ungloved hand sought the wound, and pressed so hard that her
wrist half buried itself in her bosom. Blood trickled between her
spread fingers. And she looked at Venters with eyes that saw him.
He cursed himself and the unerring aim of which he had been so
proud. He had seen that look in the eyes of a crippled
antelopewhich he was about to finish with his knife. But in her it had
infinitely more--a
revelation of
mortal spirit. The instinctive
bringing to life was there, and the divining
helplessness and the
terrible
accusation of the stricken.
"Torgive me! I didn't know!" burst out Venters.
"You shot me--you've killed me!" she whispered, in panting gasps.
Upon her lips appeared a fluttering,
bloody froth. By that
Venters knew the air in her lungs was mixing with blood. "Oh, I
knew--it would--come--some day!...Oh, the burn!...Hold me--I'm
sinking--it's all dark....Ah, God!...Mercy--"
Her rigidity loosened in one long
quiver and she lay back limp,
still, white as snow, with closed eyes.
Venters thought then that she died. But the faint pulsation of
her breast
assured him that life yet lingered. Death seemed only
a matter of moments, for the
bullet had gone clear through her.
Nevertheless, he tore sageleaves from a bush, and, pressing them
tightly over her wounds, he bound the black scarf round her
shoulder, tying it
securely under her arm. Then he closed the
blouse, hiding from his sight that blood-stained, accusing
breast.
"What--now?" he questioned, with flying mind. "I must get out of
here. She's dying--but I can't leave her."
He rapidly surveyed the sage to the north and made out no animate
object. Then he picked up the girl's sombrero and the mask. This
time the mask gave him as great a shock as when he first removed
it from her face. For in the woman he had forgotten the rustler,
and this black strip of felt-cloth established the
identity of
Oldring's Masked Rider. Venters had solved the
mystery. He
slipped his rifle under her, and, lifting her carefully upon it,
he began to retrace his steps. The dog trailed in his shadow. And
the horse, that had stood drooping by, followed without a call.
Venters chose the deepest tufts of grass and clumps of sage on
his return. From time to time he glanced over his shoulder. He
did not rest. His concern was to avoid jarring the girl and to
hide his trail. Gaining the narrow
canyon, he turned and held
close to the wall till he reached his hiding-place. When he
entered the dense
thicket of oaks he was hard put to it to force
a way through. But he held his burden almost
upright, and by
slipping side wise and bending the saplings he got in. Through
sage and grass he
hurried to the grove of silver
spruces.
He laid the girl down, almost fearing to look at her. Though
marble pale and cold, she was living. Venters then appreciated
the tax that long carry had been to his strength. He sat down to
rest. Whitie sniffed at the pale girl and whined and crept to
Venters's feet. Ring lapped the water in the runway of the
spring.
Presently Venters went out to the
opening, caught the horse and,
leading him through the
thicket, unsaddled him and tied him with
a long
halter. Wrangle left his browsing long enough to whinny
and toss his head. Venters felt that he could not rest easily
till he had secured the other rustler's horse; so,
taking his
rifle and
calling for Ring, he set out. Swiftly yet watchfully he
made his way through the
canyon to the oval and out to the cattle
trail. What few tracks might have betrayed him he obliterated, so
only an
expert tracker could have trailed him. Then, with many a
wary
backward glance across the sage, he started to round up the
rustler's horse. This was
unexpectedly easy. He led the horse to
lower ground, out of sight from the opposite side of the oval
along the
shadowywestern wall, and so on into his
canyon and
secluded camp.
The girl's eyes were open; a
feverish spot burned in her cheeks
she moaned something unintelligible to Venters, but he took the
movement of her lips to mean that she wanted water. Lifting her
head, he tipped the canteen to her lips. After that she again
lapsed into un
consciousness or a
weakness which was its
counterpart. Venters noted, however, that the burning flush had
faded into the former pallor.
The rustler's sun set behind the high
canyon rim, and a cool
shade darkened the walls. Venters fed the dogs and put a
halteron the dead rustlers horse. He allowed Wrangle to
browse free.
This done, he cut
spruce boughs and made a lean-to for the girl.
Then,
gently lifting her upon a blanket, he folded the sides over
her. The other blanket he wrapped about his shoulders and found a
comfortable seat against a
spruce-tree that upheld the little
shack. Ring and Whitie lay near at hand, one asleep, the other
watchful.
Venters dreaded the night's vigil. At night his mind was active,
and this time he had to watch and think and feel beside a dying
girl whom he had all but murdered. A thousand excuses he invented
for himself, yet not one made any difference in his act or his
self-reproach.
It seemed to him that when night fell black he could see her
white face so much more plainly.
"She'll go, presently," he said, "and be out of agony--thank
God!"
Every little while
certainty of her death came to him with a
shock; and then he would bend over and lay his ear on her breast.
Her heart still beat.
The early night
blackness cleared to the cold
starlight. The
horses were not moving, and no sound disturbed the deathly
silence of the
canyon.
"I'll bury her here," thought Venters, "and let her grave be as
much a
mystery as her life was."
For the girl's few words, the look of her eyes, the prayer, had
strangely touched Venters.
"She was only a girl," he soliloquized. "What was she to Oldring?
Rustlers don't have wives nor sisters nor daughters. She was
bad--that's all. But somehow...well, she may not have willingly
become the
companion of rustlers. That prayer of hers to God for
mercy!...Life is strange and cruel. I wonder if other members of
Oldring's gang are women? Likely enough. But what was his game?
Oldring's Mask Rider! A name to make villagers hide and lock
their doors. A name credited with a dozen murders, a hundred
forays, and a thousand stealings of cattle. What part did the
girl have in this? It may have served Oldring to create
mystery."
Hours passed. The white stars moved across the narrow strip of
dark-blue sky above. The silence awoke to the low hum of insects.
Venters watched the
immovable white face, and as he watched, hour
by hour
waiting for death, the infamy of her passed from his
mind. He thought only of the
sadness, the truth of the moment.
Whoever she was--whatever she had done--she was young and she was
dying.
The after-part of the night wore on interminably. The
starlightfailed and the gloom blackened to the darkest hour. "She'll die
at the gray of dawn," muttered Venters, remembering some old
woman's fancy. The
blackness paled to gray, and the gray
lightened and day peeped over the eastern rim. Venters listened
at the breast of the girl. She still lived. Did he only imagine
that her heart beat stronger, ever so
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slightly, but stronger? He
pressed his ear closer to her breast. And he rose with his own
pulse quickening.
"If she doesn't die soon--she's got a chance--the barest chance
to live," he said.
He wondered if the
internal bleeding had ceased. There was no
more film of blood upon her lips. But no
corpse could have been
whiter. Opening her
blouse, he untied the scarf, and carefully
picked away the sage leaves from the wound in her shoulder. It
had closed. Lifting her
lightly, he ascertained that the same was
true of the hole where the
bullet had come out. He reflected on
the fact that clean wounds closed quickly in the healing upland
air. He recalled instances of riders who had been cut and shot
apparently to fatal issues; yet the blood had clotted, the wounds
closed, and they had recovered. He had no way to tell if
internalhemorrhage still went on, but he believed that it had stopped.
Otherwise she would surely not have lived so long. He marked the
entrance of the
bullet, and concluded that it had just touched
the upper lobe of her lung. Perhaps the wound in the lung had
also closed. As he began to wash the blood stains from her breast
and carefully rebandage the wound, he was
vaguelyconscious of a
strange, grave happiness in the thought that she might live.
Broad
daylight and a hint of
sunshine high on the cliff-rim to
the west brought him to
consideration of what he had better do.
And while busy with his few camp tasks he revolved the thing in
his mind. It would not be wise for him to remain long in his
present hiding-place. And if he intended to follow the cattle
trail and try to find the rustlers he had better make a move at
once. For he knew that rustlers, being riders, would not make
much of a day's or night's
absence from camp for one or two of
their number; but when the
missing ones failed to show up in
reasonable time there would be a search. And Venters was afraid
of that.
"A good tracker could trail me," he muttered. "And I'd be
cornered here. Let's see. Rustlers are a lazy set when they're
not on the ride. I'll risk it. Then I'll change my hiding-place."
He carefully cleaned and reloaded his guns. When he rose to go he
bent a long glance down upon the un
conscious girl. Then ordering
Whitie and Ring to keep guard, he left the camp
The safest cover lay close under the wall of the
canyon, and here
through the dense
thickets Venters made his slow, listening
advance toward the oval. Upon gaining the wide
opening he decided
to cross it and follow the left wall till he came to the cattle
trail.
He scanned the oval as
keenly as if
hunting for
antelope. Then,
stooping, he stole from one cover to another,
takingadvantage of
rocks and bunches of sage, until he had reached the
thickets
under the opposite wall. Once there, he exercised
extreme caution
in his surveys of the ground ahead, but increased his speed when
moving. Dodging from bush to bush, he passed the mouths of two
canyons, and in the entrance of a third
canyon he crossed a wash
of swift clear water, to come
abruptly upon the cattle trail.
It followed the low bank of the wash, and, keeping it in sight,
Venters hugged the line of sage and
thicket. Like the curves of a
serpent the
canyon wound for a mile or more and then opened into
a
valley. Patches of red showed clear against the
purple of sage,
and farther out on the level dotted strings of red led away to
the wall of rock.
"Ha, the red herd!" exclaimed Venters.
Then dots of white and black told him there were cattle of other
colors in this inclosed
valley. Oldring, the rustler, was also a
rancher. Venters's calculating eye took count of stock that
outnumbered the red herd.
"What a range!" went on Venters. "Water and grass enough for
fifty thousand head, and no riders needed!"
After his first burst of surprise and rapid
calculation Venters
lost no time there, but slunk again into the sage on his back
trail. With the discovery of Oldring's
hidden cattle-range had
come enlightenment on several problems. Here the rustler kept his
stock, here was Jane Withersteen's red herd; here were the few
cattle that had disappeared from the Cottonwoods slopes during
the last two years. Until Oldring had
driven the red herd his
thefts of cattle for that time had not been more than enough to
supply meat for his men. Of late no drives had been reported from
Sterling or the villages north. And Venters knew that the riders
had wondered at Oldring's inactivity in that particular field. He
and his band had been active enough in their visits to Glaze and