The Fighting Edge. William MacLeod Raine

Wyoming or Utah.”

      “Was Jake Houck one of your crowd?”

      Pete hesitated.

      She cut in, with a flare of childish ferocity. “I’m gonna know the truth. He’s not protecting you any.”

      “Yes. Jake was one of us. I met up with him right soon after I come to Colorado.”

      “And Purdy?”

      “Tha’s the name I was passin’ under. I’d worked back in Missouri for a fellow of that name. They got to callin’ me Pete Purdy, so I kinda let it go. My father’s name was Tolliver, though. I took it—after the trouble.”

      “What trouble?”

      “It come after I was married. I met yore maw at Rawlins. She was workin’ at the railroad restaurant waitin’ on table. For a coupla years we lived there, an’ I wish to God we’d never left. But Jake persuaded ’Lindy I’d ought to take up land, so we moved back to the Park an’ I preëmpted. Everything was all right at first. You was born, an’ we was right happy. But Jake kep’ a-pesterin’ me to go in with him an’ do some cattle runnin’ on the quiet. There was money in it—pretty good money—an’ yore maw was sick an’ needed to go to Denver. Jake, he advanced the money, an’ o’ course I had to work in with him to pay it back. I was sorta driven to it, looks like.”

      He stopped to mop a perspiring face with a bandanna. Tolliver was not enjoying himself.

      “You haven’t told me yet what the trouble was,” June said.

      “Well, this fellow Jas Stuart was a stock detective. He come down for the Cattlemen’s Association to find out who was doing the rustlin’ in Brown’s Park. You see, the Park was a kind of a place where we holed up. There was timbered gulches in there where we could drift cattle in an’ hide ’em. Then there was the Hole-in-the-Wall. I expect you’ve heard of that too.”

      “Did this Stuart find out who was doing the rustlin’?”

      “He was right smart an’ overbearin’. Too much so for his own good. Some of the boys served notice on him he was liable to get dry-gulched if he didn’t take the trail back where he come from. But Jas was right obstinate an’ he had sand in his craw. I’ll say that for him. Well, one day he got word of a drive we was makin’. Him an’ his deputies laid in wait for us. There was shooting an’ my horse got killed. The others escaped, but they nailed me. In the rookus Stuart had got killed. They laid it on me. Mebbe I did it. I was shooting like the rest. Anyhow, I was convicted an’ got twenty years in the pen.”

      “Twenty years,” June echoed.

      “Three—four years later there was a jail break. I got into the hills an’ made my getaway. Travelin’ by night, I reached Rawlins. From there I came down here with a freight outfit, an’ I been here ever since.”

      He stopped. His story was ended. June looked at the slouchy little man with the weak mouth and the skim-milk, lost-dog eyes. He was so palpably wretched, so plainly the victim rather than the builder of his own misfortunes, that her generous heart went out warmly to him.

      With a little rush she had him in her arms. They wept together, his head held tight against her immature bosom. It was the first time she had ever known him to break down, and she mothered him as women have from the beginning of time.

      “You poor Daddy. Don’t I know how it was? That Jake Houck was to blame. He led you into it an’ left you to bear the blame,” she crooned.

      “It ain’t me. It’s you I’m thinkin’ of, honey. I done ruined yore life, looks like. I shut you off from meeting decent folks like other girls do. You ain’t had no show.”

      “Don’t you worry about me, Dad. I’ll be all right. What we’ve got to think about is not to let it get out who you are. If it wasn’t for that big bully up at the house—”

      She stopped, hopelessly unable to cope with the situation. Whenever she thought of Houck her mind came to an impasse. Every road of escape it traveled was blocked by his jeering face, with the jutting jaw set in implacable resolution.

      “It don’t look like Jake would throw me down thataway,” he bewailed. “I never done him a meanness. I kep’ my mouth shut when they got me an’ wouldn’t tell who was in with me. Tha’s one reason they soaked me with so long a sentence. They was after Jake. They kep’ at me to turn state’s evidence an’ get a short term. But o’ course I couldn’t do that.”

      “ ’Course not. An’ now he turns on you like a coyote—after you stood by him.” A surge of indignation boiled up in her. “He’s the very worst man ever I knew—an’ if he tries to do you any harm I’ll—I’ll settle with him.”

      Her father shook his unkempt head. “No, honey. I been learnin’ for twelve years that a man can’t do wrong for to get out of a hole he’s in. If Jake’s mean enough to give me up, why, I reckon I’ll have to stand the gaff.”

      “No,” denied June, a spark of flaming resolution in her shining eyes.

CHAPTER VI

       Table of Contents

“DON’T YOU TOUCH HIM!”

       Table of Contents

      Inside the big chuck tent of the construction camp the cook was busy forking steak to tin plates and ladling potatoes into deep dishes.

      “Git a move on you, Red Haid,” he ordered.

      Bob Dillon distributed the food at intervals along the table which ran nearly the whole length of the canvas top. From an immense coffee pot he poured the clear brown liquid into tin cups set beside each plate. This done, he passed out into the sunshine and beat the triangle.

      From every tent men poured like seeds squirted from a squeezed lemon. They were all in a hurry and they jostled each other in their eagerness to get through the open flap. Straw boss, wood walkers, and ground men, they were all hungry. They ate swiftly and largely. The cook and his flunkey were kept busy.

      “More spuds!” called one.

      “Coming up!” Dillon flung back cheerfully.

      “Shoot along more biscuits!” a second ordered.

      “On the way!” Bob announced.

      The boss of the outfit came in leisurely after the rush. He brought a guest with him and they sat down at the end of the table.

      “Beans!” demanded a line man, his mouth full.

      “Headed for you!” promised the flunkey.

      The guest of the boss was a big rangy fellow in the early forties. Bob heard the boss call him “Jake,” and later “Houck.” As soon as the boy had a moment to spare he took a good look at the man. He did not like what he saw. Was it the cold, close-set eyes, the crook of the large nose, or the tight-lipped mouth gave the fellow that semblance to a rapacious wolf?

      As soon as Bob had cleaned up the dishes he set off up the creek to meet June. The boy was an orphan and had been brought up in a home with two hundred others. His life had been a friendless one, which may have been the reason that he felt a strong bond of sympathy for the lonely girl on Piceance. He would have liked to be an Aladdin with a wonder lamp by means of which he could magically transform her affairs to good fortune. Since this could not be, he gave her what he had—a warm fellow-feeling because of the troubles that worried her.

      He found June waiting at their usual place of meeting. Pete Tolliver’s forty-four hung in a scabbard along the girl’s thigh. Bob remembered