The Rangeland Avenger Part 28

"The end of it came somehow. I found a flood of people calling to me and pressing around me, and all the time I was thinking of nothing but the new ring on my finger and the weight--the horrible weight of it!

"We went back to my father's house. I managed to get away from all the merrymaking and go to my room. The minute the door closed behind me and shut away their voices and singing into the distance, I felt that I had saved one last minute of freedom. I went to the window and looked out at the mountains. The stars were coming out.

"All at once my knees gave way, and I began to weep on the window sill.

I heard voices coming, and I knew that I mustn't let them see me with the tears running down my face. But the tears wouldn't stop coming.

"I ran to the door and locked it. Then someone tried to open the door, and I heard the voice of my Aunt Jane calling. I gathered all my nerve and made my voice steady. I told her that I couldn't let anyone in, that I was preparing a surprise for them.

"'Are you happy, dear?' asked Aunt Jane.

"I made myself laugh. 'So happy!' I called back to her.

"Then they went away. But as soon as they were gone I knew that I could never go out and meet them. Partly because I had no surprise for them, partly because I didn't want them to see the tear stains and my red eyes. Somehow little silly things were as big and as important as the main thing--that I could never be the real wife of Jude Cartwright. Can you understand?"

"Jig, once when I had a deer under my trigger I let him go because he had a funny-shaped horn. Sure, it's the little things that run a gent's life. Go on!"

"I knew that I had to escape. But how could I escape in a place where everybody knew me? First I thought of changing my clothes. Then another thing--man's clothes! The moment that idea came, I was sure it was the thing. I opened the door very softly. There was no one upstairs just then. I ran into my cousin's room--he's a youngster of fifteen--and s.n.a.t.c.hed the first boots and clothes that I could find and rushed back to my own room.

"I jumped into them, hardly knowing what I was doing. For they were beginning to call to me from downstairs. I opened the door and called back to them, and I heard Jude Cartwright answer in a big voice.

"I turned around and saw myself in the mirror in boy's clothes, with my face as white as a sheet, my eyes staring, my hair pouring down over my shoulders. I ran to the bureau and found a scissors. Then I hesitated a moment. You don't dream how hard it was to do. My hair was long, you see, below my waist. And I had always been proud of it.

"But I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth and cut it off with great slashes, close to my head. Then I stood with all that ma.s.s of hair shining in my hand and a queer, light feeling in my head.

"But I felt that I was free. I clamped on my cousin's hat--how queer it felt with all that hair cut off! I bundled the hair into my pocket, because they mustn't dream what I had done. Then someone beat on the door.

"'Coming!' I called to them.

"I ran to the window. The house was built on a slope, and it was not a very long drop to the ground, I suppose. But to me it seemed neck-breaking, that distance. It was dark, and I climbed out and hung by my hands, but I couldn't find courage to let go. Then I tried to climb back, but there wasn't any strength in my arms.

"I cried out for help, but the singing downstairs must have m.u.f.fled the sound. My fingers grew numb--they slipped on the sill--and then I fell.

"The fall stunned me, I guess, for a moment. When I opened my eyes, I saw the stars and knew that I was free. I started up then and struck straight across country. At first I didn't care where I went, so long as it was away, but when I got over the first hill I made up a plan.

That was to go for the railroad and take a train. I did it.

"There was a long walk ahead of me before I reached the station, and with my cousin's big boots wobbling on my feet I was very tired when I reached it. There were some freight cars on the siding, and there was hay on the floor of one of them. I crawled into the open door and went to sleep.

"After a while I woke up with a great jarring and jolting and noise. I found the car pitch dark. The door was closed, and pretty soon, by the roar of the wheels under me and the swing of the floor of the car, I knew that an engine had picked up the empty cars.

"It was a terrible time for me. I had heard stories of tramps locked into cars and starving there before the door was opened. Before the morning shone through the cracks of the boards, I went through all the pain of a death from thirst. But before noon the train stopped, and the car was dropped at a siding. I climbed out when they opened the door.

"The man who saw me only laughed. I suppose he could have arrested me.

"'All right, kid, but you're hitting the road early in life, eh!'

"Those were the first words that were spoken to me as a man.

"I didn't know where I should go, but the train had taken me south, and that made me remember a town where my father had lived for a long time--Sour Creek. I started to get to this place.

"The hardest thing I had to do was the very first thing, and that was to take my ragged head of hair into a barber shop and get it trimmed. I was sure that the barber would know I was a girl, but he didn't suspect.

"'Been a long time in the wilds, youngster, eh?' was all he said.

"And then I knew that I was safe, because people here in the West are not suspicious. They let a stranger go with one look. By the time I reached Sour Creek I was nearly over being ashamed of my clothes. And then I found this place and work as a schoolteacher. I think you know the rest." She leaned close to Sinclair. "Was I wrong to leave him?"

Sinclair rubbed his chin. "You'd ought to have told him straight off,"

he said firmly. "But seeing you went through with the wedding--well, take it all in all, your leaving of him was about the rightest thing I ever heard of."

Quiet fell between them.

"But what am I going to do? And where is it all going to end?" a small voice inquired of Sinclair at last.

"Roll up in them blankets and go to sleep," he advised her curtly. "I'm figuring steady on this here thing, Jig."

Jig followed that advice. Sinclair had left the fire and was walking up and down from one end of the little plateau to the other, with a strong, long step. As for the girl, she felt that an incalculable burden had been shifted from her shoulders by the telling of this tale.

That burden, she knew, must have fallen on another person, and it was not unpleasant to know that Riley Sinclair was the man.

Gradually the sense of strangeness faded. As she grew drowsy, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for her to be up here at the top of the world with a man she had; known two days. And, before she slept, the last thing of which she was conscious was the head of Sinclair in the broad sombrero, brushing to and fro across the stars.

18

With a bang the screen door of Sheriff Kern's office had creaked open and shut four times at intervals, and each man, entering in turn with a "Howdy" to the sheriff, had stamped the dust out of the wrinkles of his riding boots, hitched up his trousers carefully, and slumped into a chair. Not until the last of his handpicked posse had taken his place did the sheriff begin his speech.

"Gents," he said, "how long have I been a sheriff?"

"Eighteen to twenty years," said Bill Wood. "And it's been twenty years of bad times for the safecrackers and gunmen of these parts."

"Thanks," said the sheriff hastily. "And how many that I've once put my hands on have got loose?"

Again Bill Wood answered, being the senior member.

"None. Your score is exactly one hundred percent, sheriff."

Kern sighed. "Gents," he said, "the average is plumb spoiled."

It caused a general lifting of heads and then a respectful silence. To have offered sympathy would have been insulting; to ask questions was beneath their dignity, but four pairs of eyes burned with curiosity.

The least curious was Arizona. He was a fat, oily man from the southland, whose past was unknown in the vicinity of Woodville, and Arizona happened to be by no means desirous of rescuing that past from oblivion. He held the southlander's contempt for the men and ways of the north. His presence in the office was explained by the fact that he had long before discovered it to be an excellent thing to stand in with the sheriff. After this statement from Kern, therefore, he first glanced at his three companions, and, observing their agitation, he became somewhat stirred himself and puckered his fat brows above his eyes, as he glanced back at Kern.

"You've heard of the killing of Quade?" asked the sheriff.

"Yesterday," said Red Chalmers.

"And that they got the killer?"

"Nope."