The riddle of Three-Way Creek

OUTWARDLY the life in the Valley of Hope had undergone no change. The atmosphere of peace and well-being remained. There was not even a ripple to be detected on the surface of things. Yet a change had developed—a definite, significant change, which left a feeling of unease, a question in the minds of those responsible for the enterprise.

Daylight had found Jim Pryse and Larry Manford abroad. And their work lay in the pacification of the fears which assailed those for whose safety they held themselves responsible. A shudder of real apprehension had found its way through the heart of the valley. How it had done so no one seemed able to tell. Yet it had dated from the moment of the arrival of Dan Quinlan’s “express.” It had to be dealt with promptly, and Jim Pryse had set about it in thorough fashion. It was this that preoccupied him at daylight on the morning following Molly’s arrival at the valley.

Meanwhile the tragedy of Molly’s life was being enacted under the roof of the home on the hillside. And those who were witness to it were the skilful, diminutive Doc Lennox, and the woman whose heart was racked with grief for the wantonness of the girl’s calamity.

The day broke calm and still. The valley was alive with the goodliness of the season. There was the morning song coming up from the river, and the sounds of stirring, eager life echoing through the corrals and pastures. Great banks of summer mist enveloped the slopes of the upper hills. Sunrise was at work upon them, and the flood of brilliant light was fast rolling them upwards towards the cloud-line.

Jim and Larry paced over the dew-laden, sun-scorched grass on their way to the house where they would eat the breakfast waiting for them.

Jim’s eyes were on the verandah ahead of them, for his concern for that which had been passing within the walls of his home was infinitely deeper than for any of his more personal anxieties.

“We’ve got to be rid of those boys before sundown,” he said, reverting to the matter on which he was engaged. “You were right, Larry,” he admitted. “There’s no real scare in them. And they’re using the scare of the others for a play of their own. They’re a tough bunch, and they mean mischief. I’m standing for no crook work here. Despard’s got them tabbed. I figgered on three. But you reckon that new fish, Jack Pike, is on the crook, too. Well, he’ll have to go with ’em.”

Larry laughed quietly.

“It’s good you’ve got it at last, Jim,” he said. “I’ll be tickled to death to see the last of Dago Naudin and Slattery. That Soapy Kid’s worse. And as for Pike—well, I guess the rest, with them clear across the border, will be like handling a Sunday school. I’ve no sort of illusions. They’ll be double blindfold when they go, and I’ll pass them over myself.”

“Maybe I’m losing one or two of my own tame illusions,” Jim said, with a laugh that failed to change the look of anxiety with which he was regarding the two figures on the verandah ahead of them. “But I mean to play the hand out to the last card. I promised those boys to clear up their scare for them, and I must make good. There needs to be no let-down.”

“You mean—McFardell?”

“I certainly do.”

Larry shook his head. His inclination to laugh had gone. He saw the difficulties, which, to his mind, short of murder were insurmountable.

“How?”

His interrogation came with a sharpness that made Jim look round.

“There’s none of those boys who’ve relied on my word are going to find trouble through McFardell,” he said deliberately.

“Which means, one way or another, an end of this show.”

Larry’s bluntness left the other unaffected.

“One way or another, maybe,” Jim agreed. “You see, boy, there’s that poor little kid up there now, and it’s made a difference—a hell of a difference—to the way I see things.”

“See here, Jim,” Larry replied sharply. “There’s two clear things I see. McFardell’s got to be fixed so he can’t do the thing he wants, or you’ve got to close right down here and get out. That’s the situation as I see it. Lightning reckons he was followed here, which means McFardell’s located the tunnel. He’s no doubt located the valley by now. Well, what next?” He made an expressive gesture. “The game’s up—right up. Unless, of course—— No, Jim, boy, the other’s not for you, even for this kid, Molly Marton. You belong to us—Blanche and me. There’s better than that waiting on you. McFardell deserves anything he gets, but don’t let it come from you. Close down this outfit and make a break for a new world. Blanche and I are right with you. We’ll stick by you with the last ounce in us.”

The man’s freckled face was deadly serious, and his manner was urgent. But, for all their apparent effect, his words might have remained unuttered. Jim raised a hand, pointing at the verandah they were approaching.

“The Doc’s waiting on us,” he said.

Further protest or appeal was useless. Larry knew too well the headlong recklessness that governed this impulsive brother of the woman he was to marry. He felt he had said all, and perhaps even more than he should have said. He even felt that if he left well alone his protest might actually bear some measure of fruit. At any rate he had made it, and now he could only watch and wait, and, in so far as lay within his power, do his best to protect this absurd creature from his own loyal impulses.

As the two men approached the verandah both became absorbed in the thing that was awaiting them. The dark-faced, quick-eyed Doc Lennox was there. So was the overshadowing figure of Lightning. The latter regarded them in the unseeing fashion of a mind oblivious to the things he beheld.

“Well, Doc? Is it good news, or—bad?”

Jim stepped briskly on to the verandah, while Larry remained below. Jim removed his broad-brimmed hat and flung it on the table. Then he ran his fingers back through his white hair.

“It’s a question of point of view.” The doctor’s reply came without encouragement.

“How?”

There was a curious blankness in Jim’s monosyllable.

The doctor’s quick eyes snapped as he looked up into the other’s face, and all his professional attitude seemed to fall from him.

“If I’d a golden throne among the fool angels, who don’t know better than to sit around doping over their harps,” he cried, without a shadow of a smile, “I reckon I’d feel like weepin’ hot tears over news as bad as human news can be. But, seeing they don’t keep my size in haloes lying around up there, I’d say it’s—the best. That poor kid’s going to pull round in no time at all,” he went on, with quiet confidence. “She’s young, and she’s strong. She’s full of physical health. It’s nursing she needs, and your good sister don’t need showing a thing that way. But she’s had a bad shake-up. I mean mentally. I can’t figure how bad it’s been. It sort of seems she came darn near ending everything—whether by design or accident, God alone knows. But I want to tell you the same as I’ve told him,” he went on, indicating Lightning. “There’s some feller around who needs lynching.”

His final pronouncement encountered a profound silence. Then it was Jim who spoke. And his words came haltingly.

“Then—it—was so?”

The eyes of the doctor flashed. His face flushed, and the whole of his diminutive body seemed to bristle.

“Man!” he cried fiercely. “I’ve told you folk I’m no sort of darned angel. I’ve lived too long in a profession where you see most of what’s rotten in human nature to hug swell notions to myself. But if I’d a shadow of right to protect that poor, innocent kid, I’d get right out after some guy with a whole arsenal of shooting machinery, and I wouldn’t quit his trail till I’d shot him to death, if it was the last crazy act of a foolish life.”

Lightning had not moved from the verandah. He was sitting on the edge of it. He had been sitting hunched there all the morning, and now it was nearing noon.

He had been steadily gazing out upon this new world of busy life without a shadow of the interest which Blanche had prophesied for him. It almost seemed as if nothing could ever again interest him in his surroundings. He saw the coming and going of the men, whom he knew to be fugitives from the law, who did the daily work of the ranch. He saw the droves of cattle being dealt with and handled, however inadequately, without a single uncomplimentary mental reservation. He was content to remain where he was, with the thoughts that were his.

The doctor had passed on down to the bunk-house, to employ himself again in the new life he had adopted. He had given his verdict; he had told of the reality of Molly’s calamity; he had exercised all his undoubted professional skill on her behalf, and spread the glad news of a coming quick bodily recovery. Lightning had no further interest in him.

Jim’s cordiality was a thing that had left him cold. Jim had told him that the whole valley, his house, everything that was his, was at his entire disposal. Lightning had thanked him briefly and continued to chew his tobacco in stony silence.

Larry, too. He had been no less solicitous of the old man’s welfare. He had referred him to Despard for anything and everything for his convenience and comfort. The old man had watched both men depart. But he—he had remained precisely where they had left him, a sort of grim, silent sentry, standing guard over the helpless girl who was the idol of his half-savage heart.

But Lightning’s vigil meant more than that. Whatever the old man’s shortcomings, whatever his failings, lack of decision and the energetic prosecution of purpose were by no means amongst them. As he sat there at the edge of the verandah, with a sub-tropical sun pouring down its merciless rays upon his hard old head, never was his decision more irrevocable, never was his energy more ardently concentrated.

He was waiting for one thing—for one thing only. Sooner or later he felt certain that Blanche would appear. And it was she for whom he was waiting.

The end of his waiting came with the approach of noon. The rustle of a woman’s skirts somewhere within the French window behind him warned him of Blanche’s coming. Instantly his whole attitude underwent a transformation. He glanced swiftly down in the direction of the ranch buildings. There was no sign of the return of the men-folk to the house. So he straightened his body and stood up. And the face, with its tatter of whisker, that turned to greet Blanche was smiling!

“I sure take it she’s feelin’ good, ma’am,” he nodded. “If it wa’an’t that way I don’t guess you’d be gettin’ around to breathe the swell air of midday.”

There was no responsive smile in Blanche. Her whole expression was grave. There was sadness in the down-drooping of the mouth that was accustomed to respond so readily to her smile.

“She’s going on well,” she said. Then, with a sigh: “Poor little Molly.”

That expression of pity came near to undoing all Lightning’s carefully calculated pose. A furious desire to blaspheme, and hurl malediction upon the author of the girl’s trouble, drove him hard. Perhaps Blanche read something of that which was passing through his mind, for with the passing of his smiling greeting she went on.

“You know, Lightning,” she said gently, “we mustn’t let ourselves grieve too badly. She’s going to recover, and—and things might have been worse.”

“Worse?”

The old man’s eyes rolled, and his tone was full of scorn.

“Yes. They might have been—much worse,” Blanche went on quickly. “She might have died. She might have—— She’s going to get well. She’ll be her old self again. Time will see to that. And maybe she’ll have forgotten—him. Yes, I think that’s so. She’s a girl of character. And—and I sort of feel she’ll never, never let him come near her ever again.”

“No.”

Lightning’s monosyllable was significant. He glanced down at the bunk-houses. Then his gaze came swiftly back to the woman’s face.

“I was waitin’ around fer you, ma’am,” he said simply. “The Doc said his piece. He said it right here to us all. But it wasn’t the thing I needed. It was your word I was waitin’ on. I had to get it from you that Molly, gal, was goin’ on right. So I jest waited around. Now I guess I’m ready to beat it back to home.”

Lightning’s manner was never so supremely simple, and Blanche was wholly deceived.

“You’re going to quit here? You’re going home? You’re leaving Molly?”

The woman’s astonishment was not untouched by disapproval.

“Sure. Right away, ma’am,” he said. “I got to. An’ it’s fer Molly, gal. Ther’s the cows, an’ the hosses, an’ then ther’s the harvest. It’s all Molly’s, ma’am, an’ she’ll need it.”

Blanche’s disapproval was completely dispelled.

“I’d forgotten. Of course. You’ll surely have to get right back. And when Molly’s feeling good and strong again I’ll bring her right home to you.”

Lightning nodded.

“That’s how I’d figgered.”

His gaze drifted away in the direction of the barns. It was almost as though he found it difficult to look the woman in the face.

“I need to get right away now,” he said with a shrug, “only I don’t feel like settin’ saddle on my plug fer the trail of that canyon, ma’am. He’s mean. He’s mean as hell, ma’am. It was diff’rent beating it up here. He’d your black to foller, which was everything. I surely don’t guess I’d get him to face that crick through the canyon in the dark. Still, I got to get right back anyway. I’ll sure need to make a break fer it.”

The old man’s regret and anxiety were perfection. It was quite impossible for Blanche to resist it. Her smile broke forth at once.

“Why, you don’t need to worry that way,” she cried. “It certainly would be a tough proposition facing the canyon with a scary horse. You go saddle up my Pedro. He’s right there in the barn, and he knows that path and that tunnel like a child knows its prayers. You can have him and welcome, and you can treat him the same as if he was steam driven. You go right on. And while you’re fixing things for Molly down there, we’ll be fixing things for her here. And between us, with God’s help, there’ll be little amiss with her when she gets right back to you and at her home.”

As Lightning moved down towards the barn his manner had undergone a complete transformation. He hurried with long, rapid strides. Somehow his lean body looked straighter and taller. Energy and something like youth seemed to bristle in every movement. Even his eyes had lost their recent expression. They were alight now. They were alight with a sparkle of almost unholy joy. He felt that at long last the great test of his manhood was about to begin.