CHAPTER VII.—THE TRAGEDY AT THE RANCH.
“That?” exclaimed Frank. “You must be mistaken! That man’s name is not Kilgore, it is Lawrence.”
He fancied the girl was crazy. He had wondered if her misfortune had affected her brain.
“This is the picture of Lawton Kilgore!” she repeated, in a dull tone.
“Do you think I would not know him anywhere—under any circumstances? This is the man who promised to marry me! This is the man my father hates as he hates a snake!”
“Well, that man is worthy of your father’s hatred,” said Merry, “for he is a thoroughbred villain. But I think you must be mistaken, for your father met him in Denver. This man had me arrested, and your father followed to the police station, and was instrumental in securing my release. If this man was Kilgore, your father would have found his opportunity to kill him.”
“You do not understand,” panted the girl. “Father has never seen him to know him—has never even seen his picture. If Lawton was known by another name, father would not have recognized him, even though they met in Denver.”
Frank began to realize that the girl was talking in a sensible manner, and something told him she spoke the truth. To his other crimes, Lawrence had added that of deceiving an innocent girl.
“And he is in Denver?” panted the rancher’s daughter. “He is so near! Oh, if he would come to me!”
Frank was sorry that he had permitted her to see the photographs, but it was too late now for regrets.
The girl pressed the picture to her lips.
“You must give it to me!” she panted. “I will take it to my room! I wish to be alone with it at once! Oh, I thank you!”
Then she hurried from the room, leaving Merry in anything but a pleasant frame of mind.
There was a sound outside the window. Frank got up and went over to the window. Looking out, he saw two horses standing at a little distance from the ranch. A man was holding them, and the faint light of the moon fell on the man’s face.
“Well, I wonder what that means?” speculated Frank. “Those horses are saddled and bridled. Who is going to ride them to-night?”
Then he remembered the two forms he had seen coming out of the mist that lay on the plain, and he wondered if they had not been two horsemen.
Something about the appearance of the man at the heads of the horses seemed familiar. He looked closer.
“About the size and build of Lloyd Fowler,” he muttered. “Looks like Fowler, but of course it is not.”
There was a step on the veranda, and a figure appeared at the open window. Into the room stepped a man.
Frank sprang back, and was face to face with the intruder.
“Leslie Lawrence!” he whispered.
“Yes,” said the man, advancing insolently; “I am Leslie Lawrence.”
“What do you want?”
“I want an engagement in your new company. I have come here for it. Will you give it to me?”
Frank was astounded by the insolence of the fellow.
“I should say not!” he exclaimed. “What do you take me for? No, Leslie Lawrence, alias Lawton Kilgore, villain, deceiver of innocent girls, wretch who deserves hanging, I will not give you an engagement, unless it is with an outraged father. Go! If you wish to live, leave instantly. If Kent Carson finds you here, he will know you now, and your life will not be worth a cent!”
At this moment the door was flung open, and Ephraim Gallup came striding into the room, saying as he entered:
“Darned if I knowed there was a purty young gal in this haouse! Thought I’d come daown, Frank, an’ see if yeou was goin’ to stay up all night writin’ on that play of—— Waal, I be gosh-blamed!”
Ephraim saw Lawrence, and he was astounded.
“Didn’t know yeou hed visitors, Frank,” he said.
“So you refuse me an engagement, do you, Merriwell?” snarled Lawrence. “All right! You’ll wish you hadn’t in a minute!”
He made a spring for the table and caught up the manuscript lying on it. Then he leaped toward the open grate, where the fire was burning.
“That’s the last of your old play!” he shouted, hurling the manuscript into the flames.
Both Frank and Ephraim sprang to save the play, but neither of them was in time to prevent Lawrence’s revengeful act.
“You miserable cur!” panted Frank.
Out shot his fist, striking the fellow under the ear, and knocking him down.
At the same time Ephraim snatched the manuscript from the fire and beat out the flames which had fastened on it.
Lawrence sat up, his hand going round to his hip. He wrenched out a revolver and lifted it.
Frank saw the gleam of the weapon, realized his danger, and dropped an instant before the pistol spoke.
The shot rang out, but even as he pressed the trigger, Lawrence realized that Merriwell had escaped. But beyond Frank, directly in line, he saw a pale-faced girl who had suddenly appeared in the open door. He heard her cry “Lawton!” and then, through the puff of smoke, he saw her clutch her breast and fall on the threshold, shot down by his own hand!
Horror and fear enabled him to spring up, plunge out of the open window, reach the horses, leap on one and go thundering away toward the moonlight mists as if Satan were at his heels.
There was a tumult at the Twin Star. There was hot mounting to pursue Lawrence and his companion. Carson had heard the shot. He had rushed down to find his daughter, shot in the side, supported in the arms of Frank Merriwell.
A few words had told Carson just what had happened.
He swore a fearful oath to follow Lawrence to death.
The girl heard the oath. She opened her eyes and whispered:
“Father—don’t! He didn’t mean—to shoot—me! It was—an—accident!”
“I’ll have the whelp stiff at my feet before morning!” vowed the revengeful rancher.
He gave orders for the preparing of horses. He saw his daughter carried to her room. He lingered till the old black housekeeper was at the bedside to bind up the wound and do her best to save the girl.
Then Carson bounded down the stairs and sent a cowboy flying off on horseback for the nearest doctor, a hundred miles away.
“Kill the horse under ye, if necessary, Prescott!” he had yelled at the cowboy. “Get the doctor here as quick as you can!”
“All right, sir!” shouted Prescott, as he thundered away.
“Now!” exclaimed Kent Carson—“now to follow that murderous hound till I run him to earth!”
He found men and horses ready and waiting. He found Frank Merriwell and Bart Hodge there, both of them determined to take part in the pursuit.
“We know him,” said Merriwell. “He fired that shot at me. We can identify him.”
Frank believed that Lawrence had murdered the rancher’s daughter, and he, like the others, was eager to run the wretch down.
They galloped away in pursuit, the rancher, four cowboys, Merriwell and Hodge, all armed, all grim-faced, all determined.
The sun had risen when they came riding back to the ranch. Ephraim Gallup met Frank.
“Did ye git ther critter?” he asked, in a whisper.
“No,” was the answer.
“Then he got erway?” came in accents of disappointment from the Vermonter.
“No.”
“Whut? Haow’s that?”
“Neither Lawrence nor Fowler escaped.”
“Then it was Fowler with him?”
“I believe so.”
“Whut happened to um?”
“They attempted to ford Big Sandy River.”
“An’ got drownded?”
“No. Where they tried to cross is nothing but a bed of quicksands. Horses and men went down into the quicksands. They were swallowed up forever.”
The doctor came at last. He extracted the bullet from Blanche Carson’s side, and he told her she would get well, as the wound was not dangerous.
Kent Carson heard this with deep relief. He went to the bedside of the girl and knelt down there.
“Blanche,” he whispered, huskily, “can you forgive your old dad for treating you as he has? You are my own girl—my little Blanche—no matter what you have done.”
“Father!” she whispered, in return, “I am glad you have come to me at last. But you know you are ashamed of me—you can never forget what I have done.”
“I can forget now,” he declared, thinking of the man under the quicksands of Big Sandy. “You are my daughter. I am not ashamed of you. You shall never again have cause for saying that of me.”
“Kiss me, papa!” she murmured.
Sobbing brokenly, he pressed his lips to her cheeks.
And when he was gone from the room she took a photograph from beneath her pillow and gazed at it long and lovingly.
She knew not that the man had been swallowed beneath the quicksands of the Big Sandy.
The tragic occurrences of the night hastened the departure of Frank and his friends from Twin Star Ranch, although Kent Carson urged them to remain. Frank had, however, finished his play, which, thanks to the prompt act of Ephraim, had been only slightly injured by its fiery experience, and was anxious to put it in rehearsal.
So, a day or so later, Frank, Bart and Ephraim were once more in Denver.