“Steady, pardner! Make a move, an’ I’ll kill you!”
In a twinkling, he was stripped of his guns. Then his captor—Lemuel Huntington—unhasped the barn door and herded him outside and down a narrow lane between two corrals, until they stood in the open field.
“Turn yore face to the moon, an’ let’s git a squint of you, Billy Gee,” said Lemuel. He studied the outlaw a few seconds. “So my gal was passin’ up ten thousand dollars for the likes of you, eh? Well, I won’t! Now, listen clost an’ don’t make no mistake about what I tell you! Me an’ you’s goin’ on into Geerusalem right off, see? Warburton wants you dead or ’live, an’ it’s up to you how you care to be deelivered to him. I don’t. Savvy! Now, march acrosst to them hosses!”
CHAPTER V—THE WHEREWITHAL
When Dot awoke next morning, after a fitful few hours’ sleep, it was nine o’clock. She sprang out of bed and hurried through her dressing, certain that her father was considerately waiting his breakfast rather than disturb her, late though the hour was. But upon entering the kitchen, she found that he had not yet been about. This fact at first astonished, then filled her with alarm. She ran to his door and rapped sharply, calling him, and experienced a feeling of deep relief when she heard him yawn out a reply.
Nevertheless, as she walked back into the kitchen and began scraping the ashes out of the grate, she reflected on the usual circumstance of Lemuel oversleeping; for not in many years—and then only on the several rare occasions that they had been out late together the night before, attending a party at some neighboring ranch—had he failed to have the fire in the stove going for her. Later on she told herself that it was quite probable their quarrel had disturbed him, that worry had kept him awake, and out of this conviction was born an acute feeling of remorse which determined her to make no reference to the time of day or to anything that might recall the unhappy scene of the night.
For that matter, he also was silent on the subject. He came into the kitchen, stretching himself tremendously, grinning, in the best spirits she had seen him in for many months. She could not help but notice a remarkable change in him, but attributed it to his desire to have her forget their recent differences. So she met him halfway in the effort and laughed merrily when he jested about the professional fraternity he hobnobbed with in camp and at his sly insinuations that Agatha Liggs would make an adorable stepmother for some girl. As he picked up his hat to look after his chores he caught her in his arms, told her how fondly he loved her, and that her happiness meant everything in the world to him.
But alone, back of the barn, his display of buoyancy vanished. He gazed down the lane between the two corrals and reënacted in his mind’s eye his brave capture of the notorious train robber, Billy Gee, and the way he had marched the outlaw into Sheriff Warburton’s room in the hotel before daybreak and turned his prisoner over to the astounded, sleepy-eyed official. Again, he felt an ecstatic thrill over the realization that he had the certified check of the Mohave & Southwestern Railroad for ten thousand dollars in his pocket that very moment!
Nor could he subdue the wild surge of elation that swept through his breast at thought that his Dot was to receive the long-cherished education, that here at last, after long, trialsome years of waiting, was the crystallization of his dead wife’s precious dreams all but fulfilled. Why couldn’t this sacred woman of his heart have lived to enjoy this great moment of happiness with him, to know that all her trying and skimping and dreaming had not been done in vain? Yes, he decided, Dot would be educated “to the queen’s taste;” nothing would be spared, nothing would be left undone to make her the wonderful lady of accomplishments Emily had so desired.
But with all the deep sense of gratification that his reavowal of intentions gave him and the delight he got from planning the glorious future, he could not put out of his mind Billy Gee’s last words to him in Warburton’s room that morning—what Billy Gee had said, the look in his eyes as he spoke.