HORSEHEAD PASS
Bradley had not been able to tell her just when the funeral was set
for. But it surged in Kate's heart that after what Abe Hawk had done
for her, to let the poor, bullet-torn, neglected body be put into the
ground without some effort to pay a tribute of gratitude to the man
that had once animated it, would be on her part fearfully cold.
The difficulties of the situation were many. She feared the anger of
her father, and owed his feelings something as well. But every time
she decided she ought to stay at home, the pricking at her heart grew
keener. In the end, her feelings overrode her restraint. She resolved
at least to go to town. The funeral might have already taken place--it
would be a relief even to learn more about his death.
Late in the afternoon, she got Spider Legs up again, saddled him and,
telling Kelly she might not be back that night, rode away.
It was dark by the time she reached town and leaving her horse with
McAlpin she crossed the street from the barn and walked hurriedly
around the corner to Belle's. The front door stood open and the
red-shaded lamp burned low on the dining-room table.
Tapping on the screen door, Kate, without waiting for Belle to answer,
opened it and went in. There was no light in the living-room and the
portieres were drawn. She walked down the hall to the dining-room,
where she laid down her gloves and took off her coat and hat.
Smoothing her hair, she knocked on the door of Belle's room, but got no
answer. Conjecturing that she had gone out on an errand, Kate sat down
in a rocking chair and, taking a newspaper from the table, tried to
read.
Her thoughts soon blurred the print. She read on only to think of what
had brought her so irresistibly to town and to wonder what she should
hear now that she had come.
After some struggle to concentrate, she tossed the paper aside to ask
herself why Belle did not return, and, being tense, began without
realizing it, to rock softly. Her eyes naturally turned to the
familiar lamp. Its somber paper shade threw the light in a circle on
the table, leaving the room in the heavy shadows of its figured
pattern. Kate became all at once conscious of the utter silence, and
impatient for Belle's return, got up and walked through the dark hall
toward the front door.
Passing the living-room portieres, she pushed open the screen door and
stepped out on the porch. There she stood for a moment at the top of
the steps looking at the stars. Lights here and there burned in
neighboring cottage windows. No wind stirred. The street and the town
were as still as the night. After some minutes, Kate descended the
steps, opened the gate, leaving it to close with a click behind her,
and walked to the corner of Main Street. It looked dark. The stores
were closed. From the saloon windows spotty lights shot at intervals
across the upper street, but these only made the darkened store fronts
blacker and revealed the nakedness and desertion of the street itself.
Not a man, much less a woman, could she see anywhere moving.
Either the silence, or the night, or her long wait changed her
impatience into a feeling of loneliness. She turned back toward the
cottage gate. She had not noticed before how very dark the side street
was. Reaching the gate she hesitated, pushed it open and then stopped,
conscious of a curious repugnance to entering the house.
Her feeling refused to explain itself. Through the screen she could
see the lamp still burning on the dining-room table. Things appeared
just as she had left them, yet she did not want to go in. But,
dismissing the qualm, she walked up the steps, crossed the narrow
porch, opened the screen door and, stepping inside, closed it after her.
This time that she passed the living-room she noticed the portieres
were partly open. Both times she had passed before, she felt sure,
they had been closed.
Kate sat down in the dining-room and looked suspiciously back at the
portieres. She was already sorry she had come into the house, for the
silence and her aloneness added to the conviction fast stealing over
her that someone must be in the dark living-room.
Once entertained, the suspicion became insupportable. Her ears were
pitched to a painful intensity of listening and her eyes were fastened
immovably on the motionless curtains.
She carried a ranchwoman's revolver and, putting her hand on it, she
rose, stepped close to the door of Belle's room--into which she could
retreat--and, with one hand on the knob, called sharply toward the
living-room: "Who's there?"
Not a sound answered her.
"Who is in the living-room?" she demanded again. This time, after a
moment's delay, she heard something move in the darkness, then a man's
step and Laramie stood out between the portieres.
Except for a fatigued look as he rested one hand on the portiere and
the other on his hip, he appeared quite as she had last seen him. "Are
you calling me?" he asked.
"Yes," she responded tartly. "Why didn't you answer?"
"I didn't know who you were speaking to at first. I've been here all
the evening. I didn't know you were in town till I saw your hat on the
table a few minutes ago."
"Where is Belle?" asked Kate, still on edge.
"She went over to Mrs. Kitchen's."
"When will she be back?"
He seemed to take no offense at her peremptory tone. "She said she
wouldn't be gone a great while. But," he added, with his customary
deliberation, "all the same, I wouldn't be surprised if she stayed over
pretty late--or even all night."
This was not just what Kate wanted to hear. "Why didn't you say
something when I first came in?" she asked, her suspicion reflected in
her voice.
He did not seem nonplused but he answered slowly: "I heard someone come
in. I didn't pay much attention, that's about the truth."
"What are you doing in there in the dark?"
He was provokingly deliberate in answering. "You probably haven't
heard about Abe Hawk?"
Her manner changed instantly and her voice sank. "Is it true that he
is dead?"
"Yes."
"He didn't drown that morning, did he?" she asked eagerly anxious.
"You thought he could get out--what happened?"
"He got out of the creek. But he strained his wounds--they opened. I
wasn't much of a surgeon. I got him to the hospital--he died there. I
had no place to take him then. I wouldn't leave him there alone.
Belle said I might bring him here. I'm spending my last night with
him."
"You're not trying to spare me, are you?" she asked, unsteadily. "He
really did get out of the creek?"
"He did get out."
She spoke again brokenly: "He saved my life."
"Well," remarked Laramie, meditating, "he wouldn't ask anything much
for that. Do you mind if I smoke?"
"Not a bit."
"I'm kind of nervous tonight," he confessed simply. Then he crossed
the room, rested his elbow on the mantelpiece and made ready a
cigarette. "I wonder," he said, "if I could ask you a question?"
"What is it?"
"You always act kind of queer with me. Why is it? You've never been
the way you were the first day we met. Haven't I always been square
with you?"
She hesitated but she answered honestly: "You always have."
"Then why are you so different?"
"I've made that confession once. I was acting a part that day."
"No, I can't figure it in that way. That day you were acting natural.
Why can't you be like that again."
"But, Mr. Laramie----"
"No--Jim."
"But----"
"Every time you call me Mr. Laramie I'm looking around for a gentleman.
Why can't you be the way you were the first time?"
She realized his eyes were on her, demanding the truth--and his eyes
were uncomfortably steady as she had reason to know. "If I spoke I
should hurt your feelings," she urged, summoning all her courage. "You
know as well as I do that the first time I met you I didn't know who
you were."
He did not seem much disconcerted, except that he tossed away the
unlighted cigarette. "You don't know now," was his only comment.
"I can't help knowing what is said about you--you and your friends."
He made an impatient gesture. "That gives you no clue to me."
"What are people to believe when such stories are public property?"
"Only what they know to be true."
"How are they to find out what is true?"
"By going straight to the person most concerned in the stories."
"Would you honestly expect a young woman to go to work and investigate
all the charges against men she hears in Sleepy Cat?"
"We are talking now about the charges against one man--against me. I
want to give you an instance:
"I suppose there's been a good many hard words over your way about my
keeping Abe Hawk out of the hands of your people. Because I did
shelter him--you know how--they've blackened my name here at Sleepy Cat
and down at Medicine Bend. A man doesn't have to approve all another
man does, to befriend him when he's down and a bunch of men--not as
good as he--set out to finish him. I haven't got any apologies to make
to anybody for protecting Abe when he was wounded--and if he wasn't
wounded, no man would talk any kind of protection to him. But you've
been fed up with stories about it--I know that--so," he added grimly,
"I'm going to tell you one story more.
"I grew up in this country when the mining fever was on--everybody
plumb crazy in the rush for the Horsehead Camp in the Falling Wall
country. One winter five hundred men in tents were hanging around
Sleepy Cat waiting for the first thaw, to get up to the camp. That's
when I got acquainted with Abe Hawk. Abe was carrying the mails to the
mines. He hadn't a red cent in the world. My father had just died; I
was a green kid with a pocketful of money. Abe didn't teach me any bad
habits--I didn't need any teacher. One night we were sitting next to
each other, with Harry Tenison dealing faro.
"I heard Abe was going up over the pass to Horsehead with the Christmas
bag. The few miners that got in the fall before had hung up a fat
purse for their Christmas mail and Abe needed the money. He was the
only man with the crazy nerve to try such a thing. And there were
twenty men, with all kinds of money, crowding him to take them along:
to beat the bunch in might mean a million dollar strike to any
tenderfoot in Sleepy Cat.
"Abe wouldn't hear a word of it, not from anybody--and he could talk
back awful rough. He was sure he could make the trip alone. He was
the strongest man in the mountains. I never saw the day I could handle
Abe Hawk. But the pass in December was not a job for any ordinary
mountain man--let alone a bunch of greenhorns. Just the same, I made
my play to go with him. He cursed me as hard as he did anybody and
turned me down.
"One night, after that, I was at Tenison's again. I was losing money.
Hawk was near me. He saw it. I waited for him to come out. I knew
he'd be starting soon and I was desperate. I tackled him pretty
strong. He swore if I talked again about going with him he'd kill me.
Old Bill Bradley ran the livery. My horse was in the same barn with
Abe's and Bill promised to tip me off when Abe was ready to start. He
waited for a blizzard. When it passed he was ready. But I got ahead
of him, out of town, and trailed him--I knew how. Only it snowed
again, as if all hell was against me; I had to close up on Abe or lose
him, but he never saw me till we got so far I couldn't get back; though
he could have dropped me out of the saddle with a bullet, and had the
right to do it.
"When I rode up he only looked at me. If I had been as small as I
felt, he'd never seen me. He ought to have abused me; but he didn't.
He ought to have shot me; but he didn't; or turned me back and that
would have been worse than shooting. But if he'd been my own father he
couldn't have acted different. He just told me to come along."
Laramie paused. He was speaking under a strain: "I didn't understand
it then; but he knew it was too late to quarrel. He knew there was
about one chance in a hundred for him to get through; for me, there was
about one in a hundred thousand--in fact, he knew I _couldn't_ get
through, so he didn't abuse me.
"You don't know what the winter snow on the pass is. When it got too
bad for us, he put his horse ahead to break the trail, but he let me
ride mine as far as I could--he knew what was coming. When my horse
quit, he told me to tramp along behind him.
"I guess you know about how long a boy's wind would last ten thousand
feet up in the air. I wasn't used to it. I quit."
Laramie drew from his pocket a handkerchief and knotted it nervously in
his fingers: "He told me to get up," he went on. "I did my level best
a way farther. It was no use. I quit again. He was easy with me.
But I couldn't get up and I told him to go on.
"Abe wouldn't go. I couldn't walk another step in that wind and snow
to save my soul from perdition. I just couldn't. And when I tell you
next what I asked of him, then you'll understand how mean a common
tramp like me can be. But I've got past pretty much caring what you
think of me--only I want you to know what _I_ think, and thought, of
Abe Hawk. I did the meanest thing then I ever did in my life--I asked
him to let me ride his horse. It was useless. I offered him all the
money I had. He refused. He didn't just look at me and move on, the
way most men would to save their own skins and leave me to what I
deserved. He stopped and explained that if his horse gave out we were
done--we could never break a trail to the top without the horse.
"It was blowing. He stripped his horse. The mail went into the snow.
I tried again to walk. I didn't get a hundred feet. When I fell down
that time he saw it was my finish.
"He stood a minute in front of me, looking all around before he spoke.
His horse was breathing pretty heavy; the snow blowing pretty bad.
After a while he loosened the quirt from his saddle and looked at me:
'Damn you,' he said, 'you were bound to come. All hell couldn't keep
you back, could it? Now it's come in earnest for you. You're goin'
over the pass with me. Get up out of that snow.'
"I could hear him, but I couldn't move hand or foot. And I never
dreamed what was going to happen till he laid the quirt across my face
like a knife.
"All I ever hoped for was to get up so I could live long enough to kill
him. He gave me that quirt till I was insane with rage; long afterward
he told me my eyes turned green. I cursed him. He asked me whether
I'd get up. I knew, if I didn't, I'd have to take more. I dragged
myself out of the snow again and pitched and struggled after him--to
the top of the pass.
"Then he put me on his pony--we got the wind worse up there. Abe had a
little shack a way down the pass, rigged up for storm trouble. But the
pony quit before we got to the shack, and when the pony fell down, my
hands and feet were no use. Abe carried and dragged and rolled me down
into the shack. I was asleep. There was always a fire left laid in
the stove. Abe had a hard time to light it. But he got it lighted and
when he fell down he laid both hands on the stove--so when they began
to burn it would wake him up; if the fire didn't burn he didn't want to
wake up. The marks of that fire are on his hands right in that room
there now, tonight. He saved my hands and feet. He stayed with me
while I was crazy and got me safe to Horsehead.
"Do you suppose I could ever live long enough to turn that man,
wounded, over to an enemy? He didn't ask me for any shelter after Van
Horn's raid. All he ever asked me for was cartridges--and he got 'em.
He'd get anything I had, and all I had, as long as there was a breath
left in my body, and he asked within reason. And Abe Hawk wouldn't ask
anything more."
Kate rose from her chair: "I've a great deal to learn about people and
things in this country," she said slowly. "Not all pleasant things,"
she added. "I suppose some unpleasant things have to be. Anyway, I'll
ride home tonight better satisfied for coming in."
"You going home?" he asked.
She was moving toward the door: "I only hope," she exclaimed, "this
fighting is over."
"That doesn't rest in my hands. It's no fun for me. You say you're
going to ride home?"
"There's a moon. I shan't get lost again."
He was loath to let her get away. At the door he asked if he couldn't
ride a way with her. "I'll get Lefever or Sawdy to stay here while I'm
gone," he urged.
"No, no."
"It isn't that they don't want to," he explained. "But the boys felt
kind of bad and went down to the Mountain House. Why not?"
She regarded him gravely: "One reason is, I'd never get rid of you till
I got home."
"I'll cross my heart."
"We might meet somebody. I don't want any more explosions. Let's talk
about something else."
He asked to go with her to the barn to get her horse. The simplicity
of his urging was hard to resist. "I must tell you something," she
said at last. "If you go with me to the barn we should be seen
together."
"And you're ashamed of me?"
"I said I must tell you something," she repeated with emphasis. "Will
you give me a chance?"
"Go to it."
She looked at him frankly: "I don't always have the easiest time in the
world at home. And there is always somebody around a big ranch to
bring stories to father about whom I'm seen with. Everybody in town
talks--except Belle. I must just do the best I can till things get
better."
"Here's hoping that'll be soon."
"Good-by!"
"Safe journey."