“Oh!” said the girl.
“That was my high card,” laughed the woman, harshly. “He took it and derided me. I decided right then that I wouldn’t play any more.”
“Then he didn’t send for you?”
“Corrigan did that, dearie.”
“You—you knew Corrigan before—before you came here?”
“You can guess intelligently, can’t you?”
“Corrigan planned it all?”
“All.” Hester watched as the girl bowed her head and sobbed convulsively.
“What a brazen, crafty and unprincipled thing Trevison must think me!”
Hester reached out a hand and laid it on the girl’s. “I—there was a time when I would have done murder to have him think of me as he thinks of you, dearie. He isn’t for me, though, and I can’t spoil any woman’s happiness. There’s little enough—but I’m not going to philosophize. I was going away without telling you this. I don’t know why I am telling it now. I always was a little soft. But if you hadn’t spoken as you did a while ago in that crowd—taking Trevison’s end—I—I think you’d never have known. Somehow, it seemed you deserved him, dearie. And I couldn’t bear to—to think of him facing any more disappointment. He—he took it so—”
The girl looked up, to see the woman’s eyes filling with a luminous mist. A quick conception of what this all meant to the woman thrilled the girl. She got up and walked to the woman’s side. “I’m so sorry, Hester,” she said as her arms stole around the other’s neck.
* * * *
She went out a little later, into the glaring, shimmering sunlight of the morning, her cheeks red, her eyes aglow, her heart racing wildly, to see an engine and a luxurious private car just pulling from the main track to a switch.
“Oh,” she whispered, joyously; “it’s father’s!”
And she ran toward it, tingling with a new-found hope.
In her room at the Castle sat a woman who was finding the world very empty. It held nothing for her except the sad consolation of repentance.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE FIGHT
“The boss is sure a she-wolf at playin’ a lone hand,” growled Barkwell, shortly after dusk, to Jud Weaver, the straw boss. “Seems he thinks his friends is delicate ornaments which any use would bust to smithereens. Here’s his outfit layin’ around, bitin’ their finger nails with ongwee an’ pinin’ away to slivers yearnin’ to get into the big meal-lee, an’ him racin’ an’ tearin’ around the country fightin’ it out by his lonesome. I call it rank selfishness!”
“He sure ought to have give us a chancst to claw the hair outen that damned Corrigan feller!” complained Weaver. “In some ways, though, I’m sorta glad the damned mine was blew up. ‘Firebrand’ would have sure got a-hold of her some day, an’ then we’d be clawin’ at the bowels of the earth instid of galivantin’ around on our cayuses like gentlemen. I reckon things is all for the best.”
The two had come in from the river range ostensibly to confer with Trevison regarding their work, but in reality to satisfy their curiosity over Trevison’s movements. There was a deep current of concern for him under their accusations.
They had found the ranchhouse dark and deserted. But the office door was open and they had entered, prepared supper, ate with a more than ordinary mingling of conversation with their food, and not lighting the lamps had gone out on the gallery for a smoke.
“He ain’t done any sleepin’ to amount to much in the last forty-eight hours, to my knowin’,” remarked Barkwell; “unless he’s done his sleepin’ on the run—an’ that ain’t in no ways a comfortable way. He’s sure to be driftin’ in here, soon.”
“This here country’s goin’ to hell, certain!” declared Weaver, after an hour of silence. “She’s gettin’ too eastern an’ flighty. Railroads an’ dams an’ hotels with bath tubs for every six or seven rooms, an’ resterawnts with filleedegree palms an’ leather chairs an’ slick eats is eatin’ the gizzard outen her. Railroads is all right in their place—which is where folks ain’t got no cayuses to fork an’ therefore has to hoof it—or—or ride the damn railroad.”
“Correct!” agreed Barkwell; “she’s a-goin’ the way Rome went—an Babylone—an’ Cincinnati—after I left. She runs to a pussy-cafe aristocracy—an’ napkins.”
“She’ll be plumb ruined—follerin’ them foreign styles. The Uhmerican people ain’t got no right to adopt none of them new-fangled notions.” Weaver stared glumly into the darkening plains.
They aired their discontent long. Directed at the town it relieved the pressure of their resentment over Trevison’s habit of depending upon himself. For, secretly, both were interested admirers of Manti’s growing importance.
Time was measured by their desires. Sometime before midnight Barkwell got up, yawned and stretched.
“Sleep suits me. If ‘Firebrand’ ain’t reckonin’ on a guardian, I ain’t surprisin’ him none. He’s mighty close-mouthed about his doin’s, anyway.”
“You’re shoutin’. I ain’t never seen a man any stingier about hidin’ away his doin’s. He just nacherly hawgs all the trouble.”
Weaver got up and sauntered to the far end of the gallery, leaning far out to look toward Manti. His sharp exclamation brought Barkwell leaping to his side, and they both watched in perplexity a faint glow in the sky in the direction of the town. It died down as they watched.
“Fire—looks like,” Weaver growled. “We’re always too late to horn in on any excitement.”
“Uh, huh,” grunted Barkwell. He was staring intently at the plains, faintly discernable in the starlight. “There’s horses out there, Jud! Three or four, an’ they’re comin’ like hell!”
They slipped off the gallery into the shadow of some trees, both instinctively feeling of their holsters. Standing thus they waited.
The faint beat of hoofs came unmistakably to them. They grew louder, drumming over the hard sand of the plains, and presently four dark figures loomed out of the night and came plunging toward the gallery. They came to a halt at the gallery edge, and were about to dismount when Barkwell’s voice, cold and truculent, issued from the shadow of the trees:
“What’s eatin’ you guys?”
There was a short, pregnant silence, and then one of the men laughed.
“Who are you?” He urged his horse forward. But he was brought to a quick halt when Barkwell’s voice came again:
“Talk from where you are!”
“That goes,” laughed the man. “Trevison here?”
“What you wantin’ of him?”
“Plenty. We’re deputies. Trevison burned the courthouse and the bank tonight—and killed Braman. We’re after him.”
“Well, he ain’t here.” Barkwell laughed. “Burned the courthouse, did he? An’ the bank? An’ killed Braman? Well, you got to admit that’s a pretty good night’s work. An’ you’re wantin’ him!” Barkwell’s voice leaped; he spoke in short, snappy, metallic sentences that betrayed passion long restrained, breaking his self-control. “You’re deputies, eh? Corrigan’s whelps! Sneaks! Coyotes! Well, you slope—you hear? When I count three, I down you! One! Two! Three!”
His six-shooter stabbed the darkness at the last word. And at his side Weaver’s pistol barked viciously. But the deputies had started at the word “One,” and though Barkwell, noting the scurrying of their horses, cut the final words sharply, the four figures were vague and shadowy when the first pistol shot smote the air. Not a report floated back to the ears of the two men. They watched, with grim pouts on their lips, until the men vanished in the star haze of the plains. Then Barkwell spoke, raucously:
“Well, we’ve broke in the game, Jud. We’re Simon-pure outlaws—like our boss. I got one of them scum—I seen him grab leather. We’ll all get in, now. They’re after our boss, eh? Well, damn ’em, we’ll show ’em! They’s eight of the boys on the south fork. You get ’em, bring ’em here an’ get rifles. I’ll hit the breeze to the basin an’ rustle the others!” He was running at the last
word, and presently two horses raced out of the corral gates, clattered past the bunk-house and were swallowed in the vast, black space.
Half an hour later the entire outfit—twenty men besides Barkwell and Weaver—left the ranchhouse and spread, fan-wise, over the plains west of Manti.
* * * *
They lost all sense of time. Several of them had ridden to Manti, making a round of the places that were still open, but had returned, with no word of Trevison. Corrigan had claimed to have seen him. But then, a man told his questioner, Corrigan claimed Trevison had choked the banker to death. He could believe both claims, or neither. So far as the man himself was concerned, he was not going to commit himself. But if Trevison had done the job, he’d done it well. The seekers after information rode out of Manti on the run. At some time after midnight the entire outfit was grouped near Clay Levins’ house.
They held a short conference, and then Barkwell rode forward and hammered on the door of the cabin.
“We’re wantin’ Clay, ma’am,” said Barkwell in answer to the scared inquiry that filtered through the closed door. “It’s the Diamond K outfit.”
“What do you want him for?”
“We was thinkin’ that mebbe he’d know where ‘Firebrand’ is. ‘Firebrand’ is sort of lost, I reckon.”
The door flew open and Mrs. Levins, like a pale ghost, appeared in the opening. “Trevison and Clay left here tonight. I didn’t look to see what time. Oh, I hope nothing has happened to them!”
They quieted her fears and fled out into the plains again, charging themselves with stupidity for not being more diplomatic in dealing with Mrs. Levins. During the early hours of the morning they rode again to the Diamond K ranchhouse, thinking that perhaps Trevison had slipped by them and returned. But Trevison had not returned, and the outfit gathered in the timber near the house in the faint light of the breaking dawn, disgusted, their horses jaded.
“It’s mighty hard work tryin’ to be an outlaw in this damned dude-ridden country,” wailed the disappointed Weaver. “Outlaws usual have a den or a cave or a mountain fastness, or somethin’, anyhow—accordin’ to all the literchoor I’ve read on the subject. If ‘Firebrand’s’ got one, he’s mighty bashful about mentionin’ it.”
“Oh, Lord!” exclaimed Barkwell, weakly. “My brains is sure ready for the mourners! Where’s ‘Firebrand’? Why, where would you expect a man to be that’d burned up a courthouse an’ a bank an’ salivated a banker? He’d be hidin’ out, wouldn’t he, you mis’able box-head! Would he come driftin’ back to the home ranch, an’ come out when them damn deputies come along, bowin’ an’ scrapin’ an’ sayin’: ‘I’m here, gentlemen—I’ve been waitin’ for you to come an’ try rope on me, so’s you’d be sure to get a good fit!’ Would he? You’re mighty right he—wouldn’t! He’d be populatin’ that old pueblo that he’s been tellin’ me for years would make a good fort!” His horse leaped as he drove the spurs in, cruelly, but at the distance of a hundred yards he was not more than a few feet in advance of the others—and they, disregarding the rules of the game—were trying to pass him.
* * * *
“There ain’t a bit of sense of takin’ any risk,” objected Levins from the security of the communal chamber, as Trevison peered cautiously around a corner of the adobe house. “It’d be just the luck of one of them critters if they’d pot you.”
“I’m not thinking of offering myself as a target for them,” the other laughed. “They’re still there,” he added a minute later as he stepped into the chamber. “Them shooting you as they did, without warning, seems to indicate that they’ve orders to wipe us out, if possible. They’re deputies. I bumped into Corrigan right after I left the bank building, and I suppose he has set them on us.”
“I reckon so. Seems it ain’t possible, though,” Levins added, doubtfully. “They was here before you come. Your horse ain’t takin’ no dust. I reckon you didn’t stop anywheres?”
“At the Bar B.” Trevison made this admission with some embarrassment.
But Levins did not reproach him—he merely groaned, eloquently.
Trevison leaned against the opening of the chamber. His muscles ached; he was in the grip of a mighty weariness. Nature was protesting against the great strain that he had placed upon her. But his jaws set as he felt the flesh of his legs quivering; he grinned the derisive grin of the fighter whose will and courage outlast his physical strength. He felt a pulse of contempt for himself, and mingling with it was a strange elation—the thought that Rosalind Benham had strengthened his failing body, had provided it with the fuel necessary to keep it going for hours yet—as it must. He did not trust himself to yield to his passions as he stood there—that might have caused him to grow reckless. He permitted the weariness of his body to soothe his brain; over him stole a great calm. He assured himself that he could throw it off any time.
But he had deceived himself. Nature had almost reached the limit of effort, and the inevitable slow reaction was taking place. The tired body could be forced on for a while yet, obeying the lethargic impulses of an equally tired brain, but the break would come. At this moment he was oppressed with a sense of the unreality of it all. The pueblo seemed like an ancient city of his dreams; the adobe houses details of a weird phantasmagoria; his adventures of the past forty-eight hours a succession of wild imaginings which he now reviewed with a sort of detached interest, as though he had watched them from afar.
The moonlight shone on him; he heard Levins exclaim sharply: “Your arm’s busted, ain’t it?”
He started, swayed, and caught himself, laughing lowly, guiltily, for he realized that he had almost fallen asleep, standing. He held the arm up to the moonlight, examining it, dropping it with a deprecatory word. He settled against the wall near the opening again.
“Hell!” declared Levins, anxiously, “you’re all in!”
Trevison did not answer. He stole along the outside wall of the adobe house and peered out into the plains. The men were still where they had been when the shot had been fired, and the sight of them brought a cold grin to his face. He backed away from the corner, dropped to his stomach and wriggled his way back to the corner, shoving his rifle in front of him. He aimed the weapon deliberately, and pulled the trigger. At the flash a smothered cry floated up to him, and he drew back, the thud of bullets against the adobe walls accompanying him.
“That leaves seven, Levins,” he said grimly. “Looks like my trip to Santa Fe is off, eh?” he laughed. “Well, I’ve always had a yearning to be besieged, and I’ll make it mighty interesting for those fellows. Do you think you can cover that slope, so they can’t get up there while I’m reconnoitering? It would be certain death for me to stick my head around that corner again.”
At Levins’ emphatic affirmative he was helped to the shelter of a recess, from where he had a view of the slope, though himself protected by a corner of one of the houses; placed a rifle in the wounded man’s hands, and carrying his own, vanished into one of the dark passages that weaved through the pueblo.
He went only a short distance. Emerging from an opening in one of the adobe houses he saw a parapet wall, sadly crumpled in spots, facing the plains, and he dropped to his hands and knees and crept toward it, secreting himself behind it and prodding the wall cautiously with the barrel of his rifle until he found a joint in the stone work where the adobe mud was rotted. He poked the muzzle of the rifle through the crevice, took careful aim, and had the satisfaction of hearing a savage curse in the instant following the flash. He threw himself flat immediately, listening to the spatter and whine of the bullets of the volley that greeted his shot. They kept it up long—but when there was a momentary cessation he crept back to the entrance of the adobe house, entered, followed another passage and came out on the ledge farther along the side of the pueblo. He halted in a dense shadow and looked toward the spot where the men had been. They had vanished.
There was nothing to do but to wait, and he sank behind a huge block of stone in an angle of the ledg
e, noting with satisfaction that he could see the slope that he had set Levins to guard.
“I’m the boss of this fort if I don’t go to sleep,” he told himself grimly as he stretched out. He lay there, watching, while the moonlight faded, while a gray streak in the east slowly widened, presaging the dawn. Stretched flat, his aching muscles welcoming the support of the cool stone of the ledge, he had to fight off the drowsiness that assailed him.
An hour dragged by. He knew the deputies were watching, no doubt having separated to conceal themselves behind convenient boulders that dotted the plains at the foot of the slope. Or perhaps while he had been in the passages of the pueblo, changing his position, some of them might have stolen to the numerous crags and outcroppings of rock at the base of the pueblo. They might now be massing for a rush up the slope. But he doubted they would risk the latter move, for they knew that he must be on the alert, and they had cause to fear his rifle.
Once he rested his head on his extended right arm, and the contact was so agreeable that he allowed it to remain there—long. He caught himself in time; in another second he would have been too late. He saw the figure of a man on the slope a foot or two below the crest. He was flat on his stomach, no doubt having crept there during the minutes that Trevison had been enjoying his rest, and at the instant Trevison saw him he was raising his rifle, directing it at the recess where Levins had been left, on guard.
Trevison was wide awake now, and his marksmanship as deadly as ever. He waited until the man’s rifle came to a level. Then his own weapon spat viciously. The man rose to his knees, reeling. Another rifle cracked—from the recess where Levins was concealed, this time—and the man sank to the dust of the slope, rolling over and over until he reached the bottom, where he stretched out and lay prone. There was a shout of rage from a section of rock-strewn level near the foot of the slope, and Trevison’s lips curled with satisfaction. The second shot had told him that a fear he had entertained momentarily was unfounded—Levins was apparently quite alive.
The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack Page 85