Chapter XXVII
The day following the fall of Hell City was one of rejoicing tempered with regret, for casualties had not been confined to the conquered; there were gaps in both outfits, Dugout and Red Rock had lost citizens, and the wounded were many. But the job was done, thoroughly.
At the Double K ranch-house, the Colonel was receiving visitors. He had heard a wellnigh incredible story, and insisted on seeing the Principal performers in the drama. So, one by one, Merry, the Red Rock sheriff, Sudden, Frosty, and the Double K foreman filed into the bedroom, where the invalid—propped up by pillows, with Joan sitting beside him—apologized with old-world courtesy.
“Yu don’t have to say a word, Ken,” Merry assured him. “We’re mighty glad to be able to see yu a-tall. How’re yu makin’ it?”
The Colonel replied that he was progressing favourably, and asked for details of the strange happenings of which he had been given only an outline. He listened as each added his quota to the tale, but his gaze was on the door. Presently it opened, Jeff stepped in, and stood, waiting. Instantly the deep-sunk eyes in the sick man’s gaunt face became obdurate, relentless.
“What do you here?” he asked harshly. “Have you come slinking back to see if there is still a hope of regaining the inheritance you threw away?”
The thunderstruck company saw the boy’s face turn as white as that of the man who hurled this cruel question at him, but there was no anger in it.
“No, sir, I came to beg a father’s forgiveness and nothing -more,” he answered quietly.
“Very touching, but a lie,” was the searing retort. “I happen to know that, in case I decline to be duped, you have provided yourself with a second chance by persuading this foolish girl that you care for her.”
“Oh, Daddy Ken,” the “foolish girl” murmured, and hid her shamed face.
Merry stood up. “Ken Keith, yo’re my friend, but if yu wasn’t crippled, I’d shake the eternal lights out’n yu. Of all the—”
The Colonel did not let him finish. “Attend to your own affairs, Mart, and allow me to deal with mine,” he snapped. “As for you Joan, if you marry that fellow, you go to him empty-handed. That makes a difference, doesn’t it?”
The girl’s wet eyes met his steadily. “No,” she replied.
“Joan is more to me than all the ranches in Arizona,” young Keith said. “I have learned my lesson, sir, and I’m sorry you—feel this way.”
He was turning to leave when Merry spoke again: “Hold yore hosses, I’m comin’ along. We’ll go to the Twin Diamond, an’—” He stopped, and the belligerent look faded when he saw the change in the Colonel’s face; the sternness had gone, and with a smile which was like the sun bursting through a cloud, the old man said:
“Would you rob me of my boy, Mart?”
The fat man stared open-mouthed, but Jeff understood. With a bound he was at the bedside, gripping the thin white hand waiting for him.
“Dad!” he cried.
“Forgive me, lad,” Kenneth Keith said. “I had to try you —for Joan’s sake; I couldn’t trust her to a weakling.” Taking the girl’s hand, he placed it in that of his son. “There must always be a Keith at the Double K, Jeff.”
“I hope there will be, sir,” the young man replied, with a look which brought the blood back into Joan’s cheeks.
By this time Merry had recovered. “Well, yu of fraud, I’m free to admit yu had me razzle-dazzled,” he remarked. “Shore thought yu meant it, an’ I ‘most wish yu had; I was figurin’ on gettin’ me a son an’ daughter at the ranch-house.” He sensed the significance of Frosty’s grin. “O’ course, she’d want repairin’ some.”
“All she needs is new floors, walls, roof, an’ fixin’s,” the white-headed cowboy suggested. “The ground’s good.”
This produced a laugh in which the owner of the maligned edifice joined heartily. Then the Colonel spoke.
“My friends, I owe a great debt to all of you, but especially to James Green, whom I woefully misjudged.”
The Twin Diamond man could not resist the opportunity. “I put one over on yu there, Ken; said all along he was straight.”
The Colonel turned on him sharply, and—smiled. “That is so,” he agreed, and Mart—who had expected a prompt contradiction—was sorry he had spoken. Then, divining Sudden’s evident discomfort, the invalid went on, “We must have a long talk, Green, when I am stronger. Now, I see my nurse is looking severe …”
Jeff lingered behind the others. “Dad, you’re being very good to me,” he said.
“Nonsense, son,” was the reply. “When a man is ill, he has time to think, and I have found much to regret. Run along and entertain our guests.”
Later, Sudden encountered Lazy and enquired about Anita.
“She’s here, goin’ to be Miss Joan’s maid—for a spell,” the cowboy told him, and reddened at the other’s, “Good luck to yu.”
Staring after the tall, loose-limbed figure as it swung towards the corral, he muttered, “How’n th’ devil did he guess? Hope he ain’t interested—I wouldn’t have a chance.”
The sheriff of Red Rock shouted a welcome as “Mart Merry’s visitor” stepped into his office some weeks after the effacement of Hell City. Then he looked out of the window and saw that the black had a blanket roll strapped to the saddle.
“Ain’t leavin’ us, are you, Jim?” he asked.
“Shore am, an’ sorry to be,” the puncher told him. “They let you go?”
“It warn’t easy; the Colonel an’ Mart made me han’some offers, Jeff an’ Frosty damn near pulled guns on me, an’ Miss Joan cried, which was wuss’n all.”
“Then why in the nation …?”
“Somebody’s waitin’ for me in Tucson.”
Dealtry thought he understood. “An’ she’ll be anxious, huh?”
Sudden grinned. “Yo’re way off the trail, sheriff. The person waitin’ for me is a shortish, middle-aged fella, with grey hair an’ a persuasive manner. They call him `Bloke,’ an’ he can be—times.”
“The Governor?”
“Yeah, an’ he’ll be wonderin’ if he oughta send a wreath.”
“So you’re from him? You kept it mighty close.”
“I’m the third.” He told the fate of his predecessors. “I expect they talked too much.”
The sheriff breathed hard. “An’ we thought he was doin ‘ nothin’,” he said. “I’ll bet he’ll be pleased with you.”
“Just a shake an’ a `Well done, Jim,’ but I reckon them’s the best words a man can hear in this li’l of world.”
Dealtry reached into a drawer, produced and passed over a familiar folded paper. “Found it on Lander. Mean anythin’ to you?”
Sudden laughed. “Shore, it’s my letter of introduction to Hell City. A long story, sheriff.”
“I never was curious,” the officer replied.
He got out a bottle and they drank together, solemnly, as men do when they have to part, and regret it. Their farewell was a mere hand-clasp and a “So long”—it was an undemonstrative land.
Standing in his doorway, Dealtry watched the black horse pace slowly along the street. When, at length, it disappeared in the distance, he said softly:
“Well done, Jim.”
The End
Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 07 - Sudden Rides Again(1938) Page 26