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“Keep them going up!” Cass heard Gawne saying. And to his surprise he found that he had been raising his hands, had raised them, unconsciously, until they were now a considerable distance from his weapons.

“Now hold them there while I tell you something, Cass. Keep your dirty hands off Miss Harkless. Don’t go near her; don’t speak to her unless you’ve got your hat in your hand. And don’t tell her that her father belongs to your rotten band of outlaws. Don’t hint of it to her, and don’t suggest it. And tell that to your gang. You’re running things, and I’ll hold you responsible. She won’t hear of it through anybody else, for my outfit won’t mention it, because not one of them, with the exception of Billings, knows it. The Colonel won’t tell her, because he’ll want her to think he’s white. And I won’t tell her, because if she’s half a woman the knowledge will hurt her, and there’s hell enough for a woman in this country, if she’s got any good in her, without the knowledge that her father is a cattle thief. If she hears of it I’m coming for you, good and plenty! Get going, and be careful how you move!”

He watched Cass re-enter the Palace. A few minutes later he followed the outlaw in, taking a seat at a table near the wall, morosely scanning the faces of the men in the room, but apparently not seeing them.

Jess Cass returned to the card room, but not to play. He mumbled some excuse to the others and went to a window, where he stood, looking out at the refuse that littered the backyard. It was not a fascinating view; it seemed to accord perfectly with his thoughts, which were not pleasant. The crushing of self-respect may have two effects—it may oppress the victim with an overpowering sense of his littleness, in which case he may want to crawl away in some dark corner and hide, or it may arouse him to a frenzy of bitter malignance, in which extremity he speculates on vigorous reprisal. It worked the latter way with Cass.

He was no longer under the spell of Gawne’s eyes; passionate courage galloped rampant through his veins. He stood for a long time at the window until his vicious thoughts shaped themselves into coherent form; then his shoulders took on the sneaking droop they had worn before Gawne had interrupted him, and he walked cautiously to the back door, closed it behind him and squirmed through mounds of backyard refuse until he reached the rear door of the High Card. He found a Bozzam man there; in a saloon across the street he came upon another; and in a resort of another character he discovered two more—sober as himself, hating Gawne with a fervor equaled only by his own. And an hour later, when the Lazette stage rumbled its way down Bozzam City’s one street, Jess Cass and his four henchmen were fringing the front of the Palace, apparently unconcerned, affected, seemingly, with merely the quality of curiosity exhibited by the other citizens of Bozzam City who had foregathered for the event.

CHAPTER III

THE “EXCEPTION “

When the stage came to a stop in front of the Palace Miss Kathleen Harkless breathed a deep sigh of satisfaction and relief. The ride had been a long one, and anticipation had made it seem longer. In her eagerness to see her father she had hardly noticed the inconveniences of travel; certainly they had not affected either her spirit or her appearance, for when she stepped down from the stagecoach there was a vivacity in her manner and a trim neatness to her traveling suit that drew a gasp of admiration from the assembled citizens of Bozzam.

She noticed none of the citizens particularly—except one. The others were collective nonentities—the heterogeneous wanderers—good, bad, and indifferent—inseparable from the average western cow-town. She had seen many of them—towns and people; they had littered the plains from San Francisco to Bozzam City, and her curiosity must have been sated, had she been afflicted with it in the beginning.

The “exception” had arrested her first glance; she stole another at him after she stepped down from the stage and was waiting for the driver to swing her trunk off. He was lounging in the doorway of the Palace, his broad felt hat drawn well over his forehead, his arms folded. But there was a set to his head, a lithe grace in his attitude, a gleam in his eyes that marked him as being out of the ordinary. There was the trace of a smile on his lips, slightly contemptuous, as though he condemned Bozzam City’s curiosity. He advertised that his own interest was not in the arrival of the stage, but in Bozzam City’s curiosity over its arrival. There was much difference.

Kathleen watched the driver drag her trunk from the carrier at the rear, carry it and drop it to the ground in front of the Palace. That seemed to end his interest in her, for he began to unhitch the horses. And now, standing at the step of the stage uncertainly, she looked about her, hoping to see her father. Her shoulder drooped from the weight of the traveling bag she carried, and when, after she had searched the faces around her and saw not one that might have belonged to her father, disappointment drooped the shoulder still further. She was about to address the “exception”, to ask him where she might find a conveyance, when she saw him step toward her. He had approached to within ten feet of her when, watching him through the corners of her eyes, she saw him stop. At the same instant she detected movement in the group of men fringing the front of the Palace. She could not have told which man had moved, or whether there had been more than one, for when she shifted her gaze toward them every one stood motionless, their eyes directed at the “exception”. She, too, looked at him, wondering, for he seemed suddenly to dominate them all. She could not have told why, for he was standing in an easy, careless attitude, his thumbs hooked in his cartridge belt above the butts of his heavy pistols, facing the fringe of men.

The girl stared in perplexity. Turning her head she noted that the stage driver had ceased working with the harness; that he had shrunk against the haunches of the wheel horse on her side, and was crouching there. She turned again to the fringe of men for enlightenment. And then she saw a dark man, with a queer droop to the right corner of his mouth, standing rigid, the fingers of his right hand gripping the stock of the pistol at his hip—the weapon was still in its holster. Four other men, she now observed, were standing in like positions—one had his pistol half drawn. It seemed to the girl that if the “exception” hadn’t turned as he had these men would have shot him down. She shivered.

It was the “exception’s” voice that steadied her. He had not changed his position. She had a three-quarter view of his face; it was hard and colorless as a stone image. Only his eyes seemed alive; they were glinting with a fierce, wanton fire that started the shivers over her again. She did not see his lips move when he spoke:

“Everybody stand!” he said coldly. “The first man that moves a finger until I say the word, goes down!”

There was a concerted stiffening of bodies. Bulging, fear-widened eyes stared at the “exception”; blanched faces were turned to his; a little man—one of the strangers that was to take the stage, and who might be identified by the luggage at his feet—gasped audibly; it was startlingly resonant in the perfect silence; the girl saw men in the fringe cringe from it. And then the man in front of her was speaking again:

“There are five men in front of the Palace who figured on shooting me while my back was turned. I’ve spotted them. They’re to hit the breeze straight down the street to the edge of town. I bore the last man!” He stiffened, his voice snapped metallically: “Go!”

The girl saw the crooked-mouthed man sneer and claw at his gun. There was a glitter at the “exception’s” right side, a splitting streak of blue-white smoke. The man with the crooked mouth staggered, cursed and clapped his left hand to his right wrist. His pistol thudded dully into the dust of the street. As through a haze the girl saw men running—five of them. The man with the crooked mouth was one of the foremost—he was cursing as he ran. Two of the five ran abreast for a dozen feet, and then one of them stumbled, dropping back several paces. A splitting crash at the girl’s side told her that the lithe lounger of the doorway had fired again, and she covered her eyes with her hands. When she removed the hands—as she was compelled to do through sheer curiosity—she saw that the laggard lay prone in the dust. There were men bending over him; she saw they were some of those who had taken no part in the affair.

She wheeled, to see the tall man replacing his pistol, and furious rage and horror brought passionate speech to her lips. She had taken several steps toward him before she realized what she was doing, and she now stood before him, rigid, every muscle tense.

“Oh!” she said, hoarsely, “that was murder! You shot him—in the back!”

He smiled mirthlessly at her. “I think I did, Miss Harkless,” he said coldly. “I kept my word. But you’ll find he isn’t murdered.” He placed odd emphasis on the word, in mockery of the tone she had used. “I broke his shoulder, and the shock downed him. Don’t worry, he’ll live to steal any number of things yet. And now,” he added, mildly; “if you are ready, I’ll find a horse for you and take you to Colonel Harkless.”

She drew herself up stiffly. “I shall not go with you!” she declared.

He laughed, and walked around a corner of the Palace building. When he reappeared a few minutes later, leading a pony, saddled and bridled, she looked at him icily. But during the interval of his absence some men had lifted the wounded laggard to his feet and had led him into the Palace. The girl had seen that her prospective escort had spoken truthfully—and she felt just a trifle remorseful for her words—and when he seized her traveling bag, she permitted him to help her mount the pony he had brought for her, watched him swing upon Meteor, and followed him as he rode down the street. As her pony moved away from the hitching rail she heard a man remark lowly:

“Jumpin’ Joseph! If that there Riddle Gawne ever wakes up an’ performs like he c’n perform when he shakes the hobbles off, this burg ain’t goin’ to go stale for want of excitement!”

CHAPTER IV

THE WOMAN CURIOUS

Kathleen Harkless did not permit herself to remain long in the fit of depression that had followed the shooting. The perfect sanity of her character forbade that. Besides, it was not the first shooting that she had witnessed, and she had seen that by all the rules of life in this section of the country, her escort had been justified in doing just what he had done. After a time she even ceased to speculate upon the probable outcome of the shooting. Certainly, if the crooked-mouthed man and companions were of the type they seemed to be—indicated, too, by her escort’s words—they could not be expected to remain passive under their defeat. But she reasoned that since her escort had defeated them once, he could do so again, and thus dismissed the matter from her mind.

As her pony loped slightly behind his, her gaze followed the lithe stranger. She studied him with covert curiosity, strengthening impressions formed by her first glance in Bozzam City. Bozzam City was several miles in the rear now, and her escort had not spoken once to her during the ride; maintaining the position slightly in advance of her, indicating by no word or sign that he knew of her presence.

The term “exception” was one that described him perfectly, she thought. The cold reserve of his manner irritated her; she was not accustomed to having men entirely disregard the fact of her existence in this fashion.

The irritation grew; it could not be dispersed by the manifold beauties of the country through which they were passing. They were inviting enough, peaceful enough; but no woman of spirit could console herself with mere views while filled with the knowledge that a man in whom she was interested was deliberately ignoring her. She urged her pony until its muzzle was opposite the gray’s shoulder. Her lips were set in lines of determination.

“Pardon me, perhaps you know why my father didn’t come to meet me?”

He looked swiftly at her. Did his face show surprise at her closeness? She could not tell, for he was looking straight ahead again.

“Colonel Harkless is slightly indisposed.”

“Not really ill?”

“No.”

“So you came,” she ventured, after a silence. “You are—”

“I am Jefferson Gawne.”

She studied his profile for a moment, and then smiled with faint derision. He was positively boorish.

“What about my trunk? I suppose father will send for it?”

“Joe Allen will haul it over, I presume; he’s in Bozzam City.”

“Why didn’t he bring the trunk right along with us?”

“Allen is in no condition for travel.”

“Why?”

“He’s drunk.”

Kathleen considered Gawne speculatively, a humorous devil tugging at the corners of her mouth. This man, as she had seen, did not permit other men to trifle with him, and that was precisely the reason she purposed to trifle. Her experience with men had been limited, but she had been observant, and she had a conviction that this man’s sullenness had been adopted merely to show her the depths of his resentment for the bitter words that she had applied to him in Bozzam City. It was too ridiculous! Positively puerile! And he yet had certainly acted a man’s part in the shooting affray!

“I want you to—to pardon me for what I said to you in Bozzam City,” she said, with a sidelong glance at him. “I was startled into betraying my nerves.”

He turned and looked squarely into her eyes, his own glinting with cold amusement. “You needn’t have gone to that trouble—I’m not worrying about it.”

Nor was he; she gathered that from the level look of his eyes. He was deeper than she had thought, and she had to reconstruct her theory regarding him. She did this while they were negotiating a rolling level of knee-high sagebrush, and plunging through an arroyo whose bottom was studded with a gnarled chaparral growth which clutched at her skirts. He was not sullen; he was merely coldly and politely uncommunicative. And his thoughts were not pleasant ones; in the flashing glance she had of his eyes she saw a bitter cynicism lurking in them, behind the amusement.

She was not frivolous; she had capacity for deep feeling; she had always been soberly sensible and conventionally considerate of the rights of her fellowmen; and yet the attitude of this man toward her aroused a grim, unrecking malice in her. It was a primeval emotion. She felt toward him as a jungle ancestor might have felt toward a victim clinging to the slender outward branch of a tree; the ancestor farther back, teetering vindictively to dislodge him. She smiled into the yawning distance and urged her pony alongside. He did not see the mischief in her eyes, for he had not turned his head at her approach.

“This country exerts a depressing influence upon some persons,” she said quietly. They were passing through a sand draw and their horses made no sound. Her voice carried clearly to him.