The Ranchman Part 7

And Carrington had seen Marion Harlan's glances at the man; he had been aware of the admiring smile she had given Taylor; and bitter pa.s.sion gripped Carrington at the recollection of the smile.

More-he had seen Taylor's face when the girl had smiled. The smile had thrilled Taylor-it had held promise for him, and Carrington knew it.

Carrington continued to stare out into the street. Danforth watched him furtively, in silence.

At last, not opening his lips, Carrington spoke:

"Tell me about this man, Taylor."

"Taylor owns the Arrow ranch, in the basin south of here. His ranch covers about twenty thousand acres. He has a clear t.i.tle.

"According to report, he employs about thirty men. They are holy terrors-that is, they are what is called 'hard cases,' though they are not outlaws by any means. Just a devil-may-care bunch that raises h.e.l.l when it strikes town. They swear by Taylor."

So far as Carrington could see, everybody in Dawes swore by Taylor.

Carrington grimaced.

"That isn't what I want to know," he flared. "How long has he been here; what kind of a fellow is he?"

"Taylor owned the Arrow before Dawes was founded. When the railroad came through it brought with it some land-sharks that tried to frame up on the ranch-owners in the vicinity. It was a slick scheme, they tell me.

They had clouded every t.i.tle, and figured to grab the whole county, it seems.

"Taylor went after them. People I've talked with here say it was a dandy shindy while it lasted. The land-grabbers brought the courts in, and a crooked judge. Taylor fought them, crooked judge and all, to a bite-the-dust finish. Toward the end it was a free-for-all-and the land-grabbers were chased out of the county.

"Naturally, the folks around here think a lot of Taylor for the part he played in the deal. Besides that, he's a man that makes friends quickly-and holds them."

"Has Taylor any interests besides his ranch?"

"A share in the water company, I believe. He owns some land in town; and he is usually on all the public committees here."

"About thirty, isn't he?"

"Twenty-eight."

Carrington looked at the other with a sidelong, sneering grin:

"Have any ladies come into his young life?"

Danforth snickered. "You've got me-I hadn't inquired. He doesn't seem to be much of a ladies' man, though, I take it. Doesn't seem to have time to monkey with them."

"H-m!" Carrington's lips went into a pout as he stared straight ahead of him.

Danforth at last broke a long silence with:

"Well, we got licked, all right. What's going to happen now? Are you going to quit?"

"Quit?" Carrington snapped the word at the other, his eyes flaming with rage. Then he laughed, mirthlessly, resuming: "This defeat was unexpected; I wasn't set for it. But it won't alter things-very much.

I'll have to shake a leg, that's all. What time does the next train leave here for the capital?"

"At two o'clock this afternoon." Danforth's eyes widened as he looked at Carrington. The curiosity in his glance caused Carrington to laugh shortly.

"You don't mean that the governor is in this thing?" said Danforth.

"Why not?" demanded Carrington. "Bah! Do you think I came in with my eyes closed!"

There was a new light in Danforth's eyes-the flame of renewed hope.

"Then we've still got a chance," he declared.

Carrington laughed. "A too-popular mayor is not a good thing for a town," he said significantly.

CHAPTER VII-THE SHADOW OF THE PAST

Marion Harlan and her uncle, Elam Parsons, did not accompany Carrington to the Castle Hotel. By telegraph, through Danforth, Carrington had bought a house near Dawes, and shortly after Quinton Taylor left the station platform accompanied by his friends and admirers, Marion and her uncle were in a buckboard riding toward the place that, henceforth, was to be their home.

For that question had been settled before the party left Westwood.

Parsons had declared his future activities were to be centered in Dawes, that he had no further interests to keep him in Westwood, and that he intended to make his home in Dawes.

Certainly Marion had few interests in the town that had been the scene of the domestic tragedy that had left her parentless. She was glad to get away. For though she had not been to blame for what had happened, she was painfully conscious of the stares that followed her everywhere, and aware of the morbid curiosity with which her neighbors regarded her.

Also-through the medium of certain of her "friends," she had become cognizant of speculative whisperings, such as: "To think of being brought up like that? Do you think she will be like her mother?"

Or-"What's bred in the bone, _et cetera_."

Perhaps these good people did not mean to be unkind; certainly the crimson stains that colored the girl's cheeks when she pa.s.sed them should have won their charity and their silence.

There was nothing in Westwood for her; and so she was glad to get away.

And the trip westward toward Dawes opened a new vista of life to her.

She was leaving the old and the tragic and adventuring into the new and promising, where she could face life without the onus of a shame that had not been hers.

Before she was half way to Dawes she had forgotten Westwood and its wagging tongues. She alone, of all the pa.s.sengers in the Pullman, had not been aware of the heat and the discomfort. She had loved every foot of the great prairie land that, green and beautiful, had flashed past the car window; she had gazed with eager, interested eyes into the far reaches of the desert through which she had pa.s.sed, filling her soul with the mystic beauty of this new world, reveling in its vastness and in the atmosphere of calm that seemed to engulf it.

Dawes had not disappointed her; on the contrary, she loved it at first sight. For though Dawes was new and crude, it looked rugged and honest-and rather too busy to hesitate for the purpose of indulging in gossip-idle or otherwise. Dawes, she was certain, was occupying itself with progress-a thing that, long since, Westwood had forgotten.

Five minutes after she had entered the buckboard, the spirit of this new world had seized upon the girl and she was athrob and atingle with the joy of it. It filled her veins; it made her cheeks flame and her eyes dance. And the strange aroma-the pungent breath of the sage, borne to her on the slight breeze-she drew into her lungs with great long breaths that seemed to intoxicate her.

"Oh," she exclaimed delightedly, "isn't it great! Oh, I love it!"

Elam Parsons grinned at her-the habitual smirk with which he recognized all emotion not his own.

"It _does_ look like a good field for business," he conceded.

The girl looked at him quickly, divined the sordidness of his thoughts, and puckered her brows in a frown. And thereafter she enjoyed the esthetic beauties of her world without seeking confirmation from her uncle.

Her delight grew as the journey to the new home progressed. She saw the fertile farming country stretching far in the big section of country beyond the water-filled basin; her eyes glowed as the irrigation ditches, with their locks and gates, came under her observation; and she sat silent, awed by the mightiness of it all-the tall, majestic mountains looming somberly many miles distant behind a glowing mist-like a rose veil or a gauze curtain lowered to partly conceal the mystic beauty of them.

Intervening were hills and flats and draws and valleys, and miles and miles of level gra.s.s land, green and peaceful in the shimmering sunlight that came from somewhere near the center of the big, pale-blue inverted bowl of sky; she caught the silvery glitter of a river that wound its way through the country like a monstrous serpent; she saw dark blotches, miles long, which she knew were forests, for she could see the spires of trees thrusting upward. But from where she rode the trees seemed to be no larger than bushes.