Agnes had been on her homestead almost a week. She was making a brave “stagger,” as Smith described all amateurish efforts, toward cutting up some dry cottonwood limbs into stove-lengths before her tent on the afternoon that Jerry Boyle rode across the ford.
While she had not forgotten him, she had begun to hope that he had gone back to Comanche, and his sudden appearance there gave her an unpleasant shock. He drew up near her with a friendly word, and dismounted with a cowboy swing to his long body and legs.
“Well, Agnes, you dodged me in Meander,” said he. “You’ve located quite a piece up the river and off the stage-road, haven’t you?”
“But not far enough, it seems,” she answered, a little weariness in her voice, as of one who turns unwillingly to face at last something which has been put away for an evil day.
“No need for us to take up old quarrels, Agnes,” he chided with a show of gentleness.
“I don’t want to quarrel with you, Jerry; I never did quarrel with you,” she disclaimed.
“‘Misunderstandings’ would be a better word then, I suppose,” he corrected. “But you could have
“How could you?” she said, irritably. “That was nothing; let it rest. But you understand that it was for the sake of others that the alias was–and is–used; not for my own.”
“Of course, Agnes. But what do you want to be wasting yourself on this rough country for? There are more suitable places in Wyoming for you than this lonesome spot. What’s the object, anyhow?”
“I am building here the City of Refuge,” said she, “and its solitude will be its walls.”
“Ready for the time when he comes back, I suppose?”
She nodded assent slowly, as if grudging him that share of the knowledge of her inner life.
“Poor old kid, you’ve got a job ahead of you!” he commiserated.
A resentful flush crept into her face, but she turned aside, gathering her sticks as if to hide her displeasure. Boyle laughed.
“Pardon the familiarity–‘vulgar familiarity’ you used to call it–Agnes. But ‘what’s bred in the bone,’ you know.”
“It doesn’t matter so much when there’s no one else around, but it’s awkward before people.”
“You wouldn’t marry me on account of my tongue!” said he with sour reminiscence.
“It wasn’t so much that, Jerry,” she chided, “and you know it perfectly well.”
“Oh, well, if a man does take a drink now and then––” he discounted.
“But many drinks, and frequently, are quite different,” she reproved.
“We’ll not fuss about it.”
“Far from it,” she agreed.
“I didn’t come down to open old matters, although I suppose you thought that was my intention when you dodged me and stuck so close to that tin-horn doctor up at Meander.”
“It’s comforting to know you haven’t come for–that,” said she, ignoring his coarse reference to Slavens.
“No; things change a good deal in four years’ time, even sentiment–and names.”
“But it wouldn’t be asking too much to expect you to respect some of the changes?”
“I don’t suppose,” he mused, “that many people around here care whether a man’s name is the one he goes by, or whether it’s the one he gets his mail under at the post-office at Comanche. That’s generally believed to be a man’s own business. Of course, he might carry it too far, but that’s his own lookout.”
“Are you on your way to Comanche?” she asked.
Boyle motioned her to the trunk of the cottonwood whose branches she had been chopping into fuel, with
“I’ve been wearing a pair of these high-heeled boots the past few days for the first time since I rode the range,” he explained, “and they make my ankles tired when I stand around.”
He seated himself beside her on the fallen log.
“No, I’m not going to Comanche,” said he. “I came down here to see you. They gave me the worst horse in the stable at Meander, and he’ll never be able to carry me back there without a long rest. I’ll have to make camp by the river.”
She glanced at his horse, on the saddle of which hung, cowboy fashion, a bag of grub which also contained a frying-pan and coffeepot, she knew, from having seen many outfits like it in the stores at Comanche. A blanket was rolled behind the high cantle. As for the horse, it seemed as fresh and likely as if it had come three miles instead of thirty. She believed from that evidence that Jerry’s talk about being forced to make camp was all contrived. He had come prepared for a stay.
“I got into the habit of carrying those traps around with me when I was a kid,” he explained, following her eyes, “and you couldn’t drive me two miles away from a hotel without them. They come in handy, too, in a pinch like this, I’m here to tell you.”
“It’s something like a wise man taking his coat, I suppose.”
“Now you’ve got it,” commended Boyle.
“But Smith, who used to drive the stage, could have fixed you up all right,” she told him. “He’s got a tent to lodge travelers in down by his new store. You must have seen it as you passed?”
“Yes; and there’s another crook!” said Boyle with plain feeling on the matter. “But I didn’t come down here to see Smith or anybody else but you. It’s business.”
He looked at her with severity in his dark face, as if to show her that all thoughts of tenderness and sentiment had gone out of his mind.
“I’m listening,” said she.
“There’s a man down here a few miles spreadin’ himself around on a piece of property that belongs to me,” declared Boyle, “and I want you to help me get him off.”
She looked at him in amazement.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” said she.
“Slavens.”
“Dr. Slavens? Why, he’s on his own homestead, which he filed upon regularly. I can’t see what you mean by saying it belongs to you.”
“I mean that he stole the description of that land at the point of a gun, that’s what I mean. It belongs to me; I paid money for it; and I’m here to take possession.”
“You’ve got your information wrong,” she denied indignantly. “Dr. Slavens didn’t steal the description.
“Oh, cut out that high-handshake stuff, Miss Agnes Horton-Gates, or Gates-Horton, and come down to brass tacks! The time was when you could walk up and down over me like a piece of hall carpet, and I’d lie there and smile. That day’s gone by. I’ve got wool on me now like a bellwether, and I’m shaggy at the flanks like a wolf. I can be as mean as a wolf, too, when the time comes. You can’t walk up and down over me any more!”
“Nobody wants to walk up and down over you!” she protested. “But if you want to put Dr. Slavens off that homestead, go and do it. You’ll not draw me into any of your schemes and murderous plots, and you’ll find Dr. Slavens very well able to take care of himself, too!”
“Oh, sure he can!” scoffed Boyle. “You didn’t seem to think so the time you turned Comanche inside out hunting him, when he was layin’ drunk under a tent. I don’t know what kind of a yarn he put up when he came back to you, but I’ve got the goods on that quack, I’ll give you to understand!”
Boyle was dropping his polish, which was only a superficial coating at the best. In the bone he was a cowboy, belonging to the type of those who, during the rustlers’ war, hired themselves out at five dollars a day, and five dollars a head for every man they could kill.
“I’m not under obligations to keep anybody’s secrets in this country when it comes to that,” Boyle reminded her.
“It couldn’t be expected of you,” she sighed.
“You’re close to that feller,” he pursued, “and he’s as soft as cheese on you. All right; pool your troubles and go on off together for all I care, but before you turn another wheel you’ll put the crowbar under that man that’ll lift him off of that land; savvy? Well, that’s what you’ll do!”
“You can spread it all up and down the river that I’m living here under an assumed name, and you may tell them anything else–all that is true–that you think you ought to tell, just as soon as you want to begin,” she said, rising and moving away from him in scorn. “I’ll not help you; I couldn’t help you if I would.”
Boyle got up, his face in a scowl, and as she retreated toward her tent, followed her in his peggy, forward-tilting cowboy walk.
“Say,” he hailed, unveiling at once all the rudeness of his character, “come back here a minute and take your medicine!”
She paused while he came up.
“Jerry,” said Agnes gently, turning upon him eyes full of sadness and lost hope, “get on your horse and go away. Don’t force me to think worse of you than I have thought. Go away, Jerry; go away!”
Boyle’s face was flushed, and his naturally pop-eyed expression was greatly aggravated by his anger. It seemed that his eyes were straining to leap out, and had forced themselves forward until the whites showed beyond the lids.
“Yes, that Slavens is one of these men that’d eat hot rocks for the woman he loves,” he sneered. “Well, it’s up to him to show how far he’ll go for you.”
“It’s unworthy of even you, Jerry, to talk like that,” she reproved. “As far as I know, I am nothing more to Dr. Slavens than any other friend. If you want his claim, why don’t you go down there and buy it, as you were ready to buy it from Peterson if you could have filed him on it?”
“Because I can get it cheaper,” said Boyle. “I’ll not give him ten cents for it. It’s your job to go and tell him that I want him to go over to Meander and pay up on that land, and I’ll furnish the money for it, but before he pays he must sign a relinquishment to me.”
“I’ll not do it!” she declared.
“If you won’t lead, I’ll have to try spurs, and I don’t like to do that, Agnes, for the sake of old days.”
“Forget the old days.”
“I’ll go you,” said he.
“There’s nothing that you can tell these people about me that will lower me much in their estimation. None of them, except Smith, knows me very well, anyhow. I don’t care so much for their opinion, for I’m not here to please them.”
Boyle placed his hand on her shoulder and looked gravely into her face.
“But if I was to show proof to the land commissioner that you’d got possession of a homestead here through fraud and perjury, then where would you land?” he asked.
“It isn’t true!” she cried, fear rising within her and driving away the color of courage which to that moment had flown in her face.
“It is true, Agnes,” he protested. “You registered under the name of Agnes Horton and made affidavit that it was your lawful name; you entered this land under the same name, and took title to it in the preliminaries, and that’s fraud and perjury, if I know anything about the definition of either term.”
“Do you mean to tell me, Jerry,” she faltered, “that I’d have to go to prison if Dr. Slavens wouldn’t consent to save me by giving up his claim to you?”
“Well, the disgrace of it would amount to about the same, even if a jury refused to send you up,” said he brutally, grinning a little over the sight of her consternation. “You’d be indicted, you see, by the Federal grand jury, and arrested by the United States marshal, and locked up. Then you’d be tried, and your picture
“But you wouldn’t do it,” she appealed, placing her hand on his arm, looking into his face beseechingly, the sudden weight of her trouble making her look old. “You wouldn’t do it, Jerry, would you?”
“Wouldn’t I?” he mocked disdainfully. “Well, you watch me!”
“It’s a cowardly way to use an advantage over a woman!”
“Never mind,” grinned Boyle. “I’ll take care of that. If that tin-horn doctor wants to toe the line and do what I say to keep you out of a Federal pen, then let him step lively. If he does it, then you can stay here in peace as long as you live, for anything I’ll ever say or do. You’ll be Agnes Horton to me as long as my tongue’s in workin’ order, and I’ll never know any more about where you came from or what passed before in your history than Smith down there.”
Agnes stood with her head drooping, as if the blackmailer’s words had taken away the last shoring prop of her ambition and hope. After a while she raised her white, pained face.
“And if I refuse to draw the doctor into this to save myself?” she asked.
“Then I guess you’ll have to suffer, old kid!” said he.
Boyle saw the little tremor which ran over her shoulders like a chill, and smiled when he read it as the outward signal of inward terror. He had no doubt in the world that she would lay hold of his alternative to save herself and her plans for others, as quickly as he, coward at heart, would sacrifice a friend for his own comfort or gain.
Yet Agnes had no thought in that moment of sacrificing Dr. Slavens and his prospects, which the unmasking of Boyle’s hand now proved to be valuable, to save herself. There must be some other way, she thought, and a few hours to turn it in her mind, and reflect and plan, might show her the road to her deliverance. She did not doubt that the penalty for what she had done would be as heavy as Boyle threatened.
“So it’s up to you, handle first,” exulted Boyle, breaking her reflections. “I’ll ride off down the river a little piece and go into camp, and tomorrow evening I’ll come up for your answer from Slavens. It’s about twenty miles from here to his claim, and you can make it there and back easy if you’ll start early in the morning. So it’s all up to you, and the quicker the sooner, as the man said.”
With that, Boyle rode away. According to her newly formed habit, Agnes gathered her wood and made a fire in the little stove outside her tent, for the day was wasting and the shadow of the western hills was reaching across the valley.
Life had lost its buoyancy for her in that past
Boyle’s dust had not settled before Smith came by, jangling a road-scraper behind his team. He was coming from his labor of leveling a claim, skip one, up the river. He drew up, his big red face as refulgent as the setting sun, a smile on it which dust seemed only to soften and sweat to illumine. He had a hearty word for her, noting the depression of her spirit.
After passing the commonplaces, a ceremony which must be done with Smith whether one met him twice or twenty times a day, he waved his hand down the river in the direction that Boyle had gone.
“Feller come past here a little while ago?” he asked, knowing very well that Boyle had left but a few minutes before.
“He has just gone,” she told him.
“Jerry Boyle,” nodded Smith; “the Governor’s son. He ain’t got no use for me, and I tell you, if I had a woman around the place––”
Smith hung up his voice there as if something had crossed his mind. He stood looking down the valley in a speculative way.
“Yes?” she inquired, respectfully recalling him.
“Yes,” repeated Smith. “If I had a woman around the house I’d take a shot at that feller as quick as I would at a lobo-wolf!”
Smith jangled on, his scraper making toadish hops and tortoise-like tips and amblings over the inequalities in the way. She looked after him, a new light shining from her eyes, a new passion stirring her bosom, where his words had fallen like a spark upon tinder.
So that was the estimation in which men held Jerry Boyle–men like Smith, who moved along the lower levels of life and smoothed over the rough places for others to pass by and by! It must be but the reflection of thought in higher planes–“If I had a woman around the place!” Such then was the predatory reputation of Jerry Boyle, who was capable of dishonorable acts in more directions than one, whose very presence was a taint.
And he would ride back there tomorrow evening, perhaps after the sun had set, perhaps after darkness had fallen, to receive the answer to his dishonorable proposal that she sacrifice her friend to save herself from his spite, and the consequences of her own misguided act.
“If I had a woman around the place!”
The spark in the tinder was spreading, warming, warming, glowing into a fierce, hot flame. Like a wolf–like a wolf–Smith would take a shot at him–like a wolf! Smith had compared him to a wolf; had said
She went into the tent, the blood rising hot to her temples, beating, singing in her ears. The revolver which she had brought with her on the doctor’s advice hung at the head of her cot. With it strapped around her she went back to her stove, which she fed with a wild vigor, exulting in seeing the flames pour out of the pipe and the thin sides grow red.
“Like a wolf–like a wolf!”
The words pounded in her mind, leaped through her circulation like quickening fire.
“Like a wolf–if there was a woman around the house––”
And a man like that was coming back, perhaps when the darkness had let down over that still valley, expecting her to say that she had killed the hope of her dearest friend to shield herself from his smirched and guilty hand!
