Part 49 (1/2)

For a few seconds more Thornton stood rocking on unsteady legs, then, with a final and supreme effort, he stooped and lifted the heavy weight that hung sagging like one newly dead and not yet rigid.

With his burden Parish staggered to the cliff's edge and swung his man from side to side, gaining momentum.

Then suddenly he stopped and stood silhouetted there, sweat-s.h.i.+ny and tattered, blood-stained and panting, and instead of pitching Bas Rowlett outward he laid him down again on the shelf of rock.

How much later he did not know, though he knew that it was twilight now, Bas Rowlett seemed to come out of a heavy and disturbed sleep in which there had been no rest, and he found himself lying with his feet hanging over the precipice edge, and with Thornton looking intently down upon him. In Thornton's hand was the recovered pistol--so there must have been time enough for that.

But his perplexed brain reeled to the realization that he still lay up here instead of among the rocks upon which he should have been broken two hundred feet below. Presumably the victor had waited for returning consciousness in the victim to consummate that atrocity.

But Thornton's unaccountable whims had flown at another tangent.

”Git up, Bas,” he commanded, briefly, ”yore life b'longs ter me. I won hit--an' ye're goin' ter die--but my fingers don't ache no more fer a holt on yore throat--they're satisfied.”

”What air--ye goin' ter do, now?” Rowlett found words hard to form; and the victor responded promptly, ”I've done concluded ter take ye down thar, afore ye dies, an' make ye crave Dorothy's pardon on yore bended knees. Ye owes. .h.i.t ter her.”

Slowly Rowlett dragged himself to a sitting posture. His incredulous senses wanted to sing out in exultation, but he forced himself to demur with surly obduracy.

”Hain't hit enough ter kill me without humiliatin' me, too?”

”No, hit hain't enough fer me an' hit's too tardy fer _you_ ter make no terms now.”

Bas Rowlett exaggerated his dizzy weakness. There was every reason for taking time. This mad idea that had seized upon the other was a miracle of deliverance for him. If only he could kill time until night had come and the moon had risen, it would prove not only a respite but a full pardon--capped with a reserved climax of triumph.

Down there at that house the mob would soon come, and circ.u.mstance would convert him, at a single turn of the wheel, from humbled victim to the avenger ironically witnessing the execution of his late victor.

After a while he rose and stood experimentally on his legs.

”I reckon I kin walk now,” he said, drearily, ”ef so be ye lets me go slow--I hain't got much of my stren'th back yit.”

”Thar hain't no tormentin' haste,” responded Thornton; ”we've got all night afore us.”

When they reached the house, it stood mistily bulked among shadows, with its front door open upon an unlighted room.

The men had tramped down that slope in silence, and they crossed the threshold in silence, too, the captive preceding his captor; and the householder paused to bolt the door behind him.

Then, holding a vigilant eye on the forced guest who had not spoken, Thornton lighted a lamp and backed to the closed bedroom door at whose sill he had seen a slender thread of brightness. In all his movements he went with a wary slowness, as though he were held by a cord, and the cord was the line of direct glance that he never permitted to deviate from the face of his prisoner.

Now while his right hand still fondled the revolver, he groped with his left for the latch and opened the door at his back.

”Dorothy,” he called in a low voice, ”I wisht ye'd come in hyar, honey.”

From within he heard a sound like a low moan; but he knew it was a sigh of relief loosening tight nerve cords that had been binding his wife's heart in suspense.

”Thank G.o.d, ye're back, Ken,” she breathed. ”Air ye all right--an'

unharmed?”

”All right an' unharmed,” he responded, as he stepped to the side of the door frame and stood there a rigid and unmoving sentinel.

But when Dorothy came to the threshold, she took in at once the whole picture, pregnant with significance: the glint of lamplight on the ready revolver, the relentless, tooth-marked face of her husband, and the figure of the vanquished plotter with its powerful shoulders hunched forward and its head hanging.