The Second Western Megapack. Zane Grey
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that Carney’s meddling had trapped him. He was caught, but the author of his evil luck should not escape.
“That’s Bulldog Carney!” he cried fiercely; “don’t let him get away.”
Startled, the two constables at the table sprang to their feet.
A sharp, crisp voice said: “The first man that reaches for a gun drops.” They were covered by two guns held in the steady hands of the man whose small gray eyes watched from out narrowed lids.
“I’ll make you a present of the Wolf,” Carney said quietly; “I thought I had Sergeant Heath. I could almost forgive this man, if he weren’t such a skunk, for doing the job for me. Now I want you chaps to pass, one by one, into the pen,” and he nodded toward a heavy wooden door that led from the room they were in to the other room that had been fitted up as a cell. “I see your carbines and gunbelts on the rack—you really should have been properly in uniform by this time; I’ll dump them out on the prairie somewhere, and you’ll find them in the course of a day or so. Step in, boys, and you go first, Wolf.”
When the four men had passed through the door Carney dropped the heavy wooden bar into place, turned the key in the padlock, gathered up the fire arms, mounted the buckskin, and rode into the west.
A week later the little school teacher at Fort Victor received through the mail a packet that contained five hundred dollars, and this note:—
DEAR MISS BLACK:—
I am sending you the five hundred dollars that you bet on a bad man. No woman can afford to bet on even a good man. Stick to the kids, for I’ve heard they love you. If those Indians hadn’t picked up Sergeant Heath and got him to Hobbema before I got away with your money I wouldn’t have known, and you’d have lost out.
Yours delightedly,
BULLDOG CARNEY.
DUST, by Marcet and Emanuel Haldeman-Julius
Chapter I
The Dust Is Stirred
Dust was piled in thick, velvety folds on the weeds and grass of the open Kansas prairie; it lay, a thin veil on the scrawny black horses and the sharp-boned cow picketed near a covered wagon; it showered to the ground in little clouds as Mrs. Wade, a tall, spare woman, moved about a camp-fire, preparing supper in a sizzling skillet, huge iron kettle and blackened coffee-pot.
Her husband, pale and gaunt, the shadow of death in his weary face and the droop of his body, sat leaning against one of the wagon wheels trying to quiet a wailing, emaciated year-old baby while little tow-headed Nellie, a vigorous child of seven, frolicked undaunted by the August heat.
“Does beat all how she kin do it,” thought Wade, listlessly.
“Ma,” she shouted suddenly, in her shrill, strident treble, “I see Martin comin’.”
The mother made no answer until the strapping, fourteen-year-old boy, tall and powerful for his age, had deposited his bucket of water at her side. As he drew the back of a tanned muscular hand across his dripping forehead she asked shortly:
“What kept you so long?”
“The creek’s near dry. I had to follow it half a mile to find anything fit to drink. This ain’t no time of year to start farmin’,” he added, glum and sullen.
“I s’pose you know more’n your father and mother,” suggested Wade.
“I know who’ll have to do all the work,” the boy retorted, bitterness and rebellion in his tone.
“Oh, quit your arguin’,” commanded the mother. “We got enough to do to move nearer that water tonight, without wastin’ time talkin’. Supper’s ready.”
Martin and Nellie sat down beside the red-and-white-checkered cloth spread on the ground, and Wade, after passing the still fretting baby to his wife, took his place with them.
“Seems like he gets thinner every day,” he commented, anxiously.
With a swift gesture of fierce tenderness, Mrs. Wade gathered little Benny to her. “Oh, God!” she gasped. “I know I’m goin’ to lose him. That cow’s milk don’t set right on his stomach.”
“It won’t set any better after old Brindle fills up on this dust,” observed Martin, belligerency in his brassy voice.
“That’ll do,” came sharply from his father. “I don’t think this is paradise no more’n you do, but we wouldn’t be the first who’ve come with nothing but a team and made a living. You mark what I tell you, Martin, land ain’t always goin’ to be had so cheap and I won’t be living this time another year. Before I die, I’m goin’ to see your mother and you children settled. Some day, when you’ve got a fine farm here, you’ll see the sense of what I’m doin’ now and thank me for it.”
The boy’s cold, blue eyes became the color of ice, as he retorted: “If I ever make a farm out o’ this dust, I’ll sure ’ave earned it.”
“I guess your mother’ll be doin’ her share of that, all right. And don’t you forget it.”
As he intoned in even accents, Wade’s eyes, so deep in their somber sockets, dwelt with a strange, wistful compassion on his faded wife. The rays of the setting sun brought out the drabness of her. Already, at thirty-five, grey streaked the scanty, dull hair, wrinkles lined the worn olive-brown face, and the tendons of the thin neck stood out. Chaotically, he compared her to the happy young girl—round of cheek and laughing of eye—he had married back in Ohio, fifteen years before. It comforted him a little to remember he hadn’t done so badly by her until the war had torn him from his rented farm and she had been forced to do a man’s work in field and barn. Exposure and a lung wound from a rebel bullet had sent Wade home an invalid, and during the five years which had followed, he had realized only too well how little help he had been to her.
It is not likely he would have had the iron persistency of purpose to drag her through this new stern trial if he had not known that in her heart, as in his, there gnawed ever an all-devouring hunger to work land of their own, a fervent aspiration to establish a solid basis of self-sustentation upon which their children might build. From the day a letter had come from Peter Mall, an ex-comrade in Wade’s old regiment, saying the quarter-section next his own could be bought by paying annually a dollar and twenty-five cents an acre for seven years, their hopes had risen into determination that had become unshakable. Before the eyes of Jacob and Sarah Wade there had hovered, like a promise, the picture of the snug farm that could be evolved from this virgin soil. Strengthened by this vision and stimulated by the fact of Wade’s increasing weakness, they had sold their few possessions, except the simplest necessities for camping, had made a canvas cover for their wagon, stocked up with smoked meat, corn meal and coffee, tied old Brindle behind, fastened a coop of chickens against the wagon-box and, without faltering, had made the long pilgrimage. Their indomitable courage and faith, Martin’s physical strength and the pulling power of their two ring-boned horses—this was their capital.
It seemed pitifully meager to Wade at that despondent moment, exhausted as he was by the long, hard journey and the sultry heat. Never had he been so taunted by a sense of failure, so torn by the haunting knowledge that he must soon leave his family. To die—that was nothing; but the fears of what his death might mean to this group, gripped his heart and shook his soul.
If only Martin were more tender! There was something so ruthless in the boy, so overbearing and heartless. Not that he was ever deliberately cruel, but there was an insensibility to the feelings of others, a capacity placidly to ignore them, that made Wade tremble for the future. Martin would work, and work hard; he was no shirk, but would he ever feel any responsibility toward his younger brother and sister? Would he be loyal to his mother? Wade wondered if his wife ever felt as he did—almost afraid of this son of theirs. He had a way of making his father seem foolishly inexperienced and ineffectual.
“I reckon,” Wade analysed laboriously, “it’s because I’m gettin’ less able all the time and he’s growing so fast—him limber