AT KITCHEN'S BARN
To be so summarily left alone and in such a place was disconcerting.
Kate, in the semi-darkness and silence, put her foot on the first tread
of the steps and, placing her hand against the wall, looked upward.
Not a sound; above her a partial light through a trap-door and a
wounded man. She stood completely unnerved. The thought of Laramie
wounded, perhaps dying, the man that had rescued her, protected her, in
truth saved her life on that fearful night--this man, now lying above
her stricken, perhaps murdered, by her own father's friends! How could
she face him? Only the thought that he should not lie wounded unto
death without knowing at least that she was not ungrateful, that she
had not wittingly betrayed him, gave her strength to start up the
narrow steps.
When her head rose above the trap opening the light in the large loft
seemed less than it had promised from below. There were no windows,
but through a gable door, partly ajar, shot a narrow slit of daylight
from the afterglow of the sunset. Kate caught glimpses of a maze of
rafters, struts and beams and under them huge piles of loose hay.
Reaching the top step she paused, trying to look about in the dim
light, when Laramie, close at hand, startled her: "McAlpin told me you
wanted to see me," he said. She could distinguish nothing for a
moment. But the low words reassured her.
"I'm lying on the hay," he continued, in the same tone. "If you'll
open the door a little more you can see better."
Picking her way carefully over to it, Kate pushed the door open
somewhat wider and turned toward Laramie.
He lay not far from the stairs. The yellow light of the evening glow
falling on his face reflected a greenish pallor. Kate caught her
breath, for it seemed as if she were looking into the face of death
until she perceived, as he turned his head, the unusual brightness of
his eyes.
In her confusion what she had meant to say fled:
"Are you very much hurt?" she faltered.
"Far from it." He spoke slowly. If it cost him an effort none was
discernible. "Coming into the barn tonight," he went on, very
haltingly, "I had a kind of dizzy spell." He paused again. "I've been
eating too much meat lately, anyway. They say--I fell off my horse;
leastways I bumped my head. I'll be all right tomorrow."
"Belle told me there had been a fight up at the canyon bridge," Kate
stammered, already at a loss to begin.
A sickly yellow smile pointed the silence. "I wouldn't call it exactly
a fight," he said, dwelling somewhat on the last word. "Far from it,"
he repeated, with a touch of grimness. "There was some shooting. And
some running." She could see how he paused between sentences. "But if
the other fellows ran it must have been after me. I didn't pay much
attention to who was behind. I had to make a tolerable steep grade
down the Falling Wall Ladder to the river. I was on horseback and
didn't have much leisure to pick my trail."
"And they shooting at you from the rim!"
"Well, they must have been shooting at something in my general
direction. I guess they hit me once. I didn't mind getting hit
myself, but I didn't want them to hit my horse. I was heading for the
bottom as fast as the law would allow. If they'd hit the horse, I
wouldn't have had much more than one jump from the rim to the river.
Can't ask you to sit down," he added, "unless you'll sit here on the
hay."
Without the least hesitation Kate placed herself beside him. Without
giving her a chance to speak and in the same monotone, he added: "Who
told you I was a gambler?"
Less than so blunt and unexpected a question would have sufficed to
take her aback. And she was conscious in the fading light of his
strangely bright eyes fixed steadily on her. "I don't remember anybody
ever did. I----"
"Somebody did. You told Belle once."
"It must have been long ago----"
"Is that the reason you never acted natural with me?"
She flushed with impatience. But if she tried to get away he brought
her back to the subject. Cornered, she grew resentful: "I can't tell
who told me," she pleaded, after ineffectual sparring. "I've
forgotten. Are you a gambler?" she demanded, turning inquisitor
herself.
He did not move and it was an instant before he replied: "What do you
mean," he asked, "by gambler?"
Kate's tone was hard: "Just what anybody means."
"If you mean a man that makes his living by gambling--or hangs around a
gambling house all the time, or plays regularly--then I couldn't fairly
and squarely be called a gambler. If you mean a man that plays cards
_sometimes_, or _has_ once in a while bet on a game in a gambling
house, then, I suppose"--he was so evidently squirming that Kate meanly
enjoyed his discomfort--"you might call me that. It would all depend
on whether the one telling it liked me or didn't like me. I haven't
been in Tenison's rooms for months, nor played but one game of poker."
"I despise gambling."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Why should I?"
"In one sense everybody's a gambler. Everybody I know of is playing
for something. Take your father and me: He's playing for my life; I'm
playing for you. He's playing for a small stake; I'm playing for a big
one."
She could not protest quick enough: "You talk wildly."
"No," he persisted evenly, "I only look at it just as it is."
"Don't ask me to believe all the cruel things said of my father any
more than you want me to believe the things said of you. I am terribly
sorry to see you wounded. And now"--her words caught in her
throat--"Belle blames me even for that."
"How on earth does she blame you for that?"
Despite her efforts to control herself, Kate, as she approached the
unpleasant subject, began to tremble inwardly with the fear that it
must after all be as Belle had rudely asserted--that her father was
behind these efforts against Laramie's life. For nothing had shaken
her tottering faith in her father more than the blunt words Laramie
himself had just now indifferently spoken.
"If I am in any way to blame, it is innocently," she hurried on. "I
will tell you everything; you shall judge. My father was bitterly
angry when he learned I had been seen at Abe Hawk's funeral. I told
him about my getting lost, about falling into the place at the
bridge--how you did everything you could and how Abe Hawk had done all
he could. He was so angry he would listen to nothing----" she stopped,
collected herself, tried to go on, could not.
"Oh, I hate this country!" she exclaimed. "I hate the people and
everything in it! And I'm going away from it--as far as I can get.
But I wouldn't go," she said determinedly, "without seeing you and
telling you this much."
Laramie spoke quietly but with confidence: "You are not going away from
this country."
Kate had picked up a stem of hay and looking down at it was breaking it
nervously between her fingers. "You will have to hurry up and get well
if I stay," she said abruptly. "I'm beginning to think you are the
only friend I have here. And," she added, so quickly as to cut off any
words from him, "I've told you everything. I only hope my speaking
about the hiding place at the bridge when father was angry with me--and
only to defend myself--was not the cause of _this_."
She was close beside him. "Can it be," she asked, "that this was how
it happened?" He heard her voice break with the question.
"No," he blurted out instantly.
"Oh," she cried, "I'm so thankful!"
Listening to her effort to speak the words, he was not sorry for what
he had said. "If you're going to lie," Hawk had once said to him,
cynically, "don't stumble, don't beat about the bush--do a job!" The
moment Kate told her story, Laramie knew exactly how he had been
trapped. But why blame her? "It's the first time I ever lied to her,"
he thought ruefully to himself. "It's the first time she ever believed
me!"
"Does Belle know you quarreled with your father?" he asked, to get away
from the subject.
"No," she answered, steadying herself.
"She said you'd been acting sort of queer."
"I can't tell people my troubles."
"Why did you tell me?"
"You might die and blame me."
"Who says I'm going to die?"
"They were afraid you might."
"Well, I don't like to disappoint anybody, but dying is a thing a man
is entitled to take his time about."
"Can't I do something till the doctor comes?"
He turned very slowly on his side. Kate made an attempt to examine his
shoulder. She was not used to the sight of blood. The clotted and
matted clothing awed and sickened her. Even the hay was blood-soaked,
but she stuck to her efforts. Supplementing the rude efforts of
McAlpin and Kitchen to give him first aid, she cut away, with Laramie's
knife, the bullet-torn coat and shirt and tried to get the wound ready
for cleansing. "I'm so afraid of doing the wrong thing," she murmured,
fearfully.
"I don't care what you do--do something," he said. "Your hands feel
awful good."
"I've nothing here to work with."
"All right, we'll go to the drug store and get something." After
stubborn efforts he got on his feet and insisted on going down the
stairs. Nothing that Kate could say would dissuade him. "I've been
here long enough, anyway," was his decision. "I'm feeling better every
minute; only awfully thirsty."
Kate steadied him down the dark stairs, fearful he might fall over her
as she went ahead. Secrecy of movement seemed to have no significance
for him. If his friends were disturbed, Laramie was not. He evidently
knew the harness room, for he opened the blind door with hardly any
hesitation and stepped into the office. The office was empty but the
street door of the stable was open. McAlpin stood in the gang-way
talking to some man who evidently caught a glimpse of Laramie, for he
said rudely and loud enough for Kate to hear: "Hell, McAlpin! There
comes your dead man now!"
Kate recognized the heavy voice of Carpy and shrank back. The doctor,
McAlpin behind him dumbly staring, confronted Laramie at the door:
"What are you doin' here, Jim?" he demanded.
"What would I be doing anywhere?" retorted Laramie.
"Go back to your den. This man says you're dying."
"Well, I'm not getting much encouragement at it--I've been waiting for
you three hours to help things along. I'm done with the hay."
"Looking for a feather bed to die in. Some men are blamed particular."
As he spoke Carpy caught his first glimpse of Kate. "Hello! There's
the pretty little girl from the great big ranch. No wonder the man's
up and coming--what did you send for me for, McAlpin? Where you
heading, Jim?"
With his hands on the door jambs, Carpy effectually barred the exit.
Knowing his stubborn patient well, he humored him, to the verge of
letting him have his own way, but with much raillery denied him the
drug store trip. A compromise was effected. Laramie consented to go
to Belle's to get something to eat. In this way, refusing help, the
obdurate patient was got to walk to the cottage.
"Don't let him fall on y'," McAlpin cautioned Kate, as the two followed
close behind. "I helped carry him upstairs. He's a ton o' brick."
But Laramie, either incensed by his condition--the idea of any escort
being vastly unpleasant to him--or animated by the stiff hypodermics of
profanity that Carpy injected into the talk as they crossed the street,
did not even stumble; he held his way unaided, met Belle's amazement
unresponsively and, sitting down, called for something to eat.
"How does he do it, Doc?" whispered McAlpin, craning forward from the
background.
"Pure, damned nerve," muttered Carpy. "But he does it."
They got him into bed. While the doctor was excavating the channel
ripped through his shoulder, Laramie said nothing. When, however, he
discovered that Kate was missing, he crustily short-circuited Belle's
excuses. Words passed. It became clear that Laramie would start out
and search the town if Kate were not produced.
"She wanted to see _me_," he insisted, doggedly. "Now I want to see
_her_."
Carpy found he must again intervene. He despatched McAlpin as a
diplomatic envoy over to his own house whither he had taken Kate as his
guest when she peremptorily declined to return to Belle's.