Kate found her sister, as the stranger had intimated, fully prepared. A hasty inventory of provisions and means of subsistence showed that they had ample resources for a much longer isolation.
“They tell me it is by no means an uncommon case, Kate; somebody over at somebody's place was snowed in for four weeks, and now it appears that even the Summit House is not always accessible. John ought to have known it when he bought the place; in fact, I was ashamed to admit that he did not. But that is like John to prefer his own theories to the experience of others. However, I don't suppose we should even notice the privation except for the mails. It will be a lesson to John, though. As Mr. Lee says, he is on the outside, and can probably go wherever he likes from the Summit except to come here.”
“Mr. Lee?” echoed Kate.
“Yes, the wounded one; and the other's name is Falkner. I asked them in order that you might be properly introduced. There were very respectable Falkners in Charlestown, you remember; I thought you might warm to the name, and perhaps trace the connection, now that you are such good friends. It's providential they are here, as we haven't got a horse or a man in the place since Manuel disappeared, though Mr. Falkner says he can't be far away, or they would have met him on the trail if he had gone towards the Summit.”
“Did they say anything more of Manuel?”
“Nothing; though I am inclined to agree with you that he isn't trustworthy. But that again is the result of John's idea of employing native skill at the expense of retaining native habits.”
The evening closed early, and with no diminution in the falling rain and rising wind. Falkner kept his word, and unostentatiously performed the out-door work in the barn and stables, assisted by the only Chinese servant remaining, and under the advice and supervision of Kate. Although he seemed to understand horses, she was surprised to find that he betrayed a civic ignorance of the ordinary details of the farm and rustic household. It was quite impossible that she should retain her distrustful attitude, or he his reserve in their enforced companionship. They talked freely of subjects suggested by the situation, Falkner exhibiting a general knowledge and intuition of things without parade or dogmatism. Doubtful of all versatility as Kate was, she could not help admitting to herself that his truths were none the less true for their quantity or that he got at them without ostentatious processes. His talk certainly was more picturesque than her brother's, and less subduing to her faculties. John had always crushed her.
When they returned to the house he did not linger in the parlor or sitting-room, but at once rejoined his friend. When dinner was ready in the dining-room, a little more deliberately arranged and ornamented than usual, the two women were somewhat surprised to receive an excuse from Falkner, begging them to allow him for the present to take his meals with the patient, and thus save the necessity of another attendant.
“It is all shyness, Kate,” said Mrs. Hale, confidently, “and must not be permitted for a moment.”
“I'm sure I should be quite willing to stay with the poor boy myself,” said Mrs. Scott, simply, “and take Mr. Falkner's place while he dines.”
“You are too willing, mother,” said Mrs. Hale, pertly, “and your 'poor boy,' as you call him, will never see thirty-five again.”
“He will never see any other birthday!” retorted her mother, “unless you keep him more quiet. He only talks when you're in the room.”
“He wants some relief to his friend's long face and moustachios that make him look prematurely in mourning,” said Mrs. Hale, with a slight increase of animation. “I don't propose to leave them too much together. After dinner we'll adjourn to their room and lighten it up a little. You must come, Kate, to look at the patient, and counteract the baleful effects of my frivolity.”
Mrs. Hale's instincts were truer than her mother's experience; not only that the wounded man's eyes became brighter under the provocation of her presence, but it was evident that his naturally exuberant spirits were a part of his vital strength, and were absolutely essential to his quick recovery. Encouraged by Falkner's grave and practical assistance, which she could not ignore, Kate ventured to make an examination of Lee's wound. Even to her unpractised eye it was less serious than at first appeared. The great loss of blood had been due to the laceration of certain small vessels below the knee, but neither artery nor bone was injured. A recurrence of the haemorrhage or fever was the only thing to be feared, and these could be averted by bandaging, repose, and simple nursing.
The unfailing good humor of the patient under this manipulation, the quaint originality of his speech, the freedom of his fancy, which was, however, always controlled by a certain instinctive tact, began to affect Kate nearly as it had the others. She found herself laughing over the work she had undertaken in a pure sense of duty; she joined in the hilarity produced by Lee's affected terror of her surgical mania, and offered to undo the bandages in search of the thimble he declared she had left in the wound with a view to further experiments.
“You ought to broaden your practice,” he suggested. “A good deal might be made out of Ned and a piece of soap left carelessly on the first step of the staircase, while mountains of surgical opportunities lie in a humble orange peel judiciously exposed. Only I warn you that you wouldn't find him as docile as I am. Decoyed into a snow-drift and frozen, you might get some valuable experiences in resuscitation by thawing him.”
“I fancied you had done that already, Kate,” whispered Mrs. Hale.
“Freezing is the new suggestion for painless surgery,” said Lee, coming to Kate's relief with ready tact, “only the knowledge should be more generally spread. There was a man up at Strawberry fell under a sledge-load of wood in the snow. Stunned by the shock, he was slowly freezing to death, when, with a tremendous effort, he succeeded in freeing himself all but his right leg, pinned down by a small log. His axe happened to have fallen within reach, and a few blows on the log freed him.”
“And saved the poor fellow's life,” said Mrs. Scott, who was listening with sympathizing intensity.
“At the expense of his LEFT LEG, which he had unknowingly cut off under the pleasing supposition that it was a log,” returned Lee demurely.
Nevertheless, in a few moments he managed to divert the slightly shocked susceptibilities of the old lady with some raillery of himself, and did not again interrupt the even good-humored communion of the party. The rain beating against the windows and the fire sparkling on the hearth seemed to lend a charm to their peculiar isolation, and it was not until Mrs. Scott rose with a warning that they were trespassing upon the rest of their patient that they discovered that the evening had slipped by unnoticed. When the door at last closed on the bright, sympathetic eyes of the two young women and the motherly benediction of the elder, Falkner walked to the window, and remained silent, looking into the darkness. Suddenly he turned bitterly to his companion.
“This is just h-ll, George.”
George Lee, with a smile on his boyish face, lazily moved his head.
“I don't know! If it wasn't for the old woman, who is the one solid chunk of absolute goodness here, expecting nothing, wanting nothing, it would be good fun enough! These two women, cooped up in this house, wanted excitement. They've got it! That man Hale wanted to show off by going for us; he's had his chance, and will have it again before I've done with him. That d—d fool of a messenger wanted to go out of his way to exchange shots with me; I reckon he's the most satisfied of the lot! I don't know why YOU should growl. You did your level best to get away from here, and the result is, that little Puritan is ready to worship you.”
“Yes—but this playing it on them—George—this—”
“Who's playing it? Not you; I see you've given away our names already.”
“I couldn't lie, and they know nothing by that.”
“Do you think they would be happier by knowing it? Do you think that soft little creature would be as happy as she was to-night if she knew that her husband had been indirectly the means of laying me by the heels here? Where is the swindle? This hole in my leg? If you had been five minutes under that girl's d—d sympathetic fingers you'd have thought it was genuine. Is it in our trying to get away? Do you call that ten-feet drift in the pass a swindle? Is it in the chance of Hale getting back while we're here? That's real enough, isn't it? I say, Ned, did you ever give your unfettered intellect to the contemplation of THAT?”
Falkner did not reply. There was an interval of silence, but he could see from the movement of George's shoulders that he was shaking with suppressed laughter.
“Fancy Mrs. Hale archly introducing her husband! My offering him a chair, but being all the time obliged to cover him with a derringer under the bedclothes. Your rushing in from your peaceful pastoral pursuits in the barn, with a pitchfork in one hand and the girl in the other, and dear old mammy sympathizing all round and trying to make everything comfortable.”
“I should not be alive to see it, George,” said Falkner gloomily.
“You'd manage to pitchfork me and those two women on Hale's horse and ride away; that's what you'd do, or I don't know you! Look here, Ned,” he added more seriously, “the only swindling was our bringing that note here. That was YOUR idea. You thought it would remove suspicion, and as you believed I was bleeding to death you played that game for all it was worth to save me. You might have done what I asked you to do—propped me up in the bushes, and got away yourself. I was good for a couple of shots yet, and after that—what mattered? That night, the next day, the next time I take the road, or a year hence? It will come when it will come, all the same!”
He did not speak bitterly, nor relax his smile. Falkner, without speaking, slid his hand along the coverlet. Lee grasped it, and their hands remained clasped together for a few minutes in silence.
“How is this to end? We cannot go on here in this way,” said Falkner suddenly.
“If we cannot get away it must go on. Look here, Ned. I don't reckon to take anything out of this house that I didn't bring in it, or isn't freely offered to me; yet I don't otherwise, you understand, intend making myself out a d—d bit better than I am. That's the only excuse I have for not making myself out JUST WHAT I am. I don't know the fellow who's obliged to tell every one the last company he was in, or the last thing he did! Do you suppose even these pretty little women tell US their whole story? Do you fancy that this St. John in the wilderness is canonized in his family? Perhaps, when I take the liberty to intrude in his affairs, as he has in mine, he'd see he isn't. I don't blame you for being sensitive, Ned. It's natural. When a man lives outside the revised statutes of his own State he is apt to be awfully fine on points of etiquette in his own household. As for me, I find it rather comfortable here. The beds of other people's making strike me as being more satisfactory than my own. Good-night.”
In a few moments he was sleeping the peaceful sleep of that youth which seemed to be his own dominant quality. Falkner stood for a little space and watched him, following the boyish lines of his cheek on the pillow, from the shadow of the light brown lashes under his closed lids to the lifting of his short upper lip over his white teeth, with his regular respiration. Only a sharp accenting of the line of nostril and jaw and a faint depression of the temple betrayed his already tried manhood.
The house had long sunk to repose when Falkner returned to the window, and remained looking out upon the storm. Suddenly he extinguished the light, and passing quickly to the bed laid his hand upon the sleeper. Lee opened his eyes instantly.
“Are you awake?”
“Perfectly.”
“Somebody is trying to get into the house!”
“Not HIM, eh?” said Lee gayly.
“No; two men. Mexicans, I think. One looks like Manuel.”
“Ah,” said Lee, drawing himself up to a sitting posture.
“Well?”
“Don't you see? He believes the women are alone.”
“The dog—d—d hound!”
“Speak respectfully of one of my people, if you please, and hand me my derringer. Light the candle again, and open the door. Let them get in quietly. They'll come here first. It's HIS room, you understand, and if there's any money it's here. Anyway, they must pass here to get to the women's rooms. Leave Manuel to me, and you take care of the other.”
“I see.”
“Manuel knows the house, and will come first. When he's fairly in the room shut the door and go for the other. But no noise. This is just one of the SW-EETEST things out—if it's done properly.”
“But YOU, George?”
“If I couldn't manage that fellow without turning down the bedclothes I'd kick myself. Hush. Steady now.”
He lay down and shut his eyes as if in natural repose. Only his right hand, carelessly placed under his pillow, closed on the handle of his pistol. Falkner quietly slipped into the passage. The light of the candle faintly illuminated the floor and opposite wall, but left it on either side in pitchy obscurity.
For some moments the silence was broken only by the sound of the rain without. The recumbent figure in bed seemed to have actually succumbed to sleep. The multitudinous small noises of a house in repose might have been misinterpreted by ears less keen than the sleeper's; but when the apparent creaking of a far-off shutter was followed by the sliding apparition of a dark head of tangled hair at the door, Lee had not been deceived, and was as prepared as if he had seen it. Another step, and the figure entered the room. The door closed instantly behind it. The sound of a heavy body struggling against the partition outside followed, and then suddenly ceased.
The intruder turned, and violently grasped the handle of the door, but recoiled at a quiet voice from the bed.
“Drop that, and come here.”
He started back with an exclamation. The sleeper's eyes were wide open; the sleeper's extended arm and pistol covered him.
“Silence! or I'll let that candle shine through you!”
“Yes, captain!” growled the astounded and frightened half-breed. “I didn't know you were here.”
Lee raised himself, and grasped the long whip in his left hand and whirled it round his head.
“WILL YOU dry up?”
The man sank back against the wall in silent terror.
“Open that door now—softly.”
Manuel obeyed with trembling fingers.
“Ned” said Lee in a low voice, “bring him in here—quick.”
There was a slight rustle, and Falkner appeared, backing in another gasping figure, whose eyes were starting under the strong grasp of the captor at his throat.
“Silence,” said Lee, “all of you.”
There was a breathless pause. The sound of a door hesitatingly opened in the passage broke the stillness, followed by the gentle voice of Mrs. Scott.
“Is anything the matter?”
Lee made a slight gesture of warning to Falkner, of menace to the others. “Everything's the matter,” he called out cheerily. “Ned's managed to half pull down the house trying to get at something from my saddle-bags.”
“I hope he has not hurt himself,” broke in another voice mischievously.
“Answer, you clumsy villain,” whispered Lee, with twinkling eyes.
“I'm all right, thank you,” responded Falkner, with unaffected awkwardness.
There was a slight murmuring of voices, and then the door was heard to close. Lee turned to Falkner.
“Disarm that hound and turn him loose outside, and make no noise. And you, Manuel! tell him what his and your chances are if he shows his black face here again.”
Manuel cast a single, terrified, supplicating glance, more suggestive than words, at his confederate, as Falkner shoved him before him from the room. The next moment they were silently descending the stairs.
“May I go too, captain?” entreated Manuel. “I swear to God—”
“Shut the door!” The man obeyed.
“Now, then,” said Lee, with a broad, gratified smile, laying down his whip and pistol within reach, and comfortably settling the pillows behind his back, “we'll have a quiet confab. A sort of old-fashioned talk, eh? You're not looking well, Manuel. You're drinking too much again. It spoils your complexion.”
“Let me go, captain,” pleaded the man, emboldened by the good-humored voice, but not near enough to notice a peculiar light in the speaker's eye.
“You've only just come, Manuel; and at considerable trouble, too. Well, what have you got to say? What's all this about? What are you doing here?”
The captured man shuffled his feet nervously, and only uttered an uneasy laugh of coarse discomfiture.
“I see. You're bashful. Well, I'll help you along. Come! You knew that Hale was away and these women were here without a man to help them. You thought you'd find some money here, and have your own way generally, eh?”
The tone of Lee's voice inspired him to confidence; unfortunately, it inspired him with familiarity also.
“I reckoned I had the right to a little fun on my own account, cap. I reckoned ez one gentleman in the profession wouldn't interfere with another gentleman's little game,” he continued coarsely.
“Stand up.”
“Wot for?”
“Up, I say!”
Manuel stood up and glanced at him.
“Utter a cry that might frighten these women, and by the living God they'll rush in here only to find you lying dead on the floor of the house you'd have polluted.”
He grasped the whip and laid the lash of it heavily twice over the ruffian's shoulders. Writhing in suppressed agony, the man fell imploringly on his knees.
“Now, listen!” said Lee, softly twirling the whip in the air. “I want to refresh your memory. Did you ever learn, when you were with me—before I was obliged to kick you out of gentlemen's company—to break into a private house? Answer!”
“No,” stammered the wretch.
“Did you ever learn to rob a woman, a child, or any but a man, and that face to face?”
“No,” repeated Manuel.
“Did you ever learn from me to lay a finger upon a woman, old or young, in anger or kindness?”
“No.”
“Then, my poor Manuel, it's as I feared; civilization has ruined you. Farming and a simple, bucolic life have perverted your morals. So you were running off with the stock and that mustang, when you got stuck in the snow; and the luminous idea of this little game struck you? Eh? That was another mistake, Manuel; I never allowed you to think when you were with me.”
“No, captain.”
“Who's your friend?”
“A d—d cowardly nigger from the Summit.”
“I agree with you for once; but he hasn't had a very brilliant example. Where's he gone now?”
“To h-ll, for all I care!”
“Then I want you to go with him. Listen. If there's a way out of the place, you know it or can find it. I give you two days to do it—you and he. At the end of that time the order will be to shoot you on sight. Now take off your boots.”
The man's dark face visibly whitened, his teeth chattered in superstitious terror.
“I'm not going to shoot you now,” said Lee, smiling, “so you will have a chance to die with your boots on,* if you are superstitious. I only want you to exchange them for that pair of Hale's in the corner. The fact is I have taken a fancy to yours. That fashion of wearing the stockings outside strikes me as one of the neatest things out.”
* “To die with one's boots on.” A synonym for death by
violence, popular among Southwestern desperadoes, and the
subject of superstitious dread.
Manuel suddenly drew off his boots with their muffled covering, and put on the ones designated.
“Now open the door.”
He did so. Falkner was already waiting at the threshold, “Turn Manuel loose with the other, Ned, but disarm him first. They might quarrel. The habit of carrying arms, Manuel,” added Lee, as Falkner took a pistol and bowie-knife from the half-breed, “is of itself provocative of violence, and inconsistent with a bucolic and pastoral life.”
When Falkner returned he said hurriedly to his companion, “Do you think it wise, George, to let those hell-hounds loose? Good God! I could scarcely let my grip of his throat go, when I thought of what they were hunting.”
“My dear Ned,” said Lee, luxuriously ensconcing himself under the bedclothes again with a slight shiver of delicious warmth, “I must warn you against allowing the natural pride of a higher walk to prejudice you against the general level of our profession. Indeed, I was quite struck with the justice of Manuel's protest that I was interfering with certain rude processes of his own towards results aimed at by others.”
“George!” interrupted Falkner, almost savagely.
“Well. I admit it's getting rather late in the evening for pure philosophical inquiry, and you are tired. Practically, then, it WAS wise to let them get away before they discovered two things. One, our exact relations here with these women; and the other, HOW MANY of us were here. At present they think we are three or four in possession and with the consent of the women.”
“The dogs!”
“They are paying us the highest compliment they can conceive of by supposing us cleverer scoundrels than themselves. You are very unjust, Ned.”
“If they escape and tell their story?”
“We shall have the rare pleasure of knowing we are better than people believe us. And now put those boots away somewhere where we can produce them if necessary, as evidence of Manuel's evening call. At present we'll keep the thing quiet, and in the early morning you can find out where they got in and remove any traces they have left. It is no use to frighten the women. There's no fear of their returning.”
“And if they get away?”
“We can follow in their tracks.”
“If Manuel gives the alarm?”
“With his burglarious boots left behind in the house? Not much! Good-night, Ned. Go to bed.”
With these words Lee turned on his side and quietly resumed his interrupted slumber. Falkner did not, however, follow this sensible advice. When he was satisfied that his friend was sleeping he opened the door softly and looked out. He did not appear to be listening, for his eyes were fixed upon a small pencil of light that stole across the passage from the foot of Kate's door. He watched it until it suddenly disappeared, when, leaving the door partly open, he threw himself on his couch without removing his clothes. The slight movement awakened the sleeper, who was beginning to feel the accession of fever. He moved restlessly.
“George,” said Falkner, softly.
“Yes.”
“Where was it we passed that old Mission Church on the road one dark night, and saw the light burning before the figure of the Virgin through the window?”
There was a moment of crushing silence. “Does that mean you're wanting to light the candle again?”
“No.”
“Then don't lie there inventing sacrilegious conundrums, but go to sleep.”
Nevertheless, in the morning his fever was slightly worse. Mrs. Hale, offering her condolence, said, “I know that you have not been resting well, for even after your friend met with that mishap in the hall, I heard your voices, and Kate says your door was open all night. You have a little fever too, Mr. Falkner.”
George looked curiously at Falkner's pale face—it was burning.
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