Front matter (continued 2)

But I was ready. My own guns were out. They would have drawn and fired without compunction while I had my back to them, but now that I had seen them, now that the laboring lungs of Bob Carstairs had given me a warning, they hesitated.

Bob Carstairs squirmed slightly, his face paling, the big bulk shifting to one foot then the other, his hands working, ever nearer to his guns, indecision in his eyes, fear in his heart, and treachery in his mind. He would mask the moves of the two men behind him with the bulk of his body, would throw himself to one side at the proper time and leave me to face the blazing guns of the other killers.

And he did just that, but his body moved slowly, clumsily. The guns of the killers blazed, but mine as well, and I have noticed that it is hard for men to shoot straight when they are face to face with a man who is known for straight, cool shooting.

Their craven natures told. Nights of carousal, days of indolent laziness, years of dissipation, all had left their marks in a nervous system which could not properly co-ordinate at the critical time, in spirits which lacked the moral courage to go down into the valley of the shadow in equal combat.

One bullet hit me in the flesh of the arm, one tore through my coat, but my own bullets crashed forth with deadly accuracy.

Ten seconds later and we were in the yard. A whistle and my black was with me, and I speedily located another horse. The pursuing cowpunchers had rushed to the scene of the latest burst of firing, and there was something in what they saw there which gave them a check. Ed Boswell was dead. The four killers whom he had kept in his service as a bodyguard, as hired murderers, reputed to be the swiftest and most accurate shots on the Border, had been sprawled face down upon the floor. Bob Carstairs was lying on his back, his glazed eyes staring upward in startled incredulity, his black heart stilled forever, and, out in the darkness, Black Barr waited with loaded guns. It was not a situation which made these hired land-grabbers feel any too enthusiastic about pursuit. They hesitated, held back, leaderless, each waiting for the other, and each questioning in his own mind whether there remained any incentive for him to risk his life against the death which lurked in the darkness.

Oh, yes, they came, but it was a half-hearted pursuit, and the scattering volleys which rattled forth upon the still night air were more for the sake of keeping up their own spirits than for the purpose of actually accomplishing any damage.

By common consent we swung in a great half circle, headed toward the homestead. We were cleaning things up, paying off old scores, righting wrongs, and I wanted the girl to have possession of that homestead.

To myself I was grateful for the trace of Indian blood in the girl. She rode proudly, swiftly, with none of the hysterical thanks or babbling comment which might have characterized another girl.

And so we rode, stirrup to stirrup, the floor of the valley slipping beneath the hoofs of our mounts, the sand and gravel rattling on the sage and cacti, while the pursuit dropped behind, and, finally, turned back.

Out in the darkness there gleamed a flickering light. Even as we watched, the light took on new body and a tongue of flame licked greedily upward against the dark background of silhouetted hills. It was the camp fire of the watchers who guarded the homestead, seeking to retain possession at all costs.

“You will stay back here until I call,” I told the girl, the first words I had spoken since leaving the Half Box outfit.

Her face was a white blur in the starlight, and I could not see the expression, but I could and did see the sudden uptilting of the chin, the set of the shoulders. She swung her horse even closer and came on, running stride for stride, her stirrup leather actually touching mine at times. Useless to argue with such a girl. The veneer of civilization had given to her merely a feeling of independence, a will to do as she wished, a sex emancipation. At heart she was a savage.

Together we pounded up to the barbed wire barrier which had been erected. There were shadowy forms to receive us, men rolling out of blankets at a whispered summons, the watchers who had been doing sentry duty, tending the fire.

From the confidence of the man who came forward to meet us, I was satisfied that riflemen were concealed in the darkness, ready to shoot us down at the first sign of trouble. I wasted no time.

“I am Black Barr, and I have with me the owner of this homestead. I want possession.”

The very crispness of the message puzzled the man for a moment. He parried for time.

“You’ll have to see Ed Boswell. We’re taking our orders from him.”

“I have seen Ed Boswell,” I said slowly, evenly.

“What did he say?” asked the guard.

“He is dead,” I retorted gravely.

From the darkness there came a slight stirring, no motion which could be sensed, but a vague feeling of psychic unrest as when invisible men shift their positions uncomfortably, peer doubtfully at each other.

I gathered that the force had been somewhat reduced to take part in the visit to the card-room at the Green Leaf. The very fact of my presence there with the girl at my side told them much. They were rapidly losing heart.

“You’ll have to see Bob Carstairs, then.”

I kept my tone low, steady, deadly. “I have seen Bob Carstairs.”

There was a pause while I could hear a rasping in the other’s throat as he swallowed, gulped, sought to keep his voice steady.

“What did he say?”

“He is dead.”

The man fidgeted, mumbled something about “seeing the boys,” and stepped slightly to one side.

It was a time for action, for complete assurance, a chance to dominate the situation by sheer force of personality. I swung from my horse with calm, deliberate manner, and approached the barrier. “Where’s the gate in this thing?” I asked.

“Ov—over this way,” said the watcher, and himself pulled back the twisted wire gate.

I entered, and the girl was at my heels. The man fell back, undecided. I knew the type, recognized the symptoms. I would have no trouble with him. He was licked. It was those men who were scattered through the darkness who worried me.

“Here, you fellows, come on up here to the fire,” I said.

There was a silence, and then suddenly, that silence was broken by a metallic double click—the cocking of a rifle.

My ears are acutely sensitive, and I recognized the sound at once. It was the crucial moment. If the men yielded to my order they would leave the property, never to return. If I should allow them to hesitate, permit them to start a fight, my doom was sealed. They outnumbered me, and they were invisible in the darkness.

“Stick ’em up, Barr,” came a rasping voice.

I had been prepared for that voice. The double click had warned me, had given me the direction of the danger, had enabled me to brace my muscles so that the smooth ripple of motion which jerked out my gun, which sent a shot crashing into the darkness, was no mere chance. I had deliberately planned my move. The hand that drew the gun had been on the side away from the fire. The eyes of the man in the darkness, looking toward the glow of the flame, could not have seen the motion. The bullet was sent toward the location of the speaker. Shooting always by the feel of the gun, never by an alignment of the sights, I had acquired an accuracy which was as deadly in the dark as in the daylight.

With the shot came a scream.

“Don’t shoot!”

A man arose to his feet, clutching a dangling arm which was bleeding at the shoulder. All about me, from the darkness, men came to the fire, hands uplifted.

“Get your things together and start, and don’t come back,” I said. “The next man who sets foot on this ground will have to account to Black Barr.”

In silence they gathered their things, saddled their picketed stock, and filed through the gate in the barrier. The man in the lead broke into a gallop, and soon the men were headed in a mad, panic-stricken race for the ranch-house of the Half Box. They were not fighters, merely Border toughs, and they were yellow, clean through.

“And do we stay here?” asked the girl.

I shook my head. “We have taken possession, ejected the guards, and you will have no more trouble. Had they headed toward town we would have stayed, but they went to the ranch. What they will find there will convince them that they are finished. Hired killers do not fight when their pay has ceased. Cowards cease to obey orders which are given by dead lips.”

She nodded.

Together again we trotted toward town.

There was a light in the restaurant of Wing Lee. I had hoped it would be there. Probably the girl would collapse when she could let down from the nervous strain under which she labored. The Chinaman had been a family servant, and there is a loyalty in the Chinese race which knows no bounds.

Wing Lee, himself, came to the door.

And then came a surprise. Both the Chinaman and the girl turned to me with a series of swift, efficient motions. The patch of light from the door had revealed my blood-soaked sleeve, the wound which had been slowly welling blood during my long ride.

While the girl applied hot water and bandages the Chinaman brought forth certain native lotions, evil-smelling, pungent, contained in red-labeled bottles of thick glass, bottles which were three inches high, an inch wide and contained but a score of drops when filled.

“You big killum,” announced Wing Lee when the arm had been bandaged and he was serving tea to the girl and myself.

I said nothing. Evidently he knew something, this Chink.

The girl’s eyes looked me over, and there was something of a caress in her look. To my surprise I found that I understood her better through silence than I had been able to understand many other women through words. Between us there was some tangible bond of psychic affinity which, though invisible, linked us together in a common bond. I could feel it, struggle against it as I might. I am Black Barr, the killer, and the love of a good woman is not for me. Had the girl spoken I would have been rude, have shattered her faith in me, but she did not speak, merely penetrated the inner silences of my soul.

And then the Chinaman broke into his weird chant, a wild, ululating hymn of pagan hate.

“You heap killum!” he said at length, ceasing his music, his beady eyes glowing like polished ebony.

I endeavored to explain to him and to the girl at the same time. “I am the executioner of Fate, Wing Lee. I go ridum my horse. Maybe Fate gettum tired somebody. She send me. Man he fight me. I killum, then go ’way.”

He looked at me without nodding, and I noticed that there was a flicker of red in the whites of his eyes.

“You allee samee execlutioner for Fate,” he singsonged, “I allee samee deputy for devil,” and, with that, his hand plunged into his sleeve and drew out—a long, legal-looking document. It was the quitclaim deed for the homestead, properly signed and acknowledged by Ed Boswell. In the upper corner was a spatter or two of blood.

Gravely I bowed to the devil worshipper and passed the document to the girl.

She took it in dignified silence. It was almost as though the delivery of the deed was a part of some strange ceremonial rite. And well it might be. The Devil’s Deputy and the Executioner of Fate had united to right a wrong—and the deed vested a complete record title.