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Page 14
"BOO-HOO! you are going to take away my only daughter!"
The Colonel, however, though he had loved Dick as if he were his
own son, was delighted to the bottom of his hospitable soul that
it was a man not already in the family circle who was to marry
Echo, especially when he was a royal fellow like Jack Payson; so
he arranged a compromise between the time proposed by Mrs. Allen
and that desired by the lovers, and the date of the wedding was
fixed nine months ahead.
"It will fall in June," said the old fellow, who knew exactly how
to handle his fractious wife; "the month when swell folks back in
the East do all their hitchin' up. Why, come to think of it, it
was the very month I ran off with you in, though I didn't know,
then that we was elopin' so strictly accordin' to the Book of
Etikwet."
CHAPTER III
A Woman's Loyalty
The first instinctive thought of a man reveals innate character;
those that follow, the moral that he has acquired through
environment and circumstances. That Jack Payson was at bottom
good man is shown by his first emotion, which was joy, and his
first impulse, which was to impart the glad news to everybody,
upon receiving the letter from Dick Lane telling that he was
alive and soon to come home. He was in his house at the time.
Bud Lane had just brought in the packet of mail from Florence,
and was riding away. Jack uttered a cry of joy which brought the
young man back to the door. "What is it?" asked Bud. But Jack
had already had time for his damning second thought. He was
stunned by the consideration that the promulgation of the news in
the letter meant his loss of Echo Allen. He dissembled, though
as yet he was not able to tell an outright falsehood:
"It's a letter telling me that I may expect to receive enough
money in a month or so to pay off the mortgage. Now your
brother's debt needn't trouble you any longer, Bud."
"Whew-w!" whistled Bud. "That's great! Where does it come from?"
"Oh, from an old friend that I lent the money to some time ago.
But, say, Bud, there's another matter I want to talk with you
about. You've got to shake Buck McKee. I've got it straight
that he is the worst man in Arizona Territory, yes, worse than an
Apache. Why, he has been with Geronimo, torturing and massacring
lone prospectors, and robbing them of their gold."
"That's a damned lie, Jack Payson, and you know it!" cried the
hot-headed young man. "It was Buck McKee who stood by Dick's
side and fought the Apaches. And I'll stand by Buck against all
the world. Everybody is in a conspiracy against him, Polly and
Slim Hoover and you. Why are you so ready now to take a
slanderer's word against his? You were keen enough to accept his
story, when it let you out of going to Dick's rescue, and gave
you free swing to court his girl. Let me see the name of the
damned snake-in-the-grass that's at the bottom of all this!" And
he snatched for the letter in Payson's hand.
The ranchman quickly thrust the missive into pocket. The
injustice of Bud's reflections on former actions gave to his
uneasy conscience just the pretext he desired for justifying his
present course. His cause being weak and unworthy, he whipped up
his indignation by adopting a high tone and overbearing manner,
even demeaning himself by using his position as Bud's employer to
crush the younger man. Indeed, at the end of the scene which
ensued he well-nigh convinced himself that he had been most
ungratefully treated by Bud while sincerely attempting to save
the boy from the companionship of a fiend in human guise.
"No matter who told me, young man," he exclaimed; "I got it
straight, and you can take it straight from me. You either give
up Buck McKee or the Sweetwater Ranch. Snake-in-the-grass!" he
was working himself up into false passion; "it is you, ungrateful
boy, who are sinking the serpent's tooth in the hand that would
have helped you. I tell you that I intended to make you foreman,
though Sage-brush Charley is an older and better man. It was for
Dick's sake I would have done it."
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