"But, the water--surely there was water in the flask last night!"
Then, of a sudden, she understood. "You--you fed it to me in my sleep," she faltered. "You were afraid I would refuse, and that was my dream!"
"Mind over matter," reminded Endicott, with a distortion of his bleeding lips that pa.s.sed for a grin. Again he fumbled in his slicker and withdrew the untouched can of tomatoes. He cut its cover as he had seen Tex do and extended it to the girl. "Drink some of this, and if the horses hold out we will reach the river in a couple of hours."
"I believe it"s growing a little cooler since that awful wind went down," she said, as she pa.s.sed the can back to Endicott. "Let"s push on, the horses seem to know there is water ahead. Oh, I hope they can make it!"
"We can go on a-foot if they can"t," rea.s.sured the man. "It is not far."
The horses pushed on with renewed life. They stumbled weakly, but the hopeless, lack-l.u.s.tre look was gone from their eyes and at frequent intervals they stretched their quivering nostrils toward the long green line in the distance. So slow was their laboured pace that at the end of a half-hour Endicott dismounted and walked, hobbling clumsily over the hot rocks and through ankle-deep drifts of dust in his high-heeled boots. A buzzard rose from the coulee ahead with silent flapping of wings, to be joined a moment later by two more of his evil ilk, and the three wheeled in wide circles above the spot from which they had been frightened. A bend in the coulee revealed a stagnant poison spring. A dead horse lay beside it with his head buried to the ears in the slimy water. Alice glanced at the broken chain of the hobbles that still encircled the horse"s feet.
"It"s the pack-horse!" she cried. "They have only one horse between them!"
"Yes, he got away in the night." Endicott nodded. "Bat is hunting water, and Tex is waiting." He carried water in his hat and dashed it over the heads of the horses, and sponged out their mouths and noses as Tex and Bat had done. The drooping animals revived wonderfully under the treatment and, with the long green line of scrub timber now plainly in sight, evinced an eagerness for the trail that, since the departure from Antelope b.u.t.te, had been entirely wanting. As the man a.s.sisted the girl to mount, he saw that she was crying.
"They"ll come out, all right," he a.s.sured her. "As soon as we hit the river and I can get a fresh horse, I"m going back."
"Going back!"
"Going back, of course--with water. You do not expect me to leave them?"
"No, I don"t expect you to leave them! Oh, Winthrop, I--" her voice choked up and the sentence was never finished.
"Buck up, little girl, an hour will put us at the river," he swung into the saddle and headed southward, glad of a respite from the galling, scalding torture of walking in high-heeled boots.
Had Endicott combed Montana throughout its length and breadth he could have found no more evil, disreputable character than Long Bill Kearney.
Despised by honest citizens and the renegades of the bad lands, alike, he nevertheless served these latter by furnishing them whiskey and supplies at exorbitant prices. Also, he bootlegged systematically to the Port Belknap Indians, which fact, while a matter of common knowledge, the Government had never been able to prove. So Long Bill, making a living ostensibly by maintaining a flat-boat ferry and a few head of mangy cattle, continued to ply his despicable trade. Even pa.s.sing cowboys avoided him and Long Bill was left pretty much to his own evil devices.
It was the cabin of this sc.u.m of the outland that Endicott and Alice approached after pushing up the river for a mile or more from the point where they had reached it by means of a deep coulee that wound tortuously through the breaks. Long Bill stood in his doorway and eyed the pair sullenly as they drew rein and climbed stiffly from the saddles. Alice glanced with disgust into the sallow face with its unkempt, straggling beard, and involuntarily recoiled as her eyes met the leer with which he regarded her as Endicott addressed him:
"We"ve been fighting the dust storm for two days, and we"ve got to have grub and some real water, quick."
The man regarded him with slow insolence: "The h.e.l.l ye hev," he drawled; "Timber City"s only seven mile, ef ye was acrost the river. I hain"t runnin" no hotel, an" grub-liners hain"t welcome."
"G.o.d, man! You don"t mean----"
"I mean, ef ye got five dollars on ye I"ll ferry ye acrost to where ye c"n ride to Timber City ef them old skates"ll carry ye there, an" ef ye hain"t got the five, ye c"n swim acrost, or shove on up the river, or go back where ye come from."
Endicott took one swift step forward, his right fist shot into the man"s stomach, and as he doubled forward with a grunt of pain, Endicott"s left crashed against the point of his jaw with a force that sent him spinning like a top as he crumpled to the hard-trodden earth of the door-yard.
"Good!" cried Alice. "It was beautifully done. He didn"t even have a chance to shoot," she pointed to the two 45"s that hung, one at either hip.
"I guess we"ll just relieve him of those," said Endicott, and, jerking the revolvers from their holsters, walked to his saddle and uncoiled the rope. Alice lent eager a.s.sistance, and a few moments later the inhospitable one lay trussed hand and foot. "Now, we"ll go in and find something to eat," said Endicott, as he made fast the final hitch.
The cabin was well stocked with provisions and, to the surprise of the two, was reasonably clean. While Alice busied herself in the cabin, Endicott unsaddled the horses and turned them into a small field where the vegetation grew rank and high and green beside a series of irrigation ditches. Pa.s.sing the horse corral he saw that three or four saddle-horses dozed in the shade of its pole fence, and continued on to the river bank where he inspected minutely the ferry.
"I guess we can manage to cross the river," he told Alice, when he returned to the cabin; "I will breathe easier when I see you safe in Timber City, wherever that is. I am coming back after Tex. But first I must see you safe."
The girl crossed to his side and as the man glanced into her face he saw that her eyes were shining with a new light--a light he had dreamed could shine from those eyes, but never dared hope to see. "No, Win,"
she answered softly, and despite the mighty pounding of his heart the man realized it was the first time she had used that name. "You are not going back alone. I am going too." Endicott made a gesture of protest but she gave no heed. "From now on my place is with you. Oh, Win, can"t you see! I--I guess I have always loved you--only I didn"t know It. I wanted romance--wanted a red-blood man--a man who could do things, and----"
"Oh, if I could come to you clean-handed!" he interrupted, pa.s.sionately; "if I could offer you a hand unstained by the blood of a fellow creature!"
She laid a hand gently upon his shoulder and looked straight into his eyes: "Don"t, Win," she said; "don"t always hark back to _that_. Let us forget."
"I wish to G.o.d I could forget!" he answered, bitterly. "I know the act was justified. I believe it was unavoidable. But--it is my New England conscience, I suppose."
Alice smiled: "Don"t let your conscience bother you, because it is a New England conscience. They call you "the pilgrim" out here. It is the name they called your early Ma.s.sachusetts forebears--and if history is to be credited, they never allowed their consciences to stand in the way of taking human life."
"But, they thought they were right."
"And you _know_ you were right!"
"I know--I know! It isn"t the ethics--only the fact."
"Don"t brood over it. Don"t think of it, dear. Or, if you must, think of it only as a grim duty performed--a duty that proved, as nothing else could have proved, that you are every inch a man."
Endicott drew her close against his pounding heart. "It proved that the waters of the Erie Ca.n.a.l, if given the chance, can dash as madly unrestrained as can the waters of the Grand Canyon."
She pressed her fingers to his lips: "Don"t make fun of me. I was a fool."
"I"m not making fun--I didn"t know it myself, until--" the sentence was drowned in a series of yells and curses and vile epithets that brought both to the door to stare down at the trussed-up one who writhed on the ground in a very paroxysm of rage.
"Conscience hurting you, or is it your jaw?" asked Endicott, as he grinned into the rage-distorted features.
"Git them hosses outa that alfalfy! You ---- ---- ---- ---- ----!
I"ll hev th" law on ye! I"ll shoot ye! I"ll drag yer guts out!" So great was the man"s fury that a thin white foam flecked his hate-distorted lips, and his voice rose to a high-pitched whine.
Endicott glanced toward the two horses that stood, belly-deep, in the lush vegetation.
"They like it," he said, calmly. "It"s the first feed they have had in two days." The man"s little pig eyes glared red, and his voice choked in an inarticulate snarl.
Alice turned away in disgust. "Let him alone," she said, "and we will have dinner. I"m simply famished. Nothing ever looked so good to me in the world as that ham and potatoes and corn and peas." During the course of the meal, Endicott tried to dissuade the girl from her purpose of accompanying him on his search for Tex and the half-breed.
But she would have it no other way, and finally, perforce, he consented.
Leaving her to pack up some food, Endicott filled the water-bag that hung on the wall and, proceeding to the corral, saddled three of the horses. Through the open window of the cabin he could see the girl busily engaged in transferring provisions to a sack. He watched her as she pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed the window intent upon her task. Never had she seemed so lovable, so unutterably desirable--and she loved him! With her own lips she had told him of her love, and with her own lips had placed the seal of love upon his own. Happiness, like no happiness he had ever known should be his. And yet--hovering over him like a pall--black, ominous, depressing--was the thing that momentarily threatened to descend and engulf him, to destroy this new-found happiness, haunt him with its diabolical presence, and crush his life--and hers.
With an effort he roused himself--squared himself there in the corral for the final battle with himself. "It is now or never," he gritted through clenched teeth. "Now, and alone. She won"t face the situation squarely. It is woman"s way, calmy to ignore the issue, to push it aside as the ill of a future day."
She had said that he was right, and ethically, he knew that he was right--but the fact of the deed remained. His hand had sped a soul to its G.o.d.
Why?
To save the woman he loved. No jury on earth would hold him guilty.
He would surrender himself and stand trial. Then came the memory of what Tex had told him of the machinations of local politics. He had no wish to contribute his life as campaign material for a county election.
The other course was to run--to remain, as he now was, a fugitive, if not from justice, at least from the hand of the law. This course would mean that both must live always within the menace of the shadow--unless, to save her from this life of haunting fear, he renounced her.
His eyes sought the forbidding sweep of the bad lands, strayed to the sluggish waters of the Missouri, and beyond, where the black b.u.t.tes of the Judith Range reared their ma.s.sive shapes in the distance. Suddenly a mighty urge welled up within him. He would not renounce her! She was his! This was life--the life that, to him, had been as a sealed book--the fighting life of the boundless open places. It was the coward"s part to run. He had played a man"s part, and he would continue to play a man"s part to the end. He would fight. Would identify himself with this West--become part of it. Never would he return to the life of the city, which would be to a life of fear. The world should know that he was right. If local politics sought to crush him--to use him as a puppet for their puny machinations, he would smash their crude machine and rebuild the politics of this new land upon principles as clean and rugged as the land itself. It should be his work!
With the light of a new determination in his eyes, he caught up the bridle-reins of the horses and pushed open the gate of the corral. As he led the animals out he was once more greeted with a volley of oaths and curses: "Put them back! Ye hoss-thief! I"ll have ye hung! Them"s mine, I tell ye!"