The Light of Western Stars

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"Git back, Bill, git back!" he roared. "Git 'em back!" With one
lunge Stillwell shoved Stewart and Nick and the other cowboys up
on the porch. Then he crowded Madeline and Alfred and Florence
to the wall, tried to force them farther. His motions were rapid
and stern. But failing to get them through door and windows, he
planted his wide person between the women and danger. Madeline
grasped his arm, held on, and peered fearfully from behind his
broad shoulder.

"You, Hawe! You, Sneed!" called Monty, in that same wild voice.
"Don't you move a finger or an eyelash!"

Madeline's faculties nerved to keen, thrilling divination. She
grasped the relation between Monty's terrible cry and the strange
hunched posture he had assumed. Stillwell's haste and silence,
too, were pregnant of catastrophe.

"Nels, git in this!" yelled Monty; and all the time he never
shifted his intent gaze as much as a hair's-breadth from Hawe and
his deputy. "Nels, chase away them two fellers hangin' back
there. Chase 'em, quick!"

These men, the two deputies who had remained in the background
with the pack-horses, did not wait for Nels. They spurred their
mounts, wheeled, and galloped away.

"Now, Nels, cut the gurl loose," ordered Monty.

Nels ran forward, jerked the halter out of Sneed's hand, and
pulled Bonita's horse in close to the porch. As he slit the rope
which bound her she fell into his arms.

"Hawe, git down!" went on Monty. "Face front an' stiff!"

The sheriff swung his leg, and, never moving his hands, with his
face now a deathly, sickening white, he slid to the ground.

"Line up there beside your guerrilla pard. There! You two make
a damn fine pictoor, a damn fine team of pizened coyote an' a
cross between a wild mule an' a Greaser. Now listen!"

Monty made a long pause, in which his breathing was plainly
audible.

Madeline's eyes were riveted upon Monty. Her mind, swift as
lightning, had gathered the subtleties in action and word
succeeding his domination of the men. Violence, terrible
violence, the thing she had felt, the thing she had feared, the
thing she had sought to eliminate from among her cowboys, was,
after many months, about to be enacted before her eyes. It had
come at last. She had softened Stillwell, she had influenced
Nels, she had changed Stewart; but this little black-faced,
terrible Monty Price now rose, as it were, out of his past wild
years, and no power on earth or in heaven could stay his hand. It
was the hard life of wild men in a wild country that was about to
strike this blow at her. She did not shudder; she did not wish
to blot out from sight this little man, terrible in his mood of
wild justice. She suffered a flash of horror that Monty, blind
and dead to her authority, cold as steel toward her presence,
understood the deeps of a woman's soul. For in this moment of
strife, of insult to her, of torture to the man she had uplifted
and then broken, the passion of her reached deep toward primitive
hate. With eyes slowly hazing red, she watched Monty Price; she
listened with thrumming ears; she waited, slowly sagging against
Stillwell.

"Hawe, if you an' your dirty pard hev loved the sound of human
voice, then listen an' listen hard," said Monty. "Fer I've been
goin' contrary to my ole style jest to hev a talk with you. You
all but got away on your nerve, didn't you? 'Cause why? You roll
in here like a mad steer an' flash yer badge an' talk mean, then
almost bluff away with it. You heerd all about Miss Hammond's
cowboy outfit stoppin' drinkin' an' cussin' an' packin' guns.
They've took on religion an' decent livin', an' sure they'll be
easy to hobble an' drive to jail. Hawe, listen. There was a good
an' noble an be-ootiful woman come out of the East somewheres,
an' she brought a lot of sunshine an' happiness an' new idees
into the tough lives of cowboys. I reckon it's beyond you to
know what she come to mean to them. Wal, I'll tell you.
They-all went clean out of their heads. They-all got soft an'
easy an' sweet-tempered. They got so they couldn't kill a coyote,
a crippled calf in a mud-hole. They took to books, an' writin'
home to mother an' sister, an' to savin' money, an' to gittin'
married. Onct they was only a lot of poor cowboys, an' then
sudden-like they was human bein's, livin' in a big world thet hed
somethin' sweet even fer them. Even fer me--an ole, worn-out,
hobble-legged, burned-up cowman like me! Do you git thet? An'
you, Mister Hawe, you come along, not satisfied with ropin' an'
beatin', an' Gaw knows what else, of thet friendless little
Bonita; you come along an' face the lady we fellers honor an'
love an' reverence, an' you--you-- Hell's fire!"

With whistling breath, foaming at the mouth, Monty Price crouched
lower, hands at his hips, and he edged inch by inch farther out
from the porch, closer to Hawe and Sneed. Madeline saw them only
in the blurred fringe of her sight. They resembled specters. She
heard the shrill whistle of a horse and recognized Majesty
calling her from the corral.

"Thet's all!" roared Monty, in a voice now strangling. Lower and
lower he bent, a terrible figure of ferocity. "Now, both you
armed ocifers of the law, come on! Flash your guns! Throw 'em,
an' be quick! Monty Price is done! There'll be daylight through
you both before you fan a hammer! But I'm givin' you a chanst to
sting me. You holler law, an' my way is the ole law."

His breath came quicker, his voice grew hoarser, and he crouched
lower. All his body except his rigid arms quivered with a
wonderful muscular convulsion.

"Dogs! Skunks! Buzzards! Flash them guns, er I'll flash mine!
Aha!"

To Madeline it seemed the three stiff, crouching men leaped into
instant and united action. She saw streaks of fire--streaks of
smoke. Then a crashing volley deafened her. It ceased as
quickly. Smoke veiled the scene. Slowly it drifted away to
disclose three fallen men, one of whom, Monty, leaned on his left
hand, a smoking gun in his right. He watched for a movement from
the other two. It did not come. Then, with a terrible smile, he
slid back and stretched out.

XX Unbridled

In waking and sleeping hours Madeline Hammond could not release
herself from the thralling memory of that tragedy. She was
haunted by Monty Price's terrible smile. Only in action of some
kind could she escape; and to that end she worked, she walked and
rode. She even overcame a strong feeling, which she feared was
unreasonable disgust, for the Mexican girl Bonita, who lay ill at
the ranch, bruised and feverish, in need of skilful nursing.

Madeline felt there was something inscrutable changing her soul.
That strife--the struggle to decide her destiny for East or West
--held still further aloof. She was never spiritually alone.
There was a step on her trail. Indoors she was oppressed. She
required the open--the light and wind, the sight of endless
slope, the sounds of corral and pond and field, physical things,
natural things.

One afternoon she rode down to the alfalfa-fields, round them,
and back up to the spillway of the lower lake, where a group of
mesquite-trees, owing to the water that seeped through the sand
to their roots, had taken on bloom and beauty of renewed life.
Under these trees there was shade enough to make a pleasant place
to linger. Madeline dismounted, desiring to rest a little. She
liked this quiet, lonely spot. It was really the only secluded
nook near the house. If she rode down into the valley or out to
the mesa or up on the foothills she could not go alone. Probably
now Stillwell or Nels knew her whereabouts. But as she was
comparatively hidden here, she imagined a solitude that was not
actually hers.

Her horse, Majesty, tossed his head and flung his mane and
switched his tail at the flies. He would rather have been
cutting the wind down the valley slope. Madeline sat with her
back against a tree, and took off her sombrero. The soft breeze,
fanning her hot face, blowing strands of her hair, was
refreshingly cool. She heard the slow tramp of cattle going in
to drink. That sound ceased, and the grove of mesquites appeared
to be lifeless, except for her and her horse. It was, however,
only after moments of attention that she found the place was far
from being dead. Keen eyes and ears brought reward. Desert
quail, as gray as the bare earth, were dusting themselves in a
shady spot. A bee, swift as light, hummed by. She saw a horned
toad, the color of stone, squatting low, hiding fearfully in the
sand within reach of her whip. She extended the point of the
whip, and the toad quivered and swelled and hissed. It was
instinct with fight. The wind faintly stirred the thin foliage
of the mesquites, making a mournful sigh. From far up in the
foothills, barely distinguishable, came the scream of an eagle.
The bray of a burro brought a brief, discordant break. Then a
brown bird darted down from an unseen perch and made a swift,
irregular flight after a fluttering winged insect. Madeline
heard the sharp snapping of a merciless beak. Indeed, there was
more than life in the shade of the mesquites.

Suddenly Majesty picked up his long ears and snorted. Then
Madeline heard a slow pad of hoofs. A horse was approaching from
the direction of the lake. Madeline had learned to be wary, and,
mounting Majesty, she turned him toward the open. A moment later
she felt glad of her caution, for, looking back between the
trees, she saw Stewart leading a horse into the grove. She would
as lief have met a guerrilla as this cowboy.

Majesty had broken into a trot when a shrill whistle rent the
air. The horse leaped and, wheeling so swiftly that he nearly
unseated Madeline, he charged back straight for the mesquites.
Madeline spoke to him, cried angrily at him, pulled with all her
strength upon the bridle, but was helplessly unable to stop him.
He whistled a piercing blast. Madeline realized then that
Stewart, his old master, had called him and that nothing could
turn him. She gave up trying, and attended to the urgent need of
intercepting mesquite boughs that Majesty thrashed into motion.
The horse thumped into an aisle between the trees and, stopping
before Stewart, whinnied eagerly.

Madeline, not knowing what to expect, had not time for any
feeling but amaze. A quick glance showed her Stewart in rough
garb, dressed for the trail, and leading a wiry horse, saddled
and packed. When Stewart, without looking at her, put his arm
around Majesty's neck and laid his face against the flowing mane
Madeline's heart suddenly began to beat with unwonted quickness.
Stewart seemed oblivious to her presence. His eyes were closed.
His dark face softened, lost its hardness and fierceness and
sadness, and for an instant became beautiful.

Madeline instantly divined what his action meant. He was leaving
the ranch; this was his good-by to his horse. How strange, sad,
fine was this love between man and beast! A dimness confused
Madeline's eyes; she hurriedly brushed it away, and it came back
wet and blurring. She averted her face, ashamed of the tears
Stewart might see. She was sorry for him. He was going away, and
this time, judging from the nature of his farewell to his horse,
it was to be forever. Like a stab from a cold blade a pain shot
through Madeline's heart. The wonder of it, the
incomprehensibility of it, the utter newness and strangeness of
this sharp pain that now left behind a dull pang, made her forget
Stewart, her surroundings, everything except to search her heart.
Maybe here was the secret that had eluded her. She trembled on
the brink of something unknown. In some strange way the emotion
brought back her girlhood. Her mind revolved swift queries and
replies; she was living, feeling, learning; happiness mocked at
her from behind a barred door, and the bar of that door seemed to
be an inexplicable pain. Then like lightning strokes shot the
questions: Why should pain hide her happiness? What was her
happiness? What relation had it to this man? Why should she
feel strangely about his departure? And the voices within her
were silenced, stunned, unanswered.

"I want to talk to you," said Stewart.

Madeline started, turned to him, and now she saw the earlier
Stewart, the man who reminded her of their first meeting at El
Cajon, of that memorable meeting at Chiricahua.

"I want to ask you something," he went on. "I've been wanting to
know something. That's why I've hung on here. You never spoke
to me, never noticed me, never gave me a chance to ask you. But
now I'm going over--over the border. And I want to know. Why
did you refuse to listen to me?"

At his last words that hot shame, tenfold more stifling than when
it had before humiliated Madeline, rushed over her, sending the
scarlet in a wave to her temples. It seemed that his words made
her realize she was actually face to face with him, that somehow
a shame she would rather have died than revealed was being
liberated. Biting her lips to hold back speech, she jerked on
Majesty's bridle, struck him with her whip, spurred him.
Stewart's iron arm held the horse. Then Madeline, in a flash of
passion, struck at Stewart's face, missed it, struck again, and
hit. With one pull, almost drawing her from the saddle, he tore
the whip from her hands. It was not that action on his part, or
the sudden strong masterfulness of his look, so much as the livid
mark on his face where the whip had lashed that quieted, if it
did not check, her fury.

"That's nothing," he said, with something of his old audacity.
"That's nothing to how you've hurt me."

Madeline battled with herself for control. This man would not be
denied. Never before had the hardness of his face, the flinty
hardness of these desert-bred men, so struck her with its
revelation of the unbridled spirit. He looked stern, haggard,
bitter. The dark shade was changing to gray--the gray to
ash-color of passion. About him now there was only the ghost of
that finer, gentler man she had helped to bring into being. The
piercing dark eyes he bent upon her burned her, went through her
as if he were looking into her soul. Then Madeline's quick sight
caught a fleeting doubt, a wistfulness, a surprised and saddened
certainty in his eyes, saw it shade and pass away. Her woman's
intuition, as keen as her sight, told her Stewart in that moment
had sustained a shock of bitter, final truth.

For the third time he repeated his question to her. Madeline did
not answer; she could not speak.

"You don't know I love you, do you?" he continued, passionately.
"That ever since you stood before me in that hole at Chiricahua
I've loved you? You can't see I've been another man, loving you,
working for you, living for you? You won't believe I've turned
my back on the old wild life, that I've been decent and honorable
and happy and useful--your kind of a cowboy? You couldn't tell,
though I loved you, that I never wanted you to know it, that I
never dared to think of you except as my angel, my holy Virgin?
What do you know of a man's heart and soul? How could you tell
of the love, the salvation of a man who's lived his life in the
silence and loneliness? Who could teach you the actual truth--
that a wild cowboy, faithless to mother and sister, except in
memory, riding a hard, drunken trail straight to hell; had looked
into the face, the eyes of a beautiful woman infinitely beyond
him, above him, and had so loved her that he was saved--that he
became faithful again--that he saw her face in every flower and
her eyes in the blue heaven? Who could tell you, when at night I
stood alone under these Western stars, how deep in my soul I was
glad just to be alive, to be able to do something for you, to be
near you, to stand between you and worry, trouble, danger, to
feel somehow that I was a part, just a little part of the West
you had come to love?"

Madeline was mute. She heard her heart thundering in her ears.

Stewart leaped at her. His powerful hand closed on her arm. She
trembled. His action presaged the old instinctive violence.

"No; but you think I kept Bonita up in the mountains, that I went
secretly to meet her, that all the while I served you I was-- Oh,
I know what you think! I know now. I never knew till I made you
look at me. Now, say it! Speak!"

White-hot, blinded, utterly in the fiery grasp of passion,
powerless to stem the rush of a word both shameful and revealing
and fatal, Madeline cried:

"YES!"

He had wrenched that word from her, but he was not subtle enough,
not versed in the mystery of woman's motive enough, to divine the
deep significance of her reply.

For him the word had only literal meaning confirming the dishonor
in which she held him. Dropping her arm, he shrank back, a
strange action for the savage and crude man she judged him to be.

"But that day at Chiricahua you spoke of faith," he burst out.
"You said the greatest thing in the world was faith in human
nature. You said the finest men had been those who had fallen
low and had risen. You said you had faith in me! You made me
have faith in myself!"

His reproach, without bitterness or scorn, was a lash to her old
egoistic belief in her fairness. She had preached a beautiful
principle that she had failed to live up to. She understood his
rebuke, she wondered and wavered, but the affront to her pride
had been too great, the tumult within her breast had been too
startlingly fierce; she could not speak, the moment passed, and
with it his brief, rugged splendor of simplicity.

"You think I am vile," he said. "You think that about Bonita!
And all the time I've been . . . I could make you ashamed--I
could tell you--"

His passionate utterance ceased with a snap of his teeth. His
lips set in a thin, bitter line. The agitation of his face
preceded a convulsive wrestling of his shoulders. All this swift
action denoted an inner combat, and it nearly overwhelmed him.

"No, no!" he panted. Was it his answer to some mighty
temptation? Then, like a bent sapling released, he sprang erect.
"But I'll be the man--the dog--you think me!"

He laid hold of her arm with rude, powerful clutch. One pull drew
her sliding half out of the saddle into his arms. She fell with
her breast against his, not wholly free of stirrups or horse, and
there she hung, utterly powerless. Maddened, writhing, she tore
to release herself. All she could accomplish was to twist
herself, raise herself high enough to see his face. That almost
paralyzed her. Did he mean to kill her? Then he wrapped his
arms around her and crushed her tighter, closer to him. She felt
the pound of his heart; her own seemed to have frozen. Then he
pressed his burning lips to hers. It was a long, terrible kiss.
She felt him shake.

"Oh, Stewart! I--implore--you--let--me--go!" she whispered.

His white face loomed over hers. She closed her eyes. He rained
kisses upon her face, but no more upon her mouth. On her closed
eyes, her hair, her cheeks, her neck he pressed swift lips--lips
that lost their fire and grew cold. Then he released her, and,
lifting and righting her in the saddle, he still held her arm to
keep her from falling.

For a moment Madeline sat on her horse with shut eyes. She
dreaded the light.

"Now you can't say you've never been kissed," Stewart said. His
voice seemed a long way off. "But that was coming to you, so be
game. Here!"

She felt something hard and cold and metallic thrust into her
hand. He made her fingers close over it, hold it. The feel of
the thing revived her. She opened her eyes. Stewart had given
her his gun. He stood with his broad breast against her knee,
and she looked up to see that old mocking smile on his face.

"Go ahead! Throw my gun on me! Be a thoroughbred!"

Madeline did not yet grasp his meaning.

"You can put me down in that quiet place on the hill--beside
Monty Price."

Madeline dropped the gun with a shuddering cry of horror. The
sense of his words, the memory of Monty, the certainty that she
would kill Stewart if she held the gun an instant longer,
tortured the self-accusing cry from her.

Stewart stooped to pick up the weapon.

"You might have saved me a hell of a lot of trouble," he said,
with another flash of the mocking smile. "You're beautiful and
sweet and proud, but you're no thoroughbred! Majesty Hammond,
adios!"

Stewart leaped for the saddle of his horse, and with the flying
mount crashed through the mesquites to disappear.

XXII The Secret Told

In the shaded seclusion of her room, buried face down deep among
the soft cushions on her couch, Madeline Hammond lay prostrate
and quivering under the outrage she had suffered.

The afternoon wore away; twilight fell; night came; and then
Madeline rose to sit by the window to let the cool wind blow upon
her hot face. She passed through hours of unintelligible shame
and impotent rage and futile striving to reason away her
defilement.

The train of brightening stars seemed to mock her with their
unattainable passionless serenity. She had loved them, and now
she imagined she hated them and everything connected with this
wild, fateful, and abrupt West.

She would go home.

Edith Wayne had been right; the West was no place for Madeline
Hammond. The decision to go home came easily, naturally, she
thought, as the result of events. It caused her no mental
strife. Indeed, she fancied she felt relief. The great stars,
blinking white and cold over the dark crags, looked down upon
her, and, as always, after she had watched them for a while they
enthralled her. "Under Western stars," she mused, thinking a
little scornfully of the romantic destiny they had blazed for her
idle sentiment. But they were beautiful; they were speaking;
they were mocking; they drew her. "Ah!" she sighed. "It will
not be so very easy to leave them, after all."

Madeline closed and darkened the window. She struck a light. It
was necessary to tell the anxious servants who knocked that she
was well and required nothing. A soft step on the walk outside
arrested her. Who was there--Nels or Nick Steele or Stillwell?
Who shared the guardianship over her, now that Monty Price was
dead and that other--that savage--? It was monstrous and
unfathomable that she regretted him.

The light annoyed her. Complete darkness fitted her strange
mood. She retired and tried to compose herself to sleep. Sleep
for her was not a matter of will. Her cheeks burned so hotly
that she rose to bathe them. Cold water would not alleviate this
burn, and then, despairing of forgetfulness, she lay down again
with a shameful gratitude for the cloak of night. Stewart's
kisses were there, scorching her lips, her closed eyes, her
swelling neck. They penetrated deeper and deeper into her blood,
into her heart, into her soul--the terrible farewell kisses of a
passionate, hardened man. Despite his baseness, he had loved her.

Late in the night Madeline fell asleep. In the morning she was
pale and languid, but in a mental condition that promised composure.

It was considerably after her regular hour that Madeline repaired
to her office. The door was open, and just outside, tipped back
in a chair, sat Stillwell.

"Mawnin', Miss Majesty," he said, as he rose to greet her with
his usual courtesy. There were signs of trouble in his lined
face. Madeline shrank inwardly, fearing his old lamentations
about Stewart. Then she saw a dusty, ragged pony in the yard and
a little burro drooping under a heavy pack. Both animals bore
evidence of long, arduous travel.

"To whom do they belong?" asked Madeline.

"Them critters? Why, Danny Mains," replied Stillwell, with a
cough that betrayed embarrassment.

"Danny Mains?" echoed Madeline, wonderingly.

"Wal, I said so."

Stillwell was indeed not himself.

"Is Danny Mains here?" she asked, in sudden curiosity.

The old cattleman nodded gloomily.

"Yep, he's hyar, all right. Sloped in from the hills, an' he
hollered to see Bonita. He's locoed, too, about that little
black-eyed hussy. Why, he hardly said, 'Howdy, Bill,' before he
begun to ask wild an' eager questions. I took him in to see
Bonita. He's been there more 'n a half-hour now."

Evidently Stillwell's sensitive feelings had been ruffled.
Madeline's curiosity changed to blank astonishment, which left
her with a thrilling premonition. She caught her breath. A
thousand thoughts seemed thronging for clear conception in her
mind.

Rapid footsteps with an accompaniment of clinking spurs sounded
in the hallway. Then a young man ran out upon the porch. He
resembled a cowboy in his lithe build, his garb and action, in
the way he wore his gun, but his face, instead of being red, was
clear brown tan. His eyes were blue; his hair was light and
curly. He was a handsome, frank-faced boy. At sight of Madeline
he slammed down his sombrero and, leaping at her, he possessed
himself of her hands. His swift violence not only alarmed her,
but painfully reminded her of something she wished to forget.

This cowboy bent his head and kissed her hands and wrung them,
and when he straightened up he was crying.

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