by Max Brand
But he was lost. Even had he had the speed of the long-legged grays to help him, he could not have stood off the steady challenge of Lou. She came like the wind overtaking a ship. In five minutes she would range beside them. Now lack Moon knew that the girl had indeed ruined his effort. The delay had been fatal.
He made up his mind instantly, it seemed. Ronicky saw him cast loose the reins of the girl’s horse and draw his revolver, and a terrible premonition darted through the brain of Ronicky. Was the heartless devil going to murder the woman he could not carry away with him?
But that was not the purpose of the outlaw.
“Swear by everything that’s holy,” he called to Jerry Dawn, “that you’ll stand by with your hoss and not try to escape. Otherwise I’ll kill the roan while I go back and attend to the fool that’s coming up on us!”
There was no hesitation in the mind of the girl. She had seen one poor creature pistoled by this remorseless fiend of a man, and she could not face the thing again.
“I’ll promise,” she said. And she added fiercely: “But you’ll never come back, Jack Moon!”
He laughed scornfully.
“The man ain’t born,” he declared, “that can stand me off in man-to-man fight.”
“That,” said the girl coldly, “is why you’ve run away like a whipped cur ever since you sighted Ronicky Doone. Bah!”
He blinked before her scorn, and then, through his teeth, he answered: “I played safe. I took no chances. But if you think I fear him or any man, watch me now! I’ll come back riding Lou!”
She trembled at the thought, but she kept her head high and showed no sign of her fear.
“You dare not face him, Jack Moon,” she said fiercely. “It’s the beginning of the end. You’ve failed from the first, ever since Ronicky Doone crossed your path. I begin to see a hundred things. Somehow you’ve lied and blinded me with your lies. But now, in my heart, I know that Ronicky Doone was never untrue to my father. Jack Moon, heaven pity you, because as sure as honesty is stronger than crime, Ronicky Doone is going to kill you here on this hill. And all your tricks won’t help you!”
He looked to the side.
There came the pursuer, drawing his mare back to a long and swinging canter as he saw that the outlaw no longer fled.
Moon knew that, whatever happened, he had already lost Jerry. “Stand by,” he said. “Watch Ronicky Doone go down. And before I go, I’ll tell you the truth. I’ve made my play, and I’ve lost; but I’ll show you how little you’ve won. It wasn’t a bluff that I told my boys to run back there in the hollow. I told them to rush the house and shoot to kill. And that’s what they done. Doone got away — to be finished by me. But your father is dead back yonder in the hollow. Otherwise, wouldn’t he be there with Ronicky? He’s dead, and that’s the end of his story. And now I’ll finish Ronicky’s.”
He saw her lips part and her eyes widen with horror; then he shut out the picture by whirling his horse toward the oncoming rider.
Ronicky Doone made out no detail of that conversation, of course, but its general tenor was unmistakable. There sat the girl with her head bowed, and her face covered by her hands. Here was Jack Moon cantering toward him.
He stopped Lou on the crest of the hill and slipped from the saddle. Why should he imperil her life by putting her in the way of a chance bullet, so long as the enemy were coming on to fight the battle out bravely, man to man, in fair contest? The good mare followed him a pace or two, whinnying softly as though to ask why he had left the saddle, but he checked her advance with a sharp word, and she halted obediently, lifting her head and pricking her ears in curiosity.
Half a dozen paces from her, Ronicky paused and dropped his right hand on his hip, for the approaching rider had also slipped his revolver into the holster now. Though he did not follow Ronicky’s humane example and dismount, he came on with one hand raised in the time-honored fashion of those who request a truce. Ronicky raised his own left hand as signal that the truce was granted, and the outlaw halted not more than half a dozen paces away, still in the saddle.
He waited, his head high, his clear eye sparkling with alertness. Not a movement of the sweat-brightened body of the horse, not a stir of the face of the outlaw, escaped him.
That face was set with unutterable grimness, though Jack Moon was striving to relax his expression and adopt one of careless self-confidence. He so far succeeded that he was able to smile down to Ronicky.
“I see,” he said, “that you’re so plumb tired of living that you pretty near wore out your hoss trying to get close to me.”
“I see,” answered Ronicky, with a smile to match that of the big fellow, “that you’re so plumb fond of life that you wore out two horses trying to get away from me.”
Unquestionably, if there were an advantage in that exchange of words, it lay on the side of Ronicky Doone. Since, in a manner, this was the first blow for him, Jack Moon set his teeth and strove to drive away the gloomy foreboding which flooded his mind. The words of the girl, too, rang through his memory. She had been strangely confident that her champion must win. That confidence had gleamed in her steady eyes, and the memory of that light now served to darken the vision of the outlaw. But he must rouse himself from this depression. In another moment his life would be staked upon his speed of hand, his lightning surety of eye, and he would be mated against a fighter such as he had never before in his life faced.
Accordingly, he stared straight into the eyes of Ronicky Doone. He had many a time made men cringe under the weight of his dominant will, but now the glance of Ronicky clashed against his own with equal force. This was to be no cheaply won victory!
But the youngster was smiling — no, he was sneering.
“Your nerve’s going, Moon,” he was saving calmly. “You’d better make your play now before it’s all gone.”
“Make my play now? Make my play first? I ain’t sunk to that, kid!”
“You’ll sink to that now,” said Ronicky Doone. “Because you’re wilting, Jack. The skunk in you is coming out to the surface. You’re beat, and you know it. If you wait a minute more, you’ll begin begging for life!”
The sweat poured out on the forehead of Jack Moon. For it was true! And he did know it. A great weakness was sweeping over him. The nervous, lean fingers of Ronicky Doone fascinated him. How could he expect to beat the speed of those fingers with his own great paws? If only the smaller man were within grip —
But he must act at once. Behind him the girl would look on. But the moment his hand moved for his gun there would be a convulsive downward flick of the hand now hanging so loosely, so carelessly at the hip of Ronicky. How cool the man was! What a devil of surety was in him!
The chestnut, impatient, pranced a little and turned sidewise toward Ronicky. Then the trick came to the outlaw. The horse would be his bulwark. Mighty must be the bullet that could plow through the body of a horse and reach him. Quick as thought he flung himself down along the chestnut, whipping out his revolver as he fell, and, encircling the neck of the horse with his left hand, he leveled the revolver and fired under the throat of his mount point- blank at Ronicky Doone.
But swift though his maneuver had been, it was slow compared with the lightning gun play of Ronicky. At the first twitch of the big man’s body, the gun had been conjured into those lean fingers, and as the right shoulder and chest of the outlaw surged down on the other side of the horse — after all, it was an old Indian trick — the blaze of Doone’s gun beat that of the man-killer’s by a split part of a second. A small interval, indeed, very small — but just long enough to send the soul of a man winging from its body.
Jack Moon, without a sound, without a groan, slipped out of the saddle and landed with heavy inertness on the ground, face down, and Ronicky Doone touched his shirt sleeve, where the bullet had flicked through the cloth.
He went to Jack Moon and gave the fallen man a cursory examination. It had been instant death. Ronicky looked down with a sort of childlike wonder. Ho
w could one bullet have opened the way for the passage of the vital spirit from that enormous frame, so cunningly made for strength and endurance, so trained to feats of strength? How could one bullet have stopped forever the machinations of that crafty brain?
Ronicky went slowly to the girl.
She still sat with her face bowed in her arms, but when he came near, still covering her eyes, she reached out one hand toward him, fumbling like a blind person.
“Ronicky!” she whispered.
“Yes?” he said gently.
“Dad?”
“All’s well with him, thank Heaven!”
“Thank Heaven, and thanks to you. Oh, Ronicky, what have you done for us?”
“Only helped your dad fight a ghost out of his past,” said Ronicky Doone as gently as before. “Now that the ghost’s gone, let’s forget all about it!”
THE END
Ronicky Doone’s Rewards (1922)
CONTENTS
I. ENTER, BLONDY
II. THE TIME MATCH
III. BLONDY’S BLUNDER
IV. RONICKY SADDLES LOU
V. CLEAN FROM THE HEART
VI. RONICKY REFLECTS
VII. AN INVITATION TO JOIN UP
VIII. A CRY FROM THE SHRUBS
IX. IN THE DARK
X. IN THE BARN
XI. BLONDY’S BASE MOVE
XII. OLD-FASHIONED IRONS
XIII. DELIVERANCE
XIV. JENKINS GETS A JOLT
XV. CURLY CARRIES A MESSAGE
XVI. JENKINS TALKS TO HIS HENCHMAN
XVII. WOODEN SLUGS
XVIII. DOONE DRAWS
XIX. WAITING
XX. “ALL AROUND A CIRCLE”
XXI. THE LIFTED SHUTTER
XXII. RONICKY DECIDES
XXIII. RONICKY’S FIRST MOVE
XXIV. CURLY’S CAPTURE
XXV. WATCHFUL WAITING
XXVI. FREE AND AWAY
XXVII. THE MAN WITH THE MUSTACHES
XXVIII. SOLOMON MOUNTAIN MEN
XXIX. THE DOCTOR SPEAKS TO BLONDY
XXX. NEWS FROM TWIN SPRINGS
XXXI. A DOUBLE DILEMMA
XXXII. HELD BY THE OUTLAWS
XXXIII. LORING LIES
XXXIV. RONICKY PREVAILS
XXXV. RONICKY’S TRIUMPH
XXXVI. SKINNY’S STORY
XXXVII. PAVING THE PRIMROSE PATH
XXXVIII. A FORMULA FOR HAPPINESS
I. ENTER, BLONDY
THE RIDER SHOT down the street, swung out of one stirrup, and rested all this weight on the other; then, when his pony flung back on braced legs, still traveling with great speed, he leaped down and ran up the steps to the hotel. His eyes were shining. He whipped off his hat and beat the dust from the crown against his leg, a great cloud of it rolling lazily down the wind.
“Boys,” he cried, “what d’you think’s up? Old Steve Bennett’s new man has come to town!”
This announcement was greeted with such a roar of cheers that even Ronicky Doone turned his head. He was seated at the far end of the veranda, stretched low in his chair and so posed that the keen, hot sunshine fell upon all of him, saving one shoulder and his head, above which his arms were thrown for greater ease. He was taking a sun bath which might have set a lizard boiling, but Ronicky Doone enjoyed every instant of it. As he turned he literally flashed with color, turning from sunlight into shadow. For Ronicky was one of those dandies of the mountain desert who adopted the gaudiness of the Spanish-Indian habits. No band but one of carved gold could surround his sombrero. No ready-made boot could surround his ankles and slope with glove- fitted smoothness about his feet The red of his bandanna was glowing scarlet and of the purest silk. Silk also was his shirt, though of a heavier and coarser make. What vain, and almost womanly, vanity had made him have such gloves worked to order? The leather was as thin as a fine tissue, it seemed, and clothed his hand so that it hardly impeded the movement of the fingers in flexing. Even his cartridge belt, that symbol of all the grimmer side of the cow business, could not be allowed to remain as it had come from its maker. No, the webbing must needs be taken to some Mexican silver worker who wrought upon it, with infinite patience and skill, figures of birds and beasts and the strange flowers of cacti.
He stretched himself in the shadow now, as if he enjoyed the coolness fuface, dark of skineyes and with a singularly youthful look. The strangeness of those youthful lines came out of the contrast with a certain weariness which, now and again, dulled his eyes. Just as one was about to write him down as a half-breed for his luxurious laziness and his olive skin, one caught a glimpse of that time-tired look in his eyes, and there was a suggestion of sadness beyond words.
It came and went in his face, however, so quickly that the observer could not be entirely sure. So he lounged in his chair, for he had appropriated to his uses the only long wicker chair in that vast county. It creaked with shrill voices whenever he stirred.
As for the rider who had dismounted in such haste to rush upon the hotel veranda with the tidings that old Steve Bennett’s new man had come to town, he had stepped back, laughing and still dusting clouds out of his sombrero and nodding his head to affirm his tidings, as the cow-punchers yelled.
“It’s the blond-headed kid,” he repeated. “He’s come in to look us over, maybe.”
This remark provoked a yet heartier chorus of mirth, and Ronicky Doone thrust himself slowly into a more erect position.
“Who’s the blond-headed kid?” he asked. “And who’s Bennett?”
Now, as a rule, people west of the Rockies avoid direct questions and prefer to learn by inference and by patient waiting. He who bluntly asked to find out what he wishes to know, instead of trailing the information stealthily to the ground, is usually put down as a greenhorn; or else he is an established man with a known reputation, a man born and bred in the West and possessed of sufficient fame to free him from the danger of being put down as a blockhead.
The man to whom Ronicky Doone had put the question had never seen his face before that day, nevertheless, no matter to what other conclusions he may have come, he decided that the olive-skinned youth was not a tenderfoot. The smile of cold derision and aloofness faded instantly from his lips, and he returned: “You’re new to these parts, I reckon?”
“I’m plumb new,” admitted Ronicky.
“Bennett is the old gent tried to put Al Jenkins out of business thirty years back. But now Jenkins has come back after making a stake in Alaska gold. He sunk that gold right back in the oil range land, bought in the acres that Bennett had robbed him of, and now he’s giving Bennett some of his own medicine. And Bennett don’t like it. This blond-headed kid — well, I dunno. Every now and then Bennett gets some new hands, and they try to hold down jobs for a while on the ranch, but sooner or later they got to come to town. Well, partner, when they come to town they meet up with the boys, and the boys give ’em a pretty rough ride. You watch the way they handle ‘Blondy’ when he sails in. Maybe he’ll sashay into town as a peacock, but before he leaves Twin Springs I reckon some of the starch will be took out of him!”
He twisted himself from side to side in the ecstasy of his emotion.
“Yes sir, something is sure going to happen to that gun fighter!”
“Gunfighter?” echoed Ronicky. “You know this Blondy, then?”
“Sure I don’t. But I know that everybody out on Bennett’s ranch has to know that when they wander into Twin Springs they’re going to have a rough ride. And the ones that come in, come because they’re all set for the party. They know well that the man that can ride into Twin Springs off’n the ranch of old Steve Bennett and get out without having his guns and his spurs took from him, is quite some party!”
He set his teeth to prove the strength of his own convictions on the matter.
“Why,” continued Ronicky, forced to raise his voice because of the gathering clamor, as new men came out from the interior of the hotel to hear the tidings, “why should the whole town be agin Bennett and f
or Al Jenkins?”
“That’s easy,” responded his informant “It works this way. The money that Al Jenkins sunk into Twin Springs is what brung it to life. You’d ought to have seen this here town a few years back. Any respectable junk dealer would have laughed himself to death if he’d been asked to make a bid on it. There wasn’t a piece of a board in it that wasn’t rotten. There wasn’t a nail that wasn’t rusted in two. Why? Just because the old toll road had been allowed to go bust. That’s why! When the railroad picked out The Falls as the place it was going to run through, why everybody in Twin Springs just sat down and folded their hands and said: ‘Here’s where we slip off the map and get all rubbed out!’
“And that’s what was happening, too. Twin Springs done just that same thing. It begun to die like a tree when the taproot’s cut. The old toll road was allowed to go to pieces. The rains of a couple of winters put a crimp in that roadbed and made every teamster take chances on cross-country rather than use the old toll road from here to The Falls.
“Well, then along comes old Al Jenkins that Bennett had run out of the country a half lifetime before. What did he do? Did he sit down and fold his hands in his lap like the rest of ’em? No, sir!
“‘If the old town is dead,’ he says, ‘we’ll bring the old town back to life,’ says he.
“And that is what he’s done, just as sure as if you’d read about him in the Bible. He climbed down into his purse and come up covered with gold and greenbacks. He spilled money everywhere, and everything that money touched turned green and begun to put out shoots like springtime. Yes, sir, he was like irrigation. Old Al Jenkins, the first thing he done, was to send out a gang to work on the toll road, and he got that back into better shape than it ever was before. It cost a sight of money but he slicked it up as smooth as glass. He got all the old-timers that had used to team on it before the railroad went through, and he got them to tell him every good feature of the old road. After they’d told him, he went ahead and fixed up this road just the same and better. He got it so good that not a one of the old boys could drive over it without admitting that that road couldn’t give a man a bump in the worst wagon that was ever made.