Bud Lee, riding alone toward the Western Lumber Camp, turned in his
saddle to glance back as he heard hoof-beats behind him. It was
Carson, and the old cattleman was riding hard. Lee frowned. Then for
an instant a smile softened his stern eyes.
"Good little old Carson," he muttered.
Carson came to his side, saying merely in his dry voice:
"Mind if I come along, Bud? You an' me have rid into one thing an'
another more'n just once."
"This is my fight," said Lee coolly.
"Who said it wasn't?" demanded the other querulously. "Only you ain't
got any call to be a hawg, Bud. Besides, I got a right to see if
there's a fair break, ain't I? Say, look at them cow brutes back
yonder! Don't it beat all how silage, when you use it right, shapes
'em up?"
Few enough words were said as the miles were flung behind them; few
were needed. A swift glance showed Carson that Lee carried a revolver
in his shirt; his own gun rode plainly in evidence in front of his hip.
What little conversation rose between them was of ranch matters. They
spoke of success now with confidence. These two foremen alone could
see the money in late winter and early spring from their cattle and
horses to carry the Blue Lake venture over the rapids. Then there were
the other resources of the diversified undertaking, the hogs, the prize
stock, the olives, poultry, dairy products. And soon or late Western
Lumber would pay the price for the timber tract, soon, if they saw that
they had to pay it or lose the forests which they had so long counted
upon. Lumber values were mounting every day.
Neither man, when it chanced that Bayne Trevors's name was casually
mentioned, suggested: "Why not go to the law?" For to them it was very
clear that, once in the courts, the man who had played safe would laugh
at them. Against Judith's oath that he had kidnapped her would stand
Trevors's word that he had done nothing of the kind, coupled with his
carefully established perjured alibi and the lying testimony of the
physician who had visited Judith in the cave. This man and that might
be rounded up, Shorty and Benny and Poker Face, and if any of them
talked--which perhaps none of them would--at most they would say that
they had no orders from anybody but Quinnion. And where was Quinnion,
who stood as a buckler between Trevors and prosecution? And what
buckler in all the world can ever stand between one man and another?
Now and then Carson sent a quick questioning glance toward Lee's
inscrutable face; now and then he sighed, his thoughts his own. Bud
Lee, knowing his companion as he did, shrewdly guessed that Carson was
hoping that events might so befall that there would be an open,
free-for-all fight and that he might not be forced to play the restless
part of a mere onlooker. Bud Lee hoped otherwise.
"There's two ways to get a man," said Carson meditatively, out of a
long silence. "An' both is good ways: with a gun or with your hands."
"Yes," agreed Bud quietly.
"If it works out gun way," continued Carson, still with that
thoughtful, half-abstracted look in his eyes, "it don't hurt to
remember, Bud, that he shoots left-handed an' from the hip."
Lee merely nodded. Carson did not look up from the bobbing ears of his
horse as he continued:
"If it works out the other way an' it's just fists, it don't hurt to
remember how Trevors put out Scotty Webb last year in Rocky Bend.
Four-footed style, striking with his boot square in Scotty's belly."
Trevors's name was not again referred to even in the vaguest terms.
The road in front of them, at last dropping down into the valley in
which the lumber-camp was, straightened out into a lane that ran
between stumps to the clutter of frame buildings.
"Something doing at the office," offered Carson, as they drew near.
"Directors' meeting, likely."
Two automobiles stood in the road ten steps from the closed door of the
unpretentious shack which bore the printed legend, "Office, Western
Lumber Company." The big red touring-car certainly belonged to Melvin,
the company's president. Carson looked curiously at Lee.
Bud dismounted, dropped his horse's reins, shifted the revolver from
his shirt to his belt where it was at once unhidden and loosely held,
ready for a quick draw. Then he went up the three steps, Carson at his
heels, his gun also unhidden and ready. From within came voices, one
in protest, Bayne Trevors's ringing out, filled with mastery followed
by a laugh. Lee set his hand to the door. Then, only because it was
locked from within, did he knock sharply.
"Who is it?" came the sharp inquiry. But the man who made it and who
was standing by the door, threw it open.
"What do you want?" he demanded again. "We're busy."
"I want to see Trevors," said Lee coolly.
"You can't. He----"
Lee shoved the man aside and strode on. Carson, close at Lee's heels,
his eyes glittering, stepped a little aside when once he was within the
room and took his place with his back against the wall close to the
door.
It was a big, bare, barn-like room, furnished simply with one long
table and half a dozen chairs. Here were five men besides Bayne
Trevors. All except Trevors and the man who had opened the door were
seated; Trevors, at the far end of the room, was standing, an
oratorical arm slowly dropping to his side.
His eyes met Lee's, ran quickly to Carson's, came back to Lee's and
rested there steadily. Beyond the slow falling of his extended arm, he
did not move. The muscles of his face hardened, the look of triumph
which just now had stood in his eyes changed slowly and in its place
came an expression that was twin to that in Bud Lee's eyes, just a look
of inscrutability with a hint of watchfulness under it, and the
hardness of agate. While a man might have drawn a deep breath into his
lungs and expelled it, neither Lee nor Trevor stirred.
"What the devil is this?" demanded Melvin from across the table.
"Hold-up or what?" He rapped the table resoundingly.
"Shut up!" snapped Carson. "It's just a two-man play, Melvin: Lee an'
Trevors."
"Oh," said Melvin, and sank back, making no further protest. He was no
stranger to Carson or to Bud Lee, and he sensed what might be between
Lee and a man like Trevors. Then shrugging his shoulders, he said
carelessly: "I'm not the man to get in other men's way, and you know
it, Carson. But you might tell your friend Bud Lee that Bayne Trevors
is rather a big man influentially to mix things with. I've just
resigned this morning and Trevors is our new president."
"Thanks," returned Carson dryly. "I don't think that'll make much
difference though, Melvin. Most likely you'll have two presidents
resigning the same day."
At last Lee spoke.
"Trevors," he said quietly, "maybe the law can't get you. But I can.
For reasons which both you and I understand you are going to clear out
of this part of the country."
"Am I?" asked Trevors. The look of his eyes did not alter, the poise
of his big body did not shift, his hands, both at his sides again,
might have been carved in bronze.
Then suddenly he laughed and threw out his arms in a wide gesture and
again dropped them, saying shortly:
"You're playing the game the way I thought you would. You've got a
gun. I am unarmed--begin your shooting and be damned to you!"
He even stepped forward, his eyes fearlessly upon Lee's, and settled
his big frame comfortably in a chair by the table.
"Go ahead," he concluded. "I'm ready."
"That's as it should be!" Lee's voice was vibrant. His hard eyes
brightened. With a quick jerk he drew the revolver from his belt and
dropped it to the floor at Carson's feet.
Carson, though he stooped for it quickly, did not shift his watchful
eyes from Trevors. For Carson had known more fights in his life than
he had years; he knew men, and looked to Trevor for just the sort of
thing Trevors did.
As Lee stepped forward, Trevors snatched open the drawer of the table
at his side, quick as light, and whipped out the weapon which lay there.
"Go slow, Trevors!" came old Carson's dry voice. "I've got you covered
already, two-gun style."
Trevors, even with his finger crooking to the trigger, paused and saw
the two guns in Carson's brown hands trained unwaveringly upon him.
There was much deadly determination in Carson's eyes. Again Trevors
laughed, drawing back his empty hand.
"You yellow dog!" grunted Bud Lee, his tone one of supreme disgust.
"You damned yellow dog!"
Trevors shrugged.
"You see, gentlemen--two to one, with the odds all theirs."
"You lie!" spat out Carson. "It's one to one an' I see the game goes
square." He stepped forward, removed the weapon from the table under
Trevors's now suddenly changeful eyes, and went back to his place with
his back to the wall.
"For God's sake!" cried the one nervous man in the room, he who had
opened the door. "This is murder!"
Melvin smiled, a smile as cheerless as the gleam of wintry starlight on
a bit of glass.
"Will you fight him, Trevors?" he asked. "With your hands?"
"Yes," answered Trevors. "Yes."
"Move back the table," commanded Melvin, on his feet in an instant.
"And the chairs. Get them back."
The table was dragged to the far end of the room; the chairs were piled
upon it.
"Now," and Melvin's watch was in his hand, his voice coming with
metallic coldness, "it's to a finish, is it? Three-minute rounds, fair
fighting, no----"
But now at last Bayne Trevors's blood was up, his slow anger had
kindled, he was moving his feet restlessly.
"Damn it," he shouted, "whose fight is this but mine and Lee's? If he
wants a fight, let him come and get it; a man's fight and rules and
rounds and time be damned! Am I to dance around here and sidestep and
fence just for you to look on? . . . Carson!"
"Well?" said Carson.
"Lee challenges me, doesn't he? Then I'm the man to name the sort of
fight, am I not? Is that fair?"
"Meaning just what?" asked Carson.
"Meaning that I am going to get him, get him any way I can! You let us
fight this out our way, any way, and no interference!"
"Talk to Bud there," rejoined the old cattleman calmly. "It ain't my
scrap."
"Then, Lee," snapped Trevors, "come on if you want such a fight as
you'd get if you and I were alone in the mountains, with no man to
watch, a fight where a man can use what weapons God gave him, any
weapon he can lay his mind to, his eye to, his hand to! Or," and at
last the sneer came, "do you want a pair of padded gloves and somebody
to fan you?"
Carson shifted his glance to Bud Lee's face. Lee merely nodded.
"Then," cried Carson sternly, "go to it! No man steps in, an' you two
can fight it out like coyotes or mountain-lions for all of me."
"Your word there will be no interference?" asked Trevors. "For you're
just a fool and not a liar, Carson."
"My word," was the answer.