'Firebrand' Trevison

“Swell. I enjoyed every minute of it. Won’t you sit down?”

He held himself back, grinning coldly, for the woman’s look had goaded him to fury.

“No,” he said; “I’ll stand. I won’t be here a minute. You saw Trevison last night, eh? You warned him that I was going to have Carson arrested.” He had hazarded this guess, for it had seemed to him that it must be the solution to the mystery, and when he caught the quick, triumphant light in the woman’s eyes at his words he knew he had not erred.

“Yes,” she said; “I saw him, and I told him – what Braman told me.” She saw his eyes glitter and she laughed harshly. “That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it, Jeff – what Braman told me? Well, you know it. I knew you couldn’t play square with me. You thought you could dupe me —again, didn’t you? Well, you didn’t, for I snared Braman and pumped him dry. He’s kept me posted on your movements; and his little board telephone – Ha, ha! that makes you squirm, doesn’t it? But it was all wasted effort – Trevison won’t have me – he’s through. And I’m through. I’m not going to try any more. I’m going back East, after I get rested. You fight it out with Trevison. But I warn you, he’ll beat you – and I wish he would! As for that beast, Braman, I wish – Ah, let him go, Jeff,” she advised, noting the cold fury in his eyes.

“That’s all right,” he said with a dry laugh. “You and Braman have done well. It hasn’t done me any harm, and so we’ll forget about it. What do you say to having a drink – and a talk. As in old times, eh?” He seemed suddenly to have conquered his passion, but the queer twitching of his lips warned the woman, and when he essayed to move toward her, smiling pallidly, she darted to the far side of a stand near the center of the room, pulled out a drawer, produced a small revolver and leveled it at him, her eyes wide and glittering with menace.

“Stay where you are, Jeff!” she ordered. “There’s murder in your heart, and I know it. But I don’t intend to be the victim. I’ll shoot if you come one step nearer!”

He smirked at her, venomously. “All right,” he said. “You’re wise. But get out of town on the next train.”

“I’ll go when I get ready – you can’t scare me. Let me alone or I’ll go to Rosalind Benham and let her in on the whole scheme.”

“Yes you will – not,” he laughed. “If I know anything about you, you won’t do anything that would give Miss Benham to Trevison.”

“That’s right; I’d rather see her married to you – that would be the refinement of cruelty!”

He laughed sneeringly and stepped out of the door. Waiting a short time, the woman heard his step in the hall. Then she darted to the door, locked it, and leaned against it, panting.

“I’ve done it now,” she murmured. “Braman – Well, it serves him right!”

Corrigan stopped in the barroom and got a drink. Then he walked to the front door and stood in it for an instant, finally stepping down into the street. Across the street in the banking room he saw a thin streak of light gleaming through a crevice in the doorway that led from the banking room to the rear. The light told him that Braman was in the rear room. Selecting a moment when the street in his vicinity was deserted, Corrigan deliberately crossed, standing for a moment in the shadow of the bank building, looking around him. Then he slipped around the building and tapped cautiously on the rear door. An instant later he was standing inside the room, his back against the door. Braman, arrayed as he had been the night before, had opened the door. He had been just ready to go when he heard Corrigan’s knock.

“Going out, Croft?” said Corrigan pleasantly, eyeing the other intently. “All lit up, too! You’re getting to be a gay dog, lately.”

There was nothing in Corrigan’s bantering words to bring on that sudden qualm of sickening fear that seized the banker. He knew it was his guilt that had done it – guilt and perhaps a dread of Corrigan’s rage if he should learn of his duplicity. But that word “lately”! If it had been uttered with any sort of an accent he might have been suspicious. But it had come with the bantering ring of the others, with no hint of special significance. And Braman was reassured.

“Yes, I’m going out.” He turned to the mirror on the wall. “I’m getting rather stale, hanging around here so much.”

“That’s right, Croft. Have a good time. How much money is there in the safe?”

“Two or three thousand dollars.” The banker turned from the glass. “Want some? Ha, ha!” he laughed at the other’s short nod; “there are other gay dogs, I guess! How much do you want?”

“All you’ve got?”

“All! Jehoshaphat! You must have a big deal on tonight!”

“Yes, big,” said Corrigan evenly. “Get it.”

He followed the banker into the banking room, carefully closing the door behind him, so that the light from the rear room could not penetrate. “That’s all right,” he reassured the banker as the latter noticed the action; “this isn’t a public matter.”

He stuffed his pockets with the money the banker gave him, and when the other tried to close the door of the safe he interposed a restraining hand, laughing:

“Leave it open, Croft. It’s empty now, and a cracksman trying to get into it would ruin a perfectly good safe, for nothing.”

“That’s right.”

They went into the rear room again, Corrigan last, closing the door behind him. Braman went again to the glass, Corrigan standing silently behind him.

Standing before the glass, the banker was seized with a repetition of the sickening fear that had oppressed him at Corrigan’s words upon his entrance. It seemed to him that there was a sinister significance behind Corrigan’s present silence. A tension came between them, portentous of evil. Braman shivered, but the silence held. The banker tried to think of something to say – his thoughts were rioting in chaos, a dumb, paralyzing terror had seized him, his lips stuck together, the facial muscles refusing their office. He dropped his hands to his sides and stared into the glass, noting the ghastly pallor that had come over his face – the dull, whitish yellow of muddy marble. He could not turn, his legs were quivering. He knew it was conscience – only that. And yet Corrigan’s ominous silence continued. And now he caught his breath with a shuddering gasp, for he saw Corrigan’s face reflected in the glass, looking over his shoulder – a mirthless smirk on it, the eyes cold, and dancing with a merciless and cunning purpose. While he watched, he saw Corrigan’s lips open:

“Where’s the board telephone, Braman?”

The banker wheeled, then. He tried to scream – the sound died in a gasping gurgle as Corrigan leaped and throttled him. Later, he fought to loosen the grip of the iron fingers at his throat, twisting, squirming, threshing about the room in his agony. The grip held, tightened. When the banker was quite still Corrigan put out the light, went into the banking room, where he scattered the papers and books in the safe all around the room. Then he twisted the lock off the door, using an iron bar that he had noticed in a corner when he had come in, and stepped out into the shadow of the building.

CHAPTER XXIII

FIRST PRINCIPLES

Judge Lindman shivered, though a merciless, blighting sun beat down on the great stone ledge that spread in front of the opening, smothering him with heat waves that eddied in and out, and though the interior of the low-ceilinged chamber pulsed with the fetid heat sucked in from the plains generations before. The adobe walls, gray-black in the subdued light, were dry as powder and crumbling in spots, the stone floor was exposed in many places; there was a strange, sickening odor, as though the naked, perspiring bodies of inhabitants in ages past had soaked the walls and floor with the man-scent, and intervening years of disuse had mingled their musty breath with it. But for the presence of the serene-faced, steady-eyed young man who leaned carelessly against the wall outside, whose shoulder and profile he could see, the Judge might have yielded completely to the overpowering conviction that he was dreaming, and that his adventures of the past twelve hours were horrors of his imagination. But he knew from the young man’s presence at the door that his experience had been real enough, and the knowledge kept his brain out of the threatening chaos.

Some time during the night he had awakened on his cot in the rear room of the courthouse to hear a cold, threatening voice warning him to silence. He had recognized the voice, as he had recognized it once before, under similar conditions. He had been gagged, his hands tied behind him. Then he had been lifted, carried outside, placed on the back of a horse, in front of his captor, and borne away in the darkness. They had ridden many miles before the horse came to a halt and he was lifted down. Then he had been forced to ascend a sharp slope; he could hear the horse clattering up behind them. But he had not been able to see anything in the darkness, though he felt he was walking along the edge of a cliff. The walk had ended abruptly, when his captor had forced him into his present quarters with a gruff admonition to sleep. Sleep had come hard, and he had done little of it, napping merely, sitting on the stone floor, his back against the wall, most of the time watching his captor. He had talked some, asking questions which his captor ignored. Then a period of oblivion had come, and he had awakened to the sunshine. For an hour he had sat where he was, looking out at his captor and blinking at the brilliant sunshine. But he had asked no questions since awakening, for he had become convinced of the meaning of all this. But he was intensely curious, now.

“Where have you brought me?” he demanded of his jailor.

“You’re awake, eh?” Trevison grinned as he wheeled and looked in at his prisoner. “This,” he waved a hand toward the ledge and its surroundings, “is an Indian pueblo, long deserted. It makes an admirable prison, Judge. It is also a sort of a fort. There is only one vulnerable point – the slope we came up last night. I’ll take you on a tour of examination, if you like. And then you must return here, to stay until you disclose the whereabouts of the original land record.”

The Judge paled, partly from anger, partly from a fear that gripped him.

“This is an outrage, Trevison! This is America!”

“Is it?” The young man smiled imperturbably. “There have been times during the past few weeks when I doubted it, very much. It is America, though, but it is a part of America that the average American sees little of – that he knows little of. As little, let us say, as he knows of the weird application of its laws – as applied by some judges.” He smiled as Lindman winced. “I have given up hoping to secure justice in the regular way, and so we are in the midst of a reversion to first principles – which may lead us to our goal.”

“What do you mean?”

“That I must have the original record, Judge, I mean to have it.”

“I deny – ”

“Yes – of course. Deny, if you like. We shan’t argue. Do you want to explore the place? There will be plenty of time for talk.”

He stepped aside as the Judge came out, and grinned broadly as he caught the Judge’s shrinking look at a rifle he took up as he turned. It had been propped against the wall at his side. He swung it to the hollow of his left elbow. “Your knowledge of firearms convinces you that you can’t run as fast as a rifle bullet, doesn’t it, Judge?”

The Judge’s face indicated that he understood.

“Ever make the acquaintance of an Indian pueblo, Judge?”

“No. I came West only a year ago, and I have kept pretty close to my work.”

“Well, you’ll feel pretty intimate with this one by the time you leave it – if you’re obstinate,” laughed Trevison. He stood still and watched the Judge. The latter was staring hard at his surroundings, perhaps with something of the awed reverence that overtakes the tourist when for the first time he views an ancient ruin.

The pueblo seemed to be nothing more than a jumble of adobe boxes piled in an indiscriminate heap on a gigantic stone level surmounting the crest of a hill. A sheer rock wall, perhaps a hundred feet in height, descended to the surrounding slopes; the latter sweeping down to join the plains. A dust, light, dry, and feathery lay thickly on the adobe boxes on the surrounding ledge on the slopes, like a gray ash sprinkled from a giant sifter. Cactus and yucca dotted the slopes, thorny, lancelike, repellent; lava, dull, hinting of volcanic fire, filled crevices and depressions, and huge blocks of stone, detached in the progress of disintegration, were scattered about.

“It has taken ages for this to happen!” the Judge heard himself murmuring.

Trevison laughed lowly. “So it has, Judge. Makes you think of your school days, doesn’t it? You hardly remember it, though. You have a hazy sort of recollection of a print of a pueblo in a geography, or in a geological textbook, but at the time you were more interested in Greek roots, the Alps, Louis Quinze, the heroes of mythology, or something equally foreign, and you forgot that your own country might hold something of interest for you. But the history of these pueblo towns must be pretty interesting, if one could get at it. All that I have heard of it are some pretty weird legends. There can be no doubt, I suppose, that the people who inhabited these communal houses had laws to govern them – and judges to apply the laws. And I presume that then, as now, the judges were swayed by powerful influences in – ”

The Judge glared at his tormentor. The latter laughed.

“It is reasonable to presume, too,” he went on, “that in some cases the judges rendered some pretty raw decisions. And carrying the supposition further, we may believe that then, as now, the poor downtrodden proletariat got rather hot under the collar. There are always some hot-tempered fools among all classes and races that do, you know. They simply can’t stand the feel of the iron heel of the oppressor. Can you picture a hot-tempered fool of that tribe abducting a judge of the court of his people and carrying him away to some uninhabited place, there to let him starve until he decided to do the right thing?”

“Starve!” gasped the Judge.

“The chambers and tunnels connecting these communal houses – they look like mud boxes, don’t they, Judge? And there isn’t a soul in any of them – nor a bite to eat! As I was about to remark, the chambers and tunnels and the passages connecting these places are pretty bare and cheerless – if we except scorpions, horned toads, centipedes, tarantulas – and other equally undesirable occupants. Not a pleasant place to sojourn in until – How long can a man live without eating, Judge? You know, of course, that the Indians selected an elevated and isolated site, such as this, because of its strategical advantages? This makes an ideal fort. Nobody can get into it except by negotiating the slope we came up last night. And a rifle in the hands of a man with a yearning to use it would make that approach pretty unsafe, wouldn’t it?”

“My God!” moaned the Judge; “you talk like a man bereft of his senses!”

“Or like a man who is determined not to be robbed of his rights,” added Trevison. “Well, come along. We won’t dwell on such things if they depress you.”

He took the Judge’s arm and escorted him. They circled the broad stone ledge. It ran in wide, irregular sweeps in the general outline of a huge circle, surrounded by the dust-covered slopes melting into the plains, so vast that the eye ached in an effort to comprehend them. Miles away they could see smoke befouling the blue of the sky. The Judge knew the smoke came from Manti, and he wondered if Corrigan were wondering over his disappearance. He mentioned that to Trevison, and the latter grinned faintly at him.

“I forgot to mention that to you. It was all arranged last night. Clay Levins went to Dry Bottom on a night train. He took with him a letter, which he was to mail at Dry Bottom, explaining your absence to Corrigan. Needless to say, your signature was forged. But I did so good a job that Corrigan will not suspect. Corrigan will get the letter by tonight. It says that you are going to take a long rest.”

The Judge gasped and looked quickly at Trevison. The young man’s face was wreathed in a significant grin.

“In the first analysis, this looks like a rather strange proceeding,” said Trevison. “But if you get deeper into it you see its logic. You know where the original record is. I want it. I mean to have it. One life – a dozen lives – won’t stop me. Oh, well, we won’t talk about it if you’re going to shudder that way.”

He led the Judge up a flimsy, rotted ladder to a flat roof, forcing him to look into a chamber where vermin fled at their appearance. Then through numerous passages, low, narrow, reeking with a musty odor that nauseated the Judge; on narrow ledges where they had to hug the walls to keep from falling, and then into an open court with a stone floor, stained dark, in the center a huge oblong block of stone, surmounting a pyramid, appalling in its somber suggestiveness.

“The sacrificial altar,” said Trevison, grimly. “These stains here, are – ”

He stopped, for the Judge had turned his back.

Trevison led him away. He had to help him down the ladder each time they descended, and when they reached the chamber from which they had started the Judge was white and shaking.

Trevison pushed him inside and silently took a position at the door. The Judge sank to the floor of the chamber, groaning.

The hours dragged slowly. Trevison changed his position twice. Once he went away, but returned in a few minutes with a canteen, from which he drank, deeply. The Judge had been without food or water since the night before, and thirst tortured him. The gurgle of the water as it came out of the canteen, maddened him.

“I’d like a drink, Trevison.”

“Of course. Any man would.”

“May I have one?”

“The minute you tell me where that record is.”

The Judge subsided. A moment later Trevison’s voice floated into the chamber, cold and resonant:

“I don’t think you’re in this thing for money, Judge. Corrigan has some sort of a hold on you. What is it?”

The Judge did not answer.

The sun climbed to the zenith. It grew intensely hot in the chamber. Twice during the afternoon the Judge asked for water, and each time he received the answer he had received before. He did not ask for food, for he felt it would not be given him. At sundown his captor entered the chamber and gave him a meager draught from the canteen. Then he withdrew and stood on the ledge in front of the door, looking out into the darkening plains, and watching him, a conviction of the futility of resisting him seized the Judge. He stood framed in the opening of the chamber, the lines of his bold, strong face prominent in the dusk, the rifle held loosely in the crook of his left arm, the right hand caressing the stock, his shoulders squared, his big, lithe, muscular figure suggesting magnificent physical strength, as the light in his eyes, the set of his head and the firm lines of his mouth, brought a conviction of rare courage and determination. The sight of him thrilled the Judge; he made a picture that sent the Judge’s thoughts skittering back to things primitive and heroic. In an earlier day the Judge had dreamed of being like him, and the knowledge that he had fallen far short of realizing his ideal made him shiver with self-aversion. He stifled a moan – or tried to and did not succeed, for it reached Trevison’s ears and he turned quickly.

“Did you call, Judge?”

“Yes, yes!” whispered the Judge, hoarsely. “I want – to tell you everything! I have longed to tell you all along!”

An hour later they were sitting on the edge of the ledge, their feet dangling, the abyss below them, the desert stars twinkling coldly above them; around them the indescribable solitude of a desert night filled with mystery, its vague, haunting, whispering voice burdened with its age-old secrets. Trevison had an arm around the Judge’s shoulder. Their voices mingled – the Judge’s low, quavering; Trevison’s full, deep, sympathetic.

After a while a rider appeared out of the starlit haze of the plains below them. The Judge started. Trevison laughed.

“It’s Clay Levins, Judge. I’ve been watching him for half an hour. He’ll stay here with you while I go after the record. Under the bottom drawer, eh?”

Levins hallooed to them. Trevison answered, and he and the Judge walked forward to meet Levins at the crest of the slope.

“Slicker’n a whistle!” declared Levins, answering the question Trevison put to him. “I mailed the damn letter an’ come back on the train that brought it to him!” He grinned felinely at the Judge. “I reckon you’re a heap dry an’ hungry by this time?”

“The Judge has feasted,” said Trevison. “I’m going after the record. You’re to stay here with the Judge until I return. Then the three of us will ride to Las Vegas, where we will take a train to Santa Fe, to turn the record over to the Circuit Court.”

“Sounds good!” gloated Levins. “But it’s too long around. I’m for somethin’ more direct. Why not take the Judge with you to Manti, get the record, takin’ a bunch of your boys with you – an’ salivate that damned Corrigan an’ his deputies!”

Trevison laughed softly. “I don’t want any violence if I can avoid it. My land won’t run away while we’re in Santa Fe. And the Judge doesn’t want to meet Corrigan just now. I don’t know that I blame him.”

“Where’s the record?”

Trevison told him, and Levins grumbled. “Corrigan’ll have his deputies guardin’ the courthouse, most likely. If you run ag’in ’em, they’ll bore you, sure as hell!”

“I’ll take care of myself – I promise you that!” he laughed, and the Judge shuddered at the sound. He vanished into the darkness of the ledge, returning presently with Nigger, led him down the slope, called a low “So-long” to the two watchers on the ledge, and rode away into the haze of the plains.

Trevison rode fast, filled with a grim elation. He pitied the Judge. An error – a momentary weakening of moral courage – had plunged the jurist into the clutches of Corrigan; he could hardly be held responsible for what had transpired – he was a puppet in the hands of an unscrupulous schemer, with a threat of exposure hanging over him. No wonder he feared Corrigan! Trevison’s thoughts grew bitter as they dwelt upon the big man; the old longing to come into violent physical contact with the other seized him, raged within him, brought a harsh laugh to his lips as he rode. But a greater passion than he felt for the Judge or Corrigan tugged at him as he urged the big black over the plains toward the twinkling lights of Manti – a fierce exultation which centered around Rosalind Benham. She had duped him, betrayed him to his enemy, had played with him – but she had lost!

Yet the thought of his coming victory over her was poignantly unsatisfying. He tried to picture her – did picture her – receiving the news of Corrigan’s defeat, and somehow it left him with a feeling of regret. The vengeful delight that he should have felt was absent – he felt sorry for her. He charged himself with being a fool for yielding to so strange a sentiment, but it lingered persistently. It fed his rage against Corrigan, however, doubled it, for upon him lay the blame.

It was late when he reached the outskirts of Manti. He halted Nigger in the shadow of a shed a hundred yards or so down the track from the courthouse, dismounted and made his way cautiously down the railroad tracks. He was beyond the radius of the lights from various windows that he passed, but he moved stealthily, not knowing whether Corrigan had stationed guards about the courthouse, as Levins had warned. An instant after reaching a point opposite the courthouse he congratulated himself on his discretion, for he caught a glimmer of light at the edge of a window shade in the courthouse, saw several indistinct figures congregated at the side door, outside. He slipped behind a tool shed at the side of the track, and crouching there, watched and listened. A mumbling of voices reached him, but he could distinguish no word. But it was evident that the men outside were awaiting the reappearance of one of their number who had gone into the building.

Trevison watched, impatiently. Then presently the side door opened, letting out a flood of light, which bathed the figures of the waiting men. Trevison scowled, for he recognized them as Corrigan’s deputies. But he was not surprised, for he had half expected them to be hanging around the building. Two figures stepped down from the door as he watched, and he knew them for Corrigan and Gieger. Corrigan’s voice reached him.