The man found dead the night the Lazy S was burned out was not easily identified. He was a half-breed, but half-breeds were many west of the river, and the places where they laid their heads at night were as shifting as the sands of that rapid, ominous, changing stream of theirs, which ever cut them off from the world of their fathers and kept them bound, but restless, chafing, in that same land where their mothers had stared stolidly at a strange little boat-load tugging up the river that was the forerunner of the ultimate destiny of this broad northwest country, but which brought incidentally—as do all big destinies in the great scheme bring sorrow to some one—wrong, misunderstanding, forgetfulness, to a once proud, free people now in subjection.
At last the authorities found trace of him far away at Standing Rock, through the agent there, who knew him as of an ugly reputation,—a dissipated, roving profligate, who had long since squandered his government patrimony. He had been mixed up in sundry bad affairs in the past, and had been an inveterate gambler. So much only were the Kemah County authorities able to uncover of the wayward earthly career of the dead man. Of his haunts and cronies of the period immediately preceding his death, the agent could tell nothing. He had not been seen at the agency for nearly a year. The reprobate band had covered its tracks well. There was nothing to do but lay the dead body away and shovel oblivion over its secret.
In the early morning after the return of the men from their unsuccessful man hunt, Gordon, gray and haggard from loss of sleep and from hard thought, stepped out into the kitchen to stretch his cramped limbs. He stumbled over the figure of Langford prone upon the floor, dead asleep in utter exhaustion. He smiled understandingly and opened the outer door quietly, hoping he had not aroused the worn-out Boss. The air was fresh and cool, with a hint of Autumn sharpness, and a premature Indian Summer haze, that softened the gauntness of the landscape, and made the distances blue and rest-giving. He felt the need of invigoration after his night’s vigil, and struck off down the road with long strides, in pleasant anticipation of a coming appetite for breakfast.
Thus it was that Langford, struggling to a sitting posture, rubbing his heavy eyes with a dim consciousness that he had been disturbed, and wondering drowsily why he was so stupid, felt something seeping through his senses that told him he did not do well to sleep. So he decided he would take a plunge into the cold artesian pond, and with such drastic measures banish once and for all the elusive yet all-pervading cobwebs which clung to him. Rising to his feet with unusual awkwardness, he looked with scorn upon the bare floor and accused it blindly and bitterly as the direct cause of the strange soreness that beset his whole anatomy. The lay of the floor had changed in a night. Where was he? He glanced helplessly about. Then he knew.
Thus it was, that when Mary languidly opened her eyes a little later, it was the Boss who sat beside her and smiled reassuringly.
“You have not slept a wink,” she cried, accusingly.
“Indeed I have,” he said. “Three whole hours. I feel tip-top.”
“You are—fibbing,” she said. “Your eyes look so tired, and your face is all worn.”
His heart leaped with the joy of her solicitude.
“You are wrong,” he laughed, teasingly. “I slept on the floor; and a good bed it was, too. No, Miss Williston, I am not ‘all in’ yet, by any means.”
In his new consciousness, a new formality crept into his way of addressing her. She did not seem to notice it.
“Forgive me for forgetting, last night,” she said, earnestly. “I was very selfish. I forgot that you had not slept for nearly two days, and were riding all the while in—our behalf. I forgot. I was tired, and I went to sleep. I want you to forgive me. I want you to believe that I do appreciate what you have done. My father—”
“Don’t, don’t, little girl,” cried Langford, forgetting his new awe of her maidenhood in his pity for the stricken child.
“My father,” she went on, steadily, “would thank you if he were here. I thank you, too, even if I did forget to think whether or no you and all the men had any sleep or anything to eat last night. Will you try to believe that I did not forget wittingly? I was so tired.”
When Langford answered her, which was not immediately, his face was white and he spoke quietly with a touch of injured pride.
“If you want to hurt us, Miss Williston, that is the way to talk. We cowmen do not do things for thanks.”
She looked at him wonderingly a moment, then said, simply, “Forgive me,” but her lips were trembling and she turned to the wall to hide the tears that would come. After all, she was only a woman—with nerves—and the reaction had come. She had been brave, but a girl cannot bear everything. She sobbed. That was too much for Langford and his dignity. He bent over her, all his heart in his honest eyes and broken voice.
“Now you will kill me if you don’t stop it. I am all sorts of a brute—oh, deuce take me for a blundering idiot! I didn’t mean it—honest I didn’t. You will believe me, won’t you? There is nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you, little girl.”
She was sobbing uncontrollably now.
“Mr. Langford,” she cried, turning to him with something of the past horror creeping again into her wet eyes, “do you think I killed—that man?”
“What man? There was only one man killed, and one of my boys potted him on the run,” he said.
“Are you sure?” she breathed, in quick relief.
“Dead sure,” convincingly.
“And yet,” she sobbed, memory coming back with a rush, “I wish—I wish—I had killed them all.”
“So do I!” he agreed, so forcefully that she could but smile a little, gratefully. She said, with just the faintest suggestion of color in her white cheeks:
“Where is everybody? Have you been sitting with me long?”
“Mrs. White is getting breakfast, and I haven’t been sitting with you as long as I wish I had,” he answered, boldly; and then added, regretfully, “Dick was the man who had the luck to watch over you all night. I went to sleep.”
“You were so tired,” she said, sympathizingly. “And besides, I didn’t need anything.”
“It is good of you to put it that way,” he said, his heart cutting capers again.
“Mr. Gordon is the best man I know,” she said, thoughtfully.
“There you are right, Miss Williston,” he assented, heartily, despite a quick little sting of jealousy. “He is the best man I know. I wish you would shake hands on that—will you?”
“Surely.”
He held the smooth brown hand in his firmly with no thought of letting it go—yet.
“I am not such a bad chap myself, you know, Miss Williston,” he jested, his bold eyes flashing a challenge.
“I know it,” she said, simply. “I do not know what I should do without you. You will be good to me always, wont you? There is no one but me—now.”
She was looking at him trustingly, confident of his friendship, innocent, he knew, of any feminine wile in this her dark hour. The sweetness of it went to his head. He forgot that she was in sorrow he could not cure, forgot that she was looking to him in all probability only as the possible saviour of her father. He forgot everything except the fact that there was nothing in all the world worth while but this brown-eyed, white-cheeked, grieving girl, and he went mad with the quick knowledge thereof. He held the hand he had not released to his face, brushed it against his lips, caressed it against his breast; then he bent forward—close—and whispering, “I will be good to you—always—little girl,” kissed her on the forehead and was gone just as Gordon, filled with the life of the new day, came swinging into the house for his well-earned breakfast.
The sheriff and his party of deputies made a diligent search for Williston that day and for many days to come. It was of no avail. He had disappeared, and all trace with him, as completely as if he had been spirited away in the night to another world—body and soul. That the soul of him had really gone to another world came to be generally believed—Ma............