THE LAND OF LICENCE
For twenty-four hours the two cowmen from the distant Clay Creek ranch
had owned Coyote Centre. An hour before sunset on the day previous they
had suddenly blown in from the north; a great cloud of yellow dust,
lifting lazily on the sultry air, a mighty panting of winded bronchos, a
single demoniacal dare-man whoop heralding their coming, a groaning of
straining leather, a jingle of great spurs, and an otherwise augmented
stillness even in this silent land, marking their arrival. Pete it was,
Pete Sweeney, "Long Pete," who first dismounted. Pete likewise it was
who first entered the grog shop of Red Jenkins. Pete again it was who,
ere ten words had passed, drew cold-blooded, point blank at the only man
who saw fit to question the invader's right of absolute ownership. Pete
it was once again who, when the smoke had cleared away, assisted in
laying out that same misguided citizen, in decent fellowship, beneath
the cottonwood bar, and thrust an adequate green roll in the stiffening
hand for funeral expenses.
"It's Bill's own fault," he commented lucidly the while. "I don't visit
you very often; but when I do I've got the dough to make it square, and
this town's my sausage, skin, curl, and all. D'ye understand?" and from
Manning, the greybearded storekeeper, to Rank Judge, the one-legged
saddler, there was no one to say him nay, none to contest his right of
authority.
By no means without an officer of the law was Coyote Centre. Under
ordinary conditions its majesty was ably, even aggressively, upheld by
its representative, Marshal Jim Burton. Likewise there was no lack of
pilgrims, who by devious and circuitous routes sought his residence on
this occasion, with tales of distress and petitions for succour; but one
and all departed with their mission unfulfilled. The doughty James was
not to be found. Urgent business of indefinite duration, at an even more
indefinite destination, had called him hence. No one regretted the
mischance so much as stalwart Mrs. Burton, who imparted the information,
no one deplored the lost opportunity for distinction so much as she; but
nevertheless the fact remained. For the time being, Coyote Centre was
thrown upon its own resources, was left to work out its own salvation as
best it might.
Thus it came about that for a long, long dragging day, and the beginning
of a second, the gunpowder had intermittently burned, and that more than
intermittently, all but continuously, the red liquor had flowed; to the
alternate aggrandisement of Red Jenkins and his straw-haired Norwegian
rival across the street--Gus Ericson. Unsophisticated ones there were
who fancied that ere this it would all end, that Mr. Sweeney's capacity
for absorption had a limit. Four separate gentlemen, with the laudable
intention of hastening that much to be desired condition, had sacrificed
themselves for the common weal; but to the eternal disgrace of the town,
all of them were now down and out, and in various retired spots, where
they had been deposited by their sympathising friends, were snoring in
peaceful oblivion. Even Len Barker, game disciple of the great master,
had reached his limit and, no longer formidable, had, without form of
law, been deposited for safekeeping, and with a sigh of relief, in the
corporate Bastile; but Mr. Sweeney himself, Mr. Sweeney of the hawk eye
and the royal tread, despite a lack of sleep and of solid sustenance,
was, to all visible indications, as fresh and aggressive as at the
beginning.
Now for the second time night was coming on. Neither up nor down the
single business thoroughfare did a street lamp show its face. One and
all had succumbed long before to the god of gunpowder. Not a stray dog,
and Coyote Centre was plethoric of canines, raised its voice nor showed
even a retreating tail near the area of disturbance. Wisdom and a desire
for deepest obscurity had come to the many, swift and sudden
annihilation to the few. Temporarily, yet effectively as though a
cyclone were imminent, business and social life were paralysed. They
were a tolerant breed, these citizens of Coyote Centre; repeated similar
experience had not been without its effect; moreover, the object lesson
of the day before was still vivid in their minds; but at last patience
was reaching its limit. In the closed doorway of the town hall a tiny
group of men were gathered, a group who spoke scarcely above a whisper,
who kept a sharp lookout all surrounding, who stood ready at the twitch
of an eyelash to disperse to the four winds. This was revolt incipient.
In the single room of Bob Manning's general store was open revolt and
plotting. Manning himself, grizzled, grey of hair, shaggy bearded, had
the floor.
"You're a bunch of measly cowards," he included indiscriminately. "You
come here with your stories and croak and croak, and still not one of
you would dare say a word to Pete's face, not one of you but would stand
and let him twist your nose if he saw fit." He glowered from one horn of
the silent, listening semicircle to the other, with all-including
disdain. "If you don't like it, why don't you put a stop to it? If Jim
Burton has sneaked, why don't you elect a new marshal? You're damned
cowards, I say."
In his place on the cover of a barrel of dried apples, Bud Smith, the
weazened little land man, shifted as though the seat hurt him.
"P'raps you're right, dad," he commented imperturbably, "and agin p'raps
you're not. It's all well enough to say appoint a new marshal, but as
fer's I've been able to discover there's no one hereabouts hankerin' fer
the job." He spat at a crack in the cottonwood floor meditatively,
struck true, and seemed mildly pleased. "Our buryin' patch is growin'
comfortably rapidly as it is, without adding any marshals to the
collection. I've known Pete Sweeney fer quite a spell, and my private
advice is to let him alone. There ain't coffins enough this side the
river to supply the demand, if you was to try to arrest him when he's
feelin' as he's feelin' now."
"Who mentioned arresting?" broke in Walt Wagner, the lanky Missourian,
who drove the stage. "Pot him, I say. Pot him the first time he isn't
looking."
For a long half minute Bud observed the speaker; analytically,
meditatively.
"Evidently you ain't been a close observer, my boy," he commented at
last, impersonally, "or you wouldn't be talkin' of Pete not lookin'. I
ain't no weather prophet, but I'd hint to the feller who tackles that
job to say his prayers before he starts. He won't have much time
afterwards." With a swifter movement than he had yet made, the speaker
slid from his place to the floor, involuntarily cast a glance into the
street without. "I ain't perticularly scared, boys," he explained, "and
I ain't lookin' fer trouble neither. Between yourselves and myself, it
ain't at all healthy to sit here discussin' the matter. Someone's bound
to peach on you, and then there's sure to be a call. You better scatter
and let it blow over."
"Scatter nothing," exploded Wagner, belligerently. "Slide if you want
to, if you've got cold feet. I for one intend staying here as long as I
see fit, Sweeney or no Sweeney."
"You do, do you?" It was Manning this time who spoke, Manning with his
deep-set eyes flashing over his high cheek bones. "Well, maybe I've got
something to say about that." He came out from behind the counter, faced
the lanky figure before him, with deliberate contempt. "You're a mighty
stiff-backed boy in the daytime, you are, Walt Wagner, but in the
dark--" He halted and his mouth curled in bitterest sarcasm. "Why, if
you're so anxious for a scrap, don't you run for marshal? Why don't you
take the job right now and put Pete out of business?" And his mouth
curled again.
Beneath its coat of tan Wagner's face reddened; then went white.
Involuntarily his lip curled back like that of a cornered dog, and until
it showed the lack of a prominent front tooth.
"Seeing you are so free with your tongue," he retorted, "I might ask you
the same question. I ain't no property interest here being destroyed
like you have. Why don't you do the trick yourself, dad?"
For a moment there was silence, inaction; then of a sudden the old man
stiffened. With an effort almost piteous, he attempted to square his
shoulders; but they remained round as before.
"Why don't I?" He held up his right hand--minus the index and middle
fingers. He held up his left, stiffened and shrivelled with rheumatism.
"Why don't I?" He clumped the length of the tiny storeroom and back
again; one crippled leg all but dragging. "Why don't I?" repeated for
the third time. "Do you imagine for the fraction of a second, Walt
Wagner, that if I was back twenty years and sound like you are, I'd be
asking another man why he didn't do the job?" Terrible, almost ghastly,
he stood there before them, the picture of bitter rage, of impotent,
distorted senility. "Have you got the last spark of manhood left in you,
and ask that question of me?"
In the pockets of his trousers Wagner's hands worked nervously. His face
went red again, but he gave no answer. Bud Smith it was, Bud Smith,
five-feet-two, with a complexion prairie wind had made like a lobster
display in a cafe window, who had halted at the door, but who now came
back, he it was who spoke.
"And while you're in the talkin' business," he suggested slowly, "you
might elab'rate what you meant a bit ago by intimatin' that I had cold
feet. We'll listen to that, too, any time you see fit to explain,
pardner."
"You want to know, do you?" Wagner's countenance had become normal
again, and with an effort at nonchalance he leaned his elbows back
against the glass showcase, glancing the while down at the small man,
almost patronisingly. "Well, then, for your benefit, I was merely
observing that you filled the bill of what dad here said a bit ago we
all were." He smiled tantalisingly; again showing the vacancy in his
dental arch. "You remember what that was, don't you?"
"P'raps and p'raps not," still deliberately. "I ain't lookin' fer
trouble, mind you, but I just like to have things explicit. To be dead
sure, I'd like to have you repeat it."
Again there was silence. In it Bob Manning returned to his place behind
the counter; his game leg shuffling behind him as he moved. In it
likewise there was an interruption from without; the subdued clatter of
a horse's feet on the packed earth of the street, the straining of
leather, as the man, its rider, alighted, a moment later the click of
the door latch as the same man, a stranger if they had noticed, entered
and halted abruptly at what he saw. But those within did not notice.
Silent as the night without, forgetful for the moment of even Pete
Sweeney, they were staring at those two actors there before them.
"I'm listening," repeated Bud Smith gently. "I ain't lookin' fer
trouble, you understand; but as fer as I recollect, no feller of my own
age ever called me coward. If you think so, I'd like to hear you say it.
I'm listenin' fer you to say it now, Walt Wagner."
Again within the room there was silence, and again from without there
approached an interruption. From up the street, from out the door of Red
Jenkins's joint it came; the patter, patter of many feet, leading it the
heavy clump of mighty cowhide boots on the cottonwood sidewalk, the
jingle of spurs on those same boots at every step, the deep breathing of
a cowman intoxicated at last. Down the walk they came, past the darkened
doorways of the deserted shops; wordless, menacing, nearer and nearer.
Within the tiny storeroom no one had spoken, no one had noticed. The
arms of Walt Wagner were not on the showcase now. In the depths of his
pockets they were fumbling again, aimlessly, nervously. His face had
gone whiter than before. Once he had opened his lips to speak, revealing
the blackness of the vacant tooth; but he had closed them again
silently. Now at last he cleared his throat, involuntarily he drew in a
long breath. Whether he was about to speak they who watched never knew.
What if he had spoken he would have said they likewise never knew; for
at that moment, interrupting, compelling, the door to the street swung
open with a crash, and fair in the aperture, filling it, blocking it,
appeared the mighty, muscular figure of a cowman, while upon their ears,
like the menacing bellow of an enraged bull, burst a voice--the
challenging, bullying voice of Pete Sweeney, inebriate.
"What the hell be you fellers doin' here?" And when there was no answer
repeated, "What the hell be you doin', I say?"
For a space that dragged into a half minute there was inaction while
every man within sound of his voice gazed at the speaker; at first
almost with fascination, then as the real meaning of the interruption
came over them, with sensations as divergent as their various individual
minds. There was no need to tell them who looked at that towering,
intruding figure that tragedy lurked in the air, that death on the
slightest provocation, at the twitch of a trigger finger, dwelt in
those big twin Colts lying menacingly across the folded arms. A lunatic
escaped was a pleasant companion, a child, to deal with, compared with
Pete Sweeney at this time. Malevolent, irresponsible, dare god--bull
mastery fairly oozed from his presence. Bad every inch of him,
hopelessly, irredeemably bad was this mountain of humanity. Bad from the
soles of his misshapen boots to the baggy chaperajos, to the bulging
holsters at his hips, to the gleaming cartridge belt around his waist,
to the soft green flannel shirt, to the red silk handkerchief about his
throat, to the dark unshaven face, to the drink-reddened nose, to the
mere slits of eyes, to the upturned sombrero that crowned the shock of
wiry hair; bad in detail, in ensemble, was this inebriate cowman, bad.
"Well, why don't you talk?" Himself interrupting the silence he came a
step nearer, braced himself with legs far apart. "What've you got to say
for yourselves? This ain't no Quaker meeting. Speak up. What're you all
doin' here?"
Among the crowd one man alone spoke, and that was lobster-red Bud Smith.
"Tendin' to our own business, I reckon, Pete," he explained evenly.
"You lie!" Narrower and narrower closed the slit-like eyes. "You lie by
the clock. You were planning to fix ME, you nest of skunks." From man to
man he passed the look, halted at last at the figure of the lanky
Missourian. "Some feller here figgered to pot me, and I'm lookin' to
see the colour of his hair. Who was it, I'd like to know?"
"Someone's been stuffin' you, Pete." Even, deliberate as before Smith
spoke the lie. "We don't give a whoop what you do. You can own the whole
county so far as we care. Go back and 'tend to your knittin'. Dad here
wants to close up, now."
"He does, does he? Well, he can in just a minute, just as soon as you
name the feller I mention." Of a sudden his eyes shifted, dropped like
claws on the figure of the little land man. "You know who it is I'm
lookin' for. Tell me his name."
"You don't know me very well, Pete."
"I don't, eh? You think I don't know you?" The speaker was inspecting
the other as a house cat inspects the mouse within its paws. "In other
words, you mean you know, but won't tell me." Lingeringly, baitingly,
almost exultingly, he was dragging the _dénouement_ on and on. "That's
what you mean to imply, is it?"
"You've guessed it, Pete." Not a muscle in the small man's body
twitched; there was not the slightest alteration of the even tone.
There, facing death as surely as harvest follows seedtime, knowing as he
knew that but one man present could interfere to prevent, that that man
wouldn't, he spoke those four words: "You've guessed it, Pete." And but
minutes before Manning had called this man coward!
For a moment likewise Sweeney did not stir. For a second his slow brain
failed to grasp the truth, the deliberate challenge of the refusal;
then of a sudden, in a blinding, maddening flood, came comprehension,
came action. Swifter than any human being would have thought possible,
unbelievably ferocious even in this land of licence, something took
place, something which the staring onlookers did not realise until it
was done. They only knew that with a mighty backward leap the cowman had
reached the single heavy oak door, had sent it shut with a bang. That at
the same time there was the vicious spit of a great revolver, that the
odour of burnt gunpowder was in their nostrils, that lifting slowly
toward the ceiling was a cloud of thin blue smoke; a curtain that once
raised made them shudder, made their blood run cold, for it revealed
there, stretched on the floor, huddled as it had dropped, lifeless,
motionless, the figure of the man who had refused, the weazened face of
Land Man Bud Smith! All this they realised in that first second; then
something that was almost fascination drew away their eyes to the man
who had done this deed, to the man who, his back to the great door, the
only means of egress, was covering them, every soul, with the two great
revolvers in his hands. For Pete Sweeney was not drunk now. As swiftly
as that horrible thing had been done he had gone sober. Yet no man who
saw him that instant feared him one whit less. Not a man present,
believer or scoffer, but breathed a silent prayer. And there was reason.
If Pete Sweeney, Long Pete, had possessed a real friend on earth, he
possessed that one no more. Disciples he had, imitators a-plenty; but
friends--there had been but one, and now there was none. In an instant
of oblivion, of drunken frenzy, he had murdered that friend; murdered
him without a chance for self-defence, fair in his tracks. Not another
had done this thing but he himself, he, Cowman Pete. Small wonder that
they who watched this man prayed, that surreptitious glances sought for
an avenue of escape where there was none, that the face of Walt Wagner
went whiter and whiter; for as certain as Bud Smith lay dead there upon
the floor, there would be a reckoning,--and what that reckoning would be
God alone could tell!
And Sweeney himself. After that first, all but involuntary movement, he
had not stirred. In his hands the big revolvers did not waver the
breadth of a hair. Out of bloodshot, terrible eyes he was looking at
that mute figure on the floor; looking at it immovably, indescribably,
with an impassivity that was horrible. For the moment he seemed to have
forgotten the others' presence, seemed at their mercy; and to the mind
of Walt Wagner there came a suggestion. Slowly, surreptitiously one hand
came out of his pocket, advanced by the fractions of inches towards his
hip; advanced and halted and advanced again, reached almost--almost--.
"That'll do, you!" It was not a voice that spoke, it was a snarl: the
snarl of an angry animal. "Put that fist back in your breeches or by
God--"
No need to complete that threat. Back went the hand, back as though
drawn by a spring, back as though it were a paralysed, useless thing.
"Now line up." At last the move had come, the move they had known was
but a question of time. "Toe the crack, every mother's son of you. Step
lively."
They obeyed. As Wagner's hand had done, they obeyed. Six men of them
there were: surly crippled Manning, with eyes ablaze and jaws set like a
trap; lank Wagner with his hands still in his pockets; Rank Judge,
stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose Buck Walker, who ran the meat
market; Slim Simpson, from the eating joint opposite, pale as the
tucked-in apron around his waist; last of all the stranger, tall,
smooth-shaven, alien in knickerbockers and blouse, his lips compressed,
at his throat the arteries pounding visibly through his fair skin. Up
they came at the word of command, like children with ill-learned lessons
to recite, like sheep with a collie at their heels. Humorous at another
time and another place, that compliance would have been; but with that
mute, prostrate figure there before them on the floor, with that other
menacing, dominating figure facing them, it was far from humorous. It
was ghastly in its confession of impotence, in its mute acquiescence to
another's will.
The shuffling of feet ceased and silence fell; yet for some reason Pete
did not act. Instead he stood waiting; his red-rimmed eyes travelling
from man to man, the fissure between them deepening, the heavy lids
narrowing, moment by moment. A long half minute he waited, gloating on
their misery, prolonging their suspense; then came the interruption. A
step sounded on the walk without, a step that was all but noiseless. A
hand tried the knob of the door, found it bolted, and tapped gently on
the panel.
Not a soul within the room stirred, not even Long Pete; but the
narrowing lids closed until they were mere slits, and the unshaven jaws
tightened.
Again the knock sounded; louder, more insistent.
This time there was action. One of the revolvers in Pete's hand moved to
the end of the line, halted. "Up with your hands," snarled a voice.
Two gnarled, distorted hands, the hands of Bob Manning, lifted in air.
"Up with you," and another pair, and another and another followed, until
there were not two but twelve.
"Make a move, damn you,"--one of the revolvers had returned to its
holster, the free hand was upon the bolt,--"and I'll drop you, every
cursed one of you, in your tracks. I'll drop you if I swing the next
second." With a jerk, the door opened wide, and like a flash the hand
returned to the holster. "Come in, you idiot," he challenged into the
darkness without, "come in and take your medicine with the rest."
Within the room the six peered at the blackness of the open doorway,
peered and held their breath. For an instant they saw nothing; then of a
sudden, fair in the opening, walking easily, noiselessly on moccasined
feet, entered a brand new actor, advanced half across the room, while
his eyes adjusted themselves to the light, halted curiously. Back of him
that instant the door again returned to its case with a crash, the rusty
bolt grating in its socket; and above the noise, drowning it, sounded
the snarl the others knew so well.
"It's you, is it, redskin? What the hell are you doin' here?"
Deliberately, soundlessly as he had entered, the newcomer turned. From
his height of six feet one, an inch below that of Pete himself, he
returned the other's look fixedly, without answer. He wore a soft
flannel shirt, and a pair of dark brown corduroy trousers, supported by
a belt. Unconsciously, as though he were alone, he hitched the corduroys
up over his narrow hips, in the motion of one who has been riding. That
was all.
Closer and closer came the red lids over Pete's veritable disfigurement.
Involuntarily his great nostrils opened.
"Talk up there, Injun," he repeated slowly; and this time his voice was
almost gentle. "My name's Sweeney, and I'm speakin' to you. What the
devil are you here for?"
No answer, not a sound; not even the twitching of an eyelid or a muscle.
Ten seconds passed, fifteen.
"I'll give you one more chance there, aborigine;" slowly, with an
effort, almost gratingly came the words, like the friction of a rusty
spring at the striking of a clock; "and I ain't in the habit of doin'
that either, pard." He halted and his great chest heaved with the effort
of a mighty breath, his whole body leaned a bit forward. "Tell me what
you want here, and tell me quick, or by the eternal I'll fill you so
full of holes your own mother wouldn't recognise you."
One by one the two repeaters shifted, shifted until they were focussed
upon a spot midway between the belt and the rolling collar of the
flannel shirt. "I'm listening, How Landor."
At last the moment had come, the climax, the supreme instant in the
career of those eight men in that tiny weather-boarded room. No need to
tell seven of them at least that it was a moment of life or death. If
something, something which seemed inevitable, happened, if one of those
curling, itching fingers on the triggers tightened, if but once that
took place, their lives were not worth the wording of a curse. If once
again that black-visaged, passion-mastered human smelt powder, there
would be no end while a target had power to move, while a tiny gleaming
cylinder remained in the row within his belt. This they knew; and man by
man, as the Creator made them, revealed the knowledge. The jaws of Bob
Manning were quiet now, but the old eyes blazed from beneath their
sockets like the eyes of a grey timber wolf, the centre of a howling
pack. Next to him lank Wagner stood, waiting with closed lips; his lips
as grey as those of the dead man on the floor. Rank Judge had not moved,
but the harness on his wooden stump creaked softly as his weight shifted
from leg to leg. Fat Buck Walker was perspiring almost grotesquely, like
an earthenware pitcher. Great drops hung from his chin, from his
uptilted nose, and his cotton shirt was dark. Slim Simpson, white
before, was like a corpse; only his great boyish eyes stared out, as a
somnambulist stares, as one hypnotised. Last of all, at the end of the
line was the stranger from the East, representative of another world.
Piteous, horrible, the others had been; but he--but for his clothes, his
most intimate friend would not have recognised him at that moment. In
him, blind, racking terror was personified. To have saved his soul he
could not keep still, and his heavy walking shoes grated as they
shuffled on the rough floor. He had bitten his lip and the blood stood
in his mouth and trickled down, down his clean-shaven face. His eyes,
like those of Slim Simpson, were abnormally wide, but shifting
constantly in a hopeless search for a place of concealment, of safety.
If aught in his life merited retribution, the man paid the price a
hundred times over and over that second.
Thus man by man they stood waiting; a background no art could reproduce,
no stage manager prodigal of expense. If on earth there ever was a hell,
that tiny frontier room with the smoke-blackened ceiling and the single
kerosene lamp sputtering on the wall, was the place. Not an imp
thereof, but Satan himself, stood in the misshapen boots of Cowman Pete;
doubly vicious in the aftermath of a debauch, Pete with the lust of
blood in his veins. And against him, scant hope to those who watched,
was a man; tall, but not heavy, smooth-cheeked as a boy of fourteen,
soft-eyed, soft-handed, without the semblance of a weapon. One branded
unmistakably a sleeper, a dreamer, one apparently helpless as a woman.
Yet there that night, within the space of minutes, from the time there
fell that last speaking silence, with this man the chief actor, there
took place something, the report of which spread swifter than wildfire,
from the river to the Hills, from the north Bad Lands to the sandy
Platte, that will live and be repeated while tales of nerve and of man
mastery quicken the pulses of listeners. For after that night Coyote
Centre knew Long Pete Sweeney no more; Dakota knew him no more. Not that
he was murdered in cold blood as he had murdered others: it was not
that. Alone, unmolested, he left, in the starlight of that very night;
but he knew, and they who permitted him to go, knew that it had been
better--
But we anticipate.
"I'm listening, How Landor," he had said.
But he heard nothing:--yet he saw. He saw a tall, lithe, catlike figure
straighten until it seemed fairly to tower. He saw this same figure look
at him fully, squarely; as though for the first time really conscious of
his presence. He saw two unflinching black eyes, flanked by high cheek
bones, out of a copper-brown face meet his own, meet them and hold them;
hold them immovably, hold them so he could not look away. He saw the
owner of those eyes move--he did not hear, there was no sound, not even
a pat from the moccasined feet, he merely saw--and move toward him. He
saw that being coming, coming, saw it detour to pass a prostrate body on
the floor; always silent, but always coming, always drawing nearer. He
saw this thing, he, Pete Sweeney, he, Long Pete, whose name alone was
terror. He knew what it meant, he knew what he should do, what he had
sworn to do; the muzzles of his two revolvers were already focussed, but
he made no move. His fingers lay as before on the triggers. Once in
unison they tightened; then loosened again. He did not act, this man. As
his maker was his judge, he could not. He was wide awake,
preternaturally wide awake; he tried to act, tried to send the message
that would make the muscles tense; but he could not. Those two eyes were
holding him and he could not. All this he knew; and all the while that
other was coming nearer and nearer. He began to have a horror of that
coming that he could not halt. The great unshaven jaw of him worked;
worked spasmodically, involuntarily. His skin, flaming hot before, of a
sudden felt cool. The sweat spurted, stood damp on the hairy hands.
Something he had never felt before, something he had observed in others,
others like those six in the background, began to grip him; something
that whitened his face, that made him feel of a sudden weak--weak as he
had never felt before. And still those eyes were upon him, still that
dark face came closer and closer. Once more his brain sent the message
to kill, once more he battled against the inevitable; and that message
was the last. There was no more response than if he were clay, than if
his muscles were the muscles of another man. In that instant, without
the voicing of a word, the deed was done. That instant came the black
chaotic abandon that was terror absolute. In pure physical impotence,
his arms dropped dangling at his sides. The other was very near now, so
near they could have touched, and the cowman tried to brace himself,
tried to prepare for that which he knew was coming, which he read on the
page of that other face. But he was too late. Watching, almost doubting
their own eyes, the six saw the end. They saw a dark hand of a sudden
clench, shoot out like a brown light. They heard an impact, and a second
later the thud of a great body as it met the floor. They saw the latter
lift, stumble clumsily to its feet, heard a muffled, choking oath. Then
for a second time, the last, that clenched fist shot out, struck true.
That was all.
For a minute, a long, dragging minute, there was silence, inaction. Then
for the first time the victor turned, facing the spectators.
Deliberately he turned, slowly, looked at them an instant almost
curiously,--but he did not smile. Twelve arms, that had forgotten to
lower, were still in the air--but he did not smile. Instead he sought
out the stranger in knickerbockers and blouse.
"I came to meet Mr. Craig, Mr. Clayton Craig, and guide him to the B.B.
ranch," he explained, "It is Mr. Landor's wish. Is this he?"