Peak and Prairie Part 20

"M. le croupier?" the voice queried.

He turned sharp about. The Frenchman stood there with his hat raised, a gentleman to the finger-tips. Involuntarily Dirke lifted his own hat, and lifted it after the manner of a gentleman. The manner was not lost upon the Frenchman.

"Monsieur," said the latter, courteously; "I had the misfortune to lose a ring this evening. I shall redeem it on the morrow, when I can command my resources."

The "boss" looked him full in the face. They could not distinguish one another's features in the starlight, yet the two personalities were as plainly in evidence as could have been the case in the broad light of day.

"No, you won't!" Dirke retorted, coolly, planting his hat firmly on his head again. He was angry with himself for having removed it.

"May I ask Monsieur why not?"

"Because the ring is sold!"

The Frenchman started visibly.

"And the purchaser? Would you have the courtesy to indicate to me the purchaser?"

"No!"

The rudely spoken monosyllable put an abrupt period to the conversation.

Dirke pa.s.sed down the steps and along the deserted street. As he paced the length of the board sidewalk, which helped itself over the ups and downs of the ungraded thoroughfare by means of short, erratic flights of steps at certain points, he distinctly heard footsteps following. They sounded plainly on the plank walk, and he did not for a moment doubt whose they were. His hands were in his coat-pockets. On the little finger of his left hand was the ring.

He paused, opposite the brightly lighted windows of the last saloon in the row. The town ended there, the street lapsing into a rough and trackless barren. Here he waited for the Frenchman to come up with him.

He watched his progress with a curious interest, noting how the figure was at one moment lost in the shadow, only to emerge, the next instant, into the full light that streamed from some nocturnal haunt. As he came up with Dirke, the electric light over the entrance to the saloon shone full upon them both.

Dirke waited for him to speak. Again he raised his hat, but this time Dirke was on his guard and was not to be betrayed into any concession to courtesy. There was a slight shrug of the shoulders as the Frenchman replaced his hat. He spoke, however, in a conciliatory tone:

"It is a fine evening," he observed. "I have followed your example. I go for a walk."

"You have followed me, you mean," said Dirke, bluntly. "I heard you behind me."

Then, moved by a sudden impulse to precipitate matters, he drew his left hand from his pocket. The diamonds flashed in the light.

M. de Lys's eyes flashed in response. With all his unabated elegance, he had something the look of a tiger ready to spring upon his prey. But he held himself in check.

"Monsieur!" he cried, and there was a savage note in his voice, which Dirke would not have credited him with. "Monsieur! If you decline to permit me to pay for that ring to-morrow, I am ready to _fight_ for it to-night!" He p.r.o.nounced the word "_fight_" with a peculiar, hissing emphasis.

"Not to-night," Dirke rejoined quietly.

"And why not to-night, Monsieur, may I ask?"

"Because I am armed, and you are not."

At the word Dirke had drawn his right hand from his pocket; the barrel of a pistol gleamed white between them.

The Frenchman recoiled. His face was not pleasant to look upon, yet his antagonist would have been sorry to lose the sight of it.

Dirke stood, tall and slim and commanding, his face set in the accustomed lines. No emotion whatever was to be seen there, not even contempt for the man who shrank from sure death in such a cause. For fully twenty seconds they faced each other in the glaring light of the saloon, pent up pa.s.sion visible in the one, invisible in the other. In Dirke's face, and bearing, however, devoid as it was of any emotion, one quality was but the more recognizable for that, and the count knew that the man before him was available as an antagonist.

"Monsieur," he said, with strong self-control, "it is possible that you do not understand--that you are not aware--that--Monsieur! The ring which you are pleased to wear so--so--conspicuously is the property of--The ring, Monsieur, is sacred to me!"

"Sacred!" Dirke repeated. "Sacred!" The word was an arraignment, not to be overlooked.

"Monsieur!" the count cried.

"I was merely struck by your peculiar treatment of sacred things," Dirke replied, his tone dropping to the level of absolute indifference. "It is--unconventional, to say the least."

He lifted his hand and examined the ring with an air of newly aroused interest. He wondered, half-contemptuously, at the man's self-control.

"Monsieur," he heard him say. "You are a gentleman; I perceive it beneath the disguise of your vocation,--of your conduct. When I say to you that the sight of that ring upon your finger compromises my honor,--that it is an _insult_ to me,--you comprehend; is it not so?"

"Quite so," Dirke replied, with carefully studied offensiveness.

"Then, Monsieur, it will perhaps be possible at another time to correct the inequality in point of arms to which you have called my attention."

The challenge was admirably delivered.

"I should think nothing could be simpler," Dirke rejoined, and he deliberately put his pistol in his pocket.

They parted without more words, de Lys stumbling once as he made his way along the uneven sidewalk, Dirke keeping on across the barren upland, sure-footed and serene.

It had come at last, his great opportunity; all the evil in his nature was roused at last; jealousy, vindictiveness, unscrupulousness. He gloated over his own iniquity; every feature of it rejoiced him. He had no moral right to that ring,--all the dearer his possession of it! This man had never injured him;--the more delicious his hatred of him. The Frenchman with his exasperating air of success was to him the insolent embodiment of that which had been wrongfully wrested from him, Dabney Dirke, who had as good a right to success as another. Some philanthropists, made such by prosperity and ease, spent their lives in trying to even things off by raising the condition of their fellow-creatures to their own. Well, he had the same object to be attained, by different means. He would even things off by grading to his own level. Was not that a perfectly logical aim, given the circ.u.mstances which induced it?

He lifted his hand and moved it to and fro, that he might catch the gleam of the stones in the faint starlight. In the mere joy of seeing the ring there upon his finger he almost forgot for the moment what its significance was. It scarcely reminded him just then of the girl with the tearful eyes, usually so present with him. Her face seemed to be receding from his memory; the whole story of his life seemed to grow dim and ill-defined. His mind was curiously elate with a sense of achievement, a certainty that he was near the goal, that fulfilment was at hand.

He was still pursuing his way up the hill, walking slowly, with bent head, like a philosopher in revery, when he became aware that the day was dawning. The stars were growing dim and vanis.h.i.+ng one by one, in the pale light which came like a veil across their radiance. A dull, creeping regret invaded his mind. He had loved the stars, he could have studied them with joy; under a happier fate he might have been high in their counsels. As he watched their obliteration in the dawn of a day deliberately dedicated to evil, a profound yearning for their pure tranquil eternal light came upon him, and as Jupiter himself withdrew into the impenetrable s.p.a.ces, Dirke turned his eyes downward with a long, shuddering sigh. His downcast gaze fell upon the poor earthly brilliance of the diamonds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ON THE EDGE OF A DEAD FOREST."]

It was not until he heard from the count, a few hours later, that Dirke found himself restored to the state of mind which he was pleased to consider natural. The call for action dissipated his misgivings, carried him beyond the reach of doubts and regrets, gave him an a.s.surance that Fate had at last ranged itself on his side. For even if duelling were not a peculiarly un-American inst.i.tution, it is a mode of warfare of such refinement and elaborateness, as to be utterly foreign to the atmosphere of a mining-camp, and Dirke could only regard the challenge which came to him in due form and order that morning, as a special interposition of those darker powers which he had so long, and hitherto so vainly invoked. He went about his preparations for the meeting in an exaltation of spirit, such as he had never before experienced.

Paradoxical as it may seem, absurd as it really was, he was sustained, uplifted, by the sense of immolating himself upon the altar of an ideal cause. He was about to do an ideally evil thing, to the accomplishment of an ideally evil end. Insane as this feeling was, it was his inspiration, and he felt himself, for the first time in his life, acting consistently, courageously, confidently.

The meeting took place on a remote, barren hillside, on the edge of a dead forest whose gaunt stems stood upright, or leaned against each other, a weird, unearthly company. As Dirke arrived with his second,--a saturnine Kentuckian, with a duelling record of his own,--he glanced about the desolate spot thinking it well chosen. Only one feature of the scene struck him as incongruous. It was a p.r.i.c.kly poppy standing there, erect and stiff, its coa.r.s.e, harsh stem and leaves repellent enough, yet bearing on its crest a single flower, a wide white silken wonder, curiously at variance with the spirit of the scene. Dirke impatiently turned away from the contemplation of it, which had for an instant fascinated him, and faced, instead, the count, who was approaching from below, accompanied by his friend and countryman.

Shots were to be exchanged but once, and though the princ.i.p.als were both good shots, the seconds antic.i.p.ated nothing serious. The count, for his part, was not desirous of killing his adversary, and he had no reason to suppose that the latter thirsted for his blood. He considered the incident which had led to this unpleasant situation as a mere freak on the part of this morose individual whom he had unfortunately run afoul of. He had, indeed, moments of wondering whether the man were quite in his right mind.

Dirke wore the ring, and he gloried in wearing it, as he took his place, elate, exultant, yet perfectly self-contained.

"Are you ready?" the Kentuckian asked, and the sense of being "ready"

thrilled him through every nerve.

At the given signal, Dirke raised his pistol in deliberate, deadly aim.

De Lys saw it, and a subtle change swept his face, while he instantly readjusted his own aim. In Dirke's countenance there was no change, no slightest trace of any emotion whatever. Yet both seconds perceived, in the flash of time allowed, that the combat was to be a mortal one, and that it was Dirke who had thus decreed it.

And then it was, in that crucial moment, that Dirke's groping soul came out into the light,--even as the wide white flower over yonder had come out into the light, springing from its grim, unsightly stem. In that flas.h.i.+ng instant of time his true nature, which he had so long sought to belie, took final command. All that was false, fantastic, artificial, loosed its hold and fell away. For the first time in two years Dabney Dirke was perfectly sane.

At the word to fire, he did the one thing possible to the man he was; his pistol flashed straight upwards.

The two shots rang out simultaneously, setting the echoes roaring among the hills. Dirke staggered, but recovered his foothold again and stood an instant, swaying slightly, while he slowly, with an absent look in his face and in his eyes, drew the ring from his finger. As de Lys came up, he dropped the trinket at his feet. Then, slowly, heavily, he sank back, and the men gently lowered him to the ground.