They of the High Trails. Garland Hamlin

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СКАЧАТЬ Fan opened her eyes she saw the big stars above her and felt a sinewy arm beneath her head. Compton was fanning her with his hat and calling upon her to speak, his voice agonized with fear and remorse.

      Slowly it all came back to her, and, struggling to a sitting position, she called piteously: "Dell, where are you? Dell!" Her voice rose in fear, a tone no man had ever heard in it before. She staggered to her feet and dazedly looked about her. A group of awed, silenced, dismounted men stood not far away, and on the ground, lying in a crumpled, distorted heap, was her husband. With a shriek of agony she fell on her knees beside him, calling upon him to open his eyes, to speak to her.

      Then at last, as the conviction of his death came to her, she lifted her head and with a voice of level, hoarse-throated hate, she imprecated her murderers. "I'll kill you, every one of you! I'll kill you for this – you cowardly wolves – I'll kill – "

V

      They lifted them both up for dead, and Compton, taking Fan in his strong arms, held her like a child as they drove slowly back to the ranch. All believed Lester dead; but Compton, who held his ear to Fan's lips, insisted that she was breathing, and indeed she recovered from her swoon before they reached the house.

      Blondell, more powerfully moved than ever before in his life, after a swift curse upon the culprits took his girl to his bosom and carried her to her bed.

      As her brain cleared, Fan rose and, staggering across the room, took her husband's head in her arms. "Bring some water. Dell is hurt. Don't you see he is hurt? Be quick!"

      "Has somebody gone for the doctor?" asked the mother, to whom this was the raving of dementia. "Somebody go."

      No one had, for all believed the man to be dead; but Compton exclaimed, "I'll go!" turning to vault his horse, glad of something to do, eager to escape the sight of Fan's agonized face.

      The dash of cold water on his bruised face brought a flutter of life to Lester's eyelids, and in triumph the bride cried out:

      "I told you so! He is alive! Oh, Dell, can't you speak to me?"

      He could not so much as lift his eyelids, but his breathing deepened, and with that sign of returning vitality Fan was forced to be content. She was perfectly composed now, and helped to bathe his crushed and bleeding head and his broken shoulder with a calmness very impressive to all those who were permitted to glance within the room.

      Slowly the guests departed. The cowboys, low-voiced and funereal of mien, rode away in groups of three or four.

      The doctor came hurrying down the slope about ten of the morning, his small roan mustang galloping, his case of instruments between his feet. He was very young, and, luckily, very self-confident, and took charge of "the case" with thrilling authority.

      "The coma was induced," he explained, "by the concussion of the brain. The shoulder is also badly contused and the collar-bone broken, but if brain fever does not set in the man will live. The treatment so far as it has gone is admirable."

      Compton returned with him, or a little before him, and seemed to be waiting for arrest. He was a lean, brown young fellow with good, gray eyes and a shapely nose. "Yes, I threw the rope," he confessed to every one. "It was all in fun, but he shot my horse, and as he reared up he jerked the people out of the buggy. I guess the broncos jumped ahead at the same time. But it was my fault. I had no business to rope 'em. In fact, we had no business chasing 'em up at all."

      At last Blondell gruffly told him to go home. "If the man dies we'll come after you," he added, with blunt ferocity.

      "All right," responded the young fellow, with lofty spirit. "I'll be there – but I want to see Fan a moment before I leave. I want to know if there is anything I can do for her or him."

      Blondell was for refusing this utterly, but his wife said: "You didn't mean nothing, Link – I'm sure of that – and I've always liked you, and so has Fan. She won't lay it up against you, I know. I'll tell her you're here."

      Fan, sitting beside Lester's bed, turned at her mother's word and saw the young fellow standing in the doorway in mute appeal. Her glance was without anger, but it was cold and distant. She shook her head, and the young rancher turned away, shaken with sobs. That look was worse than her curse had been.

      From the dim, grim region of his delirium and his deathlike unconsciousness George Lester struggled slowly back to life. His reawakening was like a new birth. He seemed born again, this time an American – a Western American. In the measure of a good old homely phrase, some sense (a sense of the fundamental oneness of humanity) had been beaten into his head.

      As he lay there, helpless and suffering, he was first of all aware of Fan, whose face shone above him like the moon, and was soon able to understand her unwearying devotion and to remember that she was his wife. She was always present when he woke, and he accepted her presence as he accepted sunshine, knowing nothing of the sleeplessness and toil which her attendance involved – a knowledge of this came later.

      At times gruff old Blondell himself bent his shaggy head above his bed to ask how he felt, and no mother could have been more considerate than Mrs. Blondell.

      "What right have I to despise these people?" he asked himself one day. "What have I done to lift myself above them?" (And this question extended to the neighbors, to the awkward ranchers who came stiffly and with a sort of awe into his room to "pass a good word," as they said.) "They are a good sort, after all" – his heart prompted him to admit.

      But his deepest penitence, his tenderest gratitude, rose to Fan, whom care and love had marvelously refined. He was able to forget her careless speech and to look quite through her untidy ways to the golden, good heart which beat beneath her unlovely gowns. Nothing was too hard, too menial, for her hands, and her smile warmed his midnight sick-room like sunshine.

      He was curiously silent even after his strength was sufficient for speech. Content to lie on his bed and watch her as she moved about him, he answered only in monosyllables, while the deep current of his love gathered below his reticence. As he came to a full understanding of what he had been and to a sense of his unworthy estimate of her and her people, his passion broke bounds.

      "Fan!" he called out one morning, "I'm not fit to receive all your care and devotion – but I'm going to try to be; I'm going to set to work in earnest when I get up. Your people shall be my people, your cares my cares." He could not go on, and Fan, who was looking down at him in wonder, stooped and laid a kiss on his quivering lips.

      "You get well, boy; that's all you need to worry about," she said, and her face was very sweet – for she smiled upon him as if he were a child.

      THE LONESOME MAN

      – the murderer still seeks forgetfulness in the solitude, building his cabin in the shadow of great peaks.

      IV

      THE LONESOME MAN

      The road that leads to the historic north shoulder of Solidor is lonely now. The stages that once crawled painfully upward through its flowery meadows are playhouses for the children of Silver Plume, and the brakes that once howled so resoundingly on the downward way are rusting to ashes in the weeds that spring from the soil of the Silverado Queen's unused corral. The railway, half a hundred miles to the north, has left the famous pass to solitude and to grass.

      Once a week, or possibly oftener, a cattleman or prospector rides across, or a little band of tourists plod up or down, – thinking they are penetrating to the heart of the Rockies, – but for the most part the trail is passing swiftly to the unremembered twilight of the СКАЧАТЬ