Chapter XXIV: A Hard-Won Promise

For two or three seconds the girl and the policeman faced each other tensely in the soft moonlight; and then, as she met his steely gaze, her eyes narrowed, her lips drew apart, her breathing quickened. "Let go!" she panted.

With a twist and a wrench she tried to withdraw her slender wrist from his grasp. He shook his head with a slight movement, and his grip tightened. The restraining clutch seemed to madden her, and she fought wildly, furiously, to free herself. But disabled as he was, shaken by many hours of suffering, he still was stronger than she. Back and forth they struggled over the snowy ground, relentless antagonists, the girl desperately determined to escape, the man coldly resolved that she should not break away from him.

Neither spoke, and the soft night silence was disturbed only by the crunch of boots scuffling in the snow. In groping for a securer foothold, Dexter slipped and lurched forward, stumbling. The girl found her chance. Quick as a flash she doubled her arm and thrust her elbow into the corporal's shoulder; at the same time she tried with all her might to force him backwards, and wrest herself free from his grasp.

Dexter was conscious of a sharp, gritting sound, and a spasm of pain surged through his body and lapped about him like fire. He reeled for an instant on his feet, and an involuntary cry of anguish was wrung from his lips. A red haze filled his brain, while stars and moon and the white-gleaming mountainsides all seemed to swirl about him in inexplicable tangles. There came to him a horrible conviction that he was about to faint. He fought hard to keep his feet, to throw off the feeling of dizziness. As he stared into vacancy, trying to hold his wavering faculties, he was dimly aware that the girl still stood before him.

"I hurt you!" she was sobbing. "I didn't mean--I forgot!"

He looked at her wonderingly, and saw that her cheeks were wet with tears. "'S nothing," he said thickly. "'S all right!"

"It isn't!" Alison gasped. "To think that we--that you and I-- Oh, we mustn't--we mustn't!"

"You didn't think I wanted to, did you?" Dexter gazed at her with gradually clearing vision. "I told you what to expect," he went on in a husky voice, "and it's something that I've got to do. You know that, don't you?"

"You can be so hard," she said--"you who have been so gentle."

"It isn't I." The corporal drew a slow breath as his shoulders sagged hopelessly. "I want to let you go; but I haven't anything to do with it. I'd let you go if I could. Don't you understand?"

"You don't need to," she returned in a hushed voice. "You've won. I give you my word of honor not to--not to try to get away."

Dexter raised his head sharply, his glance searching into the depths of her misty eyes. "Why?" he asked.

"Because I could never endure going through a thing like this again," she faltered. "Let anything happen rather than that." She buried her face in her hands, and her shoulders shook with sobbing. "You and I hurting each other!" she finished incoherently. "Oh, no!

"Please!" she went on faintly, after a little silence. "I've promised, and you--you're hurting me still." She moved her wrist with a gentle tug, and he realized all at once that he was still holding her with a merciless, unbreakable grip.

"Alison!" he cried, his fingers instantly unlocking. "I'm sorry!" He looked at her in the moonlight, with eyes grown moist: seeing the forlorn, trembling little figure waiting submissively, feeling the soft appeal of the grave, wistful face that lifted slowly to meet his gaze. A wave of pitying tenderness swept upon him, and there came to him also a feeling of self-contempt, and for a minute he was almost ashamed of his service and the coat he wore. The knowledge that he had been forced to deal ruthlessly, cruelly, with such a woman as Alison Rayne, would always remain a galling remembrance.

He breathed unsteadily as he faced her, and, scarcely knowing what he was doing, he reached about her and circled her yielding shoulders with his arm. "Alison!" he whispered.

With a throbbing gasp the girl swayed towards him and pressed her flushed cheek against his jacket. "I'm tired," she said--"so tired."

For a long space the corporal stood without speech, holding her close, feeling her heart beating, intoxicated by the warmth and nearness of her presence, touching her fragrant hair with his cheek, thrilled to his innermost being by the sweetness of an ineffable moment, dreaming a dream that his reason told him could never come true.

But as he gazed yearningly over the girl's bowed head, he caught a glimpse of a rising star--the Dog Star--creeping up over the southern horizon. It was the star of spring, and it promised the opening of the passes, the speedy coming of comrades from the distant barracks of the police. And as his glance ranged down the shimmering sky, somehow the magical spell was broken, and sanity returned. He caught himself with a shivering movement, and his arm dropped swiftly to his side.

"I think we'd better be going," he said abruptly, with a strange gruffness in his voice. "If you're ready--?"

She averted her face with a quivering sigh, and her eyelids drooped and closed; but after an instant she flung up her head, as though to toss the straying tendrils of hair from her eyes; her shoulders and back straightened, and she turned to Dexter with a cool, inscrutable glance. "Whenever you say," she agreed.

The corporal appreciated the impossibility of going back to Saddle Mountain that night, but he bent his steps northward, with no definite place in view, feeling only the urge to leave this spot, to be on the move, to go somewhere else. He led the way through a scented growth of cedars, along the mountain slope, the girl following meekly at his heels. They had not gone far, however, before he realized how foolish it was to attempt to travel. He was exhausted, almost ready to collapse. Two or three times he slipped in the snow and swayed on his uncertain legs, and each time he managed somehow to recover himself and push onward. Alison pleaded with him to use the support of her shoulder, but he smiled and shook his head. "I'm all right," he insisted.

It was foolish talk, and he knew it. And at last he was forced to give in. They had climbed to a level shelf of ground, screened on all sides by dense brush, and after a wavering glance about him, Dexter decided to call a halt.

"We'll have to stop here," he said. "I can't go farther."

"Is there any need?" Alison asked.

"I don't know. I guess not. Anyhow, here we are." His legs seemed to double under him, and he sank down slowly, and sat in the snow. "The thickets would hide our fire if we wanted to build one," he observed.

Without a word she left him to hunt through the timber, and returned presently with her arms full of down wood. She built up a little teepee of dry sticks, lighted a match, and almost at once had a cheerful fire blazing in the sheltered covert. Then she unstrapped the pack she had brought with her, brought out a pair of blankets, and spread them on the ground.

"Now," she said with a troubled glance--"what are we going to do about your shoulder?"

"It seems to be the upper arm, near the shoulder socket," he observed, feeling with tentative fingers. "Do you suppose you could help me off with my jacket?"

She gave him the needed assistance, and afterwards slit his shirt sleeve with her knife, to expose the bruised, swollen flesh of his arm. "I don't see how you stood it," she murmured.

Dexter was examining the broken member with critical concern. "Simple fracture," was his diagnosis. "Splints and bandages, and we'll make out." He picked up three or four tough hardwood sticks that were left over from the fire kindling. "These'll do nicely." He regarded her questioningly. "Do you think you could hang on to my elbow while I pull? Or, if you'd rather, we'll strap my hand to a sapling, and I can do my stretching for myself."

"I think I can--help," she said. "We'll try."

The corporal made his few simple arrangements, instructed his companion in the part she was to play, and then nodded to indicate that he was ready. She took hold of his arm, closing her eyes, and holding tightly.

"Now!" he said. Gritting his teeth, he leaned backward and tugged with a strong, steady pull, and presently the fingers of his left hand told him that the fractured ends of bone were drawn back together. "The sticks!" he said faintly, sliding his hand forward to support his arm in its rigid position.

Under his directions the girl fixed the splints, and bound them securely in place with strips torn from the hem of a blanket. The job was finally accomplished to Dexter's satisfaction. For safety's sake the arm was swathed in outer wrappings and fastened securely against his chest.

"Ought to knit straight," he managed to say. He noticed the woe-begone expression of his companion's face, and attempted to laugh at her; but the effort was rather feeble, and his voice sounded strange in his own ears.

"Anything I can do to make you more comfortable?" she asked after a pause.

"No," he said. "You've been very fine about it all. Thank you." His glance strayed to the edge of the shadowy thicket. "I'll have to take it easy for a while--stay here. Those men--Crill and Stark and the rest--they might change their minds and come back. Find our trail, and come up here. Can't be helped if they do." His good hand made a fatalistic gesture. "Well, we'll have to take the chance."

Alison was watching from across the fire with shadowed eyes, and she suddenly noticed the stem of his pipe sticking from his jacket pocket. "You can't have smoked all day," she abruptly remarked. "Maybe you'd like to."

"Don't know but that I would," he said unsteadily.

She found his pouch, stuffed the pipe bowl with tobacco, and thrust the stem between his teeth. Dexter smiled gratefully, his eyes following her movements as she bent over the fire and picked up a lighted brand. But as he watched her come back to him, a glowing ember in her hand, something all at once seemed to go wrong with his eyesight. The girl, the firelight, the ragged line of the thickets, all became hazy and unreal, fading before him. He tried to hold his head erect, but the effort was too great. His eyelids closed like leaden weights, the pipe dropped from his mouth, blackness flooded upon him, and he toppled with a sigh and fell forward upon his face.