CHAPTER VIII
It was not until late afternoon that Jim slowly struggled back to consciousness. He was first aware of a deadly nausea, which seemed billowing through every atom of his being. Then he felt the torture that stabbed through his brain. In an effort of revolt, he raised his head, though the movement tried his strength to the utmost. His eyes swept dimly over the scene, and a dull wonder filled him. Just at first, he did not recognize the place. Very quickly, however, the acrid odors of spilled liquors and the reek of cheap perfumes from the women quickened memory. Suddenly his eyes opened wide, and he saw clearly, with new consciousness of his surroundings—and of himself. He realized that in some mysterious fashion, altogether inexplicable to him, he had been overcome in the back room of Murphy's saloon. His mind went to the period immediately preceding the blank in memory. He remembered his presence there along with the woman, Jess, and the gambler, and his taking a drink with them. Of whatever had followed, he had no knowledge. Evidently, he had suffered a seizure of some sort. As his faculties were restored, it occurred to him that he might have been drugged by the gambler or the woman, for the purpose of robbery. But a hasty examination showed that his watch and money were untouched. Besides, it seemed to him, on second thought, preposterous that either of the two should have dared anything of the kind against him. No, it was certain that he had been attacked thus without warning by some unexpected physical ailment. He was rather alarmed by the experience, as strong men usually are when unaccustomed weakness assails them. He determined to submit himself to a careful examination at the hands of a competent physician, on his first visit to the county-seat.
The nausea had subsided in some measure, and the pain in his head, too, had lessened. But he felt mouth and throat parched. He got up, moving with difficulty, and, after a few moments of unsteadiness while he held to the back of a chair for support, he was able to stand firmly enough and to walk forward to the bar.
"Give me a glass of water," he said to the bar-keeper.
The fellow obeyed with alacrity, for he knew Jim Maxwell to be a man of importance in the community, and he had been puzzled by the events of the day—even a little frightened lest trouble come of them. Jim gulped the water and demanded more. He drank a number of glasses before his thirst was even partially quenched. The effect was speedy. He felt strength returning to him. His brain was quite clear again.
The bar-tender, watching narrowly, saw that the ranch-owner was himself once more. He ventured to speak ingratiatingly, in the hope of satisfying his curiosity.
"That was quite some snoozle, Mister," he remarked, with a smirk.
"It was nothing of the sort," Jim snapped. "I don't know what it was. But it was bad enough."
"I thought mebbe as how you'd had a drop too much," the bar-keeper explained, "an' was jest nacherly sleepin' it off. If we'd knowed you was sick, we'd have got the Doc in to give you a look-over."
"That's all right," Jim answered. "I'm not blaming you any—unless it was the drink you gave me that poisoned me."
Presently Jim went out into the street. He found his horse tied to a ring at the corner of the saloon building. He unhitched it, mounted, and rode slowly homeward. He was still in distress physically, but his condition was improving from moment to moment, so that he no longer felt apprehension as to the outcome. Soon, indeed, he became sufficiently sure of himself to put his horse to a trot.... As the shadows of evening drew down, he rode up to the door of his home.
There was a bank of lurid clouds in the west, massed heavily on the horizon. The air was motionless, weighted with portents of coming storm. Jim felt the oppressiveness, and in a subtle way it rested upon his mood as something sinister. A weight of melancholy pressed upon him as he entered the house. The stillness of the air seemed reënforced in the quiet of the living-room into which he stepped. There was no sound. He listened for his wife's greeting. It did not come. He listened for the pattering steps of Nell, running to welcome him. He did not hear them. The silence hurt him in some curious way. He had an overwhelming sense of the absence of those he loved—the absence of wife and child.
He crossed the room to his desk. He slipped the loop of the quirt from his wrist and let it fall on the desk. The effect of the drug was not yet assuaged; he was very thirsty. He called to the maid passing through the hall:
"Bring me a glass of water, Mary."
The girl came quickly with the drink. She and the other servants were in a ferment of curiosity, full of suspicions and wonderings. There had been much gossip in the house over the fight between the two men the day before, which had not passed unobserved. To-day, the wife had suddenly left her home with the man who had been ordered out of the house. Over this fact, scandalous tongues were clacking loudly. Mary had made it her business to be passing in the hall, in order that she might note the attitude of the master at such a time. So she stood, in eager expectation, eying her master closely, as he took the glass of water.
But he set the glass back on the tray suddenly, for he saw an envelope lying on the desk, addressed in the handwriting of the woman he loved:
"Jim."
A foreboding of disaster crashed upon him. He trembled, standing there with the envelope unopened in his hand. Then he strove to throw off this craven dread—for which there was no reason. He turned to the maid.
"Where is your mistress?" he asked, quietly.
It was the question for which Mary, and the whole household, had been waiting.
"Why, sir," she answered falteringly, dismayed now that the matter was coming to a crisis, "she has gone out—with Miss Nell, sir—and with Mr. McGrew."
McGrew! The name roared in Jim's brain. The man who had insulted his wife, whom he had beaten and driven from his home like a whipped cur.... And Lou and Nell had gone with Dan McGrew. He felt a sickness, inexpressibly more horrible than the physical nausea that had sickened him there in Murphy's saloon. That Lou should have gone with Dan McGrew—and Nell! The thing was incredible!
His eyes searched the room, as if looking for wife or child, or for some clew to explain the mystery. They fell on the envelope, which he still held in his hand. He tore it open in a frenzy of eagerness.
He read confusedly. But, somehow, the essential meaning beat upon his brain. He grasped the fact that the woman he loved had gone from him. It was all a monstrous lie, of course. Yet, there was the horrid truth—she had gone away. Lou and Nell—the two things in the world—had gone away. He could not understand. But they had gone.
"Good-by, Jim!"
She had written that, and she had signed it "Lou." There was confusion in his thoughts. He could not guess the meaning that lay back of what his wife had written. He only knew that there was some monstrous lie.
The maid's voice came softly. The girl was appalled at the expression on the man's face as he stood staring down at the sheet of paper in his hands. It was from a desire to bring things back to the ordinary that she spoke apologetically:
"Your glass of water, sir."
The words made a mechanical impression on Jim Maxwell's consciousness. He stretched out his left arm, and his hand, from which he had not yet pulled off the riding-gauntlet, closed over the glass on the tray. He raised it toward his lips. His eyes fell on the note once more.
"You love another, so will perhaps not miss me."
The incredible words were there before him. And she had gone—she and Nell.... With Dan McGrew! The thing was impossible. There was no truth anywhere. He stared down at the letter, aghast at the horrible conundrum propounded to him by fate. Lou had gone—with Dan McGrew!... Why?
His eyes held to the note.
"—so I am going away."
The words beat a refrain of dreadfulness in his brain.
"—so I am going away."
His hand, holding the glass of water, clenched fiercely in the reflex of emotion. The glass was shivered, and the fragments were multiplied as his passion still sought expression in the violence of that clutch.
HIS HAND CLENCHED FIERCELY IN THE REFLEX OF EMOTION.
Jim turned to the maid, who had watched his unconscious splintering of the glass with distended eyes.
"When did they go?" he asked.
Mary answered hurriedly, disconcerted by the obvious distress of her master.
"It was some hours ago, sir. They went sort of unexpected-like, as it seemed to me, sir."
Jim reasoned swiftly. Somehow, he sensed a frightful fraud underlying this mystery. But he knew the need of haste. By some malevolent chance, his wife had been led into this error of understanding—out of which she had written:
"I do not want to be in your path, so am going away."
Jim turned to the girl, who was still hovering doubtfully in the doorway.
"There's been a mistake somewhere, I guess." His voice was quiet, but in it throbbed a heart-beat of deepest feeling. "Tell the foreman, I want the boys to ride with me to-night."