Whetstone galloped on, mad in the pain of his wound, heading straight toward the fire.
Lambert believed, as those who urged him on toward it believed, that no horseman ever rode could jump that fiery gorge. On the brink of it his pursuers would stop, while he, powerless to check or turn his horse, would plunge over to perish in his bonds, smothered under his struggling beast, pierced by the transcendent agonies of fire.
This was the last thought that rose coherently out of the turmoil of his senses as the firepit opened before his eyes. He heard his horse squeal again in the pain of another knife thrust to madden it to its destructive leap. Then a swirl of the confused senses as of released waters, the lift of his horse as it sprang, the heat of the fire in his face.
The healthy human mind recoils from death, and there is no agency among the destructive forces of nature which threatens with so much terror as fire. The senses disband in panic before it, reason flees, the voice appeals in its distress with a note that vibrates horror. In the threat of death by fire, man descends to his primal levels; his tongue speaks again the universal language, its note lending its horrified thrill to the lowest thing that moves by the divine force of life.
As Lambert hung over the fire in that mighty leap, his soul recoiled.
His strength rushed into one great cry, which still tore at his throat as his horse struck, racking him with a force that seemed to tear him joint from joint.
The shock of this landing gathered his dispersed faculties. There was fire around him, there was smoke in his nostrils, but he was alive. His horse was on its feet, struggling to scramble up the bank on which it had landed, the earth breaking under its hinder hoofs, threatening to precipitate it back into the fire that its tremendous leap had cleared.
CHAPTER XVI
WHETSTONE COMES HOME
Lambert saw the fire leaping around him, but felt no sting of its touch, keyed as he was in that swift moment of adjustment. From a man as dead he was transformed in a breath back to a living, panting, hoping, struggling being, strong in the tenacious purpose of life. He leaned over his horse"s neck, shouting encouragement, speaking endearments to it as to a woman in travail.
There was silence on the bank behind him. Amazement over the leap that had carried Whetstone across the place which they had designed for the grave of both man and horse, held the four scoundrels breathless for a spell. Fascinated by the heroic animal"s fight to draw himself clear of the fire which wrapped his hinder quarters, they forgot to shoot.
A heave, a lurching struggle, a groan as if his heart burst in the terrific strain, and Whetstone lunged up the bank, staggered from his knees, snorted the smoke out of his nostrils, gathered his feet under him, and was away like a bullet. The sound of shots broke from the bank across the fiery creva.s.se; bullets came so close to Lambert that he lay flat against his horse"s neck.
As the gallant creature ran, sensible of his responsibilities for his master"s life, it seemed, Lambert spoke to him encouragingly, proud of the tremendous thing that he had done. There was no sound of pursuit, but the shooting had stopped. Lambert knew they would follow as quickly as they could ride round the field of fire.
After going to this length, they could not allow him to escape. There would have been nothing to explain to any living man with him and all trace of him obliterated in the fire, but with him alive and fleeing, saved by the winged leap of his splendid horse, they would be called to answer, man by man.
Whetstone did not appear to be badly hurt. He was stretching away like a hare, shaping his course toward the ranch as true as a pigeon. If they overtook him they would have to ride harder than they ever rode in their profitless lives before.
Lambert estimated the distance between the place where they had trapped him and the fire as fifteen miles. It must be nine or ten miles across to the Philbrook ranch, in the straightest line that a horse could follow, and from that point many miles more to the ranchhouse and release from his stifling ropes. The fence would be no security against his pursuing enemies, but it would look like the boundary of hope.
Whether they lost so much time in getting around the fire that they missed him, or whether they gave it up after a trial of speed against Whetstone, Lambert never knew. He supposed that their belief was that neither man nor horse would live to come into the sight of men again.
However it fell, they did not approach within hearing if they followed, and were not in sight as dawn broke and broadened into day.
Whetstone made the fence without slackening his speed. There Lambert checked him with a word and looked back for his enemies. Finding that they were not near, he proceeded along the fence at easier gait, holding the animal"s strength for the final heat, if they should make a sudden appearance. Somewhere along that miserable ride, after daylight had broken and the pieced wire that Grace Kerr had cut had been pa.s.sed, Lambert fell unconscious across the horn of his saddle from the drain of blood from his wounds and the unendurable pain of his bonds.
In this manner the horse came bearing him home at sunrise. Taterleg was away on his beat, not uneasy over Lambert"s absence. It was the exception for him to spend a night in the bunkhouse in that summer weather. So old Whetstone, jaded, scorched, b.l.o.o.d.y from his own and his master"s wounds, was obliged to stand at the gate and whinny for help when he arrived.
It was hours afterward that the fence rider opened his eyes and saw Vesta Philbrook, and closed them again, believing it was a delirium of his pain. Then Taterleg spoke on the other side of the bed, and he knew that he had come through his perils into gentle hands.
"How"re you feelin", old sport?" Taterleg inquired with anxious tenderness.
Lambert turned his head toward the voice and grinned a little, in the teeth-baring, hard-pulling way of a man who has withstood a great deal more than the human body and mind ever were designed to undergo. He thought he spoke to Taterleg; the words shaped on his tongue, his throat moved. But there was such a roaring in his ears, like the sound of a train crossing a trestle, that he could not hear his own voice.
"Sure," said Taterleg, hopefully, "you"re all right, ain"t you, old sport?"
"Fine," said Lambert, hearing his voice small and dry, strange as the voice of a man to him unknown.
Vesta put her arm under his head, lifted him a little, gave him a swallow of water. It helped, or something helped. Perhaps it was the sympathetic tenderness of her good, honest eyes. He paid her with another little grin, which hurt her more to see than him to give, wrenched even though it was from the bottom of his soul.
"How"s old Whetstone?" he asked, his voice coming clearer.
"He"s all right," she told him.
"His tail"s burnt off of him, mostly, and he"s cut in the hams in a couple of places, but he ain"t hurt any, as I can see," Taterleg said, with more truth than diplomacy.
Lambert struggled to his elbow, the consciousness of what seemed his ingrat.i.tude to this dumb savior of his life smiting him with shame.
"I must go and attend to him," he said.
Vesta and Taterleg laid hands on him at once.
"You"ll bust them st.i.tches I took in your back if you don"t keep still, young feller," Taterleg warned. "Whetstone ain"t as bad off as you, nor half as bad."
Lambert noticed then that his hands were wrapped in wet towels.
"Burned?" he inquired, lifting his eyes to Vesta"s face.
"No, just swollen and inflamed. They"ll be all right in a little while."
"I blundered into their hands like a blind kitten," said he, reproachfully.
"They"ll eat lead for it!" said Taterleg.
"It was Kerr and that gang," Lambert explained, not wanting to leave any doubt behind if he should have to go.
"You can tell us after a while," she said, with compa.s.sionate tenderness.
"Sure," said Taterleg, cheerfully, "you lay back there and take it easy.
I"ll keep my eye on things."
That evening, when the pain had eased out of his head, Lambert told Vesta what he had gone through, sparing nothing of the curiosity that had led him, like a calf, into their hands. He pa.s.sed briefly over their attempt to herd him into the fire, except to give Whetstone the hero"s part, as he so well deserved.
Vesta sat beside him, hearing him to the end of the brief recital that he made of it in silence, her face white, her figure erect. When he finished she laid her hand on his forehead, as if in tribute to the manhood that had borne him through such inhuman torture, and the loyalty that had been the cause of its visitation. Then she went to the window, where she stood a long time looking over the sad sweep of broken country, the fringe of twilight on it in somber shadow.
It was not so dark when she returned to her place at his bedside, but he could see that she had been weeping in the silent pain that rises like a poison distillation from the heart.
"It draws the best into it and breaks them," she said in great bitterness, speaking as to herself. "It isn"t worth the price!"
"Never mind it, Vesta," he soothed, putting out his hand. She took it between her own, and held it, and a great comfort came to him in her touch.
"I"m going to sell the cattle as fast as I can move them, and give it up, Duke," she said, calling him by that name with the easy unconsciousness of a familiar habit, although she never had addressed him so before.
"You"re not going away from here whipped, Vesta," he said with a firmness that gave new hope and courage to her sad heart. "I"ll be out of this in a day or two, then we"ll see about it--about several things.
You"re not going to leave this country whipped; neither am I."