The Forfeit Part 45

A glimmer of light, like some distant star fallen to earth from its velvet setting above, marked the station, house. It was visible at a great distance down the flat stretch of the valley. The ranchman's horse was headed directly for it, and the animal moved readily, eagerly now, nor were the spurs needed to urge him further. The instinct of its journey's end was sufficient to encourage its flagging spirits.

The distant light grew brighter. It took on the rectangular form of a window opening in a log-built hut.

Jeffrey Masters had fixed his gaze upon it, and so the shadowy scene about him pa.s.sed all unnoticed. He saw nothing of the darker objects lying on the ground adjacent to his way. The slumbering kine which bore his brand remained all unheeded. He had no thought for them. His course took him over a track which pa.s.sed down a land between two fenced pastures. These, too, were stocked with fattening steers, or with the brood cows and their attendant calves. At another time, under other conditions, these things would have held for him an absorbing interest. Now they concerned him not at all.

The dark pastures gave place to a number of corrals, also lost in the summer night. A dog barked. Then, in a moment, its sharp yelps became silent, and the stillness became once more unbroken except for the hard pounding hoofs of the two hors.e.m.e.n approaching.

A few moments later these sounds ceased as the dark outline of the station house itself took shape.

For a few seconds Jeff gazed at the window opening where the light from within was still s.h.i.+ning. A sound had caught and held his attention.

It came from within the hut, and there was no mistaking it. It was the sound inspired by physical suffering, and the voice that uttered it was a man's. He sprang out of the saddle and turned to hand his horse to the man who had accompanied him. But he found himself standing alone.

With a shrug of the shoulders he left his horse and turned at once to the hut. Just for an instant he hesitated once more. It was his thought to look in through the window. The hesitation pa.s.sed. The next moment he pa.s.sed along the lateral log walls to the far end of the building where he knew the door to be situated.

The door was closed. He placed his hand on the heavy wooden latch. A second pa.s.sed. He glanced over his shoulder. It had occurred to him to wonder at the sudden going of the youth who had accompanied him.

But there was neither sight nor sound of the vanished youth. He raised the latch and swung the door open.

CHAPTER XXV

AN EPIC BATTLE

The station house was extensive. It was a bunkhouse of lesser dimensions.

Jeff's eyes moved swiftly over the dim interior. The remoter corners of the place were shadowed. But the light was sufficient to yield him a view of four squalid bunks on which the many-hued blankets were tumbled. The walls bore signs of personal effort at decoration. There were photographs over each bunk, tacked up and disfigured by flies.

There were odd prints pasted on the rough log walls, the seams of which were more or less adequately filled with mud to keep the weather out.

There were two rough window openings, one in each side wall. The only entrance or exit was the door at the northern end, through which he had approached. At the other end, directly opposite this, an oil lamp was shedding its feeble rays through a well-smoked chimney gla.s.s. It was standing on a small improvised table which divided two bunks set on wooden trestles. The whole interior was perhaps thirty feet in length and twelve feet wide, a roomy, unkempt shanty, which served its simple purpose as a shelter for men unused to any of the comforts of life.

The object which caught and held Jeff's instant attention was the figure of the man seated on the side of one of the bunks, beside the table on which the lamp stood. It was the figure of Sikkem Bruce, bearing no trace whatever of any mortal injury, and with a look of wide-eyed surprise upon his evil countenance.

Jeff moved up the room. He approached without haste. His eyes were steady, and his expression one of tight-lipped determination. There was something coldly commanding in his att.i.tude. His fair, bronzed features, keen, set, displayed no weakening. His body seemed poised ready for everything that could possibly happen. The latent power and vigor of his movements were tremendous. He carried no weapons of defense in view, and his dress was a simple loose jacket over a cotton s.h.i.+rt, and, for nether garments, a pair of loose riding breeches which terminated in soft leather top-boots.

Sikkem's eyes were on him the whole time. There was even some slight apprehension in them at the sight of that swift, voiceless approach.

Jeff came to a halt before him, and it was the ranch hand who found speech most necessary.

"Say, I didn't guess you was gettin' around to-night, boss," he said with some show of ease.

"No?"

"I sure didn't."

Jeff's retort flashed out.

"Then what did you send that youngster in for with mouthful of durned lies?"

Sikkem stared. But his look was unconvincing. Moments pa.s.sed before his reply came, and in those moments the keen eyes of his employer were busy. The man was still in the working kit of a cowpuncher. Even to the chapps, and the prairie hat crushed down on his ugly bullet head.

Then, too, his pair of guns were still strapped about his waist. None of these things escaped Jeff, any more than did the fellow's clumsy regard. He wondered how much truth--if any--lay behind that mask of wicked eyes and brutish features.

"I'm waiting."

Jeff's demand came with a rasp. The man's delay in reply had conveyed all he wanted to know of the truth in him.

"Wot youngster? I tell you I didn't send no one in." There was truculence in the denial. "Wot's the lies?"

The ranchman was no match for the keen mind of his employer. In brute force he might have been more than his equal. But even that was doubtful. While he was speaking Jeff moved. Up to that moment he had been facing the foreman with his back turned toward the distant door.

Now his movement placed him against the table with his back to the other empty bunk, and his focus took in not only the man before him, but the shadowy outline of the distant half-open door.

"It's the boy we took on the other day at--your recommendation. Your recommendation. Get me? Guess he came with the yarn you were shot to death. You'd located the rustlers' camp. You needed to see me quick."

Jeff's words came swiftly. Then after a pause he added: "You didn't send him along? Who did?"

As Jeff watched the man's deliberate shake of the head he became aware of a m.u.f.fled sound, somewhere away beyond the door. It was faint, but, to him, unmistakable. He gave no sign.

"Where are the other boys?" he demanded.

"Out on cattle guard."

The movement beyond the door again penetrated the silence of the hut.

Now it was that the ranchman made his mistake. Only for an instant did he turn his head and eyes in the direction of the sound. But it was sufficient.

Jeff's voice rasped again.

"Stand up, darn you! Stand up!"

Sikkem's gaze came back abruptly, and on the instant his right hand flew to his waist for his guns. But the muzzle of Jeff's revolver was within a foot of his head, and behind it his coldly s.h.i.+ning eyes.

Sikkem's hand dropped from his waist. He stood up. The law of the gun was powerfully ingrained upon his mind.

"Loose those guns at your waist--quick! Let 'em drop on the bunk!

Quick, or I'll pump you full of lead!"

The deadliness of Jeff's command was irresistible. The power of that leveled gun indisputable. The buckle was loosened, and the weapons fell on the blankets behind the ranchman.

"Now push your hands up! Right up!"

The command was obeyed on the instant, but the look which accompanied the movement was as deadly as human pa.s.sion could make it.

"Back away! Back to the far end! Sharp!"

Sikkem moved. But his movement was not rapid enough. Jeff urged him.

In the pause Jeff's straining ears caught again the sound of movement, and he wondered why development was not precipitated. Perhaps---- But Sikkem had nearly reached the distant wall, and, at that instant, a whistle shrilled through the building.

Jeff knew he was trapped. But, with a wonderful sense of detachment, mind and body worked almost electrically. His revolver spat out its vicious report. For the fraction of a second he held the smoking lamp poised in his other hand. Then, like a shooting star, it flew through the adjacent window and fell extinguished amidst the crash of its own gla.s.s. It was at the complete fall of darkness that the door slammed closed, and half a dozen shots rang out through the building, followed by the "plonk" of the bullets embedding themselves in the solid logs immediately behind where the rancher had been standing.