The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox - Ernest Haycox

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Perhaps I'll be here more than a week. Good- night, Jim."

      "Good-bye—Gay."

      "No—good-night."

      She pressed her horse and raced toward the house. A glimmer of light sprang out along the desert. Chaffee watched until she had faded into the falling darkness; and then wheeled and raced northward in the direction of the canyon. The premonition of trouble filled his mind.

      "Those tracks struck straight for the middle herd. What else but rustling? I ain't got time to get back home and roust out the boys. I'll have to tackle this alone."

      His horse was tired, he himself was weary; yet the farther he rode the more urgent and the more alarming was the warning in his mind. A gray mound stood vaguely toward the bench. The herd was in that vicinity. On he galloped, the horse gallantly stretching out at Chaffee's impatient words. Time passed; he slackened pace and veered along a great circle. Nothing of the herd was visible in the deep darkness. Impelled by the same foreboding, he straightened out for the canyon again. Cattle didn't shift so far of their own accord in the short space of time between midafternoon and night. Reasoning along line of the most probable course of travel rustlers would take with so large a bunch of cows, it seemed to him he ought to swing at right angles and head into the undulating folds of the bench. Yet try as he would, he could not overreach the impulse to keep his present trail.

      He pulled up. Away to his left and somewhat ahead he caught the vast and ominous rumbling of a herd in swift motion. Without further thought he raced off at a tangent. The rumbling grew deeper and swelled above the sound of his own progress. All of a sudden he was on the flank of the herd, seeing the dark mass stretch out in an irregular line. He dug his spurs deep into the sides of his exhausted pony and shot forward among the lead steers. As he did so he felt the pressure of another bunch of stock thundering in from his right, converging with the mass he was now abreast. He was trapped in the van of a wide-flung line of onrushing brutes, frenzied by mass fear and mass sound. He thought for a moment to make one effort to break their stride. Drawing his gun he fired point-blank into the weaving formation abreast him. A brute fell, but the bellowing and the fury seemed only to rise higher. And far back he heard what he thought to be a man's voice dimly crying a warning. The warning came to him equally soon; somewhere in the immediate foreground was the canyon. He bent low and slipped his quirt, alternately yelling into the pony's ear and flailing the buckskin thongs. With one last magnificent burst of reserve strength the horse pulled away, yard by yard; and Jim Chaffee, crying, "So long, Buck!" saw a fence post shoot up from the ground and bear abreast of him. He kicked the stirrups, flung his feet far ahead, and let go, the force of the impact rolling him head first. He waited, in that flashing fragment of time, to hear the bursting and shrill singing of barb wire as his horse struck. No such sound came. Still rolling, he caught instead a distant screaming; and then the rush of the cattle engulfed that sound. His hands touched the jagged rocks of the rim; he gripped them with the pressure of death and swung himself down into the black maw. His boots touched a flimsy ledging; he got a new grip on an outcrop just below the rim; and, braced to the shock, he hung there as the dust rolled against his face and the very pit of hell seemed to engulf him.

      VII. FANG AND PERFUME

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      William Wells Woolfridge called his ranch house "Wolf's Head," and there was about it a blending of Western roughness and costly splendor suggesting the dual personality of the owner. The house was a veritable mansion standing massive and solitary in the desert, designed by a famous Eastern architect who himself had overseen its erection. Lava rock and squared timbers braced it; lodge pole pines framed it all around. Massive beams supported a vaulted two-story living room, along three sides of which ascended a stairway that ran into wide galleries. After dark, when the remote corners were clouded by shadow, it suggested the spaciousness of some Gothic temple; and the same fathomless mystery. There was a fireplace wide and deep enough for a tier of four-foot logs laboriously hauled from the distant mountains. From place to place were ranged trophies gathered by Woolfridge throughout the world; and as if tiring of this stark coloring he had thrown around wall and corner all sorts of tapestries and fabrics and bits of statuary of which nobody but himself knew the full price. Into this living room, half lighted by lamp and fire, Gay Thatcher stepped.

      Her immediate reaction was one of utter astonishment. She stopped and flung up her head, eyes immediately falling upon objects here and there; and catching instantly the effect of the whole arrangement. "Why, Mr. Woolfridgel I never dreamed—"

      He was in evening clothes, a suave and chuby-cheeked host, groomed to precision. He bowed slightly from the hips, smiling with an urbane pride. And he raised her hand in such a manner that for a moment she thought he was about to salute it in the continental style. But, looking closely at her, he straightened and stepped back a pace. "I told you that perhaps I could offer some small diversion to the monotony of this land. After all, an exile must comfort himself. You have no luggage?"

      "Just a few things in my saddlebags. I never imagined such splendor, Mr. Woolfridge, or I would have done you greater honor in clothing. In the open country I always go about ragged. And since this was but an overnight visit I didn't bother to—"

      He interrupted her. "My dear, make no excuses. You are lovely, in whatever dress, wherever you are." A wiry Filipino lad darted through the door with the girl's saddlebags. Woolfridge raised his voice. "Ysabel." A Mexican woman came down the stairway and took the bags. "You will want to freshen up," said he. "Ysabel will show you to your room."

      When the girl returned fifteen minutes later Woolfridge had changed back to his riding clothes and a table had been placed by the fire, silver all aflash in the light. He came toward her.

      "Really," said she, "this embarrasses me. I—"

      "That," said Woolfridge, tremendously earnest, "is the last thing in the world I want you to feel. I mean that as I never meant anything else. It was only a foolish fancy of mine. The pomp and circumstance of a lonely exile." He placed her in a chair and went around the table to his own seat. "I was worried about you. I should have disregarded your instructions and sent a man over to guide you here."

      "I like to ride alone. I had no trouble at all. I have so little chance to go adventuring as I grow older that I always look forward to the opportunity." She lifted a salad fork and spoke as an apparent afterthought. "But I found company. Chaffee—Jim Chaffee took me to the canyon. And came nearly home with me."

      "Interesting," said Woolfridge, engaged with the serving. "Would like to have seen the chap. There is a character for you. Did you say he was traveling back to Stirrup S after you left him?"

      "I believe in that direction," replied the girl. She had a moment's glance at his face as it turned away; nothing but serenity dwelt upon it. "You spoke of being an exile, Mr. Woolfridge. You don't really mean that."

      "Yes, very much so. Voluntary exile. What is there for a man to do in the cities? I found myself growing soft, getting old. Going around and around. There is no place in America I cannot go, my dear lady, with credentials that will admit me to the best of homes. I am in a position to do almost anything I want to do. But I relegated all that and came here. Why? Well, because—"

      He leaned forward and something of the mildness vanished from his face; she thought she saw a hint of the iron in this man. "Because I'm in the wrong century. I am a good business man. But I would have made a better buccaneer one hundred years ago. I am laying myself open to you. There is that urge in me. Something pulls me off the beaten track. I built this house on the strength of that. I live here on the strength of that. It is not good for a man to live alone; neither is it good for him to stifle his impulses and tread the machine."

      "And have you found what you seek?"

      He turned squarely to her. She saw the will of the man very plainly then. "I am on the very edge of finding it. There—"

      "Please. I didn't meant to ask into your affairs. Let us consider that unsaid."

      "Why so?" he asked. "I should like you to know.

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