CHAPTER XXIX
DURING the second winter Ruth left the ranch only twice, except for runs down to Wagon Wheel. Late in January she went to Cheyenne with her boy to make another appeal to the governor. He was full of genuine homely kindness to her, and renewed at once his allegiance to Rowan, junior. With the large hospitality of the West, he urged her to spend the next few months as their guest, to postpone her return at least until the snow was out of the hills. But in the matter of a parole he stood firm against the entreaties of his wife, the touching wistfulness of her friend, and the tug of desire at his own big heart.
Her other visit was in April to the penitentiary. McCoy was away as a trusty in charge of a road-building gang near Casper. But it was not her husband that Ruth had come to see. She wanted to make a plea to the one man who could help her. She carried an order from Governor McDowell permitting her to see him.
The hour she had chosen was inauspicious. Falkner, sullen and dogged, was brought in irons to the office of the warden. His face was badly swollen and cut. He pretended not to recognize Ruth, but stood, heavy and lowering, his sunken eyes set defiantly straight before him.
“He’s been in solitary for a week,” explained the warden. “Makes us more trouble than any two men here. This time he hit a guard over the head with a shovel.”
The prisoner had the baited look of a hunted wild animal.
“I’m so sorry,” breathed Ruth.
It was plain to her at a glance that he was much more of a wild beast than he had been when she last saw him.
“You needn’t be sorry for him. He brings it all on himself.” The warden turned curtly to Falkner. “This lady wants to talk to you. See you behave yourself.”
But when she was alone with this battered hulk her carefully prepared arguments all fell away from her. She felt instinctively that they would have no weight with him. She hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. The best she could do was to repeat herself.
“I’m sorry they don’t treat you well, Mr. Falkner. Is there anything I can do for you—tobacco or anything like that?”
He gave her a sulky sidewise look, but did not answer.
“We’re all hoping you’ll get out soon,” she went on bravely. “They are talking of getting up a petition for all of you.”
She stuck again. His whole attitude was unfriendly and hostile.
“I—I’ve come to ask another favour of you. Perhaps you don’t know that I have a little baby now. I’m trying to get Rowan out on parole, but the governor won’t do anything unless we bring evidence to show that he did not kill Mr. Gilroy.”
He clung still to his obstinate silence. His eyes were watching her now steadily. It came to her that her suffering pleased him.
“So I’ve come to you, Mr. Falkner. You are the only man that can help me. If you’ll make a statement that you shot Mr. Gilroy the governor will give me back my husband. I’m asking it for the sake of my little baby.”
A pulse beat fast in her throat. A tremor passed through her body. The eyes begged him to be merciful.
He laughed, and the sound of his laughter was harsh and cruel.
“I’d see the whole outfit of you rot first.”
“I’m sure you don’t mean that,” she said gently. “You haven’t been treated well here, and naturally you feel hard about it. Anybody would. But I’m sure you want to be fair to your friends.”
“My friends!” he jeered bitterly. “Tha’s a good one. My friends!”
“Isn’t Rowan your friend? You told me yourself that he had stood by you to the finish, though it almost cost him his own life. If he had lifted a finger and pointed it at you he and the others would have been given short terms and you would have been hanged. You said as much to me that day down at Wagon Wheel. Won’t you say as much to the governor now? It can’t hurt you, and it would bring happiness to so many people.”
“You want me to be the goat, eh?”
“I want you to tell the truth. Rowan would in your place. He’d never let women and children suffer for his wrongdoing. I don’t think you would if you thought of it.”
“You’re wastin’ yore breath,” he told her sulkily.
“I wish you could see Missie Yerby and her little boy. They get along somehow because the neighbours help with the cattle. She doesn’t complain. She’s brave. But she does miss Sam dreadfully. So does the little boy. He’s a nice manly little chap, but he needs a father. It isn’t right that he shouldn’t have one. He often asks when his dad is coming home.”
“I ain’t keepin’ him here,” he growled.
“And Mrs. Rogers will be an old woman soon if Brad doesn’t get out. I can see her fading away. It seems to me that if I could help them by saying a few words, by just telling the truth, that it would give me pleasure to make them happy.”
“Different here,” he snarled. “It’s every one for himself.”
“That isn’t what you told me that day at Wagon Wheel,” she said quietly.
“All right. I’ve changed my mind. Let it go at that.”
“Kate is still waiting for Jack Cole. She won’t look at any other man.”
“Makes no difference to me if she waits till Kingdom Come.”
“That’s three women who are unhappy, and Jack’s mother is another, and I’m the fifth. Five women and two children you could make glad by confessing that you started the shooting and killed Mr. Gilroy. Not many men have an opportunity like that. We would bless you in our prayers, Mr. Falkner.”
“Keep right on soft-soapin’ me. See where it gets you,” he taunted.
She ignored his retort.
“We’d do more for you than that. We’d all work for your pardon, too. We’d show how Joe Tait had beaten you up when you hadn’t a chance and how quarrelsome he was. Pretty soon we’d get you out, too.”
“The hell you would! Don’t I know? I’d stand the gaff for all of ’em. Ain’t I doing it now? Rowan’s out somewheres bossin’ a road gang. Rogers is in the warden’s office. Sam Yerby putters around the garden. An’ me—I live in that damned dark hole alone. They’re warden’s little pets. I’m the one that gets the whip. By God, if I ever get a chance at one of these slave-drivers——”
He broke off, to grind his teeth in a fury of impotent rage.
“Don’t! Don’t feel that way,” she begged. “You get all the worst of it. Don’t you see you do? And it makes you unhappy. Let me tell the warden that you’ll try not to break the prison rules. It would be so much better for you.”
“Tell him I’ll cut his black heart out if I ever get a chance.”
She was appalled at his venomous hatred. Vaguely she knew that prison discipline was often harsh. Occasionally some echo of it crept into newspapers. Falkner was refractory and undisciplined. No doubt he had broken rules and been insubordinate. It came to her that there had been some contest of stubborn will between this lawless convict and the guards who had charge of him. His face was scarred with wounds not yet healed. She did not know that ridges crossed and recrossed his back where the lash had cut away the skin with cruel strokes which had burned like fire. But she did know that he was untamed and unbroken, that nothing short of death could make that wild spirit quail before his tormentors.
“I wish I could help you,” she said. “But I can’t. All I can do is ask you to help me. Won’t you think about it, please? I know you’re a man. You’re not afraid to take the blame that belongs to you. If you could only see this straight, the way you would see it if you were outdoors in the hills, I know you would help me.”
“I don’t need to think about it. I’m playin’ my own hand.”
“The governor says that if I can get any evidence, any proof that Rowan did not start the shooting or kill Gilroy, he will give him a pardon. It lies with you, Mr. Falkner.”
“Well, I’ve done given you my answer. I’m for myself, an’ for nobody else. Tha’s the bed rock of it.”
For Rowan’s freedom Ruth would have gone a long way. She had humbled herself to plead with the convict. But she had known it would be useless. His environment had so deadened his moral sense, so numbed his sympathy, that she could strike no response from him. When she left the prison it was with the knowledge that she had not advanced her husband’s cause one whit.
In front of the warden’s house a convict was wheeling manure and scattering it on the lawn. Some trick of gesture caught the attention of Ruth. Her arrested eyes fixed themselves on the man. His shoulders drooped, and his whole attitude expressed dejected listlessness, but she was sure she knew him. Deserting the warden’s wife, she ran forward with both hands outstretched.
“Oh, I’m so glad to see you!”
For an instant a puzzled expression lifted the white eyebrows and slackened the lank jaw of Sam Yerby. Then his shoulders straightened. He had been caught with his guard down, detected in the mood of hopelessness into which he often fell now.
He came gamely to time. “Well—well, Miss Ruth. I’m sure proud to see you, ma’am.”
“They told me you were at a road camp. One of the guards said so.”
“I was, but I’m back. You’re looking fine, ma’am. Missie writes me you-all done got a little baby of yore own now.”
She nodded. “Yes, I’ll tell you all about it. But how are you? Missie will ask me a hundred questions.”
“I’m tol’able, thank you.” Yerby, looking across her shoulder, saw a guard moving toward them. He did not mention to her that he was liable to ten days’ solitary confinement for talking to a visitor without permission. “How’s Missie—and Son?”
“Missie is prettier than ever. She’s always talking about you. And the boy—he’s the dandiest little chap—smart as a whip and good as gold. You’ll be awfully pleased with him when you come home.”
“Yes’m—when I come home.”
His voice fell flat. Its lifelessness went to the heart of his friend. She saw that hope was dead within him. He was getting into the fifties, and the years were slipping away.
“That won’t be long. We’re getting up a petition to——”
The guard pushed between Ruth and the convict. “You know the rule, Yerby,” he said curtly.
“Yes, sir, and I most generally aim to keep it. But when a lady speaks to me—an old friend——”
“Come along with me.”
The old cowman dropped his shovel and shambled off beside the guard.
Ruth turned in consternation to the wife of the warden. “What have I done?”
“He oughtn’t to have talked with you. That’s the rule. He knew it.”
“You won’t let him be punished because I made a mistake, will you? He’s a Texan, you know. He thinks it wouldn’t be courteous not to answer a lady. It would make me very unhappy if I had got him into trouble.”
The warden’s wife smiled. “I think it can be arranged this time. We all like him. We’re all sorry for him. He takes it to heart a good deal that he has to stay in prison. I talk with him when he pots my plants, and he tells me he wants to hear the whining of a rope and to taste the dust of the drag driver, whatever that is. I wish the governor would pardon him. If he stays much longer he’ll become an old man with no hope in his heart.”
“I’ll tell his wife that you are good to him. It will be a great comfort to her. She’s a good deal younger than he is, but she’s very fond of him.”
The meeting with Yerby depressed Ruth more even than her encounter with Falkner. She took home with her a memory of a brave man slowly having the zest of life pressed out of him.
But of this she said little when next she wrote to Rowan. Always her letters had running through them the red thread of hope. She told him that Flanders was getting up a petition for a parole which had been signed by half the county, including the judge who had tried him, every member of the jury, the prosecuting attorney, and the sheriff. Nor did she mention that Ruth McCoy was the motive power behind the petition, that she in person had won the signatures of Haight, Matson, and the judge, as well as hundreds of others.
The clock struck midnight before she finished her letter:
It is very late, sweetheart—almost utterly quiet, save for a small wind among the leaves, and the night is black and soft, and abloom with stars. Stillness and stars and whispering wind—they are all astir with dreams and questions—yes, and answers, too. I feel sure of that, love—as sure as I do of you.Will you take “good-night” born of the night’s voices, dear?
It is very late, sweetheart—almost utterly quiet, save for a small wind among the leaves, and the night is black and soft, and abloom with stars. Stillness and stars and whispering wind—they are all astir with dreams and questions—yes, and answers, too. I feel sure of that, love—as sure as I do of you.
Will you take “good-night” born of the night’s voices, dear?
She signed her name, turned out the lights, and sat long at the low window, her fingers laced around her knee. The thoughts back of her hungry, shadowy eyes were gropings for the answers of which she had written so confidently.
CHAPTER XXX
AGAIN spring bloomed into summer and summer yellowed into autumn. A mellow, golden glow lay over the valleys, and in the foothills purple asters and pink thistles lent patches of colour to a brown land.
During the daytime Ruth was busy with business details of the round-up, of the fall beef shipment, of planting and of harvesting. The lettuce crop had been very successful and Jennings had long ago made theamende honorablefor his doubts. She had experimented with pinto beans, and these were no sooner cut and stacked than the men were hard at it putting in winter wheat. As soon as dusk fell she devoted herself to the baby until he went to sleep for the night. In the evening she took up the accounts of the ranch, wrote to Rowan, held a conference with Jennings, or did a little desultory reading. The housekeeping she left almost entirely in the competent hands of Mrs. Stovall.
In addition to the business of the Circle Diamond and superintending the care of a year-old baby, Ruth had other claims upon her time that she could not ignore. One of these was her promise to Sam Yerby to look after Missie and the boy. It was her custom to have them down for a day every other month and to visit the Yerby place between times.
On a day in mid-November, with Rowan, junior, beside her, Ruth set out in the car for the little mountain ranch. It was a cool crisp morning. The sting of frost was in the air, and the indigo mountains were ribbed with white in the snow-filled gulches. To the nostrils came the tang of sage and later of pine.
After she had driven from the foothills into the cañon, Ruth stopped to wrap an extra blanket around the baby, for the sun was painting only the upper walls as yet, and down by the creek there was an inch-thick ice at the edges. The early fall snows were melting on the sunny slopes above, and Hill Creek was pouring down in a flood. The road crossed the creek twice, but after she was on it Ruth discovered that the second bridge was very shaky. The car got over safely, but she decided to take the high-line road home, even though it was a few miles longer.
Robert E. Lee Yerby came running down to the gate to meet them.
“Oh, Auntie Rufe!” he shouted. “Mumma’s peelin’ a chicken for dinner.”
Ruth caught the youngster up and hugged him. He was an attractive little chap, with the bluest of eyes and the most ingenuous of smiles.
“I like you, Auntie Rufe. You always smell like pink woses,” he confided with the frankness of extreme youth.
His r’s were all w’s, but the young woman understood him. She gave him another hug in payment for the compliment.
“I’ve brought budda to play with you, Bobbie.” “Budda” was the nearest Robert could come to the word brother at the time Rowan was born, and the word had stuck with him, as is the way with children. “Now let me go. I must get out and shut the gate.”
“No, it don’t hurt if it’s open. Mumma said so, tos everyfing’s in the pasture.”
As she went into the house with Missie, stripping the driving gauntlets from her hands, Ruth noticed that clouds were banking in the sky over the summit of the range. It looked like snow.
The days she spent with Ruth were red-letter ones for Mrs. Yerby. Missie was a simple mountain girl, born and bred in the Wyoming hills. What little schooling she had had was of the country-district kind. It did not go far, and was rather sketchy even to the point she had gone. But this radiant, vital girl from the cities, so fine and beautiful, and yet so generous of her friendship, so competent and strong and self-reliant, but so essentially feminine—Missie accepted what she offered with a devotion that came near worship. She did not understand how anybody could help loving Ruth McCoy. To be elected one of her friends was a rare privilege. Perhaps this unquestioning approval of all she was and did, together with Mrs. Yerby’s need of her, did more to win Ruth than any effort the other woman could have made. She was plentifully endowed with human failings, and flattery of this sort was no doubt incense to her self-esteem.
The women chatted and worked while the youngsters played on the floor. Just before dinner a cow-puncher from the Triangle Dot rode up and trailed into the house with spurs a-jingle. He had come to tell Mrs. Yerby about one of her yearlings he had rescued from a swamp and was keeping in the corral for a day or two. His nostrils sniffed the dinner in the kitchen, and it was not hard to persuade him to stay and eat.
“Wha’ a’ is?” demanded Robert E. Lee Yerby, pointing to the rowel on the high heel of the rider.
“It’s a spur, son, for to jog a bronc’s memory when it gits to dreamin’,” explained the young man. “I reckon I’ll step out and wash up for dinner, Mrs. Yerby.”
When he came in, his red face glowing from soap and water, it was with a piece of news he had till that moment forgotten.
“Have you ladies heard about Hal Falkner?”
Ruth, putting a platter of fried chicken on the table, turned abruptly to him. “What about him?”
“He escaped from the pen four days ago—beat up a guard ’most to death and made his get-away. Four prisoners were in the jailbreak, but they’ve got ’em all but Hal. He reached the hills somehow.”
The eyes of Ruth McCoy asked a question she dared not put into words.
“No, ma’am. None of the rest of our boys mixed up in it a-tall,” he told her quickly.
The young woman drew a deep breath of relief. The hope was always with her of a day near at hand when the Bald Knob raiders would be paroled, but she knew if they joined such an undertaking as this it would be fatal to their chances.
“Do you think Mr. Falkner will get away?” Ruth asked.
“I reckon not, ma’am. You see, he’s got the telephone against him. Whenever he shows up at a ranch the news will go out that he was there. But he got holt of a gun from a farmer. It’s a cinch they won’t take him without a fight.”
Snow was already falling when the cow-puncher took his departure. He cast a weather eye toward the hills. “Heap much snow in them clouds. If I was you, Mrs. McCoy, I’d start my gasoline bronc on the home trail so’s not to run any chances of getting stalled.”
Ruth thought this good advice. It took a few minutes to wrap Rowan for the journey and to say good-bye. By the time she was on the way the air was full of large flakes.
The storm increased steadily as she drove toward home. There was a rising wind that brought the sleet about her in sharp gusts. So fierce became the swirl that when she turned into the high-line drive she was surrounded by a white, stinging wall that narrowed the scope of her vision to a few feet.
The temperature was falling rapidly, and the wind swept the hilltops with a roar. The soft flakes had turned to powdered ice. It beat upon Ruth with a deadly chill that searched to the bones.
The young mother became alarmed. The boy was well wrapped up, but no clothing was sufficient protection against a blizzard. Moreover, there were dangerous places to pass, cuts where the path ran along the sloping edge of the mountain with a sheer fall of a hundred feet below. It would never do to try to take these with snow heavy on the ledge and the way blurred so that she could not see clearly.
Ruth stopped and tried to adjust the curtains. But her fingers were like ice, and the knobs so sleet-incrusted that she could not fasten the buttons. It was her intention to drive back to the Yerby ranch, and she backed the car into a drift while trying to turn. The snow was so slippery that the wheel failed to get a grip. She tried again and again without success, and at last killed the engine. Her attempts to crank it were complete failures.
It was a moment for swift decision. Ruth made hers instantly. She took the baby from the front seat, wrapped him close to her in all the blankets she had, and started forward toward a deserted miner’s cabin built in a draw close to the trail.
Half a mile is no distance when the sun is shining and the path is clear. But near and far take on different meanings in a blizzard. Drifts underfoot made the going slow. The pelting wind, heavy with the sting of sleet, beat upon her, sifted through her clothes, and sapped her vitality. More than once her numbed legs doubled under her like the blades of a jackknife.
Ruth knew she was in deadly peril. She recalled stories of how men had wandered for hours in the white whirl, and had lain down to die at last within a stone’s throw of their own houses. A young schoolteacher from Denver had perished three years before with one of her hands clutching the barbwire strand that led to safety.
But the will to live was strong in the young mother. For the sake of that precious young life in her arms she dared not give up. Indomitably she fought against the ice-laden wind which flung sleet waves at her to paralyse her energy, benumb her muscles, and chill the blood in her arteries. More than once she went down, her frozen legs buckling under her as she moved. But always she struggled to her feet again and plowed forward.
At last she staggered down an incline to a dip in the road. This might or might not be the draw that led to the cabin. There was no way of telling. But she had to make a choice, and life for both her and the baby hung upon it.
Her instinct told her she could go no farther. Ruth left the road, plunged into the drifts, and fought her way up the gulch. It was her last effort, and she knew it. When she went down it was all she could do to drag herself to her feet again. But somehow she crawled forward.
Out of the whirling snow loomed a log wall within reach of her hand. She staggered along it to the door, felt for the latch, found it, and stumbled into the hut.
CHAPTER XXXI
RUTH, weak and shaken from her struggle with the storm, stood in bewildered amazement near the door. A man was facing her, in his hands a rifle. He stood crouched and wary, like a wolf at bay.
The man was Falkner.
“Any more of you?” he demanded. Not for an instant had his eyes relaxed.
“No.”
“Sure of that?”
She nodded, too much exhausted for speech.
“Fine!” he went on, lowering his gun slowly. “We’ll be company for each other. Better shut the door.”
Instead, she staggered forward to the table and put down the bundle of shawls. Her arms were as heavy as though they were weighted. She sank down on the long bench in front of the table.
Like many deserted mining cabins, this one still held the home-made furniture the prospector had built with a hammer and a saw. In one corner was a rusty old stove, just now red-hot from a crackling wood fire.
“Storm-bound, I reckon,” suggested the man, watching her with narrowed lids.
“Yes,” she panted. “Going home from Yerbys’.”
From outside came the shriek of the rising storm.
“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, my dear,” he grinned, with a flash of his broken teeth.
Ruth looked round at him, her steady eyes fixed in his. There came to her a fugitive memory of meeting him on a hill trail with that look in his eyes that was a sacrilege to her womanhood. She remembered once before when he had used those words, “my dear.” Since then the wolf in him had become full grown, fed by the horrors of his prison life. He was a hunted creature. His hand was against society and its against him. The bars that had restrained him in the old days were down. He was a throwback to the cave man, and, what was worse, that primitive animal with enemies hot on his trail.
If this adventure had befallen her two years earlier the terror-stricken eyes of the girl would have betrayed her, the blood in her veins would have chilled with horror. But she had learned to be captain of her soul. Whatever fear she may have felt, none of it reached the surface.
A little wail rose from the bundle of shawls. Falkner, his nerves jumpy from sleepless nights and the continuous strain of keeping his senses alert, flashed a quick, suspicious look around the room.
Ruth turned and unloosened the wraps. The convict, taken by sheer astonishment, moved forward a step or two.
“Well, I’ll be dog-goned! You got a kid in there,” he said slowly.
At sight of his mother the face of the youngster cleared. Through all the fight with the storm, snug and warm in his nest, he had slept peacefully. But now he had wakened, and objected to being half smothered.
“Don’t you remember?” Ruth asked the man. “I told you I had a baby. Do you think he is like me or Rowan?”
She walked straight to him, and held the baby up for his inspection.
Falkner murmured something that sounded like an oath. But it happened that Rowan, junior, took to men. He smiled and stretched out his arms. Before the outlaw could speak, before he could voice the sullen rejection of friendliness that was in his mind, Ruth had pushed the boy into his arms.
The soft little hands of the baby explored the rough face of the man. Rowan, junior, beamed with delight.
“You da-da,” he announced confidently.
Ruth managed a little laugh. “He’s claiming you already, Mr. Falkner, even though he doesn’t know that meeting you has probably saved our lives.”
For years Falkner had fought his snarling way against those who held the upper hand. Hatred and bitterness had filled his soul. But the contact with this soft, helpless bit of gurgling humanity sent a queer thrill through him. It was as if pink velvet of exquisite texture, breathing delicious life, were rubbing itself against his cheek. But it was not alone the physical sensation that reached him. Somehow the little beggar, so absolutely sure of his welcome, twined those dimpled fingers around the heartstrings of the callous man. Not since his mother’s death had any human being come to him with such implicit trust. The Adam’s apple in the convict’s throat shot up and registered emotion.
“The blamed little cuss! See him grab a-holt of my ear.”
Ruth left the baby in his arms, took off her coat, and walked to the stove. She held out her hands and began to warm them.
“We were in the car,” she explained. “I took the high-line back because I was afraid of the upper bridge. The machine stalled in a drift.”
“You don’t ask me how-come I’m here,” he growled.
“I know,” she said simply. “Art Philips dropped in to Yerbys’ and stayed for dinner. He told us you escaped four days ago.”
“Did he tell you I killed a guard?”
“No. He said you wounded one.”
“First I knew he wasn’t dead. Wish I’d been more thorough. If ever a man needed killing, he did.”
“They abused you a good deal, didn’t they?” she ventured.
He ripped out a sudden furious oath. “If ever I get a chance at two or three of them——”
“Better not think of that now. The question is how you are going to get away.”
“What’s that to you?” he demanded, his suspicions all alert.
“I thought if you’d come down to the Circle Diamond you could get a horse. That would give you a much better chance.”
“And how do I know you wouldn’t ’phone to Matson?” he sneered.
She looked at him. “Don’t you know me better than that, Mr. Falkner?” she said gently.
He mumbled what might be taken either for an apology or for an oath.
“That’s all right. I dare say I wouldn’t be very trustful myself if I had been through what you have.” Ruth tossed him a smiling nod and dismissed the subject. “But we’re not down at the ranch yet. How long is this storm likely to last, Mr. Falkner?”
“It will blow itself out before morning. Too early in the season for it to last. I reckon it’s only a one-day blizzard.”
“You don’t think there will be any trouble about getting down to-morrow, do you?” she asked anxiously. “I’m not worried about myself, but I’ve got to get food for Baby.”
“Depends on the snow,” he said sulkily. “If it keeps on, you can’t break trail and carry the kid.”
“Perhaps you could go with me; then you could cut out a horse and ride away after dark.”
“I don’t have to go down there. I can pick up a horse at Yerbys’.” He added grudgingly in explanation: “Me for the hills. I don’t want to get down into the valleys, where too many people are.”
At midnight the storm outside was still howling and the sleety snow was beating against the window. The wind, coming straight from the divide above, buffeted the snow clouds in front of it. Drifts sifted and shifted as the snow whirled with the changing gusts.
The young mother, crouched behind the stove with her baby asleep across her knees, drowsed at times and wakened again with a start to see half-shuttered eyes shining across at her from the other side of the fire. In the darkness of the night she was afraid. Those gleaming points of light, always focused on her, were too suggestive of a beast of prey. With that blizzard raging outside she was a thousand miles from help, beyond the chance of human aid in case of need.
Again her instinct served Ruth well. She rose stiffly and carried the baby across to the man.
“Would you mind holding him for a while? I’ve been still so long my muscles are stiff and numb.”
Grudgingly Falkner took the baby, but as the warm body of the sleeping child nestled close to him he felt once more that queer tug at his heart. A couple of inches of the fat, pink little legs were exposed where the dress had fallen back. The man’s rough forefinger touched the soft flesh gently. To the appeal of this amazing miracle—a helpless babe asleep in his arms—everything that was good and fine in him responded. He had lived a harsh and bitter life, he had cherished hatred and dwelt with his own evil imagination; but as he looked down and felt the clutch of those small fingers on his wrist the devil that had been in his eyes slowly vanished.
Ruth tramped the floor till the pin pricks and the numbness were gone from her limbs. Then she returned to her place against the wall back of the stove. Her eyes closed drowsily, opened again. She told herself that she must not fall asleep—dare not. Falkner was sitting motionless with Rowan in his arms, his whole attention on the child. The woman’s head nodded. She struggled to shake off the sleep that was stealing over her.
When she wakened it was broad day. A slant of sunshine made a ribbon of gold across the floor. Rowan was crying a little fretfully, and the convict was dancing him up and down as a diversion from his hunger.
CHAPTER XXXII
“CAN’T you do something for this kid?” the man asked gruffly.
Ruth took the baby. “He’s hungry,” she said.
“Then we’d better be hitting the trail.”
Falkner walked to the door and flung it open. He looked out upon a world of white-blanketed hills. The sun was throwing from them a million sparkles of light.
“Gimme that kid,” the outlaw said roughly. “We gotta get him down to breakfast. Here! You take my gun.”
Ruth wrapped up the baby warmly and handed him to Falkner. The man broke trail to the point where the draw struck the road. He looked to the right, then to the left. Safety lay for him in the mountains; for her and Rowan, junior, at the Circle Diamond, which was three miles nearer than Yerby’s ranch. The way up the cañon would be harder to travel than the way down. There was a chance that they could not make it through the snow, even a probability.
“Which way?” asked Ruth.
He turned to the left toward the Circle Diamond. The heart of the girl leaped. The convict had put the good of the child before his own.
The day had turned warm, so that before they had travelled half an hour the snow was beginning to get soft and slushy. The going was heavy. Ruth was not wearing her heavy, high-laced boots, but the shoes she was accustomed to use indoors. Soon her stockings were wringing wet and the bottoms of her skirts were soaked. It was mostly a downhill grade, but within the hour she was fagged. It cost an effort to drag her foot up for each step. She did not want to be a quitter, but at last she had to speak:
“I can’t go any farther. Leave me here and send the boys to get me. Mrs. Stovall will look after the baby.”
The outlaw stopped. There was grudging admiration in the glance he gave her.
“You can make it. We’re through the worst part. Soon we’ll be in the foothills, and there the snow is real light.” After a moment he added: “We ain’t runnin’ for a train. Take your time.”
He brushed the snow from a rock and told her with a wave of his hand to sit down. After a few minutes’ rest she rose and told him she was ready to try again.
Falkner’s prediction of a lighter snowfall down in the foothills proved correct. They rounded a rocky point, which brought them within sight of the Circle Diamond. The smoke from the house rose straight up in the brilliant sunshine. It looked very near and close, but the deceptive air of the Rockies could no longer fool Ruth. They still had two miles to go. The descent to the valley was very rapid from here, and she could see that a scant two inches would measure the depth of the snow into which they were moving.
The young woman sloshed along behind. She was very tired, and her shoulders sagged from exhaustion. But she set her teeth in a game resolve to buck up and get through somehow. One after another she tried the old devices for marking progress. She would pick a mark fifty yards ahead and vow to reach it, and then would select another goal, and after it was passed choose a third. One—two—three—four—five, she counted her steps to a hundred, began again and checked off a second century, and so kept on until she had added lap after lap.
They came to the Circle Diamond line fence, crawled between the strands, and tramped across the back pasture toward the house.
Ruth must by this time have been half asleep. Her feet moved almost of their own volition, as if by clockwork. She went forward like an automaton wound up by a set will that had become comatose.
A startled shout brought her back to life abruptly. A man with a raised rifle was standing near the bunk house. He was covering Falkner.
Swift as a panther, Falkner rid himself gently of the baby and turned to Ruth. He ripped out a sudden furious oath. She was empty-handed. Somewhere between the spot where she stood and the line fence the rifle had slipped unnoticed from her cramped fingers.
The outlaw was trapped.
“Throw up your hands!” came the curt order.
Instantly the convict swerved and began running to the right. Ruth stood directly in the line of fire. The man with the gun took a dozen quick steps to one side.
“Stop or I’ll fire!” he shouted.
Falkner paid no attention. He was making for a cottonwood arroyo back of the house.
The rifleman took a long aim and fired. The hunted man stumbled, fell, scrambled to his feet again, ran almost to the edge of the gulch, and sank down once more.
The man who had fired ran past Ruth toward the fallen man. She noticed that he was Sheriff Matson. It is doubtful if he saw her at all. Men emerged from the bunk house, the stable, the corral, and the house. Some were armed, the rest apparently were not. One had been shaving. He had finished one cheek, and the lather was still moist on the other.
The half-shaved man was her foreman, Jennings. At sight of the mistress of the ranch he stopped. She had knelt to pick up the crying baby.
“What’s the row?” he asked.
“Sheriff Matson has just shot Mr. Falkner.” She could hardly speak the words from her dry throat.
“Falkner! How did he come here?”
“Baby and I were snowbound in the old Potier cabin. He broke trail down for us and carried Baby.”
“Gad! And ran right into Matson.”
“What is the sheriff doing here?”
“Came in late last night with a posse. Word had been ’phoned him that Falkner had been seen in the hills heading for the Montana line. He aimed to close the passes, I reckon.”
Mrs. Stovall bore down upon them from the back door of the house. Ruth cut her off without allowing the housekeeper a word.
“No time to talk now, Mrs. Stovall. Feed Baby. He’s about starved. I’ll look after this business.”
With Jennings striding beside her, Ruth went across to the group surrounding the wounded man.
“Is he badly hurt?” she demanded.
One of her own punchers looked up and answered gravely: “Looks like, ma’am. In the leg. He’s bleeding a lot.”
The sight of the blood trickling down to the white snow for an instant sickened Ruth. But she repressed at once any weakness. Matson she ousted from command.
“Stop the bleeding with a tourniquet, Jennings; then have him carried to the house—to Rowan’s room. Sheriff, ’phone Doctor Irwin to come at once. Better send one of your men to meet him.”
Ruth herself flew to the house. She forgot that she was exhausted, forgot that she had had neither supper nor breakfast. The call for action carried her out of her own needs. Before the men had arrived with the wounded outlaw she was ready with sponges, cold water, and bandages.
After Falkner had been made as comfortable as possible, Ruth left him in charge of Norma Tait and retired to the pantry in search of food. When she had eaten she left word with Mrs. Stovall that she was going to sleep, but wanted to be called when Doctor Irwin arrived at the ranch.
At the housekeeper’s knock she awoke three hours later, refreshed and fit for anything. Ruth had not lived the past two years in outdoor Wyoming for nothing. She had grown tough of muscle and strong of body, so that she had gained the power of recuperation with very little rest.
Having examined the patient, Doctor Irwin retired with Ruth and Sheriff Matson to the front porch.
“What do you think?” asked the young woman anxiously.
“H’mp! Think—just missed a funeral,” he snorted. “Bullet struck half inch from artery.”
“But he’ll get well?”
“I reckon. Know better later.”
“When can I move him?” asked Matson.
“Don’t know. Not for a week or two, anyhow. You in a hurry to get him back to that hell where he came from, Sheriff?” bristled the old doctor.
“I’m not responsible for the pen, Doc,” answered Matson evenly. “And by all accounts I reckon Hal Falkner makes his own hell there. But I’m responsible for turning him over to the warden. If I could get him down to Wagon Wheel——”
“Well, you can’t!” snapped Irwin. “He’ll stay right here till I think it safe to move him. It’s my say-so, Aleck.”
“Sure. And while he’s at the Circle Diamond I’ll leave a couple of men to help nurse him. He might hurt himself trying to move before he’s really fit to travel,” the sheriff announced with a grim little smile.
Ruth was head nurse herself. For years she had held a bitter resentment against Falkner, but it could not stand against the thing that had happened. Put to the acid test, the man had sacrificed his chances of escape to save her and the baby. Alone, he could have reached the Yerby ranch and gone through one of the passes before Matson had closed it. With her and the baby as encumbrances he had not dared try the deeper snow of the upper hills. Because of his choice he lay in Rowan’s room, wounded, condemned to a return to Rawlins.
Never in his rough and turbulent life had the man been treated with such gentle consideration. The clean linen and dainty food were external effects of an atmosphere wholly alien to his experience. Here were kindness and friendly smiles and an unimaginable tenderness. All three of the women were good to him in their own way, but it was for Ruth that his hungry eyes watched the door. She brought the baby with her one day, after the fever had left him, and set the youngster on the bed, where the invalid could watch him play.
Falkner did not talk much. He lay quiet for hours, scarce moving, unless little Rowan was in the room. Ruth, coming in silently one afternoon, caught the brooding despair in his eyes.
He turned to her gently. “What makes you so good to me? You know you hate me.”
Her frank, friendly smile denied the charge. “No, I don’t hate you at all. I did, but I don’t now.”
“I’m keeping Rowan away from you. It was my fault he went there in the first place.”
“Yes, but you saved Baby’s life—and mine, too. If you had looked out only for yourself, you wouldn’t be lying here wounded, and perhaps you would have got away.” She flashed deep, tender eyes on him. “I’ll tell you a secret, Mr. Falkner. You’re not half so bad as you think you are. Can’t I see how you love Baby and how fond he is of you? You’re just like the rest of us, but you haven’t had a fair chance. So we’re going to be good to you while we can, and after you come back from prison we’re going to be friends.”
The ice that had gathered at his heart for years was melting fast. He turned his face to the wall and lay still there till dusk. Perhaps it was then that he fought out the final battle of his fight with himself.
When Mrs. Stovall came in with his supper he told her hoarsely that he wanted to see Matson at once on important business.
The sheriff drove his car in the moonlight out from Wagon Wheel. Ruth took him in to see Falkner.
“Send for Jennings and Mrs. Stovall. She’s a notary, ain’t she?” said the convalescent.
Ruth’s heart beat fast. “Yes. She was one when she was postmistress. Her term hasn’t run out yet.”
“All right. Get her. I want to make a sworn statement before witnesses.”
Matson took down the statement as Falkner dictated: