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Updated: May 21, 2025
And when the door swung almost open, and he saw Abe Catherson standing in the opening, his heavy pistol in hand, cocked, a finger on the trigger, he stiffened, standing silent, looking at the intruder. Abe's eyes still wore the frenzy that had been in them when he had been speaking with Ruth. If anything, the frenzy was intensified.
Uncle Jepson had gone away "nosin' around," he had said; Masten had ridden away toward the river some time before he had seemed to ride toward the break in the canyon which led to the Catherson cabin; she did not know where Randerson had gone had not seen him for hours. Hilarious laughter reached her, busy in the kitchen, but it did not banish the peculiar uneasiness that afflicted her.
And on both occasions Catherson had muttered thickly: "I wish I knowed, for sure. A man can't do nothin' if he don't know. But I reckon it was him!" He looked up to see Ruth coming toward him. The girl had seen him twice had spoken to him.
Has ol' Catherson tumbled to Masten bein' thick with Hagar?" "I don't know," she said, flushing. "It is no affair of mine!" "It ain't eh?" he said with a laugh, low and derisive. "You don't care what Masten does-eh? An' you're goin' to marry him, Monday. Masten's lucky," he went on, giving her a look that made her shudder; "he's got two girls.
The muzzle wavered, describing wide circles, and before he could steady it enough to be reasonably certain of hitting the target, Catherson had vanished behind a low hill. Masten wiped the cold moisture from his forehead. For an instant he stood irresolute, trembling. And then, panic-stricken over a picture that his imagination drew for him, he dropped the rifle and ran, crouching, to the corral.
So calm did it all seem to him now, so distant from that dread danger he had anticipated, that he smiled and sat debating an impulse to return and face Catherson. The man's intentions could not be what he had suspected them to be; clearly, his conscience had played him a trick. But he did not wheel his pony. For as he sat there in the silence he heard the rapid drumming of hoofs on the path.
But she must see Hagar Catherson at once, no matter what the time or the difficulties. She came to the break in the canyon after an age, and rode through it, down across the bed of the river, over the narrow bridle path that led to the Catherson cabin.
But what could he be doing in the basin? And, once here, what could he mean by prowling like that, instead of coming directly to the cabin? What could he be looking for? Why did he not show himself? Masten slipped outside and crept along the wall of the shack to a corner, from which, screened by some alder, he watched breathlessly, a nameless disquiet oppressing him. Did Catherson know anything?
For he saw Willard Masten coming along the path, smiling and talking, and beside him, his arm around her waist, also smiling, but with her head bent forward a little, was Hagar Catherson. The color slowly left Randerson's face as he watched.
The nester was uncoiling a rope from his saddle horn, and at this sight Masten shrieked and went to his knees. He heard an answering laugh from Catherson, short, malevolent. And then the rope swished out, its loop widening and writhing. Masten shrieked again, and threw up his hands impotently.
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