CHAPTER XXXII
STRONGER THAN DEATH
From the time of her aunt’s going to Leeson Butte to the morning of her return to the farm Joan passed through a nightmare of uncertainty and hopelessness. Every moment of her time seemed unreal. Her very life seemed unreal. It was as though her mind were detached from her body, and she was gazing upon the scenes of a drama in which she had no part, while yet she was weighted down with an oppressive fear of the tragedy which she knew was yet to come.
Every moment she felt that the threat of disaster was growing. That it was coming nearer and nearer, and that now no power on earth could avert it.
Twice only during that dreary interval of waiting she saw Buck. But even his presence did little more than ease her dread and despair, leaving it crushing her down the more terribly with the moment of his going. He came to her with his usual confidence, but it was only with information of his own preparations for his defense of his friend. She could listen to them, told in his strong, reliant manner, with hope stirring her heart and a great, deep love for the man thrilling her every nerve. But with his going came the full realization of the significance of the necessity of such preparations. The very recklessness of them warned her beyond doubt how small was the chance of the Padre’s escape. Buck had declared his certainty of outwitting the law, even if it necessitated using force against the man whom he intended to save.
Left to her own resources Joan found them weak enough. So weak indeed that at last she admitted to herself that the evidences of the curse that had dogged her through life were no matters of distorted imagination. They were real enough. Terribly real. And the admission found her dreading and helpless. She knew she had gone back to the fatal obsession, which, aided by the Padre and her lover, she had so loyally contended. She knew in those dark moments she was weakly yielding. These men had come into her life, had sown fresh seeds of promise, but they had been sown in soil choked with weeds of superstition, and so had remained wholly unfruitful.
How could it be otherwise? Hard upon the heels of Buck’s love had come this deadly attack of fate upon him and his. The miracle of it was stupendous. It had come in a way that was utterly staggering. It had come, not as with those others who had gone before, but out of her life. It had come direct from her and hers. And the disaster threatened was not merely death but disgrace, disgrace upon a good man, even upon her lover, which would last as long as they two had life.
The sense of tragedy merged into the maddening thought of the injustice of it. It was monstrous. It was a tyranny for which there was no justification, and it goaded her to the verge of hysteria. Whatever she did now the hand of fate would move on irrevocably fulfilling its purpose to the bitter end. She knew it. In spite of all Buck’s confidence, all his efforts to save his friend, the disaster would be accomplished, and her lover would be lost to her in the vortex of her evil destiny.
Fool—fool that she had been. Wicked even, yes, wicked, that she had not foreseen whither her new life was drifting. It was for her to have anticipated the shoals of trouble in the tide of Buck’s strong young life. It was for her to have prevented the mingling of their lives. It was for her to have shut him out of her thoughts and denied him access to the heart that beat so warmly for him. She had been weak, so weak. On every count she had failed to prove the strength she had believed herself to possess. It was a heart-breaking thought.