As his mouth opened for understandable words they were prepared for nearly any announcement other than the one he made. He had all the earmarks of a man bringing the gladdest of glad tidings, and what he said—he couldn’t keep his voice from ringing exultantly—was:
“Mike Bundy’s comin’. He’s up by the corral already. He’ll be here in a split second.”
“First time I ever knew Bundy’s arrival to make you as gay as a Christmas tree,” said a perplexed Dorn, while Lorna just looked searchingly at Jinks.
“Hell, it ain’t that that’s got me doin’ Maypole dances. It’s something else, an’ when you two hear it—But it’ll have to wait till Bundy’s gone.” He heard footsteps outside, and pressed closer, whispering the last few words: “For the love of Pete, Will an’ Lorny,” he begged them, “get Bundy out o’ here quick, so’s I c’n tell you. Else I’ll bust! You’d never believe—Sh!” He commanded, as though they had been shouting at him. “Here he is!”
He had left the door wide open and now Bundy looked in. He was a Bundy hard to make out. For one thing it was obvious that he meant to appear friendly. He smiled in on them; he said quite cordially: “Hello, Bill. Good morning, Miss—Miss Lorna. Hello, Jinks.” But one had the odd impression that this new geniality hurt him; as though it were all on the outside while within a secret interior his mood was downright ugly—murderous almost.
They only sensed that something galled the man; they could not guess what it was, since they did not know what had happened in County Line. Mike Bundy, though many men hated and not a few feared him, had held men’s respect. He had done big things, done them in a big way, and there was a dignity about him which others recognized and, in one way and another, paid tribute to. But in an instant, like an over-proud Lucifer, he had fallen from his high estate in the estimation of his fellows. And the thing that had brought him down headlong was the roaring laughter of the rude mining camp. And it was Bill Dorn’s errand of last night that had worked the change.
Men told the tale over and over among themselves, and the inevitable trimmings were added. The episode became a gigantic bit of slapstick, with Mike Bundy playing the part of the man who gets the custard pie in his face.
“Ol’ Sudden Bill Dorn, the son-a-gun,” men were saying, “come over an’ jumped Mike Bundy an’ knocked hell out’n him, an’ then hel’ him down whilst he shoves twenty thou-san’ bucks in Bundy’s mouth, an’ says to him, ‘I pay my debts, you skunk, even if it’s a skunk I owe ’em to!’ Ol’ Sudden Bill’s shore a case, ain’t he?”
Sudden Bill right now was saying curtly, “What are you here for, Bundy?”
“I’ve been thinking things over, Bill,” said Bundy without seeming to note Dorn’s curtness. “You started me thinking. You took me off guard yesterday; I was sore as a saddle boil, too. But I’m here today to tell you that when you toed the scratch the way you did—Well, Bill, it was a damned fine thing to do, and I don’t know any man on earth who’d have been the man for it except old Sudden Bill Dorn!” Dorn looked more puzzled then ever.
“What’s back of all that talk, Bundy?” he demanded.
Bundy shrugged. “I’m not here to fall all over you and kiss you,” he said bluntly. “But I am here to tell you I have sense enough to appreciate a thing as big as the thing you did last night. So much for that. Now I want to say a word about the future: I’m getting no particular satisfaction out of fighting you. Suppose we draw off and let each other alone? Call it a draw and quit; what do you say?”
“And what’s back of that?” snapped Dorn, suspicious now as he would be suspicious always of any act or word of Bundy’s.
“I’ve got you licked and you know it,” said Bundy evenly. He seemed determined to remain unruffled, good-humored. “But you’ve been square with me and I’ll be square with you. First, there has been the question of ownership of this ranch—”
“There is no such question. It belongs to this young lady and me,” said Dorn. “We hold it now in partnership.”
“But only theoretically; you might say, sentimentally,” smiled Bundy. “I think you must know by this time, Bill, that this young lady is not Lorna Kent. The real Lorna Kent was at Liberty some time back. She vanished one night—”
“Lugged off by Smith and Fontana,” said Dorn.
“Yes. Though I’d say ‘escorted’ rather than ‘lugged.’ Well, I have known all the time where she was to be found. A couple of days ago I had a long talk with her. She will be showing up whenever I send for her to come. She will have no trouble establishing her identity as Lorna Kent, old lady Kent’s heiress. And meantime I have a deed from her, making over to me all her right, title and interest in Palm Ranch as it may appear. So you see this place is mine in more ways than one now.”
It was Dorn’s time to shrug.
“I won’t call you a liar because maybe you’re telling the truth. Maybe you are not. Time will show. But why come to me with all this?”
“Because you came to me as you did last night. I’m not much given to gestures of charming sentiment as you know; just the same I’m willing to give you a chance to get out with your shirt. To get out before you are evicted through due process of law.”
“Thanks,” said Dorn drily.
“You’re licked already, remember,” said Bundy, and they could see that it was only with an effort that he held himself in check. “You and this girl and Jinks and the whole outfit, you’re licked. But I’ll do this and I’ll tell you why: First, I want to let you down easy—”
“Skip that part of it, Bundy!”
“All right. Second, I am as anxious as any other man to avoid litigation. I want this thing cleaned up in a hurry. I want to use Palm Ranch myself just as you were using it. For a while I thought I’d change my plan and work from the north, hauling from San Marco through Hacienda Villaga, establishing a midway station at the hacienda. I’ve given that up.
“So I come back to my original scheme which you folks for a time have done me out of. And I realize that this charming young woman may just possibly make a bit of trouble for me, phony though her claim is bound to be proved to be. To make a clean sweep here and get it done like that—” he snapped finger and thumb—“I’ll pay this aforesaid charming young woman, and you too, Bill, a round sum for a quit claim. You move out and I move in.”
“How round a sum might it be, Bundy?” piped up Cap Jinks. “How much did you say you’d pay?”
“Do you come in on this too?” said Bundy, edgily.
“Yep, shore do. We’re all like one big happy fam’ly.”
Bundy ignored him and returned his attention to Dorn. “How about it, Bill? Right now I’m on my way into Liberty. Shall I cash this?” He pulled a paper out of his pocket and displayed it; it was Dorn’s check for twenty-one thousand dollars. “Or shall I tear it up?”
“You mean me to believe that you’re willing to spend twenty thousand dollars for what you claim will be a worthless deed?”
“Did I ever shoot nickels?” demanded Bundy. “If you could afford this much money just to show the world you could shoot square, and at a time when your back was to the wall, can’t I afford it now to get what I want when I want it instead of waiting months for the damned legal wheels to get turning? I’ve got a gold mine that’s going to be worth a million; in six months I’ll be in a position where I can cash in for twice that and—”
“You’re a damn liar an’ ever was, Mike Bundy,” snapped Jinks who refused to be ignored.
“I’m talking to you, Bill,” said Bundy.
“Go cash your check,” said Dorn. “And now we’re going to have breakfast—and we’re not asking you to stay.”
Bundy’s mouth opened for a tirade that never came. Instead his jaws came together with a click of teeth and he turned on his heel and went out. Cap Jinks followed him to the door and as Bundy strode away to his horse called shrilly after him: “Ne
x’ time I-see you, Bundy, I’m goin’ to have something awful funny to tell you! Get ready to laugh your head off—damn your eyes!”
* * * *
Cap’n Jinks, having shot his taunting yell after the departing Bundy, came charging back into the living room.
Once more the gleam was in his eye and shone brighter than ever.
“Gather roun’, you two,” he began jubilantly, “an’ stretch your ears to get ’em full of such words you never hoped to live to hear. An’ me, I’ll the tale unfol’ that’ll make your eyes stick out seven mile an’ maybe seven more. When them jaspers raided us—”
“Whoa, Cap!” Dorn stopped him just as Jinks was going strongest. “Lorna has already started unfolding a tale that comes ahead of yours. Just you keep your shirt on, old party, until her story is done.”
For an instant it was clear that Jinks was of a mind to override all commands and blurt out his news. But, becoming the smuggest man they ever saw, he said only. “Mine’ll keep.” Then he giggled and said in high glee: “There’s a joke in that! ‘Mine’ll keep!’ You’ll get the joke when I spill the yarn.”
“What I started telling Bill, you know already,” said Lorna to Cap, and Jinks for the first time remarked a new radiant quality in her smile and took stock of her bright, high color and the sparkle in her eyes. To himself he said, “Humph! They’ve got to it as las’.” Lorna turned again toward Dorn.
“You see,” she went on, “Aunt Nellie Kent was really my aunt. My mother was her sister. Mother married Charles Robert Brown who, when they were married, was a not very successful musician. Aunt Nellie had always mothered my mother, who was several years younger; she took a very strong dislike to Charles Robert Brown, and Mother and he had to elope. They were both very young; I think they were both a little bit afraid of Aunt Nellie. Well, after that she would have nothing to do with either of them. She never saw either of them again; never even wrote to them. They remained in the East. She came West.
“I lost my mother when I was very little; I can scarcely remember her. Then, four years ago, I lost my father. He had never done very well financially, but he did leave enough insurance to send me to a very good if inexpensive girls’ school. About two years ago the money ran out. I was doing the best I could; I had learned a little music and how to dance; I had small classes. Then I got a most surprising letter from Mrs. Kent.
“In it, first of all, she scolded me for being my father’s and mother’s daughter. But she was kind, too. She wanted to help me. But her letter had made me mad—”
Jinks chuckled, “You’re good at that, Lorny. I’m warnin’ Bill Dorn right now it ain’t all goin’ to be smooth sailin’, him an’ you.”
“What has Bill Dorn got to do with it?” demanded Lorna, and tried to stare him down.
No staring Cap Jinks down this morning! “When I see folks look at folks like you two folks is lookin’ right now—do you reckon I need to have you write it down on a slate? Hell no! Faces of two silly young geese when they’re crazy in love is so easy to read a Chinaman could do it.”
“Never mind Cap here,” Dorn grinned at her. “He passed the age of discretion about the time he went into senile decay—which is to say about forty years ago. Sail on, Lorna. But I guess I’ve got it already.”
Lorna sailed on.
“We wrote back and forth for a while. I was lonely for some of my own, and her letters got kinder and I got to understand that she too, in her own way, was lonesome for some of her own flesh and blood. The first check she sent me was on my birthday; you can’t guess how it surprised me. She must have known about me ever since I was born. Then not very long ago she asked me to come out here. And she said that she was going to try to make amends for having been so seemingly forgetful of me all these years. But she made one thing clear from the start: If I came to her I must call myself Lorna Kent and never Lorna Brown.
“Later she wrote again. She told me that she wanted me very much; that she was going to make her will in my favor; but that before I could ever touch a cent of hers I must have my name changed legally to Kent. Well—well, I came. You know the rest of it.”
Dorn nodded thoughtfully. “And you got here just too late ever to see her. Tough luck.”
“Anyhow,” piped up Cap Jinks, “the will’s made out an’ is at the bank in Liberty. Roger Rutherford tol’ me so.”
“And with it, no doubt,” added Dorn, “will be instructions to the effect that Lorna Brown must become Lorna Kent to inherit.” He looked at her sideways. “Seems to me you’re headed toward doing a lot of changing of your name, young lady.” Having paused long enough to admire the effective manner in which Lorna could wrinkle up that saucy nose of hers, he added, again thoughtful: “All you’ve got to do now is to arrange to have your identity as Lorna Brown established here.”
“I’ve already written a friend of mine back home, a lawyer who I am sure will help me.”
“A friend of yours, huh?” said Bill Dorn. “Young or old, this lawyer?”
Jinks broke in with a hearty: “Aha! What did I say about smooth water ahead?” And then he added, hurried and eager once more: “You two done now? Ready to hear a tale that is a tale?”
Dorn laughed into the puckered, oddly boyish old face, clapped him on the shoulder—you never could smite Cap’n Jinks on hip, thigh or back without starting up a small cloud of dust—and gave him his permission to go ahead and do his worst.
“If you don’t get it out of your system in a hurry,” said Dorn, “you’re sure to go ‘pop’ like a toy balloon on a hot day. Shoot, Cap.”
“Here goes,” said Jinks. “Firs’, since you wouldn’t listen when I was ready to bust out with it, I’ll make you wait until I mention something that has popped into my head since I come a runnin’. Yestiddy, Will, when you chased off to play square with Bundy, well, I thought you was a damn’ jackass same as usual, it bein’ my hunch that it was Mike Bundy an’ not the Villagas that planned an’ plotted that raid on us. Now, I know different. You c’n make dead shore Bundy didn’t have any hand in tryin’ to blow us off the map.”
“That’s no news to me, Cap. But what brought you around to it?”
“That comes later. Bein’ a sort of Nick Carter, I sort of figger out things like that. To resoom, as the feller says: Lorny here’s lucky for bein’ Lorny, an’ Will Dorn’s a lucky dog that he chipped in with Lorny, an’ all us other fellers is maybe lucky fellers we chipped in with Will Dorn. Fu’thermore, we got the work by the tail, the drag is downhill an’ the skids is greased, an’ Mike Bundy’s a louse. Add to all of which, I c’n up now, soon’s I get ready, an’ say to you folks, like folks likes to say to folks, ‘Me, I tol’ you so!’ Only I’ll bet a man you don’t even rec’lec’ what I did tell you! You upped an’ made light o’ me then, but I’m danged if you’re goin to make light o’ me now.”
“Cap Jinks,” cried Lorna, “if you don’t say what you’ve got to say—”
“Ain’t I sayin’ it?” chuckled Jinks. He stopped, drew a deep, slow breath and fairly exploded his next words at them: “I said long ago, why was Mike Bundy so crazy anxious to get this place? An’ I said right then, ‘Maybe the gold’s on Palm Ranch ’stead of bein’ in the Blue Smokes.’ Mike Bundy’s gold mine ain’t Mike Bundy’s gold mine a-tall, but it’s our gold mine and it’s not over a half mile from where we’re standin’, spang in the middle o’ Palm Ranch! An’ me, Cap’n Nicholas Carter Ashbury Jinks, I found it this mornin’. An’ if them hyenas, which now we oughter call good Christian frien’s of our’n, hadn’t blowed up our nice new dam, we’d never have knowed a thing about it! An’ if you ain’t got an ear full now, say so!”
Cap Jinks, no matter what his expectations, could not conceivably have been disappointed in the effect of the tale he blasted into their ears. The two young, happy faces of a moment before grew absolutely blank as two pairs of wide-open eyes stared at him. Dorn and Lo
rna didn’t even look incredulous; they appeared simply stunned.
Lorna gasped and sank down into her big chair and forgot even to close her mouth which had involuntarily opened at some stage of his racing announcement and thereafter had remained in the status quo. She looked up at him as a child of four might look up into the actual, real, first-seen Santa Claus, spellbound, perhaps a little shocked and with a hint of fear pounding at her heart, bereft equally of words and of the power of thought.
As for Bill Dorn, he looked grimmer and grimmer and the muscles corded along his lean, hard jaw. There was so much at stake; they were, despite brave words, in such a hopeless mess altogether, that such news as this, so utterly unexpected, took a man in the short ribs like a fist. If this were true—if Jinks had made some idiotic mistake—“Jinks,” said Dorn at last, out of a silence of considerable duration, “if—if—”
And Lorna at the identical moment got control over her own speaking muscles and said, “Cap Jinks, if you—if—”
“Two hearts without a single thought!” yipped the delighted Jinks.
Dorn bore down upon him, Lorna swooped up to pounce on him, they got him one by each arm and held on to him as though they feared he might sprout wings and soar up through the roof to vanish for all time.
“Let’s have the whole thing now,” said Dorn. “Slow, Jinks; in words of one syllable, so we can get it. You’ve got us sort of dazed.”
There was behind them a hesitant creak of the kitchen door, a soft, also hesitant footstep, and then Josefa’s face looked in on them.
“I hongry,” said Josefa. Her voice, too, was hesitant, yet there was a hint of sullen, Indian defiance in it. “Brik-fuss now? Huh?”
Given carte blanche in the matter of disporting herself with abandon among the bacon and eggs and hotcakes and coffee, the long-enough forgotten Josefa withdrew with alacrity and what was almost a smile.
The Sixth Western Novel Page 20