CHAPTER XIII
"NO HONOR IN HER BLOOD"
Vesta was too far behind the other girl for anything like accurateshooting with a pistol, but Lambert feared that a chance shot might hit,with the most melancholy consequences for both parties concerned. Noother plan presenting, he rode down with the intention of placinghimself between them.
Now the Kerr girl had her gun out, and had turned, offering battle. Shewas still a considerable distance beyond him, with what appeared fromhis situation to be some three or four hundred yards between thecombatants, a safe distance for both of them if they would keep it. ButVesta had no intention of making it a long-range duel. She pulled herhorse up and reloaded her gun, then spurred ahead, holding her fire.
Lambert saw all this as he swept down between them like an eagle, oldWhetstone hardly touching the ground. He cut the line between them notfifty feet from the Kerr girl's position, as Vesta galloped up.
He held up his hand in an appeal for peace between them. Vesta chargedup to him as he shifted to keep in the line of their fire, coming as ifshe would ride him down and go on to make an end of that chapter of thelong-growing feud. The Kerr girl waited, her pistol hand crossed on theother, with the deliberate coolness of one who had no fear of theoutcome.
Vesta waved him aside, her face white as ash, and attempted to dash by.He caught her rein and whirled her horse sharply, bringing her face toface with him, her revolver lifted not a yard from his breast.
For a moment Lambert read in her eyes an intention that made his heartcontract. He held his breath, waiting for the shot. A moment; the filmof deadly passion that obscured her eyes like a smoke cleared, thethreatening gun faltered, drooped, was lowered. He twisted in his saddleand commanded the Kerr girl with a swing of the arm to go.
She started her horse in a bound, and again the soul-obscuring curtainof murderous hate fell over Vesta's eyes. She lifted her gun as Lambert,with a quick movement, clasped her wrist.
"For God's sake, Vesta, keep your soul clean!" he said.
His voice was vibrant with a deep earnestness that made him as solemn asa priest. She stared at him with widening eyes, something in his mannerand voice that struck to reason through the insulation of her anger. Herfingers relaxed on the weapon; she surrendered it into his hand.
A little while she sat staring after the fleeing girl, held by whatthoughts he could not guess. Presently the rider whisked behind a pointof sage-dotted hill and was gone. Vesta lifted her hands slowly andpressed them to her eyes, shivering as if struck by a chill. Twice orthrice this convulsive shudder shook her. She bowed her head a little,the sound of a sob behind her pressing hands.
Lambert put her pistol back into the holster which dangled on her thighfrom the cartridge-studded belt round her pliant, slender waist.
"Let me take you home, Vesta," he said.
She withdrew her hands, discovering tears on her cheeks. Saying nothing,she started to retrace the way of that mad, murderous race. She did notresent his familiar address, if conscious of it at all, for he spokewith the sympathetic tenderness one employs toward a suffering child.
They rode back to the fence without a word between them. When they cameto the cut wires he rode through as if he intended to continue on withher to the ranchhouse, six or seven miles away.
"I can go on alone, Mr. Lambert," she said.
"My tools are down here a mile or so. I'll have to get them to fix thishole."
A little way again in silence. Although he rode slowly she made noeffort to separate from his company and go her way alone. She seemedvery weary and depressed, her sensitive face reflecting the strain ofthe past hour. It had borne on her with the wearing intensity ofsleepless nights.
"I'm tired of this fighting and contending for evermore!" she said.
Lambert offered no comment. There was little, indeed, that he couldframe on his tongue to fit the occasion, it seemed to him, still underthe shadow of the dreadful thing that he had averted but a little whilebefore. There was a feeling over him that he had seen this warm,breathing woman, with the best of her life before her, standing on thebrink of a terrifying chasm into which one little movement would haveprecipitated her beyond the help of any friendly hand.
She did not realize what it meant to take the life of another, even withfull justification at her hand; she never had felt that weight of ashesabove the heart, or the presence of the shadow that tinctured all lifewith its somber gloom. It was one thing for the law to absolve a slayer;another to find absolution in his own conscience. It was a strain thattried a man's mind. A woman like Vesta Philbrook might go mad under theunceasing pressure and chafing of that load.
When they came to where his tools and wire lay beside the fence, shestopped. Lambert dismounted in silence, tied a coil of wire to hissaddle, strung the chain of the wire-stretcher on his arm.
"Did you know her before you came here?" she asked, with suchabruptness, such lack of preparation for the question, that it seemed afragment of what had been running through her mind.
"You mean----?"
"That woman, Grace Kerr."
"No, I never knew her."
"I thought maybe you'd met her, she's been away at schoolsomewhere--Omaha, I think. Were you talking to her long?"
"Only a little while."
"What did you think of her?"
"I thought," said he, slowly, his face turned from her, his eyes onsomething miles away, "that she was a girl something could be made outof if she was taken hold of the right way. I mean," facing herearnestly, "that she might be reasoned out of this senseless barbarity,this raiding and running away."
Vesta shook her head. "The devil's in her; she was born to maketrouble."
"I got her to half agree to a truce," said he reluctantly, his eyesstudying the ground, "but I guess it's all off now."
"She wouldn't keep her word with you," she declared with greatearnestness, a sad, rather than scornful earnestness, putting out herhand as if to touch his shoulder. Half way her intention seemed tofalter; her hand fell in eloquent expression of her heavy thoughts.
"Of course, I don't know."
"There's no honor in the Kerr blood. Kerr was given many a chance byfather to come up and be a man, and square things between them, but hedidn't have it in him. Neither has she. Her only brother was killed atGlendora after he'd shot a man in the back."
"It ought to have been settled, long ago, without all this fighting. Butif people refuse to live by their neighbors and be decent, a good manamong them has a hard time. I don't blame you, Vesta, for the way youfeel."
"I'd have been willing to let this feud die, but she wouldn't drop it.She began cutting the fence every summer as soon as I came home. She'sgoaded me out of my senses, she's put murder in my heart!"
"They've tried you almost past endurance, I know. But you've neverkilled anybody, Vesta. All there is here isn't worth that price."
"I know it now," she said, wearily.
"Go home and hang your gun up, and let it stay there. As long as I'mhere I'll do the fighting when there's any to be done."
"You didn't help me a little while ago. All you did was for her."
"It was for both of you," he said, rather indignant that she should takesuch an unjust view of his interference.
"You didn't ride in front of her and stop her from shooting me!"
"I came to you first--you saw that."
Lambert mounted, turned his horse to go back and mend the fence. Sherode after him, impulsively.
"I'm going to stop fighting, I'm going to take my gun off and put itaway," she said.
He thought she never had appeared so handsome as at that moment, a softlight in her eyes, the harshness of strain and anger gone out of herface. He offered her his hand, the only expression of his appreciationfor her generous decision that came to him in the gratefulness of themoment. She took it as if to seal a compact between them.
"You've come back to be a woman again," he said, hardly realizing howstrange his words might seem t
o her, expressing the one thought thatcame to the front.
"I suppose I didn't act much like a woman out there a while ago," sheadmitted, her old expression of sadness darkening in her eyes.
"You were a couple of wildcats," he told her. "Maybe we can get on herenow without fighting, but if they come crowding it on let us men-folkstake care of it for you; it's no job for a girl."
"I'm going to put the thought of it out of my mind, feud, fences,everything--and turn it all over to you. It's asking a lot of you toassume, but I'm tired to the heart."
"I'll do the best by you I can as long as I'm here," he promised,simply. He started on; she rode forward with him.
"If she comes back again, what will you do?"
"I'll try to show her where she's wrong, and maybe I can get her to hangup her gun, too. You ought to be friends, it seems to me--a couple ofneighbor girls like you."
"We couldn't be that," she said, loftily, her old coldness coming overher momentarily, "but if we can live apart in peace it will besomething. Don't trust her, Mr. Lambert, don't take her word foranything. There's no honor in the Kerr blood; you'll find that out foryourself. It isn't in one of them to be even a disinterested friend."
There was nothing for him to say to this, spoken so seriously that itseemed almost a prophecy. He felt as if she had looked into the windowof his heart and read his secret and, in her old enmity for this slimgirl of the dangling braid of hair, was working subtly to raise abarrier of suspicion and distrust between them.
"I'll go on home and quit bothering you," she said.
"You're no bother to me, Vesta; I like to have you along."
She stopped, looked toward the place where she had lately ridden throughthe fence in vengeful pursuit of her enemy, her eyes inscrutable, herface sad.
"I never felt it so lonesome out here as it is today," she said, andturned her horse, and left him.
He looked back more than once as he rode slowly along the fence, a mistbefore his perception that he could not pierce. What had come over Vestato change her so completely in this little while? He believed she wasentering the shadow of some slow-growing illness, which bore down herspirits in an uninterpreted foreboding of evil days to come.
What a pretty figure she made in the saddle, riding away from him inthat slow canter; how well she sat, how she swayed at the waist as hernimble animal cut in and out among the clumps of sage. A mighty prettygirl, and as good as they grew them anywhere. It would be a calamity tohave her sick. From the shoulder of the slope he looked back again.Pretty as any woman a man ever pictured in his dreams.
She passed out of sight without looking back, and there rose a picturein his thoughts to take her place, a picture of dark, defiant eyes, oftelltale hair falling in betrayal of her disguise, as if discoveringher secret to him who had a right to know.
The fancy pleased him; as he worked to repair the damage she hadwrought, he smiled. How well his memory retained her, in her transitionfrom anger to scorn, scorn to uneasy amazement, amazement to relief.Then she had smiled, and the recognition not owned in words but spokenin her eyes, had come.
Yes, she knew him; she recalled her challenge, his acceptance andvictory. Even as she rode swiftly to obey him out of that mad encounterin the valley over there, she had owned in her quick act that she knewhim, and trusted him as she sped away.
When he came to the place where she had ridden through, he pieced thewire and hooked the ends together, as he had told her he would do. Hehandled even the stubborn wire tenderly, as a man might theappurtenances to a rite. Perhaps he was linking their destinies in thatsimple act, he thought, sentimentally unreasonable; it might be thatthis spot would mark the second altar of his romance, even as the littlestation of Misery was lifted up in his heart as the shrine of itsbeginning.
There was blood on his knuckles where the vicious wire had torn him. Hedashed it to the ground as a libation, smiling like one moonstruck, aflood of soft fancies making that bleak spot dear.
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