'Firebrand' Trevison
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