The Black Rider (28 page)

With his hand raised to knock at the door, he hesitated. To walk in suddenly on Tom might be merely to bring to a quick head the passion which was in the young miner. There might well be a reaching for guns— and then the tragedy even earlier than he had dreaded to meet it.

Full of that thought, he went around the shack to the window on the farther side. It was sheltered by a projection of the roof and was clear of snow or frost; he could look through to the interior. There was Tom Vance not the distance of an arm’s reach away!

Gerald shrank back. Then, recalling that the light inside would blind the man within to all that stood beyond the window, he came closer again. And he saw the pen scrawl slowly across the paper, hesitate, and then go on again, a painful effort.

It wasn’t hard to make it out. The lantern light fell strongly upon the page, and the stub pen blotted the
paper with heavy, black lines. So he read the letter with ease:

Dearest Kate:

If this comes to you, I shall be dead as you read it, and Kern shall have killed me. I have challenged him. We are to meet tonight at Douglas’s place, and there will be only one ending. I know what he can do. He can almost think with a six-shooter. And, though I am a good shot, I cannot stand up to such a marksman. But I shall do my best.

1 don’t want you to think of me as a man who has thrown himself away as a sacrifice. I know that the chances are against me, ten to one, but the tenth chance is worth playing for. With the help of heaven, I shall kill him!

You may think that I am a hound for fighting with a man you have said you love. But once you told me that you loved me, and I believed you. And I still believe that you cared for me as much as you care for him now. But there is some sort of fascination about him. The boys have told me when they begged me to take back my challenge or else fail to appear at Canton’s tonight. They have told me how he broke down the nerve of Curly. They had sworn that no one can stand up against him.

And wouldn’t it be odd if a man who can break the nerve of trained fighters couldn’t win over a girl just as he pleased?

That is why I’m taking the tenth chance. Not that you’ll ever care for me afterwards, but because at least I’ll have cleared the road for some other good man more worthy of you than either Kern or me.

I know that he is not your kind of man. He’s a stranger. He talks in a new way. He thinks in a new
way. He acts as no one in the mountains acts. He has a manner of fixing his eye on a person and paralyzing the mind and making one think the thoughts he wishes to put into one’s head. And that’s what he has done with you.

You half admitted it when you told me that you no longer cared for me because of him. When I asked you if you really loved him, you looked past me—a queer, far-away look. You seemed half afraid to answer. You would love him some day, you told me, more than you could ever love any other man.

But I think that you will never come to that day. Kate, take this letter as my warning. I am dying for the privilege of telling you what I think in honesty And I swear to you that you can never be happy with him.

Where has he been? What has he done? Who knows his past?

Have you ever thought of asking him those questions? Has he ever spoken to you about friends of his? No, and I think he never will. One thing at least I know. I know that he is a man who has been hunted. He has a quick, sharp way of looking at new faces that come near him. Sometimes, when people pass behind him, he shivers a little. And, when he is not speaking, his mouth is set, and his teeth are locked together. He looks in repose as though he were making up his mind to do some desperate act.

1 saw all these things that one evening I was with him. And I knew then that danger—hours and days and months of deadly danger—had given him those characteristics.

So, in the name of heaven, Kate, learn more about his past before you marry him. And remember
this—that a man who is capable of cheating and betraying another man as he cheated and betrayed me is capable of no really good thing.

1 know that you will hate me when you have read this letter. Warnings are never welcome. But because I love you, Kate, I cannot help writing. Good bye, my dear.

Tom

So the letter came slowly to its end, and Gerald stepped back into the blanketing night and the soft whisper of the wind.

Who was it that said that truth sits upon the lips of dying men? He could not remember, but he knew the truth of all the words which Tom had written. And it was new to Gerald. Yes, the power with which he had been able to break down the wills of strong men might surely be strong enough to break down the will of a young girl. And had she, indeed, come to care for him chiefly because he was strange? He was recalled to a dozen times when he had found her looking at him half in terror, looking at him and past him as though she were seeing the future and trembling at what she saw.

Sick at heart, he came slowly back to the window. In the farther corner Tom was strapping on cartridge belt and the heavy Colt hanging in the holster. He took up a broad-brimmed, felt hat and placed it carefully on his head. Over his shoulders he threw a slicker. Next he drew out the revolver and went carefully over its action.

When he was assured that all was in working order, he dropped the gun back into its leather sheath and marched to the door.

“The fool!” muttered Gerald. “To go twenty minutes ahead of time and then stand the strain of waiting!”

But Tom was not yet ready to leave. He turned again.

He hesitated with a strange, half-sad, half-bewildered look. Presently, he dropped to his knees beside his bunk. He clasped his thick, brown hands together. He raised his head, and Gerald watched the moving of his lips in prayer—words which came slowly, a long-forgotten lesson, learned at his mother’s knee, was brought back to him and delivered him from the evil he would have done.

A
ssembled Culver City was packed into Canton Douglas’s place, and yet not a dollar’s worth of business had been done, except at the bar. And when the door finally opened, at three minutes before the great clock at the end of the hall showed eight, all heads jerked around and watched Tommy Vance step in.

It was noted that he was quite pale, and that his lips were compressed hard—a bad sign of the condition of his nerves. But he bore himself stiffly erect. He looked quietly over the crowd, made sure that the man he wanted was not yet come, and walked with deliberation to a seat near the clock, pulling up a chair well apart from the others. There he sat and crossed his legs and waited.

“Just like the time that Cheyenne Curly…,” muttered someone.

“Except that it’s different,” said another. “Curly was a skunk. And Tom Vance is as white as they make ’em.”

“He is,” agreed another. “It’s a shame that they got to
have this trouble. Women sure get at the bottom of all the mischief.”

“And Christmas Eve, too!”

“Is it? God damn me if I hadn’t forgot that it was the twenty-fourth! Tomorrow’s Christmas?”

“It sure is.”

“There’ll be no Christmas for poor Tom Vance this year.”

“Why not? Maybe he’ll have the luck against Kern.”

“Luck? There ain’t any luck against Kern. He’s like fate. You can’t get away from him. When his eye takes hold of you, you just feel that you’re gone, that’s all.”

“There’s a considerable talk about this Kern,” said a grizzle-haired old-timer who was proud of being able to remember the early frontier and the men of those hardy days. “But what’s he done? He scared out two low-lived bullies. And any white man that don’t get scared can beat an ignorant hound that don’t know nothing but picking trouble. This here will be different. This boy Vance is clean. He’ll make a different kind of fight.”

“If his nerve holds. Look here! He can’t hardly roll a cigarette!”

Tom had ventured on this task and was dribbling tobacco wastefully over the floor. Finally, the paper tore across. He crumpled it, dropped it, and drew out the makings again.

“There you are,” said the gray-haired observer. “There’s the right nerve for you. He’s going to try again. He’ll do better this time, too. Look!”

The second cigarette was deftly and smoothly manufactured, lighted, and a cloud of smoke puffed from Tom’s lips.

“That ain’t nerve,” said Canton himself, who was near. “That’s the way a gent will act when he’s facing a death
sentence. He ain’t got any hope. All he wants to do is to die game without showing no white feather. But why don’t Kern show up? It’s past time!”

Here eight o’clock began striking, the brazen chimes booming loudly through the hushed room, and when the last sound echoed away to a murmur every man leaned forward, expecting to see the door fly open. The cigarette fell from the numbed fingers of Tom Vance. But the door did not stir. And slowly the crowd settled back.

“He’s waiting so’s he can break Tom’s nerve just the way he busted Cheyenne Curly’s.”

“It’s a mighty poor thing to do,” said Canton with heat. “I don’t mind saying that it’s downright low to play that sort of game with poor Tom that ain’t got a chance in a hundred, anyway.”

They waited five minutes, ten minutes, and the scowls of the miners grew blacker and blacker. The trick of Gerald was patent to all, and it enraged them.

“Hey, Jerry!” called Canton suddenly to one of the men who was making a pretense at continuing a card game. “Run over to the hotel, will you? Tell Gerald that his friend is waiting for him plumb anxious, will you? And tell him that he’s a mile overdue!”

There was a growl of assent from a hundred throats, and Jerry went off reluctantly on an errand which might prove dangerous unless the message were phrased tenderly enough. In three minutes he came back, and he came with a rush that knocked the swinging door wide.

“Boys!” he shouted as he came to a halt, “I looked up in his room. He ain’t there, and his things are gone. I run down and looked into the stable. And Sorrow wasn’t there. And nobody ain’t seen nothing of Kern nowhere!”

“By heaven!” roared the old-timer of the gray hair, rising from his place. “I sort of suspicioned it! He didn’t
like this game. He knew he had different kind of meat to chew this time! He’s been bluffed out! He’s quit cold, the yaller dog!”

Tumult instantly reigned in Canton’s place. Out poured the hundred searchers. They swarmed through the town, but they found no trace of Gerald Kern.

“Up yonder!” called an inspired voice at last, pointing to the light in the window of the Maddern cabin. “I’ll bet a thousand that he’s up there sitting pretty and talking to his girl. Let’s take a look!”

And up the slope they went with a willing rush. They reached the door. It was opened by Maddern, with Kate behind him.

“Where’s Kern?” they demanded.

“Not here,” they were told. “And what’s up, boys?”

“The hound has run out on Tom Vance. He’s showed yaller! He’s quit without daring to show his face!”

“No, no!” cried Kate.

“Here’s a hundred of us to swear to it,” said Canton Douglas furiously.

And Kate raised her hands to her face.

It was hard going over the mountains. Though the wagons had beaten out a trail, it was deep with snow, and the two horsemen let their mounts labor on, giving them what aid they could to guide them until the clouds were brushed from the sky and the stars looked down to show them the way. A little later, they reached the last of the ridges. Below them spread the lowlands and a safer and an easier trail to follow.

Here they drew rein, and Gerald looked back.

“Cher ami”
said Banti, “no halting by the way. The small waiting makes the great heart ache. Forward, comrade!”

“Hush, Louis. It is my last look!”

“Ah, my friend, it will be far better when you have your first look at your kingdom yonder over the sea.”

“But this is my country,” he said. “And this is the last time that I shall see it.”

So the silence grew, while Banti gnawed his lip with anxiety.

“It is my torment if you linger here,” he said gently at last.

“Louis,” murmured his friend, “what is it that a woman detests most in a man?”

“A close string drawn on the pocketbook.”

“We are not in France,” said Gerald with a touch of scorn. “Tell me again.”

“Long silences at the table,” said Banti. “They drive the poor dears mad. Yes, a silent husband is even worse than a pinched wallet.”

“Still wrong,” said Gerald. “What a woman hates most of all in a man is cowardice. A woman ceases to love a man who runs away from danger.”

“Eh?”

“Because that is rot at the heart of the tree.”

“Perhaps you are right. But what of that?”

“Nothing,” said Gerald. “Let us ride on again.”

They passed on down the slope. And the steady trot of the horses covered the weary miles one by one. As for Banti, he whistled; he sang; he told wild tales of a dozen lands, and all without drawing a word from his companion until, as they drew near to a town, he said:

“What is in your head now, Gerald? Tell me the thought which has stopped that restless tongue of yours so long?”

“I shall tell you,” said Gerald, “though it will mean nothing to you. I have been thinking of Christmas Day Louis, and the power of prayer.”

Louis considered a moment.

“Ah, yes,” he said at last. “I had forgotten. But this is Christmas, and on this day one goes back to the silly thoughts of one’s childhood. Is it not so?”