UNDER THE STARS
Robert Dodson, appalled at the horrible thing he had done, fled with his
accomplice during the night. They reached Reno, were hidden on the
outskirts of the town by a friend, and crossed the Sierras furtively to
California. Here the trail was lost. Nobody was very anxious to find it,
for Dodson carried with him his own punishment.
Years later a man from Virginia City met in a San Francisco dive a
drunken wreck who reminded him of the fugitive. He called him by name,
but the man shrank from him, slid to the door, and disappeared into the
night. This was the last time Dodson was ever recognized. A rumour
floated to Nevada that he died of yellow fever soon after this in
Mexico, but no proof of this was ever given out.
The Dodson fortune collapsed with the death of Ralph. The firm had
over-extended its operations and a tight money market closed it out. If
Ralph had lived he might have been able to weather the storm, but
without his guiding hand the Dodson properties became liabilities
instead of assets. A sheriff’s sale of the mines paid creditors almost
in full.
The death of Ralph was the nine-days talk of the town. From the evidence
of red-headed Tommie it was clear that he had directly or indirectly
approved of the plan to make away with Hugh McClintock. Most Christians
felt it to be a judgment of Providence that he had stepped into the trap
prepared for his enemy. The pagans of the community voted it a neat
piece of luck for Hugh and buried Dodson complacently and without
regrets.
Hugh had been summoned by business out of town the morning after the
tragedy and did not return for nearly a week. He called on Vicky the
evening of the same day.
Both of them were ill at ease and self-conscious. Vicky felt that she
ought to be mistress of the situation, but she could not get out of her
mind the memory of how she had clung to this man and sobbed in his arms.
The conventional parlour, with its plush album, its shell ornaments, and
its enlarged photographs of Jim Budd and his wife, stifled all Hugh’s
natural impulses. He had never learned how to make small talk.
“Whew! It’s hot here. Let’s take a walk,” he blurted out at last.
“I want to borrow a book from Mrs. Sinclair. We might walk up there,”
Vicky said.
As Vicky moved up Turkey Creek Avenue beside this strong and
self-contained man she marvelled at herself for ever having thought him
the Old Dog Tray type. The lights from the saloons and gambling houses
flashed on a face that had stirred her imagination. He never posed or
played to the gallery. He never boasted. He never made the heroic
gesture. Yet she knew him for one among ten thousand, first among all
the men she had met. He was clean and simple and direct, yet it had come
about that he held in his keeping the romance of her life. He was the
prince in shining armour she had dreamed about from her childhood.
They walked up the street toward the suburbs of the town. As they passed
the Sacramento Storage Warehouse the girl, eager to keep up a desultory
conversation, nodded at the alley.
“Mr. Budd told me that was where the man Dutch shot at you one night,”
she said.
“Yes. He waited for me as I passed. Missed three shots.”
She shuddered. Even now she did not like to think of the dangers through
which he had come to her in safety.
“All past,” he said cheerfully. “Strange, when you come to think of it.
All our enemies, Scot’s and mine, dead or driven out. Yet from first to
last all we ever did was to defend ourselves.”
They came to the end of the road, as he had done on that other night to
which she had referred. They looked up into the stars and the clean
wonder of the night took hold of them. The blatant crudeness of Piodie,
its mad scramble for gold and for the pleasures of the senses, faded for
this hour at least from their lives. The world had vanished and left
them alone—one man and one woman.
When at last he spoke it was quite simply and without any introduction
to what was in his mind.
“There’s never been any woman but you in my life. Even when you were a
li’l trick and I bought that first doll for you—even then I was getting
ready to love you and didn’t know it.”
“I’ve got that doll yet. It’s the _dearest_ doll,” she said softly, the
adjective flashing out as words were wont to do in her childhood.
He smiled. “And the black doll—have you that?”
“Yes, I have that, too. I just loved the boy that sent it to me.”
“Do you love the man he’s grown into, Vicky?”
“Yes.” She said it bravely, without any pretense of doubt. She was proud
of her love. The truth was too fine to cloud with any feminine
sinuosities.
He drew a deep long breath of joy. His dreams had come true.
With the stars as witnesses they plighted troth to each other.
THE END
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==BIG-TOWN ROUND-UP, THE==
==BRAND BLOTTERS==
==BUCKY O’CONNOR==
==CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT==
==DAUGHTER OF THE DONS, A==
==DESERT’S PRICE, THE==
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==MAN FOUR SQUARE, A==
==MAN-SIZE==
==MAVERICKS==
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TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.