Kitabı oku: «Trailin'!», sayfa 15

CHAPTER XXXVI
JERRY WOOD

When he was at the old Drew place before, Logan had told him of Jerry Wood's place, five miles to the north among the hills; and to this he now directed his horse, riding at a merciless speed, as if he strove to gain, from the swift succession of rocks and trees that whirled past him, new thoughts to supplant the ones which already occupied him.

He reached in a short time a little rise of ground below which stretched a darkly wooded hollow, and in the midst the trees gave back from a small house, a two-storied affair, with not a light showing. He wished to announce himself and his name at this place under the pretence of asking harbourage for the brief remainder of the night. The news of what he had done at Drew's place could not have travelled before him to Wood's house; but the next day it would be sure to come, and Wood could say that he had seen Bard—alone—the previous night. It would be a sufficient shield for the name of Sally Fortune in that incurious region.

So he banged loudly at the door.

Eventually a light showed in an upper window and a voice cried: "Who's there?"

"Anthony Bard."

"Who the devil is Anthony Bard?"

"Lost in the hills. Can you give me a place to sleep for the rest of the night? I'm about done up."

"Wait a minute."

Voices stirred in the upper part of the house; the lantern disappeared; steps sounded, descending the stairs, and then the door was unbarred and held a cautious inch ajar. The ray of light jumped out at Bard like an accusing arm.

Evidently a brief survey convinced Jerry Wood that the stranger was no more than what he pretended. He opened the door wide and stepped back.

"Come in."

Bard moved inside, taking off his hat.

"How'd you happen to be lost in the hills?"

"I'm a bit of a stranger around here, you see."

The other surveyed him with a growing grin.

"I guess maybe you are. Sure, we'll put you up for the night. Where's your hoss?"

He went out and raised the lantern above his head to look. The light shone back from the lustrous wide eyes of the grey.

Wood turned to Bard.

"Seems to me I've seen that hoss."

"Yes. I bought it from Duffy out at Drew's place."

"Oh! Friend of Mr. Drew?"

Half a life spent on the mountain-desert had not been enough to remove from Drew that distinguishing title of respect. The range has more great men than it has "misters."

"Not exactly a friend," answered Bard.

"Sail right. Long's you know him, you're as good as gold with me. Come on along to the barn and we'll knock down a feed for the hoss."

He chuckled as he led the way.

"For that matter, there ain't any I know that can say they're friends to William Drew, though there's plenty that would like to if they thought they could get away with it. How's he lookin'?"

"Why, big and grey."

"Sure. He never changes none. Time and years don't mean nothin' to Drew. He started bein' a man when most of us is in short pants; he'll keep on bein' a man till he goes out. He ain't got many friends—real ones—but I don't know of any enemies, neither. All the time he's been on the range Drew has never done a crooked piece of work. Every decent man on the range would take his word ag'in'—well, ag'in' the Bible, for that matter."

They reached the barn at the end of this encomium, and Bard unsaddled his horse. The other watched him critically.

"Know somethin' about hosses, eh?"

"A little."

"When I seen you, I put you down for a tenderfoot. Don't mind, do you? The way you talked put me out."

"For that matter, I suppose I am a tenderfoot."

"Speakin' of tenderfoots, I heard of one over to Eldara the other night that raised considerable hell. You ain't him, are you?"

He lifted the lantern again and fixed his keen eyes on Bard.

"However," he went on, lowering the lantern with an apologetic laugh, "I'm standin' here askin' questions and chatterin' like a woman, and what you're thinkin' of is bed, eh? Come on with me."

Upstairs in the house he found Bard a corner room with a pile of straw in the corner by way of a mattress. There he spread out some blankets, wished his guest a good sleep, and departed.

Left to himself, Anthony stretched out flat on his back. It had been a wild, hard day, but he felt not the slightest touch of weariness; all he wished was to relax his muscles for a few moments. Moreover, he must be away from the house with the dawn-first, because Sally Fortune might waken, guess where he had gone, and follow him; secondly because the news of what had happened at Drew's place might reach Wood at any hour.

So he lay trying to fight the thought of Sally from his mind and concentrate on some way of getting back to Drew without riding the gauntlet of the law.

The sleep which stole upon him came by slow degrees; or, rather, he was not fully asleep, when a sound outside the house roused him to sharp consciousness compared with which his drowsiness had been a sleep.

It was a knocking at the door, not loud, but repeated. At the same time he heard Jerry Wood cursing softly in a neighbouring room, and then the telltale creak of bedsprings.

The host was rousing himself a second time that night. Or, rather, it was morning now, for when Anthony sat up he saw that the hills were stepping out of the shadows of the night, black, ugly shapes revealed by a grey background of the sky. A window went up noisily.

"Am I runnin' a hotel?" roared Jerry Wood. "Ain't I to have no sleep no more? Who are ye?"

A lowered, muttering voice answered.

"All right," said Jerry, changing his tone at once. "I'll come down."

His steps descended the noisy stairs rapidly; the door creaked. Then voices began again outside the house, an indistinct mumble, rising to one sharp height in an exclamation.

Almost at once steps again sounded on the stairs, but softly now. Bard went quietly to the door, locked it, and stole back to the window. Below it extended the roof of a shed, joining the main body of the house only a few feet under his window and sloping to what could not have been a dangerous distance from the ground. He raised the window-sash.

Yet he waited, something as he had waited for Sally Fortune to speak earlier in the night, with a sense of danger, but a danger which thrilled and delighted him. No game of polo could match suspense like this. Besides, he would be foolish to go before he was sure.

The walls were gaping with cracks that carried the sounds, and now he heard a sibilant whisper with a perfect clearness.

"This is the room."

There was a click as the lock was tried.

"Locked, damn it!"

"Shut up, Butch. Jerry, have you got a bar, or anything? We'll pry it down and break in on him before he can get in action."

"You're a fool, McNamara. That feller don't take a wink to get into action. Sure he didn't hear you when you hollered out the window? That was a fool move, Wood."

"I don't think he heard. There wasn't any sound from his room when I passed it goin' downstairs. Think of the nerve of this bird comin' here to roost after what he done."

"He didn't think we'd follow him so fast."

But Anthony waited for no more. He slipped out on the roof of the shed, lowered himself hand below hand to the edge, and dropped lightly to the ground.

The grey, at his coming, flattened back its ears, as though it knew that more hard work was coming, but he saddled rapidly, led it outside, and rode a short distance into the forest. There he stopped.

His course lay due north, and then a swerve to the side and a straight course west for the ranch of William Drew. If the hounds of the law were so close on his trace, they certainly would never suspect him of doubling back in this manner, and he would have the rancher to himself when he arrived.

Yet still he did not start the grey forward to the north. For to the south lay Sally Fortune, and at the thought of her a singular hollowness came about his heart, a loneliness, not for himself, but for her. Yes, in a strange way all self was blotted from his emotion.

It would be a surrender to turn back—now.

And like a defeated man who rides in a lost cause, he swung the grey to the south and rode back over the trail, his head bowed.

CHAPTER XXXVII
"TODO ES PERDO"

It was not long after the departure of Bard that Sally Fortune awoke. For a step had creaked on the floor, and she looked up to find Steve Nash standing in the centre of the room with the firelight gloomily about him; behind, blocking the door with his squat figure, stood Shorty Kilrain.

"Where's your side-kicker?" asked Nash. "Where's Bard?"

And looking across the room, she saw that the other bunk was empty. She raised her arms quickly, as if to stifle a yawn, and sat up in the bunk, holding the blanket close about her shoulders. The face she showed to Nash was calmly contemptuous.

"The bird seems to be flown, eh?" she queried.

"Where is he?" he repeated, and made a step nearer.

She knew at last that her power over him as a woman was gone; she caught the danger of his tone, saw it in the steadiness of the eyes he fixed upon her. Behind was a great, vague feeling of loss, the old hollowness about the heart. It made her reckless of consequences; and when Nash asked, "Is he hangin' around behind the corner, maybe?" she cried:

"If he was that close you'd have sense enough to run, Steve."

The snarl of Nash showed his teeth.

"Out with it. The tenderfoot ain't left his woman fur away. Where's he gone? Who's he gone to shoot in the back? Where's the hoss he started out to rustle?"

"Kind of peeved, Nash, eh?"

One step more he made, towering above her.

"I've done bein' polite, Sally. I've asked you a question."

"And I've answered you: I don't know."

"Sally, I'm patient; I don't mean no wrong to you. What you've been to me I'm goin' to bust myself tryin' to forget; but don't lie to me now."

Such a far greater woe kept up a throbbing ache in the hollow of her throat that now she laughed, laughed slowly, deliberately. He leaned, caught her wrist in a crushing pressure.

"You demon; you she-devil!"

She whirled out of the bunk, the blanket caught about her like the toga of some ancient Roman girl; and as she moved she had swept up something heavy and bright from the floor.

All this, and still his grip was on her left arm.

"Drop your hand, Nash."

With a falling of the heart, she knew that he did not fear her gun; instead, a light of pleasure gleamed in his eyes and his lower jaw thrust out.

She would never forget his face as he looked that moment.

"Will you tell me?"

"I'll see you in hell first."

By that wrist he drew her resistlessly toward him, and his other arm went about her and crushed her close; hate, shame, rage, love were in the contorted face above her. She pressed the muzzle of her revolver against his side.

"You're in beckoning distance of that hell, Steve!"

"You she-wolf—shoot and be damned! I'd live long enough to strangle you."

"You know me, Steve; don't be a fool."

"Know you? Nobody knows you. And God Almighty, Sally, I love you worse'n ever; love the very way you hate me. Come here!"

He jerked her closer still, leaned; and she remembered then that Anthony had never kissed her. She said:

"You're safe; you know he can't see you."

He threw her from him and stood snarling like a dog growling for the bone it fears to touch because there may be poison in the taste—a starving dog, and a bone full of toothsome marrow which has only to be crushed in order that it may be enjoyed.

"I'm wishin' nothin' more than that he could see me."

"Then you're a worse fool than I took you for, Steve. You know he'd go through ten like you."

"There ain't no man has gone through me yet."

"But he would. You know it. He's not stronger, maybe not so strong. But he was born to win, Steve; he's like—he's like Drew, in a way. He can't fail."

"If I wrung that throat of yours," he said, "I know I couldn't get out of you where he's gone."

"Because I don't know, you see."

"Don't know?"

"He's given me the slip."

"You!"

"Funny, ain't it? But he has. Thought I couldn't ride fast enough to keep up with him, maybe. He's gone on east, of course."

"That's another lie."

"Well, you know."

"I do."

His voice changed.

"Has he really beat it away from you, Sally?"

She watched him with a strange, sneering smile. Then she stepped close.

"Lean your ear down to me, Steve."

He obeyed.

"I'll tell you what ought to make you happy. He don't care for me no more than I care for—you, Steve."

He straightened again, wondering.

"And you?"

"I threw myself at him. I dunno why I'm tellin' you, except it's right that you should know. But he don't want me; he's gone on without me."

"An' you like him still?"

She merely stared, with a sick smile.

"My God!" he murmured, shaken deep with wonder. "What's he made of?"

"Steel and fire—that's all."

"Listen, Sally, forget what I've done, and—"

"Would you drop his trail, Steve?"

He cursed through his set teeth.

"If that's it—no. It's him or me, and I'm sure to beat him out.

Afterwards you'll forget him."

"Try me."

"Girls have said that before. I'll wait. There ain't no one but you for me—damn you—I know that. I'll get him first, and then I'll wait."

"Ten like you couldn't get him."

"I've six men behind me."

She was still defiant, but her colour changed.

"Six, Sally, and he's out here among the hills, not knowing his right from his left. I ask you: has he got a chance?"

She answered: "No; not one."

He turned on his heel, beckoned to Kilrain, who had stood moveless through the strange dialogue, and went out into the night.

As they mounted he said: "We're going straight for the place where I told Butch Conklin I'd meet him. Then the bunch of us will come back."

"Why waste time?"

"Because he's sure to come back. Shorty, after a feller has seen Sally smile—the way she can smile—he couldn't keep away. I know!"

They rode off at a slow trot, like men who have resigned themselves to a long journey, and Sally watched them from the door. She sat down, crosslegged, before the fire, and stirred the embers, and strove to think.

But she was not equipped for thinking, all her life had been merely action, action, action, and now, as she strove to build out some logical sequence and find her destiny in it, she failed miserably, and fell back upon herself. She was one of those single-minded people who give themselves up to emotion rarely, but when they do their whole body, their whole soul burns in the flame.

Into her mind came a phrase she had heard in her childhood. On the outskirts of Eldara there was a little shack owned by a Mexican—José, he was called, and nothing else, "Greaser" José. One night an alarm of fire was given in Eldara, and the whole populace turned out to enjoy the sight; it was a festival occasion, in a way. It was the house of Greaser José.

The cowpunchers manned a bucket line, but the source of water was far away, the line too long, and the flames gained faster than they could be quenched. All through the work of fire-fighting Greaser José was everywhere about the house, flinging buckets of water through the windows into the red furnace within; his wife and the two children stood stupidly, staring, dumb. But in the end, when the fire was towering above the roof of the house, roaring and crackling, the Mexican suddenly raised a long arm and called to the bucket line, "It is done. Señors, I thank you."

Then he had folded his arms and repeated in a monotone, over and over again: "Todo es perdo; todo es perdo!"

His wife came to him, frantic, wailing, and threw her arms around his neck. He merely repeated with heavy monotony: "Todo es perdo; todo es perdo!"

The phrase clung in the mind of the girl; and she rose at last and went back to her bunk, repeating: "Todo es perdo; todo es perdo! All is lost; all is lost!"

No tears were in her eyes; they were wide and solemn, looking up to the shadows of the ceiling, and so she went to sleep with the solemn Spanish phrase echoing through her whole being: "Todo es perdo!"

She woke with the smell of frying bacon pungent in her nostrils.

CHAPTER XXXVIII
BACON

The savour of roasting chicken, that first delicious burst of aroma when the oven door is opened, would tempt an angel from heaven down to the lowly earth. A Southerner declares that his nostrils can detect at a prodigious distance the cooking of "possum and taters." A Kanaka has a cosmopolitan appetite, but the fragrance which moves him most nearly is the scent of fish baking in Ti leaves. A Frenchman waits unmoved until the perfume of some rich lamb ragout, an air laden with spices, is wafted toward him.

Every man and every nation has a special dish, in general; there is only one whose appeal is universal. It is not for any class or nation; it is primarily for "the hungry man," no matter what has given him an appetite. It may be that he has pushed a pen all day, or reckoned up vast columns, or wielded a sledge-hammer, or ridden a wild horse from morning to night; but the savour of peculiar excellence to the nostrils of this universal hungry man is the smell of frying bacon.

A keen appetite is even stronger than sorrow, and when Sally Fortune awoke with that strong perfume in her nostrils, she sat straight up among the blankets, startled as the cavalry horse by the sound of the trumpet. What she saw was Anthony Bard kneeling by the coals of the fire over which steamed a coffee-pot on one side and a pan of crisping bacon on the other.

The vision shook her so that she rubbed her eyes and stared again to make sure. It did not seem possible that she had actually wakened during the night and found him gone, and with this reality before her she was strongly tempted to believe that the coming of Nash was only a vivid dream.

"Morning, Anthony."

He turned his head quickly and smiled to her.

"Hello, Sally."

He was back at once, turning the bacon, which was done on the first side. Seeing that his back was turned, she dressed quickly.

"How'd you sleep?"

"Well."

"Where?"

He turned more slowly this time.

"You woke up in the middle of the night?"

"Yes."

"What wakened you?"

"Nash and Kilrain."

He sighed: "I wish I'd been here."

She answered: "I'll wash up; we'll eat; and then off on the trail. I've an idea that the two will be back, and they'll have more men behind them."

After a little her voice called from the outside: "Anthony, have you had a look at the morning?"

He came obediently to the doorway. The sun had not yet risen, but the fresh, rose-coloured light already swept around the horizon throwing the hills in sharp relief and flushing, faraway, the pure snows of the Little Brothers. And so blinding was the sheen of the lake that it seemed at first as though the sun were about to break from the waters, for there all the radiance of the sunrise was reflected, concentrated.

Looking in this manner from the doorway, with the water on either side and straight ahead, and the dark, narrow point of land cutting that colour like a prow, it seemed to Anthony almost as if he stood on the bridge of a ship which in another moment would gather head and sail out toward the sea of fresh beauty beyond the peaks, for the old house of William Drew stood on a small peninsula, thrusting out into the lake, a low, shelving shore, scattered with trees.

Where the little tongue of land joined the main shore the ground rose abruptly into a shoulder of rocks inaccessible to a horse; the entrance and exit to the house must be on either side of this shoulder hugging closely the edge of the water.

Feeling that halo of the morning about them, for a moment Anthony forgot all things in the lift and exhilaration of the keen air; and he accepted the girl as a full and equal partner in his happiness, looking to her for sympathy.

She knelt by the edge of the water, face and throat shining and wet, her head bending back, her lips parted and smiling. It thrilled him as if she were singing a silent song which made the brightness of the morning and the colour beyond the peaks. He almost waited to see her throat quiver—hear the high, sweet tone.

But a scent of telltale sharpness drew him a thousand leagues down and made him whirl with a cry of dismay: "The bacon, Sally!"

It was hopelessly burned; some of it was even charred on the bottom of the pan. Sally, returning on the run, took charge of the cookery and went about it with a speed and ability that kept him silent; which being the ideal mood for a spectator, he watched and found himself learning much.

Whatever that scene of the night before meant in the small and definite, in the large and vague it meant that he had a claim of some sort on Sally Fortune and it is only when a man feels that he has this claim, this proprietorship, as it were, that he begins to see a woman clearly.

Before this his observance has been half blind through prejudice either for or against; he either sees her magnified with adulation, or else the large end of the glass is placed against his eye and she is merely a speck in the distance. But let a woman step past that mysterious wall which separates the formal from the intimate—only one step—at once she is surrounded by the eyes of a man as if by a thousand spies. So it was with Anthony.

It moved him, for instance, to see the supple strength of her fingers when she was scraping the charred bacon from the bottom of the pan, and he was particularly fascinated by the undulations of the small, round wrist. He glanced down to his own hand, broad and bony in comparison.

It was his absorption in this criticism that served to keep him aloof from her while they ate, and the girl felt it like an arm pushing her away. She had been very close to him not many hours before; now she was far away. She could understand nothing but the pain of it.

As he finished his coffee he said, staring into a corner: "I don't know why I came back to you, Sally."

"You didn't mean to come back when you started?"

"Of course not."

She flushed, and her heart beat loudly to hear his weakness. He was keeping nothing from her; he was thinking aloud; she felt that the bars between them were down again.

"In the first place I went because I had to be seen and known by name in some place far away from you. That was for your sake. In the second place I had to be alone for the work that lay ahead."

"Drew?"

"Yes. It all worked like a charm. I went to the house of Jerry Wood, told him my name, stayed there until Conklin and several others arrived, hunting for me, and then gave them the slip."

She did not look up from her occupation, which was the skilful cleaning of her gun.

"It was perfect; the way clear before me; I had dodged through their lines, so to speak, when I gave Conklin the slip, and I could ride straight for Drew and catch him unprepared. Isn't that clear?"

"But you didn't?"

She was so calm about it that he grew a little angry; she would not look up from the cleaning of the gun.

"That's the devil of it; I couldn't stay away. I had to come back to you."

She restored the gun to her holster and looked steadily at him; he felt a certain shock in countering her glance.

"Because I thought you might be lonely, Sally."

"I was."

It was strange to see how little fencing there was between them. They were like men, long tried in friendship and working together on a great problem full of significance to both.

"Do you know what I kept sayin' to myself when I found you was gone?"

"Well?"

"Todo es perdo; todo es perdo!"

She had said it so often to herself that now some of the original emotion crept into her voice. His arm went out; they shook hands across their breakfast pans.

She went on: "The next thing is Drew?"

"Yes."

"There's no changing you." She did not wait for his answer. "I know that. I won't ask questions. If it has to be done we'll do it quickly; and afterward I can find a way out for us both."

Something like a foreknowledge came to him, telling him that the thing would never be done—that he had surrendered his last chance of Drew when he turned back to go to Sally. It was as if he took a choice between the killing of the man and the love of the woman. But he said nothing of his forebodings and helped her quietly to rearrange the small pack. They saddled and took the trail which pointed up over the mountains—the same trail which they had ridden in an opposite direction the night before.

He rode with his head turned, taking his last look at the old house of Drew, with its blackened, crumbling sides, when the girl cried softly: "What's that? Look!"

He stared in the direction of her pointing arm. They were almost directly under the shoulder of rocks which loomed above the trail along the edge of the lake. Anthony saw nothing.

"What was it?"

He checked his horse beside hers.

"I thought I saw something move. I'm not sure. And there—back, Anthony!"

And she whirled her horse. He caught it this time clearly, the unmistakable glint of the morning light on steel, and he turned the grey sharply. At the same time a rattling blast of revolver shots crackled above them; the grey reared and pitched back.

By inches he escaped the fall of the horse, slipping from the saddle in the nick of time. A bullet whipped his hat from his head. Then the hand of the girl clutched his shoulder.

"Stirrup and saddle, Anthony!"

He seized the pommel of the saddle, hooked his foot into the stirrup which she abandoned to him, and she spurred back toward the old house.

A shout followed them, a roar that ended in a harsh rattle of curses; they heard the spat of bullets several times on the trees past which they whirled. But it was only a second before they were once more in the shelter of the house. He stood in the centre of the room, stunned, staring stupidly around him. It was not fear of death that benumbed him, but a rising horror that he should be so trapped—like a wild beast cornered and about to be worried to death by dogs.

As for escape, there was simply no chance—it was impossible. On three sides the lake, still beautiful, though the colour was fading from it, effectively blocked their way. On the fourth and narrowest side there was the shoulder of rocks, not only blocking them, but affording a perfect shelter for Nash and his men, for they did not doubt that it was he.

"They think they've got us," said a fiercely exultant voice beside him, "but we ain't started to make all the trouble we're goin' to make."

Life came back to him as he looked at her. She was trembling with excitement, but it was the tremor of eagerness, not the unmistakable sick palsy of fear. He drew out a large handkerchief of fine, white linen and tied it to a long splinter of wood which he tore away from one of the rotten boards.

"Go out with this," he said. "They aren't after you, Sally. This is west of the Rockies, thank God, and a woman is safe with the worst man that ever committed murder."

She said: "D'you mean this, Anthony?"

"I'm trying to mean it."

She snatched the stick and snapped it into small pieces.

"Does that look final, Anthony?"

He could not answer for a moment. At last he said: "What a woman you would have made for a wife, Sally Fortune; what a fine pal!"

But she laughed, a mirth not forced and harsh, but clear and ringing.

"Anthony, ain't this better'n marriage?"

"By God," he answered, "I almost think you're right."

For answer a bullet ripped through the right-hand wall and buried itself in a beam on the opposite side of the room.

"Listen!" she said.

There was a fresh crackle of guns, the reports louder and longer drawn.

"Rifles," said Sally Fortune. "I knew no bullet from a six-gun could carry like that one."

The little, sharp sounds of splintering and crunching began everywhere. A cloud of soot spilled down the chimney and across the hearth. A furrow ploughed across the floor, lifting a splinter as long and even as if it had been grooved out by a machine.

"Look!" said Sally, "they're firin' breast high to catch us standing, and on the level of the floor to get us if we lie down. That's Nash. I know his trademark."

"From the back of the house we can answer them," said Bard. "Let's try it."

"Pepper for their salt, eh?" answered Sally, and they ran back through the old shack to the last room.