'Firebrand' Trevison Part 15

Judge Lindman came out into the street, urged by curiosity. He had stepped down from the doorway of the courthouse and had instantly been carried with the crowd to a point directly in front of Corrigan and Trevison, where he stood, bare-headed, pale, watching silently. Corrigan saw him, and smiled faintly at him. The easterner's eye sought out several faces in the crowd near him, and when he finally caught the gaze of a certain individual who had been eyeing him inquiringly for some moments, he slowly closed an eye and moved his head slightly toward the rear of the building.

Instantly the man whistled shrilly with his fingers, as though to summon someone far down the street, and slipping around the edge of the crowd made his way around to the rear of the bank building, where he was joined presently by other men, roughly garbed, who carried pistols. One of them climbed in through a window, opened the door, and the others--numbering now twenty-five or thirty, dove into the room.

Out in front a silence had fallen. Trevison had lifted a hand and the crowd strained its ears to hear.

"I've caught a crook!" declared Trevison, the frenzy of fight still surging through his veins. "He's not a cheap crook--I give him credit for that. All he wants to do is to steal the whole county. He'll do it, too, if we don't head him off. I'll tell you more about him in a minute.

There's another of his stripe." He pointed to Braman, who cringed. "I threw him out through the window, where the sunlight could shine on him.

He tried to shoot me in the back--the big crook here, framed up on me. I want you all to know what you're up against. They're after all the land in this section; they've clouded every t.i.tle. It's a raw, dirty deal. I see now, why they haven't sold a foot of the land they own here; why they've shoved the cost of leases up until it's ruination to pay them. They're land thieves, commercial pirates. They're going to euchre everybody out of--"

Trevison caught a gasp from the crowd--concerted, sudden. He saw the ma.s.s sway in unison, stiffen, stand rigid; and he turned his head quickly, to see the door behind him, and the broken window through which he had thrown Braman--the break running the entire width of the building--filled with men armed with rifles.

He divined the situation, sensed his danger--the danger that faced the crowd should one of its members make a hostile movement.

"Steady there, boys!" he shouted. "Don't start anything. These men are here through prearrangement--it's another frame-up. Keep your guns out of sight!" He turned, to see Corrigan grinning contemptuously at him. He met the look with naked exultation and triumph.

"Got your body-guard within call, eh?" he jeered. "You need one. You've cut me short, all right; but I've said enough to start a fire that will rage through this part of the country until every d.a.m.ned thief is burned out! You've selected the wrong man for a victim, Corrigan."

He stepped down into the street, sheathing his pistol. He heard Corrigan's voice, calling after him, saying:

"Grand-stand play again!"

Trevison turned; the gaze of the two men met, held, their hatred glowing bitter in their eyes; the gaze broke, like two sharp blades rasping apart, and Corrigan turned to his deputies, scowling; while Trevison pushed his way through the crowd.

Five minutes later, while Corrigan was talking with the deputies and Braman in the rear room of the bank building, Trevison was standing in the courthouse talking with Judge Lindman. The Judge stared out into the street at some members of the crowd that still lingered.

"This town will be a volcano of lawlessness if it doesn't get a square deal from you, Lindman," said Trevison. "You have seen what a mob looks like. You're the representative of justice here, and if we don't get justice we'll come and hang you in spite of a thousand deputies! Remember that!"

He stalked out, leaving behind him a white-faced, trembling old man who was facing a crisis which made the future look very black and dismal. He was wondering if, after all, hanging wouldn't be better than the sunlight shining on a deed which each day he regretted more than on the preceding day. And Trevison, riding n.i.g.g.e.r out of town, was estimating the probable effect of his crowd-drawing action upon Judge Lindman, and considering bitterly the perfidy of the woman who had cleverly drawn him on, to betray him.

CHAPTER XIII

ANOTHER LETTER

That afternoon, Corrigan rode to the Bar B. The ranchhouse was of the better cla.s.s, big, imposing, well-kept, with a wide, roofed porch running across the front and partly around both sides. It stood in a grove of fir-balsam and cottonwood, on a slight eminence, and could be seen for miles from the undulating trail that led to Manti. Corrigan arrived shortly after noon, to find Rosalind gone, for a ride, Agatha told him, after she had greeted him at the edge of the porch.

Agatha had not been pleased over Rosalind's rides with Trevison as a companion. She was loyal to her brother, and she did not admire the bold recklessness that shone so frankly and unmistakably in Trevison's eyes.

Had she been Rosalind she would have preferred the big, sleek, well-groomed man of affairs who had called today. And because of her preference for Corrigan, she sat long on the porch with him and told him many things--things that darkened the big man's face. And when, as they were talking, Rosalind came, Agatha discreetly retired, leaving the two alone.

For a time after the coming of Rosalind, Corrigan sat in a big rocking chair, looking thoughtfully down the Manti trail, listening to the girl talk of the country, picturing her on a distant day--not too distant, either, for he meant to press his suit--sitting beside him on the porch of another house that he meant to build when he had achieved his goal. These thoughts thrilled him as they had never thrilled him until the entrance of Trevison into his scheme of things. He had been sure of her then. And now the knowledge that he had a rival, filled him with a thousand emotions, the most disturbing of which was jealousy. The rage in him was deep and malignant as he coupled the mental pictures of his imagination with the material record of Rosalind's movements with his rival, as related by Agatha. It was not his way to procrastinate; he meant to exert every force at his command, quickly, resistlessly, to destroy Trevison, to blacken him and d.a.m.n him, in the eyes of the girl who sat beside him. But he knew that in the girl's presence he must be wise and subtle.

"It's a great country, isn't it?" he said, his eyes on the broad reaches of plain, green-brown in the shimmering sunlight. "Look at it--almost as big as some of the Old-world states! It's a wonderful country. I feel like a feudal baron, with the destinies of an important princ.i.p.ality in the clutch of my hand!"

"Yes; it must give one a feeling of great responsibility to know that one has an important part in the development of a section like this."

He laughed, deep in his throat, at the awe in her voice. "I ought to have seen its possibilities years ago--I should have been out here, preparing for this. But when I bought the land I had no idea it would one day be so valuable."

"Bought it?"

"A hundred thousand acres of it. I got it very cheap." He told her about the Midland grant and his purchase from Marchmont.

"I never heard of that before!" she told him.

"It wasn't generally known. In fact, it was apparently generally considered that the land had been sold by the Midland Company to various people--in small parcels. Unscrupulous agents engineered the sales, I suppose. But the fact is that I made the purchase from the Midland Company years ago--largely as a personal favor to Jim Marchmont, who needed money badly. And a great many of the ranch-owners around here really have no t.i.tle to their land, and will have to give it up."

She breathed deeply. "That will be a great disappointment to them, now that there exists the probability of a great advance in the value of the land."

"That was the owners' lookout. A purchaser should see that his deed is clear before closing a deal."

"What owners will be affected?" She spoke with a slight breathlessness.

"Many." He named some of them, leaving Trevison to the last, and then watching her furtively out of the corners of his eyes and noting, with straightened lips, the quick gasp she gave. She said nothing; she was thinking of the great light that had been in Trevison's eyes on the day he had told her of his ten years of exile; she could remember his words, they had been vivid fixtures in her mind ever since: "I own five thousand acres, and about a thousand acres of it is the best coal land in the United States. I wouldn't sell it for love or money, for when your father gets his railroad running, I'm going to cash in on ten of the leanest and hardest and lonesomest years that any man ever put in."

How hard it would be for him to give it all up; to acknowledge defeat, to feel those ten wasted years behind him, empty, unproductive; full of shattered hopes and dreams changed to nightmares! She sat, white of face, gripping the arms of her chair, feeling a great, throbbing sympathy for him.

"You will take it all?"

"He will still hold one hundred and sixty acres--the quarter-section granted him by the government, which he has undoubtedly proved on."

"Why--" she began, and paused, for to go further would be to inject her personal affairs into the conversation.

"Trevison is an evil in the country," he went on, speaking in a judicial manner, but watching her narrowly. "It is men like him who r.e.t.a.r.d civilization. He opposes law and order--defies them. It is a shock, I know, to learn that the t.i.tle to property that you have regarded as your own for years, is in jeopardy. But still, a man can play the man and not yield to lawless impulses."

"What has happened?" She spoke breathlessly, for something in Corrigan's voice warned her.

"Very little--from Trevison's viewpoint, I suppose," he laughed. "He came into my office this morning, after being served with a summons from Judge Lindman's court in regard to the t.i.tle of his land, and tried to kill me.

Failing in that, he knocked poor, inoffensive little Braman down--who had interfered in my behalf--and threw him bodily through the front window of the building, gla.s.s and all. It's lucky for him that Braman wasn't hurt.

After that he tried to incite a riot, which Judge Lindman nipped in the bud by sending a number of deputies, armed with rifles, to the scene. It was a wonderful exhibition of outlawry. I was very sorry to have it happen, and any more such outbreaks will result in Trevison's being jailed--if not worse."

"My G.o.d!" she panted, in a whisper, and became lost in deep thought.

They sat for a time, without speaking. She studied the profile of the man and compared its reposeful strength with that of the man who had ridden with her many times since her coming to Blakeley's. The turbulent spirit of Trevison awed her now, frightened her--she feared for his future. But she pitied him; the sympathy that gripped her made icy shivers run over her.

"From what I understand, Trevison has always been a disturber," resumed Corrigan. "He disgraced himself at college, and afterwards--to such an extent that his father cut him off. He hasn't changed, apparently; he is still doing the same old tricks. He had some sort of a love affair before coming West, your father told me. G.o.d help the girl who marries him!"

The girl flushed at the last sentence; she replied to the preceding one:

"Yes. Hester Keyes threw him over, after he broke with his father."

She did not see Corrigan's eyes quicken, for she was wondering if, after all, Hester Keyes had not acted wisely in breaking with Trevison.

Certainly, Hester had been in a position to know him better than some of those critics who had found fault with her for her action--herself, for instance. She sighed, for the memory of her ideal was dimming. A figure that represented violence and bloodshed had come in its place.

"Hester Keyes," said Corrigan, musingly. "Did she marry a fellow named Harvey--afterwards? Winslow Harvey, if I remember rightly. He died soon after?"

"Yes--do you know her?"

"Slightly." Corrigan laughed. "I knew her father. Well, well. So Trevison worshiped there, did he? Was he badly hurt--do you know?"