CHAPTER X
Jim and his men rode throughout the night in vain. Nowhere could they come on any trace of the fugitives. There was as yet no telephone installed in this newly settled region. But their search was thorough. There were inquiries at the railway stations in the various towns round about. At none of these had ought been seen of Dan McGrew and woman and child. Jim found himself baffled in his quest. He could not guess that the wife who had thus deserted him was lying in a stupor, from which she aroused only to rave over a lost husband and a dead child. He could not know that she had broken under the stress of sorrow, and was being ministered unto by a kindly woman to whom Dan McGrew had told many lies, in order to enlist her sympathetic aid. Even had his inquiries reached the very house in which Lou was sheltered, he would still have been deceived. For he sought a mother and her child: and here was no child.
So, the hunt availed nothing. The three who fled had vanished utterly. There came not even a rumor as to their whereabouts. They were gone as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up.
Nevertheless, Jim was not slow in learning something of the truth. He was told of Dan's visit at the ranch that fatal day, and of his wife's accompanying this visitor to the town. Those there were who had seen the two as they dismounted at Murphy's saloon, and looked in through the window. Jim, remembering his own experiences of that day in the back room of the saloon, was aroused to suspicion of the fact. He got from the bar-keeper details as to what had occurred. The fellow's reference, jestingly made, to the manner in which Jim and the woman, Jess, had embraced, gave him a sudden illumination concerning the plot of Dan McGrew by which his wife had been beguiled.
Straightway, Jim hunted out Fingie Whalen's woman. She would have denied, but, in the face of the injured husband's rage, she was fairly terrified into confession. In the end, the woman wrote at Jim's dictation, even as she had written at the dictation of Dan McGrew. But, now, she wrote without any smirk of vicious satisfaction—with a face pallid and with fingers that trembled from fear of the fierce-visaged man who stood over her in stern and menacing domination. Fingie Whalen, all his bluster gone, looked on in timid consternation, cringing from the baleful threat in the eyes of the man mortally wronged.
SHE WOULD HAVE DENIED, BUT WAS FAIRLY TERRIFIED INTO CONFESSION.
The painted woman was so moved by the anger of the man whom she had helped betray, that, for the first time in more years than she would have cared to tell, she revealed the name with which, back in a quiet New England village, she had been christened by simple, God-fearing parents.
This was the note of confession, which the woman wrote at Jim's command, duly dated, and witnessed by Fingie Whalen and the landlady of the house, who was summoned for the purpose. Jim realized that these formalities were extravagant, but, somehow, they seemed necessary to him just then, to put this evidence of the crime against his home and happiness beyond cavil of doubt.
I, Anne Weston, confess to tricking Jim Maxwell and deceiving his wife at the instigation of Dan McGrew. McGrew hired Fingie Whalen and me to help him fool Mrs. Maxwell. I wrote the note signed "Jess." At the time when Mr. Maxwell was due to arrive in town, I was all ready, and as he came by fell from my horse as if I had fainted. He carried me into the saloon, and then Fingie gave him knock-out drops, and we fixed it up so that when McGrew came with Mrs. Maxwell and looked in at the window, it was as if we were loving together. But it was all a lie, worked out by Dan McGrew to make Mrs. Maxwell believe her husband was false to her.
Anne Weston.
Jim carried that paper in his pocket. It was the document with which he would prove to Lou how she had been deluded. But the days passed, and there came no opportunity to show her the sheet of paper on which Anne Weston had scrawled her confession. He used every means at his command, but he was powerless to gain any trace of the woman whom he had loved and lost through despicable treachery.
It was on the fourth day after Lou had fled her home, that Jim Maxwell seated himself at the piano in the living-room. Hitherto, he had been so occupied in the vain effort to find his wife that he had been, in some measure, unappreciative of the misery that was upon him. Now, when he had exhausted every resource of activity, he suddenly felt the desolation of his home—the ruin of his life. With his instinct toward the musical expression of moods, he took his place before the instrument.
Then, again, that glorious love-lyric came softly sonorous from the keys. The lilt of the melody rose and fell with a subtle vigor, instinct with the joy of life. The delicate tenderness of the music throbbed the story of a love complete and enduring. There was passion in the rhythm. It was a passion ennobled and purified by the intricate harmonies woven around and within it. It was a song of the spirit. It was overlaid with a splendor of sensuous sound. There was nothing gross—only the fullness of life.... Jim was playing with exquisite art that song of happiness which he had improvised on the day he received the news of Dan McGrew's coming.
Now, after he had followed the melody to its end, the truth, which during the moments of his playing he had forgotten, crashed upon him in a discord so horrible that he could not touch the keys to voice it—could only sit, moveless, listening to the din within his own soul in an ecstasy of despair.
Often, again, in the years to come, Jim Maxwell played that same melody. Always, he was searching for the wife whom he had loved and lost. Men whose eyes were sharp noted him here and there around the world, because he seemed so uninterested in everything, and because so often his left hand touched his breast.... In the pocket there, he carried, ready for Lou's reading, the confession signed by Anne Weston—the woman Jess.
And, in the years as they passed, Jim Maxwell gained something of reputation for another thing. He traveled the world over; he had money enough. His foreman was competent. Even without his personal attendance, the revenues from the ranch increased year by year. He lived for only two things: to find Lou and prove to her his innocence—and to kill the man who had betrayed them. In his search, Jim Maxwell went everywhere. He was known in the capitals of Europe; he was known in the wild places of the earth. Men spoke of him, though they had little acquaintance with him. The reason they spoke of him was because on occasion—it might be in the parlor of some sailor's lodging-house in Vladivostok, or it might be in a drawing-room of the Savoy, this man would seat himself at the piano, and he would play. And, always, he played the self-same melody, a lilting air of love and tenderness, filled full of the joy of life. Always, too, the melody was embroidered over with an intricate web of harmonies, magnificent, yet somber. And, in the end, always, the player beat suddenly upon the keys a frenzy of discord.