The Ranchman

by Charles Alden Seltzer

“I reckon we got here just in time, boss!” he said. “They didn’t git you or Bud? No?” at Taylor’s grin. “Well, we’re wipin’ them out—that’s all! That Keats bunch can’t run in no raw deal like that on the Arrow—not while I’m range boss. Law? Bah! Every damned man that runs with Keats would have stretched hemp before this if they’d have been any law in the country! A clean-up, eh—that’s what they tryin’ to pull off. Well, watch my smoke!”

His voice leaping with passion, Bothwell slapped his horse sharply, and as the animal leaped down the trail toward Dawes, Bothwell shouted to the other men of the outfit, who had halted at a little distance back in the gorge:

“Come a runnin’, you yaps! That ornery bunch can’t git out of this section without hittin’ the basin trail!”

Bothwell and the others fled down the gorge like a devastating whirlwind before Taylor could offer a word of objection.

As a matter of fact, Taylor had paid little attention to Bothwell’s threats. He knew that the big range boss was in a bitter rage, and he had been aware of the ill-feeling that had existed for some time between Keats and his friends and the men of the Arrow outfit.

But the deserved punishment of Keats was not the burden his mind carried at this instant. Dominating every other thought in Taylor’s brain was the obvious, naked fact that Carrington had struck at him again; that he had struck underhandedly, as usual; and that he would continue to fight with that method until he was victorious or beaten.

And yet Taylor was not so much concerned over the blow that had been aimed at him as he was of its probable effect upon Marion Harlan. For of course the girl had heard of the charge by this time—or she would hear of it. It would be all the same in the end. And at a blow the girl’s faith in him would be destroyed—the faith that he had been nurturing, and upon which he had built his hopes.

To be sure he had Larry Harlan’s note to show her, to convince her of his innocence, but he knew that once the poison of suspicion and doubt got into her heart, she could never give him that complete confidence of which he had dreamed. She might, now that Carrington had spread his poison, conclude that he had forged the note, trusting in it to disarm the suspicions of herself and of the world. And if she were to demand why he had not shown her the note before—when she had first come to the Arrow—he could not tell her that he had determined never to show it to her, lest she understand that he knew her mother’s sordid history. That secret, he had promised himself, she would never know; nor would she ever know of the vicious significance of that conversation he had overheard between Carrington and Parsons on the train coming to Dawes. He was convinced that if she knew these things she would never be able to look him in the eyes again.

Therefore, knowing the damage Carrington had wrought by bringing the charge of murder against him, Taylor’s rage was now definitely centered upon his enemy. The pursuit and punishment of Keats was a matter of secondary consideration in his mind—Bothwell and the men of the outfit would take care of the man. But Taylor could no longer fight off the terrible rage that had seized him over the knowledge of Carrington’s foul methods, and when he mounted Spotted Tail and urged him down the trail toward the Arrow ranchhouse, there was a set to his lips that caused Norton, who had brought his horse to a halt near him, to look sharply at him and draw a quick breath.

Not speaking to Norton, nor to Bud—who had also remained to watch him—Taylor straightened Spotted Tail to the trail and sent him flying toward the Arrow. Taylor looked neither to the right nor left, nor did he speak to Norton and Bud, who rode hard after him. Down the trail at a point where the neck of the gorge broadened and merged into the grass level that stretched, ever widening, to the Arrow, Spotted Tail and his rider flashed past a big cluster of low hills from which came flame-streaks and the sharp, cracking reports of rifles, the yells of men in pain, and the hoarse curses of men in the grip of the fighting rage.