"Don't do that," said the man with the rifle. "I can't murder you in cold blood; but if you attempt to draw your gun, I'll fire."
The other stood still.
James Rutlidge spoke again, his voice hoarse with emotion; "Listen to me, King. It's useless for me to deny what brought me here. The trail you are following leads to Sibyl Andres. You had her all summer. I've got her now.
If you hadn't stumbled onto the trail up there, I would have taken her out of the country, and you would never have seen her again. I might have killed you before you saw me, but I couldn't. I'm not that kind. Under the circumstances there is no possible compromise. I'll give you a fighting chance for your life and the girl. I'll take a fighting chance for my life and the girl. Throw your gun out of reach and I'll leave mine here. We'll meet on the ledge there."
James Rutlidge was no coward. Mr. Taine, also,--it will be remembered,--on the night of his death, boasted that he was game.
Without an instant's hesitation, Aaron King unbuckled the belt that held his weapon and, turning, tossed it behind him, with the gun still in its holster. At the other end of the ledge, James Rutlidge set his rifle behind the rock.
Deliberately, the two men removed their coats and threw aside their hats.
For a moment they stood eyeing each other. Into Aaron King's mind flashed the memory of that scene at the Fairlands depot, when, moved by the distress of the woman with the disfigured face, he had first spoken to the man who faced him now. With startling vividness, the incidents of their acquaintance came to him in flash-like succession--the day that Rutlidge had met Sibyl in the studio; the time of his visit to the camp in the sycamore grove; the night of the Taine banquet--a hundred things that had strengthened the feeling of antagonism which had marked their first meeting. And, through it all, he seemed to hear Conrad Lagrange saying that in his story of life this character's name was "Sensual." The artist, in that instant, knew that this meeting was inevitable.
It was only for a moment that the two men--who in their lives and characters represented forces so antagonistic--stood regarding each other, each knowing that the duel would be--must be--to the death. Deliberately, they started toward the center of the ledge. Over their heads towered the great cliff. A thousand feet below were the tops of the trees in the bottom of the gorge. About them, on every hand, the silent, mighty hills watched--the wild and lonely wilderness waited.
As they drew closer together, they moved, as wrestlers, warily--crouching, silent, alert. Stripped to their shirts and trousers, they were both splendid physical types. James Rutlidge was the heavier, but Aaron King made up for his lack in weight by a more clean-cut, muscular firmness.
They grappled. As two primitive men in a savage age might have met, bare handed, they came together. Locked in each other's arms, their limbs entwined, with set faces, tugging muscles, straining sinews, and taut nerves they struggled. One moment they crushed against the rocky wall of the cliff--the next, and they swayed toward the edge of the ledge and hung over the dizzy precipice. With pounding hearts, laboring breath, and clenched teeth they wrestled.
James Rutlidge's foot slipped on the rocky floor; but, with a desperate effort, he regained his momentary loss. Aaron King--worn by his days of anxiety, by his sleepless nights and by the long hours of toil over the mountains, without sufficient food or rest--felt his strength going.
Slowly, the weight and endurance of the heavier man told against him.
James Rutlidge felt it, and his eyes were beginning to blaze with savage triumph.
They were breathing, now, with hoarse, sobbing gasps, that told of the nearness of the finish. Slowly, Aaron King weakened. Rutlidge, spurred to increase his effort, and exerting every ounce of his strength, was bearing the other downward and back.
At that instant, the convict and Sibyl Andres reached the cliff. With a cry of horror, the girl stood as though turned to stone.
Motionless, without a word, the convict watched the struggling men.
With a sob, the girl stretched forth her hands. In a low voice she called, "Aaron! Aaron! Aaron!"
The two men on the ledge heard nothing--saw nothing.
Sibyl spoke again, almost in a whisper, but her companion heard. "Mr.
Marston, Mr. Marston, it is Aaron King. I--I love him--I--love him."
Without taking his eyes from the struggling men, the convict answered, "Pray, girl; pray, pray for me." As he spoke, he steadily raised his rifle to his shoulder.
Aaron King went down upon one knee. Rutlidge his legs braced, his body inclined toward the edge of the precipice, was gathering his strength for the last triumphant effort.
The convict, looking along his steady rifle barrel, was saying again, "Pray, pray for me, girl." As the words left his lips, his finger pressed the trigger, and the quiet of the hills was broken by the sharp crack of the rifle.
James Rutlidge's hold upon the artist slipped. For a fraction of a second, his form half straightened and he stood nearly erect; then, as a weed cut by the sharp scythe of a mower falls, he fell; his body whirling downward toward the trees and rocks below. The sound of the crashing branches mingled with the reverberating report of the shot. On the ledge, Aaron King lay still.
The convict dropped his rifle and ran forward. Lifting the unconscious man in his arms, he carried him a little way down the mountain, toward the cabin; where he laid him gently on the ground. To Sibyl, who hung over the artist in an agony of loving fear, he said hurriedly, "He'll be all right, presently, Miss Andres. I'll fetch his coat and hat."
Running back to the ledge, he caught up the dead man's rifle, coat, and hat, and threw them over the precipice, as he swiftly crossed for the artist's things. Recovering his own rifle, he ran back to the girl.
"Listen, Miss Andres," said the convict, speaking quickly. "Mr. King will be all right in a few minutes. That rifle-shot will likely bring his friends; if not, you are safe, now, anyway. I dare not take chances.
Good-by."
From where she sat with the unconscious man's head in her lap, she looked at him, wonderingly. "Good-by?" she repeated questioningly.
Henry Marston smiled grimly. "Certainly, good-by What else is there for me?"
A moment later, she saw him running swiftly down the mountainside, like some hunted creature of the wilderness.
Chapter XXXIX
The Better Way
Alone on the mountainside with the man who had awakened the pure passion of her woman heart, Sibyl Andres bent over the unconscious object of her love. She saw his face, unshaven, grimy with the dirt of the trail and the sweat of the fight, drawn and thin with the mental torture that had driven him beyond the limit of his physical strength; she saw how his clothing was stained and torn by contact with sharp rocks and thorns and bushes; she saw his hands--the hands that she had watched at their work upon her portrait as she stood among the roses--cut and bruised, caked with blood and dirt--and, seeing these things, she understood.
In that brief moment when she had watched Aaron King in the struggle upon the ledge,--and, knowing that he was fighting for her, had realized her love for him,--all that Mrs. Taine had said to her in the studio was swept away. The cruel falsehoods, the heartless misrepresentations, the vile accusations that had caused her to seek the refuge of the mountains and the protection of her childhood friends were, in the blaze of her awakened passion, burned to ashes; her cry to the convict--"I love him, I love him"--was more than an expression of her love; it was a triumphant assertion of her belief in his love for her--it was her answer to the evil seeing world that could not comprehend their fellowship.
As the life within the man forced him slowly toward consciousness, the girl, natural as always in the full expression of herself, bent over him with tender solicitude. With endearing words, she kissed his brow, his hair, his hands. She called his name in tones of affection. "Aaron, Aaron, Aaron." But when she saw that he was about to awake, she deftly slipped off her jacket and, placing it under his head, drew a little back.
He opened his eyes and looked wonderingly up at the dark pines that clothed the mountainsides. His lips moved and she heard her name; "Sibyl, Sibyl."
She leaned forward, eagerly, her cheeks glowing with color. "Yes, Mr.
King."
"Am I dreaming, again?" he said slowly, gazing at her as though struggling to command his senses.
"No, Mr. King," she answered cheerily, "you are not dreaming."
Carefully, as one striving to follow a thread of thought in a bewildering tangle of events, he went over the hours just past. "I was up on that peak where you and I ate lunch the day you tried to make me see the Golden State Limited coming down from the pass. Brian Oakley sent me there to watch for buzzards." For a moment he turned away his face, then continued, "I saw flashes of light in Fairlands and on Granite Peak. I left a note for Brian and came over the range. I spent one night on the way. I found tracks on the peak. There were two, a man and a woman. I followed them to a ledge of rock at the head of a canyon," he paused. Thus far the thread of his thought was clear. "Did some one stop me? Was there--was there a fight? Or is that part of my dream?"
"No," she said softly, "that is not part of your dream."
"And it was James Rutlidge who stopped me, as I was going to you?"
"Yes."
"Then where--" with quick energy he sat up and grasped her arm--"My God!
Sibyl--Miss Andres, did I, did I--" He could not finish the sentence, but sank back, overcome with emotion.
The girl spoke quickly, with a clear, insistent voice that rallied his mind and forced him to command himself.
"Think, Mr. King, think! Do you remember nothing more? You were struggling--your strength was going--can't you remember? You must, you must!"
Lifting his face he looked at her. "Was there a rifle-shot?" he asked slowly. "It seems to me that something in my brain snapped, and everything went black. Was there a rifle-shot?"