The Ranchman

CHAPTER III – THE SERPENT TRAIL

Marion Harlan did not dream of Quinton Taylor, though her last waking thought was of him, and when she opened her eyes in the morning it was to see him as he had sat in the seat behind Carrington and her uncle, his eyes wide with interest, or astonishment – or some emotion that she could not define – looking directly at her.

She had been certain then, and still was certain that he had been feigning sleep, that he had been listening to the talk carried on between her uncle and Carrington.

Why had he listened?

That interrogation absorbed her thoughts as she dressed.

She had not meant to be interested in him, for she had, in her first glance at him, mentally decided that he was no more interesting than many another ill-dressed and uncouth westerner whom she had seen on the journey toward Dawes.

To be sure, she had seen signs of strength in him, mental and physical, but that had been when she looked at him coming toward her down the aisle. But even then he had not interested her; her interest began when she noted his interest in the conversation of her traveling companions. And then she had noticed several things about him that had escaped her in other glances at him.

For one thing, despite the astonishment in his eyes, she had observed the cold keenness of them, the odd squint at the corners, where little wrinkles, splaying outward, indicated either deliberate impudence or concealed mirth. She was rather inclined to believe it the latter, though she would not have been surprised to discover the wrinkles to mean the former.

And then she had noted his mouth; his lips had been straight and firm; she had been sure they were set resolutely when she had surprised him looking at her. That had seemed to indicate that he had taken more than a passing interest in what he had overheard.

She speculated long over the incident, finally deciding that much would depend upon what he had overheard. There was only one way to determine that, and at breakfast in the dining-car she interrogated Carrington.

“Of course, you and uncle are going to Dawes on business, and I am merely tagging along to see if I can find any trace of my father. But have you any business secrets that might interest an eavesdropper? On a train, for instance – a train going toward Dawes?”

“What do you mean?” Carrington’s eyes flashed as he leaned toward her.

“Have you and uncle talked business within hearing distance of a stranger?”

Carrington’s face flushed; he exchanged a swift glance with the other man.

“You mean that clodhopper with the tight-fitting hand-me-down in the seat behind us – yesterday? He was asleep!”

“Then you did talk business – business secrets,” smiled the girl. “I thought really big men commonly concealed their business secrets from the eager ears of outsiders.”

She laughed aloud at Carrington’s scowl, and then went on:

“I don’t think the clodhopper was asleep. In fact, I rather think he was very wide awake. I wouldn’t say for certain, but I think he was awake. You see, when I came back to talk with you he was sitting very straight, and his eyes were wide open.

“And I shall tell you something else,” she went on. “During all the time he sat behind you, when you were talking, I watched him, he was pretending to sleep, for at times he opened his eyes and looked at you, and I am sure he was not thinking pleasant thoughts. And I don’t believe he is a clodhopper. I think he amounts to something; and if you will look well at him you will see, too. When he was listening to you there was a look in his eyes that made me think of fighting.” And then, after a momentary pause, she added slowly, “there isn’t anything wrong about the business you are going to transact out here – is there?”

“Wrong?” he laughed. “Oh, no! Business is business.” He leaned forward and gazed deliberately into her eyes, his own glowing significantly. “You don’t think, with me holding your good opinion – and always hoping to better it – that I would do anything to destroy it, Marion?”

The girl’s cheeks were suffused with faint color.

“You are assuming again, Mr. James J. Carrington. I don’t care for your subtle speeches. I like you best when you talk frankly; but I am not sure that I shall ever like you enough to marry you.”

She smiled at the scowl in his eyes, then looked speculatively at him. It should have been apparent to him that she had spoken the truth regarding her feeling for him.

The uncle knew she had spoken the truth, for she left them presently, and the car door had hardly closed behind her when Carrington said, smiling grimly:

“She’s a thoroughbred, Parsons. That’s why I like her. I’ll have her, too!”

“Careful,” grinned the other, smoothly. “If she ever discovers what a brute you are – ” He made a gesture of finality.

“Brute! Bah! Parsons, you make me sick! I’ll take her when I want her! Why do you suppose I told her that fairy tale about her father having been seen in this locality? To get her out here with me, of course – where there isn’t a hell of a lot of law, and a man’s will is the only thing that governs him. She won’t have me, eh? Well, we’ll see!”

Parsons smirked at the other. “Then you lied about Lawrence Harlan having been seen in this country?”

“Sure,” admitted Carrington. “Why not?”

Parsons looked leeringly at Carrington. “Suppose I should tell her?”

Carrington glared at the older man. “You won’t,” he declared. “In the first place, you don’t love her as an uncle should because she looks like Larry Harlan – and you hated Larry. Suppose I should tell her that you were the cause of the trouble between her parents; that you framed up on her mother, to get her to leave Larry? Why, you damned, two-faced gopher, she’d wither you!”

He grinned at the other and got up, turning, when he reached his feet, to see Quinton Taylor, standing beside a chair at the next table, just ready to sit down, but delaying to hear the remainder of the extraordinary conversation carried on between the two men.

Taylor had donned the garments he had discarded in Kansas City. A blue woolen shirt, open at the throat; corduroy trousers, the bottoms stuffed into the soft tops of high-heeled boots; a well-filled cartridge-belt, sagging at the right hip with the weight of a heavy pistol – and a broad-brimmed felt hat, which a smiling waiter held for him – completed his attire.

Freshly shaved, his face glowed with the color that betokens perfect health; and just now his eyes were also glowing – but with frank disgust and dislike.

Carrington flushed darkly and stepped close to Taylor. Carrington’s chin was thrust out belligerently; his eyes fairly danced with a rage that he could hardly restrain.

“Listening again, eh?” he said hoarsely. “You had your ears trained on us yesterday, in the Pullman, and now you are at it again. I’ve a notion to knock your damned head off!”

Taylor’s eyelids flickered once, the little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening a trifle. But his gaze was steady, and the blue of his eyes grew a trifle more steely.

“You’ve got a bigger notion not to, Mr. Man,” he grinned. “You run a whole lot to talk.”

He sat down, twisted around in the chair and faced the table, casting a humorous eye at the black waiter, and ignoring Carrington.

“I’ll want a passable breakfast this morning, George,” he said; “I’m powerful hungry.”

He did not turn when Carrington went out, followed by Parsons.

The waiter hovered near him, grinning widely.

“I reckon you-all ain’t none scary, boss!” he said, admiringly.

CHAPTER IV – THE HOLD-UP

After breakfast – leaving a widely grinning waiter, who watched him admiringly – Taylor reentered the Pullman.

Stretching out in the upholstered seat, Taylor watched the flying landscape. But his thoughts were upon the two men he had overheard talking about the girl in the diner. Taylor made a grimace of disgust at the great world through which the train was speeding; and his feline grin when his thoughts dwelt definitely upon Carrington, indicated that the genial waiter had not erred greatly in saying Taylor was not “scary.”

Upon entering, Taylor had flashed a rapid glance into the car. He had seen Carrington and Parsons sitting together in one of the seats and, farther down, the girl, leaning back, was looking out of the window. Her back was toward Taylor. She had not seen him enter the car – and he was certain she had not seen him leave it to go to the diner. He had thought – as he had glanced at her as he went into the smoking compartment – that, despite the girl’s seemingly affectionate manner toward Parsons, and her cordial treatment of the big man, her manner indicated the presence of a certain restraint. And as he looked toward her, he wondered if Parsons or the big man had told her anything of the conversation in the diner in which he himself figured.

And now, looking out of the window, he decided that even if the men had told her, she would not betray her knowledge to him – unless it were to give him another scornful glance – the kind she threw at him when she saw him as he sat behind the two men when they had been talking of Dawes. Taylor reddened and gritted his teeth impotently; for he knew that if the two men had told her anything, they would have informed her, merely, that they had again caught him listening to them. And for that double offense, Taylor knew there would be no pardon from her.

Half an hour later, while still thinking of the girl and the men, Taylor felt the train slowing down. Peering as far ahead as he could by pressing his face against the glass of the window, Taylor saw the train was entering a big cut between some hills. It was a wild section, with a heavy growth of timber skirting the hills – on Taylor’s side of the train – and running at a sharp angle toward the right-of-way came a small river.

Taylor recognized the place as Toban’s Siding. He did not know how the spot had come by its name; nor did he know much about it except that there was a spur of track and a water-tank. And when the train began to slow down he supposed the engineer had decided to stop to take on water. He found himself wondering, though, why that should be necessary, for he was certain the train had stopped for water a few miles back, while he had been in the dining-car.

The train was already late, and Taylor grinned as he settled farther back in the seat and drew a sigh of resignation. There was no accounting for the whims of an engineer, he supposed.

He felt the train come to a jerking stop; and then fell a silence. An instant later the silence was broken by two sharp reports, a distinct interval between them. Taylor sat erect, the smile leaving his face, and his lips setting grimly as the word “Hold-up” came from between them.

Marion Harlan also heard the two reports. Stories of train robberies – recollections of travelers’ tales recurred in her brain as she sat, for the first tense instant following the reports, listening for other sounds. Her face grew a little pale, and a tremor ran over her; but she did not feel a bit like screaming – though in all the stories she had ever read, women always yielded to the hysteria of that moment in which a train-robber makes his presence known.

She was not frightened, though she was just a trifle nervous, and more than a trifle curious. So she pressed her cheek against the window-glass and looked forward.

What she saw caused her to draw back again, her curiosity satisfied. For on the side of the cut near the engine, she had seen a man with a rifle – a masked man, tall and rough-looking – and it seemed to her that the weapon in his hands was menacing someone in the engine-cab.

She stiffened, looking quickly around the car. None of the passengers had moved. Carrington and Parsons were still sitting together in the seat. They were sitting erect, though, and she saw they, too, were curious. More, she saw that both men were pale, and that Carrington, the instant she turned, became active – bending over, apparently trying to hide something under a seat. That movement on Carrington’s part was convincing, and the girl drew a deep breath.

While she was debating the wisdom of permitting her curiosity to drive her to the door nearest her to determine what had happened, the door burst open and a masked man appeared in the opening!

While she stared at him, he uttered the short, terse command:

“Hands up!”

She supposed that meant her, as well as the men in the car, and she complied, though with a resentful glare at the mask.

Daringly she turned her head and glanced back. Carrington had his hands up, too; and Parsons – and the tourist, and the other man. She did not see Taylor – though she wondered, on the instant, if he, too, would obey the train-robber’s command.

She decided he would – any other course would have been foolhardy; though she could not help remembering that queer gleam in Taylor’s eyes. That gleam, it had seemed to her, was a reflection of – not foolhardiness, but of sheer courage.

However, she had little time to speculate. The masked man advanced, a heavy gun in his right hand, its muzzle moving from side to side, menacing them all.

He halted when he had advanced to within a step of the girl.

“You guys set tight!” he ordered gruffly – in the manner of the train-robber of romance. “If you go to lettin’ down your sky-hooks one little quiver, I bore you so fast an’ plenty that you’ll think you’re a colander!” Then he turned the mask toward the girl; she could feel his eyes burning through it.

“Shell out, lady!” he commanded.

She stared straight back at the eye-slits in the mask, defiance glinting her own eyes.

“I haven’t any money – or anything of value – to give you,” she returned.

“You’ve got a pocketbook there – in your hand!” he said. “Fork it over!” He removed his hat, held it in his left hand, and extended it toward her. “Toss it in there!”

Hesitatingly, she obeyed, though not without a vindictive satisfaction in knowing that he would find little in the purse to compensate him for his trouble. She could see his eyes gleam greedily as he still looked at her.

“Now that chain an’ locket you’ve got around your neck!” he ordered. “Quick!” he added, savagely, as she stiffened and glared at him.

She did as she was bidden, though; for she had no doubt he would kill her – at least his manner indicated he would. And so she removed it, held it lingering in her hand for an instant, and then tossed it into the hat. She gulped as she did so, for the trinket had been given to her by her father before he left home to go on that pilgrimage from which he had never returned.

“That’s all, eh?” snarled the man. “Well, I ain’t swallowin’ that! I’m goin’ to search you!”

She believed she must have screamed at that. She knew she stood up, prepared to fight him if he attempted to carry out his threat; and once on her feet she looked backward.

Neither Carrington nor Parsons had moved – they were palely silent, watching, not offering to interfere. As for that, she knew that any sign of interference on the part of her friends would result in their instant death. But she did not know what they should do! Something must be done, for she could not permit the indignity the man threatened!

Still looking backward, she saw Taylor standing at the end of the car – where the partition of the smoking-compartment extended outward. He held a gun in each hand. He had heard her scream, and on his face as the girl turned toward him, she saw a mirthless grin that made her shiver. She believed it must have been her gasp that caused the train-robber to look swiftly at Taylor.

Whatever had caused the man to look toward the rear of the car, he saw Taylor; and the girl saw him stiffen as his pistol roared in her ears. Taylor’s pistols crashed at the same instant – twice – the reports almost together. Afterward she could not have told what surprised her the most – seeing the man at her side drop his pistol and lurch limply against a corner of the seat opposite her, and from there slide gently to the floor, grunting; or the spectacle of Taylor, arrayed in cowboy garb, emerging from the door of the smoking-compartment, the mirthless smile on his face, and his guns – he had used both – blazing forth death to the man who had threatened her.

Nor could she – afterward – have related what followed the sudden termination of the incident in the car. Salient memories stood out – the vivid and tragic recollection of chief incidents that occurred immediately; but she could not have even guessed how they happened.

She saw Taylor as he stood for an instant looking down at the man after he came running forward to where the other lay; and she saw Taylor leap for the front door of the car, vanish through it, and slam it after him.

For an instant after that there was silence, during which she shuddered as she tried to keep her gaze from the thing that lay doubled oddly in the aisle.

And then she heard more shooting. It came from the direction of the engine – the staccato crashing of pistols; the shouts of men, their voices raised in anger.

Pressing her cheek against the window-pane, and looking forward toward the engine, she saw Taylor. With a gun in each hand, he was running down the little level between the track and the steep wall of the cut, toward her. She noted that his face still wore the mirthless grin that had been on it when he shot the train-robber in the car; though his eyes were alight with the lust of battle – that was all too plain – and she shivered. For Taylor, having killed one man, and grimly pursuing others, seemed to suggest the spirit of this grim, rugged country – the threat of death that seemed to linger on every hand.

She saw him snap a shot as he ran, bending far over to send the bullet under the car; she heard a pistol crash from the other side of the car; and then she saw Taylor go to his knees.

She gasped with horror and held to the window-sill, for she feared Taylor had been killed. But almost instantly she saw her error, for Taylor was on his hands and knees crawling when she could again concentrate her gaze; and she knew he was crawling under the car to catch the man who had shot from the other side.

Then Taylor disappeared, and she did not see him for a time. She heard shots, though; many of them; and then, after a great while, a silence. And during the silence she sat very still, her face white and her lips stiff, waiting.

The silence seemed to endure for an age; and then it was broken by the sound of voices, the opening of the door of the car, and the appearance of Taylor and some other men – several members of the train-crew; the express-messenger; the engineer, his right arm hanging limply – and two men, preceding the others, their hands bound, their faces sullen.

On Taylor’s face was the grin that had been on it all along. The girl wondered at the man’s marvelous self-control – for certainly during those moments of excitement and danger he must have been aware of the terrible risk he had been running. And then the thought struck her – she had not considered that phase of the situation before – that she must have screamed; that he had heard her, and had emerged from the smoking-room to protect her. She blushed, gratitude and a riot of other emotions overwhelming her, so that she leaned weakly back in the seat, succumbing to the inevitable reaction.

She did not look at Taylor again; she did not even see him as he walked toward the rear of the car, followed by the train-crew, and preceded by the two train-robbers he had captured.

But as the train-crew passed her, she heard one of them say:

“That guy’s a whirlwind with a gun! Didn’t do no hesitatin’, did he?”

And again:

“Now, what do you suppose would make a guy jump in that way an’ run a chance of gettin’ plugged – plenty? Do you reckon he was just yearnin’ fer trouble, or do you reckon they was somethin’ else behind it?”

The girl might have answered, but she did not. She sat very still, comparing Carrington with this man who had plunged instantly into a desperate gun-fight to protect her. And she knew that Carrington would not have done as Taylor had done. And had Carrington seen her face just at that moment he would have understood that there was no possibility of him ever achieving the success of which he had dreamed.

She heard one of the men say that the two men were to be placed in the baggage-car until they reached Dawes; and then Carrington and Parsons came to where she sat.

They talked, but the girl did not hear them, for her thoughts were on the picture Taylor made when he appeared at the door of the smoking-compartment arrayed in his cowboy rigging, the grim smile on his face, his guns flaming death to the man who thought to take advantage of her helplessness.

CHAPTER V – THE UNEXPECTED

The train pulled out again presently, and the water-tank and the cut were rapidly left in the rear. Taylor returned to the smoking-room and resumed his seat, and while the girl looked out of the window, some men of the train-crew removed the body of the train-robber and obliterated all traces of the fight. And Carrington and Parsons, noting the girl’s abstractedness, again left her to herself.

It had been the girl’s first glimpse of a man in cowboy raiment, and, as she reflected, she knew she might have known Taylor was an unusual man. However, she knew it now.

Cursory glances at drawings she had seen made her familiar with the type, but the cowboys of those drawings had been magnificently arrayed in leather chaparajos, usually fringed with spangles; and with long-roweled spurs; magnificent wide brims – also bespangled, and various other articles of personal adornment, bewildering and awe inspiring.

But this man, though undoubtedly a cow-puncher, was minus the magnificent raiment of the drawings. And, paradoxical as it may seem, the absence of any magnificent trappings made him seem magnificent.

But she was not so sure that it was the lack of those things that gave her that impression. He did not bulge in his cowboy clothing; it fitted him perfectly. She was sure it was he who gave magnificence to the clothing. Anyway, she was certain he was magnificent, and her eyes glowed. She knew, now that she had seen him in clothing to which he was accustomed, and which he knew how to wear, that she would have been more interested in him yesterday had he appeared before her arrayed as he was at this moment.

He had shown himself capable, self-reliant, confident. She would have given him her entire admiration had it not been for the knowledge that she had caught him eavesdropping. That action had almost damned him in her estimation – it would have completely and irrevocably condemned him had it not been for her recollection of the stern, almost savage interest she had seen in his eyes while he had been listening to Carrington and Parsons.

She knew because of that expression that Carrington and Parsons had been discussing something in which he took a personal interest. She had not said so much to Carrington, but her instinct told her, warned her, gave her a presentiment of impending trouble. That was what she had meant when she had told Carrington she had seen fighting in Taylor’s eyes.

Taylor confined himself to the smoking-compartment. The negro porter, with pleasing memories of generous tips and a grimmer memory to exact his worship, hung around him, eager to serve him, and to engage him in conversation; once he grinningly mentioned the incident of the cast-off clothing of the night before.

“I ain’t mentionin’ it, boss – not at all! I ain’t givin’ you them duds till you ast for them. You done took me by s’prise, boss – you shuah did. I might’ near caved when you shoved that gun under ma nose – I shuah did, boss. I don’t want to have nothin’ to do with your gun, boss – I shuah don’t. She’d go ‘pop,’ an’ I wouldn’t be heah no more!

“I didn’t reco’nize you in them heathen clo’s you had on yesterday, boss; but I minds you with them duds on. I knows you; you’re ‘Squint’ Taylor, of Dawes. I’ve seen you on that big black hoss of yourn, a prancin’ an’ a prancin’ through town – more’n once I’ve seen you. But I didn’t know you in them heathen clo’s yesterday, boss – ’deed I didn’t!”