The Ranchman

by Charles Alden Seltzer

  CHAPTER XX--A FIGHT TO A FINISH

  And Taylor was "coming." The big black horse he was riding--which he hadnamed "Spotted Tail" because of the white blotches that startlinglyrelieved his somber sable coat--was never in better condition. Hestepped lightly, running in long, smooth leaps down the narrow trail,champing at the bit, keen of eye, alert, eager, snorting his impatienceover the tight rein his rider kept on him.

  But Spotted Tail was not more eager than his rider. Taylor, however,knowing that at any instant he might run plump into Carrington,returning from the big house, was forced to restrain his impatience.Therefore, except on the straight reaches of the trail, he was forced topull the black down.

  But they were traveling fast when they reached the timber grove in whichCarrington's men were concealed; and yet on the damp earth of the trail,where the sunlight could not penetrate, and where the leaves of pastsummers had fallen, to rot and weave a pulpy carpet, the rush of SpottedTail's passing created little sound.

  Within a hundred feet of the spot where Carrington's men were concealed,Spotted Tail shot his ears forward stiffly and raised his muzzleinquiringly. Taylor, noting the action, and suspecting that instinct hadwarned Spotted Tail of the approach of another horse, drew the animaldown and rode forward at a walk, for he felt that it must beCarrington's horse which was approaching.

  Rounding a sharp turn in the trail, Taylor could look ahead for perhapsa hundred feet. He saw no rider advancing toward him, and he leanedforward, slapping the black's neck in playful reproach.

  As he moved he heard the heavy crash of a pistol shot and felt thebullet sing past his head. Another pistol barked venomously from somebrush on his right, and still another from his left.

  But none of the bullets struck Taylor. For the black horse, startled byTaylor's playful movement when all his senses were strained to detectthe location of his kind on the trail, had made an involuntary forwardleap, thus whisking his rider out of the line of fire. And before eitherof the three men could shoot again, Spotted Tail had flashed down thetrail--a streak of somber black against the green background of thetrees.

  He fled over the hundred feet of straight trail and had vanished arounda bend before the Carrington men could move their weapons aroundimpeding branches of the brush that covered them. There was no stoppingSpotted Tail now, for he was in a frenzy of terror--and he made a mererushing black blot as he emerged from the timber and fled across an openspace toward another wood--the wood that surrounded the big house.

  Standing on the front porch of the big house, nervously smoking a cigar,his face set in sullen lines, his eyes fixed on the Dawes trail,Carrington heard the shots. He sighed, grinned maliciously, and relaxedhis vigilance.

  "He's settled by now," he said.

  He looked at one of the chairs standing on the porch, thought of sittingin one of them to await the coming of the three men, decided he was tooimpatient to sit, and began walking back and forth on the porch.

  He had thrown a half-smoked cigar away and was lighting another when hesaw a black blot burst from the edge of a timber-clump beyond an openspace. The match flared and went out as Carrington held it to the end ofthe cigar, for there was something strangely familiar in the shape ofthe black blot--even with it heading directly toward him. An instantlater, the blot looming larger in his vision, Carrington dropped cigarand match and stood staring with wild, fear-haunted eyes at the rushingblack horse.

  Carrington stood motionless a little longer--until the black horse, itsrider sitting straight in the saddle, in cowboy fashion, reached theedge of the wood surrounding the house. Then Carrington, cursing, hislips in a hideous pout, drew a pistol from a hip-pocket. And when theblack horse was within fifty feet of him, and still coming at a speedwhich there was no gauging, Carrington leveled the pistol.

  Once--twice--three, four, five, six times he pulled the trigger of theweapon. Carrington saw a grim, mocking smile on the rider's face, andknew none of his bullets had taken effect.

  Unarmed now, he was suddenly stricken with a panic of fear; and whilethe rider of the black horse was dismounting at the edge of the porch,Carrington dove for the front door of the house and vanished inside,slamming the door behind him, directly in the rider's face.

  When Taylor threw the door open he saw Carrington, far back in the room,swinging a chair over his head. At Taylor's appearance he threw thechair with all the force his frenzy of fear could put into the effort.Taylor ducked, and the chair flew past him, sailing uninterruptedlyoutside and over the porch railing.

  Carrington ran through the big front room, through the next room--thesitting-room--knocking chairs over in his flight, throwing a big centertable at his silent, implacable pursuer. He slammed the sitting-roomdoor and tried to lock it, but he could not turn the key quickly enough,and Taylor burst the door open, almost plunging against Carrington as hecame through it.

  Carrington ran into the dining-room, shoved the dining-room table inTaylor's way as Taylor tried to reach him; but Taylor leaped over theobstruction, and when Carrington dodged into Marion Harlan's room,Taylor was so close that he might have grasped the big man.

  Taylor had said no word. The big man saw two guns swinging at Taylor'ships, and he wondered vaguely why the man did not use them. It occurredto Carrington as he plunged through Marion Harlan's room into Martha's,and from there to the kitchen, and back again to the dining-room, thatTaylor was not going to shoot him, and his panic partially left him.

  And yet there was a gleam in Taylor's eyes that made his soul cringe interror--the cold, bitter fury of a peaceloving man thoroughly aroused.

  Twice, as Taylor pursued Carrington through the sitting-room again andinto another big room that adjoined it, Carrington's courage revivedlong enough to permit him to consider making a stand against Taylor, buteach time as he stiffened with the determination, the terrible rage inTaylor's eyes dissuaded him, and he continued to evade the clash.

  But he knew that the clash must come, and when, in their rapid, headlongmovements, Carrington came close to the front door and tried to slip outof it, Taylor lunged against him and struck at him, the fist justgrazing Carrington's jaw, the big man understood that Taylor was intenton beating him with his fists.

  Had it not been for his previous encounter with Taylor, Carrington wouldnot have hesitated, for he knew how to protect himself in a fight; butthere was something in Taylor's eyes now to add to the memory of thatother fight, and Carrington wanted no more of it.

  But at last he was forced to stand. Ducking to evade the blow aimed athis jaw when he tried to dart out of the front door, he slipped.Reeling, in an effort to regain his equilibrium, he plunged into anotherbig room. It was a room that was little used--an old-fashioned parlor,kept trim and neat against the coming of visitors, but a room whosegloominess the occupants of the house usually avoided.

  The shades were down, partly concealing heavy wooden blinds--which wereclosed. And the only light in the room was that which came from a littlesquare window high up in the side wall.

  Before Carrington could regain his balance Taylor had entered the room.He closed the door behind him, placed his back against it, locked it,and grinned felinely at the big man.

  "Your men are coming, Carrington," he said--"hear them?" In the silencethat followed his words both stood, listening to the beat of hoofs nearthe house. "They'll be trying to get in here in a minute," went onTaylor. "But before they get in I'm going to knock your head off!" Andwithout further warning he was upon Carrington, striking bitterly.

  It seemed to Carrington that the man was endowed with a savage strengthentirely out of proportion to his stature, and that he was able to startterrific, deadening blows from any angle. For though Carrington was astrong man and had had some fighting experience, he could neither evadeTaylor's blows nor stand against the impact of them.

  He went reeling around the room under the impetus of Taylor's terriblerushes, struggling to defend himself, to dodge, to clinch, to evadesomehow the fists that were flying at him from
all directions. He couldnot get an instant's respite in which to set himself. Three times insuccession he was knocked down so heavily that the house shook with thecrash of his body striking the floor, and each time when he got to hisfeet he tried to fight Taylor off in an endeavor to set himself for ablow. But he could not. He was knocked against the walls of the room,and hammered away from them with stiff, jolty, venomous blows thatjarred him from head to heels. He tried vainly to cover up--with hisarms locked about his head he crouched and tried to rush Taylor off hisfeet, knowing he was stronger than the other, and that his only hope wasin clinching. But Taylor held him off with savage uppercuts and terrificshort-arm swings that smashed his lips.

  He began to mutter in a whining, vicious monotone; twice he kicked atTaylor, and twice he was knocked down as a punishment for his foulmethods. Finding his methods ineffectual, and discovering that coveringhis face with his arms did not materially lessen the punishment he wasreceiving, he began to stand up straight, taking blows in an effort toland one.

  But Taylor eluded him; Carrington's blows did not land. Raging andmuttering, roaring with impotent passion, he whipped the air with hisarms, almost jerking them out of their sockets.

  Stiff and taut, his muscles accommodating themselves to every demand hemade on them, and in perfect coordination with his brain--and thepurpose of his brain to inflict upon Carrington the maximum ofpunishment for his dastardly attack on Marion Harlan--Taylor worked fastand furiously. For he heard Carrington's three men in the next room; heheard them try the door; heard them call to Carrington.

  And then, convinced that the fight must be ended quickly, before the menshould break down the door and have him at a disadvantage, Taylorfinished it. He smothered Carrington with a succession of stiff-arm,straight punches that glazed the other's eyes and sent him reelingaround the room. And, at last, over in a corner near the little window,Carrington went down flat on his back, his eyes closed, his arms flungwide.

  Panting from his exertions, Taylor drew his guns and ran to one of thefront windows. They opened upon the porch, and, peering through theblinds, Taylor saw one of the men standing at one of the windows, tryingto peer into the room. The other two, Taylor knew, were at the door--hecould hear them talking in the silence that had followed the finalfalling of Carrington.

  With a gun in each hand, Taylor approached the door. He was compelled tosheath one of the guns, finding that it interfered with the turning ofthe key in the lock; and he had sheathed it and was slowly turning thekey, intending to throw the door open suddenly and take his chance withthe two men on the other side of it, when he saw a shadow darken thelittle window above where Carrington lay.

  He wheeled quickly, saw a man's face at the window, caught the glint ofa pistol. He snapped a shot at the man, swinging his gun over his headto keep it from striking the door as he turned. But at the movement theman's pistol roared, glass tinkling on the floor with the report. Theair in the room rocked with the explosion of Taylor's pistol, but aheavy blow on Taylor's left shoulder, accompanied by a twinge of pain,as though a white-hot iron had suddenly been plunged through it, spoiledTaylor's aim, and his bullet went into the ceiling. As he staggered backfrom the door he saw the man's face at the window, set in a triumphantgrin. Then, as Taylor flattened against the wall to steady himself foranother shot, the face disappeared.

  For an instant Taylor rested against the wall, his arms outstretchedalong it to keep himself from falling, for the bullet which had struckhim had hurt him badly. The wound was in the left shoulder, though, andhigh, and therefore not dangerous, yet he knew it had robbed his leftarm of most of its strength--there was no feeling in the fingers thatgroped along the wall.

  He stepped again to the door and softly turned the key in the lock. Heheard no sound in the room beyond the door, and, thinking that the men,curious over the shooting, had gone outside, he jerked the door open.

  The movement was greeted with deafening report and a smoke-streak thatblinded Taylor momentarily. In just the instant before the smoke-streakTaylor had caught a glimpse of a man standing near the center of theroom beyond the door, and though he was rather disconcerted by thepowder-flash and the searing of his left cheek by a bullet, he let hisown gun off twice in as many seconds, and had the grim satisfaction ofseeing the man stagger and tumble headlong to the floor.

  Taylor peered once at the man, to see if he needed further attention,decided he did not, and ran toward the front door, which opened upon theporch.

  He was just in time to see one of Carrington's men sticking his headaround a corner of the house. It was the man who had shot him from thelittle window. Taylor's gun and the man's roared simultaneously. Taylorhad missed, for the man dodged back, and Taylor staggered, for the man'sbullet had struck him in the left thigh. He leaped, though limping,toward the corner, and when almost there a pistol crashed behind him,the bullet hitting his left shoulder, near where the other had gone in,the force of it spinning him clear around, so that he reeled and broughtup against a porch column where it joined the rail.

  Grimly setting himself, grinning bitterly with the realization that themen had him between them, Taylor stood momentarily, fighting to overcomethe terrible weakness that had stolen over him. His knees weretrembling, the house, trees, and sky were agitated in sickeningconvolutions, and yet when he saw the head of a man appear from around acorner of the house at his right, he snapped a shot at it, and instantlyas it was withdrawn he staggered to the corner, lurching heavily as hewent, and turning just as he reached it to reply to a shot sent at himfrom the other corner of the house.

  A smoke-spurt met him as he reeled around the corner nearest him, andhis knees sagged as he aimed his gun at a blurring figure in front ofhim. He saw the man go down, but his own strength was spent, and he knewthe last bullet had struck him in a vital spot.

  Staggering drunkenly, he started for the side of the house and broughtup against it with a crash. Again, as he had done inside the house, hestretched his arms out, flattening himself against the wall, but thistime the arms were hanging more limply.

  He was seeing things through a crimson haze, and raising a hand, hewiped his eyes--and could see better, though there was a queer dimnessin his vision and the world was still traveling in eccentric circles.

  He saw a blur in front of him--two men, he thought, though he knew hehad accounted for two of the three gunmen who had followed him to thehouse. Then he heard a laugh--coarse and brutal--in a voice that heknew--Carrington's.

  With heartbreaking effort he brought up his right hand, bearing thepistol. He was trying to swing it around to bring it to bear upon one ofthe two dancing figures in front of him, when a crushing blow landed onhis head, and he knew one of the men had struck him with a fist. He felthis own weapon go off at last--it seemed he had been an age pressing onthe trigger--and he heard a voice again--Carrington's--saying: "Damnhim; he's shot me!" He laughed aloud as a gun roared close to him; hefelt another twinge of pain somewhere around where the other twinges hadcome--or on the other side--he did not know; and he sank slowly, stillpressing the trigger of his pistol, though not knowing whether or not hewas doing any damage. And then the eccentrically whirling world became ablack blur, soundless and void.