The Boss of the Lazy Y, Charles Alden Seltzer [top 10 best books of all time .txt] 📗

with a quick look at her. "Here"—he drew a piece of paper and a short pencil from an inside pocket of his vest, and, walking to the table, wrote quickly, giving her the paper.

"I herewith renounce all claim to my father's property," it read; "I refuse the conditions of the will."

It was signed with his name. While he stood watching her, she tore the paper to small bits, scattering them on the floor.

"I think," she said, regarding him fixedly, "that you are not exactly chivalrous in leaving me this way; that you are more concerned over your own safety than over mine. What do you suppose will happen when the Taggarts discover that you have gone and that I am here alone?"

His eyes glinted with hatred. "The Taggarts," he laughed. "Did you think I was going to let them off so easy? I'm charged with one murder, ain't I? Well, after tonight there won't be any Taggarts to bother anybody."

"You mean to—" Her eyes widened with horror.

"I reckon," he said. "Did you think I was runnin' away without squarin' things with them?" There was a threat of death in his cold laugh.

While she stood with clenched hands, evidently moved by the threat in his manner and words, he said "So-long," shortly, and swung the door open.

She followed three or four steps, again calling upon him to "wait." He turned in the doorway and went slowly back to her. She was nervous, breathless, and he looked wonderingly at her.

"Wait just a minute," she said; "I have something to give you."

She darted into the sitting-room; he could hear her running up the stairs. She was gone a long time, so long a time that he grew impatient and paced the floor with long, hasty strides. He was certain that it was fully five minutes before she reappeared, and then her manner was more nervous than ever.

"You act," he said suspiciously, "as though you wanted to keep me here."

"No, no," she denied breathlessly, her eyes bright and her cheeks aflame. "How can you think that? I have brought you some money; you will need it." She had a leather bag in her hands, and she seized it by the bottom and turned out its contents—a score or more of twenty-dollar gold pieces.

"Take them," she said as he hesitated. And, not waiting for him to act, she began to gather them up. She was nervous, though, and dropped many of them several times, so that he felt that time would have been gained if she had not touched them. He returned them to the bag, with her help, and placed the bag in a pocket of his trousers. Then once more he said good-by to her.

This time, however, she stood between him and the door, and when he tried to step around her she changed her position so as to be always in front of him.

"Tell me where you are going?" she said.

"What do you want to know for?" he demanded.

"Just because," she said; "because I want to know."

His eyes lighted with a deep fire as he looked at her. She was very close to him; he felt her warm breath; saw her bosom heave rapidly, and a strange intoxication seized him.

"Shall I tell you?" he said, with sudden hoarseness, as though asking himself the question. He grasped her by the shoulders and looked closely at her, his eyes boring, probing, as though searching for some evidence of duplicity in hers. For an instant his gaze held. Then he laughed, softly, self-accusingly.

"I thought you was stringin' me—just for a minute," he said. "But you're true blue, an' I'll tell you. I'm goin' first to the Arrow to hand the Taggarts their pass-out checks. Then I'm hittin' the breeze to Durango. If you ever want me, send for me there, an' I'll come back to you, sheriff or no sheriff."

She put out a hand to detain him, but he seized it and pressed it to her side, the other with it. Then his arms went around her shoulders, she was crushed against him, and his lips met hers.

Then she was suddenly released, and he was at the door.

"Good-by," he said as he stood in the opening, the glare of light from the lamp showing his face, pale, the eyes illumined with a fire that she had never seen in them; "I'm sorry it has to end this way—I was hopin' for somethin' different. You've made me almost a man."

Then the door closed and he was gone. She stood by the table for a few minutes, holding tightly to it for support, her eyes wide from excitement.

"Oh," she said, "if I could only have kept him here a few minutes longer!"

She walked to the door and stood in the opening, shading her eyes with her hands. He had not been gone long, but already he was riding the river trail; she saw him outlined in the moonlight, leaning a little forward in the saddle, the black running with a long, swift, sure stride. She watched them until a bend in the trail shut them from view, and then with a sob she bowed her head in her arms.

CHAPTER XXII NEAL TAGGART VISITS

When a little later Betty heard hoof-beats in the ranchhouse yard—the sounds of a horseman making a leisurely approach—she left the door and went out upon the porch.

She knew who the horseman was; she had seen him from the window of her room when she had gone upstairs to get the money for Calumet. More than once she had seen the sheriff coming over the hill—the same hill upon which Calumet and Neal Taggart had fought their duel—and she recognized the familiar figure. On his previous visits to the ranchhouse, however, Toban had left his horse in the timber clump near the house. She was not surprised, though, to hear him coming into the ranchhouse yard tonight, for his errand now was different.

Toban had evidently intended to hitch his pony to the corral fence, for it was toward it that he was directing the animal, when he caught sight of Betty on the porch and rode up beside her.

"What's up?" he inquired, leaning over in the saddle and peering closely at her; "you look flustered. Where's Marston?"

"Gone," she told him.

He straightened. "Gone where?" he demanded.

"Away—forever," she said weakly. "He heard you were after him for—for killing that man Sharp—and he left."

Toban cursed. "So he got wind of it, did he? The Taggarts must have gassed about it. Marston told you, did he? Why didn't you keep him here? He didn't kill Sharp!"

"I know it," she said; "he told me he didn't, and I believed him. He said you had a warrant for his arrest; that you were coming for him, and I was afraid that if you met him out on the range somewhere there would be shooting. I knew if I could keep him here until you came you would be able to fix it up some way—to prove his innocence. I was so glad, when I ran upstairs to get some money for him and looked out of the window. For you were coming. But he wouldn't stay."

Toban dismounted and stood in front of her, his eyes probing into hers. "I've got evidence that he didn't kill Sharp," he said; "I saw the whole deal. But I reckon," he added, a subtle gleam in his eyes, "that it's just as well that he's gone—he was a heap of trouble while he was here, anyway, wasn't he?"

"No," she said quickly, defiantly; "he—" She broke off and looked at him with wide eyes. "Oh," she said with a quavering laugh; "you are poking fun at me. You liked him, too; you told me you did!"

"I reckon I like him," said Toban, his lips grimming; "I like him well enough not to let him pull his freight on account of the Taggarts. Why, damn it!" he added explosively; "I was his father's friend, an' I ain't seein' him lose everything he's got here when he's innocent. Which way did he go?"

There was a wild hope in her eyes; she was breathing fast. "Oh," she said; "are you going after him? He went to the Arrow—first. He told me he was going to kill the Taggarts. Then he is going to get out of the Territory. Oh, Toban, catch him—please! I—"

Toban laughed. "I ain't been blind, girl," he said; "the talks I've had with you in old Marston's office have wised me up to how things stand between you an' him. I'll ketch him, don't worry about that. That black horse of his is some horse, but he ain't got nothin' on my old dust-thrower, an' I reckon that in fifteen miles—"

He was climbing into the saddle while talking, and at his last word he gave the spurs to his horse, a strong, clean-limbed bay, and was away in a cloud of dust.

Betty watched him, her hands clasped over her breast, her body rigid and tense, her eyes straining, until she saw him vanish around the bend in the trail; and then for a long time she stood on the porch, scanning the distant horizon, in the hope that she might again see Toban and be assured that nothing had happened to him. And when at last she saw a speck moving swiftly along a distant rise, she murmured a prayer and went into the house.

When she closed the kitchen door and stood against it, looking around the room, she was afflicted with a depressing sense of loss, and she realized fully how Calumet had grown into her life, and what it would mean to her if she lost him. He had been mean, cruel, and vicious, but he had awakened at last to a sense of his shortcomings; he was like a boy who had had no training, who had grown wild and ungovernable, but who, before it had become too late, had awakened to the futility, the absurdity, the falseness of it all, and was determined to begin anew. And she felt—as she had felt all along—even when she had seen him at his worst—that she must mother him, must help him to build up a new structure of self, must lift him, must give him what the world had so far denied him—his chance. And she sat at the table and leaned her head in her arms and prayed that Toban might overtake him before he reached the Arrow. For she did not want him to come back to her with the stain of their blood on his hands.

She was startled while sitting at the table, for she heard a sound from the sitting-room, and she got up to investigate. But it was only Bob, who, hearing the sounds made by Toban and herself, had come to investigate. She urged him to return to his room and to bed, and kissed him when he started up the stairs, so warmly that he looked at her in surprise.

She returned to the kitchen, sitting at the table and watching the clock. A half hour had elapsed since Toban's departure when she heard the faint beat of hoofs in the distance, and with wildly beating heart got up and went out on the porch.

For a moment she could not determine the direction from which the sounds came, but presently she saw a rider approaching from the direction of the river, and she stepped down from the porch and advanced to meet him. She feared at first that it was Toban returning alone, and she halted and stood with clenched hands, but as the rider came closer she saw it was not Toban but an entire stranger. She retreated to the porch and watched his approach.

He was a cowboy and he rode up to the edge of the porch confidently, calling to her when he came close enough to make himself heard.

"My name's Miller," he said, taking his hat off and showing her the