OLDRING’S KNELL
Some forty hours or more later Venters created a commotion in
Cottonwoods by riding down the main street on Black Star and leading
Bells and Night. He had come upon Bells grazing near the body of a dead
rustler, the only incident of his quick ride into the village.
Nothing was farther from Venters’s mind than bravado. No thought came
to him of the defiance and boldness of riding Jane Withersteen’s racers
straight into the arch-plotter’s stronghold. He wanted men to see the
famous Arabians; he wanted men to see them dirty and dusty, bearing all
the signs of having been driven to their limit; he wanted men to see
and to know that the thieves who had ridden them out into the sage had
not ridden them back. Venters had come for that and for more—he wanted
to meet Tull face to face; if not Tull, then Dyer; if not Dyer, then
anyone in the secret of these master conspirators. Such was Venters’s
passion. The meeting with the rustlers, the unprovoked attack upon him,
the spilling of blood, the recognition of Jerry Card and the horses,
the race, and that last plunge of mad Wrangle—all these things, fuel on
fuel to the smoldering fire, had kindled and swelled and leaped into
living flame. He could have shot Dyer in the midst of his religious
services at the altar; he could have killed Tull in front of wives and
babes.
He walked the three racers down the broad, green-bordered village road.
He heard the murmur of running water from Amber Spring. Bitter waters
for Jane Withersteen! Men and women stopped to gaze at him and the
horses. All knew him; all knew the blacks and the bay. As well as if it
had been spoken, Venters read in the faces of men the intelligence that
Jane Withersteen’s Arabians had been known to have been stolen. Venters
reined in and halted before Dyer’s residence. It was a low, long, stone
structure resembling Withersteen House. The spacious front yard was
green and luxuriant with grass and flowers; gravel walks led to the
huge porch; a well-trimmed hedge of purple sage separated the yard from
the church grounds; birds sang in the trees; water flowed musically
along the walks; and there were glad, careless shouts of children. For
Venters the beauty of this home, and the serenity and its apparent
happiness, all turned red and black. For Venters a shade overspread the
lawn, the flowers, the old vine-clad stone house. In the music of the
singing birds, in the murmur of the running water, he heard an ominous
sound. Quiet beauty—sweet music—innocent laughter! By what monstrous
abortion of fate did these abide in the shadow of Dyer?
Venters rode on and stopped before Tull’s cottage. Women stared at him
with white faces and then flew from the porch. Tull himself appeared at
the door, bent low, craning his neck. His dark face flashed out of
sight; the door banged; a heavy bar dropped with a hollow sound.
Then Venters shook Black Star’s bridle, and, sharply trotting, led the
other horses to the center of the village. Here at the intersecting
streets and in front of the stores he halted once more. The usual
lounging atmosphere of that prominent corner was not now in evidence.
Riders and ranchers and villagers broke up what must have been
absorbing conversation. There was a rush of many feet, and then the
walk was lined with faces.
Venters’s glance swept down the line of silent stone-faced men. He
recognized many riders and villagers, but none of those he had hoped to
meet. There was no expression in the faces turned toward him. All of
them knew him, most were inimical, but there were few who were not
burning with curiosity and wonder in regard to the return of Jane
Withersteen’s racers. Yet all were silent. Here were the familiar
characteristics—masked feeling—strange secretiveness—expressionless
expression of mystery and hidden power.
“Has anybody here seen Jerry Card?” queried Venters, in a loud voice.
In reply there came not a word, not a nod or shake of head, not so much
as dropping eye or twitching lip—nothing but a quiet, stony stare.
“Been under the knife? You’ve a fine knife-wielder here—one Tull, I
believe!... Maybe you’ve all had your tongues cut out?”
This passionate sarcasm of Venters brought no response, and the stony
calm was as oil on the fire within him.
“I see some of you pack guns, too!” he added, in biting scorn. In the
long, tense pause, strung keenly as a tight wire, he sat motionless on
Black Star. “All right,” he went on. “Then let some of you take this
message to Tull. Tell him I’ve seen Jerry Card! ... Tell him Jerry Card
_will never return!_”
Thereupon, in the same dead calm, Venters backed Black Star away from
the curb, into the street, and out of range. He was ready now to ride
up to Withersteen House and turn the racers over to Jane.
“Hello, Venters!” a familiar voice cried, hoarsely, and he saw a man
running toward him. It was the rider Judkins who came up and gripped
Venters’s hand. “Venters, I could hev dropped when I seen them hosses.
But thet sight ain’t a marker to the looks of you. What’s wrong? Hev
you gone crazy? You must be crazy to ride in here this way—with them
hosses—talkie’ thet way about Tull en’ Jerry Card.”
“Jud, I’m not crazy—only mad clean through,” replied Venters.
“Wal, now, Bern, I’m glad to hear some of your old self in your voice.
Fer when you come up you looked like the corpse of a dead rider with
fire fer eyes. You hed thet crowd too stiff fer throwin’ guns. Come,
we’ve got to hev a talk. Let’s go up the lane. We ain’t much safe
here.”
Judkins mounted Bells and rode with Venters up to the cottonwood grove.
Here they dismounted and went among the trees.
“Let’s hear from you first,” said Judkins. “You fetched back them
hosses. Thet _is_ the trick. An’, of course, you got Jerry the same as
you got Horne.”
“Horne!”
“Sure. He was found dead yesterday all chewed by coyotes, en’ he’d been
shot plumb center.”
“Where was he found?”
“At the split down the trail—you know where Oldring’s cattle trail runs
off north from the trail to the pass.”
“That’s where I met Jerry and the rustlers. What was Horne doing with
them? I thought Horne was an honest cattle-man.”
“Lord—Bern, don’t ask me thet! I’m all muddled now tryin’ to figure
things.”
Venters told of the fight and the race with Jerry Card and its tragic
conclusion.
“I knowed it! I knowed all along that Wrangle was the best hoss!”
exclaimed Judkins, with his lean face working and his eyes lighting.
“Thet was a race! Lord, I’d like to hev seen Wrangle jump the cliff
with Jerry. An’ thet was good-by to the grandest hoss an’ rider ever on
the sage!... But, Bern, after you got the hosses why’d you want to bolt
right in Tull’s face?”
“I want him to know. An’ if I can get to him I’ll—”
“You can’t get near Tull,” interrupted Judkins. “Thet vigilante bunch
hev taken to bein’ bodyguard for Tull an’ Dyer, too.”
“Hasn’t Lassiter made a break yet?” inquired Venters, curiously.
“Naw!” replied Judkins, scornfully. “Jane turned his head. He’s mad in
love over her—follers her like a dog. He ain’t no more Lassiter! He’s
lost his nerve, he doesn’t look like the same feller. It’s village
talk. Everybody knows it. He hasn’t thrown a gun, an’ he won’t!”
“Jud, I’ll bet he does,” replied Venters, earnestly. “Remember what I
say. This Lassiter is something more than a gun-man. Jud, he’s big—he’s
great!... I feel that in him. God help Tull and Dyer when Lassiter does
go after them. For horses and riders and stone walls won’t save them.”
“Wal, hev it your way, Bern. I hope you’re right. Nat’rully I’ve been
some sore on Lassiter fer gittin’ soft. But I ain’t denyin’ his nerve,
or whatever’s great in him thet sort of paralyzes people. No later ’n
this mornin’ I seen him saunterin’ down the lane, quiet an’ slow. An’
like his guns he comes black—_black_, thet’s Lassiter. Wal, the crowd
on the corner never batted an eye, en’ I’ll gamble my hoss thet there
wasn’t one who hed a heartbeat till Lassiter got by. He went in Snell’s
saloon, an’ as there wasn’t no gun play I had to go in, too. An’ there,
darn my pictures, if Lassiter wasn’t standin’ to the bar, drinking en’
talkin’ with Oldrin’.”
“_Oldring!_” whispered Venters. His voice, as all fire and pulse within
him, seemed to freeze.
“Let go my arm!” exclaimed Judkins. “Thet’s my bad arm. Sure it was
Oldrin’. What the hell’s wrong with you, anyway? Venters, I tell you
somethin’s wrong. You’re whiter ’n a sheet. You can’t be _scared_ of
the rustler. I don’t believe you’ve got a scare in you. Wal, now, jest
let me talk. You know I like to talk, an’ if I’m slow I allus git there
sometime. As I said, Lassiter was talkie’ chummy with Oldrin’. There
wasn’t no hard feelin’s. An’ the gang wasn’t payin’ no pertic’lar
attention. But like a cat watchin’ a mouse I hed my eyes on them two
fellers. It was strange to me, thet confab. I’m gittin’ to think a lot,
fer a feller who doesn’t know much. There’s been some queer deals
lately an’ this seemed to me the queerest. These men stood to the bar
alone, an’ so close their big gun-hilts butted together. I seen Oldrin’
was some surprised at first, an’ Lassiter was cool as ice. They talked,
an’ presently at somethin’ Lassiter said the rustler bawled out a
curse, an’ then he jest fell up against the bar, an’ sagged there. The
gang in the saloon looked around an’ laughed, an’ thet’s about all.
Finally Oldrin’ turned, and it was easy to see somethin’ hed shook him.
Yes, sir, thet big rustler—you know he’s as broad as he is long, an’
the powerfulest build of a man—yes, sir, the nerve had been taken out
of him. Then, after a little, he began to talk an’ said a lot to
Lassiter, an’ by an’ by it didn’t take much of an eye to see thet
Lassiter was gittin’ hit hard. I never seen him anyway but cooler ’n
ice—till then. He seemed to be hit harder ’n Oldrin’, only he didn’t
roar out thet way. He jest kind of sunk in, an’ looked an’ looked, an’
he didn’t see a livin’ soul in thet saloon. Then he sort of come to,
an’ shakin’ hands—mind you, _shakin’ hands_ with Oldrin’—he went out. I
couldn’t help thinkin’ how easy even a boy could hev dropped the great
gun-man then!... Wal, the rustler stood at the bar fer a long time, en’
he was seein’ things far off, too; then he come to an’ roared fer
whisky, an’ gulped a drink thet was big enough to drown me.”
“Is Oldring here now?” whispered Venters. He could not speak above a
whisper. Judkins’s story had been meaningless to him.
“He’s at Snell’s yet. Bern, I hevn’t told you yet thet the rustlers hev
been raisin’ hell. They shot up Stone Bridge an’ Glaze, an’ fer three
days they’ve been here drinkin’ an’ gamblin’ an’ throwin’ of gold.
These rustlers hev a pile of gold. If it was gold dust or nugget gold
I’d hev reason to think, but it’s new coin gold, as if it had jest come
from the United States treasury. An’ the coin’s genuine. Thet’s all
been proved. The truth is Oldrin’s on a rampage. A while back he lost
his Masked Rider, an’ they say he’s wild about thet. I’m wonderin’ if
Lassiter could hev told the rustler anythin’ about thet little masked,
hard-ridin’ devil. Ride! He was most as good as Jerry Card. An’, Bern,
I’ve been wonderin’ if you know—”
“Judkins, you’re a good fellow,” interrupted Venters. “Some day I’ll
tell you a story. I’ve no time now. Take the horses to Jane.”
Judkins stared, and then, muttering to himself, he mounted Bells, and
stared again at Venters, and then, leading the other horses, he rode
into the grove and disappeared.
Once, long before, on the night Venters had carried Bess through the
cañon and up into Surprise Valley, he had experienced the strangeness
of faculties singularly, tinglingly acute. And now the same sensation
recurred. But it was different in that he felt cold, frozen, mechanical
incapable of free thought, and all about him seemed unreal, aloof,
remote. He hid his rifle in the sage, marking its exact location with
extreme care. Then he faced down the lane and strode toward the center
of the village. Perceptions flashed upon him, the faint, cold touch of
the breeze, a cold, silvery tinkle of flowing water, a cold sun shining
out of a cold sky, song of birds and laugh of children, coldly distant.
Cold and intangible were all things in earth and heaven. Colder and
tighter stretched the skin over his face; colder and harder grew the
polished butts of his guns; colder and steadier became his hands as he
wiped the clammy sweat from his face or reached low to his gun-sheaths.
Men meeting him in the walk gave him wide berth. In front of Bevin’s
store a crowd melted apart for his passage, and their faces and
whispers were faces and whispers of a dream. He turned a corner to meet
Tull face to face, eye to eye. As once before he had seen this man pale
to a ghastly, livid white so again he saw the change. Tull stopped in
his tracks, with right hand raised and shaking. Suddenly it dropped,
and he seemed to glide aside, to pass out of Venters’s sight. Next he
saw many horses with bridles down—all clean-limbed, dark bays or
blacks—rustlers’ horses! Loud voices and boisterous laughter, rattle of
dice and scrape of chair and clink of gold, burst in mingled din from
an open doorway. He stepped inside.
With the sight of smoke-hazed room and drinking, cursing, gambling,
dark-visaged men, reality once more dawned upon Venters.
His entrance had been unnoticed, and he bent his gaze upon the drinkers
at the bar. Dark-clothed, dark-faced men they all were, burned by the
sun, bow-legged as were most riders of the sage, but neither lean nor
gaunt. Then Venters’s gaze passed to the tables, and swiftly it swept
over the hard-featured gamesters, to alight upon the huge, shaggy,
black head of the rustler chief.
“_Oldring!_” he cried, and to him his voice seemed to split a bell in
his ears.
It stilled the din.
That silence suddenly broke to the scrape and crash of Oldring’s chair
as he rose; and then, while he passed, a great gloomy figure, again the
thronged room stilled in silence yet deeper.
“Oldring, a word with you!” continued Venters.
“Ho! What’s this?” boomed Oldring, in frowning scrutiny.
“Come outside, alone. A word for you—_from your Masked Rider!_”
Oldring kicked a chair out of his way and lunged forward with a stamp
of heavy boot that jarred the floor. He waved down his muttering,
rising men.
Venters backed out of the door and waited, hearing, as no sound had
ever before struck into his soul, the rapid, heavy steps of the
rustler.
Oldring appeared, and Venters had one glimpse of his great breadth and
bulk, his gold-buckled belt with hanging guns, his high-top boots with
gold spurs. In that moment Venters had a strange, unintelligible
curiosity to see Oldring alive. The rustler’s broad brow, his large
black eyes, his sweeping beard, as dark as the wing of a raven, his
enormous width of shoulder and depth of chest, his whole splendid
presence so wonderfully charged with vitality and force and strength,
seemed to afford Venters an unutterable fiendish joy because for that
magnificent manhood and life he meant cold and sudden death.
_“Oldring, Bess is alive! But she’s dead to you—dead to the life you
made her lead—dead as you will be in one second!”_
Swift as lightning Venters’s glance dropped from Oldring’s rolling eyes
to his hands. One of them, the right, swept out, then toward his
gun—and Venters shot him through the heart.
[Illustration: and Venters shot him through the heart]
Slowly Oldring sank to his knees, and the hand, dragging at the gun,
fell away. Venters’s strangely acute faculties grasped the meaning of
that limp arm, of the swaying hulk, of the gasp and heave, of the
quivering beard. But was that awful spirit in the black eyes only one
of vitality?
“_Man—why—didn’t—you—wait? Bess—was_—” Oldring’s whisper died under his
beard, and with a heavy lurch he fell forward.
Bounding swiftly away, Venters fled around the corner, across the
street, and, leaping a hedge, he ran through yard, orchard, and garden
to the sage. Here, under cover of the tall brush, he turned west and
ran on to the place where he had hidden his rifle. Securing that, he
again set out into a run, and, circling through the sage, came up
behind Jane Withersteen’s stable and corrals. With laboring, dripping
chest, and pain as of a knife thrust in his side, he stopped to regain
his breath, and while resting his eyes roved around in search of a
horse. Doors and windows of the stable were open wide and had a
deserted look. One dejected, lonely burro stood in the near corral.
Strange indeed was the silence brooding over the once happy, noisy home
of Jane Withersteen’s pets.
He went into the corral, exercising care to leave no tracks, and led
the burro to the watering-trough. Venters, though not thirsty, drank
till he could drink no more. Then, leading the burro over hard ground,
he struck into the sage and down the slope.
He strode swiftly, turning from time to time to scan the slope for
riders. His head just topped the level of sage-brush, and the burro
could not have been seen at all. Slowly the green of Cottonwoods sank
behind the slope, and at last a wavering line of purple sage met the
blue of sky.
To avoid being seen, to get away, to hide his trail—these were the sole
ideas in his mind as he headed for Deception Pass, and he directed all
his acuteness of eye and ear, and the keenness of a rider’s judgment
for distance and ground, to stern accomplishment of the task. He kept
to the sage far to the left of the trail leading into the Pass. He
walked ten miles and looked back a thousand times. Always the graceful,
purple wave of sage remained wide and lonely, a clear, undotted waste.
Coming to a stretch of rocky ground, he took advantage of it to cross
the trail and then continued down on the right. At length he persuaded
himself that he would be able to see riders mounted on horses before
they could see him on the little burro, and he rode bareback.
Hour by hour the tireless burro kept to his faithful, steady trot. The
sun sank and the long shadows lengthened down the slope. Moving veils
of purple twilight crept out of the hollows and, mustering and forming
on the levels, soon merged and shaded into night. Venters guided the
burro nearer to the trail, so that he could see its white line from the
ridges, and rode on through the hours.
Once down in the Pass without leaving a trail, he would hold himself
safe for the time being. When late in the night he reached the break in
the sage, he sent the burro down ahead of him, and started an avalanche
that all but buried the animal at the bottom of the trail. Bruised and
battered as he was, he had a moment’s elation, for he had hidden his
tracks. Once more he mounted the burro and rode on. The hour was the
blackest of the night when he made the thicket which inclosed his old
camp. Here he turned the burro loose in the grass near the spring, and
then lay down on his old bed of leaves.
He felt only vaguely, as outside things, the ache and burn and throb of
the muscles of his body. But a dammed-up torrent of emotion at last
burst its bounds, and the hour that saw his release from immediate
action was one that confounded him in the reaction of his spirit. He
suffered without understanding why. He caught glimpses into himself,
into unlit darkness of soul. The fire that had blistered him and the
cold which had frozen him now united in one torturing possession of his
mind and heart, and like a fiery steed with ice-shod feet, ranged his
being, ran rioting through his blood, trampling the resurging good,
dragging ever at the evil.
Out of the subsiding chaos came a clear question. What had happened? He
had left the valley to go to Cottonwoods. Why? It seemed that he had
gone to kill a man—Oldring! The name riveted his consciousness upon the
one man of all men upon earth whom he had wanted to meet. He had met
the rustler. Venters recalled the smoky haze of the saloon, the
dark-visaged men, the huge Oldring. He saw him step out of the door, a
splendid specimen of manhood, a handsome giant with purple-black and
sweeping beard. He remembered inquisitive gaze of falcon eyes. He heard
himself repeating: “_Oldring, Bess is alive! But she’s dead to you_,”
and he felt himself jerk, and his ears throbbed to the thunder of a
gun, and he saw the giant sink slowly to his knees. Was that only the
vitality of him—that awful light in the eyes—only the hard-dying life
of a tremendously powerful brute? A broken whisper, strange as death:
“_Man—why—didn’t—you wait! Bess—was_—” And Oldring plunged face
forward, dead.
“I killed him,” cried Venters, in remembering shock. “But it wasn’t
_that_. Ah, the look in his eyes and his whisper!”
Herein lay the secret that had clamored to him through all the tumult
and stress of his emotions. What a look in the eyes of a man shot
through the heart! It had been neither hate nor ferocity nor fear of
men nor fear of death. It had been no passionate glinting spirit of a
fearless foe, willing shot for shot, life for life, but lacking
physical power. Distinctly recalled now, never to be forgotten, Venters
saw in Oldring’s magnificent eyes the rolling of great, glad
surprise—softness—love! Then came a shadow and the terrible superhuman
striving of his spirit to speak. Oldring shot through the heart, had
fought and forced back death, not for a moment in which to shoot or
curse, but to whisper strange words.
What words for a dying man to whisper! Why had not Venters waited? For
what? That was no plea for life. It was regret that there was not a
moment of life left in which to speak. Bess was—Herein lay renewed
torture for Venters. What had Bess been to Oldring? The old question,
like a specter, stalked from its grave to haunt him. He had overlooked,
he had forgiven, he had loved and he had forgotten; and now, out of the
mystery of a dying man’s whisper rose again that perverse, unsatisfied,
jealous uncertainty. Bess had loved that splendid, black-crowned
giant—by her own confession she had loved him; and in Venters’s soul
again flamed up the jealous hell. Then into the clamoring hell burst
the shot that had killed Oldring, and it rang in a wild fiendish
gladness, a hateful, vengeful joy. That passed to the memory of the
love and light in Oldring’s eyes and the mystery in his whisper. So the
changing, swaying emotions fluctuated in Venters’s heart.
This was the climax of his year of suffering and the crucial struggle
of his life. And when the gray dawn came he rose, a gloomy, almost
heartbroken man, but victor over evil passions. He could not change the
past; and, even if he had not loved Bess with all his soul, he had
grown into a man who would not change the future he had planned for
her. Only, and once for all, he must know the truth, know the worst,
stifle all these insistent doubts and subtle hopes and jealous fancies,
and kill the past by knowing truly what Bess had been to Oldring. For
that matter he knew—he had always known, but he must hear it spoken.
Then, when they had safely gotten out of that wild country to take up a
new and an absorbing life, she would forget, she would be happy, and
through that, in the years to come, he could not but find life worth
living.
All day he rode slowly and cautiously up the Pass, taking time to peer
around corners, to pick out hard ground and grassy patches, and to make
sure there was no one in pursuit. In the night sometime he came to the
smooth, scrawled rocks dividing the valley, and here set the burro at
liberty. He walked beyond, climbed the slope and the dim, starlit
gorge. Then, weary to the point of exhaustion, he crept into a shallow
cave and fell asleep.
In the morning, when he descended the trail, he found the sun was
pouring a golden stream of light through the arch of the great stone
bridge. Surprise Valley, like a valley of dreams, lay mystically soft
and beautiful, awakening to the golden flood which was rolling away its
slumberous bands of mist, brightening its walled faces.
While yet far off he discerned Bess moving under the silver spruces,
and soon the barking of the dogs told him that they had seen him. He
heard the mocking-birds singing in the trees, and then the twittering
of the quail. Ring and Whitie came bounding toward him, and behind them
ran Bess, her hands outstretched.
“Bern! You’re back! You’re back!” she cried, in joy that rang of her
loneliness.
“Yes, I’m back,” he said, as she rushed to meet him.
She had reached out for him when suddenly, as she saw him closely,
something checked her, and as quickly all her joy fled, and with it her
color, leaving her pale and trembling.
“Oh! What’s happened?”
“A good deal has happened, Bess. I don’t need to tell you what. And I’m
played out. Worn out in mind more than body.”
“Dear—you look strange to me!” faltered Bess.
“Never mind that. I’m all right. There’s nothing for you to be scared
about. Things are going to turn out just as we have planned. As soon as
I’m rested we’ll make a break to get out of the country. Only now,
right now, I must know the truth about you.”
“Truth about me?” echoed Bess, shrinkingly. She seemed to be casting
back into her mind for a forgotten key. Venters himself, as he saw her,
received a pang.
“Yes—the truth. Bess, don’t misunderstand. I haven’t changed that way.
I love you still. I’ll love you more afterward. Life will be just as
sweet—sweeter to us. We’ll be—be married as soon as ever we can. We’ll
be happy—but there’s a devil in me. A perverse, jealous devil! Then
I’ve queer fancies. I forgot for a long time. Now all those fiendish
little whispers of doubt and faith and fear and hope come torturing me
again. I’ve got to kill them with the truth.”
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” she replied, frankly.
“Then by Heaven! we’ll have it over and done with!... Bess—did Oldring
love you?”
“Certainly he did.”
“Did—did you love him?”
“Of course. I told you so.”
“How can you tell it so lightly?” cried Venters, passionately. “Haven’t
you any sense of—of—” He choked back speech. He felt the rush of pain
and passion. He seized her in rude, strong hands and drew her close. He
looked straight into her dark-blue eyes. They were shadowing with the
old wistful light, but they were as clear as the limpid water of the
spring. They were earnest, solemn in unutterable love and faith and
abnegation. Venters shivered. He knew he was looking into her soul. He
knew she could not lie in that moment; but that she might tell the
truth, looking at him with those eyes, almost killed his belief in
purity.
“What are—what were you to—to Oldring?” he panted, fiercely.
“I am his daughter,” she replied, instantly.
Venters slowly let go of her. There was a violent break in the force of
his feeling—then creeping blankness.
“What—was it—you said?” he asked, in a kind of dull wonder.
“I am his daughter.”
“Oldring’s daughter?” queried Venters, with life gathering in his
voice.
“Yes.”
With a passionately awakening start he grasped her hands and drew her
close.
“All the time—you’ve been Oldring’s daughter?”
“Yes, of course all the time—always.”
“But Bess, you told me—you let me think—I made out you were—a—so—so
ashamed.”
“It is my shame,” she said, with voice deep and full, and now the
scarlet fired her cheek. “I told you—I’m nothing—nameless—just Bess,
Oldring’s girl!”
“I know—I remember. But I never thought—” he went on, hurriedly,
huskily. “That time—when you lay dying—you prayed—you—somehow I got the
idea you were bad.”
“Bad?” she asked, with a little laugh.
She looked up with a faint smile of bewilderment and the absolute
unconsciousness of a child. Venters gasped in the gathering might of
the truth. She did not understand his meaning.
“Bess! Bess!” He clasped her in his arms, hiding her eyes against his
breast. She must not see his face in that moment. And he held her while
he looked out across the valley. In his dim and blinded sight, in the
blur of golden light and moving mist, he saw Oldring. She was the
rustler’s nameless daughter. Oldring had loved her. He had so guarded
her, so kept her from women and men and knowledge of life that her mind
was as a child’s. That was part of the secret—part of the mystery. That
was the wonderful truth. Not only was she not bad, but good, pure,
innocent above all innocence in the world—the innocence of lonely
girlhood.
He saw Oldring’s magnificent eyes, inquisitive, searching, softening.
He saw them flare in amaze, in gladness, with love, then suddenly
strain in terrible effort of will. He heard Oldring whisper and saw him
sway like a log and fall. Then a million bellowing, thundering
voices—gunshots of conscience, thunderbolts of remorse—dinned horribly
in his ears. He had killed Bess’s father. Then a rushing wind filled
his ears like a moan of wind in the cliffs, a knell indeed—Oldring’s
knell.
He dropped to his knees and hid his face against Bess, and grasped her
with the hands of a drowning man.
“My God!... My God!... Oh, Bess!... Forgive me! Never mind what I’ve
done—what I’ve thought. But forgive me. I’ll give you my life. I’ll
live for you. I’ll love you. Oh, I do love you as no man ever loved a
woman. I want you to know—to remember that I fought a fight for
you—however blind I was. I thought—I thought—never mind what I
thought—but I loved you—I asked you to marry me. Let that—let me have
that to hug to my heart. Oh, Bess, I was driven! And I might have
known! I could not rest nor sleep till I had this mystery solved. God!
how things work out!”
“Bern, you’re weak—trembling—you talk wildly,” cried Bess. “You’ve
overdone your strength. There’s nothing to forgive. There’s no mystery
except your love for me. You have come back to me!”
And she clasped his head tenderly in her arms and pressed it closely to
her throbbing breast.