The Forfeit (10 page)

He hesitated. But the younger man seemed to have no similar scruples.

"The gang my brother ran."

Bud nodded.

"Some of 'em got clear away-that time."

"And you figure after giving things time to get forgotten they've gathered up a crowd of toughs and started in on this district?"

"It seems that way."

"How?"

"System," Bud declared sharply. "They're takin' a steady toll of us, an' other folks in the district. We trailed 'em to the hills, an'-lost 'em. Say, if we don't handle 'em it means--"

"Something like ruin for the-Obar."

Jeff's manner was shorn of any equivocation. He spoke with almost ruthless force, but the coldness of tone was incomparable with the steely light in his blue eyes.

After a moment's silence he turned away. He stood looking back over the trail he had just left, and Bud regarded his keen profile, waiting. He felt there was nothing more for him to say at the moment.

At last the other turned in his quick, decided fashion as the sound of the women's voices reached them from within the parlor.

"Will you stop and eat with us?" he asked bluntly.

Bud shook his head.

"Not now, Jeff, boy. This is your home-coming."

"Yes. Well, I'll get around your place to-morrow morning, Bud. We can make big talk then."

* * *

A long day of anxiety and fevered apprehension merged into a night of terror. It was the outcome of a conviction that was irresistible. The shadow of disaster was marching hard upon her heels. Nor had she the power to avoid it.

As night came on Elvine remained alone in her twilit bedroom. She had no desire to come into contact with the servants, she had no desire for human companionship of any sort. So, with the fading light, she betook herself to the bedroom.

But there was no relief. It was haunted to-night, teeming with the fancies of a dreading imagination. It seemed to her like the cell of a condemned prisoner.

The day had passed heavily, drearily. Every moment of it had been filled with the thought that Jeff was on his way to Orrville. On his way to meet Dug McFarlane. On his way to meet the one man in whose hands her whole fate lay. He alone knew the source of the ten thousand dollars which she had carried back to her paternal home as the net result of her first marriage. He alone knew it to be the price of the blood of men, amongst whom was the twin brother of her present husband.

Memory was alive, and full of a poignant torture. It brought back to her the scene when she had driven her first husband to help her to the money she had desired to possess. He had spoken, in his horror and anger, of "blood money," of "Judas," and she would not hear. She had derided him, she had lashed him with the scorn of an unbridled tongue, she had turned upon him in her selfish craving, without a thought of any principle.

Now she understood what she had done, but she only understood because of the threat which overshadowed her. It was no spiritual awakening. It was again the self in her, threatened in its desires as a result of her earlier wanton actions. Her motives, even the picture of the carnage in that hidden valley, which came back to her unbidden, had no power to add to the hopelessness of her feelings. Every emotion was wrapped in the thought that she was about to be robbed of all the fruits of the one great passion of her life.

She had one desire now, one motive in life only. It was the man she had married. The man she had designed to marry for the station and wealth he could offer her, and who had almost instantly become the centre of her whole life. Nothing of any worldly consideration counted any longer. There was nothing could interest her of which he did not occupy the centre of the focus. Self dominated still, but it was a more human type of self, which had, perhaps, some rightful claim on human sympathy.

The shadows grew, and the wide airy room was filled with a hundred added terrors which claimed reality in the troubled brain. The silence of the world about her became a threat. The darkening of the cloudless sky beyond the open window. She sat on, refusing to invoke the aid of lamp-light to banish the gathering legions of her dread. She knew it was impossible to banish them.

Oh, she had no physical fear of the world about her. What was there to fear? Did she not know it all? Had she not lived it all before? The two wide open windows invited her. She moved to one of them, and drew a chair so that she could rest upon the sill and gaze out into the space so perfectly jeweled. And the cool night air fanned her cheeks, and seemed to relieve the fever that was raging behind her hot eyes.

The morrow. There was no other concern with her now but-the morrow. To-morrow Jeff would return. To-morrow she would know the worst, she would know if the purpose of Fate were for or against her. Oh, that to-morrow! And in the meantime there were interminable hours of darkness to endure, when sleep was impossible. And after that the daylight, when she must fear every eye that was turned in her direction, when every moment brought nearer the possibility of the end for her of all things in the world which mattered.

The night wore on. Midnight came and passed. She had not moved again. Her straining eyes had watched the starry groups as they set beyond the horizon. There was no moon to create shadows upon the wide, rolling pasture before her. Everything was in shadow, just as her every thought was similarly enwrapped. There was no relief anywhere.

Once she heard a sound that set her jarred nerves hammering. It was a distant sound, and, to her fancy, it was the rapid beat of horse's hoofs sweeping across the wide valley. But it died out. She had been caught by the thought of the possibility of her husband's return, suddenly, in the night. She pictured for one brief instant the headlong race of the man to charge her with the crime of his brother's life.

She saw that keen, stern face with its cold blue eyes and the grimly tightened lips. She had seen some such expression there before, and she knew there were depths within his soul which she had never probed, and hoped that she might never have to probe.

It was the mystery of these unknown depths which had inspired her passion. It was because of that cognizance of something unusual, profound, in his personality that he had first become so completely desirable. Then as she grew to know him, so she found she knew him less, and desired to know him more. Her love and worship of him was of the primitive. It was such as is the love of all women when inspired by an emotion not untouched by fear.

So, when the sounds of hoof-beats broke the night silence, she became panic-stricken, because such a return, at such an hour, could have but one meaning.

Then the sounds passed, and her nerves steadied, and presently a stirring night breeze rustled the lank grass. It came over the plain toward her. It reached her window and fanned her cheeks with its chill breath. Then it passed, sighing round an angle of the house. Then, in its wake, came the plaintive dole of a scavenging coyote. The combination, to her fancy, was an echo of her feelings. It was the sigh of despair, and the cry of a lost soul.

Presently the drowse of utter weariness descended upon her. The dread of thought remained heavily overshadowing, but a certain distortion displayed the reaching of limits beyond which human power could not go, even in suffering. It was a merciful nature asserting itself. Her eyes closed, slowly, gently, with a drowsy helplessness. Once her elbow slipped from the sill of the window and awoke her. A somnolent thought that she would go to bed passed dully through her mind. But she did not act upon it. She propped her head upon her hand once more, and, in a moment, everything was forgotten.

She awoke with a start. There was no drowse in her wakefulness now. Her eyes were wide, and her thoughts alert. The sensation of a blow, a light, unforceful blow was still tingling through her nerves. The blow, it seemed, had fallen upon her forehead, and she thrust a hand up mechanically to the spot. But the action yielded her no enlightenment. There was no pain, no sign.

She peered through the open window and realized that the moon had risen. She stared at it, and presently it occurred to her that she must have slept, and, by the position of the moon above the horizon, for at least an hour.

Then her thoughts returned to the blow which had awakened her, and the conclusion followed that it must have been the result of the half-blind flight of one of those great winged beetles.

She closed the window abruptly. She closed the second one. Then, having drawn the curtains, she fumbled for the matches and lit the candles upon her dressing bureau. It was her intention to search for the intruding beetle, and then retire.

But her search terminated abruptly. It terminated even as it began. That which had struck her was lying almost at her feet upon the soft rug on which she stood, and within a yard of where she had been sitting. It was a piece of paper tied about a small ball of soil.

She stared down at it for some startled moments. The effects of her dread were still upon her, and they set up a sort of panic which made her fearful of touching the missile. But it could not remain there uninspected. There could be no thought of retiring without learning the meaning of what lay there on the floor.

Gingerly she stooped with a candle in her hand. She stooped lower, but making no attempt to touch the thing which had disturbed her. The candle revealed a folded sheet of white paper. A string bound it round the rooted portion of a grass tuft.

After a few moments she reached out and picked it up. The next moment she was standing erect at her bureau, and with a pair of scissors she severed the string and dropped the grass tuft to the floor.

The paper was folded and thumb-marked by dirty hands. With shaking fingers and tense nerves she deliberately unfolded it.

It was a note, and she read it eagerly.

"You sold the lives of men for a price. You had it your way then. We're goin' to have our way now. You'll pay for that deal the only way we know."

* * * * * *

Elvine sat watching the scenes of the work of the range. The men were returning from distant points making for the ranch house where their evening meal was awaiting them at the bunkhouse. Teams were moving toward the barns, and barn-hands were watering those which had already returned. There was a general stir everywhere. Certain stock was being corralled and hayed for the night. In the hay corral men were busy cutting and hauling feed. There was no loneliness, no solitude. The business of so great an enterprise as the Obar Ranch involved many hands, and seemingly endless work.

But Elvine watched these things without interest. In her present state of mind they meant nothing to her, they could mean nothing. She was waiting, waiting in a perfect fever for the home-coming of her husband.

Strangely, too, she was not without a glimmer of hope. Somehow the belief had taken possession of her that had Jeff learned anything of her story he must have been home before this. It seemed to her that he must have flung every consideration to the winds, and rushed in fevered haste to denounce her as the murderess of his twin brother.

The mysterious note which had been flung in through her open window had left her sleepless for the rest of the night, but, even so, now, in the broad light of day, it was only relatively alarming. The other terror overwhelmed it.

The sun was already tinting the hilltops with ruddy, golden hues. The frigid snow-caps no longer wore their sheen of alabaster. There was a golden radiance everywhere, a suggestion of a perfect peace, such as the woman felt could never again find place in her heart.

She turned her eyes from the splendor of the scene in silent protest. The green of the wide-spreading valley, even the dark purple shadows of the lower mountain slopes were better in harmony with her mood. But even these she denied in her nervous irritation, and again, and yet again, her searching gaze was flung out to the northwest along the trail over which she knew her husband must come.

The waiting seemed endless. And the woman's heart literally stood still when at last she detected an infinitesimal flurry of dust away on the far distance of the trail. A mad desire surged through her to flee for hiding to those vast purple solitudes she knew to lie in the heart of the hills.

She remained where she was, however. She stirred not a muscle. She was powerless to do so. What, what had the coming of the man for her? It was the one absorbing question which occupied her whole brain and soul.

The dust flurry grew to a long trail in the wake of a horseman. In five minutes he stood out ahead of it, clear to the eye. In ten his identity was distinguishable. And, presently he rode swiftly at a gallop past the ranch buildings and drew up before the house.

The rack of that moment was superlative. The woman's hands clenched and her finger nails dug into the soft flesh of her palms. There was no greeting upon her lips. She only had power to stare; her wide beautiful eyes were searching the face of the man she loved, searching it as the criminal in the dock might search the face of the judge about to pass sentence.

Her tongue was ready for its release. Pent words lay deep in her soul for an outpouring at the lightest sign. But these things were dependent, dependent upon the reading she found in the man's eyes.

The horse stood drooping at the termination of its effort. The man sprang from the saddle. A barn-hand took the beast away to its stable. Elvine's tongue remained almost cleaving to the roof of her mouth.