The Lone Star Ranger and the Mysterious Rider (74 page)

“My little girl you call Columbine was born there durin' a long absence of mine. When I got home Lucy an' the baby were gone. Also the Southerner!… Spencer an' his pard Cap, an' others they had in the deal, proved to me, so it seemed, that the little girl was not really mine!… An' so I set out on a hunt for my wife an' her lover. I found them. An' I killed him before her eyes. But she was innocent, an' so was he, as came out too late. He'd been, indeed, her friend. She scorned me. She told me how her brother Spencer an' his friends had established guilt of mine that had driven her from me.

“I went back to Dodge to have a little quiet smoke with these men who had ruined me. They were gone. The trail led to Colorado. Nearly a year later I rounded them all up in a big wagon-train post north of Denver. Another brother of my wife's, an' her father, had come West, an' by accident or fate we all met there. We had a family quarrel. My wife would not forgive me—would not speak to me, an' her people backed her up. I made the great mistake to take her father an' other brothers to belong to the same brand as Spencer. In this I wronged them an' her.

“What I did to them, Belllounds, is one story I'll never tell to any man who might live to repeat it. But it drove my wife near crazy. An' it made me Hell-Bent Wade!… She ran off from me there, an' I trailed her all over Colorado. An' the end of that trail was not a hundred miles from where we stand now. The last trace I had was of the burnin' of a prairie-schooner by Arapahoes as they were goin' home from a foray on the Utes.… The little girl might have toddled off the trail. But I reckon she was hidden or dropped by her mother, or some one fleein' for life. Your men found her in the columbines.”

Belllounds drew a long, deep breath.

“What a man never expects always comes true.… Wade, the lass is yours. I can see it in the way you look at me. I can feel it.… She's been like my own. I've done my best, accordin' to my conscience. An' I've loved her, for all they say I couldn't see aught but Jack.… You'll take her away from me?”

“No. Never,” was the melancholy reply.

“What! Why not?”

“Because she loves you.… I could never reveal myself to Collie. I couldn't win her love with a lie. An' I'd have to lie, to be false as hell.… False to her mother an' to Collie an' to all I hold high! I'd have to tell Collie the truth—the wrong I did her mother—the
hell
I visited upon her mother's people.… She'd fear me.”

“Ahuh!… An' you'll never change—I reckon that!” exclaimed Belllounds.

“No. I changed once, eighteen years ago. I can't go back.… I can't undo all I hoped was good.”

“You think Collie'd fear you?”

“She'd never
love
me as she does you, or as she loves me even now. That is my rock of refuge.”

“She'd hate you, Wade.”

“I reckon. An' so she must never know.”

“Ahuh!… Wal, wal, life is a hell of a deal! Wade, if you could live yours over again, knowin' what you know now, an' that you'd love an' suffer the same—would you want to do it?”

“Yes. I love life, with all it brings. I wouldn't have the joy without the pain. But I reckon only men who've come to our years would want it over again.”

“Wal, I'm with you thar. I'd take what came. Rain an' sun!… But all this you tell, an' the hell you hint at, ain't changin' this hyar deal of Jack's an' Collie's. Not one jot!… If she remains my adopted daughter she marries my son.… Wade, I'm haltered like the north star in that.”

“Belllounds, will you take a day to think it over?” appealed Wade.

“Ahuh! But that won't change me.”

“Won't it change you to know that if you force this marriage you'll lose all?”

“All! Ain't that more queer talk?”

“I mean lose all—your son, your adopted daughter—his chance of reformin', her hope of happiness. These ought to be all in life left to you.”

“Wal, they are. But I can't see your argument. You're beyond me, Wade. You're holdin' back, like you did with your hell-bent story.”

Ponderously, as if the burden and the doom of the world weighed him down, the hunter got up and fronted Belllounds.

“When I'm driven to tell I'll come.… But, once more, old man, choose between generosity an' selfishness. Between blood tie an' noble loyalty to your good deed in its beginnin'.… Will you give up this marriage for your son—so that Collie can have the man she loves?”

“You mean your young pard an' two-bit of a rustler—Wils Moore?”

“Wils Moore, yes. My friend, an' a man, Belllounds, such as you or I never was.”

“No!” thundered the rancher, purple in the face.

With bowed head and dragging step Wade left the room.

*   *   *

By slow degrees of plodding steps, and periods of abstracted lagging, the hunter made his way back to Moore's cabin. At his entrance the cowboy leaped up with a startled cry.

“Oh, Wade!… Is Collie dead?” he cried.

Such was the extent of calamity he imagined from the somber face of Wade.

“No. Collie's well.”

“Then, man, what on earth's happened?”

“Nothin' yet.… But somethin' is goin' on in my mind.… Moore, I'd like you to let me alone.”

*   *   *

At sunset Wade was pacing the aspen grove on the hill. There was sunlight and shade under the trees, a rosy gold on the sage slopes, a purple-and-violet veil between the black ranges and the sinking sun.

Twilight fell. The stars came out white and clear. Night cloaked the valley with dark shadows and the hills with its obscurity. The blue vault overhead deepened and darkened. The hunter patrolled his beat, and hours were moments to him. He heard the low hum of the insects, the murmur of running water, the rustle of the wind. A coyote cut the keen air with high-keyed, staccato cry. The owls hooted, with dismal and weird plaint, one to the other. Then a wolf mourned. But these sounds only accentuated the loneliness and wildness of the silent night.

Wade listened to them, to the silence. He felt the wildness and loneliness of the place, the breathing of nature; he peered aloft at the velvet blue of the mysterious sky with its deceiving stars. All that had been of help to him through days of trial was now as if it had never been. When he lifted his eyes to the great, dark peak, so bold and clear-cut against the sky, it was not to receive strength again. Nature in its cruelty mocked him. His struggle had to do with the most perfect of nature's works—man.

Wade was now in passionate strife with the encroaching mood that was a mocker of his idealism. Many times during the strange, long martyrdom of his penance had he faced this crisis, only to go down to defeat before elemental instincts. His soul was steeped in gloom, but his intelligence had not yet succumbed to passion. The beauty of Columbine's character and the nobility of Moore's were not illusions to Wade. They were true. These two were of the finest fiber of human nature. They loved. They represented youth and hope—a progress through the ages toward a better race. Wade believed in the good to be, in the future of men. Nevertheless, all that was fine and worthy in Columbine and Moore was to go unrewarded, unfulfilled, because of the selfish pride of an old man and the evil passion of the son. It was a conflict as old as life. Of what avail were Columbine's high sense of duty, Moore's fine manhood, the many victories they had won over the headlong and imperious desires of love? What avail were Wade's good offices, his spiritual teaching, his eternal hope in the order of circumstances working out to good? These beautiful characteristics of virtue were not so strong as the unchangeable passion of old Belllounds and the vicious depravity of his son. Wade could not imagine himself a god, proving that the wages of sin was death. Yet in his life he had often been an impassive destiny, meting out terrible consequences. Here he was incalculably involved. This was the cumulative end of years of mounting plots, tangled and woven into the web of his pain and his remorse and his ideal. But hope was dying. That was his strife—realization against the morbid clairvoyance of his mind. He could not help Jack Belllounds to be a better man. He could not inspire the old rancher to a forgetfulness of selfish and blinded aims. He could not prove to Moore the truth of the reward that came from unflagging hope and unassailable virtue. He could not save Columbine with his ideals.

The night wore on, and Wade plodded under the rustling aspens. The insects ceased to hum, the owls to hoot, the wolves to mourn. The shadows of the long spruces gradually merged into the darkness of night. Above, infinitely high, burned the pale stars, wise and cold, aloof and indifferent, eyes of other worlds of mystery.

In those night hours something in Wade died, but his idealism, unquenchable and inexplicable, the very soul of the man, saw its justification and fulfilment in the distant future.

The gray of the dawn stole over the eastern range, and before its opaque gloom the blackness of night retreated, until valley and slope and grove were shrouded in spectral light, where all seemed unreal.

And with it the gray-gloomed giant of Wade's mind, the morbid and brooding spell, had gained its long-encroaching ascendancy. He had again found the man to whom he must tell his story. Tragic and irrevocable decree! It was his life that forced him, his crime, his remorse, his agony, his endless striving. How true had been his steps! They had led, by devious and tortuous paths, to the home of his daughter.

Wade crouched under the aspens, accepting this burden as a man being physically loaded with tremendous weights. His shoulders bent to them. His breast was sunken and labored. All his muscles were cramped. His blood flowed sluggishly. His heart beat with slow, muffled throbs in his ears. There was a creeping cold in his veins, ice in his marrow, and death in his soul. The giant that had been shrouded in gray threw off his cloak, to stand revealed, black and terrible. And it was he who spoke to Wade, in dreadful tones, like knells. Bent Wade—man of misery—who could find no peace on earth—whose presence unknit the tranquil lives of people and poisoned their blood and marked them for doom! Wherever he wandered there followed the curse! Always this had been so. He was the harbinger of catastrophe. He who preached wisdom and claimed to be taught by the flowers, who loved life and hated injustice, who mingled with his kind, ever searching for that one who needed him, he must become the woe and the bane and curse of those he would only serve! Insupportable and pitiful fate! The fiends of the past mocked him, like wicked ghouls, voiceless and dim. The faces of the men he had killed were around him in the gray gloom, pale, drifting visages of distortion, accusing him, claiming him. Likewise, these gleams of faces were specters of his mind, a procession eternal, mournful, and silent, wending their way on and on through the regions of his thought. All were united, all drove him, all put him on the trail of catastrophe. They fore-shadowed the future, they inclosed events, they lured him with his endless illusions. He was in the vortex of a vast whirlpool, not of water or of wind, but of life. Alas! he seemed indeed the very current of that whirlpool, a monstrous force, around which evil circled and lurked and conquered. Wade—who had the ill-omened croak of the raven—Wade—who bent his driven steps toward hell!

*   *   *

In the brilliant sunlight of the summer morning Wade bent his resistless steps down toward White Slides Ranch. The pendulum had swung. The hours were propitious. Seemingly, events that already cast their shadows waited for him. He saw Jack Belllounds going out on the fast and furious ride which had become his morning habit.

Columbine intercepted Wade. The shade of woe and tragedy in her face were the same as he had pictured there in his gloomy vigil of the night.

“My friend, I was coming to you.… Oh, I can bear no more!”

Her hair was disheveled, her dress disordered, the hands she tremblingly held out bore discolored marks. Wade led her into the seclusion of the willow trail.

“Oh, Ben!… He fought me—like—a beast!” she panted.

“Collie, you needn't tell me more,” said Wade, gently. “Go up to Wils. Tell him.”

“But I must tell you. I can bear—no more.… He fought me—hurt me—and when dad heard us—and came—Jack lied.… Oh, the dog!… Ben, his father believed—when Jack swore he was only mad—only trying to shake me—for my indifference and scorn.… But, my God!—Jack meant…”

“Collie, go up to Wils,” interposed the hunter.

“I want to see Wils. I need to—I must. But I'm afraid.… Oh, it will make things worse!”

“Go!”

She turned away, actuated by more than her will.

“Collie!”
came the call, piercingly and strangely after her. Bewildered, startled by the wildness of that cry, she wheeled. But Wade was gone. The shaking of the willows attested to his hurry.

*   *   *

Old Belllounds braced his huge shoulders against the wall in the attitude of a man driven to his last stand.

“Ahuh!” he rolled, sonorously. “So hyar you are again?… Wal, tell your worst, Hell-Bent Wade, an' let's have an end to your croakin'.”

Belllounds had fortified himself, not with convictions or with illusions, but with the last desperate courage of a man true to himself.

“I'll tell you…” began the hunter.

And the rancher threw up his hands in a mockery that was furious, yet with outward shrinking.

“Just now, when Buster Jack fought with Collie, he meant bad by her!”

“Aw, no!… He was jest rude—tryin' to be masterful.… An' the lass's like a wild filly. She needs a tamin' down.”

Wade stretched forth a lean and quivering hand that seemed the symbol of presaged and tragic truth.

“Listen, Belllounds, an' I'll tell you.… No use tryin' to hatch a rotten egg! There's no good in your son. His good intentions he paraded for virtues, believin' himself that he'd changed. But a flip of the wind made him Buster Jack again.… Collie would sacrifice her life for duty to you—whom she loves as her father. Wils Moore sacrificed his honor for Collie—rather than let you learn the truth.… But they call me Hell-Bent Wade, an' I will tell you!”