CHAPTER XXIII
Billy Jordan, terror springing up into his own eyes, sped through thedoor. And Conniston and Garton turned grave faces upon each other.
"Have you any idea," Garton was asking, and to Conniston his voiceseemed to come faintly from a great distance, "which way she rode?"
"North. I don't know how far. Tommy, have you a horse here I canride?"
"You are going to look for her?"
"Yes."
He was already at the door, and turned impatiently as Garton called tohim:
"It's up to you, Greek. But--do you think that you could do any moreto help her than the men you are sending out?"
"No. But, man, I can't sit here without knowing--"
"Greek!" There was a note in Tommy's voice, a look in his eyes whichheld Conniston. "I know how you feel, old man. And don't you know thatanother man might be fool enough to--to love her as much as you do?"
"Tommy!"
"Yes," with a hard little smile. "Why not? I'm only half a man, oldfellow, but the head and the heart of me are left. And I've got to sithere and wait. And," his tone suddenly stern, "that's what you've gotto do! You can't help by going--and you are the only man who has gotto keep his head clear, who has got to stay here and direct the newforces which our good fortune has given to us."
For a moment Conniston stood staring incredulously. Then he turned,and his frowning eyes ran out toward the north, across thefar-stretching solitudes of the desert. Somewhere out there, a mileaway, ten miles away, twenty miles away, alone, perhaps tortured withthirst, perhaps famishing, perhaps--He shuddered and groaned aloud ashe tried in vain to shut out the pictures which his leapingimagination drew for him. And here Garton's quiet voice was tellinghim that he had responsibilities, that he had work to do, that he, towhom she meant more than success or failure, life or death, must holdback from going to her.
"I won't--I can't!" he cried, wildly. "She is out there, Tommy, alone.She needs me--and I am going to her! What do I care about your cursedwork!"
"There's a horse and saddle in the shed by the lunch-stand." Gartonturned and hobbled back to his stool.
And Conniston, without a glance over his shoulder, hastened toward theshed. Before he had gone half the distance he stopped, swung about,and went slowly back to the office.
"You were right, Tommy," he said, as he stopped in the doorway. "I wasa fool. Understand," he added, quickly, "that if I thought I could beof one particle more value than the men I shall send in my place thework here could go to eternal perdition! But I can tell them all thatI know of the way she has gone--and she would want me to stay here andpush the work as if nothing had happened."
Mrs. Ridley, hysterically crying that Argyl was dead, that she _knew_that she was dead, and that she herself was to blame, came sobbing andmoaning and wringing her hands into the office.
"Don't do that!" Conniston cried, angrily. "If you want to do anygood, go down to the lunch-counter and help your husband put up fiftylunches. The men may be gone all day. Put up plenty."
She hurried away, drying her eyes now that there was something for herto do; and the two men, never looking at each other, sat and waitedthe coming of Brayley's men.
All that long, endlessly, wretchedly long forenoon, Conniston wentabout his work like a man under sentence of death, his face white anddrawn, his step heavy, his voice silent save when necessity drove himto short, sharp, savage commands.
Again and again he forgot what it was that he was doing, forgot theditches which were branching off from the main canal, right and left,as his eyes ran out across the sun-blistered sands, as his fancies ranahead of them, searching, searching, searching--and half afraid tofind what they sought. He had seen the questing riders push fartherand farther into the desert, had seen them drop out of sight. Now theywere gone; no moving dot told him where their search had taken them,what they had found. In the middle of an order he found himselfbreaking off and turning again to the north, looking for the return ofthe party, hoping to see the men waving their hats that all was well,straining his ears for their reassuring shouts. And the desert, vast,illimitable, threatening, mysterious, full of dim promise, full ofvague threats, gave no sign.
At eleven o'clock he saw one of the men returning. Why one man alone?What would be the word which he was bringing? His heart beat thickly.His throat was very dry. He felt a quick pain through it as he triedto swallow. He lifted his head, and his eyes asked the question of theman who had jerked in his sweating horse at his side. The rider shookhis head.
"Nothin'--we ain't found nothin' yet. Mundy sent me back. He says totell you they're about ten mile out now, an' the hosses is gettin'done up for water. He says will you send a water-wagon or will yousend out a fresh party?"
Conniston's heart leaped at the man's first word. He knew then how hehad feared to know what they had found. And then it sank as fearsurged higher into it. They had not found her yet--already she hadbeen gone a whole day, a whole night, half the second day--
"Get a fresh horse and go back," he said, when the man waited for ananswer. "Tell Mundy that I am starting a six-horse wagon, carryingwater, right away. Tell him to keep on looking. You men keep closeenough together for the most part to be able to hear a gun fired fromthe man nearest you. I'll send the wagon due north. You can pick it upby the tracks."
The man rode away, and Conniston strode to the office.
"Tommy"--and his voice was steady and determined--"you'll have to getinto a buggy and watch the work this afternoon. I've got the menstarted--and now I am going to her."
"All right, Greek," Garton answered, gently. "I can keep thingsgoing."
Conniston turned and left him. He saddled his horse with eagerfingers, gave the order for the wagon carrying water to move steadilynorthward until it came up with the men who had gone ahead, put alunch and a flask of whisky into his pocket, filled his own canteens,and rode out across the hot sands.
"I am going to find her," he told himself, with quiet confidence.
He rode slowly at first, curbing his crying impatience with theknowledge that restraint now meant the reserve of endurance to hishorse upon which he might be forced to call before he had found her.He held to a course due north, remembering what Argyl had told himabout the location of the spring.
When he had gone nearly five miles he began to search to right andleft, still holding to a general northerly direction, but oftenturning out of his course to ride to the tops of the knolls which rosehere and there about him. And now he had let his horse out into aswinging gallop, urged to spare neither animal nor himself, promptedto make what haste he might by the thought that already noon hadpassed, that the day was half gone, that what he was to do must bedone before the night came.
Once--he thought that Valley City must be at least eight or nine milesbehind him--his heart leaped with sudden hope and fear as he saw, halfa mile to the east, a cluster of little sand-hills like those Argylhad told him surrounded her spring.
He did not know that he was cutting his horse's bleeding sides withhis spurs as he galloped up the gradual slopes; long ago he hadforgotten all thought of conserving the beast's strength. He knew onlythat the very soul of him cried out aloud that he might at last cometo her, and that his eyes, ever seeking, seeking, seeking, were morethan half afraid to rest upon every shadowy, stirring bunch of scrubbrush, more than half afraid to run ahead of him down the far sides ofthe low hills.
Nothing before him as he jerked in his panting horse, nothing but thedesert, still, hot, thirsty, a great tortured thing under themerciless sky. Nothing but long level stretches so bleak, so barren,that a jackrabbit could not have hidden his gaunt, gray body. Nothingas he looked with narrowing eye far to east and west, north and south,but a vast, silent monotone of plain that would seem to concealnothing, as open under the bright rays of the sun as the palm of aman's hand, an unsmiling, grave-faced, hypocritical thing which hidand held from him all that he wanted in the world.
A frenzy of terrified rage upon him, he sti
ffened in his stirrups, heshook his clenched fist at the quiet, jeering face whose very unmovedstillness was like a deep contempt, and cursed it, his voice springingharshly through his dry lips, rising almost into a sobbing shriek,dying away without an echo, leaving the face of the desert quietlycontemptuous. For he grew suddenly as silent, a word cut in two by theclick of his teeth, the sound of his own voice in his ears trickinghim.
Breathless, a man turned to stone, he listened.
He had heard something--he _knew_ that he had heard a voice, not hisown, a voice hardly more than a faint whisper, calling to him, callingagain, then lost in the all-engulfing silence. About him the mileswere laid bare in the sunlight. There was nothing.
Driven from the moment of inactivity into a madness of haste,tormented afresh at the thought that he had lost one precious minute,he cut anew with his red-roweled spurs into the torn flanks of hishorse, and rode on, careless of all save that he must hurry, that hiswas a great race against the racing day, that he must find her beforethe night had sought her out. The very shadow which he and his horsecast--a distorted, black centaur sort of thing, running silentlyacross the desert--was one with the desert in its cursed menace. For amoment ago it had hidden under his horse's belly, and now it ranbeside him, ever lengthening, ever pushing farther to the eastward, agrim avowal that the day was passing.
The miles fled behind him like lean greyhounds. The miles before himreached out in unshortened endlessness. It was one o'clock. He hadbeen gone two hours--he had done nothing. Now, far ahead, he caughtsight of moving figures, saw a man yonder on horseback, saw another,hardly more than a drifting dot against the sky-line to the east,another yet to the west.
They were still searching for her, still pushing deeper and deeperinto the burning solitudes; they had found nothing. They must be, heestimated roughly, twenty miles from Valley City. Had she ridden sofar? Why hadn't she told him more about the location of the spring? Ifthere _was_ a spring, had she clung close to it when her horse hadleft her? Then she would not die for want of water! Or had she dugwith breaking nails into the soil which had in it moisture enough tofeed the roots of the yellow willows but which would but mock her asthe desert mocked him, refusing to yield up one single drop of water?
Gradually, steadily he swung toward the left, riding a little towestward so as not to be seeking over the same territory across whichthe men before him had ridden. And as he rode he saw, a mile away fromhim, still farther to the west, a ring of hills, and he prayed that hemight come upon the spring there and upon Argyl. And his moving lipswere not still before he had found her.
He had swept down into a little hollow, the slightest of depressionsin the sandy level, not to be seen until a man was upon its very rim,floored with scanty, dry brush. His tired horse threw up its head andshied. But Conniston had seen her first, a huddled heap, almost at hisfeet.
"Argyl!" he cried, loudly, dropping to his knees beside her, leavinghis horse to stand staring at them. "Argyl!"
She lay as she had fallen, her right arm stretched straight out infront of her, her left arm lying close to her side, her face hiddenfrom him in the sand. She did not move. Had he called to her an hourago she would have turned her wide eyes upon him wonderingly. Now, ifhe had shouted with the voice of thunder she would not have heard. Shewas dead, or death was very close to her. For a moment, a momentlengthened into an eternity of hell, he did not know whether theshadowy wings of the stern angel were now rustling over her head or ifalready the wings had swept over her and had borne away from him thesoul of the woman he loved.
"Argyl, Argyl dear!" he whispered. "I have come to save you, Argyl. Totake you home. Oh! don't you hear me, Argyl?"
He put his arms about her, and as he knelt lifted her and put his faceto hers. She was not cold; thank Heaven, she was not cold! But shedid not move, she was heavy in his arms, the warmth of her body mighthave been from the ebbing tide of life or from the sun's fire. Hecould not feel her breathe, could not feel the beating of her heart.
He held her so that he could look into her face, and the cry upon hislips was frozen into a grief-stricken horror. Her hair unbound,hanging loose, tangled about her face, dull and soiled with the graysand-dust, her lips dry, cracked, unnaturally big, her cheeks pinchedand stamped at the corners of her mouth with the misery through whichshe had lived--was this Argyl?
He laid her back upon the sand, his body bent over her to shut out thesun, and unslung his canteen. He washed her mouth, let the watertrickle over her brow and cheeks, forced a little of the lukewarmstuff between her teeth. He bathed her head, bathed her throat, andagain forced a few drops into her mouth. And then, when she did notmove, he would not believe that she was dead. She could not be dead.It was impossible. She would open her eyes in a minute, those great,frank, fearless, glorious gray eyes, and she would come back tohim--back from the shadow of the stern angel's wing, back to herselfand to him.
He unstoppered his flask of whisky and, holding her to him, thrust itto her lips. And the thing which had been a curse to Bat Truxton,which had hurled him downward from his leadership of men, which hadthreatened to wreck the hopes of the Great Work, brought Argyl backfrom the last boundaries of the thing called Life, back from the mistyfrontiers of the thing called Death to which she was journeying.
Her eyes opened, she stared at him, her eyes closed again.
Again he forced her reluctant throat to swallow the whisky, a fewdrops only. And again he bathed her with water--brow and throat andquiet wrists. Her eyes did not open now, but he saw that she wasbreathing. Presently he made her take a little water. He washed herdusty nostrils that she might breathe better. And that breath mightcome into her tired lungs more easily he gently, reverently loosenedthe clothing about her breasts.
Not once did his eyes leave her face. He did not fire the shot whichwas to be a signal to the others, because he knew that they could nothear. Soon he would look for the wagon. It would pass closely enoughfor him to see it, near enough for him to make himself seen. Now hecould do alone as much for her as could fifty men, as could any one.
An hour passed, two hours. He had watched the color of life creep backinto her face faintly, slowly, but steadily. She had again opened hereyes, had turned them for a puzzled second upon his tense face, hadclosed them.
Now she seemed to be sleeping.
He had exhausted the contents of one canteen, had gone to his saddlefor the other, when far to the south he saw the wagon. He had wavedhis hat high above his head, standing like a circus-rider in thesaddle, and had emptied the cylinder of his revolver into the air. Hehad seen that the driver had heard him, that he had fired an answeringvolley, that he had turned westward. And then he had gone back toArgyl.
She had heard the shots. Her eyes were open and turned curiously uponhim as he came swiftly to where she lay.
"Will you give me some water?" she whispered.
He lifted her head, and she drank thirstily, looking with reproachfulsurprise at him when he took the canteen from her lips.
"That is all now, Argyl," he told her, his voice choking. And then,all power of restraint swept away from him by the joyous, throbbinglove which so long he had silenced, he drew her close, closer to him,crying, almost harshly: "Oh, Argyl, thank God! For if you hadn't comeback to me--I love you, love you! Don't you know how I love you,Argyl?"
Her hand closed weakly upon his.
"Of course, dear," she answered him, faintly, her poor lips trying tosmile. "Of course we love each other. But can't I have a little water,dear?"
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