Ridgwell Cullum

“ Fortunately human nature does not readily yield to such behests, and so life is not robbed of its mainspring, and the whole machinery of human nature is not reduced to a chaotic bundle of useless wheels.
For all Helen’s boasted scheming, for all Bill’s lack of brilliancy, these two were just a pair of simple creatures, loyal and honest, and deeply in love. So they dallied as all true lovers must dally with those first precious moments which a Divine Providence permits to flow in full tide but once in a lifetime.
Charlie Bryant was standing at the bar of O’Brien’s saloon. ”

“ Fyles is dealing with the cleverest, keenest woman I’ve ever met in all my life. I’m not thinking that way. I’m thinking how almighty easy it is for a man walking a broken trail to trip and smash himself right up. The more sure he is the worse is his fall, because—he takes big chances, and big chances mean big falls. You’ve hit it, Bill, I’m scared—scared to death just now. If I know Fyles there’s going to be one hell of a time around here, and, if you value your future, get clear while you can. I’m scared, Bill, scared and mad. I can’t stand to watch that man talking to Kate. ”

“ His first visit was to the barn, where Kid Blaney, his brother’s ranchman, was rubbing down two well saddle-marked cow-ponies, after his morning out on the fences. It was a crazy sort of a shanty, built of sod walls with a still more crazy door frame, and a thatched roof more than a foot thick. It was half a dug-out on the hillside, and suggested as much care as a hog pen. The floor was a mire of accumulations of manure and rotted bedding, and the low roof gave the place a hovelish suggestion such as Bill could never have imagined in the breezy life of a rancher, as he understood it. ”

“ He knew that beneath all his bitterness of feeling, and before all things, he desired Kate’s happiness and security. A strange magnanimity, in a nature so morally weak, so lacking in all that the world regards as the signs of true manhood, was his. Even his life, he felt, would be small enough price to pay for the happiness and security of the only woman who had ever held out the strong arm of support and affection for him to lean upon, the only woman he had ever truly loved. ”

“ But for all that I am a man, Kate. For all my weakness I have strength to feel, to love, to fight. I have all that, besides, which goes to make a man, just as surely as has the man, Fyles, whom you love. I know, Kate. Denial would be useless, and in denying, you would be untrue to yourself. [Pg 211] Fyles is the man for you, and no one knows it better than I. Fyles! The irony of it. The man who represents the law is the man who stands between me and all I desire on earth. ”

“ As he came to the clearing where he had first discovered Helen, however, his purpose underwent a further modification. His sentimental feelings getting the better of him, he sat down upon the very log over which the girl had fallen, and turned his face toward where the little home of the girls, with its single twinkling light, was rapidly losing itself in the deep of the gathering twilight.
He had no thought for the elder girl as he sat there. Her bolder beauty had no attraction for him, her big, dark eyes, so full of reliant spirit were scarcely the type he admired. ”

“ Kate made no answer, and the man went on.
“Do you know, Kate, as the days go on in this place, as the moment of crisis approaches, I am growing less and less of a policeman. I’m even beginning to repent of my wager with you, and but for the chance of winning you, I should be glad to abandon it. Love has been a hidden chapter in the book of life to me up till now, and now, reading it, it quite overwhelms me. Do you know I’ve always despised people who’ve put true love before all other considerations? ”

“ What right had he to be walking down that particular trail at that particular moment? How dared he whistle, any way? What right had he in Rocky Springs? Why—why was he on earth at all?
At that moment Helen felt that if there was one combination in the world she disliked more than another it was blue eyes and fair hair. Yes, and long noses were hateful, too; they were always poking themselves into other people’s business. ”

“ Helen shook her head while the saloonkeeper spat out his chew of tobacco with all the violence of his outraged feelings.
“He surely is a gilt-edged winner beside it,” he finally admitted impressively, before clipping off a fresh chew from his plug with his strong teeth.
Helen turned away, partly to hide the laugh that would no longer be denied, and partly to watch the approach of a team of horses hauling a load of logs. In a moment swift anger shone in her pretty eyes.
“Why!” she cried, pointing at them. “Look, Dirty! That’s our team; and Pete Clancy is driving it.” ”

“ Nothing that concerns your life escapes me. How could it, when my whole thought is for you—you? But the agony of mind I suffer is no less. I cannot help it, Kate. The knowledge and sight of things drives me nearly crazy, and I suffer the tortures of hell. But even so, if your happiness lies at Fyles’s side, then—I would have it so. If I were sure—sure that this happiness were awaiting you. Is it, Kate? Think. Think of it in—every aspect. Is it? Happiness with this—Fyles? ”

“ All about her stretched the vast plains of grass, which seemed to know no end. The wide flat trail, so bare and hard, passed her by, and vanished into the valley behind her. In the opposite direction, at long intervals, it showed up in sections as it passed over the rises in the prairie ocean, until the limits of her vision were reached.
Not a single object stood out to relieve the monotony of that desert of grass. Any dwelling of man within reach of the searching eye must have been hidden in the troughs between the crests of summer grass. ”

“ Kate was about to break in with a laughing protest, but Helen stayed her with a gesture of denial.
“Wait,” she cried, grandly. “Hear the whole charge. Look at your village life, which you plead guilty to. You, a high-spirited woman of independence and daring. You are no better than a sort of hired cleaner to a Meeting House you have adopted, and which is otherwise run by a lot of cut-throats and pirates, whose wives and offspring are no better than themselves. You attend the village social functions with as much appreciation of them as any village mother with an unwashed but growing family. ”

“ Charlie was in a discontented mood. He had seen Fyles approach Kate’s home from his eyrie on the valley slope, and that hopeless impulse belonging to a weakly nature, that self-pitying desire to further lacerate his own feelings, had sent him seeking to intercept the man whom he felt in his inmost heart was his successful rival for all that which he most desired on earth. ”

“ A sudden commotion in the scrub beside him abruptly changed the trend of his thought. He was startled. The commotion went on. Then with a rush and whirr of wings, and a hoarse-throated squawk, a large bird flew up, clutching the ruffled body of a lesser one in its fierce claws, its great flapping wings brushing his sleeve as it swept on past him.
His wondering blue eyes followed the bird’s flight until it passed beyond the tree tops, and became hidden by the trunk of the old pine. ”

“ She might be everything a woman should be, strong, sympathetic, generous, big in spirit, and of unusual courage; she might be all these and more, but, even so, she was incomparable to the fair delight of Helen’s bright, inconsequent prettiness. No, serious-minded people did not appeal to him, and, in his blundering way, he told himself that life itself was far too serious to be taken seriously. ”

“ Crooks are scared to death of each other, you know that, sir, better than I do. It’s the basis of their methods. They’ve got to make safe. To do this they have to resort to schemes which hide their identity. They’ll trust each other engaged in the crime because all are involved. But they daren’t trust those who’re under no penalty. What do they do? They’ve got to blind the outside world, the police, and they do it by making a mystery. Now, in this case, the pine is the heart of their mystery. It must give the key to the cache. It must lead us to getting the lot red-handed—running a cargo. ”

“ Bill blundered. “You see, if the dew had got on these books they’d have got all mussed. Must have been a sort of fate about my being around, and—and finding ’em for you.”
“Fate?” sniffed Helen, with the light of battle in her eyes, while Kate began to laugh.
“Why, sure,” said Bill eagerly. “Don’t you believe in fate? I do. Say,” he went on, gaining confidence from the sound of his own voice, “it was like this. Charlie and I had been talking a piece, and then he had to go off, and didn’t want me. If he had, I should have gone with him. Instead, I set off by myself, making toward the village. ”

“ Helen saw Charlie smile in a half-hearted fashion. For some moments his patience remained. Then, as Kate still waited for him to speak, his eyes abruptly lit with the deep fire of passion.
[Pg 46]
“Why? Why?” he cried suddenly. “Why must we conquer and fight with ourselves? Why beat down the nature given to us by a power beyond our control? Why not indulge the senses that demand indulgence, when, in such indulgence, we injure no one else? Oh, I argue it all with myself, and I try to reason, too. I try to see it all from the wholesome point of view from which you look at it, Kate. ”

“ Jack Huntly at Amberley grumbled at the unenlivening conditions of his existence, but compared with those of Mr. Moss he lived in a perfect whirlwind of gaiety.
There was no police station at White Point. There were no farms in the neighborhood. There was not even a half-breed camp, with its picturesque squalor, to break up the deadly drear of the surrounding plains. The only human diversion that ever marred the calm serenity of the neighborhood was the rare visit of some lodge of Indians, straying from the reservation, some sixty miles to the south, on a hunting pass. ”

“ Certainly the atmosphere of the village that morning must have been intolerable to Inspector Fyles, had he permitted himself to dwell upon the indications, the derisive glances, the quiet laugh of men as he chanced to pass. But public opinion and feeling were things he had long since schooled himself to ignore. He was concerned with his superiors, and his superiors only. At all times they were more than sufficient to trouble with, and his whole anxiety was turned in their direction now, in view of his terrible failure of the night before. ”

“ Charlie shook his head, laughing in his silent fashion.
“Oh, you’ll see him all right. This village’ll just be filled right up with him.” Then his dark eyes became serious, and a hopeless shadow crept into them. “I’m glad he’s coming,” he went on, adding simply, “maybe he’ll keep me straight.”
Kate’s smile died out in an instant. “Don’t talk like that Charlie,” she cried almost sharply. “Do you know what your words imply? Oh, it’s too dreadful, and—and I won’t have it. You don’t need anybody’s support. You can fight yourself. You can conquer yourself. ”

“ It was a weakness of the citizens of Rocky Springs to watch others work. They had no desire to help. They rarely were beset with any desire to help anybody. They simply clustered together in small groups, chewing tobacco, or smoking, and, to a man, their hands were indolently thrust into the tops of their trousers, which, in every case, were girdled with a well-laden ammunition belt, from which was suspended at least one considerable revolver.
There was no doubt in Helen’s mind but that these weapons were loaded in every chamber, and the thought set her merry eyes dancing again. ”

“ Low bush-grown hills lined the trail where it entered the wide valley of Leaping Creek, which, six miles further on, ran through the heart of the hamlet of Rocky Springs.
It was a beauty spot of no mean order. The smaller hills were broken and profuse, with dark woodland gorges splitting them in every direction, crowded with such a density of foliage as to be almost impassable. Farther on, as the valley widened and deepened, its aspect became more rugged. The land rose to greater heights, the lighter vegetation gave way to heavier growths of spruce and blue gum and maple. ”

“ Something more human. Something which made success a thousand times more pleasing to contemplate. He felt that with Kate at his side giant’s work would become all too easy. Her ravishing smile of encouragement would be a gentle spur to the most jaded energies. The delight of bearing her upon his broad shoulders in his upward career, would be bliss beyond words, and, in the interim of his great efforts, the care and happiness of her loyally courageous heart would be a delight almost too good to be true. ”

“ Then he rose up, and, in a loud voice, cursed the pine and the valley of the pine. He called down his gods and spirits to witness that never, so long as the pine stood, should there be peace in the valley. Forever it should be the emblem of crime and disaster beneath its shadow. There should be no happiness, no prosperity, no peace. ”

“ Only Fyles and three men stayed behind with the fallen teamster and his one other dead comrade.
But at the moment of the flight and pursuit, the sound of racing wheels some distance away caught the officer’s ears. In a moment he was at the wagon side. His men were close upon his heels. The wagon was empty. It was the blind he had anticipated, but—that sound of speeding wheels.
He shouted to his men and set off across country in the direction. Nothing must be left to chance. There was no doubt about the peculiar rattle which sounded so plainly. It was a buckboard being driven at a racing speed. ”

“ I know that I would rather suffer all the tortures of hell than forfeit your—good will.”
Kate sighed. She had no answer. She knew all that lay behind the man’s passionate appeal. She knew, too, that he spoke the truth. She knew that the only reason he made any effort at all was because his devotion to herself was something just a shade stronger than this awful disease with which he was afflicted.
The hopelessness of the position for a moment almost overwhelmed her. She knew that she had no love—love such as he required—to give him in return. ”

“ I love you, Helen, and shall always love you. My one thought in life now is your welfare. If you love me, dear, then leave those things. Leave them as part of a cruel, evil, shadowed time, which must be put behind us. All I want you to ever remember of it—when you are the happy wife of your Big Brother Bill—is that Charlie was all [Pg 335] we believed him, in spite of all appearances, and he died the noblest, the most heroic death that man ever died.”
Kate bent down and tenderly kissed the beautiful head of fair, wavy hair. ”

“ Kate Seton’s eyes wore a responsive twinkle, but she did not turn.
“You’re a bit of a joke, Hel,” she replied, in the slow musical fashion of a deep contralto voice.
“But I’m not a joke,” protested the other, with pretended severity. “And I won’t be called ‘Hel,’ just because my name’s Helen. It—it sounds like the way Pete and Nick swear at each other when they’ve been spending their pay at Dirty O’Brien’s. Besides, it doesn’t alter facts at all. It won’t take much more climbing to find ourselves right on the shelf, among the frying pans and other cooking utensils. ”

“ For him it was the valley of destiny. Within [Pg 143] its spacious confines lay the two great factors of life—his life—love and duty. They were confronting him. They were standing there waiting for him to possess himself of his victorious hold.
Stanley Fyles felt rather like a ticket-of-leave criminal, instead of a law officer, as he gazed out from the doorway of the frame hut, which formed the temporary quarters of the police, far out on the western reaches of the valley, five miles above the village of Rocky Springs. He knew he was there to prove himself. ”