by Zane Grey
“Sure. Go ahead. Shoot low, now, a little below where you want to hit,” said Wade.
Belllounds took aim and fired. A thundering report shook the cabin. Dust and splinters flew from the post.
“I hit it!” he exclaimed, in delight. “I was sure I wouldn’t, because I aimed ’way under.”
“Reckon you did. It was a good shot.”
Then a door slammed and Old Bill Belllounds appeared, his hair upstanding, his look and gait proclaiming him on the rampage.
“Jack! What ’n hell are you doin’?” he roared, and he stamped up to the door to see his son standing there with the rifle in his hands. “By Heaven! If it ain’t one thing it’s another!”
“Boss, don’t jump over the traces,” said Wade. “I’ll allow if I’d known the gun would let out a bellar like that I’d not have told Jack to shoot. Reckon it’s because we’re under the open roof that it made the racket. I’m wantin’ to clean the gun while it’s hot.”
“Ahuh! Wal, I was scared fust, harkin’ back to Indian days, an’ then I was mad because I figgered Jack was up to mischief.… Did you fetch in the meat?”
“You bet. An’ I’d like a piece for myself,” replied Wade.
“Help yourself, man. An’ say, come down an’ eat with us fer supper.”
“Much obliged, boss. I sure will.”
Then the old rancher trudged back to the house.
“Wade, it was bully of you!” exclaimed Jack, gratefully. “You see how quick dad’s ready to jump me? I’ll bet he thought I’d picked a shooting-scrape with one of the cowboys.”
“Well, he’s gettin’ old an’ testy,” replied Wade. “You ought to humor him. He’ll not be here always.”
Belllounds answered to that suggestion with a shadowing of eyes and look of realization, affection, remorse. Feelings seemed to have a quick rise and play in him, but were not lasting. Wade casually studied him, weighing his impressions, holding them in abeyance for a sum of judgment.
“Belllounds, has anybody told you about Wils Moore bein’ bad hurt?” abruptly asked the hunter.
“He is, is he?” replied Jack, and to his voice and face came sudden change. “How bad?”
“I reckon he’ll be a cripple for life,” answered Wade, seriously, and now he stopped in his work to peer at Belllounds. The next moment might be critical for that young man.
“Club-footed!… He won’t lord it over the cowboys any more—or ride that white mustang!” The softer, weaker expression of his face, that which gave him some title to good looks, changed to an ugliness hard for Wade to define, since it was neither glee, nor joy, nor gratification over his rival’s misfortune. It was rush of blood to eyes and skin, a heated change that somehow to Wade suggested an anxious, selfish hunger. Belllounds lacked something, that seemed certain. But it remained to be proved how deserving he was of Wade’s pity.
“Belllounds, it was a dirty trick—your jumpin’ Moore,” declared Wade, with deliberation.
“The hell you say!” Belllounds flared up, with scarlet in his face, with sneer of amaze, with promise of bursting rage. He slammed down the gun.
“Yes, the hell I say,” returned the hunter. “They call me Hell-Bent Wade!”
“Are you friends with Moore?” asked Belllounds, beginning to shake.
“Yes, I’m that with every one. I’d like to be friends with you.”
“I don’t want you. And I’m giving you notice—you won’t last long at White Slides.”
“Neither will you!”
Belllounds turned dead white, not apparently from fury or fear, but from a shock that had its birth within the deep, mysterious, emotional reachings of his mind. He was utterly astounded, as if confronting a vague, terrible premonition of the future. Wade’s swift words, like the ring of bells, had not been menacing, but prophetic.
“Young fellar, you need to be talked to, so if you’ve got any sense at all it’ll get a wedge in your brain,” went on Wade. “I’m a stranger here. But I happen to be a man who sees through things, an’ I see how your dad handles you wrong. You don’t know who I am an’ you don’t care. But if you’ll listen you’ll learn what might help you.… No boy can answer to all his wild impulses without ruinin’ himself. It’s not natural. There are other people—people who have wills an’ desires, same as you have. You’ve got to live with people. Here’s your dad an’ Miss Columbine, an’ the cowboys, an’ me, an’ all the ranchers, so down to Kremmlin’ an’ other places. These are the people you’ve got to live with. You can’t go on as you’ve begun, without ruinin’ yourself an’ your dad an’ the—the girl.… It’s never too late to begin to be better. I know that. But it gets too late, sometimes, to save the happiness of others. Now I see where you’re headin’, as clear as if I had pictures of the future. I’ve got a gift that way.… An’, Belllounds, you’ll not last. Unless you begin to control your temper, to forget yourself, to kill your wild impulses, to be kind, to learn what love is—you’ll never last!… In the very nature of things, one comin’ after another like your fights with Moore, an’ your scarin’ of Pronto, an’ your drinkin’ at Kremmlin’, an’ just now your r’arin’ at me—it’s in the very nature of life that goin’ on so you’ll sooner or later meet with hell! You’ve got to change, Belllounds. No half-way, spoiled-boy changin’, but the straight right-about-face of a man!… It means you must see you’re no good an’ have a change of heart. Men have revolutions like that. I was no good. I did worse than you’ll ever do, because you’re not big enough to be really bad, an’ yet I’ve turned out worth livin’.… There, I’m through, an’ I’m offerin’ to be your friend an’ to help you.”
Belllounds stood with arms spread outside the door, still astounded, still pale; but as the long admonition and appeal ended he exploded stridently. “Who the hell are you?… If I hadn’t been so surprised—if I’d had a chance to get a word in—I’d shut your trap! Are you a preacher masquerading here as hunter? Let me tell you, I won’t be talked to like that—not by any man. Keep your advice an’ friendship to yourself.”
“You don’t want me, then?”
“No,” Belllounds snapped.
“Reckon you don’t need either advice or friend, hey?”
“No, you owl-eyed, soft-voiced fool!” yelled Belllounds.
It was then Wade felt a singular and familiar sensation, a cold, creeping thing, physical and elemental, that had not visited him since he had been at White Slides.
“I reckoned so,” he said, with low and gloomy voice, and he knew, if Belllounds did not know, that he was not acquiescing with the other’s harsh epithet, but only greeting the advent of something in himself.
Belllounds shrugged his burly shoulders and slouched away.
Wade finished his dressing of the meat. Then he rode up to spend an hour with Moore. When he returned to his cabin he proceeded to change his hunter garb for the best he owned. It was a proof of his unusual preoccupation that he did this before he fed the hounds. It was sunset when he left his cabin. Montana Jim and Lem hailed as he went by. Wade paused to listen to their good-natured raillery.
“See hyar, Bent, this ain’t Sunday,” said Lem.
“You’re spruced up powerful fine. What’s it fer?” added Montana.
“Boss asked me down to supper.”
“Wal, you lucky son-of-a-gun! An’ hyar we’ve no invite,” returned Lem. “Say, Wade, I heerd Buster Jack roarin’ at you. I was ridin’ in by the storehouse.… ‘Who the hell are you?’ was what collared my attention, an’ I had to laugh. An’ I listened to all he said. So you was offerin’ him advice an’ friendship?”
“I reckon.”
“Wal, all I say is thet you was wastin’ yore breath,” declared Lem. “You’re a queer fellar, Wade.”
“Queer? Aw, Lem, he ain’t queer,” said Montana. “He’s jest white. Wade, I feel the same as you. I’d like to do somethin’ fer thet locoed Buster Jack.”
“Montana, you’re the locoed one,” rejoined Lem. “Buster Jack know
s what he’s doin’. He can play a slicker hand of poker than you.”
“Wal, mebbe. Wade, do you play poker?”
“I’d hate to take your money,” replied Wade.
“You needn’t be so all-fired kind about thet. Come over to-night an’ take some of it. Buster Jack invited himself up to our bunk. He’s itchin’ fer cards. So we says shore. Blud’s goin’ to sit in. Now you come an’ make it five-handed.”
“Wouldn’t young Belllounds object to me?”
“What? Buster Jack shy at gamblin’ with you? Not much. He’s a born gambler. He’d bet with his grandmother an’ he’d cheat the coppers off a dead nigger’s eyes.”
“Slick with cards, eh?” inquired Wade.
“Naw, Jack’s not slick. But he tries to be. An’ we jest go him one slicker.”
“Wouldn’t Old Bill object to this card-playin’?”
“He’d be ory-eyed. But, by Golly! we’re not leadin’ Jack astray. An’ we ain’t hankerin’ to play with him. All the same a little game is welcome enough.”
“I’ll come over,” replied Wade, and thoughtfully turned away.
When he presented himself at the ranch-house it was Columbine who let him in. She was prettily dressed, in a way he had never seen her before, and his heart throbbed. Her smile, her voice added to her nameless charm, that seemed to come from the past. Her look was eager and longing, as if his presence might bring something welcome to her.
Then the rancher stalked in. “Hullo, Wade! Supper’s ’most ready. What’s this trouble you had with Jack? He says he won’t eat with you.”
“I was offerin’ him advice,” replied Wade.
“What on?”
“Reckon on general principles.”
“Humph! Wal, he told me you harangued him till you was black in the face, an’—”
“Jack had it wrong. He got black in the face,” interrupted Wade.
“Did you say he was a spoiled boy an’ thet he was no good an’ was headin’ plumb fer hell?”
“That was a little of what I said,” returned Wade, gently.
“Ahuh! How’d thet come about?” queried Belllounds, gruffly. A slight stiffening and darkening overcast his face.
Wade then recalled and recounted the remarks that had passed between him and Jack; and he did not think he missed them very far. He had a great curiosity to see how Belllounds would take them, and especially the young man’s scornful rejection of a sincerely offered friendship. All the time Wade was talking he was aware of Columbine watching him, and when he finished it was sweet to look at her.
“Wade, wasn’t you takin’ a lot on yourself?” queried the rancher, plainly displeased.
“Reckon I was. But my conscience is beholden to no man. If Jack had met me half-way that would have been better for him. An’ for me, because I get good out of helpin’ any one.”
His reply silenced Belllounds. No more was said before supper was announced, and then the rancher seemed taciturn. Columbine did the serving, and most all of the talking. Wade felt strangely at ease. Some subtle difference was at work in him, transforming him, but the moment had not yet come for him to question himself. He enjoyed the supper. And when he ventured to look up at Columbine, to see her strong, capable hands and her warm, blue glance, glad for his presence, sweetly expressive of their common secret and darker with a shadow of meaning beyond her power to guess, then Wade felt havoc within him, the strife and pain and joy of the truth he never could reveal. For he could never reveal his identity to her without betraying his baseness to her mother. Otherwise, to hear her call him father would have been earning that happiness with a lie. Besides, she loved Belllounds as her father, and were this trouble of the present removed she would grow still closer to the old man in his declining days. Wade accepted the inevitable. She must never know. If she might love him it must be as the stranger who came to her gates, it must be through the mysterious affinity between them and through the service he meant to render.
Wade did not linger after the meal was ended despite the fact that Belllounds recovered his cordiality. It was dark when he went out. Columbine followed him, talking cheerfully. Once outside she squeezed his hand and whispered, “How’s Wilson?”
The hunter nodded his reply, and, pausing at the porch step, he pressed her hand to make his assurance stronger. His reward was instant. In the bright starlight she stood white and eloquent, staring down at him with dark, wide eyes.
Presently she whispered: “Oh, my friend! It wants only three days till October first!”
“Lass, it might be a thousand years for all you need worry,” he replied, his voice low and full. Then it seemed, as she flung up her arms, that she was about to embrace him. But her gesture was an appeal to the stars, to Heaven above, for something she did not speak.
Wade bade her good night and went his way.
* * *
The cowboys and the rancher’s son were about to engage in a game of poker when Wade entered the dimly lighted, smoke-hazed room. Montana Jim was sticking tallow candles in the middle of a rude table; Lem was searching his clothes, manifestly for money; Bludsoe shuffled a greasy deck of cards; and Jack Belllounds was filling his pipe before a fire of blazing logs on the hearth.
“Dog-gone it! I hed more money ’n thet,” complained Lem. “Jim, you rode to Kremmlin’ last. Did you take my money?”
“Wal, come to think of it, I reckon I did,” replied Jim, in surprise at the recollection.
“An’ whar’s it now?”
“Pard, I ain’t no idee. I reckon it’s still in Kremmlin’. But I’ll pay you back.”
“I should smile you will. Pony up now.”
“Bent Wade, did you come over calkilated to git skinned?” queried Bludsoe.
“Boys, I was playin’ poker tolerable well in Missouri when you all was nursin’,” replied Wade, imperturbably.
“I heerd he was a card-sharp,” said Jim. “Wal, grab a box or a chair to set on an’ let’s start. Come along, Jack; you don’t look as keen to play as usual.”
Belllounds stood with his back to the fire and his manner did not compare favorably with that of the genial cowboys.
“I prefer to play four-handed,” he said.
This declaration caused a little check in the conversation and put an end to the amiability. The cowboys looked at one another, not embarrassed, but just a little taken aback, as if they had forgotten something that they should have remembered.
“You object to my playin’?” asked Wade, quietly.
“I certainly do,” replied Belllounds.
“Why, may I ask?”
“For all I know, what Montana said about you may be true,” returned Belllounds, insolently.
Such a remark flung in the face of a Westerner was an insult. The cowboys suddenly grew stiff, with steady eyes on Wade. He, however, did not change in the slightest.
“I might be a card-sharp at that,” he replied, coolly. “You fellows play without me. I’m not carin’ about poker any more. I’ll look on.”
Thus he carried over the moment that might have been dangerous. Lem gaped at him; Montana kicked a box forward to sit upon, and his action was expressive; Bludsoe slammed the cards down on the table and favored Wade with a comprehending look. Belllounds pulled a chair up to the table.
“What’ll we make the limit?” asked Jim.
“Two bits,” replied Lem, quickly.
Then began an argument. Belllounds was for a dollar limit. The cowboys objected.
“Why, Jack, if the ole man got on to us playin’ a dollar limit he’d fire the outfit,” protested Bludsoe.
This reasonable objection in no wise influenced the old man’s son. He overruled the good arguments, and then hinted at the cowboys’ lack of nerve. The fun faded out of their faces. Lem, in fact, grew red.
“Wal, if we’re agoin’ to gamble, thet’s different,” he said, with a cold ring in his voice, as he straddled a box and sat down. “Wade, lemme some money.”
Wade slipped
his hand into his pocket and drew forth a goodly handful of gold, which he handed to the cowboy. Not improbably, if this large amount had been shown earlier, before the change in the sentiment, Lem would have looked aghast and begged for mercy. As it was, he accepted it as if he were accustomed to borrowing that much every day. Belllounds had rendered futile the easygoing, friendly advances of the cowboys, as he had made it impossible to play a jolly little game for fun.
The game began, with Wade standing up, looking on. These boys did not know what a vast store of poker knowledge lay back of Wade’s inscrutable eyes. As a boy he had learned the intricacies of poker in the country where it originated; and as a man he had played it with piles of yellow coins and guns on the table. His eagerness to look on here, as far as the cowboys were concerned, was mere pretense. In Belllounds’s case, however, he had a profound interest. Rumors had drifted to him from time to time, since his advent at White Slides, regarding Belllounds’s weakness for gambling. It might have been cowboy gossip. Wade held that there was nothing in the West as well calculated to test a boy, to prove his real character, as a game of poker.
Belllounds was a feverish better, an exultant winner, a poor loser. His understanding of the game was rudimentary. With him, the strong feeling beginning to be manifested to Wade was not the fun of matching wits and luck with his antagonists, nor a desire to accumulate money—for his recklessness disproved that—but the liberation of the gambling passion. Wade recognized that when he met it. And Jack Belllounds was not in any sense big. He was selfish and grasping in the numberless little ways common to the game, and positive about his own rights, while doubtful of the claims of others. His cheating was clumsy and crude. He held out cards, hiding them in his palm, he shuffled the deck so he left aces at the bottom, and these he would slip off to himself, and he was so blind that he could not detect his fellow-player in tricks as transparent as his own. Wade was amazed and disgusted. The pity he had felt for Belllounds shifted to the old father, who believed in his son with stubborn and unquenchable faith.