For a wild moment a strange fancy seized her usually sane intellect and stirred her temperate blood. The news they had told her was NOT true; he had been hung, and this was his ghost! He looked as white and spirit-like in the moonlight, dressed in the same clothes, as when she saw him last. He had evidently seen her approaching, and moved quickly to meet her. But in his haste he stumbled slightly; she reflected suddenly that ghosts did not stumble, and a feeling of relief came over her. And it was no assassin of her father that had been prowling around--only this unhappy fugitive. A momentary color came into her cheek; her coolness and hardihood returned; it was with a tinge of sauciness in her voice that she said:--"I reckoned you were a ghost."
"I mout have been," he said, looking at her fixedly; "but I reckon I'd have come back here all the same.""It's a little riskier comin' back alive," she said, with a levity that died on her lips, for a singular nervousness, half fear and half expectation, was beginning to take the place of her relief of a moment ago. "Then it was YOU who was prowlin' round and makin'
tracks in the far pasture?"
"Yes; I came straight here when I got away."
She felt his eyes were burning her, but did not dare to raise her own. "Why," she began, hesitated, and ended vaguely. "HOW did you get here?""You helped me!"
"I?"
"Yes. That kiss you gave me put life into me--gave me strength to get away. I swore to myself I'd come back and thank you, alive or dead."Every word he said she could have anticipated, so plain the situation seemed to her now. And every word he said she knew was the truth. Yet her cool common sense struggled against it.
"What's the use of your escaping, ef you're comin' back here to be ketched again?" she said pertly.
He drew a little nearer to her, but seemed to her the more awkward as she resumed her self-possession. His voice, too, was broken, as if by exhaustion, as he said, catching his breath at intervals:--"I'll tell you. You did more for me than you think. You made another man o' me. I never had a man, woman, or child do to me what you did. I never had a friend--only a pal like Red Pete, who picked me up 'on shares.' I want to quit this yer--what I'm doin'.
I want to begin by doin' the square thing to you"-- He stopped, breathed hard, and then said brokenly, "My hoss is over thar, staked out. I want to give him to you. Judge Boompointer will give you a thousand dollars for him. I ain't lyin'; it's God's truth! I saw it on the handbill agin a tree. Take him, and I'll get away afoot. Take him. It's the only thing I can do for you, and I know it don't half pay for what you did. Take it; your father can get a reward for you, if you can't."Such were the ethics of this strange locality that neither the man who made the offer nor the girl to whom it was made was struck by anything that seemed illogical or indelicate, or at all inconsistent with justice or the horse-thief's real conversion. Salomy Jane nevertheless dissented, from another and weaker reason.
"I don't want your hoss, though I reckon dad might; but you're just starvin'. I'll get suthin'." She turned towards the house.
"Say you'll take the hoss first," he said, grasping her hand. At the touch she felt herself coloring and struggled, expecting perhaps another kiss. But he dropped her hand. She turned again with a saucy gesture, said, "Hol' on; I'll come right back," and slipped away, the mere shadow of a coy and flying nymph in the moonlight, until she reached the house.
Here she not only procured food and whiskey, but added a long dust-coat and hat of her father's to her burden. They would serve as a disguise for him and hide that heroic figure, which she thought everybody must now know as she did. Then she rejoined him breathlessly. But he put the food and whiskey aside.
"Listen," he said; "I've turned the hoss into your corral. You'll find him there in the morning, and no one will know but that he got lost and joined the other hosses."Then she burst out. "But you--YOU--what will become of you?
You'll be ketched!"
"I'll manage to get away," he said in a low voice, "ef--ef"--"Ef what?" she said tremblingly. "Ef you'll put the heart in me again,--as you did!" he gasped.
She tried to laugh--to move away. She could do neither. Suddenly he caught her in his arms, with a long kiss, which she returned again and again. Then they stood embraced as they had embraced two days before, but no longer the same. For the cool, lazy Salomy Jane had been transformed into another woman--a passionate, clinging savage. Perhaps something of her father's blood had surged within her at that supreme moment. The man stood erect and determined.
"Wot's your name?" she whispered quickly. It was a woman's quickest way of defining her feelings.
"Dart."
"Yer first name?"
"Jack."
"Let me go now, Jack. Lie low in the woods till to-morrow sunup.
I'll come again."
He released her. Yet she lingered a moment. "Put on those things," she said, with a sudden happy flash of eyes and teeth, "and lie close till I come." And then she sped away home.
But midway up the distance she felt her feet going slower, and something at her heartstrings seemed to be pulling her back. She stopped, turned, and glanced to where he had been standing. Had she seen him then, she might have returned. But he had disappeared. She gave her first sigh, and then ran quickly again.
It must be nearly ten o'clock! It was not very long to morning!
She was within a few steps of her own door, when the sleeping woods and silent air appeared to suddenly awake with a sharp "crack!"She stopped, paralyzed. Another "crack!' followed, that echoed over to the far corral. She recalled herself instantly and dashed off wildly to the woods again.
As she ran she thought of one thing only. He had been "dogged" by one of his old pursuers and attacked. But there were two shots, and he was unarmed. Suddenly she remembered that she had left her father's gun standing against the tree where they were talking.
