“That is a harsh motive you ascribe to Mr. Langford,” said Louise, closing the window and coming to sit affectionately at Mary’s feet. “I don’t think he means it in that way at all. I think it is a fine and delicate and manly thing he has done. He did not intend for you to know—or any one. And don’t you think, Mary, that the idea of making up a purse should have come from some one else—just as he tried to make you believe? It was not done, so what was left for Mr. Langford to do? He had promised to see your father through. He was glad to do it. I think it was fine of him to do—what he did—the way he did it.”
She had long thought the Boss dreamed dreams of Mary. She was more sure of it than ever to-night. And now if Gordon did, too—well, Mary was worth it. But she would be sorry for one of them some day. They were fine men—both of them.
“But I shall pay him back—every cent,” replied Mary, firmly. “He owes me nothing, Louise, nothing, I tell you. I will not accept alms—of him. You see that I couldn’t, don’t you?”
“I know he does not feel he owes you anything—in the way you are accusing him,” answered Louise, wisely. “He is doing this because you are you and he cannot bear to think of you suffering for things when he wants to help you more than he could dare to tell you now. Mary, don’t you see? I think, too, you must pay him back some day, but don’t worry about it. You would hurt him too much if you do not take plenty of time to get strong and well before repaying him—paltry dollars. There will be a way found, never fear. Meanwhile you can amuse yourself correcting my transcripts to keep you content till something turns up, and we will make something turn up. Wait until this term is over and don’t fret. You won’t fret, will you?”
“I will try not to, Louise,” said Mary, with a little weary gesture of acquiescence.
A jolly party set off for Velpen Sunday morning. Hank Bruebacher had remained over night on purpose to escort them to the river in his ’bus. It had been caught on the wrong side. The channel had closed over about the middle of the week. The ice had been very thin at first; there had been no drop of the thermometer, but a gradual lowering night after night had at last made men deem it safe to cross on foot. A rumor to this effect had drifted in to the tired jurors hanging around and killing time, waiting to be called. Sunday in Kemah was impossible—to many. Besides, they had had a week of it. They were sure of a good dinner at Velpen, where there had been no such fearful inroads on the supplies, and the base of whose supplies, moreover, was not cut off as it was at Kemah by the closing of the river, which was not yet solid enough for traffic. That consideration held weight with many. Saloon service was a little better, and that, too, had its votaries. Business appointments actuated Gordon and perhaps a few others. Ennui pure and simple moved the Court and the Court’s assistant.
It was about ten in the morning. It was frosty, but bright, and the little cold snap bade fair to die prematurely. It surely was wonderful weather for South Dakota.
“Where is Mary?” asked the Judge, as Louise came lightly down the stairs, ready to put on her gloves.
“She went out to the Whites’ an hour or so ago—to do the week’s washing, I suspect. Mr. Langford took her out.”
“Louise! On Sunday!” Even the tolerant Judge was shocked.
“It’s true, Uncle Hammond,” persisted Louise, earnestly.
She wore a modish hat that was immensely becoming, and looked charming. Gordon stood at the worn, wooden steps, hat off, despite the nipping air, waiting to assist her to the place the gallant Hank had reserved for her.
He sat down at her right, Judge Dale at her left. The jurymen filled the other places rapidly. The heavy wagon lurched forward. The road was good; there had been no snows or thaws. Now was Hank in his element. It is very probable that he was the most unreservedly contented man in seven States that fair Sunday morning—always excepting Munson of the Three Bars. A few straggling buckboards and horsemen brought up the rear. Judge Dale, taking to himself as much room as it was possible to confiscate with elbows slyly pressed outward chickenwing-wise, fished out his newspaper leisurely, leaned over Gordon to say in a matter-of-fact voice, “Just amuse Louise for a little while, will you, Dick, while I glance at the news; you won’t have to play, just talk,—she likes to talk,” and buried himself in the folds of the jiggling paper; much jiggled because Hank had no intention of permitting any vehicle to pass the outfit of which the Judge was passenger while he, Hank Bruebacher, held the reins. He was an authority of the road, and as such, he refused to be passed by anything on wheels.
The rattle of the wagon drowned all coherent conversation. The Judge’s outspread arms had forced Louise very close to her neighbor on the right, who had the instructions to keep her amused, but even then he must bend his head if he were to obey orders strictly and—talk. He chose to obey. Last night, he had been worn out with the strain of the week; he had not been able to forget things. To-day,—well, to-day was to-day.
“Are you going to hear the bishop?” asked Louise. It was a little hard to make conversation when every time one lifted one’s eyes one found one’s self so startlingly close to a man’s fine face.
“Surely!” responded Gordon. “An incomparable scholar—an indefatigable workman—truest of saints.” There was grave reverence in his lowered voice.
“You know him well?”
“Yes. I see him often in his Indian mission work. He is one of the best friends I have.”
The river gleamed with a frozen deadness alongside. The horses’ hoofs pounded rhythmically over the hardened road. Opposite, a man who had evidently found saloon service in Kemah pretty good, but who doubtless would put himself in a position to make comparisons as soon as ever his unsteady feet could carry him there, began to sing a rollicking melody in a maudlin falsetto.
“Shut up!” One of the men nudged him roughly.
“Right you are,” said the singer, pleasantly, whose name was Lawson. “It is not seemly that we lift up our voices in worldly melody on this holy day and—in the presence of a lady,” with an elaborate bow and a vacant grin that made Louise shrink closer to the Judge. “I suggest we all join in a sacred song.” He followed up his own suggestion with a discordant burst of “Yes, we will gather at the river.”
“He means the kind o’ rivers they have in the ‘Place around the Corner,’” volunteered Hank, turning around with a knowing wink. “They have rivers there—plenty of ’em—only none of ’em ever saw water.”
“I tell you, shut up,” whispered the man who had first chided. “Can’t you see there’s a lady present? No more monkey-shines or we’ll oust you. Hear?”
“I bow to the demands of the lady,” said Lawson, subsiding with happy gallantry.
“You have many ‘best friends’ for a man who boasted not so long ago that he stood alone in the cow country,” said Louise, resuming the interrupted conversation with Gordon.
“He is one of the fingers,” retorted Gordon. “I confessed to one hand, you will remember.”
“Let me see,” said Louise, musingly. She began counting on her own daintily gloved hand.
“Mrs. Higgins is the thumb, you said?” questioningly.
“Yes.”
“Mr. Langford is the first finger, of course?”
“Of course.”
“And Uncle Hammond is the middle finger?”
“You have said it.”
“And the bishop is the third finger?”
“He surely is.”
“And—and—Mary is the next?”
“Sorceress! You have guessed all right.”
“Then where am I?” she challenged, half in earnest, half in fun. “You might have left at least the little finger for me.”
He laughed under his breath—an unsteady sort of laugh, as if something had knocked at his habitual self control. There was only one answer to that gay, mocking challenge—only one—and that he could not give. He forgot for a little while that there were other people in the wagon. The poor babbling, grinning man across the way was not the only drunken man therein. Only one answer, and that to draw the form closer—closer to him—against his heart—for there was where she belonged. Fingers? What did he care for fingers now? He wanted to lay his face down against her soft hair—it was so perilously near. If only he might win in his fight! But even so, what would it matter? What could there ever be for her in this cruel, alien land? She had been so kindly and lovingly nurtured. In her heart nestled the home call—for all time. She was bound in its meshes. They would draw her sooner or later to her sure and inevitable destiny. And what was there for him elsewhere—after all these years? Kismet. He drew a long breath.
“I’m a poor maverick, I suppose, marked with no man’s friendship. But you see I’m learning the language of the brotherhood. Why don’t you compliment me on my adaptability?”
She looked up smilingly. She was hurt, but he should never know it. And he, because of the pain in him, answered almost roughly:
“It is not a language for you to learn. You will never learn. Quit trying. You are not like us.”
She, because she did not understand, felt the old homesick choking in her throat, and remembered with a reminiscent shudder of the first awful time she had spun along that road. Everybody seemed to spin in this strange land. She felt herself longing for the fat, lazy, old jogging horses of her country home. Horses couldn’t hurry there because the hills were too many and the roads too heavy. These lean, shaggy, range-bred horses were diabolical in their predilection for going. Hank’s surely were no exception to the rule. He pulled them up with a grand flourish at the edge of the steep incline leading directly upon the pontoon that bridged the narrowed river on the Kemah side of the island, and they stopped dead still with the cleanness worthy of cow ponies. The suddenness of the halt precipitated them all into a general mix-up. Gordon had braced himself for the shock, but Louise was wholly unprepared. She was thrown violently against him. The contact paled his face. The soft hair he had longed to caress in his madness brushed his cheek. He shivered.
“Oh!” cried Louise, laughing and blushing, “I wasn’t expecting that!”
Most of the men were already out and down on the bridge. A lone pedestrian was making his way across.
“All safe?” queried Judge Dale, as he came up.
“A little thin over the channel, but all safe if you cross a-foot.”
“Suppose we walk across the island,” suggested the Judge, who occasionally overcame his indolence in spasmodic efforts to counteract his growing portliness, “and our friend Hank will meet us here in the morning.”
So it was agreed. The little party straggled gayly across the bridge. The walk across the island was far from irksome. The air was still bracing, though rags of smoky cloud were beginning to obscure the sun. The gaunt cottonwoods stood out in sombre silhouette against the unsoftened bareness of the winter landscape. Louise was somewhat thoughtful and pensive since her little attempt to challenge intimacy had been so ungraciously received. To Gordon, on the other hand, had come a strange, new exhilaration. His blood bounded joyously through his veins. This was his day—he would live it to the dregs. To-morrow, and renunciation—well, that was to-morrow. He could not even resent, as, being a man, he should have resented, the unwelcome and ludicrous attentions of the drunken singer to the one woman in the crowd, because whenever the offender came near, Louise would press closer to him, Gordon, and once, in her quick distaste to the proximity of the man, she clutched Gordon’s coat-sleeve nervously. It was the second time he had felt her hand on his arm. He never forgot either. But the man received such a withering chastisement from Gordon’s warning eyes that he ceased to molest until the remainder of the island road had been traversed.
Then men looked at each other questioningly. A long, narrow, single-plank bridge stretched across the channel. It was not then so safe as report would have it. The boards were stretched lengthwise with a long step between each board and the next. What was to be done? Hank had gone long since. No one coveted the long walk back to Kemah. Every one did covet the comfort or pleasure upon which each had set his heart. Gordon, the madness of his intoxication still upon him, constituted himself master of ceremonies. He stepped lightly upon the near plank to reconnoitre. He walked painstakingly from board to board. He was dealing in precious freight—he would draw no rash conclusions. When he had reached what he considered the middle of the channel, he returned and pronounced it in his opinion safe, with proper care, and advised strongly that no one step upon a plank till the one in front of him had left it. Thus the weight of only one person at a time would materially lessen the danger of the ice’s giving way. So the little procession took up its line of march.
Gordon had planned that Louise should follow her uncle and he himself would follow Louise; thus he might rest assured that there would be no encroachment upon her preserves. The officious songster, contrary to orders, glided ahead of his place when the line of march was well taken up—usurping anybody’s plank at will, and trotting along over the bare ice until finally he drew alongside Louise with an amiable grin.
“I will be here ready for emergencies,” he confided, meaningly. “You need not be afraid. If the ice breaks, I will save you.”
“Get back, you fool,” cried Gordon, fiercely.
“And leave this young lady alone? Not so was I brought up, young man,” answered Lawson, with great dignity. “Give me your hand, miss, I will steady you.”
Louise shrank from his touch and stepped back to the end of her plank.
“Get on that plank, idiot!” cried Gordon, wrathfully. “And if you dare step on this lady’s board again, I’ll wring your neck. Do you hear?”
He had stepped lightly off his own plank for a moment while he drew Louise back to it. The ice gave treacherously, and a little pool of water showed where his foot had been. Louise faltered.
“It—it—flows so fast,” she said, nervously.
“It is nothing,” he reassured her. “I will be more careful another time.”
It was a perilous place for two. He hurried her to the next board as soon as the subdued transgressor had left it, he himself holding back.
It was indeed an odd procession. Dark figures balanced themselves on the slim footing, each the length of a plank from the other, the line seeming to stretch from bank to bank. It would have been ludicrous had it not been for the danger, which all realized. Some half-grown boys, prowling along the Velpen shore looking for safe skating, gibed them with flippant rudeness.
Lawson took fire.
“Whoop ’er up, boys,” he yelled, waving his hat enthusiastically.
He pranced up gayly to the Judge, tripping along on the bare ice.
“Your arm, your honor,” he cried. “It is a blot on my escutcheon that I have left you to traverse this danger-bristling way alone—you, the Judge. But trust me. If the ice breaks, I will save you. I swim like a fish.”
“My friend,” said Dale, fixing on him eyes of calm disapproval, “if you are the cause of my being forced to a cold-water plunge bath against my wishes, I will sentence you to the gallows. Now go!”
He went. He was hurt, but he was not deterred. He would wait for the lady. A gentleman could do no less. Louise stopped. Gordon stopped. The whole back line stopped. Each man stood to his colors and—his plank. Louise, glancing appealingly over her shoulder, gave an hysterical little laugh.
“Move on!” cried Gordon, impatiently.
Instead of moving on, however, Lawson came confidently toward Louise. She stifled a little feminine scream in her handkerchief and stepped hastily backward.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Lawson.
Gordon repressed a rising oath, and cried out, “If you dare—,” but Lawson had already dared. His heavy step was upon Louise’s frail support. She thought shudderingly, intuitively, of the dark, swift, angry current under its thin veneer of ice—the current that was always hungry and ate islands and fertile fields in ravenous mouthfuls. She ran back to the end of her plank.
“Have no fear,” said the drunken man, blandly. He stepped to the bare ice at her side. “A man can’t walk pigeon-toed always,” he confided. “Besides, there’s not a particle of danger. These fools are making a mountain of a mole-hill.”
Gordon came forward quickly.
“Run ahead, Miss Dale, I’ll tend to this fellow,” he said.
He extended a firm hand. He meant to clutch the man, shove him behind, and keep him there. But at that moment the ice began to give under Lawson’s clumsy feet. A look of blank, piteous helplessness came into his drunken eyes as he felt the treacherous ice sinking beneath him. He tottered, then, with frantic, unthinking haste, and sprang to the plank, but it, too, began to sink. He laid desperate hold of the girl.
“Save me!” he shrieked.
Louise was conscious only of a quick, awful terror, a dreadful horror of swaying and sinking, and then she was muffled against a rough coat, strong arms clasped her tightly and bore her backward. Shivering, she hid her face in the coat, clutching the lapels with nervous strength.
“You’ll spoil your Sunday clothes,” she moaned, trying desperately to be calm and sensible.
And Gordon held her at last as he had dreamed in his mad moments of holding her—close against his heart—in the place he had not dared to tell her he had already put her. His face was pressed against the fair hair that he had longed with an indescribable longing to caress such a short time ago. His lips brushed the soft strands with infinite tenderness. Now was his dream come true. This day was his. No one might take it from him. To-morrow,—but that was to-morrow. To-day was his. He would live it to the end. Closer he held her,—the dear woman,—there was no one else in all the world. When he released her, she was confronting a man whose face was as white as the ice around them.
“Is this—the last of us?” she questioned, tremulously.
He flung his arm over her shoulders again. He did not know exactly what he did. Men were coming forward rapidly, aware that a great tragedy had threatened, had been averted. Dale was hastily retracing his steps. Lawson had crawled to a place of safety on a forward plank after having been flung out of the way by Gordon in his swift rush for Louise. He was grinning foolishly, but was partially sobered by the shock.
“Back! All of you!” cried Gordon, imperiously. He was very pale, but he had regained his self-control. “Idiots! Do you want another accident? Back to your places! We’ll have to go around.”
The ice was broken in many spots. Louise had really gone through, but so quick had been her rescue that she escaped with wet feet only. By making a portable bridge of two of the planks, they skirted the yawning hole in safety. It was a more dangerous undertaking now that two must stand on a plank at the same time. Luckily, the greater number were ahead when the accident occurred. It was not much past noon,—but Gordon’s day was ended. It was as if the sun had gone down on it. He found no opportunity to speak to Louise again, and the to-morrow, his to-morrow, had come. But the one day had been worth while.
Contrary to expectation, the case of the State of South Dakota against Jesse Black was called soon after the sitting of the court Monday afternoon. No testimony was introduced, however, until the following day. Inch by inch, step by step, Gordon fought for a fair jury through that tense afternoon. Merciless in his shrewd examination, keen to detect hesitancy, prejudices sought to be concealed he cleverly and relentlessly unearthed. Chair after chair was vacated,—only to be vacated again. It seemed there was not a man in the county who had not heard somewhat of this much-heralded crime—if crime it were. And he who had heard was a prejudiced partisan. How could it be otherwise where feeling ran so high,—where honest men mostly felt resentment against the man who dared to probe the wound without extracting the cause of it, and a hatred and fear curiously intermingled with admiration of the outlaw whose next move after obtaining his freedom might be to cut out of the general herd, cows of their own brands,—where tainted men, officers or cowmen, awaited developments with a consuming interest that was not above manipulating the lines of justice for their own selfish ends? Yet, despite the obstacles in the way, Gordon was determined to have an unprejudiced jury in so far as it lay in human power to seat such a one in the box. So he worked, and worked hard.
This impanelling of the jury was not interesting to the crowd. Many had no hint of its deeper meaning. Others saw it in the light of child’s play—a certain braggadocio on the part of the young lawyer. They wanted the actual show to begin—the examination of witnesses. They came and went restlessly, impatiently waiting. Wiser heads than theirs knew that the game was already on in deadly earnest. If these had been lucky enough to get seats in the small and overcrowded court-room, they remained glued to them. They were waiting to see what manner of men would be chosen—Jesse’s peers—to pass judgment on his acts and mete out for him just deserts—if they were capable of a just verdict. The square-jawed, keen-witted, clean-cut captain of justice, who had forgotten that the campaign had aged him irrevocably and that some whitened hair would never grow brown again, meant that they should be capable. The opposing lawyers smiled tolerantly at the numerous challenges. These smiles went far to convince many of the infallibility of their defence. Amused tolerance is a powerful weapon on more fields than one where men war with their wits. It is a wise man who cultivates the art.
“We have chosen the right man,” whispered Langford to Mary. They had secured seats near the front and were of those who knew the game was being played.
“He is great,” returned Mary. If only her father could be there to help! The odds were fearful. Louise, sitting at her table within the bar, with faith in this man’s destiny sufficient to remove mountains, smiled down at her friends.
“Louise is an angel,” said Mary, affectionately.
“Yes, she is,” responded Langford, absently, for he was not looking at the girl reporter, nor were his thoughts on her side of the rail. He wished for the sake of Williston’s “little girl” that there were not so much tobacco stench in the room. But this was a vague and intangible wish. He wished with the whole strength of his manhood—which was much—that this man on trial might be made to pay the penalty of his crime as a stepping-stone to paying the penalty of that greater crime of which he firmly believed him guilty. His own interest had become strangely secondary since that hot July day when he had pledged himself to vengeance. This falling off might have dated from a certain September morning when he had lost himself—for all time—to a girl with pain-pinched face and fever-brightened eyes who wore a blue wrapper. His would not be a personal triumph now, if he won.
Court adjourned that evening with the jury-box filled. The State’s friends were feeling pretty good about it. Langford made his way into the bar where Gordon was standing apart. He passed an arm affectionately over his friend’s shoulder.
“You were inspired, Dick,” he said. “Keep on the same as you have begun and we shall have everything our own way.”
But the fire had died down in the young lawyer’s bearing.
“I’m tired, Paul, dead tired,” he said, wearily. “I wish it were over.”
“Come to supper—then you’ll feel better. You’re tired out. It is a tough strain, isn’t it?” he said, cheerily. He was not afraid. He knew the fire would burn the brighter again when there was need of it—in the morning.
They passed out of the bar together. At the hotel, Mary and Louise were already seated at the table in the dining-room where the little party usually sat together when it was possible to do so. Judge Dale had not yet arrived. The landlady was in a worried dispute with Red Sanderson and a companion. The men were evidently cronies. They had their eyes on two of the three vacant places at the table.
“But I tell you these places are taken,” persisted the landlady, who served as head-waitress when such services were necessary, which was not often. Her patrons usually took and held possession of things at their own sweet will.
“You bet they are,” chimed in Red, deliberately pulling out a chair next to Louise, who shivered in recognition.
“Please—” she began, in a small voice, but got no farther. Something in his bold, admiring stare choked her into silence.
“You’re a mighty pretty girl, if you are a trottin’ round with the Three Bars,” he grinned. “Plenty time to change your live—”
“Just move on, will you,” said Gordon, curtly, coming up at that moment with Langford and shoving him aside with unceremonious brevity. “This is my place.” He sat down quietly.
“You damned upstart,” blustered Sanderson. “Want a little pistol play, do you?”
“Gentlemen! gentlemen!” implored the landlady.
“I’m not entering any objection,” said Gordon, coolly. “Just shoot—why don’t you? You have the drop on me.”
For a moment it looked as if Sanderson would take him at his word and meet this taunt with instant death for the sender of it, so black was his anger. But encountering Langford’s level gaze, he read something therein, shrugged his shoulders, replaced his pistol, and sauntered off with his companion just as Judge Dale came upon the scene. Langford glanced quickly across the table at Mary. Her eyes were wide with startled horror. She, too, had seen. Just above Red Sanderson’s temple and extending from the forehead up into the hair was an ugly scar—not like that left by a cut, but as if the flesh might have been deeply bruised by some blunt weapon.
“Mary! How pale you are!” cried Louise, in alarm.
“I’m haunted by that man,” she continued, biting her lip to keep from crying out against the terrors of this country. “He’s always showing up in unexpected places. I shall die if I ever meet him alone.”
“You need not be afraid,” said Gordon, speaking quietly from his place at her side. Louise flashed him a swift, bewildering smile of gratitude. Then she remembered she had a grievance against him and she stiffened. But then the feel of his arms came to her—the feel that she had scarcely been conscious of yesterday when the dark water lay at her feet,—and she blushed, and studied her plate diligently.
Under this cover, the young ranchman comforted Mary, whom the others had temporarily forgotten, with a long, caressing look from his handsome eyes that was a pledge of tireless vigilance and an unforgetting watchfulness of future protection.
The next morning, every available seat was filled early. People had blocked the rough plank walks leading to the court-house long before the doors were unlocked. The day promised to be fine, and the many teams coming and going between Kemah and the river to pick up the Velpen people who had crossed the ice on foot gave to the little town somewhat of the gala appearance of fair time. The stately and blanketed Sioux from their temporary camps on the flat were standing around, uncommunicative, waiting for proceedings to begin. Long before the judicial party had arrived from the hotel, the cramped room was crowded to its limits. There was loud talking, laughing, and joking. Local wits amused themselves and others by throwing quips at different members of the county bar or their brethren from across the river, as they walked to their places inside the railings with the little mannerisms that were peculiar to each. Some swaggered with their importance; others bore themselves with a ludicrous and exaggerated dignity; while a refreshing few, with absolute self-unconsciousness, sat down for the work in hand. The witty cowboys, restrained by no bothersome feelings of delicacy, took off every one in running asides that kept the room in uproar. Men who did not chew tobacco ate peanuts.
The door in the rear of the bar opened and Judge Dale entered. A comparative quiet fell upon the people. He mounted to his high bench. The clerk came in, then the court reporter. She tossed her note books on the table, leisurely pulled off her gloves and took her place, examining the ends of her pencils with a critical eye. It would be a busy day for the “gal reporter.” Then Langford came shoving his way down the crowded aisle with a sad-faced, brown-eyed, young woman in his wake, who yet held herself erect with a proud little tilt to her chin. There was not an empty seat outside the bar. Louise motioned, and he escorted Mary to a place within and sat down beside her. The jurymen were all in their chairs. Presently came in Gordon with his quiet, self-reliant manner. Langford had been right. The County Attorney was not tired to-day.
Shortly after Gordon came Small—Small, the dynamic, whose explosives had so often laid waste the weak and abortive independent reasoning powers of “Old Necessity” and his sort, and were the subject of much satire and some admiration when the legal fraternity talked “shop.” As he strode to his place, he radiated bombs of just and telling wrath. He scintillated with aggressiveness. With him came Jesse Black, easy and disdainful as of old. After them, a small man came gliding in with as little commotion as if he were sliding over the floor of a waxed dancing hall in patent-leather pumps. He was an unassuming little man with quick, cat-like movements which one lost if one were not on the alert. When he had slipped into a chair next to his associate, Small, the inflammable Small, towered above him head and shoulders.
“Every inch the criminal,” audibly observed a stranger, an Englishman over to invest in lands for stocking a horse ranch. “Strange how they always wear the imprint on their faces. No escaping it. I fancy that is what the Scriptures meant by the mark of Cain.”
The remark was addressed to no one in particular, but it reached the ears of Jim Munson, who was standing near.
“Good Lord, man!” he said, with a grin, “that’s the plumb smartest criminal lawyer in the hull county. That’s a fac’. Lord, Lord! Him Jesse Black?”
His risibilities continued to thus get the better of his gravity at frequent intervals during the day. He never failed to snort aloud in pure delight whenever he thought of it. What a tale for the boys when he could get to them!
“These cattle men!” This time the tenderfoot communicated with himself—he had a square chin and a direct eye; there were possibilities in him. “Their perverted sense of the ridiculous is diabolical.”
There were others who did not know the little man. He hailed from the southern part of the State. But Gordon knew him. He knew he was pitted against one of the sharpest, shrewdest men of his day.
“Gentlemen, I think we are ready,” said the Judge, and the game was on again.
The State called Paul Langford, its principal witness in default of Williston.
“Your name, place of residence, and business?” asked the counsel for the State.
“Paul Langford. I reside in Kemah County, and I own and operate a cattle ranch.”
After Langford had clearly described and identified the animal in question, Gordon continued:
“Mr. Langford, when did you first miss this steer?”
“On the fifteenth day of July last.”
“How did you happen to miss this steer?”
“My attention was called to the fact that an animal answering this description and bearing my brand had been seen under suspicious detention.”
“Prior to information thus received, you were not aware this creature had either strayed away or been stolen?”
“I was not.”
“Who gave you this information, Mr. Langford?”
“George Williston of the Lazy S.”
“Now you may tell the jury in what words Williston told you about the steer he saw.”
This, of course, was objected to and the objection was sustained by the court, as Gordon knew it would be. He only wanted the jury to remember that Williston could have told a damaging story had he been here, and also to remember how mysteriously this same Williston had disappeared. He could not have Williston or Williston’s story, but he might keep an impression ever before these twelve men that there was a story—he knew it and they knew it,—a story of which some crotchet of the law forbade the telling.
“What did you do after your attention had been called to the suspicious circumstances of the steer’s detention?”
“I informed my boys of what I had heard, and sent them out to look for the steer.”
“That same day?”
“Yes.”
“Were they successful?”
“No.”
“Did this steer have a particular stamping ground?”
“He did.”
“Where was that?”
“He always ranged with a bunch on what we call the home range.”
“Near the ranch house?”
“Within half a mile.”
“Did you look for him yourself?”
“I did.”
“He was not on this home grazing ground?”
“He was not.”
“Did you look elsewhere for him?”
“We did.”
“Where?”
“We rode the free ranges for several days—wherever any of my cattle held out.”
“How many days did you say you rode?”
“Why, we continued to look sharp until my boy, Munson, found him the day before the preliminary at the Velpen stock-yards, on the point of being shipped to Sioux City.”
“You went to Velpen to identify this steer?”
“I did.”
“It was your steer?”
“Yes.”
“The same for which you had been searching so long?”
“The very same.”
“It was wearing your brand?”
“It was not.”
“What brand was it wearing?”
“J R.”
“Where was it?”
“On the right hip.”
“Where do you usually put your brand, Mr. Langford?”
“On the right hip.”
“Do you always brand your cattle there?”
“Always.”
“Do you know any J R outfit?”
“I do not.”
Gordon nodded to Small. His examination had been straightforward and to the point. He had drawn alert and confident answers from his witness. Involuntarily, he glanced at Louise, who had not seemed to be working at all during this clean-cut dialogue. She flashed a fleeting smile at him. He knew he was out of sympathy with the great majority of the people down there in front. He did not seem to care so much now. A great medicine is a womanly and an understanding smile. It flushed his face a bit, too.
Langford was most unsatisfactory under cross-examination. He never contradicted himself, and was a trifle contemptuous of any effort to tangle him up in threads of his own weaving. The little man touched Small on the arm and whispered to him.
“Mr. Langford,” said Small, in a weighty voice, “you travel a great deal, I believe?”
“I do.”
“For pleasure, maybe?” with a mysterious inflection.
“Partly.”
“Business as well?”
“Business as well.”
“Just prior to the arrest of the defendant,” insinuatingly, “you were away?”
“How long prior do you mean?”
“Say a week.”
“No.”
“Two weeks?”
“Yes.”
“You had been away some time?”
“The better part of a year,” confessed Langford, with engaging candor.
“Yes. Now, Mr. Langford, I should like you to tell me about how many cattle you range—in round numbers.”
“About five thousand head.”
“Yes. Now, Mr. Langford, you who count your cattle by the thousands, on your own sworn word you have been out of the country a year. Don’t you think you are asking this jury to swallow a pretty big mouthful when you ask them to believe that you could so unmistakably distinguish this one poor ornery steer, who has so little to distinguish him from thousands of others?”
“I have owned that spotted steer for years,” said Langford, composedly. “I have never sold him because he was rather an odd creature and so cantankerous that we dubbed him the Three Bars mascot.”
Gordon called Jim Munson.
“What is your name?”
“Gosh!”
The question was unexpected. Was there any one in the county who did not know Jim Munson? And Dick Gordon of all people! Then he remembered that the Boss had been asked the same question, so it must be all right. But the ways of the court were surely mysterious and ofttimes foolish.
“Jim Munson. Jim Munson’s my name—yep.”
Gordon smiled.
“You needn’t insist on it, Mr. Munson,” he advised. “We know it now. Where do you live?”
“Hellity damn! I live at the Three Bars ranch.”
“In Kemah County?”
“It sure is.”
“What is your business, Mr. Munson?”
“Jim’s shorter, Dick. Well, I work for the Boss, Mr. Paul Langford.”
“In what capacity?”
“If you mean what do I do, why, I ride the range, I punch cows, I always go on the round-up, I’m a fair bronco-breaker and I make up bunks and clean lamp chimblies between times,” he recited, glibly, bound to be terse yet explicit, by advice of the Boss.
There was a gale of laughter in the bar. Even the Court smiled.
“Oh, Jim! Jim! You have perjured yourself already!” murmured the Boss. “Clean lamp chimneys—ye gods!”
“Well, grin away!” exploded Jim, his quick ire rising. He had forgotten that Judge Dale’s court was not like Justice McAllister’s. His fingers fairly itched to draw a pistol and make the scoffers laugh and dance to a little music of his own. But something in Gordon’s steady though seemingly careless gaze brought him back to the seriousness of the scene they were playing—without guns.
The examination proceeded. The air was getting stifling. Windows were thrown open. Damp-looking clouds had arisen from nowhere seemingly and spread over the little prairie town, over the river and the hills. It was very warm. Weather-seasoned inhabitants would have predicted storm had they not been otherwise engaged. There was no breath of air stirring. Mrs. Higgins had said it was a sorry day for the cattle when the river was running in December. Others had said so and so believed, but people were not thinking of the cattle now. One big-boned, long-horned steer held the stage alone.
The State proceeded to Munson’s identification of the steer in question. After many and searching questions, Gordon asked the witness:
“Jim, would you be willing to swear that the steer you had held over at the stock-yards was the very same steer that was the mascot of the Three Bars ranch?”
This was Jim’s big opportunity.
“Know Mag? Swear to Mag? Dick, I would know Mag ef I met him on the golden streets of the eternal city or ef my eyes was full o’ soundin’ cataracts! Yep.”
“I am not asking such an impossible feat, Mr. Munson,” cut in Gordon, nettled by the digressions of one of his most important witnesses. “Answer briefly, please. Would you be willing to swear?”
Jim was jerked back to the beaten track by the sharp incision of Gordon’s rebuke. No, this was indeed not Jimmie Mac’s court.
“Yep,” he answered, shortly.
Billy Brown was called. After the preliminary questions, Gordon said to him:
“Now, Mr. Brown, please tell the jury how you came into possession of the steer.”
“Well, I was shippin’ a couple o’ car loads to Sioux City, and I was drivin’ the bunch myself with a couple o’ hands when I meets up with Jesse Black here. He was herdin’ a likely little bunch o’ a half dozen or so—among ’em this spotted feller. He said he wasn’t shippin’ any this Fall, but these were for sale—part of a lot he had bought from Yellow Wolf. So the upshot of the matter was, I took ’em off his hands. I was just lackin’ ’bout that many to make a good, clean, two cars full.”
“You took a bill-of-sale for them, of course, Mr. Brown?”
“I sure did. I’m too old a hand to buy without a bill-o’-sale.”
The document was produced, marked as an exhibit, and offered in evidence.
The hearing of testimony for the State went on all through that day. It was late when the State rested its case—so late that the defence would not be taken up until the following day. It was all in—for weal or for woe. In some way, all of the State’s witnesses—with the possible exception of Munson, who would argue with the angel Gabriel at the last day and offer to give him lessons in trumpet blowing—had been imbued with the earnest, honest, straightforward policy of the State’s counsel. Gordon’s friends were hopeful. Langford was jubilant, and he believed in the tolerable integrity of Gordon’s hard-won jury. Gordon’s presentation of the case thus far had made him friends; fickle friends maybe, who would turn when the wind turned—to-morrow,—but true it was that when court adjourned late in the afternoon, many who had jeered at him as a visionary or an unwelcome meddler acknowledged to themselves that they might have erred in their judgment.
As on the previous night, Gordon was tired. He walked aimlessly to a window within the bar and leaned against it, looking at the still, oppressive, cloudy dampness outside, with the early December darkness coming on apace. Lights were already twinkling in kitchens where housewives were busy with the evening meal.
“Well, Dick,” said Langford, coming up cheery and confident.
“Well, Paul, it’s all in.”
“And well in, old man.”
“I—don’t know, Paul. I hope so. That quiet little man from down country has not been much heard from, you know. I am afraid, a moral uplift isn’t my stunt. I’m tired! I feel like a rag.”
Langford was called away for a moment. When he returned, Gordon was gone. He was not at supper.
“He went away on his horse,” explained Louise, in answer to Langford’s unspoken question. “I saw him ride into the country.”
When the party separated for the night, Gordon had not yet returned.
Gordon rode aimlessly out of the little town with its twinkling lights. He did not care where he went or what direction he pursued. He wanted to ride off a strange, enervating dejection that had laid hold of him the moment his last testimony had gone in. It all seemed so pitifully inadequate—without Williston,—now that it was all in. Why had he undertaken it? It could only go for another defeat counted against him. Though what was one defeat more or less when there had been so many? It would be nothing new. Was he not pursuing merely the old beaten trail? Why should the thought weigh so heavily now? Can a man never attain to that higher—or lower, which is it?—altitude of strifeless, unregretful hardness? Or was it, he asked himself in savage contempt of his weakness, that, despite all his generous and iron clad resolutions, he had secretly, unconsciously perhaps, cherished a sweet, shy, little reservation in his inmost heart that maybe—if he won out—
“You poor fool,” he said, aloud, with bitter harshness.
Suppose he did. A brave specimen, he, if he had the shameful egoism to ask a girl—a girl like Louise—a gentle, highbred, protected, cherished girl like that—to share this new, bleak, rough life with him. But the very sweetness of the thought of her doing it made him gasp there in the darkness. How stifling the air was! He lifted his hat. It was hard to breathe. It was like the still oppressiveness preceding an electrical storm. His mare, unguided, had naturally chosen the main travelled trail and kept it. She followed the mood of her master and walked leisurely along while the man wrestled with himself.
If he really possessed the hardihood to ask Louise to do this for him, she would laugh at him. Stay! That was a lie—a black lie. She would not laugh—not Louise. She was not of that sort. Rather would she grieve over the inevitable sadness of it. If she laughed, he could bear it better—he had good, stubborn, self-respecting blood in him,—but she would not laugh. And all the rest of his long life must be spent in wishing—wishing—if it could have been! But he would never ask her to do it. Not even if the impossible came to pass. It was a hard country on women, a hard, treeless, sun-seared, unkindly country. Men could stand it—fight for its future; but not women like Louise. It made men as well as unmade them. And after all it did not prove to be the undoing of men so much as it developed in them the perhaps hitherto hidden fact that they were already wanting. These latent, constitutional weaknesses thus laid bare, the bad must for a while prevail—bad is so much noisier than good. But this big, new country with its infinite possibilities—give it time—it would form men out of raw material and make over men mistakenly made when that was possible, or else show the dividing line so clearly that the goats might not herd with the sheep. Some day, it would be fit for women—like Louise. Not now. Much labor and sorrow must be lived through; there must be many mistakes, many experiments tried, there must be much sacrifice and much refining, and many must fall and lose in the race before its big destiny be worked out and it be fit for women—like Louise. Down in the southern part of the State, and belonging to it, a certain big barred building sheltered many women, when the sun of the treeless prairies and the gazing into the lonesome distances surrounding their homesteads seeped into their brains and stayed there so that they knew not what they did. There were trees there and fountains and restful blue-grass in season, and flowers, flowers, flowers—but these came too late for most of the women.
Louise was not of that sort. The roughness and the loneliness would simply wear her away and she would die—smiling to the last. What leering fate had led her hither to show him what he had missed by choosing as he had chosen to throw himself into the thankless task of preparing a new country for—a future generation? This accomplished, she would flit lightly away and never know the misery she had left behind or the flavor and zest she had filched from the work of one man, at least, who had entered upon it with lofty ambition, high hopes, and immutable purpose. What then would he have wished? That she had not come at all?
He smiled. If Louise could have seen that smile, or the almost dewy softness which stole into his eyes—the eyes that were too keen for everyday living! That he loved her was the one thing in life worth while. Then why rail at fate? If he had not chosen as he had, he should never have known Louise. He must have gone through life without that dear, exquisite, solemn sense of her—in his arms—those arms to which it had been given to draw her back from a cruel death. That fulfilment was his for all time. How sweet she was! He seemed to feel again the soft pressure of her clinging arms,—remembering how his lips had brushed her fair hair. If it had been Langford, now, who was guilty of so ridiculous a sentimentalism—the bold, impetuous, young ranchman—he smiled at himself whimsically. Then he pulled himself together. He did not think the jury could believe the story Jesse Black would trump up, no matter how plausible it was made to sound. He felt more like himself,—in better condition to meet those few but staunch friends of his from whom he had so summarily run away,—stronger to meet—Louise. Man-like, now that he was himself again, he must know the time. He struck a match.
“Why, Lena, old girl, we’ve been taking our time, haven’t we? They are likely through supper, but maybe I can wheedle a doughnut out of the cook.”
The match burned out. Not until he had tossed it away did it come to him that they were no longer on the main trail.
“Now, that’s funny, old girl,” he scolded. “What made you be so unreasonable? Well, we started with our noses westward, so you must have wandered into the old Lazy S branch trail. Though, to be sure, it has been such a deuce of a while since we travelled it that I wonder at you, Lena. Well, we’ll just jog back. What’s the matter now, silly?”
His mare had shied. He turned her nose resolutely, domineeringly, back toward the spot objected to.
“I can’t see what you’re scared at, but we’ll just investigate and show you how foolish a thing is feminine squeamishness.”
A shadowy form arose out of the darkness. It approached.
“Is that you, Dick?”
Gordon was not a superstitious man, yet he felt suddenly cold to the crown of his head. It was not so dark as it might have been. There would have been a moon had it not been cloudy. Dimly, he realized that the man had arisen from the ruins of what must have been the old Williston homestead. The outlines of the stone stoop were vaguely visible in the half light. The solitary figure had been crouched there, brooding.
“I’m flesh and blood, Dick, never fear,” said the man in a mournful voice. “I’m hungry enough to vouch for that. You needn’t be afraid. I’m anything but a spirit.”
“Williston!” The astonished word burst from Gordon’s lips. “Williston! Is it really you?”
“None other, my dear Gordon! Sorry I startled you. I saw your light and heard your voice speaking to your horse, and as you were the very man I was on the point of seeking, I just naturally came forward, forgetting that my friends would very likely look upon me in the light of a ghost.”
“Williston! My dear fellow!” repeated Gordon again. “It is too good to be true,” he cried, leaping from his mare and extending both hands cordially. “Shake, old man! My, the feel of you is—bully. You are flesh and blood all right. You always did have a good, honest shake for a fellow. I don’t know, though. Seems to me you have been kind o’ running to skin and bones since I last saw you. Grip’s good, but bony. You’re thinner than ever, aren’t you?”
All this time he was shaking Williston’s hands heartily. He never thought of asking him where he had been. For weary months he had longed for this man to come back. He had come back. That was enough for the present. He had always felt genuinely friendly toward the unfortunate scholar and his daughter.
“That’s natural, isn’t it? Besides, they forgot my rations sometimes.”
“Who, Williston?” asked Gordon, the real significance of the man’s return taking quick hold of him.
“I think you know, Gordon,” said the older man, quietly. “It is a long story. I was coming to you. I will tell you everything. Shall I begin now?”
“Are you in any danger of pursuit?” asked Gordon, suddenly bethinking himself.
“I think not. I killed my jailer, the half-breed, Nightbird.”
“You did well. So did Mary.”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you know that Mary shot and killed one of the desperadoes that night? At least, we have every reason to think it was Mary. By the way, you have not asked after her.”
The man’s head drooped. He did not answer for a long time. When he raised his head, his face, though showing indistinctly, was hard and drawn. He spoke with little emotion as a man who had sounded the gamut of despair and was now far spent.
“What was the use? I saw her fall, Gordon. She stood with me to the end. She was a brave little girl. She never once faltered. Dick,” he said, his voice changing suddenly, and laying hot, feverish hands on the young man’s shoulders, “we’ll hang them—you and I—we’ll hang them every one,—the devils who look like men, but who strike at women. We’ll hang them, I say—you and I. I’ve got the evidence.”
“Is it possible they didn’t tell you?” cried Gordon, aghast at the amazing cruelty of it.
“Tell me anything? Not they. She was such a good girl, Dick. There never was a better. She never complained. She never got her screens, poor girl. I wish she could have had her screens before they murdered her. Where did you lay her, Dick?”
“Mr. Williston,” said Dick, taking firm hold of the man’s burning hands and speaking with soothing calmness, “forgive me for not telling you at once. I thought you knew. I never dreamed that you might have been thinking all the while that Mary was dead. She is alive and well and with friends. She only fainted that night. Come, brace up! Why, man alive, aren’t you glad? Well, then, don’t go to pieces like a child. Come, brace up, I tell you!”
“You—you—wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Dick?”
“As God is my witness, Mary is alive and in Kemah this minute—unless an earthquake has swallowed the hotel during my absence. I saw her less than two hours ago.”
“Give me a minute, my dear fellow, will you? I—I—”
He walked blindly away a few steps and sat down once more on the ruins of his homestead. Gordon waited. The man sat still—his head buried in his hands. Gordon approached, leading his mare, and sat down beside him.
“Now tell me,” he said, with simple directness.
An hour later, the two men separated at the door of the Whites’ claim shanty.
“Lie low here until I send for you,” was Gordon’s parting word.
The wind arose along toward midnight—the wind that many a hardened inhabitant would have foretold hours before had he been master of his time and thoughts. As a rule, no signal service was needed in the cow country. Men who practically lived in the open had a natural right to claim some close acquaintance with the portents of approaching changes. But it would have been well had some storm flag waved over the little town that day. For the wind that came slipping up in the night, first in little sighing whiffs and skirmishes, gradually growing more impatient, more domineering, more utterly contemptuous, haughty, and hungry, sweeping down from its northwest camping grounds, carried a deadly menace in its yet warm breath to the helpless and unprotected cattle huddled together in startled terror or already beginning their migration by intuition, running with the wind.
It rattled loose window-casings in the hotel, so that people turned uneasily in their beds. It sent strange creatures of the imagination to prowl about. Cowmen thought of the depleted herds when the riders should come in off the free ranges in the Spring should that moaning wind mean a real northwester.
Louise was awakened by a sudden shriek of wind that swept through the slight aperture left by the raised window and sent something crashing to the floor. She lay for a moment drowsily wondering what had fallen. Was it anything that could be broken? She heard the steady push of the wind against the frail frame building, and knew she ought to compel herself sufficiently to be aroused to close the window. But she was very sleepy. The crash had not awakened Mary. She was breathing quietly and deeply. But she would be amenable to a touch—just a light one—and she did not mind doing things. How mean, though, to administer it in such a cause. She could not do it. The dilapidated green blind was flapping dismally. What time was it? Maybe it was nearly morning, and then the wind would probably go down. That would save her from getting up. She snuggled under the covers and prepared to slip deliciously off into slumber again.
But she couldn’t go to sleep after all. A haunting suspicion preyed on her waking faculties that the crash might have been the water pitcher. She had been asleep and could not gauge the shock of the fall. It had seemed terrific, but what awakens one from sleep is always abnormal to one’s startled and unremembering consciousness. Still, it might have been the pitcher. She cherished no fond delusion as to the impenetrability of the warped cottonwood flooring. Water might even then be trickling through to the room below. She found herself wondering where the bed stood, and that thought brought her sitting up in a hurry only to remember that she was over the musty sitting room with its impossible carpet. She would be glad to see it soaked—it might put a little color into it, temporarily at least, and lay the dust of ages. But, sitting up, she felt herself enveloped in a gale of wind that played over the bed, and so wisely concluded that if she wished to see this court through without the risk of grippe or pneumonia complications, she had better close that window. So she slipped cautiously out of bed, nervously apprehensive of plunging her feet into a pool of water. It had not been the pitcher after all. Even after the window was closed, there seemed to be much air in the room. The blind still flapped, though at longer intervals. If it really turned cold, how were they to live in that barn-like room, she and Mary? She thought of the campers out on the flat and shivered. She looked out of the window musingly a moment. It was dark. She wondered if Gordon had come home. Of course he was home. It must be nearly morning. Her feet were getting cold, so she crept back into bed. The next thing of which she was conscious, Mary was shaking her excitedly.
“What is it?” she asked, sleepily.
“Louise! There’s a fire somewhere! Listen!”
Some one rushed quickly through the hall; others followed, knocking against the walls in the darkness. Then the awful, heart-clutching clang of a bell rang out—near, insistent, metallic. It was the meeting-house bell. There was no other in the town. The girls sprang to the floor. The thought had found swift lodgment in the mind of each that the hotel was on fire, and in that moment Louise thought of the poisoned meat that had once been served to some arch-enemies of the gang whose chief was now on trial for his liberty. So quickly does the brain work under stress of great crises, that, even before she had her shoes and stockings on, she found herself wondering who was the marked victim this time. Not Williston,—he was dead. Not Gordon,—he slept in his own room back of the office. Not Langford,—he was bunking with his friend in that same room. Jim Munson? Or was the Judge the proscribed one? He was not a corrupt judge. He could not be bought. It might be he. Mary had gone to the window.
“Louise!” she gasped. “The court-house!”
True. The cloudy sky was reddened above the poor little temple of justice where for days and weeks the tide of human interest of a big part of a big State—ay, a big part of all the northwest country, maybe—had been steadily setting in and had reached its culmination only yesterday, when a gray eyed, drooping-shouldered, firm-jawed young man had at last faced quietly in the bar of his court the defier of the cow country. To-night, it would dance its little measure, recite its few lines on its little stage of popularity before an audience frenzied with appreciation and interest; to-morrow, it would be a heap of ashes, its scene played out.
“My note books!” cried Louise, in a flash of comprehension. She dressed hastily. Shirt-waist was too intricate, so she threw on a gay Japanese kimono; her jacket and walking skirt concealed the limitations of her attire.
“What are you going to do?” asked Mary, also putting on clothes which were easy of adjustment. She had never gone to fires in the old days before she had come to South Dakota; but if Louise went—gentle, high-bred Louise—why, she would go too, that was all there was about it. She had constituted herself Louise’s guardian in this rough life that must be so alien to the Eastern girl. Louise had been very good to her. Louise’s startled cry about her note books carried little understanding to her. She was not used to court and its ways.
They hastened out into the hallway and down the stairs. They saw no one whom they knew, though men were still dodging out from unexpected places and hurrying down the street. It seemed impossible that the inconveniently built, diminutive prairie hotel could accommodate so many people. Louise found herself wondering where they had been packed away. The men, carelessly dressed as they were, their hair shaggy and unkempt, always with pistols in belt or hip-pocket or hand, made her shiver with dread. They looked so wild and weird and fierce in the dimly lighted hall. She clutched Mary’s arm nervously, but no thought of returning entered her mind. Probably the Judge was already on the court-house grounds. He would want to save some valuable books he had been reading in his official quarters. So they went out into the bleak and windy night. They were immediately enveloped in a wild gust that nearly swept them off their feet as it came tearing down the street. They clung together for a moment.
“It’ll burn like hell in this wind!” some one cried, as a bunch of men hurried past them. The words were literally whipped out of his mouth. “Won’t save a thing.”
Flames were bursting out of the front windows upstairs. The sky was all alight. Sparks were tossed madly southward by the wind. There was grave danger for buildings other than the one already doomed. The roar of the wind and the flames was well-nigh deafening. The back windows and stairs seemed clear.
“Hurry, Mary, hurry!” cried Louise, above the roar, and pressed forward, stumbling and gasping for the breath that the wild wind coveted. It was not far they had to go. There was a jam of men in the yard. More were coming up. But there was nothing to do. Men shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders and watched the progress of the inevitable with the placidity engendered of the potent “It can’t be helped.” But some things might have been saved that were not saved had the first on the grounds not rested so securely on that quieting inevitability. As the girls came within the crowded circle of light, they overheard something of a gallant attempt on the part of somebody to save the county records—they did not hear whether or no the attempt had been successful. They made their way to the rear. It was still dark.
“Louise! What are you going to do?” cried Mary, in consternation. There were few people on this side. Louise put her hand deliberately to the door-knob. It gave to her pressure—the door swung open. Some one stumbled out blindly and leaned against the wall for a moment, his hands over his eyes.
“I can’t do it,” he said, aloud, “I can’t reach the vaults.”
Louise slipped past him and was within the doorway, closely followed by the frantic Mary.
The man cried out sharply, and stretched out a detaining hand. “Are you crazy? Come back!”
“Mr. Gordon!” cried Louise, with a little sob of relief, “is it really you? Let me go—quick—my note books!”
A thick cloud of smoke at that moment came rolling down the back stairs. It enveloped them. It went down their throats and made them cough. The man, throwing an arm over the shoulders of the slender girl who had started up after the first shock of the smoke had passed away, pushed her gently but firmly outside.
“Don’t let her come, Mary,” he called back, clearly. “I’ll get the note books—if I can.” Then he was gone—up the smoke-wreathed stairway.
Outside, the girls waited. It seemed hours. The wind, howling around the corners, whipped their skirts. There was a colder edge to it. Fire at last broke out of the back windows simultaneously with the sound of breaking glass, and huge billows of released black smoke surged out from the new outlet. Louise started forward. She never knew afterward just what she meant to do, but she sprang away from Mary’s encircling arm and ran up the little flight of steps leading to the door from which she had been so unceremoniously thrust. Afterward, when they told her, she realized what her impulsive action meant, but now she did not think. She was only conscious of some wild, vague impulse to fly to the help of the man who would even now be safe in blessed outdoors had it not been for her and her foolish woman’s whim. She had sent him to his death. What were those wretched note books—what was anything at all in comparison to his life! So she stumbled blindly up the steps. The wind had slammed the door shut. It was a cruel obstacle to keep her back. She wrenched it open. The clouds of smoke that met her, rolling out of their imprisonment like pent up steam, choked her, blinded her, beat her back. She strove impotently against it. She tried to fight it off with her hands—those little intensely feminine hands whose fortune Gordon longed to take upon himself forever and forever. They were so small and weak to fend for themselves. But small as they were, it was a good thing they did that night. Now Mary had firm hold of her and would not let her go. She struggled desperately and tried to push her off, but vainly, for Mary had twice her strength.
“Mary, I shall never forgive you—”
She did not finish her sentence, for at that moment Gordon staggered out into the air. He sat down on the bottom step as if he were drunk, but little darts of flame colored the surging smoke here and there in weird splotches and, suddenly calm now that there was something to do, Mary and Louise led him away from the doomed building where the keen wind soon blew the choking smoke from his eyes and throat.
“I’ve swallowed a ton,” he said, recovering himself quickly. “I couldn’t get them, Louise.” He did not know he called her so.
“Oh, what does it matter?” cried Louise, earnestly. “Only forgive me for sending you.”
“As I remember it, I sent myself,” said Gordon, with a humorous smile, “and, I am afraid, tumbled one little girl rather unceremoniously down the stairs. Did I hurt you?” There was a caressing cadence in the question that he could not for the life of him keep out of his voice.
“I did not even know I tumbled. How did you get back?” said Louise, tremulously.
“Who opened the door?” counter-questioned Gordon, remembering. “The wind must have blown it shut. I was blinded—I couldn’t find it—I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t have sense enough to know it was shut, but I couldn’t have helped myself anyway. I groped for it as long as I could without breathing. Then I guess I must have gone off a little, for I was sprawling on the floor of the lower hall when I felt a breath of air playing over me. Somebody must have opened the door—because I am pretty sure I had fainted or done some foolish thing.”
Louise was silent. She was thankful—thankful! God had been very good to her. It had been given to her to do this thing. She had not meant to do it—she had not known what she did; enough that it was done.
“It was Louise,” spoke up Mary, “and I—tried to hold her back!” So she accused herself.
“But I didn’t do it on purpose,” said Louise, with shining eyes. “I—I—”
“Yes, you—” prompted Gordon, looking at her with tender intentness.
“I guess I was trying to come after you,” she confessed. “It was very—foolish.”