Dorn Of The Mountains (28 page)

They got down and knelt beside their leader. In the dark-ness his face looked dull gray. His breathing was not right.

“Snake, old man, you ain’t…hurt?” asked Wilson with a tremor in his voice. Receiving no reply, he said to his comrades: “Lay hold an’ we’ll heft him up where we can see.”

The three then carefully lifted Anson up on the bank and laid him near the fire in the light. Anson was conscious. His face was ghastly. Blood showed on his lips.

Wilson knelt beside him. The other outlaws stood up and with one dark gaze at each other damned Anson’s chance of life. And on the instant rose that terrible distressing scream of acute agony—like that of a woman being dismembered. Shady Jones whispered something to Moze. Then they stood gazing down at their fallen leader.

“Tell me where you’re hurt?” asked Wilson.

“He…smashed…my chest,” said Anson in broken, strangled whisper.

Wilson’s deft hands opened the outlaw’s shirt and felt of his chest.

“No. Shore your breastbone ain’t smashed,” replied Wil son hopefully. And he began to run his hands around one side of Anson’s body and then the other. Abruptly he stopped, averted his gaze, then slowly ran the hand all along that side. Anson’s ribs had been broken and crushed in by the weight of the horse. He was bleeding at the mouth and his slow painful expulsions of breath brought on bloody froth, which showed that the broken bones had penetrated the lungs. An injury sooner or later fatal!

“Pard, you busted a rib or two,” said Wilson.

“
Aw,
Jim…it must be…wuss’n thet,” he whispered. “I’m…in orful…pain. An’ I can’t…git…any…breath.”

“Mebbe you’ll be better,” said Wilson with a cheerfulness his face belied.

Moze bent close over Anson, took a short scrutiny of that ghastly face, at the blood-stained lips, and the lean hands plucking at nothing. Then he jerked erect.

“Shady, he’s goin’ to cash. Let’s clear out of this.”

“I’m yours pertickler previous,” replied Jones.

Both turned away. They untied the two horses and led them up to where the saddles lay. Swiftly the blankets went on, swiftly the saddles swung up, swiftly the cinches snapped. Anson lay gazing up at Wilson, comprehending this move. And Wilson stood strangely grim and silent, somehow detached coldly from that self of the past few hours.

“Shady, you grab some bread an’ I’ll pack a hunk of meat,” said Moze. Both men came near to the fire, into the light within ten feet of where the leader lay.

“Fellars…you ain’t…slopin’?” he whispered in husky amaze.

“Boss, we air thet same. We can’t do you any good, an’ this hole ain’t healthy,” replied Moze.

Shady Jones swung himself astride his horse, all about him sharp, eager, strung.

“Moze, I’ll tote the grub an’ you lead out of hyar, till we git past the wust timber,” he said.

“
Aw,
Moze…you wouldn’t leave…Jim hyar…alone,” implored Anson.

“Jim can stay an’ be damned,” retorted Moze. “I’ve had enough of this hole.”

“But, Moze…it ain’t square…,” panted Anson. “Jim wouldn’t…leave me. I’d…stick…by…you…. I’ll make it…all up to you.”

“Snake, you’re goin’ to cash,” sardonically returned Moze.

A current leaped all through Anson’s stretched frame. His ghastly face blazed. That was the great and the terrible moment that for long had been in abeyance. Wilson had known grimly that it would come, by one means or another. Anson had doggedly and faithfully struggled against the tide of fatal issues. Moze and Shady Jones, deep-locked in their self-centered motives, had not realized the inevitable trend of their dark lives.

Anson, prostrate as he was, swiftly drew his gun and shot Moze. Without sound or movement of hand, Moze fell. Then the plunge of Shady’s horse caused Anson’s second shot to miss. A quick third shot brought no apparent result, but Shady’s cursing resort to his own weapon. He tried to aim from the plunging horse. His bullets spattered dust and gravel over Anson. Then Wilson’s long arm stretched and his heavy gun
banged.
Shady collapsed in the saddle, and the frightened horse, throwing him, plunged out of the circle of light.
Thudding
hoofs,
crashings
of brush, quickly ceased.

“Jim…did you…git him?” whispered Anson.

“Shore did, Snake,” was the slow halting response. Jim Wilson must have sustained a sick shudder as he replied. Sheathing his gun, he folded a blanket and put it in under Anson’s head.

“Jim…my feet…air orful cold,” whispered Anson.

“Wal, it’s gittin’ chilly,” replied Wilson, and, taking a second blanket, he lay that over Anson’s limbs. “Snake, I’m feared Shady hit you once.”

“Ahuh! But not so I’d care…much…if I hed…no wuss hurt.”

“You lay still now. Reckon Shady’s hoss stopped out heah a ways. An’ I’ll see.”

“Jim…I ain’t heerd…thet scream fer…a little.”

“Shore it’s gone…. Reckon now thet was a cougar.”

“Damn…I knowed it!”

Wilson stalked away into the darkness. That inky wall did not seem so impenetrable and black after he had gotten out of the circle of light. He proceeded carefully and did not make any missteps. He groped from tree to tree toward the cliff and presently brought up against a huge flat rock, as high as his head. Here the darkness was blackest, yet he was able to see a slight form on the rock.

“Miss, are you there…all right?” he called softly.

“Yes, but I’m scared to death,” she whispered in reply.

“Shore it wound up sudden…. Come now. I reckon your trouble’s over.”

He helped her off the rock, and, finding her unsteady on her feet, he supported her with one arm, and held the other out in front of him to feel for objects. Foot by foot they worked out from under the dense shadow of the cliff, following the course of the little brook. It babbled and gurgled, and almost drowned the low whistle Wilson sent out. The girl dragged heavily upon him now, evidently weakening. At length he reached the little open patch at the head of the ravine. Halting here, he whistled again. An answer came from somewhere behind him and to the right. Wilson waited with the girl hanging on his arm.

“Dorn’s heah,” he said. “An’ don’t you keel over now…after all the nerve you hed.”

A swishing of brush, a step, a soft padded footfall, a looming dark figure, and a long, slow, gray shape stealthily moving—it was the last of these that made Wilson jump.

“Wilson!” came Dorn’s subdued voice.

“Heah. I’ve got her, Dorn. Safe an’ sound,” replied Wilson, stepping toward the tall form. And he put the drooping girl into Dorn’s arms.

“Bo! Bo! You’re all right?” Dorn’s deep voice was tremulous.

She roused up to seize him and to utter little cries of joy.

“Oh, Dorn! Oh, thank heaven! I’m ready to drop now…Hasn’t it been a night…an adventure? I’m well…safe…sound…. Dorn, we owe it to this Jim Wilson.”

“Bo, I…we’ll all thank him…all our lives,” replied Dorn. “Wilson, you’re a man! If you’ll shake that gang….”

“Dorn, shore there ain’t much of a gang left, unless you let Burt git away,” replied Wilson.

“I didn’t kill him…or hurt him. But I scared him so, I’ll bet he’s runnin’ yet…. Wilson, did all the shootin’ mean a fight?”

“Tolerable.”

“Oh, Dorn, it was terrible. I saw it all. I….”

“Wal, miss, you can tell him after I go…. I’m wishin’ you good luck.” His voice was a cool easy slow drawl, slightly tremulous.

The girl’s face flashed white in the gloom. She pressed against the outlaw, wrung his hands.

“Heaven help you, Jim Wilson! You
are
from Texas! I’ll remember you…pray for you all my life!”

Wilson moved away, out toward the pale glow of light under the black pines.

The sunset hour while Helen Rayner watched Dorn ride away on a quest perilous to him and which meant almost life or death for her, it was surpassing strange that she could think of nothing except the thrilling tumultuous moment when she had put her arms around his neck.

It did not matter that Dorn—splendid fellow that he was!—had made the ensuing moment free of shame by taking her action as sisterly—the fact that she had actually done it was enough. How utterly impossible for her to anticipate her impulses or to understand them once they were acted upon! Confounding and terrible realization then was that, if Dorn returned with her sister, Helen knew she would do the same thing over again!

“If I do…I won’t be two-faced about it,” she soliloquized, and a hot blush flamed her cheeks.

She watched Dorn until he rode out of sight.

When he had gone, worry and dread replaced this other confusing emotion, and she turned to the business of meeting events. Before supper she packed her valuables and books, papers, and clothes together with Bo’s, and had them in readiness so, if she was forced to vacate the premises, she would have their personal possessions.

The Mormon boys and several others of her trusted men slept in their tarpaulin beds on the porch of the ranch house that night, so that Helen at least would not be surprised. But the day came with its usual manifold duties undisturbed by any event. And it passed slowly with the leaden feet of listening, watching vigilance.

Carmichael did not come back, nor was there news of him to be had. The last known of him had been late the afternoon of the preceding day when a sheepherder had seen him far out on the north range, headed for the hills. The Beemans reported that Roy’s condition had improved, and also that there was a subdued excitement of suspense down in the village.

This second lonely night was almost unendurable for Helen. When she slept, it was to dream horrible dreams; when she lay awake, it was to have her heart leap to her throat at a rustle of leaves near the window, and to lay in torture of imagination as to poor Bo’s plight. A thousand times Helen said to herself that Beasley could have had the ranch and welcome, if only Bo had been spared. Helen absolutely connected her enemy with her sister’s disappearance. Riggs might have been a means to it.

Daylight was not attended by so many fears: there were things to do that demanded attention. And thus it was that the next morning, shortly before noon, she was recalled to her perplexities by a shouting out at the corrals and a galloping of horses somewhere near. From the window she saw a big smoke.

“Fire! That must be one of the barns…the old one, farthest out,” she said, gazing out of the window. “Some careless Mexican with his everlasting cigarette!”

Helen resisted an impulse to go out and see what had happened. She had decided to stay in the house. But when footsteps sounded on the porch and a rap on the door, she unhesitatingly opened it. Four Mexicans stood close. One of them, quick as thought, flashed a hand in to grasp her, and in a single motion, pull her across the threshold.

“No hurt,
señorita
,” he said, and pointed—making motions she must go.

Helen did not need to be told what this visit meant. Many as her conjectures had been, however, she had not thought of Beasley subjecting her to this outrage. And her blood boiled.

“How dare you!” she said, trembling in her effort to control her temper. But class, authority, voice availed nothing with these swarthy Mexicans. They grinned. Another laid hold of Helen with dirty brown hand. She shrank from the contact.

“Let go!” she burst out furiously. And instinctively she began to struggle to free herself. Then they all lay hold of her. Helen’s dignity might never have been. A burning, choking rush of blood was her first acquaintance with the terrible passion of anger that was her inheritance from the Auchinclosses. She who had resolved not to lay herself open to any indignity now fought like a tigress. The Mexicans, jabbering in their excitement, had all they could do, until they lifted her bodily from the porch. They handled her as if she had been a half-empty sack of corn. One holding each hand and foot they packed her, with dress disarranged and half torn off, down the path to the lane and down the lane to the road. There they stood her upright and pushed her off her property.

Through half-blinded eyes Helen saw them guarding the gateway, ready to prevent her entrance. She staggered down the road toward the village. It seemed she made her way through a red dimness—that there was a congestion in her brain—that the distance to Mrs. Cass’s cottage was insurmountable. But she got there, to stagger up the path, to hear the old woman’s cry. Dizzy, faint, sick, with a blackness enveloping all she looked at, Helen felt herself led into the sitting room and placed in the big chair.

Presently sight and clearness of mind returned to her. She saw Roy, white as a sheet, questioning her with terrible eyes. The old woman hung murmuringly over her, trying to comfort her as well as fasten the disordered dress.

“Four greasers…packed me down…the hill…threw me off my ranch…into the road,” panted Helen. She seemed to tell this also to her own consciousness and to realize the mighty wave of anger that shook her whole body. “If I’d known…I would have killed them!” She exclaimed that, full voiced and hard, with dry hot eyes on her friends.

Roy reached out to take her hand, speaking huskily. Helen did not distinguish what he said. The frightened old woman knelt with unsteady fingers fumbling over the rents in Helen’s dress. The moment came when Helen’s quivering began to subside, when her blood quieted to let reason sway, when she began to do battle with her rage, and slowly to take fearful stock of this consuming peril that had been a sleeping tigress in her veins.

“Oh, Miss Helen, you looked so turrible, I was sure you was hurted,” the old woman was saying.

Helen gazed strangely at her bruised wrists, at the one stocking that hung down over her shoe top, at the rent that had bared her shoulder to the profane gaze of those grinning, beady-eyed Mexicans.

“My body’s…not hurt,” she whispered.

Roy had lost some of his white color, and, where his eyes had been fierce, they were now kindly.

“Wal, Miss Nell, it’s lucky no harm’s done…. Now if you’ll only see this whole deal clear! Not let it spoil your sweet way of lookin’ an’ hopin’. If…you can only see what’s raw in this West…an’ love it jest the same!”

Helen only half divined his meaning, but that was enough for a future reflection. The West was beautiful, but hard. In the faces of these friends she began to see the meaning of the keen sloping lines and shadows of pain, of a lean naked truth, cut as from marble.

“For the land’s sake, tell us all about it,” importuned Mrs. Cass.

Whereupon Helen shut her eyes and told the brief narrative of her expulsion from her home.

“Shore we all expected thet,” said Roy. “An’ it’s jest as well you’re here with a whole skin…. Beasley’s in possession now, an’ I reckon we’d all sooner hev you away from thet ranch.”

“But, Roy, I won’t let Beasley stay there!” cried Helen.

“Miss Nell, shore by the time this here Pine has growed big enough fer law you’ll hev gray in that pretty hair. You can’t put Beasley off with your honest an’ rightful claim…. Al Auchincloss was a hard driver. He made enemies an’ he made some he didn’t kill. The evil men do lives after them…. An’ you’ve got to suffer fer Al’s sins, though Al was as good as any man who ever prospered in these parts.”

“Oh, what can I do? I won’t give up. I’ve been robbed…. Can’t the people help me? Must I meekly sit with my hands crossed while that half-breed thief…. Oh, it’s unbelievable!”

“I reckon you’ll jest hev to be patient fer a few days,” said Roy calmly. “It’ll all come right in the end.”

“Roy! You’ve had this deal, as you call it, all worked out in mind for a long time!” exclaimed Helen.

“Shore, an’ I ain’t missed a reckonin’ yet.”

“Then what will happen…in a few days.”

“Nell Rayner, are you goin’ to hev some spunk an’ not lose your nerve again or go wild out of your head?”

“I’ll try to be brave but…but I must be prepared,” she replied tremulously.

“Wal, there’s Dorn an’ Las Vegas an’ me fer Beasley to reckon with…. An’, Miss Nell, his chances fer long life are as pore as his chances fer heaven.”

“But, Roy, I don’t believe in deliberate taking of life,” replied Helen, shuddering. “That’s against my religion. I won’t allow it…. And…then…think of Dorn, all of you…in danger!”

“Girl, how’re you ever goin’ to help yourself? Shore, you might hold Dorn back, if you love him, an’ swear you won’t give yourself to him…. An’ I reckon I’d respect your religion, if you was goin’ to suffer through me…. But not Dorn nor you…nor Bo…nor love or heaven or hell can ever stop thet cowboy Las Vegas!”

“Oh, if Dorn brings Bo back to me…what will I care for my ranch?” murmured Helen.

“Reckon you’ll only begin to care when thet happens. Your big hunter has got to be put to work,” replied Roy with his keen smile.

Before noon that day the baggage Helen had packed at home was left on the porch of Widow Cass’s cottage, and Helen’s anxious need of the hour was satisfied. She was made comfortable in the old woman’s one spare room and she set herself the task of fortitude and endurance.

To her surprise many of Mrs. Cass’s neighbors came unobtrusively to the back door of the little cottage and made sympathetic inquiries. They appeared a subdued and apprehensive group, and whispered to one another as they left. Helen gathered from these visits a conviction that the wives of the men dominated by Beasley believed no good could come of this high-handed taking over of the ranch. Indeed, Helen found at the end of the day that a strength had been borne of her misfortune.

The next day Roy informed her that his brother John had come down late the preceding night with the news of Beasley’s descent upon the ranch. Not a shot had been fired, and the only damage done was that of the burning of a hay-filled barn. This had been set on fire to attract Helen’s men to one spot, where Beasley had ridden down upon them with three times their number. He had boldly ordered them off the land, unless they wanted to acknowledge him boss and remain there in his ser vice. The three Beemans had stayed, having planned that in just this event they might be valuable to Helen’s interests. Beasley had ridden down into Pine the same as upon any other day. Roy reported, also, news that had come in that morning, how Beasley’s crowd had celebrated late the night before.

The second and third and fourth days endlessly wore away, and Helen believed they had made her old. At night she lay awake most of the time, thinking and praying, but during the afternoons she got some sleep. She could think of nothing and talk of nothing except her sister, and Dorn’s chances of saving her.

“Nell, shore you pay Dorn a pore compliment,” finally protested the patient Roy. “I tell you…Milt Dorn can do anythin’ he wants to do in the woods. You can believe thet…. But I reckon he’ll run chances after he comes back.”

This significant speech thrilled Helen with its assurance of hope and made her blood curdle at the implied peril awaiting the hunter.

On the afternoon of the fifth day Helen was abruptly awakened from her sleep. The sun had almost set. She heard voices—the shrill cackling notes of old Mrs. Cass, high in excitement, a deep voice that made Helen tingle all over, a girl’s laugh, broken but happy. There were footsteps and stamping of hoofs. Dorn had brought Bo back! Helen knew it. She grew very weak and had to fight herself to stand erect. Her heart began to pound in her very ears. A sweet and perfect joy suddenly flooded her soul. She thanked God her prayers had been answered. Then suddenly alive with sheer mad physical gladness she rushed out.

She was just in time to see Roy Beeman stalk out as if he had never been shot and with a yell greet a big gray-clad, gray-faced man—Dorn.

“Howdy, Roy. Glad to see you up,” said Dorn. How the quiet voice steadied Helen! She beheld Bo, looking the same except a little pale and disheveled. Then Bo saw her and leaped at her, into her arms.

“Nell! I’m here! Safe…all right. Never was so happy in my life…. Oh-h, talk about your adventures! Nell, you dear old mother to me…I’ve had en-enough for-ever!”

Bo was wild with joy and by turns she laughed and cried. But Helen could not voice her feelings. Her eyes were so dim that she could scarcely see Dorn when he loomed over her as she held Bo. But he found the hand she put shakily out.

“Nell! Reckon it’s been harder…on you.” His voice was earnest and halting. She felt his searching gaze upon her face. “Missus Cass said you were here…. An’ I know why.”

Roy led them all indoors.

“Milt, one of the neighbor boys will take care of thet hoss,” he said as Dorn had turned toward the dusty and weary Ranger. “Where’d you leave the cougar?”

“I sent him home,” replied Dorn.

“Laws, now, Milt, if this ain’t grand!” cackled Mrs. Cass. “We’ve worried some here. An’ Miss Helen near starved a-hopin’ fer you.”

“Auntie, I reckon the girl an’ I are nearer starved than anybody you know,” replied Dorn with a grim laugh.

“Fer the land’s sake! I’ll be fixin’ supper this minnit.”

“Nell, why are you here?” asked Bo suspiciously.

For answer Helen led her sister into the spare room and closed the door. Bo saw the baggage. Her expression changed. The old blaze leaped to the telltale eyes.

“He’s done it!” she cried hotly.

“Dearest…thank God I’ve got you…back again,” murmured Helen, finding her voice. “Nothing else matters! I’ve prayed only fer that!”

“Good old Nell,” whispered Bo, and she kissed and embraced Helen. “You really mean that, I know…. But nix for yours truly! I’m back alive and kicking, you bet…. Where’s my…where’s Tom?”

“Bo, not a word has been heard of him for five days. He’s searching for you, of course.”

“And you’ve been…been put off the ranch?”

“Well, rather,” replied Helen, and in few trembling words she told the story of her eviction.

Bo uttered a wild word that had more force than elegance, but it became her passionate resentment of this outrage done her sister.