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Updated: May 26, 2025
We didn't cut anybody off from the river. "Hargus is married to an Indian squaw, a little old squat, black-faced thing as mean as a snake. They've got a big brood of children, that boy you saw this morning is the senior of the gang. Old Hargus usually harbors two or three cattle thieves, horse thieves or other crooks of that kind, some of them just out of the pen, some preparing their way to it.
Lambert hoped that Sim Hargus and young Tom, and the old stub-footed scoundrel who was the meanest of them all who had lashed him into the fire that night, would swing the doors of the saloon and come out with a declaration of their intentions. He knew that some of them, if not all, were there. He had tied Kerr out before their eyes like wolf bait. Let them come and get him if they were men.
"Take him out there and head him the right way, boys," Kerr directed. Tom Hargus rode ahead, leading Whetstone by the reins. Kerr was not following. At Lambert's last sight of him he was still looking into the fire, as if fascinated by the sight of it. A hundred yards or less from the fire they stopped.
All appeared to be strangers to him. He began to assort their faces, as one searches for something in a heap, trying to fix on one that looked mean enough to belong to a Hargus. A mechanical banjo suddenly added its metallic noise to the din, fit music, it seemed, for such obscene company. Some started to dance lumberingly, with high-lifted legs and ludicrous turkey struts.
Kerr commanded, his voice hoarse with the fear of something that she, in her unreasoning anger, had not seen behind the calm front of the man she faced. She stopped, turning back again to where Hargus waited. Along the street men were drawing away from their doors, in cautious curiosity, silent suspense.
"Why, what all has Scannel ever done to you?" demanded the other, amazed. "Nothing, but I found out the other day that old Hargus poor old, broken-backed, half-starved Hargus I found out that it was Scannel that ruined him. Hargus and he had a big deal on, you know oh, ages ago and Scannel sold out on him. Great God, it was the dirtiest, damnedest treachery I ever heard of!
Kerr drew aside on arriving at the fire, and sat his horse looking at it, the light on his face. Sim Hargus pointed to the glowing pit. "That's our little private hell. What do you think of it, kid?" he said, with his grunting, insulting sneer. The fire was visible only in front of them, in a jagged, irregular strip marking the cave-in of the crust.
"You're the Duke of Chimney Butte, are you?" the stranger inquired, turning again with his sneer and cold, insulting eyes to Lambert, who knew him now for Sim Hargus, foreman for Berry Kerr. "If you know me, there's no need for us to be introduced," Lambert returned. "Duke of Chimney Butte!" said Hargus with immeasurable scorn.
To get away from the discussion of it that he knew Taterleg would keep going as long as there was an ear open to hear him, he walked to the near-by hilltop to view the land under this translating spell. This was the hilltop from which he had ridden down to interfere between Vesta and Nick Hargus.
They rode past the station, the bullet-scarred rain barrel behind which Tom Hargus took shelter in the great battle still standing in its place, and past the saloon, the hitching-rack empty before it, for this was the round-up season nobody was in town.
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