Man Size Part 12

The officer caught a gleam of hot red eyes. "I'll 'tend to that. We'll mix first, him 'n' me. Question now is, do I get a gun?"

"What for?"

"Didn't you hear him make his brags about what he was gonna do to me?

If there's shootin' I'm in on it, ain't I?"

"No. You're a prisoner. I can't arm you unless your life is in danger."

West pulled up his horse about sixty yards from the rocks. He shouted a profane order. The purport of it was that Beresford had better come out with his hands up if he didn't want to be dragged out by a rope around his neck. The man's speech crackled with oaths and obscenity.

The constable stepped into the open a few yards. "What do you want?"

he asked.

"You." The whiskey-runner screamed it in a sudden gust of pa.s.sion.

"Think you can make a fool of Bully West? Think you can bust up our cargo an' get away with it? I'll show you where you head in at."

"Don't make any mistake, West," advised the officer, his voice cold as the splash of ice-water. "Three of us are here, all with rifles, all dead shots. If you attack us, some of you are going to get killed."

"Tha's a lie. You're alone--except for Tom Morse, an' he ain't fool enough to fight to go to jail. I've got you where I want you." West swung from the saddle and came straddling forward. In the uncertain light he looked more like some misbegotten ogre than a human being.

"That's far enough," warned Beresford, not a trace of excitement in manner or speech. His hands hung by his sides. He gave no sign of knowing that he had a revolver strapped to his hip ready for action.

The liquor smuggler stopped to pour out abuse. He was working himself up to a pa.s.sion that would justify murder. The weapon in his hand swept wildly back and forth. Presently it would focus down to a deadly concentration in which all motion would cease.

The torrent of vilification died on the man's lips. He stared past the constable with bulging eyes. From the rocks three figures had come.

Two of them carried rifles. All three of them he recognized. His astonishment paralyzed the scurrilous tongue. What was McRae's girl doing at the camp of the officer?

It was characteristic of him that he suspected the worst of her.

Either Tom Morse or this red-coat had beaten him to his prey. Jealousy and outraged vanity flared up in him so that discretion vanished.

The barrel of his revolver came down and began to spit flame.

Beresford gave orders. "Back to the rocks." He retreated, backward, firing as he moved.

The companions of West surged forward. Shots, shouts, the s.h.i.+fting blur of moving figures, filled the night. Under cover of the darkness the defenders reached again the big rocks.

The constable counted noses. "Everybody all right?" he asked. Then, abruptly, he snapped out: "Who was responsible for that crazy business of you coming out into the open?"

"Me," said the girl. "I wanted that West to know you weren't alone."

"Didn't you know better than to let her do it?" the officer demanded of Morse.

"He couldn't help it. He tried to keep me back. What right has he to interfere with me?" she wanted to know, stiffening.

"You'll do as I say now," the constable said crisply. "Get back of that rock there, Miss McRae, and stay there. Don't move from cover unless I tell you to."

Her dark, stormy eyes challenged his, but she moved sullenly to obey.

Rebel though she was, the code of the frontier claimed and held her respect. She had learned of life that there were times when her will must be subordinated for the general good.

CHAPTER IX

TOM MAKES A COLLECTION

The attackers drew back and gathered together for consultation. West's anger had stirred their own smoldering resentment at the police, had dominated them, and had brought them on a journey of vengeance. But they had not come out with any intention of storming a defended fortress. The enthusiasm of the small mob ebbed.

"I reckon we done bit off more'n we can chaw," Harvey Gosse murmured, rubbing his bristly chin. "I ain't what you might call noways anxious to have them fellows spill lead into me."

"Ten of us here. One man, an Injun, an' a breed girl over there. You lookin' for better odds, Harv?" jeered the leader of the party.

"I never heard that a feller was any less dead because an Injun or a girl shot him," the lank smuggler retorted.

"Be reasonable, Bully," urged Barney with his ingratiating whine. "We come out to fix the red-coat. We figured he was alone except for Tom, an' o' course Tom's with us. But this here's a different proposition.

Too many witnesses ag'in' us. I reckon you ain't tellin' us it's safe to shoot up Angus McRae's daughter even if she is a metis."

"Forget her," the big whiskey-runner snarled. "She won't be a witness against us."

"Why won't she?"

"h.e.l.l's hinges! Do I have to tell you all my plans? I'm sayin' she won't. That goes." He flung out a gesture of scarcely restrained rage.

He was not one who could reason away opposition with any patience. It was his temperament to override it.

Brad Stearns rubbed his bald head. He always did when he was working out a mental problem. West's declaration could mean only one of two things. Either the girl would not be alive to give witness or she would be silent because she had thrown in her lot with the big trader.

The old-timer knew West's vanity and his weakness for women. From Tom Morse he had heard of his offer to McRae for the girl. Now he had no doubt what the man intended.

But what of her? What of the girl he had seen at her father's camp, the heart's desire of the rugged old Scotchman? In the lightness of her step, in the lift of her head, in speech and gesture and expression of face, she was of the white race, an inheritor of its civilization and of its traditions. Only her dusky color and a certain wild shyness seemed born of the native blood in her. She was proud, pa.s.sionate, high-spirited. Would she tamely accept Bully West for her master and go to his tent as his squaw? Brad didn't believe it. She would fight--fight desperately, with barbaric savagery.

Her fight would avail her nothing. If driven to it, West would take her with him into the fastnesses of the Lone Lands. They would disappear from the sight of men for months. He would travel swiftly with her to the great river. Every sweep of his canoe paddle would carry them deeper into that virgin North where they could live on what his rifle and rod won for the pot. A little salt, pemmican, and flour would be all the supplies he needed to take with them.

Brad had no intention of being a cat's-paw for him. The older man had come along to save Tom Morse from prison and for no other reason. He did not intend to be swept into indiscriminate crime.

"Don't go with me, Bully," Stearns said. "Count me out. Right here's where I head for Whoop-Up."

He turned his horse's head and rode into the darkness.

West looked after him, cursing. "We're better off without the white-livered coyote," he said at last.

"Brad ain't so fur off at that. I'd like blame well to be moseyin' to Whoop-Up my own self," Gosse said uneasily.

"You'll stay right here an' go through with this job, Harv," West told him flatly. "All you boys'll do just that. If any of you's got a different notion we'll settle that here an' now. How about it?" He straddled up and down in front of his men, menacing them with knotted fists and sulky eyes.

n.o.body cared to argue the matter with him. He showed his broken teeth in a sour grin.

"Tha's settled, then," he went on. "It's my say-so. My orders go--if there's no objections."