'Firebrand' Trevison
caught her breath sharply, for she recognized the woman as Hester Harvey.
It was some time before Hester reached the broad-shouldered man's side.
There was a stain in each of her cheeks, but outwardly, at least, she
showed none of the excitement that had seized the crowd; her movements
were deliberate and there was a resolute set to her lips. She got through,
finally, and halted beside the big man, the crowd closing up behind her.
She was swallowed in it, lost to sight.
"Lift her up, Lefingwell!" suggested a man on the outer fringe. "If she's
got anything to say, let us all hear it!" The suggestion was caught up,
insistently.
"If you ain't got no objections, ma'am," said the big man. He stooped at
her cold smile and swung her to his shoulder. She spoke slowly and
distinctly, though there was a tremor in her voice:
"Trevison did not kill Braman--it was Corrigan. Corrigan was in my room in
the _Castle_ last night just after dark. When he left, I watched him from
my window, after putting out the light. He had threatened to kill Braman.
I watched him cross the street and go around to the rear of the bank
building. There was a light in the rear room of the bank. After a while
Braman and Corrigan entered the banking room. The light from the rear room
shone on them for an instant and I recognized them. They were at the safe.
When they went out they left the safe door open. After a while the light
went out and I saw Corrigan come from around the rear of the building,
recross the street and come into the _Castle_. You men are blind. Corrigan
is a crook who will stop at nothing. If you let him injure Trevison for a
crime that Trevison did not commit you deserve to be robbed!"
Lefingwell swung her down from his shoulder.
"I reckon that cinches it, boys!" he bellowed over the heads of the men
nearest him. "There ain't nothin' plainer! If we stand for this we're a
bunch of cowardly coyotes that ain't fit to look Trevison in the face! I'm
goin' to help him! Who's comin' along?"
A chorus of shouts drowned his last words; the crowd was in motion, swift,
with definite purpose. It melted, streaming off in all directions, like
the sweep of water from a bursted dam. It broke at the doors of the
buildings; it sought the stables. Men bearing rifles appeared in the
street, mounting horses and congregating in front of the _Belmont_, where
Lefingwell had gone. Other men, on the board sidewalk and in the dust of
the street, were running, shouting, gesticulating. In an instant the town
had become a bedlam of portentous force; it was the first time in its
history that the people of Manti had looked with collective vision, and
the girl reeled against the iron wall of the shed, appalled at the
resistless power that had been set in motion. On a night when she sat on
the porch of the Bar B ranchhouse she had looked toward Manti, thrilled
over a pretty mental fancy. She had thought it all a game--wondrous,
joyous, progressive. She had neglected to associate justice with it
then--the inexorable rule of fairness under which every player of the game
must bow. She brought it into use now, felt the spirit of it, saw the dire
tragedy that its perversion portended, groaned, and covered her face with
her hands.
She looked around after a while. She saw Judge Lindman walking across the
street toward the _Castle_, supported by two other men. A third followed;
she did not know him, but Corrigan would have recognized him as the hotel
clerk who had grown confidential upon a certain day. The girl heard his
voice as he followed after the Judge and the others--raucous, vindictive:
"We need men like Trevison in this town. We can get along without any
Corrigans."
She heard a voice behind her and she turned, swiftly, to see Hester Harvey
walking toward her. She would have avoided the meeting, but she saw that
Hester was intent on speaking and she drew herself erect, bowing to her
with cold courtesy as the woman stopped within a step of her and smiled.
"You look ready to flop into hysterics, dearie! Won't you come over to my
room with me and have something to brace you up? A cup of tea?" she added
with a laugh as Rosalind looked quickly at her. She did not seem to notice
the stiffening of the girl's body, but linked her arm within her own and
began to walk across the street. The girl was racked with emotion over the
excitement of the morning, the dread of impending violence, and half
frantic with anxiety over Trevison's safety. Hester's offense against her
seemed vague and far, and very insignificant, relatively. She yearned to
exchange confidences with somebody--anybody, and this woman, even though
she were what she thought her, had a capacity for feeling, for sympathy.
And she was very, very tired of it all.
"It was fierce, wasn't it?" said Hester a few minutes later in the privacy
of her room, as she balanced her cup and watched Rosalind as the girl ate,
hungrily. "These sagebrush rough-necks out here will make Corrigan hump
himself to keep out of their way. But he deserves it, the crook!"
The girl looked curiously at the other, trying hard to reconcile the
vindictiveness of these words and the woman's previous action in giving
damaging testimony against Corrigan, with the significant fact that
Corrigan had been in her room the night before, presumably as a guest.
Hester caught the look and laughed. "Yes, dearie, he deserves it. How much
do you know of what has been going on here?"
"Very little, I am afraid."
"Less than that, I suspect. I happen to know considerable, and I am going
to tell you about it. My trip out here has been a sort of a wild-goose
chase. I thought I wanted Trevison, but I've discovered I'm not badly hurt
by his refusal to resume our old relations."
The girl gasped and almost dropped her cup, setting it down slowly
afterward and staring at her hostess with doubting, fearing, incredulous
eyes.
"Yes, dearie," laughed the other, with a trace of embarrassment; "you can
trust your ears on that statement. To make certain, I'll repeat it: I am
not very badly hurt by his refusal to resume our old relations. Do you
know what that means? It means that he turned me down cold, dearie."
"Do you mean--" began the girl, gripping the table edge.
"I mean that I lied to you. The night I went over to Trevison's ranch he
told me plainly that he didn't like me one teenie, weenie bit any more. He
wouldn't kiss me, shake my hand, or welcome me in any way. He told me he'd
got over it, the same as he'd got over his measles days--he'd outgrown it
and was going to throw himself at the feet of another goddess. Oh, yes, he
meant you!" she laughed, her voice a little too high, perhaps, with an odd
note of bitterness in it. "Then, determined to blot my rival out, I lied
about you. I told him that you loved Corrigan and that you were in the
game to rob him of his land. Oh, I blackened you, dearie! It hurt him,
too. For when a man like Trevison loves a woman--"
"How could you!" said the girl, shuddering.
"Please don't get dramatic," jeered the other. "The rules that govern the
love game are very elastic--for some women. I played it strong, but there
was no chance for me from the beginning. Trevison thinks you are
Corrigan's trump card in this game. It _is_ a game, isn't it. But he loves
you in spite of it all. He told me he'd go to the gallows for you. Aren't
men the sillies! But just the same, dearie, we women like to hear them
murmur those little heroic things, don't we? It was on the night I told
him you'd told Corrigan about the dynamiting."
"Oh!" said the girl.
"That was my high card," laughed the woman, harshly. "He took it and
derided me. I decided right then that I wouldn't play any more."
"Then he didn't send for you?"
"Corrigan did that, dearie."
"You--you knew Corrigan before--before you came here?"
"You _can_ guess intelligently, can't you?"
"Corrigan planned it _all_?"
"All." Hester watched as the girl bowed her head and sobbed convulsively.
"What a brazen, crafty and unprincipled _thing_ Trevison must think me!"
Hester reached out a hand and laid it on the girl's. "I--there was a time
when I would have done murder to have him think of me as he thinks of you,
dearie. He isn't for me, though, and I can't spoil any woman's happiness.
There's little enough--but I'm not going to philosophize. I was going away
without telling you this. I don't know why I am telling it now. I always
was a little soft. But if you hadn't spoken as you did a while ago in that
crowd--taking Trevison's end--I--I think you'd never have known. Somehow,
it seemed you deserved him, dearie. And I couldn't bear to--to think of
him facing any more disappointment. He--he took it so--"
The girl looked up, to see the woman's eyes filling with a luminous mist.
A quick conception of what this all meant to the woman thrilled the girl.
She got up and walked to the woman's side. "I'm _so_ sorry, Hester," she
said as her arms stole around the other's neck.
* * * * *
She went out a little later, into the glaring, shimmering sunlight of the
morning, her cheeks red, her eyes aglow, her heart racing wildly, to see
an engine and a luxurious private car just pulling from the main track to
a switch.
"Oh," she whispered, joyously; "it's father's!"
And she ran toward it, tingling with a new-found hope.
In her room at the _Castle_ sat a woman who was finding the world very
empty. It held nothing for her except the sad consolation of repentance.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE FIGHT
"The boss is sure a she-wolf at playin' a lone hand," growled Barkwell,
shortly after dusk, to Jud Weaver, the straw boss. "Seems he thinks his
friends is delicate ornaments which any use would bust to smithereens.
Here's his outfit layin' around, bitin' their finger nails with ongwee an'
pinin' away to slivers yearnin' to get into the big meal-lee, an' him
racin' an' tearin' around the country fightin' it out by his lonesome. I
call it rank selfishness!"
"He sure ought to have give us a chancst to claw the hair outen that
damned Corrigan feller!" complained Weaver. "In some ways, though, I'm
sorta glad the damned mine was blew up. 'Firebrand' would have sure got
a-hold of her some day, an' then we'd be clawin' at the bowels of the
earth instid of galivantin' around on our cayuses like gentlemen. I reckon
things is all for the best."
The two had come in from the river range ostensibly to confer with
Trevison regarding their work, but in reality to satisfy their curiosity
over Trevison's movements. There was a deep current of concern for him
under their accusations.
They had found the ranchhouse dark and deserted. But the office door was
open and they had entered, prepared supper, ate with a more than ordinary
mingling of conversation with their food, and not lighting the lamps had
gone out on the gallery for a smoke.
"He ain't done any sleepin' to amount to much in the last forty-eight
hours, to my knowin'," remarked Barkwell; "unless he's done his sleepin'
on the run--an' that ain't in no ways a comfortable way. He's sure to be
driftin' in here, soon."
"This here country's goin' to hell, certain!" declared Weaver, after an
hour of silence. "She's gettin' too eastern an' flighty. Railroads an'
dams an' hotels with bath tubs for every six or seven rooms, an'
resterawnts with filleedegree palms an' leather chairs an' slick eats is
eatin' the gizzard outen her. Railroads is all right in their place--which
is where folks ain't got no cayuses to fork an' therefore has to hoof
it--or--or ride the damn railroad."
"Correct!" agreed Barkwell; "she's a-goin' the way Rome went--an