The Trail to Yesterday Part 29

"You're a liar!" he shouted. "Dakota's square!"

Sheila stifled a scream of fear and shrank from him. But recovering, she went to him, seizing his shoulders and forcing him back into the bunk. He did not resist, not seeming to pay any attention to her at all, but he mumbled, inexpressively:

"It ain't so, I tell you. He's just left me, an' any man which could talk like he talked to me ain't--I reckon not," he said, shaking his head with a vigorous, negative motion; "you're a heap mistaken--you ain't got him right at all."

He was quiet for a time after this, but toward the middle of the afternoon Sheila saw that his gaze was following her as she paced softly back and forth in the cabin.

"So you're stuck on that Langford girl, are you?" he demanded, laughing.

"Well, it won't do you any good, Dakota, she's--well, she's some sore at you for something. She won't listen to anything which is said about you."

The laughter died out of his eyes; they became cold with menace. "I ain't listenin' to any more of that sorta talk, I tell you! I've got my eyes open. Why!" he said in surprise, starting up, "he's gone!" He suddenly shuddered and cursed. "In the back," he said. "You--you----" And profanity gushed from his lips. Then he collapsed, closing his eyes, and lay silent and motionless.

Out of the jumble of disconnected sentences Sheila was able to gather two things of importance--perhaps three.

The first was that some one had told him of Dakota's complicity in the plan to murder him and that he refused to believe his friend capable of such depravity. The second was that he knew who had shot him; he also knew the man who had informed him of Dakota's duplicity--though this knowledge would amount to very little unless he recovered enough to be able to supply the missing threads.

Sheila despaired of him supplying anything, for it seemed that he was steadily growing worse, and when the dusk came she began to feel a dread of remaining with him in the cabin during the night. If only the doctor would return! If Dakota would come--Duncan, her father, anybody! But n.o.body came, and the silence around the cabin grew so oppressive that she felt she must scream. When darkness succeeded dusk she lighted the kerosene lamp, placed a bar over the window, secured the door fastenings, and seated herself at the table, determined to take a short nap.

It seemed that she had scarcely dropped off to sleep--though in reality she had been unconscious for more than two hours--when she awoke suddenly, to see Doubler sitting erect in the bunk, watching her with a wan, sympathetic smile. There was the light of reason in his eyes and her heart gave an ecstatic leap.

"Could you give me a drink of water, ma'am?" he said, in the voice that she knew well.

She sprang to the pail, to find that it contained very little. She had lifted it, and was about to unfasten the door, intending to go to the river to procure fresh water, when Doubler's voice arrested her.

"There's some water there--I can hear it splas.h.i.+n': It'll do well enough just now. I don't want much. You can get some fresh after a while. I want to talk to you."

She placed the pail down and went over to him, standing beside him.

"What is it?" she asked.

"How long have you been here? I knowed you was here all the time--I kept seein' you, but somehow things was a little mixed. But I know that you've been here quite a while. How long?"

"This is the second night."

"You found me layin' there--in the door. I dropped there, not bein' able to go any further. I felt you touchin' me--draggin' me. There was someone else here, too. Who was it?"

"The doctor and Dakota."

"Where's Dakota now?"

"At his cabin, I suppose. He didn't stay here long--he left right after he brought the doctor. I imagine you know why he didn't stay. He was afraid that you would recognize him and accuse him."

"Accuse him of what, ma'am?"

"Of shooting you."

He smiled. "I reckon, ma'am, that you don't understand. It wasn't Dakota that shot me."

"Who did, then?" she questioned eagerly. "Who?"

"Duncan."

"Why--why----" she said, sitting suddenly erect, a mysterious elation filling her, her eyes wide with surprise and delight, and a fear that Doubler might have been mistaken--"Why, I saw Dakota on the river trail just after you were shot."

"He'd just left me. He hadn't been gone more than ten minutes or so when Duncan rode up--comin' out of the timber just down by the crick. Likely he'd been hidin' there. I was cleanin' my rifle; we had words, and when I set my rifle down just outside the shack, he grabbed it an' shot me. After that I don't seem to remember a heap, except that someone was touchin'

me--which must have been you."

"Oh!" she said. "I am _so_ glad!"

She was thinking now of Dakota's parting words to her the night before on the crest of the slope above the river,--of his words, of the truth of his statement denying his guilt, and she was glad that she had not spoken some of the spiteful things which had been in her mind. How she had misjudged him!

"I reckon it's something to be glad for," smiled Doubler, misunderstanding her elation, "but I reckon I owe it to you--I'd have pulled my freight sure, if you hadn't come when you did. An' I told you not to be comin'

here any more." He laughed. "Ain't it odd how things turn out--sometimes.

I'd have died sure," he repeated.

"You are going to live a long while," she said. And then, to his surprise, she bent over and kissed his forehead, leaving his side instantly, her cheeks aflame, her eyes alight with a mysterious fire. To conceal her emotion from Doubler she seized the water pail.

"I will get some fresh water," she said, with a quick, smiling glance at him. "You'll want a fresh drink, and your bandages must be changed."

She opened the door and stepped down into the darkness.

There was a moon, and the trail to the river was light enough for her to see plainly, but when she reached the timber clump in which Doubler had said Duncan had been hiding, she shuddered and made a detour to avoid pa.s.sing close to it. This took her some distance out of her way, and she reached the river and walked along its bank for a little distance, searching for a deep accessible spot into which she could dip the pail.

The shallow crossing over which she had ridden many times was not far away, and when she stooped to fill the pail she heard a sudden clatter and splas.h.i.+ng, and looked up to see a horseman riding into the water from the opposite side of the river.

He saw her at the instant she discovered him, and once over the ford he turned his horse and rode directly toward her.

After gaining the bank he halted his pony and looked intently at her.

"You're Langford's daughter, I reckon," he said.

"Yes," she returned, seeing that he was a stranger; "I am."

"I'm Ben Allen," he said shortly; "the sheriff of this county. What are you doing here?"

"I am taking care of Ben Doubler," she said; "he has been----"

"Then he ain't dead, of course," said Allen, interrupting her. It seemed to Sheila that there was relief and satisfaction in his voice, and she peered closer at him, but his face was hidden in the shadow of his hat brim.

"He is very much better now," she told him, scarcely able to conceal her delight. "But he has been very bad."

"Able to talk?"

"Yes. He has just been talking to me." She took a step toward him, speaking earnestly and rapidly. "I suppose you are looking for Dakota,"

she said, remembering what her father had told her about sending Duncan to Lazette for the sheriff. "If you are looking for him, I want to tell you that he didn't shoot Doubler. It was Duncan. Doubler told me so not over five minutes ago. He said----"

But Allen had spurred his pony forward, and before she could finish he was out of hearing distance, riding swiftly toward the cabin.

Sheila lingered at the water's edge, for now suddenly she saw much beauty in the surrounding country, and she was no longer lonesome. She stood on the bank of the river, gazing long at the shadowy rims of the distant mountains, at their peaks, rising majestically in the luminous mist of the night; at the plains, stretching away and fading into the mysterious shadows of the distance; watching the waters of the river, s.h.i.+mmering like quicksilver--a band of glowing ribbon winding in and out and around the moon-touched b.u.t.tes of the canyons.