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Roy Glashan's Library
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RGL Edition, 2025
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Western Story Magazine, 13 December 1924,
with "The Third Bullet"
IT was already the afterglow of the sunset time before Christopher Ballantine topped the hill that gave him a view of the house. He had no more than time to ride in, unsaddle, and wash, before supper would be on the table, but when he looked into the next hollow, in the muddy margin of the sun-shrunk "tank," he saw the head and horns of a badly bogged cow. This work should not have fallen to him. His brother, Will, back from college for the summer or for as great a part of it as he could endure, had been directed to ride the range near the house, and if he had acted according to his duty, he must have seen this bogged cow. But Will, as usual, had been playing truant.
A little flush of anger appeared in the face of Christopher. But it disappeared at once. He was too accustomed to doing his share of the work, and another share besides. He merely turned the head of his horse and rode down to the tank, making excuses for Will on the way. For, after all, when a boy comes back from college full of his athletic deeds on track and football field, full of tales of college eminence, clean-handed, high-headed, it is hard to put him on the range riding at the heels of stupid "doggies." No wonder that he had broken off work early.
Christopher Ballantine was used to making such excuses, both for his younger brother and his still younger sister. For, when his father died ten years before, Chris at the age of Sigh-teen had naturally stepped into the vacant place as the head of the family. Sylvia was only nine. Will was barely eleven. To those motherless and fatherless children, it seemed that the world owed special care to make up for their orphaned lives. And Chris Ballantine had taken that duty on himself, gladly, with a heart swelling with high determinations. He had put them both into schools. Now, with Sylvia at nineteen and Will at twenty-one, the elder brother could say with pride that they had been educated as well as any millionaire's children in the country.
If both of them had been pampered into pride and laziness, he dared not open his eyes to that fault, for the education of the two was the only result of the ten years of slavery which Chris Ballantine had just passed through. A series of disasters had swept over the ranch. At first they were caused by his inexperience, both in raising cattle and in marketing them. Afterward, when he learned the hard lessons which he needed to know, bad luck dogged him. Whatever he did went wrong. Three years before, blackleg had come like a curse on the place. The ranch had never recovered, and, left without a cent of incumbrance at the death of the father, the place was now heavily mortgaged. However, this was the price which had been paid for the education of the youngsters, and the elder brother felt more than repaid. It was therefore that he dared not open his eyes to their faults. For it simply meant opening his eyes to his own failure.
He rode down to the tank and set to work on the cow. First he unslipped his rope and shot the noose skillfully over the horns of the steer. But when the pony pulled the rope taut, it was plain that the steer was so deeply worked into the mud that its neck would break before it was drawn clear.
He had to ride right to the edge of the firm land. First he pulled at the horns of the bogged animal until its fore quarters were drawn up a little. Then he passed the tail over the pommel of the saddle and made the snorting cow pony heave up the hind quarters. When that was accomplished, he took another pull on the rope. This time the steer drew clear, slowly, with infinite tugging. For it let its exhausted body lie as a dead weight, hopeless, until it was in a half-leg depth of the mud. Then, discovering that it had a chance for life, it recovered its strength in a rush, plunged out of the tank, and made at Chris with lowered horns. There was barely enough agility left in the legs of the weary pony to avoid that rush.
And while the rescued steer galloped clumsily away, the rancher turned back toward the house, littered with mud, but profoundly thankful. So sadly had the herd diminished that the loss of a single steer was a heavy blow.
All of this made him late for supper, and when he had finished washing up and scraping mud, the cook met him with a significant shrug of the shoulders as he passed through the kitchen.
"They couldn't wait," said she, jerking a thumb over her shoulder toward the dining room.
Ballantine flushed again. It was very hard that they could not delay their supper half an hour on his account! He had to pause at the door of the dining room, for an instant, before he went in. But, when he appeared, he managed to be wearing a cheerful smile. They were down to coffee and cake. But as for an apology, it did not occur to them that one was needed. Sylvia merely nodded wearily toward him, and then looked at the mud stains with which he was covered.
"Well," said Will, "been day dreaming again? You're an hour late!"
He was too tired to be angry. His plate was brought in from the kitchen, covered with cold, soggy food. And he started eating with no appetite.
"There was a cow in the tank just over the hill," said Ballantine. "Me and the hoss had a tussle pullin' it out."
"You and the which?" asked Sylvia.
"Me and the hoss, of course."
"'Hoss?'" said Sylvia, arching her brows. "'Hoss?'"
"What's the matter?"
Will and Sylvia exchanged glances.
"It's no use," said Will. "The habits are fixed on him by this time."
"But good heavens, Christopher," said his sister, "I should think that you could make some effort."
"To do what?" asked Ballantine blankly.
"To talk as if the English language were something more than a cow-puncher's lingo, Christopher."
He stared at her for a moment. She looked very pretty with this flush of indignation in her cheeks, and with her eyes bright with anger and scorn. He felt a little stab of wonder then, as he had often felt it before, that this lovely-girl could actually be his sister. She was like dew touching his dusty life. And again he swallowed the faint beginnings of anger at her rebuke.
"Well, sis," he said, "maybe I don't talk the way Shakespeare, wrote. I ain't got the time to think about such things."
"Why?" she asked insistently.
"Why? Because it takes work to run a ranch like this, sis."
"Does it? Yes, I suppose so—to run such a ranch properly."
He winced again; then he looked straight down at his plate, hoping that they would not see his rising color. But, from the corner of his eye, he could make out the malicious little smile and nod with which Will egged on his sister to the work of torment. That, surely, was hardly fair.
"I ain't gunna pretend to be the best rancher in the world, Sylvia," he said at last, mildly.
She said: "I was talking to Mr. Bannock this afternoon."
"You was? What did old Si have to say?"
"Old Si," she snapped out, "is a very successful operator in cattle, I believe."
"He's a lucky dog," admitted Christopher Ballantine. "Lucky, lucky dog!"
He was thinking of all the calamities which had dropped upon the ranch and upon his life. He did not see the small, dark dining room, only half lighted by the flame which quivered in the throat of the smoky lamp. He did not see the very table itself, with its oilcloth covering, and the heavy, chipped crockery with which it was covered. He was watching the years, the dead years behind him. As for the future, it would all be like this—work, weariness, despair, until Will Ballantine, with his well-schooled brain, made some brilliant business stroke and was able to set him up on a larger scale.
"Lucky?" Sylvia was saying. "Lucky, Christopher? Then I suppose that you've been only—unlucky?"
He started out of his dream. "What's that, sis?" he asked hurriedly. "What's that?"
And he leaned anxiously toward her, his elbows resting on the edge of the table, which threw back his wide shoulders and made the great, smooth-swelling muscles stand out across his back.
She did not answer him, She had turned a little pale; she was sitting stiffly in her chair; now, instead of regarding Christopher, she was staring straight at Will as one who would say: "I have started it; now come in and finish it. I can't go any further."
"Chris," said Will suddenly, pushing back his chair and turning a little upon his brother, "it was from Mr. Bannock that we heard some very important news to-day."
"I hope it ain't as bad as the way you look, Will."
"Maybe not bad to you. You seem to be accustomed to such things. But it seemed very bad to Sylvia and me. What he had to say was simply that there is another mortgage on the ranch!"
Christopher Ballantine twisted a little in his chair, with the stinging pain of that accusation. He shoved away his plate, for food had turned repulsive to him.
"Well, Sylvia," he murmured, "I guess that there ain't any other way out of it than to tell you about it all."
"I hope not," said the girl dryly. "I hope that we have a sufficient interest in the ranch to make it our right!"
In that cold remark there were so; many implications, so many connotations, that Christopher simply dared not', consider them. There was such a blank and brutal accusation that he could not face it. His courage failed him utterly.
It was not from Sylvia alone. Another blow to match it came from the other side.
"After all," said Will, brought to the point by his sister's speeches, "one need not dodge the truth. Our share in the ranch is just as great as yours is, Chris. We're each a third owner."
"Did Bannock put that into your heads?" asked Ballantine.
"We'd had it in mind long ago. Even we could see how things were going on the ranch—though heaven knows you've never told us much!"
This was from Will again.
IT had come pouring down upon the head of Ballantine so swiftly and so without warning that he could not comprehend. All he knew was that he was in a great trouble, the greatest of his life. But still he refused to examine the truth as it was presented to him. To do that meant to see that he had thrown away ten years of his life, and no man can do such a thing as that lightly.
"I've told you all I thought that you needed to know." said Ballantine.
"I understand," broke in Will coldly, swelling with his suppressed anger, "that the ranch is now mortgaged for more than it would bring for cash in a quick sale."
"Bannock told you that?"
"Never mind who told me. Is it true?"
"I dunno," said Ballantine sadly. "Maybe it is. Maybe it is!"
"Oh, Chris!" cried the girl. "What have you done with the money? What have you done with it?"
His eyes widened as he looked back at her. What had he done with the money? And this from her?
"Why not make a clean breast of it all?" asked Will in his newfound, sharp-edged voice. "You've been playing the market or something like that, Chris. Come out and let's know the whole truth!"
Speech was impossible, and the head of Ballantine sank on his breast.
"You see?" said the girl with an eager savageness that made her older brother wince again. "He practically confesses. It's exactly as I thought. For where could it have gone? Heaven knows that we haven't cost the estate a great deal—just a little every year for our schooling. And while you had us out of the way, Christopher—while you were here as the absolute master of our ranch, what have you been doing?"
Ballantine rose from his chair and turned blindly toward the door.
"That won't do!" snapped out Will. "You mustn't sneak out like that. Stand up like a man and tell us the worst of it, Chris. Confession is good for the soul."
The light he was forced to face was a torture to him, but it was nothing compared with the savage intentness in the faces of the two before him.
"It's been just bad luck," he muttered.
"Not stupidity? Nothing wrong about anything? Just bad luck?" asked Sylvia through stiff lips.
"So that Sylvia, poor girl, and I—are to be beggared? In the very beginning of life—beggared!"
"I've done my best with the place," said Ballantine, hardly recognizing his own voice. "I swear I've done my best. But things have turned out bad!"
"Look here, Chris," said his brother, smashing his fist into the palm of his other hand, "these generalizations won't do! We have to know the truth and the whole truth."
"Will, when father died, somebody had to take charge. Who was there except me?"
"Who asked you to do it? Why couldn't a competent man have been given the work? Heaven knows it would have paid us in the end!"
"Hush!" cried Sylvia. "There are tears in his eyes! There's no use talking to him now, Will."
So Ballantine was allowed to escape. He staggered through the kitchen, and in the withered, twisted, cunning face of the cook he could see that she had been listening and had overheard everything. And this, in turn, meant that the entire range would know about the scene in a week, at the most. For her busy tongue could never be still when it had such a theme as this to contend with.
He went out into the dark, breathing—deeply, and he rested one hand against the corner of the house. Still, through the open window, their raised voices came shamelessly forth to him.
"By heavens, Sylvia, there were tears in his eyes!"
"Like a whipped puppy."
"He would have been blubbering in another moment."
"My heavens, is there no backbone in him? What a shameful thing to have in the family—to call brother!"
"Hush, Will!"
"What do I care if he hears? He's ruined my life—or come close to it. Can I enter a law firm this fall in New York and hold up my end socially without a penny to live on except the paltry two thousand a year that he sends me?"
"What about me, Will?"
"It's the devil of a situation for both of us, but a girl doesn't have to have so—"
"Will, you talk like a wild man! Doesn't have to have so much? Go into any decent shop on Fifth Avenue and see what clothes for a girl cost. I don't mean extravagant ones, but just plain frocks—"
"And fur coats like the one you bought last winter? Not extravagant?"
"Well, any one can tell you that a fur coat is a necessity in the East. They outwear simply dozens of cloth ones, and—you have a fur coat yourself!"
"I had to get it when Van Dyck Thompson asked me on that motor trip. That was a social opportunity I couldn't give up. You know that as well as I do! It's this soft-headed idiot who's been ruining the affairs of the family—"
But Ballantine could endure no more. He sneaked out to the haystack which stood behind the long cattle shed. Beside it he threw himself down on his back in the spill of chaff and hay which had dropped from the stack. There he lay, fighting the agony of grief and of shame which stormed through his heart, and watching the stars, and seeing them swirl into tangled lines of fire.
At length his vision cleared. The stars burned singly above him; his pulses stirred again with a regular beat. He arose and went into the house. He was perfectly calm when he came before the pair again.
"Now," he said, as they stared scowling at him, "I guess I got to put the cards on the table."
They looked at one another.
"It is only about ten years late, Christopher," said Sylvia. "But let's see what we have, by all means!"
"The Reddick bank has the mortgages. They'll tell you about them. But I want to tell you that I think Bannock was wrong. He wanted to buy that southeast half section last spring, and I wouldn't sell, because I wanted to keep father's place intact. Bannock has hated me ever since."
"The same size?" cried Sylvia. "A rotten shell with nothing in it! An oyster shell with the oyster gone. What good is that?"
"What good is that?" echoed Will.
The elder brother looked gloomily from face to face. There was no use trying to close his eyes to it now. The facts were thrust into his mind against his will or with it. Their own voices were proclaiming them. They were equally vain, senseless. And this was the result of his ten years of work!
"Looks to me," said he, "that you both got some main line in mind. You got the law in mind, Will."
"I even have the firm lined up. Crazy to get me, so they say—I don't know why, of course. But they want me. One of the finest firms in New York. Ready for me this fall. But Heaven knows how I can do it on two thousand a year. Can you raise that to three thousand, Chris?"
"One minute, if you please!" put in the girl. "I suppose that I have some rights, or are the men in the family to have everything?"
"I want to know what you want, sis?" asked the older brother.
"I want six months," said Sylvia with a toss of her head. "I want six months to do my piece of work, and do it well. I'm not one of the old-fashioned, sentimental, milk-and-water girls. I'm twentieth century, thank the heavens! And I have wits enough to realize that there is only one thing that's worth while. It's the thing that the men are after—money! I can't earn it. But I can marry it! Christopher, I have the social footing established. I can meet money. And in six months I'll marry it and bring it home sewed up in a bag! But I need living expenses—five hundred a month is all I need for six months. If I don't win by that time, I give up all claims on the ranch!"
Ballantine could not look into her face. He could not look into his own soul, hearing such words from his own sister. But he thought of the ten years of his wasted young life, and an agony rose in him.
"I think," he said huskily, "that I can raise five thousand with a last mortgage. That would give twenty-five hundred to each of you. Is that a bargain?"
"A bargain!" cried Will. "If I don't make good in a year, I'll call myself a fool!"
"It's not enough," said Sylvia critically. "But I suppose that I could make it do! When do I get the money?"
"To-morrow, if the bank will close the deal with me."
"Good boy, Chris. Then we won't have to spend the rest of the summer on this damnable ranch! Go in the morning!"
Ballantine went out again into the dark. He sat on the chopping block and there rested his chin on his fist and tried to think, but could not. Sylvia came out to him and dropped a hand on his shoulder.
"Maybe we talked pretty straight, Christopher," she said. "But words don't draw blood!"
"Don't they?" murmured Ballantine.
"Of course not. You'll forget about all this in a month. But now I want to tell you, Christopher, that if you could give me three thousand and Will only two, it will really be worth while. Of course, when I marry, I don't intend to get some small fish out of the pond. I intend millions, Christopher. And after I have it, the purse will be open to you. You understand?"
In five minutes after she left, Will was with him.
"Of course I couldn't say anything while she was there without hurting her feelings. But really, Chris, you understand that twenty-five hundred for a girl is ridiculous. They're invited places. They don't have to pay for two, the way a man does. Fifteen hundred would be oceans for Sylvia. And besides, she won't have any tuition to pay this fall!"
HE dared not consult the evidence of his senses—of his ears which had drunk in the vain, cruel, selfish words of his brother and sister—of his eyes, which had witnessed their sneering-looks, their open contempt for him.
Through that night Ballantine sat in a deep dream, half sleeping, half waking, and, before the morning, he had crucified himself on the cross of self-abnegation.
For, he said to himself, what they declared was the truth. If he had been a clever rancher from the first, he could have made such a profit from the ranch that there would never have been any financial worries. And yet, during the past years, he had poured such a quantity of money upon the two, that he could not but doubt. They were a desert upon which a golden tide was visible only a moment before it sank from sight. They remembered now and spoke to him only of the actual cash allowance which he had made to them. But there were always e xtras. There were always bits which must be provided for. There were such things as the fur coat for Will before he made the automobile trip, and the fur coat for Sylvia on a similar occasion. Always they were pressing ahead, eager, insatiable, with their eyes bent upon a higher social position. And, after all, even with the best of times and the best of good management, it had never been a very great thing, this ranch.
It had kept Ballantine, his wife, and their three children, very comfortably, but the elder Ballantine had never contemplated anything so dashing as this project of sending the two younger offspring away to expensive private schools and then to great Eastern universities. A homely public school, a high school course, and then he would have sent them into the world. Too much education, he was fond of saying, was a poison for the mind.
Perhaps he was right. 'Perhaps, after all, in his desire to help them, Ballantine had simply ruined them. If they had received only what their own father thought best for them, they would have turned into very gentle, generous, open-hearted persons, but he, a boy of eighteen, had presumed to know better what they were fitted for. This was the result.
He had thrown away ten years of labor; he had poured forth all the efforts of his body and his brain for them; he had educated them perfectly; he had prepared them-for advanced positions in the world; but at the same time he had ruined the ranch in so doing, and he had won hot even their gratitude!
To be sinned against is infuriating; but to have the sinner fail to recognize his guilt is maddening. But Ballantine was not maddened. Going patiently over the affair, he decided that, after all, he was so deeply in the wrong that he must not strike back. He must never strike back, indeed! His hands were tied. The world was his creditor.
He went to bed, at last, in the early morning, and by that time, in his exhausted brain, there remained only a dim wonder—a wonder that God could permit a man to struggle so desperately, so honestly, and with so little effective gain!
He was soundly asleep only two hours when he was wakened, without the need of an alarm clock, by the flood of the earliest morning light. He got up at once, bathed, and dressed. Then he went down to the kitchen where the cook had not yet arrived, ate a slice of bread and butter, drank a glass of milk, and was ready to work until noon!
He took a mild comfort in that knowledge of his own peerless physical resources. He could do the work, of two or three men and he could keep it up from dawn to dark. Exertion did not weary him, apparently, and by the immense labors of these last ten years, his tremendous natural strength had been turned into flexible steel. He was clad with the powers of a giant. And-now, in the beginning of this day, as he hurried forth to the corrals, he thought of his strength with a faint glow of satisfaction.
Presently he had saddled and mounted a horse. Only when he was forced to ride to town did the pinch of penury really torment him, but when the pinch came, it was a bitter thing. He had only one passion, and that was the love of horseflesh. To have controlled some dancing, high-headed, fire-eyed stallion, trembling with speed and with deviltry, would have been a perfect delight to him. But he could not afford such a luxury as this. He must content himself with a string of common nags, greatly overworked, grudging the pitiful amount of work which they were forced to drag through, and always ungrateful to the eye. He picked out a tough roan on this morning. It was the ugliest of all his string, but it was also the strongest, and therefore it had endured the labors of the spring and summer better than the rest of the horses. At the present moment, taking condition into consideration, it was much the most pleasing to the eye.
On this he trotted away toward the town. He would have liked to have his horse bounding away at full speed, rushing hard against the bit. But he was forced to content himself with this plebeian dog trot. It covered the ground slowly. The sun rose higher. The withering heat began. The sweat began to start out of the body of the roan. The stench of his perspiration was ever in the nostrils of his rider. And still he worked patiently on.
He paused at mid-morning, fighting a fierce temptation in his blood. Then he swerved irresolutely to the side and entered a by-lane off the main road. It carried him to a pasture behind a big house on a hillside, a house pleasantly shrouded with trees, with huge barns and sheds with painted roofs, spread over the lower hollow. The Holbrook place was famous over the entire range for its beauty and for its comforts.
And here, by lucky chance, were the two people whom he loved more than he loved any others in the world. Old Tom Holbrook, in spite of his wealth, had never held him away at arm's length, and Peggy Holbrook was to Ballantine all that is delightful, all that is serenely sweet in womanhood. He did not love her; he worshiped her.
They were standing under the poplars by the edge of the pasture, watching the big stallion, "Overland." It was Ballantine himself who had named the horse when Mr. Holbrook bought the animal as a two-year old, for the sake of ultimately improving the breed of his saddle horses. Because, as Ballantine had said when he first saw the horse run through the fields, he went 'like the overland itself, with an eye of fire, a rush of thundering hoofs, and blinding speed that made the fluid miles pour behind him.
They were sufficiently gloomy. When Ballantine came up, they greeted him with a sigh and a nod.
"What's wrong?" he asked. "Has something happened to Overland?"
The stallion heard that voice uttering his name and wheeled suddenly in the pasture with a snort, tossing up his shining black head, and then along the sleekness of his side, Ballantine saw the dark impress where a saddle had recently rested and where the sweat had gathered under the blanket.
"You see, dad?" said the girl.
"See what?" snapped out Mr. Holbrook in a very evil temper.
"The way he answers when Chris speaks. Chris can even call, and he'll come! I've seen it!"
The rancher grunted. "How the devil have you managed that?" he asked.
"Oh, I have the time," said Christopher Ballantine. "Time ain't much to me, you know. I only use up about twenty-four hours a day. The rest of the time I'm over here with Overland."
"It's not the time he spends with Overland. It's his way. You know, dad, that there's only one man really, for every girl; and there's only one master, really, for every horse."
"Bosh!" said the rancher. "Infernal bosh! But tell me, Chris, can you actually make that high-headed fool come to you?"
For answer, Ballantine stepped to the fence and whistled. The stallion hesitated. Then he came with a mincing step, uncertain but eager, toward Ballantine.
"This is strange'" exclaimed Holbrook. "Mind yourself, man, or he'll take your head off!"
Ballantine grinned, and, turning his back on the approaching horse, faced Holbrook as he answered.
"There's no danger. He won't harm me."
The horse, in fact, coming up behind Ballantine, offered him no harm whatever, but reaching over the fence began to nose at his coat pockets, and finding nothing there to his liking, he put one ear back in anger and one forward with a glint of coltish mischief in his eye. Then he twitched off the hat of Ballantine with a touch of his long, prehensile upper lip.
"You see, dad! Just what I told you!" cried Peggy Holbrook.
"A remarkable thing!" repeated he. "What have you done to the brute in this month while I was away?"
"I've come over near every night. That's all. And he's used to me. Patience is all it takes."
"Patience? Patience?" shouted Mr. Holbrook. "Bah! I've wasted two years on that idiot. No, sir, there's something odd in this! I suppose you'll be riding him one of these days?"
"Whenever you please," said Ballantine.
"Ha?"
"Chris!" cried the girl. "You don't mean—"
He was already through the fence.
"Don't, Chris!" she warned him. "You' re mad. Why, Charlie Pickett was here only an hour ago, and he lasted just a minute and a half on Overland!"
"Look at what he did!" answered Ballantine, shaking his head.
He pointed to welts along the flank of the stallion.
"The fool was fighting Overland; I'd as soon fight a nest full of tigers!"
"How would you manage to ride him, then?" asked Holbrook, scowling. "Let me see what you'd do. There's a saddle and bridle in the shed, yonder. Don't let that hold you back!"
"Chris!"
This from the girl in an accent of very real alarm.
"There's not a bit of danger," he said. "Not a bit. You see?"
He was still speaking when he laid hold on the mane of the big horse, made a short step beside him, and then swung onto his back. Upon the face of Mr. Holbrook appeared mingled horror and bewilderment. And the girl turned pale and doubled up her fists like a frightened child.
"Oh, Overland, good boy!" she whispered. "Don't hurt him!"
Overland tossed up his head, and by that gesture turned himself into a giant. He was a full sixteen hands and two inches, fitly limbed and fitly muscled for that height. He could have pulled a plow and looked fit for that work, from the bulging might of his quarters, except that the bone of the lower part of his legs was hampered by any coating of flesh, looking like finest hammered iron. And only the blood of the desert could have fathered that head of his, with the mystery of the far horizon still reflected from his great brave eyes.
For an instant he stood in this fashion—at attention, so to speak—then he flung himself into the air, his ears flattened, his head stretched forth, his back arched. In the very midst of his leap he seemed to recall that this was not a matter to be fought out. He landed as lightly as a feather, in full galloping stride and swung away through the pasture. And there sat Christopher Ballantine leaning over his neck, guiding him, indeed, with merely the light pressure of his hand, and with the wind of the galloping blowing the mane straight back into his face. Like a thrown spear from a giant's hand, a flung javelin of polished ebony, Overland sped to the farther end of the pasture. There he swerved and came racing back. He heard the voice of his rider; he pricked his ears, lifted his head. He seemed to be considering the words with a man's intelligence. And so he slowed to a stop where he had begun, and Ballantine slipped to the ground.
"TEN thousand devils!" cried Mr. Holbrook. "That horse has been enchanted! I'll swear it!"
"Dear dad, you've sworn already!"
He brushed her objection aside. Without his oaths he felt like a naked man, or a dumb one.
"The old rascal has had his wits stolen from him, and you've done it, Ballantine. I have five hundred dollars for you, son, if you will do that with a saddle on him, too."
"Five hundred? For me?" said Ballantine.
The blood flooded into his face.
"I hope," said he, "that you're jokin', Mr. Holbrook."
"Is five hundred dollars a joke?" blurted out the rancher. "Since when, Chris?"
"Hush, dad, hush!" cried Peggy Holbrook, even stamping her foot in impatience that her father should not have perceived the root of Ballantine's embarrassment. "One can't pay a friend, I suppose?"
"A friend? Oh, I see what you're after. But, I tell you, I've had that offer standing for a year. Five hundred to any man who could ride him."
"It's worth five million in pleasure!" said Ballantine. "It is, sir!"
The rancher, studying the flushed, joyous face of the younger man, smiled and nodded.
"I believe you," he said. And he added slowly: "Ballantine, you love that brute, eh?"
"Like a man. More than a man!"
"I'll tell you what. For half of what I paid for him when he was a colt, I'll sell him to you. I paid two thousand for that horse, Ballantine. He's yours for a thousand!"
The eyes of Ballantine shone with a savage hunger. Then he shook his head.
"I can't afford it," he said.
A little embarrassed silence followed on this.
"Chris," broke out the girl, "how can you be so self-contained? Isn't there any impulse in you? Oh, if I wanted a horse as you want that one, I'd mortgage my soul for it!"
She was so pretty as she spoke, with her head in the air, and her hands clenched, that Ballantine looked on her with a dumb worship.
"Suppose that your soul wasn't your own?" he asked her.
"I don't know what you mean."
"Nobody would, I guess," sighed Ballantine.
The rancher turned away. "Think it over, my friend," said he. "A one-man horse like that ought to belong to the man who can ride him." And he went off whistling.
Christ turned to the girl and found that she was resting her elbows on the top of the fence, her abstracted gaze following the horse.
"I've never seen dad talk like that' before," she said.
"Like what?" he answered, quite at sea.
"He's not open-handed. Not a bit! But after all, it is impressive—what you've done with Overland. Chris, how did you manage to do it?"
"I don't know. Just bit by bit. Taking him gradual." r
"But you had to get in the corral with him, to begin with."
"Yes!"
"Weren't you afraid?"
He could see that she was conducting a little cross-examination of him for the sake of some hidden purpose. And her voice was so gentle, and all her air so intimate, so quietly kind, that a great vague hope rose up in Ballantine. It made him quiver through all those massive muscles which clad his body with power.
"I was afraid—sure!" he admitted.
"But you fought the fear down, Chris? Was it hard to do?"
"Mighty hard. It was like walking in to a tiger, at first."
"When did you do it?"
"There was a bright moonshine one night. I came over after supper and went into the corral."
"What did he do?"
"He rushed at me."
"And you jumped through the bars?"
"No, I stood quiet and waited for him."
"Chris!"
"I was too scared to move—I guess!"
"Oh!" she murmured, and there was just a shade of disappointment in her voice. "But it was a brave thing to do," she added, "just the same. You love him, Chris?"
"There's only one thing in the world that I love more."
"Oh, of course. Your brother and sister. But that's different."
"Not them," he said huskily.
She looked sharply over her shoulder at him.
"What else, then?"
"Peggy—" he began.
She whirled around on him. "Heavens, Chris, what's the matter?"
But he knew that she guessed what was to come; knew that he would have no success, and yet he could not help going on with it.
"It's you, Peggy."
A shade rippled over her face; then she broke into laughter. "Chris, Chris, what are you saying?"
"That I love you, Peggy. And you don't care a snap for me. I can see that. But I had to bust out with it and tell you."
He had turned limp with despair. But, all the while, her face was a study composed of mirth and sympathy and surprise.
"I don't mean to be harsh, Chris. But how could I ever have guessed it?"
"I dunno," said he slowly. "I guess you couldn't. Except that I been coming over here pretty near every week, for the last year."
"Were you coming to see me?"
"Yes."
"I thought if was dad—and the horses. Oh, Chris, I'm terribly complimented that you could care for me, but don't you see—somehow—it just couldn't be! I'm mighty sorry!"
"Will you do one thing for me?"
"Anything, almost, except that."
"Then forget what I've said to-day!"
"I shall, Chris. Do you have to go?"
"I'll be going along. So long, Peggy."
His last glimpse of her showed him a face still struggling with the same mirth, the same compassion, the same astonishment and scorn. And it seemed to Ballantine that he hardly had the strength to climb into the saddle on his horse. For in the past few minutes a mirror had been held up before him, and in that glass he beheld the image of himself which the rest of the world saw. To them he was a great hulking fool, a coward, a flabby piece of ineffectiveness. He could have endured everything he had seen in the girl's eyes except her scorn. But that stabbed him to the heart.
He was so tortured that he cried aloud: "Maybe they're right! Maybe I ain't no more'n worth that!"
The ears of his horse pricked at the sound of his voice. There was no other answer. Indeed, there was only a single rock of strength which supported him, and this was the sense that one creature understood him and loved him. That was Overland. The horse, at least, had found in him more to trust and to honor than in any other man. He took that strange comfort to his heart and went on, sick to the soul.
And he was bitterly shamed, also, that he should have exposed the state of his heart to the girl and been so casually rejected—and yet with such an effort at kindness! He could have wished for destruction at once! Anything to swallow him up in oblivion.
For this was the second terrible blow in the course of a few short hours. He had found that the brother and sister who were the very cause of his existence, cared no more for him than to use him. Now the woman he loved was snatched from him to the illimitable distance of contempt!
And he wondered to himself what there was that made him continue this wretched existence. It was for one purpose only—to strive to get this last thing that his brother and his sister wanted. It might complete his miserable labors. It would leave him—what? At least, having completed his work, he would be ready to die!
And he was only twenty-eight. But he had never been young. He had passed from childhood to old age at a step. Fifteen years of careless boyhood and young manhood had been tossed away and exchanged for the bitter duties of mature life. The pity of it was that he did not know the value of the thing 'which he had lost.
He let his mustang plod on to town.
He had intended to go at once to Patrick Reddick and talk to him about the additional loan. But he felt that he did not have energy enough in his heart to speak now. He tethered his horse near the watering trough in front of the hotel and safe down on the veranda to rest, and while he rested, he dared not give his thoughts rein. He had to keep them in check with a bitter vigilance, for fear lest they should run away with him.
There were a dozen other men on the veranda of the hotel. Their faces were all a blank to him. He did not heed their voices, except for the heavy, rolling tones of big Jeff Partridge at the farther end of the porch. Partridge was the strong man from the North. He was reported to have lifted thirteen hundred pounds of dead weight and put it on a scale in the blacksmith shop. But the rest were nothing to Ballantine until the door of the hotel slammed and some one, lurching out, stumbled against his chair. He looked hastily up into the handsome, flushed face of young Harry Reddick, the banker's son. Obviously Harry had been drinking again, and even a little more than usual. Where he found the moonshine it was hard to tell, and it always drove him half mad. He was more than half mad on this day. It needed no more than the merest touch to quite unbalance his temper, and this touch was supplied, it seemed, by his lurch against the chair. He flew into a passion at once. The veins in his forehead seemed to stand out horribly.
"Hey!" he cried. "Did you try to trip me, you hound?"
The other voices on the veranda were struck into instant silence. Two or three in the distance rose, to watch the scene the more easily. And Ballantine felt the touch of expectancy. There must be a fight. No man could endure such language in silence and afterward hold up his head in the West. But he, Ballantine, must endure. For this was the banker's son, and in five minutes he would be talking to that man!
"I didn't bother you, Reddick," he said quietly.
"You lie!" shouted Reddick.
A great wave of something rose in Ballantine. He could not say what it was, but it took him by the throat and made him shiver and shake, and cleared his eyes and made his mind as keen as an edged tool. Yet he did not stir. He dared not stir, though there was an instinctive life twitching through all his muscles.
Yet he said to himself: "Reddick is a known gunman. Am I his next victim?"
"Get up!" shouted Reddick, snarling like a mad dog as he saw the other submitting. "Get up and let 'em look a liar in the face and see what you're like!"
Ballantine rose. He hesitated, but it was only for a fraction of a second. Then he turned and walked down the steps toward his horse. He could feel the flesh drawing on his face. He could feel a chill as though a cold wind were blowing over him. He knew that he was white as a sheet.
And, behind him, he heard something like a groan from many throats, a subdued and angry sound. For it is an ugly thing to see a human being so utterly shamed. That sick, dreary voice gave way to a chuckle here, and a loud laugh there. But he did not look up at them. He twitched the head of the roan around and rode off down the street for the office of Patrick Reddick.
PATRICK REDDICK was one of those men who, having raised themselves from nothing, cannot forget the oblivion out of which they have come. If there were richer men in the world than he, he felt that none had come up from such humble beginnings. Consequently he always made a point of his original poverty, which is usually a point with your true self-made man. His vanity rules him.
He insisted, also, in keeping the bank in its old quarters.
"Fine clothes don't make the man and stone columns don't make a bank," he was fond of saying.
So he kept the bank looking like the façade of a general merchandise store. Into the bank went Ballantine. He had to wait half an hour to see the president, but finally he was admitted. Mr. Reddick sat with his chair tilted back into the window, and puffed on a cigar.
"Sit down, Ballantine," he said. "What's wrong now?"
Ballantine sat down and told his story. It began with a recital of recent disappointments, including the price for which he had had to let that year's sale of cattle go. It continued through other things. And, finally, he made his proposal for a loan.
The banker waited till he was quite done. All the time his bright little eyes, half encased in fat, thick wrinkles, never left the face of his visitor.
"How long have you been running the ranch?" he asked at last.
"Ten years."
"What was that ranch worth when you got it?"
"I don't know, exactly."
"Well, Ballantine, I'll tell you what it's worth now—just exactly the total of the mortgages that are slathered all over it. Young man, I wouldn't give you another five hundred dollars—let alone another five thousand!"
"Why," began Ballantine, "the land and the cows—"
The other broke in. His conversational habits were not the most polished in the world. He made a rule of saying what he thought when he thought it.
"The land and the cows are all right," he said. "It's the owner that I object to. It's you, Ballantine. I'll be frank with you. I'll tell you the truth and the whole truth right out. What I'm gunna say to you now ought to be worth a whole lot to you, I say! Take it the way it's gunna be handed out. No malice—but facts! Ballantine, you begun with a big thing on your hands. To-day, you've got nothing!"
"Bad luck—"
"Bad luck the devil! There ain't such a thing as bad luck. Ballantine, I tell you that when I was only the owner of that little place there, I was better off than you are to-day!"
He pointed, as he spoke, to a photograph which hung upon his wall and showed a little shack on the side of a mountain surrounded by worthless second-growth timber.
It was the boyhood home of the banker. Ballantine had heard the story of his rise from those surroundings at least a hundred times.
"I was better off," continued the banker, '"because though I didn't have nothin' else, I had hope. And hope is a great thing—hope and determination and self-confidence and self-respect. I say that all of them are great things for a man to have!"
As he enumerated these qualities, he shoved a stubby forefinger at the face of Ballantine. Behind that finger so stiffly extended, Mr. Reddick squinted as though he were looking down the barrel of his revolver at an enemy. And Ballantine watched him, fascinated. The nail of that right forefinger had been split by a saw edge in a mill in one of Reddick's early business ventures. Now the whole end of the finger was twisted and gnarled, but it looked stronger than ever—a hardy and brawny finger. Such was the whole man, the whole soul of Patrick Reddick, thought Ballantine—twisted, deformed, but wonderfully effective, wonderfully 'strong.
"Them are the things that a man needs, Ballantine. For a young gent just starting out in life, each of them qualities is better'n a thousand dollars of capital put out to good interest. A sight better. What d'you think that I had when I started out? Nothing but them qualities. And that was what growed into this here bank!"
He gestured around him to the four ugly, barren walls of the room, as if each wall gave onto a vista of immense beauty, immense wealth. Then he turned to Ballantine, and his benignant smile of self-satisfaction turned to one of a sort of sad sternness.
"Ballantine," he said, "you ain't hopeful, you ain't got determination, you ain't got self-confidence, you ain't got self-respect!"
Years have a vast weight, in conversation. And Ballantine felt himself borne down by the authority of Mr. Reddick's position, and of his age. He could not differ from this man. But, turning his own eye inward, he found nothing but proofs that the other was right—hopelessly, horribly right! He could only sigh and bow his head.
"Look how you should of come in here!" exclaimed the banker. "You should of come in wearin' a smile, with your head in the air, and full of your schemes. What are your schemes, Ballantine?"
"Why, sir, hard work—"
"Hard nonsense!" exclaimed the banker. "If a young man under thirty—think of it—a boy under thirty—ain't got a dozen different plans for pulling the earth up to the moon or hoisting the moon back to the earth, he ain't worth his salt, hardly. Ballantine, I'm talkin' free and hard to you, for your own sake. You're too old. You ain't nacheral. You ain't normal. You ain't never been foolish—and that's why you're a great fool!"
He paused, smashing his fist down upon his desk as he made this point, and letting his voice ring so loud that Ballantine could feel it shivering through the walls and reaching, beyond the office, the ears of sundry clerks seated upon sundry high stools. He could see their heads raised; he could see the grins of mute intelligence which they flashed to one another. And the soul of Ballantine shrank small and smaller in him.
Mr. Reddick had gathered force as he went on; now he had become a resistless avalanche.
"Lend money to you?" he exclaimed, coming to his point at last. "No, Ballantine, I wouldn't lend a copper on that ranch. Not till there's some one else running it. You got about a thousand dollars in this bank—and that's all you have. You got that much cash, but you ain't got a cent of credit. 'Go back and think about what I've told you, young man. You could go around the world, but you'd never find no more valuable advice. Go along and turn what I've said over in your head. Let it work and grow into something worth while. Good-by, Ballantine, and remember that they's only one thing in the world that folks look for in a man, young or old—strength! Strength! Strength!"
He beat out the words upon the wall of his office until a faint, thundering echo rolled throughout the old building.
Ballantine went out into the anteroom. There he stood for a moment with his head bowed, his hat twitching in his fingers.
"You've had a hard time, I suppose," said a girl's voice.
He looked into the face of Reddick's stenographer.
"He's grouchy this morning—he's like a bear," she said. "I'm sorry!"
"You're sorry?" said Ballantine. "Well, ma'am, I'm not. Because this is the right way to start the day!"
What amazed him most was to find that he meant what he said. All the words that the banker had spoken had sunk into his soul like the truth out of the gospel. They could not be avoided.
He could not argue down such bald and imperatively certain facts. Everything that the older man had said had been said with authority. And Mr. Reddick stood like a prophet of wrath above the soul of Ballantine, foreseeing his destruction in the very near future.
So that Ballantine,' suddenly, cast aside a weight from his mind, and that weight was responsibility.
"I'm bankrupt," he said. "I'm smashed!"
No, there was still a thousand dollars between him and ruin. He went to the cashier's window.
"What's in my account?" he asked.
Presently the answer came back: "A thousand and twenty-four dollars, Mr. Ballantine."
"That'll be just enough," said Ballantine.
He called for a blank check, scratched out the sum hastily, and signed his name. Perhaps it was the last time in his life that his signature would mean money. He passed that check back through the window. He would have this money in fifties. Twenty fifties came back to him, all new bills, compressed into a solid little sheaf that he could pinch between thumb and forefinger.
But what he was holding between thumb and forefinger was not paper money, but a mighty black stallion, with a coat like water under the stars, an eye of fire, a soul of pride. Overland was his! Overland was his!
He leaned for a moment against the wall and took the full glory of that thought home in him.
He had lost his brother and sister; he had lost the woman he loved; he had learned that he was a worthless ruin as a business man; he had been disgraced in the eyes of the entire world as a weakling and a coward; but now he was to take in exchange for all of these injuries—a horse!
It was enough, he told himself. Rather be mounted on the smoothly winged speed of Overland, rather be served by the stanch heart of the stallion than to have the mockery and the half-scornful affection of men and women around him. Rather be free with Overland than a slave with human company!
And he was free, free as a cloud in the sky. For there was nothing on earth which could make a demand upon him. He was of no service to his brother or to his sister. Rather, he was a heavy encumbrance to them. He would go away, and let them have the ranch.
He looked up from his dream. There were half a dozen people writing checks or waiting for money; he found that the eyes of them all were fixed upon him in a startled fashion. He must have spoken aloud, and what had he said?
It made no difference. He was nothing to them; they were nothing to him!
HE went out to his horse, mounted the weary roan, and turned it up the street.
Suddenly he found himself looking at the town with new eyes. It had always seemed to him, in the past, like a great center of power, a mysterious dwelling place of strength. Now he beheld it as a little sunburned village, huddled at the foot of a mountain. A pleasant scene, but not an important one!
He let the roan go slowly. There was no cause for hurry. He had nothing left to do except to pay the money down for Overland, and there was no chance that Overland would be taken by another man, for the simple reason that no other man could ride the great stallion.
He came, again, to the hotel, and as he passed, he heard laughter—he heard a great bass voice booming something in his direction. That was Jeff Partridge. He checked the roan and looked across the street. Yes, there was Partridge with his head bent back on his great brown throat, laughing heartily. And all of those around him were laughing, also.
Once more that wave of emotion swelled in Ballantine as it had once before, on this day; but now he recognized it. The thing which made him tremble through all his bulk was anger; the thing which made his eyes clear, his brain cold, was anger. Yonder was Jeff Partridge, a big man and a strong one. But was not he, also, big? Was not he, also, strong? Moreover, he was free, and the sense of freedom like an intoxicating wine mounted to his head and swayed him with consuming joy. He dismounted, threw the reins, and stepped up on to the veranda. Here was Jeff Partridge just before him, lolling in his chair and insolently pointing with his finger. Ballantine leaned above him, and as he leaned, he felt his power tingling in his heart, in his hands.
"Partridge," he said, "are you laugh-in' at me?"
Wonder struck the laughter from the face of the other.
"Laughin' at you? Why, the devil, man; why shouldn't I laugh at you?"
"Here's a good reason to stop laugh-in'," said Ballantine, and he struck Partridge across the cheek—lightly—a mere flick of the fingers, but it made a deep white imprint—a white print that turned instantly to crimson.
His first astonishment still kept Partridge motionless, but only for an instant. Then he leaped to his feet and struck as he leaped.
There was no confusion in the eye or in the mind of Ballantine. With the very first movement of Partridge, he knew that he was the master. For how absurdly clumsy, how absurdly slow were the motions of the huge cow-puncher and miner! He could have struck twice while the other was swinging once!
He put aside that roundabout blow with a raised hand. Then he struck home, to the point of the jaw, and saw the face of Partridge sag into a stupid lifelessness—saw him drop heavily to the floor of the veranda. He turned on the others.
"There might be somebody else," said Ballantine quietly. "There might be somebody else that feels like laughin' and wants to know reasons why he shouldn't. Let him step up. Let me hear him!"
He looked up and down the line. There was not a man who moved. Ballantine walked slowly before them. He let his eyes rest insolently, freely, on each face in turn. What was the strength and the mystery of these men? Once looked into, they proved themselves hollow, empty cups. But when he had been a slave to necessity, they had all seemed mighty men!
"I've heard tell," said Ballantine, "of gents that was so dog-gone strong-handed and so easy-goin', that they wouldn't take nothin' from nobody. But I see that you ain't that kind. You're a bunch of rats! A bunch of yaller-hearted rats. You sit back and snicker and giggle like fools when you think that there ain't no danger. But when danger comes around the corner, you sit fast, you sit tight! Lemme hear you peep! Lemme hear you talk some! Lemme listen to your ideas! You was laughin' large and loud a minute ago! What's come of all the laughin', partners? Fist or knife or gun, I'm ready and waitin' to hear you!"
There was not a sound from them.
"Now tell me where Harry Reddick is hangin' out," said Ballantine. "I'm a free man, now, and he'll hear something that I have to say to him. Where's Harry Reddick?"
Still there was not an answer. Immediately before him sat Lester Jackson, a wide-built man with the strength of an ox. He stooped and took Lester Jackson by the neck and heaved him to his feet. And Jackson was limp and light in his grip.
"Where's Reddick?" he snarled out.
"He's gone—inside!" gasped out Lester Jackson.
He tossed the informant to one side; and Jackson staggered against the wall of the hotel. How strange it was. They were all turned into mere shadows of men—mere paper images. They crumbled at his touch!
He entered the hotel. The proprietor, having sensed some strange occurrences outside on the veranda, was hurrying out from behind his desk.
"Where's Harry Reddick?" asked Ballantine.
"Ah, Ballantine. You'd better not see him. He's just sobered up, and he's as ugly as a devil—particularly after—"
"Where's Reddick, you fool!" snapped out Ballantine. "I don't want your advice!"
Now there was no more inoffensive man in the world than the good proprietor of the hotel. And he stared at Ballantine as at a man suddenly gone mad. He hesitated only a second, however.
"Reddick is over yonder," he said, and pointed.
In a stride Ballantine was at the door of the room. He saw Reddick sitting by the window; and Reddick leaped to his feet as he glimpsed the other from the side. Instantly the hand of Reddick went for his gun.
But he changed his mind. A devilish expression appeared in the face of Ballantine. It could not be that any man had changed heart in so few moments!
"Well, Ballantine," he said, "what'll you have to-day? Are you back here for a little explanation?"
"The boys are waitin' out on the veranda," said Ballantine. "They are waitin' to see you get down on your knees. They're waitin' to hear you ask my pardon."
"You're turned mad, Ballantine!" cried the other. "Why, you fool, I'd break you in two!"
He glanced over the arched breast and the thick-muscled body of Ballantine and changed his mind.
"Or blow your head off!" he said.
"Ah," said Ballantine, smiling and speaking with a voice which trembled with the joy of vengeance, "I was hopin' that it would be the guns. Are you ready, Reddick? Then make your draw!"
A shadow crossed the eyes of Red-click, a faint shadow of doubt, even though he had conquered so many times in hand-to-hand battles. And Ballantine, seeing that shadow, knew that he had won already.
He stepped slowly forward. "If you pull that gun I'll kill you, Reddick. Better trust to your hands—"
Twice Reddick wavered; then he determined on the gun, and jerked it out. It was much too late. For Ballantine was near enough to close with a single leap. With his left hand he caught the right wrist of the other. And he felt the hard tendons turn to mush beneath his fingers. He heard the dropped gun clang on the floor as the power of his grip turned that deadly hand of Reddick to a numbed, useless thing. \
All this he did with his left hand, in a single grip. Then he smote up with his right, sharp and short, and tapped Reddick under the jaw. It snapped his head back on his broad shoulders. He turned limp, and slid out of the arms of Ballantine to the floor and lay there on his face.
Oh, to say that compassion and that shame for so easy a victory touched the heart of Ballantine then! But it would not be true. He felt in himself, as he looked down at that helpless body, a root of the most devilish impulses, only. Then he leaned, took the senseless body by the long, blond hair, and dragged Harry Reddick out to the veranda.
Before he reached that porch the pain had brought back the sleeping senses of Reddick. He was kicking and groaning and struggling half blindly by the time they arrived. The ten or a dozen who had been there before had been trebled in the interim. The news was abroad that there was trouble and fighting at the hotel, and that was enough to bring the crowd. For humanity has for calamity an extra sense, as buzzards have for new carrion, standing a hundred miles across the misty desert air to find the dead. So the people of the town had gathered in a brief, hurrying rush to find out what was happening at the hotel. These had arrived; others were coming. The blacksmith stood in his leathern apron three or four doors away, holding his sledge still in one hairy arm and shading his eyes against the sun as he stared to the hotel veranda. Every one was out.
And Ballantine, surveying all of these, was content. He wished to have every stroke of his ork noted; and this was an audience after his own heart.
He flung his prisoner down on the porch. Reddick sprang up and lurched in with a moan of shame and of rage. But the right fist of Ballantine was turned to a ragged lump of steel. It smote Reddick down again and bespread his face with crimson.
"Reddick," said the conqueror, "some of the boys, heard you talkin' big and broad about me a while back. I didn't have time to tend to you then. But I got the time now to stand by and let the boys hear you tell me that you're sorry that a skunk like you should talk to a man!"
"I'll see you—" began Reddick, groaning with rage and shame.
His voice was cut short, for Ballantine caught his arm and twisted it until the other yelled with agony.
"Help!" he shouted. "He's broken my arm."
"They stand still," said Ballantine grimly. "They're a lot of coyotes after your own pattern, Reddick. They'll stand still and watch a wolf eat you, and then they'll come sneakin' in and mumble your bones. Reddick, lemme hear you say it, or I'll tear you to bits!"
The agony made the eyes of Reddick start from his head, but he shouted suddenly: "I'm sorry that a skunk like me should have talked about you, Ballantine."
That was all. Ballantine tossed the other from him and turned his back and strode away to get his horse.
BUT those who looked on—and well they understood it—had seen not the physical beating of a man but the crushing of his very soul, and the horror of it turned them sick. If the sheriff himself had started out on the scene, and shouted for their help, they could not have raised a hand to stop big Ballantine. He walked slowly among them, and his back was turned in deep contempt upon the fallen man, as if he knew that the very heart of his victim had been so crushed that Reddick would not dare to try to shoot even at his turned back!
And the crowd saw Reddick stagger to his feet, saw him fumble among his clothes, saw him find and draw a gun! He stood with it poised in his left hand for a moment, a thousand emotions of fury and of shame fighting in his face. Then he burst into tears like a whipped child, dropped the weapon, and fled to hide his face from them!
Yes, fled like a beaten boy, not like a man, and a giant among men! He fled, and, seated in the saddle on the roan, Ballantine watched him go—and smiled!
He turned the roan up the street. He rode slowly. He rode whistling as he went. He was free! He was free! Nothing under heaven had any claim upon him! Only Overland had a call for him, heart to heart, fierce power to power!
He rolled a cigarette. He lighted it and snapped the burning match into a cactus. What matter if it caught fire? Still he went on, his head high. He was not turning over in his brain the events through which he had just passed. They were in the past and almost forgotten, but what filled his attention now was that world which lay around him.
All the plain, all the hills, and yonder his namesake, Mount Christopher, climbing high into the blue of the sky—and all shining in the sun which blazed from the bald, polished faces of cliffs—how beautiful were all of these, how strong, how new, as though created in another form this moment and striking his eye for the first time. The fact that there was a little ranch somewhere in this wilderness of big things was of no importance. The fact that he was a part owner of it was nothing to take into his mind. All that he had been was dead!
Hoofbeats sounded behind him. Out of a cloud of dust, Sheriff Joe Durfee drew rein beside him.
"Pull up, Ballantine," he commanded. "I got something to say to you."
But Ballantine did not halt the roan. He let it wander slowly on while he studied the sheriff. Always before, Durfee had seemed to him the very incarnation of the spirit of combat, dry, lean, keen. Now he was less than a common man. He was nothing! A gesture could crush that frail body.
"I'm on my way and I'm busy, Durfee," he said. "If you want to talk to me, ride along with me!"
He half expected a storm, but the sheriff merely colored a little and then nodded.
"I see how it is," he said, as much to himself as to his companion. "This here job you've done of Partridge and on Harry Reddick has got to your head, like red eye. Is that it?"
"I dunno," said Ballantine. "I'm not botherin' with thinking. I don't have to!"
"Son," said the older man, "I maybe see more of what's inside of you than you think. A pile more! You've held in for a mighty long time. Now you've busted loose. Partner, what I come after you to say, is this: I've figgered out what's wrong with you. I don't aim to have no trouble with you if I can help it. But, Ballantine, don't aim to think that you can ever come into town again and do what you done to-day and get away with it. The boys wouldn't stand for it twice. I couldn't stand for it twice. This day you picked on a couple that needed a fall, and you give it to 'em. To-morrow, you'd be turned into a bully. Mind you, Ballantine, I ain't threatening. I'm telling you to watch what you do from this time on!"
"Sheriff," said Ballantine, "what you want' and what you think ain't of no importance to me. I'll tell you this: You and the rest have treated me like a mangy cur. Now I'm through sneak-in' and crawlin'. From now on, I'm a man. And if there's ever any trouble that makes you come for me, come with both of your guns out and don't waste no time talkin'. Because words won't do no good!"
He turned his shoulder on the sheriff and sent the roan into a canter, and the sheriff did not follow. Where the trail turned sharply, a quarter of a mile ahead, Ballantine looked back from the corner of his eye and saw that the sheriff still sat in his saddle where Ballantine had left him.
And Ballantine smiled to himself. It was all very well. It was all exactly as he would have had it!
The big house of Mr. Holbrook loomed in the distance to the left, above the trees. He made for it at a round gallop, with the roan grunting as its tired forelegs pounded the trail. Then, under the shadow of the thin poplars, he dismounted, stripped the saddle from the back of the tired little mustang, and went to the house.
Peggy and Mr. Holbrook came together to the door; and he saw the start of surprise and the faint flush on her face as she saw him. He regarded her gravely, judicially, in turn. She, to his surprise, had not changed in his eyes as the others had changed. She seemed as delicate and as pretty as ever, as frank and as charming.
"Well, son?" said Holbrook. "Here you are back again! What's wrong now? Will you come in?"
Ballantine shrugged his shoulders. "She's told you, I guess," he said, watching the girl.
A guilty flush mounted her cheek.
"Told me what?" asked Holbrook.
"That I wanted to marry her?"
"Why, Ballantine," said Holbrook gently, "there's nothing to prevent a man wanting to marry any girl he sees."
"Well," said Ballantine, "she'll never have to trouble about that ag'in. I won't bother her. But what I've come back for is the hoss. I want the stallion, Mr. Holbrook."
"Ah? I wondered if that wouldn't tempt you, Ballantine! I wondered!"
He added: "That price I named is really a bit too much, considering the fact that no one can ride the brute, except yourself, and therefore—"
"I was never strong on bargaining," said Ballantine calmly.
He held forth the money. "Here's a thousand dollars. Do I get Overland?"
The other took the money with a somewhat reluctant hand. "A thousand dollars is a good deal," he said, "for a man who isn't particularly flush with money. And in fact, Ballantine-—"
"Let it go at that! I'm satisfied. I'll take Overland."
"By all means. He ought to belong to you. By the way, Ballantine, have you had some good news?"
"Why d'you ask?"
"You seem changed—happier—bolder, I might say!"
"I've had the best news," said Ballantine, "that any man ever had!"
"Ah, that will be a legacy, I suppose?"
"Ay. Freedom!" said Ballantine. "It was given to me sort of unexpected. Like stumbling onto a gold mine in your back yard, you might say."
"Freedom?" echoed the rich rancher.
"That's it!"
Holbrook rubbed his knuckles across his chin. "Well," said he, "you're talking around the corner from me. I hardly understand. But let that go. Are you coming out, Peggy, to see Overland go?"
"I'm coming," said she, in a very subdued voice.
Ballantine led the way to the corral, dropped saddle and bridle on the fence, and entered the enclosure of that pleasant little pasture where Overland ruled like a solitary king on a throne. It was nothing to saddle and bridle him. The big horse stood like a lamb throughout that ceremony. But when Ballantine swung into the saddle, and felt the great powerful body quivering under him, a new and hot temptation ran through his veins. It was easy to rule Overland by love; but how wild and fierce a pleasure it would be to rule him by sheer strength of will and hand!
THE rancher was all admiration. He kept nodding and smiling and calling to his daughter: "Look at that, Peggy! Remarkable, I call it, for a man to rule that horse as Ballantine does. Look at that! Obeys him like a high-school horse, I say!"
Peggy answered not a word. But her intent eyes were fastened upon the rider, not the horse, as Overland went back and forth happily, lightly, under his rider.
"There's something wrong, dad," she said in a low voice, not meant for the ear of Ballantine. And, indeed, it would never have reached the hearing of that other. Ballantine who had first spoken to her and told her of his love for her that morning. But this new creature was all of nerves and impulse, a very thing of fire. And he heard—heard while he reined Overland back and forth. "There's something wrong, dad!"
"Wrong with what, Peggy?"
"Hush!"
"Wrong with what? With Overland-I never saw him better, and he's transformed—'transformed with kindness, Peggy. Ah, there's the greatest power in the world if we were all not too proud to use it. Too proud! We'd rather break hearts!"
"I don't mean Overland, but Chris. He's different."
"Different nonsense!"
"Something has happened to him. Look at his face and his eyes."
"Rot! And yet there is something changed in him. A bit terser—a bit abrupt, I'd say. Like a man in pain."
"Or in pleasure!"
"What d'you mean by that, Peggy?"
"Dad—oh!"
This last was caused by a sudden change in the manner of Overland. For from a gentle trot he had come to a sharp halt and stood, now, with his head tossed high, one ear flattened along his neck, and one ear keenly pricked, the very picture of a horse asking a question, and as though he said to himself: "Is this possible?"
For Ballantine had drawn in hard on the curb. It was the jerk of the bit that had stopped Overland, but it was not a thing of the flesh that made him stop so short. Rather, he was saying to himself: "This was all persuasion before. What is it now?"
If he had any doubts, they were removed at once. The soft voice of Ballantine had turned harsh and stern: "Move on!" he commanded. "Get some life into you, Overland!" And he accompanied that word with a touch of the spur. That was enough. Reason fled from the brain of the stallion. For this was the very manner of those other men who came to tear at him with whips and with sharp steel and strive to break his heart and his spirit. He had beaten them all. He would beat this man, also. Bring fire to powder, and there is an explosion. Bring force to Overland, and there was sure to be an explosion also.
He shot up into the air, driven from four powerful springs. He landed again on four stiff posts of steel that jarred the rider to his teeth.
"Chris!" cried the girl. "What have you done to him?"
"Ballantine, what's wrong!"
This from the father. But Ballantine had no care for-their exclamations. His hands were full. First he put on the jaw of the stallion a pressure such as that outlaw had never felt before, a pull that might have broken the bones of another horse. And even Overland had to struggle to thrust forth his head. His sides, meantime,' were crushed by the gripping thighs and knees of Ballantine. And, at the same time, his flanks were raked with the spurs. . "Not the spurs, Chris! You'll drive him mad! He'll kill you!"
"This hoss? I'd eat three like him for breakfast," snarled out Ballantine.
And then speech was impossible. He was caught into the heart of a hurricane. For Overland broke forth at once with all the tricks which he had ever used in all his struggles with a hundred expert riders. He broke forth with fury, but not with cunning. He was too startled for that. There was fear in his heart, a great, cold fear, for the transformation of the man upon his back was a thing bewildering—not to be understood. This was he whose voice had ever been softer than running water, whose touch had been nothing but a caress. Now he was transfigured to a wild cat whose raking claws were in the flanks of Overland.
So he fought in a reckless ecstasy, blindly, wildly, without brains. He hurled himself into the air and smote the earth on stiffened legs. Then up again, down again. He tried to tie himself into a knot in the mid-air, and landing with a thump, he cast all of his weight upon one hardened foreleg. Even that whip-snap shock, though it made the rider reel, did not dislodge him, and still the raucous voice into which the gentle speech of Ballantine had been translated, cursed and raved and mocked at him, and the spurs bit deeper.
The girl fell into an ecstasy of terror. She ran to her father and caught him.
"Dad, dad, for heaven's sake, stop it!"
"Keep still, Peggy," he answered, pushing her away. "Don't bother me. You'll never see such riding as that if you live to be a hundred. What devil is cased inside of Ballantine to-day?"
Overland had burst into a wilder frenzy of bucking than ever. His hoofs beat through the dust and tore up solid chunks of the ground and tossed them high above his head. Twice the rider swayed out of his saddle. Twice he saved himself by nothing short of a miracle and was back in his place. He was a weakened Ballantine, now, his head reeling on his shoulders, and his eyes turning wildly in his head. But still the incarnate fiend in him lived and stirred and made him yell a challenge at maddened Overland.
Two cow-punchers, passing toward the bunk house, saw, and with their shouting drew the cook from the house as well as the rest of the house servants. Other men came up. There was a well-ringed group of spectators, now, to watch that historic battle in which Overland fought for his self-respect, and Ballantine fought to make him a slave.
And, when it ended, it was a white-faced rider who sat in the saddle, with two thin streams of blood trickling down from his nostrils, and his eyes staring huge from his head. He shouted hoarsely. Overland broke into a stumbling trot, head down. He jerked on the reins, and the big stallion came to a halt on reeling legs. He was beaten, exhausted, helpless. A child could have ridden him then.
There was not a murmur of applause from those onlookers, much as they worshiped good horsemanship, every one of them. It reminded Ballantine of the silence which had greeted the flooring of big Jeff Partridge and the humiliation of Harry Reddick. He looked calmly about him, wiping the blood from his face with his handkerchief. All those men were staring intently, not at the horse which had just been beaten, but at him, not with admiration, either, but with a sort of frightened awe. And yonder was Peggy, still shrinking at the side of her father. Even that wise man, Holbrook himself, was frowning in a bewildered fashion.
"Why did you do it, Ballantine?" he asked in wonder. "He was like a lamb for you. Maybe you've broken his heart, now!"
Ballantine scowled down at him. "D'you want me to treat a hoss like an equal?" he asked. "I'll have a hoss that walks when I say walk! And trots when I say trot. I'll have a hoss that lets me do his thinkin' for him. That's gunna be my way with hosses—maybe that's gunna be my way with men! If a gent can't get on with peace, lemme see how he can get on with war! One of you over there, open that gate!"
No one stirred.
"You with the red hair and the fool look," snarled out Ballantine. "Open that gate, will you?"
There was not an instant of hesitation. The man jumped as though a leveled revolver covered him. He opened the gate, and through it rode Ballantine. Then there appeared before him Peggy Holbrook, her face flushed, her eyes shining with indignation. She held out to him that sheaf of bills which he had recently handed to her father. "We won't sell him!" she exclaimed. "We won't sell him. Dad thought he was going to a man who loved him—not to a—a tyrant—like you, Chris Ballantine!"
She stamped her foot. "Get out of that saddle and let Overland go back!"
He grinned broadly down at her. For his stunned brain had recuperated already, and the ache was gone from the back of his head, and once more he could see clearly, see and think. And what he knew was the delirious truth that he had fought and won again. Oh, power of mighty hand and arm, how he could have looked up and thanked God for those gifts. But power of mind and soul, also, how far greater! To be able to crush a strong man with a word, with a look. So, feeling all his strength upon him, he looked down to the girl and smiled.
"You got a lot of men here," he said. "Lemme see 'em do the thing that you want done. Lemme see 'em take me out of this here saddle, honey!"
"Chris Ballantine!"
"Women can talk," said the rider slowly. "And that's the end of 'em. Lemme see the gents act. Which one of you starts? Which one of you begins the party?"
He swept their faces with a calm delight. But not a man stirred. That hungry eye ate the power out of their souls.
"Dad!" cried the girl.
"Ballantine," said the rancher, "I call back that bargain. It was half a gift, and you know it. Get off that horse."
But Ballantine turned and laughed in the face of Holbrook.
"Holbrook," he said, "I ain't a fool. This hoss belongs to me. If I want to wring the soul out of him, I'll wring it, the way folks tried to wring the soul out of me. Get out of my way, I'm gone."
He started the horse off; then checked it again with a brutal violence that brought Overland sharply back on his haunches. The girl cried out as though the curb had torn her own tender flesh. He leaned above her.
"I've told you this mornin'," he said, "that I love you, Peggy. When I want you, I'll come back for you. Will you be ready to go?"
"I?" she cried. "Chris Ballantine, I'd rather be dead than touch your hand."
The wildness of her rage was a delight to him. He grinned again, drinking in the full sense of it.
"D'you hate me, Peggy?"
"With all my heart!"
"Good," said he. "Then I'll be back for you, Peggy. By day or by night. You'll hear my whistle and maybe you'll come out to me."
And, laughing loudly, he roweled the flank of the stallion and the black, already somewhat recovered from that duel for freedom or slavery, swung off into a reaching gallop.
HE did not reach home until dusk; and he made it purposely late. In the first place, he wanted to be alone, for a time with Overland. In the second place, he wanted to reach the house late for supper as he had done on the preceding evening. And there was a double purpose in both desires. When he left the house of Holbrook, he went out among the hills until he reached a little sun-covered dell of half an acre, with trees edging it, and with a little brook trickling along a side of it. There he gave Overland water, and after hobbling him, let the stallion graze and walked at his side, and soothed him with hand and voice. But Overland merely shrank from his touch and quivered at his voice and followed with great fear-haunted eyes.
That work which he had done on the horse that afternoon had been a victory, indeed, but it had been a defeat also. He realized that as he walked beside the horse. And he considered the details of that day gravely. He had lost, indeed, all that he had thought was dear to him. He had lost the girl, he had lost the affection of the great black stallion, he had lost, not least of all, the esteem of wise, kindly John Holbrook.
To balance against those losses, he had found—himself! And that, perhaps, was a treasure great enough to make up for all the rest.
For, he said to himself, by the wise spending of himself he could win back all that he had lost and more, also.
There was the horse to work on, first of all. And for that work he had the patience of stone. How slow was every step! The afternoon wore late before the stallion would so much as graze in his presence. And it was already sunset before the sound of his voice made Overland prick his ears.
Then he mounted. The great black crouched beneath him, ears flattened, trembling with anger and fear, but neither spur bit nor whip fell. There were two sorts of power. One was the mind; one was the mighty hand. He had crushed Overland once with his hand. And that was enough. Now he waited for five minutes, for ten minutes, speaking gently, continually, until Overland stood straight again and arched his neck. And, after that, the big horse cantered smoothly away, still starting at every motion of his rider's hand, but more than half reclaimed from fear.
He reached the house in the dusk, therefore, according to his plan. A fine rain had begun to descend, blanketing the earth with a thicker twilight. He put Overland in a stall in the barn, fed and groomed him carefully, and came out to find that it was complete night. So much the better!
Old Alice, the cook, greeted him with a grunt as he entered the kitchen door.
"Late again, Mr. Ballantine!"
"My business keeps me late," he said sternly.
"Mine keeps me late, too!" she answered in heat. "And early. They ain't no supper here except for them that come on time!"
"You'll find another place to work, then, Alice," said he. "While you stay here, you'll do what you're told. You understand me?"
The voice of his sister called from the dining room:
"Christopher, what are you thinking of?"
She came hastily to the door, fired with indignation. "Alice, don't pay any attention to what he says. He's only one voice in this house!"
"My voice," said Christopher Ballantine, "ain't long for this house, my girl!"
"Not long," she gasped out, suddenly taken aback. "Christopher, what do you mean?"
"Sounds like he's been drinking," drawled Will from the farther room.
"I hope to die," wailed old Alice, "if I spend another day under this roof! After me slavin' and workin' my hands to the bone to—"
He raised a finger at her. And that was enough. It did not even need words, it seemed, since he had found his new self, for she quailed before him, and shrank into a corner.
"Lord love us!" gasped out Alice. "What's comin' to pass here, I ask you?"
"Heat my supper again," commanded Ballantine. "And I'll hear no more out of you."
He turned his back on her, but as he strode into the next room past the astonished Sylvia, he could hear old Alice scurrying to obey. He tossed his hat into a corner and dropped heavily into a chair.
"Good gad, Chris," said his brother, "Sylvia is still standing!"
"When she's tired," said the elder brother, "she'll sit down."
"It's whisky, Sylvia," said Will, with a nod to her. "I think we'd better leave him here!"
Ballantine stretched out his hand and closed it on the arm of the other. Through that wiry athlete's muscles he felt the tips of his fingers glide until they gritted against the bone. And there was a shout of pain from Will. He wrenched back. As well have pulled against the hawser of a ship. The very effort merely served to throw him off his feet, and he fell back into his chair with a crash.
"Young fellow," said Ballantine, "you'll stay there till I'm through talking."
"Why," began Will, with plenty of courage, and unabashed. "I'll—"
"You'll do what you're told," said Ballantine. "Don't anger me, Will. Don't anger me. You've needed a thrashing bad ever since the day dad died. And, by the heavens, this evening it won't take much to make me give it to you—for the sake of your soul, Will—your self-satisfied soul! Sit fast!"
The red died away, somewhat, from the face of Will Ballantine. He stirred to rise, but the eye of his elder brother held him, and the numbness in the bruised muscles of his strong right arm held him, also.
This was most strange. He was accustomed to more than hold his own among men, even among athletes. But here was a giant who had gripped him, and discretion rose strongly in the heart of Will Ballantine. He remained where he was.
"This," said Sylvia through her teeth, "is perfectly disgraceful. Will, if you are not man enough to assert yourself, I'll leave you with him. I certainly don't care to stay!"
The stiff forefinger of Ballantine was raised again.
"Sylvia," he said, "sit down if you like peace. Sit down and listen to me."
She stamped in a fury. "I suppose that I'll be manhandled if I don't? Christopher, have you gone mad?"
He could see that she was almost as astonished and as frightened as she was angered. And all of those emotions in her pleased him strangely.
"You'll stay," he said, "no matter for what reasons. But it's wise to stay, and I think that you know it. You'll stay, besides, because you're curious to know what I have to say. Now sit down yonder."
"I'll stay," she announced suddenly. "When one's own brother begins to talk insanely, it's time to be interested."
She slipped into the chair he had designated, and he answered her while he rolled a cigarette. Alice, furtive of eye and shaking of hand, brought in his plate and put it before him. He let it stay where it was and began to smoke.
"Not your brother, Sylvia," he said, "no way you figure it! Only a sort of a useful tool that's been bangin' away at the ranch here, while you and Will took it easy at school. Now, Sylvia, and Will, I'm through!"
"Through?" breathed Will. "What do you mean, Chris?"
"What does that most usually mean? It means that I've stopped. The ranch belongs to you and Sylvia. Make the most of it that you can. It'll cut short your law practice, I reckon, and it'll keep Sylvia from playin' at society and at getting a rich husband. It'll make you buckle down and work like the devil, here, if you want to get on. But you'll do your work without me. Ain't that clear enough?"
Clear it seemed to be, and too clear. They could only gape at one another, as though each needed the help of the other to add up the full significance of this statement.
It was Will who weakened first. "Chris," he said faintly, "you've taken too much to heart that scene of last night. We all lost our tempers and talked foolishly. I mean, Sylvia and I did—"
"Don't sneak out," said Ballantine. "The gent you was talkin' to is dead. He was a coward and a hurt rat. He was sick of his life. He was ready to crouch every time any one raised a hand. Well, sir, I say that man is dead. And I'm inside of his skin, but I'm a stranger to him, and to you, thank heaven.".
There was no answer to this, spoken as it was without passion, but with an acid edge of scorn more biting than anger.
"Do you really mean that you give up the ranch?" asked Sylvia softly.
"I give it up," answered Ballantine. "I've worked for ten years for the pair of you. What I've had out of it except trouble and slaving, Heaven only knows. I've tried to make a lady out of you—I've only made a vain, foolish, rattled-headed young ape, If you marry money, you'll marry the devil with it! I tried to make a gentleman out of your brother. I've only made a gent that can't think of nothin' but himself. I've fried every ounce of joy out of my life. And you've lived on the fat of the land, the pair of you. I've made you into a couple of foxes. All you've got is sharp wits, and no hearts in you. Well, wits is what is needed for the runnin' of this here ranch—more wits than I ever had—it's up to you.
"I end up my ten years of work with nothin' to show for it but a bit of sense and a hoss. I've taken the last thousand dollars we have in the world and I've soaked it into the buyin' of a hoss. It's the one thing that I've wanted, outside of a girl that laughed in my face to-day when I asked her to marry me. But I took out the cash and I bought the hoss. In five minutes, when I'm through with this supper, I'm gunna go out and roll my blankets, and climb on the back of that hoss and ride away. And Heaven help me if either of you ever see my face ag'in. I rigger that's sort of final. I've done my talk. You'll get nothin' more out of me. Good-by to you both!"
THE rest of that meal was never to be forgotten by Ballantine, nor the savage, sullen pleasure which it gave him as he sat there surrounded by the growing consternation of his family. There was too much pride in Will to allow him to speak. He even rose and left the room. Outside the house, Ballantine could hear him whistling loudly, expressive of unconcern. But that did not fool the elder brother. He knew that the face of the whistler was white with fear of the future. In the meantime, Sylvia was trying to draw him out.
"Of course, Christopher," she said, trying the tack of dignity, "neither Will nor I know anything about the affairs of the ranch."
He said not a word.
"And it would simply be destroying the entire value of the ranch, if it were turned over to us."
He stayed with his clew of silence and continued his supper, slowly, methodically, with a poignant sauce of self-satisfaction in every mouthful that he ate.
"Mr. Bannock," went on the girl, still eying him anxiously for a sign of a change, "tells us that there is a chance to get something out of the old place, but only by the most careful working."
He spread a large slice of bread with butter and eyed her vacantly. And he wondered at the steadiness of his nerves as he gazed. For her keen, penetrating glance had ever been a terror to him before this. Yet his glance slipped past hers easily as a rapier in the hand of a master glides around the guard of a tyro. And she shivered a little, and shrank from his power of will. And again that savage satisfaction filled the breast of Ballantine with a sort of cold glory—as it had been filled before on this day of days, when he had struck down Partridge and Harry Reddick, when he had scorned the sheriff to the latter's face, when he had bought the stallion, and when he had crushed the fighting horse, now finally, he was bringing the steel of his revenge into his household and every word, tapping on his resolution, gave back to him only a further proof of the excellent temper of his courage. Nothing could shake him. At a stroke, he had been removed beyond the reach of pity or of compassion.
Her own will power was a remarkable thing. She flinched, but she did not cease striving to persuade him, though he knew that it was misery to her haughtiness, so long pampered and fed by his own folly. Will Ballantine came back into the room and slumped into a chair, and attempted to eye his brother and sister with a matter-of-fact manner. But it was easy to tell that he was under a bitter strain.
"Besides," said the girl, "you must not think that we ever would have called all your work here a failure. Even Mr. Bannock, who seemed rather positive about a good many things, would not have gone that far. Not even he! Of course, Christopher, when we broke out at you the other evening—like a pair of spoiled children, Chris—we didn't mean what we said!"
How subtly she had made the change in tone, the change of language, leaving his formal name and picking up his nickname in the very same sentence! He could not help admiring her artistry at the same time that he saw through it and her methods.
And then, too, how clever it was of her to bring in that suggestion of their youth—and the fact that he had, indeed, been like a father to them, and that they had looked up to him, in a measure, as children to a parent. But in how small a measure he could not forget! This was all very well, this last-minute smoothness, but indeed, he had filled the parental role only in so far as it is the duty of a father to supply clothes and food and money—never once had he received authority or even respect! Still he said nothing, and kept his face a blank. Now and again old Alice came fluttering in to bring something to the table. She was in a terrible consternation. For the fear of losing her place was sliding into her soul like a knife. Not that she could not have found other work easily enough, for as a rough cook she was famous on the range, but she had worked so long for them that she was a part of the family.
He made it a point, now, to relent to her. He nodded and smiled when she brought him a cup of coffee. He thanked her and refused when she offered to supplement his supper with a dish of bacon and eggs. And then he turned from her and her relief to present a blank face to the others.
Still Sylvia bit her lip and went back to the attack, casting a single sidelong, fiery glance at her younger brother as though to whip him up to her assistance.
"Mr. Bannock," said she, "went so far as to declare that, in a way, you'd showed a great deal more intelligence than any one in the neighborhood."
It was too much for Ballantine. He looked at her with a faint smile of contempt for such foolish flattery.
"I mean," she said, and flushed hotly, "that he really said that, because you've cleared out the bottom land and made it ready for irrigation. He's one of those who believe that that old dam you built in the canon will really work. And then, of course, hundreds of acres of the land will be worth thirty times as much as they are now. Of course, Chris, Will and I could wait until next spring, when the floods come and the ground is irrigated. And then we could sell the place and get a good deal of money out of it, after people have seen that the irrigation scheme is actually practicable. But what a shame to rob you of all the honor of your work, Chris, and take away any of the reward! Not that we would take any of the reward away. If we worked the place, we'd set aside your share scrupulously every year. You could depend upon that!"
He had finished his dinner. There was only the second cup of coffee, and while he held it in one hand, sipping it, he reached out and turned up the flame in the big oil lamp so that it cast a sudden glare in her face. By that increased illumination he studied her coldly, relentlessly, and she, with slightly widened eyes, endured his scrutiny. But she weakened under it.
"Oh, Chris!" she moaned suddenly, clasping her hands together and stretching them a little toward him, "don't you see that it will be the veriest hell for both of us if we're left out here—alone? We don't know a thing about the ranch. We—we both hate the ranch life. We can't help it. You've made us that way, Chris. You've kept us away at school and given us every comfort that we could wish for while you, poor dear, have been carrying on the struggle."
She glanced at Will.
"It's true," said Will a little huskily. "Every word you say is true, Sylvia. And, confound me if I don't feel more and more like a rat for the way that we've treated you!"
A touch of a new emotion came to Ballantine. It was well enough to withstand the artifices with which they were surrounding him. But he was not quite prepared to endure real emotion, and he could not doubt that there was real emotion in the voice of Will. He looked down, afraid to reveal the sudden softening which was in his heart.
"Besides," said Will, "I've been thinking a bit rapidly for me in the past five minutes. Mind you, Chris, I know that you'll think this is a fake all carefully arranged to lure you back to the ranch. But darn me if it is! I mean what I say when I say that I can see our comfort—I mean Sylvia's and mine—has been built on your slavery. I've actually taken it for granted that you are a sort of inferior person and that I had a right to live on your drudgery. I keep remembering what I said to you the other night. Well, Chris, I was despising you, then. And if it has to cost us the loss of you in order to understand what you really are, by the heavens I'm glad of it. If I've lost a brother, I've found a man. That's that!"
"Will!" cried his sister. "What in the world are you talking about?"
"Something you feel as I feel it—but you haven't looked at it in that light, yet. Don't sham, Sylvia. You can't fool Chris. He sees through your fake. And I'm glad, by heaven, that he can see through it. I wouldn't have him otherwise, no matter how many years of drudgery it costs us on the ranch."
"I'll not stay a month!" she snapped out.
"What'll you travel on?"
"I have friends—"
"You'll not take charity. No. Sylvia, you'll do just what I'll do! You'll roll up your sleeves and buckle down to work and try to make things run as well as we can. But you, Chris, why, confound it, old man, if you want freedom, go and have it. You've earned it. And when we can do it, we'll send you on supplies. You can have your fling now—as big a fling as we can afford to pay for!"
But Sylvia, all her strength collapsing as she saw herself deserted by her last ally and found that she was indeed to be condemned to the ranch life which she loathed, as she saw all of her dreams of silks and idleness snatched away, all her hopes of social prominence and an easy life gone, into limbo, broke down utterly. She dropped her head on her rounded white arms and broke into tears.
Ballantine regarded her with a blank, unfeeling face, for a moment. Let her have her moment of sorrow. She had her youth before her in which to recover herself and find a new place in the world. But this thing had cost him ten years of agony, and ten years are more priceless than diamonds and gold.
He rose, at last, stepped to the corner, picked up his hat, dusted the crown of it carefully, settled it on his head, and looked around him. On the wall hung his Winchester. It was old and out of date. But it still shot strong and true, and the fifteen cartridges in its magazine were fifteen strong friends which would kill at the touch of his finger. The revolver ammunition was in the box on the corner table. For, after supper, weary, head bowed with the day's labor, he was accustomed to sit over the dining table and clean his guns and load them afresh. For there was rarely a day of riding on the range without a few chance shots at rattlers or jack rabbits, or even a coyote, now and then, when he rode up into the wind and suddenly topped some hollow. He went to that box, now, and began to load his revolvers, feeling their eyes upon him as he worked.
Sylvia had stopped crying, now. She and Will were both keeping hopeless, gloomy eyes upon him. And he rejoiced in their feeling of desertion. Let the steel enter their souls, as it had entered his! Let them find themselves through anguish, as he had found himself, and then if they discovered in themselves such a well of exhaustless strength as he had found in his own soul, they would bless the day that he left them to work out their own salvation.
The guns were loaded, now, and one restored to the holster at his hip, one stowed under the pit of his arm, for an unseen weapon is sometimes more valuable by far than one which is open to view.
Then he stepped through the door, and there was a tug at the very strings of his heart as he left his brother and his sister behind him. At the outer door of the kitchen, when he had thrown it wide, he paused for a moment. There came a little rush of footsteps behind him—then the voice of Sylvia, broken and weak like her child's voice which he could remember out of the old years after their father's death, the child's voice which had made him swear to himself to do for her all that his father could have done had death spared him.
"Chris, don't leave us! Dear Chris, for pity's sake, don't leave us!"
A wave of warm weakness swept over him; a dimness covered his eyes with a mist. And in a trice he would have turned back to her. But at that moment, a wind blew out of the night and carried to him the scent of sage' brush, stinging and clean, and sharp alkali, and mingled with this, the fragrance of the pines on the farther hills. And as he breathed deep of it, he saw the stars rimming those hills with dots of clear fire, and he heard, far off, the mellow thunder of a lobo haying at the newly risen moon.
He made one tentative pace through the door, still more than half resolved-not to leave the house, but as he did so, it seemed to him that the night flung a shadowy arm around him and drew him closer to its bosom, and all his past life was dead behind him, dead among the strong smells of that dark little kitchen; and all his future life lay in the land of enchantment spread before him.
"Chris—one word—" he heard
Sylvia pleading desperately.
He reached out to the door without turning around, and, catching it with his hand, he slammed it heavily in her face.
HE heard her sobbing; then he heard the step and the voice of Will comforting her and leading her back into the dining room. Yes, there was metal in Will, and this was the life to bring it out more than close-schemed plans for his advance as a lawyer in New York. A few years of this would not hurt him, and he would be twice himself when he took up the work of his life, if law was to be that work!
He went on, leisurely, enjoying, it seemed to him, the sweetness of his freedom-more and more with every step. And now, through the starlight before him, he saw the glimmering form of one of the horses in the paddock. Might he never return to see its lean ribs by daylight!
"Chris Ballantine?" a voice said softly behind him.
He turned. The voice seemed to come from a scrub cedar just behind him, but there was no shape which he could make out at first.
"Yes," he said, "this is Ballantine," and as he spoke he made out the form—a shadow, two shadows, mingling with the outline of the little tree. And the 'dull starlight gleamed faintly on two bits of metal.
He did not wait for what, something told him, was sure to follow—the roar and the flashing of two guns. But a stabbing thrill of joy rushed through his blood and through his brain. This was the new life—this was the proper crossing of the threshold of it!
He dropped flat to the ground as that thought came to him. And while he was still in the air, two guns spat fire from the dark of the cedar. His own Colt was out of the holster and extended along the ground. He had hardly touched the dirt, breaking his fall with his left hand, before he fired in return. He heard a scream. He saw a form detach itself from the gloom of the tree, twist around, and fall headlong.
Then he fired at the second man, fired while a third bullet was cutting the air above his own head so close that he thought he could feel the wind of it stir his hair, for his hat had fallen off. That second shot missed. But at least it had come close enough to its target to make the other dodge out of view behind the line of the cedar. What Ballantine next heard was the swiftly pounding feet of a man in full flight, and as the kitchen door of the house was thrown open, Ballantine, starting pursuit, saw the fellow dart across the dim shaft of light—a rather small, broad man, sprinting with wonderful speed.
He tried a snapshot as the other plunged into the darkness beyond. But the light from the kitchen lamp was streaming straight into the eyes of Ballantine and partly dazzled him. Before he could fire again, he saw the stranger fling himself onto a horse and instantly rush away down the road.
He himself turned for the barn, and turned at the run.
Will was calling, behind him: "Chris! Chris! Is that you? Is it you? Answer me, Chris!"
"I'm safe!" he shouted over his shoulder, and plunged into the dark of the barn.
There he tore the saddle from its peg and threw it on the back of the black stallion. In a trice he was out again, with the rush of Overland whipping a strong wind into his face. He went by Will like a flash.
"Chris!" cried the other.
He waved his hand and was gone.
He did not follow straight down the road. There was a shorter way from the barn over three low hills. And he took that rough going, trusting to the nimble feet of the stallion. And well did Overland prove, that night, the value of a long life in rough pasture lands, where the wit of a human rider is not used to guide a horse in the right way, but all is left to his own brains.
On a loose rein, his head high, he worked out his own course in the general direction which Ballantine selected. And his long, whipping stride put the ground in a steady rush behind him. They darted over the first hill and down into the hollow with a swoop that brought the heart of Ballantine against his teeth. He wanted to shout his joy, but his voice must not be heard. Even the beating hoofs of the great stallion might be enough to warn the killer that vengeance was coming behind him.
Over the second hill and over the third, and now, just beneath him, ran the long, white, straight road, dim under the stars, but growing brighter each moment as the moon climbed higher in the sky. He looked back up the trail. But no horseman was coming down it. Had the other, then, cleverly cut straight across country?
No, yonder he went, a dark streak diminishing in the mist of the moonshine. Surely he was well mounted, this slayer by night! Even Overland would be taxed to overtake such a flyer as yonder horse!
Now they were on the road in turn, and he could see the outline of the stranger's form grow suddenly smaller. He had seen or heard the rush of Overland and now he was leaning along the neck of his horse to jockey it to the fullest speed. With the straightaway before them, this would be a test of the relative merits of the two mounts!
Ballantine tightened his rein. With a strong wrist and yet with a sensitive touch, he took the feel of the head of Overland so that the stallion could lean well into his full stride. He leaned forward and eased his weight onto the withers of the black. In response, Overland gave forth such a burst of speed as Ballantine had dreamed of but never felt before. It seemed that the big animal had taken wings. There was a breathless swoop to every stride. And he seemed lengthening and flattening toward the ground as he settled to his work.
And still the stranger did not seem to come back to him! Amazement filled the heart of Ballantine! He had not dreamed that there was another horse West of the Mississippi which could hold this pace and not falter! There might be speedier horses by far to whirl around a leveled track with a featherweight jockey perched on its back, but where else than in Overland was there such a union of strength and speed, dauntless endurance, ability to gallop like the wind?
There might be explanations. Yonder was a stocky man, but a short one. A hundred and fifty pounds of manhood, say, whereas he, in exchange, burdened Overland with a solid bulk of two hundred pounds. That handicap was bound to tell fearfully'.
Ay, but here was the stranger coming back to him indeed! There could be no doubt about it now. As the moon rose higher, as its light brightened, it cast behind the fugitive a long and fluttering shadow that bunched like a squatting toad as the horse descended on the road' and stretched swiftly out again when he launched himself up and forward in his next swinging stride. And the black outline of the stranger drew steadily hack to Ballantine—steadily but slowly!
There was still a great gap between the two horses. Might it not well be that, forcing Overland to a sustained sprint to bring him within anything like a sure revolver range of the fugitive, he would be totally exhausted, so that the stranger could sweep off away from him? When a running horse falters, he is done; and the rival may wing away with almost unimpaired speed, simply because it has not been run out so rashly. So Ballantine drew up a little and took the stallion first out of his wild burst of full-speed running, then out of his secondary sprint into a long, sweeping gallop. His head was no longer strained straight before him. It was raised easily. He raced proudly over the ground, at ease, running well within himself. The stranger, too, as though realizing that by a sprint he could not draw away, had ceased urging his animal on except with an occasional swing of the quirt. And, at this rate, Overland held the other without trouble. Ay, and gained a little, but slowly, slowly!
Meantime, the miles were flowing fast behind them. They neared the town. The stranger turned north on the Bingham road. They passed up long grades into the hills, dipping constantly into long, easy hollows, and rising again over gentle swells. But the surety of victory was with Ballantine, now. Overland was hard pressed by that long run. There was no doubt of that by the way his lungs were working, but the horse of the fugitive was in far worse condition. His head was stretched straight forth, a sure proof that he was running again to the full of his strength. And even that effort could not shake off Ballantine. Every moment, now, the stranger was turning to look back. He began to open a scattering fire from his revolvers. But Ballantine heeded nothing of that. It was only by miracle that a shot could go home, fired in that dull light from the swaying back of a horse at full gallop.
He had only to wait until the gap between them was closed a little more, and then—the finish! He was gathering the life of another man into his hand—gathering it slowly, leisurely, enjoying the taste of the kill before the moment of it came. And sweet was that taste to Ballantine! The fierce joy of it made him tremble; and he grinned against the wind of Overland's gallop, and drew in his breath as if he were drinking wine.
It was not a blind flight, however, this of the assassin. For now, as they topped another hill, Ballantine saw before him a great sweep of second-growth timber where the Bingham Road dips into the upper and rougher hills. He had forgotten that stretch of timber. Once inside the skirts of it, the stranger could dart off to the side by any of a thousand openings, and if he were followed, could turn and shoot down his pursuer at leisure. Even now he was jockeying his horse down the slope with spur and whip!
So Ballantine called on Overland again, and this time how great was the difference. The rush of the black stallion was hardly less strong and swift than his first burst as he left the ranch. He strained his head forward like an eagle reaching after a fish hawk in midair. Far different was the answer of the horse which fled before them. He did his best, urged by all the bitterness of gouging spur and flogging quirt, but there was no more strength left. Presently his head went up and began to bob—a sure proof that he was done. That flight for the near-by woods was hopeless, now, and the stranger seemed to realize at once that his chances were gone.
He drew rein sharply. His mount was brought to a staggering halt, and then turned back to face the charge of Ballantine. And he came with a sweep, his revolver held stiffly before him, firing fast. He saw the gun flash up in the hand of the other. He saw it spit fire once. Then the stranger reeled from his saddle and lay, spread-eagled, on the dust of the road. Overland would have trod him under foot as he rushed on, but he gathered himself at the last moment and leaped clear.
Ballantine was turned and back again in an instant. As he came he could see the cause for the length of that pursuit. Standing with drooping head, its sides bright with running sweat, its ears flattened against its neck, the horse of the gunman was still as beautiful a picture of speed and high blood as Ballantine had fever seen in all his days. There was length of limb and bigness of bone and depth of lung as well. It seemed a wonder, now, that even Overland, handicapped with such a burden, could have caught him!
He stooped above the stranger and turned him on his back. He found himself looking down into a broad, ugly face, now loose-featured and limp. But the man was not dead. His heart still beat, though slowly. And from the edge of his forehead along the side of his head, Ballantine could see the place where the bullet had struck. It had glanced from the bone of the head and left a nasty-looking wound, but in reality one of no importance. Water and a bandage were all that were needed, and through the stillness of the night, above the noise of the panting horses, Ballantine could hear the trickling of spring water. He lifted his victim, therefore, and carried him toward that sound. He laid the gunman beside a little water-filled basin, and it was the pain of the cold water in the wound that roused him. He swayed to a sitting posture, groaning out a curse.
"Steady," said Ballantine. "You're out of trouble now, but you're only out for a minute. Mind your hands, partner. I've followed too far for you to start takin' chances now with you!"
"It comes back to me," said the other sullenly. "You're Ballantine."
"I'm Ballantine. Sit tight while I get this cloth around your head."
The crushing pressure of the cloth against the wound of the other must have caused the most excruciating pain, but he let not a single whisper of complaint escape from him. Only his breathing grew irregular and stertorous. When the bandaging was ended: "Where to now, mate?" he asked.
"To the sheriff," said Ballantine calmly. And the stranger nodded.
"'Was Steve killed?" he asked suddenly.
"By the way he fell, I guess so. I didn't stop to look."
"It was a low trick!" snarled out the other.
"Ay," said Ballantine, "shooting a man in the back—"
"I mean bein' sent out and told that you was simply a strong-armer and no sense with a gun! It was low, lyin' to us that way!"
Ballantine regarded him with a keener interest. There was not the slightest pang of conscience about all of this, it appeared. The man was as much at ease as though he had been overtaken in some good action.
"Who sent you out?" he asked.
"The judge'll ask the same thing," said the other, and grinned shamelessly at his intended victim.
"Yes," said Ballantine, "but I'll pay for what I want to know."
"What sort of money, partner?"
"Freedom, maybe," said Ballantine.
"You mean you'll gimme the gate and turn me loose? Is that it?"
"That's it."
"It's a lie," said the gunman. "There ain't no chance of that. You wouldn't be such a fool. All you want me to do is to shoot off my face, and when I've told who it was, you'll take me on into town."
"Maybe there's a chance of that, too. But I figger it's a chance worth takin'! You won't he no worse off than you are now. Who sent you out? If you tell me it's a one to fifty shot that I'll let you go free."
"The skunk don't deserve to be covered up," said the other. "It was young Reddick, the banker's son."
Harry Reddick! It sent an electric thrill of horror through the mind of Ballantine.
"What reason did he give for wantin' to knife me?"
"Said you was a crook that would shoot him in the back as quick as you'd wink."
Ballantine considered this quietly. He was beginning to see another phase of this new life into which he was stepping. It was not necessary to seek adventure. Adventure would come seeking him without an effort on his part. In a trice he made up his mind. There would be no wild wandering. He would simply ride into town and find what he could find.
"Turn out your pockets," he commanded.
"Ay," grunted the other. "I knew it'd turn out this way. I was a fool to blab!"
He turned out his pockets, and a small shower of things fell on the ground, all except that one for which Ballantine was most carefully waiting.
This fall of small possessions was accompanied by a little running comment from the gunman: "That watch runs slow five minutes a day. But you can depend on it just that way. It'll never run no more nor no less. There's a pocket knife that'll open tin cans or slice up greasers; you never seen steel like that. Nothin' at all can turn its edge."
"There's one thing more," broke in Ballantine, "and I suppose it's here."
He reached into the breast pocket of the smaller man and his fingers closed on the soft, padded warmth of a leather wallet. There was a groan from the gunman as his treasure was drawn out.
"It ain't all mine," he wailed. "I swear it ain't. It was give to me by a friend to take to his wife and his kids! She's a widder now. He was dead before I left him."
"I guess he was," admitted Ballantine. "Lemme know how much of this come from Reddick."
"Two hundred even."
"As cheap as that?" murmured Ballantine. "Why, you can get a man killed as cheap as you can buy a good hoss! That's all, friend. Here's your gun back ag'in. It's loaded, still," he added. "You might be sort of careful of it!"
He did not make a move toward his own weapon, but the criminal, regarding him with a steady scowl of the blackest malice, seemed to decide that this was no fit opportunity for a gun play. He shoved the weapon reluctantly out of sight among his clothes.
"I want to know one thing," he said.
"What's that?"
"What sort of a hoss is that?"
"Take a look."
The gunman went to Overland and stood reverently before the tall stallion.
"He's got it," he said at last. "I figgered there wasn't a hoss this side of purgatory that could catch my gelding—not with no fifty-pound handicap. But this big black devil has got it. How much, partner, would you take for that hoss?"
"A bullet through the head," said he, "would buy him. And that's about all."
"You ain't a fool," stated the stranger, "though your turnin' of me loose has the looks of it. Well, son, he's worth that bullet and maybe a mite more! So long!"
He climbed into the saddle on his gelding which, having blown out during the interval, had fallen to cropping the sun-cured grass at the side of the road.
"By way of lettin' you know," he said, "my name is Hank Nevis."
"Hank, I'm glad to see you go."
"I'm comin' back ag'in, Ballantine. I never yet have got trimmed without takin' another whirl at the gent that done it."
"You have your life, you rat," said Ballantine in contempt. "Be off with you before I change my mind."
The answer of Hank Nevis was a veritable whine of rage; and then he was gone.
HE could not be sure that he had heard correctly that last snarl from the disgruntled gunman; but it seemed to him that what the departing horseman said was: "I'll send Pierre to talk to you!"
That, of course, must have been an illusion of the ear. There was only one man in the world so celebrated by that name, and he was the famous Canadian who had made for himself such a place in the eye of the West that even during his life he loomed as large as those famous old heroes of the early days on the frontier. Men told fables about him; and he was still young!
No, it could not have been Pierre that was meant, with the moccasined feet and the little fur cap, brown-faced Pierre on one of his wild-caught mustangs. That was a trick of the fancy which had made Hank Nevis seem to mention the famous name. And, dismissing that fancy with a little shudder, Ballantine turned the head of the stallion toward the town.
It was the early dawn when he arrived in it. The proprietor had not yet come downstairs in the hotel, but Ballantine banged with his fist upon the desk until he raised a storm of curses from the rooms above him, curses muffled by intervening partitions but still distinguishable. And the proprietor himself came down in a furious haste, swearing with every step he took.
But when he glimpsed the face of his guest, he stopped abruptly and his eyes widened. It was a veritable mask of fear that Ballantine saw, and the sight was pleasant to him. For, in his day, Gus Dickson had been a formidable man with weapons, and he was so still, for that matter. Many and many a time his old-fashioned Colt had come into action in the liquor days in the hotel. He carried the scars of his battles with him. But even Gus Dickson seemed to see in Ballantine more danger than he cared to trouble with.
"It's sort of early, Ballantine," was all he mumbled. "What can I do for you?"
"A room," said the guest, and he was straightway shown to one. Ay, more than that, the proprietor remained to turn down the covers of the bed and bring in fresh towels and draw the shade so that the early morning light would not disturb the slumber of the sleeper. And the least of these was far more than he would have done for a man who was not a known fellow for prowess of hand.
As he was going out, he paused again in the doorway. His manner was still amiable, almost fawningly ingratiating.
"Will was in a while back. He brung in Steve Ranger's body with him and then left ag'in. I guess the sheriff will be wantin' to see you to-day, Ballantine!" And, grinning and nodding, he went out.
Steve Ranger, then, was the name of the fellow he had shot down. And for that shooting, the sheriff was ready to arrest him? However, he was too tired and too satisfied with himself after the greatest day of his life, the only real day of living, to pay any heed to such matters.
He was in bed in a trice. Only for an instant he fought back the wave of slumber that struck over him. He could hear the sounds of the day's life beginning in the street. The town was waking up. He listened to those sounds dreamily for a moment. Then sleep carried him an eternity away from the earth.
When he wakened, the air was hot and still. He raised his head from the pillow and knew by that heavy, drowsy murmur which pervaded the town, that it was high noon. There was a tapping at the door, the same sound which had awakened him. So he rose from the bed and hurried to answer the summons. But, halfway to the door, he paused. He was no longer the man of the day before. So much water had flowed under the bridge since that last awakening that he must be prepared to face a new life. And, among other things, he must not carelessly open doors to the first comer.
So he took the time needed to half dress himself and belt on his revolver, at the same time calling: "In a jig, partner. I'll be there. Who is it?"
There was a murmur in reply which he could not quite make out, and he went to the door, at last, with his hand ready at his gun. But when he opened it, he found the sheriff himself waiting outside, waiting carelessly, leaning against the wall. He grinned in a knowing fashion at Ballantine.
"Takin' nothin' on trust, I see," said he. "Well, after yesterday, I dunno but what you're right."
He entered the room, dropped his hat on the floor, and sat down in a chair by the window. Ballantine raised the shade.
"You got Ranger, then?" said he.
"I heard so," said Ballantine, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "Who was Ranger?"
"You didn't stop to ask?"
"He and another gent blazed away at me from behind a tree last night, out to the house. The talkin' that this guy Nevis and me done was with bullets."
"What happened?" asked Joe Durfee, frankly interested, and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "How did the trick turn for you?"
"I had the luck," said Ballantine. "I dropped on the ground and nailed him before he could shoot ag'in. That was all. The other gent didn't like the work. He cut and run for it. I had a long ride to get hold of him."
"Good heavens." cried the sheriff, "did you get the second man, too? Who was he?"
"Nevis was his name."
"You killed Nevis?"
"No, I only caught him."
"What became of him, then? Ranger was enough. You'll get a fat reward for nailing that yegg, but Nevis is worth a dozen of Ranger. Where is he now?"
"He was riding north," said Ballantine, "when I seen him last. He was riding north, saying what he'd do to me."
"He got away, then," sighed Joe Durfee. "Ah, Ballantine, there was the chance of a lifetime. How the devil did he get away?"
"I turned him loose."
"What!"
"I wanted the name of the gent that sent him after me. I turned him loose for telling that."
The sheriff sighed. "Ah," said he, "if I'd been in your boots, I'd either have been a dead man or I'd have had him. Well, Ballantine, what was the name of him that sent Nevis after you?"
"After I find him," said Ballantine, "most likely you'll be called in to see him. Until then, him and me have got a secret between us. Y'understand?"
The sheriff smiled faintly, wistfully. "Ballantine," he said, "tell me flat. What's happened to you?"
"I've growed young," said Ballantine, "and I've got all interested ag'in in toys like this here."
He drew his Colt and handled it with a loving touch.
"It's queer," said the sheriff. "I never knowed you to be a fighting man or a shooting man. But you got Nevis and Ranger both in one night. I never done a day's work like that in all my life, and me a professional!"
He rose. "How long are you in town?"
"I dunno," said Ballantine. "Until something comes along that takes me out of it, I guess."
"Ah? You ain't on the ranch?"
"I'm a gent of leisure, sheriff."
The sheriff gaped at him, started to speak, and then changed his mind. He grew very serious.
"Ballantine," he said, "I come up here primed to talk. But I see there ain't no use. Only, I tell you this: For heaven's sake go soft. You've made a name for yourself. After this, some kinds of trouble will dodge you. Other kinds of trouble will come along to find you out. Leave your Colt have a little sleep, will you?"
So the sheriff departed, and Ballantine went to the wash stand and shaved. Afterward, he went down for breakfast, and found that a dozen men were already there. They were busy talking, busy eating, but a little breath of silence passed over the big noisy room when he entered. Afterward, as he pulled back a chair at a corner table, he could make out a few words in the whisper that went around.
"That's Ballantine now."
"Don't look no different."
"He's turned killer."
"He'll last a while, at that."
Covert whispers, spoken in mumbles through mustaches. And they were balm to the proud heart of Ballantine. Men had never noticed him, before, except to smile. They no longer smiled. And that was enough.
After breakfast he joined the line of loungers on the veranda, looking up and down the street, and across the roofs of the town to big Mount Christopher, watching the light invade the blue hollows one by one, and polish the naked faces of the cliffs with burning light. 'The air was close; the sun grew hotter still. A tall, lean fellow with a dull eye stood over his chair.
"There's a little game in the back room. Will you play, Ballantine?"
He barely understood the system of poker, but he went. And when he had been introduced to the four others who sat around the table in the back room, he found, after all, that the playing of a poker hand is very much like a gun fight—in that it is accomplished with all of one's nerve gathered, and with all of one's force in the eye and the mind. He had to look deep into the scheming brains around that table. He had to cover his own emotions as with a mask; and he had to see through theirs. From that thick sheaf of bills which filled the wallet he had taken from Nevis, he extracted two hundred dollars in the first hour of play. Then, in the second hour, his growing skill told. He had judged his men. He knew when the thin-faced man compressed his lips a little that he had nothing and was prepared to bet to the sky to carry out a bluff. He knew when the fat man's fingers—usually so active and nervous—became still, that he held a hand worth a bet and a big one. And, in such fashion as this, he learned the earmarks of each of the others. It was not difficult.' It was only new. In the second hour he took back his lost money and added seventy-five to boot. Then the game broke up. The fat man was broke.
Ballantine went back to the veranda and sat through the cool of the evening. He had made the wages of six weeks in a single afternoon of not unpleasant play. It was surely a better fashion of harvesting the good things of life!
Afterward the tall, thin man with the dull eyes came back to him.
"Partner," he said, "if you and me was to understand each other, there'd be some extra profit in poker for the pair of us!"
"Stranger," said Ballantine, "I ain't never got along particular well with skunks; most of all with crooked skunks!"
He saw gleaming points of fire come into the eyes of the other. But after a moment the man turned away. And Ballantine smiled to himself. It was a pleasant world, an easy world. But one had to understand how to take it by the throat and make it know its master. That was all. He was getting that throat hold now!
That was only a sample of the life of Ballantine during the next few days. He retired late, he slept late. In the afternoon he played poker with whoever chose. And not once did he leave the table a loser. He was waiting, during those days, he hardly knew for what. He felt that the town was watching him, expecting something strange from him. And he himself had the same expectation. The world was all lost in a dream; he himself was the only really wakeful thing in it.
Then, with a shock, came the reward of that expectation of trouble on the horizon of his life.
IT was a letter addressed roughly in pencil which the postman brought to him, and inside he found scrawled:
Dear Mr. Ballantine:
My friend, Hank Nevis, tells me that you might be expecting me. I'm coming as fast as the train will get me there, which ought to be about a day after this letter gets to you. I hope that we will be able to entertain one another.
Pierre Lacoste.
There was no doubt, now, about the name which Nevis had muttered as he rode away to freedom with a grudge in his heart. In Ballantine three impulses rose and faded one after the other. The first was to remain and await the coming of that destroyer from the North. The second was to turn and flee as fast as he could. The third was to take out his revolver and begin practicing for the duel at once.
What he finally did was to go to Joe Durfee.
"Durfee," he said, "tell me about Pierre Lacoste."
Joe Durfee was not an emotional man.
But he changed color and stood up slowly from his chair.
"Is Pierre around here?" he asked faintly.
"Pierre is maybe gunna be here, I want to know something about him."
"Good heavens, Ballantine, you ain't mixed yourself up with him?"
"That ain't the question."
"Pierre? Well, Ballantine, they call some gents devils. Pierre is two devils!"
"What's he done? Of course I've heard about him. But nothin' certain."
The sheriff squinted his eyes. "I met a marshal, once, that knowed the whole history of Lacoste. He begun young learnin' knife work in Canadian lumber camps. He-had two dead men behind him when he was fourteen. After that he graduated and got busy with a gun, and what he's done with his guns would need an addin' machine to keep the count of."
"But he ain't bein' hunted?"
"He's one that plays safe. He waits for the other gent to make the first move. Here in the West, where a gent might have to pull a gun almost any time, it's pretty hard to hang a man for shooting another gent in a fair fight. It's pretty hard. And mostly a jury will bring in self-defense. For why? Because all of them jurors figgers that some day they might get into a scrape and have to pull a gun, and they want to make sure that if they didn't pick the fight, they'll have a chance to come off clear. Y'understand? So, unless somebody actually sees one man come up and take the draw on another and shoot him down, there ain't much chance of hanging a killer. That's what Pierre understands. He found out that in Canada they didn't give a man so much leeway. A killing was a killing up there. So he shifted down into the States, not because he likes the country better, but because he likes the laws better. Now, Ballantine, that's the story of Lacoste boiled down short and sweet. Some folks do a killin' because they hate the other man, and some of 'em kill because they get crazy mad, and some kill because they're drunk and don't know what they're doin'. But once in a while comes along a man that kills for the sake of killin'. Once in fifty years one comes along that's like that. And that's Pierre."
"He's a great fighter, then?"
"The greatest that ever pulled a gun or a knife. He shoots by instinct the same way as a wolf follers a trail. Up in Lawsonville the three Gregory brothers made up their minds to get rid of Pierre, because they knowed that he was on the trail of Pete Lawson. They went after him and come into the bar-room behind him. They didn't even holler. They just pulled their guns and started pumping lead at him. Well, sir, he turned around and dropped all three of 'em—and them as good shots as you ever seen. I used to know Harry Gregory. He was a fine hand with a rifle or with a revolver, and he'd had lots of experience. But the three of them was not good enough for this here Pierre. He killed poor Harry. He wounded the other two. And he didn't get a scratch himself. Some folks said afterward that he must have a charmed life, but that ain't it. The trouble is that most folks, when they sees that long white face of his and the devil in his eyes and the smile on his mouth, get rattled. 'They're like a man that sees his first deer. They shoot wild. And that's the end of them! I've heard gents talk about shooting grizzlies full of lead. They knew where their bullets landed. But when you kill that same bear you find that there ain't a single slug in his carcass. That's the way with a gent like Pierre. He's the bear. And the gents that stand up to him are too scared and too excited to know what they're doin'. Now, Ballantine, tell me the truth. Is they any trouble, between you and Lacoste?"
He turned the matter over and over in his mind. It was on the tip of his tongue to say that he had asked out of merest curiosity. And, having said that, to saddle matchless Overland and ride swiftly away from danger. And yet there was a horrible temptation gripping him, like that which seizes upon a man on the edge of a cliff. Just as the climber feels a grisly joy in the thought of throwing himself into space, so the desire to confront this terrible Pierre swelled in the heart of Ballantine. Moreover, if he fled, Pierre would publish abroad the tidings of his cowardice. Better to die than that! Better to tie himself to the necessity of facing this destroyer from the North.
Suddenly he took out the letter and gave it to the sheriff.
"There it is," said he.
The sheriff read it through twice, mumbling the words aloud. Then he said quietly: "Ballantine, it ain't cowardice if a gent gives Pierre room. Saddle Overland. Hit it south!"
Ballantine smiled. And the smile suggested to his mind still another thought. Since he must need brave this danger, why not brave it as if it were nothing, and no matter how his heart was quaking in him, make it impossible for any man to guess?
"D'you think," said he "that I fear Lacoste? Not a bit, Durfee!"
And he left the sheriff with those words, and went out on Overland for a ride. His last long ride, perhaps, on that glorious horse! He stretched it out through the mountains, and Overland went like the very personification of the wind. And when, in the evening, he turned back toward the town, with the plain stretched out in a deep sea of rosy light beneath him, and the huge purple mountains piled against the horizon, he told himself that it was better, far better, to live one free day such as this day had been, than to stretch cut weary years of his old existence.
And if he died to-morrow with the coming of big Pierre, let him die. The end must come to all men sooner or later. In the meantime, what joy was there in heaven greater than the joy of a swinging canter on the back of glorious Overland?
That great body, like a tireless machine, swept him back into town. He was singing when he came from the barn to the hotel. Perhaps, he thought, that song would never pass through his lips again! And, all gathered in that gentle beauty of the sunset light, he felt stirring about him whatever had been joyous and gay in all his life. All that had been dreadful with weary labor and hopelessness, was forgotten now. He thought of his childhood, most of all, and in it the voice and the face of his mother; he thought of the first proud days when he was the "boy rancher" of all that district, pointed out and commented upon by older men. And, last and brightest, he thought of pretty Peggy Holbrook. Indeed, she had never been out of his mind in that wild time which followed his re-creation.
He went in through the back door and the first person he encountered was the burly proprietor himself, coming out of the kitchen. He caught the arm of Ballantine.
"Is it true?" he gasped out.
"What?"
"Pierre Lacoste—"
"Of course. Why not, partner?"
The eye of the other filled with cold curiosity and horror, as though he-were even then looking upon a dead corpse.
"We'll be wishin' you luck," he muttered, and followed Ballantine with his glance as the latter walked away, then called: "Will and your sister are wait-in' for you."
What could they want? They were in his room, and when he entered they sprang up to meet him. How changed they were already! All the flippant and self-centered satisfaction was gone from the face of Sylvia. Will Ballantine showed a sun-reddened set of features, and weary eyes. It was Sylvia who ran to him as he opened the door.
"Oh, Chris, dear old Chris!" she said. "They haven't told us the truth, or you wouldn't be so carefree. It isn't true, Chris!"
"What?" he asked her.
"About that man Lacoste—"
Will came on his other side. There was no denying the reality of the emotion which he showed.
"Chris," he said, "hurry up and tell us that there's nothing in it."
"How's the ranch?" asked Ballantine.
"Never mind the ranch—we want to know—"
He saw that he could not dodge them. "I'm going to meet up with Lacoste," he told them. "It'll be good for the range to have him done for. That's all there is to it."
Sylvia, with a moan, covered her face.
"Why not?" asked Ballantine. "Do you think that I'm afraid of him? Not at all! These bullies, Will—they go down easily when a man faces them."
The mouth of Will Ballantine set hard; then he said slowly: "It's no use, Sylvia. He's made up his mind. There's only one thing to do, and I'll do it. I'm going to be with you—"
"You'll stay on the ranch," directed Ballantine. "That's all of that! I don't need help. Now tell me how it goes."
"Sylvia, go out and wait for me," said Will.
"Oh, Chris—" she began, and then, seeing the iron in his face, as though she realized suddenly that words were useless, she choked back a sob and ran from the room. Will Ballantine walked a turn or two up and down the room, fighting with himself.
At last he said suddenly: "Chris, for heaven's sake try to dodge this thing. You'll find a new family life if you'll come back to us. I don't mean that we want you back there to do the fighting all by yourself. I'm going to let law go hang for a few years until we've seen this trouble through. Sylvia discharged Alice. She's doing the cooking and working like a Trojan."
"I saw her hands," said Ballantine, with a warm glow of satisfaction spreading through him.
"But we need you—as the head of the family. We need you as our brother, dear old Chris, and because since you broke out and left us, we've had a chance to think things over, and we can see just how much you've had to put up with. Chris, if you can come back to us, you'll find a different atmosphere. The nonsense is completely out of Sylvia. I hope to Heaven that it's out of me. We needed the whip, and you gave it to us. I only wish that you'd done it ten years ago!"
To Ballantine it was a moment only less great than that in which he struck big Jeff Partridge to the ground and then crushed Harry Reddick like a brittle thing. He took the hand of his brother and wrung it.
"Will," he said, "this makes me feel rich. If there was ever, any doubt in my mind about Lacoste before, it's gone now. I'm going to beat him because I have to beat him. There's too much left for me to live for."
HIS brother and sister were not the last to come to him on that night. He had hardly finished his supper and gone out onto the veranda, when Patrick Reddick arrived and took him out under the pines for a serious talk. The burden of what he had to say was most strange to one whom the banker had used with such brutal frankness a few days before.
"Ballantine," he said, in the beginning, "the first essential in a business man must be the courage to change his mind when he finds he has been wrong. Ballantine, I was wrong. I was wrong about you. I've come to you to-night to tell you two things. The first is that I made a mistake about you. The second is that your credit is good in my bank again. Good for enough, say, to push through your little irrigation scheme. That is not charity. Simply good business. When I talked to you last, you were not man enough to put through a job of that size. Now you are man enough to put through almost anything."
It was a tribute strong enough to have made the head of Ballantine swim at any other time, but when a man expects to live not more than twenty-four hours, his brain is cool as steel. So it was with Ballantine.
There followed a strange recital from the banker. He had had a night visit from Hank Nevis, who tried to extract blackmail from him, threatening, otherwise, to reveal that Harry Reddick had hired the assassins to attempt the life of Ballantine. And, when the banker refused money, he had ended by declaring that Harry Reddick was done for anyway, because Ballantine already knew who the employer was.
"I've waited two more days," said Reddick, "to see if you intended to let the world know about Harry. You haven't done it. I don't believe you intend to. So I've done two things. I've sent Harry put of the country to try to make his way in a new place; and I've come to you to thank you for keeping your mouth shut!"
There followed more business talk. There was no doubt about his sincerity. He backed it up by a flat offer of money—more than enough to push through that irrigation scheme in the bottom lands and to replenish the stocking of the ranch.
"Reddick," said the other, "a week ago I was worth about a nickel to you. What's made the difference? A gun fight?"
"A week ago you wouldn't fight. And fighters are what the world needs. That's all! Men who fight their way out of trouble. I'm a fighter, Ballantine. That's why I understand. There's only one proviso—don't stay here to meet Pierre Lacoste. That's suicide! Take a vacation. I'll finance it. Let him come and go again."
But Ballantine shook his head. He listened for a few more minutes while the other argued, then he said finally: "Suppose, Mr. Reddick, that you was in my boots and my age, and a gent wrote you a letter like Lacoste wrote to me. What would you do?"
It silenced Pat Reddick. Ballantine watched him walk thoughtfully away. Then he went back to the stable behind the hotel, took out the stallion, and rode him toward the house of John Holbrook. He had made up his mind that since that wild scene at the conquering of Overland, neither the rancher nor his daughter would care to see him again. But if Reddick had changed so much, why might not Holbrook have at least forgiven him? And Peggy, as well?
He tethered the big black outside the corral near the poplars and went up to the house. They were both on the veranda. He could see the glow pulse and die in the bowl of Holbrook's pipe, and smell the fragrance of the rich tobacco. He could make out the pale outline of the girl sitting near her father. And, at that, such emotion came over Ballantine that he grew weak—weak as in the old days when the presence of the girl had ever turned him mute. He paused in front of the steps, fighting for speech. Then came the sudden voice of Holbrook.
"Ballantine!"
The rancher jumped up and ran down the steps to him, caught him by the arm, and dragged him to the porch. There Peggy came to him. A flood of questions poured out upon him. About Overland, about himself, about the fight with Nevis and Ranger, about his new life, and most of all, the wild tale that terrible Pierre Lacoste was coming from the Northland to encounter him. Where were his doubts of their cordiality now?
"But this talk," said the rancher, "of your staying to meet that man-killer—it's nonsense, eh, my boy?"
He hesitated.
Then from Peggy Holbrook: "You won't do that, Chris?"
"Do you want me to turn my back on him?" he asked sharply.
"Would you stand still to meet a mad dog?" she asked him in return.
"That's it, Chris," said the older man. "A mad dog, with poison in his teeth. That's what Lacoste is!"
"They have to be killed, things like that," answered Ballantine.
"But you—" began Holbrook warmly.
"He's right," said the girl as suddenly as before. "If he feels that way, he's right to face him. If I were a man—I'd do the same thing, if I could. But, oh, Chris, that it should have to be you!"
It was all in her manner of saying that simple thing which made it seem to Ballantine the most marvelous of music. And he carried the sound of her voice away with him when they came out to watch him mount Overland.
"No more whip and spur?" asked Holbrook.
"I was a fool," said Ballantine. "There's nothing worth while that has to be flogged into doing things. I never touch him now with more than a word. Good-by!"
He went off swiftly through the night, through the lane, and down the road. A pale half moon was plowing through thin drifts of high clouds, throwing up a steady spray of ghostly white. Now and then it broke through and dappled the ground with the shadows of the trees. But on the whole, it gave the world only a dull, uncertain light.
And by that light, swinging onto the main road again, he saw a big man sitting on a small horse, a horse with a wild, ragged mane blowing in the wind and ears flattened; a rider wearing a high, peaked cap of fur; a tall rider with a long, thin face. Pierre Lacoste!
He knew it even with the first fall of his eyes on the stranger. And he drew rein at once. The dust cloud which Overland raised as he plowed to a halt, blew before them and veiled the stranger with a fog of white. Through it he spoke.
"Ballantine?"
That hard, serene, confident voice withered the tongue of Ballantine at the root. He could not answer. And the stranger continued: "I meet you tomorrow, Ballantine, in the street, in front of the hotel, at noon, monsieur, when there will be others to watch us and see that there is—fair play!"
And as he spoke, he laughed, softly, like the purring of a great savage cat when it holds a mouse between it's paws.
KILL that man in fair fight without some previous advantage, Ballantine knew that he could not. And as he rode to town he turned the matter slowly in his mind—slowly, with prickles of horror still running cold along his spine. Not unless Pierre Lacoste were half disarmed would he have a chance against that ghoul of a man. But how disarm him? He thought again of the sneering, savage laughter of Pierre. One thing, indeed, might touch him—scorn might madden him. But who would dare scorn Pierre Lacoste to his face? Only one thing in the world could have courage enough to do that, and that one thing was the bodiless monster, Rumor f The plan was half born in the mind of Ballantine when he fell asleep that night. It was fully formed when he sprang out of bed in the morning. He went down to breakfast with a cheerful mien. And men looked upon him as upon one already dead.
"Ballantine," said the proprietor, whispering, "maybe I'm takin' my life in my hands to tell you even this much. But the fact is that they's some that says that he's in town already, or hang-in' around waitin' for you!"
"Ah, yes," said Ballantine, and he shrugged his shoulders. "I've seen him already."
"You've seen him? And you're alive, man?"
"I dunno how it was," scoffed Ballantine. "I was as close to him as he was to me. But he didn't make a move to his gun. Maybe he's losin' his nerve, d'you think? He seen me face to face, and he didn't dare to stir!"
That was all, but perhaps it was enough. It was a lie, no doubt, and a black one, but against so horrible a phantom as this Pierre Lacoste were not weird weapons permissible? After that he went back to his room and waited. It was not a pause of five hours until noon. It was five hideous centuries of suspense. And every fifth minute, which was a year's length in agony, he said to himself: "When I go out to face him and die, will I break down—will my nerve quit cold? Will I fall on my knees and beg him not to kill me? God give me strength!"
When noon came, he looked down through the crevice at the bottom of his drawn window shade which kept out the flare of the sunlight, and so he could see, plainly, the form of Pierre Lacoste when he came riding in on his ragged mustang with the famous peaked fur cap on his head. A terrible face it was that Ballantine saw, more dreadful by day than by night—a bloodless, lifeless face. Only the lips lived, and sneered.
He disappeared under the awning over the watering troughs. Then he came out again, and he came with a rush, and stared up and down the street. He snatched off his cap and cast it down into the dust and trampled on it, and exposed a head covered with a mist of long, thin, blond hair, like the hair of an old man. The sun turned it to silver —a cloud of silver fire around that terrible face.
He had been told. Some one—and Ballantine wondered who—had told him of the thing that he, Ballantine, had said that very morning and Pierre Lacoste was going mad with rage and impatience.
How long would he wait before he started to search, started, perhaps in the hotel itself? Yonder were the crowded windows, yonder was the hushed street, with only the whisper of the wind and the dust cloud moving through it. Seconds were precious, now, for they were feeding on the very soul of Pierre Lacoste!
At last Ballantine himself could stand it no longer. He rose and looked to his gun. He felt very calm, but weak. He could not feel his heart beat. He took off his hat. And then he went down the stairs. When he reached the lobby, one of the men who stood at the windows turned and saw him, and he winced back with a spasm crossing his face, as though Ballantine had held a gun to his head.
And Ballantine knew, by that, that his own face was ghastly. Outside in the street he could hear the voice of Lacoste raving—broken English—broken French patois. He paused, gathered all his strength, and set his teeth to force a smile upon his lips. Then he stepped through the door onto the veranda. He cried out—and his voice rang amazingly strong and true.
"Lacoste, you coyote, turn around and face me!"
And Lacoste turned in the middle of the street, and when he saw Ballantine, he uttered a wild cry of savage fury.
There was no question here of waiting for the other man to draw his gun. Pierre himself made the first move for all men to see, tearing furiously at the butt of his Colt—and in his haste entangling it in some way. Perhaps it was the friction of the sight—for the gun was new—against the holster. At any rate; Ballantine saw the split second of delay, and in that instant he dreamed of victory. He jerked out his own gun and fired, fired again; then out of nothingness something struck him over the eyes and he was down.
When his senses returned to him, he saw John Holbrook leaning above him. And he caught at the rancher's hand.
"Holbrook, did I—" he muttered.
"The third bullet did it—the one you fired after you hit the ground," said Holbrook. "He dropped in his tracks. It went straight through the brain."
"The third bullet?" asked Ballantine; then spoke no more. The pain in his head had grown too intolerable to admit of speech.
It was the last time he ever drew a gun. And, of course, it was the last time he ever had to. The slayer of Pierre Lacoste did not need to demonstrate his formidable skill again. But, when he was a prosperous rancher with five hundred acres of irrigated bottom land, he used to say to his wife, Peggy: "It was Providence that saved my life. I dunno how I ever escaped the bullets fired by Pierre Lacoste."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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