The Duke Of Chimney Butte Read online

  CHAPTER XXV

  "WHEN SHE WAKES UP"

  It was mid-afternoon of a bright autumn day when Lambert approachedGlendora with Kerr chained to the seat beside him. As the train rapidlycut down the last few miles, Lambert noted a change in his prisoner'sdemeanor. Up to that time his carriage had been melancholy and morose,as that of a man who saw no gleam of hope ahead of him. He had spokenbut seldom during the journey, asking no favors except that of beingallowed to send a telegram to Grace from Omaha.

  Lambert had granted that request readily, seeing nothing amiss in Kerr'sdesire to have his daughter meet him and lighten as much as she couldhis load of disgrace. Kerr said he wanted her to go with him to thecounty seat and arrange bond.

  "I'll never look through the bars of a jail in my home county," he said.That was his one burst of rebellion, his one boast, his one approach toa discussion of his serious situation, all the way.

  Now as they drew almost within sight of Glendora, Kerr became fidgetyand nervous. His face was strained and anxious, as if he dreadedstepping off the train into sight of the people who had known him solong as a man of consequence in that community.

  Lambert began to have his own worries about this time. He regretted thekindness he had shown Kerr in permitting him to send that telegram toGrace. She might try to deliver him on bail of another kind. Kerr'snervous anxiety would seem to indicate that he expected something tohappen at Glendora. It hadn't occurred to Lambert before that this mightbe possible. It seemed a foolish oversight.

  His apprehension, as well as Kerr's evident expectation, seemedgroundless as he stepped off the train almost directly in front of thewaiting-room door, giving Kerr a hand down the steps. There was nobodyin sight but the postmaster with the mail sack, the station agent, andthe few citizens who always stood around the station for the thrill ofseeing the flier stop to take water.

  Few, if any, of these recognized Kerr as Lambert hurried him across theplatform and into the station, his hands manacled at his back. Kerr heldback for one quick look up and down the station platform, then stumbledhastily ahead under the force of Lambert's hand. The door of thetelegraph office stood open; Lambert pushed his prisoner within andclosed it.

  The station agent came in as the train pulled away, and Lambert madeinquiry of him concerning the sheriff. The agent had not seen him therethat day. He turned away with sullen countenance, looking with disfavoron this intrusion upon his sacred precincts. He stood in front of hischattering instruments in the bow window, looking up and down theplatform with anxious face out of which his natural human color hadgone, leaving even his lips white.

  "You don't have to keep him in here, I guess, do you?" he said, stillsweeping the platform up and down with his uneasy eyes.

  "No. I just stepped in to ask you to put this satchel in your safe andkeep it for me a while."

  Lambert's calm and confident manner seemed to assure the agent, andmollify him, and repair his injured dignity. He beckoned with a jerk ofhis head, not for one moment quitting his leaning, watchful pose, ortaking his eyes from their watch on the platform. Lambert crossed thelittle room in two strides and looked out. Not seeing anything morealarming than a knot of townsmen around the postmaster, who stood withthe lean mail sack across his shoulder, talking excitedly, he inquiredwhat was up.

  "They're layin' for you out there," the agent whispered.

  "I kind of expected they would be," Lambert told him.

  "They're liable to cut loose any minute," said the agent, "and I tellyou, Duke, I've got a wife and children dependin' on me!"

  "I'll take him outside. I didn't intend to stay here only a minute.Here, lock this up. It belongs to Vesta Philbrook. If I have to go withthe sheriff, or anything, send her word it's here."

  As Lambert appeared in the door with his prisoner the little bunch ofexcited gossips scattered hurriedly. He stood near the door a littlewhile, considering the situation. The station agent was not to blame forhis desire to preserve his valuable services for the railroad and hisfamily; Lambert had no wish to shelter himself and retain his hold onthe prisoner at the trembling fellow's peril.

  It was unaccountable that the sheriff was not there to relieve him ofthis responsibility; he must have received the telegram two days ago.Pending his arrival, or, if not his arrival, the coming of the localtrain that would carry himself and prisoner to the county seat, Lambertcast about him for some means of securing his man in such manner that hecould watch him and defend against any attempted rescue without beinghampered.

  A telegraph pole stood beside the platform some sixty or seventy feetfrom the depot, the wires slanting down from it into the building'sgable end. To this Lambert marched his prisoner, the eyes of the town onhim. He freed one of Kerr's hands, passed his arms round the pole so hestood embracing it, and locked him there.

  It was a pole of only medium thickness, allowing Kerr ample room toencircle it with his chained arms, even to sit on the edge of theplatform when he should weary of his standing embrace. Lambert stoodback a pace and looked at him, thus ignominiously anchored in publicview.

  "Let 'em come and take you," he said.

  He laid out a little beat up and down the platform at Kerr's back,rolled a cigarette, settled down to wait for the sheriff, the train, therush of Kerr's friends, or whatever the day might have in store.

  Slowly, thoughtfully, he paced that beat of a rod behind his surlyprisoner's back, watching the town, watching the road leading into it.People stood in the doors, but none approached him to make inquiry, novoice was lifted in pitch that reached him where he stood. If anybodyelse in town besides the agent knew of the contemplated rescue, he keptit selfishly to himself.

  Lambert did not see any of Kerr's men about. Five horses were hitched infront of the saloon; now and then he could see the top of a hat abovethe latticed half-door, but nobody entered, nobody left. The stationagent still stood in his window, working the telegraph key as ifreporting the clearing of the flier, watching anxiously up and down theplatform.

  Lambert hoped that Sim Hargus and young Tom, and the old stub-footedscoundrel who was the meanest of them all who had lashed him into thefire that night, would swing the doors of the saloon and come out with adeclaration of their intentions. He knew that some of them, if not all,were there. He had tied Kerr out before their eyes like wolf bait. Letthem come and get him if they were men.

  This seemed the opportunity which he had been waiting for time to bringhim. If they flashed a gun on him now he could clean them down to theground with all legal justification, no questions asked.

  Two appeared far down the road, riding for Glendora in a swinginggallop. The sheriff, Lambert thought; missed the train, and had riddenthe forty and more miles across. No; one was Grace Kerr. Even at aquarter of a mile he never could mistake her again. The other was SimHargus. They had miscalculated in their intention of meeting the train,and were coming in a panic of anxiety.

  They dismounted at the hotel, and started across. Lambert stood near hisprisoner, waiting. Kerr had been sitting on the edge of the platform.Now he got up, moving around the pole to show them that he was not to becounted on to take a hand in whatever they expected to start.

  Lambert moved a little nearer his prisoner, where he stood waiting. Hehad not shaved during the two days between Chicago and Glendora; thedust of the road was on his face. His hat was tipped forward to shelterhis eyes against the afternoon glare, the leather thong at the backrumpling his close-cut hair. He stood lean and long-limbed, easy andindifferent in his pose, as it would seem to look at him as one mightglance in passing, the smoke of his cigarette rising straight from itsfresh-lit tip in the calm air of the somnolent day.

  As Hargus and Grace advanced, coming in the haste and heat ofindignation that Kerr's humiliating situation inflamed, two men left thesaloon. They stopped at the hitching-rack as if debating whether totake their horses, and so stood, watching the progress of the two whowere cutting the long diagonal across the road. When Grace, who came alittle ahead of her
companion in her eagerness, was within thirty feetof him, Lambert lifted his hand in forbidding signal.

  "Stop there," he said.

  She halted, her face flaming with fury. Hargus stopped beside her, hisarm crooked to bring his hand up to his belt, sawing back and forth asif in indecision between drawing his gun and waiting for the wordypreliminaries to pass. Kerr stood embracing the pole in a pose ofridiculous supplication, the bright chain of the new handcuffsglistening in the sun.

  "I want to talk to my father," said Grace, lashing Lambert with a lookof scornful hate.

  "Say it from there," Lambert returned, inflexible, cool; watching everymovement of Sim Hargus' sawing arm.

  "You've got no right to chain him up like a dog!" she said.

  "You ain't got no authority, that anybody ever heard of, to arrest himin the first place," Hargus added, his swinging, indecisive arm for amoment still.

  Lambert made no reply. He seemed to be looking over their heads, backalong the road they had come, from the lift of his chin and the set ofhis close-gathered brows. He seemed carelessly indifferent to Hargus'legal opinion and presence, a little fresh plume of smoke going up fromhis cigarette as if he breathed into it gently.

  Grace started forward with impatient exclamation, tossing her head indisdainful defiance of this fence-rider's authority.

  "Go back!" Kerr commanded, his voice hoarse with the fear of somethingthat she, in her unreasoning anger, had not seen behind the calm frontof the man she faced.

  She stopped, turning back again to where Hargus waited. Along the streetmen were drawing away from their doors, in cautious curiosity, silentsuspense. Women put their heads out for a moment, plucked curtains asidefor one swift survey, vanished behind the safety of walls. At thehitching-rack the two men--one of them Tom Hargus, the otherunknown--stood beside their horses, as if in position according to aprevious plan.

  "We want that man," said Hargus, his hand hovering over his gun.

  "Come and take him," Lambert invited.

  Hargus spoke in a low voice to Grace; she turned and ran toward herhorse. The two at the hitching-rack swung into their saddles as Hargus,watching Grace over his shoulder as she sped away, began to back off,his hand stealing to his gun as if moved by some slow, precise machinerywhich was set to time it according to the fleeing girl's speed.

  Lambert stood without shifting a foot, his nostrils dilating in theslow, deep breath that he drew. Yard by yard Hargus drew away, hisintention not quite clear, as if he watched his chance to break awaylike a prisoner. Grace was in front of the hotel door when he snappedhis revolver from its sheath.

  Lambert had been waiting this. He fired before Hargus touched thetrigger, his elbow to his side as he had seen Jim Wilder shoot on theday when tragedy first came into his life. Hargus spun on his heel as ifhe had been roped, spread his arms, his gun falling from his hand;pitched to his face, lay still. The two on horses galloped out andopened fire.

  Lambert shifted to keep them guessing, but kept away from the pole whereKerr was chained, behind which he might have found shelter. They hadseparated to flank him, Tom Hargus over near the corner of the depot,the other ranging down toward the hotel, not more than fifty yardsbetween Lambert and either of them.

  Intent on drawing Tom Hargus from the shelter of the depot, Lambert ranalong the platform, stopping well beyond Kerr. Until that moment he hadnot returned their fire. Now he opened on Tom Hargus, bringing his horsedown at the third shot, swung about and emptied his first gunineffectually at the other man.

  This fellow charged down on him as Lambert drew his other gun, TomHargus, free of his fallen horse, shooting from the shelter of the rainbarrel at the corner of the depot. Lambert felt something strike hisleft arm, with no more apparent force, no more pain, than the flip of abranch when one rides through the woods. But it swung useless at hisside.

  Through the smoke of his own gun, and the dust raised by the man onhorseback, Lambert had a flash of Grace Kerr riding across the middlebackground between him and the saloon. He had no thought of herintention. It was not a moment for speculation with the bullets hittinghis hat.

  The man on horseback had come within ten yards of him. Lambert could seehis teeth as he drew back his lips when he fired. Lambert centered hisattention on this stranger, dark, meager-faced, marked by theunmistakable Mexican taint. His hat flew off at Lambert's first shot asif it had been jerked by a string; at his second, the fellow threwhimself back in the saddle with a jerk. He fell limply over the highcantle and lay thus a moment, his frantic horse running wildly away.Lambert saw him tumble into the road as a man came spurring past thehotel, slinging his gun as he rode.

  Nearer approach identified the belated sheriff. He shouted a warning toLambert as he jerked his gun down and fired. Tom Hargus rose frombehind the rain barrel, staggered into the road, going like a drunkenman, his hat in one hand, the other pressed to his side, his headhanging, his long black hair falling over his bloody face.

  In a second Lambert saw this, and the shouting, shooting officer bearingdown toward him. He had the peculiar impression that the sheriff wassubmerged in water, enlarging grotesquely as he approached. The slap ofanother bullet on his back, and he turned to see Grace Kerr firing athim with only the width of the platform between them.

  It was all smoke, dust, confusion around him, a sickness in his body, adimness in his mind, but he was conscious of her horse rearing, liftingits feet high--one of them a white-stockinged foot, as he marked withpainful precision--and falling backward in a clatter of shod hoofs onthe railroad.

  When it cleared a little, Lambert found the sheriff was on the groundbeside him, supporting him with his arm, looking into his face withconcern almost comical, speaking in anxious inquiry.

  "Lay down over there on the platform, Duke, you're shot all to pieces,"he said.

  Lambert sat on the edge of the platform, and the world receded. When hefelt himself sweep back to consciousness there were people about him,and he was stretched on his back, a feeling in his nostrils as if hebreathed fire. Somebody was lying across from him a little way; hestruggled with painful effort to lift himself and see.

  It was Grace Kerr. Her face was white in the midst of her dark hair, andshe was dead.

  It was not right for her to be lying there, with dead face to the sky,he thought. They should do something, they should carry her away fromthe stare of curious, shocked eyes, they should--He felt in the pocketof his vest and found the little handkerchief, and crept painfullyacross to her, heedless of the sheriff's protest, defiant of hisrestraining, kindly hand.

  With his numb left arm trailing by his side, a burning pain in hisbreast, as if a hot rod had been driven through him, the track of hertreacherous bullet, he knew, he fumbled to unfold the bit of soft whitelinen, refusing the help of many sympathetic hands that wereout-stretched.

  When he had it right, he spread it over her face, white again as anevening primrose, as he once had seen it through the dusk of anothernight. But out of this night that she had entered she would ride nomore. There was a thought in his heart as tender as his deed as he thusmasked her face from the white stare of day:

  "_She can wipe her eyes on it when she wakes up and repents._"