RETRIBUTION
Coles had advertised the auction sale of the mares to take place
immediately after the race and though he would gladly have postponed it
he had to live up to his advertisement. Naturally the result was
disastrous. The ranchers had seen the ragged Alcatraz win against the
imported horses and they felt they could only show their local
patriotism by failing to bid. There were one or two mocking offers of a
hundred dollars a head for the lot. "Something pretty for my girl to
ride," as one of the ranchers phrased it, laughing. The result was that
every one of the mares was knocked down to Marianne at a ludicrously
low price; so low that when it was over and Coles strolled about with
her to indicate the size of her bargain she felt that she was moving in
a dream.
"It's easy to see that you're not Western," he said in the end, "but you
have a Western horse to thank for putting this deal through--I mean
Alcatraz."
"He's too ugly for that," said Marianne, and yet on her way back to the
hotel she realized that the sun-faded chestnut had truly proved a gold
mine to her. It had been, she felt, the luckiest day of her business
life, for she knew that the price she had paid for the mares was less
than half a reasonable valuation of them. Here was her ranch ready
stocked, so to speak, with fine horses. It only needed, now, to end the
tyrannical sway of Lew Hervey and in that fighting man of men, Red
Perris, Marianne felt that the solution lay.
Once in her room at the hotel, she looked about her in some dismay. Of
course she was merely an employer receiving a prospective employee to
examine his qualifications, but she also remained, in spite of herself,
a girl receiving a man. She was glad that no one was there to watch with
quizzical eye as she rearranged the furniture; she was doubly glad that
he could not watch her at the mirror. She gave herself the most critical
examination since she left the East and on the whole she approved of the
changes. The stirring life in the open had darkened the olive of her
skin, she found, but also had made it more translucent; the curve of her
cheek was pleasantly filled; her throat rounder; her head better poised.
And above all excitement gave her the vital color.
She paused at this point to wonder why a stray cowpuncher should make
her flush but immediately decided that he had nothing to do with it; it
was the purchase of the mares that kept alive the little thrill of
happiness. But Marianne was essentially honest and when her heart jumped
as she heard a swift, light step come down the hall and pause at her
door, she admitted at once that horses had nothing to do with the
matter.
She wished ardently that she had made the discovery sooner. As it was,
before she composed herself, he had knocked, been bidden in and stood
before her. She knew, inwardly dismayed, that her eyes were wide, her
color high, and her whole expression one of childish expectancy. It
comforted her greatly to find that he was hardly more at ease than she.
He made futile efforts to rub some dust from his shirt.
"I wanted to get fixed up," he said, "but the note said to come _right_
after the race--Miss Jordan."
In fact he made a harum-scarum figure. The fight with him of the
moustaches had produced rents invisible at a distance but distinct at
close hand and the dust and the sweat had faded the blue of his shirt
and the red of his bandana. But the red flame of that hair and the keen
blue of that eye--they, to be sure, were not faded. She discovered other
things as he crossed the room to her. That he was far shorter than he
had seemed when he fought in the street. Indeed, he was middle height
and slenderly made at that. She felt that looking at him from her window
and watching him ride Rickety she had only seen the spirit of the man
and not the physical fact at all.
He shook hands. She was glad to see that he neither peered at her slyly
as a vain man is apt to do when he meets a girl who has sought him out
nor met her sullenly as is the habit of the bashful Westerner. His head
was high, his glance straight, and his smile appreciated her with frank
enjoyment.
She tried to match her speech with his outright demeanor: "I have a
business offer to make. I won't take a great deal of your time. Ten
minutes will do. Won't you sit down, Mr. Perris?"
She took his tattered hat and pointed out a seat to him, noting, as she
herself sat down, that he was as erect in his chair as he had been
standing. There was something so adventurously restless about Red Perris
that she thought of a thoroughbred fresh from the stable; just as a
blooded hunter is apt to be "too much horse under the saddle," so she
was inclined to feel that Perris was "too much man." Something about him
was always moving. Either his lean fingers fretted on the arm of the
chair, or his foot stirred, or his glance flickered, or his head turned
proudly. Going back to the thoroughbred comparison she decided that
Perris badly needed to have a race or two under his belt before he would
be worked down to normal. She noted another thing: at close hand he was
more handsome.
In the meantime, since she had to talk, it would be pleasanter to find
some indirect approach. One was offered by the fob which hung outside
the watchpocket of his trousers. It was a tarnished, misshapen lump of
metal.
"I can't help asking about that fob," she said. "I've never seen one
even remotely like it."
He fingered it with a singular smile.
"Tell you about it," he said amiably enough. "I was standing by looking
at a large-sized fracas one day and me doing nothing--just as peaceful
as an old plough-hoss--when a gent ups and drills me in the leg. His
bullet had to cut through my holster and then it jammed into my thigh
bone. Put me in bed for a couple of months and when I got out I had the
slug fixed up for a fob. Just so's I could remember the man that shot
me. That's about five years back. I ain't found him yet, but I'm still
remembering, you see?"
He finished the anecdote with a chuckle which died out as he saw her
eyes widen with horror. Five years ago? she was thinking, he must have
been hardly more than a boy. How many other chapters as violent as this
were in his story?
"And--he didn't even offer to pay your doctor bill, I'll wager?"
"Him?" Perris chuckled again. "He'll pay it, some day. It's just
postponed--slow collection--that's all!" He shrugged the thought of it
away, and straightened a little, plainly waiting to hear her business.
But her mind was still only half on her own affairs as she began
talking.
"I have to go into the affairs of our ranch a little," she said, "so
that you can understand why I've asked you to come here. My father was
hurt by a fall from a horse several years ago and the accident made him
an invalid. He can't sit a saddle and because of that he has lost all
touch with his business. Worst of all, he doesn't seem to care. The
result was that everything went into the hands of the foreman, but the
foreman was not very successful. As a matter of fact the ranch became a
losing investment and I came out to try to run it. I suppose that
sounds foolish?"
She looked sharply at him, but to her delight for the first time his
eyes had lighted with a real enthusiasm.
"It sounds pretty fine to me," said Red Perris.
"The foreman doesn't think so," she answered. "He wants his old
authority."
"So he makes your trail all uphill?"
"By simply refusing to advise me. My father won't talk business. Lew
Hervey won't. I'm trying to run a dollar business with a cent's worth
of knowledge and no experience. I can't discharge Hervey; his service
has been too long and faithful. But I want to have someone up there who
will go into training to take Hervey's place eventually. Someone who
knows cattle and can tell me what to do now and then. Mr. Perris, do you
know the cow business?"
Some of his interest faded.
"Most folks raised in these parts do," he answered obliquely. "I should
think you could get a dozen anywhere."
She explained eagerly: "It's not so simple. You see, Lew Hervey is
rather a rough character. In the old days I think he was quite a
fighter. I guess he still is. And he's gathered a lot of fighting men
for cowpunchers on the ranch. When he sees me bring in an understudy for
his part, so to speak, I'm afraid he might make trouble unless he was
convinced it would be safer to keep his hands off the new man."
The gloom of Perris returned. He was still politely attentive, but his
head turned, and the eager eyes found something of interest across the
street. She knew her grip on him was failing and she struggled to regain
it. Here was her man, she knew. Here was one who would ride the fiercest
outlaw horse on the ranch; wear out the toughest cowboy; play with them
to weariness when they wanted to play, fight with them to exhaustion
when they wanted to fight, and as her right-hand man, advise her for the
best.
"As for terms, the right man can make them for himself," she concluded,
hopelessly: "Mr. Perris, I think you could be the man for the place.
What do you say to trying?"
He paused, diffidently, and she knew that in the pause he was hunting
for polite terms of refusal.
"I'll tell you how it is. You're mighty kind to make the offer. You
haven't seen much of me and that little bit has been--pretty rough." He
laughed away his embarrassment. "So I appreciate your confidence--a lot.
But I'm afraid that I'd be a tolerable lot like Hervey." He hurried on
lest she should take offense. "You see, I don't like orders."
"Of course if it were a man who made the offer to you--" she began
angrily.
He raised his hand. There were little touches of formal courtesy in him
so contrasted with what she had seen of him in action, so at variance
with the childishly gaudy clothes he wore, that it put Marianne
completely at sea.
"It's just that I like my own way. I've been a rolling stone all my
life. About the only moss I've gathered is what you see." He touched the
dust-tarnished gold braid on his sombrero and his twinkling eyes
invited her to mirth. But Marianne was sternly silent. She knew that her
color was gone and that her beauty had in large part gone with it; a
reflection that did not at all help her mood or her looks. "I get my fun
out of playing a free hand," he was concluding. "I don't like partners.
Not that I'm proud of it, but so you can see where I stand. If I don't
like a bunkie you can figure why I don't want a boss."
She nodded stiffly, and at the unamiable gesture she saw him shrug his
shoulders very slightly, his eyes wandered again as though he were
seeking for a means to end the interview.
Marianne rose.
"I see your viewpoint, Mr. Perris," she said coldly. "And I'm sorry you
can't accept my offer."
He came to his feet at the same moment, but still he lingered a moment,
turning his hat thoughtfully so that she hoped, for an instant, that he
was on the verge of reconsidering. After all, she should have used more
persuasion; she was firmly convinced that at heart men are very close
to children. Then his head went up and he shook away the mood which had
come over him.
"Some time I'll come to it," he admitted. "But not yet a while. I take
it mighty kind of you to have thought I could fill the bill and--I'm
wishing you all sorts of luck, Miss Jordan."
"Thank you," said Marianne, and hated herself for her unbending
stiffness.
At the door he turned again.
"I sure hope it's easy for you to forget songs," he said.
"Songs?" echoed Marianne, and then turned crimson with the memory.
"'You see," explained Red Jim Perris, "it's a bad habit I've picked up--
of doing the first fool thing that comes into my head. Good-bye, Miss
Jordan."
He was gone.
She felt, confusedly, that there were many thing? she should have said
and at the same time there was a strange surety that sometime she would
see him again and say them. She walked absently to the window which
opened on the vacant lot to the rear of the hotel.
Red Perris vanished from her mind, for below her she saw Cordova in the
act of tethering Alcatraz to the rack which stood in the middle of the
lot; saddle and bridle had been removed--the stallion wore only a stout
halter.
The Mexican kept on the far side of the rack and whipped his knot
together hastily; it was not till he sprang back from his work that she
saw the snaky length of an eight foot blacksnake uncoil from his hand.
He passed the lash slowly through his fingers, while surveying the
stallion with great complacence. The ears of Alcatraz flattened back, a
sufficient proof that he knew what was coming; he maintained his weary
attitude, but it now seemed one of despair. As for Marianne she refused
to admit the ugly suspicion which began to occur to her. But Cordova
left her only a moment for doubt.
The black streak curled around his head, and through the open window she
heard the crack of the lash-end. Alcatraz did not stir under the blow.
Once more the blacksnake whirled, and Cordova leaned back to give the
stroke the full stretch of arm and body; yet Alcatraz did not so much as
lift an ear. Only when the lash hung in mid-air did he stir. The rope
which tethered him hung slack, and this enabled the stallion to give
impetus to his backward leap. All the weight of his body, all the strain
of his leg muscles snapped the rope taut. It vibrated to invisibility
for an instant, then parted with a sound as loud as the fall of the
whip. The straining body of Alcatraz, so released, toppled sidewise.
He rolled like a dog in the dust, and when, with the agility of a dog,
he gained his feet, Cordova was fleeing towards the hotel with a
horror-stricken face.
Even then she could not understand his terror--not until she saw that
Alcatraz had wheeled and was bolting in hot pursuit. He came like the
"devil-horse" that the Mexican called him, with his ears flattened and
his mouth gaping; he came with such velocity that Cordova, running as
only consummate terror can make a man run, seemed to be racing on a
treadmill--literally standing still.
The picket fence which set off the back yard of the hotel gave the man
an instant of delay--a terribly vital instant, indeed, that seemed to
Marianne to contain long, long minutes. But here he was over and
running again. In her dread she wondered why he was not shrieking for
aid, but the face of Cordova was rigid--a nightmare mask!
Twenty steps, now, to the hotel, and surely there was still hope. No,
for Alcatraz sailed across the pickets with a bound that cut in two the
distance still dividing him from his master. It had all happened,
perhaps, within the space of three breaths. Now Marianne leaned out of
the window and screamed her warning, for the faded chestnut was on the
very heels of the Mexican. He raised his contorted face at her cry, then
threw up both his arms to her in a gesture she could never forget.
"Shoot!" yelled Cordova. "Amigo, amigo, shoot! Quick--"
Then Alcatraz struck him!
Half the bones in his body must have been broken by the impact. It spun
him over and over in the dust, yet as the impetus of the chestnut
carried him far past, Cordova struggled to his feet and attempted to
flee again. Alas, it was only a step! His left leg crumpled under him.
He toppled sideways, still wriggling and twisting onwards through the
dirt--and then Alcatraz struck him again.
This time is was no blind rush. Back and forth, up and down, he crossed
and recrossed, wheeled and reared and stamped, until his one white
stocking was crimsoned and spurts of red flew out and turned black in
the dust.
The horror which had choked her relaxed and Marianne shrieked again. It
was that second cry which saved a faint spark of life for Cordova for at
the sound the stallion leaped sidewise from the body of his victim,
lifted his head towards the half fainting girl in the window, and
trumpeted a great neigh of defiance. Still neighing he swerved away into
a gallop, cleared the fence a second time, and fled from view.