“Thet’s mighty interestin’, Miss Hammond, ‘most as interestin’ as a story-book,” he said. “Now, since you’re so obligin’ a witness, I’d sure like to put a question or two. What time did you arrive at El Cajon thet night?”

  “It was after eleven o’clock,” replied Madeline.

  “Nobody there to meet you?”

  “No.”

  “The station agent an’ operator both gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wal, how soon did this feller Stewart show up?” Hawe continued, with a wry smile.

  “Very soon after my arrival. I think — perhaps fifteen minutes, possibly a little more.”

  “Some dark an’ lonesome around thet station, wasn’t it?”

  “Indeed yes.”

  “An’ what time was the Greaser shot?” queried Hawe, with his little eyes gleaming like coals.

  “Probably close to half past one. It was two o’clock when I looked at my watch at Florence Kingsley’s house. Directly after Stewart sent Bonita away he took me to Miss Kingsley’s. So, allowing for the walk and a few minutes’ conversation with her, I can pretty definitely say the shooting took place at about half past one.”

  Stillwell heaved his big frame a step closer to the sheriff. “What ‘re you drivin’ at?” he roared, his face black again.

  “Evidence,” snapped Hawe.

  Madeline marveled at this interruption; and as Stewart irresistibly drew her glance she saw him gray-faced as ashes, shaking, utterly unnerved.

  “I thank you, Miss Hammond,” he said, huskily. “But you needn’t answer any more of Hawe’s questions. He’s — he’s — It’s not necessary. I’ll go with him now, under arrest. Bonita will corroborate your testimony in court, and that will save me from this — this man’s spite.”

  Madeline, looking at Stewart, seeing a humility she at first took for cowardice, suddenly divined that it was not fear for himself which made him dread further disclosures of that night, but fear for her — fear of shame she might suffer through him.

  Pat Hawe cocked his head to one side, like a vulture about to strike with his beak, and cunningly eyed Madeline.

  “Considered as testimony, what you’ve said is sure important an’ conclusive. But I’m calculatin’ thet the court will want to hev explained why you stayed from eleven-thirty till one-thirty in thet waitin’-room alone with Stewart.”

  His deliberate speech met with what Madeline imagined a remarkable reception from Stewart, who gave a tigerish start; from Stillwell, whose big hands tore at the neck of his shirt, as if he was choking; from Alfred, who now strode hotly forward, to be stopped by the cold and silent Nels; from Monty Price, who uttered a violent “Aw!” which was both a hiss and a roar.

  In the rush of her thought Madeline could not interpret the meaning of these things which seemed so strange at that moment. But they were portentous. Even as she was forming a reply to Hawe’s speech she felt a chill creep over her.

  “Stewart detained me in the waiting-room,” she said, clear-voiced as a bell. “But we were not alone — all the time.”

  For a moment the only sound following her words was a gasp from Stewart. Hawe’s face became transformed with a hideous amaze and joy.

  “Detained?” he whispered, craning his lean and corded neck. “How’s thet?”

  “Stewart was drunk. He—”

  With sudden passionate gesture of despair Stewart appealed to her:

  “Oh, Miss Hammond, don’t! don’t! DON’T!...”

  Then he seemed to sink down, head lowered upon his breast, in utter shame. Stillwell’s great hand swept to the bowed shoulder, and he turned to Madeline.

  “Miss Majesty, I reckon you’d be wise to tell all,” said the old cattleman, gravely. “There ain’t one of us who could misunderstand any motive or act of yours. Mebbe a stroke of lightnin’ might clear this murky air. Whatever Gene Stewart did that onlucky night — you tell it.”

  Madeline’s dignity and self-possession had been disturbed by Stewart’s importunity. She broke into swift, disconnected speech:

  “He came into the station — a few minutes after I got there. I asked-to be shown to a hotel. He said there wasn’t any that would accommodate married women. He grasped my hand — looked for a wedding-ring. Then I saw he was — he was intoxicated. He told me he would go for a hotel porter. But he came back with a padre — Padre Marcos. The poor priest was — terribly frightened. So was I. Stewart had turned into a devil. He fired his gun at the padre’s feet. He pushed me into a bench. Again he shot — right before my face. I — I nearly fainted. But I heard him cursing the padre — heard the padre praying or chanting — I didn’t know what. Stewart tried to make me say things in Spanish. All at once he asked my name. I told him. He jerked at my veil. I took it off. Then he threw his gun down — pushed the padre out of the door. That was just before the vaqueros approached with Bonita. Padre Marcos must have seen them — must have heard them. After that Stewart grew quickly sober. He was mortified — distressed — stricken with shame. He told me he had been drinking at a wedding — I remember, it was Ed Linton’s wedding. Then he explained — the boys were always gambling — he wagered he would marry the first girl who arrived at El Cajon. I happened to be the first one. He tried to force me to marry him. The rest — relating to the assault on the vaquero — I have already told you.”

  Madeline ended, out of breath and panting, with her hands pressed upon her heaving bosom. Revelation of that secret liberated emotion; those hurried outspoken words had made her throb and tremble and burn. Strangely then she thought of Alfred and his wrath. But he stood motionless, as if dazed. Stillwell was trying to holster up the crushed Stewart.

  Hawe rolled his red eyes and threw back his head.

  “Ho, ho, ho! Ho, ho, ho! Say, Sneed, you didn’t miss any of it, did ye? Haw, haw! Best I ever heerd in all my born days. Ho, ho!”

  Then he ceased laughing, and with glinting gaze upon Madeline, insolent and vicious and savage, he began to drawl:

  “Wal now, my lady, I reckon your story, if it tallies with Bonita’s an’ Padre Marcos’s, will clear Gene Stewart in the eyes of the court.” Here he grew slower, more biting, sharper and harder of face. “But you needn’t expect Pat Hawe or the court to swaller thet part of your story — about bein’ detained unwillin’!”

  Madeline had not time to grasp the sense of his last words. Stewart had convulsively sprung upward, white as chalk. As he leaped at Hawe Stillwell interposed his huge bulk and wrapped his arms around Stewart. There was a brief, whirling, wrestling struggle. Stewart appeared to be besting the old cattleman.

  “Help, boys, help!” yelled Stillwell. “I can’t hold him. Hurry, or there’s goin’ to be blood spilled!”

  Nick Steele and several cowboys leaped to Stillwell’s assistance. Stewart, getting free, tossed one aside and then another. They closed in on him. For an instant a furious straining wrestle of powerful bodies made rasp and shock and blow. Once Stewart heaved them from him. But they plunged back upon him — conquered him.

  “Gene! Why, Gene!” panted the old cattleman. “Sure you’re locoed — to act this way. Cool down! Cool down! Why, boy, it’s all right. Jest stand still — give us a chance to talk to you. It’s only ole Bill, you know — your ole pal who’s tried to be a daddy to you. He’s only wantin’ you to hev sense — to be cool — to wait.”

  “Let me go! Let me go!” cried Stewart; and the poignancy of that cry pierced Madeline’s heart. “Let me go, Bill, if you’re my friend. I saved your life once — over in the desert. You swore you’d never forget. Boys, make him let me go! Oh, I don’t care what Hawe’s said or done to me! It was that about her! Are you all a lot of Greasers? How can you stand it? Damn you for a lot of cowards! There’s a limit, I tell you.” Then his voice broke, fell to a whisper. “Bill, dear old Bill, let me go. I’ll kill him! You know I’ll kill him!”

  “Gene, I know you’d kill him if you hed an even break,” replied Stillwell, soothingly. “But, Gene, why, you ain’t even packin’ a gun! An’ there’s Pat lookin’ nasty, with his hand nervous-like. He seen you hed no gun. He’d jump at the chance to plug you now, an’ then holler about opposition to the law. Cool down, son; it’ll all come right.”

  Suddenly Madeline was transfixed by a terrible sound.

  Her startled glance shifted from the anxious group round Stewart to see that Monty Price had leaped off the porch. He crouched down with his bands below his hips, where the big guns swung. From his distorted lips issued that which was combined roar and bellow and Indian war-whoop, and, more than all, a horrible warning cry. He resembled a hunchback about to make the leap of a demon. He was quivering, vibrating. His eyes, black and hot, were fastened with most piercing intentness upon Hawe and Sneed.

  “Git back, Bill, git back!” he roared. “Git ’em back!” With one lunge Stillwell shoved Stewart and Nick and the other cowboys up on the porch. Then he crowded Madeline and Alfred and Florence to the wall, tried to force them farther. His motions were rapid and stern. But failing to get them through door and windows, he planted his wide person between the women and danger. Madeline grasped his arm, held on, and peered fearfully from behind his broad shoulder.

  “You, Hawe! You, Sneed!” called Monty, in that same wild voice. “Don’t you move a finger or an eyelash!”

  Madeline’s faculties nerved to keen, thrilling divination. She grasped the relation between Monty’s terrible cry and the strange hunched posture he had assumed. Stillwell’s haste and silence, too, were pregnant of catastrophe.

  “Nels, git in this!” yelled Monty; and all the time he never shifted his intent gaze as much as a hair’s-breadth from Hawe and his deputy. “Nels, chase away them two fellers hangin’ back there. Chase ‘em, quick!”

  These men, the two deputies who had remained in the background with the pack-horses, did not wait for Nels. They spurred their mounts, wheeled, and galloped away.

  “Now, Nels, cut the gurl loose,” ordered Monty.

  Nels ran forward, jerked the halter out of Sneed’s hand, and pulled Bonita’s horse in close to the porch. As he slit the rope which bound her she fell into his arms.

  “Hawe, git down!” went on Monty. “Face front an’ stiff!”

  The sheriff swung his leg, and, never moving his hands, with his face now a deathly, sickening white, he slid to the ground.

  “Line up there beside your guerrilla pard. There! You two make a damn fine pictoor, a damn fine team of pizened coyote an’ a cross between a wild mule an’ a Greaser. Now listen!”

  Monty made a long pause, in which his breathing was plainly audible.

  Madeline’s eyes were riveted upon Monty. Her mind, swift as lightning, had gathered the subtleties in action and word succeeding his domination of the men. Violence, terrible violence, the thing she had felt, the thing she had feared, the thing she had sought to eliminate from among her cowboys, was, after many months, about to be enacted before her eyes. It had come at last. She had softened Stillwell, she had influenced Nels, she had changed Stewart; but this little black-faced, terrible Monty Price now rose, as it were, out of his past wild years, and no power on earth or in heaven could stay his hand. It was the hard life of wild men in a wild country that was about to strike this blow at her. She did not shudder; she did not wish to blot out from sight this little man, terrible in his mood of wild justice. She suffered a flash of horror that Monty, blind and dead to her authority, cold as steel toward her presence, understood the deeps of a woman’s soul. For in this moment of strife, of insult to her, of torture to the man she had uplifted and then broken, the passion of her reached deep toward primitive hate. With eyes slowly hazing red, she watched Monty Price; she listened with thrumming ears; she waited, slowly sagging against Stillwell.

  “Hawe, if you an’ your dirty pard hev loved the sound of human voice, then listen an’ listen hard,” said Monty. “Fer I’ve been goin’ contrary to my ole style jest to hev a talk with you. You all but got away on your nerve, didn’t you? ‘Cause why? You roll in here like a mad steer an’ flash yer badge an’ talk mean, then almost bluff away with it. You heerd all about Miss Hammond’s cowboy outfit stoppin’ drinkin’ an’ cussin’ an’ packin’ guns. They’ve took on religion an’ decent livin’, an’ sure they’ll be easy to hobble an’ drive to jail. Hawe, listen. There was a good an’ noble an be-ootiful woman come out of the East somewheres, an’ she brought a lot of sunshine an’ happiness an’ new idees into the tough lives of cowboys. I reckon it’s beyond you to know what she come to mean to them. Wal, I’ll tell you. They-all went clean out of their heads. They-all got soft an’ easy an’ sweet-tempered. They got so they couldn’t kill a coyote, a crippled calf in a mud-hole. They took to books, an’ writin’ home to mother an’ sister, an’ to savin’ money, an’ to gittin’ married. Onct they was only a lot of poor cowboys, an’ then sudden-like they was human bein’s, livin’ in a big world thet hed somethin’ sweet even fer them. Even fer me — an ole, worn-out, hobble-legged, burned-up cowman like me! Do you git thet? An’ you, Mister Hawe, you come along, not satisfied with ropin’ an’ beatin’, an’ Gaw knows what else, of thet friendless little Bonita; you come along an’ face the lady we fellers honor an’ love an’ reverence, an’ you — you — Hell’s fire!”

  With whistling breath, foaming at the mouth, Monty Price crouched lower, hands at his hips, and he edged inch by inch farther out from the porch, closer to Hawe and Sneed. Madeline saw them only in the blurred fringe of her sight. They resembled specters. She heard the shrill whistle of a horse and recognized Majesty calling her from the corral.

  “Thet’s all!” roared Monty, in a voice now strangling. Lower and lower he bent, a terrible figure of ferocity. “Now, both you armed ocifers of the law, come on! Flash your guns! Throw ‘em, an’ be quick! Monty Price is done! There’ll be daylight through you both before you fan a hammer! But I’m givin’ you a chanst to sting me. You holler law, an’ my way is the ole law.”

  His breath came quicker, his voice grew hoarser, and he crouched lower. All his body except his rigid arms quivered with a wonderful muscular convulsion.

  “Dogs! Skunks! Buzzards! Flash them guns, er I’ll flash mine! Aha!”

  To Madeline it seemed the three stiff, crouching men leaped into instant and united action. She saw streaks of fire — streaks of smoke. Then a crashing volley deafened her. It ceased as quickly. Smoke veiled the scene. Slowly it drifted away to disclose three fallen men, one of whom, Monty, leaned on his left hand, a smoking gun in his right. He watched for a movement from the other two. It did not come. Then, with a terrible smile, he slid back and stretched out.

  XXI. Unbridled

  IN WAKING AND sleeping hours Madeline Hammond could not release herself from the thralling memory of that tragedy. She was haunted by Monty Price’s terrible smile. Only in action of some kind could she escape; and to that end she worked, she walked and rode. She even overcame a strong feeling, which she feared was unreasonable disgust, for the Mexican girl Bonita, who lay ill at the ranch, bruised and feverish, in need of skilful nursing.

  Madeline felt there was something inscrutable changing her soul. That strife — the struggle to decide her destiny for East or West — held still further aloof. She was never spiritually alone. There was a step on her trail. Indoors she was oppressed. She required the open — the light and wind, the sight of endless slope, the sounds of corral and pond and field, physical things, natural things.

  One afternoon she rode down to the alfalfa-fields, round them, and back up to the spillway of the lower lake, where a group of mesquite-trees, owing to the water that seeped through the sand to their roots, had taken on bloom and beauty of renewed life. Under these trees there was shade enough to make a pleasant place to linger. Madeline dismounted, desiring to rest a little. She liked this quiet, lonely spot. It was really the only secluded nook near the house. If she rode down into the valley or out to the mesa or up on the foothills she could not go alone. Probably now Stillwell or Nels knew her whereabouts. But as she was comparatively hidden here, she imagined a solitude that was not actually hers.

  Her horse, Majesty, tossed his head and flung his mane and switched his tail at the flies. He would rather have been cutting the wind down the valley slope. Madeline sat with her back against a tree, and took off her sombrero. The soft breeze, fanning her hot face, blowing strands of her hair, was refreshingly cool. She heard the slow tramp of cattle going in to drink. That sound ceased, and the grove of mesquites appeared to be lifeless, except for her and her horse. It was, however, only after moments of attention that she found the place was far from being dead. Keen eyes and ears brought reward. Desert quail, as gray as the bare earth, were dusting themselves in a shady spot. A bee, swift as light, hummed by. She saw a horned toad, the color of stone, squatting low, hiding fearfully in the sand within reach of her whip. She extended the point of the whip, and the toad quivered and swelled and hissed. It was instinct with fight. The wind faintly stirred the thin foliage of the mesquites, making a mournful sigh. From far up in the foothills, barely distinguishable, came the scream of an eagle. The bray of a burro brought a brief, discordant break. Then a brown bird darted down from an unseen perch and made a swift, irregular flight after a fluttering winged insect. Madeline heard the sharp snapping of a merciless beak. Indeed, there was more than life in the shade of the mesquites.

  Suddenly Majesty picked up his long ears and snorted. Then Madeline heard a slow pad of hoofs. A horse was approaching from the direction of the lake. Madeline had learned to be wary, and, mounting Majesty, she turned him toward the open. A moment later she felt glad of her caution, for, looking back between the trees, she saw Stewart leading a horse into the grove. She would as lief have met a guerrilla as this cowboy.

  Majesty had broken into a trot when a shrill whistle rent the air. The horse leaped and, wheeling so swiftly that he nearly unseated Madeline, he charged back straight for the mesquites. Madeline spoke to him, cried angrily at him, pulled with all her strength upon the bridle, but was helplessly unable to stop him. He whistled a piercing blast. Madeline realized then that Stewart, his old master, had called him and that nothing could turn him. She gave up trying, and attended to the urgent need of intercepting mesquite boughs that Majesty thrashed into motion. The horse thumped into an aisle between the trees and, stopping before Stewart, whinnied eagerly.