The One-Way Trail Part 36

She found it at last, and straightened out its creases. She was thankful for the occupation, and lingered over it before she read it over again.

"DEAR EVE,

"Has Elia returned home? He left camp two mornings ago, before sun up. I've been hunting him ever since, but can't locate him. I've a shrewd idea that he's on the trail of your Will, but can't be sure. Anyway, I'm worried to death about him, and, as a last resource, thought he might have gone back to you. Send word by the bearer.

"Yours, "PETER BLUNT."

Elia gone. The thought filled her with dismay. Elia was the one person in the world she still clung to. And now he had gone--been spirited away.

She thought of the poor stricken lad with his crooked body. She loved him as she might have loved a child of her own. Yes, he was much more to her than her brother. Had not she cared and struggled for him all these years? He had become part of her very life.

And Peter, in whose care she had left him, had failed her. Who on earth could she trust, if not Peter? She blamed him, blamed him bitterly; but, in her heart, she knew she had no right to. Peter would not willingly hurt her, and she knew well enough that if Elia had gone it was through no carelessness of this gentle, kindly man.

She put the note away, and sat staring into the fire. The change of thought had eased the pitch of her nerves for a moment. If she could only blot that other out altogether--but even as the wish was formulated in her brain, the horror and dread were on her again crushing her.

She sprang to her feet and paced the room with rapid, uneven strides.

She could not rest. The dread of the return of the vigilantes obsessed her. She found herself vaguely wondering if they were all out. Was Doc Crombie out? No, she knew he wasn't. That was something. That was the man she most dreaded. To her heated imagination he seemed inevitable.

He could not fail in his self-imposed mission. He would hunt his man down. He would never pause until the wretched victim was swinging at the rope end.

She shuddered. This sort of thing had never before impressed its horror upon her as it did now. How should it? It had always seemed so far away, so remote from her life. And now--oh, G.o.d, to think that its shadow was so near her!

Then for a second her struggling brain eased with an undefined hope.

She was thinking of how they had tried to track Will before, and how they had failed. She tried to tell herself that then their incentive had been even greater. Had it not been the greed of gold? And she well knew its power with these men. Yes, it suggested hope. But that one pa.s.sing gleam vanished all too swiftly. She felt in her inmost heart that no such luck would serve him now. These men were bloodhounds on a trail of blood. They were demanding a life, nor would they lift their noses from the scent until their work was accomplished.

It was not the man. It was not the thought of his life that drove her frantic now. It was the horror of such an end to her wretched marriage. The wife of a cattle-thief! The widow of a man lynched by his fellow citizens! She buried her face in her hands, and hard, dry sobs racked her body.

For a moment she stood thus. Then she suddenly lifted her head, her eyes staring, her whole att.i.tude alert, intent. There was a sound outside. She heard the clank of the latch. And now an awkward shuffling gait just outside her door. She moved toward the parlor and stood listening in the doorway.

Suddenly a light broke in upon her. That awkward footstep! She knew it! Her relief was heartbreaking. It was Elia. With a rush she was at the door, and the next moment she dragged the boy in, and was crooning over him like some mother over a long-lost child.

But the boy pushed her away roughly. His calm face and gentle eyes now shone with excitement, one of those excitements she so dreaded in him.

"Quit, sis," he cried sharply. "I ain't no use fer sech s...o...b..rin'. I ain't a kid. Say----"

He broke off, eyeing her with his head bent sideways in the extraordinary att.i.tude which a cruel nature had inflicted upon him.

"Yes."

Eve's eyes were full of a yearning tenderness. His rebuff meant nothing to her devotion. She believed it to be only his way. Part of the cruel disease for which he must be pitied and not blamed.

But his broken sentence remained uncompleted. His eyes were fixed upon her face bland yet sparkling with the thought behind them.

"Peter sent word to me to-day that you--you were lost," Eve said.

The boy laughed without relaxing a muscle.

"Did he? He's a fule someways."

He pa.s.sed into the kitchen and took Eve's rocking-chair. She followed him, and stood leaning against the table.

"Then you--you didn't get lost?"

"Say, you folks make me sick. Why 'ud I get lost more'n other fellers?

You guess I'm a kid--but I ain't. Lost! Gee! Say, sis, Peter orter know'd wher' I was. I told him I was goin'. An' I went. Sure I went."

He rubbed his delicate hands together in his glee. His eyes sparkled again with rising excitement. But Eve forgot her fears for him now; she was interested. She was lifted out of her own despair by his evident joy, and waited for him to tell his story.

But Elia had his own way of doing things, and that way was rarely a pleasant one. Nor was it now, as Eve was quickly to learn.

"Yes, sure, Peter's a fule, someways--but I like him. He's real good.

Say, sis, he's goin' to give me all the gold he finds. He said so.

Yep. An' he'll do it. Guess he's good. That's sure why I didn't do what he told me not to."

He sat blinking up at his sister with impish amus.e.m.e.nt. Suddenly something in his expression stirred his sister to alarm. Nor could she have said how it came to her, or what the nature of the alarm. It was there undefined, but none the less certain.

"What did he tell you not to do?" she asked anxiously.

"Give him away. Say, here, I'll tell you. It's a dandy yarn. Y'see I ain't just as other folks are, sis; there's things I ken do, an'

things I ken understand wot other folks can't. Say, I ken trail like--like a wolf. Well, I guess one day I told Peter I could trail. I told him I could trail your Will, an' find out wher' he got his gold."

"And did you?"

The girl's demand was almost a shriek. The boy nodded his bent head wisely, and his eyes lit with malice.

"And you didn't give him away? You wouldn't--you wouldn't? He's my husband."

The pleading in his sister's voice was pitiful to hear.

"That's sure what Peter made me promise--or I wouldn't get his gold."

Eve breathed more freely. But her relief was short-lived.

The boy began to laugh. It was a soft chuckle that found no expression in his face. The sound of it sent a shudder through the hara.s.sed woman.

"No. I didn't give him away," he said suddenly. "Sis, I trailed an'

trailed, an' I found him. Gee, I found him. He was diggin' his gold, but it was in the hides of cattle, an' with a red-hot brandin' iron. Gee! I watched him, but he didn't see me. Oh, no, I took care of that. If he'd seen me he'd sure have killed me. Say, sis, your Will's a cattle-thief. You've heerd tell of 'em, ain't you? Do you know what they do to cattle-thieves? I'll tell you.

They hang 'em. They hang 'em slow. They haul 'em up, an' their necks stretch, an'--an' then they die. Then the coyotes come round an' jump up an' try to eat 'em. An' they hang there till they stink.

That's how they treat cattle-rustlers. An' Will's a cattle-rustler."

"For G.o.d's sake, be quiet!"

The woman's face was terrible in its horror, but it only seemed to give the boy pleasure, for he went on at once.

"Ther' ain't no use in squealin'. I didn't give him away. I'd like to, because I'd like to see Will with his neck pulled sure. But I want Peter's gold, an' I wouldn't get it if I give him away."

"Did you come straight back here?" Eve questioned him sharply, a faint hope stirring her.

"Yep, sis, straight here." He laughed silently while he watched her with feline glee. "An' jest as fast as I could get, too. You see, I guessed I might miss Doc Crombie."

"Doc Crombie?" The girl's eyes dilated. She stood like one petrified.