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Out of the Depths: A Romance of Reclamation, a novel by Robert Ames Bennet |
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Chapter 5. Into The Depths |
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_ CHAPTER V. INTO THE DEPTHS At the top of the bank made by the dike the girl pointed with her quirt down to the rock-rimmed pool edge where a pair of riders were just swinging out of their saddles. "Hello, Daddy! We're coming, Kid," she called, and she turned to explain to Ashton. "They came around the other end of the hills; a longer way but better going. How's this? Thought you said you were camped here." "Yes, of course. Don't you see the tent? It's right there among the--Why, what--where is it?" cried Ashton, gaping in blank amazement. "We'll soon see," replied the girl. Their horses were scrambling down the short steep slope to the pool, where the other horses were drinking their fill of the cool water. The two men watched Ashton's approach, Knowles with an impassive gaze, Gowan with cold suspicion in his narrowed eyes. "Well, honey," asked the cowman, "did you have him pulling leather?" "No, and I didn't lose him, either," she replied, with a mischievous glance at Gowan. "I took that jump-off where the white-cheeked steer broke its neck. He took it after me without pulling leather." "Huh!" grunted the puncher. "Mr. Tenderfoot shore is some rider. We're waiting for him now to ride around and find that camp where we were to deliver his veal." Ashton stared with a puzzled, half-dazed expression from the tentless trees beside him to the fore and hind quarters of veal wrapped in slicker raincoats and fastened on back of the men's saddles. "Well?" demanded Knowles. "Thought you said you were camped here." "I am--that is, I--My tent was right there between those two trees," said Ashton. "You see, there are the twigs and leaves I had my valet collect for my bed." "Shore--valleys are great on collecting beds of leaves and sand and bowlders," observed Gowan. "There's his fireplace," said the girl, wheeling her horse through a clump of wild rosebushes. "Yes, and he's right about the tent, too. It is a bed. Here's a dozen cigarette boxes and--What's this, Mr. Ashton! Looks as if someone had left a note for you." "A note?" he muttered, slipping to the ground. He ran over to the spot to which she was pointing. On a little pile of stones, in front of where his tent had been pitched, a piece of coarse wrapping paper covered with writing was fluttering in the light breeze. He snatched it up and read the note with fast-growing bewilderment. "What is it?" sympathetically questioned the girl, quick to see that he was in real trouble. He did not answer. He did not even realize that she had spoken. With feverish haste he caught up an opened envelope that had lain under the paper. Drawn by his odd manner, Knowles and Gowan came over to stare at him. He had torn a letter from the envelope. It was in typewriting and covered less than a page, yet he gaped at it, reading and re-reading the lines as if too dazed to be able to comprehend their meaning. Slowly the involved sentences burned their way into his consciousness. As his bewilderment cleared, his concern deepened to dismay, and from dismay to consternation. His jaw dropped slack, his face whitened, the pupils of his eyes dilated. "What is it? What's the matter?" exclaimed the girl. "Matter?"--His voice was hoarse and strained. He crumpled the letter in a convulsive grasp--"Matter? I'm ruined!--ruined! God!" Knowles and the girl were both silent before the despair in the young man's face. Gowan was more obtuse or else less considerate. "Shore, you're plumb busted, partner," he ironically condoled. "Your whole outfit has flown away on the wings of the morning. Hope you won't tell us the pay for your veal has vamoosed with the rest." "Oh, Kid, for shame!" reproved the girl. "Of course Daddy won't ask for any pay--now." Ashton burst into a jangling high-pitched laugh. "No, no! there's still my pony and saddle and rifle and watch!" he cried, half hysterically. "Take them! strip me! Here's my hat, too! I paid forty-five dollars for it--silver band." He flung it on the ground. "There's a hole in it--I wish the hole were through my head!" "Now, now, look here, son. Keep a stiff upper lip," said Knowles. "Don't act like you're locoed. It's all right about that veal, as Chuckie says, and you oughtn't to make such a fuss over the loss of a camp outfit." "Camp outfit?" shrilled Ashton. "If that were all! if that were all! What shall I do? Lost--all lost!--father--all! Ruined! Oh, my God! What shall I do? Oh, my God! Oh--" Anguish and despair choked the cry in his throat. He collapsed in a huddled, quivering heap. "Sho! It can't be as bad as that, can it?" condoled the cowman. "Go away!" sobbed the prostrated man. "Go away! Take my pony--all! Only leave me!" "If ever I saw a fellow plumb locoed!" muttered Gowan, half awe-struck. "Maybe he'll come to his senses if we leave him," suggested Knowles. He took a step towards Ashton. "All right, son, we'll go. But we'll leave you half that veal, and we won't take your hawss. D'you want help in looking for your outfit?" Ashton shook his downbent head. "Well, if you want to let the thieves get away with it, that's your own lookout. You'd better strike back to the railroad." "Go away! Leave me!" moaned Ashton. "Gone to smash--clean busted!" commented Gowan, as he turned about to go to his horse, his spurs jingling gayly. Knowles followed him, shaking his head. The girl had been gazing at Ashton with an expression that varied from sympathetic commiseration to contemptuous pity. As her adopted father and Gowan mounted, she rode over to them. "Go on," she said. "I'll overtake you as soon as I've watered my hawss." "You're not going to speak to that kettle of mush again, Miss Chuckie," remonstrated Gowan. "Yes, I am, Kid, and you know you wouldn't stop me if you could. He needs it. I'm glad you smashed his pistol. A rifle is not so handy." Knowles stared over the bushes at the huddled figure on the ground. "Look here, Chuckie, you can't mean that?" "Yes," she insisted. "He is ready to do it right now, unless someone throws him a rope and hauls him out of the slough." "Lot of fuss over a tenderfoot you never saw before today," grumbled Gowan. "That's not like you, Kid," she reproached. "Besides, you don't want the trouble of digging a grave. It would have to be deep, to keep out the coyotes. Daddy, you're forgetting the veal." "So I am," agreed the cowman. "Ride on, Kid. You'll be carrying most weight." The puncher reluctantly wheeled his horse and started down the bank of the dry stream. Knowles unfastened the hind quarters of veal from behind the cantle of his saddle, lifted them into a fork of one of the low trees, and rode off after Gowan, folding up his blood-stained slicker. The girl at once slipped from her pony and walked quietly around to the drooping, despairing man. "Mr. Ashton," she softly began, "they have gone. I have stayed to find out if there is anything I can do." She paused for him to reply. His shoulders quivered, but he remained silent. She went on soothingly: "You are all unstrung. The shock was too sudden. It must have been a terrible one! Won't you tell me about it? Perhaps that will make you feel better." "As if anything could when I am ruined, utterly ruined!" he moaned. "But how? Please tell me," she urged. Slowly he raised his haggard face and looked up at her. There could be no question but that she was full of sincere sympathy and concern for him. Her eyes shone upon him with all the motherly tenderness that any good woman, however young, has in her heart for those who suffer. "It's all in this--this letter," he muttered brokenly. "Expected my remittance in it--Got ruin! ruin!" "It had been opened," suggested the girl. "Perhaps those who took your outfit also took your remittance money." "No, there wasn't any--not a cent! My valet had my written instructions to open it and cash the money orders--that weren't there! He and the guide--they came back. The letter had told them all, all! I was not here. They took the outfit--the money--divided it. Left that note--they had no more use for me.... Ruined! utterly ruined!" "But if you wish us to run them down?" "No--good riddance! What they took is less than what I owed them. Ungrateful scoundrels!" "That's it!" approved the girl. "Get up your spunk. Cuss, if you like. Rip loose, good and hard. It will ease you off." "It's no use," he groaned, slumping back into his posture of abject dejection. "Oh, come, now!" she encouraged. "You're a young, healthy man. What if you have been bucked off this time? There are lots other hawsses in Life's corral." He hung his head lower. She went on, in an altered tone: "Mr. Ashton, it is evident you have been bred as a gentleman. I wish you to give me your word that you will not put an end to yourself." There was a prolonged pause. At last he stirred as if uneasy under her steady gaze. He could not see her eyes, yet he seemed to feel them. Twice he started to speak, but checked himself and hesitated. The third time he muttered a reluctant, "I--will not." "Good! I have your word," she replied. "I must go now. When you've shaken yourself together a bit, come down to the ranch. You ride down Dry Fork to the junction, and then three miles up Plum Creek. Daddy'll be glad to put you up a few days until you can think of what to do to get a new start. Good-by!" She went back to her horse as lightfooted and graceful as an antelope. But he did not look up after her, nor did he respond to her cordial parting. For a long time after she rode away he continued to crouch as she had left him, motionless, almost torpid with the immensity of his loss. The sun sank lower and lower. It touched the skyline of High Mesa and dipped below. The shadow of twilight fell upon Dry Fork and the waterhole. The man shivered and, as if afraid that the darkness would rush upon him, hastily opened his clenched hand and smoothed out the crumpled letter. To his bloodshot eyes, the accusing words seemed to glare up at him in letters of fire: Sir: The signature was that of his father's confidential lawyers, and below, to the left, lest there be no possibility of misunderstanding, were his name and address in full: "Mr. Lafayette Ashton, Stockchute, Colorado." Again he bent over with his head on his breast and the letter clutched convulsively in his slender palm. A bloodcurdling yell brought him to his feet with a sudden leap. He still did not know the difference between the cry of a coyote and the deeper note of a timber wolf. He hastily started a fire, and ran to fetch his rifle from the saddle sheath. The pony was quietly munching a wisp of grass as best he could with the bit in his mouth. The unconcern of the beast reassured his master, who, however, filled the magazine of his rifle before offsaddling. Having hobbled the pony for the night, Ashton laid the rifle on the rim of the pool, stripped, and dived in. He went down like a plummet, reckless of the danger of striking some upjutting ledge. He may have forgotten for the moment his word to the girl, or he may have considered that it did not prevent him from courting death by accident. But, deeply as he dived, he failed to reach bottom. He came up, puffing and blowing, and swam swiftly around the pool before scrambling out to dress. The combined effect of the vigorous exercise, the grateful coolness of the water, and the riddance of the day's dust and sweat brought him ashore in a far less morbid frame of mind. Going up the bank, he pulled the hind quarters of veal from the tree and sliced off three or four ragged strips with his knife. After washing them, he put them to broil over his smoky fire of green twigs. The "cutlets" came off, one half raw and the other half burned to a crisp. But he had not eaten since the early forenoon. He devoured the mess without salt, ravenously. He topped off with the scant swallow of brandy left in his flask. Stimulated by the food and drink, he set about gathering a large heap of wood. Three or four coyotes had approached his camp, attracted by the scent of the calf meat. With the fading of twilight into night they came in closer, making such a racket with their yelping and wailing that he thought himself surrounded by a pack of ravenous wolves. He could not see how his pony was unconcernedly grazing within a few yards of one of the cowardly beasts. Had the wistful singers been timber wolves, the animal soon would have come hobbling in near the fire; but Ashton did not know that. He flung on brush and crouched down near the blaze, rifle in hand, peering out into the blackness. Every moment he expected to hear that terrible cry of which he had read, the death-scream of a horse, and then to hear the crunching of bones between the jaws of the ferocious wolves. He had spent the previous night alone in camp, peacefully sleeping. But then the yells of the beasts of darkness had been far away, and the walls of his tent had shut him in from the wild. Tonight his nerves had been shattered by the terrible blow of his father's repudiation. Worst of all, he had no tobacco with which to soothe them. His dread of the supposed wolf pack in a way eased the anguish of his ruin by diverting his mind. But the lack of cigarettes served only to put a more frightful strain on his overwrought nerves. He felt it first in a vague discomfort that set his hands to groping automatically through his pockets. The absence of the usual box roused his consciousness, with a dismayed start, to the realization that he was absolutely without his soothing drug. The absconding guide and valet had taken the large store he had in camp, and, to please Miss Knowles, he had flung away all that were left in his pockets. From vague fumbling he instantly concentrated his mind on an eager search for a packet that might have been overlooked, either in his pockets or around the camp. He could find none, nor even a single cigarette. His nerves were now clamoring wildly for their soothing poison. So great was the strain that it began to affect his mind. He fancied that the wolf pack was closing in to attack him. Twice he fired his rifle at imaginary eyes out in the darkness. All the time the craving for nicotine increased in intensity, until he was half frantic. Midnight found him, torch in hand, crawling around on the ground where his tent had been pitched, hunting for cigarette stubs. He had only to look close in order to find any number. Most were no more than cork tips, but some had at least one puff left in them, and a few had been only half smoked. Beside the bed he came upon almost a handful, close together. By this time his jangled nerves were "toning down." He became conscious of great weariness. He stretched out on his leafy bed, and with his head pillowed on his arm, luxuriously sucked in the drugging smoke. _ |
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