“It’s this sunlight.” He lifted a spread hand as if to clutch and hold something. “I feel it soaking into me like some magical oil. No more moping and whining for me. I’ve proved that hardship is good for me.”
“Don’t crow till you’re out of the woods. It’s a long ride down the hill, and going down is harder on the tenderfoot than going up.”
“I’m no longer a tenderfoot. All I need is another trip like this with you and I shall be a master trailer.”
All this was very sweet to her, and though she knew they should be going, she lingered. Childishly reckless of the sinking sun, she played with the wild flowers at her side and listened to his voice in complete content. He was right. The hour was too beautiful to be shortened, although she saw no reason why others equally delightful might not come to them both. He was more of the lover than he had ever been before, that she knew, and in the light of his eyes all that was not girlish and charming melted away. She forgot her heavy shoes, her rough hands and sun-tanned face, and listened with wondering joy and pride to his words, which were of a fineness such as she had never heard spoken—only books contained such unusual and exquisite phrases.
A cloud passing across the sun flung down a shadow of portentous chill and darkness. She started to her feet with startled recollection of the place and the hour.
“We must be going—at once!” she commanded.
“Not yet,” he pleaded. “It’s only a cloud. The sun is coming out again. I have perfect confidence in your woodcraft. Why not spend another night on the trail? It may be our last trip together.”
He tempted her strongly, so frank and boyish and lovable were his glances and his words. But she was vaguely afraid of herself, and though the long ride at the moment seemed hard and dull, the thought of her mother waiting decided her action.
“No, no!” she responded, firmly. “We’ve wasted too much time already. We must ride.”
He looked up at her with challenging glance. “Suppose I refuse—suppose I decide to stay here?”
Upon her, as he talked, a sweet hesitation fell, a dream which held more of happiness than she had ever known. “It is a long, hard ride,” she thought, “and another night on the trail will not matter.” And so the moments passed on velvet feet, and still she lingered, reluctant to break the spell.
Suddenly, into their idyllic drowse of content, so sweet, so youthful, and so pure of heart, broke the sound of a horse’s hurrying, clashing, steel-shod feet, and looking up Berrie saw a mounted man coming down the mountainside with furious, reckless haste.
“It is Cliff!” she cried out. “He’s on our trail!” And into her face came a look of alarm. Her lips paled, her eyes widened. “He’s mad—he’s dangerous! Leave him to me,” she added, in a low, tense voice.
* * *
XI
THE DEATH-GRAPPLE
There was something so sinister in the rider’s disregard of stone and tree and pace, something so menacing in the forward thrust of his body, that Berrie was able to divine his wrath, and was smitten into irresolution—all her hardy, boyish self-reliance swallowed up in the weakness of the woman. She forgot the pistol at her belt, and awaited the assault with rigid pose.
As Belden neared them Norcross also perceived that the rider’s face was distorted with passion, and that his glance was not directed upon Berrie, but upon himself, and he braced himself for the attack.
Leaving his saddle with one flying leap, which the cowboy practises at play, Belden hurled himself upon his rival with the fury of a panther.
The slender youth went down before the big rancher as though struck by a catapult; and the force of his fall against the stony earth stunned him so that he lay beneath his enemy as helpless as a child.
THE SLENDER YOUTH WENT DOWN BEFORE THE BIG RANCHER AS THOUGH STRUCK BY A CATAPULT
Belden snarled between his teeth: “I told you I’d kill you, and I will.”
But this was not to be. Berea suddenly recovered her native force. With a cry of pain, of anger, she flung herself on the maddened man’s back. Her hands encircled his neck like a collar of bronze. Hardened by incessant use of the cinch and the rope, her fingers sank into the sinews of his great throat, shutting off both blood and breath.
“Let go!” she commanded, with deadly intensity. “Let go, or I’ll choke the life out of you! Let go, I say!”
He raised a hand to beat her off, but she was too strong, too desperate to be driven away. She was as blind to pain as a mother eagle, and bent above him so closely that he could not bring the full weight of his fist to bear. With one determined hand still clutching his throat, she ran the fingers of her other hand into his hair and twisted his head upward with a power which he could not resist. And so, looking into his upturned, ferocious eyes, she repeated with remorseless fury: “Let go, I say!”
His swollen face grew rigid, his mouth gaped, his tongue protruded, and at last, releasing his hold on his victim, he rose, flinging Berrie off with a final desperate effort. “I’ll kill you, too!” he gasped.
Up to this moment the girl had felt no fear of herself; but now she resorted to other weapons. Snatching her pistol from its holster, she leveled it at his forehead. “Stop!” she said; and something in her voice froze him into calm. He was not a fiend; he was not a deliberate assassin; he was only a jealous, despairing, insane lover, and as he looked into the face he knew so well, and realized that nothing but hate and deadly resolution lit the eyes he had so often kissed, his heart gave way, and, dropping his head, he said: “Kill me if you want to. I’ve nothing left to live for.”
There was something unreal, appalling in this sudden reversion to weakness, and Berrie could not credit his remorse. “Give me your gun,” she said.
He surrendered it to her and she threw it aside; then turned to Wayland, who was lying white and still with face upturned to the sky. With a moan of anguish she bent above him and called upon his name. He did not stir, and when she lifted his head to her lap his hair, streaming with blood, stained her dress. She kissed him and called again to him, then turned with accusing frenzy to Belden: “You’ve killed him! Do you hear? You’ve killed him!”
The agony, the fury of hate in her voice reached the heart of the conquered man. He raised his head and stared at her with mingled fear and remorse. And so across that limp body these two souls, so lately lovers, looked into each other’s eyes as though nothing but words of hate and loathing had ever passed between them. The girl saw in him only a savage, vengeful, bloodthirsty beast; the man confronted in her an accusing angel.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” he muttered.
“Yes, you did! You meant it. You crushed his life out with your big hands—and now I’m going to kill you for it!”
A fierce calm had come upon her. Some far-off ancestral deep of passion called for blood revenge. She lifted the weapon with steady hand and pointed it at his heart.
His fear passed as his wrath had passed. His head drooped, his glance wavered. “Shoot!” he commanded, sullenly. “I’d sooner die than live—now.”
His words, his tone, brought back to her a vision of the man he had seemed when she first met and admired him. Her hand fell, the woman in her reasserted itself. A wave of weakness, of indecision, of passionate grief overwhelmed her. “Oh, Cliff!” she moaned. “Why did you do it? He was so gentle and sweet.”
He did not answer. His glance wandered to his horse, serenely cropping the grass in utter disregard of this tumultuous human drama; but the wind, less insensate than the brute, swept through the grove of dwarfed, distorted pines with a desolate, sympathetic moan which filled the man’s heart with a new and exalted sorrow. “You’re right,” he said. “I was crazy. I deserve killing.”
But Berrie was now too deep in her own desolation to care what he said or did. She kissed the cold lips of the still youth, murmuring passionately: “I don’t care to live without you—I shall go with you!”
Belden’s hand was on her wrist before she could raise her weapon. “Don�
�t, for God’s sake, don’t do that! He may not be dead.”
She responded but dully to the suggestion. “No, no. He’s gone. His breath is gone.”
“Maybe not. Let me see.”
Again she bent to the quiet face on which the sunlight fell with mocking splendor. It seemed all a dream till she felt once more the stain of his blood upon her hands. It was all so incredibly sudden. Only just now he was exulting over the warmth and beauty of the day—and now—
How beautiful he was. He seemed asleep. The conies crying from their runways suddenly took on poignant pathos. They appeared to be grieving with her; but the eagles spoke of revenge.
A sharp cry, a note of joy sprang from her lips. “He is alive! I saw his eyelids quiver—quick! Bring some water.”
The man leaped to his feet, and, running down to the pool, filled his sombrero with icy water. He was as eager now to save his rival as he had been mad to destroy him. “Let me help,” he pleaded. But she would not permit him to touch the body.
Again, while splashing the water upon his face, the girl called upon her love to return. “He hears me!” she exulted to her enemy. “He is breathing now. He is opening his eyes.”
The wounded man did, indeed, open his eyes, but his look was a blank, uncomprehending stare, which plunged her back into despair. “He don’t know me!” she said, with piteous accent. She now perceived the source of the blood upon her arm. It came from a wound in the boy’s head which had been dashed upon a stone.
The sight of this wound brought back the blaze of accusing anger to her eyes. “See what you did!” she said, with cold malignity. Then by sudden shift she bent to the sweet face in her arms and kissed it passionately. “Open your eyes, darling. You must not die! I won’t let you die! Can’t you hear me? Don’t you know where you are?”
He opened his eyes once more, quietly, and looked up into her face with a faint, drowsy smile. He could not yet locate himself in space and time, but he knew her and was comforted. He wondered why he should be looking up into a sunny sky. He heard the wind and the sound of a horse cropping grass, and the voice of the girl penetratingly sweet as that of a young mother calling her baby back to life, and slowly his benumbed brain began to resolve the mystery.
Belden, forgotten, ignored as completely as the conies, sat with choking throat and smarting eyes. For him the world was only dust and ashes—a ruin which his own barbaric spirit had brought upon itself.
Slowly the youth’s eyes took on expression. “Are we still on the hill?” he asked.
“Yes, dearest,” she assured him. Then to Belden, “He knows where he is!”
Wayland again struggled with reality. “What has happened to me?”
“You fell and hurt your head.”
He turned slightly and observed the other man looking down at her with dark and tragic glance. “Hello, Belden,” he said, feebly. “How came you here?” Then noting Berrie’s look, he added: “I remember. He tried to kill me.” He again searched his antagonist’s face. “Why didn’t you finish the job?”
The girl tried to turn his thought aside. “It’s all right now, darling. He won’t make any more trouble. Don’t mind him. I don’t care for anybody now you are coming back to me.”
Wayland wonderingly regarded the face of the girl. “And you—are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt. I am perfectly happy now.” She turned to Belden with quick, authoritative command. “Unsaddle the horses and set up the tent. We won’t be able to leave here to-night.”
He rose with instant obedience, glad of a chance to serve her, and soon had the tent pegged to its place and the bedding unrolled. Together they lifted the wounded youth and laid him upon his blankets beneath the low canvas roof which seemed heavenly helpful to Berea.
“There!” she said, caressingly. “Now you are safe, no matter whether it rains or not.”
He smiled. “It seems I’m to have my way after all. I hope I shall be able to see the sun rise. I’ve sort of lost my interest in the sunset.”
“Now, Cliff,” she said, as soon as the camp was in order and a fire started, “I reckon you’d better ride on. I haven’t any further use for you.”
“Don’t say that, Berrie,” he pleaded. “I can’t leave you here alone with a sick man. Let me stay and help.”
She looked at him for a long time before she replied. “I shall never be able to look at you again without hating you,” she said. “I shall always remember you as you looked when you were killing that boy. So you’d better ride on and keep a-riding. I’m going to forget all this just as soon as I can, and it don’t help me any to have you around. I never want to see you or hear your name again.”
“You don’t mean that, Berrie!”
“Yes, I do,” she asserted, bitterly. “I mean just that. So saddle up and pull out. All I ask of you is to say nothing about what has happened here. You’d better leave the state. If Wayland should get worse it might go hard with you.”
He accepted his banishment. “All right. If you feel that way I’ll ride. But I’d like to do something for you before I go. I’ll pile up some wood—”
“No. I’ll take care of that.” And without another word of farewell she turned away and re-entered the tent.
Mounting his horse with painful slowness, as though suddenly grown old, the reprieved assassin rode away up the mountain, his head low, his eyes upon the ground.
* * *
XII
BERRIE’S VIGIL
The situation in which Berea now found herself would have disheartened most women of mature age, but she remained not only composed, she was filled with an irrational delight. The nurse that is in every woman was aroused in her, and she looked forward with joy to a night of vigil, confident that Wayland was not seriously injured and that he would soon be able to ride. She had no fear of the forest or of the night. Nature held no menace now that her tent was set and her fire alight.
Wayland, without really knowing anything about it, suspected that he owed his life to her intervention, and this belief deepened the feeling of admiration which he had hitherto felt toward her. He listened to her at work around the fire with a deepening sense of his indebtedness to her, and when she looked in to ask if she could do anything for him, his throat filled with an emotion which rendered his answer difficult.
As his mind cleared he became very curious to know precisely what had taken place, but he did not feel free to ask her. “She will tell me if she wishes me to know.” That she had vanquished Belden and sent him on his way was evident, although he had not been able to hear what she had said to him at the last. What lay between the enemy’s furious onslaught and the aid he lent in making the camp could only be surmised. “I wonder if she used her pistol?” Wayland asked himself. “Something like death must have stared him in the face.”
“Strange how everything seems to throw me ever deeper into her debt,” he thought, a little later. But he did not quite dare put into words the resentment which mingled with his gratitude. He hated to be put so constantly into the position of the one protected, defended. And yet it was his own fault. He had put himself among people and conditions where she was the stronger. Having ventured out of his world into hers he must take the consequences.
That she loved him with the complete passion of her powerful and simple nature he knew, for her voice had reached through the daze of his semi-unconsciousness with thrilling power. The touch of her lips to his, the close clasp of her strong arms were of ever greater convincing quality. And yet he wished the revelation had come in some other way. His pride was abraded. His manhood seemed somehow lessened. It was a disconcerting reversal of the ordinary relations between hero and heroine, and he saw no way of re-establishing the normal attitude of the male.
Entirely unaware of what was passing in the mind of her patient, Berrie went about her duties with a cheerfulness which astonished the sufferer in the tent. She seemed about to hum a song as she set the skillet on the fire, but a moment later she called o
ut, in a tone of irritation: “Here comes Nash!”
“I’m glad of that,” answered Wayland, although he perceived something of her displeasure.
Nash, on his way to join the Supervisor, raised a friendly greeting as he saw the girl, and drew rein. “I expected to meet you farther down the hill,” he said. “Tony ’phoned that you had started. Where did you leave the Supervisor?”
“Over at the station waiting for you. Where’s your outfit?”
“Camped down the trail a mile or so. I thought I’d better push through to-night. What about Norcross? Isn’t he with you?”
She hesitated an instant. “He’s in the tent. He fell and struck his head on a rock, and I had to go into camp here.”
Nash was deeply concerned. “Is that so? Well, that’s hard luck. Is he badly hurt?”
“Well, he had a terrible fall. But he’s easier now. I think he’s asleep.”
“May I look in on him?”
“I don’t think you’d better take the time. It’s a long, hard ride from here to the station. It will be deep night before you can make it—”
“Don’t you think the Supervisor would want me to camp here to-night and do what I could for you? If Norcross is badly injured you will need me.”
She liked Nash, and she knew he was right, and yet she was reluctant to give up the pleasure of her lone vigil. “He’s not in any danger, and we’ll be able to ride on in the morning.”
Nash, thinking of her as Clifford Belden’s promised wife, had no suspicion of her feeling toward Norcross. Therefore he gently urged that to go on was quite out of order. “I can’t think of leaving you here alone—certainly not till I see Norcross and find out how badly he is hurt.”
She yielded. “I reckon you’re right,” she said. “I’ll go see if he is awake.”
He followed her to the door of the tent, apprehending something new and inexplicable in her attitude. In the music of her voice as she spoke to the sick man was the love-note of the mate. “You may come in,” she called back, and Nash, stooping, entered the small tent.
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