by Max Brand
He had hardly stretched himself out with a preliminary groan or two of comfort, when his breathing became thick, slow, and heavy.
So, in a trice, Allan found himself left alone in the middle of the mountain night. That sense of immeasurable bigness, the aching distances from the ground to the lofty tip of the pine tree, from the tree to the mountain summit, from the mountain peak to the cold white stars hanging in the thin immensity of space — this sense of prodigious size had at first weighed upon his brain and the first impulse had been to withdraw from it, to find shelter in a house, or to bend his eyes upon the ground. But, by degrees, his mind expanded to this prodigious frame. Those who dwell in cities cannot know the sky. They are only aware, now and again, of a pleasant blueness against which the bricks of some distant wall make a line of red; or they see, as they look up from an open carriage, a whirl of stars flowing through the heavens in a narrow street fenced in by the shadowy walls of the great buildings on either side. This is all that city dwellers can know of the sky. It was all that Allan knew. The sky was a place chiefly of importance when it poured down rattling hail, or rain, or soft, cold snow.
It was not in the same category after he went West. He sat now upon the ground with his head fallen back loosely upon his shoulders and stared upward with an earnest wonder and an ardent happiness. He felt, most of all, a sense of utter folly that he should have lived so many years with such wonders above his head and yet have paid no heed to them. He was like a man who sees that his neighbor’s daughter, suddenly has turned the corner of her life, as it were, and become a woman with a certain electric significance, something new in voice and hand and eye, something which can be studied long and long but the mystery never quite understood. So it was with Allan in the clearing among the pines on the edge of El Ridal Canon. He was tasting the lonely beauty of the mountain night as a new thing; he was growing drunk with it; and the more his heart swelled with this new delight the more impossible it became for him to drop his thoughts from the heaven to the black earth except to one place and to one person.
He had only to bend his head. The starry host slid out of his vision; the forested mountains swept up against the sky; then in the heart of the canon he was staring at the little cluster of yellow lights which were El Ridal. By day it was a wretched little village indeed, for then one could see its actual buildings, unpainted, ramshackle, as though made hastily and thrown down without design in the great canon at El Ridal.
But at night all one could see was the gleam of its windows, which seemed to represent the mind of man, not less mysterious and magnificent than all the glory of the stars and the mountains.
So it seemed to Allan, not clearly, but in a vague emotion which enthralled his brain; and when he thought of humanity, it looked back to him out of the bright eyes of Frances, for she was yonder among those yellow lights in the hollow!
With this, the dreamer looked at his companion, listened for an instant to the deep, regular breathing, and then rose carefully to his feet. Half an hour down the slope would take him to El Ridal. An hour would take him back again. And surely days and days before this, she had received the letter in which he had sent her the signal. He would be down and back long before morning, long before Jim awakened, sound sleeper that the latter was! Now that the idea had hold upon him, it increased in strength. It pushed him forward in frantic haste as though he were running a race until he reached the outskirts of the town, and stood among the trees beside the hotel. There he whistled his signal twice and went back behind the sheds, as agreed, to await the coming of the girl.
He had no thought, now, of those two formidable champions who so filled the mind of Jim Jones, yet he was wonderfully full of fear. It held him there among the trees with his breathing short and a dizziness in his mind; and it was the girl herself whom he so dreaded!
For, when he saw her, at last, coming through the shadows, a pale form, his heart grew so small in him that he had to stretch out his hand and support himself by leaning against the trunk of the nearest tree. He could not speak until she had come straight up to him, for she seemed to locate him by instinct even in the darkness. He could not speak even then, except to murmur an unintelligible word. Neither did she give him any greeting for a long moment, but seemed to be studying his face and in so doing came so close that her own features were no longer blurred. A high light glowed on her brow. It made her eyes seem marvelously deep and dark and gave her all the dignity of added years of age. Allan had been as eager as he was afraid; now, however, he only wished to turn and flee from her.
She said in her usual matter-of-fact manner: “I knew it wouldn’t be Jim. Jim’s sound asleep right now, I s’pose.”
No joy at seeing him, then; only profound regret because Jim had not come to her!
“He didn’t know that I intended to come,” said Allan feebly. “I slipped away without waking him, you see.”
She nodded again. “I understand Jim. But what did you come to tell me?”
The panic of Allan increased; he searched his mind and could find nothing. “I don’t know,” he said.
The girl stamped her foot. “You’ve come down here and taken a chance that might get you half a dozen bullets for a free present. I guess you know that!”
“I hoped the danger would not be so great,” said Allan. “You knew it’d be. But you come anyway. Tell me why?” He could only sigh. “Did Jim have a message for me?” “No.”
“Al, you’re actin’ sort of simple. What’s wrong? D’you mean to say you’ve come down here for — fun! You?”
Her bewilderment and her dawning scorn, it seemed, put a cruel whip upon the shoulders of Allan. “It was to see you,” he said at last, simply. At this she gasped. Words were ever ready on her tongue, but now they failed her.
“And I really,” he explained in his own heavy way, “thought that I would have something to say when I saw you, Frank.” “Look here,” said the girl, “are you on the level about this, Al? You come down here and take a chance on bein’ blowed in two just for4he sake of saying ‘Hello’ to me?” “It sounds foolish,” said Allan. “I’m sorry.” “Jiminy!” breathed the girl. “It’s crazy. Plain batty. Go back right now and get on your hoss and ride as fast as you can to get clean shut of El Ridal. This ain’t no private hospital for you. Quick, Al! Where’s your hoss?”
“Where I left Jim,” he answered lamely. It brought another furious outbreak from the girl. “You walked in? Of all the poor, bogged down — but listen to me, Al. How are we goin’ to get you out of this?”
“We?” murmured Allan. “Don’t you worry about me, Frank. I’ll manage for myself.”
“H’m!” said she. “It don’t look to me like you was none too good for managin’ your own business. Well, now you’ve seen me, and we’ve said hello, and I know that Jim is well and too mean to come to see me himself — there’s nothing left except for you to start back the way you came.”
She was so quick with her words, and so matter of fact, that poor Allan could not make his brain function with a response. He could only stammer: “There’s one thing more—”
“What is it?” she snapped out.
“I don’t know—”
“Al, what’s wrong with your head?”
“It’s slow,” he broke out desperately. “There’s something inside of it that I want to tell you, Frank, but it won’t come out.”
She began to nod, and he could see her smile.
“Good old Al,” she said, putting a kindly hand upon his arm. “You’re better a million times than any of these smooth-talkin’, smart-actin’ boys. Take your time, then tell me what’s wrong.”
All through their interview she had seemed to be growing older and wiser; he had seemed to himself to be dwindling into youth and insignificance, and now the burden of her pity was an added load which almost crushed him. Besides, he knew now that he could never, really, put what was in his heart into words. So he shook his head and said, rather sadly: “It’s no use, Frank. It
seemed to me, five minutes ago, that when I saw you I’d have a thousand things to say. But they’ve all disappeared.”
“But at least you know the main drift,” said she.
“Chiefly about you, Frank. I wanted to tell you of the ways in which I have been thinking about you.” He drew a great breath as he remembered all the times of wretched loneliness. “I wanted to tell you that it has seemed more than a year since—”
At this, with a little, startled cry, she caught him by both arms and drew him forth out of the shadow of the tree so that the light of the heavens fell dimly upon his face.
“Al!” she whispered to him. “Are you tryin’ to make love to me?”
“Love?” murmured Allan aghast. “I’ve never thought of such a thing in my life! No, no — it isn’t love, Frank.”
“H’m!” she said. “I got to take your word for it. Of course — I’m glad that my guess was wrong. But if it isn’t that, what is in your head, Al?”
“It would only puzzle you, Frank, as it has puzzled me.”
“Give me a try.”
“But how could you know? You’re only a girl, and a young girl, you see.”
“Listen to me, Al. There never was a girl so dog-gone young that she didn’t know all about every man in the world.”
“Is that so?”
He asked her so seriously that she looked up sharply into his face with a quizzical little smile on her lips to meet the sarcasm of the expression which she was sure must be his; but then, seeing him all sober and all sincere, she had to bow her head and Allan saw her shoulders shaking.
“Are you sick, Frank?” he asked in the greatest alarm.
She answered in a choked, explosive voice: “No, no!”
At any other time, he would have sworn that this was the voice of one who struggled against immense waves of laughter.
“But you are unhappy, Frank. There is something that I have said which has made you desperately unhappy. I can feel the pain in your voice, and here you are shaking from head to foot. Oh, what a stupid brute I have been. But I would rather have torn out my heart than to have hurt you. Will you try to believe that I mean what I say?”
Her answer was a stunning blow. It was a blow, indeed, after which he could never quite recover his mental poise so long as he lived. For she, starting a little back from him, cried out: “Al, what a silly, silly baby you are!”
And with that she broke into the heartiest laughter which, because it had to be controlled in sound, almost choked her.
18. HANDCUFFS ARE NEAR
ALLAN, STARING AND wondering at her, wished himself a thousand miles from the spot. Yet, though she might be laughing at him, she was so lovely in her mirth that he would have changed his mind and wished himself back again.
Here she managed to gasp out: “Dear old Al. Excuse me; I couldn’t help it!”
He said as simply as ever: “It doesn’t really matter. No one ever has taken me very seriously, you know.”
“But I take you seriously, Al.”
Alas, she was still shaking with suppressed mirth as she spoke to him, and the anguish of his soul made his heart bum and his brain grow cold. All those twining muscles of arms and shoulders and breast and back of which he had become so newly conscious now wakened each into a life of its own. His fingers began to curl a little. What he wanted was to lay his hand upon some living thing and crush and tear the life out of it. He cast two or three baffled glances around him to find a prey among the shadows.
Then the girl was close to him again, fumbling to take his hand.
“Dear Al,” she said, “now you are angry. I shall never, never forgive myself if I’ve hurt your feelings. But you know how girls are. We laugh at anything. I’m sorry, sorry, partner!”
“It’s nothing, really.”
“Tell me every word about what brought you here.”
“If it had been love, Frank, do you think that I should have the courage to stand here and tell you about it? No, no!”
“What is love, Al?”
“I don’t know, exactly. But it’s something beautiful, of course.”
“D’you think so? But go on,” she was saying more blithely. “Tell me all about it, Al.”
“Well, it’s like homesickness, Frank. Except that I have no home to go to now. So it can’t be homesickness.”
“Ah!” said she.
“Does that mean anything to you?” he asked.
“Gimme time, Al. What else?”
“Nothing. Except that I have been constantly thinking of you. It has been a most wretched experience.”
“Thinking of me?”
“Because, whenever I see you, you are smiling at me in a very peculiar way; as if you understood all about me and didn’t want me to know how well you understand. Of course I’ve been used to having people treat me in that way. But for you to do it hurt a great deal more. I don’t know why. That’s all I can tell you — except—”
“Except what, Al?”
“You have no idea of what queer things go on inside of me as I stand here and watch you now. A little while ago you held up your head. Do you mind doing it again?”
She obeyed him without a word, looking at him through her lashes.
“Now with the starlight on your face, you are wonderfully beautiful, Frank.”
She started a little. “I think you’ve said enough, Al,” said she.
“But there is a great deal more.”
“Like that last thing about starlight?”
“Oh, no. Even the way the hair curls at the nape of your neck, or the sound of your voice, Frank, are marvelous to me. And when I sat beside you in the desert that night as you slept, the sound of your breathing was such a delight that I had never known anything like it before.”
“Hush, Al.”
“Have I said a wrong thing?”
“About twenty of ’em, I guess.”
“I only wanted to tell you the truth. I wanted to explain this peculiar thing to you.”
“This thing that isn’t love?” she said.
“Yes, of course.”
She sighed. “You’re either terrible smart or terrible simple, Al.”
“Of course I’m simple. Everyone has always known that.”
“Everyone don’t know nothin’ at all about you, old son. Everyone is a blockhead. But I’m beginnin’ to guess things — I’m just beginnin’—”
She slipped suddenly close to him until her body touched him and he could hear her hurried breathing.
“Al, there’s something sneakin’ up through the shadows right straight behind you. Where’s your gun?”
“I didn’t bring a gun.”
“Here. I always carry one. Act as if you didn’t suspect nothin’. Take this gun. When you shoot, shoot plenty low. Shoot to kill, or they’ll kill you!”
He took the gun with his right hand. He put his left arm slowly around her.
“Don’t be a crazy man — your life, Al!” she whispered.
But when she strove to slip back from him, it was like leaning back against an iron beam.
“Jump for the trees!” she whispered.
He merely leaned and kissed her quietly, unhurried, and at the same instant a quiet voice was saying out of the darkness: “Look this way, Al Vincent!”
“Dive for the ground!” cried the girl. “Shoot as you drop.”
Instead, he turned slowly toward the voice.
“You fat-faced rat — you skunk!” snarled the voice of Walter Jardine in the darkness. “Here I am. There you are. Start the party with your gun.”
“I’ll never be guilty of murder,” said Allan gravely.
“Murder? I say fight, or I’ll fill you full of lead.”
“Al!” cried the girl, frantic. “He’ll kill you! Walter Jardine! Walter Jardine! If you shoot this man, I’ll swear that he hadn’t raised a hand to defend himself. I’ll have you hounded as a murderer—”
“If you won’t fight, you dog, drop the gun you got and put
up your hands.”
“And be sort of quick about it,” added Elias Johnston from a position immediately to the rear.
Then Allan could understand. Jardine wanted the first opportunity to kill his man. But if Jardine failed, Allan still would not have been the victor, for that deadly little marksman Johnston would have remained to shoot him from the rear. He thought of this as he raised his hands closely above his head.
The two were instantly beside him.
“Have you got the cuffs?” asked Johnston.
“Right here.”
“Get ’em on his wrists pronto. I’ll keep him in hand while you do it.”
So Elias drove the muzzle of a revolver into the pad of thick, soft flesh which covered the ribs of Allan and in a savage whisper invited him to dare to stir an inch in any direction.
“The first time you so much as twitch your hide like a hoss shakin’ off a fly, I blow a chunk out of your liver, old son. You lay to that.”
The handcuffs were prepared and held forth.
“Al, Al!” the girl was sobbing. “It would have been better to have fought them till you died.”
“How did you know that I had come?” asked Allan curiously.
“There is whistles and whistles, old son,” said Johnston,
proud of the clever device by which he had discovered the signal.
“Then,” cried the girl, “they’ve been opening my mail! Oh, you low, cowardly—”
What name she would have found for them in her wrath was never to be known, for at this instant a gun cracked from the trees nearby and the hat was jerked over the eyes of Jardine. He whirled with a curse of rage and surprise; at the same instant, the gun muzzle was removed from the ribs of Allan. It was only a fraction of a second as Elias involuntarily twitched away to face the new and unseen danger. But that slight interval gave Allan a chance and he used it. The back of his hand smashed into the face of Elias — a blow as fast as the flick of a cat’s paw, as crushing as the battering forepaw of a grizzly, that most terrible of boxers. It flattened the nose of Johnston and knocked out three unfortunately too prominent teeth. At the same time it drove him off his feet. He floated against the trunk of the nearest pine tree, rebounded, and rolled limp upon the earth.