CHAPTER XVIIDOUBLER TALKS
After the departure of the doctor Sheila entered the cabin and closed the door, fastening the bars and drawing a chair over near the table. Doubler seemed to be resting easier, though there was a flush in his cheeks that told of the presence of fever. However, he breathed more regularly and with less effort than before the coming of the doctor, and as a consequence, Sheila felt decidedly better. At intervals during the night she gave him quantities of the medicine which the doctor had left, but only when the fever seemed to increase, forcing the liquid through his lips. Several times she changed the bandages, and once or twice during the night when he moaned she pulled her chair over beside him and smoothed his forehead, soothing him.When the dawn came it found her heavy eyed and tired.
She went to the river and procured fresh water, washed her hands and face, prepared a breakfast of bacon and soda biscuit—which she found in a tin box in a corner of the cabin, and then, as Doubler seemed to be doing nicely, she saddled her pony and took a short gallop. Returning, she entered the cabin, to find Doubler tossing restlessly.
She gave him a dose of the medicine—an extra large one—but it had little effect, quieting him only momentarily. Evidently he was growing worse. The thought aroused apprehension in her mind, but she fought it down and stayed resolutely at the sick man’s side.
Through the slow-dragging hours of the morning she sat beside him, giving him the best care possible under the circumstances, but in spite of her efforts the fever steadily rose, and at noon he sat suddenly up in the bunk and gazed at her with blazing, vacuous eyes.
“You’re a liar!” he shouted. “Dakota’s square!”
Sheila stifled a scream of fear and shrank from him. But recovering, she went to him, seizing his shoulders and forcing him back into the bunk. He did not resist, not seeming to pay any attention to her at all, but he mumbled, inexpressively:
“It ain’t so, I tell you. He’s just left me, an’ any man which could talk like he talked to me ain’t—I reckon not,” he said, shaking his head with a vigorous, negative motion; “you’re a heap mistaken—you ain’t got him right at all.”
He was quiet for a time after this, but toward the middle of the afternoon Sheila saw that his gaze was following her as she paced softly back and forth in the cabin.
“So you’re stuck on that Langford girl, are you?” he demanded, laughing. “Well, it won’t do you any good, Dakota, she’s—well, she’s some sore at you for something. She won’t listen to anything which is said about you.” The laughter died out of his eyes; they became cold with menace. “I ain’t listenin’ to any more of that sorta talk, I tell you! I’ve got my eyes open. Why!” he said in surprise, starting up, “he’s gone!”He suddenly shuddered and cursed. “In the back,” he said. “You—you——” And profanity gushed from his lips. Then he collapsed, closing his eyes, and lay silent and motionless.
Out of the jumble of disconnected sentences Sheila was able to gather two things of importance—perhaps three.
The first was that some one had told him of Dakota’s complicity in the plan to murder him and that he refused to believe his friend capable of such depravity. The second was that he knew who had shot him; he also knew the man who had informed him of Dakota’s duplicity—though this knowledge would amount to very little unless he recovered enough to be able to supply the missing threads.
Sheila despaired of him supplying anything, for it seemed that he was steadily growing worse, and when the dusk came she began to feel a dread of remaining with him in the cabin during the night. If only the doctor would return! If Dakota would come—Duncan, her father, anybody! But nobody came, and the silence around thecabin grew so oppressive that she felt she must scream. When darkness succeeded dusk she lighted the kerosene lamp, placed a bar over the window, secured the door fastenings, and seated herself at the table, determined to take a short nap.
It seemed that she had scarcely dropped off to sleep—though in reality she had been unconscious for more than two hours—when she awoke suddenly, to see Doubler sitting erect in the bunk, watching her with a wan, sympathetic smile. There was the light of reason in his eyes and her heart gave an ecstatic leap.
“Could you give me a drink of water, ma’am?” he said, in the voice that she knew well.
She sprang to the pail, to find that it contained very little. She had lifted it, and was about to unfasten the door, intending to go to the river to procure fresh water, when Doubler’s voice arrested her.
“There’s some water there—I can hear it splashin’: It’ll do well enough just now. I don’t want much. You can get some fresh after a while. I want to talk to you.”
She placed the pail down and went over to him, standing beside him.
“What is it?” she asked.
“How long have you been here? I knowed you was here all the time—I kept seein’ you, but somehow things was a little mixed. But I know that you’ve been here quite a while. How long?”
“This is the second night.”
“You found me layin’ there—in the door. I dropped there, not bein’ able to go any further. I felt you touchin’ me—draggin’ me. There was someone else here, too. Who was it?”
“The doctor and Dakota.”
“Where’s Dakota now?”
“At his cabin, I suppose. He didn’t stay here long—he left right after he brought the doctor. I imagine you know why he didn’t stay. He was afraid that you would recognize him and accuse him.”
“Accuse him of what, ma’am?”
“Of shooting you.”
He smiled. “I reckon, ma’am, that you don’t understand. It wasn’t Dakota that shot me.”
“Who did, then?” she questioned eagerly. “Who?”
“Duncan.”
“Why—why——” she said, sitting suddenly erect, a mysterious elation filling her, her eyes wide with surprise and delight, and a fear that Doubler might have been mistaken—“Why, I saw Dakota on the river trail just after you were shot.”
“He’d just left me. He hadn’t been gone more than ten minutes or so when Duncan rode up—comin’ out of the timber just down by the crick. Likely he’d been hidin’ there. I was cleanin’ my rifle; we had words, and when I set my rifle down just outside the shack, he grabbed it an’ shot me. After that I don’t seem to remember a heap, except that someone was touchin’ me—which must have been you.”
“Oh!” she said. “I amsoglad!”
She was thinking now of Dakota’s parting words to her the night before on the crest of the slope above the river,—of his words, of the truth of his statement denying his guilt, and she was glad that she had not spoken some of the spiteful things whichhad been in her mind. How she had misjudged him!
“I reckon it’s something to be glad for,” smiled Doubler, misunderstanding her elation, “but I reckon I owe it to you—I’d have pulled my freight sure, if you hadn’t come when you did. An’ I told you not to be comin’ here any more.” He laughed. “Ain’t it odd how things turn out—sometimes. I’d have died sure,” he repeated.
“You are going to live a long while,” she said. And then, to his surprise, she bent over and kissed his forehead, leaving his side instantly, her cheeks aflame, her eyes alight with a mysterious fire. To conceal her emotion from Doubler she seized the water pail.
“I will get some fresh water,” she said, with a quick, smiling glance at him. “You’ll want a fresh drink, and your bandages must be changed.”
She opened the door and stepped down into the darkness.
There was a moon, and the trail to the river was light enough for her to see plainly, but when she reached the timber clump in which Doubler had said Duncan had beenhiding, she shuddered and made a detour to avoid passing close to it. This took her some distance out of her way, and she reached the river and walked along its bank for a little distance, searching for a deep accessible spot into which she could dip the pail.
The shallow crossing over which she had ridden many times was not far away, and when she stooped to fill the pail she heard a sudden clatter and splashing, and looked up to see a horseman riding into the water from the opposite side of the river.
He saw her at the instant she discovered him, and once over the ford he turned his horse and rode directly toward her.
After gaining the bank he halted his pony and looked intently at her.
“You’re Langford’s daughter, I reckon,” he said.
“Yes,” she returned, seeing that he was a stranger; “I am.”
“I’m Ben Allen,” he said shortly; “the sheriff of this county. What are you doing here?”
“I am taking care of Ben Doubler,” she said; “he has been——”
“Then he ain’t dead, of course,” said Allen, interrupting her. It seemed to Sheila that there was relief and satisfaction in his voice, and she peered closer at him, but his face was hidden in the shadow of his hat brim.
“He is very much better now,” she told him, scarcely able to conceal her delight. “But he has been very bad.”
“Able to talk?”
“Yes. He has just been talking to me.” She took a step toward him, speaking earnestly and rapidly. “I suppose you are looking for Dakota,” she said, remembering what her father had told her about sending Duncan to Lazette for the sheriff. “If you are looking for him, I want to tell you that he didn’t shoot Doubler. It was Duncan. Doubler told me so not over five minutes ago. He said——”
But Allen had spurred his pony forward, and before she could finish he was out of hearing distance, riding swiftly toward the cabin.
Sheila lingered at the water’s edge, for now suddenly she saw much beauty in thesurrounding country, and she was no longer lonesome. She stood on the bank of the river, gazing long at the shadowy rims of the distant mountains, at their peaks, rising majestically in the luminous mist of the night; at the plains, stretching away and fading into the mysterious shadows of the distance; watching the waters of the river, shimmering like quicksilver—a band of glowing ribbon winding in and out and around the moon-touched buttes of the canyons.
“Oh!” she said irrelevantly, “he isn’t so bad, after all!”
Stooping over again to fill the pail, she heard a sharp clatter of hoofs behind her. A horseman was racing toward the river—toward her—bending low over his pony’s mane, riding desperately. She placed the pail down and watched him. Apparently he did not see her, for, swerving suddenly, he made for the crossing without slackening speed. He had almost reached the water’s edge when there came a spurt of flame from the door of Doubler’s cabin, followed by the sharp whip like crack of a rifle!
In the doorway of the cabin, clearly outlined against the flickering light of the interior, was a man. And as Sheila watched another streak of fire burst from the door, and she heard the shrill sighing of the bullet, heard the horseman curse. But he did not stop in his flight, and in an instant he had crossed the river. She saw him for an instant as he was outlined against the clear sky in the moonlight that bathed the crest of the slope, and then he was gone.
Dropping the pail, Sheila ran toward the cabin, fearing that Doubler had suddenly become delirious and had attacked Allen. But it seemed to her that it had not been Allen who had raced away from the cabin, and she had not gone more than half way toward it when she saw another horseman coming. She halted to wait for him, and when he halted and drew up beside her she saw that it was the sheriff.
“Who was it?” she demanded, breathlessly.
“Duncan!” Allen cursed picturesquely and profanely. “When I got to the shack he was inside, standing over Doubler, stranglinghim. The damned skunk! You was right,” he added; “it was him who shot Doubler!” He continued rapidly, grimly, taking a piece of paper from a pocket and writing something on it.
“My men have got Dakota corraled in his cabin. If he tries to get away they will do for him. I don’t want that to happen; there’s too few square men in the country as it is. Take this”—he held out the paper to her—“and get down to Dakota’s cabin with it. Give it to Bud—one of my men—and tell him to scatter the others and try to head off Duncan if he comes that way. I’m after him!”
The paper fluttered toward her, she snatched at it, missed it, and stooped to take it from the ground. When she stood erect she saw Allen and his pony silhouetted for an instant on the crest of the ridge on the other side of the river. Then he vanished.
CHAPTER XVIIIFOR DAKOTA
Though in a state of anxiety and excitement over the incident of Duncan’s attack on Doubler and the subsequent shooting, together with a realization of Dakota’s danger, Sheila did not lose her composure. She ran to the river and secured the water, aware that it might be needed now more than ever. Then, hurrying as best she could with the weight of the pail, she returned to the cabin.
She was relieved to find that Doubler had received no injury, and she paused long enough to allow him to tell her that Duncan had entered the cabin shortly after she had left it. He had attacked Doubler, but had been interrupted by Allen, who had suddenly ridden up. Duncan had heard him coming, and had concealed himself behindthe door, and when Allen had entered Duncan had struck him on the head with the butt of his six-shooter, knocking him down. The blow had been a glancing one, however, and Allen had recovered quickly, seizing Doubler’s rifle and trying to bring down the would be murderer as he fled.
While attending to Doubler’s bandages, Sheila repeated the conversation she had had with Allen concerning the situation in which he had left Dakota, and instantly the nester’s anxiety for his friend took precedence over any thoughts for his own immediate welfare.
“There’ll be trouble sure, now that Allen’s left there,” he said. “Dakota won’t be a heap easy with them deputies.”
He told Sheila to let the bandaging go until later, but she refused.
“Dakota’ll be needin’ you a heap more than I need you,” he insisted, refusing to allow her to touch the bandages. “There’ll be the devil to pay if any of them deputies try to rush Dakota’s shack. I want you to go down there right now. If you wait, it’ll mebbe be too late.”
Sheila hesitated for a moment, and then, yielding to the entreaty in Doubler’s eyes, she was at his side, pressing his hand.
“Ride ma’am!” he told her, when she was ready to go, his cheeks flushed with excitement, his eyes bright.
Her pony snorted with surprise when she brought her riding whip down against its flanks when turning from the corral gates, but it needed no second urging, and its pace when it splashed through the shallow water of the crossing was fully as great as that of Duncan’s pony, which had previously passed through it.
Once on the hard sand of the river trail it settled into a long, swinging gallop, under which the miles flew by rapidly and steadily. Sheila drew the animal up on the rises, breathing it sometimes, but on the levels she urged it with whip and spur, and in something more than an hour after leaving Doubler’s cabin, she flashed by the quicksand crossing, which she estimated as being not more than twelve miles from her journey’s end.
She was tired after her long vigil at Doubler’sside, but the weariness was entirely physical, for her brain was working rapidly, filling her thoughts with picturesque conjectures, drawing pictures in which she saw Dakota being shot down by Allen’s deputies. And he was innocent!
She did not blame herself for Dakota’s dilemma, though she felt a keen regret over her treatment of him, over her unjust suspicions. He had really been in earnest when he had told her the night before on the river trail that he was not guilty—that everybody had misjudged him. Vivid in her recollection was the curious expression on his face when he had said to her just before leaving her that night:
“Won’t you believe me?”
And that other time, when he had taken her by the shoulders and looked steadily into her eyes—she remembered that, too; she could almost feel his fingers, and the words he had uttered then were fresh in her memory: “I’ve treated you mean, Sheila, about as mean as a man could treat a woman. I am sorry. I want you to believe that. And maybe some day—when thisbusiness is over—you’ll understand, and forgive me.”
There had been mystery in his actions ever since she had seen him the first time, and though she could not yet understand it, she had discovered that there were forces at work in his affairs which seemed to indicate that he had not told her that for the purpose of attempting to justify his previous actions.
Evidently, whatever the mystery that surrounded him, her father and Duncan were concerned in it, and this thought spurred her on, for it gave her a keen delight to think that she was arrayed against them, even though she were on the side of the man who had wronged her. He, at least, had not been concerned in the plot to murder Doubler.
When she reached the last rise—on the crest of which she had sat on her pony on the morning following her marriage to Dakota in the cabin and from which she had seen the parson riding away—she was trembling with eagerness and dread for fear that something might happen before shecould arrive. It was three miles down the slope, and when she reached the level there was Dakota’s cabin before her.
She drew her pony to a walk, for she saw men grouped in front of the cabin door, saw Dakota there himself, standing in the open doorway, framed in the light from within. There were no evidences of the conflict which she had dreaded. She had arrived in time.
Convinced of this, she felt for the first time her physical weariness, and she leaned forward on her pony, holding to its mane for support, approaching the cabin slowly.
Her father was there, she observed, as she drew nearer; and three strangers—and Allen! And near Allen, sitting on his horse dejectedly, was Duncan!
One of Duncan’s arms swung oddly at his side, and Sheila thought instantly of his curse when he had been riding near her at the river crossing. Evidently Allen’s bullet had struck him.
Sheila’s presence at Dakota’s cabin was now unnecessary, for it was evident that an understanding had been reached with Allen,and Sheila experienced a sudden aversion to appearing among the men. Turning her pony, she was about to ride away, intending to return to Doubler’s cabin, when Allen turned and saw her. He spurred quickly to her side, seizing the pony by the bridle rein and leading it toward the cabin door.
“It’s all right, ma’am,” he said, “I got him. Holy smoke!” he exclaimed as she came within the radius of the light. “You certainly rode some, didn’t you, ma’am?”
She did not answer. She saw her father look at her, noted his start, smiled scornfully when she observed a paleness overspreading his face. She looked from him to Duncan, and the latter flushed and turned his head. Then Allen’s voice reached her, as he spoke to Dakota.
“This young woman has rode twenty miles to-night—to save your hide—you durned cuss. If you was anyways hospitable, you’d——”
Allen’s voice seemed to grow distant to Sheila, the figures of the men in the group blurred, the light danced, she reeled in the saddle, tried to check herself, failed, andtoppled limply forward over her pony’s neck. She heard an exclamation, saw Dakota spring suddenly from the doorway, felt his arms around her. She struggled in his grasp, trying to fight him off, and then she drifted into oblivion.
CHAPTER XIXSOME MEMORIES
When Sheila recovered consciousness she was in Dakota’s cabin—in the bunk in which she had lain on another night in the yesterday of her life in this country. She recognized it instantly. There was the candle on the table, there were the familiar chairs, the fireplace, the shelves upon which were Dakota’s tobacco tins and matches; there was the guitar, with its gaudy string, suspended from the wall. If it had been raining, she might have imagined that she was just awakening from a sleep in that other time. She felt a hand on her forehead, a damp cloth, and she opened her eyes to gaze fairly into Dakota’s.
“Don’t, please,” she said, shrinking from him.
It occurred to her that she had utteredthe same words to him before, and, closing her eyes for a moment, she remembered. It had been when he had tried to assist her out of the water at the quicksand crossing, and as on that occasion, his answer was the same.
“Then I won’t.”
She lay for a long time, looking straight up at the ceiling, utterly tired, wondering vaguely what had become of her father, Duncan, Allen, and the others. She would have given much to have been able to lie there for a time—a long time—and rest. But that was not to be thought of. She struggled to a sitting position, and when her eyes had become accustomed to the light she saw her father sitting in a chair near the fireplace. The door was closed—barred. Sheila glanced again at her father, and then questioningly at Dakota, who was watching her from the center of the room, his face inscrutable.
“What does this mean? Where are the others?” she demanded.
“Allen and his men have gone back to Lazette,” returned Dakota quietly. “This means”—he pointed to Langford—“thatwe’re going to have a little talk—about things.”
Sheila rose. “I don’t care to hear any talk; I am not interested.”
“You’ll be interested inmytalk,” said Dakota.
Curiously, he seemed to be invested with a new character. Just now he was more like the man he had been the night she had met him the first time—before he had forced her to marry him—than he had been since. Only, she felt as she watched him standing quietly in the middle of the room, the recklessness which had marked his manner that other time seemed to have entirely disappeared, seemed to have been replaced by something else—determination.
Beneath the drooping mustache Sheila saw the lines of his lips; they had always seemed hard to her, and now there were little curves at the corners which hinted at amusement—grim amusement. His eyes, too, were different; the mockery had departed from them. They were steady and unwavering, as before, and though they still baffled her, she was certain that she saw aslumbering devil in them—as though he possessed some mysterious knowledge and purposed to confound Sheila and her father with it, though in his own way and to suit his convenience. Yet behind it all there lurked a certain gravity—a cold deliberation that seemed to proclaim that he was in no mood to trifle and that he proposed to follow some plan and would brook no interference.
Fascinated by the change in him Sheila resumed her seat on the edge of the bunk, watching him closely. He drew a chair over near the door, tilted it back and dropped into it, thus mutely announcing that he intended keeping the prisoners until he had delivered himself of that mysterious knowledge which seemed to be in his mind.
Glancing furtively at her father, Sheila observed that he appeared to have formed some sort of a conclusion regarding Dakota’s actions also, for he sat very erect on his chair, staring at the latter, an intense interest in his eyes.
Sheila had become interested, too; she had forgotten her weariness. And yet Dakota’sfirst words disappointed her—somehow they seemed irrelevant.
“This isn’t such a big world, after all, is it?” He addressed both Sheila and her father, though he looked at neither. His tone was quietly conversational, and when he received no answer to his remark he looked up with a quiet smile.
“That has been said by a great many people, hasn’t it? I’ve heard it many times. I reckon you have, too. But it’s a fact, just the same. The worldisa small place. Take us three. You”—he said, pointing to Langford—“come out here from Albany and buy a ranch. You”—he smiled at Sheila—“came with your father as a matter of course. You”—he looked again at Langford—“might have bought a ranch in another part of the country. You didn’t need to buy this particular one. But you did. Take me. I spent five years in Dakota before I came here. I’ve been here five years.
“A man up in Dakota wanted me to stay there; said he’d do most anything for me if I would. But I didn’t like Dakota; somethingkept telling me that I ought to move around a little. I came here, I liked the place, and I’ve stayed here. I know that neither of you are very much interested in what has happened to me, but I’ve told you that much just to prove my contention about the world being a small place. It surely isn’t so very big when you consider that three persons can meet up like we’ve met—our trails leading us to the same section of the country.”
“I don’t see how that concerns us,” said Langford impatiently.
“No,” returned Dakota, and now there was a note of sarcasm in his voice, “you don’t see. Lots of folks don’t see. But there are trails that lead everywhere. Fate marks them out—blazes them. There are trails that lead us into trouble, others that lead us to pleasure—straight trails, crooked ones, trails that cross—all kinds. Folks start out on a crooked trail, trying to get away from something, but pretty soon another trail crosses the one they are on—maybe it will be a straight one that crosses theirs, with a straight man riding it.
“The man riding the crooked trail and the man riding the straight one meet at the place where the trails cross. Such trails don’t lead to any to-morrow; they are yesterday’s trails, and before the man riding the crooked trail and the man riding the straight trail can go any further there has got to be an accounting. That is what has happened here. You”—he smiled gravely as he looked at Langford—“have been riding a crooked trail. I have been hanging onto the straight one as best I could. Now we’ve got to where the trails cross.”
“Meaning that you want an explanation of my action in burning that signed agreement, I suppose?” sneered Langford, looking up.
“Still trying to ride the crooked trail?” smiled Dakota, with the first note of mockery that Sheila had heard in his voice since he had begun speaking. “I’m not worrying a bit about that agreement. Why, man, I’d have shot myself before I’d have shot Doubler. He’s my friend—the only real friend I’ve had in ten years.”
“Then when you signed the agreementyou didn’t mean to keep it?” questioned Langford incautiously, disarmed by Dakota’s earnestness.
“Ten years ago a boy named Ned Keegles went to Dakota. I am glad to see that you are familiar with the name,” he added with a smile as Langford started and stiffened in his chair, his face suddenly ashen. “You knowing Keegles will save me explaining a lot,” continued Dakota. “Well, Keegles went to Dakota—where I was. He was eighteen and wasn’t very strong, as young men go. But he got a job punching cows and I got to know him pretty well—used to bunk with him. He took a liking to me because I took an interest in him.
“He didn’t like the work, because he had been raised differently. He lived in Albany before he went West. His father, William Keegles, was in the hardware business with a man named Langford—David Dowd Langford. You see, I couldn’t be mistaken in the name of the man; it’s such an uncommon one.”
He smiled significantly at Sheila, and an odd expression came into her face, for sheremembered that on the night of her coming he had made the same remark.
“One day Ned Keegles got sick and took me into his confidence. He wasn’t in the West for his health, he said. He was a fugitive from the law, accused of murdering his father. It wasn’t a nice story to hear, but he told it, thinking he was going to die.”
Dakota smiled enigmatically at Sheila and coldly at the now shrinking man seated in the chair beside the fireplace.
“One day Keegles went into his father’s office. His father’s partner, David Dowd Langford, was there, talking to his father. They’d had hard words. Keegle’s father had discovered that Langford had appropriated a large sum of the firm’s money. By forging his partner’s signature he had escaped detection until one day when the elder Keegles had accidentally discovered the fraud—which was the day on which Ned Keegles visited his father. It isn’t necessary to go into detail, but it was perfectly plain that Langford was guilty.
“There were hard words, as I have said. The elder Keegles threatened to prosecute.Langford seized a sample knife that had been lying on the elder Keegle’s desk, and stabbed him, killing him instantly. Then, while Ned Keegles stood by, stunned by the suddenness of the attack, Langford coolly walked to a telephone and notified the police of the murder. Hanging up the receiver, he raised the hue and cry, and a dozen clerks burst into the office, to find Ned Keegles bending over his father, trying to withdraw the knife.
“Langford accused Ned Keegles of the murder. He protested, of course, but seeing that the evidence was against him, he fought his way out of the office and escaped. He went to Dakota—where I met him.” He hesitated and looked steadily at Langford. “Do you see how the trails have crossed? The crooked one and the straight one?”
Langford was leaning forward in his chair, a scared, wild expression in his eyes, his teeth and hands clenched in an effort to control his emotions.
“It’s a lie!” he shouted. “I didn’t kill him! Ned Keegles——”
“Wait!” Dakota rose from his chair and walked to a shelf, from which he took a box, returning to Langford’s side and opening it. He drew out a knife, shoving it before Langford’s eyes and pointing out some rust spots on the blade.
“This knife was given to me by Ned Keegles,” he said slowly. “These rust spots on the blade are from his father’s blood. Look at them!” he said sharply, for Langford had turned his head.
At the command he swung around, his gaze resting on the knife. “That’s a pretty story,” he sneered.
Dakota’s laugh when he returned the knife to the box chilled Sheila as that same laugh had chilled her when she had heard it during her first night in the country—in this same cabin, with Dakota sitting at the table—a bitter, mocking laugh that had in it a savagery controlled by an iron will. He turned abruptly and walked to his chair, seating himself.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s a pretty story. But it hasn’t all been told. With a besmirched name and the thoughts which were with himall the time, life wasn’t exactly a joyful one for Ned Keegles. He was young, you see, and it all preyed on his mind. But after a while it hardened him. He’d hit town with the rest of the boys, and he’d drink whiskey until he’d forget. But he couldn’t forget long. He kept seeing his father and Langford; nights he’d start from his blankets, living over and over again the incident of the murder. He got so he couldn’t stay in Dakota. He came down here and tried to forget. It was just the same—there was no forgetfulness.
“One night when he was on the trail near here, he met a woman. It was raining and the woman had lost the trail. He took the woman in. She interested him, and he questioned her. He discovered that she was the daughter of the man who had murdered his father—the daughter of David Dowd Langford!”
Langford cringed and looked at Sheila, who was looking straight at Dakota, her eyes alight with knowledge.
“Ned Keegles kept his silence, as he had kept it for ten years,” resumed Dakota.“But the coming of the woman brought back the bitter memories, and while the woman slept in his cabin he turned to the whiskey bottle for comfort. As he drank his troubles danced before him—magnified. He thought it would be a fine revenge if he should force the woman to marry him, for he figured that it would be a blow at the father’s pride. If it hadn’t been for a cowardly parson and the whiskey the marriage would never have occurred—Ned Keegles would not have thought of it. But he didn’t hurt the woman; she left him pure as she came—mentally and physically.”
Langford slowly rose from his chair, his lips twitching, his face working strangely, his eyes wide and glaring.
“You say she married him—Ned Keegles?” he said, his voice high keyed and shrill. He turned to Sheila after catching Dakota’s nod. “Is this true?” he demanded sharply. “Did you marry him as this man says you did?”
“Yes; I married him,” returned Sheila dully, and Langford sank limply into his chair.
Dakota smiled with flashing eyes and continued:
“Keegles married the woman,” he said coldly, “because he thought she was Langford’s real daughter.” He looked at Sheila with a glance of compassion. “Later, when Keegles discovered that the woman was only Langford’s stepdaughter, he was mighty sorry. Not for Langford, however, because he could not consider Langford’s feelings. And in spite of what he had done he was still determined to secure revenge.
“One day Langford came to Keegles with a proposal. He had seen Keegles kill one man, and he wanted to hire him to kill another—a man named Doubler. Keegles agreed, for the purpose of getting Langford into——”
Dakota hesitated, for Langford had risen to his feet and stood looking at him, his eyes bulging, his face livid.
“You!” he said, in a choking, wailing voice; “you—you, are Ned Keegles! You—you—— Why——” he hesitated and passed a hand uncertainly over his forehead, looking from Sheila to Dakota with glazedeyes. “You—you are a liar!” he suddenly screamed, his voice raised to a maniacal pitch. “It isn’t so! You—both of you—have conspired against me!”
“Wait!” Dakota got to his feet, walked to a shelf, and took down a small glass, a pair of shears, a shaving cup, and a razor. While Langford watched, staring at him with fearful, wondering eyes, Dakota deftly snipped off the mustache with the shears, lathered his lip, and shaved it clean. Then he turned and confronted Langford.
The latter looked at him with one, long, intense gaze, and then with a dry sob which caught in his throat and seemed to choke him, he covered his face with his hands, shuddered convulsively, and without a sound pitched forward, face down, at Dakota’s feet.
CHAPTER XXINTO THE UNKNOWN
After a time Sheila rose from the bunk on which she had been sitting and stood in the center of the floor, looking down at her father. Dakota had not moved. He stood also, watching Langford, his face pale and grim, and he did not speak until Sheila had addressed him twice.
“What are you going to do now?” she said dully. “It is for you to say, you know. You hold his life in your hands.”
“Do?” He smiled bitterly at her. “What would you do? I have waited ten years for this day. It must go on to the end.”
“The end?”
“Yes; the end,” he said gravely. “He”—Dakota pointed to the prostrate figure—“must sign a written confession.”
“And then?”
“He will return to answer for his crime.”
Sheila shuddered and turned from him with bowed head.
“Oh!” she said at last; “it will be too horrible! My friends in the East—they will——”
“Your friends,” he said with some bitterness. “Could your friends say more than my friends said when they thought that I had murdered my own father in cold blood and then run away?”
“But I am innocent,” she pleaded.
“I was innocent,” he returned, with a grave smile.
“Yes, but I could not help you, you know, for I wasn’t there when you were accused. But you are here, and you can help me. Don’t you see,” she said, coming close to him, “don’t you see that the disgrace will not fall on him, but on me. I will make him sign the confession,” she offered, “you can hold it over him. He will make restitution of your property. But do not force him to go back East. Let him go somewhere—anywhere—but let him live.For, after all, he is my father—the only one I ever knew.”
“But my vengeance,” he said, the bitterness of his smile softening as he looked down at her.
“Your vengeance?” She came closer to him, looking up into his face. “Are we to judge—to condemn? Will not the power which led us three together—the power which you are pleased to call ‘Fate’; the power that blazed the trail which you have followed from the yesterday of your life;—will not this power judge him—punish him? Please,” she pleaded, “please, for my sake, for—for”—her voice broke and she came forward and placed her hands on his shoulders—“for your wife’s sake.”
He looked down at her for an instant, the hard lines of his face breaking into gentle, sympathetic curves. Then his arms went around her, and she leaned against him, her head against his shoulder, while she wept softly.
An hour later, standing side by side in the open doorway of the cabin, Sheila andDakota watched in silence while Langford, having signed a confession dictated by Dakota, mounted his pony and rode slowly up the river trail toward Lazette.
He slowly passed the timber clump near the cabin, and with bowed head traveled up the long slope which led to the rise upon which, in another time, Sheila had caught her last glimpse of the parson. It was in the cold, bleak moment of the morning when darkness has not yet gone and the dawn not come, and Langford looked strangely desolate out there on the trail alone—alone with thoughts more desolate than his surroundings.
Sheila shivered and snuggled closer to Dakota. He looked down at her with a sympathetic smile.
“It is so lonesome,” she said.
“Where?” he asked.
“Out there—where he is going.”
Dakota did not answer. For a long time they watched the huddled form of the rider. They saw him approach the crest of the rise—reach it. Then from the mountains in the eastern distance came a shaft of light, strikingthe summit of the rise where the rider bestrode his pony—throwing both into bold relief. For a moment the rider halted the pony, turned, glanced back an instant, and was gone.
THE END
THE END
Popular Copyright BooksAT MODERATE PRICESAsk your dealer for a complete list ofA. L. Burt Company’s Popular Copyright Fiction.
Popular Copyright Books
AT MODERATE PRICES
Ask your dealer for a complete list of
A. L. Burt Company’s Popular Copyright Fiction.