The Ronan Pioneer

Selwood of Sleepy Cat
By FRANK H. SPEARMAN

:: 'story- From the start:
John Selwood, gentleman gambler and manager of a stage line at Sleepy Cat comes upon a settler whose wagon has mired in a creek. He helps get the outfit clear, after picking up a girl's shoe-and being attracted by the supposed owner thereof in Fyler's (the settler's) wagon. Moses McCracken, a youth, is robbed of $600 in a Sleepy Cat gambling den. Selwood forces the swindlers, Bartoe and Atkins, to return the money. Fyler opens a dry goods store, with "Big Haynes" running a mock auction. Selwood learns the girl whose shoe he picked up is Christie, Fyler's daughter. Selwood makes Christie's acquaintance and warns Fyler that Atkins is a crook. Starbuck, head of the crooked gamblers, attracted, tries to ingratiate himself with Christie. The girl's mind is poisoned against Selwood. Fyler is beaten and robbed. Christie, seeking Doctor Carpy, meets Selwood and informs him that Atkins has thrown her father out of his store, claiming to own it. Fyler is not badly hurt. Christie tells Selwood of threats made by Starbuck, also that he had asked her to marry him. With his two companions, Selwood drives Atkins and Haynes from Fyler's store.

CHAPTER VII Continued
8
Selwood, approaching the high shuttered window on the north side of the building, felt carefully all around it. The two dogs crouched at Scott's feet. Selwood studied the building a moment. Then he turned to his companions.
"They'll look for us first at the back door-that's the natural way to open this oyster. I'll smash this shutter. Bill, you go around to the south side and-slam away at the other window. Bust it if you can. but, whatever you do, make plenty of noise. When I get through this shutter with an ax, Bob drops the dogs in here, one after the other- they won't get both of 'em... When you hear me yell, Bill, it will mean the dogs are in. Then run-to the back door with your ax Bob, and chop at it, I'll take the sledge and an ax around to the front door, Bill. When you hear the dogs inside, join me at the front door and give it the sledge for all that's in you. Now get to your place, Bill-when I hear your ax, I start here--Keep out of range, best you can; there's, at least, one hard shooter in there."
A moment later the thud of Pardaloe's ax against the hollow shutter on the opposite side of the building would have waked the dead, had there been any in Sleepy Cat proper. Timed at the expected signal, came the crash of Selwood's ax into the north shutter. A loud shout from within, followed by a shot, greeted the attack. Chloe and Sweetheart, savage with excitement, yelped- and whined. A shotgun discharged from close inside the north shutter warned the besiegers what to expect, and a buckshot glancing from the blade of the ax caught Selwood above the ear. Scott, crouching with the dogs, jumped as a second bullet stung his wrist, and a third brought an angry yelp from the dog Chloe.
There was no sign of, thought of a retreat. Selwood redoubled his blows --one or at most two more charges of buckshot, he believed, were all that were to be feared for a moment, and the sooner they came, the better it would suit him. He sank the ax head again and again into the thick lock-rail of the shutter, intent on reaching the hook-fastening. Again a charge of buckshot hurtled through the damaged casement and sprinkled the axman, the Indian, and the dogs, but there was no cessation in the ferocious shower of blows. The splintering crash that followed each one told how fast the shutter was giving way, and the sound of a fourth report from a shotgun also told Selwood that Pardaloe was under fire. Throwing all his energy into one last swing, Selwood drove the ax completely through the jamb to pry out the staple. The ax helve, weakened by the blow, broke. With an oath, Selwood called for the sledge and the next minute what remained of the shutter hung loose.
Within, Selwood and Scott heard the shouting of the defenders.
"The doors, boys!" roared Selwood. Pardaloe, yelling like an Indian, was plying his ax. Selwood tore the shutter from its hinges, stopped, caught Chloe in his arms, unsnapped her leash, and threw her like a shot into the store. From Scott's arms, Sweetheart flew in after her.
In an instant pandemonium raged inside. Wild shooting, the snapping of the infuriated dogs mingled with the cursing of the bewildered defenders, the crash of Scott's ax at the back door, and Pardaloe's sledge at the front. Wood and iron could not withstand. The positions of the two parties were now reversed; the trouble was all on the inside. Darkness, the danger of shooting one another in shooting at the dogs--and with it all the three men in the store trying all they could do to keep from being torn to pieces. The hickory cross-bar that held the front doors splintered before the first blows of Pardaloe's sledge, and the stout front doors gave way. Throwing himself against the weaker one, Selwood smashed and shouldered through it and fell into the store. Pardaloe, unopposed, dashed in from the front end, and Selwood, springing from his momentary shelter, grappled the form of a man in the darkness. The two clenched on the floor.
"Call off your dogs!" came in a stentorian voice from somewhere. It sounded like Big Haynes. Selwood, rolling his man in a fierce scuffle toward the front, dragged him to the doorway, threw him into the street, and ran back to help.
Scott, from outside, had set a lighted lantern up in the battered window opening, and, hastening to the door with a second lantern, ran in to secure the dogs just as Selwood reached Pardaloe. He sat astride a prostrate defender, his bony fingers fastened on the man's windpipe. Selwood understood too well what that meant. Catching a lantern from Scott's hand, he held it on the man's distorted features under Pardaloe's hand. "Let loose, Bill! Let loose, I tell you! You're killing him."
"Dash it, John," protested Pardaloe, struggling to get away from the gambler's hands, "that's what I'm trying to do--let me alone--he tried to plug me! Who is he? Atkins!" he exclaimed, as Selwood held the lantern closer to the man's swollen face.
"Get your knee out of his chest Bill," remonstrated Selwood. "Can't you see he's slipping? He can't breathe."
With many reproaches aimed at Selwood for unwarranted interference, Pardaloe, shaking himself loose, baffled and eyeing his prey, stood by while Selwood, bending over the gasping man, saw he was coming to, and started to drag him forward to throw him out.
Pardaloe bared his arms. "Stand away!" he exclaimed in a hoarse growl. "Stand away, John! You throw'd your'n out. I throw mine."
He picked up and carried Atkins forward bodily. Selwood turned to help Scott with the dogs. These had Big Haynes, greatly embarrassed, behind two big boxes in a corner-and, held back by Scott, they were tearing to shreds with fiendish delight the blanket Haynes had slept in. Haynes called loudly for quarter, and as Selwood went forward again, Scott, while he held the dogs, advised Haynes to hustle out the back door.
The party was over.
It was the work of only a few minutes for Selwood to regain his room back of the gambling hall. He slipped out of his rig and began to wash up. Within fifteen minutes he was back at the post he had left an hour earlier, with the few sitters around him who had gathered at the last table where faro was being dealt that Sunday night.
Hardly ten minutes later three men appeared at the open doors of Selwood's place. Starbuck, accompanied by Atkins and Bartoe, walked into the hall and stood for a moment looking about. Selwood knew what they were there for to see whether he was missing from his ordinary post. He impassively pressed the case spring and kept an untroubled eye on the layout. His visitors lingered only a moment, but it was past the closing hour, and while the last of the players straggled out, Starbuck came in again.
"What have your barn bull dogs been up to tonight, Selwood?" he demanded without preliminary.
Selwood asked what he meant.
Starbuck told of the attack on the store. "Atkins and Bartoe hold a bill of sale for that stock," he declared indignantly. "Things have come to a pretty pass in Sleepy Cat when legitimate owners are to be chewed up by dogs and thrown out into the street. This thing has got to stop, or you'll have to move your headquarters out of this town." Selwood parried with civil answers the questions roughly asked, and met untroubled the threats roughly made, and asked only an occasional question himself.
"Have you heard any talk of Vigilantes organizing in Sleepy Cat?" he asked. "I don't know much about it. But the little talk I heard here a few minutes ago about some kind of a fight at Fyler's store was that the Vigilantes had got after the men who had robbed Fyler-and tried to kill him. There's no use your talking to me about my men; they do as they please you know that. Talk to them," he suggested, while Starbuck, very angry, continued to blow off.
"Bartoe says there were half a dozen or more men in it-and they're in the store yet, he says." Selwood thought Pardaloe and one Indian in possession must be making a good deal of noise, but he said nothing.
"There's going to be a clean-up in this town before long," added Starbuck significantly. "Folks that are making trouble ought to get ready for it."
"Meaning just whom, Starbuck?" asked Selwood, pacifically.
"Meaning whoever's behind all this rowdyism that's going on here lately."
"Well, Starbuck," returned Selwood, with some slight appearance of fatigue, "you know, or ought to know, that I'm the man that threw Atkins and Bartoe into the street tonight. They ought to know it; if they don't, tell them so. Of course, I wouldn't have done it, if I'd known there were friends of yours in the store. If it hadn't been for me, they would have been hanging to telegraph poles by this time -that's the fact. And tell them the next thing like that Fyler job they try to pull off, they will be hanging to the poles-that's the plain, straight, every-day English of it."
Starbuck had never been faced quite so bluntly. Selwood never had shown his hand quite so carelessly- parted with his caution quite so completely. But a woman stood between them, and she meant the more to Selwood because, though he cherished slight hope of holding her himself, the thought of her going to Starbuck was bitter enough to make him ready for any manner of fray.
Starbuck eyed the gambler intently. Then he spoke with composure. "Selwood, you're cutting quite a figure here in affairs that you've got no business in. You're playing too many games to win all of them-do you know that?"
Selwood was too absorbed in watching Starbuck's eyes to make the slightest response in words. "Whether you do or not," Starbuck went on evenly, "You'll find your dual role will wind up as you play it long enough. It won't work in Sleepy Cat."
Starbuck paid his enemy one compliment. Without any attempt to back out of the room, he turned and walked straight to the door. There he paused and looked around.
"Good night, Mr. Selwood," he called out calmly.
"It's pretty late for that, Mr. Starbuck," retorted Selwood. "Good morning."
Daylight was really breaking.
"Hold on a minute," he added, walking forward to where Starbuck stood at the door. "You're giving me some advice. I'll give you a little. There's Vigilante talk brewing in Sleepy Cat, Mr. Starbuck."
"When the Vigilantes get me," cried Starbuck, "they'll get you, Mr. Selwood."
"In that case the cross-arm of one pole will do for both of us. But why wait for the Vigilantes? We can fix up our differences any time."
"Some time--not any time, Mr. Selwood."
"Sometime for you, Mr. Starbuck," smiled Selwood as Starbuck stalked heavily down the steps; "any time for me."
It was late that Monday before Selwood appeared. At noon, in his room at the hotel he was pulling himself together for a shave. After lunch he walked down the street in the sunshine, with a careful eye for enemies, but passed Fyler's to see what the place looked like, after the change of owners.
Scott had patched up the scars. The front doors showed fewer traces than Selwood had expected. But here was a deathly place. The town knew that there had been a fight at the store during the night, but for various reasons the principals concerned had kept their own counsel. When Selwood approached Fyler's, two men stood on the corner talking-Big Haynes and Harry Barbanet. Selwood understood perfectly well that Harry, chief gossip of the River quarter, was up-town to bore into Haynes for all the information he could get as to who the pseudo-Vigilantes had been-that his sore and aching friends might be posted accordingly. Big Haynes, however, had been uncommunicative and, when Selwood hove in sight, left Barbanet unceremoniously and drew Selwood aside.
"I want to explain things a little, John," said the big fellow. "This sneak"-he nodded toward Barbanet, who, left alone, was walking up the steps into the store-"is up here trying to pump me about who was in the party; he didn't get anything. What I want to say to you is this: I wa'n't in no way mixed up in this scheme to rob Fyler. I had some goods of my own in there and stayed with them fellows so as not to get robbed, myself. I've got no money, John--you know that. It's come easy. go easy. Last night I fired no gun and hit no man. That's all, John. Right is right, ain't it, John? 'N' you know the facts. I helped the girl 'n' the Indian and McAlpin get Fyler up here early this morning -they'll tell you that, too-they understood the situation. And I want to tell you, 'tween you 'n' me-that man Fyler ain't hurt much, neither."
Selwood had no reason to doubt Haynes' story.
"I hold nothing against you, Haynes, as far as I'm concerned. And I don't know rightly what you're talking about. Somebody at the hotel said there'd been a fight. If any of my men were mixed in it and have injured anybody, they'll have to make it right."
Barbanet came down the steps with a satisfied smile on his face-a wise smile, meant to ingratiate him with the two men talking on the corner. Nothing lacking in assurance, he addressed Selwood. "That's a nice girl in there." He nodded back toward the store. Selwood only looked at him in silence, turned his back abruptly on the impudent loafer and walked away.
Haynes nodded toward the store. "Go slow on what you say about anybody in there to Selwood, Harry."
"How so?"
"They're friends of his."
Barbanet smiled anew. "She thinks Selwood is a mining man. She and her old man were talking about him just now. I asked whether she meant Selwood the gambler. She said no. she meant the mining man-the man that runs the Russell and Wentworth wagons. She don't know he runs the place up the hill," grinned Barbanet.
"I guess from the way Mr. Gentleman John walked off just now, he wouldn't like her to know he's a gambler."
"I've got a better guess than that: when he wants her to know it he'll tell her himself."
"Wonder how he'd like me to tell her?"
"He wouldn't like it."
"Wonder how much it would be worth to him for me not to tell her?"
Big Haynes was prompt in his reply, and disinterested. "Not a cent to him--not if I guess him right. But before you cross his trail, Harry, send for the buzzards; they're quick workers and they'll make a clean job of you."
Selwood walked down street quite unconscious of the corner talk behind him. But he felt cheated out of his visit and, feeling that he had a perfectly good excuse, made occasion to walk around by Fyler's an hour later. This time he found Christie alone and behind the counter in the front of the store.
Her face lighted when she saw him coming up the steps. She had evidently been at work among the goods and was still busy. Her face, already flushed, seemed to deepen in color under his gaze, and the slight disorder of her dress matched the pretty disarray of her hair. Things were in such awful shape this morning," she said, with her fingers running around like mice among the hairpins and with her eyes fixed in dire apology on Selwood's eyes. "I know I'm a sight!" she exclaimed. "But you'll never know what this poor store looked like!"
"If it looked anything like you," he ventured, "I shouldn't have touched it."
Could Christie have blushed more deeply she probably would; but, unable to do so, she did something worse, as far as Selwood's composure was concerned. She laughed. And it was the happiest care-free laugh in the world-no fret, no worry, neither regret nor apprehension-just the young, happy laugh of a young, happy moment. Selwood felt himself rudely shaken with every vibration of her throat, but he clung to the lifeline. "How's your father?"
"Oh"-Christie heaved a big sigh of relief--"ever so much better. Oh, I know I shall never be able to say all I want to to thank you-how am I ever going to do it?"
She looked at him with eyes so wide open and so appealingly perplexed that Selwood momentarily wilted. His eyes fell. The man who could look at any sort of a hand at poker calmly, or into the muzzle of a gun without visible hysteria, faltered before Christie's eyes. He kept his wits just enough to answer her appeal. "You've done it," he managed to say-and continued: "I hope you'll have no more trouble. Bob Scott will be sneaking around here for a while at night; Bob doesn't sleep much."
"He just saved my life, helping this morning. And"-she hesitated and twisted her fingers a little as she stood behind the counter. Then she summoned courage and went on--in truth she had much the more courage of the two. "And--he, when I spoke of you, he told me you were not here at all last night! And I just knew that wasn't so. And he said that Mr. Pardaloe had gone out of town early this morning-"
"He took a wagon train out," explained Selwood. He could not add that knowing there was but one way to keep the mule boss quiet, he had sent him out.
"Where were you last night?" demanded Christie, growing in pretty boldness-pretty because it was nothing but gratitude and fast-kindling confidence-with just the merest dash of receptive feminine curiosity. "Oh, you needn't tell me if you don't want to," she added hastily. "I know I ought not to ask."
Her head hung down-about far enough down to reproach herself for hardihood--and her eyes looked up just far enough to reach his: and just innocently enough to shatter his good resolutions of every sort.
"You've full permission to ask me any kind of a question in the world," he said. "Just remember that. I was here a little while last night. But Pardaloe and Scott did the hard work."
"Somebody certainly did it. How can men be so mean as those men were to really steal everything we had?" Christie sighed at the thought, but it was not the sigh that shook Selwood: it was the appealing confidence of her question to the one man she felt sure she could trust: and it was so satisfying to him to be even for a few moments in that position.
He stumbled at some effort to answer or explain her difficulty, but Christie rode right in. "I suppose," she said impulsively, "I might as well ask: How can men be as good as you and your friends were to risk their lives to get back what was taken away from us--when they couldn't have the slightest personal interest in helping father and me?"
Selwood demurred. "I wouldn't say just exactly that: Men like Pardaloe and Scott and myself don't see a nice young lady like you often-"
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Christie flushing anew at her success as nice young lady.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)