Goodheart Makes a Promise and Breaks It
Pauline was a singularly honest little soul, but she now discovered in
herself unsuspected capacity for duplicity. She went singing about her
work, apparently care-free as a lark. Presently, still humming a French
chanson, she appeared on the porch swinging a key, passed the two men
with a gay little nod, and disappeared around the corner of the house
to the cellar.
The rancher apologized for the key. "We've had to lock the cellar lately
since so many movers have been going through on this road. Eh bien! Our
hams--they took wings and flew."
Polly rattled the milk pans for a moment or two and then listened. From
above there came to her the sound of three faint raps on the woodwork of
the bed. She crept up the stairs that led from the cellar into the house.
At the top of them was a trapdoor. Very slowly and carefully she pushed
this up. Through the opening she passed into a bedroom.
Softly the girl stole to the bed. From the cellar she had brought a
butcher knife and with this she sawed at the rope which bound the
prisoner.
"But your handcuffs. What can we do about them?" she whispered.
Clanton stretched his stiff muscles. He made no answer in words. For a
moment or two his arms writhed, then from out of the iron bracelet his
long slender hand slowly twisted. Soon the second wrist was also free.
"I've had a lot of fun poked at my girl hands, but they come in useful
sometimes," he murmured.
"I'll have to hurry back or I'll be missed," she told him. "You'll find a
saddled horse in the aspens."
He caught her by the shoulders and held her fast. "You've been the
truest little friend ever a man had. You've stuck by me an' believed in
me even when I didn't believe in myself any longer. No matter what folks
said about me or about you for takin' an interest in such a scamp, you
never quit fightin' to keep me decent. I've heard tell of guardian
angels--well, that's what you've been to me, little pilgrim."
"I haven't forgotten the boy who rode up Escondido Cañon to save me from
death and dishonor," Pauline cried softly.
"You've paid that debt fifty times. I owe you more than I can tell. I
wisht I knew a way to pay it."
Her soft and dusky eyes clung to his pleadingly. "If you get away, Jim,
you _will_ be good, won't you?"
"I'll be as good as I've got it in me to be. I don't know how good that
is, Polly. But I'll do my level best."
"Oh, I'm so glad," she whispered. "Good luck--heaps of it."
He was not quite sure whether it was his privilege to kiss the parted red
lips upturned to him, but he took a chance and was not rebuked.
Pauline went noiselessly down the steps again into the cellar while
Clanton held the trapdoor. He lowered it inch by inch so that it would
not creak, then spread over it the Navajo rug that had been there before
the entrance of the girl.
Pierre Roubideau was still on his first pipe when Polly came round the
corner of the house and stopped at the porch steps.
"I want to show you our new colt, Jack," she said to the deputy. This
matter-of-fact statement came a little shyly and a little tremulously
from her lips. Her heart was beating furiously.
The officer rose at once. "Just a minute," he said, and went into the
house.
He unlocked the door of the room where Clanton was and glanced in. The
prisoner lay on the bed in the moonlight, the blankets drawn over him.
From his deep, regular breathing Jack judged him to be asleep. He
relocked the door and joined Pauline.
The face of the girl was very white in the moonlight. Her big eyes
flashed at him a question. Had he discovered that his prisoner was free?
They walked slowly toward the corral. From it Goodheart could see the
front of the house, but not the cellar entrance at the side. Neither of
them spoke until they reached the fence. He turned and leaned his elbows
against it, facing the house.
Pauline was under great nervous tension. Her lips were dry and her throat
parched. If the guard at the rear caught sight of the prisoner while he
was escaping, Clanton would certainly be shot down. She knew Jim better
than to hope that he would let himself be taken again alive.
The conscience of the girl troubled her too. She was doing this to save
the life of a friend, but it was impossible not to feel a sense of
treachery toward this other friend whose approval was so much more
vital to her happiness. Would Jack think that she had conspired against
his honor in an underhanded way? He was a man of strict principles. Would
he cast her off and have no more to do with her?
She woke from her worries to discover that an emotional climax was
imminent. Jack was telling her, in awkward, broken phrases, of his love
for her. Polly had waited a long time for his confession, but coming at
this hour it filled/her with shame and distress. What an evil chance that
he should be blurting out the story of his faith and trust in her
while she was in the act of betraying him!
"Don't, Jack, don't!" she begged.
"It's all right," he said gently. "I know you don't care for me. But I
had to tell you. Just had to do it. Couldn't keep still any longer. It's
all right, Polly. I can stand it. I didn't go for to worry you."
She wept.
Her tears distressed him. He urged her to forget his presumption. She had
been so good to him that he had spoken in spite of himself.
Pauline found she could not let him deceive himself. If she let him go
now, perhaps he might never come back.
"You goose!"
Though the words came smothered through her handkerchief, he gained
incredible comfort from them.
"Polly!" he cried.
"Don't you say a word, Jack," she ordered. "Let me do the talking."
"If you'll tell me that--that--you care anything for--for--"
"--For a big stupid who is too modest ever to think enough of himself,"
she completed. "Well, I do. I care a great deal for him."
"You don't mean--"
"I do, too. That's just what I mean. No, you keep back there till I'm
through, Jack. I want to find out if you love me as much as I do you."
"Polly!" he cried a second time.
Her small face was very serious and white in the moonshine.
"Suppose we don't agree about something. Say I do a thing that seems
right to me, but it doesn't seem right to you. What then?"
"It'll seem right to me if you do it," he answered.
"That's just a compliment."
"No, it's the truth. Whatever you do seems right to me."
"But suppose I do something that you think is wrong. Perhaps it may seem
to you disloyal."
"If you do it because you think you ought to I'll not find it disloyal."
"Sure, Jack?"
"Certain sure," he answered.
"It's a promise?"
"It's a promise."
Little imps of mischief bubbled into the brown eyes. "Then why don't you
kiss me, goose?"
He caught her to him with a fierce rapture.
There came to them the sudden sound of drumming hoofs. A shot rang out in
the night. Goodheart, with the first kiss of his sweetheart almost on his
lips, flung Pauline aside and ran to the house.
The other guard met him at the front steps. "By God, he's gone!" the man
cried.
"Clanton?"
"Yep."
"Can't be. He was handcuffed, tied to the bed, and locked in. I've got
the key in my pocket."
The deputy sheriff took the steps at one bound, flung himself across the
parlor, and unlocked the door. One glance showed him the empty bed, the
displaced rug, and the trapdoor. He stepped forward and picked up the
bits of rope and the handcuffs.
"Some one cut the rope and freed him," he said, confounded at the
impossibility of the thing that had occurred.
"Must of slipped his hands out of the cuffs, looks like," the guard
suggested.
"He got me to give him a bigger size--complained they chafed his wrists."
"Some trick that, if he _has_ got kid hands."
The chill eyes of Goodheart gimleted into those of his assistant. "Did
you do this, Brad? God help you if you did."
A light step sounded on the threshold. Pauline came into the room. "I did
it, Jack," she said.
"You!"
"I came up through the trapdoor when I was in the cellar. I cut the rope
and told him there was a horse saddled in the aspens."
Thoughts raced in his bewildered mind. She had planned all this
carefully. Almost under his very eyes she had done it. Then she had lured
him from the house to give Clanton a better chance. She had let him make
love to her so that she could keep him at the corral while the prisoner
escaped. It was all a trick. Even now she was laughing up her sleeve
at the way she had made a fool of him.
"You saddled the horse and left it there." His statement was a question,
too.
"Yes. I had to save him. I knew he was innocent."
All the explanations she had intended shriveled up before the scorn in
his eyes. He brushed past her without a word and strode out of the house.
Pauline went to her room and flung herself on the bed. After a time her
father came in and sat down beside the girl. He put a gentle hand on her
shoulder.
"I know what you think, dad," she said without turning her head. "But I
couldn't help it, I had to do it."
"It may make you trouble, ma petite."
"I can't help that. Jim didn't kill Mr. Webb. I know it."
"After a fair trial a jury said he did, Polly. We have to take their word
for it."
"You think I did wrong then."
"You did what you think was right. In my heart is no blame for you."
He comforted her as best he could and left her to sleep. But she did not
sleep. All through the night she lay and listened. She was miserably
unhappy. Her head and her heart ached. Jack had promised that she should
be the judge of what was right for her to do, and at the first test he
had failed her. She made excuses for him, but the hurt of her
disappointment could not be assuaged.
In the early morning she heard the clatter of horses' hoofs in the yard.
During the night she had not undressed. Now she rose and went out to meet
her lover. He was at the stable, a gaunt figure, hollow-eyed, dusty, and
stern. He had failed to recapture his prisoner.
"Jack," she pleaded, reaching out a hand timidly toward him.
Again he rejected her advance in grim silence. Swinging to the saddle, he
rode out of the gate and down the road toward Live-Oaks.
With a little whimper Polly moved blindly to the house through her tears.