Garry frowned, perplexed. His fast numbing brain refused to reconstruct clearly, and yet dimly he knew that this sentiment was not the one which he had heard a few hours before from Steve"s lips.
"Too true," he was content to reply sadly. "Too true!"
"We"ve both earned a vacation." Steve"s gentle smile never left his lips. "To-day I couldn"t help but think that it was a shame to miss such perfect hunting weather as this. I wonder if I couldn"t persuade you to postpone your going for just a day or two longer. I can show you some deer, Garry."
The frown upon the latter"s forehead deepened with his effort at recollection. Then he brightened with happy satisfaction.
"Deer!" he chuckled, addressing himself to Joe. "Hunter took me for a deer, thinking I was Steve." He blinked, for the statement did not entirely please him. "Doesn"t sound logical," he pondered, "but it"s so. Fired twice and missed both shots. Poor work--very poor work indeed!"
Joe squared around, his perplexed scrutiny an accusation now. Steve had neglected to apprise him of that incident which had happened on the way home, and Joe had not heard the rifle reports. But O"Mara clung to the subject which he had introduced.
"That"s the trouble with hunting right here in the front yard," he admitted. "There are too many gunners anxious to hear their rifles go off. We might swing over toward the west branch, though. As long as this rain holds on the leaves will be quiet as a carpet. You"ve never seen my own private shooting box, either, have you Garry?"
The questioned one tried hard to pay attention, but the attempt was no more than an indifferent success, for he was still grumbling to himself over that unknown marksman"s lack of skill.
"Never knew you had one," he answered.
"My inheritance," laughed Steve. From his manner he might have been talking to a sober man. "And also the haunt of my boyhood days. It"s the shack, you know, where I spent a good many years with Old Tom. It lies a half dozen miles through the woods from here. I"ve made it weather-tight and dry. I spend a day or so up there whenever I have a chance to get away. We"re sure of a shot if we still-hunt over in that direction--sure of a tight roof and good beds, too. How does it appeal to you?"
Garry spilled over his gla.s.s and had to fill it again, with many apologies for his clumsiness, so ardent was his acceptance of the invitation. He rose and insisted upon shaking hands.
"A personally conducted tour," he stammered gayly.
"A pilgrimage to the nest from which young genius first spread its wings, personally conducted by my friend, Mr. O"Mara." But his moods were growing more and more uncertain and changeable, now. He bent a baleful glance upon Fat Joe. "Is this--person going to accompany us,"
offensively he wanted to know.
Steve shook his head.
"Joe"ll have to stay here and hold things down until we return," he explained.
Garry resumed his seat.
"Then I"ll go," he stated. The baleful light was slow in leaving his eyes. And, after a rambling, muttered something to himself: "Too officious . . . wouldn"t let me have but one drink every three hours . . . better we left him alone. He might shoot somebody, too--looks as though he might shoot and investigate at leisure."
With that he turned once more to thoughts of him who, firing from ambush, had left a trail of hob-nails to voice mutely the haste of his retreat. It had a fascination for him; his mind went back to it automatically, the only idea apparently upon which he found it possible to center his faculties. Now and then he referred to it aloud, in jumbled and meaningless e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns. Both men knew that he did not know what he was saying, and yet his reference to Fat Joe had left a hint of pain in the latter"s eyes. It was still there when Joe arose, an hour later, and jerked his head toward Garry"s quarters.
"If you need me, sing out," he said. "There"s whiskey locked in the medicine chest--and I"ll be sleeping light."
The words meant nothing to Garry, but he noted Joe"s departure. Steve saw that his eyes were fixed, his lips crusted with fever, when he too came to his feet in a supreme effort, and steadied himself by the back of his chair.
"I"ve been most thoughtless, Steve," he apologized charmingly. It was the spirit of the old Garry talking through the flesh of the Garry he had become. "I"ve been unpardonably selfish. You must be tired; you have worked hard to-day."
In turn he made as if to cross to the door. Steve drew him back.
"Joe"s taken your bed," he explained. "He"s been an hour asleep by now. We"ll be getting away at daybreak, and he always did hate to be waked an instant before his hour, so you"ll have to occupy his bunk."
It took Garry a minute or two to a.s.similate that.
"Surely," he agreed. "Daybreak." Then, drearily, with no knowledge of what he was saying: "I wish I could go to sleep--I wish it was daybreak, now!"
Yet he was almost sober again when Steve shook him awake at four the next morning, his first inquiry concerning the state of the weather proving that he recalled their plans of the night before. But his politeness had given way to a pallid stubbornness that would not budge an inch until he had had a drink and filled a pair of flasks with all that the fresh bottle from the medicine chest contained. He refused breakfast with sickened finality; declined even the coffee which Steve tried to press upon him. When the latter handed him Joe"s rifle and a handful of extra sh.e.l.ls, however, his eagerness to be away showed in his eyes.
Steve did not like that gleam any more than he understood it, and he did not understand it at all. It went around him--through him--much as though Garry was peering cunningly at a far-off, bodiless something which the other man could not see. And throughout the whole morning Steve was conscious of it whenever they met after skirting a swamp, or slipped noiselessly over a hardwood knoll, to rejoin each other. The day was half gone before Steve realized that it was the telltale sign of a brain no longer sober, even though Garry"s body continued to maintain an incredible steadiness.
Long after it seemed that eyes such as his had become must needs be sightless the latter went on picking his way carefully over rough bits of going; when he had reached a condition where he no longer heard the word or two which, now and then, Steve addressed to him, he still flattened his body and crouched at the expected nearness of game. It became an uncanny exhibition of mechanics after a while--a sleep-walking sort of thing which wore upon Steve"s nerves until he was more than once at the point of taking possession of Joe"s repeater.
And yet it was Garry who jumped a spike-horn buck, just before nightfall. It was he who fired twice before Steve"s rifle reached his shoulder. But they found only blood on the leaves when they hastened forward.
"You hit him!" Steve leaned over to examine those crimson stains.
"You must have found him with both shots, judging from the way he"s bleeding. He"s gone into that cedar swamp; he won"t travel far, and I hate to let him crawl in there, wounded like that, to die."
Indecisively he paused, not sure just what to do. In that moment of quiet Garry lifted a flask to his lips and finding it empty let it slip heedlessly to the ground.
"Two shots," he muttered darkly. "Two, where one should have been enough."
That echo of the night before helped the other man to decide.
"This strip of dark timber runs straight west to the river--are you listening, Garry?" he asked. "Straight to the river--it"s only a scant mile--and you"ll find the cabin on the rise of ground in a clump of balsams, three or four rods to the right. I"m going to take your gun--you look f.a.gged out. You skirt around the edge of the bad going and I"ll drive straight through. It may be only a scratch, after all, although it doesn"t seem possible, with all this blood. I"ll take your gun and, now, are you sure you can make it--sure you won"t get turned around? It"ll be dark in half an hour, you know."
Garry gave up his rifle without a sign of demur. His eyes were burning with some sort of feverish antic.i.p.ation, but his answer was clear enough.
"I"ll wait for you at the river," he said, and he started forthwith toward the west.
Steve watched him out of sight before he turned to take up, irresolutely, the trail that zig-zagged into the cedar brake. But once he had started he went ahead rapidly, jumping the wounded buck within five minutes and giving him no time to lie down again. And after he had covered a quarter of a mile Steve saw that it was much as he had told Garry it might be; it was a flesh wound that bled profusely and that was all. For the deer, holding to a direct line down the middle of the swamp, continued to travel strongly. Steve had all but reached the river-edge where they were to stop for the night, before he detected a stirring in the bushes ahead of him and his ear caught the crackle of a dry branch.
Instantly he forgot everything save the quarry he was running down; forgot Garry and the strange persistence with which the latter had gone back, after twelve hours, to quote himself word for word. With rifle poised he edged forward a step and halted; he stooped and laid Garry"s gun at the foot of a tree and went on again. Once he made out a movement behind a nearer tangle and saw the branches shake before a heavy body that was forcing slowly through them. His own rifle came up; his finger was on the trigger when he thought better of it. Old Tom, more than a half-score of years before, had switched him well, not so very far from that very spot, because he had not made certain first of the target at which he was firing.
There was an open patch to the left. If the buck held to that quarter he would have to cross that clear. Rock-steady the muzzle came down and covered the first indistinct brown bulk which entered the notch of the sights. And then, with an oath, Steve let the gun slip to the ground at his feet and stood shaking, checks gone white. Garret Devereau, wearing an old tan canvas coat which he had unearthed in the cabin peered slyly around a bush which he had been stirring gently with one hand.
"Go ahead "n" shoot," he ordered aggrievedly. "Hunter"sh alwaysh shoot at rush"le in the dark. Good joke on hunter"sh--good joke on my good frien", Misther O"Mara! Think"sh"s got deer until he inves"gates at leisure. Best joke of all"sh on myself."
The muscles which all day had been a marvel of firmness beneath him gave way altogether. Without a sound he pitched forward upon his face.
A second later Steve reached his side, but the horror had not faded from his own eyes after he had picked that prostrate figure up and carried it into the clay-clinked shack. His memory played him an odd trick during that moment. A vivid picture came back to him of the grave-faced boy he had been, struggling to steady Old Tom"s helpless feet up that same rise.
Garry was limp and blue and pulseless when Steve stretched him out, inside. The second flask stood there where Garry had left it, upon a table, and while he was loosening the latter"s clothing Steve shook it, experimentally, and found it empty. He swung it aloft and drove it through a window. The crash of shivered gla.s.s made the other stir. He opened his eyes and stared vacantly up into his friend"s face.
"Steve," he moaned. "Steve, I"m cold!"
And that was the burden of the complaints which he lifted, time and again, throughout the first part of the night. Even after Steve had wrapped him in everything which the bare room afforded he still continued to whimper like a sick boy. But his body held strong. Just as, all day, it had been his brain which had shown the effects of the alcohol which he had consumed, so now, all night, it was his brain which suffered most. Again and again he called aloud a woman"s name, in a voice which Stephen O"Mara had never before heard from his lips.
In inconceivable tenderness he whispered it--the name of Mary Graves--only to cry aloud, "Steve--Steve," in accents of heartbreak the next.
Long before morning came his pulse was steady--a little jumpy but rea.s.suringly rhythmic. But the sunlight was two hours old upon the floor before the silent watcher saw the white lids flutter and then part with a gaze that was once more sane. Garry"s smile had always been mocking; it was shamed and wistful now. The clearness with which he remembered was a miraculous thing.
"You see, Steve," he faltered. "You see now, don"t you, that I"m not worth trying to save? Oh, you"ve tried hard; I knew how hard you were trying! That"s why I did--what I did. I"m no good; there"s no use, friend of mine. Why don"t you let me go?"
Steve groped and found the hand groping for his. He nodded his head, bruskly, to hide his eyes. But his voice was not brusk.
"I almost shot you, Garry," he said, and there was a husky echo of horror in the words. "In another minute I"d have killed you. Right now I don"t know just what kept me from firing."