The Breaking Point

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  XXVIII

  Dick had picked up life again where he had left it off so long before.Gone was David's house built on the sands of forgetfulness. Gone wasDavid himself, and Lucy. Gone not even born into his consciousnesswas Elizabeth. The war, his work, his new place in the world, were allobliterated, drowned in the flood of memories revived by the shock ofBassett's revelations.

  Not that the breaking point had revealed itself as such at once. Therewas confusion first, then stupor and unconsciousness, and out of that,sharply and clearly, came memory. It was not ten years ago, but an hourago, a minute ago, that he had stood staring at Howard Lucas on thefloor of the billiard room, and had seen Beverly run in through thedoor.

  "Bev!" he was saying. "Bev! Don't look like that!"

  He moved and found he was in bed. It had been a dream. He drew a longbreath, looked about the room, saw the woman and greeted her. Butalready he knew he had not been dreaming. Things were sharpening in hismind. He shuddered and looked at the floor, but nobody lay there. Onlythe horror in his mind, and the instinct to get away from it. He was notthinking at all, but rising in him was not only the need for flight, butthe sense of pursuit. They were after him. They would get him. They mustnever get him alive.

  Instinct and will took the place of thought, and whatever closed chamberin his brain had opened, it clearly influenced his physical condition.He bore all the stigmata of prolonged and heavy drinking; his nerveswere gone; he twitched and shook. When he got down the fire-escape hislegs would scarcely hold him.

  The discovery of Ed Rickett's horse in the courtyard, saddled and ready,fitted in with the brain pattern of the past.

  Like one who enters a room for the first time, to find it alreadyfamiliar, for a moment he felt that this thing that he was doing hehad done before. Only for a moment. Then partial memory ceased, and heclimbed into the saddle, rode out and turned toward the mountains andthe cabin. By that strange quality of the brain which is called habit,although the habit be of only one emphatic precedent, he followed theroute he had taken ten years before. How closely will never be known.Did he stop at this turn to look back, as he had once before? Did he lethis horse breathe there? Not the latter, probably, for as, following theblind course that he had followed ten years before, he left the town andwent up the canyon trail, he was riding as though all the devils of hellwere behind him.

  One thing is certain. The reproduction of the conditions of the earlierflight, the familiar associations of the trail, must have helped ratherthan hindered his fixation in the past. Again he was Judson Clark, whohad killed a man, and was flying from himself and from pursuit.

  Before long his horse was in acute distress, but he did not notice it.At the top of the long climb the animal stopped, but he kicked him onrecklessly. He was as unaware of his own fatigue, or that he was swayingin the saddle, until galloping across a meadow the horse stumbled andthrew him.

  He lay still for some time; not hurt but apparently lacking theinitiative to get up again. He had at that period the alternatinglucidity and mental torpor of the half drunken man. But struggling upthrough layers of blackness at last there came again the instinct forflight, and he got on the horse and set off.

  The torpor again overcame him and he slept in the saddle. When thehorse stopped he roused and kicked it on. Once he came up through theblackness to the accompaniment of a great roaring, and found that theanimal was saddle deep in a ford, and floundering badly among the rocks.He turned its head upstream, and got it out safely.

  Toward dawn some of the confusion was gone, but he firmly fixed in thepast. The horse wandered on, head down, occasionally stopping to seize aleaf as it passed, and once to drink deeply at a spring. Dick was stillnot thinking--there was something that forbade him to think-but he wasweak and emotional. He muttered:

  "Poor Bev! Poor old Bev!"

  A great wave of tenderness and memory swept over him. Poor Bev! Hehad made life hell for her, all right. He had an almost uncontrollableimpulse to turn the horse around, go back and see her once more. He wasgone anyhow. They would get him. And he wanted her to know that he wouldhave died rather than do what he had done.

  The flight impulse died; he felt sick and very cold, and now and then heshook violently. He began to watch the trail behind him for the pursuit,but without fear. He seemed to have been wandering for a thousand blacknights through deep gorges and over peaks as high as the stars, and nowhe wanted to rest, to stop somewhere and sleep, to be warm again. Letthem come and take him, anywhere out of this nightmare.

  With the dawn still gray he heard a horse behind and below him on thetrail up the cliff face. He stopped and sat waiting, twisted aboutin his saddle, his expression ugly and defiant, and yet touchinglyhelpless, the look of a boy in trouble and at bay. The horseman cameinto sight on the trail below, riding hard, a middle-aged man in a darksack suit and a straw hat, an oddly incongruous figure and manifestlyweary. He rode bent forward, and now and again he raised his eyes fromthe trail and searched the wall above with bloodshot, anxious eyes.

  On the turn below Dick, Bassett saw him for the first time, and spoke tohim in a quiet voice.

  "Hello, old man," he said. "I began to think I was going to miss youafter all."

  His scrutiny of Dick's face had rather reassured him. The delirium hadpassed, apparently. Dishevelled although he was, covered with dust andwith sweat from the horse, Livingstone's eyes were steady enough. Ashe rode up to him, however, he was not so certain. He found himselfsurveyed with a sort of cool malignity that startled him.

  "Miss me!" Livingstone sneered bitterly. "With every damned hill coveredby this time with your outfit! I'll tell you this. If I'd had a gunyou'd never have got me alive."

  Bassett was puzzled and slightly ruffled.

  "My outfit! I'll tell you this, son, I've risked my neck half the nightto get you out of this mess."

  "God Almighty couldn't get me out of this mess," Dick said somberly.

  It was then that Bassett saw something not quite normal in his face, andhe rode closer.

  "See here, Livingstone," he said, in a soothing tone, "nobody's going toget you. I'm here to keep them from getting you. We've got a good start,but we'll have to keep moving."

  Dick sat obstinately still, his horse turned across the trail, and hiseyes still suspicious and unfriendly.

  "I don't know you," he said doggedly. "And I've done all the runningaway I'm going to do. You go back and tell Wilkins I'm here and to comeand get me. The sooner the better." The sneer faded, and he turnedon Bassett with a depth of tragedy in his eyes that frightened thereporter. "My God," he said, "I killed a man last night! I can't gothrough life with that on me. I'm done, I tell you."

  "Last night!" Some faint comprehension began to dawn in Bassett's mind,a suspicion of the truth. But there was no time to verify it. He turnedand carefully inspected the trail to where it came into sight at theopposite rim of the valley. When he was satisfied that the pursuit wasstill well behind them he spoke again.

  "Pull yourself together, Livingstone," he said, rather sharply. "Thinka bit. You didn't kill anybody last night. Now listen," he addedimpressively. "You are Livingstone, Doctor Richard Livingstone. Youstick to that, and think about it."

  But Dick was not listening, save to some bitter inner voice, forsuddenly he turned his horse around on the trail. "Get out of the way,"he said, "I'm going back to give myself up."

  He would have done it, probably, would have crowded past Bassett onthe narrow trail and headed back toward capture, but for his horse. Itbalked and whirled on the ledge, but it would not pass Bassett. Dickswore and kicked it, his face ugly and determined, but it refusedsullenly. He slid out of the saddle then and tried to drag it on, but hewas suddenly weak and sick. He staggered. Bassett was off his horse ina moment and caught him. He eased him onto a boulder, and he sat there,his shoulders sagging and his whole body twitching.

  "Been drinking my head off," he said at last. "If I had a drink now I'dstraighten out." He tried to sit up. "That's what'
s the matter with me.I'm funking, of course, but that's not all. I'd give my soul for somewhisky."'

  "I can get you a drink, if you'll come on about a mile," Bassett coaxed."At the cabin you and I talked about yesterday."

  "Now you're talking." Dick made an effort and got to his feet, shakingoff Bassett's assisting arm. "For God's sake keep your hands off me," hesaid irritably. "I've got a hangover, that's all."

  He got into his saddle without assistance and started off up the trail.Bassett once more searched the valley, but it was empty save for a deerdrinking at the stream far below. He turned and followed.

  He was fairly hopeless by that time, what with Dick's unexpectedresistance and the change in the man himself. He was dealing withsomething he did not understand, and the hypothesis of delirium didnot hold. There was a sort of desperate sanity in Dick's eyes. Thatstatement, now, about drinking his head off--he hadn't looked yesterdaylike a drinking man. But now he did. He was twitching, his hands shook.On the rock his face had been covered with a cold sweat. What wasthat the doctor yesterday had said about delirium tremens? Suppose hecollapsed? That meant capture.

  He did not need to guide Dick to the cabin. He turned off the trailhimself, and Bassett, following, saw him dismount and survey the ruinwith a puzzled face. But he said nothing. Bassett waiting outside to tiethe horses came in to find him sitting on one of the dilapidated chairs,staring around, but all he said was:

  "Get me that drink, won't you? I'm going to pieces." Bassett found histin cup where he had left it on a shelf and poured out a small amount ofwhisky from his flask.

  "This is all we have," he explained. "We'll have to go slow with it."

  It had an almost immediate effect. The twitching grew less, and a faintcolor came into Dick's face. He stood up and stretched himself. "That'sbetter," he said. "I was all in. I must have been riding that infernalhorse for years."

  He wandered about while the reporter made a fire and set the coffee potto boil. Bassett, glancing up once, saw him surveying the ruined lean-tofrom the doorway, with an expression he could not understand. But he didnot say anything, nor did he speak again until Bassett called him to getsome food. Even then he was laconic, and he seemed to be listening andwaiting.

  Once something startled the horses outside, and he sat up and listened.

  "They're here!" he said.

  "I don't think so," Bassett replied, and went to the doorway. "No," hecalled back over his shoulder, "you go on and finish. I'll watch."

  "Come back and eat," Dick said surlily.

  He ate very little, but drank of the coffee. Bassett too ate almostnothing. He was pulling himself together for the struggle that was tocome, marshaling his arguments for flight, and trying to fathom theextent of the change in the man across the small table.

  Dick put down his tin cup and got up. He was strong again, and thenightmare confusion of the night had passed away. Instead of itthere was a desperate lucidity and a courage born of desperation. Heremembered it all distinctly; he had killed Howard Lucas the nightbefore. Before long Wilkins or some of his outfit would ride up to thedoor, and take him back to Norada. He was not afraid of that. They wouldalways think he had run away because he was afraid of capture, but itwas not that. He had run away from Bev's face. Only he had not got awayfrom it. It had been with him all night, and it was with him now.

  But he would have to go back. He couldn't be caught like a rat in atrap. The Clarks didn't run away. They were fighters. Only the Clarksdidn't kill. They fought, but they didn't murder.

  He picked up his hat and went to the door.

  "Well, you've been mighty kind, old man," he said. "But I've got to goback. I ran last night like a scared kid, but I'm through with that sortof foolishness."

  "I'd give a good bit," Bassett said, watching him, "to know what madeyou run last night. You were safe where you were."

  "I don't know what you are talking about," Dick said drearily. "Ididn't run from them. I ran to get away from something." He turned awayirritably. "You wouldn't understand. Say I was drunk. I was, for thatmatter. I'm not over it yet."

  Bassett watched him.

  "I see," he said quietly. "It was last night, was it, that this thinghappened?"

  "You know it, don't you?"

  "And, after it happened, do you remember what followed?"

  "I've been riding all night. I didn't care what happened. I knew I'd runinto a whale of a blizzard, but I--"

  He stopped and stared outside, to where the horses grazed in the uplandmeadow, knee deep in mountain flowers. Bassett, watching him, saw theincredulity in his eyes, and spoke very gently.

  "My dear fellow," he said, "you are right. Try to understand what I amsaying, and take it easy. You rode into a blizzard, right enough. Butthat was not last night. It was ten years ago."