第 9 页

“What a devoted couple we are, Hame! We are so absorbed with each other!”

Bozzam pushed back his plate and looked at her with cold appraisement. “Yes,” he said, bluntly; “we’ve played out our string, I reckon. I’ve seen it coming for quite a spell. You getting tired of it, too?”

“I believe I’ve grown to hate you, Hame,” She said, quite passionlessly. The only resentment she felt was aroused over the obvious fact that Bozzam no longer cared. Yet this was as she had hoped. “Two years is a long time, isn’t it? Much too long—when the fire is out.”

“You want a break, then?” His vanity was also suffering. She smiled an affirmative. “Well, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t,” he said, gruffly.

“And a good reason why we should,” she said, looking directly at him. “Two reasons, I should have said.”

“What are they?”

“Kathleen Harkless, for one,” she said, and paused to enjoy the flush on his face. “And Jeff Gawne for the other,” she added, without changing expression.

“Yes,” she went on, after a silence, during which he looked at her with a pout on his lips, “I want Jeff Gawne. You want Kathleen Harkless. Why should we pretend?” Her face showed a slight perplexity. “To my knowledge you have never seen Kathleen Harkless. Can it be that you have fallen in love with her picture—the one I found in one of your coat pockets the other day?”

“How—” began Bozzam. But her laugh cut him short.

“I looked for it, of course, after I saw, the night Cass was shot, that you loved her, and were jealous of Gawne. She is pretty. I might take exception to your judgment—you preferring her to me—if I thought it worth while.”

Bozzam sat looking at her, his hands spread along the edge of the table, his heart full of malice and hatred. He could never veil his emotions from this woman; she saw clear through him.

She walked to the dining-room door and stood, watching him for an instant. “Take my advice, Hame, and don’t antagonize Gawne. Don’t try using a gun on him; he is dangerous. Try craft; it’s safer. I’ve heard you boast of your cunning. Use it; it may save your life.”

Bozzam sat long at the table, and his grip on its edge grew tighter. For six years he had avoided Gawne—had avoided him at the risk of wagging tongues and at the expense of his self-respect. And now, despite all his efforts the time was coming when their wills would clash, when the animosity that had been concealed for so long would flare forth, naked and bitter, demanding its long deferred toll. He knew he would pay. Something had been telling him that for years. It was dinned in his ears now by the cold fear that had seized him, by the paralyzing conviction that Gawne was the Nemesis appointed by Providence to avenge his brother Wesley.

A cold, damp sweat broke out on his forehead. Glinn had not returned; he had promised to return before dusk—if he succeeded. If he failed, he intended to join the other men in Bozzam City. Glinn had not returned, and therefore he had failed. Bozzam realized now that he had known all along that Glinn would fail. The thing was impossible. Gawne bore a charmed life; no one could kill him until he had accomplished what he had set out to accomplish—the destruction of Watt Hyat. Bozzam almost spoke the name aloud, and shivered. It was inexplicable. Gawne did not know him; could not recognize him, because Gawne had never seen him. Gawne might have got a description of him from the station agent who had seen him and the woman get aboard the train on the night he had murdered Wesley Gawne—that had been the only weak spot in Hyat’s plan—but he had changed much since then, and his beard—Yet that would not—did not alter the situation, for Jeff Gawne was here, had been here, and hated him, and everything seemed to conspire to drive them together.

Bozzam got to his feet, staggering a little. He was a strong man, inured to danger; he had never known a pulse of fear in his life until he had faced Jeff Gawne the morning he had come upon him in the Diamond Bar ranchhouse after the red murderers had been punished; but his knees shook now, his eyes dilated and he took the air into his lungs in great gasps. For framed in one of the front windows was the pallid visage of his enemy, the eyes flaming with the cold, cruel fires of hate.

Bozzam slowly stiffened to cold rigidity, and in the ominous silence of the room the wheezing of his breath sounded shrill and labored. He was fascinated; he tried to sneer, tried to shift his gaze, but his eyes and his senses were held in the clutch of a mighty dread; and when he saw Gawne’s head move back with a quick, significant jerk, Bozzam found himself walking toward the front door.

An instant later he was on the porch, closing the door behind him, and facing Gawne in the dimly luminous haze that filtered through the windows.

“Stand where you are, Bozzam!” Gawne’s voice was low and vibrant, and Bozzam did not move a quarter of an inch after he received the command. Yet Gawne’s voice had broken the tension that had held Bozzam; his hatred for Gawne was conquering his fear of him; he grinned wolfishly at Gawne’s face, faintly visible in the shadows.

“What do you want?”

He stiffened as Gawne stepped toward him. Bozzam might have reached out a hand and touched him, might have drawn his gun, it seemed that it would be so easy, for Gawne’s hands were hanging at his sides. But something in Gawne’s manner warned him and he stood motionless, looking at his enemy.

There fell a silence, strained, awkward, portentous. Gawne broke it with a sharp “I’ve brought Glinn in.”

Bozzam could feel his muscles jump and then contract, rigidly. He said, “Where is he?” and could have bitten his tongue off in his rage over the error.

Gawne laughed shortly; the sound of it made Bozzam cringe. “There,” said Gawne; and following the quick sweep of the other’s arm, Bozzam looked downward at the edge of the porch where a prone figure, ghastly in its slackness, lay in the faint glow of light from within.

Bozzam’s breath made a shrill sound as he sucked it in; his face was as ghastly as that of the figure at the edge of the porch. He stared at Gawne and saw the other’s lips twist contemptuously.

“It is the sixth of June,” said Gawne. “I nailed him as he was climbing the rock ridge across from Sunshine Gap. He talked—some. He wanted me to bring him in—here. There he is. I wanted you to know—that I know. You can save a thousand by doing your own killing, Bozzam. You’ve got to do it. Your chance is as good as mine. It’s better, for I won’t draw until I see your hand move. Any time you are ready!” The muscles of his arms stiffened and his chin came forward a little. “Get going, you coyote!” he said.

After six years, it had come. Death was within an arm’s length of Bozzam, and he could feel the chill of its presence. And now that death was imminent, Bozzam realized that he had always known he would meet it as he was meeting it—with a clammy dread at his heart; with paralyzed muscles; in speechless terror. He fought the panic, though, groaning from the awful tension of it, his lips dry, his tongue clacking against the roof of his mouth as it labored for speech. He wanted to tell Gawne to withhold his hand. If he could gain a minute he could rout the awful terror that gripped him—

The opening of the front door, flooding the porch with light, precipitated action, swift and confusing. Startled, Bozzam’s hand sought for his gun-holster. The woman’s was first. Keen-witted, she had sensed the danger, and Bozzam’s hand merely brushed the smooth skin of her wrist as she drew his pistol and threw it from her toward the porch edge. It glittered in its flight and fell into some bunch grass. With the weapon still in the air the woman evaded Bozzam’s clutching hands, silently enduring his furious curses, wheeled and flung herself at Gawne, wrestling with him, trying to pinion his arms, in one of which he held a pistol. But she could not secure the arm; it swung free, the muzzle of the weapon covering Bozzam.

“Don’t shoot!” she cried, sharply; “that would be murder!”

Her supple body was against his; he could feel the straining of her muscles, the throbbing eagerness of her, the dread anxiety. He smiled cynically, pushing her from him with his free hand—holding her off, warily watching Bozzam. She clung to his hand frenziedly until she saw the hard light fade from his eyes, until she saw them glow with a bitter humor. But not until she heard him say, shortly, “You win,” did she release her grasp on his hand. And then she and Bozzam stood motionless, watching him until he vanished into the darkness beyond the edge of the porch.

And then it seemed to be a long time before Bozzam spoke. He took a step toward the woman.

“He would have got me—I think.” he said, thickly.

She stared into the shadows. “You would have been dead—by now.”

He watched her, perplexed. “And yet you told me you didn’t care—”

She turned on him, pale, but smiling. “Don’t get sentimental, Hame!” she jibed “How do you suppose I would ever get him if he killed you?”

CHAPTER XI

THE FLAME OF DESIRE

Gawne had demonstrated that his capacity for violent, destroying passion had not been affected by his contact with Kathleen Harkless, yet in many ways he was changing. It was a new mental condition; yet it was not. It was a re-won faith; nor was it that. It was a faith dragged out of dormancy, for it had never been lost. But he did not analyze, he exulted, leaving the speculation to his astonished friends. He was a man who had been through the fire, and he had emerged, tempered, fine-fibered. The electric current of desire had flown through him—magnetizing him. He had removed the dark glasses of doubt and was looking at the world with a clear vision. He was—save for the lust to feel his fingers at the throat of Watt Hyat—the Jefferson Gawne of old. Marie Calvert did not matter, she had become a remote memory and he thought of her without feeling a pulse of emotion. Surviving, also, was his hatred for Hame Bozzam. Yet even the quality of that hatred had changed. It was as deep, but it was not so furious.

He knew Reb Haskell. Reb would not bother him again. For two weeks he waited, half expecting that Hame Bozzam would force Haskell; but nothing occurred. Nor did Hame Bozzam make a hostile move—open or covert.

Gawne felt that Bozzam would trouble him no further. Bozzam would hate him, that was certain. Bozzam wasn’t the kind to forgive, but there had been terror in Bozzam’s soul on the night that Gawne had threatened him—terror cringing, abject, complete—and Bozzam would plan long before he would make another hostile move.

Yet Gawne gave Bozzam only casual thought; he was a stinging memory, a yesterday reminiscence, unimportant and negligible compared to the absorbing, worthwhile realities of today. Gawne, the brooder, had been buried; the Gawne of today was a tingling-blooded eager optimist filled with a contemptuous knowledge of his past narrowness.

He knew the change in him was noticeable to others, and yet he did not care. He saw Aunt Emily watching him with shining eyes, and every time he caught her at it he grinned widely at her, an exultant challenge in his look. He saw Uncle Lafe’s deepening wrinkles, pleasure wrinkles; he felt the grins of the outfit; he chuckled at the subtle references that flowed in the verbal undercurrent around him; he marked Jane’s joy—and realized that he had been a fool.

Kathleen had taken charge of Jane. During the fortnight that had elapsed since the shooting at Sunshine Gap Kathleen had made daily visits to the Diamond Bar. She flatly refused Gawne’s invitations to ride, devoting herself to Jane. Gawne could not be at the ranchhouse all the time—various matters occupied his attention, but he invented clever pretexts, yielding to a sense of guilt over them, feeling that Kathleen knew. He could see the knowledge in her eyes when he turned up, pretending preoccupation. And several times when he boldly invaded the sacred precincts of the sitting room—which had been converted into a study where Jane was let into mysteries that were quite beyond Gawne’s mannish knowledge—he was subjected to the quiet, calm and speculative scrutiny of Miss Harkless’ direct eyes. He would not have cared about that, but he was certain that the calm eyes held a glint of amusement, and the glint nettled him.

One morning, near the beginning of the third week following the incident in Sunshine Gap, Gawne deliberately settled himself in a chair on the porch to await the coming of Kathleen. He intercepted her as she was about to dismount at the edge of the porch.

“Look here,” he said, with firm directness, “let Jane off for a day and come riding with me. The child looks rather fagged out. You’re keeping her at it too steadily.”

Her eyes were comprehensive and mocking.

“Bosh!” she said. “Do you think I am forcing the child? She begs me—positively clamors for me to come. I shouldn’t, otherwise.” She noted the effect of her words, and perhaps felt a little remorseful. “The child needs the companionship of some one of her sex besides Aunt Emily, Mr. Gawne. There are many things—little things, feminine, delicate, dainty, refined, mannerisms essentially womanish and dear to the hearts of girls, that you, undeniably, cannot, could not, teach her. You don’t expect to keep her in this wilderness always?”

“A day won’t set her back much,” he persisted.

She looked at him with a quiet smile. “I think I can beg off, once,” she said, and went in to Jane.

Two hours later, after a leisurely journey through the mountains, they were standing on the crest of the gray rock ridge across the river from the Sunshine Range, looking at the ever-changing, flaming colors of the desert.

The great waste places of the world are enigmas, the desert is the spirit of the enigma; it is immutable, like the primitive impulses that strain at the hearts of men. The desert is a ruthless exposer. It strips the veneer of civilization from those who look upon it, laying naked the basic fiber of character, which is the mystic bond that welds man to nature. Revert to type! says the desert, to all who look upon it; and the soul stands awed and appalled, for the desert makes civilization seem artificial and futile.

Gawne laughed vibrantly, watching the girl’s face—eager, worshipful, solemn.

“It isn’t my first desert,” she said, turning. “And yet it makes me feel as I did when seeing one for the first time. Isn’t it wonderful? It makes one feel so—small and insignificant?”

“It strips off the heaviest load that man bears,” he laughed—“his egotism. We seem wonderfully far from pretense and affectation. And the desert makes pose seem ridiculous. I wouldn’t think of pretending—now.”

“I don’t think you ever succeeded at pretending!” she declared. “You feel too strongly for that.”

He scowled and she laughed lightly.

“Well,” she said; “I can’t equivocate. You cannot conceal your emotions. Few men can.”

“Can you?” He looked at her challengingly, for he was thinking of the flash of jealousy she had exhibited the day he had told her he knew a good woman—and she had thought he was referring to another.