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

by Unknown

  "I'm willing," Roy agreed. "And I've been looking up ancient history, Mr. Ryan. I don't think you were as bad as you painted yourself to me once. I'm ready to shake hands with you whenever you like."

  The little Irishman flushed. He shook hands with shining eyes.

  "That's why I was tickled when Miss Beulah asked me to come up and turn loose that coyote. It's a God's truth that I hoped he'd fight. I wanted to do you a good bit of wolf-killing if I could. And I've done it . . . and I'm not sorry. He had it coming if iver a man had."

  "Did you say that Beulah Rutherford sent you up here?" asked Roy.

  "She asked me to come. Yis."

  "Why?"

  "I can only guess her reasons. She didn't want you to come and she couldn't ask Ned for fear he would gun the fellow. So she just picked on a red-headed runt of an Irishman."

  "While we're so close, let's ride across to Huerfano Park," suggested Dave. "I haven't been there in twenty years."

  That suited Roy exactly. As they rode across the hills his mind was full of Beulah. She had sent Ryan up so that he could get Meldrum away before her lover arrived. Was it because she was afraid Roy might show the white feather? Or was it because she feared for his safety? He wished he knew.

  Chapter XXIX

  A New Leaf

  Hal Rutherford himself met the three riders as they drew up at the horse ranch. He asked no verbal questions, but his eyes ranged curiously from one to another.

  "'Light, gentlemen. I been wanting to see you especially, Mr. Beaudry," he said.

  "I reckon you know where we've been, Hal," answered Dave after he had dismounted.

  "I reckon."

  "We got a little news for public circulation. You can pass the word among the boys. Dan Meldrum was shot three hours ago beside the pit where Miss Beulah was imprisoned. His body is in the prospect hole now. You might send some lads with spades to bury him."

  "One of you shot him."

  "You done guessed it, Hal. One of us helped him out of that pit intending to see he hit the dust to Mexico. Dan was loaded to the guards with suspicions. He chose to make it a gun-play. Fired twice. The one of us that took him out of the pit fired back and dropped him first crack. All of us saw the affair. It happened just as I've told you."

  "But which of you--?"

  "That's the only point we can't remember. It was one of us, but we've forgotten which one."

  "Suits me if it does you. I'll thank all three of you, then." Rutherford cleared his throat and plunged on. "Boys, to-day kinder makes an epoch in Huerfano Park. Jess Tighe died yesterday and Dan Meldrum to-day. They were both bad citizens. There were others of us that were bad citizens, too. Well, it's right-about face for us. We travel broad trails from now on. Right now the park starts in to make a new record for itself."

  Dave offered his hand, and with it went the warm smile that made him the most popular man in Washington County. "Listens fine, Hal. I sure am glad to hear you say so."

  "I niver had any kick against the Rutherfords. They were open and aboveboard, anyhow, in all their diviltry," contributed Ryan to the pact of peace.

  Nobody looked at Roy, but he felt the weight of their thoughts. All four of them bore in mind the death of John Beaudry. His son spoke quietly.

  "Mr. Rutherford, I've been thinking of my father a good deal these last few days. I want to do as he would have me do about this thing. I'm not going to chop my words. He gave his life to bring law and order into this country, The men who killed him were guilty of murder. That's an ugly word, but it's the true one."

  The grim face of the big hillman did not twitch. "I'll take the word from you. Go on."

  "But I've been thinking more and more that he would want me to forget that. Tighe and Meldrum are gone. Sheriff Beaudry worked for the good of the community. That is all he asked. It is for the best interest of Washington County that we bury the past. If you say so, I'll shake hands on that and we'll all face to the future. Just as you say."

  Dingwell grinned. "Hooray! Big Chief Dave will now make oration. You've got the right idea, son. I knew Jack Beaudry. There wasn't an atom of revenge in his game body. His advice would have been to shake hands. That's mine, too."

  The hillman and Roy followed it.

  Upon the porch a young woman appeared.

  "I've written those letters for you, dad," she called.

  Roy deserted the peace conference at once and joined her.

  "Oh! I didn't know it was you," she cried. "I'm so glad you came this way. Was it . . . all right?"

  "Right as the wheat. Why did you send Pat up Del Oro?"

  She looked at him with eyes incredibly kind and shy. "Because I . . . didn't want to run any chance of losing my new beau."

  "Are you sure that was your only reason?"

  "Certain sure. I didn't trust Meldrum, and . . . I thought you had taken chances enough with him. So I gave Mr. Ryan an opportunity."

  "He took it," her lover answered gravely.

  She glanced at him quickly. "You mean--?"

  "Never mind what I mean now. We've more important things to talk about. I haven't seen you for eight hours, and thirty-three minutes."

  Rutherford turned his guests over to Ned, who led the way to the stable. The ranchman joined the lovers. He put an arm around Beulah.

  "Boots has done told me about you two, Mr. Beaudry. I'm eternally grateful to you for bringing back my little girl to me, and if you all feel right sure you care for each other I've got nothing to say but 'God bless you.' You're a white man. You're decent. I believe you'll be kind to her."

  "I'm going to try to the best I know, Mr. Rutherford."

  "You'd better, young man." The big rancher swallowed a lump in his throat and passed to another phase of the subject. "Boots was telling me about how it kinder stuck in yore craw to marry the daughter of Hal Rutherford, seeing as how things happened the way they did. Well, I'm going to relieve yore mind. She's the one that has got the forgiving to do, not you. She knew it all the time, too, but she didn't tell it. Beulah is the daughter of my brother Anse. I took her from the arms of her dying mother when she was a little trick that couldn't crawl. She's not the daughter of the man that shot yore father. She's the daughter of the man yore father shot."

  "Oh!" gasped Roy.

  Beulah went to her lover arrow-swift.

  "My dear . . . my dear! What does it matter now? Dad says my father was killed in fair fight. He had set himself against the law. It took his life. Your father didn't."

  "But--"

  "Oh, his was the hand. But he was sheriff. He did only his duty. That's true, isn't it, dad?"

  "I reckon."

  Her strong young hands gripped tightly those of her lover. She looked proudly into his eyes with that little flare of feminine ferocity in hers.

  "I won't have it any other way, Roy Beaudry. You're the man I'm going to marry, the man who is going to be the father of my children if God gives me any. No blood stands between us--nothing but the memory of brave men who misunderstood each other and were hurt because of it. Our marriage puts an end forever to even the memory of the wrong they did each other. That is the way it is to me--and that's the way it has got to be to you, too."

  Roy laughed softly, tears in his eyes. As he looked at her eager young beauty the hot life in his pulses throbbed. He snatched her to him with an ardor as savage as her own.

  THE END

  OF THE BEGINNING

  * * *

  Contents

  A MAN FOUR-SQUARE

  BY WILLIAM MAC LEOD RAINE

  Prologue

  A girl sat on the mossy river-bank in the dappled, golden sunlight. Frowning eyes fixed on a sweeping eddy, she watched without seeing the racing current. Her slim, supple body, crouched and tense, was motionless, but her soul seethed tumultuously. In the bosom of her coarse linsey gown lay hidden a note. Through it destiny called her to the tragic hour of decision.

  The foliage of the young pawpaws stirred behind her. Furtively a pair
of black eyes peered forth and searched the opposite bank of the stream, the thicket of rhododendrons above, the blooming laurels below. Very stealthily a handsome head pushed out through the leaves.

  "'Lindy," a voice whispered.

  The girl gave a start, slowly turned her head. She looked at the owner of the voice from steady, deep-lidded eyes. The pulse in her brown throat began to beat. One might have guessed her with entire justice a sullen lass, untutored of life, passionate, and high-spirited, resentful of all restraint. Hers was such beauty as lies in rich blood beneath dark coloring, in dusky hair and eyes, in the soft, warm contours of youth. Already she was slenderly full, an elemental daughter of Eve, primitive as one of her fur-clad ancestors. No forest fawn could have been more sensuous or innocent than she.

  Again the man's glance swept the landscape cautiously before he moved out from cover. In the country of the Clantons there was always an open season on any one of his name.

  "What are you doin' here, Dave Roush?" the girl demanded. "Are you crazy?"

  "I'm here because you are, 'Lindy Clanton," he answered promptly. "That's a right good reason, ain't it?"

  The pink splashed into her cheeks like spilled wine.

  "You'd better go. If dad saw you--"

  He laughed hardily. "There'd be one less Roush--or one less Clanton," he finished for her.

  Dave Roush was a large, well-shouldered man, impressive in spite of his homespun. If he carried himself with a swagger there was no lack of boldness in him to back it. His long hair was straight and black and coarse, a derivative from the Indian strain in his blood.

  "Git my note?" he asked.

  She nodded sullenly.

  'Lindy had met Dave Roush at a dance up on Lonesome where she had no business to be. At the time she had been visiting a distant cousin in a cove adjacent to that creek. Some craving for adventure, some instinct of defiance, had taken her to the frolic where she knew the Roush clan would be in force. From the first sight of her Dave had wooed her with a careless bravado that piqued her pride and intrigued her interest. The girl's imagination translated in terms of romance his insolence and audacity. Into her starved existence he brought color and emotion.

  Did she love him? 'Lindy was not sure. He moved her at times to furious anger, and again to inarticulate longings she did not understand. For though she was heritor of a life full-blooded and undisciplined, every fiber of her was clean and pure. There were hours when she hated him, glimpsed in him points of view that filled her with vague distrust. But always he attracted her tremendously.

  "You're goin' with me, gal," he urged.

  Close to her hand was a little clump of forget-me-nots which had pushed through the moss. 'Lindy feigned to be busy picking the blossoms.

  "No," she answered sulkily.

  "Yes. To-night--at eleven o'clock, 'Lindy,--under the big laurel."

  While she resented his assurance, it none the less coerced her. She did not want a lover who groveled in the dust before her. She wanted one to sweep her from her feet, a young Lochinvar to compel her by the force of his personality.

  "I'll not be there," she told him.

  "We'll git right across the river an' be married inside of an hour."

  "I tell you I'm not goin' with you. Quit pesterin' me."

  His devil-may-care laugh trod on the heels of her refusal. He guessed shrewdly that circumstances were driving her to him. The girl was full of resentment at her father's harsh treatment of her. Her starved heart craved love. She was daughter of that Clanton who led the feud against the Roush family and its adherents. Dave took his life in his hands every time he crossed the river to meet her. Once he had swum the stream in the night to keep an appointment. He knew that his wildness, his reckless courage and contempt of danger, argued potently for him. She was coming to him as reluctantly and surely as a wild turkey answers the call of the hunter.

  The sound of a shot, not distant, startled them. He crouched, wary as a rattlesnake about to strike. The rifle seemed almost to leap forward.

  "Hit's Bud--my brother Jimmie." She pushed him back toward the pawpaws. "Quick! Burn the wind!"

  "What about to-night? Will you come?"

  "Hurry. I tell you hit's Bud. Are you lookin' for trouble?"

  He stopped stubbornly at the edge of the thicket. "I ain't runnin' away from it. I put a question to ye. When I git my answer mebbe I'll go. But I don't 'low to leave till then."

  "I'll meet ye there if I kin git out. Now go," she begged.

  The man vanished in the pawpaws. He moved as silently as one of his Indian ancestors.

  'Lindy waited, breathless lest her brother should catch sight of him. She knew that if Jimmie saw Roush there would be shooting and one or the other would fall.

  A rifle shot rang out scarce a hundred yards from her. The heart of the girl stood still. After what seemed an interminable time there came to her the sound of a care-free whistle. Presently her brother sauntered into view, a dead squirrel in his hand. The tails of several others bulged from the game bag by his side. The sister did not need to be told that four out of five had been shot through the head.

  "Thought I heard voices. Was some one with you, sis?" the boy asked.

  "Who'd be with me here?" she countered lazily.

  A second time she was finding refuge in the for-get-me-nots.

  He was a barefoot little fellow, slim and hard as a nail. In his hand he carried an old-fashioned rifle almost as long as himself. There was a lingering look of childishness in his tanned, boyish face. His hands and feet were small and shapely as those of a girl. About him hung the stolid imperturbability of the Southern mountaineer. Times were when his blue eyes melted to tenderness or mirth; yet again the cunning of the jungle narrowed them to slits hard, as jade. Already, at the age of fourteen, he had been shot at from ambush, had wounded a Roush at long range, had taken part in a pitched battle. The law of the feud was tempering his heart to implacability.

  The keen gaze of the boy rested on her. Ever since word had reached the Clantons of how 'Lindy had "carried on" with Dave Roush at the dance on Lonesome her people had watched her suspiciously. The thing she had done had been a violation of the hill code and old Clay Clanton had thrashed her with a cowhide till she begged for mercy. Jimmie had come home from the still to find her writhing in passionate revolt. The boy had been furious at his father; yet had admitted the substantial justice of the punishment. Its wisdom he doubted. For he knew his sister to be stubborn as old Clay himself, and he feared lest they drive her to the arms of Bad Dave Roush.

  "I reckon you was talkin' to yo'self, mebbe," he suggested.

  "I reckon."

  They walked home together along a path through the rhododendrons. The long, slender legs of the girl moved rhythmically and her arms swung like pendulums. Life in the open had given her the litheness and the grace of a woodland creature. The mountain woman is cheated of her youth almost before she has learned to enjoy it. But 'Lindy was still under eighteen. Her warm vitality still denied the coming of a day when she would be a sallow, angular snuff-chewer.

  Within sight of the log cabin the girl lingered for a moment by the sassafras bushes near the spring. Some deep craving for sympathy moved her to alien speech. She turned upon him with an imperious, fierce tenderness in her eyes.

  "You'll never forgit me, Bud? No matter what happens, you'll--you'll not hate me?"

  Her unusual emotion embarrassed and a little alarmed him. "Oh, shucks! They ain't anything goin' to happen, sis. What's ailin' you?"

  "But if anything does. You'll not hate me--you'll remember I allus thought a heap of you, Jimmie?" she insisted.

  "Doggone it, if you're still thinkin' of that scalawag Dave Roush--" He broke off, moved by some touch of prescient tragedy in her young face. "'Course I ain't ever a-goin' to forgit you none, sis. Hit ain't likely, is it?"

  It was a comfort to him afterward to recall that he submitted to her impulsive caress without any visible irritability.

 
'Lindy busied herself preparing supper for her father and brother. Ever since her mother died when the child was eleven she had been the family housekeeper.

  At dusk Clay Clanton came in and stood his rifle in a corner of the room. His daughter recognized ill-humor in the grim eyes of the old man. He was of a tall, gaunt figure, strongly built, a notable fighter with his fists in the brawling days before he "got religion" at a camp meeting. Now his Calvinism was of the sternest. Dancing he held to be of the devil. Card-playing was a sin. If he still drank freely, his drinking was within bounds. But he did not let his piety interfere with the feud. Within the year, pillar of the church though he was, he had been carried home riddled with bullets. Of the four men who had waylaid him two had been buried next day and a third had kept his bed for months.