The Forfeit Part 7

But Effie was in no mood to listen to the dictates of squeamish principles from a man who lacked the spirit and power--the will to raise her out of the mire of penury into which he had helped to plunge her. The hours of dreary, hopeless labor; the weeks and months of dismal and grinding poverty had sunk deeply into her soul. No price was too high to pay to escape these things. In a moment her reply was pouring forth in a pa.s.sionate torrent.

"Blood money?" she cried. "Bob, you're crazier than I'd have thought.

Where's the difference? I mean between handin' these folks over to justice for justice sake, and taking the reward the folks who're most to benefit by it are ready to hand out to me? Say, you can't talk that way, Bob. You can't just do it. Aren't the folks who carry out the justice in the land paid for it--from the biggest judge to the fellow who handles the levers of the electric chair? Doesn't the country hand out thousands of dollars every year for the punishment of offenders, whether it's for the shedding of their life blood, or merely their heart's blood in the cruel horrors of a penitentiary? Do you think I'm going to hand out my secret to a bunch of cattlemen for their benefit and profit, and reap no comfort from it for myself in the miserable life I'm condemned to endure? Your scruples are just crazy. They're worse. They're selfish. You'd rather see me drudging all the best moments of my life away, so you can lounge around Ju Penrose's saloon spending dollars you've no right to, than risk your peace of mind on an honest--yes, _honest_--transaction that's going to give me a little of the comfort that you haven't the grit to help me to yourself."

The girl was carried away with the force of her own purpose and craving. Every word she said was meant from the bottom of her soul.

There was not a shadow of yielding. She had no illusions. For two years her heart had been hardening to its present condition, and she would not give up one t.i.ttle of the chance that now opened out before her hungry eyes.

Bob was clay in her hands. He was clay in any hands sufficiently dominating. He knew from the moment he had delivered his appeal, and he had heard only the tones of her reply, that it was he who must yield or complete irrevocably the barrier which had been steadily growing up between them. Just for a moment the weakly, obstinate thought had occurred of flinging everything to the winds and of denying her once more with all the force at his command. But the moment pa.s.sed. It fled before the charm of her presence, and the memory of the loved which he was incapable of shutting out of his heart. He knew he was right, and she was utterly wrong. But he knew, equally well, from her words and att.i.tude, that it was he who must give way, or----

He shook his head with a negative movement which Effie was quick enough to realize meant yielding. She wanted him to yield. It would simplify all her purpose. She desired that he should partic.i.p.ate in the transaction.

"You'll regret it, Effie," he said, in his usual easy tones. "You'll regret it so you'll hate to think of this moment all the rest of your life. It's not you talking, my dear, it's just--the experience you've had to go through. Can't you see? You've never been like this before.

And it isn't you. Say, I'd give my right hand it you'd quit the whole thing."

But the girl's resolution was unwavering.

"You--still refuse--to countenance it?" she demanded.

Again Bob shook his head. But now he moved away and struck a match to relight his pipe.

"No," he said. Then he slowly puffed out great clouds of smoke. "No, my dear, if you're bent on it." Then he moved to the cook-stove and supported one foot upon it.

"Say--you guess I'm selfish. You guess I haven't acted as I ought to help push our boat along. You reckon I've become a sort of saloon-loafing b.u.m. Guess you sort of think I'm just about the limit.

Well, maybe I'm nothing to shriek about. However, I've told you all I feel. I've told you what you're going to feel--later. Meanwhile it's up to me to help you all I know. Tell me the whole thing, and I'll do the business for you. I'll see Dug McFarlane for you, and fix things.

But it's on one condition."

"What is it?"

Something of the coldness had pa.s.sed from the girl's eyes. She was smiling because she had achieved her purpose.

"Why--just this. That I don't touch one single dollar of the price you're to receive for those poor devils' blood. That's all."

Just for a moment a dull flush surged up under the tan of the girl's cheeks, and her eyes sparkled ominously. Then she returned to her rocker with great deliberation.

"You're crazy, Bob," she said frigidly, but without any other display.

"Still--just sit around, and--I'll tell you it all."

And while the man listened to the story of his wife's adventures his mind went back to the scene in Ju Penrose's saloon, and the denial he had flung so heatedly at that philosophic cynic.

CHAPTER V

THE HANGING BEE

Dug McFarlane was a picturesque creature. He was big in height and girth. He was also big in mind. And, which was much more important to the people of the Orrville ranching world, big in purse. He was grizzled and gray, and his eyes beamed out of a setting which was surely made for such beaming; a setting which possessed no sharp angles or disfiguring hollows, but only the healthy tissue of a well-nourished and wholesome-living man in middle life.

As he sat his horse, beside his station foreman, gazing out at the broken line of foothills which marked the approach to the barrier of mountains cutting against the blue, he seemed to display in his bearing something of that dominating personality which few successful men are entirely without. All about them lay the heavy-railed corrals of a distant out-station. Just behind stood the rough shanty, which was the bunkhouse for the cowhands employed in this region. The doctor was still within, tending the grievously injured man who had been so badly wounded in the previous night's raid by the rustlers.

For the time Dug's beaming eyes were shadowed with a concern that was half angry and wholly depressed. They searched the rolling gra.s.s-land until the distance was swallowed up by the barrier of hills. He was seeking one rea.s.suring glimpse of the black, hornless herd whose pastures these were. But only disappointment met him on every side.

The beautiful, sleek, Aberdeen-Angus herd, which was his joy and pride, had vanished. They had gone, he knew. They had gone the same way that, during the last five years, hundreds of head of his stock had gone. It was the last straw.

"Say, Lew Hank," he said, in a voice of something approaching an emotion he possessed no other means of displaying, "it's beat me bad.

It's beat me so bad I don't seem able to think right. We'd a hundred head running on this station. As fine a bunch as ever were bred from the old country's strain. I just feel that mad I could set right in to break things."

Then, after a long pause during which the station foreman waited silent:

"And only last night, while these guys was raising the mischief right here, I was setting around doping out big talk, and raising a mighty big wad for the round-up of the whole darnation gang. Can you beat it?

I'm sore. Sore as h.e.l.l. Say, tell it me again. I don't seem to have it clear."

He pa.s.sed one great muscular hand across his moist forehead, and the gesture was rather one of helplessness.

Lew Hank regarded him with measuring eyes. He knew him so well. In the ten years and more he had worked for him he had studied his every mood. This phase in the great cattleman's character was something new, something rather startling. Dug's way was usually volcanic. It was hot and fierce for a while, generally to hollowed by a hearty laugh, rather like the pa.s.sing of a summer storm. But this, in Lew's opinion, was a display of weakness. A sign he neither liked nor respected. The truth was Dug McFarlane had been hit in a direction of which his subordinate had no understanding. That herd of Aberdeen-Angus cattle had been his plaything. His hobby. He had been devoted to it in a way that would have been absurd to any one but a cattleman. Hank decided this unaccustomed weakness must be nipped in the bud.

"Say, boss, it ain't no use in squealin'," he grumbled, in the hard tones of a man who yields to no feelings of sympathy. His weather-stained face was set and ugly in its expression. "Wher's the use in it anyway?" he demanded. "Get a look around. There's miles of territory, an' all of it runs into them blamed hills. I got three boys with me. They're right boys, too. I don't guess there's a thing you or me could tell 'em 'bout their work. Not a thing. Day and night one of 'em's on grazin' guard. Them beasties ain't never left to trail off into the hills. Wal, I guess that's all we ken do--sure. Say, you can't hold up a gang of ten an' more toughs with a single gun in the dead, o' night, 'specially with a hole in your guts same as young Syme's had bored into his. I ain't ast once, nor twice, to hev them beasties run into the corrals o' nights, and fed hay, same as in winter. I've ast it fifty times. It's bin up to you, boss. So I say it's no use in squealin'."

Hank spat over his horse's shoulder, and his thin lips closed with a snap. He was a lean forceful prairieman who possessed, as he would himself have said, no parlor tricks. Dug McFarlane, for all his wealth, for all he had been elected president of the Western Union Cattle Breeders' a.s.sociation three years in succession, was no more to him than any other employer who paid wages for work loyally performed.

Dug regarded his foreman with close attention. He ignored the man's rough manner. But, nevertheless, it was not without effect.

"And the other boys?"

"Was dead asleep in the bunkhouse--same as me. What 'ud you have?

They ain't sheep dogs."

Dug took no umbrage.

"And they're out on the trail--right now?"

"Sure. Same as we should be, 'stead o' wastin' hot air around here.

Say, I guess you're feelin' sore. But I don't guess your feelin's is a circ.u.mstance to mine, boss. You ain't bin beat to your face by this lousy gang. I have. An' say, I'm yearnin'--jest gaspin'--to wipe out the score. I don't sort o' care a bit for your loss. That ain't my funeral. But they've beat me plumb out--same as if I was some sucker who ain't never roped an' branded a three-year-old steer since I was pupped. Are you comin' along? They struck out northwest. We got that, an' the boys is follerin' hard on their trail. It'll be better'n squealin' around here."

There could be no doubt about the man's feelings. They were displayed in every word he spoke. In every glance of his fierce eyes. Dug approved him. His manners were nothing. Lew was probably the most capable cattleman in his service.

He was about to follow his foreman who had swung his horse about to set off northward, when he abruptly flung out an arm, pointing.

"That one of your boys--coming in? Maybe----"

Lew screwed up his eyes in the sunlight. His rep came in a moment.

"Maybe--nuthin'. That ain't one of my boys." Then, after a brief, considering pause, in which he narrowly examined the distant horseman's outfit: "Sort o' rec'nize him, too. Likely he's that b.u.m guy with the dandy wife way up on b.u.t.te Creek. Whitstone, ain't it? Feller with swell folks way down east, an' who guesses the on'y sort o' farmin'

worth a cuss is done in Ju Penrose's saloon. That's him sure," he added, as the man drew nearer. Then he went on musingly. "I guess he's got a lot to dope out. Say, them guys must have pa.s.sed near by his shanty."

Bob Whitstone reined his pony up with a jerk. He was on a mission that inspired no other emotion than that of repulsion and self-loathing.

And these things found reflection in his good-looking face.

He glanced swiftly from one to the other as he confronted the burly rancher and his station foreman. The latter he did not know, nor was he interested in him. The man he had come to see was Dug McFarlane, who claimed from him, as he did from every man in the district, something in the nature of respect.