The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

  Like a wild bull the prizefighter was at him again. He beat down the cowpuncher's defense and mauled him savagely with all the punishing skill of his craft. Steve was a man of his hands. He had held his own in many a rough-and-tumble bout. But he had no science except that which nature had given him. As long as a man could, he stood up to Harrison's trained skill. When at last he was battered to the ground it was because the strength had all oozed out of him.

  Harrison stood over him, swaggering. "Had enough?"

  Where he had been flung, against one of the studio walls, Steve sat dizzily, his head reeling. He saw things through a mist in a queer jerky way. But still a smile beamed on his disfigured face.

  "Surest thing you know."

  "Don't want some more of the same?" jeered the victor.

  "Didn't hear me ask for more, did you? No, an' you won't either. Me, I love a scrap, but I don't yearn for no encore after I've been clawed by a panther and chewed up by a threshing-machine and kicked by an able-bodied mule into the middle o' next week. Enough's a-plenty, as old Jim Butts said when his second wife died."

  The prizefighter looked vindictively down at him. He was not satisfied, though he had given the range-rider such a whaling as few men could stand up and take. For the conviction was sifting home to him that he had not beaten the man at all. His pile-driver blows had hammered down his body, but the spirit of him shone dauntless out of the gay, unconquerable eyes.

  With a sullen oath Harrison turned away. His sulky glance fell upon Lennox, who was clapping his hands softly.

  "You'd be one grand little fighter, Yeager, if you only knew how," the leading man said with enthusiasm.

  "Mebbe you'd like to teach him, Mr. Lennox," sneered Harrison.

  The star flushed. "Maybe I would, Mr. Harrison."

  "Or perhaps you'd rather show him how it's done."

  Lennox looked, straight at him. "Nothing doing. And I serve notice right here that I'll have no more trouble with you. If it's got to come to that either you or I will quit the company."

  The bully's eyes narrowed. "Which one of us?"

  "It'll be up to Threewit to pass on that."

  Harrison put on his coat and slouched sulkily out of the building. He knew quite well that if it came to a choice between him and Lennox the director would sacrifice him without a moment's consideration.

  Farrar, who had been grinding out pictures since the beginning of hostilities, came forward to greet Yeager with a little whoop of joy.

  "Say, you sure go some, Cactus Center. I never did see a fellow eat up such a licking and come up smiling. You're certainly one Mellin's Food baby. I'm for you--strong."

  One of Steve's eyes was closing rapidly, but the other had not lost its twinkle.

  "Does a fellow's system good to assimilate a tanning oncet in a while--sort o' corrects any mistaken notions he's liable to collect. Gentlemen, hush! Ain't Harrison the boss eat-em-alive white hope that ever turkey-trotted down the pike?"

  The melancholy Manderson smiled. "You make a hit with me, Arizona. If I were in your place I'd be waiting for the undertaker. You look like you'd out come of a railroad wreck, two fires, and a cattle stampede over your carcass. Here, boys, hustle along first aid to our friend the punching-bag."

  They got him water and towels and a sponge. Steve, protesting humorously, submitted to their ministrations. He was grateful for the friendliness that prompted their kindness. The atmosphere had subtly changed. During the afternoon he had sensed a little aloofness, an intention on the part of the company members to stand off until they knew him better. Now the ice was melted. They had taken him into the family. He had passed with honors his preliminary examination.

  CHAPTER III

  CHAD HARRISON

  As soon as Steve stepped into the dining-room he knew that the story of his fight with Harrison had preceded him. His battered face became an immediate focus of curious veiled glances. These exhibited an animated interest rather than surprise.

  Mrs. Seymour introduced him in turn to each of the other boarders, and the furtive looks stared for a moment their frank questions at him. As he drew in his chair beside a slender, tanned young woman, he knew with some amusement that his arrival had interrupted a conversation of which he had been the theme.

  The film actress seated beside Yeager must have been in her very early twenties, but her pretty face, finely modeled, had the provocative effrontery that is the note of twentieth-century young womanhood. Its audacity, which was the quintessence of worldliness, held an alert been-through-it-all expression.

  "I hope you like Los Robles, Mr. Yeager. Some of us don't, you know," she suggested.

  "Like it fine, Miss Ellington," he answered with enthusiasm, accepting from Ruth Seymour a platter of veal croquettes.

  Daisy Ellington slanted mischievous eyes toward him. "Not much doing here. It's a dead little hole. You'll be bored to death--if you haven't been already."

  "Me! I've found it right lively," retorted Steve, his eyes twinkling. "Had all the excitement I could stand for one day. You see I come from way back in the cow country, ma'am."

  "And I came from New York," she sighed. "When it comes to little old Broadway I'm there with bells on. What d'you mean, cow country? Ain't this far enough off the map? Say, were you ever in New York?"

  "Oncet. With a load of steers my boss was shipping to England. Lemme see. It was three years ago come next October."

  "Three years ago. Why, that was when I was in the pony ballet with 'Adam, Eve, and the Apple.' Did you see the show?"

  "Bet I did."

  Her eyes sparkled. "I was in the first row, third from the left in the 'Good-Night' chorus. Some kick to that song, wasn't there?"

  "I should say yes. We're old friends, then, aren't we?" exclaimed Yeager promptly. He buried her little hand in his big brown paw, a friendly smile beaming through the disfigurements of his bruised face.

  "He didn't do a thing to you, did he?" she commented, looking him over frankly.

  "Not a thing--except run me through a sausage-grinder, drop me out of one of these aeroplanes, hammer my haid with a pile-driver, and jounce me up and down on a big pile of sharp rocks. Outside of trifles like that I had it all my own way."

  "I don't see any alfalfa in your hair," she laughed. Then, lowering her voice discreetly, she added: "Harrison's a brute. I'll tell you about him some time when Ruth isn't round."

  "Ruth!" Steve glanced at the young girl who moved about the room with such rhythmic grace helping the Chinese waiter serve her mother's guests. "What has she got to do with Harrison?"

  "Engaged to him--that's all. See that sparkler on her finger? Wouldn't it give you a jolt that a nice little girl like her would take up with a stiff like Harrison?"

  "What's her mother thinking about?" asked the cowpuncher under cover of the conversation that was humming briskly all around the tables.

  Daisy lifted her shoulders in a careless little shrug. "Oh, her mother! What's she got to do with it? Harrison has hypnotized the kid, I guess. He throws a big chest, and at that he ain't bad-looking. He's one man too, if he is a rotten bad lot."

  The young woman breezed on to another subject in the light, inconsequent fashion she had, and presently deserted Yeager to meet the badinage of an extra sitting at an adjoining table.

  After dinner Steve went to his new quarters to get a cigar he had left on the table. It was one Farrar had given him. He was cherishing it because his financial assets had become reduced to twenty cents and he did not happen to know when pay-day was.

  Yeager climbed the barn stairs humming a range song:--

  "Black Jack Davy came a-riding along, Singing a song so gayly, He laughed and sang till the merry woods rang And he charmed the heart of a lady, And he charmed--"

  Abruptly he pulled up in his stride and in his song. Ruth Seymour was in the room putting new sheets and pillow-cases on the bed.

  "I haven't had time before. I didn't think you would be through dinner so soon," she explained i
n a voice soft and low.

  "That's all right. I only dropped up to get a cigar I left on the table. Don't let me disturb you."

  Her troubled eyes rested on the strong, lean face that went so well with the strong, lean body. One eye was swollen and almost shut. Red bruises glistened on the forehead and the cheeks. A bit of plaster stretched diagonally above the right cheekbone where the prizefighter's knuckles had cut a deep gash. Little ridges covered his countenance as if it had been a contour map of a mountainous country. But through all the havoc that had been wrought flashed his white teeth in a cheerful smile.

  The girl's lip trembled. "I'm sorry you--were hurt."

  He flashed a quick look at her. "Sho! Forget it, Miss Seymour. I wasn't hurt any--none to speak of. It don't do a big husky like me any harm to be handed a licking."

  "You--hit him first, didn't you?"

  "Yes, ma'am,--knocked him out cold before he knew where he was at. He was entitled to a come-back. I'm noways hos-tile to him because he's a better man than I am."

  She stood with the pillow in her hands, shy as a fawn, but with a certain resolution, too, the trouble of her soul still reflected on the sweet face.

  "Why do men--do such things?" she asked with a catch of her breath.

  He scratched his curly head in apologetic perplexity. "Search me. I reckon the cave man is lurking around in most of us. We hadn't ought to. That's a fact."

  "It was all a mistake, Miss Ellington says. You thought he was hurting Miss Winters. Why didn't you tell him you were sorry? Then it would have been all right."

  The cowpuncher did not bat an eye at this innocent suggestion.

  "That's right. Why didn't I think of that? Then of course he would have laid off o' me."

  "He--Mr. Harrison--is quick-tempered. I suppose all brave men are. But he's generous, too. If you had explained--"

  "I reckon you're right. He sure is generous, even in the whalings he gives. But don't worry about me. I'm all right, and much obliged for your kindness in asking."

  Steve found his cigar and retired. He carried with him in memory a picture of a troubled young creature with soft, tender eyes gleaming starlike from beneath waves of dark hair.

  Yeager met Harrison swaggering up the gravel walk toward the house. A malevolent gleam lit in the cold black eyes of the bully.

  "How you feeling, young fella?"

  "A hundred and eighty years old," answered the cowpuncher promptly with a grin. "Every time I open my mouth my face cracks. You ce'tainly did give me a proper trimming. I don't know sic-'em about this scientific fight game."

  Harrison scowled. "There's more at the same address any time you need it."

  "Not if I see you coming in time to make a getaway," retorted Steve with a laugh.

  As the range-rider passed lightly down the walk there drifted back to the prizefighter the words of a cowboy song:--

  "Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee, In a narrow grave just six by three, Where the wild coyotes will howl o'er me-- Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee."

  Harrison ripped out an oath. There was a note of gentle irony about the minor strain of the song that he resented. He had given this youth the thrashing of his life, but he had apparently left his spirit quite uncrushed. What he liked was to have men walk in fear of him.

  The song presently died on the lips of Steve. Harrison was on his way to call on Ruth. The man had somehow won her promise to marry him. It was impossible for Yeager to believe that the child knew what she was doing. To think of her as the future wife of Chad Harrison moved him to resentment at life's satiric paradoxes. To give this sweet young innocent to such a man was to mate a lamb with a tiger or a wolf. The outrage of it cried to Heaven. What could her mother be thinking of to allow such a wanton sacrifice?

  CHAPTER IV

  THE EXTRA

  From the first Yeager enjoyed his work with the Lunar Company. Young and full-blooded, he liked novelty and adventure, life in the open, new scenes and faces. As a film actor he did not have to seek sensations. They came to him unsought. He had the faculty of projecting himself with all his mind into the business of the moment, so that he soon knew what it was to be a noble and self-conscious hero as well as an unmitigated villain.

  One day he was a miner making his last stand against a band of Mexican banditti, the next he was crawling through the mesquite to strike down an intrepid ranger who laughed at death. He fought desperate single combats, leaped from cliffs into space or across bridgeless chasms, took part in dozens of sets illustrating scenes of frontier life as Billy Threewit conceived these. Sometimes Steve smiled. The director's ideas had largely been absorbed in New York from reading Western fiction. But so long as he drew down his two-fifty a day and had plenty of fun doing it, Steve was no stickler for naked realism. The "bad men" of Yeager's acquaintance had usually been quiet, soft-spoken citizens, notable chiefly for a certain chilliness of the eye and an efficient economy of expression that eliminated waste. Those that Threewit featured were of a different type. They strutted and bragged and made gun plays on every possible occasion.

  Perhaps this was why Harrison's stuff got across. By nature a swaggering bully, he had only to turn loose his real impulses to register what the director wanted of a bad man. In the rough-and-tumble life he had led, it had been Yeager's business to know men. He made no mistake about Harrison. The fellow might be a loud-mouthed braggart; none the less he would go the limit. The man was game.

  Lennox met Steve one day as the latter was returning from the property room with a saddle Threewit had asked him to adjust. The star stopped him good-naturedly.

  "Care to put the gloves on with me some time, Yeager?"

  The cowpuncher's face brightened. "I sure would. The boys say you're the best ever with the mitts."

  "I'm a pretty good boxer, but I don't trail in your class as a fighter. What you need is to take some lessons. If you'd care to have me show you what I know--"

  "Say, you've rung the bell first shot."

  "Come up to the hotel to-night, then. No need advertising it. Harrison might pick another quarrel with you to show you what you don't know."

  Steve laughed. "He's ce'tainly one tough citizen. He can look at a pine board so darned sultry it begins to smoke. All right. Be up there to-night, Mr. Lennox."

  From that day the boxing lessons became a regular thing. The claim Lennox had made for himself had scarcely done him justice. He was one of the best amateur boxers in the West. In Yeager he had a pupil quick to learn. The extra was a perfect specimen physically, narrow of flank, broad of shoulder, with the well-packed muscles of one always trained to the minute. Fifteen years in the saddle had given him a toughness of fiber no city dweller could possibly equal. Nights under the multiple stars in the hills, cool, invigorating mornings with the pine-filled air strong as wine in his clean blood, long days of sunshine full of action, had all contributed to make him the young Hermes that he was. Cool and wary, supple as a wildcat, light as a dancing schoolgirl on his feet, he had the qualities which go to help both the fighter and the boxer. Lennox had never seen a man with more natural aptitude for the sport.

  Sometimes Farrar was present at these lessons. Often Baldy Cummings, who liked the cowpuncher because Steve was always willing to help him get the properties ready for the required sets, would put on the gloves with him and try him out for a round or two. Manderson, the melancholy comedian, occasionally dropped in with some other member of the company.

  The same thought was in the mind of all of them except Yeager himself. The extra was being trained to meet Harrison. It was apparent to all of them that the prizefighter was nursing a grudge. The jaunty insouciance of the young range-rider irritated him as a banderilla goads a bull in the ring.

  "Steve gets under his hide. Some day he's going to break loose again," Farrar told Manderson as they watched Lennox and Yeager box.

  "The kid shapes fine. If Mr. Chad Harrison waits long enough he's liable to find himself in trouble when he tackles that you
ng tiger cub," answered the comedian. "Ever see anybody quicker on his feet? Reminds me of Jim Corbett when he was a youngster."

  The news of the boxing lessons traveled to Harrison. He set his heavy jaw and waited. He intended that Yeager should go to the hospital after their next mix-up.

  Meanwhile he found other causes for disliking the new man. Always a vain man, his jealousy was inflamed because Steve was a better rider than he. At any time he was ready with a sneer for what he called the cowpuncher's "grandstanding."

  "It gets across, Harrison," Threewit told him bluntly one day. "We've never had a rider whose work was so snappy. He's doing fine."

  "Watch him blow up one of these days--nothing to him," growled the heavy.

  "There's a whole lot to him," disagreed the producing director as he walked away to superintend the arrangement of a set.