Читать книгу The Hand of the Mighty, and Other Stories - Vaughan Kester - Страница 7

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OUT of the warm distance came the song:

“Do you love me, Mollie darling?

Say you love none else but me—”

The man seated in the cabin door raised a battered face and listened, as down the trail came the singer and the song.

“Mollie, sweetest, fairest, dearest;

Look up, darling, tell me this.

Do you love me, Mollie darling?

Let your answer be a kiss!”

The dog at the man's feet cocked his head knowingly on one side and seemed to listen, too. The man addressed the dog.

“Duffer, that's a right sweet old song, ain't it?—a right plaintive air. When you're fifty odd, Duffer, them old songs dig holes in your memory.” As he spoke he gently caressed the dog. It was yellow and palpably of uncertain breed, but just as palpably of distinguished social qualities. “Duffer, I'll bet you what you like he ain't fifty,—and that his Mollie's within safe walking distance!”

Around a turn in the trail, a winding path that led up and up, and from behind a big boulder, came the singer in blue work-stained overalls and blouse. He swung a tin dinner pail with one hand and his cap with the other. His years were plainly a scanty half of fifty. Catching sight of the man in the cabin door, he paused, while the song died abruptly on his lips.

“Hullo!” he said.

“Evening,” responded the man. Middle age had put its stamp upon him; hard-lived years apparently, for he was lean and muscular, with the brown skin of perpetual sunburn. A long scar slashed the bridge of his beak-like nose and halved a shaggy iron-gray eyebrow with a white welt. The eye beneath was fixed and staring, yet it served to mitigate and soften the somewhat severe expression that lurked across the way, as it were, on the other side of his face; for his good eye was dark and piercing, and held a deep spark.

Duffer, wagging his tail, investigated the newcomer. He sniffed at the blue overalls that kept the rancid odor of smoke and oil and machinery. The young man clapped his cap on his thick mop of black curls, opened his dinner pail and found a crust.

“Think he'd like this?” he asked of the dog's master, who nodded. Duffer made short work of the crust, and then, wise and inquiring, nosed the bottom of the dinner pail.

“What do you call this place?” inquired the elder man. There were sixteen houses on the bench below.

“Sunset,—Sunset Limited, some of us calls it. Say, Alvarado's knocked the spots out of us,—so's Last Pan, so's Buffalo Bend. Sunset Limited,—yes, sir, and that ain't no joke either!”

“Quiet?”

“You can hear a pin drop during rush hours. This is one of the rush hours, me going home to supper. That gives you the dimensions of the rush.” The young man laughed pleasantly. “My name's Johnny Severance,” he added, by way of introduction.

“Mine's Brown.”

“Huh,” said Johnny. “That's Brown's Peak you're looking at. Brown was an old-time scout; he stood off a bunch of Apaches here way back in the early days. They named the mountain after him.”

“You'll always meet plenty of Browns wherever you go,” said the owner of that name, in impartial judgment of its merits.

“It is awful common,” agreed Johnny. “You prospecting?”

Brown shook his head.

“Health, mebby?”

But Brown's appearance was strongly against this supposition. “I don't want no more health than I got,” he said.

“Well, you do look hearty,” admitted Johnny. “But every now and then they blow in here for their health. That was the way with the last fellow who had this cabin. He croaked.” And young Mr. Severance sank his voice in decent recognition of the universal tragedy. He continued: “I'm keeping the pumps up at the Red Bird sucking. The stockholders are suffering from cold feet. Well, so long, Mr. Brown!” and he moved off in the direction of the sixteen houses that constituted Sunset.

He passed fifteen of these houses, whose back doors looked boldly out across an arid valley to a distant line of jagged peaks that saw-toothed the horizon under flaming bands of color. No one of the fifteen but breathed an air of dilapidation and neglect, for they sepulchered dead hopes. The sixteenth was in pleasing contrast; it was newly painted and two stories high. A sign announced this the Mountain House,—M. Ferguson, Proprietor.

Johnny passed about a corner of the Mountain House and paused beside the kitchen door, where there was a barrel, a bench, a tin basin, a roller towel, a cake of soap and a sixty-mile view set under the splendid arch of the heavens. He filled the basin at the barrel, tossed aside his blouse, and began the removal of such evidences of honest toil as he had brought away from the Red Bird.

A window overlooked the bench, and he was presently aware that a slender bit of a girl was gazing down on him with serious blue eyes and smiling warm red lips; a fresh color the mountain wind had blown there was in her soft round cheeks, which held a dimple that came and went tantalizingly, and her hair curled in golden disarray about her pretty face. Johnny stared up at her through a mist compounded of soap and water.

“My eyes are chuck-full of suds, but I can see good enough to know you're the sweetest thing that ever was, Mollie,—honest you are!” he said.

The girl laughed, disclosing a row of white even teeth.

“Well, will you just get on to them dimples!” cried Johnny.

“Now, Johnny,—honest?”

“Honest, what?”

“The sweetest thing——”

“Wish I may die if you ain't!” said Johnny fervently.

He made great haste with the towel, then he stepped close to the window. His mop of black curls was raised toward the yellow head, there was a soft sound and Mr. Severance seemed greatly cheered and refreshed by something.

“Mollie, you got the sweetest lips to kiss,—honest you have,” he said.

The girl laughed shyly.

“You always say that.”

“You want I should aways tell you the truth, don't you?” he demanded, his arm about her shoulders.

“Can't you say something different?” asked Mollie, puckering her brows and then dimpling at him.

“What's the use of trying? You bet you I don't want to think no different,” and Johnny looked at her with adoring eyes, their faces very close together. Finally he released her. “Any news, Mollie?” he asked.

“The gentleman that's bought the Pay Streak over at Alvarado was here for lunch. He come in a big touring-car with his wife and baby, and its nurse. They seemed awful nice people, Johnny.”

“I wish I had his bank roll. They say he's a millionaire all right,” said Johnny.

“Mollie!” a voice called from within, and Mollie said hastily as she turned away:

“Supper's on the table; you can come in when you get ready.”

M. Ferguson was another Mollie, the younger Mollie's aunt. Years before while Sunset was still a prosperous mining camp, she had come West to make her home with her brother and to take charge of his motherless child. The brother had died in that evil time when the bottom was dropping out of Sunset. She had given the best years of her life to her niece; singlehanded she had fought a long fight with adverse circumstances and had won a modest victory. Now one can not live an utterly self-sacrificing life to no purpose, so Miss Mollie had a certain sweet dignity that came of much goodness, and a soul at peace with itself.

The Mountain House was a part of the niece's heritage. It was kept alive by chance tourists. Johnny was the regular, the star boarder, and frequently the only one, and at all times so much at home that he usually wiped the supper dishes. Mollie washed them. Johnny was the trusted man up at the Red Bird, the very right hand of a soulless corporation whose only symptoms of life were in its feet and even they were undeniably cold. He pulled down seventy dollars a month just as easy! With all this wealth pouring in upon him every thirty days, with money saved, too, and Mollie flitting in and out of those big bare rooms at the Mountain House, why, no wonder he was intent on matrimony!

That night after the dishes had been duly washed and as duly dried in the intervals between sundry breathless moments when Johnny's black curls and Mollie's golden head were very close together, they strolled out upon what had once been Sunset's long main street, past the houses that still fronted it and up the trail toward the Red Bird.

Miss Mollie sat in the doorway of the Mountain House in the warm twilight and watched them as they went slowly forward arm in arm. They brought back the sentiment of youth, and she shared vicariously in its romance. Yet there was a heartache scarcely stilled in the realization that the imperceptible gradations of time had swept her away from the morning world in which youth dwells; that for her, beginning to be visible down the pathway of the years, were the silences—the solitudes that she must before long enter alone.

The twilight deepened. The last vestige of color faded from the sky. The white cap of Brown's Peak sank into the gloom, merged with the blue of the heavens and was lost to sight. There was a footfall on the path as a tall shadow detached itself from the night, and Mr. Brown, with his dog Duffer at his heels, paused on the step. Seeing a woman in the doorway of the lighted office, he removed his hat.

“Evening,” he said.

“Won't you step in?” asked Miss Mollie, slipping aside her chair which blocked the entrance. “I guess you're Mr. Brown Johnny was telling us about at supper?” she added.

“Yes, ma'am.” Mr. Brown looked severe and even purposeful, but his voice held a shy deferential note.

“He's not used to women,” thought Miss Mollie.

From under the flapping brim of his hat Brown stole a covert glance in her direction. She was very good to look at, he decided, with her soft brown hair drawn smoothly back from her comely face, and her dark eyes that held just the hint of a sorrow lightly borne.

Subsequently he negotiated for one meal a day at the Mountain House. He elected that this meal should be supper, because he would then have the moral support of Mr. Severance's presence.

When he had tested it he found that Sunset yielded a superior article of peace. Save for Johnny, who passed his cabin twice a day, he was undisturbed. Usually it was Johnny's morning song that brought him awake,—Johnny on his way toward the gaping hole at the timber line with Mollie's farewell kiss sweet upon his lips. Yet Mr. Brown did not succumb to the charms of Sunset without a struggle. He told Duffer each morning:

“I guess we'll pull out of here to-morrow, old sport!”

But the to-morrows became a respectable division of time, and presently as a concession to some inherent love of accuracy Mr. Brown changed his formula.

“I guess we'll be leaving here along about day after to-morrow!”

But the days after to-morrow went to join the to-morrows, and Brown still lingered in Sunset.

Into this Eden, like another serpent, came Mr. Bunny, his hair slicked low across his forehead and tastefully roached back over one ear. He breathed an air of profound sophistication. Johnny and he met at the bench by the kitchen door where Mr. Bunny was bestowing certain deft touches to his toilet.

“Say, pardner, this million-dollar palace hotel seems to be mainly in the hands of the suffragettes, don't it?” he remarked.

Johnny surveyed him without favor.

“Huh!” he said, and scooped up a basin of water from the barrel. Mr. Bunny, not easily discouraged, waited.

“What's your name, pardner?” he presently asked.

“Severance,” said Johnny shortly.

“Say, I knowed a fellow of that name in the Klondike,—I'm a liar if I didn't. He was a card-player. We was awful intimate—”

“Huh!” said Johnny again. He was not impressed with Mr. Bunny nor Mr. Bunny's friend.

Mollie appeared at the window, but catching sight of Mr. Bunny she vanished into the inner regions of the Mountain House.

“Mama! mama!—what was that?” cried Mr. Bunny softly, in admiration.

“Look here!” said Johnny, wheeling on him. “You cut that out!”

“It's the climate, pardner. These here high altitudes braces a man up most amazin'——”

“The climate's all right, but you can get just as rank here as anywhere else,” warned Johnny. Mr. Bunny gave him a sidelong glance. Johnny completed his toilet in silence.

“Going in to supper now, Mr. Severance?” asked Mr. Bunny affably.

Johnny nodded, led the way around the building, in through the office, and on into the diningroom where sat Miss Mollie, inoffensive Mr. Brown and Mollie at supper. He presented Mr. Bunny with no little formality.

Mr. Bunny's company manners immediately developed one striking merit. They seemed to afford their fortunate possessor the greatest possible satisfaction and confidence. Also when you tapped Mr. Bunny you tapped an unfailing spring. Moreover he had a generous and withal a thoughtful nature, had Mr. Bunny, especially was it thoughtful.

“Miss Ferguson will try them pickles, Mr. Severance. Just chase the butter down this way, Mr. Brown,—Miss Mollie's aimin' her eye at it. Mr. Severance, 'low me to shoot a slice of bread on to your plate...” This and much more of a similar character in the interval of agreeable and easy conversation, the burden of which Mr. Bunny lightly sustained. And while he talked, his small wicked eyes, close-set under their low brows and of an indeterminable color, slid around in a furtive circle. They took in everything, but they came back and back to Mollie.

“Say, Denver, Albuquerque, Dawson, 'Frisco,—I've seen 'em all; and say, I've seen a lot of life, too,—and me only twenty-five. How many fellows do you reckon have been about as much as me? But I'm giving it to you straight when I say it's good to hit a place like this where you feel at home, and where you can wash out of a tin basin at the back door like you done at mother's!”

Johnny listened abashed to Mr. Bunny's easy flow of words. It might have occurred to him that this fascinating stranger never spoke of anybody but himself; that his own moods, emotions, ambitions, thoughts so called, occupied him entirely and to the exclusion of all else, for he moved in a world of men rock walled by his own towering egotism. It was wasted labor to try to change the drift of the conversation. Whatever was said instantly reminded Mr. Bunny of himself. At the most, one merely opened up fresh and inviting fields for him to enter and claim his place in the foreground.

After supper he cornered quiet Mr. Brown in the office. That gentleman's bad eye had attracted his attention, and he seized the first opportunity to ask Brown how he came by that scar, thus artfully framing a question that covered the eye as well.

“Knife slipped while I was picking my teeth,” said Brown, regarding him malevolently.

“Say, I thought you might have bit yourself accidental,” responded Mr. Bunny.

In the kitchen Johnny was talking earnestly with Mollie, as they washed and dried the supper dishes.

“Don't you have nothing to do with that fellow, Mollie——”

“Why, Johnny?”

“Well, mainly because he's no good. He's the rankest proposition I even stacked up' against, and I've seen 'em as rank as they make 'em.”

Mollie puckered her brows thoughtfully. She was fond of Johnny and they were engaged, but all the same she had the very human quality of disliking orders, and Johnny's voice smacked of command.

“I thought he was entertaining, and that he had nice table manners,” she said.

“Well, I didn't notice 'em if he had. I hate these smart geezers!”

“He was awful polite, Johnny.” She wished Johnny to be fair to the stranger; at the same time she felt affronted by his foolish jealousy.

“Fresh,” said Johnny, “if you call that being polite.”

No more was said then, but somehow when they walked up the trail there was this between them, and they walked farther apart than usual. They were silent, too, a good deal of the time. Moreover it was a short walk; but before they reached the hotel Johnny had returned to the vexed subject of Mr. Bunny and the treatment Mollie was to accord him.

“Mollie, you are not going to talk to that fellow any more, are you?”

“Certainly I shall talk to him. I am not going to be impolite just because you are,” rejoined Mollie, with a little toss of her head.

Johnny flushed hotly, then the color faded from his face.

“All right then, if you'd rather talk to him than me, you can, but I won't be here to listen to it—I can tell you that!”

They had reached the door by this time, and Mollie, holding her chin very high, said coldly:

“Good night, Mr. Severance,—I think I must go in. Thank you for your company.”

Johnny gasped, then he said politely:

“Good night, Miss Ferguson,” and turned away, while Mollie went up to her room with burning cheeks and smarting eyes.

But it was not until she was safe in bed that she shed a few surreptitious tears.

“He might have known... that I care more for his little finger—than for all the Mr. Bunnys in the world!” she whispered tremulously to herself under cover of the friendly darkness.

Mr. Bunny, for reasons of his own, remained in Sunset. He discovered that M. Ferguson desired to introduce water on her premises. She designed to have flowers, a kitchen garden and grass. This involved a half-mile of ditch. He let it be known that for a proper consideration he might be induced to betake himself to ditching, though he also let it be known that this was a pursuit he should never look back upon with any feeling even remotely approaching pride. He further gave M. Ferguson to understand that he had recently lifted a mortgage on his widowed mother's quarter-section back in Nebraska. This had taken his last cent. He drove a much better bargain in consequence, did artless Mr. Bunny.

To Johnny he had already explained that he had impoverished himself in Albuquerque; his attentions to a handsome brunette having been the immediate cause of his financial undoing. Later she had proved unworthy of his generosity. He was hitting the high places now mainly because of the throw-down she had given him. He indicated that this throw-down had been cruel and perfidious beyond words. Brown had heard the same story from Mr. Bunny's own authentic lips, but in his case Mr. Bunny had added:

“Say, I put my coin on the black. You watch me make my next play on the red. That ought to fetch a change of luck.”

Then one morning Johnny's song failed to rouse Mr. Brown, but its very absence at the accustomed hour brought him wide awake. He heard Johnny's step on the path, and looking from his window saw Johnny go by, his curly head bowed and his shoulders rounded.

Mr. Brown sat in his cabin door and considered the situation over his morning pipe. Subsequently he sought out Mr. Bunny, peacefully ditching, gun on hip. Not that Mr. Bunny was actually ditching; truth compels the statement that he was seated on a flat rock with his spade within easy reach. Mr. Brown addressed the ditcher:

“Ain't you finding this a mighty sedentary job?” he asked.

“Shucks! I've made big money in my time,—ten a day in the Klondike tending bar——”

“What you getting here?”

“A dollar fifty, and my board,” said Mr. Bunny sheepishly.

“Why, she's doing you—ain't she?” cried Brown. “Robbing you right along! No wonder you're warming them rocks. A dollar fifty to a high-priced man like you hardly pays for the trouble of drawing your wages!”

Mr. Bunny looked off, got up, dug his spade disconsolately into the bank, threw a couple of shovelfuls from him with disdain; and sat down once more. Brown regarded him earnestly.

“And your mother back in Nebraska on that quarter-section, like I heard you tellin' Miss Ferguson at supper last night, looking anxious to you to remit... and that handsome brunette down in Albuquerque that cost you such a pot of money.... Say, Mr. Bunny, you got to do some mighty close figurin', ain't you, to make both ends meet?”

“Just between ourselves, Brown, you can cut out the mother,—but I was giving it to you straight about the other.”

“Well, I see you got all the feelings of a high-priced man; it naturally fusses you to think how Miss Ferguson's taken advantage of you. Dollar fifty,—why, that ain't whisky money for an ambitious fellow like you.”

“You're right, it ain't,” said Mr. Bunny, shaking his head ominously. “I'm going to pull out of here soon. Say, Brown,—” he continued confidentially, “I could take her away from him—” and he nodded in the direction of the Mountain House. Mr. Brown understood he was referring to Mollie now. “Just as easy as nothing. All I got to do is just to crook my finger at her,—see?” said Mr. Bunny. “But pshaw! I don't marry. They none of 'em ketch me. I'll have my fun with a fair-looker, spend my money on her, but there ain't an ounce of matrimony in my system.” And into Brown's ears he poured a tale of triumphant sin, giving Mr. Brown to understand that he, Bunny, was a bee among the flowers.

Brown was viewing the gun on Bunny's manly hip with a wistful eye. It had been years since he had renounced such vanities. Bunny leaned over to pick up a stone.

“Say,—what in blazes you up to?” he cried, for Brown had deftly slipped the gun from its holster. He fell back a step and gave Bunny the benefit of his good eye. Mr. Bunny was instantly conscious of a cold feeling at the pit of his stomach. “Say, you give me back my gun!” And he began to bluster.

“Forget it!” said Mr. Brown softly. “If a man took that trail and kept moving, he'd be in Alvarado by to-morrow night——”

“Give me back my gun, Mr. Brown——”

“I never did believe in these here private irrigation projects,” said Brown. “And I don't believe you're the man to put this one through.” He drew back the hammer of the gun.

“Say—it's loaded, Mr. Brown—” cried Bunny. “Look out!”

“Of course it's loaded. I wouldn't insult you by thinking you packed an empty gun. You keep moving at a reasonable rate of speed and you can be counting the lamp-posts in Alvarado tomorrow night,—seven on Main Street, and four on Prairie Avenue. You're wasting your time here.... No,—you don't need to go down to the Mountain House—you can start here!”

“Say, she's owing me money, Mr. Brown. A man wants what lie's earned, don't he?” said Bunny meekly, but disposed to raise an issue.

“Of course he does,—but he don't want what he ain't earned.” Brown looked at him with weary petulance. “Ain't you open to a hunch?” The muzzle of the gun menaced Bunny, who fell back a step in consternation, ducked, turned and fled shamelessly.

Brown returned to his cabin feeling that he had permanently eliminated the fascinating Mr. Bunny, and evidences of a certain austere pleasure radiated from his damaged features. But though the hour arrived when Johnny Severance should have come striding down the path from the Red Bird, head thrown back and shoulders squared as he swung his cap and dinner pail, it brought no Johnny; and Brown, disturbed and wondering, set out alone for the straggle of buildings on the bench.

He found two anxious-faced women at the Mountain House; the eyes of each were red from much weeping, and he surmised that there had been a crisis—that his well-intentioned interference had been too long delayed—and he suffered a moment of intense humiliation. He had figured creditably in more than one strenuous human drama, but never before had he to reproach himself with being dilatory. It gave him a unique sensation.

Supper was eaten in dreary silence. At first Miss Mollie had attempted to talk to her guest, but her voice was forced and unnatural and now and again trailed off into what sounded very like a sob, while Mollie's big blue eyes were misted lakes of sorrow. In the presence of their grief Brown was stricken into speechless shyness. He felt that the feminine soul was a curious and an awesome thing; he stood close to it with trepidation. But he did not lack a certain deep integrity,—he would see this thing through to a finish.

After supper he hung around the office, where presently Miss Mollie joined him. He sensed it that his hostess was only anxious to have him go, yet he lingered, perturbed and ill at ease. At last he cleared his throat.

“I don't see nothing of Mr. Severance,” he remarked with diffidence, as one who had encroached on a forbidden subject.

The tears swiftly gathered in Miss Mollie's soft brown eyes.

“I'm afraid he's gone,” she said.

There was a pause. Brown followed a crack in the floor from the desk to the wall opposite and back again with his embarrassed glance.

“Anything happened?” he at length asked, and the very bluntness of his query threw him into a state of intense and painful confusion, but he gripped himself hard and went on. “She”—he jerked his thumb in the direction of the diningroom where Mollie could be heard clearing away the supper dishes—“she's feeling pretty bad,” he hazarded, and once more was stricken dumb.

“Yes, she's feeling awful bad, Mr. Brown. Johnny's gone. He sent down word—a good-by—from the Red Bird this afternoon, and said he was going.”

Brown considered.

“He should be fetched back,” he presently observed with conviction.

“Where is Mr. Bunny?” asked Miss Mollie, and her tone betrayed anxiety.

Brown flushed under his sunburn.

“He's left Sunset. He went sudden.”

“Did they—did he and Johnny meet?—was there trouble?” began Miss Mollie.

“No, ma'am. Bunny had his reasons for going. They looked good to him and nothing was holding him, so he just went. I seen him when he went. It looked like it come over him all at once that he had ought to go,” explained Mr. Brown considerately and at length.

“I am so glad! I was afraid that perhaps they had met.”

“Where's Johnny gone?” inquired Brown.

“We think to Alvarado.”

Mollie had appeared in the dining-room doorway and was listening, but Brown's back was turned toward her.

“What's to hinder my going there after him?” asked Brown. “I can produce an argument he'll listen to.” Unconsciously his hand rested on Mr. Bunny's gun.

“It's awful kind of you to suggest it, but perhaps you shouldn't go; it may make trouble for you,” said Miss Mollie. It was the habit of a lifetime with her to think of others.

“You're a good kind man!” cried Mollie fervently through her tears, advancing. “You tell him that I just hate and despise that Bunny.... I didn't mean anything I said.... I'm sorry—sorry!” She seized one of his hands in both of hers. “Oh, he must come back!—tell him to come back, Mr. Brown——”

“I'm aimin' to tell him just that,—and he'll come back all right,” Brown assured her.

“Do you think he will?—do you... do you?”

“I was never surer of anything in my life.”

Mollie relinquished his hand, and throwing her arms about his neck, kissed him. An instant later and she had buried her face on his shoulder and was sobbing aloud.

Mr. Brown's unhandsome face flushed scarlet. Never in all his varied experience had he known anything like this. Then his face grew white, and he shook as he had never shaken in the presence of danger, violence, or the risk of sudden death.

Johnny Severance had quitted the Red Bird and turned his face in the direction of Alvarado. Two years of perfect happiness had vanished in the cataclysm that had overwhelmed him and Mollie.

A sudden mist swam before his eyes. Well, she hadn't treated him right, but he hoped she would find peace,—he was man enough to wish no less. He must shape his own future out of the wreck she had made; though this didn't matter greatly, since he was sure life held nothing for him,—indeed, he rather gloated in the thought of an existence, bleak, purposeless and incomparably lonely,—and again the mist seemed to burn his very eyeballs, while it sent the gray valley and the line of purple peaks deep into the distance.

He kept the trail for Alvarado all that day and at nightfall went into camp. Necessity now drove him to the lunch he had brought away from the Red Bird. He choked over each mouthful, for Mollie's small deft hands had been busy here. He reflected bitterly that never again was this to be.

“It'll be up to some chuck-house cook to fill my dinner pail!” he murmured sadly. With the final mouthful he felt that he had destroyed the last link that bound him to the past.

Morning found him sorely tempted to pocket his pride and go back,—back to Mollie, his pumps at the Red Bird and the Mountain House; but he sternly repressed this ignoble weakness. No, sir! She had cast him off. Yet he sat a long time with his head bowed in his hands and watched the light flood the valley. Then again he took the trail. His steps lagged. Not that he was tired, but the cataclysm was somehow seeming less complete than it had seemed the day before.

He went forward, steadily resolute, with his chin sunk on his breast and his glance lowered. Suddenly he became aware that some one was coming along the trail toward him and looked to find himself face to face with Mr. Bunny. There was a strained moment, then Bunny, eying him askance, put out his hand.

“Why, how are you, pardner?” he said. Johnny ignored the hand. “Say, what's your grouch?” inquired Mr. Bunny in a tone of affected astonishment. Johnny gave him a look of scorn. “Oh, that,—well, see here, Mr. Severance, I ain't no plaster saint, but say, I'm on the level. Yes, sir,—I didn't interfere none between you and your girl——”

“Who said you did?” demanded Johnny, angry with himself for allowing such a thought to gain a place in Mr. Bunny's mind.

“Then why don't you shake hands?”

“I'm willing enough to shake hands,” responded Johnny sourly.

“You didn't look like you was,” said Bunny. There was a moment's silence. Mr. Bunny's original idea had been that Johnny had followed him with sinister intent; since this was evidently not the case, what was he doing here? While he was debating this point, a somewhat similar problem was occupying Johnny. He had supposed Bunny still at Sunset. “It's mighty agreeable to meet old friends, ain't it, Mr. Severance? You going on to Alvarado?”

Johnny signified that this was not unlikely.

“Say, when did you leave Sunset, pardner?” continued Bunny.

“Yesterday,” said Johnny briefly.

“Say, if we'd knowed what was in each other's minds we might have come away together,” observed Bunny.

“You going on to Alvarado?” inquired Johnny.

“Not immediate,” said Bunny hastily. “Yesterday I run into a old friend who's been doing a bit of prospecting. He's pulled down a grubstake. Say, I'm considering a proposition he's made me. He's back yonder a spell.” And Bunny nodded indefinitely.

“Well, so long!” said Johnny.

“So long, pardner,” responded Bunny. They shook hands and separated.

Mr. Bunny passed back along the trail and was presently lost to sight behind a gray fold of the hills. Johnny found a convenient boulder and sat down to consider this meeting from every point of view.

“I reckon he lied about that grub-stake,—I reckon he's going back to Sunset!” was his definite conclusion. “Honest, he's the most ambitious liar I ever listened to!”

He quitted his boulder and went forward, but very slowly now. Memories of Sunset, memories of Mollie, were tugging at his heart-strings. All at once, breaking in upon the silence in which he moved, he heard his name called, and turning, was again gladdened by the sight of Mr. Bunny, who was coming along the trail at a brisk run.

“Say, pardner,” he panted, when he had gained a place at Johnny's side, “would you be willing to help a fellow creature in distress? Oh, not me,—a fellow named Graham; a intimate friend of mine, and a fellow in the hardest sort of luck. It'd make a wooden Indian shed tears to hear his hard-luck story; and he's met with a accident. Say, you're a western man,—I reckon you wouldn't turn your back on no fellow being in real eighteen-carat distress the way Bob Graham is!”

“What's the matter of him?” asked Johnny, with a striking lack of interest.

“One thing, he's got a hurt leg; spraint it on these here rocks and he's sufferin' something awful. But what he's sufferin' in his spraint leg ain't a circumstance to what he's sufferin' in his mind. You bet you, that's what gets a fellow every time! I know, 'cause I know what I went through with when that brunette throwed me down in Albuquerque after getting all my coin. I don't pose as no blighted being, but say, it was agony—yes, sir, agony!”

“Is this the fellow you were telling me about first? Look here, Bunny, you began pleasant enough with a grub-stake, and now I'm hearing all about a spraint leg,” said Johnny.

“Well, what's to keep a man from having a grub-stake and a spraint leg simultaneous? You come with me, and I'll show you Bob Graham who's got both.”

“Huh!” said Johnny.

“I can't tell you all Bob's story, but there's a woman into it, his wife,—yes, sir. Say, talk about throw-downs! Why, he's got yours and mine beat to a pulp. Ain't it tough the way women do?—how they show you the high places and then give you the laugh? Say, Mr. Severance, there was reasons why I couldn't give it to you straight about Bob without consulting him. If you feel afraid of anything——”

“What of?” demanded Johnny quickly.

“Durned if I know, but some people are timider than others,” said Bunny, with an oblique glance.

“You show me this friend of yours,” said Johnny.

Mr. Bunny led the way back down the trail to the point where Johnny had previously seen him disappear. They climbed a hill and entered a small bottom. Here, prone on his back and gazing peacefully up at the hot sky, was a gentleman of singularly unprepossessing exterior. When aware that his solitude was being invaded he uttered sundry heartrending groans and fell to nursing his right leg, which was elaborately bandaged in strips torn from a blanket.

“Sh—” said Bunny, over his shoulder to Johnny. “Sh—ain't it pitiful?”

The groans were continued with increasing vigor.

“Bob!” whispered Mr. Bunny. “Bob,—old pardner!”

“Is that you, Bunny? I reckon I must have fell asleep,” said the sufferer weakly.

“Say, Bob, I want you should shake hands with Mr. Severance.”

Bob raised himself with apparent difficulty on one elbow, and extended his hand.

“How are you, Bob?” continued Mr. Bunny with anxious solicitude. “But I can see it's painin' you something awful!”

“Folks, I've spraint my leg,—mebby she's broke—” and Bob groaned.

“You want a doctor—” said Johnny. Mr. Bunny and the sufferer exchanged significant glances.

“Folks, it ain't my leg that's hurtin' me most,—it's here—” and Bob rested his hand on the bosom of his shirt.

“Stomach?” said Johnny innocently.

“Sh,—heart!” said Bunny quickly.

“My feelin's are raisin' hell inside of me. This spraint leg ain't nothin'.” But Mr. Graham groaned lustily. “Mebby if you two was to help me, I could manage to hobble to my shack.... No, stranger”—to Johnny, as they set out—“I don't want no doctor. He might set my leg, but he couldn't cure me. Folks, I'm hard hit where no pills can ever get to.”

They helped him back into the hills, but had Johnny been a little less disposed to confidence he might have doubted the integrity of that sprained leg, for Bob had a curious way of forgetting and then suddenly remembering it with many groans. If Johnny noticed this at all it only went to prove Mr. Bunny's statement that the mind of man was capable of furnishing a very superior article of suffering.

Mr. Graham's retreat was a shack set down in a grove of young pines. As far as Johnny could see, his grub-stake seemed to be in a convenient liquid form.

“Put the bottle down beside me, Bunny, where I'll have it handy,” said Bob, when they had helped him to his bed on the floor in a corner of the room.

“He needs a stimulant,” explained fluent Mr. Bunny. “When you're sufferin' like Bob is, you got to take a stimulant.”

“Folks, I've knocked around a heap,” said Bob. “I've drunk whatever can be got through the bung-hole of a barrel or out of the neck of a bottle; but when a man's really sufferin', whisky's got all the other souse skinned a mile!”

“What did I tell you?” asked Bunny of Johnny, with a glance of commiseration.

“Besides, I don't have no doctor from Alvarado,—my enemy's got the everlasting drop on me, that's why! If my leg's spraint she can stay spraint—if she's broke she can stay broke!” added Bob with resolute stoicism.

“You certainly talk like a man, Bob!” said Bunny admiringly.

“If I could only jest see my child—” said Bob, and passed the back of his hand before his eyes.

“It's them domestic feelin's that's hurtin' him so,” whispered Bunny to Johnny. Aloud he said: “I'm in favor of tellin' Mr. Severance just how you stand, Bob,—why you can't have no doctor.”

“Kin you vouch for Mr. Severance?”

“Of course I can vouch for him. Ain't I told you he was a hundred per cent, all right?” cried Bunny warmly. He fixed Johnny with his shifty glance and went on.

“When I first knowed Bob it was in Ogden. He was a residin' snug and makin' a good livin', ownin' a saloon. There was no business man there thought higher of. He had a nice trade and plenty of friends because he was always aimin' to please. He was a married man, was Bob, and had a wife and kid.... Say, when you know what a woman can do to a man! You bet you if I get many more throw-downs like I got in Albuquerque I'm going to cut 'em out! Well, Bob had the happiest home you about ever see. He owned a piano and a fast-steppin' buggy horse,—and talk about your family man! I often says to him, I says, 'Say, Bob, this looks awful good to me and I don't know but you are to be envied, yet it comes over me, ain't a man takin' long chances when he centers all his happiness on a woman like this?' I says, 'Say, it's mighty nice to set here in your parlor and listen to Mrs. Bob hit the hurdy-gurdy, but,' I says, 'are you sure of her?—as sure of her as you are of yourself?'

“Say, I must have had a hunch,—for along comes a Boston man. Say, she was fascinated! Here was steady-goin' old Bob doin' a nice business and never dreamin' that a spider was gettin' ready to drop into his sirup! Well, one day Mrs. Bob and the kid were missin'. Next Bob heard she was up at that stylish place in Nevada where the divorces come from. Bob just sacrificed everything. He wanted his boy back. He was willin' to pass the mother up if she felt like that, but he wanted the boy. Well, say, he followed 'em from place to place, and finally the Boston man come here and bought the Pay Streak over at Alvarado. Bob followed 'em, but the Boston man had the sheriff fixed. He showed Bob the outside of the town—that's what he done!”

Johnny had heard of the Boston man and the purchase of the Pay Streak. He permitted his glance to stray in Bob's direction. He had not liked Mr. Graham's looks from the first, and he was liking them even less as time went on.

“I don't care a cuss for nothin' but the boy,” said Bob the business man. “She can stick to her millionaire,—she's throwed me down,—but I want to see the boy just once and kiss him on his little lips, and say good-by and get out. Folks, I know when I been hit by the trolley.”

“Ain't it pitiful?—and him with his spraint leg?” murmured Mr. Bunny. “Just wantin' to say good-by to his kid before he fans it on out of here.”

“It ain't much to ask,” said Bob gloomily. “And yet I dunno as I shall ever see him again, or hear his sweet little voice call me daddy like he done in Ogden. I reckon they've learnt him to call the Boston man that afore this.”

“Ain't that heart-breakin' for you?” cried Mr. Bunny.

“If he could just be fetched out here so I could kiss him good-by, I'd feel a heap better, folks. But I dassant go into Alvarado. And you don't go there either—they'd spot you for my friend.”

“Ain't that a frame-up for you, pardner?” Bunny appealed to Johnny. “And yet nothing could be easier according to what Bob's told me than to fetch the kid out here. His nurse trundles him to the Pay Streak every morning in his little buggy when his imitation daddy goes up there,—see? And she trundles him back alone,—it's a good mile.—Say, Bob, I wished I could help you!”

“I only wants to kiss him just once or mebby twict,” said Bob mournfully.

A brief pause ensued. Johnny moved uneasily in his seat. He felt curiously committed to Mr. Bunny and his afflicted friend. For some reason, which he obscurely sensed, it was apparently up to him to produce the child for that farewell kiss on which Mr. Graham's happiness seemed so largely to depend.

“I hate to see a western man downed!” resumed Bunny. “Say, Mr. Severance, when I met Bob last night I told him about you—I'm a liar if I didn't!—I says to Bob, I says, 'Say, Bob, we don't want no yearlin's in this.' I says, 'There's a fellow back yonder I'd give a heap to have with us.' I wouldn't insult you by offerin' money for the job!” concluded Bunny with generous enthusiasm.

“No,” said Johnny hastily. “I ain't lookin' to earn no money that way.” He appeared entirely credulous, since he felt it to be his best protection, but he was deeply regretting the alacrity with which he had followed Mr. Bunny.

“There weren't many husbands like Bob here,—that gentle and considerate and always aimin' to please. Say, pardner, you take it straight from me,—it ain't the man any more, it's the bank roll the dolls are after! That Boston man was a ingrate,—I told you so, Bob,—you remember?—I says, 'Bob, he acts white on the surface, but he's a ingrate all the same!—and I hate a ingrate!' Say, I suppose it's because I'm a conservative.”

After tying himself up in this verbal knot, Bunny heaved a sigh.

Johnny glanced about him. He was meditating flight. The ideal parent had sniffed audibly at Bunny's moving peroration.

“Sh—” said Bunny softly. “Ain't it rank, the affection a man feels for his own child?—how it kin make him suffer and suffer?”

Certain sounds issued from Bob's vexed interior which were supposed to be indicative of the anguish of soul that shook him.

“Say, Bob,” said Bunny, “I'm in favor of lettin' Mr. Severance in on this with us. I got a heap of confidence in him,—and if it's agreeable to you I'm willin' he should fetch your child out here. We'll fix it this way: He'll be on the watch when the nurse and the Boston man takes the kid up to the Pay Streak, like you say they do every mornin',—see?—he'll wait until she gets half-way back to Alvarado, then he meets her strollin' casual along like he was goin' up to the mine. He snatches the kid out of his little buggy and skips with him, does Mr. Severance. I'll be hid back in the hills a ways and when he gets to me I'll take the kid off his hands—see?”

But Johnny did not see. He suddenly placed his veto on this ingenious scheme.

“What!” cried Mr. Bunny in hurt astonishment. “You mean you ain't with us, pardner?—after we've took you into our confidence like this... and you a western man?”

“No,” said Johnny. “I never had no luck in pickin' up strange babies. Seems there's something in the way I take hold of 'em that makes 'em holler.”

“And say, you call yourself a western man?” said Bunny in a tone midway between pity and contempt.

“I'm awful sorry,—honest! He's been treated tough all right.” And Johnny glanced inquiringly at Bob.

“And you don't put out your hand to help a fellow creature up who's down?” demanded Bunny. “Here you go wormin' your way into other folk's confidence and then you give 'em the laugh,—you're a peach of a fellow!” The glance of his shifty eyes became suddenly wicked and vindictive. “Say, you'd ought to be beat up some,—a reptile like you!”

“I'm in favor of givin' Mr. Severance another chance to show there's good stuff in him, Bunny,” said Bob. “I'm in favor of offerin' him money for the job. What's a few dollars to come between a parent and his love for his child?”

“What's your price, pardner?” asked Bunny.

“No,” said Johnny. “If I seen a way open to help Mr. Graham I wouldn't want money for doin' him a good turn,—honest I wouldn't.” He quitted his seat.

“Say, you set still!” warned Bunny menacingly. “We ain't through with you. We've took your measure, and your dimensions don't suit!”

Johnny was unarmed, while Mr. Bunny wore a gun on his hip, a spare weapon he had borrowed from Graham to replace the one of which Brown had despoiled him. He half drew it, then, changing his mind, he snatched up a stick of fire-wood. Johnny backed hastily into a corner.

“Shoot his feet out from under him, Bunny!” advised Bob.

“I use a stick on snakes!” Bunny heaved up his club.

But just here a notable interruption occurred. The door of the shack yielded to a man's hand, and swunk back plainly disclosing Brown's gaunt figure.

Bob, in the exigencies of the moment, forgetting his sprained leg, sprang to his feet, while Bunny dropped his stick and reached for his gun. Indeed, the motion being made nimbly, his fingers even touched it. They did no more. There was a shot and he emitted a howl of anguish. Simultaneously with Bunny, Bob had reached for his weapon with confidence and speed, for in certain select circles he enjoyed something of a reputation as a gun-fighter; but he was no more fortunate than his friend. He was quick, but Brown was quicker. His hand traveled with the speed of light. Apparently he had no use for sights. He pointed his gun as casually as a man points his finger at an object and with the same instinctive accuracy. In this particular instance Bob was the object.

“You travel!” said Brown to Johnny, who backed from the shack. Brown lingered to say a few fervent words. When he was gone, Bunny glanced at Bob, who was cursing while he nursed a shattered wrist; he himself was shot in the shoulder.

“Say, it was a man named Brown—” said he weakly.

Johnny and his rescuer moved rapidly off in the direction of the trail.

“It was awful unexpected the way you showed up,” said Johnny. He glanced at Brown, dazed and wondering. “Why, I didn't think you were within thirty miles of here... you've got the full use of your two hands! You've been considerable of a man in your day,—and I wouldn't recommend no one to fool with your remains——”

“Was you hunting trouble, Johnny? I seen that fellow with the tied-up leg sentenced two years ago for a hold-up he'd pulled off in Alvarado. Incidental I'd like to ask you did you believe what they told you about his wife and child? They were aimin' to use you in a kidnaping scheme. Young man, they say a fool's born every minute. I reckon you arrived punctual on the clock tick all right.”

“You don't think I believed 'em, Mr. Brown—honest?” protested Johnny.

“They weren't taking chances—they were willin' to pass them along to you. It looked like you'd feed right out of their hands, sonny!”

“I couldn't see no other way out of it. Where are we going now, Mr. Brown?”

“To Sunset.”

“I can't go back there,—honest, I can't!”

“Why not?”

“Well,—just because I can't. She—Mollie—” began Johnny doggedly, and paused abruptly.

“Naturally she's feeling some annoyed the way you've acted, but if you go back humble... Look here,—you don't know the first thing about a woman's love. It don't go by merit. Just look at a woman,—take her as a mother,—it's a boy, or a girl, or it's twins,—and she's there with her love. She never makes a kick, not she! That boy, or that girl, or them twins, suit her apparently down to the ground. It's pretty much the same when it's a case of man. You come along and you're what she loves; not because you're any good—which you ain't—but you're what life's offerin' her and it's up to her to make the best of her chances. Does she notice any rake-off when she sizes you up? Nope, she don't. It's her nature to make mistakes and have poor judgment. She just loves you because you happen to be you. That there's a sixty dollar a month limit to the game you'll play, don't bother her none, for she's got a heap more courage than sense; she takes her fightin' chance. She's ready to believe in the luck you'll never taste, and through it all think you're a good man but unfortunate.”

“I wonder feeling that way about women, you ain't never married,” said Johnny.

“I respect 'em too highly. But if I ever had any idea of that kind, I wouldn't be like you, young man! I'd never go further than the Mountain House,—M. Ferguson, Proprietor.”

It was a week later. A crescent moon swung low in the heavens and lighted up the trail that led past Brown's cabin. Its faint radiance showed Johnny and his Mollie walking very close together, as was their wont, while they talked in ecstatic whispers in the intervals of tender silences that brought them dim night sounds from the valley below.