22
“Nor anybody else has,” he replied, with a note of pride.
“But he’s no cow pony––surely.”
“You ain’t never heard o’ Sunnysides?”
“No.”
He looked at her curiously.
“Of course not,” he said apologetically. “You’re f’m the city. East, maybe?”
“Yes, I’m from New York.”
“Then it’s natch’ral. Everybody in these parts has heard o’ Sunnysides, though it’s not many that’s seen him.”
“Please tell me about him.”
The man’s eyes brightened a little.
“He’s got some strange blood in him,” he began. “Nobody knows what it is, but th’ ain’t another one o’ that color, nor his devil spirit, in the whole bunch. The rest of ’em’s just ordinary wild horses runnin’ up an’ down the sandhills of the San Luis. There’s people’t say he’s a ghost horse. Fact! An’ they say’t he’ll never stay caught. I don’t know. It’s certain’t he’s been caught three times,––not countin’ the times cow-punchers an’ others has thought they’d caught him, but hadn’t. The first time he was caught actual he broke out o’ the strongest corral in the San Luis––at night––an’ nobody sees hide nor hair of ’im––not so much as a flicker o’ yellow in the moonlight. An’ back he was, headin’ the herd again.
“Nex’ time Thad Brinker ropes him. Thad’s the topnotch cow-puncher between the Black Hills an’ the Rio Grande, an’ he comes all the way f’m Dakoty when he hears the yarn about Sunnysides. Thad gits fourteen23men to help him round up the bunch, an’ then he ropes the gold feller after a fight that’s talked about yit in the San Luis. He ropes him. An’ then what does Brinker do?”
He looked at Marion as if he dared her to make as many guesses as she wished. She shook her head.
“You ain’t the only one that’d never hit it,” he went on with satisfaction. “Thad ropes him, an’ while they lay there restin’, Sunnysides all tied up so he can’t move, an’ Brinker rubbin’ some bumps he’d come by in the fracas, just then the red comes up onto Sangre de Cristo. Brinker sees it––Ever seen the sunset color on Sangre de Cristo? No? That’s a pity, Miss. Indeed, that’s a pity. But you’re f’m Noo York, you said.”
He paused again, and Marion began to realize the full degree of her provinciality and ignorance. She was from New York. What a pity!
“Well,” said the cowboy, as if resolved to do the best he could in the circumstances, “sometimes––maybe three or four times a year––it’s weird. It’s religious. The white peaks turn red as blood––that’s why they’re called Sangre de Cristo. It’s Spanish for Blood of Christ. It makes you feel queer-like”––He paused a moment thoughtfully, watching the golden horse as it stepped quietly, lightly, with head high, just ahead of them. “The red comes onto Sangre de Cristo, an’ Brinker sees it. He looks at the blood on the peaks, an’ then at the gold horse lyin’ there all torn an’ dirty, an’ this is what Brinker does, an’ maybe he couldn’t help it. He ups an’ cuts the ropes, an’ Sunnysides’s off to his waitin’ bunch, an’ they all go snortin’ down the valley.”
24
There was a touch of awe in the man’s voice, and Marion felt a little of it too. She looked toward the serrated barrier of mountains, in the very middle of which stood old Thunder under his pall of cloud. Beyond lay San Luis––Sangre de Cristo––and what romance! Would she ever––Her eyes rested for a moment on the black pile that now, as always, fascinated and yet disturbed her.
“And you?” she said at length, turning to the cowboy.
“There wasn’t no red sunset this time,” the man answered, with a grim smile. “But we ain’t slep’ since,” he added, with a return of weariness.
“You caught him?” she asked admiringly.
“Us three.”
“But what are you doing with him here?”
“He’s sold, if we c’n find the man’t offered a thousand for him a year ago.”
“Who was he?”
But she knew already. Some swift flash of intuition told her there was but one man in Paradise Park who––
“His name’s Haig, an’ he’s––”
“Philip Haig!” she murmured.
“You know him?”
“Yes––no. That is, I’ve heard of him.”
It was on her lips,––the explanation that the men had passed the branch road leading to Haig’s ranch, that they were now riding away from it. But she hesitated. And why? She did not know then; but an hour later she would be reproaching herself bitterly for that moment’s indecision. The words were almost spoken, but something checked them; and before she could make25up her mind to follow her first natural impulse it was too late.
The leader of the party turned in his saddle, and called to the man at Marion’s side, who rode quickly forward and joined his companions. There was a conversation inaudible to her ears, and while she still pondered over her inexplicable hesitation the cowboys and the golden horse, followed by Marion, approached the group of squat, unpainted houses that bore without apology the name of Paradise.
26CHAPTER IIISETH HUNTINGTON’S OPPORTUNITY
It was Thursday, the one day of the week when Paradise needed no apologist. For on Thursdays the stage arrived from Tellurium, bringing the mail and, now and then, a passenger, and always a whiff of the outside world. No resident of Paradise Park would willingly have missed the arrival of the stage; and on this occasion fully two-thirds of the male population, with nine-tenths of the female, had already assembled. But the stage was not due for an hour or more. The women bargained and gossiped in Thompson’s store; the men, most of them, were gathered around a stiff game of freeze-out in the Square Deal Saloon; and only the score or more of saddle horses hitched in front of the store, and the dozen or so of buckboards and road wagons parked in the rear of it, showed that Paradise was in its weekly state of mild and patient expectancy.
So the three cow-punchers, the yellow horse, and Marion rode into Paradise without being seen or heard, and halted in front of the post-office.
“Hal-lo! Hallo!” sang out the leader of the cowboys. And then, with the petulance of one that is “all in”: “Is this a dam’ graveyard?”
A thin man in his shirt sleeves, with a whisky glass in one hand and a towel in the other, came to the door of the Square Deal Saloon. His pallid face had the look27of settled weariness that is characteristic of keepers of such oases. Slavin had never, within the recollection of the oldest frequenter of his establishment, betrayed the slightest interest in anything. If there was a certain change in his expression as he looked out between narrowed eyelids into the garish sunlight it was one indicative of mild resentment at having been disturbed in his methodic occupation behind the bar. He saw with neither interest nor anticipation the three strangers, who ought to have had enough sense to dismount and walk in if they wanted anything.
“Well,” he began in a drawling and sarcastic tone, “what––”
It probably would have been a cautious and covered insult to the presumed intelligence of the strangers, if he had finished the question. But it died away on his thin lips. His fishy, blue eyes had caught at last the gleam of Sunnysides, half in eclipse behind the dull-hued cow ponies. For a few seconds he stared, while his mouth stood open, and his features slowly responded to the first emotion he had felt in years.
“Hell’s bobcats!” he yelled.
The glass slipped from his hand, and fell tinkling in pieces on the floor as he lunged out into the road.
In the saloon there was a moment of tense silence as the men there slowly realized that a phenomenon had occurred. Slavin was excited! The silence was followed by a hubbub of raised voices and a racket of overturned chairs and the scrape and thud of boots on the sanded floor. At that instant a woman in a pink calico dress, drawn by Slavin’s yell, came to the door of Thompson’s, and promptly screeched. The poker game28was never finished; Thompson’s trade was ruined for the day; and the strange group in the roadway became the center of a jostling, uproarious crowd of men and women, who alternately bombarded the three cow-punchers with questions and stared at Sunnysides in silent wonder. But they were careful to maintain a respectful distance between themselves and the formidable captive, though he stood motionless amid all the uproar, like a golden statue of a horse, with his head raised proudly, his yellow-black eyes flashing defiance and suspicion, and his lustrous hide gleaming in the sun.
Marion’s enjoyment of this exciting scene was tinged with a vague uneasiness. She had watched the men come tumbling out of the Square Deal Saloon and the women swarming from Thompson’s store, and had felt a curious relief at seeing neither Seth nor Claire among them. Though she could not have given any reason for her satisfaction, their absence, and Seth’s especially, seemed to her a piece of rare good fortune. Haig’s warning––“Tell him he’s a fool to anger me!”––was still echoing at the back of her brain; her recent act of incomprehensible errancy still troubled and perplexed her; and try as she would, she was unable to suppress the feeling that she had become inextricably entangled in the feud between Haig and Huntington. She was not yet ready to face Huntington. Thank Heaven, he was not there!
But at the very instant of her self-congratulation, and when she was just turning her attention again to the hubbub around the golden outlaw, her eye was suddenly caught, across the heads of the crowd, by a figure that caused her to stiffen in the saddle.
29
“Seth!” she gasped.
He came striding rapidly from the direction of the blacksmith’s, the most distant of the group of buildings,––a large and heavy but well-built man, whose black, short-cropped beard and bushy, overhanging eyebrows gave him a somewhat truculent expression, which was heightened by his rough and domineering demeanor. He was better dressed, or more carefully at least, than any of the other men. He wore a coat and trousers of dark-brown corduroy, a light-gray flannel shirt with a flowing black tie, and a wide-brimmed Stetson hat. His belt, under the unbuttoned coat, was of elaborately stamped leather, with a pocket at one side from which a heavy, gold watch chain was looped to a silver ring, and with an ornate holster at the other where the black butt of a revolver was visible as he moved.
He shouldered his way through the crowd in the heedless manner of most bulky men, who seldom realize how much space they take that properly belongs to others. At six feet from the golden horse he halted, and surveyed him with shining eyes.
“Sunnysides, eh?” he said, turning toward the nearest of the strangers.
“The’s only one,” replied the cow-puncher.
“Who caught him this time?”
“Us three. That’s Jim Raley, with the busted arm. That other is Jud Smith, My name’s Larkin. We belong to the X bar O outfit on Lost Soldier Creek.”
“Second outfit below Forty-Mile,” said Huntington, familiarly.
“Right!”
“Sanders still foreman?”
30
“Yes.”
“Then what are you doing with that horse up here?”
The cow-puncher grinned.
“I ketch your meanin’,” he replied. “It’s like this. Sanders chased Sunnysides three seasons, an’ thought he’d roped him. But all he gits ’s a cracked leg, an’ not a yeller hair of the slippery beast. Then us three takes on the job––not presumin’ to be better’n Sanders, but hopin’ for luck. It comes our way, an’ there you are. We offer him to Sanders––for a price, natch’rally––but he says he don’t believe in ghosts, an’ we c’n go to hell with him.”
“You must have missed the road. This is Paradise,” said Huntington.
The crowd roared its appreciation.
“The’ ain’t much in names,” observed Larkin testily.
The crowd laughed again, though, of course, less heartily.
“Well, Heaven or Hell,” said Huntington, “is the horse for sale?”
“He is––if he ain’t sold already.”
“How’s that?”
“We’re offered a price for him––if it still holds good. That’s why we’ve come to Paradise––an’ no other reason, believe me!”
“How much?”
“Thousand.”
There was a stir in the crowd.
“That’s some price for a bronco,” said Huntington, with an assumed indifference.
“It sure is––if you’re talkin’ about abronco,” retorted the cow-puncher.
31
There was a brief silence, in which all eyes were turned again upon the golden horse, standing motionless but alert, as if keenly alive to all that passed. The common ponies around him stamped, and champed their bits, and moved restlessly in their places, but Sunnysides remained calm and observant, with all the dignity and contempt of a captive patrician in a crowd of yokels.
Marion saw admiration and desire growing in Seth’s eyes, and knew that her foreboding had not been without reason.
“And who’s paying a thousand dollars for him?” asked Huntington.
“Haig’s his name, Philip Haig,” answered Larkin. “Know him?”
If Larkin had been a little nettled by the levity of the Paradisians he now had his revenge, though much to his surprise, in the extraordinary effect produced by his simple announcement. The smiles faded from the faces assembled around him; significant glances were exchanged; and there followed a silence so deep that the murmur of the Brightwater could be heard quite clearly across the meadows. Then there was a rustling movement in the crowd, and every face, as if by a common impulse, or at a given signal, was turned toward Huntington.
Marion was not sure of the feelings of the others, but there could be no mistake in what she read in Huntington’s black countenance. She was not only frightened, but surprised and pained. For all his coarseness and crudity, she had until to-day believed him to be innately gentle, with only a rough and ungracious exterior. She had seen him always tender with Claire, whom undoubtedly32he loved with all the best there was in him. But now she perceived the other side of his character, which she had indeed divined at first, but which she had firmly, on account of Claire, refused to acknowledge. An unworthy passion glowed in his eyes; his features were distorted by an expression of mingled cunning and hate; and his head somehow seemed to sink lower between his shoulders as he leaned slightly forward, studying the face of the cow-puncher. Then swiftly he took himself in hand, and masked his passions under an air of careless badinage that was, for the moment, suited to his purpose.
“But I don’t just understand,” he drawled insinuatingly. “Haig hasn’t been away from the Park lately––unless he’s gone an’ come by night.”
A snicker or two, and one loud guffaw rewarded him for this insult to his absent foe. But Marion felt the color rising to her cheeks.
“It’s a year ago he’s seen him, ’way off, shinin’ in the sun,” explained Larkin. “He stops at the X bar O, an’ says he’ll give a thousand for him.”
“So that’s all you’ve got to go on, is it?” sneered Huntington.
“Yes,” answered Larkin uneasily.
“An’ you think he’ll make good, do you?”
“If a man’s word ain’t good he don’t stay in this country long, does he?”
“That’s right––he won’t stay long!” replied Huntington, with a savage laugh.
“You mean to say––” queried Larkin pointedly, leaning across the neck of his pony, and looking keenly into Huntington’s eyes.
33
“Nothing,” answered Huntington, lifting his huge shoulders.
“That’s sayin’ a lot an’ sayin’ nothing,” retorted Larkin.
“You’ll know more when you try to collect that thousand.”
“All right,” responded Larkin, gathering up the reins as if to terminate the interview. “Where’s his place––if it ain’t a secret?”
“It’s over beyond that ridge,” said Huntington, pointing toward the west. “You go back about three miles the way you came, an’ there’s a branch road––”
“Hell!” snorted the cowboy whose arm hung limp at his side.
The three men exchanged glances. They were very weary; they had used almost the last of their powers to bring the outlaw this far; and they were plainly reluctant to undertake another tussle with the tireless animal, now ready, without doubt, to renew his struggle for liberty.
Huntington watched them narrowly.
“I’m all in!” grumbled Raley.
“You look it,” said Huntington. Then he added lightly: “Still, you ought to fetch up at Haig’s place before morning.”
Marion felt disgust and resentment rising in her at this misrepresentation of the distance to Haig’s ranch. Whatever Haig had done, this was cowardly and unfair. She looked eagerly at the other men, expecting to hear some one correct the gross exaggeration. But the faces were all blank, and no one spoke.
34
Something like a groan escaped from the lips of the injured cowboy. He looked as if he might tumble from the saddle at any instant.
“Sure we can!” said Larkin doggedly. “Come, men! Let’s move on.”
“Well, good luck!” said Huntington carelessly. And then, as if on second thought: “But see here! You fellows look all right to me, and if Haig’s changed his mind, or hasn’t got the cash handy, bring the horse back here, and I’ll talk business with you.”
“Talk business now!” Smith blurted out, averting his eyes from Larkin.
“Very well. I’ll give you five hundred for him––if you don’t want to go any farther. He ain’t worth it, but he’s a kind of a curiosity, and––”
“That ain’t talkin’ business worth a dam’!” cried Larkin. “Come along, men!”
He turned his pony’s head, and took a fresh grip on the halter that held the prisoner. Smith moved also, though slowly, but Raley did not budge.
“I’m damned if I go any further!” he growled.
Smith stopped, and looked uncertainly from Raley to Larkin, from Larkin to Huntington, who was studying him craftily.
“The five hundred isn’t wind,” said Huntington sneeringly. “It’s over there in Thompson’s safe, if you want it.”
“We’ll see Haig first,” said Larkin, compressing his lips, and speaking more to his companions than to Huntington.
Smith shifted uneasily in his saddle, while Raley avoided Larkin’s eyes, and looked appealingly at Huntington.35The ranchman, in his turn, took a sidelong glance, furtive and questioning, at the faces of his neighbors. The moment was critical, and much more was involved in the crisis than the possession of the golden outlaw. For a long time Huntington had assumed a certain leadership in the Park, but it had not always been unquestioned. His qualifications for leadership were not as apparent to all his neighbors as they were to himself, and there were some who even resented his pretensions. Nevertheless he had, in a way, succeeded; and he had been permitted to represent the entire valley as far as he liked in the war with Philip Haig. One and all, indeed, regarded Haig as an intruder; many of them had more than once threatened violence against him; and there was not among them one whom Haig, if he had wanted a defender, could have counted on. Yet, for all that, Huntington was practically alone in the depth of his hatred and the violence of his methods. If Haig had no friends in the Park, he had only a few, perhaps no more than two or three, inveterate enemies, of whom Huntington was the active representative.
Huntington now saw in the faces of the men around him that they were doubtful of him, and that the time was opportune to turn their passivity into energetic support of his plans. Moreover, he had already “put his foot in it,” had gone too far to withdraw without discredit. Having openly insulted the absent enemy, and having clearly revealed his intention to cheat him of this prize, to weaken now would be to abandon forever all hope of ascendency. For an instant he regretted what he had done, and cursed himself under his breath.36Then, taking a new grip on himself, he returned to the attack.
“Seven hundred and fifty, then!” he said with a swagger. “And it’s cash, not words.”
There was a moment of suspense. The three men, who were moving slowly away, turned in their saddles. Not a muscle quivered, not a foot stirred in the expectant crowd. Marion felt that in another minute she would cry out, shrieking at Seth, shrieking the warning Haig had sent by her.
“That’s good enough, for me!” declared Raley, throwing the reins over his pony’s head, and preparing painfully to dismount.
“No, Jim!” cried Smith. “Let him say a thousand, an’ I’m with you. ’Tain’t exactly on the square, but the’s no use killin’ ourselves for––”
His speech was cut short by a shrill cry from a woman who stood on a horse block at the outer edge of the crowd.
“Look! Look!” she called, pointing a finger toward the long white road.
37CHAPTER IVTHE HIGHEST BIDDER
Far up the road appeared a little cloud of dust with a black speck in its center.
A murmur ran through the crowd; a name was passed from mouth to mouth; and the men nearest Huntington began to edge away instinctively, leaving a larger and larger space clear around him and the three cow-punchers.
Marion too looked, and understood. She had not dismounted, but still sat her pony within ten feet of the outlaw, at the side of the roadway, in about the middle of which stood Huntington. With an effort she drew her eyes away from that ominous black spot in the distance, and turned toward Seth. A shiver ran through her body, but her cheeks burned, and there was a voice in her ears that shouted, “Tell him he’s a fool to anger me!” For a moment she was on the point of rushing upon Seth, and shrieking that warning into his face. But now it was too late.
Like all the others Huntington stood for a few seconds fascinated by that figure in the puff of dust. And for just those few seconds there was a certain unsteadiness in his attitude, irresolution in the black eyes beneath their bushy brows. But the blue-whiteness under the dark beard was not the pallor of fear, so called. Seth38Huntington was as incapable of physical cowardice as he was of moral courage. He was not afraid of Philip Haig, but he was dreadfully afraid of being thought afraid of him. There was yet time to avoid a clash with Haig, to withdraw from an undertaking in which he knew he was wholly in the wrong. But he was not equal to that test of character. He would sooner tackle all the Haigs in Christendom than face the derision of his neighbors, whom he had assiduously taught to expect great things of him on the first occasion. Here was the occasion; he had seized it, blinded by passion; and there was no way for him now but to see it through. He straightened up, and faced the three cow-punchers.
“All right!” he cried defiantly. “It’s a thousand.”
But the three had heard the name murmured by the crowd, had seen the distant horseman. Larkin was plainly elated. Raley and Smith, as plainly abashed, looked this way and that, avoiding the eyes of their leader, and every other eye as well. Huntington, seeing the game about to slip from his hands, whirled on his heel and looked swiftly toward the store.
“Thompson!” he yelled.
“Here!” was the answer, as a small, gray-bearded man in shirt sleeves advanced a step or two from the door.
“Fetch me that roll from your safe, will you?”
“Right!”
As Thompson disappeared within the store, Huntington turned again toward the cowboys.
“A thousand dollars––cash!” he repeated.
Larkin leaned forward on his horse, and looked at him shrewdly.
39
“Seems to me it’s not the horse you’re after so much as him,” he said, with a grin and a nod toward the road.
“That’s as may be,” retorted Huntington. “Money talks.”
“An’ it says mighty funny things sometimes,” replied Larkin, who now made no concealment of his dislike of Huntington and his “game.”
“We’ll see!” cried Huntington angrily. “How does twelve hundred sound to you two?”
He looked steadily at Raley and Smith, who exchanged glances.
“What’s your awful hurry?” Larkin demanded, in a drawling tone, but with an anxious eye for the galloping figure now in plain view. “We’ll give Haig a chance to bid––eh, men?”
Smith shot an angry but uneasy look at the leader. Huntington saw it, and guessed that there was more than weariness and greed in the willingness of Smith and Raley to combine against Larkin. Probably, he thought, there had been differences of opinion, disputes even, on the road to Paradise. He turned impatiently toward the store.
At that instant Thompson ran out, broke through the ring of men, and handed a roll of “yellowbacks” to Huntington, who hurriedly peeled off several of the bills, and thrust them at arm’s length toward the wavering cow-punchers.
“Haig talked about a thousand dollars!” he cried. “There’s fifteen hundred. Do you want it?”
For a moment it was heads or tails. Even Larkin eyed the money hungrily. Then his teeth clicked40together, and he turned upon his partners, whose faces showed plainly the answer that was upon their lips.
“An’ what’ll you say tohim?” he demanded.
“Eighteen hundred!” shouted Huntington.
“That’s good enough for me!” cried Raley. “Say it, Jud!”
There was a distant thunder of hoofs as Haig’s horse took the short bridge over the Brightwater. The crowd backed still farther away from Huntington, who was again fingering his roll of bills.
“Two thousand!” he roared, shaking the handful of “yellowbacks” at the wavering Smith.
Raley leaned from his saddle, and grabbed Smith’s arm.
“Quick, Jud!” he pleaded hotly. “Don’t be a fool!”
“All right! We’ll take it!” answered Smith.
“No!” said Larkin firmly, pulling his horse around between Huntington and the two partners.
“Yes!” the two cried out together.
Huntington stepped forward, and thrust both handfuls of bills almost into Larkin’s face.
“Name your price then!” he bellowed.
Larkin looked at the money,––smelt it,––as he said afterwards, grimly confessing his weakness at the sight of more than he could save in years of riding the range and branding mavericks. If there had been ten seconds more––
Haig galloped into the crowd, which gave him plenty of room, and reined up his pony just in front of the golden outlaw. For some instants he saw only the41horse; and his eyes kindled. Then he faced the cowboys and Huntington.
They were fixed in almost the very attitudes in which he had come upon them. Huntington’s outstretched hands had indeed fallen to his side, but they still clutched the crumpled bills. Raley’s blood-stained face was purple with anger and chagrin, while Smith’s wore a sullen, hangdog look. As for Larkin, he met Haig’s questioning scrutiny with a look of mingled triumph and guilt.
“Well, why don’t you go on?” asked Haig, with a smile.
There was no response. The silence was again so complete that the music of the Brightwater was heard across the meadows.
Haig slowly swept the crowd with an inquiring glance. All these men were hostile toward him, of course; but how far would they support Huntington? No matter! He swung himself suddenly out of the saddle, and addressed himself to the leader of the cowboys.
“You’re Larkin, aren’t you?” he said.
“Yes,” answered the embarrassed cow-puncher.
“And the others are Smith and––”
“Raley,” prompted Larkin.
“And here, of course, is my good friend Huntington, looking like Fortune with both hands full.”
Several men in the crowd laughed, whereupon Huntington, who had evidently forgotten the money, made matters worse for himself by hastily and clumsily thrusting it into the pockets of his coat, while his face flushed angrily.
42
“That’s right, Cousin Seth,” Haig said lightly. “You may need it.”
Marion, at these words, quivered with alarm. Was he going to tell Huntington, there in that crowd, of the incident in the pasture? His next speech, however, reassured her.
“Now, Larkin,” he said, “let’s understand things. That’s my horse, isn’t it?”
“That’s what I’ve been sayin’ some time back,” answered Larkin, in a tone of relief.
“And you, Smith?”
“I suppose so,” was the sullen reply.
“And Raley?”
“No, it ain’t!” answered that one with a sudden flare-up of courage.
“Then whose horse is it?”
“It belongs to Larkin an’ Smith an’ me.”
“Of course. But why did you bring him to Paradise Park?”
“To sell him.”
“To whom, please?”
Raley, caught in the trap, looked appealingly toward Smith, but got no help from him.
“To whom?” repeated Haig sharply.
“To you––if you wanted him!” Raley blurted out at last.
“If I wanted him!” retorted Haig ironically. “I bargained for him with you, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” growled Raley.
“And you went and caught himfor me?”
“Yes.”
“And you brought him to Paradise Parkfor me?”
43
“Yes.”
“Very well. Don’t be downhearted!” he said cheerfully. “A good name is more to be desired than great riches. Isn’t that so, Cousin Seth?”
The ranchman’s face flamed.
“If you’ve got anything to say to me, say it quick!” he jerked out.
“I have several things to say to you, one at a time,” replied Haig smoothly. “To begin with, these men told you the horse was mine, didn’t they?”
“No, they didn’t. They said you’d offered a thousand dollars for him.”
Haig laughed.
“All right, if that suits you better! They told you they had brought him here to deliver him to me for a thousand dollars, and you thought it would be a fine joke to buy him yourself. Is that it?”
Huntington did not respond to this, but watched Haig narrowly, a little puzzled by his manner.
“How much did he offer you?” Haig asked Larkin.
“Two thousand dollars––and then he said name our price.”
Haig whistled.
“Well, I’m damned if you haven’t got some sporting blood in you!” he said, smiling at Huntington. “How much was in your roll?”
Huntington’s first impulse was to tell Haig that it was none of his business. But he was deceived by Haig’s manner, having expected his enemy to fall upon him like a thunderbolt. His surprise was shared, indeed, by most of the men, who had expected gun-play on the jump. Only Marion, sitting still and watchful44on her pony, was not misled. She felt that Haig was playing with Huntington, and biding his time.
Huntington’s vanity completed his self-delusion.
“Four thousand, two hundred dollars” he replied boastfully, glancing around at his neighbors.
“Whew!” uttered Haig, between pursed lips. Then to Larkin: “You were hard pressed, weren’t you? But never mind, boys, I’ll do better than I promised––and charge it up to Cousin Seth.”
Another laugh flickered around the crowd. It was evident that there was no great objection to seeing Huntington baited.
“My name’s Huntington!” he snorted. “What’s this damned cousin business, anyhow?”
Haig raised his eyebrows.
“Does it annoy you?” he asked, in a tone of exaggerated politeness.
Huntington merely glared. He was one of those self-made wits who enjoy their own jokes immensely but grumble at plucking barbed shafts out of their own skins. He began to wish for the thunderbolt.
“But it’s your own fault, you know,” Haig added.
“What in hell are you talking about?” Huntington growled.
“I’m talking about your last visit to my ranch.”
“My last––What do you mean, damn you!” the ranchman thundered, his right hand moving to his belt.
There was a hurried movement among those of the crowd who, absorbed in the dialogue, had half-consciously crept nearer. But Haig appeared to have noticed neither Huntington’s motion nor the backing away of the spectators.
45
“And wouldn’t it have been reckless extravagance to pay good money for Sunnysides when you might just have come and taken him out of my corrals?”
For a few seconds Huntington, as if he could scarce believe that he heard aright, was speechless with amazement and rage.
“Say it, damn you!” he said chokingly. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t get so excited, or you may break a blood vessel, Cous––I beg your pardon,MisterHuntington.”
“Say it!” roared the ranchman.
Then Haig dropped his mask.
“I will say it,” he began in a voice that rang ominously. “I’ll say it so that even you cannot fail to understand me. I mean that I’m tired of your threats and persecutions. I mean that you have harassed me and my men at every opportunity. I mean that you drove that bunch of my cattle off the cliff last September. I mean that within twenty-four hours another fence has been cut, and that you know who did it. I mean that your attempt to buy my horse was only another of the contemptible and cowardly tricks you have played on me. I mean, Huntington, that you are a bully, a liar and a thief!”
Huntington’s hand had slipped to the butt of his revolver at the beginning of this intolerable speech; but he had waited, as if fascinated, as if unable to move under the torrent of denunciation. Then to the onlookers it appeared that the bold young man, who had not yet made the slightest motion toward his own weapon, would be slain in his tracks. But Haig was46as much the quicker in action as he was the nimbler in wit.
The two revolvers cracked, it seemed, as one, but with very different results. Haig’s battered old hat, lifted as if by a sudden gust of wind, slid from his head, and fell to the ground with a bullet hole through it. But Huntington threw up his hands, pitched forward, and fell in a heap in the dusty road.
There was a single shrill, short-cut shriek as a woman near the door of the post-office slipped down in a faint; and then a chorus of quavering cries as other women clutched the arms of the men nearest them.
Marion swayed in her saddle, her head drooping on her breast. A young cowboy darted from the crowd, and grabbed her as she fell. He started to lift and carry her away, but, with a desperate effort, she recovered, and stood erect, trying to thrust him from her. He held her nevertheless, supporting her with an arm under one of hers.
Haig had quickly turned and faced the group of men at the left of the road.
“Is there anybody else here that wants to buy my horse?” he demanded coolly.
There was no response, no movement. He whirled, and confronted the silent row of men on the other side.
“Is there anybody else here who thinks he can drive me out of Paradise Park?”
Still no one replied; and Haig, with a shrug, thrust his revolver back in its holster.
“Thompson!” he called out.
“Here!” was the answer, in the same tone of readiness47with which he had responded to Huntington. By keeping his mouth shut, and never taking sides in any of the occasional disagreements and disputes that enlivened the tedium of life in that community, Thompson had established a reputation for neutrality and trustworthiness, and was permitted to be everybody’s friend.
“Look after Huntington, please!” said Haig. “He’s not badly hit––you’ll find the bullet under the left shoulder blade. It’ll do him good.”
Thompson and some others lifted Huntington, and carried him into the store; and at that moment the stage, its approach unnoticed, rattled up, and stopped with shrieking brakes and creaking harness. There was a sudden outbreak of speech on all sides, as if the tension had been relaxed by the recurrence of a familiar and orderly event. In the confusion Haig turned toward Sunnysides and the three cow-punchers.
“Now, Larkin,” he began briskly, “we’ll finish this business, and then––”
He stopped short, and stared.
By the side of the golden horse stood Marion. Still shocked and bewildered, yet strangely thrilled, she had stretched out one trembling arm, and rested her hand on the neck of the wild creature, from which every other person in the crowd around––and she too in her right senses––had kept away, in full appreciation of his reputation. Whether it was that the outlaw had for the time given up all notion of resistance and hostility, or that he felt the difference between the girl’s gentle touch and the rough handling he had undergone, he did not stir. But this docility, this understanding,48was only a part of the sight that brought Haig to a standstill.
He had left many things behind him, but there was one thing he had not been, able to destroy as he would have destroyed it, root and branch and flower. He would always have a weakness––he called it that––for beauty in whatever form it appeared to him. Sunsets and twilights, the shadows of trees in still waters, flowers and reeds, old ruins in the moonlight, sometimes even faces moved him until he was ashamed, and berated himself for a sentimental weakling. And now––
The girl was tawny as a leopard. Her hair was almost exactly the color of the outlaw’s dull yellow mane, but finer, of course, and softer; and her complexion––he wondered that he had not noticed it before––had a peculiar richness and brilliancy that seemed to reflect the luster of Sunnysides’ golden hide. They stood there entrancing his artist-eye with their perfect harmony of line and color; and the last thin rays of the setting sun bathed horse and girl in a golden light––an atmosphere in which they glowed like one of Titian’s mellowed canvases.
“Don’t move, please!” he exclaimed.
But Marion did not hear, or did not heed. She dropped her hand, and glided toward him, while he watched her, curious and rapt. Perhaps it was because he saw her through that golden glow, perhaps because his nerves were a little unsteady in the reaction from the strain they had undergone, that she made a singular appeal to his imagination. He fancied that for all the fineness of her figure, the exquisite poise of49her small head, the cameo-like delicacy of her face, there was something in her as wild, untamed, and elemental as the heart of Sunnysides.
Thus she moved slowly past him, and passing gave him a long and steady look, with an unfathomable expression in her eyes,––an expression neither of anger nor of bitterness nor of disgust nor of anything he might have expected after all he had done that day. He turned, and watched her until she had disappeared in the crowd around the stagecoach; and with her went out the last rays of the sun.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Philip Haig.
With a shake of his shoulders, as if to throw off some unwelcome weight upon them, he turned again to take up his business with the gaping cow-punchers.