To the outlaw in the Rocky Mountain cabin in that stormy night it was in every respect the climax of his life. As he sat in the doorway, looking at the fire and over into the storm beyond, he realized that he was shaken by a wild, crude lyric of passion. Here was, to him, the pure emotion of love. All the beautiful things he had ever heard or read of girlhood, of women, of marriage, rose in his mind to make this night an almost intolerable blending of joy and sorrow, hope and despair.
To stay time in its flight, to make this hour his own, to cheat the law, to hold the future at bay—these were the avid desires, the vague resolutions, of his brain. So sure as the day came this happiness would end. To-morrow he must resume his flight, resigning his new-found jewel into the hands of another. To this thought he returned again and again, each time with new adoration for the girl and added fury and hate against his relentless pursuers and himself. He did not spare himself! “Gad! what a fool I’ve been—and yet, if I had been less a fool I would not be here and I would never have met her.” He ended with a glance toward Alice.
Then he arose, closed the door of the cabin, and stood without beside the fire, so that the women might prepare for bed. His first thought of suicide came to him. Why not wait with his love as long as possible—stay till the law’s hand was in the air above his head, uplifted to strike, and then, in this last moment, die with this latest, more glorious passion as climax to his career? To flee meant endless fear, torment. To be captured meant defeat, utter and final dismay.
A knock upon the door startled him, and Peggy’s voice cut short his meditation. “You can come in now, Mr. Smith,” she said.
The broad crystals were still falling thickly and the fire was hissing and spluttering around a huge root which he had rolled upon it. In its light the cabin stood hardly higher than a kennel, and yet it housed the woman whose glance had transformed his world into something mystical. A man of commonplace ancestry would have felt only an animal delight in shelter and warmth, but this youth was stirred to a spiritual exaltation. The girl’s bosom, the rounded beauty of her neck, appealed to him, but so also did the steady candor of her gaze and the sweet courage of her lips. Her helplessness roused his protective instinct, and her words, the sound of her voice, so precise, so alien-sweet, filled him with bitter sadness, and he re-entered the house in such spirit of self-abasement as he had never known before.
He lay down upon the hard floor in silence, his audacity gone, his reckless courage deep-sunk in gloomy foreboding.
Alice, on her part, could not free her mind from the burden of his crime. He was so young, and so handsome, to be hunted like a noxious beast! She had at the moment more concern of him than of Ward, and in this lay a certain disloyalty. She sighed deeply as she thought of the outlaw resuming his flight next day. Would it not be better for him to sacrifice himself to the vengeance of the state at once and so end it? What right had she to shield him from the law’s demand? “He is a criminal, after all. He must pay for his rash act.”
She could not sleep, and when he rose to feed the fire she softly asked, “Does it still storm?”
“No,” he answered in a tone that voiced disappointment; “the sky is clear.”
“Isn’t that cheering!” she exclaimed, still in the same hushed voice.