Speeding in a panic from what she feared might happen behind her at any moment; soon out of sight of the scene, but with ears pitched for the sound of a shot, and a volley of shots; her head swimming with excitement and her heart beating a roll in her breast, Kate urged her horse down the road.
And Belle's silence, her enigmatic face as she listened later to the story only convinced Kate that her own apprehensions of trouble were well founded. "It's coming," was all she could get Belle to mutter, as Belle hobbled on a lame foot at meal time between the table and the stove, "but nobody can say when or where." Both the women could tell even earlier than this, from McAlpin's intimations, from watching groups of men in the street and from the way in which those who could have no direct interest in the affairs of the Falling Wall country were hurrying to and fro, that Laramie had reached town with his prisoners and was busy getting them jailed.
Kate, stunned by her father's utter coldness in casting her out, did not want to talk about it. She had left home resolved to tell Belle everything, despite the humiliating shame of the recital. But the excitement of the ride and the stir in the town were excuses enough to put off explaining. It was possible that her father might become as ashamed of himself as she was of him—in which event, nothing said would be best.
But when Bradley stopped the ranch wagon before Belle's cottage door with Kate's suitcase and trunk, something was needed to satisfy Belle. Kate's intimation that she should spend a few days in town, and might be called East was somewhat disjointed, but at the moment, enough. Bradley, however, after unloading the trunk and while Belle stood wondering, reappeared at the door with two rifles.
"Lord A'mighty, man!" cried Belle, already stirred, "what're you doing with them rifles?"
Bradley tried to placate his nervous questioner: "I'm just leavin' 'em here, Belle, while I go down 'n' get a load o' feed," he explained with dignity.
"Don't you believe you're leavin' any rifles here, Bill Bradley. This is nobody's arsenal, I want you to know."
"Why, Belle, they belong t' the ranch," remonstrated Bradley.
"What's that got to do with it?" she exclaimed, turning from the door and shutting it vigorously in Bradley's face as he stood discomfited. "I wonder if everybody's going crazy in this country."
On this point Kate entertained convictions that she did not express. She was only glad that Belle's curiosity, usually robust enough concerning ranch happenings, was now under more engrossing pressure.
Concerning what was setting the town ablaze that day, only confused echoes reached the secluded women; and chiefly through the butcher, between whom and Belle a tacit armistice was soon in effect. Chops were slashed ruthlessly as he revealed details of what was going on, and the patent block shook under the savage blows of the cleaver while the butcher hinted at things more momentous to come. From him, Belle learned that Van Horn and Stone had been held somewhere up at Tenison's incommunicado, by Lefever and Sawdy, while Laramie, opposed by the cattlemen's lawyer, was demanding from Justice Druel warrants for his prisoners; and that after they had reluctantly been issued, Sheriff Druel had pigeon-holed them until Tenison, backing Laramie, had told Druel after a big row, he would run him out of town if he didn't take his prisoners to jail.
It was five o'clock when the butcher, instead of sending over the boy, brought the meat for supper himself: "They're locked up," he said in a terse undertone, as he handed his package to Belle. "There was a big bunch up there when they was put in. Some of 'em talked pretty loud about a jail delivery. Laramie stood right there to see they went into their cells and they went."
"Were you there?" demanded Belle.
"I was."
"What did Laramie say?"
"All he said to Druel was: 'If you don't keep 'em locked up, Druel, I take no responsibility for what happens.' I come all the way from the jail with Laramie myself," recited the butcher; "walked right alongside him and Harry Tenison down t' the hotel."
"Well, if you walked so far with him, is he coming here for supper?"
The butcher was taken aback: "How in thunder should I know?" he blurted out.
"There you go, slamming away with your blasphemy again. Couldn't you ask him?"
"Why, yes, Belle, I reckon I could. Maybe I can. Say!" he returned after starting down the steps, to point to the package in her hand, "there's a mess o' sweetbreads in there for you."
"Shucks! I can't use sweetbreads tonight, Heinie."
"Throw 'em away then. A present, ain't they? Nobody in town eats 'em but you."
Kate unfortunately suggested braizing the sweetbreads for Sawdy and Lefever.
"What?" exclaimed Belle. "Men don't eat sweetbreads, don't you know that? You've got to give 'em steak—round steak and the tougher the better—tough as cowhide and fried to tears. They'd be insulted. Lefever and Sawdy won't be here tonight, anyway. They're in Medicine Bend on an Indian case. All I'm wondering is, whether Jim's coming."
But Laramie did not come—greatly to Kate's relief. He spent the night at the hotel and left town early. Next morning when Belle heard the news of the street she was thankful he had gone, for it was said that Van Horn and Stone were out of jail. Barb had been summoned in the night by the lawyers, and next day the prisoners were out on bail.
Laramie had made no secret of his riding north, except that, in the circumstances, he preferred to ride the night trail rather than the day trail. He wanted to look up his cattle and see Simeral and he thought he knew Barb well enough to be sure the stock would be sent back very promptly in as bad condition as possible.
He got to his ranch in good time. There were no signs of life anywhere. Riding about noon over to Simeral's he found his shack empty. But he hunted up food and cooked himself a breakfast.
While he was eating peacefully at Simeral's, Van Horn was with Stone and Doubleday, the three breakfasting in the back room of a Main Street saloon. Just what took place at that breakfast was not figured out for a long time afterward, if it really ever was. But the street heard that Van Horn and Doubleday had had a quarrel at breakfast and that Doubleday in a rage had turned the prisoners over to the sheriff and asked to be released from his bail bond.
No news more exciting could have reached Belle Shockley. She heard the story up street and ran halfway home to tell Kate, who remained in seclusion. Kate herself was not less excited; the news meant so much if it were true, and the butcher confirmed it beyond a doubt. By nightfall everybody knew that Van Horn and Stone were locked up again.
One man in town was not altogether at ease over the day's developments. Tenison spent much time that afternoon in the hotel billiard room, it being the best clearing house for the street gossip.
He tried more than once during the afternoon to get hold of Kitchen or Carpy—neither was in town—and with the day drawing to a close, Tenison's restlessness increased. He was standing late in the evening near a favorite corner at the upper end of the bar and above the billiard tables, when among the crowd drifting in and out of the room he caught sight of Ben Simeral. Tenison lost no time. Without moving, he asked the nearest bartender to take a message to the old rancher. And when Simeral passed through the door leading into the hotel, Tenison was behind him. He followed Simeral into the office and back past the wash room, through the hallway leading to the sample rooms. Opening the door of the first of these, Tenison pressed a light button, and motioning Simeral to enter, followed him into the room, closed the door, locked it, and sat down facing the rancher: "I want to get a message to Jim Laramie, Ben," he began at once. "You know what's been going on here today?"
The old rancher nodded silently.
"Can you ride to the Falling Wall for me right away with a word for Laramie?"
Simeral said nothing, but his heavy eyes closed as he nodded again.
"Laramie's gone home. He thinks Van Horn is in jail. The story is," continued Tenison, "that Van Horn and old Barb quarreled, that they came to blows and that Barb turned Stone and him over to Druel again to lock up." Tenison spoke slowly and impressively: "Tell Laramie," he said, "I copper all that stuff—every bit of it. Tell him to look out. I don't know what them fellows have got in their heads; but it's something. Van Horn won't be in jail long."
"He's out again now."
Tenison eyed his messenger steadily: "What do you mean?"
"I just come from Hinchcliffe's saloon. They've been out an hour."
Hard as the blow struck home, Tenison did not bat a lash: "We may be too late," he said. "It's worth trying. Warn Jim if you can."
"I can."
"There'll be a good horse for you at Kitchen's. Ask McAlpin for it. Tell him I couldn't get hold of a man any quicker. Will Jim sleep at your place tonight?"
Simeral shook his head: "No tellin'."
Tenison rose. Drawing from a trousers pocket a roll of bills, he slipped off several and passed them to Simeral.
"What's this f'r?" asked Simeral, looking at the money as it lay across his hand and then at Tenison.
The gambler regarded him evenly: "You're getting old, Ben."
"Not when it comes to doin' a turn f'r Jim."
Tenison literally swore the money on him. "Ride hard," he said. "An hour may make the difference."
Simeral listened to the injunction but he was putting the money away as slowly and carefully as if he never expected to see money again. This done, he hitched his trousers, shifted his quid, pushed his hat and followed Tenison across the room. He was so slow that Tenison was forced inwardly to smile at his own exasperation: "Never get nervous, do you, Ben?" he asked imperturbably.
"Nervous?"
Tenison, unlocking the street door of the long room, only stood by with his hand outstretched to speed his laggard messenger. The old man stepped out into the night. Tenison, looking after him, shook his head doubtfully. But he was doing what he could and he knew that though the old fellow walked slow, once in a saddle, he could ride fast; and that for Laramie, he would do it.
Laramie, after disposing of his prisoners, had ridden north with less of a hunted feeling experienced every time he mentally inventoried the rocks commanding the trail, the boulders looming ahead of him, and the cottonwoods through which he wound his way along the creek bottoms. And when at length he looked across Turkey creek, he was not surprised to see his cows straying down the hills toward their own range.
Even the bitter sight of the ruins of his cabin bore upon him less now that he had put Van Horn actually in jail for the trick. "You can't keep him there long," Tenison had cynically warned him.
"I've put the mark on him, if he's only there overnight," had been Laramie's reply. "He'll be a long time explaining. And I want you to notice, Harry, with all the fighting they've put me to, they've never got me locked up yet—not for a second. I guess for that," he added, reflecting, "I ought to thank my friends."
Never so much as that day had he realized how every aspect of his situation, as he viewed it, was colored by the thought of Kate Doubleday. If he were determined that despite any intrigue worked against him, he would never be locked up alive on a trumped-up charge, it was chiefly because of the disgrace of such a thing in her eyes. If he avoided opportunities now of finishing with Van Horn, he knew it was chiefly because of her. She would probably never see that finish, but she would hear the story of it from his enemies. Laramie was not at any time thinking merely of being justified in the last resort, nor of the justification of his friends, which would in any case be his. But what would Kate think?
Yet he knew what was ahead of him; he knew what lay at the end of the trail he and Van Horn were traveling. Lawing, as Sleepy Cat contemptuously termed it, was the least of it all and the most futile—yet in thinking of the other, her judgment was what he dreaded. This bore on him and perplexed him. It had, more than all else, put two little vertical furrows between his eyebrows; they were there often of late. Suppression of the feeling that had always and irresistibly drawn him toward her, had only intensified this worry. His pride had suffered at her hands; yet he made excuses for her—he had no high opinion of himself, of his general reputation—and had built dreams on the fanciful imagining that she should, despite everything, some day like him. He wearied his brain in recalling a chance expression of her eyes that could not have been unfriendly; an inflection of her voice that might have carried a hope, if only their paths had been less crossed: and his pride, despite rebuffs, sought her as a moth seeks a flame. It drew him to her and kept him from her, for he lacked for the first time in his life the boldness to stake everything on the turn of a card, and ask Kate to marry him.
Simeral had told him that John Frying Pan saw the cabin burning, and Laramie rode up to his place on the Reservation to talk with him. Failing to find him at home, Laramie left word with his wife and turned south. It was then late. The trail had taken him high up in the mountains and he made up his mind to ride over to the old bridge, stay for the night, pick up the few things he had left there and take them over to Simeral's in the morning.
Night had fallen when riding in easy fashion he reached the rim of the canyon and made his way from foothold to foothold until he came to an open ledge with grass and water for his horse, near the abutment. Leaving him in this spot, Laramie, carrying his rifle, climbed by a zig-zag footpath up a hundred feet to the shelter and rolled himself in a blanket for the night.
He woke at what he believed to be near midnight. The night was cold and he began to think about something to eat. With the aid of a candle he found bacon cached under a crevice in a baking-powder can near his bunk, and found some splinters of wood. These he laid for an early breakfast fire and wrapped himself again in his blanket. He had closed his eyes for another nap when a sound arrested his attention; it was the rumbling of a small piece of rock tumbling into the canyon.
Nothing was more common than for fragments, great and small, of the splintered canyon walls to loosen and start in the silence of the night. As mountain trees withstand the winter winds only to fall in summer calms, so it seemed as if the masses of rock that hung poised on the canyon rim through countless storms, chose the stillest hour of the stillest night to ride like avalanches the headlong slopes, plunge over dizzy cliffs and crash and sprawl in dying thunders from ledge to ledge into the river below. All these noises, big and little, were familiar to Laramie's ears. He could hear them in his sleep without losing the thread of a dream; but the echo of a single footstep would bring him up sitting.
The sound that now caught his attention had a still different effect. Listening, he lay motionless in his blanket with every faculty keyed; had a man at that moment stood before him reading his death warrant, he could not have been more awake. The noise was slight; only a small fragment of rock had fallen and the echoes of its journey were lost almost at once; it was the beginning of the sound that he was thinking of—the noise had not started right. He thought of the four-footed prowlers of the night and as a cause eliminated them one after another. He thought of his horse below—it was not where such a sound could start. But always slow to imagine a mystery when a reason could be assigned, Laramie, lying prone, was brought back every time to his first instinctive inference. Numberless times when tramping the canyon walls, his foot slipping before he recovered his balance had dislodged a bit of loose rock. He knew that sound too well and it was such a sound he had just heard. Behind the sound he suspected there was a man.
He tried long to reason himself out of the conviction. For an hour he lay perfectly still, waiting for some further alarm. There was none and the night was never stiller. Nor was there any haste, even if it should prove the worst, about meeting the situation. He was caught not like a rat in a trap but like a man in a blind canyon, with ample means of defense and none of escape except through a gauntlet. No enemy could molest him where he lay, but he could not lie there indefinitely. And with little ammunition and scarcely any food or water, he had no mind to stand a siege.
If his enemies had actually discovered his retreat and put a watch on him, he must in any event wait for the first peep of daylight. The one chance of escape lay down and not up, and the descent of the canyon was not to be made in complete darkness. A moon would have been a godsend. It would have made things easy, if such a word could be used of the situation; but there was no moon. Acting on his premonition as if it had been an assurance, Laramie, at the end of a long and silent vigil, rolled out of his blanket to save his life if he could. He lighted his breakfast fire and fried his bacon unconcernedly. He could neither be rushed nor potted and if there was a touch of insolent bravado in his seeming carelessness he was well aware that while the appetizing odors of a good breakfast would not tantalize an enemy believing himself master of the situation, it would make him believe he had taken the quarry unawares.
Below, he felt that all was safe—no one without passing him could possibly reach his horse.
By the time the eastern sky warned him of the coming dawn he had crawled to the edge of the abutment to look down and estimate his chances for dropping to the narrow ledge on which it stood footed. Then he crawled noiselessly toward the overhead break through which Kate had plunged. The sky was alive with stars. Worming himself close to the opening, he lay for a time patiently scrutinizing the rocks commanding the abutment from above. One of these long vigils disclosed, he fancied, against the sky the outline of a man's hat.
To satisfy himself if it were one, Laramie picked up a chip of rock and flung it down the canyon wall. The suspicious object moved. Laramie slowly took up his rifle and leaning forward raised it to his shoulder. Against the eastern sky the man's head made a perfect target. It was close range. Laramie covered the hat low. The bullet should penetrate the brim just where it covered the forehead. His finger moved to press the trigger before he thought further. Then he hesitated.
It seemed on reflection like murder, nothing less. He did not know the man, though he was no doubt an enemy who had come either to kill him or to help kill him. And to his natural repugnance to blowing off the top of an unknown man's head even in constructive self-defense, there was the thought of another's view of it. This might, after all, be merely a Texan acting as a lookout. It was even possible, though improbable, that it might be Barb himself. And if the man were not alone less would be gained by killing him.
The rifle came down from Laramie's shoulder as slowly as it had gone up. He made immediate disposition for his escape. Retreating noiselessly from the opening, he found his blanket, cut from it four strips, knotted these into a rope and creeping to the face of the abutment, lowered his rifle, ammunition belt and revolver down to the footing some twenty feet below, where they hung in darkness. For himself there was nothing but to drop after his accoutrements. At one point the horizontal footing ledge below jutted out in a blunt tongue something like six feet; this tongue was where he must land; elsewhere the ledge narrowed to only a foothold for a sober man already on it.
Laramie found an old mackinaw of Hawk's, put it on over his coat, and padding his back under it with the pieces into which he tore a quilt, strapped the mackinaw tight and returned to look over the ledge. He thought he knew precisely where the tongue lay, but wanted a little daylight to dispel any misgiving about letting go at a point where he might drop two hundred feet instead of twenty.
From the abutment the depths of the canyon looked in the half light pretty black, but its recesses hid no terrors of sentiment for Laramie. Fairly serene and stuffed in his baggy mackinaw, he lay for a few minutes flat on his stomach peering over the edge. Far below he could hear the rush of the river. Day was racing toward the mountain tops and diffusing its reflected light into their recesses. The rock tongue below outlined itself faintly in an almost impenetrable gloom. Waiting no longer, Laramie, with a careful hand-hold, let himself down over the face of the abutment and hung for an instant suspended. Loosing one hand he swung sidewise and threw back his head. The fingers of the other hand, straightened by his weight, let go.
Falling like a plummet, one of his heels smashed into the rocky gravel and he struck the ledge on his back. With such instinct as the swift drop left him he threw himself toward the canyon wall when he landed and, shocked though he was, tried to rise.
He could not get a breath, much less move. His mind remained perfectly clear, but the fall left him momentarily paralyzed. His efforts to regain his breath, to make himself breathe, were astonishingly futile, and he lay annoyed at his helplessness. It seemed as if minute after minute passed. Listening, he heard sounds above. Daylight was coming fast and every ray of it meant a slenderer chance of escape.
To his relief, his lungs filled a little. Soon they were doing more. He found he could move. He turned to his side, and, beginning life over again, crawled on hands and knees to where his belt, revolver and rifle hung suspended. He stood up, got out of the mackinaw, adjusted his belt and revolver, and with his rifle resting across his forearm looked around. He was battered and had a stinging ankle, but stood with legs and arms at least usable. Listening, he tiptoed as fast as he could to the narrow footpath leading into the canyon, and turning a corner of the rock wall hastened down to where he had picketed his horse. This trail was not exposed from above. But when he reached his horse and got stiffly into the saddle his problem was less simple.
To get out of the tremendous fissure in which he was trapped from above, Laramie had one trail to follow. This led for a hundred feet in an extremely sharp descent across the face of a nearly vertical canyon wall that flanked the recess where the horse had been left. This first hundred feet of his way down to the river, so steep that it was known as the Ladder, was all that caused Laramie any uneasiness; it was commanded every foot of the way from the abutment above.
Making all possible haste, Laramie headed his horse stealthily for the Ladder. He knew he had lost the most precious juncture of the dawn in lying paralyzed for some unexpected moments after his drop. It was a chance of war and he made no complaint. Indeed, as he reached the beginning of his trail and peered downward he realized that he needed daylight for the perilous ride. To take it slowly would be child's play for him but would leave him an easy target from above. To ride it fast was to invite a header for his horse and himself; one misstep would send the horse and rider bolting into space. How far it was to the river through this space Laramie felt little curiosity in figuring; but it could hardly have been less than two hundred and fifty feet.
There was no time for much thinking; the trail must be ridden and the sooner and faster the better. He struck his horse lightly. The horse jumped, but not very far ahead. Again Laramie used his heels and again the frightened beast sprung as little as he could ahead. A stinging lash was the only reward for his caution. If horses think, Laramie's horse must have imagined himself backed by a madman, and under the goading of his rider, the beast, quivering with fear, peered at the broken rocks below and sprang down among them. Concealment was no longer possible.
Like a man heading into a hailstorm, Laramie crouched to the horse, dropped the reins low on the beast's neck, and, clinging close, made himself as nearly as he could a part of the animal itself. The trail was five to six feet wide, but the descent was almost headlong, and down it the horse, urged by his rider, sprang in dizzy leaps; where the footing was worst Laramie tried to ease his frantic plunges. Stricken with terror, the beast caught his breath in convulsive starts and breathed in grunting snorts. Halting and bucking in jerky recoveries; leaping from foothold to foothold as if every jump were his last, and taking on a momentum far beyond his own or his rider's control, the frightened pony dashed recklessly ahead. It was as if a great weight, bounding on living springs, were heading to bolt at length against the sheer rock wall across the canyon.
Half the distance of the mad flight, and the worst half, was covered when a rifle cracked from the top of the abutment. Laramie felt a violent blow on his shoulder. There was no possible answer; there could be no more speed—no possible defense; the race lay between the rifle sights covering him and the four slender hoofs of the horse under him. Ten yards more were covered and a second rifle shot cracked crisply down the canyon walls. Laramie thought it from a second rifle; the bullet spat the wall above his head into splinters. They were shooting high, he told himself, and only hoped they might keep trying to pick him off the horse and let the horse's legs alone. None knew better than he exactly what was taking place above; the quick alarm, the fast-moving target in the gloomy canyon; the haste to get the feet set, the rifle to the shoulder, the sights lined, the moving target followed, the trigger pressed.
It was a madman's flight. As one or other of the rifles cracked at him, Laramie threw himself back in the saddle. With his hat in his hand, his arm shot straight up, and pointing toward the abutment he yelled a defiant laugh at his enemies. In an instant the hat was knocked from his fingers by a bullet; but the springing legs under him were left untouched. The trick for the rider now was, even should he escape the bullets, to check the flight of the horse before both shot over the foot of the Ladder into the depths. Laramie threw his weight low on the horse's side next the canyon wall and spoke soothingly into his ear as his arms circled the heaving neck.
And on the rim of the precipice, high above, two active men, bending every nerve and muscle to their effort, stood with repeating rifles laid against their cheeks, pumping and firing at the figure plunging into the depths below.
Late that afternoon a stable boy from Kitchen's barn appeared at Belle's, making inquiries for Doctor Carpy. Kate heard Belle at the door answering and asking questions, but the messenger was not able to answer any questions; his business was to ask only. When Kitchen himself came over a little later there was more talk at the door, this time in low tones that left Kate in ignorance of its purport. But the moment Kitchen went away, Belle, never equal to hiding an emotion, passed with compressed lips and set face through the room in which Kate sat sewing. Kate looked up as Belle walked toward the kitchen and noticed the tense expression—fortunately she asked no questions. After some vigorous moments in the kitchen, evidenced by the sound of a creaking bread-board, sharp blows at the stove lids and an unabashed slamming of the stewpans, Belle passed again through the room carrying a plate covered with a napkin, and evidently going somewhere.
Kate felt compelled to take notice: "Where you bound for, Belle?" she asked.
"Not far. But if I don't get back, don't wait supper," was the only answer. The manner rather than the matter of it puzzled Kate as she bent over her work. But the next moment she was alone and thinking about her own troubles.
Half an hour passed rapidly on her sewing—for Kate's fingers were quick—and Belle returned more perturbed than when she left. She gave Kate hardly a chance to question her.
"Why didn't you eat your supper?" she demanded.
Kate answered unconcernedly: "I wasn't hungry—it isn't late, is it?"
Without answering the question Belle asked another. "Kate," she said, unpinning her hat as she spoke, "how long you going to stay here?"
A less sensitive person than Kate could hardly have mistaken the import of the question. She flushed as she looked up. "Why, surely no longer than you want me, Belle," she answered, as evenly as she could; but her voice showed her surprise. Belle stood before her, a statue of implacability and Kate, in growing astonishment, rose to her feet: "What is it? What has happened?" she asked, then as her wits worked fast: "Doesn't my father wish you to keep me?"
"I'm not thinking about what your father wants. Things are getting too thick here for me." Kate made no effort to interrupt. "I don't say I don't like you, Kate—I've always treated you right, or tried to," continued Belle, laboring under evident excitement. "But it's no use shutting our eyes any longer to facts. You're Barb Doubleday's daughter and Barb Doubleday is making war all the time on my friends and hiring men to assassinate them, and it doesn't seem right to me and it won't to other people, me sheltering Barb Doubleday's daughter with such things going on——"
"But, Belle——"
Belle raised her voice one key higher: "You needn't tell me, I know. Now they're trying to murder Jim Laramie and they've close to done it, this day——"
Belle had received and accepted strict injunctions of secrecy on the next point she disclosed, but her feelings were not to be denied. And she was not prepared for the question that Kate, stung by the accusation, flung at her: "What do you mean?"
"I mean he's lying near here bleeding to death this minute and Doctor Carpy in Medicine Bend."
In tones broken with anger and excitement, Belle told the disconnected story as it had come to her in jerks and nods and oaths from McAlpin at the barn, and in the little she had pulled out of Laramie himself when she took food to him. Then came in terribly heated words the brunt of her anger at Kate. "You knew," she said, pointing her finger at Kate, standing stupefied. "You knew where Jim Laramie hid Hawk. Nobody else did know—not even Lefever or Sawdy knew—I didn't know till you told me. Now, after they've burned his cabin, they set a death watch there at the bridge on Laramie. How did they know there was such a place if you didn't tell 'em?"
Stunned by the fire of Belle's wrath, Kate, breathless, tried to collect her senses. It was only her anger at the final implication that cleared them. But even as her words of indignant denial reached her lips, her utterance was paralyzed by the recollection that unwittingly she had told her father of the night she was thrown into Laramie's retreat. Yet even this did not check her resentment.
"Who accuses me of telling them?" she demanded. "Who says I conspired to murder anyone—did Mr. Laramie say so?"
She shot the question at Belle in a furious tone. Her eyes flashed in a way that confounded her accuser.
"I'm asking you how they found out," retorted Belle, but in spite of herself on the defensive.
Kate's face was set and her eyes were on fire. All the anger that a woman could feel centered in her words and manner. "Answer my question before you say another word." She confronted Belle without yielding. "Did Jim Laramie accuse me in any way of anything?"
"Oh, you needn't be so high and mighty," flustered Belle. "I'll answer your question; no. Now you answer mine, will you?"
"How canIanswer how they found out? I will not say another word until I see Mr. Laramie—where is he?"
"You can't see him—nobody knows he is here—he won't talk to you."
Kate paid no attention to her words: "He'll have to tell me that himself," she returned. "If he is near here—he must be at Kitchen's."
Belle could say nothing to check or swerve her. Taking up her hat and ignoring all warnings, Kate walked straight over to the barn. She found McAlpin at the stable door: "I want you to take a message for me to Mr. Laramie," she said, speaking low and collectedly. "Ask him if he will see Kate Doubleday for just two minutes."
McAlpin, in all his devious career, had never passed through more or quicker stages of astonishment, confusion, poise and evasion than he did in listening to those words. But at pulling his wits together, McAlpin was a wonder. By the time Kate had finished, his innocent question was ready: "Where is he?"
"He is here. I must see him at once."
"But I ain't seen him myself for a week. He's not here. Who told you he's here?"
"Belle," persisted Kate calmly, "told me heishere. I must see him. Don't deceive me, McAlpin—do just as I ask you, no more, no less."
"No more, no less, sure," grumbled the Scotchman. "You gives me one kind of orders—the boss gives me another kind. I can't do no more, I can't do no less. I can't do nothin'—I've got a family to support and all this damned rowing going on, a man's job is no safer nowadays in this country than his head!"
But words were not to save him. Kate persisted. She would not be put off. McAlpin, swearing and protesting, could in the end only offer to go see whether he could by any chance find Laramie. After a long trip through the winding alleys of the big barn—for Kate watched the baseball cap and crazy vizor as long as she could follow it—then complete disappearance for a time, McAlpin came back to Kate, immovable at the office door, his face wreathed with a surprised smile.
He spoke, but his eyes were opened wide and his words were delivered in a whisper; mystery hung upon his manner: "Come along," he nodded, indicating the interior. "Only say nothing to nobody. He's hit—there's all there is to it. Here's all I know, but I don't know all: About three hours ago Ben Simeral was riding up the Crazy Woman when he seen a man half dropping off his horse, hat gone, riding head down, slow, with his rifle slung on his arm. Simmie seen who it was—Jim Laramie. He looked at horse 'n' man 'n' says: 'Where the hell you bin?' 'Where the hell 'a' you been,' Laramie says, pretty short. 'Ridin' all over this'—excuse my rough language, Kate—'blamed country, lookin' f'r to tell you Van Horn and Stone's out o' jail!'
"Laramie seen then from the ol' man's horse how he'd been ridin' 'n' softened down a bit. 'So I heard, Simmie,' he says. 'Who'd you hear it from?' says Simmie. 'Direct, Simmie,' he says. 'Did they pot y', Jim?' 'Nicked my shoulder, I guess.' 'Where you goin'?' 'To town.' 'Man,' says Simmie, 'you've lost a lot o' blood.' 'Got a little left, Simmie.'
"Then John Fryin' Pan c'm along. Simmie tried to ride to town with Laramie—f'r fear he'd fall off his horse. Laramie wouldn't let neither of 'em do a thing. 'This is my fight,' he says. But Simmie and John Fryin' Pan scouted along behind and Simmie rode in ahead near town to tell me Laramie was comin'. God! He was a sight when he rode into this barn. He tumbled off his horse right there"—McAlpin pointed to a spot where fresh straw had been sprinkled—"just like a dead man. I helped carry him upstairs," he whispered. "I'll take y' to him. But y' bet your life"—the grizzled old man stopped and turned sharply on his companion—"y' bet your life some o' them niggers bit the dust some'eres this morning. This way."
Kate, pacing McAlpin's rapid step breathlessly, hung on his half-muttered words: "He's bleedin' to death," continued McAlpin; "that's the short of it, and that blamed doctor down at Medicine Bend. I don't think much o' that man. Can't none of us stop it. Where's this goin' to end?"
He led her by roundabout passages, up one alley and down another, and at last opened the door of an old harness room, waited for Kate to follow him inside and, closing the door behind her, spoke: "I didn't want you to have to climb a barn ladder," he said, explaining. "There's the stairs." He pointed in the semi-darkness and led her toward the flight along the opposite wall. At the top of this flight light fell from a square opening in the hay-mow.
"Walk up them stairs—I lifted the trap-door f'r ye. He's right up there at the head of the steps. When y' come down, openthisdoor at the foot, here. It's a blind door; don't show on the other side. See, it's bolted. It takes you right into the office. We keep it bolted from the inside, so no trouble can't come, see?" He unbolted and opened the door a crack to show her, closed and rebolted it. Then starting her up the stairs, McAlpin jerked the crazy vizor on his forehead into a fashion once more simulating child-like frankness and disappeared by the way he had come.
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 cardssometimes, orhasonce 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 ofthis."
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 seeme," he insisted, doggedly. "Now I want to seeher."
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.