_ CHAPTER XXII. MULLENDORE WINS
Kate sat on the side bench listening to Mullendore's disjointed mumblings. It was now well towards midnight and she had been sitting so for hours in the hope that he might have a lucid moment, but to the present her vigil had been unrewarded. Mostly his sentences were a jumble relative to trapping or sheep. Again, he lay inert with his eyes fixed upon her face in a meaningless stare.
Gusts of wind shook the wagon and swayed the kerosene lamp in its bracket, while a pounding rain beat a tattoo on the canvas cover. The tension was telling on Kate and a kind of nervous frenzy grew upon her as the time dragged by and she was no nearer learning what she had hoped to learn--than when she had had Mullendore brought to her camp.
She and Bowers had taken turns guarding him, and in growing despair she had watched him weaken, for each day the chances lessened that his mind would clear; and now Kate sat staring back into his unblinking eyes asking herself if it was possible that his crime was to be buried with him and she must go on the rest of her life bearing the onus of his guilt? The answer to every question she wanted to know was locked in the breast of the emaciated man lying on the bunk.
Bowers had proved to be correct in his diagnosis. The headache, backache, stiff neck and muscles with which Mullendore's illness had started were the forerunner of brown blotches, fever and jangling nerves. A virulent case of spotted fever, it was pronounced by "Doc" Fussel, who doubted that he would recover.
"I'd knock him in the head and put him to bed with a shovel, if 'twere me," Bowers had grumbled when he had helped move Pete Mullendore over to Kate's headquarters.
"We've got to make him talk," Kate had replied grimly. "We've got to get the truth somehow, Bowers, before he goes."
Kate had no prearranged plan as to the course she would pursue if Mullendore became rational, but trusted to her instinct to guide her. She was certain only of one thing--that if he had a spark of manhood in him she would reach it somehow. Though he inspired in her a feeling which was akin to her repugnance for creeping things, and there were moments when something like her childish terror of the half-breed trapper returned, she was determined that there were no lengths to which she would not go, in the way of humbling her pride, to attain her end.
The clock, ticking loudly on its nail, said midnight, and still Mullendore, deaf and blind to all save the fantastic world into which he stared, mumbled incoherently.
At last, unable longer to sit quietly, Kate arose and leaned over him.
"Do you remember the Sand Coulee, Pete?--the Sand Coulee Roadhouse where you used to stop?" she asked softly.
His mumblings ceased as if her voice had penetrated his dulled ears. Then his lips moved:
"The Sand Coulee Roadhouse--the Sand Coulee--"
"Where you trapped. Remember the bear hides you brought in that spring Katie left?"
"The pack's slippin' agin--them saddles is far and away too narrer--and them green hides weigh like lead--" He ran his words together like a person talking in his sleep.
"You load too heavy--you load to break a horse's back--Katie Prentice always told you that."
A troubled frown grew between his eyes as though he was groping, vainly groping for some elusive thought.
"Katie told me--Katie Prentice--" His voice trailed off and ended in a breath.
She made a gesture of despair, but repeated persistently:
"She told you that you ought to be ashamed to pack a horse like that. Three hundred pounds, Pete Mullendore! You haven't any feeling for a horse."
"Killed Old Blue and left him on the trail. My, but you're gittin' growed up fast. Ain't you got a kiss for Pete?"
She leaned closer.
"Would you do something for me if I kissed you--if Katie Prentice kissed you, Pete Mullendore?"
She repeated her words, speaking in a whisper, with careful distinctness.
"Will you tell Katie something that she wants to know, if she kisses you, Pete Mullendore?"
"Goin' to take you back to the mountings next trip--learn you to tan hides good--with ashes and deer brains--all--same--squaw--make good squaw out o' you--Katie--break your spirit first--you brat--lick you till I break your heart."
Katie's hands clenched.
"My mother wouldn't let me go with you!"
A shadowy cunning crossed his face.
"You'll go, when I say so. I got the whip-hand o' Jezebel."
"You're bragging, Pete Mullendore. My mother's not afraid of you."
"Jest a line on a postal--ud bring the Old Man on a special. You're more afraid of the Old Man than you are of dyin'--ain't it the truth, Isabelle?" he mumbled.
"You're only talking to hear yourself--you wouldn't know where to write. You've forgotten the name of the town where the 'Old Man' lives. You can't remember at all, can you, Pete?"
A frown lined his forehead while she waited with parted lips, afraid to move lest she start him rambling elsewhere again.
"You couldn't say the name of the town where Katie Prentice's father lives!"
Bending over him, rigid, tense, it seemed as though she would draw the answer from him through sheer will power.
He rolled his head fretfully to and fro, looking into her eyes with dilated pupils that burned in yellow bloodshot eyeballs. The wind rattled loose wagon bolts and scattered the ashes on the hearth in a puff, while Kate with a thumping heart waited for a response.
"
Think!" she urged. "Say it out loud, Mullendore--the name of the town you'd put on the postal if you were going to write to the 'Old Man.'"
His lips moved to speak, and then somewhat as if the habit of secrecy asserted itself even in his delirium, he checked himself with an expression of obstinacy on his face.
Kate's hand crept to his shoulder and clutched it tight.
"Tell me, Pete!" She shook him hard. "Say it--quick!"
He muttered thickly:
"What for?"
"You're a liar, Pete Mullendore!" she taunted. "You don't know. You haven't any idea where Katie Prentice's father lives!"
The gibe brought no response; yet slowly, so gradually that it was not possible to tell when it began, a look that was wholly rational came into his eyes. He blinked, touched his dry lips with his dry tongue and, turning his head, recognized her without surprise.
"Git me a drink."
She held a dipper to his lips.
He fixed his eyes upon her face.
"I been sick?"
"Spotted fever."
He stirred slightly.
"What's this?" A weak astonishment was in his voice as he felt a rope across his arms and chest.
"To keep you in bed."
"I been--loony?"
She nodded.
He looked at her quizzically.
"Emptied my sack?"
"You've talked."
He lay motionless, staring at her fixedly; then, as if arriving at a conclusion:
"Guess I didn't say much."
"You said plenty," significantly.
"But not enough, eh?" he jeered.
She regarded him silently.
"Where am I, anyhow?"
"In my camp."
"Oh." He considered a moment, then mocked, "Got religion?"
"Not yet," curtly.
"Jest wanted me close? Ol' friends are the best friends--ain't they?" He grinned weakly at her.
"Pete," slowly, "there are some questions I want to ask you."
"Thought it was about time for the pumps to start. What do you want to know?"
Kate's heart leaped. She endeavored to steady her voice, to keep out of her face the eagerness with which she trembled, as she replied:
"I want to know who my father is--where he is, if he's alive. Oh, Pete!" Her hands came together beseechingly, "Tell me that--I beg of you tell me about him."
Satisfaction glistened in his eyes.
"I thought that would be it! The only civil words I ever got out of you when you was a kid was when you hoped to make me loosen up and talk to you about him." Then he asked again with an expression she could not interpret, "You're sure you'd ruther I give up that than anything else on earth?"
"Yes, Pete!" she gulped. "It means so much to me."
"I guess yes. The ground wouldn't be good enough for your feet if the 'Old Man' had you."
"Is that the truth? He'd care for me like that? Oh, Pete!"
"Care? He'd worship you. Them Prouty folks would bite themselves if they could see your Old Man," he chuckled faintly.
"He is still living, then? Oh, Pete!" She extended two pleading hands impulsively, "Don't make me wait!"
Something other than fever glittered in his eyes, and there was more than satisfaction in his voice when he said:
"That's somethin' like it--somethin'--not quite! It's sweeter nor music to hear you beg. But, damn you, you ain't humble enough yet!"
"What do you want me to do?" she cried. "I'll--I'll get down on my knees, if only you'll tell me what I want to know!"
"That's it!" in shrill excitement. "Get down on your knees. I ain't forgot that you called me a 'nigger' once, and hit me with a quirt. It'll kinda wipe it out to see you crawlin' to Pete, that you always treated like dirt. Git down on your knees and beg, if you want me to talk!"
She sank to the floor of the wagon without a word.
He looked at her queerly as she knelt. There was intense gratification in his voice, "You do want to know, when you'll swaller that."
"Yes, Pete," humbly, "I do."
His thin hands lay inert upon the soogan. His head turned weakly while he kept his eyes upon her as though enjoying the situation to the utmost. There was a silence in which he seemed both to be gathering strength and considering how to begin.
"He's the kind of a feller--your Old Man--that don't have to holler his head off to git himself heard. They'd listen in any man's country when he talks. He don't talk much, but what he says goes--the kind that can always finish what he starts.
"He's six feet, and there wasn't any man in the country could handle him in those days. I've seen him throw a three-year-ol' steer like you'd slap over a kid. He was easy and quiet, commonly, like one of them still deep rivers that slip along peaceful till somethin' gits in its way. The patientest feller I ever see with dumb brutes, and a patience that wasn't hardly human, even with folks. But when he did break loose--well, them that thought he was 'harmless' and went too far on account of it never made the same mistake twice."
He continued with evident relish:
"That's where he fooled her--Isabelle--she didn't read him right. She thought he was 'soft' because she had her way with him."
"They were married, Pete?"
"Married, right enough--he never thought any other way about her. She was all-the-same angel to him," he grinned. "She never was straight--we all knowed that but him, but she was slick, and she was swingin' her throwrope for him in about a week after they brought her in from the Middle West to teach the school in that district. Anybody that said a word ag'in' her to him would have gone to the hospital. So he went ahead and married her--while she laffed at him to his own hired men.
"If he'd worked her over with a quirt about onct a month, instead of wonderin' what he could do for her next, he might have had her yet.
"If he made a door-mat out of hisself before, it was worse after you come. He was the greatest hand for little things that ever I see--colts, kittens, calves, puppies and a baby! He walked the floor carrying you on a pillow for fear you'd break.
"It was too slow for Isabelle--that life--and only one man to fetch and carry for her. We used to make bets among ourselves as to how long 'twould last, and the short-time man won out. She liked 'em 'tough,' she said--no white-collared gents for her; and she got what she was lookin' for when she throwed in with Freighter Sam that hauled supplies from the railroad to the ranch.
"They skipped out between daylight and dark and made as clean a getaway as ever was pulled off. But where she made her big mistake was takin' you along. If it hadn't been for that, he wouldn't a-walked a half mile to bring her back. Twenty-four hours put ten years on him, and he never squeaked. But if he'd caught that freighter he'd took him by the heels and swung him like you'd knock a rabbit's brains out agin a post.
"He went over the country with a fine-tooth comb, hopin' to git you back. A couple of times he almost closed in on 'em, but they managed to give him the slip and headed north while mostly he hunted south and west.
"You was well growed before I run into 'em. Freighter Sam used to bang her head agin the door jamb about twict a week, and they got along good until he fell for a hasher in an eatin' house and quit Isabelle cold. She hit bottom pretty pronto after that." Mullendore stopped.
"But my father, Pete;--tell me more about him!"
He eyed her with a quizzical and appraising look before he replied:
"You favor the Old Man as much as if you was made out of the mud that was left when they was done workin' on him. Your eyes, your mouth, your chin--the way you walk and stand--the easy style you set a horse. As the sayin' is, 'You're the spit out of his mouth.' God A'mighty! Wouldn't he spile you if you was with him!"
"But you don't tell me where he is, Pete!"
He ignored the interruption and said with slow malice, watching her face:
"I've often thought what a shame it was that you two never got together--a hankerin' for each other so."
Something in his tone struck terror to her heart.
"But you're going to tell me, Pete? You are! You are!" She crawled closer to the bunk, on her knees.
A passionate satisfaction glittered in his eyes.
"Yes! it's a plumb pity that you and him never happened to meet up."
There was cold cruelty in his tantalizing voice.
"You mean--you mean--" she stammered with colorless lips--"that--that you're only tormenting me again--you don't intend--"
"That depends." His pupils dilated, his white teeth gleamed.
"But you promised, Pete! Haven't you any honor--not a speck?"
"I git what I want any way I can git it. That's me--Mullendore."
"Tell me what you want! Is it money, Pete?"
"Money! Hell! What's money good for to me? Money's only to blow after you've got enough to eat. What do you spose I want? I want you!"
"What do you mean?"
"Just that." An oath came between his clenched teeth. "I'm stuck on you! I want you so I hate you, if you can understand that--and always have. I'd like to take you off like a dog packs a bone away for himself. I've dealt you and your sheep all the misery I could, because every step you took up was just so far from me. What I've done," savagely, "is nothin' to what I'll do when I git out of this, if you don't say yes."
Kate's face, that had gone scarlet, was a grayish white as she got up slowly from her knees.
Her breathing was labored as she demanded:
"You--mean--that--you'll--not--tell me anything more unless I do what you ask?"
"You got it right."
Kate's nerves and self-control gave way as a taut string snaps. In the center of a black disc she saw only the mocking eyes and evil face of Mullendore.
"I'm going to kill you, Pete! I'm--going--to choke you--to death! You--shan't torment me--any more!"
Her strong hands were close to his throat while he shrank from the white fury in her face. Suddenly her arms dropped to her sides. Such a feeling of physical repulsion swept over her that she could not touch him even in her rage.
"Lost your nerve?" he mocked. "Old Pete wins again, eh, Kate?"
She did not answer but stepped out on the wagon tongue that the cool rain might patter in her face. Her knees were shaking beneath her and she felt nauseated--sick with a feeling of absolute defeat. _