Part 27 (2/2)
With a slight, listening smile he gave himself up to the intoxication of the moment, feeling the pressure of her body soft against his arm.
The reins which hung loose suddenly jerked through his fingers and the mare fell cras.h.i.+ng to her knees. She was down before he knew it, head forward, and then with a quivering subsidence, p.r.o.ne in a tangle of torn harness. He urged her up with a jerked rein, she made a struggling effort, but fell back, and a groan, singularly human in its pain, burst from her. The wagon behind pounded almost on them, the mules crowding against each other. Daddy John's voice rising in a cracked hail. Courant and Leff came up from the rear, splas.h.i.+ng through the river.
”What's happened?” said the former.
”It's Bess,” said David, his face pallid with contrition. ”I hope to G.o.d she's not hurt. Up, Bess, there! Up on your feet, old girl!”
At her master's voice the docile brute made a second attempt to rise, but again sank down, her sides panting, her head strained up.
Leff leaped off his horse.
”d.a.m.n her, I'll make her get up,” he said, and gave her a violent kick on the ribs. The mare rolled an agonized eye upon him, and with a sudden burst of fury he rained kick after kick on her face.
David gave a strange sound, a pinched, thin cry, as if wrung from him by unbearable suffering, and leaped over the wheel. He struck Leff on the chest, a blow so savage and unexpected that it sent him staggering back into the stream, where, his feet slipping among the stones, he fell sprawling.
”Do that again and I'll kill you,” David cried, and moving to the horse stood over it with legs spread and fists clinched for battle.
Leff scrambled to his knees, his face ominous, and Courant, who had been looking at the mare, apparently indifferent to the quarrel, now slipped to the ground.
”Let that hound alone,” he said. ”I'm afraid it's all up with Bess.”
David turned and knelt beside her, touching her with hands so tremulous he could hardly direct them. His breath came in gasps, he was shaken and blinded with pa.s.sion, high-pitched and nerve-wracking as a woman's.
Leff rose, volleying curses.
”Here you,” Courant s.h.i.+fted a hard eye on him, ”get out. Get on your horse and go,” then turning to Bess, ”d.a.m.n bad luck if we got to lose her.”
Leff stood irresolute, his curses dying away in smothered mutterings.
His skin was gray, a trickle of blood ran down from a cut on his neck, his face showed an animal ferocity, dark and lowering as the front of an angry bull. With a slow lift of his head he looked at Susan, who was still in the wagon. She met the glance stonily with eyes in which her dislike had suddenly crystallized into open abhorrence. She gave a jerk of her head toward his horse, a movement of contemptuous command, and obeying it he mounted and rode away.
She joined the two men, who were examining Bess, now stretched motionless and uttering pitiful sounds. David had the head, bruised and torn by Leff's kicks, on his knees, while Courant with expert hands searched for her hurt. It was not hard to find. The left foreleg had been broken at the knee, splinters of bone penetrating the skin. There was nothing to do with Bess but shoot her, and Courant went back for his pistols, while Daddy John and the doctor came up to listen with long faces. It was the first serious loss of the trip.
Later in the day the rain stopped and the clouds that had sagged low with its weight, began to dissolve into vaporous lightness, float airily and disperse. The train debouched from the gorge into one of the circular meadows and here found Leff lying on a high spot on the ground, his horse cropping the gra.s.s near him. He made no remark, and as they came to a halt and began the work of camping, he continued to lie without moving or speaking, his eyes fixed on the mountains.
These slowly unveiled themselves, showing in patches of brilliant color through rents in the mist which drew off lingeringly, leaving filaments caught delicately in the heights. The sky broke blue behind them, and clarified by the rain, the shadows brimmed high in the clefts. The low sun shot its beams across the meadow, leaving it untouched, and glittering on the remote, immaculate summits.
In exhaustion the camp lay resting, tents unpitched, the animals nosing over the gra.s.s. David and Daddy John slept a dead sleep rolled in blankets on the teeming ground. Courant built a fire, called Susan to it, and bade her dry her wet skirts. He lay near it, not noticing her, his glance ranging the distance. The line of whitened peaks began to take on a golden glaze, and the shadows in the hollow mounted till the camp seemed to be at the bottom of a lake in which a tide of some gray, transparent essence was rising.
”That's where Lucy's gone,” he said suddenly without moving his head.
Susan's eyes followed his.
”Poor Lucy!” she sighed.
”Why is she poor?”
”Why?” indignantly. ”What a question!”
”But why do you call her poor? Is it because she has no money?”
”Of course not. Who was thinking of money? I meant she was unfortunate to run away to such a life with a half-breed.”
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