The One-Way Trail: A story of the cattle country

Doc Crombie stood with folded arms within two yards of the prisoner. Behind the prisoner Smallbones and the rest of his men stood, their hands grasping the plaited rope. They were only awaiting the silent signal from the doctor.

When the handkerchief had been adjusted the man fell in beside his comrades on the rope. The awful moment had arrived when the signal must be given. The tension amongst the onlookers was breathless, and the agony of the man about to die must have been appalling, in spite of his apparent calm.

The moments passed. It almost seemed as though the hardened nerve of the doctor needed support. At last he stiffened. He raised his head, and looked squarely at the pinioned man.

“Jim Thorpe,” he cried, in a harsh, unyielding voice. “You are condemned to die by the ballot of your fellow citizens, for the murder of Will–”

“Ho! Ho, Doc! Hold on! For God’s sake, hold your hand, Doc!”

A great hoarse voice split the deathly stillness with a roar that suddenly electrified the assembly. Everybody swung round in the direction whence it came. That is, everybody but the doctor. He had recognized the voice, and he had caught Smallbones’ gleaming eye. With a spring he was at Jim’s side, and threw the noose clear of his neck. He had no idea of the reason of the interruption, but he had caught Smallbones’ eye.

He turned about in time to see Peter Blunt break through the crowd bearing in his arms the crippled brother of Eve Henderson. Following close upon his heels was Eve herself, gasping and almost fainting with her exertion.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE PASSING OF ELIA

Peter Blunt paused, staggered, then with a great effort pulled himself together. Mighty man as he was, he had reached the limits of his strength, for he had run nearly a mile, carrying Elia in his arms. Eve now clung to his great arm for support.

Peter set the boy on his feet and supported him. A great fear was in him that a perverse fate would yet rob them of justice. Elia was dying, and he knew it. He needed no examination to tell him so. It was there, written in the glazing eyes, in the hideous blue pallor stealing over the lad’s face.

“We’re in time, laddie,” he said hoarsely, with his mouth close to Elia’s ear. “Speak up and say the truth.”

Then he looked up to encounter the keen eyes of the doctor.

“What’s all this?” the latter demanded harshly. But there was a sudden light of hope in his fierce eyes.

“It’s him. He’s got something to say. It’s the truth about the killing.” Peter indicated the boy. “Speak up, laddie, they’re all friends. Speak up–for Jim’s sake.” Eve looked on with hands clasped. She was still breathing painfully from her exertions.

The crowd gathered round. All but Smallbones, who never for a moment removed his eyes from Jim’s face. It was a bitter moment for him. He felt he was about to be robbed of his prey, and he resented it with all that was mean in him. But Elia did not speak. His eyes were half closed, and a terrible helplessness seemed to have suddenly seized hold of him.

Peter urged him again with a sinking heart.

“Aren’t you going to tell them, laddie? Aren’t you going to tell them all you’ve told me–and save Jim?”

It was Jim’s voice that answered him.

“Don’t bother the lad,” he said. He could not see, but instinctively he knew that Elia was in a bad way.

Peter caught at his words.

“Do you hear, laddie? That’s Jim talking. You’ve come to tell the truth and save him. They’ve got him all bound up, and the rope’s hanging over him. Eh? I didn’t rightly hear.”

He had seen the boy’s lips move, and he strove by every means in his power to encourage him to a dying effort.

But in the pause that followed Smallbones’ mean voice was suddenly heard.

“This ain’t no sort o’ justice. Wot’s these folks buttin’ in fer? They’ve stuffed him full o’ lies ’cause he’s sick an’ dying. I tell yer it’s a trick, an’ when he speaks it’ll be to tell his usual lies–”

“It ain’t lies, I tell yer it ain’t lies.” It was Elia speaking, suddenly roused from his stupor by the vicious charge. His words came in a high, shrill voice. “I don’t need to tell no lies. I killed Will Henderson. I killed him! I killed him! He’s kicked me to death, an’ I killed him with Jim’s knife. It was lyin’ ther’ wher’ he’d left it after he’d fixed them rags on his face. I killed him, I tell yer. An’ I’m glad. ’Cos I–I–hate him, an’–he’s–killed–me.”

The boy’s voice had risen to a shriek, and then died suddenly away to a whisper as he fell back into Peter’s arms. It was the final effort, which Peter had been unable to rouse him to, but which, to his own chagrin, Smallbones had achieved.

The boy was dead. The one honest action of his life had been performed with his last breath. Such was the overmastering cruelty of his nature that, in comparative health, and with all his faculties alert, the one spark of good, somewhere deep down in his heart, had had no power to shine. The flesh had been too strong for him–and now, now perhaps he had fulfilled his mission, and that one little step forward would carry him beyond the jaws of evil which had been so tightly shut about his poor, weakly spirit. Peter laid him gently upon the ground.

Then he stood up about to speak. There were tears in his eyes, and without shame he dashed them away with the back of his hand. But Eve stayed him with a gesture. She took a step forward. Her eyes were shining as she glanced round upon the familiar faces. Her mind was made up. There was no shrinking now at the disgrace she had in her cowardice so feared before. Jim had shown her the way to a loyal courage. She understood now why he had gone to his death shielding the real murderer. He had done it to save her, he had done it as once before he had sought to help her. She loved him, and no longer feared to tread the path he had so willingly, so readily trodden for her sake.

“I want to tell you all the things that I should have told you long ago,” she began, in clear ringing tones, “but I couldn’t, because–because he was my husband.”

A startled sound went round the listeners. The doctor’s eyes flashed suddenly in Jim’s direction. But before she could continue, the latter suddenly urged her to silence.

“There’s no need to speak of him, Eve,” he cried. “Leave it to me, and I’ll tell them how Will came by his death–now.”

But the doctor interfered. He signed to one of the men to release the prisoner.

“We’ll have Mrs. Henderson’s story first,” he said decidedly. “You’ll please get right ahead, ma’am.”

There was just the briefest possible hesitation. For a second Eve’s eyes wandered over the faces now gathered so closely about. It was not that she was any longer afraid. It was merely that she looked for one friendly glance. She found it in the round face of Angel Gay. He was smiling on her. And at once she plunged into her story.

“Will Henderson–my husband, was the cattle-thief,” she said. And for a moment she could go no further. Had she desired to create a sensation, she amply succeeded. The doctor had to call for silence so that she might proceed.

Having made the plunge, her story came clearly and concisely. She told everything without sparing either herself or her husband. She began from the time when Will had been ordered out of Barnriff, and told all the pitiful, sordid details, right down to his final return after escaping from the doctor’s men at the Little Bluff River. Everything she told as she knew it, except the part Jim had played in his actual escape. This she could not bring herself to speak of.

The story took some time in the telling, but there was not a man amongst those assembled that did not hungrily take in every detail of it. And as it unrolled, to the final scene of Will’s return, when again he ill-used her and departed in search of Elia to kill him, and his final promise to return later and kill her, a fierce light of understanding grew on the swarthy, rough faces, and muttered imprecations flew from lip to lip. All bitterness for Jim had passed from their thoughts, all except, perhaps, from the thoughts of Smallbones.

And Jim remained silent all the time. He, too, was listening. He, too, shared again in the thoughts which now assailed the others. The hideous brutality, as it appeared, told in Eve’s simple words, set his blood boiling afresh against the dead man. Though he knew it all only too well, it still had power to rouse the worst side of his nature.

At the conclusion, Doc Crombie suddenly turned to Jim. He offered no comment, no sympathy.

“Now, I guess, you’ll talk some,” he said, in his usual harsh tone. But somehow his words seemed to contain a smile.

“The boy has told you who killed Will Henderson,” Jim answered at once. “I can’t, because I didn’t see him killed. I’ll tell you the part I had in the affair. It’s not pretty.” He paused, but went on almost at once. “I happened along to Mrs. Henderson’s house directly I came in to town. I had news for her. You know the news. Will had escaped.”

“Yes,” cried Smallbones, unable to keep silent longer, “because you helped him, an’ bluffed the Doc. Oh, I’m wise to you.”

“You look wise to a good deal,” retorted Jim, with a cold smile. Then without further concern he went on with his story. “I came to her house and found her bound and gagged. Will had not long left her. She told me what had happened, that he had gone off to kill Elia, and I rode out at once to the bluff. I found Will kicking the life out of the poor boy. I jumped from my horse and hit him with my fist. I frankly admit I desired to kill him, and my whole intent was in that blow. He fell to the ground with his jaw badly smashed, and–and I was glad. I left him there and looked to Elia. He was in a pretty bad way, but he did not seem so bad as I now realize he must have been. However, when I saw that I had been in time to save him, my anger began to pass, and I felt I could not leave the wretched man lying there with his wound dripping, and–well, I thought I’d better do what I could for him. So I sent Elia over to my horse–I intended that he should ride home–while I fixed Will’s face up some.

“Well, I had nothing much to do it with except my handkerchiefs,” he went on, “so I knelt down beside him, took out my sheath-knife and ripped up my white handkerchief into a bandage and folded my neck-scarf into a pad, and bound it on his broken jaw. Then I got up, and now I know I must have left my knife on the ground beside him. I didn’t know it at the time. Anyway, I left him and went back to my horse expecting to find Elia. But he was not there. I was alarmed at once, and began to search round for him, calling at the same time. You see, I thought he’d maybe collapsed somewhere near by. But I got no answer, and so circling round and round I again came to where Will Henderson was lying. At first I didn’t notice anything, it was fairly dark; then, of a sudden, I saw he was lying on his back, where before he had been on his side. The next thing was that I realized the bandages were off his face. Then, as I knelt down beside him again, I found that–other. My knife was sticking up in his chest. Then I knew the reason of Elia’s absence, and–what he had done.”

Jim ceased speaking, and presently his eyes sought Eve’s face with a look of trouble in their dark depths. He had wanted to spare her all this, and now–

The doctor’s voice was questioning him.

“And you come right into the village, wher’ your flavor was mighty strong, to tell us he was dead?” he asked almost incredulously.

Jim shrugged. All eyes were upon him, silently echoing their leader’s question.

“Why not?” he said. “I hadn’t killed him. Besides, what else was there to do? The evidence was damning anyway. And I sure couldn’t run away. I guessed I’d best trust to circumstances. Y’see my last words to Mrs. Henderson were a threat to kill her husband–if he’d killed Elia.”

The doctor shook his head.

“Them things sure may have influenced you, but–”

“I think I can tell you.”

Doc Crombie turned at the interruption. It was Eve who spoke. Her eyes were shining, and she looked fearlessly into his face.

“Yes,” she cried, with rising emotion, “I think I can see the rest. It was to shield Elia, and, shielding him, to save me from pain and the disgrace which he knew I was too cowardly to face. He did it as he did that other thing, when he set out to carry a warning to Will, simply to help me, and save me from my troubles. Oh, doctor, haven’t you heard and seen sufficient? Must you stand here demanding all the inmost secrets and motives of two people’s lives? Let us go. Let Jim go. I have yet to bury my dead.”

The woman suddenly turned to Peter and buried her face against his rough flannel shirt, while the long-pent tears at last broke forth, and her body shook with sobs. Peter put his arm about her shoulders and patted her gently with his great rough hand.

“This thing is played right out, Doc,” he said. “You’ve got the facts. Let them be sufficient.” He turned to the boys, and his great kindly face was lit with something like a derisive smile. “Do you want a hanging, lads?” he asked them. “Because, out of all this racket, it seems to me there’s only one needs the rope, an’ that’s Smallbones.”

He needed no other answer than the harsh laugh which greeted his words. He had done it purposely. He meant to clip Smallbones’ wings for him, and, at the same time, put an end to the scene for Eve and his friend.

His success was ample. Doc Crombie walked straight up to Jim Thorpe and held out his hand.

“I’m sorry for things, Jim,” he said, “but you can’t rightly blame us. Not even Smallbones.”

Jim wrung his hand cordially, but silently. His eyes were still on Eve at Peter’s side. The doctor saw his look and understood.

“Guess I’m gettin’ right back to the city,” he said. “And,” he added, authoritatively, “I guess all you’se folks had best git busy that way, too.” Then he turned sharply and walked over to his buckboard. “Smallbones,” he said, as he mounted to his seat, “you’ll come right along in with me–an’ bring that rope.”

CHAPTER XXXVII

GOLD

The gray of dawn had passed. Now the rosy light of day was spreading its fresh beauty across the heavens, and gladdening the warming air, and painting afresh with generous brush the rolling, open world below.

Yes, the drab of dawn was past, and, as it was with all Nature about them, the rosy light of hope brushed lightly the weary hearts of those who had just passed through the fiery trials of the furnace of despair.

There were three people only standing beneath the tree, under whose shadow a man’s life so recently was to have been offered a sacrifice to human justice–two men and a woman. There was something else there, but life had passed from it, and it lay there waiting, in the calm patience of the last, long sleep, to return to the clay from which it sprang.

Eve was kneeling beside the deformed body of her poor brother. Her tears were falling fast as she bent over the pale upturned face, even more beautiful still since Death had hugged him to its harsh bosom. All the woman’s passionate love and regrets were pouring out over the unconscious clay. His cruelties, his weaknesses were forgotten, brushed away by an infinite love that had no power nor inclination to judge.

She loved him, and he was dead. He was gone beyond her ken; and for the moment in her grief she longed to be with him. In the midst of her tears she prayed–prayed for the poor weak soul, winging its way in the mysterious Beyond. She asked Him that his sins might be forgiven. She prayed Him that the great loving forbearance, so readily yielded to suffering humanity, might be shed upon that weak, benighted soul. She poured out all the longings of her simple woman’s heart in a passionate prayer that the Great Christ, who had shed His blood for all sinners, would stretch out His saving hand, and take her brother’s erring spirit once again to His bosom.

The two men stood by in silence. Their heads were bowed in reverence. They, too, felt something of the woman’s grief.

But presently Peter Blunt raised his head. His kindly blue eyes were full of sympathy. He moved across the intervening grass, and laid a hand with infinite tenderness upon the woman’s shoulder.

“We must take him with us,” he said gently.

The woman started, and looked up through her tears.

“Take him? Take him?” she questioned, without understanding.

Peter nodded.

“We’ll take him to–his new home.”

Eve bowed her head and covered her eyes with her hands.

“He’s yours, Eve,” the man went on softly. “Shall I?”

The woman nodded silently and rose to her feet. Peter stooped and picked the boy up in his arms to carry him as he had carried him before. Then he moved off and Eve followed him.

Jim hesitated for a moment. It almost seemed as though he had no right to force himself upon the woman’s grief. It seemed to him like sacrilege, and yet– Finally he, too, joined in the silent procession.

They followed whither Peter chose to lead. There was no question. It was not a moment for question. The kindly heart dictated. It was only for the others to acquiesce. Peter, too, perhaps in lesser degree, had loved the boy. But then it was in his nature to love all suffering humanity. He had never had anything but kindness for Elia in life. Now that he was dead his feelings were no less.

So they trailed across the prairie–on, slowly and solemnly on. Their course was marked straight as an arrow’s flight in Peter’s mind. Nor did he pause till the mound of gravel beside his cutting was reached.

He stood at the brink of the shallow pit. There in its depths lay a broad, jagged, soil-stained ridge. Here and there on its rough surface patches of dazzling white, streaked with the more generous tints of deep red, and blue, and green, showed where the hard-driven pick had split the gold-bearing quartz.

Eve stared wonderingly down. Jim looked on in silent awe. He knew something of that which was in Peter’s mind. Peter had found the deposits for which he had so long searched. Here–here was the great reef, round which the Indian stories had been woven.

He laid his burden on the edge of the pit. Then he clambered down into it. He signed to Jim, and the waiting man understood. He carefully passed the boy’s body to the man below.

Then he stood up, and Eve came to his side. Silently she rested one hand upon his shoulder, and together they watched the other at his work.

With the utmost tenderness Peter laid the boy down on his gravelly bed. They saw that the dead lad’s face was turned so that its cheek rested against the cold, auriferous quartz. Then the man untied the silk scarf about his own neck and laid it over the waxen face. Then he stood up and stripped the shoring planks from the walls of the pit, and placed them a solid covering over the boy’s body, resting them on two large stones, one at his head and one at his feet. Finally he tested their solidity, and climbed out of the grave.

Now he joined the others, and gazed silently down into the pit. For some moments he stood thus, until presently he glanced across at the eastern sky. A fiery line, like the light of a distant prairie fire, hovered upon the horizon. He knew it was the rising of the sun.

He turned to the still weeping woman.

“Little Eve,” he said gently, pointing into the pit. “There’s gold lies there. He wanted it, and–and I promised he should have it. Jim,” he turned, and looked into the dark eyes of his friend, “that poor, weak, suffering lad saved you, because–because you’d been good to him. Well, old lad, I guess now that we’ve found some of the gold that lies here in Barnriff, we–we must be content. We mustn’t take it with us, we mustn’t rob those who need. We’ve found it, so we’ll just cover it up again, and hope and pray that it may multiply and bear fruit. Then we’ll mark it with a headstone, so that others may know that this gold is to be found if folks will only seek long enough, and hard enough beneath the surface.”

Jim nodded. He understood.

Then, as the great arc of the morning sun lifted above the horizon, both men picked up the shovels lying close by them, and buried forever the treasure Peter had found.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

ON, OVER THE ONE-WAY TRAIL

Eve’s door was suddenly pushed open. She did not look up from her sewing-machine. She guessed who her visitor was.

“Sit down, Annie, dear,” she said, cordially. “I’ll be through with this in a moment.”

Her visitor took the proffered chair and smiled, while the busy machine rattled down the last seam of the skirt on which the other was busy.

Eve was very good to look upon, as she bent over her work, and her visitor was well content to wait. Her slight figure was delightfully gracious; her pretty hair, loosely dressed, looked to have all the velvet softness and lustre of spun silk. Her face was hidden, but the beautifully moulded outline of her cheek was visible. There was such a wholesome air of purpose in her attitude that it was quite easy to imagine that the shadows of the past had long since faded from her gentle eyes, that youth had again conquered, now that those gray days had lightened to the rosy summer of peace.

Something of this was passing through the man’s mind as he hungrily devoured the beauty, which for so long had held him its slave.

It was nearly two months since the happenings which had so nearly ended Jim Thorpe’s earthly career. Two months during which he had honestly struggled to regain that footing he had once held in the district. And now the fall was advancing, and the hopes of winning through with the people of the place seemed as far off as ever.

Prejudice still clung. Barnriff, willing enough to accept his actual innocence on the double charges made against him, still could not forget that he had helped the real thief to escape. It mattered nothing to them that in the end the man had died a violent death. He had been helped to escape–their justice. So there was no employment of any sort in Barnriff for Jim Thorpe. And Eve, too, was only completing orders which had been placed with her weeks before.

“There,” she said, raising her needle and removing the stuff from beneath it. “I hate it, and I’m glad it’s done.”

She looked up with a smile to encounter the dark eyes of Jim Thorpe.

“You?” she cried, in a tone that should have made him glad. “Why, I thought surely it was Annie. But there, I might have known. Annie would not have sat silent so long. You see she was coming over for a gossip. But I s’pose it’s too early for her.”

Jim noticed now that something of the old happy light was in her eyes again. That joyous light which he had not seen in them for nearly a year. What a wonderful thing was youth.

“I saw her as I came along,” he said slowly. “She said she’d come after supper. She sent her love, and said she was going to bring a shirt-waist to get fixed.”

“The dear thing! It’s the one thing that makes my life here possible, Jim. I mean her friendship. She’s the only one in all the village that can forget things. I mean among the women.” She came round the table and sat on its edge facing him, staring out of the window at the ruddy sunset with eyes that had suddenly become shadowed with regret. “Men aren’t like that, it seems to me. They’re fierce, and violent, and all that, but most of them have pretty big hearts when their anger is past.”

Jim’s eyes smiled whimsically.

“Do you think so?” he said. “Guess maybe I won’t contradict you, but it seems to me I’ve learned pretty well how large their hearts are–in the last two months.”

“You mean–you can get no work?”

The man nodded. But he had no bitterness now. He had learned his lesson from Peter Blunt. He had no blame for the weaknesses of human nature. Why should he have? Who was he to judge?

There was a silence for some moments. Eve continued to gaze at the sunset. The glorious ever-changing lights held her physical vision, but her mind was traveling in that realm of woman’s thought, whither no mere man can follow it.

It was Jim who spoke at last.

“But I didn’t come to–to air troubles,” he said thoughtfully. “I came to tell you of two things. One of ’em is Peter. He’s packing his wagon. He goes at sun-up to-morrow. He says he must move on–keep moving. He says all that held him to Barnriff is finished with, so now there’s nothing left but to hit the trail.”

“Poor old Peter!” Eve murmured softly. “I s’pose he means the gold business?”