The clock showed half-past twelve, so, after letting him out, she extinguished the light and dragged herself wearily up to her room. She removed her outer garments and threw over her bare shoulders a negligée of many flounces and bewildering, clinging looseness. As she took down her heavy braids, the story of Cherry Malotte returned to her tormentingly. So Glenister had saved her life also at risk of his own. What a very gallant cavalier he was, to be sure! He should bear a coat of arms—a dragon, an armed knight, and a fainting maiden. “I succor ladies in distress—handsome ones,” should be the motto on his shield. “The handsomest woman in the North,” Struve had said. She raised her eyes to the glass and made a mouth at the petulant, tired reflection there. She pictured Glenister leaping from floe to floe with the hungry river surging and snapping at his feet, while the cheers of the crowd on shore gave heart to the girl crouching out there. She could see him snatch her up and fight his way back to safety over the plunging ice-cakes with death dragging at his heels. What a strong embrace he had! At this she blushed and realized with a shock that while she was mooning that very man might be fighting hand to hand in the darkness of a mountain-gorge with the man she was going to marry.
A moment later some one mounted the front steps below and knocked sharply. Truly this was a night of alarms. Would people never cease coming? She was worn out, but at the thought of the tragedy abroad and the sick old man sleeping near by, she lit a candle and slipped down-stairs to avoid disturbing him. Doubtless it was some message from McNamara, she thought, as she unchained the door.
As she opened it, she fell back amazed while it swung wide and the candle flame flickered and sputtered in the night air. Roy Glenister stood there, grim and determined, his soft, white Stetson pulled low, his trousers tucked into tan half-boots, in his hand a Winchester rifle. Beneath his corduroy coat she saw a loose cartridge-belt, yellow with shells, and the nickelled flash of a revolver. Without invitation he strode across the threshold, closing the door behind him.
“Miss Chester, you and the Judge must dress quickly and come with me.”
“The Vigilantes are on their way here to hang him. Come with me to my house where I can protect you.”
She laid a trembling hand on her bosom and the color died out of her face, then at a slight noise above they both looked up to see Judge Stillman leaning far over the banister. He had wrapped himself in a dressing-gown and now gripped the rail convulsively, while his features were blanched to the color of putty and his eyes were wide with terror, though puffed and swollen from sleep. His lips moved in a vain endeavor to speak.
CHAPTER XV
VIGILANTES
ON the morning after the episode in the Northern, Glenister awoke under a weight of discouragement and desolation. The past twenty-four hours with their manifold experiences seemed distant and unreal. At breakfast he was ashamed to tell Dextry of the gambling debauch, for he had dealt treacherously with the old man in risking half of the mine, even though they had agreed that either might do as he chose with his interest, regardless of the other. It all seemed like a nightmare, those tense moments when he lay above the receiver’s office and felt his belief in the one woman slipping away, the frenzied thirst which Cherry Malotte had checked, the senseless, unreasoning lust for play that possessed him later. This lapse was the last stand of his old, untamed instincts. The embers of revolt in him were dead. He felt that he would never again lose mastery of himself, that his passions would never best him hereafter.
Dextry spoke. “We had a meeting of the ‘Strangles’ last night.” He always spoke of the Vigilantes in that way, because of his early Western training.