Alcatraz Part 19

"You're in love with Red Perris!"

And she answered him fiercely: "Yes, yes, yes! In love with Red Perris! Go tell every one of your men. Shame me as far as you wish!

But--Mr. Hervey, you won't dare lead a gang against him now!"

He drew back from her, thrust away by her half-hysteria of emotion.

"Won't I?" growled Hervey, regarding her from beneath sternly gathered brows. "I seen something of this to-night. I guessed it all. Won't I lay a hand on a sneaking hound that comes grinning and talking soft and saying things he don't half mean? Why, it's a better reason for throwing him off the ranch than I ever had before, seems to me!"

"You don't mean that!" she breathed. "Say you don't mean that!"

"Your Dad ain't here. If he was, he'd say the same as me. I got to act in his place. You think you like Perris. Why, you'd be throwing yourself away. You'd break Oliver Jordan's heart. That's what you'd do!"

Her brain was whirling. She grasped at the first thought that came to her.

"Then wait till he comes back before you touch Jim Perris."

"And let Perris raise the devil in the meantime?"

He laughed in her face.

"At least," she cried, her voice shrill with anger and fear, "let me know where he is. Let me send for him myself."

"Dunno that I'm exactly sure about where he is myself," fenced Lew Hervey.

"Ah," moaned the girl, half-breaking down under the strain. "Why do you hate me so? What have I done to you?"

"Nothing," said Hervey grimly. "Made me the laughing stock of the mountains--that's all. Made me a joke--that's all you've done to me.

'Lew Hervey and his boss--the girl.' That's what they been saying about me. But I ain't been taking that to heart. What I'm doing now is for your own good, only you don't know it! You'll see it later on."

"Mr. Hervey," she pleaded, "if it will change you, I'll give you my oath to stop bothering with the management of the ranch. You can run it your own way. I'll leave if you say the word, but----"

"I know," said Hervey. "I know what you'd say. But Lord above, Miss Jordan, I ain't doing this for my own sake. I'm doing it for yours and your father's. He'll thank me if you don't! Far as Perris goes, I'd----"

He halted. She had sunk into a chair--collapsed into it, rather, and lay there half fainting with one arm thrown across her face. Hervey glowered down on her a moment and then turned on his heel and left the house.

He went straight to the bunkhouse, gathered the men about him, and told them the news.

"Boys," he said, "the cat's out of the bag. I've found out everything, and it's what I been fearing. She started begging me to keep off Red Jim's trail. Wouldn't hear no reason. I told her there wasn't nothing for me to gain by throwing him off the ranch. Except that he'd been ordered off and he had to go. It'd make a joke of me and all of you boys if the word got around that one gent had laughed at us and stayed right in the Valley when we told him to get out."

A fierce volley of curses bore him out.

"Well," said Hervey, "then she come right out and told me the truth: she's in love with Perris. She told me so herself!"

They gaped at him. They were young enough, most of them, and lonely and romantic enough, to have looked on Marianne with a sort of sad longing which their sense of humor kept from being anything more aspiring. But to think that she had given her heart so suddenly and so freely to this stranger was a shock. Hervey reaped the harvest of their alarmed glances with a vast inward content. Every look he met was an incipient gun levelled at the head of Red Jim.

"Didn't make no bones about it," he said, "she plumb begged for him.

Well, boys, she ain't going to get him. I think too much of old man Jordan to let his girl run off with a man-killing vagabond like this Perris. He's good looking and he talks dead easy. That's what's turned the trick. I guess the rest of you would back me up?"

The answer was a growl.

"I'll go bust his neck," said Little Joe furiously. "One of them heart-breakers, I figure."

"First thing," said the foreman, "is to see that she don't get to him.

If she does, she'll sure run off with him. But she's easy kept from that. Joe, you and Shorty watch the hoss corrals to-night, will you?

And don't let her get through to a hoss by talking soft to you."

They vowed that they would be adamant. They vowed it with many oaths.

In fact, the rage of the cowpunchers was steadily growing. Red Perris was more than a mere insolent interloper who had dared to scoff at the banded powers of the Valley of the Eagles. He was far worse. He was the most despicable sort of sneak and thief for he was trying to steal the heart and ruin the life of a girl. They had looked upon the approaching conflict with Perris as a bitter pill that must be swallowed for the sake of the Valley of the Eagles outfit. They looked upon it, from this moment, as a religious duty from which no one with the name of a man dared to shrink. Little Joe and Shorty at once started for the corral. The others gathered around the foreman for further details, but he waved them away and retired to his own bunk.

For he never used the little room at the end of the building which was set aside for the foreman. He lived and slept and ate among his cowpunchers and that was one reason for his hold over them.

At his bunk, he produced writing materials scribbled hastily.

"Dear Jordan,

"h.e.l.l has busted loose.

"I played Perris with a long rope. I gave him a week because Miss Jordan asked me to. But at the end of the week he still wasn't ready to go. Seems that he's crazy to get Alcatraz. Talks about the horse like a drunk talking about booze. Plumb disgusting. But when I told him to go to-night, he up and said they wasn't enough men in the Valley to throw him off the ranch. I would of taken a fall out of him for that, but Miss Jordan stepped in and kept me away from him.

"Afterwards I had a talk with her. She begged me not to go after Perris because he would fight and that meant a killing. I told her I had to do what I'd said I'd do. Then she busted out and told me that she loved Perris. Seemed to think that would keep me from going after Perris. She might of knowed that it was the very thing that would make me hit the trail. I'm not going to stand by and see a skunk like Perris run away with your girl while you ain't on the ranch.

"I've just given orders to a couple of the boys to see that she don't get a horse to go out to Perris. Tomorrow or the next day I'll settle his hash.

"This letter may make you think that you'd better come back to the ranch. But take my advice and stay off. I can handle this thing better while you're away. If you're here you'll have to listen to a lot of begging and crying. Come back in a week and everything will be cleared up.

"Take it easy and don't worry none. I'm doing my best for you and your daughter, even if she don't know it.

"Sincerely,

"LEW HERVEY."

This letter, when completed, he surveyed with considerable complacence. If ever a man were being bound to another by chains of inseparable grat.i.tude, Oliver Jordan was he! Indeed, the whole affair was working out so smoothly, so perfectly, that Hervey felt the thrill of an artist sketching a large and harmonious composition. In the first place, Red Jim Perris, whom he hated with unutterable fervor because the younger man filled him with dread, would be turned, as Hervey expressed it, "into buzzard food." And Hervey would be praised for the act! Oliver Jordan, owing the preservation of his daughter from a luckless marriage to the vigilance of his foreman, could never regret the life-contract which he had drawn up. No doubt that contract, as it stood, could never hold water in the law. But Jordan's grat.i.tude would make it proof. Last of all, and best of all, when Perris was disposed of, Marianne would never be able to remain on the ranch. She would go to forget her sorrow among her school friends in the East. And Hervey, undisputed lord and master of the ranch, could bleed it white in half a dozen years and leave it a mere husk, overladen with mortgages.

No wonder a song was in the heart of the foreman as he sealed the letter. He gave the message to Slim, and added directions.

"You'll be missing from the party," he said, as he handed over the letter, "but the party we have with Perris is apt to be pretty much like a party with a wild-cat. You can thank your stars you'll be on the road when it comes off!"

And Slim had sense enough to nod in agreement.

CHAPTER XX

THE TRAP SHUTS

In one matter Lew Hervey had acted none too quickly. Shorty and Little Joe arrived at the corral in time to find Marianne in the very act of leading out her pony. They told her firmly and gently that the horse must go back, and when she defied them, they astonished her by simply removing her hand from the lead-rope and taking the horse away. In vain she stormed and threatened. In vain, at length, she broke into tears. Either of them would have given an arm to serve her. But in fact they considered they were at that moment rendering the greatest service possible. They were saving her from herself.

She fled back to the house again, finally, and threw herself face down on her bed in an agony of dread, and helplessness, and shame. Shame because from Little Joe's brief remarks, she gathered that Hervey had already spread the news of her confession. But shame and fear were suddenly forgotten. She found herself sitting wide-eyed on the edge of the bed repeating over and over in a shaking voice "I have to get there! I have to get there!"

But how utterly Hervey had tied her hands! She could not budge to warn Perris or to join him!