Langford of the Three Bars Part 16

"You know him well?"

"Yes. I see him often in his Indian mission work. He is one of the best friends I have."

The river gleamed with a frozen deadness alongside. The horses' hoofs pounded rhythmically over the hardened road. Opposite, a man who had evidently found saloon service in Kemah pretty good, but who doubtless would put himself in a position to make comparisons as soon as ever his unsteady feet could carry him there, began to sing a rollicking melody in a maudlin falsetto.

"Shut up!" One of the men nudged him roughly.

"Right you are," said the singer, pleasantly, whose name was Lawson. "It is not seemly that we lift up our voices in worldly melody on this holy day and-in the presence of a lady," with an elaborate bow and a vacant grin that made Louise shrink closer to the Judge. "I suggest we all join in a sacred song." He followed up his own suggestion with a discordant burst of "Yes, we will gather at the river."

"He means the kind o' rivers they have in the 'Place around the Corner,'" volunteered Hank, turning around with a knowing wink. "They have rivers there-plenty of 'em-only none of 'em ever saw water."

"I tell you, shut up," whispered the man who had first chided. "Can't you see there's a lady present? No more monkey-s.h.i.+nes or we'll oust you.

Hear?"

"I bow to the demands of the lady," said Lawson, subsiding with happy gallantry.

"You have many 'best friends' for a man who boasted not so long ago that he stood alone in the cow country," said Louise, resuming the interrupted conversation with Gordon.

"He is one of the fingers," retorted Gordon. "I confessed to one hand, you will remember."

"Let me see," said Louise, musingly. She began counting on her own daintily gloved hand.

"Mrs. Higgins is the thumb, you said?" questioningly.

"Yes."

"Mr. Langford is the first finger, of course?"

"Of course."

"And Uncle Hammond is the middle finger?"

"You have said it."

"And the bishop is the third finger?"

"He surely is."

"And-and-Mary is the next?"

"Sorceress! You have guessed all right."

"Then where am I?" she challenged, half in earnest, half in fun. "You might have left at least the little finger for me."

He laughed under his breath-an unsteady sort of laugh, as if something had knocked at his habitual self control. There was only one answer to that gay, mocking challenge-only one-and that he could not give. He forgot for a little while that there were other people in the wagon. The poor babbling, grinning man across the way was not the only drunken man therein. Only one answer, and that to draw the form closer-closer to him-against his heart-for there was where she belonged. Fingers? What did he care for fingers now? He wanted to lay his face down against her soft hair-it was so perilously near. If only he might win in his fight!

But even so, what would it matter? What could there ever be for her in this cruel, alien land? She had been so kindly and lovingly nurtured. In her heart nestled the home call-for all time. She was bound in its meshes. They would draw her sooner or later to her sure and inevitable destiny. And what was there for him elsewhere-after all these years?

Kismet. He drew a long breath.

"I'm a poor maverick, I suppose, marked with no man's friends.h.i.+p. But you see I'm learning the language of the brotherhood. Why don't you compliment me on my adaptability?"

She looked up smilingly. She was hurt, but he should never know it. And he, because of the pain in him, answered almost roughly:

"It is not a language for you to learn. You will never learn. Quit trying. You are not like us."

She, because she did not understand, felt the old homesick choking in her throat, and remembered with a reminiscent shudder of the first awful time she had spun along that road. Everybody seemed to spin in this strange land. She felt herself longing for the fat, lazy, old jogging horses of her country home. Horses couldn't hurry there because the hills were too many and the roads too heavy. These lean, s.h.a.ggy, range-bred horses were diabolical in their predilection for going.

Hank's surely were no exception to the rule. He pulled them up with a grand flourish at the edge of the steep incline leading directly upon the pontoon that bridged the narrowed river on the Kemah side of the island, and they stopped dead still with the cleanness worthy of cow ponies. The suddenness of the halt precipitated them all into a general mix-up. Gordon had braced himself for the shock, but Louise was wholly unprepared. She was thrown violently against him. The contact paled his face. The soft hair he had longed to caress in his madness brushed his cheek. He s.h.i.+vered.

"Oh!" cried Louise, laughing and blus.h.i.+ng, "I wasn't expecting that!"

Most of the men were already out and down on the bridge. A lone pedestrian was making his way across.

"All safe?" queried Judge Dale, as he came up.

"A little thin over the channel, but all safe if you cross a-foot."

"Suppose we walk across the island," suggested the Judge, who occasionally overcame his indolence in spasmodic efforts to counteract his growing portliness, "and our friend Hank will meet us here in the morning."

So it was agreed. The little party straggled gayly across the bridge.

The walk across the island was far from irksome. The air was still bracing, though rags of smoky cloud were beginning to obscure the sun.

The gaunt cottonwoods stood out in sombre silhouette against the unsoftened bareness of the winter landscape. Louise was somewhat thoughtful and pensive since her little attempt to challenge intimacy had been so ungraciously received. To Gordon, on the other hand, had come a strange, new exhilaration. His blood bounded joyously through his veins. This was his day-he would live it to the dregs. To-morrow, and renunciation-well, that was to-morrow. He could not even resent, as, being a man, he should have resented, the unwelcome and ludicrous attentions of the drunken singer to the one woman in the crowd, because whenever the offender came near, Louise would press closer to him, Gordon, and once, in her quick distaste to the proximity of the man, she clutched Gordon's coat-sleeve nervously. It was the second time he had felt her hand on his arm. He never forgot either. But the man received such a withering chastis.e.m.e.nt from Gordon's warning eyes that he ceased to molest until the remainder of the island road had been traversed.

Then men looked at each other questioningly. A long, narrow, single-plank bridge stretched across the channel. It was not then so safe as report would have it. The boards were stretched lengthwise with a long step between each board and the next. What was to be done? Hank had gone long since. No one coveted the long walk back to Kemah. Every one did covet the comfort or pleasure upon which each had set his heart.

Gordon, the madness of his intoxication still upon him, const.i.tuted himself master of ceremonies. He stepped lightly upon the near plank to reconnoitre. He walked painstakingly from board to board. He was dealing in precious freight-he would draw no rash conclusions. When he had reached what he considered the middle of the channel, he returned and p.r.o.nounced it in his opinion safe, with proper care, and advised strongly that no one step upon a plank till the one in front of him had left it. Thus the weight of only one person at a time would materially lessen the danger of the ice's giving way. So the little procession took up its line of march.

Gordon had planned that Louise should follow her uncle and he himself would follow Louise; thus he might rest a.s.sured that there would be no encroachment upon her preserves. The officious songster, contrary to orders, glided ahead of his place when the line of march was well taken up-usurping anybody's plank at will, and trotting along over the bare ice until finally he drew alongside Louise with an amiable grin.

"I will be here ready for emergencies," he confided, meaningly. "You need not be afraid. If the ice breaks, I will save you."

"Get back, you fool," cried Gordon, fiercely.

"And leave this young lady alone? Not so was I brought up, young man,"

answered Lawson, with great dignity. "Give me your hand, miss, I will steady you."

Louise shrank from his touch and stepped back to the end of her plank.

"Get on that plank, idiot!" cried Gordon, wrathfully. "And if you dare step on this lady's board again, I'll wring your neck. Do you hear?"

He had stepped lightly off his own plank for a moment while he drew Louise back to it. The ice gave treacherously, and a little pool of water showed where his foot had been. Louise faltered.

"It-it-flows so fast," she said, nervously.

"It is nothing," he rea.s.sured her. "I will be more careful another time."

It was a perilous place for two. He hurried her to the next board as soon as the subdued transgressor had left it, he himself holding back.

It was indeed an odd procession. Dark figures balanced themselves on the slim footing, each the length of a plank from the other, the line seeming to stretch from bank to bank. It would have been ludicrous had it not been for the danger, which all realized. Some half-grown boys, prowling along the Velpen sh.o.r.e looking for safe skating, gibed them with flippant rudeness.

Lawson took fire.