'Firebrand' Trevison
"The plaintiff, Mr. Jefferson Corrigan, is a claimant to the title of the
land now held by you."
"Corrigan can have no claim on my land; I bought it five years ago from
old Buck Peters. He got it from a man named Taylor. Corrigan is
bluffing."
The Judge coughed and dropped his gaze from the belligerent eyes of the
young man. "That will be determined in court," he said. "The entire land
transactions in this county, covering a period of twenty-five years, are
recorded in that book." And the Judge indicated a ledger on his desk.
"I'll take a look at it." Trevison reached for the ledger, seized it, the
Judge protesting, half-heartedly, though with the judicial dignity that
had become habitual from long service in his profession.
"This is a high-handed proceeding, young man. You are in contempt of
court!" The Judge tried, but could not make his voice ring sincerely. It
seemed to him that this vigorous, clear-eyed young man could see the guilt
that he was trying to hide.
Trevison laughed grimly, holding the Judge off with one hand while he
searched the pages of the book, leaning over the desk. He presently closed
the book with a bang and faced the Judge, breathing heavily, his muscles
rigid, his eyes cold and glittering.
"There's trickery here!" He took the ledger up and slammed it down on the
desk again, his voice vibrating. "Judge Lindman, this isn't a true
record--it is not the original record! I saw the original record five
years ago, when I went personally to Dry Bottom with Buck Peters to have
my deed recorded! This record is a fake--it has been substituted for the
original! I demand that you stay proceedings in this matter until a search
can be made for the original record!"
"This is the original record." Again the Judge tried to make his voice
ring sincerely, and again he failed. His one mistake had not hardened him
and judicial dignity could not help him to conceal his guilty knowledge.
He winced as he felt Trevison's burning gaze on him, and could not meet
the young man's eyes, boring like metal points into his consciousness.
Trevison sprang forward and seized him by the shoulders.
"By God--you know it isn't the original!"
The Judge succeeded in meeting Trevison's eyes, but his age, his
vacillating will, his guilt, could not combat the overpowering force and
virility of this volcanic youth, and his gaze shifted and fell.
He heard Trevison catch his breath--shrilling it into his lungs in one
great sob--and then he stood, white and shaking, beside the desk, looking
at Trevison as the young man went out of the door--a laugh on his lips,
mirthless, bitter, portending trouble and violence.
* * * * *
Corrigan was sitting at his desk in the bank building when Trevison
entered the front door. The big man seemed to have been expecting his
visitor, for just before the latter appeared at the door Corrigan took a
pistol from a pocket and laid it on the desk beside him, placing a sheet
of paper over it. He swung slowly around and faced Trevison, cold interest
in his gaze. He nodded shortly as Trevison's eyes met his.
In a dozen long strides Trevison was at his side. The young man was pale,
his lips were set, he was breathing fast, his nostrils were dilated--he
was at that pitch of excitement in which a word, a look or a movement
brings on action, instantaneous, unrecking of consequences. But he
exercised repression that made the atmosphere of the room tingle with
tension of the sort that precedes the clash of mighty forces--he
deliberately sat on one corner of Corrigan's desk, one leg dangling, the
other resting on the floor, one hand resting on the idle leg, his body
bent, his shoulders drooping a little forward. His voice was dry and
light--Patrick Carson would have said his grin was tiger-like.
"So that's the kind of a whelp you are!" he said.
Corrigan caught his breath; his hands clenched, his face reddened darkly.
He shot a quick glance at the sheet of paper under which he had placed the
pistol. Trevison interpreted it, brushed the paper aside, disclosing the
weapon. His lips curled; he took the pistol, "broke" it, tossed cartridges
and weapon into a corner of the desk and laughed lowly.
"So you were expecting me," he said. "Well, I'm here. You want my land,
eh?"
"I want the land that I'm entitled to under the terms of my purchase--the
original Midland grant, consisting of one-hundred thousand acres. It
belongs to me, and I mean to have it!"
"You're a liar, Corrigan," said the young man, holding the other's gaze
coldly; "you're a lying, sneaking crook. You have no claim to the land,
and you know it!"
Corrigan smiled stiffly. "The record of the deal I made with Jim Marchmont
years before any of you people usurped the property is in my pocket at
this minute. The court, here, will uphold it."
Trevison narrowed his eyes at the big man and laughed, bitter humor in the
sound. It was as though he had laughed to keep his rage from leaping,
naked and murderous, into this discussion.
"It takes nerve, Corrigan, to do what you are attempting; it does, by
Heaven--sheer, brazen gall! It's been done, though, by little,
pettifogging shysters, by piking real-estate crooks--thousands of parcels
of property scattered all over the United States have been filched in that
manner. But a hundred-thousand acres! It's the biggest steal that ever has
been attempted, to my knowledge, short of a Government grab, and your
imagination does you credit. It's easy to see what's been done. You've got
a fake title from Marchmont, antedating ours; you've got a crooked judge
here, to befuddle the thing with legal technicalities; you've got the
money, the power, the greed, and the cold-blooded determination. But I
don't think you understand what you're up against--do you? Nearly every
man who owns this land that you want has worked hard for it. It's been
bought with work, man--work and lonesomeness and blood--and souls. And now
you want to sweep it all away with one stroke. You want to step in here
and reap the benefit; you want to send us out of here, beggars." His voice
leaped from its repression; it now betrayed the passion that was consuming
him; it came through his teeth: "You can't hand me that sort of a raw
deal, Corrigan, and make me like it. Understand that, right now. You're
bucking the wrong man. You can drag the courts into it; you can wriggle
around a thousand legal corners, but damn you, you can't avert what's
bound to come if you don't lay off this deal, and that's a fight!" He
laughed, full-throated, his voice vibrating from the strength of the
passion that blazed in his eyes. He revealed, for an instant to Corrigan
the wild, reckless untamed youth that knew no law save his own impulses,
and the big man's eyes widened with the revelation, though he gave no
other sign. He leaned back in his chair, smiling coldly, idly flecking a
bit of ash from his shirt where it had fallen from his cigar.
"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