'Firebrand' Trevison by Charles Alden Seltzer (ebook reader for manga .TXT) 📕

“Correct!” agreed Barkwell; “she’s a-goin’ the way Rome went—an Babylone—an’ Cincinnati—after I left. She runs to a pussy-cafe aristocracy—an’ napkins.”

“She’ll be plumb ruined—follerin’ them foreign styles. The Uhmerican people ain’t got no right to adopt none of them new-fangled notions.” Weaver stared glumly into the darkening plains.

They aired their discontent long. Directed at the town it relieved the pressure of their resentment over Trevison’s habit of depending upon himself. For, secretly, both were interested admirers of Manti’s growing importance.

Time was measured by their desires. Sometime before midnight Barkwell got up, yawned and stretched.

“Sleep suits me. If ‘Firebrand’ ain’t reckonin’ on a guardian, I ain’t surprisin’ him none. He’s mighty close-mouthed about his doin’s, anyway.”

“You’re shoutin’. I ain’t never seen a man any stingier about hidin’ away his doin’s. He just nacherly hawgs all the trouble.”

Weaver got up and sauntered to the far end of the gallery, leaning far out to look toward Manti. His sharp exclamation brought Barkwell leaping to his side, and they both watched in perplexity a faint glow in the sky in the direction of the town. It died down as they watched.

“Fire—looks like,” Weaver growled. “We’re always too late to horn in on any excitement.”

“Uh, huh,” grunted Barkwell. He was staring intently at the plains, faintly discernable in the starlight. “There’s horses out there, Jud! Three or four, an’ they’re comin’ like hell!”

They slipped off the gallery into the shadow of some trees, both instinctively feeling of their holsters. Standing thus they waited.

The faint beat of hoofs came unmistakably to them. They grew louder, drumming over the hard sand of the plains, and presently four dark figures loomed out of the night and came plunging toward the gallery. They came to a halt at the gallery edge, and were about to dismount when Barkwell’s voice, cold and truculent, issued from the shadow of the trees:

“What’s eatin’ you guys?”

There was a short, pregnant silence, and then one of the men laughed.

“Who are you?” He urged his horse forward. But he was brought to a quick halt when Barkwell’s voice came again:

“Talk from where you are!”

“That goes,” laughed the man. “Trevison here?”

“What you wantin’ of him?”

“Plenty. We’re deputies. Trevison burned the courthouse and the bank tonight—and killed Braman. We’re after him.”

“Well, he ain’t here.” Barkwell laughed. “Burned the courthouse, did he? An’ the bank? An’ killed Braman? Well, you got to admit that’s a pretty good night’s work. An’ you’re wantin’ him!” Barkwell’s voice leaped; he spoke in short, snappy, metallic sentences that betrayed passion long restrained, breaking his self-control. “You’re deputies, eh? Corrigan’s whelps! Sneaks! Coyotes! Well, you slope—you hear? When I count three, I down you! One! Two! Three!”

His six-shooter stabbed the darkness at the last word. And at his side Weaver’s pistol barked viciously. But the deputies had started at the word “One,” and though Barkwell, noting the scurrying of their horses, cut the final words sharply, the four figures were vague and shadowy when the first pistol shot smote the air. Not a report floated back to the ears of the two men. They watched, with grim pouts on their lips, until the men vanished in the star haze of the plains. Then Barkwell spoke, raucously:

“Well, we’ve broke in the game, Jud. We’re Simon-pure outlaws—like our boss. I got one of them scum—I seen him grab leather. We’ll all get in, now. They’re after our boss, eh? Well, damn ’em, we’ll show ’em! They’s eight of the boys on the south fork. You get ’em, bring ’em here an’ get rifles. I’ll hit the breeze to the basin an’ rustle the others!” He was running at the last word, and presently two horses raced out of the corral gates, clattered past the bunk-house and were swallowed in the vast, black space.

Half an hour later the entire outfit—twenty men besides Barkwell and Weaver—left the ranchhouse and spread, fan-wise, over the plains west of Manti.

They lost all sense of time. Several of them had ridden to Manti, making a round of the places that were still open, but had returned, with no word of Trevison. Corrigan had claimed to have seen him. But then, a man told his questioner, Corrigan claimed Trevison had choked the banker to death. He could believe both claims, or neither. So far as the man himself was concerned, he was not going to commit himself. But if Trevison had done the job, he’d done it well. The seekers after information rode out of Manti on the run. At some time after midnight the entire outfit was grouped near Clay Levins’ house.

They held a short conference, and then Barkwell rode forward and hammered on the door of the cabin.

“We’re wantin’ Clay, ma’am,” said Barkwell in answer to the scared inquiry that filtered through the closed door. “It’s the Diamond K outfit.”

“What do you want him for?”

“We was thinkin’ that mebbe he’d know where ‘Firebrand’ is. ‘Firebrand’ is sort of lost, I reckon.”

The door flew open and Mrs. Levins, like a pale ghost, appeared in the opening. “Trevison and Clay left here tonight. I didn’t look to see what time. Oh, I hope nothing has happened to them!”

They quieted her fears and fled out into the plains again, charging themselves with stupidity for not being more diplomatic in dealing with Mrs. Levins. During the early hours of the morning they rode again to the Diamond K ranchhouse, thinking that perhaps Trevison had slipped by them and returned. But Trevison had not returned, and the outfit gathered in the timber near the house in the faint light of the breaking dawn, disgusted, their horses jaded.

“It’s mighty hard work tryin’ to be an outlaw in this damned dude-ridden country,” wailed the disappointed Weaver. “Outlaws usual have a den or a cave or a mountain fastness, or somethin’, anyhow—accordin’ to all the literchoor I’ve read on the subject. If ‘Firebrand’s’ got one, he’s mighty bashful about mentionin’ it.”

“Oh, Lord!” exclaimed Barkwell, weakly. “My brains is sure ready for the mourners! Where’s ‘Firebrand’? Why, where would you expect a man to be that’d burned up a courthouse an’ a bank an’ salivated a banker? He’d be hidin’ out, wouldn’t he, you mis’able box-head! Would he come driftin’ back to the home ranch, an’ come out when them damn deputies come along, bowin’ an’ scrapin’ an’ sayin’: ‘I’m here, gentlemen—I’ve been waitin’ for you to come an’ try rope on me, so’s you’d be sure to get a good fit!’ Would he? You’re mighty right he—wouldn’t! He’d be populatin’ that old pueblo that he’s been tellin’ me for years would make a good fort!” His horse leaped as he drove the spurs in, cruelly, but at the distance of a hundred yards he was not more than a few feet in advance of the others—and they, disregarding the rules of the game—were trying to pass him.

“There ain’t a bit of sense of takin’ any risk,” objected Levins from the security of the communal chamber, as Trevison peered cautiously around a corner of the adobe house. “It’d be just the luck of one of them critters if they’d pot you.”

“I’m not thinking of offering myself as a target for them,” the other laughed. “They’re still there,” he added a minute later as he stepped into the chamber. “Them shooting you as they did, without warning, seems to indicate that they’ve orders to wipe us out, if possible. They’re deputies. I bumped into Corrigan right after I left the bank building, and I suppose he has set them on us.”

“I reckon so. Seems it ain’t possible, though,” Levins added, doubtfully. “They was here before you come. Your Nigger horse ain’t takin’ no dust. I reckon you didn’t stop anywheres?”

“At the Bar B.” Trevison made this admission with some embarrassment.

But Levins did not reproach him—he merely groaned, eloquently.

Trevison leaned against the opening of the chamber. His muscles ached; he was in the grip of a mighty weariness. Nature was protesting against the great strain that he had placed upon her. But his jaws set as he felt the flesh of his legs quivering; he grinned the derisive grin of the fighter whose will and courage outlast his physical strength. He felt a pulse of contempt for himself, and mingling with it was a strange elation—the thought that Rosalind Benham had strengthened his failing body, had provided it with the fuel necessary to keep it going for hours yet—as it must. He did not trust himself to yield to his passions as he stood there—that might have caused him to grow reckless. He permitted the weariness of his body to soothe his brain; over him stole a great calm. He assured himself that he could throw it off any time.

But he had deceived himself. Nature had almost reached the limit of effort, and the inevitable slow reaction was taking place. The tired body could be forced on for a while yet, obeying the lethargic impulses of an equally tired brain, but the break would come. At this moment he was oppressed with a sense of the unreality of it all. The pueblo seemed like an ancient city of his dreams; the adobe houses details of a weird phantasmagoria; his adventures of the past forty-eight hours a succession of wild imaginings which he now reviewed with a sort of detached interest, as though he had watched them from afar.

The moonlight shone on him; he heard Levins exclaim sharply: “Your arm’s busted, ain’t it?”

He started, swayed, and caught himself, laughing lowly, guiltily, for he realized that he had almost fallen asleep, standing. He held the arm up to the moonlight, examining it, dropping it with a deprecatory word. He settled against the wall near the opening again.

“Hell!” declared Levins, anxiously, “you’re all in!”

Trevison did not answer. He stole along the outside wall of the adobe house and peered out into the plains. The men were still where they had been when the shot had been fired, and the sight of them brought a cold grin to his face. He backed away from the corner, dropped to his stomach and wriggled his way back to the corner, shoving his rifle in front of him. He aimed the weapon deliberately, and pulled the trigger. At the flash a smothered cry floated up to him, and he drew back, the thud of bullets against the adobe walls accompanying him.

“That leaves seven, Levins,” he said grimly. “Looks like my trip to Santa Fe is off, eh?” he laughed. “Well, I’ve always had a yearning to be besieged, and I’ll make it mighty interesting for those fellows. Do you think you can cover that slope, so they can’t get up there while I’m reconnoitering? It would be certain death for me to stick my head around that corner again.”

At Levins’ emphatic affirmative he was helped to the shelter of a recess, from where he had a view of the slope, though himself protected by a corner of one of the houses; placed a rifle in the wounded man’s hands, and carrying his own, vanished into one of the dark passages that weaved through the pueblo.

He went only a short distance. Emerging from an opening in one of the adobe houses he saw a parapet wall, sadly crumpled in spots, facing the plains, and he dropped to his hands and knees and crept toward it, secreting himself behind it and prodding the wall cautiously with the barrel of his rifle until he found a joint in the stone work where the adobe mud was rotted. He poked the muzzle of the rifle through the crevice, took careful aim, and had the satisfaction of hearing a savage curse in the instant following the flash. He threw himself flat immediately, listening to the