It was between the spring round-up and the fall, while the boys were employed in desultory fashion at the home ranch, breaking in new horses and the like, and while I was indefatigably wearing a trail straight across country to that little butte--and getting mighty little out of it save the exercise and much heart-burnings--that the message came.
A man rode up to the corrals on a lather-gray horse, coming from Kenmore, where was a telephone-station connected from Osage. I read the message incredulously. Dad sick unto death? Such a thing had never happened--couldn't happen, it seemed to me. It was unbelievable; not to be thought of or tolerated. But all the while I was planning and scheming to shave off every superfluous minute, and get to where he was.
I held out the paper to Perry Potter, "Have some one saddle up Shylock," I ordered, quite as if he had been Rankin. "And Frosty will have to go with me as far as Osage. We can make it by to-morrow noon--through King's Highway. I mean to get that early afternoon train."
The last sentence I sent back over my shoulder, on my way to the house. Dad sick--dying? I cursed the miles between us. Frisco was a long, a terribly long, way off; it seemed in another world.
By then I was on my way back to the corral, with a decent suit of clothes on and a few things stuffed into a bag, and with a roll of money--money that I had earned--in my pocket. I couldn't have been ten minutes, but it seemed more. And Frisco was a long way off!
"You'd better take the rest of the boys part way," Potter greeted dryly as I came up.
I brushed past him and swung up into the saddle, feeling that if I stopped to answer I might be too late. I had a foolish notion that even a long breath would conspire to delay me. Frosty was already on his horse, and I noticed, without thinking about it at the time, that he was riding a long-legged sorrel, "Spikes," that could match Shylock on a long chase--as this was like to be.
We were off at a run, without once looking back or saying good-by to a man of them; for farewells take minutes in the saying, and minutes meant--more than I cared to think about just then. They were good fellows, those cowboys, but I left them standing awkwardly, as men do in the face of calamity they may not hinder, without a thought of whether I should ever see one of them again. With Frosty galloping at my right, elbow to elbow, we faced the dim, purple outline of White Divide.
Already the dusk was creeping over the prairie-land, and little sleepy birds started out of the grasses and flew protesting away from our rush past their nesting-places. Frosty spoke when we had passed out of the home-field, even in our haste stopping to close and tie fast the gate behind us.
"You don't want to run your horse down in the first ten miles, Ellis; we'll make time by taking it easy at first, and you'll get there just as soon." I knew he was right about it, and pulled Shylock down to the steady lope that was his natural gait. It was hard, though, to just "mosey" along as if we were starting out to kill time and earn our daily wage in the easiest possible manner. One's nerves demanded an unusual pace--a pace that would soothe fear by its very headlong race against misfortune.
Once or twice it occurred to me to wonder, just for a minute, how we should fare in King's Highway; but mostly my thoughts stuck to dad, and how it happened that he was "critically ill," as the message had put it. Crawford had sent that message; I knew from the precise way it was worded--Crawford never said sick--and Crawford was about as conservative a man as one could well be, and be human. He was as unemotional as a properly trained footman; Jenks, our butler, showed more feeling. But Crawford, if he was conservative, was also conscientious. Dad had had him for ten years, and trusted him a million miles farther than he would trust anybody else--for Crawford could no more lie than could the multiplication-table; if he said dad was "critically ill," that settled it; dad was. I used to tell Barney MacTague, when he thought it queer that I knew so little about dad's affairs, that dad was a fireproof safe, and Crawford was the combination lock. But perhaps it was the other way around; at any rate, they understood each other perfectly, and no other living man understood either.
The darkness flowed down over the land and hid the farther hills; the sky-line crept closer until White Divide seemed the boundary of the world, and all beyond its tumbled shade was untried mystery. Frosty, a shadowy figure rising and falling regularly beside me, turned his face and spoke again:
"We ought to make Pochette's Crossing by daylight, or a little after--with luck," he said. "We'll have to get horses from him to go on with; these will be all in, when we get that far."
"We'll try and sneak through the pass," I answered, putting unpleasant thoughts resolutely behind me. "We can't take time to argue the point out with old King."
"Sneak nothing," Frosty retorted grimly. "You don't know King, if you're counting on that."
I came near asking how he expected to get through, then; when I remembered my own spectacular flight, on a certain occasion, I felt that Frosty was calmly disowning our only hope.
We rode quietly into the mouth of King's Highway, our horses stepping softly in the deep sand of the trail as if they, too, realized the exigencies of the situation. We crossed the little stream that is the first baby beginning of Honey Creek--which flows through our ranch--with scarce a splash to betray our passing, and stopped before the closed gate. Frosty got down to swing it open, and his fingers touched a padlock doing business with bulldog pertinacity. Clearly, King was minded to protect himself from unwelcome evening callers.
"We'll have to take down the wires," Frosty murmured, coming back to where I waited. "Got your gun handy? Yuh might need it before long." Frosty was not warlike by nature, and when he advised having a gun handy I knew the situation to be critical.
We took down a panel of fence without interruption or sign of life at the house, not more than fifty yards away; Frosty whispered that they were probably at supper, and that it was our best time. I was foolish enough to regret going by without chance of a word with Beryl, great as was my haste. I had not seen her since that day Frosty and I had ridden into their picnic--though I made efforts enough, the Lord knows--and I was not at all happy over my many failures.
Whether it was good luck or bad, I saw her rise up from a hammock on the porch as we went by--for, as I said before, King's house was much closer to the trail than was decent; I could have leaned from the saddle and touched her with my quirt.
"Mr. Carleton"--I was fool enough to gloat over her instant recognition, in the dark like that--"what are you doing here--at this hour? Don't you know the risk? And your promise--" She spoke in an undertone, as if she were afraid of being overheard--which I don't doubt she was.
But if she had been a Delilah she couldn't have betrayed me more completely. Frosty motioned imperatively for me to go on, but I had pulled up at her first word, and there I stood, waiting for her to finish, that I might explain that I had not lightly broken my promise; that I was compelled to cut off that extra sixty miles which would have made me, perhaps, too late. But I didn't tell her anything; there wasn't time. Frosty, waiting disapprovingly a length ahead, looked back and beckoned again insistently. At the same instant a door behind the girl opened with a jerk, and King himself bulked large and angry in the lamplight. Beryl shrank backward with a little cry--and I knew she had not meant to do me a hurt.
"Come on, you fool!" cried Frosty, and struck his horse savagely. I jabbed in my spurs, and Shylock leaped his length and fled down that familiar trail to the "gantlet," as I had always called it mentally after that second passing. But King, behind us, fired three shots quickly, one after another--and, as the bullets sang past, I knew them for a signal.
A dozen men, as it seemed to me, swarmed out from divers places to dispute our passing, and shots were being fired in the dark, their starting-point betrayed by vicious little spurts of flame. Shylock winced cruelly, as we whipped around the first shed, and I called out sharply to Frosty, still a length ahead. He turned just as my horse went down to his knees.
I jerked my feet from the stirrups and landed free and upright, which was a blessing. And it was then that I swung morally far back to the primitive, and wanted to kill, and kill, with never a thought for parley or retreat. Frosty, like the stanch old pal he was, pulled up and came back to me, though the bullets were flying fast and thick--and not wide enough for derision on our part.
"Jump up behind," he commanded, shooting as he spoke. "We'll get out of this damned trap."
I had my doubts, and fired away without paying him much attention. I wanted, more than anything, to get the man who had shot down Shylock. That isn't a pretty confession, but it has the virtue of being the truth. So, while Frosty fired at the spurts of red and cursed me for stopping there, I crouched behind my dead horse and fought back with evil in my heart and a mighty poor aim.
Then, just as the first excitement was hardening into deliberate malevolence, came a clatter from beyond the house, and a chorus of familiar yells and the spiteful snapping of pistols. It was our boys--thirty of the biggest-hearted, bravest fellows that ever wore spurs, and, as they came thundering down to us, I could make out the bent, wiry figure of old Perry Potter in the lead, yelling and shooting wickeder than any one else in the crowd.
"Ellis!" he shouted, and I lifted up my voice and let him know that, like Webster, "I still lived." They came on with a rush that the King faction could not stay, to where I was ambushed between the solid walls of two sheds, with Shylock's bulk before me and Frosty swearing at my back.
"Horse hit?" snapped Perry Potter breathlessly. "I knowed it. Just like yuh. Get onto this'n uh mine--he's the best in the bunch--and light out--if yuh still want t' catch that train."
I came back from the primitive with a rush. I no longer wanted to kill and kill. Dad was lying "critically ill" in Frisco--and Frisco was a long way off! The miles between bulked big and black before me, so that I shivered and forgot my quarrel with King. I must catch that train.
I went with one leap up into the saddle as Perry Potter slid down, thought vaguely that I never could ride with the stirrups so short, but that there was not time to lengthen them; took my feet peevishly out of them altogether, and dashed down, that winding way between King's sheds and corrals while the Ragged H boys kept King's men at bay, and the unmusical medley of shots and yells followed us far in the darkness of the pass. At the last fence, where we perforce drew rein to make a free passage for our horses, I looked back, like one Mrs. Lot. A red glare lit the whole sky behind us with starry sparks, shooting up higher into the low-hanging crimson smoke-clouds. I stared, uncomprehending for a moment; then the thought of her stabbed through my brain, and I felt a sudden horror. "And Beryl's back among those devils!" I cried aloud, as I pulled my horse around.
"Beryl"--Frosty laid peculiar stress upon the name I had let slip--"isn't likely to be down among the sheds, where that fire is. Our boys are collecting damages for Shylock, I guess; hope they make a good job of it."
I felt silly enough just then to quarrel with my grandmother; I hate giving a man cause for thinking me a love-sick lobster, as I'd no doubt Frosty thought me. I led my horse over the wires he had let down, and we went on without stopping to put them back on the posts. It was some time before I spoke again, and, when I did, the subject was quite different; I was mourning because I hadn't the Yellow Peril to eat up the miles with.
"What good would that do yuh?" Frosty asked, with a composure I could only call unfeeling. "Yuh couldn't get a train, anyway, before the one yuh will get; motors are all right, in their place--but a horse isn't to be despised, either. I'd rather be stranded with a tired horse than a broken-down motor."
I did not agree with him, partly because I was not at all pleased with my present mount, and partly because I was not in amiable mood; so we galloped along in sulky silence, while a washed-out moon sidled over our heads and dodged behind cloud-banks quite as if she were ashamed to be seen. The coyotes got to yapping out somewhere in the dark, and, as we came among the breaks that border the Missouri, a gray wolf howled close at hand.
Perry Potter's horse, that had shown unmistakable symptoms of disgust at the endless gallop he had been called upon to maintain, shied sharply away from the sound, stumbled from leg-weariness, and fell heavily; for the second time that night I had need to show my dexterity--but, in this case, with Perry Potter's stirrups swinging somewhere in the vicinity of my knees, the danger of getting caught was not so great. I stood there in the dark loneliness of the silent hills and the howling wolf, and looked down at the brute with little pity and a good deal of resentment. I applied my toe tentatively to his ribs, and he just grunted. Frosty got down and led Spikes closer, and together we surveyed the heavily breathing, gray bulk in the sand at our feet.
"If he was the Yellow Peril, instead of one of your much-vaunted steeds," I remarked tartly, "I could go at him with a wrench and have him in working order again in five minutes; as it is--" I felt that the sentence was stronger uncompleted.
"As it is," finished Frosty calmly, "you'll just step up on Spikes and go on to Pochette's. It's only about ten miles, now; Spikes is good for it, if you ease him on the hills now and then. He isn't the Yellow Peril, maybe, but he's a good little horse, and he'll sure take yuh through the best he knows."
I don't know why, but a lump came up in my throat at the tone of him. I put out my hand and laid it on Spikes' wet, sweat-roughened neck. "Yes, he's a good little horse, and I beg his pardon for what I said," I owned, still with the ache just back of my palate. "But he can't carry us both, Frosty; I'll just have to tinker up this old skate, and make him go on."
"Yuh can't do it; he's reached his limit. Yuh can't expect a common cayuse like him to do more than eighty miles in one shift--at the gait we've been traveling. I'm surprised he's held out so long. Yuh take Spikes and go on; I'll walk in. Yuh know the way from here, and I can't help yuh out any more than to let yuh have Spikes. Go on--it's breaking day, and yuh haven't got any too much time to waste."
I looked at him, at Spikes standing wearily on three legs but with his ears perked gamily ahead, and down at the gray, worn-out horse of Perry Potter's. They have done what they could--and not one seemed to regret the service. I felt, at that moment, mighty small and unworthy, and tempted to reject the offer of the last ounce of endurance from either--for which I was not as deserving as I should have liked to be.
"You worked all day, and you've ridden all night, and gone without a mouthful of supper for me," I protested hotly. "And now you want to walk ten beastly miles of sand and hills. I won't--"
"Your dad cared enough to send for you--" he began, but I would not let him finish.
"You're right, Frosty," and I wrung his hand. "You're the real thing, and I'd do as much for you, old pal. I'll make that Frenchman rub Spikes down for an hour, or I'll kill him when I get back."
"You won't come back," said Frosty bruskly. "See that streak uh yellow, over there? Get a move on, if yuh don't want to miss that train--but ease Spikes up the hills!"
I nodded, pulled my hat down low over my eyes, and rode away; when I did get courage to glance back, Frosty still stood where I had left him, looking down at the gray horse.
An hour after sunrise I slipped off Spikes and watched them lead him away to the stable; he staggered like a man when he has drunk too long and deeply. I swallowed a cup of coffee, mounted a little buckskin, and went on, with Pochette's assurance, "Don't be afraid to put heem through," ringing in my ears. I was not afraid to put him through. That last forty-eight miles I rode mercilessly--for the demon of hurry was again urging me on. At ten o'clock I rolled stiffly off the buckskin at the Osage station, walked more stiffly into the office, and asked for a message. The operator handed me two, and looked at me with much curiosity--but I suppose I was a sight. The first was to tell me that a special would be ready at ten-thirty, and that the road would be cleared for it. I had not thought about a special--Osage being so far from Frisco; but Crawford was a wonder, and he had a long arm. My respect for Crawford increased amazingly as I read that message, and I began at once to bully the agent because the special was not ready at that minute to start. The second message was a laconic statement that dad was still alive; I folded it hurriedly and put it out of sight, for somehow it seemed to say a good many nasty things between the words.
I wired Crawford that I was ready to start and waiting for the special, and then I fumed and continued my bullying of the man in the office; he was not to blame for anything, of course, but it was a tremendous relief to take it out of somebody just then.
The special came, on time to a second, and I swung on and told the conductor to put her through for all she was worth--but he had already got his instructions as to speed, I fancy; we ripped down the track a mile a minute--and it wasn't long till we bettered that more than I'd have believed possible. The superintendent's car had been given over to me, I learned from the porter, and would carry me to Ogden, where dad's own car, the Shasta, would meet me. There, too, I saw the hand of Crawford; it was not like dad or him to borrow anything unless the necessity was absolute.
I hope I may never be compelled to take another such journey. Not that I was nervous at the killing pace we went--and it was certainly hair-raising, in places; but every curve that we whipped around on two wheels--approximately--told me that dad was in desperate case indeed, and that Crawford was oiling every joint with gold to get me there in time. At every division the crack engine of the shops was coupled on in seconds, rather than minutes, bellowed its challenge to all previous records, and scuttled away to the west; a new conductor swung up the steps and answered patiently the questions I hurled at him, and courteously passed over the invectives when I felt that we were crawling at a snail's pace and wanted him to hurry a bit.
At Ogden I hustled into the Shasta and felt a grain of comfort in its familiar atmosphere, and a sense of companionship in the solemn face of Cromwell Jones, our porter. I had taken many a jaunt in the old car, with Crom, and Rankin, and Tony, the best cook that ever fed a hungry man, and it seemed like coming home just to throw myself into my pet chair again, with Crom to fetch me something cold and fizzy.
From him I learned that it was pneumonia, and that if I got there in time it would be considered a miracle of speed and a triumph of faultless railroad system. If I had been tempted to take my ease and to sleep a bit, that settled it for me. The Shasta had no more power to lull my fears or to minister to my comfort. I refused to be satisfied with less than a couple of hundred miles an hour, and I was sore at the whole outfit because they refused to accommodate me.
Still, we got over the ground at such a clip that on the third day, with screech of whistle and clang of bell, we slowed at Oakland pier, where a crowd was cheering like the end of a race--which it was--and kodak fiends were underfoot as if I'd been somebody.
A motor-boat was waiting, and the race went on across the bay, where Crawford met me with the Yellow Peril at the ferry depot. I was told that I was in time, and when I got my hand on the wheel, and turned the Peril loose, it seemed, for the first time since leaving home, that fate was standing back and letting me run things.
Policemen waved their arms and said things at the way we went up Market Street, but I only turned it on a bit more and tried not to run over any humans; a dog got it, though, just as we whipped into Sacramento Street. I remember wishing that Frosty was with me, to be convinced that motors aren't so bad after all.
It was good to come tearing up the hill with the horn bellowing for a clear track, and to slow down just enough to make the turn between our bronze mastiffs, and skid up the drive, stopping at just the right instant to avoid going clear through the stable and trespassing upon our neighbor's flower-beds. It was good--but I don't believe Crawford appreciated the fact; imperturbable as he was, I fancied that he looked relieved when his feet touched the gravel. I was human enough to enjoy scaring Crawford a bit, and even regretted that I had not shaved closer to a collision.
Then I was up-stairs, in an atmosphere of drugs and trained nurses and funeral quiet, and knew for a certainty that I was still in time, and that dad knew me and was glad to have me there. I had never seen dad in bed before, and all my life he had been associated in my mind with calm self-possession and power and perfect grooming. To see him lying there like that, so white and weak and so utterly helpless, gave me a shock that I was quite unprepared for. I came mighty near acting like a woman with hysterics--and, coming as it did right after that run in the Peril, I gave Crawford something of a shock, too, I think. I know he got me by the shoulders and hustled me out of the room, and he was looking pretty shaky himself; and if his eyes weren't watery, then I saw exceedingly, crooked.
A doctor came and made me swallow something, and told me that there was a chance for dad, after all, though they had not thought so at first. Then he sent me off to bed, and Rankin appeared from somewhere, with his abominably righteous air, and I just escaped making another fool scene. But Rankin had the sense to take me in hand just as he used to do when I'd been having no end of a time with the boys, and so got me to bed. The stuff the doctor made me swallow did the rest, and I was dead to the world in ten minutes.
