The Exile of The Lariat/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
THE HEARING
THE month dragged. Hugh received long letters from Miriam and wrote even longer ones in return. Miriam made no attempt to direct Hugh’s effort to save his fossil field. But she urged him on to the fight by a sympathy that intoxicated him as regularly as her letters came. But in spite of the letters the days in The Lariat were long. The big snows that arrived with December prevented any one from the outlying ranches from visiting Fort Sioux, and except for Principal Jones and Red Wolf, The Lariat was unpatronized. The old Indian’s efforts to cheer Hugh up were unceasing. Not a week passed that he did not come prowling into the shop with some curious memento of the tribe and carry on a long, haggling barter for a book. The trading was, to say the least, unique and was the only bright spot in the long month. Hugh always carried on the negotiations himself, for the old Sioux openly scorned doing business with Fred. They traded a pair of polished buffalo horns for a copy of Artemus Ward. A beaded “kinne-ki-nick” bag for a cheap and very gaudily bound reproduction of Hogarth’s Rake's Progress. A buckskin belt and a dilapidated war bonnet for a second-hand set entitled, Pictorial History of the Civil War. The final triumph for both sides, however, was the trading of a necklace made up of teeth—bear teeth, buffalo teeth, snake fangs, the teeth of Red Wolf’s father and of his first wife and of several of his own, all strung on a deer sinew, as pliable as silk—for a copy of the life of Queen Victoria. The old chief fell violently in love with a picture of the old queen at her stoutest and would have bartered his tepee, containing his present squaw, if it had been necessary, to close the bargain.
The day after Christmas, Hugh returned to Cheyenne, and within two days’ time he had procured an appointment to present his case before the commission. His was the first business brought up when the morning session was called. John Houghton introduced Hugh to the members and he was invited to join the group around the mahogany table.
This was quite a different matter from telling his tale to the barber-shop group, or to Miriam, or to the Conservation and Children’s Code Committees. These were hard-headed, experienced politicians, all of whom had expressed an entire impatience with Hugh’s plea. He had thought constantly in the past month of what he could say that might reach them. He knew that the scientific plea would not touch them. He knew that there could be no appeal to their state pride. Their record precluded the possibility of their having any. He believed that there was small chance of what Mrs. Morgan had called his personality beguiling them. And he sat forward in the chair they had given him at the table, and opened his mouth to speak without any real idea of what he would say.
And he began, to his own astonishment, to talk of his Uncle Bookie. Every man at the table had known the former owner of The Lariat. Old Charley Whitson, the chairman, had ridden herd for Bookie before the old ranch had been turned over to dudes. John Houghton had purloined a brood mare, three cows and a bull from Bookie thirty years before and had thus gotten a start in life. Fred had told this to Hugh in the month just passed. And there was not a man among them who had not visited the wise old man who had dreamed dreams in The Lariat.
Hugh told them about his discovery of the cave and of Bookie’s trip to his Christmas camp. With the accuracy of memory that was partly born in him and was partly the result of his scientific training he repeated the long conversation between himself and Bookie, appalled as he did so by the sudden revelation to himself of his own egoism. When he told of his findings in the cave and of Jimmie Duncan’s skeleton there was a sudden movement and murmur from his hearers. Hugh paused. He was not sure how far to go.
“What did you do with him?” demanded Whitson. “I knew that fellow.”
With sudden inspiration, Hugh decided to have no reticences. “What I say will be treated as entirely confidential and not even be inscribed on the minutes?” he asked.
Old Whitson turned to the young woman who was busily inscribing pot hooks in a notebook.
“Miss Dick, skeedaddle!” he said, shortly.
Miss Dick left the room with the nonchalant air of doing exactly what she had intended to do anyhow.
“Now, Stewart, shoot and shoot straight,” said the chairman. “We’ll have some straight man’s talk at this session. If any of you old timers want to get out, get out now, because I don’t opine I want to be interrupted while I’m digging up these three several kinds of old bones!”
A grin went round the table, but nobody moved except to relight cigars.
“I’ll tell you what I did with Jimmie Duncan’s bones,” said Hugh slowly. “But first, I’ll explain what Uncle Bookie said to me when I told him that the old cattle runner was below. He said, ‘Hughie, I left Jimmie Duncan down there twenty-three years ago this Christmas.’”
“Hah!” ejaculated old Whitson, spitting into the brass cuspidor beside his chair. “Go on, Stewart.”
“I asked, ‘Did you put a notch on your gun, Uncle Bookie?’”
“‘You can bet I did, Hughie, a deep one!’
“‘Why, Uncle Bookie?’
“‘Because he was a skunk.’
“‘Will you tell me about it, Uncle Bookie?’ I asked.
“He nodded. ‘I’ll try Hughie,’ he said, ‘I loved your mother from the time she came out here with your poor, one-lunged dad’”
Hugh went on in his gentle way to tell of Bookie’s tragic love story. Not an eye moved from his face as he continued. “And so, when I returned to the cave the next day, I knew what Jimmie Duncan had done. I built a big fire in the remains of the old fireplace and I kicked his bones into the flames. And I threw the ashes out into the Roaring Chief.”
There was silence.
“I am telling you all this,” Hugh finally went on, “because I want you to feel that the Old Sioux Tract and Uncle Bookie are inseparably connected in my mind.”
“And yet,” said John Houghton, “you want to keep that tract to dig the fossils out of. And your Uncle was sore about fossils.”
A quick nod went round the table, in which Hugh soberly joined.
“One point at a time, gentlemen. Yes, I was a keen disappointment to Uncle Bookie.” Hugh looked miserably out the window, flecked across by a rattling cottonwood tree. “I would have changed it if I could. But a cow pony with all the good will in the world can’t make himself into a race horse, and if he’s a horse with sense he won’t try. Uncle Bookie felt that himself. Toward the last, he didn’t talk so much to me about my work as he did about my—well, I suppose I might say, my character. He had more real, disinterested fondness for Wyoming than any native son I ever met. I think his biggest disappointment in me was that I didn’t show the same kind of fondness.”
Hugh paused It was extraordinarily painful, this laying his soul bare before these hard-faced men. But he knew of no other method.
“It was a fondness that none of you and certainly not I have ever felt. It was a feeling so strong that what embittered his deathbed was the realization that he had not done his limit for Wyoming. I don’t blame him myself for not doing more. He was a clean-handed man. He stood for civic decency and enforced it at the gun point if necessary. He believed he couldn’t mix in state politics without dirtying his hands. He did all he could for Wyoming up to that point.”
Again Hugh stopped while he drew on the deeps within. And still his auditors, angered though they may have been, made no attempt to interrupt Hugh’s low-voiced monologue.
“I am saying to you now,” suddenly lifting his head and speaking directly at Whitson, his beautiful, ardent mouth twisted half tragically, “that not until I repeated our conversation to you this morning have I realized what my absorption in myself must have meant to Uncle Bookie. And yet, observe that after all, knowing that I would use it as a world fossil field, he did put it within my power to control the Old Sioux Tract. This tract that for nearly a quarter of a century had had such a poignant significance to him, that was bound up with his early fight to make Wyoming a law-abiding state, with the killing that must have been a terrible memory to him and, most of all, with the deep hurt of having it spurned by the woman he loved, who preferred to die in poverty and dependence rather than take from him the gift won by him at such soul cost. This is the tract that he turned over to me. I believe that I can turn it to such noble usage that it will satisfy all Uncle Bookie's hurts—as to Duncan, as to my mother, as to me. Force the Eastern Electric Corporation to build its dam elsewhere, gentlemen. Let me make a monument to Uncle Bookie of the Old Sioux Tract.”
Old Whitson heaved a great sigh. “Those were the days! Men was men in those days. So that’s what became of Jimmie Duncan! Huh!”
John Houghton spoke: “Grafton, the Eastern Corporation’s man, says the only other feasible point to build the dam is fifteen miles on up the Roaring Chief. He says what with the frightful difficulty that would be added in transportation costs—it’s a god-awful spot to reach from the railroad—and in the doubling of the size of the dam as would have to be done at that point, it would more than double the cost of the project, and it’s not to be thought of. The Corporation has reached its limit in costs with the dam at Thumb Butte.”
Whitson scratched a scraggly chin with a paper knife and renewed his plug. “Why ain’t it monument enough to Bookie to let the Old Sioux Tract contribute to the producing of water power for his section of Wyoming?” he asked.
Hugh looked at the chairman with such a combination of anger and disgust in eye and lip that the old man turned hastily to the other members of the commission.
“Any other of you folks got anything to say?”
They had and they said it at considerable length Hugh made no attempt to follow the details of their arguments. He was convinced that they had been bought and paid for. When each member had said his say, the chairman turned to Hugh:
“Sorry, Stewart. You’ve given us a pretty good idea of how you feel and how old Bookie felt. But to go up against this Eastern Electric Corporation so it would give up building the Fort Sioux dam would be about the most unpopular thing this commission could do in this state.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” demanded Hugh. Then he bit his lip. Not for one moment did he propose to lose his self-control. “Is this answer final?” he asked quietly.
Whitson looked around the table. “I guess it is, son. As far as I’m concerned, I’m sorry it has to be so. I was fond of Bookie, and as near as I can judge you are extra prime quality yourself, in spite of your job. But business and politics can’t mix with science.”
Hugh rose slowly “I think I ought to warn you,” he said, “that this is only the beginning of my fight.”
An amused smile should have crossed each face, but curiously enough it did not. There was a controlled power in Hugh’s eyes that caused Whitson to say:
“Gentlemen, not because we are scared of the threat, but because we’d like to give Bookie’s nephew a sporting chance, let’s hold up delivering that charter till Easter.”
A nod went round the table. Whitson turned to Hugh and said, with a show of courtesy strange to him, “That’s the best we can do for you, Mr. Stewart.”
Hugh bowed and left the room.
He returned to Fort Sioux that night. He was bitterly disappointed, but not discouraged. All the next day, and until well into the following night, he contemplated what he felt to be the most drastic decision of his life. With a new clarity of vision gained by his experiences at the Capitol, he faced facts about himself that he never before had faced. Pacing the floor of the room, lined with the volumes old Bookie had loved so well, the room where less than a year before he had decided to make what he believed to be the supreme sacrifice of his life, he found life demanding of him a sacrifice infinitely greater, infinitely more difficult. He went to bed deeply absorbed in the contemplation of this sacrifice and woke early to lie watching Fred putter at the starting of the heater fire, and to listen to the broken ice grind and crash in the swift-moving river, with a sense of loss and of destiny upon him difficult to adjust to each other.
The morning was about half spent when Red Wolf came in. He only grunted when Hugh asked him, smiling, what the trade was to be that day, and stood for a long time, with his back to the heater, glowering at Hugh with a face quite expressionless except for the burning eyes.
“What’s eating you, Red Wolf?” Fred finally demanded.
The Indian turned to Hugh. “Winter, it not last long, this year,” he said “Not much snow. Not any snow any more.”
“There’s been an unusual amount of snow up on the plains, Red Wolf,” protested Hugh.
“Yes, but not cold. Soon go. And heap little snow down here. Ice usually go out of river in March. Look! Ice going out of river now.”
“What about it, Red Wolf?” Hugh eyed his old friend keenly, realizing that in his own way and his own time the Indian would tell him something he considered important.
“Most times, Fort Sioux folks, they no try go up river canyon in winter. Too hard work. You remember, they say you heap fool last year, maybe get killed working in cave in winter?”
“I remember,” said Hugh. “Keep out of it for a minute, Fred,” as the little man muttered impatiently.
“But this year,” Red Wolf went on imperturbably, “folks they go up river, they find no snow on your trail to cave, they go in cave.”
“What did they do there!” exclaimed Hugh.
“Injun can’t go in cave. You know that, Hughie! But I see big door broke out, from this side of river when I ride down this morning.”
Hugh, his cheeks flushing, put a restraining hand on Fred’s shoulder. “What else did you see, Red Wolf?”
“Broken boxes on trail.”
“God! That’s too much!” cried Hugh. “Come on, Red Wolf. I’m going up there. Fred, you watch the store.”
“Who helped save that critter? Was it Red Wolf?” shouted Fred “Let him mind shop!”
A look of pleased surprise came to Red Wolf’s eyes. “I sell ’em books,” he said. “You take Fred. He go in cave with you.”
Hugh nodded, strapped on his gun, and pulled on his mackinaw.
“Now, Red Wolf,” said Fred, impressively, “don’t sell anything. Just take orders for ’em. You don’t sabez how to sell books. See! You just let folks tell you what they want. And I’ll fix ’em up when I get back.”
“Fred, you go heap to hell,” grunted the Indian, removing his mackinaw and walking behind the counter to stand leaning against the bookcases in close imitation of Hugh’s favorite attitude.
Fred followed Hugh hastily to the corral.
There was too much ice in the river to risk a boat. The two men decided to use the horses along the river edge as far as they could go and then to crawl along the face of the canyon until they reached the trail to the cave. They saddled quickly, and silently trotted out of town to the bridge. It was here that they met Jessie. She pulled up Magpie.
“Hello, Hughie! What luck did you have in Cheyenne?”
“None at all. And it looks as if ill luck were pursuing me here, too.”
“What’s happened, Hughie?”
“Red Wolf reports that some one has broken into the cave where I’d left the triceratops, and from what he says, I think they’ve wantonly destroyed the specimen. We’re going up there.” Hugh spurred Fossil and rode off abruptly.
A small boy, standing on the bridge watching the chaos of ice in the river, waited until Hugh had crossed, then put his hands to his mouth and shouted lustily, “Gray stallion! O gray stallion!”
Hugh looked back and saw Jessie jump from her horse and box the youngster’s ears. Fred laughed and Hugh thought, “I wonder what Miriam would do about that particular deviltry of Pink’s.” Then he gave his mind to the anxiety at hand.
They were able to work their horses within a possible two miles of the trail. When, however, the canyon wall crowded the river too closely for safe riding, they hobbled their mounts and began the difficult climb along the wall. It was midafternoon when they made the trail, and after a few moments’ rest began the upward climb. Halfway up they came upon a broken box, from which protruded a piece of rib bone, hacked and mangled beyond repair. After a hasty examination, they continued to climb, to be brought to pause again and again by portions of the specimen, wantonly injured and tumbled upon the path.
Neither man spoke until they reached the ledge. The door had been chopped to pieces, but the crude doorframe was intact and on one side of it was scrawled with charcoal, “For the gray stallion.”
Fred uttered an oath. But still Hugh did not speak. He lighted a candle and led the way within the cave. Here the destruction was complete. The floor was littered with the broken and mingled bones of the ancient Indian warriors and of the triceratops. The fireplace and the altar had been eradicated. Hugh, holding the candle at arm’s length above his head, strode up and down the cave, his face set, his jaw white. Fred followed at his heels, for once not daring to speak. At length Hugh was driven by very weariness to pause. He leaned against the door frame and looked at Fred.
“Who could have done it! Why did they do it? What have I done to deserve it?”
“Done! Done! Why, you’ve done what a guy like Pink or Billy Chamberlain can’t excuse you for. You’ve used your brains to make yourself too smart for them to keep up with. I’ll get ’em for this! God! You’ll see! I’ll get ’em.”
“There’s no proof they did it,” said Hugh “We won’t get anywhere by going crazy. Let’s gather up the wood and make a fire where the chimney was and go over this thing carefully. There must be some kind of a clue to pick up. Calm down, Fred. The men that did this are going to suffer, but we’re not going to make any bad breaks.”
They built a fire and by its light and that of the candle searched diligently for clues to the identity of the miscreants. There were myriad footprints in the sand and dust. But greater skill than that possessed by Hugh or Fred was required to discover their significance. After a prolonged effort, Hugh sat down by the fire on a broken box.
“Fred,” he said, “I’m hard hit by this!”
“Don’t I know that?” raved Fred. “Let me get my hands on ’em Let me!”
“It’s more than that sort of thing will satisfy,” muttered Hugh, leaning his head wearily on his hand. “Fred,” abruptly, “do me one more favor. Go on back to The Lariat and leave me here for the night.”
“What’s the idea?” demanded Fred in astonishment.
“I want to be alone,” replied Hugh. “Fred, old man, this thing is a sort of a last straw with me. I’m—I’m hard hit. And I want to be alone to get on top of myself again.”
“But you haven’t got anything to eat.”
“I don’t want anything. I’ll come down in the morning.”
Fred scratched his chin and sighed. “Well, you’re the boss. I’ll take the horses along and be back up to meet you in the morning.”
Hugh nodded and Fred, without further comment or protest, hurried from the cave to take advantage of the remainder of the daylight in the perilous passage along the river’s edge.
Hugh sat before the fire, head on hands. It did not seem to him that he could endure the thought of the loss of the marvelous specimen. And he dared not return to Fort Sioux until he had faced this new trouble and had got himself well in hand. Yet for a long time he could only sit in impotent wrath over the senseless destruction of a thing so invaluable. All the outraged scientist was uppermost in him now. He had no thought of Miriam, of the Old Sioux Tract or of the problem he had been facing the night before.
Darkness had fallen completely when above the crackling of the fire he caught the sound of footsteps without. He listened intently, his hand slipping automatically to his hip. It would have gone ill with Pink had he appeared at that moment in the cave opening. But it was not Pink. It was his daughter, Jessie. She paused in the doorway, breathing rapidly, her face flushed, her eyes heavily shadowed in the flickering light. After a moment she discerned Hugh and she moved forward.
“I was coming up to see what the trouble was. Fred tried to stop me, so don’t blame him. And I brought some lunch. I noticed you had nothing but your canteen this morning. Don’t look at me so, Hughie.”
Hugh rubbed his hand across his forehead. “I suppose you wanted to do me a kindness, Jessie. But I’d have been better off alone.”
“I’ll leave now, if you tell me to!”
“No. It would be dangerous for you to try to get out in the dark. I can’t let you risk it, as you probably very well knew.”
A slight smile, unnoticed by Hugh, flickered on Jessie’s face for a moment, then she put a bundle of sandwiches on the box beside Hugh, made herself a seat before the fire opposite him, and sat down in her own way, apparently immovable. A deep contrast to Hugh’s restlessness. But silent and motionless as she was, she was deeply perturbing to Hugh. He found it impossible to return to the deep abstraction in which he had lost himself before she came. And he resented it. If any woman were to sit opposite him it should be Miriam. And only Miriam could have sounded the depths of his anger and pain with him.
After a time he found himself wondering why he could not go on with his thoughts as though she were not there. There had been a time when he could forget her though she were within hand touch, so complete had been the inner life he had built up for himself. But now he realized that with the coming of Miriam, that time had passed. It was impossible to ignore Jessie now. She interfered too much with his passionate pursuit of happiness.
She was looking at the fire and he stared at her profile. Something had been at work during the past year, refining the strength of Jessie’s face into a beauty that Hugh now grudgingly acknowledged to himself. She turned and caught his glance.
“Better eat your sandwiches, Hughie,” she said.
Hugh ignored the suggestion. “Jessie!” he cried. “How can you intrude on me this way! You know I’m in love with Miriam. You know it’s Miriam and not you that I’d wish to be here. Why can’t you care for Johnny Parnell and let me alone?”
Jessie looked at him steadily. “I have a right to be here,” she said, in a strained voice.
“A right!” cried Hugh. “Your rights ceased years ago, when you sneered at me because you found you couldn’t bend me to your lazy will.”
“I was a fool!” exclaimed Jessie. “How many times do you want me to admit it?”
“I don’t want you to admit it at all. I just want you to leave me alone. It’s not much to ask, is it, after what you and your father and mother have done to me?”
“No,” replied Jessie, sadly. “It’s not much to ask of me.”
Hugh eyed her, still resentfully. “With your brain and your strength you might so easily have kept on being all the world to me. And you didn’t care, Jessie, you didn’t care, until another woman took your place! That hurts me. It shouldn’t. But it does.”
Jessie did not reply, and with a desire for speech upon him as strong as hitherto had been the desire for silence, Hugh went on.
“Life is too short to be so filled with mistakes. My mistakes have been more than yours. But, at least at first, I was not mistaken about the importance of love in a man’s life and work. Or a woman’s. If you had loved me, your love would have weaned you from your mother and have made a big woman of you. And now it’s too late. It’s too late. We learn all of it when we are too old to enjoy the results of our enlightenment. I knew this to be so at Cheyenne.” He paused.
“What happened to make you know it at Cheyenne?” asked Jessie.
“It was old Whitson made me think of it,” returned Hugh, and suddenly, without conscious volition on his part, he began to pour out to her the story of his experiences at the state capital.
She was so silent, so motionless that Hugh was scarcely conscious that he was speaking aloud. When he had finished, she let the silence last for a long time before she said, softly:
“Hughie, if Miriam Page were out of the way, I could make you care for me as much as ever.”
She leaned toward him in the firelight and for a moment Hugh looked deep into her blue eyes. But he only shook his head and said sadly, “Too late, Jessie! The old thrill is gone. Make no mistake. I love Miriam as I never could love a woman again.”
Suddenly Jessie moved from her place opposite him and with a gesture of abandonment infinitely pathetic in its helplessness she dropped on the floor of the cave beside him, and laying her head on his knee she burst into racking sobs.
“Hughie! Hughie! My punishment is greater than I can bear!”
Hugh, his face lined with pain, looked down on the mass of chestnut braids.
“For God’s sake, Jessie, don’t! You make me feel like a brute. What do you want me to do? Pretend to love you when I don’t?”
But Jessie was beyond conversation. She wept on and on as if by tears she sought to wash out the mistakes of her selfish girlhood. After a moment or two, Hugh made no attempt to speak. He sat rigidly staring at her, pain, regret, resentment struggling for mastery within him. It seemed to him a very long time before Jessie raised her head and looking up into his face said:
“Hughie, I suppose that selfishness wrecks more lives than anything else in the world. My own has wrecked me and your own selfishness will ruin you if you don’t get a different view of life.”
“I can’t force myself to do the impossible,” replied Hugh.
Jessie returned slowly to her old seat. Hugh replenished the fire, then leaned wearily against the warm wall behind him and closed his eyes. Gradually his long body sagged in slumber. He had been asleep for some time when Jessie looked at her watch. It was past midnight and the moon was riding high over the river. After a moment’s gazing she crossed over to look at Hugh, breathing heavily against the wall. She kissed him softly on the lips and, stepping lightly, left the cave.
The sun was well up when Hugh made his way around a jutting rock to the spot where Fred had agreed to meet him with the horses. Fred was there. Also Pink Morgan. Both men were sitting their horses, but Pink was evidently present under duress, for Fred had an ancient six-shooter resting on his left arm.
“I brought Pink along, Hughie,” said Fred. “Picked him up down by the bridge.”
“Why did you do that?” asked Hugh.
“I think he can tell us what happened up in the Dinosaur Cave. He went up to see if you had hid the gray stallion there and he got peevish and broke up the whole works. I know him.”
Hugh looked at Pink carefully and was entirely convinced as to his guilt. But he felt sure it would only be a waste of time to try to prove the matter. However, Pink was a blunderer and might possibly be surprised into some sort of admission.
“Who helped you, Pink?” he asked suddenly. “You couldn’t have done all the wrecking.”
Pink grunted.
Fred shifted his gun and mimicked Pink’s grunt. “Sounds like the hog you are,” he said. “Gosh, but I’d like to make sausage of you. Wish you’d worked to git out just one of them dinosaurs and you might have some inkling of what scientists like me and Hughie do. You fat, bone-headed, salmon-faced, slavering keeper of a fifth-rate hotel. If I was Hughie I’d git the price of that dinosaur out of you if I had to burn down your boarding house and collect the insurance. I always did hate you, Pink.”
“That’s all right,” said Pink, with astounding calm. “I’ve got you two going. It’s worth taking your insults for. Keep it up, Fred. I like to hear you rave.” He dangled his feet comfortably free of the stirrups and wiped his nose on the back of his mitten.
Fred breathed deep and the hand that held the old gun twitched uneasily. Hugh stared at Pink as if he never before had seen him. His big blond hulk bore little resemblance to Jessie, yet he was Jessie’s father. Mrs. Morgan’s little bird-like frame, too, bore little of the look of Jessie. Yet the combination of the twain had produced the fine, clean-cut strength that was Jessie’s.
Hugh wanted to kill Pink. Quite coolly and clearly he stared at him, wondering at his paternity of Jessie and contemplating sending a bullet through his great chest. Fred smiled sardonically as his gaze traveled from the slow look of fury in Hugh’s face to the pallor that was gradually spreading over Pink’s.
“If I shoot you,” Hugh’s low voice was distinct above the rush of the river, “at the very worst they’d give me a life sentence for it. And that would solve all my problems. Fred, I think I’ll do it.” He put his hand to his hip.
Pink gave a howl and dug his horse’s belly with the spurs. The horse reared. Fred sent a shot above Pink’s head.
“We’ve got you, Pink. Let your horse go to sleep again,” he said.
Pink brought the horse to its former position and sat rigidly in the saddle. “If I’d had a gun, you’d never have tried this on me, you dogy-faced coyotes,” he snarled.
Hugh, keeping his hand on his hip, continued to eye Pink thoughtfully. This was Jessie’s father Jessie, who the night before had drenched his knees with her tears, because he no longer loved her. Well, if he no longer loved her, why hesitate over killing Pink?
She had been his wife. He had loved her madly, with an abandon that his mature years could not give to Miriam. Deep locked in his lonely and unhappy heart, the memory of that first year with Jessie was kept sacred by Hugh. He had not looked at it for years. And now, all undesired and uninvited, its subtle fragrance rose to shake his will.
Pink was her father.
Hugh, white to the lips, took his hand from his gun. “Pink,” he said, “you ride on down the trail. In the future, you let me alone.”
“O no!” exclaimed Fred. “He ain’t going to get off like that. Not after what he’s done. I got a right to say something, haven’t I, Hughie?”
“Yes, you have, Fred,” agreed Hugh. “Go ahead and say it.”
“I want the story of what he done to that dinosaur and who helped him.”
“Fred,” said Hugh, “I wish you’d let it go. It can’t bring the triceratops back and I’d rather not know who had a hand in it. I’ve finished this fight. All that I want of Pink is that he lets me alone.”
Fred, after a visible struggle, said, “Well, that don’t prevent my telling him what I think of him, does it?”
“No, you can do that as often as you wish. Anything else?”
“Yes! I want him to shut up about that stallion.”
“Good heavens, Fred! What do I care about his gab! What I want him to do is to return the horse to Red Wolf. He’ll do it, before the play ends. Anything else, Fred?”
Fred looked at the landlord of the Indian Massacre. “My God!” he exclaimed. “Don’t he look like one of his own custard pies! Git gone, you dirty road runner, you!”
And Pink trotted ignominiously down the trail.
The two men gave him ten minutes’ start. There was very little said while they waited. In fact, Fred ventured but two remarks.
“I’m kinda sorry you didn’t plug him.”
“After all,” repeated Hugh, “that wouldn’t have brought back the triceratops.”
“Is that what made you hold off?” asked Fred skeptically.
Hugh did not reply and the trip back to Fort Sioux was made in almost total silence. In fact, they were turning in at the home corral before Fred said:
“You got company.”
“Who is it?” grunted Hugh.
“That Mrs. Ellis. She come in on the ten o’clock flyer last night. She come right to The Lariat, but I shooed her over to the hotel. Told her I’d come for her this morning as soon as you was fixed up to receive visitors. She asked me if you’d got any spring books in yet. Guess she might be got to buy that set of second-hand Pansy books.”
“Wait till I get shaved and have some breakfast, Fred. Then you see to it that she and I have an hour or two alone, will you?”
“All right,” growled Fred “I’m glad she’s white-headed. Pretty soon The Lariat ain’t going to have any more reputation than a dance hall.”
But Hugh already was stamping in at the door of the book shop.