B M Bower - Wolverine

by Wolverine (Lit)

  "If you -- Ward, I 'll prove I 'm a friend to yuh in spite of the idea you 've got that I ain't. I never done nothing -- "

  "No, of course not." Ward's lip curled. "That was my mistake, maybe. You always used to say you were my friend, when -- "

  "And that 's the God's truth, Ward!" Buck's face was becoming flushed with his eagerness. "I done everything I could for you, Ward, but the way the cards laid, I could n't -- "

  "Get me hanged. I know; you sure tried hard enough!" Ward puffed hard at his cigarette, and the lips that held it trembled a little. Otherwise he seemed perfectly cool and calm.

  "Say, Ward, them lawyers lied to you."

  "Oh, cut it out, Buck. I 've seen you wriggle through a snake-hole before. I believe you 're my friend, just the way you 've always been."

  "That 's right, Ward, and I can prove it."

  Ward snorted. "You proved it, old-timer, when you laid up there behind a rock with your sights on this shack, ready to get me when I came out. I sabe now how it happened Jim McGuire was found face down in the spring behind his shack, with a bullet hole in his back, that time. You were his friend, too!"

  "Ward, I -- "

  "Shut up. I just wanted to see if you 'd changed any in the last seven years. You have n't, unless it 's for the worse. You 've got to the end of the trail, old-timer. When you went laying for me, you fixed yourself a-plenty. Do you want to know what I 'm going to do to you?"

  "Ward, you would n't dare shoot me! With the record you 've got, you would n't stand -- "

  "Who gave it to me, huh? Oh, I heap sabe; you 've left word with your pardners that you were coming up here to arrest me single-handed. They will give the alarm, if you don't show up; and I 'll go on the dodge and get caught and -- " Ward threw away his cigarette and took a step toward his captive; a step so ominous that Buck squirmed in his bonds.

  "Well, you can rest easy on one point. I 'm not going to shoot you." Ward stood still and watched the light of hope flare in the eyes of his enemy. "I 'm going to wash the dishes and take a shave -- and then I 'm going to take you out somewhere and hang you."

  "My God, Ward! You -- you -- "

  "I told you, seven years ago," went on Ward steadily, "that I 'd see you hung before I was through with you. Remember? By rights you ought to hang by the heels, over a slow fire! You 're a about as low a specimen of humanity as I ever saw or heard of. You know what you did for me, Buck. And you know what I told you would happen; well, it 's going to come off according to the programme.

  "I did think of running you in and giving you a taste of hell yourself. But, as usual, you 've gone and tangled up a couple of fellows that never did me any particular harm and I don't want to hand them anything if I can help it. So I 'll just string you up -- after awhile, when I get around to it -- and leave a note saying who you are, and that you 're the head push in this rustling business, and that you helped spend the money that Hardup bank lost awhile back; and that you 're one of the gazabos -- "

  "You can't prove it! You -- "

  "I don't have to prove it. The authorities will do all that when they get the tip I 'll give them. And you, being hung up on a limb somewhere, can't very well give your pardners the double-cross; so they 'll have a fighting chance to make their getaway.

  "Now, I 'm through talking to you. What I say goes. You can talk if you want to, Buck; but I 'm going to carve a steak out of you every time you open your mouth." He pulled Buck's own knife out of its sheath and laid it convenient to his hand, and he looked as if he would do any cruel thing he threatened.

  He relighted the fire, which had gone out long ago, and set the dish-pan on the stove with water to heat. He remade his bunk, spreading on the army blanket which he took from the saddle on Rattler. He swept the floor as neatly as any woman could have done it and laid the two wolf-skins down in their places where they did duty as rugs. He washed and wiped his few dishes, keeping Buck's knife always within reach and sending an inquiring glance toward Buck whenever that unhappy man made the slightest movement, though truth to tell, Buck did not make many. He brought two pails of water and set them on the bench inside, and in the meantime he had cooked a mess of prunes and set them in a bowl on the window-sill beside his bunk, where the air was coolest. He stropped his razor painstakingly and shaved himself in leisurely fashion and sent an occasional glance toward his prisoner from the looking-glass, which made Buck swallow hard at his Adam's apple. And Buck, during all this time, never once opened his lips, except to lick his tongue across them, and never once took his eyes off Ward.

  "I 've sure put the fear of the Lord into you, have n't I, Buck?" Ward observed maliciously, wiping a blob of hairy lather upon a page torn from an old Sears-Roebuck catalogue. "I was kinda hoping you had more nerve. I wanted to get a whack at you, just to prove I 'm not joshing."

  Buck swallowed again, but he made no reply.

  Ward washed his face in a basin of steaming water, got a can of talcum out of the dish cupboard, and took the soap-shine off his cheeks and chin. He combed his hair before the little mirror -- trying unavailingly to take the wave out of it with water, and leaving it more crinkly over his temples than it had been in the first place -- and retied the four-in-hand under the soft collar of his shirt.

  "I wish you 'd talk, Buck," he said, turning toward the other. He looked very boyish and almost handsome, except for the expression of his eyes, which gave Buck the shivers, and the set of his lips, which was cruel. "I 've read how the Chinks hand out what they call the death-of-a-thousand-cuts; I was thinking I 'd like to try it out on you. But -- oh, well, this is Friday. It may as well go as a hanging." He made a poor job of his calm irony, but Buck was not in the mental condition to be critical.

  The main facts were sufficiently ominous to offset Ward's attempt at facetiousness. Indeed, the very weakness of the attempt was in itself ominous. Ward might try to be coldly malevolent, but the light that burned in his eyes, and the rage that tightened his lips, gave the lie to his forced composure.

  He went out and led up the horses to the door. He came back and started to untie Buck Olney's feet, then bethought him of the statement he had promised to write. He got a magazine and tore out the frontispiece -- which, oddly enough, was a somber picture of Death hovering with outstretched wings over a battlefield -- and wrote several lines in pencil on the back of it, where the paper was smooth and white.

  "How 's that?" he asked, holding up the paper so that Buck could read what he had written. "I ain't in the mood to sit down and write a whole book, so I had to boil down your pedigree. But that will do the business all right, don't you think?"

  Buck read with staring eyes, looked into Ward's face, and opened his lips for protest or pleading. Then he followed Ward's glance to the knife on the table and shut his mouth with a snap. Ward laughed grimly, picked up the knife, and ran his thumb lightly over the edge to test its keenness.

  "Put a fresh edge on it for me, huh?" he commented. "Well, we may as well get started, I reckon. I 'm getting almighty sick of seeing you around."

  He loosened the rope that bound Buck to the chair and stood scowling down at him, drawing in a corner of his lip and biting it thoughtfully. Then he took his revolver and held it in his left hand, while with his right he undid the rope which bound Buck's hands.

  "Stick your hands out in front of you," he commanded. "You 'll have to ride a ways; there is n't any gallows tree in walking distance."

  "For God's sake, Ward!" Buck's voice was hoarse. The plea came out of its own accord. He held his hands before him, however, and he made no attempt to get out of the chair. He knew Ward could shoot all right with his left hand, you see. He had watched him practice on tin cans, long ago when the two were friends.

  "You know what I told you," Ward reminded him grimly and took up the knife with a deadly air that made the other suck in his breath. "Hold still! I 'm liable to cut your throat if I make a mislick."

  Really, it was the way he did it that made it terrible. The thing itself was not
hing. He merely drew the back of the blade down alongside Buck's ear, and permitted the point to scratch through the skin barely enough to let out a thin trickle of blood. A pin would have hurt worse. But Buck groaned and believed he had lost an ear. He breathed in gasps, but did not say a word.

  "Go ahead; talk all you want to, Buck," Ward invited, and wiped the knife-blade on Buck's shoulder before he returned the weapon to its sheath in his inside coat pocket.

  Buck flinched from the touch and set his teeth.

  Ward tied his hands before him and told him to get up and go out to his horse. Buck obeyed with abject submissiveness, and Ward's lip curled again as he walked behind him to the door. He had not the slightest twinge of pity for the man. He was gloatingly glad that he could make him suffer, and he inwardly cursed his own humanity for being so merciful. He ought to have cut Buck's ear off slick and clean instead of making a bluff at it, he told himself disgustedly. Buck deserved it and more.

  He helped Buck into the saddle, took the short rope in his hands, and hobbled Buck's feet under the horse, grasped the bridle-reins, and mounted Rattler. Without a word he set off up the rough trail toward Hardup, leading Buck's horse behind him.

  CHAPTER XVII

  "So-Long, Buck!"

  "BEFORE you go, Buck, I want to tell you that you need n't jolly yourself into thinking your death will be avenged. It won't. You noticed what I wrote; and there is n't a scrap of my writing anywhere in the country to catch me up -- " Ward's thoughts went to Billy Louise, who had some very good samples, and he stopped suddenly. He was trying not to think of Billy Louise, to-day. "Also, when somebody happens to ride this way and sees you, I won't be anywhere around."

  "This is the tree," he added, stopping under a cottonwood that flung a big branch out over the narrow cow-trail they were traveling. "The chances are friend Floyd will be ambling around this way in a day or two," he said hearteningly. "He can tend to the last sad rites and take charge of your horse. He 's liable to be sore when he reads your pedigree, but I don't reckon that will make a great deal of difference. You 'll get buried, all right, Buck."

  Ward dismounted with a most businesslike manner and untied Buck Olney's rope from the saddle. "I can't spare mine," he explained laconically. He had some trouble in fashioning a hangman's noose. He had not had much practice, he remarked to Buck after the first attempt.

  "How do you do it, Buck? You know more about these things than I do," he taunted. "You 've helped hang lots of poor devils that will be glad to meet yuh in hell to-day."

  Buck Olney moistened his dry lips. Ward glanced at his face and looked quickly away. Staring, abject terror is not nice to look upon, even though the man is your worst enemy and is suffering justly for his sins. Ward's fingers fumbled the rope as though his determination were weakening. Then he remembered some things, hunched his shoulders, impatient of the merciful impulse, and began the knot again. An old prospector had shown him once how it was done.

  "Of course, a plain slip-knot would do the business all right," he said. "But I 'll try and give you the genuine thing, same as you gave the other fellows."

  "Ward, for God's sake, let me go!"

  Ward started, He did not know that a man's voice could change so much in so short a time. He never would have recognized the tones as coming from Buck Olney's loose, complacent lips.

  "Ward, I 'll never -- I 'll leave the country -- I 'll go to South America, or Australia, or -- "

  "You 'll go to hell, Buck," Ward cut in inexorably. "You 've got your ticket."

  "I 'll own up to everything. I 'll tell you where some of the money 's cached we got in that Hardup deal, Ward. There 's enough to put you on Easy Street. I 'll tell you who helped -- "

  "You 'd better not," advised Ward harshly, "or I 'll make hanging a relief to you. I know pretty well, right now, all you could tell. And if I wanted to send your pardners up, I would n't need your help. It 's partly to give them a chance that I 'm sending you out this way, myself. I don't call this murder, Buck. I 'm saving the State a lot of time and trouble, that 's all; and your pardners the black eye they 'd get for throwing in with you. I heap sabe who was the head push. You got them in to take whatever dropped, so you could get off slick and clean, just as you 've done before, you -- you -- "

  Buck Olney got it then, hot from the fires of Ward's wrath. A man does not brood over treachery and wrong and a blackened future for years, without storing up a good many things that he means to say to the friend who has played him false. Ward had been a happy-go-lucky young fellow who had faith in men and in himself and in his future. He had lived through black, hopeless days and weeks and months, because of this man who tried now to buy mercy with the faith of his partners.

  Ward stood up and let the rope trail forgotten from his hands while he told Buck Olney all the things he had brooded over in bitterness. He had meant to keep it all down, but it was another instance of bottled emotions, and Buck, with his offer of a fresh bit of treachery, had pulled the cork. Ward trembled a little while he talked, and his face grew paler and paler as he dug deep into the blackest part of the past, until when he finished he was a tanned white. He was shaking at the last; shaking so that he staggered to the tree and leaned against it weakly, while he fumbled for tobacco and papers.

  In the saddle Buck sat all hunched together as if Ward had lashed him with rawhide instead of with stinging words. The muscles of his face twitched spasmodically. His eyes were growing bloodshot.

  Ward spilled two papers of tobacco before he got a cigarette rolled and lighted. He wondered a little at the physical reaction from his outburst, but he wondered more at Buck Olney sitting alive and unhurt on the horse before him -- a Seabeck horse which Ward had seen Floyd Carson riding once or twice. He wondered what Floyd would do if he saw Buck now and the use to which the horse was being put.

  Ward finished the cigarette, rolled another, and smoked that also before he could put his hand out before him and hold it reasonably steady. When he felt fairly sure of himself again, he lifted his hat to wipe off the sweat of his anger, gave a big sigh, and returned to the tying of the hangman's noose.

  When he finally had it fixed the way he wanted it, he went close and flung the noose over Buck Olney's head. He could not trust himself to speak just then. He cast an inquiring glance upward, took Buck's horse by the bridle, and led him forward a few steps so that Buck was directly under the overhanging limb. Then, with the coil of Buck's rope in his hand, he turned back and squirmed up the tree-trunk until he had reached the limb. He crawled out until he was over Buck's bullet-punctured hat-crown, sliced off what rope he did not need, and flung it to the ground. He saw Buck wince as the rope went past him. The pinto horse shied out of position.

  "Take the reins and bring him back here!" Ward called shortly, and gave a twitch of the rope as a hint.

  Mechanically Buck obeyed. He did not know that the rope was not yet tied to the limb.

  Ward tied the rope securely, leaving enough slack to keep Buck from choking prematurely. He fussed a minute longer, with his lip curled into a grin of sardonic humor. Then he crawled back to the trunk of the tree and slid down carefully so that he would not frighten the pinto.

  He went up and took the hobble off Buck Olney's feet, felt in the seam of his coat-lapel, and pulled out four pins, with which he fastened Buck's "pedigree" between Buck's shrinking shoulder-blades. Then he stood off and surveyed his work critically before he went over to Rattler, who stood dozing in the sunshine.

  "Sorry I can't stay to see you off," he told Buck maliciously. "I 've decided to let you go alone and take your own time about starting. As long as that cayuse stands where he is, you 're safe as a church. And you 've got the reins; you can kick off any time you feel like it. Sabe?" He studied Buck's horror-marked face pitilessly.

  "You 've got about one chance in a million that you can make that pinto stand there till someone comes along," he pointed out impartially. "I 'm willing to give you that chance, such as it is. And if you 're lucky e
nough to win out on it -- well, I 'd advise you to do some going! South America is about as close as you 'll be safe. Folks around here are going to know all about you, old-timer, whether they get to read what 's on your back or not.

  "And, on the other hand, it 's a million-to-one shot you 'll land where your ticket reads. I 'd hate to gamble on that horse standing in one spot for two or three days, would n't you?" He wheeled Rattler unobtrusively, his eye on the pinto. "I hope he don't try to follow," he said. "I want you to have a little time to think about the things I said to you. Well, so-long."

  Ward rode back the way he had come, glancing frequently over his shoulder at Buck, slumped in the saddle with a paper pinned to his back like a fire-warning on a tree, and his own grass rope noosed about his neck and connecting him with the cottonwood limb six feet above his hat crown.

  Ward had not ridden a hundred yards before he heard Buck Olney scream hysterically for help. He grinned sourly with his eyebrows pinched together and that hard, strained look in his eyes still. "Let him holler awhile!" he gritted. "Do him good, damn him!"