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  Then Parmelee said: “Boys, I guess you all know the name of our new foreman. Last night, you were trying to find out. You tried hard. You tried all the time. But you didn’t make the hill. If you’d put on a little more pressure, maybe you would have found out his name, and maybe he would have given you some reasons for remembering it, too.”

  The men grinned faintly. They looked askance at Barney Dwyer, whose innocent blue eyes were fixed on the face of Parmelee, without malice, almost without understanding. Only Red, pale of face, looked straight down at his plate. He knew that he had seriously offended a famous man, a great warrior. And he felt that a day of reckoning must remain for him.

  Parmelee went on: “I think Barney has forgotten what happened last night . . . and part of this morning. I don’t think he bears any malice because of a few practical jokes. Do you, Barney?”

  Barney started as from a dream and blushed a little. He was surprised, it seemed, to find himself the center of attention. “No, no,” he said. “No malice. A few practical jokes . . . that’s all right. No malice to a soul.”

  Red, hearing this, snapped up his head and looked straight at Barney, and Barney Dwyer smiled a little and nodded back at him with recognition. Red shunned down a little in his chair with a vast sigh of relief. He would not have gambled on a six months’ future for himself ten minutes before. Now life was given to him; it was like a new birth.

  Parmelee went on: “I think you boys know the other news, too. The worst thugs on the entire range, old Adler and McGregor, who were cooped up in jail by Barney Dwyer, are loose again. They’re loose, and they’re sure to come on his trail. Well, boys, that trail has come to a full stop here. Barney Dwyer is here to stay with us, for a while. I think he’s broken the back of our cattle war on his first day. And if that’s true, he’s going to let me make this ranch what it ought to be. It will be a good place for you fellows to work, then. You’ll have a chance at more pay in dollars and less in bullets. But before any of us may have a chance at the good things that lie ahead, we’ve got to make Barney safe here with us. Adler and McGregor are probably near us now. They may be outside the black of those windows this minute, aiming guns at Dwyer.”

  There was a general start, a loud squeaking and scraping of chairs as heavy bodies moved suddenly in them.

  And then Parmelee said: “He’s doing his work for us. Our job will have to be to keep McGregor and his gangsters from sinking their bullets in him. Until we’ve managed to make sure that McGregor and Adler are under the sod or a long distance away from us, we’ve got to mount guard like soldiers. Are you ’punchers ready to do it?”

  They were ready enough. To guard a treasure would mean a fight, and a fight was what most of them were best equipped to enjoy. Besides, to stand with Barney Dwyer was in itself an honor. Not for nothing had the stories of his doings circulated through the mountains in recent days.

  It was Red who stood up from the table first. He said: “I made the most trouble for you last night, Barney. Wonder you didn’t take and bust me in two. And I’m gonna have the first watch on you. I’m gonna go out and walk the rounds of the house. Keep a scrap of meat and some coffee for me, boys. I’ll see that this here supper is quiet enough.”

  He went to the wall, picked his gun belt from a peg, buckled it around his hips, settled his hat over his ears, and went straightway out into the darkness.

  The others settled down. They felt not a depression but a strength of determination and resource, such as always comes to men who have just banded themselves together. A new friendliness filled them. They looked upon one another with different eyes. Each man appeared to his companions stronger, more valiant, more dependable than ever before.

  Leonard Peary glanced swiftly around the table and murmured at the ear of Barney Dwyer: “You don’t take long, Barney. One day, and you’ve made all of these fellows love you. How do you manage it?”

  Barney could not have answered. He was utterly confused and bewildered by the strong resolutions that all of these men were taking to ensure his safety. And staring about him, he wondered how even the strength of McGregor could break through such a force as this.

  He forgot, for the instant, that there is something greater than the prowess of numbers, and that is the weight of brains—and the strength of evil—which has an edge like a poisoned knife.

  At this moment, there came a loud hail from outside the house. It was the lifted voice of Red. Presently he threw open the door of the house and called out: “Here’s a fellow that calls himself Terry Loftus! Says that he’s got a message for you, Dwyer. Have a look at him.”

  It was a man with a face both fat and firm who stepped through the open door and frowned at the light for an instant. He was not tall. He had a big, round body and a small, round face. The fat under his skin seemed to have set and fixed in place. If he smiled, it was only a stretching of his lips and a dimple appearing in either cheek.

  He came slowly forward, saying: “Which of you is Dwyer?”

  “I am,” answered Barney. He stood up and went a step toward Terry Loftus.

  “I’m from Coffeeville, and I’ve got some bad news for you, Dwyer. I’ve got to tell you . . . I’ve got to tell you . . .” His bright, black eyes wandered for an instant. Then he fished out an envelope. “Well, you better read this, first,” he said. “Then I’ll tell you the rest.”

  Barney Dwyer opened the letter, which was not addressed, and inside he found a sheet of paper in which a few words were scribbled in the handwriting of Sue Jones. The writing was firm enough in the beginning, but it trailed away to illegibility toward the end. And there was no signature. He read:

  Dear Barney,

  Blood poisoning has started, they say. And I feel pretty sick. The doctor says it’s dangerous. A man is bringing you this letter because it seems that I ought to say good bye if it takes you too long to . . .

  What followed—half a dozen words—was in a scrawl that he could not make out at all. The paper fluttered from his hand to the floor.

  Leonard Peary picked it up and stared. Then he groaned.

  Barney was saying: “How was she when you left her?”

  “Kind of delirious,” said Terry Loftus. “She was laying and talking so’s you could hear her in the street. Doctor Swain, he says that he’s afraid. He’s mighty scared. He wants you back there, Dwyer. They asked me to bring you word, because I got a fast horse, and I know the way.”

  “I’m going,” said Barney. “I’ll go back as fast as the red mare can take me . . .”

  He ran for the door and disappeared into the night. Terry Loftus followed him, and so did Leonard Peary.

  There were no farewells.

  But presently, as the men stood about in the dining room, muttering to one another, Red spoke up.

  “Any of you ever see that fellow Terry Loftus before?”

  A rattling of hoofbeats began near the barn and faded down the pass.

  “Did you ever see him before, Red?” asked Parmelee.

  “I’m trying to think,” said Red. “Seems like I can remember his face, all right, but I can’t spot where I seen it. And I can’t spot his name.”

  Phil broke in: “Did the sight of him make you feel good or bad? “

  “Mighty bad,” said Red.

  “Then he’s tucked away for a bad hombre somewhere inside of your head,” said Phil.

  “Take it easy,” suggested Parmelee. “Easy does the trick. You can’t force your head to work when it don’t feel like working.”

  Red began to stride up and down the room, his head bent and his brow contorted. “Somebody give me a start,” he begged. “I got something so near the tip of my tongue that the roof of my mouth’s on fire.”

  “Sing something, Buck,” said Parmelee. “That’ll give him a change. Strike up a tune, will you?”

  “She was only a bird in a gilded cage. A pitiful sight to see . . .” began Buck, throwing back his head and letting out a great roar of a voice.

  “W
ait a minute!” shouted Red. He caught hold of the back of a chair and stared straight before him, entranced by thought. “There was something gilded about it . . . the way I remember him, all right. Now I’ve got it . . . a big, gilded mirror behind a bar . . . and a hard-boiled shack up from the railroad and having some beer . . . and me in a corner and a few more strung along the bar, and then this here fat-faced fellow steps into the picture. He and the railroad operator have a brawl. The fat boy pulls a gun quicker’n a wink and lets the shack have it. The shack meant a fist fight, but the fat boy, he meant murder, and that’s what he done. Right through the center of the forehead, he drilled that shack and dropped him dead. And the fat boy backed out through the swinging doors. Nobody moved. ‘Why don’t we go after that killer?’ I asked. ‘What for?’ says the bartender. Wait a minute. I’m remembering the names he used. ‘What for,’ says the bartender, ‘that’s Dick Whalen, and he’s one of McGregor’s men. Want to have McGregor on your back?’”

  As Red ended, Parmelee exclaimed: “Boys, if this fellow is packing a wrong name . . . if he worked for McGregor once . . . then he’s here to make trouble! He’s got Barney Dwyer away from us. I say, we all follow on and try to find out if anything happens on this trail tonight. Will you ride with me?”

  There was only one voice, and it sounded like the woof of a bear, but it came from the throat of every man present, and instantly they made a rush for the door of the dining room.

  X

  Barney was galloping far off through the night, by this time, with Leonard Peary on his left and the so-called Terry Loftus on his right. When he looked up, the long gallop of the mare made the stars seem to waver in the sky, and out of the night before him, the shapes of hills loomed faintly and were gone, and trees stood up in strange attitudes and vanished to the rear. Sometimes Loftus spoke to him. Sometimes Peary. He answered them in words that had no meaning to him. For all that was really in his mind was the girl. He saw that if all of the world was gathered together, all the mountains, the deserts, the rich valleys, all the cities, the farms, the ships, the mighty factories, the mines, the lofty buildings, and all the myriads of people in them, all that was of beauty or strength—if all of these things were gathered together on the one hand and weighed in divine scales against Sue, for him she would outbalance all the rest. Yes, or even the least attribute or quality of her would be to him more important. That huskiness of her voice that came from laughter or her smile when she looked at him askance or a way she had of lifting her head and considering brightly and calmly their future—any of these things would be, to Barney Dwyer, more than the rest of the great universe.

  He had suffered much pain, but he never had suffered such pain as this. He had been in terrible danger and tried to pray, but no prayer had come to his mute lips. But now he prayed. For her sake, the words swelled his throat like silent sobbing, as he begged the God who rules us to have mercy on Sue Jones. He begged for her life. Then it seemed to him that so much as this could not be granted. He felt that every instant her life was ebbing away. So he only entreated, in that silent agony, that she might endure until he came to the house and that she might know him, give him some message before the end. That message would be for Barney Dwyer the only important reason for a continued existence in this world.

  Those were his thoughts when they came to a place where the valley pinched out to a narrow ravine in which rocks and shrubs crowded the trail on either side.

  Suddenly the red mare halted. The violence of her stopping almost threw Barney from the saddle. He urged her forward, as the others drew rein ahead of him to see what was happening. But in spite of his urging, she would not go on. She merely reared and balked, and backed up instead of advancing.

  “What’s wrong?” Terry Loftus asked smoothly.

  “I don’t know,” said Barney. “She doesn’t want to go ahead.”

  “She smells trouble, then,” suggested Peary. “She never acts like a fool, ordinarily. There must be something ahead, Barney. You’ve told me more than once that she has her reasons.”

  “What could be ahead?” asked Barney. “She must go on. Go ahead, girl. Get on!”

  He slapped her shoulder. The mare merely wheeled in a circle and stood fast, head down, balking resolutely.

  “Can’t you get your horse on?” Terry Loftus demanded, with heat. “Down there in Coffeeville, there’s Sue Jones with the life burnin’ out of her and . . .”

  Barney groaned. He called out loudly, and suddenly the mare bolted ahead, snorting, shying at the shadows. She swept by Loftus and Peary and was going hard when something hissed in the air above Barney’s head, and then he felt the grip of a rope noose that bound his arms against his sides and wrenched him out of the saddle.

  He landed with a crash in the midst of a bush. Behind him, he heard the yell of Peary and the barking of a gun. But as he stood up, he saw that Peary’s horse, too, had an empty saddle.

  Men rushed in on either side. They spun the lariat around him, until he was fast imprisoned. And he heard the voice of Doc Adler saying: “Good work, Terry Loftus. Brains. That’s what you got. Brains!”

  Then McGregor came and stood by him. He knew it was McGregor by the familiar outline of the shoulders and the head canted a trifle to the side. And he felt that he would know it for McGregor even by the breathing of the man. McGregor said nothing, simply devouring his prisoner in silent glance.

  Then, as he turned away, other men threw Barney like a sack of bran over the saddle on the back of the mare, and they were led off.

  Barney had uttered no complaint. When he considered the profound depth of the hatred of McGregor, such a thing as speech between them became a folly. It was Peary who cried out in lamentation and who cursed Terry Loftus.

  Loftus rode up beside the horse that was carrying Peary, and Barney saw the hand of Loftus fly up, heard the whacking and cutting noise of a lash as it landed.

  “You damn traitor,” said Loftus. “What you talkin’ to me about, anyway? I’m true to my kind, and you’re a dirty turncoat!”

  They left the trail well behind them, turned through a wilderness of rocks and trees, and so came close to the sound of running water.

  They entered a little cove, a pleasant, green place with a smooth floor and a hedging of bushes and trees about it, and the rushing of water at its side, with a little lean-to built near the edge of the creek. The noise of the water was like the noise of the wind by the sea.

  Into the lean-to they took Barney and Peary and flung them down on the floor. A lantern was found and lit. The illumination showed a tumble-down wreck of a place, and yet there was a lantern and oil in the shed. Barney was able to wonder at that.

  His mind began to detach from his body. He felt as he had when he was a child, enduring cold on an endless ride by night or listening to the talk of grown men while sleep benumbed his brain. He could forget fear, almost, and watch the faces of the brutal men around him and see their grinning eyes.

  McGregor had Adler and five other men with him. They were like wolves, and as wolves do, so they hunted in packs.

  McGregor said: “You fellows scatter. I want to be alone here with Adler and these two old friends of mine. Get out of here and put yourselves where you can be on the watch.”

  “What we gonna watch for?” asked Terry Loftus.

  “Watch for trouble,” snapped McGregor. “Wherever this half-wit of a Dwyer goes, he makes friends. You never can tell what may happen.”

  The men left the place to Adler, McGregor, and those two helpless prisoners.

  McGregor took the lantern and shone its light into the face of Barney.

  “Turn pale, damn you,” he said.

  Barney looked straight at the light, not at the man who held it. He studied the crookedness of the wick, and the crooked flame that rose from it. He saw the rusted metal of the hail of the lantern and the jagged crack down one side of the chimney. He was not thinking. He was simply seeing.

  “Look at him,” said McGre
gor.

  Old Doc Adler came, like a humpbacked buzzard, and sat on his heels and stared into Barney’s face.

  “His eyes, they ain’t changed none,” said Adler.

  “I’ll change ’em before I’m through,” said McGregor.

  “You take pale-blue eyes like them,” said Adler, “and sometimes they don’t change none. Not even when they die. They’re like steel in the color of them, and they’re strong as steel, too. Maybe they won’t change none.”

  “Damn you!” breathed McGregor, and kicked Barney in the face.

  The toe of the boot landed fairly on the jaw of Barney. It struck red sparks from his brain. That was all. He was not surprised or appalled. This was nothing compared with his expectations. They would tear him to pieces, the pair of them. They would shred him small.

  It was Peary who cried out, when he saw that brutal indignity offered to his friend. “Stop it!” shouted Peary. “You rotten pair of coyotes!”

  McGregor poised a quirt, but delayed the blow. “I don’t know,” he said. “We don’t want to waste much time on this one.”

  Adler went to Peary and sat on his heels again, until his face was level with that of Peary, who was propped against the wall.

  “Well,” said Adler, “suit yourself. This here is a different sort of a gent. This here is the sort of a pair of eyes that would open up, when he started to screaming. That’s what they’d do. They’d open up.” He began to chuckle, nodding that old head of his until the hair flashed to silver in the lantern light.

  “Would he scream?” McGregor asked carelessly.

  “Yeah. He’d break down. He ain’t got the nerve that lasted. This here Dwyer, he’s got the nerve of a bulldog. The more you beat him, the harder he’d hang on. But Peary, he’s just a flash. He’s a wildcat. He’s good for one spring, and then he’s through.”

  “Is he?” asked McGregor, carelessly still. “Well, I don’t want to waste time on him. He’s not the one who’s been on my mind. He’s a dirty traitor. That’s all. And he’s going to get what comes to traitors. He’s not on my mind. Dwyer is the one we’ve been thinking about. Eh, Doc?”