Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

"Gay—are you all right?"

"Y-yes, but there's a rat in here!"

He wasted no time on the lock. Bracing himself, he crushed the panel with a drive of his shoulder, ripped the catch clear, and caught hold of her extended arms. He saw instantly the mark of a blow on her temple.

"Who did that?"

"My dear man, don't you eat me alive. Let's wait until I get out of here."

"Soon settled," said he, and carried her back to her room. "Now, who did that?"

"Can it be so bad?" she wanted to know, and went directly to the mirror. "That is a mark of Mr. Woolfridge's affection, Jim. I suppose I should feel honored that he wished to kidnap me. Where is he now?"

"In jail."

She turned and came over. "My poor man! They have hurt you so much more than they've hurt me. Is it all done?"

"All but the judge and the jury."

She made a queer little gesture with her hand. "Then there is nothing for me to do but pack."

"Pack for what? Where are you going?"

"Back home," said she in a rather small voice.

He shook his head. "Not now. Nor any other time without me. Gay—"

Her fine rounding features were pale. One hand crept to her breast, and she seemed profoundly disturbed. He caught the changing expression had came nearer.

"I can only bring you a bad name," said she quietly. "Only a bad name."

"I ain't interested in that, Gay."

"Oh, you have always been that way! Why don't you ask me about myself? Why won't you let me tell you? Do you think I'd ever come to you with all that's behind me—you not knowing?"

"I know."

"You can't know. How could you?"

"Folks took plenty of pains to tell me during those days in Bannock City."

"Well?"

"They're a bunch of blind fools," he grunted. "Do you figure I believe it? The first time I saw you I knew the kind of a woman you were. I—"

"I ran away," said she, the words rushing out of her, "because home meant only a dad who worked me from daylight to dark and sent me to bed hungry. I ran away because the only man who was ever kind to me in those years helped me to do it. Whatever I am, Jim, I have made myself. That man was nothing but kind. Never anything but that from the time he took me in his rig until the time he put me on a train going east. I have never seen him again. Nobody else ever has. And so the story about me was carried on. Jim, I have been decent—I—"

"Don't need to tell me that, Gay," was his gruff reply. "I don't like to hear you defending yourself. You don't need to. Seems to me I need to do the explainin'. I'm white and twenty- eight. Sound of limb and busted flat. But I think, now that the fighting is over, I can get a job. Always some kind of a job. Some kind of shelter."

"Shelter—Jim I have never known the security of a home of my own. Never. Pillar to post is the way I have lived. I washed dishes to go to school. Always wandering. Wherever you want to take me—if you want me at all—"

Somebody came up the stairway and turned at the door. Craib's bald head glistened on them as he ducked.

"Oh, Jim."

"Come in, Craib."

But Craib stopped on the doorsill. "Man that rented your place from Woolfridge came to me to-night. I took it over. You're free to go back, Jim. I'll take care of all the details. It ain't mine yet and it ain't yours. But you go back. We'll straighten it out and we'll stock it up. I want no money from you till everything's back to normal. It's just a personal affair between the both of us and I wanted to come and tell you soon's I could. I would like—" and the heavy face changed a trifle, as much as it ever would—"I would like you to consider me a friend."

"Well," began Jim, and found himself looking at an empty opening. Craib had gone.

"There's shelter, Gay," he drawled.

She smiled, and the color came back to her as he closed in.

Presently she looked up, the film of tears in her eyes, but still smiling. "You take care of the outside of that cabin, Jim, and I'll take care of the inside."

"Put on a hat," said Chaffee with already that touch of proprietorship which comes to a married man, "and let's go down for a cup of coffee."

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Table of Contents

The sprawling, haze-dimmed outline of Angels, Casabella County's official seat and only town, had been in front of Clint Charterhouse all during the last five miles riding across the undulating prairie. And because many days and weeks of lonely traveling had taught this tall, hazel-eyed man the value of keeping his mind always occupied he had been speculating on the nature of this remote and isolated place. Experience told him it would be just another double row of sun-baked, paint-peeled buildings with a dusty sweltering street between; and since it was just past noon the citizens would be indoors dawdling. Clint Charterhouse, footloose and fancy free, had entered into and departed from a hundred such habitations of man and found none of them different.

But as he checked his horse at the very limits of Angels, he discovered all his guesses wrong. This town was different and, with a quick interest breaking through the long saddle drowse, he swept the scene. There indeed lay the double row of paint-peeled buildings, perhaps fifteen on a side, and along the fronts of all ran second story porches that made of each sidewalk a long and shaded gallery. But Angels itself was far from being asleep on this sultry, droning day. The town was full of men. A particular knot of them stood in front of an expansive porch at the far end; lesser groups were by the stable, the saloons, the blacksmith's yawning door. Honest hammer strokes clanged off an anvil; horses rubbed sides at the racks; more riders coursed rapidly into Angels from the far end; and more men waddled across the plaza.

"Court day?" Clint Charterhouse asked himself. "No, it's the wrong time of the year. Here it is Monday in the middle of roundup season and by every rule of the range this joint ought to be dead as a door nail." His hazel glance narrowed down the street, more closely studying those indolent groups of men. "Might be just my imagination, or do I sort of see them square off against each other, watchful-like? Heard somewhere Casabella took its politics serious—and continuous. For a practically honest man looking for practically honest toil this ain't so good. I'd hate to dab a rope on trouble." But as he said it he smiled. White teeth flashed against a bronzed skin, and a flare of high-humored excitement broke the severity of his eyes.

As he was observing, so was he being observed. He saw men swing in his direction and stand waiting. And since it was almost as bad taste to stand on the edge of a strange town and peer in as it was to stand outside a strange window and eavesdrop, he spoke gently to the horse and proceeded casually forward. If Angels this day contained two factions—and the impression that such was the case grew more strangely pronounced in Clint Charterhouse's shrewd head—then his entry was somewhat ticklish, for any stray or innocent act might be taken as an indication of his own politics. If he racked his horse on either side he might be involuntarily swearing himself into partisanship with one group. Studying the situation quickly he decided safety lay in putting up his horse at the only visible stable on the street and so he veered in that direction, conscious that he was being scanned by fifty pairs of eyes.

For that matter horse and rider were worth a second glance. The horse, a true representative of the cowpony—the toughest, staunchest breed in the world for the work it performs—was a glistening coal-black and so largely proportioned that it escaped the stubby, end-forend look of the average range product. By some reversion of nature the fine Arab blood of its ancestors flared strongly in carriage and muscle. Upon its back rested a magnificent square-skirted saddle stamped with an oak leaf pattern and mounted with silver ornaments.