Kate found her sister, as the stranger had intimated, fully prepared. A
hasty inventory of provisions and means of subsistence showed that they
had ample resources for a much longer isolation.
“They tell me it is by no means an uncommon case, Kate; somebody over at
somebody's place was snowed in for four weeks, and now it appears that
even the Summit House is not always accessible. John ought to have known
it when he bought the place; in fact, I was ashamed to admit that he did
not. But that is like John to prefer his own theories to the experience
of others. However, I don't suppose we should even notice the privation
except for the mails. It will be a lesson to John, though. As Mr. Lee
says, he is on the outside, and can probably go wherever he likes from
the Summit except to come here.”
“Mr. Lee?” echoed Kate.
“Yes, the wounded one; and the other's name is Falkner. I asked them in
order that you might be properly introduced. There were very respectable
Falkners in Charlestown, you remember; I thought you might warm to
the name, and perhaps trace the connection, now that you are such good
friends. It's providential they are here, as we haven't got a horse or
a man in the place since Manuel disappeared, though Mr. Falkner says
he can't be far away, or they would have met him on the trail if he had
gone towards the Summit.”
“Did they say anything more of Manuel?”
“Nothing; though I am inclined to agree with you that he isn't
trustworthy. But that again is the result of John's idea of employing
native skill at the expense of retaining native habits.”
The evening closed early, and with no diminution in the falling rain and
rising wind. Falkner kept his word, and unostentatiously performed the
out-door work in the barn and stables, assisted by the only Chinese
servant remaining, and under the advice and supervision of Kate.
Although he seemed to understand horses, she was surprised to find that
he betrayed a civic ignorance of the ordinary details of the farm and
rustic household. It was quite impossible that she should retain her
distrustful attitude, or he his reserve in their enforced companionship.
They talked freely of subjects suggested by the situation, Falkner
exhibiting a general knowledge and intuition of things without parade or
dogmatism. Doubtful of all versatility as Kate was, she could not help
admitting to herself that his truths were none the less true for their
quantity or that he got at them without ostentatious processes. His talk
certainly was more picturesque than her brother's, and less subduing to
her faculties. John had always crushed her.
When they returned to the house he did not linger in the parlor or
sitting-room, but at once rejoined his friend. When dinner was ready in
the dining-room, a little more deliberately arranged and ornamented than
usual, the two women were somewhat surprised to receive an excuse from
Falkner, begging them to allow him for the present to take his meals
with the patient, and thus save the necessity of another attendant.
“It is all shyness, Kate,” said Mrs. Hale, confidently, “and must not be
permitted for a moment.”
“I'm sure I should be quite willing to stay with the poor boy myself,”
said Mrs. Scott, simply, “and take Mr. Falkner's place while he dines.”
“You are too willing, mother,” said Mrs. Hale, pertly, “and your 'poor
boy,' as you call him, will never see thirty-five again.”
“He will never see any other birthday!” retorted her mother, “unless you
keep him more quiet. He only talks when you're in the room.”
“He wants some relief to his friend's long face and moustachios that
make him look prematurely in mourning,” said Mrs. Hale, with a slight
increase of animation. “I don't propose to leave them too much together.
After dinner we'll adjourn to their room and lighten it up a little.
You must come, Kate, to look at the patient, and counteract the baleful
effects of my frivolity.”
Mrs. Hale's instincts were truer than her mother's experience; not only
that the wounded man's eyes became brighter under the provocation of her
presence, but it was evident that his naturally exuberant spirits were
a part of his vital strength, and were absolutely essential to his quick
recovery. Encouraged by Falkner's grave and practical assistance, which
she could not ignore, Kate ventured to make an examination of Lee's
wound. Even to her unpractised eye it was less serious than at first
appeared. The great loss of blood had been due to the laceration of
certain small vessels below the knee, but neither artery nor bone was
injured. A recurrence of the haemorrhage or fever was the only thing to
be feared, and these could be averted by bandaging, repose, and simple
nursing.
The unfailing good humor of the patient under this manipulation, the
quaint originality of his speech, the freedom of his fancy, which was,
however, always controlled by a certain instinctive tact, began to
affect Kate nearly as it had the others. She found herself laughing over
the work she had undertaken in a pure sense of duty; she joined in the
hilarity produced by Lee's affected terror of her surgical mania, and
offered to undo the bandages in search of the thimble he declared she
had left in the wound with a view to further experiments.
“You ought to broaden your practice,” he suggested. “A good deal might
be made out of Ned and a piece of soap left carelessly on the first step
of the staircase, while mountains of surgical opportunities lie in
a humble orange peel judiciously exposed. Only I warn you that you
wouldn't find him as docile as I am. Decoyed into a snow-drift and
frozen, you might get some valuable experiences in resuscitation by
thawing him.”
“I fancied you had done that already, Kate,” whispered Mrs. Hale.
“Freezing is the new suggestion for painless surgery,” said Lee, coming
to Kate's relief with ready tact, “only the knowledge should be
more generally spread. There was a man up at Strawberry fell under a
sledge-load of wood in the snow. Stunned by the shock, he was slowly
freezing to death, when, with a tremendous effort, he succeeded in
freeing himself all but his right leg, pinned down by a small log. His
axe happened to have fallen within reach, and a few blows on the log
freed him.”
“And saved the poor fellow's life,” said Mrs. Scott, who was listening
with sympathizing intensity.
“At the expense of his LEFT LEG, which he had unknowingly cut off under
the pleasing supposition that it was a log,” returned Lee demurely.
Nevertheless, in a few moments he managed to divert the slightly shocked
susceptibilities of the old lady with some raillery of himself, and did
not again interrupt the even good-humored communion of the party. The
rain beating against the windows and the fire sparkling on the hearth
seemed to lend a charm to their peculiar isolation, and it was not until
Mrs. Scott rose with a warning that they were trespassing upon the rest
of their patient that they discovered that the evening had slipped by
unnoticed. When the door at last closed on the bright, sympathetic
eyes of the two young women and the motherly benediction of the elder,
Falkner walked to the window, and remained silent, looking into the
darkness. Suddenly he turned bitterly to his companion.
“This is just h-ll, George.”
George Lee, with a smile on his boyish face, lazily moved his head.
“I don't know! If it wasn't for the old woman, who is the one solid
chunk of absolute goodness here, expecting nothing, wanting nothing,
it would be good fun enough! These two women, cooped up in this house,
wanted excitement. They've got it! That man Hale wanted to show off by
going for us; he's had his chance, and will have it again before I've
done with him. That d--d fool of a messenger wanted to go out of his way
to exchange shots with me; I reckon he's the most satisfied of the lot!
I don't know why YOU should growl. You did your level best to get away
from here, and the result is, that little Puritan is ready to worship
you.”
“Yes--but this playing it on them--George--this--”
“Who's playing it? Not you; I see you've given away our names already.”
“I couldn't lie, and they know nothing by that.”
“Do you think they would be happier by knowing it? Do you think that
soft little creature would be as happy as she was to-night if she knew
that her husband had been indirectly the means of laying me by the heels
here? Where is the swindle? This hole in my leg? If you had been five
minutes under that girl's d--d sympathetic fingers you'd have thought it
was genuine. Is it in our trying to get away? Do you call that ten-feet
drift in the pass a swindle? Is it in the chance of Hale getting back
while we're here? That's real enough, isn't it? I say, Ned, did you ever
give your unfettered intellect to the contemplation of THAT?”
Falkner did not reply. There was an interval of silence, but he could
see from the movement of George's shoulders that he was shaking with
suppressed laughter.
“Fancy Mrs. Hale archly introducing her husband! My offering him a
chair, but being all the time obliged to cover him with a derringer
under the bedclothes. Your rushing in from your peaceful pastoral
pursuits in the barn, with a pitchfork in one hand and the girl in the
other, and dear old mammy sympathizing all round and trying to make
everything comfortable.”
“I should not be alive to see it, George,” said Falkner gloomily.
“You'd manage to pitchfork me and those two women on Hale's horse and
ride away; that's what you'd do, or I don't know you! Look here, Ned,”
he added more seriously, “the only swindling was our bringing that note
here. That was YOUR idea. You thought it would remove suspicion, and as
you believed I was bleeding to death you played that game for all it was
worth to save me. You might have done what I asked you to do--propped
me up in the bushes, and got away yourself. I was good for a couple of
shots yet, and after that--what mattered? That night, the next day, the
next time I take the road, or a year hence? It will come when it will
come, all the same!”
He did not speak bitterly, nor relax his smile. Falkner, without
speaking, slid his hand along the coverlet. Lee grasped it, and their
hands remained clasped together for a few minutes in silence.
“How is this to end? We cannot go on here in this way,” said Falkner
suddenly.
“If we cannot get away it must go on. Look here, Ned. I don't reckon
to take anything out of this house that I didn't bring in it, or isn't
freely offered to me; yet I don't otherwise, you understand, intend
making myself out a d--d bit better than I am. That's the only excuse I
have for not making myself out JUST WHAT I am. I don't know the fellow
who's obliged to tell every one the last company he was in, or the last
thing he did! Do you suppose even these pretty little women tell US
their whole story? Do you fancy that this St. John in the wilderness is
canonized in his family? Perhaps, when I take the liberty to intrude in
his affairs, as he has in mine, he'd see he isn't. I don't blame you for
being sensitive, Ned. It's natural. When a man lives outside the revised
statutes of his own State he is apt to be awfully fine on points of
etiquette in his own household. As for me, I find it rather comfortable
here. The beds of other people's making strike me as being more
satisfactory than my own. Good-night.”
In a few moments he was sleeping the peaceful sleep of that youth which
seemed to be his own dominant quality. Falkner stood for a little space
and watched him, following the boyish lines of his cheek on the pillow,
from the shadow of the light brown lashes under his closed lids to the
lifting of his short upper lip over his white teeth, with his regular
respiration. Only a sharp accenting of the line of nostril and jaw and a
faint depression of the temple betrayed his already tried manhood.
The house had long sunk to repose when Falkner returned to the window,
and remained looking out upon the storm. Suddenly he extinguished the
light, and passing quickly to the bed laid his hand upon the sleeper.
Lee opened his eyes instantly.
“Are you awake?”
“Perfectly.”
“Somebody is trying to get into the house!”
“Not HIM, eh?” said Lee gayly.
“No; two men. Mexicans, I think. One looks like Manuel.”
“Ah,” said Lee, drawing himself up to a sitting posture.
“Well?”
“Don't you see? He believes the women are alone.”
“The dog--d--d hound!”
“Speak respectfully of one of my people, if you please, and hand me my
derringer. Light the candle again, and open the door. Let them get in
quietly. They'll come here first. It's HIS room, you understand, and if
there's any money it's here. Anyway, they must pass here to get to the
women's rooms. Leave Manuel to me, and you take care of the other.”
“I see.”
“Manuel knows the house, and will come first. When he's fairly in the
room shut the door and go for the other. But no noise. This is just one
of the SW-EETEST things out--if it's done properly.”
“But YOU, George?”
“If I couldn't manage that fellow without turning down the bedclothes
I'd kick myself. Hush. Steady now.”
He lay down and shut his eyes as if in natural repose. Only his right
hand, carelessly placed under his pillow, closed on the handle of his
pistol. Falkner quietly slipped into the passage. The light of the
candle faintly illuminated the floor and opposite wall, but left it on
either side in pitchy obscurity.
For some moments the silence was broken only by the sound of the rain
without. The recumbent figure in bed seemed to have actually succumbed
to sleep. The multitudinous small noises of a house in repose might have
been misinterpreted by ears less keen than the sleeper's; but when
the apparent creaking of a far-off shutter was followed by the sliding
apparition of a dark head of tangled hair at the door, Lee had not been
deceived, and was as prepared as if he had seen it. Another step, and
the figure entered the room. The door closed instantly behind it. The
sound of a heavy body struggling against the partition outside followed,
and then suddenly ceased.
The intruder turned, and violently grasped the handle of the door, but
recoiled at a quiet voice from the bed.
“Drop that, and come here.”
He started back with an exclamation. The sleeper's eyes were wide open;
the sleeper's extended arm and pistol covered him.
“Silence! or I'll let that candle shine through you!”
“Yes, captain!” growled the astounded and frightened half-breed. “I
didn't know you were here.”
Lee raised himself, and grasped the long whip in his left hand and
whirled it round his head.
“WILL YOU dry up?”
The man sank back against the wall in silent terror.
“Open that door now--softly.”
Manuel obeyed with trembling fingers.
“Ned” said Lee in a low voice, “bring him in here--quick.”
There was a slight rustle, and Falkner appeared, backing in another
gasping figure, whose eyes were starting under the strong grasp of the
captor at his throat.
“Silence,” said Lee, “all of you.”
There was a breathless pause. The sound of a door hesitatingly opened
in the passage broke the stillness, followed by the gentle voice of Mrs.
Scott.
“Is anything the matter?”
Lee made a slight gesture of warning to Falkner, of menace to the
others. “Everything's the matter,” he called out cheerily. “Ned's
managed to half pull down the house trying to get at something from my
saddle-bags.”
“I hope he has not hurt himself,” broke in another voice mischievously.
“Answer, you clumsy villain,” whispered Lee, with twinkling eyes.
“I'm all right, thank you,” responded Falkner, with unaffected
awkwardness.
There was a slight murmuring of voices, and then the door was heard to
close. Lee turned to Falkner.
“Disarm that hound and turn him loose outside, and make no noise. And
you, Manuel! tell him what his and your chances are if he shows his
black face here again.”
Manuel cast a single, terrified, supplicating glance, more suggestive
than words, at his confederate, as Falkner shoved him before him from
the room. The next moment they were silently descending the stairs.
“May I go too, captain?” entreated Manuel. “I swear to God--”
“Shut the door!” The man obeyed.
“Now, then,” said Lee, with a broad, gratified smile, laying down his
whip and pistol within reach, and comfortably settling the pillows
behind his back, “we'll have a quiet confab. A sort of old-fashioned
talk, eh? You're not looking well, Manuel. You're drinking too much
again. It spoils your complexion.”
“Let me go, captain,” pleaded the man, emboldened by the good-humored
voice, but not near enough to notice a peculiar light in the speaker's
eye.
“You've only just come, Manuel; and at considerable trouble, too. Well,
what have you got to say? What's all this about? What are you doing
here?”
The captured man shuffled his feet nervously, and only uttered an uneasy
laugh of coarse discomfiture.
“I see. You're bashful. Well, I'll help you along. Come! You knew that
Hale was away and these women were here without a man to help them. You
thought you'd find some money here, and have your own way generally,
eh?”
The tone of Lee's voice inspired him to confidence; unfortunately, it
inspired him with familiarity also.
“I reckoned I had the right to a little fun on my own account, cap.
I reckoned ez one gentleman in the profession wouldn't interfere with
another gentleman's little game,” he continued coarsely.
“Stand up.”
“Wot for?”
“Up, I say!”
Manuel stood up and glanced at him.
“Utter a cry that might frighten these women, and by the living God
they'll rush in here only to find you lying dead on the floor of the
house you'd have polluted.”
He grasped the whip and laid the lash of it heavily twice over the
ruffian's shoulders. Writhing in suppressed agony, the man fell
imploringly on his knees.
“Now, listen!” said Lee, softly twirling the whip in the air. “I want to
refresh your memory. Did you ever learn, when you were with me--before
I was obliged to kick you out of gentlemen's company--to break into a
private house? Answer!”
“No,” stammered the wretch.
“Did you ever learn to rob a woman, a child, or any but a man, and that
face to face?”
“No,” repeated Manuel.
“Did you ever learn from me to lay a finger upon a woman, old or young,
in anger or kindness?”
“No.”
“Then, my poor Manuel, it's as I feared; civilization has ruined you.
Farming and a simple, bucolic life have perverted your morals. So you
were running off with the stock and that mustang, when you got stuck in
the snow; and the luminous idea of this little game struck you? Eh? That
was another mistake, Manuel; I never allowed you to think when you were
with me.”
“No, captain.”
“Who's your friend?”
“A d--d cowardly nigger from the Summit.”
“I agree with you for once; but he hasn't had a very brilliant example.
Where's he gone now?”
“To h-ll, for all I care!”
“Then I want you to go with him. Listen. If there's a way out of the
place, you know it or can find it. I give you two days to do it--you and
he. At the end of that time the order will be to shoot you on sight. Now
take off your boots.”
The man's dark face visibly whitened, his teeth chattered in
superstitious terror.
“I'm not going to shoot you now,” said Lee, smiling, “so you will have a
chance to die with your boots on,* if you are superstitious. I only want
you to exchange them for that pair of Hale's in the corner. The fact
is I have taken a fancy to yours. That fashion of wearing the stockings
outside strikes me as one of the neatest things out.”
* “To die with one's boots on.” A synonym for death by
violence, popular among Southwestern desperadoes, and the
subject of superstitious dread.
Manuel suddenly drew off his boots with their muffled covering, and put
on the ones designated.
“Now open the door.”
He did so. Falkner was already waiting at the threshold, “Turn Manuel
loose with the other, Ned, but disarm him first. They might quarrel. The
habit of carrying arms, Manuel,” added Lee, as Falkner took a pistol and
bowie-knife from the half-breed, “is of itself provocative of violence,
and inconsistent with a bucolic and pastoral life.”
When Falkner returned he said hurriedly to his companion, “Do you think
it wise, George, to let those hell-hounds loose? Good God! I could
scarcely let my grip of his throat go, when I thought of what they were
hunting.”
“My dear Ned,” said Lee, luxuriously ensconcing himself under the
bedclothes again with a slight shiver of delicious warmth, “I must warn
you against allowing the natural pride of a higher walk to prejudice you
against the general level of our profession. Indeed, I was quite struck
with the justice of Manuel's protest that I was interfering with certain
rude processes of his own towards results aimed at by others.”
“George!” interrupted Falkner, almost savagely.
“Well. I admit it's getting rather late in the evening for pure
philosophical inquiry, and you are tired. Practically, then, it WAS wise
to let them get away before they discovered two things. One, our exact
relations here with these women; and the other, HOW MANY of us were
here. At present they think we are three or four in possession and with
the consent of the women.”
“The dogs!”
“They are paying us the highest compliment they can conceive of by
supposing us cleverer scoundrels than themselves. You are very unjust,
Ned.”
“If they escape and tell their story?”
“We shall have the rare pleasure of knowing we are better than people
believe us. And now put those boots away somewhere where we can produce
them if necessary, as evidence of Manuel's evening call. At present
we'll keep the thing quiet, and in the early morning you can find out
where they got in and remove any traces they have left. It is no use to
frighten the women. There's no fear of their returning.”
“And if they get away?”
“We can follow in their tracks.”
“If Manuel gives the alarm?”
“With his burglarious boots left behind in the house? Not much!
Good-night, Ned. Go to bed.”
With these words Lee turned on his side and quietly resumed his
interrupted slumber. Falkner did not, however, follow this sensible
advice. When he was satisfied that his friend was sleeping he opened the
door softly and looked out. He did not appear to be listening, for
his eyes were fixed upon a small pencil of light that stole across the
passage from the foot of Kate's door. He watched it until it suddenly
disappeared, when, leaving the door partly open, he threw himself on
his couch without removing his clothes. The slight movement awakened
the sleeper, who was beginning to feel the accession of fever. He moved
restlessly.
“George,” said Falkner, softly.
“Yes.”
“Where was it we passed that old Mission Church on the road one dark
night, and saw the light burning before the figure of the Virgin through
the window?”
There was a moment of crushing silence. “Does that mean you're wanting
to light the candle again?”
“No.”
“Then don't lie there inventing sacrilegious conundrums, but go to
sleep.”
Nevertheless, in the morning his fever was slightly worse. Mrs. Hale,
offering her condolence, said, “I know that you have not been resting
well, for even after your friend met with that mishap in the hall, I
heard your voices, and Kate says your door was open all night. You have
a little fever too, Mr. Falkner.”
George looked curiously at Falkner's pale face--it was burning.