CHAPTER XXVI
THE CHASE AMONG THE CLIFFS
The heart-stricken man staggered down the gravel path before the house and struck blindly across the prairie toward the river. Pink Eye, standing with drooping rein, tilted his ears and neighed to him, but he was deaf and blind to everything save his bleeding heart. Something in the rugged lines of the river cliffs drew him on. There was clamour to match the chaos in his mind, there was solitude and loneliness where to fight out the problem that stretched out and on through the rest of his days. Pink Eye neighed again, and tried to follow sideways, but a foot caught a dragging rein and pulled him up.
Cockney plunged through the long grass to the height west of the ranch valley and dropped limply into the first ragged peaks, where he lay on his back, staring with unseeing eyes into the cloudless sky. His head was paining him, and the bandage had slipped, but he thought it all a part of his mental suffering. Dimly his mind went back to the beginning—to his fight with Professor Bulkeley. But defeat did not trouble him now; the struggle was nothing more to him than a series of pictures of Mary's emotions. A groan—a gasp—a cry—the swinging of that small arm that settled the issue. That was what blinded his eyes with tears and shook his body with sobs. There lay the verdict he had sought so rashly to alter with his story. Love—he knew it now—was not a thing of many lives. One could not kill it and hope ever again to breathe life into its nostrils. Love—real love—came but once. It lived but once. Like a leaf that withers before an icy wind, love died for ever at the hand of cruelty.
For the past year—ever since he knew he had no right to marry Mary—he had suffered trebly, the ignominy of a bigamist, the horror of the injury he had done her, and the tearing agony of his grim fight to destroy her love before it learned the truth. And he only knew how well he had succeeded in that when he would have given his life to change it. Ever since he had laid foul hands on a woman's throat he had been an insult to her sex.
Big Cockney Aikens covered his face and shuddered. If a lifetime of repentance—— But there was to be no chance for repentance—there could be none without Mary. He must go on and on, living his life alone—no Mary, no pardon of God or himself without Mary to keep him straight. The years ahead were a long road of blank despair leading—where? Without Mary, without friends, without hope, without ambition or plans or pride—the end could only be that to which he had been tending this past year of reckless memory.
He rolled over on his face in his anguish. Below him the cliff dropped away for more than a hundred feet to a jumble of rock. A few yards of eroded eminences, and then the rushing torrent of the river. There lay peace—forgetfulness—an end of the struggle. He lay peering down into it with misty eyes—wondering.
But Cockney Aikens' self-condemnation was too deep for that. His sin was too great for such a simple ending. His destiny—his punishment—was to live until God cried quits and gave him happy release. Only addled cowards thought thus to escape the penalty of their misdeeds.
He clambered hastily to his feet and moved to where a wide ledge lay beneath him, cutting him off from the sheer drop to the river bottom. He was too weak just then to fight temptation, and he fled from it.
Then he saw Isabel Bulkeley. She was seated on the ledge, screened, except from above, by the fallen rubble. Hammer and chisel and whisk lay at her feet. Her hand supported her chin, and her eyes were fixed on the river below. She, too, was sad. Cockney, sensitive to the suffering of mankind, felt it in every line of her figure.
Presently he saw her start and raise her head as if listening. The next instant she had seized her chisel and was hammering at the rock at her feet.
Around the face of the cliff only a few yards away came Dakota Fraley, Winchester strapped over his shoulder.
* * * * *
Stamford wound his way slowly from before the hidden valley, along the rocky lip of the Red Deer canyon. His arms and legs ached, and his mind was wearier still, but he crept carefully along like a conspirator. He knew that somewhere farther down the river he would find the Bulkeleys; he was thankful that that day they had chosen the south side for their explorations.
With the thought came another: his days with Isabel Bulkeley were over—he might never see her again. Slow as was his progress in the roughness of the way and the care of his advance, he was in no hurry. So long as he was away by nightfall he would be satisfied—the longer it was delayed, the better. He settled himself in the comfortable hollow of a rock.
A man burst from the prairies above, far ahead of him, leaped to the cover of the upper rocks, and in one swift glance swept the cliff below. With scarcely an instant's pause he dropped into a crevice, and Stamford could see him working a perilous but rapid descent with back and hands and knees. Reaching a ledge, he began to leap downward from rock to rock like a goat, swinging himself by his arms, unhesitating, sure-footed.
Stamford blinked as the huge figure of Professor Bulkeley threw itself down the last height and landed on the water's edge.
There he paused only long enough to cast one quick glance upward at the height behind him, another on either side into the torrent, then he leaped far out into the water. Stamford gasped. It was nothing short of suicide. Human flesh or human muscle could not master the rush of that foaming current.
There the sullen eddies told of a fierce pull beneath—and out beyond was the bubbling foam of rocks crowding the surface.
The Professor disappeared. But the big head came up farther down, shook itself like a spaniel, and started for the other shore. Stamford swept the lashing water with his glasses, but there was nothing now to be seen save the roaring torrent.
He climbed warily upward. Something out there on the prairie—something of dire peril—had driven the Professor to such a risk.
Peering over the edge, he saw a circle of mounted cowboys closing in on the place where the Professor had disappeared. They were in no hurry. Dakota and his companions knew that cliff—they knew the hopelessness of escape from their pursuing vengeance. Dakota laughed wildly and waved his rifle; Alkali drew his hand expressively across his mouth, and General took a last look at his rifle. Fifty yards from the cliff edge they dismounted and came on, crouching, creeping in on their prey. When no shot greeted them, they moved faster, tightening the arch of the circle.
"It's a shame to take the money, boys," jeered Dakota. "The old fossil thought he could make it here. He don't know these rocks. Anyway there won't be no funeral service; the grave's just yawning for him down there."
He was on the edge now, looking down to the river. They spread out in sudden surprise and alarm, searching among the upper rocks with drawn revolvers; several of them carried their rifles as well. The foreman started down, leaving his rifle at the top. Right and left was unscalable wall; below, it seemed almost as impassable. They were puzzled—furious.
A mocking laugh drifted to them above the rattle of the waters. Across the river, three hundred yards below them, the Professor was standing, waving his hand. Bean Slade threw forward his rifle and fired, and a chip of rock broke into the air several yards above the mocking foe. The Professor waved again and disappeared.
Dakota, his face livid, climbed up to the prairie.
"Get back to the ranch. Take my horse with you. I'll attend to this little affair myself. One of us isn't going to sleep in no bed this night.... Besides, I got a little personal matter to settle, and this seems a mighty good chance. You fellers wouldn't be interested."
He jerked his Winchester back over his shoulder and started down-stream.
The others rode away, laughing significantly. Stamford slunk from his hiding-place on Dakota's trail. He had no idea what was in Dakota's mind, but in that mood he was dangerous, and it was someone's business to keep an eye on him.
Presently, far down the river on the other shore, something moved among the rocks. Dakota was invisible in a bend in the cliff, and Stamford fixed his glasses on the spot and watched. The Professor was there, straining at something, jerking forward as if for a fresh hold, and pulling back slowly again. To Stamford's amazement the raft came foot by foot into view from this side of the river and moved out toward the straining figure. And on it was Gee-Gee. The jerking of the craft made the horse rear once or twice, and his legs were braced in terror. Stamford noticed then that the raft was turned for the opposite passage, the higher end toward the shore it was leaving.
Against the pressure of that current, with Gee-Gee aboard, Professor Bulkeley was pulling the raft by sheer force of muscle and the weight of his body.
By the time Dakota came into view again Gee-Gee and the Professor had passed into the rocks on the other side. In time the cowboy arrived at the mooring platform. He saw the raft across the river and sat down under cover to think. In a minute he lifted a huge stone and approached the end of the cable. A few heavy blows severed it, and the wire, with a spitting of fume, sank into the stream. The raft, freed, floated down the current, bumped against hidden rocks, splintered, split apart, one section swinging to destruction lower down.
Dakota lifted his head and laughed into the opposite cliffs.