WHETSTONE COMES HOME
Lambert saw the fire leaping around
him, but felt no sting of its touch, keyed as he was
in that swift moment of adjustment. From a man
as dead he was transformed in a breath back to a living,
panting, hoping, struggling being, strong in the tenacious
purpose of life. He leaned over his horse’s
neck, shouting encouragement, speaking endearments
to it as to a woman in travail.
There was silence on the bank behind
him. Amazement over the leap that had carried
Whetstone across the place which they had designed
for the grave of both man and horse, held the four
scoundrels breathless for a spell. Fascinated
by the heroic animal’s fight to draw himself
clear of the fire which wrapped his hinder quarters,
they forgot to shoot.
A heave, a lurching struggle, a groan
as if his heart burst in the terrific strain, and
Whetstone lunged up the bank, staggered from his knees,
snorted the smoke out of his nostrils, gathered his
feet under him, and was away like a bullet. The
sound of shots broke from the bank across the fiery
crevasse; bullets came so close to Lambert that he
lay flat against his horse’s neck.
As the gallant creature ran, sensible
of his responsibilities for his master’s life,
it seemed, Lambert spoke to him encouragingly, proud
of the tremendous thing that he had done. There
was no sound of pursuit, but the shooting had stopped.
Lambert knew they would follow as quickly as they
could ride round the field of fire.
After going to this length, they could
not allow him to escape. There would have been
nothing to explain to any living man with him and all
trace of him obliterated in the fire, but with him
alive and fleeing, saved by the winged leap of his
splendid horse, they would be called to answer, man
by man.
Whetstone did not appear to be badly
hurt. He was stretching away like a hare, shaping
his course toward the ranch as true as a pigeon.
If they overtook him they would have to ride harder
than they ever rode in their profitless lives before.
Lambert estimated the distance between
the place where they had trapped him and the fire
as fifteen miles. It must be nine or ten miles
across to the Philbrook ranch, in the straightest
line that a horse could follow, and from that point
many miles more to the ranchhouse and release from
his stifling ropes. The fence would be no security
against his pursuing enemies, but it would look like
the boundary of hope.
Whether they lost so much time in
getting around the fire that they missed him, or whether
they gave it up after a trial of speed against Whetstone,
Lambert never knew. He supposed that their belief
was that neither man nor horse would live to come
into the sight of men again. However it fell,
they did not approach within hearing if they followed,
and were not in sight as dawn broke and broadened into
day.
Whetstone made the fence without slackening
his speed. There Lambert checked him with a word
and looked back for his enemies. Finding that
they were not near, he proceeded along the fence at
easier gait, holding the animal’s strength for
the final heat, if they should make a sudden appearance.
Somewhere along that miserable ride, after daylight
had broken and the pieced wire that Grace Kerr had
cut had been passed, Lambert fell unconscious across
the horn of his saddle from the drain of blood from
his wounds and the unendurable pain of his bonds.
In this manner the horse came bearing
him home at sunrise. Taterleg was away on his
beat, not uneasy over Lambert’s absence.
It was the exception for him to spend a night in the
bunkhouse in that summer weather. So old Whetstone,
jaded, scorched, bloody from his own and his master’s
wounds, was obliged to stand at the gate and whinny
for help when he arrived.
It was hours afterward that the fence
rider opened his eyes and saw Vesta Philbrook, and
closed them again, believing it was a delirium of
his pain. Then Taterleg spoke on the other side
of the bed, and he knew that he had come through his
perils into gentle hands.
“How’re you feelin’,
old sport?” Taterleg inquired with anxious tenderness.
Lambert turned his head toward the
voice and grinned a little, in the teeth-baring, hard-pulling
way of a man who has withstood a great deal more than
the human body and mind ever were designed to undergo.
He thought he spoke to Taterleg; the words shaped
on his tongue, his throat moved. But there was
such a roaring in his ears, like the sound of a train
crossing a trestle, that he could not hear his own
voice.
“Sure,” said Taterleg,
hopefully, “you’re all right, ain’t
you, old sport?”
“Fine,” said Lambert,
hearing his voice small and dry, strange as the voice
of a man to him unknown.
Vesta put her arm under his head,
lifted him a little, gave him a swallow of water.
It helped, or something helped. Perhaps it was
the sympathetic tenderness of her good, honest eyes.
He paid her with another little grin, which hurt her
more to see than him to give, wrenched even though
it was from the bottom of his soul.
“How’s old Whetstone?”
he asked, his voice coming clearer.
“He’s all right,” she told him.
“His tail’s burnt off
of him, mostly, and he’s cut in the hams in a
couple of places, but he ain’t hurt any, as I
can see,” Taterleg said, with more truth than
diplomacy.
Lambert struggled to his elbow, the
consciousness of what seemed his ingratitude to this
dumb savior of his life smiting him with shame.
“I must go and attend to him,” he said.
Vesta and Taterleg laid hands on him at once.
“You’ll bust them stitches
I took in your back if you don’t keep still,
young feller,” Taterleg warned. “Whetstone
ain’t as bad off as you, nor half as bad.”
Lambert noticed then that his hands were wrapped in
wet towels.
“Burned?” he inquired, lifting his eyes
to Vesta’s face.
“No, just swollen and inflamed. They’ll
be all right in a little while.”
“I blundered into their hands
like a blind kitten,” said he, reproachfully.
“They’ll eat lead for it!” said
Taterleg.
“It was Kerr and that gang,”
Lambert explained, not wanting to leave any doubt
behind if he should have to go.
“You can tell us after a while,”
she said, with compassionate tenderness.
“Sure,” said Taterleg,
cheerfully, “you lay back there and take it easy.
I’ll keep my eye on things.”
That evening, when the pain had eased
out of his head, Lambert told Vesta what he had gone
through, sparing nothing of the curiosity that had
led him, like a calf, into their hands. He passed
briefly over their attempt to herd him into the fire,
except to give Whetstone the hero’s part, as
he so well deserved.
Vesta sat beside him, hearing him
to the end of the brief recital that he made of it
in silence, her face white, her figure erect.
When he finished she laid her hand on his forehead,
as if in tribute to the manhood that had borne him
through such inhuman torture, and the loyalty that
had been the cause of its visitation. Then she
went to the window, where she stood a long time looking
over the sad sweep of broken country, the fringe of
twilight on it in somber shadow.
It was not so dark when she returned
to her place at his bedside, but he could see that
she had been weeping in the silent pain that rises
like a poison distillation from the heart.
“It draws the best into it and
breaks them,” she said in great bitterness,
speaking as to herself. “It isn’t
worth the price!”
“Never mind it, Vesta,”
he soothed, putting out his hand. She took it
between her own, and held it, and a great comfort came
to him in her touch.
“I’m going to sell the
cattle as fast as I can move them, and give it up,
Duke,” she said, calling him by that name with
the easy unconsciousness of a familiar habit, although
she never had addressed him so before.
“You’re not going away
from here whipped, Vesta,” he said with a firmness
that gave new hope and courage to her sad heart.
“I’ll be out of this in a day or two,
then we’ll see about it about several
things. You’re not going to leave this
country whipped; neither am I.”
She sat in meditation, her face to
the window, presenting the soft turn of her cheek
and chin to Lambert’s view. She was too
fine and good for that country, he thought, too good
for the best that it ever could offer or give, no
matter how generously the future might atone for the
hardships of the past. It would be better for
her to leave it, he wanted her to leave it, but not
with her handsome head bowed in defeat.
“I think if you were to sift
the earth and screen out its meanest, they wouldn’t
be a match for the people around here,” she said.
“There wouldn’t be a bit of use taking
this outrage up with the authorities; Kerr and his
gang would say it was a joke, and get away with it,
too.”
“I wouldn’t go squealing
to the county authorities, Vesta, even if I knew I’d
get results. This is something a man has to square
for himself. Maybe they intended it for a joke,
too, but it was a little rougher than I’m used
to.”
“There’s no doubt what
their intention was. You can understand my feelings
toward them now, Duke; maybe I’ll not seem such
a savage.”
“I’ve got a case with you against them
all, Vesta.”
He made no mental reservation as he
spoke; there was no pleading for exception in Grace
Kerr’s dark eyes that he could grant. Long
as he had nestled the romance between them in his
breast, long as he had looked into the West and sent
his dream out after her, he could not, in this sore
hour, forgive her the taint of her blood.
He felt that all tenderness in him
toward any of her name was dead. It had been
a pretty fancy to hold, that thought of finding her,
but she was only swamp-fire that had lured him to
the door of hell. Still the marvel of his meeting
her, the violet scent of his old dream, lingered sweetly
with him like the perfume that remains after a beautiful
woman whose presence has illuminated a room.
So hard does romance die.
“I think I’ll have to
break my word to you and buckle on my gun again for
a little while,” she said. “Mr. Wilson
can’t ride the fence alone, capable and willing
as he is, and ready to go day and night.”
“Leave it to him till I’m
out again, Vesta; that will only be a day or two ”
“A day or two! Three or four weeks, if
you do well.”
“No, not that long, not anything
like that long,” he denied with certainty.
“They didn’t hurt me very much.”
“Well, if they didn’t
hurt you much they damaged you considerably.”
He grinned over the serious distinction
that she made between the words. Then he thought,
pleasantly, that Vesta’s voice seemed fitted
to her lips like the tone of some beautiful instrument.
It was even and soft, slow and soothing, as her manner
was deliberate and well calculated, her presence a
comfort to the eye and the mind alike.
An exceptional combination of a girl,
he reflected, speculating on what sort of man would
marry her. Whoever he was, whatever he might be,
he would be only secondary to her all through the
compact. That chap would come walking a little
way behind her all the time, with a contented eye
and a certain pride in his situation. It was a
diverting fancy as he lay there in the darkening room,
Vesta coming down the years a strong, handsome, proud
figure in the foreground, that man just far enough
behind her to give the impression as he passed that
he belonged to her entourage, but never quite
overtaking her.
Even so, the world might well envy
the man his position. Still, if a man should
happen along who could take the lead but
Vesta wouldn’t have him; she wouldn’t
surrender. It might cost her pain to go her way
with her pretty head up, her eyes on the road far
beyond, but she would go alone and hide her pain rather
than surrender. That would be Vesta Philbrook’s
way.
Myrtle, the negro woman, came in with
chicken broth. Vesta made a light for him to
sup by, protesting when he would sit up to help himself,
the spoon impalpable in his numb fingers, still swollen
and purple from the long constriction of his bonds.
Next morning Vesta came in arrayed
in her riding habit, her sombrero on, as she had appeared
the first time he saw her. Only she was so much
lovelier now, with the light of friendship and tender
concern in her face, that he was gladdened by her
presence in the door. It was as of a sudden burst
of music, or the voice of someone for whom the heart
is sick.
He was perfectly fine, he told her,
although he was as sore as a burn. In about two
days he would be in the saddle again; she didn’t
need to bother about riding fence, it would be all
right, he knew. His declaration didn’t
carry assurance. He could see that by the changing
cast of her face, as sensitive as still water to a
breathing wind.
She was wearing her pistol, and appeared
very competent with it on her hip, and very high-bred
and above that station of contention and strife.
He was troubled not a little at sight of her thus prepared
to take up the battles which she had renounced and
surrendered into his hands only yesterday. She
must have read it in his eyes.
“I’m only going to watch
the fence and repair it to keep the cattle in if they
cut it,” she said. “I’ll not
take the offensive, even if I see her them
cutting it; I’ll only act on the defensive, in
any case. I promise you that, Duke.”
She left him with that promise, before
he could commend her on the wisdom of her resolution,
or set her right on the matter of Grace Kerr.
From the way Vesta spoke, a man would think she believed
he had some tender feeling for that wild girl, and
the idea of it was so preposterous that he felt his
face grow hot.
He was uneasy for Vesta that day,
in spite of her promise to avoid trouble, and fretted
a good deal over his incapacitated state. His
shoulder burned where Tom Hargus’ knife had scraped
the bone, his wounded back was stiff.
Without this bodily suffering he would
have been miserable, for he had the sweat of his humiliation
to wallow in, the black cloud of his contemplated
vengeance across his mind in ever-deepening shadow.
On his day of reckoning he cogitated long, planning
how he was to bring it about. The law would not
justify him in going out to seek these men and shooting
them down where overtaken. Time and circumstance
must be ready to his hand before he could strike and
wipe out that disgraceful score.
It was not to be believed that they
would allow the matter to stand where it was; that
was a comforting thought. They would seek occasion
to renew the trouble, and push it to their desired
conclusion. That was the day to which he looked
forward in hot eagerness. Never again would he
be taken like a rabbit in a trap. He felt that,
to stand clear before the law, he would have to wait
for them to push their fight on him, but he vowed
they never would find him unprepared, asleep or awake,
under roof or under sky.
He would get Taterleg to oil up a
pair of pistols from among the number around the bunkhouse
and leave them with him that night. There was
satisfaction in the anticipation of these preparations.
Dwelling on them he fell asleep. He woke late
in the afternoon, when the sun was yellow on the wall,
the shadow of the cottonwood leaves quivering like
dragonflies’ wings.
On the little table beside his bed,
near his glass, a bit of white paper lay. He
looked at it curiously. It bore writing in ink
and marks as of a pin.
Just to say hello, Duke.
That was the message, unsigned, folded
as it had been pinned to the wire. Vesta had
brought it and left it there while he slept.
He drew himself up with stiff carefulness
and read it again, holding it in his fingers then
and gazing in abstraction out of the window, through
which he could pick up the landscape across the river,
missing the brink of the mesa entirely.
A softness, as of the rebirth of his
old romance, swept him, submerging the bitter thoughts
and vengeful plans which had been his but a few hours
before, the lees of which were still heavy in him.
This little piece of writing proved that Grace was
innocent of anything that had befallen him. In
the friendly good-will of her heart she thought him,
as she doubtless wished him, unharmed and well.
There was something in that girl better
than her connections would seem to guarantee; she
was not intractable, she was not beyond the influence
of generosity, nor deaf to the argument of honor.
It would be unfair to hold her birth and relationship
against her. Nobility had sprung out of baseness
many times in the painful history of human progress.
If she was vengeful and vindictive, it was what the
country had made her. She should not be judged
for this in measure harsher than Vesta Philbrook should
be judged. The acts of both were controlled by
what they believed to be the right.
Perhaps, and who knows, and why not?
So, a train of dreams starting and blowing from him,
like smoke from a censer, perfumed smoke, purging the
place of demons which confuse the lines of men’s
and women’s lives and set them counter where
they should go in amity, warm hand in warm hand, side
by side.