The Heart of Thunder Mountain

And the battle began. Farrish and Pete turn by turn flung their lariats at the horse’s head and feet, but time after time he dodged, and ducked, and capered away from the whirling noose, or wriggled out of the coil as it tightened around him.

“He’s greased lightning!” ejaculated Bill, from his perch on the fence.

“He’s hell, that’s what he is!” retorted Curly, from a corner of the corral.

Farrish and Pete went silently on with their work. They knew that eventually, dance and squirm as he might, the horse would be caught in one or the other of the relentless loops. And so it proved. While Sunnysides was side-stepping a throw by Farrish, Pete’s rope slipped snakily over his head, and tightened around the arched neck. With an artful lunge toward the Indian, and a lowering of his head, the horse struggled to throw off the coil. But it held.

Then followed a mad performance. The horse was over all the corral at once, it seemed: rearing, plunging, leaping, tossing his head, crashing into the fence with such fury that it barely stood up under his onslaughts. Bill was knocked off the fence backward on to his head; Curly, crowded into his corner, barely avoided a vicious kick; and Haig’s temper was not improved by the narrow escape he had from being crushed against a post.

“Bill!” he yelled. “Get a rope!”

The man ran into the barn, returned with a lariat, and joined the fray. Plainly chagrined, though unhurt by his fall, Bill took long chances to even up the score; and under the very hoofs of the infuriated animal, he made a throw that brought Sunnysides sprawling on the ground, his forefeet caught in Bill’s noose. It was the work of a few seconds then for Farrish to secure the hind feet also; and the horse lay prostrate, panting and half-choked, but defiant still.

Giving him no time to recover, and no more breath than he actually required, Haig and Curly forced the bit of a bridle into the outlaw’s foaming mouth. Then the noose on his hind feet was cautiously removed, one forefoot was freed, and the horse was allowed to rise. The next proceeding appeared to be resented by Sunnysides even more than what he had already been subjected to. While Farrish and Pete held his head, Haig approached him cautiously with a saddle, and dropped it on his back. There was a lightning-like motion, and the saddle was tossed a dozen feet away, while the two men at the horse’s head were jerked almost off their feet. Again and again the saddle was laid on his back, to remain there barely an instant. But at the fifth attempt, to the astonishment of all, Sunnysides stood still, as if, being an equine Napoleon, he had changed his plan of battle in the face of the enemy. Without further resistance, he permitted the saddle to be adjusted and cinched, permitted the men to lead him out of the corral into the larger one adjoining it, and permitted Haig to mount him and take the bridle reins in his hand.

“I’ll be damned!” said Curly. “You’d think–”

“Shut up!” cried Farrish. “That’s a bluff.”

“Now then!” ordered Haig, pointing to the rope that still held one forefoot.

The rope was removed.

“The other!”

Pete and Farrish slipped off the lariat that remained noosed around the outlaw’s neck, and stepped back.

For some seconds there was no sound, no motion, no sign of any design on the part of Sunnysides. Then, with the swiftness and surprise of a flash of powder in the dark, a shocking thing occurred. Without a preliminary movement, either of lunging or bucking or leaping to one side, or any of the expected tactics, Sunnysides, with incredible suddenness, reared straight up into the air, threw himself over, and fell on his back, pinning Haig to the ground beneath him.

Before any of the men could move, the horse rolled over sprawling, scrambled to his feet, and charged at the fence. There was a crash and the sound of splintering wood. The top plank fell, broken in two jagged pieces, and the horse’s forefeet were over the second plank. But before he could leap again, Curley had caught the bridle rein, and swung the outlaw’s head around, holding him there until Bill had leaned over the broken fence and roped the forelegs once more. After a moment of furious struggle, Sunnysides appeared to realize that it was useless; and thus the two men held him, with his forefeet still hanging outside the fence, while they turned their eyes toward Haig.

Farrish and the Indian knelt at his side. He lay quite still, unconscious, and for a moment they thought him dead. Pete put his head down on Haig’s breast, and listened. Then he rose to his feet.

“Whisky!” he muttered, and ran toward the stable.

In two minutes he was back, bearing a flask, which he uncorked as he ran. Forcing the mouth of it between Haig’s lips, he let the scorching liquor trickle down the throat until the flask was half emptied. Then he poured some of the whisky in the palm of his hand, and rubbed it on Haig’s face and bared breast and wrists, while Farrish, in his turn, ran to the stable and brought a lap robe, which he folded and placed under Haig’s head.

They waited helplessly, without speech. At the fence, Bill and Curley clung to their ropes. Sunnysides, his forefeet still projecting over the plank, and the saddle hanging lopsided from his back, had his head drawn back so far that he could see the group in the middle of the corral. His eyes were bloodshot, foam dripped from his mouth, the breath came whistling through his half-shut windpipe.

But in the cottonwoods the birds sang undisturbed, and the pines far up the hill droned their old tune unchanged. From the ranch house came the rattle of tin pans, and the voice of the cook singing a song of the round-up.

After a long time, Haig stirred. A moan came with the first deep breath; his eyes opened, staring up at the two faces above him; his lips moved, but at first no sound came from them. Pete leaned closer, and listened.

“Did–he–get–away?” came in a whisper.

“No,” answered Pete. “He caught.”

A smile flickered on Haig’s lips, and went out; and at the same time a tiny trickle of blood oozed out, and ran down through the dust on the white cheek. Pete and Farrish looked at each other; and when they turned to Haig again, his eyes were closed, and the pallor of his face had deepened to a bluish, ashen hue.

Pete bent quickly to put his ear again to Haig’s breast.

CHAPTER XIII

HILLYER’S DILEMMA

Hillyer’s loyal heart was near to bursting with joy. In all the days of his eager courtship Marion had never seemed so close to him, so fairly within his grasp, as now. She had welcomed him with totally unexpected warmth, considering the many times she had rejected him, and considering, too, the letter he had received from her on her departure. Absence, he thought, had advanced his cause for him. A dozen times he was on the point of boldly violating the six months’ embargo she had placed upon his pleadings; but as often as the fervent words rose to his lips fear froze them there, and he was silent.

As for Marion, she was for the moment absorbed in a little plan that was not for Robert’s knowledge. She was intent upon meeting Philip in Robert’s company; she wanted to bow to him, and smile, and let him see that there was one man at least who prized her, if he did not. But the imp of perversity seemed to have come to abide permanently in the Park. Though Marion, in the first two days of Robert’s visit, guided him, in the big automobile, everywhere except beyond the Ridge and to the glade of the columbines, she had never a glimpse of Philip. All this maddened her; and if Robert had but spoken, there were times when–But Robert did not speak.

Near noon of the third day they met Smythe in the main valley road a mile or so below the post-office. At sight of him bobbing along toward them, almost lost between his horse and his sombrero, Marion’s first impulse was to speed past him without stopping. She was not sure she could trust his discretion; for she had told Robert nothing about Philip Haig. But she did not wish to offend the faithful Smythe; and so, on second thought, she hurriedly acquainted Robert with the identity of the approaching figure, and warned him to control his inevitable mirth.

“He is funny,” she said, laughing in spite of herself, “but he can’t help that. He’s been very good to me, in his way.”

In the meantime Smythe’s horse was deciding the matter on his own account. This was the first automobile the pony had ever seen, and he made up his mind promptly that he did not like it. He reared and bucked, bolting first to one side and the other of the road, and refused to consider Smythe’s well-worded assurance that wise horses were really fond of automobiles, which were taking a great deal of work off their shoulders.

Hillyer stopped the machine, and cut off the power. But the pony’s suspicions had been thoroughly aroused, and the sudden silence seemed to him more portentous than even the noise of the motor. Smythe thereupon had his work cut out for him, but he would not compromise either by dismounting, or by turning and riding away. Slowly and patiently he urged the frightened pony toward the automobile until, after many setbacks and panics, he had brought him near enough for conversation.

“There now, Peanuts!” he said to the prancing animal. “You see you were quite mistaken.” Then, to Hillyer and Marion: “He’s a little like myself. He doesn’t really believe in ghosts, but he’s dreadfully afraid of them.”

“I didn’t know you were such an accomplished horseman,” said Marion.

“Didn’t you? Well, you see–”

At that instant the pony suffered a fresh access of alarm. He bounded suddenly sideways, and at the same time ducked as if he purposed to stand on his head, though what good that would have done only he knew. The movement threw Smythe over the pony’s head, and flat on his back in the dust; and in a twinkling Peanuts was dashing up the road, with his tail in the air, and the stirrups flapping at his sides.

For some seconds Smythe lay half-stunned; but before Marion and Hillyer, leaping from the automobile, were able to reach him, he sat up, and began to straighten out his crushed sombrero, eyeing it critically. He was covered with dust, and one end of his white collar, torn from the button, stuck out above his coat. But his aplomb was perfect.

“As I was saying, when interrupted,” he began, continuing to minister to the sombrero, “you see I am an accomplished horseman.”

Marion and Hillyer broke out in uncontrollable laughter. Then Hillyer hastened to assist Smythe to rise.

“Not hurt, I hope?” said Robert.

“Objectively, no. Subjectively, yes. Sartorially, a wreck.”

They laughed now without restraint, which seemed to please Smythe immensely. He proceeded to tuck the end of the torn collar back into its place, where it refused to stay; to brush his clothes; to adjust the abused sombrero in exactly the long-studied angle on his head.

“I hope you’ll forgive us for laughing,” said Marion, “but–”

“Say no more about it, please!” protested Smythe. “I’d rather make you laugh than weep–assuming that anybody would weep for me.”

“Oh, I’d have felt very badly if you’d been hurt,” Marion assured him. “And you might have been, too.”

“No, a cropper like that’s nothing. Peanuts isn’t–” He paused just a second to look into Marion’s eyes with an expression that arrested her attention sharply. “Peanuts isn’t Sunnysides.”

“Sunnysides?” she cried out unguardedly.

Smythe’s eyes warned her, as he waited to give her time for self-control. He did not know how far Hillyer was in her confidence.

“Is there news–about–Sunnysides?” she faltered, struggling desperately with herself.

“Yes,” he answered. Then he continued slowly, in as light a manner as possible, the while he held her with a concentrated gaze: “I’d been down the valley as far as the mouth of the canyon. Coming back, about two miles below where Haig’s road joins this, I saw the sorrels in a cloud of dust. ‘Hello!’ I said. ‘Something’s up, or the sorrels wouldn’t be driven like that.’ In a minute or two I made out Bill Craven, one of Haig’s men, leaning forward in the seat of a road wagon, and laying on the whip. ‘If Haig saw that!’ I thought. And so I–”

“Go on, please!” said Marion shrilly.

But Smythe was purposely deliberate; for he saw Hillyer looking at her curiously.

“I wasn’t going to let anybody abuse his horses if I could prevent it. Besides, how did I know but Craven was stealing the sorrels? I threw my pony straight across the road. Craven reined the sorrels up on their hind legs, almost on top of me.

“‘What in hell?’ he yelled.

“‘That’s what I want to know,’ I answered.

“‘Can’t you see I’m in a hurry, damn you?’ he shouted angrily.

“‘That’s exactly what I do see,’ I replied. ‘But Haig never whips those horses.’

“‘That’s none of your business, and Haig ain’t carin’ much now,’ he fired back at me. ‘Get out o’ my way, or I’ll–’

“‘Now just keep cool!’ I told him. ‘What’s the trouble?’

“Craven snorted, but he told me, as the quickest way out of it. Haig had been hurt–trying to ride Sunnysides. He’s–”

“Hurt? How?” asked Marion; and Smythe was relieved to detect a new steadiness in her voice. She had passed the danger point.

“The horse went over backwards, pinning him to the ground, with the saddle horn in his stomach. Craven’s gone for the doctor.”

She gave him one long, searching look, as if to pluck out anything he might have been hiding from her. Then she turned swiftly toward the automobile.

“Come, Robert! Quick!” she commanded.

She climbed quickly into the machine, followed by Hillyer, who was puzzled and alarmed by what he had seen in Marion’s face.

“You too, Mr. Smythe. Hurry!” cried Marion.

“But my horse?” objected Smythe.

“He’ll run home,” answered Marion impatiently. “Come! We may need you.”

Smythe obeyed, and jumped into the tonneau, while Robert cranked up and threw in the clutch.

“Fast!” cried Marion.

Hillyer glanced at her. She was very white; her lips were pressed together, her eyes were fixed on the road ahead. The machine lurched under them.

“Faster!” urged Marion, in another minute.

The machine, with a kind of shudder, responded to Hillyer’s hand, and shot out with fresh speed.

Another brief silence.

“The cut-out!” she ordered.

Hillyer bent to the mechanism, and the engine, with the muffler off, roared and shrieked as it took the smooth white road, with every bar and rivet throbbing under the pressure. Only then did Marion turn, and motion to Smythe. He leaned forward, clinging to the back of her seat.

“The doctor?” she shouted in his ear.

“Craven had started for Tellurium,” he yelled back. “Said he’d kill the sorrels. I told him there was a doctor at Lake Cobalt–Doctor Norris of Omaha–just arrived, with his family. ‘You’re not such a fool after all,’ said Craven. (I’ll talk with him about that later.) ‘Thanks!’ I said, and pulled my horse out of the way. ‘That saves two days.’ He gave the horses the whip again, and I started for Huntington’s to tell you–Watch out! There’s the turn!” he shouted in Hillyer’s ear.

The wheels tore up the sand as the machine, with the power off but still going at more than half-speed under its momentum, skidded and scraped around the turn into Haig’s road.

“Now!” cried Marion.

Again the automobile shivered, and plunged, and went clamoring like a mad thing up the little valley, the hills echoing back its roar. The white road leaped up at them, gulping them in. A red steer, astray from some pasture, crossed the road far ahead of them, and Marion closed her eyes as the machine, with a sickening swerve, missed it by inches. The next instant she was pointing to the group of buildings squatting under the hill; and then she was out of the automobile, and running to Farrish at the door of the barn. His face confirmed her worst fears.

“Where is he?” she asked, with a swift look around.

He pointed toward the larger of the two cottages. With Hillyer and Smythe silently following, she ran to the cottage, and through the open door. There she found herself in a bare, uncarpeted room, furnished only with two chairs and a table. On the table lay a faded and battered gray hat. For an instant her gaze rested on it, and a lump rose in her throat. But she resolutely turned away, tightening her lips.

There were two inner doors, one of which, ajar, revealed a glimpse of brightly polished pans hanging on the wall. The other door was closed. After an instant of hesitation, she walked straight toward it.

“Marion!” called Hillyer warningly.

She did not heed him, but turned the knob, softly opened the door, and with Robert and Smythe at her heels, stepped into a dimly lighted room where the aroma of a pine log blazing in the fireplace mingled with the pungent odor of ammonia. Smythe was quick to observe, over Marion’s shoulder, that the room was a sort of library and bedroom combined, carpeted in dark red, the walls papered in red also, and the windows curtained with heavy tapestry silk of the same rich hue. There were low bookcases on two sides of the room, with pictures above them; several marble statuettes on the bookcases; and a little jade Buddha beside a two-foot bronze god of terrifying aspect on the mantelpiece. In the middle of the apartment stood a solid library table, of which the cover was a curious strip of faded yellow silk embroidered with a dragon in green, a fragment of an old Chinese banner.

At the left of the door, its head against the wall, was a brass bed in which a figure moved restlessly under the covers. Near the head of the bed, on the side nearest the door, stood the Indian, his stolid, bronzed face turned toward Marion as she entered. On the other side, holding one of Haig’s hands, knelt Slim Jim in his blue silks, his yellowish face as expressionless as Pete’s, except for an alert and questioning look in his eyes. There was no sound except the low crackling of the fire, and the rasp of heavy breathing, with sharp catches in it that spoke eloquently of pain.

Marion stepped to Pete’s side, and looked down into the face of Philip Haig. In the dim light it had the pallor of death, with the parted lips and the staring eyes of the dead, or the dying. But he breathed; and presently her steady, searching, pitying gaze brought his eyes to meet her own, and she saw that they were living eyes, though clouded and darkened with agony. Almost was she on her knees, weeping over him, regardless of those in the doorway watching her. And it was not their presence so much as the necessity for action that restrained and steadied her. She did not even speak his name; but after her one long look, she turned away, and with every outward sign of calm, removed her gloves and hat and coat, and placed them on a chair in a corner of the room. Then she beckoned to Pete, who followed her, with Smythe and Hillyer, into the bare outer room.

“Close the door, please!” she commanded quietly.

Smythe closed it.

“Where is he hurt?” she asked the Indian.

“Here.” He laid a hand on his stomach.

“Was he unconscious?”

“Yes. Long time.”

“How long has he been like that–awake?”

“Maybe two hours.”

“What have you done? What have you given him?”

“Whisky.”

“Nothing else?”

“Water. Ammonia on face and breast.”

“Was there blood?”

“Yes. From mouth.”

She had another struggle then, and the tears started in spite of all that she could do. But she conquered them.

“Much blood?”

“No. Little, only at first.”

“Thank you, Pete.” Then, turning to Hillyer: “I want you, Robert, please, to drive home, and tell Mrs. Huntington to make up a bundle of the things I shall need. Wait! A pencil and a bit of paper, please.”

For a moment he did not move to comply.

“What are you going to do, Marion?” he asked, his voice shaking slightly with the effort of speaking calmly.

“I’m going to nurse him,” she replied, meeting his look without flinching.

“But, Marion! I don’t–”

“Pencil and paper, Robert!” she said firmly.

He tore a leaf from a notebook, and gave it to her with his pencil.

“Thank you,” she said; and seated herself at the table to write.

But there was the dilapidated hat again–so stained and soiled, a crumpled, tragic, intimate thing–arresting her. How it had filled her dreams! How she had laughed at it, fondly, tenderly, as a mother smiles at the battered school hat of her boy! Once, she had fancied it hanging on the pink wall in her room, a trophy, with a ribbon tied around its sweated band. And now she wanted to grab it up, and hug it to her breast. But she only lifted it gently, and placed it a little farther away, on the other side of the table. Then she made her notes.

“There, Robert!” she said, rising, and handing the list to him. “Claire will know where to find them.”

He took the paper mechanically, his eyes fixed on Marion.

“Will you come down, to the car for a moment?” he asked.

She saw the look, and softened under it. But she could not answer his questions then.

“No,” she said. “Later, if you wish it.”

For a moment he hesitated. But he could say no more in the presence of Smythe and Pete, though they were talking together at the other side of the room. So he moved slowly away, but was suddenly stopped by a cry from Marion.

“Oh! Oh!” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t somebody–why didn’t I think of it before? The car? Run, Robert! Drive down the road toward the lake. You’ll overtake the sorrels–or meet them. Bring the doctor in the car. Fast, please!”

Hillyer, without another word, ran and leaped into the automobile, and was soon bringing the echoes out of the hills again. He sank low in the seat, and fixed his eyes on the road that stretched out blinding white in the sunlight.

CHAPTER XIV

COALS OF FIRE

Seth was oiling a pair of boots on the veranda, while Claire talked to him about Hillyer, who had pleased her immeasurably by his devotion to Marion, and even more, of course, by his generous compliments to herself. She was delicately calling Seth’s attention to the pleasure, the profits, and the sanctity of politeness, when she caught sight of Hillyer’s automobile emerging slowly and silently from the trees that concealed the road at a little distance from the corrals.

“There he is now!” she exclaimed. And then, an instant later: “Why, he’s alone!”

She stood up excitedly, and Seth also, dropping a half-oiled boot on the floor.

“What the devil?” ejaculated Huntington.

So they stood, waiting and wondering, while Hillyer alighted from the automobile, and walked, with exasperating slowness–with reluctance, if they had but known it–up the graveled path among the flower beds. Something in the look of him caused Claire to clutch a post of the veranda for support.

“Where’s Marion?” she cried.

“She’s all right,” replied Hillyer, as he mounted the steps. “That is, nothing has happened to her. But there’s been an accident.” He hesitated. “Who is this Philip Haig?”

“Haig? What about Haig?” demanded Huntington.

“He’s been hurt. A horse threw him.”

“Sunnysides?” cried Huntington excitedly.

“I believe so.”

“He will, will he?” chuckled Huntington. “That serves–”

“But Marion?” interrupted Claire. “What about Marion?”

Hillyer looked doubtfully from one to the other, in much embarrassment. What did they know? Or were they as ignorant as he of the situation that had been revealed to him as if by the flash of a thunderbolt? And how much should he disclose to them, in loyalty to Marion? But in his pocket was Marion’s list.

“She’s there–with him,” he said at length.

“There? Where?” thundered Huntington.

“At his house.”

They stood stock-still, staring at him.

“She wishes Mrs. Huntington to make up a bundle of these things for me to take to her.”

He handed the list to Claire, who took it, and held it at arm’s length, regarding it curiously, as if she had not understood.

“You mean that–” she began, and stopped.

“She says she’s going to nurse him.”

“She’s going to–what?” Claire’s voice rose almost to a shriek.

“Nurse him.”

“And you’ve left her there with that–”

Huntington was going to say “ruffian,” but was checked by a sudden recollection, as well as by the look that Hillyer flashed at him. For a moment the two men faced each other, the one with anger boiling up inside of him, the other struggling to put down the resentment aroused by Huntington’s belligerent tone. Claire crushed the slip of paper in her hand, and watched them fearfully.