by Zane Grey
Footsteps in the hall passed his door, out upon the landing, started down the stairs. That stairway descended directly under Corny’s window. Corny could not see, but he could hear. More than once he had been intensely curious about the men who passed up and down this back stairway at odd hours. Leighton had rooms on the same floor, in the front, accessible by a stairway just inside the front door.
“Sho—sho I knows dat. But I feels sorta drove. What’s he agoin’ to do if S’se found oot?” Corny heard the words distinctly.
“Tumbler, ya won’t be found out,” came the quick low reply. “What in hell could Latch do if he did find out?”
“Wal, he could shoot. I knows dat man. I‘se seen him, Kennedy. But Leighton’s done got me ober a barrel. If I don’t risk dis drive he’ll squeal aboot de udders.”
“Nonsense, Johnson. You’re gettin’ dotty with your gray hairs an’ too much prosperity,” returned Kennedy, so low Corny could not have heard if the speaker had not been scarcely five feet under the window. “This drive will clean Latch out of cattle. Then Leighton will close in on him. Leighton is close-mouthed. But I’ve a hunch ruin an’ death for Latch wouldn’t be enough for Leighton.”
“He sho hates de boss. I wasn’t dere when he got dat brand on his face. But I knows de brander. I sho does.”
“So thet’s it!” ejaculated Kennedy, in sibilant whisper. “Latch shot him!—What for, Tumbler?”
“Aboot a woman. But I’se been loose-lipped enough. Dat whisky is sho pepper hot. I’se gwine home now.”
“Wait, you—— ——nigger!” hissed Kennedy. “I’ve been your friend. An’ if Leighton has you over a barrel, let’s wait till he plays his deal, then put him over one. We can do it easier than he can to Latch.”
“Wha—what? Double-cross Leighton same as he’s double-crossin’ de boss?”
“Exactly. We’ll get rich on it. Believe me, Tumbler, Leighton won’t ever come through this alive…. Tell me, quick, about the woman in the case.”
“Man, I ain’t swarin’ it’s de truff, but I got it from Black Hand, a mulatto who rode wid de boss when he was massacreein’ wagon trains with Satana. Dat was years ago. I nursed Black Hand when he was dyin’. He tole me—Back durin’ de war Latch an’ Satana raided Bowden’s wagon train. Dey was to massacree every one. But Leighton stole a woman an’ fetched her along in a big Tullt an’ Company wagon. Latch ketched him wid de woman an’ shot him. Den Latch had a hell ob a fight wid his band, to keep dem from gittin’ her. Dam’ near wiped oot de band. Old Keetch could tell better dan Black Hand. Latch was married to dat gurl by a member of his own band. He fetched her to Spider Web Canyon, where dey all used to hole up. Dis chile of Latch’s, Miss Estie, she was borned dere. Once years ago I heerd Keetch an’ Leighton arguin’. Leighton was heah when dat chile was borned. He stole letters—proofs ob de chile’s heritage. Dat’s what Leighton had on Keetch—what Keetch never dared tell. Dis chile growed up now doan know her dad was boss of de bloodiest band ever on de border. But she’s gonna know, I kin gamble on dat. ’Cause Leighton will tell her some day. I’se heerd Cole an’ Mizzouri an’ Bain talk aboot Leighton’s revenge. Dey got him figgered. But Latch laughed at der talk.”
“By God!” gasped Kennedy, his head making a decided thump against the wall. “Thet’s what Leighton has on Latch…. Partner of Satana!… Bowden’s lost wagon train! …I never heard the beat of it on the frontier…. Come on, Nigger. We need another swig.”
The two men passed on down the stairway, leaving Corny crouched on his knees. The blood beat in his brain. Slowly he lay back, stretched out, and tried to relax his steel-like muscles. Then his mind cleared of shock. The tragedy of Latch’s life stood out like letters of lightning. Murderer! Consort of the blood-thirsty Kiowas! Real love and honest life too late! The havoc in Latch’s face—the burning in his eyes—all so clear now! Remorse, torture—lastly horror at the fear of Estelle’s finding him out, shrinking from him as something loathsome, ending her ruined life!
Corny sat up to let the cool night breeze fan his hot face. It was dark and still at the back of the house. Music and voices came from the front. The evening star shone alone in the sky.
“Wal, he’s a game old rooster,” soliloquized Corny. “Fightin’ for years to hide his low-down past! That’s been done before. Ahuh. But fightin’ for the little girl! It’d kill her. Poor kid! She has reason to worry aboot her dad. But she has no idee of the truth…. An’ so help me Gawd she never will!”
Corny could not eat. He could scarcely stand still long enough to wash and shave and don some of his new clothes. His mind remained clear but had a tendency to race. He was to meet Estelle at nine o’clock—meet her with the tremendous weight of this revelation on his mind. But no inkling of it must reach her. One thing only knocked at the gate of his slowly mounting gladness as the certainty of saving Latch from ruin and thereby the happiness of Estelle, began to take definite shape, and that was the haunting fear that she might feel as strangely about him as he did about her. And he would have to spill more blood to free her father—then ride away.
Long before a pale light brightened above the bold bluff, heralding the rising moon, Corny paced to and fro under the great, spreading, walnut tree.
The trunk of this monarch split low down and the right fork curved away close to the ground. In the center of the bend a wide seat had been built. Corny ran a quivering hand over it, brushed it clean with his scarf. Never in all his life had he waited for a girl, by day or night. Fate was giving him a cruel and maddening initiation into the mystery of romance and love.
Corny paced a beat across the wide dark shade. Here and there the big walnut trees stood as nature had widely separated them. Under them he saw the lamplights at the ranch-house. Momentarily the pale glow above the black rim grew larger and brighter. Estelle would come before the moon topped the bluff.
The instant he would see her and realize this incredible thing was not a disordered fancy or an ecstatic dream he would leap out of this tumult of whirling thoughts and wild emotions, to become cool and sure again.
Corny remembered Weaver, his trail boss and friend, and that poor misguided and reckless devil he had been compelled to kill. Some inscrutable dispensation of chance had been at work then, directing his steps toward Latchfield. And every single event since had led to the betrayal of Latch’s secret, of his peril, of the menace to Estelle’s home and honor and happiness. How Corny thanked those men of the trail who had guided him hither. He was an obstacle in the path of Leighton’s revenge—unsurmountable, indestructible, inevitable. He was an instrument sent there to frustrate this man. Corny flipped one of the darkly shining guns in his hand, sheathed it to throw again, with a speed inspired by ruthless passion and long practice. The skill he hated, the name of which he was ashamed, the sickening revolt in the pit of his stomach, these for once in his life found in him welcome.
But Corny put away thought of an immediate forcing of the climax. He leaned toward waiting for proof of the negro Johnson’s rustling of Latch’s cattle, and likewise toward a plan to recover whatever Leighton possessed that would throw light on the tragic fate of Latch’s wife and Estelle’s birth. No doubt Latch was in ignorance of what his archenemy had known all the years and could produce at will.
A silver disk of moon tipped the dark ragged bluff and almost imperceptibly the valley underwent some magical change. Coyotes were wailing out on the range. The night wind stirred the walnut leaves rustlingly. Corny faced toward the ranch-house. At once his eye, trained by years of night-guarding the herd, caught a dark bar crossing the lamplights. She was coming. Life could never again be lonely, empty, no matter what the issue. The doubt of love, of woman, that had haunted Corny since Lester’s disaster had ruined them all, faded forever out of his heart.
He strode out into the open. The moon glided higher. A white radiance moved toward him from across the valley. Then he espied a dark form flitting from tree to tree, to pause behind each one, and then come on, lik
e an Indian.
A last tree—the last patch of shade! She stepped out, slim, stealthy, darkly clad, and espying him in the open, she ran headlong.
“Oh—you’re here!” she panted, her hands outflung. “I was scared…. It’s new to me—meeting handsome vaqueros—out on the range.”
“Wal, girl, you’ve got nerve,” he replied as he took her hand. “I wasn’t scared till I seen you. I’m shore scared stiff now. Latch would kill me for this.”
“Corny!…It was easy. We’re safe. I told the girls I was—meeting you. They’re tickled—to death. They’ll watch…. But Dad is in the living-room…. Benson, Keetch, Mizzouri—I don’t know who—else. Something amiss—cowboy.”
“Ahuh. Come in the shade…. Heah, set down now, an’ when you catch your breath tell me what’s amiss.”
“Lift me up on this tree—like you did on that one,” she said, and stood for him, with her arms high.
Corny did as he was bidden. That left him head and shoulders below her, as he leaned on the huge branch. She sat partly in the moonlight, and if more were needed for his undoing it came with the ray of silver which caught her face.
“Very thrilling—to meet like this, isn’t it?” she questioned, fathomless eyes upon him.
“Turrible thrillin’, child,” he replied. “An for me—dangerous.”
“You don’t look scared.”
“Wal, I am, though.”
“Corny, I believe I like this better than if you came to my home—a-courting.”
“Dear, I’m courtin’ death. I’ll welcome the heartbreak. But I shore don’t want to die heah. I’ve got some awful important work on hand.”
“Cowboy, you can’t frighten me—now I’ve got you. … But—before I tell you anything—you tell me—if it’s really true what you said—over your saddle that day.”
How large and dark her eyes in her moon-blanched face! Corny had no background of experience by which to understand her. But he could feel her intensity; he could see that she was wholly unconscious of how trying an ordeal this was for him.
“Yes, Estelle—it’s true,” he replied, unsteadily.
She swayed back out of the moonlight and covered her face with her hands. He turned away a moment to let her recover. That she betrayed no evidence of surprise and affront at the brazen impudence of a trail driver did much to carry Corny over that bitter confession.
“Corny, I—I’ve doubted you,” she went on. “That Smith girl said you were one of them cowboy lady-killers!”
“Wal, reckon it’s news to me if I am,” drawled Corny. “I been buyin’ stuff in Smith’s. An’ natural-like I talked sort of pert to her.”
“You didn’t m—make love to her!”
“Estelle! I cross my heart I didn’t,” ejaculated Corny, bewildered.
“Nor flirt with her?”
“No.”
“She gave me a different impression…. And worse, Corny, I’ve been told you have paid a good deal of attention to one of Leighton’s dancers. The red-headed girl. Is that true?”
“Wal, I’m afraid it is, little girl. But you notice I’m lookin’ you straight in the eye.”
“Yes…. But, why, then——”
“Estelle, I’ve been findin’ out things heah in Latchfield. An’ I’ve made no bones aboot how I went at it.”
“Corny! All the time I’ve been miserable. I—I’ve despised myself because I was so little—so jealous…. Because in my heart I knew you wouldn’t lie to me. Yet I—I doubted…. And all the time you’ve been working for my dad!”
“You bet I have, Estelle,” replied Corny, helpless in the current. He had meant to strengthen her doubts—deliberately to damn his character in her eyes. And here he was proud to tell her the truth.
“Forgive me, Corny,” she entreated, and then with hands on his shoulders she lowered her lips to a level with his.
Corny’s response had the simplicity of her invitation. He kissed her without realizing the inevitableness of this moment. But the instant she shyly withdrew her cool sweet lips he knew.
“My Gawd, little girl!” he whispered. “Am I drunk—or out of my haid?”
“That’s not flattering, Corny. I gave you my first kiss…. Honest!”
“But, child, you—you couldn’t do that onless——
“Of course I couldn’t,” she interrupted, quickly. “But never mind about that now. I—I’m a little scared myself. You see, we’re not very well acquainted. That’s my fault, Corny Cornwall.”
“Listen, wonderful little lady. No one but you heah knows my real name. I’m Slim Blue. Savvy?”
“Slim Blue! Well, I never. Where did you get that pretty name?”
“That’s my trail name, Estelle.”
“I think I like it. But, Corny, we’re wasting time. I can’t stay long. Oh! it’s so—so sweet to be here…. Corny, there’s something dreadfully wrong with Dad.”
“Yeah. Wal, I’m listenin’.”
“I’ve made it my business to try to find out what is wrong. But I can’t…. Corny, Dad walks the floor at night. All hours of the night! I hear men come and go. Bain, Cole, Mizzouri, Webb, Bartlett.—I’ve seen or heard them all, visiting Dad at late hours. No ordinary calls, believe me. I’ve heard Dad cursing Keetch. Oh, I’ve listened shamelessly. But I could never make out what was said. Once I think I heard Leighton’s name. Then there are other men who came—whose voices I didn’t recognize. I looked in Dad’s desk and discovered that most of the ten thousand dollars I brought home is gone. Gone! and not one of the many bills paid. Oh, Dad owes everybody. They are all dunning him. I can’t understand it, Corny.”
“Wall, it’s easy to understand aboot the bills. He’s hard up.”
“But where has all that money gone?”
“Shore I don’t know, Estelle.”
“I want you to find out. There were a good many brand-new greenbacks. Fifties and hundreds. They would be unusual here.”
“Wal, I might run across some if I snooped around. But why—what’s the idee?”
“I’d like to know who is getting it…. Corny, Dad is failing. Oh, I know it. He has lost weight. He looks old, broken, harassed. But when he sees me he changes so that I gasp with wonder. He’s all smiles. He is my old Daddy again. It’s only when I spy on him that I can see the havoc…. Corny, it’s breaking my heart. What does it mean?”
“Wal, go on, little girl, if you have any more to tell,” replied Corny, coolly.
“There’s more. The worst. I’m so ashamed. We—the Latches are losing caste in Latchfield! My own home. Ihe town Daddy built!… When I first got home I sensed a difference. I was puzzled. Coolness on the part of former friends!… Corny, today I had my suspicions confirmed. Mrs. Webb sort of avoided me on the street. I used to be so fond of her. Then when I spoke to Edith Rankin about my party she said she guessed none of the Rankins would be there. I was dumbfounded. And terribly hurt…. Corny, there’s something—range gossip—going around about my father.”
“Shore. I heahed a lot myself.”
“Against my Dad?”
“Nope. What I heahed was all good.”
“Ah! Corny, I should have seen you long ago—Well, the last is so—so disgusting that I wouldn’t tell you if it weren’t so amazing…. You know that young gambler partner of Leighton’s. His name is Wess Manley. Good-looking in a bold sort of way.”
“Yeah. I know Manley.”
“He insulted me.”
“Wal, you don’t say,” drawled Corny, averting his eyes from her lovely troubled face. For a moment he was concerned with an inward reaction.
“I bumped into him on the street. The girls were coming out of Smith’s. That was the second time we’d gone in there…. Manley was as bold as his looks, if it ain’t Estie Latch,’ he said, halting me. ‘Hello, kid. You sure have growed up. Am I in for some of your favor?’… Corny, I couldn’t speak, I was so furious. But I whirled and he called after, ‘Proud as ever, I see… Estie Latch, you’ll come down a few
pegs presently. I’ll see the day you drink with me in Leighton’s.”
“Wall, Estelle, he was just drunk,” replied Corny, with easy assurance, hiding the fury of his emotions. “Don’t think aboot that another minute.”
“But, Corny, drunk or sober, he couldn’t say that without some reason. He must have been sure I wouldn’t tell Dad.”
“Shore he was. An’ you won’t, Estie?”
“I don’t want Dad shooting the cur. All the same, Corny, it riles me. I’m Western, in spite of my Southern education…. How do you explain all this?”
“Simple as a, b, c, darlin’,” rejoined Corny. Then he had to catch his breath at her response to his unwitting term of endearment. “Estie!… Dog-gone! Am I loco?”
“We’re both loco. But go on.”
“Wal, Latch is on the verge of ruin. He has given away prodigally. He has been a prince to settlers, Indians, travelers, outlaws, everyone who came to Latch’s Field. He has not saved. He is land poor. Thousands of haid of cattle have been rustled. Leighton is his worst enemy. There’s an old grudge, datin’ back years. An old gamblin’ debt—an’ gun-play aboot it. Your Dad gave Leighton that ugly bullet mark. Wal, Leighton is at the haid of this rustlin’. He has a gang. Kennedy is his main pard. Manley is with them. Tumbler Johnson, the nigger rancher down the valley, is supposed to be close with your Dad, same as Mizzouri an’ the others. I heahed Johnson an’ Kennedy talkin’ today. There’s a deal on now to steal all the rest of your Dad’s stock. That will aboot ruin him. For he cain’t meet his obligations—all the bills you spoke of, an’ I reckon outstandin’ debts to Leighton. An’ the plan is, of course, to force Latch off his ranch.”
“Good Heaven! Is it possible, Corny?” burst out Estelle, passionately.
“No. It shore isn’t. But Leighton doesn’t know that. … I reckon there’s only one man Who does.”
“You!
“I hate to brag, Estelle, but I reckon I’m the little old hombre…. Leighton’s plan is to ruin your Dad financially. He’ll end by holdin’ all these debts. An’ if he cain’t drive your Dad off the land, he’ll kill him an’ take possession after.”
