Pa.s.sing with an easy step the row of barbers lined up in waiting beside their chairs, de Spain walked straight down the open aisle, behind Morgan's back. While Duke bent over the case to select a cigar, de Spain, pa.s.sing, placed himself at the mountain-man's side and between him and the street sunshine. It was taking an advantage, de Spain was well aware, but under the circ.u.mstances he thought himself ent.i.tled to a good light on Duke's eye.

De Spain wore an ordinary sack street suit, with no sign of a weapon about him; but none of those who considered themselves favored spectators of a long-awaited encounter felt any doubt as to his ability to put his hand on one at incomparably short notice. There was, however, no trace of hostility or suspicion in de Spain's greeting.

"h.e.l.lo, Duke Morgan," he said frankly. Morgan looked around. His face hardened when he saw de Spain, and he involuntarily took a short step backward. De Spain, with his left hand lying carelessly on the cigar case, faced him. "I heard you wanted to see me," continued de Spain.

"I want to see you. How's your back since you went home?"

Morgan eyed him with a mixture of suspicion and animosity. He took what was to him the most significant part of de Spain's greeting first and threw his response into words as short as words could be chopped: "What do you want to see me about?"

"Nothing unpleasant, I hope," returned de Spain. "Let's sit down a minute."

"Say what you got to say."

"Well, don't take my head off, Duke. I was sorry to hear you were hurt. And I've been trying to figure out how to make it easier for you to get to and from town while you are getting strong. Jeffries and I both feel there's been a lot of unnecessary hard feeling between the Morgans and the company, and we want to ask you to accept this to show some of it's ended." De Spain put his left hand into his side pocket and held out an unsealed envelope to Morgan. Duke, taking the envelope, eyed it distrustfully. "What's this?" he demanded, opening it and drawing out a card.

"Something for easier riding. An annual pa.s.s for you and one over the stage line between Calabasas and Sleepy Cat--with Mr. Jeffries's compliments."

Like a flash, Morgan tore the card pa.s.s in two and threw it angrily to the floor. "Tell 'Mr.' Jeffries," he exclaimed violently, "to----"

The man that chanced at that moment to be lying in the nearest chair slid quietly but imperiously out from under the razor and started with the barbers for the rear door, wiping the lather from one unshaven side of his face with a neck towel as he took his hasty way. At the back of the shop a fat man, sitting in a chair on the high, shoe-shining platform, while a negro boy polished him, rose at Morgan's imprecation and tried to step over the bootblack's head to the floor below. The boy, trying to get out of the way, jumped back, and the fat man fell, or pretended to fall, over him--for it might be seen that the man, despite his size, had lighted like a cat on his feet and was instantly half-way up to the front of the shop, exclaiming profanely but collectedly at the lad's awkwardness, before de Spain had had time to reply to the insult.

The noise and confusion of the incident were considerable. Morgan was too old a fighter to look behind him at a critical moment. No man could say he had meant to draw when he stamped the card underfoot, but de Spain read it in his eye and knew that Lefever's sudden diversion at the rear had made him hesitate; the crisis pa.s.sed like a flash.

"Sorry you feel that way, Duke," returned de Spain, undisturbed. "It is a courtesy we were glad to extend. And I want to speak to you about Nan, too."

Morgan's face was livid. "What about her?"

"She has given me permission to ask your consent to our marriage,"

said de Spain, "sometime in the reasonable future."

It was difficult for Duke to speak at all, he was so infuriated. "You can get my consent in just one way," he managed to say, "that's by getting me."

"Then I'm afraid I'll never get it, for I'll never 'get' you, Duke."

A torrent of oaths fell from Morgan's cracked lips. He tried to tell de Spain in his fury that he knew all about his underhanded work, he called him more than one hard name, made no secret of his deadly enmity, and challenged him to end their differences then and there.

De Spain did not move. His left hand again lay on the cigar case.

"Duke," he said, when his antagonist had exhausted his vituperation, "I wouldn't fight you, anyway. You're crazy angry at me for no reason on earth. If you'll give me just one good reason for feeling the way you do toward me, and the way you've always acted toward me since I came up to this country, I'll fight you."

"Pull your gun," cried Morgan with an imprecation.

"I won't do it. You call me a coward. Ask these boys here in the shop whether they agree with you on that. You might as well call me an isosceles triangle. You're just crazy sore at me when I want to be friends with you. Instead of pulling my gun, Duke, I'll lay it out on the case, here, to show you that all I ask of you is to talk reason."

De Spain, reaching with his left hand under the lapel of his coat, took a Colt's revolver from its breast harness and laid it, the muzzle toward himself, on the plate-gla.s.s top of the cigar stand. It reduced him to the necessity of a spring into Morgan for the smallest chance for his life if Morgan should draw; but de Spain was a desperate gambler in such matters even at twenty-eight, and he laid his wagers on what he could read in another's eye.

"There's more reasons than one why I shouldn't fight you," he said evenly. "Duke, you're old enough to be my father--do you realize that? What's the good of our shooting each other up?" he asked, ignoring Morgan's furious interruptions. "Who's to look after Nan when you go--as you must, before very many years? Have you ever asked yourself that? Do you want to leave her to that pack of wolves in the Gap? You know, just as well as I do, the Gap is no place for a high-bred, fine-grained girl like Nan Morgan. But the Gap is your home, and you've done right to keep her under your roof and under your eye. Do you think _I'd_ like to pull a trigger on a man that's been a father to Nan? d.a.m.nation, Duke, could you expect me to do it, willingly? Nan is a queen. The best in the world isn't good enough for her--I'm not good enough, I know that. She's dear to you, she is dear to me. If you really want to see me try to use a gun, send me a man that will insult or abuse her. If you want to use your own gun, use it on me if I ever insult or abuse her--is that fair?"

"d.a.m.n your fine words," exclaimed Morgan slowly and implacably. "They don't pull any wool over my eyes. I know you, de Spain--I know your breed----"

"What's that?"

Morgan checked himself at that tone. "You can't sneak into my affairs any deeper," he cried. "Keep away from my blood! I know how to take care of my own. I'll do it. So help me G.o.d, if you ever take any one of my kin away from me--it'll be over my dead body!" He ended with a bitter oath and a final taunt: "Is that fair?"

"No," retorted de Spain good-naturedly, "it's not fair. And some day, Duke, you'll be the first to say so. You won't shake hands with me now, I know, so I'll go. But the day will come when you will."

He covered his revolver with his left hand, and replaced it under his coat. The fat man who had been leaning patiently against a barber's chair ten feet from the disputants, stepped forward again lightly as a cat. "Henry," he exclaimed, in a low but urgent tone, his hand extended, "just a minute. There's a long-distance telephone call on the wire for you." He pointed to the office door. "Take the first booth, Henry. h.e.l.lo, Duke," he added, greeting Morgan with an extended hand, as de Spain walked back. "How are you making it, old man?"

Duke Morgan grunted.

"Sorry to interrupt your talk," continued Lefever. "But the barns at Calabasas are burning--telephone wires from there cut, too--they had to pick up the Thief River trunk line to get a message through. Makes it bad, doesn't it?" Lefever pulled a wry face. "Duke, there's somebody yet around Calabasas that needs hanging, isn't there? Yes."

CHAPTER XXII

GALE PERSISTS

When within an hour de Spain joined Nan, tense with suspense and anxiety, at the hospital, she tried hard to read his news in his face.

"Have you seen him?" she asked eagerly. De Spain nodded. "What does he say?"

"Nothing very reasonable."

Her face fell. "I knew he wouldn't. Tell me all about it, Henry--everything."

She listened keenly to each word. De Spain gave her a pretty accurate recital of the interview, and Nan's apprehension grew with her hearing of it.

"I knew it," she repeated with conviction. "I know him better than you know him. _What_ shall we do?"

De Spain took both her hands. He held them against his breast and stood looking into her eyes. When he regarded her in such a way her doubts and fears seemed mean and trivial. He spoke only one word, but there was a world of confidence in his tone: "Stick."

She arched her brows as she returned his gaze, and with a little troubled laugh drew closer. "Stick, Nan," he repeated. "It will come out all right."

She paused a moment. "How can you know?"

"I know because it's got to. I talked it all over with my best friend in Medicine Bend, the other day."

"Who, Henry?"

"Whispering Smith. He laughed at your uncle's opposing us. He said if your uncle only knew it, it's the best thing that could happen for him. And he said if all the marriages opposed by old folks had been stopped, there wouldn't be young folks enough left to milk the cows."

"Henry, what is this report about the Calabasas barns burning?"

"The old Number One barn is gone and some of the old stages. We didn't lose any horses, and the other barns are all right. Some of our Calabasas or Gap friends, probably. No matter, we'll get them all rounded up after a while, Nan. Then, some fine day, we're going to get married."

De Spain rode that night to Calabasas to look into the story of the fire.

McAlpin, swathed in bandages, made no bones about accusing the common enemy. No witnesses could be found to throw any more light on the inquiry than the barn boss himself. And de Spain made only a pretense of a formal investigation. If he had had any doubts about the origin of the fire they would have been resolved by an anonymous scrawl, sent through the mail, promising more if he didn't get out of the country.

But instead of getting out of the country, de Spain continued as a matter of energetic policy to get into it. He rode the deserts stripped, so to say, for action and walked the streets of Sleepy Cat welcoming every chance to meet men from Music Mountain or the Sinks.