The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack

by Charles Alden Seltzer

  However, she had little time to speculate. The masked man advanced, a heavy gun in his right hand, its muzzle moving from side to side, menacing them all.

  He halted when he had advanced to within a step of the girl.

  “You guys set tight!” he ordered gruffly—in the manner of the train-robber of romance. “If you go to lettin’ down your sky-hooks one little quiver, I bore you so fast an’ plenty that you’ll think you’re a colander!” Then he turned the mask toward the girl; she could feel his eyes burning through it.

  “Shell out, lady!” he commanded.

  She stared straight back at the eye-slits in the mask, defiance glinting her own eyes.

  “I haven’t any money—or anything of value—to give you,” she returned.

  “You’ve got a pocketbook there—in your hand!” he said. “Fork it over!” He removed his hat, held it in his left hand, and extended it toward her. “Toss it in there!”

  Hesitatingly, she obeyed, though not without a vindictive satisfaction in knowing that he would find little in the purse to compensate him for his trouble. She could see his eyes gleam greedily as he still looked at her.

  “Now that chain an’ locket you’ve got around your neck!” he ordered. “Quick!” he added, savagely, as she stiffened and glared at him.

  She did as she was bidden, though; for she had no doubt he would kill her—at least his manner indicated he would. And so she removed it, held it lingering in her hand for an instant, and then tossed it into the hat. She gulped as she did so, for the trinket had been given to her by her father before he left home to go on that pilgrimage from which he had never returned.

  “That’s all, eh?” snarled the man. “Well, I ain’t swallowin’ that! I’m goin’ to search you!”

  She believed she must have screamed at that. She knew she stood up, prepared to fight him if he attempted to carry out his threat; and once on her feet she looked backward.

  Neither Carrington nor Parsons had moved—they were palely silent, watching, not offering to interfere. As for that, she knew that any sign of interference on the part of her friends would result in their instant death. But she did not know what they should do! Something must be done, for she could not permit the indignity the man threatened!

  Still looking backward, she saw Taylor standing at the end of the car—where the partition of the smoking-compartment extended outward. He held a gun in each hand. He had heard her scream, and on his face as the girl turned toward him, she saw a mirthless grin that made her shiver. She believed it must have been her gasp that caused the train-robber to look swiftly at Taylor.

  Whatever had caused the man to look toward the rear of the car, he saw Taylor; and the girl saw him stiffen as his pistol roared in her ears. Taylor’s pistols crashed at the same instant—twice—the reports almost together. Afterward she could not have told what surprised her the most—seeing the man at her side drop his pistol and lurch limply against a corner of the seat opposite her, and from there slide gently to the floor, grunting; or the spectacle of Taylor, arrayed in cowboy garb, emerging from the door of the smoking-compartment, the mirthless smile on his face, and his guns—he had used both—blazing forth death to the man who had threatened her.

  Nor could she—afterward—have related what followed the sudden termination of the incident in the car. Salient memories stood out—the vivid and tragic recollection of chief incidents that occurred immediately; but she could not have even guessed how they happened.

  She saw Taylor as he stood for an instant looking down at the man after he came running forward to where the other lay; and she saw Taylor leap for the front door of the car, vanish through it, and slam it after him.

  For an instant after that there was silence, during which she shuddered as she tried to keep her gaze from the thing that lay doubled oddly in the aisle.

  And then she heard more shooting. It came from the direction of the engine—the staccato crashing of pistols; the shouts of men, their voices raised in anger.

  Pressing her cheek against the window-pane, and looking forward toward the engine, she saw Taylor. With a gun in each hand, he was running down the little level between the track and the steep wall of the cut, toward her. She noted that his face still wore the mirthless grin that had been on it when he shot the train-robber in the car; though his eyes were alight with the lust of battle—that was all too plain—and she shivered. For Taylor, having killed one man, and grimly pursuing others, seemed to suggest the spirit of this grim, rugged country—the threat of death that seemed to linger on every hand.

  She saw him snap a shot as he ran, bending far over to send the bullet under the car; she heard a pistol crash from the other side of the car; and then she saw Taylor go to his knees.

  She gasped with horror and held to the window-sill, for she feared Taylor had been killed. But almost instantly she saw her error, for Taylor was on his hands and knees crawling when she could again concentrate her gaze; and she knew he was crawling under the car to catch the man who had shot from the other side.

  Then Taylor disappeared, and she did not see him for a time. She heard shots, though; many of them; and then, after a great while, a silence. And during the silence she sat very still, her face white and her lips stiff, waiting.

  The silence seemed to endure for an age; and then it was broken by the sound of voices, the opening of the door of the car, and the appearance of Taylor and some other men—several members of the train-crew; the express-messenger; the engineer, his right arm hanging limply—and two men, preceding the others, their hands bound, their faces sullen.

  On Taylor’s face was the grin that had been on it all along. The girl wondered at the man’s marvelous self-control—for certainly during those moments of excitement and danger he must have been aware of the terrible risk he had been running. And then the thought struck her—she had not considered that phase of the situation before—that she must have screamed; that he had heard her, and had emerged from the smoking-room to protect her. She blushed, gratitude and a riot of other emotions overwhelming her, so that she leaned weakly back in the seat, succumbing to the inevitable reaction.

  She did not look at Taylor again; she did not even see him as he walked toward the rear of the car, followed by the train-crew, and preceded by the two train-robbers he had captured.

  But as the train-crew passed her, she heard one of them say:

  “That guy’s a whirlwind with a gun! Didn’t do no hesitatin’, did he?”

  And again:

  “Now, what do you suppose would make a guy jump in that way an’ run a chance of gettin’ plugged—plenty? Do you reckon he was just yearnin’ fer trouble, or do you reckon they was somethin’ else behind it?”

  The girl might have answered, but she did not. She sat very still, comparing Carrington with this man who had plunged instantly into a desperate gun-fight to protect her. And she knew that Carrington would not have done as Taylor had done. And had Carrington seen her face just at that moment he would have understood that there was no possibility of him ever achieving the success of which he had dreamed.

  She heard one of the men say that the two men were to be placed in the baggage-car until they reached Dawes; and then Carrington and Parsons came to where she sat.

  They talked, but the girl did not hear them, for her thoughts were on the picture Taylor made when he appeared at the door of the smoking-compartment arrayed in his cowboy rigging, the grim smile on his face, his guns flaming death to the man who thought to take advantage of her helplessness.

  CHAPTER V

  THE UNEXPECTED

  The train pulled out again presently, and the water-tank and the cut were rapidly left in the rear. Taylor returned to the smoking-room and resumed his seat, and while the girl looked out of the window, some men of the train-crew removed the body of the train-robber and obliterated all traces of the fight. And Carrington and Parsons, noting the girl’s abstractedness, again left her to herself.

  It had been th
e girl’s first glimpse of a man in cowboy raiment, and, as she reflected, she knew she might have known Taylor was an unusual man. However, she knew it now.

  Cursory glances at drawings she had seen made her familiar with the type, but the cowboys of those drawings had been magnificently arrayed in leather chaparajos, usually fringed with spangles; and with long-roweled spurs; magnificent wide brims—also bespangled, and various other articles of personal adornment, bewildering and awe inspiring.

  But this man, though undoubtedly a cow-puncher, was minus the magnificent raiment of the drawings. And, paradoxical as it may seem, the absence of any magnificent trappings made him seem magnificent.

  But she was not so sure that it was the lack of those things that gave her that impression. He did not bulge in his cowboy clothing; it fitted him perfectly. She was sure it was he who gave magnificence to the clothing. Anyway, she was certain he was magnificent, and her eyes glowed. She knew, now that she had seen him in clothing to which he was accustomed, and which he knew how to wear, that she would have been more interested in him yesterday had he appeared before her arrayed as he was at this moment.

  He had shown himself capable, self-reliant, confident. She would have given him her entire admiration had it not been for the knowledge that she had caught him eavesdropping. That action had almost damned him in her estimation—it would have completely and irrevocably condemned him had it not been for her recollection of the stern, almost savage interest she had seen in his eyes while he had been listening to Carrington and Parsons.

  She knew because of that expression that Carrington and Parsons had been discussing something in which he took a personal interest. She had not said so much to Carrington, but her instinct told her, warned her, gave her a presentiment of impending trouble. That was what she had meant when she had told Carrington she had seen fighting in Taylor’s eyes.

  Taylor confined himself to the smoking-compartment. The negro porter, with pleasing memories of generous tips and a grimmer memory to exact his worship, hung around him, eager to serve him, and to engage him in conversation; once he grinningly mentioned the incident of the cast-off clothing of the night before.

  “I ain’t mentionin’ it, boss—not at all! I ain’t givin’ you them duds till you ast for them. You done took me by s’prise, boss—you shuah did. I might’ near caved when you shoved that gun under ma nose—I shuah did, boss. I don’t want to have nothin’ to do with your gun, boss—I shuah don’t. She’d go ‘pop,’ an’ I wouldn’t be heah no more!

  “I didn’t reco’nize you in them heathen clo’s you had on yesterday, boss; but I minds you with them duds on. I knows you; you’re ‘Squint’ Taylor, of Dawes. I’ve seen you on that big black hoss of yourn, a prancin’ an’ a prancin’ through town—more’n once I’ve seen you. But I didn’t know you in them heathen clo’s yesterday, boss—’deed I didn’t!”

  Later the porter slipped into the compartment. For a minute or two he fussed around the room, setting things to order, meanwhile chuckling to himself. Occasionally he would cease his activities long enough to slap a knee with the palm of a hand, with which movement he would seem to be convulsed with merriment, and then he would resume work, chuckling audibly.

  For a time Taylor took no notice of his antics, but they assailed his consciousness presently, and finally he asked:

  “What’s eating you, George?”

  The query was evidently just what “George” had been waiting for. For now he turned and looked at Taylor, his face solemn, but a white gleam of mirth in his eyes belying the solemnity.

  “Tips is comin’ easy for George this mornin’,” he said; “they shuah is. No trouble at all. If a man wants to get tips all he has to be is a dictionary—he, he, he!”

  “So you’re a dictionary, eh? Well, explain the meaning of this.” And he tossed a silver dollar to the other.

  The dollar in hand, George tilted his head sidewise at Taylor.

  “How on earth you know I got somethin’ to tell you?”

  “How do I know I’ve got two hands?”

  “By lookin’ at them, boss.”

  “Well, that’s how I know you’ve got something to tell me—by looking at you.”

  The porter chuckled. “I reckon it’s worth a dollar to have a young lady interested in you,” he told himself in a confidential voice, without looking at Taylor; “yassir, it’s sure worth a dollar.” He slapped his knee delightedly. “That young lady a heap interested in you, ’pears like. While ago she pens me in a corner of the platform. ‘Porter, who’s that man in the smoking-compartment—that cowboy? What’s his name, an’ where does he live?’ I hesitates, ’cause I didn’t want to betray no secrets—an’ scratch my haid. Then she pop half a dollar in my hand, an’ I tole her you are Squint Taylor, an’ that you own the Arrow ranch, not far from Dawes. An’ she thank me an’ go away, grinnin’.”

  “And the young lady, George; do you know her name?”

  “Them men she’s travelin’ with calls her Marion, boss.”

  He peered intently at Taylor for signs of interest. He saw no such signs, and after a while, noting that Taylor seemed preoccupied, and was evidently no longer aware of his presence, he slipped out noiselessly.

  At nine thirty, Taylor, looking out of the car window, noted that the country was growing familiar. Fifteen minutes later the porter stuck his head in between the curtains, saw that Taylor was still absorbed, and withdrew. At nine fifty-five the porter entered the compartment.

  “We’ll be in Dawes in five minutes, boss,” he said. “I’ve toted your baggage to the door.”

  The porter withdrew, and a little later Taylor got up and went out into the aisle. At the far end of the car, near the door, he saw Marion Harlan, Parsons, and Carrington.

  He did not want to meet them again after what had occurred in the diner, and he cast a glance toward the door behind him, hoping that the porter had carried his baggage to that end of the car. But the platform was empty—his suitcase was at the other end.

  He slipped into a seat on the side of the train that would presently disclose to him a view of Dawes’s depot, and of Dawes itself, leaned an elbow on the window-sill, and waited. Apparently the three persons at the other end of the car paid no attention to him, but glancing sidelong once he saw the girl throw an interested glance at him.

  And then the air-brakes hissed; he felt the train slowing down, and he got up and walked slowly toward the girl and her companions. At about the same instant she and the others began to move toward the door; so that when the train came to a stop they were on the car platform by the time Taylor reached the door. And by the time he stepped out upon the car platform the girl and her friends were on the station platform, their baggage piled at their feet.

  Dawes’s depot was merely a roofless platform; and there was no shelter from the glaring white sun that flooded it. The change from the subdued light of the coach to the shimmering, blinding glare of the sun on the wooden planks of the platform affected Taylor’s eyes, and he was forced to look downward as he alighted. And then, not looking up, he went to the baggage-car and pulled his two prisoners out.

  Looking up as he walked down the platform with the two men, he saw a transformed Dawes.

  The little, frame station building had been a red, dingy blot beside the glistening rails that paralleled the town. It was now gaily draped with bunting—red, white, and blue—which he recognized as having been used on the occasion of the town’s anniversary celebration.

  A big American flag topped the ridge of the station; other flags projected from various angles of the frame.

  Most of the town’s other buildings were replicas of the station in the matter of decorations—festoons of bunting ran here and there from building to building; broad bands of it were stretched across the fronts of other buildings; gay loops of it crossed the street, suspended to form triumphal arches; flags, wreaths of laurel, Japanese lanterns, and other paraphernalia of the decorator’s art were everywhere.

&n
bsp; Down the street near the Castle Hotel, Taylor saw transparencies, but he could not make out the words on them.

  He grinned, for certainly the victor of yesterday’s election was outdoing himself.

  He looked into the face of a man who stood near him on the platform—who answered his grin.

  “Our new mayor is celebrating in style, eh?” he said.

  “Right!” declared the man.

  He was about to ask the man which candidate had been victorious—though he was certain it was Neil Norton—when he saw Marion Harlan, standing a little distance from him, smiling at him.

  It was a broad, impersonal smile, such as one citizen of a town might exchange with another when both are confronted with the visible evidences of political victory; and Taylor responded to it with one equally impersonal. Whereat the girl’s smile faded, and her gaze, still upon Taylor, became speculative. Its quality told Taylor that he should not presume upon the smile.

  Taylor had no intention of presuming anything. Not even the porter’s story of the girl’s interest in him had affected him to the extent of fatuous imaginings. A woman’s curiosity, he supposed, had led her to inquire about him. He expected she rarely saw men arrayed as he was—and as he had been arrayed the day before.

  The girl’s gaze went from Taylor to the street in the immediate vicinity of the station, and for the first time since alighting on the platform Taylor saw a mass of people near him.

  Looking sharply at them, he saw many faces in the mass that he knew. They all seemed to be looking at him and, with the suddenness of a stroke came to him the consciousness that there was no sound—that silence, deep and unusual, reigned in Dawes. The train, usually merely stopping at the station and then resuming its trip, was still standing motionless behind him. With a sidelong glance he saw the train-crew standing near the steps of the cars, looking at him. The porter and the waiter with whose faces he was familiar, were grinning at him.

  Taylor felt that his own grin, as he gazed around at the faces that were all turned toward him, was vacuous and foolish. He felt foolish. For he knew something had attracted the attention of all these people to him, and he had not the slightest idea what it was. For an instant he feared that through some mental lapse he had forgotten to remove his “dude” clothing; and he looked down at his trousers and felt of his shirt, to reassure himself. And he gravely and intently looked at his prisoners, wondering if by any chance some practical joker of the town had arranged the train robbery for his special benefit. If that were the explanation it had been grim hoax—for two men had been killed in the fight.