Lambert pushed it away. A man beside him gave it a kick that sent it spinning back into the trodden circle. Tom was at that moment rounding his beat at the farther end. He came face about just as the hat skimmed across the floor, stopped, jerked himself up stiffly, looked at Lambert with a leap of anger across his drunken face.
Immediately there was silence in the crowd that had been a.s.sisting on the side lines of his performance. They saw that Tom resented this treatment of his hat by any foot save his own. The man who had kicked it had fallen back with shoulders to the bar, where he stood presenting the face of innocence. Tom walked out to the hat, kicked it back within a few feet of Lambert, his hand on his gun.
He was all Indian now; the streak of smoky white man was engulfed. His handsome face was black with the surge of his lawless blood as he stopped a little way in front of Lambert.
"Pick up that hat!" he commanded, smothering his words in an avalanche of profanity.
Lambert scarcely changed his position, save to draw himself erect and stand clear of the bar. To those in front of him he seemed to be carelessly lounging, like a man with time on his hands, peace before him.
"Who was your n.i.g.g.e.r last year, young feller?" he asked, with good-humor in his words. He was reading Tom"s eyes as a prize fighter reads his opponent"s, watching every change of feature, every strain of facial muscle. Before young Hargus had put tension on his sinews to draw his weapon, Lambert had read his intention.
The muzzle of the pistol was scarcely free of the scabbard when Lambert cleared the two yards between them in one stride. A grip of the wrist, a twist of the arm, and the gun was flung across the room. Tom struggled desperately, not a word out of him, striking with his free hand. Sinewy as he was, he was only a toy in Lambert"s hands.
"I don"t want to have any trouble with you, kid," said Lambert, capturing Tom"s other hand and holding him as he would have held a boy.
"Put on your hat and go home."
Lambert released him, and turned as if he considered the matter ended.
At his elbow a man stood, staring at him with insolent, threatening eyes. He was somewhat lower of stature than Lambert, thick in the shoulders, firmly set on the feet, with small mustache, almost colorless and harsh as hog bristles. His thin eyebrows were white, his hair but a shade darker, his skin light for an outdoors man. This, taken with his pale eyes, gave him an appearance of bloodless cruelty which the sneer on his lip seemed to deepen and express.
Behind Lambert men were holding Tom Hargus, who had made a lunge to recover his gun. He heard them trying to quiet him, while he growled and whined like a wolf in a trap. Lambert returned the stranger"s stare, withholding anything from his eyes that the other could read, as some men born with a certain cold courage are able to do. He went back to the bar, the man going with him shoulder to shoulder, turning his malevolent eyes to continue his unbroken stare.
"Put up that gun!" the fellow said, turning sharply to Tom Hargus, who had wrenched free and recovered his weapon. Tom obeyed him in silence, picked up his hat, beat it against his leg, put it on.
"You"re the Duke of Chimney b.u.t.te, are you?" the stranger inquired, turning again with his sneer and cold, insulting eyes to Lambert, who knew him now for Sim Hargus, foreman for Berry Kerr.
"If you know me, there"s no need for us to be introduced," Lambert returned.
"Duke of Chimney b.u.t.te!" said Hargus with immeasurable scorn. He grunted his words with such an intonation of insult that it would have been pardonable to shoot him on the spot. Lambert was slow to kindle. He put a curb now on even his naturally deliberate vehicle of wrath, looking the man through his shallow eyes down to the roots of his mean soul.
"You"re the feller that"s come here to teach us fellers to take off our hats when we see a fence," Hargus said, looking meaner with every breath.
"You"ve got it right, pardner," Lambert calmly replied.
"Duke of Chimney b.u.t.te! Well, pardner, I"m the King of Hotfoot Valley, and I"ve got travelin" papers for you right here!"
"You seem to be a little sudden about it," Lambert said, a lazy drawl to his words that inflamed Hargus like a blow.
"Not half as sudden as you"ll be, kid. This country ain"t no place for you, young feller; you"re too fresh to keep in this hot climate, and the longer you stay the hotter it gits. I"ll give you just two days to make your gitaway in."
"Consider the two days up," said Lambert with such calm and such coolness of head that men who heard him felt a thrill of admiration.
"This ain"t no joke!" Hargus corrected him.
"I believe you, Hargus. As far as it concerns me, I"m just as far from this country right now as I"ll be in two days, or maybe two years.
Consider your limit up."
It was so still in the barroom that one could have heard a match burn.
Lambert had drawn himself up stiff and straight before Hargus, and stood facing him with defiance in every line of his stern, strong face.
"I"ve give you your rope," Hargus said, feeling that he had been called to show his hand in an open manner that was not his style, and playing for a footing to save his face. "If you ain"t gone in two days you"ll settle with me."
"That goes with me, Hargus. It"s your move."
Lambert turned, contempt in his courageous bearing, and walked out of the place, scorning to throw a glance behind to see whether Hargus came after him, or whether he laid hand to his weapon in the treachery that Lambert had read in his eyes.
CHAPTER XV
WOLVES OF THE RANGE
Lambert left his horse at the saloon hitching-rack while he went to the store. Business was brisk in that place, also, requiring a wait of half an hour before his turn came. In a short time thereafter he completed his purchases, tied his package to his saddle, and was ready to go home.
The sound of revelry was going forward again in the saloon, the mechanical banjo plugging away on its tiresome tune. There was a gap here and there at the rack where horses had been taken away, but most of them seemed to be anch.o.r.ed there for the night, standing dejectedly with drooping heads.
The tinkle of Alta"s guitar sounded through the open window of the hotel parlor as he pa.s.sed, indicating that Taterleg was still in that harbor.
It would be selfish to call him, making the most as he was of a clear field. Lambert smiled as he recalled the three-cornered rivalry for Alta"s bony hand.
There was a lemon-rind slice of new moon low in the southwest, giving a dusky light, the huddling sage clumps at the roadside blotches of deepest shadow. Lambert ruminated on the trouble that had been laid out for him that night as he rode away from town, going slowly, in no hurry to put walls between him and the soft, pleasant night.
He was confronted by the disadvantage of an unsought notoriety, or reputation, or whatever his local fame might be called. A man with a fighting name must live up to it, however distasteful the strife and turmoil, or move beyond the circle of his fame. Move he would not, could not, although it seemed a foolish thing, on reflection, to hang on there in the lure of Grace Kerr"s dark eyes.
What could a man reasonably expect of a girl with such people as Sim Hargus as her daily a.s.sociates? Surely she had been schooled in their warped view of justice, as her act that day proved. No matter for Omaha and its refinements, she must be a savage under the skin. But gentle or savage, he had a tender regard for her, a feeling of romantic sympathy that had been groping out to find her as a plant in a pit strains toward the light. Now, in the sunshine of her presence, would it flourish and grow green, or wither in its mistaken worship and die?
Vesta had warned him, not knowing anything of the peculiar circ.u.mstances which brought him to that place, or of his discovery, which seemed a revelation of fate, the conjunction of events shaped before his entry upon the stage, indeed. She had warned him, but in the face of things as they had taken place, what would it avail a man to turn his back on the arrangements of destiny? As it was written, so it must be lived. It was not in his hand or his heart to change it.
Turning these things in his mind, flavoring the bitter in the prospect with the sweet of romance, he was drawn out of his wanderings by the sudden starting of his horse. It was not a shying start, but a stiffening of att.i.tude, a leap out of laxity into alertness, with a lifting of the head, a fixing of the ears as if on some object ahead, of which it was at once curious and afraid.
Lambert was all tension in a breath. Ahead a little way the road branched at the point of the hill leading to the Philbrook house. His road lay to the right of the jutting plowshare of hill which seemed shaped for the mere purpose of splitting the highway. The other branch led to Kerr"s ranch, and beyond. The horse was plainly scenting something in this latter branch of the road, still hidden by the bushes which grew as tall there as the head of a man on horseback.
As the horse trotted on, Lambert made out something lying in the road which looked, at that distance, like the body of a man. Closer approach proved this to be the case, indeed. Whether the man was alive or dead, it was impossible to determine from the saddle, but he lay in a huddled heap as if he had been thrown from a horse, his hat in the road some feet beyond.
Whetstone would not approach nearer than ten or twelve feet. There he stood, swelling his sides with long-drawn breaths, snorting his warning, it seemed, expressing his suspicion in the best manner that he could command. Lambert spoke to him, but could not quiet his fear. He could feel the sensitive creature tremble under him, and took it as certain that the man must be dead.
Dismounting, he led the horse and bent over the man in the road. He could see the fellow"s shoulder move as he breathed, and straightened up with a creeping of apprehension that this might be a trap to draw him into just such a situation as he found himself that moment. The nervousness of his horse rather increased than quieted, also, adding color to his fear.
His foot was in the stirrup when a quick rush sounded behind him. He saw the man on the ground spring to his feet, and quick on the consciousness of that fact there came a blow that stretched him as stiff as a dead man.
Lambert came to himself with a half-drowned sense of suffocation. Water was falling on his head, pouring over his face, and there was the confused sound of human voices around him. As he cleared he realized that somebody was standing over him, pouring water on his head. He struggled to get from under the drowning stream. A man laughed, shook him, cursed him vilely close to his ear.
"Wake up, little feller, somebody"s a-cuttin" your fence!" said another, taking hold of him from the other side.
"Don"t hurt him, boys," admonished a third voice, which he knew for Berry Kerr"s--"this is the young man who has come to the Bad Lands with a mission. He"s going to teach people to take off their hats to barbed-wire fences. I wouldn"t have him hurt for a keg of nails."
He came near Lambert now, put a hand on his shoulder, and asked him with a gentle kindness how he felt.