CHAPTER XLIV
THE BULLDOG BARKS
Joyce fainted for the first time in her life.
When she recovered consciousness Doble was splashing water in her face.She was lying on the bunk from which she had fled a few minutes earlier.The girl made a motion to rise and he put a heavy hand on her shoulder.
"Keep your hand off me!" she cried.
"Don't be a fool," he told her irritably. "I ain't gonna hurt younone--if you behave reasonable:"
"Let me go," she demanded, and struggled to a sitting position on thecouch. "You let me go or my father--"
"What'll he do?" demanded the man brutally. "I've stood a heap fromthat father of yore's. I reckon this would even the score even if Ihadn't--" He pulled up, just in time to keep from telling her that he hadfired the chaparral. He was quite sober enough to distrust his tongue. Itwas likely, he knew, to let out some things that had better not be told.
She tried to slip by him and he thrust her back.
"Let me go!" she demanded. "At once!"
"You're not gonna go," he told her flatly. "You'll stay here--with me.For keeps. Un'erstand?"
"Have you gone crazy?" she asked wildly, her heart fluttering like afrightened bird in a cage. "Don't you know my father will search thewhole country for me?"
"Too late. We travel south soon as it's dark." He leaned forward and puta hand on her knee, regardless of the fact that she shrank back quiveringfrom his touch. "Listen, girl. You been a high-stepper. Yore heels clickmighty loud when they hit the sidewalk. Good enough. Go far as you like.I never did fancy the kind o' women that lick a man's hand. But you madeone mistake. I'm no doormat, an' nobody alive can wipe their feet on me.You turned me down cold. You had the ol' man kick me outa my job asforeman of the ranch. I told him an' you both I'd git even. But I don'taim to rub it in. I'm gonna give you a chance to be Mrs. Doble. An' whenyou marry me you git a man for a husband."
"I'll never marry you! Never! I'd rather be dead in my grave!" she brokeout passionately.
He went to the table, poured himself a drink, and gulped it down. Hislaugh was sinister and mirthless.
"Please yorese'f, sweetheart," he jeered. "Only you won't be dead inyore grave. You'll be keepin' house for Dug Doble. I'm not insistin' onweddin' bells none. But women have their fancies an' I aim to be kind.Take 'em or leave 'em."
She broke down and wept, her face in her hands. In her sheltered life shehad known only decent, clean-minded people. She did not know how to copewith a man like this. The fear of him rose in her throat and choked her.This dreadful thing he threatened could not be, she told herself. Godwould not permit it. He would send her father or Dave Sanders or Bob Hartto rescue her. And yet--when she looked at the man, big, gross, dominant,flushed with drink and his triumph--the faith in her became a weak andfluid stay for her soul. She collapsed like a child and sobbed.
Her wild alarm annoyed him. He was angered at her uncontrollable shudderswhen he drew near. There was a savage desire in him to break through thedefense of her helplessness once for all. But his caution urged delay. Hemust give her time to get accustomed to the idea of him. She had senseenough to see that she must make the best of the business. When theterror lifted from her mind she would be reasonable.
He repeated again that he was not going to hurt her if she met himhalfway, and to show good faith went out and left her alone.
The man sat down on a chopping-block outside and churned his hatred ofSanders and Crawford. He spurred himself with drink, under its influencerecalling the injuries they had done him. His rage and passion simmered,occasionally exploded into raucous curses. Once he strode into the house,full of furious intent, but the eyes of the girl daunted him. They lookedat him as they might have looked at a tiger padding toward her.
He flung out of the house again, snarling at his own weakness. There wassomething in him stronger than passion, stronger than his reckless will,that would not let him lay a hand on her in the light of day. Hisbloodshot eyes looked for the sun. In a few hours now it would be dark.
While he lounged sullenly on the chopping-block, shoulders and headsunken, a sound brought him to alert attention. A horseman was gallopingdown the slope on the other side of the valley.
Doble eased his guns to make sure of them. Intently he watched theapproaching figure. He recognized the horse, Chiquito, and then, with anoath, the rider. His eyes gleamed with evil joy. At last! At last he andDave Sanders would settle accounts. One of them would be carried out ofthe valley feet first.
Sanders leaped to the ground at the same instant that he pulled Chiquitoup. The horse was between him and his enemy.
The eyes of the men crossed in a long, level look.
"Where's Joyce Crawford?" asked Dave.
"That yore business?" Doble added to his retort the insult unmentionable.
"I'm makin' it mine. What have you done with her?" The speech of theyounger man took on again the intonation of earlier days. "I'm here tofind out."
A swish of skirts, a soft patter of feet, and Joyce was beside herfriend, clinging to him, weeping in his arms.
Doble moved round in a wide circumference. When shooting began he did notwant his foe to have the protection of the horse's body. Not even for thebeat of a lid did the eyes of either man lift from the other.
"Go back to the house, Joyce," said Dave evenly. "I want to talk withthis man alone."
The girl clung the tighter to him. "No, Dave, no! It's been ... awful."
The outlaw drew his long-barreled six-shooter, still circling the group.He could not fire without running a risk of hitting Joyce.
"Hidin' behind a woman, are you?" he taunted, and again flung the epithetmen will not tolerate.
At any moment he might fire. Dave caught the wrists of the girl, draggedthem down from his neck, and flung her roughly from him to the ground. Hepulled out his little bulldog.
Doble fired and Dave fell. The outlaw moved cautiously closer, exultantat his marksmanship. His enemy lay still, the pistol in his hand.Apparently Sanders had been killed at the first shot.
"Come to git me with that popgun, did you? Hmp! Fat chance." The bad manfired again, still approaching very carefully.
Round the corner of the house a man had come. He spoke quickly. "Turnyore gun this way, Dug."
It was Shorty. His revolver flashed at the same instant. Doble staggered,steadied himself, and fired.
The forty-fives roared. Yellow flames and smoke spurted. The bulldogbarked. Dave's parlor toy had come into action.
Out of the battle Shorty and Sanders came erect and uninjured. Doblewas lying on the ground, his revolver smoking a foot or two from thetwitching, outstretched hand.
The outlaw was dead before Shorty turned him over. A bullet had passedthrough the heart. Another had struck him on the temple, a third in thechest.
"We got him good," said Shorty. "It was comin' to him. I reckon you don'tknow that he fired the chaparral on purpose. Wanted to wipe out theJackpot, I s'pose. Yes, Dug sure had it comin' to him."
Dave said nothing. He looked down at the man, eyes hard as jade, jawclamped tight. He knew that but for Shorty's arrival he would probably belying there himself.
"I was aimin' to shoot it out with him before I heard of this lastscullduggery. Soon as the kid woke me I hustled up my intentions." Thebad man looked at Dave's weapon with the flicker of a smile on his face."He called it a popgun. I took notice it was a right busy li'l'plaything. But you got yore nerve all right. I'd say you hadn't a chancein a thousand. You played yore hand fine, keelin' over so's he'd comeclost enough for you to get a crack at him. At that, he'd maybe 'a' gotyou if I hadn't drapped in."
"Yes," said Sanders.
He walked across to the corral fence, where Joyce sat huddled against thelower bars.
She lifted her head and looked at him from wan eyes out of which the lifehad been stricken. They stared at him in dumb, amazed questioning.
Dave lifted her from the ground.
"I... I thought you.
.. were dead," she whispered.
"Not even powder-burnt. His six-shooter outranged mine. I was trying toget him closer."
"Is he...?"
"Yes. He'll never trouble any of us again."
She shuddered in his arms.
Dave ached for her in every tortured nerve. He did not know, and it wasnot his place to ask, what price she had had to pay.
Presently she told him, not in words, without knowing what he wassuffering for her. A ghost of a smile touched her eyes.
"I knew you would come. It's all right now."
His heart leaped. "Yes, it's all right, Joyce."
She recurred to her fears for him. "You're not ... hiding any wounds fromme? I saw you fall and lie there while he shot at you."
"He never touched me."
She disengaged herself from his arms and looked at him, wan, haggard,unshaven, eyes sunken, a tattered wretch scarred with burns.
"What have you done to yourself?" she asked, astonished at hisappearance.
"Souvenirs of the fire," he told her. "They'll wash and wear off. Don'tsuppose I look exactly pretty."
He had never looked so handsome in her eyes.
Gunsight Pass: How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West Page 44