Winter Evening Tales Part 12

"Wall, sir, you can't do it, not by no manner of means, just yet. David Lorimer is on watch till midnight."

He was perfectly civil, but there was something particularly irritating in the way Whaley named David Lorimer. So the two men sat almost silent before the camp fire until midnight. Then Whaley said, "Mr. Lorimer, your son is at liberty now. You'll excuse me saying that the shorter you make your palaver the better it will suit me."

Lorimer turned angrily, but Whaley was walking carelessly away; and the retort that rose to his lips was not one to be shouted after a man of Whaley's desperate character with safety. As his son approached him he was conscious of a thrill of pleasure in the young man's appearance.

Physically, he was all he could desire. No Lorimer that ever galloped through Eskdale had the national peculiarities more distinctively. He was the tall, fair Scot, and his father complacently compared his yellow hair and blue eyes with the "dark, deil-like beauty" of Whaley.

"Davie," and he held out his hand frankly, "I hae come to tak ye back to your ain hame. Let byganes be byganes, and we'll start a new chapter o'

life, my lad. Ye'll try to be a gude son, and I'll aye be a gude father to ye."

It was a great deal for James Lorimer to say; and David quite appreciated the concession, but he answered--

"Lulu, father? I cannot give her up."

"Weel, weel, if ye are daft to marry a strange woman, ye must e'en do sae. It is an auld sin, and there have aye been daughters o' Heth to plague honest houses wi'. But sit down, my lad; I came to talk wi' ye anent some decenter way of life than this."

The talk was not altogether a pleasant one; but both yielded something, and it was finally agreed that as soon as Whaley could pick up a man to fill Davie's place Davie should return home. Lorimer did not linger after this decision. Whaley's behavior had offended him and without the ceremony of a "good-bye," he turned his horse's head eastward again.

Picking up a man was not easy; they certainly had several offers from emigrants going west, and from Mexicans on the route, but Whaley seemed determined not to be pleased. He disliked Lorimer and was deeply offended at him interfering with his arrangements. Every day that he kept David was a kind of triumph to him. "He might as well have asked me how I'd like my drivers decoyed away. I like a man to be on the square,"

he grumbled. And he said these and similar things so often, that David began to feel it impossible to restrain his temper.

Anger, fed constantly by spiteful remarks and small injustices, grows rapidly; and as they approached the Apache mountains, the men began to notice a fixed tightening of the lips, and a stern blaze in the young Scot's eyes, which Whaley appeared to delight in intensifying.

"Thar'll be mischief atween them two afore long," remarked an old drover; "Lorimer is gittin' to hate the captain with such a vim that he's no appet.i.te for his food left."

"It'll be a fair fight, and one or both'll get upped; that's about it."

At length they met a party of returning drovers, and half a dozen men among them were willing to take David's place. Whaley had no longer any pretence for detaining him. They were at the time between two long, low spurs of hills, enclosing a rich narrow valley, deep with ripened gra.s.s, gilded into flickering gold by the sun and the dewless summer days. All the lower ridges were savagely bald and hot--a glen, paved with gold and walled with iron. Oh, how the sun did beat and s.h.i.+ver, and shake down into the breathless valley!

The cattle were restless, and the men had had a hard day. David was weary; his heart was not in the work; he was glad it was his last watch.

It began at ten o'clock, and would end at midnight. The weather was gloomy, and the few stars which shone between the rifts of driving clouds just served to outline the ma.s.s of sleeping cattle.

The air also was surcharged with electricity, though there had been no lightning.

"I wouldn't wonder ef we have a 'run' to-night," said one of the men.

"I've seen a good many stampedes, and they allays happens on such nights as this one."

"Nonsense!" replied David. "If a cayote frightens one in a drove the panic Spreads to all. Any night would do for a 'run.'"

"'Taint so, Lorimer. Ef you've a drove of one thousand or of ten thousand it's all the same; the panic strikes every beast at the same moment. It's somethin' in the air; 'taint my business to know what. But you look like a 'run' yourself, restless and hot, and as ef somethin'

was gitting 'the mad' up in you. I noticed Whaley is 'bout the same. I'd keep clear of him, ef I was you."

"No, I won't. He owes me money, and I'll make him pay me!"

"Don't! Thar, I've warned you, David Lorimer, and that let's me out.

Take your own way now."

For half an hour David pondered this caution, and something in his own heart seconded it. But when the trial of his temper came he turned a deaf ear to every monition. Whaley went swaggering by him, and as he pa.s.sed issued an unnecessary order in a very insolent manner. David asked pointedly, "Were you speaking to me, Captain?"

"I was."

"Then don't you dare to do it again, sir; never, as long as you live!"

Before the words were out of his mouth, every one of the drove of eight thousand were on their feet like a flash of lightning; every one of them exactly at the same instant. With a rush like a whirlwind leveling a forest, they were off in the darkness.

The wild clatter, the crackling of a river of horns, and the thundering of hoofs, was deafening. Whaley, seeing eighty thousand dollars' worth of cattle running away from him, turned with a fierce imprecation, and gave David a pa.s.sionate order "to ride up to the leaders," and then he sprang for his own mule.

David's time was now fully out, and he drew his horse's rein tight and stood still.

"Coward!" screamed Whaley; "try and forget for an hour that you have Spanish blood in you."

A pistol shot answered the taunt. Whaley staggered a second, then fell without a word. The whole scene had not occupied a minute; but it was a minute that branded itself on the soul of David Lorimer. He gazed one instant on the upturned face of his slain enemy, and then gave himself up to the wild pa.s.sion of the pursuit.

By the spectral starlight he could see the cattle outlined as a black, clattering, thundering stream, rus.h.i.+ng wildly on, and every instant becoming wilder. But David's horse had been trained in the business; he knew what the matter was, and scarce needed any guiding. Das.h.i.+ng along by the side of the stampede, they soon overtook the leaders and joined the men, who were gradually pus.h.i.+ng against the foremost cattle on the left so as to turn them to the right. When once the leaders were turned the rest blindly followed and thus, by constantly turning them to the right, the leaders were finally swung clear around, and overtook the f.a.g end of the line.

Then they rushed around in a circle, the centre of which soon closed up, and they were "milling;" that is, they had formed a solid wheel, and were going round and round themselves in the same s.p.a.ce of ground. Men who had noticed how very little David's heart had been in his work were amazed to see the reckless courage he displayed. Round and round the mill he flew, keeping the outside stock from flying off at a tangent, and soothing and quieting the beasts nearest to him with his voice. The "run" was over as suddenly as it commenced, and the men, breathless and exhausted, stood around the circle of panting cattle.

"Whar's the Captain?" said one; "he gin'rally soop'rintends a job like this himself."

"And likes to do it. Who's seen the Captain? Hev you, Lorimer?"

"He was in camp when I started. My time was up just as the 'run'

commenced."

No more was said; indeed, there was little opportunity for conversation. The cattle were to watch; it was still dark; the men were weary with the hard riding and the unnatural pitch to which their voices had been raised. David felt that he must get away at once; any moment a messenger from the camp might bring the news of Whaley's murder; and he knew well that suspicion would at once rest upon him.

He offered to return to camp and report "all right," and the offer was accepted; but, at the first turn, he rode away into the darkness of a belt of timber. The cayotes howled in the distance; there was a rush of unclean night birds above him, and the growling of panther cats in the underwood. But in his soul there was a terror and a darkness that made all natural terrors of small account. His own hands were hateful to him.

He moaned out loudly like a man in an agony. He measured in every moments' s.p.a.ce the height from which he had fallen; the blessings from which he must be an outcast, if by any means he might escape the shameful punishment of his deed. He remembered at that hour his father's love, the love that had so finely a.s.serted itself when the occasion for it came. Lulu's tenderness and beauty, the hope of home and children, the respect of his fellow-men, all sacrificed for a moment's pa.s.sionate revenge. He stood face to face with himself, and, dropping the reins, cowered down full of terror and grief at the future which he had evoked.

Within hopeless sight of Hope and Love and Home, he was silent for hours gazing despairingly after the life which had sailed by him, and not daring--

"--to search through what sad maze, Thenceforth his incommunicable ways Follow the feet of death."

CHAPTER II.

"--and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." James i.

15.

Blessed are they who have seen Nature in those rare, ineffable moments when she appears to be asleep--when the stars, large and white, bend stilly over the dreaming earth, and not a breath of wind stirs leaf or flower. On such a night James Lorimer sat upon his south verandah smoking; and his niece Lulu, white and motionless as the magnolia flowers above her, mused the hour away beside him. There were little ebony squads of negroes huddled together around the doors of their quarters, but they also were singularly quiet. An angel of silence had pa.s.sed by no one was inclined to disturb the tranquil calm of the dreaming earth.

There is nothing good in this life which Time does not improve. In ten days the better feelings which had led James Lorimer to seek his son in the path of moral and physical danger had grown as Divine seed does grow. This very night, in the scented breathless quiet, he was longing for David's return, and forming plans through which the future might atone for the past. Gradually the weary negroes went into the cabins, rolled themselves in their blankets and fell into that sound, dreamless sleep which is the compensation of hard labor. Only Lulu watched and thought with him.

Suddenly she stood up and listened. There was a footstep in the avenue, and she knew it. But why did it linger, and what dreary echo of sorrow was there in it?

"That is David's step, uncle; but what is the matter? Is he sick?"

Then they both saw the young man coming slowly through the gloom, and the shadow of some calamity came steadily on before him. Lulu went to the top of the long flight of white steps, and put out her hands to greet him. He motioned her away with a woeful and positive gesture, and stood with hopeless yet half defiant att.i.tude before his father.