Essential Western Novels - Volume 10. Zane Grey

you are."

      "Got out of the hospital Thursday."

      "Hope you've made up yore mind to behave, Dan."

      "It doesn't hurt a man to take a drink onc't in a while."

      "Depends on the man. It put you in the hospital."

      Meldrum ripped out a sudden oath. "Wait. Just wait till I get that pink-ear. I'll drill him full of holes right."

      "By God, you'll not!" Rutherford's voice was like the snap of a whip. "Try it. Try it. I'll hunt you down like a wolf and riddle yore carcass."

      In amazement the ex-convict stared at him. "What's ailin' you, Rutherford?"

      "I'm through with you and Tighe. You'll stop making trouble or you'll get out of here. I'm going to clean up the park—going to make it a place where decent folks can live. You've got yore warning now, Dan. Walk a straight chalk-line or hit the trail."

      "You can't talk that way to me, Rutherford. I know too much," threatened Meldrum, baring his teeth.

      "Don't think it for a minute, Dan. Who is going to take yore word against mine? I've got the goods on you. I can put you through for rustling any time I have a mind to move. And if you don't let young Beaudry alone, I'll do it."

      "Am I the only man that ever rustled? Ain't there others in the park? I reckon you've done some night-riding yore own self."

      "Some," drawled Rutherford, with a grim little smile. "By and large, I've raised a considerable crop of hell. But I'm reforming in my old age. New Mexico has had a change of heart. Guns are going out, Meldrum, and little red schoolhouses are coming in. We've got to keep up with the fashions."

      "Hmp! Schoolhouses! I know what's ailin' you. Since Anse Rutherford's girl—"

      "You're off the reservation, Dan," warned the rancher, and again his low voice had the sting of cactus thorns in it.

      Meldrum dropped that subject promptly. "Is Buck going to join this Sunday-School of yours?" he jeered. "And all the boys?"

      "That's the programme. Won't you come in, too?"

      "And Jess Tighe. He'll likely be one of the teachers."

      "You'd better ask him. He hasn't notified me."

      "Hell! You and yore kin have given the name to deviltry in this country. Mothers scare their kids by telling them the Rutherfords will git them."

      "Fact. But that's played out. My boys are grown up and are at the turn of the trail. It hit me plumb in the face when you fools pulled off that express robbery. It's a piece of big luck you're not all headed for the penitentiary. I know when I've had enough. So now I quit."

      "All right. Quit. But we haven't all got to go to the mourner's bench with you, have we? You can travel yore trail and we can go ours, can't we?"

      "Not when we're on the same range, Dan. What I say goes." The eyes of Rutherford bored into the cruel little shifty ones of the bad man. "Take yore choice, Dan. It's quit yore deviltry or leave this part of the country."

      "Who elected you czar of Huerfano Park?" demanded Meldrum, furious with anger.

      He glared at the ranchman impotently, turned away with a mumbled oath, and went back with jingling spurs to his horse.

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      Chapter XIX

      Beaudry Blows a Smoke Wreath

      Royal Beaudry carried about with him in his work on the Lazy Double D persistent memories of the sloe-eyed gypsy who had recently played so large a part in his life. Men of imagination fall in love, not with a woman, but with the mystery they make of her. The young cattleman was not yet a lover, but a rumor of the future began to murmur in his ears. Beulah Rutherford was on the surface very simple and direct, but his thoughts were occupied with the soul of her. What was the girl like whose actions functioned in courage and independence and harsh hostility?

      Life had imposed on her a hard finish. But it was impossible for Roy to believe that this slender, tawny child of the wind and the sun could at heart be bitter and suspicious. He had seen the sweet look of her dark-lashed eyes turned in troubled appeal upon her father. There had been one hour when he had looked into her face and found it radiant, all light and response and ecstasy. The emotion that had pulsed through her then had given the lie to the sullen silence upon which she fell back as a defense. If the gods were good to her some day, the red flower of passion would bloom on her cheeks and the mists that dulled her spirit would melt in the warm sunshine of love.

      So the dreamer wove the web of his fancy about her, and the mystery that was Beulah Rutherford lay near his thoughts when he walked or rode or ate or talked.

      Nor did it lessen his interest in her that he felt she despised him. The flash of her scornful eyes still stung him. He was beyond caring whether she thought him a spy. He knew that the facts justified him in his attempt to save Dingwell. But he writhed that she should believe him a coward. It came too close home. And since the affray in the arcade, no doubt she set him down, too, as a drunken rowdy.

      He made the usual vain valorous resolutions of youth to show her his heroic quality. These served at least one good purpose. If he could not control his fears, he could govern his actions. Roy forced himself by sheer will power to ride alone into Battle Butte once a week. Without hurry he went about his business up and down Mission Street.

      The town watched him and commented. "Got sand in his craw, young Beaudry has," was the common verdict. Men wondered what would happen when he met Charlton and Meldrum. Most of them would have backed John Beaudry's son both in their hopes and in their opinion of the result.

      Into saloons and gambling-houses word was carried, and from there to the hillmen of the park by industrious peddlers of trouble, that the young cattleman from the Lazy Double D could be found by his enemies heeled for business whenever they wanted him.

      Charlton kept morosely to the park. If he had had nothing to consider except his own inclination, he would have slapped the saddle upon a cowpony and ridden in to Battle Butte at once. But Beulah had laid an interdict upon him. For a year he had been trying to persuade her to marry him, and he knew that he must say good-bye to his hopes if he fought with his enemy.

      It was fear that kept Meldrum at home. He had been a killer, but the men he had killed had been taken at advantage. It was one thing to shoot this Beaudry cub down from ambush. It was another to meet him in the open. Moreover, he knew the Rutherfords. The owner of the horse ranch had laid the law down to him. No chance shot from the chaparral was to cut down Dingwell's partner.

      The ex-convict listened to the whispers of Tighe. He brooded over them, but he did not act on them. His alcohol-dulled brain told him that he had reached the limit of public sufferance. One more killing by him, and he would pay the penalty at the hands of the law. When he took his revenge, it must be done so secretly that no evidence could connect him with the crime. He must, too, have an alibi acceptable to Hal Rutherford.

      Meldrum carried with him to Battle Butte, on his first trip after the arcade affair, a fixed determination to avoid Beaudry. In case he met him, he would pass without speaking.

      But all of Meldrum's resolutions were apt to become modified by subsequent inhibitions. In company with one or two cronies he made a tour of the saloons of the town. At each of them he said, "Have another," and followed his own advice to show good faith.

      On one of these voyages from port to port the bad man from Chicito Cañon sighted a tall, lean-flanked, long-legged brown man. He was crossing the street so that the party came face to face with him at the apex of a right angle. The tanned stranger in corduroys, hickory shirt, and pinched-in hat of the range rider was Royal Beaudry. It was with a start of surprise that Meldrum recognized him. His enemy was no longer a "pink-ear." There was that in his stride, his garb, and the