The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack

by Charles Alden Seltzer

  “Lonesome,” explained Betty, frigidly, “was a dog—he was Bob’s dog. Bob loved him. I suppose you didn’t know that—you couldn’t have known. We believed him to be part wolf. Bob found him on the Lazette trail, where he had evidently been left behind, probably forgotten, by some traveler who had camped there. Bob brought him home and raised him. He has never been known to exhibit any vicious traits. You were born in the West,” she went on, “and ought to be able to tell the difference between a dog and a wolf. Did you take Lonesome for a wolf?”

  “I reckon,” sneered Calumet, determined not to be lectured by her, “that I’ve got to give a reason for everything I do around here. Even to killin’ a damn dog!”

  “Then,” she said with cold contempt, “you killed him in pure wantonness?”

  It was plain to Calumet that she was badly hurt over the dog’s death. Certainly, despite her cold composure, she must be filled with rage against him for killing the animal. He might now have exhibited his arm, to confound her with the evidence of his innocence of wantonness, and very probably she would have been instantly remorseful. But he had no such intention; he was keenly alive to his opportunity to show her that he was answerable to no one for his conduct. He enjoyed her chagrin; he was moved to internal mirth over her impotent wrath; he took a savage delight in seeing her cringe from the evidence of his apparent brutality. He grinned at her.

  “He’s dead, ain’t he?” he said. “An’ I ain’t makin’ no excuses to you!”

  She gave him a scornful glance and went over to Malcolm, who had clambered to his feet and was crouching, his face working with passion. At the instant Betty reached him he was clawing at his six-shooter, trying to drag it from the holster. But Betty’s hand closed over his and he desisted.

  “Not that, grandpa,” she said quietly. “Shooting won’t bring Lonesome back. Besides”—she turned toward Calumet and saw the cold grin on his face as his right hand dropped to his hip in silent preparation for Malcolm’s menacing movement—“don’t you see that he would shoot you as he shot Lonesome? He just can’t help being a brute!”

  She turned her back to Calumet and spoke in a low voice to her grandfather, smoothing his hair, patting his shoulders—calming him with all a woman’s gentle artifices. And Calumet stood watching her, marveling at her self-control, feeling again that queer, thrilling sensation of reluctant admiration.

  He had forgotten Bob. Betty had left the boy standing alone when she had gone over to Malcolm, and Bob had hobbled forward when Calumet had turned to follow the girl’s movements, so that now he stood just behind Calumet. The latter became aware of the boy’s presence when the latter seized his left hand from behind, and he turned with a snarl, his six-shooter half drawn, to confront the boy, whose grip on the hand had not been loosened. Calumet drew the hand fiercely away, overturning Bob so that he fell sprawling into the dust at his feet. The youngster was up again before Betty and Malcolm could reach him, hobbling toward Calumet, his thin face working from excitement, his big eyes alight over the discovery he had made.

  “He didn’t kill Lonesome because he is mean, Betty!” he shrilled; “I knew he didn’t! Look at his arm, Betty! It’s all bloody! Lonesome bit him!”

  In spite of Calumet’s efforts to avoid him, the boy again seized the arm, holding it out so that Betty and Malcolm could see the patches on the sleeve and the thin red streak that had crawled down over the back of his hand and was dripping from the finger tips.

  Malcolm halted in his advance on Calumet and stealthily sheathed his weapon. Betty, too, had stopped, a sudden wave of color overspreading her face, the picture of embarrassment and astonishment.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked accusingly; “it would have saved—”

  “Saved you from makin’ a fool of yourself,” interrupted Calumet. “You certainly did prove that I’m a mighty mean man,” he added, mockingly. “I didn’t tell you because it’s none of your business. It’s only a scratch, but I ain’t lettin’ no damned animal chaw me up an’ get away with it.” He drew the hand away from the boy and placed it behind him so that Betty could not look at it, which she had been doing until now, with wide, frightened eyes. She came forward when he placed the hand behind him, and stood close to him, determination in her manner.

  “I want to see how badly you have been bitten,” she said.

  “Go finish washin’ your dishes,” he advised, with a sneer. “That’s where you belong. Until you an’ your bunch butted in with your palaver I was enjoyin’ myself. You drive me plumb weary.”

  Betty faced him resolutely, though now there was contrition in her manner, in her voice. She spoke firmly.

  “I am sorry for what I said to you before—about Lonesome. I thought you had killed him just to be mean, to hurt me. I will try to make amends. If you will come into the house I will dress your arm—it must be badly injured.”

  Calumet’s lips curled, then straightened, and he looked down at her with steady hostility.

  “I ain’t got no truck with you at all,” he said. “When I’m figgerin’ on lettin’ you paw over me I’ll let you know.” He turned shortly and walked over to the door of the stable, where he fumbled at the fastenings, presently swinging the door open and vanishing inside. Five minutes later, when he came out with the pony saddled and bridled, he found that Betty and Malcolm had gone. But Bob stood over the dead body of Lonesome, silently weeping.

  For a moment, standing beside his pony, Calumet watched the boy, and as he stood a queer pallor overspread his face and his lips tightened oddly. For something in the boy’s appearance, in the idea of his exhibition of grief over his dog, which Malcolm had said he loved, smote Calumet’s heart. As he continued to watch, his set lips moved strangely, and his eyes glittered with a light that they had not yet known. Twice he started toward the boy, and twice he changed his mind and returned to his pony to continue his vigil. The boy was unaware of his presence.

  The third time Calumet reached his side, and the big rough palm of his right hand was laid gently on the boy’s head.

  “I reckon I’m sorry, you damned little cuss,” he said huskily as the youngster looked up into his face. “If I’d have knowed that he was your dog I’d have let him chaw my arm off before I’d have shot him.”

  The boy’s eyes glowed with gratitude. Then they sought the body of Lonesome. When he looked up again Calumet was on his pony, riding slowly past the bunkhouse. The boy watched him until he rode far out into the valley.

  CHAPTER VII

  A PAGE FROM THE PAST

  Darkness had fallen when Calumet returned to the Lazy Y. He had passed the day riding over the familiar ranges, returning to almost forgotten spots, reviving the life of his youth and finding the memories irksome. He was in no pleasant frame of mind when he rode in, and he disdained the use of the corral or the stable, staking his horse out in the pasture, remembering the scant supply of grain in the bin in the stable, and telling himself that “them two skates”—referring to the horses he had seen in the corral—“need it worse than Blackleg,” his own pony.

  After staking Blackleg out, he took the saddle and bridle from the animal and stalked toward the ranchhouse. A light burned on the kitchen table. He saw it from a distance and resisted an impulse to enter the house from the kitchen, walking, instead, around to the front, where he found the door to the office unbarred. He threw the saddle into a corner, lighted the candle that still stood on the desk where he had placed it the night before, and stood for a long time in its glare, examining the ragged gashes on his arm. Twice during the day he had washed the wounds with water secured from the river, binding the arm with a handkerchief; but he noted with a scowl that the arm was swollen and the wound inflamed. He finally rewound the bandage, tieing the ends securely. Then he stood erect beside the desk, listening and undecided.

  No sound reached his ears. The Claytons, he assured himself, must have retired.

  He walked over to the sofa and sat upon it, frowning. He was hungry, ha
ving been without food since morning, and he found himself wondering if he might not find food in the kitchen. Obeying an impulse, he got up from the sofa and went to the door through which Betty had entered the night before, noting that it was still barred as he had left it that morning. He carefully removed the fastenings and swung the door open, intending to go into the kitchen. He halted on the threshold, however, for beside a table in the dining room, in the feeble glare of a light that stood at her elbow, sat Betty, reading a book.

  She looked up as the door opened, betraying no surprise, smiling mildly, and speaking as she might have spoken had she been addressing a friend.

  “Won’t you come in?”

  She placed the book down, sticking a piece of paper between the leaves to mark her place, and stood up.

  “I have been waiting for you. I heard you come in. I expected you for supper, and when you didn’t come I saved yours. If you will come out into the kitchen I will get it for you.”

  Calumet did not move. Had Betty shown the slightest dismay or perturbation at sight of him he would not have hesitated an instant in walking past her to get the food which she had said was in the kitchen. But her easy unconcern, her cool assumption of proprietorship, aroused in him that obstinacy which the revelation of her power over him had brought into being. He did not purpose to allow her to lead him to anything.

  “I don’t reckon I’ll grub,” he said.

  “Then of course you have been to Lazette,” she returned. “You had dinner there.”

  “Look here,” he said truculently; “does it make any difference to you where I’ve been or what I’ve done?”

  “Perhaps it really doesn’t make any difference,” she answered calmly; “but of course I am interested. I don’t want you to starve.”

  His face expressed disgust. “Holy smoke!” he said; “I reckon I ain’t man enough to take care of myself!”

  “I don’t think that is the question. Can’t we get at it in the proper spirit? You belong here; you have a right to be here. And I am here because your father wanted me to stay. I want you to feel that you are at home, and I don’t want to be continually quarreling with you. Be mean and stubborn if you want to—I suppose you can’t help that. But so long as conditions are as they are, let us try to make the best of them. Even if you don’t like me, even if you resent my presence here, you can at least act more like a human being and less like a wild man. Why,” she continued, with a dry laugh, “just now you spoke of being a man, and this morning after you killed Lonesome you acted like a big, over-grown boy. You had your arm hurt and refused to allow me to dress it. Did you think I wanted to poison you?”

  “What I thought this morning is my business,” returned Calumet gruffly. Betty’s voice had been quietly conversational, but it had carried a subtle sting with its direct mockery, and Calumet felt again as he had felt the night before, like an unruly scholar being rebuked by his teacher. Last night, though, the situation had been a novel one; now the thought that she was laughing at him, taunting him, filled him with rage.

  “Mebbe you’ll be interested in knowin’ what I think right now,” he said. “It’s this: you’ve got a bad case of swelled head. You’re one of them kind of female critters which want to run things their own way. You’re—”

  Her laugh interrupted him. “We won’t argue that again, if you please. If you remember, you had something to say on that subject last night, and I want you to know that I haven’t the slightest desire to hear your opinion of me. Won’t you sit down?” She invited again, motioning to a chair beside the table, opposite hers. “If you absolutely refuse to eat, I presume there is no help for it, though even if you had dinner in Lazette you must be hungry now, for a ride of twenty miles is a strict guarantee of appetite. Please sit down. There is something I want to give you, something your father left for you. He told me to have you read it as soon as you came.”

  She stood motionless until Calumet left the door and seated himself in the chair beside the table, and then she went out of the room; he could hear her steps on the stairs. She returned quickly and laid a bulky envelope on the table beside him.

  “Here it is,” she said.

  As Calumet took up the envelope and tore it open she dropped into the other chair, took up her book, opened it, and settled herself to read. Calumet watched her covertly for a moment, and then gave his attention to the contents of the envelope.

  There were a number of sheets of paper on which Calumet recognized his father’s handwriting.

  “MY SON:—

  “Feeling that I am about to die, it is my desire to do what I can toward setting things right between us. Betty Clayton will tell you that I have repented of my treatment of you, but she cannot tell you how deep is the realization of the injury I have done you through my inhuman attitude toward you. I fear that I have ruined your character and that it may be too late to save you from those passions which, if not checked, will spoil your life.

  “I know that children sometimes inherit the evil that has abided with their parents, and I am certain that you have inherited mine, because while you stayed at home I saw many evidences of it, aye, I used to delight in its manifestation. Toward the end of your stay at home I grew to hate you. But it was because of that woman. If ever there was an evil spirit in the guise of a human being, it was she. She—well, you will learn more of her later.

  “I am going to try at this late day to repair the damage I did you. I have come to the conclusion that the surest way to do this is to force you to give me in death that respect and veneration which you refused me while I lived. You see that, in spite of my boasted repentance, I still have left a spark of satanic irony, and I do not expect you to believe me when I tell you that I have planned this for your own good. But it seems to me that if you can exhibit respect for the one who is directly responsible for your cursed passions you will be able to govern them on all occasions. That is my conviction, and if you do not agree with me there is no hope for you.

  “Betty Clayton will tell you the conditions, and she will be your judge. I believe in Betty, and if you do not see that she is a true-blue girl you are more of a fool than I think you are.”

  At this point Calumet glanced sidelong at Betty, but she seemed engrossed in her book, and he resumed reading.

  “That is all I have to say on that subject. You will have to look to Betty for additions. By this time, if she has carried out my wishes, she has told you what you may expect. I have told her the story which I am going to tell you, and I am certain that when you have finished it you will see that I am not entirely to blame. You will see, too, what havoc Tom Taggart has wrought in my life; why he has tried many times to kill me. Calumet, beware of the Taggarts! For the last five years they have been a constant menace to me; I have been forced to be on my guard against them day and night. They have hounded me, induced my men to betray me. In five years I have not slept soundly because of them. But I have foiled them. I am dying now, and that which they seek will be hidden until you fulfill the conditions which I impose on you. I know you are coming home—I can feel it—and I know that when you read what is to follow you will be eager to square my account with Tom Taggart.

  “Before going any further, before you read my story, I want you to know that the cursed virago whom you saw buried in the cottonwood was not your real mother. Your mother died giving you birth, and her body lies in a quiet spot beside the Rio Pecos, at Twin Pine crossing, about ten miles north of the Texas border. God rest her.”

  Again Calumet glanced at Betty. She was reading, apparently unconscious of him, and without disturbing her Calumet laid down the finished page and took up another.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE TOLTEC IDOL

  “I was twenty-five when your mother died,” this page began. “I had a little ranch in the Pecos valley near Twin Pine crossing, and I had just begun to taste prosperity. After your mother died things began to go wrong. It didn’t take me long to conclude that she had been responsible for wha
t success I had had, and that without her I couldn’t hope to keep things together. I didn’t try very hard; I’ll admit that. I just gradually let go all holds and began to slip—began to drift back into the sort of company I’d kept before I met your mother. They were not bad fellows, you understand—just the rakehelly, reckless sort that keep hanging on to the edge of things and making a living by their wits. I’d come West without any definite idea of what I wanted to do, and I fell in with these men naturally and easily, because they were of my type.

  “I had three intimates among them—a tall, clean-limbed fellow with the bluest and steadiest eyes I ever saw in a man, who called himself ‘Nebraska’; a rangy Texan named Quint Taylor, who maintained that manual labor was a curse and quoted the Scriptures to prove it; and Tom Taggart. Tom and I were thick. I liked him, and he’d done things for me that seemed to prove that he thought a lot of me. He didn’t like it a little bit when I married your mother—her name was Mary Lannon, and I’d got acquainted with her while riding for a few months for her father, who owned a ranch near Eagle Pass, close to the Rio Grande. She was white, boy, and so were her folks, and you can be proud of her. And if she had lived you could be proud of me—she’d have kept on making me a man.

  “Taggart didn’t like the idea of me getting hooked up. He didn’t want to break up the old associations. He and the others hung around for a year, waiting for something to turn up, and when your mother died it wasn’t long before I was back with them. I left you in care of Jane Connor—her husband, Dave, owned the Diamond Dot ranch, which adjoined mine.

  “During the year the boys had been knocking around without me they’d fallen in with an Indian from Yucatan, from the tribe called the Toltecs. This Indian called himself Queza—he’d been exiled because he was too lazy to work. The boys got him drunk one night, and he blabbed everything he knew about his tribe—how rich it was; how they’d discovered a diamond mine, and that gold was so common that they used it to make household ornaments. His story got the boys excited and they pumped him dry. They found out where his tribe lived, how to get there, and all that.