by Zane Grey
One morning, as Clifton bent over his desk, he heard Mr. Hartwell, his employer, enter the office with someone whom he very volubly made welcome. They passed close to Clifton, who, without raising his eyes, caught a glimpse of shiny high-top boots and tight, immaculate riding-breeches that gave him a sharp start. It was not necessary to look up to recognize Malpass, even before the suave voice, a moment later, told him doubly who this visitor was.
“It’s a particular job, Hartwell,” Malpass was saying, and he slapped his boot-tops with his whip. “Expect to be married to my partner’s daughter soon, and spend the winter in the South. I’d want to start building here upon my return in early spring. You will have ample time to get all the materials here. I’m giving you this large order because, as I expect to live in Watrous, I want to patronize men who’ll be my neighbors.”
“I appreciate it, Mr. Malpass,” replied Hartwell, deferentially, almost with gratitude. “I’ll go over these orders very carefully, an’ guarantee delivery in time, at lower figures than you could get in Las Vegas.”
“Later I’ll mail you orders for lumber to build barns, corrals, and——”
Malpass ceased abruptly, and Clifton awakened to the fact that his ears were tingling.
“Who is that?” spoke up Malpass, in a lower, changed voice.
“Where?”
“There—at the desk.”
“That’s my bookkeeper,” replied Hartwell, also in lower tone. “Fine young man. Shot up bad in France. Name’s Forrest.”
“Aha! I thought so. Used to live at Cottonwoods.”
“I don’t know. You see, I’m a newcomer here. His father’s name is Clay Forrest.”
“Well, you can fire him right now, or consider my order canceled,” returned Malpass, peremptorily.
“Why—Mr. Malpass! Do you know anything to his discredit?”
“I do.”
“Indeed! I’m very sorry. We got along fine. But, of course, I’ll discharge him. I wish to serve you, an’ I wouldn’t keep any help you disapproved of.”
“If Lundeen should happen to come in here to see you employed a Forrest he’d walk out and never enter your place again. He’s in town, too. Rode over with me. You’d better get rid of this wounded soldier here.”
“Reckon I will, at once,” replied Hartwell, hurriedly.
Clifton leaped up with a bursting gush of hot blood.
“Save your breath, Mr. Hartwell. I quit,” he declared, passionately.
“I’m sorry, Forrest. I’d have had to let you go. Mr. Malpass assures me he knows somethin’ to your discredit, an’ I——”
“He’s a damned liar,” interrupted Clifton, stalking to the rack for his hat and coat. “And you will live to regret the day you listened to him.”
Malpass carried off his part exceedingly well. Manifestly his last encounter with Clifton was uppermost in his mind, and he looked cool, contemptuous. There shone, however, a deep hot gleam in his sloe-black eyes.
“Forrest, if you weren’t a poor empty sack of a soldier I’d slap your face,” he said, and he spoke loudly, not averse to being heard by listening clerks and customers.
But for this, Clifton might have controlled his fury in time and gotten out.
“It’d be a sorry slap for you, Señor Malpass. . . . Of all the rotten tricks I ever heard of, this is the rottenest. To have me thrown out of a two-bit job! It wasn’t enough for you to hire one of your greasers to burn up my store at San Luis. You’ve got to hound me here and put Hartwell against me.”
“Ha!—Hartwell, you can easily see what the war did to Forrest,” laughed Malpass. “He’s gone mentally, too.”
Hartwell came slowly forward, plainly perturbed. Clifton had gotten outside of the office rail, into the store proper.
“Young man, you’re making a plumb wild statement,” said Hartwell.
“Not so wild, when you know Señor Malpass. He’s a liar and I’m not. That’s all, and I’ll live to prove it.”
Then Clifton realized he was in for battle. Remembering Malpass’ reaction in their former encounter, he saw that he did not intend to let this pass, unless Clifton fled. That indeed was the last thing Clifton would think of. He backed against a counter littered with leather accouterments for horsemen, and his quick eye caught sight of a long black whip, the kind used by teamsters. Clifton would far rather have had a gun within reach, but this weapon would serve.
“You take that back, you white-faced beggar!” ordered Malpass. He snarled, but he did not yet give way to undue anger. His play was to impress the bystanders, and whatever he intended to do, he showed confidence.
“Make me take it back, you yellow-faced greaser millionaire,” retorted Clifton, feeling the surge of released restraint. “You burned up my little store—all I had to make a living. Now you bully Hartwell to fire me! You’d like to see me and my poor old robbed father and mother starve. I said robbed. Do you get that? I said it and you know it. What’s more, Virginia Lundeen——”
“Shut up!” hissed Malpass, and he struck Clifton across the mouth. “I beat you once . . . I’ll do it again, if you dare speak my sweetheart’s name.”
The blow made Clifton cold and steady with a realization that something terrible was about to happen.
“Sweetheart?” he laughed, jeeringly. “You poor conceited ass! Money has gone to your head. . . . Virginia Lundeen despises you. How could she be your sweetheart—you damned half-breed? . . . How, I say—when she’s my wife?”
Malpass was lunging when the word, more astonishing and stunning than a blow, halted him almost off his balance.
“Wife!” he choked out.
“Yes, my wife.”
“You’re crazy.”
Clifton, appalled at what passion had led him to, realized he was driven to prove his statement. With a sense of fatality—a feeling that he was betraying Virginia—he whipped out his marriage certificate and shoved it under Malpass’ nose.
“Forgery!” gasped Malpass, his lips white.
“Who wrote that? . . . Don’t you recognize the handwriting? . . . Virginia Lundeen!”
Malpass indeed read his defeat in that quivering paper. He seemed staggered by an incredible, insupportable catastrophe. His eyes of black fire followed the certificate as Clifton folded it and replaced it in his pocket. Then they blazed at Clifton, comprehending that a gigantic hoax had been perpetrated upon him. And suddenly the rest of his features kept pace with the hell in his eyes. Calling Virginia a vile name, he cut Clifton across the face with his riding-crop.
Clifton had his right hand behind him gripping the handle of the teamster’s whip. With all his might he swung it. Like a pistol report it cracked and like a black snake it curled round Malpass’ neck. The man let out a strangled yell. Clifton jerked so hard on the whip that he threw Malpass to his knees. Up he sprang nimbly, to ply his crop upon Clifton’s head, in short, hard strokes, the last of which knocked Clifton flat and also broke the bone handle of the crop.
Panting and malignant, Malpass put his right hand to his hip pocket. Hartwell shouted in affright. The other onlookers, exclaiming incoherently, scattered from behind Clifton, who again swung the whip viciously. It streaked out, snakelike, to crack across Malpass’ face. As if by magic a red stripe leaped out. Malpass screamed, true to the stronger half of his blood.
“Shoot, you greaser!” yelled Clifton. There was a fierce joy in this encounter. It liberated passion that must slowly have dammed up. He began to dance around Malpass, suddenly to attack with his whip.
Malpass drew a small automatic gun and hurriedly shot. Clifton ducked at the flash. The bullet hit a man behind, who fell, yelling: “My God! I’m shot! . . . Help! Help!”
Instead of going to his assistance, the others broke pellmell and ran. Hartwell dodged behind a counter. None of them could escape from the store because at the moment Clifton was dodging back and forth across the doorway that led into the street. The place was in an uproar. Men came running from outside.
Clifton spoiled Malpass’ aim by swift blows with his whip. But Malpass kept on shooting, breaking windows, scattering bullets into the wall. His eyes protruded, horrible with murderous intent. Then another slash of the whip appeared to obliterate those eyes, as if a purple band had crossed them. Malpass was momentarily blinded. He screamed maledictions in Spanish, and shot again. Clifton felt a light shock, as from a puff of air. The long blacksnake whip darted out and the end curled round Malpass’ extended hand that held the gun. It held fast as if it had been knotted. Malpass was shooting at random. Clifton pulled with both hands on the whip, swinging Malpass helplessly, to stumble over an obstruction and fall heavily. The gun flew out of his grip. Clifton got the whip loose, and swung it aloft with both hands, and brought it down hissing hot. Malpass shrieked, and flopped over on his face, to huddle against the floor.
Clifton beat him until the whip dropped from his spent hands. Then he staggered out of the store to the sidewalk. Men and boys, whom he saw but indistinctly, spread before him. Someone, whose voice he recognized, took his arm and steadied him along the street a few rods to where his car was parked. Clifton stumbled in and hung over the wheel.
But he did not lose consciousness, though his sight was dim and his hearing imperfect. Still it became obvious to him that a crowd was collecting, and this goaded his fainting spirit. With shuddering, desperate effort he wiped away the blood that flowed from a cut on his forehead into his eyes, and then started the car. Soon he had left Watrous behind, and once out in the open country he ran off the road into a clump of cedars, to rest and recover.
He came near to collapse, yet the effort had carried him over that point, and gradually he approached something like physical normality. Then he became aware of painful welts upon his face, and his right hand and wrist, where Malpass’ crop had fallen. His shirt was wet and at first he thought it came from sweat. But it was blood. Malpass had shot him, after all.
A bullet wound meant little to Forrest. He did not even search for this one, nor care whether or not it might be fatal. He was not conscious of any pain. At length he felt blood trickling down inside his shirt, both front and back, on his right side. As it did not appear to be a copious flow, he concluded the wound was high up on his shoulder, cutting through the fleshy part on top. Already his handkerchief was soaked, so he did not have anything to serve as a pad over the hole.
He rested over his wheel, and by degrees thought impinged upon his sensorial perceptions. He knew he had been in a fight, but what was the cause and what had happened? Virginia had wanted to keep their marriage a secret until she could use the fact of it as a last resource. Clifton had promised not to reveal it under any circumstances. He had failed utterly. He had not counted on unbearable provocation nor the unknown quantity of jealousy. Almost he wished Malpass’ bullet had finished him at once.
What would come of this, he wondered, as his mind quickened. He had accused Malpass of burning his store. He had flaunted the fact of his marriage. He had passionately resented the vile name the mad Malpass had called Virginia, and he had beaten him into unconsciousness. If that whip had been a gun Malpass would never wake in this world.
Clifton plodded on in his deductions. Hartwell and others besides Malpass had heard his assertion about Virginia being his wife. Likewise they had seen the marriage certificate. He had betrayed Virginia. That fight would become range gossip before the day had passed. And if Malpass had killed a man with the random shot there would be court proceedings. Alas! to what a pass his passions had brought him!
Presently he raised his head, and starting the Ford, he drove out of the cedars, back onto the road. It was about all he could do to hang to the wheel. But for its support he would have fallen over. The few miles to San Luis seemed vast and hateful distance, never to be surmounted.
Upon reaching the village he stopped at the hut of an old Indian whom he knew, and who was a medicine man of local note.
Clifton’s wound was a deep furrow in the shoulder muscle, and not serious. When bandaged with a soothing ointment he forgot it. The stripes on his face, however, were brands that could not be concealed. Nevertheless, with the blood washed off, and his coat well buttoned over his shirt, he did not, at least, present a frightful appearance.
He wanted to get home, if possible, without encountering his father, and to get in without distressing his mother. And luck was with him, so far as those two were concerned, for he reached the house and got in unobserved. He was lying down in the shaded living-room when his mother came in. Her anxiety was easy to allay. But his father presented a different proposition, and Clifton welcomed the fact that delayed a meeting between them. He rested until the betraying faintness of his voice had gone.
Toward sundown, when his mother went out to prepare supper, his father came in, evidently having been informed that Clifton was home early and that all was not so well with him as it might have been.
“Howdy, son! an’ what ails you?” queried Forrest, gruffly, as his big eyes ran curiously over Clifton lying quietly on the couch.
“Why do you ask that?” returned Clifton, to try out his voice. It was pretty weak.
“Wal, you’re pale, except for them long marks, an’ I reckon I can smell blood,” replied his father, drawing a chair close up to Clifton. He was troubled and suspicious, but cool. There seemed to be little use trying to deceive him, especially as the gossip of his encounter would spread like wildfire in dry prairie grass.
“Dad, let’s keep all we can from mother?”
“Shore.”
“Well, to begin with, I’ve lost my job.”
Forrest nodded his shaggy head.
“Hartwell fired me.”
“What for?”
“Because my name happened to be Forrest. . . . Malpass dropped in the store. He talked over orders for lumber, etc., for building he expects to do in the spring. Big job. All of a sudden he saw me, and he hit the roof.”
Forrest bent over Clifton with sudden intensity, his great eyes beginning to flare.
“He told Hartwell to fire me or he’d cancel the order.”
“Wal, if that wasn’t low-down!—An’ Hartwell did?”
“No. When he showed yellow I just quit. . . . I made a couple of remarks to Malpass, but at that, dad, I meant to get out of the store to avoid trouble. I started out, backing out, in fact, and of course I kept shooting off my chin. Malpass backed me up against a harness counter. . . . Well, he hit me first, with one of those bone-handled crops. I grabbed up a blacksnake whip and took after him. He pulled a gun. His first shot hit somebody who went down with a yell. Might have killed him, for all I know. Then I kept dodging and cracking him with the whip. And he kept shooting. Finally I whipped the gun out of his hand. He fell, and I beat him till I gave out. . . . Somebody helped me to my car.”
“An’ how often an’ where did he shoot you?” asked Forrest, without emotion.
“One bullet nicked my shoulder. It’s nothing. But I’d rather mother doesn’t know.”
Forrest let out a rolling curse. “Hasn’t this Malpass got it in for you?”
“Sort of looks that way.”
“Why? He’s no Lundeen, an’ he’s never made any target of me. What’s he pick on you for?”
That happened to be the very thing Clifton dared not explain to his father, wherefore he lied.
“Looks damn queer to me,” replied Forrest, dubiously, with his ox-eyes piercing his son. “Reckon you didn’t kill him?”
“No. But I’ll bet he’ll have a little dose of what I’ve had so much.”
“Wal, if he killed somebody it sure strengthens our side. In any case it will stew up the Lundeen-Forrest deal good an’ hot. I’ll go to law.”
“I wouldn’t, dad. We haven’t any money, and we’d only get the worst of it,” advised Clifton.
“Wal, I don’t need any money. There’s a new lawyer come to Albuquerque. He’s young an’ he’s keen. Came out West for his health. I’ve had two conferences with him. An’
he said if I was tellin’ facts he could get my property back.”
“But, dad, how can you prove these facts?” expostulated Clifton.
“Wal, that’s the rub. But this last trick of Malpass’ will help. I’ll go to law.”
“I don’t think you’ve a ghost of a show. Suppose Lundeen did cheat? You were in deals with him. An’ you owed him money. Even a gambling debt is a debt. He got your property. And afterwards they struck silver. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
Forrest shook his head with dogged stubbornness. “Reckon you’ll never see it from my side of the fence. An’ I ain’t doubtin’ the reason.”
“What reason, dad? I’ve got a mind of my own.”
“Yes, an’ so has Virginia Lundeen,” returned Forrest, enigmatically. “I’ll bet I live to see the day somethin’ hatches between you two. But I hope I die before.”
“Dad, I’ve done the best I could do in a rotten situation,” said Clifton, resignedly.
The hum of a swift-running motor car came in at the open window, and what made Clifton note it was that it ceased abruptly. It had stopped outside. He groaned inwardly, sensing calamity. His father got up uneasily, and began to pace the room.
Soon quick footsteps struck Clifton’s ears. Then they sounded heavily on the porch. A powerful hand assailed the door. It swung in, as if irresistibly impelled.
Jed Lundeen stood on the threshold, his dark face and somber eyes indicative of mighty passions all but spent. Stamping in, he closed the door, and seemed to fill the room with his presence.
Clifton sat up. He knew what was coming. His father paled with more than amaze.
“Forrest, there’s shore hell to pay,” he announced, stridently.
“Wal, I’m lookin’ at you,” returned Forrest, in cold, sullen expectation. The mere sight of his old enemy had unleashed his passions.