FullReads

He followed them inside the hall of the Happy Land. When they stepped into the sitting-room, he stood at the door waiting. The hotel was entirely empty, the roisterers at the Prairie Home having drawn off the idlers and spectators. The barman was nodding behind the bar, the proprietor was moving about in the backyard inspecting a horse. There was a cheerful warmth everywhere; the air was like an elixir; the pungent smell of a pine-tree at the door gave a kind of medicament to the indrawn breath. And to Billy Goat, who sometimes sang in the choir of a church not a hundred miles away–for the people agreed to forget his occasional sprees–there came, he knew not why, the words of a hymn he had sung only the preceding Sunday:

“As pants the hart for cooling streams,
When heated in the chase–“

The words kept ringing in his ears as he listened to the conversation inside the room–the partition was thin, the door thinner, and he heard much. Foyle had asked him not to intervene, but only to stand by and await the issue of this final conference. He meant, however, to take a hand in if he thought he was needed, and he kept his ear glued to the door. If he thought Foyle needed him–his fingers were on the handle of the door.

“Now, hurry up! What do you want with me?” asked Halbeck of his brother.

“Take your time,” said ex-Sergeant Foyle, as he drew the blind three-quarters down, so that they could not be seen from the street.

“I’m in a hurry, I tell you. I’ve got my plans. I’m going South. I’ve only just time to catch the Canadian Pacific three days from now, riding hard.”

“You’re not going South, Dorl.”

“Where am I going, then?” was the sneering reply.

“Not farther than the Happy Land.”

“What the devil’s all this? You don’t mean you’re trying to arrest me again, after letting me go?”

“You don’t need to ask. You’re my prisoner. You’re my prisoner,” he said, in a louder voice–“until you free yourself.”

“I’ll do that damn quick, then,” said the other, his hand flying to his hip.

“Sit down,” was the sharp rejoinder, and a pistol was in his face before he could draw his own weapon.

“Put your gun on the table,” Foyle said, quietly. Halbeck did so. There was no other way.

Foyle drew it over to himself. His brother made a motion to rise.

“Sit still, Dorl,” came the warning voice.

White with rage, the freebooter sat still, his dissipated face and heavy angry lips, looking like a debauched and villanous caricature of his brother before him.

“Yes, I suppose you’d have potted me, Dorl,” said the ex-sergeant. “You’d have thought no more of doing that than you did of killing Linley, the ranchman; than you did of trying to ruin Jo Byndon, your wife’s sister, when she was sixteen years old, when she was caring for your child–giving her life for the child you brought into the world.”

“What in the name of hell–it’s a lie!”

“Don’t bluster. I know the truth.”

“Who told you–the truth?”

“She did–to-day–an hour ago.”

“She here–out here?” There was a new, cowed note in the voice.

“She is in the next room.”

“What did she come here for?”

“To make you do right by your own child. I wonder what a jury of decent men would think about a man who robbed his child for five years, and let that child be fed and clothed and cared for by the girl he tried to destroy, the girl he taught what sin there was in the world.”

“She put you up to this. She was always in love with you, and you know it.”

There was a dangerous look in Foyle’s eyes, and his jaw set hard. “There would be no shame in a decent woman caring for me, even if it was true. I haven’t put myself outside the boundary as you have. You’re my brother, but you’re the worst scoundrel in the country–the worst unhanged. Put on the table there the letter in your pocket. It holds five hundred dollars belonging to your child. There’s twenty-five hundred dollars more to be accounted for.”