"Take it, I say. You and I will settle our affairs when we get Nan out of this," he insisted.

"De Spain!" Duke's voice, as was its wont, cracked like a pistol, "I can say all I've got to say to you right here."

"No."

"Yes," cried the old man.

"Listen, Henry," pleaded Nan, seeking shelter from the furious blast within his arm, "just for a moment, listen!"

"Not now, I tell you!" cried de Spain.

"He was coming, Henry, all the way--and he is sick--just to say it to you. Let him say it here, now."

"Go on!" cried de Spain roughly. "Say it."

"I'm not afraid of you, de Spain!" shouted the old man, his neck bared to the flying ice. "Don't think it! You're a better man than I am, better than I ever was--don't think I don't know that. But I'm not afraid of e'er a man I faced, de Spain; they'll tell you that when I'm dead. All the trouble that ever come 'tween you and me come by an accident--come before you was born, and come through Dave Sa.s.soon, and he's held it over me ever since you come up into this country. I was a young fellow. Sa.s.soon worked for my father. The cattle and sheep war was on, north of Medicine Bend. The Peace River sheepmen raided our place--your father was with them. He never did us no harm, but my brother, Bay Morgan, was shot in that raid by a man name of Jennings.

My brother was fifteen years old, de Spain. I started out to get the man that shot him. Sa.s.soon trailed him to the Bar M, the old de Spain ranch, working for your father."

The words fell fast and in a fury. They came as if they had been choked back till they strangled. "Sa.s.soon took me over there. Toward night we got in sight of the ranch-house. We saw a man down at the corral. 'That's Jennings,' Sa.s.soon says. I never laid eyes on him before--I never laid eyes on your father before. Both of us fired.

Next day we heard your father was killed, and Jennings had left the country. Sa.s.soon or I, one of us, killed your father, de Spain. If it was I, I did it never knowing who he was, never meaning to touch him.

I was after the man that killed my brother. Sa.s.soon didn't care a d.a.m.n which it was, never did, then nor never. But he held it over me to make trouble sometime 'twixt you and me. I was a young fellow. I thought I was revenging my brother. And if your father was killed by a patched bullet, his blood is not on me, de Spain, and never was.

Sa.s.soon always shot a patched bullet. I never shot one in my life. And I'd never told you this of my own self. Nan said it was the whole truth from me to you, or her life. She's as much mine as she is yours.

I nursed her. I took care of her when there weren't no other living soul to do it. _She got me and herself out into this, this morning.

I'd never been caught like this if I'd had my way._ I told her 'fore we'd been out an hour we'd never see the end of it. She said she'd rather die in it than you'd think she quit you. I told her I'd go on with her and do as she said--that's why we're here, and that's the whole truth, so help me G.o.d!

"I ain't afraid of you, de Spain. I'll give you whatever you think's coming to you with a rifle or a gun any time, anywhere--you're a better man than I am or ever was, I know that--and that ought to satisfy you. Or, I'll stand my trial, if you say so, and tell the truth."

The ice-laden wind, as de Spain stood still, swept past the little group with a sinister roar, insensible alike to its emotions and its deadly peril. Within the shelter of his arm he felt the yielding form of the indomitable girl who, by the power of love, had wrung from the outlaw his reluctant story--the story of the murder that had stained with its red strands the relations of each of their lives to both the others. He felt against his heart the faint trembling of her frail body. So, when a boy, he had held in his hand a fluttering bird and felt the whirring beat of its frightened heart against his strong, cruel fingers.

A sudden aversion to more bloodshed, a sickening of vengeance, swept over him as her heart mutely beat for mercy against his heart. She had done more than any man could do. Now her. In the breathless embrace that drew her closer she read her answer from him. She looked up into his eyes and waited. "There's more than what's between you and me, Duke, facing us now," said de Spain sternly, when he turned. "We've got to get Nan out of this--even if we don't get out ourselves. Where do you figure we are?" he cried.

"I figure we're two miles north of the lava beds, de Spain," shouted Morgan.

De Spain shook his head in dissent. "Then where are we?" demanded the older man rudely.

"I ought not to say, against you. But if I've got to guess, I say two miles east. Either way, we must try for Sleepy Cat. Is your team all right?"

"Team is all right. We tore a wheel near off getting out of the lava.

The wagon's done for."

De Spain threw the fur coat at him. "Put it on," he said. "We'll look at the wheel."

They tried together to wrench it into shape, but worked without avail.

In the end they lashed it, put Nan on the Lady, and walked behind while the team pushed into the pitiless wind. Morgan wanted to cut the wagon away and take to the horses, but de Spain said, not till they found a trail or the stage road.

So much snow had fallen that in spite of the blizzard, driving with an unrelenting fury, the drifts were deepening, packing, and making all effort increasingly difficult. It was well-nigh impossible to head the horses into the storm, and de Spain looked with ever more anxious eyes at Nan. After half an hour's superhuman struggle to regain a trail that should restore their bearings, they halted, and de Spain, riding up to the wagon, spoke to Morgan, who was driving: "How long is this going to last?"

"All day and all night." Nan leaned closely over to hear the curt question and answer. Neither man spoke again for a moment.

"We'll have to have help," said de Spain after a pause.

"Help?" echoed Morgan scornfully. "Where's help coming from?"

De Spain's answer was not hurried. "One of us must go after it." Nan looked at him intently.

Duke set his hard jaw against the hurtling stream of ice that showered on the forlorn party. "I'll go for it," he snapped.

"No," returned de Spain. "Better for me to go."

"Go together," said Nan.

De Spain shook his head. Duke Morgan, too, said that only one should go; the other must stay. De Spain, while the storm rattled and shook at the two men, told why he should go himself. "It's not claiming you are not ent.i.tled to say who should go, Duke," he said evenly. "Nor that our men, anywhere you reach, wouldn't give you the same attention they would me. And it isn't saying that you're not the better man for the job--you've travelled the Sinks longer than I have. But between you and me, Duke, it's twenty-eight years against fifty. I ought to hold out a while the longer, that's all. Let's work farther to the east."

Quartering against the mad hurricane, they drove and rode on until the team could hardly be urged to further effort against the infuriated elements--de Spain riding at intervals as far to the right and the left as he dared in vain quest of a landmark. When he halted beside the wagon for the last time he was a ma.s.s of snow and ice; horse and rider were frozen to each other. He got down to the ground with a visible effort, and in the singing wind told Duke his plan and purpose.

He had chosen on the open desert a hollow falling somewhat abruptly from the north, and beneath its shoulder, while Morgan loosened the horses, he scooped and kicked away a ma.s.s of snow. The wagon had been drawn just above the point of refuge, and the two men, with the aid of the wind, dumped it over sidewise, making of the body a windbreak over the hollow, a sort of roof, around which the snow, driven by the gale, would heap itself in hard waves. Within this shelter the men stowed Nan. The horses were driven down behind it, and from one of them de Spain took the collar, the tugs, and the whiffletree. He stuck a hitching-strap in his pocket, and while Morgan steadied the Lady's head, de Spain buckled the collar on her, doubled the tugs around the whiffletree, and fastened the roll at her side in front of the saddle.

Nan came out and stood beside him as he worked. When he had finished she put her hand on his sleeve. He held her close, Duke listening, to tell her what he meant to try to do. Each knew it well might be the last moment together. "One thing and another have kept us from marriage vows, Nan," said de Spain, beckoning at length to Morgan to step closer that he might clearly hear. "Nothing must keep us longer.

Will you marry me?"

She looked up into his eyes. "I've promised you I would. I will promise every time you ask me. I never _could_ have but one answer to that, Henry--it must always be yes!"

"Then take me, Henry," he said slowly, "here and now for your wedded husband. Will you do this, Nan?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I've promised you I would. I will promise every time you ask me."]

Still looking into his eyes, she answered without surprise or fear: "Henry, I do take you."

"And I, Henry, take you, Nan, here and now for my wedded wife, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, from this day forward, until death us do part."

They sealed their pact with a silent embrace. De Spain turned to Duke.

"You are the witness of this marriage, Duke. You will see, if an accident happens, that anything, everything I have--some personal property--my father's old ranch north of Medicine Bend--some little money in bank at Sleepy Cat--goes to my wife, Nan Morgan de Spain.

Will you see to it?"

"I will. And if it comes to me--you, de Spain, will see to it that what stock I have in the Gap goes to my niece, Nan, your wife."

She looked from one to the other of the two men. "All that I have,"

she said in turn, "the lands in the Gap, everywhere around Music Mountain, go to you two equally together, or whichever survives. And if you both live, and I do not, remember my last message--bury the past in my grave."

Duke Morgan tested the cinches of the saddle on the Lady once more, unloosed the tugs once more from the horse's shoulder, examined each buckle of the collar and every inch of the two strips of leather, the reinforced fastenings on the whiffletree, rolled all up again, strapped it, and stood by the head till de Spain swung up into the saddle. He bent down once to whisper a last word of cheer to his wife and, without looking back, headed the Lady into the storm.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

GAMBLING WITH DEATH