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The Ranchman

by Charles Alden Seltzer · English · Gutenberg #37204 · 431,683 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Ranchman

Author: Charles Alden Seltzer

Illustrator: P. V. E. Ivory


        
Release date: August 25, 2011 [eBook #37204]
                Most recently updated: September 20, 2011

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37204

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        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RANCHMAN ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at http://www.pgdp.net





[Illustration: CARRINGTON LAUGHED JEERINGLY. (Page 268)]




THE RANCHMAN

BY CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER

AUTHOR OF THE BOSS OF THE LAZY Y, FIREBRAND TREVISON, THE RANGE BOSS,
ETC.

FRONTISPIECE BY P. V. E. IVORY NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS

Made in the United States of America




Copyright A. C. McClurg & Co. 1919

Published September, 1919

_Copyrighted in Great Britain_




              CHAPTER                                    PAGE
                    I Concerning Dawes                      1
                   II Slick Duds                           14
                  III The Serpent Trail                    20
                   IV The Hold-Up                          26
                    V The Unexpected                       36
                   VI A Man Makes Plans                    51
                  VII The Shadow of the Past               59
                 VIII Concerning "Squint"                  66
                   IX A Man Lies                           75
                    X The Frame-Up                         86
                   XI "No Fun Fooling Her"                 91
                  XII Lifting the Mask                    106
                 XIII The Shadow of Trouble               113
                  XIV The Face of a Fighter               128
                   XV Gloom--and Plans                     142
                  XVI A Man Becomes a Brute               153
                 XVII The Wrong Ankle                     172
                XVIII The Beast Again                     186
                  XIX The Ambush                          193
                   XX A Fight to a Finish                 200
                  XXI A Man Faces Death                   212
                 XXII Looking for Trouble                 218
                XXIII A World-Old Longing                 225
                 XXIV A Death Warrant                     232
                  XXV Keats Looks for "Squint"            238
                 XXVI Keats Finds "Squint"                245
                XXVII Besieged                            254
               XXXIII The Fugitive                        259
                 XXIX The Captive                         264
                  XXX Parsons Has Human Instincts         270
                 XXXI A Rescue                            277
                XXXII Taylor Becomes Riled                284
               XXXIII Retribution                         290
                XXXIV The Will of the Mob                 304
                 XXXV Triumph at Last                     315




THE RANCHMAN




CHAPTER I—CONCERNING DAWES


The air in the Pullman was hot and, despite the mechanical
contrivances built into the coach to prevent such a contingency, the
dust from the right-of-way persisted in filtering through crevices.

Even the electric fans futilely combated the heat; their droning hum
bespoke terrific revolutions which did not materially lessen the
discomfort of the occupants of the coach; and the dry, dead dust of
the desert, the glare of a white-hot sun, the continuing panorama of
waste land, rolling past the car windows, afforded not one cool vista
to assuage the torture of travel.

For hours after leaving Kansas City, several of the passengers had
diligently gazed out of the windows. But when they had passed the vast
grass plains and had entered the desert, where their eyes met nothing
but endless stretches of feathery alkali dust, beds of dead lava, and
clumps of cacti with thorny spire and spatula blade defiantly upthrust
as though in mockery of all life—the passengers drew the shades and
settled down in their seats to endure the discomfort of it all.

A _blasé_ tourist forward reclined in one seat and rested his legs on
another. From under the peak of a cap pulled well down over his eyes
he smiled cynically at his fellow-passengers, noting the various
manifestations of their discomfort. The tourist was a transcontinental
traveler of note and he had few expectations. It amused him to watch
those who had.

A girl of about twenty, seated midway in the coach to the left of the
tourist, had been an intent watcher of the desert. With the covert eye
of the tourist upon her she stiffened, stared sharply out of the
window, then drew back, shuddering, a queer pallor on her face.

“She’s seen something unpleasant,” mused the tourist. “A heap of
bleached bones—which would be the skeleton of a steer; or a
rattlesnake—or most anything. She’s got nerves.”

_One_ passenger in the car had no nerves—of that the tourist was
convinced. The tourist had observed him closely, and the tourist was a
judge of men. The nerveless one was a young man who sat in a rear seat
staring intently out into the inferno of heat and sand, apparently
absorbed in his thoughts and unaware of any physical discomfort.

“Young—about twenty-seven or twenty-eight—maybe thirty,” mused the
tourist; “but an old-timer in this country. I wised up to him when he
got aboard at Kansas City. Been a miner in his time—or a cow-puncher.
I’d hate to cross him.”

Among the other passengers were two who attracted the attention of the
tourist. They occupied the seat in front of the young man.

One of the two, who sat nearest the window, was not much older than
the young man occupying the seat behind him. The tourist guessed his
age to be around thirty-five or thirty-six. He was big, almost
massive, and had lived well—as the slightly corpulent stomach
revealed. Despite that, however, he was in good physical condition,
for his cheeks glowed with good healthy color under the blue-black
sheen of his fresh-shaved beard; there was a snapping twinkle in his
black eyes, which were penetrating and steady; and there was a quiet
confidence in his manner which told that he knew and appreciated
himself. He was handsome in a heavy, sensuous fashion, and his
coal-black hair, close-cropped and wavy, gave him an appearance of
virility and importance that demanded a second look. The man seated
beside him was undersized and ordinary-looking, with straight,
iron-gray hair and a look of having taken orders all his life. The
tourist set his age at fifty-five.

The girl was of the type that the tourist admired. He had seen her
kind in the far corners of the world, on the thronged streets of
cosmopolitan cities, in isolated sections of the world—the
self-reliant, quietly confident American girl whose
straight-in-the-eye glance always made a man feel impelled to
respectfully remove his hat.

She was not beautiful, but she was undeniably good-looking. She was
almost tall, and the ease and grace of her movements sufficed to
convey to the tourist some conception of the symmetrical lines of her
figure. If her features had been more regular, the girl would have
been plain; but there was a slight uptilt to her nose that hinted of
piquancy, denied by the quiet, steady eyes.

A brown mass of hair, which she had twisted into bulging coils and
glistening waves, made the tourist wonder over her taste in that
feminine art.

“She knows what becomes her,” he decided.

He knew the two men seated in front of the young man were traveling
with her, for he had seen them together, with the older man patting
her shoulder affectionately. But often she left them with their talk,
which did not seem to interest her, while she withdrew to a distant
seat to read or to gaze out of the window.

She had not seemed to notice either the man of colorless personality
or the young man who occupied the seat behind her friends. If she had
glanced at them at all it was with that impersonal interest one feels
in the average traveler one meets anywhere.

But long ago—which, to be strictly accurate, was when he had entered
the coach at Kansas City—Quinton Taylor had been interested in her. He
was content, though, to conceal that interest, and not once when she
chanced to look toward him did she catch him looking at her.

Taylor knew he was no man to excite the interest of women, not even
when he looked his best. And he knew that in his present raiment he
did not look his best. He was highly uncomfortable.

For one thing, the white, starched collar he wore irritated him,
choked him, reddening his face and bulging his eyes. The starched
shirt had a pernicious habit of tightly sticking to him, the seams
chafing his skin.

The ready-made suit he had bought at Kansas City was too small, and he
could feel his shoulders bulging through the arms of the coat, while
the trousers—at the hips and the knees—were stretched until he feared
the cloth would not stand the strain.

The shoes were tight, and the derby hat—he glowered humorously at it
in the rack above his head and gazed longingly at the suitcase at his
feet, into which he had crammed the clothing he had discarded and
which he had replaced at the suggestion of his banker in Kansas City.
Cowboy rigging was not uncommon to Kansas City, the banker had told
him, but still—well, if a man was wealthy, and wished to make an
impression, it might be wise to make the change.

Not in years had Taylor worn civilized clothing, and he was fully
determined that before reaching his home town he would resume the
clothing to which he was accustomed—and throw the new duds out of a
window. He reddened over an imaginary picture of himself descending
from the train in his newly acquired rigging to endure the humorous
comments of his friends. Old Ben Mullarky, for instance, would think
he had gone loco—and would tell him so. Yes, the new clothes were
doomed; some ragged overland specimen of the genus “hobo” would
probably find them or, if not, they would clutter up the right-of-way
as the sad memento of a mistake he had made during a fit of momentary
weakness.

As a matter of fact the girl had noticed Taylor. A girl will notice
men, unconsciously. Sitting at her window even now, she was thinking
of him.

She was not aware that she had studied him, or that she had even
glanced at him. But despite her lack of interest in him she had a
picture of him in mind, and her thoughts dwelt upon him.

She, too, had been aware that Taylor’s clothes did not fit him. She
had noticed the bulging shoulders, the tight trousers, the shoes,
squeaking with newness, when once he had passed through the car to go
out upon the platform. She had noticed him screwing his neck around in
the collar; she had seen him hunch his shoulders intolerantly; she had
seen that the trousers were too short; that he looked like an awkward
farmer or homesteader abroad on a pleasure trip, and decidedly
uncomfortable in the unaccustomed attire.

She had giggled to herself, then. For Taylor did make a ridiculous
figure. But later—when he had reentered the car and she had looked
fairly, though swiftly, at him as he advanced down the aisle—she had
seen something about him that had impressed her. And that was what she
was thinking about now. It was his face, she believed. It was red with
self-consciousness and embarrassment, but she had seen and noted the
strength of it—the lean, muscular jaw, the square, projecting chin,
the firm, well-controlled mouth; the steady, steel-blue eyes, the
broad forehead. It had seemed to her that he was humorously aware of
the clothes, but that he was grimly determined to brazen the thing
out.

Her mental picture now gave her the entire view of Taylor as he had
come toward her. And she could see him in a different environment, in
cowboy regalia, on a horse, perfectly at ease. He made a heroic
figure. So real was the picture that she caught herself saying:
“Clothes _do_ make the man!” And then she smiled at her enthusiasm and
looked out of the window.

Taylor had been thinking of her with the natural curiosity of the man
who knows he has no chance and is not looking for one. But she had
impressed him as resembling someone with whom he had been well
acquainted. For an hour he puzzled his brain in an endeavor to
associate hers with some face of his recollection, but elusive memory
resisted his demands on it with the result that he gave it up and
leaned back as restfully as he could with the consciousness of the
physical torture he was undergoing.

And then he heard the younger of the two men in front of him speak to
the other:

“We’ll make things hum in Dawes, once we get hold of the reins.”

“But there will be obstacles, Carrington.”

“Sure! Obstacles! Of course. That will make the thing all the more
enjoyable.”

There was a ring in Carrington’s voice that struck a chord of sudden
antagonism in Taylor, a note of cunning that acted upon Taylor
instantly, as though the man had twanged discord somewhere in his
nature.

Dawes was Taylor’s home; he had extensive and varied interests there;
he had been largely responsible for Dawes’s growth and development; he
had fought for the town and the interests of the town’s citizens
against the aggressions of the railroad company and a grasping land
company that had succeeded in clouding the titles to every foot of
land owned by Dawes’s citizens—his own included.

And he had heard rumors of outside interests that were trying to gain
a foothold in Dawes. He had paid little attention to these rumors, for
he knew that capital was always trying to drive wedges that would
admit it to the golden opportunities afforded by new towns, and he had
ascribed the rumors to idle gossip, being aware that such things are
talked of by irresponsibles.

But the words, “Get hold of the reins,” had a sound of craft and
plotting. And there was something in Carrington’s manner and
appearance that suggested guile and smooth cunning. Seething with
interest, Taylor closed his eyes and leaned his head back upon the
cushion behind him, simulating sleep.

He felt Carrington turn; he could feel the man’s eyes on him, and he
knew that Carrington was speculating over him.

He heard the other man whisper, though he could not catch the words.
However, he heard Carrington’s answer:

“Don’t be uneasy—I’m not ‘spilling’ anything. _He_ wouldn’t know the
difference if I did. A homesteader hitting town for the first time in
a year, probably. Did you notice him? Lord, what an outfit!”

He laughed discordantly, resuming in a whisper which carried to
Taylor:

“As I was saying, we’ll make things hum. The good folks in Dawes don’t
know it, but we’ve been framing them for quite a spell—been feeding
them Danforth. You don’t know Danforth, eh? He’s quite a hit with
these rubes. Knows how to smear the soft stuff over them. He’s what we
call a ‘mixer’ back in Chicago. Been in Dawes for about a year,
working in the dark. Been going strong during the past few months.
Running for mayor now—election is today. It’ll be over by the time we
get there. He’ll win, of course; he wired me it was a cinch. Cost a
lot, though, but it’s worth it. We’ll own Dawes before we get
through!”

It was with an effort that Taylor kept his eyes closed. He heard
nothing further, for the man’s voice had dropped lower and Taylor
could not hear it above the roar of the train.

Still, he had heard enough to convince him that Carrington had designs
on the future welfare of Dawes, and his muscles swelled until the
tight-fitting coat was in dire danger of bursting.

Danforth he knew slightly. He had always disliked and distrusted the
man. He remembered Danforth’s public _début_ to the people of Dawes.
It had been on the occasion of Dawes’s first anniversary and some
public-spirited citizens had decided upon a celebration. They had
selected Danforth as the speaker of the day because of his
eloquence—for Danforth had seized every opportunity to publicly air
his vigorous voice, and Taylor had been compelled to acknowledge that
Danforth was a forceful and able speaker.

Thereafter, Danforth’s voice often found the public ear. He was a
lawyer, and the sign he had erected over the front of the frame
building adjoining the courthouse was as magnificent as Danforth was
eloquent.

But though Taylor had distrusted Danforth, he had found no
evidence—until now—that the lawyer intended to betray his
fellow-citizens. Before leaving Dawes the week before he had heard
some talk, linking Danforth’s name with politics, but he had
discredited the talk. His own selection had been Neil Norton, and he
had asked his friends to consider Norton.

Taylor listened intently, with the hope of hearing more of the
conversation being carried on between the two men in front of him. But
he heard no more on the subject broached by Carrington. Later,
however, his eyes still closed, still pretending to be asleep, he saw
through veiled eyelids the girl rise from her seat and come toward the
two men in front of him.

For the first time he got a clear, full view of her face and a deep,
disturbing emotion thrilled him. For now, looking fairly at her, he
was more than ever convinced that he had seen her before, or that her
resemblance to someone he had known was more startling than he had
thought.

Then he heard Carrington speak to her.

“Getting tired, Miss Harlan?” said Carrington. “Well, it will soon be
ended, now. One more night on the train—and then Dawes.”

The older man laughed, and touched the girl’s arm playfully. “You
don’t mind it, do you, Marion?”

The older man said more, but Taylor did not hear him. For at his
mention of the girl’s given name, so soon after Carrington’s
pronouncement of “Harlan,” Taylor’s eyes popped open, and he sat
erect, staring straight at the girl.

Whether her gaze had been drawn by his, or whether her woman’s
curiosity had moved her to look at him, Taylor never knew. But she met
his wide gaze fairly, and returned his stare with one equally wide.
Only, he was certain, there was a glint of mocking accusation in her
eyes—to remind him, he supposed, that she had caught him
eavesdropping.

And then she smiled, looking at Carrington.

“One is recompensed for the inconveniences of travel by the
interesting characters one chances to meet.”

And she found opportunity, with Carrington looking full at her, to
throw a swift, significant glance at Taylor.

Taylor flushed scarlet. Not, however, because of any embarrassment he
felt over her words, but because at that instant was borne
overwhelmingly upon him the knowledge that the girl, and the man,
Carrington, who accompanied her—even the older man—were persons with
whom Fate had insisted that he play—or fight. They were to choose. And
that they had chosen to fight was apparent by the girl’s glance, and
by Carrington’s words, “We’ll own Dawes before we get through.”

Taylor got up and went to the smoking-room, where he sat for a long
time, staring out of the window, his eyes on the vast sea of sagebrush
that stretched before him, his mental vision fixed on an earlier day
and upon a tragedy that was linked with the three persons in the
coach—who seemed desirous of antagonizing him.




CHAPTER II—SLICK DUDS


After a time Taylor’s lips wreathed into a smile. He searched in his
pockets—he had transferred all his effects from the clothing in the
suitcase to his present uncomfortable raiment—and produced a long,
faded envelope in danger of imminent disintegration.

The smile faded from his lips as he drew out the contents of the
envelope, and a certain grim pity filled his eyes. He read:

Squint:

That rock falling on me has fixed me. There is no use in me trying to
fool myself. I’m going out. There’s things a man can’t say, even to a
friend like you. So I’m writing this. You won’t read it until after
I’m gone, and then you can’t tell me what you think of me for shoving
this responsibility on you. But you’ll accept, I know; you’ll do it
for me, won’t you?

I’ve had a lot of trouble—family trouble. It wouldn’t interest you.
But it made me come West. Maybe I shouldn’t have come. I don’t know;
but it seemed best.

You’ve been a mighty persevering friend, and I know you from the
ground up. You never inquired about my past, but I know you’ve
wondered. Once I mentioned my daughter, and I saw you look sharp at
me. Yes, there is a daughter. Her name is Marion. There was a wife and
her brother, Elam Parsons. But only Marion counts. The others were too
selfish and sneaking.

You won’t be interested in that. But I want Marion taken care of. She
was fifteen when I saw her last. She looked just like me; thank God
for that! She won’t have any of the characteristics of the others!

Squint, I want you to take care of her. You’ll find her in Westwood,
Illinois. You and me have talked of selling the mine. Sell it; take my
share and for it give Marion a half-interest in your ranch, the Arrow.
If there is any left, put it in land in Dawes—that town is going to
boom. Guard it for her, and marry her, Squint; she’ll make you a good
wife. Tell her I want her to marry you; she’ll do it, for she always
liked her “dad.”

There was more, but Taylor read no further. He stuffed the envelope
into a pocket and sat looking out of the window, regarding morosely
the featureless landscape. After a time he grinned saturninely:

“Looks to me like a long chance, Larry,” he mused. “Considered as a
marrying proposition she don’t seem to be enthusiastic over me. Now
what in thunder is she doing out here, and why is that man Carrington
with her—and where did she pick him up?”

There came no answer to these questions.

Reluctant, after the girl’s mocking smile, to seem to intrude, Taylor
sat in the smoking-compartment during the long afternoon, until the
dusk began to descend—until through the curtains of the compartment he
caught a glimpse of the girl and her companions returning from the
dining-car. Then, after what he considered a decent interval, he
emerged from the compartment, went to the diner, ate heartily, and
returned to the smoking-room.

He had met Larry Harlan about three years before. Harlan had appeared
at the Arrow one morning, looking for a job. Taylor had hired him, not
because he needed men, but because he thought Harlan needed work. A
friendship had developed, and when one day Harlan had told Taylor
about a mine he had discovered in the Sangre de Christo Mountains,
some miles southwestward, offering Taylor a half-interest if the
latter would help him get at the gold, Taylor had agreed.

They had found the mine, worked it, and had taken considerable gold
out of it, when one day a huge rock had fallen on Harlan. Taylor had
done what he could, rigging up a drag with which to take Harlan to
town and a doctor, but Harlan had died before town could be reached.

That had been the extent of Taylor’s friendship for the man. But he
had followed Harlan’s directions.

Sitting in the smoking-compartment, he again drew out Harlan’s note to
him and read further:

Marion will have considerable money, and I don’t want no sneak to get
hold of it—like the sneak that got hold of the money my wife had, that
I saved. There’s a lot of them around. If Marion is going to fall in
love with one of that kind, I’d rather she wouldn’t get what I
leave—the man would get it away from her.

Use your own judgment, and I’ll be satisfied.

It was not difficult for Taylor to divine what had happened to Harlan,
nor was it difficult to understand that the man’s distrust of other
men amounted to an obsession. However, Taylor had no choice but to
assume the trust and no course but to obey Harlan’s wishes in the
matter.

Taylor’s trip eastward to Kansas City had been for the purpose of
attending to his own financial interests, and incidentally to conclude
the deal for the sale of the mine. He had deposited the money in his
own name, but he intended—or had intended—after returning to the Arrow
to make arrangements for his absence, to go to Westwood to find Marion
Harlan. The presence of the girl on the train and the certain
conviction that she was bound for Dawes made the trip to Westwood
unnecessary.

For Taylor had no doubt that the girl was the daughter of Larry
Harlan. That troublesome resemblance of hers to someone of his
acquaintance bothered him no longer, for the girl was the living image
of Larry Harlan.

Taylor had not anticipated the coming of Carrington into his scheme of
things. For the first time since Larry Harlan’s letter had come into
his possession he realized that deep in his heart was a fugitive
desire for the coming of the girl to the Arrow. He had liked Larry
Harlan, and he had drawn mental pictures of what the daughter would be
like; and, though she was not exactly as he had pictured her, she was
near enough to the ideal he had visualized. He wanted, now more than
ever, to faithfully fulfil his obligation to Larry Harlan.

The presence of Carrington on the train, coupled with the inference
that Carrington was a close friend of the girl’s, irritated Taylor.
For at the first glance he had felt a subtle antagonism for the man.
Yet he was more disturbed over the mockery in the girl’s eyes when she
had looked directly at him when she had caught him listening to her
talk with Carrington and the older man.

Still, Taylor was not the type of man who permits the imminence of
discord to disturb his mental equanimity, and he grinned into the
growing darkness of the plains with a grimly humorous twist to his
lips that promised interesting developments should Carrington oppose
him.

When he again looked out of the aperture in the curtains screening the
smoking-compartment from the aisle he saw the porter pass, carrying
bedclothing. Later he saw the porter returning, smilingly inspecting a
bill. After an interval the porter stuck his head through the curtains
and surveyed him with a flashing grin:

“Is you ready to retiah, boss?” he asked.

A quarter of an hour later Taylor was alone in his berth, gazing at
his reflection in the glass while he undressed.

“You wouldn’t have the nerve to think she is interested in you, would
you—you homely son-of-a-gun?” he queried of his reflection. “Why, no,
she ain’t, of course,” he added; “no woman could be interested in you.
You’ve been all day looking like a half-baked dude—and no woman is
interested in dudes!”

Carefully removing the contents of the several pockets of the despised
wearing apparel in which he had suffered for many days, he got into
his nightclothes and rang for the porter. When the latter appeared
with his huge grin, Taylor gave him the offensive clothing, bundled
together to form a large ball.

“George,” he said seriously, almost solemnly, “I’m tired of being a
dude. Some day I may decide to be a dude; but not now. Take these duds
and save them until I ask for them. If you offer them to me before I
ask for them, I’ll perforate you sure as hell!”

He produced a big Colt pistol from somewhere, and as the weapon
glinted in the light the porter’s eyes bulged and he backed away,
gingerly holding the bundle of clothing.

“Yassir, boss—yassir! I shuah won’t mention it till you does, boss!”

When the porter had gone, Taylor grinned into the glass.

“I sure have felt just what I looked,” he said.

Then he got into his berth and dreamed all night of a girl whose
mocking eyes seemed to say:

“Well, do you think you have profited by listening?”

“Why, sure,” he retorted, in his dreams; “I’ve seen you, ain’t I?”




CHAPTER III—THE SERPENT TRAIL


Marion Harlan did not dream of Quinton Taylor, though her last waking
thought was of him, and when she opened her eyes in the morning it was
to see him as he had sat in the seat behind Carrington and her uncle,
his eyes wide with interest, or astonishment—or some emotion that she
could not define—looking directly at her.

She had been certain then, and still was certain that he had been
feigning sleep, that he had been listening to the talk carried on
between her uncle and Carrington.

Why had he listened?

That interrogation absorbed her thoughts as she dressed.

She had not meant to be interested in him, for she had, in her first
glance at him, mentally decided that he was no more interesting than
many another ill-dressed and uncouth westerner whom she had seen on
the journey toward Dawes.

To be sure, she had seen signs of strength in him, mental and
physical, but that had been when she looked at him coming toward her
down the aisle. But even then he had not interested her; her interest
began when she noted his interest in the conversation of her traveling
companions. And then she had noticed several things about him that had
escaped her in other glances at him.

For one thing, despite the astonishment in his eyes, she had observed
the cold keenness of them, the odd squint at the corners, where little
wrinkles, splaying outward, indicated either deliberate impudence or
concealed mirth. She was rather inclined to believe it the latter,
though she would not have been surprised to discover the wrinkles to
mean the former.

And then she had noted his mouth; his lips had been straight and firm;
she had been sure they were set resolutely when she had surprised him
looking at her. That had seemed to indicate that he had taken more
than a passing interest in what he had overheard.

She speculated long over the incident, finally deciding that much
would depend upon what he had overheard. There was only one way to
determine that, and at breakfast in the dining-car she interrogated
Carrington.

“Of course, you and uncle are going to Dawes on business, and I am
merely tagging along to see if I can find any trace of my father. But
have you any business secrets that might interest an eavesdropper? On
a train, for instance—a train going toward Dawes?”

“What do you mean?” Carrington’s eyes flashed as he leaned toward her.

“Have you and uncle talked business within hearing distance of a
stranger?”

Carrington’s face flushed; he exchanged a swift glance with the other
man.

“You mean that clodhopper with the tight-fitting hand-me-down in the
seat behind us—yesterday? He was asleep!”

“Then you did talk business—business secrets,” smiled the girl. “I
thought really big men commonly concealed their business secrets from
the eager ears of outsiders.”

She laughed aloud at Carrington’s scowl, and then went on:

“I don’t think the clodhopper was asleep. In fact, I rather think he
was very wide awake. I wouldn’t say for certain, but I _think_ he was
awake. You see, when I came back to talk with you he was sitting very
straight, and his eyes were wide open.

“And I shall tell you something else,” she went on. “During all the
time he sat behind you, when you were talking, I watched him, he was
pretending to sleep, for at times he opened his eyes and looked at
you, and I am sure he was not thinking pleasant thoughts. And I don’t
believe he is a clodhopper. I think he amounts to something; and if
you will look well at him you will see, too. When he was listening to
you there was a look in his eyes that made me think of fighting.” And
then, after a momentary pause, she added slowly, “there isn’t anything
wrong about the business you are going to transact out here—is there?”

“Wrong?” he laughed. “Oh, no! Business is business.” He leaned forward
and gazed deliberately into her eyes, his own glowing significantly.
“You don’t think, with me holding your good opinion—and always hoping
to better it—that I would do anything to destroy it, Marion?”

The girl’s cheeks were suffused with faint color.

“You are assuming again, Mr. James J. Carrington. I don’t care for
your subtle speeches. I like you best when you talk frankly; but I am
not sure that I shall ever like you enough to marry you.”

She smiled at the scowl in his eyes, then looked speculatively at him.
It should have been apparent to him that she had spoken the truth
regarding her feeling for him.

The uncle knew she had spoken the truth, for she left them presently,
and the car door had hardly closed behind her when Carrington said,
smiling grimly:

“She’s a thoroughbred, Parsons. That’s why I like her. I’ll have her,
too!”

“Careful,” grinned the other, smoothly. “If she ever discovers what a
brute you are—” He made a gesture of finality.

“Brute! Bah! Parsons, you make me sick! I’ll take her when I want her!
Why do you suppose I told her that fairy tale about her father having
been seen in this locality? To get her out here with me, of
course—where there isn’t a hell of a lot of law, and a man’s will is
the only thing that governs him. She won’t have me, eh? Well, we’ll
see!”

Parsons smirked at the other. “Then you lied about Lawrence Harlan
having been seen in this country?”

“Sure,” admitted Carrington. “Why not?”

Parsons looked leeringly at Carrington. “Suppose I should tell her?”

Carrington glared at the older man. “You won’t,” he declared. “In the
first place, you don’t love her as an uncle should because she looks
like Larry Harlan—and you hated Larry. Suppose I should tell her that
you were the cause of the trouble between her parents; that you framed
up on her mother, to get her to leave Larry? Why, you damned,
two-faced gopher, she’d wither you!”

He grinned at the other and got up, turning, when he reached his feet,
to see Quinton Taylor, standing beside a chair at the next table, just
ready to sit down, but delaying to hear the remainder of the
extraordinary conversation carried on between the two men.

Taylor had donned the garments he had discarded in Kansas City. A blue
woolen shirt, open at the throat; corduroy trousers, the bottoms
stuffed into the soft tops of high-heeled boots; a well-filled
cartridge-belt, sagging at the right hip with the weight of a heavy
pistol—and a broad-brimmed felt hat, which a smiling waiter held for
him—completed his attire.

Freshly shaved, his face glowed with the color that betokens perfect
health; and just now his eyes were also glowing—but with frank disgust
and dislike.

Carrington flushed darkly and stepped close to Taylor. Carrington’s
chin was thrust out belligerently; his eyes fairly danced with a rage
that he could hardly restrain.

“Listening again, eh?” he said hoarsely. “You had your ears trained on
us yesterday, in the Pullman, and now you are at it again. I’ve a
notion to knock your damned head off!”

Taylor’s eyelids flickered once, the little wrinkles at the corners of
his eyes deepening a trifle. But his gaze was steady, and the blue of
his eyes grew a trifle more steely.

“You’ve got a bigger notion not to, Mr. Man,” he grinned. “You run a
whole lot to talk.”

He sat down, twisted around in the chair and faced the table, casting
a humorous eye at the black waiter, and ignoring Carrington.

“I’ll want a passable breakfast this morning, George,” he said; “I’m
powerful hungry.”

He did not turn when Carrington went out, followed by Parsons.

The waiter hovered near him, grinning widely.

“I reckon you-all ain’t none scary, boss!” he said, admiringly.




CHAPTER IV—THE HOLD-UP


After breakfast—leaving a widely grinning waiter, who watched him
admiringly—Taylor reentered the Pullman.

Stretching out in the upholstered seat, Taylor watched the flying
landscape. But his thoughts were upon the two men he had overheard
talking about the girl in the diner. Taylor made a grimace of disgust
at the great world through which the train was speeding; and his
feline grin when his thoughts dwelt definitely upon Carrington,
indicated that the genial waiter had not erred greatly in saying
Taylor was not “scary.”

Upon entering, Taylor had flashed a rapid glance into the car. He had
seen Carrington and Parsons sitting together in one of the seats and,
farther down, the girl, leaning back, was looking out of the window.
Her back was toward Taylor. She had not seen him enter the car—and he
was certain she had not seen him leave it to go to the diner. He had
thought—as he had glanced at her as he went into the smoking
compartment—that, despite the girl’s seemingly affectionate manner
toward Parsons, and her cordial treatment of the big man, her manner
indicated the presence of a certain restraint. And as he looked toward
her, he wondered if Parsons or the big man had told her anything of
the conversation in the diner in which he himself figured.

And now, looking out of the window, he decided that even if the men
had told her, she would not betray her knowledge to him—unless it were
to give him another scornful glance—the kind she threw at him when she
saw him as he sat behind the two men when they had been talking of
Dawes. Taylor reddened and gritted his teeth impotently; for he knew
that if the two men had told her anything, they would have informed
her, merely, that they had again caught him listening to them. And for
that double offense, Taylor knew there would be no pardon from her.

Half an hour later, while still thinking of the girl and the men,
Taylor felt the train slowing down. Peering as far ahead as he could
by pressing his face against the glass of the window, Taylor saw the
train was entering a big cut between some hills. It was a wild
section, with a heavy growth of timber skirting the hills—on Taylor’s
side of the train—and running at a sharp angle toward the right-of-way
came a small river.

Taylor recognized the place as Toban’s Siding. He did not know how the
spot had come by its name; nor did he know much about it except that
there was a spur of track and a water-tank. And when the train began
to slow down he supposed the engineer had decided to stop to take on
water. He found himself wondering, though, why that should be
necessary, for he was certain the train had stopped for water a few
miles back, while he had been in the dining-car.

The train was already late, and Taylor grinned as he settled farther
back in the seat and drew a sigh of resignation. There was no
accounting for the whims of an engineer, he supposed.

He felt the train come to a jerking stop; and then fell a silence. An
instant later the silence was broken by two sharp reports, a distinct
interval between them. Taylor sat erect, the smile leaving his face,
and his lips setting grimly as the word “Hold-up” came from between
them.

Marion Harlan also heard the two reports. Stories of train
robberies—recollections of travelers’ tales recurred in her brain as
she sat, for the first tense instant following the reports, listening
for other sounds. Her face grew a little pale, and a tremor ran over
her; but she did not feel a bit like screaming—though in all the
stories she had ever read, women always yielded to the hysteria of
that moment in which a train-robber makes his presence known.

She was not frightened, though she was just a trifle nervous, and more
than a trifle curious. So she pressed her cheek against the
window-glass and looked forward.

What she saw caused her to draw back again, her curiosity satisfied.
For on the side of the cut near the engine, she had seen a man with a
rifle—a masked man, tall and rough-looking—and it seemed to her that
the weapon in his hands was menacing someone in the engine-cab.

She stiffened, looking quickly around the car. None of the passengers
had moved. Carrington and Parsons were still sitting together in the
seat. They were sitting erect, though, and she saw they, too, were
curious. More, she saw that both men were pale, and that Carrington,
the instant she turned, became active—bending over, apparently trying
to hide something under a seat. That movement on Carrington’s part was
convincing, and the girl drew a deep breath.

While she was debating the wisdom of permitting her curiosity to drive
her to the door nearest her to determine what had happened, the door
burst open and a masked man appeared in the opening!

While she stared at him, he uttered the short, terse command:

“Hands up!”

She supposed that meant her, as well as the men in the car, and she
complied, though with a resentful glare at the mask.

Daringly she turned her head and glanced back. Carrington had his
hands up, too; and Parsons—and the tourist, and the other man. She did
not see Taylor—though she wondered, on the instant, if he, too, would
obey the train-robber’s command.

She decided he would—any other course would have been foolhardy;
though she could not help remembering that queer gleam in Taylor’s
eyes. That gleam, it had seemed to her, was a reflection of—not
foolhardiness, but of sheer courage.

However, she had little time to speculate. The masked man advanced, a
heavy gun in his right hand, its muzzle moving from side to side,
menacing them all.

He halted when he had advanced to within a step of the girl.

“You guys set tight!” he ordered gruffly—in the manner of the
train-robber of romance. “If you go to lettin’ down your sky-hooks one
little quiver, I bore you so fast an’ plenty that you’ll think you’re
a colander!” Then he turned the mask toward the girl; she could feel
his eyes burning through it.

“Shell out, lady!” he commanded.

She stared straight back at the eye-slits in the mask, defiance
glinting her own eyes.

“I haven’t any money—or anything of value—to give you,” she returned.

“You’ve got a pocketbook there—in your hand!” he said. “Fork it over!”
He removed his hat, held it in his left hand, and extended it toward
her. “Toss it in there!”

Hesitatingly, she obeyed, though not without a vindictive satisfaction
in knowing that he would find little in the purse to compensate him
for his trouble. She could see his eyes gleam greedily as he still
looked at her.

“Now that chain an’ locket you’ve got around your neck!” he ordered.
“Quick!” he added, savagely, as she stiffened and glared at him.

She did as she was bidden, though; for she had no doubt he would kill
her—at least his manner indicated he would. And so she removed it,
held it lingering in her hand for an instant, and then tossed it into
the hat. She gulped as she did so, for the trinket had been given to
her by her father before he left home to go on that pilgrimage from
which he had never returned.

“That’s all, eh?” snarled the man. “Well, I ain’t swallowin’ that! I’m
goin’ to search you!”

She believed she must have screamed at that. She knew she stood up,
prepared to fight him if he attempted to carry out his threat; and
once on her feet she looked backward.

Neither Carrington nor Parsons had moved—they were palely silent,
watching, not offering to interfere. As for that, she knew that any
sign of interference on the part of her friends would result in their
instant death. But she did not know what they _should_ do! Something
must be done, for she could not permit the indignity the man
threatened!

Still looking backward, she saw Taylor standing at the end of the
car—where the partition of the smoking-compartment extended outward.
He held a gun in each hand. He had heard her scream, and on his face
as the girl turned toward him, she saw a mirthless grin that made her
shiver. She believed it must have been her gasp that caused the
train-robber to look swiftly at Taylor.

Whatever had caused the man to look toward the rear of the car, he saw
Taylor; and the girl saw him stiffen as his pistol roared in her ears.
Taylor’s pistols crashed at the same instant—twice—the reports almost
together. Afterward she could not have told what surprised her the
most—seeing the man at her side drop his pistol and lurch limply
against a corner of the seat opposite her, and from there slide gently
to the floor, grunting; or the spectacle of Taylor, arrayed in cowboy
garb, emerging from the door of the smoking-compartment, the mirthless
smile on his face, and his guns—he had used both—blazing forth death
to the man who had threatened her.

Nor could she—afterward—have related what followed the sudden
termination of the incident in the car. Salient memories stood out—the
vivid and tragic recollection of chief incidents that occurred
immediately; but she could not have even guessed how they happened.

She saw Taylor as he stood for an instant looking down at the man
after he came running forward to where the other lay; and she saw
Taylor leap for the front door of the car, vanish through it, and slam
it after him.

For an instant after that there was silence, during which she
shuddered as she tried to keep her gaze from the thing that lay
doubled oddly in the aisle.

And then she heard more shooting. It came from the direction of the
engine—the staccato crashing of pistols; the shouts of men, their
voices raised in anger.

Pressing her cheek against the window-pane, and looking forward toward
the engine, she saw Taylor. With a gun in each hand, he was running
down the little level between the track and the steep wall of the cut,
toward her. She noted that his face still wore the mirthless grin that
had been on it when he shot the train-robber in the car; though his
eyes were alight with the lust of battle—that was all too plain—and
she shivered. For Taylor, having killed one man, and grimly pursuing
others, seemed to suggest the spirit of this grim, rugged country—the
threat of death that seemed to linger on every hand.

She saw him snap a shot as he ran, bending far over to send the bullet
under the car; she heard a pistol crash from the other side of the
car; and then she saw Taylor go to his knees.

She gasped with horror and held to the window-sill, for she feared
Taylor had been killed. But almost instantly she saw her error, for
Taylor was on his hands and knees crawling when she could again
concentrate her gaze; and she knew he was crawling under the car to
catch the man who had shot from the other side.

Then Taylor disappeared, and she did not see him for a time. She heard
shots, though; many of them; and then, after a great while, a silence.
And during the silence she sat very still, her face white and her lips
stiff, waiting.

The silence seemed to endure for an age; and then it was broken by the
sound of voices, the opening of the door of the car, and the
appearance of Taylor and some other men—several members of the
train-crew; the express-messenger; the engineer, his right arm hanging
limply—and two men, preceding the others, their hands bound, their
faces sullen.

On Taylor’s face was the grin that had been on it all along. The girl
wondered at the man’s marvelous self-control—for certainly during
those moments of excitement and danger he must have been aware of the
terrible risk he had been running. And then the thought struck her—she
had not considered that phase of the situation before—that she _must_
have screamed; that he had heard her, and had emerged from the
smoking-room to protect her. She blushed, gratitude and a riot of
other emotions overwhelming her, so that she leaned weakly back in the
seat, succumbing to the inevitable reaction.

She did not look at Taylor again; she did not even see him as he
walked toward the rear of the car, followed by the train-crew, and
preceded by the two train-robbers he had captured.

But as the train-crew passed her, she heard one of them say:

“That guy’s a whirlwind with a gun! Didn’t do no hesitatin’, did he?”

And again:

“Now, what do you suppose would make a guy jump in that way an’ run a
chance of gettin’ plugged—plenty? Do you reckon he was just yearnin’
fer trouble, or do you reckon they was somethin’ else behind it?”

The girl might have answered, but she did not. She sat very still,
comparing Carrington with this man who had plunged instantly into a
desperate gun-fight to protect her. And she knew that Carrington would
not have done as Taylor had done. And had Carrington seen her face
just at that moment he would have understood that there was no
possibility of him ever achieving the success of which he had dreamed.

She heard one of the men say that the two men were to be placed in the
baggage-car until they reached Dawes; and then Carrington and Parsons
came to where she sat.

They talked, but the girl did not hear them, for her thoughts were on
the picture Taylor made when he appeared at the door of the
smoking-compartment arrayed in his cowboy rigging, the grim smile on
his face, his guns flaming death to the man who thought to take
advantage of her helplessness.




CHAPTER V—THE UNEXPECTED


The train pulled out again presently, and the water-tank and the cut
were rapidly left in the rear. Taylor returned to the smoking-room and
resumed his seat, and while the girl looked out of the window, some
men of the train-crew removed the body of the train-robber and
obliterated all traces of the fight. And Carrington and Parsons,
noting the girl’s abstractedness, again left her to herself.

It had been the girl’s first glimpse of a man in cowboy raiment, and,
as she reflected, she knew she might have known Taylor was an unusual
man. However, she knew it now.

Cursory glances at drawings she had seen made her familiar with the
type, but the cowboys of those drawings had been magnificently arrayed
in leather _chaparajos_, usually fringed with spangles; and with
long-roweled spurs; magnificent wide brims—also bespangled, and
various other articles of personal adornment, bewildering and awe
inspiring.

But this man, though undoubtedly a cow-puncher, was minus the
magnificent raiment of the drawings. And, paradoxical as it may seem,
the absence of any magnificent trappings made _him_ seem magnificent.

But she was not so sure that it was the lack of those things that gave
her that impression. He did not _bulge_ in his cowboy clothing; it
fitted him perfectly. She was sure it was he who gave magnificence to
the clothing. Anyway, she was certain he was magnificent, and her eyes
glowed. She knew, now that she had seen him in clothing to which he
was accustomed, and which he knew how to wear, that she would have
been more interested in him yesterday had he appeared before her
arrayed as he was at this moment.

He had shown himself capable, self-reliant, confident. She would have
given him her entire admiration had it not been for the knowledge that
she had caught him eavesdropping. That action had almost damned him in
her estimation—it would have completely and irrevocably condemned him
had it not been for her recollection of the stern, almost savage
interest she had seen in his eyes while he had been listening to
Carrington and Parsons.

She knew because of that expression that Carrington and Parsons had
been discussing something in which he took a personal interest. She
had not said so much to Carrington, but her instinct told her, warned
her, gave her a presentiment of impending trouble. That was what she
had meant when she had told Carrington she had seen _fighting_ in
Taylor’s eyes.

Taylor confined himself to the smoking-compartment. The negro porter,
with pleasing memories of generous tips and a grimmer memory to exact
his worship, hung around him, eager to serve him, and to engage him in
conversation; once he grinningly mentioned the incident of the
cast-off clothing of the night before.

“I ain’t mentionin’ it, boss—not at all! I ain’t givin’ you them duds
till you ast for them. You done took me by s’prise, boss—you shuah
did. I might’ near caved when you shoved that gun under ma nose—I
shuah did, boss. I don’t want to have nothin’ to do with your gun,
boss—I shuah don’t. She’d go ‘pop,’ an’ I wouldn’t be heah no more!

“I didn’t reco’nize you in them heathen clo’s you had on yesterday,
boss; but I minds you with them duds on. I knows you; you’re ‘Squint’
Taylor, of Dawes. I’ve seen you on that big black hoss of yourn, a
prancin’ an’ a prancin’ through town—more’n once I’ve seen you. But I
didn’t know you in them heathen clo’s yesterday, boss—’deed I didn’t!”

Later the porter slipped into the compartment. For a minute or two he
fussed around the room, setting things to order, meanwhile chuckling
to himself. Occasionally he would cease his activities long enough to
slap a knee with the palm of a hand, with which movement he would seem
to be convulsed with merriment, and then he would resume work,
chuckling audibly.

For a time Taylor took no notice of his antics, but they assailed his
consciousness presently, and finally he asked:

“What’s eating you, George?”

The query was evidently just what “George” had been waiting for. For
now he turned and looked at Taylor, his face solemn, but a white gleam
of mirth in his eyes belying the solemnity.

“Tips is comin’ easy for George this mornin’,” he said; “they shuah
is. No trouble at all. If a man wants to get tips all he has to be is
a dictionary—he, he, he!”

“So you’re a dictionary, eh? Well, explain the meaning of this.” And
he tossed a silver dollar to the other.

The dollar in hand, George tilted his head sidewise at Taylor.

“How on earth you know I got somethin’ to tell you?”

“How do I know I’ve got two hands?”

“By lookin’ at them, boss.”

“Well, that’s how I know you’ve got something to tell me—by looking at
you.”

The porter chuckled. “I reckon it’s worth a dollar to have a young
lady interested in you,” he told himself in a confidential voice,
without looking at Taylor; “yassir, it’s sure worth a dollar.” He
slapped his knee delightedly. “That young lady a heap interested in
you, ’pears like. While ago she pens me in a corner of the platform.
‘Porter, who’s that man in the smoking-compartment—that cowboy? What’s
his name, an’ where does he live?’ I hesitates, ’cause I didn’t want
to betray no secrets—an’ scratch my haid. Then she pop half a dollar
in my hand, an’ I tole her you are Squint Taylor, an’ that you own the
Arrow ranch, not far from Dawes. An’ she thank me an’ go away,
grinnin’.”

“And the young lady, George; do you know her name?”

“Them men she’s travelin’ with calls her Marion, boss.”

He peered intently at Taylor for signs of interest. He saw no such
signs, and after a while, noting that Taylor seemed preoccupied, and
was evidently no longer aware of his presence, he slipped out
noiselessly.

At nine thirty, Taylor, looking out of the car window, noted that the
country was growing familiar. Fifteen minutes later the porter stuck
his head in between the curtains, saw that Taylor was still absorbed,
and withdrew. At nine fifty-five the porter entered the compartment.

“We’ll be in Dawes in five minutes, boss,” he said. “I’ve toted your
baggage to the door.”

The porter withdrew, and a little later Taylor got up and went out
into the aisle. At the far end of the car, near the door, he saw
Marion Harlan, Parsons, and Carrington.

He did not want to meet them again after what had occurred in the
diner, and he cast a glance toward the door behind him, hoping that
the porter had carried his baggage to that end of the car. But the
platform was empty—his suitcase was at the other end.

He slipped into a seat on the side of the train that would presently
disclose to him a view of Dawes’s depot, and of Dawes itself, leaned
an elbow on the window-sill, and waited. Apparently the three persons
at the other end of the car paid no attention to him, but glancing
sidelong once he saw the girl throw an interested glance at him.

And then the air-brakes hissed; he felt the train slowing down, and he
got up and walked slowly toward the girl and her companions. At about
the same instant she and the others began to move toward the door; so
that when the train came to a stop they were on the car platform by
the time Taylor reached the door. And by the time he stepped out upon
the car platform the girl and her friends were on the station
platform, their baggage piled at their feet.

Dawes’s depot was merely a roofless platform; and there was no shelter
from the glaring white sun that flooded it. The change from the
subdued light of the coach to the shimmering, blinding glare of the
sun on the wooden planks of the platform affected Taylor’s eyes, and
he was forced to look downward as he alighted. And then, not looking
up, he went to the baggage-car and pulled his two prisoners out.

Looking up as he walked down the platform with the two men, he saw a
transformed Dawes.

The little, frame station building had been a red, dingy blot beside
the glistening rails that paralleled the town. It was now gaily draped
with bunting—red, white, and blue—which he recognized as having been
used on the occasion of the town’s anniversary celebration.

A big American flag topped the ridge of the station; other flags
projected from various angles of the frame.

Most of the town’s other buildings were replicas of the station in the
matter of decorations—festoons of bunting ran here and there from
building to building; broad bands of it were stretched across the
fronts of other buildings; gay loops of it crossed the street,
suspended to form triumphal arches; flags, wreaths of laurel, Japanese
lanterns, and other paraphernalia of the decorator’s art were
everywhere.

Down the street near the Castle Hotel, Taylor saw transparencies, but
he could not make out the words on them.

He grinned, for certainly the victor of yesterday’s election was
outdoing himself.

He looked into the face of a man who stood near him on the
platform—who answered his grin.

“Our new mayor is celebrating in style, eh?” he said.

“Right!” declared the man.

He was about to ask the man which candidate had been victorious—though
he was certain it was Neil Norton—when he saw Marion Harlan, standing
a little distance from him, smiling at him.

It was a broad, impersonal smile, such as one citizen of a town might
exchange with another when both are confronted with the visible
evidences of political victory; and Taylor responded to it with one
equally impersonal. Whereat the girl’s smile faded, and her gaze,
still upon Taylor, became speculative. Its quality told Taylor that he
should not presume upon the smile.

Taylor had no intention of presuming anything. Not even the porter’s
story of the girl’s interest in him had affected him to the extent of
fatuous imaginings. A woman’s curiosity, he supposed, had led her to
inquire about him. He expected she rarely saw men arrayed as he
was—and as he had been arrayed the day before.

The girl’s gaze went from Taylor to the street in the immediate
vicinity of the station, and for the first time since alighting on the
platform Taylor saw a mass of people near him.

Looking sharply at them, he saw many faces in the mass that he knew.
They all seemed to be looking at him and, with the suddenness of a
stroke came to him the consciousness that there was no sound—that
silence, deep and unusual, reigned in Dawes. The train, usually merely
stopping at the station and then resuming its trip, was still standing
motionless behind him. With a sidelong glance he saw the train-crew
standing near the steps of the cars, looking at him. The porter and
the waiter with whose faces he was familiar, were grinning at him.

Taylor felt that his own grin, as he gazed around at the faces that
were all turned toward him, was vacuous and foolish. He _felt_
foolish. For he knew something had attracted the attention of all
these people to him, and he had not the slightest idea what it was.
For an instant he feared that through some mental lapse he had
forgotten to remove his “dude” clothing; and he looked down at his
trousers and felt of his shirt, to reassure himself. And he gravely
and intently looked at his prisoners, wondering if by any chance some
practical joker of the town had arranged the train robbery for his
special benefit. If that were the explanation it had been grim
hoax—for two men had been killed in the fight.

Looking up again, he saw that the grins on the faces of the people
around him had grown broader—and several loud guffaws of laughter
reached his ears. He looked at Marion Harlan, and saw a puzzled
expression on her face. Carrington, too, was looking at him, and
Parsons, whose smile was a smirk of perplexity.

Taylor reddened with embarrassment. A resentment that grew swiftly to
an angry intolerance, seized him. He straightened, squared his
shoulders, thrust out his chin, and shoving his prisoners before him,
took several long strides across the station platform.

This movement brought him close to Marion Harlan and her friends, and
his further progress was barred by a man who placed a hand against his
chest.

This man, too, was grinning. He seized Taylor’s shoulders with both
hands and looked into his face, the grin on his own broad and
expanding.

“Welcome home—you old son-of-a-gun!” said the man.

His grin was infectious and Taylor answered it, dropping his suitcase
and looking the other straight in the eyes.

“Norton,” he said, “what in hell is the cause of all this staring at
me? Can’t a man leave town for a few days and come back without
everybody looking at him as though he were a curiosity?”

Norton—a tall, slender, sinewy man with broad shoulders—laughed aloud
and deliberately winked at several interested citizens who had
followed Taylor’s progress across the platform, and who now stood near
him, grinning.

“You are a curiosity, man. You’re the first mayor of this man’s town!
Lordy,” he said to the surrounding faces, “he hasn’t tumbled to it
yet!”

The color left Taylor’s face; he stared hard at Norton; he gazed in
bewilderment at the faces near him.

“Mayor?” he said. “Why, good Lord, man, I wasn’t here yesterday!”

“But your friends were!” yelped the delighted Norton. He raised his
voice, so that it reached far into the crowd on the street:

“He’s sort of fussed up, boys; this honor being conferred on him so
sudden; but give him time and he’ll talk your heads off!” He leaned
over to Taylor and whispered in his ear.

“Grin, man, for God’s sake! Don’t stand there like a wooden man;
they’ll think you don’t appreciate it! It’s the first time I ever saw
you lose your nerve. Buck up, man; why, they simply swamped Danforth;
wiped him clean off the map!”

Norton was whispering more into Taylor’s ear, but Taylor could not
follow the sequence of it, nor get a coherent meaning out of it. He
even doubted that he heard Norton. He straightened, and looked around
at the crowd that now was pressing in on him, and for the first time
in his life he knew the mental panic and the physical sickness that
overtakes the man who for the first time faces an audience whose eyes
are focused on him.

For a bag of gold as big as the mountains that loomed over the distant
southern horizon he could not have said a word to the crowd. But he
did succeed in grinning at the faces around him, and at that the crowd
yelled.

And just before the crowd closed in on him and he began to shake hands
with his delighted supporters, he glanced at Marion Harlan. She was
looking at him with a certain sober interest, though he was sure that
back in her eyes was a sort of humorous malice—which had, however, a
softening quality of admiration and, perhaps, gratitude.

His gaze went from her to Carrington. The big man was watching him
with a veiled sneer which, when he met Taylor’s eyes, grew open and
unmistakable.

Taylor grinned broadly at him, for now it occurred to him that he
would be able to thwart Carrington’s designs of “getting hold of the
reins.” His grin at Carrington was a silent challenge, and so the
other interpreted it, for his sneer grew positively venomous.

The girl caught the exchange of glances between them, for Taylor heard
her say to Parsons, just before the noise of the crowd drowned her
voice:

“Now I _know_ he overheard you!”

Meanwhile, the two prisoners were standing near Taylor. Taylor had
almost forgotten them. He was reminded of their presence when he saw
Keats, the sheriff, standing near him. At just the instant Taylor
looked at Keats, the latter was critically watching the prisoners.

Keats and Taylor had had many differences of opinion, for the
sheriff’s official actions had not merited nor received Taylor’s
approval. Taylor’s attitude toward the man had always been that of
good-natured banter, despite the disgust he felt for the man. And now,
pursuing his customary attitude, Taylor called to him:

“Specimens, eh! Picked them up at Toban’s this morning. They yearned
to hold up the train. There were four, all together, but we had to put
two out of business. I came pretty near forgetting them. If I hadn’t
seen you just now, maybe I would have walked right off and left them
here. Take them to jail, Keats.”

Keats advanced. He met Taylor’s eyes and his lips curved with a sneer:

“Pullin’ off a little grand-stand play, eh! Well, it’s a mighty clever
idea. First you get elected mayor, an’ then you come in here, draggin’
along a couple of mean-lookin’ hombres, an’ say they’ve tried to hold
up the train at Toban’s. It sounds mighty fishy to me!”

Taylor laughed. He heard a chuckle behind him, and he turned, to see
Carrington grinning significantly at Keats. Taylor’s eyes chilled as
his gaze went from one man to the other, for the exchange of glances
told him that between the men there was a common interest, which would
link them together against him. And in the dead silence that followed
Keats’s words, Taylor drawled, grinning coldly:

“Meaning that I’m a liar, Keats?”

His voice was gentle, and his shoulders seemed to droop a little as
though in his mind was a desire to placate Keats. But there were men
in Dawes who had seen Taylor work his guns, and these held their
breath and began to shove backward. That slow, drooping of Taylor’s
shoulders was a danger signal, a silent warning that Taylor was ready
for action, swift and violent.

And faces around Taylor whitened as the man stood there facing Keats,
his shoulders drooping still lower, the smile on his face becoming one
of cold, grim mockery.

The discomfiture of Keats was apparent. Indecision and fear were in
the set of his head—bowed a little; and a dread reluctance was in his
shifting eyes and the pasty-white color of his face. It was plain that
Keats had overplayed; he had not intended to arouse the latent tiger
in Taylor; he had meant merely to embarrass him.

“Meaning that I’m a liar, Keats?”

Again Taylor’s voice was gentle, though this time it carried a subtle
taunt.

Desperately harried, Keats licked his hot lips and cast a sullen
glance around at the crowd. Then his gaze went to Taylor’s face, and
he drew a slow breath.

“I reckon I wasn’t meanin’ just that,” he said.

“Of course,” smiled Taylor; “that’s no way for a sheriff to act. Take
them in, Keats,” he added, waving a hand at the prisoners; “it’s been
so long since the sheriff of this county arrested a man that the
jail’s gettin’ tired, yawning for somebody to get into it.”

He turned his back on Keats and looked straight at Carrington:

“Have you got any ideas along the sheriff’s line?” he asked.

Carrington flushed and his lips went into a sullen pout. He did not
speak, merely shaking his head, negatively.

Keats’s glance at Taylor was malignant with hate; and Carrington’s
sullen, venomous look was not unnoticed by the crowd. Keats stepped
forward and seized the two prisoners, hustling them away, muttering
profanely.

And then Taylor was led away by Norton and a committee of citizens,
leaving Carrington, the girl and Parsons alone on the platform.

“Looks like we’re going to have trouble lining things up,” remarked
Parsons. “Danforth——”

“You shut up!” snapped Carrington. “Danforth’s an ass and so are you!”




CHAPTER VI—A MAN MAKES PLANS


Within an hour after his arrival in Dawes, Carrington was sitting in
the big front room of his suite in the Castle Hotel, inspecting the
town.

A bay window projected over the sidewalk, and from a big leather chair
placed almost in the center of the bay between two windows and facing
a third, at the front, Carrington had a remarkably good view of the
town.

Dawes was a thriving center of activity, with reasons for its
prosperity. Walking toward the Castle from the railroad station,
Carrington had caught a glimpse of the big dam blocking the
constricted neck of a wide basin west of the town—and farther westward
stretched a vast agricultural section, level as a floor, with a carpet
of green slumbering in the white sunlight, and dotted with young trees
that seemed almost ready to bear.

There were many small buildings on the big level, some tenthouses, and
straight through the level was a wide, sparkling stream of water, with
other and smaller streams intersecting it. These streams were
irrigation ditches, and the moisture in them was giving life to a vast
section of country that had previously been arid and dead.

But Carrington’s interest had not been so much for the land as for the
method of irrigation. To be sure, he had not stopped long to look, but
he had comprehended the system at a glance. There were locks and
flumes and water-gates, and plenty of water. But the irrigation
company had not completed its system. Carrington intended to complete
it.

Dawes was two years old, and it had the appearance of having been
hastily constructed. Its buildings were mostly of frame—even the
Castle, large and pretentious, and the town’s aristocrat of
hostelries, was of frame. Carrington smiled, for later, when he had
got himself established, he intended to introduce an innovation in
building material.

The courthouse was a frame structure. It was directly across the
street from the Castle, and Carrington could look into its windows and
see some men at work inside at desks. He had no interest in the post
office, for that was of the national government—and yet, perhaps,
after a while he might take some interest in that.

For Carrington’s vision, though selfish, was broad. A multitude of men
of the Carrington type have taken bold positions in the eternal battle
for progress, and all have contributed something toward the ultimate
ideal. And not all have been scoundrels.

Carrington’s vision, however, was blurred by the mote of greed. Dawes
was flourishing; he intended to modernize it, but in the process of
modernization he intended to be the chief recipient of the material
profits.

Carrington had washed, shaved himself, and changed his clothes; and as
he sat in the big leather chair in the bay, overlooking the street, he
looked smooth, sleek, and capable.

He had seemed massive in the Pullman, wearing a traveling suit of some
light material, and his corpulent waist-line had been somewhat
accentuated.

The blue serge suit he wore now made a startling change in his
appearance. It made his shoulders seem broader; it made the wide,
swelling arch of his chest more pronounced, and in inverse ratio it
contracted the corpulent waist-line—almost eliminating it.

Carrington looked to be what he was—a big, virile, magnetic giant of a
man in perfect health.

He had not been sitting in the leather chair for more than fifteen
minutes when there came a knock on a door behind him.

“Come!” he commanded.

A tall man entered, closed the door behind him and with hat in hand
stood looking at Carrington with a half-smile which might have been
slightly diffident, or impudent or defiant—it was puzzling.

Carrington had twisted in his chair to get a glimpse of his visitor;
he now grunted, resumed his former position and said, gruffly:

“Hello, Danforth!”

Danforth stepped over to the bay, and without invitation drew up a
chair and seated himself near Carrington.

Danforth was slender, big-framed, and sinewy. His shoulders were broad
and his waist slim. There was a stubborn thrust to his chin; his nose
was a trifle too long to perfectly fit his face; his mouth a little
too big, and the lips too thin. The nose had a slight droop that made
one think of selfishness and greed, and the thin lips, with a downward
swerve at the corners, suggested cruelty.

These defects, however, were not prominent, for they were offset by a
really distinguished head with a mass of short, curly hair that
ruffled attractively under the brim of the felt hat he wore.

The hat was in his right hand, now, but it had left its impress on his
hair, and as he sat down he ran his free hand through it. Danforth
knew where his attractions were.

He grinned shallowly at Carrington when the latter turned and looked
at him.

He cleared his throat. “I suppose you’ve heard about it?”

“I couldn’t help hearing.” Carrington scowled at the other. “What in
hell was wrong? We send you out here, give you more than a year’s time
and all the money you want—which has been plenty—and then you lose.
What in the devil was the matter?”

“Too much Taylor,” smirked the other.

“But what else?”

“Nothing else—just Taylor.”

Carrington exclaimed profanely.

“Why, the man didn’t even know he was a candidate! He was on the train
I came in on!”

“It was Neil Norton’s scheme,” explained Danforth. “I had _him_ beaten
to a frazzle. I suppose he knew it. Two days before election he
suddenly withdrew his name and substituted Taylor’s. You know what
happened. He licked me two to one. He was too popular for me—damn him!

“Norton owns a newspaper here—the only one in the county—the _Eagle_.”

“Why didn’t you buy him?”

Danforth grinned sarcastically: “I didn’t feel that reckless.”

“Honest, eh?”

Carrington rested his chin in the palm of his right hand and scowled
into the street. He was convinced that Danforth had done everything he
could to win the election, and he was bitterly chagrined over the
result. But that result was not the dominating thought in his mind. He
kept seeing Taylor as the latter had stood on the station platform,
stunned with surprise over the knowledge that he had been so signally
honored by the people of Dawes.

And Carrington had seen Marion Harlan’s glances at the man; he had
been aware of the admiring smile she had given Taylor; and bitter
passion gripped Carrington at the recollection of the smile.

More—he had seen Taylor’s face when the girl had smiled. The smile had
thrilled Taylor—it had held promise for him, and Carrington knew it.

Carrington continued to stare out into the street. Danforth watched
him furtively, in silence.

At last, not opening his lips, Carrington spoke:

“Tell me about this man, Taylor.”

“Taylor owns the Arrow ranch, in the basin south of here. His ranch
covers about twenty thousand acres. He has a clear title.

“According to report, he employs about thirty men. They are holy
terrors—that is, they are what is called ‘hard cases,’ though they are
not outlaws by any means. Just a devil-may-care bunch that raises hell
when it strikes town. They swear by Taylor.”

So far as Carrington could see, everybody in Dawes swore by Taylor.
Carrington grimaced.

“That isn’t what I want to know,” he flared. “How long has he been
here; what kind of a fellow is he?”

“Taylor owned the Arrow before Dawes was founded. When the railroad
came through it brought with it some land-sharks that tried to frame
up on the ranch-owners in the vicinity. It was a slick scheme, they
tell me. They had clouded every title, and figured to grab the whole
county, it seems.

“Taylor went after them. People I’ve talked with here say it was a
dandy shindy while it lasted. The land-grabbers brought the courts in,
and a crooked judge. Taylor fought them, crooked judge and all, to a
bite-the-dust finish. Toward the end it was a free-for-all—and the
land-grabbers were chased out of the county.

“Naturally, the folks around here think a lot of Taylor for the part
he played in the deal. Besides that, he’s a man that makes friends
quickly—and holds them.”

“Has Taylor any interests besides his ranch?”

“A share in the water company, I believe. He owns some land in town;
and he is usually on all the public committees here.”

“About thirty, isn’t he?”

“Twenty-eight.”

Carrington looked at the other with a sidelong, sneering grin:

“Have any ladies come into his young life?”

Danforth snickered. “You’ve got me—I hadn’t inquired. He doesn’t seem
to be much of a ladies’ man, though, I take it. Doesn’t seem to have
time to monkey with them.”

“H-m!” Carrington’s lips went into a pout as he stared straight ahead
of him.

Danforth at last broke a long silence with:

“Well, we got licked, all right. What’s going to happen now? Are you
going to quit?”

“Quit?” Carrington snapped the word at the other, his eyes flaming
with rage. Then he laughed, mirthlessly, resuming: “This defeat was
unexpected; I wasn’t set for it. But it won’t alter things—very much.
I’ll have to shake a leg, that’s all. What time does the next train
leave here for the capital?”

“At two o’clock this afternoon.” Danforth’s eyes widened as he looked
at Carrington. The curiosity in his glance caused Carrington to laugh
shortly.

“You don’t mean that the governor is in this thing?” said Danforth.

“Why not?” demanded Carrington. “Bah! Do you think I came in with my
eyes closed!”

There was a new light in Danforth’s eyes—the flame of renewed hope.

“Then we’ve still got a chance,” he declared.

Carrington laughed. “A too-popular mayor is not a good thing for a
town,” he said significantly.




CHAPTER VII—THE SHADOW OF THE PAST


Marion Harlan and her uncle, Elam Parsons, did not accompany
Carrington to the Castle Hotel. By telegraph, through Danforth,
Carrington had bought a house near Dawes, and shortly after Quinton
Taylor left the station platform accompanied by his friends and
admirers, Marion and her uncle were in a buckboard riding toward the
place that, henceforth, was to be their home.

For that question had been settled before the party left Westwood.
Parsons had declared his future activities were to be centered in
Dawes, that he had no further interests to keep him in Westwood, and
that he intended to make his home in Dawes.

Certainly Marion had few interests in the town that had been the scene
of the domestic tragedy that had left her parentless. She was glad to
get away. For though she had not been to blame for what had happened,
she was painfully conscious of the stares that followed her
everywhere, and aware of the morbid curiosity with which her neighbors
regarded her. Also—through the medium of certain of her “friends,” she
had become cognizant of speculative whisperings, such as: “To think of
being brought up like that? Do you think she will be like her mother?”
Or—“What’s bred in the bone, _et cetera_.”

Perhaps these good people did not mean to be unkind; certainly the
crimson stains that colored the girl’s cheeks when she passed them
should have won their charity and their silence.

There was nothing in Westwood for her; and so she was glad to get
away. And the trip westward toward Dawes opened a new vista of life to
her. She was leaving the old and the tragic and adventuring into the
new and promising, where she could face life without the onus of a
shame that had not been hers.

Before she was half way to Dawes she had forgotten Westwood and its
wagging tongues. She alone, of all the passengers in the Pullman, had
not been aware of the heat and the discomfort. She had loved every
foot of the great prairie land that, green and beautiful, had flashed
past the car window; she had gazed with eager, interested eyes into
the far reaches of the desert through which she had passed, filling
her soul with the mystic beauty of this new world, reveling in its
vastness and in the atmosphere of calm that seemed to engulf it.

Dawes had not disappointed her; on the contrary, she loved it at first
sight. For though Dawes was new and crude, it looked rugged and
honest—and rather too busy to hesitate for the purpose of indulging in
gossip—idle or otherwise. Dawes, she was certain, was occupying itself
with progress—a thing that, long since, Westwood had forgotten.

Five minutes after she had entered the buckboard, the spirit of this
new world had seized upon the girl and she was athrob and atingle with
the joy of it. It filled her veins; it made her cheeks flame and her
eyes dance. And the strange aroma—the pungent breath of the sage,
borne to her on the slight breeze—she drew into her lungs with great
long breaths that seemed to intoxicate her.

“Oh,” she exclaimed delightedly, “isn’t it great! Oh, I love it!”

Elam Parsons grinned at her—the habitual smirk with which he
recognized all emotion not his own.

“It _does_ look like a good field for business,” he conceded.

The girl looked at him quickly, divined the sordidness of his
thoughts, and puckered her brows in a frown. And thereafter she
enjoyed the esthetic beauties of her world without seeking
confirmation from her uncle.

Her delight grew as the journey to the new home progressed. She saw
the fertile farming country stretching far in the big section of
country beyond the water-filled basin; her eyes glowed as the
irrigation ditches, with their locks and gates, came under her
observation; and she sat silent, awed by the mightiness of it all—the
tall, majestic mountains looming somberly many miles distant behind a
glowing mist—like a rose veil or a gauze curtain lowered to partly
conceal the mystic beauty of them.

Intervening were hills and flats and draws and valleys, and miles and
miles of level grass land, green and peaceful in the shimmering
sunlight that came from somewhere near the center of the big,
pale-blue inverted bowl of sky; she caught the silvery glitter of a
river that wound its way through the country like a monstrous serpent;
she saw dark blotches, miles long, which she knew were forests, for
she could see the spires of trees thrusting upward. But from where she
rode the trees seemed to be no larger than bushes.

Looking backward, she could see Dawes. Already the buckboard had
traveled two or three miles, but the town seemed near, and she had
quite a shock when she looked back at it and saw the buildings, mere
huddled shanties, spoiling the beauty of her picture.

A mile or so farther—four miles altogether, Parsons told her—and they
came in sight of a house. She had difficulty restraining her delight
when they climbed out of the buckboard and Parsons told her the place
was to be their permanent home. For it was such a house as she had
longed to live in all the days of her life.

The first impression it gave her was that of spaciousness. For though
only one story in height, the house contained many rooms. Those,
however, she saw later.

The exterior was what intrigued her interest at first glance. So far
as she knew, it was the only brick building in the country. She had
seen none such in Dawes.

There was a big porch across the front; the windows were large; there
were vines and plants thriving in the shade from some big cottonwood
trees near by—in fact, the house seemed to have been built in a grove
of the giant trees; there were several outhouses, one of which had
chickens in an enclosure near it; there was a garden, well-kept; and
the girl saw that back of the house ran a little stream which flowed
sharply downward, later to tumble into the big basin far below the
irrigation dam.

While Parsons was superintending the unloading of the buckboard,
Marion explored the house. It was completely furnished, and her eyes
glowed with pleasure as she inspected it. And when Parsons and the
driver were carrying the baggage in she was outside the house,
standing at the edge of a butte whose precipitous walls descended
sharply to the floor of the irrigation basin, two or three hundred
feet below. She could no longer see the cultivated level, with its
irrigation ditches, but she could see the big dam, a mile or so up the
valley toward Dawes, with the water creeping over it, and the big
valley itself, slumbering in the pure, white light of the morning.

She went inside, slightly awed, and Parsons, noting her excitement,
smirked at her. She left him and went to her room. Emerging later she
discovered that Parsons was not in the house. She saw him, however, at
a distance, looking out into the valley.

And then, in the kitchen, Marion came upon the housekeeper, a negro
woman of uncertain age. Parsons had not told her there was to be a
housekeeper.

The negro woman grinned broadly at her astonishment.

“Lawsey, ma’am; you jes’ got to have a housekeeper, I reckon! How you
ever git along without a housekeeper? You’re too fine an’ dainty to
keep house you’self!”

The woman’s name, the latter told her, was Martha, and there was
honest delight—and, it seemed to Marion, downright relief in her eyes
when she looked at the new mistress.

“You ain’t got no ‘past,’ that’s certain, honey,” she declared, with a
delighted smile. “The woman that lived here befo’ had a past, honey. A
man named Huggins lived in this house, an’ she said she’s his wife.
Wife! Lawsey! No man has a wife like that! She had a past, that woman,
an’ mebbe a present, too—he, he, he!

“He was the man what put the railroad through here, honey. I done hear
the woman say—her name was Blanche, honey—that Huggins was one of them
ultra rich. But whatever it was that ailed him, honey, didn’t help his
looks none. Pig-eye, I used to call him, when I’se mad at him—which
was mostly all the time—he, he, he!”

The girl’s face whitened. Was she never to escape the atmosphere she
loathed? She shuddered and Martha patted her sympathetically on the
shoulder.

“There, there, honey; you ain’t ’sponsible for other folks’ affairs.
Jes’ you hold you’ head up an’ go about you’ business. Nobody say
anything to you because you’ livin’ here.”

But Martha’s words neither comforted nor consoled the girl. She went
again to her room and sat for a long time, looking out of a window.
For now all the cheer had gone out of the house; the rooms looked dull
and dreary—and empty, as of something gone out of them.




CHAPTER VIII—CONCERNING “SQUINT”


Marion Harlan had responded eagerly to Carrington’s fabrication
regarding the rumor of Lawrence Harlan’s presence in Dawes.
Carrington’s reference to her father’s sojourn in the town had been
vague—he merely told her that a rumor had reached him—a man’s word,
without details—and she had accepted it at its face value. She was
impatient to run the rumor down, to personally satisfy herself, and
she believed Carrington.

But she spent a fruitless week interrogating people in Dawes. She had
gone to the courthouse, there to pass long hours searching the
records—and had found nothing. Then, systematically, she had gone from
store to store—making small purchases and quizzing everyone she came
in contact with. None had known a man named Harlan; it seemed that not
one person in Dawes had ever heard of him.

Parsons had returned to town in the buckboard shortly after noon on
the day of their arrival at the new house, and she had not seen him
again until the following morning. Then he had told her that
Carrington had gone away—he did not know where. Carrington would not
return for a week or two, he inferred.

Parsons had bought some horses. A little bay, short-coupled but wiry,
belonged to her, Parsons said—it was a present from Carrington.

She hesitated to accept the horse; but the little animal won her
regard by his affectionate mannerisms, and at the end of a day of
doubt and indecision she accepted him.

She had ridden horses in Westwood—bareback when no one had been
looking, and with a side-saddle at other times—but she discovered no
side-saddle in Dawes. However, she did encounter no difficulty in
unearthing a riding-habit with a divided skirt, and though she got
into that with a pulse of trepidation and embarrassment, she soon
discovered it to be most comfortable and convenient.

And Dawes did not stare at her because she rode “straddle.” At first
she was fearful, and watched Dawes’s citizens furtively; but when she
saw that she attracted no attention other than would be attracted by
any good-looking young woman in more conventional attire, she felt
more at ease. But she could not help thinking about the sanctimonious
inhabitants of Westwood. Would they not have declared their kindly
predictions vindicated had they been permitted to see her? She could
almost hear the chorus of “I-told-you-so’s”—they rang in her ears over
a distance of many hundreds of miles!

But the spirit of the young, unfettered country had got into her soul,
and she went her way unmindful of Westwood’s opinions.

For three days she continued her search for tidings of her father,
eager and hopeful; and then for the remainder of the week she did her
searching mechanically, doggedly, with a presentiment of failure to
harass her.

And then one morning, when she was standing beside her horse near the
stable door, ready to mount and fully determined to pursue the
Carrington rumor to the end, the word she sought was brought to her.

She saw a horseman coming toward her from the direction of Dawes. He
was not Parsons—for the rider was short and broad; and besides,
Parsons was spending most of his time in Dawes.

The girl watched the rider, assured, as he came nearer, that he was a
stranger; and when he turned his horse toward her, and she saw he
_was_ a stranger, she leaned close and whispered to her own animal:

“Oh, Billy; what if it _should_ be!”

An instant later she was watching the stranger dismount within a few
feet of where she was standing.

He was short and stocky, and undeniably Irish. He was far past middle
age, as his gray hair and seamed wrinkles of his face indicated; but
there was the light of a youthful spirit and good-nature in his eyes
that squinted at the girl with a quizzical interest.

With the bridle-rein in the crook of his elbow and his hat in his
hand, he bowed elaborately to the girl.

“Would ye be Miss Harlan, ma’am?” he asked.

“Yes,” she breathed, her face alight with eagerness, for now since the
man had spoken her name the presentiment of news grew stronger.

The man’s face flashed into a wide, delighted grin and he reached out
a hand, into which she placed one of hers, hardly knowing that she did
it.

“Me name’s Ben Mullarky, ma’am. I’ve got a little shack down on the
Rabbit-Ear—which is a crick, for all the name some locoed ignoramus
give it. You c’ud see the shack from here, ma’am—if ye’d look sharp.”

He pointed out a spot to her—a wooded section far out in the big level
country southward, beside the river—and she saw the roof of a building
near the edge of the timber.

“That’s me shack,” offered Mullarky. “Me ol’ woman an’ meself owns
her—an’ a quarter-section—all proved. We call it seven miles from the
shack to Dawes. That’d make it about three from here.”

“Yes, yes,” said the girl eagerly.

He grinned at her. “Comin’ in to town this mornin’ for some
knickknacks for me ol’ woman, I hear from Coleman—who keeps a
store—that there’s a fine-lookin’ girl named Harlan searchin’ the
country for news of her father, Larry Harlan. I knowed him, ma’am.”

“You did? Oh, how wonderful!” She stood erect, breathing fast, her
eyes glowing with mingled joy and impatience. She had not caught the
significance of Mullarky’s picturesque past tense, “knowed;” but when
he repeated it, with just a slight emphasis:

“I _knowed_ him, ma’am,” she drew a quick, full breath and her face
whitened.

“You knew him,” she said slowly. “Does that mean——”

Mullarky scratched his head and looked downward, not meeting her eyes.

“Squint Taylor would tell you the story, ma’am,” he said. “You see,
ma’am, he worked for Squint, an’ Squint was with him when it
happened.”

“He’s dead, then?” She stood rigid, tense, searching Mullarky’s face
with wide, dreading eyes, and when she saw his gaze shift under hers
she drew a deep sigh and leaned against Billy, covering her face with
her hands.

Mullarky did not attempt to disturb her; he stood, looking glumly at
her, reproaching himself for his awkwardness in breaking the news to
her.

It was some minutes before she faced him again, and then she was pale
and composed, except for the haunting sadness that had come into her
eyes.

“Thank you,” she said. “Can you tell me where I can find Mr.
Taylor—‘Squint,’ you called him? Is that the Taylor who was elected
mayor—last week?”

“The same, ma’am.” He turned and pointed southward, into the big,
level country that she admired so much.

“Do you see that big timber grove ’way off there—where the crick
doubles to the north—with that big green patch beyond?” She nodded.
“That’s Taylor’s ranch—the Arrow. You’ll find him there. He’s a mighty
fine man, ma’am. Larry Harlan would tell you that if he was here.
Taylor was the best friend that Larry Harlan ever had—out here.” He
looked at her pityingly. “I’m sorry, ma’am, to be the bearer of ill
news; but when I heard you was in town, lookin’ for your father, I
couldn’t help comin’ to see you.”

She asked some questions about her father—which Mullarky answered;
though he could tell her nothing that would acquaint her with the
details of her father’s life between the time he had left Westwood and
the day of his appearance in this section of the world.

“Mebbe Taylor will know, ma’am,” he repeated again and again. And
then, when she thanked him once more and mounted her horse, he said:

“You’ll be goin’ to see Squint right away, ma’am, I suppose. You can
ease your horse right down the slope, here, an’ strike the level.
You’ll find a trail right down there. You’ll follow it along the
crick, an’ it’ll take you into the Arrow ranchhouse. It’ll take you
past me own shack, too; an’ if you’ll stop in an’ tell the ol’ woman
who you are, she’ll be tickled to give you a snack an’ a cup of tea.
She liked Larry herself.”

The girl watched Mullarky ride away. He turned in the saddle, at
intervals, to grin at her.

Then, when Mullarky had gone she leaned against Billy and stood for a
long time, her shoulders quivering.

At last, though, she mounted the little animal and sent him down the
slope.

She found the trail about which Mullarky had spoken, and rode it
steadily; though she saw little of the wild, virgin country through
which she passed, because her brimming eyes blurred it all.

She came at last to Mullarky’s shack, and a stout, motherly woman,
with an ample bosom and a kindly face, welcomed her.

“So you’re Larry Harlan’s daughter,” said Mrs. Mullarky, when her
insistence had brought the girl inside the cabin; “you poor darlin’.
An’ Ben told you—the blunderin’ idiot. He’ll have a piece of my mind
when he comes back! An’ you’re stoppin’ at the old Huggins house, eh?”
She looked sharply at the girl, and the latter’s face reddened.
Whereat Mrs. Mullarky patted her shoulder and murmured:

“It ain’t your fault that there’s indacint women in the world; an’ no
taint of them will ever reach you. But the fools in this world is
always waggin’ their tongues, associatin’ what’s happened with what
they think will happen. An’ mebbe they’ll wonder about you. It’s your
uncle that’s there with you, you say? Well, then, don’t you worry. You
run right along to see Squint Taylor, now, an’ find out what he knows
about your father. Taylor’s a mighty fine man, darlin’.”

And so Marion went on her way again, grateful for Mrs. Mullarky’s
kindness, but depressed over the knowledge that the atmosphere of
suspicion, which had enveloped her in Westwood, had followed her into
this new country which, she had hoped, would have been more friendly.

She came in sight of the Arrow ranchhouse presently, and gazed at it
admiringly. It was a big building, of adobe brick, with a wide
porch—or gallery—entirely surrounding it. It was in the center of a
big space, with timber flanking it on three sides, and at the north
was a green stretch of level that reached to the sloping banks of a
river.

There were several smaller buildings; a big, fenced enclosure—the
corrals, she supposed; a pasture, and a garden. Everything was in
perfect order, and had it not been for the aroma of the sage that
assailed her nostrils, the awe-inspiring bigness of it all, the sight
of thousands of cattle—which she could see through the trees beyond
the clearing, she could have likened the place to a big eastern
farmhouse of the better class, isolated and prosperous.

She dismounted from her horse at a corner of the house, near a door
that opened upon the wide porch, and stood, pale and hesitant, looking
at the door, which was closed.

And as she stared at the door, it swung inward and Quinton Taylor
appeared in the opening.




CHAPTER IX—A MAN LIES


Taylor was arrayed as Marion had mentally pictured him that day when,
in the Pullman, she had associated him with ranches and ranges.
Evidently he was ready to ride, for leather chaps incased his legs.
The chaps were plain, not even adorned with the spangles of the
drawings she had seen; and they were well-worn and shiny in spots. A
pair of big, Mexican spurs were on the heels of his boots; the
inevitable cartridge-belt about his middle, sagging with the heavy
pistol; a quirt dangled from his left hand. Assuredly he belonged in
this environment—he even seemed to dominate it.

She had wondered how he would greet her; but his greeting was not at
all what she had feared it would be. For he did not presume upon their
meeting on the train; he gave no sign that he had ever seen her
before; there was not even a glint in his eyes to tell her that he
remembered the scornful look she had given him when she discovered him
listening to the conversation carried on between her uncle and
Carrington. His manner indicated that if _she_ did not care to mention
the matter _he_ would not. His face was grave as he stepped across the
porch and stood before her. And he said merely:

“Are you looking for someone, ma’am?”

“I came to see you, Mr. Taylor,” she said. (And then he knew that the
negro porter on the train had not lied when he said the girl had paid
him for certain information.)

But Taylor’s face was still grave, for he thought he knew what she had
come for. He had overheard a great deal of the conversation between
Parsons and Carrington in the dining-car, and he remembered such
phrases as: “That fairy tale about her father having been seen in this
locality; To get her out here, where there isn’t a hell of a lot of
law, and a man’s will is the only thing that governs him;” and, “Then
you lied about Lawrence Harlan having been seen in this country.”
Also, he remembered distinctly another phrase, uttered by Carrington:
“That you framed up on her mother, to get her to leave Larry.”

All of that conversation was vivid in Taylor’s mind, and mingled with
the recollection of it now was a grim pity for the girl, for the
hypocritical character of her supposed friends.

To be sure, the girl did not know that Parsons had lied about her
father having been seen in the vicinity of Dawes; but that did not
alter the fact that Larry Harlan had really been here; and Taylor
surmised that she had made inquiries, thus discovering that there was
truth in Carrington’s statement.

He got a chair for her and seated himself on the porch railing.

“You came to see me?” he said, encouragingly.

“I am Marion Harlan, the daughter of Lawrence Harlan,” began the girl.
And then she paused to note the effect of her words on Taylor.

So far as she could see, there was no sign of emotion on Taylor’s
face. He nodded, looking steadily at her.

“And you are seeking news of your father,” he said. “Who told you to
come to me?”

“A man named Ben Mullarky. He said my father had worked for you—that
you had been his best friend.”

She saw his lips come together in straight lines.

“Poor Larry. You knew he died, Miss Harlan?”

“Mullarky told me.” The girl’s eyes moistened. “And I should like to
know something about him—how he lived after—after he left home;
whether he was happy—all about him. You see, Mr. Taylor, I loved him!”

“And Larry Harlan loved his daughter,” said Taylor softly.

He began to tell her of her father; how several years before Harlan
had come to him, seeking employment; how Larry and himself had formed
a friendship; how they had gone together in search of the gold that
Larry claimed to have discovered in the Sangre de Christo Mountains;
of the injury Larry had suffered, and how the man had died while he
himself had been taking him toward civilization and assistance.

During the recital, however, one thought dominated him, reddening his
face with visible evidence of the sense of guilt that had seized him.
He must deliberately lie to the daughter of the man who had been his
friend.

In his pocket at this instant was Larry’s note to him, in which the
man had expressed his fear of fortune-hunters. Taylor remembered the
exact words:

Marion will have considerable money and I don’t want no sneak to get
hold of it—like the sneak that got hold of the money my wife had, that
I saved. There’s a lot of them around. If Marion is going to fall in
with one of that kind, I’d rather she wouldn’t get what I leave; the
man would get it away from her. Use your own judgment and I’ll be
satisfied.

And Taylor’s judgment was that Carrington and Parsons were
fortune-hunters; that if they discovered the girl to be entitled to a
share of the money that had been received from the sale of the mine,
they would endeavor to convert it to their own use. And Taylor was
determined they should not have it.

The conversation he had overheard in the dining-car had convinced him
of their utter hypocrisy and selfishness; it had aroused in him a
feeling of savage resentment and disgust that would not permit him to
transfer a cent of the money to the girl as long as they held the
slightest influence over her.

Again he mentally quoted from Larry’s note to him:

The others were too selfish and sneaking. (That meant Parsons—and one
other.) Squint, I want you to take care of her.... Sell—the mine—take
my share and for it give Marion a half-interest in your ranch, the
Arrow. If there is any left, put it in land in Dawes—that town is
going to boom. Guard it for her, and marry her, Squint; she’ll make
you a good wife.

Since the first meeting with the girl on the train Taylor had felt an
entire sympathy with Larry Harlan in his expressed desire to have
Taylor marry the girl; in fact, she was the first girl that Taylor had
ever wanted to marry, and the passion in his heart for her had already
passed the wistful stage—he was determined to have her. But that
passion did not lessen his sense of obligation to Larry Harlan. Nor
would it—if he could not have the girl himself—prevent him doing what
he could to keep her from forming any sort of an alliance with the
sort of man Larry had wished to save her from, as expressed in this
passage of the note: “If Marion is going to fall in with one of that
kind, I’d rather she wouldn’t get what I leave.”

Therefore, since Taylor distrusted Carrington and Parsons, he had
decided he would not tell the girl of the money her father had
left—the share of the proceeds of the mine. He would hold it for her,
as a sacred trust, until the time came—if it ever came—when she would
have discovered their faithlessness—or until she needed the money.
More, he was determined to expose the men.

He knew, thanks to his eavesdropping on the train, at least something
regarding the motives that had brought them to Dawes; Carrington’s
words, “When we get hold of the reins,” had convinced him that they
and the interests behind them were to endeavor to rob the people of
Dawes. That was indicated by their attempt to have David Danforth
elected mayor of the town.

Taylor had already decided that he could not permit Marion to see the
note her father had left, for he did not want her to feel that she was
under any obligation—parental or otherwise—to marry him. If he won her
at all, he wanted to win her on his merits.

As a matter of fact, since he had decided to lie about the money, he
was determined to say nothing about the note at all. He would keep
silent, making whatever explanations that seemed to be necessary,
trusting to time and the logical sequence of events for the desired
outcome.

He was forced to begin to lie at once. When he had finished the story
of Larry’s untimely death, the girl looked straight at him.

“Then you were with him when he died. Did—did he mention anyone—my
mother—or me?”

“He said: ‘Squint, there is a daughter’”—Taylor was quoting from the
note—“‘she was fifteen when I saw her last. She looked just like
me—thank God for that!’” Taylor blushed when he saw the girl’s face
redden, for he knew what her thoughts were. He should not have quoted
that sentence. He resolved to be more careful; and went on: “He told
me I was to take care of you, to offer you a home at the Arrow—after I
found you. I was to go to Westwood, Illinois, to find you. I suppose
he wanted me to bring you here.”

The speech was entirely unworthy, and Taylor knew it, and he eased his
conscience by adding: “He thought, I suppose, that you would like to
be where he had been. I’ve not touched the room he had. All his
effects are there—everything he owned, just as he left them. I had
given him a room in the house because I liked him (that was the
truth), and I wanted him where I could talk to him.”

“I cannot thank you enough for that!” she said earnestly. And then
Taylor was forced to lie again, for she immediately asked: “And the
mine? It proved to be worthless, I suppose. For,” she added, “that
would be just father’s luck.”

“The mine wasn’t what we thought it would be,” said Taylor. He was
looking at his boots when he spoke, and he wondered if his face was as
red as it felt.

“I am not surprised.” There was no disappointment in her voice, and
therefore Taylor knew she was not avaricious—though he knew he had not
expected her to be. “Then he left nothing but his personal
belongings?” she added.

Taylor nodded.

The girl sat for a long time, looking out over the river into the vast
level that stretched away from it.

“He has ridden there, I suppose,” she said wistfully. “He was here for
nearly three years, you said. Then he must have been everywhere around
here.” And she got up, gazing about her, as though she would firmly
fix the locality for future reminiscent dreams. Then suddenly she
said:

“I should like to see his room—may I?”

“You sure can!”

She followed him into the house, and he stood in the open doorway,
watching her as she went from place to place, looking at Larry’s
effects.

Taylor did not remain long at the door; he went out upon the porch
again, leaving her in the room, and after a long time she joined him,
her eyes moist, but a smile on her lips.

“You’ll leave his things there—a little longer, won’t you? I should
like to have them, and I shall come for them, some day.”

“Sure,” he said. “But, look here, Miss Harlan. Why should you take his
things? Leave them here—and come yourself. That room is yours, if you
say the word. And a half-interest in the ranch. I was going to offer
your father an interest in it—if he had lived——”

He realized his mistake when he saw her eyes widen incredulously. And
there was a change in her voice—it was full of doubt, of distrust
almost.

“What had father done to deserve an interest in your ranch?” she
demanded.

“Why,” he answered hesitatingly, “it’s rather hard to say. But he
helped me much; he suggested improvements that made the place more
valuable; he was a good man, and he took a great deal of the work off
my mind—and I liked him,” he finished lamely.

“And do you think I could do his share of the work?” she interrogated,
looking at him with an odd smile, the meaning of which Taylor could
not fathom.

“I couldn’t expect that, of course,” he said boldly; “but I owe Harlan
something for what he did for me, and I thought——”

“You thought you would be charitable to the daughter,” she finished
for him, with a smile in which there was gratitude and understanding.

“I am sure I can’t thank you enough for feeling that way toward my
father and myself. But I can’t accept, you know.”

Taylor did know, of course. A desperate desire to make amends for his
lying, to force upon her gratuitously what he had illegally robbed her
of, had been the motive underlying his offer. And he would have been
disappointed had she accepted, for that would have revealed a lack of
spirit which he had hoped she possessed.

And yet Taylor felt decidedly uncomfortable over the refusal. He
wanted her to have what belonged to her, for he divined from the note
her father had left that she would have need of it.

He discovered by judicious questioning, by inference, and through
crafty suggestion, that she was entirely dependent upon her uncle;
that her uncle had bought the Huggins house, and that Carrington had
made her a present of the horse she rode.

This last bit of information, volunteered by Marion, provoked Taylor
to a rage that made him grit his teeth.

A little while longer they talked, and when the girl mounted her horse
to ride away, they had entered into an agreement under which on
Tuesdays and Fridays—the first Tuesday falling on the following
day—Taylor was to be absent from the ranch. And during his absence the
girl was to come and stay at the ranchhouse, there to occupy her
father’s room and, if she desired, to enter the other rooms at will.

As a concession to propriety, she was to bring Martha, the Huggins
housekeeper, with her.

But Taylor, after the girl had left, stood for an hour on the porch,
watching the dust-cloud that followed the girl’s progress through the
big basin, his face red, his soul filled with loathing for the part
his judgment was forcing him to play. But arrayed against the loathing
was a complacent satisfaction aroused over the thought that Carrington
would never get the money that Larry Harlan had left to the girl.




CHAPTER X—THE FRAME-UP


James J. Carrington was unscrupulous, but even his most devout enemy
could not have said that he lacked vision and thoroughness. And, while
he had been listening to Danforth in his apartment in the Castle
Hotel, he had discovered that Neil Norton had made a technical blunder
in electing Quinton Taylor mayor of Dawes. Perhaps that was why
Carrington had not seemed to be very greatly disturbed over the
knowledge that Danforth had been defeated; certainly it was why
Carrington had taken the first train to the capital.

Carrington was tingling with elation when he reached the capital; but
on making inquiries he found that the governor had left the city the
day before, and that he was not expected to return for several days.

Carrington passed the interval renewing some acquaintances, and fuming
with impatience in the barroom, the billiard-room, and the lobby of
his hotel.

But he was the first visitor admitted to the governor’s office when
the latter returned.

The governor was a big man, flaccid and portly, and he received
Carrington with a big Stetson set rakishly on the back of his head and
an enormous black cigar in his mouth. That he was not a statesman but
a professional politician was quite as apparent from his appearance as
was his huge, welcoming smile, a certain indication that he was on
terms of intimate friendship with Carrington. Formerly an eastern
political worker, and a power in the councils of his party, his
appointment as governor of the Territory had come, not because of his
ability to fill the position, but as a reward for the delivery of
certain votes which had helped to make his party successful at the
polls. He would be the last carpetbag governor of the Territory, for
the Territory had at last been admitted to the Union; the new
Legislature was even then in session; charters were already being
issued to municipalities that desired self-government—and the
governor, soon to quit his position as temporary chief, had no real
interest in the new régime, and no desire to aid in eliminating the
inevitable confusion.

“Take a seat, Jim,” he invited, “and have a cigar. My secretary tells
me you’ve been buzzing around here like a bee lost from the hive, for
the past week.” He grinned hugely at Carrington, poking the latter
playfully in the ribs as Carrington essayed to light the cigar that
had been given him.

“Worried about that man Taylor, in Dawes, eh?” he went on, as
Carrington smoked. “Well, it _was_ too bad that Danforth didn’t trim
him, wasn’t it? But”—and his eyes narrowed—“I’m still governor, and
Taylor isn’t mayor yet—and never will be!”

Carrington smiled. “You saw the mistake, too, eh?”

“Saw it!” boomed the governor. “I’ve been watching that town as a cat
watches a mouse. Itching for the clean-up, Jim,” he whispered. “Why,
I’ve got the papers all made out—ousting him and appointing Danforth
mayor. Right here they are.” He reached into a pigeon-hole and drew
out some legal papers. “You can serve them yourself. Just hand them to
Judge Littlefield—he’ll do the rest. It’s likely—if Taylor starts a
fuss, that you’ll have to help Littlefield handle the case—arranging
for deputies, and such. If you need any more help, just wire me. I
don’t pack my carpetbag for a year yet, and we can do a lot of work in
that time.”

Carrington and the governor talked for an hour or more, and when
Carrington left for the office he was grinning with pleasurable
anticipation. For a municipality, already sovereign according to the
laws of the people, had been delivered into his hands.

Just at dusk on Tuesday evening Carrington alighted from the train at
Dawes. He went to his rooms in the Castle, removed the stains of
travel, descended the stairs to the dining-room, and ate heartily;
then, stopping at the cigar-counter to light a cigar, he inquired of
the clerk where he could find Judge Littlefield.

“He’s got a house right next to the courthouse—on your left, from
here,” the clerk told him.

A few minutes later Carrington was seated opposite Judge Littlefield,
with a table between them, in the front room of the judge’s residence.

“My name is Carrington—James J.,” was Carrington’s introduction of
himself. “I have just left the governor, and he gave me these, to hand
over to you.” He shoved over the papers the governor had given him,
smiling slightly at the other.

The judge answered the smile with a beaming smirk.

“I’ve heard of you,” he said; “the governor has often spoken of you.”
He glanced hastily over the papers, and his smirk widened. “The good
people of Dawes will be rather shocked over this decision, I suppose.
But laymen _will_ confuse things—won’t they? Now, if Norton and his
friends had come to _me_ before they decided to enter Taylor’s name,
this thing would not have happened.”

“I’m glad it _did_ happen,” laughed Carrington. “The chances are that
even Norton would have beaten Danforth, and then the governor could
not have interfered.”

Carrington’s gaze became grim as he looked at the judge. “You are
prepared to go the limit in this case, I suppose?” he interrogated.
“There is a chance that Taylor and his friends will attempt to make
trouble. But any trouble is to be handled firmly, you understand.
There is to be no monkey business. If they accept the law’s mandates,
as all law-abiding citizens should accept it, all well and good. And
if they don’t—and they want trouble, we’ll give them that!
Understand?”

“Perfectly,” smiled the judge. “The law is not to be assailed.”

Smilingly he bowed Carrington out.

Carrington took a turn down the street, walking until his cigar burned
itself out; then he entered the hotel and sat for a time in the lobby.
Then he went to bed, satisfied that he had done a good week’s work,
and conscious that he had launched a heavy blow at the man for whom he
had conceived a great and bitter hatred.




CHAPTER XI—“NO FUN FOOLING HER”


Accompanied by Martha, who rode one of the horses Parsons had bought,
Marion Harlan began her trip to the Arrow shortly after dawn.

The girl had said nothing to Parsons regarding her meeting with Taylor
the previous day, nor of her intention to pass the day at the Arrow.
For she feared that Parsons might make some objection—and she wanted
to go.

That she feared her uncle’s deterrent influence argued that she was
aware that she was doing wrong in going to the Arrow—even with Martha
as chaperon; but that was, perhaps, the very reason the thought of
going engaged her interest.

She wondered many times, as she rode, with the negro woman trailing
her, if there was not inherent in her some of those undesirable traits
concerning which the good people of Westwood had entertained fears.

The thought crimsoned her cheeks and brightened her eyes; but she knew
she had no vicious thoughts—that she was going to the Arrow, not
because she wanted to see Taylor again, but because she wanted to sit
in the room that had been occupied by her father. She wanted to look
again at his belongings, to feel his former presence—as she had felt
it while gazing out over the vast level beyond the river, where he had
ridden many times.

She looked in on Mrs. Mullarky as they passed the Mullarky cabin, and
when the good woman learned of her proposed visit to the Arrow, she
gave her entire approval.

“I don’t blame you, darlin’,” declared Mrs. Mullarky. “Let the world
jabber—if it wants to. If it was me father that had been over there,
I’d stay there, takin’ Squint Taylor at his word—an’ divvle a bit I’d
care what the world would say about it!”

So Marion rode on, slightly relieved. But the crimson stain was still
on her cheeks when she and Martha dismounted at the porch, and she
looked fearfully around, half-expecting that Taylor would appear from
somewhere, having tricked her.

But Taylor was nowhere in sight. A fat man appeared from somewhere in
the vicinity of the stable, doffed his hat politely, informed her that
he was the “stable boss” and would care for the horses; he having been
delegated by Taylor to perform whatever service Miss Harlan desired;
and ambled off, leading the horses, leaving the girl and Martha
standing near the edge of the porch.

Marion entered the house with a strange feeling of guilt and shame.
Standing in the open doorway—where she had seen Taylor standing when
she had dismounted the day before—she was afflicted with regret and
mortification over her coming. It wasn’t right for a girl to do as she
was doing; and for an instant she hesitated on the verge of flight.

But Martha’s voice directly behind her, reassured her.

“They ain’t a soul here, honey—not a soul. You’ve got the whole house
to yo’self. This am a lark—shuah enough. He, he, he!”

It was the voice of the temptress—and Marion heeded it. With a defiant
toss of her head she entered the room, took off her hat, laid it on a
convenient table, calmly telling Martha to do the same. Then she went
boldly from one room to another, finally coming to a halt in the
doorway of the room that had been occupied by her father.

For her that room seemed to hallow the place. It was as though her
father were here with her; as though there were no need of Martha
being here with her. The thought of it removed any stigma that might
have been attached to her coming; it made her heedless of the opinion
of the world and its gossip-mongers.

She forgot the world in her interest, and for more than an hour, with
Martha sitting in a chair sympathetically watching her, she reveled in
the visible proofs of her father’s occupancy of the room.

Later she and Martha went out on the porch, where, seated in
rocking-chairs—that had not been on the porch the day before—she
filled her mental vision with pictures of her father’s life at the
Arrow. Those pictures were imaginary, but they were intensely
satisfying to the girl who had loved her father, for she could almost
see him moving about her.

“You shuah does look soft an’ dreamy, honey,” Martha told her once.
“You looks jes’ like a delicate ghost. A while ago, lookin’ at you, I
shuah was scared you was goin’ to blow away!”

But Marion was not the ethereal wraith that Martha thought her. She
proved that a little later, when, with the negro woman abetting her,
she went into the house and prepared dinner. For she ate so heartily
that Martha was forced to amend her former statement.

“For a ghost you shuah does eat plenty, honey,” she said.

Later they were out on the porch again. The big level on the other
side of the river was flooded with a slumberous sunshine, with the
glowing, rose haze of early afternoon enveloping it, and the girl was
enjoying it when there came an interruption.

A cowboy emerged from a building down near the corral—Marion learned
later that the building was the bunkhouse, which meant that it was
used as sleeping-quarters for the Arrow outfit—and walked, with the
rolling stride so peculiar to his kind, toward the porch.

He was a tall young man, red of face, and just now affected with a
mighty embarrassment, which was revealed in the awkward manner in
which he removed his hat and shuffled his feet as he came to a halt
within a few feet of Marion.

“The boss wants to know how you are gettin’ along, ma’am, an’ if
there’s anything you’re wantin’?”

“We are enjoying ourselves immensely, thank you; and there is nothing
we want—particularly.”

The puncher had turned to go before the girl thought of the
significance of the “boss.”

Her face was a trifle pale as she called to the puncher.

“Who is your boss—if you please?” she asked.

The puncher wheeled, a slow grin on his face.

“Why, Squint Taylor, ma’am.”

She sat erect. “Do you mean that Mr. Taylor is here?”

“He’s in the bunkhouse, ma’am.”

She got up, and, holding her head very erect, began to walk toward the
room in which she had left her hat.

But half-way across the porch the puncher’s voice halted her:

“Squint was sayin’ you didn’t expect him to be here, an’ that I’d have
to do the explainin’. He couldn’t come, you see.”

“Ashamed, I suppose,” she said coldly.

She was facing the puncher now, and she saw him grin.

“Why, no, ma’am; I don’t reckon he’s a heap ashamed. But it’d be
mighty inconvenient for him. You see, ma’am, this mornin’, when he was
gittin’ ready to ride to the south line, his cayuse got an ornery
streak an’ throwed him, sprainin’ Squint’s ankle.”

The girl’s emotions suddenly reacted; the resentment she had yielded
to became self-reproach. For she had judged hastily, and she had
always felt that one had no right to judge hastily.

And Taylor had been remarkably considerate; for he had not even
permitted her to know of the accident until after noon. That indicated
that he had no intention of forcing himself on her.

She hesitated, saw Martha grinning into a hand, looked at the
puncher’s expressionless face, and felt that she had been rather
prudish. Her cheeks flushed with color.

Taylor had actually been a martyr on a small scale in confining
himself to the bunkhouse, when he could have enjoyed the comforts and
spaciousness of the ranchhouse if it had not been for her own
presence.

“Is—is his ankle badly sprained?” she hesitatingly asked the now
sober-faced puncher.

“Kind of bad, ma’am; he ain’t been able to do no walkin’ on it. Been
hobblin’ an’ swearin’, mostly, ma’am. It’s sure a trial to be near
him.”

“And it is warm here; it must be terribly hot in that little place!”

She was at the edge of the porch now, her face radiating sympathy.

“I am not surprised that he should swear!” she told the puncher, who
grinned and muttered:

“He’s sure first class at it, ma’am.”

“Why,” she said, paying no attention to the puncher’s compliment of
his employer, “he is hurt, and I have been depriving him of his house.
You tell him to come right out of that stuffy place! Help him to come
here!”

And without waiting to watch the puncher depart, she darted into the
house, pulled a big rocker out on the porch, got a pillow and arranged
it so that it would form a resting-place for the injured man’s
head—providing he decided to occupy the chair, which she doubted—and
then stood on the edge of the porch, awaiting his appearance.

Inside the bunkhouse the puncher was grinning at Taylor, who, with his
right foot swathed in bandages, was sitting on a bench, anxiously
awaiting the delivery of the puncher’s message.

“Well, talk, you damned grinning inquisitor!” was Taylor’s greeting to
the puncher. “What did she say?”

“At first she didn’t seem to be a heap overjoyed to know that you was
in this country,” said the other; “but when she heard you’d been hurt
she sort of stampeded, invitin’ you to come an’ set on the porch with
her.”

Taylor got up and started for the door, the bandaged foot dragging
clumsily.

“Shucks,” drawled the puncher; “if you go to _runnin’_ to her she’ll
have suspicions. Accordin’ to my notion, she expects you to come a
hobblin’, same as though your leg was broke. ‘Help him to come,’ she
told me. An’ you’re goin’ that way—you hear me! I’ll bust your ankle
with a club before I’ll have her think I’m a liar!”

“Maybe I _was_ a little eager,” grinned Taylor.

An instant later he stepped out of the bunkhouse door, leaning heavily
on the puncher’s shoulder.

The two made slow progress to the porch; and Taylor’s ascent to the
porch and his final achievement of the rocking-chair were accomplished
slowly, with the assistance of Miss Harlan.

Then, with a face almost the color of the scarlet neckerchief he wore,
Taylor watched the retreat of the puncher.

His face became redder when Miss Harlan drew another rocker close to
his and demanded to be told the story of the accident.

“My own fault,” declared Taylor. “I was in a hurry. Accidents always
happen that way, don’t they? Slipped trying to swing on my horse, with
him running. Missed the stirrup. Clumsy, wasn’t it?”

Eager to keep his word, of course, Marion reasoned. She had insisted
that he be gone when she arrived, and he had injured himself hurrying.

She watched him as he talked of the accident. And now for the first
time she understood why he had acquired the nickname Squint.

His eyes were deep-set, though not small. He did not really squint,
for there was plenty of room between the eyelids—which, by the way,
were fringed with lashes that might have been the envy of any woman;
but there were many little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, which
spread fanwise toward cheek and brow, and these created the illusion
of squinting.

Also, he had a habit of partially closing his eyes when looking
directly at one; and at such times they held a twinkling glint that
caused one to speculate over their meaning.

Miss Harlan was certain the twinkle meant humor. But other persons had
been equally sure the twinkle meant other emotions, or passion.
Looking into Taylor’s eyes in the dining-car, Carrington had decided
they were filled with cold, implacable hostility, with the promise of
violence, to himself. And yet the squint had not been absent.

Whatever had been expressed in the eyes had been sufficient to deter
Carrington from his announced purpose to “knock hell out of” their
owner.

The girl was aware that Taylor was not handsome; that his attractions
were not of a surface character. Something about him struck deeper
than that. A subtle magnetism gripped her—the magnetism of strength,
moral and mental. In his eyes she could see the signs of it; in the
lines of his jaw and the set of his lips were suggestions of
indomitability and force.

All the visible signs were, however, glossed over with the deep, slow
humor that radiated from him, that glowed in his eyes.

It all made her conscious of a great similarity between them; for
despite the doubts and suspicions of the people of Westwood, she had
been able to survive—and humor had been the grace that had saved her
from disappointment and pessimism. Those other traits in
Taylor—visible to one who studied him—she knew for her own; and her
spirits now responded to his.

Her cheeks were glowing as she looked at him, and her eyes, half
veiled by the drooping lashes, were dancing with mischief.

“You were in that hot bunkhouse all morning,” she said. “Why didn’t
you send word before?”

“You were careful to tell me that you didn’t want me around when you
came.”

There was a gleam of reproach in his eyes.

“But you were injured!”

“Look how things go in the world,” he invited, narrowing his eyes at
her. “It’s almost enough to make a man let go all holds and just drift
along. Maybe a man would be just as well off.

“Early this morning I knew I had to light out for the day, and I
didn’t want to go any more than a gopher wants to go into a
rattlesnake’s den. But I had to keep my word. Then Spotted Tail gets
notions——”

“Spotted Tail?” she interrupted.

“My horse,” he grinned at her. “He gets notions. Maybe he wants to get
away as much as I want to stay. Anyhow, he was in a hurry; and things
shape up so that I’ve got to stay.

“And then, when I hang around the bunkhouse all morning, worrying
because I’m afraid you’ll find out that I didn’t keep my word, and
that I’m still here, you send word that you’ll not object to me coming
on the porch with you. I’d call that a misjudgment all around—on my
part.”

“Yes—it was that,” she told him. “You certainly are entitled to the
comforts of your own house—especially when you are hurt. But are you
sure you _worried_ because you were afraid I would discover you were
here?”

“I expect you can prove that by looking at me, Miss Harlan—noticing
that I’ve got thin and pale-looking since you saw me last?”

She threw a demure glance at him. “I am afraid you are in great
danger; you do not look nearly as well as when I saw you, the first
time, on the train.”

He looked gravely at her.

“The porter threw them out of the window,” he said. “That is, I gave
him orders to.”

“What?” she said, perplexed. “I don’t understand. What did the porter
throw out of the window?”

“My dude clothes,” he said.

So he _had_ observed the ridicule in her eyes.

She met his gaze, and both laughed.

He had been curious about her all along, and he artfully questioned
her about Westwood, gradually drawing from her the rather unexciting
details of her life. Yet these details were chiefly volunteered,
Taylor noticed, and did not result entirely from his questions.

Carrington’s name came into the discussion, also, and Parsons. Taylor
discovered that Carrington and Parsons had been partners in many
business deals, and that they had come to Dawes because the town
offered many possibilities. The girl quoted Carrington’s words; Taylor
was convinced that she knew nothing of the character of the business
the men had come to Dawes to transact.

Their talk strayed to minor subjects and to those of great importance,
ranging from a discussion of prairie hens to sage comment upon certain
abstruse philosophy. Always, however, the personal note was dominant
and the personal interest acute.

That atmosphere—the deep interest of each for the other—made their
conversation animated. For half the time the girl paid no attention to
Taylor’s words. She watched him when he talked, noting the various
shades of expression of his eyes, the curve of his lips, wondering at
the deep music of his voice. She marveled that at first she had
thought him uninteresting and plain.

For she had discovered that he was rather good-looking; that he was
endowed with a natural instinct to reach accurate and logical
conclusions; that he was quiet-mannered and polite—and a gentleman.
Her first impressions of him had not been correct, for during their
talk she discovered through casual remarks, that Taylor had been
educated with some care, that his ancestors were of that sturdy
American stock which had made the settling of the eastern New-World
wilderness possible, and that there was in his manner the unmistakable
gentleness of good breeding.

However, Taylor’s first impressions of the girl had endured without
amendations. At a glance he had yielded to the spell of her, and the
intimate and informal conversation carried on between them; the
flashes of personality he caught merely served to convince him of her
desirability.

Twice during their talk Martha cleared her throat significantly and
loudly, trying to attract their attention.

The efforts bore no fruit, and Martha might have been entirely
forgotten if she had not finally got to her feet and laid a hand on
Marion’s shoulder.

“I’s gwine to lie down a spell, honey,” she said. “You-all don’t need
no third party to entertain you. An’ I’s powerful tiahd.” And over the
girl’s shoulder she smiled broadly and sympathetically at Taylor.

The sun was filling the western level with a glowing, golden haze when
Miss Harlan got to her feet and announced that she was going home.

“It’s the first day I have really enjoyed,” she told Taylor as she sat
in the saddle, looking at him. He had got up and was standing at the
porch edge. “That is, it is the first enjoyable day I have passed
since I have been here,” she added.

“I wouldn’t say that I’ve been exactly bored myself,” he grinned at
her. “But I’m not so sure about Friday; for if you come Friday the
chances are that my ankle will be well again, and I’ll have to make
myself scarce. You see, my excuse will be gone.”

Martha was sitting on her horse close by, and her eyes were dancing.

“Don’ you go an’ bust your haid, Mr. Taylor!” she warned. “I knows
somebuddy that would be powerful sorry if that would happen to you!”

“Martha!” said Marion severely. But her eyes were eloquent as they met
Taylor’s twinkling ones; and she saw a deep color come into Taylor’s
cheeks.

Taylor watched her until she grew dim in the distance; then he turned
and faced the tall young puncher, who had stepped upon the porch and
had been standing near.

The puncher grinned. “Takin’ ’em off now, boss?” he asked.

He pointed to the bandages on Taylor’s right foot. In one of the young
puncher’s hands was Taylor’s right boot.

“Yes,” returned Taylor.

He sat down in the rocker he had occupied all afternoon, and the young
puncher removed the bandages, revealing Taylor’s bare foot and ankle,
with no bruise or swelling to mar the white skin.

Taylor drew on the sock which the puncher drew from the boot; then he
pulled on the boot and stood up.

The puncher was grinning hugely, but no smile was on Taylor’s face.

“It worked, boss,” said the puncher; “she didn’t tumble. I thought I’d
laff my head off when I seen her fixin’ the pillow for you—an’ your
foot not hurt more than mine. You ought to be plumb tickled, pullin’
off a trick like that!”

“I ain’t a heap tickled,” declared Taylor glumly. “There’s no fun in
fooling _her_!”

Which indicated that Taylor’s thoughts were now serious.




CHAPTER XII—LIFTING THE MASK


Elam Parsons awoke early in the morning following that on which Marion
Harlan’s visit to the Arrow occurred. He lay for a long time smiling
at the ceiling, with a feeling that something pleasurable was in store
for him, but not able to determine what that something was.

It was not long, however, before Parsons remembered.

When he had got out of bed the previous morning he had discovered the
absence of Marion and Martha. Also, he found that two of the horses
were missing—Marion’s, and one of the others he had personally bought.

Parsons spent the day in Dawes. Shortly before dusk he got on his
horse and rode homeward. Dismounting at the stable, he noted that the
two absent horses had not come in. He grinned disagreeably and went
into the house. He emerged almost instantly, for Marion and Martha had
not returned.

Later he saw them, Marion leading, coming up the slope that led to the
level upon which the house stood.

Marion had retired early, and after she had gone to her room Parsons
had questioned Martha.

Twice while getting into his clothes this morning Parsons chuckled
audibly. There was malicious amusement in the sound.

Once he caught himself saying aloud:

“I knew it would come, sooner or later. And she’s picked out the
clodhopper! This will tickle Carrington!”

Again he laughed—such a laugh as the good people of Westwood might
have used had they known what Parsons knew—that Marion Harlan had
visited a stranger at his ranchhouse—a lonely place, far from prying
eyes.

Parsons hated the girl as heartily as he had hated her father. He
hated her because of her close resemblance to her parent; and he had
hated Larry Harlan ever since their first meeting.

Parsons likewise had no affection for Carrington. They had been
business associates for many years, and their association had been
profitable for both; but there was none of that respect and admiration
which marks many partnerships.

On several occasions Carrington had betrayed greediness in the
division of the spoils of their ventures. But Carrington was the
strong man, ruthless and determined, and Parsons was forced to nurse
his resentment in silence. He meant some day, however, to repay
Carrington, and he lost no opportunity to harass him. And yet it had
been Parsons who had brought Carrington to Westwood two years before.
He knew Carrington; he knew something of the big man’s way with women,
of his merciless treatment of them. And he had invited Carrington to
Westwood, hoping that the big man would add Marion Harlan to his list
of victims.

So far, Carrington had made little progress. This fact, contrary to
Parsons’ principles, had afforded the man secret enjoyment. He liked
to see Carrington squirm under disappointment. He anticipated much
pleasure in watching Carrington’s face when he should tell him where
Marion had been the day before.

He breakfasted alone—early—chuckling his joy. And shortly after he
left the table he was on a horse, riding toward Dawes.

He reached town about eight and went directly to Carrington’s rooms in
the Castle.

Carrington had shaved and washed, and was sitting at a front window,
coatless, his hair uncombed, when Parsons knocked on the door.

“You’re back, eh?” said Parsons as he took a chair near the window.
“Danforth was telling me you went to see the governor. Did you fix
it?”

Carrington grinned. “Taylor was to take the oath today. He won’t take
it—at least, not the sort of oath he expected.”

“It’s lucky you knew the governor.”

“H-m.” The grim grunt indicated that, governor or no governor,
Carrington would not be denied.

Parsons smirked. But Carrington detected an unusual quality in the
smirk—something more than satisfaction over the success of the visit
to the governor. There was malicious amusement in the smirk, and
anticipation. Parsons’ expressed satisfaction was not over what _had_
happened, but over what was _going_ to happen.

Carrington knew Parsons, and therefore Carrington gave no sign of what
he had seen in Parsons’ face. He talked of Dawes and of their own
prospects. But once, when Carrington mentioned Marion Harlan, quite
casually, he noted that Parsons’ eyes widened.

But Parsons said nothing on the subject which had brought him until he
had talked for half an hour. Then, noting that his manner had aroused
Carrington’s interest, he said softly:

“This man, Taylor, seems destined to get in your way, doesn’t he?”

“What do you mean?” demanded Carrington shortly.

“Do you remember telling me—on the train, with this man, Taylor,
listening—that your story to Marion, of her father having been seen in
this locality, was a fairy tale—without foundation?”

At Carrington’s nod Parsons continued:

“Well, it seems it was not a fairy tale, after all. For Larry Harlan
was in his section for two or three years!”

“Who told you that?” Carrington slid forward in his chair and was
looking hard at Parsons.

Parsons was enjoying the other’s astonishment, and Parsons was not to
be hurried—he wanted to _taste_ the flavor of his news; it was as good
to his palate as a choice morsel of food to the palate of a disciple
of Epicurus.

“It came in a sort of roundabout way, I understand,” said Parsons. “It
seems that during your absence Marion made a number of inquiries about
her father. Then a man named Ben Mullarky rode over to the house and
told her that Larry had been in this country—that he had worked for
the Arrow.”

“That’s Taylor’s ranch,” said Carrington. A deep scowl furrowed his
forehead; his lips extended in a sullen pout.

Parsons was enjoying him. “Taylor again, eh?” he said softly. “First,
he appears on the train, where he gets an earful of something we don’t
want him to hear; then he is elected mayor, which is detrimental to
our interests; then we discover that Larry Harlan worked for him.
_You’ll_ be interested to know that Marion went right over to the
Arrow—in fact, she spent part of Monday there, and practically _all_
of yesterday. More, Taylor has invited her to come whenever she wants
to.”

“She went alone?” demanded Carrington.

“With Martha, my negro housekeeper. But that—” Parsons made a gesture
of derision and went on: “Martha says Taylor was there with her, and
that the two of them—with Martha asleep in the house—spent the entire
afternoon on the porch, talking rather intimately.”

To Parsons’ surprise Carrington did not betray the perturbation
Parsons expected. The scowl was still furrowing his forehead, his lips
were still in the sullen pout; but he said nothing, looking steadily
at Parsons.

At last his lips moved slightly; Parsons could see the clenched teeth
between them.

“Where’s Larry Harlan now?”

Parsons related the story told him by Martha—which had been imparted
to the negro woman by Marion in confidence—that Larry Harlan had been
accidentally killed, searching for a mine.

When Parsons finished Carrington got up. There was a grin on his face
as he stepped to where Parsons sat and placed his two hands heavily on
the other’s shoulders.

There was a grin on his face, but his eyes were agleam with a
slumbering passion that made Parsons catch his breath with a gasp. And
his voice, low, and freighted with menace, caused Parsons to quake
with terror.

“Parsons,” he said, “I want you to understand this: I am going to be
the law out here. I’ll run things to suit myself. I’ll have no
half-hearted loyalty, and I’ll destroy any man who opposes me! Those
who are not with me to the last gasp are against me!” He laughed, and
Parsons felt the man’s hot breath on his face—so close was it to his
own.

“I was born a thousand years too late, Parsons!” he went on. “I am a
robber baron brought down to date—modernized. I believe that in me
flows the blood of a pirate, a savage, or an ancient king; I have all
the instincts of a tribal chief whose principles are to rule or ruin!
I’ll have no law out here but my own desires; and hypocrisy—in
others—doesn’t appeal to me!

“You’ve told me a tale that interested me, but in the telling of it
you made one mistake—you enjoyed the discomfiture you thought it would
give me. You tingled with malice. Just to show you that I’ll not
tolerate disloyalty from you—even in thought—I’m going to punish you.”

He dropped his big hands to Parsons’ throat, shutting off the
incipient scream that issued from between the man’s lips. Parsons
fought with all his strength to escape the grip of the iron fingers at
his throat, twisting and squirming frenziedly in the chair. But the
fingers tightened their grip, and when the man’s face began to turn
blue-black, Carrington released him and looked down at his victim,
laughing vibrantly.




CHAPTER XIII—THE SHADOW OF TROUBLE


Elam recovered slowly, for Carrington had choked him into
unconsciousness. Out of the blank, dark coma Parsons came, his brain
reeling, his body racked with agonizing pains. His hands went to his
throat before he could open his eyes; he pulled at the flesh to ease
the constriction that still existed there; he caught his breath in
great gasps that shrilled through the room. And when at last he
succeeded in getting his breath to come regularly, he opened his eyes
and saw Carrington seated in a chair near him, watching him with a
cold, speculative smile.

He heard Carrington’s voice saying: “Pretty close, wasn’t it,
Parsons?” But he did not answer; his vocal cords were still partially
paralyzed.

He closed his eyes again and stretched out in the chair. Carrington
thought he had fainted, but Parsons was merely resting—and thinking.

His thoughts were not pleasant. Many times during the years of their
association he had seen the beast in Carrington’s eyes, but this was
the first time Carrington had even shown it in his presence, naked and
ugly. Carrington had told him many times that were he not hemmed in
with laws and courts he would tramp ruthlessly over every obstacle
that got in his way; and Parsons knew now that the man had meant what
he said. The beast in him was rampant; his passions were to have free
rein; he had thrown off the shackles of civilization and was prepared
to do murder to attain his aims.

Parsons realized his own precarious predicament. Carrington controlled
every cent Parsons owned—it was in the common pool, which was in
Carrington’s charge. Parsons might leave Dawes, but his money must
stay—Carrington would never give it up. More, Parsons was now afraid
to ask for an accounting or a division, for fear Carrington would kill
him.

Parsons knew he must stay in Dawes, and that from now on he must play
lackey to the master who, at last in an environment that suited him,
had so ruthlessly demonstrated his principles.

In a spirit of abject surrender Parsons again opened his eyes and sat
up. Carrington rose and again stood over him.

“You understand now, Parsons, I’m running things. You stay in the
background. If you interfere with me I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you if
you laugh at me again. Your job out here is to take care of Marion
Harlan. You’re to keep her here. If she gets away I’ll manhandle you!
Now get out of here!”

An hour later Parsons was sitting on the front porch of the big house,
staring vacantly out into the big level below him, his heart full of
hatred and impotent resentment; his brain, formerly full of craft and
guile, now temporarily atrophied through its attempts to comprehend
the new character of the man who had throttled him.

In Dawes, Carrington was getting into his clothing. He was smiling,
his eyes glowing with grim satisfaction. At nine o’clock Carrington
descended the stairs, stopped in the hotel lobby to light a cigar;
then crossed the street and went into the courthouse, where he was
greeted effusively by Judge Littlefield. Quinton Taylor, too, was
going to the courthouse.

This morning at ten o’clock, according to information received from
Neil Norton—sent to Taylor by messenger the night before—Taylor was to
take the oath of office.

Taylor was conscious of the honor bestowed upon him by the people of
Dawes, though at first he had demurred, pointing out that he was not
actually a resident of the town—the Arrow lying seven miles southward.
But this objection had been met and dismissed by his friends, who had
insisted that he was a resident of the town by virtue of his large
interests there, and from the fact that he occupied an apartment above
the Dawes bank, and that he spent more time in it than he spent in the
Arrow ranchhouse.

But on the ride to Dawes—on Spotted Tail—(this morning wonderfully
docile despite Tuesday’s slander by his master)—Taylor’s thoughts
dwelt not upon the honor that was to be his, but upon the questionable
trick he had played on Marion Harlan, with the able assistance of the
tall young puncher, Bud Hemmingway.

He looked down at the foot, now unbandaged, with a frown. The girl’s
complete and matter-of-fact belief in the story of his injury; her
sympathy and deep concern; the self-accusation in her eyes; the
instant pardon she had granted him for staying at the ranchhouse when
he should not have stayed—all these he arrayed against the bald fact
that he had tricked her. And he felt decidedly guilty.

And yet somehow there was some justification for the trick. It was the
justification of desire. The things a man wants are not to be denied
by the narrow standards of custom. Does a man miss an opportunity to
establish acquaintance with a girl he has fallen in love with, merely
because custom has decreed that she shall not come unattended—save by
a negro woman—to his house?

Taylor made desire his justification, and his sense of guilt was
dispelled by half.

Nor was the guilt so poignant that it rested heavily on his conscience
since he had done no harm to the girl.

What harm had been done had been done to Taylor himself. He kept
seeing Marion as she sat on the porch, and the spell of her had seized
him so firmly that last night, after she had left, the ranchhouse had
seemed to be nothing more than four walls out of which all the life
had gone. He felt lonesome this morning, and was in the grip of a
nameless longing.

All the humor had departed from him. For the first time in all his
days a conception of the meaning of life assailed him, revealing to
him a glimpse of the difficulties of a man in love. For a man may love
a girl: his difficulties begin when the girl seems to become
unattainable.

Looming large in Taylor’s thoughts this morning was Carrington. Having
overheard Carrington talking of her on the train, Taylor thought he
knew what Carrington wanted; but he was in doubt regarding the state
of the girl’s feelings toward the man. Had she yielded to the man’s
intense personal magnetism?

Carrington was handsome; there was no doubt that almost any girl would
be flattered by his attentions. And had Carrington been worthy of
Marion, Taylor would have entertained no hope of success—he would not
even have thought of it.

But he had overheard Carrington; he knew the man’s nature was vile and
bestial; and already he hated him with a fervor that made his blood
riot when he thought of him.

When he reached Dawes he found himself hoping that Marion would not be
in town to see that his ankle was unbandaged. But he might have saved
himself that throb of perturbation, for at that minute Marion was
standing in the front room of the big house, looking out of one of the
windows at Parsons, wondering what had happened to make him seem so
glum and abstracted.

When Taylor dismounted in front of the courthouse there were several
men grouped on the sidewalk near the door.

Neil Norton was in the group, and he came forward, smiling.

“We’re here to witness the ceremony,” he told Taylor.

Taylor’s greeting to the other men was not that of the professional
politician. He merely grinned at them and returned a short: “Well,
let’s get it over with,” to Norton’s remark. Then, followed by his
friends, he entered the courthouse.

Taylor knew Judge Littlefield. He had no admiration for the man, and
yet his greeting was polite and courteous—it was the greeting of an
American citizen to an official.

Taylor’s first quick glance about the interior of the courthouse
showed him Carrington. The latter was sitting in an armchair near a
window toward the rear of the room. He smiled as Taylor’s glance swept
him, but Taylor might not have seen the smile. For Taylor was deeply
interested in other things.

A conception of the serious responsibility that he was to accept
assailed him. Until now the thing had been entirely personal; his
thoughts had centered upon the honor that was to be his—his friends
had selected him for an important position. And yet Taylor was not
vain.

Now, however, ready to accept the oath of office, he realized that he
was to become the servant of the municipality; that these friends of
his had elected him not merely to honor him but because they trusted
him, because they were convinced that he would administer the affairs
of the young town capably and in a fair and impartial manner. They
depended upon him for justice, advice, and guidance.

All these things, to be sure, Taylor would give them to the best of
his ability. They must have known that or they would not have elected
him.

These thoughts sobered him as he walked to the little wooden railing
in front of the judge’s desk; and his face was grave as he looked at
the other.

“I am ready to take the oath, Judge Littlefield,” he gravely
announced.

Glancing sidewise, Taylor saw that a great many men had come into the
room. He did not turn to look at them, however, for he saw a gleam in
Judge Littlefield’s eyes that held his attention.

“That will not be necessary, Mr. Taylor,” he heard the judge say. “The
governor, through the attorney-general, has ruled you were not legally
elected to the office you aspire to. Only last night I was notified of
the decision. It was late, or I should have taken steps to apprise you
of the situation.”

Taylor straightened. He heard exclamations from many men in the room;
he was conscious of a tension that had come into the atmosphere. Some
men scuffled their feet; and then there was a deep silence.

Taylor smiled without mirth. His dominant emotion was curiosity.

“Not legally elected?” he said. “Why?”

The judge passed a paper to Taylor; it was one of those that had been
delivered to the judge by Carrington.

The judge did not meet Taylor’s eyes.

“You’ll find a full statement of the case, there,” he said. “Briefly,
however, the governor finds that your name did not appear on the
ballots.”

Norton, who had been standing at Taylor’s side all along, now shoved
his way to the railing and leaned over it, his face white with wrath.

“There’s something wrong here, Judge Littlefield!” he charged.
“Taylor’s name was on every ballot that was counted for him. I
personally examined every ballot!”

The judge smiled tolerantly, almost benignantly.

“Of course—to be sure,” he said. “Mr. Taylor’s name appeared on a good
many ballots; his friends _wrote_ it, with pencil, and otherwise. But
the law expressly states that a candidate’s name must be _printed_.
Therefore, obeying the letter of the law, the governor has ruled that
Mr. Taylor was not elected.” There was malicious satisfaction in Judge
Littlefield’s eyes as they met Taylor’s. Taylor could see that the
judge was in entire sympathy with the influences that were opposing
him, though the judge tried, with a grave smile, to create an
impression of impartiality.

“Under the governor’s ruling, therefore,” he continued, “and acting
under explicit directions from the attorney-general, I am empowered to
administer the oath of office to the legally elected candidate, David
Danforth. Now, if Mr. Danforth is in the courtroom, and will come
forward, we shall conclude.”

Mr. Danforth was in the courtroom; he was sitting near Carrington; and
he came forward, his face slightly flushed, with the gaze of every
person in the room on him.

He smiled apologetically at Taylor as he reached the railing,
extending a hand.

“I’m damned sorry, Taylor,” he declared. “This is all a surprise to
me. I hadn’t any doubt that they would swear you in. No hard
feelings?”

Taylor had been conscious of the humiliation of his position. He knew
that his friends would expect him to fight. And yet he felt more like
gracefully yielding to the forces which had barred him from office
upon the basis of so slight a technicality. And despite the knowledge
that he had been robbed of the office, he would have taken Danforth’s
hand, had he not at that instant chanced to glance at Carrington.

The latter’s eyes were aglow with a vindictive triumph; as his gaze
met Taylor’s, his lips curved with a sneer.

A dark passion seized Taylor—the bitter, savage rage of jealousy. The
antagonism he had felt for Carrington that day on the train when he
had heard Carrington’s voice for the first time was suddenly
intensified. It had been growing slowly, provoked by his knowledge of
the man’s evil designs on Marion Harlan. But now there had come into
the first antagonism a gripping lust to injure the other, a
determination to balk him, to defeat him, to meet him on his own
ground and crush him.

For Carrington’s sneer had caused the differences between them to
become sharply personal; it would make the fight that was brewing
between the two men not a political fight, but a fight of the spirit.

Taylor interpreted the sneer as a challenge, and he accepted it. His
eyes gleamed with hatred unmistakable as they held Carrington’s; and
the grin on his lips was the cold, unhumorous grin of the fighter who
is not dismayed by odds. His voice was low and sharp, and it carried
to every person in the room:

“We won’t shake, Danforth; you are not particular enough about the
character of your friends!”

The look was significant, and it compelled the eyes of all of Taylor’s
friends, so that Carrington instantly found himself the center of
interest.

However, he did not change color; on his face a bland smile testified
to his entire indifference to what Taylor or Taylor’s friends thought
of him.

Taylor grinned mirthlessly at the judge, spoke shortly to Norton, and
led the way out through the front door, followed by a number of his
friends.

Norton took Taylor into his office, adjoining the courthouse, and
threw himself into a chair, grumbling profanely. Outside they could
see the crowd filing down the street, voicing its opinion of the
startling proceeding.

“An election is an election,” they heard one man say—a Taylor
sympathizer. “What difference does it make that Taylor’s name wasn’t
_printed_? It’s a dawg-gone frame-up, that’s what it is!”

But Danforth’s adherents were not lacking; and there were arguments in
loud, vigorous language among men who passed the door of the _Eagle_
office.

“I could have printed the damned ballots, myself—if I had thought it
necessary,” mourned Norton. “And now we’re skinned out of it!”

Norton’s disgust was complete and bitter; he had slid down in the
chair, his chin on his chest, his hands shoved deep into the pockets
of his trousers.

Yet his dejection had not infected Taylor; the latter’s lips were
curved in a faint smile, ironic and saturnine. It was plain to Norton
that whatever humor there was in the situation was making its appeal
to Taylor. The thought angered Norton, and he sat up, demanding
sharply: “Well, what in hell are you going to do about it?”

Taylor grinned at the other. “Nothing, now,” he said. “We might appeal
to the courts, but if the law specifies that a candidate’s name must
be printed, the courts would sustain the governor. It looks to me,
Norton, as though Carrington and Danforth have the cards stacked.”

Norton groaned and again slid down into his chair. He heard Taylor go
out, but he did not change his position. He sat there with his eyes
closed, profanely accusing himself, for he alone was to blame for the
complete defeat that had descended upon his candidate; and he could
not expect Taylor to fight a law which, though unjust and arbitrary,
was the only law in the Territory.

Taylor had not gone far. He stepped into the door of the courthouse,
to meet Carrington, who was coming out. Danforth and Judge Littlefield
were talking animatedly in the rear of the room. They ceased talking
when they saw Taylor, and faced toward him, looking at him
wonderingly.

Carrington halted just inside the threshold of the doorway, and he,
too, watched Taylor curiously, though there was a bland, sneering
smile on his face.

Taylor’s smile as he looked at the men was still faintly ironic, and
his eyes were agleam with a light that baffled the other men—they
could not determine just what emotion they reflected.

And Taylor’s manner was as quietly deliberate and nonchalant as though
he had merely stepped into the room for a social visit. His gaze swept
the three men.

“Framing up—again, eh?” he said, with drawling emphasis. “You sure did
a good job for a starter. I just stepped in to say a few words to
you—all of you. To you first, Littlefield.” And now his eyes held the
judge—they seemed to squint genially at the man.

“I happen to know that our big, sleek four-flusher here”—nodding
toward Carrington—“came here to loot Dawes. Quite accidentally, I
overheard him boasting of his intentions. Danforth was sent here by
Carrington more than a year ago to line things up, politically. I
don’t know how many are in the game—and I don’t care. You are in it,
Littlefield. I saw that by the delight you took in informing me of the
decision of the attorney-general. I just stepped in to tell you that I
know what is going on, and to warn you that you can’t do it! You had
better pull out before you make an ass of yourself, Littlefield!”

The judge’s face was crimson. “This is an outrage, Taylor!” he
sputtered. “I’ll have you jailed for contempt of court!”

“Not you!” gibed Taylor, calmly. “You haven’t the nerve! I’d like
nothing better than to have you do it. You’re a little fuzzy dog that
doesn’t crawl out of its kennel until it hears the snap of its
master’s fingers! That’s all for you!”

He grinned at Danforth, felinely, and the man flushed under the odd
gleam in the eyes that held his.

“I can classify you with one word, Dave,” he declared; “you’re a
crook! That lets you out; you do what you are told!”

He now ignored the others and faced Carrington.

His grin faded quickly, the lips stiffening. But still there was a
hint of cold humor in his manner that created the impression that he
was completely in earnest; that he was keenly enjoying himself and
that he did not feel at all tragic. And yet, underlying the mask of
humor, Carrington saw the passionate hatred Taylor felt for him.

Carrington sneered. He attempted to smile, but the malevolent
bitterness of his passions turned the smile into a hideous smirk. He
had hated Taylor at first sight; and now, with the jealousy provoked
by the knowledge that Taylor had turned his eyes toward Marion Harlan,
the hatred had become a lust to destroy the other.

Before Taylor could speak, Carrington stepped toward him, thrusting
his face close to Taylor’s. The man was in the grip of a mighty rage
that bloated his face, that made his breath come in great labored
gasps. He had not meant to so boldly betray his hatred, but the
violence of his passions drove him on.

He knew that Taylor was baiting him, mocking him, taunting him; that
Taylor’s words to the judge and to Danforth had been uttered with the
grimly humorous purpose of arousing the men to some unwise and
precipitate action; he knew that Taylor was enjoying the confusion he
had brought.

But Carrington had lost his self-control.

Without a word, but with a smothered imprecation that issued
gutturally from between his clenched teeth, he swung a fist with
bitter malignance at Taylor’s face.

The blow did not land, for Taylor, self-possessed and alert, had been
expecting it. He slipped his head sidewise slightly, evading the fist
by a narrow margin, and, tensed, his muscles taut, he drove his own
right fist upward, heavily.

Carrington, reeling forward under the impetus of the force he had
expended, ran fairly into the fist. It crashed to the point of his jaw
and he was unconscious, rigid, and upright on his feet in the instant
before he sagged and tumbled headlong out through the open doorway
into the street.

With a bound, his face set in a mirthless grin, Taylor was after him,
landing beyond him in the windrowed dust at the edge of the sidewalk,
ready and willing to administer further punishment.




CHAPTER XIV—THE FACE OF A FIGHTER


Slouching in his chair, in an attitude of complete dejection, Neil
Norton was glumly digesting the dregs of defeat.

The _Eagle_ office adjoined the courthouse. Both were one-story frame
structures, flimsy, with one thin wall between them; and to Norton’s
ears as he sat with his unpleasant thoughts, came the sound of voices,
muffled, but resonant. Someone was speaking with force and insistence.
Norton attuned his ears to the voice. It was then he discovered there
was only one voice, and that Taylor’s.

He sat erect, both hands gripping the arms of his chair. Then he got
up, walked to the front door of the _Eagle_ office, and looked out. He
was just in time to see Carrington tumble out through the door of the
courthouse and land heavily on the sidewalk in front of the building.
Immediately afterward he saw Taylor follow.

Norton exclaimed his astonishment, and he saw Taylor turn toward him,
a broad, mirthless grin on his face.

“Good Heavens!” breathed Norton, “he’s started a ruckus!”

Taylor had not moved. He was looking at Norton when a man leaped from
the door of the courthouse, straight at him. It was Danforth, his face
hideous with rage.

Taylor sensed the movement, wheeled, stumbled, and lost his balance
just as Danforth crashed against him. The two men went down in a heap
into the deep dust of the street, rolling over and over.

Danforth’s impetus had given him the initial advantage, and he was
making the most of it. His fists were working into Taylor’s face as
they rolled in the dust, his arms swinging like flails. Taylor, caught
almost unprepared, could not get into a position to defend himself. He
shielded his face somewhat by holding his chin close to his chest and
hunching his shoulders up; but Danforth landed some blows.

There came an instant, however, when Taylor’s surprise over the
assault changed to resentment over the punishment he was receiving. He
had struck Carrington in self-defense, and he had not expected the
attack by Danforth.

Norton, also surprised, saw that his friend was at a disadvantage, and
he was running forward to help him when he saw Taylor roll on top of
Danforth.

To Norton’s astonishment, Taylor did not seem to be in a vicious
humor, despite the blows Danforth had landed on him. Taylor came out
of the smother with a grin on his face, wide and exultant, and
distinctly visible to Norton in spite of the streaks of dust that
covered it. Taylor shook his head, his hair erupting a heavy cloud.
Then he got up, permitting Danforth to do likewise.

Regaining his feet, Danforth threw himself headlong toward Taylor,
cursing, his face working with malignant rage. When Taylor hit him the
dust flew from Danforth’s clothes as it rolls from a dirty carpet
flayed with a beater. Danforth halted, his knees sagged, his head
wabbled. But Taylor gave him a slight respite, and he came on again.

This time Taylor met him with a smother of sharp, deadening uppercuts
that threw the man backward, his mouth open, his eyes closed. He fell,
sagging backward, his knees unjointed, without a sound.

And now Norton was not the only spectator. Far up the street a man had
emerged from a doorway. He saw the erupting volcanoes of dust in the
street, and he ran back, shouting, “Fight! Fight!”

Dawes had seen many fights, and had grown accustomed to them. But
there is always novelty in another, and long before Danforth had
received the blows that had rendered him inactive, nearly all the
doors of Dawes’s buildings were vomiting men. They came, seemingly, in
endless streams, in groups, in twos and singly, eager, excited, all
the streams converging at the street in front of the courthouse.

Mindful of the ethics in an affair of this kind, the crowd kept
considerately at a distance, permitting the fighting men to continue
at their work without interference, with plenty of room for their
energetic movements.

Word ran from lip to lip that Taylor, stung by the knowledge that he
had been robbed of the office to which he had been elected, had
attacked Carrington and Danforth with the grim purpose of punishing
them personally for their misdeeds.

Taylor was aware of the gathering crowd. When he had delivered the
blows that had finished his political rival, he saw the dense mass of
men in the street around him; and he felt that all Dawes had
assembled.

There was still no rancor in Taylor’s heart; the same savage humor
which had driven him into the courthouse to acquaint Carrington and
the others with his knowledge of their designs, still gripped him. He
had not meant to force a fight, but neither had he any intention of
permitting Carrington and Danforth to inflict physical punishment upon
him.

But a malicious devil had seized him. He knew that what he had done
would be magnified and distorted by Carrington, Danforth, and the
judge; that they would charge him with the blame for it; that he faced
the probability of a jail sentence for defending himself. And he was
determined to complete the work he had started.

Therefore, having disposed of Danforth, he grinned at the eager,
excited faces that hemmed him about, and wheeled toward Carrington.

He was just in time. For Carrington, not badly hurt by Taylor’s blow,
which had catapulted him out of the door of the courthouse, had been
standing back a little, awaiting an opportunity. The swiftness of
Taylor’s movements had prevented interference by Carrington; but now,
with Danforth down, Carrington saw his chance.

Without a word, Carrington lunged forward. They met with a shock that
caused the dry dust to splay and spume upward and outward in thin,
minute streaks like the leaping, spraying waters of a fountain. They
were lost, momentarily, in a haze, as the dust fell and enveloped
them.

They emerged from the blot presently, Carrington staggering, his chin
on his chest, his eyes glazed—Taylor crowding him closely. For while
they had been lost in the smother of dust, Taylor had landed a
deadening uppercut on the big man’s chin.

The big man’s brain was befogged; and yet he still retained presence
of mind enough to shield his chin from another of those terrific
blows. He had crossed his arms over the lower part of his face,
fending off Taylor’s fists with his elbows.

A Danforth man in the crowd called on Carrington to “wallop” Taylor,
and the big man’s answering grin indicated that he was not as badly
hurt as he seemed.

Almost instantly he demonstrated that, for when Taylor, still
following him, momentarily left an opening, Carrington stepped quickly
forward and struck—his big arm flashing out with amazing rapidity.

The heavy fist landed high on Taylor’s head above the ear. It was not
a blow that would have finished the fight, even had it landed lower,
but it served to warn Taylor that his antagonist was still strong, and
he went in more warily.

The advantage of the fight was all with Taylor. For Taylor was cool
and deliberate, while Carrington, raging over the blows he had
received, and in the clutch of a bitter desire to destroy his enemy,
wasted much energy in swinging wildly.

The inaccuracy of Carrington’s hitting amused Taylor; the men in the
crowd about him could see his lips writhing in a vicious smile at
Carrington’s efforts.

Carrington landed some blows. But he had lived luxuriously during the
later years of his life; his muscles had deteriorated, and though he
was still strong, his strength was not to be compared with that of the
out-of-door man whose clean and simple habits had toughened his
muscles until they were equal to any emergency.

And so the battle went slowly but surely against Carrington. Fighting
desperately, and showing by the expression of his face that he knew
his chances were small, he tried to work at close quarters. He kept
coming in stubbornly, blocking some blows, taking others; and finally
he succeeded in getting his arms around Taylor.

The crowd had by this time become intensely partisan. At first it had
been silent, but now it became clamorous. There were some Danforth
men, and knowing Danforth to be aligned with Carrington—because, it
seemed to them, Carrington was taking Danforth’s end of the fight—they
howled for the big man to “give it to him!” And they grew bitter when
they saw that despite Carrington’s best efforts, and their own verbal
support of him, Carrington was doomed to defeat.

Taylor’s admirers vastly outnumbered Carrington’s. They did not find
it necessary to shout advice to their champion; but they shouted and
roared with approval as Taylor, driving forward, the grin still on his
face, striking heavily and blocking deftly, kept his enemy retreating
before him.

Carrington, locking his arms around Taylor, hugged him desperately for
some seconds—until he recovered his breath, and until his head
cleared, and he could fix objects firmly in his vision; and then he
heaved mightily, swung Taylor from his feet and tried to throw him.
Taylor’s feet could get no leverage, but his arms were still free, and
with both of them he hammered the big man’s head until Carrington, in
insane rage, threw Taylor from him.

Taylor landed a little off balance, and before he could set himself,
Carrington threw himself forward. He swung malignantly, the blow
landing glancingly on Taylor’s head, staggering him. His feet struck
an obstruction and he went to one knee, Carrington striking at him as
he tried to rise.

The blow missed, Carrington turning clear around from the force of the
blow and tumbling headlong into the dust near Taylor.

They clambered to their feet at the same instant, and in the next they
came together with a shock that made them both reel backward. And
then, still grinning, Taylor stepped lightly forward. Paying no
attention to Carrington’s blows, he shot in several short, terrific,
deadening uppercuts that landed fairly on the big man’s chin.
Carrington’s hands dropped to his sides, his knees doubled and he fell
limply forward into the dust of the street where he lay, huddled and
unconscious, while turmoil raged over him.

For the Danforth men in the crowd had yielded to rage over the defeat
of their favorites. They had seen Danforth go down under the terrific
punishment meted out to him by Taylor; they had seen Carrington suffer
the same fate. Several of them drove forward, muttering profane
threats.

Norton, pale and watchful, fearing just such a contingency, shoved
forward to the center, shouting:

“Hold on, men! None of that! It’s a fair fight! Keep off, there—do you
hear?”

A score of Taylor men surged forward to Norton’s side; the crowd
split, forming two sections—one group of men massing near Norton, the
other congregating around a tall man who seemed to be the leader of
their faction. A number of other men—the cautious and faint-hearted
element which had no personal animus to spur it to participation in
what seemed to threaten to develop into a riot—retreated a short
distance up the street and stood watching, morbidly curious.

But though violence, concerted and deadly, was imminent, it was
delayed. For Taylor had not yet finished, and the crowd was curiously
following his movements.

Taylor was a picturesquely ludicrous figure. He was covered with dust
from head to foot; his face was streaked with it; his hair was full of
it; it had been ground into his cheeks, and where blood from a cut on
his forehead had trickled to his right temple, the dust was matted
until it resembled crimson mud.

And yet the man was still smiling. It was not a smile at which most
men care to look when its owner’s attention is definitely centered
upon them; it was a smile full of grimly humorous malice and
determination; the smile of the fighting man who cares nothing for
consequences.

The concerted action which had threatened was, by the tacit consent of
the prospective belligerents, postponed for the instant. The gaze of
every partisan—and of all the non-partisans—was directed at Taylor.

He had not yet finished. For an instant he stood looking down at
Carrington and Danforth—both now beginning to recover from their
chastisement, and sitting up in the dust gazing dizzily about
them—then with a chuckle, grim and malicious, Taylor dove toward the
door of the courthouse, where Littlefield was standing.

The judge had been stunned by the ferocity of the action he had
witnessed. Whatever judicial dignity had been his had been whelmed by
the paralyzing fear that had gripped him, and he stood, holding to the
door-jambs, nerveless, motionless.

He saw Taylor start toward him; he saw a certain light leaping in the
man’s eyes, and he cringed and cried out in dread.

But he had not the power to retreat from the menace that was
approaching him. He threw out his hands impotently as Taylor reached
him, as though to protest physically. But Taylor ignored the movement,
reaching upward, a dusty finger and thumb closing on the judge’s right
ear.

There was a jerk, a shrill cry of pain from the judge, and then he was
led into the street, near where Carrington and Danforth had fallen,
and twisted ungently around until he faced the crowd.

“Men,” said Taylor, in the silence that greeted him as he stood erect,
his finger and thumb still gripping the judge’s ear, “Judge
Littlefield is going to say a few words to you. He’s going to tell you
who started this ruckus—so there won’t be any nonsense about actions
in contempt of court. Deals like this are pulled off better when the
court takes the public into its confidence. Who started this thing,
judge? Did I?”

“No—o,” was Littlefield’s hesitating reply.

“Who did start it?”

“Mr. Carrington.”

“You saw him?”

“Yes.”

“What did he do?”

“He—er—struck at you.”

“And Danforth?”

“He attacked you while you were in the street.”

“And I’m not to blame?”

“No.”

Taylor grinned and released the judge’s ear. “That’s all, gentlemen,”
he said; “court is dismissed!”

The judge said nothing as he walked toward the door of the courthouse.
Nor did Carrington and Danforth speak as they followed the judge. Both
Carrington and Danforth seemed to have had enough fighting for one
day.

The victor looked around at the faces in the crowd that were turned to
his, and his grin grew eloquent.

“Looks like we’re going to have a mighty peaceable administration,
boys!” he said. His grin included Norton, at whom he deliberately
winked. Then he turned, mounted his horse—which had stood docilely
near by during the excitement, and which whinnied as he approached
it—and rode down the street to the Dawes bank, before which he
dismounted. Then he went to his rooms on the floor above, washed and
changed his clothes, and attended to the bruises on his face. Later,
looking out of the window, he saw the crowd slowly dispersing; and
still later he opened the door on Neil Norton, who came in, deep
concern on his face.

“You’ve started something, Squint. After you left I went into the
_Eagle_ office. The partition is thin, and I could hear Carrington
raising hell in there. You look out; he’ll try to play some dog’s
trick on you now! There’s going to be the devil to pay in this man’s
town!”

Taylor laughed. “How long does it take for a sprained ankle to mend,
Norton?”

Norton looked sharply at Taylor’s feet.

“You sprain one of yours?” he asked.

“Lord, no!” denied Taylor. “I was just wondering. How long?” he
insisted.

“About two weeks. Say, Squint, your brain wasn’t injured in that
ruckus, was it?” he asked solicitously.

“It’s as good as it ever was.”

“I don’t believe it!” declared Norton. “Here you’ve started something
serious, and you go to rambling about sprained ankles.”

“Norton,” said Taylor slowly, “a sprained ankle is a mighty serious
thing—when you’ve forgotten which one it was!”

“What in——”

“And,” resumed Taylor, “when you don’t know but that she took
particular pains to make a mental note of it. If I’d wrap the left one
up, now, and she knew it was the right one that had been hurt—or if
I’d wrap up the right one, and she knew it was the wrong one, why
she’d likely——”

_“She?”_ groaned Norton, looking at his friend with bulging eyes that
were haunted by a fear that Taylor’s brain _had_ cracked under the
strain of the excitement he had undergone. He remembered now, that
Taylor _had_ acted in a peculiar manner during the fight; that he had
grinned all through it when he should have been in deadly earnest.

“Plumb loco!” he muttered.

And then he saw Taylor grinning broadly at him; and he was suddenly
struck with the conviction that Taylor was not insane; that he was in
possession of some secret that he was trying to confide to his friend,
and that he had begun obliquely. Norton drew a deep breath of relief.

“Lord!” he sighed, “you sure had me going. And you don’t know which
ankle you sprained?”

“I’ve clean forgot. And now she’ll find out that I’ve lied to her.”

“_She?_” said Norton significantly.

“Marion Harlan,” grinned Taylor.

Norton caught his breath with a gasp. “You mean you’ve fallen in love
with her? And that you’ve made her—Oh, Lord! What a situation! Don’t
you know her uncle and Carrington are in cahoots in this deal?”

“It’s my recollection that I told you about that the day I got back,”
Taylor reminded him. And then Taylor told him the story of the
bandaged ankle.

When Taylor concluded, Norton lay back in his chair and regarded his
friend blankly.

“And you mean to tell me that all the time you were fighting
Carrington and Danforth you were thinking about that ankle?”

“Mostly all the time,” Taylor admitted.

Norton made a gesture of impotence. “Well,” he said, “if a man can
keep his mind on a girl while two men are trying to knock hell out of
him, he’s sure got a bad case. And all I’ve got to say is that you’re
going to have a lovely ruckus!”




CHAPTER XV—GLOOM—AND PLANS


Elam Parsons sat all day on the wide porch of the big house nursing
his resentment. He was hunched up in the chair, his shoulders were
slouched forward, his chin resting on the wings of his high, starched
collar, his lips in a pout, his eyes sullen and gleaming with
malevolence.

Parsons was beginning to recover from his astonishment over the attack
Carrington had made on him. He saw now that he should have known
Carrington was the kind of man he had shown himself to be; for now
that Parsons reflected, he remembered little things that Carrington
had done which should have warned him.

Carrington had never been a real friend. Carrington had used him—that
was it; Carrington had made him think he was an important member of
the partnership, and he had thought so himself. Now he understood
Carrington. Carrington was selfish and cruel—more, Carrington was a
beast and an ingrate. For it had been Parsons who had made it possible
for Carrington to succeed—for he had used Parsons’ money all
along—having had very little himself.

So Parsons reflected, knowing, however, that he had not the courage to
oppose Carrington. He feared Carrington; he had always feared him, but
now his fear had become terror—and hate. For Parsons could still feel
the man’s fingers at his throat; and as he sat there on the porch his
own fingers stroked the spot, while in his heart flamed a great
yearning for vengeance.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Marion Harlan had got up this morning feeling rather more interested
in the big house than she had felt the day before—or upon any day that
she had occupied it. She, like Parsons, had awakened with a
presentiment of impending pleasure. But, unlike Parsons, she found it
impossible to definitely select an outstanding incident or memory upon
which to base her expectations.

Her anticipations seemed to be broad and inclusive—like a clear,
unobstructed sunset, with an effulgent glow that seemed to embrace the
whole world, warming it, bringing a great peace.

For upon this morning, suddenly awakening to the pure, white light
that shone into her window, she was conscious of a feeling of
satisfaction with life that was strange and foreign—a thing that she
had never before experienced. Always there had been a shadow of the
past to darken her vision of the future, but this morning that shadow
seemed to have vanished.

For a long time she could not understand, and she snuggled up in bed,
her brow thoughtfully furrowed, trying to solve the mystery. It was
not until she got up and was looking out of the window at the mighty
basin in which—like a dot of brown in a lake of emerald
green—clustered the buildings of the Arrow ranch, that knowledge in an
overwhelming flood assailed her. Then a crimson flush stained her
cheeks, her eyes glowed with happiness, and she clasped her hands and
stood rigid for a long time.

She knew now. A name sprang to her lips, and she murmured it aloud,
softly: “Quinton Taylor.”

Later she appeared to Martha—a vision that made the negro woman gasp
with amazement.

“What happen to you, honey? You-all git good news? You look light an’
airy—like you’s goin’ to fly!”

“I’ve decided to like this place—after all, Martha. I—I thought at
first that I wouldn’t, but I have changed my mind.”

Martha looked sharply at her, a sidelong glance that had quite a
little subtle knowledge in it.

“I reckon that ‘Squint’ Taylor make a good many girls change their
mind, honey—he, he, he!”

“Martha!”

“Doan you git ’sturbed, now, honey. Martha shuah knows the signs. I
done discover the signs a long while ago—when I fall in love with a
worfless nigger in St. Louis. He shuah did captivate me, honey. I done
try to wiggle out of it—but ’tain’t no use. Face the fac’s, Martha,
face the fac’s, I tell myself—an’ I done it. Ain’t no use for to try
an’ fool the fac’s, honey—not one bit of use! The ol’ fac’ he look at
you an’ say: ‘Doan you try to wiggle ’way from me; I’s heah, an’ heah
I’s goin’ to stay!’ That Squint man ain’t no lady-killer, honey, but
he’s shuah a he-man from the groun’ up!”

Marion escaped Martha as quickly as she could; and after breakfast
began systematically to rearrange the furniture to suit her artistic
ideals.

Martha helped, but not again did Martha refer to Quinton
Taylor—something in Marion’s manner warned her that she could trespass
too far in that direction.

Some time during the morning Marion saw Parsons ride up and dismount
at the stable door; and later she heard him cross the porch. She
looked out of one of the front windows and saw him huddled in a big
rocking-chair, and she wondered at the depression that sat so heavily
upon him.

The girl did not pause in her work long enough to partake of the lunch
that Martha set for her—so interested was she; and therefore she did
not know whether or not Parsons came into the house. But along about
four o’clock in the afternoon, wearied of her task, Marion entered the
kitchen. From Martha she learned that Parsons had not stirred from the
chair on the porch during the entire day.

Concerned, Marion went out to him.

Parsons did not hear her; he was still moodily and resentfully
reviewing the incident of the morning.

He started when the girl placed a gentle hand on one of his shoulders,
seeming to cringe from her touch; then he looked up at her suddenly.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“Don’t you feel well, Uncle Elam?” she inquired. Her hand rose from
his shoulder to his head, and her fingers ran through his hair with a
light, gentle touch that made him shiver with repugnance. There were
times when Parsons hated this living image of his brother-in-law with
a fervor that seemed to sear his heart. Now, however, pity for himself
had rather dulled the edge of his hatred. A calamity had befallen him;
he was crushed under it; and the sympathy of one whom he hated was not
entirely undesirable.

No sense of guilt assailed the man. He had never betrayed his hate to
her, and he would not do so now. That wasn’t his way. He had always
masked it from her, making her think he felt an affection for her
which was rather the equal of that which custom required a man should
feel for a niece. Yet he had always hated her.

“I’m not exactly well,” he muttered. “It’s the damned atmosphere, I
suppose.”

“Martha tells me that it _does_ affect some persons,” said the girl.
“And lack of appetite seems to be one of the first symptoms—in your
case. For Martha tells me you have not eaten.”

The girl’s soft voice irritated Parsons.

“Go away!” he ordered crossly; “I want to think!”

It was not the first time the girl had endured his moods. She smiled
tolerantly, and softly withdrew, busying herself inside the house.

Parsons did not eat supper; he slunk off to bed and lay for hours in
his room brooding over the thing that had happened to him.

He got up early the next morning, mounted his horse and left the house
before Marion could get a glimpse of him. It was still rather early
when he reached Dawes. There, in a saloon, he overheard the story of
the fight in the street in front of the courthouse, and with tingling
eagerness and venomous satisfaction he listened to a man telling
another of the terrible punishment inflicted upon Carrington by
Quinton Taylor.

Parsons did not go to see Carrington, for he feared a repetition of
Carrington’s savage rage, should he permit the latter to observe his
satisfaction over the incident of yesterday. He knew he could not face
Carrington and conceal the gloating triumph that gripped him.

So he returned to the big house. And for the greater part of the day
he sat in the rocker on the porch, his soul filled with a vindictive
joy.

He ate heartily, too; and his manner indicated that he had quite
recovered from the indisposition that had affected him the previous
day. He even smiled at Marion when she told him he was “looking
better.”

But his bitter yearning for vengeance had not been satisfied by the
knowledge that Taylor had thrashed Carrington. He knew, now that
Carrington had ruthlessly cast him aside, that he was no longer to
figure importantly in the scheme to loot the town; he knew that it was
Carrington’s intention to rob him of every dollar he had entrusted to
the man. He knew, too, that Carrington would not hesitate to murder
him should he offer the slightest objection, or should he make any
visible resistance to Carrington’s plans.

But Parsons was determined to be revenged upon Carrington, and he was
convinced that he could secure his revenge without boldly announcing
his plans.

As for that, he had no plans. But while sitting in the rocker on the
porch during the long afternoon, the vindictive light in his eyes
suddenly deepened, and he grinned evilly.

That night after supper he exerted himself to be agreeable to Marion.
During the interval between sunset and darkness he walked with the
girl along the edge of the butte above the big valley which held the
irrigation dam. And while standing in a timber grove at the edge of
the butte, he questioned her deftly about the news she had received of
her father, and she told him of her visits to the Arrow.

He had watched her narrowly, and he saw the flush that came into her
cheeks each time Taylor was mentioned.

“He is a remarkably forceful man,” he observed once, when he mentioned
Taylor. “And if I am not mistaken, Carrington is going to have his
hands full with him.”

“What do you mean? Do you mean that Mr. Taylor is not in sympathy with
Carrington’s plans concerning Dawes?”

“I mean just that. And if you had happened to be in Dawes yesterday
you might have witnessed a demonstration of Taylor’s lack of sympathy
with Carrington’s plans. For”—and now Parsons’ eyes gleamed
maliciously—“after Judge Littlefield, acting under instructions from
the governor, had refused to administer the oath of office to
Taylor—inducting his rival, Danforth, into the position instead——”

Here the girl interrupted, and Parsons was forced to relate the tale
in its entirety.

“Uncle Elam,” she said when Parsons paused, “are you certain that
Carrington’s intentions toward Dawes are honorable?”

Parsons smiled crookedly behind a palm, and then uncertainly at the
girl.

“I don’t know, Marion. Carrington is a rather hard man to gauge. He
has always been mighty uncommunicative and headstrong. He is getting
ruthless and domineering, too. I am rather afraid—that is, my dear, I
am beginning to believe we made a mistake in Carrington. He doesn’t
seem to be the sort of man we thought him to be. If he were like that
man Taylor, now——” He paused and glanced covertly at the girl, noting
the glow in her eyes.

“Yes,” he resumed, “Taylor _is_ a man. My dear,” he added
confidentially, “there is going to be trouble in Dawes—I am convinced
of that; trouble between Carrington and Taylor. Taylor thrashed
Carrington yesterday, but Carrington isn’t the kind to give up. I have
withdrawn from active participation in the affairs that brought me
here. I am not going to take sides. I don’t care who wins. That may
sound disloyal to you—but look here!” He showed her several black and
blue marks on his throat. “Carrington did that—the day before
yesterday. Choked me.” His voice quavered with self-pity, whereat the
girl caught her breath in quick sympathy and bent to examine the
marks. When she stood erect again Parsons saw her eyes flashing with
indignation, and he knew that whatever respect the girl had had for
Carrington had been forever destroyed.

“Oh!” she said, “why did he choke you?”

“Because I frankly told him I did not approve of his methods,” lied
Parsons, smirking virtuously. “He showed his hand, unmistakably, and
his methods mean evil to Dawes.”

The girl stiffened. “I shall go directly to Dawes and tell Carrington
what I think of him!” she declared.

“No—for God’s sake!” protested Parsons. “He would kill me! He would
know, instantly, that I had been talking. My life would not be worth a
snap of your fingers! Don’t let on that I have said _anything_ to you!
Let him come here, and treat him as you have always treated him. But
warn Taylor. Taylor may know something—it is certain he suspects
something—but Taylor will not know everything. Make a friend of
Taylor, my dear. Go to him—visit his ranch—as much as you like. But if
Carrington says anything to you about going there, tell him I opposed
it. That will mislead him.”

When Parsons and the girl reached the house, Parsons stood near the
kitchen door and watched her enter. He did not go in, himself; he
walked around to the front and sat on the edge of the porch, grinning
maliciously. For he knew something of the tortures of jealousy, and he
was convinced that he had added something to the antagonism that
already had been the cause of one clash between Carrington and Taylor.
And Parsons was convinced that both he and Carrington had made a
mistake in planning to loot Dawes; that despite the connivance of the
governor and Judge Littlefield, Quinton Taylor would defeat them.

Parsons might lose his money; but the point was that Carrington would
also lose. And if Parsons was wise and cautious—and did not antagonize
Taylor—there was a chance that he might gain more through his
friendship—a professed friendship—for Taylor, than he would have won
had he been loyal to Carrington. At the least, he would have the
satisfaction of working against Carrington in the dark. And to a man
of Parsons’ character that was a satisfaction not to be lightly
considered.




CHAPTER XVI—A MAN BECOMES A BRUTE


During the days that Parsons had passed nursing his resentment,
Carrington had been busy. Despite the bruises that marked his face
(which, by the way, a clever barber had disguised until they were
hardly visible) Carrington appeared in public as though nothing had
happened.

The fight at the courthouse had aroused the big man to the point of
volcanic action. The lust for power that had seized him; the
implacable resolution to rule, to win, to have his own way in all
things; his passionate hatred of Taylor; his determination to destroy
anyone who got in his path—these were the forces that drove him.

Taylor had brought matters to a sudden and unexpected crisis.
Carrington had planned to begin his campaign differently, to insinuate
himself into the political life of Dawes; and he had gone to the
courthouse intending to keep in the background, but Taylor had forced
him into the open.

Therefore, Carrington had no choice, and he instantly accepted
Taylor’s challenge. After reentering the courthouse, following the
departure of Taylor, Carrington had insisted that Judge Littlefield
have Taylor taken into custody on a contempt of court charge.
Littlefield had flatly refused, and the resulting argument had been
what Neil Norton had overheard. But Littlefield had not yielded to
Carrington’s insistence.

“That would be ridiculous, after what has happened,” the judge
declared. “The whole country would be laughing at us. More, you can
see that public sentiment is with Taylor. And he forced me to publicly
admit that you were to blame. I simply won’t do it!”

“All right,” grinned Carrington, darkly; “I’ll find another way to get
him!”

And so for the instant Carrington dismissed Taylor from his thoughts,
devoting his attention to the task of organizing his forces for the
campaign he was to make against the town.

He held many conferences with Danforth and with three of five men who
had been elected to the new city council—that political body having
also been provided under the new charter. Three of the
members—Cartwright, Ellis, and Warden—were Danforth men, cogs of that
secret machine which for more than a year Danforth had been perfecting
at Carrington’s orders.

Some officials were appointed by Mayor Danforth—at Carrington’s
direction; a chief of police, a municipal judge, a town clerk, a
treasurer—and a host of other office-holders inevitable to a system of
government which permits the practice.

Carrington dominated every conference; he made it plain that he was to
rule Dawes—that Danforth and all the others were subject to his
orders.

Only one day was required to perfect Carrington’s organization, and on
Thursday evening, with everything running smoothly, Carrington
appeared in the palm-decorated foyer of the Castle, a smugly
complacent smile on his face. For he had won the first battle in the
war he was to wage. To be sure, he had been worsted in a physical
encounter with Taylor, as the bruises still on his face indicated, but
he intended to repay Taylor for that thrashing—and his lips went into
an ugly pout when his thoughts dwelt upon the man.

He had almost forgotten Parsons; he did not think of the other until
about eight o’clock in the evening, when, with Danforth in the barroom
of the Castle, Danforth mentioned his name. Then Carrington remembered
that he had not seen Parsons since he had throttled the man. He
ordered another drink, not permitting Danforth to see his eyes, which
were glowing with a flame that would have betrayed him.

“This is good-night,” he said to Danforth as he raised his glass.
“I’ve got to see Parsons tonight.”

Yet it was not Parsons who was uppermost in his mind when he left the
Castle, mounted on his horse; the face of Marion Harlan was in the
mental picture he drew as he rode toward the Huggins house, and there
ran in his brain a reckless thought—which had been uttered to Parsons
at the instant before his fingers had closed around the latter’s
throat a few days before:

“I was born a thousand years too late, Parsons! I am a robber baron
brought down to date—modernized. I believe that in me flows the blood
of a pirate, a savage, or an ancient king. I have all the instincts of
a tribal chief whose principles are to rule or ruin! I’ll have no law
out here but my own desires!”

And tonight Carrington’s desires were for the girl who had accompanied
him to Dawes; the girl who had stirred his passions as no woman had
ever stirred them, and who—now that he had seized the town’s
government—was to be as much his vassal as Parsons, Danforth—or any of
them. He grinned as he rode toward the Huggins house—a grin that grew
to a laugh as he rode up the drive toward the house; low, vibrant,
hideous with its threat of unrestrained passion.

The night had been too beautiful for Marion Harlan to remain indoors,
and so, after darkness had swathed the big valley back of the house,
she had slipped out, noting that her uncle had gone again to the chair
on the front porch. She had walked with Parsons along the butte above
the valley, but she wanted to be alone now, to view the beauties
without danger of interruption. Above all, she wanted to think.

For the news that Parsons had communicated to her had affected her
strangely; she felt that her uncle’s revelations of Carrington’s
character amounted to a vindication of her own secret opinion of the
man.

He had been a volcanic wooer, and she had distrusted him all along.
She had never permitted that distrust to appear on the surface,
however, out of respect for her uncle—for she had always thought he
and Carrington were firm friends. She saw now, though, that she had
always suspected Carrington of being just what her uncle’s revelation
had proved him t

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