IRONHEART

IRONHEART

BY
WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE

AUTHOR OF
MAN-SIZE, TANGLED TRAILS,
THE FIGHTING EDGE, Etc.

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

TO
ARTHUR CHAPMAN

“But somehow when he’s gone, you think a heap

About his virtues—how he’s square and true;

If more come stringin’ in they’d make it cheap—

This friendship thing—and spoil it all for you.”

CONTENTS

IRONHEART

IRONHEART

CHAPTER I
TURFING IT

A thin wisp of smoke drifted up from the camp at the edge of the wash. It rose languidly, as though affected by the fact that the day was going to be a scorcher. Already, though the morning was young, a fiery sun beat down on the sand so that heat waves shimmered in the air. Occasionally a spark from the crackling cottonwood limbs was caught by a dust whirl and carried toward the field of ripe wheat bordering the creek.

Of the campers there were three, all of the genus tramp, but each a variant. They represented different types, these desert trekkers.

The gross man lying lazily under the shade of a clump of willows might have stepped straight out of a vaudeville sketch. He was dirty and unkempt, his face bloated and dissipated. From his lax mouth projected an English brier pipe, uncleansably soiled. His clothes hung on him like sacks, wrinkled and dusty, but not ragged. He was too good a hobo to wear anything torn or patched. It was his boast that he could get another suit for the asking any time he needed one.

“I’m a blowed-in-the-glass stiff,” he bragged now. “Drilled from Denver to ’Frisco fifteen times, an’ never was a stake man or a shovel bum. Not for a day, ’boes. Ask any o’ the push about old York. They’ll give it to youse straight that he knows the best flops from Cincie to Phillie, an’ that no horstile crew can ditch him when he’s goin’ good.”

York was a hobo pure and simple. It was his business in life. For “stew-bums” and “gay-cats,” to use his own phraseology, he had a supreme contempt. His companions were amateurs, from his point of view non-professionals. Neither of them had any pride in turfing it, which is the blanket stiff’s expression for taking to the road. They did not understand York’s vocabulary nor the ethics that were current in his craft.

Yet the thin, weasel-faced man with the cigarette drooping from his mouth was no amateur in his own line. He had a prison face, the peculiar distortion of one side of the mouth often seen in confirmed criminals. His light-blue eyes were cold and dead. A film veiled them and snuffed out all expression.

“Cig” he called himself, and the name sufficed. On the road surnames were neither asked for nor volunteered. York had sized him up three days before when they had met at Colorado Springs, and he had passed on his verdict to the third member of the party.

“A river rat on a vac—hittin’ the grit for a getaway,” he had whispered.

His guess had been a good one. Cig had been brought up on the East River. He had served time in the penitentiaries of three States and expected to test the hospitality of others. Just now he was moving westward because the East was too hot for him. He and a pal had done a job at Jersey City during which they had been forced to croak a guy. Hence his unwilling expedition to the Rockies. Never before had he been farther from the Atlantic than Buffalo, and the vast uninhabited stretches of the West bored and appalled him. He was homesick for the fetid dumps of New York.

The corner of his mouth lifted in a sneer. “Wot’ell would any one want to cross this Gawd-forsaken country fifteen times for unless he was bughouse?”

“If you read the papes you’d know that travel is a lib’ral ejucation. Difference between a man an’ a tree is that one’s got legs to move around with. You ginks on the East Side act like you’re anchored to the Batt’ry an’ the Bowery. Me, I was born there, but I been batterin’ on the road ever since I was knee-high to a duck. A fellow’s got to throw his feet if he wants to learn,” York announced dogmatically.

There was obvious insult in Cig’s half-closed eyes. “’S at what learned you all youse know?” he asked.

“Don’t get heavy, young feller,” advised the blanket stiff. “I’ve knew guys to stay healthy by layin’ off me.”

The young man cooking breakfast barked a summons. “Come an’ get it.”

The tramps moved forward to eat, forgetting for the moment their incipient quarrel. Into tin cups and plates the cook poured coffee and stew. In his light clean build, slender but well-packed, was the promise of the athlete. His movements disappointed this expectation. He slouched, dragging the worn shoes through the cracks of which the flesh was visible. Of the three, he was the only one that was ragged. The coat he wore, which did not match the trousers, was at the last extremity.

One might have guessed his age at twenty-three or four. If it had not been for the sullen expression in the eyes and the smoldering discontent of the face, he might have been good-looking. The reddish hair was short, crisp, and curly, the eyes blue as the Colorado summer sky above, the small head well-shaped and beautifully poised on the sloping column of the neck.

Yet the impression he made on observers was not a pleasant one. His good points were marred by the spirit that found outlet in a sullen manner that habitually grudged the world a smile. He had the skin pigment of the blond, and in the untempered sun of the Rockies should have been tanned to a rich red-brown. Instead, the skin was clammily unhealthy. The eyes were dulled and expressionless.

York ate wolfishly, occasionally using the sleeve of his coat for a napkin. He talked, blatantly and continuously. Cig spoke only at rare intervals, the cook not at all. Within the silent man there simmered a nausea of disgust that included himself and all the universe in which he moved.

In the underworld caste rules more rigidly than in upper strata of society. The sense of superiority is everywhere an admission of weakness. It is the defense of one who lives in a glass house. Since all of these men were failures, each despised the others and cherished his feeling that they were inferior.

“You ’boes turf it with York an’ you’ll always have plenty o’ punk and plaster,” the old tramp swaggered. “Comes to batterin’ I’m there with bells on.”

Translated into English, he meant that if they traveled with him they would have bread and butter enough because he was a first-class beggar.

“To hear youse chew the rag you’re a wiz, ain’t you?” Cig jeered. “I ain’t noticed you diggin’ up any Ritz-Carlton lunches a guy can write home about. How about it, Tug?”

The cook grunted.

“Me, I can tell a mark far as I can see him—know whether he’s good for a flop or a feed,” York continued. “Onct I was ridin’ the rods into Omaha—been punchin’ the wind till I was froze stiff, me ’n’ a pal called Seattle. Shacks an’ the con tried to ditch us. Nothin’ doing. We was right there again when the wheels began to move. In the yards at Omaha we bumps into a gay-cat—like Tug here. He spills the dope that the bulls are layin’ for us. Some mission stiff had beefed on me. No guy with or without brass buttons can throw a scare into old York. No can do. So I says to Seattle, says I—”

York’s story died in his throat. He stood staring, mouth open and chin fallen.

Two men were standing on the edge of the bluff above the bed of the creek. He did not need a second look to tell him that they had come to make trouble.

CHAPTER II
“DE KING O’ PROOSHIA ON DE JOB”

To Reed came his foreman Lon Forbes with a story of three tramps camping down by Willow Creek close to the lower meadow wheatfield.

The ranchman made no comment, unless it was one to say, “Get out the car.” He was a tight-lipped man of few words, sometimes grim. His manner gave an effect of quiet strength.

Presently the two were following the winding road through the pasture. A field of golden wheat lay below them undulating with the roll of the land. Through it swept the faintest ripple of quivering grain. The crop was a heavy one, ripe for the reaper. Dry as tinder, a spark might set a blaze running across the meadow like wildfire.

Forbes pointed the finger of a gnarled hand toward a veil of smoke drifting lazily from the wash. “Down there, looks like.”

His employer nodded. They descended from the car and walked along the edge of the bank above the creek bed. Three men sat near a camp-fire. One glance was enough to show that they were hoboes. Coffee in an old tomato can was bubbling over some live coals set between two flat stones.

The big man with the bloated face was talking. The others were sulkily silent, not so much listening as offering an annoyed refusal to be impressed. The boaster looked up, and the vaporings died within him.

“What you doing here?” demanded Reed. His voice was curt and hostile.

York, true to type, became at once obsequious. “No offense, boss. If these here are private grounds—”

“They are,” the owner cut in sharply.

“Well, we’ll hit the grit right away. No harm done, mister.” The voice of the blanket stiff had become a whine, sullen and yet fawning.

His manner irritated both of his companions. Cig spoke first, out of the corner of his mouth, slanting an insolent look up at the ranchman.

“Youse de traffic cop on dis block, mister?”

Lon Forbes answered. “We know your sort an’ don’t want ’em here. Shack! Hit the trail pronto! No back talk about it either.”

Cig looked at the big foreman. “Gawd!” he jeered. “Wotcha know about that? De king o’ Prooshia on de job again.”

The bluff tanned Westerner took a step or two toward the ferret-faced man from the slums. Hurriedly York spoke up. He did not want anything “started.” There were stories current on the road of what ranchmen had done to hoboes who had made trouble. He knew of one who had insulted a woman and had been roped and dragged at a horse’s heels till half dead.

“We ain’t doin’ no harm, boss. But we’ll beat it ’f you say so. Gotta roll up our war bags.”

Reed did not discuss the question of the harm they were doing. He knew that a spark might ignite the wheat, but he did not care to plant the suggestion in their minds. “Put out the fire and move on,” he said harshly.

“De king o’ Prooshia an’ de clown prince,” Cig retorted with a lift of his lip.

But he shuffled forward and began to kick dirt over the fire with the toe of his shoe.

Reed turned to the youngest tramp. “Get water in that can,” he ordered.

“I don’ know about that.” Up till now the tramp called Tug had not said a word. “I’m not your slave. Get water yourself if you want to. Able-bodied, ain’t you?”

The rancher looked steadily at him, and the longer he looked, the less he liked what he saw. A stiff beard bristled on the sullen face of the tramp. He was ragged and disreputable from head to heel. In the dogged eyes, in straddling legs, in the half-clenched fist resting on one hip, Reed read defiance. The gorge of the Westerner rose. The country was calling for men to get in its harvests. His own crops were ripe and he was short of hands. Yet this husky young fellow was a loafer. He probably would not do a day’s work if it were offered him. He was a parasite, the kind of ne’er-do-well who declines to saw wood for a breakfast, metaphorically speaking.

“Don’t talk back to me. Do as I say. Then get out of here.”

Reed did not lift his voice. It was not necessary. As he stood on the bank above the sand bed he conveyed an impression of strength in every line of his solid body. Even the corduroy trousers he wore folded into the short laced boots seemed to have fallen into wrinkles that expressed power. Close to fifty, the sap of virile energy still flowed in his veins.

The fist on Tug’s hip clenched. He flushed angrily. “Kind of a local God Almighty on tin wheels,” he said with a sneer.

York was rolling up his pack. Cig, grumbling, had begun to gather his belongings. But the youngest tramp gave no evidence of an intention to leave. Nor did he make a move to get water to put out the still smoldering fire.

The rancher came down from the bank. Forbes was at his elbow. The foreman knew the signs of old. Reed was angry. Naturally imperious, he did not allow any discussion when clearly within his rights. He would not waste his force on such a spineless creature as York, but the youngest tramp was of a different sort. He needed a lesson, and Lon judged he was about to get one.

“Hear me? Get water and douse that fire,” the ranchman said.

His steel-gray eyes were fastened to those of Tug. The tramp faced him steadily. Forbes had a momentary surprise. This young fellow with the pallid dead skin looked as though he would not ask for anything better than a fight.

“Get it yourself,” the hobo flung back.

The right fist of the ranchman lifted swiftly. It did not move far, but it carried great power back of it. The tramp’s head snapped backward. His shoulders hit the sand. He had been caught on the point of the jaw by a knock-out punch.

Tug came back to consciousness under the impression that he was drowning in deep waters. Cig was dipping a can in the creek and sousing its contents over his head. He sat up dizzily. His uncertain gaze fell on some one who had arrived since his exit from activity.

She was a young woman on horseback. He noticed that she was slender and had a good seat. Her dark eyes watched him.

Who was she? What the dickens was she doing here? Where was he anyhow?

His glance swept the scene. York was stamping out the last embers of the fire. There was a bruise on Cig’s cheek and one of his eyes was rapidly closing. From the fact that Forbes was examining abraded knuckles it was an easy guess that he had been in action.

The rancher, hands in coat pockets, relieved his mind in regard to the youth he had knocked out. “You’re a good-for-nothing loafer, not fit to live in a country that treats you too well. If I had charge of wastrels like you, I’d put you on the rock-pile and work you to a frazzle. What use are you, to yourself or any one else? When you were needed to fill a uniform, I’ll bet a dollar you were a slacker. You still are. A worthless, rotten-to-the-core hobo. Now get up and get off my land or I’ll give you that thrashing you need.”

Tug got up, swayed unsteadily on his feet, and lurched forward. In his eyes, still dull and glazed from the shock his nervous system had endured, a gleam of anger came to life. He was a slacker, was he? All right. He would show this arrogant slave-driver that he could stand up and take all he had to give.

His rush was a poor leaden-footed shuffle, for he was shaky at the knees and weights dragged at his feet. The blow he aimed at Reed missed the brown face half a foot. It was badly timed and placed. The ranchman’s counter caught him flush on the cheekbone and flung him back.

Again he gathered himself and plunged forward. Clinton Reed belonged to the old fighting West. He had passed through the rip-roaring days of Leadville’s prime and later had been a part of Cripple Creek’s turbid life. Always he had been a man of his hands. He punished his dazed opponent with clean hard blows, most of them started at short range to save his own fists from the chance of broken or dislocated bones.

The tramp fell into a clinch to get time for recovery. Reed jolted him out of it with a short arm left below the chin and followed with two slashing rights to the face.

The hobo was in a bad way. In ring parlance, he was what is known as groggy. His arms moved slowly and without force back of the blows. His knees sagged. There was a ringing in his head. He did not seem able to think clearly.

But the will in him functioned to push him to more punishment. He attacked feebly. Through a weak defense the ranchman’s driving arms tore cruelly.

Tug went down again. He tried to rise, but in spite of the best he could do was unable to get up. The muscles of the legs would not coöperate with the will.

Some one in khaki riding-breeches flashed past him. “That’s enough, Dad. I don’t care if he was impudent. You’ve hurt him enough. Let him go now.”

The figure was the boyish one of the equestrienne, but the high indignant voice was feminine enough.

“S’pose you try minding your own business, Bess,” her father said quietly.

“Now, Dad,” she expostulated. “We don’t want any trouble, do we? Make ’em move on, and that’s enough.”

“Tha’s what we’re doin’, Betty,” explained the foreman. “It ain’t our fault if there’s a rookus. We told ’em to light out, an’ they got sassy.”

Tug rose with difficulty. He was a badly hammered hobo. Out of swollen and discolored eyes he looked at the ranchman.

“You quite through with me?” he snarled.

It was a last growl of defiance. His companions were already clambering with their packs out of the wash to the bank above.

“Not quite.” Clint Reed took his daughter by the shoulders and spun her out of the way when she tried to stop him. “Be fresh if you want to, my young wobbly. I reckon I can stand it if you can.” He whirled the tramp round and kicked him away.

“Oh, Dad! Fighting with a tramp,” the girl wailed.

Tug swung round unsteadily, eyes blazing. He took a step toward the rancher. His glance fell on the girl who had just called him a tramp, and in saying it had chosen the last word of scorn. Her troubled, disdainful gaze met his fully. The effect on him was odd. It paralyzed action. He stopped, breathing hard.

She had called him a tramp, as one who belongs to another world might do—a world that holds to self-respect and decency. He had read in her voice utter and complete contempt for the thing he was. It was a bitter moment. For him it stamped the low-water mark of his degradation. He felt beneath her eyes a thing unclean.

What she had said was true. He was a tramp. He had ridden the rods, asked for hand-outs, rough-housed with hoboes, slept with them. He had just been thoroughly thrashed and kicked before her. What was the use of resenting it? He had become declassed. Why should he not be kicked and beaten? That was the customary way to treat his kind of cattle.

Tug swung heavily on a heel and followed his companions into the willows.

CHAPTER III
ONE OF THE LOST LEGION

Among the lost legion are two kinds of men. There are those who have killed or buried so deep the divine fire of their manhood that for them there seems no chance of recovery in this world. There are those in whom still burns somewhere a faint candle that may yet flame to a dynamic glow of self-respect.

The young tramp slouching along the bank of Willow Creek drank deep of the waters of despair. The rancher had called him a slacker, rotten to the core. It was a true bill. He was a man spoiled and ruined. He had thrown away his life in handfuls. Down and dragging, that’s what he was, with this damned vice a ball and chain on his feet.

There was in him some strain of ignoble weakness. There must be, he reasoned. Otherwise he would have fought and conquered the cursed thing. Instead, he had fought and lost. He could make excuses. Oh, plenty of them. The pain—the horrible, intolerable pain! The way the craving had fastened on him before he knew it while he was still in the hospital! But that was piffling twaddle, rank self-deception. A man had to fight, to stand the gaff, to flog his evil yearnings back to kennel like yelping dogs.

His declension had been swift. It was in his temperament to go fast, to be heady. Once he let go of himself, it had been a matter of months rather than of years. Of late he had dulled the edge of his despair. The opiates were doing their work. He had found it easier to live in the squalid present, to forget the pleasant past and the purposeful future he had planned.

But now this girl, slim, clean, high-headed, with that searing contempt for him in her clear eyes, had stirred up again the devils of remorse. What business had he to companion with these offscourings of the earth? Why had he given up like a quitter the effort to beat back?

In the cold waters of the creek he washed his swollen and bloodstained face. The cold water, fresh from the mountain snows, was soothing to the hot bruised flesh even though it made the wounds smart. He looked down into the pool and saw reflected there the image of himself. Beneath the eyes pouches were beginning to form. Soon now he would be a typical dope fiend.

He was still weak from the manhandling that had been given him. Into an inside coat pocket his fingers groped. They brought out with them a small package wrapped in cotton cloth. With trembling hands he made his preparations, bared an arm, and plunged the hypodermic needle into the flesh.

When he took the trail again after his companions, Tug’s eyes were large and luminous. He walked with a firmer step. New life seemed to be flowing into his arteries.

Where the dusty road cut the creek he found the other tramps waiting for him. Their heads had been together in whispered talk. They drew apart as he approached.

Taking note of Cig’s purple eye and bruised face, Tug asked a question. “Was it the big foreman beat you up?”

“You done said it, ’bo,” the crook answered out of the side of his mouth.

“I reckon you got off easy at that,” Tug said bitterly. “The boss bully didn’t do a thing to me but chew me up and spit me out.”

“Wotcha gonna do about it?” Cig growled significantly.

The young fellow’s glance was as much a question as his words. “What can I do but take it?” he asked sullenly.

Cig’s eyes narrowed venomously. He lifted his upper lip in an ugly sneer. “Watch my smoke. No roughneck can abuse me an’ get away with it. I’ll say he can’t.”

“Meaning?”

“I’m gonna fix him.”

Tug’s laughter barked. “Did you fix him when you had a chance?” he asked ironically.

“Call that a chance? An’ the big stiff wide as a door. ’F I’d had a gun I’d ’a’ croaked him.”

“Oh, if!”

“De bulls frisked me gun in Denver. But I’ll get me a gat somewheres. An’ when I do—” The sentence choked out in a snarl more threatening than words.

“Sounds reasonable,” Tug jeered.

“Listen, ’bo.” Cig laid a hand on the sleeve of the young fellow’s coat. “Listen. Are youse game to take a chance?”

Eyes filled with an expression of sullen distaste of Cig looked at him from a bruised and livid face. “Maybe I am. Maybe I ain’t. What’s on your mind?”

“I’m gonna get that bird. See?”

“How?”

“Stick around an’ gun him. Then hop a freight for ’Frisco.”

There was in the lopsided face a certain dreadful eagerness that was appalling. Was this mere idle boasting? Or would the gangster go as far as murder for his revenge? Tug did not know. But his gorge rose at the fellow’s assumption that he would join him as a partner in crime.

“Kill him without giving him a chance?” he asked.

Again there was a sound like the growl of a wild beast in the throat of the Bowery tough. “Wotcha givin’ me! A heluva chance them guys give us when they jumped us. I’ll learn ’em to keep their hands off Cig.” He added, with a crackle of oaths, “The big stiffs!”

“No!” exploded Tug with a surge of anger. “I’ll have nothing to do with it—or with you. I’m through. You go one way. I’ll go another. Right here I quit.”

The former convict’s eyes narrowed. “I getcha. Streak of yellow a foot wide. No more nerve than a rabbit. All right. Beat it. I can’t lose you none too soon to suit me.”

The two glared at each other angrily.

York the peacemaker threw oil on the ruffled waters. “’S all right, ’boes. No use gettin’ sore. Tug he goes one way, we hit the grit another. Ev’rybody satisfied.”

Tug swung his roll of blankets across a shoulder and turned away.

CHAPTER IV
BETTY RIDES

Betty Reed had watched unhappily the young tramp shuffle into the willows and disappear. She felt depressed by a complex she could not analyze. In part it was shame, for her father, for this tramp who looked as though he were made for better things, for the whole squalid episode; in part pity, not wholly divorced from admiration at the boy’s insolence and courage. He might be a wastrel, as her father had said. He might be a ne’er-do-well. But by some sure instinct she knew that there had been a time when he fronted with high hope to the future. That momentary meeting of the eyes had told her as much.

Something had killed him as surely as a bullet fired through the heart. The boy he had been was dead.

Lon Forbes chuckled. “They’ll keep going, I reckon, now they’ve found out this ain’t no Hotel de Gink. You certainly handed that youngest bum his hat, Clint. I’ll say you did.”

Now that it was over Reed was not very well satisfied with his conduct. The hobo had brought the punishment on himself. Still—there was something morally degrading about such an affray. One can’t touch pitch without paying the penalty.

“We’ll begin cutting this field to-morrow, Lon,” he said shortly. “Hustle the boys up so’s to finish the mesa to-day.” Across his shoulder he flung a question at the girl. “You going to town, Bess?”

“In an hour or so. Want me to do something?” she asked.

“Call at Farrell’s and see if he’s got in those bolts I ordered.”

The ranchman strode to the car followed by Forbes. The foreman was troubled by no doubts. His mind functioned elementally. If hoboes camped on the Diamond Bar K and made themselves a danger to the crops, they had to be hustled on their way. When they became insolent, it was necessary to treat them rough. That was all there was to it.

Betty swung to the saddle and rode back to the house. She was returning from an inspection of a bunch of two-year-olds that were her own private property. She was rather well off in her own right, as the ranch country counts wealth. The death of her uncle a year before had left her financially independent.

As Betty cantered into the open square in front of the house, her father and the foreman were getting out of the car. A chubby, flaxen-haired little lass came flying down the porch steps a-quiver with excited delight.

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy, what d’you fink? I went out to the barn an’—an’—an’ I fink Fifi’s got puppies, ’cause she—she—”

“Thought I told you to stay away from the barn,” the ranchman chided.

His harsh voice dried up the springs of the child’s enthusiasm. She drew back as though she had been struck. From the winsome, wee face the eager, bubbling delight vanished, the enchanting dimples fled. The blue eyes became wells of woe. A small finger found the corner of the Cupid’s-bow mouth.

Clint Reed, ashamed and angry at himself, turned away abruptly. Little Ruth was the sunshine of his life, the last pledge of his dead wife’s love, and he had deliberately and cruelly wounded her.

Swinging from the saddle, Betty ran to the porch. Her arms enfolded the child and drew her tenderly close. “Ruthie, tell big sister all about it,” she whispered gently.

“D-d-d-daddy—” the sobbing little girl began, and choked up.

“Daddy’s worried, dear. He didn’t mean to hurt your precious little feelings. Tell Betty about Fifi’s puppies, darling.”

Through her tears and between sobs Ruth told her great news. Presently she forgot to weep and was led to the scene of Fifi’s amazing and unique triumph. She gave little squeals of delight when Betty handed her a blind little creature to cuddle in spite of the indignant mother’s protesting growls. The child held the warm white-and-brown puppy close to her bosom and adored it with her eyes. With reluctance she returned it at last.

Ruth’s happiness was quite restored after her sister had given her a glass of milk and a cookie and sent her out to play.

The young woman waved her a smiling good-bye and went to work.

She had some business letters to write and she went to the room that served her as a library and office. The sound of the typewriter keys drifted out of the open window for an hour or more.

The girl worked swiftly. She had a direct mind that found fluent expression through the finger-tips. When she knew what she wanted to say, it was never any trouble for Betty Reed to say it. A small pile of addressed and sealed letters lay in the rack on the desk before she covered the machine.

These she took with her.

Clint Reed she found tinkering with a reaper that had gone temporarily out of service.

“Want anything more, Dad? I’m going now,” she said.

“You’ve got that list I left on the desk. That’s all, except the bolts.”

The sky was a vault of blue. Not even a thin, long-drawn skein of cloud floated above. A hot sun baked down on the dusty road over which Betty traveled. Heat waves danced in front of her. There was no faintest breath of breeze stirring.

The gold of autumn was creeping over the hills. Here and there was a crimson splash of sumac or of maple against the almost universal yellow toning. It seemed that the whole landscape had drunk in the summer sunshine and was giving it out now in a glow of warm wealth.

The girl took a short cut over the hills. The trail led by way of draw, gulch, and open slope to the valley in which Wild Horse lay. She rode through the small business street of the village to the post-office. Here she bought supplies of the storekeeper, who was also post-master.

Battell was his name. He was an amiable and harmless gossip. Wild Horse did not need a newspaper as long as he was there to hand tobacco and local information across the counter. An old maid in breeches, Lon Forbes had once called him, and the description serves well enough. He was a whole village sewing circle in himself. At a hint of slander his small bright eyes would twinkle and his shrunken little body seem to wriggle like that of a pleased pup. Any news was good news to him.

“Mo’ning, Miss Betty. Right hot, I’ll tell the world. Ninety-nine in the shade this very minute. Bart Logan was in to get Doc Caldwell for his boy Tom. He done bust his laig fallin’ from the roof of the root house. Well, Bart was sayin’ your paw needs help right bad to harvest his wheat. Seems like if the gov’ment would send out some of these here unemployed to work on the ranches it would be a good idee. Sometimes Congress acts like it ain’t got a lick o’ sense.”

Betty ordered coffee, sugar, tobacco, and other supplies. While he waited upon her Battell made comment pertinent and impertinent.

“That Mecca brand o’ coffee seems to be right popular. Three pounds for a dollar. O’ course, if it’s for the bunkhouse— Oh, want it sent out to the Quarter Circle D E. How’re you makin’ it on your own ranch, Miss Betty? Some one was sayin’ you would clean up quite a bit from your beef herd this year, mebbe twelve or fifteen thousand. I reckon it was Bart Logan.”

“Is Bart keeping my books for me?” the girl asked dryly.

The storekeeper cackled. “Folks will gossip.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “How much is that corn meal a hundred?”

“Cost you ten cents more’n the last. Folks talk about cost of livin’ coming down. Well, mebbe ’tis an’ mebbe ’tain’t. I told Bart I wouldn’t believe you’d cleared any twelve or fifteen thousand till I heard you say so. That’s a lot of money, if any one asks you.”

Apparently Betty misunderstood him. “Yes, you’re high, but I’ll take two sacks. Send it to the Quarter Circle and charge it to me.”

Betty stopped at the railroad station to ask the agent about a shipment of goods her father was expecting, and from there went to Farrell’s to find out about the bolts.

It was well on toward noon when she took the road for home. At Four-Mile Crossing it intersected the railroad track. A man with a pack on his back was plodding along the ties in the direction of Wild Horse. The instant her eyes fell on him, the girl recognized the tramp her father had beaten. The pallid face was covered with wheals and bruises. Both of the sullen eyes were ringed with purple and black.

They met face to face. Full into hers his dogged gaze challenged. Without a word they passed.

Betty crossed the grade and followed a descent to a small grove of pines close to the road. The sun was so hot that she decided to dismount and give the pony a breathing spell.

From the saddle she swung, then trailed the reins and loosened the cinch.

A sound brought her head round sharply. Two men had come over the brow of a little hill silently. One of them was almost at her elbow. A twisted, malevolent grin was on his lips. He was the hobo Lon Forbes had thrashed two or three hours ago.

“Welcome to our city, goil,” he jeered in choice Boweryese. “Honest to Gawd, you knock me dead. Surest thing you know. We’ll treat you fine, not like your dad an’ that other big stiff did us. We’ll not tell youse to move on, m’ dearie. Nothin’ like that.”

The girl’s heart felt as though drenched in ice-cold water. She had not brought with her the small revolver she sometimes carried for rattlesnakes. Both instinct and observation told her this man was vile and dangerous. She was in his power and he would make her pay for what her father had done.

She trod down the fear that surged up in her bosom. Not for nothing had she been all her life a daughter of the sun and the wind and wide outdoor spaces.

“I stopped to rest my pony from the heat of the sun,” she explained.

“You stopped to see old Cig,” he corrected. “An’ now you’re here it’ll be him an’ you for a while. The hop-nut don’t belong to de same push as us no longer. I shook him. An’ York don’t count. He’s no lady’s man, York ain’t.”

The slim girl in the riding-suit could not quite keep the panic out of her eyes. None of the motives that swayed the men she knew would have weight with him. He was both base and bold, and he had lived among those who had small respect for a woman.

Betty’s glance moved to York. It found no comfort there. The gross hobo was soft as putty. He did not count, as his companion had openly sneered.

“No. I won’t stop,” she said, and made as though to tighten the loosened cinch.

“Won’cha? Think again, miss. Old Cig ain’t seen a skirt since he left li’l’ old New York. Sure as youse is a foot high he’s hungry for a sweetie of his own.”

He put his hand on her arm. At the touch her self-control vanished. She screamed.

The man’s fingers slid down to the wrist and tightened. His other hand clamped over her mouth and cut off the cry.

She writhed, twisting to free herself. In spite of her slenderness she was strong. From her lips she tore his hand and again called for help in an ecstasy of terror.

The crook of his arm garroted her throat and cut off the air from her lungs. He bent her body back across his hip. Still struggling, she strangled helplessly.

“Youse would, eh?” His voice, his narrowed eyes, exulted. “Forget it, miss. Cig’s an A1 tamer of Janes. That’s de li’l’ old thing he’s de champeen of de world at.”

He drew her closer to him.

There came a soft sound of feet thudding across the grass. The arm about Betty’s throat relaxed. She heard a startled oath, found herself flung aside. Her eyes opened.

Instantly she knew why Cig had released her. The man stood crouched, snarling, his eyes fixed on an approaching runner, one who moved with the swift precision of a half-back carrying a ball down a whitewashed gridiron.

The runner was the tramp whose face her father had battered to a pulp. He asked for no explanations and made no comment. Straight for the released convict he drove.

Cig had not a chance. The bad air and food of the slums, late hours, dissipation, had robbed him of both strength and endurance. He held up his fists and squared off, for he was game enough. But Tug’s fist smashed through the defense as though it had been built of paper. The second-story man staggered back, presently went down before a rain of blows against which he could find no protection.

Tug dragged him to his feet, cuffed him hard with his half-closed fist again and again, then flung him a second time to the ground. He stood over the fellow, his eyes blazing, his face colorless.

“Get up, you hound!” he ordered in a low voice trembling with anger. “Get up and take it! I’ll teach you to lay hands on a woman!”

Cig did not accept this invitation. He rolled away, caught up York’s heavy tramping stick, and stood like a wolf at bay, the lips lifted from his stained yellow teeth.

“Touch me again an’ I’ll knock your block off,” he growled, interlarding the threat with oaths and foul language.

“Don’t!” the girl begged of her champion. “Please don’t. Let’s go. Right away.”

“Yes,” agreed the young fellow, white to the lips.

York flat-footed forward a step or two. “No use havin’ no trouble. Cig he didn’t mean nothin’ but a bit of fun, Tug. Old Cig wouldn’t do no lady any harm.” The tramp’s voice had taken on the professional whine.

Tug fastened the girth, his fingers trembling so that he could hardly slip the leather through to make the cinch. Even in the reaction from fear Betty found time to wonder at this. He was not afraid. He had turned his back squarely on the furious gangster from the slums to tighten the surcingle. Why should he be shaking like a man in a chill?

The girl watched Cig while the saddle was being made ready. The eyes in the twisted face of the convict were venomous. If thoughts could have killed, Tug would have been a dead man. She had been brought up in a clean world, and she did not know people could hate in such a soul-and-body blasting way. It chilled the blood only to look at him.

The girl’s rescuer turned to help her into the saddle. He gave her the lift as one does who is used to helping a woman mount.

From the seat she stooped and said in a low voice, “I want you to go with me.”

He nodded. Beside the horse he walked as far as the road. “My pack’s back there on the track,” he said, and stopped, waiting for her to ride away.

Betty looked down at him, a troubled frown on her face. “Where are you going?”

A bitter, sardonic smile twitched the muscles of the bruised face. He shrugged his shoulders.

“Looking for work?” she asked.

“Maybe I am,” he answered sullenly.

“We need men on the Diamond Bar K to help with the harvest.”

“The ranch where I was kicked off?”

“Father’s quick-tempered, but he’s square. I’ll talk with him about you—”

“Why waste your time?” he mocked mordantly. “I’ll not impose on him a good-for-nothing loafer, a worthless rotten-to-the-core hobo, a slacker, a wastrel who ought to be on a rock-pile.”

“Dad didn’t mean all that. He was angry. But if you don’t want to work for him, perhaps you’d work for me. I own a ranch, too.”

He looked up the road into the dancing heat waves. She was wasting pity on him, was she? No doubt she would like to reform him. A dull resentment burned in him. His sulky eyes looked into hers.

“No,” he said shortly.

“But if you’re looking for work,” she persisted.

“I’m particular about who I work for,” he told her brutally.

She winced, but the soft dark eyes were still maternally tender for him. He had fought for her, had saved her from a situation that held at least degradation and perhaps horrible despair. Moreover, young though he was, she knew that life had mauled him fearfully.

“I need men. I thought perhaps—”

“You thought wrong.”

“I’m sorry—about Father. You wouldn’t need to see him if you didn’t want to. The Quarter Circle D E is four miles from the Diamond Bar K.”

“I don’t care if it’s forty,” he said bluntly.

Her good intentions were at an impasse. The road was blocked. But she could not find it in her heart to give up yet, to let him turn himself adrift again upon a callous world. He needed help—needed it desperately, if she were any judge. It was written on his face that he was sailing stormy seas and that his life barque was drifting toward the rocks. What help she could give she must press upon him.

“I’m asking you to be generous and forget what—what we did to you,” she pleaded, leaning down impulsively and putting a hand on his shoulder. “You saved me from that awful creature. Isn’t it your turn now to let me help you if I can?”

“You can’t help me.”

“But why not? You’re looking for work. I need men. Wouldn’t it be reasonable for us to get together on terms?” Her smile was very sweet and just a little wistful, her voice vivid as the sudden song of a meadow-lark.

Under the warmth of her kindness his churlishness melted.

“Good of you,” he said. “I’m much obliged. But it’s no use. Your father had the right of it. I’m not any good.”

“I don’t believe it. Your life’s got twisted somehow. But you can straighten it. Let me help. Won’t you? Because of what you did for me just now.”

Her hand moved toward him in a tentative offer of friendship. Automatically his eyes recorded that she wore a diamond ring on the third finger. Some lucky fellow, probably some clean young man who had given no hostages to vice, had won her sweet and gallant heart.

She was all eager desire and sympathy. For a moment, as he looked into the dusky, mobile face that expressed a fine and gallant personality, it seemed possible for him to trample down the vice that was destroying him. But he pushed this aside as idle sentiment. His way was chosen for him and he could not go back.

He shook his head and turned away. The bitter, sardonic smile again rested like a shadow of evil on his good-looking face.

CHAPTER V
TUG IS “COLLECTED”

Tug followed the rails toward Wild Horse.

He groped in an abyss of humiliation and self-disgust. Slacker! The cattleman’s scornful word had cut to the quick. The taste of it was bitter. For he had not always been one. In war days he had done his share.

How was it McCrae’s poem ran?

“We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

“Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.”

Yes, he had kept the faith in France, but he was not keeping it now. The obligation was as binding on him in peace as on the battle-field. He knew that. He recognized it fully. But when the pain in his head began, his mind always flew to the only relief he knew. The drug had become a necessity to him. If the doctors had only let him fight it out from the beginning without help, he would not have become accustomed to the accursed stuff.

But what was the use of going over that again and again? He was done for. Why send his thoughts forever over the same treadmill?

The flaming sun poured down into the bowl of the valley and baked its contents. He moved from the track to the shade of a cottonwood and lay down. His racing thoughts grew more vague, for the hot sun had made him sleepy. Presently his eyes closed drowsily. They flickered open and slowly shut a second time. He began to breathe deeply and regularly.

The sun passed the zenith and began to slide down toward the western hills. Still Tug slept.

He dreamed. The colonel was talking to him. “Over the top, Hollister, at three o’clock. Ten minutes now.” He shook himself out of sleep. It was time to get busy.

Slowly he came back blinking to a world of sunshine. Two men stood over him, both armed.

“Must be one of ’em,” the shorter of the two said.

“Sure thing. See his outfit. All rags. We’ll collect him an’ take him back to the ranch.”

They were cowboys or farmhands, Tug was not sure which. He knew at once, however, that their intentions were not friendly.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“You,” the short, stocky one answered curtly. He wore a big broad-rimmed hat that was both ancient and dusty.

“Interesting. You a sheriff? Got a warrant for me?”

The little man raised the point of his thirty-eight significantly. “Ain’t this warrant enough?”

“What’s the trouble? What d’you want me for?”

“Tell him, Dusty,” the lank cowboy said.

“All right, Burt.” To the tramp he said roughly: “We’ll learn you how to treat a lady. Get up. You’re gonna trail back to the Diamond Bar K with us.”

“You’ve got the wrong man,” explained Tug.

“Sure. You’re jus’ travelin’ through the country lookin’ for work,” Dusty jeered. “We’ve heard that li’l’ spiel before. Why, you chump, the ol’ man’s autograph is writ on yore face right now.”

Tug opened his mouth to expostulate, but changed his mind. What was the use? He had no evidence. They would not let him go.

“I guess you hold the aces.” He rose, stiffly, remarking to the world at large, “I’ve read about those three-gallon hats with a half-pint of brains in them.”

Dusty bridled. “Don’t get gay with me, young feller. I’ll not stand for it.”

“No?” murmured the hobo, and he somehow contrived to make of the monosyllable a taunt.

“Just for that I’ll drag you back with a rope.”

Dusty handed his weapon to the other cowboy, stepped to his horse, and brought back a rope. He uncoiled it and dropped the noose over the tramp’s head, tightening it around his waist.

The riders swung to their saddles.

“Get a move on you,” Dusty ordered, giving the rope a tug. The other end of it he had fastened to the horn of the saddle.

Tug walked ahead of the horses through the sand. It was a long hot tramp, and Dusty took pains to make it as unpleasant as possible. If the prisoner lagged, he dragged him on the ground, gibing at him, and asking him whether he would insult another woman next time he got a chance.

The cowpuncher found small satisfaction in the behavior of the man at the other end of the rope. The ragged tramp neither answered his sneers nor begged for mercy. He took what was coming to him silently, teeth clamped tight.

At last Burt interfered. “That’ll be about enough, Dusty. The old man’s gonna settle with him. It’s his say-so about what he wants done to this guy.” He added, a moment later: “I ain’t so darned sure we’ve got the right one, anyhow. This bird don’t look to me like a feller who would do a girl a meanness.”

“Hmp! You always was soft in the head, Burt,” his companion grunted.

But he left his prisoner in peace after that. Burt had said one true word. Clint Reed would not want a half-dead hobo dragged to the Diamond Bar K. He would prefer one that he could punish himself.

Tug plodded through the fine white dust that lay inches deep on the road. A cloud of it moved with them, for the horses kicked it up at every step until they ascended from the valley into the hills. The man who walked did not have the reserve of strength that had been his before he had gone to the hospital. There had been a time when he could go all day and ask for more, but he could not do it now. He stumbled as he dragged his feet along the trail.

They reached the summit of the pass and looked down on the Diamond Bar K. Its fenced domain was a patchwork of green and gold with a background of pineclad ridges. The green patches were fields of alfalfa, the gold squares were grain ripe for the mower.

Downhill the going was easier. But by the time the horsemen and their prisoner drew up to the ranch house, Tug was pretty well exhausted.

While Dusty went in to get Reed, the tramp sat on the floor of the porch and leaned against a pillar, his eyes closed. He had a ridiculous feeling that if he let go of himself he would faint.

CHAPTER VI
“NOTHING BUT A GAY-CAT ANYHOW”

With an unusual depression Betty had watched the tramp move down the dusty road to the railroad track after he had declined her offer of employment. An energetic young person, she was accustomed to having her own way. One of her earliest delightful discoveries had been that she could nearly always get what she wanted by being eager for it and assuming that, of course, the others involved would recognize her plan as best, or at least would give up theirs cheerfully when she urged hers.

But this ragged scamp, out of whose heart youth and hope had been trampled, was leaving her dashed and rebuffed. She liked to make conquests of people in bending them to the schemes she made for the regulation of her small universe, though she would have denied even to herself that she liked to manage her friends. In the case of this drear-eyed boy, the hurt was not only to her vanity. He might be five or six years older than she, but the mothering instinct—the desire to save him from himself and his fate—fluttered yearningly toward him.

She did not blame him. There was at least a remnant of self-respect in his decision. Nobody wants to be done good to. Perhaps she had seemed smug to him, though she had not meant to be.

He was on her mind all the way back to the ranch, so much so that she blurted out the whole story to her father as soon as she saw him.

Clint Reed moved to prompt action. He did not see eye to eye with his daughter. What concerned him was that these bums should waylay and insult Betty. It was a nice state of affairs when a girl was not safe alone on the roads. He gathered his men and gave them orders to find the hoboes and bring them to the ranch.

The girl’s protest was lost on Reed. It hardly reached his mind at all. Besides, this had become public business. It was not her personal affair. If hoboes needed to be taught a sense of decency, the men of the community would attend to that.