I
The Kettle Hole Ranch house faces a wide, treeless valley and is backed by an equally bare hill. To the west the purple peaks of the Rampart range are visible. It is a group of ramshackle and dispersed cabins—not Western enough to be picturesque, and so far from being Eastern as to lack cleanliness or even comfort, and the young Englishman who rode over the hill one sunset was bitterly disappointed in the "whole plant."
"I shall stay here but one night," said he, as he entered the untidy house.
He stayed five years, and the cause of this change of mind lay in the person of Fan Blondell, the daughter of the old man who owned the ranch and to whom young Lester had been sent to "learn the business" of cattle-raising.
Fan was only seventeen at this time, but in the full flower of her physical perfection. Lithe, full-bosomed, and ruddy, she radiated a powerful and subtle charm. She had the face of a child—happy-tempered and pure—but every movement of her body appealed with dangerous directness to the sickly young Englishman who had never known an hour of the abounding joy of life whichhad been hers from the cradle. Enslaved to her at the first glance, he resolved to win her love.
His desire knew no law in affairs of this kind, but his first encounter with Blondell put a check to the dark plans he had formed—for the rancher had the bearing of an aged, moth-eaten, but dangerous old bear. His voice was a rumble, his teeth were broken fangs, and his hands resembled the paws of a gorilla. Like so many of those Colorado ranchers of the early days, he was a Missourian, and his wife, big, fat, worried and complaining, was a Kentuckian. Neither of them had any fear of dirt, and Fan had grown up not merely unkempt, but smudgy. Her gown was greasy, her shoes untied, and yet, strange to say, this carelessness exercised a subduing charm over Lester, who was fastidious to the point of wasting precious hours in filling his boots with "trees" and folding his neckties. The girl's slovenly habits of dress indicated, to his mind, a similar recklessness as to her moral habits, and it sometimes happens that men of his stamp come to find a fascination in the elemental in human life which the orderly no longer possess.
Lester, we may explain, was a "remittance man"—a youth sent to America by his family on the pretense of learning to raise cattle, but in reality to get him out of the way. He was not a bad man; on the contrary, he was in most ways a gentleman and a man of some reading—but he lacked initiative, even in his villainy. Blondell at once called him "a lazy hound"—provoked thereto by Lester's slowness of toilet of a morning, and had it not been for Fan—backed by the fifty dollars a month which Lester was paying for "instruction"—he would have been "booted off the place."
Fan laughed at her father. "You better go slow; George Adelbert is heeled."
Blondell snorted. "Heeled! He couldn't unlimber his gun inside of fifteen minutes."
"Well, he can ride."
The old man softened a little. "Yes, he can ride, and he don't complain, once he gets mounted, but he carries 'pajammys' in his saddle-bags and a tooth-brush on his slicker; hanged if he don't use it, too!"
"That's what I like about him," she answered, defiantly. "We're all so blamed careless about the way we live. I wish he'd jack us all up a bit."
Truly Fan was under conviction, brought to a realization of her slouchiness by Lester's care of his own room as well as by his lofty manners. She no longer wore her dress open at the throat, and she kept her yellow hair brushed, trying hard to make each meal a little less like a pig's swilling. She knew how things ought to be done, a little, for at "The Gold Fish Ranch" and at Starr Baker's everything was spick and span (Mrs. Baker especially was a careful and energetic housekeeper), but to keep to this higher level every day was too great an effort even for a girl in love. She dropped back, now and again, weary and disheartened.
It was her mating-time. She leaned to Lester from the first glance. The strangeness of his accent, his reference to things afar off, to London and Paris, appealed to her in the same way in which poetry moved her—dimly, vaguely—but his hands, his eyes, his tender, low-toned voice won her heart. She hovered about him when he was at home, careless of the comments of the other men, ignoring the caustic "slatting" of her mother. She had determined to win him, no matter what the father might say—for to her all men were of the same social level and she as good as the best. Indeed, she knew no other world than the plains of Colorado, forshe was born in the little dugout which still remained a part of the kitchen. The conventions of cities did not count with her.
She was already aware of her power, too, and walked among the rough men of her acquaintance with the step of an Amazonian queen, unafraid, unabashed. She was not in awe of Lester; on the contrary, her love for him was curiously mingled with a certain sisterly, almost maternal pity; he was so easily "flustered." He was, in a certain sense, on her hands like an invalid.
She soon learned that he was wax beneath her palm—that the touch of a finger on his arm made him uneasy of eye and trembling of limb. It amused her to experiment with him—to command him, to demand speech of him when he was most angry and disgusted with the life he was living. That he despised her father and mother she did not know, but that he was sick of the cowboys and their "clack" she did know, and she understood quite as well as if he had already told her that she alone kept him from returning at once to Denver to try some other manner of earning a living. This realization gave her pride and joy.
She had but one jealousy—he admired and trusted Mrs. Baker and occasionally rode over there to talk with her, and Fan could not understand that he sought intellectual refuge from the mental squalor of the Blondells, but she perceived a difference in his glance on his return. Mrs. Baker, being a keen-sighted, practical little woman, soon fell upon the plainest kind of speech with the young Englishman.
"This is no place for you," she defiantly said. "The rest of us are all more or less born to the plains and farm-life, but you're not; you're just 'sagging,'that's all. You're getting deeper into the slough all the time."
"Quite right," he answered, "but I don't know what else I can do. I have no trade—I know nothing of any art or profession, and my brother is quite content to pay my way so long as he thinks I'm on a ranch, and in the way of learning the business."
She, with her clear eyes searching his soul, replied: "The longer you stay the more difficult it will be to break away. Don't you see that? You're in danger of being fastened here forever."
He knew what she meant, and his thin face flushed. "I know it and I am going to ask Starr to give me a place here with you, and I'm about to write my brother stating full reasons for the change. He might advance me enough to buy into Starr's herd."
She considered this. "I'll take the matter up with Starr," she replied, after a pause. "Meanwhile, you can come over and stay as a visitor as long as you please—but don't bring Fan," she added, sharply. "I can't stand slatterns, and you must cut loose from her once for all."
Again he flushed. "I understand—but it isn't easy. Fan has been mighty good to me; life would have been intolerable over there but for her."
"I should think life would have been intolerablewithher," Mrs. Baker answered, with darkening brow, and then they talked of other things till he rose to ride away.
He headed his horse homeward, fully resolved to give notice of removal, but he did not. On the contrary, he lost himself to Fan. The girl, glowing with love and anger and at the very climax of her animal beauty, developed that night a subtlety of approach, a method ofattack, which baffled and in the end overpowered him. She was adroit enough to make no mention of her rivals; she merely set herself to cause his committal, to bend him to her side. As the romping girl she played round him, indifferent to the warning glances of her mother, her eyes shining, her cheeks glowing, till the man he was, the life he had lived, the wishes of his brother, were fused and lost in the blind passion of the present. "This glorious, glowing creature can be mine. What does all the rest matter?" was his final word of renunciation.
In this mood he took her to his arms, in this madness he told her of his love (committing himself into her hands, declining into her life), and in the end requested of her parents the honor of their daughter's hand.
Mrs. Blondell wept a tear or two and weakly gave her consent, but the old ranchman thundered and lightened. "What can you do for my girl?" he demanded. "As I understand it, you haven't a cent—the very clothes you've got on your back are paid for by somebody else! What right have you to come to me with such a proposal?"
To all this Lester, surprised and disconcerted, could but meekly answer that he hoped soon to buy a ranch of his own—that his brother had promised to "set him up" as soon as he had mastered the business.
Blondell opened his jaws to roar again when Fan interposed and, taking a clutch in his shaggy beard, said, calmly: "Now, dad, you hush! George Adelbert and I have made it all up and you better fall in gracefully. It won't do you any good to paw the dirt and beller."
Lester grew sick for a moment as he realized the temper of the family into which he was about to marry, but when Fan, turning with a gay laugh, put her round,smooth arm about his neck, the rosy cloud closed over his head again.
II
Blondell was silenced, but not convinced. A penniless son-in-law was not to his liking. Fan was his only child, and the big ranch over which he presided was worth sixty thousand dollars. What right had this lazy Englishman to come in and marry its heiress? The more he thought about it the angrier he grew, and when he came in the following night he broke forth.
"See here, mister, I reckon you better get ready and pull out. I'm not going to have you for a son-in-law, not this season. The man that marries my Fan has got to have sabe enough to round up a flock of goats—and wit enough to get up in the morning. So you better vamoose to-morrow."
Lester received his sentence in silence. At the moment he was glad of it. He turned on his heel and went to packing with more haste, with greater skill, than he had ever displayed in any enterprise hitherto. His hurry arose from a species of desperation. "If I can only get out of the house!" was his inward cry.
"Why pack up?" he suddenly asked himself. "What do they matter—these boots and shirts and books?" He caught a few pictures from the wall and stuffed them into his pockets, and was about to plunge out into the dusk when Fan entered the room and stood looking at him with ominous intentness.
She was no longer the laughing, romping girl, but the woman with alert eye and tightly closed lips. "What are you doing, Dell?"
"Your father has ordered me to leave the ranch," he answered, "and so I'm going."
"No, you're not! I don't care what he has ordered! You're not going"—she came up and put her arms about his neck—"not without me." And, feeling her claim to pity, he took her in his arms and tenderly pressed her cheek upon his bosom. Then she began to weep. "I can't live without you, Dell," she moaned.
He drew her closer, a wave of tenderness rising in his heart. "I'll be lonely without you, Fan—but your father is right. I am too poor—we have no home—"
"What does that matter?" she asked. "I wouldn't marry you for any amount ofmoney! And I know you don't care for this old ranch!I'llbe glad to get shut of it. I'll go with you, and we'll make a home somewhere else." Then her mood changed. Her face and voice hardened. She pushed herself away from him. "No, I won't! I'll stay here, and so shall you! Dad can't boss me, and I won't let him run you out. Come and face him up with me."
So, leading him, she returned to the kitchen, where Blondell, alone with his wife, was eating supper, his elbows on the table, his hair unkempt, his face glowering, a glooming contrast to his radiant and splendid daughter, who faced him fearlessly. "Dad, what do you mean by talking this way to George Adelbert? He's going to stay and I'm going to stay, and you're going to be decent about it, for I'm going to marry him."
"No, you're not!" he blurted out.
"Well, I am!" She drew nearer and with her hands on the table looked down into his wind-worn face and dim eyes. "I say you've got to be decent. Do you understand?" Her body was as lithe, as beautiful, as that of a tigress as she leaned thus, and an unalterable resolution blazed in her eyes as she went on, a deepersignificance coming into her voice: "Furthermore, I'm as good as married to him right now, and I don't care who knows it."
The old man's head lifted with a jerk, and he looked at her with mingled fear and fury. "What do you mean?"
"Anything you want to have it mean," she replied. "You drive him out and you drive me out—that's what I mean."
Blondell saw in her face the look of the woman who is willing to assume any guilt, any shame for her lover, and, dropping his eyes before her gaze, growled a curse and left the room.
Fan turned to her lover with a ringing, boyish laugh, "It's all right, Dell; he's surrendered!"
III
Lester passed the month before his marriage in alternating uplifts and depressions, and the worst of it lay in the fact that his moments of exaltation were sensual—of the flesh, and born of the girl's presence—while his depression came from his sane contemplation of the fate to which he was hastening. He went one day to talk it all over with Mrs. Baker, who now held a dark opinion of Fan Blondell. She frankly advised him to break the engagement and to go back to England.
"I can't do that, my dear Mrs. Baker. I am too far committed to Fan to do that. Besides, I know she would make a terrible scene. She would follow me. And besides, I am fond of her, you know. She's very beautiful, now—and she does love me, poor beggar! I wonder at it, but she does." Then he brightened up. "You know she has the carriage of a duchess. Really, if shewere trained a little she would be quite presentable anywhere."
Mrs. Baker shook her head. "She's at her best this minute. Look at the mother; that's what she'll be like in a few years."
"Oh no—not really! She's an improvement—a vast improvement—on the old people, don't you think?"
"You can't make a purse out of a sow's ear. Fan will sag right down after marriage. Mark my words. She's a slattern in her blood, and before the honeymoon is over she'll be slouching around in old slippers and her nightgown. That is plain talk, Mr. Lester, but I can't let you go into this trap with your eyes shut."
Lester went away with renewed determination to pack his belongings and bolt, but the manly streak in his blood made it impossible for him to go without some sort of explanation to her.
The other hands, who called him "George Adelbert" in mockery, were more and more contemptuous of him, and one or two were sullen, for they loved Fan and resented this "lily-fingered gent," who was to their minds "after the old man's acres." Young Compton, the son of a neighboring rancher, was most insulting, for he had himself once carried on a frank courtship with Fan, and enjoyed a brief, half-expressed engagement. He was a fine young fellow, not naturally vindictive, and he would not have uttered a word of protest had his successful rival been a man of "the States," but to give way to an English adventurer whose way was paid by his brother was a different case altogether.
Of George Adelbert's real feeling the boys, of course, knew nothing. Had they known of his hidden contempt for them they would probably have taken him out ofthe country at the end of a rope, but of his position with Fan they were in no doubt, for she was very frank with them. If they accused her of being "sweet on the bloody Englishman" she laughed. If they threatened his life in a jocular way she laughed again, but in a different way, and said: "Don't make a mistake; George Adelbert is a fighter from way back East." And once, in a burst of rage, she said: "I won't have you saying such things, Lincoln Compton. I won't have it, I tell you!" No one could accuse her of disloyalty or cowardice.
In his letters home Lester had put his fiancée's best foot forward. "She's quite too good for me," he wrote to his brother. "She's young and beautiful and sole heiress of an estate twice as big as our whole family can muster. She's uncultivated, the diamond in the rough, and all that sort of thing, you understand, but she'll polish easily." He put all this down in the sardonic wish to procure some sort of settlement from his brother. He got it by return mail.
Edward was suavely congratulatory, and in closing said: "I'm deucedly glad you're off my hands just now, my boy, for I'm confoundedly hard up. You're doing the sensible thing—only don't try to bring your family home—not at present."
Lester was thrown into despairing fury by this letter, which not only cut him off from his remittances, but politely shut the paternal door in his own face as well as in the face of his bride. For the moment he had some really heroic idea of setting to work to show them what he could do. "The beggar! He squats down on the inheritance, shoves me out, and then takes on a lot of 'side' as to his superiority over me! He always was a self-sufficient ass. I'd like to punch his jaw!"
Then his rage faded out and a kind of sullen resignation came to him. What was the use? Why not submit to fate? "Everything has been against me from the start," he bitterly complained, and in this spirit he approached his wedding-day.
The old man, acknowledging him as a son-in-law prospective, addressed him now with gruff kindness, and had Lester shown the slightest gain in managerial ability he would have been content—glad to share a little of his responsibility with a younger man. In his uncouth, hairy, grimy fashion Blondell was growing old, and feeling it. As he said to his wife: "It's a pity that our only child couldn't have brought a real man, like Compton, into the family. There ain't a hand on the place that wouldn't 'a' been more welcome to me. What do you suppose would become of this place if it was put into this dandy's hands?"
"I don't know, pa. Fan, for all her slack ways, is a purty fair manager. She wouldn't waste it. She might let it run down, but she'd hang on to it."
"But she's a fool about that jackass."
"She is now," answered the mother, with cynical emphasis, which she softened by adding, "Dell ain't the kind that would try to work her."
He sighed with troubled gaze and grumbled an oath. "I don't know what to think of him! He gits me." And in that rather mournful spirit he went about his work, leaving the whole matter of the marriage festival in the hands of the women. In a dim way he still felt that haste was necessary, although Fan's face was as joyous, as careless, and as innocent as a child's. As she galloped about the country with her George Adelbert she sowed her "bids" broadcast, as if wishing all the world to share her happiness. There was nothingexclusive, or shrinking, or parsimonious in Frances Blondell.
IV
The marriage feast was indeed an epoch-making event in the county. It resembled a barbecue and was quite as inclusive. Distinctions of the social sort were few in Arapahoe County. Cattle-rustlers and sheepmen were debarred, of course, but aside from these unfortunates practically the whole population of men, women, children, and babies assembled in the Kettle Hole Ranch grove. The marriage was to be "al fresco," as the LimoneLimerickrepeated several times.
Blondell found it a hard day, for what with looking after the roasting ox and the ice and the beer, he was almost too busy to say hello to his guests. Fan had contrived to get a clean shirt on him by the trick of whisking away his old one and substituting a white one in its place. He put this on without realizing how splendid it was, but rebelled flatly at the collar, and by the time the ox was well basted his shirt was subdued to a condition which left him almost at ease with himself.
Fan received the people at the door of the shack—her mother being too busy in the preparation for dinner to do more than say "Howdy?" to those who deliberately sought her out; but Fan was not embarrassed or wearied. It was her great day—she was only a little disturbed when George Adelbert fled to his room for a little relief from the strain of his position, for he lacked both her serenity of spirit and her physical health.
Once Lester would have enjoyed the action and comment of these people as characters in a play, but now the knowledge that he was about to sink to their level and be nailed there filled him with a fear and disgust whichnot even the radiant face and alluring body of his bride could conceal or drive out. These lumbering ranchers, these tobacco-chewing, drawling lumpkins, were they to be his companions for the rest of his life? These women with their toothless, shapeless mouths, these worn and weary mothers in home-made calico and cheap millinery, were they to be the visitors at his fireside? What kind of woman would they make of Fan?
By one o'clock the corrals were full of ponies and the sheds and yards crowded with carriages all faded by the pitiless sun and sucked dry by the never-resting wind of the plain.
Meanwhile the young women had set long tables in the back yard and covered them with food—contributed chicken, home-made biscuit, cake, and pie, while the young fellows had been noisily working at constructing a "bowery" for the dance which was to follow the ceremony at three. And at last Fan raised a bugle-call for "dinner!" and they all came with a rush.
The feast did not last long, for every one was hungry and ate without permitting delay or distraction. Nearly all remarked on having had a very early breakfast, and they certainly showed capacity for not merely beef and beer, but pie and ice-cream, and when they shoved back, and lighted the cigars which Lester had provided with prodigal hand, they all agreed that the barbecue was "up to the bills."
The ceremony at three was short, almost hurried, so great was the bustle about the house and yard. Fan wore no veil and George Adelbert made no change from the neat sack-suit which he had put on at rising. At the close of the clergyman's blessing he was called upon for a second time to pump the hard hands and stringyarms of his neighbors as they filed by to bid them both a hearty God-speed.
After this painful procession was ended Fan dragged him away to the bower where the young folks were already dancing with prodigious clatter. "How young she is!" he exclaimed, as he saw her mix with the crowd of tireless, stamping, prancing cowboys.
As the dance went on he grew furious with her lack of reserve, her indelicacy. Her good-natured laughter with the men who crowded about her familiarly was a kind of disloyalty. She seemed at times to be exchanging doubtful jests with them; and at last, to protect her from the results of her own fatuity, he danced with her himself—danced almost incessantly, notwithstanding the heat and the noise.
At sunset they all returned to the tables and ate up what remained of the ox and the pies.
Lester was well enough acquainted with these rough youths to know that some deviltry was preparing, and, already furious with his bride and distrustful of the future, his self-command at last gave way. Drawing Fan away from the crowd he said, tenderly:
"I've had enough of this! I'm having Aglar harness the buckskins into the red cart, and I want you to go to the house and pack a few things—we're going to Limone and catch the early train for Denver."
"We can't do that, Dell; we got to stay here and feed this gang once more."
"Oh, hang the gang! I'm sick of them. Get ready, I tell you! Who cares what these beggars think?"
She laughed. "You're jealous of them." Then, rising to his passion, she answered, "All right; I'll sneak some clothes into a bag and we'll slide out and leave the gang."
A half-hour later they stole away toward the back of the garden and out upon the prairie, where a Mexican was holding a spirited team. Fan was giggling so hard that she was barely able to lift the valise which she carried in her hand.
"Don't you tell," she said to the Mexican. "If they ask, say we went to Holcombe."
"All right. Isabe," the Mexican replied. Even as he spoke the music in the bower ceased and voices were heard in question.
Fan sobered. "They've missed us already."
Lester took the reins. "Send 'em south, Aglar," and at his chirp the team sprang forward out upon the road into the coolness and silence of the midnight plain.
Fan, clutching Lester's arm, shook with laughter. "It's like eloping—ain't it?"
The tone of her voice irritated him. "Good Heaven! how vulgar she is! And she is my wife," was his thought; and he took no pleasure in her nearness.
Wild whoops reached them from the ranch-house now hid in the valley behind them, and a few moments later the yells broke out again perceptibly nearer.
"They're after us!" cried Fan, vastly excited and pleased. "It's a race now," and, catching the whip from his hand, she lashed the horses into a gallop.
He said: "I'll turn into the Sun-Fish Trail; we'll throw 'em off the track."
"No use," she laughed. "No use, Dell; they can read a trail like Injuns; besides, they're overtaking us. We might as well turn and go back."
His only answer was a shout to the horses. He was burning with fury now. All his hidden contempt, his concealed hatred of the vulgarians behind him, filled his heart. It was like them, the savages, to give chase.
With shrill whoops in imitation of Comanches the cowboys came on, riding their swift and tireless ponies; like skimming hawks they swept down the swells, and the bride, clinging to her husband's arm, called each of them by his name.
"Link Compton is in the lead. Pull up!" She reached a firm hand and laid it on the lines. "Pull up, Dell; it's no use."
He tried to shake off her grasp, but could not. Her voice changed to command. "Don't be a fool!" she called, sharply, and, laying both hands upon the reins, she brought the horses into a trot in spite of his furious objection, just as the first of the pursuing cowboys rode alongside and, seizing one of the horses by the bit, cried out:
"Come back. We need you!"
Even as he spoke a whistling rope settled round the fleeing couple and the team came to a stand, surrounded by a hooting mob of mounted men. The noose, tight-drawn, was like a steel embrace, and Compton called:
"Thought you'd give us the slip, did ye? Well, I don't think!"
"Leave us alone, you ruffians," shouted Lester, "or it'll be the worse for you!"
They all laughed at this, and Compton drew the rope tighter, pinning Lester's arms to his side.
"Boys—" began Fan in appeal, but she got no further.
Lester, wrenching his right arm loose, began to shoot. What happened after that no one ever clearly knew, but the team sprang wildly forward, and Compton's pony reared and fell backward, and the bride and groom were thrown violently to the ground.
When Fan opened her eyes she saw the big stars above her and felt a sinewy arm beneath her head. Comptonwas fanning her with his hat and calling upon her to speak, his voice agonized with fear and remorse.
Slowly it all came back to her, and, struggling to a sitting position, she called piteously: "Dell, where are you? Dell!" Her voice rose in fear, a tone no man had ever heard in it before. She staggered to her feet and dazedly looked about her. A group of awed, silenced, dismounted men stood not far away, and on the ground, lying in a crumpled, distorted heap, was her husband. With a shriek of agony she fell on her knees beside him, calling upon him to open his eyes, to speak to her.
Then at last, as the conviction of his death came to her, she lifted her head and with a voice of level, hoarse-throated hate, she imprecated her murderers. "I'll kill you, every one of you! I'll kill you for this—you cowardly wolves—I'll kill—"
V
They lifted them both up for dead, and Compton, taking Fan in his strong arms, held her like a child as they drove slowly back to the ranch. All believed Lester dead; but Compton, who held his ear to Fan's lips, insisted that she was breathing, and indeed she recovered from her swoon before they reached the house.
Blondell, more powerfully moved than ever before in his life, after a swift curse upon the culprits took his girl to his bosom and carried her to her bed.
As her brain cleared, Fan rose and, staggering across the room, took her husband's head in her arms. "Bring some water. Dell is hurt. Don't you see he is hurt? Be quick!"
"Has somebody gone for the doctor?" asked themother, to whom this was the raving of dementia. "Somebody go."
No one had, for all believed the man to be dead; but Compton exclaimed, "I'll go!" turning to vault his horse, glad of something to do, eager to escape the sight of Fan's agonized face.
The dash of cold water on his bruised face brought a flutter of life to Lester's eyelids, and in triumph the bride cried out:
"I told you so! He is alive! Oh, Dell, can't you speak to me?"
He could not so much as lift his eyelids, but his breathing deepened, and with that sign of returning vitality Fan was forced to be content. She was perfectly composed now, and helped to bathe his crushed and bleeding head and his broken shoulder with a calmness very impressive to all those who were permitted to glance within the room.
Slowly the guests departed. The cowboys, low-voiced and funereal of mien, rode away in groups of three or four.
The doctor came hurrying down the slope about ten of the morning, his small roan mustang galloping, his case of instruments between his feet. He was very young, and, luckily, very self-confident, and took charge of "the case" with thrilling authority.
"The coma was induced," he explained, "by the concussion of the brain. The shoulder is also badly contused and the collar-bone broken, but if brain fever does not set in the man will live. The treatment so far as it has gone is admirable."
Compton returned with him, or a little before him, and seemed to be waiting for arrest. He was a lean, brown young fellow with good, gray eyes and a shapelynose. "Yes, I threw the rope," he confessed to every one. "It was all in fun, but he shot my horse, and as he reared up he jerked the people out of the buggy. I guess the broncos jumped ahead at the same time. But it was my fault. I had no business to rope 'em. In fact, we had no business chasing 'em up at all."
At last Blondell gruffly told him to go home. "If the man dies we'll come after you," he added, with blunt ferocity.
"All right," responded the young fellow, with lofty spirit. "I'll be there—but I want to see Fan a moment before I leave. I want to know if there is anything I can do for her or him."
Blondell was for refusing this utterly, but his wife said: "You didn't mean nothing, Link—I'm sure of that—and I've always liked you, and so has Fan. She won't lay it up against you, I know. I'll tell her you're here."
Fan, sitting beside Lester's bed, turned at her mother's word and saw the young fellow standing in the doorway in mute appeal. Her glance was without anger, but it was cold and distant. She shook her head, and the young rancher turned away, shaken with sobs. That look was worse than her curse had been.
From the dim, grim region of his delirium and his deathlike unconsciousness George Lester struggled slowly back to life. His reawakening was like a new birth. He seemed born again, this time an American—a Western American. In the measure of a good old homely phrase, some sense (a sense of the fundamental oneness of humanity) had been beaten into his head.
As he lay there, helpless and suffering, he was first of all aware of Fan, whose face shone above him like themoon, and was soon able to understand her unwearying devotion and to remember that she was his wife. She was always present when he woke, and he accepted her presence as he accepted sunshine, knowing nothing of the sleeplessness and toil which her attendance involved—a knowledge of this came later.
At times gruff old Blondell himself bent his shaggy head above his bed to ask how he felt, and no mother could have been more considerate than Mrs. Blondell.
"What right have I to despise these people?" he asked himself one day. "What have I done to lift myself above them?" (And this question extended to the neighbors, to the awkward ranchers who came stiffly and with a sort of awe into his room to "pass a good word," as they said.) "They are a good sort, after all"—his heart prompted him to admit.
But his deepest penitence, his tenderest gratitude, rose to Fan, whom care and love had marvelously refined. He was able to forget her careless speech and to look quite through her untidy ways to the golden, good heart which beat beneath her unlovely gowns. Nothing was too hard, too menial, for her hands, and her smile warmed his midnight sick-room like sunshine.
He was curiously silent even after his strength was sufficient for speech. Content to lie on his bed and watch her as she moved about him, he answered only in monosyllables, while the deep current of his love gathered below his reticence. As he came to a full understanding of what he had been and to a sense of his unworthy estimate of her and her people, his passion broke bounds.
"Fan!" he called out one morning, "I'm not fit to receive all your care and devotion—but I'm going to try to be; I'm going to set to work in earnest when I get up.Your people shall be my people, your cares my cares." He could not go on, and Fan, who was looking down at him in wonder, stooped and laid a kiss on his quivering lips.
"You get well, boy; that's all you need to worry about," she said, and her face was very sweet—for she smiled upon him as if he were a child.
—the murderer still seeks forgetfulness in the solitude, building his cabin in the shadow of great peaks.
The road that leads to the historic north shoulder of Solidor is lonely now. The stages that once crawled painfully upward through its flowery meadows are playhouses for the children of Silver Plume, and the brakes that once howled so resoundingly on the downward way are rusting to ashes in the weeds that spring from the soil of the Silverado Queen's unused corral. The railway, half a hundred miles to the north, has left the famous pass to solitude and to grass.
Once a week, or possibly oftener, a cattleman or prospector rides across, or a little band of tourists plod up or down,—thinking they are penetrating to the heart of the Rockies,—but for the most part the trail is passing swiftly to the unremembered twilight of the tragic past. There are, it is true, one or two stamp-mills above Pemberton, but they draw their supplies from the valley to the west and not from the plain's cities, and the upper camps have long since been deserted by the restless seeker of sudden gold.
It is a desolate, unshaded country, made so by the reckless hand of the tenderfoot prospector, who, in the days of the silver rush, cut and burned the timber sinfully, and the great peaks are meticulated with the rotting boles of noble pines and spotted with the decaying stumpsof the firs which once made the whole land as beautiful as a park. Here and there, however, a segment of this splendid ancient forest remains to give some hint of what the ranges were before the destroying horde of silver-seekers struck and scarred it.
Along this trail and above the last vestige of its standing trees a man could be seen, walking eastward and upward, one bright afternoon in August, a couple of years ago. He moved slowly, for he was heavily built and obviously not much used to climbing, for he paused often to breathe. The air at that altitude is thin and, to the one not accustomed to it, most unsatisfying. In the intervals of his pauses the traveler's eyes swept the heights and explored each cañon wall as if in search of a resting-place. Around him the conies cried and small birds skimmed from ledge to ledge, but his dark face did not lighten with joy of the beauty which shone over his head nor to that which flamed under his feet. It was plain that he was too preoccupied with some inner problem, too intent on his quest, to give eye or ear to the significance of bird or flower.
Huge Solidor, bare and bleak, rose grandly to the north, propping the high-piled shining clouds, and the somber, dust-covered fields of snow showed to what far height his proud summit soared above his fellows. Little streams of icy water trickled through close-knit, velvety sward whereon small flowers, white and gold and lilac, showed like fairy footprints. Down from the pass a chill wind, delicious and invigorating, rushed as palpably as if it were a liquid wave. In all this upper region no shelter offered to the tired man.
A few minutes later, as he rounded the sloping green bastion which flanks the peak to the south, the man's keen eyes lighted upon a small cabin which squattedalmost unnoticeably against a gray ledge some five hundred feet higher than the rock whereon he stood. The door of this hut was open and the figure of a man, dwarfed by distance, could be detected intently watching the pedestrian on the trail. Unlike most cabin-dwellers, he made no sign of greeting, uttered no shout of cheer; on the contrary, as the stranger approached he disappeared within his den like a marmot.
There was something appealing in the slow mounting of the man on foot. He was both tired and breathless, and as he neared the cabin (which was built on ground quite twelve thousand feet above sea-level) his limbs dragged, and every step he made required his utmost will. Twice he stopped to recover his strength and to ease the beating of his heart, and as he waited thus the last time the lone cabin-dweller appeared in his door and silently gazed, confronting his visitor with a strangely inhospitable and prolonged scrutiny. It was as if he were a lonely animal, jealous of his ground and resentful even of the most casual human inspection.
The stranger, advancing near, spoke. "Is this the trail to Silver Plume?" he asked, his heaving breast making his speech broken.
"It is," replied the miner, whose thin face and hawk-like eyes betrayed the hermit and the man on guard.
"How far is it across the pass?"
"About thirty miles."
"A good night's walk. Are there any camps above here?"
"None."
"How far is it to the next cabin?"
"Some twelve miles."
The miner, still studying the stranger with piercing intensity, expressed a desire to be reassured. "What areyou doing up here on this trail? Are you a mining expert? A spy?" he seemed to ask.
The traveler, divining his curiosity, explained. "I stayed last night at the mill below. I'm a millwright. I have some property to inspect in Silver Plume, hence I'm walking across. I didn't know it was so far; I was misinformed. I'm not accustomed to this high air and I'm used up. Can you take care of me?"
The miner glanced round at the heap of ore which betrayed his craft, and then back at the dark, bearded, impassive face.
"Come in," he said at last, "I'll feed you." But his manner was at once surly and suspicious.
The walls of the hovel were built partly of logs and partly of boulders, and its roof was compacted of dirt and gravel; but it was decently habitable. The furniture (hand-rived out of slabs) was scanty, and the floor was laid with planks, yet everything indicated many days of wear.
"You've been here some time," the stranger remarked rather than asked.
"Ten years."
Thereafter the two men engaged in a silent duel. The millwright, leaning back in his rude chair, stretched his tired limbs and gazed down the valley with no further word of inquiry, while his grudging host prepared a primitive meal and set it upon a box which served as a table.
"You may eat," he curtly said.
In complete silence and with calm abstraction the stranger turned to the food and ate and drank, accepting it all as if this were a roadhouse and he a paying guest. The sullen watchfulness of his host seemed not to disturb him, not even to interest him.
At length the miner spoke as if in answer to a question—the question he feared.
"No, my mine has not panned out well—not yet. The ore is low-grade and the mill is too far away."
To this informing statement the other man did not so much as lift an eyebrow. His face was like a closed door, his eyes were curtained windows. He mused darkly as one who broods on some bitter defeat.
Nevertheless, he was a human presence and the lonely dweller on the heights could not resist the charm of his guest's personality, remote as he seemed.
"Where do you live?" he asked.
There was a moment's hesitation.
"In St. Paul."
"Ever been here before?"
The dark man shook his shaggy head slowly, and dropped his eyes as if this were the end of the communication. "No, and I never expect to come again."
The miner perceived power in his guest's resolute taciturnity, and the very weight of the silence eventually opened his own lips. From moment to moment the impulse to talk grew stronger within him. There was something as compelling as heat in this reticent visitor whose soul was so intent on inward problems that it perceived nothing of interest in an epaulet of gold on the shoulder of Mount Solidor.
"Few come this trail now," the miner volunteered, as he cleared the table. "I am alone and seldom see a human being drifting my way. I do not invite them."
The stranger refilled his pipe and again leaned back against the wall in ponderous repose. If he heard his host's remark he gave no sign of it, and yet, despite the persistence of his guest's silence—perhaps because of it—the lonely gold-seeker babbled on with increasingcandor, contradicting himself, revealing, hiding, edging round his story, confessing to his hopes of riches, betraying in the end the secrets of his lonely life. It was as if the gates of his unnatural reserve had broken down and the desire to be heard, to be companioned, had over-borne all his early caution.
"It's horribly lonesome up here," he confessed. "Sometimes I think I'll give it all up and go back to civilization. When I came here the pass had its traffic; now no one rides it, which is lucky for me," he added. "I have no prying visitors—I mean no one to contest my claim—and yet a man can't do much alone. Even if my ore richens I must transport it or build a mill. Sometimes I wonder what I'm living for, stuck away in this hole in the hills. I was born to better things—"
He checked himself at this moment, as if he were on the edge of self-betrayal, but his listener seemed not vitally interested in these personal details. However, he made some low-voiced remark, and, as if hypnotized, the miner resumed his monologue.
"The nights are the worst. They are endless—and sometimes when I cannot sleep I feel like surrendering to my fate—" Here again he broke off sharply. "That's nonsense, of course. I mean, it seems as if a life were too much to pay for a crazy act—I mean a mine. You'll ask why I don't sell it, but it's all I have and, besides, no one has any faith in it but myself. I cannot sell, and I can't live down there among men."
Gabbling, keeping time to his nervous feet and hands, endlessly repeating himself, denying, confessing, the miner raged on, and through it all the dark-browed guest smoked tranquilly, too indifferent to ask a question or make comment; but when, once or twice, he lifted his eyes, the garrulous one shuddered and turned away,a scared look on his haggard face. He seemed unable to endure that steady glance.
At last, for a little space, he remained silent; then, as if compelled by some increasing magic in his hearer, he burst forth:
"I'm not here entirely by my own fault—I mean my own choice. A man is a product of his environment, you know that, and mine made me idle, wasteful. Drink got me—drink made me mad—and so—and so—here I am struggling to win back a fortune. Once I gambled—on the wheel; now I am gambling with nature on the green of these mountain slopes; but I'll win—I have already won—and soon I shall sell and go back to the great cities."
Again his will curbed his treacherous tongue, and, walking to the doorway, he stood for a moment, looking out; then he fiercely snarled:
"Oh, God, how I hate it all—how I hate myself! I am going mad with this life! The squeak of these shadowy conies, the twitter of these unseen little birds, go on day by day. They'll drive me mad! If you had not come to-night I could not have slept—I would have gone to the mill, and that means drink to me—drink and oblivion. You came and saved me. I feared you—hated you then; now I bless you."
Once more he seemed to answer an unspoken query:
"I have no people. My mother is dead, my father has disowned me—he does not even know I am alive. I'm the black devil of the family—but I shall go back—"
His face was working with passion, and though he took a seat opposite his guest, his hands continued to flutter aimlessly and his head moved restlessly from side to side.
"I don't know why I am telling all this to you," hewent on after a pause. "I reckon it's because of the weakness of the thirst that is coming over me. Some time I'll go down to those hell-holes at the mills and never come back—the stuff they sell to me is destructive as fire—it is poison! You're a man of substance, I can see that—you're no hobo like most of the fellows out here—that's why I'm talking to you. You remind me of some one I know. There's something familiar in your eyes."
The man with the beard struck the ashes from his pipe and began scraping it. "There is always a woman in these cases," he critically remarked.
The miner took this simple statement as a challenging question. His excitement visibly increased, but he did not at once reply. He talked on aimlessly, incoherently, struggling like a small animal in a torrent. He rose at last, and as he stood in the doorway, breathing deeply, his face livid in the sunset light, the muscles of his jaw trembled.
The stranger observed his host's agitation, but put away his pipe with slow and steady hand. He said nothing, and yet an observer would have declared he held the other and weaker man in the grasp of an inexorable hypnotic silence. Finally he fixed a calm, cold glance upon his host, as if summoning him to answer.
"Yes," the miner confessed, "there is always a woman in the case—another and more fortunate man. The woman is false, the man is treacherous. You trust and they betray. Such beings ruin and madden—they make outlaws such as I am—"
"Love is above will," asserted the millwright, with decision.
The other man fiercely turned. "I know what you mean—you mean the woman is not to becondemned—that love goes where it is drawn. That is true, but deceit is not involuntary—it is deliberate—"
"Sometimes we deceive ourselves."
"In her case it was deceit," retorted the miner, who was now so deeply engaged with his own story that each general observation on the part of his guest was taken to be specific and personal.
The room was growing dusky, and the stranger's glance appeared keener, more insistent, as his body melted into the shadow. His shaggy head and black beard all but disappeared; only the faint outlines of his forehead remained, and yet, as his physical self faded into the gloom, his personality, his psychic self, loomed larger. His will enveloped the hermit, drawing upon him with irresistible power. It was as if he were wringing him dry of a confession as the priest closes in upon the culprit.
"I had my happy days—my days of care-free youth," the unquiet man was saying. "But my time of innocence was short. Evil companions came early and reckless deeds followed.... I knew I was losing something, I knew I was being drawn downward, but I could not escape. Day and night I called for help, and then—shecame—"
"Who came?"
"The one who made me forget all the others, the one who made me ashamed."
"And then?"
"And then for a time I was happy in the hope that I might win her and so redeem my life."
"And she?"
"She pitied me—at first—and loved me—at least I thought so."
As his excitement increased his words came slower,burdened with passion. He spoke like a prisoner addressing a judge, his voice but a husky whisper.
"I told her I was unworthy of her—that was when I believed her to be an angel. I promised to begin a new life for her sake. Then she promised me—helped me—and all the while she was false to me—false as a hell-cat!"
"How?" queried the almost invisible man, and his voice was charged with stern demand.
"All the time she was promised to another man—and that man my enemy."
Here his frenzy flared forth in a torrent of words.
"Then—then I went mad. My brain was scarred and numb. I lost all sense of pity—all fear of law—all respect for woman. I only knew my wrongs—my despair—my hate. I watched, I waited, I found them together—"
"And then? What did you do then?" demanded the stranger, rising from his seat with sudden energy, his voice deep, insistent, masterful. "Tell me what you did?"
The miner's wild voice died to a hesitant whisper. "I—I fled."
"But before that—before you fled?"
"What is it to you?" asked the hermit, gazing with scared eyes at the man who towered above him like the demon of retribution. "Who are you?"
"I am the avenger!" answered the other. "The man you hated was my brother. The woman you killed was his wife."
The fugitive fell upon his knees with a cry like that of one being strangled.
Out of the darkness a red flame darted, and the crouching man fell to the floor, a crumpled, bloody heap.
For a long time the executioner stood above the body, waiting, listening from the shadow to the faint receding breath-strokes of his victim. When all was still he restored his weapon to its sheath and stepped over the threshold into the keen and pleasant night.
As he closed the door behind him the stranger raised his eyes to Solidor, whose sovereign, cloud-like crest swayed among the stars.
"Now I shall rest," he said, with solemn satisfaction.