by Zane Grey
With that he swung her with him into the door of Hall’s saloon, and sent her whirling, almost falling toward Syvertsen and Orcutt, who were backing away from the window. Brazos leaped back in front of the door, so that he could face them and all the big room.
“Everybody in heah freezer he yelled, his voice loud with strident ring.
An instant silence contrasted strangely with the former clink and rattle and hum of the saloon. On the moment Kiskadden came sliding in behind Brazos, closely followed by Inskip. Then they backed slowly to Brazos’ left step by step until the tables halted them.
On the other side Bess sagged against the wall, ashen of face, her piercing eyes on Brazos in a terrible comprehension. She knew that Syvertsen and Orcutt were trapped wolves. The staring crowd at the bar, at the gaming tables divined the same, though they did not understand why. But the Norwegian and his swarthy ally divined nothing except the monstrous possibility that they might have been betrayed. Passion, not fear, transfixed them.
“Yu hellcat!” burst out Syvertsen. “What does this mean?”
His base epithet, his cold query, acted upon the girl like a goad. She stiffened as her head swept up and back to the wall, knocking off her sombrero. Then she appeared a white-faced woman at bay.
“I told him!” she cried.
“What!” Syvertsen’s word, like a bullet, might have been either question or ejaculation. It was Orcutt who flung at her: “You double-crossin’ white-faced—! You told him what?”
“You bet your life I double-crossed you,” she flashed, further inflamed. “I made love to Brazos Keene. Yes! But I meant it. . . . And I’ve just told him the plot I had been dragged into—that I was your tool—to entice him—to get him drunk—or off his guard so you could kill him. . . . To murder him because you had not the guts to fight him! . . . That you’d been hired to do it!”
“You told him that . . . you told him who . . .” gasped Syvertsen, suddenly shaken from his icy fury.
“No—not who . . . but if Brazos Keene has half the sense he’s credited with he knows.”
“You’ve been in love with him—all this time?” demanded Orcutt, incredulously, jealousy mastering all else.
“All this time,” she said, tauntingly.
“You love this towheaded, girl-chasin’ cowboy . . . this snoopin’, sneakin’, watchin’ gunman!” shouted Orcutt, furiously, his leather face no longer swarthy.
“Love Brazos Keene? Yes—yes! Thank God I had honesty enough left in me to love him!” she returned, with a passion that matched Orcutt’s.
“I’ll tear our your lyin’—”
“Stop!” thundered Brazos. He waited a moment for that command to sink in. “Yu’re forgettin’ I’m here. Yu ask me.”
Both Bess’s antagonists had actually forgotten the presence of Brazos Keene. They were rudely reminded of it and that the stiffness of the spectators, the silence, the strange position of the cowboy, bent a little, both brown powerful hands extended a little low, and quivering—that all these constituted a tremendous menace. Then the significance of Brazos Keene dawned appallingly upon them. He confronted them. There was no escape. No matter by what incredible means this encounter had worked out, it was a reality. And the reputation of this fire-eyed cowboy might as well have been blazoned on the walls.
“Ask me, yu yellow dawgs,” rang out Brazos.
But neither of these trapped men voiced a query regarding what was dawning upon them. Engrossed in their own greeds and lusts, slow-witted and weak-willed, they had been falsely led into a mortal predicament, into an encounter with the very man they had plotted to murder.
“Wal, if yu haven’t nerve to ask I’ll tell yu,” went on Brazos. “Bess told me, but she didn’t need to. All the time I knew it.”
“There!” boomed Syvertsen, coming out of his trance to point a shaking finger at the wide-eyed girl. “You were the fool. He made love to you. He double-crossed you. All the time he knew! So he made you the fool. You betrayed us for his kisses.”
“That’s not true,” flashed Bess, a dark scarlet staining her white cheek. “He never kissed me. . . . And I don’t believed he made a—a fool of me.”
“Ask him. Look at him—an’ ask him,” shouted Orcutt, beside himself.
Bess swerved her fathomless gaze to the cowboy.
“Brazos, is that true?”
Brazos did not answer, nor shift his narrowed gaze from the two men.
“Let her alone,” he called, bitingly. “What difference does it make to yu now?”
“Keene, if she squealed—I’ll kill her!” choked out Syvertsen.
“Squealed? . . . Yu mean aboot young Neece an’ the dirty job yu hung on me!” queried Brazos, once more in his slow tantalizing drawl with its note of mockery.
“By Gawd!” ejaculated Syvertsen, hoarsely, his eyes rolling. And the content of his words, if not their audible sound, was echoed by Orcutt.
“No! No!” cried Bess, suddenly desperate. “Bard, I swear I didn’t. . . . I told him no more. . . . Hen, believe me. . . . I didn’t—I couldn’t be that rotten!”
Orcutt’s white thin lips framed a vile name he could not utter.
“Ah! I see it all now,” burst out Syvertsen, tragically. “—your false soul!”
“Heah!” yelled Brazos, in a piercing anger. “Let thet girl alone. Yu split on her—shore. She stacked yore deal. But the game’s with me now. . . . Me! Brazos Keene!”
“You!” echoed the two pale men, in unison.
“Yes. Me! An’ I say what’s the difference to yu now—now? . . . Haven’t yu got sense enough to see thet?”
They had. It struck them like a bludgeon. Orcutt’s lips tightened. Syvertsen began to bluster. By these signs Brazos read that Orcutt was the more dangerous of the two. Then Brazos let loose the dammed-up flood that for weeks had been waiting for this moment.
“I’ve run into some low-down hombres in my day. But yu two take the bacon. I wouldn’t waste my breath callin’ yu the names thet’d fit yu, if I could think of any dirty enough.”
Brazos paused with that. Even in liberating passion he did not forget his cunning. He knew how to work on such men—to destroy what effectiveness they might have had. And the fact that he could rail at them proved his estimate of their nerve and prowess.
“So what am I callin’ yu for? . . . Remember thet little deal of yore’s oot at the Hill cabin? Aha! Yu haven’t forgot thet. Wal, neither have I—an’ thet’s what I’ve been workin’ on all these weeks. . . . Orcutt—Syvertsen, if yu ever got oot of heah alive yu’d swing. But then maybe yu might have too many powerful friends who’d clear yu of the rope. Miller, for instance, an’ Bodkin, who’s runnin’ for sheriff—an’ Raine Surface. . . . Ahuh. Thet makes yu kinda pale aboot the gills. . . . Wal, I reckon yu won’t get oot of heah alive. I’m not trustin’ the justice of Las Animas—nor yore cattle combine.”
“Keene! You’re clean—mad,” broke out Syvertsen.
“Bard, I told you,” rasped Orcutt, in bitter accusation. “Shut your bellarin’ trap an’ take your medicine.”
“You hombres murdered Allen Neece an’ blamed thet job on me,” went on Brazos, relentlessly. “Yu murdered him because Surface wanted it done. An’ yu schemed to put me oot of the way because Surface was afraid I’d take Allen Neece’s trail. Wal, yu bet yore life I took it an’ it ends right heah. . . . Surface beat Abe Neece oot of Twin Sombreros Ranch. Yu men held up Neece thet night an’ robbed him of the money he had to pay Surface for his cattle. An’ yu-all sicked this girl on me ’cause none of yu had the nerve to meet me face-to-face. . . . Wal, thet’s my say. An’ after all yu’re meetin’ me face-to-face!”
As Brazos ended he read the desperate intent in Orcutt’s eyes and beat him to a gun. Orcutt’s heart was split even as he pulled trigger and his bullet hissed hotly by Brazos’ ear. Syvertsen, slow to realize and act, scarcely had his gun free when Brazos shot him through. The ball thudded into the wall. Syvertsen’s vitality equaled his terrible f
ury. He did not fall. He did not lose sight or intent. But his muscular co-ordination had been destroyed. Fire and smoke belched from his wavering gun. His frown of immense surprise, his pale lighted eves, his
Brazos had to end them all, though the man was mortally struck, by blowing out his brains. Syvertsen swayed from his lofty stature, to fall across a table, to slide from that into another, and to crash down.
The smoke cleared away disclosing Bess, back against the wall, her arms wide spread, with her gaze fixed terribly upon the fallen men.
“He—killed—them?” she panted, as if dazed. “Brazos Keene!”
Suddenly she sprang out from the wall, an incarnate fury, formidable as a tigress.
“Bess,” called Brazos, who had feared her reaction to the tragedy.
“You fooled me—to kill them.”
“Don’t draw, Bess. . . . Don’t!” warned Brazos, shrilly.
“I’ll kill you!”
As she whipped out her gun Brazos had to be quick to save his life. He took a shot at her arm, high up. The heavy bullet spun her around like a top and sent the little gun flying. Shrieking wildly she collided with the wall, bounced out to fall beyond the two dead men, where her boots pattered on the floor.
As Brazos sheathed his gun and knelt to lift her head she ceased the cry of agony. She gazed up at Brazos, fascinated, suddenly bereft of all hate and passion.
“Brazos—you shot me,” she whispered accusingly.
“My Gawd, I did, girl! But why did you draw on me? Why did yu, Bess?”
“You made a fool of me.”
“No. I swear I didn’t. At least I didn’t intend to. Yu did all the foolin’, Bess.”
“You’ve killed me—Brazos?”
“I’m terrible scared, Bess,” replied Brazos, and he did not lie. He saw that he had hit her in the breast or shoulder, instead of the arm. Blood was pouring out. He was afraid to open her blouse.
“It’s better so. I deserve it. . . . But to be killed by you, Brazos Keene—for loving you! Oh, what irony! . . . Oh, my wasted life! . . . the pity of it!”
Bilyen knelt beside Brazos. Kiskadden, Inskip—the others crowded around, shocked and silent.
“Bess, if yu have to go—make it a clean job,” said Brazos, earnestly. “Confess. Tell the truth aboot this deal.”
“The truth?” she whispered.
“Yes. Of Allen Neece’s murder.”
“Oh, I will, Brazos.”
“Hank, Kiskadden—somebody get paper an’ pencil. Take down what she says. . . . An’ all of yu listen. Yu’ll be called to prove some things important to this range.”
“I’m fainting. . . . Whisky!” called the girl, almost inaudibly. Somebody fetched a glass, and Brazos, with bloody hand, held it to her ashen lips. She drank. “All right,” she said, smiling up at him. “My right name is Bess Moore. I am not Syvertsen’s wife. . . . We belonged to Raine Surface’s crooked outfit at Abilene. Surface is a man of two sides. One of them is black as hell. . . . We were called here to put Allen Neece out of the way. I got him to drink—coaxed him to ride out of town with me. . . . Orcutt roped him from behind bushes on the road—jerked him off his horse. . . . As he lay on the ground Bard shot him—in the back. . . . They carried him to the Hill cabin—left him in the loft. . . . Then Brazos Keene rode up. Bard had a few words with Brazos—thought he deceived him. He rode back to town and fastened the crime upon Brazos. . . . But our own plot miscarried . . . and lately—Surface called us again—to do the same job—over . . .”
“Thet’ll do, Bess. Give me the paper, Kiskadden. Bess, can you sign yore name—heah?” importuned Brazos, with strong feeling.
Bess signed her name and then fell back fainting.
Brazos, with shaking hands, tore open her blouse, shivering at the white swelling breast. He pulled the blouse down over the blood-stained shoulder to feel for the wound, frantic in fear that it would be too low. But it was not low. He found it high up, just where the arm met the shoulder, a bad painful wound, but not in any sense dangerous to life.
“Aw!” Brazos burst out. “She’s not bad hurt at all. She’s only fainted. . . . Hank, get somebody to help carry her to Hailey’s. Call the doctor. An’ when she comes to, tell her she’s not gonna die an’ I’ll be back pronto.”
Brazos snatched the paper from Bilyen and relinquished the girl to him. Then he stood up, tense and eager.
“It’s aboot all, men, but not quite,” he said, as he carefully folded the confession. “Come with me. Yu too, Kiskadden, an’ fetch somebody with yu.”
At the foot of the Odd Fellows stairway Brazos halted to load his gun and wait for the followers he had outstripped.
“Brazos, is yore haid cool?” asked Kiskadden, breathing hard. “I ain’t presumin’ to advise yu, I’m just askin’.”
“Speak oot, old-timer.”
“It might look better to hold yore hand at Surface. Yu know the range—an’ he has friends. Don’t let them call this a gunman’s spree.”
“Wal, onless he goes for his gun—which he won’t. Only I hope to Gawd he does! Come on an’ step easy.”
Inskip arrived with thumping strides, followed by men in two and threes.
“Did yu search them?” asked Brazos, facing around from the stairway.
“Yes. Both well heeled. Bilyen took charge of money, papers, guns.”
Brazos went up the stairs three steps at a time, and his followers strung after him, trying to step softly on heavy boots. The door of the hall stood open. Surface was holding forth with resonant voice.
“Gentlemen, all our fellow citizens were invited to participate here. Evidently those who stayed away were satisfied to leave important matters to us. . . . We have all voted and the result assures Bodkin’s election as sheriff of Las Animas. Formerly he was appointed by the Cattlemen’s Association. That is a distinction with a difference.”
Surface halted impressively for a moment, then resumed in strong voice:
“There remains to invite undesirable loafers, gamblers, dissolute women, suspected cowmen, and at least one notorious cowboy to leave Las Animas.”
Brazos drew his gun and stepped into the hall.
“Wal, Surface,” he called ringingly, “heah’s yore last named undesirable—to talk for himself.”
Surface stood on a platform facing a room full of men, sitting in rows. A stiffening jerk appeared to run through them, but all of them turned to look.
“Set tight, everybody,” ordered Brazos. “Surface, the jig’s up!”
No noticeable change showed in the rancher’s pale face. He had begun to weigh this intrusion. Kiskadden, Inskip, and others filed in with grave grim visages. They must have meant as much, or more to him, as the advent of Brazos.
“Gentlemen, you come too late to participate in this election,” he rolled out, sonorously.
“Ump-umm!” retorted Brazos. “Surface, did yu heah me? I said yore jig was up.”
“What do you mean?” shouted Surface, harshly.
“I just shot yore ootfit.”
“Wha-at! . . . Who?”
“Bard Syvertsen . . . Hen Orcutt . . . an’ Bess!”
“Dead!”
“Wal, the girl lived to sign her confession.”
Then a startling transformation made Surface another man.
“Yu’re gonna heah thet confession read.”
With left hand, watching the cattleman like a hawk, Brazos extracted the paper from his vest and held it back.
“Somebody read this.”
Kiskadden took the paper and with slow deliberate voice, somehow more telling and inflexible for the cool Texas accent, he read it solemnly.
When he had finished, Surface seemed actually to have shrunken in stature. He opened his mouth several times as if to speak, but no words issued forth.
“Surface, I shore hope yu got the guts to throw yore gun, but I’m gamblin’ yu’ve not,” called Brazos, in cold scorn.
The rancher flunked that challenge, and as tha
t fact became manifest the stiff occupants of the seats began to scrape their boots nervously, to squirm and mutter, and at last to gaze at each other for angry confirmation.
“All right, Surface. I cain’t waste time waitin’,” went on Brazos. “March down heah.”
Without protest Surface obeyed and when he reached the open space behind the chairs Brazos ordered him to halt and had him searched.
“Wal, so yu was packin’ a gun!” drawled Brazos, in derisive exclamation. “I wonder what’n hell for. . . . Surface, yu’re aboot as low-down as they come. If we was in New Mexico yu’d be strung up an’ bored while yu was kickin’.”
This speech from Brazos precipitated expression of the pent-up astonishment and wrath of the men whom Surface had addressed.
“Shet up!” yelled Brazos, suddenly inflamed. “Yu’re hollerin’ a little late against this man. Maybe most of yu air honest. But some of yu air crooked! . . . An’ it’ll shore be best for yu-all, an’ for Las Animas, to swaller the disgrace yu all gotta share.”
Then he punched Surface in the back with his gun.
“Mosey along, yu! An’ don’t forget I’d jump at the chance to try oot yore specialty of shootin’ men in the back.”
Brazos marched Surface down the stairway to the street, and into the rancher’s buckboard. Brazos climbed into the back seat
“Drive oot to Neece’s ranch,” he called, loud enough for the gathering bystanders to hear.
“Neece’s ranch! . . . Where’s that!” choked out Surface.
“Where do yu reckon, yu—robber? . . . Twin Sombreros Ranch!”
The crowded sidewalks of Las Animas were then treated to another of Brazos Keene’s peculiar actions. And it was of the most prominent citizen of that frontier town driving his team of black horses down the middle of the street with a gun at his back and behind that gun the cold-faced cowboy.
Brazos did not look to right or left, and he was too grimly concerned to enjoy that ride, or the gathering whoop which rang along the street and out of town with him.
In short order the spirited team arrived at the ranch.
“Surface, I want thet bag of gold.”
