CHAPTER IIIA Real Samaritan
IT was the dim-lit interior of a lean-to built against the big barn. It was the farmer’s workshop, littered with the tools that served his simple needs. Marton was propped against a sturdy, home-made table that also served the purposes of a bench. He was gazing down in the yellow lamplight at the famished creature squatting beside the small wood-stove on an up-turned box.
It was a painful spectacle. He had realised from his brief catechism that the man was educated. Yet he sat there devouring a great platter of hot stew at a speed and in a fashion such as he had never before witnessed in any human creature. The wolfishness of it was terrible. The man was literally starving.
Marton was a man of swift decision. And his decision had long since been taken. The stranger had spoken truth when he said that another night in the open without food would be his last. He had committed a crime against the law, and had been sentenced for it. And now he had made a getaway. Well, that crime by no means found the farmer on the side of the law. On the contrary, it found him on the side of this poor, starving wreck. And he meant to help him all he knew. That is, if subsequent talk failed to inspire doubt.
So he had brought him to this little workshop, where the stove was still alight, and had released him from the lacerating shackles. He had sought out Lightning and warned him not to intrude. Then he had forthwith passed on to the house, and told Molly just sufficient to account for hisdemand for the necessary food with which to restore the convict to some semblance of well-being. But in all this he gave no clue to the feelings which the encounter had inspired.
The convict cleared up the last of the gravy by wiping the platter out with bread. He devoured the last crumb of the bread, and took a long drink from the pannikin of steaming tea that was on the ground beside him. Then he looked up with an irresistible smile in his eyes.
“Gee! That’s swell!” he said. “The liquor doesn’t count so much, except it’s hot. Snow-water’s poor sort of stuff, but it’s drink. I’ll never forget you gave me that feed, whoever you are. I hadn’t eaten for seven days and seven nights.”
Then his gaze lowered to the hideous lacerations of his wrists.
“They’ve been frozen again and again,” he said.
“And they’ll rot if you ain’t careful.”
“I s’pose they will.”
Marton bestirred himself. He drew out of a pocket the bandages and ointments he had procured from Molly.
“We best not try to heal ’em,” he said. “You’ll get worse trouble that way. This dope’ll maybe save ’em from gangrene, and the bandages’ll keep the frost out of ’em—and the dirt. It’s the best I know. Here, we’ll wash ’em first.”
For ten minutes or so the farmer worked with the skill of long experience in frost-bites. He worked in silence, and his patient offered neither comment, nor protest, nor expression of pain. Then, when the operation was completed, Marton sent him back to his seat and returned to his position on the bench. He lit his pipe.
“Well?” he said, in that meaning fashion so comprehensive in difficult circumstances.
The convict shook his head.
“What’re you going to do?”
The blue eyes were smiling, but a shadow of anxiety was looking out of them.
“If I hand you feed and loan you a broncho, can you make a clear getaway without involving me with the Police?”
“D’you mean that?”
The smile in the convict’s eyes was radiant.
Marton still gave no sign of any feeling. He smoked on heavily, his eyes coldly expressionless.
“I don’t say things without meaning ’em, I guess,” he said, in the same even tone, which never seemed to vary very much. “Ther’s just two things I can do. One’s hold you right here till the Police get around and relieve me of you. The other’s to help you beat it to a place of safety—that ain’t the penitentiary. Anyway, I’ve a hunch for the man who can kill his wife’s seducer, and for those that helped him.”
The man at the stove drew a deep breath. His condition was utterly forgotten. The thought of all that might still lie ahead of him when he again set out on the winter trail gave him not a tremor of disquiet. He was thinking only of the heavily built creature smoking his pipe against the table, and wondering. The sphinx-like face was impossible to read.
After a few silent moments he stirred.
“Won’t you hand me your name?” he asked almost diffidently.
“Sure. George Marton. Do you feel like talking?”
For some moments Jim Pryse gazed up silently into the face of the stranger who had so unexpectedly become his benefactor. His emotion was such that for awhile the talk he had been bidden to seemed impossible. It was all a miracle—a veritable miracle. A few short hours ago thelast shadow of hope had been extinguished. For days he had been wandering about interminable hills, with the thermometer more than ten below zero. His horse had long since been foundered and abandoned, while he essayed to reach some sort of shelter on foot. Oh, he had made his escape from Corporal McFardell surely enough, but the hell he had endured as the price of that escape had been something he had never thought that human body could endure.
The short days, the desperately long nights; no matches to kindle a fire, no blankets, nothing but the merciful sheepskin coat which the police had provided him with; no food of any sort, and only snow-water to drink; nothing, nothing but his will to flounder on through a world of snow and ice and a maddening sea of uninhabited hills. The terror of those last days had been almost insupportable. And only was it a sort of grim philosophy which had kept him going. A hundred times he could have lain down and let the temperature lull his weary, starving body and mind to that final peace which would have saved him from his agony. But he had kept to his weary feet, that, as he had told himself through his clenched teeth, he might go down fighting.
And now, now that was all behind him. The scars of it all were there. Those manacles. The bite of the frost upon his face and hands. Then the dreadful sense of bodily weariness. Even now he felt that the only thing he desired was sleep—just sleep. And yet——
No, there was no sleep yet. This man, this queer, unsmiling creature had offered him help, had given him food and had named no price. God! There was no price adequate that he could pay him. What was it? Where was the sign of this silent creature’s humanity? He passed a bandaged hand over his forehead and thrust his fur cap back.
Then he began to talk, and with talking the desire forsleep passed away. He talked to the man who sucked silently at his pipe and offered never a word of comment. And his talk was of that queer history which had brought him to the gates of the penitentiary. He told everything without any reservation, even to the fact of the great wealth he had accumulated during his five years up in the gold country of Alaska. He felt in his wave of gratitude that he could do no less.
“You see,” he finished up, “I’m handing you all this because I don’t fancy leaving you with a shadow of doubt. I’m a mighty rich man. So rich I don’t fancy you can guess. But I’m not the sort that figures to offer you a thing for what you reckon to do for me. But I want to say this, and I mean it all; there just isn’t a thing I wouldn’t raise hell to do for you or yours any old time, and for just as long as I live. You’ve handed me life and hope. Hope! You don’t know what it means till you’ve lost it. Hope! Think of life without it. No, you couldn’t. No one could. Death a thousand times sooner—without hope. Gee, I’m tired!”
Suddenly he thrust his elbows on his knees and dropped his chin into the palms of his bandaged hands.
The farmer bestirred himself. He knocked out his pipe, and, moving over to a small pile of wood, replenished the stove. Then he stood up, and, for the first time, the convict beheld a twinkle in the keen black eyes.
“I wanted that story, Pryse,” he said, addressing the other by name for the first time. “And you’ve told it good. I’m not left guessing. Well, boy, I’m going right up to the house now. I’ll be back along with blankets in awhile. There’s wood right here that’ll keep the frost out of your bones. You’re welcome to it all. Then you can sleep good. I’ll have my gal, Molly, pack you up a big bunch of food by morning. I’ll hand you dollars to pay your way with, in case that wealth of yours has been left behind. And you can have a broncho that’ll worry thetrail a month without let-up, and live on the dead grass it can scrape from under the snow. If you can make your getaway with that outfit you’re welcome to it. If you fancy it, there’s a shot-gun and some shells that’ll maybe help you to pick up some feed. That’s about all I can see to do. And you’ll have to make that getaway after you’ve eaten good in the morning. You won’t see a soul but me till you’ve quit here. I’ll hand you the best trail to make. That’s all. Now I’ll get along to my supper.”
He moved towards the door, but paused at the sound of the voice of the weary creature beside the stove.
“Say, I want—I want——”
Pryse broke off lamentably, and Marton beheld the piteous spectacle of a strong man with hot tears welling up into his eyes.
“Don’t say a word, boy,” the farmer said, in his curious, even tone. “Not a word. I know how it feels. Forget it.”
And a radiant light in the twinkling eyes entirely transformed the unsmiling expression to which the convict had grown accustomed.
George Marton turned again to the door and passed out. And as he went there was a picture in his mind of a pair of fine blue eyes that gazed after him through a veil of hot tears of which the man was unashamed.