CHAPTER XXIV

At the sharp, staccato crack of Bud’s rifle Roxie had sprung from the cabin. She was out before Allston fell. But as he fell, she fell too. Her legs gave way and a dark cloud settled down upon her and she knew no more.

From the rear of the spring-house Bud uttered an oath. For a second he thought he had made some dreadful mistake; that his bullet had gone home to her. Yet there in a heap and quite motionless lay Allston. His automatic had dropped from his lifeless fingers and fallen several feet away--quite out of reach. There was no shamming in that pose.

But also, prone, lay Roxie. There was no shamming in her pose either. She had fallen face downward. Bud reloaded and ventured forth, his eyes first on Allston and then on Roxie. But strange to say he was more afraid to approach the latter than the former. Halfway to her side he stood motionless with the deepest, blackest fear he had ever known upon him. Fear had him by the throat--was strangling him with fiercer passion than Allston had done. His arms grew limp and his rifle dropped.

He tottered forward, stopped, and went on again. Then the last ten feet he took at a run and knelt by her side. He turned her over. She did not resist. She was as passive as a child’s rag doll. And her face was white--chalky white. His eyes sought her bodice near the heart. There was no crimson stain there. That was what he had feared. He felt her hands. They were cold, but he caught a slow pulse-beat. It was as though he had been released from chains. She was not dead, and that was enough.

Rising, Bud glanced at Allston. He looked at him as he might a dead branch--with no more pity, with no more regret. The damned furriner’s cheeks were not as pink as they had once been. He had shot true this time.

A squirrel chattered. Bud came to alert. This was the end in one sense, but it was only the beginning in another. This man was motionless, but his very immobility brought a new danger. He would lie there one hour, two hours, perhaps three hours. He would make no sound. He would not move a finger. And yet all the while he would be calling--calling with a voice that might be heard throughout the county. The dead are not as helpless as they seem. Allston would be missed, in time, down at the bungalow. Some one would wonder where he was and go to a neighbor and make him wonder too. They would go together to a third neighbor until the hue and cry was raised. Then they would all swarm up here together.

Bud’s wild eyes turned to the shack. He could not stay in there. However tight he might bar the doors, the searchers would beat them down. His home was no longer his home. He had killed more things than one when he shot from behind the spring-house.

But at that he had not killed everything. He himself was still alive and Roxie was still alive. And back of him lay the hills still alive--the tangled hills that he knew as a squirrel knows them. Once in their shelter he would still have some sort of chance. With Roxie by his side he might have hours--even days--days that would count for years.

Bud went back and picked up his rifle. He would need that now more than ever. Moving swiftly and definitely, he entered the shack and spreading a blanket on the floor hastily tossed into it the tinned goods he had lately bought, a small bag of flour, a can of coffee, some sugar, salt, a frying-pan, and coffee-pot. Drawing the four corners together he tied them in a knot and throwing the bundle over his shoulder came out.

Allston still lay on the ground quite motionless. So too did Roxie. But there was a difference--a significant difference. As far as Bud was concerned, Allston now stood only for the past, while Roxie still stood for the future. Until death the future persists in full strength, whatever limitations are put around it.

Bud stooped and placed his hands upon the girl. Her body was warm and the touch of it magnetized him. Lifting her easily he swung her upon his back, her head and arms over his right shoulder. So for hours he had carried burdens heavier than she. His provisions and rifle he seized in his left hand. With long, noiseless strides, he crossed the log to the road, turned to the right, and began to climb the rocky trail.

Straying tendrils of the girl’s light hair brushed his cheeks as bending forward he bore her upwards and away--away from the silent form in his yard, away from the valley and all its folks below, away from the invisible hand of the law which would soon be reaching for him. And with that loose hair against his rough cheeks, the strength of ten men was in him. With it came a new defiance. They might turn out the whole county after him, but before they caught him he would be in the next county. They might turn out the whole State to hound him, but he would cross the mountains--mountain after mountain if necessary--until he reached the next State. There were no limits to his horizon now. He was anchored by neither shack nor farm. They could take them both and be damned, but they would travel far before they took him or his woman. For all he knew, these hills and this forest continued indefinitely. A man could live in them indefinitely. And when they could not furnish him with what he needed, why, there were always settlements where a man with a rifle could secure what he wished.

The higher Bud climbed, the less he had any consciousness of being a fugitive. It was more as though all his life he had been a prisoner and had just found freedom. His contact with civilization had done nothing but force upon him a series of inhibitions. Some one was always interfering with his rights. He was pulling away from all that.

Where a small stream crossed the road, he turned sharp left into the woods. He was becoming impatient even with man-made paths. He followed the edge of the cut made by the running water, forcing his way through the bushes, sweeping aside the growth ahead of him with his long arm. Not a twig touched her face. Not a branch whipped her body.

He was well out of the beaten track before any sign of consciousness began to return to the girl. The first indication she gave was something like a sigh and a feeble attempt to raise her head. Her eyes even then remained closed. And she made no struggle. But at once Bud lowered her to the leaf-strewn ground and went to the brook for water. Scooping up as much as his cupped hands would hold he returned and moistened her lips and bathed her forehead. The effect came quicker than he anticipated. Her eyes opened wide and she struggled to her elbow.

“Hit’s only me, Roxie,” he said gently.

It was only he. And as he spoke the words they were tempered with love. Through his steel-gray eyes there shone something of the gentle blue of the sky peering through the upper branches of the trees. It was only he. Big and brutal and coarse-featured and merciless as he was, there was the tenderness of a woman in his touch. Before her it was only he--only Bud. And had there been need he would have held out his right arm and drained into her veins every drop of his blood.

“I don’t aim ter bother yuh,” he went on as she remained dumb. “Hit’s only me.”

Big-eyed, half fearing what she would find, Roxie was fumbling around among her confused thoughts trying to account for her presence here. Bud Childers--he had come to the bungalow for her. She had gone with him. Then Allston--the night--the dawn--the crack of a rifle! Weakly she sank back, throwing her arm over her eyes as though to shut out some terrible sight. For a moment she almost fell back into a pit of darkness. Allston had fallen. She had seen him fall. She had started to his side, and then--and then--

She scrambled to her knees staring in terror at the man before her.

“Whar’s Mister Allston?” she panted.

Bud’s face grew dark.

“Over thar,” he answered grimly with a nod back of his head down the mountain.

“You--you shot him! You--you killed him!” she cried.

“Well?” he drawled vaguely.

Still on her knees she began to crawl away from the man.

“You--you devil!” she choked.

“He come up thar and no one axed him,” he said.

“And you killed him--a-hidin’ behin’ the spring-house like a yaller dawg, you killed a _man_!”

There was the cut of a knife in every word she spoke. He winced, but his lips grew thin and hard. And all the blue vanished from the gray eyes.

“’Pears like yo’re takin’ et kinder hard--him a furriner.”

As he spoke his eyes narrowed until his bushy brows almost met.

“Him a furriner,” he repeated in a voice that was like the low growl of a mountain cat.

“Him a _man_!” burst out Roxie.

“It was him er me,” said Bud. “An’ I didn’ go atter him. He come up hyar.”

“He come up hyar,” nodded Roxie with a quick, gasping intake of breath. “He come up hyar. You wanter know how he come to come up hyar, Bud Childers? It was ’cause he keered more ’bout me than he keered ’bout hisself. Thet’s the truth, Bud Childers, ef yuh want the truth. Thet’s the kind o’ man he was.”

“An’ you--you keered ’bout him?”

She lifted her face at that--lifted it and met Bud eye to eye:

“Keered?” she choked. “Keered? Oh, my Gawd!”

With that her head began to sink, her lips to quiver, and though she fought hard she could no longer control the tears. Her hands before her face she bowed low, racked by sobs that shook her to the depths.

With his rifle across his knees Bud sat down and watched her. He removed his old black hat and ran his hand across his perspiring forehead--slowly as though in bewilderment.