THE KILLER STRIKES
It was generally recognized that the Republicans would carry the state that year. The war was still so near that it would have a determining influence on thousands of voters. The chief local interest centred in the race for the nomination of the dominant party for secretary of state.
This was due to several factors. Chief of these was the fight between two candidates of outstanding personality, a fight which rapidly developed into a bitter one. Scot McClintock was still the most picturesque figure in Nevada, though he had left behind him his wild escapades and his gay irresponsibility. The mining camps were yet full of the rumour of his adventures. In any assembly his good looks, charm, and qualities of leadership made him a marked figure. His audacity and courage fitted the time and the place. Men tremendously admired him because they saw in him what they would like to be themselves.
The character of Ralph Dodson made no appeal to men’s affections. He was too cold and calculating, his ambition too ruthless. But they recognized his strength. He would travel a long way in the world.
The big mining interests supported Dodson. Scot was too much a tribune of the people to suit them. At any time he might embarrass the mine owners by some quixotic gesture inspired by his sense of justice.
Scot went out into the camps and the agricultural valleys to make a personal campaign. If he had been dealing with the voters individually he could have made a runaway race of it. But delegates to conventions, then as now, were under the influence of leaders, who in turn took orders from the men who financed the campaign. He was under a tremendous handicap because he had only an individual following to oppose a party machine.
Yet he made headway, and so fast that his opponent became alarmed. Dodson came out in the Enterprise with a savage attack on his rival in which he accused him of being an ex-gambler and a bawdy-house brawler. Scot kept his temper and made no counter charges. From the stump he replied that at least he had always been a square gambler. His fighting record, he said carelessly, must take care of itself.
Vicky met Ralph Dodson on the Avenue at Piodie while the campaign was at its height. She fired point blank a charge at him.
“I read what you said in the Enterprise about Scot.”
He laughed a little, but his eyes watched her warily. “You’d think once in a while some newspaper reporter would get a story right,” he said easily.
“Oh! Wasn’t it true that you said it?” Her level gaze met his steadily.
“I was annoyed, and I said something. Don’t remember just what. Certainly I didn’t intend to insult any of your family.”
“Then you’ll deny it in the paper?”
“Is it quite worth-while? Everybody knows what newspapers are—how they’re keen to make everything one says sensational.”
“If you don’t deny it people will think you said it.”
“We-ell, in a political campaign men get excited. It doesn’t greatly matter what folks say—just part of the game, you know.”
“Is it part of the game to tell lies about a good man?” she asked flatly.
He threw up his hands gaily. “I surrender at discretion. Will a note to the Enterprise correcting the error suit your Majesty?”
“You’re not doing it for me,” she told him, her dark eyes shining. “You’re doing it because it’s the fair thing.”
“Hang the fair thing,” he answered, laughing. “I’m doing it for Miss Victoria Lowell.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” She dimpled to a smile. “Because I’m against you and for Scot in this fight.”
“Then I’ll give up the race,” he mocked. “I think you ought at least to be neutral.”
Dodson played his hand under cover after that. He saw that McClintock was kept under a steady fire of newspaper attack and that none of it could be traced to him. No paper dared make any reference to the origin of the trouble between Colonel McClintock and the Dodsons, but hired assassins of reputation whispered evil stories in which the names of Mollie and Scot appeared. These became so numerous that at last Scot in a speech full of eloquence and fierce indignation referred to the traducers of his wife as snakes in the grass who dared not come into the open for fear of having the life trampled out of them.
The bitterness grew, became acute. Robert Dodson, still full of venom and hatred, whispered in the ears of killers. The word was passed around quietly that McClintock might be shot down any time. Friends came to warn him. They carried the word to Hugh, who dropped his business at once and joined Scot at Austin. From this time the younger man, in spite of the Colonel’s good-humoured protest, travelled over the state with his brother as a lookout.
At Carson the killers struck.
Scot had addressed an enthusiastic meeting, at which he had been heckled by supporters of Dodson and had turned upon them with such witty scorn that they had slipped out of the hall discomfited. With Hugh beside him the speaker had returned to the Ormsby House. The younger brother was putting up at the house of a friend. He left Scot in his room ready to undress.
But when the colonel felt in his waistcoat pocket for a cigar he found none. He stepped down to the barroom to get one. Baldy Green, the old stage driver, was sitting by the office stove. The two fell into talk and Scot sat down to smoke his cigar with the old-timer.
A man whom Scot did not know lounged into the office and out again. In the darkness outside he whispered to two men. One of them was the ex-mule-skinner Hopkins, a dyed-in-the-wool bad man; the other was Sam Dutch.
The hotel office had three doors. One opened from the street, a rear one led to the rooms, the third was a double swing door separating the office from the bar. Scot’s chair was so placed that he faced the entrance from the street and the bar. His back was half-turned to the rear one.
The stage driver was talking. “You betcha, Colonel. If us old-timers had the say-so we’d elect you by a mile. Sure would. That slick scalawag Dodson, why he—he——”
Scot’s first warning came from Baldy’s consternation. His eyes popped out. They were staring at some apparition in the back of the room. The words of his sentence stuck in the roof of his mouth. Almost simultaneously came the click McClintock knew from of old.
He whirled in the chair dragging at his revolver. It caught on his coat. Two bolts of lightning flamed. The crash of heavy thunder filled the room. Scot sagged in his seat, the curly head falling forward heavily on the chest. From his slack fingers the revolver dropped.
Again the guns boomed. Another jagged knife thrust of pain went through and through Scot’s body.
“Got him. Got him good, Sam,” an exultant voice announced hoarsely through the smoke.
A hulking figure slouched forward cautiously. The victim lay huddled in the chair motionless, both hands empty of weapons. No sign of life showed in the lax body.
“Always said I’d git him.” Dutch broke into a storm of oaths. He reversed his revolver and struck the fallen head savagely with the butt.
“We’d better make a getaway,” the other man said hurriedly. “This ain’t no healthy place for us.”
The gorilla-man struck again and broke the hammer of his revolver.
“Out this way,” he said, and pushed through the swinging doors to the bar.
The heavy blows had beaten McClintock down so that he slid from the chair. The doctor who attended him afterwards said that the effect of them was temporarily to act as a counter-shock to the bullet wounds. His senses cleared and his hand found the revolver. He was cocking it as the second assassin vanished through the swing doors.
Scot concentrated his strength and energy, focussing every ounce of power left in him to do the thing in his mind. With his left hand as a support he raised the six-shooter and fired through the swing door. Then, inch by inch, he crawled forward to the barroom entrance, shoved the door open with his shoulder, and tried again to lift the forty-five. It was not in his ebbing forces to raise the heavy weapon from the floor.
But there was no need to use it again. The mule-skinner Hopkins lay face down on the floor, arms flung wide. Scot’s shot through the swing door had killed him instantly.
Baldy knelt beside his friend. “Did they get you, old-timer?” he asked, his voice shaking.
“I’m still kicking. Send for Hugh,” the wounded man gasped.
Half an hour later Hugh stood beside the bedside of his brother. Scot’s face was bloodless to the lips. He was suffering a good deal and was very weak. The doctor had told Hugh that he would not live till morning.
“I’m going—to—make it,” Scot said faintly.
“Wire—for—Mollie. Tell her—not to—worry.”
Mollie came down from Virginia. She reached Carson by daybreak. Scot was still living, still holding his own, though the doctors held out no hope of recovery. At the end of forty-eight hours he was in a high fever, but his strength was unabated. The fever broke. He came out of it weak but with the faint, indomitable smile of the unconquered on his face.
His hand pressed Mollie’s softly. “It’s all right, sweetheart. I’ll make it sure,” he promised.
The tears welled into her eyes. His courage took her by the throat and choked her, for the doctors still gave her no encouragement.
“Yes,” she whispered, and tried to keep the sob out of her voice.
“What’s a li’l’ thing like three bullets among one perfectly good man?” he asked whimsically.
“You’re not to talk, the doctor says,” she reproved.
“All right. Where’s Hugh?”
“He left yesterday to ’tend to some business.”
“What business?” A frown of anxiety wrinkled his pale forehead.
“He didn’t say.”
“Where did he go?”
“I didn’t ask him. He said he’d be back to-day or to-morrow, one.”
Scot thought this over, still with a troubled face. He guessed what this important business was that had called Hugh from his bedside at such a critical time. But he did not hint to Mollie his suspicion.
“When he comes back will you let me know right away, Honey? Or if he wires?”
“Yes. Now you must stop talking and take this powder.”
The smile that was a messenger to carry her all his love rested in his eyes. “I’ll be good, Mollie.”
He took the medicine and presently fell asleep.