The Law-Breakers

She stole out and closed up the house for the night.

Nor was Helen prepared for the miracle of the next morning. When she arose it was to find her bedroom empty, and her bed made up. She hurriedly set out in search of her sister. She was nowhere in the house. In rapidly rising dismay she hurried out to search the barn, fearing she knew not what. But instant relief awaited her. Kate was outside doing all those little necessary duties by the livestock of her homestead, which she was accustomed to do, in the calm unruffled fashion in which she always went about her work.

Helen stared. She could scarcely believe her eyes. The miracle was altogether beyond her comprehension. But her delight and relief were profound. She greeted her sister and spoke. Then it was that she realized that here was no longer the old Kate, but a changed, utterly changed woman. The big eyes, so darkly ringed, no longer smiled. They looked out at her so full of unutterable pain, as full of dull aching regrets. There was such a depth of yearning and misery in them that her greeting suddenly seemed to jar upon her own ears, and come back to her in bitter mockery. In a moment, however, understanding came. Intuitively she felt that her sister’s grief was her own, into which she could never pry. She must ask no questions, she must offer no sympathy. For the moment her sister’s mantle had fallen upon her shoulders. Hers had suddenly become the strength, and it was for her to use it in Kate’s support.

So the days wore on, long dreary days of many heartaches and bitter speculation. Kate remained the dark, brooding figure she had displayed herself on that first morning after her return. She was utterly unapproachable in those first days, while yet at the greatest pains to conceal the sorrow she was enduring. No questions or explanations passed between the two women, and Helen was left without the faintest suspicion of the truth.

Sometimes, Helen, in the long silent days, strove to solve the meaning of everything for herself. She thought and thought till her poor head ached. But she always began and ended with the same thought. It was Charlie’s capture, Charlie’s death which had wrought this havoc in her sister, and she felt that time alone could remove the shadow which had settled itself so hopelessly upon her.

Then she began to wonder and worry at the prolonged absence of her – Bill.

Kate had just finished removing the remains of the evening meal. Helen had curled herself up in the old rocker. She was reading through the numerous pages of a long letter, for perhaps the twentieth time. She was tired, bodily and mentally, and her pretty face looked drawn under its tanning.

Her sister watched her, moving silently about, returning the various articles to the cupboards where they belonged. Her eyes were shadowed. The old assurance seemed to have gone entirely out of her. Her whole manner was inclined to a curious air of humility, which, even now, seemed to fit her so ill.

She watched the girl turn page after page. Then she heard her draw a long sigh as she turned the last page.

Helen looked up and caught the eyes so yearningly regarding her.

“I – I feel better now,” she declared, with a pathetic little smile. “And – please – please don’t worry about me, Kate, dear. I’m tired. We’re both tired. Tired to death. But – there’s no help for it. We surely must keep going, and – and we’ve no one now to help us.” She glanced down at the letter in her lap. Then she abruptly raised her eyes, and went on quickly. “Say, Kate, I s’pose we’ll never see Nick or Pete again? Shall we always have to do the work of our little patch ourselves?” Then she smiled and something of her old lightness peeped out of her pretty eyes. “Look at me,” she cried. “I – I haven’t put on one of my nice suits since – since that day. I’m – a tramp.”

Kate’s returning smile was of the most shadowy description. She shook her head.

“Maybe we’ll get some hired men soon,” she said, quietly. Then she sighed. “I don’t know. I hope so. I guess we’ll never see Nick again. He got away – I believe – across the border. As for Pete,” she shuddered, “he was found by the police – shot dead.”

Helen sat up.

“You never told me,” she cried.

Kate shook her head.

“I didn’t want to distress you – any more.” Just for one moment she averted her eyes. Then they came back to Helen’s face in an inquiry. “When – when is – Bill coming back?”

“Bill?” Helen’s eyes lighted up, and a warm smile shone in them as she glanced down at her letter again. “He says he’ll be through with Charlie’s affairs soon. He’s in Amberley. He’s had to see to things through the police. He’s coming right on here the moment he’s through. He’s – he’s going to wire me when he starts. Kate?”

“Yes, dear.”

Kate turned from the cook stove at the abruptness of her sister’s tone. Helen began to speak rapidly, and as she talked she kept her gaze fixed upon the window.

“It’s – it’s a long while now, since – that day. We were both feeling mighty bad ’bout things then. We,” she smiled whimsically, “sort of didn’t know whether it was Rocky Springs, or Broadway, did we? And there was such a lot I didn’t know or understand. And I never asked a question. Did I?”

Kate winced visibly. The moment she had always dreaded had come. She had realized that it must eventually come, and for days she had wondered vaguely how she would be able to meet it. The smile which strove to reach her eyes was a failure, and, for a moment, a hunted look threatened. In the end, however, she forced herself to perfect calmness.

“I don’t think I could have answered them then if you had,” she said gently. “I don’t know that I can answer many now – for both our sakes.”

Helen thought for some moments. Then she appeared to have arrived at a determination.

“How did you – come home that day – and why? I didn’t expect you until the next day.”

Kate drew a deep breath.

“I came back – riding,” she said. “I came back because – because I had to.”

“Why?”

“Because of the – disaster out there.”

“You knew?”

Kate nodded.

“Pretty well everything. That is all I can tell you, dear.” Kate crossed the room, and stood beside her sister’s chair. She laid one gentle hand upon her shoulder. “Don’t ask me any more about that. It – it is like – like searing my very soul with red-hot irons. That must be my secret, and you must forgive me for keeping it from you. Ask me anything else, and I will tell you – but leave that alone. It can do nobody any good.”

Helen leaned her head on one side till her soft cheek rested caressingly upon her sister’s hand.

“Forgive me, Kate,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’ll never mention it again – never.”

For some moments neither spoke. But Kate was waiting. She knew there were other questions that must be asked and answered.

“Was it because of the felling of that tree you went away?” Helen asked presently.

Kate shook her head.

“No.”

Helen started up.

“I knew it wasn’t. Oh, Kate, I knew it wasn’t. It was so unlike you. I know why you went. Listen,” she went on, almost excitedly. “You always defended Charlie. You pretended to believe him straight. You – you stuck to him through thick and thin. You flouted every charge made against him. It was because of him you went away. You went to try and help him – save him. All the time you knew he was against the law. That’s why you went. Oh, Kate, I knew it – I knew it.”

Helen was looking up into her sister’s shadowed face with loyal enthusiasm shining in her admiring eyes.

Kate gravely shook her head.

“I believed every word I said of Charlie. As God is my witness I believed it. And I tell you now, Helen, that as long as I live my heart will be bowed down beneath a terrible weight of grief and remorse at the death of a brave, honest, and loyal gentleman. I have no more to say. I never shall have – on the subject. I love you, Helen, and shall always love you. My one thought in life now is your welfare. If you love me, dear, then leave those things. Leave them as part of a cruel, evil, shadowed time, which must be put behind us. All I want you to ever remember of it – when you are the happy wife of your Big Brother Bill – is that Charlie was all we believed him, in spite of all appearances, and he died the noblest, the most heroic death that man ever died.”

Kate bent down and tenderly kissed the beautiful head of fair, wavy hair. Then, without waiting for the astonished sister’s reply, she moved across to the door.

“Some day,” she said, pausing with her hand on the catch, and, turning back, smiling gently through the gathering tears, “Bill will tell you it all. He knows it all – everything. Just now he is bound to secrecy, but he will be released from that some day, and then – he will tell you.”

CHAPTER XL

THE DAWN

A girl was leaning against a solitary post, a hundred yards or so from where the descent into the valley of Leaping Creek began. All about her stretched the vast plains of grass, which seemed to know no end. The wide flat trail, so bare and hard, passed her by, and vanished into the valley behind her. In the opposite direction, at long intervals, it showed up in sections as it passed over the rises in the prairie ocean, until the limits of her vision were reached.

Not a single object stood out to relieve the monotony of that desert of grass. Any dwelling of man within reach of the searching eye must have been hidden in the troughs between the crests of summer grass. It was all so wide, so vast, so dreadful in its unspeakable solitude.

Helen’s eyes were upon the last section of the trail, away to the northwest, just as far as her bright eyes could see. She was searching, searching. Her heart was beating with a great and buoyant hope, and every little detail she beheld in that far-off distance she searched, and sought to mould into the figure of the horseman she was waiting for.

The sun was hot. It’s relentless rays, freed from the wealth of shade in the valley below, beat down upon the parching land with a fiery intensity which must have been insupportable to unaccustomed human life. But to Helen it meant nothing, nothing but the fact that its brilliant light was in keeping with every beat of the warm, thrilling heart within her bosom.

He was on the road. Bill – her Big Brother Bill. He was on the road, and must be somewhere near now, for the telegram in her hand warned her that he hoped to reach the valley by sundown.

Four long weeks since the dreadful day. Four long weeks in which her aching heart and weary thought had left her in wretched unhappiness. Four weeks of doubt and trouble, in which her sister seemed to have shut herself out of her life, leaving her to face all her doubts and fears alone.

Bill was away on his dead brother’s affairs. Loyal Bill, seeking by every means in his lumbering power to shield the memory of the dead man from the effects of the manner of his death. Helen honored her lover for it. He was just the good, loyal soul she had believed. And now, as she stood with the tinted paper message, announcing his return in her hand, she smiled, and wondered tenderly what blunders he would contrive in the process.

Sundown. Sundown would not be for at least two hours. Two hours. Two hours meant some fourteen or sixteen miles by horse upon the trail. She told herself she could not see for sixteen miles, nor even for eight. It was absurd waiting there. She had already been waiting there over an hour. Then she smiled, laughing at herself for her absurd yearning for this lover of hers. He was so big, so foolish, so honest and loyal – and, he was just hers.

She sat down again on the ground, as already she had seated herself many times. She would restrain her impatience. She would not just get up at every —

She was on her feet again at the very moment of making her resolve. This time her eyes were straining and wide open. Every nerve in her body was at a tension. Some one was on the trail this time. Certain. It was a horseman, too. There was no mistake, but he was near, quite near, comparatively. How had she come to miss him in the far distance?

She saw the figure as it came over a rising ground. She watched it closely. Then she saw it was not on the trail, but was making for it – across country. Now she knew. Now she was certain, and she laughed and clapped her hands. It must be Bill, and – of course he had lost himself, and now, at last, had found his way.

The horseman came on at a great pace.

As he drew nearer a frown of doubt crossed the girl’s face. He did not appear big enough – somehow.

He dropped down into a hollow, and mounted the next crest. In a moment, as he came into view, Helen felt like bursting into tears of disappointment.

The next moment, however, all thought of tears passed away and a steady coldness grew in her eyes. She felt like hiding herself back there in the valley. She had recognized the man. Without a doubt it was Stanley Fyles. But he wore no uniform. He was clad in a civilian costume, which pronouncedly smacked of the prairie.

It was too late to hide. Besides, to hide would be undignified. What was he coming to the valley for? Helen’s eyes hardened. Nor did she know quite why she felt resentful at the sight of him. Yes, she did. It was for poor Charlie, Bill’s brother. And Kate had sworn that Charlie was innocent.

She stood thinking, thinking, and then a further change came over her. She remembered this man’s work. She remembered his duty. Ought she to feel badly toward him?

And Kate? What of Kate? Would she – What on earth brought him to the valley – now?

It was too late to avoid him now, if she had wanted to. And, somehow, on reflection, she was not sure she did want to. So she stood her ground as he came up.

He reined Peter in as he came abreast, and his dark eyes expressed his surprise at sight of the waiting girl.

“Why – Miss Helen, this – ” He broke off abruptly, and, turning in his saddle, looked back over the long, long trail. When his eyes came back to the girl’s face they were smiling. “It’s kind of hot out here,” he said. “Aren’t you afraid of the sun?” Then he became silent altogether, while he interpreted to himself the somewhat stony regard in her eyes.

In a moment something of the awkwardness of the encounter occurred to him. His mind was full of other things, which before he had missed the possibility of.

“I don’t mind the sun, Mr. Fyles,” said Helen coldly. “Besides, I guess I’m not standing around here for – fun. I’m waiting for some one.”

Fyles glanced back over the trail. Then he nodded. “He’s coming along,” he said quietly. “Guess he started out from Amberley before me. Say, he’s a bully feller, sure enough, and I like him. I’ve seen a good deal of him in Amberley. But I guessed he wouldn’t be thanking me for my company on the trail, so I came another way, and passed on ahead. You see – I, well, I had to do my duty – here, and – well, he’s a bully feller, Miss Helen, and – you’ll surely be happy with him.”

While he was talking, just for a moment, a wild impulse stirred Helen to some frigid and hateful retort. But the man’s evident sincerity won the day and the girl’s eyes lit with a radiant smile.

“He’s – on the trail?” she cried, banishing her last shadow of coldness. “He is? Say, tell me where, and when he’ll get in. I – I had this message which said he’d be here by sundown, and – and I thought I’d just come right along and meet him. Have – have you seen him? And – and – ”

Fyles shook his head. “Not until just now,” he said kindly. “He’s about four miles back. Say,” he added, with less assurance, “maybe your sister’s home?”

For a moment Helen stared incredulously. “Yes,” she answered slowly. Then in agitation: “You’re not going to – ?”

The man nodded, but his smile had died out. “Yes. That’s why I’ve come along,” he said seriously. “Is – is she well? Is she – ?”

But Helen left him no time to finish his apprehensive inquiries. At that moment she caught sight of a distant figure on the trail. It was the figure of a big man – so big, and her woman’s heart cried out in love and thankfulness.

“Oh, look! It’s Bill – my Bill! Here he comes. Oh, thank God.”

Stanley Fyles flung a glance over his shoulder. Then without a word he lifted Peter’s reins. Then he seemed to glide off in the direction of the setting sun.

As he went he drew a long sigh. He was wondering – wondering if all the happiness in the world lay there, behind him, in the warm heart of the girl who was waiting to embrace her lover.

Kate Seton was standing at the window of her parlor. Her back was turned upon the room, upon the powerful, loose-limbed figure of Stanley Fyles.

Her face was hidden, she wanted it to remain hidden – from him. She felt that he must not see all that his sudden visit, without warning, meant to her.

The man was near the center table. One knee was resting upon the hard, tilted seat of a Windsor chair, and his folded arms leaned upon the back of it. His eyes were full of a deep fire as he gazed upon the woman’s erect, graceful figure. A great longing was in him to seize her, and crush her in arms that were ready to claim and hold her against all the world.

All the atmosphere of his calling seemed to have fallen from him. He stood there just a plain, strong man of no great eloquence, facing a position in which he might well expect certain defeat, but from which there was no thought of shrinking.

Silence had fallen since their first greeting. That painful silence when realization of that which lies between them drives each to search for a way to cross the barrier.

It was Kate who finally spoke. She moved slightly. It was a movement which might have suggested many things, among them uncertainty of mind, perhaps of decision. Her voice came low and gentle. But it was full of a great weariness and regret, even of pain.

“Why – why did you come – now?” she asked plaintively. “It seems as though I’ve lived through years in the last few weeks. I’ve tried to forget so much. And now – you come here to remind me – to stir once more the shadows which have nearly driven me crazy. Is it merciful – to do that?”

The woman’s tone was baffling. Fyles searched for its meaning. Resentment he had anticipated. He had been prepared for it, and to resist it, and break it down by the ardor of his appeal. That dreary regret was more than he could bear, and he hastened to protest.

“Say, Kate,” he cried, his sun-tanned features flushing with a quick shame. “Don’t think I’ve come here to remind you. Don’t think I’ve come along to taunt you with the loss of our – our mad wager. I want to forget it. It became a gamble on a man’s life, and – and I hate the thought. You’re free of it, and I wish to God it had never been made.”

The bitter sincerity of his final words was not without its effect. Kate stirred. Then she turned. Her beautiful eyes, so full of pathos, so full of remorse, looked straight into his.

“Then – why did you come here?” she asked.

The man started up. The chair dropped back on to its four legs with a clatter. His arms were outstretched, and the passionate fire of his eyes blazed up as the quick, hot words escaped his lips.

“Why? Why?” he demanded, his eyes widening, his whole body vibrant with a consuming passion. “Don’t you know? Kate, Kate, I came because I couldn’t stay away. I came because there’s just nothing in the world worth living for but you. I came because I just love you to death, and – there’s nothing else. Say, listen. I went right back from here with one fixed purpose. Maybe it won’t tell you a thing. Maybe you won’t understand. I went back to get quit of the force – honorably. I’d made my peace with them. Oh, yes, I’d done that. Then I demanded leave of absence pending my resignation. They had to grant it. I am never going back. Oh, yes, I knew what I was up against. I wanted you. I wanted you so that I couldn’t see a thing else in any other direction. There is no other direction. So I came straight here to – to ask you to forget. I came here to tell you all I feel about – the work I had to do here. I came here with a wild sort of forlorn hope you could forgive. You see, I even believed that but for – for that – there was just a shadow of hope for me. Kate – !”

The woman suddenly held up her hand. And when she spoke there was nothing of the Kate he had always known in the humility of her tone.

“It is not I who must forgive,” she said quickly. “If there is any forgiveness on this earth it is I who need it.”

“You? Forgiveness?”

The man’s face wore blank incredulity.

Kate sighed. It was the sigh of a broken-hearted woman.

“Yes. If there is any forgiveness I pray that it may come my way. I need it all – all. I can never forgive myself. It was I who caused Charlie’s death.”

Quite suddenly her whole manner changed. The humility, the sadness of her tone rose quickly to a passionate self-denunciation.

“Yes, yes. I will tell you now. Oh, man, man. Your words – every one of them, have only stabbed me more and more surely to the heart. You don’t understand. You can’t, because you do not know what I mean. Oh, yes,” she went on desperately, “why shouldn’t I admit it? I love you. I always have loved you. Let me admit everything fully and freely.”

“Kate!” The man stepped forward, his eyes alight with a world of happiness, of overwhelming joy. But she waved him back.

“No, no,” she cried, almost harshly. “I have told you that just to show you how your words have well nigh crazed me. I can be nothing to you. I can be nothing to anybody. It was I who brought about Charlie’s death. He, the bravest, the loyalest man I ever knew, gave his life to save me from the police, who were hunting me down. Oh,” she went on, at sight of Fyles’s incredulous expression, “you don’t need to take my word alone. Ask Charlie’s brother. Ask Bill. He was there. He, too, shared in the sacrifice, although he did not understand that which lay in the depths of his brother’s brave heart. And now – now I must live on with the knowledge of what my wild folly has brought about. For weeks the burden of thought and remorse has been almost insupportable, and now you come to torture me further. Oh, God, I have paid for my wanton folly and wickedness. Oh, God!”

Kate buried her face in her hands, and abruptly flung herself into the rocker close behind her.

Fyles looked down upon her in amazed helplessness. He watched the woman’s heaving shoulders as great, dry, hard sobs broke from her in tearless agony. He waited, feeling for the moment that nothing he could say or do but must add to her despair, to her pain. Her self-accusation had so far left him untouched. He could not realize all she meant. All that was plain to him was her suffering, and he longed to comfort her, and help her, and defend her against herself.

The moments slipped away, heavy moments of intense feeling and bitter grief.

Presently the grief-stricken woman’s sobs grew less, and with something like a gesture of impatience she snatched her hands from her face, and raised a pair of agonized eyes to his.

“Leave me,” she cried. “Go, please go. I – I can’t bear it.”

Her appeal was so helpless. Again the impulse to take her in his arms was almost too strong for the man, but with an effort he overcame it.

“Won’t you – go on?” he said, in the gentlest possible tone. “It will help you. And – you would rather tell me.”

The firmness of his manner, the gentleness, had a heartbreaking effect. In a moment the woman’s eyes were flooded with tears, which coursed down her cheeks. It was the relief that her poor troubled brain and nerves demanded, and so Fyles understood.

He waited patiently until the passion of weeping was over. Then again he urged his demand.

“Now tell me, Kate. Tell me all. And remember I’m not here as your judge. I am here to help – because – I love you.”

The look from the woman’s eyes thanked him. Then she bowed her head lest the sight of him should leave her afraid.

“Must I tell it all?”

Kate’s tone was firmer. There was a ring in it that reminded the other of the woman he used to know.

“Tell me just what you wish. No more – no less. You are telling it for your own sake, remember. To me – it makes no difference.”

“There’s no use in telling it you from the start. The things that led up to it,” she began. “I have been smuggling whisky for nearly five years. It’s a pretty admission, isn’t it? Yes, you may well be horrified,” she went on, as Fyles started.