Bruce of the Circle A Part 33

A fortnight ago, when he rode to the Circle A ranch to share with Bayard the secret that hara.s.sed him his countenance had been merely sober, troubled; but now it gave evidence of a severe strain that had endured long enough to wear down his stolidity--the tension that would naturally come to a man who is normally kind and gentle and who, by those same qualities, is driven to hunt a fellow human as he would plot to take the life of a dangerous animal. Through those two weeks he had been waiting alone in the mining camp, working eight hours each day, doing his cooking and housework methodically, regularly, telling himself that he had settled down to the routine of industriously developing property that was rightfully his, when that occupation was only a ruse, a blind, when he was waiting there solely for the opportunity to kill! His watching had not been patient; it was outwardly deliberate, true, but inwardly it kept him in a continual state of ferment; witness the lines about his mouth, the pallor of his skin, the feverish, expectant look in his eyes.

On a spike in the timbering hung an alarm clock ... and a gun belt, weighted with revolver and ammunition. At regular, frequent intervals, the blows of his jack were checked and he sat crouched there, head forward and a trifle to one side, as though he were listening. When no sound save the singing of his candle wick reached his ears, he went on, regularly, evenly, purposeful. Possibly the tension that showed about his mouth became more noticeable after each of these brief periods when he strained to catch sounds.

With a final blow Benny left off the rhythmic swing, wiped his forehead with a wrist, poured water from a small tin bucket into the hole on which he was at work and picked up his jack to resume the swinging. He glanced at the clock.

"It's time," he said aloud, his voice reverberating hollowly in the place.

He put down his hammer quickly and rose from his squatting position as though he had neglected to perform some important duty. He took down the gun belt, slung it about his waist, and, making a reflector of his hollowed hand for the candle, started out along the tunnel, walking swiftly, intent on a definite end. When he reached the point where the darkness of the drift was dissipated by the white sunlight, he extinguished his feeble torch, jabbed the candlestick into the hanging-wall and reached for a pair of binoculars that, in their worn and battered case, hung from the timbering.

"This is 'n elegant day," he said aloud, as he walked out on to the dump, manipulating the focusing screw of the gla.s.s and looking cautiously around at the pine clad mountains which stretched away to right, left and behind him.

Evidently his mind was not on his words or on the idea; he was merely keeping up his game of pretense, while beneath the surface he was alert, expectant. Near the foot of the pile of waste rock was the log cabin with its red, iron roof and protruding stove pipe. Far below him and running outward like a great tinted carpet spread Manzanita Valley.

Close in to the base of the hills on which he stood a range of bald, flat-topped, miniature b.u.t.tes made, from his eminence, a low welt in its contour, but beyond that and except for an occasional island of knee-high oak brush it seemed to be without mar or blemish. Here and there patches of deeper color showed and the experienced eye knew that there the country swelled or was cut by washes, but, otherwise, it all seemed to be flat, unbroken.

On this immense stretch of country Benny trained the gla.s.s. His manner was intent, resolute. Each hour during daylight he had been making that observation for a fortnight; every time he had antic.i.p.ated reward, action. Aided by the lenses he picked out the low b.u.t.tes, saw a spot that he knew was a grazing horse, a distant shimmering blotch of mellow white canopied by a golden aura that meant sheep, turned his body from left to right in swift, sweeping inspection.

And stopped all movement with a jerk, while an inarticulate exclamation came from him.

For the first time his sight had encountered that for which he had been seeking. He was motionless an instant, then lowered the gla.s.s to his chest-level and stared hard with naked eyes. He wet his lips with his tongue and strained forward, used the gla.s.ses again, shifted his footing, looking about with a show of bright nervousness, and rubbed the lenses on his shirt briskly.

"He ain't even waitin' to take th' road," he said aloud. "He's in a powerful hurry!"

Once more the instrument picked out the moving dot under that vast dome of brilliant blue sky and, for a lengthy interval Benny held his aided gaze upon it, watching it disappear and come into sight again, ever holding toward him through wash and over swells, maintaining its steady crawling. He moved further out on the dump to obtain a better view and leaned against the rusty ore car on its track that he might be steadier; for sight of that purposeful life down yonder had started ever so slight tremors through his stalwart limbs.

He muttered to himself, and again looked alertly about, right and left and behind. His eye was brighter, harder. When he looked into the valley again, sweeping its expanse to find the horseman who had momentarily disappeared, he stood with gaze fixed in quite another direction and, when he had suppressed his breath an instant to make absolutely certain, he cried excitedly:

"In bunches! They're comin' in droves!"

He put down the binocular, took the six-gun from its holster, twirled the cylinder briskly and caressed the trigger with an eager finger. His mouth had become a tight, straight line and his brows were gathered slightly, as in perplexity. He breathed audibly as he watched those indications of human life on the valley. He knew then the greatest torment of suspense....

Ten minutes later, when the near dot had become easily discernible to the naked eye, when the figure of horse and rider was in sharp detail through the gla.s.s, the ominous quality about the man gave way to frank mystification. He flung one leg over the corner of the ore car, and his face ceased to reflect his great determination, became puzzled, half alarmed.

"That's Bruce's stallion, if I ever seen him!" he thought, "An' he's been run to th' last breath."

The horse went out of sight, entered the timber below Benny and the clicking of stones, the sounds of shod hoofs floundering over bare rocks gave evidence that he would be at the mine level in another five minutes. The man hitched his gun belt about, took one more anxious, puzzled look down into the valley where other figures moved, and walked down the trail toward the cabin slowly, watching through the pines for sight of the climbing animal.

A man came first, bent over that he might climb faster up the steep trail. He was leading a horse that was drenched from ear to ankle, lathered about neck and shoulder and flank, who breathed in short, low sobs, and stepped with the uneven awkwardness of utter fatigue. Benny stopped as he recognized Bayard and Abe and his right hand which had rested lightly on the gun b.u.t.t at his hip dropped to his thigh. He stood still, waiting for them to come nearer, wondering anxiously what this might mean, for he knew that the owner of the sorrel stallion would never have ridden him to that condition without cause.

Bayard looked up, saw the man waiting for him and halted between strides, the one foot far advanced before the other. His face was white and he stared hard at the miner, studying him closely, dreading to ask the question that was at his lips. But after that momentary pause he blurted out,

"Is everything all right, Benny?"

And Lynch, shaken by Bruce's appearance, the manner of his arrival, countered:

"What's wrong? What is it?"--walking swiftly down the trail toward the newcomer.

"Has anybody been here before me, to-day?"

"n.o.body, Bruce. What is it?"--anxiously, feeling somehow that they were both in danger.

"Thank G.o.d for that!" Bayard muttered, some of the intensity going from him, and turned to loose the cinch. "We weren't too late, Abe, we weren't." He dragged the saddle from the stallion's dripping back, flung it on the rocks behind him, pulled off the bridle and with hands that were not steady, stroked the lathered withers as the horse stood with head hung and let the breath sob and wheeze down his long throat while his limbs trembled under his weight. "We've come from town in th' most awful ride a horse ever made on this valley, Benny. Look at him! I had to ask him, I had to ask him to do this, to run his heart out for me; I had to do it!"

He stood looking at his horse and for the moment seemed to be wholly absorbed in contemplating the animal's condition; his voice had been uncertain as he pleaded the vague necessity for such a run.

"What is it, Bruce? Why was you in such a hurry?" Lynch asked, taking the cowman gently by the arm, turning him so that they confronted one another, an uneasy connection forming in his mind between his friend's dramatic arrival and his own purpose at the mine.

"Ned Lytton an' his wife are comin' here to-day, Benny,"--bluntly. "I had to get here before them to stop you ... doin' what you've come here an' waited to do."

The other's hand dropped from Bruce's arm; in Benny's face the look of fear, of doubt, gave way to a return of the strained, tense expression with its dogged determination. That was it! The woman, identified as such through his gla.s.s, was Lytton's wife! He felt the nerves tightening at the back of his neck.

"What do you mean by that ... to stop me?" he asked, spreading his feet, arms akimbo, a growing defiance about him.

"What I said, Benny. I've come to stop a killin' here to-day. I thank G.o.d I was in time!"

His old a.s.surance, his poise, which had been missing on his arrival, had returned and he stepped forward, reaching out a hand to rest on Benny's shoulder, gripping through the flannel shirt with his long, stout fingers.

"You told me your trouble with Lytton in confidence. I thought once this mornin' maybe I'd have to break that confidence. I thought when I started up this trail that I must be too late to do any good, but now I'm here I know you'll understand, old timer, I know you'll understand!"

He shook Lynch gently with his hand and smiled, but no responsive light came from the miner's eyes in return; hostility was there, along with the fever of waiting.

"No, I don't understand," he said, sharply. "I don't understand why you're throwin' in with that sc.u.m."

"Don't think that! It's not for him I'm doin' this. I wouldn't ask my Abe to run himself sick for _him_! It's for my own peace of mind an'

yours, Benny."

"My mind'll be at peace when I've squared my dad's account with Lytton an' not before!"--with a significant gesture toward his gun.

"But mine won't, an' neither will yours when you know that by comin' to me with your story you tied me hand an' foot! Hand an' foot, Benny, that's what! I've never been helpless before, but I am this time; if Lytton comes to any harm from you here to-day, his blood'll be on my hands. I know he's a snake, I know he knifed your daddy in th'

back,"--growing more intense, talking faster, "But he's wrong, Benny, wrong in th' head. A man can't get so lowdown as he is an' not be wrong.

"Oh, I know him. I know him better than you or anybody else does! I've been nursin' him for weeks. He's been at my ranch--"

"At your--"

"Yes, at my ranch. I took him there a month ago, Benny, to make a man of him for his wife, the sweetest woman that G.o.d ever made live to make us men better. I've been groomin' him up for her, workin' with him, hatin'

him, but doin' my best to make a man of him. Now, he's bringin' her here by force because of me, an' she sent back for me ... asked me to help her. She knows there's danger here. I didn't tell her why, but I told her that much, told her never to let him come back. Now he's forcin' her to come with him an' she sent for me.

"Don't you see? I can't let you shoot him down! Can't you see that, Benny?"

He shook him again and leaned forward, face close to face.

"No, I don't see that it makes any difference," Lynch said slowly, a hard calm covering his roused emotions.

Bayard drew back a step and a quick flush swept into his cheeks.

"But I sent him here, Benny; knowin' you were waitin'. It's my fault if he--"

"You sent him?"