CHAPTER XXXII—TAYLOR BECOMES RILED

By the time Bud Hemmingway had finished his grotesque expression of

the delight that had seized him, and had got to his knees and was

grinning widely at Taylor, the horses of the Arrow outfit were running

down the neck of the gorge, their hoofs drumming on the hard floor of

the bottom, awakening echoes that filled the gorge with an incessant

rumbling clatter that might have caused one to think a regiment of

cavalry was advancing at a gallop.

Bud turned his gaze up the gorge and saw them.

“Ain’t they great!” he yelled at Taylor. The leap in Bud’s voice

betrayed something of the strained tenseness with which the man had

endured his besiegement.

And now that there was an even chance for him, Bud’s old humorous and

carefree impulses were again ascendant. He got to his feet, grinning,

the spirit of battle in his eyes, and threw a shot at a Keats man, far

up on a hillside, who had left his concealment and was running upward.

At the report of the rifle the man reeled, caught himself, and

continued to clamber upward, another bullet from Bud’s rifle throwing

up a dust spray at his feet.

Other figures were now running; the slopes of the hills in the

vicinity were dotted with moving black spots as the Keats men, also

hearing the clattering of hoofs, and divining that their advantage was

gone, made a concerted break for their horses, which they had hidden

in a ravine beyond the hills.

Taylor did not do any shooting. While Bud was standing erect among the

pile of rocks which had served as a shelter for him during the

afternoon, his rifle growing hot in his hands, and picturesque curses

issued from his lips, Taylor walked to Spotted Tail and tightened the

saddle cinches. This task did not take him long, but by the time it

was finished the Arrow outfit had dispersed the Keats men, who were

fleeing toward Dawes in scattered units.

Bothwell, big and grim, rode to where Taylor was standing, his voice

booming as he looked sharply at Taylor.

“I reckon we got here just in time, boss!” he said. “They didn’t git

you or Bud? No?” at Taylor’s grin. “Well, we’re wipin’ them out—that’s

all! That Keats bunch can’t run in no raw deal like that on the

Arrow—not while I’m range boss. Law? Bah! Every damned man that runs

with Keats would have stretched hemp before this if they’d have been

any law in the country! A clean-up, eh—that’s what they tryin’ to pull

off. Well, watch my smoke!”

His voice leaping with passion, Bothwell slapped his horse sharply,

and as the animal leaped down the trail toward Dawes, Bothwell shouted

to the other men of the outfit, who had halted at a little distance

back in the gorge:

“Come a runnin’, you yaps! That ornery bunch can’t git out of this

section without hittin’ the basin trail!”

Bothwell and the others fled down the gorge like a devastating

whirlwind before Taylor could offer a word of objection.

As a matter of fact, Taylor had paid little attention to Bothwell’s

threats. He knew that the big range boss was in a bitter rage, and he

had been aware of the ill-feeling that had existed for some time

between Keats and his friends and the men of the Arrow outfit.

But the deserved punishment of Keats was not the burden his mind

carried at this instant. Dominating every other thought in Taylor’s

brain was the obvious, naked fact that Carrington had struck at him

again; that he had struck underhandedly, as usual; and that he would

continue to fight with that method until he was victorious or beaten.

And yet Taylor was not so much concerned over the blow that had been

aimed at him as he was of its probable effect upon Marion Harlan. For

of course the girl had heard of the charge by this time—or she would

hear of it. It would be all the same in the end. And at a blow the

girl’s faith in him would be destroyed—the faith that he had been

nurturing, and upon which he had built his hopes.

To be sure he had Larry Harlan’s note to show her, to convince her of

his innocence, but he knew that once the poison of suspicion and doubt

got into her heart, she could never give him that complete confidence

of which he had dreamed. She might, now that Carrington had spread his

poison, conclude that he had forged the note, trusting in it to disarm

the suspicions of herself and of the world. And if she were to demand

why he had not shown her the note before—when she had first come to

the Arrow—he could not tell her that he had determined never to show

it to her, lest she understand that he knew her mother’s sordid

history. That secret, he had promised himself, she would never know;

nor would she ever know of the vicious significance of that

conversation he had overheard between Carrington and Parsons on the

train coming to Dawes. He was convinced that if she knew these things

she would never be able to look him in the eyes again.

Therefore, knowing the damage Carrington had wrought by bringing the

charge of murder against him, Taylor’s rage was now definitely

centered upon his enemy. The pursuit and punishment of Keats was a

matter of secondary consideration in his mind—Bothwell and the men of

the outfit would take care of the man. But Taylor could no longer

fight off the terrible rage that had seized him over the knowledge of

Carrington’s foul methods, and when he mounted Spotted Tail and urged

him down the trail toward the Arrow ranchhouse, there was a set to his

lips that caused Norton, who had brought his horse to a halt near him,

to look sharply at him and draw a quick breath.

Not speaking to Norton, nor to Bud—who had also remained to watch

him—Taylor straightened Spotted Tail to the trail and sent him flying

toward the Arrow. Taylor looked neither to the right nor left, nor did

he speak to Norton and Bud, who rode hard after him. Down the trail at

a point where the neck of the gorge broadened and merged into the

grass level that stretched, ever widening, to the Arrow, Spotted Tail

and his rider flashed past a big cluster of low hills from which came

flame-streaks and the sharp, cracking reports of rifles, the yells of

men in pain, and the hoarse curses of men in the grip of the fighting

rage.

But Taylor might not have heard the sounds. Certainly he could not

have seen the flame-streaks, unless he glimpsed them out of the

corners of his eyes, for he did not turn his head as he urged Spotted

Tail on, speeding him over the great green sweep of grass at a pace

that the big horse had never yet been ridden.

Laboring behind him, for they knew that something momentous impended,

Norton and Bud tried their best to keep up with the flying beast ahead

of them. But the sorrel ridden by Norton, and even the great, rangy,

lionhearted King, could not hold the pace that Spotted Tail set for

them, and they fell slowly back until, when still several miles from

the Arrow, horse and rider vanished into the dusk ahead of them.