Produced by Andrew Sly, Al Haines and the Online Distributed
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[Frontispiece: _The Captain tore at the shoulders and neck of the gray
horse with his gleaming teeth_. Page 96]
"I Conquered"
By HAROLD TITUS
With Frontispiece in Colors
By CHARLES M. RUSSELL
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by Arrangements with Rand, McNally & Company
_Copyright, 1916,_
By Rand McNally & Company
THE CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. Denunciation
II. A Young Man Goes West
III. "I've Done My Pickin'"
IV. The Trouble Hunter
V. Jed Philosophizes
VI. Ambition Is Born
VII. With Hoof and Tooth
VIII. A Head of Yellow Hair
IX. Pursuit
X. Capture
XI. A Letter and a Narrative
XII. Woman Wants
XIII. VB Fights
XIV. The Schoolhouse Dance
XV. Murder
XVI. The Candle Burns
XVII. Great Moments
XVIII. The Lie
XIX. Through the Night
XX. The Last Stand
XXI. Guns Crash
XXII. Tables Turn; and Turn Again
XXIII. Life, the Trophy
XXIV. Victory
XXV. "The Light!"
XXVI. To the Victor
"__I CONQUERED"
CHAPTER I
Denunciation
Danny Lenox wanted a drink. The desire came to him suddenly as he stood
looking down at the river, burnished by bright young day. It broke in
on his lazy contemplation, wiped out the indulgent smile, and made the
young face serious, purposeful, as though mighty consequence depended
on satisfying the urge that had just come up within him.
He was the sort of chap to whom nothing much had ever mattered, whose
face generally bore that kindly, contented smile. His grave
consideration had been aroused by only a scant variety of happenings
from the time of a pampered childhood up through the gamut of bubbling
boyhood, prep school, university, polo, clubs, and a growing popularity
with a numerous clan until he had approached a state of established and
widely recognized worthlessness.
Economics did not bother him. It mattered not how lavishly he spent;
there had always been more forthcoming, because Lenox senior had a
world of the stuff. The driver of his taxicab--just now whirling
away--seemed surprised when Danny waved back change, but the boy did
not bother himself with thought of the bill he had handed over.
Nor did habits which overrode established procedure for men cause him
to class himself apart from the mass. He remarked that the cars zipping
past between him and the high river embankment were stragglers in the
morning flight businessward; but he recognized no difference between
himself and those who scooted toward town, intent on the furtherance of
serious ends.
What might be said or thought about his obvious deviation from beaten,
respected paths was only an added impulse to keep smiling with careless
amiability. It might be commented on behind fans in drawing rooms or
through mouths full of food in servants' halls, he knew. But it did not
matter.
However--something mattered. He wanted a drink.
And it was this thought that drove away the smile and set the lines of
his face into seriousness, that sent him up the broad walk with
swinging, decisive stride, his eyes glittering, his lips taking
moisture from a quick-moving tongue. He needed a drink!
Danny entered the Lenox home up there on the sightly knoll, fashioned
from chill-white stone, staring composedly down on the drive from its
many black-rimmed windows. The heavy front door shut behind him with a
muffled sound like a sigh, as though it had been waiting his coming all
through the night, just as it had through so many nights, and let
suppressed breath slip out in relief at another return.
A quick step carried him across the vestibule within sight of the
dining-room doorway. He flung his soft hat in the general direction of
a cathedral bench, loosed the carelessly arranged bow tie, and with an
impatient jerk unbuttoned the soft shirt at his full throat. Of all
things, from conventions to collars, Danny detested those which bound.
And just now his throat seemed to be swelling quickly, to be pulsing;
and already the glands of his mouth responded to the thought of that
which was on the buffet in a glass decanter--amber--and clear--and--
At the end of the hallway a door stood open, and Danny's glance,
passing into the room it disclosed, lighted on the figure of a man
stooping over a great expanse of table, fumbling with papers--fumbling
a bit slowly, as with age, the boy remarked even in the flash of a
second his mind required to register a recognition of his father.
Danny stopped. The yearning of his throat, the call of his tightening
nerves, lost potency for the moment; the glitter of desire in his dark
eyes softened quickly. He threw back his handsome head with a gesture
of affection that was almost girlish, in spite of its muscular
strength, and the smile came back, softer, more indulgent.
His brow clouded a scant instant when he turned to look into the dining
room as he walked down the long, dark, high-ceilinged hall, and his
step hesitated. But he put the impulse off, going on, with shoulders
thrown back, rubbing his palms together as though wholesomely happy.
So he passed into the library.
"Well, father, it's a good morning to you!"
At the spontaneous salutation the older man merely ceased moving an
instant. He remained bent over the table, one hand arrested in the act
of reaching for a document. It was as though he held his breath to
listen--or to calculate quickly.
The son walked across to him, approaching from behind, and dropped a
hand on the stooping, black-clothed shoulder.
"How go--"
Danny broke his query abruptly, for the other straightened with a
half-spoken word that was, at the least, utmost impatience; possibly a
word which, fully uttered, would have expressed disgust, perhaps--even
loathing! And on Danny was turned such a mask as he had never seen
before. The cleanly shaven face was dark. The cold blue eyes flashed a
chill fire and the grim slit of a tightly closed mouth twitched, as did
the fingers at the skirts of the immaculate coat.
Lenox senior backed away, putting out a hand to the table, edging along
until a corner of it was between himself and his heir. Then the hand,
fingers stiffly extended, pressed against the table top. It trembled.
The boy flushed, then smiled, then sobered. On the thought of what
seemed to him the certain answer to the strangeness of this reception,
his voice broke the stillness, filled with solicitude.
"Did I startle you?" he asked, and a smile broke through his concern.
"You jumped as though--"
Again he broke short. His father's right hand, palm outward, was raised
toward him and moved quickly from side to side. That gesture meant
silence! Danny had seen it used twice before--once when a man of
political power had let his angered talk rise in the Lenox house until
it became disquieting; once when a man came there to plead. And the
gesture on those occasions had carried the same quiet, ominous
conviction that it now impressed on Danny.
The voice of the old man was cold and hard, almost brittle for lack of
feeling.
"How much will you take to go?" he asked, and breathed twice loudly, as
though struggling to hold back a bursting emotion.
Danny leaned slightly forward from his hips and wrinkled his face in
his inability to understand.
"What?" He drawled out the word. "Once more, please?"
"How much will you take to go?"
Again the crackling, colorless query, by its chill strength narrowing
even the thought which must transpire in the presence of the speaker.
"How much will I take to go?" repeated Danny. "How much what? To go
where?"
Lenox senior blinked, and his face darkened. His voice lost some of its
edge, became a trifle muffled, as though the emotion he had breathed
hard to suppress had come up into his throat and adhered gummily to the
words.
"How much money--how much money will you take to go away from here?
Away from me? Away from New York? Out of my sight--out of my way?"
Once more the fingers pressed the table top and the fighting jaw of the
gray-haired man protruded slowly as the younger drew nearer a faltering
step, two--three, until he found support against the table.
There across the corner of the heavy piece of furniture they peered at
each other; one in silent, mighty rage; the other with eyes widening,
quick, confusing lights playing across their depths as he strove to
refuse the understanding.
"How much money--to go away from New York--from you? Out of your _way_?"
Young Danny's voice rose in pitch at each word as with added
realization the strain on his emotions increased. His body sagged
forward and the hands on the table bore much of its weight; so much
that the elbows threatened to give, as had his knees.
"To go away--why? Why--is this?"
In his query was something of the terror of a frightened child; in his
eyes something of the look of a wounded beast.
"You ask me why!"
Lenox senior straightened with a jerk and followed the exclamation with
something that had been a laugh until, driven through the rage within
him, it became only a rattling rasp in his throat.
"You ask me why!" he repeated. "You ask me why!"
His voice dropped to a thin whisper; then, anger carrying it above its
normal tone:
"You stand here in this room, your face like suet from months and years
of debauchery, your mind unable to catch my idea because of the poison
you have forced on it, because of the stultifying thoughts you have let
occupy it, because of the ruthless manner in which you have wasted its
powers of preception, of judgment, and ask me why!"
In quick gesture he leveled a vibrating finger at the face of his son
and with pauses between the words declared: "_You_--are--why!"
Danny's elbows bent still more under the weight on them, and his lips
worked as he tried to force a dry throat through the motions of
swallowing. On his face was reflected just one emotion--surprise. It
was not rage, not resentment, not shame, not fear--just surprise.
He was utterly confused by the abruptness of his father's attack; he
was unable to plumb the depths of its significance, although an
inherent knowledge of the other's moods told him that he faced disaster.
Then the older man was saying:
"You have stripped yourself of everything that God and man could give
you. You have thrown the gems of your opportunity before your swinish
desires. You have degenerated from the son your mother bore to a
worthless, ambitionless, idealless, thoughtless--drunkard!"
Danny took a half-step closer to the table, his eyes held on those
others with mechanical fixity.
"Father--but, dad--" he tried to protest.
Again the upraised, commanding palm.
"I have stood it as long as I can. I have suggested from time to time
that you give serious consideration to things about you and to your
future; suggested, when a normal young man would have gone ahead of his
own volition to meet the exigencies every individual must face sooner
or later.
"But you would have none of it! From your boyhood you have been a
waster. I hoped once that all the trouble you gave us was evidence of a
spirit that would later be directed toward a good end. But I was never
justified in that.
"You wasted your university career. Why, you weren't even a good
athlete! You managed to graduate, but only to befog what little hope
then remained to me.
"You have had everything you could want; you had money, friends, and
your family name. What have you done? Wasted them! You had your polo
string and the ability to play a great game, but what came of it? You'd
rather sit in the clubhouse and saturate yourself with drink and with
the idle, parasitic thoughts of the crowd there!
"You have dropped low and lower until, everything else gone, you are
now wasting the last thing that belongs to you, the fundamental thing
in life--your vitality!
"Oh, don't try to protest! Those sacks under your eyes! Your shoulders
aren't as straight as they were a year ago; you don't think as quickly
as you did when making a pretense of playing polo; your hand isn't
steady for a man of twenty-five. You're going; you're on the toboggan
slide.
"You have wasted yourself, flung yourself away, and not one act or
thought of your experience has been worth the candle! Now--what will
you take to get out?"
The boy before him moved a slow step backward, and a flush came up over
his drawn face.
"You--" he began. Then he stopped and drew a hand across his eyes,
beginning the movement slowly and ending with a savage jerk. "You never
said a word before! You never intimated you thought this! You
never--you--"
He floundered heavily under the stinging conviction that of such was
his only defense!
"No!" snapped his father, after waiting for more to come. "I never said
anything before--not like this. You smiled away whatever I suggested.
Nothing mattered--nothing except debauchery. Now you've passed the
limit You're a common drunk!"
His voice rose high and higher; he commenced to gesticulate.
"You live only to wreck yourself. Yours is the fault--and the blame!
"It is natural for me to be concerned. I've hung on now too long,
hoping that you would right yourself and justify the hopes people have
had in you. I planned, years ago, to have you take up my work where I
must soon leave off--to go on in my place, to finish my life for me as
I began yours for you! I've had faith that you would do this, but you
won't--you can't!
"That isn't all. You're holding _me_ back. I must push on now harder
than ever, but with the stench of your misdeeds always in my nostrils
it is almost an impossibility."
Danny raised his hands in a half-gesture of pleading, but the old man
motioned him back.
"Don't be sorry; don't try to explain. This had to come. It's an
accumulation of years. I have no more faith in you. If I thought you
could ever rally I'd give up everything and help you, but not once in
your life have you shown me that you possessed one impulse to be of
use."
His voice dropped with each word, and its return to the cold normal
sent a stiffness into the boy's spine. His head went up, his chin out;
his hands closed slowly.
"How much money will you take to get out?"
The old man moved from behind the table corner and approached Danny,
walking slowly, with his hands behind him. He came to a stop before the
boy, slowly unbuttoned his coat, reached to an inner pocket, and drew
out a checkbook.
"How much?"
Danny's gesture, carried out, surely would have resulted in a blow
strong enough to send the book spinning across the room; but he stopped
it halfway.
His eyes were puffed and bloodshot; his pulse hammered loudly under his
ears, and the rush of blood made his head roar. Before him floated a
mist, fogging thought as it did his vision.
The boy's voice was scarcely recognizable as he spoke. It was hard and
cold--somewhat like the one which had so scourged him.
"Keep your money," he said, looking squarely at his father at the cost
of a peculiar, unreal effort. "I'll get out--and without your help.
Some day I'll--I'll show you what a puny thing this faith of yours is!"
The elder Lenox, buttoning his coat with brisk motions, merely said,
"Very well." He left the room.
Danny heard his footsteps cross the hall, heard the big front door sigh
when it closed as though it rejoiced at the completion of a distasteful
task.
Then he shut his eyes and struck his thighs twice with stiff forearms.
He was boiling, blood and brain! At first he thought it anger; perhaps
anger had been there, but it was not the chief factor of that tumult.
It was humiliation. The horrid, unanswerable truth had seared Danny's
very body--witness the anguished wrinkles on his brow--and his molten
consciousness could find no argument to justify himself, even to act as
a balm!
"He never _said_ it before," the boy moaned, and in that spoken thought
was the nearest thing to comfort that he could conjure.
He stood in the library a long time, gradually cooling, gradually
nursing the bitterness that grew up in the midst of conflicting
impulses. The look in his eyes changed from bewilderment to a glassy
cynicism, and he began to walk back and forth unsteadily.
He paced the long length of the room a dozen times. Then, with a
quickened stride, he passed into the hall, crossed it, and entered the
dining room, the tip of his tongue caressing his lips.
On the buffet stood a decanter, a heavy affair of finely executed
glassworker's art. The dark stuff in it extended halfway up the neck,
and as he reached for it Danny's lips parted. He lifted the receptacle
and clutched at a whisky glass that stood on the same tray. He picked
it up, looked calculatingly at it, set it down, and picked up a
_tumbler_.
The glass stopper of the bottle thudded on the mahogany; his nervous
hand held the tumbler under its gurgling mouth. Half full, two-thirds,
three-quarters, to within a finger's breadth of the top he filled it.
Then, setting the decanter down, he lifted the glass to look through
the amber at the morning light; his breath quick, his eyes glittering,
Danny Lenox poised. A smile played about his eager lips--a smile that
brightened, and lingered, and faded--and died.
The hand holding the glass trembled, then was still; trembled again, so
severely that it spilled some of the liquor; came gradually down from
its upraised position, down below his mouth, below his shoulder, and
waveringly sought the buffet.
As the glass settled to the firm wood Danny's shoulders slacked forward
and his head drooped. He turned slowly from the buffet, the aroma of
whisky strong in his dilated nostrils. After the first faltering step
he faced about, gazed at his reflection in the mirror, and said aloud:
"And it's not been worth--the candle!"
Savagery was in his step as he entered the hall, snatched up his hat,
and strode to the door.
As the heavy portal swung shut behind the hurrying boy it sighed again,
as though hopelessly. The future seemed hopeless for Danny. He had gone
out to face a powerful foe.