CHAPTER XXI“HEART AND HAND”
“Come in, Bowers.” Kate looked up from the market report she was reading as her trusted lieutenant scraped his feet on the soap box which did duty as a step to the tongue of the sheep wagon.
After a final glance at the report, during which Bowers eyed the mail sack with interest, she folded the sheet and turned to him inquiringly.
“I wisht you’d order some turpentine—'bout two quarts of it,” he said.
“What do you want with so much?” She reached for a pad and pencil to make a note.
“Ticks. I never seen the beat of ’em. I bet I picked a thousand off me a'ready this season. They ain’t satisfied with grabbin’ me from a sagebrush as I go by, but when they gits wind of me they trails me up and jumps me. All the herders is complainin’.”
“How’s the new herder doing?”
Bowers’s face clouded. “Dibert’s havin’ trouble with Neifkins’s herder—says the feller does most of his herdin’ in the wagon, and there would a been a ‘mix’ a dozen times if he hadn’t been with his sheep every minute. Dibert says it looks to him like the feller’s doin’ it on purpose.”
“I don’t know but what I’d rather have it that way than for them to be too friendly. More 'mixes’ come from herders visiting than any other cause, and I wouldn’t run that band through the chutes for three hundred dollars.It would take that much fat off of them, to say nothing of the bother. Who is Neifkins’s herder?”
“I ain’t seen him. Dibert says he’s an o’nery looker.”
“Next time you go over, notify him that he’s to herd lines closer. If he keeps on crowding, I’ll take a dog and set his sheep back where they belong so they won’t forget it. You can tell him. You think Dibert’s all right, do you?”
“Well,” Bowers replied judicially, “he’s one of these fellers that would fight like hell fer his sheep one day, and the next, if you brought him prunes instead of the aprycots he’d ordered, he’d turn ’em loose to the coyotes to git hunks with you. He’s all right, only he’s crazy.”
Kate shrugged a shoulder.
“Is there much water-hemlock in the gulch this summer?”
“Quite a bit of it—it’s spreadin’. Neifkins has lost several sheep a'ready by poison, but it’s careless herdin’.”
“I should own that section,” Kate commented. “It’s public land. I could have it put up at auction and buy it in, but I suppose they’d run the price up on me just to make me pay for it. How are Svenson’s lambs doing?”
“They’re so fat they can’t play—and Woods’s got twenty-five hundred of the best wethers that ever blatted!”
Kate’s eyes sparkled.
“I’m going to be a real Sheep Queen, Bowers, if wool and mutton keep climbing. The price of wool is the highest in its history.”
Bowers looked at her in mute admiration. He was always loyal, but when she was sociable and friendly like this he adored her. Alas, however, the times when she was so were yearly growing rarer.
Kate went on tentatively:
“I think I’ll ‘cut’ for a hard winter. You know my motto, 'Better be sure than sorry.'”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if 'twan’t a humdinger—last winter was so open. I think we’d be safer if we ship everything that’s fat enough.”
Bowers always said “we” when he spoke of the Outfit, though he was still only a camptender working for wages.
Kate relied upon him to keep her informed of the details of the business, which she had less time than formerly to look after personally. His judgment was sometimes at fault, but she trusted his honesty implicitly and, though she gave him little of her confidence, it was so much more than she gave to any other person that he was flattered by it.
“Guess what that Boston woolbuyer is offering me?” She tapped a letter.
“No idee.”
“Twenty-six cents.”
Bowers whistled.
“Gosh a'mighty! You’re goin’ to take it, ain’t you?”
“I’ll get a quarter more, if I hold out for it.”
His face fell a little.
“I’ll get it!” Her voice had a metallic quality. “It’s a fine long staple, and clean. If he won’t, some one else will give it to me.”
The sheep woman had the reputation now of being difficult to deal with, of haggling over fractions, and it was of this that Bowers was thinking. To others he would never admit that she was anything but perfect, though to himself he acknowledged the hardening process that was going on in her. He saw the growth of the driving ambition which made her indifferent to everything that did not tend to her personal interest.
Outside of himself and Teeters, Kate took no interestwhatever in individuals. There was no human note in her intercourse with those who worked for her. She cared for results only, and showed it.
They resented her appraising eyes, her cold censure when they blundered, her indifference to them as human beings, and they revenged themselves in the many ways that lie in a herder’s power if he cares to do so.
They gave away to the dry-farmers in the vicinity the supplies and halves of mutton she furnished them. In the lambing season they left the lambs whose mothers refused to own them to die when a little extra effort would have saved them. When stragglers split off from the herd they made no great attempt to recover them. They shot at coyotes and wildcats when it was convenient, but did not go out of their way to hunt them.
She was just but not generous. She never had spared herself, and she did not spare her herders. “Hard as nails” was the verdict in general. In her presence they were taciturn to sullenness; among themselves they criticised her constantly, exaggerating her faults and taking delight in recounting her failures. She was too familiar with every detail of the business for her men to dare to neglect her interests too flagrantly, but they had learned to a nicety how high their percentage of losses might run without getting their “time” for it.
Bowers knew of this silent hostility, which was so unnecessary, but he dared not speak of it. He could only deny that she had faults and resent it with violence when the criticisms become too objectionable.
If Kate had known of the antagonism, it would have made no difference—she would rather have taken the losses it entailed than to conciliate. She would have argued that if she was harsh, imperious, it was her privilege—she had earned it.
Life for Kate had resolved itself into an unromantic routine—like extracting the last penny for her wool that was possible, shipping on favorable markets, acquiring advantageous leases, discharging incapable herders and hiring others, eliminating waste and unnecessary expenditures, studying range conditions against hard winters.
“Any mail for the herders?” Bowers asked, innocently, since she showed no disposition to give him her confidence farther.
He watched her intently as she sorted the mail, tossing him a paper finally from which he removed the wrapper with a certain eagerness. He peered into it with a secrecy that attracted her attention, and, looking at it hard, Kate recognized it as the publication of a matrimonial agency.
“Bowers, you surprise me!” She regarded him quizzically.
Bowers started guiltily.
“Aw—it’s one they sent me,” he said disparagingly—“jest a sample copy.”
“Bowers, I think you’re lying,” she accused him good-humoredly. “Tell me the truth—didn’t you send for it?”
He squirmed and colored.
“I did write to ’em—out of cur'osity.”
“Don’t forget that married men are not hired into this Outfit,” she reminded him, smiling. “I’d be sorry to lose you.”
“Gosh a'mighty!” he protested vigorously. “I ain’t no use fer women!”
The subject seemed to interest him, however, for he continued with animation:
“They’s always somethin’ about ’em I don’t like when I git to know ’em. I’ve knowed several real well—sixor eight, altogether, countin’ two that run restauraws and one that done my warshin’. I got a kind o’ cur'osity about ’em, but I don’t take no personal interest in ’em. Why—Gosh—a'mighty—”
Bowers nearly kicked the stove over in his embarrassed denial.
Kate looked after him speculatively as he made his escape in a relief that was rather obvious. His protests had been too vehement to be convincing. Was he growing discontented? Didn’t her friendship satisfy him any longer?
There was something of the patient trust of a sheepdog in Bowers’s fidelity. “The queen can do no wrong,” was his attitude. Kate was so accustomed to his devotion and admiration that it gave her a twinge to think of sharing it.
She called after him as he was leaving:
“If you meet that freighter, tell him for me he’ll get his check if he gets in again as early as he did last trip. I won’t have a horse left with a sound pair of shoulders.”
“And I fergot to tell you that somebody’s ‘salted’ over in Burnt Basin,” he answered, turning back. “There’s a hunerd head o’ cattle eatin’ off the feed there. We’ll need that, later.”
“Tsch! tsch!” Kate frowned her annoyance at the information.
“Be sure and warn Neifkins’s herder as soon as you can get around to it,” she reminded him.
“You bet!” Bowers responded cheerfully, and went on.
Yes, she certainly would miss Bowers if anything happened that he left her, she thought as she turned inside to her market report and her letters.
It was days, however, before Bowers found the opportunityto go to Dibert’s camp with supplies and incidentally warn Neifkins’s herder, if he was still crowding. Now as he jolted towards the fluttering rag, thrust in a pile of rocks to mark the location of Dibert’s sheep-wagon, his thoughts, for once, were not of sheep or anything pertaining to them. He was, forsooth, composing for the matrimonial paper an advertisement which should be sufficiently attractive to draw a few answers without making himself in any way liable. He thought he might with safety say that he was a single gentleman, crowding forty, interested in the sheep industry, who would be pleased to correspond with a plump blonde of about thirty. He would not go so far as to say that his object was matrimony, since, of course, it was not, and the declaration might somehow prove incriminating. The DenverPostwas full of suits for breach of promise and it behooved him to be wary.
Bowers felt like a fox, at the adroit wording of the advertisement, and chuckled at his cunning. He would notify the postmaster in Prouty to hold out his mail for him and thus escape further “joshing” from Kate, who would be sure to observe letters addressed to him in feminine writing.
The matrimonial paper had proved to be in the nature of a debauch to Bowers, who had worn it to tatters poring over its columns. The “petite blondes” and “dashing brunettes” who enumerated their charms without any noticeable lack of modesty furnished food for his imagination. He selected brides, as the description pleased him, with the prodigal abandon of a sultan.
However, the idea of an advertisement of his own, dismissed promptly at first, grew upon him. The thought of getting something in the mail besides a catalogue and the speeches of his congressman, of having something actuallyto look forward to, appealed to him strongly the more he considered it. Bowers craved a little of the warmth of romance in his drab existence and this was the only way he knew of obtaining it.
Smiling at the brash act he contemplated, Bowers threw the brake mechanically as the front wheels of the wagon sank into a chuck-hole and the jolt all but landed him on the broad rump of Old Peter.
As he raised his eyes he saw a sight charged with significance to one familiar with it.
Neifkins’s sheep were coming down the side of the mountain like a woolly avalanche. In the shape of a wedge with a leader at the point of it, they were running with a definite purpose and as though all the dogs in sheepdom were heeling them. The very thing against which he had come to warn the herders was about to happen—the band was making straight for Dibert’s sheep, which were still feeding peacefully on the hillside.
With an imprecation that was not flattering to either herder, Bowers wrapped the lines around the brake and leaped over the wheel to head them if it were possible. But they seemed possessed by all the imps of Satan, as they came on bleating, hurdling boulders, letting out another link of speed at Bowers’s frantic shoutings.
The leaders of the two bands were not fifty feet apart when Bowers, realizing he could not get between them, reached for a rock with a faint hope that he might hit what he aimed for. His prayer was answered, for the ewe in the lead of Neifkins’s band blinked and staggered as the rock bounced on her forehead. With a surprised bleat she turned and started back up the mountain, the rest of the band following.
The perspiration was streaming from under Bowers’s hat as his eyes searched the surrounding country. Not asign of either herder! A cactus thorn that had penetrated his shoe leather did not improve Bowers’s temper. As he sat down to extract it, he considered whether it would be advisable to pound Dibert to a jelly when he found him or wait until they got a herder to replace him.
The man’s horse and saddle were missing in camp, Bowers discovered, so it was fairly safe to assume that he was over visiting Neifkins’s herder.
After Bowers had brought the supply wagon up and unloaded, he secured the horses and started on foot up the mountain.
From the summit he could see the white canvas top of Neifkins’s wagon gleaming among the quaking asp well down the other slope of the mountain. No one was visible, but as he got closer he saw Dibert’s horse tied to the wheel. Bowers felt “hos-tile.”
“What you doin’ here?” he demanded unceremoniously, as Dibert, hearing the rocks rattle, all but tumbled out of the wagon in his eagerness.
“I never was so tickled to see anybody in my life!” he cried.
“I’m about as pleased to see you as a stepmother welcomin’ home the first wife’s children,” Bowers replied, eyeing him coldly. “You ain’t answered my question.”
The herder nodded towards the wagon:
“He’s come down with somethin’. Clean off”—he touched his forehead—“I dassn’t leave him.”
Bowers immediately went into the wagon, where, after a look at the man mumbling on the bunk, he said laconically:
“Tick bite.”
The brown blotches, flushed forehead, and burning eyes told their own story.
As Bowers continued to look at the sick man, with hisunshaven face and mop of oily black hair, so long that it was beginning to curl, Dibert commented:
“He ain’t what you’d call pretty—I’ve no idee he has to keep a rock handy to stone off the ladies.”
But Bowers was searching his mind in the endeavor to recall where he had seen those curious eyes with the muddy blue-gray iris. It came to him so suddenly that he shouted it:
“I know him! It’s the feller that blowed up my wagon! It’s the—that killed Mary!”
CHAPTER XXIIMULLENDORE WINS
Kate sat on the side bench listening to Mullendore’s disjointed mumblings. It was now well towards midnight and she had been sitting so for hours in the hope that he might have a lucid moment, but to the present her vigil had been unrewarded. Mostly his sentences were a jumble relative to trapping or sheep. Again, he lay inert with his eyes fixed upon her face in a meaningless stare.
Gusts of wind shook the wagon and swayed the kerosene lamp in its bracket, while a pounding rain beat a tattoo on the canvas cover. The tension was telling on Kate and a kind of nervous frenzy grew upon her as the time dragged by and she was no nearer learning what she had hoped to learn—than when she had had Mullendore brought to her camp.
She and Bowers had taken turns guarding him, and in growing despair she had watched him weaken, for each day the chances lessened that his mind would clear; and now Kate sat staring back into his unblinking eyes asking herself if it was possible that his crime was to be buried with him and she must go on the rest of her life bearing the onus of his guilt? The answer to every question she wanted to know was locked in the breast of the emaciated man lying on the bunk.
Bowers had proved to be correct in his diagnosis. The headache, backache, stiff neck and muscles with which Mullendore’s illness had started were the forerunner ofbrown blotches, fever and jangling nerves. A virulent case of spotted fever, it was pronounced by “Doc” Fussel, who doubted that he would recover.
“I’d knock him in the head and put him to bed with a shovel, if 'twere me,” Bowers had grumbled when he had helped move Pete Mullendore over to Kate’s headquarters.
“We’ve got to make him talk,” Kate had replied grimly. “We’ve got to get the truth somehow, Bowers, before he goes.”
Kate had no prearranged plan as to the course she would pursue if Mullendore became rational, but trusted to her instinct to guide her. She was certain only of one thing—that if he had a spark of manhood in him she would reach it somehow. Though he inspired in her a feeling which was akin to her repugnance for creeping things, and there were moments when something like her childish terror of the half-breed trapper returned, she was determined that there were no lengths to which she would not go, in the way of humbling her pride, to attain her end.
The clock, ticking loudly on its nail, said midnight, and still Mullendore, deaf and blind to all save the fantastic world into which he stared, mumbled incoherently.
At last, unable longer to sit quietly, Kate arose and leaned over him.
“Do you remember the Sand Coulee, Pete?—the Sand Coulee Roadhouse where you used to stop?” she asked softly.
His mumblings ceased as if her voice had penetrated his dulled ears. Then his lips moved:
“The Sand Coulee Roadhouse—the Sand Coulee—”
“Where you trapped. Remember the bear hides you brought in that spring Katie left?”
“The pack’s slippin’ agin—them saddles is far and away too narrer—and them green hides weigh like lead—” He ran his words together like a person talking in his sleep.
“You load too heavy—you load to break a horse’s back—Katie Prentice always told you that.”
A troubled frown grew between his eyes as though he was groping, vainly groping for some elusive thought.
“Katie told me—Katie Prentice—” His voice trailed off and ended in a breath.
She made a gesture of despair, but repeated persistently:
“She told you that you ought to be ashamed to pack a horse like that. Three hundred pounds, Pete Mullendore! You haven’t any feeling for a horse.”
“Killed Old Blue and left him on the trail. My, but you’re gittin’ growed up fast. Ain’t you got a kiss for Pete?”
She leaned closer.
“Would you do something for me if I kissed you—if Katie Prentice kissed you, Pete Mullendore?”
She repeated her words, speaking in a whisper, with careful distinctness.
“Will you tell Katie something that she wants to know, if she kisses you, Pete Mullendore?”
“Goin’ to take you back to the mountings next trip—learn you to tan hides good—with ashes and deer brains—all—same—squaw—make good squaw out o’ you—Katie—break your spirit first—you brat—lick you till I break your heart.”
Katie’s hands clenched.
“My mother wouldn’t let me go with you!”
A shadowy cunning crossed his face.
“You’ll go, when I say so. I got the whip-hand o’ Jezebel.”
“You’re bragging, Pete Mullendore. My mother’s not afraid of you.”
“Jest a line on a postal—ud bring the Old Man on a special. You’re more afraid of the Old Man than you are of dyin’—ain’t it the truth, Isabelle?” he mumbled.
“You’re only talking to hear yourself—you wouldn’t know where to write. You’ve forgotten the name of the town where the 'Old Man’ lives. You can’t remember at all, can you, Pete?”
A frown lined his forehead while she waited with parted lips, afraid to move lest she start him rambling elsewhere again.
“You couldn’t say the name of the town where Katie Prentice’s father lives!”
Bending over him, rigid, tense, it seemed as though she would draw the answer from him through sheer will power.
He rolled his head fretfully to and fro, looking into her eyes with dilated pupils that burned in yellow bloodshot eyeballs. The wind rattled loose wagon bolts and scattered the ashes on the hearth in a puff, while Kate with a thumping heart waited for a response.
“Think!” she urged. “Say it out loud, Mullendore—the name of the town you’d put on the postal if you were going to write to the 'Old Man.'”
His lips moved to speak, and then somewhat as if the habit of secrecy asserted itself even in his delirium, he checked himself with an expression of obstinacy on his face.
Kate’s hand crept to his shoulder and clutched it tight.
“Tell me, Pete!” She shook him hard. “Say it—quick!”
He muttered thickly:
“What for?”
“You’re a liar, Pete Mullendore!” she taunted. “You don’t know. You haven’t any idea where Katie Prentice’s father lives!”
The gibe brought no response; yet slowly, so gradually that it was not possible to tell when it began, a look that was wholly rational came into his eyes. He blinked, touched his dry lips with his dry tongue and, turning his head, recognized her without surprise.
“Git me a drink.”
She held a dipper to his lips.
He fixed his eyes upon her face.
“I been sick?”
“Spotted fever.”
He stirred slightly.
“What’s this?” A weak astonishment was in his voice as he felt a rope across his arms and chest.
“To keep you in bed.”
“I been—loony?”
She nodded.
He looked at her quizzically.
“Emptied my sack?”
“You’ve talked.”
He lay motionless, staring at her fixedly; then, as if arriving at a conclusion:
“Guess I didn’t say much.”
“You said plenty,” significantly.
“But not enough, eh?” he jeered.
She regarded him silently.
“Where am I, anyhow?”
“In my camp.”
“Oh.” He considered a moment, then mocked, “Got religion?”
“Not yet,” curtly.
“Jest wanted me close? Ol' friends are the best friends—ain’t they?” He grinned weakly at her.
“Pete,” slowly, “there are some questions I want to ask you.”
“Thought it was about time for the pumps to start. What do you want to know?”
Kate’s heart leaped. She endeavored to steady her voice, to keep out of her face the eagerness with which she trembled, as she replied:
“I want to know who my father is—where he is, if he’s alive. Oh, Pete!” Her hands came together beseechingly, “Tell me that—I beg of you tell me about him.”
Satisfaction glistened in his eyes.
“I thought that would be it! The only civil words I ever got out of you when you was a kid was when you hoped to make me loosen up and talk to you about him.” Then he asked again with an expression she could not interpret, “You’re sure you’d ruther I give up that than anything else on earth?”
“Yes, Pete!” she gulped. “It means so much to me.”
“I guess yes. The ground wouldn’t be good enough for your feet if the 'Old Man’ had you.”
“Is that the truth? He’d care for me like that? Oh, Pete!”
“Care? He’d worship you. Them Prouty folks would bite themselves if they could see your Old Man,” he chuckled faintly.
“He is still living, then? Oh, Pete!” She extended two pleading hands impulsively, “Don’t make me wait!”
Something other than fever glittered in his eyes, andthere was more than satisfaction in his voice when he said:
“That’s somethin’ like it—somethin’—not quite! It’s sweeter nor music to hear you beg. But, damn you, you ain’t humble enough yet!”
“What do you want me to do?” she cried. “I’ll—I’ll get down on my knees, if only you’ll tell me what I want to know!”
“That’s it!” in shrill excitement. “Get down on your knees. I ain’t forgot that you called me a ‘nigger’ once, and hit me with a quirt. It’ll kinda wipe it out to see you crawlin’ to Pete, that you always treated like dirt. Git down on your knees and beg, if you want me to talk!”
She sank to the floor of the wagon without a word.
He looked at her queerly as she knelt. There was intense gratification in his voice, “You do want to know, when you’ll swaller that.”
“Yes, Pete,” humbly, “I do.”
His thin hands lay inert upon the soogan. His head turned weakly while he kept his eyes upon her as though enjoying the situation to the utmost. There was a silence in which he seemed both to be gathering strength and considering how to begin.
“He’s the kind of a feller—your Old Man—that don’t have to holler his head off to git himself heard. They’d listen in any man’s country when he talks. He don’t talk much, but what he says goes—the kind that can always finish what he starts.
“He’s six feet, and there wasn’t any man in the country could handle him in those days. I’ve seen him throw a three-year-ol' steer like you’d slap over a kid. He was easy and quiet, commonly, like one of them still deep rivers that slip along peaceful till somethin’ gits in its way. The patientest feller I ever see with dumb brutes,and a patience that wasn’t hardly human, even with folks. But when he did break loose—well, them that thought he was 'harmless’ and went too far on account of it never made the same mistake twice.”
He continued with evident relish:
“That’s where he fooled her—Isabelle—she didn’t read him right. She thought he was ‘soft’ because she had her way with him.”
“They were married, Pete?”
“Married, right enough—he never thought any other way about her. She was all-the-same angel to him,” he grinned. “She never was straight—we all knowed that but him, but she was slick, and she was swingin’ her throwrope for him in about a week after they brought her in from the Middle West to teach the school in that district. Anybody that said a word ag'in’ her to him would have gone to the hospital. So he went ahead and married her—while she laffed at him to his own hired men.
“If he’d worked her over with a quirt about onct a month, instead of wonderin’ what he could do for her next, he might have had her yet.
“If he made a door-mat out of hisself before, it was worse after you come. He was the greatest hand for little things that ever I see—colts, kittens, calves, puppies and a baby! He walked the floor carrying you on a pillow for fear you’d break.
“It was too slow for Isabelle—that life—and only one man to fetch and carry for her. We used to make bets among ourselves as to how long ’twould last, and the short-time man won out. She liked ’em ‘tough,’ she said—no white-collared gents for her; and she got what she was lookin’ for when she throwed in with Freighter Sam that hauled supplies from the railroad to the ranch.
“They skipped out between daylight and dark and made as clean a getaway as ever was pulled off. But where she made her big mistake was takin’ you along. If it hadn’t been for that, he wouldn’t a-walked a half mile to bring her back. Twenty-four hours put ten years on him, and he never squeaked. But if he’d caught that freighter he’d took him by the heels and swung him like you’d knock a rabbit’s brains out agin a post.
“He went over the country with a fine-tooth comb, hopin’ to git you back. A couple of times he almost closed in on ’em, but they managed to give him the slip and headed north while mostly he hunted south and west.
“You was well growed before I run into ’em. Freighter Sam used to bang her head agin the door jamb about twict a week, and they got along good until he fell for a hasher in an eatin’ house and quit Isabelle cold. She hit bottom pretty pronto after that.” Mullendore stopped.
“But my father, Pete;—tell me more about him!”
He eyed her with a quizzical and appraising look before he replied:
“You favor the Old Man as much as if you was made out of the mud that was left when they was done workin’ on him. Your eyes, your mouth, your chin—the way you walk and stand—the easy style you set a horse. As the sayin’ is, 'You’re the spit out of his mouth.' God A'mighty! Wouldn’t he spile you if you was with him!”
“But you don’t tell me where he is, Pete!”
He ignored the interruption and said with slow malice, watching her face:
“I’ve often thought what a shame it was that you two never got together—a hankerin’ for each other so.”
Something in his tone struck terror to her heart.
“But you’re going to tell me, Pete? You are! You are!” She crawled closer to the bunk, on her knees.
A passionate satisfaction glittered in his eyes.
“Yes! it’s a plumb pity that you and him never happened to meet up.”
There was cold cruelty in his tantalizing voice.
“You mean—you mean—” she stammered with colorless lips—“that—that you’re only tormenting me again—you don’t intend—”
“That depends.” His pupils dilated, his white teeth gleamed.
“But you promised, Pete! Haven’t you any honor—not a speck?”
“I git what I want any way I can git it. That’s me—Mullendore.”
“Tell me what you want! Is it money, Pete?”
“Money! Hell! What’s money good for to me? Money’s only to blow after you’ve got enough to eat. What do you spose I want? I want you!”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that.” An oath came between his clenched teeth. “I’m stuck on you! I want you so I hate you, if you can understand that—and always have. I’d like to take you off like a dog packs a bone away for himself. I’ve dealt you and your sheep all the misery I could, because every step you took up was just so far from me. What I’ve done,” savagely, “is nothin’ to what I’ll do when I git out of this, if you don’t say yes.”
Kate’s face, that had gone scarlet, was a grayish white as she got up slowly from her knees.
Her breathing was labored as she demanded:
“You—mean—that—you’ll—not—tell me anything more unless I do what you ask?”
“You got it right.”
Kate’s nerves and self-control gave way as a taut string snaps. In the center of a black disc she saw only the mocking eyes and evil face of Mullendore.
“I’m going to kill you, Pete! I’m—going—to choke you—to death! You—shan’t torment me—any more!”
Her strong hands were close to his throat while he shrank from the white fury in her face. Suddenly her arms dropped to her sides. Such a feeling of physical repulsion swept over her that she could not touch him even in her rage.
“Lost your nerve?” he mocked. “Old Pete wins again, eh, Kate?”
She did not answer but stepped out on the wagon tongue that the cool rain might patter in her face. Her knees were shaking beneath her and she felt nauseated—sick with a feeling of absolute defeat.
CHAPTER XXIIIWHEN THE BLACK SPOT HIT
Teeters moved in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.
Outwardly, there would seem to be no possible connection between his presence in the living room at Happy Wigwam making himself even more than ordinarily agreeable, and the confession he desired to wring from the murderer of Mormon Joe.
Years of “Duding,” however, had given Teeters a confidence in himself and his diplomacy which would seem to be justified, for, as he rightly argued, “A man who can handle dudes can do anything.”
Now, he knew that if he had come to Mrs. Taylor and bluntly asked the use of her supernatural gifts in Kate’s behalf she would have refused him.
Kate had gone to Teeters in despair after her failure with Mullendore, hoping that he might have something to suggest which had not occurred to her. She had told him all that had happened, and among other things, that she knew now that the “breed” had negro blood in him.
“It probably accounts for his secret belief in an old-fashioned, brimstone hell,” she had added. “He denies it, of course, but I’m sure it’s the one thing he’s really afraid of.”
The information had impressed Teeters.
“You go back and keep the varmit alive until I gitthere,” he had advised her. “I got a black speck in my brain, and every time it hits the top of my head I get an idea—I think it’s goin’ to strike directly.”
The present visit was evidence that it had done so. The situation was one which demanded all his subtlety, but what possible bearing the deep interest with which he was eying the garment Mrs. Taylor was repairing could have upon it, the most astute would have found it difficult to imagine.
The bifurcated article of wearing apparel was of outing flannel, roomy where amplitude was most needed, gathered at the waist with a drawstring, confined at the ankle by a deep ruffle—a garment of amazing ugliness.
“I suppose,” Teeters ventured guilelessly, “them things is handier than skirts to git over fences and do chores in?” Then, with an anticipatory air, he waited.
He was not disappointed. Mrs. Taylor laid down her work and, throwing back her head, burst into laughter that was ringing, Homeric, reverberating through the house like some one shouting in a canyon. It continued until Teeters was alarmed lest he had overdone matters.
She subsided finally and, wiping her streaming eyes on a ruffle, shook a playful finger at him:
“Clarence, you are killing—simply killing!”
Teeters did not deny it. He had not yet recovered from the fear that he might be. But he had accomplished what he had intended—he had furnished Mrs. Taylor with the “one good laugh a day” which she declared her health and temperament demanded.
After a pensive silence Teeters looked up wistfully:
“I wonder if you and Miss Maggie would sing somethin’. I git a reg'lar cravin’ to hear good music.”
Mrs. Taylor laid down her work with a pleased expression.
“Certainly, Clarence. Is there anything in particular?”
“If it ain’t too much trouble, I’d like, 'Oh, Think of the Home Over There.'”
“I’m delighted that your mind sometimes turns in that direction. I’ve sometimes feared, Clarence, that you were not religious.”
Mr. Teeters looked pained at the suggestion.
“I don’t talk about religion much,” he replied earnestly, “but there’s somethin’ come up the last few days that set me thinkin’ pretty serious.”
Mrs. Taylor looked her curiosity.
“It’s a turrible thing,” Teeters wagged his head solemnly, “to see a feller layin’ on his death-bed denyin’ they’s a Hereafter.”
“Why, how dreadful! Who is it?”
“A sheepherder. He says they ain’t no hell—nor nothin’.”
“The po-oo-or soul! Is there any way I could talk to him?”
“I was hopin’ you’d say that, but I didn’t like to ask you, seein’ as he’s a sheepherder.”
“They’re human beings, Clarence,” reproved Mrs. Taylor.
“I’ve heerd that questioned,” declared Teeters, “but anyhow, a person with a heart in him no bigger than a bullet would have to be sorry to see this feller goin’ to his everlasting punishment without repentin’. He’s done murder.”
“Murder!”
“I’ll tell you about it to-morrow on the way over.”
“Where is he?”
“At Kate Prentice’s—at headquarters.”
Mrs. Taylor stiffened.
“I shouldn’t care to go there, Clarence.” Seeing that his face clouded, she added: “Of course, if your heart is set upon it—the woman wouldn’t construe it as a ‘call’ and return it, would she?”
“I hardly think so,” replied Teeters dryly.
As a result of this conversation, the following morning Kate saw Teeters driving up Bitter Creek with a second person on the seat beside him. She had just come down from Burnt Basin and was not in too good a humor. Bowers, who was staying with Mullendore, came out of the wagon when he heard her and asked:
“How was it lookin’?”
“The spring was trampled to a bog,” she said in an exasperated voice, “and the range is covered with bare spots where that dry-farmer has salted his cattle. I’ll throw two bands of sheep in there, and when I take ’em off there won’t be roots enough left to grow grass for five years. If it’s fight he wants, I’ll give him all he’s looking for.” Her brow cleared as she added:
“Teeters is coming up the road and bringing some one with him.” She nodded towards the wagon, “How is he?”
“I doubt if he lasts the day out.”
Kate frowned when she recognized Mrs. Taylor. They passed occasionally on the road to Prouty, but always without speaking. Kate never had forgiven the affront at the Prouty House, while Mrs. Taylor preserved her uncompromising attitude towards “rough characters.”
Mrs. Taylor looked like a grenadier in a long snuff-brown coat and jaunty sailor hat as she descended from the buckboard without using the step. The benign cow-like complacency of her face always had irritated Kate,and now, as she advanced with the air of a great lady slumming, Kate felt herself tingling.
“How do you do, my dear?” She extended a large hand with a brown cotton glove upon it.
Kate’s hand remained at her side, as she said coldly:
“How do you do, Mrs. Taylor?”
Mrs. Taylor’s manner said that it was the gracious act of an unsullied woman extending a hand to a fallen sister when she laid her brown cotton paw upon Kate’s arm and quavered pityingly:
“You po-oo-or soul!”
“You stupid woman!” Kate’s eyes at the moment looked like steel points emitting sparks.
Mrs. Taylor drew herself up haughtily and was about to retort, but thought better of it. Instead, she declared with noble magnanimity:
“I am not angery. I have not been angery in thirty years. You are very rude, but I can rise above it and forgive you, because I realize you’ve had no raising.”
“I hope,” said Kate hotly, “that you realize also that you are not here by my invitation.”
Mrs. Taylor looked as if she was not only about to forget that she was a saint but a lady, while Teeters had a sensation of being rent by feline claws.
It seemed like a direct intervention of Providence when Bowers hung out of the door of the wagon and called excitedly:
“I believe he’s goin’!”
The exigencies of the moment, and curiosity, combined to make Mrs. Taylor overlook temporarily that she had been insulted, and she hastened with Teeters to the dying man’s side.
Emaciated, yellow, Mullendore was lying with closed eyes when they entered.
“Say, feller—” said Teeters, hoping to rouse him.
Only Mullendore’s faint breathing told them that he was living.
Mrs. Taylor laid her hand upon his damp forehead and withdrew it quickly.
“The po-oo-or soul! I’ll sing something.”
“It might help to gitong rapportwith the sperrits,” agreed Teeters.
As Mrs. Taylor droned a familiar camp-meeting hymn, Mullendore opened his eyes and looked at her dully:
“Who are you?” he whispered.
Mrs. Taylor quavered, “I’ve come to bring the Truth to you.”
Mullendore looked at her, uncomprehending.
Teeters thrust himself in the sick man’s line of vision and elucidated:
“Feller, I’m sorry to tell you you ain’t goin’ to 'make the grade'—they’s no possible show fur you—an’ Mis’ Taylor here, who’s a personal friend, you might say, of all the leadin’ sperrits in the Sperrit World, has come to kind of prepare you—”
Mullendore’s lips moved with an effort:
“There ain’t nothin’ after this.”
“Oh, my!” Teeters ejaculated in a shocked voice. “Don’t say heathen things like that! If you’d seen half of what I’ve saw you couldn’t nowise doubt.”
“There ain’t no hell—there ain’t no comin’ back.” The voice was stronger, and querulous.
Teeters wagged his head in horrified reproach.
“Mis’ Taylor, do you think the sperrits are goin’ to take holt?”
Turning to the lady who hoped to be his mother-in-law, Teeters’s eyes started in his head. He was familiar with weird gyrations of the kitchen table, and messages receivedthrough the medium of the ouija board, but he never had seen the mysterious force which Mrs. Taylor referred to as her “control” evidence itself in any such fashion as this.
With her lank six feet sunk upon the side bench and her supine hands lying limply in her lap, Mrs. Taylor’s chest was rising and falling in convulsive heaves; the nostrils of her large flat nose were dilated, and her wide mouth, with its loose colorless lips, was slightly agape. Her eyes were open and staring fixedly straight ahead. Mrs. Taylor was in a trance.
Teeters had long since given over trying to explain what he did not understand, but in a vague way he regarded Mrs. Taylor as an unconscious fakir, whose spiritual communications bore the earmarks of something she had learned in a quite ordinary way.
There was, however, nothing of charlatanry in her present state. Teeters was convinced of that. She caught and held the gaze of Mullendore’s dull eyes. Suddenly she stiffened out like a corpse galvanized into life by an electric charge, then again sank back, and said thickly between labored breaths:
“It is turgid—dark—all is confusion—spirits are assembling—they are spirits of unrest—there is no peace—no happiness. There is horror in every distorted face—they have met—violent deaths—they want to talk—they clamor to be heard—they—”
“It’s a lie!” Mullendore’s whisper was shrill, aspirate. “There ain’t no other world! There ain’t no comin’ back!”
“Clouds roll up—” she went on, “clouds of red smoke—they shut the spirits out—new ones come—dim at first—but I can’t see—yet. Wait!”
The woman’s stare seemed to carry her through andbeyond the wagon cover into the invisible world she peopled with the dead. Her body was rigid; her face had the ossified gray look of stone; the labored jerks in which she spoke racked her body with the effort that it cost.
“Now—they’re coming! The smoke rolls back a bit—I see—quite plain—Oh! Oh!” A look of horror froze on her gray face, and her voice rose to a shriek. “He says he’s Mormon Joe! He cries—Confess! Confess!”
To Mullendore with his inflamed brain and nerves jangling like a network of loose wire, she seemed like a direct emissary from the place of torment, which was as real to him as the wagon in which he lay.
The half-breed had tried to convince himself by saying over and over mechanically: “There ain’t no hell—there ain’t no comin’ back—there ain’t nothin’ after this,”—but the denial was only of the lips—atavism was stronger than his will. He believed, as much as he believed that on the morrow the sun would rise, in a real and definite hell, filled with the shrieking spirits of the damned. In these final hours it had required all his weakened will to hide his fears and keep his tongue between his teeth. Now, like a man clinging by his finger tips to some small crevice in a cliff, he suddenly gave up. As he relaxed his grip he whispered with the last faint remnant of his strength:
“I own up—I set the gun—I—I—”
Teeters slipped an arm about his shoulders and raised him up.
“Where did you git it, Mullendore?”
His answer was a breath.
“Toomey.”
“One thing more—Where does Kate Prentice’sfather live? His address—quick!” Teeters shook the wasted shoulders in his haste.
The muddy blue-gray iris was divided in half by the closing upper lids. Beneath the glaze there seemed a last malicious spark. Then his tongue clicked as it dropped to the back of his mouth, and Mullendore was dead.