An early moon stuck a pallid rim over the crest of the big, hill-like plateau as Parsons sat on his horse in the basin, and Parsons watched it rise in its silvery splendor and bathe the world with an effulgent glow. It threw house and timber on the plateau crest in bold relief, a dark silhouette looming against a flood of shimmering light, and Parsons could see the porch he knew so well, and could even distinguish the break in the timber that led to the house, which merged into the trail that stretched to Dawes.

Parsons was still laboring with the devils of indecision and doubt. He knew why Carrington had captured Marion, and he yearned to take the girl from the man – for her own sake, and for the purpose of satisfying his vengeance. But he knew that certain death awaited him up there should he venture to show himself to Carrington. And yet a certain desperate courage stole into Parsons as he watched from the basin, and when, about half an hour after he had seen the flicker of light filter out of one of the windows of the house, he saw a man emerge, mount a horse, and ride away, he drew a deep breath of resolution and urged his own horse up the slope. For the man who had mounted the horse up there was Carrington – there could be no doubt of that.

Shivering, though still obeying the courageous impulse that had seized him, Parsons continued to ascend the slope. He went half way and then halted, listening. No sound disturbed the solemn stillness that had followed Carrington’s departure.

Reassured, though by this time he was sweating coldly, Parsons accomplished the remainder of the intervening space upward. Far back in the timber he brought his horse to a halt, dismounted, and again listened. Hearing nothing that alarmed him, except a loud, angry voice from the rear of the house – a voice which he knew as Martha’s – he cautiously made his way to the front porch, tiptoed across it, and peered stealthily into the room out of which the light still shone, its flickering rays stabbing weakly into the outside darkness.

Looking into the room, Parsons could see Marion sitting in a chair. Her hands were bound, and she was leaning back in the chair, her hair disheveled, her face chalk-white, and her eyes filled with a haunting, terrible dread. Near the door, likewise seated on a chair, his back to the big room that adjoined the one in which he sat, was a villainous-looking man who was watching the girl with a leering grin.

The sight brought a murderous passion into Parsons’ heart, nerving him for the deed that instantly suggested itself to him. He crept off the porch again, moving stealthily lest he make the slightest sound that would warn the watcher at the door, and searched at a corner of the porch until he found what he was looking for – a heavy club, a spoke from one of the wheels of a wagon.

Parsons knew about where to find it, for during the days that he had sat on the porch nursing his resentment against Carrington, he had gazed long at the wagon-spoke, wishing that he might have an opportunity to use it on Carrington.

He took it, balancing it, testing its weight. And now a hideous terror seized him, almost paralyzing him. For though Parsons had robbed many men, he had never resorted to violence; and for a time he stood with the club in his hand, unable to move.

He moved at last, though, his face transformed from the strength of the passion that had returned, and he carefully stepped on the porch, crossed it, and stood, leaning forward, peering into the room through the outside door left open by Carrington. The outside door opened from the big room adjoining that in which the watcher sat, and Parsons could see the man, who, with his back toward the door, was still looking at Marion.

Entering the big room, Parsons saw Marion’s eyes widen as she looked full at him. He shook his head at her; her face grew whiter, and she began to talk to the other man.

Only a second or two elapsed then until Parsons struck. The man rolled out of his chair without a sound, and Parsons, leaping over him, trembling, his breath coming in great gasps, ran to Marion and unbound her hands.

Together they flew outside, where they found the girl’s horse tethered near a tree, and Parsons’ animal standing where he had left it.

Mounting, the girl whispered to Parsons. She was trembling, and her voice broke with a wailing quaver when she spoke:

“Where shall we go, Elam – where? We – I can’t go back to the Arrow! Oh, I just can’t! And Carrington will be back! Oh! isn’t there any way to escape him?”

“We’ll go to Dawes, girl; that’s where we’ll go!” declared Parsons, his dread and fear of the big man equaling that of the girl. “We’ll go to Dawes and tell them there just what kind of a man Carrington is – and what he has tried to do with you tonight! There must be some men in Dawes who will not stand by and see a woman persecuted!”

And as they rode the river trail toward the town, the girl, white and silent, riding a little distance ahead of him, Parsons felt for the first time in his life the tingling thrills that come of an unselfish deed courageously performed. And the experience filled him with the spirit to do other good and unselfish deeds.

They rode fast for a time, until the girl again spoke of Carrington’s announced intention to return shortly. Then they rode more cautiously, and it was well they did. For they had almost reached Dawes when they heard the whipping tread of a horse’s hoofs on the trail, coming toward them. They rode well back from the trail, and, concealed by some heavy brush, saw Carrington riding toward the big house. He went past them, vanishing into the shadows of the trees that fringed the trail, and for a long time the girl and Parsons did not move for fear Carrington might have slowed his horse and would hear them. And when they did come out of their concealment and were again on the Dawes trail, they rode fast, with the dread of Carrington’s wrath to spur them on.

It had been Martha’s voice that Parsons had heard when he had been standing in the timber near the front of the house. The negro woman was walking back and forth in the room where her captor had confined her, vigorously berating the man. She was a dusky thundercloud of wrath, who rumbled verbal imprecations with every breath. Her captor – a small man with a coarse voice, a broken nose, and a scraggy, drooping mustache – stood in the doorway looking at her fiercely, with obvious intent to intimidate the indignant Amazon.

At the instant Parsons heard her voice she was confronting the man, her eyes popping with fury.

“You let me out of heah this minute, yo’ white trash! Yo’ heah! An’ doan’ you think I’s scared of you, ’cause I ain’t! If you doan’ hop away from that do’, I’s goin’ to mash yo’ haid in wif this yere chair! You git away now!”

The man grinned. It was a forced grin, and his face whitened with it, betraying to Martha the fear he felt of her – which she had suspected from the moment he had brought her in and the light from the kitchen lamp shone on his face.

She took a threatening step toward him; a tentative movement, a testing of his courage. And when she saw him retreat from her slightly, she lunged at him, raising the chair she held in her hands.

Possibly the man was reluctant to resort to violence; he may have had a conviction that the detaining of Martha was not at all necessary to the success of Carrington’s plan to subjugate the white girl, or he might have been merely afraid of Martha. Whatever his thoughts, the man continued to retreat from the negro woman, and as she pursued him, her courage grew, and the man’s vanished in inverse ratio. And as he passed the center of the kitchen, he wheeled and ran out of the door, Martha following him.

Outside, the man ran toward the stable. For an instant Martha stood looking after him. Then, thinking Carrington was still in the house, and that there was no hope of her frightening him as she had frightened the little man who had stood guard over her, she ran to where her horse stood, clambered into the saddle, and sent the animal down the big slope toward Mullarky’s cabin, where she hoped to find Mullarky, to send him to the big house to rescue the girl from Carrington.

CHAPTER XXXII – TAYLOR BECOMES RILED

By the time Bud Hemmingway had finished his grotesque expression of the delight that had seized him, and had got to his knees and was grinning widely at Taylor, the horses of the Arrow outfit were running down the neck of the gorge, their hoofs drumming on the hard floor of the bottom, awakening echoes that filled the gorge with an incessant rumbling clatter that might have caused one to think a regiment of cavalry was advancing at a gallop.

Bud turned his gaze up the gorge and saw them.

“Ain’t they great!” he yelled at Taylor. The leap in Bud’s voice betrayed something of the strained tenseness with which the man had endured his besiegement.

And now that there was an even chance for him, Bud’s old humorous and carefree impulses were again ascendant. He got to his feet, grinning, the spirit of battle in his eyes, and threw a shot at a Keats man, far up on a hillside, who had left his concealment and was running upward. At the report of the rifle the man reeled, caught himself, and continued to clamber upward, another bullet from Bud’s rifle throwing up a dust spray at his feet.

Other figures were now running; the slopes of the hills in the vicinity were dotted with moving black spots as the Keats men, also hearing the clattering of hoofs, and divining that their advantage was gone, made a concerted break for their horses, which they had hidden in a ravine beyond the hills.

Taylor did not do any shooting. While Bud was standing erect among the pile of rocks which had served as a shelter for him during the afternoon, his rifle growing hot in his hands, and picturesque curses issued from his lips, Taylor walked to Spotted Tail and tightened the saddle cinches. This task did not take him long, but by the time it was finished the Arrow outfit had dispersed the Keats men, who were fleeing toward Dawes in scattered units.

Bothwell, big and grim, rode to where Taylor was standing, his voice booming as he looked sharply at Taylor.

“I reckon we got here just in time, boss!” he said. “They didn’t git you or Bud? No?” at Taylor’s grin. “Well, we’re wipin’ them out – that’s all! That Keats bunch can’t run in no raw deal like that on the Arrow – not while I’m range boss. Law? Bah! Every damned man that runs with Keats would have stretched hemp before this if they’d have been any law in the country! A clean-up, eh – that’s what they tryin’ to pull off. Well, watch my smoke!”

His voice leaping with passion, Bothwell slapped his horse sharply, and as the animal leaped down the trail toward Dawes, Bothwell shouted to the other men of the outfit, who had halted at a little distance back in the gorge:

“Come a runnin’, you yaps! That ornery bunch can’t git out of this section without hittin’ the basin trail!”

Bothwell and the others fled down the gorge like a devastating whirlwind before Taylor could offer a word of objection.

As a matter of fact, Taylor had paid little attention to Bothwell’s threats. He knew that the big range boss was in a bitter rage, and he had been aware of the ill-feeling that had existed for some time between Keats and his friends and the men of the Arrow outfit.

But the deserved punishment of Keats was not the burden his mind carried at this instant. Dominating every other thought in Taylor’s brain was the obvious, naked fact that Carrington had struck at him again; that he had struck underhandedly, as usual; and that he would continue to fight with that method until he was victorious or beaten.

And yet Taylor was not so much concerned over the blow that had been aimed at him as he was of its probable effect upon Marion Harlan. For of course the girl had heard of the charge by this time – or she would hear of it. It would be all the same in the end. And at a blow the girl’s faith in him would be destroyed – the faith that he had been nurturing, and upon which he had built his hopes.

To be sure he had Larry Harlan’s note to show her, to convince her of his innocence, but he knew that once the poison of suspicion and doubt got into her heart, she could never give him that complete confidence of which he had dreamed. She might, now that Carrington had spread his poison, conclude that he had forged the note, trusting in it to disarm the suspicions of herself and of the world. And if she were to demand why he had not shown her the note before – when she had first come to the Arrow – he could not tell her that he had determined never to show it to her, lest she understand that he knew her mother’s sordid history. That secret, he had promised himself, she would never know; nor would she ever know of the vicious significance of that conversation he had overheard between Carrington and Parsons on the train coming to Dawes. He was convinced that if she knew these things she would never be able to look him in the eyes again.

Therefore, knowing the damage Carrington had wrought by bringing the charge of murder against him, Taylor’s rage was now definitely centered upon his enemy. The pursuit and punishment of Keats was a matter of secondary consideration in his mind – Bothwell and the men of the outfit would take care of the man. But Taylor could no longer fight off the terrible rage that had seized him over the knowledge of Carrington’s foul methods, and when he mounted Spotted Tail and urged him down the trail toward the Arrow ranchhouse, there was a set to his lips that caused Norton, who had brought his horse to a halt near him, to look sharply at him and draw a quick breath.

Not speaking to Norton, nor to Bud – who had also remained to watch him – Taylor straightened Spotted Tail to the trail and sent him flying toward the Arrow. Taylor looked neither to the right nor left, nor did he speak to Norton and Bud, who rode hard after him. Down the trail at a point where the neck of the gorge broadened and merged into the grass level that stretched, ever widening, to the Arrow, Spotted Tail and his rider flashed past a big cluster of low hills from which came flame-streaks and the sharp, cracking reports of rifles, the yells of men in pain, and the hoarse curses of men in the grip of the fighting rage.

But Taylor might not have heard the sounds. Certainly he could not have seen the flame-streaks, unless he glimpsed them out of the corners of his eyes, for he did not turn his head as he urged Spotted Tail on, speeding him over the great green sweep of grass at a pace that the big horse had never yet been ridden.

Laboring behind him, for they knew that something momentous impended, Norton and Bud tried their best to keep up with the flying beast ahead of them. But the sorrel ridden by Norton, and even the great, rangy, lionhearted King, could not hold the pace that Spotted Tail set for them, and they fell slowly back until, when still several miles from the Arrow, horse and rider vanished into the dusk ahead of them.

CHAPTER XXXIII – RETRIBUTION

Twice descending the long slope leading to the basin, Martha’s horse stumbled. The first time the negro woman lifted him to his feet by jerking sharply on the reins, but when he stumbled the second time, Martha was not alert and the horse went to his knees. Unprepared, Martha was jolted out of the saddle and she fell awkwardly, landing on her right shoulder with a force that knocked the breath out of her.

She lay for a short time, gasping, her body racked with pain, and at last, when she succeeded in getting to her feet, the horse had strayed some little distance from her and was quietly browsing the tops of some saccaton.

It was several minutes before Martha caught the animal – several minutes during which she loosed some picturesque and original profanity that caused the experienced range horse to raise his ears inquiringly.

Then, when she caught the horse, she had some trouble getting into the saddle, though she succeeded after a while, groaning, and grunting, and whimpering.

But Martha forgot her pains and misery once she was in the saddle again, and she rode fast, trembling with eagerness, her sympathies and her concern solely for the white girl who, she supposed, was a prisoner in the hands of the ruthless and unprincipled man that Martha, with her limited vocabulary, had termed many times a “rapscallion.”

Martha headed her horse straight for the Mullarky cabin, guided by a faint shaft of light that issued from one of its windows.

When she reached the cabin she found no one there but Mrs. Mullarky. Ben, Mrs. Mullarky told Martha, had gone to Dawes – in fact, he had been in Dawes all day, she supposed, for he had left home early that morning.

Martha gasped out her news, and Mrs. Mullarky’s face whitened. While Martha watched her in astonishment, she tore off the gingham apron that adorned her, threw it into a corner, and ran into another room, from which she emerged an instant later carrying a rifle.

The Irishwoman’s face was pale and set, and the light of a great wrath gleamed in her eyes. Martha, awed by the woman’s belligerent appearance, could only stand and blink at her, her mouth gaping with astonishment.

“You go right on to the Arrow!” she commanded Martha, as she went out of the door; “mebbe you’ll find somebody there by this time, an’ if you do, send them to the big house. I’m goin’ over there right this minute to take that dear little girl away from that big brute!”

She started while Martha was again painfully mounting her horse, and the two women rode away in opposite directions – Martha whimpering with pain, and Mrs. Mullarky silent, grim, with a wild rage gripping her heart.

Taylor, on Spotted Tail, was approaching the Arrow ranchhouse at a speed slightly greater than that into which the big horse had fallen shortly after he had left the gorge. The spirited animal was just warming to his work, and he was doing his best when he flashed past the big cattle corral, going with the noise of rushing wind. In an instant he was at the long stretch of fence which formed the ranchyard side of the horse corral, and in another instant he was sliding to a halt near the edge of the front porch of the ranchhouse itself. There he drew a deep breath and looked inquiringly at his master, while the latter slid off his back, leaped upon the porch, and with a bound crossed the porch floor, knocking chairs helter-skelter as he went.

The house was dark, but Taylor ran through the rooms, calling sharply for Parsons and Marion, but receiving no reply. When he emerged from the house his face, in the light of the moon that had climbed above the horizon some time before, was like that of a man who has just looked upon the dead face of his best friend.

For Taylor was convinced that he had looked upon death in the ranchhouse – upon the death of his hopes. He stood for an instant on the porch, while his passions raged through him, and then with a laugh of bitter humor he leaped on Spotted Tail.

Half-way to the Mullarky cabin, with the big horse running like the wind, Taylor saw a shape looming out of the darkness ahead of him. He pulled Spotted Tail down, and loosed one of his pistols, and approached the shape warily, his muscles stiff and taut and ready for action.

But it was only Martha who rode up to him. Her fortitude gone, her pains convulsing her, she wailed to Taylor the story of the night’s tragic adventure.

“An’ Carrington’s got missy in the big house!” she concluded. “She fit him powerful hard, but it was no use – that rapscallion too much fo’ her!”

She shouted the last words at Taylor, for Spotted Tail had received a jab in the sides with the rowels that hurt him cruelly, and, angered, he ran like a deer with the hungry cry of a wolf-pack in his ears.

Like a black streak they rushed by Mrs. Mullarky, who breathed a fervent, “Oh, thank the Lord, it’s Taylor!” and before the good woman could catch her breath again, Spotted Tail and his rider had opened a huge, yawning space between himself and the laboring horse the woman rode.

Riding with all his muscles taut as bowstrings, and a terrible, constricting pressure across his chest – so mighty were the savage passions that rioted within him – Taylor reached the foot of the long slope that led to the big house, and sent Spotted Tail tearing upward with rapid, desperate leaps.

When Carrington reached the big house soon after he had unknowingly passed Marion Harlan and Parsons on the river trail, he was in a sullen, impatient mood.

For no word concerning Keats’s movements had reached Dawes, and Carrington was afflicted with a gloomy presentiment that something had happened to the man – that he had not been able to locate Taylor, or that he had found him and Taylor had succeeded in escaping him.

Carrington did not go at once into the house, for captive though she was, and completely within his power, he did not want the girl to see him in his present mood. Lighting a cigar, and chewing it viciously, he walked to the stable. There, standing in the shadow of the building, he came upon the guard Martha had routed. He spoke sharply to the man, asking him why he was not inside guarding the “nigger.”

The man brazenly announced that Martha had escaped him, omitting certain details and substituting others from his imagination.

“If she hadn’t been a woman, now,” added the man in self-extenuation.

Carrington laughed lowly. “We didn’t need her, anyway,” he said, and the other laughed with him.

The laugh restored Carrington’s good-nature, and he left the man and went into the front room of the house. Had he paused on the porch to listen, or had he glanced toward the big slope that dropped to the basin, he would not have entered the house just then. And he would have paused on the porch had it not been that the intensity of his desires drove him to concentrate all his senses upon Marion.

He crossed the porch and entered the room, and then halted, staring downward with startled eyes at the body of the guard huddled on the floor, a thin stream of blood staining the carpet beneath his head.

Cursing, Carrington stepped into the other room – the room in which he had fought with Taylor – the room in which he had left Marion Harlan bound and sitting on a chair. The lamp on the shelf was still burning, and in its light Carrington saw the rope he had used to bind the girl’s hands.

A bitter rage seized him as he looked at the rope, and he threw it from him, cursing. In an instant he was outside the house and had leaped upon his horse. He headed the animal toward the long slope leading to the Arrow trail, for he suspected the girl would go straight back there, despite any conviction she might have of Taylor’s guilt – for there she would find Parsons, who would give her what comfort he could. Or she might stop at the Mullarky cabin. Certainly she would not go to Dawes, for she must know that he ruled Dawes – Parsons must have told her that – and that if she went to Dawes, she would be merely postponing her surrender to him.

He had plenty of time, even if she were in Dawes, he meditated as he sent his horse over the crest of the slope, for there were no trains out of the town during the night, and if she were not at the Arrow or Mullarky’s, he was sure to catch her later.

He was half-way down the slope, his horse making slow work of threading its way through the gnarled chaparral growth, when, looking downward, he saw another horse leaping up the slope toward him.

In the glare of the moon that was behind Carrington, he could see horse and rider distinctly, and he jerked his own horse to a halt, cursing horribly. For the horse that was leaping toward him like a black demon out of the night was Spotted Tail. And Spotted Tail’s rider was Taylor. Carrington could see the man’s face, with the terrible passion that distorted it, and Carrington wheeled his horse, making frenzied efforts to escape up the slope.

Carrington was not more than a hundred feet from the big black horse and its indomitable rider when he wheeled his own animal, and he had not traveled more than a few feet when he realized that Spotted Tail was gaining rapidly.

Cursing again, though his face was ghastly with the fear that had seized him, Carrington slipped from his horse, and, running around so that the animal was between him and Taylor, he drew a heavy pistol from a hip-pocket. And when the oncoming horse and rider were within twenty-five or thirty feet of him, Carrington took deliberate aim and fired.

He grinned vindictively as he saw Taylor reel in the saddle, and he fired again, and saw Taylor drop to the ground beside Spotted Tail.

Carrington could not tell whether his second shot had struck Taylor, and before he could shoot again, Taylor dove headlong toward a jagged rock that thrust a bulging shoulder upward. Carrington threw a snapshot at him as he leaped, but again he could not have told whether the bullet had gone home.

Keeping the horse between himself and the rock behind which Taylor had thrown himself, Carrington leaped behind another that stood near the edge of the chaparral clump through which he had been riding when he had seen Taylor coming up the slope. Seeming to sense their danger, both horses slowly moved off out of the line of fire and proceeded unconcernedly to browse the clumps of grass that dotted the side of the slope.

And now began a long, strained silence. Carrington could see Taylor’s rock, but it was at the edge of the chaparral, and Taylor might easily slip into the chaparral and begin a circling movement that would bring him behind Carrington. The thought brought a damp sweat out upon Carrington’s forehead, and he began to cast fearing glances toward the chaparral at his side. He watched it long, and the longer he watched, the greater grew his fear. And at last, at the end of half an hour, the fear grew to a conviction that Taylor was stalking him in the chaparral. No longer able to endure the suspense, Carrington left the shelter of his rock and began to work his way around the edge of the chaparral clump.

Taylor had felt the heat and the shock of Carrington’s first bullet, and he knew it had gone into his left arm. The second bullet had missed him cleanly, and he landed behind the rock, with all his senses alert, paying no attention to his wound.

He had recognized Carrington, and with the cold calm that comes with implacable determination, Taylor instantly began to take an inventory of the hazards and the advantages of his position. And after his examination was concluded, he dropped to his hands and knees and began to work his way into the chaparral.

He moved cautiously, for he knew that should he disturb the rank growth he would disclose his whereabouts to Carrington, should the latter have gained a vantageous point from where he could watch the thicket for just such signs of Taylor’s presence.

But Taylor made no such signs; he had not spent the greater part of his life in the open to be outdone in this grim strategy by an eastern man. He grinned wickedly at the thought.

He suspected that Carrington might try the very trick he himself was trying, and that thought made him wary.

Working his way into the thicket, he at last reached a point near its center, upon a slight mound surrounded by stunt oak and quivering aspen. There, concealed and alert, he waited for Carrington to show himself.

Carrington, though, did not betray his presence in the thicket. For Carrington was not in the thicket when Taylor reached its center. Carrington had started into the thicket, but he had not proceeded very far when he began to be afflicted with a dread premonition of Taylor’s presence somewhere in the vicinity.

A clammy sweat broke out on the big man; a panic of fear seized him, and he began to creep backward, out of the thicket. And by the time Taylor reached his vantagepoint, Carrington was crouching at the thicket’s edge, near the rock where he had been concealed, oppressed with a conviction that Taylor was working his way toward him through the thicket.

The big man waited, his nerves taut, his muscles quivering and cringing at the thought that any instant a bullet sent at him by Taylor might strike him. For he knew that Taylor had come for him; he was now convinced that Marion Harlan had gone to the Arrow, that she had told Taylor what had happened to her, and that Taylor had come straight to the big house to punish him for his misdeeds.

And Carrington had a dread of the sort of punishment Taylor had dealt him upon a former occasion, and he wanted no more of it. That was why he had used his pistol instantly upon recognizing Taylor. He wished, now, that he had not been so hasty; for he had taken the initiative, and Taylor would not scruple to imitate him.

In fact, he was so certain that at that moment Taylor was creeping upon him from some point with the fury of murder in his heart, that he got to his feet and, looking over the top of the rock, searched with wild eyes for his horse. And when he saw the animal not more than twenty or thirty feet from him, he could not longer resist the panic that had seized him. Crouching, he ran for several yards on his hands and feet and then, nearing his horse, he stood upright and ran for it.

As he ran he cringed, for he expected a pistol-shot to greet his appearance at the side of his horse. But no report came, and he reached the horse, threw himself into the saddle and raced the animal down the slope.

He was conscious of a pulse of elation, for he thought he had eluded Taylor, but just as his horse struck the edge of the big level Carrington looked back, to see Spotted Tail slipping down the slope with a smooth swiftness that terrified the big man.

He turned then and began to ride as he had never ridden before. The animal under him was strong, courageous, and speedy; but Carrington knew he would have need of all those sterling qualities if he hoped to escape the iron-hearted horse Taylor bestrode. And so Carrington leaned forward, trying to lighten the load, slapping the beast’s neck with the palm of his hand, urging him with his voice – coaxing him to the best endeavors. For Carrington knew that somewhere in the vast expanse of grass land and spread before him Keats and his men must be. And his only hope lay in reaching them before the avenger, astride the big horse that was speeding on his trail like a black thunderbolt, could bring his rider within pistol-shot distance of him.