Firebrand Trevison

by Seltzer, Charles Alden

  He strode out, leaving Lefingwell slightly stunned over his abrupt leave-taking. A minute later he was in the squatty frame courthouse, towering above Judge Lindman, who had been seated at his desk and who had risen at his entrance.

  Trevison shoved the summons under Lindman’s nose.

  “I just got this,” he said. “What does it mean?”

  “It is perfectly understandable,” the Judge smiled with forced affability. “The plaintiff, Mr. Jefferson Corrigan, is a claimant to the title of the land now held by you.”

  “Corrigan can have no claim on my land; I bought it five years ago from old Buck Peters. He got it from a man named Taylor. Corrigan is bluffing.”

  The Judge coughed and dropped his gaze from the belligerent eyes of the young man. “That will be determined in court,” he said. “The entire land transactions in this county, covering a period of twenty-five years, are recorded in that book.” And the Judge indicated a ledger on his desk.

  “I’ll take a look at it.” Trevison reached for the ledger, seized it, the Judge protesting, half-heartedly, though with the judicial dignity that had become habitual from long service in his profession.

  “This is a high-handed proceeding, young man. You are in contempt of court!” The Judge tried, but could not make his voice ring sincerely. It seemed to him that this vigorous, clear-eyed young man could see the guilt that he was trying to hide.

  Trevison laughed grimly, holding the Judge off with one hand while he searched the pages of the book, leaning over the desk. He presently closed the book with a bang and faced the Judge, breathing heavily, his muscles rigid, his eyes cold and glittering.

  “There’s trickery here!” He took the ledger up and slammed it down on the desk again, his voice vibrating. “Judge Lindman, this isn’t a true record—it is not the original record! I saw the original record five years ago, when I went personally to Dry Bottom with Buck Peters to have my deed recorded! This record is a fake—it has been substituted for the original! I demand that you stay proceedings in this matter until a search can be made for the original record!”

  “This is the original record.” Again the Judge tried to make his voice ring sincerely, and again he failed. His one mistake had not hardened him and judicial dignity could not help him to conceal his guilty knowledge. He winced as he felt Trevison’s burning gaze on him, and could not meet the young man’s eyes, boring like metal points into his consciousness. Trevison sprang forward and seized him by the shoulders.

  “By God—you know it isn’t the original!”

  The Judge succeeded in meeting Trevison’s eyes, but his age, his vacillating will, his guilt, could not combat the overpowering force and virility of this volcanic youth, and his gaze shifted and fell.

  He heard Trevison catch his breath—shrilling it into his lungs in one great sob—and then he stood, white and shaking, beside the desk, looking at Trevison as the young man went out of the door—a laugh on his lips, mirthless, bitter, portending trouble and violence.

  * * *

  Corrigan was sitting at his desk in the bank building when Trevison entered the front door. The big man seemed to have been expecting his visitor, for just before the latter appeared at the door Corrigan took a pistol from a pocket and laid it on the desk beside him, placing a sheet of paper over it. He swung slowly around and faced Trevison, cold interest in his gaze. He nodded shortly as Trevison’s eyes met his.

  In a dozen long strides Trevison was at his side. The young man was pale, his lips were set, he was breathing fast, his nostrils were dilated—he was at that pitch of excitement in which a word, a look or a movement brings on action, instantaneous, unrecking of consequences. But he exercised repression that made the atmosphere of the room tingle with tension of the sort that precedes the clash of mighty forces—he deliberately sat on one corner of Corrigan’s desk, one leg dangling, the other resting on the floor, one hand resting on the idle leg, his body bent, his shoulders drooping a little forward. His voice was dry and light—Patrick Carson would have said his grin was tiger-like.

  “So that’s the kind of a whelp you are!” he said.

  Corrigan caught his breath; his hands clenched, his face reddened darkly. He shot a quick glance at the sheet of paper under which he had placed the pistol. Trevison interpreted it, brushed the paper aside, disclosing the weapon. His lips curled; he took the pistol, “broke” it, tossed cartridges and weapon into a corner of the desk and laughed lowly.

  “So you were expecting me,” he said. “Well, I’m here. You want my land, eh?”

  “I want the land that I’m entitled to under the terms of my purchase—the original Midland grant, consisting of one-hundred thousand acres. It belongs to me, and I mean to have it!”

  “You’re a liar, Corrigan,” said the young man, holding the other’s gaze coldly; “you’re a lying, sneaking crook. You have no claim to the land, and you know it!”

  Corrigan smiled stiffly. “The record of the deal I made with Jim Marchmont years before any of you people usurped the property is in my pocket at this minute. The court, here, will uphold it.”

  Trevison narrowed his eyes at the big man and laughed, bitter humor in the sound. It was as though he had laughed to keep his rage from leaping, naked and murderous, into this discussion.

  “It takes nerve, Corrigan, to do what you are attempting; it does, by Heaven—sheer, brazen gall! It’s been done, though, by little, pettifogging shysters, by piking real-estate crooks—thousands of parcels of property scattered all over the United States have been filched in that manner. But a hundred-thousand acres! It’s the biggest steal that ever has been attempted, to my knowledge, short of a Government grab, and your imagination does you credit. It’s easy to see what’s been done. You’ve got a fake title from Marchmont, antedating ours; you’ve got a crooked judge here, to befuddle the thing with legal technicalities; you’ve got the money, the power, the greed, and the cold-blooded determination. But I don’t think you understand what you’re up against—do you? Nearly every man who owns this land that you want has worked hard for it. It’s been bought with work, man—work and lonesomeness and blood—and souls. And now you want to sweep it all away with one stroke. You want to step in here and reap the benefit; you want to send us out of here, beggars.” His voice leaped from its repression; it now betrayed the passion that was consuming him; it came through his teeth: “You can’t hand me that sort of a raw deal, Corrigan, and make me like it. Understand that, right now. You’re bucking the wrong man. You can drag the courts into it; you can wriggle around a thousand legal corners, but damn you, you can’t avert what’s bound to come if you don’t lay off this deal, and that’s a fight!” He laughed, full-throated, his voice vibrating from the strength of the passion that blazed in his eyes. He revealed, for an instant to Corrigan the wild, reckless untamed youth that knew no law save his own impulses, and the big man’s eyes widened with the revelation, though he gave no other sign. He leaned back in his chair, smiling coldly, idly flecking a bit of ash from his shirt where it had fallen from his cigar.

  “I am prepared for a fight. You’ll get plenty of it before you’re through—if you don’t lie down and be good.” There was malice in his look, complacent consciousness of his power. More, there was an impulse to reveal to this young man whom he intended to ruin, at least one of the motives that was driving him. He yielded to the impulse.

  “I’m going to tell you something. I think I would have let you out of this deal, if you hadn’t been so fresh. But you made a grand-stand play before the girl I am going to marry. You showed off your horse to make a bid for her favor. You paraded before her window in the car to attract her attention. I saw you. You rode me down. You’ll get no mercy. I’m going to break you. I’m going to send you back to your father, Brandon, senior, in worse condition than when you left, ten years ago.” He sneered as Trevison started and stepped on the floor, rigid.

  “How did you recognize me?” Curiosity had dulled the young man’s passion; h
is tone was hoarse.

  “How?” Corrigan laughed, mockingly. “Did you think you could repose any confidence in a woman you have known only about a month? Did you think she wouldn’t tell me—her promised husband? She has told me—everything that she succeeded in getting out of you. She is heart and soul with me in this deal. She is ambitious. Do you think she would hesitate to sacrifice a clod-hopper like you? She’s very clever, Trevison; she’s deep, and more than a match for you in wits. Fight, if you like, you’ll get no sympathy there.”

  Trevison’s faith in Miss Benham had received a shock; Corrigan’s words had not killed it, however.

  “You’re a liar!” he said.

  Corrigan flushed, but smiled icily. “How many people know that you have coal on your land, Trevison?”

  He saw Trevison’s hands clench, and he laughed in grim amusement. It pleased him to see his enemy writhe and squirm before him; the grimness came because of a mental picture, in his mind at this minute, of Trevison confiding in the girl. He looked up, the smile freezing on his lips, for within a foot of his chest was the muzzle of Trevison’s pistol. He saw the trigger finger contracting; saw Trevison’s free hand clenched, the muscles corded and knotted—he felt the breathless, strained, unreal calm that precedes tragedy, grim and swift. He slowly stiffened, but did not shrink an inch. It took him seconds to raise his gaze to Trevison’s face, and then he caught his breath quickly and smiled with straight lips.

  “No; you won’t do it, Trevison,” he said, slowly; “you’re not that kind.” He deliberately swung around in the chair and drew another cigar from a box on the desk top, lit it and leaned back, again facing the pistol.

  Trevison restored the pistol to the holster, brushing a hand uncertainly over his eyes as though to clear his mental vision, for the shock that had come with the revelation of Miss Benham’s duplicity had made his brain reel with a lust to kill. He laughed hollowly. His voice came cold and hard:

  “You’re right—it wouldn’t do. It would be plain murder, and I’m not quite up to that. You know your men, don’t you—you coyote’s whelp! You know I’ll fight fair. You’ll do yours underhandedly. Get up! There’s your gun! Load it! Let’s see if you’ve got the nerve to face a gun, with one in your own hand!”

  “I’ll do my fighting in my own way.” Corrigan’s eyes kindled, but he did not move. Trevison made a gesture of contempt, and wheeled, to go. As he turned he caught a glimpse of a hand holding a pistol, as it vanished into a narrow crevice between a jamb and the door that led to the rear room. He drew his own weapon with a single movement, and swung around to Corrigan, his muscles tensed, his eyes alert and chill with menace.

  “I’ll bore you if you wink an eyelash!” he warned, in a whisper.

  He leaped, with the words, to the door, lunging against it, sending it crashing back so that it smashed against the wall, overbalancing some boxes that reposed on a shelf and sending them clattering. He stood in the opening, braced for another leap, tall, big, his muscles swelling and rippling, recklessly eager. Against the partition, which was still swaying, his arms outstretched, a pistol in one hand, trying to crowd still farther back to escape the searching glance of Trevison’s eyes, was Braman.

  He had overheard Trevison’s tense whisper to Corrigan. The cold savagery in it had paralyzed him, and he gasped as Trevison’s eyes found him, and the pistol that he tried to raise dangled futilely from his nerveless fingers. It thudded heavily upon the boards of the floor an instant later, a shriek of fear mingling with the sound as he went down in a heap from a vicious, deadening blow from Trevison’s fist.

  Trevison’s leap upon Braman had been swift; he was back in the doorway instantly, looking at Corrigan, his eyes ablaze with rage, wild, reckless, bitter. He laughed—the sound of it brought a grayish pallor to Corrigan’s face.

  “That explains your nerve!” he taunted. “It’s a frame-up. You sent the deputy after me—pointed me out when I went into Hanrahan’s! That’s how he knew me! You knew I’d come in here to have it out with you, and you figured to have Braman shoot me when my back was turned! Ha, ha!” He swung his pistol on Corrigan; the big man gripped the arms of his chair and sat rigid, staring, motionless. For an instant there was no sound. And then Trevison laughed again.

  “Bah!” he said; “I can’t use your methods! You’re safe so long as you don’t move.” He laughed again as he looked down at the banker. Reaching down, he grasped the inert man by the scruff of the neck and dragged him through the door, out into the banking room, past Corrigan, who watched him wonderingly and to the front, there he dropped him and turning, answered the question that he saw shining in Corrigan’s eyes:

  “I don’t work in the dark! We’ll take this case out into the sunlight, so the whole town can have a look at it!”

  He stooped swiftly, grasped Braman around the middle, swung him aloft and hurled him through the window, into the street, the glass, shattered, clashing and jangling around him. He turned to Corrigan, laughing lowly:

  “Get up. Manti will want to know. I’m going to do the talking!”

  He forced Corrigan to the front door, and stood on the threshold behind him, silent, watching.

  A hundred doorways were vomiting men. The crash of glass had carried far, and visions of a bank robbery filled many brains as their owners raced toward the doorway where Trevison stood, the muzzle of his pistol jammed firmly against Corrigan’s back.

  The crowd gathered, in the manner peculiar to such scenes, coming from all directions and converging at one point, massing densely in front of the bank building, surrounding the fallen banker, pushing, jostling, straining, craning necks for better views, eager-voiced, curious.

  No one touched Braman. On the contrary, there were many in the front fringe that braced their bodies against the crush, shoving backward, crying that a man was hurt and needed breathing space. They were unheeded, and when the banker presently recovered consciousness he was lifted to his feet and stood, pressed close to the building, swaying dizzily, pale, weak and shaken.

  Word had gone through the crowd that it was not a robbery, for there were many there who knew Trevison; they shouted greetings to him, and he answered them, standing back of Corrigan, grim and somber.

  Foremost in the crowd was Mullarky, who on another day had seen a fight at this same spot. He had taken a stand directly in front of the door of the bank, and had been using his eyes and his wits rapidly since his coming. And when two or three men from the crowd edged forward and tried to push their way to Corrigan, Mullarky drew a pistol, leaped to the door landing beside Trevison and trained his weapon, on them.

  “Stand back, or I’ll plug you, sure as I’m a foot high! There’s hell to pay here, an’ me friend gets a square deal—whatever he’s done!”

  “Right!” came other voices from various points in the crowd; “a square deal—no interference!”

  Judge Lindman came out into the street, urged by curiosity. He had stepped down from the doorway of the courthouse and had instantly been carried with the crowd to a point directly in front of Corrigan and Trevison, where he stood, bare-headed, pale, watching silently. Corrigan saw him, and smiled faintly at him. The easterner’s eye sought out several faces in the crowd near him, and when he finally caught the gaze of a certain individual who had been eyeing him inquiringly for some moments, he slowly closed an eye and moved his head slightly toward the rear of the building. Instantly the man whistled shrilly with his fingers, as though to summon someone far down the street, and slipping around the edge of the crowd made his way around to the rear of the bank building, where he was joined presently by other men, roughly garbed, who carried pistols. One of them climbed in through a window, opened the door, and the others—numbering now twenty-five or thirty, dove into the room.

  Out in front a silence had fallen. Trevison had lifted a hand and the crowd strained its ears to hear.

  “I’ve caught a crook!” declared Trevison, the frenzy of fight still surging through his veins. “He’s n
ot a cheap crook—I give him credit for that. All he wants to do is to steal the whole county. He’ll do it, too, if we don’t head him off. I’ll tell you more about him in a minute. There’s another of his stripe.” He pointed to Braman, who cringed. “I threw him out through the window, where the sunlight could shine on him. He tried to shoot me in the back—the big crook here, framed up on me. I want you all to know what you’re up against. They’re after all the land in this section; they’ve clouded every title. It’s a raw, dirty deal. I see now, why they haven’t sold a foot of the land they own here; why they’ve shoved the cost of leases up until it’s ruination to pay them. They’re land thieves, commercial pirates. They’re going to euchre everybody out of—”

  Trevison caught a gasp from the crowd—concerted, sudden. He saw the mass sway in unison, stiffen, stand rigid; and he turned his head quickly, to see the door behind him, and the broken window through which he had thrown Braman—the break running the entire width of the building—filled with men armed with rifles.

  He divined the situation, sensed his danger—the danger that faced the crowd should one of its members make a hostile movement.

  “Steady there, boys!” he shouted. “Don’t start anything. These men are here through prearrangement—it’s another frame-up. Keep your guns out of sight!” He turned, to see Corrigan grinning contemptuously at him. He met the look with naked exultation and triumph.

  “Got your body-guard within call, eh?” he jeered. “You need one. You’ve cut me short, all right; but I’ve said enough to start a fire that will rage through this part of the country until every damned thief is burned out! You’ve selected the wrong man for a victim, Corrigan.”

  He stepped down into the street, sheathing his pistol. He heard Corrigan’s voice, calling after him, saying:

  “Grand-stand play again!”

  Trevison turned; the gaze of the two men met, held, their hatred glowing bitter in their eyes; the gaze broke, like two sharp blades rasping apart, and Corrigan turned to his deputies, scowling; while Trevison pushed his way through the crowd.