The Cow Puncher Part 27

CHAPTER TWENTY

When Dave sprang into his car he gave the motor a full head and drove through the city streets in a fury of recklessness. His mind was numbed; it was incapable of a.s.sorting thoughts and placing them in proper relationship to each other. His muscles guided the machine apparently without any mental impulse. He rode it as he had ridden unbroken bronchos in his far-away boyhood. Only this difference; then he had no sense of danger; now he knew the danger, and defied it. If he killed himself, so much the better; if he killed others, so much the better still. The world was a place without purpose; a chaos of blind, impotent, struggling creatures, who struggled only because they did not know they were blind and impotent. Life was a farce and death a big bluff set up that men might take the farce seriously.

He was soon out of the city, roaring through the still Autumn night with undiminished speed. Over tortuous country roads, across sudden bridges, along slippery hillsides, through black bluffs of scrub-land--in some strange way he tried to drown the uproar in his soul in the frenzy of the steel that quivered beneath him. On and on, into the night. Bright stars gleamed overhead; a soft breeze pressed against his face; it was such a night as he had driven, a year ago, with Bert Morrison. Was that only a year ago? And what had happened?

Where had he been? Oh, to bring the boy--Charlie, the boy. When was that? Under the calm heaven his mind was already attempting to establish a sequence; to set its outraged home again in order.

Suddenly the car skidded on a slippery hillside, turned from the road, plowed through a clump of scrub, ricochetted against a dark obstruction, poised a moment on two wheels, turned around and stopped.

The shock brought Dave to his senses; he got out and walked about the car, feeling the tires with his hands in the darkness. He could appraise no serious damage. Then he sat on the running board and stared for a long while into the darkness. "No use being a d.a.m.ned fool, anyway, Dave," he said to himself, at length. "I got it--where I didn't expect it--but I guess that's the way with every one. The troubles we expect, don't happen, and then the trouble that we didn't expect gets us when we're not watching." He tried to philosophize; to get a fresh grip on himself. "Where are we, anyway?" he continued.

"This country looks familiar." He got up again and walked about, finding his way back to the road. He went along it a little way.

Vague impressions suggested that he should know the spot, and yet he could not identify it. Listen! There was a sound of water. There was a sighing of the wind in trees; a very low sighing, rather a whispering, of a gentle wind in trees. The place seemed alive with spirits; spirits tapping on the door of some long sealed chamber of his memory.

Then, with a sudden shock, it came to him. It was the hillside on which Dr. Hardy had come to grief; the hillside on which he had first seen her bright face, her wonderful eyes---- A poignancy of grief engulfed him, sweeping away his cheap philosophies. Here she stood, young and clean and entrancing, thrust before him in an instant out of the wonderful days of the past. And would she always follow him thus; would she stand at every road corner, every street corner, on every prairie hill, in every office hour; must he catch her fragrance in every breeze; see the glint of her hair in every sunbeam; meet her eyes for ever--soft eyes now veiled in tears and flashing glimpses of what might have been? With an unutterable sinking he knew that that was so; that the world was not big enough to hide him from Irene Hardy. There was no way out.

He started his motor and, even in his despair, felt a thrill of pride as the faithful gears engaged, and the car climbed back to its place on the trail. Was all faithfulness, then, in things of steel and iron, and none in flesh and blood? He followed the trail. Why stop now?

The long-forgotten ranch buildings lay across the stream and behind the tongue of spruce trees, unless some wandering foothill fire had destroyed them. He forded the stream without difficulty. That was where he had carried her out. . . . He felt his way slowly along the old fence. That was where she had set up bottles for his marksmanship.

. . . He stopped where the straggling gate should be, and walked carefully into the yard. That was where she had first called him Dave.

. . . Then he found the doorstep, and sat down to wait.

When the sun was well up he rose and walked about. His lips were parched; he found himself nibbling them with his teeth, so he went to the stream. He was thirsty, but he drank only a mouthful; the water was flat and insipid. . . . The old cabin was in better repair than he would have thought. He sprung the door open. It was musty and strung with cobwebs; that was the room she had occupied. He did not go in, but sat down and tried to think.

Later he walked up the canyon. He must have walked swiftly, for the sun was not yet at the meridian when he found himself at the little nook in the rock where he and Irene had sat that afternoon when they had first laid their hearts open to each other. He tried to recall that long-forgotten conversation, lacerating himself with the pain of its tenderness. Suddenly one remark stood up in his memory. "The day is coming," she had said, "when our country will want men who can shoot and ride." And he had said, "Well, when it does, it can call on me."

And to-day the country did want men who could shoot and ride, and he had flown into the foothills to nurse a broken heart. . . . Broken hearts can fight as well as whole ones. Better, perhaps, because they don't care. He felt his frame straighten as this thought sank home.

He could be of some use yet. At any rate, there was a way out.

Some whim led him through the grove of spruce trees on his way back to the ranch. Here, in an open s.p.a.ce, he looked about, kicking in the dry gra.s.s. At length his toe disturbed a few bleached bones, and he stood and looked with unseeing eyes far across the shimmering valley.

"Brownie," he said at length. "Brownie." The whole scene came back upon him; the moonlight, and Irene's distress, and the little bleeding body. And he had said he didn't know anything about the justice of G.o.d; all he knew was the crittur that couldn't run was the one that got caught. . . . And he had said that was life. . . . He had said it was only nature.

And then they had stood among the trees and beneath the white moon and pledged their faith. . . .

Again his head went up, and the old light flashed in his eyes. "The first thing is to kill the wolf," he said aloud. "No other innocent shall fall to his fangs. Then--my country."

Darkness had again fallen before Dave found his car threading the streets of the city, still feverish with its new-born excitement of war. He returned his car to the garage; an attendant looked up curiously,--it was evident from his glance that Dave had already been missed--but no words were exchanged. He stood for a moment in the street collecting his thoughts and rehearsing his resolves. He was amazed to find that, even in his bitterness, the city reached a thousand hands to him--hands of habit, and a.s.sociation, and custom of mind--all urging him back into the old groove; all saying, "The routine is the thing; be a spoke in the wheel; go 'round with the rest of us."

"No," he reminded himself. "No, I can't do that. I have business on hand. First--to kill the wolf."

He remembered that he had given his revolver to Irene. And suddenly she sat with him again at the tea table. . . . Where was he? Yes, he had given his revolver to Irene. Well, there was another in his rooms.

First to kill the wolf.

In the hallway of the block in which he had his bachelor apartments Dave almost collided with a woman. He drew back, and the light fell on his face, but hers was in the shadow. And then he heard her voice.

"Oh, Dave, I'm so glad--why, what has happened?" The last words ran into a little treble of pain as she noted his haggard face; he had not eaten for twenty-four hours, nor slept for thirty-six.

"You--Edith," he managed to say. "Whatever----"

She came toward him and placed her hands on his. "I've been here a hundred times--ever since morning--ever since Bert Morrison called up to say you had disappeared--that there was some mystery. There isn't, is there, Dave? You're all right, Dave, aren't you, Dave?"

"I guess I'm all right," he managed to answer, "but I got a job on--an important job on. I must get it done. There is not time----"

But her woman's intuition had gone far below his idle words. "There is something wrong, Dave," she said. "You never looked like this before.

Tell me what it is. Tell me, Dave; not that I want to know, for knowing's sake, but just that I--perhaps I--can help."

Dave was silent for a moment, watching her. She had changed her position, and he could see her face. Suddenly it occurred to him that Edith Duncan was beautiful. If she had not quite the fine features of Irene, she had a certain softness of expression, a certain mellowness, even tenderness, of lip and eye; a certain womanly delicacy----

"Edith," he said, "you're white. Why is it that the woman a man loves will fail him, and the woman he only likes--stays true?"

"Oh!" she cried, and he could not guess the depths from which her cry was wrung. . . . "I should not have asked you, Dave," she said. "I'm sorry."

They stood a moment, neither wishing to move away. "You said you had something must be done at once," she reminded him at length.

"Yes," he answered. "I have to kill a man. Then I'm going to join up with the army."

Her hands were again upon him. "But you mustn't, Dave," she pleaded.

"No matter--no matter _what_--you mustn't do that. That is the one thing you must not do."

"Edith, you are not a man. You don't understand. That is the one thing I must do."

"But you can't fight for your country, then. You will only increase its troubles in these troubled times. Don't think I'm pleading for _him_, Dave, but for you, for the sake of us--for the sake of those--who care."

He took her hands in his and raised them to his shoulders and drew her face close to his. Then, speaking very slowly, and with each word by itself, "Do you really care?" he said.

"Oh, Dave!"

"Then come to my room and talk to me. Talk to me! Talk to me! For G.o.d's sake talk to me. I must talk to some one."

She followed him. Inside the room he had himself under control again.

The street lights flooded through the windows, so he did not press the switch. He motioned her to a chair.

And then he told her the story, all he knew.

When he had finished she arose and walked to one of the windows and stood looking with unseeing eyes upon the street. For the second time in his life Dave Elden had laid his heart bare to her, and again after all these years he still talked as friend to friend. That was it. She was under no delusion. Dave's eyes were as blind to her love as they had been that night when he had first told her of Irene Hardy. And she could not tell him. Most of all, she could not tell him now. . . .

Yes, she was very sure of that. If she should tell him now--if she should let him know--he would turn to her in his grief. He would be clay in her hands. And afterwards he would despise her for having taken advantage of his hour of weakness. She had waited all these years, and still she must wait.

Dave's eyes were upon her form, silhouetted against the window. It occurred to him that in form Edith was very much like Irene. He recalled that in those dead past days when they used to ride together Edith had reminded him of Irene. When she stood silent so long he spoke again.

"I'm afraid I haven't played a very heroic part," he said, somewhat shamefacedly. "I should have buried my secret in my heart; buried it even from you; perhaps most of all from you. I should have faced the world with a smile, as one who rises above the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. People do that kind of thing in books; perhaps some do in real life. I suppose you can't tell from the outside what may be carried within--even by your closest friend. But--you can advise me, Edith. I will value whatever you say."

She trembled until she thought he must see her, and she feared to trust her voice, but she could delay a reply no longer.

"You are right, Dave," she said at length. "You never can tell what other people are carrying; perhaps, even, as you say, your closest friends. The first thing is to get rid of the idea that your experience is unique; that your lot is harder than that of other people. It may be different, but it is not harder. When you get that point of view you will be able to pa.s.s sane judgments.

"'And when you can pa.s.s sane judgment you may see that the evidence is not, even at the worst, very conclusive. Why should you take Conward's word in such a matter as this?"

"I didn't take Conward's word. That's why I didn't kill him at once.

It wasn't his word--it was the insult--that cut. But she tried to save him. She threw herself upon me. She would have taken the bullet herself rather than let it find him. That was what--that was what----"