The Twins of Suffering Creek Part 49

She knew him now for all he was. The scales had fallen from her foolish eyes. All the romance of his hideous calling had pa.s.sed in a flash, and she saw it as it was. She had no words to express her feelings of horror and revolting. In her weakness and wickedness she had torn herself out of the life of a good man to fling herself upon the bosom of this black-hearted villain. She loathed him; she loathed his very name. But more than all else she loathed herself. Her punishment was terrible. She was so helpless, so powerless. She knew it, and the knowledge paralyzed her thought. What could she do? She knew she was watched, and any move to get away would be at once frustrated. She could do nothing--nothing.

No longer able to remain in her room, she had come out to breathe air which she vainly hoped was less contaminated with the crimes of the man whose home she had elected to share. But inside or out it made no difference. The haunting was not of the place. It was in her mind; it had enveloped her whole consciousness.

But through it all there was one longing, one yearning for all that she had lost, all she had wantonly thrown away. Suffering Creek, with its poverty-stricken home on the dumps, suggested paradise to her now.

She yearned as only a mother can yearn for the warm caresses of her children. She longed for the honest love of the little man whom, in the days of her arrogant womanhood, she had so mercilessly despised.

All his patient kindliness came back to her now. All his tremendous, if misdirected, effort on her behalf, his never-failing loyalty and courage, were things which to her, in her misery, were the most blessed of all blessings. She wanted home--home. And in that one bitter cry of her heart was expressed the awakening of her real womanhood.

But it had come too late--too late. There was no home now for her but the home of this man. There was no husband for her, only the illicit love of this man. Her children--she could only obtain them by a theft.

And as this last thought came to her she remembered who it was who must commit the theft.

The thought brought a fresh terror. How would he accomplish his end?

Had not Scipio tacitly refused to yield up her children? Then how--how? She s.h.i.+vered. She knew the means James would readily, probably only too gladly, adopt. Her husband, the little harmless man who had always loved her, would be swept aside like anyone else who stood in the way. James would shoot him down as he had shot Conroy down; even, she fancied, he would shoot him down for the wanton amus.e.m.e.nt of destroying his life.

Oh no, no! It was too horrible. He was her husband, the first man she had ever cared for. She thought of all they had been to each other.

Her mind sped swiftly over past scenes which had so long been forgotten. She remembered his gentleness, his kindly thought for her, his self-effacement where her personal comforts were in question, his devotion both to herself and her children. Every detail of their disastrous married life sped swiftly before her straining mental vision, leaving the man standing out something greater than a hero to her yearning heart. And she had flung it all away in a moment of pa.s.sion. She had blinded herself in the arrogance of her woman's vanity. Gone, gone. And now she was the mistress of a common a.s.sa.s.sin.

So she lashed herself with the torture of repentance and regret as the darkness fell. She did not stir from her post. The damp of the mist was unnoticed, the chill of the air. She was waiting for that return which was to claim her to an earthly h.e.l.l, than which she could conceive no greater--waiting like the condemned prisoner, numb, helpless, fearful lest the end should come un.o.bserved.

The ranch wardens waited, too. The man cursed his charge with all the hatred of an evil nature, as the damp penetrated to his mean bones.

The dog, too, grew restless, but where his master was, there was his place. He had long since learned that--to his cost.

The night crept on, and there was no change in the position, except that the man sought the sheltering doorway of one of the barns, and covered his damp s.h.i.+rt with a jacket. But the woman did not move. She was beyond all conception of time. She was beyond any thought of personal comfort or fatigue. All she knew was that she must wait--wait for the coming of her now hated lover, that at least she might s.n.a.t.c.h her child from his contaminating arms. And after that--well, after that--She had no power to think of the afterwards.

The moon rose amidst the obscurity of the fog. It mounted, and at last reached a height where its silvery light could no longer be denied by the low-lying mists. But its reign was brief. Its cold splendor rapidly began to shrink before the pink dawn, and in less than two hours it was but a dim white circle set in the azure of the new-born day.

Still the woman remained at her post, her dark eyes straining with her vigil. She was drenched to the skin with the night-mists, but the chill of her body was nothing to the chill of her heart. The spy was still at his post in the barn doorway, but he was slumbering, as was his canine servitor, lying curled up at his feet. The sun rose, the mists cleared. And now the warming of day stirred the cattle in the corrals.

Suddenly the waiting woman started. Her attention had never once relaxed. She moved out with stiffened joints, and, shading her eyes with her hand, stared into the gleaming sunlight. Her ears had caught the distant thud of horses' hoofs, and now her eyes confirmed. Away down the valley she could see the dim outline of a number of hors.e.m.e.n riding towards the ranch.

Her heart began to thump in her bosom, and her limbs quaked under her.

What could she do? What must she do? Every thought, every idea that her long vigil had suggested was swept from her mind. A blank helplessness held her in its grip. She could only wait for what was to come.

The pounding of hoofs grew louder, the figures grew bigger. They were riding out of the sun, and her eyes were almost blinded as she looked for that which she trembled to behold. She could not be certain of anything yet, except that the return of her lover was at hand.

Nearer, nearer they came. Nearer, nearer still. Then suddenly a sharp exclamation broke from the watcher. It was a cry which had in it a strange thrill. It might have been the gasp of the condemned man at the sound of the word "reprieve." It might have been the cry of one momentarily relieved from years of suffering.

She could see them plainly. For now the figures were no longer silhouetted against the sun. They had changed their course as they neared the ranch, and the rising sun was well clear. She could even recognize them by their horses. She counted. There were ten of them.

One was missing. Who? But her interest was only momentary. She recognized the leader, and after that nothing else concerned her.

She could not mistake him. He sat his dark brown horse differently to anybody else. He looked to be part of it. But there was no admiration in her eyes. And yet there was an expression in them that had not been in them since his departure. There was hope in her eyes, and something akin to joy in her whole att.i.tude. James was riding empty-handed!

Hence her cry. But now she glanced swiftly at each horseman, to be sure that they, too, were empty-handed. Yes, each man was riding with the loose swinging arms of the prairie man. And with a sigh that contained in it every expression of an unbounded relief she turned and vanished into the house. For the time, at least, Vada was safe.

CHAPTER XXVIII

JAMES

James clattered into the empty sitting-room and stared about him. His dark face was flushed with excitement. The savage in him was stirred to its best mood, but it was still the savage. He grinned as he realized that the room was empty, and it was a grin of amus.e.m.e.nt. Some thought in his mind gave him satisfaction, in spite of the fact that there was no one to greet him.

The grin pa.s.sed and left him serious. Even his excitement had abated.

He had remembered Jessie's scream at the scene she must have witnessed. He remembered that he had left her fainting. With another quick glance round he stood and called--

"Ho, you! Jess!"

There was no answer; and he called again, this time his handsome face darkening. He had seen her from a distance outside the house, so there was no doubt of her being about.

Still he received no answer.

An oath followed. But just as he was about to call again he heard the sound of a skirt beyond the inner door. Instantly he checked his impulse, and where before his swift-rising anger had shone in his eyes a smile now greeted Jessie as she opened the door and entered the room.

For a moment no verbal greeting pa.s.sed between them. The man was taking in every detail of her face and figure, much as a connoisseur may note the points of some precious purchase he is about to make, or a glutton may contemplate a favorite dish. He saw nothing in her face of the effects of the strain through which she had pa.s.sed. To him her eyes were the same wonderful, pa.s.sionate depths that had first drawn his reckless manhood to flout every risk in hunting his quarry down.

Her lips were the same rich, moist, enticing lips he had pressed to his in those past moments of pa.s.sion. The rounded body was unchanged.

Yes, she was very desirable.

But he was too sure of his ground to notice that there was no responsive admiration in the woman's eyes. And perhaps it was as well.

She was looking at him with eyes wide open to what he really was, and all the revolting of her nature was uppermost. She loathed him as she might some venomous reptile. She loathed him and feared him. His body might have been the body of an Apollo, his face the most perfect of G.o.d's creations. She knew him now for the cold-blooded murderer he was, and so she loathed and feared him.

There were stains upon his cotton s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, upon the bosom of it showing between the fronts of his unb.u.t.toned waistcoat. There were stains upon his white moleskin trousers.

"Blood," she said, pointing. And something of her feelings must have been plain to any but his infatuated ears.

He laughed. It was a cruel laugh.

"Sure," he cried. "It was a great sc.r.a.p. We took nigh a hundred head of Sid Morton's cattle and burnt him out."

"And the blood?"

"Guess it must be his, or--Luke Tedby's." His face suddenly darkened.

"That mutton-headed gambler over on Suffering Creek did him up. I had to carry him to shelter--after he got away."

But Jessie paid little attention. She was following up her own thought.

"It isn't--Conroy's?"

James' eyes grew cold.

"That seems to worry you some," he cried coldly. Then he put the thing aside with a laugh. "You'll get used to that sort of talk after you've been here awhile. Say, Jes--"

"I can never get used to--murder."

The woman's eyes were alight with a somber fire. She had no idea of whither her words and feelings were carrying her. All her best feelings were up in arms, and she, too, was touched now with the reckless spirit which drove these people. There was no hope for her future. There was no hope whithersoever she looked. And now that she had seen her children were still safe from the life she had flung herself into, she cared very little what happened to her.

But the cruel despot, to whom life and death were of no account whatsoever, was not likely to deal tenderly long with the woman he desired did she prove anything but amenable. Now her words stung him as they were meant to sting, and his mouth hardened.

"You're talking foolish," he cried in that coldly metallic way she had heard him use before. "Conroy got all he needed. Maybe he deserved more. Anyhow, ther's only one man running this lay-out, and I'm surely that man. Say--" again he changed. This time it was a change back to something of the lover she knew, and at once he became even more hateful to her--"things missed fire at--the Creek. I didn't get hands on your kids. I--"