The Eye of Dread Part 21

"Don't! Richard. Hung? What have you done? What do you mean? When was it?"

"Sunday night."

"But you had to start for Cheyenne early this morning. Where have you been all day? I thought you were gone forever, dear."

"I hid myself down by the river. I lay there all day, and heard them talking, but I couldn't see them nor they me. It was a hiding place we knew of when our camp was there--Peter Junior and I. He's gone. I did it--I did it with murder in my heart--Oh, my G.o.d!"

"Don't, Richard. You must tell me nothing except as I ask you. It is not as if we did not love each other. What you have done I must help you bear--as--as wives help their husbands--for I will never marry; but all my life my heart will be married to yours." He reached for her hands and covered them with kisses and moaned. "No, Richard, don't.

Eat the bread and meat I have brought you. You've eaten nothing for two days, and everything may seem worse to you than it is."

"No, no!"

"Richard, I'll go away from you and leave you here alone if you don't eat."

"Yes, I must eat--not only now--but all the rest of my life, I must eat to live and repent. He was my dearest friend. I taunted him and said bitter things. I goaded him. I was insane with rage and at last so was he. He struck me--and--and I--I was trying to push him over the bluff--"

Slowly it dawned on Betty what Richard's talk really meant.

"Not Peter? Oh, Richard--not Peter!" She shrank from him, wide-eyed in terror.

"He would have killed me--for I know what was in his heart as well as I knew what was in my own--and we were both seeing red. I've felt it sometimes in battle, and the feeling makes a man drunken. A man will do anything then. We'd been always friends--and yet we were drunken with hate; and now--he--he is better off than I. I must live. Unless for the disgrace to my relatives, I would give myself up to be hanged. It would be better to take the punishment than to live in such torture as this."

The tears coursed fast down Betty's cheeks. Slowly she drew nearer him, and bent down to him as he sat, until she could look into his eyes. "What were you quarreling about, Richard?"

"Don't ask me, darling Betty."

"What was it, Richard?"

"All my life you will be the sweet help to me--the help that may keep me from death in life. To carry in my soul the remembrance of last night will need all the help G.o.d will let me have. If I had gone away quietly, you and Peter Junior would have been married and have been happy--but--"

"No, no. Oh, Richard, no. I knew in a moment when you came--"

"Yes, Betty, dear, Peter Junior was good and faithful; and he might have been able to undo all the harm I had done. He could have taught you to love him. I have done the devil's work--and then I killed him--Oh, my G.o.d! My G.o.d!"

"How do you know you pushed him over? He may have fallen over. You don't know it. He may have--"

"Hush, dearest. I did it. When I came to myself, it was in the night; and it must have been late, for the moon was set. I could only see faintly that something white lay near me. I felt of it, and it was Peter Junior's hat. Then I felt all about for him--and he was gone and I crawled to the edge of the bluff--but although I knew he was gone over there and washed by the terrible current far down the river by that time, I couldn't follow him, whether from cowardice or weakness.

I tried to get on my feet and could not. Then I must have fainted again, for all the world faded away, and I thought maybe the blow had done for me and I might not have to leap over there, after all. I could feel myself slipping away.

"When I awoke, the sun was shining and a bird was singing just as if nothing had happened, and I thought I had been dreaming an awful dream--but there was the wound on my head and I was alive. Then I went farther down the river and came back to the hiding place and crept in there to wait and think. Then, after a long while, the boys came, and I was terrified for fear they were searching for me. That is the shameful truth, Betty. I feared. I never knew what fear was before.

Betty, fear is shameful. There I have been all day--waiting--for what, I do not know; but it seemed that if I could only have one little glimpse of you I could go bravely and give myself up. I will now--"

"No, Richard; it would do no good for you to die such a death. It would undo nothing, and change nothing. Peter was angry, too, and he struck you, and if he could have his way he would not want you to die.

I say maybe he is living now. He may not have gone over."

"It's no use, Betty. He went down. I pushed him into that terrible river. I did it. I--I--I!" Richard only moaned the words in a whisper of despair, and the horror of it all began to deepen and crush down upon Betty. She retreated, step by step, until she backed against the door leading to her chamber, and there she stood gazing at him with her hand pressed over her lips to keep herself from crying out. Then she saw him rise and turn toward the door without looking at her again, his head bowed in grief, and the sight roused her. As the door closed between them she ran and threw it open and followed him out into the darkness.

"I can't, Richard. I can't let you go like this!" She clung to him, sobbing her heart out on his bosom, and he clasped her and held her warm little body close.

"I'm like a drowning man pulling you under with me. Your tears drown me. I would not have entered the house if I had not seen you crying.

Never cry again for me, Betty, never."

"I will cry. I tell you I will cry. I will. I don't believe you are a murderer."

"You must believe it. I am."

"I loved Peter Junior and you loved him. You did not mean to do it."

"I did it."

"If you did it, it is as if I did it, too. We both killed him--and I am a murderer, too. It was because of me you did it, and if you give yourself up to be hung, I will give myself up. Poor Peter--Oh, Richard--I don't believe he fell over." For a long moment she sobbed thus. "Where are you going, Richard?" she asked, lifting her head.

"I don't know, Betty. I may be taken and can go nowhere."

"Yes, you must go--quick--quick--now. Some one may come and find you here."

"No one will find me. Cain was a wanderer over the face of the earth."

"Will you let me know where you are, after you are gone?"

"No, Betty. You must never think of me, nor let me darken your life."

"Then must I live all the rest of the years without even knowing where you are?"

"Yes, love. Put me out of your life from now on, and it will be enough for me that you loved me once."

"I will help you atone, Richard. I will try to be brave--and help Peter's mother to bear it. I will love her for Peter and for you."

"G.o.d's blessing on you forever, Betty." He was gone, striding away in the darkness, and Betty, with trembling steps, entered the house.

Carefully she removed every sign of his having been there. The bowl of water, and the cloth from which she had torn strips to bind his head she carried away, and the gla.s.s from which he had taken his milk, she washed, and even the crumbs of bread which had fallen to the floor she picked up one by one, so that not a trace remained. Then she took her drawing materials back to the studio, and after kneeling long at her bedside, and only saying: "G.o.d, help Richard, help him," over and over, she crept in beside her little sister, and still weeping and praying chokingly clasped the sleeping child in her arms.

From that time, it seemed to Bertrand and Mary that a strange and subtle change had taken place in their beloved little daughter; for which they tried to account as the result of the mysterious disappearance of Peter Junior. He was not found, and Richard also was gone, and the matter after being for a long time the wonder of the village, became a thing of the past. Only the Elder cherished the thought that his son had been murdered, and quietly set a detective at work to find the guilty man--whom he would bring back to vengeance.

Her parents were forced to acquaint Betty with the suspicious nature of Peter's disappearance, knowing she might hear of it soon and be more shocked than if told by themselves. Mary wondered not a little at her dry-eyed and silent reception of it, but that was a part of the change in Betty.

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER XIV

OUT OF THE DESERT