The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack

by Charles Alden Seltzer

  A great sigh arose as Parsons finished and was drawn down, his hat off, his hair ruffled, his eyes gleaming with the strength of the terrible frenzy he was laboring under. The crowd muttered; voices rose sharply; there was an impatient movement; a concerted stiffening of bodies and a long pause, as of preparation.

  Aroused, seething with passion, with a vindictive desire for action, swift and ruthless, the crowd waited—waited for a leader. And while the pause and the mutterings continued, the leader came.

  It was the big, grim-faced Bothwell, at the head of the Arrow outfit. With his horse in a dead run, the other horses of the outfit crowding him close, Bothwell brought his horse to a sliding halt at the edge of the crowd.

  Bothwell’s eyes were ablaze with the light of battle; and he stood in his stirrups, looming high above the heads of the men around him, and shouted:

  “Where’s my boss—Squint Taylor?” And before anyone could answer—“Where’s that damned coyote Carrington? Where’s Danforth? What’s wrong here?”

  It was Parsons who answered him. Parsons, again clambering into the saddle from which he had spoken, now shrieking shrilly:

  “It’s Carrington’s work! He abducted Marion Harlan, my niece. He’s a scoundrel and a thief, and he is trying to ruin this town!”

  There was a short silence as Parsons slid again to the ground, and then the man growled profanely:

  “Let’s run the whole bunch out of town! Start somethin’, Bothwell!”

  Bothwell laughed, a booming bellow of grim mirth that stirred the crowd to movement. “We’ve been startin’ somethin’! This outfit is out for a clean-up! There’s been too much sneakin’ an’ murderin’; an’ too many fake warrants flyin’ around, with a bunch like them Keats guys sent out to kill innocent men. Damn their hides! Let’s get ’em—all of ’em!”

  He flung his horse around and leaped it between the other horses of the Arrow outfit, sending it straight to the doors of the city hall. Closing in behind him, the other members of the Arrow outfit followed; and behind them the crowd, now able to center its passion upon something definite, rushed forward—a yelling, muttering, turbulent mass of men intent to destroy the things which the common conscience loathes.

  It seemed a lashing sea of retribution to Danforth and Judge Littlefield, who were in the mayor’s office, a little group of their political adherents around them. At the first sign of a disturbance, Danforth had attempted to gather his official forces with the intention of preserving order. But only these few had responded, and they, white-faced, feeling their utter impotence, were standing in the room, terror-stricken, when Bothwell and the men of the Arrow outfit, with the crowd yelling behind them, entered the door of the office.

  * * * *

  The little, broken-nosed man had done well to leave the vicinity of the big house before Taylor arrived there. For when Taylor emerged from the front room, in which the light still burned, his soul was still in the grip of a lust to slay.

  He was breathing fast when he emerged from the house, for what he saw there had puzzled him—the guard lying on the floor and Marion gone—and he stood for an instant on the porch, scanning the clearing and the woods around the house with blazing eyes, his guns in hand.

  The silence around the house was deep and solemn now, and over Taylor stole a conviction that Carrington had sent Marion to Dawes in charge of some of his men; having divined that he would come for her. But Taylor did not act upon the conviction instantly. He ran to the stable, stormed through it—and the other buildings in the cluster around the ranchhouse; and finding no trace of men or girl, he at last leaped on Spotted Tail and sent him thundering over the trail toward Dawes.

  When he arrived in town a swaying, shouting, shooting mob jammed the streets. He brought his horse to a halt on the edge of the crowd that packed the street in front of the city hall, and demanded to know what was wrong.

  The man shouted at him:

  “Hell’s to pay! Carrington abducted Marion Harlan, an’ that little guy—Parsons—rescued her. An’ Parsons made a speech, tellin’ folks what Carrington an’ Danforth an’ all the rest of the sneakin’ coyotes have done, an’ we’re runnin’ the scum out of town!” And then, before Taylor could ask about the girl, the man raised his voice to a shrill yell:

  “It’s Squint Taylor, boys! Squint Taylor! Stand back an’ let ol’ Squint take a hand in this here deal!”

  There was a wild, concerted screech of joy. It rose like the shrieking of a gale; it broke against the buildings that fringed the street; it echoed and reechoed with terrific resonance back and forth over the heads of the men in the crowd. It penetrated into the cozy room of a private dwelling, where sat a girl who started at the sound and sat erect, her face paling, her eyes, glowing with a light that made the motherly looking woman say to her, softly:

  “Ah, then you do believe in him, my dear!”

  * * * *

  It was when the noise and the tumult had subsided that Taylor went to her. For he had been told where he might find her by men who smiled sympathetically at his back as he walked down the street toward the private dwelling.

  She was at the door as soon as he, for she had been watching from one of the front windows, and had seen him come toward the house.

  And when the motherly looking woman saw them in each other’s arms, the moon and the light from within the house revealing them to her, and to the men in the crowd who watched from the street, she smiled gently. What the two said to each other will never be known, for their words were drowned in the cheer that rose from hoarse-voiced men who knew that words are sometimes futile and unnecessary.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  TRIUMPH AT LAST

  A month later, Taylor walked to the front door of the Arrow ranchhouse and stood on the threshold looking out over the great sweep of green-brown plain that reached eastward to Dawes.

  A change had come over Taylor. His eyes had a gentler light in them—as though they had seen things that had taken the edge off his sterner side; and there was an atmosphere about him that created the impression that his thoughts were at this moment far from violence.

  “Mr. Taylor!” said a voice behind him—from the front room. There had been an undoubted accent on the “Mr.” And the voice was one that Taylor knew well; the sound of it deepened the gentle gleam in his eyes.

  “Mrs. Taylor,” he answered, imparting to the “Mrs.” exactly the emphasis the voice had placed on the other.

  There was a laugh behind him, and then the voice again, slightly reproachful: “Oh, that sounds so awfully formal, Squint!”

  “Well,” he said, “you started it.”

  “I like ‘Squint’ better,” said the voice.

  “I’m hoping you keep on liking Squint all the days of your life,” he returned.

  “I was speaking of names,” declared the voice.

  “Doan’ yo’ let her fool yo’, Mr. Squint!” came another voice, “fo’ she think a heap mo’ of you than she think of yo’ name!”

  “Martha!” said the first voice in laughing reproof, “I vow I shall send you away some day!”

  And then there was a clumping step on the floor, and Martha’s voice reached the door as she went out of the house through the kitchen:

  “I’s goin’ to the bunkhouse to expostulate wif that lazy Bud Hemmingway. He tole me this mawnin’ he’s gwine feed them hawgs—an’ he ain’t done it!”

  And then Mrs. Taylor appeared at the door and placed an arm around her husband’s neck, drawing his head over to her and kissing him.

  She looked much like the Marion Harlan who had left the Arrow on a night about a month before, though there was a more eloquent light in her eyes, and a tenderness had come over her that made her whole being radiate.

  “Don’t you think you had better get ready to go to Dawes, dear?” she suggested.

  “I like that better than ‘Squint’ even,” he grinned.

  For a long time they stood in the doorway very close together. And then Mrs
. Taylor looked up with grave eyes at her husband.

  “Won’t you please let me look at all of father’s note to you, Squint?” she asked.

  “That can’t be done,” he grinned at her. “For,” he added, “that day after I let you read part of it I burnt it. It’s gone—like a lot of other things that are not needed now!”

  “But what did it say—that part that you wouldn’t let me read?” she insisted.

  “It said,” he quoted, “‘I want you to marry her, Squint.’ And I have done so—haven’t I?”

  “Was that all?” she persisted.

  “I’d call that plenty!” he laughed.

  “Well,” she sighed, “I suppose that will have to be sufficient. But get ready, dear; they will be waiting for you!” She left him and went into a room, from where she called back to him: “It won’t take me long to dress.” And then, after an interval: “Where do you suppose Uncle Elam went?”

  He scowled out of the doorway; then turned and smiled. “He didn’t say. And he lost no time saying farewell to Dawes, once he got his hands on the money Carrington left.” Taylor’s smile became a laugh, low and full of amusement.

  Shortly Mrs. Taylor appeared, attired in a neat riding-habit, and Taylor donned coat and hat, and they went arm in arm to the corral gate, where their horses were standing, having been roped, saddled, and bridled by the “lazy” Bud Hemmingway, who stood outside the bunkhouse grinning at them.

  “Well, good luck!” Bud called after them as they rode toward Dawes.

  Lingering much on the way, and stopping at the Mullarky cabin, they finally reached the edge of town and were met by Neil Norton, who grinned widely when he greeted them.

  Norton waved a hand at Dawes. As in another time, Dawes was arrayed in holiday attire, swathed in a riot of color—starry bunting, flags, and streamers, with hundreds of Japanese lanterns suspended festoonlike across the streets. And now, as Taylor and the blushing, moist-eyed woman at his side rode down the street, a band on a platform near the station burst into music, its brazen-tongued instruments drowning the sound of cheering.

  “We got that from Lazette,” grinned Norton. “We had to have some noise! As I told you the other day,” he went on, speaking loudly, so that Taylor could hear him above the tumult, “it is all fixed up. Judge Littlefield stayed on the job here, because he promised to be good. He hadn’t really done anything, you know. And after we made Danforth and the five councilmen resign that night, and saw them aboard the east-bound the next morning, we made Littlefield wire the governor about what had happened. Littlefield went to the capital shortly afterward and told the governor some things that astonished him. And the governor appointed you to fill Danforth’s unexpired term. But, of course, that was only an easy way for the governor to surrender. So everything is lovely.”

  Norton paused, out of breath.

  And Taylor smiled at his wife. “Yes,” he said, as he took her arm, “this is a mighty good little old world—if you treat it right.”

  “And if you stay faithful,” added the moist-eyed woman.

  “And if you fall in love,” supplemented Taylor.

  “And when the people of a town want to honor you,” added Norton significantly.

  And then, arm in arm, followed by Norton, Taylor and his wife rode forward, their horses close together, toward the great crowd of people that jammed the street around the band-stand, their voices now raised above the music that blared forth from the brazen instruments.

  THE RANGE BOSS

  Originally published in 1916.

  CHAPTER I

  AT CALAMITY CROSSING

  Getting up the shoulder of the mesa was no easy job, but judging from the actions and appearance of wiry pony and rider it was a job that would be accomplished. For part of the distance, it is true, the man thought it best to dismount, drive the pony ahead of him, and follow on foot. At length, however, they reached the top of the mesa, and after a breathing spell the man mounted and rode across the table-land.

  A short lope brought pony and rider to a point where the mesa sloped down again to meet a plain that stretched for miles, to merge into some foothills. A faint trail came from somewhere through the foothills, wound over the plain, and followed a slope that descended to a river below the rider, crossed the stream, led over a level, up another slope, to another plain, and so away into the distance.

  Up and down the river the water ran deeply in a canyon, the painted buttes that flanked it lending an appearance of constriction to its course, but at the crossing it broadened formidably and swirled splashingly around numerous rocks that littered its course.

  The man’s gaze rested briefly on the river and the crossing.

  “She’s travelin’ some, this mornin’,” he said aloud, mentally referring to the water. “I reckon that mud over there must be hub deep on a buckboard,” he added, looking at the level on the opposite side of the crossing. “I’d say, if anybody was to ask me, that last night’s rain has made Calamity some risky this mornin’—for a buckboard.” He drew out a silver timepiece and consulted it with grave deliberation. “It’s eleven. They’d be due about now—if the Eight O’clock was on time—which she’s never been knowed to be.” He returned the timepiece to the pocket and rode along the edge of the mesa away from the river, his gaze concentrated at the point where the trail on the plains below him vanished into the distant foothills. A little later he again halted the pony, swung crossways in the saddle and rolled a cigarette, and while smoking and watching drew out two pistols, took out the cylinders, replaced them, and wiped and polished the metal until the guns glittered brightly in the swimming sunlight. He considered them long before restoring them to their places, doubt in his gaze. “I reckon she’s been raised a lot different,” was his mental conclusion.

  “But anyway, I reckon there ain’t nothin’ in Poughkeepsie’s name to give anyone comin’ from there any right to put on airs.” He tossed the butt of the cigarette away and frowned, continuing his soliloquy: “The Flyin’ W ain’t no place for a lady. Jim Pickett an’ Tom Chavis ain’t fit for no lady to look at—let alone talkin’ to them. There’s others, too. Now, if she was comin’ to the Diamond H—why, shucks! Mebbe she wouldn’t think I’m any better than Pickett an’ Chavis! If she looks anything like her picture, though, she’s got sense. An’—”

  He saw the pony flick its ears erect, and he followed its gaze to see on the plain’s trail, far over near where it melted into the foothills, a moving speck crawling toward him.

  He swung back into the saddle and smilingly patted the pony’s neck.

  “You was expectin’ them too, wasn’t you, Patches? I reckon you’re a right knowin’ horse!”

  He wheeled the pony and urged it slowly back over the mesa, riding along near the edge until he reached a point behind a heavy post-oak thicket, where he pulled the pony to a halt. From here he would not be observed from the trail on the plains, and he again twisted in the saddle, sagging against the high pommel and drawing the wide brim of his hat well over his eyes, shading them as he peered intently at the moving speck.

  He watched for half an hour, while the speck grew larger in his vision, finally assuming definite shape. He recognized the buckboard and the blacks that were pulling it; they had been inseparable during the past two years—for Bill Harkness, the Flying W owner, would drive no others after his last sickness had seized him, the sickness which had finally finished him some months before. The blacks were coming rapidly, shortening the distance with the tireless lope that the plains’ animal uses so effectively, and as they neared the point on the mesa where the rider had stationed himself, the latter parted the branches of the thicket and peered between them, his eyes agleam, the color deepening in his face.

  “There’s four of them in the buckboard,” he said aloud, astonished, as the vehicle came nearer; “an’ Wes Vickers ain’t with them! Now, what do you think of that! Wes told me there’d be only the girl an’ her aunt an’ uncle. It’s a man, too, an’ he’s doin�
�� the drivin’! I reckon Wes got drunk an’ they left him behind.” He reflected a moment, watching with narrowed eyes, his brows in a frown. “That guy doin’ the drivin’ is a stranger, Patches,” he said. “Why, it’s mighty plain. Four in the buckboard, with them bags an’ trunks an’ things, makes a full house, an’ there wasn’t no room for Wes!” He grinned.

  The buckboard swung close to the foot of the slope below him, and he eagerly scrutinized the occupants, his gaze lingering long on the girl on the seat beside the driver. She had looked for one flashing instant toward him, her attention drawn, no doubt, by the fringing green of the mesa, and he had caught a good glimpse of her face. It was just like the picture that Wes Vickers had surreptitiously brought to him one day some weeks before, after Harkness’ death, when, in talking with Wes about the niece who was now the sole owner of the Flying W, and who was coming soon to manage her property, he had evinced curiosity. He had kept the picture, in spite of Vickers’ remonstrances, and had studied it many times. He studied it now, after the passage of the buckboard, and was supremely pleased, for the likeness did not flatter her.

  Displeasure came into his eyes, though, when he thought of the driver. He was strangely disturbed over the thought that the driver had accompanied her from the East. He knew the driver was an Easterner, for no Westerner would ever rig himself out in such an absurd fashion—the cream-colored Stetson with the high pointed crown, extra wide brim with nickel spangles around the band, a white shirt with a broad turndown collar and a flowing colored tie—blue; a cartridge belt that fitted snugly around his waist, yellow with newness, so that the man on the mesa almost imagined he could hear it creak when its owner moved; corduroy riding-breeches, tight at the knees, and glistening boots with stiff tops. And—here the observer’s eyes gleamed with derision—as the buckboard passed, he had caught a glimpse of a nickeled spur, with long rowels, on one of the ridiculous boots.

  He chuckled, his face wreathing in smiles as he urged the pony along the edge of the mesa, following the buckboard. He drew up presently at a point just above the buckboard, keeping discreetly behind some brush that he might not be seen, and gravely considered the vehicle and its occupants. The buckboard had stopped at the edge of the water, and the blacks were drinking. The girl was talking; the watcher heard her voice distinctly.