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He was breathing fast when he emerged from the house, for what he saw there had puzzled him – the guard lying on the floor and Marion gone – and he stood for an instant on the porch, scanning the clearing and the woods around the house with blazing eyes, his guns in hand.
The silence around the house was deep and solemn now, and over Taylor stole a conviction that Carrington had sent Marion to Dawes in charge of some of his men; having divined that he would come for her. But Taylor did not act upon the conviction instantly. He ran to the stable, stormed through it – and the other buildings in the cluster around the ranchhouse; and finding no trace of men or girl, he at last leaped on Spotted Tail and sent him thundering over the trail toward Dawes.
When he arrived in town a swaying, shouting, shooting mob jammed the streets. He brought his horse to a halt on the edge of the crowd that packed the street in front of the city hall, and demanded to know what was wrong.
The man shouted at him:
“Hell’s to pay! Carrington abducted Marion Harlan, an’ that little guy – Parsons – rescued her. An’ Parsons made a speech, tellin’ folks what Carrington an’ Danforth an’ all the rest of the sneakin’ coyotes have done, an’ we’re runnin’ the scum out of town!” And then, before Taylor could ask about the girl, the man raised his voice to a shrill yell:
“It’s Squint Taylor, boys! Squint Taylor! Stand back an’ let ol’ Squint take a hand in this here deal!”
There was a wild, concerted screech of joy. It rose like the shrieking of a gale; it broke against the buildings that fringed the street; it echoed and reechoed with terrific resonance back and forth over the heads of the men in the crowd. It penetrated into the cozy room of a private dwelling, where sat a girl who started at the sound and sat erect, her face paling, her eyes, glowing with a light that made the motherly looking woman say to her, softly:
“Ah, then you do believe in him, my dear!”
It was when the noise and the tumult had subsided that Taylor went to her. For he had been told where he might find her by men who smiled sympathetically at his back as he walked down the street toward the private dwelling.
She was at the door as soon as he, for she had been watching from one of the front windows, and had seen him come toward the house.
And when the motherly looking woman saw them in each other’s arms, the moon and the light from within the house revealing them to her, and to the men in the crowd who watched from the street, she smiled gently. What the two said to each other will never be known, for their words were drowned in the cheer that rose from hoarse-voiced men who knew that words are sometimes futile and unnecessary.
CHAPTER XXXV – TRIUMPH AT LAST
A month later, Taylor walked to the front door of the Arrow ranchhouse and stood on the threshold looking out over the great sweep of green-brown plain that reached eastward to Dawes.
A change had come over Taylor. His eyes had a gentler light in them – as though they had seen things that had taken the edge off his sterner side; and there was an atmosphere about him that created the impression that his thoughts were at this moment far from violence.
“Mr. Taylor!” said a voice behind him – from the front room. There had been an undoubted accent on the “Mr.” And the voice was one that Taylor knew well; the sound of it deepened the gentle gleam in his eyes.
“Mrs. Taylor,” he answered, imparting to the “Mrs.” exactly the emphasis the voice had placed on the other.
There was a laugh behind him, and then the voice again, slightly reproachful: “Oh, that sounds so awfully formal, Squint!”
“Well,” he said, “you started it.”
“I like ‘Squint’ better,” said the voice.
“I’m hoping you keep on liking Squint all the days of your life,” he returned.
“I was speaking of names,” declared the voice.
“Doan’ yo’ let her fool yo’, Mr. Squint!” came another voice, “fo’ she think a heap mo’ of you than she think of yo’ name!”
“Martha!” said the first voice in laughing reproof, “I vow I shall send you away some day!”
And then there was a clumping step on the floor, and Martha’s voice reached the door as she went out of the house through the kitchen:
“I’s goin’ to the bunkhouse to expostulate wif that lazy Bud Hemmingway. He tole me this mawnin’ he’s gwine feed them hawgs – an’ he ain’t done it!”
And then Mrs. Taylor appeared at the door and placed an arm around her husband’s neck, drawing his head over to her and kissing him.
She looked much like the Marion Harlan who had left the Arrow on a night about a month before, though there was a more eloquent light in her eyes, and a tenderness had come over her that made her whole being radiate.
“Don’t you think you had better get ready to go to Dawes, dear?” she suggested.
“I like that better than ‘Squint’ even,” he grinned.
For a long time they stood in the doorway very close together. And then Mrs. Taylor looked up with grave eyes at her husband.
“Won’t you please let me look at all of father’s note to you, Squint?” she asked.
“That can’t be done,” he grinned at her. “For,” he added, “that day after I let you read part of it I burnt it. It’s gone – like a lot of other things that are not needed now!”
“But what did it say – that part that you wouldn’t let me read?” she insisted.
“It said,” he quoted, “‘I want you to marry her, Squint.’ And I have done so – haven’t I?”
“Was that all?” she persisted.
“I’d call that plenty!” he laughed.
“Well,” she sighed, “I suppose that will have to be sufficient. But get ready, dear; they will be waiting for you!” She left him and went into a room, from where she called back to him: “It won’t take me long to dress.” And then, after an interval: “Where do you suppose Uncle Elam went?”
He scowled out of the doorway; then turned and smiled. “He didn’t say. And he lost no time saying farewell to Dawes, once he got his hands on the money Carrington left.” Taylor’s smile became a laugh, low and full of amusement.
Shortly Mrs. Taylor appeared, attired in a neat riding-habit, and Taylor donned coat and hat, and they went arm in arm to the corral gate, where their horses were standing, having been roped, saddled, and bridled by the “lazy” Bud Hemmingway, who stood outside the bunkhouse grinning at them.
“Well, good luck!” Bud called after them as they rode toward Dawes.
Lingering much on the way, and stopping at the Mullarky cabin, they finally reached the edge of town and were met by Neil Norton, who grinned widely when he greeted them.
Norton waved a hand at Dawes. As in another time, Dawes was arrayed in holiday attire, swathed in a riot of color – starry bunting, flags, and streamers, with hundreds of Japanese lanterns suspended festoonlike across the streets. And now, as Taylor and the blushing, moist-eyed woman at his side rode down the street, a band on a platform near the station burst into music, its brazen-tongued instruments drowning the sound of cheering.
“We got that from Lazette,” grinned Norton. “We had to have some noise! As I told you the other day,” he went on, speaking loudly, so that Taylor could hear him above the tumult, “it is all fixed up. Judge Littlefield stayed on the job here, because he promised to be good. He hadn’t really done anything, you know. And after we made Danforth and the five councilmen resign that night, and saw them aboard the east-bound the next morning, we made Littlefield wire the governor about what had happened. Littlefield went to the capital shortly afterward and told the governor some things that astonished him. And the governor appointed you to fill Danforth’s unexpired term. But, of course, that was only an easy way for the governor to surrender. So everything is lovely.”
Norton paused, out of breath.
And Taylor smiled at his wife. “Yes,” he said, as he took her arm, “this is a mighty good little old world – if you treat it right.”
“And if you stay faithful,” added the moist-eyed woman.
“And if you fall in love,” supplemented Taylor.
“And when the people of a town want to honor you,” added Norton significantly.
And then, arm in arm, followed by Norton, Taylor and his wife rode forward, their horses close together, toward the great crowd of people that jammed the street around the band-stand, their voices now raised above the music that blared forth from the brazen instruments.