The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 9

She remembered the Ranger had tossed a revolver to the old frontiersman and Matthews had gone tearing up the slippery clay of the Mesa road ripping out oaths of his unregenerate days that he would have "the scoundrels' scalps if he had to tear them off with his own hands."

Somehow, Wayland had headed the draggled horses round on the narrow Rim Rock trail.

"Go down and break the news to his mother. I'll get the body," he had said; and she had driven the buckboard down with her foot on the wheel brake. Not a soul appeared around the Senator's place as she pa.s.sed the white square of fenced buildings. All the mosquito doors were hooked. Everything looked deserted; branding irons lying in disorder round the k'raal. The River had swollen too turbulent for fording and she had crossed the white bridge--she remembered she had crossed at a gallop contrary to the little notice tacked on the board railing.

Then, the horses steaming from rain had stopped in front of the Mission gate and Mrs. Williams had come out "wondering about Fordie in the storm." With her back to the waiting mother, Eleanor had spent an unconscionable time tying the ponies, trying to control her own trembling lips and thres.h.i.+ng round for some way to tell the untenable.

She remembered the roil of the raging waters, the floating star blossoms on the muddy swirl, the light sifting in beaten rain dust through the silver pine needles, the curve and dip of the joyous swallows. Then, she had followed the little white haired lady into the Mission Parlor.

Almost hysterically, that saying of an old profane writer came to mind, "G.o.d tempers the wind to the shorn lamb;" and all her inner being was shouting in rebellion "Does He, Does He?" Then she shut the door. She knew very well how she ought to have broken the news with the pious plat.i.tudes that everything is for the best, with the whitewashed lies that every d.a.m.nable tragedy is a blessing in disguise, that every devil-dance of fool circ.u.mstance is beneficent design, that disease is really health in a mask and sin a joke, a misnomer, that crime is really a trump card up Deity's sleeve to play down some wonderful trick of good; but--was it the Indian strain in her blood back many generations? She could not mouthe the hollow mockery of such sophistries in the presence of Death.

"Eleanor--what is it? Why do your eyes look so strange?"

The little woman clasped both the girl's hands and gazed questioningly up in her face. At the same moment, she began to tremble. She tried to ask and faltered; a tremor pulsed in the upper lip. Then the grand-daughter of the man of the iron hand had gathered the little white haired lady in her arms as if to ward the blow.

"The outlaws drove Fordie over the Rim Rocks with the herd," she said.

"Is he dead? Is he dead?"

The little woman had drawn her body up its full height.

Eleanor tried to answer. The words would not come from her lips. She nodded. There again she had to shut the door of memory; for, when we break the news, it isn't the news we break; it's the news breaks us.

After what seemed an interminable quiet, Mrs. Williams was asking through dry tearless sobs:

"What does it all mean? Have we not given our whole lives to G.o.d? How could this thing happen--to an innocent child? There isn't any justice or right in this whole world."

"We must _not_ be quiescent any more, Mrs. Williams. We must fight.

We have such a habit of letting things go, and things let go--go wrong.

It isn't G.o.d's fault at all: it's us--us humans: it's our fault. Every one of us ought to have been ready to die to prevent crime; and we've been letting things go. We mustn't be quiescent any more. We must fight wrongs and evils. And much more;" the girl in tears, the little woman fevered, red-eyed, gazing with glazed look into dark s.p.a.ces, kneading her clasped hands together. Once the door opened and the shawled head of the old half-breed woman poked in.

"Ford?" Calamity asked.

"Go 'way, Calamity," whispered Eleanor.

She saw the little woman rise slowly.

"He is murdered," Mrs. Williams said, "he is murdered just as truly as if Moyese had cut his throat with his own hand." It was not for months after, that Eleanor recalled the look on Calamity's face as the Indian woman heard those frenzied words. Then Mrs. Williams broke in uncontrollable sobbing. "Leave me! Go out--all of you. Leave me alone!"

Eleanor shut the door and led the dazed Indian children from the outer hall. In the Library, opposite the Mission Parlor, she found old Calamity sitting on the floor with the shawl over her head. The half-breed woman sat peering through the shawl as Eleanor lighted the hanging lamp. No Indian will mention the name of the dead. She fastened her eyes on Eleanor, snakily, sinister, never s.h.i.+fting her glance.

"What is it, Calamity?"

"Is dat true? Senator man he keel heem--keel leetle boy?" she asked slowly.

Eleanor thought a moment.

"Yes, it is entirely true," she said, never heeding the import of her words to the superst.i.tious mind of the Indian woman.

A little hiss of breath came from the crouching form. She rose, drew the shawl round her head and at the door, turned.

"Dey take mine," she said, "and now dey keel heem, an' white man, he yappy--yappy--yappy; not do--not do any t'ing! He send for Mount'

P'lice, mabee no do anyt'ing unless Indian man . . . he keel." The little hiss of breath again and a cunning mad look in the eyes.

"Go 'way Calamity! Go home to our ranch house!"

By and by, came Wayland. She knew why he had come after dark, carrying the slender body against his shoulder. A white handkerchief had been thrown over the face; and she saw that he held the arms tightly to hide the fact that both had been broken in the fall. The rains had matted the curly hair and brought a strange rose glow to the cheeks. There again--Eleanor had to shut the doors of memory; for they had carried him in together. The wind was not tempered to the shorn lamb; and it is the living, not the dead, who beat against the Portals of Death.

They kept watch together, she and Wayland, in the Library across from the closed door of the Mission. Parlor, black-eyed Indian urchins peeping furtively from the head of the stairs till bells rang lights out. Then silence fell, stabbed by the creak of floor, the swing of door, the click and rustle of the cotton wood leaves outside.

There was a slight patter of rain-drip from the eaves somewhere. A gate swung to the wind; and, from across the hall, they could hear the driven footsteps pacing up and down the parlor. Then, the drip,--drip,--was broken by longer blanks, and stopped. The cotton wood leaves ceased to rustle and flutter. Only the tw.a.n.g of the night hawk's wing hummed through the stillness; and the distracted tread no longer paced the Mission Parlor. When Eleanor came back from across the hall, she shut the Library door softly.

"She is praying," she said.

Wayland had been extemporizing a morris chair into a lounge with his Service coat for a pillow. He threw a navajo rug across. Then, he faced her. The look of masterdom had both hardened and softened. She did not know that the hunger-light of her own face hardened that hardness; and she gazed through the darkened window to hide her tears.

He stood beside her with his arms folded. A convulsive shudder shook her frame. Wayland tightened his folded arms. Sympathy is so easy.

The sense of her nearness, of her trust, of the warm living fire of her love was pus.h.i.+ng him not over the precipice but into the battle, out beyond the firing line. What did one man matter in this big fight anyway? They heard the sibilant hush of the River flood-tide; and the warm June dark enveloped them as in a caress. They could see the sheet lightning glimmer on the bank of c.u.mulous clouds behind the Holy Cross.

The humming night-hawk, up in the indigo of mid-heaven, uttered a lonely, far, fading call, as of life in flight; and a rustle of wind, faint as the brus.h.i.+ng of moth wings, pa.s.sed whispering into silence.

"You don't really think death is the end of all, do you?" she asked.

Wayland could not answer. If she had looked, she would have seen his face white and his eyes s.h.i.+ning with a strange new light. He drew back a little in the dark of the window cas.e.m.e.nt, with his hand on the sill.

It touched hers and closed over it. Then, somewhere from the dark came a night-sound heard only in June, the broken dream-trill of a bird in its sleep. When she spoke, her voice was low, keyed as the dream-voice from the dark.

"Where did the spray of flowers you gave me come from?"

"Sprig I'd stuck in my hat band."

"Was that all? Didn't you mean to tell me more?"

"It's a pearl everlasting blossom," answered Wayland.

She waited. He heard the slow ticking of his own watch.

"I was dreaming of your face," he blundered out, "and when I wakened, the thing had blown down on--the hammock." It was a clumsy subterfuge; and he knew that her thought meeting his half-way divined his dream.

The wind pa.s.sed whispering into silence. He felt the quiver of the pine needles outside, trembling to the touch of wind and night. The sense of her nearness, of her trust, of the warm living fire of her love swept over him unstemmed; and, when she turned and looked in his eyes, he caught her in his arms and held her there with a fierce tenderness, her face thrown back, the veins of her throat pulsing to the touch of wind and night, her lips parted, her lashes hiding her eyes.

"Tell me that you are mine," he whispered.

She did not answer for a moment. Then she lifted her eyes. He drank their light as a thirsty man might drink waters of life. Neither spoke. The rustling wind pa.s.sed whispering. The June dark enveloped them in the warm caress of the night. By the dim flare of the library lamp he saw her lips trembling.

"Tell me," he commanded.

"Do I need to tell you?"

"Yes, yes! I must have a seal of memory for the dark future," and his tongue poured forth such utterances as he had not dreamed men could use but in prayer. "I must know from your own lips."

He felt the tremor, felt the two hands rise to frame his face, felt the catch and take of breath, heard the broken notes of gold.