"AND I'LL HELP YOU!"
What Jessamy Selden told Oliver Drew of the Poison Oakers was about the
same as he had heard from Damon Tamroy.
She used his sawbuck for a seat, and sat with one booted ankle resting
on a knee, idly spinning the rowel of her spur as she talked. Oliver
listened without interruption until she finished and once more levelled
that straightforward glance at him.
"The cows have been down below on winter pasture," she added. "Adam
Selden and the boys rode out yesterday to start the spring drive into
the foothills. You'll awake some morning soon to find red cattle all
about you, and they'll be here till August."
"Well," he said, "I don't know that I shall mind them. My fence is
pretty fair, and with a little more repairing will turn them, I think."
She twirled her rowel in silence for a time, her eyes fixed on it. Then
she said:
"It isn't that, Mr. Drew. I may as well tell you right now what I came
down here purposely to tell you. You're not wanted here. All of this
land has been abandoned so long that Adam Selden and the gang have come
to consider it their property--or at least free range."
"But they'll respect my right of ownership."
"I don't know--I don't know. I'm afraid they won't. They're a law unto
themselves down in here. They'll try to run you out."
"How?"
"Any way--every way. If nothing else occurs to them, they'll begin a
studied system of persecution with the idea of making you so sick of
your bargain that you'll pull stakes and hit the trail. That poor man
Dodd! Mr. Tamroy told me you happened into the saloon in time to see the
shooting. Wasn't it terrible! And how they persecuted him--fairly drove
him into the rash act that cost him his life!"
She lifted her glance again. "Mr. Tamroy tells me that you were shocked
at me that day."
"I guess I didn't fully understand the circumstances."
"I did," she firmly declared, her lips setting in what would have been a
grim smile but for the dimples that came with it. "I understood the
situation," she went on. "Digger Foss had been waiting for just that
chance. There's just enough Indian and Chinese blood in him to make him
a fatalist. He's therefore deadly. Has no fear of death. He's cruel,
merciless. I knew when I saw Henry Dodd covering him with that gun that,
if he didn't finish what he'd started, he was a dead man. He couldn't
even have backed off gracefully, keeping Digger covered, and got away
alive. Digger is so quick on the draw, and his aim is so deadly. He's a
master gunman. Even had Dodd succeeded in getting away then, he would
have been a marked man. He had thrown down on Digger Foss. Digger would
have got the drop on him next time they met and killed him as you would
a coyote. So in my excitement I rushed in with my well meant warning,
and--Oh, it was horrible!"
"And you meant actually for Dodd to kill Foss?"
Her black eyes dilated, and an angry flush blended with the tan on her
cheeks.
"It was one or the other of them," she told him coldly. "Mr. Dodd was an
honest, plodding man--a good citizen. Foss is a renegade. Was I so very
bloodthirsty in trying to make the best of a bad situation by choosing,
on the spur of the moment, which man ought to live on? I'm not the
fainting kind of woman, Mr. Drew. One must be practical, if he can, even
over matters like that."
"I'm not condemning," he said. "I'm only wondering that a woman could be
so practical in such a situation."
"Digger Foss hasn't seen me since then," she observed. "He's in jail,
awaiting trial, at the county seat. He'll be acquitted, of course. I'm
wondering what he'll have to say to me when he is free again."
Oliver said nothing to this.
"I must be going," she declared, rising suddenly. "As I said, I came
down to warn you to be on your guard against the Poison Oakers."
He caught her pony and led it to her. She swung into the saddle, then
slued toward him, leaned an elbow on the horn and rested her chin in the
palm of her hand. Once more that direct gaze of her frank black eyes
looked him through and through.
"Well," she asked, "will the Poison Oakers run you off?"
"Oh, I think not," he laughed lightly.
"They'll be ten against one, Mr. Drew."
"There's law in the land."
"Yes, there's law," she mused. "But it's so easy for unscrupulous people
to get around the law. They can subject you to no end of persecution,
and you won't even be able to prove that one of them is behind it."
She looked him over deliberately.
"I'm glad you've come," she said. "You're an educated man, and blessed
with a higher order of character than has been anybody else who stood to
cross the Poison Oakers. Somehow, I feel that you are destined to be
their undoing. They must be corralled and their atrocities brought to an
end. You must be the one to put the quietus on that gang. And I'll help
you. Good-bye!"
She lifted the white mare into a lope, opened the gate, rode through and
closed it without leaving the saddle, then, waving back at him,
disappeared in the chaparral.