Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Forbes stayed three days longer; restless, wretched days whenever he thought of himself and his position; sunlit and serene whenever his facile temperament permitted him to forget them. He felt that he should be moving on, yet, having stopped, was at a loss how to proceed. Staying or going seemed equally difficult and dangerous. He had no precedents to guide his action. Nothing in his previous life and training had ever fitted him to be a fugitive. He was, as he often reminded himself, not a fugitive from justice, but from injustice; which is quite another matter, but after all hardly more comfortable. He began to suspect that he might have been a fool to come away, but was too dazed to decide intelligently whether he should go forward or back. He was still in this undecided frame of mind on the morning of the third day.

Wilson and his wife performed by turns the duties of telegraph operator, with the difference that whereas she received by sound, he took the messages on paper. On the evening of the second day of Forbes’s stay, Wilson, sitting alone in the office, received a message from Pueblo that startled him.

“Great Scott!” he said, and looked around to see if his wife was in sight. She was not, and on reflection he felt thankful. It would be better not to have her know. There were some things women, even plucky ones, made a fuss about. They were not fond of seeing criminals taken, for instance. So he answered the message, and having made the requisite copy locked that in the office safe. The long strip of paper, with its lines of dots and dashes, he crumpled carelessly and dropped into the waste-basket.

The next afternoon Mrs. Wilson, in the process of sweeping out the room, upset the waste-basket, and the crumpled piece of paper fell out and rolled appealingly to her feet. There were a dozen messages on the strip, but the last one riveted her eyes. She read it, then read it again; returned it to the waste-basket and sat down to think with folded hands in lap, her white face as inscrutable as the Sphinx. What should she do? Should she do anything?

The man might be a criminal or he might not. The fact that he was followed by detectives with papers for his arrest, who might be expected to arrive on the afternoon train, proved nothing to her mind. At the same time, criminal or none, if she interfered it might prove a dangerous experiment for her, and was sure to be a troublesome one. Why, then, should she interfere?

There was only one reason, but it was a reason rooted in the dumb depths of her being--the depths that this man’s bearing had so disturbed. He was of her people; on her side--though it was the side that had cast her off. The faint, sweet memories of her earliest years pleaded for him; the enduring bitterness of that later life which she had lived sometimes forgetfully, sometimes--but this was rare--prayerfully, sometimes with long-drawn sighs, seldom with tears, always in silence, fought for him; the inextinguishable class-spirit fought for him--and fought successfully.

She looked at the clock. It lacked an hour of train-time. What she did must be done quickly.

She went out to her husband, loafing on the platform.

“I’ve got to go to Connor’s, Jim. There’s no butter and no eggs.”

Wilson looked up carelessly. “All right,” he said.

She went into the back room which served as kitchen and store-room and provided herself with a basket, into which she put meat and bread. As she left the station, Wilson came around to the side and called to her:

“You’ll be back by supper-time, Ellen?”

The woman nodded, not looking back, and plunged on up the rocky spur.

When she found him, an hour later, Forbes was lying on a sunny slope indulging in the luxury of a day-dream. He was stretched out at full length, his arms under his head, the sketch-book that he had not used lying by his side unopened. For the life of him he could not feel that his position was serious, and the mountain-air and the sunshine intoxicated him.

“Once I get clear of this thing,” he was saying to himself, “I’ll come back here and buy me a ranch. Why should anybody who can live here want to live anywhere else?”

To him in this pastoral mood appeared the woman. There was that in her face which made him spring to his feet in vague alarm before she opened her lips.

“They’re after you,” she said. “You must be moving. Do you know what you want to do? What was your idea in stopping here? Have you any plans?”

He shook his head helplessly. “I thought perhaps--Mexico?”

“Mexico! But what you want just now is a place to hide in till they have given you up and gone along. After that you can think about Mexico. Come! I’ve heard the whistle. The train is in. You’re all right if they don’t start to look for you before supper-time, and I hardly think they will, for they’ll expect you to come in. But if anybody should stroll out to look over the country, this place is in sight from the knoll beside the station. Come!”

Stumbling, he ran along beside her.

“I swear to you,” he said between his labored breaths, “I did not do it. I am not unworthy of your help. But the evidence was damning and my friends told me to clear out. I may have been a fool to come--but it is done.”

Her calm face did not change.

“You must not waste your breath,” she warned. “We have two miles to go, and then I must walk to Connor’s and get back by six o’clock, or there’ll be trouble.”

They were working their way back toward the station, but going farther to the east. She explained briefly that their objective point was the nearest canyon. She knew a place there where any one would be invisible both from above and below. It was fairly accessible--“if you are sure-footed,” she warned. Here he might hide himself in safety for a day or two. She had brought him food. It would not be comfortable, but it was hardly a question of his comfort.

“You are very good,” said Forbes, simply. “I don’t want to give myself up now. You are very good,” he repeated, wondering a little why she should take the pains.

She made no answer, only hastened on.

To Forbes the way seemed long. His feet grew heavy and his head bewildered. Was this really he, this man who was in flight from justice and dependent on the chance kindness of a stranger for shelter from the clutches of the law?

They reached the canyon and began to make their way slowly down and along its side. The woman led fearlessly over the twistings of a trail imperceptible to him. He followed dizzily. Suddenly she turned.

“It is just around this rock that juts out in front. Is your head steady? It falls off sheer below and the path is narrow.”

“Go on,” he said, and set his teeth.

The path was steep as well as narrow, and the descent below was sheer and far. Mid-way around the rocks a mist came over his eyes. He put up his hand, stumbled, fell forward and out, was dimly aware that he had fallen against his guide.

A crash and cry awoke the echoes of the canyon. Then silence settled over it again--dead silence--and the night came down.

Their bodies were not found until three days later. When the Eastern detectives had identified their man they proposed his burial, but Wilson turned from the place with the muscles of his throat working with impotent emotion, and a grim look about his mouth that lifted his lips like those of a snarling beast.

“Carrion! Let it lie,” he said, with so dark a face that the men followed him silently, saying nothing more, and the two were left lying upon the ground which had drunk with impartial thirst the current that oozed from their jagged wounds.

The suspicions of primitive men are of a primitive nature. Those three days in which nothing had been seen or heard of his wife or Forbes had been a long agony to Wilson. And now that the end had come it seemed to him that his basest suspicions were confirmed. To his restricted apprehension there was but one passion in the world that could have sent his wife to this stranger’s side, to guard and save him at her cost. So thinking, it seemed to him that swift justice had been done.

And that he might not forget, nor let his fierce thoughts of her grow more tender, the next day when the train had gone eastward and he was left alone to his desolation he took his brush and laboriously wrote across the end of the high platform, in great letters for all men to see and wonder at, the phrase he thought her fitting epitaph:

THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH.

And there it still stands, remaining in its stupid, brutal accusation the sole monument on earth of a woman’s ended life.

HARDESTY’S COWARDICE