The Claim Jumpers Part 11

"Jim?"

"Jim Fay."

Bennington felt this as a discordant note.

"Do you know him very well?" he asked jealously.

"He's my best friend. I like him very much. He is a fine fellow. You must meet him."

"I've met him," said Bennington shortly.

"Now you must go," she commanded, after a pause. "I want to stay here for a while." "No," as he opened his mouth to object. "I mean it!

Please be good!"

After he had gone she sat still until sundown. Once she shook her shoulders impatiently. "It is _silly_!" she a.s.sured herself. As before, the shadow of Harney crept out to the horizon's edge. There it stopped. Twilight fell.

"No Spirit Mountain to-night," she murmured wistfully at last. "Almost do I believe in the old legend."

CHAPTER VIII

AN ADVENTURE IN THE NIGHT

After supper that night Bennington found himself unaccountably alone in camp. Old Mizzou had wandered off up the gulch. Arthur had wandered off down the gulch. The woman had locked herself in her cabin.

So, having nothing else to do, he got out the ma.n.u.script of _Aliris: A Romance of all Time_, and read it through carefully from the beginning.

To his surprise he found it very poor. Its language was felicitous in some spots, but stilted in most; the erudition was pedantic, and dragged in by the ears; the action was idiotic; and the proportions were padded until they no longer existed as proportions. He was astounded. He began to see that he had misconceived the whole treatment of it. It would have to be written all over again, with the love story as the ruling _motif_. He felt very capable of doing the love story.

He drew some paper toward him and began to write.

You see he was already developing. Every time a writer is made to appreciate that his work is poor he has taken a step in advance of it.

Although he did not know that was the reason of it, Bennington perceived the deficiencies of _Aliris_, because he had promised to read it to the girl. He saw it through her eyes.

The young man became absorbed in redescribing the heroine with violet eyes. A sudden slamming of the door behind him brought him, startled, to his feet. He laughed, and was about to sit down again, but noticed that the door had remained open. He arose to shut it. Over the trunks of the nearer pines played a strange flickering light, throwing them now into relief, now into shadow. "Strange!" murmured Bennington to himself, and stepped outside to investigate. As he crossed the sill he was seized on either side.

He cried out and struggled blindly, but was held as in a vice. His captors, whom he dimly perceived to be large men in masks, whirled him sharply to the left, and he found himself face to face with a third man, also masked. Beyond him were a score or so more, some of whom bore pine torches, which, partly blazing and partly smoking, served to cast the weird light he had seen flickering on the tree trunks. Perfect silence reigned. The man with whom Bennington was fronted eyed him gravely through the holes in his mask.

"I'd like to know what this means?" broke out the Easterner angrily.

The men did not reply. They stood motionless, as silent as the night.

In spite of his indignation, the young man was impressed. He twisted his shoulders again. The men at either arm never tightened a muscle to resist, and yet he was held beyond the possibility of escape.

"What's the matter? What're you trying to do? Take your hands off me!"

he cried.

Again the silence fell.

Then at the end of what seemed to the Easterner a full minute the masked figure in front spoke.

"Thar is them that thinks as how it ain't noways needful thet ye knows," it said in slow and solemn accents, "but by the mercy of th'

others we gives y' thet much satisfaction."

"You comes hyar from a great corp'ration thet in times gone by we thinks is public spirited an' enterprisin', which is a mistake. You pays th' debt of said corp'ration, so they sez, an' tharfore we welcomes you to our bosom cordial. What happens? You insults us by paying such low-down ornary cusses as Snowie. Th' camp is just. She arises an' avenges said insult by stringin' of you up all right an'

proper. We gives you five minutes to get ready."

"What do you mean?"

"We hangs you in five minutes."

The slow, even voice ceased, and again the silence was broken only by the occasional bursting crackle of a blister in the pine torches.

Bennington tried to realize the situation. It had all come about so suddenly.

"I guess you've got the joke on me, boys," he ventured with a nervous little laugh. And then his voice died away against the stony immobility of the man opposite as laughter sinks to nothing against the horror of a great darkness. Bennington began to feel impressed in earnest. Across his mind crept doubts as to the outcome. He almost screamed aloud as some one stole up behind and dropped over his throat the soft cold coil of a lariat. Then, at a signal from the chief, the two men haled him away.

They stopped beneath a gnarled oak halfway down the slope to the gulch bottom, from which protruded, like a long witch arm, a single withered branch. Over this the unseen threw the end of the lariat. Bennington faced the expressionless gaze of twenty masks, on which the torchlight threw Strong black shadows. Directly in front of him the leader posted himself, watch in hand.

"Any last requests?" he inquired in his measured tones.

Bennington felt the need of thinking quickly, but, being unused to emergencies, he could not.

"Anywhar y' want yore stuff sent?" the other pursued relentlessly.

Bennington swallowed, and found his voice at last.

"Now be reasonable," he pleaded. "It isn't going to do you any good to hang me. I didn't mean to make any distinctions. I just paid the oldest debts, that's all. You'll all get paid. There'll be some more money after a while, and then I can pay some more of you. If you kill me, you won't get any at all."

"Won't get any any way," some one muttered audibly from the crowd.

The man with the watch never stirred.

"Two minutes more," he said simply.

One of the men, who had been holding the young man's arms, had fallen back into the crowd when the lariat was thrown over the oak limb.

During the short colloquy just detailed, the attention of the other had become somewhat distracted. Bennington wrenched himself free, and struck this man full in the face.

He had never in his well-ordered life hit in anger, but behind this blow was desperation, and the weight of a young and active body. The man went down. Bennington seized the lariat with both hands and tried to wrench it over his head.

The individual who had done all the talking leaped forward toward him, and dodging a hastily aimed blow, seized him about the waist and threw him neatly to the ground. Bennington struggled furiously and silently.

The other had great difficulty in holding him down.

"Come here, some of you fellows," he cried, panting and laughing a little. "Tie his hands, for the love of Heaven."

In another moment the Easterner, his arms securely pinioned, stood as before. He was breathing hard and the short struggle had heated his blood through and through. Bunker Hill had waked up. He set his teeth, resolving that they should not get another word out of him.

The timekeeper raised one hand warningly. Over his shoulder Bennington dimly saw a tall muscular figure, tense with the expectation of effort, lean forward to the slack of the lariat. He stared back to the front.

The leader raised his pistol to give the signal. Bennington shut his eyes. Then ensued a pause and a murmuring of low voices. Bennington looked, and, to his surprise, perceived Lawton's girl in earnest expostulation with the leader of the band. As he listened their voices rose, so he caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of their talk.