“It might be so here,” he admitted.
“I met Jerry Boyle about five years ago, when father was in Congress. His father was at that time Senator from this state. We lived in Washington, and Jerry Boyle was then considered a very original and delightful young man. He was fresh in from the range, but he had the polish of a university education over his roughness, and what I know now to be inborn coarseness was then accepted for ingenuousness. He passed current in the best society of the capital, where he was coddled as a butterfly of new species. We met; he made love to me, and I–I am afraid that I encouraged him to do it at first.
“But he drank and gambled, and got into brawls. He stabbed an attaché of the Mexican Legation over a woman, and the engagement to marry him which I had entered into was broken. I was foolish in the first instance, but I plead the mitigation of frivolity and youth. My heart was not in it. I beg you to believe, Dr. Slavens, that my heart was not in it at all.”
She looked at him with pleading sincerity, and from her eyes his heart gathered its recesses full of joy.
“I need no further assurance of that,” he smiled.
“You are generous. It was on the afternoon of the day that followed your disappearance from Comanche that Boyle came into camp there. I had not forgotten him, of course, nor his influential position in this state; but I never thought of meeting him there. It was a sickening shock to me. I denied his protestations of acquaintanceship, but it passed off poorly with all of them who were present, except William Bentley, generous gentleman that he is.”
“He is so,” testified Slavens.
“I left Comanche because I was afraid of him, but he rode post the night that I engaged passage and beat me to Meander; but he wasn’t hurrying on my account, as you know. He tried to see me there in Meander, but I refused to meet him. The day before yesterday he came here and solicited my help in carrying out a scheme. I refused. He threatened me with exposure and arrest on account of false entry and affidavit.”
Agnes told then of her ride into the hills, the meeting with the herder, and subsequent events up to the shooting. But she said nothing of Boyle’s base proposal to her, although her face burned at the recollection, giving Slavens more than half a guess what was behind that virtuous flame.
“And so, you poor little soul, all your plans for your City of Refuge are shattered because you refuse to sacrifice somebody to keep them whole,” said he.
“No matter,” she returned in that voice of abnegation which only a long marching line of misfortunes can give a woman or a man command over. “I have decided, anyway, to give it up. It’s too big and rough and lonesome for me.”
“And that person whom you put up your heart and soul to shield,” he went on, looking steadily into her face and pursuing his former thought, “has something in his possession which this man Boyle covets and thinks he must have? And the cheapest and easiest way to get it is to make you pay for it in the violation of your honest principles, if he can drive you to it in his skulking way?”
She bowed assent, her lips tightly set.
“Yes,” said he. “Just so. Well, why didn’t Boyle come to me with his threats, the coward!”
“No, no!” she cried in quick fright. “Not that; it is something–something else.”
“You poor dissembler!” he laughed. “You couldn’t be dishonest if you wanted to the worst way in the world. Well, don’t you worry; I’ll take it up with him today.”
“You’ll not give it up!” she exclaimed vehemently. “All your hopes are there, and it’s yours, and you’ll not give it up!”
“Never mind,” he soothed, again taking her hand, which she had withdrawn to aid in emphasizing her protest. “I don’t believe he’d carry out his threats about the United States marshal and all that.”
“You’ll not give it up to him unless he pays you for it,” she reiterated, ignoring her own prospect of trouble. “It’s valuable, or he wouldn’t be so anxious to get it.”
“Perhaps,” Slavens assented.
“I’m going to leave here,” she hurriedly pursued. “It was foolish of me to come, in the first place. The vastness of it bewildered me, and ‘the lonesomeness,’ as Smith calls it, is settling in my heart.”
“Well, where will you go?” he asked bewilderedly.
“Somewhere–to some village or little farm, where we can raise poultry, mother and I.”
“But I haven’t planned it that way,” Slavens smiled. “If you leave, what am I going to do?”
“I don’t know,” she acknowledged, “unless–unless you come some time.”
“Look here, Agnes,” said he, taking the matter entirely in hand. “When we leave this place, we’ll leave together. I’ve arranged that all in my mind and intention. It’s all disposed of and settled. Here comes Boyle now, I think.”
Boyle left his horse standing a few rods distant and came over to where they sat.
“You look comfortable,” he commented, as serene and unperturbed as if the load of one more human life on his soul were a matter too light to be felt with inconvenience.
“Very comfortable,” answered Slavens, rising stiffly. “We have nothing on our hands that common water will not wash off.”
“Oh, that nut!” depreciated Boyle. “He’d talked around for a year or two about getting me. I only beat him to it when he tried; that’s all.”
“But there was another occasion–another attempt that didn’t turn out quite like you intended,” said Slavens. “Do you remember me?”
“Yes; you’re the tin-horn doctor that held a man up in Comanche and stole the coat off of his back,” Boyle retorted with easy insolence.
Agnes looked at the doctor imploringly, plainly begging him not to provoke Boyle to another outbreak of violence. She was standing beside him, the fear and loathing which Boyle’s presence aroused undisguised in her frank face.
“It was an outrage against one of the honest men who tried to murder me,” said the doctor. “But, vicious as it was, neither Shanklin nor you, his side-partner, has ever made a squeal. If it was a holdup, why haven’t you sent one of your little sheriffs out after me?”
“I’m no partner of Hun Shanklin’s!” denied Boyle.
“Maybe you’ve parted company since the night you slugged me and nailed me up in that box for the river to hide your work.”
“I’ll make you prove that charge!” threatened Boyle hotly.
“I can’t prove it,” admitted the doctor. “If I could, I’d have you in court tomorrow. But you were one of them, and I want you to understand fully that I know it, and will treat you accordingly in any private dealings that may come up between you and me.”
“If you keep spoutin’ it around that I ever slugged you, I’ll pull you into court and make you prove it! It’ll either be put up or shut up with you, mister!”
“Whenever you’re ready,” invited Slavens.
With somewhat more of ostentation than the simple act seemed to warrant, Boyle unbuttoned his coat, displaying his revolver as he made an exploration of his vest-pockets for a match to light his cigarette.
“Well, I guess you know what I’m here for?” Boyle suggested, passing his glance significantly from one to the other of them.
“Dr. Slavens is acquainted with your proposal,” said Agnes; “and it ought to be needless for me to say that I’ll not permit him to make any concession to shield myself.”
“Fine! fine!” said Boyle in mock applause, throwing his head back and snorting smoke.
“In the first place,” said Slavens, “your bluff don’t go. Miss Gates has not broken any law in registering and entering this land under an alias. There’s no crime in assuming a name, and no felony in acquiring property under it, unless fraud is used. She has defrauded nobody, and you could not make a case against her in a thousand years!”
“I can get an indictment–that’s a cinch!” declared Boyle.
“Go ahead,” said the doctor. “We’ve got some new blood in this country now, and we can find a jur
y that you don’t own and control when it comes to trial.”
“And after the indictment comes arrest and jail,” Boyle continued, overlooking the doctor’s argument in the lofty security of his position. “It would make a lot of noisy talk, considering the family reputation and all that.”
“And the outcome of it might be–and I doubt even that–that Miss Gates would lose her homestead,” Slavens supplied.
“You don’t know the Federal judge in this district,” Boyle grinned. “Jail’s what it means, and plenty of it, for the judge has to approve a bond, if you know what that means.”
“Why don’t you pay Dr. Slavens for his homestead, as you were ready to pay that man Peterson if you could have filed him on it?” Agnes asked.
“Because it’s mine already,” said Boyle. “This man stole the description of that land, as I have told you before, at the point of a gun.”
“Then you lied!” Slavens calmly charged.
Boyle hitched his hip, throwing the handle of his pistol into sight.
“You can say that,” said he, “because I’ve got to have your name on a paper.”
“I’ll never permit Dr. Slavens to sign away his valuable claim to you,” declared Agnes. “I’ll not allow––”
Slavens lifted his hand for silence.
“I’ll do the talking for this family from now on,” said he, smiling reassuringly as he held her eyes a moment with his own.
He turned abruptly to Boyle.
“And the fighting, too, when necessary. You keep that little gun in its place when you’re around me, young man, or you’ll get hurt! One more break like that to show me that you’ve got it, and you and I will mix. Just put that down in your book.”
“Oh, all right, pardner!” returned Boyle with that jerky insolence which men of his kind assume when they realize that they have been called, and called hard. He buttoned his coat.
“And as far as Miss Gates is concerned, consider her out of this case,” said Slavens. “But I want to have some private talk with you.”
They walked over to the place where Boyle’s horse stood, and there, out of the hearing of Agnes, Slavens sounded Jerry sharply on his intentions. It was plain that there was no bluff in Boyle; he meant what he threatened, and he was small enough to carry it through.
As an illustration of his far-reaching influence, Boyle pointed out to Slavens that nobody had approached the physician with an offer to buy him out, although one had appeared anxious enough to open negotiations the day he filed.
“When we tell a man to lay down in this part of the country, he lays down,” said Boyle; “and when we order him to walk on his hind legs, he walks. Nobody will offer you any money for that place; it isn’t worth anything to a soul on earth but me. You couldn’t sell out in a century. You’ll get that through your nut if you hang around here long enough.”
For a little while Slavens thought it over, walking away a few paces and appraising the situation studiously. Suddenly he wheeled and confronted Boyle, leveling his finger at his face.
“Your bluff don’t go, Boyle!” said he. “You’d just as well get on your horse and light out; and if you want to bring it to a fight, then let it be a fight. We’ll meet you on any ground you pick.”
“You’re a fool!” snarled Boyle.
“Then I’ll be a bigger one–big enough to call you to account before another day has passed over your head for your part in that dirty work in Comanche that night. And I want to lay it off to you right now that all the influence you can command in this state isn’t going to save you when I go after you!”
Boyle picked up his bridle-reins and threaded his arm through them, standing so, legs wide apart, while he rolled a cigarette. As it dangled between his lips and the smoke of it rose up, veiling his eyes, he peered narrowly through it at the doctor.
“There’s a man in the graveyard up at Cheyenne that made a talk like that one time,” he said.
“I’ll have to take your word for that,” returned Slavens, quite unmoved. “I’ll meet you at the hotel in Meander tomorrow morning at nine o’clock for a settlement, one way or the other.”
“One way or the other,” repeated Boyle.
He mounted his horse and rode away toward Meander, trailing a thin line of smoke behind him.
Agnes hurried forward to meet Slavens as he turned toward her. Her face was bloodless, her bosom agitated.
“I heard part of what you said,” she told him. “Surely you don’t mean to go over there and fight him on his own ground, among his friends?”
“I’m going over there to see the county attorney,” said he. “He’s from Kansas, and a pretty straight sort of chap, it seemed to me from what I saw of him. I’m going to put this situation of ours before him, citing a hypothetical case, and get his advice. I don’t believe that there’s a shred of a case against you, and I doubt whether Boyle can bluff the government officials into making a move in it, even with all his influence.”
“And you’ll come back here and tell me what he says, no matter what his opinion may be, before you act one way or another?”
“If you wish it, although–Well, yes–if you wish it.”
“I do, most earnestly,” she assured him.
“You need a good sleep,” he counseled. “Turn in as soon as I’m gone, and don’t worry about this. There’s a good deal of bluff in Boyle.”
“He’s treacherous, and he shoots wonderfully. He killed that poor fellow last night without ever seeing him at all.”
“But I’m not going to take a shot at him out of the dark,” said he.
“I know. But I’ll be uneasy until you return.”
“There’s too much trouble in your face today for one of your years,” he said, lifting her chin with rather a professional rebuke in his eyes. “You’ll have to put it down, or it will make you old. Go right on dreaming and planning; things will come out exactly as you have designed.”
“Perhaps,” she agreed, but with little hope in her voice.
Slavens saddled his horse after they had refreshed themselves with coffee. Agnes stood by, racked with an anxiety which seemed to grind her heart. The physician thought of the pioneer women of his youth, of those who lived far out on the thin edge of prairie reaches, and in the gloom of forests which groaned around them in the lone winds of winter nights. There was the same melancholy of isolation in Agnes’ eyes today as he had seen in theirs; the same sad hopelessness; the same hunger, and the longing to fly from the wilderness and its hardships, heart-weariness, and pain.
Her hand lay appealingly upon his shoulder for a moment before he mounted, and her face was turned up to him, unspoken yearning on her lips.
“Promise me again before you go that you will come back here before you relinquish your homestead to Boyle,” she demanded. “Promise me that, no matter what the lawyer’s opinion may be, you’ll return here before you do anything else at all.”
“I promise you,” said he.
When he had ridden a little way he halted his horse and turned in his saddle to look back. She was sitting there in the sun, her head bowed, her hands clasped over her face, as if she wept or prayed. A little while he waited there, as if meditating a return, as if he had forgotten something–some solace, perhaps, for which her lips had appealed to his heart dumbly.
Yet a sincere man seldom knows these things, which a trifler is so quick to see. He did not know, perhaps; or perhaps he was not certain enough to turn his horse and ride back to repair his omission. Presently he rode on slowly, his head bent, the bridle-reins loose in his hand.
* * *
CHAPTER XVII
A PLAN
The man who had supplied the horse-blanket for covering the dead sheep-herder had taken it away, but the board upon which they had stretched him still lay under the tree where they had left it. There was blood on it where the wound had drained, a disturbing sight which persisted in meeting Agnes’ eye every time she came out of the tent. She was debating in her mind whether
to throw the board in the river or split it up and burn it in the stove, when Smith came along and claimed it.
“Scarce as wood’s goin’ to be in this valley six months from now,” Smith remarked, rubbing dust over the stain which did not appear to give him any qualms, “a man’s got to take care of it. That’s a shelf out of my store.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll ever put goods on it again.”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Well, not groceries, at any rate,” she ventured.
“It won’t hurt canned goods,” Smith told her, turning it stain downward. “Doctor gone back?”
“He’s gone on to Meander on some business.”
“Smart feller,” commended Smith. “If I had to have my leg took off I’d just as lief have that man do it as any doctor I ever saw.”
“I’m sure he would appreciate your confidence,” she smiled.
“Been acquainted with him a good while?” he wanted to know.
“Only since I’ve been in this country. We met on the train coming to Comanche.”
Smith sighed as if oppressed by a secret trouble, and cast his wise eye about the camp.
“I wouldn’t leave them things around out here at night,” he advised, indicating some boxes of supplies with which she was rather liberally provided. “Animals might git at ’em.”
“You don’t mean bears?” she asked with lively concern.
“No; not likely bears,” said he. “Badgers, more like. They’re awful thieves.”
“Thank you for the advice. I meant to put them in today, but I’ve been so distracted by last night’s awful events––”
“Yes, I know,” Smith nodded. “I’ll put ’em in for you.”
Smith stored the boxes within the tent. The exertion brought out the sweat on his red face. He stood wiping it, his hat in his hand, turning his eyes to see how she regarded his strength.
“I tell you, a woman needs a man to do the heavy work for her in a place like this,” he hinted.
“I’m finding that out,” she laughed.
Smith sat down comfortably on the box lately occupied by Dr. Slavens. He buckled his hands over a knee and sat with that foot raised from the ground in a most ungainly, but perhaps refreshing, attitude.
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