“Is this the way you keep watch?” the Californian shouted fiercely. “You've thrown our lives away!”
0135
Between the wagons where Stephen entered the enclosure, ten or a dozen dark forms now appeared. He put down the child bidding him run and hide himself in a safe spot, and sprang to Roger's aid where he stood beating back the enemy with the stock of his clubbed gun. It was only for an instant, however, that they faced these odds alone; for Bushrod, Walsh, and Bingham rushed to their assistance, and there succeeded a wild moment; the mingled sound of blows and oaths, and then the attack having failed, the dark forms melted silently away in the grey light.
“Who's hurt?” Rogers inquired eagerly.
“I guess I'm not, for one,” said Bushrod. “How about you, Steve, and you, Walsh, are your skins whole yet?”
“Yes, but good God, where is Bingham! What's become of him?” cried Stephen.
“He was at my elbow a moment ago,” faltered Walsh. There was a pause while they stared blankly at each other. Then from the plain below they heard a yell of savage triumph.
“Hark, what's that?” said Stephen, but his blood ran cold at the sound.
“What does it mean, Rogers?” Bushrod demanded, for the yells continued. “Why don't you speak, man?” he cried.
“I was listening to see if I could hear him; he must have been done for when they fetched him off with their own dead and wounded. Hear the devils yell! I reckon he can thank God Almighty he died in time;” and he licked his dry lips with the tip of his tongue.
“You mean—” began Stephen in a voice of horror; but the Californian cut him short.
“I tell you he was dead when they found out who they had fetched away; ain't that enough for you to know?” he cried, but he clapped his hands to his ears, and stood rocking from side to side.
“How did they get so close?” asked Walsh at last.
“You'd better ask Landray that,” said Rogers bitterly. “It was his watch.” He had stooped, and was picking up his rifle which he had dropped the moment before.
“No, it was mine,” said Bushrod. “Why didn't you call me, Steve?” They were grateful to have something to talk of.
“You were asleep, and—well, I couldn't sleep, so what was the use of calling you?”
They could see now indistinctly what was passing below them; merely a dark cluster of huddled men and horses, where they waited for day to come; but with the first streaks of yellow light the plains resounded with the beat of hoofs.
Half an hour passed, and then Walsh pitched forward without a word or groan, shot through the heart; an instant later Bushrod put aside his rifle.
“You'll have to finish it,” he said shortly to his brother, and held up his right hand; his wrist had been shattered by a ball. He looked at the hurt member for a moment considering what he should do; and then began moodily to wrap it in long strips of cloth which he cut with his hunting-knife from the front of his shirt.
The sun rose higher and higher in the sky, until its rays fell vertically on the three men and the child. Stephen and Rogers, their faces black with powder stains and their lips parched and swollen, intently watched the enemy; from time to time they warily raised themselves on their knees and made a hasty discharge of their rifles. Benny, at his father's side, helped him to load; his little face, pinched with suffering and terror, was streaked with sweat and grime. At Stephen's elbow, Bushrod, working clumsily with his uninjured hand performed the same offices for his brother; thus they managed to keep two rifles always loaded. In this manner the morning passed.
The Californian's fire had slackened by imperceptible degrees; now each time his gun was loaded it was jerked recklessly to his shoulder and discharged without aim; his dark eyes lighted wildly, he began to sing the emigrant's song,
“Oh, California,
That's the land for me,
I'm bound for San Francisco
With my wash bowl on my knee.”
At first he sang the words under his breath, crooning them softly over and over to himself; then the song grew louder and louder until he finally bellowed the words in a deep rugged bass. The sound cut like a knife, and Benny shrank from his side in alarm.
“Be still, Rogers!” ordered Stephen sharply.
“Why the hell do you want me to keep still? I'm letting 'em know how gay we feel,” and he began to sing again,
“I soon shall be in 'Frisco
And then I'll look all round—”
“I tell you, Rogers, keep still!” cried Landray.
The Californian paused, and glared at him vacantly.
“Rogers,” he repeated slowly, “Who's talking about Rogers? That's a good joke; Rogers is dead—the redskins done for him handsome; but first he killed ten of the devils. They stripped off his shirt and cut ten gashes in his back, and then they stabbed him ten times, and drove a stake in his eye and filled the hole with powder and blew his skull to pieces. That's the trick they played Rogers.” He seemed to dwell on this horrible fancy with positive delight. “Rogers was a murdering cuss anyhow, but God Almighty fixed it so he got come up with all right!” While he was speaking he had half risen to his feet, but now he squatted down once more. Benny thrust the stock of a rifle toward him, his hands closed about it instinctively; he seemed to be recalled to himself. “Keep low, son,” he cautioned, “they sha'n'. serve us as they served Rogers. Presently we'll be on the move.”
But Benny, wide-eyed and frightened, and not comprehending the change that had come over him, only shrank further and further away. An instant later the Californian dropped his gun.
“What's the use!” he cried, springing to his feet.
“Get down, Rogers! Get down, you fool!” cried Stephen angrily.
“I want some of Bingham's luck!” He swung about on his heel, searching the horizon with heavy bloodshot eyes. “Where's the West? There's gold there; put the mules to the wagons—let's be moving—gold! Do you hear? Me and Benny needs it!” And before they divined his purpose he had leaped the barricade. Bushrod sprang after him and with his uninjured hand sought to draw him back; they struggled fiercely together for a moment, and then Rogers exerting his strength dragged him across the hilltop.
“Let him go, Bush!” shouted Stephen.
Bushrod freed himself from the madman's clutch and turned to regain the shelter of the wagons; but at this moment a horseman galloped swiftly up the slope and drew rein not ten paces distant; he threw himself from his horse and raised his rifle. It might have been some horrid fancy that the eyes that looked at him out of the smear of paint were Basil Landray's eyes, but there was no mistaking the beard.
“You!” he cried, and with his left hand sought to draw the hunting-knife from its sheath at his belt, since save for this he was weaponless. The fur trader thrust his rifle across his horse's back and taking deliberate aim, fired. Bushrod, with his eyes still fixed intently on his cousin's face, and his hand still fumbling clumsily with the hilt of his knife, sank first to his knees, then he pitched forward with a single groan.
It all occupied but an instant in the doing, yet each slightest detail was distinct and vivid to Stephen. Until Bushrod fell he made neither sound or movement; he durst not use the loaded rifle he held in his hand, since his brother stood between him and the fur trader; but as Bushrod sank to the ground he strode forward with his piece resting loosely in the crook of his arm. Basil saw him coming and his first impulse was evidently flight; then he released his hold on his horse, dropped his rifle, and drawing a pistol from his belt, stepped eagerly forward to meet his cousin.
When the two men were quite near, the fur trader lifted his pistol. Stephen saw his black beard bristle like the mane of some angry animal, and caught the glint of his cruel eyes along the short barrel; the hammer fell, the cap exploded, but there was no report; and with an oath Basil threw down the useless weapon.
“It's my turn. I knew it would come,” said Stephen sternly; and he drew the stock of his rifle up to his shoulder. He was so secure in this belief of his, that no power on earth could have moved him to haste. He heard the hoof beats of the horses as they charged up the hill, yet the gun came slowly to his shoulder, and his aim was taken with the utmost deliberation. It seemed minutes while his eyes were finding the sights.
Basil, with an uncontrollable emotion of fear and horror, threw out his arms in a gesture of mute entreaty; then he covered his face with his hands, while a sob burst from his twitching lips; a deep groan followed almost instantly.
Stephen stood like a man in a daze, with his still smoking rifle held in his hand. The trampling of the horses roused him to some thought of his own safety; he took his eyes away from the writhing figure on the ground, and turned, intending if possible to regain the shelter of the barricade; but what was the use? One place was no better than another, for the end had clearly come. He seized his rifle by the barrel and heaved up the stock.
“Come on!” he cried hoarsely; and at his words the dark shouting mass of straining men and trampling horses closed about him.
He struck out fiercely but never blindly; each time his weapon was raised he selected his victim, and each time he crushed the life out of this victim with a terrible sweeping blow; for he had gone beyond fear, the dread of wounds and death, even the strong desire of man's strength in its prime, to live. A dozen guns blazed in his face; now he was down, now up; now down again; his footing slippery with his own blood and with that of his assailants; but now he was down, and for the last time; and the savages struggled fiercely among themselves, each intent on striking the body of this mighty fallen warrior.
The Californian had kept on down the western slope of the hill. When Basil released his horse, the animal trotted off toward the cottonwoods, and before it had gone a hundred yards Rogers caught and threw himself astride of it, and fled out across the plain, while back to the hill making lessening head against the freshening wind was borne snatches of his song. He had covered a third of the distance to the cottonwoods, when a child's frightened voice reached him.
“Pop! Pop! Come back! It's me—Benny!”
He drew rein instantly, turned, and at a canter rode back toward the camp. There was absolute silence there now, save for the screams of the terrified child, who stood outside the barricade, clinging to the spokes of a wagon wheel.
“Benny, where are you?” Rogers called, when he reached the foot of the hill, and his dull eyes lit up with a sudden sense of things.
For answer there came a crashing volley; and out of the drifting patches of smoke a great bay horse appeared to spring, and stung with wounds dashed along the plain dragging the limp figure of a man whose heavy-booted foot had caught in a stirrup-iron.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE letters which the brothers and Walsh had written at Fort Laramie, and which they had entrusted to a party of returning emigrants, were the last that reached the town of Benson. They were poured over in secret; and afterward Colonel Sharp was permitted to print in the Pioneer such descriptive passages as were deemed of general public interest.
They marked the end of what had seemed as permanent as anything can seem in this world; and all that remained in record of what three men in their varying ways had counted of supreme worth, was the yellowing paper with the many seals and the words that meant so little or so much.
One month, then two, then three, dragged by in silence; a silence which Virginia, and Jane, and Anna, bore with differing degrees of fear and uncertainty, as they waited from day to day for some sign from the gold-seekers; but no word came. The trail and the campfire with the love that watched beside them had spoken for the last time.
Each day Virginia with Jane, from the white porch of the farmhouse, anticipated the coming of the north bound stage which carried the western mails. They heard it with its squeaking brake block hard set against the wheels the moment it began the long descent of Landray's Hill; they watched it with anxious glances as it came careening into sight, tossed and troubled in the ruts of the Little River road; and their eyes, now filled with a world of hope and yearning, followed it until it was lost in the depths of the covered bridge at the foot of Main Street.
Sam West, sometimes dusty, and sometimes muddy—for they would not let him start for town until they saw the last of the coach since they found some comfort in sending him off post-haste, and in bidding him ride hard, and above all things be sure and bring back the letters—would each day present his honest red face at the little square window in the post-office, with a cheerful, “Anything to-day, Mr. Bently?” And Mr. Bendy, who knew there was nothing for him would answer, “No, I think not, Sam, but I won't be sure; just wait a minute and I'll look.” And he would search through the letters only to lay them down with a regretful shake of the head. “I am sorry, Sam, but there don't seem to be as much as the scratch of a pen,” he would say.
At first, Sam, by a variety of ingenious theories strove to explain away the repetition of this tragic fact; then theories being exhausted, he fixed his faith for a time on the inherent weakness of human nature.
“I didn't think it of Stephen Landray—I vow I didn't! Looks like out of sight out of mind, don't it? Well, I'm dummed!” However, the cynic's mood endured but briefly. “I wish she wouldn't send me,” he told the postmaster one rainy day late in September. “I'd give a good deal not to have to go back and tell her there's nothing; why don't he write; what's to hinder him, anyway?”
“I don't know what's to hinder, Sam, but something is a-hinder-ing,” said Mr. Bently.
“Mighty singular; ain't it?” and Sam meditated in silence for a moment. “Do you reckon anything's wrong with them?” he asked, dropping his voice to a confidential whisper. He could never quite rid himself of the conviction that the postmaster, with all those letters, must have a means of knowing.
“I hope not; I'd hate to think that,” said Mr. Bently.
“You don't reckon the letters could be lost?” Sam ventured hesitatingly, for to him the question somehow seemed to argue lack of faith in Mr. Bently's official ability.
“That might happen, Sam; I won't say it is at all likely; still it might happen.”
“Can I tell her that, Mr. Bently, that you said so? I got to tell her something; she just listens to any fool thing I say, and turns back into the house without a word except a 'Thank you, Sam.' She's got to stop sending me, or I'll quit the place! It don't make no difference if Stephen Landray did tell me he wanted me to stay on. He ain't acting right, not letting her know where he's at.”
“I am afraid the boys made a big mistake,” said Mr. Bently. “They was well fixed here.”
“They was indeed,” agreed Sam. “Say, would you mind looking at them letters again to make sure, Mr. Bently? No? Don't it beat all why she don't hear from him! Well, I must be getting along, she's waiting for me. You think there is some sort of a slim chance that the letters are lost? It will be a comfort for them to think that. Indians, maybe?”
“No, I wouldn't say a word about Indians, Sam,” objected Mr. Bently hastily.
“Well, then, they are just lost, you reckon.”
“That may be, Sam, I don't say it's so, but the western mails are very oncertain. They probably had to give their letters to some party that was coming East, and they may have lost them.”
“Then I'd like to put my hands on the cuss that done it! I'd make him jump clean out of his skin to get shut of me.”
The honest fellow galloped back to the farm through the mud, and in the face of a cold rain that drenched him to the skin. It was early candle-light when he entered the lane, and he walked his horse up the strip of soggy turf while he meditated on what he should tell Mrs. Landray. The storm had driven her from the porch, but as he turned the corner of the house on his way to the barn he saw her face at the library window, and merely shook his head.
When he had stabled and fed his horse he hurried into the kitchen. Martha, his wife, met him with a look of inquiry on her broad, good-natured face.
“No letters?” she asked, and he answered her with her own words, “No letters.”
“There's a drink of brandy for you, Sam,” she said. “Mrs. Landray wanted you should have it.”
Sam stalked to the table and emptied the glass at a swallow.
“Best French spirits! The Landrays always was gentlemen when it came to their drinks.”
“We are expecting things, we are,” said his wife. “You're to be ready to go into town after supper for the doctor, if he's wanted.”
In the dining-room with its dark walnut wainscoating, doubly sombre in the half light of the flickering candles that burnt on the mantel, Virginia watched and waited alone. No sound came from the room above; silence filled the house with a hush that was like expectation. But a moment before she had heard Martha moving to and fro; a chair had been pushed across the floor; and she had heard the sound of voices. She had listened intently but the words they spoke had been indistinguishable; perhaps Jane was resting more quietly now.
An hour had elapsed since Sam had rattled out of the yard in the covered cart, the beat of his horse's hoofs on the spongy earth soon dying away in the distance. He had been dispatched in urgent haste into town to bring Dr. Harrison.
Meanwhile Martha had the care of the sick woman; for Virginia had no heart to go near her. If she should be needed, or if Jane asked for her, then she would go; but not unless. The situation with its hope and uncertainty baffled her usually ready courage; she could only think of that boyish husband, for so Jane described him, and his absence and silence. Why had he gone—he of all men? What fitness had he, with his impractical Latin and Greek, for the hard actualities of the plains?
From her seat before the fire, she heard the sullen insistent rush of the wind outside; and at intervals the dull surging echoes the wooded heights of Landray's Hill gave to the storm. They had roared among those oaks for perhaps a thousand years, as now, when the grey clouds and slanted mists of the equinox were tossed and twisted in the face of the night. She rested her cheek in the palm of her hand; she heard the fall of the rain in a lull of the storm; and again rising out of the silence, the wind, as it roared on the hill and sweeping nearer beat against the shuttered windows high up in the gable of the old stone mill: then it dribbled and died away on the brown meadow land of the Little River bottom.
Jane was quite happy; how happy, Virginia had only her woman's instinct to tell her; she had talked incessantly all day of the future when her husband should have returned. But what if he did not return, what was in store for her then? This doubt now took possession of Virginia's fancy, for her own hope had crumbled; perhaps it was only the night, the loneliness; perhaps later when all was over, her courage would come back; and then there was the morrow, it might bring the looked-for letters; it surely would, she had waited patiently; but now—now she could endure no longer.
Presently disturbing her revery the brass knocker on the front door sounded discordantly. She rose hurriedly, and picking up a candle hastened out into the hall to admit Dr. Harrison; but she admitted more than the doctor; for there in the portly physician's shadow, bowing and smiling, not quite diffident and not quite confident, stood young Jacob Benson.
The doctor was saying as Virginia opened the door, “So it was you, Jacob; we heard your horse floundering through the mud after us all the way out from town and wondered who it was.”
“Yes, it was I, doctor,” but Benson looked past him to Virginia, who stood in the doorway shading the light she held with one hand. There was a brief silence; the doctor seemed to smile behind the turned-up collar of his great coat. The lawyer spoke first.
“I trust you are not ill, Mrs. Landray?” he said.
“I? Oh, no, Mr. Benson—pray come in.”
The doctor grinned at Virginia, who gave him a slightly embarrassed glance; and Benson noting it, felt somehow that he was in the way; yet he followed the physician into the hall and closed the door. In the library, Dr. Harrison promptly divested himself of his outer coat and fell to warming his hands before the fire. Benson stood at a little distance fingering the rim of his hat, and wondering who was ill since it was not Virginia.
“You must have had a very disagreeable ride, doctor,” Virginia was saying.
“I'll leave Jacob to speak of that; he couldn't have enjoyed it any more than I did.” He smiled again; then picking up his case of medicines he quitted the room.
“Won't you come nearer the fire, Mr. Benson?” said Virginia; her words were civil enough, but there was the old hostility in her manner, which Benson had never been able to explain.
“I rather fear I've chosen a poor time for my call,” he observed.
“If it is to see Mrs. Walsh—”
“It is to see Mrs. Walsh,” he replied.
“She is not well.”
“I'm very sorry. It's nothing serious, I hope?” he said.
He drew forward a chair, and seated himself with no little composure before the fire.
“I am not detaining you?” he said suddenly, half rising.
“No, I think not; Martha is with her.”
He wondered vaguely at her reticence regarding Jane.
“There's a good deal of sickness,” he said, as one presenting a valuable fact for her consideration.
“So I hear.”
“I fear her affairs are in a rather bad way,” he continued, suddenly recalled to the ostensible purpose of his visit.
“You have heard from her husband's brother then?” said Virginia quickly.
“Not from him personally, but from a lawyer in New York for whom I occasionally transact business here.”
“Oh!” and Virginia waited for him to go on.
“I gather that this brother of Walsh's is entirely irresponsible. In the first place his business did not fail; he disposed of it at a remunerative figure.”
“And the money which was left for Jane is lost?” asked Virginia.
“That seems to be the case. In fact Walsh has himself sailed for California.”
They were silent. Benson had said all there was to say, yet he made no move to go. That he had not seen Mrs. Walsh did not matter since the real purpose of his drive to the farm had been accomplished. He had seen Virginia; he had lacked the strength to deny himself this perilous joy. Away from her he forgot rebuffs and slights; he remembered only her beauty, the depths of her eyes; the poise of her head; some swift graceful gesture; and he lived in the spell of these things; and the desire, strong and not to be denied, to see her, would assert itself. To be near her was to feel himself ennobled, to thrill with a curious sense of purification; but he was conscious that his feeling for her, which had grown out of a boyish admiration for a woman's beauty that seemed finer and nobler than anything he had known in a woman before, was sweeping him away by imperceptible gradations from all his ideals of conduct and manhood; yet he would have been loath to call this secret ecstasy he knew in her presence, love. In his moments of self-searching he told himself that her indifference more than punished him for the pleasure he derived from being near her; but he expected to suffer; that was something he could not hope to escape.
Virginia moved impatiently.
“I will tell Jane all you have told me, when I think she is able to bear it. It will be a terrible disappointment to her.” Then she shot him a swift glance. “You have not heard from Stephen?” she spoke unsteadily, and to Benson it seemed reluctantly as well.
“Not since he left Fort Laramie. I suppose we can hardly realize the difficulties he encounters in sending his letters East for mailing, here we have every modern convenience; the stage each day—”
Her grave eyes were bent upon his face; she was seeking to determine the depth of his conviction.
“What would you do if it was one you loved who was so strangely silent, who had gone, and from whom you could not hear?” she asked.
He met her glance helplessly.
“Perhaps the letters are lost,” he said at last.
“That's what every one tells me,” she smiled wearily.
“It is not an unreasonable conjecture,” he urged.