The Chalice Of Courage Part 34

"By your own hand, out of your own mouth, you dog," thundered old Kirkby. "Miss Enid, w'ere are them letters I give you?"

"I--I--" faltered the girl, but there was no escape from the keen glance of the old man, her hand went to the bosom of her tunic.

"Letters!" exclaimed Armstrong. "What letters?"

"These," answered Enid Maitland, holding up the packet.

Armstrong reached for them but Kirkby again interposed.

"No, you don't," he said dryly. "Them ain't for your eyes yit. Mr.

Newbold, I found them letters on the little shelf w'ere your wife first struck w'en she fell over onto the b.u.t.te w'ere she died. I figgered out her dress was tore open there an' them letters she was carryin' fell out an' lodged there. We had ropes an' we went down over the rocks that way.

I went first an' I picked 'em up. I never told n.o.body about it an' I never showed 'em to a single human bein' until I give 'em to Miss Maitland at the camp."

"Why not?" asked Newbold, taking the letters.

"There wasn't no good tellin' n.o.body then, jest fer the sake o' stirrin'

up trouble."

"But why did you give them to her at last?"

"Because I was afeered she might fall in love with Armstrong. I supposed she'd know his writin', but w'en she didn't I jest let her keep 'em anyway. I knowed it'd all come out somehow; there is a G.o.d above us in spite of all the d.a.m.ned scoundrels on earth like this un."

"Are these letters addressed to my dead wife?" asked Newbold.

"They are," answered Enid Maitland; "look and see."

"And did Mr. Armstrong write them?"

"He'll deny it, I suppose," answered Kirkby.

"But I am familiar with his handwriting," said Maitland.

Taking the still unopened packet from Newbold he opened it, examined one of the letters and handed them all back.

"There is no doubt about it," he said. "It's Armstrong's hand, I'll swear to it."

"Oh, I'll acknowledge them," said Armstrong, seeing the absolute futility of further denial. He had forgotten all about the letters. He had not dreamed they were in existence. "You've got me beat between you, the cards are stacked against me, I've done my d.a.m.ndest--" and indeed that was true.

Well, he had played a great game, battling for a high stake he had stuck at nothing. A career in which some good had mingled with much bad was now at an end. He had lost utterly, would he show himself a good loser?

"Mr. Armstrong," said Newbold, quietly extending his hand, "here are your letters."

"What do you mean?"

"I am not in the habit of reading letters addressed to other people without permission and when the recipient of them is dead long since, I am doubly bound."

"You're a d.a.m.ned fool," cried Armstrong contemptuously.

"That kind of a charge from your kind of a man is perhaps the highest compliment you could pay me. I don't know whether I shall ever get rid of the doubt you have tried to lodge in my soul about my dead wife, but--"

"There ain't no doubt about it," protested old Kirkby earnestly. "I've read them letters a hundred times over, havin' no scruples whatsomever, an' in every one of 'em he was beggin' an' pleadin' with her to go away with him an' fightin' her refusal to do it. I guess I've got to admit that she didn't love you none, Newbold, an' she did love this here wuthless Armstrong, but for the sake of her reputation I'll prove to you all from them letters of hisn, from his own words, that there didn't live a cleaner hearted, more virtuous, upright feemale than that there wife of yourn, even if she didn't love you. It's G.o.d's truth an' you kin take it from me."

"Mr. Armstrong," cried Enid Maitland, interposing at this juncture, "not very long ago I told you I liked you better than any man I had ever seen, I thought perhaps I might have loved you, and that was true. You have played the coward's part and the liar's part in this room--"

"Did I fight him like a coward?" asked Armstrong.

"No," answered Newbold for her, remembering the struggle, "you fought like a man."

Singular perversion of language and thought there! If two struggled like wild beasts that was fighting like men!

"But let that pa.s.s," continued the woman. "I don't deny your physical courage, but I am going to appeal to another kind of a courage which I believe you possess. You have showed your evil side here in this room, but I don't believe that's the only side you have, else I couldn't even have liked you in the past. You have made a charge against two women, one dead and one living. It makes little difference what you say about me; I need no defense and no justification in the eyes of those here who love me and for the rest of the world I don't care. But you have slain this man's confidence in a woman he once loved, and whom he thought loved him. As you are a man, tell him that it was a lie and that she was innocent of anything else although she did love you."

What a singular situation, an observer who knew all might have reflected? Here was Enid Maitland pleading for the good name of the woman who had married the man she now loved, and whom by rights she should have jealously hated.

"You ask me more than I can," faltered Armstrong, yet greatly moved by this touching appeal to his better self.

"Let him speak no word," protested Newbold quickly. "I wouldn't believe him on his oath."

"Steady now, steady," interposed Kirkby with his frontier instinct for fair play. "The man's down, Newbold, don't hit him now."

"Give him a chance," added Maitland earnestly.

"You would not believe me, eh?" laughed Armstrong horribly; "well then this is what I say, whether it is true or a lie you can be the judge."

What was he about to say? They all recognized instinctively that his forthcoming deliverance would be a final one. Would good or evil dominate him now? Enid Maitland had made her plea and it had been a powerful one; the man did truly love the woman who urged him, there was nothing left for him but a chance that she should think a little better of him than he merited, he had come to the end of his resources. And Enid Maitland spoke again as he hesitated.

"Oh, think, think before you speak," she cried.

"If I thought," answered Armstrong quickly, "I should go mad. Newbold, your wife was as pure as the snow. That she loved me I cannot and will not deny. She married you in a fit of jealousy and anger after a quarrel between us in which I was to blame, and when I came back to the camp in your absence I strove to make it up and used every argument that I possessed to get her to leave you and to go with me. Although she had no love for you she was too good and too true a woman for that. Now you've got the truth, d.a.m.n you; believe it or not as you like. Miss Maitland,"

he added swiftly, "if I had met you sooner, I might have been a better man. Good-by."

He turned suddenly and none preventing, indeed it was not possible, he ran to the outer door; as he did so his hand s.n.a.t.c.hed something that lay on the chest of drawers. There was a flash of light as he drew in his arm but none saw what it was. In a few seconds he was outside the door.

The table was between old Kirkby and the exit, Maitland and Newbold were nearest. The old man came to his senses first.

"After him," he cried, "he means--"

But before anybody could stir, the dull report of a pistol came through the open door!

They found Armstrong lying on his back in the snowy path, his face as white as the drift that pillowed his head, Newbold's heavy revolver still clutched in his right hand and a b.l.o.o.d.y, welling smudge on his left breast over his heart. It was the woman who broke the silence.

"Oh," she sobbed, "It can't be--"

"Dead," said Maitland solemnly.

"And it might have been by my hand," muttered Newbold to himself in horror.

"He'll never cause no more trouble to n.o.body in this world, Miss Enid an' gents," said old Kirkby gravely. "Well, he was a d.a.m.ned fool an' a d.a.m.ned villain in some ways," continued the old frontiersman reflectively in the silence broken otherwise only by the woman's sobbing breaths, "but he had some of the qualities that go to make a man, an' I ain't doubtin' but what them last words of hisn was mighty near true. Ef he had met a gal like you earlier in his life he mought have been a different man."