The White Desert Part 19

"But--"

"She have land, and she have a part of the lake and a flume site."

Houston hung back.

"Isn't it a bad bet, Ba'tiste? Have you talked to her?"

"No--I have not seen her since the day--at the flume. She is here--Lost Wing is at the back of the cabin. We will talk to her, you and I. Mebbe, when the spring come, she will lease to you the lake and the flume site. Mebbe--"

"Very well." But Houston said it against his will. He felt, in the first place, that he would be presuming to ask it of her,--himself a stranger against whom had come the accusation of murder, hardly denied.

Yet, withal, in a way, he welcomed the chance to see her and to seek to explain to her the deadly thrusts which Fred Thayer had sent against him. Then too a sudden hope came; Ba'tiste had said that Agnes Jierdon had become friendly with her; certainly she had told the truth and righted the wrongs of malicious treachery. He joined Ba'tiste with a bound. A moment more and the door had opened, to reveal Medaine, repressed excitement in her eyes, her features a trifle pale, her hand trembling slightly as she extended it to Ba'tiste. Houston she received with a bow,--forced, he thought. They went within, and Ba'tiste pulled his queer little cap from his head, to crush it in the grasp of his ma.s.sive hands.

"We have come for business, Medaine," he announced, with a slight show of embarra.s.sment. "M'sieu Houston, he have need for a flume site."

"But I don't see where I could be of any a.s.sistance. I have no right--"

"Ah! But eet is not for the moment present. Eet is for the springtime."

She seemed to hesitate then and Houston took a sudden resolve. It might as well be now as later.

"Miss Robinette," he began, coming forward, "I realize that all this needs some explanation. Especially," and he halted, "about myself."

"But is that any of my affair?" Her old pertness was gone. She seemed white and frightened, as though about to listen to something she would rather not hear. Houston answered her as best he could:

"That depends upon yourself, Miss Robinette. Naturally, you wouldn't want to have any business dealings with a man who really was all that you must believe me to be. It isn't a pleasant thing for me to talk about--I would like to forget it. But in this case, it has been brought up against my will. You were present a week ago when Thayer accused me of murder."

"Yes."

"Eet was a big lie!"

"Wait just a minute, Ba'tiste." Cold sweat had made its appearance on Barry Houston's forehead. "I--I--am forced to admit that a part of what he said was true. When I first met Ba'tiste here, I told him there was a shadow in my life that I did not like to talk about. He was good enough to say that he didn't want to hear it. I felt that out here, perhaps I would not be hara.s.sed by certain memories that have been rather hard for me to bear in the last couple of years. I was wrong. The thing has come up again, in worse form than ever and without giving me a chance to make a denial. But perhaps you know the whole story?"

"Your story?" Medaine Robinette looked at him queerly. "No--I never have heard it."

"Then you've heard--"

"Only accusations."

"Is it fair to believe only one side of a thing?"

"Please, Mr. Houston," and she looked at him with a certain note of pleading, "you must remember that I--well, I didn't feel that it was any of my business. I didn't know that circ.u.mstances would throw you at all in my path."

"But they have, Miss Robinette. The land on my side of the creek has been taken from me by fraud. It is absolutely vital that I use every resource to try to make my mill what it should be. It still is possible for me to obtain lumber, but to get it to the mill necessitates a flume and rights in the lake. I've lost that. We've been hoping, Ba'tiste and myself, that we would be able to induce you to lease us your portion of the lake and a flume site. Otherwise, I'm afraid there isn't much hope."

"As I said, that doesn't become my property until late spring, nearly summer, in fact."

"That is time enough. We are hoping to be able to bid for the railroad contract. I believe it calls for the first s.h.i.+pment of ties about June first. That would give us plenty of time. If we had your word, we could go ahead, a.s.semble the necessary machinery, snake a certain amount of logs down through the snow this winter and be in readiness when the right moment came. Without it, however, we can hardly hope for a sufficient supply to carry us through. And so--"

"You want to know--about heem. You have Ba'teese's word----"

"Really--" she seemed to be fencing again.

Houston, with a hard pull at his breath, came directly to the question.

"It's simply this, Miss Robinette. If I am guilty of those things, you don't want to have anything to do with me, and I don't want you to.

But I am here to tell you that I am not guilty, and that it all has been a horrible blunder of circ.u.mstance. It is very true in one sense--" and his voice lowered--"that about two years ago in Boston, I was arrested and tried for murder."

"So Mr. Thayer said."

"I was acquitted--but not for the reason Thayer gave. They couldn't make a case, they failed absolutely to prove a thing which, had I really been guilty, should have been a simple matter. A worthless cousin, Tom Langdon, was the man who was murdered. They said I did it with a wooden mallet which I had taken from a prize fight, and which had been used to hammer on the gong for the beginning and the end of the rounds. I had been seen to take it from the fight, and it was found the next morning beside Langdon. There was human blood on it. I had been the last person seen with Langdon. They put two and two together--and tried to convict me on circ.u.mstantial evidence. But they couldn't convince the jury; I went free, as I should have done. I was innocent!"

Houston, white now with the memories and with the necessity of retailing again in the presence of a girl who, to him, stood for all that could mean happiness, gritted his teeth for the determination to go on with the grisly thing, to hide nothing in the answers to the questions which she might ask. But Medaine Robinette, standing beside the window, the color gone from her cheeks, one hand lingering the curtains, eyes turned without, gave no evidence that she had heard.

Ba'tiste, staring at her, waited a moment for her question. It did not come. He turned to Houston.

"You tell eet!" he ordered. There was something of the father about him,--the father with a wayward boy, fearful of the story that might come, yet determined to do everything within his power to aid a person he loved. Houston straightened.

"I'll try not to s.h.i.+eld myself in any way," came at last. The words were directed to Ba'tiste, but meant for Medaine Robinette. "There are some things about it that I'd rather not tell--I wish I could leave them out. But--it all goes. My word of honor--if that counts for anything--goes with it. It's the truth, nothing else.

"I had come home from France--invalided back. The records of the Twenty-sixth will prove that. Gas. I was slated for out here--the recuperation hospital at Denver. But we managed to persuade the army authorities that I could get better treatment at home, and they gave me a disability discharge in about ten months--honorable, of course.

After a while, I went back to work, still weak, but rather eager to get at it, in an effort to gather up the strands which had become tangled by the war. I was in the real-estate business then, for myself. Then, one afternoon," his breath pulled sharp, "Tom Langdon came into my office."

"He was your cousin?" Ba'tiste's voice was that of a friendly cross-examiner.

"Yes. I hadn't seen him in five years. We had never had much to do with him; we," and Houston smiled coldly with the turn that Fate had given to conditions in the Houston family, "always had looked on him as a sort of a black sheep. He had been a runaway from home; about the only letters my uncle ever had received from him had asked for money to get him out of trouble. Where he had been this time, I don't know. He asked for my father and appeared anxious to see him. I told him that father was out of town. Then he said he would stay in Boston until he came back, that he had information for him that was of the greatest importance, and that when he told father what it was, that he, Langdon, could have anything my father possessed in the way of a job and a competence for life. It sounded like blackmail--I could think of nothing else coming from Tom Langdon--and I told him so. That was unfortunate. There were several persons in my office at the time. He resented the statement and we quarreled. They heard it and later testified."

Houston halted, tongue licking at dry lips. Medaine still gave no indication that she had heard. Ba'tiste, his knit cap still crushed in his big hands, moved forward.

"Go on."

"Gradually, the quarrel wore off and Tom became more than friendly, still harping, however, on the fact that he had tremendous news for my father. I tried to get rid of him. It was impossible. He suggested that we go to dinner together and insisted upon it. There was nothing to do but acquiesce; especially as I now was trying to draw from him something of what had brought him there. We had wine. I was weak physically. It went to my head, and Tom seemed to take a delight in keeping my gla.s.s full. Oh," and he swerved suddenly toward the woman at the window, "I'm not trying to make any excuses for myself. I wanted if--after that first gla.s.s or two, it seemed there wasn't enough in the world. He didn't force it on me--he didn't play the part of a tempter or pour it down my throat. I took it readily enough. But I couldn't stand it. We left the cafe, he fairly intoxicated, myself greatly so. We saw the advertis.e.m.e.nt of a prize fight and went, getting seats near the ring-side. They weren't close enough for me. I bribed a fellow to let me sit at the press stand, next to the timekeeper, and worried him until he let me have the mallet that he was using to strike the gong.

"The fight was exciting--especially to me in my condition. I was standing most of the time, even leaning on the ring. Once, while in this position, one of the men, who was bleeding, was knocked down. He struck the mallet. It became covered with blood. No one seemed to notice that, except myself--every one was too excited. A moment more and the fight was over, through a knock-out. Then I stuck the mallet in my pocket, telling every one who cared to hear that I was carrying away a souvenir. Langdon and I went out together.

"We started home--for he had announced that he was going to spend the night with me. Persons about us heard him. It was not far to the house and we decided to walk. On the way, he demanded the mallet for himself and pulled it out of my pocket. I struggled with him for it, finally however, to be bested, and started away. He followed me a block or so, taunting me with his superior strength and cursing me as the son of a man whom he intended to make bow to his every wish. I ran then and, evading him, went home and to bed. About four o'clock in the morning, I was awakened by the police. They had found Tom Langdon dead, with his skull crushed, evidently by the blow of a club or a hammer. They said I did it."

A slight gasp traveled over the lips of Medaine, still by the window.

Ba'tiste, his features old and lined, reached out with one big hand and patted the man on the shoulder. Then for a long time, there was silence.

"Eet is the lie, eh?"

"Ba'tiste," Houston turned appealingly to him "as I live, that's all I know. I never saw Langdon after he took that mallet from me. Some one killed him, evidently while he was wandering around, looking for me.

The mallet dropped by his side. It had blood on it--and they accused me. It looked right--there was every form of circ.u.mstantial evidence against me. And," the breath pulled hard, "what was worse, everybody believed that I killed him. Even my best friends--even my father."

"Ba'teese no believe it."

"Why?" Houston turned to him in hope,--in the glimmering chance that perhaps there was something in the train of circ.u.mstances that would have prevented the actuality of guilt. But the answer, while it cheered him, was rather disconcerting.

"You look like my Pierre. Pierre, he could do no wrong. You look like heem."