by Max Brand
“What ways, Dad?”
“Ways of money with men. Al has followed a foolish... er... impulse... and has broken the law. What’s the law? Men! What do men listen to? Money! Who has the money? Al has it. There you are.”
He smiled beneficently on her and waited for admiration. And he received it. It was always her habit to slip in the little verbal pat on the back whenever she could.
“It sounds wonderful, Dad, but is it possible?”
“Of course, it’s possible. What’s against him? The Smiley family... that’s all. Aren’t they poor as rats? Five thousand would make them swear their souls away and bring them weeping with joy to Al Rankin. Then there’s Gordon, you say? Tush! I go to him and give him some straight talk... ‘Boy made a few mistakes, but he’s good at heart. Wants a new start. Just married. Ready to settle down. I’ll answer for him. Besides, here’s the value of your horse plus the reward you offered.’ I guess that would hold Mister Gordon, whoever he is. Suppose the case comes to trial? No evidence... no weeping relatives of Smiley to appear. A yokel of a district attorney against a real man of the law such as I could get. Why, girl, don’t you see how it will come out?”
“But there’s one other... the only living eyewitness... Bob Lake.”
“He didn’t see the shot fired,” said her father. “If he wants to talk, can’t he be bought off as well as the others? Tut, he knows which side his bread is buttered on. What other reason has he for working for Al now?”
“Oh,” sighed the girl. “You think he’s like the rest?”
“Why not?”
“I wonder.”
“But there’s no use worrying about him. He’s already with us.”
“You don’t think I’ll have to leave here and go home, Dad?”
He flushed a little. “I was excited when I said that. Hadn’t a chance to look over the ground of the case. Needlessly excited, my dear, that’s all. Now, don’t worry. If Al can only be kept out of danger until we have this thing straightened out....”
“He will be kept out of danger.”
“You’re so sure?”
“Bob Lake will see to it.”
“Yes! Remarkable fellow! I’ll see to it that he’s rewarded.”
“How?”
“With money, my dear. How else?”
“Do you really think that money would do for him?” Anne asked her father.
“How else, then? Do you think he’s working for us for nothing?”
“I don’t know,” replied the girl. “I don’t know.”
For it had started a train of thoughts that had run through her brain too often of late. What would be the result for Bob Lake? At the idea of a money reward she shivered. Of course, she would have to prevent such an offer to him. Before she had finished that thought, there was a swish of a door swung swiftly open, and she looked up into the face of her husband.
There followed without a word spoken an instant of hurried movements. Her father ran tiptoe to one door and closed and locked it; she did the same for another; and Al Rankin tended to the one through which he had entered.
She came back slowly, a little timidly, waiting for him with a smile and with gentle eyes. He had not a glance for her.
“First,” he said, “money! I need the coin.”
“Certainly, my boy. How much?”
Paul Sumpter had drawn out his fat wallet. It was snatched from his hand and pocketed by the outlaw. Sumpter stared blankly at his own open hand.
“That’ll do for a while,” said Al Rankin. “I’ll tell you where to send more. Now a gun!”
“You have one in the holster.”
“I need two. One might jam on me, and then where’d I be? I need two!”
“Al,” asked Sumpter, “you’re not going to fight?”
“What do you think? Lie down and let them grab me? Not me! This is a game, and I’m going to play it.” He threw his clenched fist above his head and laughed in silent exultation. “What’s happened?” he continued, firing the question at them like a shot. “What’s been doing around here? And where are the servants? That rat-eyed Charley... where’s he?”
All vestiges of a smile had been brushed from the face of Anne Rankin, and all softness was faded from her eyes, and they were now hard and steady. Al passed close to her as he went around the table, and she shrank back, but this he did not note.
“Nothing has happened. They haven’t been near the house, but I know they’re watching the approaches. How in the world did you get through?”
“Night before last. It was a squeeze, but I made it. What’s that?” He whirled, his teeth showing under a lifted upper lip. There was a far-away sound of a door closing. “Try... try the hall. Look out!” he commanded.
The command was directed to Anne, but she did not stir. Her father covered the embarrassing part of that moment by going himself to obey the order. He unlocked the door, peered out, and turned back into the room, forgetting to lock the door.
“Someone must have gone out. There’s not a soul or a sound in the hall.”
“All right.”
Anne raised her head. “You’ve met Bob Lake?” She pointed to his bandanna and the Stetson hat that he wore crushed onto the back of his head.
“You’re sharp-eyed, ain’t you?” he asked. “Been looking pretty close at this Lake fellow, and he at you? The idiot! Well, don’t forget that I’m watching you both.”
There was no avoiding or explaining away the pointed ugliness of his voice. It brought a stifled exclamation from Paul Sumpter. But the girl smiled in an odd manner, and she met his eyes with a steadiness which in another than his wedded wife might have seemed contempt. He turned, fumbled in a cabinet, and brought out a second revolver, looked to its mechanism, and then laid it on the table.
“You met Bob Lake,” she went on. “What happened?”
“Him?” He tossed up his head and favored her with a wolfish grin. “The skunk tried to play the crook with me.”
“The fiend,” said Sumpter softly.
“The fiend he is,” asserted Al Rankin calmly. “But I paid him his dues. He ran onto me in a crossroads hotel... found me in my room. Then he went down and warned the people that I was there and came back to me.”
Anne had sunk in a chair where she sat very erect, her fingers clutching the arms until the knuckles whitened.
“The dirty dog,” breathed Paul Sumpter. “Anne, I knew there was something behind that cur’s actions. I’ll have him skinned alive for this and run out of the country, if there’s a law in it.”
“There ain’t any law for gents like him,” said Rankin. “He’s too smooth to get caught.”
“Go on,” said Anne, strangely without emotion. “Tell us what happened after that?”
“After that? Well, when he come back to the room, I gave him a look. The hound smiled too much to please me. I waited a minute. Then I asked him point-black what he was up to. What d’you think he did?”
“What?” asked Paul Sumpter.
“Went for his gun!”
From the corner of his eye he became aware that Anne was smiling a mirthless smile, and the sight disturbed him a trifle.
“Great Cæsar!” said Sumpter. “And what did you do?”
“Didn’t waste a bullet on him. I knocked the skunk head over heels.”
“Good. I’d have given a thousand to see you do it.”
“Then I tied and gagged him and took his hat and bandanna, and with that I managed to get away. The others thought it was his outfit and let me pass... there wasn’t much light. And that’s all there is to Mister Bob Lake.”
“I knew it!” said Sumpter, striking his fist into his open palm. “Something in the face of that fellow that I distrusted the first time I saw him.”
“You think pretty good... backwards,” replied Al Rankin. “Point is I got clean away from him.”
“Wrong,” said a soft voice behind him. “All wrong, Al.”
He whirled. The door into the hall had been
opened silently, and Bob Lake stood in the arch. His revolver was at his hip, pointing at Rankin.
XII.— “PLUMB HOLLOW INSIDE”
INSTINCTIVELY RANKIN MADE one impulsive clutch for his revolver, but an imperative jerk to the side of Lake’s weapon discouraged him.
“Don’t do it, Al,” said Lake. “I told you before I’d had a hunch that I’d blow your head off one of these days, and now I got an idea that the time has come.”
“Sumpter!” implored Rankin.
“Stay where you are, you thick-headed fool,” said Bob Lake. “And you, girl, stay where you are. I’m watching all three of you. You’re wrong... the whole bunch of you.”
Anne was on her feet.
“It shows that playing square don’t count and don’t pay. I’m a fool to bother with you, but first I’m going to get the truth out of this hound, and then I’m going to wash my hands of the whole gang of you.” He stretched back to the door, and with his left hand, feeling behind him, he turned the lock. “These walls are tolerable thick,” he said, “and I don’t think that a rumpus here would get much notice in the house. Rankin, you and me has got to have it out here. Understand?”
Paul Sumpter had backed up step by step against the wall as though an invisible hand shoved him, and, even when his shoulders struck the wall, he still wriggled as though he hoped to work his way through it.
“Now,” said Bob Lake, “I want that gun you got there, Al. I want it bad. No, don’t hurry. Move slow, Al, move slow. Pull back that hand of yours like you was liftin’ a hundred pounds instead of a gun. Then bring the gun out careful... mighty careful... because, if I got to complain, this gat of mine’ll do my talkin’ for me. That’s right. Now take it by the barrel. There you are. No flips, Al. Nothin’ fancy. Just shove that gun of yours onto the table. And now we’re nearly ready.”
Al Rankin was trembling like a man with ague, and he raved at the others. “Sumpter... Anne... are you tongue-tied? Give a yell. Get somebody in here.”
“There ain’t going to be any noise,” stated Bob Lake. “There ain’t going to be a whisper. You figure on that, Sumpter. You figure on that, ma’am.”
She made a little motion toward him, but once more he failed to see, and certainly he failed to understand.
“Now,” he continued, “since I’ve started in preaching, I’m going to finish the sermon. I’m going to tell you what’s wrong with you, Al. You’re like a kid that needs a thrashing. When a kid don’t get the whip once in a while, he goes wrong. He gets wild. He turns bad, but maybe he ain’t quite as bad as he thinks. One taste of the whip would straighten him out and bring him to time. Well, Al, that’s the trouble with you. You need the whip. And I’m it. I’m the whip!” Then he shoved his gun back into his holster. There was a slow gravity about this that was more impressive than any burst of violent action.
“I’m going to lick you, Al,” went on the cowpuncher slowly. “I think you’re a better man than I am with a gun. But what are guns for? Cowards. Cowards, Al, like yourself. Yaller hounds, like yourself, gents that practice till they’re perfect and then go out and pick a fight. Fight? No, it ain’t a fight, it’s a murder, when a gent like you picks on an ordinary ‘puncher. Fists are what we were meant to fight with, and fists it’s going to be today. I know you’re a fast one with your hands, Al, but what I’m going to trust is the muscle that come out of labor. You see you’re a gentleman, Al, by all accounts. I’m a cowpuncher, plain and simple. And I’m goin’ to bulldog you the way I’d bulldog a yearlin’... if I can. Now step up and put up your hands. Unless... you’ll tell this lady what was the truth of the last time I met you?”
The alarm had been gradually fading from the face of Al Rankin. As Bob Lake said, Al was fast with his hands. Careful boxing instruction had trained him, and he knew how to use his great strength to the greatest advantage. Now he smiled with savage satisfaction.
“Why, you fool,” he said, “I’ll bust you in two! Tell ’em the truth? I’ve already told ’em the truth.”
On the heels of that speech he leaped in with a left arm that shot out with the precision of a piston and thudded squarely on the jaw of Bob Lake. The weight of the blow carried him before it and drove him back until his shoulders were against the wall, but Al Rankin, instead of following, made for the table where his gun lay. To his astonishment the girl intercepted him like a flash. She snatched up the heavy weapon and leveled it at him, her eyes on fire with anger and excitement.
“A fair fight, Al Rankin. That’s all he asked from you, and he’ll have it.”
The beast came up in the face of Rankin as he glared at her. He would have sprung in to wrest away the gun, but a merciless coldness in her bearing told him she meant what she said.
“You’ve swung over to him, eh? I’ll attend to you later on. You....”
He had to whirl before he had finished the sentence and meet the rush of Bob Lake. For the first blow had stung the cowpuncher rather than dazed him, and he came in now furiously, a terrifying figure. The bandage around his forehead was thickly stained. The jar of the first blow had opened the shallow wound where the rifle bullet had skinned across the flesh of his brow, and now a thin trickle went down his face.
Al Rankin, wheeling, smashed out with both hands, and both hands struck the mark. The weight of the punches held up Lake, but in he came again. A lightning side-step made him charge into thin air, and, before he could change direction, a heavy blow behind the ear knocked him sprawling.
He was badly dazed by the fall, and Al Rankin whining with beastly satisfaction caught up a heavy stool and swung it around his head. That blow would have ended the fight and Bob Lake, but the shrill voice of the girl cut in on Rankin.
“Drop it, or I’ll shoot you, Al. Drop it and fight fair, or I swear I’ll shoot!”
He aimed a curse at her, cast the stool away, and sprang in on Bob Lake, who was rising slowly to his feet. He came in rashly. Sure of his man he paid no attention to his own guard, and the result was that Lake, lunging low with the full power of his big body behind the blow, drove his fist fairly into the ribs of the other. The impact sounded heavily through the room, and Paul Sumpter groaned in sympathy.
Al Rankin was not too much hurt to side-step, but this time Lake did not rush blindly. Instead, he followed his man slowly with a bulldog steadiness, and he dealt out bone-breaking blows with either hand, swinging full-arm punches, four out of five of which were blocked by the skill of Al Rankin, but the fifth blow went home with cruel effect.
He was taking terrible punishment in the meantime. The cutting, darting fists of Rankin battered his face and played a tattoo on his body, but still Lake came in like a tide with a resistless force.
There was dead silence in the room except for the impacts of the blows and the panting of the fighters. Paul Sumpter cowered against the wall in terror, but the girl stood erect, swaying a little, following the battle with a fierce interest as though she gloried in it. And the revolver was never lowered in her hand.
There was a short, half-stifled cry from Al Rankin. He had smashed both fists fairly into the face of Bob Lake, and yet he had failed to stop the rush of the latter. The sneering contempt and confidence with which Rankin began the battle had changed to a wild-eyed fear. His own strength was failing him, but the strength of Lake, built on the ranges, remained. It grew with the taste of battle, apparently. If ever he came to close quarters, the end would be near.
Al Rankin sensed it, and he used every trick he knew to keep away. If it had been the open, he might have succeeded through his lightness of foot, but the walls of the room confined him. Finally, he leaped aside from a swinging blow, and, as he leaped, his shoulder struck the wall. He sprang back, and his shoulders struck against the corner. He was fairly trapped, and now Bob Lake came lunging, head down, arms circling, and caught his enemy under the armpits.
The minute those bear arms circled him the last strength left the body of Rankin. He remembered a fight he had once seen — a fight t
hat he had egged on. It had been like this — bulldog against wolf. And finally, when the bulldog cornered his man, the ending had been horrible to see — a hurricane of short blows that battered the body and face of the wolf to a shapeless pulp. No quarter, either. Al Rankin gave up.
At the very point where Bob Lake had expected the crucial test, he found a form of putty in his embrace, and then the harsh scream of terror from Rankin’s lips— “Help!”
He jerked his hand over the shoulder of the man and crushed his hand against the lips. The wild, horrible eyes stared at him — the plea and the terror of a cornered beast. Bob Lake shook himself free with a snort of disgust. Rankin, that support suddenly removed, was cowering against the wall.
“I knew it,” said Lake. “I knew it. Plumb hollow inside... a bluff. A yaller quitter. Look at him!”
He stood back so that the others could see the better, and Al Rankin crouched and shuddered. His eyes flashed here and there, seeking escape and finding none — finding disgust even on the face of Paul Sumpter, his gaze reverted to Lake.
“He... he’ll kill me,” said Rankin. “Anne... Sumpter... take him off.”
“If she asks me,” said Bob Lake slowly. “Otherwise, I’m just beginning on you, Al. Down on your knees and beg her to call me off.”
To the horror of them all, Al Rankin dropped to his knees. “Anne... say a word....”
She covered her face. “Bob Lake,” she whispered.
And Bob Lake drew back. “It’s the end for you, Al,” he said with a certain amount of pity in his voice. “It’s the complete end for you. You’ve been showed up, and your color is yaller... like a dog’s. This is just the beginning of what’s coming. The next gent that meets up with you, you’ll buckle to. You’ll be afraid. You can’t help it. You’ll be scared that he’ll call your bluff the way I’ve called it. You’ll take water going down the line. You ain’t going to be hung because you ain’t worth the price of a rope. Get up, Rankin, and git out of the house and never come back.”
* * * * *