by Zane Grey
“I’m beginning to imagine the process of making has progressed very far already.”
“You’ve got cat in you — same as other women,” he retorted. “Listen, we’re wastin’ talk. If you’ll marry me I’ll save Ben Ide. If you won’t I’ll quit him an’ use my influence all over the range. I’ll make ranchin’ impossible for him in this country. An’ I’ll get you in the bargain.”
Hettie Ide turned so pale that her eyes shone black.
“Mr. Clan Dillon! Popular fellow! Splendid cattleman! Best and squarest foreman in Arizona!” she exclaimed, with amazed and infinite scorn.
Dillon, whose back was now turned toward Jim, made a deprecatory gesture in reply.
“Mr. Dillon, weeks ago when you first came to us and began your — your attentions to me, I thought there was something queer about you,” went on Hettie, deliberately. “You were too good to be true, as old Raidy said. Well, I think you’re as bad as you seemed good. I think you’re a contemptible, conceited ass. I think you’re a deep, cunning scoundrel. . . . You need not return to Cedar Springs tomorrow. Marvie Blaine will drive me Home.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Dillon.
“You’ll not get a chance to quit Ben. Right here and now you’re discharged.”
“Me! What? Who’s dischargin’ me?”
“I am.”
“Bah! You’re loco, girl. Ben Ide wouldn’t listen to you. He can’t run that ranch without me. Haven’t you sense enough to see it?”
Hettie Ide abruptly turned her back upon Dillon and walked away, to disappear in the crowd of dancers returning to the floor.
“ — damn the luck!” muttered Dillon. He lighted a cigarette and stood thoughtfully inhaling and expelling smoke.
Jim Lacy strode out from under the vines and the shadow.
“Howdy, Dillon!” he said, as he confronted the foreman.
A lightning-swift glance took Jim in from head to feet and back again.
“Howdy, yourself. Reckon you’ve got the best of me,” returned Dillon, gruffly.
“Shore, I reckon I have,” drawled Jim, with cool significance.
“Who are you?” queried Dillon, sharply.
“I might be Peter Punkins — only I ain’t.”
“Pretty smart, aren’t you?” rejoined Dillon, feeling his way. He knew men; he knew the West. “Reckon you’re more Simple Simon than Peter Punkins. I don’t care. But I’m curious about where you just sprung from.”
“Wal, I hail from New Mexico,” returned Jim.
“The hell you do!” flashed Dillon. “That’s nothin’ to me. But where’d you come from just now?”
“Dillon, you’re figurin’ quick,” returned Jim, in slow deliberation. “Wal, I was settin’ right heah on the adobe wall.”
Jim pointed to the spot in the shadow, but he did not take his gaze off Dillon.
The man cursed under his breath and flung his cigarette down so hard that the sparks flew from the stone pavement.
“You set there watchin’ — listenin’?” he demanded, with sudden and powerful self-control.
“Shore did,” drawled Jim.
“Stranger, where I come from men got shot for such offense.”
“I reckon. That’s why I’m not apologizin’.”
Dillon seemed to accept this as confirmation of the suspicion which had evidently been growing with his thoughts. Abruptly his bullying manner changed. The swift retreat of his personality was almost as remarkable as the new one which took its place. He stood unmasked, as far as his pretense was concerned. Cautious, steady, cold, and hard he stood a moment, his strange green eyes trying to pierce Jim’s mind. He was searching more for Jim’s intent than for other knowledge of him.
As for Jim, he measured Dillon to be a Westerner vastly different from the character he enjoyed in the section of Arizona. He judged Dillon without recourse to the words of Rose Hatt. Jim did not recognize a kindred spirit, but he read in Dillon the depth, the courage, the desperate experience of a man used to the rawest and deadliest of frontier life.
“Ha! I see you pack a gun, stranger,” coolly remarked Dillon, as he lighted another cigarette.
“Yes. I got sort of used to it.”
“Reckon you see I don’t?”
“Shore. I seen first off you didn’t, an’ then just now I read it in your eyes.”
“Mind-reader, eh? Well, it’s a helpin’ trait for some men.”
“Are you meanin’ any particular breed?” queried Jim, dryly.
“Yes. Spies, gamblers, thieves, gun-throwers, an’ the like.”
“Thanks. I’m shore appreciatin’ the way you speak. An’ not wantin’ to be outdone in compliments, I’ll just repeat what Miss Hettie Ide called you — a conceited ass! A deep, cunnin’ scoundrel!”
“You heard all she said?” snarled Dillon. Deep and crafty as he was, he could not help the risk of passion, though he controlled it.
“Shore. An’ I never heard a low-down man called more proper. Tickled me more because only to-day some one called you a handsome, smilin’-faced liar.”
“Aho! You happened to hear a good deal, now didn’t you, stranger?” returned Dillon. “Well, I don’t care a damn.”
“Shore you don’t. A skunk stinks so bad that nothin’ but bullets can get to his hide.”
“You’re a brave man, stranger, shoutin’ that way above your gun. But I’m tired listenin’. Are you from New Mexico?”
“No. I was lyin’.”
“Ahuh? An’ you’ve got a hunch that’s where I come from?”
“I reckon.”
“You see I don’t deny it. What do I care what you know or think or do? You pose for a dandy cowboy. But you’re not ridin’ for any outfit around Winthrop. You excite a little suspicion yourself, mister, considerin’ this country is full of outlaws an’ rustlers.”
“It shore is. That’s why I come over,” returned Jim, meaningly.
For the first time the dark red showed in Dillon’s face.
“I’ll have you put out of here,” he said. “An’ I’ll tip Macklin off that you need watchin’.”
“Wal,” drawled Jim, with his glance cold and set, “go ahaid, but be sure to tip him off that I’m Jim Lacy.”
Dillon’s stalwart frame jerked with a perceptible tremor. A slow pale shade began to blot out the brown of his face.
“Jim Lacy, eh! Say, I’ve had that dodge worked on me before. Paradin’ under a dead man’s name! It’s an old trick of four-flushers.”
But Dillon was not so cocksure as his bluster was intended to indicate. His iron nerve had been pierced. Here was a name to conjure with. For a moment the revelation of it unmasked him as had nothing else. Honest men seldom had anything to fear from Jim Lacy or any other of his class. It was only a sudden, instinctive fear at that, a weakening at once controlled. Dillon might have been afraid of a name, but not of any man.
“You expect me to believe you’re Jim Lacy?” he demanded, hoarsely.
“Wal, I’m tellin’ you, but it’s nothin’ to me what you believe,” returned Jim, icily. This interview was about to conclude.
“All right,” went on Dillon, breathing hard. “But I still figure you a liar.”
Jim sprang forward and knocked Dillon down.
“Wal, shore it may take more’n that,” he said, in slow accents. “But I told you who I am. An’ that’s somethin’ you didn’t tell me.”
Dillon cautiously arose on his hand, lifting a dark face to his assailant. But he made no response.
Jim, wheeling away to go, found himself confronted by Rose Hatt. The girl had seen at least the last of Jim’s encounter with Dillon.
“Oh — mister!” she cried, in a comprehension bounded by fear.
The dancers were trooping off the floor. A tall youth, with features strangely familiar to Jim, appeared behind Rose. She clasped his arm, while she stared from Jim to Dillon, who had not attempted to get up. Without a word Jim hurried on.
“My — God! Who was
that?” called out some one Jim took to be the youth with Rose. The voice added to the stirring of Jim Lacy’s memory. It also urged him faster through the throng of dancers and out into the street.
“That was Marvie Blaine, God bless him!” whispered Jim, as he gained the darkness. “Shore a close shave for me.”
It was eleven o’clock when Jim Lacy entered the Ace High Saloon, at the period one of the noted gambling hells of the southwest.
John Brennan, its proprietor, had two unique characteristics that stood in his favor. He had the reputation of being a square gambler and he would not have a woman about the place. Consequently he was not so prosperous as most men of his business and his house was without costly and gaudy fittings. He did not bar any man from his tables, so long as that man played fairly. More than one crooked gambler had been carried out of the Ace High, feet first. This fact was reported to have had its effect upon the intent-eyed, still-faced sharps who frequented the rooms.
Jim Lacy bolted into the barroom like a man who was being pursued. He was, indeed, though not by any visible thing.
“Cowboy, what you runnin’ from?” queried a tall man. He happened to be standing nearest to the door, his back to the bar, his high hat tipped back, to expose a weather-beaten face. A brass shield, with letters printed upon it, stood out prominently on his vest.
Jim recognized this individual almost instantly.
“Howdy, Macklin!” he said, nonchalantly. “I was just runnin’ from a sheriff.”
“Wal, you run right into another,” growled Macklin, surprised and annoyed. “Who air you?”
“I’m foreman of the Coffee Pot outfit,” drawled Jim.
“What’s your handle, smarty? It jest happens there ain’t any Coffee Pot outfit at this particular time. . . . I’ve a notion to clap you into the jug. You look kinda pale round the gills. What have you been up to an’ who air you?”
“None of your damn business,” returned Jim, with abrupt change of tone and manner. “But if you hang around I reckon somebody’ll tell you.”
“Hyar, you come right along with—”
“Lookout, Mack!” interrupted some one behind Jim. A glass went crash on the floor, and the rasp of heavy boots followed. Then a man strode in front of the sheriff, facing Jim. “Excuse me, stranger, but I believe I know you. If I’m wrong, say so.”
“Howdy, Cash!” returned Jim, extending his hand.
Cash Burridge looked a full ten years older than when Jim had last seen him. Drink and hard life and evil passion had broken the man. His lined dark visage lost its set expression of uncertainty, almost alarm, and worked convulsively into a broad smile.
“Jumpin’ steers!” he ejaculated, grasping Jim’s hand in both his and wagging it vigorously. His smile kept on expanding. His eyes lighted. “If it ain’t you!”
“Shore is, Cash. Just got in, an’ am lookin’ for trouble.”
“No! Who?” queried Burridge, with a sudden check to his almost boisterous welcome. He had bent forward and lowered his voice.
“Wal, nobody in particular, Cash. I just feel mean.”
“I’m a son-of-a-gun! It’s you — changed a lot. Most in disposition — if it’s true. You’re lookin’ for trouble.”
Here the sheriff interposed by placing an ungentle hand on Burridge’s shoulder and turning him somewhat.
“Friend of yours, hey? Thet’s no guarantee to keep him out of jail.”
“Hell!” exploded Burridge. “I’m tryin’ to keep you out of the boneyard. My Gawd! if I told you who this man is you’d sweat blood.”
Macklin’s jaw dropped and he swayed back against the bar, dominated by Burridge’s fierce sincerity. Then Burridge drew Jim aside from the gaping, grinning bystanders at the bar and the gamesters at the tables.
“It’s you — really you, Jim?” he whispered, huskily.
“Shore, Cash. Cain’t you see?”
“But we heard you were dead.”
“That was terrible exaggerated, Cash.”
“Dropped from the sky! Jim Lacy, just down from heaven, huh? Well, I’m damned! . . . An’ I never was so glad to see a man in my life. Honest, Jim.”
“Wal, I’m glad to see you, Cash, though we was never very thick.”
“Where you been, Jim, since you left Lineville? Lord! I never forgot that night you shot Link Cawthorne’s eye out.”
“Wal, Cash, never mind where I’ve been.”
“Sure, that doesn’t matter, only I always had my idea, an’ I was curious. I had a hunch you went to New Mexico an’ got mixed up in that Lincoln County war. Some of those hombres got out of that fight alive. I know one of them did. Close pard of Billy the Kid.”
“Who?” queried Jim.
“I’m not givin’ any man away, Jim. Sure wouldn’t have said as much as that to anyone else. When’d you drift in?”
“To-day.”
“You’ll be recognized here.”
“Shore. I expect to be an’ I’m not carin’.”
“Lord! Jim, have you grown reckless with the years? You look older, but fine, healthy, an’ prosperous.”
“Who’s goin’ to recognize me, Cash?”
“You remember Ace Black? He’s the gambler we knowed at the Gold Mine back in Lineville.”
“Shore I remember Black.”
“He’s upstairs playing faro. Reckon Black will know you, but he’d never give you away. Hardy Rue, though. He will. He never cottoned to you. Always had a hunch you’d killed Less Setter. Rue has dogged me all these years. An’ I’m layin’ it to him that I’m down on my luck now.”
“Wal, what come of your ranchin’ deal heah, Cash?”
“Jim, you had me figured. I couldn’t stand prosperity,” returned Burridge, heavily. “But I swear I went straight till I got in need of money. I’d made poor deals. I could steal cattle an’ make money, but not by tradin’ or ranchin’. I began to borrow. Then I had a chance to sell out to Ben Ide, a Californian. I did him dirt, an’ I’ve lived to be sorry. There’s a man, Jim. . . . Well, when I was flush again I began to drink an’ buck the tiger.”
“An’ now you’re aboot broke. Who got all that money, Cash?”
“Aw, everybody. Brennan some, but then I don’t begrudge it to him. Hardy Rue beat me out of most of it. I fell in love with a Spanish girl here. She an’ Rue double-crossed me. Got my pile!”
“Wal, why didn’t you kill him?”
“I couldn’t try an even break with Rue. An’ I never had a chance to shoot him in the back.”
“Is Rue heah now?” asked Jim.
“Reckon he’s with that black-eyed hussy. It’s a little early for him to drop in. Lord! it’ll tickle me to have him see you with me. Rue was afraid of you, Jim, an’ you need to watch him.”
“Where do you hang out, Cash?”
“I’ve been most here in town,” replied Burridge. “I’ve a cabin down in the brakes.”
“Are you acquainted down there?”
“Sure am, Jim. Know everybody except the newcomers. An’ I’m givin’ you a hunch there’s some hard customers driftin’ in. It’s a hell of a rough country an’ big as all outdoors. I sure learned to love Arizona.”
“Wal, Cash, when you was rich an’ high-handed I didn’t have much use for you,” said Jim, with a smile. “But now you’re broke an’ down on your luck, I reckon I’ll chip in with you.”
“Jim Lacy! You always was a queer one,” returned Burridge, feelingly. “Reckon, I know you’ve got somethin’ up your sleeve, an’ whatever it is, I’m sure with you.”
“All right, Cash. Suppose you tote me round to look ’em over.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HETTIE IDE HAD attended the dance at Winthrop as a guest of Alice Franklidge, a girl of nineteen, daughter of the judge’s second wife. She was a frank, breezy, Western girl to whom Hettie took a liking, and they were on the way to become real friends.
They left the dance before midnight, to be driven out to the Franklidge house by Alice’s escort
. The night was cold and clear, with myriads of blinking stars overhead. Hettie removed her hat to let the cool wind blow her hair.
“Did you enjoy your first dance in Arizona?” asked the young rancher.
“Yes indeed I did, Mr. Van Horn — in spite of a — a rather unpleasant incident,” replied Hettie.
“Sure, we’re awful glad. Sorry, too, somethin’ annoyed you. But honest, the dances now are Sunday-school affairs to what they once was. Isn’t that so, Alice?”
“It is. I used to be afraid to go,” replied the girl. “Fights were common. One for each dance! They’re really nice now. Dad and some of the town men have seen to that. . . . Hettie, it mortifies me that you were annoyed by — by Clan Dillon. I know it was he. You danced with him — then came back to us all flushed and nervous.”
“Yes, it was Mr. Dillon. He — he insulted me.”
Van Horn cracked his whip over the horses in rather abrupt and forceful action.
“I’m not surprised,” returned Alice, thoughtfully. “Dillon is a handsome, fascinating man. Very agreeable, winning. But I always thought him a little common and bold.”
“Who was the pretty girl Marvie paid so much attention to?” asked Hettie.
“I didn’t notice her. But I saw he was having a grand time.”
“He had her with him just before we left,” went on Hettie. “She wore a white muslin dress, cotton stockings, cheap slippers too large for her feet. She hung back as Marvie came up to me. I think she was afraid to meet us. I thought her very pretty. Big staring dark eyes. Red lips. Curly brown hair.”
“That was Rose Hatt,” replied Van Horn.
“Rose Hatt? She couldn’t belong to that notorious Hatt family we hear about?” asked Alice.
“There’s only one family of Hatts, Alice, an’ Rose is the only girl,” explained the young rancher. “I’d seen her before. Charley Moss danced with her. Pretty kid. An’ she seemed modest an’ quiet. Young Blaine sure acted smitten with her.”
“Indeed he did,” corroborated Hettie, seriously. “Marvie is such a fine boy. But he’s going a little wild. I’ve remonstrated with Ben, who lets Marvie run around too freely.”