Dorn Of The Mountains (29 page)

“Oh! Does Tom Carmichael know this?” she added breathlessly.

“How could he?”

“When he finds out then…oh, won’t there be hell? I’m glad I got here first…. Nell, my boots haven’t been off the whole blessed time. Help me.…And, oh, for some soap and hot water, and some clean clothes! Nell, old girl, I wasn’t raised right for these Western deals. Too luxurious!”

And then Helen had her ears filled with a rapid-fire account of running horses and Riggs and outlaws and Beasley called boldly to his teeth and a long ride and an outlaw who was a hero—a fight with Riggs—blood and death—another long ride—a wild camp in black woods—night—lonely ghostly sounds—and day again—plot—a great actress lost to the world—Ophelia—Snake Anson’s hoodooed outlaws—mournful moans and terrible cries—cougar—stampede—fight and shots, more blood and death—Wilson a hero—another Tom Carmichael—fall in love with outlaw gunfighter if—black night and Dorn and horse and rides and starved and: “Oh…Nell, he
was
from Texas!”

Helen gathered what wonderful and dreadful events had hung over the bright head of this beloved little sister, but the bewilderment occasioned by Bo’s fluent and remarkable utterance left only that last sentence clear.

Presently Helen got a word in to inform Bo that Mrs. Cass had knocked twice for supper, and that welcome news checked Bo’s flow of speech when nothing else seemed adequate.

It was obvious to Helen that Roy and Dorn had exchanged stories. Roy deliberated this reunion by sitting at table the first time since he had been shot, and, despite Helen’s misfortune and the suspended waiting balance in the air, the occasion was joyous. Old Mrs. Cass was in the height of her glory. She sensed a romance here, and, true to her sex, she radiated to it.

Daylight was still lingering when Roy got up and went out on the porch. His keen ears had heard something. Helen fancied she herself had heard rapid hoof beats.

“Dorn, come out!” called Roy sharply.

The hunter moved with his swift noiseless agility. Helen and Bo followed, halting in the door.

“Thet’s Las Vegas,” whispered Dorn.

To Helen it seemed that the cowboy’s name changed the very atmosphere.

Voices were heard at the gate; one that, harsh and quick, sounded like Carmichael’s. And a spirited horse was pounding and scattering gravel. Then a lithe figure appeared striding up the path. It was Carmichael—yet not the Carmichael Helen knew. She heard Bo’s strange little cry, a corroboration of her own impression.

Roy might never have been shot, judging from the way he stepped out, and Dorn was almost as quick. Carmichael reached them—grasped them with swift hard hands.

“Boys…I jest rode in…. An’ they said you’d found her!”

“Shore Las Vegas…. Dorn fetched her home safe an’ sound…. There she is.”

The cowboy thrust aside the two men and with a long stride he faced the porch, his piercing eyes on the door. All that Helen could think of his look was that it seemed terrible. Bo stepped outside in front of Helen. Probably she would have run straight into Carmichael’s arms if some strange instinct had not withheld her. Helen judged it to be fear; she found her heart lifting painfully.

“Bo!” he yelled like a savage, yet he did not in the least resemble one.

“Oh…Tom!” cried Bo falteringly. She half held out her arms.

“You girl?” That seemed to be his piercing query, like the quivering blade in his eyes. Two more long strides carried him close up to her and his look chased the red out of Bo’s cheek. Then it was beautiful to see his face marvelously change until it was that of the well-remembered Las Vegas magnified in all his old spirit.

“Aw!”
The exclamation was a tremendous sigh. “I shore am glad!”

That beautiful flash left his face as he wheeled to the men. He wrung Dorn’s hand, long and hard, and his gaze confused the older man.

“Riggs?” he said, and in the jerk of his frame as he whipped out the word disappeared the strange fleeting signs of his kindlier emotion.

“Wilson killed him,” replied Dorn.

“Jim Wilson…thet old Texas ranger! Reckon he lent you a hand?”

“My friend, he saved Bo,” replied Dorn with emotion. “My old cougar an’ me…we just hung around.”

“You made Wilson help you?” cut in the hard voice.

“Yes. But he killed Riggs before I come up, an’ I reckon he’d done well by Bo if I’d never got there.”

“How aboot the gang?”

“All snuffed out, I reckon, except Wilson.”

“Somebody told me Beasley did run Miss Helen off the ranch…. Thet so?”

“Yes. Four of his greasers packed her down the hill…’most tore her clothes off, so Roy tells me.”

“Four greasers! Shore it was Beasley’s deal clean through?”

“Yes. Riggs was led. He had an itch for a bad name, you know. But Beasley made the plan. It was Nell they wanted instead of Bo.”

Abruptly Carmichael stalked off down the darkening path, his silver heel plates ringing, his spurs
jingling.

“Hold on, Carmichael!” called Dorn, taking a step.

“Oh, Tom!” cried Bo.

“Shore, folks, callin’ won’t be no use, if anythin’ would be,” said Roy. “Las Vegas has hed a look at red liquor.”

“He’s been drinking! Oh, thet accounts! Nell, he never…nevereven touched me!”

For once Helen was not ready to comfort Bo. A mighty tug at her heart had sent her with flying, uneven steps toward Dorn. He took another stride down the path and another.

“Dorn…oh…please stop!” she called, very low.

He halted as if he had run sharply into a bar across the path. When he turned, Helen had come close. Twilight was deep there in the shade of the peach trees, but she could see his face, the hungry flaring eyes.

“I…I haven’t thanked you…yet…for bringing Bo home,” she whispered.

“Nell, never mind that,” he said in surprise. “If you must…wait…I’ve got to catch up with that cowboy.”

“No. Let me thank you now,” she whispered, and, stepping closer, she put her arms up, meaning to put them around his neck. That action must be her self-punishment for the other time she had done it. Yet it might also serve to thank him. But strangely her hands got no farther than his breast and fluttered there to catch hold of the fringe of his buckskin jacket. She felt a great heave of his deep chest.

“I…I do thank you…with all my heart,” she said softly. “I owe you now…for myself and her…more than I can ever…ever repay.”

“Nell, I’m your friend,” he replied hurriedly. “Don’t talk of repayin’ me…. Let me go now…after Las Vegas.”

“What for?” she queried suddenly.

“I mean to line up beside him…at the bar…or wherever he goes,” returned Dorn.

“Don’t tell me that.
I
know. You’re going straight to meet Beasley.”

“Nell, if you hold me up any longer, I reckon I’ll have to run…or never get to Beasley before that cowboy.”

Helen locked her fingers in the fringe of his jacket, leaned closer to him, all her being responsive to a bursting gust of blood over her. “I’ll not let you go,” she said.

He laughed and put his great hands over hers. “What’re you sayin’, girl? You can’t stop me.”

“Yes I can…. Dorn, I don’t want you to risk your life.”

He stared at her and made as if to tear her hands from their hold.

“Listen…please…oh…please!” she implored. “If you go deliberately to kill Beasley…and do it…that will be murder…. It’s against my religion…. I would be unhappy all my life.”

“But, child, you’ll be ruined all your life if Beasley is not dealt with…as men of his breed are always dealt with in the West,” he remonstrated, and in one quick move he had freed himself from her clutching fingers.

Helen, with a move as swift, put her arms around his neck and clasped her hands tightly. “Milt, I’m finding myself,” she said. “The other day when I did…this…you made an excuse for me…. I’m not two-faced now.”

She meant to keep him from killing Beasley if she sacrificed every last shred of her pride. And she stamped the look of his face on her heart of hearts to treasure always. The thrill, the beat of her pulses almost obstructed her thought of purpose.

“Nell, just now…when you’re overcome…rash with feelin’s…don’t say to me…a word…a….” He broke down huskily.

“My first friend…my…oh, Dorn, I
know
you love me,” she whispered. And she hid her face on his breast, there to feel a tremendous tumult. “Oh, don’t you?” she cried, in low smothered voice, as his silence drove her farther on this mad yet glorious purpose.

“If you need to be told…yes…I reckon I do love you, Nell Rayner,” he replied.

It seemed to Helen that he spoke from far off. She lifted her face, her heart on her lips. “If you kill Beasley I’ll never marry you,” she said.

“Who’s expectin’ you to?” he asked with low coarse laugh. “Do you think you have to marry me to square accounts? This’s the only time you ever hurt me, Nell Rayner.…I’m shamed you could think I’d expect you…out of gratitude….”

“Oh…you…you are as dense as the forest where you live,” she cried. And then she shut her eyes again, the better to remember that transfiguration of his face, the better to betray herself. “Man…I love you!” Full and deep, yet tremulous, the words burst from her heart that had been burdened with them for many a day.

Then it seemed in the throbbing riot of her senses that she was lifted and swung into his arms, and handled with a great and terrible tenderness, and hugged and kissed with the hunger and awkwardness of a bear, and held with her feet off the ground, and rendered blind, dizzy, rapturous, and frightened, and utterly torn asunder from her old calm thinking self.

He put her down—released her. “Nothin’ could have made me so happy as what you said.” He finished with a strong sigh of unutterable wondering joy.

“Then you will not go to…to meet…?” Helen’s happy query froze on her lips.

“I’ve got to go,” he rejoined with his old quiet voice. “Hurry in to Bo…. An’ don’t worry. Try to think of things as I taught you up in the woods.”

Helen heard his soft padded footfalls swiftly pass away. She was left there, alone in the darkening twilight, suddenly cold and stricken, as if turned to stone.

Thus she stood an age-long moment until the upflashing truth galvanized her into action. Then she flew in pursuit of Dorn. The truth was that, in spite of Dorn’s early training in the East and the long years of solitude that had made him wonderful in thought and feeling, he had also become a part of this raw bold and violent West.

It was quite dark now and she had run quite some distance before she saw Dorn’s tall dark form against the yellow light of Turner’s saloon. Somehow in that poignant moment, when her flying feet kept pace with her heart, Helen felt in herself a force opposing itself against this raw primitive justice of the West. She was one of the first influences emanating from civilized life, from law and order. In that flash of truth she saw the West as it would be some future time when through women and children these wild frontier days would be gone forever. Also, just as clearly she saw the present need of men like Roy Beeman and Dorn and the fire-blooded Carmichael. Beasley and his kind must be killed. But Helen did not want her lover, her future husband, and the probable father of her children, to commit what she held to be murder.

At the door of the saloon she caught up with Dorn. “Milt…oh…wait…wait!” she panted.

She heard him curse under his breath, as he turned. They were alone in the yellow glare of light. Horses were champing bits and drooping before the rails.

“You go back!” ordered Dorn sternly. His face was pale, his eyes were gleaming.

“No! Not till…you take me…or carry me,” she replied resolutely, with all a woman’s positive and inevitable assurance.

Then he laid hold of her with ungentle hands. His violence, especially the look on his face, terrified Helen, rendered her weak. But nothing could have shaken her resolve. She felt victory. Her sex, her love, and her presence would be too much for Dorn.

As he swung Helen around, the low hum of voices inside the saloon suddenly rose to a sharp hoarse roar accompanied by a scuffling of feet and crashing of violently sliding chairs or tables. Dorn let go of Helen and leaped toward the doors. But a silence inside, quicker and stranger than the roar, halted him. Helen’s heart contracted, then seemed to cease beating. There was absolutely not a perceptible sound. Even the horses appeared, like Dorn, to have turned to statues.

Two thundering shots annihilated this silence. Then quickly came a lighter shot—the smash of glass. Dorn ran into the saloon. The horses began to snort, to rear, to pound. A low muffled murmur terrified Helen even as it drew her. Dashing at the door, she swung it in and entered.

The place was dim, blue-hazed, smelling of smoke. Dorn stood just inside the door. On the floor lay two men. Chairs and tables were overturned. A motley, dark, shirt-sleeved, booted, and belted crowd of men appeared hunched against the opposite wall with pale set faces turned to the bar. Turner, the proprietor, stood at one end, his hands aloft and shaking. Carmichael leaned against the middle of the bar. He held a gun low down. It was smoking.

With a gasp Helen flashed her eyes back to Dorn. He had seen her—was reaching an arm toward her. Then she saw the man lying almost at her feet. Jeff Mulvey—her uncle’s old foreman! His face was awful to behold. A smoking gun lay near his inert hand. The other man had fallen on his face. His garb proclaimed him a Mexican. He was not yet dead. Then Helen, as she felt Dorn’s arm encircle her, looked further because she could not prevent it—looked on at that strange figure against the bar—this boy who had been such a friend in her hour of need—this naive and frank sweetheart of her sister’s.

She saw a man now—wild, white, intense as fire, with some terrible cool kind of deadliness in his mien. His left elbow rested upon the bar, and his hand held a glass of red liquor. The big gun, low down in his other hand, seemed as steady as if it were a fixture.

“Heah’s to thet…half-breed Beasley an’ his outfit!”

Carmichael drank while his flaming eyes held the crowd, then with savage action of terrible passion he flung the glass at the quivering form of the still living Mexican on the floor.