"LIKE A WOLF"
Agnes had been on her homestead almost a week. She was making a brave
"stagger," as Smith described all amateurish efforts, toward cutting up
some dry cottonwood limbs into stove-lengths before her tent on the
afternoon that Jerry Boyle rode across the ford.
While she had not forgotten him, she had begun to hope that he had gone
back to Comanche, and his sudden appearance there gave her an unpleasant
shock. He drew up near her with a friendly word, and dismounted with a
cowboy swing to his long body and legs.
"Well, Agnes, you dodged me in Meander," said he. "You've located quite
a piece up the river and off the stage-road, haven't you?"
"But not far enough, it seems," she answered, a little weariness in her
voice, as of one who turns unwillingly to face at last something which
has been put away for an evil day.
"No need for us to take up old quarrels, Agnes," he chided with a show
of gentleness.
"I don't want to quarrel with you, Jerry; I never did quarrel with you,"
she disclaimed.
"'Misunderstandings' would be a better word then, I suppose," he
corrected. "But you could have knocked me over with a feather when you
repudiated me over there at Comanche that day. I suppose I should have
known that you were under an alias before I made that break, but I
didn't know it, Agnes, believe _me_."
"How could you?" she said, irritably. "That was nothing; let it rest.
But you understand that it was for the sake of others that the alias
was--and is--used; not for my own."
"Of course, Agnes. But what do you want to be wasting yourself on this
rough country for? There are more suitable places in Wyoming for you
than this lonesome spot. What's the object, anyhow?"
"I am building here the City of Refuge," said she, "and its solitude
will be its walls."
"Ready for the time when _he_ comes back, I suppose?"
She nodded assent slowly, as if grudging him that share of the knowledge
of her inner life.
"Poor old kid, you've got a job ahead of you!" he commiserated.
A resentful flush crept into her face, but she turned aside, gathering
her sticks as if to hide her displeasure. Boyle laughed.
"Pardon the familiarity--'vulgar familiarity' you used to call
it--Agnes. But 'what's bred in the bone,' you know."
"It doesn't matter so much when there's no one else around, but it's
awkward before people."
"You wouldn't marry me on account of my tongue!" said he with sour
reminiscence.
"It wasn't so much that, Jerry," she chided, "and you know it perfectly
well."
"Oh, well, if a man does take a drink now and then----" he discounted.
"But many drinks, and frequently, are quite different," she reproved.
"We'll not fuss about it."
"Far from it," she agreed.
"I didn't come down to open old matters, although I suppose you thought
that was my intention when you dodged me and stuck so close to that
tin-horn doctor up at Meander."
"It's comforting to know you haven't come for--_that_," said she,
ignoring his coarse reference to Slavens.
"No; things change a good deal in four years' time, even sentiment--and
names."
"But it wouldn't be asking too much to expect you to respect some of the
changes?"
"I don't suppose," he mused, "that many people around here care whether
a man's name is the one he goes by, or whether it's the one he gets his
mail under at the post-office at Comanche. That's generally believed to
be a man's own business. Of course, he might carry it too far, but
that's his own lookout."
"Are you on your way to Comanche?" she asked.
Boyle motioned her to the trunk of the cottonwood whose branches she had
been chopping into fuel, with graceful and unspoken invitation to sit
down and hear the tale of his projected adventures.
"I've been wearing a pair of these high-heeled boots the past few days
for the first time since I rode the range," he explained, "and they make
my ankles tired when I stand around."
He seated himself beside her on the fallen log.
"No, I'm not going to Comanche," said he. "I came down here to see you.
They gave me the worst horse in the stable at Meander, and he'll never
be able to carry me back there without a long rest. I'll have to make
camp by the river."
She glanced at his horse, on the saddle of which hung, cowboy fashion, a
bag of grub which also contained a frying-pan and coffeepot, she knew,
from having seen many outfits like it in the stores at Comanche. A
blanket was rolled behind the high cantle. As for the horse, it seemed
as fresh and likely as if it had come three miles instead of thirty. She
believed from that evidence that Jerry's talk about being forced to make
camp was all contrived. He had come prepared for a stay.
"I got into the habit of carrying those traps around with me when I was
a kid," he explained, following her eyes, "and you couldn't drive me two
miles away from a hotel without them. They come in handy, too, in a
pinch like this, I'm here to tell you."
"It's something like a wise man taking his coat, I suppose."
"Now you've got it," commended Boyle.
"But Smith, who used to drive the stage, could have fixed you up all
right," she told him. "He's got a tent to lodge travelers in down by his
new store. You must have seen it as you passed?"
"Yes; and there's another crook!" said Boyle with plain feeling on the
matter. "But I didn't come down here to see Smith or anybody else but
you. It's business."
He looked at her with severity in his dark face, as if to show her that
all thoughts of tenderness and sentiment had gone out of his mind.
"I'm listening," said she.
"There's a man down here a few miles spreadin' himself around on a piece
of property that belongs to me," declared Boyle, "and I want you to help
me get him off."
She looked at him in amazement.
"I don't understand what you mean," said she.
"Slavens."
"Dr. Slavens? Why, he's on his own homestead, which he filed upon
regularly. I can't see what you mean by saying it belongs to you."
"I mean that he stole the description of that land at the point of a
gun, that's what I mean. It belongs to me; I paid money for it; and I'm
here to take possession."
"You've got your information wrong," she denied indignantly. "Dr.
Slavens didn't steal the description. More than that, he could make it
pretty uncomfortable for certain people if he should bring charges of
assault and intended murder against them, Mr. Jerry Boyle!"
"Oh, cut out that high-handshake stuff, Miss Agnes Horton-Gates, or
Gates-Horton, and come down to brass tacks! The time was when you could
walk up and down over me like a piece of hall carpet, and I'd lie there
and smile. That day's gone by. I've got wool on me now like a
bellwether, and I'm shaggy at the flanks like a wolf. I can be as mean
as a wolf, too, when the time comes. You can't walk up and down over me
any more!"
"Nobody wants to walk up and down over you!" she protested. "But if you
want to put Dr. Slavens off that homestead, go and do it. You'll not
draw me into any of your schemes and murderous plots, and you'll find
Dr. Slavens very well able to take care of himself, too!"
"Oh, sure he can!" scoffed Boyle. "You didn't seem to think so the time
you turned Comanche inside out hunting him, when he was layin' drunk
under a tent. I don't know what kind of a yarn he put up when he came
back to you, but I've got the goods on that quack, I'll give you to
understand!"
Boyle was dropping his polish, which was only a superficial coating at
the best. In the bone he was a cowboy, belonging to the type of those
who, during the rustlers' war, hired themselves out at five dollars a
day, and five dollars a head for every man they could kill. Boyle
himself had been a stripling in those days, and the roughness of his
training among a tribe of as desperate and unwashed villains as ever
disgraced the earth underlay his fair exterior, like collar-welts on a
horse which has been long at pasture.
"I'm not under obligations to keep anybody's secrets in this country
when it comes to that," Boyle reminded her.
"It couldn't be expected of you," she sighed.
"You're close to that feller," he pursued, "and he's as soft as cheese
on you. All right; pool your troubles and go on off together for all I
care, but before you turn another wheel you'll put the crowbar under
that man that'll lift him off of that land; savvy? Well, that's what
you'll do!"
"You can spread it all up and down the river that I'm living here under
an assumed name, and you may tell them anything else--all that is
true--that you think you ought to tell, just as soon as you want to
begin," she said, rising and moving away from him in scorn. "I'll not
help you; I couldn't help you if I would."
Boyle got up, his face in a scowl, and as she retreated toward her tent,
followed her in his peggy, forward-tilting cowboy walk.
"Say," he hailed, unveiling at once all the rudeness of his character,
"come back here a minute and take your medicine!"
She paused while he came up.
"Jerry," said Agnes gently, turning upon him eyes full of sadness and
lost hope, "get on your horse and go away. Don't force me to think worse
of you than I have thought. Go away, Jerry; go away!"
Boyle's face was flushed, and his naturally pop-eyed expression was
greatly aggravated by his anger. It seemed that his eyes were straining
to leap out, and had forced themselves forward until the whites showed
beyond the lids.
"Yes, that Slavens is one of these men that'd eat hot rocks for the
woman he loves," he sneered. "Well, it's up to him to show how far he'll
go for you."
"It's unworthy of even you, Jerry, to talk like that," she reproved. "As
far as I know, I am nothing more to Dr. Slavens than any other friend.
If you want his claim, why don't you go down there and buy it, as you
were ready to buy it from Peterson if you could have filed him on it?"
"Because I can get it cheaper," said Boyle. "I'll not give him ten cents
for it. It's your job to go and tell him that I want him to go over to
Meander and pay up on that land, and I'll furnish the money for it, but
before he pays he must sign a relinquishment to me."
"I'll not do it!" she declared.
"If you won't lead, I'll have to try spurs, and I don't like to do that,
Agnes, for the sake of old days."
"Forget the old days."
"I'll go you," said he.
"There's nothing that you can tell these people about me that will lower
me much in their estimation. None of them, except Smith, knows me very
well, anyhow. I don't care so much for their opinion, for I'm not here
to please them."
Boyle placed his hand on her shoulder and looked gravely into her face.
"But if I was to show proof to the land commissioner that you'd got
possession of a homestead here through fraud and perjury, then where
would you land?" he asked.
"It isn't true!" she cried, fear rising within her and driving away the
color of courage which to that moment had flown in her face.
"It is true, Agnes," he protested. "You registered under the name of
Agnes Horton and made affidavit that it was your lawful name; you
entered this land under the same name, and took title to it in the
preliminaries, and that's fraud and perjury, if I know anything about
the definition of either term."
"Do you mean to tell me, Jerry," she faltered, "that I'd have to go to
prison if Dr. Slavens wouldn't consent to save me by giving up his claim
to you?"
"Well, the disgrace of it would amount to about the same, even if a jury
refused to send you up," said he brutally, grinning a little over the
sight of her consternation. "You'd be indicted, you see, by the Federal
grand jury, and arrested by the United States marshal, and locked up.
Then you'd be tried, and your picture would be put in the papers, and
the devil would be to pay all around. You'd lose your homestead anyhow,
and your right to ever take another. Then where would the City of Refuge
be?"
"But you wouldn't do it," she appealed, placing her hand on his arm,
looking into his face beseechingly, the sudden weight of her trouble
making her look old. "You wouldn't do it, Jerry, would you?"
"Wouldn't I?" he mocked disdainfully. "Well, you watch me!"
"It's a cowardly way to use an advantage over a woman!"
"Never mind," grinned Boyle. "I'll take care of that. If that tin-horn
doctor wants to toe the line and do what I say to keep you out of a
Federal pen, then let him step lively. If he does it, then you can stay
here in peace as long as you live, for anything I'll ever say or do.
You'll be Agnes Horton to me as long as my tongue's in workin' order,
and I'll never know any more about where you came from or what passed
before in your history than Smith down there."
Agnes stood with her head drooping, as if the blackmailer's words had
taken away the last shoring prop of her ambition and hope. After a while
she raised her white, pained face.
"And if I refuse to draw the doctor into this to save myself?" she
asked.
"Then I guess you'll have to suffer, old kid!" said he.
Boyle saw the little tremor which ran over her shoulders like a chill,
and smiled when he read it as the outward signal of inward terror. He
had no doubt in the world that she would lay hold of his alternative to
save herself and her plans for others, as quickly as he, coward at
heart, would sacrifice a friend for his own comfort or gain.
Yet Agnes had no thought in that moment of sacrificing Dr. Slavens and
his prospects, which the unmasking of Boyle's hand now proved to be
valuable, to save herself. There must be some other way, she thought,
and a few hours to turn it in her mind, and reflect and plan, might show
her the road to her deliverance. She did not doubt that the penalty for
what she had done would be as heavy as Boyle threatened.
"So it's up to you, handle first," exulted Boyle, breaking her
reflections. "I'll ride off down the river a little piece and go into
camp, and tomorrow evening I'll come up for your answer from Slavens.
It's about twenty miles from here to his claim, and you can make it
there and back easy if you'll start early in the morning. So it's all up
to you, and the quicker the sooner, as the man said."
With that, Boyle rode away. According to her newly formed habit, Agnes
gathered her wood and made a fire in the little stove outside her tent,
for the day was wasting and the shadow of the western hills was reaching
across the valley.
Life had lost its buoyancy for her in that past unprofitable hour. It
lay around her now like a thing collapsed, which she lacked the warm
breath to restore. Still, the evening was as serene as past evenings;
the caress of the wind was as soft as any of the south's slow breathings
of other days. For it is in the heart that men make and dismantle their
paradises, and from the heart that the fountain springs which lends its
color to every prospect that lies beyond.
Boyle's dust had not settled before Smith came by, jangling a
road-scraper behind his team. He was coming from his labor of leveling a
claim, skip one, up the river. He drew up, his big red face as refulgent
as the setting sun, a smile on it which dust seemed only to soften and
sweat to illumine. He had a hearty word for her, noting the depression
of her spirit.
After passing the commonplaces, a ceremony which must be done with Smith
whether one met him twice or twenty times a day, he waved his hand down
the river in the direction that Boyle had gone.
"Feller come past here a little while ago?" he asked, knowing very well
that Boyle had left but a few minutes before.
"He has just gone," she told him.
"Jerry Boyle," nodded Smith; "the Governor's son. He ain't got no use
for me, and I tell you, if I had a woman around the place----"
Smith hung up his voice there as if something had crossed his mind. He
stood looking down the valley in a speculative way.
"Yes?" she inquired, respectfully recalling him.
"Yes," repeated Smith. "If I had a woman around the house I'd take a
shot at that feller as quick as I would at a lobo-wolf!"
Smith jangled on, his scraper making toadish hops and tortoise-like tips
and amblings over the inequalities in the way. She looked after him, a
new light shining from her eyes, a new passion stirring her bosom, where
his words had fallen like a spark upon tinder.
So that was the estimation in which men held Jerry Boyle--men like
Smith, who moved along the lower levels of life and smoothed over the
rough places for others to pass by and by! It must be but the reflection
of thought in higher planes--"If I had a woman around the place!" Such
then was the predatory reputation of Jerry Boyle, who was capable of
dishonorable acts in more directions than one, whose very presence was a
taint.
And he would ride back there tomorrow evening, perhaps after the sun had
set, perhaps after darkness had fallen, to receive the answer to his
dishonorable proposal that she sacrifice her friend to save herself from
his spite, and the consequences of her own misguided act.
"If I had a woman around the place!"
The spark in the tinder was spreading, warming, warming, glowing into a
fierce, hot flame. Like a wolf--like a wolf--Smith would take a shot at
him--like a wolf! Smith had compared him to a wolf; had said he could be
as mean as a wolf--and if there was a woman around the place!
She went into the tent, the blood rising hot to her temples, beating,
singing in her ears. The revolver which she had brought with her on the
doctor's advice hung at the head of her cot. With it strapped around her
she went back to her stove, which she fed with a wild vigor, exulting in
seeing the flames pour out of the pipe and the thin sides grow red.
"Like a wolf--like a wolf!"
The words pounded in her mind, leaped through her circulation like
quickening fire.
"Like a wolf--if there was a woman around the house----"
And a man like that was coming back, perhaps when the darkness had let
down over that still valley, expecting her to say that she had killed
the hope of her dearest friend to shield herself from his smirched and
guilty hand!