by Unknown
"Ah, make the most of what ye yet may spend, Before ye, too, into the Dust descend; Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!"
he misquoted, with a sneer; and immediately interrupted his irony to give way to one of his sudden blind rages.
With incredible swiftness his right hand moved forward and up, catching revolver from scabbard as it rose. But by a fraction of a second his purpose had been anticipated. A closed fist shot forward to the salient jaw in time to fling the bullets into the ceiling. An arm encircled the outlaw's neck, and flung him backward down the stairs. The railing broke his fall, and on it his body slid downward, the weapon falling from his hand. He pulled himself together at the foot of the stairs, crouched for an upward rush, but changed his mind instantly. The young officer who had flung him down had him covered with his own six-shooter. He could hear footsteps running toward him, and he knew that in a few seconds he would be in the hands of the soldiers. Plunging out of the doorway, the desperado vaulted to the saddle and drove his spurs home. For a minute hoofs pounded on the hard, white road. Then the night swallowed him and the echo of his disappearance.
"That was Bannister of the Shoshones and the Tetons," the girl's white lips pronounced to Lieutenant Beecher.
"And I let him get away from me," the disappointed lad groaned. "Why, I had him right in my hands. I could have throttled him as easy. But how was I to know he would have nerve enough to come rushing into a hotel full of soldiers hunting him?"
"Y'u have a very persistent cousin, Mr. Bannister," said McWilliams, coming forward from the alcove with shining eyes. "And I must say he's game. Did y'u ever hear the like? Come butting in here as cool as if he hadn't a thing to do but sing out orders like he was in his own home. He was that easy."
"It seems to me that a little of the praise is due Lieutenant Beecher. If he hadn't dealt so competently with the situation murder would have been done. Did you learn your boxing at the Academy, Lieutenant?" Helen asked, trying to treat the situation lightly in spite of her hammering heart.
"I was the champion middleweight of our class," Beecher could not help saying boyishly, with another of his blushes.
"I can easily believe it," returned Helen.
"I wish y'u would teach me how to double up a man so prompt and immediate," said the admiring foreman.
"I expect I'm under particular obligations to that straight right to the chin, Lieutenant," chimed in the sheepman. "The fact is that I don't seem to be able to get out anything except thanks these days. I ought to send my cousin a letter thanking him for giving me a chance to owe so much kindness to so many people."
"Your cousin?" repeated the uncomprehending officer.
"This desperado, Bannister, is my cousin," answered the sheepman gravely.
"But if he was your cousin, why should he want--to kill you?"
"That's a long story, Lieutenant. Will y'u hear it now?"
"If you feel strong enough to tell it."
"Oh, I'm strong enough." He glanced at Helen. "Perhaps we had better not tire Miss Messiter with it. If y'u'll come to my room--"
"I should like, above all things, to hear it again," interrupted that young woman promptly.
For the man she loved had just come back to her from the brink of the grave and she was still reluctant to let him out of her sight.
So Ned Bannister told his story once more, and out of the alcove came the happy foreman and Nora to listen to the tale. While he told it his sweetheart's contented eyes were on him. The excitement of the night burnt pleasantly in her veins, for out of the nettle danger she had plucked safety for her sheepman.
CHAPTER 20
. TWO CASES OF DISCIPLINE
The Fourth of July celebration at Gimlet Butte had been a thing of the past for four days and the Lazy D had fallen back into the routine of ranch life. The riders were discussing supper and the continued absence of Reddy when that young man drew back the flap and joined them.
He stood near the doorway and grinned with embarrassed guilt at the assembled company.
"I reckon I got too much Fourth of July at Gimlet Butte, boys. That's how come I to be onpunctual getting back."
There was a long silence, during which those at the table looked at him with an expressionless gravity that did not seem to veil an unduly warm welcome.
"Hello, Mac! Hello, boys! I just got back," he further contributed.
Without comment the Lazy D resumed supper. Apparently it had not missed Reddy or noticed his return. Casual conversation was picked up cheerfully. The return of the prodigal was quite ignored.
"Then that blamed cow gits its back up and makes a bee-line for Rogers. The old man hikes for his pony and--"
"Seems good to git my legs under the old table again," interrupted Reddy with cheerful unease.
"--loses by about half a second," continued Missou. "If Doc hadn't roped its hind laig--"
"Have some cigars, boys. I brought a box back with me." Reddy tossed a handful on the table, where they continued to lie unnoticed.
"--there's no telling what would have happened. As 'twas the old man got off with a--"
"Y'u bet, they're good cigars all right," broke in the propitiatory Reddy.
The interrupted anecdote went on to a finish and the men trooped out and left the prodigal alone with his hash. When that young man reached the bunkhouse Frisco was indulging in a reminiscence. Reddy got only the last of it, but that did not contribute to his serenity.
"Yep! When I was working on the Silver Dollar. Must a-been three years ago, I reckon, when Jerry Miller got that chapping."
"Threw down the outfit in a row they had with the Lafferty crowd, didn't he?" asked Denver.
Frisco nodded.
Mac got up, glanced round, and reached for his hat. "I reckon I'll have to be going," he said, and forthright departed.
Reddy reached for HIS hat and rose. "I got to go and have a talk with Mac," he explained.
Denver got to the door first and his big frame filled it.
"Don't hurry, Reddy. It ain't polite to rush away right after dinner. Besides, Mac will be here all day. He ain't starting for New York."
"Y'u're gittin' blamed particular. Mac he went right out."
"But Mac didn't have a most particular engagement with the boys. There's a difference."
"Why, I ain't got--" Reddy paused and looked around helplessly.
"Gents, I move y'u that it be the horse sense of the Lazy D that our friend Mr. Reddy Reeves be given gratis one chapping immediately if not sooner. The reason for which same being that he played a lowdown trick on the outfit whose bread he was eating."
"Oh, quit your foolin', boys," besought the victim anxiously.
"And that Denver, being some able-bodied and having a good reach, be requested to deliver same to the gent needing it," concluded Missou.
Reddy backed in alarm to the wall. "Y'u boys don't want to get gay with me. Y'u can't monkey with--"
Motion carried unanimously.
Just as Reddy whipped out his revolver Denver's long leg shot out and his foot caught the wrist behind the weapon. When Reddy next took cognizance of his surroundings he was serving as a mattress for the anatomy of three stalwart riders. He was gently deposited face down on his bunk with a one-hundred-eighty-pound live peg at the end of each arm and leg.
"All ready, Denver," announced Frisco from the end of the left foot.
Denver selected a pair of plain leather chaps with care and proceeded to business. What he had to do he did with energy. It is safe to say that at least one of those present can still vividly remember this and testify to his thoroughness.
Mac drifted in after the disciplining. As foreman it was fitting that he should be discreetly ignorant of what had occurred, but he could not help saying:
"That y'u I heard singing, Reddy? Seems to me y'u had ought to take that voice into grand opera. The way y'u straddle them high notes is a caution for fair. What was it y'u was singing? S
ounded like 'Would I were far from here, love.'"
"Y'u go to hell," choked Reddy, rushing past him from the bunkhouse.
McWilliams looked round innocently. "I judge some of y'u boys must a-been teasing Reddy from his manner. Seemed like he didn't want to sit down and talk."
"I shouldn't wonder but he'll hold his conversations standing for a day or two," returned Missou gravely.
At the end of the laugh that greeted this Mac replied:
Well, y'u boys want to be gentle with him." "He's so plumb tender now that I reckon he'll get along without any more treatment in that line from us," drawled Frisco.
Mac departed laughing. He had an engagement that recurred daily in the dusk of the evening, and he was always careful to be on time. The other party to the engagement met him at the kitchen door and fell with him into the trail that led to Lee Ming's laundry.
"What made you late?" she asked.
"I'm not late, honey. I seem late because you're so anxious," he explained.
"I'm not," protested Nora indignantly. "If you think you're the only man on the place, Jim McWilliams "
"Sho! Hold your hawsses a minute, Nora, darling. A spinster like y'u--"
"You think you're awful funny--writing in my autograph album that a spinster's best friend is her powder box. I like Mr. Halliday's ways better. He's a perfect gentleman."
"I ain't got a word to say against Denver, even if he did write in your book,
"'Sugar is sweet, The sky is blue, Grass is green And so are you.'
I reckon, being a perfect gentleman, he meant--"
"You know very well you wrote that in yourself and pretended it was Mr. Halliday, signing his name and everything. It wasn't a bit nice of you."
"Now do I look like a forger?" he wanted to know with innocence on his cherubic face.
"Anyway you know it was mean. Mr. Halliday wouldn't do such a thing. You take your arm down and keep it where it belongs, Mr. McWilliams."
"That ain't my name, Nora, darling, and I'd like to know where my arm belongs if it isn't round the prettiest girl in Wyoming. What's the use of being engaged if--"
"I'm not sure I'm going to stay engaged to you," announced the young woman coolly, walking at the opposite edge of the path from him.
"Now that ain't any way to talk "
"You needn't lecture me. I'm not your wife and I don't think I'm going to be," cut in Nora, whose temper was ruffled on account of having had to wait for him as well as for other reasons.
"Y'u surely wouldn't make me sue y'u for breach of promise, would y'u?" he demanded, with a burlesque of anxiety that was the final straw.
Nora turned on her heel and headed for the house.
"Now don't y'u get mad at me, honey. I was only joking," he explained as he pursued her.
"You think you can laugh at me all you please. I'll show you that you can't," she informed him icily.
"Sho! I wasn't laughing at y'u. What tickled me--"
"I'm not interested in your amusement, Mr. McWilliams."
"What's the use of flying out about a little thing like that? Honest, I don't even know what you're mad at me for," the perplexed foreman averred.
"I'm not mad at you, as you call it. I'm simply disgusted."
And with a final "Good night" flung haughtily over her shoulder Miss Nora Darling disappeared into the house.
Mac took off his hat and gazed at the door that had been closed in his face. He scratched his puzzled poll in vain.
"I ce'tainly got mine good and straight just like Reddy got his. But what in time was it all about? And me thinkin' I was a graduate in the study of the ladies. I reckon I never did get jarred up so. It's plumb discouraging."
If he could have caught a glimpse of Nora at that moment, lying on her bed and crying as if her heart would break, Mac might have found the situation less hopeless.
CHAPTER 21
. THE SIGNAL LIGHTS
In a little hill-rift about a mile back of the Lazy D Ranch was a deserted miner's cabin.
The hut sat on the edge of a bluff that commanded a view of the buildings below, while at the same time the pines that surrounded it screened the shack from any casual observation. A thin curl of smoke was rising from the mud chimney, and inside the cabin two men lounged before the open fire.
"It's his move, and he is going to make it soon. Every night I look for him to drop down on the ranch. His hate's kind of volcanic, Mr. Ned Bannister's is, and it's bound to bubble over mighty sudden one of these days," said the younger of the two, rising and stretching himself.
"It did bubble over some when he drove two thousand of my sheep over the bluff and killed the whole outfit," suggested the namesake of the man mentioned.
"Yes, I reckon that's some irritating," agreed McWilliams. "But if I know him, he isn't going to be content with sheep so long as he can take it out of a real live man."
"Or woman," suggested the sheepman.
"Or woman," agreed the other. "Especially when he thinks he can cut y'u deeper by striking at her. If he doesn't raid the Lazy D one of these nights, I'm a blamed poor prophet."
Bannister nodded agreement. "He's near the end of his rope. He could see that if he were blind. When we captured Bostwick and they got a confession out of him, that started the landslide against him. It began to be noised abroad that the government was going to wipe him out. Folks began to lose their terror of him, and after that his whole outfit began to want to turn State's evidence. He isn't sure of one of them now; can't tell when he will be shot in the back by one of his own scoundrels for that two thousand dollars reward."
The foreman strolled negligently to the door. His eyes drifted indolently down into the valley, and immediately sparkled with excitement.
"The signal's out, Bann," he exclaimed. "It's in your window."
The sheepman leaped to his feet and strode to the door. Down in the valley a light was gleaming in a window. Even while he looked another light appeared in a second window.
"She wants us both," cried the foreman, running to the little corral back of the house.
He presently reappeared with two horses, both saddled, and they took the downward trail at once.
"If Miss Helen can keep him in play till we arrive," murmured Mac anxiously.
"She can if he gives her a chance, and I think he will. There's a kind of cat instinct in him to play with his prey."
"Yes, but he missed his kill last time by letting her fool him. That's what I'm afraid of' that he won't wait."
They had reached lower ground now, and could put their ponies at a pounding gallop that ate up the trail fast. As they approached the houses, both men drew rein and looked carefully to their weapons. Then they slid from the saddles and slipped noiselessly forward.
What the foreman had said was exactly true. Helen Messiter did want them both, and she wanted them very much indeed.
After supper she had been dreamily playing over to herself one of Chopin's waltzes, when she became aware, by some instinct, that she was not alone in the room. There had been no least sound, no slightest stir to betray an alien presence. Yet that some one was in the room she knew, and by some subtle sixth sense could even put a name to the intruder.
Without turning she called over her shoulder: "Shall I finish the waltz?" No faintest tremor in the clear, sweet voice betrayed the racing heart.
"Y'u're a cool hand, my friend," came his ready answer. "But I think we'll dispense with the music. I had enough last time to serve me for twice."
She laughed as she swung on the stool, with that musical scorn which both allured and maddened. "I did rather do you that time," she allowed.
"This is the return match. You won then. I win now," he told her, with a look that chilled.
"Indeed! But isn't that rather discounting the future?"
"Only the immediate future. Y'u're mine, my beauty, and I mean to take y'u with me."
Just a disdainful sweep of her eyes she gave him as she rose from the piano-stool and rearr
anged the lamps. "You mean so much that never comes to pass, Mr. Bannister. The road to the nether regions is paved with good intentions, we are given to understand. Not that yours can by any stretch of imagination be called 'good intentions.'"
"Contrariwise, then, perhaps the road to heaven may be paved with evil intentions. Since y'u travel the road with me, wherever it may lead, it were but gallant to hope so."
He took three sharp steps toward her and stood looking down in her face, her sweet slenderness so close to him that the perfume mounted to his brain. Surely no maiden had ever been more desirable than this one, who held him in such contemptuous estimation that only her steady eyes moved at his approach. These held to his and defied him, while she stood leaning motionless against the table with such strong and supple grace. She knew what he meant to do, hated him for it, and would not give him the satisfaction of flying an inch from him or struggling with him.
