He advanced until he was far up on the side of the hill, where he tethered the four horses to a tree of conspicuous size, easily located from a distance. Then he turned back, and after a few minutes of search he found the girl and Silas Treat, who, with stolid obedience, had taken her well on into the forest and was now keeping her in a little clearing.
“Go back to the boys,” said the leader to Treat, “and tell them that I’m going to dispose of the girl and then follow later on.”
“How is it that you can leave the girl off here and come back yourself?” asked Treat curiously.
“I’ll manage that,” said the leader. “There are lots of ways of managing.”
“This?” queried Treat, and with a broad grin he passed his forefinger across his throat.
It was done with such inhuman complacence that even the hard heart of Jack Moon revolted.
“Maybe that way,” he admitted, eager simply to get rid of his gigantic follower and be alone with the girl. “Now get back, Si, and tell the boys to watch sharp, because Ronicky may start a rush. That’s his kind. He don’t like inaction, and when he starts he’ll do enough to keep all of you warm.”
Jerry had not made an effort to escape during the conversation while the two men had turned their backs to her. Instead, she sat on a fallen log with her head supported in both hands, and the leader, approaching, had time even in his rush of thoughts, even in his eagerness to get away, to mark the slenderness of the fingers against her hair.
“Jerry!” he called softly.
She raised her head and stared at him blankly. But even now, after all she had seen and heard, there was no sign of hysterical terror about her. From the first, when a crisis came, she had made no outcry, no noisy appeals, but like a man of firm nerve she had waited for events to develop before she made her decisions, before she moved. She was waiting still as she faced the outlaw, and the big man admired her from the bottom of his heart and pitied her for the lie which he was about to tell.
“Jerry,” he went on, “I’ve come to ask you to trust in me another time.”
Her answer was a smile, no more, but the smile was of greater import than a thousand words of scorn, contempt, accusation. Moon winced before her, but he went on as smoothly as possible: “Wait till I get through talking before you make up your mind. Jerry, you know my place in the world. You know how I’ve fought to gain it. You know that up here in the mountains I’m as good as a king, with a kingdom and followers. Well, I’ve decided to give it all up —for your sake!”
He waited for that point to tell.
But she said: “So you’ve hemmed in my father. You’ve set your bloodhounds around him. And any moment, perhaps now, your men are sneaking up to set fire to his hiding place and shoot him as he runs out. You’ve done that also for my sake, Jack Moon?”
He wondered at her calmness, until he saw that her hands were gripped. In a man such calm would have preceded a fierce attack. He said: “This’ll go to show how wrong it is for folks to make up their minds about other gents until they know! Now listen to what’s really happened. My boys want to kill, and they want to kill your father. I guess you know that.”
She nodded.
“They were so dead set against him that I didn’t dare let them see you around while I was talking to ‘em. Seeing you would of made ‘em think more and more about Hugh and made ‘em wilder and wilder to get at him. That’s why I sent you away with Si Treat—so’s I could have a chance to be alone with ‘em and try to make ‘em talk sense and see sense. Well, when you were gone, I tried a high hand with ‘em. I knew right enough that they could burn out your father and Ronicky like rats out of a hole. But because of you I had to stop ‘em. So I piled up the difficulties and made it look bad to try. Anyway, I made ‘em change their minds, which I couldn’t of done if you’d been there to sort of urge ‘em on to get at Hugh. I made ‘em promise to get away as soon as they could and follow after me. So they’re going to stay behind me and—”
“And you and I?” queried the girl, vaguely groping toward his meaning.
“And you and I, Jerry, won’t be on the north road at all! We’ll be driving west as fast as the spurs will send the hosses! Ain’t it clear, and ain’t it a beauty? There was your father and Doone no better’n dead men, and here I’ve gotten ‘em off free and sound!”
It was all clear to her. Suddenly she cried, with a great impulse of thanksgiving: “Heaven bless you for it!”
“Let them bless you,” said the outlaw. “Because, except for you, they’d of been finished sure!”
“But you and I ride west, and your men ride north—Jack Moon, does it mean that you’ve broken away from them, that you never intend to ride with them again, that you’ve given up your life of crime?”
“It’s all according to what you want it to mean.”
“Ah,” she murmured, “if I could only trust you for half a minute! If I could only be sure of the thoughts that are going on in that wild, cruel mind of yours! Tell me, are you speaking true?”
“Can you ask that?” he said, dodging her swiftly. Then he cried with utter sincerity: “I’d make myself over a thousand times if one shape of me would get a single smile out of you, Jerry. Will you believe that?”
“After what I’ve seen—”
“You’ve seen nothing. Neither you nor anybody else has ever seen a thing! My real self is a buried self, girl! And they’s only one thing in the world that can make me what I ought to be.”
“I think I know what you mean,” she said faintly. “And—and in spite of myself I think you mean what you say. Otherwise, how could you dare to leave your men—to betray them in order to ride with me? Because, Jack Moon, if you have left them, if you are speaking the truth to me, there are some of them who will never leave your trail until they have run you down and killed you like a dog! You know that!”
“Ay, if they could run me down. But they can’t. That west road I start on is going to swing off to an east road before long, and you and I are going—”
“Back to Trainor?”
He winced, but then he went on glibly: “We’re going to follow it wherever you want it to be followed. But the first thing now is for you and me to get onto our hosses and ride as we never rode before. Will you come?”
“I’ll come.”
“And trust me?”
“What else can I do?”
“Then,” cried the outlaw, “I’ve started a new life.”
And, for the first time in his wild life, he meant what he said!
XXIV. PREPARATIONS
All unconscious of the fact that their leader, so long trusted, had at last betrayed them, the band of Jack Moon gathered around Silas Treat when the black-bearded giant strode out of the trees and stood before them.
“Where’s Moon?” asked one.
“Back with the girl. Going to put her out of the way while we plan to tackle the house. I told him he’d better knife the filly. That’s what he’ll do.”
“You’re a fool, Treat,” said Baldy McNair, who took greater liberties in his speech and manner than any other in the band. “You’re a fool and a swine. But the chief’s right. He’ll tie up the girl and leave her in the woods. No use having her around when we rush the