CHAPTER XXXILightning Becomes a Friend
“LIGHTNING thinks we’ve been followed, Jim.”
Jim Pryse surveyed the lean figure that suggested nothing so much as a bare frame strung with whipcord. He knew Lightning well enough from his sister’s account of him, and from the talk of Molly on their memorable ride together. But this was the first time he had set eyes upon him. And from his head to his heels the old cattleman became an object of the keenest interest.
Lightning gave no sign. And somehow the whole poise of the man suggested to Jim something of his boyhood’s ideas of the calm of the Red Indian. There was even more than that in the likeness—the man’s face and high cheekbones, the aquilinity of his nose, and the thinness of his capacious mouth. Only were his eyes, and the foolish tatter of his chin-whisker, anachronisms.
They were standing on the verandah, and Lightning was studying the white-haired man with no less an interest. The two men were taking each other’s measure.
“We were.”
Lightning corrected the doubt in Blanche’s statement with cold assurance. Then he went on, quite undeflected from his purpose.
“I come fer Molly,” he said. “I got her pony to take her back.”
There was a negative movement of Jim’s head. He turned to Blanche.
“You’d best get right into the house, Sis,” he said. “Doc Lennox is with her now. Poor little kid. She woke right up as we rode up to this verandah, and I guessI was never so crazy at the sight of a pair of wide-open eyes in my life. Right up to then I was scared she was dead, for all I couldn’t believe it. But she wasn’t. No. And she’s going to get right. But you get right in and hand Doc the help he needs. There’s something else worrying, and—I need to make a big talk here with Lightning.”
Blanche was glad enough to hurry away to Molly. And Jim waited until she had passed in through the open French window. Then he smiled as he indicated a chair to the man he had determined to make his friend.
“Will you sit, Lightning?” he said. “You and I are no use to her in there. Doc Lennox is a real, smart doctor man. And my sister’s crazy for that little girl of yours. You and I can do better talking.”
There was a moment of hesitation, while Lightning seemed in the throes of making up his mind. Then, quite suddenly, his coldness seemed to melt, and he nodded.
“I don’t get things, an’ I want to know,” he said, as he sat himself in the lounging chair.
“And I want to tell you,” Jim replied simply.
Jim took another chair, which he drew up and set facing the cattleman. He was sitting with his back to the valley, which the verandah overlooked. Lightning had a full view of everything—the ranch, with its many buildings, and the range of the whole valley, with its surroundings of forest and mountain. Jim offered a cigar, but Lightning shook his head.
“Guess I’ll chew,” he said, and the other kicked a cuspidore towards him.
Lightning fumbled a piece of chewing plug from his hip pocket. He bit deeply into it, and Jim watched him. He knew he had a difficult talk before him, and meant to make no mistake.
“It’s queer, Lightning, how we can be rubbing shoulders with folk and not know about it,” he began. “That’show it is between you and me and Molly. I’ve been in this valley a longish spell. I’ve been around outside quite a lot. But it wasn’t till more than three months back I knew of Marton’s farm, and of you and Molly. And yet ever since I’ve been around here I’ve had in mind a great big hope that some day I’d locate a boy called George Marton, who had a daughter, and pay them both good for the help they once gave me. It was the sort of help a man can never forget. It was something that could never be paid for right. George Marton saved my life. He saved me when few would have wanted to save me. It wasn’t only my life he saved. It was something more than that. Sure enough, if it hadn’t been for him my body would have been poor sort of feed for timber wolves. But he saved me when he hadn’t arightto save me. And it was Molly’s hands that provided the food that kept my body going.”
Lightning stirred in a chair that left him feeling a queer sense of mental discomfort. He tried to lounge back in it, but sat up again at once. He ignored the cuspidore, and spat beyond the verandah.
“I ain’t pryin’ secrets,” he said, in his harsh way. “I’m jest lookin’ to get Molly back to home. This talk ain’t——”
Jim nodded.
“It’s all to do with her being here,” he said quickly. “We—Sis and I—knew where she came from when we found her down at the water’s edge on Three-Way Creek. There wasn’t a thing to stop us riding back with her the moment we located her. But we didn’t do that, because——” He spread out his hands. “I meant to bring her right along up here, and do my best to help her some way. You see, Lightning, it was the chance I’d been yearning for. She was sick. She was badly hurt. Then there was that cur McFardell, who’d set her crazy for him, and—quit her cold.”
The old man’s jaws worked violently at the mention of McFardell’s name. His eyes snapped. Jim interpreted the signs he beheld unerringly. He inclined his white head.
“Sure, we’ll come back to him in awhile, Lightning,” he said. “Now I just want you to listen. I’m going to hand you a story. I’m going to put myself right into your hands. But it doesn’t worry me a thing. You’ve just one idea in life, and so have I. It’s Molly. We’re both looking to do the same thing from different ends. Well, we’ve got to get on common ground. To do that I want you to know me, and all about me. When you know that I’ll be good and satisfied, if you feel that way and Molly’s yearning to go, for you to take her right back to her farm. Will you hear the story first, boy?”
In a moment the hardness passed out of Lightning’s eyes, giving place to a smile like a sunbeam breaking through the grey cloud of winter. He gripped the arms of his chair.
“A friend to Molly, gal, is sure a friend to me, mister,” he said. “Mebbe that story’s your own, and I’ll sure take it as told. That pore gal’s eyes is full of sadness, an’ her innercent heart’s clear froze over. I’m grievin’ fer her, an’ that’s all. An’ if you’re out to pass her help I can’t never hope to, why, I’m all in it with you.”
But Jim shook his head.
“That’s not my way,” he said. “Sit right back and let me talk.”
Jim told his story with care for the detail of it. He began it at the point where he had once saved his brother from the consequences of shooting his wife’s lover. He told of his frustration of the Police; of his ultimate trial and sentence. Then he passed on to his journey down to the Calford penitentiary, with Corporal Andrew McFardell as his escort. He smiled over the incident of his escape in the snowstorm. Then came to the story of hisbattle for life, and his arrival at Marton’s farm. He told of his appeal to the farmer, and its amazing result. And it was at this point that the old cattleman nodded and interrupted him.
“I get it now,” he cried. “That feller set you in the workshop. You slep a night ther’. An’ you beat it at daylight. He warned me to keep clear o’ that shack that night, and didn’t hand the story of it. Then he asked Molly fer food come morning, and that day we was a saddle-hoss short. It was you that was ther’ that night. An’ it was you he passed on next morning. Gee! He was a swell feller.”
“He was more than that,” Jim replied, and drew a deep breath.
Then he continued rapidly. He told of his wanderings in the hills till he found Dan Quinlan’s place. And the story of Dan Quinlan, and of his ultimate shelter in the Valley of Hope, held the cattleman’s deepest interest. Dan Quinlan! The man he had despised! The man he had believed to be a cattle thief, and anything else that was sufficiently unworthy! Then he came to the story of the valley as it was at present.
“You see, Lightning,” he went on, “Dan’s got his share in this enterprise. I’ve given him a share, and a good one. He’s got, or is getting, a swell home, and all he needs for himself and the bunch that he’s father, mother, and brother to. It’s something of a return to him, but nothing like enough for what he did for me. I built this place up for one big notion. I’m a rich man, with more dollars than I need, but I tripped up badly. There’s not a moment of my foolish life but I’m liable to go down to do five years in penitentiary. Well, I figure there’s many folk fixed that way—folk who’re not a deal more to blame than me. This is a shelter for such folk. They can come here, and work, and hide, just as long as they fancy. But they can only come on our terms, andlive by our rules. And we aren’t a harbour for real criminals. They need to be folk who’ve tripped up. That’s all. There it is, boy. It’s maybe a crazy notion. But it’s a sort of thanksgiving, and I got it right in my bones. And now my chance has come to pay something of the debt I owe Molly and her father. And you’ve come right along here to tell me you’re going to let me pay it and help me. Isn’t that so? Yes. I guess it is.”
Lightning’s answer was there in the thrust of a hand that reached out towards the man opposite him. Jim gripped it, and wrung it, and as their hands fell apart the last of his smile vanished.
“We’ll get right back now to McFardell,” he said, and his face hardened.
“You ain’t through with him,” Lightning interjected.
“No. I don’t want to be either.”
Lightning turned his gaze upon the valley below him, where the passing of the evening sun had softened the far outline of the forest-belts. The life of the place was settling for the night, and the lowing of cattle came up to him, and reminded him of long past days.
“We were bein’ trailed on our way here,” he said significantly.
Jim shrugged.
“McFardell’s been trailing us weeks,” he said quietly. “He and I met down near Molly’s farm, and he’s been trailing me ever since. It’s not that worries me. If it did, I’d only need to have the folk beat up this territory till we’d run him to earth. And he wouldn’t get a dog’s chance to do the thing he reckons to do. It’s not that. It’s Molly I’m thinking of.”
Lightning stirred uneasily in his chair. He watched the setting of Jim’s jaws. He observed the abrupt change in the eyes he had seen so full of kindliness. So he waited.
But Jim seemed in no hurry to continue. He was measuring the queer creature that bore so deep a hallmarkof the uncouth manhood that had served him in his sixty years of hard life. He was wondering. With an almost crazy disregard for consequences he had put into Lightning’s hands power to undo for him all the labours of the past years. The reason he had done it was the better to be able to help Molly, whom he knew now needed all the help he could give her. He needed this man’s complete trust and he believed he could inspire it. Now, dared he tell him the rest? Dared he?
Yes. Molly must remain where she was. It was absolutely imperative. Therefore there was only one course open to him—the truth, the simple truth.
“No,” he said at last, “I don’t want to be through with that feller yet. The longer he hangs around spying these hills the better.”
“Why?”
The word was jerked at him.
“We’ll know where he is,” Jim went on. “We’ll be the better able to get our hands on him.”
“Why?”
Again came that swift interrogation.
“Why?” Jim glanced out over the evening scene below them. Then his eyes came back with a steady look into the cattleman’s lean face. “Because, if the thing Doc Lennox guesses is right, we’ll need him. I’d say we’ll know when my sister gets back to us.”
“What d’you mean?”
Lightning was leaning forward crouching in his chair, his hands gripping its arms as though he were about to spring. His eyes were shining with the cold fury of a tiger. His jaws were still, the worn remains of his teeth gritting.
Jim realised the storm lying behind his question.
“Why, there’s swine of men in the world, Lightning,” he said, “who’re always ready to take advantage of awoman’s weakness when she falls for the love that’s just bursting her heart. And—and—he’s one of ’em.”
“God! I’ll kill him!”
Lightning’s words came with a shout. He had risen to his feet, and stood for a moment unmoving. Then he came to the edge of the verandah, and his eyes were on the hills, as though they were already searching for his victim. Jim watched him. And as he watched the man turned slowly.
“If—if he’s—”
“The Doc reckons someone has.”
Jim’s coldness matched the other’s. Lightning raised one clenched fist. And the movement was an expression of irrevocable purpose.
“It’s him!” he cried. “I know it! Sure I know it! I knew it right after that party night. An’ I’ve seen it in her pore face ever sence. Man, that skunk’s goin’ to get it!”