Bud watched them until they vanished behind a ridge in the distance; then he got down from the porch, walked to the corral gate, climbed the post, and began, with grave deliberation, to voice his opinion of the sorrel horse.
Chapter XVII. A Fresh Deal
FOR a time, following the departure of Rand, Link Compton stood in the rear room of the Gilt Edge talking with his friends. There was a smile on Compton's face as he talked, and his eyes were glinting with a bland good humor; for he had publicly defied Rand, and he was filled with a grim amusement over the occurrence. The big man could be engaging when he desired, and now his friends grinned sympathetically with him, remembering his icy composure when facing the passion in Rand's eyes.
Compton did not speak of Rand. When an admirer mentioned the occurrence, Compton smilingly rebuked him.
But after Kinney's hand had been attended to, and the gunfighter and Compton were in the street, walking toward the sheriff's office, Compton looked at the other, a gleam of venomous disgust in his eyes.
"You're a hell of a gunslinger!" he charged. "Lost your nerve, eh? You stood there shivering like a coyote in a blizzard, and let him bust you wide open! You didn't even get started!"
The reason Kinney hadn't got "started" was a mystery to the gunfighter himself. Even now, having had some time to meditate upon the miracle, he was mystified. He brushed his good hand uncertainly over his eyes, as though to dispel the blank amazement that still afflicted him.
"That ain't never happened to me before," he muttered. "He had me clean flustered. I didn't seem to know I had any guns on me; an' when I did get goin', it was too late."
Compton laughed grimly, contempt of Kinney blazing in his eyes.
"Well," he said, "we lost that trick. There's no use whining over it."
They found Webster in his office, and they went in, Kinney dropping himself disconsolately in a chair, Compton standing, huge anil furious, beside Webster's desk.
"Webster," he said coldly, meeting the other's gaze, "somebody peached. Who was it?"
Webster spread both hands upon the desk, the palms upward, in eloquent denial of all responsibility.
"How in hell should I know?" he growled. "The first I knowed everything was goin' to smithereens was when I seen Kinney standin' there like a snubbin' post, his eyes poppin' out of his head — scared plumb stiff. An' Rand, grinnin' like a tiger, throwin' a scrap of paper at his number 'leven's!"
Compton looked at Kinney. "What was written on that paper?"
"It was a bill of sale for that Midnight horse — from Seddon," growled Kinney.
Compton's face paled with rage. He strode out of the office and mounted his horse. Riding southward many miles, he encountered the Bar S outfit.
Seddon was not with the outfit.
Compton waited, expecting him. But Seddon did not come that day; and Compton, reluctant to visit the Bar S ranchhouse for fear Eleanor Seddon might overhear some of the vitriolic things he intended to say to her father, stayed with the outfit.
It was not until sunrise the next day that Seddon appeared. And then, drawing the Bar S owner aside, Compton learned the story of Rand's appearance at the Bar S to demand the bill of sale. But the information came after Compton had charged Seddon with disloyalty to him.
With rage still gripping him, Compton abruptly left Seddon and rode back to town.
He spent the greater part of the day in the saddle, riding to the Two Link from the Bar S camp, and talking long and earnestly with his range boss. Then, late in the afternoon, he was standing near the front door of the Gilt Edge talking with Labrue, the proprietor, a suave, smooth-spoken, dark-faced man, with sleek, black hair and steady, cruel eyes.
He laughed harshly while Compton was talking with him.
"So, she did that, eh? Queered the whole deal. I was wondering if it wasn't something like that. What? Sure! I don't give a damn what you do to her!"
Smiling mirthlessly, Compton walked through the barroom, strode across the dance-hall, and climbed the stairs to the second story. There were a number of doors oft" a hall, but Compton did not hesitate, pausing before one and knocking softly upon it.
When the door swung open an instant later—just a trifle, to permit a woman's face to peer outward inquiringly— Compton placed a shoulder against it, and forced his way into the room, closing the door behind him, barring it, and grinning sneeringly at Lucia Morell who, arrayed in a loose gown, her hair disheveled, her eyes gleaming with fury over the ruthlessness of Compton's entrance, stood back at a little distance from the door, glaring at him.
"Clever — eh, Lucia?" said Compton, his lips smiling, though his eyes were gleaming with a ferocity that was unmistakable. "Ha, ha! You almost got away with it, too! How did you get word to him?"
The girl stiffened; her chin went up defiantly. Then she laughed tantalizingly, for she saw in Compton's eyes the suspicion that lay naked in them.
"So you know, eh?" she laughed, her white teeth flashing. "Well, if you know, why should you come to me? Get out of here — I hate you!"
"Sore, eh?" grinned Compton. He was flattered by this exhibition of temper; it showed that she had cared more for him than he had thought. "Well," he went on. "a man gets tired — just as I tired of you. So you told him, eh?"
It was plain to the girl that Compton meditated violence; she saw that in his eyes now, where, an instant before, she had seen only rage. Her face whitened a little as she stepped toward the dresser, where she kept a pistol of small caliber.
Compton saw the gleam of fear in her eyes and the swift pallor that came into her cheeks. And before she could reach the dresser he leaped at her, gripping her hands with a ruthless strength that made her whimper with pain.
He held her close to him, holding both her hands in one of his, while with the free hand he seized the back of her neck, the fingers biting deeply into the flesh. She cringed from the malignant fury of his eyes and opened her lips to scream.
"Scream, damn you!" he sneered. "You tell me how you warned Rand or I'll choke the life out of you!"
Awed by the blazing eyes of the man, unable to endure the terrible pain at the back of her neck, the girl answered f renziedly:
" I rode to him that night — the night I heard you and Kinney and Webster plotting to kill him. I was behind the partition. Don't squeeze so hard, Link; you are hurting me!"
But the man's eyes were still aflame with fury, and his fingers sank deeper into her flesh. And he laughed, lowly and harshly.
"Was it because you hate me, or because you love him? Answer straight, or I'll break your neck!"
"I love him," answered the woman.
Compton laughed full-throatedly, a bitter, mirthless laugh that made the woman shiver.
"You love him, eh!" He looked at her as though about to taunt her regarding the passion to which she had confessed; then his grip tightened and his eyes grew subtle and cunning.
"Two or three times while we were on good terms, you hinted that you knew the father of that kid of Rand's. I'm wanting to know — I'm going to know, right now!"
He released her hands and slipped both his own to her throat, and despite the wild appeal in her eyes, and the staring horror in them, he pressed his thumbs into the flesh until she cried out chokingly:
"Don't; I'll tell!"