With Hoops of Steel Part 26

As he came nearer Mead thought there was something familiar in his att.i.tude and the outline of his body. But he did not look closely, for he was running through a growth of p.r.i.c.kly pear cactus and needed to watch his footsteps. Scarcely more than two hundred yards separated them when the horseman leaned forward in his saddle, studying keenly the figure of the man on foot. A look of cruel, snarling triumph flashed over his face and a Spanish oath broke from his lips. He whipped out a revolver and leveled it at the running man with the child in his arms. Mead had been looking at the ground, choosing his course, and then had glanced at Paul's face for a moment. When he raised his eyes again he saw the shining muzzle of a revolver pointed at his breast and above it the savage, revengeful, triumphant face of Antone Colorow.

CHAPTER XXII

A bullet tore through the sleeve of Mead's coat, pa.s.sing but a few inches from the head of the unconscious child. Another sang over his left shoulder, scorching his coat. His face, flushed with running, went white and grim with sudden pa.s.sion, his lips closed in a narrow, straight line, and the yellow flame blazed in his wide and brilliant eyes. He shifted the child more to the left and turned sidewise toward his a.s.sailant, shielding the little one with his body. Antone Colorow, shouting curses and vile names, came dashing on, revolver in hand, to try again at closer quarters. Mead kept on, running sidewise, his set white face turned over his shoulder and his flashing eyes fixed on Antone's revolver hand. They were within a score of paces of each other when Mead suddenly jumped to one side and the bullet that was meant for his head whistled harmlessly through the air. "Three!" he thought, his eyes fixed steadily on Antone's right hand, as he still advanced toward the angry man. For he had noticed that the Mexican wore no cartridge belt. Again he sprang to one side as he saw Antone's finger stiffen upon the trigger, and the ball rattled through the bushes behind him. "Four!" he thought, veering toward the west. The Mexican turned his horse to follow, and Mead, with eyes fixed on the trigger, and noting, too, the slant of the barrel, knew that he had no need to dodge the next bullet. It went wild and tore up the ground some feet away. "Only one more!" he thought, as he halted with the sun at his back and shining straight in the Mexican's face. A sudden, quick leap and a loud yell startled Antone's horse, it jerked backward, and the last bullet went singing harmlessly through the air.

Antone's voice shot up into a falsetto, and shrieking vile curses he threw the empty revolver over his shoulder and leaped to the ground.

Mead's watchful eye caught the gleam of a steel blade in the sunlight.

He dropped his burden upon the ground, in the shade of a clump of greasewood, and sprang to one side. He caught Antone's wrist, as the knife made its downward turn, and held that hand high in the air for a moment while he looked into the Mexican's eyes. They shone with the angry glare of a wild beast.

"Antone," he said, "I have found the lost child. It is still alive, and it may live if I can get it to the doctor at once. Will you let me go and finish this quarrel afterward?"

The Mexican's only answer was a volley of curses. This man had broken his wrists and made useless that boasted skill with the la.s.so which had been the one pride of his life. For weeks and months anger and hatred and the determination to have revenge had blazed in his heart, and at sight of his enemy everything else went from his mind. He too had been ranging the hills since early morning searching for the boy, but so fierce was his rage that he could have jumped upon the little form and trampled its life out, if by so doing he could have killed Mead with a double death.

Antone's wrists were stiff and his arms had not recovered their full strength, so that Mead had no difficulty in holding the dagger aloft.

He waited a moment to see if some glimmer of human feeling would not strike through the man's rage. Suddenly Antone began kicking his shins, and Mead understood that the sooner the struggle began the sooner it would be ended. He strove warily, with the coolness of a masterful determination, with a quick eye, a quick hand, and a quick brain. The Mexican fought with the insensate rage of an angered beast.

They struggled first for the possession of the knife. Antone succeeded in releasing his wrist and sprang backward out of Mead's reach. With a lunge straight at his enemy's heart he came forward again, but Mead sprang quickly to one side and the Mexican barely saved himself from sprawling headlong on the ground. He faced about, his features distorted with anger, and, as he dashed forward, Mead caught his wrist again. There was a short, sharp struggle, and Mead sent the knife whirling down the hillside.

Then they closed in a hand to hand struggle. Antone bent his head and sent his teeth deep into Mead's arm. Into the flesh they sank and met and with a slipping sound tore the solid muscle from its bed. Then there flamed in Emerson Mead's heart that wild, white rage that mettles the nerves and steels the muscles of him who suffers that indignity. He felt the strength of a giant in his arms as he gripped the Mexican by both shoulders. In another minute Antone Colorow was flat upon the ground and Emerson Mead was sitting on his chest.

"You hound!" Mead exclaimed, "I ought to kill you, and by the living G.o.d, I would if I could do it decently! But I'm no Greaser, to use lariats and knives and boot-heels, and so you get off this time, you beast! If I had a rope," he went on, "I'd tie you here!"

With his right hand he grasped Antone's two wrists while he thrust his left into his pockets in search of something with which he could bind the fallen man. From the side pocket of his coat he drew a shiny, snaky black thing, and a satisfied "ah!" broke from his lips as he saw the Chinaman's queue, which Nick Ellhorn had forgotten, and which he had put into that pocket two weeks before.

As he held it in his hands Marguerite Delarue came running over the hill. Her sunbonnet hung by its strings around her neck, her hair had come down and was streaming over her shoulders, her dress hung in rags and tatters, and she was panting and almost breathless. She had hurried on behind Mead as rapidly as she could walk, until she heard the first pistol shot. Then, fearful of trouble, she had run as fast as possible, stopping at nothing, her anxiety giving speed to her feet and endurance to her muscles.

The look of savage triumph on Mead's face made her shrink back for an instant, awed and frightened. But her comprehension quickly took in what had happened and her heart rose in sympathetic exultation.

"You are just in time," said Mead, "and I'm mighty glad. I'll have to ask you to sit on this man's chest and hold him down while I tie him fast to that mesquite."

Marguerite sat down on the Mexican's breast while Mead tied his wrists tightly together and then began fastening them to the stocky stem of the bush beside which he had fallen. Antone struggled and tried to throw her off, and Mead said:

"I think, Miss Delarue, you'd better put your thumbs on his windpipe and press a little, just to keep him from fighting too hard. We've got no time to waste on him."

Marguerite gasped and hesitated, but her eye fell on little Paul's unconscious figure, and she did as he asked her.

"There," said Mead. "Now get up and jump quickly away."

The prostrate Mexican struggled and rolled about, but he could not rise. Marguerite ran to the child and with her ear to his breast she called to Mead.

"His heart is beating! He is still alive!"

Mead caught Antone's horse, and with Marguerite behind him and the child on one arm started off on the gallop. A long, straggling line of searchers stretched across the mesa, the nearest at least four miles away. As Mead came nearer he dropped the bridle on the horse's neck and waved his hat and shouted again and again. At last he attracted the attention of the nearest ones, and two or three came running toward him. "Water! Water!" he called, at the top of his voice. They understood, and one ran back to the nearest horseman, who galloped off to a group of people still farther away.

Almost instantly the great throng, like a huge organism, animated by one thought, started off across the mesa toward the galloping horse, every atom in it moved by the single purpose to reach at once the new-found babe. Two horses in front of the hastening mult.i.tude ran at their topmost speed and distanced all the others. One carried Pierre Delarue and the other Doctor Long, and behind them came hors.e.m.e.n, carts, carriages and people on foot, all rushing to the one point.

The physician administered such restoratives as he had with him and brought the boy back to consciousness. Then, in the shade of a canopy phaeton, he carried the child home in his arms, while Marguerite and her father and Emerson Mead followed in another carriage, and all the crowd came pouring along after them.

But there were four men who stayed behind. Joe Davis and John Daniels and two others, all in perfect accord and friendliness, went back to find Antone Colorow. They had listened to Mead's hastily told story of how Antone had attacked and delayed him. Daniels and Davis had looked at each other with a single significant glance and the one remark, "We'd better attend to him!" And then they had taken the other two men and started back.

They found Antone Colorow still struggling, rolling and kicking on the ground. His lips were stained with the blood his own teeth had drawn, and his red beard was flecked with foam. They untied him, and he sprang to his feet and would have darted away, intent on his one purpose to kill the enemy who had escaped his vengeance, had not quick hands seized him. They tied his arms behind him and set him astride his own horse, and then, surrounding him, with their revolvers drawn, they rode away to the southwest, leaving Las Plumas far to their right. On to the river bottom they went, and into a _bosque_ where the cottonwoods and the sycamores grew thickly and the willow underbrush was dense.

Long afterward a river ranchman, hunting a lost cow, penetrated the _bosque_ and started back in sudden fright from a dangling, decaying body that hung from a sycamore limb.

Pierre Delarue insisted that Emerson Mead should come into his house for some wine and wait until they should know the worst or the best concerning little Paul. He sat alone in the room where first he had seen Marguerite, his anxiety about the child driven quite out of his mind by the thought that the long hours alone with her, out on the hills, their hearts and minds united in a common purpose, had come to an end, that she was soon to be another man's wife, and that he would never see her again. After a time the door opened and she came toward him, smiling gladly. The color had come back to her cheeks and her eyes were bright, though there were still dark rings around them, and her face told of the weariness her brain had not yet recognized. So absorbed had she been in giving the physician a.s.sistance and carrying out his directions that she had not thought of her appearance. Her white dress, which yesterday had been fresh and dainty, was in tatters and bedraggled strings, and her hair hung down her back in a disheveled ma.s.s. But she came shining down upon Mead's dark thoughts, fresh and beautiful and glorious beyond compare. He did not remember rising, but presently he knew that he was on his feet and that she was standing in front of him. He did not even hear her say, "Doctor Long says my little Bye-Bye will live and that there will probably be no serious results."

Then she saw that he was trembling from head to foot, shaking as do the leaves of a cottonwood tree in a west wind, and she drew back in alarm, looking at him anxiously.

"What is the--" she began, but the look in his eyes stopped her tongue and held her gaze, while she felt her breath come hard and her heart beat like a triphammer. For an instant there was silence. Then Marguerite heard in a whisper so soft that it barely reached her ears, "I love you! I love you!" It was the loosing of the floods, and at once their arms were about each other. But in a second he remembered that she was to be another man's wife, and the thought came over him like the drawing down of the black cap over the head of a condemned man. With a fierce girding of his will he put both his hands upon her shoulders and drew back.

"I forgot! Forgive me!" The words came in a groan from his lips. "I forgot you're going to be his wife!"

"Whose?" said Marguerite, stepping back. For the instant she had forgotten there was any other man in the world.

"Why, Wellesly's!"

"Indeed, I am not!" That one second in Mead's embrace had settled Marguerite's long-vexed problem, and she felt her mind grow full of sudden wonder that it had ever troubled her. "He wanted me to marry him, but I'm not going to do it!"

Again their arms were about each other, their lips met, and her head was pillowed on his shoulder. Then he remembered the fate that was hanging over him, and he said bitterly:

"I've no right to ask you to be my wife, for in another week I'll probably be convicted of murder and sentenced to be hung, or sent to the penitentiary for life."

From the yard came the sound of Pierre Delarue's voice speaking to the crowd. She took Mead's hands in hers and swung a little away from him, looking into his face.

"I know that you didn't kill Will Whittaker!"

"How do you know it?" he answered, looking at her in loving surprise.

"Because he was shot in the back!"

She felt herself swept into the sudden storm of a masterful embrace, and with soft laughter yielded to his rapturous caresses. "And all this time," came to her ear in a whisper, "I've cared about it only because I thought you would believe me guilty even if I was cleared!

"But I've no proof of my innocence," he added presently, "and I can't ask your father's consent, or allow your name to be mentioned with mine in the town's gossip until my own is clear. I've no right even to ask you for another kiss until--"

She closed his lips with the kiss he would not ask for, and said:

"I would just as lief go out there now and say to all that crowd that I love you and know that you are innocent--"

"No, no!" he broke in upon her pa.s.sionate protestation. "No one shall couple your name with mine and pity you while they are doing it! The penitentiary may be my fate, for the rest of my life, but its shadow shall not touch yours. If I can clear myself of this charge I will come and ask you to be my wife, and openly ask your father's consent.

If I can't--" He turned and looked out of the window, but instead of the trees and flowers that were there, he saw a big, grim building with a high stone wall all around it and armed guards on the bastions.

Outside they heard the crowd calling for him. She understood his feeling, and taking his face between her palms she kissed his lips, whispering, "We will wait," and hurried from the room.

The crowd ma.s.sed itself around the house, squatting on the sidewalk, perching on the fence, and filling the waiting vehicles, until Pierre came out and announced that the physician said little Paul would recover and would probably be none the worse for his experience.

Everybody shouted "hurrah!" and somebody yelled, "three cheers for Frenchy!" The cheers were given, and Pierre stepped out on the sidewalk and began thanking them all for the kindness and sympathy they had shown and for their willing efforts to help him in his trouble. Then he launched into rhetorical praises of the country, the climate and the community, and from these turned to enthusiastic commendation of the man who had restored to him his lost child.

"Among all the brave and n.o.ble men of this favored region," he exclaimed, "there is none braver, n.o.bler, greater-hearted, more chivalrous, than he who has this day proved himself worthy of all our praises--Emerson Mead!" The crowd cheered loudly and called for Mead.

Somebody shouted, "Three cheers for Emerson!" and the whole a.s.semblage, Pierre leading, waved their hats and cheered again and again.