The Crimson Gardenia and Other Tales of Adventure Part 41

"No, no! But--he's bad now, and--and probably drunk. He'll kill you, McGill. He's bad, I tell you--tough--don't you understand? He's bad, and he's made me bad, too, that's why I'm here. He's not worth it, McGill; neither am I!"

"You can't stay in Arcadia, neither of you. I got out of Ophir and let you alone, but this is my town; I can't leave it."

"We'll go," she cried, wringing her hands; "anyhow, I'll go, if you'll help me. But I'll need help--Oh, G.o.d! Yes, I'll need help! You don't know--You and he can settle things afterward."

"You want to leave him?"

"I've tried to break away, I've been trying ever since that first day in Ophir, but he won't let me. I kept trying--until I learned better; now I'm afraid. He's broken me, Dan, but you'll help me to leave him, won't you?"

After a time the husband answered, more to himself than to her: "I guess I'm even with _you_, anyhow. You've gone to h.e.l.l, hand in hand with him.

I won't interfere--not that way. I s'pose he beats you?"

She nodded, and saw his bearded face twitch. "Yes, and he'll make me like these other women--you understand? I've fought until I'm tired, worn out. I'm in a trap, McGill, and--I'm afraid--afraid for the little soul I have left."

"You sprung the trap," he told her, bitterly.

But his wife had seen a way to freedom and clutched at it with desperate persistence.

"Listen! I want to talk to you. Come with me for a minute."

"Come? Why?"

"Never mind. Oh, it's all right. You owe me something, for I still have your name. Do this for me, please! It's only a step."

He yielded to her imploring eyes and followed grudgingly down the back stairs and into the night, wondering the while at his own weakness. She led the way, bareheaded, heedless of the cold. They were in that ill-favored district he had penetrated earlier in the day, but if it had been offensive then it was doubly so now, with its m.u.f.fled sounds of debauchery and wickedness. She paused finally, fumbling at the door of one miserable structure, whereupon he growled:

"You live here? You're worse than--"

"'Sh-h!" She laid a finger on her lips as she let him in and lit a lamp, then she beckoned him toward the single rear room, shading the light with one hand and inviting him silently to peer over her shoulder.

The surprise of what he saw struck McGill dumb, for there in a crib lay the tiny la.s.s who had befriended him that afternoon. Her lips were pouting sweetly, her face was flushed with dreams, one plump little arm was outside the covers, and just below the doubled fist McGill saw the deep dimpled bracelet of babyhood. Her presence made of these squalid surroundings a place of purity; the room became suddenly a shrine.

"The son-of-a-gun!" said McGill, inanely, then his face darkened once more. "I know her," he announced, grimly. "What are _you_ doing with that kid--in this h.e.l.l-hole?"

From the alleyways near by came a burst of ribaldry, but the woman's face was shining when she answered:

"Why, she's mine--my baby. We have no other home."

He did not--could not--speak, so she said, simply:

"Now you see why I must leave Barclay, and--all this."

"_Your_ baby!" McGill's eyes dropped to the index finger of his right hand, then he touched his lips curiously.

"Barclay won't let me run straight. I've always wanted to, and now I must, for the baby's sake." When this brought no response she continued, with growing intensity, but in a lowered tone. "She'll begin to understand things before long. She'll hear about him--and me. Then what?

She'll think for herself, and she'll never forget a thing like that, never. How can she grow up to be good if she learns the truth? It wouldn't let her. n.o.body could stay good around Barclay. Even I couldn't, and I was a woman when I met him. I'm decent, inside, McGill.

Honestly I am, and I've been sorry every day since you left. Oh, I've paid for what I did! And I'll pay more, if I have to, but she mustn't be part of the price. No! You've got to help me. Don't you see?"

She mistook his gesture of bewilderment for one of refusal, then hurried to one final, frenzied appeal, although at a fearful cost to herself. It was this which had come to her in the dance-hall; it was this that she had led up to without allowing herself time in which to weaken.

"Listen! She shouldn't stay with me, even if I get away; it wouldn't be good for her; besides, Barclay would find us some time; or, if he didn't, I'm too sick to last much longer. Then she'd be alone. You're rich, McGill. You're John Daniels. You'll have to take her--not for my sake, understand, but--"

"_I?_" The man started. "I take Barclay's baby? Great G.o.d!"

There was a moment of silence during which the wife strove to steady herself, then she said:

"She's not his--she's yours--ours."

McGill uttered a great cry. It issued from the depths of his being and racked him dreadfully. He swung ponderously toward the rear room, then fell to trembling so that he could not proceed. He stared at the woman, lifted his hands, then dropped them; his lips shook. A fretful, sleepy complaint issued from the chamber, at which the mother raised a warning finger, and the necessity for silence calmed him more quickly than anything else could have done.

"_My--baby!_" he whispered, while he felt something melt within him and was filled with such an aching joy that he sobbed with the agony of it.

His wife's punishment overflowed when he breathed, fiercely:

"Then give her to me. You can't keep her. You can't touch her. You ain't fit."

She bowed her head in a.s.sent, although his torture was nothing as compared with hers.

"You'll help me get away from Barclay, won't you?" she asked, supporting herself unsteadily.

"Barclay! I forgot him! He's the one that did all this, ain't he? He brought you to--this; and my baby, too. He made her live among women like these. He raised her in slime--" The speaker's face became slowly, frightfully distorted.

His wife went swiftly to him; she struggled to fend him away from the door, but he moved irresistibly. They wrestled breathlessly so as not to awaken the child, while she begged him in the baby's name not to go, not to bring blood upon her; but he plucked her arms from around him and went out, closing the door softly.

When he had gone Mrs. McGill stood motionless, her eyes closed, her palms pressed over her ears as if to shut out a sound she dreaded.

Barclay was dealing "bank" in one of the saloons when McGill entered and came toward him down the full length of the room. They recognized each other as their eyes met, and the former sat back stiffly in his chair, feeling that the dead had risen. What he saw written in the face of the bearded man drove the blood from his cheeks, for it was something he had dreaded in his dreams. He knew himself to be cornered, and fear set his nerves to jumping so uncontrollably that when he s.n.a.t.c.hed the Colt's from its drawer and fired blindly, he missed. The place was crowded, and it broke into a frightful confusion at the first shot.

None of those present told the same tale of what immediately followed, but the stories agreed in this, that John Daniels neither hesitated nor quickened his approach, although Barclay emptied his gun so swiftly that the echoes blended, then snapped it on a spent cartridge as the two clinched. Curious ones later searched out the bullet-marks in wall and ceiling which showed beyond doubt the nervous panic under which the gambler had gone to pieces, and so long as the building stood they remained objects of great interest.

Now McGill--or Daniels, as he was known to the onlookers--never went armed, having yet to feel the need of other weapons than his hands. He tore the gun from his victim's grasp, then mauled him with it so fearfully that men shouted at him and hid their faces. Meanwhile he was speaking, growling something into Barclay's ears. No one understood what it was he said until the confusion died and they heard these words:

"--And you'll go with my brand on you where everybody 'll read it and know you're a rat."

Next he did something that a great many had heard of but few, even of the old-timers, had witnessed. He gun-branded his enemy. Barclay was little more than a pulp by this time; he lay face up across the faro-table with McGill's fingers at his throat. They thought the older man was about to brain him, but instead he turned the revolver in his hand and drew the thin, sharp-edged sight across Barclay's forehead from temple to temple, then from forelock to bridge of nose. A stream of blood followed as the sight ripped through to the skull like a dull scalpel, leaving a ragged disfiguring cross above the gambler's eyes; it scarred the bone; it formed a hideous mutilation that would last as long as the fellow lived, and const.i.tute a brand of infamy to single him out from ten thousand, telling the story of his dishonor.

When he had finished, McGill raised the wretch bodily and flung him half across the room as if he were unclean, then, without a glance to right or left, he went forth as he had come.

His wife was waiting with her ears covered, but she saw the blood on his hands when she opened her eyes, and cried out.

"It's his," he told her, roughly. "I don't think I killed him. I tried not to, for her sake." He inclined his head toward the inner door. "But it was hard to hold in, after all this time. He'll never trouble you again."

"When do you--mean to take the baby?" she whispered.

"Now--She--"

"No, no! Not yet. Let her stay here a little while--till I'm strong enough to let her go. Just a little while, McGill. You're a good man.

Don't you understand?" She was palsied, incoherent with dread; in her eyes was a look of death.