The Spirit of the Border and the Last Trail

by Zane Grey

  “It was a black night. He’d have to travel by the stars, an’ north’s the only safe direction for him,” muttered the borderman.

  On the bank above he found oblong indentations in the grass, barely perceptible, but owing to the peculiar position of the blades of grass, easy for him to follow.

  “He’d better have learned to walk light as an Injun before he took to outlawin’,” said the borderman in disdain. Then he returned to the gordge and entered the inclosure. At the foot of the little rise of ground where Wetzel had leaped upon his quarry, was one of the dead Indians. Another lay partly submerged in the brown water.

  Jonathan carried the weapons of the savages to a dry place under a projecting ledge in the cliff. Passing on down the glen, he stopped a moment where the cabins had stood. Not a log remained. The horses, with the exception of three, were tethered in the copse of laurel. He recognized two of Colonel Zane’s thoroughbreds, and Betty’s pony. He cut them loose, positive they would not stray from the glen, and might easily be secured at another time.

  He set out upon the trail of Brandt with a long, swinging stride. To him the outcome of that pursuit was but a question of time. The consciousness of superior endurance, speed, and craft spoke in his every movement. The consciousness of being in right, a factor so powerfully potent for victory, spoke in the intrepid front with which he faced the north.

  It was a gloomy November day. Gray, steely clouds drifted overhead. The wind wailed through the bare trees, sending dead leaves scurrying and rustling over the brown earth.

  The borderman advanced with a step that covered glade and glen, forest and field, with astonishing swiftness. Long since he had seen that Brandt was holding to the lowland. This did not strike him as singular until for the third time he found the trail lead a short distance up the side of a ridge, then descend, seeking a level. With this discovery came the certainty that Brandt’s pace was lessening. He had set out with a hunter’s stride, but it had begun to shorten. The outlaw had shirked the hills, and shifted from his northern course. Why? The man was weakening; he could not climb; he was favoring a wound.

  What seemed more serious for the outlaw, was the fact that he had left a good trail, and entered the low, wild land north of the Ohio. Even the Indians seldom penetrated this tangled belt of laurel and thorn. Owing to the dry season the swamps were shallow, which was another factor against Brandt. No doubt he had hoped to hide his trail by wading, and here it showed up like the track of a bison.

  Jonathan kept steadily on, knowing the farther Brandt penetrated into this wilderness the worse off he would be. The outlaw dared not to take to the river until below Fort Henry, which was distant many a weary mile. The trail grew more ragged as the afternoon wore away. When twilight rendered further tracking impossible, the borderman built a fire in a sheltered place, ate his supper, and went to sleep.

  In the dim, gray morning light he awoke, fancying he had been startled by a distant rifle shot. He roasted his strips of venison carefully, and ate with a hungry hunter’s appreciation, yet sparingly, as befitted a borderman who knew how to keep up his strength upon a long trail.

  Hardly had he traveled a mile when Brandt’s footprints covered another’s. Nothing surprised the borderman; but he had expected this least of all. A hasty examination convinced him that Legget and his Indian ally had fled this way with Wetzel in pursuit.

  The morning passed slowly. The borderman kept to the trail like a hound. The afternoon wore on. Over sandy reaches thick with willows, and through long, matted, dried-out cranberry marshes and copses of prickly thorn, the borderman hung to his purpose. His legs seemed never to lose their spring, but his chest began to heave, his head bent, and his face shone with sweat.

  At dusk he tired. Crawling into a dry thicket, he ate his scanty meal and fell asleep. When he awoke it was gray daylight. He was wet and chilled. Again he kindled a fire, and sat over it while cooking breakfast.

  Suddenly he was brought to his feet by the sound of a rifle shot; then two others followed in rapid succession. Though they were faint, and far away to the west, Jonathan recognized the first, which could have come only from Wetzel’s weapon, had he felt reasonably certain of the third, which was Brandt’s. There might have been, he reflected grimly, a good reason for Legget’s not shooting. However, he knew that Wetzel had rounded up the fugitives, and again he set out.

  It was another dismal day, such a one as would be fitting for a dark deed of border justice. A cold, drizzly rain blew from the northwest. Jonathan wrapped a piece of oil-skin around his rifle-breech, and faced the downfall. Soon he was wet to the skin. He kept on, but his free stride had shortened. Even upon his iron muscles this soggy, sticky ground had begun to tell.

  The morning passed but the storm did not; the air grew colder and darker. The short afternoon would afford him little time, especially as the rain and running rills of water were obliterating the trail.

  In the midst of a dense forest of great cottonwoods and sycamores he came upon a little pond, hidden among the bushes, and shrouded in a windy, wet gloom. Jonathan recognized the place. He had been there in winter hunting bears when all the swampland was locked by ice.

  The borderman searched along the banks for a time, then went back to the trail, patiently following it. Around the pond it led to the side of a great, shelving rock. He saw an Indian leaning against this, and was about to throw forward his rifle when the strange, fixed, position of the savage told of the tragedy. A wound extended from his shoulder to his waist. Near by on the ground lay Legget. He, too, was dead. His gigantic frame weltered in blood. His big feet were wide apart; his arms spread, and from the middle of his chest protruded the haft of a knife.

  The level space surrounding the bodies showed evidence of a desperate struggle. A bush had been rolled upon and crushed by heavy bodies. On the ground was blood as on the stones and leaves. The blade Legget still clutched was red, and the wrist of the hand which held it showed a dark, discolored band, where it had felt the relentless grasp of Wetzel’s steel grip. The dead man’s buckskin coat was cut into ribbons. On his broad face a demoniacal expression had set in eternal rigidity; the animal terror of death was frozen in his wide staring eyes. The outlaw chief had died as he had lived, desperately.

  Jonathan found Wetzel’s trail leading directly toward the river, and soon understood that the borderman was on the track of Brandt. The borderman had surprised the worn, starved, sleepy fugitives in the gray, misty dawn. The Indian, doubtless, was the sentinel, and had fallen asleep at his post never to awaken. Legget and Brandt must have discharged their weapons ineffectually. Zane could not understand why his comrade had missed Brandt at a few rods’ distance. Perhaps he had wounded the younger outlaw; but certainly he had escaped while Wetzel had closed in on Legget to meet the hardest battle of his career.

  While going over his version of the attack, Jonathan followed Brandt’s trail, as had Wetzel, to where it ended in the river. The old borderman had continued on down stream along the sandy shore. The outlaw remained in the water to hide his trail.

  At one point Wetzel turned north. This move puzzled Jonathan, and did also the peculiar tracks. It was more perplexing because not far below Zane discovered where the fugitive had left the water to get around a ledge of rock.

  The trail was approaching Fort Henry. Jonathan kept on down the river until arriving at the head of the island which lay opposite the settlement. Still no traces of Wetzel! Here Zane lost Brandt’s trail completely. He waded the first channel, which was shallow and narrow, and hurried across the island. Walking out upon a sandbar he signaled with his well-known Indian cry. Almost immediately came an answering shout.

  While waiting he glanced at the sand, and there, pointing straight toward the fort, he found Brandt’s straggling trail!

  CHAPTER XXIV

  Colonel Zane paced to and fro on the porch. His genial smile had not returned; he was grave and somber. Information had just reached him that Jonathan had hailed from the island
, and that one of the settlers had started across the river in a boat.

  Betty came out accompanied by Mrs. Zane.

  “What’s this I hear?” asked Betty, flashing an anxious glance toward the river. “Has Jack really come in?”

  “Yes,” replied the colonel, pointing to a throng of men on the riverbank.

  “Now there’ll be trouble,” said Mrs. Zane nervously. “I wish with all my heart Brandt had not thrown himself, as he called it, on your mercy.”

  “So do I,” declared Colonel Zane.

  “What will be done?” she asked. “There! that’s Jack! Silas has hold of his arm.”

  “He’s lame. He has been hurt,” replied her husband.

  A little procession of men and boys followed the borderman from the river, and from the cabins appeared the settlers and their wives. But there was no excitement except among the children. The crowd filed into the colonel’s yard behind Jonathan and Silas.

  Colonel Zane silently greeted his brother with an iron grip on the hand which was more expressive than words. No unusual sight was it to see the borderman wet, ragged, bloody, worn with long marches, hollow-eyed and gloomy; yet he had never before presented such an appearance at Fort Henry. Betty ran forward, and, though she clasped his arm, shrank back. There was that in the borderman’s presence to cause fear.

  “Wetzel?” Jonathan cried sharply.

  The colonel raised both hands, palms open, and returned his brother’s keen glance. Then he spoke. “Lew hasn’t come in. He chased Brandt across the river. That’s all I know.”

  “Brandt’s here, then?” hissed the borderman.

  The colonel nodded gloomily.

  “Where?”

  “In the long room over the fort. I locked him in there.”

  “Why did he come here?”

  Colonel Zane shrugged his shoulders. “It’s beyond me. He said he’d rather place himself in my hands than be run down by Wetzel or you. He didn’t draw, I’ll say that for him. He just said, ‘I’m your prisoner.’ He’s in pretty bad shape; barked over the temple, lame in one foot, cut under the arm, starved, and worn out.”

  “Take me to him,” said the borderman, and he threw his rifle on a bench.

  “Very well. Come along,” replied the colonel. He frowned at those following them. “Here, you women, clear out!” But they did not obey him.

  It was a sober-faced group that marched in through the big stockade gate, under the huge, bulging front of the fort, and up the rough stairway. Colonel Zane removed a heavy bar from before a door, and thrust it open with his foot. The long guardroom brilliantly lighted by sunshine coming through the portholes, was empty save for a ragged man lying on a bench.

  The noise aroused him; he sat up, and then slowly labored to his feet. It was the same flaring, wild-eyed Brandt, only fiercer and more haggard. He wore a bloody bandage round his head. When he saw the borderman he backed, with involuntary, instinctive action, against the wall, yet showed no fear.

  In the dark glance Jonathan shot at Brandt shone a pitiless implacability; no scorn, nor hate, nor passion, but something which, had it not been so terrible, might have been justice.

  “I think Wetzel was hurt in the fight with Legget,” said Jonathan deliberately, “an’ ask if you know?”

  “I believe he was,” replied Brandt readily, “I was asleep when he jumped us, and was awakened by the Indian’s yell. Wetzel must have taken a snap shot at me as I was getting up, which accounts, probably, for my being alive. I fell, but did not lose consciousness. I heard Wetzel and Legget fighting, and at last struggled to my feet. Although dizzy and bewildered, I could see to shoot; but missed. For a long time, it seemed to me, I watched that terrible fight, and then ran, finally reaching the river, where I recovered somewhat.”

  “Did you see Wetzel again?”

  “Once, about a quarter of a mile behind me. He was staggering along on my trail.”

  At this juncture there was a commotion among the settlers crowding behind Colonel Zane and Jonathan and Helen Sheppard appeared, white, with her big eyes strangely dilated.

  “Oh!” she cried breathlessly, clasping both hands around Jonathan’s arm. “I’m not too late? You’re not going to—”

  “Helen, this is no place for you,” said Colonel Zane sternly. “This is business for men. You must not interfere.”

  Helen gazed at him, at Brandt, and then up at the borderman. She did not loose his arm.

  “Outside some one told me you intended to shoot him. Is it true?”

  Colonel Zane evaded the searching gaze of those strained, brilliant eyes. Nor did he answer.

  As Helen stepped slowly back a hush fell upon the crowd. The whispering, the nervous coughing, and shuffling of feet, ceased.

  In those around her Helen saw the spirit of the border. Colonel Zane and Silas wore the same look, cold, hard, almost brutal. The women were strangely grave. Nellie Downs’ sweet face seemed changed; there was pity, even suffering on it, but no relenting. Even Betty’s face, always so warm, piquant, and wholesome, had taken on a shade of doubt, of gloom, of something almost sullen, which blighted its dark beauty. What hurt Helen most cruelly was the borderman’s glittering eyes.

  She fought against a shuddering weakness which threatened to overcome her.

  “Whose prisoner is Brandt?” she asked of Colonel Zane.

  “He gave himself up to me, naturally, as I am in authority here,” replied the colonel. “But that signifies little. I can do no less than abide by Jonathan’s decree, which, after all, is the decree of the border.”

  “And that is?”

  “Death to outlaws and renegades.”

  “But cannot you spare him?” implored Helen. “I know he is a bad man; but he might become a better one. It seems like murder to me. To kill him in cold blood, wounded, suffering as he is, when he claimed your mercy. Oh! it is dreadful!”

  The usually kind-hearted colonel, soft as wax in the hands of a girl, was now colder and harder than flint.

  “It is useless,” he replied curtly. “I am sorry for you. We all understand your feelings, that yours are not the principles of the border. If you had lived long here you could appreciate what these outlaws and renegades have done to us. This man is a hardened criminal; he is a thief, a murderer.”

  “He did not kill Mordaunt,” replied Helen quickly. “I saw him draw first and attack Brandt.”

  “No matter. Come, Helen, cease. No more of this,” Colonel Zane cried with impatience.

  “But I will not!” exclaimed Helen, with ringing voice and flashing eye. She turned to her girl friends and besought them to intercede for the outlaw. But Nell only looked sorrowfully on, while Betty met her appealing glance with a fire in her eyes that was no dim reflection of her brother’s.

  “Then I must make my appeal to you,” said Helen, facing the borderman. There could be no mistaking how she regarded him. Respect, honor, and love breathed from every line of her beautiful face.

  “Why do you want him to go free?” demanded Jonathan. “You told me to kill him.”

  “Oh, I know. But I was not in my right mind. Listen to me, please. He must have been very different once; perhaps had sisters. For their sake give him another chance. I know he has a better nature. I feared him, hated him, scorned him, as if he were a snake, yet he saved me from that monster Legget!”

  “For himself!”

  “Well, yes, I can’t deny that. But he could have ruined me, wrecked me, yet he did not. At least, he meant marriage by me. He said if I would marry him he would flee over the border and be an honest man.”

  “Have you no other reason?”

  “Yes.” Helen’s bosom swelled and a glory shone in her splendid eyes. “The other reason is, my own happiness!”

  Plain to all, if not through her words, from the light in her eyes, that she could not love a man who was a part to what she considered injustice.

  The borderman’s white face became flaming red.

  It was difficult to refu
se this glorious girl any sacrifice she demanded for the sake of the love so openly avowed.

  Sweetly and pityingly she turned to Brandt: “Will not you help me?”

  “Lass, if it were for me you were asking my life I’d swear it yours for always, and I’d be a man,” he replied with bitterness; “but not to save my soul would I ask anything of him.”

  The giant passions, hate and jealousy, flamed in his gray eyes.

  “If I persuade them to release you, will you go away, leave this country, and never come back?”

  “I’ll promise that, lass, and honestly,” he replied.

  She wheeled toward Jonathan, and now the rosy color chased the pallor from her cheeks.

  “Jack, do you remember when we parted at my home; when you left on this terrible trail, now ended, thank God! Do you remember what an ordeal that was for me? Must I go through it again?”

  Bewitchingly sweet she was then, with the girlish charm of coquetry almost lost in the deeper, stranger power of the woman.

  The borderman drew his breath sharply; then he wrapped his long arms closely round her. She, understanding that victory was hers, sank weeping upon his breast. For a moment he bowed his face over her, and when he lifted it the dark and terrible gloom had gone.

  “Eb, let him go, an’ at once,” ordered Jonathan. “Give him a rifle, some meat, an’ a canoe, for he can’t travel, an’ turn him loose. Only be quick about it, because if Wetzel comes in, God himself couldn’t save the outlaw.”

  It was an indescribable glance that Brandt cast upon the tearful face of the girl who had saved his life. But without a word he followed Colonel Zane from the room.

  The crowd slowly filed down the steps. Betty and Nell lingered behind, their eyes beaming through happy tears. Jonathan, long so cold, showed evidence of becoming as quick and passionate a lover as he had been a borderman. At least, Helen had to release herself from his embrace, and it was a blushing, tearstained face she turned to her friends.