ANNIE
Doc Crombie and his men had returned to Barnriff after a long and fruitless hunt. Two days and two nights they had spent on the trail. They had found the haunt of the rustlers; they had seen the men––at least, they had had an excellent view of their backs; they had pursued––and they had lost them all four. But this was not all. One of the boys had been shot down in his tracks by the man they believed to be the leader of the gang. So it was easy enough to guess their temper.
The doctor said little, because that was his way when things went wrong. But the iron possessed his soul to a degree that suggested all sorts of possibilities. And Barnriff was a raging cauldron of fury and disappointment. So was the entire district, for the news was abroad, travelling with that rapidity which is ever the case with the news of disaster. Every rancher was, to use a local phrase, “up in the air, and tearing his sky-piece” (his hair), which surely meant that before long there would be trouble for some one, the nature of which would be quite easy to guess.
The “hanging committee,” as the vigilantes were locally called, returned at sundown, and the evening was spent in spreading the news. Thus it was that Annie Gay learned the public feeling, and the general drift of Barnriff’s thought. Her husband dutifully gave her his own opinions first, that there might be no doubt in her 304 own mind; then he proceeded to show her how Barnriff saw these things.
“Of course,” he said. “What ken you expect wi’ folk like Smallbones an’ sech on a committee like this! Doc’s to blame, sure. Ef he’d sed to me, ‘Gay, you fix this yer racket. I leave it to you,’ I’d sure ’a’ got men in the gang, an’ we’d ’a’ cleared the country of all sech gophers as rustlers. But ther’, guess I don’t need to tell you ’bout Doc.”
Annie’s loyalty to him stood the test, and she waited for the rest. It came with his recounting of the details of their exploits. He told her of their journey, of the race. Then he passed on to the story of the Little Bluff River, as he had been told it by Smallbones. He assured her that now everybody, urged on by Smallbones, wanted to hang somebody, and, as far as he could make out, unless they quickly laid hands on the real culprit, Jim Thorpe was likely violently to terminate his checkered career over the one-way trail.
He was convinced that the venom of Smallbones, added to the tongues of the women, which were beginning to wag loudly at what they believed was Jim’s clandestine intimacy with Eve during her husband’s absence, would finally overcome the scruples of Doc Crombie and force him to yield to the popular cry.
He gave her much detail, all of which she added to her own knowledge. And, with her husband’s approval, decided to go to Eve, and, in her own phraseology, “do what she could.” Her husband really sent her, for he liked Jim Thorpe.
So, on the third morning, Annie set out on her errand of kindly warning. The position was difficult. But she 305 realized that this was no time to let her feelings hinder her. She loved Eve, and, like her husband, she had a great friendliness for Jim.
Then she was convinced that there was nothing between these two yet, other than had always existed, a liking on the woman’s part and a deep, wholesome, self-sacrificing love on the man’s. She saw the danger for Eve well enough, since her husband had turned out so badly; but her sympathetic heart went out to her, and she would never have opened her mouth to say one word to her detriment, even if she knew the women’s accusations to be true. In fact, in a wave of sentimental emotion, she rather hoped they were true. Eve deserved a little happiness, and, if it lay in her power to help her to any, she would certainly not hesitate to offer her services.