Over the Pass Part 57

For over a week a private car had stood on a siding at Little Rivers.

Every morning a porter polished the bra.s.swork of the platform in heraldry of the luxury within. Occasionally a young man with a plaster over a wound on his cheek would walk up and down the road-bed on the far side of the car. Indeed, he had worn a path there. He never went into town, and any glances that he may have cast in that direction spoke his desire to be forever free of its sight. Not a train pa.s.sed that he did not wish himself aboard and away. But as heir-apparent he had no thought of endangering his new kingdom by going before his father went. He meant to keep very close to the throne. He had become clingingly, determinedly filial. At times the gleam of the bra.s.swork would exercise the same hypnosis over his senses as the scintillation of the jewelry counters of the store, and he would rub his hands crisply together.

John Wingfield, Sr. spent little time in the car. Morning and afternoon and evening he would go over to Dr. Patterson's with the question: "How is he?" which all Little Rivers was asking. The rules of longevity were in oblivion and the routine channels of a mind, so used to teeming detail, had become abysses as dark and void as the canyons of the range.

On the day of his arrival in Little Rivers he found a town peopled mostly by women and children. All of the men who could bear arms and get a horse had departed, and with them Mary. Thereby hangs a story all to the honor of little Ignacio. After Jack had ridden away with his insistent refusal of a.s.sistance, apprehension among the group that watched him disappear in the gathering darkness was allayed by reports of men who had been at the store, where they found the Leddyites hanging about as usual. True, no one had seen either Pete or Ropey Smith, but Lang said that they were upstairs playing poker, a favorite relaxation from the strain of their intellectual life.

But Ignacio learned from another Indian in Lang's service that Pete and seven of his best shots had started for Agua Fria about the same time as Jack, while the rest of the gang that had been left behind were making it their business to cover the leader's absence. Distrusting Ignacio, they locked him in a closet off the bar. In the early hours of the morning he succeeded in escaping with his news, which he carried first to Mary. She was not asleep when he rapped at her door. It had been a night of wakefulness for her, recalling the night after her meeting with Jack on the pa.s.s before the duel in the _arroyo_.

"I for Senor Don't Care, now! I for every devil in him! And they go to kill him!" was the incoherent way in which he began his announcement.

In an hour the alarm had travelled from house to house. While the gang slept at Lang's or in their tents, a solemn cavalcade set forth quietly into the night, with rifles slung over their shoulders or lying across the pommels of their saddles, bound to rescue Jack Wingfield. They had protested against Mary's going with all the old, familiar arguments that occur to the male at thought of a woman in physical danger.

"It is the least that any of us can do," she declared.

"But of what service will you be?" Dr. Patterson asked.

"No one can say yet," she replied. "And no one shall stop me!" She was driven by the same impulse that had sent her across the _arroyo_ in face of the ruffians on the bank to Jack's side after he was wounded. "My pony can keep up with the best of yours," she added.

Leddy had eight hours' start on a two-days' journey. It was not in horse-flesh to gain much on his fast and hardened ponies. There was little chance that Jack could hold out against such odds as he must face, even if he had escaped an ambush. So they rode in desperation and in silence, each too certain of what was in the minds of the others to make pretence of a hope that was not in the heart.

Their only stop for rest was at Las Cascadas in the hot hours of midday.

Darkness had fallen when they overtook a solitary horseman coming from Agua Fria. John Prather drew rein well to one side of the trail. He had a moment, as they approached, in which to think out his explanation of his position.

"It's Prather, and riding P.D.!" Galway announced.

"Where is Jack Wingfield?" came the merciless question as in one voice from all.

"You are his friends! You have come to rescue him!" Prather cried.

He seemed overcome by his relief. At all events, the wildness of his exclamation in face of the force barring the trail was without affectation.

"There is time? There is hope?"

"Yes! yes!" gasped Prather, as the men began to surround him.

"Why are you here? Why on his horse?"

"Leddy turned on me, too! I was fighting at Wingfield's side! We got two of them before dark! Then I was wounded and couldn't see to shoot. And I came for help. And you will be in time! He's in a good position!"

"I think you are lying!" said Galway.

"He couldn't help it!" said Bob Worther.

"How--how would I have his horse if he weren't willing?" protested Prather, frantically.

"By stealing it, in keeping with your character!"

"Yes! On general principles we ought to--"

"I have a piece of rope!" called a voice from the rear.

"There isn't any tree. But we can drop him over the wall of a chasm!"

Spectral figures with set faces appallingly grim in the thin moonlight pressed close to Prather.

"My G.o.d! No!" he pleaded, throatily. "We fought together, I tell you! We drew lots to see which one should take the risk of riding through danger to save the other!"

"Lying again!"

"Here's the rope! All we've got to do is to slip a noose over his head!"

"It's a clean piece of rope, isn't it?" said the Doge, in his mellow voice. "I don't think it's worth while soiling a clean piece of rope. Come! Taking his life is no way to save Jack's. Come, we are losing time!"

"Right, Doge!" said the man with the rope. "But it is some satisfaction to give him a scare."

"And take care of P.D.!" called another.

"Yes, if you founder Jack's pony you'll hear from us a-plenty!"

This was their adieu to John Prather, who was left to pursue his way in safety to his kingdom, while they rode on, following a hard path at the base of the range. Those with the best horses took the lead, while the heavier men, including the Doge, whose weight was telling on their mounts, fell to the rear. Mary was at the head, between Dr. Patterson and Jim Galway.

The stars flickered out; the moon grew pale, and for a while the hors.e.m.e.n rode into a wall of blackness, conscious of progress only by the sound of hoof-beats which they were relentlessly urging forward. Then dawn flashed up over the chaos of rocks, pursuing night with the sweep of its broadening, translucent wings across the valley to the other range. The tops of the cotton-woods rose out of the sparkling sea, floating free of any visible support of trunks, and the rescuers saw that they were near the end of their journey.

There was a faint sound of a shot; then of another shot and another.

After that, the radiant, baffling silence of daybreak on uninhabited wastes, when the very active glory of the spreading, intensifying light ought, one feels, to bring paeans of orchestral splendor. It set desperation in the hearts of the riders, which was communicated to weary ponies driven to a last effort of speed. And still no more shots. The silence spoke the end of some tragedy with the first streaks from the rising sun clearing a target to a waiting marksman's eye.

Around the cotton-woods was no sign of human movement; nothing but inanimate, dark spots which developed into prostrate human forms, in pantomimic expression of the story of that night's work done in the moonlight and finished with the first flush of morning. Two of the outstretched figures were lying head to head a few yards apart on either side of the water-hole. The one on the side toward the ridge was recognized as Jack, still as death. Another a short distance behind him, at the sound of hoof-beats looked up with face blanched despite its dark skin, the parched lips stretched over the teeth; but in Firio's eyes there was still fire, as he whispered, "All right!" before he sank back unconscious. A wound in his shoulder had been bandaged, but the wrist of his gun hand lay beside a fresh red spot on the earth.

Jack had a bullet hole in the upper left arm plugged with a bit of cotton; and a deep furrow across the temple, which was bleeding. His rigid fingers were still gripping his six-shooter. He lay partly on his side, facing Leddy, who had rolled over on his back dead.

Mary and Dr. Patterson dropped from their horses simultaneously. The doctor pressed his hand over Jack's heart, to find it still beating.

"Jack!" they whispered. "Jack!" they called aloud.

He roused slightly, lifting his weary eyelids and gazing at them as if they were uncertain shadows who wanted some kind of an explanation from him which he had not the strength to give.

"We must drink--blaze away, Leddy," he murmured. "I'm coming down after the stars go out--close--close as you like--we must drink!"

"No vital hit!" said the doctor; while Mary bringing water a.s.sisted him to bathe the wounds before he dressed them. "No, not from a bullet!" he added, after the dressing was finished and he had one hand on Jack's hot brow and the other on his pulse.

Then he attended to Firio, who was talking incoherently:

"Take water-hole--boil coffee in the morning--quail for dinner, Senor Jack--_si, si_!"

When they had moved Jack and Firio into the shadow of the cotton-woods and forced water down their throats, Firio revived enough to recognize those around him and to cry out an inquiry about Jack; but Jack himself continued in a stupor, apparently unconscious of his surroundings and scarcely alive except for breathing. Yet, when litters of blankets and rifles tied together had been fas.h.i.+oned and attached to the pack-saddles of tandem burros, as he was lifted into place for the return he seemed to understand that he was starting on a journey; for he said, disjointedly:

"Don't forget Wrath of G.o.d--and Jag Ear is thirsty--and bury Wrath of G.o.d fittingly--give him an epitaph! He was gloomy, but it was a good gloom, a kind of kingly gloom, and he liked the prospect when at last he stuck his head through the blue blanket of the horizon."