“Try him?” echoed a hoarse voice. “Oh, yeah, an’ give him a chance to lie hisself out of it again. Yo’re mighty fussy, marshal, ‘bout stringin’ up a cowardly coyote who kills from cover.
Mebbe it’s ‘cause he’s a Burdette, huh?”
The speaker was Goldy Evans, still sore at the loss of his dust, and a chorus of approval showed that he had plenty of support. The marshal drew himself up with a farcical attempt at dignity.
“A Burdette gets the same treatment from me as any other man,” he announced. “I represent the law, an’ there’ll be no necktie party—if I can prevent it.” The pause and the lowered tone of the last few words told the turbulent element in the crowd all it wanted to know. Slype had made his protest; if they forced his hand …
Magee, who, arriving late, had only contrived to make his way just inside the door, threw up a hand.
“Aisy, boys, give the lad a hearin’,” he shouted. “Shure it’s agin all nature he should do this thing—Green saved his life, ye mind. Lavin’ th’ hat behind looks purty thin to me.”
But for once the saloon-keeper, popular though he was, found himself powerless; only a few voices backed him up, and these were drowned by the opposition.
“Aw, Mick, one customer won’t make much difference,” a miner gibed, and the Irishman’s protest ended in a burst of laughter.
The brutal witticism, typical of a land where tragedy and comedy frequently stalked hand in hand, conveyed no hope to the accused. He knew that these men, having decided by their own rough and ready reasoning that he was guilty, would hang him with no more compunction than they would have in breaking the back of a rattlesnake. The old Biblical law, “An eye for an eye,” was perhaps the only ordinance for which they had any respect. Nevertheless, the boy faced them boldly, making no resistance when two of them grabbed his arms and hustled him towards the door.
“Hand the prisoner over to me,” Slype blustered, and made a belated attempt to draw his gun, only to find that some cautious soul in the press behind him had already removed it.
“Best not interfere, marshal,” the fellow—a red-jowled, stalwart teamster—warned. “Yu can have yore shootin’ iron when this business is settled.”
The officer shrugged his shoulders resignedly; he had put up a bluff, but with no intention of trying to make it good. He saw the condemned youth vanish through the door in a medley of heaving bodies, and presently followed, to make a final effort, not to save the victim’s neck, but his own face. The fools, he reflected; they thought they had beaten him, and were only doing just what he wanted them to. He strode after the jeering, shouting crowd, and like peas from a pod, men popped from the buildings on either side of the street and joined the procession. By the time it stopped, nearly every man in the place was present.
The halt was made at a cottonwood which shaded the last shack—going east—in the settlement, and had the distinction of being the one tree the actual town could boast. It was a giant, only its great girth having saved it from transformation into building material. Round it the spectators milled, jockeying to get a good view of the tightlipped, grey-faced boy who flushed a little and then proudly straightened up when the rope, with its running noose, was dropped over his head. The other end was pitched over an outflung branch above him and three men gripped it.
“Anythin’ to say, Burdette?” ripped out Goldy Evans, who had constituted himself leader of the lynching party, and added, “Yu might as well tell where yu cached my dust—it won’t be no use where yo’re goin’.”
The prisoner looked at the ring of threatening, ghoulish faces thrust eagerly forward to see him die. “I never had yore dust, Evans, an’ I didn’t shoot Green,” he replied firmly. “Yo’re hangin’ an innocent man.”
Magee and several of the more solid citizens believed him, but could do nothing against the overwhelming odds. The bulk of the crowd received the statement with ornate expressions of unbelief; the lust for blood was in their nostrils; nothing short of a miracle would stop them now.
The marshal knew it; this was not the first Western mob, with its weird ideas of justice, its mad desire to destroy, that he had seen. He voiced one more feeble protest.
“Boys, I can’t let this go on—it ain’t reg’lar. Yo’re robbin’ the law of its rights.”
“Git to hell outa this an’ take yore law with yu,” snarled the teamster who had threatened him in the hotel. “That there branch’ll bear two, an’ we can easy find another rope.”
Slype turned away with a well-simulated gesture of despair, and the teamster plunged again into the jostling throng, anxious not to miss the climax of the drama. Every eye was now fixed on the slim, youthful figure waiting tensely for the word which would hurl him into eternity. No one noticed the approach of two riders who, about to enter the town, had pulled up at the sight of the gathering. Evans was about to give the fatal signal when another command rang out :
“Drop that rope, yu fellas!”
Heads turned and oaths sprang from amazed lips when it was seen that the speaker was none other than the man whose murder they helieved themselves to be avenging. The C P foreman’s face was of beaten bronze, and out of it his slitted eyes gleamed frostily upon the executioners; they let go the rope as though it had been red-hot.
“What’s Burdette been doin’ now?” Sudden asked.
A dozen voices told him the story, and as he heard it, the cowpuncher’s lips curled in a sneer of disgust. Then he drawled, “Seein’ as I ain’t dead none to speak of, I reckon the prisoner can shuck that rope an’ stand clear.”
In a flurry of dust Mrs. Lavigne pulled her pony to a stop at Sudden’s side. Returning from a ride, she had only just heard the news. When she saw the puncher’s contemptuous smile and Bill Yago’s broad grin, the colour crept slowly back into her cheeks.
“They told me you were—dead, and that they were going to hang Luce,” she said breathlessly.
“All a mistake, Mrs. Lavigne,” Sudden said lightly. “As yu see, I ain’t cached, an’ the lynchin’ will—not—take place.”
The marshal fancied he saw a chance to reassert his authority. “Hold on, Green,” he snapped. “What right yu got to call the turn? If this fella didn’t bump yu off, he tried to, an’ I’m holdin’ him on that.” A murmur from the rougher element in the assembly encouraged him, and he went on, “As marshal o’ this yer burg…”
“Yo’re a false alarm,” came the acid interruption. “Yu stand there like a bump on a log while a man who ain’t been tried is strung up.” The speaker’s quick eye saw the empty holster, and he laughed aloud. “Cripes! So they took away yore gun?” He turned to the crowd in mock reproof. “Boys, that warn’t noways right—it don’t show a fittin’ respect for the law. How’d yu know he don’t want to argue with somebody—or somethin’?”
This brought a cackle from one of the audience, and the merriment spread. Conscious that they had nearly committed a terrible blunder, the men were willing to forget it in ridiculing Slype, whose sallow face grew more sour as the jesting voices rose.
“Give the man his gun,” someone cried. “Whats a good of a marshal without a gun?”
“Huh! Whatsa good o’ some marshals with one?” another wanted to know.
Sudden had one more thing to say. “Someone tried to get me to-day, marshal, but it wasn’t this Burdette,” he said meaningly. “Don’t let anyone persuade yu different. It’s mighty lucky for yu I came along in time; yu sabe?” The marshal did, and the chill in the quiet voice made him shiver. The foreman turned to Luce. “I’m a-goin’ to the hotel; yu better come with me, if there ain’t no objections.”
There were none; this satirical, long-limbed young man who had beaten Whitey to the draw was clearly not a person to take chances with, and the squinting, hopeful eyes of Bill Yago, who was known as a willing and enthusiastic fighter, did not add to the attractiveness of the proposition. So the crowd opened to let through the man it had come to hang, and, with the volatile spirit of the time an
d place, was grimly humorous.
“We was plenty near puttin’ one over on you, Luce,” grinned a miner. “Yu shore oughta sell that grey; what’ll yu take?”
“Damn good care yu don’t get him,” retorted the youth, and looked at the marshal. “Yu can tell yore boss, King Burdette, that yu’ve fallen down again on the job o’ gettin’ rid of me. I’m stayin’.”
Without waiting for a reply from the rageful, stuttering officer, he joined Sudden, Yago, and Mrs. Lavigne, walking beside them as they paced up the street. At the door of “The Plaza” the girl spoke,
“Didn’t you get any warning?” she asked.
“Yes, an’ I’m thankin’ yu, ma’am,” Sudden replied. “I allow I was plumb careless—an’ fortunate.”
“A man can play his luck too long,” she said, and with a wise little nod, left them.
Yago’s gaze followed her. “She’s too good for that skunk,” he remarked. “Got guts, that gal has.”
Which inelegance, coming from a confirmed misogynist, was indeed a compliment. The foreman regarded his friend with surprise, and then a mischievous twinkle danced in his eyes.
“Pore of Bill,” he murmured. “It’s wuss’n measles when yu get it late in life, love is. Look at him a-blushin,’ Luce.” Which was an obvious libel, since Yago’s leathery skin was as incapable of blushing as a boot-sole. “Rotten trick for Master Cupid to play on a fella what’s been damnin’ women all his life,” the tormentor went on. “Yu ain’t got a chance, ol’-timer, but never yu mind, slick yoreself up, buy a new shirt—yu can do with one, anyway—an’ —”
“Aw, go to hell, yu—yu blatherskite,” Yago shouted.
“Let’s make it the hotel—they tell me drinks ain’t too plentiful where yu said, an’ I’m as dry as the Staked Plain,” his foreman smiled.
Chapter XIII
THAT same evening, on the verandah at the C P, Sudden related the day’s happenings to an interested audience of two. The rancher’s brow grew black when he learned of the attack on his foreman. Angrily he struck in on the story,
“By God! I’ve a mind to round up the boys an’ go clean up the Circle B right away,” he said.
“Which is just what they’re hopin’ for,” Sudden pointed out. “No, we gotta lie doggo an’ let them do the movin’. Yu ain’t heard all of it.”
He went on to tell of the attempted lynching, and though Purdie did not interrupt again, he exploded when the tale ended.
“Pity yu didn’t show up a bit later,” was his cruel comment.
“But, Daddy, if Luce wasn’t guilty,” Nan protested, and there was a tremor in her tone.
Purdie had not seen her cheeks pale, or noticed the little gasp of relief when she heard that the accused man had been delivered from danger; he grasped one fact only—a Burdette had escaped a fate he held to be richly deserved.
“He’s earned it a’ready,” he growled harshly, and both his hearers knew that he was thinking of his son.
The foreman shook his head. “Still can’t agree with yu on that, Purdie. As for to-day’s play, it was a plain frame-up, an’ a clumsy one too, though it nearly came off; if that bullet had got me right, nothin’ could ‘a’ saved Burdette. Now, ask yoreself a question: If Luce is in with his brothers, why should they try to get him stretched?”
“I dunno, but it might ‘a’ been him,” was the obstinate reply.
“Not a chance,” Sudden said. “Luce ain’t such a fool as to leave his name an’ address like that.”
“Huh! Any fella who has just downed another in cold blood is liable to run off an’ forget a hat,” Purdie persisted. “An’ if he had got yu, who’d ever find the spot he fired from? It was on’y by chance Riley was passin’.”
“Was it?” the foreman asked dryly. “Riley rides for the Circle B, an’ was comin’ to town. What was he doin’ so far off the reg’lar trail?”
“Yu suggest he did the shootin’?”
“No, but I’d say he was there to take the news in an’ lead the posse to the place.”
“Well, I ain’t convinced,” the rancher replied. “An’ watch out for yoreself, Jim; the Burdettes ain’t quitters, which is the on’y good thing I can say for ‘em.”
He went into the house, and the girl followed. The foreman caught a murmured “Thank you” as she passed him. He smiled as he reflected that Luce might be having a thin time just now, but there were compensations to come. His thoughts went to “The Plaza,” but he jerked them savagely away and stalked to his own quarters.
Riley, for reasons of his own, did not return to the ranch, but he took care to keep clear of “The Plaza”; the boss of the Circle B had a nasty habit of venting his displeasure on the nearest object. Therefore, no other member of the outfit having been to town, King Burdette rode in that evening blissfully ignorant of what had happened. But he knew what he expected to hear, and his darkly handsome face wore an expression of satisfaction when he tied his horse to the hitch-rail in front of “The Plaza” and walked in. Lu Lavigne greeted him with her usual smile, and the customer to whom she was chatting promptly drifted away. King’s keen eyes searched the girl’s face for any sign of distress and found none; she appeared to be her own gay, impudent self. The hand which poured a drink for him was perfectly steady.
“Well, honeybird, what’s the good news?” he smiled.
She bobbed a mocking curtsey. “The best I can offer Your Majesty is that the coward who tried to shoot Mister Green from ambush this afternoon failed, and another gang of cowards who would have hanged Luce for it, failed also.”
She was laughing as she spoke, but her dark eyes watched him; she had not forgotten his cryptic reference to the bringing down of two birds with one stone. But King Burdette was an expert poker-player, and though the information had hit him like a blow, not a muscle of his face moved. Still smiling, he said drawlingly:
“So somebody took a shot at the estimable Green, huh? On’y shows that even a fella like Whitey may have friends, don’t it?”
“Why should he fasten the crime on Luce?” she asked.
“Him being already under a cloud, it seems a pretty bright idea,” he replied carelessly.
“As regards Luce, I’m sorry …”
Lu Lavigne pushed out a slim white hand. “That pleases me, King,” she said warmly.
“Sorry they didn’t succeed in hangin’ him, I was goin’ to say,” he finished harshly.
“But—after all—he’s your brother,” she protested.
“Don’t think it,” he said sharply. “When Luce left the Circle B he stepped right outa the family—he’s no more to me than any bum who tramps the trail. If I’d been at the stringin’-up I wouldn’t ‘a’ raised a finger to stop it.”
She knew he meant it, and the vicious savagery of his attitude appalled, and yet, in some curious way, appealedto her. She too was a creature of extremes, of fire and ice, primitive in her passions, not to be bound by the humdrum conventions of civilization. King Burdette was a kindred spirit, and she was aware of it; though she condemned, she could not help being attracted.
“Look here, sweetness, to the devil with that young cur,” he said. “I came to see yu.”
She had an impish desire to plague him. “Really?” she doubted. “So Nan Purdie did dare to turn you down?”
At once she saw that she had struck home. For all his iron control, the raging fiend within the man showed in his evil eyes. And then he laughed.
“Shucks,” he said. “Jealous huh? Yu needn’t be. No milk an’ water for me, honey; I like a dash o’ somethin’ stronger.”
She allowed herself to be persuaded, and as he could be very entertaining when he chose, the pair of them were soon laughing merrily. Some of the men in the place shrugged significant shoulders.
“Callous devil,” muttered one. “Yu’d never think they mighty near hanged his brother this afternoon.”
“He wouldn’t care if they had—seein’ they’ve quarrelled,” said another. “That’s the Black B
urdettes all over; the Ol’ Man would ‘a’ shot any son that disobeyed him. Holy terror, he was; an’ it wouldn’t surprise me none if one o’ the boys wiped him out.”
“Hey, Simmy, yu owe me ten dollars. Ante up,” chimed in a third in the party.
“What’s the matter with yu? Didn’t I say I’d pay yu to-morrow?” Simmy said indignantly.
“Shore, but if yo’re goin’ to talk like a fool, there won’t be no to-morrow for yu, an’ I can use that dinero,” was the reply, with a meaning glance at the lounging figure at the bar.
But the Circle B man had no eyes for anyone but the beauty before him. He was aware that there were probably men present who hated him, but such a thought would add to his enjoyment rather than otherwise, for inaction on their part meant that they feared him, and fear, King Burdette held, was the ruling passion of life.
He left “The Plaza” early and went to “The Lucky Chance,” where he found Riley, considerably the worse for liquor.
“I’m wantin’ yu,” King said shortly, and led the way out of the saloon to an empty space at the back of it. Then he turned on the man and said fiercely: “Why didn’t yu come back to the ranch an’ report to me?”
The cowboy blinked owlishly at him. “Well, the bottom sorta fell out o’ things,” he excused.
“Yu damned fool, all the more reason for lettin’ me know,” the other rapped back. “‘Stead o’ that, yu gotta get soaked.”
“Yore han’s have to ask yore permish to take a drink?” Riley asked impudently.
The boss of the Circle B looked at him for a moment, calmly measured his distance, and struck. Before the piston-like force of that blow the man went full-length to the ground. Ere he could rise or pull the gun at which he was clawing, King jumped forward, picked him up, shook him till his teeth rattled, and again flung him headlong.
“Now pull that gun an’ go to hell,” he snarled, slanting his own weapon on the sprawling form. “Argue with me, will yu, yu scum?”
Riley, making no effort to reach for his pistol, climbed slowly to an upright posture again.
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