10
Fifty miles over any sort of going is a stiff march. Fifty miles uphilland down and mostly over districts where there was only a rough cow pathin lieu of a road made a prodigious day's work; and certainly it was analmost incredible feat for one who professed to hate work with aconsuming passion and who had looked upon an eight-mile jaunt the nightbefore as an insuperable burden. Yet such was the distance whichDonnegan had covered, and now he drove the pack mule out on the shoulderof the hill in full view of The Corner with the triangle of the YoungMuddy and Christobel Rivers embracing the little town. Even the gaunt,leggy mule was tired to the dropping point, and the tough buckskin whichtrailed up behind went with downward head. When Louise Macon turned tohim, he had reached the point where he swung his head around first andthen grudgingly followed the movement with his body. The girl was tired,also, in spite of the fact that she had covered every inch of thedistance in the saddle. There was that violet shade of weariness underher eyes and her shoulders slumped forward. Only Donnegan, the hater oflabor, was fresh.
They had started in the first dusk of the coming day; it was now theyellow time of the slant afternoon sunlight; between these two pointsthere had been a body of steady plodding. The girl had looked askance atthat gaunt form of Donnegan's when they began; but before three hours,seeing that the spring never left his step nor the swinging rhythm hisstride, she began to wonder. This afternoon, nothing he did could havesurprised her. From the moment he entered the house the night before hehad been a mystery. Till her death day she would not forget the firewith which he had stared up at her from the foot of the stairs. But whenhe came out of her father's room--not cowed and whipped as most men leftit--he had looked at her with a veiled glance, and since that momentthere had always been a mist of indifference over his eyes when helooked at her.
In the beginning of that day's march all she knew was that her fathertrusted her to this stranger, Donnegan, to take her to The Corner, wherehe was to find Jack Landis and bring Jack back to his old allegiance andfind what he was doing with his time and his money. It was a quitenatural proceeding, for Jack was a wild sort, and he was probablygambling away all the gold that was dug in his mines. It was perfectlynatural throughout, except that she should have been trusted so entirelyto a stranger. That was a remarkable thing, but, then, her father was aremarkable man, and it was not the first time that his actions had beeninscrutable, whether concerning her or the affairs of other people. Shehad heard men come into their house cursing Colonel Macon with death intheir faces; she had seen them sneak out after a soft-voiced interviewand never appear again. In her eyes, her father was invincible,all-powerful. When she thought of superlatives, she thought of him. Herconception of mystery was the smile of the colonel, and her conceptionof tenderness was bounded by the gentle voice of the same man.Therefore, it was entirely sufficient to her that the colonel had said:"Go, and trust everything to Donnegan. He has the power to command youand you must obey--until Jack comes back to you."
That was odd, for, as far as she knew, Jack had never left her. But shehad early discarded any will to question her father. Curiosity was athing which the fat man hated above all else.
Therefore, it was really not strange to her that throughout the journeyher guide did not speak half a dozen words to her. Once or twice whenshe attempted to open the conversation he had replied with crushingmonosyllables, and there was an end. For the rest, he was alwaysswinging down the trail ahead of her at a steady, unchanging, rapidstride. Uphill and down it never varied. And so they came out upon theshoulder of the hill and saw the storm center of The Corner. They werein the hills behind the town; two miles would bring them into it. Andnow Donnegan came back to her from the mule. He took off his hat andshook the dust away; he brushed a hand across his face. He was stillunshaven. The red stubble made him hideous, and the dust andperspiration covered his face as with a mask. Only his eyes were rimmedwith white skin.
"You'd better get off the horse, here," said Donnegan.
He held her stirrup, and she obeyed without a word.
"Sit down."
She sat down on the flat-topped boulder which he designated, and,looking up, observed the first sign of emotion in his face. He wasfrowning, and his face was drawn a little.
"You are tired," he stated.
"A little."
"You are tired," said the wanderer in a tone that implied dislike of anydenial. Therefore she made no answer. "I'm going down into the town tolook things over. I don't want to parade you through the streets until Iknow where Landis is to be found and how he'll receive you. The Corneris a wild town; you understand?"
"Yes," she said blankly, and noted nervously that the reply did notplease him. He actually scowled at her.
"You'll be all right here. I'll leave the pack mule with you; ifanything should happen--but nothing is going to happen, I'll be back inan hour or so. There's a pool of water. You can get a cold drink thereand wash up if you want to while I'm gone. But don't go to sleep!"
"Why not?"
"A place like this is sure to have a lot of stragglers hunting aroundit. Bad characters. You understand?"
She could not understand why he should make a mystery of it; but then,he was almost as strange as her father. His careful English and hisragged clothes were typical of him inside and out.
"You have a gun there in your holster. Can you use it?"
"Yes."
"Try it."
It was a thirty-two, a woman's light weapon. She took it out andbalanced it in her hand.
"The blue rock down the hillside. Let me see you chip it."
Her hand went up, and without pausing to sight along the barrel, shefired; fire flew from the rock, and there appeared a white, small scar.Donnegan sighed with relief.
"If you squeezed the butt rather than pulled the trigger," he commented,"you would have made a bull's-eye that time. Now, I don't mean that inany likelihood you'll have to defend yourself. I simply want you to beaware that there's plenty of trouble around The Corner."
"Yes," said the girl.
"You're not afraid?"
"Oh, no."
Donnegan settled his hat a little more firmly upon his head. He had beenon the verge of attributing her gentleness to a blank, stupid mind; hebegan to realize that there was metal under the surface. He felt thatsome of the qualities of the father were echoed faintly, and at adistance, in the child. In a way, she made him think of an unawakenedcreature. When she was roused, if the time ever came, it might be thather eye could become a thing alternately of fire and ice, and her voicemight carry with a ring.
"This business has to be gotten through quickly," he went on. "Onemeeting with Jack Landis will be enough."
She wondered why he set his jaw when he said this, but he was wonderinghow deeply the colonel's ward had fallen into the clutches of NellyLebrun. If that first meeting did not bring Landis to his senses, whatfollowed? One of two things. Either the girl must stay on in The Cornerand try her hand with her fiance again, or else the final brutalsuggestion of the colonel must be followed; he must kill Landis. It wasa cold-blooded suggestion, but Donnegan was a cold-blooded man. As helooked at the girl, where she sat on the boulder, he knew definitely,first and last, that he loved her, and that he would never again loveany other woman. Every instinct drew him toward the necessity ofdestroying Landis. There was his stumbling block. But what if she trulyloved Landis?
He would have to wait in order to find that out. And as he stood therewith the sun shining on the red stubble on his face he made a resolutionthe more profound because it was formed in silence: if she truly lovedLandis he would serve her hand and foot until she had her will.
But all he said was simply: "I shall be back before it's dark."
"I shall be comfortable here," replied the girl, and smiled farewell athim.
And while Donnegan went down the slope full of darkness he thought ofthat smile.
The Corner spread more clearly before him with every step he made. Itwas a type of th
e gold-rush town. Of course most of the dwellings weretents--dog tents many of them; but there was a surprising sprinkling ofwooden shacks, some of them of considerable size. Beginning at the veryedge of the town and spread over the sand flats were the mines and theblack sprinkling of laborers. And the town itself was roughly jumbledaround one street. Over to the left the main road into The Cornercrossed the wide, shallow ford of the Young Muddy River and up this roadhe saw half a dozen wagons coming, wagons of all sizes; but nothing wentout of The Corner. People who came stayed there, it seemed.
He dropped over the lower hills, and the voice of the gold town rose tohim. It was a murmur like that of an army preparing for battle. Now andthen a blast exploded, for what purpose he could not imagine in thisschool of mining. But as a rule the sounds were subdued by the distance.He caught the muttering of many voices, in which laughter and shoutswere brought to the level of a whisper at close hand; and through allthis there was a persistent clangor of metallic sounds. No doubt fromthe blacksmith shops where picks and other implements were made orsharpened and all sorts of repairing carried on. But the predominanttone of the voice of The Corner was this persistent ringing of metal. Itsuggested to Donnegan that here was a town filled with men of iron andall the gentler parts of their natures forgotten. An odd place to bringsuch a woman as Lou Macon, surely!
He reached the level, and entered the town.