XXIII
The Arrow to the Mark
Smith, concentrating abstractedly, as his habit was, upon the work inhand, was still deep in the voucher-auditing when the office door wasopened and a small shocked voice said: "Oh, _wooh_! how you startled me!I saw the light, and I supposed, of course, it was Colonel-daddy. Whereis he?"
Smith pushed the papers aside and looked up scowling.
"Your father? He was here a minute ago, with Stillings. Isn't he out inthe main office?"
"No, there is no one there."
"Martin is there," he said, contradicting her bluntly. And then: "Yourfather said he'd be back. You've come to take him home?"
She nodded and came to sit in a chair at the desk-end, saying:
"Don't let me interrupt you, please. I'll be quiet."
"I don't mean to let anything interrupt me until I have finished what Ihave undertaken to do; I'm past all that, now."
"So you told me two evenings ago," she reminded him gently, adding: "AndI have heard about what you did last night."
"About the newspaper fracas? You don't approve of anything like that, ofcourse. Neither did I, once. But you were right in what you said theother evening out at the dam; there is no middle way. You know what theanimal tamers tell us about the beasts. I've had my taste of blood.There are a good many men in this world who need killing. CrawfordStanton is one of them, and I'm not sure that Mr. David Kinzie isn'tanother."
"I can't hear what you say when you talk like that," she objected,looking past him with the gray eyes veiled.
"Do you want me to lie down and let them put the steam-roller over me?"he demanded irritably. "Is that your ideal of the perfect man?"
"I didn't say any such thing as that, did I?"
"Perhaps not, in so many words. But you meant it."
"What I said, and what I meant, had nothing at all to do with TimanyoniHigh Line and its fight for life," she said calmly, recalling thewandering gaze and letting him see her eyes. "I was thinking altogetherof one man's attitude toward his world."
"That was night before last," he put in soberly. "I've gone a long waysince night before last, Corona."
"I know you have. Why doesn't daddy come back?"
"He'll come soon enough. You're not afraid to be here alone with me, areyou?"
"No; but anybody might be afraid of the man you are going to be."
His laugh was as mirthless as the creaking of a rusty door-hinge.
"You needn't put it in the future tense. I have already broken withwhatever traditions there were left to break with. Last night Ithreatened to kill Allen, and, perhaps, I should have done it if hehadn't begged like a dog and dragged his wife and children into it."
"I know," she acquiesced, and again she was looking past him.
"And that isn't all. Yesterday, Kinzie set a trap for me and baited itwith one of his clerks. For a little while it seemed as if the only wayto spring the trap was for me to go after the clerk and put a bulletthrough him. It wasn't necessary, as it turned out, but if it hadbeen----"
"Oh, you couldn't!" she broke in quickly. "I can't believe that of you!"
"You think I couldn't? Let me tell you of a thing that I have done.Night before last, in less than an hour after you sat and talked with meat the dam, Verda Richlander had a wire from a young fellow who wants tomarry her. He had found out that she was here in Brewster, and the wirewas to tell her that he was coming in that night on the delayed 'Flyer.'She asked me to meet him and tell him she had gone to bed. He is amiserable little wretch; a sort of sham reprobate; and she has nevercared for him, except to keep him dangling with a lot of others. I toldher I wouldn't meet him, and she knew very well that I couldn't meethim--and stay out of jail. Are you listening?"
"I'm trying to."
"It was the pinch, and I wasn't big enough--in your sense of theword--to meet it. I saw what would happen. If Tucker Jibbey came here,Stanton would pounce upon him at once; and Jibbey, with a drink or twounder his belt, would tell all he knew. I fought it all out while I waswaiting for the train. It was Jibbey's effacement, or the end of theworld for me, and for Timanyoni High Line."
Dexter Baldwin's daughter was not of those who shriek and faint at theapparition of horror. But the gray eyes were dilating and her breath wascoming in little gasps when she said:
"I _can't_ believe it! You are not going to tell me that you met thisman as a friend, and then----"
"No; it didn't quite come to a murder in cold blood, though I thought itmight. I had Maxwell's runabout, and I got Jibbey into it. He thought Iwas going to drive him to the hotel. After we got out of town he grewsuspicious, and there was a struggle in the auto. I--I had to beat himover the head to make him keep quiet; I thought for the moment that Ihad killed him, and I knew, then, just how far I had gone on the roadI've been travelling ever since a certain night in the middle of lastMay. The proof was in the way I felt; I wasn't either sorry orhorror-stricken; I was merely relieved to think that he wouldn't troubleme, or clutter up the world with his worthless presence any longer."
"But that wasn't your real self!" she expostulated.
"What was it, then?"
"I don't know--I only know that it wasn't you. But tell me: did he die?"
"No."
"What have you done with him?"
"Do you know the old abandoned Wire-Silver mine at Little Butte?"
"I knew it before it was abandoned, yes."
"I was out there one Sunday afternoon with Starbuck. The mine isbulkheaded and locked, but one of the keys on my ring fitted the lock,and Starbuck and I went in and stumbled around for a while in the darktunnels. I took Jibbey there and locked him up. He's there now."
"Alone in that horrible place--and without food?"
"Alone, yes; but I went out yesterday and put a basket of food where hecould get it."
"What are you going to do with him?"
"I am going to leave him there until after I have put Stanton and Kinzieand the other buccaneers safely out of business. When that is done, hecan go; and I'll go, too."
She had risen, and at the summing-up she turned from him and went asideto the one window to stand for a long minute gazing down into theelectric-lighted street. When she came back her lips were pressedtogether and she was very pale.
"When I was in school, our old psychology professor used to try to tellus about the underman; the brute that lies dormant inside of us and iskept down only by reason and the super-man. I never believed it wasanything more than a fine-spun theory--until now. But now I know it istrue."
He spread his hands.
"I can't help it, can I?"
"The man that you are now can't help it; no. But the man that you couldbe--if he would only come back--" she stopped with a littleuncontrollable shudder and sat down again, covering her face with herhands.
"I'm going to turn Jibbey loose--after I'm through," he vouchsafed.
She took her hands away and blazed up at him suddenly, with her faceaflame.
"Yes! after you are safe; after there is no longer any risk in it foryou! That is worse than if you had killed him--worse for you, I mean.Oh, _can't_ you see? It's the very depth of cowardly infamy!"
He smiled sourly. "You think I'm a coward? They've been calling meeverything else but that in the past few days."
"You _are_ a coward!" she flashed back. "You have proved it. Youdaren't go out to Little Butte to-night and get that man and bring himto Brewster while there is yet time for him to do whatever it is thatyou are afraid he will do!"
Was it the quintessence of feminine subtlety, or only honest rage andindignation, that told her how to aim the armor-piercing arrow? God, whoalone knows the secret workings of the woman heart and brain, can tell.But the arrow sped true and found its mark. Smith got up stiffly out ofthe big swing-chair and stood glooming down at her.
"You think I did it for myself?--just to save my own worthless hide?I'll show you; show you all the things that you say are now impossible.Did you bring the gray
roadster?"
She nodded briefly.
"Your father is coming back; I hear the elevator-bell. I am going totake the car, and I don't want to meet him. Will you say what isneedful?"
She nodded again, and he went out quickly. It was only a few steps downthe corridor to the elevator landing, and the stair circled the cagedelevator-shaft to the ground floor. Smith halted in the darkened cornerof the stairway long enough to make sure that the colonel, withStillings and a woman in an automobile coat and veil--a woman whofigured for him in the passing glance as Corona's mother--got off at theoffice floor. Then he ran down to the street level, cranked the grayroadster and sprang in to send the car rocketing westward.
The Real Man Page 23