The Heart of Thunder Mountain Part 28

Meanwhile it was indeed a black day for Huntington. Fate was against him. Tearing himself, mangled in spirit, out of one trap, he rode blindly into another. Far up in the hills, riding savagely, he knew not where, nor cared, vowing dark vengeance on Haig, his attention was drawn at last by the weird and ominous bellowing of cattle. Following the sound, he came to a little hollow where a hundred or more cattle were gathered, like the rapt spectators in an amphitheater, around two bulls engaged in mortal combat. One, as Seth quickly saw, was a red Hereford, his best thoroughbred; the other, a black Angus, and even more valuable, was Haig's. The red bull, bleeding from many wounds, was plainly being worsted in the encounter. With a roar of rage, Huntington drew his revolver, urged his unwilling horse down into the arena where the turf was torn up for many yards around the combatants, circled about until he could take sure aim, and emptied every chamber of the gun into the head and neck of the Angus. The bull sank to the ground, head first, in a lumbering ma.s.s that kicked once or twice, shivered, and lay still.

But the Hereford, red-eyed with blood and fury, turned on Huntington, and drove him, barely escaping being gored, into the thick timber. In a place of safety Huntington jerked his horse around, and sat limp in the saddle, staring down at the scene of his final humiliation.

"That's it! That's it!" he bellowed. "Even my own bull turns on me.

Haw! Haw!" His hollow, hoa.r.s.e, and unmirthful laughter echoed among the pines. "Great joke! Haig will like that. And the rest of them.

h.e.l.l!"

But Haig! And the Angus! Well, there'd got to be a show-down anyhow pretty soon. He dismounted, and seated himself on a fallen tree trunk, and gave himself up to reflections upon which it is only the most obvious kindness and discretion to draw the curtain.

CHAPTER XV

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

The days dragged by under the burdens of doubt and torture, and out of the Valley of the Shadow came Philip Haig, with some new and disquieting thoughts to occupy him in his convalescence. Toiling up out of the darkness, where foul fiends seemed to have torn and mangled his body with their fiery claws, his fingers were still warm from the pressure of a soft, guiding hand; there was a haunting memory of kisses on his forehead, of a cheek laid close to his; and he could still hear the gentle but commanding voice that told him to be patient--to be still--that life was coming back to him.

Life! As if he cared for life! Had he not spent years on years in seeking what just now had been in his very grasp, only to be withdrawn by two caressing hands? And Doctor Morris, on the day of his final visit, had left him no possibility of misunderstanding.

"Miss g.a.y.l.o.r.d has saved your life," he said. "I could do little. It was her nursing that pulled you through."

He wanted much to tell the doctor just how much value he placed on that life. But to what purpose? Doctors lived in their own peculiar atmosphere of conceit and self-deception, crowing like a hen over a new-laid egg whenever they chanced to bring back a soul to the miseries from which it had struggled to escape. It would be a waste of words, for Norris would never understand. Would Marion? Cold terror seized him at the thought of the coming, the inevitable scene with her. She, he realized vaguely, was different from--from all the others he had ever seen and looked down upon from his safe heights of cynical hatred and contempt. She was not selfish or mercenary--not consciously selfish or mercenary. And she was not vile. But she was all the more dangerous because her heart was pure. She was too high-bred, too fine, to demand payment of his debt; but her very reticence and delicacy, he foresaw, would make his repudiation of that debt--that fact.i.tious debt--more difficult. Twice or thrice, as he struggled with his problem, he was conscious of a curious, disturbing thrill. She loved him. There had been a time, long, long ago--But now he was a man; he had learned his lesson; and he knew that the chains would be no less hateful because they were made of gold.

There came a day when he sat, wrapped in blankets, in an armchair near the window, where he could see the gra.s.s waving in the sunlight on the slope above the cottage, and the pines bending in the breeze high up the hill. Marion, near him, her hands folded in her lap, looked sometimes out of the window but more often at him, though his eyes avoided hers. She was scarcely less pale than he, and very tired and worn. Despite Hillyer's protestations she had slept little in the ten days of Philip's peril; for she would trust no one but herself to do with iron determination exactly what the doctor had commanded.

Philip's pitiable pleading for water in his semi-delirium her love alone was strong enough to resist. But this was the last day of her watch over him. In an hour she must go. She had frankly asked Robert to let her have this last afternoon alone with Philip; and had promised him that he should then have the answer to every question that he had loyally put aside for her.

They sat a long time silent, while the shadow of the cottage lengthened on the gra.s.s.

"It wasn't worth it, Miss g.a.y.l.o.r.d," Haig said at length.

"I--I don't understand," she faltered.

"Doctor Norris tells me that you saved my life."

"I'm glad if he thinks I helped a little," she answered, trying to smile.

"He left me no room for doubt. Very plain-spoken is Doctor Norris."

"I'm afraid he exaggerated," she protested gently.

"No."

"But Jim--"

"Jim's all right in his way, but he couldn't have done it."

"I am paid," she said simply.

"Paid?"

"Yes. Knowing that you live."

"No. You think you mean that, perhaps, but you don't."

"I don't mean what?" she asked in surprise.

"You don't mean that you are paid."

She turned away, and looked out the window, her heart throbbing.

"I must tell you something, Miss g.a.y.l.o.r.d," he went on resolutely. "I'm not grateful."

"Not grateful?"

"I mean, I'm not glad to owe my life to you."

"But I haven't asked--"

"No. Not directly." He hesitated a moment. "It's like this: If a man had saved my life, I could pay him. There would be a clasp of the hand, and a look from man to man. Or I should save his life in turn, or do him some service. Or--there are other ways. There's Pete's way and Jim's way--of paying. But I can't pay you in any of the ways I could pay a man. And I can't pay in the only way a woman knows."

"Don't," she cried. "Don't, please!"

She was right, he thought. He was doing it brutally. He must try another method. There followed a long silence, while he tried to frame a speech that would tell her, and would not hurt too much; for now, strangely, he found himself reluctant to give her pain, even to put himself in a false light before her--to be misunderstood. At last he leaned toward her--forced her to meet his gaze.

"Could you--if you had ever loved one man with all your heart and soul--held him as dear to you as life--dearer than life itself--without whom life would be impossible--could you ever love another?"

For all her anguish she was able to detect the trap that he had set for her. "Yes" would cheapen the quality and deny the finality of her love for him; "no" would be an acceptance of the doom and tragedy she saw shadowing his eyes. She did not answer.

"You see, you dare not answer that," he went on. "I suppose I ought to tell you the story. But I won't. It's long, and not a pretty story at all. But this much I will tell you. I gave one woman all I had to give. She threw it away--and laughed at me. I have nothing more."

She took it very bravely and very quietly, as it seemed to him. He felt a certain admiration. There was good blood in the girl. Her father must have been worth knowing. His thoughts would have taken a different direction--would have been nothing so complacent if he had known just what she was thinking. His speech, terrifying at first, had actually renewed a hope that had fallen very low. She did not believe a word of what he had said, that is, of his having nothing more to give. Whenever did woman believe any such thing as that, no matter how solemnly, on what stoutest oaths, with what tragic air a man has told it to her? Love is not love that doubts its own compelling power. And Marion, gazing fondly at Philip now, felt somewhat as a mother feels who smilingly indulges some childhood tragedy of her boy, knowing that it will pa.s.s as the cloud upon an April sky. If this was the worst he had to say to her--

But it was not the worst. Philip felt an intense relief to see her accept the situation with such unexpected calm. He admired her consciously now,--for her intelligence. He began to think that he might almost take her hand, and thank her, as he would thank a man for doing him a service, however mistakenly. But something held him back from that folly. He wondered a little at her silence, and it was by way of breaking it before it should become embarra.s.sing that he searched for something safe and commonplace to say to her.

"It was my own fault, you know, that I was injured."

"Why your own fault?"

"I was in a bad humor. I lost my self-control. And I got what I deserved."

He thought she would ask him why he had been in a bad humor, and he purposed to say that he was raging in discontent, longing for the white road again. It would be safe enough now, no doubt, to tell her in this fashion that if ever she should come to the Park again she would not find him there. But his words had suggested something entirely different to her mind.

"What are you going to do with him?" she asked, in sudden vague anxiety.