CHAPTER XVI
THE REBIRTH OF SIM GAGE
Neither Sim Gage nor his neighbor slept to any worth that night. Attimes one would speak, but they held no discussion. Wid Gardner, in aniron wrath, was thinking much.
Sim Gage lay with his eyes opened toward the rude ceiling. In hisheart was something new. Hitherto in all his life he had neverquarreled with fate, but smiled at it as something beyond his making orhis mending. He was one of the world's lost sheep, one of the army ofthe unhoping. The mountains, the valleys, the trees, had been enoughfor him, the glint of the sun on the silver gray of the sage yonder onthe plains. He had been content to spend his life here where chancehad thrown him. But now--and Sim Gage himself knew it--something newhad been born in Sim Gage's heart. It troubled him. He lay there andbent his mind upon the puzzle, intensely, wonderingly.
It had been bravado with him up to the time that he knew this girl wascoming out. After that, curiosity and a sense of fair play, mingled,had ensued. Then a new feeling had come after he had met the girlherself--pity, and remorse in regard to a helpless woman. Sim Gage didnot know the dangerous kinship that pity holds. He knew no proverbsand no poetry.
But now, mixed also with his feeling of vague loss, his sense of rage,there was now, as Sim Gage realized perfectly well, a new and yet morepowerful emotion in his soul. He was not the same man, now; he neveragain would be. Pity and propinquity and the great law had done theirwork! For the first and only time in all his life Sim Gage was in love!
Love dareth and endureth all things, magnifies and lessens, softens andhardens, loosens and binds, establishes for itself new worlds,fabricates for itself new values, chastens, humbles, makes weak, makesstrong. Sim Gage never before had known how merciless, how cruel allthis may be. He was in love. With all his heart and life and soul heloved _her_, right or wrong. There had been a miracle in Two-ForksValley.
The two men were astir long before dawn. Wid Gardner first kicked offhis blankets. "I'll find me a horse," said he. "You git breakfast,Sim, if you can." He went into the darkness of the starlit morning.
Sim Gage, his wounded leg stiff and painful enough, crawled out of hisbunk--the same where She but now had slept--and made some sort of alight by means of matches and a stub of candle; found a stick and madesome shavings; made shift to start a fire. With a hatchet he found onthe floor he hacked off more of the charred woodwork of his owndoor-frame, seeing that it must be ruined altogether. It was nothingto him what became of this house. The only question in his mind was,Where was She? What had happened to Her?
His breakfast was that of the solitary man in such surroundings. Hegot a little bacon into a pan, chipped up some potatoes which hemanaged to pare--old potatoes now, and ready to sprout long since. Hemixed up some flour and water with salt and baking powder and cookedthat in a pan.
The odors of the cooking brought new life into the otherwise silentinterior of Sim Gage's cabin. Sim felt something at his feet, at hisleg. It was the Airedale puppy which he had left curled up all nightat the foot of his bed. The scent of the meat now had awakened him,and he was begging his new master for attention.
Sim leaned down stiffly to pat him on the head, gave him a bit of food.Then he bethought him of the sack of fowls which he had entirelyforgotten--found them luckily still alive in the wagon bed, cut off thesacking around them, and drove them out into the open to shift forthemselves as best they might. But the little dog would not be castoff. He followed Sim wherever he went, licked his hand. That made himthink how She would have petted the puppy had She been there. He hadgot the dog for Her.
By the time he had the meal ready Wid Gardner was back leading a horse.There was no saddle at either ranch now, but Wid searched around andfound a bit of discarded sack, a piece of rope near the burned barn.
"I'll ride down the valley," said he after the two had eaten insilence. "Wait till I ride down to Jensen's. He'll come along."
"Well, hurry back," said the new Sim, with a resolution and decision inhis voice which surprised his neighbor. "I can't very well go offalone. Send word down to the dam. We got to clean out this gang."
"Yes," replied Wid, "they'd better look out who's working on the dam.It ain't all soldiers. You can't tell a thing about where this isgoing to run to--they might blow out the dam, for all you can tell.They ain't up in there for no good,--after the timber, likely. Iwonder how many there is of them."
"I don't care how many there is," said Sim Gage simply.
Early as Gardner was, he was not the only traveler on the road. As heapproached Nels Jensen's gate he saw below that place on the road thelight of a car traveling at speed.
He slid off his horse, tied the animal, and stood, rifle in hand,directly in front of the approaching vehicle.
"Halt!" he cried, and flung up his left hand high, the rifle held inhis right, under his arm pit.
It was no enemy who now slowed down the car and cut out the lights. Avoice not unfamiliar called out, "What's wrong with you, man? What doyou want? You trying to hold me up?"
"Is that you, Doc? No one passes here. What are you doing up here?"Wid walked up to the edge of the car.
"I'm on a call, that's what I'm doing up here," replied Doctor Barnes."Have you heard anything about an accident up on the Reserve?"
"Accidents a-plenty, right around here. I don't know nothing about theReserve. Who told you?"
"A man, last night late. Said there was a man hurt up in the timbercamp, for me to go up fast as I could. Tree fell on him. They lefthim up there alone, because they couldn't bring him out."
"That so?" commented Wid Gardner grimly.
--"So that elected me, you see. Every time I try to get a night'ssleep, here comes some damn sagebrusher and wants me to come out andcure his sick cow, or else mamma's got a baby, or a horse has got inthe wire, or papa's broke a leg, or something. Damn the countryanyhow! I wish I'd never seen it. I'm a doctor, yes, but I'm theCompany doctor, and I don't have to run on these fool trips. But ofcourse I do," he added, smiling sunnily after his usual fashion. "So Icome along here. And you hold me up. What do _you_ want?"
"I want you to wait and come in and see Nels Jensen with me, Doc," saidWid Gardner. "Hell's to pay."
"What's wrong?" Doctor Barnes' face grew graver.
"We don't know what. When Sim and me come home, some one had been herewhen we was gone. Sim's barn is burned, and all his hay, and all mine,and my house--I haven't got lock, stock nor barrel left of my ranch,and nothing to make a crop with."
"What do you think?" asked Doctor Barnes gravely.
"We don't know what to think. It's like enough a hold-on from that oldIndustrial work--they been threatening all down the valley, since timesare hard and wages fell a little after the war work shut down. Therewas some hay burned down below there. Folks said it was spontaneouscombustion, or something--said it got hot workin' in the stacks. Iain't so sure now. It's them old ways. As if they ever got anythingby that!"
Dr. Barnes puckered his lips into a long whistle. "I wonder if there'sany two and two to put together in _this_ thing!" said he. "I came uphere to get that poor devil out of the woods. But who can tell what inthe merry hell has really happened up there?"
"We got to go and see," said Wid Gardner. "You know that woman?"
The doctor nodded.
"She's gone too. Whoever it was took her off in a car from up at thehead of Sim Gage's lane."
Doctor Barnes got down out of the car, and the two walked through NelsJensen's gate. Jensen was afoot, ready for the day's work. He agreedthat one of his boys would carry the news to the Company dam.
"Better give us a little something to eat along with us, Karen," hesaid to his wife. He took down his rifle, and looked inquiringly atDoctor Barnes. "Have you got an extra gun?" asked the latter. Jensennodded, finding the spare piece near at hand.
Very little more was said. They all walked out into the morning, whenthe red ball of the sun
was coming up above the misty valley.
"Go on ahead in the car," said Wid. "I'll bring my horse."
They met at Sim Gage's half-burned home. Sim himself hobbled out,rifle under one arm and the little Airedale under the other, the latterwriggling and barking in his delight. The purr of a good motor wassoon under them. In a few moments they were out of Sim Gage's lane andalong the highway as far as the point where the Tepee Creek trailturned off into the mountains.
"Wait here, Doc," said Wid, "Sim and me want to have a look--we knowthe track of that car that done the work down here."
But when they bent over the trail, they saw that it was differentfrom what it had been when they left it the night before! Wid cursedaloud, and Sim Gage joined him heartily.
"It's wiped out," said Sim. "Some one's been over this trail sincelast night. This car ain't got no busted tire."
"That may be the very man that came down and called me!" exclaimedDoctor Barnes.
"I heard him when he went down the road," nodded Nels Jensen--"lastnight. I'll bet that's the same car. I'll bet it come down out of themountains."
They passed on up the creek valley toward the Reserve far more rapidlythan the weaker car of Big Aleck had climbed the same grade the dayprevious, but the main body of the forest lay three thousand feet abovethe valley floor, and the ascent was so sharp that at times they wereobliged to stop in order to allow the engine to cool.
"What's that?" said Sim Gage after a time, when they had been on theirway perhaps an hour up the winding canon, and had paused for the time."Smoke? That ain't no camp fire--it's more."
They made one or two more curves of the road and then got confirmation.A long, low blanket of smoke was drifting off down the valley to theright, settling in a gray-blue cloud along the mountain side. The windwas from left to right, so that the smoke carried free of the trail.
"She's a-fire, boys!" exclaimed Wid. "We better git out of here whilewe can."
"We ain't a-going to do nothing of the sort," said a quiet voice. WidGardner turned to look into the face of Sim Gage. "We're a-going righton up ahead."
Wid Gardner looked at Doctor Barnes. The latter made his answer bystarting the car once more. Although they did not know it, they nowwere approaching their journey's end. They could not as yet see theswift advance of the fire from tree to tree, because the wind as yetwas no stronger than the gentle air of morning; could not as yet hearany roar of the flames. But they saw that now, on these mountainslopes before them, one of the most valuable timber bodies in the statewas passing into destruction.
"God damn their souls!" said Wid Gardner fervently. "Wasn't it enoughwhat they done to us already?"
"Go on, Doc." It was Sim's voice. Wid Gardner knew perfectly wellwhat drove Sim Gage on.
But the car soon came to a sudden halt. A couple of hundred yards onahead lay an open glade. At the left of the trail stood a great walltent.
In an instant, every man was out of the car, the three ranchmen, likehounds on the scent, silently trotting off, taking cover from tree totree. A few moments, and the four of them, rifles at a ready, hadsurrounded the tent. As they closed in, they all heard a high, clearvoice--one they would not have suspected Sim Gage to haveowned--calling out: "Throw up your hands, in there!" Actually, SimGage was leader!
There came an exclamation in a hoarse and broken voice. "Who are you?Don't shoot--I surrender."
"How many are there of you?" inquired Doctor Barnes.
"It's me--Big Aleck--I'm shot--I'm dying-- Help!--Who is it?"
"Come out, Aleck!" called the high and resolute voice of SimGage--"Come on out!"
"I can't come out. I'm shot, I tell you."
Then Sim Gage did what ordinarily might not have been a wise thing todo. Without pause he swept aside the tent flap with the barrel of hisrifle, and stepped in, quickly covering the prostrate figure that layon the bloody blankets before him.
Big Aleck was able to do more than move. He raised one hand, feebly,imploring mercy.
"Come out, damn you!" said Sim Gage, his hand at the dollar of thecrippled man. He dragged his prisoner out into the light and threw himfull length,--mercilessly--upon the needle-covered sand.
The crippled man began to weep, to beg. It was small mercy he saw ashe looked from face to face.
"That's my man," exclaimed Doctor Barnes. "But it's not any accidentwith a tree. That's gun shot!"
"Who done that work down below?" demanded Sim of the prostrate man."Where is she? Tell me!" His voice still rang high and imperative.
Big Aleck shivered where he lay. Now he too saw the flames on ahead inthe woods.
"Who set that fire?" demanded the Doctor suddenly. "Whose work wasthat?"
"It was sabcats!" said Big Aleck, frightened into an ingenious lie."They was in here. I'm the government foreman. I don't know how theygot in or got out. They must of set a 'clock' somewhere for to startit."
"Who do you mean--sabcats?" demanded Doctor Barnes. The other threestood coldly and implacably staring at the crippled man.
"I caught them in here--I'm in charge of this work, you see. I triedto stop them. They shot me and left me here. They said they'd send adoctor."
"I'm the doctor," replied the medical man, who stood looking at him."Where is that woman?"
Big Aleck rolled his head. "I don't know. I don't know nothing. I'mshot--I'm going to die."
"We've got to get out," said Doctor Barnes. "Boys, shall we get himinto the car?"
"No!" said Sim Gage, sharply. "I won't ride with him. _Where isshe_?" He stepped close up to Big Aleck, pushing in front of theothers. "You know. Damn you, tell me!"
"Keep him away!" yelled Big Aleck. "He's going to kill me!" He triedto get on his elbows, his hands and knees, but could not, broken downas he was. He was abject--an evil man overtaken by an evil fate.
"Where is she?" repeated Sim Gage. "Tell me!"
"I tell you I don't know. She ran off, that way."
"That's the car that brung her up!" said Wid Gardner, motioning towardthe ragged tire of the rear wheel. "See that tire, Sim? That's thecar! She's been here."
"Go see if you can git the trail, Wid," said Sim Gage to his friend."Quick!"
Sim himself passed for a moment, hurriedly, to the car which hadbrought his party up. He had left the little dog tied there, but nowheard it whining, and stopped to loosen it. It ran about, barking.Head down, Sim Gage stumbled off, following a trail which he halfthought he saw, but he lost it on the pine needles, and came back,bitter of heart, once more to face the man who lay helpless on theground--the man who now he knew was his enemy, not to be forgiven orspared.
"Where is she?" he said to Aleck once more. "It was her trail, I knowit. Tell me the truth now, while you can talk."
"You was follering right the way she went, far as I know," moanedAleck. "How kin I tell where she went, after I was shot?"
"After you was shot? Who shot you? _Did she_?"
"I told you who shot me. It was them fellers."
"Then why didn't they kill you, if they wanted to? They _could_ offinished you, couldn't they? Where's my six-shooter, Aleck--you tookit outen my house, and you know you did."
He stepped back into the tent and began to kick around among theblankets. "There's nothing here excepting your own rifle." He cameout, unloaded the gun, smashed the lever against the nearest tree.
"You won't never need no gun no more," said he.
"I'll have to look after him, now," said Doctor Barnes, steppingforward. He had stood looking at the crippled man, his own hands onhis hips. "He's bad off."
"Keep away--don't you touch him!" It was still the new voice of SimGage that was talking now, and there was something in his tone whichmade the others all fall back. All the time Sim Gage's rifle wascovering the writhing man.
"I tried to save her," whimpered Big Aleck now.
"You lie! Why did you bring her up here then? Why didn't you leaveher there--she di
dn't have to come." Sim Gage still was talking nowsharp, decisive. "Where is she now?"
"Good God, man, I told you I didn't know. How do I know which wayshe'd run? She said she was blind--but I don't believe she was."
"_Why_ don't you?" demanded Sim Gage. "_Because she could shootyou_?--Because she _did_ shoot you, twice? What made her? Where's mygun? Did she take it with her after she shot you?"
The sweat broke out now on the gray and grimed forehead of thesuffering man. "I won't tell you nothing more!" he broke out. "Whatright you got to arrest me? I ain't committed no crime, and you ain'tgot no warrant. I want a lawyer. I want this doctor to take care ofme. I got money to get a lawyer. I don't have to answer no questionsyou ask me."
"You say she went over that way?" Sim's finger was pointing across theroad in the direction of the fire.
"I told you, yes," nodded Big Aleck. And Sim Gage's own knowledgegained from the last direction of the footprints confirmed this.
"Blind--and out all night in these mountains!" he said, his voiceshaking for the first time. "And then comes that fire. You done that,Aleck--you know you done it."
"I told you I didn't know nothing," protested the crippled man, who nowhad turned again upon his back. "I ain't a-goin' to talk. It was themfellers."
"Some things you'd better know," said Sim Gage, suddenly judge in thiscourt, suddenly assembled. "Some things I know now. You come down tomy house your own self. It was you set my barn a-fire and burned myhouse and my hay, and killed my stock. It was you carried that girloff. I know why you done it, too. You wasn't fighting that bunch inhere--they was with you. You was all on the same business, and youknow it. You made trouble before the war, and you're making it now,when we're all trying to settle down in the peace."
He was beginning to tremble now as he talked. "Didn't she shootyou?--Now, tell me the truth."
"Yes!" said the prisoner suddenly, seeing that in the other's eyeswhich demanded the truth. "She did shoot me, and then ran away. Shetook your gun. But I didn't set the fire. Honest to God, I don't knowhow it got out. I swear--oh, my God--have mercy!"
But what he afterward would have sworn no man ever knew. There was arifle shot--from whose rifle none of the four ever could tell. Itstruck Big Aleck fair below the eyes, and blew his head well apart. Hefell backward at the door of the tent.
They turned away slowly. Just for an instant they stood looking at thesweeping blanket of smoke. They walked to the car, paying no furtherattention to the figure which lay motionless behind them. The firemight come and make its winding sheet.
It was coming. Wid Gardner lifted his head. "Wind's changing," saidhe. "Hurry!"
They headed down the trail as fast as might be.
"_Wait_, now, Doc!" said Sim Gage, a moment after they started. "Waitnow!"
"What's up?" said Doctor Barnes. "Look at that smoke."
"Where's that little dog, now? We've forgot him."
He sprang out of the car, began stumbling back up the trail, his ownleg dragging.
"Cut off the car!" he called back. "I can't hear a thing."
As he stood there came up to him from the mountain side a sound whichmade him turn and plunge down in that direction himself. It was ashot. Then the bark of the Airedale, baying "treed."
The dog itself, keen of nose, and of the instinct to run almost anysort of trail, even so very faint as this on which it was set, had inpart followed out the winding course of the fleeing girl after Sim Gagehimself had abandoned it, thinking it had been laid on that trail. Andnow what Sim saw on ahead, down the hill, below the trail, was thefigure of Mary Warren herself, sitting up weakly, gropingly, on the logover which she had fallen the night before--beneath which, like someanimal, she had cowered all that awful night on the heap of pineneedles which she had swept up for herself!
A cry broke from Sim Gage's lips. She heard him and herself called outaloud, "Sim! Sim! Is it you? I knew it was you when the dog came!"
And then, still shivering and trembling with fear and cold andexhaustion, Mary Warren once more lost all sense of things, and droppedlimp. The little dog stood licking at her hands and face.
Here was work for Doctor Barnes after all. He took charge. The fourof them carried the woman up the hill to the car. He had restorativeswhich served in good stead now.
"Poor thing!" said he. "Out all night! It's just a God's mercy shedidn't freeze to death, that's all."
He himself was wondering at the extraordinary beauty of this woman.Who was she--what was there in this talk that two ranchmen had made,down there at the dam? Why, this was no ordinary ranchwoman at all,but a woman of distinction, one to attract notice anywhere.
Mary Warren at last began to talk,--before the smoke cloud drove themdown the trail. "I heard a shot," said she, turning a face towardthem. "Who was it? I didn't signal then, for I didn't know. Iwaited. Then the dog came."
No one answered her.
"That must have been what brought me to. It sounded up the hill.Where--where is he?"
They did not answer even yet, and she went on.
"Who are you all?" she demanded. "I don't see you, of course." Shewas looking into the face of Doctor Barnes who bent above her, his handon her pulse.
"I'm Doctor Barnes," said he. "I work down at the Company's plant atthe big dam. You are Miss Mary Warren, are you not?"
She nodded. "Yes."
"I won't introduce these others, but they're all friends--we all are."
She was recognizing the voice, the diction of a gentleman. The thoughtgave her comfort.
"What's that smoke?" she said suddenly, herself catching the scentpervading the air.
"The whole mountain's afire," said Sim Gage. "We got to hurry if weget out of here."
"I know--it was those people!--Where is that man? You found him?"
The voice of Doctor Barnes broke in quickly. "He'd been hurt by atree--we had to leave him because he was too far gone, Miss Warren,"said he. "We couldn't save him. He couldn't answer any questions--noteven a hypothetical question--when we tried him. But now, don't try totalk. He's got what he had coming, and he'll never trouble you again."
"Whose little dog is this?" she asked suddenly, reaching out a handwhich the young Airedale kissed fervently. "If it hadn't been for thatlittle dog, you'd never have found me, would you? You couldn't haveheard me call. I would not have dared to shoot. Whose little dog?"
"It's yours, ma'am," said Sim Gage. "And I got four hens."