Where the Trail Divides Part 10

Slowly, meaningly, Clayton Craig drew away--resumed the former position; the place from which, un.o.bserved, he could himself watch.

"We're going away out there," complied the girl suddenly, reluctantly.

Her hand indicated the trackless waste to the right. "Just the two of us are going: How and I. We'll take a pack horse and a tent and How's camp kit and stay out there alone until winter comes." Against her will she was warming to the subject, was unconsciously painting a picture to please the solitary listener. "We'll have our ponies and ammunition and plenty to read. The cowboys laugh at How because ordinarily he never carries a gun; but he's a wonderful shot. We'll have game whenever we want it. We'll camp when we please and move on when we please." Again unconsciously she glanced at the listener to see the effect of her art.

"We'll be together, How and I, and free--free as sunshine. There'll be nothing but winter, and that's a long way off, to bring us back. It's what I've always wanted to do, from the time I can remember. How goes away every year, and he's promised this once to take me along."

Suddenly, almost challengingly, she turned, facing the man her companion. "Won't it be fine?" she queried abruptly.

"Yes," answered a voice politely, a voice with a shade of listlessness in its depths, "fine indeed. And if you want anything at any time you can go to the nearest ranch house. One always does forget something you know."

"That's just what we can't do," refuted the girl swiftly. "That's the best of it all. The Buffalo b.u.t.te is the last ranch that way, to the west, until you get to the Hills. We probably won't see another human being while we're gone. We'll be as much alone as though we were the only two people in the world."

Craig hesitated; then he shrugged self-tolerantly.

"I'm hopelessly civilised myself," he commented smilingly. "I was thinking that some morning I might want toast and eggs for breakfast.

And my clean laundry might not be delivered promptly if I were changing my residence so frequently." He lifted from his elbow. "Pardon me again, though," he added contritely. "I always do see the prosaic side of things." The smile vanished, and for the first time he looked away, absently, dreamily. As he looked his face altered, softened almost unbelievably. "It would be wonderful," he voiced slowly, tensely, "to be alone, absolutely alone, out there with the single person one cared for most, the single person who always had the same likes and dislikes, the same hopes and ambitions. I had never thought of such a thing before; it would be wonderful, wonderful!"

No answer; but the warm colour had returned to the girl's face and her eyes were bright.

"I think I envy you a little, your happiness," said Craig. Warmer and warmer tinged the brown cheeks, but still the girl was silent.

"Yes, I'm sure I envy you," reiterated the man. "We always envy other people the things we haven't ourselves; and I--" He checked himself abruptly.

"Don't talk so," pleaded the girl. "It hurts me."

"But it's true."

Just a child of nature was Elizabeth Landor; pa.s.sionate, sympathetic, unsophisticated product of this sun-kissed land. Just this she was; and another, this man with her, her cousin by courtesy, was sad. Inevitably she responded, as a flower responds to the light, as a parent bird responds to the call of a fledgling in distress.

"Maybe it's true now--you think it is," she halted; "but there'll be a time--"

"No, I think not. I'm as the Lord made me." Craig laughed shortly, unmusically. "It's merely my lot."

The girl hesitated, uncertain, at a loss for words. Distinctly for her as though the brightness of the day had faded under a real shadow, it altered now under the cloud of another's unhappiness. But one suggestion presented itself; and innocently, instinctively as a mother comforts her child, she drew nearer to the other in mute human sympathy.

The man did not move. Apparently he had not noticed.

"The time was," he went on monotonously, "when I thought differently, when I fancied that some time, somewhere, I would meet a girl I understood, who could understand me. But I never do. No matter how well I become acquainted with women, we never vitally touch, never become necessary to each other. It seems somehow that I'm the only one of my kind, that I must go through life so--alone."

Nearer and nearer crept the girl; not as maid to man, but as one child presses closer to another in the darkness. One of her companion's hands lay listless on his knee, and instinctively, compellingly, she placed her own upon it, pressed it softly.

"I am so selfish," she voiced contritely, "to tell you of my own love, my own happiness. I didn't mean to hurt you. I simply couldn't help it, it's such a big thing in my own life. I'm so sorry."

Just perceptibly Craig stirred; but still he did not look at her. When he spoke again there was the throb of repression in his voice; but that was all.

"I'm lonely at times," he went on dully, evasively, "you don't know how lonely. Now and then someone, as you unconsciously did a bit ago, shows me the other side of life, the happy side; and I wish I were dead." A mist came into his eyes, a real mist. "The future looks so blank, so hopeless that it becomes a nightmare to me. Anything else would be preferable, anything. It's so to-day, now." He halted and of a sudden turned away so that his face was concealed. "G.o.d forgive me, but I wish it were over with, that I were dead!"

"No, no! You mustn't say that! You mustn't!" Forgetful entirely, the girl arose, stood facing him. Tears that she could not prevent were in the brown eyes and her lip twitched. "It's so good to be alive. You can't mean it. You can't."

"But I do. It's true." Craig did not stir, did not glance up. "What's the use of living, of doing anything, when no one else cares, ever will care. What's the use--"

"But somebody does care," interrupted the girl swiftly, "all of us here care. Don't say that again, please don't. I can't bear to hear you." She halted, swallowed hard at a lump which rose hinderingly in her throat.

"I feel somehow as though I was to blame, as though if you should mean what you said, should--should--" Again she halted; the soft brown eyes glistening, the dainty oval chin trembling uncontrollably, her fingers locked tight. A moment she stood so, uncertain, helpless; then of a sudden the full horror of the possibility the other had suggested came over her, swept away the last barrier of reserve. Not the faintest suspicion of the man's sincerity, of his honesty, occurred to her, not the remotest doubt. In all her life no one had ever lied to her; she had never consciously lied to another. The world of subterfuge was an unread book. This man had intimated he would do this terrible thing. He meant it. He would do it, unless--unless--

"Don't," she pleaded in abandon. "Don't!" The hand was still lying idle on the man's knee, and reaching down she lifted it, held it prisoner between her own. It was not a suggestion she was combating now. It was a certainty. "Promise me you won't do this thing." She shook the hand insistently; at first gently, then, as there was no response, almost roughly. "Tell me you won't do it. Promise me; please, please!"

"But I can't promise," said the man dully. "I'm useless absolutely; I never realised before how useless. You didn't intend to do it, but you've made me see it all to-day. I don't blame you, but I can't promise. I can't."

Silence fell upon them; silence complete as upon the top of a mountain, as in the depths of a mine, the absolute silence of the prairie. For seconds it remained with them, for long-drawn-out, distorted seconds; then, interrupting, something happened. There was not a cloud in the sky, nor the vestige of a cloud. The sun still shone bright as before; yet distinctly, undeniably, the man felt a great wet spattering drop fall from above upon his hand--and a moment later another. He glanced up, hesitated; sprang to his feet, his big body towering above that of the little woman already standing.

"Elizabeth!" he said tensely. "Cousin Bess! I can't believe it." He took her by the shoulders compellingly, held her at arm's length; and the angel who watched halted with pen in air, indecisive. "We've known each other such a ludicrously short time--but a few hours. Can it be possible that you really meant that, that at least to someone it does really matter?" It was his turn to question, to wait breathlessly when no answer came. "Would you really care, you, if I were dead? Tell me, Bess, tell me, as though you were saying a prayer." One hand still retained its grip on her shoulder, but its mate loosened, instinctively sought that averted, trembling chin, as hundreds of men, his ancestors, had done to similar chins in their day, lifted it until their eyes met. Had he been facing his Maker that moment and the confession his last, Clayton Craig could not have told whether it were pa.s.sion or art, that action. "Tell me, Bess girl, is it mere pity, or do you really care?"

Face to face they stood there, eye to eye as two strangers, meeting by chance in darkness and storm, read each the other's mind in the glitter of a lightning flash. It was all so swift, so fantastic, so unexpected that for a moment the girl did not realise, did not understand. For an instant she stood so, perfectly still, her great eyes opening wider and wider, opening wonderingly, dazedly, as though the other had done what she feared--and of a sudden returned again to life; then in mocking, ironic reaction came tardy comprehension, and with the strength of a captured wild thing she drew back, broke free. A second longer she stood there, not her chin alone, but her whole body trembling; then without a word she turned, mounted the single step, fumbled at the k.n.o.b of the door. "Bess," said the man softly, "Cousin Bess!" But she did not glance back nor speak, and, listening, his ear to the panel, Craig heard her slowly climb the creaking stairs to her own room and the door close behind her.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SKELETON WITHIN THE CLOSET

Comparatively few men of cheerful outlook and social inclination attain the age of five and fifty without contracting superfluous avoirdupois and distinctive mannerism. That Colonel William Landor was no exception to the first rule was proven by the wheezing effort with which he made his descent from the two-seated canvas-covered surrey in front of Bob Manning's store, and, with a deftness born of experience, converted the free ends of the lines into hitch straps. That the second premise held true was demonstrated ten seconds later in the unconscious grunt of soliloquy with which he greeted the sight of a wisp of black rag tacked above the k.n.o.b of the door before him.

"Mourning, eh," he commented to his listening ego. "Looks like a strip of old Bob's prayer-meeting trousers." He tried the entrance, found it locked, and in lieu of entering tested the badge of sorrow between thumb and finger. "Pant stuff, sure enough," he corroborated. "It can't be Bob himself, or they'd have needed these garments to lay him out in. Now what in thunder, I wonder--"

He glanced across the street at Slim Simpson's eating house. Like the general store, the door was closed, and just above the catch, flapping languidly in a rising prairie breeze, was the mate to the black rag dangling at his back. The spectator's s.h.a.ggy eyebrows tightened in genuine surprise, and with near-sighted effort he inspected the fronts of the short row of other buildings along the street.

"Civilisation's struck Coyote Centre good and proper, at last, evidently," he commented. "They'll be having a bevel plate hea.r.s.e with carved wood ta.s.sels and a c.o.o.n driver next!" He halted, indecisive, and for the first time became conscious that not a human being was in sight.

In the street before him a pair of half-grown c.o.c.kerels with ludicrously long legs and abbreviated tails were scratching a precarious living from amid the litter. On the sunny expanse of sidewalk before Buck Walker's meat market a long-eared mongrel lay stretched out luxuriously in the physical contentment of the subservient unmolested; but from one end of the single street to the other not a human being was in sight; save the present spectator, not a single disturber of the all-pervading quiet.

Landor had seen the spot where the town now stood when it was virgin prairie, had watched every building it boasted rise from the earth, had hitherto observed it through the gamut of its every mood from nocturnal recklessness to profoundest daybreak remorse; but as it was now with the sun nearing the meridian, deserted, dead--.

"Well, I'm beat!" he exploded as emphatically as though another were listening. "There must have been a general cleanup this time. I fear that the report of my respected nephew--" He checked himself suddenly, a bit guiltily. Even though no one was listening, he was loath to voice an inevitable conclusion. Decision, however, had triumphed over surprise at last, and, leaving the main street, he headed toward what the proud citizens denominated the residence quarter--a handful of unpainted weather-stained one-story boxes, dest.i.tute of tree or of shrub surrounding as factory tenements. The sun was positively hot now, and as he went he unb.u.t.toned his vest and sighed in unconscious satisfaction at the relief. At the second domicile, a residence as nearly like the first as a duplicate pea from the same pod, he turned in at the lane leading to the house unhesitatingly, and without form of knocking opened the door and stepped inside.

The room he entered was bare, depressingly so; bare as to its uncarpeted cottonwood floor, bare in its hard-finished, smoke-tinted walls. In it, to the casual observer, there were visible but four objects: an old-fashioned walnut desk that had once borne a top, but which did so no longer; two cane-bottomed chairs with rickety arms; and, seated in one thereof, a man. The latter looked up as the visitor entered, revealing an unshaven chin and a pair of restless black eyes over the left of which the lid drooped appreciably. He was smoking a long black stogie, and scattered upon his vest and in a semicircle surrounding his chair was a sprinkling of white ash from vanished predecessors. Though he looked up when the other entered, and Landor returned the scrutiny, there was no salutation, not even when, without form of invitation, the rancher dropped into the vacant seat opposite and tossed his broad felt hat familiarly amid the litter of the desk. A moment they sat so, while with an effort the newcomer recovered his breath.

"I thought I'd find you here, Chantry," he initiated eventually. "I've noticed that the last place to look for a doctor is in the proximity of a funeral." He fumbled in his pocket and produced a stogie, mate to that in the other's mouth. "This particular ceremony, by the way, I gather from the appearance of the metropolis, must have been of more than ordinary interest." And lighting a match he puffed until his face was concealed.

"Rather," laconically.

"Never mind the details," Landor prevented hurriedly. The haze had cleared somewhat, and he observed his taciturn companion appreciatively.

"I left Mary up with Jim Burton's wife, and I think she can be trusted to attend to such little matters."

Chantry smoked on without comment, but his restless black eyes were observing the other shrewdly. Not without result had the two men known each other these five years.

"It's a great convenience, this having women in the family," commented Landor impersonally. "It's better than a daily paper, any time." Again the deliberate, appreciate look. "You haven't decided yet to prove the fact for yourself, have you?"

Still Chantry smoked in silence, waiting. The confidence that had brought the other to him was very near now, almost apparent. Only too well he knew the signs--the good-natured satire that ill concealed a tolerance broad as the earth, the flow of trivialities that cleared the way later of non-essentials. In silence he waited; and, as he had known the moment that big figure appeared in the doorway, it came.

Deliberately Landor removed the stogie from his lips, as deliberately flicked off the loose ash onto the floor at his side, inspected the burning tuck critically.