There was no sleep for Mary Valentine when she reached her room after Jess Dreer had escaped. She had drawn a picture by guesswork, and the picture had become a living thing.
She lighted the lamp to undress. At once the thought of going to bed became detestable, for she foresaw long hours of sleeplessness, twisting and turning from side to side. She tried to read, but the print tangled on the page, became a blur out of which grew a face and a form and a voice.
Throwing the magazine away, she tried to daydream, but the living reality cut into the midst of her dream. She blew out the lamp, but the moment it was extinguished, the pale moonlight cut into the room and brought back with breathtaking vividness the picture of Jess Dreer as he had got up from the chair and stretched himself before the window.
At length she slipped into a deep chair beside the bed and dropped her face in her hands. Time cannot be measured in some moods. She could not tell whether it was hours or moments before there was a faint scratching sound outside her window, but when she looked up, there sat the long body of Jess Dreer in the window, jet-black in the moonlight, in the very attitude he had been in when he dropped for the ground. She hardly dared to look again, and then she heard the ghost murmur: “Whist! Mary Valentine!”
At that, she started up, half fearful and tingling with a singularly happy excitement.
But when she ran to him, his greeting was characteristic.
“Well, well! Not in bed yet? Is that the way to treat yourself, Mary Valentine? I wouldn't treat my old hoss like that!”
“Do you know that the sheriffs are still in the house? That they haven't gone to bed? That their men are here? Do you know that, Jess Dreer?”
“I scouted around a bit first and seen their hosses saddled like they was hesitating about giving me another run.”
“Come inside. They'll see you sitting there!”
“But if it wasn't out of madness, what was it that brought you back?”
“Common sense. They'll hunt for me tomorrow over the hills. I'll be riding off the other way.”
“You're doubling on them. But Salt Springs lies the other way, and they're sure to comb the district around the town. They always do. The amateurs start by looking near home.”
“They're more generally right than the professionals, then. But Caswell is one of these crafty fellows. He starts right in to get inside my mind, find out what I'm thinking about, and then outguess me.” He laughed softly. “Caswell follers me as if he was a general; as if I was an army with a board of strategy—and here I am, plain Jess Dreer. All I do is to act simple, and that always fools him.”
“Jess Dreer, why have you come back?”
“Partly I've told you why. Partly because I left in such a terrible hurry that I forgot something. After all you done for me, I plumb forgot to thank you. So I come back to tell you now that you're the finest girl I've ever knowed, Mary Valentine.”
“Hush!” she whispered. And to cover her emotion and the tremor of her voice, she added: “Isn't that someone listening at the door?”
“Not a soul. They ain't anybody near. And they's another reason why I had to come back. Like as not you'll be hearing considerable talk about me the next few days. You'll be hearing about Jess Dreer the murderer, Jess Dreer the gambler, Jess Dreer the robber, Jess Dreer the no-good hound. Well, mostly I don't care what people think about me after I've gone by. My trail fades out, and what they think about me don't reach my ears, so why should I care? But this is different.”
He turned more fully toward her and looked up. She could see him frown with the effort of hard thought.
“I ain't much good with words. I'm out of practice, too. But this is the way I feel. When I come to this house I struck soft dirt, and I've left a trail that's going to last. I mean—I mean—I got an idea that maybe you won't forget me for quite a while, you see?”
“I shall never forget you,” said the girl.
“No,” he said carefully, “I don't think you ever will.”
It would have been disgusting assurance on the part of another man; but it seemed perfectly natural coming from Jess Dreer.
“And here's the way I feel,” he went on, “that if ever you should get your head filled full of wrong ideas about me, I'd know it if I was a thousand miles away. I'd know it, and I'd feel like someone had stuck a knife in me—and then—turned the knife. It would hurt, you see?”
“Maybe this'll sound all foolish to you,” said Jess Dreer, “but what I say now I say because you're the first human being that's ever gone a step out of his way to help me since the law turned me out. You took a chance. You risked something. You got me a chance to get clear. And so what I say now I say for you and God and me to hear. That's a fact!
“I ain't going to pile up a lot of excuses. All I say is this: That first a wrong was done, and that I took the law into my own hands, and then the law threw me out. And since that time, no matter what liars say, I've never lifted my hand except to defend myself. They's another thing. I've took the money of other people. I'll tell you why. When they run me away from my home, they run me away from my own cattle and my own land. It was a good-paying ranch and I figure that the world owes me as much as I'd have made clear off that ranch. And that's what I take every year—or less. And I've never yet taken it from nobody who couldn't afford to lose it. Mostly I've taken it across card tables, but some—I've taken at the end of a gun.”
Suddenly she was aware that he was in an agony; that he had spoken in an agony; that he sat now, waiting in a silent torment, for her judgment. And a great humility rushed over Mary Valentine. An ache came in the hollow of her throat. And somehow—she herself did not know how—she had taken both his hands.
“I'm talking the same way,” she said, “for you and God to hear me; and I swear that I'll never believe harm of you, Jess Dreer.”
He raised her hands suddenly to his face; her finger tips touched hot, pounding pulses in his temples; and his hands were quivering.
Was it possible that he had kissed her hands?
“For eight years I've been riding on a lone trail,” said Jess Dreer. “I've had the spur dug into me for eight years. And a spur leaves scars. And now, for the first time, I've reached a stopping place.”
“If you can stay,” she was whispering, “oh, Jess, we'll find a way to clear you!”
“Girl, you don't know men! But wherever I may go on the outtrail, night and morning, I'll send my thoughts back to you.”
“Are you going? No, no! Not yet. I have something to say—I—”
She could not finish the sentence.
“But if you should ever need me; then send for me. I'm a gambler, as I've said. And they's a string of places through the mountains where they know me. In Salt Springs they's one. Dan Carrol knows me, and he can get word to me wherever I am—by underground wires. Good-by.”
“It ain't right for me to stay. Is there something troubling you, girl?”
At length she said: “Go now; quickly.”
He stared at her in wonder. She stood erect; her face was buried in her hands. And then Jess Dreer slipped down from the window.
Afterward, she cried out, or thought she cried out, but he did not turn again. After a while she saw him pass on Angelina over the top of the hill, and across the moon.
