Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Diana Henders sat as one turned to stone, her eyes fixed upon the tall, fine figure of the leading highwayman. A little gust of wind moved the handkerchief that covered his face so that she saw, or she thought she saw, a scar upon the square chin. She was not afraid. It was not fear — physical fear that held her motionless — it was worse than that. It was the paralyzing terror of the heart and soul. Was it Bull? Could it be Bill?

  But, dear God, could she be mistaken in the familiar lines of that figure — every movement, every gesture proclaimed the numbing truth? He had not spoken. She was glad of that, for she wanted something upon which to hang a doubt. The second man had given the brief commands. That he was Gregorio she had no doubt.

  “Throw down the mail pouch,” he commanded, and Bill Gatlin threw it down.

  The taller man took it and went to the rear of the stage, out of sight. Five minutes later Gregorio commanded them to drive on. That was all. The thing had not consumed six minutes, but in that brief time the structure of Diana’s life had been shaken to its foundations. A new, a terrible truth had engulfed her — a truth that should have up-borne her upon a wave of exaltation and happiness now dragged her down into the vortex of a whirlpool of self-loathing and misery.

  They rode on in silence for a few minutes, Bill

  Gatlin cracking his long whip above the ears of the leaders, galloping smoothly over a comparatively level road.

  “Doggone!” he said presently. “It’s gettin’ too almighty reg’lar to suit me, though I reckon as how I mought git lonesome if I wasn’t held up oncet in a while; but you hed your wish, Miss — you got to see

  The Black Coyote, all right, and now what do you think? Is it or isn’t it Bull?”

  Diana Henders bit her lip. “Of course it was not Bull,” she said.

  “Looked powerful like him to me,” said Gatlin.

  As they drew up in front of The Donovan House the usual idlers came forth to learn what new element this, their sole link to civilization, had infused into their midst. They greeted Diana none the less cordially because she was the only passenger and the stage had brought no new interest to Hendersville.

  “Held up agin,” announced Bill. “Some on you better go an’ tell Gum — he might want to deputize someone.”

  Immediately the crowd was interested. They asked many questions.

  “They wa’n’t much to it,” said Bill Gatlin. “Bein’ as how they wa’n’t no gold he took the mail. I reckon if you was lookin’ fer any letters you won’t git them.”

  A man from the Bar Y spoke up. “Thet New York feller up to the ranch was lookin’ fer a important piece o’ mail,” he said. “He sent me down special to git it.”

  “Hey, what’s this?” demanded another, peering into the interior of the coach. “Here’s yer mail bag, Bill, a-lyin’ right in here.” He dragged it out and exhibited to the others.

  “They’s somethin’ wrong with it — it’s ben cut open,” said another, pointing to a slit in the leather. Then the postmaster came up and rescued the sack. The crowd followed him to the general store in which the post-office was conducted. Here the postmaster, assisted by the crowd, went through the contents of the sack.

  “Course I cain’t tell what’s missin’,” he said, “‘only they ain’t no registered letter fer Mr. Corson.”

  Diana Henders had gone immediately into The Donovan House as quickly as she could clamber from the stage after it had come to a stop, and Mary Donovan had taken her into the privacy of her sitting room for the cup “o’ tay” that Diana had been looking forward to for the past couple of hours. Here she told the motherly Irish woman the details of her trip to Kansas City and the quandary she was in as to what procedure to follow in her future dealings with Corson.

  “If I had anything to fight with, I’d fight,” she exclaimed; “but I’m all alone — even the law seems to be on their side, against justice.”

  “Shure, an’ it’s not all alone ye are,” Mary Donovan assured her. “What wid all the friends ye have that would fight fer ye at the drop o’ the hat. Faith, they’d run thim tin-horns out o’ the country, an’ ye give the word.”

  “I know,” assented the girl, “and I appreciate what the boys would do for me, but it can’t be done that way. Dad always stood for law and order and it wouldn’t do for me to sponsor illegal methods.”

  “Ye’ve got to fight the divil wid fire,” said Mary.

  Diana made no reply. She sat sipping her tea, her expression one of troubled sadness, but she was not thinking of those who would take her property from her nor of their unfair methods. Mary Donovan was moving about the room tidying up.

  Diana set her empty cup upon the rickety center table which supported an oil lamp, a bible, a red plush photograph album and a gilded conch shell, and sighed. Mrs. Donovan glanced at her out of the corner of her eye and guessed shrewdly that there was something more than New Yorkers troubling her. Presently she came and stood in front of the girl.

  “What is it, mavourneen?” she asked. “Be after tellin’ Mary Donovan.”

  Diana rose, half turned her head away and bit her lower lip in an effort to hide or suppress a short, quick intaking of the breath that was almost a gasp.

  “The stage was held up again today,” she said, mastering herself and turning, wide-eyed, toward the older woman. “I saw them — I saw them both.”

  “Yis!” said Mary Donovan.

  “But it wasn’t — it wasn’t he! It wasn’t, Mary Donovan!” and Diana, throwing herself upon the broad, motherly bosom, burst into tears, through which she gasped an occasional, “It wasn’t! It wasn’t!”

  “Shure, now, it wasn’t,” soothed Mary, “an’ the first wan that’ll be after sayin’ it was’ll wish he’d nivir bin born, an’ even if it was, Diana Henders, there’s many a good man’s gone wrong an’ come right again.

  “Why look at that ould fool Wildcat Bob! They do be sayin’ he was a road agent his-self thirty year ago an’ he’s killed so many men he’s lost count o’ ‘em, he has; but now look at him! A quiet an’ paceable ould man, an’ a good citizen whin he ain’t full o’ barbwire, which ain’t often.”

  Diana dried her tears through a smile. “You’re very fond of Bob, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Run along wid ye, now!” exclaimed Mary Donovan, smiling coyly.

  “I think Bob would make you a good husband,” continued Diana, “and you really need a man around here. Why don’t you marry him? I know he’s anxious enough.”

  “Marry him, indade!” sniffed Mary. “The ould fool’s stricken dumb ivery time he’s alone wid me. If iver he’s married it is, it’s the girl that’ll be havin’ to pop the question.”

  They were interrupted by a rap on the sitting room door. It. was the vaquero from the Bar Y who had come down for the mail.

  “Bill Gatlin told me you was here, Miss,” he said. “Do you want me to tell Colby to send the buckboard down for yore?”

  “°I left Captain here, thanks,” replied Diana, “and as soon as I change my clothes I’ll ride back to the ranch.”

  “Shall I wait fer you?” he inquired.

  “No, thanks. I don’t know how long I’ll be,” she told him; “but if Pete is there you might ask him to ride out and meet me.”

  A half-hour later Diana rode out of Hendersville on Captain along the winding, dusty road bordered by interminable sage and grease-wood that stretched off in undulating billows of rolling land to the near mountains on the north and away to the south as far as the eye could reach where the softened outlines of other mountains rose, mysterious, through the haze. The low sun cast long shadows toward the east, those of herself and her mount transformed into a weird creature of Brobdingnagian proportions mincing along upon preposterous legs.

  The inhabitants of a prairie-dog village watched her approach with growing suspicions, scampering at last to the safety of their catacombian retreat - all but a single patriarch and two owls, who watched her from the safe proximity of burrow mouths until
she had passed.

  Drear and desolate the aspect of tie: scene, perhaps, but t(? Diana i$ was home, and a tear came tip her eye as she thought that in a day or a week shy; might be leaving it forever. Her home! And they were driving her away from it — stealing it from her — her home that her father had built for her mother - that he had planned that Diana should have after he had gone. The wickedness of it! The injustice! That was what rankled — the injustice! She dashed away the tear with an angry gesture. She would not be dispossessed! She would fight! Mary Donovan was right. It was no sin to light the devil with fire.

  It was at this moment that she saw a horseman approaching her from the direction of the ranch. Her eyes, long accustomed to keen observation and to vast expanses, recognized the man minutes before his features were discernible, and a little cloud crossed her brow. It was not Texas Pete, as she had hoped, but Hal Colby. Perhaps it was for the best. She would have to see him sometime, and tell him. As he approached her she saw that there was no welcoming smile on his face, which wore a troubled expression. But his greeting was cordial.

  “Hello, Di!” he cried. “Why didn’t you let me know that you was comin’ today?’

  “There was no way to let you know, of course,” she replied. “You might have guessed that I would be back as soon as I could.”

  “Tom jest got in from town an’ told me you was comin’. I hurried out to head you off. You don’t want to come to the ranch now, it wouldn’t be no ways pleasant for you.”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “The Wainrights is there for one thing,” he said, drawing rein in front of her.

  She set her firm little jaw and rode around him. “I am going home,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t be foolish, Di,” he insisted. “It’ll only make more trouble. They as good as got the place now. We can’t fight ‘em. It wouldn’t get us nowheres.

  “Lemme see what I kin get ’em to do fer you. They’re willin’ to give you enough to live decent on if you’re reasonable, an’ I’ll git the most I kin fer you; but if you go to fightin’ ’em they won’t give you nothin’.”

  “They’ll never give me anything,” she cried. “I’d never accept anything from them, but I’ll take and keep what’s mine, and my friends will help me.”

  “You’ll only git yourself an’ your friends in a peck o’ trouble,” he told her.

  “Listen, Hal—” she hesitated, stumbling a little over the speech she had been rehearsing. “There is something I want to say to you. You asked me to marry you. I told you that if you would wait a little while I thought that I could say yes. I can’t say yes, Hal, ever, for I don’t love you. I’m sorry, but the only fair thing to do was tell you.”

  He looked a bit crestfallen and disconcerted, for, though he had realized that it would be poor policy to press his suit now that she was penniless, it injured his pride to be told that he could not have won her in any event, and suddenly came the realization that, money or no money, he wanted her very much. His infatuation for Lillian Manill was revealed in all its sordidness - it was not love. All the money in the world, all the clothes in New York, would not make Lillian Manill as desirable as Diana Henders.

  Colby was a crude, uneducated man, yet he discerned in Diana Henders a certain quality, far beyond his powers of analysis, that placed her in a sphere to which Lillian Manill and her kind might never hope to aspire. He knew now that he wanted Diana Henders for herself and Lillian Manill for her money and for that coarse, feminine attraction that certain types of women have for coarse men.

  He lived in a more or less lawless country and a more or less lawless age, so it was not strange that there should have crept into his mind the thought that he might possess them both. Naturally it would be only the part of good business to possess lawfully the one with the money. It was only the flash of a thought, though, and he quickly put it aside.

  “I’m plumb sorry, Di,” he said; “but of course you know your own business.”

  That was all he said, but he did a great deal of thinking and the more he thought the more he realized how much he wanted her now that she seemed least accessible. His face wore an expression such as Diana Henders had never seen upon it before — he was not the laughing, good-natured Hal that she had liked very much and almost loved. There was something almost sinister about him, and she wondered if being disappointed in love had this effect upon men.

  “How is everything at the ranch since I’ve been away?” she asked presently.

  “So-so,” he replied. “Some o’ the hands want to quit. They’re waitin’ ‘til you come, to git their checks.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Pete, Shorty an’ Idaho,” he replied. “They’d a-ben the fust to be let out after the change come, anyhow, so it don’t make no difference.”

  “You planned to stay on as foreman?” she asked.

  “Shore! Why not? I got to work for someone, don’t I?”

  She made no reply and they rode on in silence toward the ranch. He had given up trying to dissuade her. Let them do their own dirty work, he thought. As they neared the ranch a horseman emerged from the yard and came toward them at a run amidst a cloud of dust that obscured the ranch and ail else behind him. It was Texas Pete. He brought his horse to its haunches beside her and wheeled the animal about on its hind feet.

  “I jest got in, Miss,” he said, “an’ Tom told me that you had sent word in that I was to meet you. I’m plumb sorry I was late.”

  Each man ignored the other as completely as though he had not existed.

  “I understand you want to quit, Pete,” said the girl; “you and Shorty and Idaho.”

  Pete looked down, shamefacedly. “We was a-aimin’ to,” he said.

  “I wish you’d come up to the office and bring Shorty and Idaho with you when we get home,” she said. “I want to talk with you.”

  “All right, Miss.”

  The three finished the ride in silence. Diana dismounted with them at the corral and leaving her horse for Pete to unsaddle walked toward the office. As she approached the doorway she saw that there were several people ire the room and when she crossed the threshold found herself face to face with Corson, Lillian Manill and the two Wainrights. Corson nodded and he and the younger Wainright rose.

  “Good evening, Miss Henders,” said Corson; “back safely, I see.”

  She ignored his greeting and stood for a moment silently eying them through narrowed lids. Her wide-brimmed sombrero sat straight and level above slightly contracted brows. A tendril of hair waved softly over one temple where it had escaped the stiff confinement of the heavy hat, but it did not tend to soften the light in those cold, steady eyes, reflecting the bitterness of her resentment toward these four.

  About her hips a cartridge-filled belt supported a heavy gun — no toy such as women sometimes effect, but a .45, grim and suggestive. Its grip was shiny with usage and the blue was worn from the steel in places.

  “I know little about law, Mr. Corson,” she said, without prelude. “I have lived almost all my life a long way beyond either the protection or the menace of law. We do not bother much about it out here; but we understand moral rights perfectly. We know what justice is and we have our own ways of enforcing it. We have similar ways of protecting our just rights, as well.

  “These means I intend to invoke against you, all of you, who have come here with the intention of robbing me of what is rightly mine. Though I owe you no consideration it is my duty to warn you that our methods in such matters are usually sudden and always unpleasant.

  “I shall give you, Mr. Corson and Miss Manill, an hour to leave the premises — the buckboard will be ready then. Mr. Wainright and his son have five minutes, as they have no excuse whatsoever for being here. Now, go!”

  16. COMMON CRIMINALS

  An amused smile curled Mr. Corson’s unpleasant mouth. Mr. Wainright, senior, bobbed to his feet, though through no belated urge of chivalry. Lillian Manill rose languidly, pretending to suppress a
simulated yawn with the backs of her white fingers. Young Mr. Wainright shuffled uneasily from one foot to the other.

  “I am afraid, Miss Henders,” said Corson, “that you do not quite grasp the situation. You—”

  “It is you who fail to grasp it, Mr. Corson,” snapped Diana, “and please remember that you have only an hour in which to pack.”

  Corson dropped his suavity. “See here,” he exclaimed, “I’ve fooled along with you as much as I’m going to. You’re the one who’s going to get off this place. You haven’t a right on earth here. You don’t own a stick or a stone, a hoof or a tail, the length or breadth of the Bar Y Now you go and you go quick or you’ll land in jail, where you belong for the threats you’ve made. I imagine you’ll learn something about the law then.”

  “How come?” inquired a voice from the doorway and simultaneously three figures appeared upon the veranda. “You sent for us, Miss, and here we are,” continued Texas Pete.

  “An’ I reckon we arrive about the right time fer the party,” opined Shorty.

  “I craves the first dance with that dude with the funny pants,” said Idaho, staring at Corson.

  “Boys,” said Diana, “these people are trying to rob me of my ranch, the mine and all the cattle. I have given Mr. Corson and Miss Manill an hour to leave the premises. Idaho, I wish that you would see that they get away on time, and drive them, or better, have Willie drive them, to town. Mr. Wainright and his son had five minutes in which to leave, Shorty. They have wasted three of them. Can you help them to get away on schedule?”

  “Whee!” wheed Shorty. “Watch my smoke — and their dust. Fan yerselves, gents,” and he sprang into the room, circling the Wainrights to come upon them from the rear, true to the instincts of the cowman.

  The elder Wainright had arguments upon his tongue — you could see them in his eye, paradoxical as it may sound — but he permitted them to expire, voiceless, and took to his heels, followed closely by his son. Jefferson Wainright, senior, had been run off the Bar Y upon another occasion and he had not relished the experience. He moved now with great rapidity and singleness of purpose in the direction of the corrals, his son at his heels and Shorty inconveniently close behind.