"No. Shaunbaum didn"t shoot him. The boy did the "gunman" up. You see, it was the outcome of a brawl. There"s no one to arrest--yet."
"Who did shoot him up? The other "gunman"? Josh spoke of two. Can"t he be got? He could give Shaunbaum away--maybe."
"That"s so. Guess that"s most how it stands. Maybe it was the other "gunman.""
Murray"s satisfaction was obvious. He nodded.
"Sure. It"s Shaunbaum"s play. There"s no question. Everybody got it ahead. It wouldn"t be his way to see another feller s.n.a.t.c.h his dame without a mighty hard kick. It"s Shaunbaum--sure."
He bestirred himself. All his old energy seemed to spring suddenly into renewed life. Again came that forceful gesture of the fist which Bill watched with so much interest, and the binding of the ledger creaked under its force.
"By G.o.d! I hope they get him and hang him by his rotten vulture neck!
He"s run his vile play too long. He"s a disease--a deadly, stinking, foul disease. Maybe it was a "gunman" did the shooting. But I"d bet my life it was Shaunbaum behind him. And to think these poor lone women-folk, hundreds of miles away from him, should be the victims.
See here, Kars, I"m no sort of full-fledged angel. I don"t set myself up as any old bokay of virtue. There"s things count more with me, and one of "em"s dollars. I"m out after all I can get of "em. But I"d give half of all I possess to see a rawhide tight around Shaunbaum"s neck so it wouldn"t give an inch. I haven"t always seen eye to eye with young Alec. Maybe our temperaments were sort of contrary. But this thing"s got me bad. Before G.o.d, there"s not a thing I wouldn"t do to save these poor women-folk hurt. They"re right on their lonesome now. Do you get all that means to women-folk? There isn"t a soul between them and the world. You ask me to stand by. You ask me to keep my hand on the tiller of things. I don"t need the asking--by any one. I was Allan"s partner, and Allan"s friend. It"s my duty and my right to get in between these poor folk and a world that would show them small enough mercy. And I don"t hand my right to any man living.
I got to thank you coming along to me. But it don"t need you, or any other man, to ask me to get busy for the sake of these folk. You can reckon on me looking after things right here, Kars. I"m ready to do all I know. And G.o.d help any one who"d rob them of a cent. Allan left his work only half done. It was for them. And I"m going to carry it through. The way he"d have had it."
The rain had ceased. A watery sunshine had broken through the heavy clouds which were reluctantly yielding before a bleak wintry wind. It was the low poised sun of afternoon in the early year, and its warmth was as ineffectual as its beam of light. But it shone through the still tightly sealed double windows of Ailsa Mowbray"s parlor, a promise which, at the moment, possessed neither meaning nor appeal.
The widowed mother was standing near the wood stove which radiated a welcome warmth, and still roared its winter song through its open dampers. John Kars was leaning against the centre table. His serious eyes were on the ruddy light shining under the damper of the stove.
His strong hands were gripping the woodwork of the table behind him.
His grip was something in the nature of a clutching support. His fixed gaze was as though he had no desire to shift it to the face of the woman on whom he had come to inflict the most cruel agony a woman may endure.
"You have come to talk to me of Alec? Yes? What of him?" Ailsa Mowbray"s eyes, so steady, so handsome, eyes that claimed so much likeness to Jessie"s, were eager. Then, in a moment, a note of anxiety found expression. "He--is well?"
The man"s own suffering at that moment was lacerating. All that was in him was stirred to its deepest note. It was as though he were about to strike this woman down, a helpless, defenceless soul, and all his manhood revolted. He could have wept tears of bitterness, such as he had never dreamed could have been wrung from him.
"No."
"What--has happened? Quick! Tell me!"
The awful apprehension behind the mother"s demand found no real outward sign. She stood firmly--unwaveringly. Only was there a sudden suppressed alarm in her voice.
Kars stirred. The jacket b.u.t.toned across his broad chest seemed to stifle him. A mad longing possessed him to reach out and break something. The pleasant warmth of the room had suddenly become unbearable. He could no longer breathe in the atmosphere. He raised his eyes to the mother"s face for one moment. The next they sought again the ruddy line of the stove.
"He--is dead."
"Dead? Oh, no! Not that! Oh--G.o.d help me!"
Kars had no recollection of a mother"s love. He had no recollection of anything but the hard blows in a cruel struggle for existence, beside a man whose courage was invincible, but in whom the tender emotions at no time found the smallest display. But all that which he had inherited from the iron man who had founded his fortunes had failed to rob him of any of the gentler humanity which his unremembered mother must have bestowed upon him. His whole being shrank under the untold agony of this mother"s denial and ultimate appeal.
Now he spoke rapidly. The yearning to spare this woman, who had already suffered so much, urged him. To prolong the telling he felt would be cruelty unthinkable. He felt brevity to be the only way to spare her.
"He was shot by a tough," he said. "It was at the Elysian Fields. He was dancing, and there was a quarrel. If blame there was for Alec it was just his youth, I guess. Just sit, and I"ll hand it you--all."
He moved from the table. He came to the mother"s side. His strong hand rested on her shoulder, and somehow she obeyed his touch and sank into the chair behind her. It was the chair from which she had watched her little world grow up about her, the chair in which she had pondered on the first great tragedy of her life.
Her lips were unmoving. Her eyes terrible in their stony calm. They mechanically regarded the man before her with so little understanding that he wondered if he should proceed.
Presently, however, he was left no choice.
"Go on," she said, and her hands clasped themselves in her lap with a nerve force suggesting the physical clinging which remained her only support.
And at her bidding the man talked. He told his story in naked outline, smothering the details of her boy"s delinquencies, and sparing her everything which could wound her mother"s pride and devotion. His purpose was clearly defined. The wound he had to inflict was well-nigh mortal, but no word or act of his should aggravate it. His story was a consummate effort of loyalty to the dead and mercy to the living.
Even in the telling he wondered if those wide-gazing, stricken eyes were reading somewhere in the depths of his soul the real secrets he was striving so ardently to withhold. He could not tell. His knowledge of women was limited, so limited. He hoped that he had succeeded.
At the conclusion of his pitiful story he waited. His purpose was to leave the woman to her grief, believing that time, and her wonderful courage, would help her. But it was difficult, and all that was in him bade him stay, and out of his own great courage seek to help her.
He stirred. The moment was dreadful in its hopelessness.
"Jessie will be along," he said.
The mother looked up with a start.
"Yes," she said. "She"s all I have left. Oh, G.o.d, it will break her young heart."
There was no thought of self in that supreme moment. The mother was above and beyond her own sufferings, even when the crushing grief was beating her down with the full force of merciless blows. Her thought for the suffering of her one remaining child was supreme.
The man"s hands gripped till his nails almost cut the hard flesh of his palms. He had no answer for her words. It was beyond his power to answer such words.
He turned with a movement suggesting precipitate flight. But his going was arrested by the voice he knew and loved so well.
"What--what--will break her young heart?"
Jessie was standing just within the room, and the door was closed behind her. Her eyes were on the drawn face of her mother, but, somehow, it seemed to Kars that her words were addressed to him.
In the agony of his feelings he was about to answer. Perhaps recklessly. For somehow the dreadful nature of his errand was telling on a temper unused to such a task. But once again the fort.i.tude of the elder woman displayed itself, and he was saved from himself.
"I"ll tell you, Jessie, when--he"s gone." And the handsome, tragic eyes looked squarely into the man"s.
For a moment the full significance of the mother"s words remained obscure to the man. Then the courage, the strength of them made themselves plain. He realized that this grief-stricken woman was invincible. Nothing--just nothing could break her indomitable spirit.
In the midst of all her suffering she desired to spare him, to spare her one remaining child.
There could be no reply to such a woman. Nor could he answer the girl--now. He came towards her. Resting one great hand on the oilskin covering her shoulders, he looked down into her questioning, troubled eyes with infinite tenderness.
"Jessie, there"s things I can say to you I can"t say even to your mother. I want to say them now, with her looking on. I can"t put all I feel into words. Those things don"t come easy to me. You see, I"ve never had anything beyond my own concerns to look after, ever before in my life. Other folks never kind of seemed to figger with me. Maybe I"m selfish. It seems that way. But now--why, now that"s all changed.
Things I always guessed mattered don"t matter any longer. And why?
Why? Because there"s just two women in the world got right into my heart, and everything else has had to make way for them. Do you get me, child? Maybe you don"t. Well, it"s just that all I am or ever hope to be is for you. It don"t matter the miles between us, or the season. When I get your call I"ll answer--right away."
CHAPTER XXIV
THE FIRST STREAK OF DAWN
Fort Mowbray was enveloped in a black cloud of tragedy. Its simple life flickered on. But it seemed to have been robbed of all its past reality, all its quiet strength, all that made it worth while.