The island teemed with early sunflowers and hints of goldenrod yet to come. The fine, white, sandy soil deadened the sound of the horses’ hoofs. They seemed to be spinning through space. Under the cottonwoods it grew dusky and still.
At the toll house a dingy buckboard in a state of weird dilapidation, with a team of shaggy buckskin ponies, stood waiting. Jim drew up. Two men were lounging in front of the shanty, chatting to the toll-man.
“Hello, Jim!” called one of them, a tall, slouching fellow with sandy coloring.
“Now, how the devil did you git so familiar with my name?” growled Jim.
“The Three Bars is gettin’ busy these days,” spoke up the second man, with an insolent grin.
“You bet it is,” bragged Jim. “When the off’cers o’ the law git to sleepin’ with hoss thieves and rustlers, and take two weeks to arrest a bunch of ’em, when they know prezactly where they keep theirselves, and have to have special deputies app’inted over ’em five or six times and then let most o’ the bunch slip through their fingers, it’s time for some one to git busy. And when Jesse Black and his gang are so desp’rit they pizen the chief witnesses—”
A gentle pressure on his arm stopped him. He turned inquiringly.
“I wouldn’t say any more,” whispered Louise. “Let’s get on.”
The hint was sufficient, and with the words, “Right you are, Miss Reporter, we’ll be gittin’ on,” Jim paid his toll and spoke to his team.
“Just wait a bit, will you?” spoke up the sandy man.
“What for?”
“We’re not just ready.”
“Well, we are,” shortly.
“We aren’t, and we don’t care to be passed, you know.”
He spoke indifferently. In deference to Louise, Jim waited. The men smoked on carelessly. The toll-man fidgeted.
“You go to hell! The Three Bars ain’t waitin’ on no damned hoss thieves,” said Jim, suddenly.
His nervous team sprang forward. Quick as a flash the sandy man was in the buckboard. He struck the bays a stinging blow with his rawhide, and as they swerved aside he swung into the straight course to the narrow bridge of boats. In another moment the way would be blocked. With a burning oath Jim, keeping to the side of the steep incline till the river mire cut him off, deliberately turned his stanch little team squarely, and crowded them forward against the shaggy buckskins. It was team against team. Louise, clinging tightly to the seat, lips pressed together to keep back any sound, felt a wild, inexplicable thrill of confidence in the strength of the man beside her.
The bays were pitifully, cruelly lashed by the enraged owner of the buckskins, but true as steel to the familiar voice that had guided them so often and so kindly, they gave not nor faltered. There was a snapping of broken wood, a wrench, a giving way, and the runabout sprang over debris of broken wheel and wagon-box to the narrow confines of the pontoon bridge.
“The Three Bars is gettin’ busy!” gibed Jim over his shoulder.
“It’s a sorry day for you and yours,” cried the other, in black and ugly wrath.
“We ain’t afeared. You’re nothin’ but a hoss thief, anyway!” responded Jim, gleefully, as a parting shot.
“Now what do you suppose was their game?” he asked of the girl at his side.
“I don’t know,” answered Louise, thoughtfully. “But I thought it not wise to say too much to them. You are a witness, I believe you said.”
“Then you think they are part o’ the gang?”
“I consider them at least sympathizers, don’t you? They seemed down on the Three Bars.”
In the Indian country at last. Mile after mile of level, barren stretches after the hill region had been left behind. Was there no end to the thirst-inspiring, monotonous, lonely reach of cacti? Prairie dogs, perched in front of their holes, chattered and scolded at them. The sun went down and a refreshing coolness crept over the hard, baked earth. Still, there was nothing but distance anywhere in all the land, and a feeling of desolation swept over the girl.
The air of August was delicious now that night was coming on. There was no wind, but the swift, unflagging pace of the Boss’s matched team made a stiff breeze to play in their faces. It was exhilarating. The listlessness and discouragement of the day were forgotten. Throwing her rain-coat over her shoulders, Louise felt a clumsy but strangely gentle hand helping to draw it closer around her. Someway the action, simple as it was, reminded her of the look in that brakeman’s eyes, when he had asked her if she were homesick. Did this man think she was homesick, too? She was grateful; they were very kind. What a lot of good people there were in the world! Now, Jim Munson did not call her “little white lamb” to himself, the metaphor never entered his mind; but in his big, self-confident heart he did feel a protecting tenderness for her. She was not like any woman he had ever seen, and it was a big, lonesome country for a slip of a girl like her.
The moon came up. Then there were miles of white moonlight and lonely plain. But for some time now there has been a light in front of them. It is as if it must be a will-o’-the-wisp. They never seem to get to it. But at last they are there. The door is wide open. A pleasant odor of bacon and coffee is wafted out to the tired travellers.
“Come right in,” says the cheery voice of Mary. “How tired you must be, Miss Dale. Tie up, Jim, and come in and eat something before you go. Well, you can eat again—two suppers won’t hurt you. I have kept things warm for you. Your train must have been late. Yes, Dad is better, thank you. He’ll be all right in the morning.”
Very early in the morning of the day set for the preliminary hearing of Jesse Black, the young owner of the Three Bars ranch rode over to Velpen. He identified and claimed the animal held over from shipment by Jim’s persuasion. Brown gave possession with a rueful countenance.
“First time Billy Brown ever was taken in,” he said, with great disgust.
Langford met with no interruption to his journey, either going or coming, although that good cowpuncher of his, Jim Munson, had warned him to look sharp to his pistols and mind the bridge. Jim being of a somewhat belligerent turn of mind, his boss had not taken the words with much seriousness. As for the fracas at the pontoon, cowmen are touchy when it comes to a question of precedence, and it might well be that the inflammable Jim had brought the sudden storm down on his head. Paul Langford rode through the sweet early summer air without let or hindrance and looking for none. He was jubilant. Now was Williston’s story verified. The county attorney, Richard Gordon, had considered Williston’s story, coupled with his reputation for strict honesty, strong and sufficient enough to bind Jesse Black over to appear at the next regular term of the circuit court. Under ordinary circumstances, the State really had an excellent chance of binding over; but it had to deal with Jesse Black, and Jesse Black had flourished for many years west of the river with an unsavory character, but with an almost awesome reputation for the phenomenal facility with which he slipped out of the net in which the law—in the person of its unpopular exponent, Richard Gordon—was so indefatigably endeavoring to enmesh him. The State was prepared for a hard fight. But now—here was the very steer Williston saw on the island with its Three Bars brand under Black’s surveillance. Williston would identify it as the same. He, Langford, would swear to his own animal. The defence would not know he had regained possession and would not have time to readjust its evidence. It would fall down and hurt itself for the higher court, and Dick Gordon would know how to use any inadvertencies against it—when the time came. No wonder Langford was light-hearted. In all his arrogant and unhampered career, he had never before received such an affront to his pride and his sense of what was due to one of the biggest outfits that ranged cattle west of the river. Woe to him who had dared tamper with the concerns of Paul Langford of the Three Bars.
Williston drove in from the Lazy S in ample time for the mid-day dinner at the hotel—the hearing was set for two o’clock—but his little party contented itself with a luncheon prepared at home, and packed neatly and appetizingly in a tin bucket. It was not likely there would be a repetition of bad meat. It would be poor policy. Still, one could not be sure, and it was most important that Williston ate no bad meat that day.
Gordon met them in the hot, stuffy, little parlor of the hotel.
“It was good of you to come,” he said to Louise, with grave sincerity.
“I didn’t want to,” confessed Louise, honestly. “I’m afraid it is too big and lonesome for me. I am sure I should have gone back to Velpen last night to catch the early train had it not been for Mary. She is so—good.”
“The worst is over now that you have conquered your first impulse to fly,” he said.
“I cried, though. I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t help it. You see I never was so far from home before.”
He was an absorbed, hard-working lawyer. Years of contact with the plain, hard realities of rough living in a new country had dried up, somewhat, his stream of sentiment. Maybe the source was only blocked with debris, but certainly the stream was running dry. He could not help thinking that a girl who cries because she is far from home had much better stay at home and leave the grave things which are men’s work to men. But he was a gentleman and a kindly one, so he answered, quietly, “I trust you will like us better when you know us better,” and, after a few more commonplaces, went his way.
“There’s a man,” said Louise, thoughtfully, on the way to McAllister’s office “I like him, Mary.”
“And yet there are men in this county who would kill him if they dared.”
“Mary! what do you mean? Are there then so many cut-throats in this awful country?”
“I think there are many desperate men among the rustlers who would not hesitate to kill either Paul Langford or Richard Gordon since these prosecutions have begun. There are also many good people who think Mr. Gordon is just stirring up trouble and putting the county to expense when he can have no hope of conviction. They say that his failures encourage the rustlers more than an inactive policy would.”
“People who argue like that are either tainted with dishonesty themselves or they are foolish, one of the two,” said Louise, with conviction.
“Mr. Gordon has one stanch supporter, anyway,” said Mary, smiling. “Maybe I had better tell him. Precious little encouragement or sympathy he gets, poor fellow.”
“Please do not,” replied Louise, quickly. “I wonder if my friend, Mr. Jim Munson, has managed to escape ‘battle, murder, and sudden death,’ including death by poison, and is on hand with his testimony.”
As they approached the office, the crowd of men around the doorway drew aside to let them pass.
“Our chances of worming ourselves through that jam seem pretty slim to me,” whispered Mary, glancing into the already overcrowded room.
“Let me make a way for you,” said Paul Langford, as he separated himself from the group of men standing in front, and came up to them.
“I have watered my horse,” he said, flashing a merry smile at Mary as he began shoving his big shoulders through the press, closely followed by the two young women.
It was a strange assembly through which they pressed; ranchmen and cowboys, most of them, just in from ranch and range, hot and dusty from long riding, perspiring freely, redolent of strong tobacco and the peculiar smell that betokens recent and intimate companionship with that part and parcel of the plains, the horse. The room was indeed hot and close and reeking with bad odors. There were also present a large delegation of cattle dealers and saloon men from Velpen, and some few Indians from Rosebud Agency, whose curiosity was insatiable where the courts were concerned, far from picturesque in their ill-fitting, nondescript cowboy garments.
Yet they were kindly, most of the men gathered there. Though at first they refused, with stolid resentment, to be thus thrust aside by the breezy and aggressive owner of the Three Bars, planting their feet the more firmly on the rough, uneven floor, and serenely oblivious to any right of way so arrogantly demanded by the big shoulders, yet, when they perceived for whom the way was being made, most of them stepped hastily aside with muttered and abashed apologies. Here and there, however, though all made way, there would be no red-faced or stammering apology. Sometimes the little party was followed by insolent eyes, sometimes by malignant ones. Had Mary Williston spoken truly when she said the will for bloodshed was not lacking in the county?
But if there was aught of hatred or enmity in the heavy air of the improvised court-room for others besides the high-minded young counsel for law and order, Mary Williston seemed serenely unconscious of it. She held her head proudly. Most of these men she knew. She had done a man’s work among them for two years and more. In her man’s work of riding the ranges she had had good fellowship with many of them. After to-day much of this must end. Much blame would accrue to her father for this day’s work, among friends as well as enemies, for the fear of the law-defiers was an omnipresent fear with the small owner, stalking abroad by day and by night. But Mary was glad and there was a new dignity about her that became her well, and that grew out of this great call to rally to the things that count.
At the far end of the room they found the justice of the peace enthroned behind a long table. His Honor, Mr. James R. McAllister, more commonly known as Jimmie Mac, was a ranchman on a small scale. He was ignorant, but of an overweening conceit. He had been a justice of the peace for several years, and labored under the mistaken impression that he knew some law; but Gordon, on short acquaintance, had dubbed him “Old Necessity” in despairing irony, after a certain high light of early territorial days who “knew no law.” Instead of deciding the facts in the cases brought before him from the point of view of an ordinary man of common sense, McAllister went on the theory that each case was fraught with legal questions upon which the result of the case hung; and he had a way of placing himself in the most ridiculous lights by arguing long and arduously with skilled attorneys upon questions of law. He made the mistake of always trying to give a reason for his rulings. His rulings, sometimes, were correct, but one would find it hard to say the same of his reasons for them.
Louise’s little table was drawn closely before the window nearest the court. She owed this thoughtfulness to Gordon, who, nevertheless, was not in complete sympathy with her, because she had cried. The table was on the sunny side, but there was a breeze out of the west and it played refreshingly over her face, and blew short strands of her fair hair there also. To Gordon, wrapped up as he was in graver matters, her sweet femininity began to insist on a place in his mental as well as his physical vision. She was exquisitely neat and trim in her white shirt-waist with its low linen collar and dark blue ribbon tie of the same shade as her walking skirt, and the smart little milliner’s bow on her French sailor hat, though it is to be doubted if Gordon observed the harmony. She seemed strangely out of place in this room, so bare of comfort, so stuffy and stenchy and smoke-filled; yet, after all, she seemed perfectly at home here. The man in Gordon awoke, and he was glad she had not stayed at home or gone away because she cried.
Yes, Jim was there—and swaggering. It was impossible for Jim not to swagger a little on any occasion. The impulse to swagger had been born in him. It had been carefully nurtured from the date of his first connection with the Three Bars. He bestowed an amiable grin of recognition on the new reporter from the far side of the room, which was not very far.
The prisoner was brought in. His was a familiar personality. He was known to most men west of the river—if not by personal acquaintance, certainly by hearsay. Many believed him to be the animating mind of a notorious gang of horse thieves and cattle rustlers that had been operating west of the river for several years. Lax laws were their nourishment. They polluted the whole. It was a deadly taint to fasten itself on men’s relations. Out of it grew fear, bribery, official rottenness, perjury. There was an impudent half smile on his lips. He was a tall, lean, slouching-shouldered fellow. To-day, his jaws were dark with beard bristles of several days’ standing. He bore himself with an easy, indifferent manner, and chewed tobacco enjoyingly.
Louise, glancing casually around at the mass of interested, sunbrowned faces, suddenly gave a little start of surprise. Not far in front of Jimmie Mac’s table stood the man of the sandy coloring who had so insolently disputed their right of way the day before. His hard, light eyes, malignant, sinister, significant, were fixed upon the prisoner as he slouched forward to hear his arraignment. The man in custody yawned occasionally. He was bored. His whole body had a lazy droop. So far as Louise could make out he gave no sign of recognition of the man of sandy coloring.
Then came the first great surprise of this affair of many surprises. Jesse Black waived examination. It came like a thunderbolt to the prosecution. It was not Black’s way of doing business, and it was generally believed that, as Munson had so forcibly though inelegantly expressed it to Billy Brown, “He would fight like hell” to keep out of the circuit courts. He would kill this incipient Nemesis in the bud. What, then, had changed him? The county attorney had rather looked for a hard-fought defence—a shifting of the burden of responsibility for the misbranding to another, who would, of course, be off somewhere on a business trip, to be absent an indefinite length of time; or it might be he would try to make good a trumped-up story that he had but lately purchased the animal from some Indian cattle-owner from up country who claimed to have a bill-of-sale from Langford. He would not have been taken aback had Black calmly produced a bill-of-sale.
There were lines about the young attorney’s mouth, crow’s feet diverging from his eyes; his forehead was creased, too. He was a tall man, slight of build, with drooping shoulders. One of the noticeable things about him was his hands. They were beautiful—the long, slim, white kind that attract attention, not so much, perhaps, on account of their graceful lines, as because they are so seldom still. They belong preëminently to a nervous temperament. Gordon had trained himself to immobility of expression under strain, but his hands he had not been able so to discipline. They were always at something, fingering the papers on his desk, ruffling his hair, or noisily drumming. Now he folded them as if to coerce them into quiet. He had handsome eyes, also, too keen, maybe, for everyday living; they would be irresistible if they caressed.
The absoluteness of the surprise flushed his clean-shaven face a little, although his grave immobility of expression underwent not a flicker. It was a surprise, but it was a good surprise. Jesse Black was bound over under good and sufficient bond to appear at the next regular term of the circuit court in December. That much accomplished, now he could buckle down for the big fight. How often had he been shipwrecked in the shifting sands of the really remarkable decisions of “Old Necessity” and his kind. This time, as by a miracle, he had escaped sands and shoals and sunken rocks, and rode in deep water.
A wave of enlightenment swept over Jim Munson.
“Boss,” he whispered, “that gal reporter’s a hummer.”
“How so?” whispered Langford, amused. He proceeded to take an interested, if hasty, inventory of her charms. “What a petite little personage, to be sure! Almost too colorless, though. Why, Jim, she can’t hold a tallow candle to Williston’s girl.”
“Who said she could?” demanded Jim, with a fine scorn and much relieved to find the Boss so unappreciative. Eden might not be lost to them after all. Strict justice made him add: “But she’s a wise one. Spotted them blamed meddlin’ hoss thieves right from the word go. Yep. That’s a fac’.”
“What ‘blamed meddlin’ hoss thieves,’ Jim? You are on intimate terms with so many gentlemen of that stripe,—at least your language so leads us to presume,—that I can’t keep up with the procession.”
“At the bridge yistidy. I told you ’bout it. Saw ’em first at the Bon Amy—but they must a trailed me to the stockyards. She spotted ’em right away. She’s a cute ’n. Made me shet my mouth when I was a blabbin’ too much, jest before the fun began. Oh, she’s a cute ’n!”
“Who were they, Jim?”
“One of ’em, I’m a thinkin’, was Jake Sanderson, a red-headed devil who came up here from hell, I reckon, or Wyoming, one of the two. Nobody knows his biz. But he’ll look like a stepped-on potato bug ’gainst I git through with him. Didn’t git on to t’ other feller. Will next time, you bet!”
“But what makes you think they are mixed up in this affair?”
“They had their eyes on me to see what I was a doin’ in Velpen. And I was a doin’ things, too.”
Langford gave a long, low whistle of comprehension. That would explain the unexpected waiving of examination. Jesse Black knew the steer had been recovered and saw the futility of fighting against his being bound over.
“Now, ain’t she a hummer?” insisted Jim, admiringly, but added slightingly, “Homely, though, as all git-out. Mouse-hair. Plumb homely.”
“On the contrary, I think she is plumb pretty,” retorted Langford, a laugh in his blue eyes. Jim fairly gasped with chagrin.
Unconcerned, grinning, Black slouched to the door and out. Once straighten out that lazy-looking body and you would have a big man in Jesse Black. Yes, a big one and a quick one, too, maybe. The crowd made way for him unconsciously. No one jostled him. He was a marked man from that day. His lawyer, Small, leaned back in his chair, radiating waves of self-satisfaction as though he had but just gained a disputed point. It was a manner he affected when not on the floor in a frenzy of words and muscular action.
Jim Munson contrived to pass close by Jake Sanderson.
“So you followed me to find out about Mag, did you? Heap o’ good it did you! We knew you knew,” he bragged, insultingly.
The man’s face went white with wrath.
“Damn you!” he cried. His hand dropped to his belt.
The two glared at each other like fighting cocks. Men crowded around, suddenly aware that a quarrel was on.
“The Three Bars’s a gittin’ busy!” jeered Jim.
“Come, Jim, I want you.” It was Gordon’s quiet voice. He laid a restraining hand on Munson’s over-zealous arm.
“Dick Gordon, this ain’t your put-in,” snarled Sanderson. “Git out the way!” He shoved him roughly aside. “Now, snappin’ turtle,” to Jim, “the Three Bars’d better git busy!”
A feint at a blow, a clever little twist of the feet, and Munson sprawled on the floor, men pressing back to give him the full force of the fall. They believed in fair play. But Jim, uncowed, was up with the nimbleness of a monkey.
“Hit away!” he cried, tauntingly. “I know ’nough to swear out a warrant ’gainst you! ’T won’t be so lonesome for Jesse now breakin’ stones over to Sioux Falls.”
“Jim!” It was Gordon’s quiet, authoritative voice once more. “I told you I wanted you.” He threw his arm over the belligerent’s shoulder.
“Comin’, Dick. I didn’t mean to blab so much,” Jim answered, contritely.
They moved away. Sanderson followed them up.
“Dick Gordon,” he said with cool deliberateness, “you’re too damned anxious to stick your nose into other people’s affairs. Learn your lesson, will you? My favorite stunt is to teach meddlers how to mind their own business,—this way.”
It was not a fair blow. Gordon doubled up with the force of the punch in his stomach. In a moment all was confusion. Men drew their pistols. It looked as if there was to be a free-for-all fight.
Langford sprang to his friend’s aid, using his fists with plentiful freedom in his haste to get to him.
“Never mind me,” whispered Gordon. He was leaning heavily on Jim’s shoulder. His face was pale, but he smiled reassuringly. There was something very sweet about his mouth when he smiled. “Never mind me,” he repeated. “Get the girls out of this—quick, Paul.”
Mary and Louise had sought refuge behind the big table.
“Quick, the back door!” cried Langford, leading the way; and as the three passed out, he closed the door behind them, saying, “You are all right now. Run to the hotel. I must see how Dick is coming on.”
“Do you think he is badly hurt?” asked Louise. “Can’t we help?”
“I think you had best get out of this as quickly as you can. I don’t believe he is knocked out, by any means, but I want to be on hand for any future events which may be called. Just fly now, both of you.”
The unfair blow in the stomach had given the sympathy of most of the bystanders, for the time being at least, to Gordon. Men forgot, momentarily, their grudge against him. Understanding from the black looks that he was not in touch with the crowd, Sanderson laughed—a short snort of contempt—and slipped out of the door. Unable to resist the impulse, Jim bounded out after his enemy.
When Paul hastened around to the front of the building, the crowd was nearly all in the street. The tension was relaxed. A dazed expression prevailed—brought to life by the suddenness with which the affair had developed to such interesting proportions and the quickness with which it had flattened out to nothing. For Sanderson had disappeared, completely, mysteriously, and in all the level landscape, there was no trace of him nor sign.
“See a balloon, Jim?” asked Langford, slapping him on the shoulder with the glimmer of a smile. “Well, your red-headed friend won’t be down in a parachute—yet. Are you all right, Dick, old man?”
“Yes. Where are the girls?”
“They are all right. I took them through the back door and sent them to the hotel.”
“You kin bet on the Boss every time when it comes to petticoats,” said Jim, disconsolately.
“Why, Jim, what’s up?” asked Langford, in amused surprise.
But Jim only turned and walked away with his head in the air. The serpent was leering at him.
“I too am going to Wind City,” said a pleasant voice at her side. “You will let me help you with your things, will you not?”
The slender girl standing before the ticket window, stuffing change into her coin purse, turned quickly.
“Why, Mr. Gordon,” she said, holding out a small hand with frank pleasure. “How very nice! Thank you, will you take my rain-coat? It has been such a bother. I would bring it right in the face of Uncle Hammond’s objections. He said it never rained out this way. But I surely have suffered a plenty for my waywardness. Don’t you think so?”
“It behooves a tenderfoot like you to sit and diligently learn of such experienced and toughened old-timers as we are, rather than flaunt your untried ideas in our faces,” responded Gordon, with a smile that transformed the keen gray eyes of this man of much labor, much lofty ambition, and much sorrow, so that they seemed for the moment strangely young, laughing, untroubled; as clear of taint of evil knowledge as the source of a stream leaping joyously into the sunlight from some mountain solitude. It was a revelation to Louise.
“I will try to be a good and diligent seeker after knowledge of this strange land of yours,” she answered, with a little laugh half of embarrassment, half of enjoyment of this play of nonsense, and leading the way to her suit-case and Mary outside. “When I make mistakes, will you tell me about them? Down East, you know, our feet travel in the ancient, prescribed circles of our forefathers, and they are apt to go somewhat uncertainly if thrust into new paths.”
And this laughing, clever girl had cried with homesickness! Well, no wonder. The worst of it was, she could never hope to be acclimated. She was not—their kind. Sooner or later she must go back to God’s country.
To her surprise, Gordon, though he laughed softly for a moment, answered rather gravely.
“If my somewhat niggardly fate should grant me that good fortune, that I may do something for you, I ask that you be not afraid to trust to my help. It would not be half-hearted—I assure you.”
She looked up at him gratefully. His shoulders, slightly stooped, betokening the grind at college and the burden-bearing in later years, instead of suggesting any inherent weakness in the man, rather inspired her with an intuitive faith in their quiet, unswerving, utter trustworthiness.
“Thank you,” she said, simply. “I am so glad they did not hurt you much that day in the court-room. We worried—Mary and I.”
“Thank you. There was not the least danger. They were merely venting their spite on me. They would not have dared more.”
There is always a crowd at the Velpen station for outgoing or incoming trains. This meeting of trains is one of the dissipations of its people—and an eminently respectable dissipation. It was early—the eastbound leaves at something past eight—yet there were many people on the platform who did not seem to be going anywhere. They were after such stray worms as always fell to the lot of the proverbial early bird. The particular worm in question that morning was the new girl court reporter, homeward bound. Many were making the excuse of mailing belated letters. Mary was standing guard over the suit-case and umbrella near the last car. She seemed strangely alone and aloof standing there, the gravity of the silent prairie a palpable atmosphere about her.
“There’s my brakeman,” said Louise, when she and Gordon had found a seat near the rear. Mary had gone and a brakeman had swung onto the last car as it glided past the platform, and came down the aisle with a grin of recognition for his “little white lamb.”
“How nice it all seems, just as if I had been gone months instead of days and was coming home again. It would be funny if I should be homesick for the range when I get to Wind City, wouldn’t it?”
“Let us pray assiduously that it may be so,” answered Gordon, with one of his rare smiles. He busied himself a moment in stowing away her belongings to the best advantage. “It gets in one’s blood,—how or when, one never knows.”
They rode in silence for a while.
“Tell me about your big fight,” said Louise, presently. The road-bed was fairly good, and they were spinning along on a down grade. He must needs bend closer to hear her.
She was good to look at, fair and sweet, and it had been weary years since women had come close to Gordon’s life. In the old college days, before this hard, disappointing, unequal fight against the dominant forces of greed, against tolerance of might overcoming right, had begun to sap his vitality, he had gone too deeply into his studies to have much time left for the gayeties and gallantries of the social side in university life. He had not been popular with women. They did not know him. Yet, though dubbed a “dig” by his fellow-collegians, the men liked him. They liked him for his trustworthiness, admired him for his rugged honesty, desired his friendship for the inspiration of his high ideals.
The memory of these friendships with men had been an ever-present source of strength and comfort to him in these later years of his busy life. Yet of late he had felt himself growing calloused and tired. The enthusiasm of his younger manhood was falling from him somewhat, and he had been but six years out of the university. But it was all so hopeless, so bitterly futile, this moral fight of one man to stay the mind-bewildering and heart-sickening ceaseless round of wheels of open crime and official chicanery. Was the river bridged? And what of the straw? His name was a joke in the cattle country, a joke to horse thief, a joke to sheriff. Its synonym was impotency among the law-abiders who were yet political cowards. What was the use? What could a man do—one man, when a fair jury was a dream, when ballots were so folded that the clerk, drawing, might know which to select in order to obtain a jury that would stand pat with the cattle rustlers? Much brain and brawn had been thrown away in the unequal struggle. Let it pass. Was there any further use?
Then a woman came to him in his dark hour. His was a stubborn and fighting blood, a blood that would never cry “enough” till it ceased to flow. Yet what a comforting thing it was that this woman, Louise, should be beside him, this woman who knew and who understood. For when she lifted those tender gray eyes and asked him of his big fight, he knew she understood. There was no need of explanation, of apology, for all the failure of all these years. A warm gratitude swept across his heart. And she was so neat and sweet and fair, unspoiled by constant contact with, and intimate knowledge of, the life of the under world; rather was she touched to a wonderful sympathy of understanding. It was good to know such a woman; it would be better to be a friend of such a woman; it would be best of all to love such a woman—if one dared.
“What shall I talk about, Miss Dale? It is all very prosaic and uninteresting, I’m afraid; shockingly primitive, glaringly new.”
“I breakfasted with a stanch friend of yours this morning,” answered Louise, somewhat irrelevantly. She had a feeling—a woman’s feeling—that this earnest, hard-working, reserved man would never blurt out things about himself with the bland self-centredness of most men. She must use all her woman’s wit to draw him out. She did not know yet that he was starved for sympathy—for understanding. She could not know yet that two affinities had drifted through space—near together. A feathery zephyr, blowing where it listed, might widen the space between to an infinity of distance so that they might never know how nearly they had once met; or it might, as its whim dictated, blow them together so that for weal or for woe they would know each the other.
“Mrs. Higgins, at the Bon Ami,” she continued, smiling. “I was so hungry when we got to Velpen, though I had eaten a tremendous breakfast at the Lazy S. But five o’clock is an unholy hour at which to eat one’s breakfast, isn’t it, and I just couldn’t help getting hungry all over again. So I persuaded Mary to stop for another cup of coffee. It is ridiculous the way I eat in your country.”
“It is a good country,” he said, soberly.
“It must be—if you can say so.”
“Because I have failed, shall I cry out that law cannot be enforced in Kemah County? Sometimes—may it be soon—there will come a man big enough to make the law triumphant. He will not be I.”
He was still smarting from his many set-backs. He had worked hard and had accomplished nothing. At the last term of court, though many cases were tried, he had not secured one conviction.
“We shall see,” said Louise, softly. Her look, straight into his eyes, was a glint of sunlight in dark places. Then she laughed.
“Mrs. Higgins said to me: ‘Jimmie Mac hain’t got the sense he was born with. His little, dried-up brain ’d rattle ’round in a mustard seed and he’s gettin’ shet o’ that little so fast it makes my head swim.’ She was telling about times when he hadn’t acted just fair to you. I am glad—from all I hear—that this was taken out of his hands.”
“I can count my friends, the real ones, on one hand, I’m afraid,” said Gordon, with a good-humored smile; “and Mrs. Higgins surely is the thumb.”
“I am glad you smiled,” said Louise. “That would have sounded so bitter if you had not.”
“I couldn’t help smiling. You—you have such a way, Miss Dale.”
It was blunt but it rang true.
“It is true, though, about my friends. If I could convict—Jesse Black, for instance,—a million friends would call me blessed. But I can’t do it alone. They will not do it; they will not help me do it; they despise me because I can’t do it, and swear at me because I try to do it—and there you have the whole situation in a nutshell, Miss Dale.”
The sun struck across her face. He reached over and lowered the blind.
“Thank you. But it is ‘’vantage in’ now, is it not? You will get justice before Uncle Hammond.”
Unconsciously his shoulders straightened.
“Yes, Miss Dale, it is ‘’vantage in.’ One of two things will come to pass. I shall send Jesse Black over or—” he paused. His eyes, unseeing, were fixed on the gliding landscape as it appeared in rectangular spots through the window in front of them.
“Yes. Or—” prompted Louise, softly.
“Never mind. It is of no consequence,” he said, abruptly. “No fear of Judge Dale. Juries are my Waterloo.”
“Is it, then, such a nest of cowards?” cried Louise, intense scorn in her clear voice.
“Yes,” deliberately. “Men are afraid of retaliation—those who are not actually blood-guilty, as you might say. And who can say who is and who is not? But he will be sent over this time. Paul Langford is on his trail. Give me two men like Langford and that anachronism—an honest man west of the river—Williston, and you can have the rest, sheriff and all.”
“Mr. Williston—he has been unfortunate, has he not? He is such a gentleman, and a scholar, surely.”
“Surely. He is one of the finest fellows I know. A man of the most sensitive honor. If such a thing can be, I should say he is too honest, for his own good. A man can be, you know. There is nothing in the world that cannot be overdone.”
She looked at him earnestly. His eyes did not shift. She was satisfied.
“Your work belies your words,” she said, quietly.
Dust and cinders drifted in between the slats of the closed blind. Putting her handkerchief to her lips, Louise looked at the dark streaks on it with reproach.
“Your South Dakota dirt is so—black,” she said, whimsically.
“Better black than yellow,” he retorted. “It looks cleaner, now, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe you think my home a fit dwelling place for John Chinaman,” pouted Louise.
“Yes—if that will persuade you that South Dakota is infinitely better. Are you open to conviction?”
“Never! I should die if I had to stay here.”
“You will be going back—soon?”
“Some day, sure! Soon? Maybe. Oh, I wish I could. That part of me which is like Uncle Hammond says, ‘Stay.’ But that other part of me which is like the rest of us, says, ‘What’s the use? Go back to your kind. You’re happier there. Why should you want to be different? What does it all amount to?’ I am afraid I shall be weak enough and foolish enough to go back and—stay.”
There was a stir in the forward part of the car. A man, hitherto sitting quietly by the side of an alert wiry little fellow who sat next the aisle, had attempted to bolt the car by springing over the empty seat in front of him and making a dash for the door. It was daring, but in vain. His companion, as agile as he, had seized him and forced him again into his place before the rest of the passengers fully understood that the attempt had really been made.
“Is he crazy? Are they taking him to Yankton?” asked Louise, the pretty color all gone from her face. “Did he think to jump off the train?”
“That’s John Yellow Wolf, a young half-breed. He’s wanted up in the Hills for cattle-rustling—United States Court case. That’s Johnson with him, Deputy United States Marshal.”
“Poor fellow,” said Louise, pityingly.
“Don’t waste your sympathy on such as he. They are degenerates—many of these half-breeds. They will swear to anything. They inherit all the evils of the two races. Good never mixes. Yellow Wolf would swear himself into everlasting torment for a pint of whiskey. You see my cause of complaint? But never think, Miss Dale, that these poor chaps of half-breeds, who are hardly responsible, are the only ones who are willing to swear to damnable lies.” There was a tang of bitterness in his voice. “Perjury, Miss Dale, perjury through fear or bribery or self-interest, God knows what, it is there I must break, I suppose, until the day of judgment, unless—I run away.”
Louise, through all the working of his smart and sting, felt the quiet reserve strength of this man beside her, and, with a quick rush of longing to do her part, her woman’s part of comforting and healing, she put her hand, small, ungloved, on his rough coat sleeve.
“Is that what you meant a while ago? But you don’t mean it, do you? It is bitter and you do not mean it. Tell me that you do not mean it, Mr. Gordon, please,” she said, impulsively.
Smothering a wild impulse to keep the hand where it had lain such a brief, palpitating while, Gordon remained silent. God only knows what human longing he crushed down, what intense discouragement, what sick desire to lay down his thankless task and flee to the uttermost parts of the world to be away from the crying need he yet could not still. Then he answered simply, “I did not mean it, Miss Dale.”
And then there did not seem to be anything to say between them for a long while. The half-breed had settled down with stolid indifference. People had resumed their newspapers and magazines and day dreams after the fleeting excitement. It was very warm. Louise tried to create a little breeze by flicking her somewhat begrimed handkerchief in front of her face. Gordon took a newspaper from his pocket, folded it and fanned her gently. He was not used to the little graces of life, perhaps, but he did this well. An honest man and a kindly never goes far wrong in any direction.
“You must not think, Miss Dale,” he said, seriously, “that it is all bad up here. I am only selfish. I have been harping on my own little corner of wickedness all the while. It is a good land. It will be better before long.”
“When?” asked Louise.
“When we convict Jesse Black and when our Indian neighbors get over their mania for divorce,” he answered, laughing softly.
Louise laughed merrily and so the journey ended as it had begun, with a laugh and a jest.
In the Judge’s runabout, Louise held out her hand.
“I’m almost homesick,” she cried, smiling.
It was late. The August night was cool and sweet after a weary day of intense heat. The door was thrown wide open. It was good to feel the night air creeping into the stifling room. There was no light within; and without, nothing but the brilliant stars in the quiet, brooding sky. Williston was sitting just within the doorway. Mary, her hands clasped idly around her knees, sat on the doorstep, thoughtfully staring out into the still darkness. There was a stir.
“Bedtime, little girl,” said Williston.
“Just a minute more, daddy. Must we have a light? Think how the mosquitoes will swarm. Let’s go to bed in the dark.”
“We will shut the door and next Summer, little girl, you shall have your screens. I promise you that, always providing, of course, Jesse Black leaves us alone.”
Had it not been so dark, Mary could have seen the wistful smile on the thin, scholarly face. But though she could not see it, she knew it was there. There had been fairer hopes and more generous promises in the past few years. They had all gone the dreary way of impotent striving, of bitter disappointment. There was little need of light for Mary to read her father’s thoughts.
“Sure, daddy,” she answered, cheerily. “And I’ll see that you don’t forget. As for Jesse Black, he wouldn’t dare with the Three Bars on his trail. Well, if you must have a light, you must,” rising and stretching her firm-fleshed young arms far over her head. “You can’t forget you were born in civilization, can you, daddy? I am sure I could be your man in the dark, if you’d let me, and I always turn your nightshirt right side out before hanging it on your bedpost, and your sheet and spread are turned down, and water right at hand. You funny, funny little father, who can’t go to bed in the dark.” She was rummaging around a shelf in search of matches. “Now, I have forgotten long since that I wasn’t born on the plains. It wouldn’t hurt me if I had misplaced my nightdress. I’ve done it,” with a gay little laugh. He must be cheered up at all costs, this buffeted and disappointed but fine-minded, high-strung, and lovable father of hers. “And I haven’t taken my hair down nights since—oh, since months ago, till—oh, well—so you see it’s easy enough for me to go to bed in the dark.”
Her hand touched the match box at last. A light flared out.
“Shut the door quick, dad,” she said, lighting the lamp on the table. “The skeeters’ll eat us alive.”
Williston stepped to the door. Just a moment he stood there in the doorway, the light streaming out into the night, tall, thoughtful, no weakling in spite of many failures and many mistakes. A fair mark he made, outlined against the brightly lighted room. It was quiet. Not even a coyote shrilled. And while he stood there looking up at the calm stars, a sudden sharp report rang out and the sacred peace of God, written in the serenity of still summer nights, was desecrated. Hissing and ominous, the bullet sang past Williston’s head, perilously near, and lodged in the opposite wall. At that moment, the light was blown out. A great presence of mind had come to Mary in the time of imminent danger.
“Good, my dear!” cried Williston, in low tones. Quick as a flash, the door was slammed shut and bolted just as a second shot fell foul of it.
“Oh, my father!” cried Mary, groping her way to his side.
“Hush, my dear! They missed me clean. Don’t lose your nerve, Mary. They won’t find it so easy after all.”
There had been no third shot. A profound silence followed the second report. There was no sound of horse or man. Whence, then, the shots? One man, maybe, creeping up like some foul beast of prey to strike in the dark. Was he still lurking near, abiding another opportunity?
It took but a moment for Williston to have the rifles cocked and ready. Mary took her own from him with a hand that trembled ever so slightly.
“What will you do, father?” she asked, holding her rifle lovingly and thanking God in a swift, unformed thought for every rattlesnake or other noxious creature whose life she had put out while doing her man’s work of riding the range,—work which had given her not only a man’s courage but a man’s skill as well.
“Take the back window, girl,” he answered, briefly. “I’ll take the front. Stand to the side. Get used to the starlight and shoot every shadow you see, especially if it moves. Keep track of your shots, don’t waste an effort and don’t let anything creep up on you. They mustn’t get near enough to fire the house.”
His voice was sharp and incisive. The drifting habit had fallen from him, and he was his own master again.
Several heavy minutes dragged away without movement, without sound from without. The ticking of the clock pressed on strained ears like ghastly bell-tolling. Their eyes became accustomed to the darkness and, by the dim starlight, they were able to distinguish the outlines of the cattle-sheds, still, empty, black. Nothing moved out there.
“I think they’re frightened off,” said Mary at last, breathing more freely. “They were probably just one, or they’d not have left. He knew he missed you, or he would not have fired again. Do you think it was Jesse?”
“Jesse would not have missed,” he said, grimly.
At that moment, a new sound broke the stillness, the whinny of a horse. Reinforcement had approached within the shadow of the cattle-sheds. Something moved out there at last.
“Daddy!” called Mary, in a choked whisper. “Come here—they are down at the sheds.”
Williston stepped to the back window quickly.
“Change places,” he said, briefly.
“Daddy!”
“Yes?”
“Keep up your nerve,” she breathed between great heart-pumps.
“Surely! Do you the same, little comrade, and shoot to kill.”
There was a savage note in his last words. For himself, it did not matter so much, but Mary—he pinned no false faith in any thought of possible chivalrous intent on the part of the raiders to exempt his daughter from the grim fate that awaited him. He had to deal with a desperate man; there would be no clemency in this desperate man’s retaliation.
To his quickened hearing came the sound of stealthy creeping. Something moved directly in front of him, but some distance away. “Shoot every shadow you see, especially if it moves,” were the fighting orders, and his was the third shot of that night.
“Hell! I’ve got it in the leg!” cried a rough voice full of intense anger and pain, and there were sounds of a precipitate retreat.
Out under protection of the long row of low-built sheds, other orders were being tersely given and silently received.
“Now, men, I’ll shoot the first man of you who blubbers when he’s hit. D’ye hear? There have been breaks enough in this affair already. I don’t intend for that petticoat man and his pulin’ petticoat kid in there to get any satisfaction out o’ this at all. Hear me?”
There was no response. None was needed.
Some shots found harmless lodgment in the outer walls of the shanty. They were the result of an unavailing attempt to pick the window whence Williston’s shot had come. Mary could not keep back a little womanish gasp of nervous dread.
“Grip your nerve, Mary,” said her father. “That’s nothing—shooting from down there. Just lie low and they can do nothing. Only watch, child, watch! They must not creep up on us. Oh, for a moon!”
She did grip her nerve, and her hand ceased its trembling. In the darkness, her eyes were big and solemn. Sometime, to-morrow, the reaction would come, but to-night—
“Yes, father, keep up your own nerve,” she said, in a brave little voice that made the man catch his breath in a sob.
Again the heavy minutes dragged away. At each of the two windows crouched a tense figure, brain alert, eyes in iron control. It was a frightful strain, this waiting game. Could one be sure nothing had escaped one’s vigilance? Starlight was deceptive, and one’s eyes must needs shift to keep the mastery over their little horizon. It might well be that some one of those ghostly and hidden sentinels patrolling the lonely homestead had wormed himself past staring eyeballs, crawling, crawling, crawling; it might well be that at any moment a sudden light flaring up from some corner would tell the tale of the end.
Now and then could be heard the soft thud of a hoof as some one rode to execute an order. Occasionally, something moved out by the sheds. Such movement, if discernible from the house, was sure to be followed on the instant by a quick sharp remonstrance from Williston’s rifle. How long could it last? Would his nerve wear away with the night? Could he keep his will dominant? If so, he must drag his mind resolutely away from that nerve-racking, still, and unseen creeping, creeping, creeping, nearer and nearer. How the stillness weighed upon him, and still his mind dwelt upon that sinuous, flat-bellied creeping, crawling, worming! God, it was awful! He fought it desperately. He knew he was lost if he could not stop thinking about it. The sweat came out in big beads on his forehead, on his body; he prickled with the heat of the effort. Then it left him—the awful horror—left him curiously cold, but steady of nerve and with a will of iron and eyes, cat’s eyes, for their seeing in the dark. Now that he was calm once more, he let himself weigh the chances of succor. They were pitifully remote. The Lazy S was situated in a lonely stretch of prairie land far from any direct trail. True, it lay between Kemah, the county seat, and the Three Bars ranch, but it was a good half mile from the straight route. Even so, it was a late hour for any one to be passing by. It was not a travelled trail except for the boys of the Three Bars, and they were known to be great home-stayers and little given to spreeing. As for the rustlers, if rustlers they were, they had no fear of interruption by the officers of the law, who held their places by virtue of the insolent and arbitrary will of Jesse Black and his brotherhood, and were now carousing in Kemah by virtue of the hush-money put up by this same Secret Tribunal.
Yet now that Williston’s head was clear, he realized, with strengthening confidence in the impregnability of their position, that two trusty rifles behind barred doors are not so bad a defence after all, especially when one took into consideration that, with the exception of the sheds overlooking which he had chosen his position as the point of greatest menace, and a small clump of half-grown cottonwoods by the spring which Mary commanded from her window, there were no hiding places to be utilized for this Indian mode of warfare. He could not know how many desperadoes there were, but he reasoned well when he confided in his belief that they would not readily trust themselves to the too dangerous odds of the open space between. An open attack was not probable. Vigilance, then, a never-lapsing vigilance that they be not surprised, was the price of their salvation. What human power could do, he would do, and trust Mary to do the same. She was a good girl and true. She would do well. She had not yet shot. Surely, they would make use of that good vantage ground of the cottonwood clump. Probably they were even now making a detour to reach it.
“Watch, child, watch!” he said again, without in the least shifting his tense position.
“Surely!” responded Mary, quite steadily.
Now was her time come. Dark, sinister figures flitted from tree to tree. At first, she could not be sure, it was so heartlessly dark, but there was movement—it was different from that terrible blank quiet which she had hitherto been gazing upon till her eyes burned and pricked as with needle points, and visionary things swam before them. She winked rapidly to dispel the unreal and floating things, opened wide her longlashed lids, fixed them, and—fired. Then Williston knew that his “little girl,” his one ewe lamb, all that was left to him of a full and gracious past, must go through what he had gone through, all that nameless horror and expectant dread, and his heart cried out at the unholy injustice of it all. He dared not go to her, dared not desert his post for an instant. If one got within the shadow of the walls, all was lost.
Mary’s challenge was met with a rather hot return fire. It was probably given to inspire the besieged with a due respect for the attackers’ numbers. Bullets pattered around the outside walls like hailstones, one even whizzed through the window perilously near the girl’s intent young face.
Silence came back to the night. There was no more movement. Yet down there at the spring, something, maybe one of those dark, gaunt cottonwoods, held death—death for her and death for her father. A stream of icy coldness struck across her heart. She found herself calculating in deliberation which tree it was that held this thing—death. The biggest one, shadowing the spring, helping to keep the pool sweet and cool where Paul Langford had galloped his horse that day when—ah! if Paul Langford would only come now!
A wild, girlish hope flashed up in her heart. Langford would come—had he not sworn it to her father? Had he not given his hand as a pledge? It means something to shake hands in the cattle country. He was big and brave and true. When he came, these awful, creeping terrors would disperse—grim shadows that must steal away when morning comes. When he came, she could put her rifle in his big, confident hands, lie down on the floor and—cry. She wanted to cry—oh, how she did want to cry! If Paul Langford would only come, she could cry. Cold reason came back to her aid and dissipated the weak and womanish longing to give way to tears. There was a pathetic droop to her mouth, a long, quivering, sobbing sigh, and she buried her woman’s weakness right deeply and stamped upon it. How utterly wild and foolish her brief hope had been! Langford and all his men were sound in sleep long ago. How could he know? Were the ruffians out there men to tell? Ah, no! There was no one to know. It would all happen in the dark,—in awful loneliness, and there would be no one to know until it was all over—to-morrow, maybe, or next week, who could tell? They were off the main trail, few people ever sought them out. There would be no one to know.
As her strained sight stared out into the darkness, it was borne to her intuitively, it may be, that something was creeping up on her. She could see nothing and yet knew it to be true. Every fibre of her being tingled with the certainty of it. It was coming closer and closer. She felt it like an actual presence. Her eyes shifted here, there—swept her half-circle searchingly—stared and stared. Still nothing moved. And yet the nearness of some unseen thing grew more and more palpable. If she could not see it soon, she must scream aloud. She breathed in little quickened gasps. Soon, very soon now, she would scream. Ah! A shadow down by the biggest cottonwood! It boldly sought a nearer and a smaller trunk. Another slinking shadow glided behind the vacated position. It was a ghastly presentation of “Pussy-wants-a-corner” played in nightmare. But at last it was something tangible,—something to do away with that frightful sensation of that crawling, creeping, twisting, worming, insinuating—nearer and nearer, so near now that it beat upon her—unseen presence. She pressed her finger to the trigger to shoot at the tangible shadows and dispel that enveloping, choking, blanket horror, when God knows what stayed the muscular action of her fingers. Call it instinct, what you will, her hand was stayed even before her physical eye was caught and held by a blot darker still than the night, over to her right, farthest from the spring. It lay perfectly still. It came to her, the wily plan, with startling clearness. The blot was waiting for her to fire futilely at grinning shadows among the trees and, under cover of her engrossed attention, insinuate its treacherous body the farther forward. Then the play would go merrily on till—the end. She turned the barrel of her rifle slowly and deliberately away from the moving shapes among the cottonwood clump, sighted truly the motionless blur to her right, and fired, once, twice, three times.
The completeness of the surprise seemed to inspire the attackers with a hellish fury. They returned the fire rapidly and at will, remaining under cover the while. Shrinking low at her window, her eyes glued on the still black mass out yonder, Mary wondered if it were dead. She prayed passionately that it might be, and yet—it is a dreadful thing to kill. Once more the wild firing ceased. Mary responded once or twice just to keep the deadly chill from returning—if that were possible.
Under cover of the desperadoes’ fire, at obtuse angles with the first attempt, a second blot began its tortuous twisting. It accomplished a space, stopped; pulled itself its length, stopped, waited, watchful eyes on the window whence came Mary’s scattered firing still into the clump of trees. They had drawn her close regard at last. Would it hold out? Forward again, crawling flat on the ground, ever advancing, slowly, very slowly, but also very surely, creeping, creeping, creeping, now stopping, now creeping, stopping, creeping.
All at once the gun play began again, sharp, quick, from the spring, from the sheds. The blot lay perfectly still for a moment—waiting, watching. The plucky little rifle was silent. But so it had been before. Quarter length, half, whole length, cautiously with frequent stops, eyes so steely, so intent—could it be possible that this gun was really silenced—out of the race? It would not do to trust too much. The blot waited, scarcely breathed, crept forward again.
A sudden bright light flashed up through the darkness under the unprotected wall to Mary’s left. Almost simultaneously a kindred light sprang into being from the region of the cattle-sheds. The men down there had been waiting for this signal. It meant that for some reason the second effort to creep up unobserved to fire the house had been successful. The flare grew and spread. It became a glare.
When the whole cabin seemed to be in flames save the door,—the dry, rude boarding had caught and burned like paper,—when the heat had become unbearable, Williston held out his hand to his daughter, silently. As silently she put her hand, her left hand, in his; nor did Williston notice that it was her left, nor how limply her right arm hung to her side. In the glare, her face shone colorless, but her dark eyes were stars. Her head was held high. With firm step, Williston advanced to the door. Deliberately he unbarred it, as deliberately threw it open, and stepped over the threshold. They were covered on the instant by four rifles.
“Drop your guns!” called the chief, roughly. Then the desperadoes moved up.
“I take it that I am the one wanted,” said Williston.
His voice was calm and scholarly once more. In the uselessness of further struggle, it had lost the sharp incisiveness that had been the call to action. If one must die, it is good to die after a brave fight. One is never a coward then. Williston’s face wore an almost exalted look.
“My daughter is free to go?” he asked, his first words having met with no response. Better, much better, for the make of a man like Williston to die in the dignity of silence, but for Mary’s sake he parleyed.
“I guess not!” responded the leader, curtly. “If a pulin’ idiot hadn’t missed the broadside of you—as pretty a mark this side heaven as man could want,—then we might talk about the girl. She’s showed up too damned much like a man now to let her loose.”
His big, shuffling form lounged in his saddle. He raised his rifle with every appearance of lazy indifference. They were to be shot down where they stood, now, right on the threshold of their burning homestead.
Williston bowed his head to the inevitable for a moment; then raised it proudly to meet the inevitable.
A rifle shot rang out startlingly clear. At the very moment the leader’s hawk’s eye had swept the sight, his rifle arm had twitched uncertainly, then fallen nerveless to his side, while his bullet, playing a faltering and discordant second to the first true shot, tore up the ground in front of him and swerved harmlessly to one side. Instantly the wildest confusion reigned,—shouts, curses, the plunging of horses mingled with the sharp crack of fire-arms. The shooting was wild. The surprise was too complete for the outlaws to recover at once. They had heard no sound of approaching hoofbeats. The roaring flames licking up the dry lumber, and rendering the surrounding darkness the blacker for the contrast, had been of saving grace to the besiegers after all.
In a moment, the desperadoes rallied. They closed in and imposed a cursing, malignant wall between the rescuers and the blazing door of the shanty and what stood and lay before it. Mary had sunk down at her father’s feet, and had no cognizance of the fierce though brief conflict that ensued.
Presently, she was dragged roughly to her feet. A big, muscular arm had heavy grasp of her.
“Make sure of the girl, Red!” commanded a sharp voice near, and it was gone out into the night.
Afterward, she heard—oh, many, many times in the night watches—the eerie galloping of horses’ hoofs, growing fainter and ever fainter, heard it above the medley of trampling horses and yelling men, and knew it for what it meant; but to-night—this evil night—she gave but one quick, bewildered glance into the sinister face above her and in a soft, shuddering voice breathed, “Please don’t,” and fainted.