Heart of the Sunset by Rex Beach (ebook reader screen .TXT) 📗

very much to the family's credit. They were a bad lot, I believe."

"Frank Law had two brothers and a sister, had he not?"

"Yes. One of my uncles was a tough hombre. I'm told he notched his gun pretty well."

"He was about the worst man of his day. He was shot in Dodge City on one of his rampages."

Dave raised shocked and curious eyes. "You think he was crazy?"

"Most of those old-time gunmen would be so considered nowadays. Some unbelievable stories are told about that uncle of yours. The other one disappeared mysteriously."

"I believe so. He just walked away from his wife and family and business one day and was never heard of again."

Ellsworth seemed to consider this admission significant. "Now the sister, your aunt?"

"I think she's somewhere in the East; I never saw her."

"She is; she's an inmate of an institution the name and address of which I have here." Ellsworth thrust his finger into the loose pile of documents before him. Avoiding his caller's eyes he continued: "You can't very well ignore such a family history, Dave. I've never traced it back beyond the last generation, but you probably could if you tried."

In a voice hardly his own, Dave articulated: "God! This is—hideous."

"It is. I'd like to believe that you don't belong to the Laws, but I can't put much faith in that childhood fancy of yours. Run it down; convince yourself. But first go to the girl, whoever she is, and tell her the facts. If she's the right sort—"

"No, no!" The words were wrung from Dave's lips. "She knows too well how heredity acts; she's had one experience."

"Eh? You say she knows—Who is she, Dave? Don't tell me you mean—Alaire?"

Dave nodded.

"Damnation!" Ellsworth leaped to his feet and, striding around the desk, seized his caller roughly by the shoulder. "What are you telling me? Good God, Alaire! A married woman! So you—cut under Ed Austin, eh?" Momentarily Ellsworth lost control of himself; his eyes blazed and his fingers tightened painfully. "What damnable trick have you played on that girl? Tell me before I choke you."

For once Dave Law's passion failed to ignite at the heat of another's anger; he only sat limp and helpless in the judge's grasp. Finally he muttered: "I played square enough. It's one of those things that just happen. We couldn't help ourselves. She'll come to you for her divorce."

The lawyer uttered a shocking oath. "Then it's no mere romantic infatuation on her part?"

"Oh no!"

Ellsworth loosed his grip. He turned away and began to pace the office floor, shaking his head. "This is—unfortunate. Alaire, of all people—as if she didn't have enough to bear." He turned fiercely upon the cowering figure in the chair, saying: "I'll tell her the whole truth myself, before she goes any further."

"No! Oh, please! Let me, in my own way." Dave writhed and sank his face in his hands once more. After a while he said, "I'm waiting for you to tell me it's all a nightmare."

"Humph!" The judge continued his restless pacing. "I was sorry for you when you came in here, and it took all my strength to tell you; but now you don't matter at all. I was prepared to have you go ahead against my advice, but—I'll see you damned first."

"You have damned me."

When Ellsworth saw the haggard face turned to his he ceased his walk abruptly. "I'm all broken up, Dave," he confessed in a gentler tone than he had used heretofore. "But you'll thank me some day."

Law was no longer the big, strong, confident fellow who had entered the office such a short time before. He had collapsed; he seemed to have shrunk; he was pitifully appealing. Although there were many things he would have said, many questions upon his tongue, he could not voice them now, and it was with extreme difficulty that he managed to follow the judge's words at all.

After a time he rose and shook Ellsworth's hand limply, mechanically; then he shambled out of the office. Like a sick man, he stumbled down the stairs and into the street. When he entered his hotel the clerk and some of the idlers in the lobby looked at him queerly, but he did not see them.

All that night Dave walked the floor of his room or sat hunched up on the edge of his bed, staring at the wall and fighting the fears that preyed upon him.

He had faith enough in Alaire to believe that she would marry him regardless of the facts; her kiss, that one delirious moment when he had held her to his breast, had taught him much, and it was, in fact, this very certainty which made his struggle so hard. After all, why not? he asked himself a thousand times. Ellsworth's fears were surely exaggerated. Who could say that Frank Law had passed on his heritage? There was at least a chance that he had not, and it would require more than a remote possibility, more evidence than Ellsworth could summon, to dismay Alaire. Suppose it should transpire that he was somehow defective? What then? The signs of his mental failing would give ample warning. He could watch himself carefully and study his symptoms. He could lead the life of a sentinel perpetually on guard. The thing might never come—or at the worst it probably would not manifest itself until he was further along in years. That, it seemed, was the family history, and in such a case Dave was assured of half a life at least. Ellsworth was altogether too fearful. Yes, and he was too officious by far. This was something that did not concern him.

But such reasoning naturally brought little comfort. Dave's fears would not be put down. In common with most men of splendid physique, he had a vague contempt for those less perfect; disease or deformity had never failed to awaken his pity, and he had often argued that defective human beings, like unhealthy stock, should not be allowed to mate and to perpetuate their weaknesses. This eugenic conviction had helped to ease his conscience somewhat during his acquaintance with Alaire, for he had told himself that Ed Austin, by reason of his inherited vices, had sacrificed all right to love and marriage. These thoughts came home now to roost. What was Ed's evil heritage compared to his own? It was as vinegar to vitriol.

And yet shining through all Dave's distress, like a faint, flickering beacon in a storm, was that old doubt of his parentage; and to this he finally began to pin his hopes. In the day or two that followed his interview with Ellsworth, it afforded him almost the only comfort he knew; for in the end he had to face the truth; he could not marry if he were really Frank Law's son.

Those were dark hours for Dave. He discharged his duties automatically, taking no interest whatever in his work; his nights he spent in morose meditation. Unable to sleep, he tramped the hot streets in an effort to fight off his growing nervousness. He became irritable, despondent; his eyes took on the look of an invalid's; his face aged and grayed. Physically, too, he grew very tired, for no burden is heavier to bear than that of doubt and indecision.

One afternoon Ellsworth entered his office to find Dave waiting for him. The young man began in a shaky, husky voice:

"I can't stand it, Judge. I'm going to pieces, fast."

"You do look bad."

"Yes. I don't sleep. I'm so irritable I can't get along up at the courthouse. I'm licked. The worst of it is, I don't know whether it's all imagination, or whether you really stirred up that devilish sleeping thing in me. Anyhow, something has got me. All I can do is study and analyze and watch and imagine—I sit all night thinking—thinking, until everything gets queer and distorted. If I were sane before, you've about unbalanced me with your damnable suggestions."

"A few nights of sleep will make you feel better," Ellsworth said, gravely.

"I tried drugs, but they made me worse. God! Then my fancies WERE sick.
No, I'm going to get out."

"Where? How?"

"I'm going north to look up the members of my family and learn who I really am. I resigned from the Ranger force to-day. That's no place for a fellow with a—homicidal mania."

"Dave! You're taking this thing too absolutely and too hard," Ellsworth declared.

But Dave went on, unheeding. "Another reason why I want to get away now is that Alaire will expect me to come to her when she sends for me and—I wouldn't dare trust myself."

"Have you told her—written her?"

"Not yet, and I sha'n't until I trace out the last doubt in my own mind."

In an effort to cheer, Ellsworth put his arm about the sufferer's shoulders. "I'm sure you'll do the right thing, Dave," he said. "Maybe, after all, your instinct is true and you're not Frank Law's boy. I hope so, for this thing weighs me down as it weighs you; but you mustn't let it whip you. Don't give in, and meanwhile, above all things, try to get some sleep."

Dave nodded and mumbled something; then he slouched out, leaving the lawyer overcome by a great pity. Ellsworth had seen men, stunned by a court sentence, turn away from the bar with that same dumb, fixed look of hopelessness in their eyes. Impulsively he cursed the sense of duty that had prompted him to interfere.

XXIII THE CRASH

The several days following Dave's unexpected call at Las Palmas Alaire spent in a delightful reverie. She had so often wrestled with the question of divorce that she had begun to weary of it; and now, when she tried to summon energy to consider it anew, she found herself, as usual, reasoning in a circle and arriving at no decision. She gave up trying, at length, and for the time being rested content in the knowledge that she loved and was loved. In her heart she knew well enough what her ultimate course would be: sooner or later events would force her action. Yielding to a natural cowardice, therefore, she resigned herself to dreamy meditations and left the future to take care of itself. A week passed while she hugged her thoughts to her breast, and then one evening she rode home to learn that Ed had returned from San Antonio.

But Ed was ill, and he did not appear at dinner. It had been years since either had dared invade the other's privacy, and now, inasmuch as her husband did not send for her, Alaire did not presume to offer her services as nurse. As a matter of fact, she considered this quite unnecessary, for she felt sure that he was either suffering the customary after-effects of a visit to the city or else that he lacked the moral courage to undertake an explanation of his hurried flight from the ranch. In either event she was glad he kept to his room.

Heretofore their formal relations had made life at least tolerable to Alaire, but now she experienced a feeling of guilt at finding herself under the same roof with him. Oddly enough, it seemed to her that in this she wronged Dave and not her husband; for she reasoned that, having given her love to one man, her presence in the same house with another outraged that love.

When Austin made his appearance, on the day following his return, his bleared eyes, his puffy, pasty cheeks, his shattered nerves, showed plainly enough how he had spent his time. Although he was jumpy and irritable, he seemed determined by an assumption of high spirits and exaggerated friendliness to avert criticism. Since Alaire spared him all reproaches, his efforts seemed to meet with admirable success. Now Ed's opinion of women was not high, for those with whom he habitually associated were of small intelligence; and, seeing that his wife continued to manifest a complete indifference to his past actions, he decided that his apprehensions had been groundless. If Alaire remembered the Guzman affair at all, or if she had suspected him of complicity in it, time had evidently dulled her suspicions, and he was a little sorry he had taken pains to stay away so long.

Before many days, however, he discovered that this indifference of hers was not assumed, and that in some way or other she had changed. Ed was accustomed, when he returned exhausted from a debauch, to seeing in his wife's eyes a strained misery; he had learned to expect in her bearing a sort of pitying, hopeless resignation. But