Barger closed his eyes. "Nothing doing." He could not have been forced to tell.
Van smiled. "That"s all right." There was no resentment in the tone.
Barger looked at him curiously.
"What for did you pull me out?"
"Don"t know," Van confessed. "Perhaps I hated to have the quicksand cheat the pen."
"Must have had some good reason," agreed the prostrate man. He was silent for a moment, and then he added: "I s"pose I"m your meat."
As before, Van nodded: "I reckon you are."
Barger spat. It was his first vigorous indication of returning strength.
"Someways," he said, "I"d rather you"d shoot me here, right now, than send me back to the pen. But I couldn"t stand fer that!" He made his characteristic gesture towards the river. As Van made no comment the fellow concluded: "I s"pose you need the reward."
Van was aware there was ten thousand dollars as a price on the convict"s head, a fact which he someway resented. To-day, more than at any time within his life, he felt out of sympathy with law--with man"s law, made against man.
He began to pull off his boots.
"No," he said, "I don"t want any State"s reward, much less express company money. Maybe if it wasn"t for those rewards I"d take you into camp." He inverted his boots and shook out a few grains of sand.
Barger glanced at him suspiciously.
"What are you goin" to do with me, then, now you"ve got me to rights?"
"Nothing," said Van, "nothing this afternoon." He stood up. "You and I break even, Barger, understand? Don"t take me wrong. I"m not turning you loose entirely. You belong to me. Whenever I call for the joker, Matt, I want you to come."
He would never call, and he knew it. He merely left the matter thus to establish a species of ownership that Barger must acknowledge. There is law of the State, and law of G.o.d, and law of man to man. The latter it was that concerned Van Buren now, and upon it he was acting.
Laboriously, weakly, Barger arose to his feet. He looked at Van peculiarly, with a strange light dully firing in his eyes.
"I agree to that," he answered slowly. "I agree to that."
He put out his hand to shake--to bind his agreement. It was almost like offering his oath.
Van took it, and gave it his usual grip.
"So long, Barger," he said. "I reckon you need these boots."
He waved his hand loosely at the boots that lay upon the ground, went at once to his horse, and mounted to his seat.
"The regular ford of this river"s down below," he added to the speechless convict, standing there gaunt and wondering upon the marge.
"So long."
Barger said nothing. Van rode away on the trail by the stream, and was presently gone, around the bend.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI
VAN RUNS AMUCK
Instead of turning northward in the mountain range and riding on to the "Laughing Water" claim, Van continued straight ahead to Goldite. The letter to Beth was heavy in his pocket. Until he should rid himself of its burden he knew he should have no peace--no freedom to act for himself.
He had been delayed. The sun was setting when at last he rode his broncho to the hay-yard in the camp, and saw that he was fed with proper care. Then he got some boots and walked to Mrs. d.i.c.k"s.
Beth, from her window, looking towards the sun, discovered him coming to the place. She had never in her life felt so wildly joyous at beholding any being of the earth. She had watched for hours, counting his steps across the desert"s desolation one by one, tracing his course from Starlight "home" by all the signs along the trail which she and he had traveled together.
She ran downstairs like a child. She had momentarily forgotten even Glen. Nothing counted but this sight of Van--his presence here with herself. When she suddenly burst from the door into all the golden glory of the sunset, herself as glorious with color, warmth, and youth as the great day-orb in the west, Van felt his heart give one tumultuous heave in his breast, despite the resentment he harbored.
There had never been a moment when her smile had been so radiant, when the brown of her eyes had been so softly lighted and glowing, when her cheeks had so mirrored her beauty.
How superb she was, he said to himself--how splendid was her acting!
He could almost forgive himself for having played the fool. His helplessness, his defenselessness had been warranted. But--her smile could befuddle him no more. He took off his hat, with a certain cold elegance of grace. His face still wore that chiseled appearance of stone-like hardness.
"Oh!" she cried, in her irrepressible happiness of heart. "You"re home! You"re safe! I"m glad!"
It was nothing, her cry that he was safe. She had worried only for the desert"s customary perils, but this he could not know. He thought she referred to a possible meeting with Barger. He was almost swept from his balance by her look, for a bright bit of moisture had sprung in her eyes and her smile took on a tenderness that all but conquered him anew.
"I delivered your letter in Starlight," he said. "I return your brother"s reply."
He had taken the letter from his pocket. He held it forth.
She took it. If memories of Glen started rushingly upon her, they were halted by something she felt in the air, something in the cold, set speech of the man she loved as never she had thought to love a creature of the earth. She made no reply, but stood looking peculiarly upon him, a question written plainly in her glance.
"If there is nothing more," he added, "permit me to wish you good-day."
He swept off his hat as he had before, turned promptly on his heel, and departed the scene forthwith.
She tried to cry out, to ask him what it meant, but the thing had come like a blow. It had not been what he had said, so much as the manner of its saying--not so much what she had heard as what her heart had felt. A deluge of ice water, suddenly thrown upon her, could scarcely have chilled or shocked her more than the coldness that had bristled from his being.
Wholly at a loss to understand, she leaned in sudden weakness against the frame of the door, and watched him disappearing. Her smile was gone. In its place a dumb, white look of pain and bewilderment had frozen on her face. Had not that something, akin to anger, which her nature had felt to be emanating from him remained so potently to oppress her, she could almost have thought the thing a joke--some freakish mood of playfulness after all the other moods he had shown.
But no such thought was possible. The glitter in his eyes had been unmistakable. Then, what could it mean?
She almost cried, as she stood there and saw him vanish. She had counted so much upon this moment. She had prayed for his coming safely back from the desert. She had so utterly unbound the fetters from her love. Confession of it all had been ready in her heart, her eyes, and on her lips. Reaction smote her a dulling blow. Her whole impulsive nature crept back upon itself, abashed--like something discarded, flung at her feet ingloriously.
"Oh--Van!" she finally cried, in a weak, hurt utterance, and back along the darkening hall she went, her hand with Glen"s crushed letter pressed hard upon her breast.
Van, for his part, far more torn than he could have believed possible, proceeded down the street in such a daze as a drunken man might experience, emerging from liquor"s false delights to life"s cold, merciless facts. The camp was more emptied than he had ever known it since first it was discovered. Only a handful of the reservation stragglers had returned. The darkness would pour them in by hundreds.
Half way down the thoroughfare Van paused to remember what it was his body wanted. It was food. He started again, and was pa.s.sing the bank when someone called from within.
"h.e.l.lo, there--Van!" came the cry. "h.e.l.lo! Come in!"
Van obeyed mechanically. The cashier, Rickart, it was who had shouted the summons--a little, gray-eyed, thin-faced man, with a very long moustache.