The Boss of the Lazy Y Part 16

"Just to show you that what you said ain't botherin' me a heap," he had told Dade. "You're still yearlin' and need some one to keep an eye on you, so's some careless son of a gun won't herd-ride you."

That Dade accepted this in the spirit in which it was spoken made it possible for them to bunk together in amity. If Dade had "sized up"

Calumet, the latter had made no mistake in Dade.

Dade snuffed out the candle and followed Malcolm out. The latter went immediately to the ranchhouse, but Dade lingered until Calumet stepped down from the door of the bunkhouse.

"Bed suits me," suggested Dade. "Comin'?"

"I'm smokin' a cigarette first," said Calumet. "Mebbe two," he added as an afterthought.

He watched Malcolm go in; saw the light from the lamp on the table in the kitchen flare its light out through the kitchen door as Dade entered; heard the door close. The lamp still burned after he had seen Dade's shadow vanish, and he knew that Dade had gone upstairs. Dade had left the light burning for him.

Alone, Calumet rolled the cigarette he had promised himself, lit it, and then, in the flood of moonlight, walked slowly around the bunkhouse, estimating the material and work that would be necessary to repair it. Then, puffing at his cigarette, he made a round of the corral fence. It was a long trip, and he stopped twice to roll new cigarettes before he circled it. Then he examined the stable. This finished, he stepped over to the corral fence, leaned his arms on the top rail, and, in the moonlight that came over his shoulder, reread his father's letter, making out the picturesque chirography with difficulty.

As during the first days of his return, when he had watched the army of memories pa.s.s in review, he lingered over them now, and, to his surprise, discovered that he felt some little regret over his own conduct in those days preceding his leave-taking. To be sure, he had been only a boy at that time, but he had been a man since, and the cold light of reason should have shown him that there must have been cause for his father's brutal treatment of him--if indeed it had been brutal.

In fact, if he had acted in his youth as he had acted since reaching maturity, there was small reason to wonder that he had received blows.

Boys needed to be reprimanded, punished, and perhaps he had deserved all he had received.

The tone of his father's letters was distinctly sorrowful. Remorse, sincere remorse, had afflicted him. His father had been wronged, misled, betrayed, and humiliated by the Taggarts, and as Calumet stood beside the corral fence he found that all his rage--the bitter, malignant hatred which had once been in his heart against his father--had vanished, that it had been succeeded by an emotion that was new to him--pity. An hour, two hours, pa.s.sed before he turned and walked toward the ranchhouse. His lips were grim and white, tell-tale signs of a new resolve, as he stepped softly upon the rear porch, stealthily opened the kitchen door, and let himself in. He halted at the table on which stood the kerosene lamp, looking at the chair in which he had been sitting some hours before talking to Betty, blinking at the chair in which she had sat, summoning into his mind the picture she had made when he had voiced his suspicions about her knowledge of the contents of the letter she had given him. "n.o.body but a fool could hate Betty," the letter had read. And at the instant he had read the words he had known that he didn't hate her. But he was a fool, just the same; he was a fool for treating her as he did--as Dade had said.

He had known that all along; he knew that was the reason why he had curbed his rage when it would have driven him to commit some rash action. He had been a fool, but had he let himself go he would have been a bigger one.

Betty had appraised him correctly--"sized him up," in Dade's idiomatic phraseology--and knew that his vicious impulses were surface ones that had been acquired and not inherited, as he had thought. And he was strangely pleased.

He looked once around the room, noting the spotless cleanliness of it before he blew out the light. And then he stepped across the floor and into the dining-room, tip-toeing toward the stairs, that he might awaken no one. But he halted in amazement when he reached a point near the center of the room, for he saw, under the threshold of the door that led from the dining-room to his father's office, a weak, flickering beam of light.

The door was tightly closed. He knew from the fact that no light shone through it except from the s.p.a.ce between the bottom of it and the threshold that it was barred, for he had locked the door during the time he was repairing the house, and had satisfied himself that it could not be tightly closed unless barred. Someone was in the room, too. He heard the scuffle of a foot, the sound of a chair sc.r.a.ping on the floor. He stood rigid in the darkness of the dining-room, straining his ears to catch another sound.

For a long time he could hear only m.u.f.fled undertones which, while they told him that there were two or more persons in the room, gave him no clue to their ident.i.ty. And then, as he moved closer to the door, he caught a laugh, low, but clear and musical.

It was Betty's! He had heard it often when she had been talking to Dade; she had never laughed in that voice when talking to him!

He halted in his approach toward the door, watching the light under it, listening intently, afflicted with indecision. At first he felt only a natural curiosity over the situation, but as he continued to stand there he began to feel a growing desire to know who Betty was talking to. To be sure, Betty had a right to talk to whom she pleased, but this talk behind a barred door had an appearance of secrecy. And since he knew of no occasion for secrecy, the thing took on an element of mystery which irritated him. He smiled grimly in the darkness, and with infinite care sat down on the floor and removed his boots. Then he stole noiselessly over to the door and placed an ear against it.

Almost instantly he heard a man's voice. He did not recognize it, but the words were sufficiently clear and distinct. There was amus.e.m.e.nt in them.

"So you're stringin' him along all right, then?" said the voice. "I've got to hand it to you--you're some clever."

"I am merely following instructions." This in Betty's voice.

The man chuckled. "He's a hard case. I expected he'd have you all fired out by this time."

Betty laughed. "He is improving right along," she said. "He brought Bob another dog to replace Lonesome. I felt sorry for him that night."

"Well," said the man, "I'm glad he's learnin'. I reckon he's some impatient to find out where the idol is?"

"Rather," said Betty. "And he wanted the money right away."

The man laughed. "Well," he said, "keep stringin' him along until we get ready to lift the idol from its hidin' place. I've been thinkin'

that it'd be a good idea to take the durn thing over to Las Vegas an'

sell it. The money we'd get for it would be safer in the bank than the idol where it is. An' we could take it out when we get ready."

"No," said Betty firmly; "we will leave the idol where it is. No one but me knows, and I certainly will not tell."

"You're the boss," said the man. He laughed again, and then both voices became inaudible to Calumet.

A cold, deadly rage seized Calumet. Betty was deceiving him, trifling with him. Some plan that she had in mind with reference to him was working smoothly and well, so successfully that her confederate--for certainly the man in the room with her must be that--was distinctly pleased. Betty, to use the man's words, was "stringing" him. In other words, she was making a fool of him!

Those half-formed good resolutions which Calumet had made a few minutes before entering the house had fled long ago; he snarled now as he realized what a fool he had been for making them. Betty had been leading him on. He had been under the spell of her influence; he had been allowing her to shape his character to her will; he was, or had been, in danger of becoming a puppet which she could control by merely pulling some strings. She had been working on his better nature with selfish aims.

Who was the man? Malcolm? Dade? He thought not; the voice sounded strangely like Neal Taggart's. This suspicion enraged him, and he stepped back, intending to hurl himself against the door in an effort to smash it in. But he hesitated, leered cunningly at the door, and then softly and swiftly made his way upstairs.

He went first to his own room, for he half suspected that it might be Dade who was downstairs with Betty, and if it was-- Well, just now he remembered vividly how Dade had defied him, and he made a mental vow that if it were Dade who was with Betty the young man would leave the Lazy Y before dawn quite suddenly. But it was not Dade. Dade was in bed, snoring, stretched out comfortably.

Calumet slipped out of the room and went to Malcolm's. Both Bob and Malcolm were sound asleep. He hesitated for an instant, and then made his way slowly downstairs. Again he listened at the door. Betty and the man were still talking.

Calumet found his boots. He decided not to put them on until he got to the kitchen door, for he was determined to go around the outside of the house and lay in wait for Betty's confederate, and he did not want to make any sound that would scare him off. He was proceeding stealthily, directing his course through the darkness by a stream of moonlight that came in through one of the kitchen windows, and had almost reached the kitchen door when his feet struck an obstruction--something soft and yielding.

There was a sudden scurrying, a sharp, terrified yelp.

Calumet cursed. It was Bob's pup. The animal planted himself in the stream of moonlight that came in through the window, facing Calumet and emitting a series of short, high-pitched, resentful barks.

There was humor in this situation, but Calumet did not see it. He heard a cry of surprise from the direction of the dining-room, and he turned just in time to see the office door closing on a flood of light.

With savage energy and haste, he pulled on his boots, darted out of the house, ran across the rear porch, leaped down, and ran around the nearest corner of the house. As he ran he jerked his pistol from its holster.

When he got to the front of the house he bounded to the door of the office and threw it violently open, expecting to surprise Betty and her confederate. He was confronted by a dense blackness. He dodged back, fearing a trap, and then lighted a match and held it around the corner of one of the door jambs. After the match was burning well he threw it into the room and then peered after it. There came no reply to this challenge, and so he strode in boldly, lighting another match.

The room was empty.

He saw how it was. Betty and the man had heard the barking of the dog and had suspected the presence of an eavesdropper. The man had fled.

Probably by this time Betty was in her room. Calumet went out upon the porch, leaped off, and ran around the house in a direction opposite that which had marked his course when coming toward the front, covering the ground with long, swift strides. He reasoned that as he had seen no one leave the house from the other side or the front, whoever had been with Betty had made his escape in this direction, and he drew a breath of satisfaction when, approaching some underbrush near the kitchen, he saw outlined in the moonlight the figure of a man on a horse.

The latter had evidently just mounted, for at the instant Calumet saw him he had just settled into the saddle, one foot searching for a stirrup. He was about seventy-five feet distant, and he turned at about the instant that Calumet saw him. That instant was enough for Calumet, for as the man turned his face was bathed for a fraction of a second in the moonlight, and Calumet recognized him. It was Neal Taggart.

Calumet halted. His six-shooter roared at the exact second that the man buried his spurs in the flanks of his horse and threw himself forward upon its neck.

The bullet must have missed him only by a narrow margin, but it did miss, for he made no sign of injury. His instant action in throwing himself forward had undoubtedly saved his life. Calumet swung the pistol over his head and brought it down to a quick level, whipping another shot after the fleeing rider. But evidently the latter had antic.i.p.ated the action, for as he rode he jumped his horse from one side to another, and as the distance was already great, and growing greater, he made an elusive target.

Calumet saw his failure and stood silent, watching until Taggart was well out into the valley, riding hard, a cloud of dust enveloping him.

A yell reached Calumet from the distance--derisive, defiant, mocking.

Calumet cursed then, giving voice to his rage and disappointment.

He went glumly around to the front of the house and closed the door to the office. When he stepped off the porch, afterward, intending to go around the way he had come in order to enter the house, he heard a voice above him, and turned to see Dade, his head sticking out of an upstairs window, his hair in disorder, his eyes bulging, a forty-five gleaming in his hand. Back of him, his head over Dade's shoulder, stood Malcolm, and Bob's thin face showed between the two.

At another window, one of the front ones, was Betty. Of the four who were watching him, Betty seemed the least excited; it seemed to Calumet as he looked at her that there was some amus.e.m.e.nt in her eyes.

"Lordy!" said Dade as Calumet looked up at him, "how you scairt me!

Was it you shootin'? An' what in thunder was you shootin' _at_?"