Langford of the Three Bars

by Kate Boyles Bingham; Virgil D. Boyles

Now and then could be heard the soft thud of a hoof as some one rode to execute an order. Occasionally, something moved out by the sheds. Such movement, if discernible from the house, was sure to be followed on the instant by a quick sharp remonstrance from Williston’s rifle. How long could it last? Would his nerve wear away with the night? Could he keep his will dominant? If so, he must drag his mind resolutely away from that nerve-racking, still, and unseen creeping, creeping, creeping, nearer and nearer. How the stillness weighed upon him, and still his mind dwelt upon that sinuous, flat-bellied creeping, crawling, worming! God, it was awful! He fought it desperately. He knew he was lost if he could not stop thinking about it. The sweat came out in big beads on his forehead, on his body; he prickled with the heat of the effort. Then it left him—the awful horror—left him curiously cold, but steady of nerve and with a will of iron and eyes, cat’s eyes, for their seeing in the dark. Now that he was calm once more, he let himself weigh the chances of succor. They were pitifully remote. The Lazy S was situated in a lonely stretch of prairie land far from any direct trail. True, it lay between Kemah, the county seat, and the Three Bars ranch, but it was a good half mile from the straight route. Even so, it was a late hour for any one to be passing by. It was not a travelled trail except for the boys of the Three Bars, and they were known to be great home-stayers and little given to spreeing. As for the rustlers, if rustlers they were, they had no fear of interruption by the officers of the law, who held their places by virtue of the insolent and arbitrary will of Jesse Black and his brotherhood, and were now carousing in Kemah by virtue of the hush-money put up by this same Secret Tribunal.

Yet now that Williston’s head was clear, he realized, with strengthening confidence in the impregnability of their position, that two trusty rifles behind barred doors are not so bad a defence after all, especially when one took into consideration that, with the exception of the sheds overlooking which he had chosen his position as the point of greatest menace, and a small clump of half-grown cottonwoods by the spring which Mary commanded from her window, there were no hiding places to be utilized for this Indian mode of warfare. He could not know how many desperadoes there were, but he reasoned well when he confided in his belief that they would not readily trust themselves to the too dangerous odds of the open space between. An open attack was not probable. Vigilance, then, a never-lapsing vigilance that they be not surprised, was the price of their salvation. What human power could do, he would do, and trust Mary to do the same. She was a good girl and true. She would do well. She had not yet shot. Surely, they would make use of that good vantage ground of the cottonwood clump. Probably they were even now making a detour to reach it.

“Watch, child, watch!” he said again, without in the least shifting his tense position.

“Surely!” responded Mary, quite steadily.

Now was her time come. Dark, sinister figures flitted from tree to tree. At first, she could not be sure, it was so heartlessly dark, but there was movement—it was different from that terrible blank quiet which she had hitherto been gazing upon till her eyes burned and pricked as with needle points, and visionary things swam before them. She winked rapidly to dispel the unreal and floating things, opened wide her longlashed lids, fixed them, and—fired. Then Williston knew that his “little girl,” his one ewe lamb, all that was left to him of a full and gracious past, must go through what he had gone through, all that nameless horror and expectant dread, and his heart cried out at the unholy injustice of it all. He dared not go to her, dared not desert his post for an instant. If one got within the shadow of the walls, all was lost.

Mary’s challenge was met with a rather hot return fire. It was probably given to inspire the besieged with a due respect for the attackers’ numbers. Bullets pattered around the outside walls like hailstones, one even whizzed through the window perilously near the girl’s intent young face.

Silence came back to the night. There was no more movement. Yet down there at the spring, something, maybe one of those dark, gaunt cottonwoods, held death—death for her and death for her father. A stream of icy coldness struck across her heart. She found herself calculating in deliberation which tree it was that held this thing—death. The biggest one, shadowing the spring, helping to keep the pool sweet and cool where Paul Langford had galloped his horse that day when—ah! if Paul Langford would only come now!

A wild, girlish hope flashed up in her heart. Langford would come—had he not sworn it to her father? Had he not given his hand as a pledge? It means something to shake hands in the cattle country. He was big and brave and true. When he came, these awful, creeping terrors would disperse—grim shadows that must steal away when morning comes. When he came, she could put her rifle in his big, confident hands, lie down on the floor and—cry. She wanted to cry—oh, how she did want to cry! If Paul Langford would only come, she could cry. Cold reason came back to her aid and dissipated the weak and womanish longing to give way to tears. There was a pathetic droop to her mouth, a long, quivering, sobbing sigh, and she buried her woman’s weakness right deeply and stamped upon it. How utterly wild and foolish her brief hope had been! Langford and all his men were sound in sleep long ago. How could he know? Were the ruffians out there men to tell? Ah, no! There was no one to know. It would all happen in the dark,—in awful loneliness, and there would be no one to know until it was all over—to-morrow, maybe, or next week, who could tell? They were off the main trail, few people ever sought them out. There would be no one to know.

As her strained sight stared out into the darkness, it was borne to her intuitively, it may be, that something was creeping up on her. She could see nothing and yet knew it to be true. Every fibre of her being tingled with the certainty of it. It was coming closer and closer. She felt it like an actual presence. Her eyes shifted here, there—swept her half-circle searchingly—stared and stared. Still nothing moved. And yet the nearness of some unseen thing grew more and more palpable. If she could not see it soon, she must scream aloud. She breathed in little quickened gasps. Soon, very soon now, she would scream. Ah! A shadow down by the biggest cottonwood! It boldly sought a nearer and a smaller trunk. Another slinking shadow glided behind the vacated position. It was a ghastly presentation of “Pussy-wants-a-corner” played in nightmare. But at last it was something tangible,—something to do away with that frightful sensation of that crawling, creeping, twisting, worming, insinuating—nearer and nearer, so near now that it beat upon her—unseen presence. She pressed her finger to the trigger to shoot at the tangible shadows and dispel that enveloping, choking, blanket horror, when God knows what stayed the muscular action of her fingers. Call it instinct, what you will, her hand was stayed even before her physical eye was caught and held by a blot darker still than the night, over to her right, farthest from the spring. It lay perfectly still. It came to her, the wily plan, with startling clearness. The blot was waiting for her to fire futilely at grinning shadows among the trees and, under cover of her engrossed attention, insinuate its treacherous body the farther forward. Then the play would go merrily on till—the end. She turned the barrel of her rifle slowly and deliberately away from the moving shapes among the cottonwood clump, sighted truly the motionless blur to her right, and fired, once, twice, three times.

The completeness of the surprise seemed to inspire the attackers with a hellish fury. They returned the fire rapidly and at will, remaining under cover the while. Shrinking low at her window, her eyes glued on the still black mass out yonder, Mary wondered if it were dead. She prayed passionately that it might be, and yet—it is a dreadful thing to kill. Once more the wild firing ceased. Mary responded once or twice just to keep the deadly chill from returning—if that were possible.