The Forfeit Part 6

It was past midnight. Effie, flushed with an unusual excitement, was gazing up into her husband's face. She was listening almost breathlessly to the story he was telling her. The little living-room, more than half kitchen, was bathed in the yellow light of a small tin kerosene lamp. For the time at least her surroundings, the poverty and drudgery of her life, were forgotten in the absorbing feelings consuming her.

"I tell you, Effie, I was scared--plumb scared when I saw what it was,"

Bob Whitstone ended up. "Guess we've known long enough the whole blamed countryside is haunted by cattle rustlers, but--that's the first time I've seen 'em, and I guess it's the first time any one's seen 'em at work. Say, I'm not yearning for the experience again."

But Effie had no interest beyond his story. His feelings on the matter of his experience were of no concern whatever at the moment. There were other things in her mind, things of far greater import. She returned to the rocker chair, which was the luxury of their home, and sat down. There was one thing only in Bob's story which mattered to her just now.

"Ten thousand dollars," she murmured. "_Ten thousand_! It's a--fortune."

Bob moved across to a rough shelf nailed upon the wall and picked up a pipe.

"A bit limited," he observed contemptuously, as poured some tobacco dust into the bowl.

"I was thinking of--ourselves."

The man ceased his operation to gaze swiftly down upon the gently swaying figure in the chair.

"What d'you mean, Effie?" he demanded sharply.

The girl's steady eyes were slowly raised in answer to the challenging tone. They met her husband's without a shadow of hesitation.

"It sounds like a fortune to me, who have not handled a dollar that I could spend without careful thought--for two years," she declared with warmth.

Bob completed the filling of his pipe. He did not answer for a few moments, but occupied himself by lighting it with a reeking sulphur match.

"That's a pretty hard remark," he said at last, emitting heavy clouds of smoke between his words.

"Is it? But--it's just plain facts."

"I s'pose it is."

The girl had permitted her gaze to wander. It pa.s.sed from her husband's face to the deplorable surroundings which she had almost grown accustomed to, but which now stood out in her mind with an added sense of hopelessness. The lime-wash over the cracked and broken plaster which filled the gaps between the logs of the walls. The miserable furnishing, much of it of purely home manufacture, thrown up into hideous relief by the few tasteful knickknacks which had been wedding presents from her intimate friends and relatives in the east.

The earthen floor, beaten hard and kept scrupulously swept by her own hands. The cook-stove in the corner, with its ill-set stovepipe pa.s.sing out of a hole in the wall which had been crudely covered with tin to keep out the draughts in winter. The drooping ceiling of cotton material, which sagged in great billows under the thatch of the roof.

It was all deplorable to a woman who had known the comfort of an almost luxurious girlhood. Into her eyes crept a curious light. It was half resentful, half triumphant. It was wholly absorbed.

"Suppose? There's no supposition," she cried bitterly. "I have had the experience of it all, the grind. Maybe you don't know what it is to a woman, a girl, to find herself cut off suddenly from all the little luxuries she has always been used to. I don't mean extravagances. Just the trifling refinements which count for so much in a young woman's life. The position is possible, so long as the hope remains of their return later, perhaps fourfold. But when that hope no longer exists--I guess there's nothing much else that's worth while."

The man continued to smoke on for some silent moments. Then, as the girl, too, remained silent, he glanced at her out of the corners of his eyes.

"You gave up a good deal for me--for this," he said in gentle protest.

"But you did it with your eyes open--I mean, to the true facts of my position. Say, Effie, I didn't hold you up for this thing. I laid every card on the table. My father threatened us both, to our faces, if we persisted in marrying. Well, I guess we persisted, and he--why, he just handed us what he promised--the dollars that bought us this--farm. That was all. It was the last cent he figured to pa.s.s our way. You know all that, and you never squealed--then. You knew what was in store. I mean--this." He flung out one arm in a comprehensive gesture. "You guessed you'd grit enough to face it--with me. We hoped to win out." Then he smiled. "Say, I guess I haven't given up a thing--for you, eh? I haven't quit the home of millionaire father where my year's pocket money was more than the income of seventy per cent. of other folks! I, too, did it for this--and you. Won't you stick it for me?"

The man's appeal was spoken in low earnest tones His eyes were gentle.

But the girl kept hers studiously turned from his direction, and it was impossible for him to read that which lay behind them.

Again some silent moments pa.s.sed. The girl was gently rocking herself.

At last, however, she drew in her feet in a nervous, purposeful movement, and sat forward.

"Bob," she exclaimed, and now there were earnestness and kindness in the eyes that gazed up at the man, "it's no use for us to talk this way," she cried. "I began it, and I ought to be sorry--real sorry.

But I'm not. I wouldn't have acted that way under ordinary circ.u.mstances. But it's different now, and it was your own talk made me. You sneered at that ten thousand dollars, which seems to be a fortune to me. Ten thousand dollars!" she breathed. "And we haven't ten dollars between us in this--house. Bob, it makes me mad when I think of it. You don't care. You don't worry. All yon care for is to get away from it all--from me--and spend your time among the boys in Orrville. You've been away ever since dinner to-day, and now it's past midnight. Why? Why, when there's a hundred and one things to do around this wretched shanty? No--you undertake this thing, and then--spend every moment you can steal--yes, that's the word--steal, hanging around Ju Penrose's saloon. I'm left to fix things right here--to do the work which you have undertaken. Then you sneer when I see a fortune in that ten thousand dollars reward."

The girl's swift heat was not without effect. She had not intended to accuse in so straight a fashion. It was the result of long pent-up bitterness, which never needs more than a careless word to hurl into active expression. Bob's mild expression of contempt looked to be about to cost him dear.

A moody look not untouched with some sort of fear had crept into the man's eyes. Now he tried to smooth the threat of storm he saw looming.

Furthermore, an uncomfortable feeling of his own guilt was possessing him.

"But what if it can be called a fortune, Effie?" he demanded swiftly.

"It don't concern us. I don't guess it's liable to come our way."

"Why not?"

The girl's challenge came short and sharp, and her beautiful eyes were turned upon him full of cold regard.

The man was startled. He was even shocked.

"How?" he demanded. "I don't get you."

The girl sprang from her chair in a movement of sup-pressed excitement.

She came toward him, her eyes shining. A glorious ruddy tint shone through the tanning of her fair cheeks. She was good to look at, and Bob felt the influence of her beauty at that moment just as he had felt it when, for her, he had first flung every worldly consideration to the four winds.

"Will you listen, Bob? Will you listen to me while I tell you all that's been churning around in my head ever since you told me of that reward? You must. You shall. I have lived through a sort of purgatory in these hills for too long not to make my voice heard now--now when there's a chance of making our lives more tolerable. Oh, I've had a day while you've been away. It's been a day such as in my craziest moments I've never even dreamed of. Bob, I've discovered what they've all been trying to discover for years. I've found Lightfoot's camp!"

"And then?"

The girl's enthusiasm left her husband caught in a wave of apprehension. He saw with a growing sense of horror the meaning of that sudden revolt. This was displayed in his manner. Nor was Effie un.o.bservant of it. Nor unresentful.

She shrugged her perfect shoulders with a.s.sumed unconcern.

"That reward--those ten thousand dollars are mine--ours--if I choose.

And--I do choose."

There was no mistaking the firmness, the decision in her final words.

They came deliberate and hard, and they roused the man to prompt and sharp denial.

"You--do--not."

He was no longer propped against the table. He was no longer gentle.

He stood erect and angry, and their regard was eye to eye. But even so there was no disputing the woman's dominance of personality. The man's eyes, for all their anger, conveyed not a t.i.the of the other's decision. His whole att.i.tude was subjective to the poise of the woman's beautiful head, her erect, sculptured shoulders. Her measuring eyes were full of a fine revolt. There was nothing comparable between them--except their anger.

"Who can stop me? You?"

The scornful challenge rang sharply through the little room. Then a silence fraught with intense moment followed upon its heels.

The man nodded. His movement was followed by Effie's mocking laugh.

Perhaps Bob realized the uselessness, the danger of retaining such an att.i.tude. Perhaps his peculiar nature was unequal to the continuous effort the position called for. In a moment he seemed to shrink before those straight gazing eyes, and the light of purpose behind them. When he finally spoke a curious, almost pleading tone blended with the genuine horror in his words.

"No, no, Effie, you can't--you daren't!" he cried pa.s.sionately. "Do you know what you're doing? Do you know what that reward means to you--to us? Look at your hands. They're clean, and soft, and white.

Say, girl, that's blood money, blood money that'll surely stain them with a crimson you'll never wash off 'em all your life. It's blood money. Man's blood. Human blood. Just the same as runs through our veins. Oh, say, girl, I've no sort of use for rustlers. They're crooks, and maybe murderers. Guess they're everything you can think of, and a sight more. But they're men, and their blood's hot, warm blood the same as yours and mine. And you reckon to chaffer that blood for a price. You're going to sell it--for a price. You're going to do more. Yes. You're going to wreck a woman's conscience for life for those filthy, blood-soaked dollars. The price? Effie, things are mighty hard with us. Maybe they're harder with you than me. But I just can't believe we've dropped so low we can sell the life blood of even a--murderer. I can't believe it. I just can't. That's all.

Tell 'em, Effie. Tell 'em all you know and have discovered if you will. Tell 'em in the cause of justice. But barter your soul and conscience for filthy blood money--I--bah! It makes me turn sick to think that way."