WAR!
So, for Jane and Tom, at least, Hepburn came into the open.
And for Hepburn, these two displayed their hands.
Of greater consequence, Beck's reserve, his caution was swept away. He
had taken his big chance!
"You're all there is to me," he told Jane the following morning with a
desperation in his eyes and a seriousness in his voice that made her
search his face with alarm. "I fought against my love for you but it
wasn't any use. You _made_ me love you. You'll make me keep lovin'
you, won't you, Jane?"
"I hope so! You don't know how much I hope so!" she assured him as her
arms clasped his neck closely. "It frightens me, having this
responsibility. It's the greatest I've ever had and I'm weak, Tom, a
weak woman!"
"No, strong!" he declared and stopped her further protest with kisses.
Dad Hepburn, of course, could not stay on under the circumstances.
"There's an advantage of having a reptile in sight if you've got to
have one in the country," Beck told Jane as they discussed the matter,
"but he won't stay. He's got an excuse to back out gracefully now and
we haven't any excuse to keep him on."
"And will you be my foreman?" she asked.
"If you'll trust me that far," he replied with the laugh in his eyes
again.
Hepburn departed that day, telling Jane that he would like to stay but
that he did not feel like risking his life for the sake of a job, to
which she made no reply other than writing his check. This nettled him;
he did not meet her gaze because, though they both had lied, her guilt
was white while his was smirched with treachery.
His farewell to Beck was not open but his successor read in it an
ominous quality.
"I wish you luck on your job, Beck," he said as he mounted, ready to
ride away. "Lots of luck."
"Mostly bad luck, Hepburn?" Tom taunted and the flush that whipped into
the face of the older man was not that of humiliation.
He reined his horse away with a growl and did not look back.
If the little gold locket which Tom wore about his neck brought luck,
it supplied a dire need. He had two determined personal enemies in the
country, Webb and Hepburn, and as foreman of the HC he had many
others, identities not fully established.
There was Cole and the Mexicans he had hired to build the fence and
clear his land. There was the usual gathering of riff-raff at Webb's.
And there was Sam McKee, the coward, who was not reckoned as a menace
by Beck and who, in later days, was to figure so largely!
Another piece of news the Reverend brought:
"They're talkin' about you in town, brother. They're saying that now
some of this thieving will stop. They're looking to you to clean up the
country."
"Ain't that a lot of responsibility to put on one peaceful citizen?"
Beck asked, but though he jested over the fact he did not fail to
appreciate its significance.
"Be cautious. These men are without scruple, brother."
"And so am I ... but I got lots of luck, Reverend!" was his parting.
He needed his luck.
Riding alone, under a rim rock, with the country falling away to the
westward, he speculated on his luck and on the talisman Jane had given
him. He drew the locket from his shirt front and held it on his big
palm eyeing the thing, wondering what it contained that Jane had wanted
to conceal from him.
"I've got a half grown notion to open it," he muttered and stopped his
horse shortly.
And he might have sprung the lid had not a zipping and a dull, dead
spatter on the rock just ahead caught his attention. He looked up
sharply, saw the stain of metal against the ledge and saw in the
sunlight a fragment of the bullet that had shattered itself there, that
would have drilled him had his horse taken the next step.
Whoever fired had calculated on that next step because he was at such a
distance that no report of a rifle reached him.
Beck turned his horse and raced to cover and lay for an hour scanning
the country, but his assailant did not appear.
When Tom rode away he smiled grimly to himself and said to the roan:
"We won't look in it now. Stoppin' to consider saved our skin that
time; maybe we'll need that luck again ... and worse."
Another time, the same week, he threw his bed on a pack horse and
started a two-day ride to the south-east for, as foreman, he gave close
heed to the detail of his work.
At sundown he made camp and while his coffee boiled stripped himself
and bathed luxuriously in a waterhole.
He lay looking upward at the stars that night thinking more of Jane
Hunter than her property, thrilling at memory of her hair and eyes and
lips, telling himself that conditions were reversed now, and that
instead of fighting her off, evading her charms, he was consumed with
an eagerness for them.
Drowsiness came and, turning on his side, he reached a hand for the
locket to hold it fast while he slept. It was not about his neck. He
remembered that he had left it on a rock where he had undressed for his
bath and, slipping out of his blankets, turning them back that the
night chill might not dampen his bed, he picked his way carefully to
the place and groped for the trinket.
His fingers had just touched the gold disc when the quiet of the night
was punctured by a shot ... then four more in quick succession.
He squatted low, holding his breath. He heard booted feet running over
rocks, heard a man speak gruffly to a horse and, in a moment, heard
galloping hoofs carrying a rider away. He waited a half hour, then
stole back to his bed. The tarp and blankets were drilled by five
bullet holes.
"Maybe I'm superstitious," he muttered, fastening the gold chain about
his neck, "but this thing, or whatever is in it, has saved my hide
twice in one week."
The man who had fired into his blankets had trailed him deliberately,
had waited until satisfied that he was asleep and had stolen up to
murder him without offering a fighting chance.
* * * * *
"Hepburn has gone into partnership with Webb," Jane told him on his
return to the ranch. "The Reverend brought in that word. What do you
make of it?"
"Not much. Without my help it makes about the finest couple of snakes
that could be brought together!" Tom muttered.
"And somebody tampered with the ditch in the upper field. Curtis and
the men started the water down late in the afternoon. They left their
tools there and the ditch bank was broken. They tell me it surely was
shoveled out. The water is low and losing it hurt."
"That looks quite like war," he told her.
War it was. That night the men in the bunk house were awakened by a
bright glare and looking out Beck saw that four stacks of hay, totaling
more than a hundred tons of feed left from the winter, were in a blaze.
While the others hastily dressed and ran toward the stack yard in the
futile hope that some portion might be saved, the foreman stayed behind
... listening. From far up the road he heard the faint, quick rattle of
a running horse.
In the morning a note was found stuck in the latch of the big gate. It
was addressed to Jane Hunter and, in a rude scrawl, had been written:
"The longer you stay the more you will lose."
She showed it to Beck and after he had read and re-read and turned the
single sheet of paper over in his hands he looked up to see her eyes
tear filled.
"It isn't worth it!" she cried with a stamp of her foot. "This is only
the start. Do you know what they are saying in town? The word has been
passed that first you are to be driven out and that then I will have to
go. People are saying that the others are too many and too ruthless for
you, that they are bound to drive us away. It is being said that you
are too straight to win a crooked fight!
"I could risk losing the things I own, my property, but I wouldn't risk
you, Tom dear ... I wouldn't do that!"
"And there's somethin' else you wouldn't do," he said lowly, stroking
her forehead. "You wouldn't let 'em drive you out. You didn't start
that way. You come out here to beat the game and if you quit cold you
wouldn't think much of yourself, would you? We didn't want trouble, but
we've got to go and meet it!"
"But you!" she moaned, putting her arms about his big shoulders. "What
of you?"
"Don't worry about me when the only danger is from men that won't come
into the open! Maybe I'm a bigger crook than I'm given credit for.
Besides, you've given me lots of luck....
"I don't know what's in this thing,"--holding out the locket--"but I've
got a lot of faith in it ... and in you, Jane!"
Where, before he gave his love recognition, he had taken pains to bring
Jane into contact with adversities, he now was impelled to shield her
from all that he could. In the natural role of her protector he did
everything possible to allay her apprehension. He could not blind her
to the broad situation but he could and did withhold the seriousness of
some of its detail, even keeping some things that transpired, such as
the attempts on his life, to himself.
But he did worry about the enemy that worked from cover, that shot at
sleeping men, that broke ditches and burned property and sent unsigned
threats to women. That made his fight a battle in the darkness and his
strength was the strength of light, of frankness, of honesty. His mind
was not adapted to scheming and skulking.
To drive his foe into the open was his first objective and that night
he set out.
"You call it recognizing a state of war, I believe," he told Jane with
a twinkle in his eye when she queried his going.
"Tom! You're not going--"
"Not going to take a chance," he said soberly. "It's just a diplomatic
mission, you might say."
He put her off and rode out of the ranch gate. It was dark and when he
had progressed a mile he halted his horse, dropped off, loosened the
cinch so the leather would not creak when the animal breathed, and
stood listening. Aside from the natural noises of the night, the world
was without sound.
He drew his gun from its holster and twirled the cylinder. Usually he
carried the trigger over an empty chamber; tonight it was filled. And
inside his shirt was another gun.