Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Calumet remained unshaken.]
THE BOSS OF THE LAZY Y
BY
CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER
AUTHOR OF
THE COMING OF THE LAW, THE TWO-GUN MAN, ETC.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
J. ALLEN ST. JOHN
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1915
Published April, 1915
Copyrighted in Great Britain
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. The Home-Coming of Calumet Marston
II. Betty Meets the Heir
III. Calumet's Guardian
IV. Calumet Plays Betty's Game
V. The First Lesson
VI. "Bob"
VII. A Page from the Past
VIII. The Toltec Idol
IX. Responsibility
X. New Acquaintances
XI. Progress
XII. A Peace Offering
XIII. Suspicion
XIV. Jealousy
XV. A Meeting in the Red Dog
XVI. The Ambush
XVII. More Progress
XVIII. Another Peace Offering
XIX. A Tragedy in the Timber Grove
XX. Betty Talks Frankly
XXI. His Father's Friend
XXII. Neal Taggart Visits
XXIII. For the Altars of His Tribe
ILLUSTRATIONS
Calumet remained unshaken . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
"Get up, or I will shoot you like a dog!" she said.
Her appearance was now in the nature of a transformation.
Calumet stepped in.
THE BOSS OF THE LAZY Y
CHAPTER I
THE HOME-COMING OF CALUMET MARSTON
Shuffling down the long slope, its tired legs moving automatically, the
drooping pony swerved a little and then came to a halt, trembling with
fright. Startled out of his unpleasant ruminations, his lips tensing
over his teeth in a savage snarl, Calumet Marston swayed uncertainly in
the saddle, caught himself, crouched, and swung a heavy pistol to a
menacing poise.
For an instant he hesitated, searching the immediate vicinity with
rapid, intolerant glances. When his gaze finally focused on the object
which had frightened his pony, he showed no surprise. Many times
during the past two days had this incident occurred, and at no time had
Calumet allowed the pony to follow its inclination to bolt or swerve
from the trail. He held it steady now, pulling with a vicious hand on
the reins.
Ten feet in front of the pony and squarely in the center of the trail a
gigantic diamond-back rattler swayed and warned, its venomous, lidless
eyes gleaming with hate. Calumet's snarl deepened, he dug a spur into
the pony's left flank, and pulled sharply on the left rein. The pony
lunged, swerved, and presented its right shoulder to the swaying
reptile, its flesh quivering from excitement. Then the heavy revolver
in Calumet's hand roared spitefully, there was a sudden threshing in
the dust of the trail, and the huge rattler shuddered into a sinuous,
twisting heap. For an instant Calumet watched it, and then, seeing
that the wound he had inflicted was not mortal, he urged the pony
forward and, leaning over a little, sent two more bullets into the body
of the snake, severing its head from its body.
"Man's size," declared Calumet, his snarl relaxing. He sat erect and
spoke to the pony:
"Get along, you damned fool! Scared of a side-winder!"
Relieved, deflating its lungs with a tremulous heave, and unmindful of
Calumet's scorn, the pony gingerly returned to the trail. In thirty
seconds it had resumed its drooping shuffle, in thirty seconds Calumet
had returned to his unpleasant ruminations.
A mile up in the shimmering white of the desert sky an eagle swam on
slow wing, shaping his winding course toward the timber clump that
fringed a river. Besides the eagle, the pony, and Calumet, no living
thing stirred in the desert or above it. In the shade of a rock,
perhaps, lurked a lizard, in the filmy mesquite that drooped and curled
in the stifling heat slid a rattler, in the shelter of the sagebrush
the sage hen might have nestled her eggs in the hot sand. But these
were fixtures. Calumet, his pony, and the eagle, were not. The eagle
was Mexican; it had swung its mile-wide circles many times to reach the
point above the timber clump; it was migratory and alert with the
hunger lust.
Calumet watched it with eyes that glowed bitterly and balefully. Half
an hour later, when he reached the river and the pony clattered down
the rocky slope, plunged its head deeply into the stream and drank with
eager, silent draughts, Calumet swung himself crossways in the saddle,
fumbled for a moment at his slicker, and drew out a battered tin cup.
Leaning over, he filled the cup with water, tilted his head back and
drank. The blur in the white sky caught his gaze and held it. His
eyes mocked, his lips snarled.
"You damned greaser sneak!" he said. "Followed me fifty miles!" A
flash of race hatred glinted his eyes. "I wouldn't let no damned
greaser eagle get me, anyway!"
The pony had drunk its fill. Calumet returned the tin cup to the
slicker and swung back into the saddle. Refreshed, the pony took the
opposite slope with a rush, emerging from the river upon a high plateau
studded with fir balsam and pine. Bringing the pony to a halt, Calumet
turned in the saddle and looked somberly behind him.
For two days he had been fighting the desert, and now it lay in his
rear, a mystic, dun-colored land of hot sandy waste and silence;
brooding, menacing, holding out its threat of death--a vast natural
basin breathing and pulsing with mystery, rimmed by remote mountains
that seemed tenuous and thin behind the ever-changing misty films that
spread from horizon to horizon.
The expression of Calumet's face was as hard and inscrutable as the
desert itself; the latter's filmy haze did not more surely shut out the
mysteries behind it than did Calumet's expression veil the emotions of
his heart. He turned from the desert to face the plateau, from whose
edge dropped a wide, tawny valley, luxuriant with bunch grass--a golden
brown sweep that nestled between some hills, inviting, alluring. So
sharp was the contrast between the desert and the valley, and so potent
was its appeal to him, that the hard calm of his face threatened to
soften. It was as though he had ridden out of a desolate, ages-old
world where death mocked at life, into a new one in which life reigned
supreme.
There was no change in Calumet's expression, however, though below him,
spreading and dipping away into the interminable distance, slumbering
in the glare of the afternoon sun, lay the land of his youth. He
remembered it well and he sat for a long time looking at it, searching
out familiar spots, reviving incidents with which those spots had been
connected. During the days of his exile he had forgotten, but now it
all came back to him; his brain was illumined and memories moved in it
in orderly array--like a vast army passing in review. And he sat there
on his pony, singling out the more important personages of the
army--the officers, the guiding spirits of the invisible columns.
Five miles into the distance, at a point where the river doubled
sharply, rose the roofs of several ranch buildings--his father's ranch,
the Lazy Y. Upon the buildings Calumet's army of memories descended
and he forgot the desert, the long ride, the bleak days of his exile,
as he yielded to solemn introspection.
Yet, even now, the expression of his face did not change. A little
longer he scanned the valley and then the army of memories marched out
of his vision and he took up the reins and sent the pony forward. The
little animal tossed its head impatiently, perhaps scenting food and
companionship, but Calumet's heavy hand on the reins discouraged haste.
For Calumet was in no hurry. He had not yet worked out an explanation
for the strange whim that had sent him home after an absence of
thirteen years and he wanted time to study over it. His lips took on a
satiric curl as he meditated, riding slowly down into the valley. It
was inexplicable, mysterious, this notion of his to return to a father
who had never taken any interest in him. He could not account for it.
He had not been sent for, he had not sent word; he did not know why he
had come. He had been in the Durango country when the mood had struck
him, and without waiting to debate the wisdom of the move he had ridden
in to headquarters, secured his time, and--well, here he was. He had
pondered much in an effort to account for the whim, carefully
considering all its phases, and he was still uncertain.
He knew he would receive no welcome; he knew he was not wanted. Had he
felt a longing to revisit the old place? Perhaps it had been that.
And yet, perhaps not, for he was here now, looking at it, living over
the life of his youth, riding again through the long bunch grass, over
the barren alkali flats, roaming again in the timber that fringed the
river--going over it all again and nothing stirred in his heart--no
pleasure, no joy, no satisfaction, no emotion whatever. If he felt any
curiosity he was entirely unconscious of it; it was dormant if it
existed at all. As he was able to consider her dispassionately he knew
that he had not come to look at his mother's grave. She had been
nothing to him, his heart did not beat a bit faster when he thought of
her.
Then, why had he come? He did not know or care. Had he been a
psychologist he might have attempted to frame reasons, building them
from foundations of high-sounding phrases, but he was a materialist,
and the science of mental phenomena had no place in his brain.
Something had impelled him to come and here he was, and that was reason
enough for him. And because he had no motive in coming he was taking
his time. He figured on reaching the Lazy Y about dusk. He would see
his father, perhaps quarrel with him, and then he would ride away, to
return no more. Strange as it may seem, the prospect of a quarrel with
his father brought him a thrill of joy, the first emotion he had felt
since beginning his homeward journey.
When he reached the bottom of the valley he urged his pony on a little
way, pulling it to a halt on the flat, rock-strewn top of an isolated
excrescence of earth surrounded by a sea of sagebrush, dried bunch
grass, and sand. Dismounting he stretched his legs to disperse the
saddle weariness. He stifled a yawn, lazily plunged a hand into a
pocket of his trousers, produced tobacco and paper and rolled a
cigarette. Lighting it he puffed slowly and deeply at it, exhaling the
smoke lingeringly through his nostrils. Then he sat down on a rock,
leaned an elbow in the sand, pulled his hat brim well down over his
eyes and with the cigarette held loosely between his lips, gave himself
over to retrospection.
It all came to him, as he sat there on the rock, his gaze on the
basking valley, his thoughts centered on that youth which had been an
abiding nightmare. The question was: What influence had made him a
hardened, embittered, merciless demon of a man whose passions
threatened always to wash away the dam of his self-control? A man
whose evil nature caused other men to shun him; a man who scoffed at
virtue; who saw no good in anything?
Not once during his voluntary exile had he applied his mind to the
subject in the hope of stumbling on a solution. To be sure, he had had
a slight glimmering of the truth; he had realized in a sort of vague,
general way that he had not been treated fairly at home, but he had not
been able to provide a definite and final explanation, perhaps because
he had never considered it necessary. But his return home, the review
of the army of memories, had brought him a solution--the solution. And
he saw its ruthless logic.
He was what his parents had made him. Without being able to think it
out in scientific terms he was able to expound the why of like. It was
one of the inexorable rules of heredity. To his parents he owed
everything and nothing. He reflected on this paradox until it became
perfectly clear to him. They--his parents--had given him life, and
that was all. He owed them thanks for that, or he would have owed them
thanks if he considered his life to be worth anything. But he owed
them nothing because they had spoiled the life they had given him, had
spoiled it by depriving him of everything he had a right to expect from
them--love, sympathy, decent treatment. They had given him instead,
blows, kicks, curses, hatred. Hatred!
Yes, they had hated him; they had told him that; he was convinced of
it. The reason for their hatred had always been a mystery to him and,
for all he cared, would remain a mystery.
When he was fifteen his mother died. On the day when the neighbors
laid her away in a quiet spot at the edge of the wood near the far end
of the corral fence, he stood beside her body as it lay in the rough
pine box which some of them had knocked together, looking at her for
the last time. He was neither glad or sorry; he felt no emotion
whatever. When one of the neighbors spoke to him, asking him if he
felt no grief, he cursed and stormed out of the house. Later, after
the neighbors departed, his father came upon him in the stable and beat
him unmercifully. He came, dry-eyed, through the ordeal, raging
inwardly, but silent. And that night, after his father had gone to
bed, he stole stealthily out of the house, threw a saddle and bridle on
his favorite pony and rode away. Such had been his youth.
That had been thirteen years ago. He was twenty-eight now and had
changed a little--for the worse. During the days of his exile he had
made no friends. He had found much experience, he had become
self-reliant, sophisticated. There was about him an atmosphere of cold
preparedness that discouraged encroachment on his privacy. Men did not
trifle with him, because they feared him. Around Durango, where he had
ridden for the Bar S outfit, it was known that he possessed Satanic
cleverness with a six-shooter.
But if he was rapid with his weapons he made no boast of it. He was
quiet in manner, unobtrusive. He was taciturn also, for he had been
taught the value of silence by his parents, though in his narrowed
glances men had been made to see a suggestion of action that was more
eloquent than speech. He was a slumbering volcano of passion that
might at any time become active and destroying.
Gazing now from under the brim of his hat at the desolate, silent world
that swept away from the base of the hill on whose crest he sat, his
lips curved with a slow, bitter sneer. During the time he had been on
the hill he had lived over his life and he saw its bleakness, its
emptiness, its mystery. This was his country. He had been born here;
he had passed days, months, years, in this valley. He knew it, and
hated it. He sneered as his gaze went out of the valley and sought the
vast stretches of the flaming desert. He knew the desert, too; it had
not changed. Riding through it yesterday and the day before he had
been impressed with the somber grimness of it all, as he had been
impressed many times before when watching it from this very hill. But
it was no more somber than his own life had been; its brooding silence
was no deeper than that which dwelt in his own heart; he reflected its
spirit, its mystery was his. His life had been like--like the
stretching waste of sky that yawned above the desert, as cold, hard,
and unsympathetic.
He saw a shadow; looked upward to see the Mexican eagle winging its
slow way overhead, and the sneer on his lips grew. It was a prophecy,
perhaps. At least the sight of the bird gave him an opportunity to
draw a swift and bitter comparison. He was like the eagle. Both he
and the bird he detested were beset with a constitutional
predisposition to rend and destroy. There was this difference between
them: The bird feasted on carrion, while he spent his life stifling
generous impulses and tearing from his heart the noble ideals which his
latent manhood persisted in erecting.
For two hours he sat on the hill, watching. He saw the sun sink slowly
toward the remote mountains, saw it hang a golden rim on a barren peak;
watched the shadows steal out over the foothills and stretch swiftly
over the valley toward him. Mystery seemed to awaken and fill the
world. The sky blazed with color--orange and gold and violet; a veil
of rose and amethyst descended and stretched to the horizons,
enveloping the mountains in a misty haze; purple shafts shot from
distant canyons, mingling with the brighter colors--gleaming,
shimmering, ever-changing. Over the desert the colors were even more
wonderful, the mystery deeper, the lure more appealing. But Calumet
made a grimace at it all, it seemed to mock him.
He rose from the rock, mounted his pony, and rode slowly down into the
valley toward the Lazy Y ranch buildings.
He had been so busy with his thoughts that he had not noticed the
absence of cattle in the valley--the valley had been a grazing ground
for the Lazy Y stock during the days of his youth--and now, with a
start, he noted it and halted his pony after reaching the level to look
about him.
There was no sign of any cattle. But he reflected that perhaps a new
range had been opened. Thirteen years is a long time, and many changes
could have come during his absence.
He was about to urge his pony on again, when some impulse moved him to
turn in the saddle and glance at the hill he had just vacated. At
about the spot where he had sat--perhaps two hundred yards distant--he
saw a man on a horse, sitting motionless in the saddle, looking at him.
Calumet wheeled his own pony and faced the man. The vari-colored glow
from the distant mountains fell full upon the horseman, and with the
instinct for attention to detail which had become habitual with
Calumet, he noted that the rider was a big man; that he wore a
cream-colored Stetson and a scarlet neckerchief. Even at that
distance, so clear was the light, Calumet caught a vague impression of
his features--his nose, especially, which was big, hawk-like.
Calumet yielded to a sudden wonder over the rider's appearance on the
hill. He had not seen him; had not heard him before. Still, that was
not strange, for he had become so absorbed in his thoughts while on the
hill that he had paid very little attention to his surroundings except
to associate them with his past.
The man, evidently, was a cowpuncher in the employ of his father; had
probably seen him from the level of the valley and had ridden to the
crest of the hill out of curiosity.
Another impulse moved Calumet. He decided to have a talk with the man
in order to learn, if possible, something of the life his father had
led during his absence. He kicked his pony in the ribs and rode toward
the man, the animal traveling at a slow chop-trot.
For a moment the man watched him, still motionless. Then, as Calumet
continued to approach him the man wheeled his horse and sent it
clattering down the opposite side of the hill.
Calumet sneered, surprised, for the instant, at the man's action.
"Shy cuss," he said, grinning contemptuously. In the next instant,
however, he yielded to a quick rage and sent his pony scurrying up the
slope toward the crest of the hill.
When he reached the top the man was on the level, racing across a
barren alkali flat at a speed which indicated that he was afflicted
with something more than shyness.
Calumet halted on the crest of the hill and waved a hand derisively at
the man, who was looking back over his shoulder as he rode.
"Slope, you locoed son-of-a-gun!" he yelled; "I didn't want to talk to
you, anyway!"
The rider's answer was a strange one. He brought his horse to a
dizzying stop, wheeled, drew a rifle from his saddle holster, raised it
to his shoulder and took a snap shot at Calumet.
The latter, however, had observed the hostile movement, and had thrown
himself out of the saddle. He struck the hard sand of the hill on all
fours and stretched out flat, his face to the ground. He heard the
bullet sing futilely past him; heard the sharp crack of the rifle, and
peered down to see the man again running his horse across the level.
Calumet drew his pistol, but saw that the distance was too great for
effective shooting, and savagely jammed the weapon back into the
holster. He was in a black rage, but was aware of the absurdity of
attempting to wage a battle in which the advantage lay entirely with
the rifle, and so, with a grim smile on his face, he watched the
progress of the man as he rode through the long grass and across the
barren stretches of the level toward the hills that rimmed the southern
horizon.
Promising himself that he would make a special effort to return the
shot, Calumet finally wheeled his pony and rode down the hill toward
the Lazy Y.