The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

  He took a deep breath, seemed to shake himself out of it, and smiled cheerfully upon her.

  "We'll put our treasure-trove on the sled and go back to your friends," he continued briskly. "To-morrow I'll send men up to scour the hills for Northrup's body."

  Sheba drew the canvas back over the face of the dead man. As she followed Macdonald back to the trail, tears filled her eyes. She was remembering that the white, stinging death that had crept upon these men so swiftly had missed her by a hair's breadth. The strong, lusty life had been stricken out of the big Cornishman and probably of his partner in crime. Perhaps they had left mothers or wives or sweethearts to mourn them.

  Macdonald relieved Elliot at breaking trail and the young man went back to the gee-pole. They had discarded mukluks and wore moccasins and snowshoes. It was hard, slow work, for the trail-breaker had to fight his way through snow along the best route he could find. The moon was high when at last they reached the roadhouse.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  DIANE CHANGES HER MIND

  The news of Sheba's safety had been telephoned to Diane from the roadhouse, so that all the family from Peter down were on the porch to welcome her with mingled tears and kisses. Since Gordon had to push on to the hospital to have Holt taken care of, it was Macdonald who brought the girl home. The mine-owner declined rather brusquely an invitation to stay to dinner on the plea that he had business at the office which would not wait.

  Impulsively Sheba held out both her hands to him. "Believe me, I am thanking you with the whole of my heart, my friend. And I'm praying for you the old Irish blessing, 'God save you kindly.'"

  The deep-set, rapacious eyes of the Scotchman burned into hers for an instant. Without a word he released her hands and turned away.

  Her eyes followed him, a vital, dynamic American who would do big, lawless things to the day of his death. She sighed. He had been a great figure in her life, and now he had passed out of it.

  [Illustration: FOR HIM THE BEAUTY OF THE NIGHT LAY LARGELY IN HER PRESENCE]

  As soon as she was alone with Diane, her Irish cousin dropped the little bomb she had up her sleeve.

  "I'm going to be married Thursday, Di."

  Mrs. Paget embraced her for the tenth time within the hour. She was very fond of Sheba, and she had been on a great strain concerning her safety. That out of her danger had resulted the engagement Diane had hoped for was surplusage of good luck.

  "You lucky, sensible girl."

  Sheba assented demurely. "I do think I'm sensible as well as lucky. It isn't every girl that knows the right man for her even when he wants her. But I know at last. He's the man for me out of ten million."

  "I'm sure of it, dear. Oh, I am so glad." Diane hugged her again. She couldn't help it.

  "One gets to know a man pretty well on a trip like that. I wouldn't change mine for any one that was ever made. I like everything about him, Di. I am the happiest girl."

  "I'm so glad you see it that way at last." Diane passed to the practical aspect of the situation. "But Thursday. Will that give us time, my dear? And who are you going to have here?"

  "Just the family. I've invited two guests, but neither of them can come. One has a broken leg and the other says he doesn't want to see me married to another man," Sheba explained with a smile.

  "So Gordon won't come."

  "Yes. He'll have to be here. We can't get along without the bridegroom. It wouldn't be a legal marriage, would it?"

  Diane looked at her, for the moment dumb. "You little wretch!" she got out at last. "So it's Gordon, is it? Are you quite sure this time? Not likely to change your mind before Thursday?"

  "I suppose, to an outsider, I do seem fickle," Miss O'Neill admitted smilingly. "But Gordon and I both understand that."

  "And Colby Macdonald--does he understand it too?"

  "Oh, yes." Her smile grew broader. "He told me that he didn't think I would quite suit him, after all. Not enough experience for the place."

  Diane flashed a suspicious look of inquiry. "Of course that's nonsense. What did he tell you?"

  "Something like that. He will marry Mrs. Mallory, I think, though he doesn't know it yet."

  "You mean she will get him on the rebound," said Diane bluntly.

  "That isn't a nice way to put it. He has always liked her very much. He is fond of her for what she is. What attracted him in me were the things his imagination gave to me."

  "And Gordon likes you, I suppose, for what you are?"

  Sheba did not resent the little note of friendly sarcasm. "I suppose he has his fancies about me, too, but by the time he finds out what I am he'll have to put up with me."

  The arrival of Elliot interrupted confidences. He had come, he said, to receive congratulations.

  "What in the world have you been doing with your face?" demanded Diane. As an afterthought she added: "Mr. Macdonald is all cut up too."

  "We've been taking massage treatment." Gordon passed to a subject of more immediate interest. "Do I get my congratulations, Di?"

  She kissed him, too, for old sake's sake. "I do believe you'll suit Sheba better than Colby Macdonald would. He's a great man and you are not. But it isn't everybody that is fit to be the wife of a great man."

  "That's a double, left-handed compliment," laughed Gordon. "But you can't say anything that will hurt my feelings to-day, Di. Isn't that your baby I heap crying? What a heartless mother you are!"

  Diane gave him the few minutes alone with Sheba that his gay smile had asked for. "Get out with you," she said, laughing. "Go to the top of the hill and look at the lovers' moon I've ordered there expressly for you; and while you are there forget that there are going to be crying babies and nursemaids with evenings out in that golden future of yours."

  "Come along, Sheba. We'll start now on the golden trail," said Elliot.

  She walked as if she loved it. Her long, slender legs moved rhythmically and her arms swung true as pendulums.

  The moon was all that Diane had promised. Sheba drank it in happily.

  "I believe I must be a pagan. I love the sun and the moon and I know it's all true about the little folk and the pied piper and--"

  "If it's paganism to be in love with the world, you are a thirty-third degree pagan."

  "Well, and was there ever a more beautiful night before?"

  He thought not, but he had not the words to tell her that for him its beauty lay largely in her presence. Her passionate love of things fine and brave transformed the universe for him. It was enough for him to be near her, to hear the laughter bubbling in her throat, to touch her crisp, blue-black hair as he adjusted the scarf about her head.

  "God made the night," he replied. "So that's a Christian thought as well as a pagan one."

  They were no exception to the rule that lovers are egoists. The world for them to-night divided itself into two classes. One included Sheba O'Neill and Gordon Elliot; the other took in the uninteresting remnant of humanity. No matter how far afield their talk began, it always came back to themselves. They wanted to know all about each other, to compare experiences and points of view. But time fled too fast for words. They talked--as lovers will to the end of time--in exclamations and the meeting of eyes and little endearments.

  When Diane and Peter found them on the hilltop, Sheba protested, with her half-shy, half-audacious smile, that it could not be two hours since she and Gordon had left the living-room. Peter grinned. He remembered a hilltop consecrated to his own courtship of Diane.

  The only wedding present that Macdonald sent Sheba was a long envelope with two documents attached by a clip. One was from the Kusiak "Sun." It announced that the search party had found the body of Northrup with the rest of the stolen gold beside him. The other was a copy of a legal document. Its effect was that the district attorney had dismissed all charges pending against Gordon Elliot.

  Although Macdonald lost the coal claims at Kamatlah by reason of the report of Elliot, all Alaska still believes that he was right. In that country of stro
ng men he stands head and shoulders above his fellows. He has the fortunate gift of commanding the admiration of friend and foe alike. The lady who is his wife is secretly the greatest of his slaves, but she tries not to let him know how much he has captured her imagination. For Genevieve Macdonald cannot quite understand, herself, how so elemental an emotion as love can have pierced the armor of her sophistication.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE SHERIFF'S SON

  by WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

  Foreword

  Through the mesquite a horse moved deviously, following the crooked trail of least resistance. A man was in the saddle and in front of him a little boy nodding with sleep. The arm of the rider cradled the youngster against the lurches of the pony's gait.

  The owner of the arm looked down at the tired little bundle it was supporting. A wistful tenderness was in the leathery face. To the rest of the world he was a man of iron. To this wee bit of humanity he was a nurse, a playmate, a slave.

  "We're 'most to the creek now, son. Onc't we get there, we'll throw off and camp. You can eat a snack and tumble right off to bye-low land," he promised.

  The five-year-old smiled faintly and snuggled closer. His long lashes drooped again to the soft cheeks. With the innocent selfishness of a child he accepted the love that sheltered him from all troubles.

  A valley opened below the mesa, the trail falling abruptly almost from the hoofs of the horse. Beaudry drew up and looked down. From rim to rim the meadow was perhaps half a mile across. Seen from above, the bed of it was like an emerald lake through which wound a ribbon of silver. This ribbon was Big Creek. To the right it emerged from a draw in the foothills where green reaches of forest rose tier after tier toward the purple mountains. Far up among these peaks Big Creek had its source in Lost Lake, which lay at the foot of a glacier near the top of the world.

  The saw-toothed range lifted its crest into a sky of violet haze. Half an hour since the sun had set in a blaze of splendor behind a crotch of the hills, but dusk had softened the vivid tints of orange and crimson and scarlet to a faint pink glow. Already the mountain silhouette had lost its sharp edge and the outlines were blurring. Soon night would sift down over the roof of the continent.

  The eyes of the man searched warily the valley below. They rested closely on the willows by the ford, the cottonwood grove to the left, and the big rocks beyond the creek. From its case beneath his leg he took the sawed-off shotgun loaded with buckshot. It rested on the pommel of the saddle while his long and careful scrutiny swept the panorama. The spot was an ideal one for an ambush.

  His unease communicated itself to the boy, who began to whimper softly. Beaudry, distressed, tried to comfort him.

  "Now, don't you, son--don't you. Dad ain't going to let anything hurt you-all."

  Presently he touched the flank of his roan with a spur and the animal began to pick its way down the steep trail among the loose rubble. Not for an instant did the rider relax his vigilance as he descended. At the ford he examined the ground carefully to make sure that nobody had crossed since the shower of the afternoon. Swinging to the saddle again, he put his horse to the water and splashed through to the opposite shore. Once more he dismounted and studied the approach to the creek. No tracks had written their story on the sand in the past few hours. Yet with every sense alert he led the way to the cottonwood grove where he intended to camp. Not till he had made a tour of the big rocks and a clump of prickly pears adjoining was his mind easy.

  He came back to find the boy crying. "What's the matter, big son?" he called cheerily. "Nothing a-tall to be afraid of. This nice camping-ground fits us like a coat of paint. You-all take forty winks while dad fixes up some supper."

  He spread his slicker and rolled his coat for a pillow, fitting it snugly to the child's head. While he lit a fire he beguiled the time with animated talk. One might have guessed that he was trying to make the little fellow forget the alarm that had been stirred in his mind.

  "Sing the li'l' ole hawss," commanded the boy, reducing his sobs.

  Beaudry followed orders in a tuneless voice that hopped gayly up and down. He had invented words and music years ago as a lullaby and the song was in frequent demand.

  "Li'l' ole hawss an' li'l' ole cow, Amblin' along by the ole haymow, Li'l' ole hawss took a bite an' a chew, 'Durned if I don't,' says the ole cow, too."

  Seventeen stanzas detailed the adventures of this amazing horse and predatory cow. Somewhere near the middle of the epic little Royal Beaudry usually dropped asleep. The rhythmic tale always comforted him. These nameless animals were very real friends of his. They had been companions of his tenderest years. He loved them with a devotion from which no fairy tale could wean him.

  Before he had quite surrendered to the lullaby, his father aroused him to share the bacon and the flapjacks he had cooked.

  "Come and get it, big son," Beaudry called with an imitation of manly roughness.

  The boy ate drowsily before the fire, nodding between bites.

  Presently the father wrapped the lad up snugly in his blankets and prompted him while he said his prayers. No woman's hands could have been tenderer than the calloused ones of this frontiersman. The boy was his life. For the girl-bride of John Beaudry had died to give this son birth.

  Beaudry sat by the dying fire and smoked. The hills had faded to black, shadowy outlines beneath a night of a million stars. During the day the mountains were companions, heaven was the home of warm friendly sunshine that poured down lance-straight upon the traveler. But now the black, jagged peaks were guards that shut him into a vast prison of loneliness. He was alone with God, an atom of no consequence. Many a time, when he had looked up into the sky vault from the saddle that was his pillow, he had known that sense of insignificance.

  To-night the thoughts of John Beaudry were somber. He looked over his past with a strange feeling that he had lived his life and come to the end of it. He was not yet forty, a well-set, bow-legged man of medium height, in perfect health, sound as to every organ. From an old war wound he had got while raiding with Morgan he limped a little. Two more recent bullet scars marked his body. But none of these interfered with his activity. He was in the virile prime of life; yet a bell rang in his heart the warning that he was soon to die. That was why he was taking his little son out of the country to safety.

  He took all the precautions that one could, but he knew that in the end these would fail him. The Rutherfords would get him. Of that he had no doubt. They would probably have killed him, anyhow, but he had made his sentence sure when he had shot Anse Rutherford and wounded Eli Schaick ten days ago. That it had been done by him in self-defense made no difference.

  Out of the Civil War John Beaudry had come looking only for peace. He had moved West and been flung into the wild, turbulent life of the frontier. In the Big Creek country there was no peace for strong men in the seventies. It was a time and place for rustlers and horse-thieves to flourish at the expense of honest settlers. They elected their friends to office and laughed at the law.

  But the tide of civilization laps forward. A cattlemen's association had been formed. Beaudry, active as an organizer, had been chosen its first president. With all his energy he had fought the rustlers. When the time came to make a stand the association nominated Beaudry for sheriff and elected him. He had prosecuted the thieves remorselessly in spite of threats and shots in the dark. Two of them had been put by him behind bars. Others were awaiting trial. The climax had come when he met Anse Rutherford and his companion at Battle Butte, had defeated them both single-handed, and had left one dead on the field and the other badly wounded.

  Men said that John Beaudry was one of the great sheriffs of the West. Perhaps he was, but he would have to pay the price that such a reputation exacts. The Rutherford gang had sworn his death and he knew they would keep the oath.

  The man sat with one hand resting on the slim body of the sleeping boy. His heart was troubled. What was to become of little Royal without ei
ther father or mother? After the manner of men who live much alone in the open he spoke his thoughts aloud.

  "Son, one of these here days they're sure a-goin' to get yore dad. Maybe he'll ride out of town and after a while the hawss will come galloping back with an empty saddle. A man can be mighty unpopular and die of old age, but not if he keeps bustin' up the plans of rampageous two-gun men, not if he shoots them up when they're full of the devil and bad whiskey. It ain't on the cyards for me to beat them to the draw every time, let alone that they'll see to it all the breaks are with them. No, sir. I reckon one of these days you're goin' to be an orphan, little son."

  He stooped over the child and wrapped the blankets closer. The muscles of his tanned face twitched. Long he held the warm, slender body of the boy as close to him as he dared for fear of wakening him.