Chapter 36

A MAN MEDITATES VENGEANCE

It had always been lonely at the Hamlin cabin, and it grew more lonely after Kane Lawler left the Circle L. For the barrier between Ruth and the happiness she had a right to expect seemed to grow higher and more impassable daily.

After receiving official notification of his nomination, Lawler had gone away on a speaking tour of the state, and Ruth had seen little of him. He came home once, for a few days, just before the election, and had renewed his pleas to Ruth. But the girl, rigidly adhering to her determination not to permit the shadow of her father's reputation to embarrass him, had firmly refused to consent. And after the election, when he had gone to the capital to take the office to which he had been chosen by a record vote, she watched him ride away with a consciousness that the world had grown to gigantic proportions and that Lawler was going to its extreme farther limits, leaving behind him a gulf of space, endless and desolate.

Dorgan, the country prosecutor, had been defeated for re-election by a man named Carney--who was known to be friendly to Singleton. Moreton had also been defeated--by "Slim" McCray, who hailed from a little town called Keegles, southeast from Willets. It was rumored--after the election--that Slim McCray had been friendly to Antrim, though no one advanced any evidence in support of the rumor.

McCray--because Willets was the county seat--came to the office that had formerly been Moreton's, immediately following his election. He was slender, tall, and unprepossessing, and instantly created a bad impression.

This news came to Ruth through her father, for she had not visited town since she had gone there to help Mrs. Lawler care for her son. She felt that she did not dare to leave the cabin. For one night, after her father had acted strangely, he got up suddenly and went out of the door. And after a while, growing suspicious, she blew out the light and stepped softly outside, to see him, at a little distance from the house, talking with Singleton.

That incident had occurred shortly after Lawler had departed for the capital to assume his duties as governor. She suspected her father had talked with Singleton since, though she had never seen them together from that time until now.

Lawler had been gone a month. She had heard through various mediums--mostly from cowboys from nearby ranches who occasionally passed the cabin--that Lawler was "making good"--in the vernacular of the cowpuncher; and "makin' them all set up an' take notice." Those terms, of course, would seem to indicate that Lawler was a good governor and that he was attracting attention by the quality of his administration.

But it seemed that more than a month had passed since Lawler had gone to the capital. The days dragged and the weeks seemed to be aeons long. And yet the dull monotony of the girl's life was relieved by trips she made to the Circle L, to visit Lawler's mother--and by the presence of Mary Lawler, who had come home for her vacation, during the summer, and during Lawler's absence on his speaking tour.

Ruth had heard with satisfaction that the Circle L trail herd, attended by Blackburn, Shorty, and other Circle L men, had not been molested on the trip to Red Rock. Caldwell and the others had driven their cattle to Red Rock also--not one of them visiting Warden to arrange for cars. Lawler's influence, and the spirit he had revealed in undertaking the long drive the previous season, had had its effect upon the other owners.

It seemed to Ruth that the fight between the Circle L men and the rustlers had made the latter cautious; and that even Warden had decided that discretion was necessary. At any rate, the surface of life in Willets and the surrounding country had become smooth, no matter what forces were at work in the depths. It appeared that the men who had fought Lawler in the past, were now careful to do nothing that would bring upon them a demonstration of his new power.

* * * * *

Gary Warden, however, was not fearful of Lawler's official power. In fact, he was openly contemptuous when Lawler's name was mentioned in his presence. Face to face with Lawler, he was afflicted with an emotion that was akin to fear, though with it was mingled the passionate hatred he had always felt for the man.

While Lawler had been at the Circle L he had fought him secretly, with motives that arose from a determination to control the cattle industry. Warden had had behind him the secret power of the state government and the clandestine cooperation of the railroad company. His fight against Lawler had been in the nature of business, in which the advantage had been all on his side.

Now, however, intense personal feeling dominated Warden. Lawler had beaten him, so far, and the knowledge intensified his rage against his conqueror. The railroad company's corral had yawned emptily during the entire fall season. Not a hoof had been shipped through Willets. All the cattlemen of the district had driven their stock to Red Rock. And Warden no longer smiled at the empty corral.

Looking out of one of his office windows this morning, Warden scowled. He remembered a day, a year or so ago, when he had stood in one of the windows of his office watching Della Wharton wave a handkerchief at Lawler. She had been riding out of town in a buckboard, with Aunt Hannah beside her, and Lawler had just come from the railroad station. That incident had spread the poison of jealousy in Warden's veins; the recollection of it had caused him to doubt Della's story of what had happened at the line cabin during the blizzard of the preceding winter; it had filled him with the maddening conviction that Lawler had deliberately tried to alienate Della's affections--that Lawler, knowing Della to be vain and frivolous, had intentionally planned the girl's visit to the line cabin.

He did not blame Della for what had happened. Upon Lawler was the blame for the affair; Lawler had planned it all, merely to be revenged upon him for his refusal to keep the agreement that had been made with Lefingwell.

Warden sneered as his thoughts went to that day in Jordan's office when Lawler, a deadly threat in his eyes, had leaned close to him to warn him. Warden remembered the words--they had flamed in his consciousness since.

"But get this straight," Lawler had said. "You've got to fight _me_! Understand? You'll drag no woman into it. You went to Hamlin's ranch the other day. God's grace and a woman's mercy permitted you to get away, alive. Just so sure as you molest a woman in the section, just so sure will I kill you, no matter who your friends are!"

Apparently, in Lawler's code of morals, it was one thing to force one's attentions upon a pretty woman, and another thing to steal the affections of a woman promised to another man.

But Warden's passion permitted him to make no distinction. And his rage was based upon the premise that Lawler was guilty. Warden's thoughts grew abysmal as he stood at the window; and considerations of business became unimportant in his mind as the Satanic impulse seized him. He stood for a long time at the window, and when he finally seized hat and coat and went down into the street he was muttering, savagely:

"God's grace and a woman's mercy. Bah! Damn you, Lawler; I'll make you squirm!"