by Grey, Zane
"It seems so. Well, I'm going," said Duane, tersely.
"Lucky! I should smiler Bland's been up all night after a most draggin' ride home. He'll be fagged out this mornin', sleepy, sore, an' he won't be expectin' hell before breakfast. Now, you walk over to his house. Meet him how you like. Thet's your game. But I'm suggestin', if he comes out an' you want to parley, you can jest say you'd thought over his proposition an' was ready to join his band, or you ain't. You'll have to kill him, an' it 'd save time to go fer your gun on sight. Might be wise, too, fer it's likely he'll do thet same."
"How about the horses?"
"I'll fetch them an' come along about two minnits behind you. 'Pears to me you ought to have the job done an' Jennie outside by the time I git there. Once on them hosses, we can ride out of camp before Alloway or anybody else gits into action. Jennie ain't much heavier than a rabbit. Thet big black will carry you both."
"All right. But once more let me persuade you to stay--not to mix any more in this," said Duane, earnestly.
"Nope. I'm goin'. You heard what Benson told me. Alloway wouldn't give me the benefit of any doubts. Buck, a last word--look out fer thet Bland woman!"
Duane merely nodded, and then, saying that the horses were ready, he strode away through the grove. Accounting for the short cut across grove and field, it was about five minutes' walk up to Bland's house. To Duane it seemed long in time and distance, and he had difficulty in restraining his pace. As he walked there came a gradual and subtle change in his feelings. Again he was going out to meet a man in conflict. He could have avoided this meeting. But despite the fact of his courting the encounter he had not as yet felt that hot, inexplicable rush of blood. The motive of this deadly action was not personal, and somehow that made a difference.
No outlaws were in sight. He saw several Mexican herders with cattle. Blue columns of smoke curled up over some of the cabins. The fragrant smell of it reminded Duane of his home and cutting wood for the stove. He noted a cloud of creamy mist rising above the river, dissolving in the sunlight.
Then he entered Bland's lane.
While yet some distance from the cabin he heard loud, angry voices of man and woman. Bland and Kate still quarreling! He took a quick survey of the surroundings. There was now not even a Mexican in sight. Then he hurried a little. Halfway down the lane he turned his head to peer through the cottonwoods. This time he saw Euchre coming with the horses. There was no indication that the old outlaw might lose his nerve at the end. Duane had feared this.
Duane now changed his walk to a leisurely saunter. He reached the porch and then distinguished what was said inside the cabin.
"If you do, Bland, by Heaven I'll fix you and her!" That was panted out in Kate Bland's full voice.
"Let me looser I'm going in there, I tell you!" replied Bland, hoarsely.
"What for?"
"I want to make a little love to her. Ha! ha! It'll be fun to have the laugh on her new lover."
"You lie!" cried Kate Bland.
"I'm not saying what I'll do to her AFTERWARD!" His voice grew hoarser with passion. "Let me go now!"
"No! no! I won't let you go. You'll choke the--the truth out of her--you'll kill her."
"The TRUTH!" hissed Bland.
"Yes. I lied. Jen lied. But she lied to save me. You needn't--murder her--for that."
Bland cursed horribly. Then followed a wrestling sound of bodies in violent straining contact--the scrape of feet--the jangle of spurs--a crash of sliding table or chair, and then the cry of a woman in pain.
Duane stepped into the open door, inside the room. Kate Bland lay half across a table where she had been flung, and she was trying to get to her feet. Bland's back was turned. He had opened the door into Jennie's room and had one foot across the threshold. Duane caught the girl's low, shuddering cry. Then he called out loud and clear.
With cat-like swiftness Bland wheeled, then froze on the threshold. His sight, quick as his action, caught Duane's menacing unmistakable position.
Bland's big frame filled the door. He was in a bad place to reach for his gun. But he would not have time for a step. Duane read in his eyes the desperate calculation of chances. For a fleeting instant Bland shifted his glance to his wife. Then his whole body seemed to vibrate with the swing of his arm.
Duane shot him. He fell forward, his gun exploding as it hit into the floor, and dropped loose from stretching fingers. Duane stood over him, stooped to turn him on his back. Bland looked up with clouded gaze, then gasped his last.
"Duane, you've killed him!" cried Kate Bland, huskily. "I knew you'd have to!"
She staggered against the wall, her eyes dilating, her strong hands clenching, her face slowly whitening. She appeared shocked, half stunned, but showed no grief.
"Jennie!" called Duane, sharply.
"Oh--Duane!" came a halting reply.
"Yes. Come out. Hurry!"
She came out with uneven steps, seeing only him, and she stumbled over Bland's body. Duane caught her arm, swung her behind him. He feared the woman when she realized how she had been duped. His action was protective, and his movement toward the door equally as significant.
"Duane," cried Mrs. Bland.
It was no time for talk. Duane edged on, keeping Jennie behind him. At that moment there was a pounding of iron-shod hoofs out in the lane. Kate Bland bounded to the door. When she turned back her amazement was changing to realization.
"Where 're you taking Jen?" she cried, her voice like a man's. "Get out of my way," replied Duane. His look perhaps, without speech, was enough for her. In an instant she was transformed into a fury.
"You hound! All the time you were fooling me! You made love to me! You let me believe--you swore you loved me! Now I see what was queer about you. All for that girl! But you can't have her. You'll never leave here alive. Give me that girl! Let me--get at her! She'll never win any more men in this camp."
She was a powerful woman, and it took all Duane's strength to ward off her onslaughts. She clawed at Jennie over his upheld arm. Every second her fury increased.
"HELP! HELP! HELP!" she shrieked, in a voice that must have penetrated to the remotest cabin in the valley.
"Let go! Let go!" cried Duane, low and sharp. He still held his gun in his right hand, and it began to be hard for him to ward the woman off. His coolness had gone with her shriek for help. "Let go!" he repeated, and he shoved her fiercely.
Suddenly she snatched a rifle off the wall and backed away, her strong hands fumbling at the lever. As she jerked it down, throwing a shell into the chamber and cocking the weapon, Duane leaped upon her. He struck up the rifle as it went off, the powder burning his face.
"Jennie, run out! Get on a horse!" he said.
Jennie flashed out of the door.
With an iron grasp Duane held to the rifle-barrel. He had grasped it with his left hand, and he gave such a pull that he swung the crazed woman off the floor. But he could not loose her grip. She was as strong as he.
"Kate! Let go!"
He tried to intimidate her. She did not see his gun thrust in her face, or reason had given way to such an extent to passion that she did not care. She cursed. Her husband had used the same curses, and from her lips they seemed strange, unsexed, more deadly. Like a tigress she fought him; her face no longer resembled a woman's. The evil of that outlaw life, the wildness and rage, the meaning to kill, was even in such a moment terribly impressed upon Duane.
He heard a cry from outside--a man's cry, hoarse and alarming.
It made him think of loss of time. This demon of a woman might yet block his plan.
"Let go!" he whispered, and felt his lips stiff. In the grimness of that instant he relaxed his hold on the rifle-barrel.
With sudden, redoubled, irresistible strength she wrenched the rifle down and discharged it. Duane felt a blow--a shock--a burning agony tearing through his breast. Then in a frenzy he jerked so powerfully upon the rifle that he threw the woman against the wall. She fell and seemed stunne
d.
Duane leaped back, whirled, flew out of the door to the porch. The sharp cracking of a gun halted him. He saw Jennie holding to the bridle of his bay horse. Euchre was astride the other, and he had a Colt leveled, and he was firing down the lane. Then came a single shot, heavier, and Euchre's ceased. He fell from the horse.
A swift glance back showed to Duane a man coming down the lane. Chess Alloway! His gun was smoking. He broke into a run. Then in an instant he saw Duane, and tried to check his pace as he swung up his arm. But that slight pause was fatal. Duane shot, and Alloway was falling when his gun went off. His bullet whistled close to Duane and thudded into the cabin.
Duane bounded down to the horses. Jennie was trying to hold the plunging bay. Euchre lay flat on his back, dead, a bullet-hole in his shirt, his face set hard, and his hands twisted round gun and bridle.
"Jennie, you've nerve, all right!" cried Duane, as he dragged down the horse she was holding. "Up with you now! There! Never mind--long stirrups! Hang on somehow!"
He caught his bridle out of Euchre's clutching grip and leaped astride. The frightened horses jumped into a run and thundered down the lane into the road. Duane saw men running from cabins. He heard shouts. But there were no shots fired. Jennie seemed able to stay on her horse, but without stirrups she was thrown about so much that Duane rode closer and reached out to grasp her arm.
Thus they rode through the valley to the trail that led up over, the steep and broken Rim Rock. As they began to climb Duane looked back. No pursuers were in sight.
"Jennie, we're going to get away!" he cried, exultation for her in his voice.
She was gazing horror-stricken at his breast, as in turning to look back he faced her.
"Oh, Duane, your shirt's all bloody!" she faltered, pointing with trembling fingers.
With her words Duane became aware of two things--the hand he instinctively placed to his breast still held his gun, and he had sustained a terrible wound.
Duane had been shot through the breast far enough down to give him grave apprehension of his life. The clean-cut hole made by the bullet bled freely both at its entrance and where it had come out, but with no signs of hemorrhage. He did not bleed at the mouth; however, he began to cough up a reddish-tinged foam.
As they rode on, Jennie, with pale face and mute lips, looked at him.
"I'm badly hurt, Jennie," he said, "but I guess I'll stick it out."
"The woman--did she shoot you?"
"Yes. She was a devil. Euchre told me to look out for her. I wasn't quick enough."
"You didn't have to--to--" shivered the girl.
"No! no!" he replied.
They did not stop climbing while Duane tore a scarf and made compresses, which he bound tightly over his wounds. The fresh horses made fast time up the rough trail. From open places Duane looked down. When they surmounted the steep ascent and stood on top of the Rim Rock, with no signs of pursuit down in the valley, and with the wild, broken fastnesses before them, Duane turned to the girl and assured her that they now had every chance of escape.
"But--your--wound!" she faltered, with dark, troubled eyes. "I see--the blood--dripping from your back!"
"Jennie, I'll take a lot of killing," he said.
Then he became silent and attended to the uneven trail. He was aware presently that he had not come into Bland's camp by this route. But that did not matter; any trail leading out beyond the Rim Rock was safe enough. What he wanted was to get far away into some wild retreat where he could hide till he recovered from his wound. He seemed to feel a fire inside his breast, and his throat burned so that it was necessary for him to take a swallow of water every little while. He began to suffer considerable pain, which increased as the hours went by and then gave way to a numbness. From that time on he had need of his great strength and endurance. Gradually he lost his steadiness and his keen sight; and he realized that if he were to meet foes, or if pursuing outlaws should come up with him, he could make only a poor stand. So he turned off on a trail that appeared seldom traveled.
Soon after this move he became conscious of a further thickening of his senses. He felt able to hold on to his saddle for a while longer, but he was failing. Then he thought he ought to advise Jennie, so in case she was left alone she would have some idea of what to do.
"Jennie, I'll give out soon," he said. "No-I don't mean--what you think. But I'll drop soon. My strength's going. If I die--you ride back to the main trail. Hide and rest by day. Ride at night. That trail goes to water. I believe you could get across the Nueces, where some rancher will take you in."
Duane could not get the meaning of her incoherent reply. He rode on, and soon he could not see the trail or hear his horse. He did not know whether they traveled a mile or many times that far. But he was conscious when the horse stopped, and had a vague sense of falling and feeling Jennie's arms before all became dark to him.
When consciousness returned he found himself lying in a little hut of mesquite branches. It was well built and evidently some years old. There were two doors or openings, one in front and the other at the back. Duane imagined it had been built by a fugitive--one who meant to keep an eye both ways and not to be surprised. Duane felt weak and had no desire to move. Where was he, anyway? A strange, intangible sense of time, distance, of something far behind weighed upon him. Sight of the two packs Euchre had made brought his thought to Jennie. What had become of her? There was evidence of her work in a smoldering fire and a little blackened coffee-pot. Probably she was outside looking after the horses or getting water. He thought he heard a step and listened, but he felt tired, and presently his eyes closed and he fell into a doze.
Awakening from this, he saw Jennie sitting beside him. In some way she seemed to have changed. When he spoke she gave a start and turned eagerly to him.
"Duane!" she cried.
"Hello. How're you, Jennie, and how am I?" he said, finding it a little difficult to talk.
"Oh, I'm all right," she replied. "And you've come to--your wound's healed; but you've been sick. Fever, I guess. I did all I could."
Duane saw now that the difference in her was a whiteness and tightness of skin, a hollowness of eye, a look of strain.
"Fever? How long have we been here?" he asked.
She took some pebbles from the crown of his sombrero and counted them.
"Nine. Nine days," she answered.
"Nine days!" he exclaimed, incredulously. But another look at her assured him that she meant what she said. "I've been sick all the time? You nursed me?"
"Yes."
"Bland's men didn't come along here?"
"No."
"Where are the horses?"
"I keep them grazing down in a gorge back of here. There's good grass and water."
"Have you slept any?"
"A little. Lately I couldn't keep awake."
"Good Lord! I should think not. You've had a time of it sitting here day and night nursing me, watching for the outlaws. Come, tell me all about it."
"There's nothing much to tell."
"I want to know, anyway, just what you did--how you felt."
"I can't remember very well," she replied, simply. "We must have ridden forty miles that day we got away. You bled all the time. Toward evening you lay on your horse's neck. When we came to this place you fell out of the saddle. I dragged you in here and stopped your bleeding. I thought you'd die that night. But in the morning I had a little hope. I had forgotten the horses. But luckily they didn't stray far. I caught them and kept them down in the gorge. When your wounds closed and you began to breathe stronger I thought you'd get well quick. It was fever that put you back. You raved a lot, and that worried me, because I couldn't stop you. Anybody trailing us could have heard you a good ways. I don't know whether I was scared most then or when you were quiet, and it was so dark and lonely and still all around. Every day I put a stone in your hat."
"Jennie, you saved my life," said Duane.
"I don't know. Maybe. I did all I knew
how to do," she replied. "You saved mine--more than my life."
Their eyes met in a long gaze, and then their hands in a close clasp.
"Jennie, we're going to get away," he said, with gladness. "I'll be well in a few days. You don't know how strong I am. We'll hide by day and travel by night. I can get you across the river."
"And then?" she asked.
"We'll find some honest rancher."
"And then?" she persisted.
"Why," he began, slowly, "that's as far as my thoughts ever got. It was pretty hard, I tell you, to assure myself of so much. It means your safety. You'll tell your story. You'll be sent to some village or town and taken care of until a relative or friend is notified."
"And you?" she inquired, in a strange voice.
Duane kept silence.
"What will you do?" she went on.
"Jennie, I'll go back to the brakes. I daren't show my face among respectable people. I'm an outlaw."
"You're no criminal!" she declared, with deep passion.
"Jennie, on this border the little difference between an out law and a criminal doesn't count for much."
"You won't go back among those terrible men? You, with your gentleness and sweetness--all that's good about you? Oh, Duane, don't--don't go!"
"I can't go back to the outlaws, at least not Bland's band. No, I'll go alone. I'll lone-wolf it, as they say on the border. What else can I do, Jennie?"
"Oh, I don't know. Couldn't you hide? Couldn't you slip,out of Texas--go far away?"
"I could never get out of Texas without being arrested. I could hide, but a man must live. Never mind about me, Jennie."
In three days Duane was able with great difficulty to mount his horse. During daylight, by short relays, he and Jennie rode back to the main trail, where they hid again till he had rested. Then in the dark they rode out of the canons and gullies of the Rim Rock, and early in the morning halted at the first water to camp.
