Trail's End Part 35

"I came for Mr. Morgan!" she panted, as weak, it seemed, as a wounded bird. "I thought he came here--he had your horse."

"He's here, honey," Mrs. Stilwell told her, consoling her like a hurt child.

Morgan did not come forward. He stood as he had risen from his chair at the table, one hand on the cloth, his head bent as if in a travail of deepest thought. The shaft of tender new sunlight reaching in through the open door struck his shoulders and breast, leaving his face in the shadow that well suited the mood darkening over his soul like a storm. A thousand thoughts rose up and swirled within him, a thousand harsh charges, a thousand seeds of bitterness. Rhetta, leaning to peer under the lintel of the low door, could see him there, and she reached out her hand, appealing without a word.

"He is here, honey," Mrs. Stilwell repeated, a.s.suringly, comfortingly.

"Tell him--tell him--Craddock's come!" Rhetta said.

"Craddock?" said Stilwell, p.r.o.nouncing the name with inflection of surprise. "Oh, I thought something awful had happened to somebody." He turned with the ease of indifference in his manner, to go back and finish his meal. "Well, didn't you look for him to come back? I knew all the time he'd come."

Morgan lifted his head. The sun, broken by Rhetta's shadow, brightened on the floor at his feet, and spread its beam upon his breast like a golden stole. The old wound on his check bone was a scar now, irregular, broad from the crude surgery that had bound it but illy. Its dark disfigurement increased the somber gravity of his face, sunburned and wind-hardened as any ranger's who rode that prairie waste. From where he stood Morgan could not see the girl's face, only her restless hand on the bridle rein, the brown of her riding skirt, the beginning of white at her waist.

"There ought to be men enough in Ascalon to take care of Craddock,"

Violet said.

"He's not alone, some of those Texas cowboys are with him," Rhetta explained, her voice firmer, her words quicker. "Mr. Morgan is still marshal--he gave me his badge, but please tell him I didn't--I forgot to turn it in with his resignation."

"I don't see that it's Cal's fight this time, Rhetty," Stilwell said.

"He's done enough for them yellow pups over in Ascalon, to be yelped at and cussed for savin' their dirty hides."

"They're looking for him, they think he's hiding!"

"Well, let 'em look. If they come over here they'll find him--Cal ain't makin' no secret of where he's at. And they'll find somebody standin'

back to back with him, any time they want to come." Stilwell's resentment of Ascalon's ingrat.i.tude toward his friend was plainer in his mouth than print.

"They're going to burn the town to drive him out!" Rhetta said, gasping in the terror that shook her heart.

"I guess it'll be big enough to hold all the people that's in it when they're through," said Stilwell, unfeelingly.

"Here's his badge," said Rhetta, offering it frantically. "Tell him he's still marshal!"

"Yes, you can come for him--now!" said Violet, accusingly. "I told you--you remember now what I told you!"

"O Violet, Violet! If you knew what I've paid for that--if you knew!"

"Not as much as you owe him, if it was the last drop of blood in your heart!" said Violet. And she turned away, and went and stood by the door.

"They'll burn the town!" Rhetta moaned. "Oh, isn't anybody going to help me--won't you call him, Violet?"

"No," said Violet. "He can hear you--he'll come if he wants to--if he's fool enough to do it again!"

"Violet!" her mother cautioned.

"How many are with him?" Fred inquired.

"Seven or eight--I didn't see them all. Pa's collecting a posse to guard the bank--they're going to rob it!"

"They're welcome to all I've got in it," Stilwell said. "You better come in and have a cup of coffee, Rhetty, before----"

"The one they call the Dutchman's there, and Drumm----"

"Drumm?" Fred and his father spoke like a chorus, both of them jumping to alertness.

"And some others of that gang Mr. Morgan drove out of town. They were setting the hotel afire when I left!"

Stilwell did not wait for all of it. He was in the house at a jump, reaching down his guns which hung beside the door. Close after him Fred came rushing in, s.n.a.t.c.hing his weapons from the buffalo horns on the wall.

"I'm goin' to git service on that man!" Stilwell said. "Are you goin'

with us, Cal?"

But Cal Morgan did not reply. He went to the bedroom where he had slept, took up his gun, stood looking at it a moment as if considering something, s.n.a.t.c.hed his hat from the bedpost and turned back, buckling his belt. Mrs. Stilwell and Violet were struggling with husband and brother to restrain them from rushing off to this battle, raising a turmoil of pleading and protesting at the door.

As Morgan pa.s.sed Stilwell, who was greatly impeded in his efforts to buckle on his guns by his wife's clinging arms and pa.s.sionate pleadings to remain at home, Fred broke away from his sister and ran for the kitchen door.

"Let Drumm go--let all of them go--let the cattle go, let everything go!

none of it's worth riskin' your life for!" Stilwell's affectionate good wife pleaded with him.

"Now, Mother, I'm not goin' to git killed," Morgan heard Stilwell say, his very a.s.surance calming. But the poor woman, who perhaps had recollections of past battles and perils which he had gone through, burst out again, weeping, and clung to him as if she could not let him go.

Morgan paused a moment at the threshold, as if reconsidering something.

Violet, who had stood leaning her head on her bent arm, weeping that Fred was rushing to throw his life away, lifted her tearful face, reached out and touched his arm.

"Must you go?" she asked.

For reply Morgan put out his hand as if to say farewell. She took it, pressed it a moment to her breast, and ran away, choked on the grief she could not utter. Morgan stepped out into the sun.

Rhetta Thayer stood at the door, a little aside, as if waiting for him, as if knowing he would come. She was agitated by the anxious hope that spoke out of her white face, but restrained by a fear that could not hide in her wide-straining eyes. She moved almost imperceptibly toward him, her lips parted as if to speak, but said nothing.

As Morgan lifted his hand to his hat in grave salute, pa.s.sing on, she offered him the badge of his office which she had held gripped in her hand. He took it, inclining his head as in acknowledgment of its safe keeping through the night, and hastened on to one of the horses that stood dozing on three legs in the early sun.

As he left her, Rhetta followed a few quick steps, a cry rising in her heart for him to stay a moment, to spare her one word of forgiveness out of his grim, sealed lips. But the cry faltered away to a great, stifling sob, while tears rose hot in her eyes, making him dim in her sight as he threw the rein over the horse's head, starting the animal out of its sleep with a little squatting jump. She stood so, stretching out her hands to him, while he, unbending in his stern answer to the challenge of duty, unseeing in the hard bitterness of his heart, swung into the saddle and rode away.

Rhetta groped for her saddle, blind in her tears. Morgan was hidden by the dust that hung in the quiet morning behind him as she mounted and followed.

Half a mile or so along the road, Fred pa.s.sed her, bending low as he rode, as if his desire left the saddle and carried him ahead of his horse; a little while, and Stilwell thundered by, leaving her last and alone on that road leading to what adventures her heart shrunk in her bosom to contemplate.

Ahead of her the smoke of Ascalon's destruction rose high.

CHAPTER XXVI

IN THE SQUARE AT ASCALON

Morgan had time for a bitter train of reflection as he rode, never looking behind him to see who came after. Whether Stilwell would yield to his wife's appeal and remain at home, whether Fred could be bent from his fiery desire to be avenged on the author of their calamity, he took no trouble to surmise. He only knew that he, Calvin Morgan, was rushing again to combat at the call of this girl whose only appeal was in the face of dreadful peril, whose only service was that of blood.

She had come again, this time like a messenger bearing a command, to call him back to a duty which he believed he had relinquished and put down forever. And solely because it would be treasonable to that duty which still clung to him like a tenacious cobweb, he was riding into the smoke of the burning town.