The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

to ask you something for a long while. Did you find the three years' absence to help any? With David?"

      "Why?"

      Eve answered slowly. "If I thought my leaving for a time would make any difference I'd go tomorrow."

      "And come back on the next train for fear of losing," said Lola. "I know."

      "What would you do to please him?" asked Eve.

      "You see me standing here. I could be a thousand pleasanter places. There is your answer. I would go any place for him, do anything. Do you understand that?"

      Eve's body stiffened. The message in Lola's eyes, the blaze of feeling repelled her. Lola laughed softly. "You wouldn't, would you? You want to be discreet. You are afraid. You want things without paying for them."

      "That is not love," said Eve quickly.

      "Not your kind. But it is my kind. Love is everything. Like fire, like torture, like thirst. You must be half a savage to know it. I'm half a savage. You're not."

      "But it isn't love," repeated Eve, biting her lip.

      "Not your kind," said Lola, a trace of scorn in her words. "Let me tell you. David Denver is too strong a man to be held completely by any one woman. He is kind, yet when the black mood is on him he could double up his fist and destroy. He speaks softly, yet always with a fire burning deep down in him. He will never be happy, he will never find all that he wants in any one woman. Yet my kind can hold him—for a little while. What I must do to have him—that I'll do. But never, never will it be enough. I throw myself away gladly. And in the end he will destroy me. That is love. You know nothing about it. Go East, where you won't be hurt."

      "You don't know him at all," said Eve.

      Lola's mood changed on the instant. "Of course I don't. If I knew him—I could have him! You—what do you know that I don't? Tell me that!"

      "Isn't it a little late for us to be talking so?" asked Eve.

      "You are very calm and very wise, aren't you? You are one thing—I am another. Perhaps if both of our natures were in one woman Dave would puzzle himself no longer."

      "Sometimes," said Eve with a shadow on her face, "I think I am two women—and one of them is like you, but never able to come out and be seen. Goodnight."

      Denver drove the buggy across his yard and unhitched, throwing the horse into a corral. Lyle Bonnet came off the main house porch.

      "No developments?" asked Dave.

      "Nothin'," said Bonnet, sleepy-voiced. "There was a few shots beyond Starlight about an hour ago. But I'd say it was some galoot comin' home from the dance."

      "I suppose," agreed Dave. "You better turn in."

      As for himself, he crossed through the main room and settled down on the south porch of the house. From this vantage point he could, on a clear day, look down the sweep of Starlight canyon and on into the open prairie for thirty miles or more. He liked to sit here and feel that he was for a while above the heat of the world. It gave him a sense of peace. But tonight he could not summon back that peace. Cal Steele's face, strangely distorted, kept rising before him. Yellow Hill was going to war, no doubt of it. Riders were in the night and man's hand was set against man's hand. Jake Leverage had not been at the dance, nor had Lou Redmain. These men were busy elsewhere. And behind them were many riders on the hunt.

      "So it will be," he muttered. "And how long will I be able to stay up here and mind my affairs? God knows. I despise posses about as much as I despise outlaws. Who is to say whether the hunted is so much blacker than the man hunting? Let every man stand responsible for his acts, and let every man fight his own fights. Yet that is something soon enough impossible to do. Then what?"

      Starlight throbbed with weaving, swirling shadows; the sky was hidden behind the fog mist. The country seemed to lie uneasy. Denver, who responded quickly to the primitive moods of the earth, felt the shift and change as if the temperature had dropped twenty degrees.

      "I will fight my own fights," he said to himself. "No matter whom it puts me against. I don't want to go against Redmain, but if it must be then it shall be. All I ask—"

      He stiffened and turned his head slightly to the wind. Above the slow rustle of the night emerged a foreign disturbance. It came from the upper trail—a tentative, cautious advance of a horse. Denver slid his feet quietly beneath him, rose, and slipped into the house. He dimmed the lamp and went out to the yard, going on to the vague bulk of a pine trunk. There was a rider just above the place; and that rider seemed to be turning with considerable hesitation from one angle of the slope to another. Denver waited patiently.

      Then the horse stopped, but from the shadows came a weird sobbing noise that shot a chill along Denver's nerves. He left the tree and challenged. "Who's there?"

      A trembling reply came back. "Dave—oh, Dave—!"

      "Cal!" shouted Denver, racing forward.

      "Dave, my God, I'm shot to ribbons!"

      Denver reached the horse as his friend started slipping from the saddle. He caught Steele in his arms, feeling the warm blood all along the man's clothes. "Cal, by all that's—! Hang onto yourself! I'll have you layin' easy in a minute. Doc Williamson will get here right away. Cal!"

      Denver stumbled across the yard. The bunkhouse door sprang open, and men ran out. Somebody dashed for the house and turned up the lamp. Denver marched in, laid Steele on a couch, ripping at the crimson wet shirt. But Steele rolled his head in negation and opened his eyes, staring up at Denver.

      "No use—doin' that. I'm—shot—to—pieces."

      Denver cursed bitterly. "Who did it, Cal? By the livin' Christ, I'll rip the throat out of the man!"

      Steele's lips began twitching. "I said I'd—come to you—first or last, didn't I?" he murmured. "Tried to do you a favor, old boy. Like you'd do me. Listen to me—"

      But there was no more from Cal Steele then, nor ever would be. His head slid forward, and the invisible hand of death reached down to place the everlasting seal upon that fine face.

      TRAILS

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      Dave Denver made his preparations in the dark hour preceding dawn. He ordered the best horses saddled and brought to the porch. He opened his gun locker and distributed the rifles resting there, at the same time dividing his outfit into three parts, one to patrol his range, one to return to work, and one to ride under him. From the patrolling party he dispatched a man to Sundown for Dr. Williamson and another to Steele's ranch. The rest of that particular group he detailed to various points in the hills. All ate a hurried breakfast. The work party went off discontentedly; and when the first gray light of morning broke through the fog he gathered his chosen riders, mounted, and swung up the side of the ridge to trace the hoofprints of Cal Steele's horse. Lyle Bonnet, traveling directly behind, offered a brief suggestion.

      "Better send somebody to tell Leverage. It's a matter for the vigilantes."

      Denver shook his head. "I'll never ask anybody else to do a dirty chore I ought to do myself. And don't get it in your head, Lyle, that I want anybody else to settle this. I'll find the party who killed Cal—and I'll smile when I see him dead."

      The yielding earth bore the print of Steele's last ride for better than two miles straight down the trail. At that point the tracks swung into the slope of Starlight, crossed the bottom of the canyon, and angled along the far side. Once Denver halted and got down. Steele had fallen from the saddle. A carpet of leaves was marked with the man's blood.

      "He had a bad time gettin' back on," muttered Denver. "Don't see how he ever made it. It's clear as day his strength was about gone."

      Beyond Starlight the trail went zigzagging through timber. Denver advanced slowly. His friend seemed to have got lost and in sheer despair given his