Northern Lights Part 39

"Sit still, Dorl," came the warning voice.

White with rage, the freebooter sat still, his dissipated face and heavy angry lips, looking like a debauched and villanous caricature of his brother before him.

"Yes, I suppose you'd have potted me, Dorl," said the ex-sergeant. "You'd have thought no more of doing that than you did of killing Linley, the ranchman; than you did of trying to ruin Jo Byndon, your wife's sister, when she was sixteen years old, when she was caring for your child--giving her life for the child you brought into the world."

"What in the name of h.e.l.l--it's a lie!"

"Don't bl.u.s.ter. I know the truth."

"Who told you--the truth?"

"She did--to-day--an hour ago."

"She here--out here?" There was a new, cowed note in the voice.

"She is in the next room."

"What did she come here for?"

"To make you do right by your own child. I wonder what a jury of decent men would think about a man who robbed his child for five years, and let that child be fed and clothed and cared for by the girl he tried to destroy, the girl he taught what sin there was in the world."

"She put you up to this. She was always in love with you, and you know it."

There was a dangerous look in Foyle's eyes, and his jaw set hard. "There would be no shame in a decent woman caring for me, even if it was true. I haven't put myself outside the boundary as you have. You're my brother, but you're the worst scoundrel in the country--the worst unhanged. Put on the table there the letter in your pocket. It holds five hundred dollars belonging to your child. There's twenty-five hundred dollars more to be accounted for."

The other hesitated, then with an oath threw the letter on the table.

"I'll pay the rest as soon as I can, if you'll stop this d.a.m.ned tomfoolery," he said, sullenly, for he saw that he was in a hole.

"You'll pay it, I suppose, out of what you stole from the C. P. R.

contractor's chest. No, I don't think that will do."

"You want me to go to prison, then?"

"I think not. The truth would come out at the trial--the whole truth--the murder and all. There's your child, Bobby. You've done him enough wrong already. Do you want him--but it doesn't matter whether you do or not--do you want him to carry through life the fact that his father was a jail-bird and a murderer, just as Jo Byndon carries the scar you made when you threw her against the door?"

"What do you want with me, then?" The man sank slowly and heavily back into the chair.

"There is a way--have you never thought of it? When you threatened others as you did me, and life seemed such a little thing in others--can't you think?"

Bewildered, the man looked around helplessly. In the silence which followed Foyle's words his brain was struggling to see a way out. Foyle's further words seemed to come from a great distance.

"It's not too late to do the decent thing. You'll never repent of all you've done; you'll never do different."

The old, reckless, irresponsible spirit revived in the man; he had both courage and bravado; he was not hopeless yet of finding an escape from the net. He would not beg, he would struggle.

"I've lived as I meant to, and I'm not going to snivel or repent now. It's all a rotten business, anyhow," he rejoined.

With a sudden resolution the ex-sergeant put his own pistol in his pocket, then pushed Halbeck's pistol over toward him on the table. Halbeck's eyes lighted eagerly, grew red with excitement, then a change pa.s.sed over them.

They now settled on the pistol, and stayed.

He heard Foyle's voice. "It's with you to do what you ought to do. Of course you can kill me. My pistol's in my pocket. But I don't think you will. You've murdered one man. You won't load your soul up with another.

Besides, if you kill me, you will never get away from Kowatin alive. But it's with you--take your choice. It's me or you."

Halbeck's fingers crept out and found the pistol.

"Do your duty, Dorl," said the ex-sergeant, as he turned his back on his brother.

The door of the room opened, and Goatry stepped inside softly. He had work to do, if need be, and his face showed it. Halbeck did not see him.

There was a demon in Halbeck's eyes, as his brother stood, his back turned, taking his chances. A large mirror hung on the wall opposite Halbeck. Goatry was watching Halbeck's face in the gla.s.s, and saw the danger. He measured his distance.

All at once Halbeck caught Goatry's face in the mirror. The dark devilry faded out of his eyes. His lips moved in a whispered oath. Every way was blocked.

With a sudden wild resolution he raised the pistol to his head. It cracked, and he fell back heavily in the chair. There was a red trickle at the temple.

He had chosen the best way out.

"He had the pluck," said Goatry, as Foyle swung round with a face of misery.

A moment afterward came a rush of people. Goatry kept them back.

"Sergeant Foyle arrested Halbeck, and Halbeck's shot himself," Goatry explained to them.

A white-faced girl with a scar on her temple made her way into the room.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IF YOU KILL ME, YOU WILL NEVER GET AWAY FROM KOWATIN ALIVE"]

"Come away--come away, Jo," said the voice of the man she loved; and he did not let her see the lifeless figure in the chair.

Three days later the plains swallowed them, as they made their way with Billy Goatry to the headquarters of the Riders of the Plains, where Sergeant Foyle was asked to reconsider his resignation: which he did.

THE WHISPERER

"And thou shalt be brought down and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be as of one that hath a familiar spirit out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust."

The harvest was all in, and, as far as eye could observe, nothing remained of the golden sea of wheat which had covered the wide prairie save the yellow stubble, the bed of an ocean of wealth which had been gathered.

Here the yellow level was broken by a dark patch of fallow land, there by a covert of trees also tinged with yellow, or deepening to crimson and mauve--the harbinger of autumn. The sun had not the insistent and intensive strength of more southerly climes; it was buoyant, confident, and heartening, and it shone in a turquoise vault which covered and endeared the wide, even world beneath. Now and then a flock of wild ducks whirred past, making for the marshes or the innumerable lakes that vitalized the expanse, or buzzards hunched heavily along, frightened from some far resort by eager sportsmen.

That was above; but beneath, on a level with the unlifted eye, were houses here and there, looking in the vastness like dolls' habitations. Many of the houses stood blank and staring in the expanse, but some had trees, and others little oases of green. Everywhere prosperity, everywhere the strings of life pulled taut, signs that energy had been straining on the leash.

Yet there was one spot where it seemed that deadness made encampment. It could not be seen in the sweep of the eye, you must have travelled and looked vigilantly to find it; but it was there--a lake shimmering in the eager sun, washing against a reedy sh.o.r.e, a little river running into the reedy lake at one end and out at the other, a small, dilapidated house half hid in a wood that stretched for half a mile or so upon a rising ground. In front of the house, not far from the lake, a man was lying asleep upon the ground, a rough felt hat drawn over his eyes.

Like the house, the man seemed dilapidated also: a slovenly, ill-dressed, demoralized figure he looked, even with his face covered. He seemed in a deep sleep. Wild ducks settled on the lake not far from him with a swish and flutter; a coyote ran past, veering as it saw the rec.u.mbent figure; a prairie hen rustled by with a shrill cluck, but he seemed oblivious to all. If asleep, he was evidently dreaming, for now and then he started, or his body twitched and a muttering came from beneath the hat.