The Baron of Diamond Tail/Chapter 21
IT SEEMED to Alma that some appalling cataclysm had overwhelmed the world. An hour ago she could not have been convinced that Nearing was a man so base as he had shown himself in that room, where his words seemed to sound still in repetition of his craven, unmanly demand. His attempt on Barrett's life had done no more than weaken in a slight degree her belief in the man who had stood in her veneration equal to a father for so many years.
She always had excused Nearing in her conscience; she always had held him the innocent victim of crafty contriving. She even could have justified him in taking a man's life, under stress of desperation, weariness and goading, to protect his name from the public disgrace that might grow out of some ill-advised act of the past. But his cruel cowardice of this night convicted him. He stood revealed, loathsome in his degradation.
Whatever he had done must have been independent of any connection with Findlay, to give that saturnine devil such a grip upon him. The crimes of the range were not so diversified as those of more civilized places; theft, arson, murder, covered them, as far as men counted them grave enough for punishment. It had come to the point now where passive submission to robbery no longer satisfied the master demon of this ridden coward's mind.
It seemed incredible that Findlay would be so foolish as to believe a marriage by violence could be consummated, no matter for the ruffians he had stationed around the house. They might easily break down her door, drag her from the room and stand her beside Findlay, but they could not compel her tongue.
Alma stood at the open window, flaming and throbbing with resentful fire. And through it all there rose, slowly, the cold spectre of fear.
She began to realize her danger. Men as desperate as those who surrounded her would find a way to work their will. What would it matter to Findlay whether she spoke the marriage vows, whether her lips remained silent or assented?
One thought, one name, had leaped into her heart at Nearing's broaching of his shameful scheme—Barrett. She must get word to Barrett; by some means she must summon him. This necessity now clamored in her heart again, urging, intensified. Barrett, Barrett—she must get word to Barrett!
She thought of stealing from the house, but dismissed it in a breath. Men were on guard at the farther end of the patio, not fifty feet from where she stood. Others were in the kitchen, rough cattle thieves who would stop at nothing. She had heard Teresa ordering them out, and their loud laughter at her rage. As the realization of the danger that encompassed and drew in upon her spread its chill, Alma sat down in her weakness, her eyes staring wildly in the dark.
Findlay did not mean for her to escape from that house before they could carry out their plot against her; he did not intend that she should steal away afterwards. He would carry her off to some lonely camp, after which, he knew, she would be only too thankful for the desolation of nature, in which she could hide her shame.
Then a succession of confidence, lighting her dark moment like the dawn. Aunt Hope would not be a party to this outrage! Weak as she was in her sickness, her spirit broken by anxiety and straining, she could not remain passive while such a barbarous thing was being done in her house. Alma hastened to her, to implore her protection and help.
In the hall she paused at the sound of Nearing's voice. He appeared to be moving about the dining-room. It seemed a one-sided conversation, such as always went on with a certain man who confined himself generally to monosyllables, and spoke in low voice, as one speaks who has the fear in him that the sound may discover the villainy of his heart.
Mrs. Nearing lay on her bed, asleep. A lamp burned low in the room; the poor, broken creature's white hair was spread in disorder over the pillow, as if she had tossed in pain before sleep relieved her. Alma paused a terrified moment in the door, aware that appeal for protection would be hopeless there.
Of late she had seen Mrs. Nearing in this state before; for weeks she had been drugging a persistent headache and general nervous discord with laudaawn. Whatever Nearing had told her of his plans for that night must have aggravated her suffering to suck unbearable degree that she had taken almost a lethal dose of the drug.
Alma stole softly along the hall and looked into the dining-room. Nearing was standing at his place, hand on the back of his chair; at his left hand Dale Findlay stood, darkly handsome in his black coat. Teresa was leaving the room, tray in hand.
"Tell Miss Nearing that dinner is waiting."
Teresa started at her master's word and hurried from the room. Alma retreated hurriedly along the hall ahead of her, waiting in her door. Teresa came breathlessly, noiseless as a shadow.
"Manuel hag gone for him!" she whispered.
"Gone for him?" Alma repeated, her heart jumping with a high, glad leap.
"Meester Barrett. Don't be afraid, my poor little dove!"
"How long has he been gone, Teresa?"
"Five-ten minutes."
"Good old Manuel!" Alma blessed him, tears of gratitude, of hope, rising hot to her eyes.
"What must I tell him?" Teresa asked, moving her head toward the dining-room door.
"Tell them," Alma answered, a swelling triumph in her heart, "that Miss Nearing is fasting for her soul."
Teresa returned to Alma's door in a little while, her breath audible from excitement as if she had run around the leaguered house.
"Nobody can be married without a priest!" she said, exulting in her disclosure as if it might be original. "There is no priest here, and there can be no marriage without a priest!"
"Manuel must be half way there by now," said Alma, counting off the time as if the thread of it were being drawn through her heart.
"Without a priest, I tell you—oh, I'd laugh in their faces without a priest!"
"It will take him thirty minutes, at the fastest he can ride, to come here from the hay-ranch," Alma said.
"He will strike them down like the thunder!" Teresa said. "Five men are in my kitchen, five thieves. Wait till the hot water hits them when I begin to throw it out of the boiler—when Meester Barrett comes!"
"Teresa!" Alma drew her into the room, whispering, eager.
"Teresa, I'm going to take my gun and walk out of this house! If I can't get a horse I'll run down the road till I meet him. I'll not let him come here to be murdered by this gang!"
"No, no!" Teresa protested. "You couldn't go, unless you had the wings of a dove you couldn't go. They're out there like dogs under the feet, thieves everywhere. But what are they to Meester Barrett? No-thing!"
"He can't fight twenty of them! I must go and meet him—I must go!"
"Manuel will bring him into the house like a spirit that comes through the door when it is shut. No, palomita, you must not go."
Alma clutched the fat Teresa's arm, clinging to her in a new sweep of terror.
"Oh! What if they stopped Manuel? What if he doesn't come?"
"Manuel is on his way, palomita. There! they call me. Oh, if I had poison to put in the coffee! If I had a spider, a dried spider, crushed in fine powder, to sprinkle on their cake!"
Teresa went to answer the summons of the bell in the dining-room, expressing her vain desire with hissing breath. Alma gasped at the wish as if it were her own, only that she would apply but half of it. Nearing she would spare, to repent in such contrition as he might be capable of, for the cowardly tyranny of that hour. But if some subtle force could reach that dark scoundrel by his side, she would launch it at his heart.
And there was a way! It came to her in a flash, as an inspiration descends to some hopeless tangle of human striving when all seems lost. If she must sacrifice this night, then sacrifice with heroic hand.
She closed the window, and drew the shades against prying eyes and ears in the patio. How simple, how strange that she had not thought of it before!
The thought of running away from the impending deed of violence was dismissed, her fears were calmed in a moment. Even though the stratagem of Manuel should fail to bring Barrett into the house in time, the cattle thief would not ride away from there with a bride beside him that night. She went softly through the dark to her closet, and ran her hand along the wall to the place where her revolver hung.
Strange, that she had mislaid it. Disturbed now, her heart sinking from its high leaping, she felt among the dresses hanging thick upon the walls. It must have been hung carelessly, and fallen to the floor. Quickly she made a light, scarcely breathing in the suffocation of a great, new fear. The revolver was gone.
"It is the old lawyer with a nose like a mule," said Teresa, coming in softly, closing the door after her with careful hand. "I gave him"
Alma turned from her fruitless search of the closet, her face white, fright in her eyes.
"Did you see my gun when you were straightening up my room, Teresa?"
"Gun? Yes, it was there where it always hangs. Oh, palomita mia, you are not going"
"It's gone! Teresa, it's gone!"
"Oh, palomita, you must have missed it!" Teresa rushed to the closet, pushing things aside to search every spot. "My God! they have robbed it!" she said, turning with wide, scared eyes.
"Some of them sneaked in while I was waiting for Uncle Hal!"
"No, I remember! While they talked, just after he came home, bent and white like a man out of the rain, I heard him command the señora to go quick te your room."
"My aunt? he sent her"
"It is a true word, God save us!"
"Teresa"—eagerly, taking the great, kind creature by the hand, speaking fast—"can you find me another one, out in the hall, anywhere? Any kind of one, just so it's a gun!"
"You have seen a way!" said Teresa.
"I have seen a way. Hurry!"
Alma waited at the door, holding it open a little way to admit Teresa when she should come stealing back. She glanced at the little clock on the tall bureau. Manuel would have arrived; Barrett would be running, faithful old Fred Grubb, impetuous Dan Gustin, hastening with him, to saddle and ride.
"There is no gun in the house!" Teresa reported, coming back breathlessly.
"Teresa!"
"Big and little—gone! In the hall where they hung—empty!"
"Teresa! What am I going to do?"
"Wait. Meester Barrett will be on the way by now."
"But they'll not wait. They'll come for me soon, and I haven't got a thing—my hands are empty—I haven't got a thing!"
"They call me! it will be to bring away the meat."
Teresa started to go, duty being slow in her serving mind to come forwafd with an excuse.
"Go on," Alma urged when she paused and turned as for permission. "Hurry back and tell me what they're saying."
Teresa was gone along time. Listening at the door, Alma heard her make several trips between kitchen and dining-room, heard Lawyer Thomson's gruff voice and Hal Nearing's cultured one; heard the sounds of laughter from the kitchen where the five thieves waited, and the movement of the sentries who guarded the patio beneath her very windows. Her heart fell in deeper hopelessness with every sound. Let Manuel come even as a moonbeam through the window pane, he could not enter there unseen. They would rush out like hounds, and kill Barrett at the door.
Teresa returned sweating, panting, exclaiming under her breath. The ruffians in the kitchen had tried to kiss her; she had been forced to use the hot water before its intended time.
"Come in, Teresa!" Alma pulled her by the arm, frantically. "He's coming—he's coming for me!"
Nearing was in the hall. He came slowly to Alma's door, behind which the two women stood in fearful expectancy.
"Alma!" he called, knocking softly.
"Yes, Uncle Hal," she answered, opening immediately.
Teresa hid in the closet among the dresses, where she quaked in fear of discovery, even through the closed door.
"We're ready to proceed, Alma," Nearing announced, with such briskness as he could assume.
"Give me a few minutes, Uncle Hal," she asked, her voice steadier than his own. "I have reconsidered it; I'll do what you ask of me to spare you the ruin and disgrace that you fear more than you value your manhood and humanity."
"I knew when you reflected, I knew when you thought it over!"
"Go back to him, then, and tell him I'll do what you ask me. Tell him to consider me, in this unexpected situation, and be patient a little while."
"Ten minutes?" he suggested, watch in hand.
"I'll try to be ready then."
Alma closed the door, dismissing him with that. Teresa came sweating from the closet, lifted her skirt, drew a carving-knife from her garter.
"I slipped it from the dish, for there is no gun!" she said.
Teresa's eyes glittered brighter than the steel; her bosom rose in exultant swell.
Alma started back, shocked, it seemed, by the brutality of the suggestion of that barbarous instrument. Then she took it, and laid it on the bureau close beside the little gilt clock.
"Can we hold them off till Barrett comes?" she wondered, speaking softly, eyes on the little clock.
"I will stand at the door," Teresa said hopefully, "I will say 'She is not dressed yet; in five minutes.' Or, 'She is at her prayers. For the sake of Our Señor, master, let her empty her poor heart!' And then, if all fails, and you must go—the knife!"
"The knife!" said Alma, her eyes still on the clock.
"When he takes your hand, draw the knife from your bosom, where I will hide it as the women of my country know how. He may lean a little, the devil in his eyes, and you must draw him and turn him, gently by the hand, so you can see the buttons of his vest. Count to the third button—it is there that the heart lies in a man—and strike! Drive it through him like the seven swords of Our Mother of Sorrows! Strike for your virginity!"
Teresa struck the blow in the fervency of her passion, sweeping her strong arm at an imaginary bridegroom by her side. "Put out the light!" Alma whispered fearfully. "Let me say a prayer!"