“YOU MEN ARE BLIND. CORRIGAN IS A CROOK WHO WILL STOP AT NOTHING.”
“YOU MEN ARE BLIND. CORRIGAN IS A CROOK WHO WILL STOP AT NOTHING.”
“Trevison did not kill Braman—it was Corrigan. Corrigan was in my room in theCastlelast night just after dark. When he left, I watched him from my window, after putting out the light. He had threatened to kill Braman. I watched him cross the street and go around to the rear of the bank building. There was a light in the rear room of the bank. After a while Braman and Corrigan entered the banking room. The light from the rear room shone on them for an instant and I recognized them. They were at the safe. When they went out they left the safe door open. After a while the light went out and I saw Corrigan come from around the rear of the building, recross the street and come into theCastle. You men are blind. Corrigan is a crook who will stop at nothing. If you let him injure Trevison for a crime that Trevison did not commit you deserve to be robbed!”
Lefingwell swung her down from his shoulder.
“I reckon that cinches it, boys!” he bellowed over the heads of the men nearest him. “There ain’t nothin’ plainer! If we stand for this we’re a bunch of cowardly coyotes that ain’t fit to look Trevison in the face! I’m goin’ to help him! Who’s comin’ along?”
A chorus of shouts drowned his last words; the crowd was in motion, swift, with definite purpose. It melted, streaming off in all directions, like the sweep of water from a bursted dam. It broke at the doors of the buildings; it sought the stables. Men bearing rifles appeared in the street, mounting horses and congregating in front of theBelmont, where Lefingwell had gone. Other men, on the board sidewalk and in the dust of the street, were running, shouting, gesticulating. In an instant the town had become a bedlam of portentous force; it was the first time in its history that the people of Manti had looked with collective vision, and the girl reeled against the iron wall of the shed, appalled at the resistless power that had been set in motion. On a night when she sat on the porch of the Bar B ranchhouse she had looked toward Manti, thrilled over a pretty mental fancy. She had thought it all a game—wondrous, joyous, progressive. She had neglected to associate justice with it then—the inexorable rule of fairness under which every player of the game must bow. She brought it into use now, felt the spirit of it, saw the dire tragedy that its perversion portended, groaned, and covered her face with her hands.
She looked around after a while. She saw Judge Lindman walking across the street toward theCastle,supported by two other men. A third followed; she did not know him, but Corrigan would have recognized him as the hotel clerk who had grown confidential upon a certain day. The girl heard his voice as he followed after the Judge and the others—raucous, vindictive:
“We need men like Trevison in this town. We can get along without any Corrigans.”
She heard a voice behind her and she turned, swiftly, to see Hester Harvey walking toward her. She would have avoided the meeting, but she saw that Hester was intent on speaking and she drew herself erect, bowing to her with cold courtesy as the woman stopped within a step of her and smiled.
“You look ready to flop into hysterics, dearie! Won’t you come over to my room with me and have something to brace you up? A cup of tea?” she added with a laugh as Rosalind looked quickly at her. She did not seem to notice the stiffening of the girl’s body, but linked her arm within her own and began to walk across the street. The girl was racked with emotion over the excitement of the morning, the dread of impending violence, and half frantic with anxiety over Trevison’s safety. Hester’s offense against her seemed vague and far, and very insignificant, relatively. She yearned to exchange confidences with somebody—anybody, and this woman, even though she were what she thought her, had a capacity for feeling, for sympathy. And she was very, very tired of it all.
“It was fierce, wasn’t it?” said Hester a few minutes later in the privacy of her room, as she balanced her cup and watched Rosalind as the girl ate, hungrily.“These sagebrush rough-necks out here will make Corrigan hump himself to keep out of their way. But he deserves it, the crook!”
The girl looked curiously at the other, trying hard to reconcile the vindictiveness of these words and the woman’s previous action in giving damaging testimony against Corrigan, with the significant fact that Corrigan had been in her room the night before, presumably as a guest. Hester caught the look and laughed. “Yes, dearie, he deserves it. How much do you know of what has been going on here?”
“Very little, I am afraid.”
“Less than that, I suspect. I happen to know considerable, and I am going to tell you about it. My trip out here has been a sort of a wild-goose chase. I thought I wanted Trevison, but I’ve discovered I’m not badly hurt by his refusal to resume our old relations.”
The girl gasped and almost dropped her cup, setting it down slowly afterward and staring at her hostess with doubting, fearing, incredulous eyes.
“Yes, dearie,” laughed the other, with a trace of embarrassment; “you can trust your ears on that statement. To make certain, I’ll repeat it: I am not very badly hurt by his refusal to resume our old relations. Do you know what that means? It means that he turned me down cold, dearie.”
“Do you mean—” began the girl, gripping the table edge.
“I mean that I lied to you. The night I went over to Trevison’s ranch he told me plainly that he didn’t like me one teenie, weenie bit any more. He wouldn’tkiss me, shake my hand, or welcome me in any way. He told me he’d got over it, the same as he’d got over his measles days—he’d outgrown it and was going to throw himself at the feet of another goddess. Oh, yes, he meant you!” she laughed, her voice a little too high, perhaps, with an odd note of bitterness in it. “Then, determined to blot my rival out, I lied about you. I told him that you loved Corrigan and that you were in the game to rob him of his land. Oh, I blackened you, dearie! It hurt him, too. For when a man like Trevison loves a woman—”
“How could you!” said the girl, shuddering.
“Please don’t get dramatic,” jeered the other. “The rules that govern the love game are very elastic—for some women. I played it strong, but there was no chance for me from the beginning. Trevison thinks you are Corrigan’s trump card in this game. Itisa game, isn’t it. But he loves you in spite of it all. He told me he’d go to the gallows for you. Aren’t men the sillies! But just the same, dearie, we women like to hear them murmur those little heroic things, don’t we? It was on the night I told him you’d told Corrigan about the dynamiting.”
“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?”
“Youcanguess intelligently, can’t you?”
“Corrigan planned itall?”
“All.” Hester watched as the girl bowed her head and sobbed convulsively.
“What a brazen, crafty and unprincipledthingTrevison 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’msosorry, 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 theCastlesat a woman who was finding the world very empty. It held nothing for her except the sad consolation of repentance.
CHAPTER XXVIITHE 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’vebeen 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 Nigger 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, laughinglowly, 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 parapetwall, 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 ledge, 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 plainsat 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.
He raised himself cautiously, backed away from the rock behind which he had been concealed, and wheeled, intending to join Levins. A faint sound reached his ears from the plains, and he faced around again, to see a group of horsemen riding toward the pueblo. They were coming fast, racing ahead of a dust cloud, and were perhaps a quarter of a mile distant. But Trevison knew them, and stepped boldly out to the edge of the stone ledge waving his hat to them, laughing full-throatedly, his voice vibrating a little as he spoke:
“Good old Barkwell!”
“That’s him!”
Barkwell pulled his horse to a sliding halt as he saw the figure on the pueblo, outlined distinctly in the clear white light of the dawn.
“He’s all right!” he declared to the others as they followed his example and drew their beasts down. “Them’s some of the scum that’s been after him,” he added as several horsemen swept around the far side of the pueblo. “It was them we heard shootin’.” The outfit sat silent on their horses and watched the men ride over the plains toward another group of horsemen that the Diamond K men had observed some time before riding toward the pueblo,
“Yep!” Barkwell said, now; “that other bunch is deputies, too. It’s mighty plain. This bunch rounded up ‘Firebrand’ an’ sent some one back for reinforcements.” He swept the Diamond K outfit with a snarling smile. “They’re goin’ to need ’em, too! I reckon we’d better wait for them to play their hand. It’s abouta stand off in numbers. We don’t stand no slack, boys. We’re outlawed already, from the ruckus of last night, an’ if they start anything we’ve got to wipe ’em out! You heard ’em shootin’ at the boss, an’ they ain’t no pussy-kitten bunch! I’ll do the gassin’—if there’s any to be done—an’ when I draw, you guys do your damnedest!”
The outfit set itself to wait. Over on the edge of the pueblo they could see Trevison. He was bending over something, and when they saw him stoop and lift the object, heaving it to his shoulder and walking away with it, a sullen murmur ran over the outfit, and lips grew stiff and white with rage.
“It’s Clay Levins, boys!” said Barkwell. “They’ve plugged him! Do you reckon we’ve got to go back to Levins’ shack an’ tell his wife that we let them skunks get away after makin’ orphants of her kids?”
“I’m jumpin’!” shrieked Jud Weaver, his voice coming chokingly with passion. “I ain’t waitin’ one damned minute for any palaver! Either them deputies is wiped out, or I am!” He dug the spurs into his horse, drawing his six-shooter as the animal leaped.
Weaver’s horse led the outfit by only three or four jumps, and they swept over the level like a devastating cyclone, the spiral dust cloud that rose behind them following them lazily, sucked along by the wind of their passing.
The group of deputies had halted; they were sitting tense and silent in their saddles when the Diamond K outfit came up, slowing down as they drew nearer, and halting within ten feet of the others, spreading out ina crude semi-circle, so that each man had an unobstructed view of the deputies.
Barkwell had no chance to talk. Before he could get his breath after pulling his horse down, Weaver, his six-shooter in hand, its muzzle directed fairly at Gieger, who was slightly in advance of his men, fumed forth:
“What in hell do you-all mean by tryin’ to herd-ride our boss? Talk fast, you eagle-beaked turkey buzzard, or I salivates you rapid!”
The situation was one of intense delicacy. Gieger might have averted the threatening clash with a judicious use of soft, placating speech. But it pleased him to bluster.
“We are deputies, acting under orders from the court. We are after a murderer, and we mean to get him!” he said, coldly.
“Deputies! Hell!” Barkwell’s voice rose, sharply scornful and mocking. “Deputies! Crooks! Gun-fighters! Pluguglies!” His eyes, bright, alert, gleaming like a bird’s, were roving over the faces in the group of deputies. “A damn fine bunch of guys to represent the law! There’s Dakota Dick, there! Tinhorn, rustler! There’s Red Classen! Stage robber! An’ Pepper Ridgely, a plain, ornery thief! An’ Kid Dorgan, a sneakin’ killer! An’ Buff Keller, an’ Andy Watts, an’ Pig Mugley, an’—oh, hell! Deputies! Law!——Ah—hah!”
One of the men had reached for his holster. Weaver’s gun barked twice and the man pitched limply forward to his horse’s neck. Other weapons flashed;the calm of the early morning was rent by the hoarse, guttural cries of men in the grip of the blood-lust, the sustained and venomous popping of pistols, the queer, sodden impact of lead against flesh, the terror-snorts of horses, and the grunts of men, falling heavily.
A big man in khaki, loping his horse up the slope of an arroyo half a mile distant, started at the sound of the first shot and raced over the crest. He pulled the horse to an abrupt halt as his gaze swept the plains in front of him. He saw riderless horses running frantically away from a smoking blot, he saw the blot streaked with level, white smoke-spurts that ballooned upward quickly; he heard the dull, flat reports that followed the smoke-spurts.
It seemed to be over in an instant. The blot split up, galloping horses and yelling men burst out of it. The big man had reached the crest of the arroyo at the critical second in which the balance of victory wavers uncertainly. With thrusting chin, lips in a hideous pout, and with sullen, blazing eyes, he watched the battle go against him. Fifteen cowboys—he counted them, deliberately, coldly, despite the rage-mania that had seized him—were spurring after eight other men whom he knew for his own. As he watched he saw two of these tumble from their horses. And at a distance he saw the loops of ropes swing out to enmesh four more—who were thrown and dragged; he watched darkly as the remaining two raised their hands above their heads. Then his lips came out of their pout and were wreathed in a bitter snarl.
“Licked!” he muttered. “Twelve put out of business. But there’s thirty more—if the damn fools have come in to town! That’s two to one!” He laughed, wheeled his horse toward Manti, rode a few feet down the slope of the arroyo, halted and sat motionless in the saddle, looking back. He smiled with cold satisfaction. “Lucky for me that cinch strap broke,” he said.
Trevison was placing Levins’ limp form across the saddle on Nigger’s back when the faint morning breeze bore to his ears the report of Weaver’s pistol. A rattling volley followed the first report, and Trevison led Nigger close to the edge of the ledge in time to observe the battle as Corrigan had seen it. He hurried Nigger down the slope, but he had to be careful with his burden. Reaching the level he lifted Levins off, laid him gently on the top of a huge flat rock, and then leaped into the saddle and sent Nigger tearing over the plains toward the scene of the battle.
It was over when he arrived. A dozen men were lying in the tall grass. Some were groaning, writhing; others were quiet and motionless. Four or five of them were arrayed in chaps. His lips grimmed as his gaze swept them. He dismounted and went to them, one after another. He stooped long over one.
“They’ve got Weaver,” he heard a voice say. And he started and looked around, and seeing no one near, knew it was his own voice that he heard. It was dry and light—as a man’s voice might be who has run far and fast. He stood for a while, looking down atWeaver. His brain was reeling, as it had reeled over on the ledge of the pueblo a few minutes before, when he had discovered a certain thing. It was not a weakness; it was a surge of reviving rage, an accession of passion that made his head swim with its potency, made his muscles swell with a strength that he had not known for many hours. Never in his life had he felt more like crying. His emotions seared his soul as a white-hot iron sears the flesh; they burned into him, scorching his pity and his impulses of mercy, withering them, blighting them. He heard himself whining sibilantly, as he had heard boys whine when fighting, with eagerness and lust for blows. It was the insensate, raging fury of the fight-madness that had gripped him, and he suddenly yielded to it and raised his head, laughing harshly, with panting, labored breath.
Barkwell rode up to him, speaking hoarsely: “We come pretty near wipin’ ’em out, ‘Firebrand!’”
He looked up at his foreman, and the latter’s face blanched. “God!” he said. He whispered to a cowboy who had joined him: “The boss is pretty near loco—looks like!”
“They’ve killed Weaver,” muttered Trevison. “He’s here. They killed Clay, too—he’s down on a rock near the slope.” He laughed, and tightened his belt. The record book which he had carried in his waistband all along interfered with this work, and he drew it out, throwing it from him. “Clay was worth a thousand of them!”
Barkwell got down and seized the book, watching Trevison closely.
“Look here, Boss,” he said, as Trevison ran to his horse and threw himself into the saddle; “you’re bushed, mighty near—”
If Trevison heard his first words he had paid no attention to them. He could not have heard the last words, for Nigger had lunged forward, running with great, long, catlike leaps in the direction of Manti.
“Good God!” yelled Barkwell to some of the men who had ridden up; “the damn fool is goin’ to town! They’ll salivate him, sure as hell! Some of you stay here—two’s enough! The rest of you come along with me!”
They were after Trevison within a few seconds, but the black horse was far ahead, running without hitch or stumble, as straight toward Manti as his willing muscles and his loyal heart could take him.
Corrigan had seen the black bolt that had rushed toward him out of the spot where the blot had been. He cursed hoarsely and drove the spurs deep into the flanks of his horse, and the animal, squealing with pain and fury, leaped down the side of the arroyo, crossed the bottom in two or three bounds and stretched away toward Manti.
A cold fear had seized the big man’s heart. It made a sweat break out on his forehead, it caused his hand to tremble as he flung it around to his hip in search of his pistol. He tried to shake the feeling off, but it clung insistently to him, making him catch his breath. His horse was big, rangy, and strong, but he forced it to such a pace during the first mile of the ride that hecould feel its muscles quivering under the saddle skirts. And he looked back at the end of the mile, to see the black horse at about the same distance from him; possibly the distance had been shortened. It seemed to Corrigan that he had never seen a horse that traveled as smoothly and evenly as the big black, or that ran with as little effort. He began to loathe the black with an intensity equaled only by that which he felt for his rider.
He held his lead for another mile. Glancing back a little later he noted with a quickening pulse that the distance had been shortened by several hundred feet, and that the black seemed to be traveling with as little effort as ever. Also, for the first time, Corrigan noticed the presence of other riders, behind Trevison. They were topping a slight rise at the instant he glanced back, and were at least a mile behind his pursuer.
At first, mingled with his fear, Corrigan had felt a slight disgust for himself in yielding to his sudden panic. He had never been in the habit of running. He had been as proud of his courage as he had been of his cleverness and his keenness in planning and plotting. It had been his mental boast that in every crisis his nerve was coldest. But now he nursed a vagrant, furtive hope that waiting for him at Manti would be some of those men whom he had hired at his own expense to impersonate deputies. The presence of the hope was as inexplicable as the fear that had set him to running from Trevison. Two or three weeks ago he would have faced both Trevison and his men and brazened it out. But of late a growing dread of theman had seized him. Never before had he met a man who refused to be beaten, or who had fought him as recklessly and relentlessly.
He jeered at himself as he rode, telling himself that when Trevison got near enough he would stand and have it out with him—for he knew that the fight had narrowed down between them until it was as Trevison had said, man to man—but as he rode his breath came faster, his backward glances grew more frequent and fearful, and the cold sweat on his forehead grew clammy. Fear, naked and shameful, had seized him.
Behind him, lean, gaunt, haggard; seeing nothing but the big man ahead of him, feeling nothing but an insane desire to maim or slay him, rode a man who in forty-eight hours had been transformed from a frank, guileless, plain-speaking human, to a rage-drunken savage—a monomaniac who, as he leaned over Nigger’s mane, whispered and whined and mewed, as his forebears, in some tropical jungle, voiced their passions when they set forth to slay those who had sought to despoil them.
CHAPTER XXVIIITHE DREGS
When the Benham private car came to a stop on the switch, Rosalind swung up the steps and upon the platform just as J. C., ruddy, smiling and bland, opened the door. She was in his arms in an instant, murmuring her joy. He stroked her hair, then held her off for a good look at her, and inquired, unctuously:
“What are you doing in town so early, my dear?”
“Oh!” She hid her face on his shoulder, reluctant to tell him. But she knew he must be told, and so she steeled herself, stepping back and looking at him, her heart pounding madly.
“Father; these people have discovered that Corrigan has been trying to cheat them!”
She would have gone on, but the sickly, ghastly pallor of his face frightened her. She swayed and leaned against the railing of the platform, a sinking, deadly apprehension gnawing at her, for it seemed from the expression of J. C.’s face that he had some knowledge of Corrigan’s intentions. But J. C. had been through too many crises to surrender at the first shot in this one. Still he got a good grip on himself before he attempted to answer, and then his voice was low and intoned with casual surprise:
“Trying to cheat them? How, my dear?”
“By trying to take their land from them. You had no knowledge of it, Father?”
“Who has been saying that?” he demanded, with a fairly good pretense of righteous anger.
“Nobody. But I thought—I—Oh, thank God!”
“Well, well,” he bluffed with faint reproach; “things are coming to a pretty pass when one’s own daughter is the first to suspect him of wrong-doing.”
“I didn’t, Father. I was merely—I don’t know what Ididthink! There has been so much excitement! Everything issoupset! They have blown up the mining machinery, burned the bank and the courthouse; Judge Lindman was abducted and found; Braman was killed—choked to death; the Vigilantes are—”
“Good God!” Benham interrupted her, staggering back against the rear of the coach. “Who has been at the bottom of all this lawlessness?”
“Trevison.”
He gasped, in spite of the fact that he had suspected what her answer would be.
“Where is Corrigan? Where’s Trevison?” He demanded, his hands shaking. “Answer me! Where are they?”
“I don’t know,” the girl returned, dully. “They say Trevison is hiding in a pueblo not far from the Bar B. And that Corrigan left here early this morning, with a number of deputies, to try to capture him. And those men—” She indicated the horsemen gathered in front of theBelmont, whom he had not seen, “are organizing to go to Trevison’s rescue. Theyhave discovered that Corrigan murdered Braman, though Corrigan accused Trevison.”
J. C. flattened himself against the rear wall of the coach and looked with horror upon the armed riders. There were forty or fifty of them now, and others were joining the group. “Where’s Judge Lindman?” he faltered. “Can’t this lawlessness be stopped?”
“It is only a few minutes ago that Judge Lindman was dragged from a shed into which he had been forced by Corrigan—after being beaten by him. He made a public confession of his part in the attempted fraud, and charged Corrigan with coercing him. Those men are aroused, Father. I don’t know what the end will be, but I am afraid—I’m afraid they’ll—”
“I shall give the engineer orders to pull my car out of here!” J. C.’s face was chalky white.
“No, no!” cried the girl, sharply. “That would make them think you were—Don’trun, Father!” she begged, omitting the word which she dreaded to think might become attached to him should he go away, now that some of them had seen him. “We’ll stand our ground, Father. If Corrigan has done those things he deserves to be punished!” Her lips, white and stiff, closed firmly.
“Yes, yes,” he said; “that’s right—we won’t run.” But he drew her inside, despite her objections, and from a window they watched the members of the Vigilantes gathering, bristling with weapons, a sinister and ominous arm of that law which is the dread and horror of the evil-doer.
There came a movement, concerted, accompanied bya low rumble as of waves breaking on a rocky shore. It brought the girl out of her chair, through the door and upon the car platform, where she stood, her hands clasped over her breast, her breath coming gaspingly. His knees knocking together, his face the ashen gray of death, Benham stumbled after her. He did not want to go; did not care to see this thing—what might happen—what his terror told himwouldhappen; but he was forced out upon the platform by the sheer urge of a morbid curiosity that there was no denying; it had laid hold of his soul, and though he cringed and shivered and tottered, he went out, standing close to the iron rail, gripping it with hands that grew blueish-white around the knuckles; watching with eyes that bulged, his lips twitching over soundless words. For he could not hold himself guiltless in this thing; it could not have happened had he tempered his smug complacence with thoughts of justice. He groaned, gibbering, for he stood on the brink at this minute, looking down at the lashing sea of retribution.
The girl paid no attention to him. She was watching the men down the street. The concerted movement had come from them. Nearly a hundred riders were on the move. Lefingwell, huge, grim, led them down the street toward the private car. For an instant the girl felt a throb of terror, thinking that they might have designs on the man who stood at the railing near her, unable to move—for he had the same thought. She murmured thankfully when they wheeled, and without looking in her direction loped their horses toward a wide, vacant space between some buildings, which ledout into the plains, and through which she had ridden often when entering Manti. Watching the men, shuddering at the ominous aspect they presented, she saw a tremor run through them—as though they all formed one body. They came to a sudden stop. She heard a ripple of sound arise from them, amazement and anticipation. And then, as though with preconcerted design, though she had heard no word spoken, the group divided, splitting asunder with a precision that deepened the conviction of preconcertedness, ranging themselves on each side of the open space, leaving it gaping barrenly, unobstructed—a stretch of windrowed alkali dust, deep, light and feathery.
Silence, like a stroke, fell over the town. The girl saw people running toward the open space, but they seemed to make no noise—they might have been dream people. And then, noting that they all stared in one direction, she looked over their heads. Not more than four or five hundred feet from the open space, and heading directly toward it, thundered a rider on a tall, strong, rangy horse. The beast’s chest was foam-flecked, the white lather that billowed around its muzzle was stained darkly. But it came on with heart-breaking effort, giving its rider its all. Behind the first rider came a second, not more than fifty feet distant from the other, on a black horse which ran with no effort, seemingly, sliding along with great, smooth undulations, his mighty muscles flowing like living things under his glossy, somber coat.
The girl saw the man on his back leaning forward, a snarling, terrible grin on his face. She saw the firstrider wheel when he reached the edge of the open space near the waiting Vigilantes, bring his horse to a sliding halt and face toward his pursuer. He clawed at a hip pocket, drawing a pistol that flashed in the first rays of the morning sun—it belched fire and smoke in a continuous stream, seemingly straight at the rider of the black horse. One—two—three—four—five—six times! The girl counted. But the first man’s hand wabbled, and the rider of the black horse came on like a demon astride a black bolt, a laugh of bitter derision on his lips. The black did not swerve. Straight and true in his headlong flight he struck the other horse. They went down in a smother of dust, the two horses grunting, scrambling and kicking. The girl had seen the rider of the black horse lunge forward at the instant of impact; he had thrown himself at the other man as she had seen football players launch themselves at players of the opposition, and they had both reeled out of their saddles to disappear in the smother of dust.
Men left the fringe of the living wall flanking the open space and seized the two horses, leading them away. The smother drifted, and the girl screamed at sight of the two raging things that rolled and burrowed in the deep dust of the street.
They got up as she watched them, springing apart hesitating for an awful instant to sob breath into their lungs; then they rushed together, striking bitter, sledge-hammer blows that sounded like the smashing of flat rocks, falling from a great height, on the surface of water. She shrieked once, wildly, beseeching someoneto stop them, but no man paid any attention to her cry. They sat on their horses, silent, tense, grim, and she settled into a coma of terror, an icy paralysis gripping her. She heard her father muttering incoherently at her side, droning and puling something over and over in a wailing monotone—she caught it after a while; he was calling upon his God—in an hour that could not have been were it not for his own moral flaccidness.
The dust under the feet of the fighting men leveled under their shifting, dragging feet; it bore the print of their bodies where they had lain and rolled in it; erupting volcanoes belched it heavily upward; it caught and gripped their legs to the ankles, making their movements slow and sodden. This condition favored the larger man. He lashed out a heavy fist that caught Trevison full and fair on the jaw, and the latter’s face turned ashy white as he sank to his knees. Corrigan stopped to catch his breath before he hurled himself forward, and this respite, brief as it was, helped the other to shake off the deadening effect of the blow. He moved his head slightly as Corrigan swung at it, and the blow missed, its force pulling the big man off his feet, so that he tumbled headlong over his adversary. He was up again in a flash though, for he was fresher than his enemy. They clinched, and stood straining, matching strength against strength, sheer, without trickery, for the madness of murder was in the heart of one and the desperation of fear in the soul of the other, and they thought of nothing but to crush and batter and pound.
Corrigan’s strength was slightly the greater, but itwas offset by the other’s fury. In the clinch the big man’s right hand came up, the heel of the palm shoved with malignant ferocity against Trevison’s chin. Corrigan’s left arm was around Trevison’s waist, squeezing it like a vise, and the whole strength of Corrigan’s right arm was exerted to force the other’s head back. Trevison tried to slip his head sideways to escape the hold, but the effort was fruitless. Changing his tactics, his breath lagging in his throat from the terrible pressure on it, Trevison worked his right hand into the other’s stomach with the force and regularity of a piston rod. The big man writhed under the punishment, dropping his hand from Trevison’s chin to his waist, swung him from his feet and threw him from him as a man throws a bag of meal.
He was after him before he landed, but the other writhed and wriggled in the air like a cat, and when the big man reached for him, trying again to clinch, he evaded the arm and landed a crushing blow on the other’s chin that snapped his head back as though it were swung from a hinge, and sent him reeling, to his knees in the dust.
The watching girl saw the ring of men around the fighters contract; she saw Trevison dive headlong at the kneeling man; with fingers working in a fury of impotence she swayed at the iron rail, leaning far over it, her eyes strained, her breath bated, constricting her lungs as though a steel band were around them. For she seemed to feel that the end was near.
She saw them, locked in each other’s embrace, stagger to their feet. Corrigan’s head was wabbling. Hewas trying to hold the other to him that he might escape the lashing blows that were driven at his head. The girl saw his hold broken, and as he reeled, catching another blow in the mouth, he swung toward her and she saw that his lips were smashed, the blood from them trickling down over his chin. There was a gleam of wild, despairing terror in his eyes—revealing the dawning consciousness of approaching defeat, complete and terrible. She saw Trevison start another blow, swinging his fist upward from his knee. It landed with a sodden squish on the big man’s jaw. His eyes snapped shut, and he dropped soundlessly, face down in the dust.
For a space Trevison stood, swaying drunkenly, looking down at his beaten enemy. Then he drew himself erect with a mighty effort and swept the crowd with a glance, the fires of passion still leaping and smoldering in his eyes. He seemed for the first time to see the Vigilantes, to realize the significance of their presence, and as he wheeled slowly his lips parted in a grin of bitter satisfaction. He staggered around the form of his fallen enemy, his legs bending at the knees, his feet dragging in the dust. It seemed to the girl that he was waiting for Corrigan to get up that he might resume the fight, and she cried out protestingly. He wheeled at the sound of her voice and faced her, rocking back and forth on his heels and toes, and the glow of dull astonishment in his eyes told her that he was now for the first time aware of her presence. He bowed to her, gravely, losing his balance in the effort, reeling weakly to recover it.
And then a crush of men blotted him out—the ringof Vigilantes had closed around him. She saw Barkwell lunging through the press to gain Trevison’s side; she got a glimpse of him a minute later, near Trevison. The street had become a sea of jostling, shoving men and prancing horses. She wanted to get away—somewhere—to shut this sight from her eyes. For though one horror was over, another impended. She knew it, but could not move. A voice boomed hoarsely, commandingly, above the buzz of many others—it was Lefingwell’s, and she cringed at the sound of it. There was a concerted movement; the Vigilantes were shoving the crowd back, clearing a space in the center. In the cleared space two men were lifting Corrigan to his feet. He was reeling in their grasp, his chin on his chest, his face dust-covered, disfigured, streaked with blood. He was conquered, his spirit broken, and her heart ached with pity for him despite her horror for his black deeds. The loop of a rope swung out as she watched; it fell with a horrible swish over Corrigan’s head and was drawn taut, swiftly, and a hoarse roar of approval drowned her shriek.
She heard Trevison’s voice, muttering in protest, but his words, like her shriek, were lost in the confusion of sound. She saw him fling his arms wide, sending Barkwell and another man reeling from him; he reached for the pistol at his side and leveled it at the crowd. Those nearest him shrank, their faces blank with fear and astonishment. But the man with the rope stood firm, as did Lefingwell, grim, his face darkening with wrath.
“This is the law actin’ here, ‘Firebrand,’” he said,his voice level. “You’ve done your bit, an’ you’re due to step back an’ let justice take a hand. This here skunk has outraged every damned rule of decency an’ honor. He’s tried to steal all our land; he’s corrupted our court, nearly guzzled Judge Lindman to death, killed Braman—an’ Barkwell says the bunch of pluguglies he hired to pose as deputies, has killed Clay Levins an’ four or five of the Diamond K men. That’s plenty. We’d admire to give in to you. We’ll do anything else you say. But this has got to be done.”
While Lefingwell had been talking two of the Vigilantes had slipped to the rear of Trevison. As Lefingwell concluded they leaped. The arms of one man went around Trevison’s neck; the other man lunged low and pinned his arms to his sides, one hand grasping the pistol and wrenching it from his hand. The crowd closed again. The girl saw Corrigan lifted to the back of a horse, and she shut her eyes and hung dizzily to the railing, while tumult and confusion raged around her.
She opened her eyes a little later, to see Barkwell and another man leading Trevison into the front door of theCastle. The street around the car was deserted, save for two or three men who were watching her curiously. She felt her father’s arms around her, and she was led into the car, her knees shaking, her soul sick with the horror of it all.
Half an hour later, as she sat at one of the windows, staring stonily out in the shimmering sunlight of the street, she saw some of the Vigilantes returning. She shrank back from the window, shuddering.