The Price of the Prairie Part 53

"While O'mie was taking a vacation in the heated days of August, he slept up in the stone cabin. Jean Pahusca, thief, highwayman, robber, and a.s.sa.s.sin, kept his stolen goods there. Mapleson and his mercantile partner divided the spoils. O'mie's sense of humor is strong, and one night he played ghost for Jean. You know the redskin's inherent fear of ghosts. It put Jean out of the commission goods business. No persuasion of Mapleson's or his partner's could induce Jean to go back after night to the cabin after this reappearance of the long quiet ghost of the drowned woman."

Le Claire could not repress a smile.

"I think I unconsciously played the same role in September out there, frightening a little man away one night. I was innocent of any harm intended."

"It did the work," my father replied. "Jean cut for the West at once, and joined the Cheyennes for a time--and with a purpose." Then as he looked straight at Tell, his voice grew stern, and that mastery of men that his presence carried made itself felt.

"Jean has bought the right to the life of my son. His pay for the hundreds of dollars he has turned into the hands of this man was that Mapleson should defame my son's good name and drive him from Springvale, and that Jean in his own time was to follow and a.s.sa.s.sinate him.

Mapleson here was in league to protect Jean from the law if the deed should ever be traced to his door. With these conditions in addition, Mapleson was to receive the undivided one-half of section 29, range 14.

"Tell Mapleson, I pa.s.s by the crime of forging lies against the name of Irving Whately; I pa.s.s by the plotted crimes against this town in '63; I ignore the systematic thievery of your dealings with the half-breed Jean Pahusca; but, by the G.o.d in heaven, my boy is my own. For the crime of seeking to lay stain upon his name, the crime of trying to entangle him hopelessly in a scandal and a legal prosecution with a sinful erring girl, the crime of lending your hand to hold the coat of the man who should stone him to death,--for these things, I, the father of Philip Baronet, give you now twenty-four hours to leave Springvale and the State. If at the end of that time you are within the limits of Kansas, you must answer to me in the court-room over there; and, Tell Mapleson, you know what's before you. I came to the West to help build it up. I cannot render my State a greater service than by driving you from its borders; and so long as I live I shall bar your entrance to a land that, in spite of all it has to bear, grows a larger crop of honest men with the conquest of each acre of the prairie soil."

CHAPTER XXVII

SUNSET BY THE SWEEt.w.a.tER

And we count men brave who on land and wave fear not to die; but still, Still first on the rolls of the world's great souls are the men who have feared to kill.

--EDMUND VANCE COOKE.

Jean Pahusca turned at the sound of O'mie's step on the stone. The red sun had blinded his eyes and he could not see clearly at first. When he did see, O'mie's presence and the captive unbound and staggering to his feet, surprised the Indian and held him a moment longer. The confusion at the change in war's grim front pa.s.sed quickly, however,--he was only half Indian,--and he was himself again. He darted toward us, swift as a serpent. Clutching O'mie by the throat and lifting him clear of the rock shelf the Indian threw him headlong down the side of the bluff, cras.h.i.+ng the bushes as he fell. The knife that had cut the cords that bound me, the same knife that would have scalped Marjie and taken the boy's life in the Hermit's Cave, was flung from O'mie's hand. It rang on the stone and slid down in the darkness below. Then the half-breed hurled himself upon me and we clinched there by the cliff's edge for our last conflict.

I was in Jean's land now. I had come to my final hour with him. The Baronets were never cowardly. Was it inherited courage, or was it the spirit of power in that letter, Marjie's message of love to me, that gave me grace there? Followed then a battle royal, brute strength against brute strength. All the long score of defeated effort, all the jealousy and hate of years, all the fury of final conflict, all the mad frenzy of the instinct of self-preservation, all the savage l.u.s.t for blood (most terrible in the human tiger), were united in Jean. He combined a giant's strength and an Indian's skill with the dominant courage and coolness of a son of France. Against these things I put my strength in that strange struggle on the rocky ledge in the gathering twilight of that February day. The little cove on the bluff-side, was not more than fifteen feet across at its widest place. The shelf of sloping stone made a fairly even floor. In this little retreat I had been bound and unable to move for an hour. My muscles were tense at first. I was dazed, too, by a sudden deliverance from the slow torture that had seemed inevitable for me. The issue, however, was no less awful than swift. I had just cause for wreaking vengeance on my foeman. Twice he had attempted to take O'mie's life. The boy might be dead from the headlong fall at this very minute, for all I knew. The clods were only two days old on Bud Anderson's grave. Nothing but the skill and sacrifice of O'mie had saved Marjie from this brute's l.u.s.t six years before. While he lived, my own life was never for one moment safe. And more than everything else was the possibility of a fate for Marjie too horrible for me to dwell upon. All these things swept through my mind like a lightning flash.

If ever the Lord in the moment of supreme peril gave courage and self-control, these good and perfect gifts were mine in that evening's strife. With the first plunge he had thrown me, and he was struggling to free his hand from my grasp to get at my throat; his knee was on my chest.

"You're in my land now," he hissed in my ear.

"Yes, but this is Phil Baronet still," I answered with a calmness so dominant, it stayed the struggle for a moment. I was playing on him the same trick by which he had so often deceived us,--the pretended relaxation of all effort, and indifference to further strife. In that moment's pause I gained my lost vantage. Quick as thought I freed my other hand, and, holding still his murderous grip from my throat, I caught him by the neck, and pus.h.i.+ng his head upward, I gave him such a thrust that his hold on me loosened a bit. A bit only, but that was enough, for when he tightened it again, I was on my feet and the strife was renewed--renewed with the fierceness of maddened brutes, lashed into fury. Life for one of us meant death for the other, and I lost every humane instinct in that terrible struggle except the instinct to save Marjie first, and my own life after hers. Civilization slips away in such a battle, and the fighter is only a jungle beast, knowing no law but the unquenchable thirst for blood. The hand that holds this pen is clean to-day, clean and strong and gentle. It was a tiger's claw that night, and Jean's hot blood following my terrific blow full in his face only thrilled me with savage courage. I hurled him full length on the stone, my heavy cavalry boot was on his neck, and I would have stamped the life out of him in an instant. But with the motion of a serpent he wriggled himself upward; then, catching me by the leg, he had me on one knee, and his long arms, like the tentacles of a devil-fish, tightened about me. Then we rolled together over and under, under and over. His hard white teeth were sunk in my shoulder to cut my life artery. I had him by the long soft hair, my fingers tangled in the handfuls I had torn from his head. And every minute I was possessed with a burning frenzy to strangle him. Every desire had left my being now, save the eagerness to conquer, and the consciousness of my power to fight until that end should come.

We were at the cliff's edge now, my head hanging over; the blood was rus.h.i.+ng toward my clogging brain; the sharp rock's rim, like a stone knife, was cutting my neck. Jean loosened his teeth from my shoulder, and his murderous hand was on my throat. In that supreme crisis I summoned the very last atom of energy, the very limit of physical prowess, the quickness and cunning which can be called forth only by the conflict with the swift approach of death.

Nature had given me a muscular strength far beyond that of most men. And all my powers had been trained to swift obedience and almost unlimited endurance. With this was a nervous system that matched the years of a young man's greatest vigor. Strong drink and tobacco had never had the chance to play havoc with my steady hand or to sap the vitality of my reserve forces. Even as Jean lifted me by the throat to crush my head backward over that sharp stone ledge, I put forth this burst of power in a fierceness so irresistible that it hurled him from me, and the struggle was still unended. We were on our feet again in a rage to reach the finish. I had almost ceased to care to live. I wanted only to choke the breath from the creature before me. I wanted only to save from his h.e.l.lish power the victims who would become his prey if he were allowed to live.

Instinct led me to wrestle with my a.s.sailant across the ledge toward the wall that shut in about the sanctuary, just as, a half-year before, on our "Rockport" fighting ground, I strove to drag him through the bushes toward Cliff Street, while he tried to fling me off the projecting rock.

And so we locked limb and limb in the horrible contortion of this savage strife. Every muscle had been so wrenched, no pain or wound reported itself fairly to the congested brain. I had nearly reached the wall, and I was making a frantic effort to fling the Indian against it.

I had his shoulder almost upon the rocky side, and my grip was tight about him, when he turned on me the same trick I had played in the early part of this awful game. A sudden relaxation threw me off my guard. The blood was streaming from a wound on my forehead, and I loosed my hold to throw back my long hair from my face and wipe the trickling drops from my eyes. In that fatal moment my mind went blank, whether from loss of blood or a sudden blow from Jean, I do not know. When I did know myself, I seemed to have fallen through leagues of s.p.a.ce, to be falling still, until a pain, so sharp that it was a blessing, brought me to my senses.

The light was very dim, but my right hand was free. I aimed one blow at Jean's shoulder, and he fell by the cliff's edge, dragging me with him, my weight on his body. His left hand hung over the cliff-side. I should have finished with him then, but that the fallen hand, down in the black shadows, had closed over a knife sticking in the crevice just below the edge of the bluff--Jean Le Claire's knife, that had been flung from O'mie's grip as he fell.

I caught its gleam as the half-breed flashed it upward in a swift stab at my heart and my breath hung back. I leaped from him in time to save my life, but not quickly enough to keep the villainous thing from cutting a long jagged track across my thigh, from which spurted a crimson flood. There could be only one thing evermore for us two. A redoubled fury seized me, and then there swept up in me a power for which I cannot account, unless it may be that the Angel of Life, who guards all the pa.s.ses of the valley of the shadow, sometimes turns back the tide for us. A sudden calmness filled me, a cool courage contrasting with Jean's frenzy, and I set my teeth together with the grip of a bulldog. Jean had leaped to his feet as I sprang back from his knife-thrust, and for the first time since the fight began we stood apart for half a minute.

"I may die, but I'll never be cut to death. It must be an equal fight, and when I go, Jean Pahusca, you are going with me. I'll have that knife first and then I'll kill you with my own hands, if my breath goes out at that same instant."

There must have been something terrible in my voice for it was the voice of a strong man going down to death, firm of purpose, and unafraid.

The feel of the weapon gave the Indian renewed energy. He sprang at me with a maniac's might. He was a maniac henceforth. Three times we raged across the narrow fighting ground. Three times I struck that murderous blade aside, but not without a loss of my own blood for each thrust, until at last by sheer virtue of muscle against muscle, I wrenched it from Jean's hand, dripping with my red life-tide. And even as I seized it, it slipped from me and fell, this time to the ledges far below. Then h.e.l.l broke all bounds for us, and what followed there in that shadowy twilight, I care not to recall much less to set it down here.

I do not know how long we battled there, nor whose blood most stained the stone of that sanctuary, nor how many times I was underneath, nor how often on top of my a.s.sailant. Not all the struggles of my sixty years combined, and I have known many, could equal that fight for life.

There came a night in later time when for what seemed an age to me, I matched my physical power and endurance against the terrible weight of broken timbers of a burning bridge that was crus.h.i.+ng out human lives, in a railroad wreck. And every second of that eternity-long time, I faced the awful menace of death by fire. The memory of that hour is a pleasure to me when contrasted with this hand to hand battle with a murderer.

It ended at last--such strife is too costly to endure long--ended with a form stretched p.r.o.ne and helpless and whining for mercy before a conqueror, whose life had been well-nigh threshed out of him; but the fallen fighter was Jean Pahusca, and the man who towered over him was Phil Baronet.

The half-breed deserved to die. Life for him meant torturing death to whatever lay in his path. It meant untold agony for whomsoever his hand fell upon. And greater to me than these then was the murderous conflict just ended, in which I had by very miracle escaped death again and again. Men do not fight such battles to weep forgiving tears on one another's necks when the end comes. When the spirit of mortal strife possesses a man's soul, the demons of h.e.l.l control it. The moment for a long overdue retribution was come. As we had clinched and torn one another there Jean's fury had driven him to a maniac's madness. The blessed heritage of self-control, my endowment from my father, had not deserted me. But now my hand was on his throat, my knee was planted on his chest, and by one twist I could end a record whose further writing would be in the blood of his victims.

I lifted my eyes an instant to the western sky, out of which a clear, sweet air was softly fanning my hot blood-smeared face. The sun had set as O'mie cut my bonds. And now the long purple twilight of the Southwest held the land in its soft hues. Only one ray of iridescent light pointed the arch above me--the sun's good-night greeting to the Plains.

Its glory held me by a strange power. G.o.d's mercy was in that radiant shaft of beauty reaching far up the sky, keeping me back from wilful murder.

And then, because all pure, true human love is typical of G.o.d's eternal love for his children, then, all suddenly, the twilight scene slipped from me. I was in my father's office on an August day, and Marjie was beside me. The love light in her dear brown eyes, as they looked steadily into mine, was thrilling my soul with joy. I felt again the touch of her hand as I felt it that day when I presented her to Rachel Melrose. Her eyes were looking deep into my soul, her hand was in my hand, the hand that in a moment more would take the life of a human being no longer able to give me blow for blow. I loosed my clutch as from a leprous wound, and the Indian gasped again for mercy. Standing upright, I spurned the form grovelling now at my feet.

Lifting my b.l.o.o.d.y right hand high above me, I thanked G.o.d I had conquered in a greater battle. I had won the victory over my worser self.

But I was too wise to think that Jean should have his freedom. Stepping to where the cut thongs that had bound me lay, I took the longest pieces and tied the half-breed securely.

All this time I had fogotten O'mie. Now it dawned upon me that he must be found. He might be alive still. The fall must have been broken somehow by the bushes. I peered over the edge of the bluff into the darkness of the valley below.

"O'mie!" I called, "O'mie!"

"Present!" a voice behind me responded.

I turned quickly. Standing there in the dim light, with torn clothing, and tumbled red hair, and scratched face was the Irish boy, bruised, but not seriously hurt.

"I climbed down and round and up and got back as soon as I come too," he said, with that happy-go-lucky smile of his. "Bedad! but you've been makin' some history, I see. Git up, you miserable cur, and we'll march ye down to General Custer. You take entirely too many liberties wid a Springvale boy what's knowed you too darned long already."

We lifted Jean, and keeping him before us we hurried him into the presence of the fair-haired commander to whom we told our story, failing not to report on the incident witnessed by O'mie on the river bank two nights before, when Jean sent his murdered father's body into the waters below him.

"And so that French renegade is dead, is he," Custer mused, never lifting his eyes from the ground. He had heard us through without query or comment, until now. "I knew him well. First as a Missionary priest to the Osages. He was a fine man then, but the Plains made a devil of him; and he deserved what he got, no doubt.

"Now, as to this half-breed, why the devil didn't you kill him when you had the chance? Dead Indians tell no tales; but the holy Church and the United States Government listen to what the live ones tell. You could have saved me any amount of trouble, you infernal fool."

I stood up before the General. There was as great a contrast in our appearance as in our rank. The slight, dapper little commander in full official dress and perfect military bearing looked sternly up at the huge, rough private with his torn, b.l.o.o.d.y clothing and lacerated hands.

Custer's yellow locks had just been neatly brushed. My own dark hair, uncut for months, hung in a curly ma.s.s thrown back from my scarred face.

I gave him a courteous, military salute. Then standing up to my full height, and looking steadily down at the slender, graceful man before me, I said:

"I may be a fool, General, but I am a soldier, not a murderer."

Custer made no reply for a time.

He sat down and, turning toward Jean Pahusca, he studied the young half-breed carefully. Then he said briefly,

"You may go now."

We saluted and pa.s.sed from his tent. Outside we had gone only a few steps, when the General overtook us.