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“Conveniently left with some friend,” jeered Gawne.

Bozzam’s face flushed darkly. “Ben Mosely is putting a new spring in it,” he said.

A second six-shooter leaped into Gawne’s hand—was extended toward Bozzam, stock first. Gawne’s smile was coldly derisive. The girl saw Bozzam change color. She got up, and stood between the two men, her chin lifting as she looked at Gawne. For she could not let him know that her heart was singing in wild applause for him; she must not let him see that she cared. She divined that his antagonism had received an added impetus because of Bozzam’s presence in town with her. He had wanted to amuse himself with her—as he amused himself with Blanche Le Claire—and he was enraged because Bozzam, his old enemy, had supplanted him.

“Shoot him—if you dare!” she said, icily.

He smiled mockingly, his gaze hostile. “There is no danger, Miss Harkless. I am not a murderer. It isn’t the first time that Hame Bozzam has backed out of a scrimmage. Our love for each other is an ancient passion,” he said, laughing deeply—a sound that made the girl’s pulses skip a beat. “It has grown so deep that shooting wouldn’t satisfy it.”

A certain gleam in his eyes brought a crimson flush to the girl’s face, staining it to her temples. She knew what the gleam meant, for she had felt it many times since Blanche Le Claire had visited the Diamond Bar. She felt it even now—and wondered if he saw it. Gawne was jealous. She knew, now, that he suspected her of serious intentions toward Hame Bozzam. He must not be allowed to think that! For she had never considered Bozzam seriously, and not even to punish Gawne for his intimacy with Blanche Le Claire would she have him think that Hame Bozzam could ever be anything to her. It angered her to think of it, and she met his gaze fairly, her hands clenched, indignation flashing in her eyes.

“Jefferson Gawne, you are a fool!” she declared furiously. She walked past Bozzam, stepped down into the street, and sought her horse.

Bozzam trailed behind her, looking backward over his shoulder at Gawne, whom he could see, standing in the office, his hands resting on his hips, watching, his face wrinkled in a puzzled frown.

The girl paid no attention to Hame Bozzam as she rode out of town—toward the Harkless ranch. She might have forgotten Bozzam’s existence. But when, after traveling three or four miles, Bozzam spurred alongside, he was made aware that she had not forgotten him.

She halted her horse and faced him, and her face was pale with wrath and scorn and contempt.

“Jefferson Gawne is a fool, and you are a coward! ” she flung at Bozzam. “I never want to see either of you again! Don’t you ever come to my house or speak to me again! If you do, I’ll shoot you!”

Bozzam laughed, with a ring of the old confidence and depth. “No; you won’t shoot me,” he said. “You’re just a little excited, now, over what has happened. Look here, little girl!” He drove his horse against hers and showed her a six-shooter, suspended from the inside of his vest by a sling. “I had that all along. I could have killed Gawne at any time—”

“If you hadn’t been afraid!” she jeered. “Don’t touch me!” she warned, reaching for the small weapon she wore at her waist, as he tried to take one of her hands. “I know you; I saw you a while ago, just as you are! And I hate you!”

“You’ll marry me, some day,” he laughed. But he was aware of her earnestness, and there was no mirth in his voice.

“Bah!” she cried, in her disgust over the memory of the picture he had presented in the sheriff’s office.

“Look here!” Stung by her scorn—by the truth she had spoken concerning him—he urged his horse against hers again, seizing her roughly by the hand. She had tried to grasp the butt of the pistol, but his grip prevented. He was close to her; he had dropped the mask of bland politeness which he had worn all along in her presence, and his face was repulsive with the passion that lay exposed in it.

“Now we’ll get to an understanding, girl! You think you know me, eh? Well, you don’t half know me! I’ve wanted you from the day I saw a picture of you. I’m going to have you—understand? There’ll be no playing with me. You don’t like me, eh? Well, you like your father! You’ll marry me to save him. I’ll hang him, sure as hell, if you don’t. Do you know what it was that Jess Cass said to you? He told you the truth! Your father is a cattle thief! Haskell has the goods on him! I’ll have him strung up so sure as my name is Bozzam—if you don’t marry me!” He laughed harshly, enjoying the girl’s horror; he felt her sway weakly in his grasp; and she looked at him with a new terror.

“I’m after Gawne, too, now,” he went on, vindictively. “I’ve run things in this country for a good many years—and I’m going to keep on running them. Do you know what Gawne was doing in the sheriff’s office? He’d given Haskell until sundown to leave town, and he went to Haskell’s office to kill him! You still love him—don’t you?” he sneered. “Don’t think I’m a fool. I saw the way you looked at him. But Blanche Le Claire has got him. That’s what hurts you, eh? But Gawne’s run his race in this here country. We’re going to get him—right! There’ll be no monkey business hereafter. It’s war now—damn him!

“But first I take you! Understand that! Tonight I’m coming for you. I take you, or Haskell takes your dad!” He crushed her against him, kissed her brutally, while she fought him, ineffectively—and then suddenly released her, laughing mockingly, jerking the small pistol from her holster as he did so and throwing it far into a mesquite clump.

She rode away, swaying in the saddle, white and shaking, thrilling with terror over the intensity of the man’s passion; realizing now, for the first time, the fierceness of the beast that she had unwittingly aroused; breathing incoherent prayers for her father and herself. And as she rode she heard Bozzam’s laugh in her ears—derisive and deep.

Back in the sheriff’s office Gawne had opened Haskell’s note:

“I’m goin’. It’s none of your damn business where. Mebbe it’s far an’ mebbe it ain’t. But I’ll git you some day.

“Reb Haskell.”

Standing in the doorway of the office, Gawne slowly tore the note to pieces. Lingering in his recollection was the sincerity of Kathleen’s voice when she had told him that he was a fool. He smiled with straight lips, thinking that, if she persisted in her friendship for Bozzam, she would one day discover that she might have reserved the epithet for herself.

CHAPTER XXI

DISILLUSIONMENT

Bozzam’s brutal and explosive recital of her father’s guilt had shocked Kathleen tremendously. Yet the ride homeward was a long one, and each mile that she placed between her and Hame Bozzam seemed to take her farther from the spell of his words and his sinister influence—seemed, indeed, to lessen the probability of the truth of his charge. There was just a chance that he had been lying to her, hoping to frighten her into consenting to his designs; for by this time she could think of no other term that would correctly describe his desire to possess her.

She still had faith in her father; it was incredible that he would have lied to her; that he would deliver her over to Bozzam, knowing him as she knew him. It must be that Bozzam had deceived her father as he had deceived her. She gathered the crumbs of this consolation and feasted her hopes on them; but by the time she reached the ranchhouse her fears had seized her again, and when she dismounted her knees shook with weakness.

She did not take the trappings off her horse, leaving him standing beside the porch, the reins trailing over his head. Darkness was replacing the twilight.

The house was deserted. She went from room to room, looking for her father, and not finding him, she went out on the porch, sank into a chair and stared, white and nerveless, out over the big, dark level that stretched between the porch and the Diamond Bar ranchhouse. She knew she could never pass another day in this section of the country.

It seemed to be hours, afterward, before she dimly saw the Colonel ride up to the corral gates and dismount. She waited, a growing whiteness on her face, for him to come in; and when he walked to the edge of the porch and stood, looking at her, a quick concern in his eyes, she got up and faced him.

“What’s wrong, Kathie?” He took a few steps toward her, but halted, and paled, at the look she gave him. Her eyes were brilliant in the ghostly light.

“Father,” she said; “I rode—part of the way home with Hame Bozzam today. He wanted me to go to Bozzam City with him, and I did so. We met Jefferson Gawne there; he had ordered Reb Haskell to leave town, threatening to kill him if he didn’t go. Bozzam seemed to be furious over it. He acted the part of a coward in Gawne’s presence, and I told him he did. Then he demanded that I marry him. I refused, and he threatened. He repeated the story Jess Cass told me here one day. Father, have you lied to me about Hame Bozzam? Did Jess Cass speak the truth when he told me about you being a—about you working for Hame Bozzam?”

She watched the Colonel, holding her breath, a haunting anxiety in her eyes. She saw the Colonel’s face grow ashen; saw his eyes bulge and glint with some deep emotion. Then he let his chin fall to his chest, and stood there, drooping, his shoulders sagging—a picture of guilt.

She caught her breath with a quick gasp; stood rigid for an instant, looking at her father with an expression of mingled regret, pity, and contempt—then turned noiselessly, and went into the house.

When the Colonel went in, some time later, he heard her upstairs, walking rapidly back and forth. He waited and listened for a long time, and then tiptoed to the head of the stairs and stood there, watching her. She was packing her belongings into a trunk and traveling bag. She gave no sign of seeing the Colonel until he cleared his throat. Then she stood erect and looked at him, her face white in the lamp light.

“W-what are you doing, Kathie?”

“I am going away. Do you think I could stay here any longer after what has happened?”

“Don’t, Kathie! You are all I’ve got! What would I do if you left me?” He shivered. “Hame Bozzam will kill me—sure—if you go!”

She realized now, that in her rage and disappointment she had given no thought to her father’s future, and swift remorse seized her. He seemed to be utterly broken—a gray, bent figure, old and absurdly futile. She ran to him with a cry of torturing self-accusation, throwing her arms around him and telling him that he should go with her, that both should escape Hame Bozzam’s vicious influence.

His eyes brightened at this; and he blurted out the story of his weaknesses to her, she patting his head and smoothing his cheeks, and telling him not to “mind”.

But later, after they had packed the things they had decided to take with them, his moral courage failed again.

“Father,” she said, holding him close and whispering to him; “was it all true—what you said about Jeff Gawne—and the Le Claire woman?”

“Yes—Kathie.” He could not bear to have her blame him further. She drew her breath sharply, for she had cherished a hope, in spite of what she had seen in Bozzam City, in the doorway, when she and Hame Bozzam had been riding towards Haskell office.

She did not speak again—of Gawne or of Bozzam. Some low, tuneless words she addressed to the Colonel, regarding the effects they had packed; the Colonel told her he would find some one in Bozzam City to send for her trunk, and it would follow them by stage—and they stood for some time on the porch. Then, as an early moon thrust a pallid rim above the peaks of some distant mountains, they mounted their horses and rode toward Bozzam City.

CHAPTER XXII

A MATTER OF NERVE

Gawne’s determination to purge the country of Hame Bozzam and his outfit was not founded entirely on the high principle of service to the common moral conscience. Retributive impulses spring from personal animosities. Gawne did not delude himself. When he stepped down from the door of the sheriff’s office into the deepening twilight of Bozzam City’s street he knew that consideration for the town’s welfare was overwhelmed by the strength of his personal hatred for Hame Bozzam. He would have liked to believe that Hame Bozzam’s success with Kathleen Harkless had nothing to do with his bitterness against the man, but the vindictive joy he felt over the probable effect—on Kathleen—of the big man’s banishment, was not to be overlooked.

But there was a limit to his ability. He could not, single-handed, hope to accomplish Hame Bozzam’s overthrow. To the best of his knowledge, there were still seventeen men in the Bozzam outfit—hardened characters recruited from various sections of the country—upon whom Bozzam could depend. There were men in Bozzam City who, like Gawne, had long yearned for Hame Bozzam’s downfall. Gawne knew them, and it had been to them that he had gone after he had forced Haskell’s resignation. Haskell legally gone, Bozzam City had no representation in law. The Law was in Las Vegas, and could not be summoned that night. So long as Haskell reigned as a regularly recognized official of the county, Bozzam City was powerless to initiate any reform that did not meet the sheriff’s approval. But with Haskell’s resignation, and in the absence of his successor, there arose the necessity for protective organization. Therefore, during Gawne’s absence in the sheriff’s office a vigilance committee was formed, composed of eager men who respected the law and had the courage to fight for it.

Bozzam City had suffered long. By forcing Haskell’s resignation, Gawne had provided the lawful element with an opportunity to forever end the domination of Hame Bozzam and the pliant official elected by the rustler; and by the time Gawne emerged from the sheriff’s office there were twenty men, armed with rifles, grouped in front of the Palace, waiting for him. Among them were some of the town’s merchants, ranch owners who had suffered through the depredations of Bozzam’s outfit, and cowpunchers whose love for a “square deal” they were willing to prove.

But Gawne had not depended entirely upon the chance of organizing a vigilance committee. There had existed the possibility of him not finding men in town who would sympathize with his design; and when leaving the Diamond Bar that morning he had left a brief note for Billings. And when he walked toward the group of men in front of the Palace, he saw the Diamond Bar outfit, headed by its foreman, skimming toward Bozzam City in a dust cloud, their horses in a dead run.

For once, there were no sounds of revelry by night in Bozzam City. The imminence of organized violence had cast a spell of awe over the town. With the coming of darkness a sepulchral silence filled the street, broken only by the voices of the members of the committee.

Gawne had tried to keep the real purpose of his visit to town a secret, and he had told only those men whom he felt he could trust. But two of Bozzam’s men had been in town all day. They had used their eyes and their ears, and their lurid imaginations had supplied reasons for the significant silences that greeted their presence near any group of men that formed. They waited, impatiently, for the night to come, and under cover of the shadows they mounted their horses and slipped out of town riding, helter-skelter, toward the Bozzam ranchhouse.