"You're taking me to your ranch!" she gasped. "_Me?_"

He nodded. "You, n.o.body else."

She laughed harshly without a note of hysteria. "You're two hundred years behind the times. Men don't carry off their women any more."

"Here's one that will," he told her. "You're going with me, y'understand. And you needn't stop to wash your face or change into petticoats either. I'm not letting you out of my sight. If you wanna take any extra duds along, you can wrap 'em up. What's the answer--you going willing or will I have to tie you up in a bundle?"

"You idiot, even your friends wouldn't stand you turning such a trick as this! I'll bet you couldn't get your own men to help you. That's why you had to come alone."

His suddenly bloating features gave evidence that her shot had told.

Bending down, he shook her shoulder roughly. And now for the first time she smelt his breath. It was rank with the raw odor of whisky.

So that was what had given him the wild idea of carrying her off by force. The man was drunk. Sober, he was bad enough. Drunk, he was capable of anything.

She reached stoveward for the lid lifter. Rafe seized her wrist and jerked her sidewise.

"None of that!" he snarled. "Gonna get your clothes or not?"

"I'll get them," she said calmly. "Let go of my wrist."

If she could win into the next room where the six-shooter was hanging on the wall, it might be possible to--but he did not release her wrist.

"I'll go with you," he told her with a leer. "You're too slippery a customer to trust alone."

As he turned with her, the lamplight fell full on his face, and she saw that his eyes were bloodshot! He also saw something that had hitherto escaped his notice. He saw the whisky bottle on the shelf in the cupboard. She had neglected to close the cupboard door.

"I'll have a short drink first," he said, and dragged her to the cupboard.

He was holding her left-handed. She was on the wrong side to reach his gun. Nevertheless she swung her body in front of him and s.n.a.t.c.hed wildly at the pistol b.u.t.t.

He did not divine her intention but thought she was trying to keep him away from the whisky. The result was the same, for he wrenched her back with a twist that started the tears in her eyes.

Holding the bottle in one hand, he drew the cork with his teeth, spat it out and applied his lips to the bottle neck. He swallowed long and generously. Hazel saw his Adam's apple slide up and down a dozen times. At such a rate the man would be a fiend in no time.

"Let me get my clothes," she begged.

Anything to get him away from the liquor. But Rafe was not so easily separated from his old friend.

"Wait a minute," he said peevishly, lowering the bottle and fixing her with his bloodshot gaze. "Don't be in such a hurry. Here, have one yourself."

He thrust the bottle toward her. She took it from him, held it to her mouth and then the bottle seemed to slip from her fingers. She s.n.a.t.c.hed at it, juggled it a split second and--the bottle smashed in bits on a corner of the stove.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she cried, quite as if she had not contrived the catastrophe on purpose.

"I'll make you sorrier!" Rafe exclaimed and without more ado cast both arms around her.

He was striving to kiss her and she, face crushed against his rough shirt, fought him like the primeval female every woman becomes in like circ.u.mstances. Her right hand clawed upward at his face. Her left arm, doubled between their two bodies, she strove to work free so that she could grab his gun.

Rafe received three distinct clawings that considerably altered the appearance of one side of his face, before he was able to confine those active fingers.

"Here!" he bawled in a fury. "I'll fix you!"

He tried to seize her by the throat and his thumb slipped by mistake into her mouth. She promptly clamped down hard on the thumb. With a yell, Rafe released his grip on her body and worked a thumb and ring finger into her cheeks in a frantic effort to force open her locked jaws.

Suddenly she opened her mouth. Rafe sprang back a yard, shaking a bleeding thumb and swearing, and as he sprang she dragged the six-shooter from his holster.

Her palm swept down to c.o.c.k the gun. But Rafe was as quick to see his danger as Dan Slike had been. He made a long arm as he hurled himself at her and knocked the barrel to one side at the moment of the shot.

Before she could fire again, he had torn the weapon from her grasp and flung it across the room.

"You tried to murder me!" he panted. "You tried to murder me!"

She dived headlong beneath his arm, but he caught the slack of her overalls as she went by and dragged her to a standstill. She immediately b.u.t.ted him in the stomach with her head. He stumbled back but caught her arm. Her head flashed down and her teeth fastened on his wrist. Again he broke the grip of her teeth by the application of ring finger and thumb to her cheeks, and then he reached purposefully for her throat and began to strangle her in dead earnest.

She kicked and thrashed about like a wild thing in a trap,--as indeed she was. Her nails scratched desperately at his arms. She might as well have been petting him. Tighter and tighter became the choking grasp of those long fingers. She could not breathe. Her temples were bursting. Her head felt like a balloon. With her last flare-up of failing strength, she kicked him on the knee-cap.

He jumped back against the wall, dragging her with him, and began to shake her as a dog does a rat. And then the old Terry clock did that for which it surely must have been originally made. For, as his shoulders struck the wall, his head knocked away the support of the bracket that held the clock. Involuntarily he ducked his head. It was the worst thing he could have done, giving, as it did, the clock an extra foot to fall. It fell. One corner struck him fairly on the temple and knocked him cold as a wedge.

When Hazel's reeling senses had reestablished their equilibrium, she found herself on the floor, lying across the inert legs of Rafe Tuckleton. She raised herself on her two arms and looked at him. He was breathing very lightly. It occurred to her that it would not worry her overmuch if he breathed not at all.

She dragged herself on hands and knees to where he had thrown his six-shooter. She picked it up and threw out the cylinder. Evidently Rafe was accustomed to carry his hammer on an empty chamber, for there were four cartridges and a spent sh.e.l.l in the cylinder. She ejected the spent sh.e.l.l, crawled back to the senseless Rafe and plucked two cartridges from his belt.

She loaded those two empty chambers and c.o.c.ked the gun. Then she pulled herself up into a chair at the table, and leaning across the cloth, trained the six-shooter on Rafe's stomach.

And as she sat there watching a senseless man through the gunsights, it suddenly seemed to her that she was not one person, but two,--herself and a stranger. And the Hazel Walton that had gone through the evening's adventures was the stranger. She herself apparently stood at one side observing. But she saw the room and its contents with new eyes, the eyes of the stranger. It was a most amazing feeling, and she was oddly frightened while it lasted.

Slowly the feeling pa.s.sed as her muscles renewed their strength, and her jangled nerves steadied and quieted. She came back to herself with a jerk as Rafe Tuckleton stirred and put his hand to his head. She saw the hand come away covered with blood. That side of Rafe's head being in the shadow she had not previously noted that it had sustained a shrewd cut.

Rafe groaned a little. He rolled over and sat up, his chin sagging forward on his chest. He moved his head and looked at her vacantly.

The blood ran down his cheek and dripped slowly off his chin.

The light of reason glared of a sudden in Rafe's eyes. She could see that he was absorbing the situation from every angle.

"I'll give you five minutes to pull yourself together and get out," she announced clearly. "If you're still here by the time I've counted three hundred I'll begin to shoot."

Rafe started to go by the time she reached sixty. With the six-shooter pointing at the small of his back, her finger on the trigger, step by step she drove him out of the house to where he had left his horse.

Hazel watched him ride away and after a little become at one with the moonlit landscape. She walked back to the house. She felt that she was taking enormous strides. In reality she was stepping short and staggering badly. She went into the kitchen. She closed the door, dropped the bar into place and fell into the nearest chair.

"My G.o.d!" she said aloud, "I wonder what will happen next?"

CHAPTER TWENTY

A DISCOVERY

"I tell you I ain't satisfied," nagged the district attorney.