Charles Alden Seltzer

“ And tonight Carrington’s desires were for the girl who had accompanied him to Dawes; the girl who had stirred his passions as no woman had ever stirred them, and who—now that he had seized the town’s government—was to be as much his vassal as Parsons, Danforth—or any of them. He grinned as he rode toward the Huggins house—a grin that grew to a laugh as he rode up the drive toward the house; low, vibrant, hideous with its threat of unrestrained passion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When Parsons finished Carrington got up. There was a grin on his face as he stepped to where Parsons sat and placed his two hands heavily on the other’s shoulders.
There was a grin on his face, but his eyes were agleam with a slumbering passion that made Parsons catch his breath with a gasp. And his voice, low, and freighted with menace, caused Parsons to quake with terror.
“Parsons,” he said, “I want you to understand this: I am going to be the law out here. I’ll run things to suit myself. I’ll have no half-hearted loyalty, and I’ll destroy any man who opposes me! ”

“ After a time Taylor’s lips wreathed into a smile. He searched in his pockets—he had transferred all his effects from the clothing in the suitcase to his present uncomfortable raiment—and produced a long, faded envelope in danger of imminent disintegration.
The smile faded from his lips as he drew out the contents of the envelope, and a certain grim pity filled his eyes. He read:
Squint:
That rock falling on me has fixed me. There is no use in me trying to fool myself. I’m going out. There’s things a man can’t say, even to a friend like you. ”

“ She was trembling, and her voice broke with a wailing quaver when she spoke:
“Where shall we go, Elam—where? We—I can’t go back to the Arrow! Oh, I just can’t! And Carrington will be back! Oh! isn’t there any way to escape him?”
“We’ll go to Dawes, girl; that’s where we’ll go!” declared Parsons, his dread and fear of the big man equaling that of the girl. “We’ll go to Dawes and tell them there just what kind of a man Carrington is—and what he has tried to do with you tonight! There must be some men in Dawes who will not stand by and see a woman persecuted!” ”

“ In the glare of the moon that was behind Carrington, he could see horse and rider distinctly, and he jerked his own horse to a halt, cursing horribly. For the horse that was leaping toward him like a black demon out of the night was Spotted Tail. And Spotted Tail’s rider was Taylor. Carrington could see the man’s face, with the terrible passion that distorted it, and Carrington wheeled his horse, making frenzied efforts to escape up the slope. ”

“ And when Parsons and the driver were carrying the baggage in she was outside the house, standing at the edge of a butte whose precipitous walls descended sharply to the floor of the irrigation basin, two or three hundred feet below. She could no longer see the cultivated level, with its irrigation ditches, but she could see the big dam, a mile or so up the valley toward Dawes, with the water creeping over it, and the big valley itself, slumbering in the pure, white light of the morning. ”

“ But tonight Parsons was learning what emotion is. Not from others, but from himself. Emotions—thousands of them seethed in his brain and heart. He was in an advanced state of hysteria when he rode down the Dawes trail with Marion Harlan. For there was the huge, implacable, ruthless, and murderous Carrington, whom he had just passed on the trail, to menace his very life—and he knew that just as soon as Carrington returned to the big house and found Marion gone and the guard dead, he would ride back to Dawes, seeking vengeance. ”

“ A clammy sweat broke out on the big man; a panic of fear seized him, and he began to creep backward, out of the thicket. And by the time Taylor reached his vantagepoint, Carrington was crouching at the thicket’s edge, near the rock where he had been concealed, oppressed with a conviction that Taylor was working his way toward him through the thicket.
The big man waited, his nerves taut, his muscles quivering and cringing at the thought that any instant a bullet sent at him by Taylor might strike him. ”

“ The things a man wants are not to be denied by the narrow standards of custom. Does a man miss an opportunity to establish acquaintance with a girl he has fallen in love with, merely because custom has decreed that she shall not come unattended—save by a negro woman—to his house?
Taylor made desire his justification, and his sense of guilt was dispelled by half. ”

“ Bud Hemmingway, the tall, red-faced young puncher who had assisted Quinton Taylor in the sprained-ankle deception, saw the dawn breaking through one of the windows of the bunkhouse when he suddenly opened his eyes after dreaming of steaming flapjacks soaked in the sirup he liked best. ”

“ Taylor, however, was of the fighting type. On two occasions, now, Carrington had been given convincing proof of the man’s ability. And he had seen in Taylor’s eyes on the latest occasion the implacable gleam of iron resolution and—when Taylor had gone down, fighting to the last, in the sanguinary battle at the big house, he had not failed to note the indomitability of the man—the tenacious and dogged spirit that knows no defeat—a spirit that would not be denied. ”

“ Parsons concurred in this view of Carrington, though he did not tell Mrs. Mullarky so. He went on his way, refusing the good woman’s proffer of a horse, for he wanted to go afoot to the Arrow. He felt sure of Marion’s sympathy, but he wanted to make himself as pitiable an object as possible. And as he walked toward the Arrow he mentally dramatized the moment of his appearance at the ranchhouse—a bruised and battered figure dragging itself wearily forward, dusty, thirst-tortured, and despairing. He knew that spectacle would win the girl’s swift sympathy. ”

“ And Parsons did retain the girl’s affections—likewise her confidence and trust. A man must be blind who could not see that. For the girl looked after him as any dutiful girl might care for a father she loved. Her attitude toward the man puzzled Taylor, for, he assured himself, if she would but merely study the man’s face perfunctorily she could not have failed to see the signs of deceit and hypocrisy in it. All of which convinced Taylor of the truth of the old adage: “Love is blind.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the days that Parsons had passed nursing his resentment, Carrington had been busy. Despite the bruises that marked his face (which, by the way, a clever barber had disguised until they were hardly visible) Carrington appeared in public as though nothing had happened.
The fight at the courthouse had aroused the big man to the point of volcanic action. The lust for power that had seized him; the implacable resolution to rule, to win, to have his own way in all things; his passionate hatred of Taylor ”

“ All the humor had departed from him. For the first time in all his days a conception of the meaning of life assailed him, revealing to him a glimpse of the difficulties of a man in love. For a man may love a girl: his difficulties begin when the girl seems to become unattainable.
Looming large in Taylor’s thoughts this morning was Carrington. Having overheard Carrington talking of her on the train, Taylor thought he knew what Carrington wanted; but he was in doubt regarding the state of the girl’s feelings toward the man. Had she yielded to the man’s intense personal magnetism? ”

“ During the days of Carrington’s confinement to his rooms above the Castle—awaiting the slow healing of the wound Taylor had inflicted upon him, and the many bruises that marred his face—mementoes of the terrible punishment Taylor had inflicted upon him—the big man nursed his venomous thoughts and laid plans for revenge upon his enemy. ”

“ His grin was infectious and Taylor answered it, dropping his suitcase and looking the other straight in the eyes.
“Norton,” he said, “what in hell is the cause of all this staring at me? Can’t a man leave town for a few days and come back without everybody looking at him as though he were a curiosity?”
Norton—a tall, slender, sinewy man with broad shoulders—laughed aloud and deliberately winked at several interested citizens who had followed Taylor’s progress across the platform, and who now stood near him, grinning.
“You are a curiosity, man. You’re the first mayor of this man’s town! ”

“ For the puncher knew that Taylor and Norton couldn’t have traveled more than a few miles in the short time that had passed since their departure; and he knew also that in a short run—of a dozen miles or so—there wasn’t a horse in the Dawes section that could catch King, barring, of course, Spotted Tail, the real king of range horses.
And so Bud bent eagerly to his work, not riding erect in the saddle as is the fashion of the experienced cow-puncher in an unfamiliar country, where pitfalls, breaks, draws, hidden gullies, and weed-grown barrancas provide hazards that might bring disaster. ”

“ It had been growing slowly, provoked by his knowledge of the man’s evil designs on Marion Harlan. But now there had come into the first antagonism a gripping lust to injure the other, a determination to balk him, to defeat him, to meet him on his own ground and crush him.
For Carrington’s sneer had caused the differences between them to become sharply personal; it would make the fight that was brewing between the two men not a political fight, but a fight of the spirit. ”

“ In just the instant before the smoke-streak Taylor had caught a glimpse of a man standing near the center of the room beyond the door, and though he was rather disconcerted by the powder-flash and the searing of his left cheek by a bullet, he let his own gun off twice in as many seconds, and had the grim satisfaction of seeing the man stagger and tumble headlong to the floor. ”

“ Her mental picture now gave her the entire view of Taylor as he had come toward her. And she could see him in a different environment, in cowboy regalia, on a horse, perfectly at ease. He made a heroic figure. So real was the picture that she caught herself saying: “Clothes do make the man!” And then she smiled at her enthusiasm and looked out of the window.
Taylor had been thinking of her with the natural curiosity of the man who knows he has no chance and is not looking for one. ”

“ More, there were perhaps a hundred men in the place—some of them drinking; and at the sight of them all, realizing the mightiness of their number, Parsons raised his hands aloft and screamed frenziedly:
“Men! There’s been a crime committed tonight! At the Huggins house! Carrington did it! He abducted my niece! I want you men to help me! Carrington is going to kill me! And I want you to protect my niece!”
For an instant after Parsons’ voice died in a breathless gasp, for he blurted his story, the words coming in a stream, with hardly a pause between them ”

“ Never in his life had he met a man he feared as he feared Taylor. There was something about Taylor that made Carrington’s soul shrivel. He knew what it was—it was his conviction of Taylor’s absolute honorableness, as arrayed against his own beastly impulses. But that knowledge merely served to intensify his hatred for Taylor.
Toward evening Carrington rode back to Dawes with the men; and while there he sought news from Keats. Danforth, from whom he inquired, could tell him nothing, and so Carrington knew that Taylor had not yet been 266 disposed of. ”

“ She alone, of all the passengers in the Pullman, had not been aware of the heat and the discomfort. She had loved every foot of the great prairie land that, green and beautiful, had flashed past the car window; she had gazed with eager, interested eyes into the far reaches of the desert through which she had passed, filling her soul with the mystic beauty of this new world, reveling in its vastness and in the atmosphere of calm that seemed to engulf it. ”

“ Carrington had his hands up, too; and Parsons—and the tourist, and the other man. She did not see Taylor—though she wondered, on the instant, if he, too, would obey the train-robber’s command. 30
She decided he would—any other course would have been foolhardy; though she could not help remembering that queer gleam in Taylor’s eyes. That gleam, it had seemed to her, was a reflection of—not foolhardiness, but of sheer courage.
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. ”

“ Danforth halted, his knees sagged, his head wabbled. But Taylor gave him a slight respite, and he came on again.
This time Taylor met him with a smother of sharp, deadening uppercuts that threw the man backward, his mouth open, his eyes closed. He fell, sagging backward, his knees unjointed, without a sound.
And now Norton was not the only spectator. Far up the street a man had emerged from a doorway. He saw the erupting volcanoes of dust in the street, and he ran back, shouting, “Fight! Fight!”
Dawes had seen many fights, and had grown accustomed to them. ”

“ Therefore, since Taylor distrusted Carrington and Parsons, he had decided he would not tell the girl of the money her father had left—the share of the proceeds of 80 the mine. He would hold it for her, as a sacred trust, until the time came—if it ever came—when she would have discovered their faithlessness—or until she needed the money. More, he was determined to expose the men. ”