A brief ten minutes of waiting beside the front door of the house, and then Ronicky Doone heard a swift pattering of feet on the stairs. Presently the girl was moving very slowly toward him down the hall. Plainly she was bitterly afraid when she came beside him, under the dim hall light. She wore that same black hat, turned back from her white face, and the red flower beside it was a dull, uncertain blur. Decidedly she was pretty enough to explain Bill Gregg’s sorrow.
Ronicky gave her no chance to think twice. She was in the very act of murmuring something about a change of mind, when he opened the door and, stepping out into the starlight, invited her with a smile and a gesture to follow. In a moment they were in the freshness of the night air. He took her arm, and they passed slowly down the steps. At the bottom she turned and looked anxiously at the house.
“Lady,” murmured Ronicky, “they’s nothing to be afraid of. We’re going to walk right up and down this street and never get out of sight of the friends you got in this here house.”
At the word “friends” she shivered slightly, and he added: “Unless you want to go farther of your own free will.”
“No, no!” she exclaimed, as if frightened by the very prospect.
“Then we won’t. It’s all up to you. You’re the boss, and I’m the cow- puncher, lady.”
“But tell me quickly,” she urged. “I—I have to go back. I mustn’t stay out too long.”
“Starting right in at the first,” Ronicky said, “I got to tell you that Bill has told me pretty much everything that ever went on between you two. All about the correspondence-school work and about the letters and about the pictures.”
“I don’t understand,” murmured the girl faintly.
But Ronicky diplomatically raised his voice and went on, as if he had not heard her. “You know what he’s done with that picture of yours?”
“No,” she said faintly.
“He got the biggest nugget that he’s ever taken out of the dirt. He got it beaten out into the right shape, and then he made a locket out of it and put your picture in it, and now he wears it around his neck, even when he’s working at the mine.”
Her breath caught. “That silly, cheap snapshot!”
She stopped. She had admitted everything already, and she had intended to be a very sphinx with this strange Westerner.
“It was only a joke,” she said. “I—I didn’t really mean to —”
“Do you know what that joke did?” asked Ronicky. “It made two men fight, then cross the continent together and get on the trail of a girl whose name they didn’t even know. They found the girl, and then she said she’d forgotten —but no, I don’t mean to blame you. There’s something queer behind it all. But I want to explain one thing. The reason that Bill didn’t get to that train wasn’t because he didn’t try. He did try. He tried so hard that he got into a fight with a gent that tried to hold him up for a few words, and Bill got shot off his hoss.”
“Shot?” asked the girl. “Shot?”
Suddenly she was clutching his arm, terrified at the thought. She recovered herself at once and drew away, eluding the hand of Ronicky. He made no further attempt to detain her.
But he had lifted the mask and seen the real state of her mind; and she, too, knew that the secret was discovered. It angered her and threw her instantly on the aggressive.
“I tell you what I guessed from the window,” said Ronicky. “You went down to the street, all prepared to meet up with poor old Bill—”
“Prepared to meet him?” She started up at Ronicky. “How in the world could I ever guess—”
She was looking up to him, trying to drag his eyes down to hers, but Ronicky diplomatically kept his attention straight ahead.
“You couldn’t guess,” he suggested, “but there was someone who could guess for you. Someone who pretty well knew we were in town, who wanted to keep you away from Bill because he was afraid—”
“Of what?” she demanded sharply.
“Afraid of losing you.”
This seemed to frighten her. “What do you know?” she asked.
“I know this,” he answered, “that I think a girl like you, all in all, is too good for any man. But, if any man ought to have her, it’s the gent that is fondest of her. And Bill is terrible fond of you, lady—he don’t think of nothing else. He’s grown thin as a ghost, longing for you.”
“So he sends another man to risk his life to find me and tell me about it?” she demanded, between anger and sadness.
“He didn’t send me—I just came. But the reason I came was because I knew Bill would give up without a fight.”
“I hate a man who won’t fight,” said the girl.
“It’s because he figures he’s so much beneath you,” said Ronicky. “And, besides, he can’t talk about himself. He’s no good at that at all. But, if it comes to fighting, lady, why, he rode a couple of hosses to death and stole another and had a gunfight, all for the sake of seeing you, when a train passed through a town.”
She was speechless.
“So I thought I’d come,” said Ronicky Doone, “and tell you the insides of things, the way I knew Bill wouldn’t and couldn’t, but I figure it don’t mean nothing much to you.”
She did not answer directly. She only said: “Are men like this in the West? Do they do so much for their friends?”
“For a gent like Bill Gregg, that’s simple and straight from the shoulder, they ain’t nothing too good to be done for him. What I’d do for him he’d do mighty pronto for me, and what he’d do for me—well, don’t you figure that he’d do ten times as much for the girl he loves? Be honest with me,” said Ronicky Doone. “Tell me if Bill means anymore to you than any stranger?”
“No—yes.”
“Which means simply yes. But how much more, lady?”
“I hardly know him. How can I say?”
“It’s sure an easy thing to say. You’ve wrote to him. You’ve had letters from him. You’ve sent him your picture, and he’s sent you his, and you’ve seen him on the street. Lady, you sure know Bill Gregg, and what do you think of him?”
“I think—”
“Is he a square sort of gent?”
“Y-yes.”
“The kind you’d trust?”
“Yes, but—”
“Is he the kind that would stick to the girl he loved and take care of her, through thick and thin?”
“You mustn’t talk like this,” said Caroline Smith, but her voice trembled, and her eyes told him to go on.
“I’m going back and tell Bill Gregg that, down in your heart, you love him just about the same as he loves you!”
“Oh,” she asked, “would you say a thing like that? It isn’t a bit true.”
“I’m afraid that’s the way I see it. When I tell him that, you can lay to it that old Bill will let loose all holds and start for you, and, if they’s ten brick walls and twenty gunmen in between, it won’t make no difference. He’ll find you, or die trying.”
Before he finished she was clinging to his arm.
“If you tell him, you’ll be doing a murder, Ronicky Doone. What he’ll face will be worse than twenty gunmen.”
“The gent that smiles, eh?”
“Yes, John Mark. No, no, I didn’t mean—”
“But you did, and I knew it, too. It’s John Mark that’s between you and Bill. I seen you in the street, when you were talking to poor Bill, look back over your shoulder at that devil standing in the window of this house.”
“Don’t call him that!”
“D’you know of one drop of kindness in his nature, lady?”
“Are we quite alone?”
“Not a soul around.”
“Then he is a devil, and, being a devil, no ordinary man has a chance against him—not a chance, Ronicky Doone. I don’t know what you did in the house, but I think you must have outfaced him in some way. Well, for that you’ll pay, be sure! And you’ll pay with your life, Ronicky. Every minute, now, you’re in danger of your life. You’ll keep on being in danger, until he feels that he has squared his account with you. Don’t you see that if I let Bill Gregg come near me—”
“Then Bill will be in danger of this same wolf of a man, eh? And, in spite of the fact that you like Bill—”
“Ah, yes, I do!”
“That you love him, in fact.”
“Why shouldn’t I tell you?” demanded the girl, breaking down suddenly. “I do love him, and I can never see him to tell him, because I dread John Mark.”
“Rest easy,” said Ronicky, “you’ll see Bill, or else he’ll die trying to get to you.”
“If you’re his friend—”
“I’d rather see him dead than living the rest of his life, plumb unhappy.”
She shook her head, arguing, and so they reached the corner of Beekman Place again and turned into it and went straight toward the house opposite that of John Mark. Still the girl argued, but it was in a whisper, as if she feared that terrible John Mark might overhear.
* * * * *
In the home of John Mark, that calm leader was still with Ruth Tolliver. They had gone down to the lower floor of the house, and, at his request, she sat at the piano, while Mark sat comfortably beyond the sphere of the piano light and watched her.
“You’re thinking of something else,” he told her, “and playing abominably.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You ought to be,” he said. “It’s bad enough to play poorly for someone who doesn’t know, but it’s torture to play like that for me.”
He spoke without violence, as always, but she knew that he was intensely angry, and that familiar chill passed through her body. It never failed to come when she felt that she had aroused his anger.
“Why doesn’t Caroline come back?” she asked at length.
“She’s letting him talk himself out, that’s all. Caroline’s a clever youngster. She knows how to let a man talk till his throat is dry, and then she’ll smile and tell him that it’s impossible to agree with him. Yes, there are many possibilities in Caroline.”
“You think Ronicky Doone is a gambler?” she asked, harking back to what he had said earlier.
“I think so,” answered John Mark, and again there was that tightening of the muscles around his mouth. “A gambler has a certain way of masking his own face and looking at yours, as if he were dragging your thoughts out through your eyes; also, he’s very cool; he belongs at a table with the cards on it and the stakes high.”
The door opened. “Here’s young Rose. He’ll tell us the truth of the matter. Has she come back, Rose?”
The young fellow kept far back in the shadow, and, when he spoke, his voice was uncertain, almost to the point of trembling. “No,” he managed to say, “she ain’t come back, chief.”
Mark stared at him for a moment and then slowly opened a cigarette case and lighted a smoke. “Well,” he said, and his words were far more violent than the smooth voice, “well, idiot, what did she do?”
“She done a fade-away, chief, in the house across the street. Went in with that other gent.”
“He took her by force?” asked John Mark.
“Nope. She slipped in quick enough and all by herself. He went in last.”
“Damnation!” murmured Mark. “That’s all, Rose.”
His follower vanished through the doorway and closed the door softly after him. John Mark stood up and paced quietly up and down the room. At length he turned abruptly on the girl. “Good night. I have business that takes me out.”
“What is it?” she asked eagerly.
He paused, as if in doubt as to how he should answer her, if he answered at all. “In the old days,” he said at last, “when a man caught a poacher on his grounds, do you know what he did?”
“No.”
“Shot him, my dear, without a thought and threw his body to the wolves!”
“John Mark! Do you mean—”
“Your friend Ronicky, of course.”
“Only because Caroline was foolish are you going to—”
“Caroline? Tut, tut! Caroline is only a small part of it. He has done more than that—far more, this poacher out of the West!”
He turned and went swiftly through the door. The moment it was closed the girl buried her face in her hands.
Time in six months brought the year to the early spring, that time when even the mountain desert forgets its sternness for a month or two. Six months had not made Bill Gregg rich from his mine, but it had convinced him, on the contrary, that a man with a wife must have a sure income, even if it be a small one.
He squatted on a small piece of land, gathered a little herd, and, having thrown up a four-room shack, he and Caroline lived as happily as king and queen. Not that domains were very large, but, from their hut on the hill, they could look over a fine sweep of country, which did not all belong to them, to be sure, but which they constantly promised themselves should one day be theirs.
It was the dull period of the afternoon, the quiet, waiting period which comes between three or four o’clock and the sunset, and Bill and his wife sat in the shadow of the mighty silver spruce before their door. The great tree was really more of a home for them than the roof they had built to sleep under.
Presently Caroline stood up and pointed. “She’s coming,” she said, and, looking down the hillside, she smiled in anticipation.
The rider below them, winding up the trail, looked up and waved, then urged her horse to a full gallop for the short remnant of the distance before her. It was Ruth Tolliver who swung down from the saddle, laughing and joyous from the ride.
A strangely changed Ruth she was. She had turned to a brown beauty in the wind and the sun of the West, a more buoyant and more graceful beauty. She had accepted none of the offers of John Mark, but, leaving her old life entirely behind her, as Ronicky Doone had suggested, she went West to make her own living. With Caroline and Bill Gregg she had found a home, and her work was teaching the valley school, half a dozen miles away.
“Any mail?” asked Bill, for she passed the distant group of mail boxes on her way to the school.
At that the face of the girl darkened. “One letter,” she said, “and I want you to read it aloud, Caroline. Then we’ll all put our heads together and see if we can make out what it means.” She handed the letter to Caroline, who shook it out. “It’s from Ronicky,” she exclaimed.
“It’s from Ronicky,” said Ruth Tolliver gravely, so gravely that the other two raised their heads and cast silent glances at her.
Caroline read aloud:
“Dear Ruth, I figure that I’m overdue back at Bill’s place by about a month—”
“By two months,” corrected Ruth soberly.
“And I’ve got to apologize to them and you for being so late. Matter of fact I started right pronto to get back on time, but something turned up. You see, I went broke.”
Caroline dropped the letter with an exclamation. “Do you think he’s gone back to gambling, Ruth?”
“No,” said the girl. “He gave me his promise never to play for money again, and a promise from Ronicky Doone is as good as minted gold.”
“It sure is,” agreed Bill Gregg.
Caroline went on with the letter:
“I went broke because Pete Darnely was in a terrible hole, having fallen out with his old man, and Pete needed a lift. Which of course I gave him pronto, Pete being a fine gent.”
There was an exclamation of impatience from Ruth Tolliver.
“Isn’t that like Ronicky? Isn’t that typical?”
“I’m afraid it is,” said the other girl with a touch of sadness. “Dear old Ronicky, but such a wild man!”
She continued in the reading:
“But I’ve got a scheme on now by which I’ll sure get a stake and come back, and then you and me can get married, as soon as you feel like saying the word. The scheme is to find a lost mine—”
“A lost mine!” shouted Bill Gregg, his practical miner’s mind revolting at this idea. “My guns, is Ronicky plumb nutty? That’s all he’s got to do —just find a ‘lost mine?’ Well, if that ain’t plenty, may I never see a yearling ag’in!”
“Find a lost mine,” went on Caroline, her voice trembling between tears and laughter, “and sink a new shaft, a couple of hundred feet to find where the old vein—”
“Sink a shaft a couple of hundred feet!” said Bill Gregg. “And him broke! Where’ll he get the money to sink the shaft?”
“When we begin to take out the pay dirt,” went on Caroline, “I’ll either come or send for you and—”
“Hush up!” said Bill Gregg softly.
Caroline looked up and saw the tears streaming down the face of Ruth Tolliver. “I’m so sorry, poor dear!” she whispered, going to the other girl. But Ruth Tolliver shook her head.
“I’m only crying,” she said, “because it’s so delightfully and beautifully and terribly like Ronicky to write such a letter and tell of such plans. He’s given away a lot of money to help some spendthrift, and now he’s gone to get more money by finding a lost mine!’ But do you see what it means, Caroline? It means that he doesn’t love me—really!”
“Don’t love you?” asked Bill Gregg. “Then he’s a plumb fool. Why —”
“Hush, Bill,” put in Caroline. “You mustn’t say that,” she added to Ruth. “Of course you have reason to be sad about it and angry, too.”
“Sad, perhaps, but not angry,” said Ruth Tolliver. “How could I ever be really angry with Ronicky? Hasn’t he given me a chance to live a clean life? Hasn’t he given me this big free open West to live in? And what would I be without Ronicky? What would have happened to me in New York? Oh, no, not angry. But I’ve simply waked up, Caroline. I see now that Ronicky never cared particularly about me. He was simply in love with the danger of my position. As a matter of fact I don’t think he ever told me in so many words that he loved me. I simply took it for granted because he did such things for me as even a man in love would not have done. After the danger and uniqueness were gone Ronicky simply lost interest.”
“Don’t say such things!” exclaimed Caroline.
“It’s true,” said Ruth steadily. “If he really wanted to come here —well, did you ever hear of anything Ronicky wanted that he didn’t get?”
“Except money,” suggested Bill Gregg. “Well, he even gets that, but most generally he gives it away pretty pronto.”
“He’d come like a bullet from a gun if he really wanted me,” said Ruth. “No, the only way I can bring Ronicky is to surround myself with new dangers, terrible dangers, make myself a lost cause again. Then Ronicky would come laughing and singing, eager as ever. Oh, I think I know him!”
“And what are you going to do?” asked Caroline.
“The only thing I can do,” said the other girl. “I’m going to wait.”
* * * * *
Far, far north two horsemen came at that same moment to a splitting of the trail they rode. The elder, bearded man, pointed ahead.
“That’s the roundabout way,” he said, “but it’s sure the only safe way. We’ll travel there, Ronicky, eh?”
Ronicky Doone lifted his head, and his bay mare lifted her head at the same instant. The two were strangely in touch with one another.
“I dunno,” he said, “I ain’t heard of anybody taking the short cut for years—not since the big slide in the canyon. But I got a feeling I’d sort of like to try it. Save a lot of time and give us a lot of fun.”
“Unless it breaks our necks.”
“Sure,” said Ronicky, “but you don’t enjoy having your neck safe and sound, unless you take a chance of breaking it, once in a while.”
THE END
The dirt began to crash back into the hole as Jerry Dawn turned away and looked upon the ending of the strangest day of her life. All the forested sides of the evergreen hollow were gilded now with sunset colors falling on the trees, crimsons and golds of exquisite dimness, pastel shades almost too faint for the most exact eye. Beyond, the greater mountaintops walked up to the brighter color of the horizon sky, and to the zenith was an infinite reach of the eye—the purity of blue distance.
The girl drew close to her father with a chastened heart. Looking into his seamed, sorrow-worn face, she was able to understand those wild moments of his younger life which now placed him in peril. She was able to forgive the cruelty of carelessness and neglect which had broken the heart of her mother. For the big man was only a product of this big country—intense in passions, big of will, great of heart, and sublime in indifference.
Such men are needed to make the Western mountains, she thought. If she were able to extend her influence around him, how vitally he might be changed, and in how short a time! His had been too muscular a nature to submit to life and gain lessons from it in his youth. The milder hours of receptivity were reserved for his maturer years. She looked on him with a touch of pity, a hallowed emotion; she looked on him as she might have looked on a child.
His face, also, had been raised as he followed her glance to the central sky. But when he looked down to her he murmured: “Well, Jerry, here’s another day ending, and I’m still alive!”
She only took his hand in both of hers and gripped it hard. Her finger tips closed over deep, stiff calluses. However wild he might once have been, he had proved his worth by the bitter labor which earned money enough to give her a schooling. Through her mind flashed in swift procession, memories of the letters which had come to her from the East, never with an address to guide her answer, for fear that that address might become known to Jack Moon.
Each letter had contained a money order; and about each money order was always wrapped a bit of paper over which, in a sprawling, stiff hand, were traced a few formal words. Their formality she had not been able to understand until she grew much older. And then she knew that it is typical of the uneducated. The written word is to them a fearsome thing. Their thoughts come forth haltingly on paper. They blush at attempted tenderness. They feel that they are addressing the world, and therefore they write to their nearest and dearest as though they were writing to strangers.
She was still thinking of these things when she heard the deep and musical voice of Jack Moon behind her. It was a voice rare indeed! It might have been used to move thousands of men. And always when the man spoke she was conscious of the strong mind, the strong will behind the words. There was ever something about Jack Moon as strong as his muscles, as big as his body. Beyond the power of the flesh there was a secondary power of the spirit. The longer she saw him, the more she knew of him, the greater seemed the extent of the undiscovered bourn behind his eyes.
He was giving his orders for the night, and he issued them with a military precision. To some he gave the task of collecting wood for the big camp fire which was to be built in the central space among the huts. Others still would care for the unpacking. A third crew would do the cooking. And finally the fourth would relieve the two watchers in the forest, who were keeping ward against Ronicky Doone, and would call them toward the cabins, where a fresh guard must be mounted all night to keep off the expected marauder.
With this accomplished, the bandit leader overtook Hugh Dawn and his daughter.
“You, Dawn,” he said gruffly; “maybe you think you got a free ticket to chuck and bed and everything, eh? Not a hope of that, son! You mosey along and do your share. You can help the boys with the unpacking. Treat will give you orders just what to do. And mind that you keep in sight. No trying to run off through the trees. Treat has a terrible nervous trigger finger. Now off with you! Go tell Treat that I sent you!”
Hugh Dawn cast a glance at his daughter and then departed.
“And now,” said Moon, his voice changed adroitly to fit her hearing, “I got a chance to talk to you private. I been wanting to all day, but one thing or another kept coming up. What I got to say is this: Me and the boys all like you fine, and we aim to give you as good a time as we can, considering everything.”
She turned a little and looked him squarely in the eye, smiling whimsically.
“I suppose,” said Jack Moon, grave before her subdued mirth, “that that sounds pretty queer to you. I suppose that you got us all wrote down as man- eaters that do a couple of murders before breakfast to work up an appetite. That it?”
She examined him somewhat cautiously. She had always thought that the fellow was far too intelligent to have any illusions about himself or about what others might think of him. Now, searching for a trace of stupidity or of weak conceit, she was unable to find it. She saw a noble cast of features, strange only in their unvarying pallor. She had heard of men like this before, whose skins were apparently impervious to the burning rays of the mountain suns, but Moon was the first she had seen.
Aside from his complexion, however, there was nothing curious about his make-up. The mouth was generously large, and formed with a promise of sensitiveness. The chin was cut in a manner to suggest plenty of solid bone beneath. The nose was straight, large enough to give dominance to his face, but perfectly formed. The eyes were large and well separated, and they looked straight as the flight of an arrow. The forehead above was magnificently high and broad, and crowning all was a luxuriant mass of chestnut-colored hair. His face, indeed, was like his body, flawless in proportions; and the unmanageable hair suggested the mane of a lion—a leonine head, a leonine nature formed to command. By his looks, by his voice, by his glance, he could have been picked among ten thousand chosen men.
It suddenly came to her that perhaps such a fellow, framed for superiority, might have chafed against the bonds of society, learned the fierce empire of the outlawed world, and broken away to it.
“I thought,” she said, deciding that frankness was entirely permissible with such a man, “that you would understand everything. I thought you wouldn’t make friendly speeches that seem to require friendly answers. Because, you know, I have to do what I’m expected to do. If you want friendliness, I’ll have to act the part. Is that the order?”
He smiled again, enjoying her mood.
“What’s always queer to me about folks like you,” he said, “clean-bred, clean-raised, clean-taught, is that you ain’t got the imagination to put yourselves in the boots of the other fellow. You see, we know we’re a hard lot. We know you know it. But we figured you to have a sense of humor, lady. We figured you’d be able to forget what can’t be helped for a day or two, and make yourself sociable. Understand?
“Back in the old days they had what they called The Truce of Heaven. I think it lasted from Thursday nights to Mondays. I dunno for sure, but a schoolteacher told me about it once. Those were the times when every gent done his bit of fighting pretty regular and counted a week lost that didn’t see him whaling away at some other gent in armor. Well, when Thursday night come, they quit the fighting. They laid off their armor and called on their enemies and sat down and had a smoke together, so to speak—because they wasn’t any use talking mean and acting mean between Thursday and Monday. Well, I thought it was kind of the same way with us. Suppose it takes us a couple of days to dig that next hole. Does it pay for us to keep our claws out all the time during them two days? Can’t we use the velvet paw, lady? Can’t we call it The Truce of Heaven till we sink that hole and find out if the treasure of Cosslett is down under it.”
“And if the treasure isn’t there?”
“Then out come the claws. I have a bargain with your father, lady. You know that!”
She shuddered.
“But that’s a good way off—two days, three days—three centuries!” he suggested.
She nodded, intensely curious at this working of his mind.
“You’d gain one thing,” he said. “If you’d give me your word not to try to leave and get to a town through the mountains, I’d parole you. Savvy?”
“You would accept my word?” she queried.
“As free as you’d accept mine,” he answered at once.
She bit her lips to keep back the smile.
“I know,” he said. “But when you come to think it over, you would take my word on anything. Go all through the mountains. That’s what I’m known as —a gent that never busted a promise. Lot of other things charged up again’ me, but never a real promise that I’ve broke.”
“For instance,” she said, “last night you promised that Ronicky Doone would be received as a friend, and yet your men opened fire on him!”
“Sure,” he replied, absolutely unabashed. “I just stated that he’d be received that way. I didn’t promise. I didn’t take no oath. I didn’t give anybody my hand on it.”
She observed the distinction with a thoughtful mind. There was a distinction. Even the low took heed of the difference between an oath and a mere given word.
“It’s hard for me to sympathize with that viewpoint,” she said coldly. “In my world we could not call it fair play.”
“I’m not asking for sympathy,” he replied readily. “Not a bit. I ain’t asking you to step inside my world. But I want to find out if my world is so plumb far away from yours that you can’t even see it through a telescope, so to speak. Is it?”
“No,” she said, “I think I can understand a good many things. And I’ll give you my word that I won’t attempt to escape until—”
He did not wait for her to finish the difficult sentence.
“Mind shaking on that?” he said.
“No.”
They shook hands. His palm was as soft as a woman’s, well nigh. No labor had ever hardened it. For some reason the touch of that hand convinced her more than a thousand words, a thousand deeds, of the essential evil of the man.
“This is fine!” he said. “We’ll have a couple of good days out of this. Why not? Every minute you save out of being sad is a minute that’s gained.”
“But what if sorrow comes afterward?”
“Well, what happens tomorrow doesn’t change what happens today.”
It was the root, she felt, of his philosophy.
“I suppose not,” she said cautiously. Then she became frank again. After all, he was distinctly worth frankness. Good or bad, he was a man. “Everything is very new to me here, as you understand. I’m trying to make it out.”
“I wish you’d postpone judging me for a while,” he begged. “Will you do that? I know it’s hard for you to make me out. You can’t know how a gent gets hungry to be free.”
“I think I do know,” she insisted. “I’ve met Ronicky Doone, and if ever there was a man who lives to be free, it is he!”
Her head went up with her enthusiasm; his head went down in thought, and he examined her with a keen glance.
“You figure he’s a lot better than the ordinary, eh?”
“Don’t you? But then, you don’t know him.”
“Lady,” said the other, “I know him like a book.”
“You’ve met him?”
“Never laid eyes on his face.”
“You admit it!”
“I don’t have to. I’ve heard about him. He’s too important for me not to have heard. Gents like him and me can’t live within a thousand miles of each other without knowing what the other fellow is.”
“But he doesn’t know you.”
“Sure he don’t. That’s where he’s weaker.”
“Ah! Weaker?”
“That’s what I said. He’s got his parts. But he’s too much of a fighter to be at the top of any game.”
It was so absurd that she laughed. “You object to fighting?” she said.
“I wish you’d try to understand,” he said, irritated. “You can if you want to. But you can’t get all I mean with the first jump of your mind, every time. Sure I object to fighting. That’s a last resource. Gents that do nothing but fight their way into trouble and out of it are like wolves. No better. They’re beasts. Maybe fine beasts, but beasts just the same. What makes men different? Brains, lady, brains! It ain’t how hard a gent can hit or how quick and straight he can shoot. It’s what he’s got above the eyes. Understand me?”
“Of course I understand you; and of course I agree.” She was piqued by his bluntness. And yet at the same time it made her wish more than ever to have his respect. The respect of Jack Moon! Afterward, she would marvel at herself and her mood during that talk! “But you have to admit that it sounds queer coming from Jack Moon.”
“Sure—Jack Moon the way you know him now. Not the Jack Moon I hope you’ll get to know.”
“Do you really want me to know you? Wouldn’t you be less strong, less invincible, if any one really understood you?”
“You won’t,” said he calmly. “But I’m going to show you my insides if I can. The more you show of yourself the more people miss you.”
“Where are your weaknesses?” she said.
“That’s asking. But I’ll tell you. I’m vain. I like to be flattered.”
“But you intend to be forearmed, I see!”
“Don’t do any good to be prepared for a thing. That’s my weakness. You’d laugh if you knew the way it works. Ain’t a man in my crowd that I don’t want to have respect me. If I can’t get ‘em to love me, I want ‘em to fear me; and you can lay to it that they all do!”
“And that flatters you?”
“Of course. Take you, for instance. If I can’t make you like me— like to talk to me; of course I don’t mean anything more’n that—then the next best is to have you shake every time I come near you.”
She looked at him out of narrowed eyes. And she knew that the fellow was actually telling the truth! And yet the door he had opened let in only enough light upon his involute nature to give her a deceptive feeling of knowledge. The main theme—the key to the mystery—was still farther beyond.
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m not going to use what I know.”
“Thanks,” said the outlaw. “Here we are almost home!”
The clearing of the shacks was before them, and the crowd, which had hurried on ahead of them, was already busy at twenty preparations for the night and the evening meal. The sunset was touching only the tops of the trees now. All beneath was swiftly deepening shadow.
“However,” she said as a parting shot, “I’m going to maintain that there are two types of freedom—yours and Ronicky’s!”
“You know him well enough to call him Ronicky?”
“Yes.”
“And he calls you Jerry!”
“Why not?”
“No harm. Well, I tell you what: I could take this Ronicky Doone and wind him around my finger. I could make him my man! I could get him into my crowd if I wanted to!”
She flushed with her anger.
“That’s simply impossible! Ronicky Doone? He’s the soul of everything honorable!”
“Actions speak, lady,” and Jack Moon grinned. “Suppose I was to go out and bring him into this camp!”
“You could only bring him dead!”
“That so? I’d bet on it, though.”
“As a member of your band?”
“That’s what I said. Have him in here sleeping right along with the rest of the boys. He’d take Harry Bush’s place!”
“You can’t do it, Jack Moon! I—unless you’re a hypnotist.”
“You’re weakening,” said the other coldly. “Must be kind of fond of this gent if you can’t believe anything wrong about him!”
“I’ll tell you this,” she said firmly. “If he came down here as a member of your band, I’d despise him with all my heart. I’d loathe him!”
“That’s hard on me,” remarked Jack Moon. “But it sounds to me like a bet. What say? Shall I go out and try to get him down here?”
“If you go to face him, you’d risk your life!”
“Not the first time. Besides, it’d be worth it.”
“How?”
“To see your face when I bring him in. Shall I try?”
“You’ll gain nothing from me, sir!” She was trembling with excitement. “But go out. Try him. If he’s as weak as that, then there’s no steady faith, no honesty, no truth in any man in the world! But how—how could you get him?”
“Ain’t there gold over yonder? Wouldn’t he like a share in it?”
“You’d buy him!”
“They say everybody has a price, and I can bid pretty high right now!”
“You’ll fail, Jack Moon!”
He laughed mockingly and turned abruptly on his heel and strode out into the shade of the trees.
Straight west Ronicky Doone had sent Lou when he parted from Hugh Dawn. There was not a chance in ten that he would come on signs of the fugitive, if indeed the bandit had taken this way. It only remained to play the single chance bravely and strongly. So he laid a true course due west and let the mare do her gallant best. Then, when the sun was well up, and before and behind him the mountains were tossing in endless waves of rocky summits, he saw the two figures hurrying far before him over a crest two ranges away. At the very moment when the two looked back and saw him, he had sighted them, and, though at that distance he could not tell whether or not one was a man and one was a woman, he sent Lou like a red-bay streak down the mountainside.
But when he struck the opposite slope, unlike the blind eagerness of the outlaw, and even though he were groaning at the thought of a further delay, Ronicky drew down the willing mare to a slow trot. In this fashion he climbed the steep slope, even forcing Lou to come back to a steady walk when the trail rose sheer before him, and finally slipping from the saddle and trotting at the side of the beautiful creature.
She knew what this meant. When the master so favored her, to lighten her burden, it meant that he expected her, sooner or later, to give every ounce of her energy in his service. Well, let him make the call; she was prepared to answer. How different from the method of huge Jack Moon was this partnership of man and beast! As he trotted beside his struggling mare along that heartbreaking trail, Ronicky called out to her cheerily and patted her shining shoulder. When they reached the top of the heavy grade, he jumped into the saddle and was off like the wind.
Down the next mountainside they dipped and climbed the farther rise. Down they went again, and, reaching the farther summit, Ronicky stiffened in the saddle and cried out in joy.
Straight down below him lay the struggling figure of the prostrate gray, ruined forever. Farther still, in the hollow before the first rise, there was the glint of gold which had been thrown away. And over the first foothill —could he believe his eyes?—were the girl and Jack Moon, so close that he could identify the broad shoulders of the outlaw!
He took the shorter slope of the hill swiftly and broke on to the rolling surface of the foothills. Now, indeed, the mare could run, and Ronicky let her head go. He kept a rein just strong enough to steady her and keep her running straight, just firm enough to straighten her out in case of a stumble; and so they flashed over range after range of the softly molded hills and came again in sight of the fugitives.
They were riding on the last range of the hills, the girl sitting straight in the saddle with the red silk bandanna fluttering about her head. Jack Moon was flogging with his quirt and alternately spurring his own mount and the horse of the girl.
But he was lost. Even had he had the speed of the long-legged grays to help him, he could not have stood off the steady challenge of Lou. She came like the wind overtaking a ship. In five minutes she would range beside them. Now lack Moon knew that the girl had indeed ruined his effort. The delay had been fatal.
He made up his mind instantly, it seemed. Ronicky saw him cast loose the reins of the girl’s horse and draw his revolver, and a terrible premonition darted through the brain of Ronicky. Was the heartless devil going to murder the woman he could not carry away with him?
But that was not the purpose of the outlaw.
“Swear by everything that’s holy,” he called to Jerry Dawn, “that you’ll stand by with your hoss and not try to escape. Otherwise I’ll kill the roan while I go back and attend to the fool that’s coming up on us!”
There was no hesitation in the mind of the girl. She had seen one poor creature pistoled by this remorseless fiend of a man, and she could not face the thing again.
“I’ll promise,” she said. And she added fiercely: “But you’ll never come back, Jack Moon!”
He laughed scornfully.
“The man ain’t born,” he declared, “that can stand me off in man-to-man fight.”
“That,” said the girl coldly, “is why you’ve run away like a whipped cur ever since you sighted Ronicky Doone. Bah!”
He blinked before her scorn, and then, through his teeth, he answered: “I played safe. I took no chances. But if you think I fear him or any man, watch me now! I’ll come back riding Lou!”
She trembled at the thought, but she kept her head high and showed no sign of her fear.
“You dare not face him, Jack Moon,” she said fiercely. “It’s the beginning of the end. You’ve failed from the first, ever since Ronicky Doone crossed your path. I begin to see a hundred things. Somehow you’ve lied and blinded me with your lies. But now, in my heart, I know that Ronicky Doone was never untrue to my father. Jack Moon, heaven pity you, because as sure as honesty is stronger than crime, Ronicky Doone is going to kill you here on this hill. And all your tricks won’t help you!”
He looked to the side.
There came the pursuer, drawing his mare back to a long and swinging canter as he saw that the outlaw no longer fled.
Moon knew that, whatever happened, he had already lost Jerry. “Stand by,” he said. “Watch Ronicky Doone go down. And before I go, I’ll tell you the truth. I’ve made my play, and I’ve lost; but I’ll show you how little you’ve won. It wasn’t a bluff that I told my boys to run back there in the hollow. I told them to rush the house and shoot to kill. And that’s what they done. Doone got away—to be finished by me. But your father is dead back yonder in the hollow. Otherwise, wouldn’t he be there with Ronicky? He’s dead, and that’s the end of his story. And now I’ll finish Ronicky’s.”
He saw her lips part and her eyes widen with horror; then he shut out the picture by whirling his horse toward the oncoming rider.
Ronicky Doone made out no detail of that conversation, of course, but its general tenor was unmistakable. There sat the girl with her head bowed, and her face covered by her hands. Here was Jack Moon cantering toward him.
He stopped Lou on the crest of the hill and slipped from the saddle. Why should he imperil her life by putting her in the way of a chance bullet, so long as the enemy were coming on to fight the battle out bravely, man to man, in fair contest? The good mare followed him a pace or two, whinnying softly as though to ask why he had left the saddle, but he checked her advance with a sharp word, and she halted obediently, lifting her head and pricking her ears in curiosity.
Half a dozen paces from her, Ronicky paused and dropped his right hand on his hip, for the approaching rider had also slipped his revolver into the holster now. Though he did not follow Ronicky’s humane example and dismount, he came on with one hand raised in the time-honored fashion of those who request a truce. Ronicky raised his own left hand as signal that the truce was granted, and the outlaw halted not more than half a dozen paces away, still in the saddle.
He waited, his head high, his clear eye sparkling with alertness. Not a movement of the sweat-brightened body of the horse, not a stir of the face of the outlaw, escaped him.
That face was set with unutterable grimness, though Jack Moon was striving to relax his expression and adopt one of careless self-confidence. He so far succeeded that he was able to smile down to Ronicky.
“I see,” he said, “that you’re so plumb tired of living that you pretty near wore out your hoss trying to get close to me.”
“I see,” answered Ronicky, with a smile to match that of the big fellow, “that you’re so plumb fond of life that you wore out two horses trying to get away from me.”
Unquestionably, if there were an advantage in that exchange of words, it lay on the side of Ronicky Doone. Since, in a manner, this was the first blow for him, Jack Moon set his teeth and strove to drive away the gloomy foreboding which flooded his mind. The words of the girl, too, rang through his memory. She had been strangely confident that her champion must win. That confidence had gleamed in her steady eyes, and the memory of that light now served to darken the vision of the outlaw. But he must rouse himself from this depression. In another moment his life would be staked upon his speed of hand, his lightning surety of eye, and he would be mated against a fighter such as he had never before in his life faced.
Accordingly, he stared straight into the eyes of Ronicky Doone. He had many a time made men cringe under the weight of his dominant will, but now the glance of Ronicky clashed against his own with equal force. This was to be no cheaply won victory!
But the youngster was smiling—no, he was sneering.
“Your nerve’s going, Moon,” he was saving calmly. “You’d better make your play now before it’s all gone.”
“Make my play now? Make my play first? I ain’t sunk to that, kid!”
“You’ll sink to that now,” said Ronicky Doone. “Because you’re wilting, Jack. The skunk in you is coming out to the surface. You’re beat, and you know it. If you wait a minute more, you’ll begin begging for life!”
The sweat poured out on the forehead of Jack Moon. For it was true! And he did know it. A great weakness was sweeping over him. The nervous, lean fingers of Ronicky Doone fascinated him. How could he expect to beat the speed of those fingers with his own great paws? If only the smaller man were within grip—
But he must act at once. Behind him the girl would look on. But the moment his hand moved for his gun there would be a convulsive downward flick of the hand now hanging so loosely, so carelessly at the hip of Ronicky. How cool the man was! What a devil of surety was in him!
The chestnut, impatient, pranced a little and turned sidewise toward Ronicky. Then the trick came to the outlaw. The horse would be his bulwark. Mighty must be the bullet that could plow through the body of a horse and reach him. Quick as thought he flung himself down along the chestnut, whipping out his revolver as he fell, and, encircling the neck of the horse with his left hand, he leveled the revolver and fired under the throat of his mount point- blank at Ronicky Doone.
But swift though his maneuver had been, it was slow compared with the lightning gun play of Ronicky. At the first twitch of the big man’s body, the gun had been conjured into those lean fingers, and as the right shoulder and chest of the outlaw surged down on the other side of the horse—after all, it was an old Indian trick—the blaze of Doone’s gun beat that of the man-killer’s by a split part of a second. A small interval, indeed, very small—but just long enough to send the soul of a man winging from its body.
Jack Moon, without a sound, without a groan, slipped out of the saddle and landed with heavy inertness on the ground, face down, and Ronicky Doone touched his shirt sleeve, where the bullet had flicked through the cloth.
He went to Jack Moon and gave the fallen man a cursory examination. It had been instant death. Ronicky looked down with a sort of childlike wonder. How could one bullet have opened the way for the passage of the vital spirit from that enormous frame, so cunningly made for strength and endurance, so trained to feats of strength? How could one bullet have stopped forever the machinations of that crafty brain?
Ronicky went slowly to the girl.
She still sat with her face bowed in her arms, but when he came near, still covering her eyes, she reached out one hand toward him, fumbling like a blind person.
“Ronicky!” she whispered.
“Yes?” he said gently.
“Dad?”
“All’s well with him, thank Heaven!”
“Thank Heaven, and thanks to you. Oh, Ronicky, what have you done for us?”