The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 24

"Better keep it for the horses, then; if we can keep them going to the next spring, they'll carry us out. Anything the matter with me that you ask that?"

"Oh no; A thought A saw you wave y'r arms."

The Ranger looked at the elder man. He was riding leaning forward heavily; and the dust had trenched deep fatigue lines in the hollow beneath his eyes and from the nostrils to the mouth. Wayland didn't retort that the frontiersman's speech had sounded guttural and m.u.f.fled.

He was not sure it was _not_ the fault of his own ears.

They worked slowly to the crest of the sand roll, zig-zagging to break the steepness. An ash-colored shadow skulked along the tracks of the outlaw trail. The little mule gave a squealing hind kick. The shadow looked back: it was a coyote, scenting the tracks of the drovers' lame horse. It went loping over the sand a blurr of gray.

"Curious thing that, Wayland! Notice the antics of the mule? Always see that in a range bred beast, centuries of ham stringing."

The Ranger did not answer. The sand was no longer heaving in waves.

It was running, sliding like the glossy surface of the sea. The throb of his temples, the slide of the sand, the lakes of light, light and crystal pools, that ran away as you came up, all brought visions of water. The dust cloud on the sky line dipped and disappeared behind a ridge of rolling sand.

There was the drowsy swash of saddle leather and the padded chug of dragging feet and the hum, the hypnotic hum, of the heat that drowsed from delirium to sleep.

"I think," said Wayland, "this seems a pretty good jumping-off place for a rest."

The afternoon was waning. They were under shelter of a sand bank from the wind and sun.

"A think, Wayland, this is nearly my jumping off place altogether."

Matthews spoke feebly. On pretense of steadying the f.a.gged broncho, the Ranger helped him to dismount. Then, Wayland unsaddled and drew the water bag from the pack trees. He handed it over to the old man.

Matthews pushed it aside: "Keep it for yourself to-morrow. If y' find no spring, y'll need the water to-morrow; but A'll take y'r flask of brandy if y' don't mind?"

"That's a fool thing to take in the heat, sir."

"'Tis if y' intend to live, Wayland; but A'm at the end of this Trail.

A'd like a bit strength t' tell y' a thing or two before . . . as we rest! Don't waste any water on flap jacks."

The mule lay rolling in the sage brush. The two horses stood with lowered heads chacking on the bit and pawing. Wayland saw the brandy flush mount to the purplish pallor of the old man's face.

"Wayland, this is _my_ jumping off place! A'm at the end of the Track.

The Trail where the tracks all point one way. 'Tis na' sensible y'r hangin' back for me! If y'll take the fresh horse an' go on alone, y'll get out! If the railroad is only thirty miles due East, y' can make that. We'll rest a bit here, then after sundown we'll ride on; an' in the dark A'll drop back. If it hurts y' t' think of it, A'll head my horse due East for the railroad! Y'll go on, Wayland! Y'll not turn back for me!"

It took the Ranger a moment to realize what the old frontiersman was trying to say. "I think you'd better take another drink of that brandy," he said. "It seems to me a fool thing to let a good man die for the sake of catching three outlaw blackguards."

"'Tis not for the sake o' three blackguards!" The words came out with a rap. "'Tis to vindicate justice, 'tis to uphold law, an' till every good citizen is willin' to lay down his life hounding outrage to th'

very covert o' h.e.l.l, t' die protectin' law an' justice an' innocence an' right, y'r Nation wull be ruled by paltroons an' cowards an'

white-vested blackguards! Go; go on; go on to the end till ye fall and rot! If th' Devil takes to the open an' the saints take to cover, whose goin' t' fight the battle for right? The Armageddon o' y'r Nation? 'Tis easy t' be a good citizen when the bands are playin' an'

the cannon roarin'. 'Tis harder in times o' peace to fight the battle o' the lone man! These outlaws, these blackguards, these cut throats, they're only the tools of the Man Higher Up! Get them, then go on for the Man Higher Up! Leave me, when A drop back in the dark to-night; if A'm in my senses, A'll shout a bravo and give y' a wave! Y'r the Man on the Job, the Nation's job! 'Tis not by bludgeons and bayonets, 'tis by ballots and brains y'll fight this battle out; and fight y' must or y'r freedom will go the way o' the old world despotisms down in a welter. A wish y'd go to the top o' the bank and have a look ahead."

An absurd sense of power, of resolution from despair, of will to do--suddenly swept over the Ranger. He forgot his fatigue. Months afterwards, a fellow student who had become a professor in psychology explained to him that it was a case of consciousness dipping suddenly down to the sublimal reservoirs of unconscious strength that lie in humanity; but then, Wayland had left two factors of explanation untold: first, that the dying trumpet call of the old warrior missionary had opened the doors of consciousness to that night on the Ridge of the Holy Cross; second, that the setting sun tinging all the b.u.t.tes and hummocks and plains with rose flame somehow tinctured his being with consciousness of her, consciousness of the life drafts he had taken from her lips that night of the Death Watch.

He went across to the pack trees. Picking up the cross trees and blankets, he laid them on the ground as a pillow.

"If you will rest here, sir, I'll go above and have a look."

From the top of the sand bank, the Ranger looked down to see the old man lying with his face to the sky, his head pillowed on the saddle blankets, sound asleep. He looked across the Desert. The sun had sunk behind the azure strip of the mountain sky line. The billows of lava, black and glazed, the ashy silt pink-tinged to the sun-glow, the heaving orange sands . . . lay palpitating infinite almost with a oneness that was of G.o.d. Wayland was not given to prayers. Perhaps, like all men of action, he tried to make his life a prayer. Somehow, something within him prayed wordlessly now . . . not for exceptional advantage in the game of life, not for remission of the laws of Nature, not for miracle, but for apt.i.tude to play the game according to rules.

His wordless prayer did not end in an "amen." It ended in a little hard laugh. As though Right were such a simple business as just personally being good! or an insurance policy against d.a.m.nation and guarantee for salvation! What was it the old man had said? Your right must be made into might . . . that was the game of life: the saving of the Nation: the good old-fas.h.i.+oned square deal no matter which party cut the cards. Right made Might, Might made Right; that was what the Nation wanted!

Then, it came again, the touch, the consciousness, the will to power, to do, to fight and overcome. He rose and looked across the Desert. A puff of dust, a swirl and eddy of riders, resolved itself through the terra cotta mist to the forms of three men going over the crest of the sand roll against the red sun-wrack of the sky line; three figures far apart, riding slowly, crawling against the face of the distant sky; one man in advance bent over his pummel; a second rider with a pack horse in tow pulling and dragging on the halter rope, the pack horse white and lame, stopping at every step, the man crunched, huddling fore done, down in his saddle; then dragging far to the rear, just cresting the sky line as the other two disappeared, swaying from side to side, a ragged wreck lying almost forward on his horse's neck; was he being deserted?

Wayland uttered a jubilant low whistle and tumbled down the sand bank to his camp kit.

The wind was at lull and the velvet air palpitating as a human pulse.

The after-glow lay on the orange sands cresting all the ridges with cressets of flame. Wayland was riding bare backed.

"When we sight them, I want you to drop back, sir! The Desert's got them. They haven't the resistance of dead fish left. If we cut across this sink, as I make it, we'll save a couple of miles and almost meet them on the other side of the next ridge."

When Wayland had wakened the old frontiersman, he had babbled inconsequently about the sea. Mixing brandy with the last of the sediment water, Wayland got him into the saddle. There were queer splotches of blood under the skin on the backs of his hands; but when the brandy relieved his fatigue, he stopped babbling of the sea and spoke coherently.

"Y' mind the man, whose wife died in the Desert, Wayland?"

His horse stumbled. The Ranger s.n.a.t.c.hed at the bridle and jerked it up.

"Yes," said Wayland.

"Vera n.o.ble of the woman; 'tis all right on _her_ record, Wayland; but what do y' think o' th' man?"

"But in this case, the man took her in to save her life."

"A wasn't thinking of _his_ case," answered the other bluntly. "A was thinking of _yours_."

The horse stumbled again. This time, the Ranger kept hold of the bridle rein.

"A didna' just mean t' tell y', Wayland; but A want y' t' know before A drop back. A saw it in her eyes, Wayland, yon night she went up the Ridge trail, and oh, man, A was loth to speak: she would cheer y' on in y'r work, A thought, perhaps--perhaps, the Lord might be playin' an ace card an' A'd no be trumpin' my partner's tricks; but 'tisn't so; Wayland, 'tisn't so! This Desert h.e.l.l proves me wrong. She isna for y', man; no man can ask a woman to come into a fight that may mean this! It's a man's job, Wayland; an' the man who would drag a woman into the sufferin' of it isn't worthy of her . . . isn't the man to do the job. Oh yes, A know, a woman's love is ready to jump in the fire an' all that. Hoh! The man's love that'll let her is poor stuff, Wayland, base metal, kind o' love to burn all away to dross an' ashes when the fires come! Her's will come out pure gold thro' it all, but man alive, Wayland, think o' her when she finds his as dross; an' if he lets her sacrifice hers for his, 'tis dross!"

Wayland grew suddenly hot all over. He could not bring himself to name her, much less indulge in the cheap confessional of tawdry loose held affection. He had heard men discuss their love affairs: men who could discuss them hadn't any; theirs was the sense reflex of the frog that kicks when you tickle its nerve-end. He rode on unspeaking.

"Y'll be tellin' y'rself 'tis too sacred to mouthe--with an old fellow like me. All right! We'll say it is _too_ sacred; but that minds me of a Cree rascal on my Reserve, an old medicine man, always talkin' of his sacred medicine bag; well, one day when he was good an' far away, good an' plenty drunk, A took a peep into his medicine bag; there was nothin' inside but a little snake that hissed; an' him beatin' the big drum! Hoh! sacred?

"Y'll be tellin' me y'r pa.s.sion vows are stronger than life or death?

Hoh! Y'd be a poor man if love wasn't stronger than death without any vows and big drum! Y'll be tellin' me y've warned her not t' link her life up wi' y'rs, to help y' resist an' all that; well, while y'r playin' y'r high and mighty self-sacrifice, did y'r manhood melt in the love light o' her eyes?"

Wayland jerked his horse roughly to a dead stop. "Mr. Matthews, for what reason are you saying all this?"

"A'll tell y' that too! A've come for her, Wayland. A've come to take her back to her people. Y' don't understand, her father is a MacDonald of the Lovatt clan--came out with Wolfe's regiment in 1759."

"In 1759?" repeated Wayland. "I heard her father say that very year."

"Yes, and a dark doursome race they are. Lovatt: Fraser MacDonald was his name; fought under Wolfe and joined the up country furhunters.

When he came back from his hunting one year, he found his wife had eloped with an officer of the regiment; so he took to the north woods an' married an Indian girl and his son was the man o' the iron arm, the piper for little Sir George in the thirties, who blew the bag pipes up Saskatchewan and over the mountains and down the Columbia and all round them lakes where y'r Holy Cross Forest is. They were a' dark fearsome men in their loves and hates. This man married late in life, he had two sons, Angus of Prince Albert an' your Donald here. He never saw his father alive. The Lovatt estates have been restored by law; but the line is bred out, down to a little old lady whose waitin' me up at my Mission on Saskatchewan. She came huntin' heirs. Angus had married an Indian woman; he'll never go back, nor his sons. They're livin'

under a tent to-day. What would they do wi' a castle and liveried servants and tenants an' things? Donald, y'r sheep king man, married a white girl. Some time after '85 she left him for the part he took in the Rebellion. She died after the child's birth; and the father claimed the daughter. He's known they'd have to come for his daughter some day, spite of his part in the Rebellion; and that was no such shameful thing as y' might think, if y've lived long enough in the West, t' understand! He has educated the daughter for the place. As A guess, she knows nothing of it, doesn't know who her mother was, or why her father had to leave Canada. A guessed that much when y'r Indian woman sent me the wrong road from the Ridge trail, that night! She doesn't even know who that Indian woman is."