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Frozen into immobility by the malignant bitterness of the attack, Kathleen stood for many minutes in the room. Then, tortured by the thought that perhaps Bozzam would kill the man—and that she might prevent such a crime, she sprang to the door and threw it open.

Cass was lying on the floor of the porch, his face blue-black, his mouth open, his muscles twitching. Bozzam was standing over him, watching him, coolly indifferent. He turned when he heard the door open and smiled at Kathleen.

“There is no cause for alarm. Miss Harkless,” he said. “Cass isn’t hurt—very much. He will get over it. May all liars meet a like fate.”

He turned to Haskell, who, during the scuffle, had stood, watching with wooden stoicism.

“Haskell!” snapped Bozzam. “Take this man to your jail and lock him up. He isn’t to get out until I give the word! Move quickly, now, before I have to kill him!”

“I regret this,” he went on, after they had watched the sheriff lift Cass to his saddle and ride away; “but Cass resented the humiliation of having to face you with an apology.” He looked straight at her, holding her gaze, his eyes flaming with earnestness. “Do you think I punished him for saying what he did about me? Bah! I could tell you thought that. But you are wrong. I guzzled him because of what he said to you, because of what he thought of you, because he dared to look at you, because he yearned for something that belongs to me!”

“You have no right to say that!” she retorted defiantly. “I belong to no man! You are impertinent!”

“And prophetic,” he laughed, deeply.

Half an hour later, at her stirrup as she sat on her horse ready to leave, he looked up at her and spoke soberly :

“My house shall be desolate until you come again.”

“That may never be,” she said.

He laughed, lowly. “We shall see,” he said. “I am a ruthless and an impatient lover.”

CHAPTER XX

GAWNE STRIKES

Gawne’s physical wounds had healed. The lithe, vigorous, muscular body which had been his before the shooting at the Bozzam ranch was as good as ever. He knew, for he had tested it. Tested it by riding long distances, by roping, branding; denying himself food and sleep; judging his condition from his capacity for action and his recuperative powers. Physically, he was never in better shape. Mentally, he was never in worse shape.

For many years he had dwelt in a black abyss. He had grown accustomed to it, and was beginning to be able to distinguish objects. Then a light had flooded the abyss. The light had dazzled him; he had groped toward it, eagerly and trustingly. Then the light had disappeared, going out entirely; leaving him in a darkness deeper and blacker than the preceding one.

The experience had taken something from him—the dormant instinct to love. There were times, during the month that had elapsed since Kathleen Harkless had pretended to ignore him, that day when he had ridden to the ranchhouse, that he even found himself watching Jane with speculative malice. She, too, he believed, would one day develop into a ruthless huntress who would walk to the kill with a luring smile on her lips. He couldn’t bear to have Jane near him at these times; and one day, in a fit of bitterness, when she had asked about Kathleen, he forbade her to mention the girl’s name in his presence again.

He saw how it was. Kathleen Harkless had set out to ensnare Hame Bozzam. She had lured him, coaxing him to a declaration, pretending a thousand virtues and honesties, while all the time she weighed him, baited him, probed him, to determine the depth of his passion. She was one of those women who deliberately arouse a man’s love in order to enjoy the work of killing it. She was a wanton at heart—masquerading as a virtuous innocent.

But he did not blame her, he blamed himself. He had been the fool—weak, vacillating, credulous. Long study of her picture had convinced him, in the first place, that she was like the rest of her kind. And after deciding that she was he had permitted himself to be fooled.

Daily, torturing himself with his bitter thoughts, he yielded more and more to the venomous passions they aroused. Twice, meditating vengeance, he rode to a point near the Harkless ranchhouse—and twice he saw Hame Bozzam visiting there. Once again, riding near the ranchhouse on his way to the camp of his outfit, and skirting a timber dump that concealed him from their view, he saw Hame Bozzam and Kathleen ride in to the ranchhouse and dismount. He saw the girl, momentarily, in Bozzam’s arms.

His ancient hatred of Bozzam had been deep and rancorous. He had known that some day he and Bozzam must meet for the final clash, and it had been in his mind, the night he had taken Glinn in to the Bozzam ranch, to bring about the final accounting there. But Blanche Le Claire had interfered. Now, he must postpone a clash, a personal clash, with Bozzam. For to precipitate any sort of a conflict now—which would betray his hate—would direct Kathleen’s attention to the state of his feelings; would betray the jealousy he felt; would arouse her scorn and contempt—and her ridicule—which would be worse, and unbearable.

Women were endowed with Satanic cleverness in those matters; their subtle minds enabled them to accurately determine motives—and the thought that he should do anything to draw Kathleen’s contempt was repugnant to him. Whatever fight he made against Hame Bozzam must seem to have no connection with his humiliation by Kathleen Harkless. And it took him many days to decide how to proceed. But he got up one morning, about six weeks following the shooting at the Bozzam ranch, got into his clothes, buckled on his cartridge belt and pistols, ate a light breakfast, threw the trappings on Meteor, mounted and rode toward Bozzam City.

It was ten o’clock when he reached the edge of town and urged Meteor to the hitching rail in front of the Palace. Bozzam City’s vices, flourishing in the darkness, were insipid memories during the early hours of the morning—and Bozzam’s citizens, like washed-out print fabrics, were dull and toneless in the light. Men were lounging in front of saloons, variously occupied in loafing against the time when their energies would move them within the saloons and gambling hells to resume their activities; aproned barkeepers stood in doorways; many ponies, fly-tortured, stamped impatiently in the deep dust of the street, awaiting their owners’ pleasure; Gawne caught glimpses of women, through windows, and in doorways. Bozzam City on this morning—as upon every other morning from the time the town was founded—seemed to be meditating upon the worthwhile phase of its existence.

Gawne nodded shortly to several men who were draped in front of the Palace. His back was toward the men while he tied Meteor to the hitching rail, and when that task was completed he strode, without a side glance at the loungers, straight toward a little frame shanty quite a distance up the street, over whose doorway was affixed a crude sign which bore the word “Sheriff”.

As Gawne passed out of hearing distance of the men in front of the Palace, one of them spoke, indicating Gawne with a jerky motion of the head:

“He’s a heap stingy with his talk this morn’.”

“Lookin’ sorta screwed up, too,” observed another.

“I don’t savvy that guy,” drawled a tall man. “ ’Pears to me he ain’t in no foolin’ humor this mornin’. You’ll notice I didn’t pull no funny stuff on him,” he added, in an attempt to gain a smile from the others.

None smiled. Gawne’s appearance had cast a chill over them. None of them knew Gawne intimately, yet they had seen in his manner a cold intentness that suggested the imminence of violence.

Looking up from his pipe and a week-old copy of a Las Vegas newspaper, Reb Haskell was afflicted with a chill quite like that which had swept over the group of loungers. He slowly took his feet off the flat-topped desk on which they had been resting, laid the paper down, and sat erect in his chair, smiling mirthlessly.

The ghastly pallor of his face betrayed his fear of his visitor. His hand trembled as he placed the newspaper on the desk; twice he cleared his throat before he could speak his stereotyped greeting:

“What can I do for you today?”

A corner of Gawne’s mouth twitched, softening its hardness with the hint of a cold smile. He had placed his hands on the desk top, and he now leaned toward the sheriff.

“Write out your resignation, Haskell.”

The sheriff stiffened. A dull red stole into his face, bloating it poisonously. It was plain that the other’s quiet demand had brought a riot of resentment into his heart; but it died, miserably, as his gaze met the steady flame of determination that blazed in the eyes that looked into his across the desk.

There was a short, tense instant of indecision on Haskell’s part, during which he thought of his gun. But, associated with that thought was another—the thin scar on his arm; and a recollection of the light in Gawne’s eyes on the day the wound had been made. He shuddered, gulped, and reached for ink and paper. Drawing the ink bottle toward him, he paused, demanding with toneless belligerence:

“Whose idee is this?”

“Mine.”

“Kind of sudden, ain’t it; an’ a heap unusual?” Haskell asked, with a ghastly attempt at a smile. “You figgerin’ on runnin’ this county now?”

“Yes,” said Gawne. Haskell met the cold gaze in the eyes that watched him unwaveringly, and decided that his official position was not worth the risk of refusal. Yet he wondered.

“ ’Sposin’ I don’t write it?” he demanded, with a show of aggressiveness.

“You won’t need to write it after your minute is up,” said Gawne. “I’m going to begin to count now!”

Haskell, after several seconds of the precious minute had been wasted, seized the pen and wrote feverishly. Then, reluctantly, he pushed the paper over the table. Remembering another time, when Gawne’s seeming unpreparedness had resulted disastrously, to him, he kept his hands spread widely and eloquently on the desk top.

Gawne stuck the paper in a pocket and stood erect. There was no change in his voice or in the expression of his eyes.

“You’re dead timber in this country, Haskell,” he said, shortly. “Get out—before sundown.”

Haskell rose at this insult, his face scarlet with rage. He raved, chokingly, incoherently; and at last, white and furious, he spluttered:

“Me! Leave the country? Get out by sundown! Me! Why—damn you! I was here before you come! I’ll see you in hell, first!”

“If you’re in Bozzam City at sundown, you’ll go to hell—alone, Haskell. For at sundown I’m coming for you!”

Gawne backed away and stepped down into the street. An instant later, he stuck his head in the doorway, to see Reb Haskell sitting in a chair, his legs asprawl, his hands plunged deep into his trousers’ pockets, staring straight ahead of him, his lips in a horrible pout. Gawne’s voice, snapping viciously, made the sheriff jump:

“Give me the keys to the jail, Haskell!”

Haskell passed the keys over. Gawne took them, dropped them into a pocket, and made his way down the street to the jail. The entire town was watching him now, aware that something out of the ordinary was happening.

Gawne’s demand for the keys of the jail was not the result of any particular interest in that institution; yet he had decided there might be a prisoner or two in it, and he wanted Haskell to have no further control over their destinies.

The building was of framed timbers, heavy and substantial. Two grated windows were in its walls, and one door, iron-barred, opened on the street. The building sat back slightly from the street line, leaving an open space, in which, in times of any organized civic effort, Bozzam City’s citizens were prone to meet for a discussion of the things that interested them. Those times were not many. Yet here Bozzam City held its elections. Reb Haskell had been elected in the jail—his electors having used the jail as a voting booth. A court sat here—sometimes; Bozzam City was the County Seat; though cases were so few that a judge had to be brought from Las Vegas.

Gawne unlocked the door of the jail and swung it open. Standing in the opening, he saw the figure of a man sitting on a bench in the rear of the building. Twice Gawne blinked at the man before he recognized him; then he laughed lowly.

“I never expected to see a Bozzam man in here.” He closed the door behind him, for, sauntering along the street, a citizen of Bozzam had halted, and was interestedly watching Gawne.

“Well; you’re lookin’ at one,” said the other.

“Have trouble with Bozzam, Cass?”

“Plenty,” growled the discomfited right-hand man. He looked truculently at Gawne. “What you doin’, goin’ around openin’ an’ shuttin’ the jail door for? You the sheriff now?”

“Haskell has resigned. I’m taking his resignation right on to the Governor. Thought I’d look in and see if any prisoner would find it lonesome in here until the new sheriff is appointed. Glad I stopped.”

“What made Haskell resign? He was a heap enthusiastic, last night.”

“That’s a long story, Cass. Haskell isn’t the first man that has changed his mind overnight.”

“Hell!” exploded Cass; “I reckon I’ll never git out of here now!”

“What you in for, Cass?”

Cass flushed with embarrassment, and then grinned a brazen, crooked grin at his inquisitor. “For buttin’ into a love game, I reckon,” he said.

“Oh, don’t!” mocked Gawne. But he scowled, for a suspicion had suddenly seized him. Cass had said Bozzam was responsible for his incarceration.

“Don’t tell me you were butting into Bozzam’s love game!” he said.

“It sure wasn’t my game!” said Cass, ruefully.

“Bozzam broke with Blanche Le Claire then? And you were mixed in?”

“Hell!” Cass sneered at his visitor. “Where you been—sleepin’? Bozzam broke off with Blanche Le Claire the day you herd-rode the outfit! She went home with you—didn’t she? She didn’t go back to Bozzam. Bozzam’s took up with that there Harkless female!”

Gawne turned and examined the lock on the jail door—that Cass might not see his face. He spoke with his back turned to the prisoner: “That’s news to me.”

“An’ to me, too,” said Cass, sourly. “At least it was news—when I got wind of it. That was when Bozzam sailed into me. I was on the porch, an’ my gun got snagged.”

“Bozzam sailed into you, eh? And you didn’t know he was friendly with Miss Harkless?”

“I don’t know nothin’,” asserted Cass. “I was wantin’ to know. Speakin’ straight, I’d took a shine to the girl from the first—when you warned me off an’ took her to the Colonel’s ranch—an’ plugged me in the wrist. I want to tell you, while I’m talkin’, that I’ll square that deal with you, some day. I was thinkin’ to square it when I frames up on the Harkless girl—with Haskell. You warns me not to tell her about the Colonel bein’ one of Bozzam’s men, an’ I figgers that because you don’t want her to know that it’ll hurt you a heap to have me tell her. I does so, makin’ it strong, not thinkin’ she was promised to Hame. I tells her if she don’t hook up with me. I’ll sick Haskell on her dad an’ make him hang him. That don’t make no hit with her. She gits a rifle an’ tries to bore me, which she ain’t a good shot or she’d have done it. Then I gits a note from Bozzam to come over to his shack. She’s there—an’ the Colonel—an’ Bozzam. Bozzam makes me crawl, which I’m so flustered, I do. Out on the porch, afterward, I tries to fan my gun, an’ Bozzam steps on my gullet an’ sends me off to—here—by Reb Haskell, which Haskell had been standin’ there watchin’ the whole performance, an’ never batted an eye-winker! That’s how I’m here. You got no love for Hame Bozzam, I reckon?”