The Forfeit

by Cullum, Ridgwell

  "Here's your lager, Jeff," he said, in his easiest fashion. He had no desire that Ju should be made aware of the trouble that Jeff was laboring under.

  Jeff replied at once. His readiness and even cheerfulness of manner surprised Bud. But it relieved him as well.

  "Bully!" he cried, as he came back to the bar. "I was just gettin' a look around at the-city." He turned to Ju with his shadowy smile which almost broke Bud's heart. "Quite a place, eh?"

  "Place? Wal, it's got points I allow. So's hell ef you kin look at it right." Ju lit a cigar and hid nearly half of it in his capacious mouth. "I'd say," he went on, with a certain satisfaction, "ther's more mush-headed souses in this lay out to the square yard than I've ever heard tell of in any other city. Ef it wa'an't that way I couldn't see myself wastin' a valuable life lookin' at grass, hearin' talk of grass, smellin' grass, an' durned nigh eatin' grass. I tell you right here it takes me countin' my legs twice a day to keep me from the delusion I got four, an' every time I got to shake my head at some haf soused bum who's needin' credit I'm scared to death my blamed ears'll start right in flappin'. Why, yes, I guess it's some place-if you don't know no other."

  Bud was eager to get to the end of the task he had assumed for his friend. He wanted the facts, all the facts as far as they were available, of the terrible enactments in that valley of his early youth.

  "An' who antied the price?" he demanded.

  "Who? Why, the President of the Western Union Cattle Breeders' Association-Dug McFarlane."

  "And you don't know who-accepted it?"

  It was Jeff who put the question, and Bud, looking on, saw the steely gleam that lit the man's eyes as he spoke.

  But Ju's amiability was passing. He was getting tired of a subject which dealt with another man's profit. He rolled his cigar across his mouth.

  "Here. Guess I best tell you the yarn as we know it. Y'see," he added regretfully, "we ain't learned a heap 'cep' jest the racket of it. Dug set up the reward overnight. Next night twenty-five of the boys rode out with him to the hills. Ther' was some guy with 'em leadin'. But none of the boys come up with him. He rode with Dug. We've all guessed, but I don't reckon we know, or'll ever know. You see, he got shot up they say by Lightfoot himself. However, it don't signify. I got my notions 'bout it, an' anyway I guess they're jest my own. The boys guess it was one of the gang itself. Mebbe it was. Can't rightly say. After they'd located the camp they set out to surround it. It was in a bluff. The scrap started right away, an' there was a deal o' shootin'. One or two o' the boys got shot up bad. Then some one fired the bluff, an' burned 'em right out like a crowd of gophers. After that the scrap came good an' plenty, an' it seems to've lasted nigh an hour. Anyways, they got three of 'em. They shot up several others, an' not more than three got clear away."

  "An' what about Lightfoot?" It was Bud who spoke. His voice was changed from its usual deep tone. It was sharp, and almost impatient.

  "They got him," said Ju, with a delight so evident that Bud felt like killing him for it. "Oh, yes, they got him, sure. A dandy gent with his blue eyes an' curly, tow hair. They don't guess that's his right name tho'. But it don't signify. He was the boss all right, all right, an' they took him, an' hanged him with the other two, right out of hand. Gee, I'd have give a deal to have seen--"

  "We'll have to be pushing on now, Bud."

  Jeff spoke with his head bent, examining the face of his gold timepiece. Bud glanced at him. He could see the ghastly hue of the averted features, and his answer came on the instant.

  "You git the ponies cinched up, Jeff," he said quickly. "I'll be right with you."

  Ju watched Jeff hurry out of the bar. Then his eyes came searchingly back to Bud's grimly set face.

  "Kind o' seems in a hurry, don't he?" he demanded, with a curious look in his hard eyes. "Looks sick, too. Say, I didn't git his name right. Mebbe he's traveling around incog.-ain't that the word?"

  There was no mistaking the suggestion in the man's half-smiling, half-sneering manner. The ranchman understood it only too well. He understood most of the ways and expressions of the men of the prairie. The hot blood surged under his calm exterior. His gray eyes, so accustomed to smiling, snapped dangerously. But his reply came with the same ease which he had displayed most of the time.

  "Wal, I don't guess ther's no myst'ry 'bout either of us, which you kind o' seem you'd like to think. Jeff Masters of the 'O--'s' is well enough known to most folks, who got any sort o' knowledge of these parts. An' ther's quite a few folks around here, including Dug McFarlane, li'ble to remember the name of Bud Tristram, of the 'T.T.'s.' But you're sure right in guessin' he's in a hurry to quit. Ther's some places, an' some folks, it ain't good to see a heap of. Ther's fellers with minds like sinks, an' others with natures like rattlers. Neither of them things is as wholesome as a Sunday-school, I allow. Jeff ain't yearnin' to explore no sinks, human or any other. An' I've generally noticed his favorite pastime is killin' rattlers. So it's jest about the only thing to do-quit this saloon, same as I'm goin' to do. But say, 'fore I go I'd jest like to hand you this. Justice is justice, an' we all need to take our dope when it comes our way. But ther' ain't no right on this blamed earth fer any feller to whoop it up at another feller's misdoin's, an' his ultimate undoin'. An' you kin take it how you fancy when I say only the heart of a louse could feel that-a-way-an' that's about the lowest I know how to hand you."

  Bud's eyes were shining dangerously. They were squarely looking into the hard face of the saloon-keeper. Not the movement of an eyelid escaped him. He literally seemed to devour the unwholesome picture confronting him. The aggressive chin beard, the continual mastication of the cigar which protruded from the corner of the mouth. There was deadly fury lurking behind Ju's cruel eyes. But the looked-for physical display was withheld, and Bud finally turned and walked slowly out of the bar.

  * * * * * *

  It was some minutes since a word had passed between the two men. Jeff had nothing to say, and Bud's sympathy was too deep for words. He was waiting for the younger man to fight his battle to its logical end. He knew, only too well, all that Jeff had suffered since the moment of that gruesome discovery in the Cathills valley. It had been no figure of speech when Jeff had described his twin brother as part of himself. The shock the man had received was, to Bud's mind, as though his heart had been torn asunder. Hanged as a cattle thief! Was there anything more dire, more terrible in the imagination of man than to suddenly find that his well-loved brother, twin body of his own, was a cattle thief, possibly a murderer, and had been hanged by his fellow-men? It was a thought to leave the simple Bud staggered. And for the victim of the shock it might well mean the mental breaking point.

  Jeff was fighting out his battle with an almost super-human courage. Bud knew that. It was written in every detail of his attitude. In the straining of his blue eyes, in the deep knitting of his fair strong brows, in the painful lines ploughing deeper and deeper about his mouth, and the set of his strong jaws.

  No. There was no thought of breaking in upon the boy's black moments of suffering. He must fight his own battle now, once and for all. When victory had been achieved, then perhaps his sympathy might become helpful. But till then nothing but the necessities of their journey must be allowed to intrude between them.

  So they rode over the southern trail. The noontide sun scorched the parching earth with a blistering heat, drinking up the last moisture which the tall prairie grass sought to secrete at its attenuated roots. The world about them was unchanged. Every scene was similar in its characteristics to all that which had become their lives. Yet Bud knew that for one of them, at least, the whole of life, and everything pertaining to it, had been completely and terribly distorted.

  But the character of Jeffrey Masters was stronger and fiercer than Bud knew. For all his suffering there was no yielding in him. There had been moments when his soul had cried out in agony. There had been moments when the hideousness of his weak brother's fall had driven him to the verge of madness. But
with each yielding to suffering had come a rally of passionate force that would not be overborne, and gradually mastery supervened.

  Ten miles out of Orrville on the homeward journey Bud received his first intimation that the battle was waning. It came almost as a shock. They had passed a long stretch of flat grass-land, and were breasting an incline. Jeff, on the lead, had reined his horse down to a walk. In a moment they were riding abreast, with Bud's pack pony in between them. Jeff turned his bloodshot eyes upon his friend, then they turned again to the trail.

  "There's nothing now, Bud, but to get ahead with all our plans and schemes," he said. "We must drive ahead without any looking back. There's still things in life, I guess, that's worth while, and I'd say not the least of 'em is-work."

  He paused. He had been gazing straight ahead to disguise his effort. Now he turned and looked into the face of his friend, and thrust his hat back on his head.

  "It's been tough, Bud. So tough I don't know how I got through. Guess I shouldn't have without you. You see, Bud, you never said a thing, and-and that saved me. Guess I'm sort of tired now. Tired of thinking, tired of-everything. But it's over, and now I sort of feel I've got to get busy, or I'll forget how to play the man. I don't guess I'll ever hope to forget. No, I don't want to forget. I couldn't, just as I couldn't forget that there's some one in the world took ten thousand dollars as the price of Ronny's poor foolish life. Oh, it's pretty bad," he sighed wearily. "But-I've closed the book, Bud, and please God I'll never open it again."

  * * *

  Six weeks of all she had ever hoped for, dreamed of, in the lean years of heart starvation. The complete devotion of a strong man, a man who held a place in the world she knew. Every luxury wealth could purchase at her disposal, even to satiation. Her every whim ministered to, and even anticipated. This was something of the ripe fruit literally heaped into Elvine's lap. She had longed for it, schemed for it, and Providence had permitted all her efforts complete success.

  Now, with those six weeks behind her, she gazed upon the balance-sheet. She looked for the balance of happiness. To her horror it was blotted out, smudged out of all recognition. Oh, yes, the figures had been entered, but now they were completely obscured.

  It was the last stage of her journey to her new home. It was a journey being made in the saddle. Their baggage, a large number of trunks loaded with the precious gleanings from the great stores during the honeymoon, had been sent on ahead by wagon. There was nothing, so far as could be seen, to rob the home-coming of its proper sense of delight. Yet delight was more than far off. Elvine was a prey to a hopelessness which nothing seemed able to relieve.

  Summer was not yet over, although the signs of the coming fall were by no means lacking. The hard trail, like some carefully set out terra-cotta ribbon upon a field of tawny green, took them through a region of busy harvesting. The tractors and threshers were busily engaged in many directions. Great stacks of straw testified to the ample harvest in progress. Fall ploughing had already begun, and high-wheeled wagons bore their burden of produce toward the distant elevators. Then, too, human freight passed them, happy, smiling freight of old and young, whose sun-scorched faces reflected something of the joy of life and general prosperity prevailing.

  A radiant sun looked down upon the scenes through which they passed. It was the wonderful ripening God almost worshipped of these people who lived by the fruits of the earth. Jeffrey Masters understood it all, and reveled in the pleasant senses it stirred. For he, too, lived by the fruits of the earth, although his harvest was garnered in the flesh of creature kind.

  Elvine looked on with eyes that beheld but saw nothing of that which inspired her husband. Remembrance claimed her. Too well she remembered. And gladly would she have shut out such sights altogether, for more and more surely they crushed her already depressed spirits to a depth from which it seemed impossible to raise them.

  Nor was her beautiful face without some reflection of this. Her smile was ready for the man at her side. She laughed and talked in a manner so care-free that he could never have suspected. But in repose, when no eyes were upon her, a lurking, hunted dread peered furtively out of her dark eyes, and the fine-drawn lines gathered about her shapely lips, and seriously marred the serenity of their youthful contours.

  She had one purpose now, one only. It was to ward off the blow which she knew might fall at any moment when she reached her new home. The threat of it was with her always. It drove her to panic in the dark of night. It left her watchful and fearful in the light of day. At all times the memory of her husband's words dinned through her brain like the haunt of some sickening melody.

  "Now I only hope the good God'll let me come up with the man who took the price of his blood."

  It had been spoken coldly. It had been spoken with an intensity of bitterness that left an impression as hard as flint. The tone had set her shuddering. Then the look in those cold blue eyes when at last she had turned confronting them. No, there had been no mercy in them. No mercy, she told herself, for-anybody.

  At that moment she had known that the earth could hold no future peace for her. She felt that Fate had passed sentence on her, and she was powerless to stay its execution. Her husband demanded vengeance upon the man who had accepted the price of his brother's blood.

  For the moment she had been stunned. Then had risen up in her a desperate courage. She would fight. She would fight for herself, she would fight for the love which all unbidden, all undesired, had come to her. Then, in the end, if defeat should overtake her, she would, yes, she could, submit to the punishment his hand should mete out to her.

  Strangely, from that moment her love for this man seemed to increase a thousandfold. He grew in her heart a towering colossus of worship. The primitive in her bowed down before his image ready to yield to his lightest word, while, by every art, she was ready to cajole and foster his love.

  It was all she knew, understood. It was the woman in her who possessed no other weapons of defense. She loved him, she desired him, then nothing was too small to cling to with the wild hope of the drowning. When the day came that he should turn and rend her soul she could submit. But until that day she would cling to every straw that offered.

  While the scenes through which they were passing preoccupied the man, the silence of the wide plains left Elvine to her fears. The great breadth of the world about her added to her hopelessness. And after a silence which had become unduly protracted, she took refuge in talk for which she had no real desire.

  "It's beautiful, but-oppressive," she said, and the words were the inspiration of genuine thought.

  But the man was like one who has spent a world of love and devotion upon carving a beautiful setting and is now about to complete his work by securing in place the crowning jewel. He had no room for any feeling of oppression. He shook his head.

  "Say, Evie," he cried, "I just can't allow you the word 'oppressive.' I just can't. Look-look right out there toward the hills we're making. Take the colors as they heap up to the distance. Every shade, I guess, from green to purple. It makes me feel good. It gives me room to stretch myself. It sort o' sweeps away a whole heap of fusty city smells, and gives us something a deal more worth breathing. It's a man's place. And it's full of man's work. Guess Providence got busy an' set it all out for us. Providence guessed we'd have to use it. But Providence didn't just guess how far crazy human nature really was. She didn't foresee we'd gather around in the musty dump-holes we call cities. She didn't figure on our tastes for the flesh-pots, and the indulgence of the senses she'd handed us. But then Providence knows her power to fix us right when she feels that way." Then he spread out his arms with an inexpressible suggestion of longing. "Say, I'm crazy-plumb crazy to get the first peek at that dandy home I've had fixed for you."

  The woman's eyes sought her husband's with a smile that was a caress.

  "You're good to me, Jeff," she said. Then she added: "So good." Her smile deepened. "You'd hand me the world with-with a fence around it, if I a
sked. Why? Why are you like that?"

  It was the love in her seeking reassurance. Nor was she disappointed.

  "Why?" The man laughed. And the sound of it was good to hear. It was deep, and seemed to come from the depths of his soul. His blue eyes shone with a world of devotion. "Guess I love you-just that," he said. Then he pointed at the distant hills. "I can't tell you all I feel, Elvie," he said, "but get those hills. See them. There, that peak, sitting right up over its fellows, with a cap of snow on it I don't guess the sun could ever melt. That's thousands of feet up. I'd say man's foot was never set there, nor bird's, nor animal's either. Well, if that peak was a throne it 'ud give you pleasure to occupy, why, I guess I'd just go the limit to have you sit there."

  Elvine was gazing at the mountain crest, but she was not thinking of it. She was thinking of the love which the extravagant words expressed, and she was wondering at the bigness of it. She was caught in its power, and it thrilled her with an even greater appreciation of her danger. What would be the result upon such a nature as this man's when-he knew?

  "I believe you would," she said, her eyes coming back to the strong, flushed face. Then she added: "Now."

  "Now?"

  There was a quick lifting in the man's fair brows. There was incredulity in his tone. To him it seemed impossible, the implied doubt in her final word.

  "I don't change easy, Elvie," he protested. "I kind of get things hard. It's my way, and it's no doing of mine. Life's a full-sized proposition, and I don't guess we can see far through it. But I can't imagine a thing that could come before you in my thoughts."

  "I'd like to think that. I'd like to feel that," Elvine returned. She was smiling up into his eyes. "You see, Jeff, I was kind of thinking. We're young now. We've been together just six weeks. Maybe you'll get used to me later. Men do get used to women till they become sort of part of the furniture. Oh, I guess their love goes right on, but-but they wouldn't feel like starting in to fence in the North Pole, or-or hitch up Niagara to their wife's buggy just because she fancied that way. Say, Jeff, when I lose your love I just lose everything in the world. You-you won't ever let me lose it, will you?"