by Max Brand
He stared up at me, scowling. He had a jaw which shot out so far beyond the upper one that when he spoke he always seemed to be pouting, or eating dry crackers with small bites.
“This boy Cole, he comes in here and takes a slam at me,” said Lefty. “That’s not so good. That doesn’t give me the kind of a happy, homey feeling the way that it used to do when I was a kid. Not when I hear the lead hissing and taste the burned powder in the air. I’d rather listen to bacon in the pan or taste it on the plate. Maybe you dunno what I mean?”
“I know, Lefty,” said I, sympathetically. “But I wish that you would loosen up on this fellow. He’s pretty young.”
“He’s older than you are,” said Lefty, “and that’s old enough to run most of Piegan. Only, you don’t run me, boy!”
I saw that he was sour, and I was sorry that I hadn’t taken a slower line with him. However, now I was in the hot water.
“I’m not trying to run you, Lefty,” said I. “Why, not a bit of it.”
“I know what you mean,” he answered. “You’re not trying to run me. You’re just telling me what to do, eh? No, Poker-face, I’m sorry to hurt you, but I’m going to put that young fool behind the bars — I’ll put him in the pen, if I can!”
“Well, I’m only asking you to think it over.”
“Why should I try to please you, Ash?” he asked me, point-blank. “You never come down here. You never hang around and chuck a few dollars away on faro. You never liven things up, and give the boys a steer.”
“I don’t gamble,” said I. “That’s why I keep away.”
“Then I keep away from you, too,” said he. “And we’re both happy. Is that right?”
That called my hand, of course. I had to look him in the eye and wonder what was next.
“I’ll cut you for the first ace on this deal,” said I.
“Will you?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
“What for?” said he.
“You mean, what do I put up?”
“That’s it. Money talks here, Poker-face!”
He was as hard as steel. I saw that I had to put him down, or he would put me, one of these days. Besides, his voice had been large enough to draw a lot of attention. Some of the boys were edging near, pretending to notice nothing, really drinking up the trouble in the air.
I remember wondering if Lefty were a dope. He acted as unaccountably mean and nervous as though he were.
“I got some lots here,” said I. “I’ll put up one of those. Do you want it in writing?”
He met my eye coldly, but he shook his head.
“Your word is all right with me,” he said.
Picking up a pack, he began to mix them, still looking at me, and saying something about the fracas of that day. It was very neat and smooth, but Stephani had taught me the trick, and when he shoved the pack across to me, I knew that he had an ace palmed, all ready for me.
We pulled two cards apiece, and then when I was afraid that he would flash his ace, I pulled my gun and laid the muzzle on the edge of the table.
“Turn your right hand palm up, Gregg!” I commanded.
He stared at me, not really afraid, but thoughtfully, and I knew what his thoughts were.
It wasn’t the matter of prosecuting the case against Cole, but it was his own life in Piegan that mattered. He had spent quite a lot of money getting started and building up his crooked trade in the town, and if he were discovered cheating as openly as this, it would ruin his business at a stroke. Piegan would be too hot to hold him.
“What d’you think I am, Ash?” said he, and tried to jump the card up his coat sleeve.
But he missed, and the card slid over the edge of the table and fluttered down through the air.
An ace of hearts lay face up on the floor for every one to see.
That was the end of Mr. Gregg in Piegan. The growl of the spectators was like the rumble of thunder. It meant trouble, bad trouble, and lots of it — right away! The men came steadily in around Lefty, and he didn’t move. He just stood there, staring at me, and seeing the black of the future rather than my face.
I knew that I had lined up another heartfelt enemy to fit in with Richardson, and the gunmen of Sid Maker.
However, the business was done, so I put up the old gun, and left the place.
When I got out onto the pavement, I stopped short suddenly, with an exclamation.
For in spite of the tenseness of that scene I had just gone through, my heart was bumping along as calmly and steadily as though it had never skipped a beat in the course of its existence. I didn’t know what to make of that, But I had a wild hope that perhaps I was around the corner, and that the illness might leave me as it had come, suddenly, and make me a free man once more!
Well, the very happiness of that thought was enough to start it racing, hopping, jumping as badly as ever. So I shook my head and went sorrowfully up the street to the sheriff’s office.
CHAPTER XXVIII. A TALK WITH STEVE
DENNIS WAS IN front, tightening the cinches of his horse and with a look of business in his eye. He said, grunting as he gave the straps a tug:
“What’s up, Jerry?”
“I want a loan from you,” said I.
“I’ve got three dollars and eighty-five cents,” said he. “You can have that.”
He reached for his pocket. He was serious about the offer.
“I want the man in your back room,” said I.
“Which one?”
“Young Cole — if you have more than one.”
“You can’t have Cole,” said the sheriff. “He’s in for attempted murder, or something like that. He tried to plaster Lefty Gregg. Didn’t you hear about that?”
“Yes, I heard. But Gregg is leaving town. He won’t prosecute.”
“How do you know?”
“I just saw him palm an ace. And a lot of the rest of the boys saw him, too.”
The sheriff nodded a bit thoughtfully.
“That’s bad,” he said. “It gets the boys pretty irritated, when they see a thing like that. I dunno why. There ain’t one gambler in twenty that’s straight. But the punchers flock in and seem to think that the place they’ve selected is always straight. I do the same thing. That’s what cleaned me out, last night. But what you want with this boy?”
“Give him to me on parole. Any way you say. Turn him out. No charge will be brought, you’ll see.”
“You can have him, and welcome,” said the sheriff. “I don’t want him. Come along in.”
We went into his office. He disappeared into the back room with a bunch of keys and came back steering Cole in front of him, the irons still on the hands of Steven.
Big Lew Dennis sat down on the edge of his plank table and gave Steve a talk. Steve looked at me as though I had arranged the lecture. Said the sheriff:
“You’ve come out here, and tried to bust things loose. Is that right?”
“Lefty is a crooked gambler,” said Steve.
“You tried to kill him,” said the sheriff.
“He tried to cheat me,” said Steve.
“If a man cheats you, do you try to kill him?” asked Dennis. “If you do, lemme tell you something. You won’t last long. Not out here. If I was you, I’d cut out and run for the parts where you’ll be at home. We don’t want your kind of a man around out here. We got a lot of space, but we ain’t got the room to put you up. You get out and you stay out.”
“You’ve been telling him something about me, I suppose,” said Steve, showing his teeth as he looked at me.
“I’m turning you loose because he asked for you, you puppy!” roared the sheriff, suddenly enraged. “Doggone if I know what he wants you for. I wouldn’t have you for anything. But Poker-face wants you, and most generally he gets what he asks for, in this town. Because he’s a white man. That’s why he can have what he wants here. We’re all solid behind a decent man. And if you can get up the hill and stand at the top, where Poker-face is, you’ll find out what I m
ean. Now get out of here and don’t let me see your face again. I’m tired of you!”
With that, he unlocked the handcuffs and turned Steve loose. I took him back to the hotel with me.
As we went down the street, he said, in a hard, constrained voice:
“Where are we driving, Jerry?”
“For the hotel,” said I.
“I don’t know that I want to be seen there,” he said.
“You’ll have to stay in town until there’s no sign of a charge against you. You’re out on parole with me.”
“Suppose that I broke that parole?” said he, stopping short and staring at me.
The meanness of that idea almost sunk me.
“Yes, you could do that,” I admitted.
He shrugged his shoulders suddenly, and walked on rapidly down the street, like a man with a new thought. He carried his head high, and it remained in the air when we walked up the steps of the hotel together.
As we did that, the loungers on the veranda were all silent. They sat up and stared at us, openly, and the looks they gave to Steve were not pleasant; they were darker than storm clouds. They looked at me, too, and shook their heads, because they could not make me out.
I stopped in the lobby and had the clerk give Steve a room next to mine. The face of that clerk was as cold as stone. He studied Steve with a sneer while he was signing his name, and then silently gave him the key to his room. I would show the way up.
When we got to the room, he went to the window and looked out, his arms folded high across his breast, his legs braced.
“You’re not Napoleon on board the Bellerophon,” I told him, pretty cruelly. “You’re with a friend, Steve, though you don’t know it.”
He turned slowly around on me. He was looking at the floor, and his face was white. But it was a hard white. He was suffering, but not shrinking, and I saw that there was a lot more man in him than I had suspected.
“You can say what you want, I suppose,” said he. “You’ve earned the right. Only, don’t talk to me about friendship.”
“Why not, Steve?” said I.
“You know what I’ve done to you. Or you’ve guessed. What you guessed is right. I double-crossed you there in New York.”
I nodded. It was sickening.
“That’s something to forget, Steve,” said I. “Thank God, we’re not finally committed to every fool thing that we’ve done in the world. That was yesterday, and this is to-day.”
“When Betty found out all the facts about what I’d done,” said he, “she made me promise that I’d come out here and square myself with you, if I could. She drove me to it. That’s why I came.”
“Quit it, Steve,” said I. “Take the whip off your back, will you?”
“My skin’s gone already,” he said. “I don’t mind the flogging that I’ve got to take.”
Then he said: “She would have gone to father and told him the whole deal. Everything that I’d done. You don’t know my father, Jerry.”
“No,” said I.
“Well, if father thought that I had done a thing like that, he would jail me and hire the best lawyers in the country to get me a long sentence. That’s the way he feels about justice — and clean hands. He’s never liked me very much, anyway. Betty’s the one. And she held him over my head until I finally swore that I’d come out here and put things right with you.”
He paused, he was breathing hard.
“We’ll talk it out another time,” said I. “I’ve had enough now. So have you. Let’s save something for another day. You’re square with me. You don’t have to worry about me. I’ve forgotten everything.”
He looked up at me suddenly, and his glance was as straight as a ray of light, and as unwavering.
“You’re sweating with shame for me, Jerry, aren’t you?”
“Not a bit,” I lied.
“Because of Betty, you’ve put up with a lot from me. You put up with a lot, and took it, and then came back and got me out of trouble! Out of jail, I mean, because I suppose that I’ll be in trouble as long as I’m near this town!”
“Not a soul will hold a grudge against you, Steve,” said I, “the minute that you begin to feel that the name of Cole is not a title, and that every man in town has as good a right to a place in the world as you have. That’s putting it to you straight, but I have to say it.”
He flushed a little, the first color that had been in his face for a long time.
“I want to murder you, when I hear you say that!” he told me, with a lot of quiet meaning in his voice. “But I’ll take it. I know that there’s no fool like a proud fool, and I’ve got to learn to take it.”
“All right,” said I. “I won’t hit you again. I’ve said enough. The boys may hold off for one day. The second, they’ll be with you.”
“There won’t be any second day,” said he. “I’ll be gone, by then.”
“I wish you’d stay on and face down the music,” said I.
He stared at me.
“You mean that you really wish it?”
“Yes,” said I.
His eyes widened and yet they darkened with significant meaning, too.
He said slowly: “Betty made me swear that I would take marching orders from you.” His voice went husky with shame and effort. “And I’m to do what you tell me — to make a man of myself!”
That was pretty hard on him. I could hear him breathing like the breathing of a tired horse. His nostrils were quivering. His whole soul was being burned up with shame.
“You’ll get no orders from me, Steve,” I told him, as gently as I could. “But I’ll be glad if you’ll stay on here and face the thing through with me. Will you do it for me?”
He groaned, suddenly.
“Ah, man,” said he. “I know you hate and despise me. It’s only for the sake of Betty”
“No, no,” I told him, and I was amazed to find that I meant what I said.
I hurried across the room and stood close to him.
“You’ve got the real stuff in you,” I told him. “You’re as good a man as Betty is a woman. I know it. I gamble on it.”
He closed his eyes.
Then he opened them again and drew himself up.
“There’s one other thing that I’ve got to tell you,” said he. “Betty gave me a letter which I was to deliver to you. I opened it and read it. I thought you were not good enough to get a letter from a daughter of the Cole family. I read the letter and I tore it up”
I was silent. This hit me hard.
He went on, forcing out every word with terrible pain:
“In the letter, she said that she — was fond of you. She said — that — she never had met more of a man — than you!”
CHAPTER XXIX.— “THE LUCK OF PIEGAN”
THE HARDEST SHOCK in my life had been the fourth round of my last fight in the ring. The greatest joy was that moment when young Steve Cole admitted to me what his sister had said in the letter. I couldn’t speak. I was number by pleasure.
He went on to say that she believed in me, and that she knew that I would go straight from then on. And he told me a good many other things that I drank in like a man dying of thirst. I wanted to hear him talk on forever. But a knock came at the door, and then the voice of the clerk saying that the colonel wanted to see me at once. I told the clerk that the colonel could wait, but the fellow said that Riggs wanted desperately to see me now, just for a moment.
So down I went to the office of the old fraud, and found him in a heat of excitement. He had a letter in his hand, and when he talked to me he flourished the sheets in the air so that they rattled loudly.
“Now, my lad,” said he, “our backs are against the wall. Piegan has the gun held under her nose. Shall she throw up her hands, or shall she fight back?”
“Ask Piegan,” said I. “I can’t read her mind for you.”
“Oh, Poker-face,” said he, coming over and dropping a hand on my shoulder in the most affectionate way, “the truth is that you and
I compose the majority of Piegan. The head and the hands of it, so to speak.”
“You can be the head, colonel,” said I, “but I’m not the hands. My skin is not thick enough to handle the jobs.”
He laughed a little.
Then, growing serious and dramatic, he pointed a finger at my head like a gun.
“Do you know what is about to happen?” he asked.
“No idea,” I answered.
“To-morrow morning, Sidney Maker, of Makerville, Piegan County, is sending a special stage to meet a train on the Q. & O. line. On that train will be two important engineers, and President Tracy Dixon! Think of that! Dixon himself!”
“President of what?” I asked.
“President of what? Why, every man and child in the country knows that he’s the president and almost the majority stockholder of the Q. & O. He’s a captain of industry, my lad. He’s made of money. That’s the man that I’m talking about.”
“Does he want a stage ride to Makerville?” said I.
The colonel paused, breathing hard, and looking out at me from beneath lowering brows.
“Jerry,” he said gloomily, “there are times when I think that you’ll never live up to your promise. But I—”
He paused again and cleared his throat.
“I have faith in you, Jerry,” he went on. “You will understand in due season, Sid Maker, of course, wants to take the president of the road to Makerville, and there bulldoze him into building the branch line on toward that starved, worthless town!”
“If Tracy Dixon is such a big man,” said I, “he’ll see through Makerville if it’s really such a bad bet.”
“See through?” cried the colonel. “Great heavens, my lad, how can I explain to you that all any of us see is words, even a Tracy Dixon? Sometimes, when I think of the folly of human nature, I have tears in my eyes, my lad. Actually, I have tears in my eyes! It’s a sad thing. We don’t see rivers or mountains, even. We only see the words that have been spoken to us about them. I have seen a forest turned into a desert, and a desert into an alfalfa field by the power of words. I have done it myself! And when Sidney Maker gets Dixon into his hands, he’ll never stop until he has convinced him!”