The Range Boss by Charles Alden Seltzer (reader novel .TXT) đź“–
- Author: Charles Alden Seltzer
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“Oh,” she said, looking at Randerson with luminous eyes, joy flashing in them, “he didn’t shoot you!”
“I reckon not, ma’am,” he grinned. “I’m still able to keep on range bossin’ for the Flyin’ W.”
“Yes, yes!” she affirmed with a gulp of delight. And she leaned her head a little toward him, so that it almost touched his arm. And he noted, with a pulse of pleasure, that the grip of her hand on the arm tightened.
But her joy was brief; she had only put the tragedy out of her mind for an instant. It returned, and her lips quavered.
“I killed Chavis, Randerson,” she said, looking up at him with a pitiful smile. “I have learned what it means to—to take—human life. I killed him, Rex! I shot him down just as he was about to spring upon me! But I had to do it—didn’t I?” she pleaded. “I—I couldn’t help it. I kept him off as long as I could—and nobody came—and he looked so terrible—”
“I reckon you’ve got things mixed, ma’am.” Randerson met her puzzled look at him with a grave smile. “It was me, ma’am, killed him.”
She drew a sharp breath, her cheeks suddenly flooded with color; she shook Hagar’s arm from around her waist, seized Randerson’s shoulders, gripping the sleeves of his shirt hard and staring at him, searching his eyes with eager, anxious intensity.
“Don’t lie to me, Randerson,” she pleaded. “Oh,” she went on, reddening as she thought of another occasion when she had accused him, “I know you wouldn’t—I know you never did! But I killed him; I know I did! For I shot him, Randerson, just as he started to leap at me. And I shall never forget the look of awful surprise and horror in his eyes! I shall never get over it—I will never forgive myself!”
“Shucks, ma’am, you’re plumb excited. An’ I reckon you was more excited then, or you’d know better than to say you did it. Me an’ Hagar was just gettin’ off our horses here at the door—after comin’ from the Flyin’ W. An’ I saw Tom Chavis in the cabin. He was facin’ the door, ma’am,” he said at a venture, and his eyes gleamed when he saw her start, “an’ I saw what he was up to. An’ I perforated him, ma’am. From outside, here. Your gun went off at the same time. But you ain’t learned to shoot extra good yet, an’ your bullet didn’t hit him. I’ll show you where it’s stuck, in the wall.”
He led her inside and showed her the bullet. And for a short space she leaned her head against the wall and cried softly. And then, her eyes filled with dread and doubt, she looked up at him.
“Are you sure that is my bullet?” she asked, slowly. She held her breath while awaiting his answer.
It was accompanied by a short laugh, rich in grave humor:
“I reckon you wouldn’t compare your shootin’ with mine, ma’am. Me havin’ so much experience, an’ you not bein’ able to hit a soap-box proper?”
She bowed her head and murmured a fervent:
“Thank God!”
Randerson caught Hagar’s gaze and looked significantly from Ruth to the door. The girl accepted the hint, and coaxed Ruth to accompany her to the door and thence across the porch to the clearing. Randerson watched them until, still walking, they vanished among the trees. Then he took Chavis’ body out. Later, when Ruth and Hagar returned, he was sitting on the edge of the porch, smoking a cigarette.
To Ruth’s insistence that Hagar come with her to the house, the girl shook her head firmly.
“Dad will be back, most any time. He’ll feel a heap bad, I reckon. An’ I’ve got to be here.”
A little later, riding back toward the Flying W—when they had reached the timber-fringed level where, on another day, Masten had received his thrashing, Ruth halted her pony and faced her escort.
“Randerson,” she said, “today Uncle Jepson told me some things that I never knew—about Masten’s plots against you. I don’t blame you for killing those men. And I am sorry that I—I spoke to you as I did—that day.” She held out a hand to him.
He took it, smiling gravely. “Why, I reckoned you never meant it,” he said.
“And,” she added, blushing deeply; “you are not going to make it necessary for me to find another range boss, are you?”
“I’d feel mighty bad if you was to ask me to quit now,” he grinned. And now he looked at her fairly, holding her gaze, his eyes glowing. “But as for bein’ range boss—” He paused, and a subtle gleam joined the glow in his eyes. “There’s a better job—that I’m goin’ to ask you for—some day. Don’t you think that I ought to be promoted, ma’am?”
She wheeled her pony, blushing, and began to ride toward the ranchhouse. But he urged Patches beside her, and, reaching out, he captured the hand nearest him. And in this manner they rode on—he holding the hand, a thrilling exultation in his heart, she with averted head and downcast eyes, filled with a deep wonder over the new sensation that had come to her.
Uncle Jepson, in the doorway of the house, eagerly watching for the girl’s return, saw them coming. Stealthily he closed the door and slipped out into the kitchen, where Aunt Martha was at work.
“Women is mighty uncertain critters, ain’t they, Ma?” he said, shaking his head as though puzzled over a feminine trait that had, heretofore, escaped his notice. “I cal’late they never know what they’re goin’ to do next.”
Aunt Martha looked at him over the rims of her spectacles, wonderment in her gaze—perhaps a little belligerence.
“Jep Coakley,” she said severely, “you’re always runnin’ down the women! What on earth do you live with one for? What are the women doin’ now, that you are botherin’ so much about?”
He gravely took her by the arm and pointed out of a window, from which Ruth and Randerson could be seen.
Aunt Martha looked, long and intently. And when she finally turned to Uncle Jepson, her face was radiant, and she opened her arms to him.
“Oh, Jep!” she exclaimed lowly, “ain’t that wonderful!”
“I cal’late I’ve been expectin’ it,” he observed.
The meeting between Catherson and Randerson had taken the edge off Catherson’s frenzy, but it had not shaken his determination. He had been in the grip of an insane wrath when he had gone to see the Flying W range boss. His passions had ruled him, momentarily. He had subdued them, checked them; they were held in the clutch of his will as he rode the Lazette trail. He did not travel fast, but carefully. There was something in the pony’s gait that suggested the mood of his rider—a certain doggedness of movement and demeanor which might have meant that the animal knew his rider’s thoughts and was in sympathy with them. They traveled the trail that Randerson had taken on the night he had found Ruth on the rock; they negotiated the plain that spread between the ranchhouse and the ford where Randerson had just missed meeting Ruth that day; they went steadily over the hilly country and passed through the section of broken land where Ruth’s pony had thrown her. Reaching the hills and ridges beyond, Catherson halted and scrutinized the country around him. When he observed that there was no sign of life within range of his vision, he spoke to the pony and they went forward.
Catherson’s lips were set in a heavy, ugly pout. His shaggy brows were contracted; somber, baleful flashes, that betrayed something of those passions that he was subduing, showed in his eyes as the pony skirted the timber where Randerson had tied Ruth’s horse. When he reached the declivity where Ruth had overheard Chavis and Kester, he dismounted and led his pony down it, using the utmost care. He was conserving the pony’s strength. For he knew nothing of what might be required of the animal, and this thing which he had determined to do must not be bungled.
He was still in no hurry, but he grew cautious now, and secretive. He made a wide circuit of the basin, keeping out of sight as much as possible, behind some nondescript brush, riding in depressions; going a mile out of his way to follow the sandy bed of a washout. His objective was Chavis’ shack, and he wanted to come upon it unnoticed. Or, if that failed, he desired to make his visit appear casual.
But in Chavis’ shack was a man who of late had formed the habit of furtive watchfulness. He wore a heavy six-shooter at his waist, but he knew better than to try to place any dependence upon his ability as a marksman. A certain meeting with a grim-faced man on the Lazette trail the night before, a vivid recollection of the grim-faced man’s uncanny cleverness with a weapon, demonstrated upon two occasions, worried him, as did also some words that kept running through his mind, asleep or awake, and would not be banished. He could even hear the intonations of the voice that had uttered them: “This country is too crowded for both of us.”
Masten was beginning to believe that. He had thought that very morning, of leaving, of escaping, rather. But Chavis had reassured him, had ridiculed him, in fact.
“Randerson’s four-flushin’,” Chavis had laughed. “He’s took a shine to Ruth, an’ he’s aimin’ to scare you out. He’d sooner shoot a foot off than bore you. ’Cause why? ’Cause if he bored you he’d never have no chance to get next to Ruth. She’s some opposed to him killin’ folks promiscuous. You lay low, that’s all. An’ I’ll rustle up a guy one of these days which will put a crimp in Randerson. If he comes snoopin’ around here, why, there’s a rifle handy. Let him have it, sudden—before he can git set!”
Since he had sent Chavis with the note to Hagar, Masten had been uneasy. He had not stayed inside the shack for more than a minute or two at a time, standing much in the doorway, scanning the basin and the declivity carefully and fearfully. And he had seen Catherson lead his pony down. He went in and took the rifle from its pegs.
He had had a hope, at first, that it might be Kester or Linton. But when he saw that the rider did not come directly toward the shack a cold sweat broke out on his forehead and he fingered the rifle nervously. When he saw the rider disappear in the washout, he got a chair from inside and, standing on it, concentrated his gaze at the point where the rider must emerge. And when, a little later, he caught a glimpse of the rider’s head, appearing for just an instant above the crest of a sand ridge, noting the beard and the shaggy hair, his face turned ashen and the chair rocked under him. For he knew but one man in this country who looked like that.
He got down from the chair and glared around, his eyes dilated. Catherson’s actions seemed innocent enough. But what could he be doing in the basin? And, once here, what could he mean by prowling like that, instead of coming directly to the cabin? What could he be looking for? Why did he not show himself?
Masten slipped outside and crept
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