The Trail Horde | Page 6

to have, and Singleton's visits must be the explanation.
Hamlin had bowed his head again after a swift glance at Lawler. He stiffened when he felt Lawler at his side again, for there had come into the atmosphere of the cabin a premonitory chill which warned him that Lawler was on the verge of action.
But he was not prepared for what happened.
Lawler's sinewy hands fell on his shoulders. The fingers bit deeply into the flesh, drawing a groan of pain from Hamlin. He was lifted to his feet--off his feet, so that he dangled in the air like a pendulum. He was suspended by the shoulders, Lawler's fingers gripping him like iron hooks; he was shaken until his feet, powerless to retard the movement, were flopping back and forth wildly, and his teeth rattled despite his efforts to clench them. It seemed to him that Lawler would snap his head from his shoulders, so viciously did Lawler shake him. Then suddenly the terrible fingers relaxed, and Hamlin reeled and swayed, dizzy and weak from the violence of movement. He was trying to keep his feet solidly on the floor when he felt Lawler's fingers at his throat.
To his astonishment, the fingers did not sink into the flesh. They touched his throat lightly, and he dazedly met Lawler's eyes, burning, with a passion he never had seen in them before. And Lawler's voice was dry and light, but steady--so steady and cold that Hamlin realized that only the man's complete mastery of himself had kept him from committing murder.
"Hamlin, I ought to kill you. I'm letting you off on one condition--that you break off with Singleton, and that you keep silent about the things we both know. If you confess to Ruth that you've been rustling cattle, or if you tell her--or hint of it--that I know you've been rustling--I'll tear you apart!
"You're like a lot of other damned, weak-kneed polecats. You've got a girl who is good as gold, and you're making a regular hell for her. She's wise to what you've been doing--she suspects you. And from now on you're going to show her that she was wrong--that you're straight and square.
"There's a job for you over at the Circle L--if you want it. I'll throw things in your way; I'll put you on your feet again--give you stock and tools, and pretend I've sold them to you. I'll do anything to keep you square. But if you tell Ruth, I'll kill you as sure as my name is Lawler!"
"I'm agreein'," said Hamlin, thickly. "I ain't wanted to do the things I've been doin'. But things didn't go right, an' Singleton--damn it, Lawler; I never liked the man, an' I don't know why I've been doin' what I have been doin'. But I've wanted to do somethin' for Ruth--so's she could quit teachin' an' live like a lady. I thought if I could get a bunch of coin together that mebbe she'd have----"
"She'd see you dead before she'd touch it," scoffed Lawler.
"Mebbe I'd be better off if I was dead," said Hamlin, glumly.
"You'll die, right enough, if you don't keep your word to me," grimly declared Lawler.
He strode to the door, leaped upon Red King and rode away.
Inside the cabin, Hamlin got to his feet and swayed toward the door, reaching it and looking out, to see Lawler riding rapidly toward Willets.
CHAPTER III
A WOMAN'S EYES
There had been a day when Willets was but a name, designating a water tank and a railroad siding where panting locomotives, hot and dry from a long run through an arid, sandy desert that stretched westward from the shores of civilization, rested, while begrimed, overalled men adjusted a metal spout which poured refreshing water into gaping reservoirs.
In that day Willets sat in the center of a dead, dry section, swathed in isolation so profound that passengers in the coaches turned to one another with awe in their voices and spoke of God and the insignificance of life.
But there was a small river near the water tank--the headwaters of the Wolf--or there had been no tank. And a prophet of Business, noting certain natural advantages, had influenced the railroad company to build a corral and a station.
From that day Willets became assured of a future. Cattlemen in the Wolf River section began to ship stock from the new station, rather than drive to Red Rock--another shipping point five hundred miles east.
From the first it became evident that Willets would not be a boom town. It grew slowly and steadily until its fame began to trickle through to the outside world--though it was a cattle town in the beginning, and a cattle town it would remain all its days.
Therefore, because of its slow growth, there were old buildings in Willets. The frame station had an ancient appearance.