THE ATTACK ON THE LAZY S
It was late. The August night was cool and sweet after a weary day of
intense heat. The door was thrown wide open. It was good to feel the
night air creeping into the stifling room. There was no light within;
and without, nothing but the brilliant stars in the quiet, brooding sky.
Williston was sitting just within the doorway. Mary, her hands clasped
idly around her knees, sat on the doorstep, thoughtfully staring out
into the still darkness. There was a stir.
“Bedtime, little girl,” said Williston.
“Just a minute more, daddy. Must we have a light? Think how the
mosquitoes will swarm. Let’s go to bed in the dark.”
“We will shut the door and next Summer, little girl, you shall have your
screens. I promise you that, always providing, of course, Jesse Black
leaves us alone.”
Had it not been so dark, Mary could have seen the wistful smile on the
thin, scholarly face. But though she could not see it, she knew it was
there. There had been fairer hopes and more generous promises in the
past few years. They had all gone the dreary way of impotent striving,
of bitter disappointment. There was little need of light for Mary to
read her father’s thoughts.
“Sure, daddy,” she answered, cheerily. “And I’ll see that you don’t
forget. As for Jesse Black, he wouldn’t dare with the Three Bars on his
trail. Well, if you must have a light, you must,” rising and stretching
her firm-fleshed young arms far over her head. “You can’t forget you
were born in civilization, can you, daddy? I am sure I could be your man
in the dark, if you’d let me, and I always turn your nightshirt right
side out before hanging it on your bedpost, and your sheet and spread
are turned down, and water right at hand. You funny, funny little
father, who can’t go to bed in the dark.” She was rummaging around a
shelf in search of matches. “Now, I have forgotten long since that I
wasn’t born on the plains. It wouldn’t hurt me if I had misplaced my
nightdress. I’ve done it,” with a gay little laugh. He must be cheered
up at all costs, this buffeted and disappointed but fine-minded,
high-strung, and lovable father of hers. “And I haven’t taken my hair
down nights since—oh, since months ago, till—oh, well—so you see it’s
easy enough for me to go to bed in the dark.”
Her hand touched the match box at last. A light flared out.
“Shut the door quick, dad,” she said, lighting the lamp on the table.
“The skeeters’ll eat us alive.”
Williston stepped to the door. Just a moment he stood there in the
doorway, the light streaming out into the night, tall, thoughtful, no
weakling in spite of many failures and many mistakes. A fair mark he
made, outlined against the brightly lighted room. It was quiet. Not even
a coyote shrilled. And while he stood there looking up at the calm
stars, a sudden sharp report rang out and the sacred peace of God,
written in the serenity of still summer nights, was desecrated. Hissing
and ominous, the bullet sang past Williston’s head, perilously near, and
lodged in the opposite wall. At that moment, the light was blown out. A
great presence of mind had come to Mary in the time of imminent danger.
“Good, my dear!” cried Williston, in low tones. Quick as a flash, the
door was slammed shut and bolted just as a second shot fell foul of it.
“Oh, my father!” cried Mary, groping her way to his side.
“Hush, my dear! They missed me clean. Don’t lose your nerve, Mary. They
won’t find it so easy after all.”
There had been no third shot. A profound silence followed the second
report. There was no sound of horse or man. Whence, then, the shots? One
man, maybe, creeping up like some foul beast of prey to strike in the
dark. Was he still lurking near, abiding another opportunity?
It took but a moment for Williston to have the rifles cocked and ready.
Mary took her own from him with a hand that trembled ever so slightly.
“What will you do, father?” she asked, holding her rifle lovingly and
thanking God in a swift, unformed thought for every rattlesnake or other
noxious creature whose life she had put out while doing her man’s work
of riding the range,—work which had given her not only a man’s courage
but a man’s skill as well.
“Take the back window, girl,” he answered, briefly. “I’ll take the
front. Stand to the side. Get used to the starlight and shoot every
shadow you see, especially if it moves. Keep track of your shots, don’t
waste an effort and don’t let anything creep up on you. They mustn’t get
near enough to fire the house.”
His voice was sharp and incisive. The drifting habit had fallen from
him, and he was his own master again.
Several heavy minutes dragged away without movement, without sound from
without. The ticking of the clock pressed on strained ears like ghastly
bell-tolling. Their eyes became accustomed to the darkness and, by the
dim starlight, they were able to distinguish the outlines of the
cattle-sheds, still, empty, black. Nothing moved out there.
“I think they’re frightened off,” said Mary at last, breathing more
freely. “They were probably just one, or they’d not have left. He knew
he missed you, or he would not have fired again. Do you think it was
Jesse?”
“Jesse would not have missed,” he said, grimly.
At that moment, a new sound broke the stillness, the whinny of a horse.
Reinforcement had approached within the shadow of the cattle-sheds.
Something moved out there at last.
“Daddy!” called Mary, in a choked whisper. “Come here—they are down at
the sheds.”
Williston stepped to the back window quickly.
“Change places,” he said, briefly.
“Daddy!”
“Yes?”
“Keep up your nerve,” she breathed between great heart-pumps.
“Surely! Do you the same, little comrade, and shoot to kill.”
There was a savage note in his last words. For himself, it did not
matter so much, but Mary—he pinned no false faith in any thought of
possible chivalrous intent on the part of the raiders to exempt his
daughter from the grim fate that awaited him. He had to deal with a
desperate man; there would be no clemency in this desperate man’s
retaliation.
To his quickened hearing came the sound of stealthy creeping. Something
moved directly in front of him, but some distance away. “Shoot every
shadow you see, especially if it moves,” were the fighting orders, and
his was the third shot of that night.
“Hell! I’ve got it in the leg!” cried a rough voice full of intense
anger and pain, and there were sounds of a precipitate retreat.
Out under protection of the long row of low-built sheds, other orders
were being tersely given and silently received.
“Now, men, I’ll shoot the first man of you who blubbers when he’s hit.
D’ye hear? There have been breaks enough in this affair already. I don’t
intend for that petticoat man and his pulin’ petticoat kid in there to
get any satisfaction out o’ this at all. Hear me?”
There was no response. None was needed.
Some shots found harmless lodgment in the outer walls of the shanty.
They were the result of an unavailing attempt to pick the window whence
Williston’s shot had come. Mary could not keep back a little womanish
gasp of nervous dread.
“Grip your nerve, Mary,” said her father. “That’s nothing—shooting from
down there. Just lie low and they can do nothing. Only watch, child,
watch! They must not creep up on us. Oh, for a moon!”
She did grip her nerve, and her hand ceased its trembling. In the
darkness, her eyes were big and solemn. Sometime, to-morrow, the
reaction would come, but to-night—
“Yes, father, keep up your own nerve,” she said, in a brave little voice
that made the man catch his breath in a sob.
Again the heavy minutes dragged away. At each of the two windows
crouched a tense figure, brain alert, eyes in iron control. It was a
frightful strain, this waiting game. Could one be sure nothing had
escaped one’s vigilance? Starlight was deceptive, and one’s eyes must
needs shift to keep the mastery over their little horizon. It might well
be that some one of those ghostly and hidden sentinels patrolling the
lonely homestead had wormed himself past staring eyeballs, crawling,
crawling, crawling; it might well be that at any moment a sudden light
flaring up from some corner would tell the tale of the end.
Now and then could be heard the soft thud of a hoof as some one rode to
execute an order. Occasionally, something moved out by the sheds. Such
movement, if discernible from the house, was sure to be followed on the
instant by a quick sharp remonstrance from Williston’s rifle. How long
could it last? Would his nerve wear away with the night? Could he keep
his will dominant? If so, he must drag his mind resolutely away from
that nerve-racking, still, and unseen creeping, creeping, creeping,
nearer and nearer. How the stillness weighed upon him, and still his
mind dwelt upon that sinuous, flat-bellied creeping, crawling, worming!
God, it was awful! He fought it desperately. He knew he was lost if he
could not stop thinking about it. The sweat came out in big beads on his
forehead, on his body; he prickled with the heat of the effort. Then it
left him—the awful horror—left him curiously cold, but steady of nerve
and with a will of iron and eyes, cat’s eyes, for their seeing in the
dark. Now that he was calm once more, he let himself weigh the chances
of succor. They were pitifully remote. The Lazy S was situated in a
lonely stretch of prairie land far from any direct trail. True, it lay
between Kemah, the county seat, and the Three Bars ranch, but it was a
good half mile from the straight route. Even so, it was a late hour for
any one to be passing by. It was not a travelled trail except for the
boys of the Three Bars, and they were known to be great home-stayers and
little given to spreeing. As for the rustlers, if rustlers they were,
they had no fear of interruption by the officers of the law, who held
their places by virtue of the insolent and arbitrary will of Jesse Black
and his brotherhood, and were now carousing in Kemah by virtue of the
hush-money put up by this same Secret Tribunal.
Yet now that Williston’s head was clear, he realized, with strengthening
confidence in the impregnability of their position, that two trusty
rifles behind barred doors are not so bad a defence after all,
especially when one took into consideration that, with the exception of
the sheds overlooking which he had chosen his position as the point of
greatest menace, and a small clump of half-grown cottonwoods by the
spring which Mary commanded from her window, there were no hiding places
to be utilized for this Indian mode of warfare. He could not know how
many desperadoes there were, but he reasoned well when he confided in
his belief that they would not readily trust themselves to the too
dangerous odds of the open space between. An open attack was not
probable. Vigilance, then, a never-lapsing vigilance that they be not
surprised, was the price of their salvation. What human power could do,
he would do, and trust Mary to do the same. She was a good girl and
true. She would do well. She had not yet shot. Surely, they would make
use of that good vantage ground of the cottonwood clump. Probably they
were even now making a detour to reach it.
“Watch, child, watch!” he said again, without in the least shifting his
tense position.
“Surely!” responded Mary, quite steadily.
Now was her time come. Dark, sinister figures flitted from tree to tree.
At first, she could not be sure, it was so heartlessly dark, but there
was movement—it was different from that terrible blank quiet which she
had hitherto been gazing upon till her eyes burned and pricked as with
needle points, and visionary things swam before them. She winked rapidly
to dispel the unreal and floating things, opened wide her longlashed
lids, fixed them, and—fired. Then Williston knew that his “little girl,”
his one ewe lamb, all that was left to him of a full and gracious past,
must go through what he had gone through, all that nameless horror and
expectant dread, and his heart cried out at the unholy injustice of it
all. He dared not go to her, dared not desert his post for an instant.
If one got within the shadow of the walls, all was lost.
Mary’s challenge was met with a rather hot return fire. It was probably
given to inspire the besieged with a due respect for the attackers’
numbers. Bullets pattered around the outside walls like hailstones, one
even whizzed through the window perilously near the girl’s intent young
face.
Silence came back to the night. There was no more movement. Yet down
there at the spring, something, maybe one of those dark, gaunt
cottonwoods, held death—death for her and death for her father. A stream
of icy coldness struck across her heart. She found herself calculating
in deliberation which tree it was that held this thing—death. The
biggest one, shadowing the spring, helping to keep the pool sweet and
cool where Paul Langford had galloped his horse that day when—ah! if
Paul Langford would only come now!
A wild, girlish hope flashed up in her heart. Langford would come—had he
not sworn it to her father? Had he not given his hand as a pledge? It
means something to shake hands in the cattle country. He was big and
brave and true. When he came, these awful, creeping terrors would
disperse—grim shadows that must steal away when morning comes. When he
came, she could put her rifle in his big, confident hands, lie down on
the floor and—cry. She wanted to cry—oh, how she did want to cry! If
Paul Langford would only come, she could cry. Cold reason came back to
her aid and dissipated the weak and womanish longing to give way to
tears. There was a pathetic droop to her mouth, a long, quivering,
sobbing sigh, and she buried her woman’s weakness right deeply and
stamped upon it. How utterly wild and foolish her brief hope had been!
Langford and all his men were sound in sleep long ago. How could he
know? Were the ruffians out there men to tell? Ah, no! There was no one
to know. It would all happen in the dark,—in awful loneliness, and there
would be no one to know until it was all over—to-morrow, maybe, or next
week, who could tell? They were off the main trail, few people ever
sought them out. There would be no one to know.
As her strained sight stared out into the darkness, it was borne to her
intuitively, it may be, that something was creeping up on her. She could
see nothing and yet knew it to be true. Every fibre of her being tingled
with the certainty of it. It was coming closer and closer. She felt it
like an actual presence. Her eyes shifted here, there—swept her
half-circle searchingly—stared and stared. Still nothing moved. And yet
the nearness of some unseen thing grew more and more palpable. If she
could not see it soon, she must scream aloud. She breathed in little
quickened gasps. Soon, very soon now, she would scream. Ah! A shadow
down by the biggest cottonwood! It boldly sought a nearer and a smaller
trunk. Another slinking shadow glided behind the vacated position. It
was a ghastly presentation of “Pussy-wants-a-corner” played in
nightmare. But at last it was something tangible,—something to do away
with that frightful sensation of that crawling, creeping, twisting,
worming, insinuating—nearer and nearer, so near now that it beat upon
her—unseen presence. She pressed her finger to the trigger to shoot at
the tangible shadows and dispel that enveloping, choking, blanket
horror, when God knows what stayed the muscular action of her fingers.
Call it instinct, what you will, her hand was stayed even before her
physical eye was caught and held by a blot darker still than the night,
over to her right, farthest from the spring. It lay perfectly still. It
came to her, the wily plan, with startling clearness. The blot was
waiting for her to fire futilely at grinning shadows among the trees
and, under cover of her engrossed attention, insinuate its treacherous
body the farther forward. Then the play would go merrily on till—the
end. She turned the barrel of her rifle slowly and deliberately away
from the moving shapes among the cottonwood clump, sighted truly the
motionless blur to her right, and fired, once, twice, three times.
The completeness of the surprise seemed to inspire the attackers with a
hellish fury. They returned the fire rapidly and at will, remaining
under cover the while. Shrinking low at her window, her eyes glued on
the still black mass out yonder, Mary wondered if it were dead. She
prayed passionately that it might be, and yet—it is a dreadful thing to
kill. Once more the wild firing ceased. Mary responded once or twice
just to keep the deadly chill from returning—if that were possible.
Under cover of the desperadoes’ fire, at obtuse angles with the first
attempt, a second blot began its tortuous twisting. It accomplished a
space, stopped; pulled itself its length, stopped, waited, watchful eyes
on the window whence came Mary’s scattered firing still into the clump
of trees. They had drawn her close regard at last. Would it hold out?
Forward again, crawling flat on the ground, ever advancing, slowly, very
slowly, but also very surely, creeping, creeping, creeping, now
stopping, now creeping, stopping, creeping.
All at once the gun play began again, sharp, quick, from the spring,
from the sheds. The blot lay perfectly still for a moment—waiting,
watching. The plucky little rifle was silent. But so it had been before.
Quarter length, half, whole length, cautiously with frequent stops, eyes
so steely, so intent—could it be possible that this gun was really
silenced—out of the race? It would not do to trust too much. The blot
waited, scarcely breathed, crept forward again.
A sudden bright light flashed up through the darkness under the
unprotected wall to Mary’s left. Almost simultaneously a kindred light
sprang into being from the region of the cattle-sheds. The men down
there had been waiting for this signal. It meant that for some reason
the second effort to creep up unobserved to fire the house had been
successful. The flare grew and spread. It became a glare.
When the whole cabin seemed to be in flames save the door,—the dry, rude
boarding had caught and burned like paper,—when the heat had become
unbearable, Williston held out his hand to his daughter, silently. As
silently she put her hand, her left hand, in his; nor did Williston
notice that it was her left, nor how limply her right arm hung to her
side. In the glare, her face shone colorless, but her dark eyes were
stars. Her head was held high. With firm step, Williston advanced to the
door. Deliberately he unbarred it, as deliberately threw it open, and
stepped over the threshold. They were covered on the instant by four
rifles.
“Drop your guns!” called the chief, roughly. Then the desperadoes moved
up.
“I take it that I am the one wanted,” said Williston.
His voice was calm and scholarly once more. In the uselessness of
further struggle, it had lost the sharp incisiveness that had been the
call to action. If one must die, it is good to die after a brave fight.
One is never a coward then. Williston’s face wore an almost exalted
look.
“My daughter is free to go?” he asked, his first words having met with
no response. Better, much better, for the make of a man like Williston
to die in the dignity of silence, but for Mary’s sake he parleyed.
“I guess not!” responded the leader, curtly. “If a pulin’ idiot hadn’t
missed the broadside of you—as pretty a mark this side heaven as man
could want,—then we might talk about the girl. She’s showed up too
damned much like a man now to let her loose.”
His big, shuffling form lounged in his saddle. He raised his rifle with
every appearance of lazy indifference. They were to be shot down where
they stood, now, right on the threshold of their burning homestead.
Williston bowed his head to the inevitable for a moment; then raised it
proudly to meet the inevitable.
A rifle shot rang out startlingly clear. At the very moment the leader’s
hawk’s eye had swept the sight, his rifle arm had twitched uncertainly,
then fallen nerveless to his side, while his bullet, playing a faltering
and discordant second to the first true shot, tore up the ground in
front of him and swerved harmlessly to one side. Instantly the wildest
confusion reigned,—shouts, curses, the plunging of horses mingled with
the sharp crack of fire-arms. The shooting was wild. The surprise was
too complete for the outlaws to recover at once. They had heard no sound
of approaching hoofbeats. The roaring flames licking up the dry lumber,
and rendering the surrounding darkness the blacker for the contrast, had
been of saving grace to the besiegers after all.
In a moment, the desperadoes rallied. They closed in and imposed a
cursing, malignant wall between the rescuers and the blazing door of the
shanty and what stood and lay before it. Mary had sunk down at her
father’s feet, and had no cognizance of the fierce though brief conflict
that ensued.
Presently, she was dragged roughly to her feet. A big, muscular arm had
heavy grasp of her.
“Make sure of the girl, Red!” commanded a sharp voice near, and it was
gone out into the night.
Afterward, she heard—oh, many, many times in the night watches—the eerie
galloping of horses’ hoofs, growing fainter and ever fainter, heard it
above the medley of trampling horses and yelling men, and knew it for
what it meant; but to-night—this evil night—she gave but one quick,
bewildered glance into the sinister face above her and in a soft,
shuddering voice breathed, “Please don’t,” and fainted.