CHAPTER XVII.

A SISTER OF MERCY.

Let us now return to the fort, after the departure of Ruth Arden. It has been seen how the coach was held up on the trail, at Deep Dell Brook, and that the road-agent quickly met his punishment at the hands of Ruth, whose shooting was the admiration of Horseshoe Ned, for he told the story over and over again at the station.

Buffalo Bill, it has also been seen, followed the trail until convinced that Ruth had gone East, and yet, to make sure, he had gone to Pocket City, where he had saved Deadshot Dean’s cabin from being broken into, and got Tom and Jerry into trouble for their lawless housebreaking.

Having had the dream he had, of Buffalo Bill being hemmed in by redskins, Surgeon Powell, his stanch friend, had gone off upon his trail, with a result already known to the reader.

The departure of the chief of scouts and the Surgeon Scout, so soon after the going of Ruth Arden, set a number in the fort to thinking what it could mean.

The visit of the young girl was discussed over and over again, not only in the officers’ families, but at the clubs, and also in the barracks among the men and in the settlement adjoining the fort.

It seemed strange to outsiders that Colonel Dunwoody should be so attentive to the sister of an outlaw, and that Major Lester and his wife should have her for their guest, while Clarice Carr had been seen so much with her.

At the officers’ club the younger men hinted that it was a case of love at first sight with the colonel, and all wondered just how it would turn out. Certain the colonel had made no effort thus far to get a pardon for the prisoner, even though doubtless urged to do so by the outlaw’s beautiful sister.

There was one thing which Ruth had asked of Clarice Carr, and that was to see her brother and try and influence him for a better life, even though, as she said, she knew that he was under the shadow of the gallows, and that the day of his doom was drawing near.

In obedience to this wish, the day after the departure of Ruth, Clarice Carr obtained permission from the colonel to visit the prisoner. It was given freely for her to go and come at will, as Ruth had asked it. She accordingly went to the cabin, accompanied by Captain Caruth, and the sentinel had orders to admit her.

Arden Leigh, the outlaw, sat there, as he had when his sister had visited him, taking matters very calmly. He arose at her entrance, the clanking of his chains sounding very harsh in the ears of Clarice.

“Miss Carr, this is an honor I had not anticipated,” he said, standing and motioning to her to take his seat.

“Your sister asked me to see you, and I have come to know if there is aught that I can do for you.”

“It is more than kind of you, Miss Carr, as you are the one I plotted to rob of a large ransom. You have a good heart to forgive me.”

“I only hope that all your sins may be forgiven as readily as I forgive your sin against me, sir. But is there aught that you need that I can send to you?”

“Nothing. My wants are few, and they will be but for a short while, as you know just one week from to-day I am to be hanged.”

“So soon?”

“Yes, it is to be on Friday, the thirteenth of the month.”

“And are you prepared to die, Mr.--Mr.--Arden?”

“In what sense do you mean, Miss Carr?”

“Have you made your peace with God and man?”

“I leave my life to man, who will take it, and if I have a soul it must go to the keeping of God, who gave it.”

“Then you will not pray for forgiveness for your sins?”

“I will ask no mercy of a God whose laws I have outraged, and I ask nothing of man. I have taken human life, and I have committed every sin in the calendar of wickedness, I suppose. Yet all might have been different had my earlier years been shaped in a different way, Miss Carr.

“My mother was lenient and forgiving, my father allowed me free rein, and the only check I had upon my temper and temptations was my little sister, then too young to understand me, or guide me aright. When I fell in love with one who could have brought me back from the precipice I was upon; could have made a good man of me, ready to atone for the past in every way in my power, I found that she turned from me for the love of another, my rival, whom I hated.

“That was the turning-point of my life, Miss Carr, and from that day I made men and women alike fair game. You see what my evil life has brought me to, and, as I do not believe in death-bed repentance, in outraging God and humanity, I will not now, when I can do nothing else, appeal for mercy for sins I committed with my eyes open, and without mercy to those who were my victims.

“As I have lived, so will I die, Miss Carr, without fear. Come and see me executed, will you not?” and Silk Lasso Sam smiled as sweetly as though the shadow of death hovered not over him.

Clarice Carr was greatly shocked at the words and indifference of the doomed man to his fate, his execution upon the gallows, and his recklessness of pardon beyond the grave. But she said, calmly and sincerely:

“Mr. Arden, though I would shun the scene in which you must be an actor soon, as I would shun an open grave, yet, if my presence there could add one atom of comfort to you, could smooth your last moments, as your sister’s loving heart might, I would go with you willingly under the very shadow of the gallows, and be the last one to clasp your hand in farewell.”

The man started at her words and half-held out his manacled hands, while his face changed from its stern expression to one of softness.

“It is just such women as you, Miss Carr, who keep the world good, and my sister is one like you. Had I my life to live over again I would be a different man, but now I shall face the alternative unflinchingly. I thank you for your kindness in coming to me, for it shows a forgiving spirit and sacrifice of self, and my sister will appreciate it I know.”

Clarice could say no more to such a man. She, too, was not one to believe that a man can sin at will, commit the most heinous of crimes, and then, when the law gets its clutch upon him and he can sin no more, when the shadow of death is upon him, that he can turn from his wickedness to prayer, to repentance, as a drowning man catches at a straw.

So she wisely did not linger, for what could she tell such a man of sweet forgiveness, or what could she say to console him in the face of the hangman fitting the noose for his neck.

“If you feel that I can serve you, Mr. Arden, send for me. I will send you some books to read, and if there is anything we can prepare for you to eat we will gladly do so.”

With this Clarice Carr left the cabin of the doomed outlaw. She had done her duty, and, unless he sent for her, she would not care to see him again. Should he send for her to cheer him in the last awful moment, she would go without the slightest hesitation.

Returning to her home, she told Major Lester and his wife just what had occurred, and they, too, felt that she had done only what was right. And yet, the next evening the sentinel on duty at the cabin saw Miss Carr approaching.

He had had orders to admit her at her will, and, as she drew near, her face closely veiled, she said, in a low tone:

“You have orders to admit Miss Carr, have you not, sentinel?”

“Yes, miss. Pass on!” and the sentinel resumed his steady pace to and fro, as soon as he had taken the outer beat, some thirty paces away from the cabin.

“Ah! Miss Carr, you have come again to see me in my loneliness,” said the prisoner, rising as the visitor entered.

The veil was thrown back, and, instead of Clarice Carr, it was Nina de Sutro who stood before him.

“Nina! is it you?”

“Sh---- It is not for you to call me by that name where it might be heard. I am Miss De Sutro to you, as to others.”

“Why this disguise in coming to see me?”

“Am I disguised?”

“You surely wear the dress and hat of Miss Carr, and a veil?”

“True, about the hat, and being veiled, for I borrowed the hat to trim one like it; the veil is mine, for I did not care to have my face seen, and the dress is Mrs. De Sutro’s and is a match for one belonging to Clarice.”

“But why?”

“Well, I do not intend to compromise myself, and I could find no excuse to ask to come and see you, so I decided upon strategy.”

“You were anxious to see me, then?”

“Nothing of the kind.”

“Why did you come, then?”

“Because I had to do so.”

“Ah! a woman’s reason.”

“Yes, _because_.”

“And you impersonated Miss Carr?”

“I did, for she has gone off with a party for a drive to the settlement, and you know that she got permission from Colonel Dunwoody to see you, as _your sister_ asked it.”

“You speak as though you did not believe it was my sister?”

“Yes, she said so.”

“And you doubt her?”

“Oh, no.”

“What then?”

“I would believe anything she told me, for I never saw a truer, lovelier face, so unlike your own.”

“Mine is stamped indelibly with crime.”

“I am glad that you admit as much. But I went to see your sister.”

“She refused to see any one.”

“Very true, but I am no blunderer, and I went about it in a way that won.”

“I hope you will not blunder when it comes to my rescue.”

“That is why I have come to see you.”

“Well?”

“I have come to tell you that I do not intend to rescue you, or even make the attempt,” was the cool reply of the woman.

The man started visibly at her words. He gazed at her with a look which seemed to pierce to her very soul.

“Do you mean what you say?”

“I do.”

“You do not intend to attempt my rescue?”

“I do not.”

“You have changed your mind?”

“I have.”

“For some reason?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Well, I see no need of it.”

“You do not?”

“I do not.”

“You have thought of the consequences?”

“I have.”

“You know that if I am not rescued I will only die upon the gallows?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Still you refuse?”

“I do.”

“You are aware of my threat?”

“To expose me?”

“Yes.”

“To tell every one that you are my husband?”

“Yes. It will disgrace you.”

“Oh, yes, in one sense of the word.”

“And you do not care?”

“Well, not so much as I did.”

“You are willing to be considered the wife of the outlaw, Silk Lasso Sam?”

“No, I am not willing.”

“What then?”

“I cannot help myself.”

“Then rescue me.”

“I cannot.”

“Then I shall keep my threat.”

“All right.”

“You seem indifferent?”

“I am not indifferent; but I shall, when I see that there is no help for it, go to Colonel Dunwoody with Lieutenant-Colonel De Sutro and his wife and tell him the truth.”

“You dare not.”

“Oh, yes, I dare. I shall have as witnesses Major and Mrs. Lester, Clarice Carr, Captain Caruth, Surgeon Frank Powell, Lieutenant Turpin, and Buffalo Bill. I will tell my story as it was, Colonel De Sutro and his wife will vouch for it, and I will not only have the sympathy of all, but will be a heroine as well.”

“You will be disgraced.”

“No, for your sins will not be visited upon my head, and when you tell the story on the gallows, my prior confession will have taken the sting from it.”

“I do not believe you will do it!”

“Then you do not know me.”

“I cannot believe it. Then you would see me die?”

“You deserve death most certainly.”

“Are you to be my judge?”

“Oh, no, you already have been judged and condemned.”

“And my death will be upon your head, for you could save me if you would.”

“I did not cause your capture.”

“That is not the question.”

“What is?”

“You would sacrifice me when you could save me.”

“Let me tell you, Arden, for I believe that is your name, unless your sister is also sailing under false colors, that you sacrificed me without mercy, and would have been glad to have had me put an end to my life in my despair, or have gone utterly to the bad. It took me a long time to turn my love for you into the bitter hatred I feel for you now, and I will tell you the truth when I say that upon the night following the day of your death upon the gallows I will sleep as serenely as an infant, far more so than I would if you had escaped, and I expected you to appear again in my life to work me evil.”

“Woman, you are a beautiful devil.”

“Thanks for the compliment, for it is not many who can be a devil and beautiful as well.”

“You will not rest so easy as you say, for I swear that I will haunt you.”

The woman laughed.

“Ah! but I will haunt you, Nina de Sutro, until I drive you to despair, to madness, to death.”

The man’s face was livid now, for he felt all that he uttered. But the woman was wholly unmoved. She gazed fixedly at him a moment and said:

“Poor creature, you already haunt me while living. You will haunt me less when dead, for then you know I will be a widow, and I can find some one else to love me, for I’ll tell you now that one reason why I do not attempt your rescue is because I have discovered that I cannot win the man whom I love. I see with wide-open eyes, Arden, and I have seen that the man I sought to win, and believed that I could, is madly in love with your sister.”

“With my sister?” gasped the outlaw.

“Oh, yes, with your beautiful sister.”

“Where did he know her?”

“Only since she has been here.”

“He knows her to be my sister?”

“Yes, and pitied her, and pity begets love, you know.”

“Does he know aught else about her?”

“What else is there for him to know?”

“Only that she is pure, beautiful, and good, a possessor of a fortune of her own, and mine, for I was disinherited, and that she is the sister of Silk Lasso Sam.”

“I do not believe that he knows aught of her other than that her face shows her virtues, and her tongue has confessed to him the shame of being _your_ sister,” was the studied reply of Nina de Sutro.

The outlaw was deeply impressed by what he had been told by Nina de Sutro. Could it be really true that a man had fallen in love with his sister, knowing nothing more about her than that she was his sister?

Yet when he remembered how lovely she was in face and form, how noble was her nature, and the imprint of her pure soul was stamped upon every feature, he did not wonder that she could win the love of any one. At last, after a silence that began to be painful to Nina de Sutro, in spite of her nerve, and her daring defiance of the man, the outlaw said:

“I am remarkably situated, I think.”

“How so?”

“Well, I have a beautiful wife, who has learned to love another man, who in his turn loves another. That other is my lovely sister, about whom all that is known is that she is the sister of Silk Lasso Sam.”

“Well, it shows how unworthily two beautiful women have loved, for I simply apply to myself the praise you have bestowed, not to speak of many others.”

“Oh, yes, you are beautiful--so is a serpent.”

“Thanks.”

“Now, to this man?”

“Who?”

“The one who you say has fallen in love with my sister.”

“What of him?”

“That is what I wish to ask you, Miss De Sutro?”

“Well, he is a man in the true sense of the word, one of nature’s noblemen, as they say in novels. He is handsome, too, has won a deserved name for gallantry on the field, and what is most remarkable, is popular with both men and women.”

“He must be a saint, or a devil, for you know wicked men win women.”

“Yes, I have had a very sad experience in that respect.”

“But continue, please, with your description of your hero.”

“There is little more to say other than that he has rank, is brilliant, fascinating, and rich, so the idea of your sister’s riches would not have influence with him.”

“Who is this paragon?”

“The man I love.”

“This from a wife to a husband?”

“Why not, from an outraged wife to a demon husband who has turned the purest love into the bitterest hate? Yes, I do love him, and when I saw that he loved your sister then I decided, especially as I had another reason, that I would not raise a hand to save your neck.”

“Who is this man?”

“One who has a sentiment. Years ago, when a young cadet, he saw a portrait in an art-gallery of a face he became fascinated with. That portrait had been painted by a young artist of his lady-love, one whom he hopelessly loved, so the story went.

“He was refused and took to a life of dissipation to drown the anguish of his unrequited love. He went to the dogs, and at last, to buy rum, parted with all he had left in that portrait. It was put into an art exhibition by the purchaser and won the first prize, a gold medal and a thousand dollars.

“The purchaser hastened to the studio of the artist to give him the medal and share with him the prize-money, and found him sitting dead in his chair, his palette and brush still grasped in his hand. He had just finished painting a likeness of himself, seated at a table with Death, a grim skeleton, throwing dice together, and with a decanter and glasses between them.

“The owner of the portrait was so impressed by the death of the young artist, and his last painting, entitled ‘The Last Chance,’ that he sold them both to a dealer, for he took charge of the remains and had them decently buried. The purchaser of one of these portraits was the man I love, for he fell in love with the portrait of his ideal of womanhood and paid a large sum for it. He has it with him to-day. The other portrait was purchased by the artist’s rival, who married the maiden who discarded him. Do you remember the story, Arden?”

“Perfectly, for the portrait was of my mother, of whom my sister was a perfect likeness, and my father purchased the painting of ‘The Last Chance,’ and it is in the old homestead to-day.”

“You are right, for so your sister told this man of whom I speak. He told me of the portrait, of his purchasing it, and the story he had heard regarding the artist. She at once told him the name of the artist, and more, that ‘The Last Chance’ was her property, for the story was talked of last night in my presence.

“Having fallen in love with the portrait, keeping it as his ideal of a woman, when he met its counterpart, in your sister, he naturally loved her at once. Could I work against such a cruel fate as that to win that man? Oh, no, I know when I am defeated, and I gave up the game, for the cards were against me, and, though tempted, I would not commit a crime to win. Now shall I tell you who this man is that loved an ideal and found the real?”

“Yes.”

“_Colonel Dunwoody_,” was the answer.

“Colonel Dunwoody?” said the outlaw, in a tone of utter surprise.

“Yes.”

“I am surprised.”

“Why so?”

“I had heard it said there was a dead romance in his life never to be resurrected.”

“No, it was the romance of the portrait ideal. Had he never met your sister, the reality of the ideal, I could have won him, though perhaps never the love I would have wanted, still the love that I would have been satisfied with.”

“You are very particular.”

“Would that I had been more so in the past.”

“Love is a lottery.”

“Yes, I grant that; but what do you think of your brother-in-law in prospective, though, of course, you will never know him as such, having been hanged by his order.”

“Nonsense.”

“Oh, no, sound sense.”

“He will never wed Ruth.”

“He will.”

“She would never wed the man who signed my death-warrant, love him as she might ever so dearly.”

“Ah! I had not thought of that.”

“Then you do not know her nature.”

“Well, he will sign your death-warrant, and, now I come to recall her face, she would not marry the man whose signature was attached to it, so after all there may be a chance for me.”

“Not the slightest.”

“Why not?”

“Having loved an ideal and found her but to lose her, he would be true to his love of a memory and never marry another.”

“I believe you are right again. You have been a close student of human nature, Arden.”

“I have had reason to be.”

“And you know something of Colonel Dunwoody?”

“I have heard of him often, and I had a chance to study him at my trial.”

“He was severe?”

“On the contrary he was kind, for he treated me throughout like a man at his mercy, the under dog in the fight, you know.”

“That is his nature.”

“He having caught me felt sorry for me, and was anxious to get me out of my misery for his sake and my own, it appeared to me.”

“You were observant.”

“I always am. But you give up, do you; the man is lost to you?”

“I must.”

“And you really believe that he loves my sister?”

“I know that he does.”

“Then aid me to escape so that there can be no barrier to their union, for of all men I believe I would rather have her wed Colonel Dunwoody than any one I know, for he would make her a noble husband.”

“I am sure of that.”

“And you had better fish in other waters for a lover.”

“I?”

“Yes, for there is Surgeon Frank Powell, Captain Dick Caruth, Buffalo Bill--and I’ll name no others, for those three strike me as men worth striving for. If I were a woman I should love the three of them and Colonel Dunwoody, too.”

“Are you in earnest?”

“Indeed I am, for I have the happy faculty of admiring my foes. Now, I have always admired the man who was my rival in love, though I hated him and sought to kill him. To him, to Surgeon Powell and to Buffalo Bill I owe it that I am here now, and yet I cannot but like them immensely. There is Caruth, too, the one who advocated hanging me, and I admire him also and thought he was perfectly right. I would have done as much for him had I had him in my place.”

“You are a very remarkable man, Arden, and if you had devoted to good deeds the talent and energy you have to evil ones, you would have made a very great name.”

“I have as it is, for Silk Lasso Sam, the outlaw chief, is the talk of barracks, camp-fire, stage-station, mines, and, in fact, all along the frontier, while I am certainly greatly feared.”

“And you are glad to be feared?”

“Why not, for if I cannot be loved I can be feared. But you had some other motive in deciding not to aid me to escape.”

“Granted.”

“What is the reason?”

“I may as well tell you.”

“Certainly.”

“Because there is another enlisted in your cause.”

“What other?”

“Your sister.”

“Ah! is she interesting herself in me to the extent of helping me escape?”

“You know that she is.”

“May I ask how you got your information?”

“Well, I regard your sister as remarkable for a woman as you for a man.”

“Well?”

“She came here for one purpose, and that was to save you. I saw it in her face, though others only read that she had come to comfort you in your last hour. Convinced that you are in safe hands, I shall make no other effort, and I am here to tell you so. I have enjoyed my talk with you, so now will say good-by, for I do not wish to attract attention to _Miss Carr_ by my long stay, and I am masquerading as that young lady, you know. Good-by.”

Drawing her veil over her face, Nina de Sutro turned to go when the outlaw said sternly:

“Hold!”