'Firebrand' Trevison
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."
CHAPTER XIV
A RUMBLE OF WAR
The train that carried Corrigan's letter eastward bore, among its few
other passengers, a young man with a jaw set like a steel trap, who leaned
forward in his seat, gripping the back of the seat in front of him; an
eager, smoldering light in his eyes, who rose at each stop the train made
and glared belligerently and intolerantly at the coach ends, muttering
guttural anathemas at the necessity for delays. The spirit of battle was
personified in him; it sat on his squared shoulders; it was in the thrust
of his chin, stuck out as though to receive blows, which his rippling
muscles would be eager to return. Two other passengers in the coach
watched him warily, and once, when he got up and walked to the front of
the coach, opening the door and looking out, to let in the roar and whir
and the clatter, one of the passengers remarked to the other: "That guy is
in a temper where murder would come easy to him."
The train left Manti at nine o'clock in the evening. At midnight it pulled
up at the little frame station in Dry Bottom and the young man leaped off
and strode rapidly away into the darkness of the desert town. A little
later, J. Blackstone Graney, attorney at law, and former Judge of the
United States District Court at Dry Bottom, heard a loud hammering on the
door of his residence at the outskirts of town. He got up, with a grunt of
resentment for all heavy-fisted fools abroad on midnight errands, and went
downstairs to admit a grim-faced stranger who looked positively
bloodthirsty to the Judge, under the nervous tension of his midnight
awakening.
"I'm 'Brand' Trevison, owner of the Diamond K ranch, near Manti," said the
stranger, with blunt sharpness that made the Judge blink. "I've a case on
in the Manti court at ten o'clock tomorrow--today," he corrected. "They
are going to try to swindle me out of my land, and I've got to have a
lawyer--a real one. I could have got half a dozen in Manti--such as they
are--but I want somebody who is wise in the law, and with the sort of
honor that money and power can't blast--I want you!"
Judge Graney looked sharply at his visitor, and smiled. "You are evidently
desperately harried. Sit down and tell me about your case." He waved to a
chair and Trevison dropped into it, sitting on its edge. The Judge took
another, and with the kerosene lamp between them on a table, Trevison
related what had occurred during the previous morning in Manti. When he
concluded, the Judge's face was serious.
"If what you say is true, it is a very awkward, not to say suspicious,
situation. Being the only lawyer in Dry Bottom, until the coming of Judge
Lindman, I have had occasion many times to consult the record you speak
of, and if my memory serves me well, I have noted several times--quite
casually, of course, since I have never been directly concerned with the
records of the land in your vicinity--that several transfers of title to
the original Midland grant have been recorded. Your deed would show, of
course, the date of your purchase from Buck Peters, and we shall, perhaps,
be able to determine the authenticity of the present record in that
manner. But if, as you believe, the records have been tampered with, we
are facing a long, hard legal battle which may or may not result in an
ultimate victory for us--depending upon the power behind the interests
opposed to you."
"I'll fight them to the Supreme Court of the United States!" declared
Trevison. "I'll fight them with the law or without it!"
"I know it," said Graney, with a shrewd glance at the other's grim face.
"But be careful not to do anything that will jeopardize your liberty. If
those men are what you think they are, they would be only too glad to have
you break some law that would give them an excuse to jail you. You
couldn't do much fighting then, you know." He got up. "There's a train out
of here in about an hour--we'll take it."
About six o'clock that morning the two men stepped off the train at Manti.
Graney went directly to a hotel, to wash and breakfast, while Trevison, a
little tired and hollow-eyed from loss of sleep and excitement, and with a
two days' growth of beard on his face, which made him look worse than he
actually felt, sought the livery stable where he had left Nigger the night
before, mounted the animal and rode rapidly out of town toward the Diamond
K. He took a trail that led through the cut where on another morning he
had startled the laborers by riding down the wall--Nigger eating up the
ground with long, sure, swift strides--passing Pat Carson and his men at a
point on the level about a quarter of a mile beyond the cut. He waved a
hand to Carson as he flashed by, and something in his manner caused Carson
to remark to the engineer of the dinky engine: "Somethin's up wid Trevison
ag'in, Murph--he's got a domned mean look in his eye. I'm the onluckiest
son-av-a-gun in the worruld, Murph! First I miss seein' this fire-eater
bate the face off the big ilephant, Corrigan, an' yisterday I was
figgerin' on goin' to town--but didn't; an' I miss seein' that little
whiffet of a Braman flyin' through the windy. Do ye's know that there's a
feelin' ag'in Corrigan an' the railroad in town, an' thot this mon
Trevison is the fuse that wud bust the boom av discontint. I'm beginnin'
to feel a little excited meself. Now what do ye suppose that gang av min
wid Winchesters was doin', comin' from thot direction this mornin'?" He
pointed toward the trail that Trevison was riding. "An' that big stiff,
Corrigan, wid thim!"
Trevison got the answer to this query the minute he reached the Diamond K
ranchhouse. His foreman came running to him, pale, disgusted, his voice
snapping like a whip:
"They've busted your desk an' rifled it. Twenty guys who said they was
deputies from the court in Manti, an' Corrigan. I was here alone,
watchin', as you told me, but couldn't move a finger--damn 'em!"
Trevison dismounted and ran into the house. The room that he used as an
office was in a state of disorder. Papers, books, littered the floor. It
was evident that a thorough search had been made--for something. Trevison
darted to the desk and ran a hand into the pigeonhole in which he kept the
deed which he had come for. The hand came out, empty. He sprang to the
door of a small closet where, in a box that contained some ammunition that
he kept for the use of his men, he had placed the money that Rosalind
Benham had brought to him. The money was not there. He walked to the
center of the room and stood for an instant, surveying the mass of litter
around him, reeling, rage-drunken, murder in his heart. Barkwell, the
foreman, watching him, drew great, long breaths of sympathy and
excitement.
"Shall I get the boys an' go after them damn sneaks?" he questioned, his
voice tremulous. "We'll clean 'em out--smoke 'em out of the county!" he
threatened. He started for the door.