The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 25

"You came--for her?" repeated Wayland slowly. The night on the Ridge came back to him! Calamity's fear when the old frontiersman arrived; Bat's threat to expose something; Eleanor's perturbed letter; the father's half furtive defiant existence. He was too proud to ask more than the other cared to tell, too loyal to pry into any part of her life that she could not willingly share with him. He sat gazing into the mystic afterglow of the Desert, a flame of fire over a lake of light. It was as the old man had said, he had asked her to strengthen his resolution; and he drank in the love light of her eyes as he asked.

He had vowed himself to a life apart and then his humanity, his weakness, his need had sealed the vow of renunciation in the fires that forged eternally their beings into one. But this, this was the Hand from Outside on which we never reckon and which always comes; the Destiny Thing which Man's Will denies, wrenching the forging asunder.

Was it right for him to risk their lives farther in the Desert now; it affected her life now; and that was exactly what his common sense had foreseen: the fighter must fight alone. Love might send forth; but love must not be suffered to draw back.

"Why do you tell me all this?"

The old man moistened his lips before speaking. "If A don't go out, Wayland, A want y' t' see that her father's told, that she's taken back. When A saw the love light in her face come out like stars and her breath break when A spoke of you as a Ranger fellow, when A saw that, A thought, no matter what A thought. If y' married her, d' y'

think y' could go off on the firing line; d' y' think y' would if y'

knew y'd left her in danger? They'd strike at you through her, Wayland . . . it would be the end of free fightin'. A ask no promise. 'Tis enough A've told y'. Drive on!"

They moved slowly up the sand ridge, the Ranger a little ahead, oblivious of the livid blue of the old man's lips and the drag on the bridle rope till a quick jerk ripped the line from his loose hold; and he glanced back to see the other's horse stagger, flounder up again, waver and sink with a sucking groan. Wayland sprang just in time to catch the old frontiersman. He tore the saddle from the fallen broncho and cinched it on his own horse. Then he lifted Matthews, protesting, to the fresh mount, "till we reach the next rest place," he said, tying the halter rope of the pack mule to the saddle pommel. "Go on, I'll come."

Wayland waited till the horse and mule pa.s.sed over the crest of the sand bank; then, he took out his revolver. A shudder ran through the fallen horse. The Ranger's hand trembled. He stroked its neck. "Poor devil; it's none of your affair either. I wonder how the G.o.d of the game will square it with the dumb brutes?"

He ran his left hand down the white face of the broncho. It hobbled as if to stagger up, and sank back dumb, faithful, trying to the end, one fore knee bent to rise, the neck outstretched. Wayland's right hand went swiftly close between eye and ear. He shot, in quick succession, three times, his hand fumbling, his sight turned aside.

Neither spoke as they advanced down the other side of the sand ridge, the Ranger steadying himself with a hand to the mule's neck. The bank dipped to a white alkali pit where the light lay in dead pools, gray in the twilight, quivering with heat, layers of blue air above ashes of death. For the second time that day, the sand colored thing skulked across the trail. Wayland took hold of both bridles and led down, the old man wakening as from a stupor. The alkali pit lay perhaps a mile distant, gray and fading in the red light.

"Wayland, is that water?"

"Where? I can't see it."

"There, at the foot of the hill."

"With trees up side down? No, sir! It may be mirage of water miles away, carried by the rays of this twilight; but if you can see it and the horses can't smell it, you can bet on a false pool!"

But the little mule had jerked free with a low squeal.

"A tell you, Wayland, there is water;" and he began babbling again inconsequently of the sea, running his words together incoherent, half delirious.

"Go on and see, then! I'll follow! If there's water, look out for the drovers."

Wayland let go his hold of the bridle. Horse and mule shot down the sand bank. He saw them shoulder neck and neck along the white alkali bottom, then break to a gallop, the old man hanging to the pommel; then all disappeared round the end of the bank. Wayland slithered down the sand slope and dashed to the top of the next hill breathless. Below lay the glister of water, real water and no mirage, gla.s.sy, gray and sinister. The Ranger uttered a yell; then paused in his head-long descent.

The pony had plunged in belly deep; the mule had lowered its head; the old man was kneeling at the brink. Wayland saw him lave the water up with his hand: then throw it violently back. All at once, the grip of life snapped. Matthews was lying motionless on the sand. The horse was chocking its head up and down; the mule was stamping angrily with fore feet roiling the pool bottom. It had been one of the salt sinks that lie in the depressions of the Desert.

CHAPTER XVII

WHERE THE TRACKS ALL POINT ONE WAY

Wayland poured the last very driblets of water sediments from the skin bag. This, he forced past the old man's lips. Then he drew the unconscious form back on the saddle blankets, loosened the neck of the s.h.i.+rt, laved the temples and wrists with the salt water, tore strips of canvas from the tent square, wet that and laid it on the old man's forehead. He ran his hand inside the s.h.i.+rt and felt the heart. It was still beating, beating furiously, with faint flutterings, then accessions of fresh fury. The lips were black and swollen. The eyes were sunken; and the veins stood out in deadly clear purplish reticulation with splotches of transfused blood under the shrivelled skin of the hands. Then, he raised the old white head from the pack trees,--brave old warrior for right going down the Trail where the Tracks All Point One Way--, and somehow got a mouthful of brandy past the clinched teeth. The breath came fast and faint like the heart beats. Once, the eyes opened; but they were glazed and unseeing.

Wayland laid the old head on the pillowed pack trees, fitting rest for frontiersman of the wilderness; then he stood up to think! A terrible pa.s.sion of tenderness, of question, of defiance to G.o.d, rushed through his thoughts. The animals take their tragedies dumb and uncomplaining.

Man alone has not learned the futility of shouting impotent reproaches at a brazen sky.

The Ranger unsaddled the pony. Then he tethered the mule and broncho by separate ropes to the boulders. He placed the brandy flask by the old man's right hand. He thought a moment. Then he laid the loaded rifle close to the same hand.

The eyes were still staring wide open unseeing. The purple lips began babbling wordless words, words of the sea, words that ran into one another inarticulate. Wayland stooped and took the left hand in his own palm. It was cold and heavy, a thing detached from life; and the purple swollen lips were still babbling in inarticulate whispers.

Should he leave him to die there alone; or go forth to seek; seek what?

The Ranger stooped and pressed his lips to the blood-blotched back of the faithful shrivelled old hand. He did not shed a tear. We weep only when we are half hurt.

Wayland seized the Service axe and uncased his own rifle. Then in words that were not wors.h.i.+pful, not bending his knees, but standing with his hat off, he uttered what may have been a prayer, or may have been blasphemy. I leave you to judge: "By G.o.d, if there is a G.o.d, why doesn't He waken up? If there is a G.o.d, does _He_ stand for right? Is there such a thing as Right; or is Right the dream of fools? I want to know! If there is a G.o.d, I want G.o.d to speak out clear and plain, right now, in plain facts, so I can understand, and not so blamed long ago that a plain fellow can't make out what's the right thing to do."

It was one thing to pray under the rose-colored windows of a college chapel, and another thing to pray under the yellow, brazen Desert sky.

There was only the dreadful Desert silence, with the rattle from the laboured breathing of the unconscious man. If there was no G.o.d, then the fight for Right was the futility of fools: Right was only the Right of the strong to prey upon the weak, till the weak became in turn strong enough to prey; and that meant anarchy. If Right was right as two and two make four in Heaven or h.e.l.l, then _where_ was the G.o.d from whom Right, laws of Right emanated, guiding the unwise as laws of gravity guide the stars?

He didn't know that he had been staggering from physical weakness as he climbed the ridge of sand. There was the fresh horse. _One of them_ might escape in a night by riding it to death. Then, there was the possibility of the railroad being within reach. One of them might go out to the railroad, _but not both_. The old frontiersman had pa.s.sed the point of being able to ride; and a very few hours would probably witness the end of his life. He could tie the old man to the fresh horse, but the slow pace that would be necessary would sacrifice both their lives. There was another possibility: the fresh man on the fresh horse. That way out did not enter Wayland's mind; but he did ask himself _why_ the outlaws had not come down to the false pool. Why had they gone on? They were as near the end of their tether as he was of his.

Then he became suddenly conscious that he had eaten almost nothing for twenty-four hours and that the quivering air darkening to night rolled above the yellow sands in a way not caused by heat. Was it saddle wear or exhaustion that he stumbled as he walked? He looked at the silver strip of mountains above the westering sky. A fore-shortening haze swam into his sight. There was the mountain flecked with silver. Then it had gone into a milky black and pools, pools of water, fringed by the pines of the North, hung in the blue haze of mid-air, fore-shortening, s.h.i.+fting like a blurred sieve into the silver strip of mountain and milky blot, then back again, pools of crystal water, cool mountain lakes, this time with the trees up side down and figures among the trees. He knew by the trees being up side down, though he was dreaming of laughing as he drank and drank, that it must be a mirage!

Then he came to himself wondering how in the world he was sitting on the sand bank. And why hadn't he kept the tea leaves to put on his eyes in case of heat inflammation? Then, it tripped almost under his feet, you understand _he_ did not trip, he had struck at it with his Service axe--the wolf thing tracking the red stain of the outlaws'

trail along the base of the sand bank out across the ash colored silt sands. He watched it pausing, where the wind had eddied the dust in serpentine lines over the tracks, sniffing the air, loping across the break, and on out again at a run, nose down to earth: a blot against the sky; the burned out sulphur sky above an earth of embers and ashes.

Was it a mirage; or was he going delirious; or had he fallen asleep to dream her face framed in the blur of the purpling haze, receding from him, drawing him with the s.h.i.+ne of the stars in her eyes, drawing him with the warmth of their first pa.s.sion kiss on her lips? He would rise from his grave, and follow her from death, if she wove such spells, whether of dreams or delirium or mirage! The Ranger found himself stumbling across the baked silt and lava rocks, stripped of his hat and his boots, stripped like a marathon runner, vaguely conscious that he ought to have kept those tea leaves for that burn in his eyes, that the silver strip of the mountain was there just ahead; now a crystal pool of the cool mountain lake in mid air; now her face had vanished into the blue haze. Suddenly, winged things flappered up with raucous protest. The coyote had skulked over the edge of the lava dip; not the burnt-oil earth-scorched Desert smell, but the shrivelled putridity of flesh smote and nauseated his senses. The white pack horse of the outlaw drovers lay dead across the trail at his feet, a pool of clotted blood darkening the ashy sand. Its throat had been cut. . . .

The Ranger drew off, rubbed his eyes and looked again. The crumbly silt had been trampled all round the dead horse. So they, too, were dying of thirst on the Desert. Which way to follow now? There were the hoof prints across the open level; but forking from the main trail was another track: that of a man dragged or dragging or crawling forward on his hands and knees. Had they deserted the third man; or had the third man dropped back from them to cut his horse's throat?

The Ranger laughed aloud, a harsh cracked laugh; he knew he was delirious. The Lord had played an ace and he wouldn't trump His trick by going after the trail of the man who had crawled away to die. There was a Deity of retribution at least, whether G.o.d or demon: he had vowed he would make those blackguards drink horse blood!

If he hounded along the trail, perhaps he might overhaul the other two.

Then, then if he did perish in the Desert, he would not have perished for naught! It was then, the earth performed the acrobatic feat of heaving up, and he fell! This time, he knew he had fallen. It was no trip. He was down and out and done for; and he knew it. He rose to his knees steadying himself on his Service axe. Then, it came again, the silver strip of mountain on the sky line with the cool lakes and the blue haze, and her face, the face in the Watts' picture of "the Happy Warrior," weaving the spell, receding from him, drawing him with the love light in her eyes and the pa.s.sion kiss on her lips, beckoning, beckoning; he would rise and follow her from the dead if she beckoned with that light in her eyes. She was receding _not_ along the trail of the fleeing Desert runners, but down the dragged track of the body that had crawled to the foot of a sand bank. Wayland never knew whether he staggered or crept down the trail of the dragged body away from the hoof prints of the drovers' horses across the alkali sink; but between him and the silver strip of mountain on the far skyline, above the yellow sand so hot to his palms, beckoned her face, the love light in her eyes, weaving the spell. Then the coyote had bounded into the air, and the red-combed Desert condors, the scavengers of an outcast world, rose from their quarry; and Wayland, fevered, delirious, laughing, crying, kneeled over the body of a man lying on his face with his b.l.o.o.d.y hand clutched in death grip round an upright post driven into the alkali bottoms, a post with a drinking cup hung on the notched crotch, the Desert sign of a water spring beneath the drifted sands.

Wayland pushed the body aside. The man's face was red-smeared. He was dead. Wayland had to unlock the clutched fingers from the post.

Somewhere, from the submerged consciousness of forgotten college lore came memory that the water table lay ten feet deep beneath the Desert silt. The Ranger slid down the sand drift and was chopping, hacking, digging, into the side of the bank, thanking G.o.d; G.o.d _was_ on the job after all; scooping the sand drift out with his naked hand, burrowing at the earth as the animals of the wilderness-struggle tear in maddened thirst for the hidden life beneath the sand death. He heard the suck and gurgle of the water, not the joyous silver laugh of Northern springs, but the sullen coming of water compelled; and his lips were at the sand; drinking, drinking, drinking. Then, he suddenly remembered her face. He looked up. Gone the silver strip of s.h.i.+ning mountain; gone the mirage of the crystal pool; darkness, velvet pansy darkness of the Desert night; and an earth bat winged past his face. Even as he drank he felt the puff and whirl of the wind rising; he laughed. He felt the cool water trickle and settle and pool in the sand hole. Then he laved his temples and wrists, and laughed softly, and called a low long tremulous call; that foolish Saxon word he had told her to look up in the dictionary.

The wind might blow great guns, and wipe out the fugitive trail. He would go no farther. The wind would attend to the other two men. He had found water: he had found life. G.o.d had played the trick; and he had not trumped the ace; four of the six outlaws dead, and the last two hastening to the alkali death across the Desert sands. He drank again, this time from the cup, sip by sip, slowly, then in deep draughts of G.o.d-given waters.

He didn't thank G.o.d in so many words, or in testimony to pa.s.s muster at a prayer meeting; but he paused twice on his way back to the saline sink to say: "He's on the job. You bet He's on the job!" He spent the rest of the week nursing the old frontiersman back to life.

PART II

THE MAN HIGHER UP

CHAPTER XVIII

WITHOUT MALICE