The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack

by Charles Alden Seltzer

  Bud’s face was flushed and Norton was grinning. And at just the instant Taylor came in sight of them Norton was saying:

  “Well, if you insist, I suppose I shall have to go to Kelso. There isn’t time to argue.”

  Norton wheeled his horse, and, with a quick grin at Taylor, sent the animal clattering down the gorge.

  Bud’s grin at Taylor was pregnant with guilt.

  “Norton didn’t want me to stay. There’s lots of stubborn cusses in the world—now, ain’t they?”

  Taylor’s answering smile showed that he understood.

  “Get King back here with Spotted Tail, Bud!” he directed. “And take that pile of rocks for cover. They’re coming!”

  By the time Bud did as he had been bidden, and was crouching behind a huge mound of broken rock on the north side of the gorge, Taylor on the southern side, with a twenty-foot passage on the comparatively level floor of the gorge between them, and an uninterrupted sweep of narrow level in front of them, except for here and there a jutting rock or a boulder, they saw Keats and his men just entering the stretch of broken country.

  The horses of the pursuing outfit were doing their best. They came on over the stretch of treacherous trail, laboring, pounding and clattering; singly sometimes, two and three abreast where there was room, keeping well together, their riders urging them with quirt and spur. For far back on the trail they had lost sight of Bud, though Keats had remembered that Bud had said Taylor had gone to Kelso Basin, and therefore Keats knew he was on the right trail.

  However, he did not want to let Bud get to Kelso before him to warn the Arrow outfit; for that would mean a desperate battle with a force equal in numbers to his own. Keats fought best when the advantages were with him, and he knew his men were similarly constituted. And so he was riding as hard as he dared, hoping that something would happen to Bud’s horse—that the animal might become winded or fall. A man could not tell what might happen in a pursuit of this character.

  But the thing that did happen had not figured in Keats’s lurid conjectures at all. That was why, when he heard Taylor’s quick challenge, he pulled his horse up sharply, so that the animal slipped several feet and came to a halt sidewise.

  Keats’s unexpected halt brought confusion to his followers. A dozen of them, crowding Keats hard, and not noticing their leader’s halt in time, rode straight against him, their horses jamming the narrow gorge, kicking, snorting and squealing in a disordered and uncontrollable mass.

  When the tangle had been magically undone—the magic being Taylor’s voice again, burdened with sarcasm bearing upon their excitement—Keats found himself nearest the nest of rocks from behind which Taylor’s voice seemed to come.

  The jutting crag behind which Taylor had concealed his horse, and where Bud had led King, completely obstructed Keats’s view of the gorge behind the crag, toward Kelso Basin, and Keats did not know but that the entire Arrow outfit was concealed behind the rocks and boulders that littered the level in the vicinity.

  And so he sat motionless, slowly and respectfully raising his hands. Noting his action, his men did likewise.

  “That’s polite,” came Taylor’s voice coldly. “Hemmingway says you’re looking for me. What for?”

  “I’ve got a warrant for you, chargin’ you with murderin’ Larry Harlan.”

  “Who accused me?”

  “Mint Morton, of Nogel.”

  There was a long silence. Behind the clump of rock Taylor smiled mirthlessly at Bud, who was watching him. For Taylor knew Mint Morton, of Nogel, as a gambler, unscrupulous and dishonest. He had earned Morton’s hatred when one night in a Nogel saloon he had caught Morton cheating and had forced him to disgorge his winnings. His victim had been a miner on his way East with the earnings of five years in his pockets. Taylor had not been able to endure the spectacle of abject despair that had followed the man’s loss of all his money.

  Taylor did not know that Carrington had hunted Morton up, paying him well to bring the murder charge, but Taylor did know that he was innocent of murder; and by linking Morton with Carrington he could readily understand why Keats wanted him. He broke the silence with a short:

  “Who issued the warrant?”

  “Judge Littlefield.”

  “Well,” said Taylor, “you can take it right back to him and tell him to let Carrington serve it. For,” he added, a note of grim humor creeping into his voice, “I’m a heap particular about such things, Keats. I couldn’t let a sneak like you take me in. And I don’t like the looks of that dirty-looking outfit with you. And so I’m telling you a few things. I’m giving you one minute to hit the breeze out of this section. If you’re here when that time is up, I down you, Keats! Slope!”

  Keats flashed one glance around at his men. Some of them already had their horses in motion; others were nervously fingering their bridle-reins. Keats sneered at the rock nest ahead of him.

  The intense silence which followed Taylor’s warning lasted about ten seconds. Then Keats’s face paled; he wheeled his horse and sent it scampering over the back trail, his men following, crowding him hard.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  BESIEGED

  Hemmingway tentatively suggested that a ride through the gorge toward the Kelso Basin might simplify matters for himself and Taylor; it might, he said, even seem to make the defending of their position unnecessary. But his suggestions met with no enthusiasm from Taylor, who lounged among the rocks of his place of concealment calmly smoking.

  Taylor gave some reasons for his disinclination to adopt Hemmingway’s suggestions.

  “Norton will be back in an hour, with Bothwell and the outfit.” And now he grinned as he looked at Bud. “Miss Harlan told me to be careful about my scratches. I take it she don’t want no more sieges with a sick man. And I’m taking her advice. If I’d go to riding my horse like blazes, maybe I would get sick again. And she wouldn’t take care of me anymore. And I’d hate like blazes to run from Keats and his bunch of plug-uglies!”

  So Hemmingway said no more on that subject.

  They smoked and talked and watched the trail for signs of Keats and his men; while the sun, which had been behind the towering hills surrounding the gorge, traveled slowly above them, finally blazing down from a point directly overhead.

  It became hot in the gorge; the air was stifling and the heat uncomfortable. Taylor did not seem to mind it, but Bud, with a vigorous appetite, and longings that ran to flapjacks and sirup, grew impatient.

  “If a man could eat now,” he remarked once, while the sun was directly overhead, “why, it wouldn’t be so bad!”

  And then, after the sun’s blazing rays had begun to diminish in intensity somewhat, Bud looked upward and saw that the shimmering orb had passed beyond the crest of a towering hill. He looked sharply at Taylor, who was intently watching the back trail, and said gravely:

  “Norton ought to have been back with Bothwell and the bunch, now.”

  “He’s an hour overdue,” said Taylor, without looking at Bud.

  “I reckon somethin’s happened,” growled Bud. “Somethin’ always happens when a guy’s holed up, like this. It wouldn’t be so bad if a man could eat a little somethin’—to sort of keep him from thinkin’ of it all the time. Or, mebbe, if there was a little excitement—or somethin’. A man could—”

  “There’ll be plenty of excitement before long,” interrupted Taylor. “Keats and his gang didn’t go very far. I just saw one of them sneaking along that rock-knob, down the gorge a piece. They’re going to stalk us. If you’re thinking of riding to Kelso—why—” He grinned at Bud’s resentful scowl.

  Lying flat on his stomach, he watched the rock-knob he had mentioned.

  “Slick as an Indian,” he remarked once, while Bud, having ceased his discontented mutterings, kept his gaze on the rock also.

  And then suddenly the eery silence of the gorge was broken by the sharp crack of Taylor’s rifle, and, simultaneously, by a shriek of pain. Report and shriek reverberated with weird, echo
ing cadences between the hills, growing less distinct always and finally the eery silence reigned again.

  “They’ll know they can’t get careless, now,” grinned Taylor, working the ejector of his rifle.

  Bud did not reply; and for another hour both men intently scanned the hills within range of their vision, straining their eyes to detect signs of movement that would warn them of the whereabouts of Keats and his men.

  Anxiously Bud watched the rays of the sun creeping up a precipitous rock wall at a little distance. Slowly the streak of light narrowed, growing always less brilliant, and finally, when it vanished, Bud spoke:

  “It’s comin’ on night, Squint. Somethin’s sure happened to Norton.” He wriggled impatiently, adding: “If we’re here when night comes we’ll have a picnic keepin’ them guys off of us.”

  Taylor said nothing until the gorge began to darken with the shadows of twilight. Then he looked at Bud, his face grim.

  “My stubbornness,” he said shortly. “I should have taken your advice about going to Kelso Basin—when we had a chance. But I felt certain that Norton would have the outfit here before this. Our chance is gone, now. There are some of Keats’s men in the hills, around us. I just saw one jump behind that rim rock on the shoulder of that big hill—there.” He indicated the spot. Then he again spoke to Bud.

  “There’s a chance yet—for you. You take Spotted Tail and make a run for the basin. I’ll cover you.”

  “What about you?” grumbled Bud.

  Taylor grinned, and Bud laughed. “You was only funnin’ me, I reckon,” he said, earnestly. “You knowed I wouldn’t slope an’ leave you to fight it out alone—now didn’t you?”

  “But if a man was hungry,” said Taylor, “and he knew there was grub with the outfit—”

  “I ain’t hungry no more,” declared Bud; “I’ve quit thinkin’ of flapjacks for more than—”

  He stiffened, and the first shadows of the night were split by a long, narrow flame-streak as his rifle crashed. And a man who had been slipping into the shelter of a depression on the side of a hill a hundred yards distant, tumbled grotesquely out and down, and went sliding to the bottom of the gorge.

  As though the report of Bud’s rifle were a signal, a dozen vivid jets of fire flamed from various points in the surrounding hills, and the silence was rent by the vicious cracking of rifles and the drone and thud of bullets as they sped over the heads of the two men at the bottom of the gorge and flattened themselves against the rocks of their shelter.

  That sound, too, died away. And in the heavy, portentous stillness which succeeded it, there came to the ears of the two besieged men the sounds of distant shouting, faint and far.

  “It’s the outfit!” said Taylor.

  And Bud, rolling over and over in an excess of joy over the coming of the Arrow men, hugged an imaginary form and yelled:

  “Oh, Bothwell, you old son-of-a-gun! How I love you!”

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  THE FUGITIVE

  One thought dominated Marion Harlan’s brain as she packed her belongings into the little handbag in her room at the Arrow—an overpowering, monstrous, hideous conviction that she had accepted charity from the man who was accused of murdering her father! There was no room in her brain for other thoughts or emotions; she was conscious of nothing but the horror of it; of the terrible uncertainty that confronted her—of the dread that Taylor might be guilty! She wanted to believe in him—she did believe in him, she told herself as she packed the bag; she could not accept the word of Keats as final. And yet she could not stay at the Arrow another minute—she could not endure the uncertainty. She must go away somewhere—anywhere, until the charge were proved, or until she could see Taylor, to look into his eyes, there to see his guilt or innocence.

  She felt that the charge could not be true; for Taylor had treated her so fairly; he had been so sympathetically friendly; he had seemed to share her grief over her father’s death, and he had seemed so sincere in his declaration of his friendliness toward the man. He had even seemed to share her grief; and in the hallowed moments during which he had stood beside her while she had looked into her father’s room, he might have been secretly laughing at her!

  And into her heart as she stood in the room, now, there crept a mighty shame—and the shadow of her mother’s misconduct never came so close as it did now. For she, too, had violated the laws of propriety; and what she was receiving was not more than her just due. And yet, though she could blame herself for coming to the Arrow, she could not excuse Taylor’s heinous conduct if he were guilty.

  And then, the first fierce passion burning itself out, there followed the inevitable reaction—the numbing, staggering, sorrowing realization of loss. This in turn was succeeded by a frenzied desire to go away from the Arrow—from everybody and everything—to some place where none of them would ever see her again.

  She started toward the door, and met Parsons—who was looking for her. He darted forward when he saw her, and grasped her by the shoulders.

  “What has happened?” he demanded.

  She told him, and the man’s face whitened.

  “I was asleep, and heard nothing of it,” he said. “So that man Keats said they had plenty of evidence! You are going away? I wouldn’t, girl; there may have been a mistake. If I were you—”

  Her glance of horror brought Parsons’ protests to an end quickly. He, too, she thought, was under the spell of Taylor’s magnetism. That, or every person she knew was a prey to those vicious and fawning instincts to which she had yielded—the subordination of principle to greed—of ease, or of wealth, or of place.

  She shuddered with sudden repugnance.

  For the first time she had a doubt of Parsons—a revelation of that character which he had always succeeded in keeping hidden from her. She drew away from him and walked to the door, telling him that he might stay, but that she did not intend to remain in the house another minute.

  She found a horse in the stable—two, in fact—the ones Taylor had insisted belonged to her and Martha. She threw saddle and bridle on hers, and was mounting, when she saw Martha standing at the stable door, watching her.

  “Yo’ uncle says you goin’ away, honey—how’s that? An’ he done say somethin’ about Mr. Squint killin’ your father. Doan’ you b’lieve no fool nonsense like that! Mr. Squint wouldn’t kill nobody’s father! That deputy man ain’t nothin’ but a damn, no-good liar!”

  Martha’s vehemence was genuine, but not convincing; and the girl mounted the horse, hanging the handbag from the pommel of the saddle.

  “You’s sure goin’!” screamed the negro woman, frantic with a dread that she was in danger of losing the girl for whom she had formed a deep affection.

  “You wait—you hear!” she demanded; “if you leave this house I’s a goin’, too!”

  Marion waited until Martha led the other horse out, and then, with the negro woman following, she rode eastward on the Dawes trail, not once looking back.

  And not a word did she say to Martha as they rode into the space that stretched to Dawes, for the girl’s heart was heavy with self-accusation.

  They stopped for an instant at Mullarky’s cabin, and Mrs. Mullarky drew from the girl the story of the morning’s happenings. And like Martha, Mrs. Mullarky had an abiding faith in Taylor’s innocence. More—she scorned the charge of murder against him.

  “Squint Taylor murder your father, child! Why, Squint Taylor thought more of Larry Harlan than he does of his right hand. An’ you ain’t goin’ to run away from him—for the very good reason that I ain’t goin’ to let you! You’re upset—that’s what—an’ you can’t think as straight as you ought to. You come right in here an’ sip a cup of tea, an’ take a rest. I’ll put your horses away. If you don’t want to stay at the Arrow while Taylor, the judge, an’ all the rest of them are pullin’ the packin’ out of that case, why, you can stay right here!”

  Yielding to the insistent demands of the good woman, Marion meekly consented and went
inside. And Mrs. Mullarky tried to make her comfortable, and attempted to soothe her and assure her of Taylor’s innocence.

  But the girl was not convinced; and late in the afternoon, despite Mrs. Mullarky’s protests, she again mounted her horse and, followed by Martha, set out toward Dawes, intending to take the first east-bound train out of the town, to ride as far as the meager amount of money in her purse would take her. And as she rode, the sun went down behind the big hill on whose crest sat the big house, looming down upon the level from its lofty eminence; and the twilight came, bathing the world with its somber promise of greater darkness to follow. But the darkness that was coming over the world could not be greater than that which reigned in the girl’s heart.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  THE CAPTIVE

  Carrington’s experiences with Taylor had not dulled the man’s savage impulses, nor had they cooled his feverish desire for the possession of Marion Harlan. In his brain rioted the dark, unbridled passions of those progenitors he had claimed in his talk with Parsons on the morning he had throttled the little man in his rooms above the Castle.

  For the moment he had postponed the real beginning of his campaign for the possession of Dawes, his venomous hatred for Taylor and his passion for the girl overwhelming his greed.

  He had watched the departure of Keats and his men, a flush of exultation on his face, his eyes alight with fires that reflected the malignant hatred he felt. And when Keats and the others disappeared down the trail that led to the Arrow, Carrington spent some time in Dawes. Shortly after noon he rode out the river trail toward the big house with two men that he had engaged to set the interior in order.

  Carrington had not seen the house since the fight with Taylor in the front room, and the wreck and ruin that met his gaze as he stood in the door brought a sullen pout to his lips.