ON TRIAL
They were at supper in the big house, all except Yance, who was at the crags, when Abel Jore, eating in thoughtful silence at the head of the table, suddenly put down his fork.
“Rand,” he asked out of a clear sky, “how long were you in Big Sandy?”
Though startled by the abrupt query, René managed: “Two hours, more or less.”
“Hear any mention of us?”
Realizing that he had drifted into a snag that had ripped the bottom out of everything, René said: “Yes.”
An absolute hush fell upon the room. Every eye turned on him—Abel’s piercing his very soul; Eden’s wide with apprehension; Revel’s unreadable. Zion’s, fiercely loyal, darted from René to Shang, whose beady eyes reflected his venomous satisfaction at this most surprising turn.
“Uhn-huh,” drawled the outlaw. “You would. A crow couldn’t light in Arizony and not hear what scalawags we are. Hear anything particular?”
“I heard,” René said steadily, “that the sheriff’s goin’ to raid the Picture Rocks … that he’s got information about a secret pass.”
“What?” Abel Jore sprang up violently, but Shang held his chair as if glued there.
“What’s this,” Abel demanded grimly, “about the pass?”
“I didn’t get much,” said René, as Race had coached him, “just the drift. The sheriff was talkin’ in Trail’s End with a man, that big racehorse man, Chartres.” A cry, articulate only in its horror, drew his gaze to Revel. Her black eyes were riveted upon him, her hands outspread as if to ward off some monstrous thing. “It seems,” he went on slowly, “somebody’s promised to show Luke Chartres the way in.”
“It’s a bluff!” Shang was on his feet then, drowning René’s voice with his blustering. “It’s a bluff! Nobody knows where that pass is but us!”
“Dolan don’t make loose talk,” said Abel Jore curtly. And, turning back to René, his face as hard and expressionless as rock, he asked coldly: “So you knew where you were comin’ when you headed up here?”
It was the question René dreaded. “Yeah.”
“And you didn’t come for health?”
“I sure did!”
“And what else?”
With a hesitation that went against him, the young fellow said evasively: “To warn you, for one thing.”
“You sure took your time! You’ve been here three weeks. Why ain’t you spoke up?”
“I was afraid to,” René owned with that game grin. “You’d accused me of bein’ a spy for Dolan. I was afraid you wouldn’t believe I was with you. Afraid you’d make me go.”
“And you liked our society so well, you risked us all? That’s flatterin’. Just what’s the big attraction?”
Reddening at the biting sarcasm in Abel’s tone, René’s eyes involuntarily sought Eden, white, stricken at this cross-examination, at his damaging admissions. That glance told the story. In fury, Shang turned expectantly to Abel Jore. But the outlaw seemed to be beyond the power to do then whatever it was Shang expected of him, and dismissed René with a gesture.
The young man went out and, with a deeper sense of isolation than ever the Jores suffered from a world’s ostracism, sat down on his cabin steps to await the verdict. It was easy now to realize that he was in an outlaws’ nest; in the hands of the Jores, against whom the whole state warred, whose greatest weapon was the dread their name inspired, and who survived the unequal conflict only by reason of the fact that they would never let that weapon grow blunt, but kept it keen by striking unhesitatingly and with all their savage force at any invasion of the basin, as any freeborn citizen defends, to the last drop of his heart’s blood, an enemy’s intrusion of his home. They had let the bars down once, had dared to hesitate, had showed human feeling. And they might have paid for it with their lives, or with what they valued more, their freedom.
Well did René realize, sitting there alone, with the big hound’s nose thrust consolingly beneath his palm, and purple twilight falling, that the Jores were deciding what to do with him, and that mercy would be excluded from that decision. Nor did he blame them. He was a stranger, and they took him in, sick, and they … Killing was too good for him. Through his black sense of shame, but one bright ray shone. The Jores were warned in time, and would be prepared for whatever came. So far he had done what Race had asked, although from now on …
“Well,” he said to Capitán, shrugging, “there won’t likely be any ‘from now on.’”
A chance for life the stakes had been, or a quick exit. A quick exit, then. He had lost, but he had won—had won weeks of real living back in God’s country, where the wind blew clean, and the sun didn’t have to wallow through clouds of dust and smoke to get to you, and a man had elbow room. He had lived more in his three weeks here than in all his twenty-one years before, had lived to love Eden Jore.
What was she thinking of him? Did she understand why he had risked them all? She thought the best thing a man could be was loyal. Did she know how hard it was sometimes to know to whom to be loyal? Did she know that he had kept silent because he wanted to repay her and Revel and Zion? For what?
Into his worried thoughts broke a light footstep. Lifting his head, he saw Zion coming up, his face as wild, as perplexed as when he’d seen it first at Sentry Crags, his weird blue eyes probing as he sat down beside him, twisting the fringe of his buckskin in painful doubt about something.
Zion suddenly laid an uncertain hand on René’s sleeve. “Pard, you mean that … about bein’ with us?”
Hot tears stung René’s eyes. He gripped that brown hand in his own. “Yes, Zion.”
The cloud passed in an instant. “I knowed it! All along I knowed it … in my heart. But they say you can’t trust hearts.”
So that’s what they were saying in there.
“They say Jores mustn’t have hearts. They say heads is what …” Zion broke off, heat lightning flashing in his eyes as Shang Haman burst out of the big house and tore down the corral trail.
A moment more and both, listening with unconscious intensity, heard him galloping away. To the pass, René thought.
“He’s goin’ to town!” blazed Zion with that dangerous hostility he always displayed toward Shang. “He’s goin’ to try and get something on you.”
Going to Big Sandy, where a dozen people might have seen Race with him. “But how can he?” cried René. “Dolan will arrest him, if he shows up in Big Sandy.”
Zion laughed bitterly. “Not Shang! They got nothin’ on him. He’s too slick. Shang’s the only one who’s free to go and come. He …”
“Zion!” Abel Jore was now loudly calling.
The young fellow left, and René sat on alone. He saw Zion saddle and ride off toward the crags. Before long Yance Jore galloped in. He could hear Yance and Abel heatedly discussing something in there, but, lacking Race’s trained hearing, no syllable reached him. He sat on while night spread over the basin, layer upon layer of velvety black, and great silvery stars pierced it; still sat—a time as long as all the time since the Picture Rocks had been—in suspense, waiting to know his fate. But he was not to know it that night.
One by one the cabin lights went out. The Jores slept. René slept, by fits and starts, hearing, toward morning, a horse coming in, dogs clamoring, and a voice cursing them. Shang was back.
Breakfast time came. But René couldn’t go in. He couldn’t eat the Jores’ bread, when they felt like this about him, but if he didn’t go, they’d think he was afraid to. Well, he’d risk that. He’d fix his own breakfast out of the provisions in his pack. He was undoing the straps, when Revel came in. She saw his intention at a glance.
“No,” she said sorrowfully, “you’ll breakfast with us.”
Silently, he went into the cabin with her.
Shang was already in his chair. He didn’t look like a man who had spent the night in the saddle. He looked as dapper as ever. His pale gray shirt was guiltless of speck or crease. His jowls were blue from a recent shave. His “silverware,” as Zion contemptuously termed his heavy belt buckle, filigreed boot tops, and other glittering niceties of costume, was as bright as if he’d spent the night polishing them. His eyes, however, had no gleam, but the filmy look of an animal feasting, and he seldom took them from René.
René was making a brave show of eating, although every morsel choked him, watching the door for Eden, wild to see what she was thinking of him, and painfully aware that Yance and Abel, the only others there, thought even less of him than at supper. They were courteous still, but with a deadly quality, the ominous politeness of an executioner toward the condemned. He knew they had called a truce until this meal was at an end. Impatient to have it over, he pushed back his chair.
As if this was what they were waiting for, Abel rose. “Now,” he instructed Shang, “tell him what you just told us.”
In a vicious, explosive breath, sinister as a rattler’s hiss, Shang flung at René: “I’ve been to Big Sandy!”
“Yeah?” coolly René rejoined.
“Yeah! And I learned all about your little game! Oh, it was a slick one, shammin’ sick to get in here for Race Coulter!”
Strange the fire that name struck from the flinty eyes of the Jores. What had they against Race, except the attempted theft of a horse? A horse they let run like any mustang and didn’t value enough to brand.
“Rand,” Abel finished what Shang seemed unable to do through the very excess of his desire to, “Shang says Race Coulter met you at the train in Big Sandy. He says Race bought your outfit. Is that true?”
The young man replied scornfully: “Shang says so.”
“We’ve heard Shang,” said the outlaw quietly. “Now we want to hear you.”
Something told René he could deny it and the Jores would believe him. He was cruelly tempted. But he said, although it might sign his death warrant: “It’s true.”
Hardly had the words left his lips, when he realized it was not. Not all that Shang had accused him of, not true he’d been playing sick. And he cried: “It’s true Race staked me, but …”
“That’s plenty,” said Abel Jore.
“But I can’t leave it there!” the young fellow insisted wildly. “You’ve got to know …”
“That’s plenty!”
They weren’t giving him a chance to defend himself. They thought he was low enough for that. Furious at this injustice, René swung on his heel and left the room. He went out into the bright sunshine of early morning, his soul crying out against the accusation that he had shammed his condition. He was in agony lest Eden and Revel think that, after all they’d done for him.
Down at the corral he hung around, hoping against hope that Eden would see him and come out so he could tell her what little there was to be said on his side. When she didn’t come, he was sure she thought … that.
As if running from that thought, he saddled his cayuse and galloped up the lake trail, riding furiously, aimlessly, for a while, bringing up by Dave’s grave beneath the pine. Finding himself here, a spot hallowed to him for moments there with Eden, he slipped down and, breathless from the exertion, flung himself in the grass beside the cross, his dark eyes on the pictured rocks, his black thoughts far off on a muddy racecourse, with a man asking him what life was worth.
“They don’t know,” he moaned, “the fix I was in.”
Then wild hoofbeats on the slope jerked him around to see Eden galloping toward him, a distracted figure, her black hair wind-tossed about her face that was robbed of all color.
He leaped up as she reared to a stop beside him, and put out his hand to help her down. But she waved him back.
“I can’t stay, René. They’ll miss me. I … I sneaked away. I couldn’t let you hear it first from them … that way. I had to tell you myself. They … they …” But the tears came, and she couldn’t tell him.
Gently, he said to help: “I know, Eden. I’m to leave the Picture Rocks … by this route—” laying his hand upon the cross.
She flinched as from a blow. “Not that!” she cried, tears in her eyes. “No. But they say you’ve got to go. They say”—the wet blue eyes flashed indignantly—“you’re able to.”
“I am,” said René smiling, although this sentence seemed the harder to bear—to live and be banished from her. “I’m as good as I was when shiftin’ for myself on the tracks.”
“Mother begged them to let you stay”—her nervous gaze was on the trail—“if only for a few weeks more. She told them you might have a relapse.”
“I won’t, girl.”
“They say”—distractedly, as she shortened rein—“they don’t dare let you stay, when you admit you came from Race Coulter.”
“Eden.”
She wheeled her horse away from him. “I want you to know, René, I don’t care about that. I don’t care what was in your heart when you came to the Picture Rocks. I know it’s been true since. I know if there was any kinks in it, you’ve got them straightened. I … I … Oh, good-bye.”
She would have dashed away, but he caught her saddle, holding her. “Eden”—his dark eyes burned with intense fire—“you trust me still?”
“Yes,” she said, and again, “yes.”
Mad with joy at this, at something else in her lovely face, René’s voice sang out: “I’ll go, then, but … I’ll come back.”
Mad with terror at that, she pleaded: “Don’t, René! Don’t try it. Promise me! You’d never get in again. Shang … Oh, René, don’t think of it even. Forget you’ve ever been here. Forget us all.”
Forget her? “Eden,” he said tensely, “there’s things I’d like to say, but I can’t. I ain’t my own man. I ain’t even a man … yet. But I will be someday. And when I am, I’ll come. These rims, guns, all the Shangs this side of Halifax can’t keep me out.”
And to give him strength till then, he put up his arms and drew her down till her wild heart beat on his.
“I’ll come,” he whispered huskily. “I’ll come … as sure as the ole rocks stand.”
Then, with her kiss upon his lips, intoxicated with joy, his soul sweeping the very clouds, he watched her riding down the trail, watched until the green leaves that had framed her in his first conscious glimpse of her had swallowed her again. He little guessed how like a dream all this would seem when next he saw her, dreaming now how quickly he’d get well with her to live for.
He woke with a start to hear another set of violent hoofbeats on the slope, to see the black that had carried him into the basin pounding up with Zion on its back. He was holding the big rifle in his hands, and in his eyes there was a savage blaze. That resolve there was no mistaking.
Zion was crying: “I’m huntin’ Shang!”