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"I Conquered"

by Harold Titus · English · Gutenberg #35866 · 390,092 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: "I Conquered"

Author: Harold Titus

Illustrator: Charles M. Russell


        
Release date: April 13, 2011 [eBook #35866]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35866

Credits: Produced by Andrew Sly, Al Haines and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "I CONQUERED" ***




Produced by Andrew Sly, Al Haines and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net











[Frontispiece: _The Captain tore at the shoulders and neck of the gray
horse with his gleaming teeth_. Page 96]




"I Conquered"

By HAROLD TITUS



With Frontispiece in Colors

By CHARLES M. RUSSELL



A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers                              New York

Published by Arrangements with Rand, McNally & Company




_Copyright, 1916,_

By Rand McNally & Company




THE CONTENTS


CHAPTER

     I.  Denunciation
    II.  A Young Man Goes West
   III.  "I've Done My Pickin'"
    IV.  The Trouble Hunter
     V.  Jed Philosophizes
    VI.  Ambition Is Born
   VII.  With Hoof and Tooth
  VIII.  A Head of Yellow Hair
    IX.  Pursuit
     X.  Capture
    XI.  A Letter and a Narrative
   XII.  Woman Wants
  XIII.  VB Fights
   XIV.  The Schoolhouse Dance
    XV.  Murder
   XVI.  The Candle Burns
  XVII.  Great Moments
 XVIII.  The Lie
   XIX.  Through the Night
    XX.  The Last Stand
   XXI.  Guns Crash
  XXII.  Tables Turn; and Turn Again
 XXIII.  Life, the Trophy
  XXIV.  Victory
   XXV.  "The Light!"
  XXVI.  To the Victor




"__I CONQUERED"




CHAPTER I

Denunciation


Danny Lenox wanted a drink. The desire came to him suddenly as he stood
looking down at the river, burnished by bright young day. It broke in
on his lazy contemplation, wiped out the indulgent smile, and made the
young face serious, purposeful, as though mighty consequence depended
on satisfying the urge that had just come up within him.

He was the sort of chap to whom nothing much had ever mattered, whose
face generally bore that kindly, contented smile. His grave
consideration had been aroused by only a scant variety of happenings
from the time of a pampered childhood up through the gamut of bubbling
boyhood, prep school, university, polo, clubs, and a growing popularity
with a numerous clan until he had approached a state of established and
widely recognized worthlessness.

Economics did not bother him. It mattered not how lavishly he spent;
there had always been more forthcoming, because Lenox senior had a
world of the stuff. The driver of his taxicab--just now whirling
away--seemed surprised when Danny waved back change, but the boy did
not bother himself with thought of the bill he had handed over.

Nor did habits which overrode established procedure for men cause him
to class himself apart from the mass. He remarked that the cars zipping
past between him and the high river embankment were stragglers in the
morning flight businessward; but he recognized no difference between
himself and those who scooted toward town, intent on the furtherance of
serious ends.

What might be said or thought about his obvious deviation from beaten,
respected paths was only an added impulse to keep smiling with careless
amiability. It might be commented on behind fans in drawing rooms or
through mouths full of food in servants' halls, he knew. But it did not
matter.

However--something mattered. He wanted a drink.

And it was this thought that drove away the smile and set the lines of
his face into seriousness, that sent him up the broad walk with
swinging, decisive stride, his eyes glittering, his lips taking
moisture from a quick-moving tongue. He needed a drink!

Danny entered the Lenox home up there on the sightly knoll, fashioned
from chill-white stone, staring composedly down on the drive from its
many black-rimmed windows. The heavy front door shut behind him with a
muffled sound like a sigh, as though it had been waiting his coming all
through the night, just as it had through so many nights, and let
suppressed breath slip out in relief at another return.

A quick step carried him across the vestibule within sight of the
dining-room doorway. He flung his soft hat in the general direction of
a cathedral bench, loosed the carelessly arranged bow tie, and with an
impatient jerk unbuttoned the soft shirt at his full throat. Of all
things, from conventions to collars, Danny detested those which bound.
And just now his throat seemed to be swelling quickly, to be pulsing;
and already the glands of his mouth responded to the thought of that
which was on the buffet in a glass decanter--amber--and clear--and--

At the end of the hallway a door stood open, and Danny's glance,
passing into the room it disclosed, lighted on the figure of a man
stooping over a great expanse of table, fumbling with papers--fumbling
a bit slowly, as with age, the boy remarked even in the flash of a
second his mind required to register a recognition of his father.

Danny stopped. The yearning of his throat, the call of his tightening
nerves, lost potency for the moment; the glitter of desire in his dark
eyes softened quickly. He threw back his handsome head with a gesture
of affection that was almost girlish, in spite of its muscular
strength, and the smile came back, softer, more indulgent.

His brow clouded a scant instant when he turned to look into the dining
room as he walked down the long, dark, high-ceilinged hall, and his
step hesitated. But he put the impulse off, going on, with shoulders
thrown back, rubbing his palms together as though wholesomely happy.

So he passed into the library.

"Well, father, it's a good morning to you!"

At the spontaneous salutation the older man merely ceased moving an
instant. He remained bent over the table, one hand arrested in the act
of reaching for a document. It was as though he held his breath to
listen--or to calculate quickly.

The son walked across to him, approaching from behind, and dropped a
hand on the stooping, black-clothed shoulder.

"How go--"

Danny broke his query abruptly, for the other straightened with a
half-spoken word that was, at the least, utmost impatience; possibly a
word which, fully uttered, would have expressed disgust, perhaps--even
loathing! And on Danny was turned such a mask as he had never seen
before. The cleanly shaven face was dark. The cold blue eyes flashed a
chill fire and the grim slit of a tightly closed mouth twitched, as did
the fingers at the skirts of the immaculate coat.

Lenox senior backed away, putting out a hand to the table, edging along
until a corner of it was between himself and his heir. Then the hand,
fingers stiffly extended, pressed against the table top. It trembled.

The boy flushed, then smiled, then sobered. On the thought of what
seemed to him the certain answer to the strangeness of this reception,
his voice broke the stillness, filled with solicitude.

"Did I startle you?" he asked, and a smile broke through his concern.
"You jumped as though--"

Again he broke short. His father's right hand, palm outward, was raised
toward him and moved quickly from side to side. That gesture meant
silence! Danny had seen it used twice before--once when a man of
political power had let his angered talk rise in the Lenox house until
it became disquieting; once when a man came there to plead. And the
gesture on those occasions had carried the same quiet, ominous
conviction that it now impressed on Danny.

The voice of the old man was cold and hard, almost brittle for lack of
feeling.

"How much will you take to go?" he asked, and breathed twice loudly, as
though struggling to hold back a bursting emotion.

Danny leaned slightly forward from his hips and wrinkled his face in
his inability to understand.

"What?" He drawled out the word. "Once more, please?"

"How much will you take to go?"

Again the crackling, colorless query, by its chill strength narrowing
even the thought which must transpire in the presence of the speaker.

"How much will I take to go?" repeated Danny. "How much what? To go
where?"

Lenox senior blinked, and his face darkened. His voice lost some of its
edge, became a trifle muffled, as though the emotion he had breathed
hard to suppress had come up into his throat and adhered gummily to the
words.

"How much money--how much money will you take to go away from here?
Away from me? Away from New York? Out of my sight--out of my way?"

Once more the fingers pressed the table top and the fighting jaw of the
gray-haired man protruded slowly as the younger drew nearer a faltering
step, two--three, until he found support against the table.

There across the corner of the heavy piece of furniture they peered at
each other; one in silent, mighty rage; the other with eyes widening,
quick, confusing lights playing across their depths as he strove to
refuse the understanding.

"How much money--to go away from New York--from you? Out of your _way_?"

Young Danny's voice rose in pitch at each word as with added
realization the strain on his emotions increased. His body sagged
forward and the hands on the table bore much of its weight; so much
that the elbows threatened to give, as had his knees.

"To go away--why? Why--is this?"

In his query was something of the terror of a frightened child; in his
eyes something of the look of a wounded beast.

"You ask me why!"

Lenox senior straightened with a jerk and followed the exclamation with
something that had been a laugh until, driven through the rage within
him, it became only a rattling rasp in his throat.

"You ask me why!" he repeated. "You ask me why!"

His voice dropped to a thin whisper; then, anger carrying it above its
normal tone:

"You stand here in this room, your face like suet from months and years
of debauchery, your mind unable to catch my idea because of the poison
you have forced on it, because of the stultifying thoughts you have let
occupy it, because of the ruthless manner in which you have wasted its
powers of preception, of judgment, and ask me why!"

In quick gesture he leveled a vibrating finger at the face of his son
and with pauses between the words declared: "_You_--are--why!"

Danny's elbows bent still more under the weight on them, and his lips
worked as he tried to force a dry throat through the motions of
swallowing. On his face was reflected just one emotion--surprise. It
was not rage, not resentment, not shame, not fear--just surprise.

He was utterly confused by the abruptness of his father's attack; he
was unable to plumb the depths of its significance, although an
inherent knowledge of the other's moods told him that he faced disaster.

Then the older man was saying:

"You have stripped yourself of everything that God and man could give
you. You have thrown the gems of your opportunity before your swinish
desires. You have degenerated from the son your mother bore to a
worthless, ambitionless, idealless, thoughtless--drunkard!"

Danny took a half-step closer to the table, his eyes held on those
others with mechanical fixity.

"Father--but, dad--" he tried to protest.

Again the upraised, commanding palm.

"I have stood it as long as I can. I have suggested from time to time
that you give serious consideration to things about you and to your
future; suggested, when a normal young man would have gone ahead of his
own volition to meet the exigencies every individual must face sooner
or later.

"But you would have none of it! From your boyhood you have been a
waster. I hoped once that all the trouble you gave us was evidence of a
spirit that would later be directed toward a good end. But I was never
justified in that.

"You wasted your university career. Why, you weren't even a good
athlete! You managed to graduate, but only to befog what little hope
then remained to me.

"You have had everything you could want; you had money, friends, and
your family name. What have you done? Wasted them! You had your polo
string and the ability to play a great game, but what came of it? You'd
rather sit in the clubhouse and saturate yourself with drink and with
the idle, parasitic thoughts of the crowd there!

"You have dropped low and lower until, everything else gone, you are
now wasting the last thing that belongs to you, the fundamental thing
in life--your vitality!

"Oh, don't try to protest! Those sacks under your eyes! Your shoulders
aren't as straight as they were a year ago; you don't think as quickly
as you did when making a pretense of playing polo; your hand isn't
steady for a man of twenty-five. You're going; you're on the toboggan
slide.

"You have wasted yourself, flung yourself away, and not one act or
thought of your experience has been worth the candle! Now--what will
you take to get out?"

The boy before him moved a slow step backward, and a flush came up over
his drawn face.

"You--" he began. Then he stopped and drew a hand across his eyes,
beginning the movement slowly and ending with a savage jerk. "You never
said a word before! You never intimated you thought this! You
never--you--"

He floundered heavily under the stinging conviction that of such was
his only defense!

"No!" snapped his father, after waiting for more to come. "I never said
anything before--not like this. You smiled away whatever I suggested.
Nothing mattered--nothing except debauchery. Now you've passed the
limit You're a common drunk!"

His voice rose high and higher; he commenced to gesticulate.

"You live only to wreck yourself. Yours is the fault--and the blame!

"It is natural for me to be concerned. I've hung on now too long,
hoping that you would right yourself and justify the hopes people have
had in you. I planned, years ago, to have you take up my work where I
must soon leave off--to go on in my place, to finish my life for me as
I began yours for you! I've had faith that you would do this, but you
won't--you can't!

"That isn't all. You're holding _me_ back. I must push on now harder
than ever, but with the stench of your misdeeds always in my nostrils
it is almost an impossibility."

Danny raised his hands in a half-gesture of pleading, but the old man
motioned him back.

"Don't be sorry; don't try to explain. This had to come. It's an
accumulation of years. I have no more faith in you. If I thought you
could ever rally I'd give up everything and help you, but not once in
your life have you shown me that you possessed one impulse to be of
use."

His voice dropped with each word, and its return to the cold normal
sent a stiffness into the boy's spine. His head went up, his chin out;
his hands closed slowly.

"How much money will you take to get out?"

The old man moved from behind the table corner and approached Danny,
walking slowly, with his hands behind him. He came to a stop before the
boy, slowly unbuttoned his coat, reached to an inner pocket, and drew
out a checkbook.

"How much?"

Danny's gesture, carried out, surely would have resulted in a blow
strong enough to send the book spinning across the room; but he stopped
it halfway.

His eyes were puffed and bloodshot; his pulse hammered loudly under his
ears, and the rush of blood made his head roar. Before him floated a
mist, fogging thought as it did his vision.

The boy's voice was scarcely recognizable as he spoke. It was hard and
cold--somewhat like the one which had so scourged him.

"Keep your money," he said, looking squarely at his father at the cost
of a peculiar, unreal effort. "I'll get out--and without your help.
Some day I'll--I'll show you what a puny thing this faith of yours is!"

The elder Lenox, buttoning his coat with brisk motions, merely said,
"Very well." He left the room.

Danny heard his footsteps cross the hall, heard the big front door sigh
when it closed as though it rejoiced at the completion of a distasteful
task.

Then he shut his eyes and struck his thighs twice with stiff forearms.
He was boiling, blood and brain! At first he thought it anger; perhaps
anger had been there, but it was not the chief factor of that tumult.

It was humiliation. The horrid, unanswerable truth had seared Danny's
very body--witness the anguished wrinkles on his brow--and his molten
consciousness could find no argument to justify himself, even to act as
a balm!

"He never _said_ it before," the boy moaned, and in that spoken thought
was the nearest thing to comfort that he could conjure.

He stood in the library a long time, gradually cooling, gradually
nursing the bitterness that grew up in the midst of conflicting
impulses. The look in his eyes changed from bewilderment to a glassy
cynicism, and he began to walk back and forth unsteadily.

He paced the long length of the room a dozen times. Then, with a
quickened stride, he passed into the hall, crossed it, and entered the
dining room, the tip of his tongue caressing his lips.

On the buffet stood a decanter, a heavy affair of finely executed
glassworker's art. The dark stuff in it extended halfway up the neck,
and as he reached for it Danny's lips parted. He lifted the receptacle
and clutched at a whisky glass that stood on the same tray. He picked
it up, looked calculatingly at it, set it down, and picked up a
_tumbler_.

The glass stopper of the bottle thudded on the mahogany; his nervous
hand held the tumbler under its gurgling mouth. Half full, two-thirds,
three-quarters, to within a finger's breadth of the top he filled it.

Then, setting the decanter down, he lifted the glass to look through
the amber at the morning light; his breath quick, his eyes glittering,
Danny Lenox poised. A smile played about his eager lips--a smile that
brightened, and lingered, and faded--and died.

The hand holding the glass trembled, then was still; trembled again, so
severely that it spilled some of the liquor; came gradually down from
its upraised position, down below his mouth, below his shoulder, and
waveringly sought the buffet.

As the glass settled to the firm wood Danny's shoulders slacked forward
and his head drooped. He turned slowly from the buffet, the aroma of
whisky strong in his dilated nostrils. After the first faltering step
he faced about, gazed at his reflection in the mirror, and said aloud:

"And it's not been worth--the candle!"

Savagery was in his step as he entered the hall, snatched up his hat,
and strode to the door.

As the heavy portal swung shut behind the hurrying boy it sighed again,
as though hopelessly. The future seemed hopeless for Danny. He had gone
out to face a powerful foe.




CHAPTER II

A Young Man Goes West


From the upper four hundreds on Riverside Drive to Broadway where the
lower thirties slash through is a long walk. Danny Lenox walked it this
June day. As he left the house his stride was long and nervously eager,
but before he covered many blocks his gait moderated and the going took
hours.

Physical fatigue did not slow down his progress. The demands upon his
mental machinery retarded his going. He needed time to think, to plan,
to bring order out of the chaos into which he had been plunged. Danny
had suddenly found that many things in life are to be considered
seriously. An hour ago they could have been numbered on his fingers;
now they were legion. It was a newly recognized fact, but one so
suddenly obvious that the tardiness of his realization became of
portentous significance.

Through all the hurt and shame and rage the great truth that his father
had hammered home became crystal clear. He had been merely a waster,
and a sharp bitterness was in him as he strode along, hands deep in
pockets.

The first flash of his resentment had given birth to the childish
desire to "show 'em," and as he crowded his brain against the host of
strange facts he found this impulse becoming stronger, growing into a
healthy determination to adjust his standard of values so that he
could, even with this beginning, justify his existence.

Oh, the will to do was strong in his heart, but about it was a clammy,
oppressive something. He wondered at it--then traced it back directly
to the place in his throat that cried out for quenching. As he
approached a familiar haunt that urge became more insistent and the
palms of his hands commenced to sweat. He crossed the street and made
on down the other side. He had wasted his ability to do, had let this
desire sap his will. He needed every jot of strength now. He would
begin at the bottom and call back that frittered vitality. He shut his
teeth together and doggedly stuck his head forward just a trifle.

The boy had no plan; there had not been time to become so specific. His
whole philosophy had been stood on its head with bewildering
suddenness. He knew, though, that the first thing to do was to cut his
environment, to get away, off anywhere, to a place where he could build
anew. The idea of getting away associated itself with one thing in his
mind: means of transportation. So, when his eyes without conscious
motive stared at the poster advertising a railroad system that crosses
the continent, Danny Lenox stopped and let the crowd surge past him.


A man behind the counter approached the tall, broad-shouldered chap who
fumbled in his pockets and dumped out their contents. He looked with a
whimsical smile at the stuff produced: handkerchiefs, pocket-knife,
gold pencil, tobacco pouch, watch, cigarette case, a couple of hat
checks, opened letters, and all through it money--money in bills and in
coins.

The operation completed, Danny commenced picking out the money. He
tossed the crumpled bills together in a pile and stacked the coins.
That done, he swept up the rest of his property, crammed it into his
coat pockets, and commenced smoothing the bills.

The other man, meanwhile, stood and smiled.

"Cleaning up a bit?" he asked.

Danny raised his eyes.

"That's the idea," he said soberly. "To clean up--a bit."

The seriousness of his own voice actually startled him.

"How far will that take me over your line?" he asked, indicating the
money.

The man stared hard; then smiled.

"You mean you want that much worth of ticket?"

"Yes, ticket and berth--upper berth. Less this." He took out a
ten-dollar bill. "I'll eat on the way," he explained gravely.

The other counted the bills, turning them over with the eraser end of
his pencil, then counted the silver and made a note of the total.

"Which way--by St. Louis or Chicago?" he asked. "We can send you
through either place."

Danny lifted a dollar from the stack on the counter and flipped it in
the air. Catching it, he looked at the side which came up and said:

"St. Louis."

Again the clerk calculated, referring to time-tables and a map.

"Denver," he muttered, as though to himself. Then to Danny: "Out of
Denver I can give you the Union Pacific, Denver and Rio Grande, or
Santa Fe."

"The middle course."

"All right--D. and R.G."

Then more referring to maps and time-tables, more figuring, more
glances at the pile of money.

"Let's see--that will land you at--at--" as he ran his finger down the
tabulation--"at Colt, Colorado."

Danny moved along the counter to the glass-covered map, a new interest
in his face.

"Where's that--Colt, Colorado?" he asked, leaning his elbows on the
counter.

"See?" The other indicated with his pencil.

"You go south from Denver to Colorado Springs; then on through Pueblo,
through the Royal Gorge here, and right in here--" he put the lead
point down on the red line of the railroad and Danny's head came close
to his--"is where you get off."

The boy gazed lingeringly at the white dot in the red line and then
looked up to meet the other's smile.

"Mountains and more mountains," he said with no hint of lightness.
"That's a long way from this place."

He gazed out on to flowing Broadway with a look somewhat akin to
pleading, and heard the man mutter: "Yes, beyond easy walking from
downtown, at least."

Danny straightened and sighed. That much was settled. He was going to
Colt, Colorado. He looked back at the map again, possessed with an
uneasy foreboding.

Colt, Colorado!

"Well, when can I leave?" he asked, as he commenced putting his
property back into the proper pockets.

"You can scarcely catch the next train," said the clerk, glancing at
the clock, "because it leaves the Grand Central in nineteen min--"

"Yes, I can!" broke in Danny. "Get me a ticket and I'll get there!"
Then, as though to himself, but still in the normal speaking tone: "I'm
through putting things off."

Eighteen and three-quarters minutes later a tall, young man trotted
through the Grand Central train shed to where his Pullman waited. The
porter looked at the length of the ticket Danny handed the conductor.

"Ain't y'll carryin' nothin', boss?" he asked.

"Yes, George," Danny muttered as he passed into the vestibule, "but
nothing you can help me with."

With the grinding of the car wheels under him Danny's mind commenced
going round and round his knotty problem. His plan had called for
nothing more than a start. And now--Colt, Colorado!

Behind him he was leaving everything of which he was certain, sordid
though it might be. He was going into the unknown, ignorant of his own
capabilities, realizing only that he was weak. He thought of those
burned bridges, of the uncertainty that lay ahead, of the tumbling of
the old temple about his ears--

And doubt came up from the ache in his throat, from the call of his
nerves. He had not had a drink since early last evening. He needed--No!
That was the last thing he needed.

He sat erect in his seat with the determination and strove to fight
down the demands which his wasting had made so steely strong. He felt
for his cigarette case. It was empty, but the tobacco pouch held a
supply, and as he walked toward the smoking compartment he dusted some
of the weed into a rice paper.

Danny pushed aside the curtain to enter, and a fat man bumped him with
a violent jolt.

"Oh, excuse me!" he begged, backing off. "Sorry. I'll be back in a
jiffy with more substantial apologies."

Three others in the compartment made room for Danny, who lighted his
cigarette and drew a great gasp of smoke into his lungs.

In a moment the fat man was back, his eyes dancing. In his hand was a
silver whisky flask.

"Now if you don't say this is the finest booze ever turned out of a gin
mill, I'll go plumb!" he declared. "Drink, friend, drink!"

He handed the flask to one of the others.

"Here's to you!" the man saluted, raising the flask high and then
putting its neck to his mouth.

Danny's tongue went again to his lips; his breath quickened and the
light in his eyes became a greedy glitter. He could hear the gurgle of
the liquid; his own throat responded in movement as he watched the
swallowing. He squeezed his cigarette until the thin paper burst and
the tobacco sifted out.

"Great!" declared the man with a sigh as he lowered the flask. "Great!"

He smacked his lips and winked. "Ah! No whisky's bad, but this's
better'n most of it!"

Then, extending the flask toward Danny, he said: "Try it, brother; it's
good for a soul."

But Danny, rising to his feet with a suddenness that was almost a
spring, strode past him to the door. His face suddenly had become tight
and white and harried. He paused at the entry, holding the curtain
aside, and turned to see the other, flask still extended, staring at
him in bewilderment.

"I'm not drinking, you know," said Danny weakly, "not drinking."

Then he went out, and the fat man who had produced the liquor said
soberly:

"Not drinking, and havin' a time staying off it. But say--ain't that
some booze?"


Long disuse of the power to plan concretely, to think seriously of
serious facts, had left it weak. Danny strove to route himself through
to that new life he knew was so necessary, but he could not call back
the ability of tense thinking with a word or a wish. And while he tried
for that end the boy commenced to realize that perhaps he had not so
far to seek for his fresh start. Perhaps it was not waiting for him in
Colt, Colorado. Perhaps it was right here in his throat, in his nerves.
Perhaps the creature in him was not a thing to be cleared away before
he could begin to fight--perhaps it was the proper object at which to
direct his whole attack.

Enforced idleness was an added handicap. Physical activity would have
made the beginning much easier, for before he realized it Danny was in
the thick of battle. A system that had been stimulated by poison in
increasing proportion to its years almost from boyhood began to make
unequivocal demands for the stuff that had held it to high pitch.
Tantalizingly at first, with the thirsting throat and jumping muscles;
then with thundering assertions that warped the vision and numbed the
intellect and toyed with the will. He gave up trying to think ahead.
His entire mental force went into the grapple with that desire. Where
he had thought to find possible distress in the land out yonder, it had
come to meet him--and of a sort more fearful, more tremendous, than any
which he had been able to conceive.

Through the rise of that fevered fighting the words of his father rang
constantly in Danny's mind.

"He was right--right, right!" the boy declared over and over. "It was
brutal; but he was right! I've wasted, I've gone the limit. And he
doesn't think I can come back!"

While faith would have been as a helping hand stretched down to pull
him upward, the denial of it served as a stinging goad, driving him on.
A chord deep within him had been touched by the raining blows from his
father, and the vibrations of that chord became quicker and sharper as
the battle crescendoed. The unbelief had stirred a retaliating
determination.

It was this that sent a growl of defiance into Danny's throat at sight
of a whisky sign; it was the cause of his cursing when, walking up and
down a station platform at a stop, he saw men in the buffet car lift
glasses to their lips and smile at one other. It was this that drew him
away from an unfinished meal in the diner when a man across the table
ordered liquor and Danny's eyes ached for the sight of it, his nostrils
begged for the smell.

So on every hand came the suggestions that made demands upon his
resistance, that made the weakness gnaw the harder at his will. But he
fought against it, on and on across a country, out into the mountains,
toward the end of his ride.


The unfolding of the marvels of a continent's vitals had a peculiar
effect on Danny.

Before that trip he had held the vaguest notions of the West, but with
the realization of the grandeur of it all he was torn between a
glorified inspiration and a suffocating sense of his own smallness.

He had known only cities, and cities are, by comparison, such puny
things. They froth and ferment and clatter and clang and boast, and yet
they are merely flecks, despoiled spots, on an expanse so vast that it
seems utterly unconscious of their presence. The boy realized this as
the big cities were left behind, as the stretches between stations
became longer, the towns more flimsy, newer. A species of terror filled
him as he gazed moodily from his Pullman window out across that
panorama to the north. Why, he could see as far as to the Canadian
boundary, it seemed! On and on, rising gently, ever flowing, never
ending, went the prairie. Here and there a fence; now a string of
telephone poles marching out sturdily, bravely, to reduce distance by
countless hours. There a house, alone, unshaded, with a woman standing
in the door watching his speeding train. Yonder a man shacking along on
a rough little horse, head down, listless--a crawling jot under that
endless sky.

Even his train, thing of steel and steam, was such a paltry particle,
screaming to a heaven that heard not, driving at a distance that cared
not.

Then the mountains!

Danny awoke in Denver, to step from his car and look at noble Evans
raising its craggy, hoary head into the salmon pink of morning,
defiant, ignoring men who fussed and puttered down there in its eternal
shadow; at Long's Peak, piercing the sky as though striving to be away
from humans; at Pike, shimmering proudly through its sixty miles of
crystal distance, taking a heavy, giant delight in watching beings
worry their way through its hundred-mile dooryard.

Then along the foothills the train tore with the might of which men are
so proud; yet it only crawled past those mountains.

Stock country now, more and more cattle in sight. Blase, white-faced
Herefords lifted their heads momentarily toward the cars. They heeded
little more than did the mountains.

Then, to the right and into the ranges, twisting, turning, climbing,
sliding through the narrow defiles at the grace of the towering heights
which--so alive did they seem--could have whiffed out that thing, those
lives, by a mere stirring on their complacent bases.

And Danny commenced to draw parallels. Just as his life had been
artificial, so had his environment. Manhattan--and this! Its
complaining cars, its popping pavements, its echoing buildings--it had
all seemed so big, so great, so mighty! And yet it was merely a little
mud village, the work of a prattling child, as compared with this
country. The subway, backed by its millions in bonds, planned by
constructive genius, executed by master minds, a thing to write into
the history of all time, was a mole-passage compared to this gorge! The
Woolworth, labor of years, girders mined on Superior, stones quarried
elsewhere, concrete, tiling, cables, woods, all manner of fixtures
contributed by continents; donkey engines puffing, petulant whistles
screaming, men of a dozen tongues crawling and worming and dying for
it; a nation standing agape at its ivory and gold attainments! And what
was it? Put it down here and it would be lost in the rolling of the
prairie as it swelled upward to meet honest heights!

No wonder Danny Lenox felt inconsequential. And yet he sensed a
friendly something in that grandeur, an element which reached down for
him like a helping hand and offered to draw him out of his cramped,
mean little life and put him up with stalwart men.

"If this rotten carcass of mine, with its dry throat and fluttering
hands, will only stick by me I'll show 'em yet!" he declared, and held
up one of those hands to watch its uncertainty.

And in the midst of one of those bitter, griping struggles to keep his
vagrant mind from running into vinous paths, the brakes clamped down
and the porter, superlatively polite, announced:

"This is Colt, sah."

A quick interest fired Danny. He hurried to the platform, stood on the
lowest step, and watched the little clump of buildings swell to natural
size. He reached into his pocket, grasped the few coins remaining
there, and gave them to the colored boy.

The train stopped with a jolt, and Danny stepped off. The conductor,
who had dropped off from the first coach as it passed the station, ran
out of the depot, waved his hand, and the grind of wheels commenced
again.

As the last car passed, Danny Lenox stared at it, and for many minutes
his gaze followed its departure. After it had disappeared around the
distant curve he retained a picture of the white-clad servant, leaning
forward and pouring some liquid from a bottle.

The roar of the cars died to a murmur, a muttering, and was swallowed
in the canyon. The sun beat down on the squat, green depot and cinder
platform, sending the quivering heat rays back to distort the outlines
of objects. Everywhere was a white, blinding light.

From behind came a sound of waters, and Danny turned about to gaze far
down into a ragged gorge where a river tumbled and protested through
the rocky way.

Beyond the stream was stretching mesa, quiet and flat and smooth
looking in the crystal distance, dotted with pine, shimmering under the
heat.

For five minutes he stared almost stupidly at that grand sweep of still
country, failing to comprehend the fact of arrival. Then he walked to
the end of the little station and gazed up at the town.

A dozen buildings with false fronts, some painted, some without
pretense of such nicety, faced one another across a thoroughfare four
times as wide as Broadway. Sleeping saddle ponies stood, each with a
hip slumped and nose low to the yellow ground. A scattering of houses
with their clumps of outbuildings and fenced areas straggled off behind
the stores.

Scraggly, struggling pine stood here and there among the rocks, but
shade was scant.

Behind the station were acres of stock pens, with high and unpainted
fences. Desolation! Desolation supreme!

Danny felt a sickening, a revulsion. But lo! his eyes, lifting blindly
for hope, for comfort, found the thing which raised him above the
depression of the rude little town.

A string of cliffs, ranging in color from the bright pink of the
nearest to the soft violet of those which might be ten or a hundred
miles away, stretched in mighty columns, their varied pigments telling
of the magnificent distances to which they reached. All were plastered
up against a sky so blue that it seemed thick, and as though the color
must soon begin to drip. Glory! The majesty of the earth's ragged
crust, the exquisite harmony of that glorified gaudiness! Danny pulled
a great chestful of the rare air into his lungs. He threw up his arms
in a little gesture that indicated an acceptance of things as they
were, and in his mind flickered the question:

"The beginning--or the end?"




CHAPTER III

"I've Done My Pickin'"


Then he felt his gaze drawn away from those vague, alluring distances.
It was one of those pulls which psychologists have failed to explain
with any great clarity; but every human being recognizes them. Danny
followed the impulse.

He had not seen the figure squatting there on his spurs at the shady
end of the little depot, for he had been looking off to the north. But
as he yielded to the urge he knew its source--in those other eyes.

The figure was that of a little man, and his doubled-up position seemed
to make his frame even more diminutive. The huge white angora chaps,
the scarlet kerchief about his neck and against the blue of his shirt,
the immense spread of his hat, his drooping gray mustache, all
emphasized his littleness.

Yet Danny saw none of those things. He looked straight into the blue
eyes squinting up at him--eyes deep and comprehensive, set in a
copper-colored face, surrounded by an intricate design of wrinkles in
the clear skin; eyes that had looked at incalculably distant horizons
for decades, and had learned to look at men with that same long-range
gaze. A light was in those eyes--a warm, kindly, human light--that
attracted and held and created an atmosphere of stability; it seemed as
though that light were tangible, something to which a man could tie--so
prompt is the flash from man to man that makes for friendship and
devotion; and to Danny there came a sudden comfort. That was why he did
not notice the other things about the little man. That was why he
wanted to talk.

"Good morning," he said.

"'Mornin'."

Then a pause, while their eyes still held one another.

After a moment Danny looked away. He had a stabbing idea that the
little man was reading him with that penetrating gaze. The look was
kindly, sincere, yet--and perhaps because of it--the boy cringed.

The man stirred and spat.

"To be sure, things kind of quiet down when th' train quits this
place," he remarked with a nasal twang.

"Yes, indeed. I--I don't suppose much happens here--except trains."

Danny smiled feebly. He took his hat off and wiped the brow on which
beads of sweat glistened against the pallor. The little man still
looked up, and as he watched Danny's weak, uncertain movements the
light in his eyes changed. The smile left them, but the kindliness did
not go; a concern came, and a tenderness.

Still, when he spoke his nasal voice was as it had been before.

"Take it you just got in?"

"Yes--just now."

Then another silence, while Danny hung his head as he felt those
searching eyes boring through him.

"Long trip this hot weather, ain't it?"

"Yes, very long."

Danny looked quickly at his interrogator then and asked:

"How did you know?"

"Didn't. Just guessed." He chuckled.

"Ever think how many men's been thought wise just guessin'?"

But Danny caught the evasion. He looked down at his clothes, wrinkled,
but still crying aloud of his East.

"I suppose," he muttered, "I do look different--_am_ different."

And the association of ideas took him across the stretches to
Manhattan, to the life that was, to--

He caught his breath sharply. The call of his throat was maddening!

The little man had risen and, with thumbs hooked in his chap belt,
stumped on his high boot heels close to Danny. A curious expression
softened the lines of his face, making it seem queerly out of harmony
with his garb.

"You lookin' for somebody?" he ventured, and the nasal quality of his
voice seemed to be mellowed, seemed to invite, to compel confidence.

"Looking for somebody?"

Danny, only half consciously, repeated the query. Then, throwing his
head back and following that range of flat tops off to the north, he
muttered: "Yes, looking for somebody--looking for myself!"

The other shifted his chew, reached for his hat brim, and pulled it
lower.

"No baggage?" he asked. "To be sure, an' ain't you got no grip?"

Danny looked at him quickly again, and, meeting the honest query in
that face, seeing the spark there which meant sympathy and
understanding--qualities which human beings can recognize anywhere and
to which they respond unhesitatingly--he smiled wanly.

"Grip?" he asked, and paused. "Grip? Not the sign of one! That's what
I'm here for--in Colt, Colorado--to get a fresh grip!" After a moment
he extended an indicating finger and asked: "Is that all of Colt--Colt,
Colorado?"

The old man did not follow the pointing farther than the uncertain
finger. And when he answered his eyes had changed again, changed to
searching, ferreting points that ran over every puff and seam and
hollow in young Danny's face. Then the older man set his chin firmly,
as though a grim conclusion had been reached.

"That's th' total o' Colt," he answered. "It ain't exactly astoundin',
is it?"

Danny shook his head slowly.

"Not exactly," he agreed. "Let's go up and look it over."

An amused curiosity drove out some of the misery that had been in his
pallid countenance.

"Sure, come along an' inspect our metropolis!" invited the little man,
and they struck off through the sagebrush.

Danny's long, free stride made the other hustle, and the contrast
between them was great; the one tall and broad and athletic of poise in
spite of the shoulders, which were not back to their full degree of
squareness; the other, short and bowlegged and muscle-bound by years in
the saddle, taking two steps to his pacemaker's one.

They attracted attention as they neared the store buildings. A man in
riding garb came to the door of a primitive clothing establishment,
looked, stepped back, and emerged once more. A moment later two others
joined him, and they stared frankly at Danny and his companion.

A man on horseback swung out into the broad street, and as he rode away
from them turned in his saddle to look at the pair. A woman ran down
the post-office steps and halted her hurried progress for a lingering
glance at Danny. The boy noticed it all.

"I'm attracting attention," he said to the little man, and smiled as
though embarrassed.

"Aw, these squashies ain't got no manners," the other apologized. "They
set out in there dog-gone hills an' look down badger holes so much that
they git loco when somethin' new comes along."

Then he stopped, for the tall stranger was not beside him. He looked
around. His companion was standing still, lips parted, fingers working
slowly. He was gazing at the front of the Monarch saloon.

From within came the sound of an upraised voice. Then another in
laughter. The swinging doors opened, and a man lounged out. After him,
ever so faint, but insidiously strong and compelling, came an odor!

For a moment, a decade, a generation--time does not matter when a man
chokes back temptation to save himself--Danny stood in the yellow
street, under the white sunlight, making his feet remain where they
were. They would have hurried him on, compelling him to follow those
fumes to their source, to push aside the flapping doors and take his
throat to the place where that burning spot could be cooled.

In Colt, Colorado! It had been before him all the way, and now he could
not be quit of its physical presence! But though his will wavered, it
held his feet where they were, because it was stiffened by the dawning
knowledge that his battle had only commenced; that the struggle during
the long journey across country had been only preliminary maneuvering,
only the mobilizing of his forces.

When he moved to face the little Westerner his eyes were filmed. The
other drew a hand across his mouth calculatingly and jerked his
hat-brim still lower.

"As I was sayin'," he went on a bit awkwardly as they resumed their
walk, "these folks ain't got much manners, but they're good hearted."

Danny did not hear. He was casting around for more resources, more
reserves to reinforce his front in the battle that was raging.

He looked about quickly, a bit wildly, searching for some object, some
idea to engage his thoughts, to divert his mind from that insistent
calling. His eyes spelled out the heralding of food stuffs. The sun
stood high. It was time. It was not an excuse; it was a Godsend!

"Let's eat," he said abruptly. "I'm starving."

"That's a sound idee," agreed the other, and they turned toward the
restaurant, a flat-roofed building of rough lumber. A baby was playing
in the dirt before the door and a chained coyote puppy watched them
from the shelter of a corner.

On the threshold Danny stopped, confusion possessing him. He stammered
a moment, tried to smile, and then muttered:

"Guess I'd better wait a little. It isn't necessary to eat right away,
anyhow."

He stepped back from the doorway with its smells of cooking food and
the other followed him quickly, blue eyes under brows that now drew
down in determination.

"Look here, boy," the man said, stepping close, "you was crazy for
chuck a minute ago, an' now you make a bad excuse not to eat. To be
sure, it ain't none of my business, but I'm old enough to be your
daddy; I ain't afraid to ask you what's wrong. Why don't you want to
eat?"

The sincerity of it, the unalloyed interest that precluded any hint of
prying or sordid curiosity, went home to Danny and he said simply:

"I'm broke."

"You didn't need to tell me. I knowed it. I ain't, though. You eat with
me."

"I can't! I can't do that!"

"Expect to starve, I s'pose?"

"No--not exactly. That is," he hastened to say, "not if I'm worth my
keep. I came out here to--to get busy and take care of myself. I'll
strike a job of some sort--anything, I don't care what it is or where
it takes me. When I'm ready to work, I'll eat. I ought to get work
right away, oughtn't I?"

In his voice was a sudden pleading born of the fear awakened by his
realization of absolute helplessness, as though he looked for assurance
to strengthen his feeble hopes, but hardly dared expect it. The little
man looked him over gravely from the heels of his flat shoes to the
crown of his rakishly soft hat. He pushed his Stetson far back on his
gray hair.

"To be sure, and I guess you won't have to look far for work," he said.
"I've been combin' this town dry for a hand all day. If you'd like to
take a chance workin' for me I'd be mighty glad to take you on--right
off. I'm only waitin' to find a man--can't go home till I do. Consider
yourself hired!"

He turned on his heel and started off. But Danny did not follow. He
felt distrust; he thought the kindness of the other was going too far;
he suspected charity.

"Come on!" the man snapped, turning to look at the loitering Danny.
"Have I got to rope an' drag you to grub?"

"But--you see it's--this way," the boy stammered. "Do you really want
me? Can I do your work? How do you know I'm worth even a meal?"

A slow grin spread over the Westerner's countenance.

"Friend," he drawled in his high, nasal tone, "it's a pretty poor
polecat of a man who ain't worth a meal; an' it's a pretty poor
specimen who goes hirin' without makin' up his mind sufficient. They
ain't many jobs in this country, but just now they's fewer men. We've
got used to bein' careful pickers. I've done my pickin'. Come on."

Only half willingly the boy followed.

They walked through the restaurant, the old man saluting the lone
individual who presided over the place, which was kitchen and dining
room in one.

"Hello, Jed," the proprietor cried, waving a fork. "How's things?"

"Finer 'n frog's hair!" the other replied, shoving open the broken
screen door at the rear.

"This is where we abolute," he remarked, indicating the dirty
wash-basin, the soap which needed a boiling out itself, and the
discouraged, service-stiffened towel.

Danny looked dubiously at the array. He had never seen as bad, to say
nothing of having used such; but the man with him sloshed water into
the basin from a tin pail and said:

"You're next, son, you're next."

And Danny plunged his bared wrists into the water. It was good, it was
cool; and he forgot the dirty receptacle in the satisfaction that came
with drenching his aching head and dashing the cooling water over his
throat. The other stood and watched, his eyes busy, his face reflecting
the rapid workings of his mind.

They settled in hard-bottomed, uncertain-legged chairs, and
Jed--whoever he might be, Danny thought, as he remembered the
name--gave their order to the man, who was, among other things, waiter
and cook.

"Make it two sirloins," he said; "one well done an' one--" He lifted
his eyebrows at Danny.

"Rare," the boy said.

"An' some light bread an' a pie," concluded the employer-host.

Danny saw that the cook wore a scarf around his neck and down his back,
knotted in three places. When he moved on the floor it was evident that
he wore riding boots. On his wrists were the leather cuffs of the
cowboy.

Danny smiled. A far cry, indeed, this restaurant in Colt, Colorado,
from his old haunts along the dark thoroughfare that is misnamed a
lighted way! The other was talking: "We'll leave soon's we're through
an' make it on up th' road to-night. It'll take us four days to get to
th' ranch, probably, an' we might's well commence. Can you ride?"

Danny checked a short affirmative answer on his lips.

"I've ridden considerably," he said. "You people wouldn't call it
riding, though. You'll have to teach me."

"Well, that's a good beginnin'. To be sure it is. Them as has opinions
is mighty hard to teach--'cause opinions is like as not to be dead
wrong."

He smeared butter on a piece of bread and poked it into his mouth. Then:

"I brought out my last hand--I come with him, I mean. Th' sheriff
brought him. His saddle an' bed's over to th' stable. You can use 'em."

"Sheriff?" asked Danny. "Get into trouble?"

"Oh, a little. He's a good boy, mostly--except when he gets drinkin'."

Danny shoved his thumb down against the tines of the steel fork he held
until they bent to uselessness.




CHAPTER IV

The Trouble Hunter


Knee to knee, at a shacking trot, they rode out into the glory of big
places, two horses before them bearing the light burden of a
Westerner's bed.

"My name's Jed Avery," the little man broke in when they were clear of
the town. "I'm located over on Red Mountain--a hundred an' thirty miles
from here. I run horses--th' VB stuff. They call me Jed--or Old VB;
mostly Jed now, 'cause th' fellers who used to call me Old VB has got
past talkin' so you can hear 'em, or else has moved out. Names don't
matter, anyhow. It ain't a big outfit, but I have a good time runnin'
it. Top hands get thirty-five a month."

Danny felt that there was occasion for answer of some sort. In those
few words Avery had given him as much information as he could need, and
had given it freely, not as though he expected to open a way for the
satisfaction of any curiosity. He wanted to forget the past, to leave
it entirely behind him; did not want so much as a remnant to cling to
him in this new life. Still, he did not deem it quite courteous to let
the volunteered information come to him and respond with merely an
acknowledgment.

He cleared his throat. "I'm from Riverside Drive, New York City," he
said grimly. "Names don't matter. I don't know how to do a thing except
waste time--and strength. If you'll give me a chance, I'll get to be a
top hand."

An interval of silence followed.

"I never heard of th' street you mention. I know New York's on th'
other slope an' considerable different from this here country. Gettin'
to be a top hand's mostly in makin' up your mind--just like gettin'
anywhere else."

Then more wordless travel. Behind them Colt dwindled to a bright
blotch. The road ran close against the hills, which rose abruptly and
in scarred beauty. The way was ever upward, and as they progressed more
of the country beyond the river spread out to their view, mesas and
mountains stretching away to infinite distance, it seemed.

Even back of the sounds of their travel the magnificent silence
impressed itself. It was weird to Danny Lenox, unlike anything his
traffic-hardened ears had ever experienced, and it made him uneasy--it,
and the ache in his throat.

That ache seemed to be the last real thing left about him, anyhow.
Events had come with such unreasonable rapidity in those last few days
that his harassed mind could not properly arrange the impressions. Here
he was, hired out to do he knew not what, starting a journey that would
take him a hundred and thirty miles from a place called Colt, in the
state of Colorado, through a country as unknown to him as the regions
of mythology, beside a man whose like he had never seen before,
traveling in a fashion that on his native Manhattan had worn itself to
disuse two generations ago!

Out of the whimsical reverie he came with a jolt. Following the
twisting road, coming toward them at good speed, was the last thing he
would have associated with this place--an automobile. He reined his
horse out of the path, saw the full-figured driver throw up his arm in
salutation to Jed, and heard Jed shout an answering greeting. The
driver looked keenly at Danny as he passed, and touched his broad hat.

"Who was that?" the boy asked, as he again fell in beside his companion.

"That's Bob Thorpe," the other explained. "He's th' biggest owner in
this part of Colorado--mebby in th' whole state. Cattle. S Bar S
mostly, but he owns a lot of brands."

"Can he get around through these mountains in a car?"

"He seems to. An' his daughter! My! To be sure, she'd drive that
dog-gone bus right up th' side of that cliff! You'll see for yourself.
She'll be home 'fore long--college--East somewheres."

The boy looked at him questioningly but said nothing.
"College--East--home 'fore long--" Might it not form a link between
this new and that old--a peculiar sort of link--as peculiar as this
sudden, unwarranted interest in this girl?

Through the long afternoon Danny eagerly awaited the coming of more
events, more distractions. When they came--such as informative bursts
from Jed or the passing of the automobile--he forgot for the brief
passage of time the throb in his throat, that wailing of the creature
in him. But when the two rode on at the shambling trot, with the
silence and the immense grandeur all about them, the demands of his
appetite were made anew, intensified perhaps by a feeling of his own
inconsequence, by the knowledge that should he fail once in standing
off those assaults it would mean only another beginning, and harder by
far than this one he was experiencing.

Every hour of sober reflection, of sordid struggle, added to his
estimate of the strength of that self he must subdue. He was going away
into the waste places, and a sneaking fear of being removed from the
stuff that had kept him keyed commenced to grow, adding to the fleshly
wants.

If he should be whipped and a surrender be forced? What then? He
realized that that doubting was cowardice. He had come out here to have
freedom, a new beginning, and now he found himself begging for a way
back should the opposition be too great. It was sheer weakness!

Cautiously Jed Avery had watched Danny's face, and when he saw anxiety
show there as doubt rose, he broke into words:

"Yes, sir, Charley was sure a good boy, but th' booze got him."

He looked down at his horse's withers so he could not see the start
this assertion gave Danny.

"He didn't want to be bad, but it's so easy to let go. To be sure, it
is. Anyhow, Charley never had a chance, never a look-in. He was good
hearted an' meant well--but he didn't have th' backbone."

And Danny found that a rage commenced to rise within him, a rage which
drove back those queries that had made him weak.

Day waned. The sun slid down behind the string of cliffs which
stretched on before them at their left. Distances took on their purple
veils, a canopy of virgin silver spread above the earth, and the
stillness became more intense.

"Right on here a bit now we'll stop," Jed said. "This's th' Anchor
Ranch. They're hayin', an' full up. We'll get somethin' to eat, though,
an' feed for th' ponies. Then we'll sleep on th' ground. Ever do it?"

"Never."

"Well, you've got somethin' comin', then. With a sky for a roof a man
gets close to whatever he calls his God--an' to himself. Some fellers
out here never seem to see th' point. Funny. I been sleepin' out, off
an' on, for longer than I like to think about--an' they's a feelin'
about it that don't come from nothin' else in th' world."

"You think it's a good thing, then, for a man to get close to himself?"

"To be sure I do."

"What if he's trying to get away from himself?"

Jed tugged at his mustache while the horses took a dozen strides. Then
he said:

"That ain't right. When a man thinks he wants to get away from himself,
that's th' coyote in him talkin'. Then he wants to get closer'n ever;
get down close an' fight again' that streak what's come into him an'
got around his heart. Wants to get down an' fight like sin!"

He whispered the last words. Then, before Danny could form an answer,
he said, a trifle gruffly:

"Open th' gate. I'll ride on an' turn th' horses back."

They entered the inclosure and rode on toward a clump of buildings a
half-mile back from the road.

Off to their right ran a strip of flat, cleared land. It was dotted
with new haystacks, and beyond them they could see waving grass that
remained to be cut. At the corral the two dismounted, Danny stiffly and
with necessary deliberation. As they commenced unsaddling, a trio of
hatless men, bearing evidences of a strenuous day's labor, came from
the door of one of the log houses to talk with Jed. That is, they came
ostensibly to talk with Jed; in reality, they came to look at the
Easterner who fumbled awkwardly with his cinch.

Danny looked at them, one after the other, then resumed his work. Soon
a new voice came to his ears, speaking to Avery. He noticed that where
the little man's greeting to the others had been full-hearted and
buoyant, it was now curt, almost unkind.

Curious, Danny looked up again--looked up to meet a leer from a pair of
eyes that appeared to be only half opened; green eyes, surrounded by
inflamed lids, under protruding brows that boasted but little hair,
above high, sunburned cheek bones; eyes that reflected all the small
meanness that lived in the thin lips and short chin. As he looked, the
eyes leered more ominously. Then the man spoke:

"Long ways from home, ain't you?"

Although he looked directly at Danny, although he put the question to
him and to him alone, the boy pretended to misunderstand--chose to do
so because in the counter question he could express a little of the
quick contempt, the instinctive loathing that sprang up for this man
who needed not to speak to show his crude, unreasoning, militant
dislike for the stranger, and whose words only gave vent to the spirit
of the bully.

"Are you speaking to me?" Danny asked, and the cool simplicity of his
expression carried its weight to those who stood waiting to hear his
answer.

The other grinned, his mouth twisting at an angle.

"Who else round here'd be far from home?" he asked.

Danny turned to Jed.

"How far is it?" he asked.

"A hundred an' ten," Jed answered, a swift pleasure lighting his
serious face.

Danny turned back to his questioner.

"I'm a hundred and ten miles from home," he said with the same
simplicity, and lifted the saddle from his horse's back.

It was the sort of clash that mankind the world over recognizes. No
angry word was spoken, no hostile movement made. But the spirit behind
it could not be misunderstood.

The man turned away with a forced laugh which showed his confusion. He
had been worsted, he knew. The smiles of those who watched and listened
told him that. It stung him to be so easily rebuffed, and his laugh
boded ugly things.

"Don't have anything to do with him," cautioned Jed as they threw their
saddles under a shed. "His name's Rhues, an' he's a nasty, snaky cuss.
He'll make trouble every chance he gets. Don't give him a chance!"

They went in to eat with the ranch hands. A dozen men sat at one long
table and bolted immense quantities of food.

The boiled beef, the thick, lumpy gravy, the discolored potatoes, the
coarse biscuit were as strange to Danny as was his environment. His
initiation back at Colt had not brought him close to such crudity as
this. He tasted gingerly, and then condemned himself for being
surprised to find the food good.

"You're a fool!" he told himself. "This is the real thing; you've been
dabbling in unrealities so long that you've lost sense of the virtue of
fundamentals. No frills here, but there's substance!"

He looked up and down at the low-bent faces, and a new joy came to him.
He was out among men! Crude, genuine, real men! It was an experience,
new and refreshing.

But in the midst of his contemplation it was as though fevered fingers
clutched his throat. He dropped his fork, lifted the heavy cup, and
drank the coffee it contained in scorching gulps.

Once more his big problem had pulled him back, and he wrestled with
it--alone among men!

After the gorging the men pushed back their chairs and yawned. A
desultory conversation waxed to lively banter. A match flared, and the
talk came through fumes of tobacco smoke.

"Anybody got th' makin's?" asked Jed.

"Here," muttered Danny beside him, and thrust pouch and papers into his
hand.

Danny followed Jed in the cigarette rolling, and they lighted from the
same match with an interchange of smiles that added another strand to
the bond between them.

"That's good tobacco," Jed pronounced, blowing out a whiff of smoke.

"Ought to be; it cost two dollars a pound."

Jed laughed queerly.

"Yes, it ought to," he agreed, "but we've got a tobacco out here they
call Satin. Ten cents a can. _It_ tastes mighty good to us."

Danny sensed a gentle rebuke, but he somehow knew that it was given in
all kindliness, that it was given for his own good.

"While I fight up one way," he thought, "I must fight down another."
And then aloud: "We'll stock up with your tobacco. What's liked by one
ought to be good enough for--" He let the sentence trail off.

Jed answered with: "Both."

And the spirit behind that word added more strength to their uniting
tie.

The day had been a hard one. Darkness came quickly, and the workers
straggled off toward the bunk house. Tossing away the butt of his
cigarette, Jed proposed that they turn in.

"I'm tired, and you've got a right to be," he declared.

They walked out into the cool of evening. A light flared in the bunk
house, and the sound of voices raised high came to them.

"Like to look in?" Avery asked, and Danny thought he would.

Men were in all stages of undress. Some were already in their beds;
others, in scant attire, stood in mid-floor and talked loudly. From one
to another passed Rhues. In his hand he held a bottle, and to the lips
of each man in turn he placed the neck. He faced Jed and Danny as they
entered. At sight of the stranger a quick hush fell. Rhues stood there,
bottle in hand, leering again.

"Jed, you don't drink," he said in his drawling, insinuating voice,
"but mebby yer friend here 'uld like a nightcap."

He advanced to Danny, bottle extended, an evil smile on his face. Jed
raised a hand as though to interfere; then dropped it. His jaw settled
in grim resolution, his nostrils dilated, and his eyes fixed themselves
fast on Danny's face.

Oh, the wailing eagerness of those abused nerves! The cracking of that
tortured throat! All the weariness of the day, of the week; all the
sagging of spirit under the assault of the demon in him were
concentrated now. A hot wave swept his body. The fumes set the blood
rushing to his eyes, to his ears; made him reel. His hand wavered up,
half daring to reach for the bottle, and the strain of his drawn face
dissolved in a weak smile.

Why hold off? Why battle longer? Why delay? Why? Why? Why?

Of a sudden his ears rang with memory of his father's brittle voice in
cold denunciation, and the quick passing of that illusion left another
talking there, in nasal twang, carrying a great sympathy.

"No, thanks," he said just above a whisper. "I'm not drinking."

He turned quickly and stepped out the door.

Through the confusion of sounds and ideas he heard the rasping laughter
of Rhues, and the tone of it, the nasty, jeering note, did much to
clear his brain and bring him back to the fighting.

Jed walked beside him and they crossed to where their rolls of bedding
had been dropped, speaking no word. As they stooped to pick up the
stuff the older man's hand fell on the boy's shoulder. His fingers
squeezed, and then the palm smote Danny between the shoulder blades,
soundly, confidently. Oh, that assurance! This man understood. And he
had faith in this wreck of a youth that he had seen for the first time
ten hours before!

Shaken, tormented though he was, weakened by the sharp struggle of a
moment ago, Danny felt keenly and with something like pride that it had
been worth the candle. He knew, too, with a feeling of comfort, that an
explanation to Jed would never be necessary.

Silently they spread the blankets and, with a simple "Good night,"
crawled in between.

Danny had never before slept with his clothes on--when sober. He had
never snuggled between coarse blankets in the open. But somehow it did
not seem strange; it was all natural, as though it should be so.

His mind went round and round, fighting away the tingling odor that
still clung in his nostrils, trying to blot out the wondering looks on
the countenances of those others as they watched his struggle to refuse
the stuff his tormentor held out to him.

He did not care about forgetting how Rhues's laughter sounded. Somehow
the feeling of loathing for the man for a time distracted his thought
from the pleading of his throat, augmented the singing of that chord
his father had set in motion, bolstered his will to do, to conquer this
thing!

But the effect was not enduring. On and on through the narrow channels
that the fevered condition made went his thinking; forever and forever
it must be so--the fighting, fighting, fighting; the searching for
petty distractions that would make him forget for the moment!

Suddenly he saw that there were stars--millions upon countless millions
of them dusted across the dome of the pale heavens as carelessly as a
baker might dust silvered sugar over the icing of a festal cake. Big
stars and tiny stars and mere little diffusive glows of light that
might come from a thousand worlds, clustering together out there in
infinite void. Blue stars and white stars, orange stars, and stars that
glowed red. Stars that sent beams through incalculable space and stars
that swung low, that seemed almost attainable. Stars that blinked
sleepily and stars that stared without wavering, purposeful, attentive.
Stars alone and lonely; stars in bunches. Stars in rows and patterns,
as though put there with design.

Danny breathed deeply, as though the pure air were stuffy and he needed
more of it, for the vagary of his wandering mind had carried him back
to the place where light points were arranged by plan. He saw again the
electric-light kitten and the spool of thread, the mineral-water clock,
the cigarette sign with flowing border, the--

Whisky again! He moved his throbbing head from side to side.

"Is it a blank wall?" he asked quite calmly. "Shall I always come up
against it? Is there no way out?"




CHAPTER V

Jed Philosophizes


Morning: a flickering in the east that gives again to the black hold of
night. Another attempt, a longer glimmer. It recedes, returns stronger;
struggles, bursts from the pall of darkness, and blots out the stars
before it. And after that first silver white come soft colors--shoots
of violet, a wave of pink, then the golden glory of a new day.

Jed Avery yawned loud and lingeringly, pushing the blankets away from
his chin with blind, fumbling motions. He thrust both arms from the
covers and reached above his head, up and up and--up! until he ended
with a satisfied groan. He sat erect, opening and shutting his mouth,
rubbed his eyes--and stopped a motion half completed.

Danny Lenox slept with lips parted. His brown hair--the hair that
wanted to curl so badly--was well down over the brow, and the skin
beneath those locks was damp. One hand rested on the tarpaulin covering
of the bed, the fingers in continual motion.

"Poor kid!" Jed muttered under his breath. "Poor son of a gun! He's in
a jack-pot, all right, an' it'll take all any man ever had to pull--"

"'Mornin', sonny!" he cried as Danny opened his eyes and raised his
head with a start.

For a moment the boy stared at him, evidencing no recognition. Then he
smiled and sat up.

"How are you, Mr. Avery?"

"Well," the other began grimly, looking straight before him, "Mr.
Avery's in a bad way. He died about thirty year ago."

Danny looked at him with a grin.

"But Old Jed--Old VB," he went on, "he's alive an' happy. Fancy
wrappin's is for boxes of candy an' playin' cards," he explained. "They
ain't necessary to men."

"I see--all right, Jed!"

Danny stared about him at the freshness of the young day.

"Wouldn't it be slick," Jed wanted to know, "if we was all fixed like
th' feller who makes th' days? If yesterday's was a bad job he can
start right in on this one an' make it a winner! Now, if this day turns
out bad he can forget it an' begin to-morrow at sun-up to try th' job
all over again!"

"Yes, it would be fine to have more chances," agreed Danny.

Jed sat silent a moment.

"Mebby so, an' mebby no," he finally recanted. "It would be slick an'
easy, all right; but mebby we'd get shiftless. Mebby we'd keep puttin'
off tryin' hard until next time. As 'tis, we have to make every chance
our only one, an' work ourselves to th' limit. Never let a chance get
away! Throw it an' tie it an' hang on!"

"In other words, think it's now or never?"

Jed reached for a boot and declared solemnly:

"It's th' only thing that keeps us onery human bein's on our feet an'
movin' along!"

Breakfast was a brief affair, brief but enthusiastic. The gastronomic
feats performed at that table were things at which to marvel, and Danny
divided his thoughts between wonder at them and recalling the events of
the night before. Only once did he catch Rhues's eyes, and then the
leer which came from them whipped a flush high in his cheeks.

Jed and Danny rode out into the morning side by side, smoking some of
the boy's tobacco. As the sun mounted and the breeze did not rise, the
heat became too intense for a coat, and Danny stripped his off and tied
it behind the saddle. Jed looked at the pink silk shirt a long time.

"To be sure an' that's a fine piece of goods," he finally declared.

Danny glanced down at the gorgeous garment with a mingled feeling of
amusement and guilt. But he merely said:

"I thought so, too, when I bought it."

And even that little tendency toward foppishness which has been handed
down to men from those ancestors who paraded in their finest skins and
paints before the home of stalwart cave women seemed to draw the two
closer to each other.

As though he could sense the young chap's bewilderment and wonder at
the life about him, Jed related much that pertained to his own work.

"Yes, I raise some horses," he concluded, "but I sell a lot of wild
ones, too. It's fun chasin' 'em, and it gets to be a habit with a
feller. I like it an' can make a livin' at it, so why should I go into
cattle? Those horses are out there in th' hills, runnin' wild, like
some folks, an' doin' nobody no good. I catch 'em an' halter-break 'em
an' they go to th' river an' get to be of use to somebody."

"Isn't it a job to catch them?" Danny asked.

"Well, I guess so!" Jed's eyes sparkled.

"Some of 'em are wiser than a bad man. Why, up in our country's a
stallion that ain't never had a rope on him. Th' Captain we've got to
call him. He's th' wildest an' wisest critter, horse or human, you ever
see. Eight years old, an' all his life he's been chased an' never
touched. He's big--not so big in weight; big like this here man
Napoleon, I mean. He rules th' range. He has th' best mares on th'
mountain in his bunch, an' he handles 'em like a king. We've tossed
down our whole hand time an' again, but he always beats us out. We're
no nearer catchin' him to-day than we was when he run a yearlin'."

The little man's voice rose shrilly and his eyes flashed until Danny,
gazing on him, caught some of his fever and felt it run to the ends of
his body.

"Oh, but that's a horse!" Jed went on. "Why, just to see him standin'
up on the sky line, head up, tail arched-like, ready to run, not
scared, just darin' us to come get him--well, it's worth a hard ride.
There's somethin' about th' Captain that keeps us from hatin' him. By
all natural rights somebody ought to shoot a stallion that'll run wild
so long an' drive off bunches of gentle mares an' make 'em crazy wild.
But no. Nobody on Red Mountain or nobody who ever chased th' Captain
has wanted to harm him; yet I've heard men swear until it would make
your hair curl when they was runnin' him! He's that kind. He gets to
somethin' that's in real men that makes 'em light headed. I guess it's
his strength. He's bigger'n tricks, that horse. He's learned all about
traps an' such, an' th' way men generally catch wild horses don't
bother him at all. Lordy, boy, but th' Captain's somethin' to set up
nights an' talk about!"

His voice dropped on that declaration, almost in reverence.

"Well, he's so wise and strong that he'll just keep right on running
free; is that the idea?" asked Danny.

Jed gnawed off a fresh chew and repocketed the plug, shifted in his
saddle, and shook his head.

"Nope, I guess not," he said gravely. "I don't reckon so, because it
ain't natural; it ain't th' way things is done in this world. Did you
ever stop to think that of all th' strong things us men has knowed
about somethin' has always turned up to be a little bit stronger? We've
been all th' time pattin' ourselves on th' back an' sayin', 'There,
we've gone an' done it; that'll last forever!' an' then watchin' a wind
or a rain carry off what we've thought was so strong. Either that, I
say, or else we've been fallin' down on our knees an' prayin' for help
to stop somethin' new an' powerful that's showed up. An' when prayin'
didn't do no good up pops somebody with an idea that th' Lord wants us
folks to carry th' heavy end of th' load in such matters, an' gets busy
workin'. An' his job ends up by makin' somethin' so strong that it
satisfied all them prayers--folks bein' that unparticular that they
don't mind where th' answer comes from so long as it comes an' they
gets th' benefits!

"That's th' way it is all th' time. We wake up in th' mornin' an' see
somethin' so discouragin' that we want to crawl back to bed an' quit
tryin'; then we stop to think that nothin' has ever been so great or so
strong that it kept right on havin' its own way all th' time; an' we
get our sand up an' pitch in, an' pretty soon we're on top!

"All we need is th' sand to tackle big jobs; just bein' sure that
they's some way of doin' or preventin' an' makin' a reg'lar hunt for
that one thing. So 'tis with th' Captain. He's fooled us a long time
now, but some day a man'll come along who's wiser than th' Captain, an'
he'll get caught.

"Nothin' strange about it. Just th' workin' out of things. 'Course,
it'll all depend on th' man. Mebby some of us on th' mountain has th'
brains; mebby some others has th' sand, but th' combination ain't been
struck yet. We ain't _men_ enough. Th' feller who catches that horse
has got to be all man, just like th' feller who beats out anythin' else
that's hard; got to be man all th' way through. If he's only part man
an' tackles th' job he's likely to get tromped on; if he's all man,
he'll do th' ridin'."

Jed stopped talking and gazed dreamily at the far horizon; dreamily,
but with an eye which moved a trifle now and then to take into its
range the young chap who rode beside him. Danny's head was down, facing
the dust which rose from the feet of the horses ahead. The biting
particles irritated the membrane of his throat, but for the moment he
did not heed. "Am I a man--all the way through?" he kept asking
himself. "All the way through?"

And then his nerves stung him viciously, shrieking for the stimulant
which had fed them so long and so well. His aching muscles pleaded for
it; his heart, miserable and lonely, missed the close, reckless
friendships of those days so shortly removed, in spite of his
realization of what those relations had meant; he yearned for the
warming, heedless thrills; his eyes ached and called out for just the
one draft that would make them alert, less hurtful.

From every joint in his body came the begging! But that chord down in
his heart still vibrated; his father's arraignment was in his ears, its
truth ringing clearly. The incentive to forge ahead, to stop the
wasting, grew bigger, and his will stood stanch in spite of the fact
that his spinning brain played such tricks as making the click of
pebbles sound like the clink of ice in glasses!

Then, too, there was Jed, the big-hearted, beside him. And Jed was
saying, after a long silence, as though he still thought of his theme:
"Yes, sir, us men can do any old thing if we only think so! Nothin' has
ever been too much for us; nothin' ever will--if we only keep on
thinkin' as men ought to think an' respectin' ourselves."

Thus they traveled, side by side, the one fighting, the other uttering
his homely truths and watching, always watching, noting effects,
detecting temptations when the strain across the worried brow and about
the tight mouth approached the breaking point. With keen intuition he
went down into the young fellow and found the vibrating chord, the one
that had been set humming by scorn and distrust. But instead of abusing
it, instead of goading it on, Jed nursed it, fed it, strengthening the
chord itself with his philosophy and his optimism.

They went on down Ant Creek, past the ranches which spread across the
narrow valley. Again they slept under the open skies, and Danny once
more marveled at the stars.

That second morning was agony, but Jed knew no relenting.

"You're sore an' stiff," he said, "but keepin' at a thing when it hurts
is what counts, is what gets a feller well--an' that applies to more
things than saddle sores, too."

He said the last as though aside, but the point carried.

At the mouth of the creek, where it flows into Clear River, they swung
to the west and went downstream. Danny's condition became only
semi-conscious. His head hung, his eyes were but half opened. Living
resolved itself into three things. First and second: the thundering
demands and the stubborn resistance of his will. When Jed spoke and
roused him the remaining element come to the fore: his physical
suffering. That agony became more and more acute as the miles passed,
but in spite of its sharpness it required the influence of his
companion's voice to awaken him to its reality.

Always, in a little back chamber of his mind, was a bit of glowing
warmth--his newly born love for the man who rode beside him.


It was night when they reached the ranch.

"We're arrived, sonny! This is home!" cried Jed, slapping Danny on the
shoulder. "Our home."

The boy mastered his senses with an effort. When he dismounted he
slumped to one knee and Jed had to help him stand erect.

Danny remembered nothing of the bed going, nor could he tell how long
the little, gray-haired man stood over him, muttering now and then,
rubbing his palms together; nor of how, when he turned toward the
candle on the table, burning steadily and brightly there in the night
like a young Crusader fighting back the shadows into the veriest corner
of the room, his eyes were misted.

It was a strange awakening, that which followed. Danny felt as though
he had slept through a whole phase of his existence. At first he was
not conscious of his surroundings, did not try to remember where he was
or what had gone before. He lay on his back, mantled in a strange
peace, wonderfully content. Torture seemed to have left him, bodily
torments had fled. His heart pumped slowly; a vague, pleasing weakness
was in his bones. It was rest--rest after achievement, the achievement
of stability, the arrival at a goal.

Then, breaking into full consciousness, his nostrils detected odors. He
sniffed slightly, scarcely knowing that he did so. Cooking! It was
unlike other smells from places of cookery that he had known; it was
attractive, compelling.

All that had happened since his departure from Colt came back to him
with his first movement. His body was a center of misery, as though it
were shot full of needles, as though it had been stretched on a rack,
then blistered. Dressing was accomplished to the accompaniment of many
grunts and quick intakings of breath.

When he tried to walk he found that the process was necessarily
slow--slower than it had ever been before. Setting each foot before the
other gingerly, as if in experiment, he walked across the tiny room
toward the larger apartment of the cabin.

"Mornin'!" cried Jed, closing the oven door with a gentleness that
required the service of both hands. "I allowed you'd be up about now.
Just step outside an' wash an' it'll be about ready. Can you eat? Old
VB sure can build a breakfast, an' he's never done better than this."

"By the smell, I judge so," said Danny.

The warm breath of baking biscuits came to him from the oven. A
sputtering gurgle on the stove told that something fried. The aroma of
coffee was in the air, too, and Jed lifted eggs from a battered pail to
drop them into a steaming kettle. The table, its plain top scrubbed to
whiteness, was set for two, and the sunlight that streamed through the
window seemed to be all caught and concentrated in a great glass jar of
honey that served as a centerpiece.

Danny's eyes and nostrils and ears took it all in as he moved toward
the outer doorway. When he gained it he paused, a hand on the low
lintel, and looked out upon his world.

Away to the south stretched the gulch, rolling of bottom, covered with
the gray-green sage. Over east rose the stern wall, scarred and split,
with cedars clinging in the interstices, their forms dark green against
the saffron of the rocks. Up above, towering into the unstained sky of
morning, a rounded, fluted peak, like the crowning achievement of some
vast cathedral.

The sun was just in sight above the cliff, but Danny knew that day was
aging, and felt, with his peace, a sudden sharp affection for the old
man who, with an indulgence that was close to motherly, had let him
sleep. It made him feel young and incompetent, yet it was good,
comforting--like the peace of that great stillness about him.

Except for the soft sounds from the stove, there was no break. Above,
on the ridges, a breeze might be blowing; but not an intimation of it
down here. Just quiet--silvery and holy.

The sun shoved itself clear of the screening trees. A jack rabbit,
startled by nothing at all, sprang from its crouching under a brush
shelter and made off across the gulch with the jerky lightness of a
stone skipping on water. As he bobbed the grass and bushes dewdrops
flew from them, catching sunbeams as they hurtled out to their death,
for one instant of wondrous glory flashing like gems.

Danny Lenox, late of New York, drew a deep, quivering breath and leaned
his head against the crude doorway. He was sore and weak and felt
almost hysterical, but perhaps this was only because he was so happy!




CHAPTER VI

Ambition is Born


And then began Danny's apprenticeship. Jed, the wise, did not delay
activity. He commenced with the boy as soon as breakfast had been eaten
and the dishes washed.

That first day they shod a horse, Danny doing nothing really, but
taking orders from Jed as though the weight of a vast undertaking
rested on his shoulders.

The next day they mended fences from early morning until evening.

Gradually the realization came to Danny that he was doing something,
that he was filling a legitimate place--small, surely: nevertheless he
was being of use, he was creating. A pleasing sensation! One of the few
truly wholesome delights he had ever experienced. Danny thought about
it with almost childish happiness; then, letting his mind return again
to the established rut, he was surprised to know that mere thinking
about his simple, homely duties had stilled for the time it endured the
restless creature within him.

The boy's bodily hurts righted themselves. Long hours of sleep did more
than anything else to speed recovery. Those first two nights he was
between covers before darkness came to the gulch, and Jed let him sleep
until the sun was well up.

On the third evening they sat outside, Danny watching Jed put a new
half-sole on a cast-off riding boot.

"They're your size," the old man said, "an' you'll have to wear boots,
to be sure. Them things you got on ain't what I'd call exactly fitted
to ridin' a horse."

Danny looked down at his modish Oxfords and smiled. Then he glanced up
at the man beside him, who hammered and cut and grunted while he worked
as though his very immortality depended on getting those boots ready
for his new hand to wear.

Oh, the boy from the city could not then appreciate the big feeling of
man for mankind which prompted such humble labor. It was a labor of
love, the mere mending of that stiff old boot! In it Jed Avery found
the encompassing happiness which comes to those who understand,
happiness of the same sort he had felt back there at Colt when he saw
that there was a human being who needed help and that it was in his
power to give him that help. And the peace this happiness engendered
created an atmosphere which soothed and made warm the heart of the boy,
though he did not know why.

"Guess we'd better move inside an' get a light," Jed muttered finally.
"I'll shut the corral gate. You light th' candle, will you? It's on th'
shelf over th' table--stickin' in a bottle."

Danny watched him go away into the dusk and heard the creak of the big
gate swinging shut before he stepped into the house and groped his way
along for the shelf. He found it after a moment and fumbled along for
the candle Jed had said was there. His fingers closed on something hard
and cold and cylindrical. He slid his fingers upward; then staggered
back with a half-cry.

"What's wrong?" asked Jed, coming into the house.

Danny did not answer him, so the old man stepped forward toward the
shelf. In a moment a match flared; the cold wick of the candle took the
flame, warmed, sent it higher, and a glow filled the room.

The boy looked out from eyes that were dark and wide and filled with
the old horror. The hand held near his lips shook, and he turned on Jed
a look that pleaded, then gazed back at the light.

The candle was stuck in the neck of a whisky bottle.

Danny opened his lips to speak, but the words would not come. That
terror was back again, shattering his sense of peace, melting the words
in his throat with its heat.

Jed moved near to him.

"It's a bright light--for such a little candle," he said slowly, and a
stout assurance was in his tone.

"But I--I touched the bottle--in the dark!"

Danny's voice was high and strained, and the words, when finally they
did come, tripped over one another in nervous haste. His knees were
weak under him. Such was the strength of the tentacles which reached up
to stay his struggles and to drag him back into the depths from which
he willed to rise. Such was the weakness of the nervous system on which
the strain of the ordeal was placed.

Jed put a hand on the boy's shoulder and gazed into the drawn face.

"It's all right, sonny," he said softly, his voice modulating from
twang to tenderness in the manner it had. "Most men touches it in th'
dark. But don't you see what this bottle's for? Don't you see that
candle? Burnin' away there, corkin' up th' bottle, givin' us light so
we can see?"

Then the other hand went up to the boy's other shoulder, and the little
old rancher shook young Danny Lenox gently, as though to joggle him
back to himself.

"I know, sonny," he said softly. "I know--" Then he turned away quickly
and smote his palms together with a sharp crack.

"Now get to bed. I'll finish these here boots to-night and in th'
mornin' we ride. If you're goin' to get to be a top hand, we've got to
quit foolin' around home an' get to learn th' country. They's a lot of
colts we got to brand an' a bunch of wild ones to gather. It means
work--lots of it--for you an' me!"

He set to work, busily thumping on the boot.


In the morning, Danny was subdued, subdued and shaking. The spontaneity
that had characterized his first days on the ranch had departed. He was
still eager for activity, but not for the sake of the new experiences
in themselves. That gnawing was again in his throat, tearing his flesh,
it seemed, and to still the trembling of his hand it was necessary for
him to clutch the saddle horn and keep his fingers clamped tightly
about it as they rode along.

They climbed out of the gulch, horses picking their way up an almost
impossible trail, and on a high ridge, where country rolled and tossed
about them for immeasurable distances, Jed stopped and pointed out the
directions to his companion.

Thirty miles to the south was Clear River with its string of ranches,
and the town of Ranger, their post office. Twenty miles to the
southeast was the S Bar S Ranch, the center of the country's cattle
activity, and over west, on Sand Creek, a dozen miles' ride across the
hills and double that distance by road, was another scattering of
ranches where Dick Worth, deputy sheriff for that end of Clear River
County, lived.

"An' to th' north of us," continued Jed, with a sweep of his hand,
"they's nothin' but hills--clean to Wyoming! We're on th' outskirts of
settlements. South of th' river it's all ranches, but north--nothin'.
Couple of summer camps but no ranches. It's a great get-away country,
all right!"

The riding was easy that day, and in spite of his stiffness Danny
wished it were harder, because the turmoil kept up within him, and even
the unbroken talk of Jed, giving him an intelligent, interesting idea
of the country, could not crowd out his disquieting thoughts.

But it was easier the next day, and Danny took a deep interest in the
hunt for a band of mares with colts that should be branded. Jed's low,
warning "H-s-s-t! There they are!" set his heart pounding wildly, and
he listened eagerly to the directions the old man gave him; then he
waited in high excitement while Jed circled and got behind the bunch.

The horses came toward him, and Danny, at Jed's shout, commenced to
ride for the ranch. It was a new, an odd, an interesting game. The
horses came fast and faster. Now and then to his ears floated Jed's
repeated cry: "Keep goin'! Keep ahead!" And he spurred on, wondering at
every jump how his horse could possibly keep his feet longer in that
awful footing.

But he had faith in the stout little beast he rode, and his spirit was
of the sort that would not question when a man as skilled in the game
as was Jed urged him along.

The mares with their colts pressed closely, but Danny kept going, kept
urging speed. Straight on for the ranch he headed, and when they
reached the level bottom of the gulch the race waxed warm.

"Into th' round corral!" cried Jed. "Keep goin'! You're doin' fine!"

And into the round corral Danny headed his mount, while the nose of the
lead mare reached out at his pony's flank.

The gate swung shut; the mares trotted around the inclosure, worried,
for there their offspring had been taken from them before. The colts
hung close to their mothers, snorting and rolling their wide eyes,
while the saddle horses stood with legs apart, getting their wind.

Danny's eyes sparkled.

"That's sport!" he declared. "But, say, will these horses always follow
a rider that way?"

Jed loosed his cinch before he answered: "Horses is like some men. As
long as they're bein' pushed from behind an' they's somebody goin'
ahead of 'em, they'll follow--follow right through high water! But once
let 'em get past th' rider who's supposed to be holdin' 'em up--why,
then they's no handlin' 'em at all. They scatter an' go their own way,
remainin' free.

"As I said, they're like men. To be sure, lots of men has got to give
that what's leadin' 'em such a run that they beat it to death an' get a
chance to go free!"

Danny rubbed his horse's drenched withers and agreed with a nod as Jed
walked over to the gate and fumbled with the fastening.

"Say," he said, turning round, "I like th' way you ride!"

Danny looked up quickly, pleased.

"I'm glad," he said, but in the simple assertion was a great self-pride.

"Most fellers strange in th' country wouldn't fancy takin' that kind of
a bust down off a point. No, sir. Not such a ride for us old heads, but
for a greenhorn-- Well, I guess you'll get to be a top hand some day,
all right!"

And the influence which more than all else was to help Danny become a
top hand, which was to set up in his heart the great ambition, which
was to hold itself up as a blazing ideal, came early in his novitiate
as a horse hunter--came in a fitting setting, on a day richly golden,
when the air seemed filled with a haze of holy incense, holy with the
holiness of beauty. It was one of those mountain days when the
immensity of nature becomes so obvious and so potent that even the
beasts leave off their hunting or their grazing to gaze into wondrous
distances. The sage is green and brash in the near sunlight, soft and
purple out yonder; the hills sharp and hard and detailed under the
faultless sky for unthinkable miles about, then soft and vague, melting
in color and line, rolling, reaching, tossing in a repetition of ranges
until eyes ache in following them and men are weak about their middles
from the feeling of vastnesses to which measurements by figures are
profane.

Jed and Danny searched for horses along two parallel ridges. Now and
then they saw each other, but for the most part it had been a day of
solitary riding.

Late afternoon arrived, and Danny had about abandoned hope of success.
He was considering the advisability of mounting the ridge above the
gulch into which he had ridden and locating Jed, though loath to leave
the solitudes.

His pony picked them out and stopped before Danny's eyes registered the
sight. The boy searched quickly, and over against a clump of cedars,
halfway up the rise, he saw horses.

"No, that's not they," he muttered. "Jed said there were two white
mares among them. Not--"

His pony started under him, gave a sharp little shudder, then moved a
step backward and stood still, a barely perceptible tremor shaking his
limbs.

Then a sound new and strange came to Danny. He did not know its origin,
but it contained a quality that sent a thrill pulsing from his heart.
Shrill it was, but not sharply cut, wavering but not breaking; alarm,
warning, concern, caution--the whistle of a stallion! Then silence,
while the mares stood rigid and the saddle horse held his breath.

Again it came, and a quick chill struck down Danny's spine. His
searching eyes encountered the source. There, halfway between the mares
and the crown of the ridge he stood, out on a little rim-rock that made
a fitting pedestal, alert, defiant, feet firmly planted, with the poise
of a proud monarch.

Even across the distance his coat showed the glossiness seen only on
fine, short hair; his chest, turned halfway toward the rider, was
splendid in breadth and depth, indicating superb strength, endurance,
high courage. Danny looked with a surge of appreciation at the arch of
the neck, regal in its slim strength, at the fine, straight limbs,
clean as a dancing girl's; at the long, lithe barrel with its fine
symmetry.

A wandering breath of breeze came up the gulch, fluttering the wealth
of tail, lifting the heavy mane and forelock. The horse raised a front
foot and smote the ledge on which he stood as though wrath rose that a
mere man should ride into his presence, and he would demand departure
or homage from Danny Lenox. He shook his noble head impatiently, to
clear his eyes of the hair that blew about them. And once more came the
whistle.

The mares stirred. One, a bright buckskin, trotted up the rise a dozen
yards, and stopped to turn and look. The others moved slowly, eyes and
ears for Danny.

Again the whistle; a clatter of loosened stones as the black leader
bounded up the hillside; and the bunch was away in his wake.

"The Captain!" Danny breathed, and then, in a cry which echoed down the
gulch--"The Captain!"

He was scarcely conscious of his movements, but his quirt fell, his
spurs raked the sides of his pony, and the sturdy little animal, young
and not yet fully developed, doing his best in making up the ridge,
labored effectively, perhaps drawn on by that same raw desire which
went straight to the roots of Danny's spirit and came back to set the
fires glowing in his eyes.

The boy rode far forward in his saddle, his gaze on the plunging band
that scattered stones and dirt as they strove for the top. But he was
many lengths behind when the last mare disappeared over the rim. He
fanned his pony again, and the beast grunted in his struggles for
increased speed in the climbing, lunging forward with mighty efforts
which netted so little ground.

As he toiled up the last yards Danny saw the Captain again, standing
there against the sky, watching, waiting, mane and tail blowing about
him. His strong, full, ever delicate body quivered with the singing
spirit of confidence within him and communicated itself to the weakling
pursuer. Just a glimpse of the man was all that the black horse wanted,
then--he was off.

As Danny's horse caught the first stride in the run down the ridge he
saw the Captain stretch that fine nose out to the flank of a lagging
mare, and saw the animal throw her head about in pain as the strong
teeth nipped her flesh, commanding more speed.

Danny Lenox was mad! He pulled off his hat and beat his pony's withers
with it. He cried aloud the Captain's name. He went on and on, dropping
far down on his horse's side as they brushed under the cedars, settling
firmly to the seat when the animal leaped over rocks. His shirt was
open at the neck, and his throat was chilled with the swift rush of
air, while hot blood swirled close to the skin. His eyes glowed with
the fire set there by this new fascination, the love of beautiful
strength; and through his body sang the will to conquer!

It was an unfair race. Danny and his light young horse had no chance.
Off and away drew the stallion and his bunch, without effort after that
first crazy break down the ridge. The last Danny saw of him was with
head turned backward, nose lifted, as though he breathed disdainful
defiance at the man who would come in his wake with the thirst for
possession high within him!

And so the boy pulled up, dropped off, and let his breathing pony rest.
His legs were uncertain under him, and he knew that his pulses raced.
For many minutes he strove to analyze his emotion but could not.

Jed slid off the next ridge and came up at a trot. His face was
radiant. "Well, he got you, didn't he?" He laughed aloud.

"I thought he would, all along; and I knowed he had you when I see you
break up over th' ridge. You've got th' fever now, like a lot of th'
rest of us! Mebby you'll chase horses here for years, but you'll always
have an eye out for just one thing--th' Captain. You won't be satisfied
until you've got him--like all of us; not satisfied until we've done
th' biggest thing there is in sight to do."

Then, as though parenthetically: "An' when we've done that we've only
h'isted ourselves up to where we can see that they's a hunderd times as
much to do."

"Gad, but he goes right into a fellow's heart!" breathed Danny, looking
into the sunset. "I didn't know I was following him, Jed, until the
pony here commenced to tire."

He laughed apologetically, as though confessing a foolishness, but his
face was glowing with a new light. A fresh incentive had come to him
with this awakening admiration, inciting him to emulation. The spirit
of the stallion stirred in him again that vibrant chord which had been
urging him to fight on, not to give up.

His ambition to overcome his weakness began to take quick, definite
direction. Added to the effort of overcoming his vices would henceforth
be the endeavor to achieve, to compass some worthy object. This was his
aim: to be a leader to whom men would turn for inspiration; to be
unconquerable among men, as the Captain was unconquerable among his
kind.

As the ideal took shape, springing full-born from his excitement, Danny
Lenox felt lifted above himself, felt stronger than human strength,
felt as though he were forever beyond human weaknesses.

When they had ridden twenty minutes in silence Jed broke out: "Sonny, I
don't want to act like 'n old woman, but I guess I'm gettin' childish!
I've knowed you less than a month. I don't even know who you was when
you come. We don't ask men about theirselves when they come in here.
What a feller wants to tell, we take; what he keeps to hisself we
wonder at without mentionin' it.

"But you, sonny--you couldn't keep it from me. I know what it is, I
know. I seen it when you got off th' train at Colt--seen that somethin'
had got you down. I knowed for sure what it was when you stopped by th'
saloon there. I knowed how honest you was with yourself in that little
meetin' with Rhues. I know all about it--'cause I've been through th'
same thing--alone, an' years ago."

After a pause he went on: "An' just now, when I seen you comin' down
that ridge after th' Captain, I knowed th' right stuff was in
you--because when a thing like that horse touches a man off it's a sign
he's th' right kind, th' kind that wants to do things for th' sake of
knowin' his own strength. You've got th' stuff in you to be a man, but
you're fightin' an awful fight. You need help; you ought to have
friends--you ought to have a daddy!"

He gulped, and for a dozen strides there were no more words.

"I feel like adoptin' you, sonny, 'cause I know. I feel like makin' you
a part of this here outfit, which ain't never branded a colt that
didn't belong to it, which ain't never done nothin' but go straight
ahead an' be honest with itself, good times an' bad.

"I used to be proud when they called me Old VB, 'cause they all knowed
th' brand was on th' level, an' when they, as you might say, put it on
me, I felt like I was wearin' some sort of medal. I feel just like
makin' you part of th' VB--Young VB--'cause I can help you here
an'--an' 'fore God A'mighty you need help, man that you are!"

An hour and a half later, when the last dish had been wiped, when the
dishpan had been hung away, Danny spoke the next words. He walked close
to the old man, his face quiet under the new consciousness of how far
he must go to approach this new ideal. He took the hard old hand in his
own, covered its back with the other, and muttered in a voice that was
far from clear: "Good night, Old VB."

And the other, to cover the tenderness in his tone, snapped back: "Get
to bed, Young VB; they's that ahead of you to-morrow which'll take
every bit of your courage and strength!"




CHAPTER VII

With Hoof and Tooth


So it came to pass that Danny Lenox of New York ceased to exist, and a
new man took his place--Young VB, of Clear River County, Colorado.

"Who's your new hand?" a passing rider asked Jed one morning, watching
with interest as the stranger practiced with a rope in the corral.

"Well, sir, he's th' ridin'est tenderfoot you ever see!" Jed boasted.
"I picked him up out at Colt an' put him to work--after Charley went
away."

"Where'd he come from? What's his name?" the other insisted.

"From all appearances, he ain't of these parts," replied Jed, squinting
at a distant peak. "An' around here we've got to callin' him Young VB."

The rider, going south, told a man he met that Jed had bestowed his
brand on a human of another generation. Later, he told it in Ranger.
The man he met on the road told it on Sand Creek; those who heard it in
Ranger bore it off into the hills, for even such a small bit of news is
a meaty morsel for those who sit in the same small company about
bunk-house stoves months on end. The boy became known by name about the
country, and those who met him told others what the stranger was like.
Men were attracted by his simplicity, his desire to learn, by his frank
impulse to be himself yet of them.

"Oh, yes, he's th' feller," they would recall, and then recite with the
variations that travel gives to tales the incident that transpired in
the Anchor bunk house.

Young VB fitted smoothly into the work of the ranch. He learned to
ride, to rope, to shoot, to cook, and to meet the exigencies of the
range; he learned the country, cultivated the instinct of directions.
And, above all, he learned to love more than ever the little old man
who fathered and tutored him.

And Young VB became truly useful. It was not all smooth progress. At
times--and they were not infrequent--the thirst came on him with
vicious force, as though it would tear his will out by the roots.

The fever which that first run after the Captain aroused, and which
made him stronger than doubtings, could not endure without faltering.
The ideal was ever there, but at times so elusive! Then the temptings
came, and he had to fight silently, doggedly.

Some of these attacks left him shaking in spite of his mending
nerves--left him white in spite of the brown that sun and wind put on
him. During the daytime it was bad enough, but when he woke in the
night, sleep broken sharply, and raised unsteady hands to his begging
throat, there was not the assuring word from Jed, or the comfort of his
companionship.

The old man took a lasting pride in Danny's adaptability. His comments
were few indeed, but when the boy came in after a day of hard, rough,
effective toil, having done all that a son of the hills could be
expected to do, the little man whistled and sang as though the greatest
good fortune in the world had come to him.

One morning Jed went to the corral to find VB snubbing up an unbroken
sorrel horse they had brought in the day before. He watched from a
distance, while the young man, after many trials, got a saddle on the
animal's back.

"Think you can?" he asked, his eyes twinkling, as he crawled up on the
aspen poles to watch.

"I don't know, Jed, but it's time I found out!" was the answer, and in
it was a click of steely determination.

It was not a nice ride, not even for the short time it lasted. Young VB
"went and got it" early in the melee. He clung desperately to the
saddle horn with one hand, but with the other he plied his quirt and
between every plunge his spurs raked the sides of the bucking beast.

He did not know the art of such riding, but the courage was there and
when he was thrown it was only at the moment when the sorrel put into
the battle his best.

VB got to his feet and wiped the dust from his eyes.

"Hurt?" asked Jed.

"Nothing but my pride," muttered the boy. He grasped the saddle again,
got one foot in the stirrup, and, after being dragged around the
inclosure, got to the seat.

Again he was thrown, and when he arose and made for the horse a third
time Jed slipped down from the fence to intervene.

"Not again to-day," he said, with a pride that he could not suppress.
"Take it easy; try him again to-morrow."

"But I don't want to give up!" protested the boy. "I _can_ ride that
horse."

"You ain't givin' up; I made you," the other smiled. "You ought to have
been born in the hills. You'd have made a fine bronc twister. Ain't it
a shame th' way men are wasted just by bein' born out of place?"

VB seemed not to hear. He rubbed the nose of the frantic horse a
moment, then said:

"If I could get this near the Captain-- Jed, if I could ever get a leg
over that stallion he'd be mine or I'd die trying!"

"Still thinkin' of him?"

"All the time! I never forget him. That fellow has got into my blood.
He's the biggest thing in this country--the strongest--and I want to
show him that there's something a little stronger, something that can
break the power he's held so long--and that _I_ am that something!"

"That's considerable ambition," Jed said, casually, though he wanted to
hug the boy.

"I know it. Most people out here would think me a fool if they heard me
talk this way. Me, a greenhorn, a tenderfoot, talking crazily about
doing what not one of you has ever been able to do!"

"Not exactly, VB. It's th' wantin' to do things bad enough that makes
men do 'em, remember. This feller busted you twice, but you've got th'
stuff under your belt that makes horses behave. That's th' only stuff
that'll ever make th' Captain anything but th' wild thing he is now.
Sand! _Grit!_ Th' _wantin'_ to do it!"

A cautious whistle from Jed that afternoon called VB into a thicket of
low trees, from where he looked down on a scene that drove home even
more forcibly the knowledge of the strength of spirit that was incased
in the glossy coat of the great stallion.

"Look!" the old man said in a low voice, pointing into the gulch. "It's
a Percheron--one of Thorpe's stallions. He's come into th' Captain's
band an' they're goin' to fight!"

VB looked down on the huge gray horse, heavier by three hundred pounds
than the black, stepping proudly along over the rough gulch bottom,
tossing his head, twisting it about on his neck, his ears flat, his
tail switching savagely.

Up the far rise huddled the mares. The Captain was driving the last of
them into the bunch as VB came in sight. That done, he turned to watch
the coming of the gray.

Through the stillness the low, malicious, muffled crying of the
Percheron came to them clearly as he pranced slowly along, parading his
graces for the mares up there, displaying his strength to their master,
who must come down and battle for his sovereignty.

The Captain stood and watched as though mildly curious, standing close
to his mares. His tail moved slowly, easily, from side to side. His
ears, which had been stiffly set forward at first, slowly dropped back.

The gray drew nearer, to within fifty yards, forty, thirty. He paused,
pawed the ground, and sent a great puff of dust out behind him.

Then he swung to the left and struck up the incline, headed directly
for the Captain, striding forward to humble him under the very noses of
his mares--the band that would be the prize of that coming conflict!

He stopped again and pawed spitefully. He rose on his hind legs slowly,
head shaking, forefeet waving in the air, as though flexing his muscles
before putting them to the strain of combat.

He settled to the ground barely in time, for with a scream of rage the
black horse hurtled. He seemed to be under full speed at the first
leap, and the speed was terrific!

Foam had gathered on his lips, and the rush down the pitch flung it
spattering against his glossy chest. His shrilling did not cease from
the time he left his tracks until, with front hoofs raised, a catapult
of living, quivering hate, he hurled himself at the gray. It ended then
in a wail of frenzy--not of fear, but of royal rage at the thought of
any creature offering challenge!

The gray dropped back to all fours, whirled sharply, and took the
impact at a glancing blow, a hip cringing low as the ragged hoofs of
the black crashed upon it. The Captain stuck his feet stiffly into the
ground, plowing great ruts in the earth in his efforts to stop and turn
and meet the rush of the other, as he recovered from the first shock,
gathered headway, and bore down on him. He overcame his momentum,
turning as he came to a stop, lifted his voice again, and rose high to
meet hoof for hoof the ponderous attack that the bigger animal turned
on him.

The men above heard the crash of their meeting. The impact of flesh
against flesh was terrific. For the catch of an instant the horses
seemed to poise, the Captain holding against the fury that had come
upon him, holding even against the odds of lightness and up-hill
fighting. Then they swayed to one side, and VB uttered a low cry of joy
as the Captain's teeth buried themselves in the back of the Percheron's
neck.

Close together then they fought, throwing dirt and stones, ripping up
the brush as their rumbling feet found fresh hold and then tore away
the earth under the might that was brought to bear in the assault and
resistance. A dozen times they rushed upon each other, a dozen times
they parted and raised for fresh attack. And each time the gray body
and the black met in smacking crash it was the former that gave way,
notwithstanding his superior weight.

"Look at him!" whispered Jed. "Look at that cuss! He hates that gray so
that he's got th' fear of death in him! Look at them ears! Hear him
holler! He's too quick. Too quick, an' he's got th' spirit that makes
up th' difference in weight--an' more, too!"

He stopped with a gasp as the Captain, catching the other off balance,
smote him on the ribs with his hoofs until the blows sounded like the
rumble of a drum. The challenger threw up his head in agony and cringed
beneath the torment, running sidewise with bungling feet.

"He like to broke his back!" cried Jed.

"And look at him bite!" whispered VB.

The Captain tore at the shoulders and neck of the gray horse with his
gleaming, malevolent teeth. Again and again they found fleshhold, and
his neck bowed with the strength he put into the wrenching, while his
feet kept up their terrific hammering.

No pride of challenge in the gray now; no display of graces for the
onlooking mares; no attacking; just impotent resistance, as the Captain
drove him on and on down the gulch, humbled, terrified, routed.

The sounds of conflict became fainter as the Percheron strove to make
his escape and the Captain relentlessly followed him, the desire to
kill crying from his every line.

The battling beasts rounded a point of rocks, and the two men sprang to
their horses to follow the moving fight. But they were no more than
mounted when the Captain came back, swinging along in his wonderful
trot, ears still flat, head still shaking, anger possessing him--anger
and pride.

He was unmarked by the conflict, save with sweat and dust and foam; he
was still possessed of his superb strength. He went up the pitch to his
band with all the vigor of stride he had displayed in flying from it to
answer the presumption of the gray. And the mares, watching him, seemed
to draw long breaths, dropped their heads to the bunch grass, and, one
by one, moved along in their grazing.

Jed looked at VB. What he saw in the boy's face made him nod his head
slowly in affirmation.

"You're that sort, too," he whispered exultingly. "You're that sort!
_His_ kind!"




CHAPTER VIII

A Head of Yellow Hair


The next day Jed declared for a trip to Ranger after grub. The trip was
necessary, and it would be an education for VB, he said with a chuckle,
to see the town. But when they were ready to start a rider approached
the ranch.

"If it ain't Kelly!" Jed cried. Then, in explanation: "He's a horse
buyer, an' must be comin' to see me."

And the man's desire to look over the VB stuff was so strong that Jed
declared it would be business for him to stay at home.

In a way, Danny was glad of the opportunity to go alone. It fed the
glowing pride in his ability to do things, to be of use, and after a
short interchange of drolleries with the man Kelly, whom he
instinctively liked, the boy mounted to the high wagon seat and drove
off down the gulch.

It was a long drive, and hours alone are conducive to thought. Danny's
mind went back over the days that had passed, wandering along those
paths he had followed since that July morning in the luxuriously dim
house on Riverside Drive. And the reason for his departing from the old
way came back to him now, because he was alone, with nothing to divert
his attention. The old turbulence arose; it wore and wore with the
miles, eating down to his will, teasing, coaxing, threatening,
pleading, fuming.

"Will it always be so?" he asked the distances. "When it comes to
challenge me, to take away all that I hold dear, shall I always be
afraid? Shan't I be able to stand and fight and triumph, merely raging
because it dares tempt me instead of fearing this thing itself?"

And he spoke as he thought in terms of his ideal, as materialized in
the Captain.

"But will it always be so with him?" he asked again. "Won't some horse
come to challenge him some day and batter him down and make defeat all
the more bitter because of the supremacy he has enjoyed? Would it then
be--worth the candle?"

And as he bowed his head he thought once more of the beacon in the
bottle, corking it up, driving back the shadows, making a livable place
in the darkness.


Nothing is ever intrinsically curious. Curiousness comes solely from
relationships. Time and place are the great factors in creating
oddities. Five miles farther on VB saw a curious thing. This was at the
forks of the road. To his right it went off behind the long, rocky
point toward Sand Creek; to the left it wandered through the sage brush
over toward the S Bar S Ranch, and ahead it ran straight on to Ranger.

Along the prong that twisted to the left went an automobile. Nothing
curious about that to VB, for many times he had seen Bob Thorpe driving
his car through the country.

But at the wheel was a lone figure crowned by a mass of yellow hair.
That was the curious thing he saw!

All VB could distinguish at that distance with his hot eyes was yellow
hair. The machine picked its way carefully along the primitive road,
checking down here, shooting ahead there, going on toward the horizon,
bearing the yellow hair away from him, until it was only a crawling
thing with a long, floating tail of dust. But it seemed to him he could
still make out that bright fleck even after the automobile had become
indistinguishable.

"She's alone," muttered VB. "She's driving that car alone--and out
here!"

Then he wondered with a laugh why he should think it so strange. Many
times he had ridden down Fifth Avenue in the afternoon traffic
congestion beside a woman who piloted her own car. Surely the few
hazards of this thoroughfare were not to be compared with that!

But it was the incongruity which his association of ideas brought up
that made him tingle a little. That hair! It did not belong out here.
He had not been near enough to see the girl's face--he was sure it was
a girl, not a grown woman--but the color of her crowning adornment
suggested many and definite things. And those things were not of these
waste places; were not rough and primal. They were finer, higher.

Once before he had experienced this nameless, pleasurable sensation of
being familiar with the unknown. That had been when Jed had sketched
with a dozen unrelated words a picture of the daughter of the house of
Thorpe.

The motor car with its fair-haired pilot had been gone an hour when
Danny, watching a coyote skulk among distant rocks, said aloud:
"East--college--I'll bet--I--I wonder--"

Dusk had come when Young VB entered Ranger and put up at the ranch,
which made as much pretense of buildings as did the town itself.
Morning found him weak and drawn, as it always did after a night of the
conflict, yet he was up with the sun, eager to be through with his task
and back with Jed.

Purchasing supplies is something of a rite in Ranger, and under other
conditions, on another day perhaps, it might have amused VB; but with
the unrest within him he found little about the procedure that did not
irritate.

In the store there one may buy everything in hardware from safety pins
to trace chains; groceries range from canned soup to wormy nuts; in
drugs anything, bounded on one end by horse liniment and on the other
extreme by eye-drops guaranteed to prevent cataracts, is for sale; and
overalls and sewing silk are alike popular commodities. All is in fine
order, and the manager is a walking catalogue of household necessities.

VB was relieved when the buying had been accomplished. He crowded a can
of ten-cent tobacco into the pocket of his new overalls and started for
the team. A dozen strides away from the store building he paused to
look about. It was his first inspection of Ranger in daylight, and now
as he surveyed its extent his sense of humor rose above the storm
within him, and he grinned.

The store, with its conventional false front, stood beside the post
office, which was built as a lean-to. Next to it was a building of red
corrugated iron, and sounds of blacksmithing issued from it. Behind VB
was a tiny house, with a path running from it to the store, the home of
the manager. Next it a log cabin. Down at the left, near the river, was
another house, deserted, the ranch where he had stayed, and beyond it a
trio of small shacks on the river bank.

"Ranger," he muttered, and chuckled.

The road, brown and soft with fine dust, stretched on and on toward
Utah, off to the west where silence was supreme.

The buildings were all on the north side of the road.

"A south front was the idea, I suppose," VB murmured. "Mere matter of--"

His gaze had traveled across the road to a lone building erected there,
far back against a sharp rise of ground. It stood apart, as though
consciously aloof from the rest, a one-story structure, and across its
front a huge white sign, on which in black characters was painted the
word:

[Illustration: SALOON]

Unconsciously his tongue came out to wet the parched lips and his
fingers plucked at the seams of the new overalls.

Why not? the insidious self argued, why not? All changes must come
gradually. Nothing can be accomplished in a moment. Just one drink to
cool his throat, to steady his nerves, and brace him for the fight he
would make--later.

As he stood there listening to that inner voice, yet holding it off, he
did not hear the fall of hoofs behind him or the jingle of spurs as a
rider dismounted and approached.

But he did hear the voice--drawling, nasty, jeering:

"Was you considerin' havin' a bit o' refreshment, stranger?"

VB wheeled quickly and looked straight into the green glitter of
Rhues's red-lidded eyes. The cruel mouth was stretched in an angular
grin, and the whole countenance expressed the incarnate spirit of the
bully.

Into Danny's mind leaped the idea that this thing before him, this
evil-eyed, jeering, leering, daring being, typified all that was foul
in his heart--just as the Captain typified all that was virtuous.

The intuitive repulsion surged to militant hate. He wanted to smother
the breath which kept alive such a spirit, wanted to stamp into the
dust the body that housed it--because it mocked him and tempted him!
But Young VB only turned and brushed past the man without a word.

He heard Rhues's laughter behind him, and heard him call: "Ranger ain't
no eastern Sunday school. Better have one an' be a man, like th' rest
o' th' boys!"

However, when Rhues turned back to his pony the laugh was gone and he
was puzzling over something. After he had mounted, he looked after the
boy again maliciously.

VB was on the road in half an hour, driving the horses as fast as he
dared. He wanted to be back in Jed's cabin, away from Ranger. This
thing had followed him across the country to Colt; from Colt to the
Anchor; and now It lurked for him in Ranger. The ranch was his haven.

The settlement by the river reached its claws after him as he drove,
fastening them in his throat and shaking his will until it seemed as
though it had reached the limit of its endurance.

It was dark when he reached home. A mile away he had seen the light and
smiled weakly at thought of it, and the horses, more than willing,
carried the wagon over the remaining distance with a bouncing that
threatened its contents.

When VB pulled up before the outer gate Jed hurried from the cabin.

"VB," he called, "are you all right?"

"All right, Jed," he answered, dropping from the seat.

And the boy thought he heard the older man thank his God.

Without words, they unharnessed and went to the cabin. Kelly was
sleeping loudly in the adjoining room. The table had been moved from
its usual place nearer to the window, and the bottle with its burning
candle was close against the pane. Jed looked at the candle, then at VB.

"I'm sorry," he said, seeing the strain about the boy's mouth. "I never
thought about it until come night, Young VB. I never thought about it.
I--I guess I'm an old fool, gettin' scared th' way I do. So I shoved
this candle up against th' window--because I'm an old fool and
thought--it might help a little."

And VB answered: "It does help, Jed! Every little thing helps. And oh,
God, how I need it!"

He turned away.




CHAPTER IX

Pursuit


Summer drew toward its close and the work became more exacting. Jed was
sure that more of his colts ran the range without brands, and the two
rode constantly, searching every gulch and break for the strays. One
day they went far to the east, and at noon encountered three of Bob
Thorpe's men building fence.

"It's his new drift fence," Jed explained. "He's goin' to have a lot of
winter pasture, to be sure he is. It'll help us, too. When we come
takin' these here willow tails off this ridge they'll find somethin'
new. It's so close up to the foot of the rise that they can't jump it."

"Thorpe must be rich," remarked Young VB as they went on along the
fence.

"Rich don't say it! He's rollin' in money, an' he sure knows how to
enjoy it. Every winter, when things gets squared away, he takes his
wife an' goes to California. I s'pose he'll be takin' his girl,
too--now that she's quit goin' to school."

The boy wanted to ask questions about this daughter of Bob Thorpe's,
but a diffidence, for which there was no accounting, held him back. He
was curious as he had been whenever he heard of or thought of her, and
as he had been when he had once seen her. But somehow he did not care
to admit that curiosity even to Jed, and when he tried to analyze the
reason for his reticence there was no doing so.

Now came more knowledge of the waste places with weeks of riding; more
knowledge of the barren area in his own heart with self-study; more
pertinent, that which the Captain typified.

And all the time that struggle continued, which at times seemed only
the hopeless floundering of a man in quicksands--life on the river bank
so close; death below, certain, mocking his efforts.

"He has faith in himself because he is physically equipped," VB
murmured one day as he saw the Captain standing against the sky on a
distant ridge. "His belief in himself is justified. But I--what do I
know about my own capabilities?"

Yet a latent quality in the boy was the sort that offsets doubts, else
why this emulation of the stallion, why this feeling that was almost
love, constant, always growing, never hesitating?


Like most men, Young VB was unprepared for the big moments of his life.
Could we only foresee them, is the plaint of men! Could we only know
and go out to meet them in spirit proper! And yet that very state of
preparation might take from the all-encompassing grandeur of those
passages a potent element.

After all, this scheme of things has its compensations, and inability
to foretell the future may be one of the greatest.

With fear in his heart and black discouragement and lack of faith,
Young VB went out to meet what proved to be his first great moment.

Jed had gone to the railroad, bound for the Springs, to untangle a mess
of red tape that had snarled about his filing on some land. VB was left
alone, and for days the young fellow saw no one. In the natural
loneliness that followed, the assault came upon him with manifold
force. He could not sleep, could not eat, could not remain in one place
or keep his mind on a fixed purpose.

He walked about, talking to himself in the silence, trying
ineffectually to do the necessary work of the ranch, trying to stifle
the loud voice that begged him to forego all the struggle and let his
impulses carry him where they would.

But were not his impulses carrying him? Was it not his first impulse to
go on with the fight? He did not think of that.

At times it was hard indeed to differentiate between the real and the
unreal. The voice that wheedled was such a twister of words and terms,
and its ally, the thirst, raged with such virility that he was forced
to do something with his body. To remain an unresisting victim to the
torture would only invite disaster.

Throwing a saddle on his "top" horse, Young VB set out, leaving the
half-prepared dinner as it was, unable even to wait for food. He rode
swiftly up the gulch to where it forked, and then to the right, letting
the stanch animal under him cover the ground at a swinging trot. In
three hours he was miles from the ranch, far back in the hills, and
climbing to the top of a stretching ridge. He breathed through his
mouth, to let the air on his burning throat, and twisted his bridle
reins until the stout leather was misshapen, utterly lost in the
conflict which went on within, heedless of all else.

Suddenly he realized that his horse had come a long distance without
rest. He dismounted in a thicket of cedars, sharply repentant that his
own torment had led him to forget the beast that served him, and even
the distraction of that concern brought relief.

With the cinch eased the horse stood and breathed gratefully. But he
was not fagged, he was still alert and eager. His ears were set stiffly
forward, and he gazed upwind, sniffing softly now and then.

"What you see, cayuse?" VB asked, trying to make out the cause of that
attentiveness.

Again the sniffing, and of a sudden the horse froze, stopped his
breathing, and VB, a hand on the beast's hip, felt a quick tremor run
through him.

Then the man saw that which had caused the animal to tremble, and the
sight set him tingling just as it always did.

A hundred yards up the ridge, sharp against the sky, commanding,
watchful, stood the Captain. He had not seen or scented VB, for he
looked in other directions, moving his head from point to point,
scanning every nook of the country below him. Something mannish there
was about that beast, a comprehensive, planned vigilance. Down below
him in a sag fed the mares.

As VB looked at that watcher he felt the lust to possess crawling up,
surging through him, blotting out that other desire, that torment,
making his breath congest, making his mouth dry. He tightened his cinch
and mounted.

The Captain did not see VB until the rider came clear of the cover in
which he had halted.

For the instant only, as the rushing horseman broke through the cedars,
a scudding, fluttering object hurtling across the low brush, the black
stallion stood as though his feet were imbedded in the rock under him,
his head full toward the rushing rider, nose up, astonishment in the
very angle of his stiff ears. Then those ears went flat; the sleek body
pivoted on its dainty hind feet, and a scream of angered warning came
from the long throat.

Even as the Captain's front hoofs clawed the ground in his first leap,
the mares were running. They drew close together, frightened by the
abruptness of the alarm, scuttling away from the punishment they knew
would be coming from their master if they wasted seconds.

VB was possessed again. His reason told him that a single horseman had
no chance in the world with that bunch, that he could not hope to keep
up even long enough to scatter the band, that he would only run his
mount down, good horse that he was. But the lust urged him on, tugging
at his vitals, and he gave vent to his excitement in sharp screams of
joy, the joy of the hunt--and the joy of honest attempt at supreme
accomplishment.

The dust trailed behind the bunch, enveloping the rushing Captain in a
dun mantle, finally to be whipped away by the breeze. They tore down
stiff sagebrush in their flight; and so great was the strain that their
bellies skimmed incredibly close to the ground.

VB's horse caught the spirit of the chase, as do all animals when they
follow their kind. He extended himself to the last fiber, and with
astonishment--a glad astonishment that brought a whoop of triumph--the
boy saw that the mares were not drawing away--that he was crawling up
on them!

But the Captain! Ah, he was running away from the man who gave chase,
was putting more distance between them at every thundering leap, was
drawing closer to his slower mares, lip stretched back over his
gleaming teeth, jaws working as he strained to reach them and make that
band go still faster.

VB's quirt commenced to sing its goading tune, slashing first on one
side, then on the other. He hung far forward over the fork of his
saddle, leaning low to offer the least possible resistance to the wind.
Now and then he called aloud to his pony, swearing with glad savagery.

The Captain reached his bunch, closing in on them with a burst of speed
that seemed beyond the abilities of blood and bone. The man behind
thought he heard those long teeth pop as they caught the rump of a
scurrying mare; surely he heard the stallion's scream of rage as, after
nipping mare after mare, running to and fro behind them, he found that
they had opened their hearts to the last limit and could go no faster.
They _could not_ do it--and the rider behind was crawling up, jump for
jump, gaining a yard, losing a foot, gaining again, steadily,
relentlessly.

VB did not know that Kelly, the horse buyer, and one of Dick Worth's
riders had given the outlaws a long, tedious race that morning as they
were coming in from the dry country to the west for water and better
feed. He did not know that the band had been filling their bellies with
great quantities of water, crowding them still more with grasses, until
there was no room left for the working of lungs, for the stretching of
taxed muscles.

He saw only the one fact: that he was gaining on the Captain. He did
not stop even to consider the obvious ending of such a chase. He might
scatter the band, but what of it? When the last hope had been cast the
Captain would strike out alone, would turn all the energy that now went
to driving his mares to making good his own escape, and then there
would be no more race--just a widening of a breach that could not be
closed.

But VB did not think of anything beyond the next stride. His mind was
possessed with the idea that every leap of the laboring beast under him
must bring him closer to the huddle of frantic horses, nearer to the
flying hindquarters of the jet leader who tried so hard to make his
authority override circumstance.

The slashing of the quirt became more vicious. VB strained farther
forward. His lips were parted, his eyes strained open with excitement,
and the tears started by that rushing streamed over his cheeks.

"E-e-eyah!" he shrieked.

The buckskin mare found a hole. Her hind legs went into the air,
sticking toward the sky above that thundering clump of tossing, rushing
bodies with its fringes of fluttering hair. Her legs seemed to poise a
moment; then they went down slowly. The Captain leaped her prostrate
body, to sink his teeth into the flank of a sorrel that lagged half a
length behind the others.

VB passed so near the buckskin as she gained her faltering feet that he
could have slashed her with his quirt. Yet he had no eyes for her, had
no heed for any of the mares. He was playing for the bigger game.

The sorrel quit, unable to respond to that punishment, fearful of her
master. She angled off to the right, to be rid of him, and disappeared
through a clump of trees. The stallion shrilled his anger and disgust,
slowing his gallop a half-dozen jumps as though he wanted to follow and
punish her cruelly.

Then he glanced backward, threw his nose in the air and, stretching to
his own tremendous speed again, stormed on.

The huddle of mares became less compact, seemed to lose also its unity
of purpose. The Captain had more to do. His trips from flank to flank
of the band were longer. By the time he had spurred the gray at the
left back into the lead the brown three-year-old on the other wing was
a loiterer by a length. Then, when she was sent ahead, the gray was
lagging again. And another by her side, perhaps.

"E-e-eyah!"

VB's throat was raw from the screaming, but he did not know it--no more
than he knew that his hat was gone or that his nerves still yearned for
their stinging stimulant.

The cry, coming again and again, worried the Captain. Each time it
crackled from VB's lips the black nose was flung high and an eye which
glared orange hate even at that distance rolled back to watch this
yelling pursuer.

VB saw, and began to shout words at the animal, to cry his challenge,
to curse.

The galloping gray quit, without an attempt to rally. The Captain
brought to bear a terrific punishment, dropping back to within thirty
yards of the man who pressed him, but it was useless, for she was
spent. The water and luscious grass in her dammed up the reservoirs of
her vitality, would not let her respond. When the stallion gave her up
and tore on after the others she dropped even her floundering gallop,
and as VB raced past her he heard the breath sob down her throat.

On and across they tore, dropping into sags of the ridge, climbing
sharp little pitches, swinging now to the right and bending back to the
left again in a sweeping curve. The uneven galloping of the horse under
him, the gulps for breath the pony made as the footing fooled him and
he jolted sharply, the shiftings and duckings and quick turnings as
they stormed through groups of trees, the rattle of brush as it smote
his boot toes and stirrups were all unheeded by VB.

Once his shoulder met a tough cedar bough, and the blow wrenched it
from its trunk. His face was whipped to rawness by smaller branches,
and one knee throbbed dully where it had skimmed a bowlder as they shot
past. But he saw only that floundering band ahead.

The buckskin was gone, the sorrel, the gray; next, two mares quit
together, and the Captain, seeing them go, did not slacken his speed,
did not even scream his rage. Only four remained, and he gambled on
them as against the slight chance of recovering any of those others;
for that screaming rider was closing in on him all the time.

Oh, water and grass! How necessary both are to life, but how dangerous
at a time like this! Pop-pop! The teeth closed on those running hips.
The vainness of it all! They could go no faster. They had tried first
from instinct, then from willingness; now they tried from fear as their
lord tortured them. But though the will was there, the ability could
not come, not even when the Captain pushed through them, and in a
desperate maneuver set the pace, showing them his fine heels and clean
limbs, demonstrating how easy it was to go on and on and draw away from
that rider who tugged at his muffler that wind might find and cool his
throat, burning now from unalloyed hope.

And so VB, the newest horse runner on the range, scattered the
Captain's band, accomplishing all that the best of the men who rode
that country had ever been able to boast.

The stallion tried once more to rally his mates into escape, but their
hearts were bursting, their lungs clogged. They could do no more.

Then away he went alone, head high and turning from side to side, mane
flaunting, tail trailing gracefully behind him, beauty in every regal
line and curve, majestic superiority in each stride he took.

He raced off into the country that stretched eastward, the loser for
the time of one set of conquests but free--free to go on and make
himself more high, more powerful, more a thing to be emulated even by
man.

He ran lightly, evenly, without effort, and the gap between him and the
rider behind, narrowed by such tremendous exertion from that lathered
pony, widened with scarce an added effort.

But VB went on, driving his reeking pony mercilessly. He had ceased
yelling now. His face was set; blood that had been whipped into it by
his frenzy, by the rushing of the wind, by the smiting of branches,
left the skin. It became white, and from that visage two eyes glowed
abnormally brilliant. For the Captain was taking off the ridge where it
bent and struck into the north, was plunging down over the pitch into
the shadows. He was going his best, in long, keen strides that would
carry him to the bottom with a momentum so tremendous that on the flat
he would be running himself into a blur. And VB's face was colorless,
with eyes brilliant, because he knew that along the bottom of the drop
ran the new drift fence that Bob Thorpe's men were erecting.

He began to plead with his pony, to talk to him childishly, to beg him
to keep his feet, to coax him to last, to pray him to follow--and in
control of himself, and on time! As they dropped off the ridge, down
through the sliding shale and scattered brush, VB's right hand,
upraised to keep his balance, held the loop of his rope, and the other,
flung behind the cantle of his saddle, grasped the coils of the sturdy
hemp.

Oh, Captain, your speed was against you! You took off that ridge with
those ground-covering leaps, limbs flying, heart set on reaching the
bottom with a swirl of speed that would dishearten your follower. But
you did not reckon on an obstruction, on the thing your eyes
encountered when halfway down that height and going with all the power
within you. Those fresh posts and the wires strung between them! A
fence! Men had invaded your territory with their barriers, and at such
a time! You knew, too, that there was no jumping it; they had set the
posts so far up on the pitch that no take-off had been left.

So the Captain tried to stop. With haunches far under him, front feet
straight before, belly scrubbing the brush, he battled to overcome the
awful impetus his body had received up above. Sprawling, sliding, feet
shooting in any direction as the footing gave, he struggled to stop his
progress. It was no simple matter; indeed, checking that flight was far
more difficult than the attaining of that speed. In the midst of
rolling, bounding stones, sliding dust, breaking brush, the great
stallion gradually slowed his going. Slow and more slowly he went on
toward the bottom; almost stopped, but still was unable to bring his
muscles into play for a dash to right or left.

On behind, pony floundering in the wake of the Captain, rode VB, right
hand high, snapping back and forth to hold him erect, rope dangling
from it crazily. He breathed through his mouth, and at every exhalation
his vocal chords vibrated.

Perhaps even then the Captain might have won. The odds of the game were
all against him, it is true, for breaking down the pitch as he did, it
required longer for him to reach the bottom in possession of his
equilibrium than it did the slower-moving horse that bore VB. It would
have been a tight squeeze for the horse, but the man was in a poor
position to cast his loop with any degree of accuracy.

But a flat sliding stone discounted all other factors. Nothing else
mattered. The Captain came to a stop, eyes wild, ears back. With a
slow-starting, mighty lunge, he made as though to turn and race down
along the line of fence before VB could get within striking distance.
The great muscles contracted, his ragged hoofs sought a hold. The hind
legs straightened, that mighty force bore on his footing--and the stone
slipped! The Captain was outlucked.

His hind legs shot backward, staggering him. His hindquarters slipped
downhill, throwing his head up to confront VB. His nostrils flared,
that orange hate in his eyes met the glow from his pursuer's, who came
down upon him--only half a dozen lengths away!




CHAPTER X

Capture


It does not take a horse that is bearing a rider downhill an
appreciable length of time to take one more stride. Gravity does the
work. The horse jerks his fore legs from under his body and then shoots
them out again for fresh hold to keep his downward progress within
reason.

VB's pony went down the drop with much more rapidity than safety, in
short, jerky, stiff-legged plunges, hindquarters scrooged far under his
body; alert, watching his footing, grunting in his care not to take too
great risks.

When the Captain, fooled by false footing, was whirled about to face
the down-coming rider, the pony's fore feet had just drawn themselves
out of the way to let his body farther down the slope. And when the
sturdy legs again shot out to strike rock and keep horse and VB
upright, the black stallion had started to wheel. But in the split
second which intervened between the beginning and ending of that
floundering jump, eyes met eyes. The eyes of a man met the eyes of a
beast, and heart read heart. The eyes of a man who had frittered his
life, who had flaunted his heritage of strength in body and bone until
he had become a weakling, a cringing, whining center of abnormal
nervous activities, fearing himself, met the eyes of a beast that knew
himself to be a paragon of his kind, the final achievement of his
strain, a commanding force that had never been curbed, that had defied
alike his own kingdom and the race from which had sprung the being now
confronting him.

The eyes of him who had been a weakling met the eyes of that which had
been superstrong and without a waver; they held, they penetrated, and,
suddenly born from the purposeless life of Danny Lenox, flamed Young
VB's soul. All the emulation, all the lust this beast before him had
roused in his heart, became amalgamated with that part of him which
subtly strove to drag him away from debauchery, and upon those blending
elements of strength was set the lasting stamp of his individuality.

His purpose flamed in his eyes and its light was so great that the
horse read, and, reading, set his ears forward and screamed--not so
much a scream of anger as of wondering terror. For the beast caught the
significance of that splendid determination which made for conquest
with a power equal to his own strength, which was making for escape.
The telepathic communication from the one to the other was the same
force that sends a jungle king into antics at the pleasure of his
trainer--the language that transcends species!

The pony's hoofs dug shale once more, and the upraised right arm
whipped about the tousled head. The rope swished angrily as it slashed
the air. Once it circled--and the Captain jumped, lunging off to the
left. Twice it cut its disk--and the stallion's quivering flanks
gathered for a second leap. It writhed; it stretched out waveringly,
seekingly, feelingly as though uncertain, almost blindly, but
swiftly--so swiftly! The loop flattened and spread and undulated,
drawing the long stretch of hemp after it teasingly. It stopped, as
though suddenly tired. It poised with uncanny deliberation. Then, as
gently as a maiden's sigh, it settled--settled--drooped--and the
Captain's nose, reaching out for liberty, to be free of this man whose
eyes flamed a determination so stanch that it went down to his beast
heart, thrust itself plumb through the middle.

The hoarse rip of the hard-twist coming through its hondu, the whistle
of breath from the man's tight teeth, the rattle of stone on stone;
then the squeal from the stallion as for the first time in his life a
bond tightened on him!

He shook his head angrily, and even as he leaped a third time back
toward his free hills one forefoot was raised to strike from him the
snaring strand. The pawing hoof did not reach its mark, did not find
the thin, lithe thing which throttled down on him, for the Captain's
momentum carried him to the end of the rope.

They put the strain on the hemp, both going away, those horses. VB
struggled with his mount to have him ready for the shock, but before he
could bring about a full stop that shock arrived. It seemed as though
it would tear the horn from the saddle. The pony, sturdy little beast,
was yanked to his knees and swung half about, and VB recovered himself
only by grabbing the saddle fork.

The black stallion again faced the man--faced him because his heels had
been cracked in a semicircle through the air by the force of that
burning thing about his neck. For ten long seconds the Captain stood
braced against the rope, moving his head slowly from side to side for
all the world as a refractory, gentled colt might do, with as much
display of fight as would be shown by a mule that dissented at the idea
of being led across a ditch. He just stood there stupidly, twisting his
head.

The thick mane rumpled up under the tightening rope, some of the
drenched hair of the neck was pulled out as the hemp rolled upward,
drawing closer, shutting down and down. The depression in the flesh
grew deeper. One hind foot lost its hold in the shale and shot out; the
Captain lifted it and moved it forward again slowly, cautiously, for
fresh, steady straining.

Then it came. The windpipe closed; he coughed, and like the sudden fury
of a mountain thunderstorm the Captain turned loose his giant forces.
The thing had jerked him back in his rush toward freedom. It held him
where he did not want to be held! And it choked!

Forefeet clawing, rearing to his hind legs with a quivering strength of
lift that dragged the bracing pony through the shale, the great, black
horse-regal screamed and coughed his rage and beat upon that vibrating
strand which made him prisoner--that web--that fragile thing!

Again and again he struck it, but it only danced--only danced, and
tightened its clutch on his throat! He reached for it with his long
teeth and clamped them on it, but the thing would not yield. He settled
to all fours again, threw his head from side to side, and strove to
move backward with a frenzied floundering that sent the pebbles
rattling yards about him.

It was a noble effort. Into the attempt to drag away from that
anchorage the Captain put his very spirit. He struggled and choked and
strained. And all the time that man sat there on his horse, tense,
watching silently, moving his free hand slightly to and fro, as though
beating time to music. His lips were parted, his face still blanched.
And in his eyes glowed that purpose which knows no defeat!

System departed. Like a hot blast wickedness came. Teeth bared, ears
flat, with sounds like an angered child's ranting coming from his
throat, the stallion charged his man enemy just as he had charged the
powerful Percheron who had come to challenge him a month ago. The
saddle horse, seeing it, avoided the brunt of the first blind rush,
taking the Captain's shoulder on his rump as the black hurtler went
past, striking thin air.

VB felt the Captain's breath, saw from close up the lurid flame in his
eyes, sensed the power of those teeth, the sledge-hammer force behind
those untrimmed hoofs. And he came alive, the blood shooting close
under his skin again and making the gray face bronze, then deeper than
bronze. His eyes puffed under the stress of that emotion, and he felt a
primitive desire to growl as the Captain whirled and came again. It was
man to beast, and somewhere down yonder through the generations a dead
racial memory came back and Young VB, girded for the conflict, ached to
have his forest foe in reach, to have the fight run high, to have his
chance to dare and do in fleshly struggle!

It was not long in coming. The near hoof, striking down to crush his
chest, fell short, and the hair of VB's chap leg went ripping from the
leather, while along his thigh crept a dull, spreading ache.

He did not notice that, though, for he was raised in his stirrups,
right hand lifted high, its fingers clutched about the lash of his
loaded quirt. He felt the breath again, hot, wet, and a splatter of
froth from the flapping lips struck his cheek. Then the right hand came
down with a snap and a jerk, with all the vigor of muscular force that
VB could summon.

His eye had been good, his judgment true. The Captain's teeth did not
sink into his flesh, for the quirt-butt, a leaden slug, crunched on the
horse's skull, right between the ears!

The fury of motion departed, like the going of a cyclone. The Captain
dropped to all fours and hung his head, staggered a half-dozen short
paces drunkenly, and then sighed deeply--

He reached the end of the rope. It came tight again, and with the
tightening--the battle! Thrice more he charged the man with all the
hate his wild heart could summon, but not once did those dreadful teeth
find that which they sought. Again the front hoof met its mark and
racked the flesh of VB's leg, but that did not matter. He could stand
that punishment, for he was winning! He was countering the stallion's
efforts, which made the contest an even break; and his rope was on and
he had dealt one telling blow with his quirt. Two points! And the boy
screamed his triumph as the missile he swung landed again, on the soft
nose this time, the nose so wrinkled with hateful desire--and the
Captain swung off to one side from the stinging force of it.

Not in delight at punishment was that cry. The blow on the skull, the
slug at the nose stabbed VB to his tenderest depths. But he knew it
must be so, and his shout was a shout of conquest--of the first man
asserting primal authority, of the last man coming into his own!

The dust they stirred rose stiflingly. Down there under the hill no
moving breath of air would carry it off. The pony under VB grunted and
strained, but was jerked sharply about by the rushes of the heavier
stallion, heavier and built of things above mere flesh and bone and
tendon. The Captain's belly dripped water; VB's face was glossy with
it, his hair plastered down to brow and temple.

The three became tired. In desperation the Captain dropped the fight,
turned to run, plunged out as though to part the strands. VB's heart
leaped as his faith in the rope faltered--but it held, and the
stallion, pulled about, lost his footing, floundered, stumbled, went
down, and rolled into the shale, feet threshing the air.

It was an opening--the widest VB had had, wider than he could have
hoped for, and he rushed in, stabbing his horse shamelessly with spurs
and babbling witlessly as he strove to make slack in the rope. The
slack came. Then the quick jerk of the wrist--the trick he had
perfected back there in Jed's corral--and a potential half-hitch
traveled down the rope.

The Captain floundered to get his feet under him, and the loop in the
rope dissolved. Again the wrist twitch, again the shooting loop and--

"Scotched!" screamed Young VB. "Scotched! You're my property!"

Scotched! The rope had found its hold about the off hind ankle of the
soiled stallion, and there it clung in a tight, relentless grasp. The
rope from neck to limb was so short that it kept the foot clear of the
ground, crippling the Captain, and as the great horse floundered to his
feet VB had him powerless. The stallion stood dazed, looking down at
the thing which would not let him kick, which would not let him step.

Then he sprang forward, and when the rope came tight he was upended, a
shoulder plowing the shale.

"It's no use!" the man cried, his voice crackling in excitement. "I've
got you right--right--_right!_"

But the Captain would not quit. He tried even then to rise to his hind
legs and make assault, but the effort only sent him falling backward,
squealing--and left him on his side, moaning for his gone liberty.

For he knew. He knew that his freedom was gone, even as he made his
last floundering, piteous endeavors. He got up and tried to run, but
every series of awkward moves only sent his black body down into the
dust and dirt, and at last he rested there, head up, defiance still in
his eyes, but legs cramped under him.

And then VB wanted to cry. He went through all the sensations--the
abrupt drop of spirits, the swelling in the throat, the tickling in the
nostrils.

"Oh, Captain!" he moaned. "Captain, don't you see I wouldn't harm you?
Only you had to be mine! I had to get bigger than you were,
Captain--for my own salvation. It was the only way, boy; it was the
only way!"

And he sat there for a long time, his eyes without the light of
triumph, on his captive.

His heart-beats quickened, a new warmth commenced to steal through his
veins, a new faith in self welled up from his innermost depths, making
his pulses sharp and hard, making his muscles swell, sending his spirit
up and up.

He had fought his first big fight and he had won!

Blood began to drip from the stallion's nose.

"It's where I struck you!" whispered VB, the triumph all gone again,
solicitation and a vast love possessing him. "It's where I struck you,
Captain. Oh, it hurts me, too--but it must be so, because things are as
they are. There will be more hurts, boy, before we're through. But it
must be!"

His voice gritted on the last.

Sounds from behind roused VB, and he looked around.

The sunlight was going even from the ridge up there, and the whole land
was in shadow. He was a long way from the ranch with this trophy--his,
but still ready to do battle at the end of his rope.

"Got one?" a man cried, coming up, and VB recognized him as one of the
trio of fence builders, riding back to their camp.

"Yes--one," muttered VB, and turned to look at the Captain.

Then the man cried: "You've got th' Captain!"

"It's the Captain," said VB unsteadily, as though too much breath were
in his lungs. "He's mine--you know--mine!"

The others looked at him in silent awe.




CHAPTER XI

A Letter and a Narrative


Jed Avery had been away from Young VB almost two weeks, and he had
grown impatient in the interval. So he pushed his bay pony up the trail
from Ranger, putting the miles behind him as quickly as possible. The
little man had fretted over every step of the journey homeward, and
from Colt on into the hills it was a conscious effort that kept him
from abusing his horse by overtravel.

"If he should have gone an' busted over while I was away I'd--I'd never
forgive myself--lettin' that boy go to th' bad just for a dinky claim!"

It was the thousandth time he had made the declaration, and as he spoke
the words a thankfulness rose in his heart because of what he had not
heard in Ranger. He knew that VB had kept away from town. Surely that
was a comfort, an assurance, a justification for his faith that was
firm even under the growling.

Still, there might have been a wanderer with a bottle--

And as he came in sight of his own buildings Jed put the pony to a
gallop for the first time during that long journey. Smoke rose from the
chimney, the door stood open, an atmosphere of habitation was about the
place, and that proved something. He crowded his horse close against
the gate, leaned low, unfastened the hasp, and rode on through.

"Oh, VB!" he called, and from the cabin came an answering hail, a
scraping of chair legs, and the young fellow appeared in the doorway.

"How's th'--"

Jed did not finish the question then--or ever. His eagerness for the
meeting, the light of anticipation that had been in his face,
disappeared. He reined up his horse with a stout jerk, and for a long
moment sat there motionless, eyes on the round corral. Then his
shoulders slacked forward and he raised a hand to scratch his chin in
bewilderment.

For yonder, his nose resting on one of the gate bars, watching the
newcomer, safe in the inclosure, alive, just as though he belonged
there, stood the Captain!

After that motionless moment Jed turned his eyes back to Young VB, and
stared blankly, almost witlessly. Then he raised a limp hand and half
pointed toward the corral, while his lips formed a soundless question.

VB stepped from the doorway and walked toward Jed, smiling.

"Yes," he said with soft pride, as though telling of a sacred thing,
"the Captain is there--in our corral."

Jed drew a great breath.

"Did you do it--and alone?"

"Well, there wasn't any one else about," VB replied modestly.

Again Jed's chest heaved.

"Well, I'm a--"

He ended in inarticulate distress, searching for a proper expletive,
mouth open and ready, should he find one. Then he was off his horse,
both hands on the boy's shoulders, looking into the eyes that met his
so steadily.

"You done it, Young VB!" he cried brokenly. "You done it! Oh, I'm proud
of you! Your old adopted daddy sure is! You done it all by yourself,
an' it's somethin' that nobody has ever been able to do before!"

Then they both laughed aloud, eyes still clinging.

"Come over and get acquainted," suggested VB. "He's waiting for us."

They started for the corral, Jed's eyes, now flaming as they took in
the detail of that wonderful creature, already seen by him countless
times, but now for the first time unfree.

The stallion watched them come, moving his feet up and down uneasily
and peering at them between the bars. VB reached for the gate
fastening, and the horse was away across the corral, snorting, head up,
as though fearful.

"Why, Captain!" the boy cried. "What ails you?"

"What ails him?" cried Jed. "Man alive, I'd expect to see him tryin' to
tear our hearts out!"

"Oh, but he's like a woman!" VB said softly, watching the horse as he
swung the gate open.

They stepped inside, Jed with caution. VB walked straight across to the
horse and laid his hand on the splendid curve of the rump.

"Well, I'm a--" Again Jed could find no proper word to express his
astonishment. He simply took off his hat and swung it in one hand, like
an embarrassed schoolgirl.

"Come over and meet the boss, Captain," VB laughed, drawing the black
head around by its heavy forelock.

And the Captain came--unexpectedly. The boy realized the danger with
the first plunge and threw his arms about the animal's neck, crying to
him to be still. And Jed realized, too. He slipped outside, putting
bars between himself and those savage teeth which reached out for his
body.

Foiled, the stallion halted.

"Captain," exclaimed VB, "what ails you?"

"To be sure, nothin' ails him," said Jed sagely. "You're his master;
you own him, body and soul; but you ain't drove th' hate for men out of
his heart. He seems to love you--but not others--yes--"

His voice died out as he watched the black beast make love to the tall
young chap who scolded into his dainty ear. The soft, thin lips plucked
at VB's clothing, nuzzling about him as he stood with arms clasped
around the glossy neck. The great cheek rubbed against the boy's side
until it pushed him from his tracks, though he strained playfully
against the pressure. Such was the fierceness of that horse's
allegiance. His nostrils fluttered, but no sound came from them: the
beast whisperings of affection. All the time VB scolded softly, as a
father might banter with a child. And when the boy looked up a great
pride was in his face, and Jed understood.

"That's right, Young VB--be proud of it! Be proud that he's yours; be
proud that he's yours, an' yours only. Keep him that way; to be sure,
an' you've earned it!"

Then he stepped close to the bars and gazed at the animal with the
critical look of a connoisseur.

"Not a hair that ain't black," he muttered. "Black from ankle to ear;
hoofs almost black, black in th' nostrils. Black horses generally have
brown eyes, but you can't even tell where th' pupil is in his!

"Say, VB, he makes th' ace of spades look like new snow, don't he?"

"He does that!" cried VB, and putting his hands on the animal's back,
he leaped lightly up, sitting sidewise on the broad hips and playing
with the heavy tail.

"VB, I'm a-- Lord, a thousand dollars for a new oath!"

At VB's suggestion they started back to the cabin.

"Why, boy, you're limpin'!" the old man exclaimed. "An' in both legs!"
He stopped and looked the young fellow over from hat to heel. "One side
of your face's all skinned. Looks as though your left hand'd all been
smashed up, it's that swelled. You move like your back hurt, too--like
sin. VB?"

The boy stopped and looked down at the ground. Then his eyes met those
of the old rancher, and Jed Avery understood--he had seen the bond
between man and horse; he realized what must have transpired between
them.

And he knew the love that men can have for animals, something which, if
you have never felt it, is far beyond comprehension. So he asked just
this question: "How long?"

And VB answered: "Six days--from dawn till dark. One to get a halter on
him, another to get my hand on his head; three days in the Scotch
hobble, and the last--to ride him like a hand-raised colt."

Jed replaced his hat, pulling it low to hide his eyes.

"Ain't I proud to be your daddy?" he whispered.

An overwhelming pride--a pride raised to the _n_th degree, of the sort
that is above the understanding of most men--was in the tone _timbre_
of the question.

They went on into the house.

"Jed," VB said, as though he had waited to broach something of great
import, "I've written a letter this morning, and I want to read it to
you, just to see how it sounds out loud."

He sat down in a chair and drew sheets of small tablet paper toward him.

Jed, without answer, leaned against the table and waited. VB read:


"My Dear Father:

"I am writing merely to say that I know you were right and I was wrong.

"I am in a new life, where men do big, real things which justify their
own existence. I am finding myself. I am getting that perspective which
lets me see just how right you were and how wrong I was.

"Since coming here I have done something real. I have captured and made
mine the wildest horse that ever ran these hills. I am frankly proud of
it. I may live to do things of more obvious greatness, but that will be
because men have had their sense of values warped. For me, this
attainment is a true triumph.

"I am now in the process of taming another beast, more savage than the
one I have mastered, and possessing none of his noble qualities. It is
a beast not of the sort we can grapple with, though we can see it in
men. It is giving me a hard battle, but try to believe that my efforts
are sincere and, though it may take my whole lifetime, I am bound to
win in the end.

"This letter will be mailed in Kansas City by a friend. I am many days'
travel from that point. When I am sure of the other victory I shall let
you know where I am.

"Your affectionate son,"


He tossed the sheets back to the table top.

"I'm going to get it over to Ant Creek and let some of the boys take it
to the river when they go with beef," he explained. "Now, how does it
sound?"

"Fine, VB, fine!" Jed muttered, rubbing one cheek. "To be sure, it
ain't so much what you say as th' way you say it--makin' a party feel
as though you meant it from th' bottom of your feet to th' tip of th'
longest hair on your head!"

"Well, Jed, I do mean it just that way. That horse out there--he--he
stands for so much now. He stands for everything I haven't been, and
for all that I want to be. He ran free as the birds, but it couldn't
always be so. He had to succumb, had to give up that sort of liberty.

"I took his power from him, made him my own, made him my servant. Yet
it didn't scathe his spirit. It has changed all that bitterness into
love, all that wasted energy into doing something useful. I didn't
break him, Jed; I converted him. Understand?"

"I do, VB; but we won't convert this here other beast. We'll bust him
wide open, won't we? Break him, body an' spirit!"

The boy smiled wanly.

"That's what we're trying to do."

He pointed to the candle in its daubed bottle.

"Just to keep the light burning, Jed--just to keep its light fighting
back the darkness. The little flame of that candle breaks the power of
the black thing which would shut it in--like a heart being good and
true in spite of the rotten body in which it beats. And when my body
commences to want the old things--to want them, oh, so badly--I just
think of this little candle here, calm and quiet and steady, sticking
out of what was once a cesspool, a poison pot, and making a place in
the night where men can see."

While a hundred could have been counted slowly they remained
motionless, quiet, not a sound breaking the silence.

Then Jed began talking in a half-tone:

"I know, Young VB; I know. You've got time now to light it and nurse
th' flame up so's it won't need watchin'--an' not miss things that go
by in th' dark. Some of us puts it off too long--like a man I
know--now. I didn't know him then--when it happened. He was wanderin'
around in a night that never turned to day, thinkin' he knowed where he
was goin', but all th' time just bein' fooled by th' dark.

"And there was a girl back in Kansas. He started after her, but it was
so dark he couldn't find th' way, an' when he did--

"Some folks is fools enough to say women don't die of broken hearts.
But--well, when a feller knows some things he wants to go tell 'em to
men who don't know; to help 'em to understand, if he can; to give 'em a
hand if they do see but can't find their way out--"

He stopped, staring at the floor. VB had no cause to search for
identities.

From the corral came a shrill, prolonged neighing. VB arose and laid a
hand gently on Jed's bowed shoulder.

"That's the Captain," he said solemnly; "and he calls me when he's
thirsty."

While he was gone Jed remained as he had been left, staring at the
floor.




CHAPTER XII

Woman Wants


Gail Thorpe rose from the piano in the big ranch house of the S Bar S,
rearranged the mountain flowers that filled a vase on a tabouret, then
knocked slowly, firmly, commandingly, on a door that led from the
living room.

"Well, I don't want you; but I s'pose you might as well come in and get
it off your mind!"

The voice from the other side spoke in feigned annoyance. It continued
to grumble until a lithe figure, topped by a mass of hair like pulled
sunshine, flung itself at him, twining warm arms about his neck and
kissing the words from the lips of big Bob Thorpe as he sat before his
desk in the room that served as the ranch office.

"Will you ever say it again--that you don't want me?" she demanded.

"No--but merely because I'm intimidated into promising," he answered.
His big arms went tight about the slender body and he pulled his
daughter up on his lap.

A silence, while she fussed with his necktie. Her blue eyes looked into
his gray ones a moment as though absently, then back to the necktie.
Her fingers fell idle; her head snuggled against his neck. Bob Thorpe
laughed loud and long.

"Well, what is it this morning?" he asked between chuckles.

The girl sat up suddenly, pushed back the hair that defied fastenings,
and tapped a stretched palm with the stiff forefinger of the other hand.

"I'm not a Western girl," she declared deliberately; and then, as the
brown face before her clouded, hastened: "Oh, I'm not wanting to go
away! I mean, I'm not truly a Western girl, but I want to be. I want to
fit better.

"When we decided that I should graduate and come back here with my
mommy and daddy for the rest of my life, I decided. There was nothing
halfway about it. Some of the other girls thought it awful; but I don't
see the attraction in their way of living.

"When I was a little girl I was a sort of tom-cow-boy. I could do
things as well as any of the boys I ever knew could do them. But after
ten years, mostly away in the East, where girls are like plants, I've
lost it all. Now I want to get it back."

"Well, go to it!"

"Wait! I want to start well--high up. I want to have the best that
there is to have. I--want--a--horse!"

"Horse? Bless me, _bambino_, there are fifty broken horses running in
the back pasture now, besides what the boys have on the ride. Take your
pick!"

"Oh, I know!" she said with gentle scoffing. "That sort of a
horse--just cow-ponies. I love 'em, but I guess--well--"

"You've been educated away from 'em, you mean?" he chuckled.

"Well, whatever it is--I want something better. I, as a daughter of the
biggest, best man in Colorado, want to ride the best animal that ever
felt a cinch."

"Well?"

"And I want to have him now, so I can get used to him this fall and
look forward to coming back to him in the spring."

Bob Thorpe took both her hands in one of his.

"And if a thing like that will make my bambino happy, I guess she'll
have it."

The girl kissed him and held her cheek close against his for a breath.

"When I go to Denver for the stock show I'll pick the best blue
ribbon--"

"Denver!" she exclaimed indignantly, sitting straight and tossing her
head. "I want a real horse--a horse bred and raised in these
mountains--a horse I can trust. None of your blue-blooded stock.
They're like the girls I went to college with!"

Bob Thorpe let his laughter roll out.

"Well, what do you expect to find around here? Have you seen anything
you like?"

She pulled her hands from his grasp and stretched his mouth out of
shape with her little fingers until he squirmed.

"No, I haven't seen him; but I've heard the cowboys talking. Over at
Mr. Avery's ranch they've caught a black horse--"

Bob Thorpe set her suddenly up on the arm of his chair and shook her
soundly.

"Look here, young lady!" he exclaimed. "You're dreaming! I know what
horse you're talking about. He's a wild devil that has run these hills
for years. I heard he'd been caught. Get the notion of having him out
of your head. I've never seen him but once, and then he was away off;
but I've heard tales of him. Why--

"Nonsense! In the first place, he couldn't be broken to ride. Men
aren't made big enough to break the spirit of a devil like that!
They're bigger than humans. So we can end this discussion in peace.
It's impossible!"

"All right," Gail said sweetly. "I just let you go on and get yourself
into a corner. You don't know what you're talking about. He has been
ridden. So there! I want him!"

He thrust her to one side, rose, and commenced to pace the room,
gesticulating wildly. But it all came to the invariable end of such
discussions, and twenty minutes later Gail Thorpe, her smoking, smiling
dad at her side, piloted the big touring car down the road, bound for
Jed Avery's ranch.


Young VB sat on a box behind the cabin working with a boot-heel that
insisted on running over. He lifted the boot, held it before his face,
and squinted one eye to sight the effect of his work--then started at a
cry from the road.

The boot still in his hands, VB stopped squinting to listen.
Undoubtedly whoever it was wanted Jed; but Jed was away with the horse
buyer, looking over his young stuff. So Young VB, boot in hand, its
foot clad in a service-worn sock, made his uneven way around the house
to make any necessary explanations.

"That must be he!"

The light, high voice of the girl gave the cry just as VB turned the
corner and came in sight, and her hand, half extended to point toward
the corral, pointed directly into the face of the young man.

He did not hear what she had said, did not venture a greeting. He
merely stood and stared at her, utterly without poise. In a crimson
flash he realized that this was Gail Thorpe, that she was pretty, and
that his bootless foot was covered by a sock that had given way before
the stress of walking in high heels, allowing his great toe, with two
of its lesser conspirators, to protrude. To his confusion, those toes
seemed to be swelling and for the life of him he could make them do
nothing but stand stiffly in the air almost at right angles with the
foot.

His breeding cried out for a retreat, for a leap into shelter; but his
wits had lost all grace. He lifted the half-naked foot and carefully
brushed the dirt from the sock. Then, leaning a shoulder against the
corner of the cabin, he drew the boot on. Stamping it to the ground to
settle his foot into place, he said, "Good morning," weakly and devoid
of heartiness.

Bob Thorpe had not noticed this confusion, for his eyes were on the
corral. But Gail, a peculiar twinkle in her eyes, had seen it all--and
with quick intuition knew that it was something more than the
embarrassment of a cow-puncher--and struggled to suppress her smiles.

"Good afternoon," Thorpe corrected. "Jed here?"

"No; he's riding," VB answered.

The cattleman moved a pace to the left and tilted his head to see
better the Captain, who stormed around and around the corral, raising a
great dust.

"We came over to look at a horse I heard was here--this one, I guess.
Isn't he the wild stallion?"

"Used to be wild."

"He looks it yet. Watch him plunge!" Thorpe cried.

"He's never seen an automobile before," VB explained, as the three
moved nearer the corral.

The horse was frightened. He quivered when he stood in one place, and
the quivering always grew more violent until it ended in a plunge. He
rose to his hind legs, head always toward the car, and pawed the air;
then settled back and ran to the far side of the inclosure, with eyes
for nothing but that machine.

They halted by the bars, Thorpe and his daughter standing close
together, Young VB nearer the gate. The boy said something to the horse
and laughed softly.

"Why, look, daddy," the girl cried, "he's beginning to calm down!"

The Captain stopped his antics and, still trembling, moved gingerly to
the bars. Twice he threw up his head, looked at the machine, and
breathed loudly, and once a quick tremor ran through his fine limbs,
but the terror was no longer on him.

Bob Thorpe turned a slow gaze on VB. The girl stood with lips parted. A
flush came under her fine skin and she clasped her hands at her breast.

"Oh, daddy, what a horse!" she breathed.

And Bob Thorpe echoed: "Lord, what a horse! Anybody tried to ride him?"
he asked a moment later.

"He gets work every day," VB answered.

"_Work?_ Don't tell me you work that animal!"

The young chap nodded. "Yes; he works right along."

The Captain snorted loudly and tore away in a proud circle of the
corral, as though to flaunt his graces.

"Oh, daddy, it took a _man_ to break that animal!" the girl breathed.

The bronze of VB's face darkened, then paled. He turned a steady look
on the sunny-haired woman, and the full thanks that swelled in his
throat almost found words. He wanted to cry out to her, to tell her
what such things meant; for she was of his sort, highly bred, capable
of understanding. And he found himself thinking: "You are! You are!
You're as I thought you must be!"

Then he felt Thorpe's gaze and turned to meet it, a trifle guiltily.

"Yours?" the man asked.

"Mine."

Thorpe turned back to the Captain. Gail drew a quick breath and turned
away from him--to the man.

"I thought so when he commenced to quiet," muttered Thorpe.

He looked then at his daughter and found her standing still, hands
clasped, lips the least trifle parted, gazing at Young VB.

Something in him urged a quick step forward. It was an alarm, something
primal in the fathers of women. But Bob Thorpe put the notion aside as
foolishness--or tenderness--and walked closer to the corral, chewing
his cigar speculatively. The stallion wrinkled his nose and dropped the
ears flat, the orange glimmer coming into his eyes.

"Don't like strangers, I see."

"Not crazy about them," VB answered.

Thorpe walked off to the left, then came back. He removed his cigar and
looked at Gail. She fussed with her rebellious hair and her face was
flushed; she no longer looked at the horse--or at VB. He felt a
curiosity about that flush.

"Well, want to get rid of him?"

Thorpe hooked his thumbs in his vest armholes and confronted VB.

No answer.

"What do you want for him?"

The young fellow started.

"What?" he said in surprise. "I was thinking. I didn't catch your
question."

The fact was, he had heard, but had distrusted the sense. The idea of
men offering money for the Captain had never occurred to him.

"What do you want for him?"

VB smiled.

"What do I want for him?" he repeated. "I want--feed and water for the
rest of his life; shelter when he needs it; the will to treat him as he
should be treated. And I guess that's about all."

The other again removed his cigar, and his jaw dropped. A cow-puncher
talking so! He could not believe it; and the idea so confused him that
he blundered right on with the bargaining. "Five hundred? Seven-fifty?
No? Well, how much?"

VB smiled again, just an indulgent smile prompted by the knowledge that
he possessed a thing beyond the power of even this man's wealth.

"The Captain is not for sale," he said. "Not to-day--or ever. That's
final."

There was more talk, but all the kindly bluffness, all the desire
instinctive in Bob Thorpe to give the other man an even break in the
bargain, fell flat. This stranger, this thirty-five-dollar-a-month
ranch hand, shed his offers as a tin roof sheds rain and with a
self-possession characterized by unmistakable assurance.

"Tell Jed I was over," the big man said as they gave up their errand
and turned to go. "And"--as he set a foot on the running board of his
car--"any time you're our way drop in."

"Yes, do!" added the girl, and her father could not check the impulse
which made him turn halfway as though to shut her off.




CHAPTER XIII

VB Fights


Jed returned that evening, worn by a hard day's riding. He was silent.
VB, too, was quiet and they spoke little until the housework was
finished and Jed had drawn off his boots preparatory to turning in.

Then VB said: "Bob Thorpe was over to-day."

"So?"

"Uh-huh; wanted to buy the Captain."

After a pause Jed commented: "That's natural."

"Wanted me to give you the good word."

The old man walked through the doorway into the little bunk room and VB
heard him flop into the crude bed.

A short interval of silence.

"Jed," called VB, "ever hear where his daughter went to school?"

A long yawn. Then:

"Yep--don't remember."

Another pause.

"She was over, too."

"Oh-ho-o-o!"

The boy felt himself flushing, and then sat bolt upright, wondering
soberly and seriously why it should be so--without reason.

Young VB slept restlessly that night. He tossed and dreamed, waking
frequently under a sense of nervous tension, then falling back to
half-slumber once more. Thorpe came, and his daughter, offering
fabulous sums for the Captain, which were stubbornly refused.

Then, shouting at the top of her voice, the girl cried:

"But I will give you kisses for him! Surely that is enough!"

And VB came back to himself, sitting up in bed and wadding the blankets
in his hands. He blinked in the darkness and herded his scattered
senses with difficulty. Then the hands left off twisting the covers and
went slowly to his throat. For the thirst was on him and in the morning
he rose in the grip of the same stifling desire, and his quavering
hands spilled things as he ate.

Jed noticed, but made no comment. When the meal was finished he said:

"S'pose I could get you to crawl up on the Captain an' take a shoot up
Curley Gulch with an eye out for that black mare an' her yearlin'?"

VB was glad to be alone with his horse, and as he walked to the corral,
his bridle over his arm, he felt as though, much as Jed could help him,
he could never bring the inspiration which the black beast offered.

He opened the gate and let it swing wide. The Captain came across to
him with soft nickerings, deserting the alfalfa he was munching. He
thrust his muzzle into the crook of VB's elbow, and the arm tightened
on it desperately, while the other hand went up to twine fingers in the
luxurious mane.

"Oh, Captain!" he muttered, putting his face close to the animal's
cheek. "You know what it is to fight for yourself! You know--but where
you found love and help when you lost that fight, I'd find--just
blackness--without even a candle--"

The stallion moved closer, shoving with his head until he forced VB out
of the corral. Then with his teasing lips he sought the bridle.

"You seem to understand!" the man cried, his tired eyes lighting. "You
seem to know what I need!"

Five minutes later he was rushing through the early morning air up the
gulch, the Captain bearing him along with that free, firm, faultless
stride that had swept him over those mountains for so many long,
unmolested years.

Throughout the forenoon they rode hard. VB looked for the mare and
colt, but the search did not command much of his attention.

"Why can't I turn all this longing into something useful?" he asked the
horse. "Your lust for freedom has come to this end; why can't my
impulses to be a wild beast be driven into another path?"

And the Captain made answer by bending his superb head and lipping VB's
chap-clad knee.

The quest was fruitless, and an hour before noon VB turned back toward
the ranch, making a short cut across the hills. In one of the gulches
the Captain nickered softly and increased his trotting. VB let him go,
unconscious of his brisker movement, for the calling in his throat had
risen to a clamor. The horse stopped and lowered his head, drinking
from a hole into which crystal water seeped.

The man dropped off and flopped on his stomach, thrusting his face into
the pool close to the nose of the greedily drinking stallion. He took
the water in great gulps. It was cold, as cold as spring water can be,
yet it was as nothing against the fire within him.

The Captain, raising his head quickly, caught his breath with a grunt,
dragging the air deep into his great lungs and exhaling slowly, loudly,
as he gazed off down the gulch; then he chewed briskly on the bit and
thrust his nose again into the spring.

VB's arm stole up and dropped over the horse's head.

"Oh, boy, you know what one kind of thirst is," he said in a whisper.
"But there's another kind that this stuff won't quench! The thirst that
comes from being in blackness--"


They went on, dropped off a point, and made for the flat little
buildings of the ranch. As he approached, VB saw three saddled horses
standing before the house, none of which was Jed's property. Nothing
strange in that, however, for one man's home is another's shelter in
that country, whether the owner be on the ground or not, and to VB the
thought of visitors brought relief. Contact with others might joggle
him from his mood.

He left the Captain, saddled, at the corral gate, bridle reins down,
and he knew that the horse would not budge so much as a step until told
to do so. Then he swung over toward the house, heels scuffing the hard
dirt, spurs jingling. At the threshold he walked squarely into the man
Rhues.

The recognition was a distinct shock. He stepped backward a
pace--recoiled rather, for the movement was as from a thing he
detested. Into his mind crowded every detail of his former encounters
with this fellow; in the Anchor bunk house and across the road from the
saloon in Ranger. They came back vividly--the expression of faces,
lights and shadows, even odors, and the calling in him for the help
that throttles became agonizing.

Rhues misconstrued his emotion. His judgment was warped by the spirit
of the bully, and he thought this man feared him. He remembered that
defiant interchange of questions, and the laugh that went to VB on
their first meeting. He nursed the rankling memory. He had told it
about that Avery's tenderfoot was afraid to take a drink--speaking
greater truth than he was aware--but his motive had been to discredit
VB in the eyes of the countrymen, for he belonged to that ilk who see
in debauchery the mark of manhood.

Coming now upon the man he had chosen to persecute, and reading fear in
VB's eyes, Rhues was made crudely happy.

"You don't appear to be overglad to see us," he drawled.

VB glanced into the room. A Mexican sat on the table, smoking and
swinging his legs; a white man he remembered having seen in Ranger
stood behind Rhues. Jed was nowhere about. He looked back at the snaky
leer in those half-opened green eyes, and a rage went boiling into his
brain. The unmistakable challenge which came from this bully was of the
sort that strips from men civilization's veneer.

"You've guessed it," he said calmly. "I don't know why I should be glad
to see you. These others"--he motioned--"are strangers to me."

Then he stepped past Rhues into the room.

The man grinned at him as he tossed his hat to a chair and unbuckled
the leather cuffs.

"But that makes no difference," he went on. "Jed isn't here. It's meal
time, and if you men want to eat I'll build a big enough dinner."

Rhues laughed, and the mockery in his tone was of the kind that makes
the biggest of men forget they can be above insult.

"We didn't come here to eat," he said. "We come up to see a horse we
heerd about--th' Captain. We heerd Jed caught him."

VB started. The thought of Rhues inspecting the stallion, commenting on
him, admiring him, was as repulsive to Young VB as would be the thought
to a lover of a vile human commenting vulgarly on the sacred body of
the woman of women.

The Mexican strolled out of the house as VB, turning to the stove,
tried to ignore the explanation of their presence. He walked on toward
the ponies. A dozen steps from the house he stopped, and called:

_"Por Dios, hombre!"_

Rhues and the other followed him, and VB saw them stand together,
staring in amazement at the Captain. Then they moved toward the great
horse, talking to one another and laughing.

VB followed, with a feeling of indignation. The trio advanced,
quickening their pace.

"Hold on!" he cried in sudden alarm. "Don't go too near; he's
dangerous!"

Already the Captain had flattened his ears, and as VB ran out he could
see the nose wrinkling, the lips drawing back.

"What's got into you?" demanded Rhues, turning, while the Mexican
laughed jeeringly. "I guess if you can ride him a _man_ can git up
clost without gittin' chawed up! Remember, young kid, we've been
workin' with hosses sence you was suckin' yer thumb."

The others laughed again, but VB gave no heed. He was seeing red again;
reason had gone--either reason or the coating of conventions.

"Well, if you won't stand away from him because of danger, you'll do it
because I say so!" he muttered.

"O-ho, an' that's it!" laughed Rhues, walking on.

VB passed him and approached the Captain and took his bridle.

"Be still, boy," he murmured. "Stand where you are."

He stroked the nose, and the wrinkles left it.

Rhues laughed again harshly.

"Well, that's a fine kind o' buggy horse!" he jeered. "Let a tenderfoot
come up an' steal all th' man-eatin' fire outen him!"

He laughed again and the others joined. The Mexican said something in
Spanish.

"Yah," assented Rhues. "I thought we was comin' to see a _hoss_--th'
kind o' nag this feller pertended to be. But now--look at him! He's
just a low-down ----"

VB sprang toward him.

"You--" he breathed, "you--you hound! Why, you aren't fit to come into
sight of this horse. You--you apologize to that horse!" he demanded,
and even through his molten rage the words sounded unutterably silly.

Yet he went on, fists clenched, carried beyond reason or balance by the
instinctive hate for this man and love for the black animal behind him.

Rhues laughed again.

"Who says so, besides you, you ----. Why, you ain't no more man'n that
hoss is hoss!"

He saw then that he had reckoned poorly. The greenhorn, the boy who
cowered at the thought of a man's dissipation, had disappeared, and in
his stead stood a quivering young animal, poising for a pounce.

Being a bully, Rhues was a coward. So when VB sprang, and he knew
conflict was unavoidable, his right hand whipped back. The fingers
closed on the handle of his automatic as VB made the first step. They
made their hold secure as the Easterner's arm drew back. They yanked at
the gun as that fist shot out.

It was a good blow, a clean blow, a full blow right on the point of the
chin, and, quickly as it had been delivered, the right was back in an
instinctive guard and the left had rapped out hard on the snarling
mouth. Rhues went backward and down, unbalanced by the first shock,
crushed by the second; and the third, a repeated jab of the left,
caught him behind the ear and stretched him helpless in the dust.

His fingers relaxed their hold on the gun that he had not been quick
enough to use, so lightning-like was the attack from this individual he
had dubbed a "kid." VB stepped over the prostrate form, put his toe
under the revolver, and flipped it a dozen yards away.

Then Jed Avery pulled up his horse in a shower of dust, and VB, his
rage choking down words, turned to lead the Captain into the corral.
The animal nosed him fiercely and pulled back to look at Rhues, who,
under the crude ministrations of his two companions, had taken on a
semblance of life.

A moment later VB returned from the inclosure, bearing his riding
equipment. He said to Jed: "This man insulted the Captain. I had to
whip him." Then he walked to the wagon shed, dropped his saddle in its
shelter, and came back.

Rhues sat up and, as VB approached, got to his feet. He lurched forward
as if to rush his enemy, but the Mexican caught him and held him back.

VB stood, hands on hips, and glared at him. He said: "No, I wouldn't
come again if I were you. I don't want to have to smash you again. I'd
enjoy it in a way, but when a man is knocked out he's whipped--in my
country--judged by the standards we set there.

"You're a coward, Rhues--a dirty, sneaking, low-down coward! Every
gun-man is a coward. It's no way to settle disputes--gun fighting."

He glared at the fellow before him, who swore under his breath but who
could not summon the courage to strike.

"You're a coward, and I hope I've impressed that on you," VB went on,
"and you'll take a coward's advantage. Hereafter I'm going to carry a
gun. You won't fight in my way because you're not a man, so I'll have
to be prepared for you in your way. I just want to let you know that I
understand your breed! That's all.

"Don't start anything, because I'll fight in two ways hereafter--in my
way and in yours. And that goes for you other two. If you run with
this--this _thing_, it marks you. I know what would have happened if
Jed hadn't come up. You'd have killed me! That's the sort you are.
Remember--all three of you--I'm not afraid, but it's a case of fighting
fire with fire. I'll be ready."

Rhues stood, as though waiting for more.

When VB did not go on he said, just above a whisper: "I'll get
you--yet!"

And VB answered, "Then I guess we all understand one another."

When the three had ridden away Jed shoved his Colt tight into its
holster again and looked at the young chap with foreboding.

"There'll be trouble, VB; they're bad," he said. "He's a coward. The
story'll go round an' he'll try to get you harder 'n ever. If he don't,
those others will--will try, I mean. Matson and Julio are every bit as
bad as Rhues, but they ain't quite got his fool nerve.

"They're a thievin' bunch, though it ain't never been proved. Nobody
trusts 'em; most men let 'em alone an' wait fer 'em to show their hand.
They've been cute; they've been suspected, but they ain't never got out
on a limb. They've got a lot to cover up, no doubt. But they've got a
grudge now. An' when cowards carry grudges--look out!"

"If a man like Rhues were all I had to fear, I should never worry," VB
muttered, weak again after the excitement. "He's bad--but there are
worse things--that you can't have the satisfaction of knocking down."

And his conspiring nostrils smelled whisky in that untainted air.




CHAPTER XIV

The Schoolhouse Dance


Young VB held a twofold interest for the men of Clear River. First, the
story of his fight with the Captain spread over the land, percolating
to the farthest camps. Men laughed at first. The absurdity of it! Then,
their surprise giving way to their appreciation of his attainment,
their commendation for the young Easterner soared to superlatively
profane heights.

When he met those who had been strangers before it was to be
scrutinized and questioned and frankly, honestly admired.

Now came another reason for discussing him about bunk-house stoves. He
had thrashed Rhues! Great as had been the credit accorded VB for the
capture of the stallion, just so great was men's delight caused by the
outcome of that other encounter.

They remembered, then, how Rhues had told of the greenhorn who was
afraid to take a drink; how he had made it a purpose to spread stories
of ridicule, doing his best to pervert the community's natural desire
to let the affairs of others alone. And this recollection of Rhues's
bullying was an added reason for their saying: "Good! I'm glad to hear
it. Too bad th' kid didn't beat him to death!"

Though his meetings with other men were few and scattered, VB was
coming to be liked. It mattered little to others why he was in the
country, from where he came, or who he had been. He had accomplished
two worthy things among them, and respect was accorded him across vast
distances. Dozens of these men had seen him only once, and scores
never, yet they reckoned him of their number--a man to be taken
seriously, worthy of their kindly attention, of their interest, and of
their respect.

Bob Thorpe helped to establish VB in the mountains. He thought much
about his interview with the young chap, and told to a half-dozen men
the story which, coming from him, had weight.

His daughter did not abandon her idea of owning the Captain. Bob told
her repeatedly that it was useless to argue with a man who spoke as did
Jed's rider; but the girl chose to disagree with him.

"I think that if you'd flatter him enough--if we both would--that he
would listen. Don't you?" she asked.

Bob Thorpe shook his head.

"No," he answered. "You can't convince me of that. You don't know men,
and I do. I've seen one or two like him before--who love a thing of
that sort above money; and, I've found you can't do a thing with
'em--ding 'em!"

The girl cried: "Why, don't feel that way about it! I think it's
perfectly fine--to love an animal so much that money won't buy him!"

"Sure it is," answered her father. "That's what makes me out of
patience with them. They're--they're better men than most of us,
and--well, they make a fellow feel rather small at times."

Then he went away, and Gail puzzled over his concluding remark.

A week to a day after her first visit she drove again to Jed's ranch.

"I came over to see the Captain," she told the old man gayly.

"Well, th' Captain ain't here now," he answered, be

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