The Vagrant Duke Part 68

"He'll come around all right. You can't kill a man as game as that."

Beth clung to the arms of the chair in which they had placed her. "You think--he--he'll live?"

"Sure he will. I've seen 'em worse'n that----"

She sank back into her chair, exhausted. She had never fainted in her life and she wasn't going to begin. But now that all that they could do had been done for Peter, they turned their attention to Beth. She had not known how much she needed it. Her hair was singed, her wrists were raw and bleeding, and her arms, half naked, were red and blistered. Her dress, soaked with mud and water, was partly torn or burned away.

"She must be put to bed here, Mrs. Bergen," said McGuire. "She'll need the doctor too."

Beth protested and would not leave the room until the doctor came. But McGuire, who seemed--and somewhat justly--to have complete faith in the efficacy of his own remedy, gave her some of the whisky and water to drink, while Aunt Tillie washed her face and rubbed vaseline upon her arms, crooning over her all the while in the comforting way of women of her kind, to the end that Beth felt the pain of her body lessen.

It was not until the doctor arrived with a businesslike air and made his examination, p.r.o.nouncing Peter's condition serious but not necessarily fatal, that the tension at Beth's heart relaxed.

"He--he'll get well, Doctor?" she asked timidly.

"I think so," he said with a smile, "but we've got to have absolute quiet now. I'd like some one here to help me----"

"If you'd only let me----"

But she read refusal in his eyes as he looked at her critically, and saw him choose Stryker.

"You're to be put to bed at once," he said dryly. "You'll need attention too, I'm thinking."

And so Beth, with McGuire's arm supporting and Aunt Tillie's arm around her, was led to the room adjoining,--the pink room of Miss Peggy McGuire. McGuire closed the door and questioned her eagerly.

"You say Hawk Kennedy was killed----?"

"I think so--or--or burned," said Beth, now quivering in the reaction of all that she had experienced. "I--I sent Shad Wells to see. We left him lying there. We just had time to get away. The fire was all around.

We got to the swamp--into the water--but he----" She put her face into her hands, trembling with the recollection. "It was horrible. I can't talk about it."

Aunt Tillie glared at McGuire, but he still questioned uneasily.

"You--you saw nothing of a blue envelope, a paper----"

With an effort Beth lowered her hands and replied:

"No--Peter--Mr. Nichols thought of it. Shad Wells will bring it--if it isn't burned."

"Oh, I see----"

"But what you can't see," broke in Aunt Tillie with spirit, "is that the poor child ain't fit to answer any more questions to-night. And she shan't."

"Er--no--of course," said McGuire, and went out.

If it had been an eventful day for Peter and Beth, the night was to prove eventful for McGuire, for not content to wait the arrival of Shad Wells, he took his courage in his hands and with Brierly drove at once to the scene of the disaster. The wind had died and a gentle rain began to fall, but the fire was burning fiercely.

The other matter in McGuire's thoughts was so much the more important to him that he had given little thought to the damage to his property. His forests might all be burned down for all that he cared.

At the spot to which Beth and Peter had been carried he met Shad and the party of men that had been looking for Hawk Kennedy, but the place where the fight had taken place was still a ma.s.s of fallen trees and branches all flaming hotly and it was impossible for any one to get within several hundred yards of it.

There seemed little doubt as to the fate of his enemy. Jonathan K.

McGuire stood at the edge of the burned area, peering into the glowing embers. His look was grim but there was no smile of triumph at his lips.

In his moments of madness he had often wished Hawk Kennedy dead, but never had he wished him such a death as this. He questioned Shad sharply as to his share in the adventure, satisfying himself at last that the man had told a true story, and then, noting his wounded arm, sent him back with Brierly in the car to Black Rock House for medical treatment with orders to send the chauffeur with the limousine.

The rain was now falling fast, but Jonathan K. McGuire did not seem to be aware of it. His gaze was on the forest, on that of the burning area nearest him where the fire still flamed the hottest, beneath the embers of which lay the one dreadful secret of his life. Even where he stood the heat was intense, but he did not seem to be aware of it, nor did he follow the others when they retreated to a more comfortable spot. No one knew why he waited or of what he was thinking, unless of the damage to the Reserve and what the loss in money meant to him. They could not guess that pity and fear waged their war in his heart--pity that any man should die such a death--fear that the man he thought of should not die it.

But as the hours lengthened and there was no report brought to him of any injured man, being found in the forest near by, he seemed to know that Peter Nichols had not struck for Beth in vain.

When the limousine came, he sent the other watchers home, and got into it, sitting in solitary grandeur in his wet clothing, peering out of the window. The glow of the flames grew dimmer and died at last with the first pale light to the eastward which announced the coming of the dawn.

A light drizzle was still falling when it grew light enough to see.

McGuire got down and without awakening the sleeping chauffeur went forth into the spectral woods. He knew where the old tool cabin had stood and, from the description Wells had given him, had gained a general idea of where the fight had taken place--two hundred yards from the edge of the swamp where Nichols and the Cameron girl had been found, and nearly in a line with the biggest of the swamp-maples, the trunk of which still stood, a melancholy skeleton of its former grandeur.

The ground was still hot under the mud and cinders, but not painfully so, and he was not aware of any discomfort. Clouds of steam rose and among them he moved like the ghost of a sin, bent, eager, searching with heavy eyes for what he hoped and what he feared to find. The old tool house had disappeared, but he saw a heap of ashes and among them the shapes of saws and iron picks and shovels. But he pa.s.sed them by, making a straight line to the eastward and keeping his gaze upon the charred and blackened earth, missing nothing to right and left, fallen branches, heaps of rubbish, mounds of earth.

Suddenly startled, McGuire halted and stood for a long moment.... Then, his hand before his eyes he turned away and slowly made his way back to his automobile. But there was no triumph in his eyes. A power greater than his own had avenged Ben Cameron.

His vigil was over--his nightly vigil--the vigil of years. He made his way to his car and, awakening his chauffeur, told him to drive to Black Rock House. But when he reached home, the set look that his face had worn for so many weeks had disappeared. And in its place among the relaxed muscles which showed his years, sat the benignity of a new resolution.

It was broad daylight when he quietly knocked at the door of the room in which the injured man lay. The doctor came to the door. It seemed that all immediate danger of a further collapse had pa.s.sed for the heart was stronger and unless there was a setback Peter Nichols had an excellent chance of recovery. McGuire himself offered to watch beside the bed; but the doctor explained that a trained nurse was already on the way from Philadelphia and would arrive at any moment. So McGuire went to his own room and, sinking into his armchair, slept for the first time in many weeks at peace, smiling his benignant smile.

Beth awoke in the pink room of Miss Peggy McGuire in which she had been put to bed. She lay for a moment still stupefied, her brain struggling against the effects of the sleeping potion that the doctor had given her and then slowly straightened to a sitting posture, regarding in bewilderment the embroidered night-robe which she wore and the flowered pink hangings at the windows. She couldn't at first understand the pain at her head and other aches and pains which seemed to come mysteriously into being. But she heard a familiar voice at her ear and saw the anxious face of Aunt Tillie, who rose from the chair at her bedside.

"Aunt Tillie!" she whispered.

"It's all right, dearie," said the old woman. "You're to lie quite still until the doctor sees you----"

"The doctor----? Oh, I--I remember----" And then with a sudden awakening to full consciousness--"Peter!" she gasped.

"He's better, dearie."

"But what does the doctor say?"

"He's doin' as well as possible----"

"Will he get well?"

"Yes, yes. The doctor is very hopeful."

"You're sure?"

"Yes. He's sleepin' now--quiet--ye'd better just lie back again."

"But I want to go to him, Aunt Tillie. I want to."

"No. Ye can't, dearie--not now."

And so by dint of rea.s.surance and persuasion, Aunt Tillie prevailed upon the girl to lie back upon her pillows and after a while she slept again.