Chapter X: The Ordeal by Torture

I

The husband who shows suspicions of his wife gives everybody to hope that she is dissolute. I never showed or felt suspicion concerning the Señora de la Mancha. While a ship's pump runs foul there may be suspicion, but when the stream clears all doubts are at an end, and it is best to run her aground out of temptation. At Lonely Valley, the señora was free from temptation.

In summer, I earned my living as a riding man, in winter as a wolfer and trapper on the Montana ranges; but all the year round my earnings went to the land and fencing, the stock and implements, for our homestead in Lonely Valley.

I could not become an American citizen without perjuring my oath of allegiance to Her Brittanic Majesty, so my señora was sole owner of that homestead.

Until I could get a livelihood out of the ranch, she had to face the tragic loneliness of all pioneer women out on the frontier. And that was her probation, test of her womanhood, measure of her reality, if she would be my wife. I hoped that, with the advent of our son Ernesto, the woman would find her soul. For the soul has no life in itself, can not be born except in love for others, or can not live save in self-sacrifice.

For the first two years, I think, I was half-dead with pain, for I could not see the wilderness in which I rode, or feel the glamour of the sky-line, or taste the freshness of the air, or scent the perfume of the plains or mountains. Then came a third year, when poignant memories dulled down to bearing point, and I began to live.

All of us, I suppose, have known some usual hazards of battle, thirst, famine, cold, pestilence, fire, flood, storm or sickness, perils of the body appealing to our courage and leaving quite pleasant memories. I, for one, have found these things good for me, yet look back only with dread, with horror, to perils of the mind. There are sorrows of which even remembrance is screaming agony, and of that kind was my default from the mounted police. To forget or go mad, to fight devils and drive them out, to be reminded and have to fight again, to beat aside expedients of drugs, of drinking, of suicide, and face naked the terrors of memory--all that was part of my training, the best part, the ordeal by torture.

I had no hope. Unless the señora went blind, unable to see my faults, or I went deaf, unable to hear her tongue, the future had become impossible for both. Yet desperation is mistress of the impossible, and there was one way to make the señora's life an easier burden. I had found out what dollars were worth when I tried to borrow some. But I need not borrow. I was twenty-five, so it was time for my swindling trustees to render the Brat's estate and mine into my keeping. So at the end of my third year as a cowboy, after the beef round-up, I let the señora suppose I had gone to the hills with my traps, but spent every dollar on a passage by rail to New York. I lived on crackers. From Philadelphia, I earned my passage as a stiff on a cattle boat to Liverpool, thence tramped to Cardiff, and signed on as deck hand with the Bilbao tramp. Spain I crossed afoot, but at Madrid made myself known to friends of my house, who lent me clothes, and obtained my presentation to the Queen Regent. By Her Majesty's aid, I recovered all that was left of my stolen inheritance, a thousand dollars a year, with some small arrears. Then it was difficult to get away, but my return to Montana was made in comfort. At Fort Benton, I opened bank-accounts for my brother's share and my own, letting him know by letter of his succession. Brat used to address me by mail as Mr. Crucible.

So I put on the good old cowboy kit once more, saddled my horse and rode for Lonely Valley in the first of the winter storms.

II

Under a low gray sky lay patches of autumn snow on dun grass withered brown.

I looked up to the red sun setting above the snowy clouded flanks of the Rocky Mountains, and Lonely Valley opened at my feet where shadows of evening groped from hill to hill.

There had been a snow-storm all last night, a thaw all day. Only a few streaks of snow lay on the turf-roofed cabin, the barn and stack, and the plowed fire-guard. The door of the cabin creaked, swinging on its hinge straps, and in the yard a little wolf sat watching that, afraid to venture nearer.

I found the stable empty, as well as the cabin. Shoved in a corner by the cabin stove was Don Ernesto's cradle, which I had made of a soap-box with barrel staves for its rockers. That cradle was covered with dust. Out in the yard I found a tiny grave-mound, and at its head a cross made of two lathes bound with a bit of tape. Pinned to the head of the cross there was an envelope scrawled with the words, "My hart, 21 Sept. 1890."

When I sat down beside that cradle, I heard from the sodden eaves outside the cabin a steady drip and splash of water beating out the time. Great swinging stars across the dial of night can measure all eternity without a sound, but these drops of water, thudding, splashing, insistent, peevishly beating time, endlessly beating time, remorselessly, horribly beating time, had driven a woman mad.

Yes, even when I crushed my ears with both hands, still I could feel these splashes throbbing out the time, measuring out the punishment of time, remorseless, passionless discipline of time, allaying medicine of time, whereby the Great Physician cures ailing, restive, quivering but eternal souls. For time is only force, vibrant like sea-waves on a coast, beating against the feet of the eternal. Why should the woman, made for eternity, be so rebuked, so maddened by mere time as to dash her fists against the logs of the wall until they were stained with blood. The pain of her bleeding fists had eased the mind's revolving agony.

Unable to endure the feel of the room, I went out, and on the sodden ground saw tracks, an hour old, perhaps more. A horse, prosperous, fresh and well shod, had come by the trail from Canada. A man with the chain spur straps worn only by the police had walked across from the stable to the cabin, had seen the dusty cradle, had visited the grave.

And how the woman would play up with such a part as that! She would be discovered kneeling beside the cradle--and make a fine pretense of finding gum-sticks to kindle the stove. There would be ostentatious concealment of bleeding hands under her apron, the mourner's covered hands to be found, to drive my comrade crazy, storming about the Blackguard's villainy while he took charge of her affairs, appointing himself a woman's champion. Then she would prate about marriage oaths, and put up arguments for him to contradict, excuses for me which he would trample on, and hesitation provoking him to use force, most violently tearing her away--all his own fault, of course, and quite against her wishes.

And then the supper, with Mistress Violet waiting on the man, unable to touch a bite of food herself except on the sly, while she was getting his coffee or cooking another batch of her slapjacks.

While she did stage business, taking off the wedding-ring to lay it on the dresser, her eyes would devour the scarlet of his coat, the tan of his neck, her ears would wait for the clink of a spur when he moved, the creak of his great belt. How women undervalue what is given, and die for the things denied them! When her time came, that woman would stage-manage her own death, and neglect her own funeral to carry on a flirtation with the devil.

Oh, yes, my lady was too desperate with grief to pass another night within the haunted scene of her calamities. She would be abducted at once before the man had time to change his mind. She would interrupt her packing with floods of tears, while she stowed her own goods and everything of mine which might be saleable--my best riata, my breaking curb, spare gun, and buffalo coat, even my father's watch, and my mother's ring which I had trusted to her especial care.

The man took her mare and the pack-horse out of the pasture, and close by the house door he loaded her baggage with a squaw hitch, unhandily, with such a trampling about as would suffice for a pack-train. Then across his blunderings came her dainty tracks out from the doorway to where he helped her mount. And they two had ridden southward, to camp on wet ground within five miles or so, where I could see a faint, reflected light against Skull Rock.

It is curious to remember how all my thoughts were evil as long as I stayed in my cabin, or tracked about the yard where the very air was fouled by a taint of misery, of morbid brooding, of outrageous wrong. Yet in the stable, where I passed that night, my thoughts were innocent, my prayers went straight up like smoke on windless air, and I was comforted.

In quite the best of tempers, I woke up from my sleep in the hay, bathed, breakfasted, brought in a horse from pasture, saddled and rode out.

Where I had seen the glow from their supper fire, my señora was in camp with her deliverer, beside the hollowed flank of old Skull Rock, which towered three hundred feet above their bed place. They were at breakfast, taken by surprise, with no chance of catching their horses to escape.

It made me catch my breath to see the dear, familiar scarlet serge, the morning sun aflame on his belt, as the man rose to face me: my friend, Red Saunders--that Cockney sailor-tramp who, ever so long ago, brought news of the Burrows girl in Winnipeg when he came to engage for the service. I bore no malice toward him for rescuing a woman in distress, no ill-will toward the señora for thinking my long absence meant desertion. I took off my hat, as one always must to a woman, dismounted, because one does not ride on ground where people are encamped, then turned to my friend with outstretched hand.

"Am I excused?" I asked.

But Red stood back with his hand to his holster.

"Violet," he said hoarsely, "get abaft thish yer rock."

"Die first," she answered, with a laugh of defiance, "it's you that's scairt, not me."

So they betrayed guilt I had not suspected.

I sat down cross-legged before their sage-brush fire, and took a branch to light me a cigarette, while they stood watching, ill at ease, afraid, the woman making hysterical talk of the weather, the man judging distance to where the old Flukes mare grazed, jangling her bronze bell.

"Sit down, _compadre_," said I to the man. "We've got to talk this over. Won't you ask the señora to take a seat? Oh, pray be seated. Believe me, I admire your good taste in selecting so lovely a woman to run away with--your friend's wife, too."

It is when the tone is soft that words come to an edge.

Covering the woman with his body, Red fumbled his holster open.

"The service side-arms," said I, "are badly hung, and take too long to draw," and my Colt beckoned him gently to a seat.

The man's face was deathly now, beaded with sweat.

"The señora will realize," said I, "that the woman is never to blame, whatever happens. When love is dead, vows break of their own accord, and lovers part; the woman to seek such solace as she can find, the man--believe me, an imperfect brute--to wish her every kind of happiness. Is this understood?"

"'Ere, cut that out!" said Saunders. "It's fight I want, not talk!"

"Last night," said I, "yonder in Lonely Valley, I read the tracks, the sign, and wished--believe me--that I might be a better husband. Yes, I put up my little sad prayer to that effect. I fear I bore you."

The señora was crying.

"This lady," said I, "was quite right in leaving Lonely Valley."

Saunders hurled curses at me, insulting, defiant, challenging, goading.

"Quite so," said I. "Quite so. As you remark, there are three of us here, with only room for two. Your gun is loaded? You should be sure of that. The light is good, the distance--ten feet--quite ample. If you get up and lean against the rock behind you, it will steady the aim, for your hand is shaking, Red. Brace yourself up, man. For the honor of the force, don't funk now that you're caught."

The señora howled.

"The lady," said I, "was prepared for this, or she would not have brought you here. She will oblige us by dropping her handkerchief as a signal for us to fire."

Now Red was blind and deaf with passion, screaming at me to stand up. But to reply to an evil word with another taunt is to clean off dirt with mud.

"Alas," I said, "I'm timid. I prefer to sit, so I won't tumble down. The señora is requested to stand out of the line of fire." I watched her swaying upon her feet, rocking as though she would fall, as she stared at me, horror-struck.

"As the señora wishes," I said, "to take no part in this little disagreement, you, Mr. Saunders, will count three slowly, firing at the word, 'Three.'"

Red braced straight upright, silent, and as I looked up his gun sights into his eyes, I knew that the kick of the gun would throw the shot clear above me. "One!" he gasped. "Two!" and with a scream, the woman flung herself into his arms, guarding him with her body, destroying his aim.

I shouted, "Don't fire!" and lowered my gun.

"You bleedin' cur!" Red yelled. "I'm goin' to kill you!" And he wrestled with the woman to throw her clear.

I jumped to my feet, and showed Red my Colt, spinning the empty cylinder. "Not loaded, Red. You see? I didn't expect a fight."

I sheathed my Colt, then snatched Red's Enfield. "This one, you see, is loaded," and I spilled the cartridges, then battered his gun against the rock until the trigger smashed.

"You didn't understand me," I explained. "You betrayed your friend, you betrayed this unhappy woman in her trouble. How should you understand? I am fastidious, and do not grant to curs the honor of engaging me. There, you may have your gun. Catch!"

I walked to my horse and mounted. "You may understand," I said, "that this lady was my wife, but it seemed that love was buried, with a little cross on the grave. So the Señora la Mancha was free. But I was not free. She might have intended only a brief absence on business of her own, or perhaps a holiday. She might have been taken by force or lured away by fraud. She might still care for me, and she might return.

"I came here to get proof, to find out for certain which of us two she loves. It was into your arms, not mine, she threw herself. Is it not proved? The honor of guarding this lady is yours, not mine."

Then Red's eyes fell before mine, and he understood.

"Señora," I lifted my hat, and bowed to her for the last time on earth. "When Beauty murdered her sister Chastity, she was turned into a vulture.

"You may remember that Joe Chambers died for you, and Sarde lost his career, and I was ruined, as this poor man will be ruined, and others after him.

"You are too wondrous fair to be all one man's own, but God aids her who changes, as you will change.

"So I commend you--may you ride with God. _Adios_."

Swinging my horse, I spurred homeward, and once again was young.