The Range Boss

by Seltzer, Charles Alden

  “If you knew him, why did you give him a job?” she interrupted. “It might have saved you shooting him.”

  “If he was wantin’ to force trouble he’d have done it sooner or later, ma’am.”

  “Well?” she said, interested in spite of herself.

  “He waited two weeks for a chance. I didn’t give him any chance. An’ then, one night, after Red Owen had been cuttin’ up some monkey shines, he talked fresh an’ pulled his gun. He was a regular gunfighter, ma’am; he’d been hired to put me out of business.”

  There was an appeal in his eyes that did not show in his voice; and it would be all the appeal that he would make. Looking fixedly at him, she became certain of that.

  “Do you know who hired him?”

  There was that in her tone which told him that he might now make his case strong—might even convince her, and thus be restored to that grace from which he, plainly, had fallen. But he was a claimant for her hand, he had told her that he would not press that claim until she broke her engagement with Masten, and if he now told her that it had been the Easterner who had hired Kelso to kill him, he would have felt that she would think he had taken advantage of the situation, selfishly. And he preferred to take his chance, slender though it seemed to be.

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “Then you only suspected it?”

  He was silent for an instant. Then: “A man told me he was hired.”

  “Who told you?”

  “I ain’t mentionin’, ma’am.” He could not tell her that Blair had told him, after he had told Blair not to mention it.

  She smiled with cold incredulity, and he knew his chance had gone.

  But he was not prepared for her next words. In her horror for his deed, she had ceased to respect him; she had ceased to believe him; his earnest protestations of innocence of wantonness she thought were hypocritical—an impression strengthened by his statement that Kelso had been hired to kill him, and by his inability to show evidence to prove it. A shiver of repulsion, for him and his killings, ran over her.

  “I believe you are lying, Randerson,” she said, coldly.

  He started, stiffened, and then stared, at her, his face slowly whitening. She had said words that, spoken by a man, would have brought about another of those killings that horrified her. She watched him, sensing for the first time something of the terrible emotions that sometimes beset men in tense situations but entirely unconscious of the fact that she had hurt him far more than any bullet could have hurt him.

  Yet, aside from the whiteness of his face, he took the fatal thrust without a sign. His dreams, that had seemed to be so real to him while riding over the plains toward the ranchhouse, had been bubbles that she had burst with a breath. He saw the wrecks of them go sailing into the dust at his feet.

  He had gazed downward, and he did not look up at once. When he did, his gaze rested, as though by prearrangement, on her. Her eyes were still cold, still disbelieving, and he drew himself slowly erect.

  “I reckon you’ve said enough, ma’am,” he told her quietly, though his voice was a trifle hoarse. “A man couldn’t help but understand that.” He wheeled Patches and took off his hat to her. “I’ll send Red Owen to see you, ma’am,” he added. “I can recommend Red.”

  She was on her feet, ready to turn to go into the house, for his manner of receiving her insult had made her feel infinitely small and mean. But at his words she halted and looked at him.

  “Why should you send Red Owen to see me? What do you mean?” she demanded.

  “Why, you’ve made it pretty plain, ma’am,” he answered with a low laugh, turning his head to look back at her. “I reckon you wouldn’t expect me to go on workin’ for you, after you’ve got so you don’t trust me any more. Red will make you a good range boss.”

  He urged Patches on. But she called to him, a strange regret filling her, whitening her cheeks, and Patches came again to a halt.

  “I—I don’t want Red Owen for a range boss,” she declared with a gulp. “If you are determined to quit, I—I suppose I cannot prevent it. But you can stay a week or two, can’t you—until I can get somebody I like?”

  He smiled gravely. “Why, I reckon I can, ma’am,” he answered respectfully. “There won’t be no awful hurry about it. I wouldn’t want to disconvenience you.”

  And then he was off into the deepening haze of the coming evening, riding tall and rigid, with never a look behind to show her that he cared.

  Standing in the doorway of the house, the girl watched him, both hands at her breast, her eyes wide, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed, until the somber shadows of twilight came down and swallowed him. Then, oppressed with a sudden sense of the emptiness of the world, she went into the house.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXI

  ONE TOO MANY

  To no man in the outfit did Randerson whisper a word concerning the result of his visit to the ranchhouse—that he would cease to be the Flying W range boss just as soon as Ruth Harkness could find a man to replace him. He went his way, thoughtful, silent, grave, filled with somber thoughts and dark passions that sometimes flashed in his eyes, but taking no man into his confidence. And yet they knew that all was not well with him. For in other days his dry humor, his love of wholesome fun, had shortened many an hour for them, and his serenity, in ordinary difficulties, had become a byword to them. And so they knew that the thing which was troubling him now was not ordinary.

  They thought they knew what was troubling him. Kelso had been hired to take his life. Kelso had lost his own in the effort. That might have seemed to end it. But it had become known that Kelso had been a mere tool in the hands of an unscrupulous plotter, and until the plotter had been sent on the way that Kelso had gone there could be no end. Already there were whispers over the country because of Randerson’s delay.

  Of course, they would wait a reasonable time; they would give him his “chance.” But they did not know what was holding him back—that deep in his heart lurked a hope that one day he might still make his dreams come true, and that if he killed Masten, Ruth’s abhorrence of him and his deeds, already strong, could never be driven from her. If he lost this hope, Masten was doomed.

  And during the second week following his latest talk with Ruth, the girl unconsciously killed it. He met her in the open, miles from the ranchhouse, and he rode toward her, deeply repentant, resolved to brave public scorn by allowing Masten to live.

  He smiled gravely at her when he came close—she waiting for him, looking at him, unmoved. For she had determined to show him that she had meant what she had said to him.

  “Have you found a new range boss, ma’am?” he said gently. He had hoped that she might answer lightly, and then he would have known that she would forgive him, in time.

  But her chin went up and she looked coldly at him. “You will be able to leave the Flying W shortly, Randerson,” she said. “I am going to leave such matters for Mr. Masten to look after.”

  She urged her pony away and left him, staring somberly after her.

  Two hours later he was riding down the declivity toward Chavis’ shack, in the basin. He had ridden first to the outfit, and had talked with Owen. And his appearance had been such that when he left the foreman the latter sought out Blair.

  “If I don’t miss my reckonin’, Masten’s goin’ to get his’n today.”

  Randerson rode, straight as Patches could carry him, to the door of Chavis’ shack. No one appeared to greet him, but he had seen horses, saddled, hitched to the corral fence, and he knew that some one was about. Chavis, Kester, and Hilton were inside the shack, and when they heard him ride up, they came to the door, curious. And when they saw him they stiffened and stood rigid, with not a finger moving, for they had seen men, before, meditating violence, and they saw the signs in Randerson’s chilled and narrowed eyes, and in the grim set of his lips.

  His lips moved; his teeth hardly parted to allow the words to come through them. They writhed through:

>   “Where’s Masten?”

  Three pairs of lungs sighed audibly in process of deflation.

  It was Chavis who answered; the other two looked at him when the question came, silently. Chavis would have lied, but the light in Randerson’s eyes warned him not to trifle, and the truth came from his lips:

  “Masten’s gone to the Flyin’ W ranchhouse.”

  “I reckon that’s all,” said Randerson shortly. “I’m thankin’ you.”

  He rode away, grinning coldly back at them, still watchful, for he knew Chavis, guiding his pony toward the declivity on the other side of the basin. The three men watched him until the pony had climbed to the mesa. Then Chavis turned to the others.

  “I reckon he’s goin’ to see Masten about that Kelso deal,” he said. “Somebody ought to put Masten wise.”

  Kester grinned. “It’s bound to come,” he commented. “Let’s finish our game; it is your deal.”

  On the mesa, Randerson urged Patches along the edge, over the trail that Ruth had taken when, months before, she had come upon Chavis and Kester at the declivity.

  “Nothin’ would have happened, if it hadn’t been for Masten,” he told himself as he rode away. “Pickett wouldn’t have got fresh, an’ Kelso would have kept himself mighty shady. We’d have fought it out, square—me an’ Masten. I reckon I didn’t kill Pickett and Kelso; it was Masten that done it.”

  He came, after a while, to the rock upon whick he had found Ruth lying on the night of the accident. And he sat and looked long at the grass plot where he had laid her when she had fainted.

  “She looked like an angel, layin’ there,” he reminded himself, his eyes eloquent. “She’s too blamed good for that sneakin’ dude.”

  He came upon the ruined boot, and memories grimmed his lips. “It’s busted—like my dreams,” he said, surveying it, ripped and rotting. “I reckon this is as good a place as any,” he added, looking around him.

  And he dismounted, led Patches out of sight behind some high bushes that grew far back from the rocks; came back, stretched himself out on the grass plot, pulled his hat over his eyes and yielded to his gloomy thoughts. But after he had lain there a while, he spoke aloud:

  “He’ll come this way, if he comes at all.”

  With the memory of Randerson’s threat always before him, “if I ever lay eyes on you ag’in, I’ll go gunnin’ for you,” Masten rode slowly and watchfully. For he had felt that the words had not been idle ones, and it had been because of them that he had hired Kelso. And he went toward the ranchhouse warily, much relieved when he passed the bunkhouse, to find that Randerson was apparently absent. He intended to make this one trip, present to Ruth his excuses for staying away, and then go back to Chavis’ shack, there to remain out of Randerson’s sight, until he could devise another plan that, he hoped, would put an end to the cowpuncher who was forever tormenting him.

  His excuses had been accepted by Ruth, for she was in the mood to restore him to that spot in her heart that Randerson had come very near to occupy. She listened to him calmly, and agreed, without conscious emotion, to his proposal that they ride, on the Monday following, to Lazette, to marry. She had reopened the subject a little wearily, for now that Randerson was hopeless she wanted to have the marriage over with as soon as possible. She saw now, that it had been the vision of Randerson, always prominent in her mind, that had caused her to put off the date of her marriage to Masten when he had mentioned it before. That vision had vanished now, and she did not care how soon she became Masten’s wife.

  On the porch of the ranchhouse they had reached the agreement, and triumphantly Masten rode away into the darkness, foreseeing the defeat of the man whom he had feared as a possible rival, seeing, too—if he could not remove him entirely—his dismissal from the Flying W and his own ascent to power.

  “On Monday, then,” he said softly to Ruth, as ready to leave, he had looked down at her from his horse. “I shall come early, remember, for I have waited long.”

  “Yes, Monday,” she had answered. And then, dully: “I have waited, too.”

  Masten was thinking of this exchange of words as he rode past the ford where the Lazette trail crossed into the broken country beyond it. He had not liked the tone of her voice when she had answered him; she had not seemed enthusiastic enough to suit him. But he did not feel very greatly disturbed over her manner, for Monday would end it, and then he would do as he pleased.

  He was passing a huge boulder, when from out of the shadow surrounding it a somber figure stepped, the star-shot sky shedding sufficient light for Masten to distinguish its face. He recognized Randerson, and he voluntarily brought his pony to a halt and stiffened in the saddle, fear, cold and paralyzing, gripping him. He did not speak; he made no sound beyond a quick gasp as his surprised lungs sought air, and he was incapable of action.

  Randerson, though, did not make a hostile movement and did not present a foreboding figure. His arms were folded over his chest, and if it had not been for Masten’s recollection of those grim words, “I’ll go gunnin’ for you,” Masten would have felt reasonably secure. But he remembered the words, and his voice caught in his throat and would not come, when he essayed to bluster and ask Randerson the cause for this strange and dramatic appearance.

  But there was no thought of the dramatic in Randerson’s mind as he stood there—nothing but cold hatred and determination—nothing except a bitter wish that the man on the pony would reach for his gun and thus make his task easier for him.

  The hoped-for movement did not come, and Randerson spoke shortly:

  “Get off your cayuse!”

  Masten obeyed silently, his knees shaking under him. Was it to be another fist fight? Randerson’s voice broke in on this thought:

  “I promised to kill you. You’re a thing that sneaks around at night on its belly, an’ you ought to be killed. But I’m goin’ to give you a chance—like you give me when you set Kelso on me. That’ll let you die like a man—which you ain’t!” He tapped the gun at his right hip. “I’ll use this one. We’ll stand close—where we are—to make your chance better. When I count three you draw your gun. Show your man now, if there’s any in you!”

  He dropped his hands from his chest and held the right, the fingers bent like the talons of a bird of prey, about to seize a victim. He waited, his eyes gleaming in the starlight, with cold alertness for Masten’s expected move toward his gun. But after a long, breathless silence, during which Masten’s knees threatened to give way, he leaned forward.

  “Flash it! Quick! Or you go out anyway!”

  “I’m unarmed!” Masten’s voice would not come before. It burst forth now, hysterically, gaspingly, sounding more like a moan than the cry of a man pleading for his life.

  But it stung the stern-faced man before him to action, rapid and tense. He sprang forward with a low, savage exclamation, drawing one of his big weapons and jamming its muzzle deep into Masten’s stomach. Then, holding it there, that the Easterner might not trick him, he ran his other hand over the frightened man’s clothing, and found no weapon. Then he stepped back with a laugh, low, scornful, and bitter. The discovery that Masten was not armed seemed to drive his cold rage from him, and when he spoke again his voice was steely and contemptuous:

  “You can hit the breeze, I reckon—I ain’t murderin’ anybody. You’re safe right now. But I’m tellin’ you this: I’m lookin’ for you, an’ you don’t run no blazer in on me no more! After this, you go heeled—or you hit the breeze out of the country. One of us has got to go. This country is too crowded with both of us!”

  Masten got on his pony, trembling so that he had trouble in getting his feet into the stirrups. He rode on, hundreds of yards, before he dared to turn, so great was his dread that to do so would be to bring upon him the wrath of the man who had spared him. But finally he looked around. He saw Randerson riding out into the darkness of the vast stretch of grass-land that lay to the south.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXII

 
INTO WHICH A GIRL’S TROUBLE COMES

  Uncle Jepson and Aunt Martha had not seen Masten when he had visited Ruth, for they had gone in the buckboard to Red Rock. And Masten had departed when they reached home. Nor did they see Ruth after they arrived, for she had gone to bed. But at the breakfast table Ruth told them of the visit of Masten and of her plan to advance the date of the marriage.

  Uncle Jepson and Aunt Martha received the news in silence. Aunt Martha did manage to proffer a half-hearted congratulation, but Uncle Jepson wrinkled his nose, as he did always when displeased, and said nothing; and he ate lightly. Ruth did not notice that she had spoiled his appetite, nor did she note with more than casual interest that he left the table long before she or Aunt Martha. She did not see him, standing at the corral fence, scowling, and she could not hear the old-fashioned profanity that gushed from his lips.

  “Aren’t you glad?” Ruth asked Aunt Martha when they were alone, for she had noted her relative’s lack of enthusiasm.

  “Why, yes, honey,” Aunt Martha smiled at her, though it seemed forced. “Only—” She hesitated eloquently.

  “Only what, Aunt Martha?” Ruth’s voice was a little sharp, as with all persons who act in opposition to her better judgment and who resent anyone understanding them.

  “Only I was hoping it would be Randerson, my dear,” said Aunt Martha gently.

  “Randerson!” Ruth’s voice was scornful. But it sounded insincere to her, and she would trust it no further.

  “Honey!” Aunt Martha’s arm was around her, and Aunt Martha’s sympathetic and knowing eyes were compelling hers; and her voice was ineffably gentle. “Are you sure, honey, that you don’t wish it were Randerson? It is a great event in your life, dear, and once it is done, it can’t be undone. Don’t be hasty.”