There seemed to be a rushing in his ears through which pierced sharp, ringing clip-clop of iron hoofs. He could see only the corner of the street. But suddenly into that shot lean-limbed dusty bay horses. There was a clattering of nervous hoofs pulled to a halt.

  Duane saw the tawny Poggin speak to his companions. He dismounted quickly. They followed suit. They had the manner of ranchers about to conduct some business. No guns showed. Poggin started leisurely for the bank door, quickening step a little. The others, close together, came behind him. Blossom Kane had a bag in his left hand. Jim Fletcher was left at the curb, and he had already gathered up the bridles.

  Poggin entered the vestibule first, with Kane on one side, Boldt on the other, a little in his rear.

  As he strode in he saw Duane.

  “HELL’S FIRE!” he cried.

  Something inside Duane burst, piercing all of him with cold. Was it that fear?

  “BUCK DUANE!” echoed Kane.

  One instant Poggin looked up and Duane looked down.

  Like a striking jaguar Poggin moved. Almost as quickly Duane threw his arm.

  The guns boomed almost together.

  Duane felt a blow just before he pulled trigger. His thoughts came fast, like the strange dots before his eyes. His rising gun had loosened in his hand. Poggin had drawn quicker! A tearing agony encompassed his breast. He pulled — pulled — at random. Thunder of booming shots all about him! Red flashes, jets of smoke, shrill yells! He was sinking. The end; yes, the end! With fading sight he saw Kane go down, then Boldt. But supreme torture, bitterer than death, Poggin stood, mane like a lion’s, back to the wall, bloody-faced, grand, with his guns spouting red!

  All faded, darkened. The thunder deadened. Duane fell, seemed floating. There it drifted — Ray Longstreth’s sweet face, white, with dark, tragic eyes, fading from his sight... fading.. . fading...

  CHAPTER XXV

  LIGHT SHONE BEFORE Duane’s eyes — thick, strange light that came and went. For a long time dull and booming sounds rushed by, filling all. It was a dream in which there was nothing; a drifting under a burden; darkness, light, sound, movement; and vague, obscure sense of time — time that was very long. There was fire — creeping, consuming fire. A dark cloud of flame enveloped him, rolled him away.

  He saw then, dimly, a room that was strange, strange people moving about over him, with faint voices, far away, things in a dream. He saw again, clearly, and consciousness returned, still unreal, still strange, full of those vague and far-away things. Then he was not dead. He lay stiff, like a stone, with a weight ponderous as a mountain upon him and all his bound body racked in slow, dull-beating agony.

  A woman’s face hovered over him, white and tragic-eyed, like one of his old haunting phantoms, yet sweet and eloquent. Then a man’s face bent over him, looked deep into his eyes, and seemed to whisper from a distance: “Duane — Duane! Ah, he knew me!”

  After that there was another long interval of darkness. When the light came again, clearer this time, the same earnest-faced man bent over him. It was MacNelly. And with recognition the past flooded back.

  Duane tried to speak. His lips were weak, and he could scarcely move them.

  “Poggin!” he whispered. His first real conscious thought was for Poggin. Ruling passion — eternal instinct!

  “Poggin is dead, Duane; shot to pieces,” replied MacNelly, solemnly. “What a fight he made! He killed two of my men, wounded others. God! he was a tiger. He used up three guns before we downed him.”

  “Who-got — away?”

  “Fletcher, the man with the horses. We downed all the others. Duane, the job’s done — it’s done! Why, man, you’re—”

  “What of — of — HER?”

  “Miss Longstreth has been almost constantly at your bedside. She helped the doctor. She watched your wounds. And, Duane, the other night, when you sank low — so low — I think it was her spirit that held yours back. Oh, she’s a wonderful girl. Duane, she never gave up, never lost her nerve for a moment. Well, we’re going to take you home, and she’ll go with us. Colonel Longstreth left for Louisiana right after the fight. I advised it. There was great excitement. It was best for him to leave.”

  “Have I — a — chance — to recover?”

  “Chance? Why, man,” exclaimed the Captain, “you’ll get well! You’ll pack a sight of lead all your life. But you can stand that. Duane, the whole Southwest knows your story. You need never again be ashamed of the name Buck Duane. The brand outlaw is washed out. Texas believes you’ve been a secret ranger all the time. You’re a hero. And now think of home, your mother, of this noble girl — of your future.”

  The rangers took Duane home to Wellston.

  A railroad had been built since Duane had gone into exile. Wellston had grown. A noisy crowd surrounded the station, but it stilled as Duane was carried from the train.

  A sea of faces pressed close. Some were faces he remembered — schoolmates, friends, old neighbors. There was an upflinging of many hands. Duane was being welcomed home to the town from which he had fled. A deadness within him broke. This welcome hurt him somehow, quickened him; and through his cold being, his weary mind, passed a change. His sight dimmed.

  Then there was a white house, his old home. How strange, yet how real! His heart beat fast. Had so many, many years passed? Familiar yet strange it was, and all seemed magnified.

  They carried him in, these ranger comrades, and laid him down, and lifted his head upon pillows. The house was still, though full of people. Duane’s gaze sought the open door.

  Some one entered — a tall girl in white, with dark, wet eyes and a light upon her face. She was leading an old lady, gray-haired, austere-faced, somber and sad. His mother! She was feeble, but she walked erect. She was pale, shaking, yet maintained her dignity.

  The some one in white uttered a low cry and knelt by Duane’s bed. His mother flung wide her arms with a strange gesture.

  “This man! They’ve not brought back my boy. This man’s his father! Where is my son? My son — oh, my son!”

  When Duane grew stronger it was a pleasure to lie by the west window and watch Uncle Jim whittle his stick and listen to his talk. The old man was broken now. He told many interesting things about people Duane had known — people who had grown up and married, failed, succeeded, gone away, and died. But it was hard to keep Uncle Jim off the subject of guns, outlaws, fights. He could not seem to divine how mention of these things hurt Duane. Uncle Jim was childish now, and he had a great pride in his nephew. He wanted to hear of all of Duane’s exile. And if there was one thing more than another that pleased him it was to talk about the bullets which Duane carried in his body.

  “Five bullets, ain’t it?” he asked, for the hundredth time.

  “Five in that last scrap! By gum! And you had six before?”

  “Yes, uncle,” replied Duane.

  “Five and six. That makes eleven. By gum! A man’s a man, to carry all that lead. But, Buck, you could carry more. There’s that nigger Edwards, right here in Wellston. He’s got a ton of bullets in him. Doesn’t seem to mind them none. And there’s Cole Miller. I’ve seen him. Been a bad man in his day. They say he packs twenty-three bullets. But he’s bigger than you — got more flesh.... Funny, wasn’t it, Buck, about the doctor only bein’ able to cut one bullet out of you — that one in your breastbone? It was a forty-one caliber, an unusual cartridge. I saw it, and I wanted it, but Miss Longstreth wouldn’t part with it. Buck, there was a bullet left in one of Poggin’s guns, and that bullet was the same kind as the one cut out of you. By gum! Boy, it’d have killed you if it’d stayed there.”

  “It would indeed, uncle,” replied Duane, and the old, haunting, somber mood returned.

  But Duane was not often at the mercy of childish old hero-worshiping Uncle Jim. Miss Longstreth was the only person who seemed to divine Duane’s gloomy mood, and when she was with him she warded off all suggestion.

  One afternoon, while she was there at the west window, a message came for him. They read it together.

  You have saved the ranger service to the Lone Star State

  MACNELLEY.

  Ray knelt beside him at the window, and he believed she meant to speak then of the thing they had shunned. Her face was still white, but sweeter now, warm with rich life beneath the marble; and her dark eyes were still intent, still haunted by shadows, but no longer tragic.

  “I’m glad for MacNelly’s sake as well as the state’s,” said Duane.

  She made no reply to that and seemed to be thinking deeply. Duane shrank a little.

  “The pain — Is it any worse to-day?” she asked, instantly.

  “No; it’s the same. It will always be the same. I’m full of lead, you know. But I don’t mind a little pain.”

  “Then — it’s the old mood — the fear?” she whispered. “Tell me.”

  “Yes. It haunts me. I’ll be well soon — able to go out. Then that — that hell will come back!”

  “No, no!” she said, with emotion.

  “Some drunken cowboy, some fool with a gun, will hunt me out in every town, wherever I go,” he went on, miserably. “Buck Duane! To kill Buck Duane!”

  “Hush! Don’t speak so. Listen. You remember that day in Val Verde, when I came to you — plead with you not to meet Poggin? Oh, that was a terrible hour for me. But it showed me the truth. I saw the struggle between your passion to kill and your love for me. I could have saved you then had I known what I know now. Now I understand that — that thing which haunts you. But you’ll never have to draw again. You’ll never have to kill another man, thank God!”

  Like a drowning man he would have grasped at straws, but he could not voice his passionate query.

  She put tender arms round his neck. “Because you’ll have me with you always,” she replied. “Because always I shall be between you and that — that terrible thing.”

  It seemed with the spoken thought absolute assurance of her power came to her. Duane realized instantly that he was in the arms of a stronger woman that she who had plead with him that fatal day.

  “We’ll — we’ll be married and leave Texas,” she said, softly, with the red blood rising rich and dark in her cheeks.

  “Ray!”

  “Yes we will, though you’re laggard in asking me, sir.”

  “But, dear — suppose,” he replied, huskily, “suppose there might be — be children — a boy. A boy with his father’s blood!”

  “I pray God there will be. I do not fear what you fear. But even so — he’ll be half my blood.”

  Duane felt the storm rise and break in him. And his terror was that of joy quelling fear. The shining glory of love in this woman’s eyes made him weak as a child. How could she love him — how could she so bravely face a future with him? Yet she held him in her arms, twining her hands round his neck, and pressing close to him. Her faith and love and beauty — these she meant to throw between him and all that terrible past. They were her power, and she meant to use them all. He dared not think of accepting her sacrifice.

  “But Ray — you dear, noble girl — I’m poor. I have nothing. And I’m a cripple.”

  “Oh, you’ll be well some day,” she replied. “And listen. I have money. My mother left me well off. All she had was her father’s — Do you understand? We’ll take Uncle Jim and your mother. We’ll go to Louisiana — to my old home. It’s far from here. There’s a plantation to work. There are horses and cattle — a great cypress forest to cut. Oh, you’ll have much to do. You’ll forget there. You’ll learn to love my home. It’s a beautiful old place. There are groves where the gray moss blows all day and the nightingales sing all night.”

  “My darling!” cried Duane, brokenly. “No, no, no!”

  Yet he knew in his heart that he was yielding to her, that he could not resist her a moment longer. What was this madness of love?

  “We’ll be happy,” she whispered. “Oh, I know. Come! — come!-come!”

  Her eyes were closing, heavy-lidded, and she lifted sweet, tremulous, waiting lips.

  With bursting heart Duane bent to them. Then he held her, close pressed to him, while with dim eyes he looked out over the line of low hills in the west, down where the sun was setting gold and red, down over the Nueces and the wild brakes of the Rio Grande which he was never to see again.

  It was in this solemn and exalted moment that Duane accepted happiness and faced a new life, trusting this brave and tender woman to be stronger than the dark and fateful passion that had shadowed his past.

  It would come back — that wind of flame, that madness to forget, that driving, relentless instinct for blood. It would come back with those pale, drifting, haunting faces and the accusing fading eyes, but all his life, always between them and him, rendering them powerless, would be the faith and love and beauty of this noble woman.

  THE END

  The Border Legion

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 1

  JOAN RANDLE REINED in her horse on the crest of the cedar ridge, and with remorse and dread beginning to knock at her heart she gazed before her at the wild and looming mountain range.

  “Jim wasn’t fooling me,” she said. “He meant it. He’s going straight for the border... Oh, why did I taunt him!”

  It was indeed a wild place, that southern border of Idaho, and that year was to see the ushering in of the wildest time probably ever known in the West. The rush for gold had peopled California with a horde of lawless men of every kind and class. And the vigilantes and then the rich strikes in Idaho had caused a reflux of that dark tide of humanity. Strange tales of blood and gold drifted into the camps, and prospectors and hunters met with many unknown men.

  Joan had quarreled with Jim Cleve, and she was bitterly regretting it. Joan was twenty years old, tall, strong, dark. She had been born in Missouri, where her father had been well-to-do and prominent, until, like many another man of his day, he had impeded the passage of a bullet. Then Joan had become the protegee of an uncle who had responded to the call of gold; and the latter part of her life had been spent in the wilds.

  She had followed Jim’s trail for miles out toward the range. And now she dismounted to see if his tracks were as fresh as she had believed. He had left the little village camp about sunrise. Someone had seen him riding away and had told Joan. Then he had tarried on the way, for it was now midday. Joan pondered. She had become used to his idle threats and disgusted with his vacillations. That had been the trouble — Jim was amiable, lovable, but since meeting Joan he had not exhibited any strength of character. Joan stood beside her horse and looked away toward the dark mountains. She was daring, resourceful, used to horses and trails and taking care of herself; and she did not need anyone to tell her that she had gone far enough. It had been her hope to come up with Jim. Always he had been repentant. But this time was different. She recalled his lean, pale face — so pale that freckles she did not know he had showed through — and his eyes, usually so soft and mild, had glinted like steel. Yes, it had been a bitter, reckless face. What had she said to him? She tried to recall it.

  The night before at twilight Joan had waited for him. She had given him precedence over the few other young men of the village, a fact she resentfully believed he did not appreciate. Jim was unsatisfactory in every way except in the way he cared for her. And that also — for he cared too much.

  When Joan thought how Jim loved her, all the details of that night became vivid. She sat alone under the spruce-trees near the cabin. The shadows thickened, and then lightened under a rising moon. She heard the low hum of insects, a distant laugh of some woman of the village, and the murmur of the brook. Jim was later than usual. Very likely, as her uncle had hinted, Jim had tarried at the saloon that had lately disrupted the peace of the village. The village was growing, and Joan did not like the change. There were too many strangers, rough, loud-voiced, drinking men. Once it had been a pleasure to go to the village store; now it was an ordeal. Somehow Jim had seemed to be unfavorably influenced by these new conditions. Still, he had never amounted to much. Her resentment, or some feeling she had, was reaching a climax. She got up from her seat. She would not wait any longer for him, and when she did see him it would be to tell him a few blunt facts.

  Just then there was a slight rustle behind her. Before she could turn someone seized her in powerful arms. She was bent backward in a bearish embrace, so that she could neither struggle nor cry out. A dark face loomed over hers — came closer. Swift kisses closed her eyes, burned her cheeks, and ended passionately on her lips. They had some strange power over her. Then she was released.

  Joan staggered back, frightened, outraged. She was so dazed she did not recognize the man, if indeed she knew him. But a laugh betrayed him. It was Jim.

  “You thought I had no nerve,” he said. “What do you think of that?”

  Suddenly Joan was blindly furious. She could have killed him. She had never given him any right, never made him any promise, never let him believe she cared. And he had dared — ! The hot blood boiled in her cheeks. She was furious with him, but intolerably so with herself, because somehow those kisses she had resented gave her unknown pain and shame. They had sent a shock through all her being. She thought she hated him.