Where the Trail Divides Part 30

"I have nothing more to say--unless you wish," he repeated in the old formula.

For a second time silence fell; to be broken again by the crackling of a match in the white man's hand. Following, as though prompted by the sound, came a question.

"Why,"--the Indian did not stir, but his eyes had shifted until they looked immovably into those of his companion,--"why, please, was not the mother of the child at least at the funeral?"

"Because she could not come," impa.s.sively. "The baby was less than two days old."

"She had been back, though, back at the ranch, for some time?"

"Yes. Several weeks."

"She returned alone?"

"Yes."

"And to stay?"

Swifter and more swiftly came the questions. Even yet no muscle of the inquisitor's body stirred; but in the black eyes a light new to the other man, ominous in its belated appearance, was kindling.

"Yes," answered Manning.

"She, Bess, had left her husband?"

"No, Craig had left her."

Suddenly, instinctively, the impersonal had been dropped; but neither man noticed the change.

"There was a reason?"

"Yes," baldly. "Another woman."

The locked fingers across the Indian's knee were growing white; white as the sunlight without.

"And now he has returned, you say, to sell the ranch, her ranch?"

"It is her ranch no more. It is his."

"She, Bess, gave it to him after all that had happened, all that he had done? You mean to tell me this?"

Abruptly, instinctively, for the end was very close at hand, the white man got to his feet, stood so silent.

"Tell me." The Indian was likewise erect, his dark face standing clear against the white background of the tent wall. "Did Bess do this thing?"

"No," said a voice. "It came to him in another way."

"Another way!" swiftly. "Another way!" repeated. "Another way!" for the third time; and then a halt. For that moment realisation had come.

"There could be but one other way!"

Swiftly, instinctively, the white man turned about, until the face opposite was hid. Hardened frontiersman as he was, prepared for the moment as he had thought himself, he could not watch longer. To do so was sacrilege unqualified. In his youth the man had been a hunter of big game. Of a sudden now, horribly distinct, he had a vision of the expression in the eyes of a great moose, mortally wounded, when at the end he himself had drawn the knife. Under its influence he halted, waiting, postponing the inevitable.

"There could be but one other way," repeated the voice slowly, repressedly. "Tell me, please. Let me know all. Am I not right?"

To hesitate longer was needless cruelty; and in infinite pity, the blow fell.

"Yes, How," said Manning gently, "Bess is dead."

CHAPTER XIX

IN SIGHT OF G.o.d ALONE

An hour had pa.s.sed. Manning had gone; and on the horizon to the east whither he had taken his way not even a dot now indicated his former presence. Even the close-fed gra.s.s whereon the wheels of the old road waggon had temporarily blazed a trail had returned normally erect.

Suddenly, as a rain cloud forms over the parched earth, the storm had gathered and broken; and pa.s.sed on as though it had not been. All about smiled the sunshine; sarcastic, isolate as though it had seen nothing, heard nothing. On the surface of the pond the ducks, again returned, swam and splashed and dawdled in their endless holiday. The eternal breeze of the prairie noontime, drifting leisurely by, sang its old, old song of abandon and of peace. Not in the merest detail had nature, the serene, altered; not by the minutest trifle had she deviated from her customary course. Man alone it is who changes to conform with the pa.s.sing mood. Man alone it was amid this primitive setting who had altered now.

For How Landor, the Indian, was no longer idle or dreaming. Instead, his every action was that of one with a definite purpose. Yet even then he did not hurry. At first he seemed merely to be going about the ordinary routine of his life. Methodically he kindled a fire and prepared himself a generous meal. Deliberately, fair in the sunshine, he ate. Then for the first time an observer who knew him well would have detected the unusual. Contrary to all precedent the dishes were not washed or even touched. Instead, the meal complete, he went swiftly toward the tent and disappeared inside.

For minutes he remained within, moving about from place to place; and when he again returned it was to do a peculiar thing indeed. In his arms were several articles of clothing rolled into a bulky bundle. Without a halt he made his way back to the place where he had eaten. The fire which he had builded had burned low ere this; and, standing there beside it, he sc.r.a.ped away the ashes with the toe of his moccasined foot until the glowing embers beneath came to view. The bundle he carried had opened with the action, revealing clearly the various articles of which it was composed. Outside was an old army-blue greatcoat; within a battered felt hat and a pair of moccasins, wholly unused. A moment the Indian stood looking at them meditatively, intensely; then gently as though they were a lost child he was returning to its mother's arms he laid them fair upon the glowing coals. Wool is slow to catch ablaze and for the moment they lay there black against the brown earth; then of a sudden, like the first lifting of an Indian signal smoke, a tiny column of blue went trailing upward. Second by second it grew until with a m.u.f.fled explosion the whole was ablaze. Before the man had merely stood watching; now deliberately as before, yet as unhesitatingly, he returned to the tent.

This time he was gone longer; and when he returned it was with an armful of books--and something more. The fire was crackling merrily now, and volume by volume his load disappeared. Then for the first time he hesitated. There was still something to destroy, something which he had gathered in the old felt hat from off his own head; yet he hesitated.

Greedy as a hungry animal deprived of its due the fire at his feet kept sending out spurts of flame like longing tentacles toward him; yet he delayed. Like the sulky thing it was, it had at last drawn back into pa.s.sive waiting, when of a sudden, without a single glance, the man laid this last sacrifice, as he had done the first, gently down. But this time he did not watch the end. Swiftly, his bare black head glistening in the sunlight, he started away toward the now expectant broncho; and back of him the pathetic little gathering of useless trinkets, bearing indelibly the mark of a woman's handiwork, a woman's trust, mingled with the ashes of the things which had gone before.

Long ere the fire had burned itself out, the wicked-looking cayuse following a bridle's length at his heels, he was back; waiting impatiently for the flame to die. No frontiersman, in a land where prairie fires spread as the breath of scandal, ever leaves fire alive when out of his sight; and to this instinct the Indian was true. Minute after minute he waited; until the flame vanished and in its stead there lay a ma.s.s of blazing coals. Then with a practical hand he banked the whole with a layer of earth until, look where one would, not a dot of red was visible. The act was the last, the culmination of preparation.

At its end, with a single spoken command, the pony was alongside; his head high in the air, his tiny ears flattened back in antic.i.p.ation. Well he knew what was in store, what was expected. No need was there of a second command nor the touch of a bridle rein. Almost ere the taking of the single leap that put the rider in his seat the little beast was away, his wide-spread nostrils breathing deep of the prairie air, the patter of his tiny hoofs a continuous song upon the close-cropped sod.

As two human beings living side by side grow to know each other, so this dumb menial had grown to know his master. With a certainty attributed to the dog alone he had learned to recognise the mood of the hour. He did so now; and as time pa.s.sed and the miles flowed monotonously beneath his galloping feet the relentless determination of the man himself was repeated in that undeviating pace.

Thus the journey southward was begun. Thus through the dragging hours of the September afternoon it continued. Many a time before the little beast had followed the trail from sun to sun. As well as the rider knew his own endurance he knew the possibilities of his mount, knew that now he would not fail. He did not attempt to quicken the pace, nor did he check it. He spoke no word. The earth was dry as tinder in the annual drouth of fall, and as time pa.s.sed on the dust the pony raised collected upon the man's clothes and upon his bare head; but apparently he noticed it not. Shade by shade the mouse-coloured hair of the broncho grew darker from sweat, moistened until the man's hand on the diminutive beast's neck grew wet; but of this likewise he was unconscious. Silent as fate, as nature the immovable, he sat his place; his lithe body conforming involuntarily to the motion, to the play of muscles beneath his legs; yet as unconsciously as one breathes in sleep. Not until the sun was red in the west, until of its own accord the broncho had drawn up at the first bit of water they had met on the way--a shallow marshy pond--did he move. Then, while the pony drank and drank his fill, the man washed his face and hands, and more from instinct than volition, shook the dust from his clothing.

For a half hour thereafter the rider did not mount. Side by side the man and the beast moved ahead at a walk; but ever moved and ever southward.

Darkness fell swiftly. There was no moon; but the sky was clear as it had been during the day, and the man needed no guide but the stars to show him the way. As he moved the hand of the Indian remained on the broncho's neck; and bit by bit as the time pa.s.sed he felt the moist hair grow stiff and dry. Then, and not until then, came the final move, the beginning of the last relay. As when they had started, with one motion, apparently without an effort, he was once more in his seat; and again as at first, equally understandingly, equally willingly, that instant the broncho sprang into a lope. Relentlessly, silent as before, a ghostly animate shadow, the two forged ahead into the night and the solitude.

Meanwhile, for the second time within the year, the C-C ranch had changed hands. All day long Craig and the prospective buyer had driven about the place. One by one the cowboys had given testimony of the fraction of the herd intrusted to their care. At first resignedly complaisant, as the hours drifted by Craig had grown c.u.mulatively impatient at the inevitably dragging inventory. Nothing but necessity absolute in the shape of an imminent foreclosure had brought him back to this land at all. Delay had followed delay until at last immediate action was imperative. Then, having agreed to come personally, he was in a fever of haste to have the deal complete and to be away. Since they had left the railroad and crossed the river the mood had been upon him.

The team that had brought them out could not move fast enough. The preceding night, shortened by liquor as it had been, nevertheless dragged interminably. Strive as he might to combat the impression, to ignore it, this land had of a sudden become to him a land of terror.

Every object which met his eye called forth a recollection. Every minute that pa.s.sed whispered a menace. In a measure it had been so a half year ago ere he had tempted fate. Now, with the knowledge of what had occurred in that time staring him in the face, the impression augmented immeasurably, haunted him like a ghostly presence. Not for a minute since his return had he been alone. Not for an instant had he been without a revolver at hand. All the previous night, despite the grumbling protest of the overseer with whom he had bunked, a lamp had burned beside the bed; yet even then he could not sleep. Whether or no he felt contrition for the past, this man, he could not have told, he never paused to consider. All he knew was that he had a deathly fear of this silent waste and of a certain human who dwelt somewhere therein.

Repugnant as consideration of the return had been, it was as nothing compared with the reality. Had he realised in advance what the actual experience of his coming would mean, even the consideration of money, badly as he needed it, could not have bought his presence. Now that he was here he must needs see the transaction through; he could not well do otherwise; but as the afternoon drew to a close and the necessity of tarrying a second night became a.s.sured, the premonition of retribution, that had before lowered merely as a possibility, loomed into the proportions of certainty. Then it was that in abandon he began to drink; not at stated intervals, as had been his habit, but frequently, all but continuously, until even his tolerant companions had exchanged glances of understanding.

To all things, however, there is an end, and at last the deal was complete. Within the stuffy living-room, hazy now with tobacco smoke, by the uncertain light of a sputtering kerosene lamp Craig had accomplished a sprawling signature and received in return a check on a Chicago bank.

It was already late, and very soon the new owner, with a significant look at a half-drained flask by the other's hand, and a curt "Good-night," had departed for bed. Immediately following, with a thinly veiled apology, the lawyer had likewise excused himself, and Craig and his one-time overseer were alone. For five minutes thereafter the two men sat so in silence; then, at last, despite his muddled brain, the former realised that the big Irishman was observing him with a concentration that was significant. Ever short of temper, the man's nerves were stretched to the jangling point this night, and the look irritated him. Responsive, he scowled prodigiously.

"Well," he queried impatiently, "what is it?"

No answer; only, if possible, the look became more a.n.a.lytic than before.

"What's on your mind?" repeated Craig. "You make me nervous staring that way. Speak up if you've got anything to say. Don't you like my selling and putting you out of a job?"