THE KILLER STRIKES
It was generally recognized that the Republicans would carry the state
that year. The war was still so near that it would have a determining
influence on thousands of voters. The chief local interest centred in
the race for the nomination of the dominant party for secretary of
state.
This was due to several factors. Chief of these was the fight between
two candidates of outstanding personality, a fight which rapidly
developed into a bitter one. Scot McClintock was still the most
picturesque figure in Nevada, though he had left behind him his wild
escapades and his gay irresponsibility. The mining camps were yet full
of the rumour of his adventures. In any assembly his good looks, charm,
and qualities of leadership made him a marked figure. His audacity and
courage fitted the time and the place. Men tremendously admired him
because they saw in him what they would like to be themselves.
The character of Ralph Dodson made no appeal to men’s affections. He was
too cold and calculating, his ambition too ruthless. But they recognized
his strength. He would travel a long way in the world.
The big mining interests supported Dodson. Scot was too much a tribune
of the people to suit them. At any time he might embarrass the mine
owners by some quixotic gesture inspired by his sense of justice.
Scot went out into the camps and the agricultural valleys to make a
personal campaign. If he had been dealing with the voters individually
he could have made a runaway race of it. But delegates to conventions,
then as now, were under the influence of leaders, who in turn took
orders from the men who financed the campaign. He was under a tremendous
handicap because he had only an individual following to oppose a party
machine.
Yet he made headway, and so fast that his opponent became alarmed.
Dodson came out in the _Enterprise_ with a savage attack on his rival in
which he accused him of being an ex-gambler and a bawdy-house brawler.
Scot kept his temper and made no counter charges. From the stump he
replied that at least he had always been a square gambler. His fighting
record, he said carelessly, must take care of itself.
Vicky met Ralph Dodson on the Avenue at Piodie while the campaign was at
its height. She fired point blank a charge at him.
“I read what you said in the _Enterprise_ about Scot.”
He laughed a little, but his eyes watched her warily. “You’d think once
in a while some newspaper reporter would get a story right,” he said
easily.
“Oh! Wasn’t it true that you said it?” Her level gaze met his steadily.
“I was annoyed, and I said something. Don’t remember just what.
Certainly I didn’t intend to insult any of your family.”
“Then you’ll deny it in the paper?”
“Is it quite worth-while? Everybody knows what newspapers are—how
they’re keen to make everything one says sensational.”
“If you don’t deny it people will think you said it.”
“We-ell, in a political campaign men get excited. It doesn’t greatly
matter what folks say—just part of the game, you know.”
“Is it part of the game to tell lies about a good man?” she asked
flatly.
He threw up his hands gaily. “I surrender at discretion. Will a note to
the _Enterprise_ correcting the error suit your Majesty?”
“You’re not doing it for me,” she told him, her dark eyes shining.
“You’re doing it because it’s the fair thing.”
“Hang the fair thing,” he answered, laughing. “I’m doing it for Miss
Victoria Lowell.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” She dimpled to a smile. “Because I’m against
you and for Scot in this fight.”
“Then I’ll give up the race,” he mocked. “I think you ought at least to
be neutral.”
Dodson played his hand under cover after that. He saw that McClintock
was kept under a steady fire of newspaper attack and that none of it
could be traced to him. No paper dared make any reference to the origin
of the trouble between Colonel McClintock and the Dodsons, but hired
assassins of reputation whispered evil stories in which the names of
Mollie and Scot appeared. These became so numerous that at last Scot in
a speech full of eloquence and fierce indignation referred to the
traducers of his wife as snakes in the grass who dared not come into the
open for fear of having the life trampled out of them.
The bitterness grew, became acute. Robert Dodson, still full of venom
and hatred, whispered in the ears of killers. The word was passed around
quietly that McClintock might be shot down any time. Friends came to
warn him. They carried the word to Hugh, who dropped his business at
once and joined Scot at Austin. From this time the younger man, in spite
of the Colonel’s good-humoured protest, travelled over the state with
his brother as a lookout.
At Carson the killers struck.
Scot had addressed an enthusiastic meeting, at which he had been heckled
by supporters of Dodson and had turned upon them with such witty scorn
that they had slipped out of the hall discomfited. With Hugh beside him
the speaker had returned to the Ormsby House. The younger brother was
putting up at the house of a friend. He left Scot in his room ready to
undress.
But when the colonel felt in his waistcoat pocket for a cigar he found
none. He stepped down to the barroom to get one. Baldy Green, the old
stage driver, was sitting by the office stove. The two fell into talk
and Scot sat down to smoke his cigar with the old-timer.
A man whom Scot did not know lounged into the office and out again. In
the darkness outside he whispered to two men. One of them was the
ex-mule-skinner Hopkins, a dyed-in-the-wool bad man; the other was Sam
Dutch.
The hotel office had three doors. One opened from the street, a rear one
led to the rooms, the third was a double swing door separating the
office from the bar. Scot’s chair was so placed that he faced the
entrance from the street and the bar. His back was half-turned to the
rear one.
The stage driver was talking. “You betcha, Colonel. If us old-timers had
the say-so we’d elect you by a mile. Sure would. That slick scalawag
Dodson, why he—he——”
Scot’s first warning came from Baldy’s consternation. His eyes popped
out. They were staring at some apparition in the back of the room. The
words of his sentence stuck in the roof of his mouth. Almost
simultaneously came the click McClintock knew from of old.
He whirled in the chair dragging at his revolver. It caught on his coat.
Two bolts of lightning flamed. The crash of heavy thunder filled the
room. Scot sagged in his seat, the curly head falling forward heavily on
the chest. From his slack fingers the revolver dropped.
Again the guns boomed. Another jagged knife thrust of pain went through
and through Scot’s body.
“Got him. Got him good, Sam,” an exultant voice announced hoarsely
through the smoke.
A hulking figure slouched forward cautiously. The victim lay huddled in
the chair motionless, both hands empty of weapons. No sign of life
showed in the lax body.
“Always said I’d git him.” Dutch broke into a storm of oaths. He
reversed his revolver and struck the fallen head savagely with the butt.
“We’d better make a getaway,” the other man said hurriedly. “This ain’t
no healthy place for us.”
The gorilla-man struck again and broke the hammer of his revolver.
“Out this way,” he said, and pushed through the swinging doors to the
bar.
The heavy blows had beaten McClintock down so that he slid from the
chair. The doctor who attended him afterwards said that the effect of
them was temporarily to act as a counter-shock to the bullet wounds. His
senses cleared and his hand found the revolver. He was cocking it as the
second assassin vanished through the swing doors.
Scot concentrated his strength and energy, focussing every ounce of
power left in him to do the thing in his mind. With his left hand as a
support he raised the six-shooter and fired through the swing door.
Then, inch by inch, he crawled forward to the barroom entrance, shoved
the door open with his shoulder, and tried again to lift the forty-five.
It was not in his ebbing forces to raise the heavy weapon from the
floor.
But there was no need to use it again. The mule-skinner Hopkins lay face
down on the floor, arms flung wide. Scot’s shot through the swing door
had killed him instantly.
Baldy knelt beside his friend. “Did they get you, old-timer?” he asked,
his voice shaking.
“I’m still kicking. Send for Hugh,” the wounded man gasped.
Half an hour later Hugh stood beside the bedside of his brother. Scot’s
face was bloodless to the lips. He was suffering a good deal and was
very weak. The doctor had told Hugh that he would not live till morning.
“I’m going—to—make it,” Scot said faintly.
“Wire—for—Mollie. Tell her—not to—worry.”
Mollie came down from Virginia. She reached Carson by daybreak. Scot was
still living, still holding his own, though the doctors held out no hope
of recovery. At the end of forty-eight hours he was in a high fever, but
his strength was unabated. The fever broke. He came out of it weak but
with the faint, indomitable smile of the unconquered on his face.
His hand pressed Mollie’s softly. “It’s all right, sweetheart. I’ll make
it sure,” he promised.
The tears welled into her eyes. His courage took her by the throat and
choked her, for the doctors still gave her no encouragement.
“Yes,” she whispered, and tried to keep the sob out of her voice.
“What’s a li’l’ thing like three bullets among one perfectly good man?”
he asked whimsically.
“You’re not to talk, the doctor says,” she reproved.
“All right. Where’s Hugh?”
“He left yesterday to ’tend to some business.”
“What business?” A frown of anxiety wrinkled his pale forehead.
“He didn’t say.”
“Where did he go?”
“I didn’t ask him. He said he’d be back to-day or to-morrow, one.”
Scot thought this over, still with a troubled face. He guessed what this
important business was that had called Hugh from his bedside at such a
critical time. But he did not hint to Mollie his suspicion.
“When he comes back will you let me know right away, Honey? Or if he
wires?”
“Yes. Now you must stop talking and take this powder.”
The smile that was a messenger to carry her all his love rested in his
eyes. “I’ll be good, Mollie.”
He took the medicine and presently fell asleep.