Part 43 (1/2)

On the night when Larry Masters had sat until dawn by an unreplenished fire, the physical resistance of his body had ebbed to feebleness. Under the quenching chill of despair his pulse-beat had become as sluggish as the unfed blaze, and the days that followed had called for exertions which would have taxed greater reserves of vitality. They had been days of alternating blizzard and soggy thawing, and Larry Masters had been constantly in the saddle like a commander who seeks to remedy a break in his lines and must not pause to consider personal exposure. A cough wracked him, and s.h.i.+fting pains gnawed at his joints and chest as he rode the slippery roads. He s.h.i.+vered, and his teeth chattered when the sleet lashed his face, and when at last he turned away from the Lexington office where he had reported the matter in hand accomplished, he had need to keep himself studiously in hand because a tide of fever crept hotly along his arteries and blurred his senses into confusion.

When he could not rise from his bed in the bungalow to which he had returned, a message went to Louisville, and his wife, somewhat tight-lipped and silently resentful, yet with a stern sense of duty, made the uncomfortable journey to Marlin Town, accompanied by a trained nurse who would be very expensive. She tarried only until the doctor said that the crisis was over, and then leaving the nurse behind came back to Louisville, feeling that she had virtuously met a most annoying obligation.

To Masters, with a sorry company of memories, which, in delirium, took human shape and gibed at his self-esteem, the bedridden days were irksome. But one morning the sick man awoke from a restive and nightmarish sleep to a grateful impression of sunlight on window panes which had been gray and dripping. Then he realized that it was not, after all, only the sun, but that there was a presence in his room.

There sitting at his bedside, with eyes not austere but smiling and sympathy-br.i.m.m.i.n.g, was Anne, and when he sought to question her she laid a smooth hand on his lips and admonished: ”Don't ask any questions now, Daddy. There's lots and lots of time for that. I've come to stay with you until you are well.”

There would be some lonely weeks for the girl coming fresh from town, but they would not trouble her until the time arrived when Boone would have to go to Frankfort for the opening of the legislature, and there were ten days yet before that. Now he rode over every evening, and their voices and laughter drifted into the sick room where Larry Masters lay.

Anne had no suspicion that every night Victor McCalloway sat up waiting for Boone's return, for the most part forgetful of the book which lay on his knee, with a crooked finger marking the place. She did not guess the anxiety which kept his brows knit until the rea.s.surance of footsteps at the door relaxed them, or that on more than one occasion the soldier even saddled his own horse and surrept.i.tiously followed the lover with a c.o.c.ked rifle balanced protectingly on his saddle pommel. Once though, when Boone had returned and was unsaddling, his lantern betrayed fresh sweat and saddle marks on McCalloway's horse. McCalloway lay on his cot but was not asleep, and the young man spoke sternly:

”If you're going to follow me as a bodyguard, sir, I sha'n't feel that I can ride over there any more--and while she's there--”

McCalloway had nodded his head.

”I understand,” he responded. ”You have my promise. I won't do it again.

I grew a bit anxious about you, tonight.”

Looking into the fine eyes that, for himself, knew no fear, the young man felt a sudden choke in his throat. He could only mutter, ”G.o.d bless you, sir,” and take himself off to bed.

One night, though, as Boone was leaving her house, Anne stood with him outside the door. He had taken her in his arms, and they ignored the sweep and snarl of the night wind in their lovers' preoccupation.

Suddenly, as he held her, he bent his head, and her intuition recognized that he was listening with strained intentness to something more remote and faint than her own whispered words. In the abrupt tightening of his arm muscles there was the warning of one abruptly thrown on guard, and she whispered tensely, ”What is it, Boone?”

After another moment of silence, he laughed.

”It's nothing at all, dear. I thought I heard a sound.”

”What?”

He had not meant to give her any alarming hint of the caution which he must so vigilantly maintain, and now he had to dissemble. It came hard to him to lie, but she must be rea.s.sured.

”That colt I'm riding tonight doesn't always stand hitched. I thought I heard him pulling loose--and it's a long walk home.”

”Go and look,” she commanded. ”If he's broken away, come back and spend the night here.”

But a few minutes later he returned and said: ”It's all right. I must have been mistaken.”

When she had watched him start away and melt almost at once into the sooty darkness, it suddenly struck her as strange that he had come back and spoken in so guarded an undertone instead of calling from the hitching post. It might have been the lover's ready excuse for another good night, but Anne was vaguely troubled and remained standing on the doorstep s.h.i.+vering and listening.

The road itself was so dark that she could rather feel than see the closing in of the laurelled mountainsides, and as for the time of her waiting, it might have been two minutes or five. She could not tell. The wind was like a whispered growl, mounting now and again into a shrieking dissonance, and there was no other sound until, as if in violent answer to her fears, came the single report of a rifle immediately followed by the hoa.r.s.er barking of a pistol.

Anne, acting with a speed that sacrificed nothing to the fl.u.s.ter of panic, turned back into the house, caught up the rifle that leaned near the door and an electric flash-torch from the table. Outside again, she found the road wet and rutty, and through the gust-driven clouds filtered no help from the stars, but remnants of snow along the edges of the way gave a low hint of visibility.

Several hundred yards brought her to an abrupt turning, and to her ears there came an uncertain sound as of something heavy being thrashed about in the mud. The girl's pupils, dilated now until the darkness was no longer so all-concealing, could make out a shapeless ma.s.s, and it seemed to her that the bulk--too large for a human body--stirred. Her finger was on the b.u.t.ton of the torch, but an impulse of caution deterred her, and she left it unlighted. If Boone lay there wounded, her flash would make of him a clear target for any lurking a.s.sa.s.sin.

As she stood nerve-taut and with straining eyes, a furious indignation mounted in her. The vague shape that lay p.r.o.ne had become still now, and when she had almost stepped on it, she knew it for a fallen and riderless horse. It must be Boone's, because she would have heard the approach of another, but the man himself was nowhere in sight. So far as outward indications went, she was herself the only human thing within the range of her vision or the sound of her voice.