Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed

[Illustration: “I Take it I am the One Wanted,” Said Williston.]

LANGFORD OF THE THREE BARS

By KATE AND VIRGIL D. BOYLES

With Frontispiece in Color

By N. C. WYETH

A. L. BURT COMPANY

PUBLISHERS—NEW YORK

Copyright

A. C. McClurg & Co.

1907

Published April 15, 1907

Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London, England

All rights reserved

Including dramatic rights

TO OUR MOTHER

MRS. MARTHA DILLIN BOYLES

CONTENTS
    CHAPTER I—THE ISLAND WITH A MYSTERY
    CHAPTER II—“ON THE TRAIL”
    CHAPTER III—LOUISE
    CHAPTER IV—“MAGGOT”
    CHAPTER V—AT THE BON AMI
    CHAPTER VI—“NOTHIN’ BUT A HOSS THIEF, ANYWAY”
    CHAPTER VII—THE PRELIMINARY
    CHAPTER VIII—THE COUNTY ATTORNEY
    CHAPTER IX—THE ATTACK ON THE LAZY S
    CHAPTER X—IN WHICH THE X Y Z FIGURES SOMEWHAT MYSTERIOUSLY
    CHAPTER XI—“YOU ARE—THE BOSS”
    CHAPTER XII—WAITING
    CHAPTER XIII—MRS. HIGGINS RALLIES TO HER COLORS
    CHAPTER XIV—CHANNEL ICE
    CHAPTER XV—THE GAME IS ON
    CHAPTER XVI—THE TRIAL
    CHAPTER XVII—GORDON RIDES INTO THE COUNTRY
    CHAPTER XVIII—FIRE!
    CHAPTER XIX—AN UNCONVENTIONAL TEA PARTY
    CHAPTER XX—THE ESCAPE
    CHAPTER XXI—THE MOVING SHADOW
    CHAPTER XXII—THE OUTLAW’S LAST STAND
    CHAPTER XXIII—THE PARTY AT THE LAZY S

CHAPTER I

THE ISLAND WITH A MYSTERY

He said positively to Battle Ax, his scraggy buckskin cow pony, that
they would ride to the summit of this one bluff, and that it should be
the last. But he had said the same thing many times since striking the
barren hill region flanking both sides of the river. Hump after hump had
been surmounted since the sound of the first promise had tickled the
ears of the tired bronco, humps as alike as the two humps of a Bactrian
camel, the monotonous continuity of which might very well have confused
the mind of one less at home on these ranges than George Williston. Even
he, riding a blind trail since sun-up, sitting his saddle with a heavy
indifference born of heat and fatigue, began to think it might be that
they were describing a circle and the sun was playing them strange
tricks. Still, he urged his pony to one more effort; just so much
farther and they would retrace their steps, giving up for this day at
least the locating of a small bunch of cattle, branded a lazy S, missing
these three days.

Had not untoward circumstances intervened, he might still have gone
blindly on; for, laying aside the gambling fever that was on him, he
could ill afford to lose the ten or twelve steers somewhere wandering
the wide range or huddled into some safe place, there to abide the time
when a daring rustler might conveniently play at witchcraft with the
brand or otherwise dispose of them with profit to himself and with
credit to his craft. Moreover, what might possibly never have been
missed from the vast herds of Langford, his neighbor of the plains
country, was of most serious import to Williston for an even weightier
reason than the actual present loss.

The existence of the small and independent ranchman was becoming
precarious. He was being hounded by two prolific sources of trouble,
these sources having a power and insolent strength contemptuously
indifferent to any claim set up in their paths by one weaker than
themselves. On the one hand was the wealthy cattle owner, whose
ever-increasing wealth and consequent power was a growing menace to the
interests of the small owner whose very bread and butter depended upon
his ability to buy and sell to advantage. But with bigger interests
slowly but surely gaining control of the markets, who might foretell the
future? None beheld the ominous signs more apprehensively than did
Williston, who for more than two years, striving desperately to make
good mistakes and misfortunes made back in Iowa, had felt the pinching
grow more and more acute. On the other hand was the vicious combination
of the boldness, cunning, and greed of the cattle rustlers who harassed
all the range country of the Dakotas and Nebraska. Annihilation was the
sword of Damocles held over the head of the small ranchman. A hand
lifted to avert impending doom would have set the air in vibration and
the sword would have fallen. Nemesis was as sure to follow at the hands
of the fellowship of rustlers as ever it was at the hands of the Secret
Tribunal of old.

Williston was chafing under his helplessness as the jaded pony climbed
doggedly this last bluff. To the right of his path a hawk was fluttering
frantically just above the reach of a basilisk-eyed rattlesnake, whose
baneful charm the ill-advised bird was not able to resist.

“Devil take you, Battle Ax, but you’re slow,” muttered Williston,
utterly indifferent to the outcome of this battle royal. “I’d give a
good deal to sit down this minute to some of my little girl’s flapjacks
and coffee. But nothing for us, lazy-bones, till midnight—or morning,
more likely. Do walk up as if you had some little standing in the world
of cow ponies. You haven’t, of a surety, but you might make an effort.
All things are possible to him who tries, you know, which is a
tremendous lie, of course. But perhaps it doesn’t apply to poor devils
like us who are ‘has beens.’ Here we are. Ah!”

There were no more hills. Almost directly at his feet was one of those
precipitous cut-aways that characterize the border bluffs of the
Missouri River. A few more steps, in the dark, and horse and rider would
have plunged over a sheer wall of nearly two hundred feet. As it was,
Williston gave a gasp of involuntary horror which almost simultaneously
gave place to one of wonder and astonishment. He had struck the river at
a point absolutely new to him. It was the time of low water, and the
river, in most of its phases muddy and sullen-looking, gleamed silver
and gold with the glitter of the setting sun, making a royal highway to
the dwelling-place of Phœbus. A little to the north of this sparkling
highroad lay what would have been an island in high water, thickly
wooded with willows and cottonwoods. Now a long stretch of sand reached
between bluff and island.

Dismounting, with the quick thought that yonder island might hold the
secret of his lost cattle, he crept as close to the edge as he dared.
The cut was sheer and tawny, entirely devoid of shrubbery by means of
which one might hazard a descent. The sand bed began immediately at the
foot of the yellow wall. Even though one managed to gain the bottom, one
would hardly dare risk the deceitful sands, ever shifting, fair and
treacherous. Baffled, he was on the point of remounting to retrace his
steps when he dropped his foot from the stirrup amazed. Was the day of
miracles not yet passed?

It was the sun, of course. Twelve hours of sun in the eyes could play
strange tricks and might even cause a dancing black speck to assume the
semblance of a man on horseback, picking his way easily, though mayhap a
bit warily, across the waste of sand. He seemed to have sprung from the
very bowels of the bluff. Whence else? Many a rod beyond and above the
ghostly figure frowned the tawny, wicked cut-away. Path for neither
horse nor man appeared so far as eye could reach. It must be the sun.
But it was not the sun.

Motionless, intent, a figure cast in bronze as the sun went down, the
lean ranchman gazed steadfastly down upon the miniature man and horse
creeping along so far below. Not until the object of his fixed gaze had
been swallowed by the trees and underbrush did his muscles relax. This
man had ridden as if unafraid.

“What man has done, man can do,” ran swiftly through Williston’s brain,
and with no idea of abandoning his search until he had probed the
mystery, he mounted and rode northward, closely examining the edge of
the precipice as he went along for any evidence of a possible descent.
Presently he came upon a cross ravine, devoid of shrubbery, too steep
for a horse, but presenting possibilities for a man. With unerring
instinct he followed the cross-cut westward. Soon a scattering of scrub
oaks began to appear, and sumach already streaked with crimson. A little
farther and the trees began to show spiral wreaths of woodbine and wild
grape. Yet a little farther, and doubtless there would be outlet for
horse as well as man.

But Williston was growing impatient. Besides, the thought came to him
that he had best not risk his buckskin to the unknown dangers of an
untried trail. What if he should go lame? Accordingly he was left behind
in a slight depression where he would be pretty well hidden, and
Williston scrambled down the steep incline alone. When foothold or
handhold was lacking, he simply let himself go and slid, grasping the
first root or branch that presented itself in his dare-devil course.

Arrived at the bottom, he found his clothes torn and his hands bleeding;
but that was nothing. With grim determination he made his way through
the ravine and struck across the sand trail with a sure realization of
his danger, but without the least abatement of his resolution. The sand
was firm under his feet. The water had receded a sufficient length of
time before to make the thought of quicksands an idle fear. No puff of
cloudy smoke leaped from a rifle barrel. If, as he more than half
suspected, the island was a rendezvous for cattle thieves, a place
surely admirably fitted by nature for such unlawful operations, the
rustlers were either overconfident of the inaccessibility of their
retreat and kept no lookout, or they were insolently indifferent to
exposure. The former premise was the more likely. A light breeze, born
of the afterglow, came scurrying down the river bed. Here and there,
where the sand was finest and driest, it rose in little whirlwinds. No
sound broke the stillness of the summer evening.

What was that? Coyotes barking over yonder across the river? That alien
sound! A man’s laugh, a curse, a heart-breaking bellow of pain.
Williston parted ever so slightly the thick foliage of underbrush that
separated him from the all too familiar sounds and peered within.

In the midst of a small clearing,—man-made, for several stumps were
scattered here and there,—two men were engaged in unroping and releasing
a red steer, similar in all essential respects to a bunch of three or
four huddled together a little to one side. They were all choice,
well-fed animals, but there were thousands of just such beasts herding
on the free ranges. He owned red steers like those, but was there a man
in the cattle country who did not? They were impossible of
identification without the aid of their brand, and it happened that they
were so bunched as to completely baffle Williston in his eager efforts
to decipher the stamp that would disclose their ownership. That they
were the illegitimate prey of cattle rustlers, he never for one moment
doubted. The situation was conclusive. A bed of glowing embers
constantly replenished and kept at white heat served to lighten up the
weird scene growing dusky under the surrounding cottonwoods.

Williston thought he recognized in one of the men—the one who seemed to
be directing the procedure of this little affair, whose wide and dirty
hat-rim was so tantalizingly drawn over his eyes—the solitary rider
whose unexpected appearance had so startled him a short time before.
Both he and his companion were dressed after the rough, nondescript
manner of cattle men, both were gay, laughing and talkative, and
seemingly as oblivious to possible danger as if engaged in the most
innocent and legitimate business.

A little to the left and standing alone was an odd creature of most
striking appearance—a large, spotted steer with long, peculiar-looking
horns. It were quite impossible to mistake such a possession if it had
once been yours. Its right side was turned full toward Williston and in
the centre of the hip stood out distinctly the cleanly cauterized three
perpendicular lines that were the identifying mark of the Three Bars
ranch, one of those same big, opulent, self-centred outfits whose
astonishingly multiplying sign was becoming such a veritable and
prophetic writing on the wall for Williston and his kind.

Who then had dared to drive before him an animal so branded? The
boldness of the transgression and the insolent indifference to the
enormity of attendant consequences held him for the moment breathless.
His attention was once more called to the movements of the men. The
steer with which they had been working was led away still moaning with
surprise and pain, and another brought forward from the reserve bunch.
The branded hip, if there was a brand, was turned away from Williston.
The bewildered animal was cleverly roped and thrown to the ground. The
man who was plainly directing the affair, he of the drooping hat and
lazy shoulders, stepped to the fire. Williston held his breath with the
intensity of his interest. The man stooped and took an iron from the
fire. It was the end-gate rod of a wagon and it was red-hot. In the act
of straightening himself from his stooping position, the glowing iron
stick in his right hand, he flung from his head with an easy swing the
flopping hat that interfered with the nicety of sight requisite in the
work he was about to do, and faced squarely that quiet, innocent-looking
spot which held the watching man in its brush; and in the moment in
which Williston drew hastily back, the fear of discovery beating a
tattoo of cold chills down his spine, recognition of the man came to him
in a clarifying burst of comprehension.

But the man evidently saw nothing and suspected nothing. His casual
glance was probably only a manifestation of his habitual attitude of
being never off his guard. He approached the prostrate steer with
indifference to any meaning that might be attached to the soft snapping
of twigs caused by Williston’s involuntary drawing back into the denser
shadows.

“Y’ don’t suppose now, do you, that any blamed, interferin’ off’cer is
a-loafin’ round where he oughtn’t to be?” said the second man with a
laugh.

Williston, much relieved, again peered cautiously through the brush. He
was confident a brand was about to be worked over. He must see—what
there was to see.

“Easy now, boss,” said the second man with an officious warning. He was
a big, beefy fellow with a heavy, hardened face. Williston sounded the
depths of his memory but failed to place him among his acquaintances in
the cow country.

“Gamble on me,” returned the leader with ready good-nature, “I’ll make
it as clean as a boiled shirt. I take it you don’t know my reputation,
pard. Well, you’ll learn. You’re all right, only a trifle green, that’s
all.”

With a firm, quick hand, he began running the searing iron over the
right hip of the animal. When he had finished and the steer, released,
staggered to its feet, Williston saw the brand clearly. It was J R. If
it had been worked over another brand, it certainly was a clean job. He
could see no indications of any old markings whatsoever.

“Too clean to be worked over a lazy S,” thought Williston, “but not over
three bars.”

“There were six reds,” said the chief, surveying the remaining bunch
with a critical eye. “One must have wandered off while I was gone. Get
out there in the brush and round him up, Alec, while I tackle this
long-horned gentleman.”

Williston turned noiselessly away from the scene which so suddenly
threatened danger. Both men were fully armed and would brook no
eavesdropping. Once more he crossed the sand in safety and found his
horse where he had left him, up the ravine. He vaulted into the saddle
and galloped away into the quiet night.

CHAPTER II

“ON THE TRAIL”

Williston himself came to the door. His thin, scholarly face looked
drawn and worn in the mid-day glare. A tiredness in the eyes told
graphically of a sleepless night.

“I’m glad to see you, Langford,” he said. “It was good of you to come.
Leave your horse for Mary. She’ll give her water when she’s cooled off a
bit.”

“You sent for me, Williston?” asked the young man, rubbing his face
affectionately against the wet neck of his mare.

“I did. It was good of you to come so soon.”

“Fortunately, your messenger found me at home. As for the rest, Sade,
here, hasn’t her beat in the cow country, if she is only a cow pony, eh,
Sade?”

At that moment, Mary Williston came into the open doorway of the rude
claim shanty set down in the very heart of the sun-seared plain which
stretched away into heart-choking distances from every possible point of
the compass. And sweet she was to look upon, though tanned and glowing
from close association with the ardent sun and riotous wind. Her auburn
hair, more reddish on the edges from sunburn, was fine and soft and
there was much of it. It seemed newly brushed and suspiciously glossy.
One sees far on the plains, and two years out of civilization are not
enough to make a girl forget the use of a mirror, even if it be but a
broken sliver, propped up on a pine-board dressing table. She looked
strangely grown-up despite her short, rough skirt and badly scuffed
leather riding-leggings. Langford stared at her with a startled look of
mingled admiration and astonishment. She came forward and put her hand
on the mare’s bridle. She was not embarrassed in the least. But color
came into the stranger’s face. He swept his wide hat from his head
quickly.

“No indeed, Miss Williston; I’ll water Sade myself.”

“Please let me. I’d love to.”

“She’s used to it, Langford,” said Williston in his quiet, gentlemanly
voice, the well-bred cadence of which spoke of a training far removed
from the harassments and harshnesses of life in this plains country.
“You see, she is the only boy I have. She must of necessity be my chore
boy as well as my herd boy. In her leisure moments she holds down her
kitchen claim; I don’t know how she does it, but she does. You had
better let her do it; she will hold it against you if you don’t.”

“But I couldn’t have a woman doing my grooming for me. Why, the very
idea!”

He sprang into the saddle.

“But you waited for me to do it,” said the girl, looking up at him
curiously.

“Did I? I didn’t mean to. Yes, I did, too. But I beg your pardon. You
see—say, look here; are you the ‘little girl’ who left word for me this
morning?”

“Yes. Why not?”

“Well, you see,” smiling, but apologetic, “one of the boys said that
Williston’s little girl had ridden over and said her father wanted to
see me as soon as I could come. So, you see, I thought—”

“Dad always calls me that, so most of the people around here do, too. It
is very silly.”

“I don’t think so at all. I only wonder why I have not known about you
before,” with a frank smile. “It must be because I’ve been away so much
of the time lately. Why didn’t you wait for me?” he asked suddenly. “Ten
miles is a sort of a lonesome run—for a girl.”

“I did wait a while,” said Mary, honestly, “but you didn’t seem in any
hurry. I expect you didn’t care to be bored that long way with the silly
chatter of a ‘little girl.’”

“Well,” said Langford, ruefully, “I’m afraid I did feel a little
relieved when I found you had not waited. I never will again. I do beg
your pardon,” he called, laughingly, over his shoulder as he galloped
away to the spring.

When he returned there was no one to receive him but Williston. Together
they entered the house. It was a small room into which Langford was
ushered. It was also very plain. It was more than that, it was shabby.
An easy-chair or two that had survived the wreckage of the house of
Williston had been shipped to this “land of promise,” together with a
few other articles such as were absolutely indispensable. The table was
a big shipping box, though Langford did not notice that, for it was
neatly covered with a moth-eaten, plum-colored felt cloth. A rug,
crocheted out of particolored rags, a relic of Mary’s conservative and
thrifty grandmother, served as a carpet for the living-room. A peep
through the open door into the next and only other room disclosed
glimpses of matting on the floor. There was a holy place even in this
castaway house on the prairie. As the young man’s careless eyes took in
this new significance, the door closed softly. The “little girl” had
shut herself in.

The two men sat down at the table. It was hot. They were perspiring
freely. The flies, swarming through the screenless doorway, stung
disagreeably.

Laconically Williston told his story. He wasted no words in the telling.
In the presence of the man whose big success made his own pitiful
failures incongruous, his sensitive scholar’s nature had shut up like a
clam.

Langford’s jaw was set. His young face was tense with interest. He had
thrown his hat on the floor as he came in, as is the way with men who
have lived much without women. He had a strong, bronzed face, with
dare-devil eyes, blue they were, too, and he had a certain turn of the
head, a mark of distinction which success always gives to her sons. He
had big shoulders, clad in a blue flannel shirt open at the throat. In
his absorption he had forgotten the “little girl” as completely as if
she had, in very truth, been the ten-year-old of his imagination. How
plainly he could see all the unholy situation,—the handful of desperate
men perfectly protected on the little island. One man sighting from
behind a cottonwood could play havoc with a whole sheriff’s posse on
that open stretch of sand-bar. Nothing but a surprise—and did these
insolent men fear surprise? They had laughed at the suggestion of the
near presence of an officer of the law. And did they not do well to
laugh? Surely it was a joke, a good one, this idea of an officer’s being
where he was needed in Kemah County.

“And my brand was on that spotted steer,” he interrupted. “I know the
creature—know him well. He has a mean eye. Had the gall to dispute the
right of way with me once, not so long ago, either. He was in the corral
at the time, but he’s been on the range all Summer. He may have the evil
eye all right, but he’s mine, bad eye and all; and what is mine, I will
have. And is that the only original brand you saw?”

“The only one,” quietly, “unless the J R on that red steer when he got
up was an original one.”

“J R? Who could J R be?”

“I couldn’t say, but the man was—Jesse Black.”

“Jesse Black!”

The repeated words were fairly spit out.

“Jesse Black! I might have known. Who else bold enough to loot the Three
Bars? But his day has come. Not a hair, nor a hide, not a hoof, not
tallow enough to fry a flapjack shall be left on the Three Bars before
he repents his insolence.”

“What will you do?” asked Williston.

“What will you do?” retorted Langford.

“I? What can I do?” in the vague, helpless tone of the dreamer.

“Everything—if you will,” briefly.

He snatched up his wide hat.

“Where are you going?” asked Williston, curiously.

“To see Dick Gordon before this day is an hour older. Will you come
along?”

“Ye—es,” hesitatingly. “Gordon hasn’t made much success of things so
far, has he?”

“Because you—and men like you—are under the thumb of men like Jesse
Black,” said Langford, curtly. “Afraid to peach for fear of antagonizing
the gang. Afraid to vote against the tools of the cattle thieves for
fear of antagonizing the gang. Afraid to call your souls your own for
fear of antagonizing the gang. Your ‘on the fence’ policy didn’t work
very well this time, did it? You haven’t found your cattle, have you?
The angel must have forgotten. Thought you were tainted of Egypt, eh?”

“It is easy for you to talk,” said Williston, simply. “It would be
different if your bread and butter and your little girl’s as well
depended on a scrawny little bunch like mine.”

“Maybe,” said Langford, shrugging his shoulders. “Doesn’t seem to have
exempted you, though, does it? But Black is no respecter of persons, you
know. However, the time has come for Dick Gordon to show of what stuff
he is made. It was for this that I worked for his election, though I
confess I little thought at the time that proofs for him would be
furnished from my own herds. Present conditions humiliate me utterly. Am
I a weakling that they should exist? Are we all weaklings?”

A faint, appreciative smile passed over Williston’s face. No, Langford
did not look a weakling, neither had the professed humiliation lowered
his proud head. Here was a man—a godlike type, with his sunny hair and
his great strength. This was the man who had thrown not only the whole
weight of his personal influence, which was much, but his whole-hearted
and aggressive service as well, into the long and bitter campaign for
county sovereignty, and had thus turned the scale in favor of the
scarcely hoped-for victory over the puppet of the cattle rustlers.
Williston knew his great object had been to rid the county of its
brigands. True it was that this big, ruddy, self-confident ranchman was
no weakling.

Langford strode to the door. Then he turned quickly.

“Look here, Williston, I shall make you angry, I suppose, but it has to
go in the cattle country, and you little fellows haven’t shown up very
white in these deals; you know that yourself.”

“Well?”

“Are you going to stand pat with us?”

“If you mean, am I going to tell what I know when called upon,” answered
Williston, with a simple dignity that made Langford color with sudden
shame, “I am. There are many of us ‘little fellows’ who would have been
glad to stand up against the rustling outrage long ago had we received
any backing. The moral support of men of your class has not been what
you might call a sort of ‘on the spot’ support, now, has it?” relapsing
into a gentle sarcasm. “At least, until you came to the front,” he
qualified.

“You will not be the loser, and there’s my hand on it,” said Langford,
frankly and earnestly, ignoring the latter part of the speech. “The
Three Bars never forgets a friend. They may do you before we are through
with them, Williston, but remember, the Three Bars never forgets.”

Braggadocio? Maybe. But there was strength back of it, there was
determination back of it, and there was an abiding faith in the power of
the Three Bars to make things happen, and a big wrath destined to sleep
not nor slumber till some things had happened in the cattle country.

Mary Williston, from her window, as is the way with a maid, watched the
two horsemen for many a mile as they galloped away. She followed them
with her eyes while they slowly became faint, moving specks in the level
distance and until they were altogether blotted out, and there was no
sign of living thing on the plain that stretched between. But Paul
Langford, as is the way with a man, forgot that he had seen a beautiful
girl and had thrilled to her glance. He looked back not once as he urged
his trusty little mare on to see Dick Gordon.

LOUISE

It was raining when she left Wind City, but the rain had soon been
distanced. Perhaps the Judge was right when he said it never rained
north or west of Wind City. But the Judge had not wanted her to go.
Neither had the Judge’s wife.

Full twenty minutes, only day before yesterday, the Judge had delayed
his day’s outing at the mill where the Jim River doubles right around on
its tracks, in order to make it perfectly clear to her that it was
absolutely outside of the bounds of her duty, that it was altogether an
affair on the side, that she could not be expected to go, and that the
prosecuting attorney up there had merely asked her out of courtesy, in
deference to her position. Of course he would be glad enough to get her,
but let him get some one nearer home, or do without. It wasn’t at all
necessary for the court reporter to hold herself in readiness to answer
the call of anything outside her prescribed circuit duties. To be sure
she would earn a trifle, but it was a hard trip, a hard country, and she
had much better postpone her initial journey into the unknown until the
regular term of court, when he could be with her. He had then thrown his
minnow seine over his shoulders, taken his minnow pail in one hand and
his reel case and lunch box in the other, and walked out to the road
wagon awaiting him at the gate, and so off to his frolic, leaving her to
fight it out for herself.

The Judge’s wife had not been so diplomatic, not by any means. She had
dwelt long and earnestly, and no doubt to a large extent truly, on the
uncivilized condition of their neighbors up the line; the roughness of
accommodation, the boldness and license of the cowboys, the daring and
insolence of the cattle thieves, the cunning and dishonesty of the
Indians, and the uncouthness and viciousness of the half-breeds. She had
ended by declaring eloquently that Louise would die of lonesomeness if,
by God’s good providence, she escaped a worse fate at the hands of one
or all of the many evils she had enumerated. Yes, it was very evident
Aunt Helen had not wanted her to go. But Aunt Helen’s real reason had
been that she held it so dizzily unconventional for her niece to go out
to that wild and unholy land alone. She did not actually fear for her
niece’s personal safety, and Louise more than half suspected the truth.

She had heard all the arguments before. They had little or no terrors
for her now. They were the arguments used by the people back in her
eastern home, those dear, dear people, her people—how far away she
was!—when they had schemed and plotted so pathetically to keep her with
them, the second one to break away from the slow, safe, and calm
traditions of her kin in the place where generation after generation of
her people had lived and died, and now lay waiting the Great Judgment in
the peaceful country burying-ground.

She had listened to them dutifully, half-believingly, swallowed hard and
followed her uncle, her father’s youngest brother, to the “Land of the
Dakotahs,” the fair land of promise, right in the face of her fears and
the loneliness that loomed before her—a thing with smirks and horns and
devil’s eyes that would not be suppressed, but perched itself insolently
before her, a heart-choking presence, magnified by the mist in her eyes,
through all the long, long journey to the west country. It had left her
for a while when she had crossed the Sioux and was on Dakota soil at
last. It was such a glorious land through which she was passing, the
fair region of the corn-belt, and such a prosperous land, and the fields
spread so broadly. It had been a sunny day with clear skies, one of
those days when distances are so infinite in South Dakota, the land of
widespread spaces. It was indeed a fertile valley through which she was
passing. There is none better on earth.

When her train had pulled out of Yankton, she reflected with a
whimsical smile that she had not yet seen an Indian. To be sure, she
had not really expected to see one in feathers and war-paint, but
surely an Indian of some description—did not the traditions of her
youth run that Dakota was the land of Indians and blizzards? She well
remembered—indeed, could she ever forget?—when, a tot of seven or eight,
she had run out into the road to gaze after the carry-all that was
taking her well-beloved young uncle away, away, into that dreadful land
where blood ran like rivers and where people trimmed their clothes with
scalps. She even remembered the feel of the warm, yellow dust up to her
bare ankles and the dreadful lump that she couldn’t swallow when her
uncle leaned out and waved his hat vigorously, crying out gayly:—

“Good-bye, little girl, good-bye. If they take my scalp, I’ll beg them
as a special favor to send it back to you as a keepsake. Don’t forget to
take good care of it. I was always rather proud of my yaller mop.”

He had said more; he had kept on calling to her till the big woods
swallowed him. But she had understood nothing after that last awful
charge. It had happened more than fifteen years before, but for many and
many a day thereafter, sensitive mite that she had been, she would run
and hide in the hay-mow whenever she saw her father or the boys coming
from town with the mail. It was years before the horror of the expected
packet containing the fair hair of her young uncle, dabbled with blood,
fell away from her.

Gradually the awfulness of that dread expectation passed away. Now, that
same dear uncle was a man of power and position in the new land that had
graciously permitted him his scalp. Only last November he had been
reëlected to his third term on the bench of his circuit with a big,
heart-stirring majority. In the day of his prosperity he had not
forgotten the little, tangle-haired girl who had cried so inconsolably
when he went away, and the unaccountable horror in whose eyes he had
tried to laugh away on that never-to-be-forgotten day when he had
wrenched his heartstrings from their safe abiding-place and gone forth
in quest of the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end—the first of many
generations. Tradition knew no other since his ancestors had felled
forests and built homes of hewn logs. Now he had sent for Louise. His
court reporter had recently left him for other fields of labor.

There was commotion among her people on receipt of the astounding
proposition. She lived over again the dark days of the first flitting.
It might well be her uncle had exaggerated the dangers of life in the
new land. It was great fun to shock his credulous relatives. He had
surely written them some enormous tales during those fifteen years and
more. He used to chuckle heartily to himself at reading some of the
sympathizing replies. But these tales were held in evidence against him
now that he dared to want Louise. Every letter was brought out by
Louise’s dear old grandmother and read to her over again. Louise did not
half believe them, but they were gospel truth to her grandmother and
almost so to her father and mother as well. She remembered the old
spirit of fun rampant in her favorite uncle, and while his vivid
pictures took all the color from her sensitive face, deep down in her
heart she recognized them for what they were worth. The letters were a
strange medley of grasshoppers, blizzards, and Indians. But a ten-dollar
per diem was a great temptation over a five-dollar per diem, and times
were pretty hard on the old farm. More than all, the inexplicable
something that had led her uncle to throw tradition to the four winds of
heaven was calling her persistently and would not be denied. So she had
written to him for the truth.

“My dear child,” he had answered, “I live in a little city whose
civilization would make some of our good friends in the old home stare.
As for grasshoppers, I believe there was some crazy talk ages ago, but
in my day I do well to corner enough scrawny, scared specimens to land a
fish in midsummer. Their appalling scarcity is a constant sorrow to me.
Makes me plumb mad even yet to think of the hopeless hours I used to
spend blistering my nose on White River, dangling for my finny favorite
with dough-balls. Dough-balls—ugh! ‘Send us more grasshoppers, oh,
Lord,’ is my daily prayer. As for your last question, I cannot answer it
so well. Not enjoying the personal acquaintance of many Indians I cannot
tell you much about them. I believe there are a few over on the Crow
Creek Reservation and perhaps as many on Lower Brule. I wouldn’t be
positive, but I think so. Occasionally I meet one coming from that
direction. I have heard—mind, this is only hearsay—that there are a
handful or so down on the Rosebud Reservation. I wouldn’t vouch for it.
You can hear most anything in this day and generation. The few I have
met seem mild enough. They appear to be rather afraid of me. Their chief
occupations seem to be dog-eating and divorce-getting, so you can see
for yourself how highly modern and civilized they are becoming. I am
sure you will have no trouble.”

Louise had not altogether believed this rollicking letter, but it had
helped her to her decision.

Wind City and still no Indians; but there was the dear hero of her
childhood. He was much changed to be sure; his big joints had taken on
more flesh and he had gained in dignity of deportment what he had lost
in ease of movement. His once merry eyes had grown keen with the years
of just judging. The lips that had laughed so much in the old days were
set in lines of sternness. Judge Hammond Dale was a man who would live
up to the tenets of his high calling without fear or favor, through good
and evil report. Yet through all his gravity of demeanor and the pride
of his integrity, Louise instinctively felt his kindliness and loved him
for it. The loneliness fell away from her and a measure of content had
come in its place, until the letter had come from the State’s attorney
up in the Kemah County:—

  My dear Miss Dale:—The eighteenth of August is the date set for the
  preliminary hearing of Jesse Black. Will you come and take the
  testimony? I am very anxious that the testimony be taken by a
  competent reporter and shall be grateful to you if you decide to come.

  The Judge will tell you about our poor accommodations. Let me
  recommend to your consideration some good friends of mine, the
  Willistons, father and daughter. They live three miles northwest of
  Kemah. The Judge will remember Williston, George Williston of the Lazy
  S. They are cultured people, though their way of living is necessarily
  primitive. I am sure you will like it better there than at our shabby
  little hotel, which is a rendezvous for a pretty rough class of men,
  especially at court time.

  If you decide to come, Mary Williston will meet you at Velpen. Please
  let me know your decision.

  Very sincerely, Richard Gordon.

So here she was, going into the Indian country at last. A big State,
South Dakota, and the phases of its civilization manifold. Having come
so far, to refuse to go on seemed like turning back with her hand
already on the plough, so with a stout heart she had wired Richard
Gordon that she would go. But it was pretty hard now, to be sure, and
pretty dreary, coming into Velpen knowing that she would see no one she
knew in all the wide, wide world. The thought choked her and the impish
demon, Loneliness, he of the smirk and horns and devil’s eyes, loomed
leeringly before her again. Blindly, she picked up her umbrella,
suit-case, and rain-coat.

“Homesick?” asked the kindly brakeman, with a consolatory grin as he
came to assist her with her baggage.

She bit her lip in mortification to think she had carried her feelings
so palpably on her sleeve. But she nodded honestly.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” sympathized the brakeman. His rough heart
had gone out to the slim, fair-haired young creature with the vague
trouble in her eyes.

“Thank you,” said Louise, gratefully.

There was a moment’s bewilderment on the station platform. There was no
one anywhere who seemed to be Mary—no one who might be looking for her.
It was evening, too, the lonesome evening to those away from home, when
thoughts stab and memories sap the courage. Some one pushed her rudely
aside. She was in the way of the trucks.

“Chuck it! None o’ your sass, my lad! There’s my fist. Heft it if you
don’t put no stock in its looks. Git out o’ this, I say!”

The voice was big and convincing. The man wasn’t so big, but some way he
looked convincing, too. The truckman stepped aside, but with plucky
temerity answered back.

“Get out yourself! Think you own the whole cattle country jest ’cause
you herd a few ornery, pink-eyed, slab-sided critters for your salt?
Well, the railroad ain’t the range, le’ me tell you that. Jest you run
your own affairs, will you?”

“Thanky. Glad to. And as my affairs is at present a lady, I’ll thank you
to jest trundle this here railroad offspring to the back o’ this here
lady—the back, I say—back ain’t front, is it? Wasn’t where I was
eddicated. That’s better. And ef you ain’t satisfied, why, I belong to
the Three Bars. Ever hear o’ the Three Bars? Ef I’m out, jest leave word
with the Boss, will you? He’ll see I git the word. Yes, sir, you ol’ hoss
thief, I belong to the Three Bars.”

The encounter was not without interested spectators. Louise’s brakeman
was grinning broadly at the discomfiture of his fellow-employee. Louise
herself had forgotten her predicament in the sudden whirlwind of which
she was the innocent storm-centre.

The cowboy with the temper, having completely routed the enemy to the
immense satisfaction of the onlookers, though why, no one knew exactly,
nor what the merits of the case, turned abruptly to Louise.

“Are you her?” he asked, with a perceptible cooling of his assertive
bravado.

“I don’t know,” said Louise, smiling fearlessly at her champion, though
inwardly quaking at the intuition that had flashed upon her that this
strange, uncouth man had come to take the place of Mary. “The boldness
and license of the cowboys,” her aunt had argued. There could be no
doubt of the boldness. Would the rest of the statement hold good?

“I think maybe I am, though I am Louise Dale, the new court reporter. I
expected Miss Mary Williston to meet me.”

“Then you are her,” said the man, with renewed cheerfulness, seizing her
suit-case and striding off. “Come along. We’ll git some supper afore we
start. You’re dead tired, more’n likely. It’ll be moonlight so’t won’t
matter ef we are late a gittin’ home.”

“Court reporter! I’ll be doggoned!” muttered the brakeman. “The new girl
from down East. A pore little white lamb among a pack o’ wolves and
coyotes, and homesick a’ready. No wonder! I’ll be takin’ you back
to-morrow, I’m thinkin’, young lady.”

He didn’t know the “little white lamb” who had come to help Paul
Langford and Dick Gordon in their big fight.

CHAPTER IV

“MAGGOT”

An hour prior to this little episode, Jim Munson had sauntered up to the
ticket window only to find that the train from the East was forty
minutes late. He turned away with a little shrug of relief. It was a
foreign role he was playing,—this assumption of the duties of a knight
in dancing attendance on strange ladies. Secretly, he chafed under it;
outwardly, he was magnificently indifferent. He had a reputation to
sustain, a reputation of having yet to meet that which would lower his
proud boast that he was afraid of nothing under the sun, neither man nor
devil. But he doubted his ability so to direct the point of view of the
Boss or the Scribe or the rest of the boys of the Three Bars ranch, who
were on a still hunt for his spot of vulnerability.

The waiting-room was hot,—unbearably so to a man who practically lived
in the open. He strolled outside and down the tracks. He found himself
wishing the train had been on time. Had it been so, it—the impending
meeting—would now have been a thing of the forgotten past. He must needs
fortify himself all over again. But sauntering down the track toward the
stockyards, he filled his cob pipe, lighted it, and was comforted. He
had a forty-minute reprieve.

The boys had tried most valiantly to persuade him to “fix up” for this
event. He had scorned them indignantly. If he was good enough as he
was—black woollen shirt, red neckerchief and all—for men, just so was he
good enough for any female that ever lived. So he assumed a little
swagger as he stepped over the ties, and tried to make himself believe
that he was glad he had not allowed himself to be corrupted by proffers
of blue shirts and white neckerchiefs.

He was approaching the stockyards. There was movement there. Sounds of
commands, blows, profane epithets, and worried bawlings changed the
placid evening calm into noisy strife. It is always a place interesting
to cowmen. Jim relegated thoughts of the coming meeting to the
background while he leaned on the fence, and, with idle absorption,
watched the loading of cattle into a stock car. A switch engine,
steaming and spluttering, stood ready to make way for another car so
soon as the present one should be laden. He was not the only spectator.
Others were before him. Two men strolled up to the side opposite as he
settled down to musing interest.

“Gee!” he swore gently under his breath, “ef that ain’t Bill Brown! Yep.
It is, for a fac’. Wonder what he’s a shippin’ now for!” He scrambled
lightly over the high fence of the pen.

“Hullo, there, Bill Brown!” he yelled, genially, making his way as one
accustomed through the bunch of reluctant, excited cattle.

“Hullo yourself, Jim! What you doin’ in town?” responded the man
addressed, pausing in his labor to wipe the streaming moisture from his
face. He fanned himself vigorously with his drooping hat while he
talked.

“Gal huntin’,” answered Jim, soberly and despondently.

“Hell!” Brown surveyed him with astonished but sympathetic approbation.
“Hell!” he repeated. “You don’t mean it, do you, Jim, honest? Come, now,
honest? So you’ve come to it, at last, have you? Well, well! What’s
comin’ over the Three Bars? What’ll the boys say?”

He came nearer and lowered his voice to a confidential tone. “Say, Jim,
how did it come about? And who’s the lady? Lord, Jim, you of all
people!” He laughed uproariously.

“Aw, come off!” growled Jim, in petulant scorn. “You make me tired!
You’re plumb luney, that’s what you are. I’m after the new gal reporter.
She’s due on that low-down, ornery train. Wish—it—was in Kingdom Come.
Yep, I do, for a fac’.”

“Oh, well, never mind! I didn’t mean anything,” laughed Brown,
good-naturedly. “But it does beat the band, Jim, now doesn’t it, how you
people scare at petticoats. They ain’t pizen—honest.”

Jim looked on idly. Occasionally, he condescended to head a rebellious
steer shute-wards. Out beyond, it was still and sweet and peaceful, and
the late afternoon had put on that thin veil of coolness which is a
God-given refreshment after the heat of the day. But here in the pen all
was confusion. The raucous cattle-calls of the cowboys smote the evening
air startlingly.

“Here, Bill Brown!” he exclaimed suddenly, “where did you run across
that critter?” He slapped the shoulder of a big, raw-boned, long-eared
steer as he spoke. The animal was on the point of being driven up the
shute.

“What you want to know for?” asked Brown in surprise.

“Reason ’nough. That critter belongs to us, that’s why; and I want to
know where you got him, that’s what I want to know.”

“You’re crazy, Jim! Why, I bought that fellow from Jesse Black t’ other
day. I’ve got a bill-of-sale for him. I’m shippin’ a couple of cars to
Sioux City and bought him to send along. That’s on the square.”

“I don’t doubt it—s’ far as you’re concerned, Bill Brown,” said Jim,
“but that’s our critter jest the same, and I’ll jest tote ’im along ’f
you’ve no objections.”

“Well, I guess not!” said Brown, laconically.

“Look here, Bill Brown,” Jim was getting hot-headedly angry, “didn’t you
know Jesse Black stands trial to-morrow for rustlin’ that there very
critter from the Three Bars ranch?”

“No, I didn’t,” Brown answered, shortly. “Any case?”

“I guess yes! Williston o’ the Lazy S saw this very critter on that
island where Jesse Black holds out.” He proceeded to relate minutely the
story to which Williston was going to swear on the morrow. “But,” he
concluded, “Jesse’s goin’ to fight like hell against bein’ bound over.”

“Well, well,” said Brown, perplexedly. “But the brand, Jim, it’s not
yours or Jesse’s either.”

“’Quainted with any J R ranch in these parts?” queried Jim, shrewdly. “I
ain’t.”

“Well, neither am I,” confessed Brown, “but that’s not sayin’ there
ain’t one somewhere. Maybe we can trace it back.”

“Shucks!” exploded Jim.

“Maybe you’re right, Jim, but I don’t propose to lose the price o’ that
animal less’n I have to. You can’t blame me for that. I paid good money
for it. If it’s your’n, why, of course, it’s your’n. But I want to be
sure first. Sure you’d know him, Jim? How could you be so blamed sure?
Your boss must range five thousand head.”

“Know him? Know Mag? I’d know Mag ef my eyes were full o’ soundin’
cataracts. He’s an old and tried friend o’ mine. The meanest critter the
Lord ever let live and that’s a fac’. But the Boss calls ’im his maggot.
Seems to actually cherish a kind o’ ’fection for the ornery critter, and
says the luck o’ the Three Bar would sort o’ peak and pine ef he should
ever git rid o’ the pesky brute. Maybe he’s right. Leastwise, the
critter’s his, and when a thing’s yours, why, it’s yours and that’s all
there is about it. By cracky, the Boss is some mad! You’d think him and
that walleyed, cross-grained son-of-a-gun had been kind and lovin’ mates
these many years. Well, I ain’t met up with this ornery critter for some
time. Hullo there, Mag! Look kind o’ sneakin’, now, don’t you, wearin’
that outlandish and unbeknownst J R?”

Bill Brown thoughtfully surveyed the steer whose ownership was thus so
unexpectedly disputed.

“You hold him,” insisted Jim. “Ef he ain’t ours, you can send him along
with your next shipment, can’t you? What you wobblin’ about? Ain’t
afraid the Boss’ll claim what ain’t his, are you, Bill Brown?”

“Well, I can’t he’p myself, I guess,” said Brown, in a tone of voice
which told plainly of his laudable effort to keep his annoyance in
subjection to his good fellowship. “You send Langford down here first
thing in the morning. If he says the critter’s his’n, that ends it.”

Now that he had convinced his quondam acquaintance, the present shipper,
to his entire satisfaction, Jim glanced at his watch with ostentatious
ease. His time had come. If all the minutes of all the time to come
should be as short as those forty had been, how soon he, Jim Munson,
cow-puncher, would have ridden them all into the past. But his “get
away” must be clean and dignified.

“Likely bunch you have there,” he said, casually, turning away with
unassumed reluctance.

“Fair to middlin’,” said Brown with pride.

“Shippin’ to Sioux City, you said?”

“Yep.”

“Well, so long.”

“So long. Shippin’ any these days, Jim?”

“Nope. Boss never dribbles ’em out. When he ships he ships. Ain’t none
gone over the rails since last Fall.”

He stepped off briskly and vaulted the fence with as lightsome an air as
though he were bent on the one errand his heart would choose, and swung
up the track carelessly humming a tune. But he had a vise-like grip on
his cob pipe. His teeth bit through the frail stem. It split. He tossed
the remains away with a gesture of nervous contempt. A whistle sounded.
He quickened his pace. If he missed her,—well, the Boss was a good
fellow, took a lot of nonsense from the boys, but there were things he
would not stand for. Jim did not need to be told that this would be one
of them.

The platform was crowded. The yellow sunlight fell slantingly on the gay
groups.

“Aw, Munson, you’re bluffin’,” jested the mail carrier. “You ain’t
lookin’ fer nobody; you know you ain’t. You ain’t got no folks. Don’t
believe you never had none. Never heard of ’em.”

“Lookin’ for my uncle,” explained Jim, serenely. “Rich old codger from
the State o’ Pennsylvaney some’ers. Ain’t got nobody but me left.”

“Aw, come off! What you givin’ us?”

But Jim only winked and slouched off, prime for more adventures. He was
enjoying himself hugely,—when he was not thinking of petticoats.

CHAPTER V

AT THE BON AMI

Unlike most of those who ride much, her escort was a fast walker. Louise
had trouble in keeping up with him, though she had always considered
herself a good pedestrian. But Jim Munson was laboring under strange
embarrassment. He was red-facedly conscious of the attention he was
attracting striding up the inclined street from the station in the van
of the prettiest and most thoroughbred girl who had struck Velpen this
long time.

Not that he objected to attention under normal conditions. Not he! He
courted it. His chief aim in life seemed to be to throw the limelight of
publicity, first, on the Three Bars ranch, as the one and only in the
category of ranches, and to be connected with it in some way, however
slight, the unquestioned aim and object of existence of every man,
woman, and child in the cattle country; secondly, on Paul Langford, the
very boss of bosses, whose master mind was the prop and stay of the
Northwest, if not of all Christendom; and lastly upon himself, the
modest, but loyal servitor in this Paradise on earth. But girls were far
from normal conditions. There were no women at the Three Bars. There
never had been any woman at the Three Bars within the memory of man. To
be sure, Williston’s little girl had sometimes ridden over on an errand,
but she didn’t count. This—this was the real thing, and he didn’t know
just how to deal with it. He needed time to enlarge his sight to this
broadened horizon.

He glanced with nonchalance over his shoulder. After all, she was only a
girl, and not such a big one either. She wore longer skirts than
Williston’s girl, but he didn’t believe she was a day older. He squared
about immediately, and what he had meant to say he never said, on
account of an unaccountable thickening of his tongue.

Presently, he bolted into a building, which proved to be the Bon Ami, a
restaurant under the direct supervision of the fat, voluble, and tragic
Mrs. Higgins, where the men from the other side of the river had right
of way and unlimited credit.

“What’ll you have?” he asked, hospitably, the familiar air of the Bon
Ami bringing him back to his accustomed self-confident swagger.

“Might I have some tea and toast, please?” said Louise, sinking into a
chair at the nearest table, with two startling yet amusing thoughts
rampant in her brain. One was, that she wished Aunt Helen could have
seen her swinging along in the wake of this typical “bold and
licentious” man, and calmly and comfortably sitting down to a cosy
little supper for two at a public eating house; the other startling
thought was to the effect that the invitation was redolent with
suggestiveness, and she wondered if she was not expected to say, “A
whiskey for me, please.”

“Guess you kin,” answered Jim, wonder in his voice at the exceeding
barrenness of the order. “Mrs. Higgins, hello there, Mrs. Higgins! I
say, there, bring on some tea and toast for the lady!”

“Where is the Three Bars?” asked Louise, her thoughts straying to the
terrors of a fifteen-mile drive through a strange and uncanny country
with a stranger and yet more uncanny man. She had accepted him without
question. He was part and parcel with the strangeness of her new
position. But the suddenness of the transition from idle conjecture to
startling reality had raised her proud head and she looked this new
development squarely in the face without outward hint of inward
perturbation.

“Say, where was you raised?” asked Jim, with tolerant scorn, between
huge mouthfuls of boiled pork and cabbage, interspersed with baked
potatoes, hot rolls, and soggy dumplings, shovelled in with knife, fork,
or spoon. He occasionally anticipated dessert by making a sudden sortie
into the quarter of an immense custard pie, hastening the end by means
of noisy draughts of steaming coffee. Truly, the Three Bars connection
had the fat of the land at the Bon Ami.

“Why, it’s the Three Bars that’s bringin’ you here. Didn’t you know
that? There’s nary a man in the hull country with backbone enough to
keep him off all-fours ’ceptin’ Paul Langford. Um. You just try once to
walk over the Boss, will you? Lord! What a grease spot you’d make!”

“Mr. Gordon isn’t being walked over, is he?” asked Louise, finished with
her tea and toast and impatient to be off.

“Oh, Gordon? Pretty decent sort o’ chap. Right idees. Don’t know much
about handlin’ hoss thieves and sich. Ain’t smooth enough. Acted kind o’
like a chicken with its head cut off till the Boss got into the
roundup.”

“Oh!” said Louise, whose conception of the young counsel for the State
did not tally with this delineation.

“Yep, Miss, this here’s the Boss’s doin’s. Yep. Lord! What’ll that gang
look like when we are through with ’em? Spendin’ the rest o’ their days
down there in Sioux Falls, meditatin’ on the advisability o’ walkin’
clear o’ the toes o’ the Three Bars in the future and cussin’ their
stupendified stupidity in foolin’ even once with the Three Bars. Yep,
sir—yep, ma’am, I mean,—Jesse Black and his gang have acted just like
pesky, little plum’-fool moskeeters, and we’re goin’ to slap ’em. The
cheek of ’em, lightin’ on the Three Bars! Lord!”

“Mr. Williston informed, did he not?”

“Williston? Oh, yes, he informed, but he’d never ’a’ done it if it
hadn’t ’a’ been for the Boss. The ol’ jellyfish wouldn’t ’a’ had the
nerve to inform without backin’, as sure as a stone wall. The Boss is a
doin’ this, I tell you, Miss. But Williston’s a goin’ on the stand
to-morrer all right, and so am I.”

The two cowboys at the corner table had long since finished their
supper. They now lighted bad-smelling cigars and left the room. To
Louise’s great relief, Munson rose, too. He was back very soon with a
neat little runabout and a high-spirited team of bays.

“Boss’s private,” explained Jim with pride. “Nothin’ too good for a
lady, so the Boss sent this and me to take keer o’ it. And o’ you, too,
Miss,” he added, as an afterthought.

He held the lines in his brown, muscular hands, lovingly, while he
stowed away Louise’s belongings and himself snugly in the seat, and then
the blood burned hot and stinging through his bronzed, tough skin, for
suddenly in his big, honest, untrained sensibilities was born the
consciousness that the Boss would have stowed away the lady first. It
was an embarrassing moment. Louise saved the day by climbing in
unconcernedly after him and tucking the linen robe over her skirt.

“It will be a dusty drive, won’t it?” she asked, simply.

“Miss, you’re a—dandy,” said Jim as simply.

As they drove upon the pontoon bridge, Louise looked back at the little
town on the bluffs, and felt a momentary choking in her throat. It was a
strange place, yet it had tendrils reaching homeward. The trail beyond
was obscurely marked and not easy to discern. She turned to her
companion and asked quickly: “Why didn’t Mary come?”

“Great guns! Did I forgit to tell you? Williston’s got the stomach-ache
to beat the band and Mary’s got to physic him up ’gin to-morrer. We’ve
got to git him on that stand if it takes the hull Three Bars to hol’ him
up and the gal a pourin’ physic down him between times. Yep, Ma’am. He
was pizened. You see, everybody that ate any meat last night was took
sick with gripin’ cramps, yep; but Williston he was worse’n all, he
bein’ a hearty eater. He was a stayin’ in town over night on this
preliminary business, and Dick Gordon he was took, too, but not so bad,
bein’ what you might call a light eater. The Boss and me we drove home
after all, though we’d expected to stay for supper. The pesky coyotes
got fooled that time. Yep, Ma’am, no doubt about it in the world.
Friends o’ Jesse’s that we ain’t able to lay hands on yit pizened that
there meat. Yep, no doubt about it. Dick was in an awful sweat about
you. Was bound he was a comin’ after you hisself, sick as he was, when
we found Mary was off the count. So then the Boss was a comin’ and they
fit and squabbled for an hour who could be best spared, when I, comin’
in, settled it in a jiffy by offerin’ my services, which was gladly
accepted. When there’s pizenin’ goin’ on, why, the Boss’s place is hum.
And nothin’ would do but the Boss’s own particular outfit. He never does
things by halves, the Boss don’t. So I hikes home after it and then
hikes here.”

“I am very grateful to him, I am sure,” murmured Louise, smiling.

And Jim, daring to look upon her smiling face, clear eyes, and soft hair
under the jaunty French sailor hat, found himself wondering why there
was no woman at the Three Bars. With the swift, half-intuitive thought,
the serpent entered Eden.

CHAPTER VI

“NOTHIN’ BUT A HOSS THIEF, ANYWAY”

The island teemed with early sunflowers and hints of goldenrod yet to
come. The fine, white, sandy soil deadened the sound of the horses’
hoofs. They seemed to be spinning through space. Under the cottonwoods
it grew dusky and still.

At the toll house a dingy buckboard in a state of weird dilapidation,
with a team of shaggy buckskin ponies, stood waiting. Jim drew up. Two
men were lounging in front of the shanty, chatting to the toll-man.

“Hello, Jim!” called one of them, a tall, slouching fellow with sandy
coloring.

“Now, how the devil did you git so familiar with my name?” growled Jim.

“The Three Bars is gettin’ busy these days,” spoke up the second man,
with an insolent grin.

“You bet it is,” bragged Jim. “When the off’cers o’ the law git to
sleepin’ with hoss thieves and rustlers, and take two weeks to arrest a
bunch of ’em, when they know prezactly where they keep theirselves, and
have to have special deputies app’inted over ’em five or six times and
then let most o’ the bunch slip through their fingers, it’s time for
some one to git busy. And when Jesse Black and his gang are so desp’rit
they pizen the chief witnesses—”

A gentle pressure on his arm stopped him. He turned inquiringly.

“I wouldn’t say any more,” whispered Louise. “Let’s get on.”

The hint was sufficient, and with the words, “Right you are, Miss
Reporter, we’ll be gittin’ on,” Jim paid his toll and spoke to his team.

“Just wait a bit, will you?” spoke up the sandy man.

“What for?”

“We’re not just ready.”

“Well, we are,” shortly.

“We aren’t, and we don’t care to be passed, you know.”

He spoke indifferently. In deference to Louise, Jim waited. The men
smoked on carelessly. The toll-man fidgeted.

“You go to hell! The Three Bars ain’t waitin’ on no damned hoss
thieves,” said Jim, suddenly.

His nervous team sprang forward. Quick as a flash the sandy man was in
the buckboard. He struck the bays a stinging blow with his rawhide, and
as they swerved aside he swung into the straight course to the narrow
bridge of boats. In another moment the way would be blocked. With a
burning oath Jim, keeping to the side of the steep incline till the
river mire cut him off, deliberately turned his stanch little team
squarely, and crowded them forward against the shaggy buckskins. It was
team against team. Louise, clinging tightly to the seat, lips pressed
together to keep back any sound, felt a wild, inexplicable thrill of
confidence in the strength of the man beside her.

The bays were pitifully, cruelly lashed by the enraged owner of the
buckskins, but true as steel to the familiar voice that had guided them
so often and so kindly, they gave not nor faltered. There was a snapping
of broken wood, a wrench, a giving way, and the runabout sprang over
debris of broken wheel and wagon-box to the narrow confines of the
pontoon bridge.

“The Three Bars is gettin’ busy!” gibed Jim over his shoulder.

“It’s a sorry day for you and yours,” cried the other, in black and ugly
wrath.

“We ain’t afeared. You’re nothin’ but a hoss thief, anyway!” responded
Jim, gleefully, as a parting shot.

“Now what do you suppose was their game?” he asked of the girl at his
side.

“I don’t know,” answered Louise, thoughtfully. “But I thought it not
wise to say too much to them. You are a witness, I believe you said.”

“Then you think they are part o’ the gang?”

“I consider them at least sympathizers, don’t you? They seemed down on
the Three Bars.”

In the Indian country at last. Mile after mile of level, barren
stretches after the hill region had been left behind. Was there no end
to the thirst-inspiring, monotonous, lonely reach of cacti? Prairie
dogs, perched in front of their holes, chattered and scolded at them.
The sun went down and a refreshing coolness crept over the hard, baked
earth. Still, there was nothing but distance anywhere in all the land,
and a feeling of desolation swept over the girl.

The air of August was delicious now that night was coming on. There was
no wind, but the swift, unflagging pace of the Boss’s matched team made
a stiff breeze to play in their faces. It was exhilarating. The
listlessness and discouragement of the day were forgotten. Throwing her
rain-coat over her shoulders, Louise felt a clumsy but strangely gentle
hand helping to draw it closer around her. Someway the action, simple as
it was, reminded her of the look in that brakeman’s eyes, when he had
asked her if she were homesick. Did this man think she was homesick,
too? She was grateful; they were very kind. What a lot of good people
there were in the world! Now, Jim Munson did not call her “little white
lamb” to himself, the metaphor never entered his mind; but in his big,
self-confident heart he did feel a protecting tenderness for her. She
was not like any woman he had ever seen, and it was a big, lonesome
country for a slip of a girl like her.

The moon came up. Then there were miles of white moonlight and lonely
plain. But for some time now there has been a light in front of them. It
is as if it must be a will-o’-the-wisp. They never seem to get to it.
But at last they are there. The door is wide open. A pleasant odor of
bacon and coffee is wafted out to the tired travellers.

“Come right in,” says the cheery voice of Mary. “How tired you must be,
Miss Dale. Tie up, Jim, and come in and eat something before you go.
Well, you can eat again—two suppers won’t hurt you. I have kept things
warm for you. Your train must have been late. Yes, Dad is better, thank
you. He’ll be all right in the morning.”

CHAPTER VII

THE PRELIMINARY

Very early in the morning of the day set for the preliminary hearing of
Jesse Black, the young owner of the Three Bars ranch rode over to
Velpen. He identified and claimed the animal held over from shipment by
Jim’s persuasion. Brown gave possession with a rueful countenance.

“First time Billy Brown ever was taken in,” he said, with great disgust.

Langford met with no interruption to his journey, either going or
coming, although that good cowpuncher of his, Jim Munson, had warned him
to look sharp to his pistols and mind the bridge. Jim being of a
somewhat belligerent turn of mind, his boss had not taken the words with
much seriousness. As for the fracas at the pontoon, cowmen are touchy
when it comes to a question of precedence, and it might well be that the
inflammable Jim had brought the sudden storm down on his head. Paul
Langford rode through the sweet early summer air without let or
hindrance and looking for none. He was jubilant. Now was Williston’s
story verified. The county attorney, Richard Gordon, had considered
Williston’s story, coupled with his reputation for strict honesty,
strong and sufficient enough to bind Jesse Black over to appear at the
next regular term of the circuit court. Under ordinary circumstances,
the State really had an excellent chance of binding over; but it had to
deal with Jesse Black, and Jesse Black had flourished for many years
west of the river with an unsavory character, but with an almost awesome
reputation for the phenomenal facility with which he slipped out of the
net in which the law—in the person of its unpopular exponent, Richard
Gordon—was so indefatigably endeavoring to enmesh him. The State was
prepared for a hard fight. But now—here was the very steer Williston saw
on the island with its Three Bars brand under Black’s surveillance.
Williston would identify it as the same. He, Langford, would swear to
his own animal. The defence would not know he had regained possession
and would not have time to readjust its evidence. It would fall down and
hurt itself for the higher court, and Dick Gordon would know how to use
any inadvertencies against it—when the time came. No wonder Langford was
light-hearted. In all his arrogant and unhampered career, he had never
before received such an affront to his pride and his sense of what was
due to one of the biggest outfits that ranged cattle west of the river.
Woe to him who had dared tamper with the concerns of Paul Langford of
the Three Bars.

Williston drove in from the Lazy S in ample time for the mid-day dinner
at the hotel—the hearing was set for two o’clock—but his little party
contented itself with a luncheon prepared at home, and packed neatly and
appetizingly in a tin bucket. It was not likely there would be a
repetition of bad meat. It would be poor policy. Still, one could not be
sure, and it was most important that Williston ate no bad meat that day.

Gordon met them in the hot, stuffy, little parlor of the hotel.

“It was good of you to come,” he said to Louise, with grave sincerity.

“I didn’t want to,” confessed Louise, honestly. “I’m afraid it is too
big and lonesome for me. I am sure I should have gone back to Velpen
last night to catch the early train had it not been for Mary. She is
so—good.”

“The worst is over now that you have conquered your first impulse to
fly,” he said.

“I cried, though. I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t help it. You see
I never was so far from home before.”

He was an absorbed, hard-working lawyer. Years of contact with the
plain, hard realities of rough living in a new country had dried up,
somewhat, his stream of sentiment. Maybe the source was only blocked
with debris, but certainly the stream was running dry. He could not help
thinking that a girl who cries because she is far from home had much
better stay at home and leave the grave things which are men’s work to
men. But he was a gentleman and a kindly one, so he answered, quietly,
“I trust you will like us better when you know us better,” and, after a
few more commonplaces, went his way.

“There’s a man,” said Louise, thoughtfully, on the way to McAllister’s
office “I like him, Mary.”

“And yet there are men in this county who would kill him if they dared.”

“Mary! what do you mean? Are there then so many cut-throats in this
awful country?”

“I think there are many desperate men among the rustlers who would not
hesitate to kill either Paul Langford or Richard Gordon since these
prosecutions have begun. There are also many good people who think Mr.
Gordon is just stirring up trouble and putting the county to expense
when he can have no hope of conviction. They say that his failures
encourage the rustlers more than an inactive policy would.”

“People who argue like that are either tainted with dishonesty
themselves or they are foolish, one of the two,” said Louise, with
conviction.

“Mr. Gordon has one stanch supporter, anyway,” said Mary, smiling.
“Maybe I had better tell him. Precious little encouragement or sympathy
he gets, poor fellow.”

“Please do not,” replied Louise, quickly. “I wonder if my friend, Mr.
Jim Munson, has managed to escape ‘battle, murder, and sudden death,’
including death by poison, and is on hand with his testimony.”

As they approached the office, the crowd of men around the doorway drew
aside to let them pass.

“Our chances of worming ourselves through that jam seem pretty slim to
me,” whispered Mary, glancing into the already overcrowded room.

“Let me make a way for you,” said Paul Langford, as he separated himself
from the group of men standing in front, and came up to them.

“I have watered my horse,” he said, flashing a merry smile at Mary as he
began shoving his big shoulders through the press, closely followed by
the two young women.

It was a strange assembly through which they pressed; ranchmen and
cowboys, most of them, just in from ranch and range, hot and dusty from
long riding, perspiring freely, redolent of strong tobacco and the
peculiar smell that betokens recent and intimate companionship with that
part and parcel of the plains, the horse. The room was indeed hot and
close and reeking with bad odors. There were also present a large
delegation of cattle dealers and saloon men from Velpen, and some few
Indians from Rosebud Agency, whose curiosity was insatiable where the
courts were concerned, far from picturesque in their ill-fitting,
nondescript cowboy garments.

Yet they were kindly, most of the men gathered there. Though at first
they refused, with stolid resentment, to be thus thrust aside by the
breezy and aggressive owner of the Three Bars, planting their feet the
more firmly on the rough, uneven floor, and serenely oblivious to any
right of way so arrogantly demanded by the big shoulders, yet, when they
perceived for whom the way was being made, most of them stepped hastily
aside with muttered and abashed apologies. Here and there, however,
though all made way, there would be no red-faced or stammering apology.
Sometimes the little party was followed by insolent eyes, sometimes by
malignant ones. Had Mary Williston spoken truly when she said the will
for bloodshed was not lacking in the county?

But if there was aught of hatred or enmity in the heavy air of the
improvised court-room for others besides the high-minded young counsel
for law and order, Mary Williston seemed serenely unconscious of it. She
held her head proudly. Most of these men she knew. She had done a man’s
work among them for two years and more. In her man’s work of riding the
ranges she had had good fellowship with many of them. After to-day much
of this must end. Much blame would accrue to her father for this day’s
work, among friends as well as enemies, for the fear of the law-defiers
was an omnipresent fear with the small owner, stalking abroad by day and
by night. But Mary was glad and there was a new dignity about her that
became her well, and that grew out of this great call to rally to the
things that count.

At the far end of the room they found the justice of the peace enthroned
behind a long table. His Honor, Mr. James R. McAllister, more commonly
known as Jimmie Mac, was a ranchman on a small scale. He was ignorant,
but of an overweening conceit. He had been a justice of the peace for
several years, and labored under the mistaken impression that he knew
some law; but Gordon, on short acquaintance, had dubbed him “Old
Necessity” in despairing irony, after a certain high light of early
territorial days who “knew no law.” Instead of deciding the facts in the
cases brought before him from the point of view of an ordinary man of
common sense, McAllister went on the theory that each case was fraught
with legal questions upon which the result of the case hung; and he had
a way of placing himself in the most ridiculous lights by arguing long
and arduously with skilled attorneys upon questions of law. He made the
mistake of always trying to give a reason for his rulings. His rulings,
sometimes, were correct, but one would find it hard to say the same of
his reasons for them.

Louise’s little table was drawn closely before the window nearest the
court. She owed this thoughtfulness to Gordon, who, nevertheless, was
not in complete sympathy with her, because she had cried. The table was
on the sunny side, but there was a breeze out of the west and it played
refreshingly over her face, and blew short strands of her fair hair
there also. To Gordon, wrapped up as he was in graver matters, her sweet
femininity began to insist on a place in his mental as well as his
physical vision. She was exquisitely neat and trim in her white
shirt-waist with its low linen collar and dark blue ribbon tie of the
same shade as her walking skirt, and the smart little milliner’s bow on
her French sailor hat, though it is to be doubted if Gordon observed the
harmony. She seemed strangely out of place in this room, so bare of
comfort, so stuffy and stenchy and smoke-filled; yet, after all, she
seemed perfectly at home here. The man in Gordon awoke, and he was glad
she had not stayed at home or gone away because she cried.

Yes, Jim was there—and swaggering. It was impossible for Jim not to
swagger a little on any occasion. The impulse to swagger had been born
in him. It had been carefully nurtured from the date of his first
connection with the Three Bars. He bestowed an amiable grin of
recognition on the new reporter from the far side of the room, which was
not very far.

The prisoner was brought in. His was a familiar personality. He was
known to most men west of the river—if not by personal acquaintance,
certainly by hearsay. Many believed him to be the animating mind of a
notorious gang of horse thieves and cattle rustlers that had been
operating west of the river for several years. Lax laws were their
nourishment. They polluted the whole. It was a deadly taint to fasten
itself on men’s relations. Out of it grew fear, bribery, official
rottenness, perjury. There was an impudent half smile on his lips. He
was a tall, lean, slouching-shouldered fellow. To-day, his jaws were
dark with beard bristles of several days’ standing. He bore himself with
an easy, indifferent manner, and chewed tobacco enjoyingly.

Louise, glancing casually around at the mass of interested, sunbrowned
faces, suddenly gave a little start of surprise. Not far in front of
Jimmie Mac’s table stood the man of the sandy coloring who had so
insolently disputed their right of way the day before. His hard, light
eyes, malignant, sinister, significant, were fixed upon the prisoner as
he slouched forward to hear his arraignment. The man in custody yawned
occasionally. He was bored. His whole body had a lazy droop. So far as
Louise could make out he gave no sign of recognition of the man of sandy
coloring.

Then came the first great surprise of this affair of many surprises.
Jesse Black waived examination. It came like a thunderbolt to the
prosecution. It was not Black’s way of doing business, and it was
generally believed that, as Munson had so forcibly though inelegantly
expressed it to Billy Brown, “He would fight like hell” to keep out of
the circuit courts. He would kill this incipient Nemesis in the bud.
What, then, had changed him? The county attorney had rather looked for a
hard-fought defence—a shifting of the burden of responsibility for the
misbranding to another, who would, of course, be off somewhere on a
business trip, to be absent an indefinite length of time; or it might be
he would try to make good a trumped-up story that he had but lately
purchased the animal from some Indian cattle-owner from up country who
claimed to have a bill-of-sale from Langford. He would not have been
taken aback had Black calmly produced a bill-of-sale.

There were lines about the young attorney’s mouth, crow’s feet diverging
from his eyes; his forehead was creased, too. He was a tall man, slight
of build, with drooping shoulders. One of the noticeable things about
him was his hands. They were beautiful—the long, slim, white kind that
attract attention, not so much, perhaps, on account of their graceful
lines, as because they are so seldom still. They belong preëminently to
a nervous temperament. Gordon had trained himself to immobility of
expression under strain, but his hands he had not been able so to
discipline. They were always at something, fingering the papers on his
desk, ruffling his hair, or noisily drumming. Now he folded them as if
to coerce them into quiet. He had handsome eyes, also, too keen, maybe,
for everyday living; they would be irresistible if they caressed.

The absoluteness of the surprise flushed his clean-shaven face a little,
although his grave immobility of expression underwent not a flicker. It
was a surprise, but it was a good surprise. Jesse Black was bound over
under good and sufficient bond to appear at the next regular term of the
circuit court in December. That much accomplished, now he could buckle
down for the big fight. How often had he been shipwrecked in the
shifting sands of the really remarkable decisions of “Old Necessity” and
his kind. This time, as by a miracle, he had escaped sands and shoals
and sunken rocks, and rode in deep water.

A wave of enlightenment swept over Jim Munson.

“Boss,” he whispered, “that gal reporter’s a hummer.”

“How so?” whispered Langford, amused. He proceeded to take an
interested, if hasty, inventory of her charms. “What a petite little
personage, to be sure! Almost too colorless, though. Why, Jim, she can’t
hold a tallow candle to Williston’s girl.”

“Who said she could?” demanded Jim, with a fine scorn and much relieved
to find the Boss so unappreciative. Eden might not be lost to them after
all. Strict justice made him add: “But she’s a wise one. Spotted them
blamed meddlin’ hoss thieves right from the word go. Yep. That’s a
fac’.”

“What ‘blamed meddlin’ hoss thieves,’ Jim? You are on intimate terms
with so many gentlemen of that stripe,—at least your language so leads
us to presume,—that I can’t keep up with the procession.”

“At the bridge yistidy. I told you ’bout it. Saw ’em first at the Bon
Amy—but they must a trailed me to the stockyards. She spotted ’em right
away. She’s a cute ’n. Made me shet my mouth when I was a blabbin’ too
much, jest before the fun began. Oh, she’s a cute ’n!”

“Who were they, Jim?”

“One of ’em, I’m a thinkin’, was Jake Sanderson, a red-headed devil who
came up here from hell, I reckon, or Wyoming, one of the two. Nobody
knows his biz. But he’ll look like a stepped-on potato bug ’gainst I git
through with him. Didn’t git on to t’ other feller. Will next time, you
bet!”

“But what makes you think they are mixed up in this affair?”

“They had their eyes on me to see what I was a doin’ in Velpen. And I
was a doin’ things, too.”

Langford gave a long, low whistle of comprehension. That would explain
the unexpected waiving of examination. Jesse Black knew the steer had
been recovered and saw the futility of fighting against his being bound
over.

“Now, ain’t she a hummer?” insisted Jim, admiringly, but added
slightingly, “Homely, though, as all git-out. Mouse-hair. Plumb homely.”

“On the contrary, I think she is plumb pretty,” retorted Langford, a
laugh in his blue eyes. Jim fairly gasped with chagrin.

Unconcerned, grinning, Black slouched to the door and out. Once
straighten out that lazy-looking body and you would have a big man in
Jesse Black. Yes, a big one and a quick one, too, maybe. The crowd made
way for him unconsciously. No one jostled him. He was a marked man from
that day. His lawyer, Small, leaned back in his chair, radiating waves
of self-satisfaction as though he had but just gained a disputed point.
It was a manner he affected when not on the floor in a frenzy of words
and muscular action.

Jim Munson contrived to pass close by Jake Sanderson.

“So you followed me to find out about Mag, did you? Heap o’ good it did
you! We knew you knew,” he bragged, insultingly.

The man’s face went white with wrath.

“Damn you!” he cried. His hand dropped to his belt.

The two glared at each other like fighting cocks. Men crowded around,
suddenly aware that a quarrel was on.

“The Three Bars’s a gittin’ busy!” jeered Jim.

“Come, Jim, I want you.” It was Gordon’s quiet voice. He laid a
restraining hand on Munson’s over-zealous arm.

“Dick Gordon, this ain’t your put-in,” snarled Sanderson. “Git out the
way!” He shoved him roughly aside. “Now, snappin’ turtle,” to Jim, “the
Three Bars’d better git busy!”

A feint at a blow, a clever little twist of the feet, and Munson
sprawled on the floor, men pressing back to give him the full force of
the fall. They believed in fair play. But Jim, uncowed, was up with the
nimbleness of a monkey.

“Hit away!” he cried, tauntingly. “I know ’nough to swear out a warrant
’gainst you! ’T won’t be so lonesome for Jesse now breakin’ stones over
to Sioux Falls.”

“Jim!” It was Gordon’s quiet, authoritative voice once more. “I told you
I wanted you.” He threw his arm over the belligerent’s shoulder.

“Comin’, Dick. I didn’t mean to blab so much,” Jim answered, contritely.

They moved away. Sanderson followed them up.

“Dick Gordon,” he said with cool deliberateness, “you’re too damned
anxious to stick your nose into other people’s affairs. Learn your
lesson, will you? My favorite stunt is to teach meddlers how to mind
their own business,—this way.”

It was not a fair blow. Gordon doubled up with the force of the punch in
his stomach. In a moment all was confusion. Men drew their pistols. It
looked as if there was to be a free-for-all fight.

Langford sprang to his friend’s aid, using his fists with plentiful
freedom in his haste to get to him.

“Never mind me,” whispered Gordon. He was leaning heavily on Jim’s
shoulder. His face was pale, but he smiled reassuringly. There was
something very sweet about his mouth when he smiled. “Never mind me,” he
repeated. “Get the girls out of this—quick, Paul.”

Mary and Louise had sought refuge behind the big table.

“Quick, the back door!” cried Langford, leading the way; and as the
three passed out, he closed the door behind them, saying, “You are all
right now. Run to the hotel. I must see how Dick is coming on.”

“Do you think he is badly hurt?” asked Louise. “Can’t we help?”

“I think you had best get out of this as quickly as you can. I don’t
believe he is knocked out, by any means, but I want to be on hand for
any future events which may be called. Just fly now, both of you.”

The unfair blow in the stomach had given the sympathy of most of the
bystanders, for the time being at least, to Gordon. Men forgot,
momentarily, their grudge against him. Understanding from the black
looks that he was not in touch with the crowd, Sanderson laughed—a short
snort of contempt—and slipped out of the door. Unable to resist the
impulse, Jim bounded out after his enemy.

When Paul hastened around to the front of the building, the crowd was
nearly all in the street. The tension was relaxed. A dazed expression
prevailed—brought to life by the suddenness with which the affair had
developed to such interesting proportions and the quickness with which
it had flattened out to nothing. For Sanderson had disappeared,
completely, mysteriously, and in all the level landscape, there was no
trace of him nor sign.

“See a balloon, Jim?” asked Langford, slapping him on the shoulder with
the glimmer of a smile. “Well, your red-headed friend won’t be down in a
parachute—yet. Are you all right, Dick, old man?”

“Yes. Where are the girls?”

“They are all right. I took them through the back door and sent them to
the hotel.”

“You kin bet on the Boss every time when it comes to petticoats,” said
Jim, disconsolately.

“Why, Jim, what’s up?” asked Langford, in amused surprise.

But Jim only turned and walked away with his head in the air. The
serpent was leering at him.

CHAPTER VIII

THE COUNTY ATTORNEY

“I too am going to Wind City,” said a pleasant voice at her side. “You
will let me help you with your things, will you not?”

The slender girl standing before the ticket window, stuffing change into
her coin purse, turned quickly.

“Why, Mr. Gordon,” she said, holding out a small hand with frank
pleasure. “How very nice! Thank you, will you take my rain-coat? It has
been such a bother. I would bring it right in the face of Uncle
Hammond’s objections. He said it never rained out this way. But I surely
have suffered a plenty for my waywardness. Don’t you think so?”

“It behooves a tenderfoot like you to sit and diligently learn of such
experienced and toughened old-timers as we are, rather than flaunt your
untried ideas in our faces,” responded Gordon, with a smile that
transformed the keen gray eyes of this man of much labor, much lofty
ambition, and much sorrow, so that they seemed for the moment strangely
young, laughing, untroubled; as clear of taint of evil knowledge as the
source of a stream leaping joyously into the sunlight from some mountain
solitude. It was a revelation to Louise.

“I will try to be a good and diligent seeker after knowledge of this
strange land of yours,” she answered, with a little laugh half of
embarrassment, half of enjoyment of this play of nonsense, and leading
the way to her suit-case and Mary outside. “When I make mistakes, will
you tell me about them? Down East, you know, our feet travel in the
ancient, prescribed circles of our forefathers, and they are apt to go
somewhat uncertainly if thrust into new paths.”

And this laughing, clever girl had cried with homesickness! Well, no
wonder. The worst of it was, she could never hope to be acclimated. She
was not—their kind. Sooner or later she must go back to God’s country.

To her surprise, Gordon, though he laughed softly for a moment, answered
rather gravely.

“If my somewhat niggardly fate should grant me that good fortune, that I
may do something for you, I ask that you be not afraid to trust to my
help. It would not be half-hearted—I assure you.”

She looked up at him gratefully. His shoulders, slightly stooped,
betokening the grind at college and the burden-bearing in later years,
instead of suggesting any inherent weakness in the man, rather inspired
her with an intuitive faith in their quiet, unswerving, utter
trustworthiness.

“Thank you,” she said, simply. “I am so glad they did not hurt you much
that day in the court-room. We worried—Mary and I.”

“Thank you. There was not the least danger. They were merely venting
their spite on me. They would not have dared more.”

There is always a crowd at the Velpen station for outgoing or incoming
trains. This meeting of trains is one of the dissipations of its
people—and an eminently respectable dissipation. It was early—the
eastbound leaves at something past eight—yet there were many people on
the platform who did not seem to be going anywhere. They were after such
stray worms as always fell to the lot of the proverbial early bird. The
particular worm in question that morning was the new girl court
reporter, homeward bound. Many were making the excuse of mailing belated
letters. Mary was standing guard over the suit-case and umbrella near
the last car. She seemed strangely alone and aloof standing there, the
gravity of the silent prairie a palpable atmosphere about her.

“There’s my brakeman,” said Louise, when she and Gordon had found a seat
near the rear. Mary had gone and a brakeman had swung onto the last car
as it glided past the platform, and came down the aisle with a grin of
recognition for his “little white lamb.”

“How nice it all seems, just as if I had been gone months instead of
days and was coming home again. It would be funny if I should be
homesick for the range when I get to Wind City, wouldn’t it?”

“Let us pray assiduously that it may be so,” answered Gordon, with one
of his rare smiles. He busied himself a moment in stowing away her
belongings to the best advantage. “It gets in one’s blood,—how or when,
one never knows.”

They rode in silence for a while.

“Tell me about your big fight,” said Louise, presently. The road-bed was
fairly good, and they were spinning along on a down grade. He must needs
bend closer to hear her.

She was good to look at, fair and sweet, and it had been weary years
since women had come close to Gordon’s life. In the old college days,
before this hard, disappointing, unequal fight against the dominant
forces of greed, against tolerance of might overcoming right, had begun
to sap his vitality, he had gone too deeply into his studies to have
much time left for the gayeties and gallantries of the social side in
university life. He had not been popular with women. They did not know
him. Yet, though dubbed a “dig” by his fellow-collegians, the men liked
him. They liked him for his trustworthiness, admired him for his rugged
honesty, desired his friendship for the inspiration of his high ideals.

The memory of these friendships with men had been an ever-present source
of strength and comfort to him in these later years of his busy life.
Yet of late he had felt himself growing calloused and tired. The
enthusiasm of his younger manhood was falling from him somewhat, and he
had been but six years out of the university. But it was all so
hopeless, so bitterly futile, this moral fight of one man to stay the
mind-bewildering and heart-sickening ceaseless round of wheels of open
crime and official chicanery. Was the river bridged? And what of the
straw? His name was a joke in the cattle country, a joke to horse thief,
a joke to sheriff. Its synonym was impotency among the law-abiders who
were yet political cowards. What was the use? What could a man do—one
man, when a fair jury was a dream, when ballots were so folded that the
clerk, drawing, might know which to select in order to obtain a jury
that would stand pat with the cattle rustlers? Much brain and brawn had
been thrown away in the unequal struggle. Let it pass. Was there any
further use?

Then a woman came to him in his dark hour. His was a stubborn and
fighting blood, a blood that would never cry “enough” till it ceased to
flow. Yet what a comforting thing it was that this woman, Louise, should
be beside him, this woman who knew and who understood. For when she
lifted those tender gray eyes and asked him of his big fight, he knew
she understood. There was no need of explanation, of apology, for all
the failure of all these years. A warm gratitude swept across his heart.
And she was so neat and sweet and fair, unspoiled by constant contact
with, and intimate knowledge of, the life of the under world; rather was
she touched to a wonderful sympathy of understanding. It was good to
know such a woman; it would be better to be a friend of such a woman; it
would be best of all to love such a woman—if one dared.

“What shall I talk about, Miss Dale? It is all very prosaic and
uninteresting, I’m afraid; shockingly primitive, glaringly new.”

“I breakfasted with a stanch friend of yours this morning,” answered
Louise, somewhat irrelevantly. She had a feeling—a woman’s feeling—that
this earnest, hard-working, reserved man would never blurt out things
about himself with the bland self-centredness of most men. She must use
all her woman’s wit to draw him out. She did not know yet that he was
starved for sympathy—for understanding. She could not know yet that two
affinities had drifted through space—near together. A feathery zephyr,
blowing where it listed, might widen the space between to an infinity of
distance so that they might never know how nearly they had once met; or
it might, as its whim dictated, blow them together so that for weal or
for woe they would know each the other.

“Mrs. Higgins, at the Bon Ami,” she continued, smiling. “I was so hungry
when we got to Velpen, though I had eaten a tremendous breakfast at the
Lazy S. But five o’clock is an unholy hour at which to eat one’s
breakfast, isn’t it, and I just couldn’t help getting hungry all over
again. So I persuaded Mary to stop for another cup of coffee. It is
ridiculous the way I eat in your country.”

“It is a good country,” he said, soberly.

“It must be—if you can say so.”

“Because I have failed, shall I cry out that law cannot be enforced in
Kemah County? Sometimes—may it be soon—there will come a man big enough
to make the law triumphant. He will not be I.”

He was still smarting from his many set-backs. He had worked hard and
had accomplished nothing. At the last term of court, though many cases
were tried, he had not secured one conviction.

“We shall see,” said Louise, softly. Her look, straight into his eyes,
was a glint of sunlight in dark places. Then she laughed.

“Mrs. Higgins said to me: ‘Jimmie Mac hain’t got the sense he was born
with. His little, dried-up brain ’d rattle ’round in a mustard seed and
he’s gettin’ shet o’ that little so fast it makes my head swim.’ She was
telling about times when he hadn’t acted just fair to you. I am
glad—from all I hear—that this was taken out of his hands.”

“I can count my friends, the real ones, on one hand, I’m afraid,” said
Gordon, with a good-humored smile; “and Mrs. Higgins surely is the
thumb.”

“I am glad you smiled,” said Louise. “That would have sounded so bitter
if you had not.”

“I couldn’t help smiling. You—you have such a way, Miss Dale.”

It was blunt but it rang true.

“It is true, though, about my friends. If I could convict—Jesse Black,
for instance,—a million friends would call me blessed. But I can’t do it
alone. They will not do it; they will not help me do it; they despise me
because I can’t do it, and swear at me because I try to do it—and there
you have the whole situation in a nutshell, Miss Dale.”

The sun struck across her face. He reached over and lowered the blind.

“Thank you. But it is ‘’vantage in’ now, is it not? You will get justice
before Uncle Hammond.”

Unconsciously his shoulders straightened.

“Yes, Miss Dale, it is ‘’vantage in.’ One of two things will come to
pass. I shall send Jesse Black over or—” he paused. His eyes, unseeing,
were fixed on the gliding landscape as it appeared in rectangular spots
through the window in front of them.

“Yes. Or—” prompted Louise, softly.

“Never mind. It is of no consequence,” he said, abruptly. “No fear of
Judge Dale. Juries are my Waterloo.”

“Is it, then, such a nest of cowards?” cried Louise, intense scorn in
her clear voice.

“Yes,” deliberately. “Men are afraid of retaliation—those who are not
actually blood-guilty, as you might say. And who can say who is and who
is not? But he will be sent over this time. Paul Langford is on his
trail. Give me two men like Langford and that anachronism—an honest man
west of the river—Williston, and you can have the rest, sheriff and
all.”

“Mr. Williston—he has been unfortunate, has he not? He is such a
gentleman, and a scholar, surely.”

“Surely. He is one of the finest fellows I know. A man of the most
sensitive honor. If such a thing can be, I should say he is too honest,
for his own good. A man can be, you know. There is nothing in the world
that cannot be overdone.”

She looked at him earnestly. His eyes did not shift. She was satisfied.

“Your work belies your words,” she said, quietly.

Dust and cinders drifted in between the slats of the closed blind.
Putting her handkerchief to her lips, Louise looked at the dark streaks
on it with reproach.

“Your South Dakota dirt is so—black,” she said, whimsically.

“Better black than yellow,” he retorted. “It looks cleaner, now, doesn’t
it?”

“Maybe you think my home a fit dwelling place for John Chinaman,” pouted
Louise.

“Yes—if that will persuade you that South Dakota is infinitely better.
Are you open to conviction?”

“Never! I should die if I had to stay here.”

“You will be going back—soon?”

“Some day, sure! Soon? Maybe. Oh, I wish I could. That part of me which
is like Uncle Hammond says, ‘Stay.’ But that other part of me which is
like the rest of us, says, ‘What’s the use? Go back to your kind. You’re
happier there. Why should you want to be different? What does it all
amount to?’ I am afraid I shall be weak enough and foolish enough to go
back and—stay.”

There was a stir in the forward part of the car. A man, hitherto sitting
quietly by the side of an alert wiry little fellow who sat next the
aisle, had attempted to bolt the car by springing over the empty seat in
front of him and making a dash for the door. It was daring, but in vain.
His companion, as agile as he, had seized him and forced him again into
his place before the rest of the passengers fully understood that the
attempt had really been made.

“Is he crazy? Are they taking him to Yankton?” asked Louise, the pretty
color all gone from her face. “Did he think to jump off the train?”

“That’s John Yellow Wolf, a young half-breed. He’s wanted up in the
Hills for cattle-rustling—United States Court case. That’s Johnson with
him, Deputy United States Marshal.”

“Poor fellow,” said Louise, pityingly.

“Don’t waste your sympathy on such as he. They are degenerates—many of
these half-breeds. They will swear to anything. They inherit all the
evils of the two races. Good never mixes. Yellow Wolf would swear
himself into everlasting torment for a pint of whiskey. You see my cause
of complaint? But never think, Miss Dale, that these poor chaps of
half-breeds, who are hardly responsible, are the only ones who are
willing to swear to damnable lies.” There was a tang of bitterness in
his voice. “Perjury, Miss Dale, perjury through fear or bribery or
self-interest, God knows what, it is there I must break, I suppose,
until the day of judgment, unless—I run away.”

Louise, through all the working of his smart and sting, felt the quiet
reserve strength of this man beside her, and, with a quick rush of
longing to do her part, her woman’s part of comforting and healing, she
put her hand, small, ungloved, on his rough coat sleeve.

“Is that what you meant a while ago? But you don’t mean it, do you? It
is bitter and you do not mean it. Tell me that you do not mean it, Mr.
Gordon, please,” she said, impulsively.

Smothering a wild impulse to keep the hand where it had lain such a
brief, palpitating while, Gordon remained silent. God only knows what
human longing he crushed down, what intense discouragement, what sick
desire to lay down his thankless task and flee to the uttermost parts of
the world to be away from the crying need he yet could not still. Then
he answered simply, “I did not mean it, Miss Dale.”

And then there did not seem to be anything to say between them for a
long while. The half-breed had settled down with stolid indifference.
People had resumed their newspapers and magazines and day dreams after
the fleeting excitement. It was very warm. Louise tried to create a
little breeze by flicking her somewhat begrimed handkerchief in front of
her face. Gordon took a newspaper from his pocket, folded it and fanned
her gently. He was not used to the little graces of life, perhaps, but
he did this well. An honest man and a kindly never goes far wrong in any
direction.

“You must not think, Miss Dale,” he said, seriously, “that it is all bad
up here. I am only selfish. I have been harping on my own little corner
of wickedness all the while. It is a good land. It will be better before
long.”

“When?” asked Louise.

“When we convict Jesse Black and when our Indian neighbors get over
their mania for divorce,” he answered, laughing softly.

Louise laughed merrily and so the journey ended as it had begun, with a
laugh and a jest.

In the Judge’s runabout, Louise held out her hand.

“I’m almost homesick,” she cried, smiling.

CHAPTER IX

THE ATTACK ON THE LAZY S

It was late. The August night was cool and sweet after a weary day of
intense heat. The door was thrown wide open. It was good to feel the
night air creeping into the stifling room. There was no light within;
and without, nothing but the brilliant stars in the quiet, brooding sky.
Williston was sitting just within the doorway. Mary, her hands clasped
idly around her knees, sat on the doorstep, thoughtfully staring out
into the still darkness. There was a stir.

“Bedtime, little girl,” said Williston.

“Just a minute more, daddy. Must we have a light? Think how the
mosquitoes will swarm. Let’s go to bed in the dark.”

“We will shut the door and next Summer, little girl, you shall have your
screens. I promise you that, always providing, of course, Jesse Black
leaves us alone.”

Had it not been so dark, Mary could have seen the wistful smile on the
thin, scholarly face. But though she could not see it, she knew it was
there. There had been fairer hopes and more generous promises in the
past few years. They had all gone the dreary way of impotent striving,
of bitter disappointment. There was little need of light for Mary to
read her father’s thoughts.

“Sure, daddy,” she answered, cheerily. “And I’ll see that you don’t
forget. As for Jesse Black, he wouldn’t dare with the Three Bars on his
trail. Well, if you must have a light, you must,” rising and stretching
her firm-fleshed young arms far over her head. “You can’t forget you
were born in civilization, can you, daddy? I am sure I could be your man
in the dark, if you’d let me, and I always turn your nightshirt right
side out before hanging it on your bedpost, and your sheet and spread
are turned down, and water right at hand. You funny, funny little
father, who can’t go to bed in the dark.” She was rummaging around a
shelf in search of matches. “Now, I have forgotten long since that I
wasn’t born on the plains. It wouldn’t hurt me if I had misplaced my
nightdress. I’ve done it,” with a gay little laugh. He must be cheered
up at all costs, this buffeted and disappointed but fine-minded,
high-strung, and lovable father of hers. “And I haven’t taken my hair
down nights since—oh, since months ago, till—oh, well—so you see it’s
easy enough for me to go to bed in the dark.”

Her hand touched the match box at last. A light flared out.

“Shut the door quick, dad,” she said, lighting the lamp on the table.
“The skeeters’ll eat us alive.”

Williston stepped to the door. Just a moment he stood there in the
doorway, the light streaming out into the night, tall, thoughtful, no
weakling in spite of many failures and many mistakes. A fair mark he
made, outlined against the brightly lighted room. It was quiet. Not even
a coyote shrilled. And while he stood there looking up at the calm
stars, a sudden sharp report rang out and the sacred peace of God,
written in the serenity of still summer nights, was desecrated. Hissing
and ominous, the bullet sang past Williston’s head, perilously near, and
lodged in the opposite wall. At that moment, the light was blown out. A
great presence of mind had come to Mary in the time of imminent danger.

“Good, my dear!” cried Williston, in low tones. Quick as a flash, the
door was slammed shut and bolted just as a second shot fell foul of it.

“Oh, my father!” cried Mary, groping her way to his side.

“Hush, my dear! They missed me clean. Don’t lose your nerve, Mary. They
won’t find it so easy after all.”

There had been no third shot. A profound silence followed the second
report. There was no sound of horse or man. Whence, then, the shots? One
man, maybe, creeping up like some foul beast of prey to strike in the
dark. Was he still lurking near, abiding another opportunity?

It took but a moment for Williston to have the rifles cocked and ready.
Mary took her own from him with a hand that trembled ever so slightly.

“What will you do, father?” she asked, holding her rifle lovingly and
thanking God in a swift, unformed thought for every rattlesnake or other
noxious creature whose life she had put out while doing her man’s work
of riding the range,—work which had given her not only a man’s courage
but a man’s skill as well.

“Take the back window, girl,” he answered, briefly. “I’ll take the
front. Stand to the side. Get used to the starlight and shoot every
shadow you see, especially if it moves. Keep track of your shots, don’t
waste an effort and don’t let anything creep up on you. They mustn’t get
near enough to fire the house.”

His voice was sharp and incisive. The drifting habit had fallen from
him, and he was his own master again.

Several heavy minutes dragged away without movement, without sound from
without. The ticking of the clock pressed on strained ears like ghastly
bell-tolling. Their eyes became accustomed to the darkness and, by the
dim starlight, they were able to distinguish the outlines of the
cattle-sheds, still, empty, black. Nothing moved out there.

“I think they’re frightened off,” said Mary at last, breathing more
freely. “They were probably just one, or they’d not have left. He knew
he missed you, or he would not have fired again. Do you think it was
Jesse?”

“Jesse would not have missed,” he said, grimly.

At that moment, a new sound broke the stillness, the whinny of a horse.
Reinforcement had approached within the shadow of the cattle-sheds.
Something moved out there at last.

“Daddy!” called Mary, in a choked whisper. “Come here—they are down at
the sheds.”

Williston stepped to the back window quickly.

“Change places,” he said, briefly.

“Daddy!”

“Yes?”

“Keep up your nerve,” she breathed between great heart-pumps.

“Surely! Do you the same, little comrade, and shoot to kill.”

There was a savage note in his last words. For himself, it did not
matter so much, but Mary—he pinned no false faith in any thought of
possible chivalrous intent on the part of the raiders to exempt his
daughter from the grim fate that awaited him. He had to deal with a
desperate man; there would be no clemency in this desperate man’s
retaliation.

To his quickened hearing came the sound of stealthy creeping. Something
moved directly in front of him, but some distance away. “Shoot every
shadow you see, especially if it moves,” were the fighting orders, and
his was the third shot of that night.

“Hell! I’ve got it in the leg!” cried a rough voice full of intense
anger and pain, and there were sounds of a precipitate retreat.

Out under protection of the long row of low-built sheds, other orders
were being tersely given and silently received.

“Now, men, I’ll shoot the first man of you who blubbers when he’s hit.
D’ye hear? There have been breaks enough in this affair already. I don’t
intend for that petticoat man and his pulin’ petticoat kid in there to
get any satisfaction out o’ this at all. Hear me?”

There was no response. None was needed.

Some shots found harmless lodgment in the outer walls of the shanty.
They were the result of an unavailing attempt to pick the window whence
Williston’s shot had come. Mary could not keep back a little womanish
gasp of nervous dread.

“Grip your nerve, Mary,” said her father. “That’s nothing—shooting from
down there. Just lie low and they can do nothing. Only watch, child,
watch! They must not creep up on us. Oh, for a moon!”

She did grip her nerve, and her hand ceased its trembling. In the
darkness, her eyes were big and solemn. Sometime, to-morrow, the
reaction would come, but to-night—

“Yes, father, keep up your own nerve,” she said, in a brave little voice
that made the man catch his breath in a sob.

Again the heavy minutes dragged away. At each of the two windows
crouched a tense figure, brain alert, eyes in iron control. It was a
frightful strain, this waiting game. Could one be sure nothing had
escaped one’s vigilance? Starlight was deceptive, and one’s eyes must
needs shift to keep the mastery over their little horizon. It might well
be that some one of those ghostly and hidden sentinels patrolling the
lonely homestead had wormed himself past staring eyeballs, crawling,
crawling, crawling; it might well be that at any moment a sudden light
flaring up from some corner would tell the tale of the end.

Now and then could be heard the soft thud of a hoof as some one rode to
execute an order. Occasionally, something moved out by the sheds. Such
movement, if discernible from the house, was sure to be followed on the
instant by a quick sharp remonstrance from Williston’s rifle. How long
could it last? Would his nerve wear away with the night? Could he keep
his will dominant? If so, he must drag his mind resolutely away from
that nerve-racking, still, and unseen creeping, creeping, creeping,
nearer and nearer. How the stillness weighed upon him, and still his
mind dwelt upon that sinuous, flat-bellied creeping, crawling, worming!
God, it was awful! He fought it desperately. He knew he was lost if he
could not stop thinking about it. The sweat came out in big beads on his
forehead, on his body; he prickled with the heat of the effort. Then it
left him—the awful horror—left him curiously cold, but steady of nerve
and with a will of iron and eyes, cat’s eyes, for their seeing in the
dark. Now that he was calm once more, he let himself weigh the chances
of succor. They were pitifully remote. The Lazy S was situated in a
lonely stretch of prairie land far from any direct trail. True, it lay
between Kemah, the county seat, and the Three Bars ranch, but it was a
good half mile from the straight route. Even so, it was a late hour for
any one to be passing by. It was not a travelled trail except for the
boys of the Three Bars, and they were known to be great home-stayers and
little given to spreeing. As for the rustlers, if rustlers they were,
they had no fear of interruption by the officers of the law, who held
their places by virtue of the insolent and arbitrary will of Jesse Black
and his brotherhood, and were now carousing in Kemah by virtue of the
hush-money put up by this same Secret Tribunal.

Yet now that Williston’s head was clear, he realized, with strengthening
confidence in the impregnability of their position, that two trusty
rifles behind barred doors are not so bad a defence after all,
especially when one took into consideration that, with the exception of
the sheds overlooking which he had chosen his position as the point of
greatest menace, and a small clump of half-grown cottonwoods by the
spring which Mary commanded from her window, there were no hiding places
to be utilized for this Indian mode of warfare. He could not know how
many desperadoes there were, but he reasoned well when he confided in
his belief that they would not readily trust themselves to the too
dangerous odds of the open space between. An open attack was not
probable. Vigilance, then, a never-lapsing vigilance that they be not
surprised, was the price of their salvation. What human power could do,
he would do, and trust Mary to do the same. She was a good girl and
true. She would do well. She had not yet shot. Surely, they would make
use of that good vantage ground of the cottonwood clump. Probably they
were even now making a detour to reach it.

“Watch, child, watch!” he said again, without in the least shifting his
tense position.

“Surely!” responded Mary, quite steadily.

Now was her time come. Dark, sinister figures flitted from tree to tree.
At first, she could not be sure, it was so heartlessly dark, but there
was movement—it was different from that terrible blank quiet which she
had hitherto been gazing upon till her eyes burned and pricked as with
needle points, and visionary things swam before them. She winked rapidly
to dispel the unreal and floating things, opened wide her longlashed
lids, fixed them, and—fired. Then Williston knew that his “little girl,”
his one ewe lamb, all that was left to him of a full and gracious past,
must go through what he had gone through, all that nameless horror and
expectant dread, and his heart cried out at the unholy injustice of it
all. He dared not go to her, dared not desert his post for an instant.
If one got within the shadow of the walls, all was lost.

Mary’s challenge was met with a rather hot return fire. It was probably
given to inspire the besieged with a due respect for the attackers’
numbers. Bullets pattered around the outside walls like hailstones, one
even whizzed through the window perilously near the girl’s intent young
face.

Silence came back to the night. There was no more movement. Yet down
there at the spring, something, maybe one of those dark, gaunt
cottonwoods, held death—death for her and death for her father. A stream
of icy coldness struck across her heart. She found herself calculating
in deliberation which tree it was that held this thing—death. The
biggest one, shadowing the spring, helping to keep the pool sweet and
cool where Paul Langford had galloped his horse that day when—ah! if
Paul Langford would only come now!

A wild, girlish hope flashed up in her heart. Langford would come—had he
not sworn it to her father? Had he not given his hand as a pledge? It
means something to shake hands in the cattle country. He was big and
brave and true. When he came, these awful, creeping terrors would
disperse—grim shadows that must steal away when morning comes. When he
came, she could put her rifle in his big, confident hands, lie down on
the floor and—cry. She wanted to cry—oh, how she did want to cry! If
Paul Langford would only come, she could cry. Cold reason came back to
her aid and dissipated the weak and womanish longing to give way to
tears. There was a pathetic droop to her mouth, a long, quivering,
sobbing sigh, and she buried her woman’s weakness right deeply and
stamped upon it. How utterly wild and foolish her brief hope had been!
Langford and all his men were sound in sleep long ago. How could he
know? Were the ruffians out there men to tell? Ah, no! There was no one
to know. It would all happen in the dark,—in awful loneliness, and there
would be no one to know until it was all over—to-morrow, maybe, or next
week, who could tell? They were off the main trail, few people ever
sought them out. There would be no one to know.

As her strained sight stared out into the darkness, it was borne to her
intuitively, it may be, that something was creeping up on her. She could
see nothing and yet knew it to be true. Every fibre of her being tingled
with the certainty of it. It was coming closer and closer. She felt it
like an actual presence. Her eyes shifted here, there—swept her
half-circle searchingly—stared and stared. Still nothing moved. And yet
the nearness of some unseen thing grew more and more palpable. If she
could not see it soon, she must scream aloud. She breathed in little
quickened gasps. Soon, very soon now, she would scream. Ah! A shadow
down by the biggest cottonwood! It boldly sought a nearer and a smaller
trunk. Another slinking shadow glided behind the vacated position. It
was a ghastly presentation of “Pussy-wants-a-corner” played in
nightmare. But at last it was something tangible,—something to do away
with that frightful sensation of that crawling, creeping, twisting,
worming, insinuating—nearer and nearer, so near now that it beat upon
her—unseen presence. She pressed her finger to the trigger to shoot at
the tangible shadows and dispel that enveloping, choking, blanket
horror, when God knows what stayed the muscular action of her fingers.
Call it instinct, what you will, her hand was stayed even before her
physical eye was caught and held by a blot darker still than the night,
over to her right, farthest from the spring. It lay perfectly still. It
came to her, the wily plan, with startling clearness. The blot was
waiting for her to fire futilely at grinning shadows among the trees
and, under cover of her engrossed attention, insinuate its treacherous
body the farther forward. Then the play would go merrily on till—the
end. She turned the barrel of her rifle slowly and deliberately away
from the moving shapes among the cottonwood clump, sighted truly the
motionless blur to her right, and fired, once, twice, three times.

The completeness of the surprise seemed to inspire the attackers with a
hellish fury. They returned the fire rapidly and at will, remaining
under cover the while. Shrinking low at her window, her eyes glued on
the still black mass out yonder, Mary wondered if it were dead. She
prayed passionately that it might be, and yet—it is a dreadful thing to
kill. Once more the wild firing ceased. Mary responded once or twice
just to keep the deadly chill from returning—if that were possible.

Under cover of the desperadoes’ fire, at obtuse angles with the first
attempt, a second blot began its tortuous twisting. It accomplished a
space, stopped; pulled itself its length, stopped, waited, watchful eyes
on the window whence came Mary’s scattered firing still into the clump
of trees. They had drawn her close regard at last. Would it hold out?
Forward again, crawling flat on the ground, ever advancing, slowly, very
slowly, but also very surely, creeping, creeping, creeping, now
stopping, now creeping, stopping, creeping.

All at once the gun play began again, sharp, quick, from the spring,
from the sheds. The blot lay perfectly still for a moment—waiting,
watching. The plucky little rifle was silent. But so it had been before.
Quarter length, half, whole length, cautiously with frequent stops, eyes
so steely, so intent—could it be possible that this gun was really
silenced—out of the race? It would not do to trust too much. The blot
waited, scarcely breathed, crept forward again.

A sudden bright light flashed up through the darkness under the
unprotected wall to Mary’s left. Almost simultaneously a kindred light
sprang into being from the region of the cattle-sheds. The men down
there had been waiting for this signal. It meant that for some reason
the second effort to creep up unobserved to fire the house had been
successful. The flare grew and spread. It became a glare.

When the whole cabin seemed to be in flames save the door,—the dry, rude
boarding had caught and burned like paper,—when the heat had become
unbearable, Williston held out his hand to his daughter, silently. As
silently she put her hand, her left hand, in his; nor did Williston
notice that it was her left, nor how limply her right arm hung to her
side. In the glare, her face shone colorless, but her dark eyes were
stars. Her head was held high. With firm step, Williston advanced to the
door. Deliberately he unbarred it, as deliberately threw it open, and
stepped over the threshold. They were covered on the instant by four
rifles.

“Drop your guns!” called the chief, roughly. Then the desperadoes moved
up.

“I take it that I am the one wanted,” said Williston.

His voice was calm and scholarly once more. In the uselessness of
further struggle, it had lost the sharp incisiveness that had been the
call to action. If one must die, it is good to die after a brave fight.
One is never a coward then. Williston’s face wore an almost exalted
look.

“My daughter is free to go?” he asked, his first words having met with
no response. Better, much better, for the make of a man like Williston
to die in the dignity of silence, but for Mary’s sake he parleyed.

“I guess not!” responded the leader, curtly. “If a pulin’ idiot hadn’t
missed the broadside of you—as pretty a mark this side heaven as man
could want,—then we might talk about the girl. She’s showed up too
damned much like a man now to let her loose.”

His big, shuffling form lounged in his saddle. He raised his rifle with
every appearance of lazy indifference. They were to be shot down where
they stood, now, right on the threshold of their burning homestead.

Williston bowed his head to the inevitable for a moment; then raised it
proudly to meet the inevitable.

A rifle shot rang out startlingly clear. At the very moment the leader’s
hawk’s eye had swept the sight, his rifle arm had twitched uncertainly,
then fallen nerveless to his side, while his bullet, playing a faltering
and discordant second to the first true shot, tore up the ground in
front of him and swerved harmlessly to one side. Instantly the wildest
confusion reigned,—shouts, curses, the plunging of horses mingled with
the sharp crack of fire-arms. The shooting was wild. The surprise was
too complete for the outlaws to recover at once. They had heard no sound
of approaching hoofbeats. The roaring flames licking up the dry lumber,
and rendering the surrounding darkness the blacker for the contrast, had
been of saving grace to the besiegers after all.

In a moment, the desperadoes rallied. They closed in and imposed a
cursing, malignant wall between the rescuers and the blazing door of the
shanty and what stood and lay before it. Mary had sunk down at her
father’s feet, and had no cognizance of the fierce though brief conflict
that ensued.

Presently, she was dragged roughly to her feet. A big, muscular arm had
heavy grasp of her.

“Make sure of the girl, Red!” commanded a sharp voice near, and it was
gone out into the night.

Afterward, she heard—oh, many, many times in the night watches—the eerie
galloping of horses’ hoofs, growing fainter and ever fainter, heard it
above the medley of trampling horses and yelling men, and knew it for
what it meant; but to-night—this evil night—she gave but one quick,
bewildered glance into the sinister face above her and in a soft,
shuddering voice breathed, “Please don’t,” and fainted.

CHAPTER X

IN WHICH THE X Y Z FIGURES SOMEWHAT MYSTERIOUSLY

Jim Munson, riding his pony over the home trail at a slow walk, drooped
sleepily in his saddle. It was not a weirdly late bedtime, half-past
ten, maybe, but he would have been sleeping soundly a good hour or more
had this not been his night to go to town—if he chose. He had chosen. He
would not have missed his chance for a good deal. But his dissipation
had been light. The Boss never tolerated much along that line. He had
drunk with some congenial cronies from the Circle E outfit complimentary
to the future well-being and increasing wealth of this already
well-known and flourishing cattle ranch. Of course he must drink a
return compliment to the same rose-colored prosperity for the Three
Bars, which he did and sighed for more. That made two, and two were the
limit, and here was the limit overreached already; for there had always
to be a last little comforter to keep him from nodding in his saddle.

Before the time arrived for that, there were some errands to be executed
for the boys on duty at the home ranch. These necessitated a call at the
post-office, the purchase of several slabs of plug tobacco, some
corn-cob pipes, and some writing material for Kin Lathrop. He must not
forget the baking powder for the cook. Woe to him, Munson, if there were
no biscuits for breakfast. Meanwhile he must not neglect to gather what
little news was going. That would be a crime as heinous as the
forgetting of the baking powder. But there didn’t seem to be anything
doing to-night. Only the sheriff was playing again behind the curtain.
Couldn’t fool him. Damned hypocrite!

The errands accomplished to his satisfaction and nothing forgotten, as
frequent and close inspection of the list written out by the Scribe
proved, his comforter swallowed, lingeringly, and regretfully, he was
now riding homeward, drowsy but vastly contented with the world in
general and particularly with his own lot therein. It was a sleepy
night, cool and soft and still. He could walk his horse all the way if
he wanted to. There was no haste. The boys would all be in bed. They
would not even wait up for the mail, knowing his, Jim’s, innate aversion
to hurry. Had he not been so drowsy, he would like to have sung a bit;
but it required a little too much effort. He would just plod along.

Must all be in bed at Williston’s—no light anywhere. A little short of
where the Williston branch left the main trail, he half paused. If it
were not so late, he would ride up and give them a hail. But of course
they were asleep. Everything seemed still and dark about the premises.
He would just plod along.

“Hello, there! Where’d you come from?” he cried of a sudden, and before
he had had time to carry his resolve into action.

A man on horseback had drawn rein directly in front of him. Jim blinked
with the suddenness of the shock.

“Might ask you the same question,” responded the other with an easy
laugh. “I’m for town to see the doctor about my little girl. Been puny
for a week.”

“Oh! Where you from?” asked Jim, with the courteous interest of his
kind.

“New man on the X Y Z,” answered the other, lightly. “Must be gettin’
on. Worried about my baby girl.”

He touched spurs to his horse and was off with a friendly “So long,”
over his shoulder.

Jim rode on thoughtfully.

“Now don’t it beat the devil,” he was thinking, “how that there
cow-puncher struck this trail comin’ from the X Y Z—with the X Y Z clean
t’other side o’ town? Yep, it beats the devil, for a fac’. He must be a
ridin’ for his health. It beats the devil.” This last was long drawn
out. He rode a little farther. “It beats the devil,” he thought
again,—the wonder of it was waking him up,—“how that blamed fool could
a’ struck this here trail a goin’ for Doc.”

At the branch road he stopped irresolutely.

“It beats the devil—for a fac’.” He looked helplessly over his shoulder.
The man was beyond sight and sound. “If he hadn’t said he was goin’ for
Doc and belonged to the X Y Z,” he pondered. He was swearing because he
could not think of a way out of the maze of contradiction. He was so
seldom at a loss, this braggadocio Jim. “Well, I reckon I won’t get any
he’p a moonin’ here less’n I wait here till that son-of-a-gun comes back
from seein’ Doc. Lord, I’d have to camp out all night. Guess I’ll be a
movin’ on. But I’m plumb a-foot for an idee as to how that idjit got
here from the X Y Z.”

He shrugged his shoulders and picked up the fallen bridle-rein. He kept
on straight ahead, and it was well for him that he did so. It was not
the last of the affair. The old, prosaic trail seemed fairly bristling