Part 16 (1/2)

Cranston stole over toward him, looking closely for weapons. He pulled aside the woolen blanket that Lennox had drawn up over his body, and he pushed his hand into the cus.h.i.+ons of the couch. A few deft pats, holding his rifle through the fork of his arm, finger coiled into the trigger guard, a.s.sured him that Lennox was not ”heeled” at all. Then he laughed and went to work.

”I thought I told you once,” Lennox began with perfect coldness, ”that the doors of my house were no longer open to you.”

”You did say that,” was Cranston's guttural reply. ”But you see I'm here just the same, don't you? And what are you going to do about it?”

”I probably felt that sooner or later you would come to steal--just as you and your crowd stole the supplies from the forest station last winter--and that probably influenced me to give the orders. I didn't want thieves around my house, and I don't want them now. I don't want coyotes, either.”

”And I don't want any such remarks out of you, either,” Cranston answered him. ”You lie still and shut up, and I suspect that sissy boarder of yours will come back, after he's through embracing your daughter in the snow, and find you in one piece. Otherwise not.”

”If I were in one piece,” Lennox answered him very quietly, ”instead of a bundle of broken bones that can't lift its arms, I'd get up off this couch, unarmed as I am, and stamp on your lying lips.”

But Cranston only laughed and tied Lennox's feet with a cord from the window shade.

He went to work very systematically. First he rifled Lennox's desk in the living room. Then he looked on all the mantels and ransacked the cupboards and the drawers. He was taunting and calm at first. But as the moments pa.s.sed, his pa.s.sion grew upon him. He no longer smiled. The rodent features became intent; the eyes narrowed to curious, bright slits under the dark lashes. He went to Dan's room, searched his bureau drawer and all the pockets of the clothes hanging in his closet. He upset his trunk and pawed among old letters in the suitcase. Then, stealing like some creature of the wilderness, he came back to the living room.

Lennox was not on the divan where he had left him. He lay instead on the floor near the fireplace; and he met the pa.s.sion-drawn face with entire calmness. His motives were perfectly plain. He had just made a desperate effort to procure Dan's rifle that hung on two sets of deer horns over the fireplace, and was entirely exhausted from it. He had succeeded in getting down from the couch, though wracked by agony, but had been unable to lift himself up in reach of the gun.

Cranston read his intention in one glance. Lennox knew it, but he simply didn't care. He had pa.s.sed the point where anything seemed to matter.

”Tell me where it is,” Cranston ordered him. Again he pointed his rifle at Lennox's wasted breast.

”Tell you where what is? My money?”

”You know what I want--and it isn't money. I mean those letters that Failing found on the ridge. I'm through fooling, Lennox. Dan learned that long ago, and it's time you learned it now.”

”Dan learned it because he was sick. He isn't sick now. Don't presume too much on that.”

Cranston laughed with harsh scorn. ”But that isn't the question. I said I've wasted all the time I'm going to. You are an old man and helpless; but I'm not going to let that stand in the way of getting what I came to get. They're hidden somewhere around this house. They wouldn't be out in the snow, because he'd want 'em where he could get them. By no means would he carry them on his person--fearing that some day he'd meet me on the ridge. He's a fool, but he ain't that much of a fool. I've watched, and he's had no chance to take them into town. I'll give you--just five seconds to tell me where they're hidden.”

”And I give you,” Lennox replied, ”one second less than that--to go to h.e.l.l!”

Both of them breathed hard in the quiet room. Cranston was trembling now, s.h.i.+vering just a little in his arms and shoulders. ”Don't get me wrong, Lennox,” he warned.

”And don't have any delusions in regard to me, either,” Lennox replied.

”I've stood worse pain, from this accident, than any man can give me while I yet live, no matter what he does. If you want to get on me and hammer me in the approved Cranston way, I can't defend myself--but you won't get a civil answer out of me. I'm used to pain, and I can stand it. I'm not used to fawning to a coyote like you, and I can't stand it.”

But Cranston hardly heard. An idea had flamed in his mind and cast a red glamour over all the scene about him. It was instilling a poison in his nerves and a madness in his blood, and it was searing him, like fire, in his dark brain. Nothing seemed real. He suddenly bent forward, tense.

”That's all right about you,” he said. ”But you'd be a little more polite if it was s...o...b..rd--and Dan--that would have to pay.”

Perhaps the color faded slightly in Lennox's face; but his voice did not change.

”They'll see your footprints before they come in and be ready,” Lennox replied evenly. ”They always come by the back way. And even with a pistol, s...o...b..rd's a match for you.”

”Did you think that was what I meant?” Cranston scorned. ”I know a way to destroy those letters, and I'll do it--in the four seconds that I said, unless you tell. I'm not even sure I'm goin' to give you a chance to tell now; it's too good a scheme. There won't be any witnesses then to yell around in the courts. What if I choose to set fire to this house?”

”It wouldn't surprise me a great deal. It's your own trade.” Lennox shuddered once on his place on the floor.