The Forfeit Part 40

Evie was watching the play of the girl's expressive eyes.

"I wonder--if you're right."

"Mostly, I guess."

"Mostly?"

Nan nodded.

"It isn't easy to condemn amongst folks on the prairie," she said with a sigh.

Elvine shook her head. Her eyes were turned from the girl. They were staring down into the turbulent stream.

"I don't think I've found it that way."

"How?"

The interrogation was natural. But it brought Elvine's eyes sharply to the girl's, and, for a moment, they gazed steadily into each other's.

Then the woman's graceful shoulders went up.

"I see you know."

"And--you aren't mad with me for knowing? You aren't mad with Jeff for me knowing? I wanted you to know I knew. I wanted to tell you I knew, only I didn't just know how to tell you. Then I wanted to tell you--something else."

There was simple sincerity in every word the girl spoke. The light in her eyes was s.h.i.+ning with truth. Elvine saw it, and knew these things were so, and, in her loneliness of heart, in her brokenness of spirit, she welcomed the chance of leaning for support upon a soul so obviously strong and sympathetic. She yielded now as she would never have believed it possible to yield.

Suddenly she raised her hands to her head and pressed her fingers to her temples.

"Oh, I--I don't know what to do. I sort of feel I just can't--can't stop around. And yet---- Oh, I love him so I can't, daren't leave him altogether. You can't understand, child, no one can. You--oh, you've never known what love is, my dear. I'm mad--mad for him. And--and I can never come into his life again."

She dropped her hands from her head in a movement that to Nan seemed as though she were wringing them. Nan's own heart was thumping in her bosom. She, too, could have cried out. But her eyes steadily, and almost tenderly, regarded the woman who had taken Jeff from her.

"You must stop around," she said in a low, firm tone. "Say, Evie, I don't guess I'm bright, or clever, or anything like that. I don't reckon I know things different to other folk. But just think how it would be if you went away now. You'd never see Jeff again, maybe, and he'd never know just how you love him. You see, men-folk are so queer, too. Maybe Jeff's right, and you and me are wrong. Maybe we're right, and he's all wrong. I can't say. But I tell you Jeff needs you now--more than ever.

He don't know it, maybe. But he wants you, and if you love him you'll just--stand by. Oh, I could tell you of a thousand ways you can help him. A thousand ways you can show him your love without telling him. It means a hard fight for you. I know. And maybe you'll think he isn't worth it. But he is--to you. You love him. And any man a woman loves is worth to her every sacrifice she can make. I don't know. Maybe you got to be punished, not by us folk, not for what you done to Jeff. But Someone guesses you got to be punished, and this is the way He's fixed it. Say, Evie, you won't let go of things, will you? Maybe you can't see ahead just now. But you will--later. You love Jeff, and he just loves you, though he's sort of blind to it now. But he loves you, an' no one else. He wouldn't act the way he's doing if it weren't so. I sort of felt I must say all this to you. I--I don't know why--just. But I won't ever talk like this again. I haven't a right, I know. But I don't mean harm. I don't sure. And if you'll let me help you anyway I can I'll--be real glad."

CHAPTER XXII

THREATENINGS

The offer of reward for the rustlers operating in Rainbow Hill Valley was without the desired effect. It was worse. The men against whom it was directed received it with deliberate but secretly expressed contempt. Nor did Chance serve the masters of the Obar, as four years before She had served Dug McFarlane.

Nor was the failure due to lack of effort. Bud left no stone unturned.

And Jeff--well, Jeff did all a man could. The hills were scoured, and the deeps and hidden hollows of the greater foothills. The notices of reward were sent broadcast, even penetrating to the Orrville country.

They were set up as Jeff had promised, on tree trunks in the remoter hills where any chance eye might discover them. Where undoubtedly the men who const.i.tuted the gang must sooner or later discover them.

The only response was a continuation of the raids.

But a distinct change had taken place in the method of these. Whereas, originally, they had been directed against not only the Obar Ranch, but wherever opportunity offered in the district, they now fastened their vampire clutches upon the Obar only, and, finally, on only one section of its territory: the land which belonged to Jeff's side of the partners.h.i.+p.

So marked was this that it could not be missed.

The partners were out at a distant station where they had been urgently summoned. A young "hand" had been wounded, a nasty flesh wound in the arm. He had been bringing in a small bunch of steers which had strayed to a distant hollow in the hills. It had been overnight. He was held up, and shot by three outlaws, and his cattle run off.

It was Bud who voiced the thought of both partners immediately after a close interrogation of the injured man.

"Looks like some low-bred son-of-a-hobo owes you a reckonin' he's yearnin' to git quit of, Jeff," he said, the moment they were alone.

"They're workin' this way all the time. They ain't so much as smelt around the old 'T.T.' territory in days. D'you make it that way?"

Jeff nodded.

"Sure."

But he made no attempt to throw enlightenment.

"Guess you signed the reward."

Bud watched the shadowed serious face of his friend.

"Maybe it's that." There was something like indifference in the younger man's manner.

Perhaps it was this manner which stirred Bud's impatience and drove him to resentment.

"Say," he cried, in fiercely vibrant tones, "d'you know what it is I got in my head? It's the 'hands' on our range. Sure. Ther's some lousy guy on the Obar working in with the gang. Cowpunchers are a mongrel lot anyway. Ther' ain't one but 'ud souse the sacrament wine ef the pa.s.son wa'an't lookin' on. I guess we'll need to chase up the penitentiary re-cord of every blamed thief on our pay-roll. Maybe the cinch we're lookin' fer lies that way."

"It's curious."

"Curious? Gee, it's rotten!"

The old man's patience completely gave way.

"See right here, Jeff. I ain't rattled. Not a thing. But ther's got to be some guts put into this thing, an' you an' me's got to find 'em.

See? I'm sick to death. Right here an' now I tell you ther's goin' to be a rotten piece of trouble around this lay-out, an' I'm goin' to be in it--right up to my back teeth."

It was perhaps the first time Bud had displayed impatience with the man who had always been the leading spirit of their enterprise. The truth was, something seemed to have gone out of Jeff. He neglected nothing.

He spared himself no pains. His physical efforts seemed even to have become greater as the days pa.s.sed. Frequently, now, night as well as day found him in the saddle watching over their interests. He had become a sort of restless spirit urging forward the work, and watching, watching with the lynx eyes dreaded so much by the men who served him.

But for all that something had certainly gone out of him, and Bud knew and feared its going.

If Bud knew and feared the change, he also knew the cause of it.

Neither he nor Nan were blind to the drama silently working out in the other household. It was bitterly plain and almost heart-breaking to the onlookers. The same roof sheltered husband and wife. But no unnecessary word was spoken between them. Their meals were taken apart. They were as completely and coldly separate as though they occupied opposite poles. And the girl who recognized these things, and the man who watched them, only wondered how long it must be before the final disaster came upon them.

Jeff's moods had become extraordinarily variable. There were moments when his moroseness became threatening. The canker at his heart was communicating itself to his whole outlook, and herein lay the failure in his work.

It was the realization of all this which stirred Bud's impatience. He knew that unless a radical change was quickly brought about, the vaunted Obar had certainly reached and probably pa.s.sed its zenith.

Finally, he opened his heart to the sure sympathy of Nan. He had purposely taken her with him on a boundary inspection amongst the foothills. They were riding through a silent hollow where quiet seemed to lie on the top of everything. Even their horses' hoofs failed to make an impression upon it. Peace was crowding the woodland slopes, a peace profound and unbreakable.