The Last Straw Part 41

n.i.g.g.e.r lifted his head high and whinnered shrilly at nothing at all.

This was another day; there might be hope!

The flies came and lighted on the crusted stain on the vest and crawled down inside the shirt ... and after an aeon a sharp, white wire of consciousness commenced to glow in Two-Bits' blank mind. The one hand--the gun hand--twitched again and the fingers, puffed from their cramped position, stretched stiffly, resuming their struggle for the gun where it had left off yesterday.

One foot moved a trifle and a m.u.f.fled cough sent a small spurt of dust from beneath the face pressed into it. Slowly the gun hand gave up its search and was still, gathering strength. The arm drew up along the man's side, the hand reached his face. Elbows pressed into the ground and with a moan Two-Bits tried to lift his body ... tried and failed and sank back, with his face turned away from the dirt.

n.i.g.g.e.r blew loudly and shook his whole body and stared. The other horse came up and stared, too; then moved toward the water hole, the precious water, and drank deeply. n.i.g.g.e.r watched him as though he, too, would drink. But he did not go; remained there, with the reins dangling among the flies. Now and then his nostrils twitched and fluttered; his ears quirked in constant query.

Noon, and another effort to rise. A muttered word this time and a squinting of the eyes that was not wholly witless.

Two-Bits shifted his position. He could see his tee-pee, his black kettle on the ashes, his water bucket ... his bucket ... water bucket ... water.... He worked his lips heavily. They were burned and cracked and his mouth was an insensate orifice....

After a time he commenced to crawl, moving an inch at a time, settling back, moaning. The crusted stain on his vest took on fresh life and the flies buzzed angrily when disturbed. His arms were of little use and he progressed by slow undulations of his limbs. Once he found a crack between two rocks with a toe and shoved himself forward a foot.

"d.a.m.n..." he muttered in feeble triumph.

A fevered glow came into his eyes. His breath quickened under the effort. He moaned more; rested less.

And behind, beside or before him went the excited n.i.g.g.e.r. He muttered softly, as in encouragement, doing his best to put his hope into sounds. His heavy mane and forelock fell about his eyes, giving him a disheveled appearance, but he seemed to be trying to say:

"You're alive; you're alive! You _can_ move after all; you _can_ move! Let me help! Oh, pardner, let me help you!"

The horse pawed the earth desperately, sending stones and dirt scattering, dust drifting.

"Keep on!" he seemed to say. "Keep it up! I'm here; we'll get there somehow!"

Two-Bits gained shadows. The water was less than a hundred feet away.

He moved his head from side to side in an agony of effort and threw one hand clumsily before him. It touched sage brush and after moments of struggle he clamped his fingers about the stalk and dragged himself on, gritting his teeth against the pain. He reached a little wash and tried to rise to his feet. He could not. He floundered in effort and rolled into it, crying lowly as his torso doubled limply and he sprawled on his back.

n.i.g.g.e.r stood at the edge, snuffing, peering down. He kicked at a fly irritably and stepped down into the wash himself, nickering in tender query.

It took a long time for Two-Bits to roll over. He cried hoa.r.s.ely from the hurt of the effort and the fevered light in his eyes mounted. His mouth was no longer without sensation. It and his throat stung and smarted. Their hurt was worse than the weight of suffering on his shoulders.... He wanted water as only a man whose life is in the balance can want water!

Somehow he crawled out of the wash. It was fifty feet to the hole now.... He cut it to twenty and lay gasping, trembling, burning, n.i.g.g.e.r close beside him, first on one side, then the other, sometimes at his feet. Never, though, standing motionless in his path....

It was ten feet.... Then five. Lifting eye lids was a world of effort in itself. His mouth was open, breath sucking in the dust, but he could not close it. He made a hand's breadth and stopped. His limbs twitched spasmodically and drew up. He made a straining, strangling sound, gathering all the life that remained in his body. He rose on his elbows and on one knee. He swayed forward, he scrambled drunkenly. He pitched down and as he went he made one last, awkward attempt to push his own weight along. Then fell ... short.

The right hand half propped his body up. It slid slowly forward, impelled by the weight upon it alone, shoving light sand in its way....

Then went limp and extended.

The tip of his second finger just dented the surface of the water in the pool!

The horse switched his tail slowly, as if disconsolate at a waning hope.

"Hang it all," he might have thought. "Here I thought you were going to make it and you can't! I _wish_ I knew how to help!"

He sighed again, this time as if in despair. He waited a long time before drinking himself as if hoping that his master would move. But the body was motionless ... utterly. The shallow, quick come and go of breath was not in evidence. Two-Bits had done all that he could do for himself....

n.i.g.g.e.r moved to the lip of rock which held the water against the cliff.

He snuffed, as if to tantalize himself and then plunged his nose into the place, guzzling greedily. Great gulps ran down his long throat, little shoots of water left his lips beside the bit and fell back. He breathed and drank and made great sounds in satisfying his thirst. He lifted his head and caught his breath and let it slip out in a sigh of satisfaction ... drank again.

Finally he was through and stepped back, holding his lips close, as horses will whose mouth contains one more swallow. Then he stared at Two-Bits and moved close to him and chewed instinctively on the bit, letting the water that he did not need spill from his mouth....

It fell squarely on the back of the man's neck, spattering on his hair, running down under his shirt, driving out the flies....

Two-Bits swam back again. A strength, a pleasing chill ran through him.

He moved the one arm and the fingers slid on into the water. With a choking cry he wriggled forward and thrust his face into the pool....

After a long time he drew back and let his fevered forehead soak, breathing more easily through his mouth.

It was nearly sunset when he rolled over, slowly, painfully, weakly, but not as a man on the edge of death. He looked up at n.i.g.g.e.r standing beside him, nose fluttering encouragement. Just above him a stirrup swung to and fro in a short arc.

"After a while ... a week or so, I can ... get hold of that ... mebby,"

the man said huskily.

CHAPTER XVIII

AN INTERRUPTED PROPOSAL

The love that grew in the hearts of Tom Beck and Jane Hunter was not the only suit which approached a climax in the hills. Another existed, quite different, unknown to them, unsuspected, even, but it was not a secret to one who rode from the HC ranch.

This was the Reverend Azariah Beal. He stayed on, though a.s.suring Beck that the call might come any hour which would send him on his way. He was sent on many errands of importance, because Beck had come to believe that he could trust the clergyman as he could trust no other man and it was this riding which gave Beal his knowledge of that other love making.

Day after day he saw d.i.c.k Hilton in Devil's Hole. He saw him joined by another rider, by Bobby Cole, and knew that the Easterner spent many days at the ranch house down there in the deep valley.

Hilton treated the girl as she never had been treated before. He told her tales of cities and men and women that held her breathless and he wooed her with an artfulness which kept her unaware of love making.

When with him, as when with her father, that ready defiance, her expectation of trouble, became reduced to a wistfulness, an eager inquiry which left her, not the self-sufficient bundle of pa.s.sionate strength, but a simple mountain child.

He would ride beside her or sit at night by the fire in her father's cabin and talk for hours, giving of his experience well, for he was a glib talker. He asked nothing in return ... openly, but while he talked his eyes were on her eyes, prodding their depths, on her red mouth, hungering, on her wonderful throat, fired by desire. He bided his time, for his was a choice prize.

Now and then she talked to him of Jane Hunter and though her allusions were scornful and her face a.s.sumed that hostility, he knew that this only resulted from her envy, the curiosity which she would not let come into being. He played upon this, dropping hints of the reason for his coming west, lying insinuations of his relationships with the mistress of the big ranch, each hint a fertile seed planted in the rich soil of her imagination.

One afternoon they dismounted in a clump of willows where early in the season and in wet summers a spring bubbled under a rim rock. Now it was dry, almost dust-dry in places, and the girl sat on the gra.s.s while Hilton stretched at her feet, smoking idly.

He talked to her for long and when he paused she said, looking far away:

"I'd like to see somethin' else besides this. I'd like to have some of the chances other gals have. I'd give anything for a chance to be somebody!"

He threw away his cigarette.

"I'd give anything to give you a chance, Bobby," he said.

"Yes, but you can't!" she laughed hopelessly. "You're a gentleman and I.... Why, I'm just the daughter of a nester."

"And maybe that very combination of circ.u.mstances gives me my chance to give you yours.