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

Calumet stepped in. [Illustration: Calumet stepped in.]

His face was pale, his lips stiff and white, and his eyes were alight with the wanton fire that she had seen in them many times, though now there was something added to their expression—concern and thankfulness.

"God!" he said, after a little space, during which she looked at him with shining eyes. She no longer gave any thought to Taggart; the struggle with him was an already fading nightmare in her recollection; he had been eliminated, destroyed, by the man who stood before her—by the man whose presence in the kitchen now stirred her to an emotion that she had never before experienced—by the man who had come back to her. And that was all that she had cared for—that he would come back.

With a short laugh he released her and stepped over to where Taggart lay, looking down at him with a cold, satisfied smile.

"I reckon you won't bother nobody any more," he said.

He turned to Betty, the pale stiffness of his lips softening a little as she smiled at him.

"I want to thank you," he said, "for sendin' Toban after me. He caught me. I wasn't ridin' so fast an' I heard him comin'. I knowed who it was, an' stopped to have it out with him. He yelled that he didn't want me; that you'd sent him after me. We met Dade an' Malcolm—we'd passed Double Fork an' nothin' was bogged down. So we knowed somebody'd framed somethin' up. I come on ahead." He grinned. "Toban's been braggin' some about his horse, but I reckon that don't go any more. That black horse can run." He indicated Taggart. "I reckon he come here just to bother you," he said.

She told him about the diagram and he started, stepping quickly to where Taggart lay, searching in his pockets until he found the paper.

Then he went to the door. Standing in it, he looked as he had looked that day when he had humiliated Neal Taggart in her presence. The gentleness which she had seen in him some hours before—and which she had welcomed—had disappeared; his lips had become stiff and pale again, his eyes were narrowed and brilliant with the old destroying fire. She grew rigid and drew a deep, quivering breath, for she saw that the pistol was still in his hand.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I reckon old Taggart will still be waitin' in the timber grove," he said with a short, grim laugh. "They've bothered me enough. I'm goin' to send him where I sent his coyote son."

At that word she was close to him, her hands on his shoulders.

"Don't!" she pleaded; "please don't!" She shuddered and cast a quick, shrinking glance at the man on the floor. "There has been enough trouble tonight," she said. "You stay here!" she commanded, trying to pull him away from the door, but not succeeding.

He seized her face with his hands in much the same manner in which he had seized it in his father's office on the night of his return to the Lazy Y—she felt the cold stock of the pistol against her cheek and shuddered again. A new light had leaped into his eyes—the suspicion that she had seen there many times before.

"Are you wantin' old Taggart to get away with the idol?" he demanded.

"He can't!" she denied. "He hasn't the diagram, has he? You have just put it in your pocket!"

A quick embarrassment swept over him; he dropped his hands from her face. "I reckon that's right," he admitted. "But I'm goin' to' send him over the divide, idol or no idol."

"He won't be in the timber grove," she persisted; "he must have heard the shooting and he wouldn't stay."

"I reckon he won't be able to run away from that black horse," he laughed. "I'll ketch him before he gets very far."

"You shan't go!" she declared, making a gesture of impotence. "Don't you see?" she added. "It isn't Taggart that I care about—it's you. I don't want you to be shot—killed. I won't have it! If Taggart hasn't gone by this time he will be hidden somewhere over there and when he sees you he will shoot you!"

"Well," he said, watching her face with a curious smile; "I'm takin' a look, anyway." In spite of her efforts to prevent him he stepped over the threshold. She was about to follow him when she saw him wheel swiftly, his pistol at a poise as his gaze fell upon something outside the ranchhouse. And then she saw him smile.

"It's Bob," he said; "with a rifle." And he helped the boy, white of face and trembling, though with the light of stern resolution in his eyes, into the kitchen.

"Bob'll watch you," he said; "so's nothin' will happen to you. Besides—" he leaned forward in a listening attitude; "Toban an' the boys are comin'. I reckon what I'm goin' to do won't take me long—if Taggart's in the timber."

He stepped down and vanished around the corner of the ranchhouse.

He had scarcely gone before there was a clatter of hoofs in the ranchhouse yard, a horse dashed up to the edge of the porch, came to a sliding halt and the lank figure of Toban appeared before the door in which Betty was standing.

He looked at her, noted her white face, and peered over her shoulder at Bob, with the rifle, at Taggart on the floor.

"Holy smoke!" he said; "what's happened?"

She told him quickly, in short, brief sentences; her eyes glowing with fear. He tried to squeeze past her to get into the kitchen, but she prevented him, blocking the doorway, pushing hysterically against him with her hands.

"Calumet has gone to the timber grove—to the clearing—to look for Tom Taggart. Taggart will ambush him, will kill him! I don't want him killed! Go to him, Toban—get him to come back!"

"Shucks," said Toban, grinning; "I reckon you don't need to worry none. If Taggart's over in the timber an' he sees Calumet he'll just naturally forget he's got a gun. But if it'll ease your mind any, I'll go after him. Damn his hide, anyway!" he chuckled. "I was braggin' up my cayuse to him, an' after we met Dade an' Malcolm he run plumb away from me. Ride! Holy smoke!"

He crossed the porch, leaped into the saddle and disappeared amid a clatter of hoofs.

Betty stood rigid in the doorway, listening—dreading to hear that which she expected to hear—the sound of a pistol shot which would tell her that Calumet and Taggart had met.

But no sound reached her ears from the direction of the timber grove. She heard another sound presently—the faint beat of hoofs that grew more distinct each second. It was Dade and Malcolm coming, she knew, and when they finally rode up and Dade flung himself from the saddle and darted to her side she was paler than at any time since her first surprise of the night.

Again she was forced to tell her story. And after it was finished, and she had watched Dade and Malcolm carry Neal Taggart from the room, she went over to where Bob sat, took him by the shoulder and led him to one of the kitchen windows, and there, holding him close to her, her face white, she stared with dreading, anxious eyes through the glass toward the timber clump. She would have gone out to see for herself, but she knew that she could do nothing. If he did not come back she knew that she would not want to stay at the Lazy Y any longer; she knew that without him—

She no longer weighed him in the balances of her affection as she stood there by the window, she did not critically array his good qualities against the bad. She had passed that point now. She merely wanted him. That was all—she just wanted him. And when at last she saw him coming; heard his voice, she hugged Bob closer to her, and with her face against his sobbed silently.

A few minutes after he left the ranchhouse Calumet was in the clearing in the timber grove, standing over the body of a man who lay face upward beside a freshly-dug hole at the edge of a mesquite clump. He was still standing there when a few minutes later Toban came clattering up on his horse. The sheriff dismounted and stood beside him.

Calumet gave Toban one look and then spoke shortly:

"Taggart," he said.

"Lord!" said Toban, in an awed voice; "what in blazes did you do to him? I didn't hear no shootin'! Is he dead?"

Both kneeled over the prone figure and Calumet pointed to the haft of a knife that was buried deep in the body near the heart.

"Telza's," said Calumet, as he examined the handle. "I dropped it here the other night; the night Sharp was killed."

"Correct," said Toban; "I saw you drop it." He smiled at the quick, inquiring glance Calumet gave him.

"I was comin' through here after tendin' to some business an' I saw Telza knife Sharp. I piled onto Telza an' beat him up a little. Lordy, how that little copper-skinned devil did fight! But I squelched him. I heard some one comin', thought it was one of Taggarts, an' dragged Telza behind that scrub brush over there. I saw you come, but I wasn't figgerin' on makin' any explanations for my bein' around the Lazy Y at that time of the night, an' besides I saw the Taggarts sneakin' up on you. While they was gassin' to you I had one knee on Telza's windpipe an' my rifle pointin' in the general direction of the Taggarts, figgerin' that if they tried to start anything I'd beat them to it. But as it turned out it wasn't necessary. I sure appreciated your tender-heartedness toward them poor dumb brutes of the Taggarts.

"After you set the Taggarts to walkin' home, I took Telza to Lazette an' locked him up for murderin' Sharp."

"I reckon, then,"