by Grey, Zane
Perhaps a long hard gallop would be good for her; and moreover, she might meet Marvie on the trail. Could something have happened to him? It might very well have, Hettie concluded, with a tremor. He and Rose might have been discovered by that Cedar Hatt, of whom Rose had such great fear. The very air round the Ide ranch seemed congested, heavy, sultry, ominous with menace.
Hettie passed the quarters of the riders at some distance, not caring to be accosted by Dillon or Raidy. She saw some saddled horses, dusty and tired, that had evidently just come in. There were a number of men bunched in a circle, conversing so earnestly that none espied her. Gaining the stables, she found Pedro and had him saddle her horse. Soon she was riding fast with the wind in her face.
But neither a gallop nor a run sufficed to change Hettie's mood.
She rode into the woods, and let her horse walk at will down the shady trail in the direction from which Marvie always returned.
And here, alone, under the impelling influence of the forest, Hettie realized that she was a most miserable and heartbroken girl, with a terrible sword hanging over her head. How hopeless her situation! What use to think? There was not a thought nor an action that could help her in her extremity. Courage and intelligence had gone with the loss of hope.
A purple haze like smoke hung in the aisles of the forest; the only sound was the faintest of breezes murmuring in the pines; the thickets were on fire with golden and scarlet flame of autumn leaves; the westering sun caught the glint of falling leaf and pine needle.
Nature seemed so pitiless this day. It went on, calm, sweet, beautiful, inscrutable, unmindful of the poor little lives of human beings. Hettie could not derive any solace, any strength, from either forest or range or desert.
Arizona had killed her dream, as it had ruined her brother. And the horror of Hettie's state seemed that the climax of this infernal paradox, the dTnouement, the worst, had yet to come.
Suddenly she caught the rhythmic beat of swift hoofs ahead round a green curve of the trail. That must be Marvie's horse. A rush of relief swept over her. The pine boughs spread. A big black horse was upon her before she could pull a rein. She cried out. But the rider hauled back to his haunches, and that rider was Nevada.
Chapter nineteen.
Hettie clutched the pommel of her saddle. An awful stunning shock suspended, for an instant, all her faculties, and every sensibility except the physical animal instinct of holding her equilibrium.
Then emotion burst the dam.
When Nevada's horse plunged up, his head came abreast Hettie's horse.
"YOU!" Hettie felt the word leave her stiff lips, but she heard it only as a whisper.
Nevada swept off his sombrero and bowed low to the mane of his horse. And as he rose erect he remained bareheaded.
"Wal, shore it's Hettie Ide," he drawled, in the cool, leisurely, Southern accent that cut into her heart like blades.
Then they gazed at one another, as if sight was trying to reconcile the face of dreams with the reality. The face Hettie looked into had the same lean outline, the dark blue-black shade of beard against the clear brown tan, the intent light hazel-flecked eyes, like level piercing points. But it did not have the soul with which her imagination and memory had invested it.
"I--saw you--in Winthrop," began Hettie, as if to find relief from oppression. Silence was impossible.
"Shore. I reckoned you might," he replied. As he spoke he rolled a cigarette with steady fingers. No surprise, no emotion that Hettie could read, manifested itself in look or manner. "Too bad you had to run into me heah!"
"Too bad! . . . It's terrible. But I'm glad," exclaimed Hettie, quivering, shaking all over.
"Thank you, an' I'm shore sorry I cain't return the compliment," he said, and bent his head to light the cigarette.
His cool nonchalance, that she remembered so poignantly, seemed now to inflame her.
"JIM LACY!" she cried, in scornful, sad haste to acquaint him with her knowledge of his infamy.
He thrust his sombrero on, tilted back, and as he blew a thin column of smoke upward his penetrating, inscrutable eyes studied her face.
"Why didn't you trust me? Oh, why?" she went on, slipping farther toward an emotional outbreak.
"Hettie, there was a time, long ago, when I'd rather have been daid than let you know I was Jim Lacy."
"You were ashamed?"
"I shore was."
"Long ago, you said. . . . Then you're NOT ashamed now?"
"Wal, it cain't matter now," he rejoined, with a gleam of a smile.
"Why can't it matter now?" she queried.
He made an expressive gesture, and then gazed down through the open forest to the colorful desert. His horse rubbed noses with Hettie's, and gradually backed it across the trail.
"Ben doesn't dream his--his old friend Nevada is you--the notorious Jim Lacy."
"I reckon not. . . . Too bad he's got to find out pretty soon!"
"Must Ben--find out?" asked Hettie, huskily. Thought of Ben augmented her weakness.
Nevada dropped his head. His horse, nosing Hettie's, brought Nevada closer to her, so that she might have touched him. This proximity bore upon her with incalculable influence. She pulled her horse aside, to no avail, for the big black followed with eager whinny. His rider did not seem to be aware of this proceeding, or of the proximity that again ensued.
"How can you be so cool--so hatefully cool?" burst out Hettie, "Ben loved you. I--I . . . What did he care who you were? Why didn't you always stay Nevada? . . . Ben left no stone unturned to locate you. Failing that, he came to Arizona because he hoped you might turn up. . . . You have turned up. But as Jim Lacy--as a rustler who stole from him. Stole from a friend you once saved and succored and loved! Did you know those cattle were Ben's?"
"Shore--I did," replied Nevada, showing a faint pallor.
"Oh, it was a terrible thing to do!" cried Hettie, covering her face with her hands. "Your pard? It will cut him to the quick-- embitter him forever. . . . And it'll kill ME!"
His silence, his imperturbability in its unnaturalness roused her to a sudden furious passion that burned away her tears and waved her face scarlet.
"Wal, you're a mighty healthy lady after so many years of dyin'," he drawled, tossing away his half-smoked cigarette. "Hettie, you always was pretty, but you've grown into a plumb handsome woman. . . . Reckon the cowboys are sweeter'n ever on you."
"That must have meant a lot to you," she flashed, breathing hard.
"Dillon, now. HE was."
"Yes. He has made love to me. Begged me to marry him," returned Hettie, in fiery flippancy, hoping with a woman's strange coquetry to make him jealous.
"Wal, you don't say. He's shore a handsome hombre. Devil with the women, I heah. . . . Why don't you marry him?"
"I--may yet," replied Hettie, somberly. He baffled her. In his cool, inscrutable presence she felt like a child. And a deep unplumbed emotion seemed to swell at the gates of her self-control.
"Hettie, if you do you'll be changin' your mind considerable from what it was that night at the dance in Winthrop."
"What do you know about that?" she queried, wonderingly.
"Wal, I happened to heah you tell Dillon a few things, an' I seen him try to get you in his arms."
"YOU! You were there?"
"Shore. An' after you flounced off I introduced myself to Dillon an' most polite invited him to draw. But he didn't have the nerve, so I took a punch at his handsome face."
"You struck Dillon on my behalf!" murmured Hettie softening.
"Wal, yes, partly. But I had it in for him before. . . . By the way, is he at the ranch?"
"Yes. I saw him at the corrals as I came out."
"Good! I'm shore a lucky hombre--since I took up with Jim Lacy again."
"You were going to our ranch?" queried Hettie, quickly.
"I AM goin', Miss Hettie Ide."
"What--for?"
"Wal, reckon my prime reason is to shoot out one of Dillon's handsome e
yes. But I've another--"
"Oh! . . . You've something against Dillon?"
"Huh! I should rather smile I have, Hettie."
"You'll--you'll KILL him?"
Nevada's flashing eye and sweeping gesture were the first indications of passion he had evinced.
"Reckon if you hadn't held me up heah he'd be daid now. An' that stands for me, too."
"Ah! Then Dillon is--a--a dangerous man--as you--"
"Hettie, HE'S a bad hombre. Come from New Mexico. Name is Ed Richardson, once with the Billy the Kid outfit. . . . I'll kill him, shore, but he might return the compliment."
"You--you bloody gunman!" returned Hettie, as if those few words expressed her infinite amaze and contempt for men who lived by such a creed.
"Hettie, if he does kill me you can tell Ben the truth, then come an' smooth back my hair an' wipe my bloody face. Ha! Ha!" he said, in bitter mockery.
"Hush!" Hettie reined her horse closer, so that her stirrup locked with Nevada's. "Do not do this terrible deed. For Ben's sake, if not mine. Be big enough to abandon your blood feud. Give up this outlaw, rustler, gunman life. . . . Take me away with you to some far country. I have money. You can start anew. I will cleave to you--live for you."
"For Gawd's sake, Hettie Ide, are you crazy?" he returned, stridently.
"Not yet. But I will be soon--if this--goes on," she panted, and slipped her gloved hand to his shoulder. "Nevada, I--I still love you. I've always loved you. . . . I forgive all. I surrender all. I don't care who you are--what you've been. All I ask is that you save Ben the horror so near--that you take me away and give up this life. . . . We can plan quickly. I will meet you at some point on the railroad. . . . Say you will."
"No," he said, hoarsely.
"Nevada! . . . Don't you love me--still?" And she leaned to him, overcome, betraying all her woman's soul of love, and hope for him, for Ben, for herself.
"Love you? Ha! Ha!"
"Don't stare. Don't laugh. This means life or death to me. Say you love me. Say you'll take me."
"Yes, I love you, mad woman. But I cain't accept your sacrifice.
I cain't ruin you. . . . Good Gawd! Hettie, you forget I'm Jim Lacy!"
"It's because you ARE Jim Lacy."
"Heavens! This heah is awful! . . . Hettie, I cain't--I won't."
"You lie, then. You do not love me. _I_ am proving mine. But you-- you are false. You have taken some--other woman. You don't love me!"
Hettie, dim of eye, saw him loom over her. She felt herself seized in iron arms and dragged from her horse. Then she was lifted over the pommel and crushed to his breast, and bent backward, blind and breathless, a victim of terrible devouring lips. He kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, her brow, her hair, and then again her mouth.
Hettie's senses reeled and almost failed her. When his violence ceased she felt herself held closely for a long moment, then let down from the horse until her feet touched the ground. She was falling when he leaped from the saddle. He set her on the grass with her back against a tree, and there, presently, her eyes opened.
Nevada knelt before her, his face convulsed. Slowly it smoothed out and a wild darkness faded from his eyes.
"There. You've come to. I reckon I must ask you to excuse me for bein' rough. But I shore couldn't stand that talk aboot not lovin' you."
"I will not believe--unless you prove it," returned Hettie, unsteadily, as she reached for her sombrero.
Nevada rose to his feet. "I cain't prove it your way," he replied, and his features set stone-cold and gray.
"Oh, what have you done to me?" cried Hettie, wildly, as again passion rose strong and regained the ascendancy over her.
"Reckon nothin' compared to what you've done to me," he responded, with somber gaze upon her. "Dillon will just aboot beat me to a gun."
Hettie stood up, holding to the tree trunk. "Nothing. . . . I've loved you since I first met you. I've been true. I trusted you.
I cared not for your past. I believed in your future. I prayed for you. My faith in you was as great as my faith in God. I believed you loved me. That when you rode away from Forlorn River-- to escape the consequences--when you killed Less Setter to save Ben--I believed you would be true to me, to the higher self you found through Ben's love and mine. . . . But you were too little.
You went back to the old life--to the old comrades. Rustlers, gamblers, gunmen! You killed just because you wanted to keep that name hated and feared. You are a bloody monster. . . . No doubt you sank to the embrace of vile women--the consorts of thieves! O my God! it would be my death if I could not kill my love. But I will. It will lie dead as my faith. . . . You are a liar, a failure, a weakling. Basest of all is your ingratitude. You stole from my brother--who loved you."
Nevada's eyes held a blaze like black lightning.
"Reckon that'll be aboot all I want to heah," he said, in tones she had never heard before.
"That is--all."
He gathered up the reins and vaulted into the saddle, then turned to gaze down the trail.
"Horses comin'," he said, briefly. "It's Marvie with his girl, Rose Hatt."
"Yes, I see," returned Hettie, with a start. "Oh, I'm glad."
"Wal, Miss Hettie Ide," he said, "you might heah somethin' from Marvie an' Rose. Anyway, don't rustle back home too quick."
Her lips framed a query she could not speak.
"It's aboot sunset," he went on, with strange gaze upon the west.
"Sunset for Dillon! An' shore sunset for me!"
Then he spurred the big black, and clattering into the trail soon vanished from sight toward the ranch.
Chapter twenty.
Nevada approached the Ide ranch from that side closest to the forest, where the pines and cedars trooped down the gentle slopes of the benches, clear to the most outwardly of the cattle sheds.
With his brain on fire and his heart like lead, his whole being crushed under the burning weight of Hettie's outspoken love and terrible scorn, he halted under cover of the last clump of cedars, and dismounted, answering to an instinct, true even in that hour of utter catastrophe, to the instinct which had preserved him so long as Jim Lacy. Not now, however, was it an instinct of self- preservation, but one to meet and kill Ed Richardson, alias Campbell, alias Clan Dillon, late member of the few surviving Lincoln County war desperadoes.
Wedging this purpose into his stunned brain, Nevada kept driving it deeper, while he removed saddle and bridle from his horse and turned it free. He would have no more need of a horse. Then he crouched in the cedars, under tremendous strain, driving himself to the exclusion of all thought, of all emotion, of all faculties except those few cardinally important for the issue at hand.
When he emerged from under cover of the cedars he might have been an automaton, with guidance of some grim-strung spirit.
He glided behind brush to the sage and through this to the pole fence. It led to the back of log cabins, which he marked as the bunkhouses. The sunset hour was near. Silver-edged purple clouds hung over the soft rounded foothills. Soon the sun would sink from behind the broken mass of cloud and slide down into that golden space behind the ranges. Cowboys, riders, range hands, foreman, all would be waiting the call to supper. The day had been hot.
Just now, with the first cool breeze breathing down from the hill, all the men would be outdoors.
There was a fate in many meetings of life, and singularly in all those that involved Jim Lacy.
He swept his magnified gaze to the left, over pasture and field, which were open to his sight. A few horses and colts, cows and calves, a burro, and some black pigs dotted the gray-green pastures and the brown fields. No rider in sight!
Nevada stole swiftly along the fence to the first high corral. It contained a number of horses, with saddles and packs stacked in a corner. He would have to cross this corral, and go through the others, to reach the rear of the bunkhouses. Climbing to the top log of the high fence, he peeped over. No man in sight! He climbed and ran and climbed an
d ran, quickly gaining the open gate of the last corral. The two small log cabins and the long one stood across the open space, with barns to the left and courtyard on the right, leading up to the Ide homes in the edge of the forest.
A Mexican boy appeared leading horses to a watering-trough; a rider came trotting down the long lane between the fields; some one was driving cows in from the pasture. From behind the cabins came the loud rollicking laughter of cowboys.
Nevada did not hesitate a moment. Leisurely he strode from the corral toward the long cabin, making for the nearest end, where cords of firewood were stacked high. That end, where blue smoke curled from a stone chimney, would be the kitchen. There would be a porch on the other side.
Nevada gained the woodpiles. They had been stacked, seemingly, to furnish him perfect passageway and perfect cover, for the fruition of this long-planned moment. It never crossed his mind that Dillon might not be there. Dillon would be there. For the men who had wronged Jim Lacy or incurred his enmity there existed a fatality which operated infallibly. Or else Lacy never made a mistake. It was something that he felt.
He glided between the high stacks of wood. Before he peeped out he saw horsemen riding down the dusty road which wound away to the north and Winthrop. Then Nevada put his eye to an aperture between two billets of cedar that protruded from the stack.
A dozen or more men lounged and sat and stood in plain sight.
Cowboys in shirt sleeves, faces shiny and red, hair glossed and wet, sat on the ground, backs to the cabin. Nevada recognized Macklin, the Winthrop sheriff, leaning against the hitching rail, in conversation with two other men, not garbed as riders. Facing Nevada was a tall man in black and he had a bright badge on his vest. He was another sheriff, a stranger to Nevada.
"We sure want to get off by sunup," he was saying to a man near him.
This man stood with his back toward Nevada. His powerful supple shoulders showed wonderfully through his white clean shirt. Nevada recognized that lithe stalwart build, the leonine neck, the handsome head, with its clustering fair hair.
Dillon! A slight cold thrill ran over Nevada. Following it came an instinct like that of a tiger to leap.
