George W. Ogden

“ He could not see her face fully, for she was bending over the calf, and the broad brim of her hat interposed. She looked up at the sound of his approach, a startled expression in her frank, gray eyes. Handsome, in truth, she was, in her riding habit of brown duck, her heavy sombrero, her strong, high boots. Her hair was the color of old honeycomb, her face browned by sun and wind.
She was a maid to gladden a man's heart, with the morning sun upon her, the strength of her great courage in her clear eyes; a girl of breeding, as one could see by her proud carriage. ”

“ Amid the hardships and scant diversions of this life, Lambert spent his first winter in the Bad Lands, drinking in the noisy revels at Misery, riding the long, bitter miles back to the ranch, despising himself for being so mean and low. It was a life in which a man's soul would either shrink to nothing or expand until it became too large to find contentment within the horizon of such an existence. ”

“ Vesta should not clean out the cattle, lock the lonesome ranchhouse, abandon the barns and that vast investment of money to the skulking wolves who waited only such a retreat to sneak in and despoil the place. He had fixed in his mind the intention, firm as a rock in the desert that defied storm and disintegration, to bring every man of that gang up to the wire fence in his turn and bend him before it, or break him if he would not bend. ”

“ Lambert moved a little nearer his prisoner, where he stood waiting. He had not shaved during the two days between Chicago and Glendora; the dust of the road was on his face. His hat was tipped forward to shelter his eyes against the afternoon glare, the leather thong at the back rumpling his close-cut hair. He stood lean and long-limbed, easy and indifferent in his pose, as it would seem to look at him as one might glance in passing, the smoke of his cigarette rising straight from its fresh-lit tip in the calm air of the somnolent day. ”

“ Taterleg stopped short at sight of the long legs drawn up like a sharp gable to get all of them into the chair, the immense nose raking the ceiling like a double-barreled cannon, the morgue-tinted light giving him the complexion of a man ready for his shroud. He touched Lambert's arm to check him and call his attention.
"Look in there—look at that feller, Duke! There he is; there's the man I've been lookin' for ever since I was old enough to vote. I didn't believe there was any such a feller; but there he is!" ”

“ There was nothing about Lambert's appearance to scare anybody, and least of all a bow-legged man beside a fire in the open air of the Bad Lands, where things are not just as they are in any other part of this world at all. His manner was rather boyish and diffident, and wholly apologetic, and the All-in-One glistened in his hand like a razor, or a revolver, or anything terrible and destructive that a startled camp cook might make it out to be. ”

“ Lambert ruminated on the trouble that had been laid out for him that night as he rode away from town, going slowly, in no hurry to put walls between him and the soft, pleasant night.
He was confronted by the disadvantage of an unsought notoriety, or reputation, or whatever his local fame might be called. A man with a fighting name must live up to it, however distasteful the strife and turmoil, or move beyond the circle of his fame. Move he would not, could not, although it seemed a foolish thing, on reflection, to hang on there in the lure of Grace Kerr's dark eyes. ”

“ The man in the chair lifted himself in sudden grimness, sat up from between the barber's massaging hands, which still held their pose like some sort of brace, turned a threatening look into the road. If half his face was sufficient to raise the declaration from Taterleg that the man was uglier than he, all of it surely proclaimed him the homeliest man in the nation. His eyes were red, as from some long carousal, their lids heavy and slow, his neck was long, and inflamed like an old gobbler's when he inflates himself with his impotent rage. ”

“ Lambert put his gun back in its sheath, and she rode on, disappearing again from his sight around the rock where the blasted valley of stones branched upon its arid way. He took the saddle from his dead horse and hid it behind a rock, not caring much whether he ever found it again, his heart so heavy that it seemed to bow him to the ground.
So at last he knew her for what Vesta Philbrook had told him she was—bad to the core of her heart. Kindness could not regenerate her, [Pg 331] love could not purge away the vicious strain of blood. ”

“ Neither of them mentioned the mutual recognition on the day she had been caught cutting the fence. They talked of commonplace things, as youth is constrained to do when its heart and mind are centered on something else which burns within it, the flame of which it cannot cover from any eyes but its own. Life on the range, its social disadvantages, its rough diversions, these they spoke of, Lambert's lips dry with his eagerness to tell her more. ”

“ Silence again, both watching the far-distant, twinkling light.
"I laid out the job for myself of bringing these outlaws around here up to your fence with their hats in their hands, and I hate to give it up before I've made good on my word."
"Let it go, Duke; it isn't worth the fight."
"A man's word is either good for all he intends it to be, or worth no more than the lowest scoundrel's, Vesta. If I don't put up works to equal what I've promised, I'll have to sneak out of this country between two suns." ”

“ Taterleg remained at the gate, because he looked better on a horse than off, and he was not wanting in that vain streak which any man with a backbone and marrow in him possesses. He wanted to appear at his best when the boss of that high-class outfit laid her eyes on him for the first time; and if he had hopes that she might succumb to his charms, they were no more extravagant than most men's are under similar conditions.
Off to one side of a long barn Lambert saw her as he opened the gate. She was trying to coax a young calf to drink out of a bucket that an old negro held under its nose. ”

“ The Duke kept him going, and going for all there was in him. Horse and rider were dim in the dust of the heated race against the evil passion, the untamed demon, in the savage creature's heart. It began to look as if Lambert never intended to come back. Jim saw it that way. He came over to Taterleg as hot as a hornet. ”

“ The custom of the country made it almost an obligatory courtesy to go in and spend money when one hitched in front of a saloon, an excuse for entering that Lambert accepted with a grim feeling of satisfaction. While he didn't want it to appear that he was crowding a quarrel with any man, the best way to meet a fellow who had gone spreading it abroad that he was out looking for one was to go where he was to be found. It wouldn't look right to leave town without giving Hargus a chance to state his business; it would be a move subject to misinterpretation, and damaging to a man's good name. ”

“ You'll excuse us if we keep your gun; you can send me your address when you land, and I'll ship it to you. We'll have to start you off tied up, too, much as I hate to do it. You'll find some way to get loose in a little while, I guess, a man that's as resourceful and original as you."
Tom Hargus had not said a word since they left the river. Now he leaned over and peered into Lambert's face with an expression of excited malevolence, his eyes glittering in the firelight, his nostrils flaring as if he drew exhilaration with every breath. ”

“ His companion was a much younger man, slender, graceful in the saddle, rather handsome in a swarthy, defiant way. He ranged up beside the spokesman as if to take full share in whatever was to come. Both of them were armed with revolvers, the elder of the two with a rifle in addition, which he carried in a leather scabbard black and slick with age, slung on his saddle under his thigh.
"You'll have to get permission from this lady before you go through here," Lambert told him calmly. ”

“ You've had a taste of the Kerr methods, but you're not satisfied yet that they're absolutely base and dishonorable in every thought and deed. You'll find it out to your cost, Duke, if you let that girl lead you. She's a will-o'-the-wisp sent to lure you from the trail."
Lambert laughed a bit foolishly, as a man does when the intuition of a woman uncovers the thing that he prided himself was so skilfully concealed that mortal eyes could not find it. Vesta was reading through him like a piece of greased parchment before a lamp. ”

“ People are no gentler than their pursuits, no finer than the requirements of their lives. Daughters of the Bad Lands, such as he had seen of them in the wives to whom he once had tried to sell the All-in-One, and the superintendent's girls were not intended for any other life. As for him, if he had to live it out there, with the shadow of a dead man at his heels, he would live it alone. So he thought, going on his way to Misery, where there was to be racing that afternoon, and a grand effort to keep up with the Chicago flier.
Lambert never had taken part in that longstanding competition. ”

“ Lambert felt an unusual restlessness that night—no mood over him for his bed. It seemed, in truth, that a man would be wasting valuable hours of life by locking his senses up in sleep. He put his horse away, sated with the comedy of Taterleg's adventure, and not caring to pursue it further. To get away from the discussion of it that he knew Taterleg would keep going as long as there was an ear open to hear him, he walked to the near-by hilltop to view the land under this translating spell.
This was the hilltop from which he had ridden down to interfere between Vesta and Nick Hargus. ”

“ Kerr rode up to Lambert and took hold of his reins, stroking old Whetstone's neck as if he didn't harbor an unkind thought for either man or beast.
"It's this way, Duke," he said. "You're a stranger here; the customs of this country are not the customs you're familiar with, and it's foolish, very foolish, and maybe dangerous, for you to try to change things around single-handed and alone. ”

“ But [Pg 303] there was no bond of romance between Vesta and him. There was no place for romance between a man and his boss. Romance bound him to Grace Kerr; sentiment enchained him. It was a sweet enslavement, and one to be prolonged in his desire.
Grace was not in sight when he reached their meeting-place. He let down the wire and rode to meet her, troubled as before by that feeling of disloyalty to the Philbrook interests which caused him to stop more than once and debate whether he should turn back and wait inside the fence. ”

“ He recalled what Vesta had said about the impossibility of securing a conviction for cutting a fence. Surely if a man could not be held responsible for this act in the courts of the country, it would fare hard with one who might kill him in the commission of the outrage. Let him draw first, and then——
The fellow rode at the fence as if he intended to try to jump it. His horse balked at the barrier, turned, raced along it, Lambert in close pursuit, coming alongside him as he was reaching to draw his pistol from the holster at his saddle bow. ”

“ He was riding in one of these dreams one mid-afternoon of a hot day about six weeks after taking charge of affairs on the ranch, thinking that he would tell Vesta in a day or two that he must go. Taterleg might stay with her, other men could be hired if she would look about her. He wanted to get out of the business anyway; there was no offering for a man in it without capital. So he was thinking, his head bent, as he rode up a long slope of grassy hill. At the top he stopped to blow old Whetstone a little, turning in the saddle, running his eyes casually along the fence. ”