Part 2

She flourished the heavy weapon in her hand and the storekeeper, suppressing a chuckle, noted that she used both hands to raise it. It would have been disastrous to offer advice then.

“Mebbe,” he gravely offered, “I’d better notify the sher’ff to arrest him fer trespassin’.”

“No, oh no! I wouldn’t do that. But you tell him what I said, will you?”

So Bud, inwardly chuckling, went to Hunter’s place, only to be motioned away. “Get out of here, you old goat. I won’t listen to any more of your ideas. You’re the cause of all this.”

“The most ungrateful thing in the world,” opined the storekeeper, returning to Burnt Creek, “is mixin’ in family troubles. Men’ve been killed fer less. But if I’m to be hung I might as well be hung fer somethin’ good. Patch that up summow.”

Man and girl were crowded from his mind in the succeeding weeks. Events in the sparse Central Oregon country move with the same irregular frequency as elsewhere. Out of a serene sky broke seven kinds of trouble into which Bud was directly or indirectly drawn. For one thing, threshing season was on full blast, and every able-bodied man gave his services; this was communal law. Then the road commissioners in a frenzy of economy--just before election--decided to leave unimproved a more or less impassable stretch of the Bend Klamath Highway. The storekeeper, being apprised of it, rode to town in a fury and shocked those commissioners out of their economic resolutions. He fought for his people and his land ruthlessly, and, being a power in his own right, won. Hardly had this subsided when the shadow of Bottle-nose Henderson fell across the land.

Bottle-nose was one of those derelicts for whom society has no honored place. In a more highly organized community he would have been sent to an asylum. Cascade county tolerated him because he stuck to the open spaces and left people alone. But somewhere on his lone trail the last restraining fiber of reason snapped, and he reverted to the law of the jungle. He ran amuck, terrorized the edges of the county, and sent unprotected families into gusts of fear. No one seemed safe from his swift attack. The sheriff set out a posse, and they traced his course southward toward the Burnt Creek region by three pilfered houses and several frightened women. This trail was all the posse found. Bottle-nose had become illusive as well as a highly dangerous character.

It was from him that the storekeeper conceived what seemed to be a sound idea one late summer evening as he jogged homeward. Toby, plodding along in dignified weariness, was startled to feel his master shake as if from ague; something that passed as a chuckle issued from Bud’s barrellike chest.

“If I got caught I’d sure be hamstrung,” mused the storekeeper. “Would lose all my reputation if I got caught an’ mebbe git a dose of lead poisonin’. But it cert’nly oughta bring results.”

And results were all that Bud cared about. At any rate, the idea took possession of him. His chin fell forward and Toby, unchecked, picked a faster pace toward Burnt Creek, viewing, doubtless, the measure of oats in the stall. A wise horse was Toby, but this time sentenced to a grievous disappointment. On reaching the store, Bud went in and returned with his revolver.

“G’ap, Toby; we’ve got to hustle. Dog-gone it, quit your balkin’! I feed an’ pamper you too much, that’s what. Git now! Ain’t to be fooled with.”

After short argument the sad Toby walked into the jack pines, bound for the desert. Leaving his horse to find the way, Bud relapsed to that reverie which years of solitude had acquainted him. Nor did he raise his head until the last dwarf pine was passed, and he stood against the gloom of the open land.

It was near nine o’clock. The moon displayed a thin, lifeless rind in the sky; the countless stars blinked down without dispelling the shadows. Across the open ground winked two lights, one from Jim Hunter’s kitchen and the other from the girl’s house, both cheerfully beckoning. Bud clucked his tongue and struck across the open, passed Hunter’s place at a good distance, and, on arriving within a few hundred yards of the Hazen house, dismounted.

“Now, you goldurned animal,” he whispered, “stay put. When I come back it’ll be a-foggin’.”

He took the revolver from the holster and, under the impulse of an unusual kind of excitement, drew the hammer part way back and turned the cylinder with a thumb. Ten feet away Tony dissolved into an indistinguishable blur. Bud took a mental line from his horse to both lights.

“Got to place that dog-goned critter,” he murmured, advancing.

A heavy boot toe struck a projecting rock and he balanced wildly, failed to right himself, and fell to the ground. The impact seemed to shake him loose in a dozen vital spots. An immense grunt escaped him. Seemed as if it exploded in the air, but that was only imagination. He crawled painfully to his feet and went on until the light from the girl’s kitchen window was quite clear. He could see inside the small room, but failed to locate her.

“Gosh, I got to see where she is afore I shoot.”

He angled aside to get a better sweep of the room. It occurred to him then that he was more or less in the position of a Peeping Tom, and a rod of ice smote his back. “Fer a nickel I’d quit this fool stunt,” he said to himself. Then the light was eclipsed for a moment as the girl moved to the front of the room. “That’d be the corner the stove’s in. She’s safe.” He raised the revolver and aimed at the window.

It was not the best idea in the world. Bud began to suspect that earlier in the evening. But his self-defense was adequate enough. Both the girl and the man were too obstinate to listen to reason and summary methods had to be employed for their own good. They were just like two fighters who struggled long after the original injury had been dead and buried. Now the only thing a man could do with stubborn pride was blast it. What he meant to do was put a bullet through that window and shatter a pane of glass. That would give the girl a much-needed scare, sort of shake her confidence in her own strength. If, on hearing that shot, Jim Hunter didn’t rush over to her house he, Dave Bud, would be greatly mistaken in his man. And if that threat of danger, always a welding influence, didn’t change their relations, he’d be mighty disappointed. He brought the gun down on the bright window, taking care that the shot would break a pane and bury itself in the sill.

There was, of a sudden, a pad-pad of feet on the ground, an alarming rush of a body that went past him, wheeled like a football player, and bore down. Bud’s revolver arm fell; a low figure hurtled from the shadows, struck him amidships, closed about him, and knocked him over with the savageness of a hungry cinnamon bear. The storekeeper’s teeth rattled, he bit his chin and choked in the sand. A rock struck his head and nearly put him to sleep. Quite instinctively he put up both huge arms--he had dropped the gun--and pushed his assailant off; but before he could take advantage the man had thrown himself back again. A fist smacked against his temple and a familiar voice reached his half-buried ears.

“You sneaking coyote! Thought you’d raise the devil in another lonely house, eh? Thought you’d scare another woman half to death! I’ve been laying for you. Next time maybe you’ll cache your horse where a man won’t stumble across it. I’m just about going to kill you, you Bottle-nose skunk!”

It was Jim Hunter on the warpath! And mistaking him for Bottle-nose Henderson! Bud’s mind worked in circles, amid a confusion of blows, a ton of sand, and smarting eyes. He had to get out of here in a hurry, no mistake. It wouldn’t do for Jim to discover his identity. Jim wouldn’t consider him in any better light, wouldn’t understand. He had overlooked the fact that the young man would patrol the girl’s home after dark and in patrolling run across Toby. The thing now was to make an exit and call it a bad venture.

He stifled a groan of protest. It was a darned good thing Jim had never seen Bottle-nose and noted the man’s skinny shape. The storekeeper raised hands and feet, throwing Hunter back like a blanket, got up, and dashed toward Toby. By golly, but this was a mess. Look where he’d got himself in trying to do a good deed!

Hunter was on him like a wild cat and down to earth they went, rolling, clawing, fighting, with no words at all to waste. Bud flung the lighter man off, got up again, ran a yard, and was pulled down. Somehow Jim’s fists found their mark. Bud felt his nose ache with resentment. In turn he traded blows and heard them land solidly. There was a burly strength in the storekeeper’s shoulder, a power which once in the older days had made him top hand of the county. Right now he spared none of it to get clear. But it didn’t matter how many times he threw Hunter away, the man was back again, pinning him to earth like a clothes dummy; and each fall hurt the corpulent Bud more than he cared to admit.

“I got to quit smokin’,” he said to himself. “Wind ain’t no good.”

Toby, nearby, snorted. They rolled beneath his very feet and he moved uneasily. Bud dragged himself and Hunter upward toward the saddle. “No you don’t!” panted Jim. “Come back here.” Bud, falling, had his face turned toward the girl’s house, and he saw a shaft of light spring out of the opening doorway. Somebody stood on the threshold. He wondered if this was actually so or whether the little skyrockets in his head caused the illusion. He was soon enough put to rest about it; for a shrill, terrified scream shattered the air. Hunter’s aggressiveness instantly ebbed, and a gasp broke from his hard-pressed lungs.

“What’s that?”

Bud’s mind attained an unprecedented nimbleness. Somebody had come across the desert from an opposite direction and gone into the house while they were fighting the silent battle. Bottle-nose Henderson, then! The man was somewhere in the Burnt Creek region.

“Huh,” he grunted. “I thought you were tryin’ to put somethin’ over on me. Thought you was Bottle-nose. Been trailin’ him all day. Leggo, you darned scorpion! This dog-goned darkness! I thought I had him pinned down.”

Together they ran across the prairie and reached the open door. Hunter was the faster, and he made a single stride to the far corner where the girl, back to the wall, faced a thin, nondescript creature whose crimson, bulbous nose and slack mouth gave him a particularly vicious expression.

Hunter flung himself upon the man and threw him against the wall so hard as to make the small place shake from rafter to floor. Bud, near done up, was content to watch them fight. Hunter was a veritable wild cat. He beat down the invader’s defense and, like a boy who has found pleasure in throwing things, swept his man across the room and slammed him against another wall, overturning a chair and table on the way.

It was soon over. Bottle-nose collapsed with a sigh of defeat, slid to the floor, and whined for mercy. Jim Hunter strode over to the girl, looking as one just emerged from a mob attack. His shirt hung in ribbons about his gangling arms. There were sundry cuts over his face, and his hair was ground with sand. But nothing could conceal the flare in his eyes.

“Honey!” he cried. “I’ll kill that skunk if he’s hurt you!”

“Jimmy, what _has_ happened?”

Bud turned his broad back and wryly moved his nose. There was more or less incoherent explanation and questioning from both and out of it, unexpectedly:

“Jimmy--I won’t ask that apology if you don’t want to give it.”

“I’m a bum. I give it, Mary. I’m just a stubborn bum.”

“You give it! Jimmy! I’ll never ask another. And I take back everything.”

A great and ponderous silence ensued, broken by the impatient Bud.

“Here I trail this fella all day long and then you dog-gone wild cat--look what you done to me.”

It was not a very strong story, but Jim Hunter was too preoccupied to pick flaws.

“I’ll take Bottle-nose back with me,” continued Bud. “Say, just what was this quarrel about, anyway? Seein’s I got so durned involved in it, might as well tell me.”

“He called me a useless butterfly, and I had to show him I wasn’t.”

“Which was after she told me I couldn’t do anything worth while.”

“For gosh sake,” stuttered the storekeeper. “Was _that_ all?” It was certainly queer what small things set people at a tangent. Stubborn people, chiefly. But what great fighters they made. Just the kind to populate this sturdy, harsh land. He fell gloomily to another thought. “Suppose now you’ll make up an’ go back to town.”

“Not on your life,” declared Jim. “It’s the only place I’m worth anything. Why, I’m happy here!”

“So’m I,” added the girl. “That settles it.”

Bud was forced to a rare smile and looked like the cat who had swallowed the canary.

“Well, I’m sure sorry my little peace efforts didn’t work. Took Bottle-nose to turn the trick. So long, folks.”

It was later, entering the dark forest with his prisoner, that he lifted his face to the dim, star-scattered sky and gave thanks. Some day this country would blossom under the hands of these vigorous and clean-chosen people. Some day!

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 27, 1924 issue of _Western Story Magazine_.]