Hunted Riders by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Publisher: Roy Glashan's Library
Published: 2020-10-24T22:00:00+00:00

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23. Into the Wilderness

JENNY LOREN appeared on the verge of following the tall man, but she changed her mind presently and, after balancing back and forth, as an undecided person will do, she returned hastily to the dining room and dropped into a chair opposite Mr. Crossett.

Mr. Crossett was not pale, he was even smiling a little. His fighting blood had been roused and, like a thoroughbred, he responded to the challenge of danger.

“Who is Willie?” he asked.

“Willie? A poor sap!” said the unsympathetic girl. “What do you think he meant?”

“Willie is his son; he hopes that you’ll marry Willie, it seems. Will you, my dear?”

“I’m not for marriage,” said Jenny Loren bluntly, “unless it helps me on with my business.”

“What is your business, pray?”

“The movies, of course.”

“I almost forgot. Jenny, that is a very keen man.”

“Him? Keen?” said Jenny.

She closed her eyes and with them shut spoke in a drawling imitation of the sheriff: “They used to have men—some—around here—long time ago. They’ve died—finished—dried up—all except one. That’s Bud Loftus—I guess——”

She opened her eyes and smiled at Jeremy Crossett.

The latter was nodding.

“You talked to him at the door,” he pointed out.

“I tried to turn him off the trails; I only put him further on it. I thought that I could talk him away—but I couldn’t!”

“Well,” murmured Crossett, “we haven’t a word from Tolliver. I’m afraid he’s not so keen a man as you thought, Jenny.”

“Tolliver,” said the girl, “will follow a trail as good as any man in the world, and shoot as straight and die as game.”

“Then what do you think has happened to him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know! They couldn’t just brush him out of their way, if he came up with them—”

“You mean that if there was a fight, it would be such a terrible one that other people would have to hear about it?”

“I think so,” said the girl. “I’d bank on that.”

“I think that Tolliver is a beaten man,” answered Crossett slowly. “The more I reflect, the surer I am. He couldn’t stand up to them. To the two of them, I mean. I saw Dunlin ride down the street. That was enough to make me feel that he’s one man in a thousand. Then there is my boy. You haven’t had a chance to know him, Jenny, but let me assure you that he’s one in ten thousand!”

Jenny’s color changed ever so little; her brown face was tinged with pink.

“Is he?” said Jenny vaguely.

“He is, my dear. And now I see what utter folly it was for me to send a fighting man on their trail. I must try some one else. I don’t know whom, I don’t know what expedient, Jenny. Can you suggest any one?”

Jenny sighed.

“I’ve been trying to think. Oh, how I’ve been trying, night and a day.”

“What a warm heart you have, my child!”

“There’s something for me to get out of it,” said Jenny in the most practical of voices. “I want that trip to Los Angeles and back.

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