The Forfeit Part 44

"But you--a woman? You can't help. You might even----"

"Jeff's in danger."

Nan repeated the words with an emphasis there could be no mistaking.

And as the final syllable escaped her pretty lips became firmly compressed.

Elvine regarded her for a silent moment or two. A strange new sensation was stirring within her. Nan's att.i.tude had brought it into being. Her earlier emotions receded before this new feeling. And, strangely enough, she remembered some words her mother had once spoken to her. It was at a time before she had engaged herself to her husband.

"But Jeff--is nothing to you," she said abruptly.

There was a new ring in the voice in which she spoke.

"Is he?"

Nan's eyes looked straight into the wife's. There was no smile in them. There was no emotion lying behind them that Elvine could read.

They were steady, unflinching. That was all.

Sounds came up from the ranch buildings. Voices reached them plainly.

And among them Bud's dominating tones were raised above all.

Nan's eyes were drawn in the direction, but her gaze only encountered the moonless night.

"What is he--to you?" Elvine's demand was strident. She was roused from her sense of her own sufferings, her own misery. The newly awakened emotion had leaped to proportions which threatened to overwhelm all others.

Nan's eyes came back to her face. There was something almost reckless in their regard. There was even a suggestion of derision in them, a suggestion of triumph. But it was not the triumph over a rival. It was the triumph of one who realizes her conquest over self.

"Everything!" she cried. Then she added almost to herself: "Everything I can think of, have ever dreamed of in life." Then suddenly her voice rose to a ring of ecstasy. It was the abundance, the purity of her love, the certainty of victory over self which inspired it. "Ah, Evie, don't be rattled with what I'm telling you. Ther' surely is no need.

You want to be mad with me. Guess you needn't to be. Jeff don't know it. He never will know it. I've never had a hope of him since he met you. He's always been just yours. I don't guess you need to worry a thing that way. The worrying's for me. I've loved him since ever I was a child: since ever he came here. Well, you figure he's in danger--so it's up to those who love him to do. You see, I--well, I just love him with my whole soul."

She turned away. The reception of her confession seemed to concern her not at all.

Out of the darkness loomed her father's great figure. He was leading Nan's horse as well as his own. The girl leaped into the saddle, and he pa.s.sed his own reins up to her.

"I shan't be haf a minit," he said. "I need my guns. The boys are waitin' by the barn."

He pa.s.sed into the house. Then Nan observed Elvine. She, too, had leaped into the saddle. Nor could the girl help being struck by the manner of her action.

"You're goin' back home?" she cried.

Elvine shook her head resolutely.

"How--then?"

The wife suddenly urged her horse. It came right up to Nan's with an almost spasmodic jump, driven by a vicious jab of the woman's spurred heel.

The dark eyes were lit with an angry fire as she leaned forward in the saddle. Her words came in a voice of pa.s.sionate jealousy.

"You love him, so you go to him, ready to face anything--for him. Do you think I don't love him? Do you think I'm not ready to dare for him--anything? Your love gives you that right. What of mine? Does mine give me no right? Say, child, your fool conceit runs away with you. I tell you you don't know what love is. You say you love him with your whole soul. And you are content to live without him. Psha!

Your soul must be a poor enough thing. I tell you life means nothing to me without him. I can't and won't live without him."

The black earth sped under the horses' hoofs. The stars shone like dew on the velvet pall of night. Bud led, as he always led in the things practical which belonged to his life.

He needed no thought for guidance on that night journey. Unerring instinct served him across those wide plains. Spruce Crossing might have possessed a beacon light, so straight, so unerring was the lead he offered those behind him.

Now, perhaps, more than ever, all his great skill was put forth. For he had listened to the complete, if halting, story of the man's wife, and shared with her the conviction of treachery. For the time, at least, all consideration for the woman was thrust aside. He offered no words of blame. His concern was simply the succor of his friend.

Nan was ready to follow him whithersoever he led. She was ready to obey his lightest command, for she understood his skill. She had no thought for anything but the man she loved. No possibilities of mischance, no threat to herself could find place in her thought. For her Jeff's well-being was her single concern.

Elvine rode beside her, step for step. She had told her story as they rode. After that silence between them prevailed. It was a silence fraught with an emotion too deep for any words. A fierce jealousy mingled with her pa.s.sionate longing. Her world was empty of all but two figures. The man she loved, and the girl who had confessed her love with all the strength of a great, simple courage.

Whatever the night might bring forth, whatever tragedy might be in store, she scarcely had thought for anything but her own almost mad resolve. This girl, this child of the plains, should obtain no advantage. She was prepared to yield all for the succor of the husband who had scorned her--even to life itself.

CHAPTER XXIV

TO SPRUCE CROSSING

The eyes of the night were there alone to see. It was as well. There are moments in men's lives when it is best that it should be so.

Pa.s.sions are not always sane. They are not always human.

So it was with Jeffrey Masters. The change in him had been rapid. It was almost magical. Always one who lacked something of the softer human qualities, he yet must have been counted a man of balance. If sympathy, sentiment, were never his strong points, he was by no means lacking in loyalty, kindliness, rightness of purpose. All his life, achievement, achievement under the strictest canons of honesty, or moral scruple, had been the motive urging him. He had seen neither to the right nor to the left of these things.

Then had come the woman into his life and the lighting of those natural fires which belong to all human life. He yielded to them, and the suddenness of it all seemed to sweep away every cooler method which had always governed him. There had been no thought, no calculation in his yielding, such as might have been expected. He was the victim of his own temperament. His powerful restraint had been suddenly relaxed.

And, for the time, he had been completely overwhelmed by the intensity of his pa.s.sion.

But this pa.s.sion for the woman who had so suddenly entered his life was merely the opening of vials of emotion hitherto held sealed. It was no radical transformation. All that had been his before still remained, buried perhaps for the moment under the avalanche of feeling, but nevertheless still occupying its place. These things could not be swept away. They could not be destroyed. They would remain when the pa.s.sionate fires had completely burned themselves out.

But the unlooked-for had happened. These fires had not been permitted to burn themselves out. They had been extinguished, deluged out of existence when the idol of his worship was flung headlong from its pedestal by the complete revolt of his moral being. His prejudices, his instincts, matured through years of effort, were the stronger part of him, and the conflict was decided before it began. The shock of discovery had brought a terrible reaction. His love was killed under the blow. And though for a while the sense of overwhelming disaster had been crushing, the measure of that disaster was taken swiftly. It left him disillusioned, it left him harder, colder. But it left him sane.

These things were not all, however. On this night he had approached far nearer the h.e.l.l which only a woman can create for a man than his first discovery had borne him. The irony of it was perfect. Out of her great love for him, solely in his interest, in a great desire to shield him from a danger she saw threatening him, she had contrived to convince him that she had been as ready to sacrifice him, his interests, the interests of his friends, as she had been to accept the price offered for the blood of his twin brother.

So the eyes of the night looked down upon the haunting figure of a man who knew neither mercy, nor pity, nor hope. The world of human happiness had closed its doors upon him, and his whole spirit and body demanded a fierce retaliation.

That was the mood which looked out of his coldly shining eyes. That was the mood which drove the horse under him at a headlong gait, and left his spurs blood-stained upon his heels. That was the mood that left him caring nothing for any danger that might lurk under cover of the starlit dark of night. The fierceness of his temper demanded outlet. Bodily outlet. Active conflict. Anything, so that a burning l.u.s.t for hurt should be satisfied. He cared nothing at all for himself. No bodily suffering could compare with the anguish of mind he had pa.s.sed through, was still pa.s.sing through. And so he rode headlong till the youth accompanying him was hard put to it to keep pace with him.

The hammering of the horses' hoofs upon the sun-baked earth was a fitting accompaniment to his mood. The sigh of the night breezes through the trees was no less desolate than his heart. Nor was the darkness one whit more dark than the stream of thought which flowed through his hot brain.

Not one word did he exchange with the man behind him. In truth the youth who had brought the summons had no part in the thing that was happening, at least not in Jeffrey Masters' mind. There was no one besides himself in this. There was just himself and his goal--whatever that might bring forth--with a wild, almost insane desire to act fiercely and without mercy should opportunity offer.

The land rose and fell, from hill to valley, from valley to hill. The way lay through avenues of bluff-lined gra.s.s, or across hollows of virgin pasture. Trickling mountain streams barred the way, only to be pa.s.sed without a thought of their depth, or the dangers of their treacherous, sodden banks. The mountain barrier ahead, looming darkly forbidding in the starlight, with its mazing hollows and woodland crowns, was incapable of inspiration at the moment. There are moments when Nature's profoundest awe is powerless to affect the mind of man.

These were such moments. The whole mind of Jeffrey Masters was absorbed till there was no room for any influence which did not arise out of the burden of his bitterness.

But if he were indifferent to his surroundings, the man riding hard behind him moved with eyes and ears fully alert. That which he was seeking would have been impossible to tell. Nevertheless every shadow seemed to possess interest, every night sound to possess some quality worth remarking. Not for an instant, after the hills had been entered, did his vigilance relax.

Spruce Crossing lay deep in the hills, a clearing to the south of the junction of converging mountain streams. It was a mere cattle station, neither better nor worse than several others lying on the outskirts of the Obar territory. Yet it was important that it headed a valley running north and south amongst the hills, where the gra.s.s was sweet, and rich, and fattening, one of those surprise natural pastures which the hills love to yield occasionally to those who seek out their wealth.