The Ranchman — Part 27

And faces around Taylor whitened as the man stood there facing Keats, his shoulders drooping still lower, the smile on his face becoming one of cold, grim mockery.

The discomfiture of Keats was apparent. Indecision and fear were in the set of his head—bowed a little; and a dread reluctance was in his shifting eyes and the pasty-white color of his face. It was plain that Keats had overplayed; he had not intended to arouse the latent tiger in Taylor; he had meant merely to embarrass him.

Again Taylor’s voice was gentle, though this time it carried a subtle taunt.

Desperately harried, Keats licked his hot lips and cast a sullen glance around at the crowd. Then his gaze went to Taylor’s face, and he drew a slow breath.

“I reckon I wasn’t meanin’ just that,” he said.

“Of course,” smiled Taylor; “that’s no way for a sheriff to act. Take them in, Keats,” he added, waving a hand at the prisoners; “it’s been so long since the sheriff of this county arrested a man that the jail’s gettin’ tired, yawning for somebody to get into it.”

He turned his back on Keats and looked straight at Carrington:

“Have you got any ideas along the sheriff’s line?” he asked.

Carrington flushed and his lips went into a sullen pout. He did not speak, merely shaking his head, negatively.

Keats’s glance at Taylor was malignant with hate; and Carrington’s sullen, venomous look was not unnoticed by the crowd. Keats stepped forward and seized the two prisoners, hustling them away, muttering profanely.

And then Taylor was led away by Norton and a committee of citizens, leaving Carrington, the girl and Parsons alone on the platform.

“Looks like we’re going to have trouble lining things up,” remarked Parsons. “Danforth——”

“You shut up!” snapped Carrington. “Danforth’s an ass and so are you!”

Within an hour after his arrival in Dawes, Carrington was sitting in the big front room of his suite in the Castle Hotel, inspecting the town.

A bay window projected over the sidewalk, and from a big leather chair placed almost in the center of the bay between two windows and facing a third, at the front, Carrington had a remarkably good view of the town.

Dawes was a thriving center of activity, with reasons for its prosperity. Walking toward the Castle from the railroad station, Carrington had caught a glimpse of the big dam blocking the constricted neck of a wide basin west of the town—and farther westward stretched a vast agricultural section, level as a floor, with a carpet of green slumbering in the white sunlight, and dotted with young trees that seemed almost ready to bear.