CHAPTER XII
Sandy Larch had driven to Bonesta to meet Mrs. Hallard, Unricht’s telephone message having reached the Palo Verde in due season. The cowboys were all out on the range. There was no one about the corrals when Gard reached the rancho. He had not expected that anyone would be, but the place seemed curiously quiet and deserted. A bunch of future polo ponies in one enclosure were the only creatures in sight as he rode on toward the casa. These nickered to his own horse and the sound brought Wing Chang to the door of his adobe kitchen. The Chinaman’s face wrinkled in a genial smile as he recognized Gard. The latter waved a hand to him and turned toward the horse-rail; for he had caught sight of a slender figure under the cottonwoods.
She rose from the low chair in which she had been sitting, reading, and awaited his coming, there beneath the trees. She was dressed, as usual, in white—a soft, clinging serge to-day, for theDecember afternoons were growing cool—and she stood, serene and quiet, smiling welcome as he approached, but the eyes veiled by her long lashes were like stars. Gard’s heart cried out to her as he took the slim little hand she held out to him in greeting. He felt like a man reprieved. There was no aversion in her look or manner. Westcott could not yet have wholly blackened his good name before her.
“So you have come back to find everybody gone,” Helen said, offering him the long chair he remembered so well. “This seems to belong to you.”
He declined it—his errand was not one that invited the soul to ease—and took, instead, a camp-stool near the little garden table. Patsy, who had been lying beneath it, came to greet the guest, with wagging recognition.
“There’s nobody gone that I came to see,” Gard answered her remark with a directness that brought the long lashes still further over those starry eyes. Helen had seen him coming far on the desert; had recognized him with a quick, exultant leap of the heart, and had schooled herself to serenity, stilling the tumult within long ere he stood before her.
Nevertheless, she was exquisitely aware of his presence; aware too, that the secret fear of her heart, lest memory might after all have played herfalse with reference to this man, was dispelled. This was indeed the Gard of her musings. Her veiled eyes took swift woman-cognizance of him; of the strength and poise of his spare, supple frame; the clean wholesomeness of his rugged good looks.
Almost before he spoke, however, she was conscious that something vaguely portentous pulsed beneath the quiet of his manner; something which her own mood failed of grasping. He was stirred to the depths by something not wholly of the present moment. The joyous light of that first instant of meeting had faded from his face, and a shadowy trouble lurked deep within his eyes. She raised her own to meet it with the steady, level glance he remembered as peculiarly her own, seeking to answer the need of his soul.
Gard’s courage was near to failing. It came home to him with terrible force as he met her pure glance, what a monstrous thing this was that he had brought to lay before her sweet, untroubled consciousness. He would have given his life to keep sorrow from her; yet he was hungering this moment to tell her his own.
But he could not let her hear it from other lips than his, and he believed that she must inevitably hear the tale very soon. In a flash he saw, too, that if she but believed him that belief would robthe knowledge of its malignant power. The friendliness of her eyes calmed the storm in his spirit. In that instant he loved her supremely; but for the moment she was more the friend to whose soul he longed to lay bare his own, than the woman he loved, whose faith he longed to feel assurance of.
He had no knowledge of the arts of circumlocution. He drew from his pocket a folded paper and began his story where, in his thought, he had meant to end it.
“I have brought you something to keep for me,” he said, opening out the paper and handing it to her.
She looked it over wonderingly. There was a rough sketch of a mountain-range, with one peak indicated by a little cross. At one side was a little map, with directions and distances plainly set out, and half a page of minute instructions as to routes and trails. Gard’s training in the surveyor’s gang had served him in good stead here.
“What is it, precisely?” the girl asked; for complete as it seemed, there was no word to indicate just what it was intended to show.
“That’s what I want to tell you,” was his answer. “It wasn’t best to puttoomuch on the paper. I got taught that the other day; but what is set down there would guide you straight to my gold-mine if ever you wanted to go.”
She flushed, slightly.
“Why should I ever want to go?” she asked, on the defensive against his eyes. “Don’t prospectors generally consider it imprudent to show such things as this?”
“Awfully imprudent. You must put it away where it will be very safe, and keep it for me.”
“But why do you wishmeto keep it? I think you are rash.” Helen held the paper toward him, but he put her hand back, pleadingly.
“Please keep it for me,” he urged; “I—I wish it above all things. I am afraid—I expect to have to go away for a time, to a place whereIcould not keep it—for a long time, perhaps.”
“Where do you expect to go?” Helen strove to keep out of her voice the dismay that was in her heart.
“There was a boy, once,” he said, apparently not hearing her question. “He wasn’t a bad boy as boys go, but you couldn’t have called him a good boy, either. And he wasn’t smart, and he wasn’t stupid.” Gard looked out across the desert, considering.
“This boy went away from home the way boys do. He thought it was slow on the farm back in Iowa; and he drifted out to Arizona....”
He paused. He found the story even harder to tell than he had expected. Helen, watching him intently, leaned toward him ever so slightly.
“I want to hear about the boy,” she said, softly, and Gard went on, without looking at her.
“He got out to Arizona and went prospecting. He found a claim, and had it jumped. He got some dust together, and lost it. He lost a good many things; his real name, for one thing, and a lot of other things it does boys good to keep. He was getting into bad ways; getting mighty worthless; and then he got into trouble.”
Gard’s face was pale under its tan, and a white dint showed in either nostril. Helen was studying the sketch of the mountains.
“A man was killed—”
The girl gave a little gasp, and Gard turned to her quickly.
“The boy didn’t do it,” he cried. “Before Heaven! he hadn’t anything to do with it. Miss Anderson—” He bent toward her, eagerly. “Can’t you believe—no matter what comes up—won’t you—oh, you must believe that the boy hadn’t anything to do with it!”
Her eyes were on his face, searching it as though she would read his hidden thoughts.
“I can believe that,” she said at last, “if you say it is true.”
He drew a deep, tremulous breath.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Helen urged, and the way opened, he went on with the wholepitiful, sordid story, the girl listening, never flinching, though her very lips grew white when he told her what his sentence had been.
He told her of his escape, but omitted mention of his visit to Blue Gulch. He did not bring Westcott’s name in at all, or dwell upon the treachery he had met with. He told of finding Mrs. Hallard’s deed; of his search for her, and of the trouble he had found her in, and Helen’s heart warmed toward him because of what he still did not say; for she recognized Westcott’s share in this matter. He came at last to the lost packet, and the danger that he was in if anyone found it.
“I think somebody has it,” he said, “and that somebody will be getting after me. I am going to try to move first; but may be I sha’ n’t be able to.”
“Do you think it was Mr. Westcott who found those papers?” Helen asked, suddenly, and Gard started.
“Did he say anything to you?” he demanded. “What did he tell you?”
She drew herself up, proudly.
“I am not in Mr. Westcott’s confidence,” she said. “He has never spoken to me on the subject.”
“Sandy and I, wedothink that,” Gard admitted. “He, Mr. Westcott, ain’t a friend of mine,” he added, “and if he did find them I’m sure to hear from him before long.”
Helen pondered his words. She knew, in various ways, that Westcott was not friendly to this man. She began now to understand why, and she realized that the attorney could be a venomous foe.
“Any one of the others would have handed the papers over to Sandy, would they not?” she asked, and before Gard could reply turned to answer Jacinta, who was calling anxiously from the house.
“Jacinta thinks it’s getting too cool out here,” she explained, laughingly. “It troubles her if she thinks I am running risks. Shall we go into the house?”
The afternoon was waning. Gard hesitated.
“I must be getting back,” he said, following her, “but I’d like to explain that diagram to you. I want you to have it in case ... if anything should happen, I—want it to be yours. You get your father to have some work done on it, and file the claim right for you. My filing—isn’t legal.”
The words came hard, and the color mounted to his forehead. The girl’s hands were trembling. Outside the sound of men’s voices came vaguely on the afternoon stillness.
“Is it as late as that?” Helen asked, surprised. “Are the men getting back?”
Glancing out of the window they saw WingChang coming from the kitchen to the house. Near the kitchen door a man on horseback was waiting.
“Mistlee Glad!” Chang’s yellow visage wore a startled look as he appeared in the doorway of the big living room.
“Man outside,” he said, addressing Gard. “Four, fi’ men; holler; swear; say you come out. Say you gotta come out.”
The man by the kitchen door now rode forward.
“Hey, you, Misher Barker, Gard, whatever you call yourself,” he yelled thickly, “come out ’n that in th’ name o’ law o’ Arizona!”
“Oh!” Helen cried, “what does he want?”
Gard turned to her with agony in his face.
“It’s—what—we—thought—might happen, I guess,” he said.
“Has—has someone come to take you? Don’t go! Don’t let them take you! Oh, surely there is some other way!” The girl’s voice was full of horror. “Oh!” she moaned, “if only my father were here! Or Sandy!” She looked at him with eyes whose revelation almost broke the man down.
“Be you comin’, in there?” the thick voice outside sounded nearer. “They’sh plenty of ush to take you,” it went on. “Y’ ain’t goin’ to hide in there along o’ no girl, Misher murderer!—We’lltake you both ’f you don’t come out ’n be quick ’bout it!”
Gard caught the words and his face grew suddenly stern. He opened the door and stepped outside. The man on horseback swerved, at sight of him, and galloped back a little distance to where his fellows had come up. Gard could still distinguish them all in the increasing dusk.
“Come out here you damned murderer!”
It was Broome’s voice, malignant and thick.
“You’re goin’ git what ’s comin’ to you this time,” he added, tauntingly.
There was no mistaking the menace of the group; Gard realized, as he surveyed it, that this was no posse, but a band of drunken cowboys ripe for any mischief. At all hazards, he must keep them from the house.
“Ride the murderer down!” someone roared, drunkenly. But none of the men moved nearer to attack the motionless figure on the door stone.
Gard was thinking fast, and the burden of his thought was the girl shivering on the other side of the door. He must get these men away. She must not know.
Deliberately he stepped back into the room. As the door closed behind him a bullet buried itself in the upper panel with a savage “ping!” amid a chorus of savage yells. Helen was at the window,ears and eyes strained to the scene without. She came toward him, swiftly.
“You must not go out there!” she cried. “Those men are not officers; they mean harm!”
Her hand touched his arm lightly in terrified appeal. The white womanliness of her upturned face made his heart ache with tenderness. His soul thrilled to a trembling sense of the sweet possibilities of life. Then the instinct of the protector awoke.
“I must go,” he said, speaking low and fast. “I must go now; I must meet these men and—and have it out with them. It is the only way. But I’m coming back. Don’t you worry. I’m coming back clear and clean—”
“Don’t go!” she whispered in terror; for he was moving toward a long French window that opened toward the cottonwoods.
“I must!” His voice was tense with pain. Outside, he knew, death lurked for him—just when life had grown so precious! But more precious still was this slim, white girl. For her sake he must draw the evil crew away from the casa. She must not know!
“Kick in the door! The patron’s away! The coward’s hiding there with—yah!”
A fleeing figure burst from the shelter of the cottonwoods, Gard’s horse still stood at the rail,the bridle reins on the ground. The drunken horsemen turned their own mounts and blundered confusedly against one another as their quarry, with a defiant shout that left them no doubt as to his identity, threw himself upon his horse and dashed away into the gloom. In an instant they rallied from their confusion, and wheeling, were after him.
Gard made for the great rancho gate. He knew the horse he bestrode; knew that it was not in the mongrel brute’s poor power to carry him far, at any speed; but at least he had a start, and was leading his pursuers away from the Palo Verde.
“Head ’im off there!”
“Shoot him!”
“Damn it! Don’t shoot! Catch the damned sneaking dog an’ we’ll string ’im up!” It was Broome’s voice.
The words were borne to Wing Chang’s horrified ears and he raised his own high, falsetto tones, in a cry of warning to Gard. Helen, hovering beside the door, heard also, and rushed out.
“Chang! Chang!” she called, gathering her skirts as she made for the corrals; “come and help me saddle Dickens!”
She seized him by the arm and literally pushed him before her. “Quick!” she cried. “You catch the horse. I’ll get the saddle.”
She must get help. She meant to ride out and meet the men who must soon be returning from the range. She was coming from a shed, bearing saddle and bridle, when Sandy Larch and Mrs. Hallard drove through the great gate. Wing Chang rushed toward them, shrieking.
“Slandy! Slandy man!” he wailed, forgetful of the discipline the foreman was wont to enforce in the matter of his name. “You savee him! Makee dlam hully up! Savee him!”
“What’s eatin’ you?” Sandy roared, struggling with his startled horses. “What’s the matter? Talk straight you fool heathen! Save who?”
“Mistlee Glad! They killee him! Go! Go!”
Wing Chang’s hands beat the air as though he could thus impel the listener forward. Helen now ran up and Mrs. Hallard caught her hand, leaning forward eagerly.
“What is it?” she cried, and the girl explained, in quick, excited sentences.
“We must get out there quick,” she said. She turned with a glad cry: in their preoccupation they had not heard the cowboys, who came galloping in for supper, singing as they rode.
Sandy Larch now comprehended the situation sufficiently to act. He gave a few quick orders, and in a moment half a dozen of the men had faced about and were riding over the desert.
“Round up anything you see,” the foreman shouted after them.
“I’ll be with you in a jerk.”
He meant to leave Helen and Mrs. Hallard at the casa, but they refused to listen to such a plan. Helen sprang into the buckboard, and as the last horseman swept out at the gate the sweating team was in pursuit.
Four of the men rode out upon the plain. Two, of whom Manuel was one, kept to the road, and after these Sandy lashed his horses. He came up with them a mile beyond the gate. Manuel was off his bronco, studying some tracks that just here turned abruptly from the way.
“They must have turned off here,” Sandy said, springing out and straining his eyes to make out the hoof-prints in the baffling gloom. “Gard’s got a poor horse. They headed him off.”
“Oh!” Helen cried, wringing her hands. “Why didn’t he ride back to the rancho?”
“Gard wouldn’t do that, with you alone there,” answered Sandy. “But oh, Lord! Why didn’t some of us turn up sooner?”
Sago Irish, who had ridden out upon the plain, while Manuel studied the hoof-prints, now came back.
“Did you pick up the trail?” the foreman demanded, sharply.
The cowboy shook his head.
“Sand’s too hard,” he said, sorrowfully, “an’ it’s gettin’ too dark.”
Sandy’s eyes searched the dusky landscape. He was breathing hard.
“Cannot we dosomething,” Helen pleaded, in a voice of agony.
“If they catch the señor—” Manuel spoke very low, but the women’s straining ears caught the words—“they will ride off where is the little west fork. There they find—”
A word from the foreman hushed his speech. Sandy turned his horses and in an instant they were flying in the direction Manuel had indicated. For the first time Kate Hallard’s nerve was shaken.
“Oh, my God!” she muttered, “Manuel meant they’d findtrees!”
As she spoke a revolver shot rang out distantly, upon the air, and with a wild yell the two cowboys dashed off, leaving those in the buckboard to follow.
CHAPTER XIII
So this was to be the end!
Gard, securely roped, stood with his back against a cottonwood tree, looking at his captors. There was no mistaking their condition, and they left him in no doubt as to their intentions.
He had not expected this. Re-arrest; re-imprisonment: these had presented themselves to his mind as possibilities; he had not looked to win justice and reinstatement without a struggle, but this—surely no sane mind could have foreseen it as a possibility.
The quick dusk of mid-December had fallen, but one of the men was provided with a stock-lantern. This had been lighted, and threw a miserable glare upon the sodden faces of the men who had him in their power. He glanced from one to the other, finding ground for hope in none.
It was Broome who had captured him. The cowboy had secured the loan of a fellow puncher’shorse, standing at the rail before Jim Bracton’s saloon. It was a good horse, more than a match for the indifferent beast Gard rode. There had been a mad race across the desert, a realizing sense that the danger was real and imminent, and Gard was in the act of drawing his revolver when the rope that Broome flung settled over his shoulders, and pinned his arms down.
“Now you know how it feels, damn you!” Broome said, when the crowd had their captive bound and again in saddle.
“But you don’t git no blindfold,” he sneered. “You’re goin’ to see all that’s a’comin’ to you, good ’n’ plain.” Broome’s face was thrust into his, drunken, distorted, malignant.
“Now my fine Mister Barker-Gard,” the thick voice snarled, “it’s prayers fer your’n. You’ve killed your last man, you sneakin’ coyote you. You’ll swing in jest about two minutes.”
There was a growl of assent from two of the others, and Gard recognized them as the same two ruffians that were fleecing Papago Joe when he had quietly but effectively stopped their game. The fourth man was a stranger to him. It was this one who carried the lantern, and he now held it unsteadily on high, surveying the prisoner with drunken gravity.
“Tell ye what,” he announced to Broome,“Thish ’ere thing’s gotter be done right. Thish ’a free ’n glorioush country. We don’t hang no man ’thout ’n he gits a fair trial.”
“Trial be damned!” Broome roared. “Don’t you go bein’ no fool Sam Hickey. This feller ’s bin tried an’ found guilty long of a real judge ’n jury, already.”
Hickey turned upon him with inebriate severity.
“If you wa’n’t so dangnation drunk, Broome,” he said, “I’d swat ye fer that remark. But y’ ain’t responsible now; that’s whatch y’ ain’t; Thish ’ere thing’s gotter be done decent, I tell you. We ain’t no murderers. We’sh populash o’ Arizona, seein’ justice done; an’ damn you, we’re goin’ to see it.”
“You bet we be!” interjected one of the others. “An’ quick! This feller’shadhis trial.”
“Not s’ fast, Hank.” Hickey swung the lantern perilously.
“There’sh a judge, thash me; an’ there’sh jury, thash gotter be you fellers. There—now. Thash all fixed.”
Oh, God! Was it really to end in this tragic farce? Gard pondered it with a sick heart. If it was, why could he not have died in the storm, with Arnold, two years ago?
He realized the futility of any appeal to the creatures before him. They were drunk; irresponsibleas dogs at play, and they held his life in their hands. His life: with all its new hope, and love, and aspiration! Moreover, three of them hated him. He owed even these few more moments of breath to the maudlin vagary of the one who did not know him.
“Prish’ner at the bar,” Hickey was mumbling, “You are accusht o’ bein’ convicted o’ the murder o’—Who ’n hell was it he murdered, Broome?”
He turned to Broome with an effort at dignity that nearly flung the lantern in the latter’s face. Broome dodged it, with an oath.
“Dan Lundy, you slitherin’ fool,” he snarled, “Git ahead with your lingo, or we’ll swing you when he’s done fer.”
Hickey ignored the threat.
“Well, prish’ner at the bar, guilty er not guilty?”
“Not guilty! I never touched Lundy,” Gard said, earnestly. “I found him dead in his shack, and they came in just as I was trying to lift him up.”
“Corsh: corsh: very proper to pleade ‘not guilty’. Reg’ler thing—we’d a’ hung ye anyway if yer hadn’t—fer’n example! As ’tish, we’ve gi’n you fair tri’l. Be there anything you wanter say, before thish court perceeds t’ ex’cute sentensh?”
Gard’s soul was in revolt.
“Hickey,” he said, speaking very slowly and distinctly, “This is murder you men are doing. You’ll know it when you are sober.”
As the lantern cast its light upon Hickey’s face it seemed to Gard that he looked startled. He realized, with a sick feeling of helplessness that the fellow’s participation in this deed was due solely to his condition. He even felt a sort of pity for the man when to-morrow’s awakening should bring the knowledge of what he had done. If he could but reach the real man buried in the addled brain.
“I did not kill Dan Lundy,” he insisted, still addressing Hickey; “You will know that some day. Killing me to-night will not be the end of it. Death ain’t such an awful thing that a man’s got to be afraid of it, beyond a certain point. We’ve all got to die some time; so it stands to reason it can’t be such a bad thing as we think. But if I do die to-night, you’ll be alive yet, to-morrow morning, Hickey, and what do you think you’ll do about it then?”
Hickey was staring at him, his jaw loosened, the lantern hanging in a listless hand.
“Aw, shut up,” interrupted Broome. “You’ve said all you got any call to say. We know there’s bin a mistake made, n’ we’re goin’ to fix it up right here. You savez?”
Gard ignored him, still looking at Hickey.
“Know Mrs. Hallard?” he asked, with the quiet of desperation. Since by no endurable possibility could he send a message where, alone, he longed to, he must at least get one word to Kate Hallard.
“Yesh;” was Hickey’s reply. “Know Missish Hallard. Mighty fine lady.”
“Will you tell Mrs. Hallard,” he cast about for words that should guide Mrs. Hallard without enlightening these ruffians. “Try to remember this, please. Tell Mrs. Hallard that Sawyer’s all right. Tell her not to give in to anybody. Anybody, I say. Tell her not to be afraid. Will you remember?”
Hickey carried his lantern a little distance away and set it down at the foot of a tree.
“I’ll tell ’er”; he said, gravely. “Hate ter hang a frien’ o’ Missish Hallard,” he added, “just plum hate ter do’t; but you see yourself how ’tish; law’s gotter take its course; so we gotter hang you.”
“Where’s your rope?” one of the men now demanded, and it was developed that the only rope in the company was the horse-hair riata with which Gard was bound.
“Take it off n’ hang ’im with that,” Hickey ordered, and three men laid hold of their victim, while Broome proceeded, savagely, to loosen his bonds. A wild hope sprang up in Gard’s heart.
It seemed as if Broome would never get done fumbling with the rope, but at last it fell away from his feet. His arms were already untied, but three men held them.
With a quick wrench he shook one free and planted a blow in Broome’s face. The fellow went down, heavily, and Gard fell upon the three others, glorying that at least he could die fighting.
But he did not mean to die. If he could but get an instant’s start he could back his sober wits against their drunken ones, in the darkness.
Hickey proved unequal to battle, and a single thrust put him temporarily out of the fight. Then Gard heard Broome’s voice.
“Shoot ’im! Shoot ’im, somebody!” he roared, and Gard realized that one of the men he struggled with had drawn a gun.
He seized the hand that held the weapon, and there was a three-cornered fight for its possession.
Broome was on his feet, now, trying to find a point of attack. Gard was doing more than fight for the gun. He was gradually forcing activities in the direction of the horses. If only he could shake free for an instant, and make a run for it! He meant to secure Broome’s mount. In a dash for freedom he felt that the odds would be with him.
Broome had by now got into the struggle again, and hurled himself, from behind, upon the man he hated. Gard felt the fellow’s great hands closing about his throat, when suddenly, the revolver for which he was fighting was discharged.
Broome sank back with a yell and a moment later, somewhere, far out on the plain, another revolver cracked.
“Somebody’s coming!” the fellow called “Hank” gasped out, wrenching free. “We’d better git!”
The sense of approaching danger sobered him, for the instant, and he sprang toward his horse. The other fellow would have followed, but Gard held him fast. He, too, realized that help was at hand, and the realization renewed his strength. A moment later, with wild yells, and a rush of swift hoofs, two riders dashed up.
Hank threw himself into the saddle. Manuel Gordo was quicker than he, however, and bore him to the ground with one sweep of a heavy arm, while Sago Irish, Manuel’s mate, dashed to Gard’s assistance. His ready rope had already secured the fellow called “Jim,” when the buckboard appeared, Sandy lashing his broncos to a mad run.
The stars were out, lighting the sky with a brilliance that shamed the lantern’s yellow glow, and Gard’s heart leaped when he saw the lithe figurethat sprang from the back-seat, as Sandy Larch brought the horses to their haunches.
The foreman was already hurrying to his friend, but he stopped short as Gard, never seeing him, turned toward Helen. Mrs. Hallard, too, had fallen behind, and the two stood face to face in the bright starlight.
“Helen!”
It was all that Gard could say, but his voice was full of wonder, and joy. He never noticed that he had called the girl by her first name.
Nor did she. For an instant she poised, bird-like, her shining eyes seeking his. All thought of their surroundings had fallen away from both; there was for them, in that moment; only the holy mystery of love, filling their souls. He held out his arms and she came to him as naturally as a child seeks its mother.
Neither spoke. His face was against the bewildering fragrance of her hair as her head lay upon his breast. He held her close, in the safe, sweet haven of his arms.
He tried to raise her face, that he might see it, but she kept it hidden, blessing the kind, wise stars, that would not reveal her scarlet cheeks.
“Look up, darling! Oh, my love, let me see your eyes!”
For answer her arms stole up to his neck, andshe clung the closer against the strong, brave heart that had borne so much.
“Did they hurt you?” she whispered. “Are you all safe now? Oh, oh, my dear heart—what if you had not been!”
She was trembling from head to foot. He took her two hands in one of his, carrying them to his lips.
“I am all right,” he said, “if I can only be sure I am awake. But howcanI believe you are here if I do not see your face?”
She raised it at last, turning it up to his gaze under the pure starlight, and the sight held him in a hush of wonder.
“You see itisI.” She forced a little smile to her trembling lips, and looked at him, half afraid.
“Yes, yes,” he whispered, “it really is. And you came to me. Don’t go away, will you? Don’t ever, ever leave me!”
CHAPTER XIV
Yelling wildly through the night, the other Palo Verde riders came pounding over the sand. Sandy Larch, who, with Mrs. Hallard, had been investigating the extent of Broome’s injuries, straightened up.
“Where’s Westcott?” he shouted. “Any of you seen the black hound? Wing Chang said he had something to do with this business.”
Broome gave a sort of howl, whether of pain or of protest, no one heeded, no one cared. The new-comers crowded around the foreman.
“Where is he?” They demanded, excitedly, “Which way’d ’e go?”
“Search me,” was Sandy’s reply. “He must a’ drifted before I come up. All I know is Wing Chang said he was one o’ the devils after Gard.”
Hickey, who had been taken with the others, roused from his drunken slumber at the sound of Westcott’s name.
“He ain’t here,” he muttered, “Weshcott’s inSylvania, takin’ care of ’s health. Thash where he ish.”
The cowboys were off before he had finished, and as no one noticed him, he slumbered again.
“What will they do with him?” whispered Helen. She had drawn away from Gard when the others appeared, but he still held her hand.
“Nothing, dear,” he replied. “They won’t find him. He’s safe at Sylvania. I only wish you were as far away from here as he is.”
“She will be in a shake,” Sandy Larch called, overhearing him. “An’ so’ll you be, too.”
Sandy had assured himself that bad whiskey and rage were more responsible for Broome’s groans than the bullet which had shattered his collar-bone, and ploughed his shoulder. The fellow’s howls and oaths had been silenced by a kick, and no longer made night hideous.
“Sago,” Sandy said, turning to one of his cowboys, “I reckon you ’n’ Manuel’s equal to the care o’ these citizens. They kin all sit their horses, I guess, an’ you two kin ride herd on ’em, into Sylvania. I’d gather in their guns, if ’t was me doin’ it, on’ leave ’em with fatty Harkins till mornin’. I dare say they’ll be some peacabler by then.”
The foreman had already eased Broome’s shoulder, crudely enough, by means of an arm-sling,improvised from the riata that the fellow had meant to use for Gard.
“He’ll do till he gits to Sylvania,” he said, with an indifference that was not feigned, “Mebby there’ll be somebody there to tend to ’im.” And he left the would-be lynchers to the tender mercies of their captors.
Ashley Westcott was mounting his hired horse in front of the hotel, when a stranger, on a hard-ridden, pacing buckskin, stopped beside the rail.
“Say, friend,” he drawled, catching sight of the lawyer, “Your name happen to be Westcott?”
“Is that any of your business?” snapped the owner of the name.
“Not a bit,” was the calm reply, “an’ I don’t care a damn. It only happened I was rounded-up, awhile back, by a parcel of fellers ’t said they was from the Palo Verde. They’d mistook me fer you, an’ you sure have some enthusiastic friends. They’re a whoopin’ it up yet, I guess, ’lowin’ they’re seekin’ your society.”
“Who were they?” Westcott asked.
“I didn’t exchange no cards with the gents,” the stranger replied, grinning. “’Twas enough fer me to know they was friends o’ yourn’. An’ seein’ you now, to realize your lovely disposition, I don’t know ’s I wonder at the warmth o’ the feelin’they showed fer you. They may be yer dearest friends,” he went on, more seriously, “an’ you may be goin’ to meet ’em this minute, but what I sot out to say was, that if a party o’mydearest friends was lookin’ fer me in the tone o’ voice them fellers was exhibitin’ I’d either stay where I was, if I thought it was a good place, er I’d git on my nag an’ I’d drift, mighty lively.”
“Bah!” was Westcott’s reply, as he got into the saddle. “I don’t know why anyone should be hunting for me, and I’m not afraid of them if they are. People generally know where to find me if they have business with me.... Thank you, though,” he muttered, recollecting himself.
“You’re sure welcome,” the stranger said, turning away, as the lawyer rode down the street.
“You’re sure good an’ welcome,” he added, to himself, “to all ’ts likely comin’ to you.”
“There are a lot of things I’ve got to straighten out.”
It was Gard, who spoke, from his place beside Sandy Larch in the buckboard.
“I think, too,” he added, addressing Sandy, a note of sadness in his tone, “that I must tell you good friends about them, right away.”
No one spoke, but before he had time to wonder at their silence Helen leaned forward and thrustinto his hands a big, official-looking envelop, which Mrs. Hallard had given her, with a few whispered words of explanation.
“What’s this?” Gard asked, peering at it in the uncertain light.
Helen laughed, happily and Sandy Larch gave a low chuckle.
“It’s something that’ll interest you a lot,” said he, “an’ I reckon it’ll keep; but good Lord, Gard! Why ’n’t you ever let on?” Sandy’s voice was full of loving reproach.
“If you’d only put me hip,” he continued, “a word’d a’ fixed it. But I get the shivers yet, thinkin’ o’ all might ’a’ happened.”
“Don’t, Sandy,” pleaded Helen. She was still trembling, with excitement and horror.
“Tell him; quick!” she urged.
“Tell me what?” Gard was dizzy with weariness and bewilderment. He held his big envelop up, trying to make out what it was.
“To think—” Sandy was still unable, for very eagerness, to come to the point. “Who’d a dreamt you never knew Jim Texas confessed, after all!”
“Confessed?” Gard’s voice thrilled with sudden joy.
“God! But it’s good to be a free man again!” he said softly, and the low spoken words sent athrill through his hearers. Years of suffering seemed expressed in them.
Then the others’ tongues were loosened, and by the time the Palo Verde was reached, the story had been pieced together, bit by bit.
“Friends,” Gard said, as they walked together from the corrals to the casa, “I don’t know what to say; but I—I sure thank you.”
He bared his head, and looked up at the stars. They were still there, swinging their ancient round as they had done, night after night, above the glade.
“Yes,” he said, speaking to them as often and often he had done before, when he watched their solemn progress across the sky. “You knew. You told me ’t would come out all right, and it has.”
Then, as Jacinta appeared in the doorway, full of anxiety about Helen, they went into the house.
“I’ll see you to-morrow morning,” Gard said an hour later, to Helen, as they stood together near the cottonwoods. Sandy had gone to the corral for the horses; he meant to ride back to Sylvania with his friend. Helen had persuaded Mrs. Hallard to remain at the hacienda for the night.
“I must see you just a little while,” Gard said, “before I go away.”
“Go away?”
Helen’s voice was full of surprise as she repeated his words. “Where are you going?” she asked; for he was smiling down at her as though the thought of separation gave him pleasure.
“Mexico,” was the reply. “Sandy says your father is down in Sonora.”
“Why, yes: but he will be home within a week. He wouldn’t be away over Christmas.”
“I know; but I can’t wait. I’ve got to see him. I’ve got to ask him—” Gard’s voice sank to a whisper, “I’ve got to ask him what he’s going to give me for Christmas.”
“Oh!” the girl’s shyness held them both silent for a moment, ere she found speech again.
“I know whatIwant,” she presently said, edging away from the other matter.
“What?”
The word sounded like a guarantee that what she wanted would be forthcoming.
“Jinny.”
They both laughed, like children, at the idea.
“Jinny’s yours,” Gard said, promptly: “but she ’nd I go together. We can’t be parted. I couldn’t bear the separation.”
“Perhaps—” He had to bend his head to catch the low-spoken words—“Perhaps—Father’s Christmas present will—will reconcile you.”
What his answer was is not of record. There was but a moment to give to it; for a whistle from Sandy presently warned Gard that his horse was ready, and the two whispered their good-night, in the friendly darkness.