The Baron of Diamond Tail/Chapter 23
FINDLAY had approached this defiled and mocked marriage altar unarmed. Whether he had been prompted to this by some feeling of delicacy and fitness which his years of self-ish living had not entirely erased, or whether from sense of security growing out of the fact that he had taken possession of all the firearms in the house and set a strong guard outside it, no man could have told. But the startling fact rose up to confront him in that moment that he had no weapon within reach of his hand except the carving-knife that lay between him and Alma on the floor.
He fell back a step on Barrett's sudden appearance, throwing his hand out of habit to his hip where his holster would have hung if he had been provided according to his usual caution. He looked swiftly about the room with the quick calculation of a man who could not understand nor accept any possibility of defeat.
"Back into that corner!" Barrett commanded him, indicating the place with his gun.
Findlay had looked into the eyes of men too long to stand on the order of his going. He backed away from Barrett, who seemed unaware of anybody in the room except the man under his eyes. In the kitchen the turmoil had ceased, but in the dooryard there rose shouts of excitement and warning cries, and the quick clatter of spurred horses, and frantic riding away.
One rode to the library window, broke the glass with a crash that seemed the note of crisis in that overburdened hour, tore down the windows-shade and shouted to his chief. Barrett threw a quick shot at him. The weapon the fellow had broken the pane with fell into the room as the horse bounded away in the dark.
Teresa stood clasping Alma, exclaiming and exulting over her, although Alma was not in need of the support of any arm. She sprang away from Teresa's happy embrace, snatched up the pistol the rider had dropped from his wounded or dead hand, and turned it upon Charley Thomson.
"Get over with him, you old devil!" she said, driving him along.
Thomson retreated before the fury gathering in her face, holding up his hands before his own precious countenance as if to shield his legal front from any disfigurement through an accidental discharge of the menacing gun.
Nearing had risen sickly to his knees, where he stood unsteadily, not fully conscious of all that had taken place. Findlay, backed into the corner, shot his quick eyes from figure to figure in the group before him, but there was no fear in them, only the sharp, eager seeking for some weapon with which he might strike and vent the passion that raged in him and darkened in his face.
Barrett jerked the silk handkerchief from his neck, tossed it to Teresa.
"Tie that man's hands!"
"Keep off!" Findlay warned, cursing her vilely. He leaned as if he arched his back like a cougar, and settled himself to leap.
"Turn around, hold them out behind you!"
Barrett went a step nearer as he gave the order. Findlay, flashing a look again into the younger man's eyes, turned and put out his hands.
Teresa was beginning her triumphant task when Manuel appeared in the door, a pistol in each hand. Calmly shoving his weapons under his belt, as a man who sees his day's work done puts away his tools, the old man relieved Teresa of her duty, undoing what she had begun, to make the rustler secure beyond a doubt.
"The other one," Barrett directed, nodding to the lawyer.
Thomson began to protest, to threaten proceedings at law, to visit terrible penalties for the outrage against his sacred person. Barrett stopped him.
"You can tell that to the sheriff when he comes for both of you," he said. "You'll stay tied till he comes."
Nearing got to his feet, his eyes staring wildly, his face white with something more than the pain he had suffered from Findlay's cruel kick.
"No, no! For God's sake, Barrett, let them go!" he begged.
"Senator Nearing, your family and friends are through sacrificing for you. You must stand or fall by what you've done. These men are going to jail, if there's any power in this state can put them there."
"Barrett, you don't understand," Nearing argued, falling back on his weak stand of intricacies in his complex life too great for the common mind.
"Time will reveal many things that none of us understand," Barrett replied.
"Alma! I'm asking only a little favor of you now. Let them go!"
"No!" said Alma, her face aflame in the thought of the shame this broken coward had brought so near her but a few moments past.
"Send me to jail if you think you've got to, Alma," Findlay said, turning from Barrett as if he scorned him too greatly to spare him even a word of defiance. "And I'll send Hal Nearing to hell on a hangman's rope!"
"Damn you! You'll never speak!" said Nearing, his weakness gone from him as he turned to snatch the pistol from Alma.
"Not here!" she cried, as she struggled against him to retain the weapon.
They were near the window. Before either Barrett or Manuel could reach them, Alma tossed the gun through the broken pane.
"Not here!" she said again, panting and white. "We've been spared blood in this house by almost a miracle tonight. Let it—let it—" she panted, "remain clean, one spot without that curse!"
"Who sounds on the door?" asked Teresa, shrinking in the fear of some new violence.
Whoever it was that made such a loud summons on the front door did not wait to be admitted. They heard the door open as Manuel, drawing both his guns, started to inquire.
Cattle Kate rushed into the room, her head bare, her wild curls flying. She stopped abruptly just inside the door, turning her white face from one to the other of them, as if to account for them all. Then she crossed swiftly to Alma, and caught her sternly by the arm.
"Are you married to him?" she demanded.
"No, Kate—thank God!"
Kate turned to Findlay, a cold white fury in her face.
"You tried to throw me, Dale!" she said, her voice trembling with something that was not all hate. "I played you even—I threw you. The cattlemen are after you! They're not two miles away!"
Findlay's dark face grew pale when the news of Cattle Kate's betrayal struck its terror to his vengeful, wicked heart. The approach of those armed riders, who had left the dance to come swiftly on this errand of justice, meant but one thing to Dale Findlay, safe so long in his place of respectability and trust. Death rode with them. There was no appeal from the decision of that stern court; no connivance of delay. All the craft of old Charley Thomson would avail him nothing there.
"You tried to throw me!" Kate repeated, standing before the silent man, in whom there seemed no faculty of either contrition, tenderness, or shame.
"Throw you hell!" he said. "It was only a joke!"
Cattle Kate turned her head slowly, and looked around the room. Her face was whiter than the bodice under her dark coat, her thin nostrils dilated as she drew her panting breath.
"Well, it was a damn poor one, Dale!" she said.
"Nearing, I've got to get out of here!"
Findlay spoke imperiously, his voice pitched to his recustomed hard note of uncompromising command. Nearing turned to Barrett, putting out his hands in wordless appeal.
"He'll have to take his medicine," Barrett said.
Cattle Kate whipped her gun from beneath her long coat and threw it down on Alma.
"I'll kill her if any of you bats an eye!" she threatened. "Cut him loose," she ordered Manuel, keeping her threat over Alma to enforce her will upon them all.
Still the old man hesitated, until Barrett nodded permission for him to obey. There was such a desperate eagerness in Cattle Kate's eyes to serve this cruel master of her heart that hesitation surely would end in tragedy.
Besides, Barrett did not believe it possible for Findlay to escape the cattlemen, to whom his villainies, long suspected but never established before that night, called so insistently for immediate adjustment. Cattle Kate would put her life down there at Findlay's feet, and do it gladly. Having found him unexpectedly free, she had repented her treason as impetuously as she had uttered his betrayal. She hoped now to regain her place in his unworthy breast.
"Hurry, Dale! Take my horse—there, at the front door!" she urged him.
Findlay had his eager eyes on Kate's pistol. Barrett" saw him stiffen to spring and snatch it, and called a warning word. Kate had interposed her body to protect Findlay the moment she drew her gun. Barrett could not fire at him without killing the girl.
"You can't have it, Dale," Kate denied him, putting back her free hand to hold him off. "If there's any shootin' done here, I'll do it. You go!"
"I'll go on my own horse, Kate, when I get good and ready," Findlay told her.
"They're comin', I tell you, Dale! Do you think it's a bluff?"
"No, but let 'em come!"
Kate was pushing him toward the door, shielding him with her body from the two armed people in the room, watching Barrett especially, knowing that he had reason to take Findlay's life where he stood. But Kate held her unfaltering aim on Alma. That she would shoot at the first start, none of them doubted.
Barrett was not keen to take the chance. On the other hand, he lowered his gun, hoping to convince Cattle Kate of his willingness to allow her gallant to pass out to such safety as he could find.
It was Barrett's belief that Findlay was passing out of that house, and withdrawing his evil shadow from it, forever. Even though he might escape the cattlemen, who would throw out scores of riders to comb the range for him before daylight, he would not dare come back. Peace would sit in his place; Nearing would be free of his oppressive hand, to repair the loss and shame of the past. So, Barrett was well enough content to let him go.
That some similar thought agitated Findlay's mind seemed certain from his reluctance to go, to release in one moment the grasp over his victim which he had counted upon not two minutes past to endow him so richly. He paused in the door, Cattle Kate stretching her arm before him, fending him like an eagle her young. It seemed that he would not go and leave that house standing upon a single hope.
"Alma, you and Barrett have been nosin' around to find out something. You wanted to know what I had on Nearing, you thought you could get it out of Kate. It'll be a sweet pill for you to chew on till I come back. I'll tell you."
"Findlay!" Nearing shouted, his voice hoarse in the appeal of terror.
"There's your senator, there's your honorable man!" Findlay mocked, pointing over Kate's shoulder.
"Hurry! don't you hear them comin'?" Kate implored.
"Even if I don't happen to come back, I pass you my word that Nearing swings for the"
"Findlay!" Nearing shouted again, in terrible voice of warning and appeal.
In his vindictive eagerness to make a complete ruin of the man in whose misery he could profit no longer, Findlay came a little from behind Kate's sheltering body to lean and look into the room. Nearing, standing close to Manuel, snatched a pistol from the old man's belt and fired.
Cattle Kate seemed to rise a little from the floor with the flash of Nearing's shot, and reel backward, as if struck a mighty blow. Findlay threw out his arm to stay her fall, and the girl, her face set hard in the grimace of her death-pang, lifted her drooping arm and fired, just as Charley Thomson, his bound arms at his back, leaned and blew out the lamp.
There was a confusion of screams from Alma and Teresa, and the rush of arriving horsemen drawing a line around the house. Barrett called sharply to Manuel to make a light. The old man, answering softly, unshaken in his fateful acceptation of things as they fell, struck a match.
Barrett had a glimpse of Cattle Kate lying crumpled in the door, and of Alma, for whom he feared with a greater terror than he ever had known, standing with horror in her eyes, gazing at something in the shadows beyond the table. Old Manuel deliberately took his handkerchief from his pocket to lift the hot lamp chimney, his body hovering over the match in his hand, cutting off the light.
When the lamp flared again, it discovered armed men crowding into the hall. Findlay was gone; Thomson was gone. But Cattle Kate lay dead in the doorway, and over beyond the long table Senator Nearing stretched straight as if his limbs had been arranged to keep his dignity. His blood was wasting down upon the hearthstones, in the place where a man should be safe, if there is any safety for him against violence and sudden death, amidst the perils of this world.