by Max Brand
“Well,” said Ronicky, determined to make one desperate rally and beat down the reserve of the other, “you ought to have knowed him. He’s a first-class inside man. I’ve seen him do everything from the making of soup to the making of the mold and the running of the soup in it.”
He of the mustaches stopped combing them for a moment.
“Look here,” said Ronicky, “I ain’t a fool. Loosen up and talk. What’s your monica?”
And like light from a great distance, a smile began to spread over the hardy features of the other. It increased finally to a rather sad-faced grin which was apparently the nearest approach to mirth of which the man was capable. A pressure of his knees brought his cow pony close to Lou. He stretched out his hand.
“Put it there,” he said. “I thought at first you were four-flushing. But I see you ain’t. I’m ‘Montana Charlie.’ Maybe we’ve met up before some place I disremember, or was I so bad that you just read right through me?”
“Bad actor?” asked Ronicky, eager to make sure that the pride of his new companion should not be injured. “I should say not. Matter of fact you were so smooth, Charlie, that I began to think that I was all wrong about you. But I have seen you somewhere. I disremember where. Were you working with ‘Mississippi Fatty’ three years back?”
“Nope, because three years back I was playing a lone hand and doing pretty well with it, at that. This here is the first time that I’ve ever throwed in with a gang. But I got sort of lonesome and decided that I needed a change. So that’s why I’m down here with the boys on Solomon Mountain. What do you think of it?”
“Slick as grass,” said Ronicky. “Of course I’ve heard about it a pile. But this is my first trip up, and it sure looks better than anything that they’ve said about it, and that means a lot. Eh?”
“Yep, that means a lot. We been breaking the heart of one sheriff a month, on the average, ever since we got together here. But what’s your name, partner?”
Ronicky Doone reflected swiftly. Should he give them his true name? That name was too clearly known by this time as that of a cow-puncher. Ronicky Doone was no name by which a lawbreaker would travel. On the other hand it was possible that some one might have seen him in Twin Springs. In that case he would be known. He summed up the chances. It was very possible that to assume a new name would be fatal. If they had seen him and known him in Twin Springs, then the fact that he had changed his name would be heavy evidence against him. But if he did not assume a name the chances were great that he would never see the interior dens of Mount Solomon. And that was the purpose for which he had taken this ride. Moreover it might very well be that no one from the mountain had been in Twin Springs while he was there. While they, no doubt, got daily news of everything that happened in the town, there was also no doubt that this news must be relayed to them. He determined then to run the risk and give a false name.
“I’m ‘Texas Slim,’” he said. “Maybe where you and me bumped into each other away back was out in that direction.”
“Maybe it was,” agreed Montana Charlie. “I’ve sure hunted the old Lone Star from one end to the other and got some fat pickings.”
“Sure,” replied Ronicky, nodding.
“Well,” went on Montana, “let’s get down below. And what did you think of my make-up—tell me straight!”
He fumbled at his face. The long mustaches disappeared. And at the same time it even seemed to Ronicky that some of the wrinkles of age, which doubtless only his imagination had furnished, had disappeared at the same moment. He found himself staring at the face of a man not more than thirty years old. His eyes were keen, and, as he straightened out of his lazy slouch on the horse, never had Ronicky seen the very heart of a man changed so quickly. Montana Charlie had become in a second or two a young man fairly alive with energy, and he sat in his saddle, laughing at Ronicky’s bewilderment.
“You ought to be on the stage,” Ronicky assured him. “You sure know how to make up!”
Montana Charlie was as happy as a child over the effect which he had produced.
“I pretty near come to laughing,” he said, “when you said that you’d met me in some place before.”
“Maybe I have, though,” said Ronicky. “And maybe it was just the sound of your voice or something like that that made me recognize you.”
In the meantime Montana Charlie was leading the way to the side and through a narrow passage. Ronicky turned to listen to the echoes which went chiming high above them, and when he faced the front again, the other had disappeared. He stared around him bewildered, until there was a burst of laughter immediately before him, and presently Montana Charlie appeared again from around the corner of an immense boulder.
“You see what sort of a place we got up here,” he said. “We could make a posse so sick and dizzy that it’d never find itself again after it chased us for ten full minutes. Look here!”
He beckoned Ronicky to him and showed behind the rock the opening of a high and narrow passage. It was hardly noticeable from either end of the boulder, but it was of sufficient size for horse and man to disappear into it. Montana led through the opening and checked his horse again just inside the entrance.
“If you got any doubts about belonging up here,” he said gravely, “you better come no farther, Texas. Because them that get inside of here on a bluff, sure are made sorry for it before they get out again!”
But Ronicky, having committed himself to the adventure, would not draw back again. He waved Montana on with a laugh, and the two presently rode out of the narrow passage, turned to the right into a spacious hall formed by a great cleft in the rock, with air and light filtering through in plenty from fissures above, and followed this hall until it widened suddenly into a large chamber, where Ronicky found himself in the presence of half a dozen lolling figures.
They showed their self-assurance by regarding him with more or less indifference.
“Here he is,” exclaimed Montana Charlie. “Here’s the man, boys, that ‘Whitey’ reported down to us. And he’s one of the right kind—one of our kind. He’s Texas Slim. Anybody here know him?”
The six men represented six silences. They sat up now, however, abandoning their occupations of the moment, whether this were tinkering with guns, or the repair of worn clothes, or the mending of bridles and saddle straps. They regarded Ronicky with the most solemn attention. And he in turn looked back to them with an eager regard.
He had traveled far and wide, but never had he seen such an assemblage. Tall and short and thick and lean, there were men of every complexion and size, so it seemed, in that meager half dozen. And each man by himself was a separate and interesting study. Weather-beaten, sharp of eyes, hard of jaw, each was formidable in his own way. There could be no mistaking them. These were either soldiers for the law or soldiers against it. A child could have guessed as much at the first glance.
Nobody, it seemed, knew Texas Slim. So there was a little pause which took Ronicky’s breath, though he managed to maintain a smile of indifference and meet their questioning glances, one by one.
“I was down Texas way last year,” said a beetle-browed individual at the farther end of the rock cavern, “and I’ve been down there off and on for the last seven years. I never heard tell of no Texas Slim.”
“Sure you didn’t,” said Montana Charlie. “In Texas they don’t call each other ‘Tex.’”
And this appropriate remark drew a hearty burst of laughter from the crowd.
Laughter after all is our best introduction. In a trice all was good humor among them. Furthermore they liked Ronicky Doone for the manner in which he bore himself.
“All man and a yard wide,” they decided that he was. And they came up and shook hands with him, one by one, giving their names a little solemnly. For an introduction among their kind was a solemn matter. It meant to a certain extent the acceptance of the other as a companion, and by that acceptance it meant that they were intrusting their safety in his hands.
Ronicky Doone was equally grave. And he knew that now a single false step would ruin him. He could only pray that his time on Solomon Mountain need not be long.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE DOCTOR SPEAKS TO BLONDY
In the meantime the six days had been filled with a bitter fight for life and against death in the hotel at Twin Springs. For there the doctor and Elsie Bennett were struggling for the life of Charlie Loring, and through the first four days he hung literally between life and death, the balance turning first one way and then the next.
But on the fifth day there was a turn for the better, and on the sixth Blondy opened his eyes, and for the first time they were cleared of delirium and gleamed with intelligence again. The girl, leaning above him, studied sadly and gladly, in strange mixture, the features which showed how near death had been to the sick man. They were sadly hollowed and worn. The square jaw was now lean and pointing. The flesh drew back, leaving the nose sharp and high and pulling the corners of the mouth into a sullen expression of discontent. His unshaven beard covered his face, and his hair would not be subdued to any regular shape, but was continually put on end by the turning and twisting of the wounded man.
Now he looked up at the girl searchingly, and then with a frown of disappointment “Elsie?” he asked, half in wonder and half, she thought, in disgust.
“Yes,” she answered and patted his hand reassuringly.
She forced a steady, almost careless smile. He would cling to her hand and pour out a tale of gratitude to her. And she must endure the tide of thanks and accept it as a mere nothing. But what was this he was saying?
“You ain’t the same. You’re different. Why, Elsie, you look ten years older!”
She shrank away from the bed, still managing to continue a ghost of her smile, but it was a wan ghost indeed! And here the doctor stepped in between them. He had proved himself a fine and faithful type, this doctor. There was no money in the case for him, saving that first money which Ronicky Doone had thrust into the pocket of his coat. But he had stayed steadily by the bed and had even outdone Elsie Bennett in the rigors of his watching and nursing. For, whereas her strength had twice given out and forced her to sleep, the doctor seemed to need no rest. Day by day he would sit in the corner, and though he nodded a little from time to time, yet he was never soundly asleep for any long period, and it was never hard to rouse him when he was needed.
Between them they had brought the wounded man through. And now there was the authority of a long and close companionship in the familiar manner in which the doctor pushed the girl away from the bed, parting her hand from the hand of Charlie Loring.
“You go lie down,” he commanded.
“But Charlie—” she began.
“No matter about Charlie right now. You need sleep.”
“I could sleep while—”
“You go try. If you can’t sleep, black is white.”
She wavered.
“But I want to talk to her!” said Charlie.
She was resolute again.
“You see how it is, doctor? He needs me still. I must stay here until—”
“Until he’s delirious again? I tell you, you got to go and sleep! Go this moment, Elsie!”
She backed away toward the cot on the far side of the room. But still she was reluctant, uneasy, and she glanced frowningly from the doctor to the patient.
“All right,” said Charlie Loring, with the petulance which so often goes with the sick bed. “All right, I’ll lie here and wait till she wakes up, I suppose.”
“Doctor!” cried the girl. “It isn’t safe for me to leave him when—”
“When fiddlesticks,” said the doctor brutally. “I don’t want him bothered. I have a reason. You lie down!”
He advanced toward her almost threateningly, and she reluctantly sat down on the couch and then reclined, under his further threat, to one side.
“Close your eyes,” said the doctor, setting his teeth a little, as the great, purple-shadowed eyes stared up at him, puzzled.
She obeyed.
“But I can’t sleep,” she insisted. “I know that I can’t sleep.”
“I’m not asking you to sleep,” said the doctor. “I’m just asking you to close your eyes. Will you do that? Just keep them closed for ten minutes. You’ll find it a curious experiment in relaxing.”
“For ten minutes,” sighed the girl. “All right, then, for just ten minutes I’ll do as you say. But the moment Charlie needs anything I’ll—”
Her voice had gone haltingly to the close of this phrase, but now she stopped altogether. The next word trembled for an instant on her lips, and then her whole body seemed to settle and melt. The features relaxed. Her head fell back a little into the pillow, her breast rose slowly with a long breath, and one hand slipped from the edge of the couch, and the arm dangled toward the floor. The doctor crossed hastily to her and, raising the arm, replaced it beside her, palm up, in the attitude of the greatest rest.
“She’s sort of tuckered out, ain’t she?” asked the wounded man.
“Shut up!” said the doctor, whirling fiercely on his patient.
Charlie Loring started and blinked under the shock of that speech.
“You—you can’t talk like that to me!” he gasped. “You—you’ll start me bleeding again!”
“Hell!” said the doctor. “I hardly care if you bleed to death. But if you keep on talking loud enough to disturb her, I’ll—” He finished the sentence with a most unprofessionally ugly glance at the other, and Loring was astonished.
Charlie was only dimly conscious that, during a long, faintly remembered period, he had been cared for as though he were an infant. This harsh, fierce tone of the doctor, as though he had been guilty of some crime, astonished him.
“Tuckered out!” exclaimed the doctor. “I should say she is. And then you tell her that she looks ten years older!”
He began to tramp fiercely up and down the room, wrath fairly dripping from him, his fists clenching and relaxing in swift successions. At length he came back and faced his patient again.
“Blondy,” he said, “I’ve got a couple of things to say to you. I’m not like a lot of doctors. There are some that think a man when he’s sick and delirious never shows anything that’s on his mind. But I’m different from that sort of a doctor. I believe there’s a certain element of truth in delirious ravings!”
As he said this he saw that Blondy Loring contracted in every muscle and cast a sharp glance at him, as though he wished at a single fierce effort to pierce through to the full meaning of the doctor.
“What’s up with you now?” he asked, a little hoarse with his emotion. “What’s bothering you now, doc?”
And there was something of a challenge and also something of a plea in what he said.
“I’m not going to tell you,” said the doctor. “I can’t tell you that—I don’t think that it would be professional honesty to tell you in your sane moments of the things which you have said during delirious moments.”
Perspiration issued bright and gleaming upon the forehead of the other, his lips worked, as he glared at the doctor.
Suddenly he was half whispering: “Come around here; come around here where I can get a good look at you, will you?”
The doctor obeyed without a murmur. Then the wasted hand of Blondy reached up and gripped at his.
“What the dickens are you driving at?” asked Blondy. “What do you mean by the things that you overheard me say? What did I say?”
“I’ve already told you that I couldn’t tell you now,” said the doctor, “much as I’d like to!”
“You’re trying to bluff me about something,” said Blondy, but his nervousness belied his attempted smile of indifference.
“I’m not trying to bluff you,” said the doctor. “I wouldn’t talk to you now except that I see your fever is nearly gone, and it’s worth risking a relapse just to straighten out your relations with the girl a little!”
“Eh?” grunted
the other.
“I mean what I say!”
“Are you interfering between Miss Bennett and me?”
“Don’t talk that way,” said the doctor, and he raised a hand in protest. “It makes me tired to hear you, Blondy. Look here: Everything that I’ve heard, the girl has heard—and more!”
Again there was that guilty start from Charlie Loring.
“About what?” he gasped.
“Everything, Blondy. Everything!” said the merciless doctor. “We know all about you now from A to Z!”
Blondy winced and closed his eyes. The gray pallor which overspread his face made the sick pallor of the moment before seem the color of hearty youth.
“Tell me everything you know!” he said at last.
“You seem sort of cut up about even guessing at what we know,” said the doctor sternly.
“Well,” gasped Blondy, “everybody has something on his conscience, in one shape or another. They all got something. How would you like to have folks know everything that ever went on in your brain, doc?”
“Why,” said the doctor, “I might blush, my son, but I should never tremble!”
“Tremble?”
“That’s what I said—tremble! Which is what you would do, Blondy, if we were to tell what we know.”
“I don’t believe it,” murmured Charlie Loring savagely. “I’ve got nothing against me—much!”
“Nothing much?” echoed the doctor. “Do you call this nothing much?”
He leaned and whispered in the ear of the youth.
Then he stepped back and saw in the wide eyes of the sick man a great terror. But almost immediately the fear vanished, and in its place there was a contemptuous unconcern.
“Nobody would believe you if you was to tell that,” said Charlie Loring. “Besides, what sort of proof can you rake up against me, doc?”
“Doesn’t that sound like enough?” asked the doctor grimly. “Then listen to this.”
This time he remained bowed at the ear of Loring, whispering for some time. And, as he reached the end of each sentence, he would half straighten, and then, observing upon the face of the wounded man an expression as of one who had just been struck a brutal blow, he would lean hastily down again and strike once more. Until finally Charlie Loring went crimson and then white and pressed both of his trembling hands across his face.