by Max Brand
“Bard,” stated Nash, “is going out to the ranch with me to-night.”
“Long ride for to-night, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but we’ll bunk on the way and finish up early in the morning.”
“Then you’ll have a chance to teach him Western manners on the way,
Steve.”
“Manners?” queried the Easterner, smiling up to the girl.
She turned, caught him beneath the chin with one hand, tilting his face, and raised the lessoning forefinger of the other while she stared down at him with a half frown and a half smile like a schoolteacher about to discipline a recalcitrant boy.
“Western manners,” she said, “mean first not to doubt a man till he tries to double-cross you, and not to trust him till he saves your life; to keep your gun inside the leather till you’re backed up against the wall, and then to start shootin’ as soon as the muzzle is past the holster. Then the thing to remember is that the fast shootin’ is fine, but sure shootin’ is a lot better. D’you get me?”
“That’s a fine sermon,” smiled Bard, “but you’re too young to make a convincing preacher, Miss Fortune.”
“Misfortune,” said the girl quickly, “don’t have to be old to do a lot of teachin’.”
She sat back and regarded him with something of a frown and with folded arms.
He said with a sudden earnestness: “You seem to take it for granted that
I’m due for a lot of trouble.”
But she shook her head gloomily.
“I know what you’re due for; I can see it in your eyes; I can hear it in your way of talkin’. If you was to ride the range with a sheriff on one side of you and a marshal on the other you couldn’t help fallin’ into trouble.”
“As a fortune-teller,” remarked Nash, “you’d make a good undertaker,
Sally.”
“Shut up, Steve. I’ve seen this bird in action and I know what I’m talking about. When you coming back this way, Bard?”
He said thoughtfully: “Perhaps to-morrow night — perhaps—”
“It ought to be to-morrow night,” she said pointedly, her eyes on Nash.
The latter had pushed his chair back a trifle and sat now with downward head and his right hand resting lightly on his thigh. Only the place in which they sat was illumined by the two lamps, and the forward part of the room, nearer the street, was a sea of shadows, wavering when the wind stirred the flame in one of the lamps or sent it smoking up the chimney. Sally and Bard sat with their backs to the door, and Nash half facing it.
“Steve,” she said, with a sudden low tenseness of voice that sent a chill up Bard’s spinal cord, “Steve, what’s wrong?”
“This,” answered the cowboy calmly, and whirling in his chair, his gun flashed and exploded.
They sprang up in time to see the bulky form of Butch Conklin rise out of the shadows in the front part of the room with outstretched arms, from one of which a revolver dropped clattering to the floor. Backward he reeled as though a hand were pulling him from behind, and then measured his length with a crash on the floor.
Bard, standing erect, quite forgot to touch his weapon, but Sally had produced a ponderous forty-five with mysterious speed and now crouched behind a table with the gun poised. Nash, bending low, ran forward to the fallen man.
“Nicked, but not done for,” he called.
“Thank God!” cried Sally, and the two joined Nash about the prostrate body.
That bullet had had very certain intentions, but by a freak of chance it had been deflected on the angle of the skull and merely ploughed a bloody furrow through the mat of hair from forehead to the back of the skull. He was stunned, but hardly more seriously hurt than if he had been knocked down by a club.
“I’ve an idea,” said the Easterner calmly, “that I owe my life to you,
Mr. Nash.”
“Let that drop,” answered the other.
“A quarter of an inch lower,” said the girl, who was examining the wound, “and Butch would have kissed the world good-bye.”
Not till then did the full horror of the thing dawn on Bard. The girl was no more excited than one of her Eastern cousins would have been over a game of bridge, and the man in the most matter-of-fact manner, was slipping another cartridge into the cylinder of the revolver, which he then restored to the holster.
It still seemed incredible that the man could have drawn his gun and fired it in that flash of time. He recalled his adventure with Butch earlier that evening and with Sandy Ferguson before; for the first time he realized what he had done and a cold horror possessed him like the man who has nerves to walk the tight rope across the chasm and faints when he looks back on the gorge from the safety of the other side. The girl took command.
“Steve, run down to the marshal’s office; Deputy Glendin is there.”
She took the wet cloth and made a deft bandage for the head of Conklin. With his shaggy hair covered, and all his face sagging with lines of weariness, the gun-fighter seemed no more than a middle-aged man asleep, worn out by trouble.
“Is there a doctor?” asked Bard anxiously.
“That ain’t a case for a doctor — look here; you’re in a blue faint. What is the matter?”
“I don’t know; I’m thinking of that quarter of an inch which would have meant the difference to poor Conklin.”
“‘Poor’ Conklin? Why, you fish, he was sneakin’ in here to try his hand on you. He found out he couldn’t get his gang into town, so he slipped in by himself. He’ll get ten years for this — and a thousand if they hold him up for the other things he’s done.”
“I know — and this fellow Nash was as quiet as the strike of a snake. If he’d been a fraction of a second slower I might be where Conklin is now. I’ll never forget Nash for this.”
She said pointedly: “No, he’s a bad one to forget; keep an eye on him.
You spoke of a snake — that’s how smooth Steve is.”
“Remember your own motto, Miss Fortune. He saved my life; therefore I must trust him.”
She answered sullenly: “You’re your own boss.”
“What’s wrong with Nash?”
“Find out for yourself.”
“Are all these fellows something other than they seem?”
“What about yourself?”
“How do you mean that?”
“What trail are you on, Bard? Don’t look so innocent. Oh, I seen you was after something a long time ago.”
“I am. After excitement, you know.”
“Ain’t you finding enough?”
“I’ve got two things ahead of me.”
“Well?”
“This trip, and when I come back I think making love to you would be more exciting than gun-plays.”
They regarded each other with bantering smiles.
“A tenderfoot like you make love to me? That would be exciting, all right, if it wasn’t so funny.”
“As for the competition,” he said serenely, “that would be simply a good background.”
“Hate yourself, don’t you, Bard?” she grinned.
“The rest of these boys are all very well, but they don’t see that what you want is the velvet touch.”
“What’s that?”
She was as frankly curious as some boy hearing a new game described.
“You’ve only been loved in one way. These rough-handed fellows come in and throw an arm around you and ask you to marry them; isn’t that it? What you really need, is an old, simple, but very effective method.”
Though her eyes were shining, she yawned.
“It don’t interest me, Bard.”
“On the contrary, you’re getting quite excited.”
“So does a horse before it gets ready to buck.”
“Exactly. If I thought it would be easy I wouldn’t be tempted.”
“Well, if you like fighting you’ve sure mapped out a nice sizeable quarrel with me, Bud.”
“Good. I’m certainly coming back to Eldara. N
ow about this method of mine—”
“Throwing your cards on the table, eh? What you got, Bard, a royal flush?”
“Right again. It’s a very simple method but you couldn’t beat it.”
“Bud, you ain’t half old enough to kid me.”
“What you need,” he persisted calmly, “is someone who would sit down and simply talk good, plain English to you.”
“Let ’er go.”
“In the first place I will call attention to your method of dressing.”
“Anything wrong with it?”
“I knew you’d be interested.”
She slipped into a chair and sat cross-legged in it, her elbows on her knees and her chin cupped in both her hands.
“Sure I’m interested. If there’s a new way fixin’ ham-and, serve it out.”
“I would begin,” he went on judiciously, “by saying that you dressed in five minutes in the dark.”
“It’s generally dark at 5 a.m.,” she admitted.
“You look, on the whole, as if you’d fallen into your clothes.”
The wounded man stirred and groaned faintly.
She called: “Lie down, Butch; I’m busy. Go on, Bard.”
“If you keep a mirror it’s a wall decoration — not for personal use.”
“Maybe this is an old method, Bard; but around this place it’d be a quick way of gettin’ shot.”
“Angry?”
“You’d peeve a mule.”
“This was only an introduction. The next thing is to sit close beside you and shift the lamp so that the light would shine on your face; then take your hand—”
He suited his action to his word.
“Let go my hand, Bard. It’s like the rest of me — not a decoration but for use.”
“Afraid of me, Sally?”
“Not of a regiment like you.”
“Then of my method?”
“Go on; I’m game.”
“But this is all there is to it.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Just what I say. Having observed that you haven’t set off any of your advantages, I will sit here and look into your face in silence, which is as much as to say that no matter how you dress you can’t spoil a very excellent figure, Sally. I suppose you’ve heard that before?”
“Lots of times,” she muttered.
“But you wouldn’t hear it from me. All I would do would be to sit and stare and let you imagine what I’m thinking. And you’d begin to see that in spite of the way you do your hair you can’t spoil its colour nor its texture.”
He raised his other hand and touched it.
“Like silk, Sally.”
He studied her closely, noting the flush which began to touch her cheeks.
“Part of the game is for you to keep looking me in the eye.”
“Well, I’ll be — Go on, I’m game.”
“Is it hard to sit like this — silently? Do I do it badly?”
“No, you show lots of practice. How many have you tried this method on,
Bard?”
He made a vague gesture and then, smiling: “Millions, Sally, and they all liked it.”
“So do I.”
And they laughed together, and grew serious at the same instant.
“All silence — like this?” she queried.
“No; after a while I would say: ‘You are beautiful.’”
“You don’t get a blue ribbon for that, Bard.”
“Not for the words, but the way they’re said, which shows I mean them.”
She blinked as though to clear her eyes and then met his stare again.
“You know you are beautiful, Sally.”
“With a pug nose — freckles — and all that?”
“Just a tip-tilt in the nose, Sally. Why, it’s charming. And you have everything else — young, strong, graceful, clear.”
“What d’you mean by that?”
“Clear? Fresh and colourful like the sunset over the desert. Do you understand?”
Her eyes went down to consider.
“I s’pose I do.”
“With a touch of awe in it, because the silence and the night are coming, and the stars walk down, one by one — one by one. And the wind is low, soft, musical, whispering, as you do now — What if this were not a game of suppose, Sally?”
She wrenched herself suddenly away, rising.
“I’m tired of supposing!” she cried.
“Then we’ll call it all real. What of that?”
That colour was unmistakably high now; it ran down from her cheeks and even stained the pure white of the throat where the flap of the shirt was open. He was excited as a hunter who has tracked some new and dangerous animal and at last driven it to bay, holding his gun poised, and not knowing whether or not it will prove vulnerable.
He stepped close, eager, prepared for any wild burst of temper; but she let him take her hands, let him draw her close, bend back her head; hold her closer still, till the warmth and softness of her body reached him, but when his lips came close she said quietly: “Are you a rotter, Bard?”
He stiffened and the smile went out on his lips. He stepped back.
She repeated: “Are you a rotter?”
He raised the one hand which he still retained and touched it to his lips.
“I am very sorry,” said Anthony, “will you forgive me?”
And with her eyes large and grave upon him she answered: “I wonder if I can!”
Butch Conklin looked up, raising his bandaged head slowly, like a white flag of truce, with a stain of red growing through the cloth. He stared at the two, raised a hand to his head as though to rub away the dream, found a pain too real for a dream, and then, like a crab which has grown almost too old to walk, waddled on hands and knees, slowly, from the room and melted silently into the dark beyond.
CHAPTER XVIII
FOOLISH HABITS
A SHARP NOISE of running feet leaped from the dust of the street and clattered through the doorway; the two turned. A swarthy man, broad of shoulder, was the first, and afterward appeared Nash.
“Conklin?” called Deputy Glendin, and swept the room with his startled glance. “Where’s Conklin?”
He was not there; only a red stain remained on the floor to show where he had lain.
“Where’s Conklin?” called Nash.
“I’m afraid,” whispered Bard quickly to the girl, “that it was more than a game of suppose.”
He said easily to the other two: “He had enough. His share of trouble came to-night; I let him go.”
“Young feller,” growled Glendin, “you ain’t been in town a long while, but I’ve heard a pile too much about you already. What you mean by takin’ the law into your own hands?”
“Wait,” said Nash, his keen eyes on the two, “I guess I understand.”
“Let’s have it, then.”
Still the steady eyes of Nash passed from Sally Fortune to Bard and back again.
“This feller bein’ a tenderfoot, he don’t understand our ways; maybe he thinks the range is a bit freer than it is.”
“That’s the trouble,” answered Glendin, “he thinks too damned much.”
“And does quite a pile besides thinkin’,” murmured Nash, but too low for the others to hear it.
He hesitated, and then, as if making up his mind by a great effort:
“There ain’t no use blamin’ him; better let it drop, Glendin.”
“Nothin’ else to do, Steve; but it’s funny Sally let him do it.”
“It is,” said Nash with emphasis, “but then women is pretty funny in lots of ways. Ready to start, Bard?”
“All ready.”
“S’long, Sally.”
“Good-night, Miss Fortune.”
“Evenin’, boys. We’ll be lookin’ for you back in Eldara to-morrow night,
Bard.”
And her eyes fixed with meaning on Nash.
“Certainly,” answered the other, “my business ought not to take
longer than that.”
“I’ll take him by the shortest cut,” said Nash, and the two went out to their horses.
They had difficulty in riding the trail side by side, for though the roan was somewhat rested by the delay at Eldara it was impossible to keep him up with Bard’s prancing piebald, which sidestepped at every shadow. Yet the tenderfoot never allowed his mount to pass entirely ahead of the roan, but kept checking him back hard, turning toward Nash with an apology each time he surged ahead. It might have been merely that he did not wish to precede the cowpuncher on a trail which he did not know. It might have been something quite other than this which made him consistently keep to the rear; Nash felt certain that the second possibility was the truth.
In that case his work would be doubly hard. From all that he had seen the man was dangerous — the image of the tame puma returned to him again and again. He could not see him plainly through the dark of the night, but he caught the sway of the body and recognized a perfect horsemanship, not a Western style of riding, but a good one no matter where it was learned. He rode as if he were sewed to the back of the horse, and, as old William Drew had suggested, he probably did other things up to the same standard. It would have been hard to fulfil his promise to Drew under any circumstances with such a man as this; but with Bard apparently forewarned and suspicious the thing became almost impossible.
Almost, but not entirely so. He set himself calmly to the problem; on the horn of his saddle the lariat hung loose; if the Easterner should turn his back for a single instant during all the time they were together old Drew should not be disappointed, and one thousand cash would be deposited for the mutual interest of Sally Fortune and himself. That is to say, if Sally would consent to become interested. To the silent persuasion of money, however, Nash trusted many things.
The roan jogged sullenly ahead, giving all the strength of his gallant, ugly body to the work; the piebald mustang pranced like a dancing master beside and behind with a continual jingling of the tossed bridle.
The masters were to a degree like the horses they rode, for Nash kept steadily leaning to the front, his bulldog jaw thrusting out; and Bard was forever shifting in the saddle, settling his hat, humming a tune, whistling, talking to the piebald, or asking idle questions of the things they passed, like a boy starting out for a vacation. So they reached the old house of which Nash had spoken — a mere, shapeless, black heap huddling through the night.