The Trail Rider/Chapter 24
EVEN at the distance which divided them, Hartwell heard the blow fall. He bounded forward as her purpose in this affront came to him in a flash.
"Winch, Winch! That's a woman!" he shouted as he ran.
Winch did not heed. That he heard there could be no doubt, for several cattlemen ahead of Hartwell repeated the warning to the infuriated gun-slinger.
Almost instantly, almost simultaneously, two shots sounded out of the confusion of trampling horses and rising dust. And there was Winch standing beside his fallen horse, his smoking revolver in his hand; beyond him a rod, lying in the dust of the road, Fannie Goodnight, her arms stretched wide, her face upon the ground. Her frightened horse was galloping away with flying stirrups; Winch was standing with his arm crooked, his gun half raised, as if he waited for her to move.
A moment, like figures revealed by a lightning stroke, those who stood in the street saw this picture. Then Hartwell leaped into it, a cry in his throat like the voice of despairing pain.
Winch did not change the position of his body, which was three-quarters full toward Hartwell. With a little slinging jerk of his gun he fired, then staggered back, his arms outflung, his weapon dropped from his hand. Three bullets from Hartwell's pistol struck him in the breast before he touched the ground.
Fannie was breathing when Hartwell lifted her and ran with her to Uncle Boley's shop, the people pressing behind him with the senseless curiosity of cattle. Uncle Boley shut the door on them. Texas carried her into the old man's room and laid her on his bed.
Uncle Boley went out the back door, after one quick look at Fannie's face, to bring the doctor. Texas bent over her, his heart melting with unutterable emotions, and bathed her face, and spoke to her in endearing whispers broken by his grief. He opened her shirt and disclosed her wound, down in her white bosom toward her heart, below the dark stain that disguised the fairness of her face and neck.
Fannie opened her eyes, quite unexpectedly, and smiled. There was blood on her lips; he wiped it away.
"Did I get him, Texas?" she asked.
"Yes honey, you got him."
She closed her eyes, and a weary placidity settled over her face.
"I went out to get him, Texas, before he—could get—you."
The last of it trailed away as if it blended with death. He took her hand and pressed it to his bosom, murmuring endearments to her in the panic of his grief. She reached up and touched his face; clasped her cold hands about his neck. He bent with her gentle pressure and kissed her lips.
So she smiled, and died, peace in her face, as if absolution had come to her soul in that caress. Hartwell bowed his head on her poor breast in agony that rent his heart.
Hartwell joined Uncle Boley in the shop after a while, unashamed of the traces of grief in his face.
"She was pure gold, Uncle Boley, as true a friend as a man ever had in this world," said he.
Uncle Boley was sitting in front of the door, as if on guard, trouble in his face, his shoemaker's hammer on the floor beside him.
"Did she speak to you before she went, Texas?"
Texas told him what she had said. Uncle Boley looked up, his face bright with admiration, his eyes tender for the great sacrifice that she had made.
"She went out to hunt him, and left early for fear you'd stop her."
"Yes, sir, that's what she did."
"She picked a fuss with him, thinkin' she could kill him and stop him from hurtin' you."
"She did just that, Uncle Boley, God bless her little heart!"
Uncle Boley got up and moved about the shop under the stress of his great emotion. Now and then he shook his head, and he was busy with his handkerchief about his eyes.
"You can't beat 'em, can't beat 'em!" said he. "When they're true, they're above anything that a man can conceive of, and when they ain't, they're hell-fire and mustard! Hell-fire and mustard, Texas, when they ain't."
"Yes, sir, I guess that's so."
"And I said she wasn't a good woman! Lord forgive me—that's what I said about that little Fannie!" He started toward the bedroom door, stopped, turned back. "Did you cover her face up, son?"
"Yes, sir, I covered her pore little face up from the light of this unkind world."
"I'm not fit to," said Uncle Boley, bowing his old white head, "not fit to touch her foot!"
"I suppose there'll be an inquiry into this by the coroner, and I'll be held to answer for my part in it, sir, accordin' to law, till it's cleared up and dismissed."
"I reckon so. And that ain't half of it. Them cowmen they're growlin' around and talkin' about comin' up here and handlin' you, Texas. The doctor overheard a good deal of their talk, and I don't like the looks of things. That's why I was settin' there in the door with that hammer. I was goin' to brain the first man that tried to put a hand on you!"
Texas went to the door. It was past the noon hour and the visiting cattlemen had cleared out of the streets, seeking the restaurants for dinner, leaving their horses to gnaw hitching poles, according to their established way.
"I'll go down and get the undertaker to care for Fannie's body," he said, "and after that I'll hunt up the marshal and see if he wants to lock me up till the coroner's jury sets. I'm tired, Uncle Boley, clean through to the bone."
"I reckon it's the best thing to do," Uncle Boley agreed. "I'll watch over her, Texas, as tender as if she was flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. To-morrow we'll lay her away. I'll go up and see the preacher about her funeral as soon as the undertaker comes."
"No preacher ever had a chance to do a nobler office in this world."
Texas went on to the hotel after his visit to the undertaker, not having been able to find the town marshal. A number of cattlemen were at dinner there, singularly silent for men of such boisterous manner. Like some other people in the world that day, Texas reflected, they had enough to think about to make them serious.
He did not give more than a passing thought to the threats which Uncle Boley had heard they were making against him, for he knew that it was inevitable that such murmuring should attend the killing of a man. It was no more to him than the blowing of the wind, sore as he was in heart that hour.
He went to his room, where he sat in the gloom of dejection, the past a seeming waste behind him, the future a blank curtain which he had no desire left in him to move aside and pass. There was no regret for the slaying of Dee Winch. That seemed to him such a small incident in the turmoil of the past few hours that it might have been the deed of any other man than himself. It had no personal connection; it seemed but an isolated and inconsequential happening in which he was only technically concerned.
The big thing that filled the day was the sacrifice that Fannie had made of her life. Nobly conceived, generously carried out, but so pathetically useless, so sorrowfully mistaken. Still, Dee Winch might have killed him if they had met face to face without the vengeance for that hideous deed to quicken Hartwell's hand. This he considered, also, his heart dead within him, his head bowed down in grief.
So that matter was finished, and his business was done in Cottonwood, sad business for the greater part, for which time had been saving him, it seemed. He must leave now with the taint of treason on him, for there was no word to be lifted in his behalf but his own. Whatever burst of sun had come into his days there had ended quickly in storm. There were goldenrod and brown eyes, and a little thread of new hope that his heart had begun to weave. These were to be remembered—sentimental trifles to be shut up in the book which he was about to close, and put away forever.
He sat wrapped in his thoughts a long time, too heavy with sorrow, too dumb from the shock of the tragedy, to care to move a foot. Below he heard the sound of feet coming and going, and the sound of strong voices as the men stood in front of the hotel and discussed the events which they had ridden to share in Cottonwood that day.
Malvina was at his door—he knew her step as she came up the stairs, quick and light as a girl's. He opened to her, to see her eyes big with fear, her cheeks pale.
"Malcolm Duncan and them men—they want you, Texas!" she whispered.
"All right, Mrs. Noggle. Please say to them I'll be right straight down."
"Oh, my God! They'll kill you, Texas," she moaned. "They've been talkin' about it—it's no secret in town—they'll kill you, I know they will!"
Texas was buckling on his gun. Her message had stirred a new desire in him, a fierce and savage desire to swim back to the shore of peace and safety through a wild turmoil of strife. If they wanted a fight they could have it, and a fight that some of them would remember above all the combats of their lives. Right here and now accounts between him and the drovers of the Arkansas Valley range would be adjusted for good and all.
"Maybe they will kill me," he said, calmly, reaching for his long black coat which he had flung down on the bed.
"Go down the back stairs," she whispered, leaning into the room, "walk easy—I'll make a noise when I go down!"
Texas turned to her with a smile, offering her his hand.
"Thank you, ma'am, for your good intention, but I'm not a backdoor man. I'm under favors to you for the many kindnesses you've done for me in this house. If they happen to get me, ma'am, there's money of mine left with Uncle Boley to pay you what I owe. Good-by, ma'am, and kindest wishes forever."
His heart was soft for the simple woman who had defied public sentiment to befriend him. Her faith had been like a flower in the desert. She was crying against the wall beside his door when he left her, and the sound of her sobbing reached him as he went down the stairs, like the grief of a mother who sees her son borne away to the grave.
Malcolm Duncan was standing just within the office door. Beyond him Hartwell saw many others blocking his way to the street. But he did not turn his eyes about, nor consider any other passage from the house. They had sent for him, and he had come, and his way lay straight ahead of him, as lays a man's way always when his conscience is clear.
Duncan stepped forward to meet Hartwell, holding out his hand.
"Texas, I want to apologize to you publicly, on my own account and on behalf of the Cattle Raisers' Association," he said.
Hartwell was so wrenched by this unexpected turn that he stopped, drew back a step, as if he struggled to adjust his equilibrium to the sudden reeling of the earth beneath his feet.
It was a thing to take a man's breath, and spring a question in his mind, to be met by a friendly hand where he expected to face hostile guns. Hartwell couldn't grasp it for a second or two. He left Duncan standing with his hand outstretched. Then a great warm surge of thankfulness, of peace, of reborn desire, came flooding over him. He took Duncan's hand.
"Sir, I didn't come down expectin' this," he said.
"You came down expectin' a fight, Hartwell, and I'm mighty glad it turned out you didn't have to do it. You'd 'a' gone through us like a hot iron through a paper sack from the way you looked."
"I'm thankful that it turned out otherwise," Texas told him, solemnly.
"I've found out the truth about them southern cattle, and I'm here to own up that we slandered and wronged you about as bad as a man can be slandered and wronged in this part of the country, Hartwell."
"It's generous and square of you to say that, sir, and it's all past and forgotten, as far as I'm concerned. It hurt for a while though, gentlemen it hurt me to the heart!"
Malvina was on the stairs behind him. When Texas said that she caught her breath with a sharp sob, and came down, half blinded by her tears, and touched him on the shoulder as she passed. Mrs. Goodloe was big in the dining-room door, and behind her was Viney Kelly, who had been called in to help serve the tables during the unusually heavy dinner trade. Other cattlemen came crowding into the office to shake hands with Texas, who met them in hearty sincerity.
"Word from Stott reached me this morning," Duncan explained. "It was delayed in reaching me, for I was out at the camp with the boys. If I'd 'a' got it two hours sooner, things wouldn't have ended the way they have."
"Yes, sir, it would have saved the life of one of the best and truest women that ever walked the earth!"
Hartwell flashed his eyes around as he said it, and drew himself up like a soldier, proud to stand the champion of Fannie Goodnight before the world.
"I did the best I could, Hartwell," said Duncan, gently.
"I know it, sir. It just had to happen so, arranged from the start for her, I guess. Life was a sort of mockery all the way through for her. The best it had to give it always fetched around too late."
Nobody mentioned his fight with Winch, for all felt that there was a certain taint of guilt attaching to them on that score. Winch had come to town that morning representing the cattlemen; his vengeance was their vengeance, his creed their creed. They were ashamed of it now, but all of them were men, after a certain rude standard, and none sought to excuse himself of responsibility.
They talked freely of their past animosity toward Texas, and of the fever which the southern cattle had spread on the range. By shifting their herds they were holding it down; it was the hope that a frost or two would see the end of it without any great loss.
The city marshal came in presently, adding his congratulations with friendly effusion.
"I've fixed it up with the coroner, Texas," he said, "and there won't be any inquest. I told him there wasn't no use puttin' the county to that expense for a carcass like Dee Winch—it's cost the county enough already buryin' men he's killed. A hundred people saw him shoot first; it was as plain a case of self-defense as ever happened in this town."
For all of which Texas expressed his gratitude in his warm, extravagant Southern fashion. The marshal went on about his business with his chest out, proud of the opportunity that had brought him into such prominent touch with Cottonwood's most notable hero.
Business men whom he never had met stopped in during the cattlemen's levee to shake hands with Hartwell. But after the first flush of satisfaction in feeling himself cleared, Texas began to settle back into the shadows of his melancholy. For there was one who did not come to add her felicitations when all the rest of the community seemed glad of his restoration to his place among honorable men.
Ranchers continued to arrive, for the news of Stott's pillage of the bank had spread. Men who went out in the morning to pick up his trail were returning, reporting no trace. It was the belief now that he had boarded a freight train that had stopped at Cottonwood for water in the early hours of the night, and had escaped their hands.
Texas yielded to Mrs. Goodloe's pressure at last and went in for his dinner, to be attended by Yiney Kelly in a white waist with a gold locket hung round her neck on a slender red ribbon. He was the only occupant of the dining-room, for the hour was long past that of the regular dinner.
Viney had little to say as she carried in the food and shifted the dishes about with ready hand, but she attempted a bit of pleasantry when it came to the choice of a drink.
"Tay or caffee?" she asked, affecting the dialect which was her lawful heritage, adding quickly: "Say caffee—we have no tay."
"Caffee it is then," said he, struggling to be genial through his fog of melancholy gray.
Viney came with the coffee and went back for the pie. When she arrived with this she stood close by Hartwell's elbow, wiping the rim of the plate around carefully with her apron. Then she put the pie down before him and fell back a step, but to reach again and slide it clear of the other plates, a full arm's length from the diner. Another retreat to gather the effect, and another shift of the plate, this time bringing it into the middle distance, where she allowed it to stand. It was if she maneuvered for the artistic distance, in which the fat slice of apple pie would be most appealing to the appetite of a man after it had been dulled by the charge of cabbage and beef.
"The board's going to put Sallie McCoy back in the school," she said.
"So they told me a little while ago."
"Well, I don't care," sighed Yiney. Then, hastily: "You know they hired me to take the primary grades in her place."
"No, I hadn't heard."
"I don't care, though. I've got thirteen music pupils and I'd 'a' had to given—gave—them up. She's a good teacher, but she's awful stuck on herself."
"You don't tell me!"
"Yes, and since Stott turned over that money to 'em yesterday she'll be so stuck-up you can't touch her with a ten-foot pole. You heard about what Stott did—done—didn't you?"
"I just got rumors of it, ma'am."
"Well, some people think they're no better than he is, takin' money from him that he stole from somebody else, no matter if it was comin' to them, as some say it was."
"Would you please hand me a glass of water, ma'am?"
Texas made the request with such distant formality, such absolute dismissal of the subject to which she was warming with true scandalous scent, that Viney turned to look back at him as she sped on his request.
When she returned she stood off a little way, dropping her locket down the V-collar of her waist and pulling it up again, as if she sounded the shallows of her bony bosom to find her heart.
"Was there anything else you wished?" she asked.
"Nothing at all, thank you kindly, ma'am."
She turned at the door to look at him again. He was sitting with his head bent in contemplative pose, as if he prayed silently, and the pie stood untouched in the foreground, where Viney had pushed it when she brought the water. Soon from the parlor the tremulous tones of the organ rose. Miss Kelly's voice took up a song.
I'll be all smiles to-night;
Though my heart should break to-mor-r-ow,
I'll be all smiles to-night!"
Texas left the pie standing as it stood, to serve for another in better trim. Several people had come into the office; Mrs. Goodloe and Malvina were there, all talking excitedly. Miss Kelly's lament was louder than their words; he wondered what new calamity had fallen as he hurried out to join them.
"Oh, ain't it awful!" said Mrs. Goodloe.
"They caught him at Wichita!" Malvina said. "Just to think—"
"Stott, the banker, you know," said a man, recognized by Texas as the railroad station agent by the badge on his hat;" he had two grips full of money."
"The minute they laid hands on him—oh, mercy, mercy!" Mrs. Goodloe covered her eyes with her hands as she exclaimed.
"Blowed his brains out," said the station agent, turning to Texas, "with his own gun the minute they tapped him on the shoulder and said: 'Come along with us.'"