by Zane Grey
“Packin’ a gun, too, the Mizzouri hayseed,” added Curly.
“Boys, friends, pards,” he began, dramatically, “if it weren’t for my sister and you I’d blow my brains out.”
Silence! Staring eyes and awed lean faces attested to the felicity of his acting.
“Why, Jim, what the hell?” uttered Curly, without his drawl.
“Listen. Let me tell it quick,” he announced, hurriedly. “We go back to Yellow Jacket after New Year’s. No more town till spring, if then. The old man is sore at Bambridge — at this two-bit rustling. We’ve got the job of clearing the range of varmints, rubbish, rustlers, and so forth. He’ll throw five thousand head of cattle on to Yellow Jacket in less than a year. That’s that, and it isn’t a marker to what I’m going to tell you.”
“Let me get it off my chest,” went on Jim. “Maybe you remember I hinted of a fellow named Darnell, who made trouble for my sister back in Missouri. Anyway, he’s here in Flag. Has taken a job with Bambridge. He has been hounding poor Glory until she has stopped going to town. She is deathly afraid of him. Afraid he will disgrace me by talking about her. Mind you — Glory is straight and fine and good. So don’t get the wrong hunch. She was only a crazy girl and this Darnell is a man, handsome, slick as the devil, a gambler and cheat at cards, and crooked otherwise. He beat Glory out of money, and my father too. She thinks he’ll beat Uncle Jim the same way. But you all know Darnell can’t fool the old man...Now does that sink in?”
“Wal, it shore doesn’t sink very deep in me, Boss,” drawled Curly. “Mister Darnell has shore picked an awful unhealthy climate.”
“You saw Darnell with Bambridge that day at the station.”
“Shore. An’ thet was enough fer me an’ Bud an’ all of the outfit.”
“All right...here’s the worst — Lord! how am I to get — it out?” continued Jim, and now he did not need to simulate trouble. He was genuine. He felt clammy and nauseated. He paced a step here and there, flung himself upon the chair before the fire, and all but tore his hair in his distress and shame.
“Molly Dunn has — jilted me. Broken her engagement — left my uncle’s house...Says she’s not good enough to marry me. And it’s just the other way around. Poor kid! Just let that sink in, will you?...She’s a clerk in Babbitt’s store in the afternoons. Mornings she goes to school. All that’s tough, boys. But listen to this. She’s going around with that —— Darnell!...I can’t realise it, let alone understand it. But Glory says Molly is only distracted — out of her head — that it’s really because she loves me she’s done it. Wants everybody in Flag to see she’s not good enough for us! That’s why she’s carrying on with this Darnell. I’m so sorry for her I — I could cry. And so mad I could bite nails. And so scared I can’t think.”
Jim paused for breath. What relief to get this confession made! When he looked up he gathered a singular conception of the regard in which he was held by the Diamond. It was rather a big moment for him.
Slinger Dunn, without a word, put on his cap and glided noiselessly toward the door.
“Hold on, Slinger. Where you going?”
Dunn turned. At any moment his sloe-black eyes were remarkable; just now they made Jim shiver.
“I was shore wonderin’ why my sister hadn’t sent fer me to come up to the house,” he said. “An’ I reckon it’s aboot time I hunted her up. Then I’ll take a look round fer this Darnell fellar.”
“Slinger by all means go see Molly, but let Darnell alone for the present,” rejoined Jim, earnestly.
“Jim, air you electin’ to boss me aboot Molly?” asked Slinger.
“No indeed, Slinger. Only asking you to wait.”
“What fer?”
“Listen, Slinger, and all of you,” said Jim. “Tomorrow night is this Christmas Eve dance. We’ll all go. We’ll look this Darnell over. I won’t do anything and I ask you not to — until after that. But understand me. I — I couldn’t stick it out here in the West without Molly. You all know how I care for her. It’s far more serious for me than the Hash-Knife deal...I’ve confided my intimate feelings because I believe you all my pards. I reckon I’ll be laughed at and ridiculed by the Flagerstown young people, as I was at first. But I don’t care. All I care for is to get Molly back, to make a home for Glory, and to have the Diamond stick to me.”
Curly might have been spokesman for the outfit. Usually in critical cases he assumed that position. Now he laid a lean, brown, pressing hand upon Jim’s shoulder.
“Jim, all this heah Diamond cares for is thet you grow a little more Western overnight,” he drawled, in his careless, cool, inflexible tone, that seemed to carry such moment. Curly’s ultimatum intimated so much. It embodied all of Jim’s longings. He divined in that cowboy’s droll words an unutterable and unquenchable loyalty, and more, the limitless spirit and the strength of all that the wild range engendered.
“By Heaven — I will!” cried Jim, ringingly, as he leaped to his feet.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JIM HAD RESISTED an impulse to bribe the cowboys to call in a body and singly at Babbitt’s store to make purchases of Molly and incidentally remind her of him.
In his own case he went downtown late, and everywhere except Babbitt’s, trying to screw up his courage. It was not that overnight he had not become transposed to a thorough Arizonian, but that his genuine tenderness for Molly had asserted itself. This he knew he should not yield to. Still he did. On several occasions he espied some of his cowboys, laden with bundles, mysteriously gay and full of the devil. They had not required prompting to do the very thing he had so sneakingly desired. He could just imagine the drawling, persuasive Curly telling Molly she was out of her haid. And Bud — what that cherubic volcanic friend would say was beyond conjecture. And Slinger! Jim had forgotten that Slinger was Molly’s brother, her guardian, in his own estimation, at any rate. It rather frightened Jim to guess what Slinger would do, considering he was not given to much speech. And the rest of the cowboys — they would drive Molly frantic in their Western fashion.
Ruminating thus, Jim lounged in the lobby of the hotel. All of a sudden he saw Molly go into Davis’s store, on the far corner. He jumped. It was only four o’clock, and she should have at least another hour of work. What a chance! It quite took his breath. He went out, crossed the street, and stood back in a hallway, close to the door of the store, where he could see and scarcely be seen. Once he had to dodge back to escape detection when Lonestar and Cherry passed, each with a load of packages. “Gosh!” ejaculated Jim. “They’ve been in Babbitt’s. I can tell by the wrapping-paper on those parcels.”
He had to wait what seemed an endless while before Molly appeared. Then he stepped out as if by magic, and Molly bumped into him. It startled her so that she uttered a cry and dropped some of her bundles. Jim picked them up, and rising he coolly faced the scarlet Molly and appropriated the rest of her parcels.
“I reckon I’ll carry these. Where you going?” he said, naturally, with a smile.
“Home. To my boardin’-house,” she said, a little mockingly.
“Well, I’ll pack your load for you,” returned Jim.
“You played me a low-down trick,” she said, presently, coldly.
“Me? I sure did not. How so?”
“You set thet Diamond outfit on to me.”
“Molly! I swear I didn’t. Honest. You know I wouldn’t lie,” replied Jim, most earnestly.
“You shore would. You’d do anythin’.”
“But I protest my innocence.”
“Innocence? — You!” She gave him her eyes for a second. Jim felt shot through with black and gold arrows.
“Sure I’m innocent. I thought how good it’d be to send the gang in on you — if for nothing else than to remind you of my existence. But I didn’t. Not only that, Molly, but yesterday I actually kept Slinger from hunting you up.”
“Wal, you shore didn’t this heah day...Oh, it was — turrible!” Her voice broke, close to a sob.
�
�Molly! — I’m sorry. What’d Slinger say?”
“Nothin ‘cept, ‘come heah, you moon-eyed calf!’...I was paralysed when I seen him come in. I couldn’t run. Slinger’s eyes are shore turrible. He reached over the counter an’ said — what I told you. Then he grabbed me by my blouse — it’s a way he has — only this time he pulled me half over the counter — face down — an’ — an’ smacked me so hard you could have heahed it out in the street...I won’t be able to — to set down at dinner!...An’ then he said he’d see me later.”
Molly stopped before a modest little brown cottage, almost at the end of the street. Jim made a note of the single large pine-tree in the yard, for future emergency, when he wished to find Molly after dark.
“This is where I board,” she said, simply.
“Are you comfortable here?” asked Jim, anxiously.
“I’m used to cold. But there’s a stove in the parlour. Come in.”
Jim was elated that she should trust him so far as to ask him inside. The modest little parlour was warm and comfortable indeed, compared with the blustery outdoors. Jim deposited Molly’s bundles in a chair, and turning discovered that she had removed her hat and coat and was warming her hands over the stove. She looked healthy and pretty, yet somehow forlorn. What was to prevent him taking her in his arms then and there? He longed to. That had been his intention, should opportunity offer. Nevertheless, something inhibited him. Probably it was a divination that Molly, during the few minutes’ walk with him, had unconsciously been drawn to him again. She betrayed it now. That was what he had prayed for, but he could not act upon it.
“Thanks for asking me in, Molly,” he said. “I suppose you expect me to get my trouble off my chest — then let you alone...Well, I won’t do it now. When that time comes we’ll have a grand row And I just won’t spoil your Christmas...But I ask you — will you send word to Darnell that you will not go to the dance with him tonight?”
“Thet’d be a low-down trick,” replied Molly, quickly.
“It does appear so. There are good reasons, however, why it would be wise for you to do so — unless you want to lose your good name in Flag.”
“Glory said thet. I don’t believe either of you. An’ it’s not square of you to—”
“You needn’t argue the point. Answer me. Will you go with me instead?”
She hung her head, she clenched her little trembling hands, she shook all over. What a trial that must have been! Jim sought to add to it.
“With me and Glory, of course. She wants you. And she thinks this is the time for you to come back. Before you’ve made me the laughing-stock of Flag.”
“But it cain’t do thet,” she cried.
“Yes it can. And it will. Not that I care a hang for what people think or say. We want you to avoid — well, Molly, being misunderstood, not to say worse.”
“You hit it on the haid, Jim,” she replied, with spirit. “Thet’s what I’m not goin’ to avoid.”
Jim regarded her speculatively. If he had had a vehicle of some kind out in the street he would have picked her up right there, as she was, and packed her out, and carried her off home. But this drastic action could scarcely be undertaken now, though his finger-tips burned to snatch her.
But there was a deadlock. Molly and Jim glared at each other across the stove, above which their extended hands almost met. Jim found it hard to tear himself away, especially in view of her anger. He pondered a moment. Finally he said, gently: “Darling, do you have any idea to what extremes you may drive me?”
She shook her head dubiously.
“Don’t you know I worship you?” Her glossy head dropped.
“Don’t you realise you’ll ruin me if you persist in this madness? I can’t believe it. But you might convince me, eventually.”
Then she covered her face with her hands and the tears trickled through her fingers.
Jim grasped at the right moment to make his escape.
“I won’t distress you any more,” he said. “Don’t cry and make your eyes red. I’ll see you tonight. Please save a dance for me.”
Then he rushed out to find the cold wind soothing to a heated brow. He trudged home, his mind in a whirl.
Before supper he went out to the bunkhouse, to find the place a bedlam of jolly cowpunchers and a storeful of the men’s furnishings, goods which they had bought so indiscriminately. All of the boys were sober — a remarkable circumstance on the eve of Christmas. When he entered — and he had stood in the open door a moment — they whooped and began to throw packages at him.
“Merry Christmas!” yelled Bud. “Son-of-a-gun from Mizzouri!” yelled Curly.
“Whoopee, you diamond-buyer!” yelled Cherry.
“You lovesick dyin’ duck!” yelled someone Jim did not pick out, for the reason that he had to dodge. And so it went until they had exhausted their vocabularies and their missiles.
“Am I to understand that this fusillade is kindly meant?” he asked, with mock solemnity.
“Means we shore went broke on you an’ Molly Dunn,” replied Bud.
“Boys, that was a cowboy stunt — your buying out Babbitt’s,” said Jim. “I’m broke, too, but I’ll share the debt.”
Someone observed that he would like the old lady who kept tavern out west, and as Jim had learned that that was a very disreputable thing, he made no further comment.
“Slinger, I hope you didn’t tell these wild men what you did in Babbitt’s,” he returned.
“I shore did, an’ the outfit’s with me, Mister Traft,” answered Dunn.
“Boss, Slinger had an inspurashun,” observed Bud, sagely. “Soon as a fellar learns to treat bull-haided sisters an’ fickle sweethearts thetaway he’ll get some obedience.”
“I’m afraid it won’t work on high-spirited girls like Molly and my sister.”
“It shore would. Wimmen is all the same. What you say, pard Curly?”
“But, on this heah Christmas Eve my heart is shore sad,” rejoined Curly. “Peace on earth an’ good will toward men is a lot of guff. There’s battle an’ murder in the air. Some of us won’t ever see another Christmas.”
“Then we oughta get turrible drunk,” said Bud.
Approval of this statement was not wanting.
“Curly, what’s eating you?” asked Jim, grasping that his favourite cowboy had something besides the festivities of the season on his mind.
“Ask Bud,” replied Curly, gloomily.
“Wal, Boss, it ain’t nuthin’ much, least-ways oughtn’t fuss us till after Christmas,” replied Bud. “Curly an’ I made a round of the gamblin’-places this afternoon. I didn’t know what was in Curly’s mind. Anyway, the doorkeeper at Snell’s tried to bar Curly out. Shore it’s a swell place, but we reckoned it wasn’t none too good fer the Diamond. After I got in I seen why Curly pushed his gun against the doorkeeper’s bread-basket. A bartender friend of Curly’s had tipped him off thet there was a big game goin’ on at Snell’s. Wal, there was. Bambridge, Blodgett, another rancher we didn’t know, an’ Blake, a hotel man from Winslow, an’ last this hyar Darnell hombre, was sittin’ in. You should of seen the coin of the realm on thet table. Wal, we watched the game. I seen Bambridge was bettin’ high an’ losin’. Looked like he’d whoop up the pots, an’ Darnell would rake them in. Blake is no slouch of a gambler, an’ he was shore sore at the game, either from losin’ or somethin’. All I seen about Darnell was thet he was mighty slick with the cards. They jest flew out of his hands. Curly, you know, is a card sharp hisself, an’ he swore Darnell stacked the deck on every deal he had. An’ Blodgett an’ the strange rancher, anyhow, was gettin’ a hell of a fleecin’.”
“Ahuh. So that’s it,” returned Jim, seriously. “Curly, I don’t see anything in that to make you sad on Christmas Eve.”
“Boss, there’s shore two things,” drawled Curly. “I’ve got to raise enough money to set in that game at Snell’s. An’ I’m wonderin’ if Darnell is as slick with a gun as he is with the cairds.”
; “Life is orful hard fer a cowpuncher when he’s in love,” observed Bud. “Sky so blue an’ grass so green, flowers an’ birds, dance an’ holdin’ hands, an’ kisses sweeter’n ambergris — an’ jest round the corner bloody death lurkin’.”
“What’s the idea, Curly?” asked Jim, quickly interested.
“Boss, it’s a fine chance to get rid of Mister Darnell without involvin’ any of our lady friends, you know. Flag is such a hell of a place for gossip. An’ I reckon there’s shore enough right now.”
“Get rid of Darnell!” ejaculated Jim curiously.
“Shore. I can set in thet game if I’ve a good-sized roll. Shore I’d flash in an’ let on I was a little drunk. Savvy? Wal, I can nail Darnell at his cheatin’ at cairds. If he pulls a gun — well, an’ good. If not he’ll shore find Flag too hot a town in winter.”
“Curly, it’s a grand idea, except the possibility of Darnell’s throwin’ a gun. I hardly believe he’d have the nerve. He’s an Easterner.”
“We don’t know for shore,” said Curly. “He might even be from Texas.”
“Aw, guff an’ nonsense!” burst out Bud. “Thet handsome white-mugged sharper won’t go fer a gun. But whatinhell’s the difference if he does? Saves us the trouble of stringin’ him up to a cottonwood...An’, Boss, an’ Curly, an’ you galoots, thet’s what Darnell is slated fer. I seen it — I felt it...Now I ask you, knowin’ how few my hunches are — do you recollect any of them far wrong? What’s more, Bambridge ain’t genuine Western. He’s too cock-sure. He reckons us all easy marks.”
“Curly, I’ll dig up the money and go with you to Snell’s,” said Jim.
The Diamond immediately voted upon a united presence at that occasion. Curly made no objection, provided they dropped in unobtrusively.
“I heahed this poker game has been goin’ on most in the afternoons,” he said, “An’ course it’s kind of private — Snell’s is — an’ you may not get in. But don’t start a fight. Aboot four o’clock would be a good hour, Jim.”
“How much money will you require?” queried Jim.