The Candidate Part 49

"Sylvia! Sylvia!" he cried in fear, and not knowing what else to say.

"What is the matter?"

"This, I think, is death," she replied, in sleepy content.

It was dark in the hollow, whether the darkness of coming night or the darkness of the storm Harley did not know nor care. He could not see her face, but he touched it; it, too, was cold.

He felt a pang of agony. When both expected to die he had neither fear nor sorrow; now she was about to die alone and leave him!

"Sylvia! Sylvia!" he cried. "It is not death! You cannot go!"

He rubbed her hands violently, and even her cheeks. He called to her over and over again, and she awoke from her numbing torpor.

"It was beginning to be like an easy sleep," she said.

"That is what we must fight," said Harley.

He brushed up all the leaves at the mouth of the hollow as a sort of barrier, and he believed that it gave help. Then he sat down on a small ledge of stone and leaned against the wall.

"Sylvia," he said, "I want you to live, and you cannot live if this cold creeps into your body again. Sit here."

She hesitated, and in the darkness he did not see her blush.

"Why should you not? It may be our last day."

He drew her down upon his knees, then closer to him, and put his arms around her. Presently he could feel her face against his, and it was cold no longer. Neither spoke nor moved, but Harley could feel that she was warm, and he could hear her soft, regular breathing. After a while he stirred a little, and he found that she was asleep. Her hands and face were still warm. He did not move again. She spoke once in her sleep, and all that she said was his name.

Outside the plain was a vast sheet of snow, over which the cold wind moaned, and out of the east the night was coming.

XXII

THE "KING'S" AWAKENING

When "King" Plummet left Harley and Sylvia on the plain, he strode blindly forward, his heart filled with rage, grief, and self-accusation.

He said aloud: "William Plummer, you are fifty years old, and you have made of yourself the d.a.m.nedest fool in the whole Northwest!"

Hitherto he had always held the belief that if Harley were away she would soon forget him and would be happy as his wife. Now he knew that this could never come to pa.s.s, and the truth filled him with dismay.

He had ridden across country with no knowledge of Mr. Grayson's presence in Grafton until he was very near the place; then, when he heard of it, he was overwhelmed with a great desire to see these people and bid them defiance. He was a man who fought his enemies, and he would show them what he could do. So he rode into Grafton, and slipped quietly into a saloon to get a tonic. He was a border man bred in border ways, and usually liquor would have had no effect on him, but to-day it was fire to a brain already on fire. All his grievances now became great wrongs--he was an injured man whom the world persecuted; Grayson, for whom he had done so much in political life, had betrayed him; the girl whom he was going to marry had betrayed him, too, and this young Eastern slip, Harley, was surely laughing at him.

These thoughts were intolerable to the "King," who had hitherto been victorious always, and now his rage centred on Harley; he saw Harley everywhere, at every point of the compa.s.s wherever he looked, and when he came out of the saloon and went down the deserted street he saw Harley in reality, strolling along absently, his eyes upon the ground.

He thought first that the correspondent was on his way to join the crowd around the speaker's stand, but he soon perceived that he was going in another direction. It was "King" Plummer's first impulse--there was still liquid fire in his veins--to overtake Harley and demand the only kind of satisfaction that such a man as he should have. Then he wished to see where Harley was going, because he had a premonition--false in this case, the meeting was by accident--that he was on his way to Sylvia; so he decided to follow as an animal stalks its game. Only the most powerful emotion conjoined with other circ.u.mstances could have made the "King" do such a thing, as his nature was essentially open, and he loved open methods. Yet he trailed his enemy with the skill and cunning of an Indian.

He saw Harley and Sylvia meet, and all his suspicions were confirmed.

Again he felt a fierce impulse, and it was to rush upon the guilty pair, but he restrained it and still followed. His perceptions were trained to other things, but he was in no danger of being seen by them; they were too much absorbed in each other, and all the world pa.s.sed by them unnoticed. The "King," though a rough, blunt man, saw this, and it made the fire in him burn the hotter.

He saw them stop at last, he saw Harley kiss Sylvia, and then he saw the girl turn away. He waited until he saw Sylvia pa.s.s over the swell, and then he took his opportunity. Whether he would have fired if Sylvia had not come he could not say to himself afterwards in his cooler moments. Remorse upon this point tortured him for some time.

When he turned away he saw nothing. He was agitated by the powerful truth that Sylvia preferred death with Harley to life with him, and all his views were inward. He still did not know what he would do, but there was much of a moving nature to him in the scene that he left. He had never before seen such a look on a woman's face as that on Sylvia's when she threw herself upon Harley's breast and defied his bullet; it was beautiful and wonderfully pathetic, and something like a sob came from the burly "King." Harley, too, had borne himself like a man; there was no fear in the face of the Eastern youth when he looked into the muzzle of the pistol that threatened instant death; "King" Plummer remembered more than once in the early days when he had been covered by the levelled weapon of an enemy, and he knew how hard it was in such a case to control one's nerves and keep steady. He could not help respecting a courage fully the equal of his own.

He wandered on in a series of circles that did not take him far, and in a half-hour he stopped at the crest of a swell higher than the rest. He saw Sylvia and Harley far away--but he knew them well--walking side by side. "Well, I suppose they have the right!" he said, moodily. The fire within him was dying down, but he added; "I'll be d.a.m.ned if I look at them making love."

The "King" had the habits bred by long years of necessity and precaution, and unless the distracting circ.u.mstances were very powerful he was always a keen observer of weather and locality. Now the fire was low, but he was almost at the edge of the town before his blood became normal and cool. Then he looked about. A half-mile away he saw a ma.s.s of heads, sometimes rising and falling, and a faint echo of cheers came to him. He knew that the candidate was still speaking, and he smiled rather sourly. Then he was conscious that the suns.h.i.+ne was not so brilliant, and there was a feeling of chill damp in the wind that came up from the southwest.

The "King" glanced up at the sky; it had turned a steely gray, and ugly brown clouds were coming up over the rim of the southwestern horizon.

"There's going to be an early snow," he said, and for the moment the matter gave him no further concern. Then Sylvia and Harley suddenly shot up and filled his whole horizon. He had seen them far from where he stood, and they were going directly away from the town, not towards it!

And one was a girl and the other a tenderfoot!

Now Harley disappeared from the "King's" horizon as suddenly as he had come into it, and the solitary figure of Sylvia filled all its s.p.a.ce.

She was not a woman now, but the desolate little girl whom he had found alone in the mountains, vainly trying to bury her ma.s.sacred dead, and whom he had carried away on his saddle-bow. All the long years of protection and tenderness that he had given her came back to him; there was only the image of the slim little girl with flying curls who ran to meet him and who called him "Daddy!"

That little girl was lost out there on the plain, and as sure as the sun had gone from the heavens a snow-storm was coming fast on the wings of the southwestern wind. He knew, and his heart was filled with grief and despair; no rage was left there; that fire had burned out completely, and it seemed to the "King" that it never could be lighted again. It was wonderful now to him that the flame could ever have been so fierce. And the boy Harley was lost, too. Mr. Plummer again remembered, and with a certain admiration, how brave Harley had been, and he remembered, too, that when he first saw him his impulse was to like him greatly.

He ran back towards the swell where he had last beheld them, hoping to find them or at least to follow upon their traces before the snow fell and hid the trail. He was an old frontiersman, and with a favorable soil he might do it. But long before he reached the swell the snow flew, and the brown clouds and the whirling flakes together blotted out all the plain, save the little circle in which he stood.

He raised his powerful voice and called in tones that carried far, "Sylvia! Sylvia!" But no sound came back save the lonely cry of the wind and the soft, whirring rush of the snow, like the soft beat of wings.

The "King" was a brave and sanguine man, physically and mentally disposed to hope, but his heart dropped like lead in water. He saw the slim little girl, with flying brown hair, dead and cold in the snow.

Then his courage came back, and with it all his mental coolness. He did not seek to rush after them, floundering here and there in the semi-darkness and calling vainly, but hurried back to the town.

The people had just returned from the candidate's speech, and were crowding into the lobby of the hotel to shake Mr. Grayson's hand and to tell him that he would win by a "million majority." The candidate was enduring this ordeal with his usual good-nature and grace, although the crowded room was hot and close, and the odor of steaming boots arose.

Into this packed ma.s.s of human beings "King" Plummer burst like a bomb.

"Help! All of you!" he cried, and his voice cracked like a rifle. "They are lost out on the plain in the storm, and they were wandering away from the town! Miss Morgan! Sylvia! My child! And the young man, Harley!"

There was no mistaking the "King's" meaning. Here was a mountain man, one who knew of what he was talking, one who would raise no false alarm.

Both grief and command were in his voice, and the Dakotans responded upon the instant; they knew Sylvia, too--her fresh, young beauty, coming into so small a town, was noticed at once. To the last man they went out into the storm to the rescue; and there were many women who were willing, too.

The candidate seized Mr. Plummer's arm in a fierce grasp.

"Do you mean to say that Sylvia and Harley are lost in that?" he cried, and he pointed into the ma.s.s of driving snow.

"Ay, they are there," said the "King," "but we will find them."

"We will find them," echoed Jimmy Grayson, and, though they strove to make him stay at the hotel, he drew his overcoat about his ears and was by his side as "King" Plummer led the way. Hobart, Blaisdell, even old Tremaine, and Churchill as well, were there, too.

They knew that Sylvia and Harley were somewhere north of the town, and, dividing into groups, five or six to a group, they spread out to a great distance. They carried whiskey for warmth, and lanterns with which to signal to each other, and for guidance in the night that might come before they returned. In the twilight of the storm these lanterns twinkled dimly.

The "King" himself carried a lantern, and Jimmy Grayson, by his side, could read his face. Mr. Plummer had not told him a word, but he could guess the story. He had come upon them, there was a violent scene of some kind, and now the "King," with death threatening "his little girl,"

was stricken with remorse. All the candidate's anger against Mr. Plummer was gone, melted away suddenly--and he saw that the "King's" wrath against himself was gone the same way. Now he felt only pity for the stricken man.

The great line of men moved across the plain towards the north, calling to each other now and then and waving the dim lanterns. Jimmy Grayson listened for the welcome cry that the lost had been found, but it did not come. The "King" did not speak save to give orders--he had naturally a.s.sumed command of the relief party, and his position was not disputed.

They advanced far northward, and they noticed with increased alarm the thickening of the storm. Whirlwinds of snow beat in their faces. Jimmy Grayson once heard the big, burly man by his side say, in a kind of sobbing whisper, "Oh, my little girl!" and he felt a catch in his own throat.

Then he repeated the "King's" own words, "We will find them."