The Barrier Part 31

"By--" He checked himself insensibly, and stood motionless for a long time, while she wiped her eyes and, woman-like, straightened out her gown and smoothed her hair with little feminine touches.

"I--I--hope you'll excuse me for acting this way," she smiled at him, piteously; then, observing his strange features, "Why, what is the matter, Mr. Stark; are you angry?"

His hawklike face was strained and colorless, his black eyes fierce and eager, his body bent as if to pounce upon a victim. In truth he was now the predatory animal.

"No," he replied, as if her question carried no meaning; then, coming to himself, "No--no! of course not, but--you gave me a start. You reminded me of some one. How do you come to be dressed like that? I never knew you had such clothes?"

"Poleon brought them from Dawson; they are the first I ever had."

He shook his head in a slow, puzzled fashion.

"You look just like a white girl--I mean--I don't know what I mean."

This time he roused himself fully, the effort being more like a shudder.

"So I have always thought," she said, and her eyes filled again.

"Your skin is like milk beneath your tan, and--I don't mean any disrespect, but--Well, I'm just so d.a.m.ned surprised! Come over here and sit down while I mix you something to put the heart back into you."

He shoved forward a big chair with a wolf-skin flung over it, into which she sank dejectedly, while he stepped to the shelves beside the Yukon stove and took down a bottle and some gla.s.ses. She glanced about with faint curiosity, but the interior of the cabin showed nothing out of the ordinary, consisting as it did of one room with a cot in the corner, upon which were tumbled blankets, and above which was a row of pegs. Opposite was a sheet-iron box-stove supported knee-high on a tin-capped framework of wood, and in the centre a table with oil-cloth cover. Around the walls were some cooking utensils, a few cases of canned goods, and clothes hanging in a row.

"I'm not fixed up very well yet," he apologized; "I've been too busy at the saloon to waste time on living quarters. But it's comfortable enough for an old roadster like me, for I've bruised around the frontier so long that I've learned there's only three things necessary to a man's comfort--warm clothes, a full stomach, and a dry place to sleep. All the rest that goes to make a man content he has inside him, and I'm not the kind to be satisfied, no matter where I am or what I have. I never was that kind, so I just don't make the attempt."

He was talking to give her leeway, and when he had concocted a weak toddy, insisted that she must drink it, which she did listlessly, while he rambled on.

"I've noticed a few things in my life, Miss Necia, and one of them is that it often does a heap of good to let out and talk things over; not that a fellow gains any real advantage from disseminating his troubles, but it serves to sort of ease his mind. Folks don't often come to me for advice or sympathy. I don't have it to give, but maybe it will help you to tell me what caused this night-marauding expedition of yours."

Seeing that she hesitated, he went on: "I suppose there's a lot of reasons why you shouldn't confide in me--I don't like that old man of yours, nor any of your friends; but maybe that's why I'm interested. If any of them has upset you, I'll take particular pleasure in helping you get even."

"I don't want to get even, and there is nothing to tell," said Necia, "except a girl's troubles, and I can't talk about them." She smiled a painful, crooked smile at him.

"Your old man has been rough to you?"

"No, no! Nothing of that sort."

"Then it's that soldier?" he quizzed, shrewdly. "I knew you cared a heap for him. Don't he love you?"

"Yes! That's the trouble; and he wants to many me; he swears he will in spite of everything."

"See here! I don't quite follow. I thought you liked him--he's the kind most women go daffy over."

"Like him!" The girl trembled with emotion. "Like him! Why--why, I would do anything to make him happy."

"I guess I must be kind of dull," Stark said, perplexedly.

"Don't you see? I've got to give him up--I'm a squaw."

"Squaw h.e.l.l! With those shoulders?"

Stark checked himself, for he found he was rejoicing in his enemy's defeat, and was in danger of betraying himself to the girl. In every encounter the young man had bested him, and these petty defeats had crystallized his antipathy to Burrell into a hatred so strong that he had begun to lie awake nights planning a systematic quarrel. For he was the kind of man who throve upon contentions: so warped in soul that when no man offered him offence he brooded over fancied wrongs and conjured up a cause for enmity, goading himself into that sour, sullen habit of mind that made him a dread and a menace to all who lacked his favor. His path was strewn from the border North with the husks of fierce brawls, and he bore the ineradicable mark of the killer, carrying always in his brain those scars that hate had seared. In his eyes forever slumbered a flame waiting to be blown to life, and when embroiled in feuds or bickerings a custom had grown upon him to fight these fights in secret many times, until of nights he would lie in solitary darkness writhing in spirit as he hounded his man to desperation, or forced him into a corner where he might slake his thirsty vengeance. After such black, sleepless hours he dragged himself from his battle-grounds of fancy, worn and weary, and the daylight discovered him more saturnine and moody, more menacing than ever.

He had brooded over his quarrel with Gale and the Lieutenant ever since their first clash, for in this place they furnished the only objects upon which his mania could work--and it was a mania, the derangement of a diseased, distorted mind. His regard for Necia was a careless whim, a rather aimless, satisfying hobby, not at all serious, entirely extraneous to his every-day life, and interesting only from its aimlessness, being as near to an unselfish and decent motive as the man had ever come. But it was not of sufficient consequence to stand out against or swerve the course of a quarrel; wherefore, he was gladdened by the news of Burrell's discomfiture.

"So you like him too much to stand in his way," he said, meditatively.

"How does your father look at it?"

"He wants the Lieutenant to marry me. He says he will fix it up all right; but he doesn't understand. How could he?"

"You are doing just right," concurred the man, hypocritically, "and you'll live to be glad you stood out." Now that both his enemies desired this thing, he was set on preventing it, regardless of the girl. "How did the Lieutenant take it when you refused him?"

"He wouldn't take it at all. He only laughed and declared he would marry me, anyhow." The very thought thrilled her.

"Does he knew you love him?"

The tender, sobbing laugh she gave was ample answer.

"Well, what's your plan?"

"I--I--I don't know. I am so torn and twisted with it all that I can't plan, but I have thought I--ought--to go--away."

"Good!" he said, quickly, but his acquiescence, instead of soothing her, had the contrary effect, and she burst out impulsively:

"Oh--I can't--I can't! I can't go away and never see him! I can't do it! I want to stay where he is!" She had been holding herself in stubbornly, but at last gave way with reckless abandon. "Why wasn't I born white like other girls? I've never felt like an Indian. I've always dreamed and fancied I was different, and I am, in my soul--I know I am! The white is so strong in me that it has killed the red, and I'm one of father's people. I'm not like the other two; they are brown and silent, and as cold as little toads; but I'm white and full of life, all over. They never see the men and women that I see in my dreams. They never have my visions of the beautiful snow-white mother, with the tender mouth and the sad eyes that always smile at me."

"You have visions of such things, eh?"

"Yes, but I came a generation late, that's all, and I've got that other woman's soul. I'm not a half-breed--I'm not me at all. I'm Merridy--Merridy! That's who I am."

Her face was turned away from him, so that she did not notice the frightful effect her words had upon Stark.

"Where did you get--that name?" His voice was pitched in a different key now. Then, after a moment, he added, "From the story I told you at the mine that night, I suppose?"

"Oh no," she answered. "I've always had it, though they call me Necia.

Merridy was my father's mother. I guess I'm like her in many ways, for I often imagine she is a part of me, that her spirit is mine. It's the only way I can account for the sights I see."

"Your father's mother?" he said, mechanically. "That's queer." He seemed to be trying to shake himself free from something. "It's heredity, I suppose. You have visions of a white woman, a woman named Merridy, eh?" Suddenly his manner changed, and he spoke so roughly that she looked at him in vague alarm.

"How do you know? How do you know she was his mother?"

"He told me so--"

Stark snarled. "He lied!"

"I can show you her wedding-ring--I've always worn it." She fumbled for the chain about her neck, but it eluded her trembling fingers. "It has her name in it--'From Dan to Merridy.'"

Stark's hand darted forward and tore the thing from her shoulders, then he thrust it under the lamp and glared at the inscription, while his fingers shook so that he could barely distinguish the words. His eyes were blazing and his face livid.

Necia cried out, but he dropped the ornament and seized her fiercely, lifting her from the chair to her feet; then, with one swift, downward clutch, he laid hold of her dress at the left shoulder and ripped it half to her waist. A hoa.r.s.e sound came from his throat, a cry half of amazement, half of triumph.

"Let me go! Let me go!" She struggled to free herself, but he held her in a viselike grip, while he peered closely at a blemish well down upon her back. Then he let her slip from his grasp, and, seized with terror, she staggered away from him. He was leaning heavily with both hands upon the table, his face working, his head drawn down between his shoulders, his thin lips grinning, his whole manner so terrifying that she shrank back till she brought up against the bark walls. She turned and made for the door, whereupon he straightened up and said, in a queer, commanding voice: