THE MAN WITH THE BLEACHED BLUE EYES
There was not much she could do for him except bathe again his face
and hands. He asked for a drink, and Betty propped him up with her
arm while she held the tin cup to his lips. Exhausted by the effort,
he sank back to the pillow and panted. All the supple strength of his
splendid youth had been drained from him. The muscles were lax, the
movements of the body feeble.
Sunken eyes stared at her without recognition. “Sure I’ll take your
hand, and say ‘Thank you’ too. You’re the _best_ little scout, the best
ever.”
She took the offered hand and pressed it gently. “Yes, but now you must
rest. You’ve been sick.”
“A Boche got me.” His wandering subconscious thoughts flowed into other
memories. “Zero hour, boys. Over the top and give ’em hell.” Then,
without any apparent break from one theme to another, his thick voice
fell to a cunning whisper. “There’s a joint on South Clark Street where
I can get it.”
Into his disjointed mutterings her name came at times, spoken
always with a respect that was almost reverence. And perhaps a
moment later his voice would ring out clear and crisp in directions
to the men working under him. Subjects merged into each other
inconsequently--long-forgotten episodes of school days, college larks,
murmured endearments to the mother who had died many years since.
Listening to him, Betty knew that she was hearing revelations of a soul
masculine but essentially clean.
A sound startled her, the click of the latch. She turned her head
swiftly as the door opened. Fear drenched her heart. The man on the
threshold was Prowers. He had come out of a strong white light and at
first could see nothing in the dark cabin.
Betty watched him as he stood there, his bleached blue eyes blinking
while they adjusted themselves to another focus.
“What do you want?” she asked sharply, the accent of alarm in her voice.
“A woman, by jiminy by jinks!” The surprise in his squeaky voice was
pronounced. He moved forward to the bed. “Clint Reed’s girl. Where you
come from? How’d you get here?”
She had drawn back to the wall at the head of the bed in order to keep
a space between them. Her heart was racing furiously. His cold eyes,
with the knife-edge stab in them, held hers fast.
“I came in over the snow to nurse him.”
“Alone?”
“No. Mr. Merrick’s with me.”
“Where?”
“At the top of the hill. He broke a ski.”
“Where’s Don?”
“Gone to meet him. They’ll be here in a minute.”
A cunning, impish grin broke the lines of the man’s leathery face.
He remembered that he had come prepared to be surprised to hear of
Hollister’s wound. “Nurse who?” he asked suavely.
“Mr. Hollister, the engineer driving the tunnel.”
“Sick, is he?” He scarcely took the trouble to veil his rancorous
malice. It rode him, voice, manner, and mocking eye. His mouth was a
thin straight line, horribly cruel.
“Some one shot him--last night--through the window.” She knew now that
he had done it or had had it done. The sense of outrage, of horror at
his unhuman callousness, drove the fear out of her bosom. Her eyes
accused him, though her tongue made no charge.
“Shot him, by jiminy by jinks! Why, Daniels had ought to put the fellow
in the calaboose. Who did it?”
“I don’t know. Do you?” she flashed back.
His evil grin derided her. “How would I know, my dear?”
He drew up a chair and sat down. The girl did not move. Rigid and
watchful, she did not let her eye waver from him for an instant.
He nodded toward the delirious man. “Will he make it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Doc seen him yet?”
“No.”
“Glad I came. I can help nurse him.” He cut short a high cackle of
laughter to ask a question. “What’s yore gun for, dearie? You wouldn’t
throw it on poor Jake Prowers, would you?”
He was as deadly as dynamite, she thought, more treacherous than a
rattlesnake. She wanted to cry out her horror at him. To see him
sitting there, humped up like a spider, not three feet from the man he
had tried to murder, filled her with repulsion. There was more in her
feeling than that; a growing paralysis of terror lest he might reach
out and in a flash complete the homicide he had attempted.
She tried to reason this away. He dared not do it, with her here as a
witness, with two men drawing closer every minute. Don Black had told
her that he wouldn’t strike in the open, and the range rider had known
him more years than she had lived. But the doubt remained. She did not
know what he would do. Since she did not live in the same world as he,
it was not possible for her to follow his thought processes.
Then, with no previous intimation that his delirium had dropped from
him, the wounded man startled Betty by asking a rational question.
“Did you come to see how good a job you’d done?” he said quietly to
Prowers.
The cowman shook his head, still with the Satanic grin. “No job of
mine, son. I’m thorough.”
“Your orders, but maybe not your hand,” Hollister insisted feebly.
Betty moved into his line of vision, and to his startled brain the
motion of her was like sweet unearthly music. He looked silently at her
for a long moment.
“Am I still out of my head?” he asked. “It’s not really you, is it?”
“Yes,” she said, very gently. “You mustn’t talk.”
“In Black’s cabin, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Shot through the window, Black told me. Remember, if I don’t get well,
it was this man or Cig that did it.”
“I’ll remember,” she promised. “But you’re going to get well. Don’t
talk, please.”
“Just one thing. What are you doing here?”
“I came to look after you. Now that’s all--please.”
He said no more, in words. But the eyes of sick men are like those of
children. They tell the truth. From them is stripped the veil woven by
time and the complexities of life.
Sounds of voices on the hillside drifted to the cabin. Betty’s heart
leaped joyfully. Friends were at hand. It was too late now for Prowers
to do any harm even if it was in his mind.
The voices approached the cabin. The girl recognized that of Merrick,
strong and dominant and just a little heavy. She heard Black’s drawling
answer, without being able to distinguish the words.
The door opened. Four men came into the room. The two who brought up
the rear were Dr. Rayburn and Lon Forbes.
“Oh, Lon!” Betty cried, and went to him with a rush. “I’m awf’ly glad
you came.”
She clung to him, trembling, a sob in her throat.
The rawboned foreman patted her shoulder with a touch of embarrassment.
“There--there, honey, ’s all right. Why didn’t you wait for old Lon
instead o’ hoppin’ away like you done?”
Prowers tilted back his chair on two legs and chirped up with satiric
comment. “We got quite a nice party present. Any late arrivals not yet
heard from?”
Both Lon and Justin Merrick were taken aback. In the darkness they had
not yet recognized the little man.
The foreman spoke dryly. “Might ’a’ known it. Trouble and Jake Prowers
hunt in couples. Always did.”
“I could get a right good testimonial from Mr. Lon Forbes,” the cowman
said, with his high cackle of splenetic laughter. “Good old Lon,
downright an’ four-square, always a booster for me.”
Betty whispered. “He’s an awful man, Lon. I’m scared of him. I didn’t
know any minute what he was going to do. Oh, I _am_ glad you came.”
“Same here,” Lon replied. “Don’t you be scared, Betty. He can’t do a
thing--not a thing.”
Merrick had been taking off his skis. He came up to Betty now. “Did he
annoy you--say anything or--?”
“No, Justin.” A shiver ran down her spine. “He just looked and grinned.
I wanted to scream. He shot Mr. Hollister. I know he did. Or had it
done by that Cig.”
“Yes. I don’t doubt that.”
The doctor, disencumbered of impedimenta of snowshoes and wraps, fussed
forward to the bedside. “Well, let’s see--let’s see what’s wrong here.”
He examined the wound, effervesced protests and questions, and prepared
for business with the bustling air that characterized him.
“Outa the room now--all but Miss Reed and one o’ you men. Lon, you’ll
do.”
“I’ll stay,” announced Merrick with decision.
“All right. All right. I want some clean rags, Black. You got plenty of
hot water, I see. Clear out, boys.”
“You don’t need a good nurse, Doc?” Prowers asked, not without satiric
malice. He was playing with fire, and he knew it. Everybody in the room
suspected him of this crime. He felt a perverted enjoyment in their
hostility.
Black chose this moment to make his declaration of independence. “I’d
light a shuck outa here if I was you, Jake, an’ I wouldn’t come back,
seems to me.”
The cold, bleached eyes of the cowman narrowed. “You’re givin’ me that
advice _as a friend_, are you, Don?” he asked.
The range rider’s jaw stopped moving. In his cheek the tobacco quid
stuck out. His face, habitually set to the leathery imperturbability of
his calling, froze now to an expressionless mask.
“I’m sure givin’ you that advice,” he said evenly.
“I don’t hear so awful good, Don. As a friend, did you say?” The
little man cupped an ear with one hand in ironic mockery.
Black’s gaze was hard as gun-metal. “I said I’d hit the trail for home
if I was you, Jake, an’ I’d stay there for a spell with kinda low
visibility like they said in the war.”
“I getcha, Don.” Prowers shot a blast of cold lightning from under his
scant brows. “I can take a hint without waitin’ for a church to fall
on me. Rats an’ a sinkin’ ship, eh? You got a notion these fellows are
liable to win out on me, an’ you want to quit while the quittin’ is
good. I been wonderin’ for quite a while if you wasn’t yellow.”
“Don’t do that wonderin’ out loud, Jake,” the other warned quietly. “If
you do, you’ll sure enough find out.”
The little man laughed scornfully, met in turn defiantly the eyes of
Betty, Merrick, and Forbes, turned on his heel, and sauntered out.