Starr, of the Desert

by B. M. Bower

"Well, there goes the revolution," he said somberly to himself. "And here I go to do the rest of the job; and alongside what I've got to do, hell would be a picnic!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

STARR TAKES ANOTHER PRISONER

With a slip of paper in his pocket that would have gone a long way toward clearing Helen May, had he only taken the trouble to look at it, Starr rode out in the cool early morning to Sunlight Basin. He looked white and worn, and his eyes were sunken and circled with the purple of too little sleep and too much worry, for in the three days since he had seen her, Starr had not been able to forget his misery once in merciful sleep. Only when he was busy with capturing the Junta had he lost for a time the keen pain of his hurt.

Now it was back like an aching tooth set going again with cold water or sweets. He tried to make himself think that he hated Helen May, and that a girl of that type—a girl who could lend herself to such treachery—could not possibly win from him anything but a pitying contempt. He told himself over and over again that he was merely sore because a girl had "put something over on him"; that a man hated to have a woman make a fool of him.

He tried to gloat over the fact that he had found her out before she had any inkling of how he felt toward her; he actually believed that! He tried not to wince at the thought of her at Fort Bliss, a Federal prisoner, charged with conspiring against the government. She must have known the risk she took, he kept telling himself. The girl was no fool, was way above the average in intelligence. That was why she had appealed to him; he had felt the force of her personality, the underlying strength of her character that had not harshened her outward charm, as strength so often does for a woman.

That was the worst of it. Had she been weak she would never have mixed with any political conspiracy; they would not have wanted her, for intrigue has no place for weaklings. But had she been weak she would never have attracted Starr so deeply, however innocent she might have been. So his reasoning went round and round in a circle, until he was utterly heartsick with no hope of finding peace.

There was one thing he could do: it would be tightening the screws of his torture, but he meant to do it for her sake. He would take her to Fort Bliss himself, shielding her from publicity and humiliation; and he would take charge of Vic, and see that the kid did not suffer too much on account of his sister.

He would make a man of Vic; he never guessed that he was taking up mentally the burden which Peter had laid upon Helen May. He believed there was good stuff in that kid, and with the right handling he would come out all right. He would put in a plea to his chief for leniency toward the girl too. He would say that she was young and inexperienced and that Holman Sommers had probably drawn her into his scheme—Starr could see how that might easily be—and that her health was absolutely dependent upon open air. They couldn't keep her shut up long; a girl could not do much harm, if the rest of the bunch was convicted. Maybe the lesson and the scare would be all she needed to pull her back into lawful living. She was not a hardened adventuress; why, she couldn't be much over twenty-one or two! After a while, when she had straightened up, maybe …

So Starr thought and thought, fighting to keep a little hope alive, to see a little gleam of light in the blackness of his soul. His head bent, his eyes staring unseeingly at the yellow-brown dust of the trail, he rode along unconscious of everything save the battle raging fiercely within. He did not know what pace Rabbit was taking; he even forgot that he was on Rabbit's back. He did not know that his duty as a man and his man's love were fighting the fiercest battle of his life, or if he did, he never thought to call it a battle.