Claim Number One Part 32

"Huh! _That_ rabbit!" said he, giving her back the light.

It did not require that gleam upon the white face to tell Agnes that the victim was the polemical sheep-herder, whose intention had been steadier than his aim.

Boyle hesitated a moment as if to speak to her, but said nothing before he turned and walked away.

"You've killed him!" she called after him sharply. "Don't go away and leave him here like this!"

"He's not dead," said Boyle. "Don't you hear him snort?"

The man's breathing was indeed audible, and growing louder with each labored inspiration.

"Turn him over on his face," directed Boyle. "There's blood in his throat."

"Will you go for Smith?" she asked, kneeling beside the wounded man.

"He's coming; I can hear the sauerkraut jolt in him while he's half a mile away. If anybody comes looking for me on account of this--coroner or--oh, anybody--I'll be down the river about a quarter below the stage-ford. I'll wait there a day longer to hear from you, and this is my last word."

With that Boyle left her. Smith came very shortly, having heard the shots; and the people from up the river came, and the young man from the bridal nest across on the other side. They made a wondering, awed ring around the wounded man, who was p.r.o.nounced by Smith to be in deep waters. There was a bullet through his neck.

Smith believed there was life enough left in the sheep-herder to last until he could fetch a doctor from Meander.

"But that's thirty miles," said Agnes, "and Dr. Slavens is not more than twenty. You know where he's located--down by Comanche?"

Smith knew, but he had forgotten for the minute, so accustomed to turning as he was to the center of civilization in that section for all the gentle ministrants of woe, such as doctors, preachers, and undertakers.

"I'll have him here before morning," said Smith, posting off to get his horse.

The poor sheep-herder was too sorely hurt to last the night out. Before Smith had been two hours on his way the shepherd was in the land of shades, having it out face to face with Epictetus--if he carried the memory of his contention across with him, to be sure.

The neighbors arranged him respectably upon a board, and covered him over with a blanket, keeping watch beside him in the open, with the clear stars shining undisturbed by this thing which made such a turmoil in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. There he lay, waiting the doctor and the coroner, and all who might come, his earthly troubles locked up forever in his cold heart, his earthly argument forever at an end.

CHAPTER XVI

A PROMISE

Dr. Slavens rode in before dawn, more concerned about Agnes than about the person in whose behalf he had been summoned. On the way he asked Smith repeatedly how the tragedy affected her; whether she was frightened or greatly disturbed.

"She's as steady as a compa.s.s," said Smith; and so he found her.

Somewhat too steady, in fact. It was the steadiness of a deep and settled melancholy, through which his best efforts could do no more than strike a feeble, weary smile.

Immediately upon the death of the herder, one of the men had ridden to Meander and carried word to the coroner. That official arrived in the middle of the forenoon, bringing with him the undertaker and a wagon.

After some perfunctory inquiries, the coroner concluded that an inquest was not necessary. He did not go to the trouble to find Boyle and question him, but he looked with a familiar understanding in his piggish eyes at Agnes when she related the circ.u.mstances of the tragedy.

Coroners, and others who knew the Governor's son, had but one measure for a woman who entertained Jerry Boyle alone in her tent, or even outside it, at night. Boyle's a.s.sociations had set the standard of his own morality, as well as that of his consorts. The woman from up the river, and the little bride from across the ford, drew off together, whispering, after Agnes had told her story. Presently they slipped away without a word.

Even Dr. Slavens, cool and just-minded as he was, felt the hot stirring of jealous suspicion. It brought to his mind unpleasantly the ruminations of his solitary days in camp among the rocks, when he had turned over in his mind the belief that there was something of the past between Agnes and Boyle.

He had not convicted her in his own judgment of any wrong, for the sincerity of her eyes had stood between him and the possibility of any such conclusion. Now the thought that, after all his trust, she might be unworthy, smote painfully upon his heart.

When the others had gone away, after a little standing around, hitch-legged and wise, in close discussion of the event, the doctor sitting, meantime, with Agnes in front of the tent, he spoke of the necessity of getting back to his claim. She was pale after the night's strain, although apparently unconscious of the obloquy of her neighbors.

Nevertheless, she pressed him to remain for the midday meal.

"I've not been very hospitable, I'm afraid," said she; "but this thing has stunned me. It seems like it has taken something away from the prospect of life here."

"Yes, it has taken something away," he responded, gravely thoughtful, his look bent upon the ground.

She sprang up quickly, a sharp little cry upon her lips as if from the shock of a blow from a hand beloved.

"I saw it in their eyes!" she cried. "But you--but you! Oh--oh--I _trusted_ you to know!"

"Forgive me," he begged. "I did not mean to hurt you. Perhaps I was thinking of the romance and the glamour which this had stripped away from things here. I think my mind was running on that."

"No," she denied. "You were thinking like that little woman across the river with the fright and horror in her big eyes. You were thinking that I am guilty, and that there can be but one answer to the presence of that man in my camp last night. His notorious name goes before him like a blight."

"You'll have to move your camp now," as if seeking delicately to avoid the ghost that seemed to have risen between them; "this place will have unpleasant a.s.sociations."

"Yes; it cannot be reconsecrated and purified."

He stood as if prepared to leave. Agnes placed her hand upon his shoulder, looking with grieved eyes into his face.

"Will you stay a little while," she asked, "and hear me? I want to part from you with your friendship and respect, for I am ent.i.tled to both, I am worthy of both--if ever."

"Let me move your stool out into the sun," he suggested. "There's a chill in the wind today. Of course I'll stay, and we'll have some more of that excellent coffee before I go. You must teach me how you make it; mine always turns out as muddy as a bucket of Missouri River water."

His cheerfulness was like that which a healthy man displays at the bedside of a dying friend--a.s.sumed, but helpful in its way. He placed her folding canvas stool in the sun beyond the shadow of the tent and found a box for himself. Thus arranged, he waited for her to speak.

"Still, I am not sure of what I protested in regard to your friendship and respect," said she after a little brooding silence. "I am a fraud, taken at the best, and perhaps a criminal."

Dr. Slavens studied her face as she paused there and looked away, as if her thoughts concentrated beyond the blue hills in the west.

"My name is not Horton," she resumed, facing him suddenly. "It is Gates, and my father is in the Federal penitentiary at Leavenworth."

"But there was no call for you to tell me this," he protested softly.

"Yes, every reason for it," she averred. "The fabric of all my troubles rests on that. He was president of a bank--you remember the scandal, don't you? It was nation-wide."

He nodded.

"I spoke to you once of the ghosts of money. They have worried me for four years and more, for nothing but the ghosts are left when one loses place and consequence before the world. It was a national bank, and the charge was misapplication of funds. He had money enough for all the sane uses of any man, but the pernicious ambition to be greater a.s.sailed him, even old as he was.

"He never said, and I never have held it so, that his punishment was unjust. Only it seemed to us unfair when so many greater evildoers escape or receive pardons. You will remember, perhaps, that none of the depositors lost anything. Wild as his schemes appeared, they turned out sound enough after a while, and everything was liquidated.

"We gave up everything of our own; mother and I have felt the rub of hardship before today. The hardest of all was the falling away of those whom we believed to be friends. We learned that the favors of society are as fickle as those of fortune, and that they walk hand in hand.