Morning found Agnes only the more firmly determined to bear her troubles alone. Smith came by early. He looked curiously at the revolver, which she still carried at her waist, but there was approval in his eyes. The sight of the weapon seemed to cheer Smith, and make him easier in his mind about something that had given him unrest. She heard him singing as he passed on to his work. Across the river the bride was singing also, and there seemed to be a song in even the sound of the merry axes among the cottonwoods, where her neighboring settler and his two lank sons were chopping and hewing the logs for their cabin. But there was no song in her own heart, where it was needed most.
She knew that Jerry Boyle had camped somewhere near the stage-road, where he could watch her coming and going to carry the demand on Dr. Slavens which he had left with her. He would be watching the road even now, and he would watch all day, or perhaps ride up there to learn the reason when he failed to see her pass. She tied back the flaps of her tent to let the wind blow through, and to show any caller that she was not at home, then saddled her horse and rode away into the hills. It needed a day of solitude, she thought, to come
In pensive mood she rode on, giving her horse its head, but following a general course into the east. As her wise animal picked its way over the broken ground, she turned the situation in her mind.
There was no doubt that she had been indiscreet in the manner of taking up her homestead, but she could not drive herself to the belief that she had committed a moral crime. And the doctor. He would drop all his prospects in the land that he held if she should call on him, she well believed. He was big enough for a sacrifice like that, with never a question in his honest eyes to cloud the generosity of the act. If she had him by to advise her in this hour, and to benefit by his wisdom and courage, she sighed, how comfortable it would be.
Perhaps she should have gone, mused she, pursuing this thought, to his place, and put the thing before him in all its ugliness, with no reservations, no attempts to conceal or defend. He could have told her how far her act was punishable. Perhaps, at the most, it would mean no more than giving up the claim, which was enough, considering all that she had founded on it. Yes, she should have ridden straight to Dr. Slavens; that would have been the wiser course.
Considering whether she would have time to go and return that day, wasted as the morning was, she pulled up her horse and looked around to see if she could estimate by her location the distance from her camp. That she had penetrated the country east of the river farther than ever before, was plain at a glance. The surroundings were new to her. There was more vegetation, and marks of recent grazing everywhere.
She mounted the hill-crest for a wider survey, and there in a little valley below her she saw a flock of sheep grazing, while farther along the ridge stood a sheep-wagon, a strange and rather disconcerting figure striding up and down beside it.
Doubtless it was the shepherd, she understood. But a queer figure he made in that place; and his actions were unusual, to say the least, in one of his sedate and melancholy calling. He was a young man, garbed in a long, black coat, tattered more or less about the skirts and open in front, displaying his red shirt. His hair was long upon his collar, and his head was bare.
As he walked up and down a short beat near his wagon, the shepherd held in his hand a book, which he placed before his eyes with a flourish now, and then with a flourish withdrew it, meantime gesticulating with his empty hand in the most extravagant fashion. His dog, sharper of perception than its master, lay aside from him a little way, its ears pricked up, its sharp nose lifted, sniffing the scent of the stranger. But it gave no alarm.
Agnes felt that the man must be harmless, whatever his peculiarities. She rode forward, bent on asking him how far she had strayed from the river. As she drew near, she heard him muttering and declaiming, illustrating his arguments of protestation with clenched fist and tossing head, his long hair lifting from his temples in the wind.
He greeted her respectfully, without sign of perturbation or surprise, as one well accustomed to the society of people above the rank of shepherd.
“My apparent eccentric behavior at the moment when you first saw me, madam, or miss, perhaps, most likely I should say, indeed––”
Agnes nodded, smiling, to confirm his penetration.
“So, as I was saying, my behavior may have led you into doubt of my balance, and the consequent question of your safety in my vicinity,” he continued.
“Nothing of the kind, I assure you,” said she. “I thought you might be a–a divinity student by your dress, or maybe a candidate for the legal profession.”
“Neither,” he disclaimed. “I am a philosopher, and at the moment you first beheld me I was engaged in a heated controversy with Epictetus, whose Discourses I hold in my hand. We are unable to agree on many points, especially upon the point which he assumes that he has made in the discussion of grief. He contends that when one is not blamable for some calamity which bereaves him or strips him of his possessions, grief is unmanly, regret inexcusable.
“‘How?’ say I, meeting him foot to foot on the controversy, ‘in case I lose my son, my daughter, my wife–the wife of my soul and heart–shall I not grieve? shall I not be permitted the solace of a tear?’
“And Epictetus: ‘Were you to blame for the disease which cut them off? Did you light the fire which consumed them, or sink the ship which carried them down?’
“‘No,’ I answer; ‘but because I’m blameless shall I become inhuman, and close my heart to all display of tenderness and pain?’
“And there we have it, miss, over and over again. Ah, I am afraid we shall never agree!”
“It is lamentable,” Agnes agreed, believing that the young man’s life in the solitudes had unsettled his mind. “I never agree with him on that myself.”
The philosopher’s hollow, weathered face glowed as she gave this testimony. He drew a little nearer to her, shaking the long, dark, loose hair back from his forehead.
“I am glad that you don’t think me demented,” said he. “Many, who do not understand the deeper feelings of the soul, do believe it. The hollow-minded and the unstable commonly lose their small balance of reason in these hills, miss, with no companionship, month in and month out, but a dog and the poor, foolish creatures which you see in the valley yonder. But to one who is a philosopher, and a student of the higher things, this situation offers room for the expansion of
“But a man of your education and capabilities,” she suggested, thinking to humor him, “ought to be more congenially situated, it seems to me. There must be more remunerative pursuits which you could follow?”
“Remuneration for one may not be reward for another,” he told her. “I shall remain here until my mission is accomplished.”
He turned to his flock, and, with a motion of the arm, sped his dog to fetch in some stragglers which seemed straying off waywardly over the crest of the opposite hill. As he stood so she marked his ascetic gauntness, and noted that the hand which swung at his side twitched and clenched, and that the muscles of his cleanly shaved jaws swelled as he locked his teeth in determination.
“Your mission?” she asked, curious regarding what it might be, there in the solitude of those barren hills.
“I see that you are armed,” he observed irrelevantly, as if the subject of his mission had been put aside. “I have a very modern weapon of that pattern in the wagon, but there is little call for the use of it here. Perhaps you live in the midst of greater dangers than I?”
“I’m one of the new settlers over in the river bottom,” she explained. “I rode up to ask you how far I’d strayed from home.”
“It’s about seven miles across to the river, I should estimate,” he told her. “I graze up to the boundary
“Thank you; I think I’ll be going back then.”
“Will you do me the favor to look at this before you go?” he asked, drawing a folded paper from the inner pocket of his coat and handing it to her.
It was a page from one of those so-called Directories which small grafters go about devising in small cities and out-on-the-edge communities, in which the pictures of the leading citizens are printed for a consideration. The page had been folded across the center; it was broken and worn.
“You may see the person whose portrait is presented there,” said he, “and if you should see him, you would confer a favor by letting me know.”
“Why, I saw him yesterday!” she exclaimed in surprise. “It’s Jerry Boyle!”
The sheep-herder’s eyes brightened. A glow came into his brown face.
“You do well to go armed where that wolf ranges!” said he. “You know him–you saw him yesterday. Is he still there?”
“Why, I think he’s camped somewhere along the river,” she told him, unable to read what lay behind the excitement in the man’s manner.
He folded the paper and returned it to his pocket, his breath quick upon his lips. Suddenly he laid hold of her bridle with one hand, and with the other snatched the revolver from her low-swinging holster.
“Don’t be alarmed,” said he; “but I want to know.
“No, no! Far from it!” she whispered, complying with his strange order out of fear that his insanity, flaming as it was under the spur of some half-broken memory, might lead him to take her life.
He gave her back the revolver and released the horse.
“Go,” said he. “But don’t warn him, as you value your own life! My mission here is to kill that man!”
Perhaps it was a surge of unworthiness which swept her, lifting her heart like hope. The best of us is unworthy at times; the best of us is base. Selfishness is the festering root of more evil than gold. In that flash it seemed to her that Providence had raised up an arm to save her. She leaned over, her face bright with eagerness.
“Has he wronged you, too?” she asked.
He lifted his hand to his forehead slowly, as if in a gesture of pain. The blood had drained from his face; his cheek-bones were marked white through his wind-hardened skin.
“It’s not a subject to be discussed with a woman, sir,” said he absently. “There was a wife–somewhere there was a wife! This man came between us. I was not then what I am today–a shepherd on the hills.... But I must keep you here; you will betray me and warn him if I let you go!” he cried, rousing suddenly, catching her bridle again.
“No, I’ll not warn him,” Agnes assured him.
“If I thought you would”–he hesitated, searching her face with his fevered eyes, in which red veins showed as in the eyes of an angry dog–“I’d have to sacrifice you!”
Agnes felt that she never could draw her weapon in time, in case the eccentric tried to take it away again, and her heart quailed as she measured the distance she would have to ride before the fall of the ground would protect her, even if she should manage to break his hold on the bridle, and gallop off while he was fetching his pistol from the wagon.
“I’ll not warn him,” said she, placing her hand on his arm. “I give you my sincere word that I’ll do nothing to save him from what I feel to be your just vengeance.”
“Go, before I doubt you again!” he cried, slapping her horse with his palm as he let go the bridle.
From the tip of the hill she looked back. He had disappeared–into the wagon, she supposed; and she made haste to swerve from the straight course to put another hill between them, in case he might run after her, his mad mind again aflame with the belief that she would cheat him of his revenge.
Agnes arrived in camp full of tremors and contradictory emotions. One minute she felt that she should ride and warn Boyle, guilty as he might be, and deserving of whatever punishment the hand of the wronged man might be able to inflict; the next she relieved herself
She sat in the sun before her tent thinking it over, for and against, cooling considerably and coming to a saner judgment of the situation. Every little while she looked toward the hills, to see if the shepherd had followed her. She had seen no horse in the man’s camp; he could not possibly make it on foot, under two hours, even if he came at all, she told herself.
Perhaps it was an imaginary grievance, based upon the reputation which Boyle had earned for himself; maybe the poor, declaiming philosopher had forgotten all about it by now, and had returned to his discourses and his argument. She brewed a pot of tea, for the shadows were marking noonday, and began to consider riding down the river to find Boyle and tell him of the man’s threat, leaving him to follow his own judgment in the matter. His conscience would tell him whether to stand or fly.
Strong as her resentment was against the man who had come into her plans so unexpectedly and thrown them in a tangle, she felt that it would be wrong to her own honesty to conceal from him the knowledge of his danger. Perhaps there remained manliness enough in him to cause him to withdraw his avaricious scheme to oust Dr. Slavens in return for a service like that.
She brought up her horse and saddled it, took a look around camp to see that everything was in shape–for she liked to leave things tidy, in case some of the neighbors should stop in–and was about to mount, when a man’s head and shoulders appeared from behind her own cottonwood log. A glance showed her that it was the sheep-herder. His head was bare, his wild hair in his eyes.
He got to his feet, his pistol in his hand.
“I watched you,” said he, sheathing the weapon, as if he had changed his mind about the use of it. “I knew you’d go!”
“But I didn’t intend to when I parted from you up there on the hill,” she declared, greatly confused over being caught in this breach of faith with even a crazy man.
“I considered that, too,” said the philosopher. “But I watched you. I’ll never be fool enough to entirely trust a woman again. You all lie!”
She wondered how he had arrived there so quickly and silently, for he gave no evidence of fatigue or heat. She did not know the dry endurance which a life like his builds up in a man. Sheep-herders in that country are noted for their fleetness. It is a common saying of them that their heels are as light as their heads.
But there he was, at any rate, and her good intentions toward Boyle must be surrendered. Conscience had a palliative in the fact that she had meant to go.
“Heaven knows I have as little reason to wish him well as you!” said she, speaking in low voice, as if to herself, as she began to undo the saddle girth.
“Stay here, then,” said the sheep-herder, watching her with glistening eyes. “I’ll kill him for both of us! Where is his camp?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, shuddering.
The demented shepherd’s way of speaking of taking a human life, even though a worthless one, or a vicious one, was eager and hungry. He licked his lips like a dog.
“You said he was camped on the river. Where?”
“I don’t know,” she returned again.
“I’ll tell you,” said he, staying her hand as she tugged on a strap. “Both of us will go! You shall ride, and I’ll run beside you. But”–he bent over, grinding his teeth and growling between them–“you sha’n’t help kill him! That’s for me, alone!”
She drew back from his proposal with a sudden realization of what a desperately brutal thing this unstrung creature was about to do, with a terrible arraignment of self-reproach because she had made no effort to dissuade him or place an obstacle in the way of accomplishing his design. It was not strange, thought she, with a revulsion of self-loathing, that he accepted her as a willing accomplice and proposed that she bear a hand. Even her effort to ride and find Boyle had been half-hearted. She might have gone, she told herself, before the herder arrived.
“No, no! I couldn’t go! I couldn’t!” she cried, forgetting that she was facing an unbalanced man, all the force of pleading in her voice.
“No, you want to kill him yourself!” he charged savagely. “Give me that horse–give it to me, I tell you! I’ll go alone!”
He sprang into the saddle, not waiting to adjust the stirrups to his long legs. With his knees pushed up like a jockey’s, he rode off, the pointer of chance, or the cunning of his own inscrutable brain, directing him the way Boyle had gone the evening before.
His going left her nerveless and weak. She sat and watched him out of sight beyond the cottonwoods and willows, thinking what a terrible thing it was to ride out with the cold intention of killing a man. This man was irresponsible; the strength of his desire for revenge had overwhelmed his reason. The law would excuse him of murder, for in the dimness of his own mind there was no conception of crime.
But what excuse could there be for one who sat down in deliberation––
Base Jerry Boyle might be, ready to sacrifice unfeelingly the innocent for his own pleasure and gain, ready to strike at their dearest hopes, ready to trample under his feet the green gardens of their hearts’ desire; yet, who should sit in judgment on him, or seek a justification in his deeds to–to–– Even then she could not bring her thoughts to express it, although her wild heart had sung over it less than twenty-four hours before.
A shiver of sickness turned her cold. With quick, nervous fingers she unbuckled the belt which held her revolver and cartridges; she carried the weapon into the tent and flung it to the ground.
At dusk the sheep-herder returned, with the horse much blown.
“He had been there, but he’s gone,” he announced. “I followed him eastward along the stage-road, but lost his trail.”
He dismounted and dropped the reins to the ground. Agnes set about to relieve the tired animal of the burden of the saddle, the sheep-herder offering no assistance. He stood with his head bent, an air of dejection and melancholy over him, a cloud upon his face. Presently he walked away, saying no more. She watched him as he went, moodily and unheeding of his way, until he passed out of view around a thicket of tangled shrubs which grew upon the river-bank.
While her horse was relieving his weariness in contented sighs over his oats, Agnes made a fire and started her evening coffee. She had a feeling of cleanness in her conscience, and a lightness of heart which she knew never could have been her own to enjoy again if the crazed herder had come back with blood upon his hands.
There was no question about the feeling of loneliness that settled down upon her with aching intensity when she sat down to her meal, spread on a box, the lantern a yellow speck in the boundless night. A rod
We must have walls around us, both lanterns and men, rightly to fill the sphere of our designed usefulness; walls to restrain our wastrel forces; walls to bind our lustful desires, our foolish ambitions, our outwinging flights. Yet, in its way, the lantern served nobly, as many a man serves in the circle which binds his small adventures, and beyond which his fame can never pass.
From the door of her tent Agnes looked out upon the lantern, comparing herself with it, put down there as she was in that blank land, which was still in the night of its development. Over that place, which she had chosen to make a home and a refuge, her own weak flame would fall dimly, perhaps never able to light it all. Would it be worth the struggle, the heart-hunger for other places and things, the years of waiting, the toil and loneliness?
She went back to her supper, the cup which she had gone to fetch in her hand. The strength of night made her heart timid; the touch of food was dry and tasteless upon her lips. For the first time since coming to that country she felt the pain of discouragement.
Feeble as her light was against the night, it was enough to discover tears upon her cheeks as she sat there upon the ground. Her fair hair lay dark in the shadows, and light with that contrast which painters love, where it lifted in airy rise above her brow. And there were the pensive softness of her chin, the sweep of her round throat, the profile as sharp as a shadow against the mellow glow. Perhaps the lantern was content in its circumscribed endeavor against the night, when it could light to such good advantage so much loveliness.
“If I’d have put my hands over your eyes, who would you have named?” asked a voice near her ear, a voice familiar, and fitted in that moment with old associations.
“I’d have had no trouble in guessing, Jerry, for I was expecting you,” she answered, scarcely turning her head, although his silent manner of approach had startled her.
“Agnes, I don’t believe you’ve got any more nerves than an Indian,” he said, dropping down beside her.
“If one wanted to make a facetious rejoinder, the opening is excellent,” she said, fighting back her nervousness with a smile. “Will you have some supper?”
“I’d like it, if you don’t mind.”
She busied herself with the stove, but he peremptorily took away from her the office of feeding the fire, and watched her as she put bacon on to fry.
“Agnes, you ought to have been frying bacon for me these four years past–figuratively, I mean,” he remarked, musingly.
“If you don’t mind, we’ll not go back to that,” she said.
Boyle made no mention of the purpose of his visit. He made his supper with ambassadorial avoidance of the subject which lay so uneasily on her mind. When he had finished, he drew out his tobacco-sack and rolled a cigarette, and, as it dangled from his lip by a shred of its wrapping, he turned to her.
“Well?” he asked.
She was standing near the lantern, removing the few utensils–the bacon had been served to him in the pan–from her outdoor table. When she answered him she turned away until her face was hidden in the shadow.
“I didn’t carry your message to Dr. Slavens as you ordered, Jerry.”
“I know it,” said he. “What next?”
“I guess it’s ‘up to you,’ as you put it. I’m not going to try to save myself at the expense of any of my friends.”
Boyle got up. He took a little turn away from the box whereon the lantern stood, as if struggling to maintain the fair front he had worn when he appeared.
“Have you considered your own danger?” he asked.
“It wouldn’t help you a great deal here, among these rough, fair-minded people, to take an advantage like that of a woman, especially when her transgression is merely technical and not intentional,” she rejoined.
“I wouldn’t have to appear in it,” he assured her.
“Well, set the United States marshal after me as soon as you want to; I’ll be here,” she said, speaking with the even tone of resignation which one commands when the mind has arrived at a determined stand to face the last and worst.
“Agnes, I told you yesterday that I was all over the old feeling that I had for you.”
Boyle leaned forward as he spoke, his voice earnest and low.
“But that was a bluff. I’m just as big a fool as I ever was about it. If you want to walk over me, go ahead; if you want to–oh, rats! But I’ll tell you; if you’ll come away with me I’ll drop all of this. I’ll leave that tin-horn doctor where he is, and let him make what he can out of his claim.”
“I couldn’t marry you, Jerry; it’s impossible to think of that,” she told him gently.
“Oh, well, that’s a formality,” he returned, far more in his voice than his words. “I’ll say to you––”
“You’ve said too much!” she stopped him, feeling
She walked across the bright ring of light toward the tent, making a little detour around him, as if afraid that his violent words might be followed by violent deeds.
Boyle turned where he stood, following her with his eyes. The light of the lantern struck him strongly up to the waist, leaving his head and shoulders in the gloom above its glare. His hands were in the pockets of his trousers, his shoulders drooping forward in that horseback stoop which years in the saddle had fastened on him.
Agnes had reached the tent, where she stood with her hand on the flap, turning a hasty look behind her, when a shot out of the dark from the direction of the river-bank struck her ears with a suddenness and a portent which seemed to carry the pain of death. She was facing that way; she saw the flash of it; she saw Jerry Boyle leap with lithe agility, as if springing from the scourge of flames, and sling his pistol from the hostler under his coat.
In his movement there was an admirable quickness, rising almost to the dignity of beauty in the rapidity with which he adjusted himself to meet this sudden exigency. In half the beat of a heart, it seemed, he had fired. Out of the dark came another leap of flame,
Agnes pressed her hand over her eyes to shut out the sight, fearing to see him fall, her heart rising up to accuse her. She had forgotten to warn him! She had forgotten!
Boyle’s voice roused her. There was a dry harshness in it, a hoarseness as of one who has gone long without water on the lips.
“Bring that lantern here!” he commanded.
She did not stand to debate it, but took up the light and hurried to the place where he stood. A man lay at his feet, his long hair tossed in disorder, his long coat spread out like a black blotch upon the ground. Boyle took the lantern and bent over the victim of his steady arm, growled in his throat, and bent lower. The man’s face was partly hidden by the rank grass in which he lay. Boyle turned it up to the light with his foot and straightened his back with a grunt of disdain.
“Huh! That rabbit!” said he, giving her back the light.
It did not require that gleam upon the white face to tell Agnes that the victim was the polemical sheep-herder, whose intention had been steadier than his aim.
Boyle hesitated a moment as if to speak to her, but said nothing before he turned and walked away.
“You’ve killed him!” she called after him sharply.
“He’s not dead,” said Boyle. “Don’t you hear him snort?”
The man’s breathing was indeed audible, and growing louder with each labored inspiration.
“Turn him over on his face,” directed Boyle. “There’s blood in his throat.”
“Will you go for Smith?” she asked, kneeling beside the wounded man.
“He’s coming; I can hear the sauerkraut jolt in him while he’s half a mile away. If anybody comes looking for me on account of this–coroner or–oh, anybody–I’ll be down the river about a quarter below the stage-ford. I’ll wait there a day longer to hear from you, and this is my last word.”
With that Boyle left her. Smith came very shortly, having heard the shots; and the people from up the river came, and the young man from the bridal nest across on the other side. They made a wondering, awed ring around the wounded man, who was pronounced by Smith to be in deep waters. There was a bullet through his neck.
Smith believed there was life enough left in the sheep-herder to last until he could fetch a doctor from Meander.
“But that’s thirty miles,” said Agnes, “and Dr. Slavens is not more than twenty. You know where he’s located–down by Comanche?”
Smith knew, but he had forgotten for the minute,
“I’ll have him here before morning,” said Smith, posting off to get his horse.
The poor sheep-herder was too sorely hurt to last the night out. Before Smith had been two hours on his way the shepherd was in the land of shades, having it out face to face with Epictetus–if he carried the memory of his contention across with him, to be sure.
The neighbors arranged him respectably upon a board, and covered him over with a blanket, keeping watch beside him in the open, with the clear stars shining undisturbed by this thing which made such a turmoil in their breasts. There he lay, waiting the doctor and the coroner, and all who might come, his earthly troubles locked up forever in his cold heart, his earthly argument forever at an end.
