CHAPTER XII
WAITING
The man found dead the night the Lazy S was burned out was not easilyidentified. He was a half-breed, but half-breeds were many west of theriver, and the places where they laid their heads at night were asshifting as the sands of that rapid, ominous, changing stream of theirs,which ever cut them off from the world of their fathers and kept thembound, but restless, chafing, in that same land where their mothers hadstared stolidly at a strange little boat-load tugging up the river thatwas the forerunner of the ultimate destiny of this broad northwestcountry, but which brought incidentally--as do all big destinies in thegreat scheme bring sorrow to some one--wrong, misunderstanding,forgetfulness, to a once proud, free people now in subjection.
At last the authorities found trace of him far away at Standing Rock,through the agent there, who knew him as of an ugly reputation,--adissipated, roving profligate, who had long since squandered hisgovernment patrimony. He had been mixed up in sundry bad affairs in thepast, and had been an inveterate gambler. So much only were the KemahCounty authorities able to uncover of the wayward earthly career of thedead man. Of his haunts and cronies of the period immediately precedinghis death, the agent could tell nothing. He had not been seen at theagency for nearly a year. The reprobate band had covered its trackswell. There was nothing to do but lay the dead body away and shoveloblivion over its secret.
* * * * *
In the early morning after the return of the men from their unsuccessfulman hunt, Gordon, gray and haggard from loss of sleep and from hardthought, stepped out into the kitchen to stretch his cramped limbs. Hestumbled over the figure of Langford prone upon the floor, dead asleepin utter exhaustion. He smiled understandingly and opened the outer doorquietly, hoping he had not aroused the worn-out Boss. The air was freshand cool, with a hint of Autumn sharpness, and a premature Indian Summerhaze, that softened the gauntness of the landscape, and made thedistances blue and rest-giving. He felt the need of invigoration afterhis night's vigil, and struck off down the road with long strides, inpleasant anticipation of a coming appetite for breakfast.
Thus it was that Langford, struggling to a sitting posture, rubbing hisheavy eyes with a dim consciousness that he had been disturbed, andwondering drowsily why he was so stupid, felt something seeping throughhis senses that told him he did not do well to sleep. So he decided hewould take a plunge into the cold artesian pond, and with such drasticmeasures banish once and for all the elusive yet all-pervading cobwebswhich clung to him. Rising to his feet with unusual awkwardness, helooked with scorn upon the bare floor and accused it blindly andbitterly as the direct cause of the strange soreness that beset hiswhole anatomy. The lay of the floor had changed in a night. Where washe? He glanced helplessly about. Then he knew.
Thus it was, that when Mary languidly opened her eyes a little later, itwas the Boss who sat beside her and smiled reassuringly.
"You have not slept a wink," she cried, accusingly.
"Indeed I have," he said. "Three whole hours. I feel tip-top."
"You are--fibbing," she said. "Your eyes look so tired, and your face isall worn."
His heart leaped with the joy of her solicitude.
"You are wrong," he laughed, teasingly. "I slept on the floor; and agood bed it was, too. No, Miss Williston, I am not 'all in' yet, by anymeans."
In his new consciousness, a new formality crept into his way ofaddressing her. She did not seem to notice it.
"Forgive me for forgetting, last night," she said, earnestly. "I wasvery selfish. I forgot that you had not slept for nearly two days, andwere riding all the while in--our behalf. I forgot. I was tired, and Iwent to sleep. I want you to forgive me. I want you to believe that I doappreciate what you have done. My father--"
"Don't, don't, little girl," cried Langford, forgetting his new awe ofher maidenhood in his pity for the stricken child.
"My father," she went on, steadily, "would thank you if he were here. Ithank you, too, even if I did forget to think whether or no you and allthe men had any sleep or anything to eat last night. Will you try tobelieve that I did not forget wittingly? I was so tired."
When Langford answered her, which was not immediately, his face waswhite and he spoke quietly with a touch of injured pride.
"If you want to hurt us, Miss Williston, that is the way to talk. Wecowmen do not do things for thanks."
She looked at him wonderingly a moment, then said, simply, "Forgive me,"but her lips were trembling and she turned to the wall to hide the tearsthat would come. After all, she was only a woman--with nerves--and thereaction had come. She had been brave, but a girl cannot beareverything. She sobbed. That was too much for Langford and his dignity.He bent over her, all his heart in his honest eyes and broken voice.
"Now you will kill me if you don't stop it. I am all sorts of abrute--oh, deuce take me for a blundering idiot! I didn't mean it--honestI didn't. You will believe me, won't you? There is nothing in the worldI wouldn't do for you, little girl."
She was sobbing uncontrollably now.
"Mr. Langford," she cried, turning to him with something of the pasthorror creeping again into her wet eyes, "do you think I killed--thatman?"
"What man? There was only one man killed, and one of my boys potted himon the run," he said.
"Are you sure?" she breathed, in quick relief.
"Dead sure," convincingly.
"And yet," she sobbed, memory coming back with a rush, "I wish--I wish--Ihad killed them all."
"So do I!" he agreed, so forcefully that she could but smile a little,gratefully. She said, with just the faintest suggestion of color in herwhite cheeks:
"Where is everybody? Have you been sitting with me long?"
"Mrs. White is getting breakfast, and I haven't been sitting with you aslong as I wish I had," he answered, boldly; and then added, regretfully,"Dick was the man who had the luck to watch over you all night. I wentto sleep."
"You were so tired," she said, sympathizingly. "And besides, I didn'tneed anything."
"It is good of you to put it that way," he said, his heart cuttingcapers again.
"Mr. Gordon is the best man I know," she said, thoughtfully.
"There you are right, Miss Williston," he assented, heartily, despite aquick little sting of jealousy. "He is the best man I know. I wish youwould shake hands on that--will you?"
"Surely."
He held the smooth brown hand in his firmly with no thought of lettingit go--yet.
"I am not such a bad chap myself, you know, Miss Williston," he jested,his bold eyes flashing a challenge.
"I know it," she said, simply. "I do not know what I should do withoutyou. You will be good to me always, wont you? There is no one butme--now."
She was looking at him trustingly, confident of his friendship,innocent, he knew, of any feminine wile in this her dark hour. Thesweetness of it went to his head. He forgot that she was in sorrow hecould not cure, forgot that she was looking to him in all probabilityonly as the possible saviour of her father. He forgot everythingexcept the fact that there was nothing in all the world worth whilebut this brown-eyed, white-cheeked, grieving girl, and he went madwith the quick knowledge thereof. He held the hand he had not releasedto his face, brushed it against his lips, caressed it against hisbreast; then he bent forward--close--and whispering, "I will be good toyou--always--little girl," kissed her on the forehead and was gone justas Gordon, filled with the life of the new day, came swinging into thehouse for his well-earned breakfast.
The sheriff and his party of deputies made a diligent search forWilliston that day and for many days to come. It was of no avail. He haddisappeared, and all trace with him, as completely as if he had beenspirited away in the night to another world--body and soul. That the soulof him had really gone to another world came to be generallybelieved--Mary held no hope after the return of the first expedition; butwhy could they find no trace of his body? Where was it? Where had itfound a resting place? Was it possible
for a man, quick or dead, evenwest of the river in an early day of its civilization when the law had awinking eye, to fall away from his wonted haunts in a night and leave noprint, neither a bone nor a rag nor a memory, to give mute witness thatthis way he passed, that way he rested a bit, here he took horse, therehe slept, with this man he had converse, that man saw his still bodyborne hence? Could such a thing be? It seemed so.
After a gallant and dauntless search, which lasted through the best daysof September, Langford was forced to let cold reason have its sway. Hehad thought, honestly, that the ruffians would not dare commit murder,knowing that they were being pursued; but now he was forced to theopinion that they had dared the worst, after all. For, though it wouldbe hard to hide all trace of a dead man, infinitely greater would be thedifficulty in covering the trail of a living one,--one who must eat anddrink, who had a mouth to be silenced and strength to be restrained. Itcame gradually to him, the belief that Williston was dead; but it camesurely. With it came the jeer of the spectre that would not let himforget that he should have foreseen what would surely happen. With itcame also a great tenderness for Mary, and a redoubled vigilance to keephis unruly tongue from blurting out things that would hurt her who waslooking to him, in the serene confidence in his good friendship, forbrotherly counsel and comfort.
In the first dark days of his new belief, he spoke to Gordon, and theyoung lawyer had written a second letter to the "gal reporter." Inresponse, she came at once to Kemah and from thence to the Whitehomestead in the Boss's "own private." This time the Boss did thedriving himself, bringing consternation to the heart of one Jim Munson,cow-puncher, who viewed the advent of her and her "mouse-colored hair"with serious trepidation and alarm. What he had dreaded had come topass. 'T was but a step now to the Three Bars. A fussy woman would bethe means of again losing man his Eden. It was monstrous. He sulked,aggrievedly, systematically.
Louise slipped into the sad life at the Whites' easily, sweetly,adaptably. Mary rallied under her gentle ministrations. There was--wouldever be--a haunting pathos in the dark eyes, but she arose from her bed,grateful for any kindness shown her, strong in her determination not tobe a trouble to any one by giving way to weak and unavailing tears. Ifshe ever cried, it was in the night, when no one knew. Even Louise, whoslept with her, did not suspect the truth for some time. But one nightshe sat straight up in bed suddenly, out of her sleep, with anindefinable intuition that it would be well for her to be awake. Marywas lying in a strange, unnatural quiet. Instinctively Louise reachedout a gentle, consoling hand to her. She was right. Mary was notsleeping. The following night the same thing happened, and the nextnight also; but one night when she reached over to comfort, she foundher gentle intention frustrated by a pillow under which Mary had hiddenher head while she gave way guardedly to her pent-up grief.
Louise changed her tactics. She took Mary on long walks over theprairie, endeavoring to fatigue her into sleep. The length of thesejaunts grew gradually and systematically. It came at last to be anestablished order of the day for the two girls to strike off early, witha box of luncheon strapped over Louise's shoulder, for--nowhere inparticular, but always somewhere that consumed the better part of theday in the going and coming. Sometimes the hills and bluffs of the riverregion drew them. Sometimes a woman's whim made them hold to a straightline over the level distance for the pure satisfaction of watching thehorizon across illimitable space remain stationary and changeless,despite their puny efforts to stride the nearer to it. Sometimes, whenthey chose the level, they played, like children, that they would walkand walk till the low-lying horizon had to change, until out of its hazyenchantment rose mountain-peaks and forests and valleys and cities. Itproved an alluring game. A great and abiding friendship grew out of this_wanderlust_, cemented by a loneliness that each girl carried closely inthe innermost recesses of her heart and guarded jealously there. It wasa like loneliness in the littleness and atom-like inconsequence of selfeach must hug to her breast,--and yet, how unlike! Louise was alone in astrange, big land, but there was home for her somewhere, and kin of herown kind to whom she might flee when the weight of alienism pressed toosorely. But Mary was alone in her own land; there was nowhere to flee towhen her heart rebelled and cried out in the bitterness of itsloneliness; this was her home, and she was alone in it.
Louise learned to love the plains country. She revelled in its winds;the high ones, blowing bold and free with their call to throw offlethargy and stay from drifting; the low ones, sighing and rustlingthrough the already dead grass--a mournful and whispering lament for theSummer gone. She had thought to become reconciled to the winds the lastof all. She was a prim little soul with all her sweet graciousness, anddearly desired her fair hair ever to be in smooth and decorous coil orplait. Strangely enough, the winds won her first allegiance. She lovedto climb to the summit of one of the barren hills flanking the river andstand there while the wind just blew and blew. Loosened tendrils of hairbothered her little these days. She relegated hats and puny, impotenthat-pins to oblivion. Her hair roughened and her fair skin tanned, butneither did these things bother her. It was the strength of the wind andthe freedom, and because it might blow where it listed without regard tothe arbitrary and self-important will of strutting man, that enthralledher imagination. It came about that the bigness and loneliness of thisbig country assumed a like aspect. It was not yet subjugated. Thevastness of it and the untrammelled freedom of it, though it took hergirl's breath away, was to dwell with her forever, a sublime memory,even when the cow country--unsubjugated--was only a retrospection ofsilver hairs.
Mary, because of her abounding health, healed of her wound rapidly.Langford took advantage of the girls' absorption in each other's companyto ride often and at length on quests of his own creation. With October,Louise must join Judge Dale for the Autumn term of court. He haunted thehills. He was not looking now for a living man; he was seeking acleverly concealed grave. He flouted the opinion--held by many--that thebody had been thrown into the Missouri and would wash ashore some laterday many and many a mile below. He held firmly to his fixed idea thatimpenetrable mystery clouding the ultimate close of Williston's earthlycareer was the sought aim of his murderers, and they would risk noriver's giving up its dead to their undoing.
It had been ascertained beyond reasonable doubt that Williston could nothave left the country in any of the usual modes. His description was atall the stations along the line, together with the theory that he wouldbe leaving under compulsion.
Meanwhile, Gordon had buckled down for the big fight. He was sadlyhandicapped, with the whole prop of his testimony struck from under himby Williston's disappearance. However, those who knew him best--thenumber was not large--looked for things to happen in those days. They,the few, the courageous minority, through all the ups and downs--with thebalance in favor of the downs most of the time--of the hardest-foughtbattle of his life, the end of which left him gray at the temples,maintained a deep and abiding faith in this quiet, unassuming young man,who had squared his shoulders to this new paralyzing blow and refused tobe knocked out, who walked with them and talked with them, but kept hisown counsel, abided his time, and in the meantime--worked.
One day, Langford was closeted with him for a long two hours in hisdingy, one-roomed office on the ground floor. The building was a plainwooden affair with its square front rising above the roof. In the rearwas a lean-to where Gordon slept and had his few hours of privacy.
"It won't do, Paul," Gordon said in conclusion. "I have thought it allout. We have absolutely nothing to go upon--nothing at least but our ownconvictions and a bandaged arm, and they won't hang a man with Jesse'sdiabolical influence. We'll fight it out on the sole question of 'Mag,'Paul. After that--well--who knows? Something else may turn up. There maybe developments. Meanwhile, just wait. There will be justice forWilliston yet."