Zane Grey (29 page)

In the midst of a dense forest of great cottonwoods and sycamores he
came upon a little pond, hidden among the bushes, and shrouded in a
windy, wet gloom. Jonathan recognized the place. He had been there in
winter hunting bears when all the swampland was locked by ice.

The borderman searched along the banks for a time, then went back to
the trail, patiently following it. Around the pond it led to the side
of a great, shelving rock. He saw an Indian leaning against this, and
was about to throw forward his rifle when the strange, fixed, position
of the savage told of the tragedy. A wound extended from his shoulder
to his waist. Near by on the ground lay Legget. He, too, was dead. His
gigantic frame weltered in blood. His big feet were wide apart; his
arms spread, and from the middle of his chest protruded the haft of
a knife.

The level space surrounding the bodies showed evidence of a desperate
struggle. A bush had been rolled upon and crushed by heavy bodies. On
the ground was blood as on the stones and leaves. The blade Legget
still clutched was red, and the wrist of the hand which held it showed
a dark, discolored band, where it had felt the relentless grasp of
Wetzel's steel grip. The dead man's buckskin coat was cut into
ribbons. On his broad face a demoniacal expression had set in eternal
rigidity; the animal terror of death was frozen in his wide staring
eyes. The outlaw chief had died as he had lived, desperately.

Jonathan found Wetzel's trail leading directly toward the river, and
soon understood that the borderman was on the track of Brandt. The
borderman had surprised the worn, starved, sleepy fugitives in the
gray, misty dawn. The Indian, doubtless, was the sentinel, and had
fallen asleep at his post never to awaken. Legget and Brandt must have
discharged their weapons ineffectually. Zane could not understand why
his comrade had missed Brandt at a few rods' distance. Perhaps he had
wounded the younger outlaw; but certainly he had escaped while Wetzel
had closed in on Legget to meet the hardest battle of his career.

While going over his version of the attack, Jonathan followed Brandt's
trail, as had Wetzel, to where it ended in the river. The old
borderman had continued on down stream along the sandy shore. The
outlaw remained in the water to hide his trail.

At one point Wetzel turned north. This move puzzled Jonathan, as did
also the peculiar tracks. It was more perplexing because not far below
Zane discovered where the fugitive had left the water to get around a
ledge of rock.

The trail was approaching Fort Henry. Jonathan kept on down the river
until arriving at the head of the island which lay opposite the
settlement. Still no traces of Wetzel! Here Zane lost Brandt's trail
completely. He waded the first channel, which was shallow and narrow,
and hurried across the island. Walking out upon a sand-bar he signaled
with his well-known Indian cry. Almost immediately came an
answering shout.

While waiting he glanced at the sand, and there, pointing straight
toward the fort, he found Brandt's straggling trail!

Colonel Zane paced to and fro on the porch. His genial smile had not
returned; he was grave and somber. Information had just reached him
that Jonathan had hailed from the island, and that one of the settlers
had started across the river in a boat.

Betty came out accompanied by Mrs. Zane.

"What's this I hear?" asked Betty, flashing an anxious glance toward
the river. "Has Jack really come in?"

"Yes," replied the colonel, pointing to a throng of men on the river
bank.

"Now there'll be trouble," said Mrs. Zane nervously. "I wish with all
my heart Brandt had not thrown himself, as he called it, on
your mercy."

"So do I," declared Colonel Zane.

"What will be done?" she asked. "There! that's Jack! Silas has hold of
his arm."

"He's lame. He has been hurt," replied her husband.

A little procession of men and boys followed the borderman from the
river, and from the cabins appeared the settlers and their wives. But
there was no excitement except among the children. The crowd filed
into the colonel's yard behind Jonathan and Silas.

Colonel Zane silently greeted his brother with an iron grip of the
hand which was more expressive than words. No unusual sight was it to
see the borderman wet, ragged, bloody, worn with long marches,
hollow-eyed and gloomy; yet he had never before presented such an
appearance at Fort Henry. Betty ran forward, and, though she clasped
his arm, shrank back. There was that in the borderman's presence to
cause fear.

"Wetzel?" Jonathan cried sharply.

The colonel raised both hands, palms open, and returned his brother's
keen glance. Then he spoke. "Lew hasn't come in. He chased Brandt
across the river. That's all I know."

"Brandt's here, then?" hissed the borderman.

The colonel nodded gloomily.

"Where?"

"In the long room over the fort. I locked him in there."

"Why did he come here?"

Colonel Zane shrugged his shoulders. "It's beyond me. He said he'd
rather place himself in my hands than be run down by Wetzel or you. He
didn't crawl; I'll say that for him. He just said, 'I'm your
prisoner.' He's in pretty bad shape; barked over the temple, lame in
one foot, cut under the arm, starved and worn out."

"Take me to him," said the borderman, and he threw his rifle on a
bench.

"Very well. Come along," replied the colonel. He frowned at those
following them. "Here, you women, clear out!" But they did not
obey him.

It was a sober-faced group that marched in through the big stockade
gate, under the huge, bulging front of the fort, and up the rough
stairway. Colonel Zane removed a heavy bar from before a door, and
thrust it open with his foot. The long guardroom brilliantly lighted
by sunshine coming through the portholes, was empty save for a ragged
man lying on a bench.

The noise aroused him; he sat up, and then slowly labored to his feet.
It was the same flaring, wild-eyed Brandt, only fiercer and more
haggard. He wore a bloody bandage round his head. When he saw the
borderman he backed, with involuntary, instinctive action, against the
wall, yet showed no fear.

In the dark glance Jonathan shot at Brandt shone a pitiless
implacability; no scorn, nor hate, nor passion, but something which,
had it not been so terrible, might have been justice.

"I think Wetzel was hurt in the fight with Legget," said Jonathan
deliberately, "an' ask if you know?"

"I believe he was," replied Brandt readily. "I was asleep when he
jumped us, and was awakened by the Indian's yell. Wetzel must have
taken a snap shot at me as I was getting up, which accounts, probably,
for my being alive. I fell, but did not lose consciousness. I heard
Wetzel and Legget fighting, and at last struggled to my feet. Although
dizzy and bewildered, I could see to shoot; but missed. For a long
time, it seemed to me, I watched that terrible fight, and then ran,
finally reaching the river, where I recovered somewhat."

"Did you see Wetzel again?"

"Once, about a quarter of a mile behind me. He was staggering along on
my trail."

At this juncture there was a commotion among the settlers crowding
behind Colonel Zane and Jonathan, and Helen Sheppard appeared, white,
with her big eyes strangely dilated.

"Oh!" she cried breathlessly, clasping both hands around Jonathan's
arm. "I'm not too late? You're not going to—"

"Helen, this is no place for you," said Colonel Zane sternly. "This is
business for men. You must not interfere."

Helen gazed at him, at Brandt, and then up at the borderman. She did
not loose his arm.

"Outside some one told me you intended to shoot him. Is it true?"

Colonel Zane evaded the searching gaze of those strained, brilliant
eyes. Nor did he answer.

As Helen stepped slowly back a hush fell upon the crowd. The
whispering, the nervous coughing, and shuffling of feet, ceased.

In those around her Helen saw the spirit of the border. Colonel Zane
and Silas wore the same look, cold, hard, almost brutal. The women
were strangely grave. Nellie Douns' sweet face seemed changed; there
was pity, even suffering on it, but no relenting. Even Betty's face,
always so warm, piquant, and wholesome, had taken on a shade of doubt,
of gloom, of something almost sullen, which blighted its dark beauty.
What hurt Helen most cruelly was the borderman's glittering eyes.

She fought against a shuddering weakness which threatened to overcome
her.

"Whose prisoner is Brandt?" she asked of Colonel Zane.

"He gave himself up to me, naturally, as I am in authority here,"
replied the colonel. "But that signifies little. I can do no less than
abide by Jonathan's decree, which, after all, is the decree of
the border."

"And that is?"

"Death to outlaws and renegades."

"But cannot you spare him?" implored Helen. "I know he is a bad man;
but he might become a better one. It seems like murder to me. To kill
him in cold blood, wounded, suffering as he is, when he claimed your
mercy. Oh! it is dreadful!"

The usually kind-hearted colonel, soft as wax in the hands of a girl,
was now colder and harder than flint.

"It is useless," he replied curtly. "I am sorry for you. We all
understand your feelings, that yours are not the principles of the
border. If you had lived long here you could appreciate what these
outlaws and renegades have done to us. This man is a hardened
criminal; he is a thief, a murderer."

"He did not kill Mordaunt," replied Helen quickly. "I saw him draw
first and attack Brandt."

"No matter. Come, Helen, cease. No more of this," Colonel Zane cried
with impatience.

"But I will not!" exclaimed Helen, with ringing voice and flashing
eye. She turned to her girl friends and besought them to intercede for
the outlaw. But Nell only looked sorrowfully on, while Betty met her
appealing glance with a fire in her eyes that was no dim reflection of
her brother's.

"Then I must make my appeal to you," said Helen, facing the borderman.
There could be no mistaking how she regarded him. Respect, honor and
love breathed from every line of her beautiful face.

"Why do you want him to go free?" demanded Jonathan. "You told me to
kill him."

"Oh, I know. But I was not in my right mind. Listen to me, please. He
must have been very different once; perhaps had sisters. For their
sake give him another chance. I know he has a better nature. I feared
him, hated him, scorned him, as if he were a snake, yet he saved me
from that monster Legget!"

"For himself!"

"Well, yes, I can't deny that. But he could have ruined me, wrecked
me, yet he did not. At least, he meant marriage by me. He said if I
would marry him he would flee over the border and be an honest man."

"Have you no other reason?"

"Yes." Helen's bosom swelled and a glory shone in her splendid eyes.
"The other reason is, my own happiness!"

Plain to all, if not through her words, from the light in her eyes,
that she could not love a man who was a party to what she considered
injustice.

The borderman's white face became flaming red.

It was difficult to refuse this glorious girl any sacrifice she
demanded for the sake of the love so openly avowed.

Sweetly and pityingly she turned to Brandt: "Will not you help me?"

"Lass, if it were for me you were asking my life I'd swear it yours
for always, and I'd be a man," he replied with bitterness; "but not to
save my soul would I ask anything of him."

The giant passions, hate and jealousy, flamed in his gray eyes.

"If I persuade them to release you, will you go away, leave this
country, and never come back?"

"I'll promise that, lass, and honestly," he replied.

She wheeled toward Jonathan, and now the rosy color chased the pallor
from her cheeks.

"Jack, do you remember when we parted at my home; when you left on
this terrible trail, now ended, thank God! Do you remember what an
ordeal that was for me? Must I go through it again?"

Bewitchingly sweet she was then, with the girlish charm of coquetry
almost lost in the deeper, stranger power of the woman.

The borderman drew his breath sharply; then he wrapped his long arms
closely round her. She, understanding that victory was hers, sank
weeping upon his breast. For a moment he bowed his face over her, and
when he lifted it the dark and terrible gloom had gone.

"Eb, let him go, an' at once," ordered Jonathan. "Give him a rifle,
some meat, an' a canoe, for he can't travel, an' turn him loose. Only
be quick about it, because if Wetzel comes in, God himself couldn't
save the outlaw."

It was an indescribable glance that Brandt cast upon the tearful face
of the girl who had saved his life. But without a word he followed
Colonel Zane from the room.

The crowd slowly filed down the steps. Betty and Nell lingered behind,
their eyes beaming through happy tears. Jonathan, long so cold, showed
evidence of becoming as quick and passionate a lover as he had been a
borderman. At least, Helen had to release herself from his embrace,
and it was a blushing, tear-stained face she turned to her friends.

When they reached the stockade gate Colonel Zane was hurrying toward
the river with a bag in one hand, and a rifle and a paddle in the
other. Brandt limped along after him, the two disappearing over the
river bank.

Betty, Nell, and the lovers went to the edge of the bluff.

They saw Colonel Zane choose a canoe from among a number on the beach.
He launched it, deposited the bag in the bottom, handed the rifle and
paddle to Brandt, and wheeled about.

The outlaw stepped aboard, and, pushing off slowly, drifted down and
out toward mid-stream. When about fifty yards from shore he gave a
quick glance around, and ceased paddling. His face gleamed white, and
his eyes glinted like bits of steel in the sun.