The Desert Valley Part 37

She hesitated. 'You know,' she said quietly at last.

So, when the pallid sky gave way to the rosy tints of the new day, they knew everything, being richly wise in the wisdom of youth. Even it was granted them to see the red earth about them and to know that Alan's surmise had led them aright. Just yonder in a little hollow to which the shadows clung longest, were the marks left by Longstreet's pick; there was a tiny pit in which he had toiled exposing a vein of rock from which he had chipped his samples; near the spot his location stake and notice. Promptly they removed their own stakes, taking claims on both sides of his.

'We were right!' called Alan triumphantly. 'But how about Sanchia? He told her and-----'

'Look!' Helen caught his arm and pointed.

Upon a neighbouring hill, by air-line not over half a mile from their own, but almost twice that distance by the trail one must follow down and up the rugged slopes, were two figures. Clearly limned against the sky, they were like black outlines against a pink curtain.

'That is Sanchia!' Helen was positive. 'There is a man with her.

It---- Do you think----'

He did not know why she should think what he knew she did think; what he himself was thinking. It was altogether too far to distinguish one man from another. It might even be Longstreet himself. But he knew that she feared it was Jim Courtot, to whom naturally Sanchia would turn at a moment like this; and never from the first did he doubt that it was Courtot.

'It's some one of Sanchia's crowd,' he said with high a.s.sumption of carelessness. 'But here is what I can't understand! Your father told Sanchia; she has raced off and staked; and as sure as fate, they are on the wrong hill! Sanchia wouldn't make a blunder like that!'

Helen was frowning meditatively. She understood what Howard had in mind, and she, too, was perplexed.

'Do you know,' she cried suddenly, 'I think we have failed to do papa justice!'

'What do you mean?'

'He never said outright that he had told her; he merely let us think that he had. He never once said positively that he had faith in Sanchia; he just said, over and over, that one accused should be given a chance to prove his innocence! Now, supposing that he had led Sanchia to think that his mine was over yonder on that other hill? He would be risking nothing; and at the same time he would be giving her that chance. No,' and it was a very thoughtful Helen who spoke, 'I don't know that we have ever done dear old pops justice.'

They stood, silent, watching the growing day and the two motionless figures upon the other hill. Those figures, as the day brightened, began to move about; plainly they were searching quite as Alan and Helen had searched just now. They were making a.s.surance doubly sure, or seeking to do so. They disappeared briefly. Again they stood, side by side, in relief against the sky.

'That is Jim Courtot, I know it.' Helen's hands were tight-pressed against her breast in which a sudden tumult was stirring. All of yesterday's premonition swept back over her. 'You two will meet this time. And then----'

'Listen, Helen. I no longer want to meet Jim Courtot. I would be content to let him pa.s.s by me and go on his own way now. But if he does come this way, if at last we must meet---- Well, my dear,' he sought to make his smile utterly rea.s.suring, 'I have met Jim Courtot before.'

But her sudden fear, after the way of fear when there is an unfounded dread at the bottom of it, gripped her as it had never done before; she felt a terrified certainty that if the two men met it would be Alan who died. She began to tremble.

Far down in the hollow lying between Red Dirt Hill and the eminence whereon stood Sanchia and Courtot, they saw a man riding. He came into a clearing; had they not from the beginning suspected who it must be they would have known Longstreet from that distance, from his characteristic carriage in the saddle. No man ever rode like James Edward Longstreet. And Courtot and Sanchia had seen him.

He jogged along placidly. They could fancy him smiling contentedly.

Helen and Howard watched him; he was coming toward them. They glanced swiftly across the ravine; there the two figures stood close together, evidently conversing earnestly. The sun was not yet up. Longstreet rode into a thickness of shadow and disappeared. In five minutes he came into sight again. Courtot and Sanchia had not stirred. But now, as though galvanized, they moved. Courtot leaped from his boulder and began hurrying down into the canon, seeking to come up with the man on the horse. Sanchia followed. Even at the distance, however, she seemed slack-footed, like one who, having played out the game, knows that it is defeat.

'Papa is coming this way!--Jim Courtot is following him--in ten minutes more----'

She did not finish. Howard put his arms about her and felt her body shaking.

'You do love me,' he whispered.

She jerked away from him. A new look was in her eyes.

'Alan Howard,' she said steadily, 'I love you. With my whole heart and soul! But our love can never come to anything unless you love me just exactly as I love you!'

'Don't you know----'

'You do not know what it has meant to me, your shooting those two men in papa's quarrel. But they lived and I have tried to forget it all.

If they had died, then what?' Her eyes widened. 'If you and Courtot meet, what will happen? If he kills you, there is an end. If--if you kill him, there is an end! Call it what you please, if it is not murder, it is a man killing a man. And it is horrible!'

Mystified, he stared at her.

'What can I do?' he muttered. 'You would not have me run from him, Helen? You do not want me to turn coward like that?'

'If you kill him,' she told him, her face dead-white, 'I will never marry you. I will go away to-morrow. If you would promise me not to shoot him, I would marry you this minute.'

He looked down into the ravine trail. Longstreet was appreciably nearer. So was Courtot. Behind Sanchia lagged spiritlessly, seeming of a mind to stop and turn back. He looked at Helen; she had had no sleep, she was unstrung, nervous, distraught. He gnawed at his lip and looked again toward Courtot.

'If you love me!' pleaded Helen wildly.

'I love you,' he said grimly. 'That is all that counts.'

He waited until she looked away from him. Then silently he drew his gun from its holster; the thing was madness, but just now there was no sanity in the universe. He could not run; he must not kill Courtot.

He dropped the gun behind him and with the heel of his boot thrust it away from him so that it fell into a fissure in the rock. He turned again to watch Courtot coming on.

The eerie light of uncertainty which is neither day nor night lay across the hills. It was utterly silent. Then, the rattle of stones below; horse and rider were so close that they could see Longstreet's upturned face. Courtot was close behind him; Courtot looked up and they could see his face.

'You must go, now,' whispered Helen. 'You have promised me.'

'I am keeping my promise,' he said sternly. 'But I am not going to run from him. You would hate me for being a coward, Helen.'

She looked at him, puzzled. Then she saw that the holster at his hip was empty.

'Oh,' cried Helen wildly, 'not that! You must kill him, Alan. I was mad with fear. I----'

Stopping the flow of her words there swept over her the paralyzing certainty that it was useless to batter against fate; that a man's destiny was not to be thrust aside by a woman's love. For out of the silence there burst a sound which to her quivering nerves was fraught with word of death; that sound which in countless human hearts presages a death before the dawn--the long, lugubrious howling of a dog. It seemed to her to burst out of the nothingness of the sky, to arise in the void of an unseen ghostly world where spirit voices foretold the onrush of destruction.

Jim Courtot was hurrying up the slope. They saw him stop dead in his tracks. He, too, seemed turned to stone by the sound. It came again, the terrible howling of a dog, nearer as though the creature sped across the hills on the wings of the quickening morning wind. Sanchia stopped and began to draw back. Longstreet came on unconcernedly.

A third time, and again nearer, came the strange baying. Courtot held where he was, balancing briefly. Then they heard him cry out, his voice strange and hoa.r.s.e; he whirled about and began to run. He was going down the trail now, running as a man runs only from his death, stumbling, cursing, rising and plunging on.

'Look!' Howard's fingers had locked upon Helen's arm. 'It is Kish Taka!'

She looked. Behind them, outlined against the sky, were a strange pair. A great beast, head down, howling as it ran, that was bigger than a desert wolf, and close behind it, gaunt body doubled, speeding like an arrow, a naked man. They flashed across the open s.p.a.ce and sped down the steep slope of the ravine where, in the shadows, they became mere ghost figures.

'It is Kish Taka!' said Howard a second time. 'And again Kish Taka has saved my life.'

Dazed, the girl did not yet understand. She shivered and drew close to her lover, stepping into his arms. He held her tight, and they turned their fascinated eyes below. The speed of Jim Courtot in the grip of his terror was great; but it looked like lingering leisure compared to the speed of Kish Taka and his great hungering dog. And, now, behind Kish Taka came a second dog, like the first; and behind it a second man, like Kish Taka.

If Jim Courtot remembered his revolver, it must have been to know that not long would that stand between him and the two rushing, slavering beasts and the two avenging Indians behind him. His one hope was his hidden cave with its small orifice and concealed exit. And Jim Courtot must have realized how small was his chance of coming to it.

They saw him plunge on. The light slowly increased. They saw how the dogs and men gained upon him. They lost sight of all down in the ravine among the shadows. They saw Courtot again, still in the lead but losing ground. They lost sight of him again. They heard a wild scream, a gun fired, the howl of a dog. Another scream, tortured and terrified. Then, in the pa.s.ses of the hills, it was as still as death.

Longstreet, alone, had not seen all of this; the dogs had swept on, but to him, deep in his own thoughts, they were but dogs barking as dogs have a way of doing. Sanchia sat in a crumpled heap, her face in her hands. Longstreet's face was smiling when he came to where his daughter stood with her lover's arms tight about her.