Later she found it possible to speak.
"You have convinced me forever of the futility of all snap judgments,"
said she, and she marveled at the shyness in her own voice, "but you could never convince me of that. You may go home now, Barbara, for you have worn yourself out. But to-morrow I would suggest that you--ask him for corroboration, if you still hold to such an opinion."
Instantly Barbara rose and bobbed her head. She had always been a slim creature of moods mercurial; she would always be that. And now her violet eyes radiated antic.i.p.ation, perverse and impish and far, far different from the sullen dullness which had filled them an hour before. Miss Sarah had spoken with well-seasoned wisdom, as was her wont: there are sometimes big moments which are the bigger for lack of a.n.a.lysis. The girl did not know why, all in one breath, she no longer feared nor doubted--but she _knew_! And that was a world and all of joy. She bobbed her head.
"Ask him?" she echoed, demurely confused. "Ask--_him_! To-morrow I am going to dare him to ask _me_--again!"
But she did not obey Miss Sarah"s suggestion that she return home and rest. On winged feet she flew back through the hedge-gap and ordered Ragtime saddled once more; yet when she touched that splendid beast with the crop and sent him at a gallop down the drive, there was no longer any sting in the lash. Even the groom, with critical eye, noticed the difference in the girl"s seat that afternoon; for days and days to come he was the better contented with the companionship of horses, which was his lot, in dwelling upon the crazy moods of women.
And Miriam Burrell, sighting Barbara"s face as the latter wheeled toward the hills, flew from her window to scratch off a note to Garry--her third note that day, for she seemed always omitting most important things which needed saying.
"It"s come," she scrawled in delighted haste, "and Miss Sarah is a visiting angel from Heaven! . . . When are we going to be married?"
Others knew of it almost as soon as she did herself, but knowledge of that did not mar Barbara"s rosy contemplation of this new-found, totally unbelievable happiness. Once before she had ridden that road with him alone in her thoughts; now she realized that she had loved him then as she must have loved him always, and marveled at such blindness.
Once, on that other day, she had told herself that all ign.o.ble and unworthy comparisons of herself and him were done and gone. Now she did not need such rea.s.surance, when her lips were tremulous.
Rest? Pressing steadily into the north that afternoon, first at a gallop, then more and more slowly until Ragtime was picking his own gait, the girl smiled in pity for Miss Sarah and her day which had never dawned. But there was scant room for sadness in her present mood. Tomorrow? She let herself be afraid for an instant, to tremble in delicious mock-terror, because there was nothing for her to fear now in the whole wide world.
She grew pensive at times; at times in an abandon of gaiety she chattered back at a quarrelsome squirrel in the thicket. She could rest later; and if she could not go to him immediately, at least every step the horse took was bringing them, for a little while, closer together. And her to-morrow was only one twilight and one dawn away; her to-morrow would be his, as utterly as was she herself. Dusk came, and regretfully she told herself that she must be turning back home.
Two rifle shots, sharp and startlingly close, whipped through the quiet of that lazy afternoon, but they meant nothing to her. She had reached the height of land, where he had found her the day her roan mare strayed off while she sat mooning on a log; she was holding out both arms toward the spot where the valley of Thirty-Mile must lie, when a team of heavy horses broke around a turn in the road, slowed to a trot at the sight of her, and came to an abrupt standstill. When the girl rode nearer to them, merely surprised and curious at first, they snorted and showed the whites of their eyes and shied back nervously.
Something chill clutched at Barbara"s heart while she spoke pre-emptorily to Ragtime, who was dancing in sympathetic panic. There was nothing to tell her, but she knew that these were Big Louie"s horses. And Big Louie was a dreamy incompetent--he had left them for a moment, that was all, and they had become frightened and bolted. But Big Louie never neglected his team . . . they were not wet . . . they had not been running far. And their fright became less when she dismounted and approached them, soothing them with her voice until they let her touch their sleek sides, without rearing away.
Dusk had come and gone, for it was growing dark. Uncertain, more and more unnerved as she stood and gazed at the forbidding, black-shadowed ridges beyond her, the girl had to fight suddenly against an impulse to turn and race back to the lower country and Morrison and home. Even then the rifle shots meant nothing to her--and pride would not let her run. She remounted and rode on a rod or two, and stopped to look back at the team which was watching her; she pressed on and rounded the curve. Ragtime reared and snorted there, and she barely stifled the cry which his strange behavior brought to her lips. Because of her senseless panic she punished him the more severely, and sent him on.
And then she saw what the horse had already seen.
A blue-shirted figure lay half in the road, half in the undergrowth that fringed it, one arm crooked under him and his face p.r.o.ne in the dust; a bulkier ma.s.s was stretched wholly within the trail--and she recognized him, too. Big Louie"s face was upturned, and the explanation of the two rifle reports and the driverless team was here.
For Big Louie"s hand still clutched the handle of a canvas pail. They had stopped to water the horses; they had been shot down from behind.
And first of all, unable to move, while horror parched her lips, the girl remembered words which the limp one, half in the road and half in the underbrush, had spoken to her in a moment of sternness.
"He has fired upon me from cover," the man who loved her had said. "He has been taking money from a man who was bent on beating me at any price!"
Giddiness rose and swayed her, and she beat Ragtime mercilessly for his fear. Instinct clamored flight, and she forced herself to wait, panting for that other shot which might leave her, too, lying in the road. But even in that first frozen moment she began to reason clearly. Back with the sleek team which welcomed her with questioning eyes she left Ragtime, for he would stand there, and retraced her way on foot. She could not do it, she sobbed drily--but she raced to him and knelt and searched with swift fingers before the words were past her lips. Her hand found moisture beneath his right shoulder; it was stained red when she held it up and stared at it. And then she was closest to fainting.
"Blood sickens me!" she whimpered aloud. "Blood sickens me!" But she managed to turn him over upon his back. With brown head against his heart, she listened--listened and would not believe that her to-morrow might come too late. And then she caught the slack pound of his pulse.
From there on she was less panic-stricken; she gained control of faculties shocked for a time into uselessness. Method marked her acts--deliberation mechanical but sure. She was horribly afraid of Big Louie, but she finally disentangled the handle of the pail from those loose fingers, and ran to the brook which babbled near at hand.
Returning, she drenched Steve"s face with icy water; she lifted his head and propped it, as comfortably as she might, upon one thigh, and opened his flannel shirt. The ball had pa.s.sed through, for back and front the shirt became immediately wetter with fresh blood. Blood sickened her, but she whipped off the coat of her boyish riding-habit and wrenched the sleeves from her linen blouse. They were desperately scant, yet they provided pads with which to check that dreadful oozing.
And when they were in place she turned again to bathing his forehead.
A folded sheet of paper came to view when she tried once to ease his heavy body from the position which was numbing her leg, and she seized upon it fiercely. It was only a brief line, bidding him come to her, but it bore her name. With instant, bodiless clarity which had marked all her mental processes so far, its purport was hers. She had not written--the hand that had traced her signature had been unstrung for once. She understood, though such knowledge seemed of little moment now.
She kept the pads cold and wet; she went for fresh water and stumbled and fell more than once, because of the treacherous footing in the deepening shadows. But she was no longer afraid of the dark; she had grown to fear Big Louie less, even though there was no help for Big Louie any more. It was the first time that Barbara had looked upon the face of a man who had died in violence. Big Louie"s face was growing indistinct now, but she knew that he was smiling--knew that his eyes were dreamy and mild. Death, like Life, had been a quite incomprehensible puzzle to that slow-witted one who had no name. But he had smiled seldom in life. In death his smile was almost childish, almost sweet, and questioning beyond all else.
Alone with him who still lived, the pallid girl sat and waited and wondered how long--or how soon--it would be. But she wasn"t afraid now. They were his hills; it was his wilderness. And could any harm come out of them equal to separation from him? This was only the beginning of one night of darkness, and Miss Sarah had endured with patience and bravery through a whole lifetime of days and nights as black. "Your face was the first . . . it will be the last thing I"ll see, as long as there is sight in my eyes!" had been his words to her.
She waited and she prayed shamelessly for herself--for one more chance--as Miss Sarah had said women always prayed. But he was looking at her, when she opened her eyes after a long and incoherent appeal; at her first word he tried to rise and she had trouble in persuading him to lie back again. She heard herself scolding, while she rearranged the bandages so that they would cover both wounds, and he listened, hot-eyed, without recognizing her. Yet when she bade him wait, until she could bring the team, he nodded his comprehension; he was watching for her return. And he came to his feet with a readiness that made her heart leap with hope; but he fell twice before she lifted him, half with her hands, half with her voice, to the seat.
She crawled in beside him, and the next moment she had to struggle madly to prevent his returning to Big Louie.
"He will wait quiet until we come for him," she protested. "There isn"t room for Big Louie--and he won"t mind----"
Her logic made an impression upon him, for he smiled. There was no sequence in his acquiescence, however.
"I have always been afraid for him," he told her in reply, as studiously grave as though he had been conscious of what he was saying.
"The others--they can take care of themselves. They are wrong ones together. But Big Louie is only a child--but he won"t mind--he"ll understand----"
She thought then that he had recognized her; she dared to hope that his brain was clearing. But when the team went forward, nervously unmanageable at first, then more decorous as they drew away from him who would never feed them brown sugar again, the man beside her only persisted vacantly with his topic.
"Big Louie never could find his way alone," he mused, "and that is strange, too, for he was born in these hills. He was always getting lost----" And with that he must not desert Louie! She had even more trouble with him this time. "He will lose his head," he expostulated mildly--his old, unfailing att.i.tude of gentleness toward her. "He will lose his head and waste his strength in running from things which do not exist."
"Big Louie will find his way this time." She was whimpering again in her helplessness. "He is--already home."
There she learned that her voice could control him when her arms availed not at all against even his dead weight. And so she talked as steadily as she was able while she drove. Once he lurched against her; when he pulled himself together he was so sanely apologetic of a sudden that she searched his face with hungry eyes. But he was talking now to himself.
"I must not touch her!" he stated firmly. And then, drearily: "I am sick. . . . I have never been so sick--before."
With that he subsided, but his silence was far more dreadful than his wanderings had been; and as fast as she dared she pushed the heavy team on, with Ragtime following behind like a dog. He slipped back against her almost immediately, and this time he had not the strength with which to apologize nor lift himself erect. With his head heavy in the hollow of her arm, they came at length to the open pasture hills; they topped the rise and faced the loops on loops of highway that ran down to Morrison at the river-edge. And so she brought him home. At the sight of his "city" she sobbed aloud, but he, sunken and slack, was conscious neither of distance covered nor change of country. He climbed down from the seat, however, in response to her urgings, when the team halted before Caleb Hunter"s white-columned house--he turned and started stubbornly back the way they had come.
She ran after him and clung to his arm.
"You promised that you would come back to me," she cried up at him.
"Oh, you cannot leave me now!"
That halted him, momentarily.
"I must go back to my bridge," he explained, plainly nonplussed. "But then I"ll surely come back to you."
She pleaded with him--raged at him.
"I must go back to my bridge," he reiterated gruffly now.
Her arms went around him in desperation, and then, with one swing, he had swept her yards away, reeling before his blazing wrath.
"Take your fingers from my eyes, Harrigan," he gasped in sudden agony.
"I am going to kill you now--and _she_ is looking on!"
The girl was afraid of him; she dared not try to hold him. She screamed wildly for help, and screamed again. And he had gone on, and wavered and crashed over upon his face, when Caleb Hunter and her father came running heavily across the lawn in answer to her shrieks.
Between them they lifted him and carried him into the house.
CHAPTER XXIV
--AND TO-MORROW, AND TO-MORROW
They carried him into the house and bore him upstairs, and laid him, quiet now and almost pulseless, upon the bed. They stood there, dumfounded, at the bedside, until Miss Sarah, re-entering the room, coolly ordered them from underfoot and sent them back downstairs. And at that their unprotesting obedience was of greater a.s.sistance than their hands could have been; but when, after one glance at the girl"s stricken face, she tried the next instant to dismiss Barbara, for once Miss Sarah"s will alone proved insufficient. The girl refused, point-blank, to go.