"And leave Charlie to his--fate?" suggested the girl.

The man nodded.

"That's what my head says."

"And your heart?"

Helen's gray eyes were very tender as they looked into the troubled face beside her.

Bill's broad shoulders lifted, with the essence of nonchalance.

"Oh, that says get right up, and shut off the life of every feller at the main who tries to do Charlie any hurt."

A sudden emotion stirred the girl at his side, and she turned her head away lest he should see that which her eyes betrayed.

"The head is the wisest," she said without conviction.

But she was wholly unprepared for the explosion her words invoked.

"Then the head can be--d.a.m.ned!" Bill cried fiercely. And in a moment the shadows seemed to fall from about him. He suddenly sprang up and stood towering before her. "I knew if I talked to you about things you'd fix me right," he cried, with pa.s.sionate enthusiasm. "I tell you my head's just a fool thing that generally b.u.t.ts in all wrong. You've just made me see right. You're that wise and clever. And--and when I get fixed like I've been, I'll always need to come to you. Say, there isn't another girl in all the world as bright as you. I'm going to stop right here, and I'll smash every blamed policeman to a pulp if he lays hands on Charlie. Charlie may be what he is. I don't care. If he needs help I'm here to give it. I tell you if Charlie goes to the penitentiary I go with him. If they hang him, they'll hang me, too.

That's how your sister feels. That's how I feel. That's how----"

"I feel, too," put in Helen quickly. "Oh, you great Big Brother Bill,"

she went on, in her sudden joy and enthusiasm. "You're the loyalest and best thing I ever knew. And--and if you aren't careful I'll--I'll give you one of my daubs after all. Come along. Let's go and look at the new church. Let's go and see how all the pious, whited sepulchers of this valley are getting on with their soul-saving business. I--I couldn't paint a thing to-day."

CHAPTER XX

IN THE FAR REACHES

Charlie Bryant's horse was a good one, far better than a rancher of his cla.s.s might have been expected to ride. It was a big, compact animal with the long sloping pasterns of a horse bred for speed. It possessed those wonderful rounded ribs, which seemed to run right up to quarters let down like those of a racehorse. It was a beautiful creature, and as it chafed under the gentle, restraining hand of its rider its full veins stood out like ropes, and its shoulders and flanks were a-lather of sweat.

They were traveling over a broken country a few miles up the valley.

There was no road of any sort, only cattle tracks, which, amid the wild tangle of bush, made progress difficult and slow.

The man's eyes were brooding, and his effeminate face was overcast as he rode. The wild scene about him went for nothing, even to his artist eyes. His thoughts were full to the brim with things that held them concentrated to the exclusion of all else. And, for all he thought, or saw, or felt, of his surroundings, he might have been footing the superheated plains of a tropical desert.

He was thinking of a woman. She was never really out of his thoughts, and his heart was torn with the hopelessness of the pa.s.sion consuming him. No overshadowing threat could give him the least disquiet, no physical fear ever seemed to touch him. But every thought of the one woman whose image was forever before him could sear and lacerate his heart almost beyond endurance.

He had no blame for her at any time. He had no protest to offer that her love, the love of a wife for a husband, was utterly beyond his reach. How could it be otherwise? He knew himself so well for what he was, he had so subtle an appreciation of all he must lack in the eyes of a big spirited, human woman, that, to his troubled mind, the situation as it was had almost become inevitable.

Now as he rode, he thought, too, of his newly arrived brother, and the hatefulness of personal comparison made him almost cringe beneath their flagellations. Bill, so big of heart and body, so lacking in the many abilities which go to make up the man in men's eyes, but which count for so little in a woman's, so strong in the buoyancy and fearlessness that was his. He felt he could almost hate him for these things. Bill had not one ugly thought or feeling in the whole of his nature. Temptation? He barely understood the word, because he was so naturally wholesome.

But more than these things it was the memory of that which, since his earliest youth, had looked back at him out of the mirror, that robbed Charlie Bryant of so much peace now. That, and the weakness which seemed to fit the vision so well. Whereas Bill, this child of the same parents, was all that might be, his own form and manner made him shudder as he thought of them. Then there was that devil haunting him, and from whom there seemed to be no escape.

How could he ever hope that Kate Seton would do more than lend her strong, pitying affection for his support? How could she ever look to him for support and guidance? His sense of proportion was far too acute to permit so grievous an error.

In some perverse way his mentality was abnormally acute. He saw with eyes which were inspired by a brain capable of vast achievement, but which possessed none of that equipoise so necessary for a well-balanced manhood. And it told him all that, and forced conviction upon him. It told him so much of that which no man should believe until it be thrust upon him overwhelmingly by the bitter experiences of life. His whole brain was permeated by a pessimism forced upon him by a morbid introspection, resulting from an undue appreciation of his own physical and moral shortcomings.

Yet with it all he bore no resentment except against the perversity of such a lot as his. And in this lay the germ of a self-pity, which is a specter to be dreaded more than anything else in life. While deploring the conditions under which he must live, robbed, as he believed he was robbed, of the possibility of winning for himself all those things which belong to the manhood really existing beneath his exterior of denial, he yet felt he would rather have his bread divided than be denied that trifling food which made it possible for him to go on living.

Kate's tender pity, Kate's warmth of affection, an affection she might even bestow upon some pet animal, was preferable to that she should shut him entirely out of her life. It left him free to drink in the dregs of happiness, although the nectar itself was denied him.

He could accept such conditions. Yes, he could almost be satisfied with them, since he believed no others to be forthcoming. But, and a dark fury of jealousy flooded his heart as he thought, he could not witness another drinking the nectar while he was condemned to the dregs. He felt that that way lay madness. That way was more than could be endured. He could endure all else, whatever life had in store for him, but the thought that he must stand by while Kate be given to another was more than his fate, for all its perversity, could expect of him.

From his veranda that morning, as on the morning before, Charlie had seen Kate and Stanley Fyles walking together. More than that he had heard from Kate herself of her admiration of the police officer. And, in these things, so trifling perhaps, so commonplace, he had read the forecast of a mind naturally dreading, and eaten up by suspicion. He would have been ready to suspect his own brother, had not a merciful providence made it plain to him that Bill possessed interest solely in the laughing gray eyes of Kate's sister.

Now, as he rode along, he saw dull visions of a future in which Kate no longer played a part. A demon of jealousy was driving him. He longed impotently for the power to rob the man of the possibility of winning that which was dearest to him. In the momentary madness which his jealousy invoked he felt that the death of this man, his life crushed out between his own lean hands, would be something approaching a joy worth living for.

But such murderous thoughts were merely pa.s.sing. They fled again before the pessimism so long his habit. It would not help him one iota. It would rob Kate of a happiness which he felt was her due, which he desired for her; it would rob him of the last vestige of even her pitying regard.

Then he laughed to himself, a laugh full of a hatefulness that somehow did not seem to fit him. It was inspired by the thought of how easy it would be to shoot the heart out of the man he deemed his rival. Others had done such things, he told himself. Then, with a world of bitterness, he added, far better men than himself.

But he knew that no such intention was really his. He knew that beneath all his bitterness of feeling, and before all things, he desired Kate's happiness and security. A strange magnanimity, in a nature so morally weak, so lacking in all that the world regards as the signs of true manhood, was his. Even his life, he felt, would be small enough price to pay for the happiness and security of the only woman who had ever held out the strong arm of support and affection for him to lean upon, the only woman he had ever truly loved.

So a nightmare of thought teemed through his brain as he rode. Now he would fall into a sweat of panic as fantastic specters of hideous possibilities arose and confronted him, now only a world of grief would overwhelm him. Again a pa.s.sion of jealousy would drive him to the verge of madness, only to be followed swiftly by that lurking self-pity which robbed him of the wholesome human instincts inspired by the spirit of battle in affairs of life. Then would come that overwhelming depression, bred of the long sapping of his moral strength, while through it all, a natural gentleness strove to soar above the ashes of baser fires.

It was with a sigh of relief, as his horse finally cleared a close growing bush, he emerged upon a small clearing. In the midst of this stood a corral. But, for the moment, he pa.s.sed this by, and rode toward a log hut of ancient construction and design.

He drew the restive creature up and dismounted. Then he flung the reins over one of the posts of the old corral. The place was beyond the boundary of his homestead and belonged to a time when the valley knew few inhabitants beyond half-breeds and Indians. He had discovered it, and had turned it into the service of a storage for those things which were required only rarely upon his ranch, and at the more remote parts of it.

Inside the corral stood a wagon. It was an ordinary box wagon, but nearby stood a hay-rack, which signified its uses. Then there was a mower, and horse rake. There were other odds and ends, too, but it appeared obvious that haying operations were carried on in this direction, and this old corral so found its uses.

After glancing casually in the direction of these things Charlie pa.s.sed round to the door of the hut. And herein his purpose became more obscure.

The place was heavily thatched and suggested long disuse. Its air was less of dilapidation than desertion, and lichen and fungus played a large part in such an aspect. The walls were low, and the heavy roof was flat and sloping. As the man drew near a flight of birds streamed from its eaves, screaming their resentment at such intrusion.

Charlie appeared not to notice them, so intent was he upon his purpose. He walked hurriedly, and finally paused at the doorway. For a moment he almost seemed in doubt. Then, with a thrust, he pushed the door, the hinges of which creaked protestingly as it opened inwards.

Another fluttering of wings, another chorus of harsh screams, and a further flight of birds poured from within and rushed headlong into the brilliant sunshine.

The place was certainly very old. A dreadful mustiness pervaded the atmosphere. The dirt, too, the heavy deposit of guano upon the floor, made it almost revolting. There was no furniture of any sort, while yet it conveyed the suggestion that, at some remote period, it had been the habitation of man.

A rough boarding lined the walls of logs very nearly up to the sloping roof. Rusty nails protruded here and there, suggesting hangers for utensils. A circular aperture in the roof denoted the presence, at one time, of a stove, possibly a cooking stove. And these things might well have raised in the mind a picture of a lean, black-haired, cadaverous man of low type, living a secret life amid the wilderness of this valley, with crime, crime against the laws of both G.o.d and Man as his object. Just such a man as is the notorious half-breed cattle thief.

Stepping over to the far end of the room, where the light shone down through the stovepipe hole in the roof, Charlie halted before the rough boarding at the angle of the wall. Then he reached out and caught the upper edge of the wooden lining, which, here, was much lower than at any other point, and exerted some strength. Four of the upright plankings slid upward together in a sort of rough panel, and revealed a shallow cupboard hewn out of the old logs behind them.

Within this opening a number of garments were hanging. There were several pairs of riding breeches, and an odd coat or two, besides other articles of man's outer attire. Added to these were two ammunition belts with holsters and revolvers.

Charlie stood gazing at the contents of the cupboard for some moments.

Then he examined them, pulling each article aside as though to a.s.sure himself that nothing was missing. Each revolver, too, he withdrew from its holster and examined closely. The chambers were fully loaded. And having satisfied himself of these things he slid the boards back into their place. As they dropped back his expression was one of appreciation. No one could possibly have guessed, even from a narrow examination, what lay behind those rough, time-worn boards. Their fit was in perfect keeping with the rest of the wall lining.

He stood back and gave a final glance about him. Then he turned toward the door.

As he did so the sound of a soft whinny reached him. It came from his horse outside. A quick, startled light leaped into his dark eyes, and the next moment his movements became almost electrical. He reached the door on the run and looked out. His horse was standing with head held high and ears p.r.i.c.ked. The creature was gazing fixedly in the direction from which it had approached the clearing.