Lahoma. J. Breckenridge Ellis
yet—not just yet!"
The mountains had begun to spread apart. There were long ranges and short. Here and there, a form that had seemed an integral part of some range, defined itself as distinct from all others, lying like an island of rock in a sea of unbroken desert. Willock was approaching the Wichita Mountains from their southwestern extremity. As far as he could see in one direction, the grotesque forms stretched in isolated chains or single groups; but in the other, the end was reached, and beyond lay the unbroken waste of the Panhandle.
Swaying on his great legs as with the weakness of an infant, he was now very near the end of the system. A wall of granite, sparsely dotted with green, rose above him to a height of about three hundred and fifty feet. The length of this range was perhaps six miles, its thickness a mile. Concealed among these ridges, he might be safe, but it was no longer possible for him to stand erect; to climb the difficult ledges would be impossible.
He sank to the ground, his eyes red and dimmed. For some time he remained there inert, staring, his brain refusing to work. If yonder stood a white object, between him and the mountain, a curious white something with wheels, might it not be a covered wagon? No, it was a mirage. But was it possible for a mirage to deceive him into the fancy that a wagon stood only a few hundred feet away? Perhaps it was really a wagon. He stared stupidly, not moving. There were no dream-horses to this ghost-wagon. There was no sign of life. If captured by the Indians, it would not have been left intact. But how came a wagon into this barren world?
He stared up at the sun as if to assure himself that he was awake, then laughed hoarsely, foolishly. The wagon did not melt away. He could crawl that far, though in stretching forth his arm he might grasp but empty air. He began to crawl forward, but the wagon did not move. As it grew plainer in all its details, a new strength came to him. He strove to rise, and after several efforts, succeeded. He staggered forward till his hands grasped one of the wheels. The contact cleared his brain as by a magic touch. It was no dream.
Supporting himself by the sideboard, he drew himself around to the front, the only opening of the canvas room. He looked within. A first look told him that the wagon was fitted up for a long journey, and that its contents had not been disturbed by bandits or Indians. The second look distinguished two objects that excluded from attention all others. Upon a mattress at the rear of the wagon lay a woman, her face covered by a cloth; and near the front seat stood a keg of water. It was impossible to note the rigid form of the woman and the position of the arms and hands without perceiving that she was dead.
The man recognized this truth but it made only a dim impression; that keg of water meant life—and life was a thousandfold more to him than death. He drew himself upon the seat, snatched at the tin cup beside the keg, and drew out the cloth-covered corn-cob that stopped the flow. Having slaked his thirst, there was mingled with his sense of ineffable content, an overwhelming desire for sleep. He dropped on the second mattress, on which bedclothes were carelessly strewn; his head found the empty pillow that lay indented as it had been left by some vanished sleeper. As his eyelids closed, he fell sound asleep. But for the rising and falling of his powerful breast, he was as motionless as the body of the woman.
Without, the afternoon sun slowly sank behind the mountains casting long shadows over the plains; the wind swirled the sand in tireless eddies, sometimes lifting it high in great sheets, forming sudden dunes; coyotes prowled among the foot-hills and out on the open levels, squatting with eyes fixed on the wagon, uttering sharp quick barks of interrogation. A herd of deer lifted their horns against the horizon, then suddenly bounded away, racing like shadows toward the lowlands of Red River. On the domelike summit of Mount Welsh, a mile away, a mountain-lion showed his sinuous form against the sky seven hundred feet in air. And from the mountainside near at hand stared from among the thick greenery of a cedar, the face of an Indian whose black hair was adorned by a single red feather.
Within the wagon, unconscious of all, in strange fellowship, lay the living and the dead.
CHAPTER IV
AN UNWONTED PRAYER
When Willock started up from the mattress in the covered wagon, the sun had set. Every object, however, was clearly defined in the first glow of the long August twilight, and it needed but a glance to recall the events that had brought him to seek shelter and slumber beside the dead woman. He sat up suddenly, staring from under his long black hair as it fell about his eyes. Accustomed as he was to deeds of violence, even to the sight of men weltering in their life's blood, he was strangely moved by that rigid form with the thin arms folded over the breast, by that white cloth concealing face and hair. A long keen examination of the prairie assured him that no human being was between him and the horizon. He turned again toward the woman. He felt an overpowering desire to look on her face.
For years there had been no women in his world but the abandoned creatures who sought shelter in the resorts of Beer City in No-Man's Land—these, and the squaws of the reservations, and occasionally a white terrified face among the wagon-trains. As a boy, before running away from home in the Middle West, he had known a different order of beings, and some instinct told him that this woman belonged to the class of his childhood's association. There was imperative need of his hurrying to the mountain, lest, at any moment, a roving band of Indians discover the abandoned wagon; besides this, he was very hungry since his rest, and the wagon was stocked with provisions; nevertheless, to look on the face of the dead was his absorbing desire.
But it was not easy for him to yield to his curiosity, despite his life of crime. Something about the majestic repose of that form seemed to add awe to the mystery of sex; and he crouched staring at the cloth which no breath stirred save the breath of evening.
He believed, now, the story that Henry Gledware had reiterated in accents of abject terror. Surely this was the "last wagon" in that train which Red Kimball had attacked the morning before. Impossible as it had seemed to the highwaymen, Gledware must have been warned of the attack in time to turn about and lash his horses out of danger of discovery. At this spot, Gledware had cut loose the horses, mounted one with his stepdaughter, leaving the other to go at will. This, then, was the mother of that child whose arm had lain in warm confidence about his neck. On hands and knees, Willock crept to the other mattress and lifted the margin of the large white cloth.
His hand moved stealthily, slowly. Catching sight of something that faintly gleamed at the collar of the dress, he hesitated; his determination to examine the countenance was as firm as ever, but his impulse to put it off as long as possible was even stronger. He bent down to look closer at the ornament; it was a round breastpin of onyx and pearl set in a heavy rim of gold. The warm wind, tempered by approaching night to a grateful balminess, stirred the cloth between his fingers. He stared as if lost in profound meditation. That pin resembled one his mother used to wear; and, somehow, the soothing touch of the wind reminded him of her hand on his forehead. He might have gone back home, if she had not died long ago. Now, in spite of the many years that had passed over her grave, the memory of her came as strong, as sweet, as instinct with the fullness of life, as, if he were suddenly wafted back into boyhood.
He did not lift the cloth, after all, but having replaced it gently, he searched the wagon for a spade. It was found in the box fastened to the end of the wagon, and with the spade, in the gathering darkness, he dug a grave near the mountainside. Between the strokes of the blade he sent searching glances over the prairie and along the sloping ridges of the overlooking range, but there were no witnesses of his work save the coyotes that prowled like gray shadows across the sands. When the grave was ready he carried thither in his giant's arms the body of the woman on the mattress, and laid it thus to rest. When the sand was smoothed over the place, he carried thither quantities of heavy stones, and broken blocks of granite, to preserve the body from wild beasts.
It was dark when the heap of stones had been arranged in the form