Part 27 (1/2)

”Your marrying this Indian was a hideous mistake,” he rushed on; ”but we can't help that now. All we can do is to get away and forget it.” He cleared his throat needlessly. ”It's this getting away that I've arranged for since I've been here. I've not been entirely idle the last week, and every detail is complete. There are three relays of horses waiting between here and the railroad. One team is all ready at the ranch house the minute I give the signal. They'll get us to town before morning. You've only to say the word, and I'll give the sign.” Again, nervously, shortly, he repeated the needless rasp, ”How may, as you say, not interfere; but it's useless, to take any chances. There's been enough tragedy already between you two, without courting more. Besides, the past is dead; dead as though it had never been. My lawyer is over at the ranch house now. He'll straighten out everything after we're gone.

Things here are all in your name; you can do as you please with them.

There's no possible excuse for delay.” He bent over her, his hands on her shoulders, his eyes looking into hers compellingly. ”G.o.d knows you've been buried here long enough, girl. I'll teach you to live; to live, do you hear? We'll be very happy together, you and I, Bess; happier than you ever dreamed of being. Will you come?”

He was silent, and of a sudden the place became very still; still as the dead past the man had suggested. Wide-eyed, motionless, the girl sat looking up at him. She did not speak; she scarcely seemed to breathe. As she had chosen, so had it come to pa.s.s; yet involuntarily she delayed.

Deliverance from the haunting solitude that had oppressed her like an evil dream was beckoning; yet impotent, she held back. Of a sudden, within her being, something she had fancied dormant had awakened. The instinct of convention, fundamental, inbred, more vital to a woman than life itself, intruded preventingly, fair in her path. Warning, pleading, distinct as a spoken admonition, its voice sounded a negative in her ears. She tried to silence it, tried to overwhelm it with her newborn philosophy; but it was useless. Fear of the future, as she had said, she had none. Good or bad as the man might be, she had chosen. With full knowledge of his deficiencies she had chosen. But to go away with him so, without sanction of law or of clergy; she, Bess Landor, who was a wife--.

The hands on her shoulders tightened insistently, the compelling face drew nearer.

”Answer me, Bess,” demanded a tense voice; ”don't keep me in suspense.

Will you go?”

With the motion of a captured wild thing, the girl arose, drew back until she was free.

”Don't,” she pleaded. ”Don't hurry me so. Give me a little time to think.” She caught her breath from the effort. ”I'll go with you, yes; but to-day, now--I can't. We must see How first. He must know, must consent--”

”See How!” The man checked himself. ”You must be mad,” he digressed. ”I can't see How, nor won't. I tell you it's between How and myself you must choose. I love you, Bess. I'm proving I love you; but I'm not insane absolutely. I ask you again: will you come?”

The girl shook her head, nervously, jerkily.

”I can't now, as things are.”

”And why not?” pa.s.sionately. ”Haven't you said you care for me?”

For answer the red lower lip trembled. That was all.

The man came a step forward, and another.

”Tell me, Bess,” he demanded. ”Don't you love me?”

”I have told you,” said a low voice.

Answering, coercing, swift as the swoop of a prairie hawk, as a human being in abandon, the man's arms were about her. Ere the girl could move or resist, his lips were upon her lips. ”You must go then,” he commanded. ”I'll compel you to go.” He kissed her again, hungrily, irresistibly. ”I won't take no for an answer. You will go.”

”Don't, please,” pleaded a voice, breathless from its owner's impotent effort to be free. ”You must not, we must not--yet. I'm bad, I know, but not wholly. Please let me go.”

Unconscious of time, unconscious of place, oblivious to aught save the moment, the man held his ground, joying in his victory, in her effort to escape. Save that one casual glance long before, he had not looked out of doors. Had he done so, had he seen--.

But he had forgotten that a world existed without those four walls. His back was toward the door. His own great shoulders walled the girl in.

Neither he nor she dreamed of a dark figure that had drifted from out the prairie swiftly into the dooryard, dreamed that that same all-knowing shadow, on soundless moccasined feet, had advanced to the doorway, stood silent, watching therein. As the first man and the first woman were alone, they fancied themselves alone. As the first man might have exulted over his mate, Clayton Craig exulted now.

”Let you go, Bess,” he baited, ”let you go now that I've just gotten you?” He laughed pa.s.sionately. ”You must think that I'm made of clay and not of flesh and blood.” He drew her closer and closer, until she could no longer struggle, until she lay still in his arms. ”I'll never let you go again, girl, not if G.o.d himself were to demand your release. You're mine, Bess, mine by right of capture, mine--”

The sentence halted midway; halted in a gasp and an unintelligible muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening, ominous, fateful, the shadow within the entrance had silently advanced until it stood beside them, paused so with folded arms. Simultaneously the wife and the invader saw, realised. Instantly, instinctively, like similar repellent poles, they sprang apart. Enveloped in a maze of surging divergent pa.s.sions, the two guilty humans stood silent so, staring at the intruder in breathless expectation, breathless fascination.

While an observer could have counted ten slowly, and repeated the count, the three remained precisely as they were. While the same mythical spectator could have counted ten more, the silence held; but inaction had ceased. While time, the relentless, checked off another measure, there was still no interruption; then of a sudden, desperately tense, desperately challenging, a voice sounded: the voice of Clayton Craig.

”Well,” he queried, ”why don't you do something?” He moistened his lips and shuffled his feet restlessly. ”You've seen enough to understand, I guess. What are you going to do about it?”

The Indian had not been looking at him. Since that first moment when the two had sprang separate he had not even appeared conscious of his presence. Nor did he alter now. Erect as a maize plant, dressed once more in the flannels and corduroys of his station, as tall and graceful, he merely stood there with folded arms, looking down on the girl. More maddening than an execration, than physical menace itself, was that pa.s.sionless, ignoring isolation to the other man. Answering, the hot blood flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until his collar choked him. Involuntarily his hand went to his neckband, tugged until it was free. Equally involuntarily he took a step forward menacingly.

”Curse you, How Landor,” he blazed, ”you've learned at last, perhaps, not to dare me to take something of yours away from you.” Word by word his voice had risen until he fairly shouted. ”You've lost, fool; lost, lost! Are you blind that you can't see? You've lost, I say!”