Chapter 20

She mistook his gesture of bewilderment for one of refusal, then hurried to one final, frenzied appeal, although at a fearful cost to herself. It was this which had come to her in the dance-hall; it was this that she had led up to without allowing herself time in which to weaken.

"Listen! She shouldn't stay with me, even if I get away; it wouldn't be good for her; besides, Barclay would find us some time; or, if he didn't, I'm too sick to last much longer. Then she'd be alone. You're rich, McGill. You're John Daniels. You'll have to take her--not for my sake, understand, but--"

"_I?_" The man started. "I take Barclay's baby? Great God!"

There was a moment of silence during which the wife strove to steady herself, then she said:

"She's not his--she's yours--ours."

McGill uttered a great cry. It issued from the depths of his being and racked him dreadfully. He swung ponderously toward the rear room, then fell to trembling so that he could not proceed. He stared at the woman, lifted his hands, then dropped them; his lips shook. A fretful, sleepy complaint issued from the chamber, at which the mother raised a warning finger, and the necessity for silence calmed him more quickly than anything else could have done.

"_My--baby!_" he whispered, while he felt something melt within him and was filled with such an aching joy that he sobbed with the agony of it.

His wife's punishment overflowed when he breathed, fiercely:

"Then give her to me. You can't keep her. You can't touch her. You ain't fit."

She bowed her head in assent, although his torture was nothing as compared with hers.

"You'll help me get away from Barclay, won't you?" she asked, supporting herself unsteadily.

"Barclay! I forgot him! He's the one that did all this, ain't he? He brought you to--this; and my baby, too. He made her live among women like these. He raised her in slime--" The speaker's face became slowly, frightfully distorted.

His wife went swiftly to him; she struggled to fend him away from the door, but he moved irresistibly. They wrestled breathlessly so as not to awaken the child, while she begged him in the baby's name not to go, not to bring blood upon her; but he plucked her arms from around him and went out, closing the door softly.

When he had gone Mrs. McGill stood motionless, her eyes closed, her palms pressed over her ears as if to shut out a sound she dreaded.

Barclay was dealing "bank" in one of the saloons when McGill entered and came toward him down the full length of the room. They recognized each other as their eyes met, and the former sat back stiffly in his chair, feeling that the dead had risen. What he saw written in the face of the bearded man drove the blood from his cheeks, for it was something he had dreaded in his dreams. He knew himself to be cornered, and fear set his nerves to jumping so uncontrollably that when he snatched the Colt's from its drawer and fired blindly, he missed. The place was crowded, and it broke into a frightful confusion at the first shot.

None of those present told the same tale of what immediately followed, but the stories agreed in this, that John Daniels neither hesitated nor quickened his approach, although Barclay emptied his gun so swiftly that the echoes blended, then snapped it on a spent cartridge as the two clinched. Curious ones later searched out the bullet-marks in wall and ceiling which showed beyond doubt the nervous panic under which the gambler had gone to pieces, and so long as the building stood they remained objects of great interest.

Now McGill--or Daniels, as he was known to the onlookers--never went armed, having yet to feel the need of other weapons than his hands. He tore the gun from his victim's grasp, then mauled him with it so fearfully that men shouted at him and hid their faces. Meanwhile he was speaking, growling something into Barclay's ears. No one understood what it was he said until the confusion died and they heard these words:

"--And you'll go with my brand on you where everybody 'll read it and know you're a rat."

Next he did something that a great many had heard of but few, even of the old-timers, had witnessed. He gun-branded his enemy. Barclay was little more than a pulp by this time; he lay face up across the faro-table with McGill's fingers at his throat. They thought the older man was about to brain him, but instead he turned the revolver in his hand and drew the thin, sharp-edged sight across Barclay's forehead from temple to temple, then from forelock to bridge of nose. A stream of blood followed as the sight ripped through to the skull like a dull scalpel, leaving a ragged disfiguring cross above the gambler's eyes; it scarred the bone; it formed a hideous mutilation that would last as long as the fellow lived, and constitute a brand of infamy to single him out from ten thousand, telling the story of his dishonor.

When he had finished, McGill raised the wretch bodily and flung him half across the room as if he were unclean, then, without a glance to right or left, he went forth as he had come.

His wife was waiting with her ears covered, but she saw the blood on his hands when she opened her eyes, and cried out.

"It's his," he told her, roughly. "I don't think I killed him. I tried not to, for her sake." He inclined his head toward the inner door. "But it was hard to hold in, after all this time. He'll never trouble you again."

"When do you--mean to take the baby?" she whispered.

"Now--She--"

"No, no! Not yet. Let her stay here a little while--till I'm strong enough to let her go. Just a little while, McGill. You're a good man. Don't you understand?" She was palsied, incoherent with dread; in her eyes was a look of death.

But he held out his empty arms, crying, hoarsely, "Let me have my kiddie!"

So she went in and gathered up the sleeping babe.

It may have been the father's heart-beats that awakened the little one when she lay against his breast; at any rate the blue eyes opened and stared up at him gravely. Astonishment, alarm gave way to recognition; she smiled drowsily and her lids closed again, then a tiny hand curled about one of McGill's fingers.

His face was wet when he raised it to the stricken woman and said, gently, "We'll go now, if you're ready, Alice."

"What do you--?" She stared at him wildly. "You don't want _me_, McGill; not after all I've done, all I--am?"

"I've always wanted you," he told her, simply. "You'll have to come, for _she_ needs you." Holding the baby close with one arm, he extended the other to his wife, but she drew back, choking.

"Not yet!" she managed to say through her tears. "Not until you know I'm not all bad--only weak."

He took her hand and together they went out, walking slowly so as not to awaken the child.

THE END

Books by REX BEACH

THE CRIMSON GARDENIA AND OTHER TALES OF ADVENTURE. HEART OF THE SUNSET. THE AUCTION BLOCK. THE IRON TRAIL. THE NET. THE NE'ER-DO-WELL. THE SPOILERS. THE BARRIER. THE SILVER HORDE. GOING SOME.