Part 29 (2/2)
The machinery of action stopped as though by the breaking of a spring.
Their watches ticked off a few seconds of mind paralysis in which there was no expectancy or motive power, all action inhibited. Sight was all they used for those seconds. Leff spoke first, the only one among them whose thinking process had not been snapped:
”If you keep on shouting for me to do your errands, I'll show you”--he s.n.a.t.c.hed up the gun and brought it to his shoulder with a lightning movement--”I'll send you where you can't order me round--you and this d--d ------ here.”
The inhibition was lifted and the three men rushed toward him. Daddy John struck up the gun barrel with a tent pole. The charge pa.s.sed over David's head, spat in the water beyond, the report crackling sharp in the narrow ravine. David staggered, the projection of smoke reaching out toward him, his hands raised to ward it off, not knowing whether he was hurt or not.
”That's a great thing to do,” he cried, dazed, and stubbing his foot on a stone stumbled to his knees.
The two others fell on Leff. Susan saw the gun ground into the dust under their trampling feet and Leff go down on top of it. Daddy John's tent pole battered at him, and Courant on him, a writhing body, grappled and wrung at his throat. The doctor came running from the trees, the hammer in his hand, and Susan grabbed at the descending pole, screaming:
”You're killing him. Father, stop them. They'll murder him.”
The sight of his Missy clinging to the pole brought the old man to his senses, but it took David and the doctor to drag Courant away. For a moment they were a knot of struggling bodies, from which oaths and sobbing breaths broke. Upright he shook them off and backed toward the bank, leaving them looking at him, all expectant. He growled a few broken words, his face white under the tan, the whole man shaken by a pa.s.sion so transforming that they forgot the supine figure and stood alert, ready to spring upon him. He made a movement of his head toward Leff.
”Why didn't you let me kill him?” he said huskily.
It broke the tension. Their eyes dropped to Leff, who lay motionless and unconscious, blood on his lips, a slip of white showing under his eyelids. The doctor dropped on his knees beside him and opened his s.h.i.+rt. Daddy John gave him an investigating push with the tent pole, and David eyed him with an impersonal, humane concern. Only Susan's glance remained on Courant, unfaltering as the beam of a fixed star.
His savage excitement was on the ebb. He pulled his hunting s.h.i.+rt into place and felt along his belt for his knife, while his broad breast rose like a wave coming to its breakage then dropped as the wave drops into its hollow. The hand he put to his throat to unfasten the band of his s.h.i.+rt shook, it had difficulty in manipulating the b.u.t.ton, and he ran his tongue along his dried lips. She watched every movement, to the outward eye like a child fascinated by an unusual and terrifying spectacle. But her gaze carried deeper than the perturbed envelope. She looked through to the man beneath, felt an exultation in his might, knew herself kindred with him, fed by the same wild strain.
His glance moved, touched the unconscious man at his feet, then lifting met hers. Eye held eye. In each a spark leaped, ran to meet its opposing spark and flashed into union.
When she looked down again the group of figures was dim. Their talk came vaguely to her, like the talk of men in a dream. David was explaining.
Daddy John made a grimace at him which was a caution to silence. The doctor had not heard and was not to hear the epithet that had been applied to his daughter.
”He's sun mad,” the old man said. ”Half crazy. I've seen 'em go that way before. How'll he get through the desert I'm asking you?”
There were some contusions on the head that looked bad, the doctor said, but nothing seemed to be broken. He'd been half strangled; they'd have to get him into the wagon.
”Leave him at Fort Bridger,” came Courant's voice through the haze.
”Leave him there to rot.”
The doctor answered in the cold tones of authority:
”We'll take him with us as we agreed in the beginning. Because he happens not to be able to stand it, it's not for us to abandon him. It's a physical matter--sun and hard work and irritated nerves. Take a hand and help me lift him into the wagon.”
They hoisted him in and disposed him on a bed of buffalo robes spread on sacks. He groaned once or twice, then settled on the softness of the skins, gazing at them with blood-shot eyes of hate. When the doctor offered him medicine, he struck the tin, sending its contents flying.
However serious his hurts were they had evidently not mitigated the ferocity of his mood.
For the three succeeding days he remained in the wagon, stiff with bruises and refusing to speak. Daddy John was detailed to take him his meals, and the doctor dressed his wounds and tried to find the cause of his murderous outburst. But Leff was obdurate. He would express no regret for his action, and would give no reason for it. Once when the questioner asked him if he hated David, he said ”Yes.” But to the succeeding, ”Why did he?” he offered no explanation, said he ”didn't know why.”
”Hate never came without a reason,” said the physician, curious and puzzled. ”Has David wronged you in any way?”
”What's that to you?” answered the farm boy. ”I can hate him if I like, can't I?”
”Not in my train.”
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