Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 1185
Dick Sloan’s neighbor, the young miner, detached himself from the crowd and hurriedly strode out to Kalispel.
“Better give me elbow room,” warned Kalispel, somberly.
But the young fellow came on unheeding.
“Emerson, it’s over,” he said, hoarsely, his face pale and set. “Sloan died without comin’ to.”
“No surprise to me. I gave him up.... An’ how’d Ruth take it?”
“Game as they come. She’s with me. We was huntin’ you.”
“Hang on to her an’ get her home.”
“I’ll hang, all right, but I’ll never get her off the street,” declared the young man. “She’s goin’ to see it!”
“Let the crowd know that Sloan’s dead.”
“I’ve already sprung it.... They’re with you, Kal.”
It did not take a long while for the tragic death of Nugget’s champion and would-be husband to become known to all. It flowed from lip to lip. And it was the last spark that precipitated an unprecedented explosion. Mutterings and curses augmented direct calls to Kalispel.
“We’re with you, old Montana!” yelled a miner.
“Bore him low down, Kal!”
“Go in after the yellow dog!”
“If you want us to rout him out — say the word!”
Such outspoken ejaculations served to unleash the passion of the mob. Men would shout to Kalispel and then go into a saloon for another drink. That Borden did not appear wore on the unruly miners. The raw good humor of the many subtly changed. They merged closer and closer to Kalispel, forming a dense circle behind him across the street. And gradually they edged him foot by foot toward Borden’s hall. This largest building in the town was the last upon the street, and presented for once a lonely aspect. Doors and windows appeared like dark, vacant eyes. It stood isolated, apparently deserted.
The impatient mob, thirsty for blood, switched its vociferous acclaim of Kalispel to a sinister call for Borden.
“Come out, Borden!”
“Hyar, you skunk! Mac has squealed an’ Sloan is dead! Come on!”
“Borden, we all want to see you!”
“Borden, it’s your only chance!”
“You’re done in Thunder City!”
“Walk out like a man, you — !”
“An’ let us see daylight through yore gizzard! Haw! Haw!”
“Come out, Borden, or get run out!”
A leather-lunged miner bawled: “Smoke him out!”
A roar attested to the mood of the watchers.
“Burn him out!”
And when they stopped to catch their breath the stentorian-voiced miner rent the pregnant air.
“Borden come out an’ fight — or we’ll lynch you!”
The cry, “Lynch him!” was caught up and carried along like a wave, until Masters ran out to confront the crowd. He held his hands high to quiet them.
“Steady, men,” he yelled, authoritatively. “Give Emerson time! — We don’t want a lynchin’. An’ fire might destroy the town.... I’ll guarantee to fetch Borden out!”
Above the murmuring roar cut out a sharp high voice: “All right, Sheriff. But no arrest goes hyar. We want to see Borden shot or swing!”
Masters sped swiftly to confront Kalispel.
“fhet gang’s in an ugly mood,” he said, with a gleam in his gray eyes. “They might set fire to Borden’s place. An’ thet’d be hell. These shacks would burn like tinder.... Emerson, you better let me go in after Borden.”
“He’s hid in there,” warned Kalispel. “He might shoot you.”
“I’ll take thet risk. An’ if I get to him, I’ll make him see thet shore as Gawd made little apples this mob will burn him out an’ hang him. An’ I’ll agree to protect him from them if he kills you. Thet’ll fetch him. It’s his only chance.”
“Suppose he bobs up with a rifle?” queried Kalispel, darkly.
“Wal, if he’s thet much of a cheat I’ll bore him myself,” replied the Texan.
“Masters, I don’t like the deal. It’s plumb good of you. But it’ll queer you with Leavitt. An’ Leavitt is strong — we don’t savvy how strong.”
“To hell with Leavitt. One at a time!... Do I go?”
“Shore. An’ thanks, old-timer.”
Masters swung away, pulling out a white handkerchief which he began to wave. The crowd yelled both encouragingly and derisively. They did not wholly trust this action of the sheriff’s.
It was more than two hundred yards from where Kalispel stood to the dance-hall. Masters slowed his pace. When he got halfway there he shouted, and went on. He had nerve, but undoubtedly he calculated that Borden would see him and grasp at anything to avert a meeting with Kalispel. Masters then increased his gait, as if the suspense was less insupportable than the risk. He still waved the white handkerchief. And when he got within a hundred feet of the hall, Borden suddenly appeared in the doorway with a leveled rifle.
“Halt!” he yelled.
Masters lowered his flag of truce with suggestive violence. His clear voice rang even to Kalispel.
“Air you drunk or crazy? Drop yore rifle The mob back there will burn you alive or hang you, shore.”
“What you want?” yelled Borden, stridently, and lowered the weapon. Masters went forward then, talking fast, but Kalispel could not distinguish what he said. Masters approached to within thirty steps of Borden, who still held his rifle threateningly. The Texan might wisely halt there and deliver his proposition and leave, thought Kalispel. Masters’ posture did not lose dignity, but his few gestures were singularly expressive of the finality of a cold ultimatum. He whirled on his heel, and swerving out of line to the left, he strode rapidly up the street toward the crowd.
Kalispel watched that rifle, and if it had started for a level he meant to leap aside for cover. He would not take any chances with a hound like Borden. The crowd seemed locked in suspense, waiting, with eyes on the two principals. Into this oppressive lull the leather-lunged miner projected his raw yell:
“Take your choice, Borden!..”
And the shout that burst from the crowd proclaimed that every watcher divined what the choice was — to drop the long-range rifle and come out like a man, or use it and swing by the neck. Certainly Borden understood, for the echo of that taunting decree had not ceased, when he lifted the rifle high to fling it down. The metallic crash of its contact with the flagstones came plainly to the listening ears.
Even at that distance Borden’s swarthy visage gleamed.
“Wal, Emerson, he’s comin’ an’ we’re gamblin’ you’ll bore him low down in the middle,” yelled the wag from the crowd.
Borden whipped out two guns, and lowering his head, like a bull about to charge, he leaped out of the doorway.
“Spread out everybody!” boomed the miner with the clarion voice. “The ball’s opened!”
Kalispel started to stride forward, drawing his gun. Borden gained the center of the street and, like a man propelled by irresistible force from behind, came lurching on. He threw forward the gun in his left hand and fired. The ball whizzed by Kalispel, glanced on the gravel behind, and brought a shrill yell from some person in the crowd. Shouts and trample of feet attested to the splitting of the mob to both sides of the street.
Kalispel kept on swiftly. Borden halted. His gun flamed red and cracked. Another bullet hissed uncomfortably close to Kalispel’s body. Far beyond it struck up dust and ricocheted along the street. Again Borden strode on and again his big gun boomed. Then bang! bang! bang! he emptied the gun in his left hand, as if driven to be free of it. He flung it aside and raised the one in his right.
Kalispel stopped to turn his side toward his adversary, upon whom he brought his gun to bear. The distance was far over a hundred yards. Kalispel froze in his aim and pulled trigger.
Everybody heard the sudden impact of that bullet. It had the soft, thudding sound of lead entering flesh. Borden’s hurried stride appeared blocked as if by a battering-ram. He uttered a choking cry, but he strung like a whipcord and began to shoot. Deliberate and cold, Kalispel took time, well knowing that this was no game for snap-shooting, and aimed as at a target, while Borden’s first and second bullets passed whistling by Kalispel, one on each side. Kalispel shot. And Borden was knocked flat, as if by a hard fist. In frenzied action he sprang up like a bent willow released, and shot wildly. But something about Kalispel’s posture, his statue-like immobility, his dark, terrible calm, pierced Borden’s chaotic brain. He essayed to take his cue from his adversary. Dropping on one knee he rested his elbow on the other, and steadying his gun, took slow and careful aim.
A suspended breath seemed to wait in the onlookers. A woman screamed as if she could not stand the deliberation for which Kalispel was famed.
The silence burst to the ringing crack of his gun. Borden’s rigidity underwent a break. His gun fell to explode. And simultaneously he appeared to be batted to one side, as by an invisible force. On hands and knees, his back to the crowd, he wrestled himself almost erect, then suddenly plunged down on his face to kick the dust and lie still.
Standing alone in the street, with the breathless crowd beginning to stir, Kalispel stood over his prostrate enemy to watch him die. It was one of the prerogatives of gunmen, to be in at the death, and owed its origin to the incentive to make sure that the enemy did die. In Kalispel’s case it was an ordeal, where ruthlessness gave way to a sickening remorse.
Borden lay beyond his last convulsion, conscious.
“Nugget?” he tried to articulate. She was his last thought, one seemingly divorced from the hard motive that had brought him to this pass. It might have been a revelation of love.
“I’ll look after her,” replied Kalispel. And Borden died with something like relief on his ghastly face.
Kalispel hurried down the street to avoid the surging crowd. He made his way out of town and down the stream to the bend, and up to the sage slope where he had often gone. It seemed almost a physical action to dismiss Borden from his consciousness. Then he was solely concerned with the revolt in heart and brain, the battle of returning normalcy with the primeval instinct of self-preservation, which was to kill or be killed. He had to make slow shift of that here, because there was Ruth to think of. And his first thought of her was that the name Nugget died with Borden.
The hour was past sunset, crimson and gold, tranquil and sad. The relentlessness of man, with his love, his hate, his avarice, did not intrude here. The stream murmured on, unmindful of the little lives of men, and the great walls frowned broodingly down. The shadows came and deepened to purple. High up on the rugged slope a wolf wailed his wild note of loneliness. Nature had been a panacea for Kalispel’s ills, from the old recovery after a cowboy debauch to the heartbreak he had sustained recently, and now to the repetition of the cruel retrogression of blood-lust.
Dusk fell. He could tarry no longer. A chill air floated down the canyon. Nighthawks and bats were fluttering. He left the fragrant sage bench and retracing his steps, crossed the bridge to Sloan’s tent. Several miners, and Barnes, the kindly partner of Sloan, met Kalispel and informed him that they had just buried Sloan on his own claim, in the deep hole where he had dug for gold and had found a grave.
“Barnes, I’ll be takin’ the girl up to my cabin,” said Kalispel. “Sloan’s claims an’ tools are yours.... An’ I won’t forget your friendship for him — an’ your goodness to her.”
“Aw — thet’s nothin’,” replied Barnes, haltingly. He, like the others was, for the moment, inhibited by Kalispel’s presence.
Kalispel went into the tent. The interior was almost too dark to discern objects.
“Ruth,” he called, “where are you?”
“Kal!” she cried, gladly, and her light feet pattered on the floor. He made out her pale form against the gloom. Then she was clinging to him, with her head pressed against his breast.
“Wal?... Don’t shake so, child,” he said, gently, as he held her. “Brace up. You’ve seen a lot of hard doin’s, though not so close to home.... Barnes told me they’d buried Dick right here. I reckon that was the thing — to get it over.” -
“Yes. I told them to,” she replied.
“Can’t you stand on your feet?” he asked, finding that he had to hold her.
“My legs are — shaky.”
“But, Ruth — you’re the gamest kid. This is gold-diggin’s life, you know. Shore it is awful tough, your losin’ Dick — but it’s done — it’s over, an’ you got to brace.”
“Kal, I’m terribly sorry about Dick,” she whispered, and then suddenly she clutched him, “but — but it was your fight with Borden — that knocked me out.”
“Aw! — Didn’t Barnes drag you off the street?”
“I stayed. I seemed possessed of a thousand devils while you waited for Borden.... Oh, how I wanted you to kill him! And I knew you would. I gloated over the thought. The crowd was for you and that thrilled me.... But when Borden plunged out, like a mad bull — then I went to pieces. I suddenly realized — he might kill you, too. And I nearly died of terror.... I saw it all.... Then I collapsed.”
“Ah-huh.... Wal!” ejaculated Kalispel, strangely affected by her poignant words and clinging hands. She was only a child, this dance-hall girl, and he was her only friend. “Ruth,” he got out, at length, “I’m takin’ you up to my cabin.”
“Kal! — I’m glad, but I can’t walk.”
“I’ll carry you.” He lifted her and swung her around comfortably against his shoulder, and edged sideways through the door.
“Barnes,” he said to the waiting miner, “would you be good enough to have your wife pack up all Ruth’s clothes an’ things, an’ bring them up to my cabin?”
“Shore’ll be glad to,” was the reply.
Kalispel took the trail up the stream. For the most part it was dark, though he could readily see the pale path winding between the shacks and the creek. Here and there lamps cast a yellow glow through doors or canvas, and camp fires flickered, silhouetting burly, red-shirted miners at their evening meal.
“Kal, I’ll walk now,” said Ruth, after they had gone a long way.
“You might stumble in the dark.”
“How strong you are! — But I am heavy, and you must be tired.”
“Wal, you were like thistle down at first. An’ I’m bound to admit you’re not quite as light as that now. But I can pack you.”
When Kalispel passed the Blair cabin, almost under its high porch, he saw a light and heard Sydney’s contralto voice. How strange to pass by Sydney this way in the darkness with a girl in his arms — a girl whose life and happiness henceforth must be his care! He tightened his hold on the slender form in his arms. And he was unable for the moment to straighten out his labyrinthine thoughts or comprehend his conflicting emotions.
They passed the last shack. Far across the bench flickered a camp fire that was Jake’s. Kalispel had been increasingly aware that Ruth’s head had slipped from his shoulder closer and closer until her cheek rested against his neck. It felt warm and moist. She was crying.
Jake was stirring around a camp fire outside the cabin. He heard Kalispel’s footsteps and straightened up to peer out into the darkness.
“It’s, me, Jake.”
“Aw! — Shore glad, son. I saw your meetin’ with Borden. All same Kalispel Montana! — Suited me fine.... Hey! what you packin’?”
“What you think? A sack of flour?”
“My Gawd — a girl! — If you don’t beat the Dutch!”
“Shut up, an’ light the lamp in the cabin.”
Jake knocked things over in his hurry to execute that order. He stared with rolling ox eyes at the white-faced, golden-haired girl Kalispel laid on the couch. Ruth sat up.
“I’m not an invalid,” she said, with a wan smile. “Howdy, Jake. Your brother has packed me up here.”
“I see,” replied Jake, with a broad grin. Ruth’s looks quickly found the hearts of men. “I reckon you’re the gurl—”
“Ruth,” interrupted Kalispel, shortly. “Jake, put a canvas up outside the cabin. An’ take your bed out. You an’ me will bunk together.”
“So our family’s increased permanent?” rejoined Jake, beamingly.
“Our family’s shore increased permanent,” drawled Kalispel. “Rustle now, an’ get some supper first.”
When Jake went out, whistling, Kalispel turned to the girl, sensing full well that he was in for what he knew not. He caught the recession of a vivid blush which left her face white, and accentuated the cornflower blue of her eyes. He had never met such an earnest, lovely light in a human’s gaze.
“Kal, let’s have it out now,” she said.
“Out! Have what out?” he queried, blankly.
“This deal.”
“Gosh, child—”
“Don’t call me child. I am a woman, Kal.”
“How old?” asked Kalispel, sparring for time.
“Eighteen in years — but years are nothing.”
“So old? You’re short huntin’ Methuselem.... An’ what deal is this you’re rarin’ about? Fetchin’ you to my cabin? What else could I do? Just because Borden has gone to join the angels is no reason to believe you’d be safe alone.”
“No. I heard what you promised Dick.”
“Wal?”
“You said, ‘I’ll take care of her, Dick’!... What did you mean by that?”
“I meant what I said,” declared Kalispel, bluntly, as if his word had been questioned.
“You’ll be my friend — my brother — as Dick was?”
“No. I reckon I didn’t mean that.”
“What then?”
“Didn’t Dick intend to marry you?”
“Yes.”
“Wal, that’s what I meant.”
“You’d marry me — Kal?” she cried.
“Why, shore! What kind of a hombre do you take me for?”
“You are the most wonderful... But, Kal, you’re in love with Sydney Blair!”
