The Man of the Forest Part 71

"Bo, I--we'll all thank him--all our lives," replied Dale. "Wilson, you're a man!... If you'll shake that gang--"

"Dale, sh.o.r.e there ain't much of a gang left, onless you let Burt git away," replied Wilson.

"I didn't kill him--or hurt him. But I scared him so I'll bet he's runnin' yet.... Wilson, did all the shootin' mean a fight?"

"Tolerable."

"Oh, Dale, it was terrible! I saw it all. I--"

"Wal, Miss, you can tell him after I go.... I'm wis.h.i.+n' you good luck."

His voice was a cool, easy drawl, slightly tremulous.

The girl's face flashed white in the gloom. She pressed against the outlaw--wrung his hands.

"Heaven help you, Jim Wilson! You ARE from Texas!... I'll remember you--pray for you all my life!"

Wilson moved away, out toward the pale glow of light under the black pines.

CHAPTER XXIV

As Helen Rayner watched Dale ride away on a quest perilous to him, and which meant almost life or death for her, it was surpa.s.sing strange that she could think of nothing except the thrilling, tumultuous moment when she had put her arms round his neck.

It did not matter that Dale--splendid fellow that he was--had made the ensuing moment free of shame by taking her action as he had taken it--the fact that she had actually done it was enough. How utterly impossible for her to antic.i.p.ate her impulses or to understand them, once they were acted upon! Confounding realization then was that when Dale returned with her sister, Helen knew she would do the same thing over again!

"If I do--I won't be two-faced about it," she soliloquized, and a hot blush flamed her cheeks.

She watched Dale until he rode out of sight.

When he had gone, worry and dread replaced this other confusing emotion.

She turned to the business of meeting events. Before supper she packed her valuables and books, papers, and clothes, together with Bo's, and had them in readiness so if she was forced to vacate the premises she would have her personal possessions.

The Mormon boys and several other of her trusted men slept in their tarpaulin beds on the porch of the ranch-house that night, so that Helen at least would not be surprised. But the day came, with its manifold duties undisturbed by any event. And it pa.s.sed slowly with the leaden feet of listening, watching vigilance.

Carmichael did not come back, nor was there news of him to be had. The last known of him had been late the afternoon of the preceding day, when a sheep-herder had seen him far out on the north range, headed for the hills. The Beemans reported that Roy's condition had improved, and also that there was a subdued excitement of suspense down in the village.

This second lonely night was almost unendurable for Helen. When she slept it was to dream horrible dreams; when she lay awake it was to have her heart leap to her throat at a rustle of leaves near the window, and to be in torture of imagination as to poor Bo's plight. A thousand times Helen said to herself that Beasley could have had the ranch and welcome, if only Bo had been spared. Helen absolutely connected her enemy with her sister's disappearance. Riggs might have been a means to it.

Daylight was not attended by so many fears; there were things to do that demanded attention. And thus it was that the next morning, shortly before noon, she was recalled to her perplexities by a shouting out at the corrals and a galloping of horses somewhere near. From the window she saw a big smoke.

"Fire! That must be one of the barns--the old one, farthest out,"

she said, gazing out of the window. "Some careless Mexican with his everlasting cigarette!"

Helen resisted an impulse to go out and see what had happened. She had decided to stay in the house. But when footsteps sounded on the porch and a rap on the door, she unhesitatingly opened it. Four Mexicans stood close. One of them, quick as thought, flashed a hand in to grasp her, and in a single motion pulled her across the threshold.

"No hurt, Senora," he said, and pointed--making motions she must go.

Helen did not need to be told what this visit meant. Many as her conjectures had been, however, she had not thought of Beasley subjecting her to this outrage. And her blood boiled.

"How dare you!" she said, trembling in her effort to control her temper.

But cla.s.s, authority, voice availed nothing with these swarthy Mexicans.

They grinned. Another laid hold of Helen with dirty, brown hand. She shrank from the contact.

"Let go!" she burst out, furiously. And instinctively she began to struggle to free herself. Then they all took hold of her. Helen's dignity might never have been! A burning, choking rush of blood was her first acquaintance with the terrible pa.s.sion of anger that was her inheritance from the Auchinclosses. She who had resolved never to lay herself open to indignity now fought like a tigress. The Mexicans, jabbering in their excitement, had all they could do, until they lifted her bodily from the porch. They handled her as if she had been a half-empty sack of corn. One holding each hand and foot they packed her, with dress disarranged and half torn off, down the path to the lane and down the lane to the road. There they stood upright and pushed her off her property.

Through half-blind eyes Helen saw them guarding the gateway, ready to prevent her entrance. She staggered down the road to the village.

It seemed she made her way through a red dimness--that there was a congestion in her brain--that the distance to Mrs. Ca.s.s's cottage was insurmountable. But she got there, to stagger up the path, to hear the old woman's cry. Dizzy, faint, sick, with a blackness enveloping all she looked at, Helen felt herself led into the sitting-room and placed in the big chair.

Presently sight and clearness of mind returned to her. She saw Roy, white as a sheet, questioning her with terrible eyes. The old woman hung murmuring over her, trying to comfort her as well as fasten the disordered dress.

"Four greasers--packed me down--the hill--threw me off my ranch--into the road!" panted Helen.

She seemed to tell this also to her own consciousness and to realize the mighty wave of danger that shook her whole body.

"If I'd known--I would have killed them!"

She exclaimed that, full-voiced and hard, with dry, hot eyes on her friends. Roy reached out to take her hand, speaking huskily. Helen did not distinguish what he said. The frightened old woman knelt, with unsteady fingers fumbling over the rents in Helen's dress. The moment came when Helen's quivering began to subside, when her blood quieted to let her reason sway, when she began to do battle with her rage, and slowly to take fearful stock of this consuming peril that had been a sleeping tigress in her veins.

"Oh, Miss Helen, you looked so turrible, I made sure you was hurted,"

the old woman was saying.

Helen gazed strangely at her bruised wrists, at the one stocking that hung down over her shoe-top, at the rent which had bared her shoulder to the profane gaze of those grinning, beady-eyed Mexicans.

"My body's--not hurt," she whispered.

Roy had lost some of his whiteness, and where his eyes had been fierce they were now kind.

"Wal, Miss Nell, it's lucky no harm's done.... Now if you'll only see this whole deal clear!... Not let it spoil your sweet way of lookin' an'

hopin'! If you can only see what's raw in this West--an' love it jest the same!"

Helen only half divined his meaning, but that was enough for a future reflection. The West was beautiful, but hard. In the faces of these friends she began to see the meaning of the keen, sloping lines, and shadows of pain, of a lean, naked truth, cut as from marble.

"For the land's sakes, tell us all about it," importuned Mrs. Ca.s.s.

Whereupon Helen shut her eyes and told the brief narrative of her expulsion from her home.

"Sh.o.r.e we-all expected thet," said Roy. "An' it's jest as well you're here with a whole skin. Beasley's in possession now an' I reckon we'd all sooner hev you away from thet ranch."

"But, Roy, I won't let Beasley stay there," cried Helen.

"Miss Nell, sh.o.r.e by the time this here Pine has growed big enough fer law you'll hev gray in thet pretty hair. You can't put Beasley off with your honest an' rightful claim. Al Auchincloss was a hard driver. He made enemies an' he made some he didn't kill. The evil men do lives after them. An' you've got to suffer fer Al's sins, though Al was as good as any man who ever prospered in these parts."

"Oh, what can I do? I won't give up. I've been robbed. Can't the people help me? Must I meekly sit with my hands crossed while that half-breed thief--Oh, it's unbelievable!"

"I reckon you'll jest hev to be patient fer a few days," said Roy, calmly. "It'll all come right in the end."