Trailin'!

by Max Brand

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  BACON

  The savour of roasting chicken, that first delicious burst of aroma whenthe oven door is opened, would tempt an angel from heaven down to thelowly earth. A Southerner declares that his nostrils can detect at aprodigious distance the cooking of "possum and taters." A Kanaka has acosmopolitan appetite, but the fragrance which moves him most nearly isthe scent of fish baking in Ti leaves. A Frenchman waits unmoved untilthe perfume of some rich lamb ragout, an air laden with spices, iswafted toward him.

  Every man and every nation has a special dish, in general; there is onlyone whose appeal is universal. It is not for any class or nation; it isprimarily for "the hungry man," no matter what has given him anappetite. It may be that he has pushed a pen all day, or reckoned upvast columns, or wielded a sledge-hammer, or ridden a wild horse frommorning to night; but the savour of peculiar excellence to the nostrilsof this universal hungry man is the smell of frying bacon.

  A keen appetite is even stronger than sorrow, and when Sally Fortuneawoke with that strong perfume in her nostrils, she sat straight upamong the blankets, startled as the cavalry horse by the sound of thetrumpet. What she saw was Anthony Bard kneeling by the coals of the fireover which steamed a coffee-pot on one side and a pan of crisping baconon the other.

  The vision shook her so that she rubbed her eyes and stared again tomake sure. It did not seem possible that she had actually wakened duringthe night and found him gone, and with this reality before her she wasstrongly tempted to believe that the coming of Nash was only a vividdream.

  "Morning, Anthony."

  He turned his head quickly and smiled to her.

  "Hello, Sally."

  He was back at once, turning the bacon, which was done on the firstside. Seeing that his back was turned, she dressed quickly.

  "How'd you sleep?"

  "Well."

  "Where?"

  He turned more slowly this time.

  "You woke up in the middle of the night?"

  "Yes."

  "What wakened you?"

  "Nash and Kilrain."

  He sighed: "I wish I'd been here."

  She answered: "I'll wash up; we'll eat; and then off on the trail. I'vean idea that the two will be back, and they'll have more men behindthem."

  After a little her voice called from the outside: "Anthony, have you hada look at the morning?"

  He came obediently to the doorway. The sun had not yet risen, but thefresh, rose-coloured light already swept around the horizon throwingthe hills in sharp relief and flushing, faraway, the pure snows of theLittle Brothers. And so blinding was the sheen of the lake that itseemed at first as though the sun were about to break from the waters,for there all the radiance of the sunrise was reflected, concentrated.

  Looking in this manner from the doorway, with the water on either sideand straight ahead, and the dark, narrow point of land cutting thatcolour like a prow, it seemed to Anthony almost as if he stood on thebridge of a ship which in another moment would gather head and sail outtoward the sea of fresh beauty beyond the peaks, for the old house ofWilliam Drew stood on a small peninsula, thrusting out into the lake, alow, shelving shore, scattered with trees.

  Where the little tongue of land joined the main shore the ground roseabruptly into a shoulder of rocks inaccessible to a horse; the entranceand exit to the house must be on either side of this shoulder huggingclosely the edge of the water.

  Feeling that halo of the morning about them, for a moment Anthony forgotall things in the lift and exhilaration of the keen air; and he acceptedthe girl as a full and equal partner in his happiness, looking to herfor sympathy.

  She knelt by the edge of the water, face and throat shining and wet, herhead bending back, her lips parted and smiling. It thrilled him as ifshe were singing a silent song which made the brightness of the morningand the colour beyond the peaks. He almost waited to see her throatquiver--hear the high, sweet tone.

  But a scent of telltale sharpness drew him a thousand leagues down andmade him whirl with a cry of dismay: "The bacon, Sally!"

  It was hopelessly burned; some of it was even charred on the bottom ofthe pan. Sally, returning on the run, took charge of the cookery andwent about it with a speed and ability that kept him silent; which beingthe ideal mood for a spectator, he watched and found himself learningmuch.

  Whatever that scene of the night before meant in the small and definite,in the large and vague it meant that he had a claim of some sort onSally Fortune and it is only when a man feels that he has this claim,this proprietorship, as it were, that he begins to see a woman clearly.

  Before this his observance has been half blind through prejudice eitherfor or against; he either sees her magnified with adulation, or else thelarge end of the glass is placed against his eye and she is merely aspeck in the distance. But let a woman step past that mysterious wallwhich separates the formal from the intimate--only one step--at once sheis surrounded by the eyes of a man as if by a thousand spies. So it waswith Anthony.

  It moved him, for instance, to see the supple strength of her fingerswhen she was scraping the charred bacon from the bottom of the pan, andhe was particularly fascinated by the undulations of the small, roundwrist. He glanced down to his own hand, broad and bony in comparison.

  It was his absorption in this criticism that served to keep him alooffrom her while they ate, and the girl felt it like an arm pushing heraway. She had been very close to him not many hours before; now she wasfar away. She could understand nothing but the pain of it.

  As he finished his coffee he said, staring into a corner: "I don't knowwhy I came back to you, Sally."

  "You didn't mean to come back when you started?"

  "Of course not."

  She flushed, and her heart beat loudly to hear his weakness. He waskeeping nothing from her; he was thinking aloud; she felt that the barsbetween them were down again.

  "In the first place I went because I had to be seen and known by name insome place far away from you. That was for your sake. In the secondplace I had to be alone for the work that lay ahead."

  "Drew?"

  "Yes. It all worked like a charm. I went to the house of Jerry Wood,told him my name, stayed there until Conklin and several others arrived,hunting for me, and then gave them the slip."

  She did not look up from her occupation, which was the skilful cleaningof her gun.

  "It was perfect; the way clear before me; I had dodged through theirlines, so to speak, when I gave Conklin the slip, and I could ridestraight for Drew and catch him unprepared. Isn't that clear?"

  "But you didn't?"

  She was so calm about it that he grew a little angry; she would not lookup from the cleaning of the gun.

  "That's the devil of it; I couldn't stay away. I had to come back toyou."

  She restored the gun to her holster and looked steadily at him; he felta certain shock in countering her glance.

  "Because I thought you might be lonely, Sally."

  "I was."

  It was strange to see how little fencing there was between them. Theywere like men, long tried in friendship and working together on a greatproblem full of significance to both.

  "Do you know what I kept sayin' to myself when I found you was gone?"

  "Well?"

  "Todo es perdo; todo es perdo!"

  She had said it so often to herself that now some of the originalemotion crept into her voice. His arm went out; they shook hands acrosstheir breakfast pans.

  She went on: "The next thing is Drew?"

  "Yes."

  "There's no changing you." She did not wait for his answer. "I knowthat. I won't ask questions. If it has to be done we'll do it quickly;and afterward I can find a way out for us both."

  Something like a foreknowledge came to him, telling him that the thingwould never be done--that he had surrendered his last chance of Drewwhen he turned back to go to Sally. It was as if he took a choicebetween the killing of the man and the love of the woman. But h
e saidnothing of his forebodings and helped her quietly to rearrange the smallpack. They saddled and took the trail which pointed up over themountains--the same trail which they had ridden in an opposite directionthe night before.

  He rode with his head turned, taking his last look at the old house ofDrew, with its blackened, crumbling sides, when the girl cried softly:"What's that? Look!"

  He stared in the direction of her pointing arm. They were almostdirectly under the shoulder of rocks which loomed above the trail alongthe edge of the lake. Anthony saw nothing.

  "What was it?"

  He checked his horse beside hers.

  "I thought I saw something move. I'm not sure. And there--back,Anthony!"

  And she whirled her horse. He caught it this time clearly, theunmistakable glint of the morning light on steel, and he turned the greysharply. At the same time a rattling blast of revolver shots crackledabove them; the grey reared and pitched back.

  By inches he escaped the fall of the horse, slipping from the saddle inthe nick of time. A bullet whipped his hat from his head. Then the handof the girl clutched his shoulder.

  "Stirrup and saddle, Anthony!"

  He seized the pommel of the saddle, hooked his foot into the stirrupwhich she abandoned to him, and she spurred back toward the old house.

  A shout followed them, a roar that ended in a harsh rattle of curses;they heard the spat of bullets several times on the trees past whichthey whirled. But it was only a second before they were once more in theshelter of the house. He stood in the centre of the room, stunned,staring stupidly around him. It was not fear of death that benumbed him,but a rising horror that he should be so trapped--like a wild beastcornered and about to be worried to death by dogs.

  As for escape, there was simply no chance--it was impossible. On threesides the lake, still beautiful, though the colour was fading from it,effectively blocked their way. On the fourth and narrowest side therewas the shoulder of rocks, not only blocking them, but affording aperfect shelter for Nash and his men, for they did not doubt that it washe.

  "They think they've got us," said a fiercely exultant voice beside him,"but we ain't started to make all the trouble we're goin' to make."

  Life came back to him as he looked at her. She was trembling withexcitement, but it was the tremor of eagerness, not the unmistakablesick palsy of fear. He drew out a large handkerchief of fine, whitelinen and tied it to a long splinter of wood which he tore away from oneof the rotten boards.

  "Go out with this," he said. "They aren't after you, Sally. This is westof the Rockies, thank God, and a woman is safe with the worst man thatever committed murder."

  She said: "D'you mean this, Anthony?"

  "I'm trying to mean it."

  She snatched the stick and snapped it into small pieces.

  "Does that look final, Anthony?"

  He could not answer for a moment. At last he said: "What a woman youwould have made for a wife, Sally Fortune; what a fine pal!"

  But she laughed, a mirth not forced and harsh, but clear and ringing.

  "Anthony, ain't this better'n marriage?"

  "By God," he answered, "I almost think you're right."

  For answer a bullet ripped through the right-hand wall and buried itselfin a beam on the opposite side of the room.

  "Listen!" she said.

  There was a fresh crackle of guns, the reports louder and longer drawn.

  "Rifles," said Sally Fortune. "I knew no bullet from a six-gun couldcarry like that one."

  The little, sharp sounds of splintering and crunching began everywhere.A cloud of soot spilled down the chimney and across the hearth. A furrowploughed across the floor, lifting a splinter as long and even as if ithad been grooved out by a machine.

  "Look!" said Sally, "they're firin' breast high to catch us standing,and on the level of the floor to get us if we lie down. That's Nash. Iknow his trademark."

  "From the back of the house we can answer them," said Bard. "Let's tryit."

  "Pepper for their salt, eh?" answered Sally, and they ran back throughthe old shack to the last room.