 CHAPTER XXIII UNMASKED Lambert was out of the saddle at the sound of the shot. He sprang to the shelter of the nearest rock gun in hand, thinking with a sweep of bitterness that Grace Kerr had led him into a trap. Wet stone was lying still, his chin on the ground, one foreleg bent and gathered under him, not in the posture of a dead horse, although Lambert knew that he was dead. It was as if the brave beast struggled even after life to picture the quality of his uncockable will and would not lie in death as other horses lay, cold and expressive of anything but death, with stiff limbs straight. Lambert was unconscious of his own safety. In his great concern for his horse he stepped clear of his shelter to look at him, hoping against his conviction that he would rise. Somebody laughed behind a rock on his right, a laugh that plucked his heart up and cast it down, as a drunken hand shatters a goblet upon the floor. I guess you'll never race me on that horse again, fence rider. There was the sound of movement behind the rock. In a moment Grace Kerr rode out from her concealment, not more than four rods beyond the place where his horse lay. She rode out boldly and indifferently before his eyes turned and looked back at him her face white as an evening primrose in the dusk, as if to tell him that she knew she was safe, even within the distance of his arm, much as she despised his calling and his kind. Lambert put his gun back into its she, and she rode on, disappearing again from his sight, around the rock where the blasted valley of stones branched upon its arid way. He took the saddle from his dead horse and hid it behind a rock, not caring much whether he ever found it again, his heart so heavy that it seemed to bow him to the ground. So at last he knew her for what Vesta Philbrook had told him she was, bad to the core of her heart, kindness could not regenerate her love, could not purge away the vicious strain of blood. She might have scorned him, and he would have bent his head and loved her more, struck him, and he would have chided her with a look of love. But when she sent her bullet into poor old Whetstone's brain, she placed herself beyond any absolution that even his soft heart could yield. He bent over Whetstone caressing his head speaking to him in his old terms of endearment, thinking of the many fruitless races he had run, believing that his own race in the Badlands had come to an end. If he had but turned back from the foot of the hill, where he recognized her, his duty demanded of him, that he turn, and not pressed on with his simple intention of friendliness which she was too shallow to appreciate or understand, this heavy loss would have been spared him. For this dead animal was more to him than comrade and friend, more than any man who has not shared the good and evil times with his horse, and the silent places can comprehend. He would not fight a woman, there was no measure of revenge, that he could take against her. But he prayed that she might suffer for this deed of treachery to him with a pang intensified a thousand times, greater than his that hour. Well of the wisp, she had been to him, indeed, leading him a fool's race since she first came twinkling into his life. There were his reflections, sombre was his heart. As he turned to walk thirty miles or more that lay between him and the ranch, leaving old whetstone to the wolves. Lambert was loading cattle nearly a week later when the sheriff returned Vesta's horse with apologies for its foot sore and beaten state. He had followed Kerr far beyond his jurisdiction, pushing him a hard race through the hills, but the wily cattlemen had evaded him in the end. The sheriff advised Lambert to put in a fill against the county for the loss of his horse, a proposal, which Lambert considered with grave face and in silence. No, said at last, I'll not put in a fill. I'll collect in my own way from the one that owes me the debt. CHAPTER XXIV Use for an old paper. Lambert was a busy man for several weeks after his last race with the will of the wisp, traveling between Glendora and Chicago, disposing of the Philbrook herd. On this day he was jolting along with the last of the cattle that were of mark of world condition and age, twenty cars of them. Glad that the wind-up of it was in sight. Tater Legg had not come this time on account of the Iowa boy having quit his job. There remained several hundred calves and thin cows in the Philbrook pasture, too much of a temptation to old Nick Hargis and his precious brother, Sim, to be left unguarded. Sitting there on top of a car, his broad pole between his knees, in his high heeled boots and old dusty hat, the Duke was a typical figure of the old-time cow-puncher, such as one never meets in these times around the stockyards of the Middle West. There are still cow-punchers, but they are mainly mail-order ones who would shy from a gun such as pulled down on Lambert's belt that day. He sat there with the wind slamming the brim of his old hat up against the side of his head, a sober, serious man, such as one would choose for a business like this entrusted to him by Vesta Philbrook and never make a mistake. Already he had sold more than eighty thousand dollars' worth of cattle for her and carried home to her the drafts. This time he was to take back the money, so they would have the cash to buy out Wally, the sheep-man, who was making a failure of the business and was anxious to quit. The Duke wondered with a lonesome sort of pleasure how things were going on the ranch that afternoon, and whether Tater Lake was riding the south fence now and then, as he had suggested, or sticking with the cattle. That was a pleasant country which he was traveling through, between fields and rich pastures as far as the eye could reach, a land such as he had spent the greater part of his life in, such as some people who are provincial and untraveled called God's country, and are fully satisfied within their way. But there seemed something lacking out of it to Lambert as he looked across the verdant flatness with pensive eyes, that great grace something that took hold of a man and drew him into its larger life. Smooth the wrinkles out of him and stood him upright on his feet, with the breath deeper in him than it ever had gone before. He felt that he never would be content to remain amongst the visible plantitude of that fat, complacent, finished land again. Give him some place that called for a fight, a place where the wind blew with a different flavor than these domestic sense of hay and fresh-turned furrows in the wheatlands by the road. In his vision he pictured the place that he liked best, a rough, untrammeled country, leading back to the purple hills, a long line of fence diminishing in its distance to a thread. He sighed, thinking of it. Dog gone his melts, he was lonesome. Lonesome for a fence. He rolled a cigarette and felt about himself abstractedly for a match. In this pocket, where Grace Kerr's little handkerchief still lay with no explanation or defense for its presence contrived or tempted, in that pocket where his thumb encountered a folded paper. Still abstracted, his head turned to save his cigarette from the wind. He drew out this paper, wondering curiously when he had put it there and forgotten it. It was the warrant for the rest of Barry Kerr. He remembered now having folded the paper and put it there the day the Sheriff gave it to him, never having read a word of it from that day to this. Now he repaired that omission. It gave him quite a feeling of importance to have a paper about him with that severe legal phraseology in it. He folded it and put it back in his pocket, wondering what had become of Barry Kerr and from him transferring his thoughts to Grace. She was still there on the ranch he knew, although Kerr's creditors had cleaned out the cattle and doubtless were at law among themselves over the proceeds by now. How she would live, what she would do, he wondered. Perhaps Kerr had left some of the money he had made out of his multi-mortgage transaction, or perhaps he would send for Grace and his wife when he had struck a gate in some other place. Didn't matter one way or the other. His interest in her was finished. His last gentle thought of her was dead. Only he hoped that she might live to be as hungry for a friendly word as his heart had been hungry of longing after her in its day. That she might moan and contrition and burn in shame for the cruelty in which she broke the vessel of his friendship and threw the fragments in his face, poor whetstone, his bones all scattered by the wolves by now over in that lonely gorge. Vesta Philbrook would not have been capable of a vengeance so mean. Strange how she had grown so gentle and so good under the constant persecution of this thieving gang. Her conscience was as clear as a windowpane. A man could look through her soul and see the world undisturbed by a flaw beyond it. A good girl. She sure was a good girl. And as pretty a figure on a horse as man's eye never followed. She had said once that she felt at Lonesome out there by the fence, not half as Lonesome he'd gamble, as he was that minute to be back there riding her miles and miles of wire. Not Lonesome on account of Vesta, sure not. Just Lonesome for that dang old fence. Simple he was, sitting there on top of that hammering old cattle-car that sunny afternoon, the dust of the road in his three-day old beard, his barked willow prodpole between his knees. Simple as a ballad, that children sang. Simple as a homely tune. Well, of course, he had kept Grace Kerr's little handkerchief for reasons that he could not quite define. Maybe because it seemed to represent her as he would have had her, maybe because it was the poor little trophy of his first tenderness, his first yearning for a woman's love. But he had kept it with the dim intention of giving it back to her, opportunity presenting. Yes, I'll give it back to her. He nodded. When the time comes, I'll hand it to her. She can wipe her eyes on it when she opens them and repents. Then he fell to thinking of business and what was best for Vesta's interests, and of how he probably would take up Pat Sullivan's offer for the cabs, thus cleaning up her troubles and making an end of her expenses. Pat Sullivan, the rancher for whom Bette Jedlik was cooked, he was the man. The duke smiled through his grime and dust when he remembered Jedlik, lying back in the barber's chair. An old Tater leg, as good as gold and honest as a horse, was itching to be hitting the breeze for Wyoming. Some of the cabs would give him the excuse that he'd been casting about after for a month. He was writing letters to Netty. She had sent her picture, a large breasted calf-faced girl with a crooked mouth. Tater leg might wait a year, or even four years more, with perfect safety. Netty would not move very fast on the market, even in Wyoming where ladies were said to be scarce. And so, pounding along, mile after mile, through the vast green land where the bread of a nation grew, arriving at midnight among squeals and moans, trembling bleed of sheep, pitiful, hungry, crying of cabs, high, lonesome tenor-notes of bewildered steers. That was the end of the journey for him, the beginning of the great adventure for the creatures under his care. By eleven o'clock, next morning, Lambert had a check for the cattle in his pocket, and Bay Rum on his face where the dust descenders and the beard had been a little while before. He bought a little hand satchel in a second hand store to bring the money home in. Cashed his check and took a turn looking around. His big gun on his leg, his high-heeled boots, making him toddle along in a rather ridiculous gait for an able-bodied cow-puncher from the Badlands. There was a train for home at six, that same flier he once had raced. There would be time enough for a man to look into the progress of the fine arts as represented in the pawn-shop windows of the stockyard's neighborhoods, before striking a line for the Union Station, to nail down a seat in the fair. It was while engaged in this elevating pursuit that Lambert glimpsed for an instant in the passing stream of people, a figure that made him start with the prickling alertness of recognition. He had caught but a flash of the hurrying figure, but with that eye for singling, a certain object from a moving mass that experienced with cattle-sharpens, he recognized the carriage of the head, the set of the shoulders. He hurried after, overtaking the man as he was entering a hotel. Mr. Kerr, I've got a warrant for you. He said, detaining the fugitive with a hand laid on his shoulder. Kerr was taken so unexpectedly that he had no chance to sling a gun, even if he carried one. He was completely changed in appearance, even to the sacrifice of his prized beard, so long his aristocratic distinction in the Badlands. He was dressed in the city fashion with a little straw hat in place of the 18-inch sombrero that he had worn for years, confident of his disguise. He affected the astonished indignation. I guess you've made a mistake in your man, said he. Lambert told him with polite firmness that there was no mistake. I know your voice in the dark. I've got reason to remember, he said. He got the warrant out with one hand, keeping the other comfortably near his gun. A little handbag with its riches between his feet. Kerr was so vehemently indignant that attention was drawn to them, which probably was the fugitive cattleman's design, seeing in numbers the chance to make a dash. Lambert had not forgotten the experience of his years at the Kansas City Stockyards, where he had seen confidence men and card sharpers play the same scheme on policemen, clamoring their innocence until a crowd had been attracted in which the officer would not dare risk a shot. He kept Kerr within reaching distance, flashed the warrant before his eyes, passed it up and down in front of his nose, and put it away again. There's no mistake, not by a thousand miles. You'll come along back to Glendora with me. A policeman appeared by this time, and Kerr appealed to him, protesting mistaken identity. The officer was a heavy-headed man of the Slaughterhouse School, and Lambert thought for a while that Kerr's argument was going to prevail with him. To first all the policeman's decision, which he could see forming behind his clouded continents, Lambert said, there's a reward of nine hundred dollars standing for this man. If you've got any doubt of who he is, or my right to arrest him, take us both the headquarters. That seemed to be a worthy suggestion to the officer. He acted on it without more drain on his intellectual reserve. There, after little course of sprouts by the chief of detectives, Kerr admitted his identity but refused to leave the state without requisition. They locked him up, and Lambert telegraphed the sheriff for the necessary papers. Going home was off for perhaps several days. Lambert gave his little satchel to the police to lock in the safe. The sheriff's reply came back like a pitched ball. Hold Kerr, he requested the police. Requisition would be made for him. He instructed Lambert to wait till the papers came, and bring the fugitive home. Kerr got in telegraphic touch with a lawyer in the home county. Morning showed a considerable change of temperature in the frontier financier. He announced that, acting on legal advice, he would waive extradition. Lambert telegraphed the sheriff, the news, requesting that he meet him at Glendora and relieve him of his charge. Lambert prepared for the homegoing by buying another revolver and a pair of handcuffs, for attaching his prisoner comfortably and securely to the arm of the seat. The little black bag gave him no worry. It wasn't half the trouble to watch money, when you didn't look as if you had any, as a man who had swindled people out of it and wanted to hide his face. The police joked Lambert about the size of his bag when they gave it back to him as he was starting with his prisoner for the train. Well, you got in that alligator, Sheriff? That you're so careful not to set it down and forget it, chief asked him. Sixteen thousand dollars, said Lambert, modestly, opening it and flashing its contents before their eyes. End of Chapter 24 Chapter 25 of the Duke of Chimney Butte. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Duke of Chimney Butte by G. W. Ogden. Chapter 25 When She Wakes Up It was mid-afternoon of a bright autumn day when Lambert approached Glendora with Curr chained to the seat beside him. As the train rapidly cut down the last few miles, Lambert noted a change in his prisoner's demeanor. Up to that time his carriage had been melancholy and morose. As that of a man who saw no gleam of hope ahead of him, he had spoken but seldom during the journey asking no favors except that of being allowed to send a telegram to Grace from Omaha. Lambert had granted that request readily, seeing nothing amiss in Curr's desire to have his daughter meet him and lighten as much as she could his load of disgrace. Curr said he wanted her to go with him to the county seat in a range bond. I'll never look through the bars with jail in Mahome County, he said. That was his one burst of rebellion, his one boast, his one approach, to a discussion of his serious situation all the way. Now as they drew almost within sight of Glendora Curr became fidgety and nervous. His face was strained and anxious as if he dreaded stepping off the train into sight of the people who had known him so long as a man of consequence in that community. Lambert began to have his own worries about this time. He regretted the kindness he had shown Curr in permitting him to send that telegram to Grace. He might try to deliver him on bail of another kind. Curr's nervous anxiety would seem to indicate that he expected something to happen at Glendora. It hadn't occurred to Lambert before that this might be possible. It seemed a foolish oversight. His apprehension as well as Curr's evident expectation seemed groundless as he stepped off the train almost directly in front of the waiting room door, giving Curr a hand down the steps. There was nobody in sight but the Postmaster with the mail sack. The station agent and the few citizens who always stood around the station for the thrill of seeing the flyer stop to take water. Few of any of these recognized Curr as Lambert hurried him across the platform and into the station as hands manacled at his back. Curr held back for one quick look up and down the station platform then stumbled hastily ahead under the force of Lambert's hand. The door of the telegraph office stood open. Lambert pushed his prisoner within and closed it. The station's agent came in as the train pulled away and Lambert made inquiry of him concerning the sheriff. The agent had not seen him there that day. He turned away with sullen continence, looking with disfavor on this intrusion upon his sacred precincts. He stood in front of his chattering instruments in the bow window, looking up and down the platform with anxious face out of which his natural human color had gone, leaving even his lips white. You don't have to keep him here, I guess, do you? He said, still sweeping the platform up and down with his uneasy eyes. No, I just stopped in to ask you to put this satchel in your sleep and keep it for me for a while. Lambert's calm and confident manner seemed to assure the agent and mollify him and repair his injured dignity. He beckoned with a jerk of his head, not for one moment quitting his leaning watchful pose or taking his eyes from their watch on the platform. Lambert crossed a little room in two strides and looked out, not seeing anything more alarming than a knot of townsmen around the postmaster who stood with the lean male sack across his shoulder. Talking excitedly, he inquired what was up. They're laying for you out there, the agent whispered. I kind of expected they would be, Lambert told him. They're libel to cut loose any minute, said the agent, and I'll tell you, Duke, I got a wife and children depending on me. I'll take him outside. I didn't intend to stay here only a minute. Here, lock this up. It belongs to Vesta Philbrook. If I have to go with the sheriff or anything, send her word it's here. As Lambert appeared in the door with his prisoner, the little bunch of excited gossips scattered hurriedly. He stood in the door a little while considering the situation. The station agent was not to blame for his desire to preserve his valuable services for the railroad and his family. Lambert had no wish to shelter himself and retain his hold on the prisoner at the trembling fellow's peril. It was unaccountable that the sheriff was not there to relieve him of his responsibility. He must have received the telegram two days ago. Pending his arrival, or if not his arrival, the coming of the local train that would carry himself and prisoner to the county seat, Lambert cast about him for some means of securing his man in such a manner that he could watch him and defend against any attempted rescue without being hampered. The telegraph pole stood beside the platform some sixty or seventy feet from the depot. The wires slanting down from it into the building's gable end. To this Lambert marched his prisoner, the eyes of the town upon him. He freed one of Curr's hands, passed his arms round the pole, so he stood embracing it, and locked him there. It was a pole of only medium thickness, allowing Curr ample room to encircle it with his chained arms, even to sit on the edge of the platform when he should weary of his standing embrace. Lambert stood back apace and looked at him, thus ignominiously anchored in public view. "'Let him come and take you,' he said. He laid out a little beat up and down the platform at Curr's back, rolled a cigarette, settled down to wait for the sheriff, the train, and the rush of Curr's friends, or whatever the day might have in store. Slowly, thoughtfully, he paced that beat of a rod behind his surly prisoner's back, watching the town, watching the road leading into it. People stood in the doors, but none approached him to make inquiry. No voice was lifted in pitch that reached him where he stood. If anybody else in town beside the agent knew of the contemplated rescue, he kept it selfishly to himself. Lambert did not see any of Curr's men about. Five horses were hitched in front of the saloon now and then. He could see the top of a hat above the lattice-half door, but nobody entered, nobody left. The stationed agent still stood in his window, working the telegraph key as if reporting the clearing of the flyer, watching anxiously up and down the platform. Lambert hoped that Sim Hargis, young Tom, and the old stub-footed scoundrel who was the meanest of them all, who had lashed him into the fire of that night, would swing the doors of the saloon and come out, with a declaration of their intentions. He knew that some of them, if not all, were there. He had tied Curr out before their eyes like wolf-bait. Let them come and get him, if they were men. This seemed the opportunity which he had been waiting for time to bring him. If they flashed a gun on him now, he could clean them down to the ground with all legal justification, no questions asked. Two appeared far down the road, riding for Glendora in a swinging gallop. The sheriff Lambert thought, missed the train, and had ridden the forty and more miles across. No? One was Grace Curr. Even at a quarter of a mile he never could mistake her again. The other was Sim Hargis. They had miscalculated in their intention of meeting the train, and were coming in a panic of anxiety. They dismounted at the hotel and started to cross. Lambert stood near his prisoner, waiting. Curr had been sitting on the edge of the platform. Now he got up, moving around a pole to show them that he was not to be counted on to take a hand in whatever they expected to start. Lambert moved a little near his prisoner, where he stood waiting. He had not shaved during the two days between Chicago and Glendora. The dust of the road was on his face. His hat was tipped forward to shelter his eyes against the afternoon glare. The leather thong at the back rumpling his close cut hair. He stood lean and long-limbed, easy and indifferent in his pose, as it would seem to look at him as one might glance in passing, the smoke of his cigarette rising straight from its fresh lit tip in the calm air of that somnolent day. As Hargis and Grace advanced, coming in the haste and heat of indignation that Curr's humiliating situation inflamed. Two men left the saloon. They stopped at the hitching rack as if debating whether to take their horses, and so stood, watching the progress of the two who were cutting the long diagonal across the road, when Grace, who came a little ahead of her companion in her eagerness, was within thirty feet of him. Lambert lifted his hand in forbidding signal. Stop there, he said. She halted. Her face flaming with fury. Hargis stopped beside her, his arm crooked, to bring his hand up to his belt, sawing back and forth as if in indecision between drawing his gun and waiting for the wordy preliminaries to pass. Curr's stood embracing a pole in a pose of ridiculous supplication, the bright chain of the new handcuffs glistening in the sun. I want to talk to my father, said Grace, lashing Lambert with a look of scornful hate. Say it from there. Lambert returned in a very flexible, cool, watching every movement of Sim Hargis sawing arm. You got no right to chain him up like a dog, she said. You ain't got no authority that anybody ever heard of to arrest him in the first place, Hargis said, his swinging indecisive arm for a moment still. Lambert made no reply. He seemed to be looking over their heads back along the road. He had come from the lift of his chin, and the set of his close gathered brows. He seemed carelessly indifferent to Hargis's legal opinion and presence. A little fresh plume of smoke going up from his cigarette as if he breathed into it gently. Grace started forward with impatient exclamation, tossing her head in disdainful defiance of this fence-writer's authority. Go back! Curr commanded his voice hoarse with the fear of something that she, in her unreasoning anger, had not seen behind the calm front of the man she faced. She stopped, turning back again to where Hargis waited. Along the street men were drawing away from their doors. Incautious curiosity, silent suspense. Women put their heads out for a moment, plucked curtains aside for one swift survey, vanished behind the safety of walls at the hitching rack. The two men, one of them Tom Hargis, the other unknown, stood by side their horses, as if in position according to a previous plan. We want that man, said Hargis, his hand hovering over his gun. Come and take him, Lambert invited. Hargis spoke in a low voice to Grace. She turned and ran toward her horse. The two at the hitching rack swung into the saddles as Hargis, watching Grace over his shoulder, as she sped away, began to back off his hand, stealing to his gun as if moved by some slow, precise machinery, which was set to time it according to the fleeing girl's speed. Lambert stood without shifting a foot, his nostrils dilating in the slow, deep breath that he drew. Yard by yard Hargis drew away, his intention not quite clear, as if he watched his chance to break away like a prisoner. Grace was in front of the hotel door when he snapped his revolver from its sheath. Lambert had been waiting for this. He fired before for Hargis to touch the trigger. His elbow to his side as he had seen Jim Wilder shoot on the day when tragedy first came into his life. Hargis spun on his heel as if he had been roped, spread his arms as his gun falling from his hand, pitched to his face, lay still. The two on horses galloped out in open fire. Lambert shifted to keep them guessing, but kept away from the pole where Kerr was chained, behind which he might have found shelter. They had separated to flank him, Tom Hargis over near the corner of the depot, the other ranging down toward the hotel, not more than fifty yards between Lambert and either of them. Intent on drawing Tom Hargis from the shelter of the depot, Lambert ran along the platform, stopping well beyond Kerr, until that moment he had not returned their fire. Now he opened on Tom Hargis, bringing his horse down at the third shot, swung about and emptied his first gun ineffectively at the other man. This fellow charged down on him as Lambert drew his other gun. Tom Hargis, free of his fallen horse, shooting from the shelter of the rain barrel at the corner of the depot, Lambert felt something strike his left arm with no more apparent force, no more pain, than the flip of a branch when one rides through the woods. But it swung useless at his side. Through the smoke of his own gun and the dust raised by the man on horseback, Lambert had a flash of Grace Kerr riding across the middle background, between him and the saloon. He had no thought of her intention. It was not a moment of first speculation, with the bullets hitting his hat. The man on horseback had come within ten yards of him. Lambert could see his teeth as he drew back his lips when he fired. Lambert centered his attention on the stranger, dark, meagre-faced, marked by the unmistakable Mexican taint. His hat flew off at Lambert's first shot as if it had been jerked by a string. At his second, the fellow threw himself back in the saddle with a jerk. He fell limply over the high candle, and laid thus a moment, his frantic horse running wildly away. Lambert saw him tumble into the road as a man came spurring past this hotel, slinging his gun as he rode. Nearer approach identified the belated sheriff. He shouted a warning to Lambert as he jerked his gun down and fired. Tom Harcus, rose from behind the rain-barrel, staggered into the road, going like a drunken man, his hat in one hand and the other pressed to his side, his head hanging, his long black hair falling over his bloody face. In a second Lambert saw this, and the shouting shooting officer bearing down toward him. He had the peculiar impression that the sheriff was submerged in water, enlarging grotesquely as he approached the slap of another bullet on his back, and he turned to see Grace Kerr firing at him, with only the width of the platform between them. It was all smoke, dust, confusion around him, a sickness in his body, a dimness in his mind, but he was conscious of her horse rearing, lifting its feet high, one of them a white, stocking foot, as he marked with painful precision, and falling backward in a clatter of shod hoofs on the railroad. When it cleared a little, Lambert found the sheriff was on the ground beside him, supporting him with his arm, looking into his face with concern, almost comical, speaking an anxious inquiry. Lay down over there on the platform, Duke, you're all shot to pieces, he said. Lambert sat on the edge of the platform, and the world receded. When he felt himself sweep back into consciousness, there were people about him, and he was stretched on his back, a feeling in his nostrils as if he breathed fire. Somebody was lying across from him a little way. He struggled with painful effort to lift himself and see. It was Grace Kerr. Her face was white in the midst of her dark hair, and she was dead. It was not right for her to be lying there, with dead face to the sky, he thought. They should do something. They should carry her away from the stare of curious, shocked eyes. They should. He felt in the pocket of his vest and found the little handkerchief, and crept painfully across to her, heedless of the sheriff's protest defiant of his restraining, kindly hand. With his numb left arm trailing by his side of burning pain in his breast, as if a hot rod had been driven through him, the track of her treacherous bullet. He knew. He fumbled to unfold the bit of soft white linen, refusing the help of many sympathetic hands. There were outstretched. When he had it right, he spread it over her face, white again, as an evening primrose, as he once had seen it through the dusk of another night. But out of this night that she had entered she would ride no more. There was a thought in his heart as tender as his deed as he thus masked her face from the white stare of day. She can wipe her eyes on it when she wakes up and repents. End of Chapter XXV Chapter XXVI of the Duke of Chimney Butte. The Duke of Chimney Butte by G. W. Ogden, Chapter XXVI Oysters and Ambitions If you'd come on and go to Wyoming with me, Duke, I think it'd be better for you than California. That low country ain't good for a feller with a tender place in these lights. Oh, I think I'm all right in as good as ever now, tater leg. Yes, no, it looks all right to you. But if you get dampness on that lung, you'll take the consumption and die. I knew a feller once. That got shot that way through the lights in a fight down on the simmer on. Him and another feller fell out over. Have you heard from Nettie lately? Lambert broke in, not caring to hear the story of the man who was shot on the simmer on or his subsequent miscalculations on the state of his lights. Tater leg rolled his eyes to look at him, not turning his head, reproach in the glance, mild reproof. But he let it pass in his good natured way, brightening to the subject nearest his heart. Four or five days ago. All right, is she. Up and a coming, fine as a fiddle. You'll be holding hands with her before the preacher in a little while now. Inside of a weak duke, Mount Troubles is nearly all over. I don't know about that, but I hope it'll turn out that way. They were on their way home, from delivering the calves and a clean up of the herd to Pat Sullivan. Some weeks after Lambert's fight at Glendora, Lambert still showed the effect of his long confinement and drain of his wounds in the paleness of his face. But he sat his saddle as straight as ever, not much thinner as far as the eye could weigh him. Nothing missing from him but the brown of his skin and the blood, they had drawn from him that day. There was frost on a grass that morning, a foretaste of winter in the sharp wind. The sky was gray with a thread of snow, the somber season of hardship. On the range was at hand. Lambert thought, as he read these signs, that it would be a hard winter on livestock in that unsheltered country, and was comfortable in mind over the profitable outcome of his dealings for his employer. As for himself, his great plans were at an end on the Badlands range. The fight at Glendora had changed all that. The doctor had warned him that he must not attempt another winter in the saddle with that tender spot in his lung. His blood thinned down that way, his flesh soft from being housebound for nearly six weeks. He advised a milder climate for several months of recuperation, and was very grave in his advice. So the sheep's scheme was put aside, the cattle being sold, there was nothing about the ranch that old Ananias could not do, and Lambert had planned to turn his face again toward the west. He could not lie around there in the bunkhouse and grow strong at best his expense, although that was what she expected him to do. He had said nothing to her of his determination to go, for he had wavered in it from day to day, finding it hard to tear himself away from that bleak land that he had come to love as he never had loved the country which claimed him by birth. He had been called on in this place to fight for a man's station in it. He had trampled a refuge of safety for the defenceless among its thorns. Vesta had said nothing further of her own plans, but they took it for granted that she would be leaving now that the last of the cattle were sold. Ananias had told them that she was putting things away in the house, getting ready to close most of it up. I don't blame you for leaving, said Tater Legge, returning to the original thread of discussion. It'll be as lonesome as sin up there at that ranch with Vesta gone away. When she's there she fills that place up like the music of a band. She sure does, Tater Legge. Old Ananias, have a soft time of it, eating chicken and rabbit all winter, nothing to do but milk them a couple of cows, no boss to keep her eye on him in a thousand miles. He's one that'll never want to leave. Well, it's a good place for a man, Tater Legge's side. He ain't got nothing else to look ahead to. I kind of hate to leave myself, but at my age, you know, Duke, man's got to begin to think of marrying and settle down and fixing him up a home, as I've said before. Many a time before, old feller, so many times I've got it down of a heart. Tater Legge looked at him again with that queer turning of the eyes, which he could accomplish with the facility of a fish, and rode on and silenced a little way after jiding him in that matter. Well, won't do you no harm, you said? No, side to Duke, not a bit of harm. Tater Legge chuckled as he rode along, hummed a tune, laughed again in his dry clicking way, deep down in his throat. I met Alta the other day when I was down in Glendora, he said. Did you make up? Make up? That girl looks to me like a tin cup by the side of a silver shaven mug now, Duke, compare that girl to Nettie. And she wouldn't take the leather medal. She says, good morning, Mr. Wilson. She says, and I turned my head quick like I was looking around for him and never kept it letting on like I knew she met me. Kind of a rough treatment for a lady, Tater Legge. It would be for a lady, but not for that galanine. It's what's coming to her and what I'll hand her again if she ever gets the gall to speak to me. The Duke had no further comment on Tater Legge's rules of conduct. They went along in silence a little way, but that was a state that Tater Legge could not long endure. Well, I'll soon be in the oyster parlor up to the belly band, he said, full of the cheer of his prospect. Nettie's got the place picked out and nailed down. I sent her the money to pay the rent. I'll be handed out stews with a slice of pickle on the side. Dish before another week goes by, Duke. Where are you going to make oysters out in Wyoming? The Duke inquired, wonderingly. Make them out of oysters, of course. Where are you ranking? There never was an oyster within a thousand miles of Wyoming, Tater Legge. They wouldn't keep to ship that far much less till you used them up. Covoister, Duke, covoisters, corrected Tater Legge gently. You couldn't hire a calm man to eat any other kind. You couldn't put one of them slick, fresh fellow down with a pair of tongs. Well, I guess you know, old fellow. Tater Legge fell into a reverie from which he started presently with the vehemint exclamation of profanity. If she got bangs, I'll make her cut them off, he said. Who cut them off? Lambert said, viewing this outburst of feeling and surprise. He said, I don't want no bangs around me to remind me of that snipe-plagued out of wood. Bangs may be all right for fellas with music boxes in their watches, but they don't go with me no more. I didn't see Jed Lake around the ranch up there. What do you suppose became of him? Well, what the boys told me. If he's still a-going like he was when they seen him last, he must be up around Medicine Hat by now. It was a sin the way you threw a scare into that man, Tater Legge. I'm sorry, I didn't lay him on the board during him. Yes, but you might as well let him have Alta. He can come back and take her any time he wants her, Duke. The Duke seemed to reflect this simple exposition of Jed Lake's present case. Yes, guess that's all he said. For a mile or more there was no sound, but the even swing of the horses-hoof says they beat in the long, easy gallop, which they could hold for a day without a break. Then, Lambert, planted a leaf tonight. Are you Tater Legge? All set for leaving, Duke. On again, the frost-powdered grass brittle under the horse's feet. I think I'll pull out tonight, too. Well, I thought you was going to stay till Vesta left, Duke. Change my mind. Don't you reckon Vesta, she'll be a little put out if you leave the ranch after she's figured on you to stay and pick up and gain to be stout and hearty and go in the sheep business next spring? I hope not. Yeah, but I bet she will. Do you reckon she'll ever come back to the ranch anymore when she goes away? What? said Lambert, starting as if he had been asleep. Vesta, do you reckon she'll ever come back anymore? Well, slowly, thoughtfully. There's no talent, Tater Legge. She's got a stockin' full of money now, and nobody depended on her. She's just as likely as not to marry some lawyer or some other shark that's after her dough. Yes, she may. No, I don't reckon she'll ever come back. She ain't got nothing to look back to here but hard times and shooting scrapes nobody's associate with and wear low neck dresses like women with money do. Not much of a chance for it here, you're right. You'd have had a nice and quiet there with them sheep if you'd have been able to go partners with Vesta like you planned, old Nick Hargis in the pen and the rest of them fellers cleaned out. Yes, I guess there'll be peace around the ranch for some time to come. Well, you made the peace around there, Duke. If it hadn't been for you, they'd have broke Vesta up and run her out by now. You had as much to do with bringing them to the time as I did, Tater Legge. Me? Look me over, Duke. Feel my hide. Do you see any knife scars in me? Or feel any bullet holes anywhere? I've never done anything but ride along that fence hoping for somebody to start something. But they've never done it. They knew you too well, old fellow. Knowed me, said Tater Legge, huh. On again in quiet. Glendora in sight when they topped a hill. Tater Legge seemed to be thinking deeply. His face was sentimentally serious. Pretty girl, he said in a pleasant vein amusing. Which one? Vesta, I like him with a little more of a figure. A little thicker in some place and wider in others. But she's trim and she's tasty in her heart's pure gold. You're right, it is, Tater Legge. Lambert agreed, keeping his eyes straight ahead as they rode on. They're aiming to come back in the spring and go partners with her on that sheep deal, ain't you, Duke? I don't expect I'll ever come back, Tater Legge. Well, said Tater Legge abstractedly, I don't know. They rode past the station the bullet-scarred rain-barrel behind which Tom Hargis took shelter in the Great Battle, still standing in its place and past the saloon, the hitching rack empty before it, for this was the round-up season. Nobody was in town. There's that slab-sided spider-leg out of wood standing out on the porch, said Tater Legge, disgustedly, falling behind Lambert, raining around on the other side to put him between the lady and himself. He better stop and bid her good-bye, Lambert, suggested. Tater Legge pulled his hat over his eyes to shut out the sight of her, turned his head, ignoring her greeting. When they were safely past, he cast a cautious look behind. I guess that settled her hash, she said. Yes, and I'd like to wad a handful of chewing gum in them old bangs before I leave this man's town. You've broken her chance for a happy married life with Jedleg, Tater Legge. Your heart's as hard as a bone. The worst luck I can wish her is that Jedleg will come back. He said, turning to look at her, as he spoke, Alta waved her hand. She's a forgiven little soul, anyway, Lambert said. Forgiven! Don't hurt him, Mr. Jedlegge! She said, don't hurt him! I had to build a fire under that old gun of mine to melt though a chewing wax off of her. I wouldn't give that girl a job washing dishes and horses a part of life. She was to travel from here to Wyoming on her knees. So they arrived at the ranch from their last expedition together. Lambert gave Tater Legge his horse to take to the barn. While he stopped in to deliver Pat Sullivan's check to Vesta and straighten up the final business. And tell her good-bye. CHAPTER XXXVII He drew a deep breath then like a man, fortifying himself for a trial, that called for the best that was in him to come forward. He knocked on the door. He was wearing a brown duck coat with a sheepskin collar, the wool of which had been dyed a mottled saffron, and corduroy breeches as roomy of leg as Tater Legge's state pair. These were laced within the tall boots which he had bought in Chicago, and in which he took a singular pride on account of their novelty on the range. It was not a very handsome outfit, but there was a rugged picturesqueness in it that the pistol-belt and shave-scabbard enhanced, and he carried it like a man who was not ashamed of it and graced it by the worth that it contained. The duke's hair had grown long, shears had not touched his head since his fight with Curseman. Jim Wilder's old scar was blue on his thin cheek that day, for the wind had been cold to face. He was so solemn and severe as he stood waiting at the door that it would seem to be a triumph to make him smile. Vesta came to the door herself with such promptness that seemed to tell she must have been near it from the moment his foot fell on the porch. "'Come to settle up with you on our last deal, Vesta,' he said. She took him to the room in which they always transacted business, which was a library in fact as well as name. It had been Phil Brooks's office in his day. Lambert once had expressed his admiration for the room, along a narrow chamber with antlers on the walls above the bookcases, a broad fireplace flanked by leaded casement windows. It was furnished with deep leather chairs and a great dark oak table, which looked as if it had stood in some English manner in the days of other kings. The windows looked out upon the river. Pleasant place on a winter night, Lambert thought, with a clogged fire on the dog, somebody sitting near enough that one could reach out and find her hand without turning his eyes from him the book. The last warm touch to crown the comfort of his happy hour. "'You mean our latest deal? No, not our last, I hope, Duke,' she said, sitting at the table with him at the head of it, like a baron, returned to his fireside after a foray in the field. "'I'm afraid it will be our last. There's nothing left to sell but the fence.' She glanced at him with relief in her eyes, a quick smile coming happily to her lips. He was busy with the account of calves and grown stock, which he had drawn from his wallet, the check laying by his hand, his face taken as an index to it. There was not much lightness in his heart. Soon he had acquitted himself of his stewardship, and given the check into her hand. Then he rose to leave her. For a moment he stood silent, as if turning his thoughts. "'I'm going away,' he said, looking out the window down upon the tops of the naked cotton-woods along the river. Just around the corner of the table she was standing, half facing him, looking at him with what seemed almost compassionate tenderness. So sympathetic were her eyes. She touched his hand where it lay with fingers on his hat rim. "'Is it so hard for you to forget her, Duke?' She looked at her frankly, no deceit in his eyes, but a mild surprise to hear her chide him so. "'If I could forget of her what no forgiving soul could remember, I'd feel more like a man,' he said. "'I thought—I thought—' She stammered, bending her head, her voice soft and low. You were grieving for her, Duke. Forgive me.' "'Tater Leg is leaving tonight,' he said, overlooking her soft appeal. I thought I'd go at the same time. "'Be so lonesome here on the ranch without you, Duke, lonesome, as it never was lonesome before. Even if there was anything I could do around the ranch any longer with the cattle all gone and nobody left to cut the fence, it wouldn't be of any use dodging in and for every blizzard that came along as the doctor says I must. Come to depend on you as I've never depended on anybody in my life. And I couldn't do that, you know, any more than I'd be content to lie around doing nothing. You've been square with me on everything from the biggest to the least. I never knew before what it was to lie down in security and get up in peace. You've fought and suffered for me here in a measure far in excess of anything that common loyalty demanded of you, and I've given you nothing in return. It will be like losing my right hand, Duke, to see you go." Tater Lake's going to Wyoming to marry a girl he used to know back in Kansas. We can travel together part of the way. "'If it hadn't been for you, they'd have robbed me of everything by now, killed me, maybe, for I couldn't have fought them alone, and there was no other help.' I thought maybe in California an old half-envald might pick up and get some blood put into him again. You came out of the desert as if God sent you when my load was heavier than I could bear. It will be like losing my right eye, Duke, to see you go." Man, that's a fool for only a little while, even, is bound to leave false impression and misunderstanding of himself, no matter how wide his own eyes have been opened or how long. So I've resigned my job on the ranch here with you, Vesta, and I'm going away. There's no misunderstanding, Duke, it's all clear to me now. When I look in your eyes and hear you speak, I know you better than you know yourself. It will be like losing the whole world to have you go." Man couldn't sit around and eat out of a woman's hand in idleness, and ever respect himself any more. My work's finished. "'All I've got is yours. You saved it to me. You brought it home.'" Vesta expects a man that hasn't got anything to go out and make it before he turns around and looks, before he lets his tongue betray his heart, and maybe be misunderstood by those he holds most dear. None of the world's business there is in any world but ours. I've thought with you gone away, Vesta, in the house, dark nights, and me not hearing you around any more, it would be so lonesome and bleak here for an old half-embald. It wasn't going. I couldn't have been driven away. I'd have stayed as long as you stayed till you found, till you knew. Oh, it will tear my heart out of my breast to see you go. Tater Leg was singing his old-time steamboat song when Lambert went down to the bunk-house an hour before sunset. There was an aroma of coffee mingling with the strain. I'll bet my money on a Bob-Till-Hawes and a Houda and a Houda. I'll bet my money on a Bob-Till-Hawes and a Houda bet on the bay. Lambert smiled, standing beside the door until Tater Leg had finished. Tater Leg came out with his few possessions in a brand sack, giving Lambert a questioning look up and down. It took him a long time to settle up, he said. Yes, there was considerable to dispose of and settle, Lambert replied. Well, we'll have to be hitting the breeze for the depot in a little while. Are you ready? No. Change my mind. I'm going to stay. Going in partners with Vesta? of the Duke of Chimney Butte by G. W. Ogden.