Desert Conquest Part 41

"Nonsense!" said Wade. "You don't mean to resist arrest? That's foolish."

"Oh, I dunno," said McHale. "Depends on how you look at it. I ain't goin' to resist to speak of; I'm just lyin' low for a spell. I reckon I'll pack old Baldy with a little outfit, Casey. 'Bout two days from now you'll find him out by Sunk Springs if you ride that way."

"I don't get the idea."

"It's this way," McHale explained. "This Cross is one of a bad bunch.

They'll be out for my scalp. They don't want no law in this. I been hearin' 'bout Cross and this old-timer, Dade. They're great tillik.u.ms, and Dade is the old he-c.o.o.n of the bunch. I ain't takin' a chance on some little tin-starred deputy standin' them off. Furthermore, I figure it ain't unlikely they'll come after me some time to-night. If it was just you and me, Casey, we could stand the hand, and whatever hangin'

there was would come off in the smoke. But with women on the place it wouldn't be right. So I'll just point out for a little campin' spot somewheres, and save everybody trouble. If any of these here sheriffs or deputies gets nosin' around, you tell 'em how it is. I'll come in when the signs is right, and not before. Tell them not to go huntin'

me, neither, but to go ahead and get everything set for a proper trial.

I'll send word when I'll be in."

Wade chuckled. "They can't arrange a trial without somebody to try, Tom."

"They'll have to make a stagger at it, or wait," McHale responded seriously.

It was dusk when he headed westward, old Baldy, lightly packed, trotting meekly at the tail of his saddle horse.

Casey, coming back from a final word with him, met Clyde strolling toward the young orchard. He fell into step.

"Nice evening."

She regarded him quizzically. "I won't ask a single question. You needn't be afraid."

"Did you think I meant to head off your natural curiosity? Not a bit of it. You want to know where Tom is going at this time of night, and why?"

"Of course I do. But I won't ask."

"You may just as well know now as later." He told her what had happened, omitting to mention McHale's real reason for leaving the ranch. Even in the darkness he could see the trouble in her eyes.

"You really mean it?" she questioned. "You mean that he has killed a man?"

"Either that or shot him up pretty badly."

"I can scarcely believe it. I like McHale; he's droll, humorous, so cheerful, so easy-going. I can't think of him as a murderer."

"Nonsense!" said Casey. "No murder about it. It was a fair gun fight--an even break. This fellow came at Tom, shooting. He had to protect himself."

"He could have avoided it. He had time to get on his horse and ride away. But he waited."

"He did right," said Casey. "This man would have shot him on sight. It was best to settle it then and there."

"That may be so," she admitted, "but life is a sacred thing to me."

"No doubt Tom considered his own life tolerably sacred," he responded.

"As an abstract proposition life may be sacred. Practically it's about the cheapest thing on earth. It persists and repeats and increases in spite of war, pestilence, and famine. The princ.i.p.al value of the individual life is its service to other life. Cross wasn't much good.

That old Holstein over there in the corral, with her long and honourable record of milk production and thoroughbred calves, is of more real benefit to the world. You see, it was Tom or Cross. One had to go. I'm mighty glad it was Cross."

"Oh, if you put it that way----"

"That's the way to put it. Of course, we aren't sure that he's more than shot up a little. Still, knowing what Tom can do with a gun, I'm inclined to think that Cross is all same good Indian."

For some moments they walked in silence. It was rapidly becoming dark.

A heavy bank of cloud, blue-black in the waning light, was slowly climbing into the northwestern sky, partially obscuring the last tints of the sunset. The wind had ceased. The air was hot, oppressive, laden with the scents of dry earth. Sounds carried far in the stillness. The stamp of a horse in a stall, the low, throaty notes of a cow nuzzling her calf, the far-off evening wail of a coyote--all seemed strangely near at hand, borne by some telephonic quality in the atmosphere.

"How still it is!" said Clyde. "One can almost feel the darkness descending."

"Electrical storm coming, I fancy. No such luck as rain."

"I don't suppose it affects you," she remarked, "but out here when night comes I feel lonely. And yet that's scarcely the right word. It's more a sense of apprehension, a realization of my own unimportance. The country is so vast--so empty--that I feel dwarfed by it. I believe I'm afraid of the big, lonely land when the darkness lies on it. Of course, you'll laugh at me."

"No," he a.s.sured her. "I know the feeling very well. I've had it myself, not here, but up where the rivers run into the Polar Sea. The vastness oppressed. I wanted the company of men and to see the things man had made. I was awed by the world lying just as it came from the hand of G.o.d. The wilderness seemed to press in on me. That's what drives men mad sometimes. It isn't the solitude or the loneliness exactly. It's the constant pressure of forces that can be felt but not described."

"I think I understand."

"The ordinary person wouldn't. There are no words to express some things."

"I'm glad of it; I don't want the things I feel the most cheapened by words."

"Something in that," he agreed. "Words are poor things when one really _feels_. Providence seems to have arranged that we should be more or less tongue-tied when we feel the most."

"Is that the case?"

"I think so--with men, at any rate. It's especially so with most of us in affairs of love and death."

"But some men make love very well, you know," she smiled.

"I defer to your experience," he laughed back.

"Oh, my experience!" She made a wry face. "And what do you know of my experience?"

"Less than nothing. But from some slight observation of my fellow men I am aware that a very pretty and wealthy girl is in a position to collect experience of that kind faster than she can catalogue it."

"Perhaps she doesn't want to do either."

"Referring further to my fellow man, I beg to say that her wishes cut very little ice. She will get the experience whether she wants it or not."

"Accurate observer! Are you trying to flatter me?"

"As how?"

"Do you think me pretty?"

"Even in the darkness----"

"Be serious. Do you?"

"Why, of course I do. I never saw a prettier girl in my life."

"Cross your heart?"