The Courage of Marge O'Doone, James Oliver Curwood [smart books to read .txt] 📗

brain was afire. He was no longer cool or self-possessed. He was blind with a wild rage, with a mad desire to reach in some way, with his vengeance, the human beasts who were bent on his death even if it was to be gained at the sacrifice of the Girl. He rushed to the side of the cabin from which the fresh attack had come, and glared through one of the embrasures between the logs. He was close to Tara, and he heard the low, steady thunder that came out of the grizzly's chest. His enemies were near on this side. Their fire came from the rocks not more than a hundred yards away, and all at once, in the heat of the great passion that possessed him now, he became suddenly aware that they knew the only weapon he possessed was Nisikoos' little rifle--and Hauck's revolver. Probably they knew also how limited his ammunition was. And they were exposing themselves. Why should he save his last three shots? When they were gone and he no longer answered their fire they would rush the cabin, beat in the door, and then--the revolver! With that he would tear out their hearts as they entered. He saw Hauck, fired and missed. A man stood up within seventy yards of the cabin a moment later, firing as fast as he could pump the lever of his gun, and David drove one of Nisikoos' partridge-killers straight into his chest. He fired a second time at Hauck--another miss! Then he flung the useless rifle to the floor as he sprang back to Marge.
"Got one. Five left. Now--damn 'em--let then come!"
He drew Hauck's revolver. A bullet flew through one of the cracks, and they heard the soft thud of it as it struck Tara. The growl in the grizzly's throat burst forth in a roar of thunder. The terrible sound shook the cabin, but Tara still made no movement, except now to swing his head with open, drooling jaws. In response to that cry of animal rage and pain a snarl had come from Baree. He had slunk close to Tara.
"Didn't hurt him much," said David, with the fingers of his free hand crumpling the Girl's hair. "They'll stop shooting in a minute or two, and then...."
Straight into his eyes from that farther wall a splinter hurled itself at him with a hissing sound like the plunge of hot iron into water. He had a lightning impression of seeing the bullet as it tore through the clay between two of the logs; he knew that he was struck, and yet he felt no pain. His mind was acutely alive, yet he could not speak. His words had been cut off, his tongue was powerless--it was like a shock that had paralyzed him. Even the Girl did not know for a moment or two that he was hit. The thud of his revolver on the floor filled her eyes with the first horror of understanding, and she sprang to his side as he swayed like a drunken man toward Tara. He sank down on the floor a few feet from the grizzly, and he heard the Girl moaning over him and calling him by name. The numbness left him, slowly he raised a hand to his chin, filled with a terrible fear. It was there--his jaw, hard, unsmashed, but wet with blood. He thought the bullet had struck him there.
"A knockout," were the first words, spoken slowly and thickly, but with a great gasp of relief. "A splinter hit me on the jaw.... I'm all right...."
He sat up dizzily, with the Girl's arm about him. In the three or four minutes of forgetfulness neither had noticed that the firing had ceased. Now there came a tremendous blow at the door. It shook the cabin. A second blow, a third--and the decaying saplings were crashing inward! David struggled to rise, fell back, and pointed to the revolver.
"Quick--the revolver!"
Marge sprang to it. The door crashed inward as she picked it up, and scarcely had she faced about when their enemies were rushing in, with Henry and Hauck in their lead, and Brokaw just behind them. With a last effort David fought to gain his feet. He heard a single shot from the revolver, and then, as he rose staggeringly, he saw Marge fighting in Brokaw's arms. Hauck came for him, the demon of murder in his face, and as they went down he heard scream after scream come from the Girl's lips, and in that scream the agonizing call of "_Tara! Tara! Tara!_" Over him he heard a sudden roar, the rush of a great body--and with that thunder of Tara's rage and vengeance there mingled a hideous, wolfish snarl from Baree. He could see nothing. Hauck's hands were at his throat.
But the screams continued, and above them came now the cries of men--cries of horror, of agony, of death; and as Hauck's fingers loosened at his neck he heard with the snarling and roaring and tumult the crushing of great jaws and the thud of bodies. Hauck was rising, his face blanched with a strange terror. He was half up when a gaunt, lithe body shot at him like a stone flung from a catapult and Baree's inch-long fangs sank into his thick throat and tore his head half from his body in one savage, snarling snap of the jaws. David raised himself and through the horror of what he saw the Girl ran to him--unharmed--and clasped her arms about him, her lips sobbing all the time--"_Tara--Tara--Tara_...." He turned her face to his breast, and held it there. It was ghastly. Henry was dead. Hauck was dead. And Brokaw was dead--a thousand times dead--with the grizzly tearing his huge body into pieces.
Through that pit of death David stumbled with the Girl. The fresh air struck their faces. The sun of day fell upon them. The green grass and the flowers of the mountain were under their feet. They looked down the slope, and saw, disappearing over the crest of the _coulee_, two men who were running for their lives.


CHAPTER XXVII
It may have been five minutes that David held the Girl in his arms, staring down into the sunlit valley into which the last two of Hauck's men had fled, and during that time he did not speak, and he heard only her steady sobbing. He drew into his lungs deep breaths of the invigorating air, and he felt himself growing stronger as the Girl's body became heavier in his embrace, and her arms relaxed and slipped down from his shoulders. He raised her face. There were no tears in her eyes, but she was still moaning a little, and her lips were quivering like a crying child's. He bent his head and kissed them, and she caught her breath pantingly as she looked at him with eyes which were limpid pools of blue out of which her terror was slowly dying away. She whispered his name. In her look and in that whisper there was unutterable adoration. It was for _him_ she had been afraid. She was looking at him now as one saved to her from the dead, and for a moment he strained her still closer, and as he crushed his face to hers he felt the warm, sweet caress of her lips, and the thrilling pressure of her hands, at his blood-stained cheeks. A sound from behind made him turn his head, and fifty feet away he saw the big grizzly ambling cumbrously from the cabin. They could hear him growling as he stood in the sunshine, his head swinging slowly from side to side like a huge pendulum--in his throat the last echoing of that ferocious rage and hate that had destroyed their enemies. And in the same moment Baree stood in the doorway, his lips drawn back and his fangs gleaming, as if he expected other enemies to face him.
Quickly David led Marge beyond the boulder from behind which he had opened the fight, and drew her down with him into a soft carpet of grass, thick with the blue of wild violets, with the big rock shutting out the cabin from their vision.
"Rest here, little comrade," he said, his voice low and trembling with his worship of her, his hands stroking back her wonderful hair. "I must return to the cabin. Then--we will go."
"Go!"
She repeated the word in the strangest, softest whisper he had ever heard, as if in it all at once she saw the sun and stars, the day and night, of her whole life. She looked from his face down into the valley, and into his face again.
"We--will go," she repeated, as he rose to his feet.
She shivered when he left her, shuddered with a terrible little cry which she tried to choke back even as she visioned the first glow of that wonderful new life that was dawning for her. David knew why. He left her without looking down into her eyes again, anxious to have these last terrible minutes over. At the open door of the cabin he hesitated, a little sick at what he knew he would see. And yet, after all, it was no worse than it should be; it was justice. He told himself this as he stepped inside.
He tried not to look too closely, but the sight, after a moment, fascinated him. If it had not been for the difference in their size he could not have told which was Hauck and which was Brokaw, for even on Hauck, Tara had vented his rage after Baree had killed him. Neither bore very much the semblance of a man just now--it seemed incredible that claw and fang could have worked such destruction, and he went suddenly back to the door to see that the Girl was not following him. Then he looked again. Henry lay at his feet across the fallen saplings of the battered door, his head twisted completely under him--or gone. It was Henry's rifle he picked up. He searched for cartridges then. It was a sickening task. He found nearly fifty of them on the three, and went out with the pack and the rifle. He put the pack over his shoulders before he returned to the rock, and paused only for a moment, when he rejoined the Girl. With her hand in his he struck down into the valley.
"A great justice has overtaken them," he said, and that was all he told her about the cabin, and she asked him no questions.
At the edge of the green meadows they stopped where a trickle of water from the mountain tops had formed a deep pool. David followed this trickle a little up the _coulee_ it had worn in the course of ages, found a sheltered spot, and stripped himself. To the waist he was covered with the stain and grime of battle. In the open pool Marge bathed her face and arms, and then sat down to finish her toilet with David's comb and brush. When he returned to her she was a radiant glory, hidden to her waist in the gold and brown fires of her disentangled hair. It was wonderful. He stood a step off and looked at her, his heart filled with a wonderful joy, his lips silent. The thought surged upon him now in an overmastering moment of exultation that she belonged to him, not for to-day, or to-morrow, but for all time; that the mountains had given her to him; that among the flowers and the wild things that "great, good God," of whom Father Roland had spoken so often, had created her for him; and that she had been waiting for him here, pure as the wild violets under his feet. She did not see him for a space, and he