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Trail's End

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241 <h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2><h3>AS ONE THAT IS DEAD</h3> "I feel like I share his guilt," said Rhetta, voice sad as if she had suffered an irreparable loss. "He's not guilty," said Violet, stoutly, standing in his defense. Rhetta had fled from Ascalon that morning, following the terrible night of Morgan's sanguinary baptism. Racked by an agony of mingled remorse for her part in this tragedy and the loss of some valued thing which she would not bring her heart to acknowledge, only moan over and weep, and bend her head to her pillow through that fevered night, she had taken horse at sunrise and ridden to Stilwell's ranch, for the comfort of Violet, whose sympathy was like balm to a bruise. Rhetta had come through the night strained almost to breaking. All day she had hidden like one crushed and shamed, in Stilwell's house, pouring out to Violet the misery of her soul. Now, at night, she was calmer, the haunting terror of the scene which rose up before her eyes was drawing off, like some frightful thing that had stood a menace to her life. But she felt that it never would dim entirely from her recollection, that it must endure, a hideous picture, to sadden her days until the end. The two girls had gone to the river, where the moonlight softened the desert-like scene of barren bars, and twinkled in the ripples of shallow water which still ran over against the farther shore. They were sitting near the spot where Morgan had laved his bruised feet in the river not many nights past. A w242hippoorwill was calling in the tangle of cottonwoods and grapevines that grew cool and dark on a little island below them, its plaint as sad as the mourner's own stricken heart. "I begged him to give up the office and let things go," said Rhetta, pleading to mitigate her own blame, against whom no blame was laid. "You'd have despised him for it if he had," said Violet. "But he wouldn't do it, and now this has happened, and he's a man-killer like the rest of them. Oh it's terrible to think about!" "Not like the rest of them," Violet corrected, in her firm, gentle way. "He had to stand up like a man for what he was sworn to do, or run like a dog. Mr. Morgan wouldn't run. Right or wrong, he wouldn't run from any man!" "No," said Rhetta, sadly, "he wouldn't run." "You talk like you wanted him to!" "I don't think I would," said Rhetta. "Then what do you expect of a man?" impatiently. "If he stands up and fights he's either got to kill or be killed." "Don't—don't, Violet! It seems like killing is all I hear—the sound of those guns—I hear them all the time, I can't get them out of my ears!" "Suppose," said Violet, looking off across the runlet sparkling, gurgling like an infant across the bar, "it was him you saw when you looked in there, instead of the others. You'd have been satisfied then, I suppose?" 243 "Violet! how can you say such awful things!" "Well, somebody had to be killed. Do you suppose Mr. Morgan killed them just for fun?" "They say, they were talking all over town that night—last night—and saying the same thing this morning, that he didn't give them a show, that he just turned his rifle on them and killed them before he knew whether they were going to shoot or not!" "Well, they lie," said Violet, with the calmness of conviction. "I suppose he had a right to do what he did, but he doesn't seem like the same man to me now. I feel like I'd lost something—some friendship that I valued, I mean, Violet—you know what I mean." "I know as well as anything," said Violet, smiling to herself, head turned away, the moonlight on her good, kind face. "I feel like somebody had died, and that he—they—that he——" "And you ought to be thankful it isn't so!" said Violet, sharply, "but I don't believe you are." "I never want to see him again, I'll always think of him standing there with that terrible gun in his hands, those dead men around him on the floor!" "You may have to go to him on your knees yet, and I hope to God you will Rhetta Thayer!" Violet said. "If you'd seen somebody—somebody that you—that was—if you'd seen him like I saw him, you wouldn't blame me so," Rhetta defended, beginning again to cry, and bend her head upon her hands and moan like a mother who had lost a child.244 Violet was moved out of her harshness at once. She put her arm around the weeping girl, whose sorrow was too genuine to admit a doubt of its great depth, and consoled her with soft words. "And he looked so big to me, and he was so clean, before that," Rhetta wailed. "He's bigger than ever, he's as blameless as a lamb," said Violet. "After a little while you'll see it different, he'll be the same to you." "I couldn't touch his hand!" said Rhetta, shuddering at the thought. "Never mind," said Violet, soothingly; "never mind." Violet said no more, but took Rhetta by the hand, and it was wet with tears from her streaming cheeks. There was peace in the night around them, for all the turmoil there might be in human hearts, for night had eased the throbbing, drouth-cursed earth of its burning, and called the trumpeters of the greenery out along the riverside. "I'm afraid he'll come," said Rhetta by and by. "Why should he come?" asked Violet, stroking back the other's hair. "He's got one of your horses—I'm afraid he'll come to bring it home." "You only hope he will," said Violet, in her assured, calm way. "Violet!" But there was not so much chiding in the word as a cry of pain, a confession of despair. He would not come; and she knew he would not come. <hr class="major" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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