Chapter 4

"No," he said. "It is strange. I did not fight at all. As I said to you, I was sick of blood. These men were only doing their duty. I might have killed two or three of them, and have escaped, but to what good? When they shot my horse, my good Sacrament,--and put a bullet into this shoulder, I crawled away still, and led them a dance, and doubled on them; and here I am."

"It is wonderful that they have not been here," she said.

"Yes, it is wonderful; but be very sure they will be with that candle in the window. Why is it there?"

She told him. He lifted his brows in stoic irony, and said: "Well, we shall have an army of them soon." He rose again to his feet. "I do not wish to die, and I always said that I would never go to prison. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she replied. She went immediately to the window, took the candle from it, and put it behind an improvised shade. No sooner was this done than Father Corraine entered the room, and seeing the outlaw, said "You have come here, Pierre?" And his face showed wonder and anxiety.

"I have come, mon pere, for sanctuary."

"For sanctuary! But, my son, if I vex not Heaven by calling you so, why"--he saw Pierre stagger slightly. "But you are wounded." He put his arm round the other's shoulder, and supported him till he recovered himself. Then he set to work to bandage anew the wound, from which Pierre himself had not unskilfully extracted the bullet. While doing so, the outlaw said to him:

"Father Corraine, I am hunted like a coyote for a crime I did not commit. But if I am arrested they will no doubt charge me with other things-- ancient things. Well, I have said that I should never be sent to gaol, and I never shall; but I do not wish to die at this moment, and I do not wish to fight. What is there left?"

"How do you come here, Pierre?"

He lifted his eyes heavily to Mary Callen, and she told Father Corraine what had been told her. When she had finished, Pierre added:

"I am no coward, as you will witness; but as I said, neither gaol nor death do I wish. Well, if they should come here, and you said, Pierre is not here, even though I was in the next room, they would believe you, and they would not search. Well, I ask such sanctuary."

The priest recoiled and raised his hand in protest. Then, after a moment, he said:

"How do you deserve this? Do you know what you ask?"

"Ah, oui, I know it is immense, and I deserve nothing: and in return I can offer nothing, not even that I will repent. And I have done no good in the world; but still perhaps I am worth the saving, as may be seen in the end. As for you, well, you will do a little wrong so that the end will be right. So?"

The priest's eyes looked out long and sadly at the man from under his venerable brows, as though he would see through him and beyond him to that end; and at last he spoke in a low, firm voice:

"Pierre, you have been a bad man; but sometimes you have been generous, and of a few good acts I know--"

"No, not good," the other interrupted. "I ask this of your charity."

"There is the law, and my conscience."

"The law! the law!" and there was sharp satire in the half-breed's voice. "What has it done in the West? Think, 'mon pere!' Do you not know a hundred cases where the law has dealt foully? There was more justice before we had law. Law--" And he named over swiftly, scornfully, a score of names and incidents, to which Father Corraine listened intently. "But," said Pierre, gently, at last, "but for your conscience, m'sieu', that is greater than law. For you are a good man and a wise man; and you know that I shall pay my debts of every kind some sure day. That should satisfy your justice, but you are merciful for the moment, and you will spare until the time be come, until the corn is ripe in the ear. Why should I plead? It is foolish. Still, it is my whim, of which, perhaps, I shall be sorry tomorrow . . . Hark!" he added, and then shrugged his shoulders and smiled. There were sounds of hoof beats coming faintly to them. Father Corraine threw open the door of the other room of the hut, and said "Go in there--Pierre. We shall see . . . we shall see."

The outlaw looked at the priest, as if hesitating; but, after, nodded meaningly to himself, and entered the room and shut the door. The priest stood listening. When the hoof-beats stopped, he opened the door, and went out. In the dark he could see that men were dismounting from their horses. He stood still and waited. Presently a trooper stepped forward and said warmly, yet brusquely, as became his office: "Father Corraine, we meet again!"

The priest's face was overswept by many expressions, in which marvel and trouble were uppermost, while joy was in less distinctness.

"Surely," he said, "it is Shon McGann."

"Shon McGann, and no other.--I that laughed at the law for many a year, though never breaking it beyond repair,--took your advice, Father Corraine, and here I am, holding that law now as my bosom friend at the saddle's pommel. Corporal Shon McGann, at your service."

They clasped hands, and the priest said: "You have come at my call from Fort Cypress?"

"Yes. But not these others. They are after a man that's played ducks and drakes with the statutes--Heaven be merciful to him, I say. For there's naught I treasure against him; the will of God bein' in it all, with some doin' of the Devil, too, maybe."

Pretty Pierre, standing with ear to the window of the dark room, heard all this, and he pressed his upper lip hard with his forefinger, as if something disturbed him.

Shon continued. "I'm glad I wasn't sent after him as all these here know; for it's little I'd like to clap irons on his wrists, or whistle him to come to me with a Winchester or a Navy. So I'm here on my business, and they're here on theirs. Though we come together it's because we met each other hereaway. They've a thought that, maybe, Pretty Pierre has taken refuge with you. They'll little like to disturb you, I know. But with dead in your house, and you givin' the word of truth, which none other could fall from your lips, they'll go on their way to look elsewhere."

The priest's face was pinched, and there was a wrench at his heart. He turned to the others. A trooper stepped forward.

"Father Corraine," he said, "it is my duty to search your house; but not a foot will I stretch across your threshold if you say no, and give the word that the man is not with you."

"Corporal McGann," said the priest, "the woman whom I thought was dead did not die, as you shall see. There is no need for inquiry. But she will go with you to Fort Cypress. As for the other, you say that Father Corraine's threshold is his own, and at his own command. His home is now a sanctuary--for the afflicted." He went towards the door. As he did so, Mary Callen, who had been listening inside the room with shaking frame and bursting heart, dropped on her knees beside the table, her head in her arms. The door opened. "See," said the priest, "a woman who is injured and suffering."

"Ah," rejoined the trooper, "perhaps it is the woman who was riding with the half-breed. We found her dead horse."

The priest nodded. Shon McGann looked at the crouching figure by the table pityingly. As he looked he was stirred, he knew not why. And she, though she did not look, knew that his gaze was on her; and all her will was spent in holding her eyes from his face, and from crying out to him.

"And Pretty Pierre," said the trooper, "is not here with her?"

There was an unfathomable sadness in the priest's eyes, as, with a slight motion of the hand towards the room, he said: "You see--he is not here."

The trooper and his men immediately mounted; but one of them, young Tim Kearney, slid from his horse, and came and dropped on his knee in front of the priest.

"It's many a day," he said, "since before God or man I bent a knee--more shame to me for that, and for mad days gone; but I care not who knows it, I want a word of blessin' from the man that's been out here like a saint in the wilderness, with a heart like the Son o' God."

The priest looked at the man at first as if scarce comprehending this act so familiar to him, then he slowly stretched out his hand, said some words in benediction, and made the sacred gesture. But his face had a strange and absent look, and he held the hand poised, even when the man had risen and mounted his horse. One by one the troopers rode through the faint belt of light that stretched from the door, and were lost in the darkness, the thud of their horses' hoofs echoing behind them. But a change had come over Corporal Shon McGann. He looked at Father Corraine with concern and perplexity. He alone of those who were there had caught the unreal note in the proceedings. His eyes were bent on the darkness into which the men had gone, and his fingers toyed for an instant with his whistle; but he said a hard word of himself under his breath, and turned to meet Father Corraine's hand upon his arm.

"Shon McGann," the priest said, "I have words to say to you concerning this poor girl,"

"You wish to have her taken to the Fort, I suppose? What was she doing with Pretty Pierre?"

"I wish her taken to her home."

"Where is her home, father?" And his eyes were cast with trouble on the girl, though he could assign no cause for that.

"Her home, Shon,"--the priest's voice was very gentle--"her home was where they sing such words as these of a wanderer:

"'You'll hear the wild birds singin' beneath a brighter sky,' The roof-tree of your home, dear, it will be grand and high; But you'll hunger for the hearthstone where a child you used to lie, You'll be comin' back, my darlin'."'

During these words Shon's face ran white, then red; and now he stepped inside the door like one in a dream, and the girl's face was lifted to his as though he had called her. "Mary--Mary Callen!" he cried. His arms spread out, then dropped to his side, and he fell on his knees by the table facing her, and looked at her with love and horror warring in his face; for the remembrance that she had been with Pierre was like the hand of the grave upon him. Moving not at all, she looked at him, a numb despondency in her face. Suddenly Shon's look grew stern, and he was about to rise; but Father Corraine put a hand on his shoulder, and said: "Stay where you are, man--on your knees. There is your place just now. Be not so quick to judge, and remember your own sins before you charge others without knowledge. Listen now to me."

And he spoke Mary Callen's tale as he knew it, and as she had given it to him, not forgetting to mention that she had been told the thing which had occurred in Pipi Valley.

The heroic devotion of this woman, and Pretty Pierre's act of friendship to her, together with the swift panorama of his past across the seas, awoke the whole man in Shon, as the staunch life that he had lately led rendered it possible. There was a grave, kind look upon his face when he rose at the ending of the tale, and came to her, saying:

"Mary, it is I who need forgiveness. Will you come now to the home you wanted?" and he stretched his arms to her. . . .

An hour after, as the three sat there, the door of the other room opened, and Pretty Pierre came out silently, and was about to pass from the hut; but the priest put a hand on his arm, and said:

"'Where do you go, Pierre?"

Pierre shrugged his shoulder slightly:

"I do not know. 'Mon Dieu!'--that I have put this upon you!--you that never spoke but the truth."

"You have made my sin of no avail," the priest replied; and he motioned towards Shon McGann, who was now risen to his feet, Mary clinging to his arm. "Father Corraine," said Shon, "it is my duty to arrest this man; but I cannot do it, would not do it, if he came and offered his arms for the steel. I'll take the wrong of this now, sir, and such shame as there is in that falsehood on my shoulders. And she here and I, and this man too, I doubt not, will carry your sin--as you call it--to our graves, without shame."

Father Corraine shook his head sadly, and made no reply, for his soul was heavy. He motioned them all to sit down. And they sat there by the light of a flickering candle, with the door bolted and a cassock hung across the window, lest by any chance this uncommon thing should be seen. But the priest remained in a shadowed corner, with a little book in his hand, and he was long on his knees. And when morning came they had neither slept nor changed the fashion of their watch, save for a moment now and then, when Pierre suffered from the pain of his wound, and silently passed up and down the little room.

The morning was half gone when Shon McGann and Mary Callen stood beside their horses, ready to mount and go; for Mary had persisted that she could travel--joy makes such marvellous healing. When the moment of parting came, Pierre was not there. Mary whispered to her lover concerning this. The priest went to the door of the but and called him. He came out slowly.

"Pierre," said Shon, "there's a word to be said between us that had best be spoken now, though it's not aisy. It's little you or I will care to meet again in this world. There's been credit given and debts paid by both of us since the hour when we first met; and it needs thinking to tell which is the debtor now, for deeds are hard to reckon; but, before God, I believe it's meself;" and he turned and looked fondly at Mary Callen.

And Pierre replied: "Shon McGann, I make no reckoning close; but we will square all accounts here, as you say, and for the last time; for never again shall we meet, if it's within my will or doing. But I say I am the debtor; and if I pay not here, there will come a time!" and he caught his shoulder as it shrunk in pain of his wound. He tapped the wound lightly, and said with irony: "This is my note of hand for my debt, Shon McGann. Eh, bien!"

Then he tossed his fingers indolently towards Shon, and turning his eyes slowly to Mary Callen, raised his hat in good-bye. She put out her hand impulsively to him, but Pierre, shaking his head, looked away. Shon put his hand gently on her arm. "No, no," he said in a whisper, "there can be no touch of hands between us."

And Pierre, looking up, added: "C'est vrai. That is the truth. You go-- home. I got to hide. So--so." And he turned and went into the hut.

The others set their faces northward, and Father Corraine walked beside Mary Callen's horse, talking quietly of their future life, and speaking, as he would never speak again, of days in that green land of their birth. At length, upon a dividing swell of the prairie, he paused to say farewell.

Many times the two turned to see, and he was there, looking after them; his forehead bared to the clear inspiring wind, his grey hair blown back, his hands clasped. Before descending the trough of a great landwave, they turned for the last time, and saw him standing motionless, the one solitary being in all their wide horizon.

But outside the line of vision there sat a man in a prairie hut, whose eyes travelled over the valley of blue sky stretching away beyond the morning, whose face was pale and cold. For hours he sat unmoving, and when, at last, someone gently touched him on the shoulder, he only shook his head, and went on thinking. He was busy with the grim ledger of his life.

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An inner sorrow is a consuming fire Philosophy which could separate the petty from the prodigious Remember your own sins before you charge others