The Man of the Forest - Zane Grey (white hot kiss txt) 📗

juncture Dale burst into the saloon, suddenly to

check his impetus, to swerve aside toward the bar and halt.

The door had not ceased swinging when again it was propelled

inward, this time to admit Helen Rayner, white and

wide-eyed.

 

In another moment then Las Vegas had spoken his deadly toast

to Beasley’s gang and had fiercely flung the glass at the

writhing Mexican on the floor. Also Dale had gravitated

toward the reeling Helen to catch her when she fainted.

 

Las Vegas began to curse, and, striding to Dale, he pushed

him out of the saloon.

 

“—! What ‘re you doin’ heah?” he yelled, stridently.

“Hevn’t you got thet girl to think of? Then do it, you big

Indian! Lettin’ her run after you heah — riskin’ herself

thet way! You take care of her an’ Bo an’ leave this deal to

me!”

 

The cowboy, furious as he was at Dale, yet had keen, swift

eyes for the horses near at hand, and the men out in the dim

light. Dale lifted the girl into his arms, and, turning

without a word, stalked away to disappear in the darkness.

Las Vegas, holding his gun low, returned to the bar-room. If

there had been any change in the crowd it was slight. The

tension had relaxed. Turner no longer stood with hands up.

 

“You-all go on with your fun,” called the cowboy, with a

sweep of his gun. “But it’d be risky fer any one to start

leavin’.”

 

With that he backed against the bar, near where the black

bottle stood. Turner walked out to begin righting tables and

chairs, and presently the crowd, with some caution and

suspense, resumed their games and drinking. It was

significant that a wide berth lay between them and the door.

From time to time Turner served liquor to men who called for

it.

 

Las Vegas leaned with back against the bar. After a while he

sheathed his gun and reached around for the bottle. He drank

with his piercing eyes upon the door. No one entered and no

one went out. The games of chance there and the drinking

were not enjoyed. It was a hard scene — that smoky, long,

ill-smelling room, with its dim, yellow lights, and dark,

evil faces, with the stealthy-stepping Turner passing to and

fro, and the dead Mulvey staring in horrible fixidity at the

ceiling, and the Mexican quivering more and more until he

shook violently, then lay still, and with the drinking,

somber, waiting cowboy, more fiery and more flaming with

every drink, listening for a step that did not come.

 

Time passed, and what little change it wrought was in the

cowboy. Drink affected him, but he did not become drunk. It

seemed that the liquor he drank was consumed by a mounting

fire. It was fuel to a driving passion. He grew more sullen,

somber, brooding, redder of eye and face, more crouching and

restless. At last, when the hour was so late that there was

no probability of Beasley appearing, Las Vegas flung himself

out of the saloon.

 

All lights of the village had now been extinguished. The

tired horses drooped in the darkness. Las Vegas found his

horse and led him away down the road and out a lane to a

field where a barn stood dim and dark in the starlight.

Morning was not far off. He unsaddled the horse and, turning

him loose, went into the barn. Here he seemed familiar with

his surroundings, for he found a ladder and climbed to a

loft, where he threw himself on the hay.

 

He rested, but did not sleep. At daylight he went down and

brought his horse into the barn. Sunrise found Las Vegas

pacing to and fro the short length of the interior, and

peering out through wide cracks between the boards. Then

during the succeeding couple of hours he watched the

occasional horseman and wagon and herder that passed on into

the village.

 

About the breakfast hour Las Vegas saddled his horse and

rode back the way he had come the night before. At Turner’s

he called for something to eat as well as for whisky. After

that he became a listening, watching machine. He drank

freely for an hour; then he stopped. He seemed to be drunk,

but with a different kind of drunkenness from that usual in

drinking men. Savage, fierce, sullen, he was one to avoid.

Turner waited on him in evident fear.

 

At length Las Vegas’s condition became such that action was

involuntary. He could not stand still nor sit down. Stalking

out, he passed the store, where men slouched back to avoid

him, and he went down the road, wary and alert, as if he

expected a rifle-shot from some hidden enemy. Upon his

return down that main thoroughfare of the village not a

person was to be seen. He went in to Turner’s. The

proprietor was there at his post, nervous and pale. Las

Vegas did not order any more liquor.

 

“Turner, I reckon I’ll bore you next time I run in heah,” he

said, and stalked out.

 

He had the stores, the road, the village, to himself; and he

patrolled a beat like a sentry watching for an Indian

attack.

 

Toward noon a single man ventured out into the road to

accost the cowboy.

 

“Las Vegas, I’m tellin’ you — all the greasers air leavin’

the range,” he said.

 

“Howdy, Abe!” replied Las Vegas. “What ‘n hell you talkin’

about?”

 

The man repeated his information. And Las Vegas spat out

frightful curses.

 

“Abe — you heah what Beasley’s doin’?”

 

“Yes. He’s with his men — up at the ranch. Reckon he can’t

put off ridin’ down much longer.”

 

That was where the West spoke. Beasley would be forced to

meet the enemy who had come out single-handed against him.

Long before this hour a braver man would have come to face

Las Vegas. Beasley could not hire any gang to bear the brunt

of this situation. This was the test by which even his own

men must judge him. All of which was to say that as the

wildness of the West had made possible his crimes, so it now

held him responsible for them.

 

“Abe, if thet — greaser don’t rustle down heah I’m goin’

after him.”

 

“Sure. But don’t be in no hurry,” replied Abe.

 

“I’m waltzin’ to slow music… . Gimme a smoke.”

 

With fingers that slightly trembled Abe rolled a cigarette,

lit it from his own, and handed it to the cowboy.

 

“Las Vegas, I reckon I hear hosses,” he said, suddenly.

 

“Me, too,” replied Las Vegas, with his head high like that

of a listening deer. Apparently he forgot the cigarette and

also his friend. Abe hurried back to the store, where he

disappeared.

 

Las Vegas began his stalking up and down, and his action now

was an exaggeration of all his former movements. A rational,

ordinary mortal from some Eastern community, happening to

meet this red-faced cowboy, would have considered him drunk

or crazy. Probably Las Vegas looked both. But all the same

he was a marvelously keen and strung and efficient

instrument to meet the portending issue. How many thousands

of times, on the trails, and in the wide-streeted little

towns all over the West, had this stalk of the cowboy’s been

perpetrated! Violent, bloody, tragic as it was, it had an

importance in that pioneer day equal to the use of a horse

or the need of a plow.

 

At length Pine was apparently a deserted village, except for

Las Vegas, who patrolled his long beat in many ways — he

lounged while he watched; he stalked like a mountaineer; he

stole along Indian fashion, stealthily, from tree to tree,

from corner to corner; he disappeared in the saloon to

reappear at the back; he slipped round behind the barns to

come out again in the main road; and time after time he

approached his horse as if deciding to mount.

 

The last visit he made into Turner’s saloon he found no one

there. Savagely he pounded on the bar with his gun. He got

no response. Then the long-pent-up rage burst. With wild

whoops he pulled another gun and shot at the mirror, the

lamps. He shot the neck off a bottle and drank till he

choked, his neck corded, bulging, and purple. His only slow

and deliberate action was the reloading of his gun. Then he

crashed through the doors, and with a wild yell leaped sheer

into the saddle, hauling his horse up high and goading him

to plunge away.

 

Men running to the door and windows of the store saw a

streak of dust flying down the road. And then they trooped

out to see it disappear. The hour of suspense ended for

them. Las Vegas had lived up to the code of the West, had

dared his man out, had waited far longer than needful to

prove that man a coward. Whatever the issue now, Beasley was

branded forever. That moment saw the decline of whatever

power he had wielded. He and his men might kill the cowboy

who had ridden out alone to face him, but that would not

change the brand.

 

The preceding night Beasley bad been finishing a late supper

at his newly acquired ranch, when Buck Weaver, one of his

men, burst in upon him with news of the death of Mulvey and

Pedro.

 

“Who’s in the outfit? How many?” he had questioned, quickly.

 

“It’s a one-man outfit, boss,” replied Weaver.

 

Beasley appeared astounded. He and his men had prepared to

meet the friends of the girl whose property he had taken

over, and because of the superiority of his own force he had

anticipated no bloody or extended feud. This amazing

circumstance put the case in very much more difficult form.

 

“One man!” he ejaculated.

 

“Yep. Thet cowboy Las Vegas. An’, boss, he turns out to be a

gun-slinger from Texas. I was in Turner’s. Hed jest happened

to step in the other room when Las Vegas come bustin’ in on

his hoss an’ jumped off… . Fust thing he called Jeff an’

Pedro. They both showed yaller. An’ then, damn if thet

cowboy didn’t turn his back on them an’ went to the bar fer

a drink. But he was lookin’ in the mirror an’ when Jeff an’

Pedro went fer their guns why he whirled quick as lightnin’

an’ bored them both… . I sneaked out an —”

 

“Why didn’t you bore him?” roared Beasley.

 

Buck Weaver steadily eyed his boss before he replied. “I

ain’t takin’ shots at any fellar from behind doors. An’ as

fer meetin’ Las Vegas — excoose me, boss! I’ve still a

hankerin’ fer sunshine an’ red liquor. Besides, I ‘ain’t got

nothin’ ag’in’ Las Vegas. If he’s rustled over here at the

head of a crowd to put us off I’d fight, jest as we’d all

fight. But you see we figgered wrong. It’s between you an’

Las Vegas! … You oughter seen him throw thet hunter Dale

out of Turner’s.”

 

“Dale! Did he come?” queried Beasley.

 

“He got there just after the cowboy plugged Jeff. An’ thet

big-eyed girl, she came runnin’ in, too. An’ she keeled over

in Dale’s arms. Las Vegas shoved him out — cussed him so

hard we all heerd… . So, Beasley, there ain’t no fight

comin’ off as we figgered on.”

 

Beasley thus heard the West speak out of the mouth of his

own man. And grim, sardonic, almost scornful, indeed, were

the words of Buck Weaver. This rider had once worked for Al

Auchincloss and had deserted to Beasley under Mulvey’s

leadership. Mulvey was dead and