Irene, attracted by her mother's cry, appeared on the stairway. For a moment her eyes refused to grasp the scene before them; Conward cowering, terror-stricken; Dave fierce, steely, implacable, with his revolver lined on Conward's brain. Through some strange whim of her mind her thought in that instant flew back to the bottles on the posts of the Elden ranch, and Dave breaking five out of six on the gallop. Then, suddenly, she became aware of one thing only. A tragedy was being enacted before her eyes, and Dave would be held responsible. In a moment every impulse within her beat forth in a wild frenzy to save him from such a consequence.
"Oh, don't, Dave, don't, don't shoot him," she cried, flying down the remaining steps. Before Dave could grasp her purpose she was upon him; had clutched his revolver; had wrapped her arms about his. "Don't, don't, Dave," she pleaded. "For my sake, don't do—that."
Her words were tragically unfortunate. For a moment Dave stood as one paralyzed; then his heart dried up within him.
"So that's the way of it," he said, as he broke her grip, and the horror in his own eyes would not let him read the sudden horror in hers. "All right; take it," and he placed the revolver in her hand. "You should know what to do with it." And before she could stop him he had walked out of the house.
She rushed to the gate, but already the roar of his motor was lost in the hum of the city's traffic.
CHAPTER TWENTY
When Dave sprang into his car he gave the motor a full head and drove through the city streets in a fury of recklessness. His mind was numbed; it was incapable of assorting thoughts and placing them in proper relationship to each other. His muscles guided the machine apparently without any mental impulse. He rode it as he had ridden unbroken bronchos in his far-away boyhood. Only this difference; then he had no sense of danger; now he knew the danger, and defied it. If he killed himself, so much the better; if he killed others, so much the better still. The world was a place without purpose; a chaos of blind, impotent, struggling creatures, who struggled only because they did not know they were blind and impotent. Life was a farce and death a big bluff set up that men might take the farce seriously.
He was soon out of the city, roaring through the still Autumn night with undiminished speed. Over tortuous country roads, across sudden bridges, along slippery hillsides, through black bluffs of scrub-land—in some strange way he tried to drown the uproar in his soul in the frenzy of the steel that quivered beneath him. On and on, into the night. Bright stars gleamed overhead; a soft breeze pressed against his face; it was such a night as he had driven, a year ago, with Bert Morrison. Was that only a year ago? And what had happened? Where had he been? Oh, to bring the boy—Charlie, the boy. When was that? Under the calm heaven his mind was already attempting to establish a sequence; to set its outraged home again in order.
Suddenly the car skidded on a slippery hillside, turned from the road, plowed through a clump of scrub, ricochetted against a dark obstruction, poised a moment on two wheels, turned around and stopped. The shock brought Dave to his senses; he got out and walked about the car, feeling the tires with his hands in the darkness. He could appraise no serious damage. Then he sat on the running board and stared for a long while into the darkness. "No use being a damned fool, anyway, Dave," he said to himself, at length. "I got it—where I didn't expect it—but I guess that's the way with every one. The troubles we expect, don't happen, and then the trouble that we didn't expect gets us when we're not watching." He tried to philosophize; to get a fresh grip on himself. "Where are we, anyway?" he continued. "This country looks familiar." He got up again and walked about, finding his way back to the road. He went along it a little way. Vague impressions suggested that he should know the spot, and yet he could not identify it. Listen! There was a sound of water. There was a sighing of the wind in trees; a very low sighing, rather a whispering, of a gentle wind in trees. The place seemed alive with spirits; spirits tapping on the door of some long sealed chamber of his memory.