The Two-Gun Man by Charles Alden Seltzer Read Free Book Online

full significance of her refusal ate slowly into his consciousness. Whatever hopes he might have had had been swept away in those few short, pithy sentences. His passion checked, the structure erected by his imagination toppled to ruin, his vanity hurt, he stood before her stripped of the veneer that had made him seem, heretofore, nearly the man he professed to be.
    In her note book had been written:
    "Dave Leviatt. . . . One rather gets the impression that the stoop is a reflection of the man's nature, which seems vindictive and suggests a low cunning. His eyes are small, deep set, and glitter when he talks. But they are steady and cold-almost merciless. One's thoughts go instantly to the tiger. I shall try to create that impression in the reader's mind."
    And now as she looked at him she was sure that task would not be difficult. She had now an impression of him that seemed as though it had been seared into her mind. The eyes that she had thought merciless were now glittering malevolently, and she shuddered at the satyric upward curve of his lips as he stepped close to the rock and placed a hand upon the mass of manuscript lying there, that she had previously dropped, to prevent her leaving.
    "So you don't love me?" he sneered. "You don't even respect me. Why? Because you've taken a shine to that damned maverick that come here from Dry Bottom-Stafford's new stray-man!"
    "That is my business," she returned icily.
    "It sure is," he said, the words writhing venomously through his lips. "An' it's my business too. There ain't any damned--"
    He had glanced suddenly downward while he had been talking and his gaze rested upon an upturned page of the manuscript that lay beside him on the rock. He broke off speaking and reaching down took up the page, his eyes narrowing with interest. The page he had taken up was one from the first chapter and described in detail the shooting match in Dry Bottom. It was a truthful picture of what had actually happened. She had even used the real names of the characters. Leviatt saw a reference to the "Silver Dollar" saloon, to the loungers, to the stranger who had ridden up and who sat on his pony near the hitching rail, and who was called Ferguson. He saw his own name; read the story of how the stranger had eclipsed his feat by putting six bullets into the can.
    He dropped the page to the rock and looked up at Miss Radford with a short laugh.
    "So that's what you're writin'?" he sneered. "You're writin' somethin' that really happened. You're even writin' the real names an' tellin' how Stafford's stray-man butted in an' beat me shootin'. You knowin' this shows that him an' you has been travelin' pretty close together."
    For an instant Miss Radford forgot her anger. Her eyes snapped with a sudden interest.
    "Were you the man who hit the can five times?" she questioned, unable to conceal her eagerness.
    She saw a flush slowly mount to his face. Evidently he had said more than he had intended.
    "Well, if I am?" he returned, his lips writhing in a sneer. "Him beatin' me shootin' that way don't prove nothin'."
    She was now becoming convinced of her cleverness. From Ben's description of the man who had won the shooting match she had been able to lead Ferguson to the admission that he had been the central character in that incident, and now it had transpired that Leviatt was the man he had beaten. This had been the way she had written it in the story. So far the plot that had been born of her imagination had proved to be the story of a real occurrence.
    She had counted upon none but imaginary characters,-though she had determined to clothe these with reality through study-but now, she had discovered, she had been the chronicler of a real incident, and two of her characters had been pitted against each other in a contest in which there had been enough bitterness to provide the animus necessary to carry them through succeeding pages, ready and willing to fly at each other's throats. She was not able to conceal