TWO PLUS ONE MAKES THREE
With a swift movement of her supple body Vicky was on her knees beside the man. She slipped an arm under his head. Icy sleet encrusted his clothes. It clung in icicles to his hair and eyebrows. It matted his lashes and small Vandyke beard.
From her throat came an astonished little cry of recognition. The man was Hugh McClintock. Over her shoulder she called to the big man at the table.
“Bring me whisky and water—please.”
He brought it, then closed the door. Awkwardly he stood above her.
“Had a hell’v a close call,” he growled sulkily. It did not suit him to entertain a second guest.
Vicky let the whisky drop between the lips. Presently Hugh opened his eyes. He smiled feebly at her. Surprise wiped out the smile. “Little Vicky,” he murmured.
“Ump-hu,” she nodded. Then, to the hulking figure behind her, the girl gave order: “Help me carry him nearer the fire. He’s ’most frozen.”
The fellow shambled forward and stooped down. As he did so his eyes fell on the face of the helpless traveller. He ripped out a savage oath. With the sweep of an arm he dragged the girl to her feet and hurled her back to the wall.
His fury struggled for expression. “Gotcha. Gotcha good an’ right. I’m gonna stomp the life outa you. Gona put my heel on yore throat an’ crack yore spine. Un’erstand?”
Victoria knew the ruffian now. A flash of memory carried her back to a day in her childhood when she had seen a horrible apelike figure standing over the prostrate body of a man from which life had just been violently ejected. She saw the same gargoyle face, the same hulking muscle-bound shoulders and long arms with hairy wrists projecting from the coat sleeves. Her memory brought her a second picture of the same incident. A smiling young fellow was lifting her gently from the ground. His hand was caressing her hair softly as he spoke. She recalled even his words. “Run right along into the wagon where yore dad is, li’l girl, an’ don’t turn yore head.”
The girl’s arm rested on a shelf, in the same position where it had fallen when she had been hurled back. Her fingers touched something cold.
“You first. Yore brother next,” the guttural voice of Dutch went on, and the horrible malice of it seemed unhuman. “I been waitin’ a mighty long time, an’ I gotcha at last. Sure have. Thought I was scared of you an’ that damned high-heeled brother o’ yourn, did you? Me, I was settin’ back an’ waitin’—waitin’ for my chance. An’ it’s come, like I knew it would. Beg. Whine like a papoose. It won’t do you no good, but go to it jest the same. Hear me—before I turn you over an’ crack yore backbone at the neck.”
His gloating was horrible. It sent chills through Victoria’s blood. Her fingers spasmodically closed—on the ivory handle of a revolver. The force of the recoil had flung her hand into contact with the revolver Dutch had tossed on the shelf a few hours earlier.
“Don’tcha hear me? Beg me to let you go. Crawl over an’ lick my boots. Maybe I’ll go easy on you like you two dern fools done with me.” A jangle of hideous laughter accompanied his words. He kicked his opponent in the side.
Hugh looked at him steadily, without a word.
“Thought you had the Injun sign on me, eh? Both of you? Well, I’ll say right here there never was a minute I was scared of either one of you—or both. Me, I’m Sam Dutch, a sure enough killer. An’ you—you’re Number Fifteen. Ole Dan Tucker’s come to git his supper, an’ he ain’t too late, neither.”
He was working himself up for murder. Soon his passion would be boiling over. Then he would strike.
One thought dominated Vicky, drove out all others. She must save Hugh McClintock. She forgot to be afraid, forgot to remember that this scoundrel was the terror of Nevada. Noiselessly she crept forward and pushed the revolver into his back just below the shoulders.
“If you move I’ll shoot you,” she said hoarsely.
The stream of curses died in the fellow’s throat. His jaw fell. Ludicrously his immature mind groped with the situation.
Three slow taps rose from the floor. Dutch gasped. Those taps had always heralded disaster for him.
Vicky drew a knife from his boot and a revolver from the belt he was wearing. She dropped them on the floor.
“Walk to the door,” she ordered. “Go outside. If you come in before I call you I’ll shoot holes in you.”
She hardly recognized her own voice. There was in it a new note. She knew that if he refused to go she would kill him as she would a wolf.
Dutch whined. “You wouldn’t drive me into the storm after I done took you in an’ fed you, miss. There can’t any one live in that blizzard. I was jest a-funnin’ about him. Jest my li’l way.”
“Go on,” she told him inexorably. “Now.”
He went. She closed the door behind him.
McClintock crept toward the fire. Vicky gathered the weapons and put them down beside her. Then she took one of his hands in hers and began to rub it to restore circulation. She worked on the other hand, on his ears, his face, his throat. She helped him to take off his boots and in spite of his protests massaged his frozen feet.
The pain was intense as the circulation began to be renewed in his body. He clamped his teeth to keep back the groans. He walked up and down nursing his hands and his ears. But not a sound came from his lips.
“I know it’s awful,” Vicky comforted. “But the pain’s a good sign. Soon as it’s gone you’ll be all right.”
He grinned. There was nothing to do but endure until the circulation was fully restored. He beat the back of his hands against the palms. If Dutch should grow troublesome he might need the use of his fingers shortly.
A fist beat on the door.
“Shall I let him in?” the girl asked.
Hugh picked up one of the revolvers and crooked his stiff forefinger over the trigger. He could make out to use it at a pinch.
“Yes, let him in,” he said.
Vicky took the second revolver. The knife Hugh thrust into one of his boot legs.
When the girl opened the door Dutch slouched in. He was covered from head to foot with frozen snow and sleet. His venomous eyes slanted first at McClintock, then at the young woman. The sullen impotent hatred in his heart was plain enough to send goose-quills down Vicky’s spine. She knew that if ever he were top dog it would go hard with her or Hugh.
The man poured out half a tumbler of whisky and drank it neat. He shuffled up to the fire, taking the opposite side to the one occupied by his guests. Silently he glared at them. But for the moment he could do nothing. They were armed. He was not.
Exhausted by his long battle with the storm, Hugh could hardly keep his eyes open. His worn body called for sleep. But with that wild beast crouched five feet away he dared not relax his vigilance for a moment.
Vicky whispered in his ear: “Cuddle down in the chair and sleep a while. I’ll watch him.”
Hugh shook his head. No, that would never do. At some unexpected instant the killer would fling his huge bulk on her and wrest the revolver from her hand. Much as his system craved it, Hugh rejected sleep as unsafe. He would stay awake and protect her.
But even as he was firmly resolving this his eyelids drooped. His head relaxed against the back of the chair. He made an effort to throw off the drowsiness pressing him down. It was a feeble and unsuccessful one. Presently he was sound asleep.
From the summit of Bald Knob the storm swept down with a roar. It hurled itself into the valley with screams like those of a lost soul. It beat against the hut in furious gusts, rattling the windows and shaking the door like some living monster intent on destruction. For hours its rage continued unabated.
Meanwhile, from opposite sides of the fireplace, the desperado and the girl watched each other. He had a feral cunning. It had served to keep him alive more than once when he seemed at the end of his rope. Now he piled the fuel high in the stone chimney and pretended to go to sleep.
The glow of the heat had the intended effect. It formed an alliance with Vicky’s fatigue. She, too, began to nod at last, her wariness lulled by the stertorous breathing of the big huddled figure opposite. The sense of responsibility was still active in her mind. She decided afterwards that she must have cat-napped, as drivers do on a long night trip, now and again for a few seconds at a time.
From one of these she awakened with a start. Dutch was tiptoeing toward her. Their eyes met. He crouched for the leap as her fingers busied themselves with the revolver.
The roar of the explosion filled the cabin. The weight of the plunging man flung Vicky to the floor. She lay face down, breathless, oppressed by his huge bulk. The six-shooter had gone clattering beyond her reach.
The weight lifted from her. She heard scuffling feet and heavy grunts as she recovered the weapon and fled to the wall. When she turned it was to see the butt of a six-gun rising and falling. There was a gasp, a groan, and one of the struggling figures sank down.
The one still standing was Hugh McClintock.
The man on the floor writhed painfully, turned over, and sank into quietude.
“Are you hurt?” Hugh asked Vicky.
“No. Are you?”
He shook his head. “I fell asleep. Lucky it was no worse.”
“So did I. He was creeping on me when I woke. Is—is he dead?” she asked, awed.
“No such luck. I tapped his bean with my gun.” He stooped over the prostrate man and turned him on his back. “Hello! Here’s a wound in his shoulder. You must have hit him.”
“Oh, I hope not,” Vicky cried.
She looked at the big revolver with a face of horror and threw it on the shelf where she had found it some hours earlier.
“Probably saved my life,” Hugh told her quietly. “And you haven’t killed him. He’ll be all right in a week or two. Good work, Vicky.”
“I—didn’t know what I was doing,” she sobbed. “My fingers just pressed.”
Dutch groaned.
“Best thing could have happened,” Hugh said cheerfully. “He’ll not trouble us any more. Have to dress the wound, though. If it makes you sick to——”
“It won’t,” she cried eagerly. “Let me help. What can I do?” Her reaction was toward activity. If she could help to look after the man she might forget the awful thing she had by chance escaped doing.
“Rummage through that drawer. Find clean shirts or rags. Tear one into strips,” Hugh told her.
She flew to the drawer and began tossing out socks, woollen shirts, old gloves, a pipe, some “dog leg” tobacco, a pack of cards, a few ore samples, and a vest or two of fancy patterns. Near the bottom she found a cotton shirt. This she ripped up for bandages.
McClintock brought water and washed the wound. His enemy permitted it, sulky as a sore bear. The wounded man winced when Hugh tried, as gently as possible, to locate the bullet.
“Lay off o’ that,” he growled. “Doc Rogers’ll find the pill.”
“Expect you’re right about that,” Hugh agreed. “He can follow the drift better than I can. Never worked on that level before myself. Doc will sure strike the ore when he digs for it.”
Vicky passed the bandages to him as he needed them. He noticed once that the blood had washed from her face and left it colourless.
“You’d better sit down,” he said gently. “I can manage alone.”
“No,” she told him firmly. In spite of the soft pallor of the neck and throat there was a look of strength about her. He knew she would not faint. The spirit of the girl shone in her eyes.
But afterwards, when Dutch had been ordered to lie down on the cot by the window, Hugh took charge of Vicky without consulting her. He arranged three chairs in such a way that they might serve for a bed, padded them with sacks, and doubled a blanket so that the girl could lie between its folds. An old coat belonging to Ralph Dodson did well enough for a pillow. In five minutes she was breathing softly and regularly, though she had told Hugh it would be impossible for her to sleep. The firelight playing on her cheek reflected a faint and delicate colour.
When Vicky woke it was morning. A pale and wintry sunbeam stole through the window. The storm had passed. Hugh was cooking at the fireplace, his back to her. The desperado was sleeping noisily and restlessly.
She rose, flushed with embarrassment, and arranged her wrinkled and disordered skirts.
“Good mo’ning,” the young man called cheerfully without turning.
“Good morning,” she answered shyly. For the first time since she had come into the house a queer surge of timidity swept her blood. The modesty of the girl was in arms.
“Your shoes are on the hearth warming.”
“Yes,” she murmured.
He carried hot water in a basin to a summer kitchen adjoining the main cabin.
“Towel hangin’ on the nail,” he told her when he returned a moment later.
Vicky gave him a grateful look and passed into the back room. Ten minutes later she emerged flushed and radiant. The dark rebellious hair had been smoothed down. To Hugh the blue dress looked miraculously fresh and clean.
“Come an’ get it,” he called, just as he would have done to another man.
His matter-of-fact acceptance of the situation dissipated measurably her sense of alarm at the shocked proprieties. If he were not disconcerted at the intimacy into which the blizzard had plunged them, why should she be? With the good healthy appetite of youth she ate eggs, bacon, corn pone, and two flapjacks.
“When can we go?” she asked as he poured coffee into the tin cup before her.
“Soon as we’ve eaten. Some job to buck the drifts to town but we’ll make it.”
“And him?” A little lift of her head showed that Vicky’s elliptical question referred to Dutch.
“I’ll notify his friends to come and look after him.”
Hugh broke trail and Vicky followed in his steps. They travelled slowly, for in places the drifts were high. Usually the girl’s clear complexion showed little colour, but now she glowed from exercise. Once when he turned to lend her a hand through a bank of snow she shook her head gaily.
“No, I’m doing fine. Isn’t it a splendiferous day?”
It was. The sun had come out in all its glory and was driving the clouds in ragged billows toward the horizon. The snow sparkled. It was crisp and sharp beneath their feet. The air, washed clean by the tempest, filled the lungs as with wine. Not on creation’s dawn had the world looked purer or more unsullied.
Youth calls to youth. Vicky looked at Hugh with a new interest. She had always admired his clean strength, the wholesome directness of his character. To-day her eyes saw him differently. He belonged to her generation, not that of Mollie and Scot. For the first time his personality touched her own life. They could not be the same hereafter. They would have to know each other better—or not at all.
In her childhood days, when fairy tales were still possible, she had dreamed of a prince in shining silver armour, handsome as Apollo Belvedere, valiant as Lancelot, a pure and ardent young Galahad. Now, as she followed the trail breaker through the white banks, an involuntary smile touched her lips. She was wondering, in the shy daring fashion of a girl’s exploring mind, what Hugh McClintock was really like behind the mask of his physical clothing. Certainly nobody could be less like the shining knight of her dreams than he. For Hugh walked the straight plain road of life without any heroic gestures. Ralph Dodson made a far more romantic figure than Hugh. Even Scot, with his native touch of the grand manner, had more glamour for her than the younger brother.
Good old Hugh, faithful and true. She could not think of anybody she liked better.