Kent leaned back against his pillows. His breath came in a series of short, hacking coughs. In the star glow O"Connor saw his face grow suddenly haggard and tired-looking, and he leaned far in so that in both his own hands he held one of Kent"s.
"I"m tiring you, Jimmy," he said huskily. "Good-by, old pal! I--I--" He hesitated and then lied steadily. "I"m going up to take a look around Kedsty"s place. I won"t be gone more than half an hour and will stop on my way back. If you"re asleep--"
"I won"t be asleep," said Kent.
O"Connor"s hands gripped closer. "Good-by, Jimmy."
"Good-by." And then, as O"Connor stepped back into the night, Kent"s voice called after him softly: "I"ll be with you on the long trip, Bucky. Take care of yourself--always."
O"Connor"s answer was a sob, a sob that rose in his throat like a great fist, and choked him, and filled his eyes with scalding tears that shut out the glow of moon and stars. And he did not go toward Kedsty"s, but trudged heavily in the direction of the river, for he knew that Kent had called his lie, and that they had said their last farewell.
CHAPTER IV
It was a long time after O"Connor had gone before Kent at last fell asleep. It was a slumber weighted with the restlessness of a brain fighting to the last against exhaustion and the inevitable end. A strange spirit seemed whirling Kent back through the years he had lived, even to the days of his boyhood, leaping from crest to crest, giving to him swift and pa.s.sing visions of valleys almost forgotten, of happenings and things long ago faded and indistinct in his memory.
Vividly his dreams were filled with ghosts--ghosts that were transformed, as his spirit went back to them, until they were riotous with life and pulsating with the red blood of reality. He was a boy again, playing three-old-cat in front of the little old red brick schoolhouse half a mile from the farm where he was born, and where his mother had died.
And Skinny Hill, dead many years ago, was his partner at the bat--lovable Skinny, with his smirking grin and his breath that always smelled of the most delicious onions ever raised in Ohio. And then, at dinner hour, he was trading some of his mother"s cuc.u.mber pickles for some of Skinny"s onions--two onions for a pickle, and never a change in the price. And he played old-fashioned casino with his mother, and they were picking blackberries together in the woods, and he killed over again a snake that he had clubbed to death more than twenty years ago, while his mother ran away and screamed and then sat down and cried.
He had worshiped that mother, and the spirit of his dreams did not let him look down into the valley where she lay dead, under a little white stone in the country cemetery a thousand miles away, with his father close beside her. But it gave him a pa.s.sing thrill of the days in which he had fought his way through college--and then it brought him into the North, his beloved North.
For hours the wilderness was heavy about Kent. He moved restlessly, at times he seemed about to awaken, but always he slipped back into the slumberous arms of his forests. He was on the trail in the cold, gray beginning of Winter, and the glow of his campfire made a radiant patch of red glory in the heart of the night, and close to him in that glow sat O"Connor. He was behind dogs and sledge, fighting storm; dark and mysterious streams rippled under his canoe; he was on the Big River, O"Connor with him again--and then, suddenly, he was holding a blazing gun in his hand, and he and O"Connor stood with their backs to a rack, facing the bloodthirsty rage of McCaw and his free-traders. The roar of the guns half roused him, and after that came pleasanter things--the droning of wind in the spruce tops, the singing of swollen streams in Springtime, the songs of birds, the sweet smells of life, the glory of life as he had lived it, he and O"Connor. In the end, half between sleep and wakefulness, he was fighting a smothering pressure on his chest. It was an oppressive and torturing thing, like the tree that had fallen on him over in the Jackfish country, and he felt himself slipping off into darkness. Suddenly there was a gleam of light. He opened his eyes. The sun was flooding in at his window, and the weight on his chest was the gentle pressure of Cardigan"s stethoscope.
In spite of the physical stress of the phantoms which his mind has conceived, Kent awakened so quietly that Cardigan was not conscious of the fact until he raised his head. There was something in his face which he tried to conceal, but Kent caught it before it was gone. There were dark hollows under his eyes. He was a bit haggard, as though he had spent a sleepless night. Kent pulled himself up, squinting at the sun and grinning apologetically. He had slept well along into the day, and--
He caught himself with a sudden grimace of pain. A flash of something hot and burning swept through his chest. It was like a knife. He opened his mouth to breathe in the air. The pressure inside him was no longer the pressure of a stethoscope. It was real.
Cardigan, standing over him, was trying to look cheerful. "Too much of the night air, Kent," he explained. "That will pa.s.s away--soon."
It seemed to Kent that Cardigan gave an almost imperceptible emphasis to the word "soon," but he asked no question. He was quite sure that he understood, and he knew how unpleasant for Cardigan the answer to it would be. He fumbled under his pillow for his watch. It was nine o"clock. Cardigan was moving about uneasily, arranging the things on the table and adjusting the shade at the window. For a few moments, with his back to Kent, he stood without moving. Then he turned, and said:
"Which will you have, Kent--a wash-up and breakfast, or a visitor?"
"I am not hungry, and I don"t feel like soap and water just now. Who"s the visitor? Father Layonne or--Kedsty?"
"Neither. It"s a lady."
"Then I"d better have the soap and water! Do you mind telling me who it is?"
Cardigan shook his head. "I don"t know. I"ve never seen her before. She came this morning while I was still in pajamas, and has been waiting ever since. I told her to come back again, but she insisted that she would remain until you were awake. She has been very patient for two hours."
A thrill which he made no effort to conceal leaped through Kent. "Is she a young woman?" he demanded eagerly. "Wonderful black hair, blue eyes, wears high-heeled shoes just about half as big as your hand--and very beautiful?"
"All of that," nodded Cardigan. "I even noticed the shoes, Jimmy. A very beautiful young woman!"
"Please let her come in," said Kent. "Mercer scrubbed me last night, and I feel fairly fit. She"ll forgive this beard, and I"ll apologize for your sake. What is her name?"
"I asked her, and she didn"t seem to hear. A little later Mercer asked her, and he said she just looked at him for a moment and he froze. She is reading a volume of my Plutarch"s "Lives"--actually reading it. I know it by the way she turns the pages!"
Kent drew himself up higher against his pillows and faced the door when Cardigan went out. In a flash all that O"Connor had said swept back upon him--this girl, Kedsty, the mystery of it all. Why had she come to see him? What could be the motive of her visit--unless it was to thank him for the confession that had given Sandy McTrigger his freedom?
O"Connor was right. She was deeply concerned in McTrigger and had come to express her grat.i.tude. He listened. Distant footsteps sounded in the hall. They approached quickly and paused outside his door. A hand moved the latch, but for a moment the door did not open. He heard Cardigan"s voice, then Cardigan"s footsteps retreating down the hall. His heart thumped. He could not remember when he had been so upset over an unimportant thing.
CHAPTER V
The latch moved slowly, and with its movement came a gentle tap on the panel.
"Come in," he said.
The next instant he was staring. The girl had entered and closed the door behind her. O"Connor"s picture stood in flesh and blood before him. The girl"s eyes met his own. They were like glorious violets, as O"Connor had said, but they were not the eyes he had expected to see.
They were the wide-open, curious eyes of a child. He had visualized them as pools of slumbering flame--the idea O"Connor had given him--and they were the opposite of that. Their one emotion seemed to be the emotion roused by an overwhelming, questioning curiosity. They were apparently not regarding him as a dying human being, but as a creature immensely interesting to look upon. In place of the grat.i.tude he had antic.i.p.ated, they were filled with a great, wondering interrogation, and there was not the slightest hint of embarra.s.sment in their gaze.
For a s.p.a.ce it seemed to Kent that he saw nothing but those wonderful, dispa.s.sionate eyes looking at him. Then he saw the rest of her--her amazing hair, her pale, exquisite face, the slimness and beauty of her as she stood with her back to the door, one hand still resting on the latch. He had never seen anything quite like her. He might have guessed that she was eighteen, or twenty, or twenty-two. Her hair, wreathed in shimmering, velvety coils from the back to the crown of her head, struck him as it had struck O"Connor, as unbelievable. The glory of it gave to her an appearance of height which she did not possess, for she was not tall, and her slimness added to the illusion.
And then, greatly to his embarra.s.sment in the next instant, his eyes went to her feet. Again O"Connor was right--tiny feet, high-heeled pumps, ravishingly turned ankles showing under a skirt of some fluffy brown stuff or other--
Correcting himself, his face flushed red. The faintest tremble of a smile was on the girl"s lips. She looked down, and for the first time he saw what O"Connor had seen, the sunlight kindling slumberous fires in her hair.
Kent tried to say something, but before he succeeded she had taken possession of the chair near his bedside.
"I have been waiting a long time to see you," she said. "You are James Kent, aren"t you?"
"Yes, I"m Jim Kent. I"m sorry Dr. Cardigan kept you waiting. If I had known--"
He was getting a grip on himself again, and smiled at her. He noticed the amazing length of her dark lashes, but the violet eyes behind them did not smile back at him. The tranquillity of their gaze was disconcerting. It was as if she had not quite made up her mind about him yet and was still trying to cla.s.sify him in the museum of things she had known.
"He should have awakened me," Kent went on, trying to keep himself from slipping once more. "It isn"t polite to keep a young lady waiting two hours!"
This time the blue eyes made him feel that his smile was a maudlin grin.
"Yes--you are different." She spoke softly, as if expressing the thought to herself. "That is what I came to find out, if you were different. You are dying?"
"My G.o.d--yes--I"m dying!" gasped Kent. "According to Dr. Cardigan I"m due to pop off this minute. Aren"t you a little nervous, sitting so near to a man who"s ready to explode while you"re looking at him?"
For the first time the eyes changed. She was not facing the window, yet a glow like the glow of sunlight flashed into them, soft, luminous, almost laughing.
"No, it doesn"t frighten me," she a.s.sured him. "I have always thought I should like to see a man die--not quickly, like drowning or being shot, but slowly, an inch at a time. But I shouldn"t like to see YOU die."
"I"m glad," breathed Kent. "It"s a great satisfaction to me."
"Yet I shouldn"t be frightened if you did."
"Oh!"