The Trail to Yesterday
Page 17
CHAPTER XVII
DOUBLER TALKS
After the departure of the doctor Sheila entered the cabin and closed thedoor, fastening the bars and drawing a chair over near the table. Doublerseemed to be resting easier, though there was a flush in his cheeks thattold of the presence of fever. However, he breathed more regularly andwith less effort than before the coming of the doctor, and as aconsequence, Sheila felt decidedly better. At intervals during the nightshe gave him quantities of the medicine which the doctor had left, butonly when the fever seemed to increase, forcing the liquid through hislips. Several times she changed the bandages, and once or twice during thenight when he moaned she pulled her chair over beside him and smoothed hisforehead, soothing him. When the dawn came it found her heavy eyed andtired.
She went to the river and procured fresh water, washed her hands and face,prepared a breakfast of bacon and soda biscuit--which she found in a tinbox in a corner of the cabin, and then, as Doubler seemed to be doingnicely, she saddled her pony and took a short gallop. Returning, sheentered the cabin, to find Doubler tossing restlessly.
She gave him a dose of the medicine--an extra large one--but it had littleeffect, quieting him only momentarily. Evidently he was growing worse. Thethought aroused apprehension in her mind, but she fought it down andstayed resolutely at the sick man's side.
Through the slow-dragging hours of the morning she sat beside him, givinghim the best care possible under the circumstances, but in spite of herefforts the fever steadily rose, and at noon he sat suddenly up in thebunk and gazed at her with blazing, vacuous eyes.
"You're a liar!" he shouted. "Dakota's square!"
Sheila stifled a scream of fear and shrank from him. But recovering, shewent to him, seizing his shoulders and forcing him back into the bunk. Hedid not resist, not seeming to pay any attention to her at all, but hemumbled, inexpressively:
"It ain't so, I tell you. He's just left me, an' any man which could talklike he talked to me ain't--I reckon not," he said, shaking his head witha vigorous, negative motion; "you're a heap mistaken--you ain't got himright at all."
He was quiet for a time after this, but toward the middle of the afternoonSheila saw that his gaze was following her as she paced softly back andforth in the cabin.
"So you're stuck on that Langford girl, are you?" he demanded, laughing."Well, it won't do you any good, Dakota, she's--well, she's some sore atyou for something. She won't listen to anything which is said about you."The laughter died out of his eyes; they became cold with menace. "I ain'tlistenin' to any more of that sorta talk, I tell you! I've got my eyesopen. Why!" he said in surprise, starting up, "he's gone!" He suddenlyshuddered and cursed. "In the back," he said. "You--you----" And profanitygushed from his lips. Then he collapsed, closing his eyes, and lay silentand motionless.
Out of the jumble of disconnected sentences Sheila was able to gather twothings of importance--perhaps three.
The first was that some one had told him of Dakota's complicity in theplan to murder him and that he refused to believe his friend capable ofsuch depravity. The second was that he knew who had shot him; he also knewthe man who had informed him of Dakota's duplicity--though this knowledgewould amount to very little unless he recovered enough to be able tosupply the missing threads.
Sheila despaired of him supplying anything, for it seemed that he wassteadily growing worse, and when the dusk came she began to feel a dreadof remaining with him in the cabin during the night. If only the doctorwould return! If Dakota would come--Duncan, her father, anybody! Butnobody came, and the silence around the cabin grew so oppressive that shefelt she must scream. When darkness succeeded dusk she lighted thekerosene lamp, placed a bar over the window, secured the door fastenings,and seated herself at the table, determined to take a short nap.
It seemed that she had scarcely dropped off to sleep--though in realityshe had been unconscious for more than two hours--when she awoke suddenly,to see Doubler sitting erect in the bunk, watching her with a wan,sympathetic smile. There was the light of reason in his eyes and her heartgave an ecstatic leap.
"Could you give me a drink of water, ma'am?" he said, in the voice thatshe knew well.
She sprang to the pail, to find that it contained very little. She hadlifted it, and was about to unfasten the door, intending to go to theriver to procure fresh water, when Doubler's voice arrested her.
"There's some water there--I can hear it splashin': It'll do well enoughjust now. I don't want much. You can get some fresh after a while. I wantto talk to you."
She placed the pail down and went over to him, standing beside him.
"What is it?" she asked.
"How long have you been here? I knowed you was here all the time--I keptseein' you, but somehow things was a little mixed. But I know that you'vebeen here quite a while. How long?"
"This is the second night."
"You found me layin' there--in the door. I dropped there, not bein' ableto go any further. I felt you touchin' me--draggin' me. There was someoneelse here, too. Who was it?"
"The doctor and Dakota."
"Where's Dakota now?"
"At his cabin, I suppose. He didn't stay here long--he left right after hebrought the doctor. I imagine you know why he didn't stay. He was afraidthat you would recognize him and accuse him."
"Accuse him of what, ma'am?"
"Of shooting you."
He smiled. "I reckon, ma'am, that you don't understand. It wasn't Dakotathat shot me."
"Who did, then?" she questioned eagerly. "Who?"
"Duncan."
"Why--why----" she said, sitting suddenly erect, a mysterious elationfilling her, her eyes wide with surprise and delight, and a fear thatDoubler might have been mistaken--"Why, I saw Dakota on the river trailjust after you were shot."
"He'd just left me. He hadn't been gone more than ten minutes or so whenDuncan rode up--comin' out of the timber just down by the crick. Likelyhe'd been hidin' there. I was cleanin' my rifle; we had words, and when Iset my rifle down just outside the shack, he grabbed it an' shot me. Afterthat I don't seem to remember a heap, except that someone was touchin'me--which must have been you."
"Oh!" she said. "I am _so_ glad!"
She was thinking now of Dakota's parting words to her the night before onthe crest of the slope above the river,--of his words, of the truth of hisstatement denying his guilt, and she was glad that she had not spoken someof the spiteful things which had been in her mind. How she had misjudgedhim!
"I reckon it's something to be glad for," smiled Doubler, misunderstandingher elation, "but I reckon I owe it to you--I'd have pulled my freightsure, if you hadn't come when you did. An' I told you not to be comin'here any more." He laughed. "Ain't it odd how things turn out--sometimes.I'd have died sure," he repeated.
"You are going to live a long while," she said. And then, to his surprise,she bent over and kissed his forehead, leaving his side instantly, hercheeks aflame, her eyes alight with a mysterious fire. To conceal heremotion from Doubler she seized the water pail.
"I will get some fresh water," she said, with a quick, smiling glance athim. "You'll want a fresh drink, and your bandages must be changed."
She opened the door and stepped down into the darkness.
There was a moon, and the trail to the river was light enough for her tosee plainly, but when she reached the timber clump in which Doubler hadsaid Duncan had been hiding, she shuddered and made a detour to avoidpassing close to it. This took her some distance out of her way, and shereached the river and walked along its bank for a little distance,searching for a deep accessible spot into which she could dip the pail.
The shallow crossing over which she had ridden many times was not faraway, and when she stooped to fill the pail she heard a sudden clatter andsplashing, and looked up to see a horseman riding into the water from theopposite side of the river.
He saw her at the instant she discovered him, and once over the ford heturned his horse and rode directly toward her.
"You're Langford's daughter, I reckon," he said.
"Yes," she returned, seeing that he was a stranger; "I am."
"I'm Ben Allen," he said shortly; "the sheriff of this county. What areyou doing here?"
"I am taking care of Ben Doubler," she said; "he has been----"
"Then he ain't dead, of course," said Allen, interrupting her. It seemedto Sheila that there was relief and satisfaction in his voice, and shepeered closer at him, but his face was hidden in the shadow of his hatbrim.
"He is very much better now," she told him, scarcely able to conceal herdelight. "But he has been very bad."
"Able to talk?"
"Yes. He has just been talking to me." She took a step toward him,speaking earnestly and rapidly. "I suppose you are looking for Dakota,"she said, remembering what her father had told her about sending Duncan toLazette for the sheriff. "If you are looking for him, I want to tell youthat he didn't shoot Doubler. It was Duncan. Doubler told me so not overfive minutes ago. He said----"
But Allen had spurred his pony forward, and before she could finish he wasout of hearing distance, riding swiftly toward the cabin.
Sheila lingered at the water's edge, for now suddenly she saw much beautyin the surrounding country, and she was no longer lonesome. She stood onthe bank of the river, gazing long at the shadowy rims of the distantmountains, at their peaks, rising majestically in the luminous mist of thenight; at the plains, stretching away and fading into the mysteriousshadows of the distance; watching the waters of the river, shimmering likequicksilver--a band of glowing ribbon winding in and out and around themoon-touched buttes of the canyons.
"Oh!" she said irrelevantly, "he isn't so bad, after all!"
Stooping over again to fill the pail, she heard a sharp clatter of hoofsbehind her. A horseman was racing toward the river--toward her--bendinglow over his pony's mane, riding desperately. She placed the pail down andwatched him. Apparently he did not see her, for, swerving suddenly, hemade for the crossing without slackening speed. He had almost reached thewater's edge when there came a spurt of flame from the door of Doubler'scabin, followed by the sharp whip like crack of a rifle!
In the doorway of the cabin, clearly outlined against the flickering lightof the interior, was a man. And as Sheila watched another streak of fireburst from the door, and she heard the shrill sighing of the bullet, heardthe horseman curse. But he did not stop in his flight, and in an instanthe had crossed the river. She saw him for an instant as he was outlinedagainst the clear sky in the moonlight that bathed the crest of the slope,and then he was gone.
Dropping the pail, Sheila ran toward the cabin, fearing that Doubler hadsuddenly become delirious and had attacked Allen. But it seemed to herthat it had not been Allen who had raced away from the cabin, and she hadnot gone more than half way toward it when she saw another horsemancoming. She halted to wait for him, and when he halted and drew up besideher she saw that it was the sheriff.
"Who was it?" she demanded, breathlessly.
"Duncan!" Allen cursed picturesquely and profanely. "When I got to theshack he was inside, standing over Doubler, strangling him. The damnedskunk! You was right," he added; "it was him who shot Doubler!" Hecontinued rapidly, grimly, taking a piece of paper from a pocket andwriting something on it.
"My men have got Dakota corraled in his cabin. If he tries to get awaythey will do for him. I don't want that to happen; there's too few squaremen in the country as it is. Take this"--he held out the paper toher--"and get down to Dakota's cabin with it. Give it to Bud--one of mymen--and tell him to scatter the others and try to head off Duncan if hecomes that way. I'm after him!"
The paper fluttered toward her, she snatched at it, missed it, and stoopedto take it from the ground. When she stood erect she saw Allen and hispony silhouetted for an instant on the crest of the ridge on the otherside of the river. Then he vanished.