The dust cloud and the figure of the rider in it were sweeping rapidly down on the grove in the hollow, where Lefty waited. And the girl was torn between three emotions: Joy at the coming of the adventurer, fear for him, terror at the thought of his meeting with Mark.
"It would be murder, John! I"ll go with you if you"ll start now!"
"No," he said quietly, "I won"t run. Besides it is impossible for him to take you from me."
"Impossible?" she asked. "What do you mean?"
"When the time comes you"ll see! Now he"s nearly there--watch!"
The rider was in full view now, driving his horse at a stretching gallop. There was no doubt about the ident.i.ty of the man. They could not make out his face, of course, at that distance, but something in the careless dash of his seat in the saddle, something about the slender, erect body cried out almost in words that this was Ronicky Doone. A moment later the first treetops of the grove brushed across him, and he was lost from view.
The girl buried her face in her hands, then she looked up. By this time he must have reached Lefty, and yet there was no sound of shooting. Had Lefty found discretion the better part of valor and let him go by unhindered? But, in that case, the swift gallop of the horse would have borne the rider through the grove by this time.
"What"s happened?" she asked of John Mark. "What can have happened down there?"
"A very simple story," said Mark. "Lefty, as I feared, has been more chivalrous than wise. He has stepped out into the road and ordered Ronicky to stop, and Ronicky has stopped. Now he is sitting in his saddle, looking down to Lefty, and they are holding a parley--very like two knights of the old days, exchanging compliments before they try to cut each other"s throats."
But, even as he spoke, there was the sound of a gun exploding, and then a silence.
"One shot--one revolver shot," said John Mark in his deadly calm voice.
"It is as I said. They drew at a signal, and one of them proved far the faster. It was a dead shot, for only one was needed to end the battle.
One of them is standing, the other lies dead under the shadow of that grove, my dear. Which is it?"
"Which is it?" asked the girl in a whisper. Then she threw up her hands with a joyous cry: "Ronicky Doone! Ronicky, Ronicky Doone!"
A horseman was breaking into view through the grove, and now he rode out into full view below them--unmistakably Ronicky Doone! Even at that distance he heard the cry, and, throwing up his hand with a shout that tingled faintly up to them, he spurred straight up the slope toward them. Ruth Tolliver started forward, but a hand closed over her wrist with a biting grip and brought her to a sudden halt. She turned to find John Mark, an automatic hanging loosely in his other hand.
His calm had gone, and in his dead-white face the eyes were rolling and gleaming, and his set lips trembled. "You were right," he said, "I cannot face him. Not that I fear death, but there would be a thousand d.a.m.nations in it if I died knowing that he would have you after my eyes were closed. I told you he could not take you--not living, my dear. Dead he may have us both."
"John!" said the girl, staring and bewildered. "In the name of pity, John, in the name of all the goodness you have showed me, don"t do it."
He laughed wildly. "I am about to lose the one thing on earth I have ever cared for, and still I can smile. I am about to die by my own hand, and still I can smile. For the last time, will you stand up like your old brave self?"
"Mercy!" she cried. "In Heaven"s name--"
"Then have it as you are!" he said, and she saw the sun flash on the steel, and he raised the gun.
She closed her eyes--waited--heard the distant drumming of hoofs on the turf of the hillside. Then she caught the report of a gun.
But it was strangely far away, that sound. She thought at first that the bullet must have numbed, as it struck her. Presently a shooting pain would pa.s.s through her body--then death.
Opening her bewildered eyes she beheld John Mark staggering, the automatic lying on the ground, his hands clutching at his breast. Then glancing to one side she saw the form of Ronicky Doone riding as fast as spur would urge his horse, the long Colt balanced in his hand. That, then, was the shot she had heard--a long-range chance shot when he saw what was happening on top of the hill.
So swift was Doone"s coming that, by the time she had reached her feet again, he was beside her, and they leaned over John Mark together. As they did so Mark"s eyes opened, then they closed again, as if with pain.
When he looked again his sight was clear.
"As I expected," he said dryly, "I see your faces together--both together, and actually wasting sympathy on me? Tush, tush! So rich in happiness that you can waste time on me?"
"John," said the girl on her knees and weeping beside him, "you know that I have always cared for you, but as a brother, John, and not--"
"Really," he said calmly, "you are wasting emotion. I am not going to die, and I wish you would put a bandage around me and send for some of the men at the house to carry me up there. That bullet of yours--by Harry, a very pretty snap shot--just raked across my breast, as far as I can make out. Perhaps it broke a bone or two, but that"s all. Yes, I am to have the pleasure of living."
His smile was ghastly thing, and, growing suddenly weak, as if for the first time in his life he allowed his indomitable spirit to relax, his head fell to one side, and he lay in a limp faint.
Chapter Twenty-eight
_Hope Deferred_
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 antic.i.p.ation.
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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nto 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 p.r.o.nto, Pete being a fine gent."
There was an exclamation of impatience from Ruth Tolliver.
"Isn"t that like Ronicky? Isn"t that typical?"