by Zane Grey
Chapter 14
THROUGH THE VALLEY
Sampson looked strangely at the great bloody blot on my breast and hislook made me conscious of a dark hurrying of my mind. Morton camestamping up the steps with blunt queries, with anxious mien. When he sawthe front of me he halted, threw wide his arms.
"There come the girls!" suddenly exclaimed Sampson. "Morton, help medrag Wright inside. They mustn't see him."
I was facing down the porch toward the court and corrals. Miss Sampsonand Sally had come in sight, were swiftly approaching, evidentlyalarmed. Steele, no doubt, had remained out at the camp. I was watchingthem, wondering what they would do and say presently, and then Sampsonand Johnson came to carry me indoors. They laid me on the couch in theparlor where the girls used to be so often.
"Russ, you're pretty hard hit," said Sampson, bending over me, with hishands at my breast. The room was bright with sunshine, yet the lightseemed to be fading.
"Reckon I am," I replied.
"I'm sorry. If only you could have told me sooner! Wright, damn him!Always I've split over him!"
"But the last time, Sampson."
"Yes, and I came near driving you to kill me, too. Russ, you talked meout of it. For Diane's sake! She'll be in here in a minute. This'll beharder than facing a gun."
"Hard now. But it'll--turn out--O.K."
"Russ, will you do me a favor?" he asked, and he seemed shamefaced.
"Sure."
"Let Diane and Sally think Wright shot you. He's dead. It can't matter.And you're hard hit. The girls are fond of you. If--if you gounder--Russ, the old side of my life is coming back. It's _been_ coming.It'll be here just about when she enters this room. And by God, I'dchange places with you if I could."
"Glad you--said that, Sampson," I replied. "And sure--Wright plugged me.It's our secret. I've a reason, too, not--that--it--matters--much--now."
The light was fading. I could not talk very well. I felt dumb, strange,locked in ice, with dull little prickings of my flesh, with dim rushingsounds in my ears. But my mind was clear. Evidently there was little tobe done. Morton came in, looked at me, and went out. I heard the quick,light steps of the girls on the porch, and murmuring voices.
"Where'm I hit?" I whispered.
"Three places. Arm, shoulder, and a bad one in the breast. It got yourlung, I'm afraid. But if you don't go quick, you've a chance."
"Sure I've a chance."
"Russ, I'll tell the girls, do what I can for you, then settle withMorton and clear out."
Just then Diane and Sally entered the room. I heard two low cries, sodifferent in tone, and I saw two dim white faces. Sally flew to my sideand dropped to her knees. Both hands went to my face, then to my breast.She lifted them, shaking. They were red. White and mute she gazed fromthem to me. But some woman's intuition kept her from fainting.
"Papa!" cried Diane, wringing her hands.
"Don't give way," he replied. "Both you girls will need your nerve. Russis badly hurt. There's little hope for him."
Sally moaned and dropped her face against me, clasping me convulsively.I tried to reach a hand out to touch her, but I could not move. I felther hair against my face. Diane uttered a low heart-rending cry, whichboth Sampson and I understood.
"Listen, let me tell it quick," he said huskily. "There's been a fight.Russ killed Snecker and Wright. They resisted arrest. It--it wasWright--it was Wright's gun that put Russ down. Russ let me off. Infact, Diane, he saved me. I'm to divide my property--return so far aspossible what I've stolen--leave Texas at once and forever. You'll findme back in old Louisiana--if--if you ever want to come home."
As she stood there, realizing her deliverance, with the dark and tragicglory of her eyes passing from her father to me, my own sight shadowed,and I thought if I were dying then, it was not in vain.
"Send--for--Steele," I whispered.
Silently, swiftly, breathlessly they worked over me. I was exquisitelysensitive to touch, to sound, but I could not see anything. By and byall was quiet, and I slipped into a black void. Familiar heavy swiftfootsteps, the thump of heels of a powerful and striding man, jarredinto the blackness that held me, seemed to split it to let me out; and Iopened my eyes in a sunlit room to see Sally's face all lined andhaggard, to see Miss Sampson fly to the door, and the stalwart Rangerbow his lofty head to enter. However far life had ebbed from me, then itcame rushing back, keen-sighted, memorable, with agonizing pain in everynerve. I saw him start, I heard him cry, but I could not speak. He bentover me and I tried to smile. He stood silent, his hand on me, whileDiane Sampson told swiftly, brokenly, what had happened.
How she told it! I tried to whisper a protest. To any one on earthexcept Steele I might have wished to appear a hero. Still, at thatmoment I had more dread of him than any other feeling. She finished thestory with her head on his shoulder, with tears that certainly were inpart for me. Once in my life, then, I saw him stunned. But when herecovered it was not Diane that he thought of first, nor of the end ofSampson's power. He turned to me.
"Little hope?" he cried out, with the deep ring in his voice. "No!There's every hope. No bullet hole like that could ever kill thisRanger. Russ!"
I could not answer him. But this time I did achieve a smile. There wasno shadow, no pain in his face such as had haunted me in Sally's andDiane's. He could fight death the same as he could fight evil. Hevitalized the girls. Diane began to hope; Sally lost her woe. He changedthe atmosphere of that room. Something filled it, something likehimself, big, virile, strong. The very look of him made me suddenly wantto live; and all at once it seemed I felt alive. And that was liketaking the deadened ends of nerves to cut them raw and quicken them withfiery current.
From stupor I had leaped to pain, and that tossed me into fever. Therewere spaces darkened, mercifully shutting me in; there were others oflight, where I burned and burned in my heated blood. Sally, like thewraith she had become in my mind, passed in and out; Diane watched andhelped in those hours when sight was clear. But always the Ranger waswith me. Sometimes I seemed to feel his spirit grappling with mine,drawing me back from the verge. Sometimes, in strange dreams, I saw himthere between me and a dark, cold, sinister shape.
The fever passed, and with the first nourishing drink given me I seemedto find my tongue, to gain something.
"Hello, old man," I whispered to Steele.
"Oh, Lord, Russ, to think you would double-cross me the way you did!"
That was his first speech to me after I had appeared to face round fromthe grave. His good-humored reproach told me more than any other thinghow far from his mind was thought of death for me. Then he talked alittle to me, cheerfully, with that directness and force characteristicof him always, showing me that the danger was past, and that I would nowbe rapidly on the mend. I discovered that I cared little whether I wason the mend or not. When I had passed the state of somber unrealitiesand then the hours of pain and then that first inspiring flush ofrenewed desire to live, an entirely different mood came over me. But Ikept it to myself. I never even asked why, for three days, Sally neverentered the room where I lay. I associated this fact, however, with whatI had imagined her shrinking from me, her intent and pale face, hersingular manner when occasion made it necessary or unavoidable for herto be near me.
No difficulty was there in associating my change of mood with herabsence. I brooded. Steele's keen insight betrayed me to him, but allhis power and his spirit availed nothing to cheer me. I pretended to becheerful; I drank and ate anything given me; I was patient and quiet.But I ceased to mend.
Then, one day she came back, and Steele, who was watching me as sheentered, quietly got up and without a word took Diane out of the roomand left me alone with Sally.
"Russ, I've been sick myself--in bed for three days," she said. "I'mbetter now. I hope you are. You look so pale. Do you still think, broodabout that fight?"
"Yes, I can't forget. I'm afraid it cost me more than life."
Sally was somber, bloomy, thoughtful. "You weren't driven t
o killGeorge?" she asked.
"How do you mean?"
"By that awful instinct, that hankering to kill, you once told me thesegunmen had."
"No, I can swear it wasn't that. I didn't want to kill him. But heforced me. As I had to go after these two men it was a foregoneconclusion about Wright. It was premeditated. I have no excuse."
"Hush--Tell me, if you confronted them, drew on them, then you had achance to kill my uncle?"
"Yes. I could have done it easily."
"Why, then, didn't you?"
"It was for Diane's sake. I'm afraid I didn't think of you. I had putyou out of my mind."
"Well, if a man can be noble at the same time he's terrible, you'vebeen, Russ--I don't know how I feel. I'm sick and I can't think. I see,though, what you saved Diane and Steele. Why, she's touching happinessagain, fearfully, yet really. Think of that! God only knows what you didfor Steele. If I judged it by his suffering as you lay there about todie it would be beyond words to tell. But, Russ, you're pale and shakynow. Hush! No more talk!"
With all my eyes and mind and heart and soul I watched to see if sheshrank from me. She was passive, yet tender as she smoothed my pillowand moved my head. A dark abstraction hung over her, and it was sostrange, so foreign to her nature. No sensitiveness on earth could haveequaled mine at that moment. And I saw and felt and knew that she didnot shrink from me. Thought and feeling escaped me for a while. I dozed.The old shadows floated to and fro.
When I awoke Steele and Diane had just come in. As he bent over me Ilooked up into his keen gray eyes and there was no mask on my own as Ilooked up to him.
"Son, the thing that was needed was a change of nurses," he said gently."I intend to make up some sleep now and leave you in better care."
From that hour I improved. I slept, I lay quietly awake, I partook ofnourishing food. I listened and watched, and all the time I gained. ButI spoke very little, and though I tried to brighten when Steele was inthe room I made only indifferent success of it. Days passed. Sally wasalmost always with me, yet seldom alone. She was grave where once shehad been gay. How I watched her face, praying for that shade to lift!How I listened for a note of the old music in her voice! Sally Langdonhad sustained a shock to her soul almost as dangerous as had been theblow at my life. Still I hoped. I had seen other women's deadened anddarkened spirits rebound and glow once more. It began to dawn upon me,however, that more than time was imperative if she were ever to becomeher old self again.
Studying her closer, with less thought of myself and her reaction to mypresence, I discovered that she trembled at shadows, seemed like afrightened deer with a step always on its trail, was afraid of the dark.Then I wondered why I had not long before divined one cause of herstrangeness. The house where I had killed one of her kin would ever behaunted for her. She had said she was a Southerner and that blood wasthick. When I had thought out the matter a little further, Ideliberately sat up in bed, scaring the wits out of all my kind nurses.
"Steele, I'll never get well in this house. I want to go home. When canyou take me?"
They remonstrated with me and pleaded and scolded, all to little avail.Then they were persuaded to take me seriously, to plan, providing Iimproved, to start in a few days. We were to ride out of Pecos Countytogether, back along the stage trail to civilization. The look inSally's eyes decided my measure of improvement. I could have startedthat very day and have borne up under any pain or distress. Strange tosee, too, how Steele and Diane responded to the stimulus of my idea, tothe promise of what lay beyond the wild and barren hills!
He told me that day about the headlong flight of every lawless characterout of Linrock, the very hour that Snecker and Wright and Sampson wereknown to have fallen. Steele expressed deep feeling, almostmortification, that the credit of that final coup had gone to him,instead of me. His denial and explanation had been only a few soundlesswords in the face of a grateful and clamorous populace that tried toreward him, to make him mayor of Linrock. Sampson had made restitutionin every case where he had personally gained at the loss of farmer orrancher; and the accumulation of years went far toward returning toLinrock what it had lost in a material way. He had been a poor man whenhe boarded the stage for Sanderson, on his way out of Texas forever.
Not long afterward I heard Steele talking to Miss Sampson, in a deep andagitated voice. "You must rise above this. When I come upon you alone Isee the shadow, the pain in your face. How wonderfully this thing hasturned out when it might have ruined you! I expected it to ruin you.Who, but that wild boy in there could have saved us all? Diane, you havehad cause for sorrow. But your father is alive and will live it down.Perhaps, back there in Louisiana, the dishonor will never be known.Pecos County is far from your old home. And even in San Antonio andAustin, a man's evil repute means little.
"Then the line between a rustler and a rancher is hard to draw in thesewild border days. Rustling is stealing cattle, and I once heard awell-known rancher say that all rich cattlemen had done a littlestealing. Your father drifted out here, and like a good many others, hesucceeded. It's perhaps just as well not to split hairs, to judge him bythe law and morality of a civilized country. Some way or other hedrifted in with bad men. Maybe a deal that was honest somehow tied hishands and started him in wrong.
"This matter of land, water, a few stray head of stock had to be decidedout of court. I'm sure in his case he never realized where he wasdrifting. Then one thing led to another, until he was face to face withdealing that took on crooked form. To protect himself he bound men tohim. And so the gang developed. Many powerful gangs have developed thatway out here. He could not control them. He became involved with them.
"And eventually their dealings became deliberately and boldly dishonest.That meant the inevitable spilling of blood sooner or later, and so hegrew into the leader because he was the strongest. Whatever he is to bejudged for I think he could have been infinitely worse."
When he ceased speaking I had the same impulse that must have governedSteele--somehow to show Sampson not so black as he was painted, to givehim the benefit of a doubt, to arraign him justly in the eyes of Rangerswho knew what wild border life was.
"Steele, bring Diane in!" I called. "I've something to tell her." Theycame quickly, concerned probably at my tone. "I've been hoping for achance to tell you something, Miss Sampson. That day I came here yourfather was quarreling with Wright. I had heard them do that before. Hehated Wright. The reason came out just before we had the fight. It wasmy plan to surprise them. I did. I told them you went out to meetSteele--that you two were in love with each other. Wright grew wild. Heswore no one would ever have you. Then Sampson said he'd rather have youSteele's wife than Wright's.
"I'll not forget that scene. There was a great deal back of it, longbefore you ever came out to Linrock. Your father said that he had backedWright, that the deal had ruined him, made him a rustler. He said hequit; he was done. Now, this is all clear to me, and I want to explain,Miss Sampson. It was Wright who ruined your father. It was Wright whowas the rustler. It was Wright who made the gang necessary. But Wrighthad not the brains or the power to lead men. Because blood is thick,your father became the leader of that gang. At heart he was never acriminal.
"The reason I respected him was because he showed himself a man at thelast. He faced me to be shot, and I couldn't do it. As Steele said,you've reason for sorrow. But you must get over it. You mustn't brood. Ido not see that you'll be disgraced or dishonored. Of course, that's notthe point. The vital thing is whether or not a woman of yourhigh-mindedness had real and lasting cause for shame. Steele says no. Isay no."
Then, as Miss Sampson dropped down beside me, her eyes shining and wet,Sally entered the room in time to see her cousin bend to kiss megratefully with sisterly fervor. Yet it was a woman's kiss, given forits own sake. Sally could not comprehend; it was too sudden, toounheard-of, that Diane Sampson should kiss me, the man she did not love.Sally's white, sad face changed, and in the flaming wave of scarlet thatdyed neck and cheek and brow I re
ad with mighty pound of heart that,despite the dark stain between us, she loved me still.