IX
JUDSON'S JOKE
Barton Rufford, ex-distiller of illicit whiskey in the Tennesseemountains, ex-welsher turned informer and betraying his neighborlaw-breakers to the United States revenue officers, ex-everything whichmade his continued stay in the Cumberlands impossible, was a man ofdistinction in the Red Desert.
In the wider field of the West he had been successively a claim-jumper,a rustler of unbranded cattle, a telegraph operator in collusion with agang of train-robbers, and finally a faro "lookout": the armed guardwho sits at the head of the gaming-table in the untamed regions to killand kill quickly if a dispute arises.
Angels acknowledged his citizenship without joy. A cold-bloodedmurderer, with an appalling record; and a man with a temper like smokingtow, an itching trigger-finger, the eye of a duck-hawk, and cat-likeswiftness of movement, he tyrannized the town when the humor was onhim; and as yet no counter-bully had come to chase him into oblivion.
For Lidgerwood to have earned the enmity of this man was consideredequivalent to one of three things: the superintendent would throw up hisjob and leave the Red Desert, preferably by the first train; or Ruffordwould kill him; or he must kill Rufford. Red Butte Western opinion wassomewhat divided as to which horn of the trilemma the victim ofRufford's displeasure would choose, all admitting that, for the moment,the choice lay with the superintendent. Would Lidgerwood fight, or run,or sit still and be slain? In the Angels roundhouse, on the secondmorning following the attempt upon Lidgerwood's life at the gate of theDawson cottage, the discussion was spirited, not to say acrimonious.
"I'm telling you hyenas that Collars-and-Cuffs ain't going to run away,"insisted Williams, who was just in from the all-night trip to Red Butteand return. "He ain't built that way."
Lester, the roundhouse foreman, himself a man-queller of no mean repute,thought differently. Lidgerwood would, most likely, take to the highgrass and the tall timber. The alternative was to "pack a gun" forRufford--an alternative quite inconceivable to Lester when it waspredicated of the superintendent.
"I don't know about that," said Judson, the discharged--and consequentlymomentarily sobered--engineer of the 271. "He's fooled everybody morethan once since he lit down in the Red Desert. First crack everybodysaid he didn't know his business, 'cause he wore b'iled shirts: he_does_ know it. Next, you could put your ear to the ground and hear thathe didn't have the sand to round up the maverick R.B.W. He's doing it. Idon't know but he might even run a bluff on Bart Rufford, if he feltlike it."
"Come off, John!" growled the big foreman. "You needn't be afraid totalk straight over here. He hit you when you was down, and we all knowyou're only waitin' for a chance to hit back."
Judson was a red-headed man, effusively good-natured when he was inliquor, and a quick-tempered fighter of battles when he was not.
"Don't you make any such mistake!" he snapped. "That's what McCloskeysaid when he handed me the 'good-by.' 'You'll be one more to go roundfeelin' for Mr. Lidgerwood's throat, I suppose,' says he. By cripes!what I said to Mac I'm sayin' to you, Bob Lester. I know good and wella-plenty when I've earned my blue envelope. If I'd been in the super'splace, the 271 would have had a new runner a long time ago!"
"Oh, hell! _I_ say he'll chase his feet," puffed Broadbent, the fatmachinist who was truing off the valve-seats of the 195. "If Rufforddoesn't make him, there's some others that will."
Judson flared up again.
"Who you quotin' now, Fatty? One o' the shop 'prentices? Or maybe it'sRank Hallock? Say, what's he doin' monkeyin' round the back shop so muchlately? I'm goin' to stay round here till I get a chance to lick thatscrub."
Broadbent snorted his derision of all mere enginemen.
"You rail-pounders'd better get next to Rankin Hallock," he warned."He's the next sup'rintendent of the R.B.W. You'll see the 'pointmentcircular the next day after that jim-dandy over in the Crow's Nest getsmoved off'n the map."
"Well, I'm some afeared Bart Rufford's likely to move him," drawledClay, the six-foot Kentuckian who was filing the 195's brasses at thebench. "Which the same I ain't rejoicin' about, neither. That littlecuss is shore a mighty good railroad man. And when you ain't rubbin' hisfur the wrong way, he treats you white."
"For instance?" snapped Hodges, a freight engineer who had been thrice"on the carpet" in Lidgerwood's office for over-running his orders.
"Oh, they ain't so blame' hard to find," Clay retorted. "Last week, whenwe was out on the Navajo wreck, me and the boy didn't have nodinner-buckets. Bradford was runnin' the super's car, and when Andy justsort o' happened to mention the famine up along, the little man madethat Jap cook o' his'n get us up a dinner that'd made your hair frizzle.He shore did."
"Why don't you go and take up for him with Bart Rufford?" sneeredBroadbent, stopping his facing machine to set in a new cut on thevalve-seat.
"Not me. I've got cold feet," laughed the Kentuckian. "I'm like thelittle kid's daddy in the Sunday-school song: I ain't got time to dieyet--got too much to do."
It was Williams's innings, and what he said was cautionary.
"Dry up, you fellows; here comes Gridley."
The master-mechanic was walking down the planked track from the backshop, carrying his years, which showed only in the graying mustache andchin beard, and his hundred and eighty pounds of well-set-up bone andmuscle, jauntily. Now, as always, he was the beau ideal of theindustrial field-officer; handsome in a clean-cut masculine way, a typeof vigor--but also, if the signs of the full face and the eager eyeswere to be regarded, of the elemental passions.
Angelic rumor hinted that he was a periodic drunkard: he was both moreand less than that. Like many another man, Henry Gridley lived a doublelife; or, perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that there weretwo Henry Gridleys. Lidgerwood, the Dawsons, the little world of Angelsat large, knew the virile, accomplished mechanical engineer and masterof men, which was his normal personality. What time the otherpersonality, the elemental barbarian, yawned, stretched itself, and cameawake, the unspeakable dens of the Copah lower quarter engulfed himuntil the nether-man had gorged himself on degradation.
To his men, Gridley was a tyrant, exacting, but just; ruling them, asthe men of the desert could only be ruled, with the mailed fist. Yetthere was a human hand inside of the steel gauntlet, as all men knew.Having once beaten a bullying gang-boss into the hospital at Denver, hehad promptly charged himself with the support of the man's family. Othergenerous roughnesses were recorded of him, and if the attitude of themen was somewhat tempered by wholesome fear, it was none the lessloyal.
Hence, when he entered the roundhouse, industrious silence supplantedthe discussion of the superintendent's case. Glancing at the group ofenginemen, and snapping out a curt criticism of Broadbent's slowness onthe valve-seats, he beckoned to Judson. When the discharged engineer hadfollowed him across the turn-table, he faced about and said, not toocrisply, "So your sins have found you out one more time, have they,John?"
Judson nodded.
"What is it this time, thirty days?"
Judson shook his head gloomily. "No, I'm down and out."
"Lidgerwood made it final, did he? Well, you can't blame him."
"You hain't heard me sayin' anything, have you?" was the surlyrejoinder.
"No, but it isn't in human nature to forget these little things." Then,suddenly: "Where were you day before yesterday between noon and oneo'clock, about the time you should have been taking your train out?"
Judson had a needle-like mind when the alcohol was out of it, and thesudden query made him dissemble.
"About ten o'clock I was playin' pool in Rafferty's place with the buttend of the cue. After that, things got kind o'hazy."
"Well, I want you to buckle down and think hard. Don't you remembergoing over to Cat Biggs's about noon, and sitting down at one of theempty card-tables to drink yourself stiff?"
Judson could not have told, under the thumbscrews, why he was promptedto tell Gridley a plain lie. But he did it.
"I can
't remember," he denied. Then then needle-pointed brain got in itsword, and he added, "Why?"
"I saw you there when I was going up to dinner. You called me in to tellme what you were going to do to Lidgerwood if he slated you for gettingdrunk. Don't you remember it?"
Judson was looking the master-mechanic fairly in the eyes when he said,"No, I don't remember a thing about that."
"Try again," said Gridley, and now the shrewd gray eyes under the brimof the soft-rolled felt hat held the engineer helpless.
"I guess--I do--remember it--now," said Judson, slowly, trying, stillineffectually, to break Gridley's masterful eyehold upon him.
"Bart's afraid he can't duck without dying."]
"I thought you would," said the master-mechanic, without releasing him."And you probably remember, also, that I took you out into the streetand started you home."
"Yes," said Judson, this time without hesitation.
"Well, keep on remembering it; you went home to Maggie, and she put youto bed. That is what you are to keep in mind."
Judson had broken the curious eye-grip at last, and again he said,"Why?"
Gridley hooked his finger absently in the engineer's buttonhole.
"Because, if you don't, a man named Rufford says he'll start a lead minein you. I heard him say it last night--overheard him, I should say.That's all."
The master-mechanic passed on, going out by the great door which openedfor the locomotive entering-track. Judson hung upon his heel for amoment, and then went slowly out through the tool-room and across theyard tracks to the Crow's Nest.
He found McCloskey in his office above stairs, mouthing and grimacingover the string-board of the new time-table.
"Well?" growled the trainmaster, when he saw who had opened and closedthe door. "Come back to tell me you've sworn off? That won't go downwith Mr. Lidgerwood. When he fires, he means it."
"You wait till I ask you for my job back again, won't you, JimMcCloskey?" said the disgraced one hotly. "I hain't asked it yet; andwhat's more, I'm sober."
"Sure you are," muttered McCloskey. "You'd be better-natured with adrink or two in you. What's doing?"
"That's what I came over here to find out," said Judson steadily. "Whatis the boss going to do about this flare-up with Bart Rufford?"
The trainmaster shrugged.
"You've got just as many guesses as anybody, John. What you can bet onis that he will do something different."
Judson had slouched to the window. When he spoke, it was without turninghis head.
"You said something yesterday morning about me feeling for the boss'sthroat along with that gang up-town that's trying to drink itself up tothe point of hitting him back. It don't strike me that way, Mac."
"How does it strike you?"
Judson turned slowly, crossed the room, and sat down in the only vacantchair.
"You know what's due to happen, Mac. Rufford won't try it on again theway he tried it night before last. I heard up-town that he has postedhis de-fi: Mr. Lidgerwood shoots him on sight or he shoots Mr.Lidgerwood on sight. You can figure that out, can't you?"
"Not knowing Mr. Lidgerwood much better than you do, John, I'm not surethat I can."
"Well, it's easy. Bart'll walk up to the boss in broad daylight, drophim, and then fill him full o'lead after he's down. I've seen him--sawhim do it to Bixby, Mr. Brewster's foreman at the Copperette."
"Say the rest of it," commanded McCloskey.
"I've been thinking. While I'm laying round with nothing much to do, Ibelieve I'll keep tab on Bart for a little spell. I don't love him much,nohow."
McCloskey's face contortion was intended to figure as a derisive smile."Pshaw, John!" he commented, "he'd skin you alive. Why, even JackHepburn is afraid of him!"
"Jack is? How do you know that?"
McCloskey shrugged again.
"Are you with us, John?" he asked cautiously.
"I ain't with Bart Rufford and the tin-horns," said Judson negatively.
"Then I'll tell you a fairy tale," said the trainmaster, lowering hisvoice. "I gave you notice that Mr. Lidgerwood would do somethingdifferent: he did it, bright and early this morning; went to JakeSchleisinger, who had to try twice before he could remember that he wasa justice of the peace, and swore out a warrant for Rufford's arrest, ona charge of assault with intent to kill."
"Sure," said Judson, "that's what any man would do in a civilizedcountry, ain't it?"
"Yes, but not here, John--not in the red-colored desert, with BartRufford's name in the body of the warrant."
"I don't know why not," insisted the engineer stubbornly. "But go onwith the story; it ain't any fairy tale, so far."
"When he'd got the warrant, Schleisinger protesting all the while thatBart'd kill him for issuing it, Mr. Lidgerwood took it to Hepburn andtold him to serve it. Jack backed down so fast that he fell over hisfeet. Said to ask him anything else under God's heavens and he'd doit--anything but that."
"Huh!" said Judson. "If I'd took an oath to serve warrants I'd serve'em, if it did make me sick at my stomach." Then he got up and shuffledaway to the window again, and when next he spoke his voice was the voiceof a broken man.
"I lied to you a minute ago, Mac. I did want my job back. I came overhere hopin' that you and Mr. Lidgerwood might be seein' things a littledifferent by this time. I've quit the whiskey."
McCloskey wagged his shaggy head.
"So you've said before, John, and not once or twice either."
"I know, but every man gets to the bottom, some time. I've hit bed-rock,and I've just barely got sense enough to know it. Let me tell you, Mac,I've pulled trains on mighty near every railroad in this country--andthen some. The Red Butte is my last ditch. With my record I couldn't getan engine anywhere else in the United States. Can't you see what I'm upagainst?"
The trainmaster nodded. He was human.
"Well, it's Maggie and the babies now," Judson went on. "They don'tstarve, Mac, not while I'm on top of earth. Don't you reckon you couldmake some sort of a play for me with the boss, Jim? He's got bowels."
McCloskey did not resent the familiarity of the Christian name, neitherdid he hold out any hope of reinstatement.
"No, John. One or two things I've learned about Mr. Lidgerwood: hedoesn't often hit when he's mad, and he doesn't take back anything hesays in cold blood. I'm afraid you've cooked your last goose."
"Let me go in and see him. He ain't half as hard-hearted as you are,Jim."
The trainmaster shook his head. "No, it won't do any good. I heard himtell Hallock not to let anybody in on him this morning."
"Hallock be--Say, Mac, what makes him keep that--" Judson broke offabruptly, pulled his hat over his eyes, and said, "Reckon it's worthwhile to shove me over to the other side, Jim McCloskey?"
"What other side?" demanded McCloskey.
Judson scoffed openly. "You ain't making out like you don't know, areyou? Who was behind that break of Rufford's last night?"
"There didn't need to be anybody behind it. Bart thinks he has a kickcoming because his brother was discharged."
"But there was somebody behind it. Tell me, Mac, did you ever see me toodrunk to read my orders and take my signals?"
"No, don't know as I have."
"Well, I never was. And I don't often get too drunk to hear straight,either, even if I do look and act like the biggest fool God ever letlive. I was in Cat Biggs's day before yesterday noon, when I ought tohave been down here taking 202 east. There were two men in the back roomputting their heads together. I don't know whether they knew I was onthe other side of the partition or not. If they did, they probablydidn't pay any attention to a drivellin' idiot that couldn't wrap histongue around an order for more whiskey."
"Go on!" snapped McCloskey, almost viciously.
"They were talking about 'fixing' the boss. One of 'em was for the slowand safe way: small bets and a good many of 'em. The other was forpulling a straight flush on Mr. Lidgerwood, right now. Number One saidno, that things were moving al
ong all right, and it wasn't worth whileto rush. Then something was said about a woman; I didn't catch her nameor just what the hurry man said about her, only it was something aboutMr. Lidgerwood's bein' in shape to mix up in it. At that Number Oneflopped over. 'Pull it off whenever you like!' says he, savage-like."
McCloskey sprang from his chair and towered over the smaller man.
"One of those men was Bart Rufford: who was the other one, Judson?"
Judson was apparently unmoved. "You're forgettin' that I was plum' fooldrunk, Jim. I didn't see either one of 'em."
"But you heard?"
"Yes, one of 'em was Rufford, as you say, and up to a little bit ago I'd'a' been ready to swear to the voice of the one you haven't guessed. Butnow I can't."
"Why can't you do it now?"
"Sit down and I'll tell you. I've been jarred. Everything I've told youso far, I can remember, or it seems as if I can, but right where I brokeoff a cog slipped. I must 'a' been drunker than I thought I was. Gridleysays he was going by and he says I called him in and told him,fool-wise, all the things I was going to do to Mr. Lidgerwood. He sayshe hushed me up, called me out to the sidewalk, and started me home.Mac, I don't remember a single wheel-turn of all that, and it makes mescary about the other part."
McCloskey relapsed into his swing-chair.
"You said you thought you recognized the other man by his voice. Itsounds like a drunken pipe-dream, the whole of it; but who did you thinkit was?"
Judson rose up, jerked his thumb toward the door of the superintendent'sbusiness office, and said, "Mac, if the whiskey didn't fake the wholebusiness for me--the man who was mumblin' with Bart Ruffordwas--Hallock!"
"Hallock?" said McCloskey; "and you said there was a woman in it? Thatfits down to the ground, John. Mr. Lidgerwood has found out somethingabout Hallock's family tear-up, or he's likely to find out. That's whatthat means!"
What more McCloskey said was said to an otherwise empty room. Judson hadopened the door and closed it, and was gone.
Summing up the astounding thing afterward, those who could recall thedetails and piece them together traced Judson thus:
It was ten-forty when he came down from McCloskey's office, and forperhaps twenty minutes he had been seen lounging at the lunch-counter inthe station end of the Crow's Nest. At about eleven one witness had seenhim striking at the anvil in Hepburn's shop, the town marshal being thetown blacksmith in the intervals of official duty.
Still later, he had apparently forgotten the good resolution declared toMcCloskey, and all Angels saw him staggering up and down Mesa Avenue,stumbling into and out of the many saloons, and growing, to allappearances, more hopelessly irresponsible with every fresh stumble.This was his condition when he tripped over the doorstep into the"Arcade," and fell full length on the floor of the bar-room. Grimsby,the barkeeper, picked him up and tried to send him home, but withgood-natured and maudlin pertinacity he insisted on going on to thegambling-room in the rear.
The room was darkened, as befitted its use, and a lighted lamp hung overthe centre of the oval faro table as if the time were midnight insteadof midday. Eight men, five of them miners from the Brewster copper mine,and three of them discharged employees of the Red Butte Western, werethe bettors; Red-Light himself, in sombrero and shirt-sleeves, wasdealing, and Rufford, sitting on a stool at the table's end, was the"lookout."
When Judson reeled in there was a pause, and a movement to put him out.One of the miners covered his table stakes and rose to obey Rufford'snod. But at this conjuncture the railroad men interfered. Judson was afellow craftsman, and everybody knew that he was harmless in his cups.Let him stay--and play, if he wanted to.
So Judson stayed, and stumbled round the table, losing his money anddribbling foolishness. Now faro is a silent game, and more than once anangry voice commanded the foolish one to choose his place and to shuthis mouth. But the ex-engineer seemed quite incapable of doing either.Twice he made the wavering circuit of the oval table, and when hefinally gripped an empty chair it was the one nearest to Rufford on theright, and diagonally opposite to the dealer.
What followed seemed to have no connecting sequence for the otherplayers. Too restless to lose more than one bet in the place he hadchosen, Judson tried to rise, tangled his feet in the chair, and felldown, laughing uproariously. When he struggled to the perpendicularagain, after two or three ineffectual attempts, he was fairly behindRufford's stool.
One man, who chanced to be looking, saw the "lookout" start and stiffenrigidly in his place, staring straight ahead into vacancy. A momentlater the entire circle of witnesses saw him take a revolver from theholster on his hip and lay it upon the table, with another from thebreast pocket of his coat to keep it company. Then his hands wentquickly behind him, and they all heard the click of the handcuffs.
The man in the sombrero and shirt-sleeves was first to come alive.
"Duck, Bart!" he shouted, whipping a weapon from its convenient shelfunder the table's edge. But Judson, trained to the swift handling ofmany mechanisms in the moment of respite before a wreck or aderailment, was ready for him.
"Bart's afraid he can't duck without dying," he said grimly, screeninghimself behind his captive. Then to the others, in the same unhastingtone: "Some of you fellows just quiet Sammy down till I get out of herewith this peach of mine. I've got the papers, and I know what I'm doin';if this thing I'm holdin' against Bart's back should happen to gooff----"
That ended it, so far as resistance was concerned. Judson backed quicklyout through the bar-room, drawing his prisoner backward after him; and amoment later Angels was properly electrified by the sight of Rufford,the Red Desert terror, marching sullenly down to the Crow's Nest, with afiery-headed little man at his elbow, the little man swinging the weaponwhich had been made to simulate the cold muzzle of the revolver when hehad pressed it into Rufford's back at the gaming-table.
It was nothing more formidable than a short, thick "S"-wrench, of thekind used by locomotive engineers in tightening the nuts of thepiston-rod packing glands.
The Taming of Red Butte Western Page 9