Justin Wingate, Ranchman. Whitson John Harvey
very well,” he urged, “for I saw our horses in his millet, myself.”
“Well, he didn’t; he was in town that day. He would have believed you, if you had said they were his horses. You might have backed me up, instead of flinching; I’d have done as much for you.”
“You’ve got a handsome dog there!” said Justin.
“Oh, that setter’s going to be fine when I get him broke,” Ben asserted, with enthusiasm. “I only wish we had some Eastern quails here. Harkness put you on this line today, did he? I wanted to train my setter; so I told him I wasn’t well, and slipped out of it.”
As the dog was now far ahead, Ben hastened to overtake him, and Justin rode on, thinking of Ben, of Lucy, and of William Sanders. Ben’s easy disregard of certain things he had been taught to consider essentials troubled him. He wanted to think well of Ben.
When Justin learned the outcome of the controversy between Davison and Sanders he was somewhat astonished. Sanders’ truculence had made him think the man would persist in his demands; but Sanders had agreed to fence his own land, if Davison would but give him a right of way to it.
Within a week Justin understood why. Sanders, visiting the ranch-house to see Davison, had also seen Lucy. He became a familiar visitor, where his presence was not desired. If Lucy rode out, William Sanders invariably chanced to be in the trail going in the same direction. If she remained at home he came to the house to get Davison’s advice as to the best manner of constructing a fence, and Lucy’s advice concerning the proper furnishing of a dug-out for a single man who expected to live alone and do his own cooking.
Lucy came to Justin with the burden of her woes.
“He follows me round all the time, just as if he were my dog!”
“You ought to feel flattered,” said Justin, though he was himself highly indignant. “I don’t suppose you want me to say anything to him about it?”
“Oh, no—no!” she gasped, terrified by the threat concealed behind the words.
“I’ve noticed he hasn’t come near me since our meeting down by the line fence. He told me then that he wanted to have a talk about old times, but he hasn’t seemed in any hurry to begin it.”
As Justin rode away in an angry mood Lucy Davison looked at his receding figure with some degree of uneasiness. Justin had on a few occasions showed a decidedly inflammable temper. Ordinarily mild in word and manner, borrowing much of that mildness doubtless from Clayton, when he gave way to a sudden spasm of rage it was likely to carry him beyond the bounds of reason.
The provocation came in a most unexpected, and at the time inexplicable, way. Justin, riding along the trail by the stream, saw Lucy come out from the shadows of the young cottonwoods near Sloan Jasper’s and walk in his direction, as if to join him. The sight of her there filled his sky with brightness and the music of singing birds. He pricked up his broncho and turned it from the trail.
As he did so he beheld William Sanders appear round the end of the cottonwood grove, mounted on one of his big, raw-boned horses. Riding up to Lucy, Sanders slipped from his saddle and walked along by her side. Justin’s anger burned. It was apparent to him, great as was the separating distance, that Sanders’ presence and words were distasteful to her. She stopped and seemed about to turn back to the grove. Justin saw Sanders put out his hand as if to detain her. As he did so she stooped; then she screamed, and fell forward, apparently to avoid him.
Justin drove his broncho from a trot into a wild gallop. His anger increased to smoking rage. It passed to ungovernable fury, when he beheld Sanders catch the screaming girl in his arms, lift her to the back of his horse, and scramble up behind her in the saddle. Justin yelled at him.
“Stop—stop, you villain!”
In utter disregard of him and his shouted command Sanders plunged his spurs into the flanks of his big horse, and began to ride away from the cottonwoods at top speed. Lucy lay limp in his arms.
“I’ll have his life!” Justin cried, longing now for one of the cowboy revolvers he had made it a practice, on the advice of Clayton, never to carry; and he drove the broncho into furious pursuit of the big horse that was bearing Lucy and Sanders away.
The light, clean-limbed broncho, unimpeded by a cumbersome double weight, began to gain in the mad race. Justin ploughed its sides mercilessly with the spurs, struck it with his hands, and yelled at it, to increase its speed.
“Go, go!” he cried; “we must catch that scoundrel quick!”
His line of action when that was accomplished was not formulated, further than that he knew he would hurl himself on Sanders, tear him from the saddle, and punish him as it seemed he deserved.
Steadily the separating distance was decreased. Sanders still sent the big horse on, almost without a backward glance. He held Lucy tightly in his arms. Apparently she had fainted, for Justin could not observe that she struggled to release herself.
Again Justin bellowed a command to Sanders to halt. He was close upon the big horse now. Sanders turned in his saddle heavily, for the weight of the girl impeded his movements. Justin fancied he could see the man’s little eyes glitter, as they did that day when he delivered his ultimatum to Davison.
“You go to hell!” he bellowed back.
The momentary slacking of his rein caused his horse to stumble, and it fell to the ground.
Justin galloped up in an insanity of blazing wrath. Lucy, hurled from the back of the horse with Sanders, sprang up with a cry, and ran toward Justin. Sanders, having picked himself up uninjured, stared at her. His flushed face whitened and his little eyes showed a singular and ominous gleam.
“Take her,” he said, hoarsely; “damn you, take her—I was doin’ the best I could!”
Lucy’s face was white—piteously white; her dry hot eyes gushed with tears, and a sob choked in her throat.
“Justin—Justin, it was not—his fault—nothing he did; it was the snake; see, it bit me, here!” She thrust forward her hand. “Near the wrist, there; and—and it is swelling fast, fast! We—we must—get to Doctor Clayton’s quick—quick!”
Justin staggered under the revulsion of feeling. He caught the shaking and terrified girl in his arms.
“Help me—get her into the saddle, Sanders,” he begged, stammering the words. “And—and I ask your pardon! Later I will tell you what I—but now I need you to—”
Sanders sprang to his assistance.
“Better take my horse; he’s bigger!”
“The broncho is faster,” said Justin. “That’s right. Now—that’s right!”
He climbed shakily into the saddle. He felt his very brain reeling. Then the broncho leaped forward. Sanders struck it a smart blow to hurry it on; and stood looking at them, as they galloped wildly on toward Clayton’s, which had been his own destination.
“Damn him!” he cried hoarsely. His little eyes glittered and his lips foamed. “I was doin’ the best I could, and I would have made it all right.” He clenched his fists. “I would 'a’ been his friend—and helped him; but now—”
The sentence, the threat, died, gurgling, in his throat.
As for Justin, he had no thought now but to reach Doctor Clayton’s in the quickest time possible. He did not spare the broncho. Yet, even in these minutes of whirling excitement, when anxiety, fright, love, chagrin, and regret, fought within him for the mastery, he did not forget some of the things learned of Clayton. He took out his handkerchief, rolled it into a cord with hands and teeth, and with hands and teeth knotted it round the bitten arm just above the two small punctures made by the teeth of the rattlesnake.
The arm was already swollen, and he thought it was becoming discolored. At times burning tears gushed from his eyes in a way to blind him and keep him from seeing anything clearly. Lucy lay in his arms as if dead. For aught he knew she might even then be dying. The poison of the rattlesnake had been injected near the great artery of the