Trail's End Part 10

But onward through the dark he struggled and stumbled, at a pace that would have taxed an unhampered man to maintain, the strain of the cutting rope about his body and arms like a band of hot iron. Should a brakeman appear now on top of the car to which he was tied, Morgan knew he had little chance of making himself heard through the noise of the train, spent as he was already, gasping short breaths which he seemed unable to drive into his burning lungs.

How long could human strength and determination to cling to life endure this punishment! how long until he must fall and drag, unable to regain his feet, to be pounded at that cruel rope's end into a mangled, abhorrent thing!

On, the grind of wheels, the jolt of loose-jointed cars over the clanking track drowning even the noise of the engine laboring up that merciful grade; on, staggering and swaying, flung like a pebble on a cord, shoulder now against the car, feet now flying, half lifted from the ground, among the stones of the ditch, over the uneven earth, across gullies, over crossings where there paused no traveler in the black despair of that night to give him the help for which he perished.

On, the breath that he drew in gasping stridulation like liquid fire in his throat; on, the calm stars of the unemotional universe above his head; on, the wind of the wide prairie lands striking his face with their indefinable sweet scents which even clutching death did not deny his turbulent senses; on, pain in every nerve; on, joints straining and starting in their sockets; on, dragged, whipped, lashed from ditch to ties' end, flung from rocking car to crumbling bank, where jagged rocks cut his face and freed his blood to streak coldly upon his cheek.

There was no likelihood that the train would stop in many miles--even now it was gaining speed, the engine over the crest of the grade. Only for a post that he might snub that stubborn strand of leather upon! only for a bridge where his swinging weight might break it!

Faster--the train was going faster! The pain of his torture dulling as overcharged nerves refused to carry the growing load, Morgan still clung to his feet, pounding along in the dark. He was growing numb in body and mind, as one overwhelmed by a narcotic drug, yet he clung to the desperate necessity of keeping on his feet.

How far he had come, how long he might yet endure, he had no thought to measure. He lived only for the insistent, tenacious purpose of keeping on his feet, rather than of keeping on his feet to live. He must run and pant, under the lash of nature that would not let him drop down and die, as long as a spark of consciousness remained or flying limbs could equal the speed of the train, helped on by the drag of that rawhide strand that would not break.

No thought of death appalled him now as at first; its revolting terror at that rope's end had no place in his thought this crowded, surging moment. Only to live, to fight and live, to run, unfeeling feet striking like wood upon the wayside stones, and run, as a maimed, scorched creature before a fire, to fall into some cool place and live. And live!

and live! In spite of all, to live!

And presently the ground fell away beneath his feet, a swish of branches was about him, the soft, cool touch of leaves against his face. A moment he was flung and tangled among willows--it was a strange revelation through a c.h.i.n.k of consciousness in that turmoil of life and death that swept the identifying scent of willows into his nostrils--and then he dropped, striking softly where water ran, and closed his eyes, thinking it must be the end.

CHAPTER VIII

THE AVATISM OF A MAN

Morgan knew that the cogs of the slow machinery by which he had been hoisted from the saddle to the professorial chair had slipped. As he lay there on his back in the shallow ripple of the Arkansas River, the long centipede railroad bridge dark-lined across the broad stream, he turned it in his mind and knew that it was so.

He had gone back in that brief time of terrific torture to the plane from which he had risen by hard and determined effort to make of himself a man in the world of consequence and achievement; back to the savagery of the old days when he rode the range in summer glare and winter storm.

For it was his life's one aim and intention now to rise from that cool bed in the river presently and go back to Ascalon, try by sound of voice those who had subjected him to this torture, separating by that test his heroic friend from the guilty. The others he intended to kill, man by man, down to the last unfeeling brute.

The water was not more than two or three inches deep where he lay, but a little way beyond he could hear it pa.s.sing with greater volume among the spiles of the bridge. Fortune had spared him a fall into the deeper channel, where even a foot of water might have drowned him, strengthless and fettered as he was. Fate had reserved him for this hour of vengeance. He turned, wallowing in the shallow water to soak the rawhide rope, which was already growing soft, the pressure and pain of it considerably eased on his arms.

He drank, and buried his face in the tepid water, grateful for life, exulting in the fierce fire that rose in him, triumphing already in the swift atonement he would call on those wretches to make. Back again to the ethical standard of those old, hard-riding, hard-drinking, hard-swearing days on the range, the refinements of his education submerged, and not one regret for the slip.

Morgan did not realize in that moment of surrender to the primitive desires which clamored within him how badly he was wrenched and mauled.

He tried the rawhide, swelling his bound arms in the hope that the slipknot would give a little, but was unable to bring pressure enough on the rope to ease it in the least.

Eager to begin his harvest of revenge before the men from the Nueces struck south again over the long trail, Morgan determined to start at once in search of somebody to free him from his bonds. He could not return to Ascalon in this shameful plight, his ignominy upon him, an object of derision. There must be somebody living along the river close at hand who would cut his bonds and give him a plaster to stick over the wound he could feel drawing and gaping in his cheek.

When it came to getting to his feet, Morgan learned that his desire had outgrown his strength. A sickness swept him as he struggled to his knees; blood burst from his nostrils, the taste of blood was on his tongue. Dizzy, sick to the core of his heart, sore with a thousand bruises, shot with a thousand pains which set up with every movement like the clamor of hara.s.sing wolves, he dragged himself on his knees to the edge of the water, where he lay on his face in the warm sand.

He waited there a long time for the gathering of strength enough to carry him on his quest of a friendly hand. Only the savage determination to strike his enemies down, head by head, kept him from perishing as he lay there sore and bruised, chilled to the marrow in his welling agony even that hot summer night.

Dawn was breaking when he at last found strength to mount the low bank through the enc.u.mbering brush and vines. His arms were senseless below the elbows, swollen almost to bursting of veins and skin by the gorged blood. There was no choice in directions, only to avoid the town. He faced up the river and trudged on, the cottonwood leaves beginning their everlasting symphony, that is like the murmur of rain, as the wakening wind moved them overhead.

Morgan stumbled over tin cans at the edge of the tall gra.s.s when the rising sun was shining across his unprotected eyes. He stood for a little while, wondering at first sight if this were only another mirage of the plagued imagination, such as had risen like ephemera while he lay on the sand bar at the river's edge. He stood with weak legs braced wide apart to fix his reeling senses on the sight--the amazing, comforting sight, of a field of growing corn. Only a little field, more properly a patch, but it was tall and green, in full ta.s.sel, the delicate sweet of its blossoms strong on the dew-damp morning.

Beyond the field he could see the roof of a sod house, and a little of the brown wall that rose not much higher than the corn. Gra.s.s had grown on the roof, for it was made of strips of sod, also, and turned sere and brown in the sun. A wire fence stood a p.r.i.c.kly barrier between roaming cattle and this little field of succulent fodder. Morgan directed his course to skirt the field, and came at last to the cabin door.

In front of the house there was no fence, but a dooryard that seemed to embrace the rest of the earth. Around the door the ground was trampled and bare; in front of the house three horses stood, saddled and waiting, bridle reins on the ground. It looked like a cow camp to Morgan; it seemed as if he had come back home. A dog rose slowly from where it lay across the door, bristles rising, foot lifted as if the creature paused between flight and attack, setting up such an alarm that the horses bolted a little way and stood wondering.

A woman came to the door, lifted her hands in silent astonishment, leaning a little to see.

"Heavens above! look at that man!" she cried, her words sounding as from a great distance in Morgan's dulling ears.

Morgan saw her start toward him, running. He tried to step forward to meet her, but only his body moved in accord with his will. The earth seemed to rise and embrace him, letting him down softly, as the arms of a friend.

It was a new pain that brought Morgan to his senses, the pain of returning life to his half-dead arms. Somebody was standing beside him holding these members raised to let the blood drain out of them, chafing them, and there was a smell of camphor and strong spirits in the place.

"The rope wouldn't 'a' slipped _down_, if they was tryin' to hang him, anyhow," somebody said with conclusive finality.

"Looks like they la.s.soed him and drug him," another said, full of the awe that hushes the human voice when one stands beside the dead.

"Whoever done it ought to be skinned alive!" a woman declared, and Morgan thanked her in his heart for her sympathy, although there was a weight of such absolute weakness on his eyes that he could not open them to see her face.

There was a dim sound of something being stirred in a gla.s.s, and the nerve-waking scent of more ardent spirits.

"If this don't fetch him to," said the voice of the first speaker, the deep pectoral tone of a seasoned man, "you jump your horse and go for the doctor, Fred."

Morgan shook his head to throw that obstinate weight from his eyes, or thought he shook it, but it was only the shadow of a movement. Slight as it was it brought an exclamation of relief in another voice, a woman's voice, also, tuned in the music of youth.

"Oh! he moved!" she said. And she was the one who stood beside him, holding aloft and chafing his blood-gorged arm.

"Blamed if he didn't! Here--try a little of this, son."

Morgan was gathering headway out of the fog so rapidly now that he began to feel ashamed of this helpless situation in which so many kind hands were ministering to him as if he were a sick horse. He made a more determined effort to open his eyes, succeeding this time, although it seemed to call for as much strength to lift his lids as to shoulder a sack of wheat. He saw a large hand holding a spoon hovering near his mouth, and the outline of big shoulders in a red shirt. Morgan swallowed what was offered him, to feel it go tingling through his nerves with vivifying warmth, like a message of cheer over a telegraph wire. The large man who administered the dose was delighted. He spoke encouragingly, working the spoon faster, as a man blows eagerly when he sees a flame start weakly in a doubtful fire. The woman with the voice of youth, who stood on Morgan's left hand, gently put his arm down, as if modesty would no longer countenance this office of tenderness to a conscious man.

"Any feelin' in your hands?" the man inquired, bending a whiskered face down near Morgan's.

"Plenty of it, thank you," Morgan replied, his voice stubborn as a rusty hinge.

"You'll be all right then, there's no bones broken as far as I can locate 'em. You just stretch out and take it easy, you'll be all right."

"I gave up--I gave up--too easy," Morgan said, slowly, like a very tired man.

"Lands alive! gave up!" said the matron of the household, who still held Morgan's arm up to drain off the congested blood. "Look at your face, look at your feet! Gave up--lands alive!"

"You're busted up purty bad, old feller," said a young man who seemed to appear suddenly at Morgan's feet, where he stood looking down with the most friendly and feeling expression imaginable in his wholesome brown face.

"That cut on your face ain't deep, it could be closed up and stuck with strips of plaster and only leave a shallow scar, but it ought to be done while it's fresh," the boss of the ranch said.

"I'd be greatly obliged to you," Morgan told him, by way of agreement to the dressing of his wound.

By the time the pioneer of the Arkansas had treated his mysteriously injured patient's hurts, Morgan had come to himself completely. He was relieved to know that his collapse at the threshold of that hospitable home was due to the suffering of his bound arms, rather than any internal rupture or concussion as he at first feared.

Already his thoughts were running forward, his blood was pounding in his arteries, in vengeful eagerness to take up the trail of the men who had subjected him to this inhuman ordeal. He could not hope to repay them cruelty for cruelty, for he was not a man who did much crippling when it came to handling a gun, but if he had to follow them to the Nueces, even to the Rio Grande, for his toll, then he would follow.