THE FALTERING FAITH
It was disconcerting to meet an armed and hostile man at the place
where he supposed his friend was waiting, yet Dexter did not for an
instant lose his self-possession. He noticed that the rifle barrel
did not hold quite steady, and he was aware that the inexperienced
youth might fire in nervous excitement at any second, without giving
him a chance. Before he could make up his mind what to do, however,
a voice screamed out behind him, and Alison stumbled forward,
apparently with some wild notion of intervening.
"Archie!" the girl cried in an agonized tone.
The corporal flung out his arm as a barrier, and thrust her back. He
was watching young Preston's face, observing the line of the tensely
compressed lips, staring into the blue eyes that squinted at him
along the gun barrel. And it struck him all at once that the boy
lacked the hardihood to pull the trigger.
They faced each other in silence for a moment, and Dexter smiled in
icy contempt, "I can't obey your order about the hands," he said,
"because I have only one to put up. So I won't bother at all."
With a slow, deliberate movement he unbuttoned his tunic and thrust
his hand into his inside pocket. Quite casually, as though he might
have reached only for a handkerchief or a match, he drew forth the
small, pearl-handled revolver that he had picked up months before
from the floor of the murder cabin. He knew that any instant might
be his last, but he was banking on the irresolution he had read in
the other's face, and was ready to accept a gambler's hazard. Gazing
with cool fixity into the boy's eyes, he cocked his weapon and
leveled the barrel.
"Drop that gun!" he commanded.
There was a quality in the corporal's tone to warn Preston that this
was not a moment for trifling. The boy shrank backward half a pace,
and his bolstered-up attitude of recklessness seemed suddenly to slip
away from him. The muzzle of the rifle wavered downward; and the
next instant his hands unclosed, and the weapon fell in the snow at
his feet.
Dexter laughed aloud in relief. "I think I told you last fall when
we met," he remarked pleasantly--"it's foolish to play with things
that we don't understand."
The boy drew a short breath, and reached up unsteadily to wipe his
sleeve over his moist forehead. "The rifle--it isn't loaded," he
managed to gulp out. "I was just--trying to bluff."
"Eh?" Dexter regarded him sharply for an instant, and then stooped
to the ground and picked up the fallen firearm.
"I ran out of cartridges several weeks ago, and--well, that's all
there is to it."
"It doesn't pay to bluff in this country, unless you're ready to back
it up," observed the corporal. "It's so easy to get hurt." He
thrust the rifle muzzle in the snow, and with his left hand he jerked
open the magazine lever, and assured himself that the weapon really
held no cartridge. "I don't believe you'd have shot me anyhow,
Archie," he remarked. "I honestly don't think so. Anyhow, we'll let
bygones be bygones, and just forget that it happened."
During the few seconds of the swift encounter Alison had stood by, a
hushed and terrified spectator. But now she moved forward suddenly
to her brother's side. "Archie!" she gasped. "How did you get here?
What does it mean?"
"I was looking for you," was the answer. "Just happened over this
direction. Looked through the brush, and saw you coming--with the
officer." The boy shook his head dejectedly. "I thought--I had
hoped that I might be able to get you away from him."
"Where's Colonel Devreaux?" interrupted the corporal.
"I don't know him," said Preston. "I haven't seen anybody."
Dexter raised his head and called the superintendent's name, shouting
with all the power of his lungs. He repeated the cry several times,
but only echoes answered him from the mountainsides.
"Can anything have happened?" he muttered after a lengthy pause. He
turned abruptly to Preston. "I want to look inside the cave," he
said. "Go in ahead of me, please."
With the boy accompanying him, Dexter searched the cavern from one
end to the other. But the place was empty, and he found no clew to
tell him what had happened to his missing officer.
"How long have you been here?" he asked, when they finally emerged
into the sunlight.
"I don't know," replied Preston. "About a half hour, I guess."
"There was no one here then?"
"Nobody."
"How'd you find the place?"
"Just accident." The boy glanced up in seeming frankness. "I was
looking for--for--"
"For your sister," supplemented the corporal as the other hesitated.
"You needn't be afraid of betraying any secrets. I know all about
you."
"Well, yes," admitted Archie, with a sidewise glance at the girl.
"We were stopping over yonder at a cabin--"
"Where I found you last fall."
"Yes. And anyhow--Alison left the other day, saying she was restless
and was going for a walk." The boy shot a furtive look towards his
sister. "She didn't come back, as she had promised, and so I started
out that same night to hunt for her."
"Over this direction?" asked Dexter.
"It was dark," was the answer, "and I somehow lost the trail, and
I've been just wandering the last couple of days--lost, I guess.
"Anyhow," Archie went on, wriggling a little under the corporal's
iron scrutiny, "I happened into this neighborhood to-day, and
discovered some tracks leading up the slope. I followed, just to see
what there was to find out, and I came on this cave. I was looking
around, trying to decide who had been here, and I caught sight of you
two coming towards me. I saw you would pass this place, and I hid,
and--" He smiled ruefully. "Well, you know the rest."
The boy faced about to survey his sister. "What became of you,
Alison?" he asked somewhat pettishly. "If you hadn't gone running
off that way we wouldn't have gotten into this mess."
"I'm sorry, Archie," she returned gently. "It was my fault, and
yet--I couldn't foresee that this would happen."
"But how did it come about?" he persisted. "Where did you go?"
"Down the valley a distance," she answered evasively, and Dexter
gathered from her manner that she did not wish her brother to know
all that had taken place.
"And let a policeman pick you up!" The boy glanced at the corporal's
empty holster, and shook his head in mystification. "I don't see how
you ever let him do it. He hasn't any gun of his own, and yet he got
the best of you--took your revolver from you?"
"My revolver?" she echoed.
"Yes--yours--the one he just stuck on me. How'd you ever allow him
to get his hands on it?"
Dexter threw up his head with a start. "Is this your sister's
revolver?" he asked after a trenchant interval. He reached into his
pocket again and exhibited the weapon on the palm of his hand.
"Certainly," Preston replied without hesitation. "There's that
scratch in the silver plate on the barrel. It's hers."
A look of infinite sadness passed over Dexter's face as he turned to
confront the girl. "You admit this is yours?" he asked somberly.
"Admit it?" she faltered. "Why, what--?"
"Do you know where I found it?" he cut in before she could finish.
She faced him with widening eyes, but did not reply.
"On the floor of the cabin where the two murders were done--that
night, when I found you there," he stated in low, incisive tones.
"Here is the revolver, exactly as I picked it up, with the cases of
two discharged cartridges still left in the chamber. The bullets
from those cartridges were the bullets that killed the two men in the
bunks."
"The revolver--I don't know how it got here," Alison said with a dry
sob. "It--I carried it in the bottom of a knapsack I had, and,
having no occasion to use it, I hadn't looked for it since early last
fall. I may have lost it, or it may have been stolen. I--I don't
know."
"That's your explanation?" Dexter asked.
"I can tell you no more than that," she said, and her face was
colorless as she bowed her head before him.
"You want me to believe, then, that this revolver was stolen without
your knowing: stolen by an unidentified woman who went to a lonely
cabin in the wilderness at the same moment you appeared there; who
shot two men, threw the smoking weapon behind the front door, and
vanished without leaving a trace behind." Dexter stared at her from
under lowering brows. "Is that what you want me to believe?"
"Oh, I don't know--I don't know what to think about it all," she
answered tonelessly.
"I do," said Dexter. "I'm thinking of a story the colonel told me
recently about--well, it was about himself when he was a younger man.
And I'm thinking how foolish we are not to profit by the experiences
of the men who have gone before us--to save ourselves the bitterness
of learning for ourselves." He looked at the girl for a moment with
eyes that had grown jaded and hard. Then, with a careless movement,
he tossed the revolver in his hand, and thrust it back into his
pocket.
"Come on!" he commanded harshly, and turned on his heel. "I've got
to find Devreaux."