As Helen Rayner watched Dale ride away on a quest perilous to him, and
which meant almost life or death for her, it was surpassing strange that
she could think of nothing except the thrilling, tumultuous moment when
she had put her arms round his neck.
It did not matter that Dale--splendid fellow that he was--had made
the ensuing moment free of shame by taking her action as he had taken
it--the fact that she had actually done it was enough. How utterly
impossible for her to anticipate her impulses or to understand them,
once they were acted upon! Confounding realization then was that when
Dale returned with her sister, Helen knew she would do the same thing
over again!
“If I do--I won't be two-faced about it,” she soliloquized, and a hot
blush flamed her cheeks.
She watched Dale until he rode out of sight.
When he had gone, worry and dread replaced this other confusing emotion.
She turned to the business of meeting events. Before supper she packed
her valuables and books, papers, and clothes, together with Bo's, and
had them in readiness so if she was forced to vacate the premises she
would have her personal possessions.
The Mormon boys and several other of her trusted men slept in their
tarpaulin beds on the porch of the ranch-house that night, so that Helen
at least would not be surprised. But the day came, with its manifold
duties undisturbed by any event. And it passed slowly with the leaden
feet of listening, watching vigilance.
Carmichael did not come back, nor was there news of him to be had. The
last known of him had been late the afternoon of the preceding day, when
a sheep-herder had seen him far out on the north range, headed for the
hills. The Beemans reported that Roy's condition had improved, and also
that there was a subdued excitement of suspense down in the village.
This second lonely night was almost unendurable for Helen. When she
slept it was to dream horrible dreams; when she lay awake it was to have
her heart leap to her throat at a rustle of leaves near the window, and
to be in torture of imagination as to poor Bo's plight. A thousand times
Helen said to herself that Beasley could have had the ranch and welcome,
if only Bo had been spared. Helen absolutely connected her enemy with
her sister's disappearance. Riggs might have been a means to it.
Daylight was not attended by so many fears; there were things to do
that demanded attention. And thus it was that the next morning, shortly
before noon, she was recalled to her perplexities by a shouting out at
the corrals and a galloping of horses somewhere near. From the window
she saw a big smoke.
“Fire! That must be one of the barns--the old one, farthest out,”
she said, gazing out of the window. “Some careless Mexican with his
everlasting cigarette!”
Helen resisted an impulse to go out and see what had happened. She had
decided to stay in the house. But when footsteps sounded on the porch
and a rap on the door, she unhesitatingly opened it. Four Mexicans stood
close. One of them, quick as thought, flashed a hand in to grasp her,
and in a single motion pulled her across the threshold.
“No hurt, Senora,” he said, and pointed--making motions she must go.
Helen did not need to be told what this visit meant. Many as her
conjectures had been, however, she had not thought of Beasley subjecting
her to this outrage. And her blood boiled.
“How dare you!” she said, trembling in her effort to control her temper.
But class, authority, voice availed nothing with these swarthy Mexicans.
They grinned. Another laid hold of Helen with dirty, brown hand. She
shrank from the contact.
“Let go!” she burst out, furiously. And instinctively she began to
struggle to free herself. Then they all took hold of her. Helen's
dignity might never have been! A burning, choking rush of blood was
her first acquaintance with the terrible passion of anger that was her
inheritance from the Auchinclosses. She who had resolved never to lay
herself open to indignity now fought like a tigress. The Mexicans,
jabbering in their excitement, had all they could do, until they
lifted her bodily from the porch. They handled her as if she had been a
half-empty sack of corn. One holding each hand and foot they packed her,
with dress disarranged and half torn off, down the path to the lane and
down the lane to the road. There they stood upright and pushed her off
her property.
Through half-blind eyes Helen saw them guarding the gateway, ready to
prevent her entrance. She staggered down the road to the village.
It seemed she made her way through a red dimness--that there was a
congestion in her brain--that the distance to Mrs. Cass's cottage was
insurmountable. But she got there, to stagger up the path, to hear the
old woman's cry. Dizzy, faint, sick, with a blackness enveloping all she
looked at, Helen felt herself led into the sitting-room and placed in
the big chair.
Presently sight and clearness of mind returned to her. She saw Roy,
white as a sheet, questioning her with terrible eyes. The old woman
hung murmuring over her, trying to comfort her as well as fasten the
disordered dress.
“Four greasers--packed me down--the hill--threw me off my ranch--into
the road!” panted Helen.
She seemed to tell this also to her own consciousness and to realize the
mighty wave of danger that shook her whole body.
“If I'd known--I would have killed them!”
She exclaimed that, full-voiced and hard, with dry, hot eyes on her
friends. Roy reached out to take her hand, speaking huskily. Helen
did not distinguish what he said. The frightened old woman knelt, with
unsteady fingers fumbling over the rents in Helen's dress. The moment
came when Helen's quivering began to subside, when her blood quieted
to let her reason sway, when she began to do battle with her rage, and
slowly to take fearful stock of this consuming peril that had been a
sleeping tigress in her veins.
“Oh, Miss Helen, you looked so turrible, I made sure you was hurted,”
the old woman was saying.
Helen gazed strangely at her bruised wrists, at the one stocking that
hung down over her shoe-top, at the rent which had bared her shoulder to
the profane gaze of those grinning, beady-eyed Mexicans.
“My body's--not hurt,” she whispered.
Roy had lost some of his whiteness, and where his eyes had been fierce
they were now kind.
“Wal, Miss Nell, it's lucky no harm's done.... Now if you'll only see
this whole deal clear!... Not let it spoil your sweet way of lookin' an'
hopin'! If you can only see what's raw in this West--an' love it jest
the same!”
Helen only half divined his meaning, but that was enough for a future
reflection. The West was beautiful, but hard. In the faces of these
friends she began to see the meaning of the keen, sloping lines, and
shadows of pain, of a lean, naked truth, cut as from marble.
“For the land's sakes, tell us all about it,” importuned Mrs. Cass.
Whereupon Helen shut her eyes and told the brief narrative of her
expulsion from her home.
“Shore we-all expected thet,” said Roy. “An' it's jest as well you're
here with a whole skin. Beasley's in possession now an' I reckon we'd
all sooner hev you away from thet ranch.”
“But, Roy, I won't let Beasley stay there,” cried Helen.
“Miss Nell, shore by the time this here Pine has growed big enough fer
law you'll hev gray in thet pretty hair. You can't put Beasley off with
your honest an' rightful claim. Al Auchincloss was a hard driver. He
made enemies an' he made some he didn't kill. The evil men do lives
after them. An' you've got to suffer fer Al's sins, though Al was as
good as any man who ever prospered in these parts.”
“Oh, what can I do? I won't give up. I've been robbed. Can't the people
help me? Must I meekly sit with my hands crossed while that half-breed
thief--Oh, it's unbelievable!”
“I reckon you'll jest hev to be patient fer a few days,” said Roy,
calmly. “It'll all come right in the end.”
“Roy! You've had this deal, as you call it, all worked out in mind for a
long time!” exclaimed Helen.
“Shore, an' I 'ain't missed a reckonin' yet.”
“Then what will happen--in a few days?”
“Nell Rayner, are you goin' to hev some spunk an' not lose your nerve
again or go wild out of your head?”
“I'll try to be brave, but--but I must be prepared,” she replied,
tremulously.
“Wal, there's Dale an' Las Vegas an' me fer Beasley to reckon with.
An', Miss Nell, his chances fer long life are as pore as his chances fer
heaven!”
“But, Roy, I don't believe in deliberate taking of life,” replied
Helen, shuddering. “That's against my religion. I won't allow it....
And--then--think, Dale, all of you--in danger!”
“Girl, how 're you ever goin' to help yourself? Shore you might hold
Dale back, if you love him, an' swear you won't give yourself to him....
An' I reckon I'd respect your religion, if you was goin' to suffer
through me.... But not Dale nor you--nor Bo--nor love or heaven or hell
can ever stop thet cowboy Las Vegas!”
“Oh, if Dale brings Bo back to me--what will I care for my ranch?”
murmured Helen.
“Reckon you'll only begin to care when thet happens. Your big hunter has
got to be put to work,” replied Roy, with his keen smile.
Before noon that day the baggage Helen had packed at home was left on
the porch of Widow Cass's cottage, and Helen's anxious need of the hour
was satisfied. She was made comfortable in the old woman's one spare
room, and she set herself the task of fortitude and endurance.
To her surprise, many of Mrs. Cass's neighbors came unobtrusively to
the back door of the little cottage and made sympathetic inquiries. They
appeared a subdued and apprehensive group, and whispered to one another
as they left. Helen gathered from their visits a conviction that the
wives of the men dominated by Beasley believed no good could come of
this high-handed taking over of the ranch. Indeed, Helen found at the
end of the day that a strength had been borne of her misfortune.
The next day Roy informed her that his brother John had come down the
preceding night with the news of Beasley's descent upon the ranch. Not a
shot had been fired, and the only damage done was that of the burning of
a hay-filled barn. This had been set on fire to attract Helen's men to
one spot, where Beasley had ridden down upon them with three times their
number. He had boldly ordered them off the land, unless they wanted to
acknowledge him boss and remain there in his service. The three Beemans
had stayed, having planned that just in this event they might be
valuable to Helen's interests. Beasley had ridden down into Pine the
same as upon any other day. Roy reported also news which had come in
that morning, how Beasley's crowd had celebrated late the night before.
The second and third and fourth days endlessly wore away, and Helen
believed they had made her old. At night she lay awake most of the time,
thinking and praying, but during the afternoon she got some sleep. She
could think of nothing and talk of nothing except her sister, and Dale's
chances of saving her.
“Well, shore you pay Dale a pore compliment,” finally protested the
patient Roy. “I tell you--Milt Dale can do anythin' he wants to do in
the woods. You can believe thet. ... But I reckon he'll run chances
after he comes back.”
This significant speech thrilled Helen with its assurance of hope, and
made her blood curdle at the implied peril awaiting the hunter.
On the afternoon of the fifth day Helen was abruptly awakened from her
nap. The sun had almost set. She heard voices--the shrill, cackling
notes of old Mrs. Cass, high in excitement, a deep voice that made Helen
tingle all over, a girl's laugh, broken but happy. There were footsteps
and stamping of hoofs. Dale had brought Bo back! Helen knew it. She grew
very weak, and had to force herself to stand erect. Her heart began to
pound in her very ears. A sweet and perfect joy suddenly flooded her
soul. She thanked God her prayers had been answered. Then suddenly alive
with sheer mad physical gladness, she rushed out.
She was just in time to see Roy Beeman stalk out as if he had never been
shot, and with a yell greet a big, gray-clad, gray-faced man--Dale.
“Howdy, Roy! Glad to see you up,” said Dale. How the quiet voice
steadied Helen! She beheld Bo. Bo, looking the same, except a little
pale and disheveled! Then Bo saw her and leaped at her, into her arms.
“Nell! I'm here! Safe--all right! Never was so happy in my life....
Oh-h! talk about your adventures! Nell, you dear old mother to me--I've
had e-enough forever!”
Bo was wild with joy, and by turns she laughed and cried. But Helen
could not voice her feelings. Her eyes were so dim that she could
scarcely see Dale when he loomed over her as she held Bo. But he found
the hand she put shakily out.
“Nell!... Reckon it's been harder--on you.” His voice was earnest and
halting. She felt his searching gaze upon her face. “Mrs. Cass said you
were here. An' I know why.”
Roy led them all indoors.
“Milt, one of the neighbor boys will take care of thet hoss,” he said,
as Dale turned toward the dusty and weary Ranger. “Where'd you leave the
cougar?”
“I sent him home,” replied Date.
“Laws now, Milt, if this ain't grand!” cackled Mrs. Cass. “We've worried
some here. An' Miss Helen near starved a-hopin' fer you.”
“Mother, I reckon the girl an' I are nearer starved than anybody you
know,” replied Dale, with a grim laugh.
“Fer the land's sake! I'll be fixin' supper this minit.”
“Nell, why are you here?” asked Bo, suspiciously.
For answer Helen led her sister into the spare room and closed the door.
Bo saw the baggage. Her expression changed. The old blaze leaped to the
telltale eyes.
“He's done it!” she cried, hotly.
“Dearest--thank God. I've got you--back again!” murmured Helen, finding
her voice. “Nothing else matters!... I've prayed only for that!”
“Good old Nell!” whispered Bo, and she kissed and embraced Helen. “You
really mean that, I know. But nix for yours truly! I'm back alive and
kicking, you bet.... Where's my--where's Tom?”
“Bo, not a word has been heard of him for five days. He's searching for
you, of course.”
“And you've been--been put off the ranch?”
“Well, rather,” replied Helen, and in a few trembling words she told the
story of her eviction.
Bo uttered a wild word that had more force than elegance, but it became
her passionate resentment of this outrage done her sister.
“Oh!... Does Tom Carmichael know this?” she added, breathlessly.
“How could he?”
“When he finds out, then--Oh, won't there be hell? I'm glad I got here
first.... Nell, my boots haven't been off the whole blessed time. Help
me. And oh, for some soap and hot water and some clean clothes! Nell,
old girl, I wasn't raised right for these Western deals. Too luxurious!”
And then Helen had her ears filled with a rapid-fire account of running
horses and Riggs and outlaws and Beasley called boldly to his teeth, and
a long ride and an outlaw who was a hero--a fight with Riggs--blood and
death--another long ride--a wild camp in black woods--night--lonely,
ghostly sounds--and day again--plot--a great actress lost to the
world--Ophelia--Snakes and Ansons--hoodooed outlaws--mournful moans
and terrible cries--cougar--stampede--fight and shots, more blood and
death--Wilson hero--another Tom Carmichael--fallen in love with outlaw
gun-fighter if--black night and Dale and horse and rides and starved
and, “Oh, Nell, he WAS from Texas!”
Helen gathered that wonderful and dreadful events had hung over
the bright head of this beloved little sister, but the bewilderment
occasioned by Bo's fluent and remarkable utterance left only that last
sentence clear.
Presently Helen got a word in to inform Bo that Mrs. Cass had knocked
twice for supper, and that welcome news checked Bo's flow of speech when
nothing else seemed adequate.
It was obvious to Helen that Roy and Dale had exchanged stories. Roy
celebrated this reunion by sitting at table the first time since he
had been shot; and despite Helen's misfortune and the suspended waiting
balance in the air the occasion was joyous. Old Mrs. Cass was in the
height of her glory. She sensed a romance here, and, true to her sex,
she radiated to it.
Daylight was still lingering when Roy got up and went out on the porch.
His keen ears had heard something. Helen fancied she herself had heard
rapid hoof-beats.
“Dale, come out!” called Roy, sharply.
The hunter moved with his swift, noiseless agility. Helen and Bo
followed, halting in the door.
“Thet's Las Vegas,” whispered Dale.
To Helen it seemed that the cowboy's name changed the very atmosphere.
Voices were heard at the gate; one that, harsh and quick, sounded like
Carmichael's. And a spirited horse was pounding and scattering
gravel. Then a lithe figure appeared, striding up the path. It was
Carmichael--yet not the Carmichael Helen knew. She heard Bo's strange
little cry, a corroboration of her own impression.
Roy might never have been shot, judging from the way he stepped out,
and Dale was almost as quick. Carmichael reached them--grasped them with
swift, hard hands.
“Boys--I jest rode in. An' they said you'd found her!”
“Shore, Las Vegas. Dale fetched her home safe an' sound.... There she
is.”
The cowboy thrust aside the two men, and with a long stride he faced the
porch, his piercing eyes on the door. All that Helen could think of his
look was that it seemed terrible. Bo stepped outside in front of Helen.
Probably she would have run straight into Carmichael's arms if some
strange instinct had not withheld her. Helen judged it to be fear; she
found her heart lifting painfully.
“Bo!” he yelled, like a savage, yet he did not in the least resemble
one.
“Oh--Tom!” cried Bo, falteringly. She half held out her arms.
“You, girl?” That seemed to be his piercing query, like the quivering
blade in his eyes. Two more long strides carried him close up to her,
and his look chased the red out of Bo's cheek. Then it was beautiful to
see his face marvelously change until it was that of the well remembered
Las Vegas magnified in all his old spirit.
“Aw!” The exclamation was a tremendous sigh. “I shore am glad!”
That beautiful flash left his face as he wheeled to the men. He wrung
Dale's hand long and hard, and his gaze confused the older man.
“RIGGS!” he said, and in the jerk of his frame as he whipped out the
word disappeared the strange, fleeting signs of his kindlier emotion.
“Wilson killed him,” replied Dale.
“Jim Wilson--that old Texas Ranger!... Reckon he lent you a hand?”
“My friend, he saved Bo,” replied Dale, with emotion. “My old cougar an'
me--we just hung 'round.”
“You made Wilson help you?” cut in the hard voice.
“Yes. But he killed Riggs before I come up an' I reckon he'd done well
by Bo if I'd never got there.”
“How about the gang?”
“All snuffed out, I reckon, except Wilson.”
“Somebody told me Beasley hed ran Miss Helen off the ranch. Thet so?”
“Yes. Four of his greasers packed her down the hill--most tore her
clothes off, so Roy tells me.”
“Four greasers!... Shore it was Beasley's deal clean through?”
“Yes. Riggs was led. He had an itch for a bad name, you know. But
Beasley made the plan. It was Nell they wanted instead of Bo.”
Abruptly Carmichael stalked off down the darkening path, his silver
heel-plates ringing, his spurs jingling.
“Hold on, Carmichael,” called Dale, taking a step.
“Oh, Tom!” cried Bo.
“Shore folks callin' won't be no use, if anythin would be,” said Roy.
“Las Vegas has hed a look at red liquor.”
“He's been drinking! Oh, that accounts!... he never--never even touched
me!”
For once Helen was not ready to comfort Bo. A mighty tug at her heart
had sent her with flying, uneven steps toward Dale. He took another
stride down the path, and another.
“Dale--oh--please stop!” she called, very low.
He halted as if he had run sharply into a bar across the path. When he
turned Helen had come close. Twilight was deep there in the shade of the
peach-trees, but she could see his face, the hungry, flaring eyes.
“I--I haven't thanked you--yet--for bringing Bo home,” she whispered.
“Nell, never mind that,” he said, in surprise. “If you must--why, wait.
I've got to catch up with that cowboy.”
“No. Let me thank you now,” she whispered, and, stepping closer, she put
her arms up, meaning to put them round his neck. That action must be her
self-punishment for the other time she had done it. Yet it might also
serve to thank him. But, strangely, her hands got no farther than his
breast, and fluttered there to catch hold of the fringe of his buckskin
jacket. She felt a heave of his deep chest.
“I--I do thank you--with all my heart,” she said, softly. “I owe you
now--for myself and her--more than I can ever repay.”
“Nell, I'm your friend,” he replied, hurriedly. “Don't talk of repayin'
me. Let me go now--after Las Vegas.”
“What for?” she queried, suddenly.
“I mean to line up beside him--at the bar--or wherever he goes,”
returned Dale.
“Don't tell me that. _I_ know. You're going straight to meet Beasley.”
“Nell, if you hold me up any longer I reckon I'll have to run--or never
get to Beasley before that cowboy.”
Helen locked her fingers in the fringe of his jacket--leaned closer to
him, all her being responsive to a bursting gust of blood over her.
“I'll not let you go,” she said.
He laughed, and put his great hands over hers. “What 're you sayin',
girl? You can't stop me.”
“Yes, I can. Dale, I don't want you to risk your life.”
He stared at her, and made as if to tear her hands from their hold.
“Listen--please--oh--please!” she implored. “If you go deliberately
to kill Beasley--and do it--that will be murder.... It's against my
religion.... I would be unhappy all my life.”
“But, child, you'll be ruined all your life if Beasley is not dealt
with--as men of his breed are always dealt with in the West,” he
remonstrated, and in one quick move he had freed himself from her
clutching fingers.
Helen, with a move as swift, put her arms round his neck and clasped her
hands tight.
“Milt, I'm finding myself,” she said. “The other day, when I
did--this--you made an excuse for me.... I'm not two-faced now.”
She meant to keep him from killing Beasley if she sacrificed every last
shred of her pride. And she stamped the look of his face on her heart
of hearts to treasure always. The thrill, the beat of her pulses, almost
obstructed her thought of purpose.
“Nell, just now--when you're overcome--rash with feelin's--don't say to
me--a word--a--”
He broke down huskily.
“My first friend--my--Oh Dale, I KNOW you love me! she whispered. And
she hid her face on his breast, there to feel a tremendous tumult.
“Oh, don't you?” she cried, in low, smothered voice, as his silence
drove her farther on this mad, yet glorious purpose.
“If you need to be told--yes--I reckon I do love you, Nell Rayner,” he
replied.
It seemed to Helen that he spoke from far off. She lifted her face, her
heart on her lips.
“If you kill Beasley I'll never marry you,” she said.
“Who's expectin' you to?” he asked, with low, hoarse laugh. “Do you
think you have to marry me to square accounts? This's the only time you
ever hurt me, Nell Rayner.... I'm 'shamed you could think I'd expect
you--out of gratitude--”
“Oh--you--you are as dense as the forest where you live,” she cried.
And then she shut her eyes again, the better to remember that
transfiguration of his face, the better to betray herself.
“Man--I love you!” Full and deep, yet tremulous, the words burst from
her heart that had been burdened with them for many a day.
Then it seemed, in the throbbing riot of her senses, that she was
lifted and swung into his arms, and handled with a great and terrible
tenderness, and hugged and kissed with the hunger and awkwardness of a
bear, and held with her feet off the ground, and rendered blind, dizzy,
rapturous, and frightened, and utterly torn asunder from her old calm,
thinking self.
He put her down--released her.
“Nothin' could have made me so happy as what you said.” He finished with
a strong sigh of unutterable, wondering joy.
“Then you will not go to--to meet--”
Helen's happy query froze on her lips.
“I've got to go!” he rejoined, with his old, quiet voice. “Hurry in to
Bo.... An' don't worry. Try to think of things as I taught you up in the
woods.”
Helen heard his soft, padded footfalls swiftly pass away. She was left
there, alone in the darkening twilight, suddenly cold and stricken, as
if turned to stone.
Thus she stood an age-long moment until the upflashing truth galvanized
her into action. Then she flew in pursuit of Dale. The truth was that,
in spite of Dale's' early training in the East and the long years of
solitude which had made him wonderful in thought and feeling, he had
also become a part of this raw, bold, and violent West.
It was quite dark now and she had run quite some distance before she saw
Dale's tall, dark form against the yellow light of Turner's saloon.
Somehow, in that poignant moment, when her flying feet kept pace with
her heart, Helen felt in herself a force opposing itself against this
raw, primitive justice of the West. She was one of the first influences
emanating from civilized life, from law and order. In that flash of
truth she saw the West as it would be some future time, when through
women and children these wild frontier days would be gone forever. Also,
just as clearly she saw the present need of men like Roy Beeman and Dale
and the fire-blooded Carmichael. Beasley and his kind must be killed.
But Helen did not want her lover, her future husband, and the probable
father of her children to commit what she held to be murder.
At the door of the saloon she caught up with Dale.
“Milt--oh--wait!'--wait!” she panted.
She heard him curse under his breath as he turned. They were alone in
the yellow flare of light. Horses were champing bits and drooping before
the rails.
“You go back!” ordered Dale, sternly. His face was pale, his eyes were
gleaming.
“No! Not till--you take me--or carry me!” she replied, resolutely, with
all a woman's positive and inevitable assurance.
Then he laid hold of her with ungentle hands. His violence, especially
the look on his face, terrified Helen, rendered her weak. But nothing
could have shaken her resolve. She felt victory. Her sex, her love, and
her presence would be too much for Dale.
As he swung Helen around, the low hum of voices inside the saloon
suddenly rose to sharp, hoarse roars, accompanied by a scuffling of feet
and crashing of violently sliding chairs or tables. Dale let go of Helen
and leaped toward the door. But a silence inside, quicker and stranger
than the roar, halted him. Helen's heart contracted, then seemed to
cease beating. There was absolutely not a perceptible sound. Even the
horses appeared, like Dale, to have turned to statues.
Two thundering shots annihilated this silence. Then quickly came a
lighter shot--the smash of glass. Dale ran into the saloon. The horses
began to snort, to rear, to pound. A low, muffled murmur terrified Helen
even as it drew her. Dashing at the door, she swung it in and entered.
The place was dim, blue-hazed, smelling of smoke. Dale stood just inside
the door. On the floor lay two men. Chairs and tables were overturned.
A motley, dark, shirt-sleeved, booted, and belted crowd of men appeared
hunched against the opposite wall, with pale, set faces, turned to the
bar. Turner, the proprietor, stood at one end, his face livid, his hands
aloft and shaking. Carmichael leaned against the middle of the bar. He
held a gun low down. It was smoking.
With a gasp Helen flashed her eyes back to Dale. He had seen her--was
reaching an arm toward her. Then she saw the man lying almost at her
feet. Jeff Mulvey--her uncle's old foreman! His face was awful to
behold. A smoking gun lay near his inert hand. The other man had fallen
on his face. His garb proclaimed him a Mexican. He was not yet dead.
Then Helen, as she felt Dale's arm encircle her, looked farther, because
she could not prevent it--looked on at that strange figure against the
bar--this boy who had been such a friend in her hour of need--this naive
and frank sweetheart of her sister's.
She saw a man now--wild, white, intense as fire, with some terrible cool
kind of deadliness in his mien. His left elbow rested upon the bar, and
his hand held a glass of red liquor. The big gun, low down in his other
hand, seemed as steady as if it were a fixture.
“Heah's to thet--half-breed Beasley an' his outfit!”
Carmichael drank, while his flaming eyes held the crowd; then with
savage action of terrible passion he flung the glass at the quivering
form of the still living Mexican on the floor.
Helen felt herself slipping. All seemed to darken around her. She could
not see Dale, though she knew he held her. Then she fainted.