'Firebrand' Trevison

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 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.