“Nobody seems to know, certainly, that Will is dead. He and Mead had a quarrel a week ago and Mead threatened to kill him. Will left the ranch that day to come to town, and he hasn’t been seen since. Of course, he may have changed his mind and gone off to some other part of the range.”
“Of course,” she assented eagerly. “At this time of year he is very likely to have been needed somewhere else on the range. I don’t believe he has—he is dead.”
“There is much feeling about it on the street. And it seems to be quite as much a matter of politics as a personal quarrel.”
“Oh, everything is politics here, Mr. Wellesly!” said the girl. “If the people all over the United States take as much interest in politics as they do here, I don’t see how they have found time to build railroads and cities.”
Wellesly laughed. “They don’t take it the same way, Miss Delarue. Las Plumas politics is a thing apart and of its own kind. Except in party names, it has no connection with the politics of the states. Here it is merely a case of ‘follow your leader,’ of personal loyalty to some man who has run, or who expects to run, for office. Being so personal, of course, it is more virulent.”
“Do you think there is likely to be any violence this time?” she asked, with a tremor of anxiety in her voice.
“There is violent talk already. I heard more than one man say that Mead ought to be lynched”—he was watching her face as he talked—“and his two friends, Ellhorn and Tuttle, along with him. There is a great deal of feeling against Mead, and the general idea seems to be that he is an inveterate cattle thief, and that the country would be better off without him.”
She turned an indignant face and flashing eyes upon him and opened her mouth to reply. Then she blushed a little, caught her breath, and asked him if he thought her father was in any danger. When Wellesly left her he said to himself: “That’s an unusually fine girl. Handsome, too. Or she would be if she didn’t wear English shoes and walk like an elephant. She seems to be interested in Emerson Mead, but old Delarue certainly wouldn’t permit anything serious. He’s too ardently on our side, or thinks he is, the old French windbag, though he’s never even been naturalized. I’ll see her again while I’m here and find out if there is anything between them. It might have some consequence for us if there is. I wish the Colonel hadn’t got the company so mixed up in their political quarrels. But there may be an advantage in it, after all, for I guess it will furnish the easiest way of getting rid of those one-horse outfits. The old man’s got the upper hand now, and as long as he keeps it we’ll be all right.”
Marguerite Delarue stood on her veranda looking after Wellesly as he walked away. “What a nice looking man he is,” ran her thoughts. “He is interesting to talk with, too. The people here may be just as good as he is, but—well, at least, he isn’t tongue-tied.”
Ellhorn and Tuttle met Emerson Mead as he stepped from his room, freshly shaven and clad in black frock coat and vest, gray trousers and newly polished shoes. As he listened to Ellhorn’s account of the sudden storm that was already shaking the little town from end to end, a yellow light flashed in his brown eyes and there came into them an intent, defiant look, the look of battle, like that in the eyes of a captured eagle. He went back into the room, buckled on a full cartridge belt, and transferred his revolver from his waistband to its usual holster.