CHAPTER XX
QUEENIE
The shadows of evening met Van, as he stepped from the outside door andstarted up the street. Then a figure emerged from the shadows and methim by the corner.
It was Queenie. Her eyes were red from weeping. A smile that somewayaffected Van most poignantly, he knew not why, came for a moment to herlips.
"You didn't expect to see me here," she said. "I had to come to see ifit was so."
"What is it, Queenie? What do you mean? What do you want?" heanswered. "What's the trouble?"
"Nothing," she said. "I don't want nothing I can git--Iguess--unless--Oh, _is_ it her, Van? Is it sure all over with me?"
"Look here," he said, not unkindly, "you've always been mistaken,Queenie. I told you at the time--that time in Arizona--I'd have donewhat I did for an Indian squaw--for any woman in the world. Whycouldn't you let it go at that?"
"You know why I couldn't," she answered with a certain intensity ofutterance that gave him a species of chill. "After what you done--likethe only real friend I ever had--I belonged to you--and couldn't eventake myself away."
"But I didn't want anyone to belong to me, Queenie. You know that. Icould barely support my clothes."
Her eyes burned with a strange luminosity. Her utterance was eager.
"But you want somebody to belong to you now? Ain't that what's thematter with you now?"
He did not answer directly.
"I didn't think it was in you, Queenie, to follow me around and playthe spy. I've liked you pretty well--but--I couldn't like this."
She stared at him helplessly, as an animal might have looked.
"I couldn't help it," she murmured, repressing some terrible emotion ofdespair. "I won't never trouble you no more."
She turned around and went away, walking uncertainly, as if fromphysical weakness and the blindness of pain.
Van felt himself inordinately wrung--felt it a cruelty not to run andovertake her--give her some measure of comfort. There was nothing hecould do that would not be misunderstood. Moreover, he had no adequateidea of what was in her mind--or in her homeless heart. He had knownher always as a butterfly; he could not take her tragically now.
"Poor girl," he said as he watched her vanishing from sight, "if onlyshe had ever had a show!"
He looked back at Mrs. Dick's. Bostwick had ousted him after all,before he could extenuate his madness, before he could ascertainwhether Beth were angry or not--before he could bid her good-by.
Now that the cool of evening was upon him, along with the chill ofsober reflection, he feared for what he had done. He was as mad, ascrude as Queenie. Yet his fear of Beth's opinion was a sign that heloved her as a woman should be loved, sacredly, and with a certain awe,although he made no such analysis, and took no credit to himself forthe half regrets that persistently haunted his reflections.
It would be a moonlight night, he pondered. He had counted on ridingby the lunar glow to the "Laughing Water" claim. Would Beth, by anypossibility, attempt to see him--come out, perhaps, in themoonlight--for a word before he should go?
He could not entertain a thought of departing without again beholdingher. He wanted to know what she would say, and when he might see heragain. After all, what was the hurry to depart? He might as well waita little longer.
He went to the hay-yard. Dave had disappeared. Half an hour of searchfailed to bring him to light. On the point of entering a restaurant toallay his sense of emptiness, Van was suddenly accosted by a wild-eyedman, bare-headed and sweating, who ran at him, calling as he came.
"Hey!" he cried. "Van Buren! Come on! Come on! She's dyin' and allshe wants is you!"
"What's wrong with you, man?" inquired the horseman, halted by thefellow's words. "What are you talking about?"
"Queenie!" gasped the fellow, panting for his breath. "Took poison--O,Lord! Come on! Come on! She don't want nothing but you!"
Van turned exceedingly pale.
"Poison? What you want is the doctor!"
"He's there--long ago!" answered the informant excitedly, and swabbingperspiration from his face. "She won't touch his dope. It's all over,I guess--only she wants to see you."
"Show me the way, then--show me the way. Where is she?" Van shook theman's shoulder roughly. "Don't stand here trembling. Take me to theplace."
The man was in a wretched plight, from fear and the physical sufferinginduced by what he had seen. He reeled drunkenly as he started downthe street, then off between some rows of canvas structures, headingfor a district hung with red.
At the edge of this place, at an isolated cabin, comprising two small,rough rooms, the man seemed threatened with collapse.
"May be too late," he whispered hoarsely, as he listened and heard nosounds from the house. "I'm goin' to stay outside--and wait."
The door was ajar. Without waiting for anything further, Van pushed itopen and entered.
"There he is--I knew it!" cried Queenie from the room at the rear. Itwas a cry that smote Van like a stab.
Then he came to the room where she was lying.
"I knew you'd come--I knew it, Van!" said the girl in a sudden outburstof sobbing, and she tried to rise upon her pillow. Agony, which shehad fought down wildly, seized her in a spasm. She doubled on the bed.
Van glanced about quickly. The doctor--a young, inexperienced man--wasthere, sweating, a look of abject helplessness upon his face. The roomwas a poor tawdry place, with gaudy decorations and a litter ofQueenie's finery. In her effort to conquer the pains that possessedher body, the girl had distorted her face almost past recognition.
Van came to the bedside directly, placed his hand on her shoulder, andgave her one of his characteristic little shakings.
"Queenie, what have you done?" he said. "What's going on?"
She tried to smile. It was a terrible effort.
"It's nobody's fault--but what was the use, Van?--what was there in itfor me?"
"She won't take anything--the antidote--anything! There isn't astomach pump in town!" the doctor broke in desperately. "She's got to!It's getting too late! We'll have to force it down! Maybe she'd takeit for you." He thrust a goblet into Van's nervous hand. It containeda misty drink.
"For God's sake take this, Queenie," Van implored. "Take it quick!"
She shrank away, attempting with amazing force of will to mask her pain.
"I'd take the stuff--for your sake--when I--wouldn't for God," shefaltered, sitting up, despite her bodily anguish. "You don't ask meto--do it for you."
"I do, Queenie--take it for me!" he answered, wrung again as he hadbeen at her smiles, an hour before, but now with heart-piercingpoignancy. "Take it for me, if you won't for anyone else."
She received the glass--and deliberately threw it on the floor. Thedoctor cried out sharply. Queenie shook her head, all the timefighting down her agony, which was fast making inroads to her life.She fell back on her pillow.
"You didn't--ask me--Van 'cause you love me. Nobody--wants me to live.That's all right. Do you s'pose you could kiss me good-by?"
The look on her face was peculiarly childish, as she drove out thelines of anguish in a superhuman effort made for him. And the yearningthere brought back again that thought he had voiced before, thatnight--why couldn't the child have had a chance?
The doctor was feverishly mixing another potent drink.
Van bent down and kissed her, indulgently.
"Force her to take it!" cried the doctor desperately. "Force her totake it!"
"Queenie," Van said, "you've got to take this stuff."
Her hand had found his and clutched it with galvanic strength.
"Don't--make me," she begged, closing her eyes in a species of ecstacythat no man may understand. "I'd rather--not--Van--please. Only abouta minute now. Ain't it funny--that love--can burn you--up?" Her griphad tightened on his hand.
The doctor ran to the window, which he found already opened. He ranback in a spec
ies of frenzy.
"Make her take it, make her take it! God!" he said. "Not to doanything--not to do a thing!"
Queenie smiled at Van again--terribly. Her fingers felt like ironrods, pressing into his flesh. As if to complete her renunciation shedropped his hand abruptly. She mastered some violent convulsion thatleft the merest flicker of her life.
"Good-by, Van--good luck," she whispered faintly.
"Queenie!" he said. "Queenie!"
Perhaps she heard. After an ordeal that seemed interminable her facewas calm and still, a faint smile frozen on her marble features.
Van waited there a long time. Someway it seemed as if this thing couldbe undone. The place was terribly still. The doctor sat there as ifin response to a duty. He was dumb.
When Van went out, the man on the doorstep staggered in.
The moon was up. It shone obliquely down into all that rock-linedbasin, surrounded by the stern, forbidding hills--the ancient,burned-out furnace of gold that man was reheating with his passions.Afar in all directions the lighted tents presented a ghostly unreality,their canvas walls illumined by the candles glowing within. A jargonof dance-hall music floated on the air. Outside it all was the desertsilence--the silence of a world long dead.
Van would gladly have mounted his horse and ridden away--far off, nomatter where. Goldite, bizarre and tragic--a microcosm of the worldthat man has fashioned--was a blot of discordant life, he felt, upon anotherwise peaceful world. As a matter of fact it had only begun itsevening's story.
He stood in the road, alone, for several minutes, before he felt hecould begin to resume the round of his own existence. When he came atlength to the main street's blaze of light, a deeply packed throngcould be seen in all the thoroughfare, compactly blocked in front of alarge saloon.
Culver, the Government representative in the land-office needs, hadbeen found in his office murdered. He had been stabbed. Van's knife,bought for Gettysburg, had been employed--and found there, red with itsguilt.
All this Van was presently to discover. He was walking towards thesurging mob when a miner he had frequently seen came running up andhalted in the light of a window. Then the man began to yell.
"Here he is!" he cried. "Van Buren!"
The mob appeared to break at the cry. Fifty men charged down thestreet in a species of madness and Van was instantly surrounded.