“Nothin’ doin’,” he said, a queer leap in his voice. “I come straight from the shack, by the Lazette trail. How does it come that you’re here, alone? What did Catherson an’ Hagar go to the Flyin’ W for? How long will they be gone?”
“They will be back right away,” she told him, with a devout hope that they would.
“You’re lyin’, Ruth,” he said familiarly. “You don’t know when they’ll be back.” He grinned, maliciously. “I reckon I c’n tell you why you’re here alone, too. Hagar’s took your cayuse. Hagar’s is in the corral. You see,” he added triumphantly as he saw the start that she could not repress. “I’ve been nosin’ around a little before I come in. I wasn’t figgerin’ on runnin’ into Abe Catherson.” He laughed thickly, as though some sort of passion surged over him. “So you’re all alone here—eh?”
She grew weak at the significance of his words, and leaned against the window-sill for support. And then with the realization that she must not seem to quail before him, she stood erect again and forced her voice to steadiness.
“Yes,” she said, “I am alone. Is there any need to repeat that? And being alone, I am in charge, here, and I don’t want you here for company.”
He laughed, making no move to withdraw.
“I’m here on business.”
“You can’t have any business with me. Come when the Cathersons are here.”
“The waitin’s good,” he grinned. He walked around to the side of the table, and with one hand resting on its top, looked closely at her, suspicion in his eyes. “Say,” he said in a confidential whisper, “it looks peculiar to me. Catherson an’ Hagar both gone. Hagar’s got your cayuse, leavin’ you here alone. Has ol’ Catherson tumbled to Masten bein’ thick with Hagar?”
“I don’t know,” she said, flushing. “It is no affair of mine!”
“It ain’t—eh?” he said with a laugh, low and derisive. “You don’t care what Masten does-eh? An’ you’re goin’ to marry him, Monday. Masten’s lucky,” he went on, giving her a look that made her shudder; “he’s got two girls. An’ one of them don’t care how much he loves the other.” He laughed as though the matter were one of high comedy.
His manner, the half-veiled, vulgar significance of his words and voice, roused her to a cold fury. She took a step toward him and stood rigid, her eyes flashing.
“You get out of this cabin, Tom Chavis!” she commanded. “Get out—instantly!” No longer was she afraid of him; she was resolute, unflinching.
But Chavis merely smiled—seemingly in huge enjoyment. And then, while he looked at her, his expression changed to wonder. “Holy smoke!” he said. “Where’s Masten’s eyes? He said you didn’t have any spirit, Ruth, that you was too cold an’ distant. I reckon Masten don’t know how to size up a girl—a girl, that is, which is thoroughbred. Seems as though his kind is more like Hagar!” He grinned cunningly and reached into a pocket, drawing out a paper. He chuckled over it, reading it. Then, as though she were certain to appreciate the joke, he held it out to her. “Read it, Ruth,” he invited, “it’s from Masten, askin’ Hagar to meet him, tomorrow, down the crick a ways. He’s dead scared to come here any more, since Randerson’s aimin’ to perforate him!”
Only one conscious emotion afflicted her at this minute: rage over Chavis’ inability to understand that she was not of the type of woman who could discuss such matters with a man. Evidently, in his eyes, all women were alike. She knew that such was his opinion when, refusing to take the paper, she stepped back, coldly, and he looked at her in surprise, a sneer following instantly.
“Don’t want to read it—eh? Not interested? Jealous, mebbe—eh?” He grinned. “Sure—that’s it, you’re jealous.” He laughed gleefully. “You women are sure jokes. Masten can’t wake you up—eh? Well, mebbe Masten—” He paused and licked his lips. “I reckon I don’t blame you, Ruth. Masten ain’t the sort of man. He’s too cold-blooded, hisself to make a woman sort of fan up to him. But there’s other guys in this country, Ruth, an’—”
She had seized the first thing that came to her hands, a glass jar that had set on the window sill behind her, and she hurled it furiously and accurately. It struck him fairly on the forehead and broke into many pieces, which clattered and rang on the bare board floor. The sound they made, the smashing, dull impact as the jar had struck Chavis, caused her heart to leap in wild applause—twanging a cord of latent savagery in her that set her nerves singing to its music. It was the first belligerent act of her life. It awakened in her the knowledge that she could defend herself, that the courage for which she had prayed that night when on the rock where Randerson had found her, was lurking deep, ready to answer her summons. She laughed at Chavis, and when she saw him wipe the blood from his face and look at her in bewilderment, she challenged him peremptorily:
“Go—now, you beast!”
His answer was a leering grin that made his face hideous. He looked like a wounded animal, with nothing but concentrated passion in his eyes. Her act had maddened him.
“I’ll fix you, you hussy!” he sneered cursing.
She saw now that he was aroused past all restraint, and when he came toward her, crouching, she knew that other missiles would not suffice, that to be absolutely safe she must get possession of the big pistol that reposed on the shelf near the door. So when he came toward her she slipped behind the table. He grasped it by its edge and tried to swing it out of the way, and when she held it he suddenly swooped down, seizing it by the legs and overturning it. As it fell he made a lunge at her, but she eluded him and bounded to the door. The box holding the miscellaneous articles she knocked out of its place, so that it fell with a tinkling crash, throwing its contents in all directions. Her fingers closed on the stock of the pistol, and she faced Chavis, who was a few feet away, leveling the big weapon at him. Her voice came firmly; she was surprised at her own calmness:
“Don’t move, Chavis, don’t dare to take a step, or I’ll kill you!”
Chavis halted, his face a dirty, chalkish white. Twice his lips opened, in astonishment or fear, she could not tell which, but no sound came from them. He stood silent, watching her, furtive-eyed, crouching.
In this interval her thoughts rioted in chaos, like dust before a hurricane. But a question dominated all: could she carry out her threat to kill Chavis, if he took the step?
She knew she would. For in this crisis she had discovered one of nature’s first laws. She had never understood, before, but in the last few minutes knowledge had come to her like a burst of light in the darkness. And a voice came to her also—Randerson’s; she mentally repeated the words he had spoken on the day he had told her about the rustlers: “I reckon you’d fight like a tiger, ma’am, if the time ever come when you had to.”
Yes, she would fight. Not as a tiger would fight, but as Randerson himself had fought—not with a lust to do murder, but in self-protection. And in this instant the spirit of Randerson seemed to stand beside her, applauding her, seeming to whisper words of encouragement to her. And she caught something of his manner when danger threatened; his cold deliberation, his steadiness of hand and eye, his grim alertness. For she had unconsciously studied him in the few minutes preceding the death of Pickett, and she was as unconsciously imitating him now.
Her thoughts ceased, however, when she saw Chavis grin at her, mockingly.
“It’s a bluff!” he said. “You couldn’t hit the ground, if you had a-hold of the gun with both hands!” He moved slightly, measuring the distance between them.
Plainly, she saw from his actions, from his tensed muscles, her threat would not stop him. She was very pale, and her breast heaved as though from a hard run; Chavis could hear the sound of her breathing as he set himself for a leap; but her lips were pressed tightly together, her eyes glowed and widened as she followed the man’s movements. She was going to kill; she had steeled her mind to that. And when she saw the man’s muscles contract for the rush that he hoped would disconcert her, she fired, coolly and deliberately.<
br />
With the deafening roar of the weapon in her ears, a revulsion, swift, sickening, overcame her. The report reverberated hideously; she seemed to hear a thousand of them. And the smoke billowed around her, strong, pungent. Through it she saw Chavis stagger, clap one hand to his chest and tumble headlong, face down, at her feet. The interior of the cabin whirled in mad circles; the floor seemed to be rising to meet her, and she sank to it, the six-shooter striking the bare boards with a thud that sounded to her like a peal of thunder. And then oblivion, deep and welcome, descended.
Coming down through the break in the canyon, riding slightly in advance of Hagar, Randerson heard the report of a pistol, distant and muffled. He turned in the saddle and looked at Hagar questioningly.
“That come from your shack!” he said shortly; “Ruth there alone?”
He caught the girl’s quick affirmative, and Patches leaped high in the air from pain and astonishment as the spurs pressed his flanks. When he came down it was to plunge forward with furious bounds that sent him through the water of the river, driving the spume high over his head. He scrambled up the sloping further bank like a cat, gained the level and straightened to his work. Twice that day had riders clattered the narrow trail with remarkable speed, but Patches would have led them.
He was going his best when within fifty feet of the shack he heard Randerson’s voice and slowed down. Even then, so great was his impetus, he slid a dozen feet when he felt the reins, rose to keep from turning a somersault, and came down with a grunt.
In an instant Randerson was inside the cabin. Ruth lay prone, where she had fallen. Randerson, pale, grim-lipped, leaned over her.
“Fainted!” he decided. He stepped to the man and turned him over roughly.
“Chavis,” he ejaculated, his lips hardening. “Bored a-plenty!” he added, with vindictive satisfaction. He saw Ruth’s weapon, noted the gash in Chavis’ forehead, and smiled. “I reckon she fit like a tiger, all right!” he commented admiringly. And now he stood erect and looked down at Ruth compassionately. “She’s killed him, but she’ll die a-mournin’ over it!” Swift resolution made his eyes flash. He looked again at Ruth, saw that she was still in a state of deep unconsciousness. Running out of the cabin, he drew one of his six-shooters. When he had gone about twenty-five feet from the edge of the porch, he wheeled, threw the gun to a quick level, and aimed at the interior of the cabin. At the report he ran toward the cabin again, to meet Hagar, just riding up, wide-eyed and wondering.
“What is goin’ on?” she demanded. “What you doin’?”
“Killin’ a man,” he told her grimly. He seized her by the shoulders. “Understand,” he said sternly; “I killed him, no matter what happens. I’d just got here.”
With Hagar at his heels he entered the cabin again. While the girl worked with Ruth, he went to the rear wall of the cabin and examined it. When shooting from the outside he had aimed at the wall near a small mirror that was affixed there, and his eyes gleamed with satisfaction when, embedded in one of the logs that formed the wall, he found the bullet.
Five minutes later he and Hagar led Ruth out on the porch. The girl was shaking and cringing, but trying hard to bear up under the recollection of her terrible experience. She had looked, once, at Chavis, on the floor of the cabin, when she had recovered, and her knees had sagged. But Randerson had gone to her assistance. She had looked at him, too, in mute agony of spirit, filled with a dull wonder over his presence, but gaining nothing from his face, sternly sympathetic. Outside, in the brilliant sunshine, a sense of time, place, and events came back to her, and for the first time since her recovery she thought of Abe Catherson’s note, which Hagar had read.
“Oh,” she said, looking at Randerson with luminous eyes, joy flashing in them, “he didn’t shoot you!”
“I reckon not, ma’am,” he grinned. “I’m still able to keep on range bossin’ for the Flyin’ W.”
“Yes, yes!” she affirmed with a gulp of delight. And she leaned her head a little toward him, so that it almost touched his arm. And he noted, with a pulse of pleasure, that the grip of her hand on the arm tightened.
But her joy was brief; she had only put the tragedy out of her mind for an instant. It returned, and her lips quavered.
“I killed Chavis, Randerson,” she said, looking up at him with a pitiful smile. “I have learned what it means to—to take—human life. I killed him, Rex! I shot him down just as he was about to spring upon me! But I had to do it—didn’t I?” she pleaded. “I—I couldn’t help it. I kept him off as long as I could—and nobody came—and he looked so terrible—”
“I reckon you’ve got things mixed, ma’am.” Randerson met her puzzled look at him with a grave smile. “It was me, ma’am, killed him.”
She drew a sharp breath, her cheeks suddenly flooded with color; she shook Hagar’s arm from around her waist, seized Randerson’s shoulders, gripping the sleeves of his shirt hard and staring at him, searching his eyes with eager, anxious intensity.
“Don’t lie to me, Randerson,” she pleaded. “Oh,” she went on, reddening as she thought of another occasion when she had accused him, “I know you wouldn’t—I know you never did! But I killed him; I know I did! For I shot him, Randerson, just as he started to leap at me. And I shall never forget the look of awful surprise and horror in his eyes! I shall never get over it—I will never forgive myself!”
“Shucks, ma’am, you’re plumb excited. An’ I reckon you was more excited then, or you’d know better than to say you did it. Me an’ Hagar was just gettin’ off our horses here at the door—after comin’ from the Flyin’ W. An’ I saw Tom Chavis in the cabin. He was facin’ the door, ma’am,” he said at a venture, and his eyes gleamed when he saw her start, “an’ I saw what he was up to. An’ I perforated him, ma’am. From outside, here. Your gun went off at the same time. But you ain’t learned to shoot extra good yet, an’ your bullet didn’t hit him. I’ll show you where it’s stuck, in the wall.”
He led her inside and showed her the bullet. And for a short space she leaned her head against the wall and cried softly. And then, her eyes filled with dread and doubt, she looked up at him.
“Are you sure that is my bullet?” she asked, slowly. She held her breath while awaiting his answer.
It was accompanied by a short laugh, rich in grave humor:
“I reckon you wouldn’t compare your shootin’ with mine, ma’am. Me havin’ so much experience, an’ you not bein’ able to hit a soap-box proper?”
She bowed her head and murmured a fervent:
“Thank God!”
Randerson caught Hagar’s gaze and looked significantly from Ruth to the door. The girl accepted the hint, and coaxed Ruth to accompany her to the door and thence across the porch to the clearing. Randerson watched them until, still walking, they vanished among the trees. Then he took Chavis’ body out. Later, when Ruth and Hagar returned, he was sitting on the edge of the porch, smoking a cigarette.
To Ruth’s insistence that Hagar come with her to the house, the girl shook her head firmly.
“Dad will be back, most any time. He’ll feel a heap bad, I reckon. An’ I’ve got to be here.”
A little later, riding back toward the Flying W—when they had reached the timber-fringed level where, on another day, Masten had received his thrashing, Ruth halted her pony and faced her escort.
“Randerson,” she said, “today Uncle Jepson told me some things that I never knew—about Masten’s plots against you. I don’t blame you for killing those men. And I am sorry that I—I spoke to you as I did—that day.” She held out a hand to him.
He took it, smiling gravely. “Why, I reckoned you never meant it,” he said.
“And,” she added, blushing deeply; “you are not going to make it necessary for me to find another range boss, are you?”
“I’d feel mighty bad if you was to ask me to quit now,” he grinned. And now he looked at her fairly, holding her gaze, his eyes glowing. “But as for bein’ range boss—” He
paused, and a subtle gleam joined the glow in his eyes. “There’s a better job—that I’m goin’ to ask you for—some day. Don’t you think that I ought to be promoted, ma’am?”
She wheeled her pony, blushing, and began to ride toward the ranchhouse. But he urged Patches beside her, and, reaching out, he captured the hand nearest him. And in this manner they rode on—he holding the hand, a thrilling exultation in his heart, she with averted head and downcast eyes, filled with a deep wonder over the new sensation that had come to her.
Uncle Jepson, in the doorway of the house, eagerly watching for the girl’s return, saw them coming. Stealthily he closed the door and slipped out into the kitchen, where Aunt Martha was at work.
“Women is mighty uncertain critters, ain’t they, Ma?” he said, shaking his head as though puzzled over a feminine trait that had, heretofore, escaped his notice. “I cal’late they never know what they’re goin’ to do next.”
Aunt Martha looked at him over the rims of her spectacles, wonderment in her gaze—perhaps a little belligerence.
“Jep Coakley,” she said severely, “you’re always runnin’ down the women! What on earth do you live with one for? What are the women doin’ now, that you are botherin’ so much about?”
He gravely took her by the arm and pointed out of a window, from which Ruth and Randerson could be seen.
Aunt Martha looked, long and intently. And when she finally turned to Uncle Jepson, her face was radiant, and she opened her arms to him.
“Oh, Jep!” she exclaimed lowly, “ain’t that wonderful!”
“I cal’late I’ve been expectin’ it,” he observed.
CHAPTER XXV
A MAN IS BORN AGAIN
The meeting between Catherson and Randerson had taken the edge off Catherson’s frenzy, but it had not shaken his determination. He had been in the grip of an insane wrath when he had gone to see the Flying W range boss. His passions had ruled him, momentarily. He had subdued them, checked them; they were held in the clutch of his will as he rode the Lazette trail. He did not travel fast, but carefully. There was something in the pony’s gait that suggested the mood of his rider—a certain doggedness of movement and demeanor which might have meant that the animal knew his rider’s thoughts and was in sympathy with them. They traveled the trail that Randerson had taken on the night he had found Ruth on the rock; they negotiated the plain that spread between the ranchhouse and the ford where Randerson had just missed meeting Ruth that day; they went steadily over the hilly country and passed through the section of broken land where Ruth’s pony had thrown her. Reaching the hills and ridges beyond, Catherson halted and scrutinized the country around him. When he observed that there was no sign of life within range of his vision, he spoke to the pony and they went forward.
The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack Page 61
