The Breaking Point Part 38

Toward dawn some of the confusion was gone, but he firmly fixed in the past. The horse wandered on, head down, occasionally stopping to seize a leaf as it pa.s.sed, and once to drink deeply at a spring. d.i.c.k was still not thinking--there was something that forbade him to think-but he was weak and emotional. He muttered:

"Poor Bev! Poor old Bev!"

A great wave of tenderness and memory swept over him. Poor Bev! He had made life h.e.l.l for her, all right. He had an almost uncontrollable impulse to turn the horse around, go back and see her once more. He was gone anyhow. They would get him. And he wanted her to know that he would have died rather than do what he had done.

The flight impulse died; he felt sick and very cold, and now and then he shook violently. He began to watch the trail behind him for the pursuit, but without fear. He seemed to have been wandering for a thousand black nights through deep gorges and over peaks as high as the stars, and now he wanted to rest, to stop somewhere and sleep, to be warm again. Let them come and take him, anywhere out of this nightmare.

With the dawn still gray he heard a horse behind and below him on the trail up the cliff face. He stopped and sat waiting, twisted about in his saddle, his expression ugly and defiant, and yet touchingly helpless, the look of a boy in trouble and at bay. The horseman came into sight on the trail below, riding hard, a middle-aged man in a dark sack suit and a straw hat, an oddly incongruous figure and manifestly weary. He rode bent forward, and now and again he raised his eyes from the trail and searched the wall above with bloodshot, anxious eyes.

On the turn below d.i.c.k, Ba.s.sett saw him for the first time, and spoke to him in a quiet voice.

"h.e.l.lo, old man," he said. "I began to think I was going to miss you after all."

His scrutiny of d.i.c.k's face had rather rea.s.sured him. The delirium had pa.s.sed, apparently. Dishevelled although he was, covered with dust and with sweat from the horse, Livingstone's eyes were steady enough. As he rode up to him, however, he was not so certain. He found himself surveyed with a sort of cool malignity that startled him.

"Miss me!" Livingstone sneered bitterly. "With every d.a.m.ned hill covered by this time with your outfit! I'll tell you this. If I'd had a gun you'd never have got me alive."

Ba.s.sett was puzzled and slightly ruffled.

"My outfit! I'll tell you this, son, I've risked my neck half the night to get you out of this mess."

"G.o.d Almighty couldn't get me out of this mess," d.i.c.k said somberly.

It was then that Ba.s.sett saw something not quite normal in his face, and he rode closer.

"See here, Livingstone," he said, in a soothing tone, "n.o.body's going to get you. I'm here to keep them from getting you. We've got a good start, but we'll have to keep moving."

d.i.c.k sat obstinately still, his horse turned across the trail, and his eyes still suspicious and unfriendly.

"I don't know you," he said doggedly. "And I've done all the running away I'm going to do. You go back and tell Wilkins I'm here and to come and get me. The sooner the better." The sneer faded, and he turned on Ba.s.sett with a depth of tragedy in his eyes that frightened the reporter. "My G.o.d," he said, "I killed a man last night! I can't go through life with that on me. I'm done, I tell you."

"Last night!" Some faint comprehension began to dawn in Ba.s.sett's mind, a suspicion of the truth. But there was no time to verify it. He turned and carefully inspected the trail to where it came into sight at the opposite rim of the valley. When he was satisfied that the pursuit was still well behind them he spoke again.

"Pull yourself together, Livingstone," he said, rather sharply. "Think a bit. You didn't kill anybody last night. Now listen," he added impressively. "You are Livingstone, Doctor Richard Livingstone. You stick to that, and think about it."

But d.i.c.k was not listening, save to some bitter inner voice, for suddenly he turned his horse around on the trail. "Get out of the way,"

he said, "I'm going back to give myself up."

He would have done it, probably, would have crowded past Ba.s.sett on the narrow trail and headed back toward capture, but for his horse. It balked and whirled on the ledge, but it would not pa.s.s Ba.s.sett. d.i.c.k swore and kicked it, his face ugly and determined, but it refused sullenly. He slid out of the saddle then and tried to drag it on, but he was suddenly weak and sick. He staggered. Ba.s.sett was off his horse in a moment and caught him. He eased him onto a boulder, and he sat there, his shoulders sagging and his whole body twitching.

"Been drinking my head off," he said at last. "If I had a drink now I'd straighten out." He tried to sit up. "That's what's the matter with me.

I'm funking, of course, but that's not all. I'd give my soul for some whisky."'

"I can get you a drink, if you'll come on about a mile," Ba.s.sett coaxed.

"At the cabin you and I talked about yesterday."

"Now you're talking." d.i.c.k made an effort and got to his feet, shaking off Ba.s.sett's a.s.sisting arm. "For G.o.d's sake keep your hands off me," he said irritably. "I've got a hangover, that's all."

He got into his saddle without a.s.sistance and started off up the trail.

Ba.s.sett once more searched the valley, but it was empty save for a deer drinking at the stream far below. He turned and followed.

He was fairly hopeless by that time, what with d.i.c.k's unexpected resistance and the change in the man himself. He was dealing with something he did not understand, and the hypothesis of delirium did not hold. There was a sort of desperate sanity in d.i.c.k's eyes. That statement, now, about drinking his head off--he hadn't looked yesterday like a drinking man. But now he did. He was twitching, his hands shook.

On the rock his face had been covered with a cold sweat. What was that the doctor yesterday had said about delirium tremens? Suppose he collapsed? That meant capture.

He did not need to guide d.i.c.k to the cabin. He turned off the trail himself, and Ba.s.sett, following, saw him dismount and survey the ruin with a puzzled face. But he said nothing. Ba.s.sett waiting outside to tie the horses came in to find him sitting on one of the dilapidated chairs, staring around, but all he said was:

"Get me that drink, won't you? I'm going to pieces." Ba.s.sett found his tin cup where he had left it on a shelf and poured out a small amount of whisky from his flask.

"This is all we have," he explained. "We'll have to go slow with it."

It had an almost immediate effect. The twitching grew less, and a faint color came into d.i.c.k's face. He stood up and stretched himself. "That's better," he said. "I was all in. I must have been riding that infernal horse for years."

He wandered about while the reporter made a fire and set the coffee pot to boil. Ba.s.sett, glancing up once, saw him surveying the ruined lean-to from the doorway, with an expression he could not understand. But he did not say anything, nor did he speak again until Ba.s.sett called him to get some food. Even then he was laconic, and he seemed to be listening and waiting.

Once something startled the horses outside, and he sat up and listened.

"They're here!" he said.

"I don't think so," Ba.s.sett replied, and went to the doorway. "No," he called back over his shoulder, "you go on and finish. I'll watch."

"Come back and eat," d.i.c.k said surlily.

He ate very little, but drank of the coffee. Ba.s.sett too ate almost nothing. He was pulling himself together for the struggle that was to come, marshaling his arguments for flight, and trying to fathom the extent of the change in the man across the small table.

d.i.c.k put down his tin cup and got up. He was strong again, and the nightmare confusion of the night had pa.s.sed away. Instead of it there was a desperate lucidity and a courage born of desperation. He remembered it all distinctly; he had killed Howard Lucas the night before. Before long Wilkins or some of his outfit would ride up to the door, and take him back to Norada. He was not afraid of that. They would always think he had run away because he was afraid of capture, but it was not that. He had run away from Bev's face. Only he had not got away from it. It had been with him all night, and it was with him now.

But he would have to go back. He couldn't be caught like a rat in a trap. The Clarks didn't run away. They were fighters. Only the Clarks didn't kill. They fought, but they didn't murder.

He picked up his hat and went to the door.

"Well, you've been mighty kind, old man," he said. "But I've got to go back. I ran last night like a scared kid, but I'm through with that sort of foolishness."

"I'd give a good bit," Ba.s.sett said, watching him, "to know what made you run last night. You were safe where you were."

"I don't know what you are talking about," d.i.c.k said drearily. "I didn't run from them. I ran to get away from something." He turned away irritably. "You wouldn't understand. Say I was drunk. I was, for that matter. I'm not over it yet."

Ba.s.sett watched him.

"I see," he said quietly. "It was last night, was it, that this thing happened?"

"You know it, don't you?"

"And, after it happened, do you remember what followed?"

"I've been riding all night. I didn't care what happened. I knew I'd run into a whale of a blizzard, but I--"

He stopped and stared outside, to where the horses grazed in the upland meadow, knee deep in mountain flowers. Ba.s.sett, watching him, saw the incredulity in his eyes, and spoke very gently.

"My dear fellow," he said, "you are right. Try to understand what I am saying, and take it easy. You rode into a blizzard, right enough. But that was not last night. It was ten years ago."