The Line of Least Resistance/Chapter 10

TIS felt water splashed on his face, trickling down his throat. He gulped it greedily and opened his eyes. A savage face bent over him, swarthy, repulsive, hateful. In the clear starlight he could see the smeared paint, the dirty headcloth bound turbanwise above the beady black eyes. Dim shapes were busy in the gloom behind.

His last conscious thought had been of Sleiter falling slowly, slowly; of Kennedy and Dolly flashing through the broad bar of sunlight before the Gap to the black shadow beyond. It came to him now with a thrill of pride and triumph and grateful joy—Don would save her. A terrible racking pain throbbed and beat through his shoulder, but he made no outcry. His head whirled dizzily. He concentrated all his thought on that one picture: Sleiter's bending knees, his red beard about the propping gunstock; far below, in a golden haze, the black horse and his burden laboring across the glory and glow of sunset.

Another Indian came. They threw him roughly into the saddle. The pain was unendurable; he gave a stifled shriek. They bound his feet under the horse's belly and led him away. Every step was agony worse than death. His hands were free. He clutched desperately at the high, sharp saddle-horn. The gripping muscles helped him, but the groans came. He was very weak. His clothes clung to his flesh, soaking in blood. They went down the hill, by the wagon, crossed the head of the Gap and climbed back up the mountain from which Kennedy had come. The pain cleared his senses, his eyes grew wonted to the night. There were shadowy, silent riders before—five, six, seven. Thorns dug at his legs, branches whipped his face, clutched at his shattered shoulder; the bitterness of death was on him. He set his mind stubbornly on the one thought: Dolly was safe; once for all he abandoned hope for himself. He thought of Lena; and then for a long, long time he set his teeth and groaned no more.

They crossed to the west side and crawled southward along a rocky ledge near the top. They crept along a hogback, hugged close under the crest of Timber Mountain—on, ever on, to the south. A merciful lethargy of weakness came to him. He drooped over, the elbow of his good arm clinging to the high-pointed horn; his hair was in the horse's mane.

Centuries afterward the journey came to an end. He roused himself and looked about numbly. They were in a craterlike sink on the mountainside. He could not see the peak, the plains, the westward rim or the mountain ranges beyond. A clump of dwarfed and stunted trees grew in the hollow, a narrow circle of jagged and crumbling rock shut out all the world beside. So, he thought, this was the end of radiant life. To this undreamed-of narrow valley his feet had tended since childhood—to Gethsemane.

There were but two of the Indians with him now; the others had fallen out on the way, unseen by Otis. They dragged him off and bundled him down by a lightning-blasted tree; they wrenched his arms around the stump behind his back and tied him fast. Then they left him.

The thirst which had tormented him from the beginning tortured him now. His wounds, aggravated as they were by the rough journey, were nothing to this; but it was the wounds that made the thirst so terrible. His tongue and lips had already begun to swell. There was not even a cooling dew.

No weakling, this! Waiting, he braced his soul firmly to meet the end. The stars burned warm and near in the violet-black sky. He watched them, waiting. Then he closed his eyes. Faces, thronging, vivid, real—Dolly, her dead mother, smiling, tender; Lena's face, rosy-flushing; Hiram's, bright, wide-eyed; Don's, resolute and high and strong. Again that flashing vision, the Titan Sleiter tottering to his fall, the black horse racing forever across the blazing sunset.

He could not see the stars—warm tears were in his eyes. Not of sorrow—of love and pride.

The far-off, measured beat of soft footsteps; they came nearer to him—the trampling of many feet. The moon rose radiant over the crater's low rim; the rocky circle became a shore, bordered on a pool of dancing, rippling light; the soft air was sweet and pure and cool.

The trampling feet came into the circle behind him. Forms monstrous, barbarous, fantastic, silent, flitted from the shad owed barrier into the silver fire. There was a horse with a shapeless burden; they cast off ropes and threw a bundle at his feet. A man, fast bound; his head touched Otis' foot, his face was in the dust, his sunny hair dabbled and dank with blood. He rolled over silently.

"God! Dolly?"

"Safe!" said Kennedy. "Safe!" The man was beautiful; the glory of strength and courage and manhood glowed through flesh and stain.

"Thank God! Where?" exclaimed Otis.

"I dare not tell you. One of these devils speaks English," he whispered. "But I've sent word, smoke-talk. Hiram'll get her."

The Indians were bunched together, talking in deep, low gutturals. "Now they're making medicine. Bad medicine for you and me, Professor."

"Are you wounded?" said Otis.

"No such luck. Just this scratch on my face. But I see you are. Is it bad?"

"I'm dying of thirst. How could they get you this way?"

"Unwounded, you mean? I left Dolly my gun. I had mighty little time to telegraph. Slow work. But they got it. I saw a big blaze at Dundee just as the Indians picked me. How bad are you hurt?"

Otis told him. "Good for you!" said Don grimly "You won't last so long."

"They'll—torture us, then?"

"Sure thing. Who was the shooting-man with you? He seemed to understand his business. Dead?"

"Sleiter … Dead."

At this Don lay silent a little. Then he raised his head out of the dust. His eyes were bright in the moonlight. "A real nice little old world, isn't it, Professor?" he said slowly and gently. "'And God saw … and behold it was very good."

Otis did not answer, grasping slowly the measure of the man. The Indians came back. They rolled Kennedy on his back; they lashed him, in the form of a cross, between four trees, slipping a loop on wrist and ankle, straining the ropes tight. Then they melted silently away, all but one. This one was evidently the leader. He gave directions to the others. Then he came back and looked silently from Kennedy to Otis. A brutal bulk of body; cruel, watchful eyes; a broad face, debased, fiendish, leering; from its blunted outlines, the moonlight tinge of the copper skin, there might be a drop of white blood in his veins. The footsteps died away.

"This is going to be a bad business. I wish it were over," said Don. Already, beyond the bruising ropes, the flesh was beginning to swell and blacken.

The breed spoke—broken Spanish and English, but intelligible. "Tengo hambre. I eat now. You mek veesit wit' friend. Poco tiempo you tell me where hide mujer, eh?" He kicked Kennedy in the ribs and turned away.

"I'm afraid you're letting yourself in for a disappointment, old man," gasped Kennedy when he could get his breath. "Too bad. But it isn't done, you know."

The Indian looked over his shoulder. "You tell purty soon. You mek fire-talk for men, eh? But my man mek big trail. White man tek follow. You tell me soon."

He made a very small fire. From his saddle he brought a canteen and a chunk of dirty beef, which last he threw on the fire.

Otis spoke. His head drooped forward on his breast.

"You believe that—now?"

"Believe? What? Oh, I see. God saw the world and the rest of it? And 'I shall not wholly die'—or annihilation?" Kennedy laughed; the gorging Indian raised his eyes and stared. "The ruling passion! Oh, Professor, you're a keen one for arguing. … I believe. It probably don't mean to me at all what it does to you. Names, you know. … as Lena said. … But God? I believe in a loving and merciful God. I know. I can't give logic for it, but I know—now more than ever. Now more than ever. I thank Him for His gifts—for strength, for courage, for the knowledge that— I shall not tell! … And, perhaps … I shall not wholly die. … Perhaps. Quien sabe?"



After a little he spoke again. "There's one more thing, Professor. It's not important at all, but—I wasn't in the train robbery. They were hungry. I harbored them. I didn't know. If I had known I would probably—possibly, anyhow—have taken them in just the same."

"Does it matter?" said Otis.

"Not a bit. I just wanted you to know."

The Apache rose, took the iron cleaning rod from the butt of his rifle, then screwed it together, laid it in the coals. He took out his sheath-knife and hacked from a maguey plant a dozen of its keen, stiff, brown spikes. He put his foot on Kennedy's neck, ripped at the flannel shirt, laid bare the gleaming white chest, the strained arms. "Digame, pues—where you put that girl?"

The stars wheeled on their calm cycles. The moon saw things. She peered in distant windows, where sleeping youth dreamed of high achievement and smiled; where age, smiling, dreamed of youth. In far cities where lights, white-gleaming, splendid, revel and laugh and song; and sweet eyes sparkled where happy lovers danced together; so swift the hours! But on this bleak hillside—to this poor wrung wretch—

It was harder, far harder, for Otis, watching, mumbling with thick lips a prayer that God in His mercy might send swiftly the Angel of Release, than for Kennedy, bound, bleeding, crucified, quivering. The tortured flesh shrank and flinched—not the masterless spirit.

Now the moon was high, the east was streaked with red. The tortured man grew weaker. A froth of white and red bubbled on his swollen lips. The eyes stared glassily There was a change; delirium. Sometimes he raved and muttered, sometimes the bleeding lips moved, but no words came.

Hal will know. Hal can do anything. He threw Ben Rice. He broke Judge Morgan's colt—Judge Boiling. … This was the battlefield—men have died here.

He saw the long, misty ridges of North Carolina's hills; southward, the dim outline of Cæsar's Head beyond the border. Hark, listen! Was that the gate-latch—Alice! slender, radiant, shy and gay. Her beauty glowed through the dusk. She was in black, there was scarlet at her throat, scarlet her lips, purple-black her hair. She saw him; she came faster, her eyes alight … came through the bending lilies all arow [sic]. …

He was riding the Staked Plains. That patch of white, that is three hundred miles away, the White Mountain beyond the Pecos. …

"Hiram Yoast will know. In the kitchen."

"Kennedy! Kennedy! For God's sake!—Kennedy! Don!"

Perhaps it was the summons, perhaps the Indian's fierce intent face as he bent to hear, that brought him back. Not to the agony of his poor, maimed body—to a sharper pang. Dead, that girl sweetheart, asleep on an Alabama hillside all these years—these wasted years. … Lena—Argive Helen! Ah!—In the thin light of dawn he saw the livid face before him, the cracked and bleeding lips, the imploring eyes—Otis! The girl? Had he babbled—had he told anything? The Indian's relentless eyes blazed into his. Had he told? No. The Indian had been still listening. Then—he never would. His head lolled over helplessly.

"Don't! No! No!—Don't burn me any more! I can't stand it. I can't! The girl" His voice was a husky whisper. His jaws fell hideously apart; the black tongue lay against the teeth. "The girl … in the cañon"

Otis strained forward, cursed him, with swollen and blackened lips—traitor, Judas, liar, coward!

"—hid where" The weak words died away.

The Indian bent closer—too close! The ghastly head jerked upward; Kennedy's teeth crunched in the brown throat, crushed gullet and windpipe together, held fast. The great muscles knotted and slid and heaved under the copper skin, the hands struck and wrenched and tore, the great body thrashed and floundered, twisted and leaped and writhed in horrible convulsion of death agony; the terrible steel-trap at his throat was unbroken, unshaken, crushing out his life. The Indian's hand groped at his belt. A glint of steel, his gun jerked spasmodically, he pulled trigger and fired—into the ground. One last shudder and the two lay still, dead clay on unconscious clay. But the red man's arms were smooth and round, his fingers outspread, relaxed; Kennedy's hands were clenched; on his strained arms the sinews stood out like cords, the bunched muscles knotted to rigid iron, his jaw frozen and set in its awful task.

They had found Dolly before midnight. Leaving her safeguarded, they scattered far and wide for Don. So, in the warm white dawn Hiram Yoast and Teagardner heard the far-off shot that marked the red-skin's dying effort. They burst over the circling barrier, black against a red flame of sun, flashed down the greening slope. Otis was huddled against his tree in a wailing heap. Under the dead Indian Kennedy kept his unyielding grip—senseless, blackened, mutilated, gashed and hacked and burned; but living, and likely to live.