Cabin Gulch (8 page)

Sunset, twilight, and night fell upon the cañon. She began to feel solitude as something tangible. Bringing saddle and blankets into the cabin, she made a bed just inside, and, facing the opening and the stars, she lay down to rest, if not to sleep. The darkness had not kept her from seeing the prostrate figure of Kells. He lay there as silent as if he were already dead. She was exhausted, weary for sleep, and unstrung.

In the night her courage fled and she was frightened at shadows. The murmuring of insects seemed augmented into a roar; the mourn of wolf and scream of cougar made her start; the rising wind moaned like a lost spirit. Dark fancies beset her. Troop on troop of specters moved out of the black night, assembling there, waiting for Kells to join them. She thought she was riding homeward over the back trail, sure of her way, remembering every rod of that rough travel, until she got out of the mountains only to be turned back by dead men. Then fancy and dream, and all the haunted gloom of cañon and cabin, seemed slowly to merge into one immense blackness.

The sun rimming the east wall, shining into Joan's face, awakened her. She had slept hours. She felt rested, stronger. Like the night, something dark had
passed away from her. It did not seem strange to her that she should feel that Kells still lived. She knew it. An examination proved her right. In him there had been no change except that he had ceased to bleed. There was just a flickering of life in him, manifest only in his slow faint heartbeats.

Joan spent most of that day in sitting beside Kells. The whole day seemed only an hour. Sometimes she would look down the cañon trail, half expecting to see horsemen riding up. If any of Kells's comrades happened to come, what could she tell them? They would be as bad as he, without that one trait that had kept him human for a day. Joan pondered upon this. It would never do to let them suspect she had shot Kells. So, carefully cleaning the gun, she reloaded it with shells found in his saddlebag. If any men came, she would tell them that Bill had done the shooting.

Kells lingered. Joan began to feel that he would live, although everything indicated the contrary. Her intelligence told her he would die and her feeling said he would not. At times she lifted his head and got water into his mouth with a spoon. When she did this, he would moan. That night, during the hours she lay awake, she gathered courage out of the very solitude and loneliness. She had nothing to fear, unless someone came to the cañon. The next day in no wise differed from the preceding. And then there came the third day, with no change in Kells till near evening, when she thought he was returning to consciousness. But she must have been mistaken. For hours she watched patiently. He might return to consciousness just before the end, and want to speak, to send a message, to ask a prayer, to feel a human hand at the last.

That night the new crescent moon hung over the cañon. In the faint light Joan could see the blanched face of Kells, strange and sad, no longer seeming evil.
The time came when his lips stirred. He tried to talk. She moistened his lips and gave him a drink. He murmured incoherently—sank again into a stupor—to rouse once more and babble like a madman. There he lay quietly for long—so long that sleep was claiming Joan. Suddenly he startled her by calling very faintly but distinctly: “Water . . . water . . . .”

Joan bent over him, lifting his head, helping him to drink. She could see his eyes, like dark holes in something white.

“Is . . . that . . . you . . . Mother?” he whispered.

“Yes,” replied Joan.

He sank immediately into another stupor, or sleep, from which he did not rouse. That whisper of his touched Joan. Bad men had mothers, just the same as any other kind of men. Even this Kells had a mother. He was still a young man. He had been youth, boy, child, baby. Some mother had loved him—cradled him—kissed his rosy baby hands—watched him grow with pride and glory—built castles in her dreams of his manhood, and perhaps prayed for him still, trusting he was strong and honored among men. And here he lay, a shattered wreck, dying for a wicked act, the last of many crimes. It was a tragedy. It made Joan think of the hard lot of mothers and then of this unsettled Western wild, when men flocked in packs like wolves and spilled blood like water and held life nothing.

Joan sought her rest and soon slept. In the morning, she did not at once go to Kells. Somehow she dreaded finding him conscious, almost as much as she had dreaded the thought of finding him dead. When she did bend over him, he was awake, and at sight of her he showed a faint amaze.

“Joan,” he whispered.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Are you . . . with me still?”

“Of course. I couldn't leave you.”

The pale eyes shadowed strangely, darkly. “I'm alive yet . . . and you stayed. . . . Was it yesterday . . . you threw my gun . . . on me?”

“No. Four days ago.”

“Four. Is my back broken?”

“I don't know. I don't think so. It's a terrible wound. I . . . I did all I could.”

“You tried to kill me . . . then tried to save me?” She was silent to that. “You're good . . . and you've been noble,” he said. “But I wish . . . you'd been only bad. Then I'd curse you . . . and strangle you. . . .”

“Perhaps you had best be quiet,” replied Joan.

“No. I've been shot before. I'll get over this . . . if my back's not broken. How can we tell?”

“I've no idea.”

“Lift me up.”

“But you might open your wound,” protested Joan.

“Lift me up!” The force of the man spoke even in his low whisper.

“But why . . . why?” asked Joan.

“I want to see . . . if I can sit up. If I can't . . . give me my gun.”

“I won't let you have it,” replied Joan. Then she slipped her arms under his and, carefully raising him to a sitting posture, released her hold.

“I'm . . . a . . . rank coward . . . about pain,” he gasped with thick drops standing out on his white face. “I . . . can't . . . stand it.”

But tortured or not, he sat up alone, and even had the will to bend his back. Then with a groan he fainted and fell into Joan's arms. She laid him down, and worked over him for some time before she could bring him to. Then he was wan, suffering, speechless.
But she believed he would live and told him so. He received that with a strange smile. Later, when she came to him with a broth, he drank it gratefully.

“I'll beat this out,” he said weakly. “I'll recover. My back's not broken. I'll get well. . . . Now you bring water and food in here . . . then you go.”

“Go?” she echoed.

“Yes. Don't go down the cañon. You'd be worse off. Take the back trail. You've a chance to get out. . . . Go!”

“Leave you here? So weak you can't lift a cup. I won't.”

“I'd rather you did.”

“Why?”

“Because in a few days I'll begin to mend. Then I'll grow like . . . myself . . . I think. . . . I'm afraid I loved you. . . . It could only be hell for you. Go now, before it's too late. If you stay . . . till I'm well . . . I'll never let you go.”

“Kells, I believe it would be cowardly for me to leave you here alone,” she replied earnestly. “You can't help yourself. You'd die.”

“All the better. But I won't die. I'm hard to kill. Go, I tell you.”

She shook her head. “This is bad for you . . . arguing. You're excited. Please be quiet.”

“Joan Randle, if you stay . . . I'll halter you . . . keep you naked in a cave . . . curse you . . . beat you . . . murder you! Oh, it's in me! Go, I tell you!”

“You're out of your head. Once for all . . . no,” she replied firmly.

“Damn you!” His voice failed in a terrible whisper.

In the succeeding days Kells did not often speak. His recovery was slow—a matter of doubt. Nothing was any plainer than the fact that, if Joan had left him, he would not have lived long. She knew it. And he knew
it. When he was awake, and she came to him, a mournful and beautiful smile lit his eyes. The sight of her apparently hurt him and uplifted him. But he slept twenty hours out of every day, and, while he slept, he did not need Joan.

She came to know the meaning of solitude. There were days when she did not hear the sound of her own voice. A habit of silence, one of the significant forces of solitude, had grown upon her. Daily she thought less and felt more. For hours she did nothing. When she sensed herself, compelled herself to think of these encompassing peaks of the lonely cañon walls, the stately trees, all those eternally silent and changeless features of her solitude, she hated them with a blind and increasing passion. She hated them because she was losing her love for them, because they were becoming a part of her, because they were fixed and content and passionless. She liked to sit in the sun, feel its warmth, see its brightness, and sometimes she almost forgot to go back to her patient. She fought at times against an insidious change—a growing older—a going backward; at other times she drifted through hours that seemed quiet and golden, in which nothing happened. And by and by, when she realized that the drifting hours were gradually swallowing up the restless and active hours, then, strangely she remembered Jim Cleve. Memory of him came to save her. She dreamed of him during the long lonely solemn days, and in the dark silent climax of unbearable solitude—the night. She remembered his kisses—forgot her anger and shame—accepted the sweetness of their meaning—and so in the interminable hours of her solitude, she dreamed herself into love for him.

Joan kept some record of days, until three weeks or thereabout passed, and then she lost track of time. It
dragged along, yet, looked at as the past, it seemed to have sped swiftly. The change in her, the growing older, the revelation and responsibility of self, as a woman, made this experience appear to have extended over months.

Kells slowly became convalescent, and then he had a relapse. Something happened, the nature of which Joan could not tell, and he almost died. There were days when his life hung in the balance, when he could not talk, and then came a perceptible turn for the better.

The store of provisions grew low, and Joan began to face another serious situation. Deer and rabbit were plentiful in the cañon, but she could not kill one with a revolver. She thought she would be forced to sacrifice one of the horses. The fact that Kells suddenly showed a craving for meat brought this aspect of the situation to a climax. And that very morning, while Joan was pondering the matter, she saw a number of horsemen riding up the cañon toward the cabin. At the moment she was relieved and experienced nothing of the dread she had formerly felt while anticipating this very event.

“Kells,” she said quickly, “there are men riding up the trail.”

“Good!” he exclaimed weakly with a light in his drawn face. “They've been long in . . . getting here. . . . How many?”

Joan counted them—five riders, and several pack animals.

“Yes. It's Gulden.”

“Gulden!” cried Joan with a start.

Her exclamation and tone made Kells regard her attentively. “You've heard of him? He's the toughest nut . . . on this border. I never saw his like. You won't be safe. I'm so helpless. What to say . . . to tell him?
Joan, if I should happen to croak . . . you want to get away quick . . . or shoot yourself.”

How strange to hear this bandit warn her of peril the like of which she had encountered through him! Joan secured the gun and hid it in a niche between the logs. Then she looked out again.

The riders were close at hand now. The foremost one, a man of Herculean build, jumped his mount across the brook, and leaped off while he hauled the horse to a stop. The second rider came close behind him; the others approached leisurely, with the gait of the pack animals.

“Ho, Kells!” called the big man. His voice had a loud bold sonorous kind of ring.

“Reckon he's here somewheres,” said the other man presently.

“Sure. I seen his hoss. Jack ain't goin' to be far from that hoss.”

Then both of them approached the cabin. Joan had never before seen two such striking, vicious-looking, awesome men. The one was huge—so wide and heavy and deep-set that he looked short—and he resembled a gorilla. The other was tall, slim, with a face as red as flame, and an expression of fierce keenness. He was stoop-shouldered, yet he held his head erect in a manner that suggested a wolf scenting blood.

“Someone here, Pearce,” boomed the big man.

“Why, damn me, Gul, if it ain't a girl!”

Joan moved out of the shadow of the wall of the cabin, and she pointed to the prostrate figure on the blankets.

“Howdy, boys,” said Kells wanly.

Gulden cursed in amaze while Pearce dropped to his knee with an exclamation of concern. Then both began to talk at once. Kells interrupted them by lifting a weak hand.

“No, I'm not going . . . to cash,” he said. “I'm only starved . . . and in need of stimulants. Had my back half shot off.”

“Who plugged you, Jack?”

“Gulden, it was your side pardner, Bill Bailey.”

“Bill?” Gulden's voice held a queer coarse constraint. Then he added gruffly: “Thought you an' him pulled together.”

“Well, we didn't.”

“An' . . . where's . . . Bill now?” This time Joan heard a slow curious cold note in the heavy voice, and she interpreted it as either doubt or deceit.

“Bill's dead and Halloway, too,” replied Kells.

Gulden turned his massive shaggy head in the direction of Joan. She had not the courage to meet the gaze upon her. The other man spoke: “Split over the girl, Jack?”

“No,” replied Kells sharply. “They tried to get familiar with . . . my wife . . . and I shot them both.”

Joan felt a swift leap of hot blood all over her, and then a coldness, a sickening, a hateful weakness.

“Wife!” ejaculated Gulden.

“Your real wife, Jack?” queried Pearce.