The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

don't you market your own beef?" he asked Steele.

      "Langdell ships five times as much as I do," replied Steele, lazily accepting Langdell's check. "So I find it easier to take a profit this way than to do my own shipping. As a matter of fact, I'm going to go over to a feeder business one of these days. Buy, feed, and sell to a shipper like the Colonel here. Good business."

      "Good for you, good for me," agreed Langdell. "Any time you want to dicker again let me know."

      "I'll be around in maybe two months," said Cal Steele and got up. Leaving Langdell in his office, the three went back to the street. At Grogan's Steele tipped his head suggestively. "Let's damp down the dust, boys."

      "Leave me out of it," drawled Denver. "I've got further business. And by the way of a parting benediction I will gently suggest this is no time to drink."

      "Go with God," murmured Cal Steele indolently. "Any time's time to drink. Make up your mind about this girl proposition, Dave. I'm second best man, either way, understand. Come on, Al. You haven't got religion yet."

      Niland followed Steele into the saloon, and they took their familiar corner at the bar, broaching a bottle. Niland studied his friend critically. "You," he announced, "are a fool. Why stand aside in favor of Dave? You know he hasn't got his mind set on Lola."

      "How do I know it? How do you know it?" Steele's face settled to unusual soberness. "Tell me that."

      "I know it because I know Dave," replied Niland emphatically. "Maybe he hasn't got his mind made up. Maybe he's thinkin' back to the time when he and Lola were a little younger, a little wilder and more headstrong. Maybe he's wondering. But I know what the answer will be. He'll swing to his own kind. Lola's one thing. Dave's another. At heart, Cal, you're more her style than Dave is."

      Steele looked shrewdly at Niland. "That's not a bad guess. How much do you know about me, anyhow?"

      Niland said quickly, "I never pry into a man's life. You know that. I take you for granted."

      "Hm," muttered Steele. For quite an interval the two men stood still. Then Steele spoke, rather abruptly, rather sadly. "Nevertheless, a man can't keep himself hidden, even if he sealed his mouth. Every act exposes him. As far as Dave is concerned, I'd rather cut off my neck than hurt him. So I stay away. You heard me tell him I was a second-choice man, didn't you? Well, I am. As far as he's involved. I'll be that as long as I live—gladly."

      He had touched some deep vein of thought. Downing his glass, he went on. "Some men have the power of drawing others. Not very many. Dave has. Look at us. I've got more education than he has. You've got a mind that cuts deeper and farther into truth than he has. But what of it? Dave is a better man than both of us put together. Why? Because he never varies from that burning light of conscience. He never strays from himself, never seems to falter. Time and again I've seen him come against some tough problem and decide one way or the other without flinching. He thinks he's a skeptic, as we are; that's one reason he likes us so well. But he could no more be the sort of purposeless fool that I am than fly to Mars. There's an enormous force driving him straight ahead."

      "Which brings us to another item," grunted Niland, favoring the bottle. "He's bound to drive straight into opposition at the rate things are balling up in Yellow Hill. His neutral stand leaves him high and dry—right out in the daylight to be shot at."

      Steele's fine face was tremendously sober and oddly set. "Listen, the most damnable visions keep coming to me, night after night. Faces staring at me from behind a bloody film. Sounds nutty, doesn't it? I have risen from a solid sleep with the horrible thing right in my eyes. I have heard shots, and men groaning. Sometimes the film thins out, and I think I see one of those faces and recognize it as my own. Sometimes I think I see Dave. Sometimes Lou Redmain. But when I reach out and am just on the point of identifying them, the bloody haze falls down."

      "Cut that out," admonished Niland, "or I'll get the willies."

      Steele's eyes were blackly brooding. "I've always been a fellow to take things as they came along. Never worrying much. Life's always been pretty easy, pretty full of sunshine. But for two months, night and day, I have felt as if I were drifting along toward darkness. I keep looking around me, and the sun's there, and the stars are there—the world's just the same as it always was. But still that ungodly black curtain keeps coming nearer and I'm heading for it. What's behind it—who knows?"

      "Stop that," said Niland sharply. "You know what you need? You need to go over to the Palace, get one of the girls to sit beside you, and then drink hard."

      "It's been tried before," said Steele and pulled himself out of his stark mood with visible effort. "The kind of forgetfulness one buys at the Palace only lasts so long. Well, I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, and fair pastures were mine by heritage. But my star is a restless one and sometimes dark in the sky. The brightest spot in this little flicker of existence that is me comes from knowing I am a friend of Dave's. What's the matter with that bottle—leakin'?"

      "The Palace is across the street and three doors down," said Niland.

      DARK HUNGERS

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      A familiar horse stood by Durbin's hardware store. Denver, stopping on the instant, ran his glance along the street and discovered Lou Redmain. The outlaw was posted in the mouth of an alley, his attention riveted on the hotel porch. Denver drew aside from the eddy of the crowd and found what held Redmain's interest. Eve Leverage sat in a porch rocker with Debbie Lunt and Steve Steers beside her.

      Even with fifty feet intervening, Denver caught a change in Redmain's dark and pointed face. The formal indifference was gone and in its stead was an utter absorption. Unaccountably it reminded Denver of a time in early boyhood when he had left his father's house, climbed a distant ridge, and saw for the first time the sweeping vastness of the prairie. It came back to him even now, that shock of surprise upon finding a world he had never known about, never dreamed of. All of an afternoon he had lain on his stomach, swelling with vague desires. And it seemed to him that Lou Redmain, staring across the street, might be going through a like turmoil of spirit.

      Denver shook his head and felt a pity for the man. All that Redmain stood for was repulsive and hateful to Eve Leverage. That dusty street might as well be a thousand miles wide, so great was the gulf separating the minds of these two. Redmain could never cross it. And Denver knew that Redmain recognized the fact; he also knew that to Redmain this was bitter knowledge.

      "Poor devil," grunted Denver. "Here he is, built like the rest of us, with the same stuff in him—and still he never will belong. And what makes the hurt still worse is to realize that but for his own folly he might have been the kind of a fellow Eve would like."

      Thinking this, Denver was considerably jarred to see Redmain suddenly square himself in the alley and walk straight for the porch. He got to the steps and whipped off his hat before Eve saw him. Steve Steers rose. Then Eve nodded her head, neither friendly nor unfriendly. Denver caught himself from going forward.

      "Here, here, this is no better than eavesdroppin'. None of my business." Turning, he went to the bank.

      To Eve the meeting came with sharp unexpectedness. It was impossible for her to like Lou Redmain. She abhorred outlawry as only a woman can whose menfolk are exposed to the dangers of outlaw violence. The black hints surrounding Redmain made her shudder. Yet she met the situation with cool detachment, inclining her head at this strange visitor whose eyes seemed to burn into her. The wind ruffled his hair as he stood soldierlike on the steps. Steve Steers cleared his throat impatiently, but Redmain never noticed Steve.

      "A pleasant day," said he, and Eve was surprised at the supple melody of his voice.

      "It has been nice," she replied.

      He seemed to listen to her words rather than to the meaning of them; and she felt the almost hungry impact of his glance. It made her flush a little. Steve was quite still. Debbie held herself scornfully back.