Blue Kingdom (27 page)

Dunmore, looking upon these things, inhaling the breath of the wilderness, watching the red-hot glow of the great logs rotting away in their own heat, sighed a little. He looked back, above all, to the brightest light, which was the illumination that streamed out of the door of the dining room. Looking at that maze of golden light, he could see in his fancy the faces of the men around the table. He could hear, also, the excited murmur of their voices, every moment growing louder. He knew of what they talked, and he smiled grimly within himself as he thought of it. They were counting the ways and the manner in which he could be disposed of.

It seemed as though a shadow rose out of the ground beside him.

“Everything's ready, chief,” said the voice of Jimmy Larren.

He reached out and grabbed the skinny shoulders of Jimmy within his arm. “Jim, old partner,” he said, “the fact is that we're going on Old Nick's own ride, tonight. We've got about one chance in twenty of pulling clear, and on the way to it they'll shoot down every man of us as if we were no better than dogs. They'd shoot you down, Jimmy, and forget that you're only a boy.”

“Why,” said Jimmy, “that's about all that I could ask, ain't it? I mean, to be mistook for a man, so's I could die a man's death. I wouldn't aim to die no better than alongside of you, chief, and it seems to me that a gent has gotta die sometime. Ain't that right?”

Dunmore grew thoughtful. “We have a few minutes, I suppose,” he said. “They'll be talkin' for a while in the dining room.”

“More'n a while,” said Jimmy. “They'll be talkin' till the cows come home, if you wanna ask my idea of it. They never run up ag'in' anything like you before, and they'll never run up ag'in' such a thing ag'in. So they got reason to talk, darn 'em all.”

“You don't like them, Jim?”

“I thought that they was free,” said Jimmy Larren, “and that was the only reason that I ever liked their kind of a life.”

“Well, Jimmy, they're free enough.”

“Free to make fools of themselves,” Jimmy said bitterly. “Is that bein' really free? I should say not. They ain't no freer than a hoss in a pasture . . . sooner or later, he's gonna feel the rope around his neck, I reckon.”

Dunmore chuckled softly. “Jimmy, where's the girl?”

“She ain't come out of her house.”

“I'll go try to get her, then. Everything's lost unless I take her along.”

At the door of Beatrice's cabin, he paused for a moment, listening, and he heard a throb of dull, soft sound within, almost like the pulse of his own heart. He tapped at the door and heard a frightened gasp in response. He pushed the door open, and he saw Beatrice lying on the couch, in the very act of raising herself from it. She, at the sight of him, sprang erect.

“I'm ready,” she stammered. “I'll go, Carrick.”

He took heed of her carefully, as one who had no time to spare, because he could see that his ship was ready to sink, and yet he said to her: “Have you thought it out, Beatrice? If you go with me now, you never will come back. You leave this. You've been a sort of a queen, up here, but you never will be a queen again. Have you figured on that?”

She nodded to him, dumb with sorrow.

“Only if you could say what I'm to be,” she said. “Where I'm to go, what I'm to do.”

“Go where I go,” said Carrick Dunmore. “Ride as I
ride, and ask no questions. I could say one thing more . . . but there's hardly any use of it.”

“I want to know.”

He looked at her tear-stained face and took a half step toward her. “I mean you no harm, Beatrice. I hope it'll be for you as much as for myself.”

It seemed to Dunmore that he never had seen her so beautiful, for the only light that was in the room, at that time, was the flame on the open hearth, which rose and fell and flickered wildly and gave to her body and to her face a strange life. Her weeping had not disfigured her, but it seemed only to have made her more feminine, with a helpless softness that went to his heart.

“I'm ready,” said Dunmore.

She looked wildly around the room. “I'm ready, too.”

“Mind you,” repeated Dunmore, “once you leave, it's forever.”

She drew a quick breath, and then nodded. “What am I to do?” she asked.

“Jimmy has the horses ready. Shall we start?”

Suddenly she threw her hands to him. “Don't you see?” said Beatrice. “It's all hopeless. You want to take me away from them, but you can't. They're sure to follow. They're sure to catch us. Everyone in the mountains is devoted to them. Everyone is ready to fight and to die for them. They have signals that would cut us off. They know how to work every corner of the country. We'll be running into a net every step that we take. Have you thought of all that, Carrick?”

“Aye,” he answered, “I've thought of all that.”

“But still you'll try?”

“Still I'll try.”

She gave one glance more around her, as though she were taking into her mind all that she never would see again—the two big grizzly bear rugs on the floor, the skins of the mountain sheep that covered the couch, and on the floor the heads of elk and of deer that had fallen to her own rifle. Then, with a little gesture, she went to Dunmore and gently laid a hand on his arm.

“I'll go,” she said. She looked up suddenly to his face. “It was a grand thing, tonight. I never saw a man do such a thing. I never hoped to see it.” And she went out before him into the dark of the night.

Dunmore, following, quickly joined her and led the way around the house and back into the trees. There, among the shadows, they saw the outlines of horses.

Jimmy Larren's voice greeted them. “I've got Gunfire and Excuse Me,” he said, “and the piebald for myself. Start quick. Here's been that fox, Lynn Tucker, walkin' along through the trees, and I was sure he'd see us.”

Dunmore gave the girl a hand into the saddle. Then he swung up on Excuse Me, and headed away through the woods, with the girl behind him, and Jimmy Larren last of the lot. As he went, an odd joy and surety filled the breast of Dunmore that the girl would not leave them. She seemed as much a member of the party as Jimmy's loyal soul itself, so he did not look behind him, but went straight forward and heard the cautious crackling of the twigs beneath the hoofs of the horses that followed.

After a time, they had passed sufficiently far to warrant
his going fast and with a glance behind him, he swung Excuse Me into a gallop. Steadily he rode, following the road to Harpersville, which he had such good reason to know. The trees flowed steadily past them. The road rang like metal beneath the hoofs of the horses, and the wind cut at his face.

So they descended two-thirds of the way to Harpersville and were cutting along at a good clip when Jimmy Larren cried out. At that, Dunmore looked back, and he saw a light flaring on the forehead of the mountain behind them. It winked rapidly, and Dunmore drew Excuse Me to a halt.

“Do you know how to read that signaling?” he asked of the girl.

She already was spelling it out aloud. “Ten thousand dollars for Dunmore, alive or dead,” she said, putting the letters together. “I knew that they'd send out some message like that. But . . . ten thousand dollars!”

“It ain't possible,” said Jimmy Larren. “Why, every man in the mountains will be oilin' up his rifle and startin' for us. I pretty nigh wish that I was on the other side, chief. You ain't going straight on through Harpersville, are you?”

“We're going to skirt around it. Jimmy, you'll be able to show us a way where we're not apt to run into anyone?”

“But the whole town is turned out by this time, blockin' the trails. I dunno that I can do the job, but I'll try. You'll get scratched up a mite, though.”

“How fast are Tankerton's messages relayed through the mountains?”

“Fast as you can think. There it goes ahead of us.”
He pointed, and from the tallest hill before them, they saw a light begin to blink, repeating the message. “They's hardly a house but what's got somebody in it that can read the signaling. And every house in a high place is fixed with a strong light for the signal makin'.”

Dunmore nodded. Then, tersely: “Lead on, Jimmy. Beatrice, go next. I'll wind up the procession.”

They started on obediently, winding off into a thick growth of trees and shrubs that constantly whipped them with projecting branches. Now and then, they could jog their horses at a slow trot, but most of the time they had to go at a walk, and even at a walk they had to pause occasionally.

Dunmore found himself straining his eyes into the thick darkness on either hand, although all was so black beneath the big trees that the most he could do was to make out the dim forms of the brush and the stalwart trunks when he was an arm's length from them. They were constantly choked by the dust that had settled on the foliage and that now was brushed off into the air in clouds. Thorns tore at their clothes with many a sound of ripping, and now and then a horse would clear its nostrils with a snort that sounded to their frightened ears like the blowing of an alarm trumpet.

However, they sifted in this manner down the hillside, and across it, until finally they were able to see through a gap in the trees the scattered lights of Harpersville above them, and finally the tall, blocky outline of the hotel itself.

Jimmy suddenly halted; the girl paused behind him. Dunmore, bringing up his horse in turn, heard her gasp
with fear. Straight before them came murmuring voices.

After a moment Dunmore heard a gruff man's voice exclaim: “I tore off half my face on that brier! I ain't gonna go no farther along here. The kid's crazy.”

“I ain't crazy,” answered a boy's voice. “When we was playin' Injun, Jimmy always used to fool us by gettin' onto this old trail.”

“Trail? It ain't no more trail than a cactus patch!”

“It got choked up a good deal, but you see that you can get through. Jimmy's with them, and he might show 'em this way. We better go along, Dad.”

“It's a fool business,” said another man. “We're wastin' our time down here, with a kid to lead us, and somebody else is gonna rake in that ten thousand. My stars . . . ten thousand dollars.” He said it reverently and with an almost religious emotion.

“And something more for the girl and the kid!” exclaimed another voice.

“Hey, I wouldn't mind plugging that Dunmore, but I'd hate to try to handle that wildcat of a girl without thick gloves on, I'm gonna tell you.”

“Go on, boys. We'll keep along the trail, now that we're started on it. Keep your guns ready.”

“I ain't gonna go another step. My face is all tore already. Besides, how could even Dunmore get the girl to ride along this here trail?”

“She's in love with him, ain't she? And a girl'll do anything for a man she's in love with. Love thickens up the hide of a girl till it's like the skin of a mule.”

“All right. Keep ahead. I'm gonna go back. So long, boys!”

“Don't you leave us, Jack. We need you, if we should run onto him.”

“Brave, ain't you? Three of you, at that.”

“If Jack goes back, I'm goin' back, too.”

“Then we'll all have to go. Dash the luck!”

With much swearing, they turned back, crashing through the thorny brush.

The last thing that Dunmore heard was: “This here Dunmore, they say that he didn't come to the mountains for nothin' but the girl.”

“Him? Nobody knows what he wants. Most likely he don't know himself. Ask a bull terrier why it loves to fight. As much sense in that as to ask what's in Dunmore's brain. Trouble raisin' is all that he's interested in.”

“A lazy loafer, they say.”

“Sure, and a drunk.”

“And a crooked gambler.”

“Well, he held a hand that Tankerton couldn't beat.”

The voices faded away.

They waited without a whisper until all noise had died away. A few minutes had passed, and Dunmore said that they might go on. Therefore, they started again, with Jimmy again in the lead, and the very horses, as it seemed, stepping more lightly after their fright of the moment before.

Presently the trail widened a little. That scene was printed forever upon the memory of Dunmore. On the left there was a run of water, beginning to sparkle under the pale silver light of the moon, which was just floating up like a cloud above the branches of the eastern trees. Second-growth forest and shrubbery banked the hill to the right, and there was a nest of glistening rocks in the center of this little natural clearing. No sooner had they come well within the range of it than half a dozen rifles suddenly clanged in their faces. Voices yelled, but of them all, he could remember only one childish screech: “I told you! I told you they'd come this way!”

He put spurs to Excuse Me and rushed straight at the rock nest.

“It's Dunmore!” someone yelled.

A figure rose from among the stones. Guns blared in his face. As he fired his revolver, he saw the lanky form of the first man topple forward. Behind him, he sensed the sweep of the boy and of Beatrice riding for cover, and he swung off from the natural fort to get into refuge in his turn.

It seemed to be by miracle alone that he escaped being hit. He felt the check and tug of bullets as they whistled through his clothes. His sombrero was knocked from his head. But he went on, unscathed, and the blessed darkness of the forest once more closed behind him. He heard the yells of the marksmen—frantic yells of disappointment as ten thousand dollars in hard cash melted away from their grasp, but now the trail widened, and he was galloping over easy ground, with the girl and the boy a scant distance in front of him. Joy rose in the heart of Dunmore. Let her ride with whom she would, how long would it be before she went with a man who dared what he had ventured on this day?