'Firebrand' Trevison, Charles Alden Seltzer [best motivational books to read .txt] 📗
- Author: Charles Alden Seltzer
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“That settles you, you damned fool!” he said.
He stepped down into the street and went into the bank. Braman fawned on him, smirking insincerely. Corrigan had not apologized for striking the blow, had never mentioned it, continuing his former attitude toward the banker as though nothing had happened. But Braman had not forgiven him. Corrigan wasted no words:
“Who’s the best gun-man in this section?”
Braman studied a minute. “Clay Levins,” he said, finally.
“Can you find him?”
“Why, he’s in town today; I saw him not more than fifteen minutes ago, going into the Elk!”
“Find him and bring him here—by the back way,” directed Corrigan.
Braman went out, wondering. A few minutes later he returned, coming in at the front door, smiling with triumph. Shortly afterward Corrigan was opening the rear door on a tall, slender man of thirty-five, with a thin face, a mouth that drooped at the corners, and alert, furtive eyes. He wore a heavy pistol at his right hip, low, the bottom of the holster tied to the leather chaps, and as Corrigan closed the door he noted that the man’s right hand lingered close to the butt of the weapon.
“That’s all right,” said Corrigan; “you’re perfectly safe here.”
He talked in low tones to the man, so that Braman could not hear. Levins departed shortly afterwards, grinning crookedly, tucking a piece of paper into a pocket, upon which Corrigan had transcribed something that had been written on the cuff of his shirt sleeve. Corrigan went to his desk and busied himself with some papers. Over in the courthouse, Judge Lindman took from a drawer in his desk a thin ledger—a duplicate of the one he had shown Corrigan—and going to the rear of the room opened the door of an iron safe and stuck the ledger out of sight under a mass of legal papers.
When Marchmont left Corrigan he went straight to the Plaza, where he ordered a lunch and ate heartily. After finishing his meal he emerged from the saloon and stood near one of the front windows. One of the hundred dollar bills that Corrigan had given him he had “broke” in the Plaza, getting bills of small denomination in change, and in his right trousers’ pocket was a roll that bulked comfortably in his hand. The feel of it made him tingle with satisfaction, as, except for the other thousand that Corrigan had given him some months ago, it was the only money he had had for a long time. He knew he should take the next train out of Manti; that he had done a hazardous thing in baiting Corrigan, but he was lonesome and yearned for the touch and voice of the crowds that thronged in and out of the saloons and the stores, and presently he joined them, wandering from saloon to saloon, drinking occasionally, his content and satisfaction increasing in proportion to the quantity of liquor he drank.
And then, at about three o’clock, in the barroom of the Plaza, he heard a discordant voice at his elbow. He saw men crowding, jostling one another to get away from the spot where he stood—crouching, pale of face, their eyes on him. It made him feel that he was the center of interest, and he wheeled, staggering a little—for he had drunk much more than he had intended—to see what had happened. He saw Clay Levins standing close to him, his thin lips in a cruel curve, his eyes narrowed and glittering, his body in a suggestive crouch. The silence that had suddenly descended smote Marchmont’s ears like a momentary deafness, and he looked foolishly around him, uncertain, puzzled. Levins’ voice shocked him, sobered him, whitened his face:
“Fork over that coin you lifted from me in the Elk, you light-fingered hound!” said Levins.
Marchmont divined the truth now. He made his second mistake of the day. He allowed a flash of rage to trick him into reaching for his pistol. He got it into his hand and almost out of the pocket before Levins’ first bullet struck him, and before he could draw it entirely out the second savage bark of the gun in Levins’ hand shattered the stillness of the room. Soundlessly, his face wreathed in a grin of hideous satire, Marchmont sank to the floor and stretched out on his back.
Before his body was still, Levins had drawn out the bills that had reposed in his victim’s pocket. Crumpling them in his hand he walked to the bar and tossed them to the barkeeper.
“Look at ’em,” he directed. “I’m provin’ they’re mine. Good thing I got the numbers on ’em.” While the crowd jostled and crushed about him he read the numbers from the paper Corrigan had given him, grinning coldly as the barkeeper confirmed them. A deputy sheriff elbowed his way through the press to Levins’ side, and the gun-man spoke to him, lightly: “I reckon everybody saw him reach for his gun when I told him to fork the coin over,” he said, indicating his victim. “So you ain’t got nothin’ on me. But if you’re figgerin’ that the coin ain’t mine, why I reckon a guy named Corrigan will back up my play.”
The deputy took him at his word. They found Corrigan at his desk in the bank building.
“Sure,” he said when the deputy had told his story; “I paid Levins the money this morning. Is it necessary for you to know what for? No? Well, it seems that the pickpocket got just what he deserved.” He offered the deputy a cigar, and the latter went out, satisfied.
Later, Corrigan looked appraisingly at Levins, who still graced the office.
“That was rather an easy job,” he said. “Marchmont was slow with a gun. With a faster man—a man, say—” he appeared to meditate “—like Trevison, for instance. You’d have to be pretty careful—”
“Trevison’s my friend,” grinned Levins coldly as he got to his feet. “There’s nothin’ doin’ there—understand? Get it out of your brain-box, for if anything happens to ‘Firebrand,’ I’ll perforate you sure as hell!”
He stalked out of the office, leaving Corrigan looking after him, frowningly.
Ten years of lonesomeness, of separation from all the things he held dear, with nothing for his soul to feed upon except the bitterness he got from a contemplation of the past; with nothing but his pride and his determination to keep him from becoming what he had seen many men in this country become—dissolute irresponsibles, drifting like ships without rudders—had brought into Trevison’s heart a great longing. He was like a man who for a long time has been deprived of the solace of good tobacco, and—to use a simile that he himself manufactured—he yearned to capture someone from the East, sit beside him and fill his lungs, his brain, his heart, his soul, with the breath, the aroma, the spirit of the land of his youth. The appearance of Miss Benham at Manti had thrilled him. For ten years he had seen no eastern woman, and at sight of her the old hunger of the soul became acute in him, aroused in him a passionate worship that made his blood run riot. It was the call of sex to sex, made doubly stirring by the girl’s beauty, her breeziness, her virile, alluring womanhood—by the appeal she made to the love of the good and the true in his character. His affection for Hester Keyes, he had long known, had been merely the vanity-tickling regard of the callow youth—the sex attraction of adolescence, the “puppy” love that smites all youth alike. For Rosalind Benham a deeper note had been struck. Its force rocked him, intoxicated him; his head rang with the music it made.
During the three weeks of her stay at Blakeley’s they had been much together. Rosalind had accepted his companionship as a matter of course. He had told her many things about his past, and was telling her many more things, as they sat today on an isolated excrescence of sand and rock and bunch grass surrounded by a sea of sage. From where they sat they could see Manti—Manti, alive, athrob, its newly-come hundreds busy as ants with their different pursuits.
The intoxication of the girl’s presence had never been so great as it was today. A dozen times, drunken with the nearness of her, with the delicate odor from her hair, as a stray wisp fluttered into his face, he had come very near to catching her in his arms. But he had grimly mastered the feeling, telling himself that he was not a savage, and that such an action would be suicidal to his hopes. It cost him an effort, though, to restrain himself, as his flushed face, his burning eyes and his labored breath, told.
His broken wrist had healed. His hatred of Corrigan had been kept alive by a recollection of the fight, by a memory of the big man’s quickness to take advantage of the banker’s foul trick, and by the passion for revenge that had seized him, that held him in a burning clutch. Jealousy of the big man he would not have admitted; but something swelled his chest when he thought of Corrigan coming West in the same car with the girl—a vague, gnawing something that made his teeth clench and his facial muscles cord.
Rosalind had not told him that she had recognized him, that during the ten years of his exile he had been her ideal, but she could close her eyes at this minute and imagine herself on the stair-landing at Hester Keyes’ party, could feel the identical wave of thrilling admiration that had passed over her when her gaze had first rested on him. Yes, it had survived, that girlhood passion, but she had grown much older and experienced, and she could not let him see what she felt. But her curiosity was keener than ever; in no other man of her acquaintance had she felt this intense interest.
“I remember you telling me the other day that your men would have used their rifles, had the railroad company attempted to set men to work in the cut. I presume you must have given them orders to shoot. I can’t understand you. You were raised in the East, your parents are wealthy; it is presumed they gave you advantages—in fact, you told me they had sent you to college. You must have learned respect for the law while there. And yet you would have had your men resist forcibly.”
“I told you before that I respected the law—so long as the law is just and the fellow I’m fighting is governed by it. But I refuse to fight under a rule that binds one of my hands, while my opponent sails into me with both hands free. I’ve never been a believer in the doctrine of ‘turn the other cheek.’ We are made with a capacity for feeling, and it boils, unrestrained, in me. I never could play the hypocrite; I couldn’t say ‘no’ when I thought ‘yes’ and make anybody believe it. I couldn’t lie and evade and side-step, even to keep from getting licked. I always told the truth and expressed my feelings in language as straight, simple, and direct as I could. It wasn’t always the discreet way. Perhaps it wasn’t always the wise way. I won’t argue that. But it was the only way I knew. It caused me a lot of trouble—I was always in trouble. My record in college would make a prize fighter turn green with envy. I’m not proud of what I’ve made of my life. But I haven’t changed. I do what my heart prompts me to do, and I say what I think, regardless of consequences.”
“That would be a very good method—if everybody followed it,” said
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