Part 10 (1/2)

”Go on.”

”This morning we saw the same posse skirting through the valley and knew that they were on the old trail. Dan sent Gregg over the hills and rode Vic's horse down so that the posse would mistake him, and he could lead them out of the way. I was afraid, terribly, I was afraid that if the posse got close and began shooting Dan would--”

She stopped; her eyes begged them to understand.

”Go on,” said Lee Haines, shuddering slightly. ”I know what you mean.”

”But I watched him ride down the slope,” she cried joyously, ”and I saw the posse close on him--almost on top of him when he reached the valley.

I saw the flash of their guns. I saw them shoot. I wasn't afraid that Dan would be hurt, for he seems to wear a charm against bullets--I wasn't much afraid of that, but I dreaded to see him turn and go back through that posse like a storm. But--” she caught both hands to her breast and her bright face tilted up--”even when the bullets must have been whistling around him he didn't look back. He rode straight on and on, out of view, and I knew”--her voice broke with emotion--”oh, Buck, I knew that he had won, and I had won; that he was safe forever; that there was no danger of him ever slipping back into that terrible other self; I knew that I'd never again have to dream of that whistling in the wind; I knew that he was ours--Joan's and mine.”

”By G.o.d,” broke out Buck, ”I'm happier than if you'd found a gold mine, Kate. It don't seem no ways--but if you seen that with your own eyes, it's possible true. He's changed.”

”I've been almost afraid to be happy all these years,” she said, ”but now I want to sing and cry at the same time. My heart is so full that it's overflowing, Buck.”

She brushed the tears away and smiled at them.

”Tell me all about yourselves. Everything. You first, Lee. You've been longer away.”

He did not answer for a moment, but sat with his head fallen, watching her thoughtfully. Women had been the special curse in Lee Haines' life; they had driven him to the crime that sent him West into outlawry long years before; through women, as he himself foreboded, he would come at last to some sordid, petty end; but here sat the only one he had loved without question, without regret, purely and deeply, and as he watched her, more beautiful than she had been in her girlhood, it seemed, as he heard the fitful laughter of Joan outside, the old sorrow came storming up in him, and the sense of loss.

”What have I been doing?” he murmured at length. He shrugged away his last thoughts. ”I drifted about for a while after the pardon came down from the governor. People knew me, you see, and what they knew about me didn't please them. Even today Jim Silent and Jim Silent's crew isn't forgotten. Then don't look at me like that, Kate; no, I played straight all the time---then I ran into Buck and he and I had tried each other out, we had at least one thing in common”--here he looked at Buck and they both flushed--”and we made a partners.h.i.+p of it. We've been together five years now.”

”I knew you could break away, Lee. I used to tell you that.”

”You helped me more than you knew,” he said quietly.

She smiled and then turned to escape him. ”And now you, Buck?”

”Since then we've made a bit of coin punching cows and we've blown it in again prospecting. Blown it in? Kate, we've shot enough powder to lift that mountain yonder but all we've got is color. You could gild the sky with what we've seen but we haven't washed enough dust to wear a hole in a tissue-paper pocket. I'll tell you the whole story. Lee packs a jinx with him. But--Haines, did you ever see a lion as big as that?”

The dimness of evening had grown rapidly through the room while they talked and now the light from the door was far less than the glow of the fire. The yellow flicker picked out a dozen pelts stretching as rugs on the floor or hanging along the wall; that to which Buck pointed was an enormous skin of a mountain lion stretched sidewise, for if it had been hung straight up a considerable portion of the tail must have dragged on the floor. Buck went to examine it. Presently he exclaimed in surprise and he pa.s.sed his fingers over it as though searching for something.

”Where was it shot, Kate? I don't find nothin' but this cut that looks like his knife slipped when he was skinnin'.”

”It was a knife that killed it.”

”What!”

”Don't ask me about it; I see the picture of it in my dreams still. The lion had dragged the trap into a cave and Bart followed it. Dan went in pus.h.i.+ng his rifle before him, but--when he tried to fire it jammed.”

”Yes?” they cried together.

”Don't ask me the rest!”

They would hardly have let her off so easily if it had not been for the entrance of Joan who had come back on account of the darkness. Black Bart went promptly to a corner of the hearth and lay down with his head on his paws and the little girl sat beside him watching the fire, her head leaning wearily on his shoulder. Kate went to the door.

”It's almost night,” she said. ”Why isn't he here?”

”Buck, they couldn't have overtaken--”

She started. ”Dan?”