"I never thought of what I was giving up, of the clean name I was soiling, of the mine back there that meant a fortune anytime I cared to take it, for things like that don't count when a man's blood is hot, so I rode away in the yellow moonlight with a sleeping baby on my breast, where no child or woman had ever lain except for that minute before I left. She stood out from beneath the porch shadow and smiled her good-bye—the last I ever saw of her....
"I travelled hard that night and swapped horses at daylight; then, leaving the wild country behind, I came into a region I didn't know, and found a Mexican woman who tended the child for me, for I was close by the place where Merridy was to come. Every night I went into the village in hopes that some word had arrived, and I waited patiently for a week. Then I got the blow. I heard it from the loafers around the little post-office first, but it dazed me so I wouldn't believe it till I borrowed the paper and read the whole story, with the type dancing and leaping before me. It took some hours for it to seep in, even after that, and for years I recalled every word of the damned lie as if it had been branded on me with hot irons. They called it a shocking crime, the most brutal murder California had ever known, and in the head-lines was my name in letters that struck me between the eyes like a hammer. Mrs. Dan Bennett had been foully murdered by me, in a fit of sudden jealousy, and I had disappeared with the baby! The husband had returned unexpectedly to find her dying, so he said, but too far gone to call for help, and with barely sufficient strength to tell him who did it and how! Then the paper went on with the tale of my courting her, and her turning me down for Bennett. It told how I had gone off alone up into the hills, turning into a bear that nobody, man or child, could approach. It said I had brooded there all this time till the mania got uppermost, and so came down to wreak my vengeance. They never even did me the credit of calling me crazy; I was a fiend incarnate, a beast without soul, and a lot of things like that; and, remember, I had never harmed a living thing in all my life. However, that wasn't what hurt. What turned me into a dull, dead, suffering thing was the knowledge that she was gone. For hours I couldn't get beyond that fact. Then came the realization that Bennett had done it, for I reasoned that he had dragged a hint of the truth from her by very force of the fear he held her in—and slain her. God!—the awful rage that came over me! But there was nothing to do; I had sworn to guard the little one, so I couldn't take vengeance on him. I couldn't go back and prove my innocence, for that would give the child to him. What a night I spent! The next day I saw I had been indicted by the grand jury and was a wanted man. From a distance I watched myself become an outlaw; watched the county put a price upon my head, which Bennett doubled; watched public opinion rise to such a heat that posses began to scour the mountains. What I noted in particular was a statement in the paper that 'The sorrowing husband takes his bereavement with the quiet courage which marks a brave man'! That roused me more than the knowledge that he had made me a wolf and set my friends on my track, which I hadn't covered very well, having ridden boldly. It happened that the Mexican woman couldn't read and talked little; still, I knew they'd find me soon—it couldn't be otherwise—so I made another run for it, swearing an oath, however, before I left that I'd come back and have that gambler's heart.
"It was lucky I went, for they uncovered my sign the next day, and the country where I'd hidden blazed like a field of dry grass. They were close on my heels, and they closed in from every quarter, but, pshaw! I knew the woods like an Indian, and the wild things were my friends again, which would have made it play if I'd been alone, but a girl child of three was harder to manage. So I cowered and skulked day after day like a thief or the murderer they thought me, working always farther into the hidden places, travelling by night with the little one asleep on my bosom, by day playing with her in some leafy glen, with my pursuers so close behind that for weeks I never slept; and my love for the child increased daily till it became almost an insanity.
"She was the only woman thing I had ever possessed, and it seemed like my love for the mother came back and settled on her. And she loved me, too, and trusted me. Every little smile, every clasp of her tiny, dimpled fingers showed it, and tied her to me with another knot till the fear of losing her became greater than I could bear, till it kept the chill of death in my bones and filled my veins with glacier water. I became an animal, a cowardly, quailing coyote, all through the love of a child.
"We had close squeezes many times, but I finally won, in spite of the fact that they tracked us clear to the edge of the desert, for I had hit for the state line, knowing that Nevada was a wilderness, and feeling that I'd surely lose them there. And I did. But in doing it I nearly lost Merridy. You see, the constant travel and hardship was too much for a prattling baby, and she fell sick from the heat and the dust and the thirst. I'd been going and going till I was a riding skeleton, till my arms were crooked and dead from holding her, but this new thing frightened me like those men and dogs had never done. Here was a thing I couldn't hide from nor outride, so I doubled back and came boldly into the watered country again, expecting they would take me, of course, for a runaway man with a babe in his arms isn't hard to identify, but I didn't care. I was bound for the nearest ranch or mining-camp where a woman could be found; but, as luck would have it, I went through without trying. I had gone farther from men and things, however, than I thought, and this return pursuit was a million times worse than the other, for I couldn't go fast enough to shake Death, who ran with his hand on my cantle or rode on my horse's rump. It was then I found Alluna. She was with a hunting-party of Pah-Utes, who knew nothing of me nor of the white man's affairs, and cared less; and when I saw the little squaw I rode my horse up beside her, laid the sick child in her arms, then tumbled out of the saddle. They had a harder job to pull me through than they did to save Merridy, for I'd given the baby all the water and hadn't slept or rested for many years, so it seemed.
"The little one was playing around several days before I got back my reason. Meanwhile the party had moved North, taking us with them, and, as it happened, just missing a posse who were returning from the desert.
"When I was able to get about I told Alluna that I must be going, but as I told her I watched her face, and saw the sign I wanted—the white girl had clutched at her like she had at me, and she couldn't give her up, so I made a dicker with her old man. It took all the money I had to buy that squaw, but I knew the kiddie must have a woman's care; and the three of us started out soon after, alone, and broke, and aimless—and we've been going ever since.
"That's the heart of the story, Lieutenant, and that's how I started to drift. Since then we three have never rested. I left them once in Idaho and went back to Mesa, riding all the way, mostly by night, but Bennett was gone. He'd run down mighty fast after Merridy died, so I heard, growing sullen and uglier day by day—and I reckon I was the only one who knew why—till he had a killing in his place. It was unprovoked, and instead of stopping to face it out the yellow in him rose to the surface and he left before sunup, as I had left, making a clean getaway, too, for there was no such hullabaloo raised about killing a man as there was about—the other. So my trip was all for nothing.
"I was used to disappointment by now, so I took it quiet and went back to Alluna and the little one, knowing that some day we two men would meet. You see, I figured that God had framed a cold hand for me, but He would surely give me a pair before the game closed. Of course, never having seen Bennett, I was handicapped, and, added to that, he changed his name, so the search was mighty slow and blind, but I knew the day would come. And it would have come only for—this.
"There isn't much more to tell. I did what most men would have done, I reckon, because I was just average in every way. I took Alluna, and together we drifted North, along the frontier, until we landed here. Every year the little girl got more beautiful and more like her mother, and every year we two loved her more. We changed her name, of course, for I've always had the dread of the law back of me, and then the other two kiddies came along; but we were living pretty easy, the woman contented and me waiting for Bennett, till you stepped in and Necia fell in love. That's another thing I never counted on. It seems like I've always overlooked the plainest kind of facts. I've held off telling you the last few weeks, hoping you two wouldn't make it necessary, for I reckon I'm sort of a coward; but she informed me to-night that she couldn't marry you, being what she thinks she is, and knowing the blood she has in her I knew she wouldn't. I figured it wouldn't be right to either of you to let you go it blind, and so I came in to tell you this whole thing and to give myself up."