"I'll be right glad to have you," said Calumet. "Come tomorrow--in the afternoon--any time."

"You reckonin' on bein' the boss now?" questioned Taggart.

Some emotion flickered Calumet's eyelashes. "You've said somethin',"

he returned; "n.o.body's runnin' me." He turned and walked to Dade, who had been watching him with wrath and astonishment.

"Drinkin'?" suggested Taggart. "Have a drink, old man," he said, with celluloid good fellowship.

Calumet turned with a grin. "Me an' my friend has got to the end of our capacity," he said. "He's workin' for me an I ain't settin' him a bad example. The next time, if you're in the humor, I'll be glad to drink all you can buy." He waved a hand behind him, with the other he was pushing Dade before him toward the door. "So-long," he said, as he and Dade went out.

Taggart laughed as he turned to his companions, who had said nothing during the conversation.

"Friends!" he said; "he's green an' due for a shock!"

Either Taggart or the proprietor had made a mistake in their estimate of Calumet. For at the instant Taggart had sneered at Calumet to his friends, the bartender, who had come in while Taggart and Calumet had been talking, leaned over to listen to the proprietor.

"In Taggart's place," said the proprietor, "I'd be mighty careful of that man. Friend, eh? Well, mebbe. But you noticed that he didn't offer to shake hands with Taggart. An' he wouldn't drink. Reached his capacity! He had four in here. Sober as a judge! Did you notice his eyes? They fair made me shiver when he looked at me when I was talkin'

about his old man. I'm goin' to be d.a.m.n careful about my palaver after this. Friend! Well, if I wasn't his friend I'd be d.a.m.n careful not to rile him!"

Outside Dade halted, white hot with rage.

"I reckon I ain't got no job with you, you white-livered--"

The muzzle of Calumet's forty-five, magically produced, it seemed, so quickly did it show in his hand, was making an icy ring against Dade's throat, and the words, the epithet for which he had hesitated, remained unspoken. Metallic, venomous and filled with a threat of death came Calumet's voice.

"You sufferin' fool!" he said, the words writhing through his lips, his eyes blazing. "It's my game, do you hear? An' if you gas another word about it I'll tear you apart!"

"He was blackguardin' Betty," objected Dade, his face ashen, but his spirit still undaunted. "He was blackguardin' her an' you made friends with him. I'd have salivated him if I'd thought you wasn't goin' to.

I'm goin' back there now an'--"

Calumet stepped back a pace and c.o.c.ked his six-shooter. "I reckon I can't make you understand that it's my game," he said coldly. "Walk backwards when you go in," he directed; "I don't want to plug you in the back."

Dade started and looked intently at Calumet. "You mean that it ain't ended between you an' him?" he demanded.

"Some people would have tumbled to that long ago," jeered Calumet.

"But kids--kids take longer to _sabe_ a thing. I'm glad you're over it," he added. He sheathed his pistol. "I reckon we'll be goin'," he said. "Betty'll begin to believe I'm lost."

Dade followed him to the wagon, meekly enough now that he had received unmistakable proof that Taggart was Calumet's "game," and shortly afterward the wagon pulled out of Lazette and struck the trail toward the Lazy Y.

CHAPTER XI

PROGRESS

Calumet had some thoughts on the subject but they were all inchoate and unsatisfying. He got only one conclusion out of them--that for some mysterious reason he had surrendered to Betty and was going to work to repair the ranchhouse.

On the morning following his visit to Lazette he sat on a piece of heavy timber which he and Dade had lifted a few minutes before to some saw-horses preparatory to framing. Armed with a scratch awl and a square Dade was at the other end of the timber, his hat shoved back from his forehead while he ran his fingers through his hair as though pondering some weighty problem. Watching him, Calumet suffered a recurrence of that vague disquiet which had moved him the night before when he had listened to the cordial greeting which Betty had given the young man. Old friendship had been between the two and somehow it had disturbed Calumet. He did not know why. He didn't like Betty, but at the same time every smile that she had given Dade the night before had caused some strange emotion to grip him. And he liked Dade, too. He couldn't understand that, either.

He had never been friendly with any man. But something about Dade appealed to him; he felt tolerant toward him, was mildly interested in him. He thought it was because Dade was boyish and impulsive.

Whatever it was, he knew of its existence. It was not a deep feeling; it was like the emotion that moves a large animal to permit a smaller one to remain near it--a grudging tolerance which may develop into sincere friendship or at a flash turn into a furious hatred. And so Dade's security depended entirely upon how he conducted himself. If he kept out of Calumet's way, all well and good. But if he interfered with him, if, for instance, he became too friendly with Betty, there would come an end to Calumet's tolerance.

And so there was a glint of speculative distrust in Calumet's eyes as he sat and watched Dade ponder. Calumet was in no good humor. He felt like baiting Dade.

"What you clawin' your head that way for?" he suddenly demanded as Dade continued to puzzle over his problem.

Dade grinned. "I'm goin' to halve these sills together. But I'm wantin' to make sure that the halves will be made reverse, so's they'll fit. An' I don't seem to be able to fix it clear in my mind."

"You was braggin' some on bein' a carpenter."

"I reckon I wasn't doin' no braggin'," denied Dade, reddening a little.

Calumet fixed a hostile eye on him. "Braggin' goes," he said shortly.

"If you'd said you was a barber, now, no one would expect you to fit any sills together. But when you say you've done carpenter work that makes it different. You ought to _sabe_ sills."

Dade laid his square and scratch awl down on the piece of timber and deliberately seated himself on the saw-horse beside it. He looked defiantly at Calumet. A change had come over him from the day before--the slight deference in his manner had become succeeded by something unyielding and hard.

"Let's get on an understandin'," he said. "You can't go to pickin' on me." And he looked fairly into Calumet's eyes over the length of the timber.

"I'm ga.s.sin' to suit myself," said Calumet; "if that don't size up right to you you can pull your freight."

"You're a false alarm," said Dade bluntly; "you drive me plumb weary."

Before his voice had died away Calumet's hand had flashed to his pistol b.u.t.t. Why he did not draw the weapon was a mystery known only to himself. It might have been because Dade had not moved. Calumet's lips had tensed over his teeth in a savage snarl; they still held the snarl when he spoke.

"You'll swallow that," he said. "Do you _sabe_ my idea?"

"Nary swallow," declared Dade. "False alarm goes. I've got you sized up right."

Calumet's six-shooter came out. His eyes, blazing with a wanton fire, met Dade's and held them. The youngster's lips whitened, but his eyes did not waver. Death twitched at Calumet's finger. There was a long silence. And then Dade spoke.

"Usin' it?" he said.

Into Calumet's blazing eyes came a slow glint of doubt, of reluctant admiration. His lashes flickered, the blaze died down, he squinted, a cold, amused smile succeeded the snarl. He laughed shortly, looked at the pistol, and then slowly jammed it back into the holster.

"You're too good to lose," he said. "I'm savin' you for another time."

"Thanks," said Dade dryly, though the ashen face of him showed how well he realized his narrow escape. "I reckon we understand each other now.

I can see by the way you yanked out your gun just now and by the way you got the drop on Taggart yesterday, that you're some on the shoot.

But I ain't none scared of you. An' now I'm tellin' you why I said you're a false alarm. I was talkin' to Betty last night. She's read up a bit, an' I'm parrotin' what she said about you because it's what I think, too. Your cosmos is all ego. That's what Betty said. Brought down to cases, what that means is that you've got a bad case of swelled head. So far as you're concerned there's only one person in the world.

That's you. n.o.body else counts. You've been thinkin' about yourself so much that you can't find time to think about anybody else. There's other people in the world as good as you--better. Betty's one of them.

She's a good girl an' you an' me'll hitch all right as long as you don't go to bullyin' her. I reckon that's all."

"Meanin' that you'll let me hang around as long as I'm good," sneered Calumet in a dangerously soft voice. He was trying to work himself into a rage, but the effort was futile. Something in Dade's quiet, matter-of-fact voice had a dulling, cooling effect on him. Besides, he knew that an attack on Dade would be resented by Betty, and he felt a strange reluctance toward further antagonizing her. "You Texas folks are sure clever at workin' your jaws," he sneered, when Dade did not answer. "But I reckon that lets you out. When I'm lookin' for advice from women an' kids mebbe I'll call on you an' Betty, but if I don't you'll understand that I'm followin' my own trail. You've got away with one call because--well, because I was fool enough to let you.

Mebbe another time I won't feel so foolish."

There were few words spoken between them during the following hours of the morning, though several times Dade caught Calumet watching him with a puzzled, amused smile in which there was a sort of slumbering ferocity. By the middle of the morning the front of the ranchhouse had been raised with the a.s.sistance of jacks, the old rotted sills taken out and new ones subst.i.tuted. About an hour before noon, while Calumet, in woolen shirt and overalls, his face dirty, his hair tousled, and his temper none too good, was wedging the sill tight against the studding above it, he became aware of Betty standing near him. She nodded toward the sill.