The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack

by Charles Alden Seltzer

  His face sobered. “I don’t recollect to have said anything about Masten, ma’am,” he said.

  “But you don’t like him, do you?”

  A direct answer was required. “No,” he said simply.

  “Why?” she persisted.

  “I reckon mebbe you’d better ask Masten,” he returned, his voice expressionless. Then he looked at her with an amused grin. “If it’s goin’ to take you any time to learn to shoot, I reckon we’d better begin.”

  She got up, went into the house for the pistol and cartridges, and came out again, the weapon dangling from her hand.

  “Shucks!” he said, when he saw the pistol, comparing its huge bulk to the size of the hand holding it, “you’ll never be able to hold it, when it goes off. You ought to have a smaller one.”

  “Uncle Jep says this ought to stop anything it hits,” she declared. “That is just what I want it to do. If I shoot anything once, I don’t want to have to shoot again.”

  “I reckon you’re right bloodthirsty, ma’am. But I expect it’s so big for you that you won’t be able to hit anything.”

  “I’ll show you,” she said, confidently. “Where shall we go to shoot? We shall have to have a target, I suppose?”

  “Not a movin’ one,” he said gleefully. “An’ I ain’t aimin’ to hold it for you!”

  “Wait until you are asked,” she retorted, defiantly. “Perhaps I may be a better shot than you think!”

  “I hope so, ma’am.”

  She looked resentfully at him, but followed him as he went out near the pasture fence, taking with him a soap box that he found near a shed, and standing it up behind a post, first making sure there were no cattle within range in the direction that the bullets would take. Then he stepped off twenty paces, and when she joined him he took the pistol from her hands and loaded it from the box. He watched her narrowly as she took it, and she saw the concern in his eyes.

  “Oh, I have used a revolver before,” she told him, “not so large a one as this, of course. But I know better than to point it at myself.”

  “I see you do, ma’am.” His hand went out quickly and closed over hers, for she had been directing the muzzle of the weapon fairly at his chest. “You ought never point it at anybody that you don’t want to shoot,” he remonstrated gently.

  He showed her how to hold the weapon, told her to stand sideways to the target, with her right arm extended and rigid, level with the shoulder.

  He took some time at this; three times after she extended her arm he seemed to find it necessary to take hold of the arm to rearrange its position, lingering long at this work, and squeezing the pistol hand a little too tightly, she thought.

  “Don’t go to pullin’ the trigger too fast or too hard,” he warned; “a little time for the first shot will save you shootin’ again, mebbe—until you get used to it. She’ll kick some, but you’ll get onto that pretty quick.”

  She pulled the trigger, and the muzzle of the pistol flew upward.

  “I reckon that target feels pretty safe, ma’am,” he said dryly. “But that buzzard up there will be pullin’ his freight—if he’s got any sense.”

  She fired again, her lips compressed determinedly. At the report a splinter of wood flew from the top of the post. She looked at him with an exultant smile.

  “That’s better,” he told her, grinning; “you’ll be hittin’ the soap box, next.”

  She did hit it at the fourth attempt, and her joy was great.

  For an hour she practiced, using many cartridges, reveling in this new pastime. She hit the target often, and toward the end she gained such confidence and proficiency that her eyes glowed proudly. Then, growing tired, she invited him to the porch again, and until near noon they talked of guns and shooting.

  Her interest in him had grown. His interest in her had always been deep, and the constraint that had been between them no longer existed.

  At noon she went into the house and prepared luncheon, leaving him sitting on the porch alone. When she called Randerson in, and he took a chair across from her, she felt a distinct embarrassment. It was not because she was there alone with him, for he had a right to be there; he was her range boss and his quarters were in the house; he was an employee, and no conventions were being violated. But the embarrassment was there.

  Did Randerson suspect her interest in him? That question assailed her. She studied him, and was uncertain. For his manner had not changed. He was still quiet, thoughtful, polite, still deferential and natural, with a quaintness of speech and a simplicity that had gripped her, that held her captive.

  But her embarrassment fled as the meal progressed. She forgot it in her interest for him. She questioned him again; he answered frankly. And through her questions she learned much of his past life, of his hopes and ambitions. They were as simple and natural as himself.

  “I’ve been savin’ my money, ma’am,” he told her. “I’m goin’ to own a ranch of my own, some day. There’s fellows that blow in all their wages in town, not thinkin’ of tomorrow. But I quit that, quite a while ago. I’m lookin’ out for tomorrow. It’s curious, ma’am. Fellows will try to get you to squander your money, along with their own, an’ if you don’t, they’ll poke fun at you. But they’ll respect you for not squanderin’ it, like they do. I reckon they know there ain’t any sense to it.” Thus she discovered that there was little frivolity in his make-up, and pleasure stirred her. And then he showed her another side of his character—his respect for public opinion.

  “But I ain’t stingy, ma’am. I reckon I’ve proved it. There’s a difference between bein’ careful an’ stingy.”

  “How did you prove it?”

  He grinned at her. “Why, I ain’t mentionin’,” he said gently.

  But she had heard of his generosity—from several of the men, and from Hagar Catherson. She mentally applauded his reticence.

  She learned that he had read—more than she would have thought, from his speech—and that he had profited thereby.

  “Books give the writer’s opinion of things,” he said. “If you read a thoughtful book, you either agree with the writer, or you don’t, accordin’ to your nature an’ understandin’. None of them get things exactly right, I reckon, for no man can know everything. He’s got to fall down, somewhere. An’ so, when you read a book, you’ve got to do a heap of thinkin’ on your own hook, or else you’ll get mistaken ideas an’ go to gettin’ things mixed up. I like to do my own thinkin’.”

  “Are you always right?”

  “Bless you, ma’am, no. I’m scarcely ever right. I’ll get to believin’ a thing, an’ then along will come somethin’ else, an’ I’ll have to start all over again. Or, I’ll talk to somebody, an’ find that they’ve got a better way of lookin’ at a thing. I reckon that’s natural.”

  They did not go out to shoot again. Instead, they went out on the porch, and there, sitting in the shade, they talked until the sun began to swim low in the sky.

  At last he got up, grinning.

  “I’ve done a heap of loafin’ today, ma’am. But I’ve certainly enjoyed myself, talkin’ to you. But if you ain’t goin’ to try to hit the target any more, I reckon I’ll be ridin’ back to the outfit.”

  She got up, too, and held out her hand to him. “Thank you,” she said. “You have made the day very short for me. It would have been lonesome here, without aunt and uncle.”

  “I saw them goin’,” he informed her.

  “And,” she continued, smiling, “I am going to ask you to come again, very soon, to teach me more about shooting.”

  “Any time, ma’am.” He still held her hand. And now he looked at it with a blush, and dropped it gently. Her face reddened a little too, for now she realized that he had held her hand for quite a while, and she had made no motion to withdraw it. Their eyes met eloquently. The gaze held for an instant, and then both laughed, as though each had seen something in the eyes of the other that had been concealed until this moment. Then Ruth’s drooped. Randerson sm
iled and stepped off the porch to get his pony.

  A little later, after waving his hand to Ruth from a distance, he rode away, his mind active, joy in his heart.

  “You’re a knowin’ horse, Patches,” he said confidentially to the pony. “If you are, what do you reckon made her ask so many questions?” He gulped over a thought that came to him.

  “She was shootin’ at the target, Patches,” he mused. “But do you reckon she was aimin’ at me?”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE GUNFIGHTER

  Red Owen, foreman of the Flying W in place of Tom Chavis, resigned, was stretched out on his blanket, his head propped up with an arm, looking at the lazy, licking flames of the campfire. He was whispering to Bud Taylor, named by Randerson to do duty as straw boss in place of the departed Pickett, and he was referring to a new man of the outfit who had been hired by Randerson about two weeks before because the work seemed to require the services of another man, and he had been the only applicant.

  The new man was reclining on the other side of the fire, smoking, paying no attention to any of the others around him. He was listening, though, to the talk, with a sort of detached interest, a half smile on his face, as though his interest were that of scornful amusement.

  He was of medium height, slender, dark. He was taciturn to the point of monosyllabic conversation, and the perpetual, smiling sneer on his face had gotten on Red Owen’s nerves.

  “Since he’s joined the outfit, he’s opened his yap about three times a day—usual at grub time, when if a man loosens up at all, he’ll loosen up then,” Red told Taylor, glaring his disapproval. “I’ve got an idea that I’ve seen the cuss somewheres before, but I ain’t able to place him.”

  “His mug looks like he was soured on the world—especial himself. If I had a twistin’ upper lip like that, I’d sure plant some whiskers on it. A mustache, now, would hide a lot of the hyena in him.”

  Owen stared meditatively at the new man through the flames. “Yes,” he said expressionlessly, “a mustache would make him look a whole lot different.” He was straining his mental faculties in an effort to remember a man of his acquaintance who possessed a lower lip like that of the man opposite him, eyes with the same expression in them, and a nose that was similar. He did not succeed, for memory was laggard, or his imagination was playing him a trick. He had worried over the man’s face since the first time he had seen it.

  He heaved a deep breath now, and looked perplexedly into the flames. “It’s like a word that gits onto the end of your tongue when your brain-box ain’t got sense enough to shuck it out,” he remarked, lowly. “But I’ll git it, some time—if I don’t go loco frettin’ about it.”

  “What you figger on gettin’—a new job?” asked Taylor, who had been sinking into a nap.

  “Snakes!” sneered Owen.

  “Thank yu’, I don’t want ’em,” grinned Taylor with ineffable gentleness, as he again closed his eyes.

  Owen surveyed him with cold scorn. Owen’s temper, because of his inability to make his memory do his bidding, was sadly out of order. He had been longing for days to make the new man talk, that he might be enabled to sharpen his memory on the man’s words.

  He studied the man again. He had been studying him all day, while he and some more of the men had worked the cattle out of some timber near the foothills, to the edge of the basin—where they were now camped. But the face was still elusive. If he could only get the man to talking, to watch the working of that lower lip!

  His glance roved around the fire. Seven men, besides the cook—asleep under the wagon—and Randerson, were lying around the fire in positions similar to his own. Randerson, the one exception, was seated on the edge of the chuck box, its canvas cover pushed aside, one leg dangling, his elbow resting on the other.

  Randerson had been rather silent for the past few days—since he had ridden in to the ranchhouse, and he had been silent tonight, gazing thoughtfully at the fire. Owen’s gaze finally centered on the range boss. It rested there for a time, and then roved to the face of the new man—Dorgan, he called himself. Owen started, and his chin went forward, his lips straightening. For he saw Dorgan watching Randerson with a bitter sneer on his lips, his eyes glittering coldly and balefully!

  Evil intent was written largely here—evil intent without apparent reason for it. For the man was a stranger here; Randerson had done nothing—to Owen’s knowledge—to earn Dorgan’s enmity; Randerson did not deliberately make enemies. Owen wondered if Dorgan were one of those misguided persons who take offense at a look unknowingly given, or a word, spoken during momentary abstraction.

  Owen had disliked Dorgan before; he hated him now. For Owen had formed a deep attachment for Randerson. There was a determination in his mind to acquaint the range boss with his suspicions concerning Dorgan’s expression, and he got up, after a while, and took a turn around the campfire in the hope of attracting Randerson’s attention.

  Randerson paid no attention to him. But through the corners of his eyes, as he passed Dorgan, Owen noted that the man flashed a quick, speculative glance at him. But Owen’s determination had not lessened. “If he’s suspicious of me, he’s figgerin’ on doin’ some dog’s trick to Wrecks. I’m puttin’ Wrecks wise a few, an’ if Dorgan don’t like it, he c’n go to blazes!”

  He walked to the rear of the chuck box and stood within half a dozen feet of Randerson.

  “Figger we’ve got ’em all out of the timber?” he asked.

  There was no answer from Randerson. He seemed absorbed in contemplation of the fire.

  “W-r-e-c-k-s!” bawled Owen, in a voice that brought every man of the circle upright, to look wildly around. Taylor was on his feet, his hair bristling, the pallor of mingled fear, astonishment, and disgust on his face. Owen grinned sardonically at him. “Lay down an’ turn over, you wall-eyed gorilla!” admonished Owen. He turned his grin on the others. “Can’t a man gas to the boss without all you yaps buttin’ in?” he demanded.

  “What for are you-all a-yowlin’ that-a-way for?” questioned a gentle-voiced Southerner reproachfully. “I was just a-dreamin’ of rakin’ in a big pot in a cyard game. An’ now you’ve done busted it up.” He sank disgustedly to his blanket.

  “He thinks he’s a damned coyote,” said a voice.

  “You’re thinkin’ it’s a yowl,” said another. “But you’ve got him wrong. He’s a jackass, come a-courtin’.”

  “A man can’t get no sleep at all, scarcely,” grumbled another.

  But Owen had accomplished his purpose. For during the exchange of amenities Randerson had answered him—without turning, though:

  “What you wantin’, Red?” he said.

  “You figger we’ve got ’em all out of the timber?” repeated Owen.

  “Shucks.” Randerson’s voice was rich with mirth. “Why, I reckon. Unless you was figgerin’ to use a fine-toothed comb. Why, the boys was all a-nappin’, Red,” he added gently.

  He did not look around, so that Owen might give him the warning wink that would have put him on his guard. Owen would have tapped him on the shoulder, but glancing sidelong, he saw Dorgan watching him, and he did not. A ripple of scornful laughter greeted Randerson’s reply, and with a sneering glance around, Owen again sought his blanket.

  The reception that had been accorded his effort had made him appear ridiculous, he knew. It would be days before the outfit would cease referring to it.

  He stretched himself out on the blanket, but after a few moments of reflection, he sat up, doggedly. He had been imagining all sorts of dire things that Dorgan might have in mind. He had a presentiment of impending trouble, and so deep was it that his forehead was damp with perspiration.

  Several of the men, disturbed by Owen, had sat up, and were smoking and talking, and when he heard one of the men, named Blair, refer to a gunman, Watt Kelso, who had formerly graced Lazette with his presence, a light leaped into Owen’s eyes, his teeth came together with a snap, his lips formed into straight lines, and he drew a slo
w, deep breath. For that was the word that had eluded him—Kelso! And Kelso—how plain and simple it seemed to him now—Kelso was Dorgan, sitting opposite him now! Kelso minus his mustache, looking much different than when he had seen him last, but Kelso, just the same—undeniably Kelso!

  So great was Owen’s excitement over this discovery that he was forced to lie down and turn his back to the fire for fear that Kelso might look at him and thus discover that he was recognized.

  As he lay there, his brain yielded to a riot of speculation. What was Kelso doing here? Why had he come, minus the mustache, assuming the name, Dorgan? What meant his glances at Randerson?

  He provided an explanation presently. Memory drew a vivid picture for him. It showed him a saloon in Lazette, some card tables, with men seated around them. Among the men were Kelso and Randerson. Randerson had been a mere youth. Kelso and Randerson were seated opposite each other, at the same table. Kelso had been losing—was in bad temper. He had charged Randerson with cheating. There had been words, and then Kelso had essayed to draw his pistol. There was a scuffle, a shot, and Kelso had been led away with a broken arm, broken by Randerson’s bullet—blaspheming, and shouting threats at Randerson. And now, after years of waiting, Kelso had come to carry out his threats. It was all plain to Owen, now. And with the knowledge, Owen’s excitement abated and he sat up, coldly observant, alert, to watch and listen.

  For, while Owen had been thinking, Blair had continued to talk of Watt Kelso, of his deeds and his personality. And Owen saw that for the first time since joining the outfit, Kelso seemed interested in the talk around him. He was watching Blair with narrowed, glittering eyes, in which Owen could see suspicion. It was as though he were wondering if Blair knew that the man of whom he spoke now was at that minute sitting close to him, listening. But presently, Owen became convinced that Kelso thought not, for the suspicion in the gunman’s eyes changed to cold, secret amusement.

  “Kelso’s pulled his freight from Lazette,” declared Blair, during the course of his talk. “It’s likely he’ll drift somewhere where he ain’t so well known. It got to be pretty hard pickin’ for him around here—folks fight shy of him. But he was sure a killer!”