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  Title: The Fighting Edge

  Author: William MacLeod Raine

  Release Date: September 4, 2008 [EBook #26520]

  Language: English

  *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIGHTING EDGE ***

  Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed

  Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

  * * *

  THE FIGHTING EDGE

  BY

  WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

  AUTHOR OF “MAN-SIZE,” “GUNSIGHT PASS,” “TANGLED TRAILS,” ETC.

  BOSTON AND NEW YORK

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

  The Riverside Press Cambridge

  1922

  * * *

  COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  The Riverside Press

  CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  * * *

  TO

  MY MOTHER

  * * *

  Contents

  CHAPTER PAGE

  I. Pete’s Girl 1

  II. “A Spunky Li’l’ Devil” 7

  III. Pals 12

  IV. Clipped Wings 17

  V. June asks Questions 25

  VI. “Don’t You Touch Him!” 33

  VII. An Elopement 41

  VIII. Blister Gives Advice 50

  IX. The White Feather 58

  X. In the Image of God 68

  XI. June Prays 76

  XII. Mollie Takes Charge 86

  XIII. Bear Cat Asks Questions 93

  XIV. Houck Takes a Ride 100

  XV. A Scandal Scotched 106

  XVI. Blister as Deus ex Machina 110

  XVII. The Back of a Bronc 117

  XVIII. The First Day 123

  XIX. Dud Qualifies as Court Jester 127

  XX. “The Bigger the Hat the Smaller the Herd” 135

  XXI. June Discovers a New World 141

  XXII. An Alternative Proposed and Declined 145

  XXIII. Bob Crawls his Hump Sudden 150

  XXIV. In the Saddle 158

  XXV. The Rio Blanco puts in a Claim 162

  XXVI. Cutting Sign 171

  XXVII. Partners in Peril 179

  XXVIII. June is Glad 189

  XXIX. “Injuns” 194

  XXX. A Recruit Joins the Rangers 200

  XXXI. “Don’t you like me any more?” 207

  XXXII. A Cup of Cold Water 214

  XXXIII. “Keep A-Comin’, Red Haid” 222

  XXXIV. An Obstinate Man stands Pat 230

  XXXV. Three in a Pit 237

  XXXVI. A Hero is Embarrassed 242

  XXXVII. A Responsible Citizen 249

  XXXVIII. Bear Cat Asleep 253

  XXXIX. Bear Cat Awake 258

  XL. Big-Game Hunters at Work 262

  XLI. In a Lady’s Chamber 266

  XLII. A Walk in the Park 270

  XLIII. Not even Powder-burnt 278

  XLIV. Bob holds his Red Haid high 284

  XLV. The Outlaw gets a Bad Break 290

  XLVI. The End of a Crooked Trail 297

  XLVII. The Kingdom of Joy 301

  * * *

  THE FIGHTING EDGE

  * * *

  THE FIGHTING EDGE

  CHAPTER I

  PETE’S GIRL

  She stood in the doorway, a patched and ragged Cinderella of the desert. Upon her slim, ill-poised figure the descending sun slanted a shaft of glory. It caught in a spotlight the cheap, dingy gown, the coarse stockings through the holes of which white flesh peeped, the heavy, broken brogans that disfigured the feet. It beat upon a small head with a mass of black, wild-flying hair, on red lips curved with discontent, into dark eyes passionate and resentful at what fate had made of her young life. A silent, sullen lass, one might have guessed, and the judgment would have been true as most first impressions.

  The girl watched her father drive half a dozen dogies into the mountain corral perched precariously on the hillside. Soon now it would be dusk. She went back into the cabin and began to prepare supper.

  In the rickety stove she made a fire of cottonwood. There was a business-like efficiency in the way she peeled potatoes, prepared the venison for the frying-pan, and mixed the biscuit dough.

  June Tolliver and her father lived alone on Piceance[1] Creek. Their nearest neighbor was a trapper on Eighteen-Mile Hill. From one month’s end to another she did not see a woman. The still repression in the girl’s face was due not wholly to loneliness. She lived on the edge of a secret she intuitively felt was shameful. It colored her thoughts and feelings, set her apart from the rest of the world. Her physical reactions were dominated by it. Yet what this secret was she could only guess at.

  A knock sounded on the door.

  June brushed back a rebellious lock of hair from her eyes with the wrist above a flour-whitened hand. “Come in.”

  A big dark man stood on the threshold. His glance swept the girl, searched the room, and came back to her.

  “Pete Tolliver live here?”

  “Yes. He’s lookin’ after the stock. Be in soon, likely.”

  The man closed the door. June dragged a chair from a corner and returned to her cooking.

  From his seat the man watched her. His regard was disturbing. It had a quality of insistence. His eyes were cold yet devouring. They were possessive, not clear but opaque. They did not look at her as other eyes did. She felt the blood burning in her cheeks.

  Presently, as she passed from the table to the stove to look at the sputtering venison, she flashed a resentful glance at him. It did not touch his effrontery.

  “You Pete’s girl?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve grown. Knew you when you was learnin’ to crawl.”

  “In Brown’s Park?” The words were out before she could stop them.

  “You done said it.” He smiled, not pleasantly, she thought. “I’m a real old friend of yore father.”

  Curiosity touched with apprehension began to stir in her. For those early years she had only memory to rely upon. Tolliver never referred to them. On that subject the barriers were up between the two. Fugitive flashes of that first home came back to June. She remembered a sweet, dark-eyed woman nuzzling her little body with kisses after the bath, an hour when that mother wept as though her heart would break and she had put little baby arms in tight embrace round her neck by way of comfort. That dear woman was not in any of the later pictures. A pile of stones on a hillside in Brown’s Park marked the grave.

  Between the day of ’Lindy Tolliver’s outburst of grief and the child’s next recollection was a gap. The setting of the succeeding memories was a frame house on a dusty road at the edge of a frontier town. In front of it jolted big freight wagons, three of them fastened together and drawn by a double row of oxen so long she could not count them. The place was Rawlins, Wyoming, and it was an outfitting point for a back country in Colorado hundreds of miles from the railroad. The chief figure in June’s horizon was a stern-eyed, angular aunt who took the place of both father and mother and did her duty implacably. The two lived together forever, it seemed to the child.

  June wakened one night from the light of a lamp in her aunt’s hand. A man was standing beside her. He was gaunt and pallid, in his eyes a look of hunger that reminded her of a hunted coyote. When he took her tightl
y in his arms she began to cry. He had murmured, “My li’l’ baby, don’t you be scared of yore paw.” As mysteriously as he had come to life, so Pete Tolliver disappeared again.

  Afterward there was a journey with a freight outfit which lasted days and days. June was in charge of a bullwhacker. All she remembered about him was that he had been kind to her and had expended a crackling vocabulary on his oxen. The end of the trek brought her to Piceance Creek and a father now heavily bearded and with long, unkempt hair. They had lived here ever since.

  Did this big man by the window belong to her father’s covered past? Was there menace in his coming? Vaguely June felt that there was.

  The door opened and Tolliver stepped in. He was rather under middle-size, dressed in down-at-the-heel boots, butternut jeans, cotton shirt, and dusty, ragged slouch hat. The grizzled beard hid the weak mouth, but the skim-milk eyes, the expression of the small-featured face, betrayed the man’s lack of force. You may meet ten thousand like him west of the Mississippi. He lives in every village, up every creek, in every valley, and always he is the cat’s-paw of stronger men who use him for good or ill to serve their ends.

  The nester stopped in his tracks. It was impossible for June to miss the dismay that found outlet in the fallen jaw and startled eyes.

  In the stranger’s grin was triumphant malice. “You sure look glad to see me, Pete, and us such old friends too. Le’s see, I ain’t seen you since—since—” He stopped, as though his memory were at fault, but June sensed the hint of a threat in the uncompleted sentence.

  Reluctantly Tolliver took the offered hand. His consternation seemed to have stricken him dumb.

  “Ain’t you going to introduce yore old pal to the girl?” the big man asked.

  Not willingly, the rancher found the necessary words. “June, meet Mr. Houck.”

  June was putting the biscuits in the oven. She nodded an acknowledgment of the introduction. Back of the resentful eyes the girl’s brain was busy.

  “Old side pardners, ain’t we, Pete?” Houck was jeering at him almost openly.

  The older man mumbled what might be taken for an assent.

  “Branded a heap of cattle, you ’n’ me. Eh, Pete?” The stranger settled deeper in the chair. “Jake Houck an’ you could talk over old times all night. We was frolicsome colts.”

  Tolliver felt his hand forced. “Put off yore hat and wash up, Jake. You’ll stay to-night, o’ course.”

  “Don’t mind if I do. I’m headed for Glenwood. Reckon I’d better put the horse up first.”

  The two men left the cabin. When they returned half an hour later, the supper was on the table. June sat on the side nearest the stove and supplied the needs of the men. Coffee, hot biscuits, more venison, a second dish of gravy: no trained waiter could have anticipated their wants any better. If she was a bit sulky, she had reason for it. Houck’s gaze followed her like a searchlight. It noted the dark good looks of her tousled head, the slimness of the figure which moved so awkwardly, a certain flash of spirit in the undisciplined young face.

  “How old’s yore girl?” the man asked his host.

  Tolliver hesitated, trying to remember. “How old are you, June?”

  “Going on sixteen,” she answered, eyes smouldering angrily.

  This man’s cool, impudent appraisal of her was hateful, she felt.

  He laughed at her manner, easily, insolently, for he was of the type that finds pleasure in the umbrage of women annoyed by his effrontery. Of the three the guest was the only one quite at his ease. Tolliver’s ingratiating jokes and the heartiness of his voice rang false. He was troubled, uncertain how to face the situation that had arisen.

  His daughter reflected this constraint. Why did her father fear this big dominating fellow? What was the relation between them? Why did his very presence bring with it a message of alarm?

  She left them before the stove as soon as the dishes were washed, retiring to the bedroom at the other end of the log cabin. Far into the night she heard them talking, in low voices that made an indistinct murmur. To the sound of them she fell asleep.

  * * *

  [1] Pronounced Pee-ance.

  * * *

  CHAPTER II

  “A SPUNKY LI’L’ DEVIL”

  Houck rode away next morning after breakfast, but not before he had made a promise June construed as a threat.

  “Be back soon, girl.”

  Her eyes were on the corral, from which her father was driving the dogies. “What’s it to me?” she said with sullen resentment.

  “More’n you think. I’ve took a fancy to you. When I come back I’ll talk business.”

  The girl’s eyes did not turn toward him, but the color flooded the dark cheeks. “With Father maybe. Not with me. You’ve got no business to talk over with me.”

  “Think so? Different here. Take a good look at me, June Tolliver.”

  “What for?” Her glance traveled over him disdainfully to the hound puppy chasing its tail. She felt a strange excitement drumming in her veins. “I’ve seen folks a heap better worth lookin’ at.”

  “Because I’m tellin’ you to.” His big hand caught her chin and swung it back. “Because I’m figurin’ on marryin’ you right soon.”

  Her dark eyes blazed. They looked at him straight enough now. “Take yore hand off’n me. D’you hear?”

  He laughed, slowly, delightedly. “You’re a spunky li’l’ devil. Suits me fine. Jake Houck never did like jog-trotters in harness.”

  “Lemme go,” she ordered, and a small brown fist clenched.

  “Not now, nor ever. You’re due to wear the Houck brand, girl.”

  She struck, hard, with all the strength of her lithe and supple body. Above his cheek-bone a red streak leaped out where the sharp knuckles had crushed the flesh.

  A second time he laughed, harshly. Her chin was still clamped in a vice-like grip that hurt. “I get a kiss for that, you vixen.” With a sweeping gesture he imprisoned both of the girl’s arms and drew the slim body to him. He kissed her, full on the lips, not once but half a dozen times, while she fought like a fury without the least avail.

  Presently the man released her hands and chin.

  “Hit me again if you like, and I’ll c’lect my pay prompt,” he jeered.

  She was in a passionate flame of impotent anger. He had insulted her, trampled down the pride of her untamed youth, brushed away the bloom of her maiden modesty. And there was nothing she could do to make him pay. He was too insensitive to be reached by words, no matter how she pelted them at him.

  A sob welled up from her heart. She turned and ran into the house.

  Houck grinned, swung to the saddle, and rode up the valley. June would hate him good and plenty, he thought. That was all right. He had her in the hollow of his hand. All her thoughts would be full of him. After she quit struggling to escape she would come snuggling up to him with a girl’s shy blandishments. It was his boast that he knew all about women and their ways.

  June was not given to tears. There was in her the stark pioneer blood that wrested the West in two generations from unfriendly nature. But the young virgin soul had been outraged. She lay on the bed of her room, face down, the nails of her fingers biting into the palms of the hands, a lump in the full brown throat choking her.

  She was a wild, free thing of the hills, undisciplined by life. Back of June’s anger and offended pride lurked dread, as yet indefinite and formless. Who was this stranger who had swaggered into her life and announced himself its lord and master? She would show him his place, would teach him how ridiculous his pretensions were. But even as she clenched her teeth on that promise there rose before her a picture of the fellow’s straddling stride, of the fleering face with its intrepid eyes and jutting, square-cut jaw. He was stronger than she. No scruples would hold him back from the possession of his desires. She knew she would fight savagely, but a chill premonition of failure drenched the girl’s heart.

  Later, she went out to the stable where Tolliver was
riveting a broken tug. It was characteristic of the man that all his tools, harness, and machinery were worn out or fractured. He never brought a plough in out of the winter storms or mended a leak in the roof until the need was insistent. Yet he was not lazy. He merely did not know how to order affairs with any system.

  “Who is that man?” June demanded.

  He looked up, mildly surprised and disturbed at the imperative in the girl’s voice. “Why, didn’t I tell you, honey—Jake Houck?”

  “I don’t want to know his name. I want to know who he is—all about him.”

  Tolliver drove home a rivet before he answered. “Jake’s a cowman.” His voice was apologetic. “I seen you didn’t like him. He’s biggity, Jake is.”

  “He’s the most hateful man I ever saw,” she burst out.

  Pete lifted thin, straw-colored eyebrows in questioning, but June had no intention of telling what had taken place. She would fight her own battles.

  “Well, he’s a sure enough toughfoot,” admitted the rancher.

  “When did you know him?”

  “We was ridin’ together, a right long time ago.”

  “Where?”

  “Up around Rawlins—thataway.”

  “He said he knew you in Brown’s Park.”

  The man flashed a quick, uncertain look at his daughter. It appeared to ask how much Houck had told. “I might ’a’ knowed him there too. Come to think of it, I did. Punchers drift around a heap. Say, how about dinner? You got it started? I’m gettin’ powerful hungry.”

  June knew the subject was closed. She might have pushed deeper into her father’s reticence, but some instinct shrank from what she might uncover. There could be only pain in learning the secret he so carefully hid.