“Bah!” Carrington leaned over the other, grinning malevolently.
“You’ve double-crossed me, Elam,” he said silkily. “You’re through. Get out of here before I kill you! I want to; and if you are here in five minutes, I shall kill you! Go to the Arrow—with your niece. Tell her what you know about me—if you haven’t done so already. And tell her that I am coming for her—and for Taylor, too! Now, get out!”
In less than five minutes, while Carrington was at the front of the house talking with the three men, Parsons tottered from a rear door, staggered weakly into some dense shrubbery that skirted the far side of the house, and made his slow way toward the big slope down which Marion and Martha had gone some hours before.
Retribution had descended swiftly upon Parsons; it seemed to him he was out of it, crushed and beaten. But no thread of philosophy weaved its way through the fabric of the man’s complete misery and humiliation, and no reflection that he had merely reaped what he had sown glimmered in his consciousness. He was merely conscious that he had been beaten and robbed by the man who had always been his confederate, and as he reeled down the big slope on his way to the Arrow he whined and moaned in a toneless voice of vengeance—and more vengeance.
CHAPTER XIX—THE AMBUSH
The incident of the fight between Carrington, Danforth, Judge Littlefield, and Taylor in front of the courthouse had eloquently revealed a trait of Taylor’s character which was quite generally known to the people of Dawes, and which, in a great measure, accounted for Taylor’s popularity.
Few of Dawes’s citizens had ever seen Taylor angry. Neil Norton had seen him in a rage once, and the memory of the man’s face was still vivid. A few of the town’s citizens had watched him once—when he had thrashed a gunman who had insulted him—and the story of that fight still taxed the vocabularies of those who had witnessed it. One enthusiastic watcher, at the conclusion of the fight, had picturesquely termed Taylor a “regular he-wolf in a scrap;” and thus there was written into the traditions of the town a page of his history which carried the lesson, repeated by many tongues:
“Don’t rile Taylor!”
Riding into Dawes about two hours after he had heard from Marion Harlan the story of the attack on her by Carrington, Taylor’s face was set and grim. His ancient hatred of Carrington was intensified by another passion that had burned its way into his heart, filling it with a primitive lust to destroy—jealousy.
He dismounted in front of the Castle Hotel, and, entering, he asked the clerk where he could find Carrington. The clerk could give him no information, and Taylor went out, the clerk’s puzzled gaze following him.