The Law-Breakers

Helen’s humor suddenly burst the bonds of all restraint. She sat there laughing until she nearly choked.

Bill waited with a patience that seemed inexhaustible. Then, as the girl’s mirth began to lessen, he put his question again with dogged persistence.

“Will you marry me?”

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Of all the – ”

“Will you marry me?” the man persisted, his great face flushing.

Helen abruptly sobered. The masterful tone somehow sent a delighted thrill through her nerves.

She nodded.

“Of course I will. I – intended to from the first moment I saw your big, funny face with Stanley – ”

“You mean that, Hel? You really – meant to marry me? You did?”

The man’s happy excitement was something not easily to be forgotten. He sprang from his chair, reached out his powerful hands, caught the girl about the waist, and picked her up in his arms as he might have picked up a child. His great bear-like hug was a monstrous thing to endure, but Helen was more than willing to endure it, as also his kisses, which he rained upon her happy, laughing face.

But the girl’s sense of the fitness of things soon came to her rescue. The ridiculousness, the undignified figure she must appear, held in her great lover’s arms, set her struggling to free herself, and, in a few moments, he set her once more upon her feet, and stood laughing down into her blushing face.

“Say,” he cried, with a great laugh, “I don’t care a cuss if my brains never hatch out. You’re going to be my wife. You, the girl I’m crazy to death about. Fyles and all the rest can go hang. Gee!”

Helen looked up at him. Then she smoothed out her ruffled frock, and patted her hair into its place.

“Well,” she cried, with a happy laugh, “I’ve heard some queer proposals from the boys of this valley when they were drunk, but for a sober, educated man, I think you’ve made the funniest proposal that any one ever listened to. Oh, Bill, Bill, you’ve done a foolish thing. I’m a shameless man-hunter. I came out west to find a husband, and I’ve found one. I wanted to marry you all along. I meant to marry you.”

Bill’s laugh rang out in a great guffaw.

“Bully!” he cried. “What’s the use of marrying a girl who doesn’t want to marry you?”

“But she ought to pretend – at first.”

“Not on your life. No pretense for me, Hel. Give me the girl who’s honest enough to love me, and let me know it.”

“Bill! How – dare you? How dare you say I loved you and told you so? I’ve – I’ve a good mind not to marry – Say, Bill, you are a – joke. Now, sit right down, and tell me all about those – those other things worrying you.”

In a moment a shadow crossed the man’s cheerful face. But he obediently resumed his seat, and somehow, when Helen sat down, their chairs were as close together as their manufacturer had made possible.

“It’s Charlie – Charlie, and the police,” said Bill, in a despondent tone. “And Kate, too. I don’t know. Say, Hel, what’s – what’s going to happen? Fyles is hot after Charlie. Charlie don’t care a curse. But there’s something scaring him that bad he’s nearly crazy. Then there’s Kate. He saw Kate talking to Fyles, and he got madder than – hell. And now he’s gone off to O’Brien’s, and it don’t even take any thinking to guess what for. I tell you he’s so queer I can’t do a thing with him. I’m not smart enough. I could just break him in my two hands if I took hold of him to keep him home and out of trouble, but what’s the use? He’s crazy about Kate, he’s crazy about drink, he’s crazy about everything, but keeping clear of the law. That’s what I came to tell you about – that, and to fix up about getting married.”

The man’s words left a momentary dilemma in the girl’s mind. For a moment she was at a loss how to answer him. It seemed impossible to accept seriously his tale of anxiety and worry, and yet – . The same tale from any other would have seemed different. But coming from Bill, and just when she was so full of an almost childish happiness at the thought that this great creature loved her, and wanted to marry her, it took her some moments to reduce herself to a condition of judicial calm, sufficient to obtain the full significance of his anxious complaint.

When at last she spoke her eyes were serious, so serious that Bill wondered at it. He had never seen them like that before.

“It’s dreadful,” she said in a low tone. “Dreadful.”

Bill jumped at the word.

“Dreadful? My God, it’s awful when you think he’s my brother, and – and Kate’s your sister. I can’t see ahead. I can’t see where things are – are drifting. That’s the devil of it. I wish to goodness they’d given me less beef and more brain,” he finished up helplessly.

Helen displayed no inclination to laugh. Somehow now that this simple man was here, now that the responsibility of him had devolved upon her, a delightful feeling of gentle motherliness toward him rose up in her heart, and made her yearn to help him. It was becoming quite easy to take him seriously.

“P’r’aps it’s a good thing you’ve got all that – beef. P’r’aps it’s for the best, you’re so – so strong, and so ready to help. You can’t see ahead. Neither can I. Maybe no one can, but – Fyles. Suppose you and I were standing at the foot of a cliff – a big, high cliff, very dangerous, very dreadful, and some one we both loved was climbing its face, and we saw them reach a point where it looked impossible to go on, or turn back. What could we do? I’ll tell you. We could remain standing there looking on, praying to Providence that they might get through, and holding ourselves ready to bear a hand when opportunity offered, and, failing that, do our utmost to break their fall.”

Bill’s appreciation suddenly illuminated his ingenuous face.

“Say,” he cried admiringly. “You’ve hit it. Sure, we can’t climb up and help. It would mean disaster to both, with no one left to help. Say, I’m glad I’m big and strong. That’s it, we’ll stand – by. You’ll think, and I’ll do what you tell me. By Jing! That’s made everything different. We’ll stand by, and break their fall. I could never have thought of that – I couldn’t, sure.”

It was Helen’s turn to display enthusiasm. It was an enthusiasm inspired by her lover’s acceptance of her suggestion.

“But we’re not going to just watch and watch and do nothing. We must keep on Fyles’s trail. We must keep close behind Charlie, and when we see the fall coming on we must be ready to thrust out a hand. You never know, we may beat the whole game in spite of Charlie. We may be able to save him in spite of himself. No harm must come to Kate through him. I can’t see where it can come, except – that he is mad about her, and she is mad about – some one else.”

“Fyles?” Bill hazarded.

Helen looked around at him in amused admiration. She nodded.

“You’re getting too clever for me. You will be thinking for us both soon.”

Bill denied the accusation enthusiastically.

“Never,” he exclaimed. And after that he drifted into a lover’s rhapsody of his own inferiority and unworthiness.

Thus, for a while, the more serious cares were set aside for that brief lover’s paradise when two people find their focus filled to overflowing with that precious Self, which we are told always to deny. Fortunately human nature does not readily yield to such behests, and so life is not robbed of its mainspring, and the whole machinery of human nature is not reduced to a chaotic bundle of useless wheels.

For all Helen’s boasted scheming, for all Bill’s lack of brilliancy, these two were just a pair of simple creatures, loyal and honest, and deeply in love. So they dallied as all true lovers must dally with those first precious moments which a Divine Providence permits to flow in full tide but once in a lifetime.

Charlie Bryant was standing at the bar of O’Brien’s saloon. One hand rested on the edge of the counter as though to steady himself. His eyes were bloodshot, a strange pallor left his features ghastly, and the combination imparted a subtle appearance of terror which the shrewd saloonkeeper interpreted in his own fashion as he unfolded his information, and its deductions.

The bar was quite empty otherwise, and the opportunity had been too good for O’Brien to miss.

“Say, I was mighty glad to get them kegs the other night safely. But I’m takin’ no more chances. It’ll see me through for awhile,” he said, as he refilled Charlie’s glass at his own expense. “There’s a big play coming right now, and, if you’ll take advice, you’ll lie low – desprit low.”

“You mean Fyles – as usual,” said Charlie thickly. Then he added as an afterthought: “To hell with Fyles, and all his damned red-coats.”

O’Brien’s quick eyes surveyed his half-drunken customer with a shrewd, contemptuous speculation.

“That sounds like bluff. Hot air never yet beat the p’lice. It needs a darnation clear head, and big acts, to best Fyles. A half-soused bluff ain’t worth hell room.”

Charlie appeared to take no umbrage. His bloodshot eyes were still fixed upon O’Brien’s hard face as he raised his glass with a shaking hand and drained it.

“I don’t need to bluff with no one around worth bluffing,” he said, setting the empty glass down on the counter.

O’Brien’s response was to fold his arms aggressively, and lean forward upon the counter, peering into the delicate, pale face before him.

“See here,” he cried, “a fellow mostly bluffs when he’s scared, or he’s in a corner – like a rat. See? Now it’s to my interest to see Fyles beat clean out of Rocky Springs. It’s that set me gassin’. Get me? So just keep easy, and take what I got to hand out. I’m wise to the game. It’s my business to keep wise. Those two crooks of yours, Pete and Nick, were in this morning, and I heard ’em talkin’. Then I got ’em yarning to me. They’ve got every move Fyles is making dead right. They’re smartish guys, and I feel they’re too smart for you by a sight. If things go their way you’re safe. If there’s a chance of trouble for them you’re up against it.”

Charlie licked his dry lips as the saloonkeeper paused. Then he replaced the sodden end of his cigarette between them. But he remained silent.

“I’ve warned you of them boys before,” O’Brien went on. “But that’s by the way. Now, see here, Fyles has got your play. The boys know that, and in turn have got his play. Fyles knows that to-morrow night you’re running in a big cargo of liquor. The only thing he don’t know is where you cache it. Anyways, he’s got a big force of boys around, and Rocky Springs’ll have a complete chain of patrols around it, to-morrow night. Each man’s got a signal, and when that signal’s given it means he’s located the cargo. Then the others’ll crowd in, and your gang’s to be overwhelmed. Get it? You’ll all be taken – red-handed. I’m guessin’ you know all this all right, all right, and I’m only telling it so you can get the rest clear. How you and your boys get these things I’m not guessing. It’s smart. But here’s the bad stuff. It’s my way to watch folks and draw ’em when I want to get wise. I drew them boys. They’re reckonin’ things are getting hot for ’emselves. They’re scared. They’re reckonin’ the game’s played out, and ain’t worth hell room, with Fyles smelling around. Those boys’ll put you away to Fyles, if they see the pinch coming. And that’s where my interests come in. They’ll put you away sure as death.”

If O’Brien were looking for the effect of his solemn warning he was disappointed. Charlie’s expression remained unchanged. The ghastly white of his features suggested fear, but it was not added to by so much as a flicker of an eyelid.

“That all?” he asked, with a deliberate pause between the words to obtain clear diction.

O’Brien shrugged, but his eyes snapped angrily at this lack of appreciation.

“Ain’t it enough? Say,” his manner had become almost threatening, “I’m not doing things for hoss-play. The folks around can build any old church to ease their souls and make a show. Rocky Springs ain’t the end of all things for me. I’m out after the stuff. I’ll soothe my soul with dollars. That’s why I’m around telling you, because your game’s the thing that’s to give ’em to me. When your game’s played I hit the trail, but as long as you make good Rocky Springs is for me. If you can’t handle your proposition right then I quit you.”

Charlie suddenly shifted his position, and leaned his body against the counter. The saloonkeeper looked for that sign which was to re-establish his confidence. It was not forthcoming. For a moment the half-drunken man leaned his head upon one hand, and his face was turned from the other behind the bar.

O’Brien became impatient.

“Wal?” he demanded.

His persistence was rewarded at last. But it was rewarded with a shock which left him startled beyond retort.

Charlie suddenly brought a clenched fist down upon the counter with a force that set the glasses ringing.

“Fyles!” he cried fiercely, “Fyles! It’s always Fyles! God’s truth, am I never to hear, or see, the last of him? Say, you know. You think you know. But you don’t. Damn you, you don’t!”

Before the astonished saloonkeeper could recover himself and formulate the angry retort which rose to his lips, Charlie staggered out of the place.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SOUL OF A MAN

It was growing dark. Away in the west a pale stream of light was fading smoothly out, absorbed by the velvet softness of the summer night. There was no moon, but the starlit vault shone dazzlingly upon the shadowed valley. Already among the trees the yellow oil lamps were shining within the half-hidden houses.

From within a dense clump of trees, high up the northern slope of the valley, a man’s slight figure made its way. His movements were slow, deliberate, even furtive. For some moments he stood peering out at a point below where a woman’s figure was rapidly making its way up the steep trail toward the old Meeting House.

The man’s eyes were straining in the darkness for the outline of the woman’s figure was indistinct, only just discernible in the starlight. She came on, and he could distinctly hear her voice humming an old, familiar air. She evidently had no thought of the possibility that her movements could be of any interest to anybody but herself.

She reached the Meeting House and paused. Then the watching man heard the rattle of a key in the lock. The humming had ceased. The next moment there was the sound of a turning handle, and a tight-fitting door being thrust open. The woman’s figure had disappeared within the building.

The man left the sheltering bush and moved out on to the trail. He passed one thin hand across his brow, as though to clear the thoughts behind of their last murkiness after a drunken slumber. He stretched himself wearily as though stiff from his unyielding bed of sun-baked earth. Then he moved down the trail toward the Meeting House, selecting the scorched grass at the side of it to muffle the sound of his footsteps.

His weariness seemed to have entirely passed now, and all his attention was fixed upon the rough exterior of the old building, which had passed through such strange vicissitudes to finally become the house of worship it now was. With its old, heavy-plastered walls, and its long, reed-thatched roof, so heavy and vastly thick, it was a curiosity; the survival of days when men and beasts met upon a common arena and played out the game of life and death, each as it suited him, with none but the victor in the game to say him nay.

The man felt something of the influence of the place now as he drew near. Nor could he help feeling that the game that went on about it now had changed little enough in its purpose. The rules may have received modification, but the spirit was still the same. Men were still struggling for victory over some one else, and beneath the veneer of a growing civilization, passions, just as untamed, raged and worked their will upon their ill-starred possessors.

Reaching the building, he moved cautiously around the walls till he came to a window. It was closed, and a curtain was drawn across it. He passed on till he came to another window. It was partially open, and, though the curtain was drawn across it, the opening had disarranged the curtain, and a beam of light shone through.

He pressed his face toward the opening so that his mouth was at its level. Then he spoke softly, in a voice that was little more than a whisper —

“Kate!” he called. “Kate! It is I – Charlie. I’ve – I’ve been waiting for you, and want to speak to you.”

For answer there was a sound of hurrying footsteps across the floor of the room. The next moment the curtain was pulled aside. Kate stood at the other side of the window in the dim lamplight. Her handsome eyes were startled and full of inquiry, and her rounded bosom rose and fell quickly. When she saw the pale face peering in at her a gentle smile crept into her eyes.

“You scared the life out of me,” she said calmly. Then, with a quick look into his bloodshot eyes, she went on: “Why did you wait for me – here?”

Charlie lowered his eyes. “I – guessed you’d be along some time this evening. I wanted to speak to you – alone.”

Kate studied him for a moment. His averted, almost shifty, eyes seemed to hold her attention. She was thinking rapidly.

Presently his eyes came back to her face; a deep passion was shining in them.

“Can I come around to the door?”

There was just the smallest hesitation before Kate replied.

“Yes, if you must see me here.”

Charlie waited for no more. The door was on the other side of the building, overlooking the village below. He hurried thither, and when he thrust it open the place was in darkness.

Kate’s voice greeted him promptly. “The draught has blown the lamp out. Have you a match?”

Charlie closed the door behind him, and produced and struck a match. The lamp flared up and Kate replaced the glass chimney. Then she moved over to the wall and placed the lamp in its bracket.

It was a curious interior. In their unevenness the white kalsomined walls displayed their primitive workmanship. The windows were small, framed, and set deep in the ponderous walls. They looked almost like the arrow slits in a mediæval fortress. The long, pitched roof was supported, and collared, by heavy, untrimmed logs, which, at some time, had formed the floor-supports of a sort of loft. This had been done away with since, for the purpose of giving air to the suppliants at a prayer meeting below.

At the far end of the room were two reading desks and a sort of communion table. While in one corner, behind one of the reading desks, was a cheap-looking harmonium. Here and there, upon the rough walls, were nailed cardboard streamers, conveying, amid a wealth of illumination, sundry appropriate texts of a non-committal religious flavor, and down the narrow body of the building were stretched rows of hard-seated, hard-backed benches for the accommodation of the congregation.

One swift glance sufficed for Charlie, and his eyes came back to the woman’s smiling face. Her good looks were undoubted, but to him they were of an almost celestial order. There was no creature in the whole wide world to compare with her.

His eyes devoured every detail of her expression, of her personality, with the hungry greed of a soul-starved man. It was almost an impossibility for him to seize upon and hold the thoughts that so swiftly poured through his brain. So the moments passed and Kate found her patience ebbing.

“Well?” she demanded, her smile slowly fading.

The man breathed a sigh, and swallowed as with a dry throat. The spell of her charm had been broken.

“I had to come,” he cried, with a nervous rush. “I had to find you. I had to speak to you – to tell you.”

The woman’s eyes, so steadily fixed upon his face, were wearing an almost hard look.

“Was it necessary to stimulate your nerve to come, and – speak to me? Charlie, Charlie,” Kate went on more gently, her fine eyes softening, “when is this all to cease? Why must you drink? It seems so hopeless. Oh, man, where is your backbone, your grit. You tell me you long to be free of your curse, yet you plunge headlong the moment you are disturbed.”

Her moment of passionate remonstrance passed and a subtle coolness superseded it, as the scarlet flushed into the man’s pale cheeks.

“Tell it me all,” she went on, “tell me what it is you had to see me about. Remember, to-morrow is Sunday, and this place must be put in order for meeting. As it is, I am late. I was kept.”

The flush of shame died out of the man’s face, and his eyes became questioning. But his manner was almost humble.

“I know,” he said. “I knew I had no right to disturb you – now. I knew you would resent it. But I had to see you – while I had the chance. To-morrow it might be too late.”

“Too late?”

The woman’s question came with a sharp, rising inflection.

“Oh, Kate, Kate, won’t you understand what has brought me? Can’t you understand all that I feel now that the shadow of the law is so threatening here in this valley? All the time I’m thinking of you; thinking of all you mean in my life; thinking of the love which would make it a happiness to lay down my life for you, the love which to me is the whole, whole world.”

He ceased speaking with a curious abruptness. It was as though there were much more to be said, but he feared to give it expression.

Kate seized upon his pause to remonstrate.

“Hush, Charlie,” she cried almost vehemently, “you mustn’t tell me all this. You mustn’t. I am not worthy of such a love from any man. Besides,” she went on, with a sigh, “it is all so useless. I have no love to return you. You know that. You have known it so long. Our friendship has been precious to me. It will always be precious. I feel, somehow, that you belong to me, are part of me, but not in the way you would have it. Oh, Charlie, the one thought in my mind, the one desire in my heart, is for your welfare. I desire that more than I could ever desire the love of any man. You love me, and yet by every act of yours that jeopardizes that welfare you stab me to the heart as surely as you add another nail to the coffin of your moral and physical well-being. You come here to tell me of these things, straight from one of your mad debauches, the signs of which are even now in your eyes, and in your shaking, nervous hands. Oh, Charlie, why must it all be? What madness is it with which you are possessed?”

The man looked into her big eyes, so full of strength and courage. The yellow lamplight left them shining darkly. He sought in them something that always seemed to baffle. Something he knew was there, but which ever eluded him. And the while he cried out in bitterness at her challenge.

“What does it matter – these things?” he said hoarsely. “What does it matter what I am if – I can’t be anything to you?”

Then his bitterness was redoubled, and an almost savage light shone in his usually gentle eyes.

“Oh, God, I know I can never be anything to you but a sort of puling weakling, who must be nursed, and petted, and cared for. I know,” he went on, his words coming with a rush in the height of his protesting passion, “if your thoughts, your secret thoughts and feelings, were put into words, I know what they would say of me, must say of me. Do I need to tell you? No, I think not. Look at me. It is sufficient.”

He paused, his great dark eyes alight as Kate had never seen them before. Then he went on, and his tone had become subdued, and its rich note thrilled with the depths of passion stirring him.

“But for all that I am a man, Kate. For all my weakness I have strength to feel, to love, to fight. I have all that, besides, which goes to make a man, just as surely as has the man, Fyles, whom you love. I know, Kate. Denial would be useless, and in denying, you would be untrue to yourself. Fyles is the man for you, and no one knows it better than I. Fyles! The irony of it. The man who represents the law is the man who stands between me and all I desire on earth. I have seen it. I have watched. Nothing that concerns your life escapes me. How could it, when my whole thought is for you – you? But the agony of mind I suffer is no less. I cannot help it, Kate. The knowledge and sight of things drives me nearly crazy, and I suffer the tortures of hell. But even so, if your happiness lies at Fyles’s side, then – I would have it so. If I were sure – sure that this happiness were awaiting you. Is it, Kate? Think. Think of it in – every aspect. Is it? Happiness with this – Fyles?”

It was some moments before Kate made any reply. Her eyes were fixed upon the old Communion Table, so shadowy in the single lamplight. She was asking herself many questions; almost as many as he could have asked her. She had permitted herself to drift on the tide of her feelings. Whither? She knew she was beyond her depth. Her life was in the hands of a Providence which would inevitably work its will. All she knew was that she loved. She had known it from the first. She loved, and rejoiced that it was so. Again, there were moments when she feared as cordially. She knew the work that lay before this lover of hers. She knew in what direction it pointed. And in obedience to her thoughts her eyes came back to the drunkard’s eager face.