CHAPTER XXXIX

THE WOMAN

ON the flat prairie, whose solid turf offered good footing to the ponies, the Del Sol riders, cursing their luck, finished rounding up their stampeded cattle.

“I’m willing to admit there is such a place as Aberlene now,” grumbled Nabours, “but it ain’t inhabitated by no human beings. This here idea of meeting a herd of cows with a brass band ain’t no ways according to no kind of Hoyle.”

“I ain’t taking no more chances about going through town,” he added. “We’ll throw them around the town and stop about three mile north. Ef anybody wants to see them cows they’ve got to come out there to our camp, and not bring no brass band neither.”

Wherefore, with exception of the few head already penned in the Abilene Stockyards, the Del Sol herd circumvented Abilene and all its attractions, and finally turned out on good grazing ground north of town. When at length the cattle were quiet and grazing the men pulled up with a feeling of vast relief, which each expressed in his own way.

“Well, boys,” said the trail boss to those nearest him, “here’s where we lean our saddles on the ground for a while. Tell Buck to pitch about here. The other cart’ll likely stay in town.”

It was the last camp at the end of the road, farthest north for any Texan longhorn at that hour. The long days and nights of trail work now were over.

Anita helped the cook to unload the cart which nominally was his, although he rarely had driven it. Strange and complex seemed the cargo as it was heaped up on the prairie. The three saddles of the lost men, their bridles and others; bed rolls and saddle blankets, kettles, pots and pans; ox yokes and trace chains; spurs, hair ropes and hide reatas; collapsed sacks of meal and flour and beans; some slabs of side meat, a mess box and a coffee mill, sections of several dried rawhides—all mingling with the meager war bags of a score of men. There were even a pair of horns of giant size, detached from the head of an aged steer whose neck had not proven able to withstand the pull of two reatas when it was attempted to haul him out of a quicksand crossing where he had bogged down. Len Hersey had chopped them off and put them in the cart, declaring that he wanted them for a “soo-vee-ner.”

“We got all the comforts o’ home now,” remarked that insouciant soul as he rode by. “Maybe I kin trade them horns fer a shirt.”

Nabours waited until he saw the cattle well scattered and disposed to feed, and until he saw the dust of the remuda coming in at a run, Cinquo Centavos and Sanchez by this time having completed their surgery on Alamo. He straightened in his saddle and drew tighter his belt, pushing his hat back on his furrowed forehead. Even now the burden of his responsibility was on his shoulders, and would be until the herd was sold; and the proximity of town brought certain problems.

“Del”—he turned to his point man, whom he found seated on the ground engaged in wiping and reloading his revolver—“you ride on down to the hotel and tell Miss Taisie I want her to stay in town to-night at the hotel. She’ll be safe with Milly along. The rest of us will come in when we can; maybe some to-night. This is the Fourth of July by the almanac, but there ain’t going to be no Fourth of July so long as there is any chance of this here bunch of cows taking another run; and, of course, we can’t tell just when we’ll make any kind of sale.”

Some of the men were disposed to grumble at the restriction of their range liberties, but the trail boss remained firm. Del Williams, quiet as usual, mounted and rode off toward town. He looked over his shoulder as he rode off alone toward the town, whose smoke was distinguishable across the prairies. Most of the other men were off at edges of the herd, all of them intent on gentling them down, with the exception of one.

Cal Dalhart knew that an agreed truce now had terminated. Up to this time both he and Williams had stood by their promise to let their quarrel wait until they had reached Abilene; and, truth to say, both scrupulously had refrained from word or act of hostility till now. But at the suspicion that his rival intended to forestall him, the pent-up wrath of Dalhart blazed high upon the instant. Without asking consent of any one he spurred out from his own place on the herd a quarter of a mile away. Nabours saw him, but could not or did not attempt to call him back. He shook his head; a sense of impending trouble came to him.

“Who was that man rid off yan just now, boy?” Dalhart demanded of Buck the cook.

“Who dat? Why dat’s Mister Del. He rid pint wif you all summer—you doan know him?”

Dalhart spurred off, but did not overtake his man outside the town limits. He saw Williams’ horse standing with the reins down in front of the door of the Drovers’ Cottage, near to Taisie’s cart; a sight which filled him with rage. A few moments later he himself flung off and also entered.

Williams had found the office room empty. Hearing voices, as he thought on the floor above, he passed upstairs, ignorant of the ways of hotels and looking for some one who might tell him where he might find Miss Taisie Lockhart.

He exulted in the success of their experiment as though the herd were all his own. His eyes were filled with a glorious picture. In fancy he saw her triumphant, as though swimming upon a cloud, radiant, scarce touching the earth. He had seen her thus in camp a hundred times, himself standing apart, distant, hungrily regarding. No actual interview between them had taken place since they had left the home ranch of Del Sol. He never had declared himself actually, never had spoken a word of his love. She had seemed always a divinity too far off for his aspirations. But now he was about to see her. He swore now he would touch her hand, would stand face to face with her alone. The thought of this was too much for Del Williams. Suddenly he began to tremble in his fear of her and his great and terrible love for her, as reverent and as loyal as any love man ever bore a woman. His courage left him. His limbs grew weak. Seeking a temporary truce with the situation, he turned into one of the little rooms which made off from the narrow hall and seated himself upon the bed, intending to pull himself together before he sought her further.

Dalhart, following up his quarry, also found the office empty. Hearing footfalls on the floor above, he also ran up the stair, looking for the man whom he knew to be somewhere in the house—the hotel was not yet really fully open for business. He found himself also in the upper hall, a long Marathon course between rows of doors all just alike, leading into rooms all just alike, all furnished just alike and each divided from the others by a shackling raw board partition, of ceiling loosely tongued and grooved. In each room was a single chair, a single washbowl, a single towel, a single bar of soap, a single coat hook on the back of the door. In each room sat a single bed, in each precisely at the same place—against the partition near the single window and facing the single door. Hotel making and hotel keeping still were in their infancy in Kansas.

Seeing no one in the hall, and still seeking for the sound he had heard, Dalhart, moody and blood mad—a more ruthless and dangerous man than Williams—entered one of these rooms to peer about. He found no one, flung himself down upon the bed. He leaned against the partition, causing it to rock somewhat.

Del Williams heard him but did not know who he was. He sat up, listening, his hand on his revolver, for a situation of doubt was usually one of danger in that border country.

The two men now were but a few yards apart, though separated by three of the thin board partitions.

Dalhart called aloud, “You Williams! Where are you? You are hiding, you damned sneak! Come on out if you dare!”

Williams heard his call. He rose eagerly to meet the challenge, fear of any man unknown in his heart, his weapon in his hand ready to meet this man. A swift thought came to him that he had been riding hard, so that the caps on the cylinder tubes might have become disengaged. He pulled up the revolver and overran the cylinder rapidly to see that the piece was in perfect order, as now it needed to be.

Dalhart heard the movement somewhere beyond him. He stepped to his own door just as Williams was about to emerge at his. Then came a report. Immediately upon it came a grunt or groan, the fall of the body of a man upon the floor.

Del Williams was himself in a flash. He fully had intended to shoot Dalhart deliberately. Now he had shot him practically by accident. The barrel, which happened to be just at the level of the man’s body as Williams whirled the cylinder, discharged the heavy ball as fatally as though by intent. The hammer must have been hit with his thumb. He never knew how it happened; no man ever does know how these things happen. The bullet pierced one partition after another. It had force enough left, driven by the heavy charge of fine rifle powder, to penetrate also the chest wall of a man’s body.

Dalhart fell, nor was it given to him to see the man who had killed him. If ever he heard the running feet of that man, or saw his glance cast into the room as he ran, no one ever could tell. He was dead the instant after the ball struck him.

A man met Williams in the front room, at the foot of the stair.

“What was that?” he demanded. “Who shot?”

Williams smiled.

“I reckon some fellow up there must have let off his gun by mistake. Maybe he has got too much liquor on board. Leave him go; he won’t hurt nobody.”

He passed out deliberately; deliberately gathered the reins of his horse; deliberately swung into the saddle and turned down the street.

Dan McMasters and Wild Bill Hickok, a block away, both had heard the sound of the shot and were walking toward the door.

“How are you, Del!” called McMasters. “I’m glad you got through all right.”

Del Williams stopped, leaned over and shook hands with McMasters, whom he had not seen north of the Washita crossing.

“Why, everything’s fine,” said he. “We’re holding the herd about three miles north. Come on out and see us. So long. I got to be going now.”

He waved his hand, passed on at a gentle trot.

But Del Williams did not hold his trot. He did not ride to a saloon, neither did he swing northward out of town to join the herd. To the contrary, he jerked his horse’s head around to the south, sunk home the spurs and left town, heading south, as fast as a good cow horse could carry him.

Many men saw him cross the town of Abilene at speed, but a cowman on a running horse was no new sight on that busy day. Liquor was flowing at every bar. Del Williams, coatless, penniless, ragged, bearded, unkempt, not a dollar in a pocket and without a morsel of food, had no one to say him nay as he headed back down the long trail which just now had found its end. Plenty of men remembered how he looked. But no man, friend or stranger, ever looked on him again in that part of the world. He disappeared as though some quicksand had engulfed him.

So passed poor Del Williams, as good a cowman as ever crossed the Red River. Poor Del Williams, for after all he had not seen the face of the woman whom he adored, had not touched her hand, had never spoken to her a word of the love he had given her since his own boyhood. He knew that a murderer might never look into her face. True, he knew that the record of the shot, piercing the several partitions, would have been a perfect alibi as an accidental case of homicide. But he knew also that he had been a murderer in his heart. So he never looked into Taisie Lockhart’s eyes and never touched her hand at all. And to this day no man knows what ever became of Del Williams, for no word ever came back from him. Perhaps he got into Old Mexico; perhaps he disappeared somewhere in the Indian Nations; perhaps he lived to old age and perhaps he did not live twenty-four hours.

Dan McMasters and Wild Bill Hickok, quasi officers of the law, after their hurried investigation, looked one into the other’s eyes and agreed that it would have been absolutely impossible for a man to kill another man in that way except by accident. In that case, and in Abilene at that time, there remained no need to question the killer or to pursue him. Neither of them asked or mentioned the name of the rider heading south, and if either had a suspicion, neither voiced it.