They of the High Trails Read online

  "Who came?"

  "The one who made me forget all the others, the one who made me ashamed."

  "And then?"

  "And then for a time I was happy in the hope that I might win her and so redeem my life."

  "And she?"

  "She pitied me—at first—and loved me—at least I thought so."

  As his excitement increased his words came slower, burdened with passion. He spoke like a prisoner addressing a judge, his voice but a husky whisper.

  "I told her I was unworthy of her—that was when I believed her to be an angel. I promised to begin a new life for her sake. Then she promised me—helped me—and all the while she was false to me—false as a hell-cat!"

  "How?" queried the almost invisible man, and his voice was charged with stern demand.

  "All the time she was promised to another man—and that man my enemy."

  Here his frenzy flared forth in a torrent of words.

  "Then—then I went mad. My brain was scarred and numb. I lost all sense of pity—all fear of law—all respect for woman. I only knew my wrongs—my despair—my hate. I watched, I waited, I found them together—"

  "And then? What did you do then?" demanded the stranger, rising from his seat with sudden energy, his voice deep, insistent, masterful. "Tell me what you did?"

  The miner's wild voice died to a hesitant whisper. "I—I fled."

  "But before that—before you fled?"

  "What is it to you?" asked the hermit, gazing with scared eyes at the man who towered above him like the demon of retribution. "Who are you?"

  "I am the avenger!" answered the other. "The man you hated was my brother. The woman you killed was his wife."

  The fugitive fell upon his knees with a cry like that of one being strangled.

  Out of the darkness a red flame darted, and the crouching man fell to the floor, a crumpled, bloody heap.

  For a long time the executioner stood above the body, waiting, listening from the shadow to the faint receding breath-strokes of his victim. When all was still he restored his weapon to its sheath and stepped over the threshold into the keen and pleasant night.

  As he closed the door behind him the stranger raised his eyes to Solidor, whose sovereign, cloud-like crest swayed among the stars.

  "Now I shall rest," he said, with solemn satisfaction.

  * * *

  THE TRAIL TRAMP

  —mounted wanderer, horseman of the restless heart, still rides from place to place, contemptuous of gold, carrying in his parfleche all the vanishing traditions of the West.

  * * *

  V

  THE TRAIL TRAMP

  KELLEY AFOOT

  I

  Kelley was in off the range and in profound disgust with himself, for after serving honorably as line-rider and later as cow-boss for ten years or more, he had ridden over to Keno to meet an old comrade. Just how it happened he couldn't tell, but he woke one morning without a dollar and, what was worse, incredibly worse, without horse or saddle! Even his revolver was gone.

  In brief, Tall Ed, for the first time in his life, was set afoot, and this, you must understand, is a most direful disaster in cowboy life. It means that you must begin again from the ground up, as if you were a perfectly new tenderfoot from Nebraska.

  Fort Keno was, of course, not a real fort; but it was a real barracks. The town was an imitation town. The fort, spick, span, in rows, with nicely planted trees and green grass-plats (kept in condition at vast expense to the War Department), stood on the bank of the sluggish river, while just below it and across the stream sprawled the town, drab, flea-bitten, unkempt, littered with tin cans and old bottles, a collection of saloons, gambling-houses and nameless dives, with a few people—a very few—making an honest living by selling groceries, saddles, and coal-oil.

  Among the industries of Keno City was a livery-and-sales stable, and Kelley, with intent to punish himself, at once applied for the position of hostler. "You durned fool," he said, addressing himself, "as you've played the drunken Injun, suppose you play valet to a lot of mustangs for a while."

  As a disciplinary design he felicitated himself as having hit upon the most humiliating and distasteful position in Keno. It was understood that Harford of the Cottonwood Corral never hired a real man as hostler. He seemed to prefer bums and tramps, either because he could get them cheaper or else because no decent man would work for him. He was an "arbitrary cuss" and ready with gun or boot. He came down a long trail of weather-worn experiences in the Southwest, and showed it in both face and voice. He was a big man who had once been fatter, but his wrinkled and sour visage seldom crinkled into a smile. He had never been jolly, and he was now morose.

  Kelley hated him. That, too, was another part of his elaborate scheme of self-punishment—hated, but did not fear him, for Tall Ed Kelley feared nothing that walked the earth or sailed the air. "You bum," he continued to say in bitter derision as he caught glimpses of himself of a morning in the little fragment of broken glass which, being tacked on the wall, served as mirror in the office. "You durned mangy coyote, you need a shave, but you won't get it. You need a clean shirt and a new bandanna, but you won't get them, neither—not yet awhile. You'll earn 'em by going without a drop of whisky and by forking manure fer the next six months. You hear me?"

  He slept in the barn on a soiled, ill-smelling bunk, and his hours of repose were broken by calls on the telephone or by some one beating at the door late at night or early in the morning; but he always responded without a word of complaint. It was all lovely discipline. It was like batting a measly bronco over the head in correction of some grievous fault (like nipping your calf, for example), and he took a grim satisfaction in going about degraded and forgotten of his fellows, for no one in Keno knew that this grimy hostler was cow-boss on the Perco. This, in a certain degree, softened his disgrace and lessened his punishment, but he couldn't quite bring himself to the task of explaining just how he had come to leave the range and go into service with Harford.

  The officers of the fort, when tired of the ambulance, occasionally took out a team and covered rig, and so Kelley came in contact with the commanding officer, Major Dugan, a fine figure of a man with carefully barbered head and immaculate uniform. In Kelley's estimation he was almost too well kept for a man nearing fifty. He was, indeed, a gallant to whom comely women were still the fairest kind of game.

  In truth, Tall Ed as hostler often furnished the major with a carriage, in which to make some of his private expeditions, and this was another and final disgrace which the cowman perceived and commented upon. To assist an old libertine like the major in concealing his night journeys was the nethermost deep of "self-discipline," but when the pretty young wife of his employer became the object of the major's attention Kelley was thrown into doubt.

  Anita Harford, part Spanish and part German, as sometimes happens in New Mexico, was a curious and interesting mixture with lovely golden-brown hair and big, dark-brown eyes. She had the ingratiating smile of the señora, her mother, and the moods of gravity, almost melancholy, of her father.

  She had been away in Albuquerque during the first week of Kelley's hostlership, and though he had heard something of her from the men about the corral, he had no great interest in her till she came one afternoon to the door of the stable, where she paused like a snow-white, timid antelope and softly said:

  "Are you the new hostler?"

  "I am, miss."

  She smiled at his mistake. "I am Mrs. Harford. Please let me have the single buggy and bay Nellie."

  Kelley concealed his surprise. "Sure thing, mom. Want her right now?"

  "If you please."

  As she moved away so lightly and so daintily Kelley stared in stupefaction. "Guess I've miscalculated somewhere. Old Harf must have more drag into him than I made out. How did the old seed get a woman like that? 'Pears like he's the champion hypnotic spieler when it comes to 'skirts.'"

  He hitched-up the horse in profound meditation. For the first ti
me since his downfall his humiliation seemed just a trifle deeper than was necessary. He regretted his filthy shirt and his unshorn cheeks, and as he brought the horse around to the door of the boss's house he slipped out of the buggy on the off side, hurriedly tethered the mare to the pole, and retreated to his alley like a rat to its burrow. The few moments when Anita's clear eyes had rested upon him had been moments of self-revelation.

  "Kelley, you're all kinds of a blankety fool," said he. "You're causing yourself a whole lot of extra misery and you're a disgustin' object, besides. It isn't necessary fer you to be a skunk in order to give yourself a welting. Go now and get a shave and a clean shirt, and start again."

  This he did, and out of his next week's pay he bought a clean pair of overalls and a new sombrero, so that when he came back to the barn Harford was disturbed.

  "Hope you aren't going to pull out, Kelley? You suit me, and if it's a question of pay, I'll raise you a couple of dollars on a week."

  "Oh no, I'm not leaving. Only I jest felt like I was a little too measly. 'Pears like I ought to afford a clean shirt. It does make a heap of difference in the looks of a feller. No, I'm booked to stay with you fer a while yet."

  Naturally thereafter little Mrs. Harford filled a large place in Kelley's gloomy world. He was not a romantic person, but he was often lonesome in the midst of his self-imposed penance. He forbade himself the solace of the saloon. He denied himself a day or even an hour off duty, and Harford, secretly amazed and inwardly delighted, went so far one day as to offer him a cigar.

  Kelley waved it away. "No, I've cut out the tobacco, too."

  This astounded his boss. "Say, it's a wonder you escaped the ministry."

  "It's more of a wonder than you know," replied Kelley. "I was headed right plumb that way till I was seventeen. My mother had it all picked out fer me. Then I broke away."

  Harford, with the instinctive caution of the plainsman, pursued the subject no further. He was content to know that for a very moderate wage he had secured the best man with horses that the stable had ever known. His only anxiety related to the question of keeping his find.

  "Kelley's too good to be permanent," he said to his wife that night. "He'll skip out with one of the best saddle-horses some night, or else he'll go on a tearing drunk and send the whole outfit up in smoke. I don't understand the cuss. He looks like the usual hobo out of a job, but he's as abstemious as a New England deacon. 'Pears like he has no faults at all."

  Anita had been attracted to Kelley, lowly as he looked, and, upon hearing his singular virtues recounted by her husband, opened her eyes in augmented interest. All the men in her world were rough. Her father drank, her brothers fought and swore and cheated, and her husband was as free of speech in her presence as if she were another kind of man, softening his words a little, but not much. Therefore, the next time she met Kelley she lingered to make conversation with him, rejoicing in his candid eyes and handsome face. She observed also that his shirt was clean and his tie new. "He looks almost like a soldier," she thought, and this was her highest compliment.

  Surrounded as she was by gamblers, horse-jockeys, cattle-buyers, and miners, all (generally speaking) of the same slouchy, unkempt type, she recognized in the officers of the fort gentlemen of highest breeding and radiant charm. Erect, neat, brisk of step, the lieutenants on parade gave off something so alien, yet so sweet, that her heart went out to them collectively, and when they lifted their caps to her individually, she smiled upon them all with childish unconsciousness of their dangerous qualities.

  Most of the younger unmarried men took these smiles to be as they were, entirely without guile. Others spoke jestingly (in private) of her attitude, but were inclined to respect Harford's reputation as a gunman. Only the major himself was reckless enough to take advantage of the young wife's admiration for a uniform.

  Kelley soon understood the situation. His keen eyes and sensitive ears informed him of the light estimation in which his employer's wife was held by the major; but at first he merely said, "This is none of your funeral, Kelley. Stick to your currycomb. Harford is able to take care of his own."

  This good resolution weakened the very next time Anita met him and prettily praised him. "Mr. Harford says you are the best man he ever had, and I think that must be so, for my pony never looked so clean and shiny."

  Kelley almost blushed, for (as a matter of faithful history) he had spent a great deal of time brushing bay Nellie. She did indeed shine like a bottle, and her harness, newly oiled and carefully burnished, glittered as if composed of jet and gold.

  "Oh, that's all right; it's a part of my job," he replied, as carelessly as he could contrive. "I like a good horse"—"and a pretty woman," he might have added, but he didn't.

  Although Anita lingered as if desiring a word or two more, the tall hostler turned resolutely away and disappeared into the stable.

  Bay Nellie, as the one dependable carriage-horse in the outfit of broncos, had been set aside for the use of Anita and her friends, but Kelley had orders from Harford to let the mare out whenever the women did not need her, provided a kindly driver was assured, and so it happened that the wives of the officers occasionally used her, although none of them could be called friends or even acquaintances of little Mrs. Harford.

  Kelley observed their distant, if not contemptuous, nods to his employer's wife as they chanced to meet her on the street, but he said no word, even when some of the town loafers frankly commented on it. He owed nothing to Harford. "It's not my job to defend his wife's reputation." Nevertheless, it made him hot when he heard one of these loafers remark: "I met the old major the other evening driving along the river road with Harf's wife. Somebody better warn the major, or there'll be merry hell and a military funeral one of these days."

  "I reckon you're mistaken," said Kelley.

  "Not by a whole mile! It was dark, but not so dark but that I could see who they were. They were in a top buggy, drivin' that slick nag the old man is so choice about."

  "When was it?" asked Kelley.

  "Night before last. I met 'em up there just at the bend of the river."

  Kelley said no more, for he remembered that Anita had called for the horse on that date just about sundown, and had driven away alone. She returned alone about ten—at least, she drove up to the stable door alone, but he recalled hearing the low tones of a man's voice just before she called.

  It made him sad and angry. He muttered an imprecation against the whole world of men, himself included. "If I hadn't seen her—if I didn't know how sweet and kind and pretty she was—I wouldn't mind," he said to himself. "But to think of a little babe like her—" He checked himself. "That old cockalorum needs killing. I wonder if I've got to do it?" he asked in conclusion.

  II

  Harford came home the next day, and for several weeks there was no further occasion for gossip, although Kelley had his eyes on the major so closely that he could neither come nor go without having his action analyzed. He kept close record of Anita's coming and going also, although it made him feel like a scoundrel whenever she glanced at him. He was sure she was only the thoughtless child in all her indiscretions, with a child's romantic admiration of a handsome uniform.

  "I'll speak to her," he resolved. "I'll hand her out a word of warning just to clear my conscience. She needs a big brother or an uncle—some one to give her a jolt, and I'll do it!"

  The opportunity came one day soon after Harford's return, but his courage almost failed at the moment of meeting, so dainty, so small, so charming, and so bird-like did the young wife seem.

  She complimented him again on the condition of the mare and asked, timidly, "How much does my husband pay you?"

  "More than I'm worth," he replied, with gloomy self-depreciation.

  She caught the note of bitterness in his voice and looked at him a moment in surprised silence, her big eyes full of question. "What made you say that?"

  Kelley, repenting of his lack of restraint, smiled and said: "Oh, I felt t
hat way—for a minute. You see, I used to lead a high life of ease. I was a nobleman—an Irish lord."

  She smiled and uttered an incredulous word, but he went on:

  "Yes, although my name is Kelley, I belong to a long line of kings. I'm working as hostler just to square myself fer having killed a man. You see, my queen was kind o' foolish and reckless and let a certain English duke hang round her till I got locoed, and, being naturally quick on the trigger, I slew him."

  She was not stupid. She understood, and with quick, resentful glance she took the reins from his hands and stepped into the carriage.

  Kelley, silenced, and with a feeling that he had bungled his job, fell back a pace, while she drove away without so much as a backward glance.

  "I reckon she got it," he said, grimly, as he went back to his work. "I didn't put it out just the way I had it in my head, but she 'peared to sense enough of it to call me a Piute for butting in. If that don't work on her I'll tack a warning on the major which nobody will misread fer a joke."

  As the hours of the afternoon went by he became more and more uneasy. "I hope she'll turn up before dark, fer Harf is liable to get back any minute," he said a dozen times, and when at last he saw her coming up the street with a woman in the seat beside her he breathed deeply and swore heartily in his relief. "I guess my parable kind o' worked," he said, exultantly. "She's kept clear of the old goat this trip."

  The little lady stopped her horse at the door of the stable and with a cool and distant nod alighted and walked away.

  "I'm the hostler now—sure thing," grinned Kelley. "No raise of pay fer Tall Ed this week."

  He was in reality quite depressed by the change in her attitude toward him. "Reckon I didn't get just the right slaunch on that warning of mine—and yet at the same time she ought to have seen I meant it kindly.—Oh well, hell! it's none o' my funeral, anyway. Harford is no green squash, he's a seasoned old warrior who ought to know when men are stealing his wife." And he went back to his dusty duties in full determination to see nothing and do nothing outside the barn.