A MAN MEDITATES VENGEANCE
It had always been lonely at the Hamlin cabin, and it grew more lonely
after Kane Lawler left the Circle L. For the barrier between Ruth and
the happiness she had a right to expect seemed to grow higher and more
impassable daily.
After receiving official notification of his nomination, Lawler had gone
away on a speaking tour of the state, and Ruth had seen little of him.
He came home once, for a few days, just before the election, and had
renewed his pleas to Ruth. But the girl, rigidly adhering to her
determination not to permit the shadow of her father's reputation to
embarrass him, had firmly refused to consent. And after the election,
when he had gone to the capital to take the office to which he had been
chosen by a record vote, she watched him ride away with a consciousness
that the world had grown to gigantic proportions and that Lawler was
going to its extreme farther limits, leaving behind him a gulf of space,
endless and desolate.
Dorgan, the country prosecutor, had been defeated for re-election by a
man named Carney--who was known to be friendly to Singleton. Moreton had
also been defeated--by "Slim" McCray, who hailed from a little town
called Keegles, southeast from Willets. It was rumored--after the
election--that Slim McCray had been friendly to Antrim, though no one
advanced any evidence in support of the rumor.
McCray--because Willets was the county seat--came to the office that had
formerly been Moreton's, immediately following his election. He was
slender, tall, and unprepossessing, and instantly created a bad
impression.
This news came to Ruth through her father, for she had not visited town
since she had gone there to help Mrs. Lawler care for her son. She felt
that she did not dare to leave the cabin. For one night, after her
father had acted strangely, he got up suddenly and went out of the door.
And after a while, growing suspicious, she blew out the light and
stepped softly outside, to see him, at a little distance from the house,
talking with Singleton.
That incident had occurred shortly after Lawler had departed for the
capital to assume his duties as governor. She suspected her father had
talked with Singleton since, though she had never seen them together
from that time until now.
Lawler had been gone a month. She had heard through various
mediums--mostly from cowboys from nearby ranches who occasionally passed
the cabin--that Lawler was "making good"--in the vernacular of the
cowpuncher; and "makin' them all set up an' take notice." Those terms,
of course, would seem to indicate that Lawler was a good governor and
that he was attracting attention by the quality of his administration.
But it seemed that more than a month had passed since Lawler had gone
to the capital. The days dragged and the weeks seemed to be aeons long.
And yet the dull monotony of the girl's life was relieved by trips she
made to the Circle L, to visit Lawler's mother--and by the presence of
Mary Lawler, who had come home for her vacation, during the summer, and
during Lawler's absence on his speaking tour.
Ruth had heard with satisfaction that the Circle L trail herd, attended
by Blackburn, Shorty, and other Circle L men, had not been molested on
the trip to Red Rock. Caldwell and the others had driven their cattle to
Red Rock also--not one of them visiting Warden to arrange for cars.
Lawler's influence, and the spirit he had revealed in undertaking the
long drive the previous season, had had its effect upon the other
owners.
It seemed to Ruth that the fight between the Circle L men and the
rustlers had made the latter cautious; and that even Warden had decided
that discretion was necessary. At any rate, the surface of life in
Willets and the surrounding country had become smooth, no matter what
forces were at work in the depths. It appeared that the men who had
fought Lawler in the past, were now careful to do nothing that would
bring upon them a demonstration of his new power.
* * * * *
Gary Warden, however, was not fearful of Lawler's official power. In
fact, he was openly contemptuous when Lawler's name was mentioned in his
presence. Face to face with Lawler, he was afflicted with an emotion
that was akin to fear, though with it was mingled the passionate hatred
he had always felt for the man.
While Lawler had been at the Circle L he had fought him secretly, with
motives that arose from a determination to control the cattle industry.
Warden had had behind him the secret power of the state government and
the clandestine cooperation of the railroad company. His fight against
Lawler had been in the nature of business, in which the advantage had
been all on his side.
Now, however, intense personal feeling dominated Warden. Lawler had
beaten him, so far, and the knowledge intensified his rage against his
conqueror. The railroad company's corral had yawned emptily during the
entire fall season. Not a hoof had been shipped through Willets. All the
cattlemen of the district had driven their stock to Red Rock. And Warden
no longer smiled at the empty corral.
Looking out of one of his office windows this morning, Warden scowled.
He remembered a day, a year or so ago, when he had stood in one of the
windows of his office watching Della Wharton wave a handkerchief at
Lawler. She had been riding out of town in a buckboard, with Aunt
Hannah beside her, and Lawler had just come from the railroad station.
That incident had spread the poison of jealousy in Warden's veins; the
recollection of it had caused him to doubt Della's story of what had
happened at the line cabin during the blizzard of the preceding winter;
it had filled him with the maddening conviction that Lawler had
deliberately tried to alienate Della's affections--that Lawler, knowing
Della to be vain and frivolous, had intentionally planned the girl's
visit to the line cabin.
He did not blame Della for what had happened. Upon Lawler was the blame
for the affair; Lawler had planned it all, merely to be revenged upon
him for his refusal to keep the agreement that had been made with
Lefingwell.
Warden sneered as his thoughts went to that day in Jordan's office when
Lawler, a deadly threat in his eyes, had leaned close to him to warn
him. Warden remembered the words--they had flamed in his consciousness
since.
"But get this straight," Lawler had said. "You've got to fight _me_!
Understand? You'll drag no woman into it. You went to Hamlin's ranch the
other day. God's grace and a woman's mercy permitted you to get away,
alive. Just so sure as you molest a woman in the section, just so sure
will I kill you, no matter who your friends are!"
Apparently, in Lawler's code of morals, it was one thing to force one's
attentions upon a pretty woman, and another thing to steal the
affections of a woman promised to another man.
But Warden's passion permitted him to make no distinction. And his rage
was based upon the premise that Lawler was guilty. Warden's thoughts
grew abysmal as he stood at the window; and considerations of business
became unimportant in his mind as the Satanic impulse seized him. He
stood for a long time at the window, and when he finally seized hat and
coat and went down into the street he was muttering, savagely:
"God's grace and a woman's mercy. Bah! Damn you, Lawler; I'll make you
squirm!"