“I am prepared for a fight. You’ll get plenty of it before you’re through – if you don’t lie down and be good.” There was malice in his look, complacent consciousness of his power. More, there was an impulse to reveal to this young man whom he intended to ruin, at least one of the motives that was driving him. He yielded to the impulse.
“I’m going to tell you something. I think I would have let you out of this deal, if you hadn’t been so fresh. But you made a grand-stand play before the girl I am going to marry. You showed off your horse to make a bid for her favor. You paraded before her window in the car to attract her attention. I saw you. You rode me down. You’ll get no mercy. I’m going to break you. I’m going to send you back to your father, Brandon, senior, in worse condition than when you left, ten years ago.” He sneered as Trevison started and stepped on the floor, rigid.
“How did you recognize me?” Curiosity had dulled the young man’s passion; his tone was hoarse.
“How?” Corrigan laughed, mockingly. “Did you think you could repose any confidence in a woman you have known only about a month? Did you think she wouldn’t tell me – her promised husband? She has told me – everything that she succeeded in getting out of you. She is heart and soul with me in this deal. She is ambitious. Do you think she would hesitate to sacrifice a clod-hopper like you? She’s very clever, Trevison; she’s deep, and more than a match for you in wits. Fight, if you like, you’ll get no sympathy there.”
Trevison’s faith in Miss Benham had received a shock; Corrigan’s words had not killed it, however.
“You’re a liar!” he said.
Corrigan flushed, but smiled icily. “How many people know that you have coal on your land, Trevison?”
He saw Trevison’s hands clench, and he laughed in grim amusement. It pleased him to see his enemy writhe and squirm before him; the grimness came because of a mental picture, in his mind at this minute, of Trevison confiding in the girl. He looked up, the smile freezing on his lips, for within a foot of his chest was the muzzle of Trevison’s pistol. He saw the trigger finger contracting; saw Trevison’s free hand clenched, the muscles corded and knotted – he felt the breathless, strained, unreal calm that precedes tragedy, grim and swift. He slowly stiffened, but did not shrink an inch. It took him seconds to raise his gaze to Trevison’s face, and then he caught his breath quickly and smiled with straight lips.
“No; you won’t do it, Trevison,” he said, slowly; “you’re not that kind.” He deliberately swung around in the chair and drew another cigar from a box on the desk top, lit it and leaned back, again facing the pistol.
Trevison restored the pistol to the holster, brushing a hand uncertainly over his eyes as though to clear his mental vision, for the shock that had come with the revelation of Miss Benham’s duplicity had made his brain reel with a lust to kill. He laughed hollowly. His voice came cold and hard:
“You’re right – it wouldn’t do. It would be plain murder, and I’m not quite up to that. You know your men, don’t you – you coyote’s whelp! You know I’ll fight fair. You’ll do yours underhandedly. Get up! There’s your gun! Load it! Let’s see if you’ve got the nerve to face a gun, with one in your own hand!”
“I’ll do my fighting in my own way.” Corrigan’s eyes kindled, but he did not move. Trevison made a gesture of contempt, and wheeled, to go. As he turned he caught a glimpse of a hand holding a pistol, as it vanished into a narrow crevice between a jamb and the door that led to the rear room. He drew his own weapon with a single movement, and swung around to Corrigan, his muscles tensed, his eyes alert and chill with menace.
“I’ll bore you if you wink an eyelash!” he warned, in a whisper.
He leaped, with the words, to the door, lunging against it, sending it crashing back so that it smashed against the wall, overbalancing some boxes that reposed on a shelf and sending them clattering. He stood in the opening, braced for another leap, tall, big, his muscles swelling and rippling, recklessly eager. Against the partition, which was still swaying, his arms outstretched, a pistol in one hand, trying to crowd still farther back to escape the searching glance of Trevison’s eyes, was Braman.
He had overheard Trevison’s tense whisper to Corrigan. The cold savagery in it had paralyzed him, and he gasped as Trevison’s eyes found him, and the pistol that he tried to raise dangled futilely from his nerveless fingers. It thudded heavily upon the boards of the floor an instant later, a shriek of fear mingling with the sound as he went down in a heap from a vicious, deadening blow from Trevison’s fist.
Trevison’s leap upon Braman had been swift; he was back in the doorway instantly, looking at Corrigan, his eyes ablaze with rage, wild, reckless, bitter. He laughed – the sound of it brought a grayish pallor to Corrigan’s face.
“That explains your nerve!” he taunted. “It’s a frame-up. You sent the deputy after me – pointed me out when I went into Hanrahan’s! That’s how he knew me! You knew I’d come in here to have it out with you, and you figured to have Braman shoot me when my back was turned! Ha, ha!” He swung his pistol on Corrigan; the big man gripped the arms of his chair and sat rigid, staring, motionless. For an instant there was no sound. And then Trevison laughed again.
“Bah!” he said; “I can’t use your methods! You’re safe so long as you don’t move.” He laughed again as he looked down at the banker. Reaching down, he grasped the inert man by the scruff of the neck and dragged him through the door, out into the banking room, past Corrigan, who watched him wonderingly and to the front, there he dropped him and turning, answered the question that he saw shining in Corrigan’s eyes:
“I don’t work in the dark! We’ll take this case out into the sunlight, so the whole town can have a look at it!”
He stooped swiftly, grasped Braman around the middle, swung him aloft and hurled him through the window, into the street, the glass, shattered, clashing and jangling around him. He turned to Corrigan, laughing lowly:
“Get up. Manti will want to know. I’m going to do the talking!”
He forced Corrigan to the front door, and stood on the threshold behind him, silent, watching.
A hundred doorways were vomiting men. The crash of glass had carried far, and visions of a bank robbery filled many brains as their owners raced toward the doorway where Trevison stood, the muzzle of his pistol jammed firmly against Corrigan’s back.
The crowd gathered, in the manner peculiar to such scenes, coming from all directions and converging at one point, massing densely in front of the bank building, surrounding the fallen banker, pushing, jostling, straining, craning necks for better views, eager-voiced, curious.
No one touched Braman. On the contrary, there were many in the front fringe that braced their bodies against the crush, shoving backward, crying that a man was hurt and needed breathing space. They were unheeded, and when the banker presently recovered consciousness he was lifted to his feet and stood, pressed close to the building, swaying dizzily, pale, weak and shaken.
Word had gone through the crowd that it was not a robbery, for there were many there who knew Trevison; they shouted greetings to him, and he answered them, standing back of Corrigan, grim and somber.
Foremost in the crowd was Mullarky, who on another day had seen a fight at this same spot. He had taken a stand directly in front of the door of the bank, and had been using his eyes and his wits rapidly since his coming. And when two or three men from the crowd edged forward and tried to push their way to Corrigan, Mullarky drew a pistol, leaped to the door landing beside Trevison and trained his weapon, on them.
“Stand back, or I’ll plug you, sure as I’m a foot high! There’s hell to pay here, an’ me friend gets a square deal – whatever he’s done!”
“Right!” came other voices from various points in the crowd; “a square deal – no interference!”
Judge Lindman came out into the street, urged by curiosity. He had stepped down from the doorway of the courthouse and had instantly been carried with the crowd to a point directly in front of Corrigan and Trevison, where he stood, bare-headed, pale, watching silently. Corrigan saw him, and smiled faintly at him. The easterner’s eye sought out several faces in the crowd near him, and when he finally caught the gaze of a certain individual who had been eyeing him inquiringly for some moments, he slowly closed an eye and moved his head slightly toward the rear of the building. Instantly the man whistled shrilly with his fingers, as though to summon someone far down the street, and slipping around the edge of the crowd made his way around to the rear of the bank building, where he was joined presently by other men, roughly garbed, who carried pistols. One of them climbed in through a window, opened the door, and the others – numbering now twenty-five or thirty, dove into the room.
Out in front a silence had fallen. Trevison had lifted a hand and the crowd strained its ears to hear.
“I’ve caught a crook!” declared Trevison, the frenzy of fight still surging through his veins. “He’s not a cheap crook – I give him credit for that. All he wants to do is to steal the whole county. He’ll do it, too, if we don’t head him off. I’ll tell you more about him in a minute. There’s another of his stripe.” He pointed to Braman, who cringed. “I threw him out through the window, where the sunlight could shine on him. He tried to shoot me in the back – the big crook here, framed up on me. I want you all to know what you’re up against. They’re after all the land in this section; they’ve clouded every title. It’s a raw, dirty deal. I see now, why they haven’t sold a foot of the land they own here; why they’ve shoved the cost of leases up until it’s ruination to pay them. They’re land thieves, commercial pirates. They’re going to euchre everybody out of – ”
Trevison caught a gasp from the crowd – concerted, sudden. He saw the mass sway in unison, stiffen, stand rigid; and he turned his head quickly, to see the door behind him, and the broken window through which he had thrown Braman – the break running the entire width of the building – filled with men armed with rifles.
He divined the situation, sensed his danger – the danger that faced the crowd should one of its members make a hostile movement.
“Steady there, boys!” he shouted. “Don’t start anything. These men are here through prearrangement – it’s another frame-up. Keep your guns out of sight!” He turned, to see Corrigan grinning contemptuously at him. He met the look with naked exultation and triumph.
“Got your body-guard within call, eh?” he jeered. “You need one. You’ve cut me short, all right; but I’ve said enough to start a fire that will rage through this part of the country until every damned thief is burned out! You’ve selected the wrong man for a victim, Corrigan.”
He stepped down into the street, sheathing his pistol. He heard Corrigan’s voice, calling after him, saying:
“Grand-stand play again!”
Trevison turned; the gaze of the two men met, held, their hatred glowing bitter in their eyes; the gaze broke, like two sharp blades rasping apart, and Corrigan turned to his deputies, scowling; while Trevison pushed his way through the crowd.
Five minutes later, while Corrigan was talking with the deputies and Braman in the rear room of the bank building, Trevison was standing in the courthouse talking with Judge Lindman. The Judge stared out into the street at some members of the crowd that still lingered.
“This town will be a volcano of lawlessness if it doesn’t get a square deal from you, Lindman,” said Trevison. “You have seen what a mob looks like. You’re the representative of justice here, and if we don’t get justice we’ll come and hang you in spite of a thousand deputies! Remember that!”
He stalked out, leaving behind him a white-faced, trembling old man who was facing a crisis which made the future look very black and dismal. He was wondering if, after all, hanging wouldn’t be better than the sunlight shining on a deed which each day he regretted more than on the preceding day. And Trevison, riding Nigger out of town, was estimating the probable effect of his crowd-drawing action upon Judge Lindman, and considering bitterly the perfidy of the woman who had cleverly drawn him on, to betray him.
CHAPTER XIII
ANOTHER LETTER
That afternoon, Corrigan rode to the Bar B. The ranchhouse was of the better class, big, imposing, well-kept, with a wide, roofed porch running across the front and partly around both sides. It stood in a grove of fir-balsam and cottonwood, on a slight eminence, and could be seen for miles from the undulating trail that led to Manti. Corrigan arrived shortly after noon, to find Rosalind gone, for a ride, Agatha told him, after she had greeted him at the edge of the porch.
Agatha had not been pleased over Rosalind’s rides with Trevison as a companion. She was loyal to her brother, and she did not admire the bold recklessness that shone so frankly and unmistakably in Trevison’s eyes. Had she been Rosalind she would have preferred the big, sleek, well-groomed man of affairs who had called today. And because of her preference for Corrigan, she sat long on the porch with him and told him many things – things that darkened the big man’s face. And when, as they were talking, Rosalind came, Agatha discreetly retired, leaving the two alone.
For a time after the coming of Rosalind, Corrigan sat in a big rocking chair, looking thoughtfully down the Manti trail, listening to the girl talk of the country, picturing her on a distant day – not too distant, either, for he meant to press his suit – sitting beside him on the porch of another house that he meant to build when he had achieved his goal. These thoughts thrilled him as they had never thrilled him until the entrance of Trevison into his scheme of things. He had been sure of her then. And now the knowledge that he had a rival, filled him with a thousand emotions, the most disturbing of which was jealousy. The rage in him was deep and malignant as he coupled the mental pictures of his imagination with the material record of Rosalind’s movements with his rival, as related by Agatha. It was not his way to procrastinate; he meant to exert every force at his command, quickly, resistlessly, to destroy Trevison, to blacken him and damn him, in the eyes of the girl who sat beside him. But he knew that in the girl’s presence he must be wise and subtle.
“It’s a great country, isn’t it?” he said, his eyes on the broad reaches of plain, green-brown in the shimmering sunlight. “Look at it – almost as big as some of the Old-world states! It’s a wonderful country. I feel like a feudal baron, with the destinies of an important principality in the clutch of my hand!”
“Yes; it must give one a feeling of great responsibility to know that one has an important part in the development of a section like this.”
He laughed, deep in his throat, at the awe in her voice. “I ought to have seen its possibilities years ago – I should have been out here, preparing for this. But when I bought the land I had no idea it would one day be so valuable.”
“Bought it?”
“A hundred thousand acres of it. I got it very cheap.” He told her about the Midland grant and his purchase from Marchmont.
“I never heard of that before!” she told him.
“It wasn’t generally known. In fact, it was apparently generally considered that the land had been sold by the Midland Company to various people – in small parcels. Unscrupulous agents engineered the sales, I suppose. But the fact is that I made the purchase from the Midland Company years ago – largely as a personal favor to Jim Marchmont, who needed money badly. And a great many of the ranch-owners around here really have no title to their land, and will have to give it up.”
She breathed deeply. “That will be a great disappointment to them, now that there exists the probability of a great advance in the value of the land.”
“That was the owners’ lookout. A purchaser should see that his deed is clear before closing a deal.”
“What owners will be affected?” She spoke with a slight breathlessness.
“Many.” He named some of them, leaving Trevison to the last, and then watching her furtively out of the corners of his eyes and noting, with straightened lips, the quick gasp she gave. She said nothing; she was thinking of the great light that had been in Trevison’s eyes on the day he had told her of his ten years of exile; she could remember his words, they had been vivid fixtures in her mind ever since: “I own five thousand acres, and about a thousand acres of it is the best coal land in the United States. I wouldn’t sell it for love or money, for when your father gets his railroad running, I’m going to cash in on ten of the leanest and hardest and lonesomest years that any man ever put in.”
How hard it would be for him to give it all up; to acknowledge defeat, to feel those ten wasted years behind him, empty, unproductive; full of shattered hopes and dreams changed to nightmares! She sat, white of face, gripping the arms of her chair, feeling a great, throbbing sympathy for him.
“You will take it all?”
“He will still hold one hundred and sixty acres – the quarter-section granted him by the government, which he has undoubtedly proved on.”
“Why – ” she began, and paused, for to go further would be to inject her personal affairs into the conversation.
“Trevison is an evil in the country,” he went on, speaking in a judicial manner, but watching her narrowly. “It is men like him who retard civilization. He opposes law and order – defies them. It is a shock, I know, to learn that the title to property that you have regarded as your own for years, is in jeopardy. But still, a man can play the man and not yield to lawless impulses.”
“What has happened?” She spoke breathlessly, for something in Corrigan’s voice warned her.
“Very little – from Trevison’s viewpoint, I suppose,” he laughed. “He came into my office this morning, after being served with a summons from Judge Lindman’s court in regard to the title of his land, and tried to kill me. Failing in that, he knocked poor, inoffensive little Braman down – who had interfered in my behalf – and threw him bodily through the front window of the building, glass and all. It’s lucky for him that Braman wasn’t hurt. After that he tried to incite a riot, which Judge Lindman nipped in the bud by sending a number of deputies, armed with rifles, to the scene. It was a wonderful exhibition of outlawry. I was very sorry to have it happen, and any more such outbreaks will result in Trevison’s being jailed – if not worse.”
“My God!” she panted, in a whisper, and became lost in deep thought.
They sat for a time, without speaking. She studied the profile of the man and compared its reposeful strength with that of the man who had ridden with her many times since her coming to Blakeley’s. The turbulent spirit of Trevison awed her now, frightened her – she feared for his future. But she pitied him; the sympathy that gripped her made icy shivers run over her.
“From what I understand, Trevison has always been a disturber,” resumed Corrigan. “He disgraced himself at college, and afterwards – to such an extent that his father cut him off. He hasn’t changed, apparently; he is still doing the same old tricks. He had some sort of a love affair before coming West, your father told me. God help the girl who marries him!”
The girl flushed at the last sentence; she replied to the preceding one:
“Yes. Hester Keyes threw him over, after he broke with his father.”
She did not see Corrigan’s eyes quicken, for she was wondering if, after all, Hester Keyes had not acted wisely in breaking with Trevison. Certainly, Hester had been in a position to know him better than some of those critics who had found fault with her for her action – herself, for instance. She sighed, for the memory of her ideal was dimming. A figure that represented violence and bloodshed had come in its place.
“Hester Keyes,” said Corrigan, musingly. “Did she marry a fellow named Harvey – afterwards? Winslow Harvey, if I remember rightly. He died soon after?”
“Yes – do you know her?”
“Slightly.” Corrigan laughed. “I knew her father. Well, well. So Trevison worshiped there, did he? Was he badly hurt – do you know?”
“I do not know.”
“Well,” said Corrigan, getting up, and speaking lightly, as though dismissing the subject from his mind; “I presume he was – and still is, for that matter. A person never forgets the first love.” He smiled at her. “Won’t you go with me for a short ride?”
The ride was taken, but a disturbing question lingered in Rosalind’s mind throughout, and would not be solved. Had Trevison forgotten Hester Keyes? Did he think of her as – as – well, as she, herself, sometimes thought of Trevison – as she thought of him now – with a haunting tenderness that made his faults recede, as the shadows vanish before the sunshine?
What Corrigan thought was expressed in a satisfied chuckle, as later, he loped his horse toward Manti. That night he wrote a letter and sent it East. It was addressed to Mrs. Hester Harvey, and was subscribed: “Your old friend, Jeff.”