Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/50

40 smart town ways; mebby your gal would stick to you, even ef you was in trouble; but me—"

Kerry made an inarticulate murmur of sympathy.

The voice went on. "You say you're goin' home to her with jest your two bare hands?" it inquired. "But why fer? You've found your man. What makes you go back that-a-way?"

Kerry's mouth was open, his jaw fallen; he stared through the smoke at his host as though he saw him now for the first time. Kerry belongs to a people who love or hate obviously and openly; that the outlaw should have known him from the first for a police officer, a creature of prey upon his track, and should have treated him as a friend, as a brother, appalled and repelled him.

"See here, Dan," the big man went on, leaning forward; "I knowed what your arrant was the fust minute I clapped eyes on you. You didn't know whether I could shoot with my left hand as well as my right—I didn't choose you should know. I watched fer ye to be tryin' to put handcuffs on me any minute—after you found my right hand was he'pless."

"Lord A'mighty! You could lay me on my back with your left hand, Andy," Kerry breathed.

The big man nodded. "They was plenty of times when I was asleep—or you thort I was. Why didn't ye do it ? Where is they? Fetch 'em out."

Unwilling, red with shame, penetrated with a grief and ache he scarce comprehended, Kerry dragged the handcuffs from their hiding-place. The other took them, and thereafter swung them thoughtfully in his strong brown fingers as he talked.

"You was goin' away without makin' use o' these?" he asked, gently.

Kerry, crimson of face and moist of eye, gulped, frowned, and nodded.

"Well, now," the mountain-man pursued, "I been thinkin' this thing over sence you was a-speakin'. That there gal o' yourn she's in a tight box. You're the whitest man I ever run up ag'inst. You've done me better than my own brothers. My own brothers," he repeated, a look of pain and bitterness knitting those wonderfully pencilled brows above the big eyes. "Fer my part, I'm sick o' livin' this-a-way. When you're gone, an' I'm here agin by my lonesome, I'm as apt as not to put the muzzle o' my gun in my mouth an' blow the top o' my head off—that's how I feel most o' the time. I tell you what you do, Dan: you jest put these here on me an' take me down to Garyville—er plumb on to Asheville—an' draw your money. That 'll square up things fer you an' that pore little gal. What say ye?"

Into Kerry's sanguine face there surged a yet deeper red; his shoulders heaved; the tears sprang to his eyes; and before his host could guess the root of his emotion the Irishman was sobbing, furiously, noisily, turned away, his head upon his arm. The humiliation of it ate into his soul; and the tooth was sharpened by his own misdeeds. How many times had he looked at the great, kindly creature across the fire there and calculated the chances of getting him to Garyville?

Andy's face twisted as though he had bitten a green persimmon. "Aw! Don't cry!" he remonstrated, with the mountaineer's quick contempt for expressed emotion. "My Lord! Dan, don't—"

"I'll cry if I damn please!" Kerry snorted. "You old fool! Me a-draggin' you down to Garyville! Me, that's loved you like a brother! An' never had no thought—an' never had no thought—Oh, hell!" he broke off, at the bitter irony of the lie; then the sobs broke forth afresh. To deny that he had come to arrest the outlaw was so pitifully futile.

"So ye won't git the money that-a-way?" Andy's big voice ruminated, and a strange note of relief sounded in it; a curious gleam leaped into the sombre eyes. But he added, softly: "Sleep on it, bud; I'll let ye change your mind in the mornin'."

"You shut your head!" screeched Kerry, fiercely, with a hiccough of wrenching misery. "You talk to me any more like that, an' I'll lambaste ye—er try to—big as ye are! Oh, damnation!"

The last night in the cave was one of gusty, moving breezes and brilliant moonlight, yet both its tenants slept profoundly, after their strange outburst of emotion. The first gray of dawn found them stirring, and Kerry making ready