“What do you mean by ‘again’?”
“I heard that you’d broke your engagement.”
“Who told you that?” Ruth’s voice was sharp, for she thought Randerson perhaps had been talking.
Hagar blushed crimson and resorted to a lie. “My dad told me. He said he’d heard it.”
“Well, it isn’t true,” Ruth told her firmly; “I have never broken with Mr. Masten. And we are to be married soon.”
She turned, for she was slightly indignant at this evidence that the people in the country near her had been meddling with her affairs, and she did not see the ashen pallor that quickly spread over Hagar’s face. Had Ruth been looking she must have suspected the girl’s secret. But it took her some time to mount her pony, and then looking back she waved her hand at Hagar, who was smiling, though with pale and drawn face.
Hagar stood rigid on the porch until she could no longer see Ruth. Then she sank to the edge of the porch, gathered the dog Nig into her arms, and buried her face in his unkempt shoulder. Rocking back and forth in a paroxysm of impotent passion, she spoke to the dog:
“I can’t kill him now, Nig, he’s goin’ to marry her! Oh Nig, Nig, what am I goin’ to do now?” And then she looked up scornfully, her eyes flashing. “She won’t let Rex be a friend of hers, because he’s killed two men that God had ought to have killed a long while ago! But she’ll marry Masten—who ain’t fit to be Rex’s dog. She won’t, Nig! Why—?”
She got up and started for the door. But nearing it, she sank upon the threshold, crying and moaning, while Nig, perplexed at this conduct on the part of his mistress, stood off a little and barked loudly at her.
CHAPTER XX
THE BUBBLE—DREAMS
Loping his pony through the golden haze of the afternoon, Randerson came over the plains toward the Flying W ranchhouse, tingling with anticipation. The still small voice to which he had listened in the days before Ruth’s coming had not lied to him; Fate, or whatever power ruled the destinies of lovers, had made her for him. Man’s interference might delay the time of possession, his thoughts were of Masten for a brief instant, and his lips straightened, but in the end there could be no other outcome.
But though he was as certain of her as he was that the sun would continue to rule the days, he kept his confidence from betraying his thoughts, and when at last he rode slowly down along the corral fence, past the bunkhouse and the other buildings, to the edge of the porch, sitting quietly in the saddle and looking down at Ruth, who was sitting in a rocker, sewing, his face was grave and his manner that of unconscious reverence.
Ruth had been on the porch for more than an hour. And as on the day when he had come riding in in obedience to her orders to teach her the mysteries of the six-shooter, she watched him today—with anticipation, but with anticipation of a different sort, in which was mingled a little regret, but burdened largely with an eagerness to show him, unmistakably, that he was not the sort of man that she could look upon seriously. And so when she saw him ride up to the porch and bring his pony to a halt, she laid her sewing in her lap, folded her hands over it, and watched him with outward calmness, though with a vague sorrow gripping her. For in spite of what he had done, she still felt the man’s strong personality, his virility—the compelling lure of him. She experienced a quick, involuntary tightening of the muscles when she heard his voice—for it intensified the regret in her—low, drawling, gentle:
“I have come in to report to you, ma’am.”
“Very well,” she said calmly. She leaned back in her chair, looking at him, feeling a quick pulse of pity for him, for as she sat there and waited, saying nothing further, she saw a faint red steal into his cheeks. She knew that he had expected an invitation to join her on the porch; he was entitled to that courtesy because of her treatment of him on the occasion of his previous visit; and that when the invitation did not come he could not but feel deeply the embarrassment of the situation.
The faint glow died out of his face, and the lines of his lips grew a trifle more firm. This reception was not the one he had anticipated, but then there were moods into which people fell. She was subject to moods, too, for he remembered the night she had hurt her ankle—how she had “roasted” him. And his face grew long with an inward mirth. She would ask him to get off his horse, presently, and then he was going to tell her of his feelings on that night.
But she did not invite him to alight. On the contrary, she maintained a silence that was nearly severe. He divined that this mood was to continue and instead of getting off his pony he swung crossways in the saddle.
“We’ve got the cattle all out of the hills an’ the timber, an’ we’re workin’ down the crick toward here,” he told her. “There ain’t nothin’ unusual happened, except”—and here he paused for a brief instant—“that I had to shoot a man. It was Watt Kelso, from over Lazette way. I hired him two weeks before.”
“I heard of it,” she returned steadily, her voice expressionless.
“I hated like poison to do it. But I had no choice. He brought it on himself.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” she said flatly. She looked at him now with the first flash of emotion that she had allowed him to see. “If killing people is your trade, and you choose to persist in it, I don’t see how we are to stop you.”
He looked sharply at her, but his voice was low and even. “I don’t shoot folks for the fun of it, ma’am.”
“No?”—with scornful disbelief. “Well, I presume it doesn’t make much difference. Dead people wouldn’t appreciate the joke, anyway.”
His face was serious now, for he could see that she was deeply disturbed over the shooting.
“I reckon you wouldn’t believe me, no matter how hard I talked,” he said. “You’d have your own opinion. It sure does look bad for me—havin’ to plug two guys in one season. An’ I don’t blame you for feelin’ like you do about it. But I’ve got this to say,” he went on earnestly. “Kelso come to the outfit, lookin’ for trouble. I’d had a run-in with him a few years ago. An’ I shot him—in the arm. I thought it was all over. But along comes Kelso, with his mustache shaved off so’s I wouldn’t know him—which I did. He asked me for a job, an’ I give it to him—hopin’. But hopes—”
“If you knew him, why did you give him a job?” she interrupted. “It might have saved you shooting him.”
“If he was wantin’ to force trouble he’d have done it sooner or later, ma’am.”
“Well?” she said, interested in spite of herself.
“He waited two weeks for a chance. I didn’t give him any chance. An’ then, one night, after Red Owen had been cuttin’ up some monkey shines, he talked fresh an’ pulled his gun. He was a regular gunfighter, ma’am; he’d been hired to put me out of business.”
There was an appeal in his eyes that did not show in his voice; and it would be all the appeal that he would make. Looking fixedly at him, she became certain of that.
“Do you know who hired him?”
There was that in her tone which told him that he might now make his case strong—might even convince her, and thus be restored to that grace from which he, plainly, had fallen. But he was a claimant for her hand, he had told her that he would not press that claim until she broke her engagement with Masten, and if he now told her that it had been the Easterner who had hired Kelso to kill him, he would have felt that she would think he had taken advantage of the situation, selfishly. And he preferred to take his chance, slender though it seemed to be.
“He didn’t tell me.”
“Then you only suspected it?”
He was silent for an instant. Then: “A man told me he was hired.”
“Who told you?”
“I ain’t mentionin’, ma’am.” He could not tell her that Blair had told him, after he had told Blair not to mention it.
She smiled with cold incredulity, and he knew his chance had gone.
But he was not prepared for her next words. In her horror for his deed, she had ceased
to respect him; she had ceased to believe him; his earnest protestations of innocence of wantonness she thought were hypocritical—an impression strengthened by his statement that Kelso had been hired to kill him, and by his inability to show evidence to prove it. A shiver of repulsion, for him and his killings, ran over her.
“I believe you are lying, Randerson,” she said, coldly.
He started, stiffened, and then stared, at her, his face slowly whitening. She had said words that, spoken by a man, would have brought about another of those killings that horrified her. She watched him, sensing for the first time something of the terrible emotions that sometimes beset men in tense situations but entirely unconscious of the fact that she had hurt him far more than any bullet could have hurt him.
Yet, aside from the whiteness of his face, he took the fatal thrust without a sign. His dreams, that had seemed to be so real to him while riding over the plains toward the ranchhouse, had been bubbles that she had burst with a breath. He saw the wrecks of them go sailing into the dust at his feet.
He had gazed downward, and he did not look up at once. When he did, his gaze rested, as though by prearrangement, on her. Her eyes were still cold, still disbelieving, and he drew himself slowly erect.
“I reckon you’ve said enough, ma’am,” he told her quietly, though his voice was a trifle hoarse. “A man couldn’t help but understand that.” He wheeled Patches and took off his hat to her. “I’ll send Red Owen to see you, ma’am,” he added. “I can recommend Red.”
She was on her feet, ready to turn to go into the house, for his manner of receiving her insult had made her feel infinitely small and mean. But at his words she halted and looked at him.
“Why should you send Red Owen to see me? What do you mean?” she demanded.
“Why, you’ve made it pretty plain, ma’am,” he answered with a low laugh, turning his head to look back at her. “I reckon you wouldn’t expect me to go on workin’ for you, after you’ve got so you don’t trust me any more. Red will make you a good range boss.”
He urged Patches on. But she called to him, a strange regret filling her, whitening her cheeks, and Patches came again to a halt.
“I—I don’t want Red Owen for a range boss,” she declared with a gulp. “If you are determined to quit, I—I suppose I cannot prevent it. But you can stay a week or two, can’t you—until I can get somebody I like?”
He smiled gravely. “Why, I reckon I can, ma’am,” he answered respectfully. “There won’t be no awful hurry about it. I wouldn’t want to disconvenience you.”
And then he was off into the deepening haze of the coming evening, riding tall and rigid, with never a look behind to show her that he cared.
Standing in the doorway of the house, the girl watched him, both hands at her breast, her eyes wide, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed, until the somber shadows of twilight came down and swallowed him. Then, oppressed with a sudden sense of the emptiness of the world, she went into the house.
CHAPTER XXI
ONE TOO MANY
To no man in the outfit did Randerson whisper a word concerning the result of his visit to the ranchhouse—that he would cease to be the Flying W range boss just as soon as Ruth Harkness could find a man to replace him. He went his way, thoughtful, silent, grave, filled with somber thoughts and dark passions that sometimes flashed in his eyes, but taking no man into his confidence. And yet they knew that all was not well with him. For in other days his dry humor, his love of wholesome fun, had shortened many an hour for them, and his serenity, in ordinary difficulties, had become a byword to them. And so they knew that the thing which was troubling him now was not ordinary.
They thought they knew what was troubling him. Kelso had been hired to take his life. Kelso had lost his own in the effort. That might have seemed to end it. But it had become known that Kelso had been a mere tool in the hands of an unscrupulous plotter, and until the plotter had been sent on the way that Kelso had gone there could be no end. Already there were whispers over the country because of Randerson’s delay.
Of course, they would wait a reasonable time; they would give him his “chance.” But they did not know what was holding him back—that deep in his heart lurked a hope that one day he might still make his dreams come true, and that if he killed Masten, Ruth’s abhorrence of him and his deeds, already strong, could never be driven from her. If he lost this hope, Masten was doomed.
And during the second week following his latest talk with Ruth, the girl unconsciously killed it. He met her in the open, miles from the ranchhouse, and he rode toward her, deeply repentant, resolved to brave public scorn by allowing Masten to live.
He smiled gravely at her when he came close—she waiting for him, looking at him, unmoved. For she had determined to show him that she had meant what she had said to him.
“Have you found a new range boss, ma’am?” he said gently. He had hoped that she might answer lightly, and then he would have known that she would forgive him, in time.
But her chin went up and she looked coldly at him. “You will be able to leave the Flying W shortly, Randerson,” she said. “I am going to leave such matters for Mr. Masten to look after.”
She urged her pony away and left him, staring somberly after her.
Two hours later he was riding down the declivity toward Chavis’ shack, in the basin. He had ridden first to the outfit, and had talked with Owen. And his appearance had been such that when he left the foreman the latter sought out Blair.
“If I don’t miss my reckonin’, Masten’s goin’ to get his’n today.”
Randerson rode, straight as Patches could carry him, to the door of Chavis’ shack. No one appeared to greet him, but he had seen horses, saddled, hitched to the corral fence, and he knew that some one was about. Chavis, Kester, and Hilton were inside the shack, and when they heard him ride up, they came to the door, curious. And when they saw him they stiffened and stood rigid, with not a finger moving, for they had seen men, before, meditating violence, and they saw the signs in Randerson’s chilled and narrowed eyes, and in the grim set of his lips.
His lips moved; his teeth hardly parted to allow the words to come through them. They writhed through:
“Where’s Masten?”
Three pairs of lungs sighed audibly in process of deflation.
It was Chavis who answered; the other two looked at him when the question came, silently. Chavis would have lied, but the light in Randerson’s eyes warned him not to trifle, and the truth came from his lips:
“Masten’s gone to the Flyin’ W ranchhouse.”
“I reckon that’s all,” said Randerson shortly. “I’m thankin’ you.”
He rode away, grinning coldly back at them, still watchful, for he knew Chavis, guiding his pony toward the declivity on the other side of the basin. The three men watched him until the pony had climbed to the mesa. Then Chavis turned to the others.
“I reckon he’s goin’ to see Masten about that Kelso deal,” he said. “Somebody ought to put Masten wise.”
Kester grinned. “It’s bound to come,” he commented. “Let’s finish our game; it is your deal.”
On the mesa, Randerson urged Patches along the edge, over the trail that Ruth had taken when, months before, she had come upon Chavis and Kester at the declivity.
“Nothin’ would have happened, if it hadn’t been for Masten,” he told himself as he rode away. “Pickett wouldn’t have got fresh, an’ Kelso would have kept himself mighty shady. We’d have fought it out, square—me an’ Masten. I reckon I didn’t kill Pickett and Kelso; it was Masten that done it.”
He came, after a while, to the rock upon whick he had found Ruth lying on the night of the accident. And he sat and looked long at the grass plot where he had laid her when she had fainted.
“She looked like an angel, layin’ there,” he reminded himself, his eyes eloquent. “She’s too blamed good for that sneakin’ dude.”
He came upon the ruined boot, and memories grimmed his lip
s. “It’s busted—like my dreams,” he said, surveying it, ripped and rotting. “I reckon this is as good a place as any,” he added, looking around him.
And he dismounted, led Patches out of sight behind some high bushes that grew far back from the rocks; came back, stretched himself out on the grass plot, pulled his hat over his eyes and yielded to his gloomy thoughts. But after he had lain there a while, he spoke aloud:
“He’ll come this way, if he comes at all.”
With the memory of Randerson’s threat always before him, “if I ever lay eyes on you ag’in, I’ll go gunnin’ for you,” Masten rode slowly and watchfully. For he had felt that the words had not been idle ones, and it had been because of them that he had hired Kelso. And he went toward the ranchhouse warily, much relieved when he passed the bunkhouse, to find that Randerson was apparently absent. He intended to make this one trip, present to Ruth his excuses for staying away, and then go back to Chavis’ shack, there to remain out of Randerson’s sight, until he could devise another plan that, he hoped, would put an end to the cowpuncher who was forever tormenting him.
His excuses had been accepted by Ruth, for she was in the mood to restore him to that spot in her heart that Randerson had come very near to occupy. She listened to him calmly, and agreed, without conscious emotion, to his proposal that they ride, on the Monday following, to Lazette, to marry. She had reopened the subject a little wearily, for now that Randerson was hopeless she wanted to have the marriage over with as soon as possible. She saw now, that it had been the vision of Randerson, always prominent in her mind, that had caused her to put off the date of her marriage to Masten when he had mentioned it before. That vision had vanished now, and she did not care how soon she became Masten’s wife.
On the porch of the ranchhouse they had reached the agreement, and triumphantly Masten rode away into the darkness, foreseeing the defeat of the man whom he had feared as a possible rival, seeing, too—if he could not remove him entirely—his dismissal from the Flying W and his own ascent to power.
The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack Page 58