“I’ll kill you for that!” he howled. “I wasn’t going to, but now—”
Raging like an angry bull, Vandover hurled the full strength of his body against Hardin, trying to fling him to the sand. He was still holding the rancher’s gun hand rigid, but was swinging his huge fist at Hardin’s head with a rage that was accentuated by the pain of his crushed nose.
But even as that hamlike fist drove, Hardin ducked, then quickly straightened as again his own fist slashed out. It was an awkward position from which to hurl a killing blow, but somehow Gage Hardin managed it. It was a punch that started somewhere from down at his knees and gathered strength along the way until it landed like a flaming meteor on Rood Vandover’s jaw.
It landed properly that time, too. Hardin could feel it himself, all the way from his connecting fist along his arm, and down through his body as it landed on Vandover’s jaw with a sound like that of a meat cleaver hitting a side of beef. But the next instant he saw the hairy face that had been so close to his retreat as Vandover’s head snapped backward. Then he felt the death grip on his gun hand loosen, saw his antagonist, with a dazed expression in his eyes, slumped backward to the sand as his knees buckled.
Hardin’s gun was held steadily on the man who had made his final desperate play for freedom. Rood Vandover struggled to his knees and knelt there a moment, head hanging, as he shook it groggily.
“Get up, Rood,” Hardin said grimly. “It’s no use. I told you that you were going back.”
Vandover glanced up at him—once—through bleared eyes.
“I told you I wasn’t going back—to Louis Peele,” he mumbled. “I meant it.”
Gage Hardin had thought his antagonist’s last play had been made, and was not prepared for any further resistance. In the heat of the fight, he had completely forgotten the gun that Vandover had tossed behind him at the rancher’s orders. But Vandover had not forgotten it. He had been reminded of it when he had fallen flat on the hard metal of the six-gun. But he knew he would never get a chance to use it on Gage Hardin who stood there so coldly merciless, with his own gun muzzle aimed straight at Vandover’s heart.
After that all but knock-out blow, Hardin would not have believed Rood Vandover could move so fast as he did then. But the next instant, he saw the man’s hand go slightly behind him, saw the glitter of the weapon in a movement so swift it was a blur in the blistering sunlight. As though it were all the same blurring movement, Vandover whipped the gun to his own temple and fired.
Hardin averted his face as Vandover went down into the sand again—never again to rise, this time. The act had been so unexpected, its results were so irrevocably final that for the moment he felt stunned, nauseated. For so swiftly did it happen that Rood Vandover was dead before he struck the sand.
At last he had hurled his defiance in Hardin’s face—a defiance that could not be denied. He was not going back to Louis Peele.
CHAPTER V
HARDIN’S RETURN
FOUR days later, in that dusk which lies between sunset and moonrise, and all the rangeland lies in quiet dreaming, Doe Gaston heard a familiar step on the back stairs. Gaston had gone to bed early, weary with his conjectures about what could have happened to Gage Hardin, as well as about what was still to come. But he had not yet gone to sleep.
Gaston turned and lighted the lamp on the table against the wall, as Hardin closed the door, came in and slumped down into a chair before he spoke. His shoulders spoke eloquently of a mission that had not been accomplished, before Gaston said a word.
From the blackness of the yard there came the faint nicker of a horse. Chaser knew he was home. He was wondering why he had been left there, still saddled and bridled, with his comfortable stall so near.
“I thought—” Gaston expended his breath in a gust, as the lamplight grew from the ignited wick and steadied. “I thought you were never coming. Where is Vandover? Couldn’t you find him?”
“I didn’t bring him, after all,” Hardin said dully.
He slipped deeper down into his chair, his attention seemingly focused on the table and the lighted lamp. He did not look at Gaston as he suddenly began talking and hastily recounted all that had happened, in minute detail, since he and Gaston had parted there at the edge of the desert.
“He shot himself before I could make a move to stop him. I had to bury him there on the desert. I didn’t dare try to bring him back all that distance in the hot sun, with only one horse. It really doesn’t matter, anyway, Doe. I took Scotch back to Hoaley. He wouldn’t accept anything for the use of him. I got Chaser—and here I am. What has been happening around here?”
Gaston huddled in his underwear. “Nothing has had much time to develop, Gage. But I did this—I sent Red Corcoran for Sheriff Shawnessy. When the sheriff got here, I simply told him to go find Mary Silver.”
Hardin nodded, staring at the wall, in blank silence. His mind traveled back to the time when he had first come to Great Lost Valley, eight years before, when Guy Shawnessy had just been elected sheriff of Grant County. Great Lost Valley had then been wild and unsettled country.
Hardin had arrived in it with money enough at hand to buy the acres encompassing most of the rich valley and a great deal of the excellent rangeland to the south and west of it. He had established at that time the Circle Crossbar Ranch.
Within three years other families had moved into the Valley, and ranches had grown up around him to the east and north. Fred Warde had come with his wife and two sons, Gilbert and Lester, to found the Diamond W Ranch. Jefferson Baker, with his wife and three sons, Toby, Ferris and Walt, and his infant daughter Annie, had founded the J Bar B Ranch.
Not long after that, less than a year of time, Hardin had met Doe Gaston in Heppner, and Doe had eventually accepted a place as partner of the Circle Crossbar. A strange and unaccountable loneliness, but a loneliness nevertheless forever manifest, had lingered about Gage Hardin. Doe had never succeeded either in banishing it or sounding it.
The next people to move into the Valley, five years after Hardin’s advent, had been Mary Silver and her elder brother Melvin. Mel was apparently dying on his feet, of a treacherous heart, and he had wanted to die in the mountains.
Brother and sister had purchased a patch of land a few miles up the Valley from the Circle Crossbar, and had settled to make a home. Mel had not died. He had grown strong and secure.
Guy Shawnessy and Gage Hardin had realized in the same week that they both loved Mary Silver. She had had eyes only for Hardin, and she was of too honest fiber to make any pretense otherwise.
Shawnessy, needing but little and showing himself seldom in that territory, had taken his loss with grace—but he had never forgotten that he loved Mary Silver. Neither had Gage Hardin forgotten.
Gage stirred in his chair, bleak gaze intent on Doe Gaston.
“You sent for Guy?”
“I did.” Doe pulled his long-sleeved underwear over his wrists. “I figured that if there was one man besides you who would turn the world over to find Mary he would be Guy Shawnessy. He asked for a posse of picked men. I gave him Red Corcoran, Dutch Sundquist, Tamm Oaks, and Salt River Charley. They left yesterday at sun-up. I waited here for you. I haven’t much of a head
