They of the High Trails Page 4
III
THE REMITTANCE MAN
I
The Kettle Hole Ranch house faces a wide, treeless valley and is backedby an equally bare hill. To the west the purple peaks of the Rampartrange are visible. It is a group of ramshackle and dispersed cabins--notWestern enough to be picturesque, and so far from being Eastern as tolack cleanliness or even comfort, and the young Englishman who rode overthe hill one sunset was bitterly disappointed in the "whole plant."
"I shall stay here but one night," said he, as he entered the untidyhouse.
He stayed five years, and the cause of this change of mind lay in theperson of Fan Blondell, the daughter of the old man who owned the ranchand to whom young Lester had been sent to "learn the business" ofcattle-raising.
Fan was only seventeen at this time, but in the full flower of herphysical perfection. Lithe, full-bosomed, and ruddy, she radiated apowerful and subtle charm. She had the face of a child--happy-temperedand pure--but every movement of her body appealed with dangerousdirectness to the sickly young Englishman who had never known an hour ofthe abounding joy of life which had been hers from the cradle. Enslavedto her at the first glance, he resolved to win her love.
His desire knew no law in affairs of this kind, but his first encounterwith Blondell put a check to the dark plans he had formed--for therancher had the bearing of an aged, moth-eaten, but dangerous old bear.His voice was a rumble, his teeth were broken fangs, and his handsresembled the paws of a gorilla. Like so many of those Colorado ranchersof the early days, he was a Missourian, and his wife, big, fat, worriedand complaining, was a Kentuckian. Neither of them had any fear of dirt,and Fan had grown up not merely unkempt, but smudgy. Her gown wasgreasy, her shoes untied, and yet, strange to say, this carelessnessexercised a subduing charm over Lester, who was fastidious to the pointof wasting precious hours in filling his boots with "trees" and foldinghis neckties. The girl's slovenly habits of dress indicated, to hismind, a similar recklessness as to her moral habits, and it sometimeshappens that men of his stamp come to find a fascination in theelemental in human life which the orderly no longer possess.
Lester, we may explain, was a "remittance man"--a youth sent to Americaby his family on the pretense of learning to raise cattle, but inreality to get him out of the way. He was not a bad man; on thecontrary, he was in most ways a gentleman and a man of some reading--buthe lacked initiative, even in his villainy. Blondell at once called him"a lazy hound"--provoked thereto by Lester's slowness of toilet of amorning, and had it not been for Fan--backed by the fifty dollars amonth which Lester was paying for "instruction"--he would have been"booted off the place."
Fan laughed at her father. "You better go slow; George Adelbert isheeled."
Blondell snorted. "Heeled! He couldn't unlimber his gun inside offifteen minutes."
"Well, he can ride."
The old man softened a little. "Yes, he can ride, and he don't complain,once he gets mounted, but he carries 'pajammys' in his saddle-bags and atooth-brush on his slicker; hanged if he don't use it, too!"
"That's what I like about him," she answered, defiantly. "We're all soblamed careless about the way we live. I wish he'd jack us all up abit."
Truly Fan was under conviction, brought to a realization of herslouchiness by Lester's care of his own room as well as by his loftymanners. She no longer wore her dress open at the throat, and she kepther yellow hair brushed, trying hard to make each meal a little lesslike a pig's swilling. She knew how things ought to be done, a little,for at "The Gold Fish Ranch" and at Starr Baker's everything was spickand span (Mrs. Baker especially was a careful and energetichousekeeper), but to keep to this higher level every day was too greatan effort even for a girl in love. She dropped back, now and again,weary and disheartened.
It was her mating-time. She leaned to Lester from the first glance. Thestrangeness of his accent, his reference to things afar off, to Londonand Paris, appealed to her in the same way in which poetry movedher--dimly, vaguely--but his hands, his eyes, his tender, low-tonedvoice won her heart. She hovered about him when he was at home, carelessof the comments of the other men, ignoring the caustic "slatting" of hermother. She had determined to win him, no matter what the father mightsay--for to her all men were of the same social level and she as good asthe best. Indeed, she knew no other world than the plains of Colorado,for she was born in the little dugout which still remained a part ofthe kitchen. The conventions of cities did not count with her.
She was already aware of her power, too, and walked among the rough menof her acquaintance with the step of an Amazonian queen, unafraid,unabashed. She was not in awe of Lester; on the contrary, her love forhim was curiously mingled with a certain sisterly, almost maternal pity;he was so easily "flustered." He was, in a certain sense, on her handslike an invalid.
She soon learned that he was wax beneath her palm--that the touch of afinger on his arm made him uneasy of eye and trembling of limb. Itamused her to experiment with him--to command him, to demand speech ofhim when he was most angry and disgusted with the life he was living.That he despised her father and mother she did not know, but that he wassick of the cowboys and their "clack" she did know, and she understoodquite as well as if he had already told her that she alone kept him fromreturning at once to Denver to try some other manner of earning aliving. This realization gave her pride and joy.
She had but one jealousy--he admired and trusted Mrs. Baker andoccasionally rode over there to talk with her, and Fan could notunderstand that he sought intellectual refuge from the mental squalor ofthe Blondells, but she perceived a difference in his glance on hisreturn. Mrs. Baker, being a keen-sighted, practical little woman, soonfell upon the plainest kind of speech with the young Englishman.
"This is no place for you," she defiantly said. "The rest of us are allmore or less born to the plains and farm-life, but you're not; you'rejust 'sagging,' that's all. You're getting deeper into the slough allthe time."
"Quite right," he answered, "but I don't know what else I can do. I haveno trade--I know nothing of any art or profession, and my brother isquite content to pay my way so long as he thinks I'm on a ranch, and inthe way of learning the business."
She, with her clear eyes searching his soul, replied: "The longer youstay the more difficult it will be to break away. Don't you see that?You're in danger of being fastened here forever."
He knew what she meant, and his thin face flushed. "I know it and I amgoing to ask Starr to give me a place here with you, and I'm about towrite my brother stating full reasons for the change. He might advanceme enough to buy into Starr's herd."
She considered this. "I'll take the matter up with Starr," she replied,after a pause. "Meanwhile, you can come over and stay as a visitor aslong as you please--but don't bring Fan," she added, sharply. "I can'tstand slatterns, and you must cut loose from her once for all."
Again he flushed. "I understand--but it isn't easy. Fan has been mightygood to me; life would have been intolerable over there but for her."
"I should think life would have been intolerable _with_ her," Mrs. Bakeranswered, with darkening brow, and then they talked of other things tillhe rose to ride away.
He headed his horse homeward, fully resolved to give notice of removal,but he did not. On the contrary, he lost himself to Fan. The girl,glowing with love and anger and at the very climax of her animal beauty,developed that night a subtlety of approach, a method of attack, whichbaffled and in the end overpowered him. She was adroit enough to make nomention of her rivals; she merely set herself to cause his committal, tobend him to her side. As the romping girl she played round him,indifferent to the warning glances of her mother, her eyes shining, hercheeks glowing, till the man he was, the life he had lived, the wishesof his brother, were fused and lost in the blind passion of the present."This glorious, glowing creature can be mine. What does all the restmatter?" was his final word of renunciation.
In this mood he took her to his arms, in this madness he told her of hislove (committing h
imself into her hands, declining into her life), andin the end requested of her parents the honor of their daughter's hand.
Mrs. Blondell wept a tear or two and weakly gave her consent, but theold ranchman thundered and lightened. "What can you do for my girl?" hedemanded. "As I understand it, you haven't a cent--the very clothesyou've got on your back are paid for by somebody else! What right haveyou to come to me with such a proposal?"
To all this Lester, surprised and disconcerted, could but meekly answerthat he hoped soon to buy a ranch of his own--that his brother hadpromised to "set him up" as soon as he had mastered the business.
Blondell opened his jaws to roar again when Fan interposed and, taking aclutch in his shaggy beard, said, calmly: "Now, dad, you hush! GeorgeAdelbert and I have made it all up and you better fall in gracefully. Itwon't do you any good to paw the dirt and beller."
Lester grew sick for a moment as he realized the temper of the familyinto which he was about to marry, but when Fan, turning with a gaylaugh, put her round, smooth arm about his neck, the rosy cloud closedover his head again.
II
Blondell was silenced, but not convinced. A penniless son-in-law was notto his liking. Fan was his only child, and the big ranch over which hepresided was worth sixty thousand dollars. What right had this lazyEnglishman to come in and marry its heiress? The more he thought aboutit the angrier he grew, and when he came in the following night he brokeforth.
"See here, mister, I reckon you better get ready and pull out. I'm notgoing to have you for a son-in-law, not this season. The man thatmarries my Fan has got to have sabe enough to round up a flock ofgoats--and wit enough to get up in the morning. So you better vamooseto-morrow."
Lester received his sentence in silence. At the moment he was glad ofit. He turned on his heel and went to packing with more haste, withgreater skill, than he had ever displayed in any enterprise hitherto.His hurry arose from a species of desperation. "If I can only get out ofthe house!" was his inward cry.
"Why pack up?" he suddenly asked himself. "What do they matter--theseboots and shirts and books?" He caught a few pictures from the wall andstuffed them into his pockets, and was about to plunge out into the duskwhen Fan entered the room and stood looking at him with ominousintentness.
She was no longer the laughing, romping girl, but the woman with alerteye and tightly closed lips. "What are you doing, Dell?"
"Your father has ordered me to leave the ranch," he answered, "and soI'm going."
"No, you're not! I don't care what he has ordered! You're notgoing"--she came up and put her arms about his neck--"not without me."And, feeling her claim to pity, he took her in his arms and tenderlypressed her cheek upon his bosom. Then she began to weep. "I can't livewithout you, Dell," she moaned.
He drew her closer, a wave of tenderness rising in his heart. "I'll belonely without you, Fan--but your father is right. I am too poor--wehave no home--"
"What does that matter?" she asked. "I wouldn't marry you for any amountof _money_! And I know you don't care for this old ranch! _I'll_ be gladto get shut of it. I'll go with you, and we'll make a home somewhereelse." Then her mood changed. Her face and voice hardened. She pushedherself away from him. "No, I won't! I'll stay here, and so shall you!Dad can't boss me, and I won't let him run you out. Come and face him upwith me."
So, leading him, she returned to the kitchen, where Blondell, alone withhis wife, was eating supper, his elbows on the table, his hair unkempt,his face glowering, a glooming contrast to his radiant and splendiddaughter, who faced him fearlessly. "Dad, what do you mean by talkingthis way to George Adelbert? He's going to stay and I'm going to stay,and you're going to be decent about it, for I'm going to marry him."
"No, you're not!" he blurted out.
"Well, I am!" She drew nearer and with her hands on the table lookeddown into his wind-worn face and dim eyes. "I say you've got to bedecent. Do you understand?" Her body was as lithe, as beautiful, as thatof a tigress as she leaned thus, and an unalterable resolution blazed inher eyes as she went on, a deeper significance coming into her voice:"Furthermore, I'm as good as married to him right now, and I don't carewho knows it."
The old man's head lifted with a jerk, and he looked at her with mingledfear and fury. "What do you mean?"
"Anything you want to have it mean," she replied. "You drive him out andyou drive me out--that's what I mean."
Blondell saw in her face the look of the woman who is willing to assumeany guilt, any shame for her lover, and, dropping his eyes before hergaze, growled a curse and left the room.
Fan turned to her lover with a ringing, boyish laugh, "It's all right,Dell; he's surrendered!"
III
Lester passed the month before his marriage in alternating uplifts anddepressions, and the worst of it lay in the fact that his moments ofexaltation were sensual--of the flesh, and born of the girl'spresence--while his depression came from his sane contemplation of thefate to which he was hastening. He went one day to talk it all over withMrs. Baker, who now held a dark opinion of Fan Blondell. She franklyadvised him to break the engagement and to go back to England.
"I can't do that, my dear Mrs. Baker. I am too far committed to Fan todo that. Besides, I know she would make a terrible scene. She wouldfollow me. And besides, I am fond of her, you know. She's verybeautiful, now--and she does love me, poor beggar! I wonder at it, butshe does." Then he brightened up. "You know she has the carriage of aduchess. Really, if she were trained a little she would be quitepresentable anywhere."
Mrs. Baker shook her head. "She's at her best this minute. Look at themother; that's what she'll be like in a few years."
"Oh no--not really! She's an improvement--a vast improvement--on the oldpeople, don't you think?"
"You can't make a purse out of a sow's ear. Fan will sag right downafter marriage. Mark my words. She's a slattern in her blood, and beforethe honeymoon is over she'll be slouching around in old slippers and hernightgown. That is plain talk, Mr. Lester, but I can't let you go intothis trap with your eyes shut."
Lester went away with renewed determination to pack his belongings andbolt, but the manly streak in his blood made it impossible for him to gowithout some sort of explanation to her.
The other hands, who called him "George Adelbert" in mockery, were moreand more contemptuous of him, and one or two were sullen, for they lovedFan and resented this "lily-fingered gent," who was to their minds"after the old man's acres." Young Compton, the son of a neighboringrancher, was most insulting, for he had himself once carried on a frankcourtship with Fan, and enjoyed a brief, half-expressed engagement. Hewas a fine young fellow, not naturally vindictive, and he would not haveuttered a word of protest had his successful rival been a man of "theStates," but to give way to an English adventurer whose way was paid byhis brother was a different case altogether.
Of George Adelbert's real feeling the boys, of course, knew nothing. Hadthey known of his hidden contempt for them they would probably havetaken him out of the country at the end of a rope, but of his positionwith Fan they were in no doubt, for she was very frank with them. Ifthey accused her of being "sweet on the bloody Englishman" she laughed.If they threatened his life in a jocular way she laughed again, but in adifferent way, and said: "Don't make a mistake; George Adelbert is afighter from way back East." And once, in a burst of rage, she said: "Iwon't have you saying such things, Lincoln Compton. I won't have it, Itell you!" No one could accuse her of disloyalty or cowardice.
In his letters home Lester had put his fiancee's best foot forward."She's quite too good for me," he wrote to his brother. "She's young andbeautiful and sole heiress of an estate twice as big as our whole familycan muster. She's uncultivated, the diamond in the rough, and all thatsort of thing, you understand, but she'll polish easily." He put allthis down in the sardonic wish to procure some sort of settlement fromhis brother. He got it by return mail.
Edward was suavely congratulatory, and in closing said: "I'm deucedlyglad you're off my hands just no
w, my boy, for I'm confoundedly hard up.You're doing the sensible thing--only don't try to bring your familyhome--not at present."
Lester was thrown into despairing fury by this letter, which not onlycut him off from his remittances, but politely shut the paternal door inhis own face as well as in the face of his bride. For the moment he hadsome really heroic idea of setting to work to show them what he coulddo. "The beggar! He squats down on the inheritance, shoves me out, andthen takes on a lot of 'side' as to his superiority over me! He alwayswas a self-sufficient ass. I'd like to punch his jaw!"
Then his rage faded out and a kind of sullen resignation came to him.What was the use? Why not submit to fate? "Everything has been againstme from the start," he bitterly complained, and in this spirit heapproached his wedding-day.
The old man, acknowledging him as a son-in-law prospective, addressedhim now with gruff kindness, and had Lester shown the slightest gain inmanagerial ability he would have been content--glad to share a little ofhis responsibility with a younger man. In his uncouth, hairy, grimyfashion Blondell was growing old, and feeling it. As he said to hiswife: "It's a pity that our only child couldn't have brought a real man,like Compton, into the family. There ain't a hand on the place thatwouldn't 'a' been more welcome to me. What do you suppose would becomeof this place if it was put into this dandy's hands?"
"I don't know, pa. Fan, for all her slack ways, is a purty fair manager.She wouldn't waste it. She might let it run down, but she'd hang on toit."
"But she's a fool about that jackass."
"She is now," answered the mother, with cynical emphasis, which shesoftened by adding, "Dell ain't the kind that would try to work her."
He sighed with troubled gaze and grumbled an oath. "I don't know what tothink of him! He gits me." And in that rather mournful spirit he wentabout his work, leaving the whole matter of the marriage festival in thehands of the women. In a dim way he still felt that haste was necessary,although Fan's face was as joyous, as careless, and as innocent as achild's. As she galloped about the country with her George Adelbert shesowed her "bids" broadcast, as if wishing all the world to share herhappiness. There was nothing exclusive, or shrinking, or parsimoniousin Frances Blondell.
IV
The marriage feast was indeed an epoch-making event in the county. Itresembled a barbecue and was quite as inclusive. Distinctions of thesocial sort were few in Arapahoe County. Cattle-rustlers and sheepmenwere debarred, of course, but aside from these unfortunates practicallythe whole population of men, women, children, and babies assembled inthe Kettle Hole Ranch grove. The marriage was to be "_al fresco_," asthe Limone _Limerick_ repeated several times.
Blondell found it a hard day, for what with looking after the roastingox and the ice and the beer, he was almost too busy to say hello to hisguests. Fan had contrived to get a clean shirt on him by the trick ofwhisking away his old one and substituting a white one in its place. Heput this on without realizing how splendid it was, but rebelled flatlyat the collar, and by the time the ox was well basted his shirt wassubdued to a condition which left him almost at ease with himself.
Fan received the people at the door of the shack--her mother being toobusy in the preparation for dinner to do more than say "Howdy?" to thosewho deliberately sought her out; but Fan was not embarrassed or wearied.It was her great day--she was only a little disturbed when GeorgeAdelbert fled to his room for a little relief from the strain of hisposition, for he lacked both her serenity of spirit and her physicalhealth.
Once Lester would have enjoyed the action and comment of these people ascharacters in a play, but now the knowledge that he was about to sink totheir level and be nailed there filled him with a fear and disgust whichnot even the radiant face and alluring body of his bride could concealor drive out. These lumbering ranchers, these tobacco-chewing, drawlinglumpkins, were they to be his companions for the rest of his life? Thesewomen with their toothless, shapeless mouths, these worn and wearymothers in home-made calico and cheap millinery, were they to be thevisitors at his fireside? What kind of woman would they make of Fan?
By one o'clock the corrals were full of ponies and the sheds and yardscrowded with carriages all faded by the pitiless sun and sucked dry bythe never-resting wind of the plain.
Meanwhile the young women had set long tables in the back yard andcovered them with food--contributed chicken, home-made biscuit, cake,and pie, while the young fellows had been noisily working atconstructing a "bowery" for the dance which was to follow the ceremonyat three. And at last Fan raised a bugle-call for "_dinner!_" and theyall came with a rush.
The feast did not last long, for every one was hungry and ate withoutpermitting delay or distraction. Nearly all remarked on having had avery early breakfast, and they certainly showed capacity for not merelybeef and beer, but pie and ice-cream, and when they shoved back, andlighted the cigars which Lester had provided with prodigal hand, theyall agreed that the barbecue was "up to the bills."
The ceremony at three was short, almost hurried, so great was the bustleabout the house and yard. Fan wore no veil and George Adelbert made nochange from the neat sack-suit which he had put on at rising. At theclose of the clergyman's blessing he was called upon for a second timeto pump the hard hands and stringy arms of his neighbors as they filedby to bid them both a hearty God-speed.
After this painful procession was ended Fan dragged him away to thebower where the young folks were already dancing with prodigiousclatter. "How young she is!" he exclaimed, as he saw her mix with thecrowd of tireless, stamping, prancing cowboys.
As the dance went on he grew furious with her lack of reserve, herindelicacy. Her good-natured laughter with the men who crowded about herfamiliarly was a kind of disloyalty. She seemed at times to beexchanging doubtful jests with them; and at last, to protect her fromthe results of her own fatuity, he danced with her himself--dancedalmost incessantly, notwithstanding the heat and the noise.
At sunset they all returned to the tables and ate up what remained ofthe ox and the pies.
Lester was well enough acquainted with these rough youths to know thatsome deviltry was preparing, and, already furious with his bride anddistrustful of the future, his self-command at last gave way. DrawingFan away from the crowd he said, tenderly:
"I've had enough of this! I'm having Aglar harness the buckskins intothe red cart, and I want you to go to the house and pack a fewthings--we're going to Limone and catch the early train for Denver."
"We can't do that, Dell; we got to stay here and feed this gang oncemore."
"Oh, hang the gang! I'm sick of them. Get ready, I tell you! Who careswhat these beggars think?"
She laughed. "You're jealous of them." Then, rising to his passion, sheanswered, "All right; I'll sneak some clothes into a bag and we'll slideout and leave the gang."
A half-hour later they stole away toward the back of the garden and outupon the prairie, where a Mexican was holding a spirited team. Fan wasgiggling so hard that she was barely able to lift the valise which shecarried in her hand.
"Don't you tell," she said to the Mexican. "If they ask, say we went toHolcombe."
"All right. I _sabe_," the Mexican replied. Even as he spoke the musicin the bower ceased and voices were heard in question.
Fan sobered. "They've missed us already."
Lester took the reins. "Send 'em south, Aglar," and at his chirp theteam sprang forward out upon the road into the coolness and silence ofthe midnight plain.
Fan, clutching Lester's arm, shook with laughter. "It's likeeloping--ain't it?"
The tone of her voice irritated him. "Good Heaven! how vulgar she is!And she is my wife," was his thought; and he took no pleasure in hernearness.
Wild whoops reached them from the ranch-house now hid in the valleybehind them, and a few moments later the yells broke out againperceptibly nearer.
"They're after us!" cried Fan, vastly excited and pleased. "It's a racenow," and, catching the whip from his hand, she lashed the horses into agallop.
"No use," she laughed. "No use, Dell; they can read a trail like Injuns;besides, they're overtaking us. We might as well turn and go back."
His only answer was a shout to the horses. He was burning with fury now.All his hidden contempt, his concealed hatred of the vulgarians behindhim, filled his heart. It was like them, the savages, to give chase.
With shrill whoops in imitation of Comanches the cowboys came on, ridingtheir swift and tireless ponies; like skimming hawks they swept down theswells, and the bride, clinging to her husband's arm, called each ofthem by his name.
"Link Compton is in the lead. Pull up!" She reached a firm hand and laidit on the lines. "Pull up, Dell; it's no use."
He tried to shake off her grasp, but could not. Her voice changed tocommand. "Don't be a fool!" she called, sharply, and, laying both handsupon the reins, she brought the horses into a trot in spite of hisfurious objection, just as the first of the pursuing cowboys rodealongside and, seizing one of the horses by the bit, cried out:
"Come back. We need you!"
Even as he spoke a whistling rope settled round the fleeing couple andthe team came to a stand, surrounded by a hooting mob of mounted men.The noose, tight-drawn, was like a steel embrace, and Compton called:
"Thought you'd give us the slip, did ye? Well, I don't think!"
"Leave us alone, you ruffians," shouted Lester, "or it'll be the worsefor you!"
They all laughed at this, and Compton drew the rope tighter, pinningLester's arms to his side.
"Boys--" began Fan in appeal, but she got no further.
Lester, wrenching his right arm loose, began to shoot. What happenedafter that no one ever clearly knew, but the team sprang wildly forward,and Compton's pony reared and fell backward, and the bride and groomwere thrown violently to the ground.
* * * * *
When Fan opened her eyes she saw the big stars above her and felt asinewy arm beneath her head. Compton was fanning her with his hat andcalling upon her to speak, his voice agonized with fear and remorse.
Slowly it all came back to her, and, struggling to a sitting position,she called piteously: "Dell, where are you? Dell!" Her voice rose infear, a tone no man had ever heard in it before. She staggered to herfeet and dazedly looked about her. A group of awed, silenced, dismountedmen stood not far away, and on the ground, lying in a crumpled,distorted heap, was her husband. With a shriek of agony she fell on herknees beside him, calling upon him to open his eyes, to speak to her.
Then at last, as the conviction of his death came to her, she lifted herhead and with a voice of level, hoarse-throated hate, she imprecated hermurderers. "I'll kill you, every one of you! I'll kill you for this--youcowardly wolves--I'll kill--"
V
They lifted them both up for dead, and Compton, taking Fan in his strongarms, held her like a child as they drove slowly back to the ranch. Allbelieved Lester dead; but Compton, who held his ear to Fan's lips,insisted that she was breathing, and indeed she recovered from her swoonbefore they reached the house.
Blondell, more powerfully moved than ever before in his life, after aswift curse upon the culprits took his girl to his bosom and carried herto her bed.
As her brain cleared, Fan rose and, staggering across the room, took herhusband's head in her arms. "Bring some water. Dell is hurt. Don't yousee he is hurt? Be quick!"
"Has somebody gone for the doctor?" asked the mother, to whom this wasthe raving of dementia. "Somebody go."
No one had, for all believed the man to be dead; but Compton exclaimed,"I'll go!" turning to vault his horse, glad of something to do, eager toescape the sight of Fan's agonized face.
The dash of cold water on his bruised face brought a flutter of life toLester's eyelids, and in triumph the bride cried out:
"I told you so! He is alive! Oh, Dell, can't you speak to me?"
He could not so much as lift his eyelids, but his breathing deepened,and with that sign of returning vitality Fan was forced to be content.She was perfectly composed now, and helped to bathe his crushed andbleeding head and his broken shoulder with a calmness very impressive toall those who were permitted to glance within the room.
Slowly the guests departed. The cowboys, low-voiced and funereal ofmien, rode away in groups of three or four.
The doctor came hurrying down the slope about ten of the morning, hissmall roan mustang galloping, his case of instruments between his feet.He was very young, and, luckily, very self-confident, and took charge of"the case" with thrilling authority.
"The coma was induced," he explained, "by the concussion of the brain.The shoulder is also badly contused and the collar-bone broken, but ifbrain fever does not set in the man will live. The treatment so far asit has gone is admirable."
Compton returned with him, or a little before him, and seemed to bewaiting for arrest. He was a lean, brown young fellow with good, grayeyes and a shapely nose. "Yes, I threw the rope," he confessed to everyone. "It was all in fun, but he shot my horse, and as he reared up hejerked the people out of the buggy. I guess the broncos jumped ahead atthe same time. But it was my fault. I had no business to rope 'em. Infact, we had no business chasing 'em up at all."
At last Blondell gruffly told him to go home. "If the man dies we'llcome after you," he added, with blunt ferocity.
"All right," responded the young fellow, with lofty spirit. "I'll bethere--but I want to see Fan a moment before I leave. I want to know ifthere is anything I can do for her or him."
Blondell was for refusing this utterly, but his wife said: "You didn'tmean nothing, Link--I'm sure of that--and I've always liked you, and sohas Fan. She won't lay it up against you, I know. I'll tell her you'rehere."
Fan, sitting beside Lester's bed, turned at her mother's word and sawthe young fellow standing in the doorway in mute appeal. Her glance waswithout anger, but it was cold and distant. She shook her head, and theyoung rancher turned away, shaken with sobs. That look was worse thanher curse had been.
* * * * *
From the dim, grim region of his delirium and his deathlikeunconsciousness George Lester struggled slowly back to life. Hisreawakening was like a new birth. He seemed born again, this time anAmerican--a Western American. In the measure of a good old homelyphrase, some sense (a sense of the fundamental oneness of humanity) hadbeen beaten into his head.
As he lay there, helpless and suffering, he was first of all aware ofFan, whose face shone above him like the moon, and was soon able tounderstand her unwearying devotion and to remember that she was hiswife. She was always present when he woke, and he accepted her presenceas he accepted sunshine, knowing nothing of the sleeplessness and toilwhich her attendance involved--a knowledge of this came later.
At times gruff old Blondell himself bent his shaggy head above his bedto ask how he felt, and no mother could have been more considerate thanMrs. Blondell.
"What right have I to despise these people?" he asked himself one day."What have I done to lift myself above them?" (And this questionextended to the neighbors, to the awkward ranchers who came stiffly andwith a sort of awe into his room to "pass a good word," as they said.)"They are a good sort, after all"--his heart prompted him to admit.
But his deepest penitence, his tenderest gratitude, rose to Fan, whomcare and love had marvelously refined. He was able to forget hercareless speech and to look quite through her untidy ways to the golden,good heart which beat beneath her unlovely gowns. Nothing was too hard,too menial, for her hands, and her smile warmed his midnight sick-roomlike sunshine.
He was curiously silent even after his strength was sufficient forspeech. Content to lie on his bed and watch her as she moved about him,he answered only in monosyllables, while the deep current of his lovegathered below his reticence. As he came to a full understanding of whathe had been and to a sense of his unworthy estimate of her and herpeople, his passion broke bounds.
"Fan!" he called out one morning, "I'm not fit to receive all your careand devotion--but I'm going to try to be; I'm going to set to work inearnest when I get up. Your people shall be my people, your cares mycares." He could not go on, and Fan, who was looking down at him inwonder, stooped and laid a kiss on his quivering lips.
"You get well, boy; that's all you need to worry about," she said, andher face was very sweet--for she smiled upon him as if he were a child.
THE LONESOME MAN
_--the murderer still seeks forgetfulness in the solitude, building his cabin in the shadow of great peaks._