His voice was so sharp and insistent, so changed, that Buckmaster turned from the doorway and came back into the room.

"What's the use of my hearin'? You want me not to kill Greevy, because of that gal. What's she to me?"

"Nothing to you, Buck, but Clint was everything to her."

The mountaineer stood like one petrified.

"What's that--what's that you say? It's a d.a.m.n lie!"

"It wasn't cards--the quarrel, not the real quarrel. Greevy found Clint kissing her. Greevy wanted her to marry Gatineau, the lumber-king. That was the quarrel."

A snarl was on the face of Buckmaster. "Then she'll not be sorry when I git him. It took Clint from her as well as from me." He turned to the door again.

"But, wait, Buck, wait one minute and hear--"

He was interrupted by a low, exultant growl, and he saw Buckmaster's rifle clutched as a hunter, stooping, clutches his gun to fire on his prey.

"Quick, the spy-gla.s.s!" he flung back at Sinnet. "It's him, but I'll make sure."

Sinnet caught the telescope from the nails where it hung, and looked out toward Juniper Bend. "It's Greevy--and his girl, and the half-breeds," he said, with a note in his voice that almost seemed agitation, and yet few had ever seen Sinnet agitated. "Em'ly must have gone up the trail in the night."

"It's my turn now," the mountaineer said, hoa.r.s.ely, and, stooping, slid away quickly into the undergrowth.

Sinnet followed, keeping near him, neither speaking. For a half mile they hastened on, and now and then Buckmaster drew aside the bushes, and looked up the valley, to keep Greevy and his _bois brulees_ in his eye. Just so had he and his son and Sinnet stalked the wapiti and the red deer along these mountains; but this was a man that Buckmaster was stalking now, with none of the joy of the sport which had been his since a lad; only the malice of the avenger. The l.u.s.t of a mountain feud was on him; he was pursuing the price of blood.

At last Buckmaster stopped at a ledge of rock just above the trail. Greevy would pa.s.s below, within three hundred yards of his rifle. He turned to Sinnet with cold and savage eyes. "You go back," he said. "It's my business. I don't want you to see. You don't want to see, then you won't know, and you won't need to lie. You said that the man that killed Clint ought to die. He's going to die, but it's none o' your business. I want to be alone. In a minute he'll be where I kin git him--plumb. You go, Sinnet--right off. It's my business."

There was a strange, desperate look in Sinnet's face; it was as hard as stone, but his eyes had a light of battle in them.

"It's my business right enough, Buck," he said, "and you're not going to kill Greevy. That girl of his has lost her lover, your boy. It's broke her heart almost, and there's no use making her an orphan too. She can't stand it. She's had enough. You leave her father alone--you hear me, let up!" He stepped between Buckmaster and the ledge of rock from which the mountaineer was to take aim.

There was a terrible look in Buckmaster's face. He raised his single-barrelled rifle, as though he would shoot Sinnet; but, at the moment, he remembered that a shot would warn Greevy, and that he might not have time to reload. He laid his rifle against a tree swiftly.

"Git away from here," he said, with a strange rattle in his throat. "Git away quick; he'll be down past here in a minute."

Sinnet pulled himself together as he saw Buckmaster s.n.a.t.c.h at a great clasp-knife in his belt. He jumped and caught Buckmaster's wrist in a grip like a vise.

"Greevy didn't kill him, Buck," he said. But the mountaineer was gone mad, and did not grasp the meaning of the words. He twined his left arm round the neck of Sinnet, and the struggle began, he fighting to free Sinnet's hand from his wrist, to break Sinnet's neck. He did not realize what he was doing. He only knew that this man stood between him and the murderer of his boy, and all the ancient forces of barbarism were alive in him.

Little by little they drew to the edge of the rock, from which there was a sheer drop of two hundred feet. Sinnet fought like a panther for safety, but no sane man's strength could withstand the demoniacal energy that bent and crushed him. Sinnet felt his strength giving. Then he said, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper: "Greevy didn't kill him. I killed him, and--"

At that moment he was borne to the ground with a hand on his throat, and an instant after the knife went home.

Buckmaster got to his feet and looked at his victim for an instant, dazed and wild; then he sprang for his gun. As he did so the words that Sinnet had said as they struggled rang in his ears, "_Greevy didn't kill him; I killed him_!"

He gave a low cry and turned back toward Sinnet, who lay in a pool of blood.

Sinnet was speaking. He went and stooped over him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LITTLE BY LITTLE THEY DREW TO THE EDGE OF THE ROCK]

"Em'ly threw me over for Clint," the voice said, huskily, "and I followed to have it out with Clint. So did Greevy, but Greevy was drunk. I saw them meet. I was hid. I saw that Clint would kill Greevy, and I fired. I was off my head--I'd never cared for any woman before, and Greevy was her father. Clint was off his head too. He had called me names that day--a cardsharp, and a liar, and a thief, and a skunk, he called me, and I hated him just then. Greevy fired twice--wide. He didn't know but what he killed Clint, but he didn't. I did. So I tried to stop you, Buck--"

Life was going fast, and speech failed him; but he opened his eyes again and whispered: "I didn't want to die, Buck. I am only thirty-five, and it's too soon; but it had to be. Don't look that way, Buck. You got the man that killed him--plumb. But Em'ly didn't play fair with me--made a fool of me, the only time in my life I ever cared for a woman. You leave Greevy alone, Buck, and tell Em'ly for me I wouldn't let you kill her father."

"You--Sinnet--you, you done it! Why, he'd have fought for you. You--done it--to him--to Clint!"

Now that the blood-feud had been satisfied, a great change came over the mountaineer. He had done his work, and the thirst for vengeance was gone.

Greevy he had hated, but this man had been with him in many a winter's hunt. His brain could hardly grasp the tragedy--it had all been too sudden.

Suddenly he stooped down. "Sinnet," he said, "ef there was a woman in it, that makes all the difference. Sinnet, ef--"

But Sinnet was gone upon a long trail that led into an illimitable wilderness. With a moan the old man ran to the ledge of rock. Greevy and his girl were below.

"When there's a woman in it--!" he said, in a voice of helplessness and misery, and watched her till she disappeared from view. Then he turned, and, lifting up in his arms the man he had killed, carried him into the deeper woods.

TO-MORROW

I

"My, nothing's the matter with the world to-day! It's so good it almost hurts."

She raised her head from the white petticoat she was ironing, and gazed out of the doorway and down the valley with a warm light in her eyes and a glowing face. The snow-tipped mountains far above and away, the fir-covered, cedar-ranged foothills, and, lower down, the wonderful maple and ash woods, with their hundred autumn tints, all merging to one soft, red tone, the roar of the stream tumbling down the ravine from the heights, the air that braced the nerves like wine--it all seemed to be part of her, the pa.s.sion of life corresponding to the pa.s.sion of living in her.

After watching the scene dreamily for a moment, she turned and laid the iron she had been using upon the hot stove near. Taking up another, she touched it with a moistened finger to test the heat, and, leaning above the table again, pa.s.sed it over the linen for a few moments, smiling at something that was in her mind. Presently she held the petticoat up, turned it round, then hung it in front of her, eying it with critical pleasure.

"_To-morrow!_" she said, nodding at it. "You won't be seen, I suppose, but _I'll_ know you're nice enough for a queen--and that's enough to know."

She blushed a little, as though some one had heard her words and was looking at her, then she carefully laid the petticoat over the back of a chair. "No queen's got one whiter, if I do say it," she continued, tossing her head.

In that, at any rate, she was right, for the water of the mountain springs was pure, the air was clear, and the sun was clarifying; and little ornamented or frilled as it was, the petticoat was exquisitely soft and delicate. It would have appealed to more eyes than a woman's.

"To-morrow!" She nodded at it again and turned again to the bright world outside. With arms raised and hands resting against the timbers of the doorway, she stood dreaming. A flock of pigeons pa.s.sed with a whir not far away, and skirted the woods making down the valley. She watched their flight abstractedly, yet with a subconscious sense of pleasure. Life--they were Life, eager, buoyant, belonging to this wild region, where still the heart could feel so much at home, where the great world was missed so little.

Suddenly, as she gazed, a shot rang out down the valley, and two of the pigeons came tumbling to the ground, a stray feather floating after. With a startled exclamation she took a step forward. Her brain became confused and disturbed. She had looked out on Eden, and it had been ravaged before her eyes. She had been thinking of to-morrow, and this vast prospect of beauty and serenity had been part of the pageant in which it moved. Not the valley alone had been marauded, but that "To-morrow," and all it meant to her.

Instantly the valley had become clouded over for her, its glory and its grace despoiled. She turned back to the room where the white petticoat lay upon the chair, but stopped with a little cry of alarm.

A man was standing in the centre of the room. He had entered stealthily by the back door, and had waited for her to turn round. He was haggard and travel-stained, and there was a feverish light in his eyes. His fingers trembled as they adjusted his belt, which seemed too large for him.

Mechanically he buckled it tighter.

"You're Jenny Long, ain't you?" he asked. "I beg pardon for sneakin' in like this, but they're after me, some ranchers and a constable--one o' the Riders of the Plains. I've been tryin' to make this house all day. You're Jenny Long, ain't you?"

She had plenty of courage, and, after the first instant of shock, she had herself in hand. She had quickly observed his condition, had marked the candor of the eye and the decision and character of the face, and doubt of him found no place in her mind. She had the keen observation of the dweller in lonely places, where every traveller has the potentialities of a foe, while the door of hospitality is opened to him after the custom of the wilds. Year in, year out, since she was a little girl and came to live here with her Uncle Sanger when her father died--her mother had gone before she could speak--travellers had halted at this door, going North or coming South, had had bite and sup, and bed, maybe, and had pa.s.sed on, most of them never to be seen again. More than that, too, there had been moments of peril, such as when, alone, she had faced two wood-thieves with a revolver, as they were taking her mountain-pony with them, and herself had made them "hands-up," and had marched them into a prospector's camp five miles away.

She had no doubt about the man before her. Whatever he had done, it was nothing dirty or mean--of that she was sure.