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The Vengeance of Jefferson Gawn - Charles A. Seltzer

CHAPTER I

THE WANDERER

Jefferson Gawne was brooding again. He sat on the railing of the lower gallery of the Diamond Bar ranchhouse, his long legs doubled under him, the toes of his boots jammed savagely under the lower rail that his body might maintain its rigid equilibrium. His broad shoulders were hunched forward; his hands were clenched, resting on the rail between his legs; his chin had sagged to his chest.

It had been coming for days, this mood. It was a pestilence of passion that never left him; it was a dormant scourge of fire that smouldered in his blood continually, recurring with devastating fury whenever he permitted his thoughts to dwell upon certain things. And they would dwell upon them; there was no stopping them. And even when he’d get them off the past, they’d linger to taunt and mock. They were making a demon of him—he knew it. He was aware of the slow change that had come over him—it had taken six years, but it had come; it had blasted him, this fire in his veins; it had consumed all his good impulses; it had made a human automaton of him—a cold, cruel, unfeeling, living machine.

Oh, he knew he was not that bad; it was the hellish fury of his lust for vengeance that made him feel that way at times. Yet a great deal had gone out of him. Before—before he had learned what he had learned of the things that lay between his brother and Watt Hyat (which had aroused the murder lust in him), and before Marie Calvert had made a fool of him (which had caused him to lose his faith in women)—before these things had happened he had felt warmly and generously toward his fellows, looking for the good in them, deliberately blinding himself to their weaknesses and vices. The chief difference between his past and present self was that he ruthlessly disregarded the good in men—and in women, too; not taking them on trust as he had done, but proving them guilty at first glance and making them bear evidence, by deeds, before he would acquit them. He had constituted himself judge and jury, and acquittal, when it came at all, came grudgingly.

Yet he was just—no man could truthfully say that he had ever taken an unfair advantage—he was scrupulously honest and fair. He told himself that, and believed it—which was merely a phase of his fire-malady and of his distorted outlook.

His values had become jumbled; his narrowed perspective gave him only partial gleams of the teeming world and its people. As he could discern only the vile in the faces of men and women, so he could see nothing of the beautiful in the mighty hills and valleys of the colossal section of the world into which his wanderings had brought him. This might have been because he had come from a section equally big and wild and impressing; but had he been normal he could not have shut his soul to the beauties that spread before him this morning—the dipping, green-carpeted valleys sweeping wide and vast into hazy nothingness; a big basin slumbering in the shimmering white sunlight, far and wide and silent; mountains distant and shining, upon whose peaks rested the mantle of majesty; miles and miles of level grass land, and Bozzam City, dingy and dirty when viewed from its street, but white and clean in the purity of distance.

He frowned at the picture. The basin glared back at him; the hills mocked; the mountains taunted, for in that direction, northwestward, lay that past whose rot had got into his soul. In the valleys and plains of the nearer distance lay the defeat and delay that were burning his life out, for it had been here that he had halted six years before when he had heard, in Las Vegas, that some years before Watt Hyat had stopped there on his way to the confluence of the Carrizo and the Rabbit-Ear. Gawne could see the two streams now, winding below him in the basin. He had found them—but not Watt Hyat. He had lost track of him here; it seemed the country had swallowed him. Seven years, it had been that he had followed Hyat, losing him here and there, finding traces of him again; but Hyat had eluded him. He had not given up; he was just waiting, aware of the futility of tracking a man who exhibited the cunning of a fox in evading him. Meanwhile he was brooding—fighting and losing, and fighting again—always losing, ever yielding more and more to the burning passions that fired his blood; growing always more venomous and intolerant toward his fellows; more coldly cynical, more dangerous. And always Bozzam City—the lawless element that dominated there—feared him; feared his icy composure and his deadly accuracy with the heavy Colts that swung low at his hips. Bozzam City hated him, too; there were many of the town’s citizens who would have murdered him without feeling a twinge of regret could they have been assured of success in the attempt.

The hatred was mutual, and strangely satisfying to Gawne; it was the one doubtful joy that he got out of life; and sitting there on the railing he smiled. If only Hame Bozzam would give him that long-looked-for chance, the slightest chance! But Bozzam was wise. Bozzam spoke softly, stepped carefully, and acted with impeccable decorum in his presence; which was as it should be, for he hated Hame Bozzam. Bozzam had never spoken a dozen words to him, but he hated him. He hated Bozzam’s beard, his eyes—fishy, but coldly alert as though he feared always that someone was about to shoot him in the back. He hated Bozzam’s walk, his voice—everything about the man.

But Gawne was patient, he could bide—he heard a slight noise behind him—the merest rustle, a soft footfall—and he sat perfectly motionless, staring straight ahead at Bozzam City and the intervening miles of spreading beauty. When he felt a presence at his back, a light breath stirring the hair on the back of his neck, he wheeled like a flash, ducked low, and caught a girl of twelve in his arms, swinging her from her feet and twisting her until she sat crossways on his lap. There was a blur of rosy cheeks, curls, and a soft, white throat which a low-necked calico dress made visible, some wildly struggling arms and legs, and then Gawne’s face was buried in the white neck. Noises mingled, as though a hen were cackling at a bear’s growling; then came relaxation, surrender, and a protest.

“Oh, those whiskers! Daddy, you’ve scuffed my face all up again!”

“Don’t scare me then.”

She sat erect on his knees, a red spot glowing on the white neck; two other spots, that shamed the other, staining her cheeks. It was the dusky bloom of health, the red sign of vigorous girlhood. Direct, guileless eyes—except for the glint of mischief in them—looked reproachfully into Gawne’s.

“You weren’t scared.”

“Was.”

She laughed at the insincerity in his voice and nestled her head against his shoulder. His arms tightened around her, and twice she looked up at him as though to protest, but she kept silent, studying him, for his jaws had set again, and the brooding look had crept into his eyes once more.

A few minutes later, after the girl had begged to be relieved of the pressure of the sinewy encircling arms, and had been set down with a kiss and an admonition to “help Aunt Emily with the breakfast”, Gawne resumed his rigid pose on the railing.

The girl was really the cause of his protracted stay in this section of the country; he knew that.

There was no use of his pretending that he had grown tired of pursuing Hyat; the bald fact was that he couldn’t leave the girl to Hame Bozzam. Bozzam had wanted her—still wanted her—he had wanted her for six years. Gawne had forestalled him.

He heard the girl go in to “Aunt Emily”; he did not know that Aunt Emily had been an interested eavesdropper; he didn’t see the old woman smile and reach out her hands to the girl when she came toward her, just a little disappointed that she had not been able to stay longer with her “daddy”; he did not hear Aunt Emily remark, with heavy resignation, that he was “the broodinest man” she had ever seen. His cowboys were coming out of the bunk and mess houses; he did not note their activities; their glances, furtive or direct, failed to pierce the armor of his indifference to what was going on around him.

His thoughts had leaped back to a day six years before; the recollection was still vivid; he experienced the same emotions. The outlook from this spot had not been much different; the changes that had come had been negligible—there were more people, and Bozzam City was larger. The Diamond Bar ranchhouse was the same, except for a wing he had erected—the parlor—and some new bunkhouses and other outbuildings, which he had built to replace those that had been burned by the Indians.

He had come up through the canyon that morning, his destination being the confluence of the Carrizo and the Rabbit-Ear. He had ridden all night and the entire day preceding the night, grimly pursuing the Las Vegas clue, and his jaded horse had refused the climb to the mesa. He left the animal in the canyon bottom and pressed forward. Climbing over the shoulder of the mesa he lay for some minutes in the tall grass bordering it, exhausted.

He looked up after a time. In the near distance he saw a house. He remembered now that it had seemed strange to him then that his gaze should have gone directly to the house when by all the rules of reason he should have looked first at the smoldering ruins of the outbuildings. He knew now, however, that it had been because he had detected movement in the house. Anyway, he saw the ruins of the outbuildings later.

The movement had not been startling, merely a human figure passing a window. But in the sepulchral silence of the early dawn his senses were keen, his vision acute, and the half-smothered cry that was borne to his ears came simultaneously with the conviction that the human figure he had seen at the window was not garbed in the garments of his own race. He was certain that he had seen an Indian. A feathered headdress and a dun breechcloth danced in his vision.

It was then that he saw the smoldering outbuildings.

He had taken his rifle from the saddle holster when leaving his horse. He had cursed the weapon when he had been climbing the shoulder of the mesa; he gulped with thankfulness as he patted its stock and examined the magazine.

His exhaustion was gone. He waited, sinking low into the grass, watching, his gaze probing into every bush and tree clump on the plateau. Rocks, thickets of brush, received his intense scrutiny, and at last, when he saw, far back in the fir-balsam grove, three riderless ponies, he drew a shrill breath and stuck the rifle out in front of him. He knew, now, that his eyes had not played him a trick.

He had not long to wait. A painted and feathered Indian stepped out of the rear door of the house, standing in bold relief in the clear, sharp light of the morning. He bore a flaming faggot, and was grinning hideously.

Gawne’s finger twitched at the trigger of the rifle, and yet he waited—there were two others. He wanted to be certain!

It was a snap shot, but the blazing eyes and the steady nerves of the white man sent it with deadly accuracy; for the time had come—a second Indian had stepped out of the door, dancing, his tomahawk red-stained; a third had followed him bearing in his arms a golden-haired female child.

The faggot-bearer plunged face downward at the corner of the step where he had been about to apply the fire; the second wheeled as the white man’s bullet struck him, leaped sideways grotesquely, and writhed in agony, groaning gutturally. The third, hesitating an instant, drove forward in great leaps toward the concealed ponies.

There could be no miss now, and in the clump of grass a rifle muzzle rose and dipped and wavered as it followed the eccentric leaps of the running savage. At the sharp, vicious crack of the rifle the Indian halted, swayed, and then dropped, loosely, landing on his back.

Gawne waited. There was no further movement. The bearer of the tomahawk had ceased to groan; the silence surrounding the house was as great and gruesome as it had been when Gawne had first come. Convinced that he had wiped out the war party, Gawne issued from his concealment and approached the spot where lay the child and the dead body of her captor. He had just severed the child’s bonds and removed the gag from her mouth, and was holding her tightly to him, whispering words of comfort to her, when he heard a shout and saw a party of white men coming toward him, their horses in a dead run.

There were half a dozen of the men, and Gawne remembered how he had searched their faces in the hope that one of them might be Hyat and that he might reveal himself through a look or a word; and his disappointment must have been visible to them, for one of them had remarked: “By God, man! you look as though you’re sorry we come!”

Through them he had learned that Hyat had never been seen in that locality, and he would have left them and pursued his search had it not been for Bozzam. He hated Bozzam on sight, and perhaps it had been pure perverseness on his part that had moved him, after the party had viewed the ghastly scene in the house, to declare that it was his purpose to take charge of the little girl. This was after he had been told that there were no relatives.

A strained silence had come upon the group of men. They looked at one another, shuffled their feet and furtively eyed Bozzam. Gawne saw how it was; Bozzam had qualities of leadership—his word would govern. Bozzam stepped forward.

His gaze was level and cold, and Gawne could still feel the bitter antagonism the look had aroused in him.

“You want the girl? ” said Bozzam.

“I’m taking her,” Gawne told him. He had felt the electric thrill of combat in the atmosphere of the room; the slow tenseness that had come over the men. They awaited a hostile move; they would array themselves with Bozzam.

Gawne acted quickly and convincingly. His big Colts were menacing them before they could draw a breath of preparation. Gawne’s veins had swelled with that curious rage that had been growing in him during his seven years of wandering.

“I take her!”’ he challenged. “That’s my play! I saved her—and I take her! It’s your move!”

There had been no shooting. Whatever the light that slumbered in Gawne’s eyes, it brought the desire for peace with this stranger who so recklessly accepted the great odds against him. The men looked at Hame Bozzam. The latter’s face was ashen beneath his beard; he looked at Gawne’s guns; his gaze roved to the blazing eyes above them; he noted the stiffened muscles of his wrists, the intolerant, unyielding spirit of the man.

“Hell!” he said shortly, sneering; “you want her bad, eh? Well, take her and be damned to you!”

He wheeled and led the men out Gawne watched them ride away. Then he took up the child again and hugged her hungrily.

His affection for her had grown during the elapsed years. Hame Bozzam had not interfered. Gawne had tried to fill his life with the girl. He had instructed her, trained her, after the standards of his own life before—before Watt Hyat had blazed a loathsome trail across it. He had brought Aunt Emily, Uncle Lafe, prosperity and security, to dwell at the Diamond Bar—but he hadn’t found Watt Hyat A movement at his side roused him.