The Main Chance Part 44

"Go for a doctor," said the bishop, very quietly, nodding to Saxton; "and go fast."

Wheaton followed Saxton to the hall, where they cut loose the remaining horse. Saxton flung himself upon it, and the animal sprang into a gallop at the door. Wheaton watched the horse and rider disappear through the starlight; he wished that he could go with Saxton. He turned back with sick terror to the room where Raridan lay white and still; but Wheaton was as white as he.

The bishop had rolled his overcoat into a support for Warry's head, and with a wet handkerchief laved his temples. Wheaton stood watching him, silent, and anxious to serve, but with his powers of initiative frozen in him.

"Get the flask from his pocket," said the old man; and Wheaton drew near the table, and with a shudder thrust his hand into the pocket of Raridan's coat.

"Shall I pour some?" he asked. Raridan had moved his arms slightly and groaned as Wheaton bent close to him. Wheaton detached the cup from the bottom of the flask and poured some of the brandy into it. The bishop, motioning him to stand ready with it, raised Raridan gently, and together they pressed the silver cup to his lips.

"That will do. I think he swallowed a little," said the bishop. "Bring wood, if you can," he said, "and make a fire here." Raridan's head was growing hot under his touch, and he continued to lave it gently with the wet handkerchief. There was a shed at the back of the house where wood had been kept in the old days of the Poindexter ascendancy, and Wheaton, glad of an excuse to get away from the prostrate figure on the long table, went stumbling through the hall to find this place. There was a terrible silence in the old house,--a silence that filled all the world, a silence that could not be broken, it seemed to him, save by some new thing of dread. There beyond the prairie, day would break soon in the town where he had striven and failed,--not the failure that proceeds from lack of opportunity or ability to gain the successes which men value most, but the failure of a man in self-mastery and courage.

He felt his soul shrivel in the few seconds that he stood at the door looking across the windy plain,--like a dreamer who turns from his dreams and welcomes the morning with the hope that his dream may not prove true. He drew the doors together and turned to go on his errand, lighting a match to get his bearings, when a sound on the stairway startled him; there was a figure there--the wan, frightened face of Grant Porter looked down at him. He had forgotten the boy, whom Saxton had left in the hall above. Grant shrank back on the stairs, not recognizing him. It seemed to Wheaton that there was something of loathing in the boy's movement, and that always afterward people would shrink from him.

"Is that you, Grant?" he asked. The boy did not answer. "It's all right, Grant," he added, trying to throw some kindness into his voice. "You'd better stay upstairs, until--we're ready to go."

The boy turned and stole back up the stairway, and Wheaton, encouraged by the sound of his own voice, brought wood and kindled it with some straw in the dining-room fireplace.

"Let us try the brandy again," said the bishop. Again Wheaton poured it, and they forced a little between the lips of the stricken man. Raridan's face, as Wheaton touched it with his fingers, was warm; he had expected to find it cold; he had a feeling that the man lying there must be dead.

If only help would come, Raridan might live! He would accept everything else, but to be a murderer--to have lured a man to his doom! The bishop did not speak to him save now and then a word in a low tone, to call attention to some change in Raridan, or to ask help in moving him. The dry wood burned brightly in the fireplace and lighted the room. The bishop asked the time.

"He could hardly go and come in less than two hours," said Wheaton. He lifted his head.

"They are coming now." The short patter of pony hoofs was heard and he went into the hall to open the doors. Two hors.e.m.e.n were just turning into the corral. Saxton had found the one doctor of the village at home,--a young man trained in an eastern hospital but already used to long, rough rides over the prairies. The two men threw themselves to the ground, and let their ponies run loose. Saxton did not speak to Wheaton, who followed him and the doctor into the house.

"Has he been conscious at all?" asked the doctor.

The bishop shook his head. The doctor was already busy with his examination, and the three men stood and watched him silently. Saxton stepped forward and helped, when there was need, to turn the wounded man and to strip away his clothing. The skilled fingers of the surgeon worked swiftly, producing shining instruments and sponges as he needed them, from the blue lining of his pea-jacket. Suddenly he paused and bent down close to the stricken man's heart. He poured more brandy into the silver cup and Saxton lifted Warry while the liquor was forced between his lips. The doctor stood up then and put his finger on Raridan's wrist. He had not spoken and his face was very grave. Saxton touched his arm.

"Is there nothing more you can do now?" The doctor shook his head, but bent again over Raridan, who gave a deep sigh and opened his eyes.

"John," he said in a whisper as he closed them again wearily. The doctor put Warry's hand down gently, and the others, at a glance from him, drew nearer.

"John," he repeated. His voice was stronger. The white light of dawn was struggling now against the flame of the fireplace. John stood on one side of the table, the doctor on the other. The old bishop's tall figure rose majestically by the head of the dying man. Wheaton alone hung aloof, but his eyes were riveted on Warry Raridan's face.

"It was another--another of my foolish chances," said Warry faintly and slowly, the words coming hard; but all in the room could hear. He looked from one to another, and seemed to know who the doctor was and why he was there.

"The boy's safe and well. We got what we came for. Just once--just once,--I got what I came for. It wasn't fair--in the dark that way--"

His voice failed and the doctor gave him more brandy. He lay very still for several minutes, with his eyes closed, while the three men stood as they had been, save that the surgeon now kept his finger on Warry's wrist.

"I never--quite arrived--quite--arrived," he went on, with his eyes on the old bishop, as if this were something that he would understand; "but you must forgive all that." He smiled in a patient, tired way.

"You have been a good man, Warry, there's nothing that can trouble you."

"I was really doing better, wasn't I, John?" he went on, still smiling.

"You had helped,--you two,"--he looked from his young friend to the older one, with the intentness of his near-sighted gaze. "Tell them"--his eyes closed and his voice sank until it was almost inaudible,--"tell them at the hill--Evelyn--the light of all--of all--the year."

The doctor had put down Warry's wrist and turned away. The dawn-wind sweeping across the prairie shook the windows in the room and moaned far away in the lonely house. The bishop's great hand rested gently on the dying man's head; his voice rose in supplication,--the words coming slowly, as if he remembered them from a far-off time:

_Unto G.o.d's gracious mercy and protection we commit thee._ Saxton dropped to his knees, and a sob broke from him. _The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee._ The old man's voice was very low, and sank to a whisper. _The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace, both now and evermore._

No one moved until the doctor put his head down to Warry's heart to listen. Then Wheaton watched him with fascinated eyes as he gathered up his instruments, which shone cold and bright in the gray light of the morning.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

HOME THROUGH THE SNOW

There was much to do, and John Saxton had been back and forth twice between the ranch house and the village before the sun had crept high into the heavens. The little village had been slow to grasp the fact of the tragedy at its doors which had already carried its name afar. There was much to do and yet it was so pitifully little after all! Warry Raridan was dead, and eager men were scouring the country for his murderer; but John Saxton sat in the room where Warry had died. It seemed to John that the end had come of all the world. He sharpened his grief with self-reproach that he had been a party to an exploit so foolhardy: they should never have attempted a midnight descent upon an unknown foe; and yet it was Raridan's own plan.

It was like Warry, too, and the thought turned John's memory into grooves that time was to deepen. This was the only man who had ever brought him friendship. The first night at the club in Clarkson, when Raridan had spoken to him, came back, vivid in all its details. He recalled with a great ache in his heart their talk there in the summer twilight; the charm that he had felt first that night, and how Warry had grown more and more into his life, and brightened it. He could not, in the fullness of his sorrow, see himself again walking alone the ways they had known together. Even the town seemed to him in these early hours an unreal place; it was not possible that it lay only a few hours distant, with its affairs going on uninterruptedly; nor could he realize that he would himself take up there the threads of his life that now seemed so hopelessly broken.

Saxton had ministered to the boy Grant with characteristic kindness.

Grant knew now of Warry's death, and this, with his own sharp experiences, had unnerved him. He clung to Saxton, and John soothed him until he slept, in one of the upper chambers.

Wheaton stood suddenly in the door, and beckoned to Saxton, who went out to him. They had exchanged no words since that moment when the old bishop's prayer had stilled the room where Warry Raridan died. Through the events of the morning hours, Wheaton had been merely a spectator of what was done; Saxton had hardly noticed him, and glancing at Wheaton now, he was shocked at the look of great age that had come upon him.

"I want to speak to you a minute,--you and Bishop Delafield," said Wheaton. The bishop was pacing up and down in the outer hall, which had been quietly cleaned and put in order by men from the village. Wheaton led the way to the room once used as the ranch office.

"Will you sit down, gentlemen?" He spoke with so much calmness that the others looked at him curiously. The bishop and Saxton remained standing, and Wheaton repeated, sharply, "Will you sit down?" The two men sat down side by side on the leather-covered bench that ran around the room, and Wheaton stood up before them; and so they met together here, the three men left of the four who had come to the ranch house in the early morning.

"I have something to say to you, before you--before we go," he said.

Their silence seemed to confuse him for a moment, but he regained his composure. He looked from Saxton to the bishop, who nodded, and he went on:

"The man who killed Warry Raridan was my brother," he said, and waited.

Saxton started slightly; his numbed senses quickened under Wheaton's words, and in a flash he saw the explanation of many things.

"He was my brother," Wheaton went on quietly. "He had wanted money from me. I had refused to help him. He carried away Grant Porter thinking to injure me in that way. It was that, I think, as much as the hope of getting a large sum for the boy's return."

"But--" began the bishop.

"There are many questions that will occur to you--and to others,"

Wheaton resumed, with an a.s.surance that transformed him for the moment.

He spoke as of events in ages past which had no relation to himself.

"There are many things that might have been different, that would have been different, if I had not been"--he hesitated and then finished abruptly--"if I had not been a coward."

A great quiet lay upon the house; the two men remained sitting, and Wheaton stood before them with his arms crossed, the bishop and Saxton watching him, and Wheaton looking from one to the other of his companions. Contempt and anger were rising in John Saxton's heart; but the old bishop waited calmly; this was not the first time that a troubled soul had opened its door to him.

"Go on," he said, kindly.

"My brother and I ran away from the little Ohio town where we were born.

Our father was a harness maker. I hated the place. I think I hated my father and mother." He paused, as we do sometimes when we have suddenly spoken a thought which we have long carried in our hearts but have never uttered. The words had elements of surprise for James Wheaton, and he waited, weighing his words and wishing to deal justly with himself. "My brother was a bad boy; he had never gone to school, as I had; he had several times been guilty of petty stealing. I joined him once in a theft; we were arrested, but he took the blame and was punished, and I went free. I am not sure that I was any better, or that I am now any better than he is. But that is the only time I ever stole."

Saxton remembered that Warry had once said of James Wheaton that he would not steal.