"Listen--please--oh--please!" she implored. "If you go deliberately to kill Beasley--and do it--that will be murder.... It's against my religion.... I would be unhappy all my life."

"But, child, you'll be ruined all your life if Beasley is not dealt with--as men of his breed are always dealt with in the West," he remonstrated, and in one quick move he had freed himself from her clutching fingers.

Helen, with a move as swift, put her arms round his neck and clasped her hands tight.

"Milt, I'm finding myself," she said. "The other day, when I did--this--you made an excuse for me.... I'm not two-faced now."

She meant to keep him from killing Beasley if she sacrificed every last shred of her pride. And she stamped the look of his face on her heart of hearts to treasure always. The thrill, the beat of her pulses, almost obstructed her thought of purpose.

"Nell, just now--when you're overcome--rash with feelin's--don't say to me--a word--a--"

He broke down huskily.

"My first friend--my--Oh Dale, I KNOW you love me! she whispered. And she hid her face on his breast, there to feel a tremendous tumult.

"Oh, don't you?" she cried, in low, smothered voice, as his silence drove her farther on this mad, yet glorious purpose.

"If you need to be told--yes--I reckon I do love you, Nell Rayner," he replied.

It seemed to Helen that he spoke from far off. She lifted her face, her heart on her lips.

"If you kill Beasley I'll never marry you," she said.

"Who's expectin' you to?" he asked, with low, hoa.r.s.e laugh. "Do you think you have to marry me to square accounts? This's the only time you ever hurt me, Nell Rayner.... I'm 'shamed you could think I'd expect you--out of grat.i.tude--"

"Oh--you--you are as dense as the forest where you live," she cried.

And then she shut her eyes again, the better to remember that transfiguration of his face, the better to betray herself.

"Man--I love you!" Full and deep, yet tremulous, the words burst from her heart that had been burdened with them for many a day.

Then it seemed, in the throbbing riot of her senses, that she was lifted and swung into his arms, and handled with a great and terrible tenderness, and hugged and kissed with the hunger and awkwardness of a bear, and held with her feet off the ground, and rendered blind, dizzy, rapturous, and frightened, and utterly torn asunder from her old calm, thinking self.

He put her down--released her.

"Nothin' could have made me so happy as what you said." He finished with a strong sigh of unutterable, wondering joy.

"Then you will not go to--to meet--"

Helen's happy query froze on her lips.

"I've got to go!" he rejoined, with his old, quiet voice. "Hurry in to Bo.... An' don't worry. Try to think of things as I taught you up in the woods."

Helen heard his soft, padded footfalls swiftly pa.s.s away. She was left there, alone in the darkening twilight, suddenly cold and stricken, as if turned to stone.

Thus she stood an age-long moment until the upflashing truth galvanized her into action. Then she flew in pursuit of Dale. The truth was that, in spite of Dale's' early training in the East and the long years of solitude which had made him wonderful in thought and feeling, he had also become a part of this raw, bold, and violent West.

It was quite dark now and she had run quite some distance before she saw Dale's tall, dark form against the yellow light of Turner's saloon.

Somehow, in that poignant moment, when her flying feet kept pace with her heart, Helen felt in herself a force opposing itself against this raw, primitive justice of the West. She was one of the first influences emanating from civilized life, from law and order. In that flash of truth she saw the West as it would be some future time, when through women and children these wild frontier days would be gone forever. Also, just as clearly she saw the present need of men like Roy Beeman and Dale and the fire-blooded Carmichael. Beasley and his kind must be killed.

But Helen did not want her lover, her future husband, and the probable father of her children to commit what she held to be murder.

At the door of the saloon she caught up with Dale.

"Milt--oh--wait!'--wait!" she panted.

She heard him curse under his breath as he turned. They were alone in the yellow flare of light. Horses were champing bits and drooping before the rails.

"You go back!" ordered Dale, sternly. His face was pale, his eyes were gleaming.

"No! Not till--you take me--or carry me!" she replied, resolutely, with all a woman's positive and inevitable a.s.surance.

Then he laid hold of her with ungentle hands. His violence, especially the look on his face, terrified Helen, rendered her weak. But nothing could have shaken her resolve. She felt victory. Her s.e.x, her love, and her presence would be too much for Dale.

As he swung Helen around, the low hum of voices inside the saloon suddenly rose to sharp, hoa.r.s.e roars, accompanied by a scuffling of feet and crashing of violently sliding chairs or tables. Dale let go of Helen and leaped toward the door. But a silence inside, quicker and stranger than the roar, halted him. Helen's heart contracted, then seemed to cease beating. There was absolutely not a perceptible sound. Even the horses appeared, like Dale, to have turned to statues.

Two thundering shots annihilated this silence. Then quickly came a lighter shot--the smash of gla.s.s. Dale ran into the saloon. The horses began to snort, to rear, to pound. A low, m.u.f.fled murmur terrified Helen even as it drew her. Dashing at the door, she swung it in and entered.

The place was dim, blue-hazed, smelling of smoke. Dale stood just inside the door. On the floor lay two men. Chairs and tables were overturned.

A motley, dark, shirt-sleeved, booted, and belted crowd of men appeared hunched against the opposite wall, with pale, set faces, turned to the bar. Turner, the proprietor, stood at one end, his face livid, his hands aloft and shaking. Carmichael leaned against the middle of the bar. He held a gun low down. It was smoking.

With a gasp Helen flashed her eyes back to Dale. He had seen her--was reaching an arm toward her. Then she saw the man lying almost at her feet. Jeff Mulvey--her uncle's old foreman! His face was awful to behold. A smoking gun lay near his inert hand. The other man had fallen on his face. His garb proclaimed him a Mexican. He was not yet dead.

Then Helen, as she felt Dale's arm encircle her, looked farther, because she could not prevent it--looked on at that strange figure against the bar--this boy who had been such a friend in her hour of need--this naive and frank sweetheart of her sister's.

She saw a man now--wild, white, intense as fire, with some terrible cool kind of deadliness in his mien. His left elbow rested upon the bar, and his hand held a gla.s.s of red liquor. The big gun, low down in his other hand, seemed as steady as if it were a fixture.

"Heah's to thet--half-breed Beasley an' his outfit!"

Carmichael drank, while his flaming eyes held the crowd; then with savage action of terrible pa.s.sion he flung the gla.s.s at the quivering form of the still living Mexican on the floor.

Helen felt herself slipping. All seemed to darken around her. She could not see Dale, though she knew he held her. Then she fainted.

CHAPTER XXV

Las Vegas Carmichael was a product of his day.

The Pan Handle of Texas, the old Chisholm Trail along which were driven the great cattle herds northward, Fort Dodge, where the cowboys conflicted with the card-sharps--these hard places had left their marks on Carmichael. To come from Texas was to come from fighting stock. And a cowboy's life was strenuous, wild, violent, and generally brief. The exceptions were the fortunate and the swiftest men with guns; and they drifted from south to north and west, taking with them the reckless, chivalrous, vitriolic spirit peculiar to their breed.

The pioneers and ranchers of the frontier would never have made the West habitable had it not been for these wild cowboys, these hard-drinking, hard-riding, hard-living rangers of the barrens, these easy, cool, laconic, simple young men whose blood was tinged with fire and who possessed a magnificent and terrible effrontery toward danger and death.

Las Vegas ran his horse from Widow Ca.s.s's cottage to Turner's saloon, and the hoofs of the goaded steed crashed in the door. Las Vegas's entrance was a leap. Then he stood still with the door ajar and the horse pounding and snorting back. All the men in that saloon who saw the entrance of Las Vegas knew what it portended. No thunderbolt could have more quickly checked the drinking, gambling, talking crowd. They recognized with kindred senses the nature of the man and his arrival.

For a second the blue-hazed room was perfectly quiet, then men breathed, moved, rose, and suddenly caused a quick, sliding crash of chairs and tables.

The cowboy's glittering eyes flashed to and fro, and then fixed on Mulvey and his Mexican companion. That glance singled out these two, and the sudden rush of nervous men proved it. Mulvey and the sheep-herder were left alone in the center of the floor.

"Howdy, Jeff! Where's your boss?" asked Las Vegas. His voice was cool, friendly; his manner was easy, natural; but the look of him was what made Mulvey pale and the Mexican livid.

"Reckon he's home," replied Mulvey.