 8 The House on the Mesa Even more bleak than from the distance the House on the Mesa appeared as the writers approached it, up the winding road it stood solitary on its desert promontory. The bright sky behind it, not a shrub to ease its lines, not a barn or shed, to make a rude background for its amazing proportions. Native grass grew sparsely on the great table where it stood, rains had guttered the soil near its door. There was about at the air of an abandoned place, its long gaunt porches open to wind and storm. As they drew nearer the House the scene opened in a more domestic appearance, beyond it in a little cup of the Mesa, the stable cattle-sheds, and quarters for the men were located, so hidden in their shelter that they could not be seen from any point in the valley below. To the world that never scaled these crumbling heights, Philbrook's mansion appeared as if it endured independent of those vulgar appendages indeed. "'Looks like they've got the barn where the House ought to be,' said Taterlig. "'I'll bet the wind takes the hide off a feller up here in the wintertime.' "'It's about a bleak place for a house as a man could pick,' Lambert agreed. He checked his horse a moment to look around on the vast sweep of country presented to view from the height, the river lying as bright as quick silver in the Dunland. Not even a wire fence to break it. Taterlig drew his shoulders up and shivered in the hot morning sun as he contemplated the untrammeled roadway of the northern winds. "'Well, sir, it looks to me like a cyclone carried that house from somewheres and slammed it down. No man in his right senses ever built it here.' People take queer freaks sometimes, even in their senses, I guess we can ride right around to the door. But for the wide-weathered porch they could have ridden up to it, and knocked on its panels from the saddle. Taterlig was forgoing to the kitchen door a suggestion which the duke scorned. He didn't want to meet that girl at a kitchen door, even her own kitchen door. For that he was about to meet her. There was no doubt in him at that moment. He was not in a state of trembling eagerness, but of calm expectation. As a man might be justified in who had made his preparations and felt the outcome sure, he even smiled as he pictured her surprise, like a man returning home unexpectedly, but to a welcome of which he held no doubt. Taterlig remained mounted while Lambert went to the door. It was a rather inhospitable appearing door of solid oak, heavy and dark. There was a narrow pane of bevel glass set in it near the top, beneath it a knocker, that must have been hammered by hand in some far land centuries before the house on the mesa was planned. A negro woman, romantic old, came to the door. Miss Philbrook was at the barn, she said. What did they want of her? Were they looking for work? To these questions Lambert made no reply. As he turned back to his horse, the old serving woman came to the porch, leaving the door swinging wide open, giving a view into the hall which was furnished with a profusion of luxurance that Taterlig had never seen before. The old woman watched the duke keenly. As he swung into the saddle in the suppleness of his youthful grace, she shaded her eyes against the sun, looking after him, still as he rode with his companion toward the barn. Chickens were making the barnyard lots comfortable with their noise, some dairy cows of a breed, alien to that range, waited in a lot to be turned out to the days grazing. A burl put his big-eared head round the corner of a shed, eyeing the strangers with the alert curiosity of a nino in his native land. But the lady of the ranch was not in sight nor sound. Lambert drew up at the gate, cutting the employees' quarters from the barnyard, and sat looking things over. Here was the peace and security, an atmosphere of contentment and comfort, entirely lacking in the surroundings of the house. The buildings were all of far better class than were to be found on the ranches of that country, even the bunk-house, a house, in fact, and not a shed-roofed shack. "'Wonder where she's at,' said Taterlig, leaning and peering. "'I don't see her round here, no where's.' I'll go down to the bunk-house and see if there's anybody around,' Lambert said, for he had a notion, somehow, that he ought to meet her on foot. Taterlig remained at the gate because he looked better on a horse than off, but he was not wanting, in that vain streak, which any man with a backbone and marrow in him possesses. He wanted to appear at his best when the boss of that high-class outfit later eyes on him for the first time, and if he had hopes that she might succumb to his charms, there were no more extravagant than most men's under similar conditions. Often one side of a long barn Lambert saw her as he opened the gate. She was trying to coax a young calf to drink out of a bucket that an old negro held under his nose. Perhaps his heart climbed a little, and his eyes grew hot with sudden surge of blood, after the way of youth as he went forward. He could not see her face fully, for she was bending over the calf, and the broad brim of her hat interposed. She looked up at the sound of his approach, a startled expression in her frank gray eyes, handsome in truth she was, in a riding habit of brown duck. Her heavy sombra or her strong high boots, her hair was the color of an old honeycomb, her face browned by sun and wind. She was a maid to gladden a man's heart. With the morning sun upon her, the strength of her great courage and her clear eyes, a girl of breeding as one could see by her proud carriage. But she was not the girl whose handkerchief he had won in his reckless race with the train. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of the Duke of Chimney Butte. This Librivant's recording is in the public domain. The Duke of Chimney Butte by G. W. Ogden, Chapter 9. A night errant. The Duke took off his hat standing before her foolishly dumb between his disappointment and embarrassment. He had counted so fully on finding the girl of his romance that he was reluctant to accept the testimony of his eyes. Here was one charming enough to compensate a man for a hundred vasts and fevers. But she was not the lodestone that had drawn upon his heart, with the impelling force which could not be denied. What a stupid blunder his impetuous conclusion had led him into. What an awkward situation. Pretty as she was. He didn't want to serve this woman, no matter for her embarrassments and distress. He could not remain there a week in the ferment of his longing to be on his way searching the world for her whom his soul desired. This ran over him like an electric shock. As he stood before her, hat in hand, head bent a little, like a culprit, looking rather stupid in his confusion. Were you looking for somebody? She asked her hands face sunning over with a smile that had invited his confidence and dismissed his qualms. I was looking for the boss, ma'am. I am the boss, she spoke encouragely, as to some timid creature bending to brush off the milk that the stubborn calf had shaken from his muzzle over her skirt. My partner and I are strangers here. He's over there at the gate, passing through the country. We wanted your permission to look around the place a little. They told us about it down in Glendora. The animation on her face was clouded instantly as by a shadow of disappointment. She turned her head as if to hide this from his eyes, answering carelessly, a little pettishly. Go ahead, look around till you're tired. Lambert hesitated, knowing very well that he had raised expectations which he was in no present mind to fill. She must be sorely in need of help when she would brighten up that way, at the mere sight of a common creature like a cow-puncher. He hated to take away what he had seemed to come their offering, what he had in all earnestness come to offer. But she was not the girl. He had followed a false lure that his own unbridled imagination had lit. The only thing to do was to back out of it as gracefully as he could, and the poor excuse of looking around was the best one he could lay his hand on in a hurry. Thank you, he said rather emptily. She did not reply but bent again to her task of teaching the little black calf to take its breakfast out of the pail instead of the fashion in which nature intended to refresh itself. Lambert backed off a little for the way of the range which had indeed become his way in that year of his apprenticeship and its crudities were over him painfully. Went off when he considered a respectful distance he put on his hat, turning to look at her as if to further assure her that his invasion of her premises was not a trespass. She gave him no further notice engrossed as she appeared to be with the calf, but when he reached the gate and looked back he saw her standing straight, the bucket at her feet, looking after him as if she resented the fact that two free-footed men should come there and flaunt their leisure before her in an hour of her need. Tater Lake was looking over the gate, trying to bring himself into the range of her eyes. He swept off his hat when she looked that way, to be rewarded by an immediate presentation of her back. Such cow-punchers as these were altogether too fine and grand in their independent heirs, her attitude seemed to say. "'Take the job?' Tater Lake inquired. Didn't ask her about it. "'Didn't ask her? Well, what in the name of snakes did you come up here for?' The Duke led his horse away from the gate, back where she could not see him, and stood fiddling with his cinch a bit, although it required no attention at all. I got to thinking, maybe I'd better go on west a piece. If you want to stay, don't let me lead you off. Go on over and strike her for a job. She needs men, I know, by the way she looked. "'Nah, I guess I'll go on with you to our roads fork. But I was kind of thinking I'd like to stay around Glendora a while,' Tater Lake sighed as he seemed to relinquish the thought of it. Tried the gate to see that it was latched, turned his horse about. "'Well, where are we heading for now?' "'Want to ride up there on the bench in front of the house and look around a little to view. Then I guess we'll go back to town.' They rode to the top of the bench, the Duke indicated, where the view broadened in every direction, that being the last barrier between the river and the distant hills. The ranch house appeared big, even in that setting of immensities, and perilously near the edge of the crumbling bluff which presented a face almost sheer on the river, more than three hundred feet below. It must have been a job to haul the lumber for that house up here.' That was Tater Lake's only comment. The rugged grandeur of nature presented to him only its obstacles, its beauties did not move him, any more than they would have affected a cow. The Duke did not seem to hear him. He was stretching his gaze into the dim south of the river, where leaden hills rolled billow upon billow, and garnitured with their sad gray sage. Whatever his thoughts were, they bound him in a spell which the creaking of Tater Lake's saddle, as he shifted in it impatiently, did not disturb. Couple fellows just rode up to the gate in the cross-finth back of the bunk-house, Tater Lake reported. The Duke grunted to let him be known, that he had heard it, but was not interested. He was a thousand miles away from the Badlands, in his fast-running dreams. "'That old Negro seems to be having some trouble with them fellers,' came Tater Lake's further report. "'There goes that girl on her horse up to the gate. Hey, look at him. Duke, them fellers are trying to, uh, make her let him through.' Lambert turned indifferently to see. There appeared to be a controversy under way at the gate, to be sure. But rouse between employees and employer. We're common. That wasn't his fuss. Perhaps it wasn't an argument, as it seemed to be from the distance, anyhow. "'Do you see that?' Tater Lake started his horse forward in a jump as he spoke, raining up stiffly at Lambert's side. One of them fellers hurled his gun on that old Negro. Do you see him, Duke?' "'Yes, I saw him,' said the Duke, spectatively, watching the squabble at a distant gate keenly, turning his horse to head that way by a pressure of his knee. Knocked him flat, Tater Lake set off in a gallop as he spoke, Duke right after him, soon ahead of him, old Wettstone, a yellow streak across the mesa. It wasn't his quarrel, but nobody could come flashing a gun in the face of a lady when he was around. That was the argument that rose in the Duke's thoughts, as he rode down the slope and up the fenced passage between the barns. The gate at which the two horsemen were disputing the way with the girl and her old black helper was a hundred yards or more beyond the one at which Tater Lake and the Duke had stopped a little while before. It was in a cross-fence which appeared to cut the house and other buildings from the range beyond. As the Duke bent to open this first gate, he saw that the girl had dismounted and was bending over the old Negro who was lying stretched on the ground. He had fallen against the gate on which one of the Ruffians was now pushing, trying to open it against the weight of his body. The girl spoke sharply to the fellow. Bracing her shoulder against the gate, Lambert heard a scoundrel laugh as he swung to the ground and set his shoulder against the other side. The man who remained mounted, leaned over and added his strength to the struggle, together forcing the gate open, pushing the resisting girl with it, dragging the old Negro who clutched the bottom plank and was hauled brutally along. All concerned in the struggle were so deeply engrossed in their own affair that none noted the approach of the Duke and Tater Leg. The fellow on the ground was leading his horse through as Lambert galloped up. At the sound of Lambert's approach, the dismounted man leaped into his saddle. The two trespassers sat scowling inside the gate, watching him closely for the first hostile sign. Vesta Philbrook was trying to help the old Negro to his feet. Blood was streaming down his face from a cut on his forehead. He sank down again when she let go of him to welcome this unexpected help. These men got my fence they're trespassing on me. Trying to defy and humiliate me because—'I know I'm alone,' she said. She stretched out her hand toward Lambert as if in appeal to a judge, her face flushed from the struggle and sense of outrage, her hat pushed back on her amber hair, the fire of righteous anger in her eyes. The realization of her beauty seemed to sweep Lambert like a flood of sudden music, lifting his heart in a great surge, making him recklessly glad. "'You fellows think you're doing,' he asked, following the speech of the range. We're going where we started to go.' The man who had just remounted replied, glaring at Lambert, with insulting sneer. This was a stocky man with bushy red-gray eyebrows, a stubble of roan beard, over his blunt, common face. One foot was short in his boot, as if he had lost his toes, in a blistered, a mark not uncommonly set by unfriendly nature on the men, who defied its force in this country. He wore a duck-shooting jacket, the pockets of it bulging as if with game. His companion was a much younger man, slender, graceful in the saddle, rather handsome in a swarthy, defiant way. He ranged up beside the spokesman as if to take full share in whatever was to come. Both of them were armed with revolvers, the elder of the two, with a rifle in addition, which he carried in a leather-scabbard, black and slick with age, slung on his saddle, under his thigh. "'You'll have to get permission from this lady before you go through here,' Lambert told him calmly. Festa Philbrook had stepped back, as if she had presented her case and waited adjudication. She stood by the old Negro, where he sat in the dust, her hand on his head, not a word more to add to her case, seeming to have passed it on to this slim, confident, soft-spoken stranger, with his clear eyes and steady hand, who took hold of it so competently. "'I've been cutting this pretty little fence for ten years, and I'll keep on cutting it, and going through whenever I feel like it. I don't have to get no women's permission. No man's neither, to go where I want to go, kid.' The man dropped his hand to his revolver as he spoke, the last word with a twisting of it the lip, a showing of his subonic teeth, a sneer. That was at once an insult and a goad. The next moment he was straining his arms above his head as if trying to pull them out of their sockets, and his companion was displaying himself in a like manner. Lambert's gun down on them. Tatterleague coming in deliberately a second or two behind. "'Keep them right there,' was the duke's caution, jerking his head to Tatterleague in the manner of a signal understood. Tatterleague rode up to the fence-cutters and disarmed them, holding his gun comfortably in their ribs, as he worked with swift hand. The rifle he handed down to the old Negro, who was now on his feet, and who took it with a bow and a gray face across which a gleam of satisfaction flashed. The holsters with three revolvers in them he passed to the duke, who hung them on his saddle-horm. "'Bile off,' Tatterleague ordered. He obeyed. Wrathful but impotent. Tatterleague sat by, chewing gum, calm and steady as if the thing had been rehearsed a hundred times. The duke pointed to the old Negro's hat. "'Pick it up,' he ordered the younger man. Dust it off and give it to him.' The fellow did as directed with evil face. It hurt his high pride just as the duke intended that it should hurt. Lambert nodded to the man who had knocked the old fellow down with a blow of his heavy revolver. "'Dust off his clothes,' he said. Vesta Phil Brooks smiled as she witnessed the swift humbling of her ancient enemy. The old Negro turned himself arrogantly, presenting the rear of his broad and dusty pantaloons. But the bristling red-faced rancher-bock he looked up at Lambert half choked on the bone of his rage. "'I'll die before I do it,' he declared with a curse. Lambert beat down the defiant red-balled, glowing eyes with one brief straight look. The fence-cutter broke a tip of sage and set to work. The old man lifting his arms like a strutting gobbler is head held high, the pain of his hurt forgotten in the triumphant moment of his revenge. "'You got some wire and tools around here handy, Miss Phil Brooke?' Lambert inquired. "'These men are going to do a little fence-fixing this morning for a change.'" The old Negro pranced off to get the required tools, throwing a look back at the two prisoners now and then, covering his mouth with his hand to keep back the explosion of his mirth. Badly, as he was hurt, his enjoyment of the unprecedented situation seemed to cure him completely. His mistress went after him, doubtful of his strength, with nothing but a quick look into Lambert's eyes as she passed to tell him how deeply she felt. It was a remarkable procession for the badlands that set out from the cross-flying fence a few minutes later, the two free rangers starting under escort to repair the damage done to a despised fence-man's barrier. One of them carried a wire-stretcher, the chain of it wound around his saddle-horn, the other a coil of barbed wire and such tools as were required. After they had proceeded a little away, Titterleg thought of something. "'Don't you reckon we might need a couple of posts, Duke?' he asked. The Duke thought perhaps they might come in handy. They turned back accordingly, and each of the trespassers was compelled to shoulder an oak post, with much blasphemy and threatening of future adjustment. In a manner of marching each free ranger carrying his crosses none of his kind ever had carried it before. They rode to the scene of their late depreditions. Festa Philbrook stood at the gate and watched them go, reproaching herself for silence, in the presence of this man who had come to her assistance with such sure and determined hand. She never had found it difficult before to thank anybody who had done her a generous turn. But here her tongue had lain as still as a hair in its cupboard, and her heart had gone trembling in the guttitude, which it could not voice. A strong man he was, and full of commanding courage, but neither so strong nor so mighty, that she had need to keep as quiet in his presence as a kitchen made before a king. But he would have to pass that way coming back, and she could make amends. The old negro stood by, chuckling his pleasure, at the sight drawing away into the distance of the pasture, where his mistress's cattle fed. Ananias, do you know who that man is, she asked? Lord, Miss Vesta? Of course I do. Did you hear his horse wrangle call him the Duke? I heard him call him Duke. He's that man they called Duke of Chimney Bute. I know that Hoss is right. That Hoss used to be Jim Wilder's old outlaw. That Duke man killed Jim and took that Hoss away from him. What he'd done. That was while he was gone. He didn't hear about it. Killed him and took his horse? Surely he must have had some good reason, Ananias. I don't know, and I ain't a caron. That's him, and that's what he'd done. Did you ever hear of him killing anybody else? Oh, plenty, plenty, said the old man with easy generosity. I bet he killed a hundred men, maybe more than a hundred. But you don't know, she said, smiling at the old man's extravagant recommendation of his hero. I don't know, but I bet he is, said he. Look at him, chuckled. Look at old Nick Haggis and that ordinary low-down Indian blood boy. CHAPTER X Fester rode out to meet them as they were coming back to make sure of her thanks. She was radiant with gratitude and at no loss any longer for words to express it. Before they had ridden together on the return journey, half a mile, Tater Leg felt that he had known her all her life, and was ready to cast his fortunes with her, win or lose. Lambert was leaving the conversation between her and Tater Leg, for the greater part. He rode in gloomy isolation, like a man with something on his mind, speaking only when spoken to, and then as shortly as politeness would permit. Tater Leg, who had words enough for a book, appeared to feel the responsibility of holding them up to the level of gentlemen and citizens of the world. Not if talk could prevent it would Tater Leg allow them to be classed as a pair of boars, who could not go beyond the ordinary cow-punchers' range in word and thought. It'll be some time, ma'am, before that fellow Hargis, and his boy'll try to make a short cut to Glendora through your ranch again, he said. It was the first time they were ever caught after old man Hargis had been cutting our fence for years, Mr. Wilson. I can't tell you how much I owe you for humiliating them, where they thought the humiliation would be on my side. Ah, don't you mention it, ma'am? It's the greatest pleasure in the world. He thought he'd come by the house and look in the window and defy me because I was alone. Got a mean eyes. You've got all eye-like the wolf. You've got a wolf's habits, too. More ways than one, Mr. Wilson. Yes, that man at Steel Caves, all right. We've never been able to prove it on him, Mr. Wilson, but you've put your finger on Mr. Hargis' weakness like a phrenologist. Tater Leg felt his oats at this compliment. He sat up like a major, his chest out, his mustache as big on his thin face as a Marmalook's. It always made Lambert think of the handlebars on that long horned safety bicycle that he had come riding into the Badlands. The worst part of it is, Mr. Wilson, that he's not the only one. Neighbors living off-yarding? Yes, that's the way it was down in Texas when the big ranchers began to fence it. Tell me. I never was there, ma'am, and I don't know of my own knowledge and belief. As lawyers say, fence-riding down there in them days was a job where a man took his life in both hands and held it up to be shot at. There's been an endless fight on this ranch, too. It's been a strain and a struggle from the first day. Not worth it, not half worth it, but Father put the best years of his life into it and established it where men boasted it couldn't be done. I'm not going to let them whip me now. Lambert looked at her with a quick gleam of admiration in his eyes. She was riding between him and Tatterleague as easy in their company and as natural as if she had known them for years. There had been no heights of false pride or consequence for her to descend to the comradeship of these men, for she was as unaffected and ingenious as they. Lambert seemed awake to a sudden realization of this. His interest in her began to grow, his reserve to fall away. They told us at Glendora that rustlers were running your cattle off, he said. Are they taking the stragglers they get through where the fence is cut or coming after them? They're coming in and running them off almost under our eyes. I've only got one man on the ranch besides Ananias. Nobody riding fence at all but myself. It takes me a good while to ride nearly seventy miles of fence. Eh, that's so, Lambert seemed to reflect. How many ahead have you got in this past year? I ought to have about four thousand, but they're melting away like snow, Mr. Lambert. We saw a bunch of them up there where the fellers cut the fence Tatterleague put in, not to be left out of the game which he had started and kept going single-handed so long white-faced cattle like they got in Kansas. Hours? Mine are all white-faced. They stand this climate better than others. Must have been a bunch of strays, we saw, none of them was branded, Lambert said. Father never would brand his calves for various reasons, the humane above all others. I never blamed him after seeing it done once, and I'm not going to take up the barbarous practice now. All other considerations aside, it ruins a hide, you know, Mr. Lambert. Seems to me you'd be better to lose the hide than a calf, Miss Phil Brook. It does make it easy for thieves, and that's the only argument in favor of branding. While I've got the only white-faced herd in this country, I can't go into court and prove my property without a brand once the cattle are run outside this fence. So they come in and take them, knowing they're safe unless they're caught. Lambert fell silent again. The ranch house was in sight high on its peninsula of Prairie, like a lighthouse seen from sea. It's a shame to let that fine-herd waste away like that, he said renominatively, as if speaking to himself. It's always been hard to get help here. Cowboys seem to think it's a disgrace to ride fence, such as we've been able to get nearly always turned out thieves on their own account in the end. The one out with the cattle now is a farm boy from Iowa, afraid to be shadowed. They didn't want no fence in here in the first place, that's what set their teeth again, you tater-leg said. If I could only get some real men once, she sighed. Men who could handle them like you boys did this morning. Even father never seemed to understand where to take hold of them to hurt them the way you do. They were near the house now. Lambert rode on a little way in silence then. It's a shame to let that herd go to pieces, he said. It's a sin, tater-leg declared. She dropped her reins, looking from one to the other, an eager appeal in her hopeful face. Why can't you boys stop here awhile and help me out? She asked, saying at last in a burst of hopeful eagerness to say what had been in her heart at first. She held out her hand to each of them in a pretty way of appeal, turning from one to the other, her grey eyes pleading. I hate to see a herd like that broken up by thieves and all your investment wasted, said the Duke thoughtfully, as if considering it deeply. So sin and shame, said tater-leg. I guess we'll stay and give you a hand, said the Duke. She pulled her horse up short and gave him not a figurative hand, but a warm, a soft, material one from which she pulled her buckskin glove, as if to level all thought or suggestion of a barrier between them. She turned then and shook hands with tater-leg, warming him so with her glowing eyes that he pattered her hand a little before he let it go, in a manner truly patriarchal. You're all right. You're all right, he said. Once pledged to it, the Duke was anxious to set his hand to the work that he saw cut out for him on the big ranch. He was like a physician who had entered reluctantly into a case after the other practitioners had left the patient in desperate condition. Every moment must be employed if disaster to that valuable herd was to be averted. Vesta would hear of nothing, but that they come first to her house for dinner. So the guests did the best they could at improving their appearance at the bunkhouse after turning their horses over to the obsequious Ananias, who appeared with a large bandage and a strong smell of turpentine on his bruised head. Beyond brushing off the dust of the morning's ride, there was little to be done. Tater-leg brought out his brightest neck tie from the portable possessions, rolled up in his slicker. The Duke produced his calfskin vest. There was not a coat between them to save the dignity of their profession at the boss lady's board. Tater-leg's green velvet waistcoat had suffered damage during the winter when a spark from his pipe burned a hole into it as big as a dollar. He held it up and looked at it, concluding in the end it would not serve. With his hairy chaps off, Tater-leg did not appear so bold-legged, but he waddled like a crab as they went toward the house to join the companion of the ride. The Duke stopped on the high ground near the house, turned and looked off over the great pasture that had been Philbrook's battleground for so many years. One farmer from Iowa out there to watch four thousand cattle and thieves all around him. Eatin' looks like burnin' daylight to me. She'd have felt hurt if we'd shied off from her dinner, Duke. You know a man's got to eat when he ain't hungry and drink when he ain't dry sometimes in this world to keep up appearances. Appearances. The Duke looked him over with humorous eye. From his somewhat clean sombrero through his capacious corduroy trousers gathered into his boot-tops—oh, well, I guess it's all right. Vesta was in excellent spirits due to the broadening of her prospects which had appeared so narrow and uncompromising but a few hours before. One of this pair, she believed, was worth three ordinary men. She asked them about their adventures, and the Duke solemnly assured her that they never had experienced any. Tater Lake, loquacious as he might be on occasion, knew when to hold his tongue. Lambert led her away from that ground into a discussion of her own affairs and conditions as they stood between her neighbors and herself. Nick Hargis is one of the most persistent offenders, and we might as well dispose of him first since you've met the old wretch and know what he's like on the outside, she explained. Hargis was in the cattle business in a hand-to-mouth way when we came here, and he raised a bigger noise than anybody else about our fences, claiming we'd cut him off from water, which wasn't true—we didn't cut anybody off from the river. Hargis is married to an Indian squaw, a little old squat, black-faced thing as mean as a snake. They've got a big brood of children that boy you saw this morning is the senior of the gang. Old Hargis used the harbors, two or three cattle thieves, horse thieves, or other crooks of that kind, some of them just out of the pen, some of them preparing the way to it. He does a sort of general rustling business with this ranch as his main source of supply. We've had a standing fight on with him ever since we came here, but today was the first time, as I told you, that he ever was caught. You heard what he said about cutting the fence this morning? That's the attitude of the country all around. You couldn't convict a man of cutting fence in this country, so all a person can do is shoot them if you catch them. I don't know what Hargis will do to get even with this morning's humiliation. I think he'll leave that fence alone like it was charged with lightning, Titterleague said. He'll try to turn something he's wily and vindictive. Needs a chunk of lead about the middle of his appetite, Titterleague declared. Who comes next, Lambert inquired? There's a man they call Wally Bostain. His regular name is Jesse. On the further end of this place, that's troubled with a case of incurable resentment against a barbed wire fence. He's a sheepman. One of the last that would do a lawless deed, you'd think, for the look of him, but he's mean to the roots of his hair. All sheepmen's honouring man, they tell me, said Titterleague a cowman from CORE to RINE and loyal to his calling accordingly. I don't know about the rest of them, but Wally Bostain is a mighty mean sheepman, while I know I got a shot at him once, that he'll remember. You did? Titterleague's face was as bright as a dishpan with admiration. He chuckled in his throat, eyeing the duke slantingly to see how he took that piece of news. The duke sat up a little stiffer, his face grew a shade more serious, and that was all the change in him that Titterleague could see. I hope we can take that kind of work off your hands in the future, Miss Philbrook, he said, his voice slow and grave. She lifted her grateful eyes with a look of appreciation that seemed to him overpayment for his service proposed, rather than done. She went on, then, with a description of her interesting neighbors. This ranch is a long, narrow strip, only about three miles wide, but by twenty deep, the river at this end of it, Wally Bostain at the other. Along the sides there are various kinds of reptiles and human skin, none of them living within four or five miles of our fences, the average being much further than that. The people are not very plentiful right around here. On the north side of us, Hargis is the worst. On the south side, a man named Kerr. Kerr is the biggest single-handed cattleman around here. His one grievance against us is that we shut a creek that he formerly used along inside our fences that forced him to range down to the river for water. As the creek begins and ends on our land, it empties into the river about a mile above here. It's hard for an unbiased mind to grasp Kerr's point of objection. Have you ever taken a shot at him? The Duke asked, smiling a little dry smile. Oh, she said reflectively, not at Kerr himself. Kerr is what is usually termed a gentleman. That is, he's a man of education who wears his beard cut like a banker's. But his methods of carrying on a feud are extremely low. Fighting is beneath his dignity, I guess. He hires it done. You've seen some fighting in your time, ma'am. Titter Lake said, too much of it, she sighed wearily. I've had a shot at his men more than once, but there are one or two in that Kerr family I'd like to sling a gun down on. It was strange to hear that gentle-mannered, refined girl talk of fighting as if it were the commonest of everyday businesses. There was no note of boasting, no color of exaggeration in her manner. She was as natural and sincere as the calm breeze. Fighting in through the open window, and as wholesome and pure. There was not a doubt of that in the mind of either of the men at the table with her. Their admiration spoke out of their eyes. When you had to fight all your life, she said, looking up earnestly into Lambert's face, make sure old before your time and quick tempered and savage, I suppose. Even when you fight in self-defense, I used to ride fence when I was fourteen with a rifle across my saddle, and I wouldn't have thought any more of shooting a man. I saw cutting our fence or running off cattle than I would of a rabbit. She did not say what her state of mind on that question was at present, but it was so plainly expressed in her flush cheeks and defiant eyes that it needed no words. If you'd have had your gun on you this morning when them fillers knocked that old negro down, I bet there'd have been a funeral due over at Hargis's Ranch, said Tater-Leg. I'd saddled up to go to the post office. I never carry a gun with me when I go to Gondorah, she said. A country where a lady has to carry a gun at all ain't no country to speak of. It needs to clean it up, ma'am. That's what it needs. It surely does, Mr. Wilson. You've got it sized up all right. Well, Tater-Leg, I guess we'd better be hitting the breeze. The Duke suggested, plainly uneasy between the duty of courtesy and the long lines of unguarded fences. Tater-Leg could not accustom himself to that extraordinary bunkhouse when they returned to it, on such short time. He walked about it neck-tie in his hand, looking into its wonderous marveling over its conveniences. She was like a regular human house, he said. There was a bureau with a glass to it in every room, and there were rooms for several men. The Duke and Tater-Leg stood away their slender belongings in the drawers, and soon were ready for the saddle. As he put the calfskin vest away, Duke took out a little handkerchief, from which the perfume of faint violet had faded long ago, and pressed it tenderly against his cheek. You wait on me a little while longer, won't you, he asked. Then he laid it away between the folds of his remarkable garment very carefully, and went out his slicker across his arm to take up his life in that strip of contention and strife between Vesta Philbrook's far-reaching wire fences. End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 of the Duke of Chimney Butte. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Duke of Chimney Butte by G. W. Ogden. Chapter 11 Alarms and Excursions The news quickly ran over the country that Vesta Philbrook had hired the notorious Duke of Chimney Butte, and his gunslinging side partner to ride fence. What had happened to Nick Hargis and his boy Tom seemed to prove that they were men of the old school, quite a different type, from any who had been employed on the ranch previously. Lambert was troubled to learn that his notoriety had run ahead of him increasing as it spread. It was said that his encounter with Jim Wilder was only one of his milder exploits, that he was a grim and bloody man from Oklahoma, who had marked his miles with tombstones as he traveled. His first business on taking charge of the Philbrook ranch had been to do a piece of fence cutting on his own account opposite Nick Hargis's ranch, through which he had written and driven home thirty head of cattle, lately stolen by the enterprising citizen from Vesta Philbrook's herd. This act of open-handed restoration carried out in broad daylight alone, and in the face of Hargis his large family of sons and the skulking refugees from the law who chanced to be, hiding there at the time, added greatly to the Duke's fame. It did not serve as a recommendation among the neighbors who had prayed so long and notoriously on the Philbrook herd, and no doubt nothing would have been said about it by Hargis to even the most intimate of his rough-and-y associates. But Tater Leg and Ol Ananias took great pains to spread the story in Glendora, where it passed along with additions as it moved. Hargis explained that the cattle were strayed which had broken out. While this reputation of the Duke was highly gratifying to Tater Leg, who found his own glory increased thereby, it was extremely distasteful to Lambert, who had no means of preventing it spread or opportunity of correcting its falsity. He knew himself to be an inoffensive, rather backward and timid man, or at least this was his own measure of himself. That fight with Jim Wilder always had been a cloud over his spirits, although his conscience was clear. It had sobered him and made him feel old, as Vesta Philbrook had said fighting made a person feel. He could understand her better, perhaps, than one whom violence had passed undisturbed. There was nothing further from his desire than strife and turmoil, gunslinging and a fearful notoriety. But there he was, set up against his will against his record, as a man to whom it was wise to give the road. There was a dangerous distinction, as he well understood, for a time would come even opportunities would be created when he would be called upon to defend it. That was the discomfort of a fighting name. It was a continual liability, found sooner or later to draw upon a man, to the full extent of his resources. This reputation lost nothing in the result of his first meeting with Barry Kerr, the rancher who wore his beard like a banker and passed for a gentleman in that country, where a gentleman was defined at that time as a man who didn't swear. This meeting took place on the south line of the fence on a day when Lambert had been on the ranch a little more than a week. Kerr was out looking for strays. He said, although he seemed to overlook the joke that he made in neglecting to state from whos heard, Lambert gave him the benefit of the doubt and construed him to mean his own. He wrote up to the fence, affable as a man who never had an evil intention in his life and made inquiry concerning Lambert's connection with the ranch, making a pretense of not having heard that Vesta had hired new men. Well, she needs a couple of good men that will stand by her steady, he said, with all the generosity of one who had her interest close to his heart. She's a good girl and she's been having a hard time of it. But if you want to do her the biggest favor that man ever did do under circumstances of similar nature, persuade her to tear this fence out all around and throw the range open like it used to be. Then all his full quarreling and shooting will stop. Everybody in here will be on good terms again. That's the best way out of it for her and it will be the best way out of it for you if you intend to stay here and run this ranch. While Kerr's manners seem to be patriarchal and kindly advisory, there was a certain hardness beneath his words, a certain coldness in his eyes, which made his proposal nothing short of a threat. Made all the resentful indignation which Lambert had mastered and chained down in himself rise up and bristle. He took it as a personal front, as a threat against his own safety, and the answer that he gave to it was quick and to the point. There'll never be a yard of this fence torn down on my advice, Mr. Kerr, he said. You people around here will have to learn to give it a good deal more respect from now on than you have in the past. Going to teach this crowd around here to take off their hats when they come to a fence. Kerr was a slender, dry man, the native meanness of his crafty face largely masked by his beard, which was beginning to show streaks of gray in its brown. He was wearing a coat that day, although it was hot, and had no weapon in sight. He sat, looking Lambert straight in the eye for a moment upon the delivery of his bill of intentions. His brows drawn a bit, a cast of concentrated hardness in his gray-blue eyes. I'm afraid you've bit off more than you can chew. Much less swallow, young man, he said. With that he wrote away knowing that he had failed in what he probably had some hope of accomplishing in his sly and unworthy way. Things went along quietly after that for a few weeks. Hargus did not attempt any retaliatory move. On the side of Kerr's ranch all was quiet. The Iowa boy, under Tartar Lake's Turleage, was developing into a trustworthy and capable hand. The cattle were fattening in the grassy valleys. All counted it was the most peaceful spell that Bill Brooks Ranch had ever known, and the tranquility was reflected in the owner, and her house, and within its walls. Lambert did not see much of Vest in those first weeks of his employment, for he lived afield, close beside the fences which he guarded as his own honor. Tartar Lake had a great pride in the matter also. He cruised up and down his section, with a long range-rifle across his saddle. Putting in more hours sometimes, he said, then there were in a day. Tartar Lake knew very well that slinking eyes were watching him from the covert of the sage-gray hills. Unceasing vigilance was the price of reputation in that place, and Tartar Lake was jealous of his. Lambert was beginning to grow restless under the urge of his spirit to continue his journey westward in quest of the girl who had left her favor in his hand. The romance of it. The improbability of ever finding her along the thousand miles between him and the sea, among the multitudes of women, in the cities and hamlets along the way appealed to him with a compelling lure. He had considered many schemes for getting trace of her, among the most favored, being that of finding the breakman who stood on the end of the train that day amongst those who watched him ride an overticket, and learning from him to what point her ticket read. That was the simplest plan, but he knew that conductors and breakmen changed often, every few hundred miles, and that his great plan might not lead to anything in the end. But it was too simple to put by without trying. When he set out again, this would be his first care. He smiled sometimes as he rode his lonely bead inside the fence and recalled a thrill that had animated him with the certainty that Vesta Philbrook would turn out to be the girl, his girl. The disappointment had been so keen that he had almost disliked Vesta the first day. She was a fine girl, modest and unaffected, honest as the middle of the day. But there was no appeal but the appeal of the weak to the strong, from her to him. They were drawn into a common sympathy of determination. He had paused there to help her because she was outmatched, fighting a brave battle against unscrupulous forces. He was taking pay from her, and there could not be admitted any thought of romance under such conditions. But the girl whose challenge he had accepted at misery that day was to be considered in a different light. There was a pledge between them, a bond. He believed that she was expecting him out there somewhere, waiting for him to come. Often he would halt on a hilltop and look away into the west, playing with a thousand fancies as to whom she might be and where. He was riding in one of those dreams one mid-afternoon of a hot day about six weeks after taking charge of affairs on a ranch, thinking that he would tell Vesta in a day or two that he must go. Tatterleague might stay with her. Other men could be hired if she would look about her. He wanted to get out of the business anyway. There was no offering for a man in it without capital. So he was thinking his head bent as he rode up a long slope of grassy hill. At the top he stopped to blow all wet stone up little, turning in the saddle, running his eyes casually along the fence. He started his dreams gone from him like a covey of frightened quail. The fence was cut. For a hundred yards or more along the hilltop it was cut at every post, making it impossible to peace. Lambert could not have felt his resentment burn any hotter if it had been his own fence. It was a fence under his charge. The defiance was directed at him. He rode along to see if any cattle had escaped and drew his breath again with relief when he found that none had passed. There was the track of but one horse, the fence-cutter, had been alone probably not more than an hour ahead of him. The job finished. He had gone boldly in the direction of Kerr's Ranch on whose side the depredation had been committed. Lambert followed the trail some distance. It led on toward Kerr's Ranch. Defiance in its very boldness current self must have done the job. One man had little chance of stopping such assaults. Now they had begun. On a front of twenty miles but Lambert vowed that if he ever did have the good fortune to come up on one of these sneaks while he was at work. He'd fill his hide so full of lead they'd have to get a derrick to load him on a wagon. It didn't matter so much about the fence so long as they didn't get any of the stock. But stragglers from the main herd would find a big gap like that in a few hours and the rustlers lying in wait would hurry them away. One such loss as that and he would be a disgraced man in the eyes of Vesta Philbrook and a laughing stock of the rascals who put it through. He rode in search of the Iowa boy who was with the cattle, his job being to ride among them continually to keep them accustomed to a man on horseback. Luckily he found him before sundown and sent him for wire. Then he stood guard at the cut until the damage was repaired. After that fence cutting became a regular prank on Kerr's side of the ranch. Watch as he might. Lambert could not prevent the stealthy excursions and vindictive destruction of the hated barrier. All these breaches were made within a mile on either side of the first cut. Sometimes in a single place again along a stretch as if the person using the nippers knew when to deliberate and when to hasten. Always there was the trace of but one rider who never dismounted to cut even the bottom wire. That was the work of the same person each time Lambert was convinced, for he always rode the same horse, as betrayed by a broken hind hoof. Lambert tried various expedients for trapping the Sculper. During a period of two weeks he lay in wait by day and made stealthy excursions by night. All to no avail, whoever was doing it, had some way of keeping informed on his movements with exasperating closeness. The matter of discovering and punishing the culprit devolved on Lambert alone. He could not withdraw Tatter Lake to help him the other man could not be spared from the cattle, and now came the crowning insult of all. It was early morning, after an all-night watch along the three miles of fence where the wire cutter always worked, when Lambert rode to the top of the ridge where the first breach in his line had been made. Below that point, not more than half a mile he had stopped to boil his breakfast coffee. His first discovery, on mounting the ridge, was a panel of fence-cut. His next, a piece of white paper twisted to the end of one of the curling wires. This he disengaged and unfolded. It was a page torn from a medicine memorandum book, such as cow-punchers usually carry their time in, and the addresses of friends. Why don't you come and get me, Mr. Duke? This was the message at Bore. The writing was better the spelling more exact than the output of the ordinary cow-puncher, Kerr himself Lambert thought again. He stood with the taunting message in his fingers, looking toward the Kerr Ranch House, some seven or eight miles to the south, and stood so quite a while, his eyes drawn small, as he looked into the wind. All right. I'll take you up on that, he said. He rode slowly out through the gap, following the fresh trail as before. It was made by the horse with a notch and his left-hined hook. It led to a hill three-quarters of a mile beyond the fence. From this point, it struck a line for the distant ranch house. Lambert did not go beyond the hill, dismounting. He stood surveying the country about him. Struck for the first time by the view of this vantage point afforded of the domain under his care. Especially the line of fence was plainly marked for a long distance on either side of the little ridge where the last cut had been made. Evidently, the sculker concealed himself at this very point and watched his opening, playing entirely safe. That accounted for all the cutting having been done by daylight, as he was sure had been the case. He looked about for a trace of where the fellow had lain behind the fringe of Sage, but the ground was so hard that it would not take a human footprint. As he looked, he formulated a plan of his own, half a mile or more beyond this hill, in the direction of the Kerr place, a small bute stood up, its steep sides grassless, its flat top bare. That would be his watchtower from that day forward until he had his hand on this defiant rascal, who had time in his security to stop and write a note. That night he scaled the little bute after mending the fence behind him, leaving his horse concealed among the huge blocks of rock at its foot. Next day, and the one following, he passed in a blazing sun, but nobody came to cut the fence. That night he went down, rode his horse to water, turned him to graze, and went back to his perch, among the ants and lizards on top of the bute. The third day was cloudy and uneventful on the fourth, a little before nine, just when the sun was squaring off to shrivel him in his skin, Lambert saw somebody coming from the direction of Kerr's Ranch, the rider made straight for the hill below Lambert's Bute, where he rained up before reaching the top, dismounted, and went crawling to the fringe of Sage at the further rim of the bare summit. Lambert waited until a fellow mounted and rode toward the fence, then he slid down the shale, startling Whitestone from his doves. Lambert calculated that he was more than a mile from the fence. He wanted to get over there near enough to catch the fellow at work, so there would be full justification for what he intended to do. Whitestone stretched himself to the task, coming out of the broken ground and up the hill from which the fence-cutter had written, but a few minutes before, while the marauder was still a considerable distance from his objective, the man was riding slowly as if saving his horse for a chance surprise. Lambert cut down the distance between them rapidly and was not more than three hundred yards behind when the fellow began snipping the wire with a pair of nippers that glittered in the sun. Lambert held his horse back. Approaching with little noise, the fence-cutter was rising back to the saddle after cutting the bottom wire of the second panel when he saw that he was trapped. Plainly unnerved by this coup of the despised fence-guard, he sat clutching his reins as if calculating his chance of dashing past the man who blocked his retreat. Lambert slowed down, not more than fifty yards between them, waiting for the first move toward a gun. He wanted as much of the law on his side even though there was no witness to it. He could have, for the sake of his conscience and his peace. Just a moment the fence-cutter hesitated, making no movement to pull a gun. Then he seemed to decide in a flash that he could not escape the way that he had come. He leaned low over his horse's neck as if he expected Lambert to begin shooting, rode through the gap that he had cut in the fence and galloped swiftly into the pasture. Lambert followed, sensing the scheme at a glance. The rascal intended to either ride across the pasture hoping to outrun his pursuer in the three miles of up and down country or turn when he had a safe lead and go back. As the chase led away, it became plain that the plan was to make a run for the further fence, cut it, and get away before Lambert could come up. That arrangement suited Lambert admirably. It would seem to give him all the law on his side that any man could ask. There was a scrubby growth of brush on the hillside, and tall red willows along the streams making a covert here and there for a horse. The fleeing man took advantage of every offering of this nature, as if he rode in constant fear of the bullet that he knew was his due. Added to this cunning, he was well mounted, his horse being almost equal in speed to whetstone. It seemed at the beginning of the race. Lambert pushed him as hard as he thought wise, conserving his horse for the advantage that he knew he would have while the fence-cutter stopped to make himself an outlet. The fellow rode hard, unsparing of his court, jumping his long-legged horse over rocks and across ravines. It was in one of those leaps that Lambert saw something fall from the saddle holster. He found it to be the nippers, with which the fence had been cut, lying in the bottom of a deep arroyo. He rode down and recovered the tool in no hurry now, for he was quite certain that the fence-cutter would not have another. He would discover his loss when he came to the fence, and then, if he was not entirely decowered and sneaked that his action seemed to brand him, he would have rescores to another tool. It did not take them long to finish the three-mile race across the pasture, and it turned out, in the end exactly as Lambert thought it would, when the fugitive came within a few rods of the fence, he put his hand down to the holster for his nippers, discovering his loss, then he looked back to see how closely he was pressed, which was very close indeed. Lambert felt that he did not want to be the aggressor, even on his own land, in spite of the determination he had reached for such a contingency as this. He recalled what Vesta had said about the impossibility of securing a conviction for cutting a fence. Surely, if a man could not be held responsible for this act in the courts of the country, it would fare hard with one who might kill him in the commission of the outrage. Let him draw first and then. The fellow rode at the fence as if he intended to try to jump it. His horse balked at the barrier, turned, raced along it. Lambert in close pursuit, coming alongside him as he was reaching to draw his pistol from the holster at his saddle-bowl. And, in that instant, as the fleeing rider bent tugging at the gun, which seemed to be strapped in the holster, Lambert saw that it was not a man. A strand of dark hair had fallen from under the white sombrero. It was dropping lower and lower as it uncoiled from its anchorage. Lambert pressed his horse forward a few feet, leaned far over, and snatched away the hand that struggled to unbuckle the weapon. She turned on him, her face scarlet in its fury. Their horses racing side by side, their stirrups clashing distorted as their features were by anger and scorn at the touch of one so despised, Lambert felt his heart leap and fall and seemed to stand still in his bosom. It was not only a girl, it was his girl, the girl of the beckoning hand. CHAPTER XII THE FURY OF DOBS Lambert released her the moment that he made his double discovery foolishly shaken, foolishly hurt to realize that she had been afraid to have him know it was a woman he pursued. He caught her rein and checked her horse along with his own. Her no use to run away from me, he said, meaning to quiet her fear she faced him scornfully, seeming to understand it as a boast. You wouldn't say that to a man, you coward. Again he felt a pang like a blow from an ungrateful hand. She was breathing fast, her dark eyes spiteful defiant, her face eloquent of the scorn that her words had only feverly expressed. He turned his head as if considering her case and resolving in his mind what punishment to apply. She was dressed in riding breaches with Mexican goat skin chaps, a heavy gray shirt such as was common to cowboys, a costly white sombrero. Its crown pinched to a peak in the Mexican fashion, with a big handkerchief on her neck flying as she rode, and the crouching posture that she had assumed in the saddle every time her pursuer began to close up on her in the race just ended. Lambert's failure to identify her sex was not so inexcusable as might appear, and he was thinking that she had been afraid to have him know she was a girl. His discovery had left him dumb. His mind confused by a cross current of emotions. He was unable to relate her with the present situation although she was unmistakably before his eyes. Her disguise ineffectual to change one line of her body as he recalled her leaning over the railing of the car, her anger unable to face one feature, as pictured in his memory. What are you going to do about it? She asked him defiantly, not a hint in her bearing of shame for her discovery or contrition for her crime. Guess she'd better go home. He spoke in gentle proof as to a child caught in some trespass. Well, nigh unforgivable but to whose offense he had closed his eyes out of considerations which only the forgiving understand. He looked her full in the eyes as he spoke, the disappointment and pain of his discovery in his face, the color blanched out of her cheeks. She stared at him a moment in waking astonishment, her eyes just as he remembered them, when they drew him on in his perilous race after the train. Such a flame rose in him that he felt it must make him transparent and lay his deepest sentiments bare before her gaze. So she looked at him a moment eye to eye, the anger gone out of her face, the flash of scorn no longer glinting in a dark well of her eye. But if she recognized him she did not speak of it almost at once, she turned away as from the face of a stranger looking back over the way that she had ridden in such a headlong flight. He believed she was ashamed to have him know she recognized him. It was not for him to speak of the straining little act that romance had cast them for at their first meeting. Perhaps under happier circumstances she would have recalled it and smiled and given him her hand. Embarrassment must attend her here no matter how well she believed herself to be justified in her destructive raids against the fence. I'll have to go back the way I came, she said. There is no other way. They stared back in silence writing side by side, wonder filled the door of his mind. He had only disconnected fragmentary thoughts upon the current of which there rose continually the realization only half understood that he started out to search the world for this woman and he had found her. That he had discovered her in the part of a petty, spiteful lawbreaker dressed in an outlandish and unbecoming garb did not trouble him. If he was conscious of it at all indeed in hurrying turmoil of his thoughts pushed it aside like drifted leaves by the way the wonderful thing was that he had found her and at the end of a pursuit so hot it might have been a continuation of his first race for the trophy of white linen in her hand. Presently this fog cleared he came back to the starting point of it to the coldness of his disappointment. More than once in that chase across the pasture his hand had dropped to his pistol in the sober intention of shooting the fugitive despised as one lower than a thief. She seemed to sound his troubled thoughts writing there by his side like a friend. It was our range and they fenced it. She said with all the feeling of a feudalist. I understand that through book bought the land he had no right to fence it. He didn't have any right to buy it. They didn't have any right to sell it to him. This was our range. It was the best range in the country. Look at the grass there and look at it outside of that fence. I guess better here because it's been fenced and grazed lightly so long. Well they didn't have them right to fence it. Cutting won't make it any better now. I don't care. I'll cut it again. If I had my way about it I'd drive our cattle in there where they've got a right to be. I don't understand the feeling of you people in this country against fences. I came from a place where everybody got them. But I suppose it's natural if you could get down to the bottom of it. If there's one thing unnatural it's a fence. She said. They rode on a little way saying nothing more than she. I thought the man they called the Duke of Chimney Butte was working on this side of the ranch. That's a nickname they gave me over at the Seneca. When I first struck this country it doesn't mean anything at all. I thought you were his partner, she said. No, I'm the monster himself. She looked at him quickly, very close to smiling. Well you don't look so terrible after all. I think a man like you would be ashamed to have a woman boss over him. I hadn't noticed it, Miss Kerr. She told you about me? She charged with resentful stress? No. So they rode on their thoughts between them. A word, a silence, nothing worthwhile said on either side, coming presently to the gap she had made in the wire. But you'd hand me over to the sheriff? She told him between banter and defiance. They say you couldn't get a conviction on anything short of cattle stealing in this part of the country and doubtful on that. But I wouldn't give you over to the sheriff, Miss Kerr, even if I caught you driving off a count. What would you do? She asked her head bent, her voice low. I'd try to argue you out of the cow first and then teach you better, he said, with such evidence seriousness that she turned her face away. He thought to hide a smile. She stopped her horse between the dangling ends of wire, her long braid of black hair, was swinging down her back to her cattle, her hard ride, having disarranged its cunning deceit beneath her hat until it drooped over her ears and blew in loose strands over her dark, wildly pinker face, out of which the hard lines of defiance had not quite melted. She was not as handsome as Vesta Philbrook. He admitted, but there was something about her that moved emotions in him, which slept in the other's presence. Perhaps it was the romance of the first meeting, perhaps it was the power of her dark, expressive eyes. Certainly, Lambert had seen many prettier women in his short experience, but none that had ever made his soul vibrate with such exquisite, sweet pain. If you own this ranch, Mr. Lambert is my name, Miss Kerr. If you owned it, Mr. Lambert, I believe we could live in peace, even if you kept the fence, but that girl, it can't be done. Here are your nippers, Miss Kerr, you lost them when you jumped the oriole. Won't you please leave the fence cutting to men of the family, if it has to be done after this? We have to use them on the rain since Philbrook cut us off from water, she explained, and hired men don't take much interest in a person's family quarrels. They're afraid of Vesta Philbrook, you know. She can pick a man off a mile with a rifle, they believe, but she can't. I am not afraid of her. I never was afraid of old Philbrook, the old devil. Even though she concluded with that spiteful little stab, she gave the explanation as if she believed it to Lambert's generous leniency and courteous behavior. And there being no men of the family who will undertake it and no hired man who can be interested, you have to cut the fence yourself, you said. I know you think I ought to be ashamed of cutting her fence, she said, or had bent her eyes veiled. But I'm not. I expect I'd feel that way if it was my quarrel, too. Any man like you would. I have been where they have fences, too, and signs to keep off the grass. It's different here. Can't we patch up a truce between us for the time I'm here? He put out his hand in entreaty. His lean face earned his to clear eyes pleading. She colored quickly at the suggestion and framed a hot reply. He could see it forming and went on hurriedly to forestall it. I don't expect to be here always. I didn't come here looking for a job. I was going west with a friend. We stopped off on the way, though. Riding fence for a woman boss is a low-down job. There's not much to it for a man that likes to change around. Maybe I'll not stay very long. We just as well have peace while I'm here. You haven't got anything to do with it. You're only a fence writer. The fight's between me and that girl, and I'll cut her fence on. Cut her heart out if she gets in my road. Well, I'm going to hook up this panel, you said, leaning and taking hold of the wire end. So you can come here and let it down anytime you feel like you have to cut the fence. That will do us about the same damage, and you every bit is much good. She moved out of her sullen humor by this proposal for giving vent to her passion against Vesta Philbrook. It seemed as if he regarded her as a child in her part in this fence viewed a piece of irresponsible folly. It was so absurd in her eyes that she laughed. I suppose you're in earnest, but if you knew how foolish it sounds, that's what I'm going to do anyway. You know I'll just keep on fixing the fence when you cut it, and this arrangement will save both of us trouble. I'll put a can or something on one of the posts to mark the spot for you. This fence isn't a joke with us, Mr. Lambert. Funny as you seem to think it. It's more than a fence. It's a symbol of all that stands between us, all the wrongs we've suffered, and the losses on account of it. I know it makes her rave to cut it, and I expect you'll have a good deal of fixing to do right along. She started away, stopped a few rods beyond the fence, came back. There's always a place for a good man over at our ranch, she said. He watched her braid of hair swinging from side to side as she galloped away with no regret for his rejected truce of the fence. She would come back to cut it again and again. He would see her. Disloyal as it might be to his employer, he hoped she would not delay the next excursion long. He had found her. No matter for the conditions under which the discovery had been made, his quest was at an end. His long flights of fancy were done. It was a marvelous thing for him, more wonderful than a realization of his first expectations would have been. This wild spirit of the girl was well in accord with the character he had given her in his imagination. When he watched her away that day at misery, he knew she was the kind of woman who would exact much of a man. As he looked after her anew, he realized that she would require more. The man who found his way into her heart would have to take up her hatreds, champion her feuds, ride into her forays, follow her wild will against her enemies. He would have to sink the refinements of his civilization in a measure discard all preconceived ideas of justice and honor. He would have to hate offense. The thought made him smile. He was so happy that he found her that he could have solved her of a deeper blame than this. He felt indeed, as if he had come to the end of vast wanderings, a peace as of the cessation of turmoil in his heart. Perhaps this was because the immensity of the undertaking which so lately had lain before him. Its resumption put off from day to day, its proportions increasing with each deferment. He made no movement to dismount and hook up the cut wires, but sat looking after her as she grew smaller between him and the hill. He was so wrapped up in his new and pleasant fantasies that he did not hear the approach of a horse on the slope of the rise until its quickened pace as it reached the top brought Vesta Philbrook suddenly into his view. Who is that? She asking during his salutation in her excitement. I think it must be Ms. Kerr as she belongs to that family, at least. You caught her cutting the fence? Yeah, it's a caught her. You let her get away. There was much else I could do, he returned, with thoughtful gravity. Vesta sat in her saddle as rigid and erect as a statue. Looking after the disappearing Loretta, Lambert contrasted the two women in mental comparison struck by the difference in which rage manifested itself in their bearing. This one seemed as cold as marble, the other had flashed and glowed like hot iron. The cold rigidity before his eyes must be the slow wrath against which men are warned. The distant rider had reached the top of the hill from which she had spied on the land. Here, she pulled up and looked back, turning her horse to face them. When she saw that Lambert's employer had joined them, a little while she gazed back at them, then waved her hat. As in, excellent challenge. Whirled her horse and galloped over the hill. That was the one taunt needed to set off the slow magazine of Vesta Philbrook's wrath. She cut her horse a sharp blow with her court and took up the pursuit so quickly that Lambert could not interpose either objection or entreaty. Lambert felt like an intruder who had witnessed something not intended for his eyes and had no thought at the moment of following and attempting to prevent what might turn out to be a regretful tragedy. But sat there, viling the land that nursed women on such a rough breast as to inspire these savage passions of reprisal and revenge. Vesta was riding a big brown gilding long necked, deep-chested, slim of hindquarters as a hound. Unless rough ground came between them, she would overhaul the curve girl inside of four miles, for her horse lacked the wind for a long race, as the chase across the pasture is shown. In case that Vesta overtook her, what would she do? The answer to that was in Vesta's eyes. When she saw the cut wire, the raider riding free across the range, it was such an answer that it shot through Lambert like a lightning stroke. Yet it was not his quarrel. He could not interfere on one side or the other, without drawing down the displeasure of somebody, nor as a neutral without incurring the wrath of both. This view of it did not relieve him of anxiety to know how the matter was going to terminate. He gave Whetstone the reins and galloped after Vesta, who was already over the hill, as he rode he began to realize as never before the smallness of this fence-cutting feud, the really worthless bone at the bottom of the contention. Here Phil Brooke had fenced in certain lands which all men agreed he had been cheated in buying, and here uproads those who scorned him for his gullibility, and lay in wait to murder him for shutting them out of his admittedly worthless domain. It was a quarrel beyond reason to a thinking man. Nobody could blame Phil Brooke for defending his rights, but they seemed such worthless possessions to stake one's life against day by day, year after year. The feud of the fence was like a cancerous infection. It spread to and poisoned all that the wind blew on around the borders of that melancholy ranch. Here were two young women riding breakneck and bloody-eyed to pull guns and fight after the code of the roughest, both of them were primed by the accumulated hatred of their young lives to deeds of violence, with no thought of consequences. It was a hard and bitter land that could foster and feed such passions and bosoms of so much native excellence. A rough and boisterous land unworthy of the labor that men lavished on it to make therein their refuge and their home. The pursuit was out of sight when Lambert gained the hilltop. The pursuer just disappearing behind a growth of stunted brushwood in the winding dry valley beyond. He poised after them his anxiety increasing hoping that he might overtake Vesta before she came within range of her enemy. Even should he succeed in this, he was at fault for some way of stopping her in her passionate design. He could not disarm her without bringing her wrath down on himself or attempt to persuade her without rousing or her suspicion that he was leaked with their destructive neighbors. On the other hand, the fence-cutting girl would believe that he had wittingly joined in an unequal and unmanly pursuit. A man's dilemma between the devil and the deep water would be simple compared to this. All this he considered as he galloped along leaving the matter of keeping the trail mainly to his horse. He emerged from the hemming brushwood entering a stretch of hard table land where the parched grass was red the earth so hard that a horse made no hoofprint in passing. Across this he hurried in a ferment of fear that he would come too late and down a long slope where sage grew again the earth dry and yielding about its unlovely clumps. Here he discovered that he had left too much to his horse. The creature had laid a course to suit himself, carrying him off the trail of those whom he sought in such breathless state. He stopped looking around to fix their direction discovering to his deep vexation what stone had veered from the course that he had laid for him into the south and was heading toward the river. On again, in the right direction swerving sharply in the hope that he would cut the trail so for a mile or more in dusty headlong race coming then to the rim of a bowl-like valley and the sound of running shots. Lambert's heart contracted in a proxiesium of fear for the lives of both those flaming combatants as he rode precipitatively into the little valley. The shooting had ceased when he came into the clear and pulled up to look for Vesta. The next second the two girls swept into sight. Vesta had not only overtaken her enemy but had ridden round her and cut off her retreat. She was driving her back toward the spot where Lambert stood, shooting at her as she fled with what seemed to him a cruel and deliberate hand. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 of The Duke of Chimney Butte This Liber Vox recording is in the public domain. The Duke of Chimney Butte by G. W. Ogden Chapter 13 No Honor in Her Blood Vesta was too far behind the other girl for anything like accurate shooting with a pistol but Lambert feared that a chance shot might hit with the most melancholy consequences for both parties concerned. No other plan presenting he rode down with the intention of placing himself between them. Now the Kerr girl had her gun out and had turned offering battle. She was still a considerable distance beyond him with what appeared from his situation to be some three or four hundred yards between the combatants a safe distance for both of them if they would keep it up but Vesta had no intention of making it a long-range duel. She pulled her horse up and reloaded her gun then spurred ahead holding her fire. Lambert saw all this as he swept down between them like an eagle old wet stone hardly touching the ground he cut the line between them not 50 feet from the Kerr girl's position as Vesta galloped up. He held up his hand in an appeal for peace between them Vesta charged up to him as he shifted to keep in line of the fire coming as if she would ride him down and go on to make an end of that chapter of the long-growing feud. The Kerr girl waited her pistol hand crossed on the other with a deliberate coolness of one who had no fear of the outcome. Vesta waved him aside her face white as ash and attempted dash by he caught a rain and whirled her horse sharply bringing her face to face with him her revolver lifted not a yard from his breast. For a moment Lambert read in her eyes an intention that made his heart contract. He held his breath waiting for the shot a moment the film of deadly passion that obscured her eyes like a smoke cleared the threatening gun faltered and drooped was lured he twisted in his saddle and commanded the Kerr girl with a swing of the arm to go. She started her horse in a bound and again the soul obscuring curtain of murderous hate fell over Vesta's eyes. She lifted her gun as Lambert with a quick movement clasped her wrist. For God's sake Vesta keep your soul clean. He said. His voice was vibrant with a deep earnestness that made him as solemn as a priest. She stared him with widening eyes something in his manner and voice that struck the reason through the insulation of her anger. Her fingers relaxed on the weapon. She surrendered it into his hand. A little while she sat staring after the fleeing girl held by what thoughts he could not guess. Presently the rider whisked behind a point of sage dotted hill and was gone. Vesta lifted her hand slowly and pressed them to her eyes shivering as if struck by a chill twice or thrice. This convulsive shudder shook her. She bowed her head a little. The sound of a sob behind her pressing hands Lambert put her pistol back into the holster which dangled on her thigh from the cartridge studded belt around her pliant slender waist. Let me take you home Vesta. He said. She withdrew her hands discovering tears on her cheek saying nothing. She started to retrace the way of that mad murderous race. She did not resent his familiar address if conscious of it at all for he spoke with a sympathetic tenderness one employs towards a suffering child. They rode back to the fence without a word between them. When they came to the cut wires he rode through it as if he intended to continue on with her to the ranch out six or seven miles away. I can go it alone Mr. Lambert she said. My tools down here a mile or so I'll have to get them to fix this hole. A little way again in silence although he rode slowly she made no effort to separate from his company and go her way alone. She seemed very weary and depressed her sensitive face reflecting the strain of the past hour. It had borne her with the wearing intensity of sleepless nights. I'm so tired of this fighting and contending for evermore. She said. Lambert offered no comment. There was little indeed that he could frame on his tongue to fit the occasion it seemed to him still under the shadow of the dreadful thing that he had averted but a little while before. There was a feeling over him that he had seen this warm breathing woman with the best of her life before her standing on the brink of a terrifying chasm into which one little movement would have precipitated her beyond the help of any friendly hand. She did not realize what it meant to take the life of another even with full justification at her hand. She never had felt the weight of ashes above the heart or the presence of the shadow that tinctured all life with its somber gloom. It was one thing for the law to absolve a slayer another to find absolution in his own conscience. It was a strain that tried a man's mind a woman like Vesta Philbrook might go mad under the unceasing pressure and shaping of that load. When they came to wear his tools and wire lay beside the fence she stopped. Lambert dismounted in silence tied a coil of wire to his saddle strung the chain of the wire stretcher on his arm. Did you know her before you came here? She asked with such abruptness such lack of preparation for the question that it seemed a fragment of what had been running through her mind. You mean that woman? Grace Kerr? No, I never knew her. I thought maybe you'd met her. She's been away at school somewhere. Omaha, I think. Where are you talking to her long? Only a little while. What did you think of her? I thought, said he slowly his face turned from her his eyes on something miles away. That she was a girl something could be made out of if she was taken hold of the right way. I mean, facing her earnestly that she might be reasoned out of this senseless barbarity, this raiding and running away. Vesta shook her head. Ah, the devil's in her. She was born to make trouble. I got her to half agree to a truce, he said, reluctantly his eyes studying the ground. I guess it's all off now. She wouldn't keep her word with you. She declared with great earnestness a sad rather than scornful earnestness, putting out her hand as if to touch his shoulder. Halfway her intention seemed to falter, her hand fell in eloquent expression of her heavy thoughts. Of course, I don't know. There's no honor within the Kerr blood. Kerr was given many a chance by father to come up and be a man and square things between them. But he didn't have it in him. Neither is she. Her only brother was killed at Glendora after he shot a man in the back. It ought to have been settle long ago without all this fighting. But if people refused to live by their neighbors and be decent, a good man among them has a hard time. I don't blame you, Vesta, for the way you feel. I have been willing to let this few die, but she wouldn't drop it. She's been cutting the fence every summer as soon as I come home. She's goaded me out of my senses. She's put murder in my heart. They've tried you almost past endurance, I know, but you've never killed anybody, Vesta. All there is here isn't worth that price. I know it now, she said, rarely. Go home and hang your gun up and let it stay there. As long as I'm here, I'll do the fighting when there's any to be done. You didn't help me a little while ago. All you did was for her. It was for both of you, he said, rather indignant, that she should take up such an unjust view of his interference. Didn't ride in front of her and stop her from shooting me. I came to you first, you saw that. Lambert mounted, turning his horse to go back and mend the fence. She rode after him impulsively. I'm going to stop fighting. I'm going to take my gun off and put it away, you said. He thought she never had appeared so handsome as at that moment. A soft light in her eyes, the harshness of strain and anger gone out of her face. He offered her his hand, the only expression of his appreciation for her generous decision, that came to him in the gratefulness of the moment. She took it, as if to seal a compact between them. You've come back to be a woman again, he said, hardly realizing how strange his words might seem to her, expressing the one thought that came to the front. I suppose I didn't act much like a woman out there a while ago, she admitted her old expression of sadness darkening in her eyes. You were a couple of wild cats, he told her, maybe we can get on here now without fighting, but if they come crowding it on, let us men folk take care of it for you. It's not a job for a girl. Going to put the thought of it out of my mind, viewed fences everything, and turned it all over to you. It's asking a lot of you to assume, but I'm tired to the heart. I'll do the best by you I can as long as I'm here, he promised simply. He started on, she rode forward with him. She comes back again. What will you do? I'll try to show her where she's wrong, and maybe I can get her to hang up her gun too. You ought to be friends, it seems to me, a couple of neighbor girls like you. We couldn't do that, he said, luckily her old coldness coming over her momentarily, but if we can live apart in peace, it will be something. Don't trust her, Mr. Lambert. Don't take her word for anything, there's no honor in the Kerr blood. You'll find that out for yourself. It isn't in one of them to be even a disinterested friend. There was nothing for him to say to this, spoken so seriously that it seemed almost a prophecy. He felt as if she had looked into the window of his heart and read his secret. And in her old enmity for that slim girl of the dangling braid of hair was working subtly to raise a barrier of suspicion and distrust between them. I'll go home and quit bothering you, she said. You're no bother to me, Vesta. I like to have you long. She stopped, looked toward the place where she had lately ridden through the fence in vengeful pursuit of her enemy. Her eyes inscrutable, her face sad. I never felt so lonesome out here as it is today. She said, and turned her horse, left him. He looked back more than once as he rode slowly along the fence, a mist before his perception that he could not pierce. What had come over Vesta to change her so completely in this little while? He believed she was entering a shadow of some slow-growing illness which bore down her spirits in an uninterrupted foreboding of evil days to come. What a pretty figure she made in the saddle riding away from him in that slow canter how well she sat, how she swayed at the waist as her nimble animal cut in and out among the clumps of sage. A mighty pretty girl, and as good as they grew them anywhere. It would be a calamity to have her sick. From the shoulder of the slope he looked back again, pretty as any woman a man ever pictured in his dreams. She passed out of sight without looking back and there rose a picture in his thoughts to take her place, a picture of dark, defiant eyes of tell-tale hair falling in betrayal of her disguise as if discovering her secret to him who had a right to know. The fancy pleased him as he worked to repair the damage she had wrought, he smiled. How well his memory retained her in her transition from anger to scorn, scorn to uneasy amazement, amazement to relieve. Then she had smiled and the recognition not owned in words but spoken in her eyes had come. Yes, she knew him. She recalled her challenge, his acceptance and victory, even as she rode swiftly to obey him out of that mad encounter in the valley over there. She had owned in her quick act that she knew him and trusted him as she sped away. When he came to the place where she had ridden through, he pieced the wire and hooked the ends together. As he had told her he would do. He handled even the stubborn wire tenderly as a man might be a prudence's to a right. Perhaps he was linking their destinies in that simple act thought. Sentimentally unreasonable. It might be that this spot would mark the second altar of his romance. Even as the little station of misery was lifted up in his heart as the shrine of its beginning. There was blood on his knuckles where the vicious wire had torn him. He dashed it to the ground as a libation smiling like one moonstruck a flood of soft fantasies making that bleak spot dear. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 of The Duke of Chimney Butte this LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Duke of Chimney Butte by G. W. Ogden Chapter 14 Notice is served. Tater Legg was finding things easier on his side of the ranch. Nick Hargis was lying still. No hostile acts had been committed. This may have been due to the fierce and pristling appearance of Tater Legg as he humorously declared or because Hargis was waiting reinforcements from the penal institutions of his own or surrounding states. Tater Legg had a good many knights to himself as a consequence of the security which his grizzly exterior had brought. These he spent at Glendora mainly on the porch of the hotel and company of Alta Wood chewing gum together as if they wove a fabric to bind their lives in a deceive amnesty to the end. Lambert had a feeling of security for his line of fence also as he rode home on the evening of his adventurous day. He had left a note on the pieced wire reminding Grace Kerr of his request that she ease her spite by unhooking it there instead of cutting it in a new place. He also added the information that he would be there on a certain date to see how well she carried out his wish. He wondered whether she would read his hope that she would be there at the same hour or whether she might be afraid to risk best of Philbrook's fury again. There was an eagerness in him for the hastening of the intervening time a joyous lightness which tuned him to such harmony with the world that he sang as he rode. Tater Legge was going to Glendora that night. He pressed Lambert to join him. Man's gotta take a day off sometime to rest his face in hands he argued. Them fillers can't run off any stock tonight and if they do they can get very far away with them before we be on their necks. They know that they're as safe as if we had them where they belong. I guess you're right on that Tater Legge. Gotta go to town to buy me a pair of clothes anyhow so I'll go with you. Tater Legge was as happy as a cricket humming a tune as he went along. He had made a liberal application of perfume to his handkerchief and mustache and of Barber's Palma Tom to his hair. He had fixed his hat on carefully for the protection of the cowlick that came down over his left eyebrow and he could not be stirred beyond a trot all the way to Glendora for fear of damage that might result. I had a run-in with that filler the other night he said. What filler do you mean? Jedlich during him? He did. I didn't notice any of your ears bit off. No, we didn't come to licks. He tried to horn in while me and Alta was out on the porch. What did you do? Didn't have a show to do anything but hand him a few words. Alta, she got me by the arm and drug me in the parlor and slammed a door. No use trying to break away from that girl. She could pull an elephant away from his hay if she took a notion. Didn't Jedlich try to hang on? No, he stood out in the office rumbling to the old man but that didn't bother me no more than the north wind when you're in bed under four blankets. Alta, she played me some tunes on her guitar and sung me some songs. Tell you, Duke, I just laid back and shut my eyes. I felt as easy as if I owned the railroad from here to Omaha. How long are you going to keep it up? Which up, Duke? Quarten, Alta. You'll have to show off your tricks pretty regular, I think, if you want to hold your own on that branch. Take her leg road along considering it. Yes, I guess a fella have to act if he wants to hold Alta. She's young and the young like change, especially the girls. A man to keep Alta on the line will have to marry her and set her to raising children. You know, Duke, there's something new to a girl and every man she sees. She likes to have him around till she leans against him and rubs the paint off. Then she's out shooting eyes at another one. Are there others besides Jedlich? Bartender boards there at the hotel. He's got four gold teeth and he picks them with a quill. Sounds like somebody slapping the crick with a fishing pole, but them teeth give him a stand in his society. They look like money in the bank. Nothing to his business, though. Duke, no sentiment or romance or anything. Not much. Who else is there sitting in this Alta game? Young fella with a neck like a bottle off a ranch somewhere back in the hills. Tater Lake mentioned him as with consideration. Lambert concluded that he was a rival to be reckoned with, but gave Tater Lake his own way of coming to that. That fella got a watch with a music box in the back of it, Duke. Ever see one of them? No, never did. Well, he's got one of them, all right. He starts that thing up about the time he hits the steps and comes in playing sweet violets like he just couldn't help busting out in music the minute he comes inside of Alta. Feller gives me a pain. The Duke smiles to every man his own affair is romance. Every other man's a folly or a diverting comedy indeed. She's a little too keen on that Feller to suit me, Duke. She sets out there with him and winds that full watch and plays them two tunes over till you begin to sag, leaning her elbow on his shoulder like she had him paid for and didn't care whether he broke or not. What is the other tune? That one that goes heel and a toe in a poke-y-o a heel and a toe in a poke-y-o. You know that one. I've heard it. She'll get tired of that watch after a while, take her leg. Maybe if she don't, I guess I'll have to figure some way to beat it. What are her jedlicks attractions? Surely not good looks. Money, Duke. That's the answer to him money. He's got a salt barrel full of it. The old man favors him for that money. That's harder to beat than a music box in a watch. Can't beat it, Duke. What's good looks by the side of money or brain? Well, they don't amount to cheese. Are you going to sidestep and favor a jedlick, a man with all your experience and good clothes? Me? I'ma go to lay that fella out on a board. They hitched at the hotel rack that, looking more respectable, as Tater Lake said, then to leave their horses in front of the saloon. Alta was heard singing in the interior. There were two railroad men belonging to a traveling paint gang on the porch, smoking their evening pipes. Lambert felt it was his duty to buy cigars in consideration of the use of the hitching rack. Wood appeared in the office door as they came up the steps and put his head beyond the jam, looking this way and that, like a man considering a sortay with enemies laying in wait. Tater Lake went into the parlor to offer the incense of his cigar in the presence of Alta. Who was cooing a sentimental ballad to her guitar? It seemed to be of parting and the hope of reunion involving one named Irene. There was a run in the chorus accompaniment which Alta had downed very neatly. The tinkling guitar, the simple, plenty of melody, sounded to Lambert as refreshing as a splash of a brook in the heat of the day. He stood listening, his elbow on the showcase, thinking vaguely that Alta had a good voice for singing babies to sleep. Wood stood in the door again, his stump of arm lifted a little, with an alertness about it that made Lambert think of a listening ear. He looked up and down the street in that uneasy, inquiring way that Lambert had remarked on his arrival. Then came back and got himself a cigar. He stood across the counter from Lambert a little while, smoking, his brows drawn in trouble, his eyes shifting constantly to the door. Dope, said he, as with an effort. There's a man in town looking for you, I thought I'd tell you. Looking for me. Who is he? Sam Hargis. You don't mean Nick? No, he's Nick's brother. I don't suppose you ever met him. Never heard of him. It's only been back from Wyoming a week or two. He was over there sometimes several years, I believe. In the pan over there? Wood took a careful survey at the door before replying, working his cigar over to the other side of his mouth in the way that a one-armed man acquires a trick. I, uh, they say he got mixed up in a cattle deal down here. Lambert smoked in silence a little while, his head bent, his face thoughtful. Wood shifted a little nearer, standing straight and alert behind his counter, as if prepared to act in some sudden emergency. Does he live around here? Lambert asked. He was working for Barry Kerr, foreman over there. That's the job he used to have before he left. Lambert grunted, expressing that he understood the situation. He stood in his leaning, careless posture, arm on the showcase, thumb hooking his belt near his gun. Thought I'd tell you, said Wood done as easily. Thanks. Wood came a step nearer along the counter, leaned his good arm on it, watching the door without a break. He's one of the old gang that used to give Phil Brooks so much trouble. He's carrying lead that Phil Brooks shot into him now. So he's got it in for that ranch, and everybody on it thought I'd tell you. I much obliged you, Mr. Wood, said Lambert hardly. He's one of these kind of men you want to watch out for when your back is turned, Duke. Thanks, old feller. I'll keep it in mind, what you say. I don't want it to look like I was on one side or the other. You understand, Duke? But I thought I'd tell you. Sim Hargis is one of them kind of men that a woman don't dare to show her face around where he is without the risk of being insult. He's a foul-minded man, the kind of feller that ought to be treated like a rattlesnake in the road. Lambert thanked him again for his friendly information understanding at once, his watchful uneasiness, and the absence of Alta from the front of the house. He was familiar with that type of man such as Wood had described Hargis as being. He had met some of them in the Badlands. There was nothing holy to them in the heavens or the earth. They did not believe there was any such thing as a virtuous woman. In honor was a word they had never heard to find. I'll go out and look him up, Lambert said. He happens to come in here asking about me. Tell him I'll be either in the store or the saloon. That's where he is, Duke, in the saloon. I suppose he was. He'll kind of run into him natural, won't you, Duke, and not let him think I tipped you off? Just as natural as the wind. Lambert went up. From the hitching rack he saw Wood at his post of vigil in the door, watching the road with anxious means. It was a Saturday night the town was full of visitors. Lambert went on to the saloon hitching at the long rack in front of where twenty or thirty horses stood. The custom of the country made it almost an obligatory courtesy to go in and spend money when one hitched in front of a saloon. An excuse for entering that Lambert accepted with a grim feeling of satisfaction. While he didn't want it to appear that he was crowding a quarrel with any man, the best way to meet a fellow who had gone spreading it abroad that he was out looking for one was to go where he was to be found. It wouldn't look right to leave town without giving Hargis a chance to state his business. It would be a move subject to misinterpretation and damaging to a man's good name. There was a crowd in the saloon which had a smoky blurred look through the open door. Some of the old gambling gear had been uncovered and pushed out from the wall. Feral game was running with a dozen or more players at the end of the bar. Several poker tables stretched across the groomy front of what had been the ballroom of more hilarious days. These players were a noisy outfit. Little money was being risked but it was going with enough profanity to melt it. Lambert stood at the end of the bar near the door just liquor in his hand, lounging in his careless attitude of abstraction. But there was not a lack fiber in his body. Every faculty was alert. Every nerve set for any sudden development. The scene before him was disgusting rather than diverting. In its quality imitation of the rough and ready times which had passed before many of these men were old enough to carry the weight of a gun. It was just a sporadic outburst, a postule, come to a sudden head that would burst before mourning and clear away. Lambert ran his eyes among the twenty-five or thirty men in a place, all appeared to be strangers to him. He began to assort their faces as one searches for something in a heap. Trying to fix on one that looked mean enough to belong to a Hargis. A mechanical banjo suddenly added its metallic noise to the din, fit music it seemed, for such obscene company. Some started to dance slumberingly with high lifted legs and ludicrous turkey struts. Among these Lambert recognized Tom Hargis, the young man who had made the uncallant attempt to pass Vesta Philbrook's gate with his father. He had more whiskey under his dark skin than he could take care of. As he jiggled on limber legs he threw his hat down with a whoop, his long black hair falling around his ears and down to his eyes. Bringing out the Indian that slept in him, sharper than the liquor had done it. His face was flushed, his eyes were heavy, as if he had been under a headway a good while. Lambert watched him as he pranced about, chopping his steps with feet jerked up straight like a string-hauled horse. The Indian was working, trying to express itself in him through this exaggerated imitation of his ancestral dances. His companions fell back at an admiration, giving him the floor. The cowboy was feeding money into the music box to keep it going, giving it coin. Together was certain grave, drunk in advice, whenever it showed a symptom of a pause. Young Hargis circled about the middle of the room, barking in little short yelps. Every time he passed his hat he kicked it, sometimes hitting, often or missing it. At last, driving it over against Lambert's foot, where it lodged. Lambert pushed it away. A man beside him gave it a kick that sent it spinning back into the trodden circle. Tom was at that moment rounding his beat at the further end. He came face about just as the hat skimmed across the floor, stopped, jerked himself up stiffly, look at Lambert with a leap of anger across his drunken face. Immediately there was silence in a crowd that had been assisting on the sidelines of his performance. They saw that Tom resented this treatment of his hat by any foot save his own. The man who had kicked it had fallen back with shoulders to the bar, where he stood presenting the face of innocence. Tom walked out to the hat, kicked it back within a few feet of Lambert, his hand on his gun. He was all Indian now. The streak of smoky white man was engulfed. His handsome face was black with the surge of his lawless blood as he stopped a little way in front of Lambert. Pick up that hat, he commanded, smothering his words in an avalanche of profanity. Lambert scarcely changed his position, saved to draw himself erect and stand clear of the bar. To those in front of him he seemed to be carelessly lounging, like a man with time on his hands, peace before him. Who was your nigger last year, young feller? He asked. With good humor in his words he was reading Tom's eyes as a prize fighter reads his opponents, watching every change of feature, every strain of facial muscle. Before young Hargis had put tension on his sinews to draw his weapon, Lambert had read his intention. The muzzle of the pistol was scarcely free of the scabbard when Lambert cleared the two yards between them in one stride, a grip of the wrist, the twist of the arm and the gun was flung across the room. Tom struggled desperately not a word out of him, striking with his free hand, sinewy as he was. He was only a toy in Lambert's hands. I don't want to have any trouble with you, kid, said Lambert, capturing Tom's other hand and holding him, as he would have held a boy. Put on your hat and go home. Lambert released him and turned as if he considered the matter ended. At his elbow a man stood, staring at him with insolent, threatening eyes. He was somewhat lower of stature than Lambert, thick in the shoulders, firmly set on the feet, with small mustache, almost colorless and harsh as hog bristle. His thin eyebrows were white, his hair but a shade darker, his skin light for an outdoorsman. This, taken with his pale eyes, gave him an appearance of bloodless cruelty, which the sneer on his lips seemed to deepen and express. Behind Lambert men were holding Tom Hargis, who had made a lunge to recover his gun. He heard them trying to quiet him while he growled and whined like a wolf in a trap. Lambert returned to Stranger's Stair withholding anything from his eyes that the other could read, as some men born with a certain cold courage are able to do. He went back to the bar, the man going with him shoulder to shoulder, turning his malevolent eyes to continue his unbroken stare. Put up that gun. The fellow said, turning sharply to Tom Hargis, who had wrenched free and recovered his weapon. Tom obeyed him in silence, picked up his hat, feed it against his leg, put it on. You're the Duke of Chimney Butte, aren't you? The Stranger inquired, turning again with his sneer and cold insulting eyes to Lambert, who know him now for Sim Hargis, foreman, for Barry Kerr. If you know me, there is no need for us to be introduced, Lambert returned. Duke of Chimney Butte said Hargis with immeasurable scorn. He grunted his words with such an intonation of insult that it would have been pardonable to shoot him on the spot. Lambert was slow to kindle. He put a curb now on even his naturally deliberate vehicle of wrath, looking the man through his shallow eyes down to the roots of his mean soul. You're the fellow that's come here to teach us fellers to take off our hats when we see a fence, Hargis said, looking meaner with every breath. You got it right, partner, Lambert calmly replied. Duke of Chimney Butte, well, partner, I'm the king of Hotfoot Valley, and I've got traveling papers for you right here. Seemed a bit a little sudden about it, Lambert said, a lazy drawl to his words that inflamed Hargis like a blow. Not half as sudden as you'll be, kid, this country ain't no place for you, young feller. You're too fresh to keep in this hot climate, and the longer you stay, the hotter it gets. I'll give you just two days to make your getaway in. Consider the two days up, said Lambert, with such calm and such coolness of head, that men who heard him felt a thrill of admiration. This ain't no joke, Hargis corrected him. I believe you, Hargis, as far as it concerns me, I'm just as far from this country right now as I'll be in two days or maybe two years. Consider your limit up. It was so still in the bar room that one could have heard a match burn. Lambert had drawn himself up stiff and straight before Hargis, and stood facing him with defiance in every line of his stern, strong face. I'll give you your rope, Hargis said, feeling that he had been called to show his hand in an open manner, that was not his style, and playing for a footing to save his face. If you ain't gone in two days, you'll settle with me. Goes for me, Hargis, to your move. Lambert turned, contempt in his courageous bearing, and walked out of the place scorning to throw a glance behind as he rather Hargis came after him, or rather he laid hand on his weapon in the treachery that Lambert had read in his eyes. End of Chapter 14