FIRST ENDING
Table of Contents
But he must stir. There would be prisoners, eager to talk. Their speech would weave a noose about his neck.
He did not glance again at the gold, gleaming there where the honest people of Wahpeton would find it. Striding from the cabin he swung on one of the horses that stood saddled and ready among the trees. The lights of the camp, the roar of the distant voices fell away behind him, and before him lay what wild destiny he could not guess. But the night was full of haunting shadows, and within him grew a strange pain, like a revelation; perhaps it was his soul, at last awakening.
SECOND ENDING
Table of Contents
But he must stir. There would be prisoners, eager to talk. Their speech would weave a noose about his neck. The men of Wahpeton must not find him here when they came.
But before he turned his back forever upon Wahpeton Gulch, he had a task to perform. He did not glance again at the gold, gleaming there where the honest people of the camp would find it. Two horses waited, bridled and saddled, among the restless mules tethered under the trees. One was the animal which had borne him into Wahpeton. He mounted it and rode slowly toward the cabin where a woman lay beside dead men. He felt vaguely that it was not right to leave her lying there among those shot-torn rogues.
He braced himself against the sight as he entered the cabin of death. Then he started and went livid under his sun-burnt hue. Glory was not lying as he had left her! With a low cry he reached her, lifted her in his arms. He felt life, pulsing strongly under his hands.
"Glory! For God's sake!" Her eyes were open, not so glazed now, though shadowed by pain and bewilderment. Her arms groped toward him. He lifted and carried her into the back room, laid her on the bunk where Joe Willoughby had received his death wounds. His mind was a whirling turmoil, as he felt with practised fingers of the darkly-clotted wound at the edge of her golden hair.
"Steve," she whimpered. "I'm afraid! Middleton—"
"He won't hurt you any more. Don't talk. I'm goin' to wash that wound and dress it."
Working fast and skillfully, he washed the blood away with a rag torn from her petticoat—as being the cleanest material he could find—and soaked in water and whisky. Corcoran had just ceased bandaging her head when she struggled upright, despite his profane objections, and caught at his arm.
"Steve!" Her eyes were wide with fear. "You must go—go quick! I was crazy—I told McNab what you told me—told Middleton, too, that's why he shot me. They'll kill you."
"Not them," he muttered. "Do you feel better now?"
"Oh, don't mind me! Go! Please go! Oh, Steve, I must have been mad! I betrayed you! I was coming here to tell you that I had, to warn you to get away, when I met Middleton. Where is he?"
"In Hell, where he ought to been years ago," grunted Corcoran. "Never mind. But the vigilantes will be headin' this way soon as some of the rats they've caught get to talkin'. I've got to dust out. But I'll take you back to the Golden Garter first."
"Steve, you're mad! You'd run your head into a noose! Get on your horse and ride!"
"Will you go with me?" His hands closed on her, hurting her with their unconscious strength.
"You still want me, after—after what I did?" she gasped.
"I've always wanted you, since I first saw you. I always will. Forgive you? There's nothin' to forgive. Nothin' you could have ever done could be anywhere near as black as what I've been for the past month. I've been like a mad-dog; the gold blinded me. I'm awake now. And I want you."
For answer her arms groped about his neck, clung convulsively; he felt the moisture of her passionate tears on his throat. Lifting her, he carried her out of the cabin, pressing her face against his breast that she might not see the stark figures lying there in their splashes of crimson.
An instant later he was settled in the saddle, holding her before him, cradled like a child in his muscular arms. He had wrapped his coat about her, and the pale oval of her face stared up at his like a white blossom in the night. Her arms still clung to him, as if she feared he might be torn from her.
"How the lights blaze over the camp!" she murmured irrelevantly, as they climbed toward the ravine.
"Take a good look," he said, his voice harsh with suppressed and unfamiliar emotions. "It's our old life we're leavin' behind, and I hope we're headin' for a better one. And as a beginnin', we're goin' to get married the first town we hit."
An incoherent murmur was her only reply as she snuggled closer in his arms; behind them the lights of the camp, the distant roar of voices fell away and grew blurred in the distance. But it seemed to Corcoran that they rode in a blaze of glory, that emanated not from moon nor stars, but from his own breast. And perhaps it was his soul, at last awakened.
THE END
Historical Novels:
Table of Contents
The 'El Borak' Saga:
Table of Contents
The Daughter Of Erlik Khan
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER I
Table of Contents
THE tall Englishman, Pembroke, was scratching lines on the earth with his hunting knife, talking in a jerky tone that indicated suppressed excitement: "I tell you, Ormond, that peak to the west is the one we were to look for. Here, I've marked a map in the dirt. This mark here represents our camp, and this one is the peak. We've marched north far enough. At this spot we should turn westward—"
"Shut up!" muttered Ormond. "Rub out that map. Here comes Gordon."
Pembroke obliterated the faint lines with a quick sweep of his open hand, and as he scrambled up he managed to shuffle his feet across the spot. He and Ormond were laughing and talking easily as the third man of the expedition came up.
Gordon was shorter than his companions, but his physique did not suffer by comparison with either the rangy Pembroke or the more closely knit Ormond. He was one of those rare individuals at once lithe and compact. His strength did not give the impression of being locked up within himself as is the case with so many strong men. He moved with a flowing ease that advertised power more subtly than does mere beefy bulk.
Though he was clad much like the two Englishmen except for an Arab headdress, he fitted into the scene as they did not. He, an American, seemed almost as much a part of these rugged uplands as the wild nomads which pasture their sheep along the slopes of the Hindu Kush. There was a certitude in his level gaze, and economy of motion in his movements, that reflected kinship with the wilderness.
"Pembroke and I were discussing that peak, Gordon," said Ormond, indicating the mountain under discussion, which reared a snow cap in the clear afternoon sky beyond a range of blue hills, hazy with distance. "We were wondering if it had a name."
"Everything in these hills has a name," Gordon answered. "Some of them don't appear on the maps, though. That peak is called Mount Erlik Khan. Less than a dozen white men have seen it."
"Never heard of it," was Pembroke's comment. "If we weren't in such a hurry to find poor old Reynolds, it might be fun having a closer look at it, what?"
"If getting your belly ripped open can be called fun," returned Gordon. "Erlik Khan's in Black Kirghiz country."
"Kirghiz? Heathens and devil worshipers? Sacred city of Yolgan and all that rot."