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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Raider," Charles Alden Seltzer crafts an exhilarating tale set against the rugged backdrop of the American West, embodying the spirit of adventure and the moral complexities within the frontier archetype. The narrative follows a fearless protagonist, whose confrontations with outlaws and his quest for justice delve into themes of honor, loyalty, and the essence of heroism. Seltzer's vivid prose and dynamic characterizations reflect his keen understanding of the early 20th-century American literary landscape, aligning with the pulp fiction movement yet infused with a nuanced ethical contemplation that elevates the genre beyond mere escapism. Charles Alden Seltzer, a prominent figure in early American popular literature, drew from his own experiences and fascination with the Wild West to create compelling narratives that resonate with readers. His extensive background in journalism and his travels through the American frontier endowed him with authentic insight into the lives and struggles of his characters. Through "The Raider," Seltzer channels a profound exploration of human values against the backdrop of the untamed American landscape, revealing not only the thrill of adventure but also the depths of the human spirit. For readers who appreciate gripping narratives that challenge conventional morality and delve into the psyche of their characters, "The Raider" stands as a must-read. Seltzer's masterful storytelling and evocative setting will captivate those yearning for an authentic Western adventure, making it a significant addition to the library of anyone interested in American literature and its cultural reflections.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Raider
Table of Contents
Chapter One
It was not until Ellen came in sight of the cabin that the awesome and austere history of the Ballinger family assailed her memory. The background of her ancestry was peopled with solemn-visaged men and women who watched her with formidable disapprobation. They were dignified ancestors whose mode of living was as sacred as a religious ritual. They never did anything wrong. They were moral, staid, and undemonstrative. The men were stiff necked; the women never permitted an adventurous gaze to stir the jealousy of their wedded mates. No scandal marred the fair record of the Ballinger family.
No scandal until now. At least Ellen’s father, Matthew M. Ballinger, had insisted that she was disgracing the family, and of course he ought to know for he was more familiar with the family history than Ellen.
Ellen was not interested in the family history as much as she was interested in knowing what was going on in the courageous heart which had sent her to search for Jim Kellis’s cabin. She had ridden twenty miles into the wilderness seeking it. And here it was, standing in a grove of pine and air balsam not more than a hundred yards from where she sat on her pony. The wilderness through which she had been riding encompassed the grove. It spread an endless number of miles to the purple mountains southward, eastward, and westward. This wilderness was featured by rugged cliffs and crags that appeared suddenly; it was dotted here and there by bastioned towers of polychromatic granite, slender spires and huge battlements. The dun earth was gashed by wild gorges, sandy arroyos, barrancas.
It had seemed to her that something had followed her from the instant she had left her father’s ranch house. The something was invisible. An atmosphere. A threat or a menace. An imponderable something like a whisper which is stilled at its inception. Ellen grimly wondered if it were the Family breathing its disapproval.
Well, of the family there still remained her father and a brother. Her mother she had never known. Her mother had not been a Ballinger and in dying while giving birth to Ellen she had escaped the rigorous, silent scrutiny of the family, and perhaps the blame for Ellen’s unconventional escapades.
Ellen had refused to inherit the dignity and the austerity of her ancestors, and back East in a long gallery where the walls were adorned with the portraits of beautiful ladies, she had often mocked at their solemn faces.
Something of theirs she had inherited at least—their beauty. And yet she was not entirely conscious that she possessed it. For now, sitting on her pony, while her cheeks crimsoned with embarrassment, she was not vainly thinking of how delighted Jim Kellis would be to see her again, but of how eager she was to look upon him.
She hadn’t seen Jim Kellis in five years. She had been twenty and Kellis twenty-three when he had come West. He had belonged to her “set,” and he had been improvident and weak. Yet she had loved him then and during the separation she had invested him with the character of a hero. He had been the only man of her acquaintance who had had the courage to journey to a new country. He had been weak and careless, yet he had grit enough to endure hardship and loneliness in an attempt to fight back to his former position. She loved Jim for that. The others, being merely men, were nothing to her. She wanted Jim Kellis and she meant to have him in spite of the solemn-visaged ancestors who at this moment seemed to be standing in the background wagging their heads at her.
She was not usually conscious of her ancestors. There had been many times when she had calmly ignored her father’s advice. As in the present.
“No woman of the Ballinger family ever chased after a man!” Matthew M. Ballinger had told her.
“Would that explain why the men they did get were so spiritless?” she naïvely asked. “I shouldn’t care to have a man unless I wanted him badly enough to make an effort to catch him.”
“Are you sure Jim Kellis wants you?” questioned Ballinger.
“I am not sure. He told me he wanted me. But I want him. That is why I am going to him,” she told her father on the day following their arrival at the Hour Glass ranch.
“Has Kellis kept you informed of what he has been doing?” asked Ballinger.
“He has written me letters.”
“You know where he may be found?”
“Yes.”
“This is the first time you have been out here with me,” said her father. “You know nothing whatever about the country. I’ll send Jim Peters with you.” Jim Peters was the Hour Glass foreman.
“I’m going alone. Thank you for offering Peters, Dad.”
Ballinger’s lips tightened. In his business organization there were five thousand men with business brains who accepted his suggestions and commands with deferential bows. But his daughter stood straight and looked him squarely in the eye and declined to be guided by him.
He flushed, turned away.
“All right then,” he said. He faced her again.
“What are you going to do when you find Kellis?” he asked.
“Marry him.”
“To-night?”
“Of course.”
Ballinger frowned.
“There is a justice over at Randall. It’s thirty miles from here. A new town. I’ve never been over there, but I hear it’s tough. You could have Kellis take you there. If you don’t find Kellis you’d better ride right back here. Don’t you want me to have Jim Peters come after you to-night? If you have gone on to Randall to marry Kellis of course Peters could come right back.”
There should have been a certain wistfulness in Ballinger’s eyes just now. What Ellen imagined she saw was a gleam of mockery.
“I’ll manage without Peters,” she said. “Thank you again, Dad.”
Ballinger ejaculated something that sounded like “Bah!”, and left her.
Now she sat gazing at the cabin which she felt belonged to Kellis. She sat in the saddle, half expecting that presently Kellis would hail her and come running toward her. His eyes, naturally, would be alight with amazement and delight.
However, Kellis did not appear, and no sound came from the cabin.
There was no sound anywhere. A flat, dead silence surrounded Ellen, seemed to press in upon her, to enfold her. The sky was white and cloudless. There was no breeze and the leaves of the trees dropped inertly. The denizens of the thickets were quiet. When Ellen’s pony had sagged to a halt all motion had ceased.
Yet the invisible menace which had followed her all day seemed to surround her. It seemed to be in the atmosphere; a brooding calm, as if nature was waiting patiently and grimly for something to happen.
A great deal of dust had accumulated upon Ellen’s riding habit, which she had brought with her from the East. The cloth was brown, matching her hair and her eyes and blending harmoniously with the peach bloom of perfect health that shone in her cheeks. There was the great calm of self-confidence in her mannerisms; intelligence and not too much worldliness was in her gaze as she waited in the silence.
She was positive she hadn’t made a mistake in direction, for while Jim Kellis’s letters had been more or less sketchy they had explained fully enough about the trail that led from the Hour Glass to the cabin where he professed to lead a “lonely existence.” She had made no mistake, for there was the flat he had written about; there was the river wandering through the centre of it, and there was the cabin with its log walls and its roof of adobe.
She rode forward through the trees to a small door-yard in front of the cabin, where she pulled her pony down and sat motionless in the saddle, staring.
There was a small porch built of poles. It had an adobe roof and its floor was of earth packed to a rock-like consistency and cracked with the dryness. A bench with a pail and a tin basin stood against the wall under the porch. From one of the slender porch columns to a tree about fifty feet distant was stretched a line from which were suspended several nondescript pieces of cloth which had evidently been washed and thrown over the line to dry. The water in which the pieces of cloth had been washed had been thrown upon the ground near the edge of the porch. It was steaming in the sun and its odour was unpleasant. Sitting on a grass matting which was spread over a section of the earth floor of the porch was a dark-skinned young woman holding a child of three or four.
The young woman was handsome. Her face was oval, her eyes were black and lustrous. Her coarse black hair was combed smoothly back from her forehead and coiled in glistening curves at the nape of her neck. A bright coloured mantilla was lying loosely upon her shoulders, disclosing a necklace of turquoise stones. She wore a loose dress of violent green and red cloth which was caught together at the waist with a coloured embroidered girdle. Grass cloth slippers were on her feet. The child was arrayed like the mother.
Neither moved. The mother watched Ellen with uncompromising steadiness in which there was no suggestion of warmth; the child stared with frank curiosity.
“I beg your pardon,” said Ellen. “It seems I have made a mistake, after all. Perhaps you will be able to direct me? I am looking for a man named Jim Kellis.”
The woman’s eyes gleamed, chilled.
“What you want weeth Jim Kellis?”
“Why I merely wish to see him.”
“What for?”
“My reasons for wishing to see him cannot concern you,” said Ellen.
“Jim Kellis my man,” stated the woman, jealously, defensively.
Ellen gasped. The peach-bloom colour fled from her cheeks.
“Your man!” she said in a weak voice. “Do you mean to say that Jim Kellis is your husband?”
The woman nodded vigorously.
“He marry me before the Padre four year ago,” she answered. “Now you tell me what you want weeth him?” she added.
“Nothing,” returned Ellen.
Chapter Two
For a reason which Ellen could not at once explain the atmosphere had chilled and an unsmiling sky stretched over a section of country that had suddenly become grim and bleak. She had definitely declined her father’s advice and assistance, and now she was deep in the wilderness, alone, and facing the prospect of a ride of more than twenty miles through the night.
She observed that the sky was already darkening, that the sun had gone down and that purple shadows were stealing around her. Moreover, mingling with her inexpressible disappointment over the dereliction of Jim Kellis was a conviction that the Ballinger ancestors were watching her and derisively laughing at her.
Her pride had been hurt, also. She had carried the Ballinger family honour into the wilderness to see it contemptibly ignored. Worse, there was nothing she could do about it.
Obviously, she could not seek Jim Kellis and demand an explanation. There could be no explanation. And she didn’t want to see Kellis again.
She couldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. But her cheeks had whitened from the conflict that her emotions were waging, and there must have been something in her appearance to arouse the pity and sympathy of the Mexican woman, for the latter invited gently:
“You tired. You rest.”
“Tired? Oh no!” Ellen’s laugh was far from being the spontaneous lilt it had always been. There was now a grim note in it.
She had been shocked, of course, and the sympathy of the Mexican woman was a humiliation. But the Ballinger brain was still functioning with its customary energy, the Ballinger dignity had not deserted her; and the cool calm of the sophistication she had spent years in acquiring was concealing her mental distress.
“Thank you,” she added. “But I can’t stop. I am on my way to Randall. You see, I knew Mr. Kellis slightly some years ago. I heard he was out here and I merely wished to inquire about him.”
“Jim away.”
“Yes; I understand.” She smiled sweetly. “When he returns you may tell him that Ellen Ballinger passed. He will be surprised.”
“You Ballinger girl, eh?” There was new interest in the woman’s voice. “You father own the Hour Glass?”
Ellen nodded.
The woman seemed to brighten; her voice became eager.
“Then mebbe you father send for me for work, eh?”
“Have you worked at the Hour Glass?”
“Many time. Jim know you father—well. Me too.”
Ellen’s pulses leaped but she smiled disarmingly.
“But father does not know that you and Jim are married, does he?”
“Oh yes; he know. Him give me present, many time. Ya se ve! He know!”
So that was why her father had suggested sending Jim Peters as an escort! He knew Jim Kellis was married and that she had been starting upon a fool’s errand. He had permitted her to go, not volunteering to tell her. Perhaps he had wanted her to find out for herself, thinking such a shock would be good for her. He had often spoken of what he had been pleased to call “the cockiness of the girls of the present generation,” intimating that a great deal of it should be knocked out of them.
She had heard much of that gospel. All of it resulted from clouded vision and forgetfulness of the shortcomings of the youth of the preceding generation. Twaddle! If she had been as impudent as her father she could have reminded him that he had never been exactly perfect. She could see him from a different angle than that from which he viewed himself, just as he could see her. The difference was that she knew it and he didn’t.
But this trick had been a mean one. He knew that she had always liked Jim Kellis, and telling her of Kellis’s marriage should have been his duty. He had deliberately humiliated her!
Her lips settled into straight lines and the peach-bloom colour again flooded her cheeks.
She smiled at Jim Kellis’s wife.
“I wish you every happiness,” she said.
“Gracias, señorita.”
Ellen rode southward, past the cabin, continuing in the direction she had travelled all day. She certainly would not return to the Hour Glass that night. Perhaps she would not return at all. What a senseless attempt at discipline. How crude, how brutal!
The peach-bloom cheeks were a flaming red as Ellen rode southward into the darkening world. The more she reflected upon her father’s action the more bitter became her resentment. Considering the hatred she now bore her parent she wondered if she had ever loved him.
Ballinger had never been like other fathers. He had done things toward her that shouldn’t have been done. Petty things, mean things—like sending her on this wild goose chase. He’d never given her the love and the consideration he should have given her—that he owed her. Fancy his playing with her affections like that.
But that was a Ballinger family trait—derision. She had observed how it had appeared upon the faces of the ancestors in the photographs. Cold pride, arrogance. She wondered if her mother had known; if that had been the reason her mother had set aside a separate fortune for her, making her independent of the Ballinger money? She silently blessed her mother, as she now vividly remembered the wise, tender, knowing eyes that always gazed out at her from various pictures she treasured.
She rode into a forest which was so dark and forbidding that she would have been frightened had she not been so furiously angry. She had been betrayed by Kellis and mocked at by her father.
She got out of the forest, crossed the river at a shallow and sent her pony through a swale whose southern side was topped by a bare ridge. By the time she gained the crest of the ridge her mood had changed and she was indulging in silent laughter which was inspired by a strange and reckless impulse which had seized her.
She had always been reckless. Some wild and perverse strain in her had made her contemptuous of the code of laws which people referred to as the conventions. Laws were made for people who were not original enough to think for themselves. “No woman of the Ballinger family has ever chased after a man, eh?” she said, aloud, nodding her head at the deep shadows that were slowly closing around her. “Well, Matthew M. Ballinger, this member of the Ballinger family is going to get herself a man before she goes back to the family circle! I will get the first man that looks good to me! And after I get him I’ll make him ride with me to the Hour Glass. And then——”
How it happened she never discovered. She only felt the pony stumble, try to recover his equilibrium, slip and fall. She went out of the saddle, struck on her head and a shoulder and sank into an abyss whose atmosphere was vivid with dazzling flashes of light. She did not see the pony roll to the bottom of the ridge, nor was she aware that she was stretched out, flat on her back, a few feet from the animal.
Chapter Three
For a long time Ellen had been conscious of motion, although the darkness was so dense that she could not determine whether her eyes were open or closed. There was an excruciating pain in the top of her head, her right shoulder was throbbing, and her arms were so heavy that she could not lift them. Also, she seemed to be suffocating. Something was covering her mouth. From its width she judged the something was a handkerchief. It was drawn tightly and when she attempted to lift her hands to remove it she was amazed to discover that her arms seemed to be bound to her sides.
Her legs were not bound. She was astride a horse, for she could feel the animal’s muscles writhing under her. The horse was not her own because she could not bind herself in this manner and mount him. Besides, she could hear somebody breathing over her shoulder. A man.
She speculated upon the man’s identity and tried to remember what had happened to her. She finally recalled that her pony had stumbled and that she had fallen out of the saddle. That would account for the pains in her head and shoulder, but there was still the presence of the man to be explained.
The man was probably Jim Peters. He had been following her and when she had not returned toward the Hour Glass after leaving the Kellis cabin he had trailed her. He must have been close when her pony stumbled and had taken advantage of her helplessness to bind her so that she could not resist. Possibly Jim Peters was a man who did not care to argue with a woman.
She was furiously indignant. Because she could not speak and tell Peters what she thought of him for binding her she kicked savagely at his shins with the heels of her riding boots. Moreover, she kicked a shin, for he growled:
“Awake an’ kickin’, eh? Well, you kick me in the shins again an’ I’ll fetch you a wallop alongside the jaw that’ll knock some of the nonsense out of you!”
The man was not Jim Peters!
She was startled, chilled with apprehension, but not intimidated. She tried to express her opinion of the man but her words were muffled into unintelligible mutterings.
“That’s all right,” said the man. “Talk as much as you can. It won’t bother me any because I can’t understand you. All women ought to be gagged, anyway. Just keep your shirt on. I’ll take that gag off after we get where we’re goin’. Then you can shoot off your gab as much as you please.”
She wanted to tell him that she was Ellen Ballinger and that all the power of the Ballinger fortune would be exerted to make him suffer for what he was doing. But the sounds she made could not be interpreted. And he went on, calmly:
“This is one time I even things with Matthew M. Ballinger! If he likes you as well as he ought to he’ll be throwin’ a fit when you don’t go back to the Hour Glass!”
So the man was not afraid of the Ballinger power. In fact, he was deliberately challenging it. And she was not to return to the Hour Glass! This man was an enemy and was striking at her father through her. Obviously, he intended holding her for ransom.
She wasn’t frightened now. She wasn’t even angry any more. If it hadn’t been for the handkerchief that covered her mouth she would have been amused. For she knew something of her father’s methods, of his temper when aroused to wrath, and she anticipated that her abductor would get neither enjoyment nor money out of his adventure with her.
As for herself—she didn’t care. She was rather glad something had happened to her, for if they found her and took her back to the Hour Glass she would not have to make any embarrassing explanations about Jim Kellis. Only she would rather escape than be rescued or ransomed.
She was not romantic. She was getting no thrill whatever out of her present predicament. Nothing but discomfort. She didn’t even speculate about the personal appearance of her captor. He might be handsome, but she had met any number of handsome men and had never liked any of them. What she had always looked for in men she had never found—sincerity and naturalness. Even her father posed for her benefit. She had heard him lie and equivocate and boast. She had heard other men say things they had not meant; had seen them pose when they thought they were watched. She had seen them affect politeness and sympathy when they thought such acting would impress others. She was tired of them all and she had liked Jim Kellis because he was weak and didn’t pretend. And even Kellis had failed her.
She would have liked to ask this man what he had against her father. But she couldn’t talk. He was a coward, anyway, or he wouldn’t have tied her. She couldn’t see his face, of course, no more than she could see other objects, but of course when daylight came she would see him, and he couldn’t keep the handkerchief around her mouth forever. And when she finally did get the handkerchief off she would tell him just what she thought of him.
Meanwhile, they were going somewhere, though she didn’t know where. Of course he was taking her to some secret retreat where he could hold her in safety while he collected the money he was after. He probably belonged to a band of outlaws.
He didn’t talk any more, but she assured herself that she would never forget his voice; that she would know it wherever she heard it. She had never heard another voice like it. It had a burr in it. The key to his enunciation was in the word “shirt.” He had said “shurrut.”
She hadn’t any idea how long she had been riding with him and there was no way of her determining in which direction they were going. He was riding behind her, and now and then he placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her, indicating that the trail was rough and that he was no stranger to it.
Once they crossed a river at a shallow, for though she could hear the water splashing it did not touch her. Again they were going through some long grass; she felt it and heard it as it rasped against her boots. Then through some timber, for he told her to “stoop low” and pressed a hand heavily upon her shoulder.
She felt they must have been riding more than an hour when he pulled the horse to a halt.
“We’ll get off here,” he said. “Don’t try any monkey-shines or I’ll slap your mouth.”
He pulled her out of the saddle and deposited her on the ground. She felt he had held her unnecessarily tight in getting her down and she showed her resentment by trying to wriggle out of his grasp and by attempting to kick his legs. He merely held her tighter and laughed at her.
And now for the first time she feared him, and she did not resist as he led her into the darkness. It was not until she felt a shoulder come in contact with a wall that she decided he was taking her to some sort of a house.
She heard a door creak on its hinges and she was pushed through it and across a floor to a bed or a trunk. He forced her to its edge and left her, saying shortly:
“You’ll stay here for a while!”
He went out and she heard him close the door. She sat quietly in the silence and the darkness, listening, trying to penetrate the blackness around her.
She heard no sound and finally became convinced that she was alone. She now realized that she had been afraid he had been bringing her among men of his kind. She trembled a little, but her chief emotion was that of resentment for her father’s action in permitting her to get into this sort of a predicament. For if he had been frank with her she would not have undertaken the journey.
She had been sitting on the edge of the bunk for about an hour when she observed that the moon was rising. At first the darkness was tinged with a luminous glow which grew and expanded until, looking out of a window—which she perceived was barred—she could see some trees just outside, and a small clearing.
She was in a room in which there were a number of bunks similar to the one upon whose edge she was sitting. There was only one door, that through which she had entered, and it was tightly closed and evidently barred from the outside. There was only one window, and that also was barred.
There was bedding in the bunks, which was eloquent evidence that men were in the habit of sleeping here. No woman could sleep in any of the bunks. At least no woman would.
She could not see the entire length of the room, for only a square of moonlight entered, and that merely struck the wall near her, disclosing the bunks and a section of the floor.
The floor was dirty. Mud which had been turned to dust had left the prints of men’s boots here and there. She was certain no woman had walked in the room.
But she grew weary of the silence, so she got up and walked about the room and peered out of the window.
She could see very little of the outside, and what there was of it seemed to have no living thing in it. But as she stood at one side of the window, leaning against one side of the frame, her head came into contact with something hard and unyielding. Turning, she saw that a small shelf had been built against the wall near the window frame. Looking at the shelf she was seized with an inspiration. She backed against the wall and found that the edge of the shelf reached the back of her head just above the point where her captor had knotted the handkerchief which covered her mouth. By standing on tiptoe she got the edge of the shelf under the knot, and by rubbing it and working her head up and down she succeeded in slipping the handkerchief over the top of her head.
She could breathe freely now, and she stood for some time at the window filling her lungs with the keen, bracing air that floated in.
Leaving the window she searched the room in the hope of finding some article which would aid her in freeing her arms. But she was unsuccessful and again went back to the window.
She stood there for a long time, watching, listening. No sound reached her and she grew tired of standing. Her head still ached and her arms were numbed from the ropes which were wound tightly about them, but she fought against the inclination to lie in one of the bunks, knowing that once she stretched out she would go to sleep. And she didn’t want to sleep until she discovered what her captor’s intentions were.
She went to sleep standing beside the window, though, for she caught herself nodding and became aware of distant sounds at the instant her mind resumed its activity. The sounds were the crashing of brush, the rushing clatter of hoofs, and two pistol shots, the first closely followed by the second.
She stiffened, listened intently.
The sounds of crashing brush continued and the clattering of hoofs seemed to come nearer, but there were no more shots.
The sounds appeared to come from the timber which she could see from the window, and she got the impression that a number of horsemen were rushing through the trees and the thick, wild brush.
Then she saw a horseman burst out of the edge of the timber on the far side of the clearing, observed him, crouching over the animal’s head, coming straight toward the window. He was furiously spurring the horse he was riding, and his cursing could be heard above the thunderous rataplan of hoofs. He swerved when within fifty or sixty feet of the window, passed the door through which Ellen had entered the room and went on, somewhere, into the country beyond.
Silence swept in behind him. Five minutes of silence which was heavy with portent. Then again came the thunder of hoofs beating upon the hard earth of a distant open stretch of country, followed by a heavy crashing as of a band of horsemen concertedly breasting the natural forest barriers. Then the timber at the edge of the clearing became animate with leaping, plunging horses and their riders.
There were six riders, Ellen observed. They crossed the clearing and were racing past the door when one of them shouted. There was a prodigious scuffling and grunting and snorting from impatient horses pulled to a sudden halt. Then a silence. After that a voice:
“Well, he’s got away.”
A laugh.
“One didn’t,” said another voice.
“He sure was fannin’ it,” said still another voice. “The devil couldn’t ketch him, the way he was ridin’. I was sure I’d burned him, the second shot. But I reckon not, or he wouldn’t be so active.”
“We throwed a scare into that guy, anyway,” said a fourth voice. “An’ we can be mighty certain Hank Kroll won’t steal any more hosses.”
The horsemen seemed to be grouped near the door. Ellen heard a match strike, detected the odour of a cigarette.
“It’s off for to-night, I reckon,” said the first voice. “That second guy will keep goin’, if his horse don’t break a leg.”
“What did you holler for, Jeff?” asked one man. “We might have ketched him.”
“Horse,” replied the one addressed as “Jeff,” “in that clump of juniper. Hobbled, ain’t he? Look at his brand.”
There followed a silence and then a voice, fainter than the others, called out:
“A bay. Blaze face. Hour Glass.”
Ellen’s horse. The one she had ridden all day. She had wondered what had become of it; now she realized that her captor had led it to this place. She had not been able to see in the darkness, nor had she heard the horse following.
“Hour Glass, eh,” said Jeff. “Ballinger hardly gets here when they begin to steal his horses. You didn’t get a look at the fellow that came through here?”
“Not a look,” came the answer. “An’ I ain’t sure he was with the guy we swung. He swore he was alone, you recollect.”
“Lying to save his hide, I reckon,” came Jeff’s voice.
Standing beside the window, Ellen gasped.
These men had hanged a man! They were murderers!
“Whew!” exclaimed a voice. “Kroll sure showed yellow, didn’t he? It made my hair raise to watch him! Far as I’m concerned I’ll be seein’ Kroll to the day I cash in!”
“Kroll can’t blame nobody but himself, Bill,” said one of the men. “He had it comin’ to him an’ he knowed it was comin’. An’ if a man keeps stealin’ horses an’ the law don’t take a hand—an’ won’t take a hand—why folks has got to do their own hangin’!”
“Sure, that’s right,” agreed the other. “But I keep seein’ him. Seein’ the way he——”
“Bill,” said the other speaker, “Kroll didn’t feel as soft as you when he shot Ed and Tim the night he was ’most caught runnin’ off them Bar K hosses!”
“That’s right,” agreed Bill.
There was a creaking of saddle leather, and Ellen knew from the sound that someone was dismounting. She had feared the riders would enter the house and find her, and for the first time since the beginning of her adventure she trembled with apprehension.
However, there was no place to conceal herself. She would not get into one of the bunks! And she certainly would not cower into a corner! She wasn’t afraid, even if she was trembling. So she held her position at the window, although she was hoping that none of the men would enter.
And then she heard a sound at the door. The door opened inward, slowly, and a man stood on the threshold, peering into the room. He was a tall man, lithe and well built. The moonlight that flooded the doorway revealed his broad shoulders, his gauntleted wrists, the leather chaps on his long legs, the heavy Colt low on his right hip. His hat was pulled over his forehead.
He did not enter the room, but stood in the doorway. He was motionless, rigid, and Ellen knew her presence in the room had amazed him. He almost bowed to her, she was certain.
