by B. M. Bower
Weary rode dispiritedly into Sleepy Trail (which Irish usually spoke of as Camas, because it had but lately been rechristened to avoid conflictions with another Camas farther up on Milk River). Weary thought, as he dismounted from Glory, which he had brought with him from home, that Sleepy Trail fitted the place exactly, and that whenever he heard Irish refer to it as Camas, he would call him down and make him use this other and more appropriate title.
Sleepy it was, in that hazy sunshine of mid fore-noon, and apparently deserted. He tied Glory to the long hitching pole where a mild-eyed gray stood dozing on three legs, and went striding, rowels a-clank, into the saloon. He had not had any answer to his telegram, and the world did not look so very good to him. He did not know that Pink and Irish and Happy Jack were even then speeding over the prairies on the eastbound train from Dry Lake, to meet him. He had come to Sleepy Trail to wait for the next stage, on a mere hope of some message from the Flying U.
The bartender looked up, gave a little, welcoming whoop and leaned half over the bar, hand extended. “Hello, Irish! Lord! When did you get back?”
Weary smiled and shook the hand with much emphasis. Irish had once created a sensation in Dry Lake by being taken for Weary; Weary wondered if, in the guise of Irish, there might not be some diversion for him here in Sleepy Trail. He remembered the maxim “Turn about is fair play,” and immediately acted thereon.
“I just came down from the Flying U the other day,” he said.
The bartender half turned, reached a tall, ribbed bottle and two glasses, and set them on the bar before Weary. “Go to it,” he invited cordially. “I’ll gamble yuh brought your thirst right along with yuh—and that’s your pet brand. Back to stay?”
Weary poured himself a modest “two fingers,” and wondered if he had better claim to have reformed; Irish could—and did—drink long and deep, where Weary indulged but moderately.
“No,” he said, setting the glass down without refilling. “They sent me back on business. How’s everything?”
The bartender spoke his wonder at the empty glass, listened while Weary explained how he had cut down his liquid refreshments “just to see how it would go, and which was boss,” and then told much unmeaning gossip about men and women Weary had never heard of before.
Weary listened with exaggerated interest, and wondered what the fellow would do if he told him he was not Irish Mallory at all. He reflected, with some amusement, that he did not even know what to call the bartender, and tried to remember if Irish had ever mentioned him. He was about to state quietly that he had never met him before, and watch the surprise of the other, when the bartender grew more interesting.
“And say! yuh’d best keep your gun strapped on yuh, whilst you’re down here,” he told Weary, with some earnestness. “Spikes Weber is in this country—come just after yuh left; fact is, he’s got it into his block that you left because he come. Brought his wife along—say! I feel sorry for that little woman—and when he ain’t bowling up and singing his war-song about you, and all he’ll do when he meets up with yuh, he’s dealing her misery and keeping cases that nobody runs off with her. Why, at dances, he won’t let her dance with nobody but him! Goes plumb wild, sometimes, when it’s ‘change partners’ in a square dance, and he sees her swingin’ with somebody he thinks looks good to her. I’ve saw him raising hell with her, off in some corner between dances, and her trying not to let on she’s cryin’. He’s dead sure you’re still crazy over her, and ready to steal her away from him first chance, only you’re afraid uh him. He never gits full but he reads out your pedigree to the crowd. So I just thought I’d tell you, and let yuh be on your guard.”
“Thanks,” said Weary, getting out papers and tobacco. “And whereabouts will I find this lovely specimen uh manhood?”
“They’re stopping over to Bill Mason’s; but yuh better not go hunting trouble, Irish. That’s the worst about putting yuh next to the lay. You sure do love a fight. But I thought I’d let yuh know, as a friend, so he wouldn’t take you unawares. Don’t be a fool and go out looking for him, though; he ain’t worth the trouble.”
“I won’t,” Weary promised generously. “I haven’t lost nobody that looks like Spikes-er-” he searched his memory frantically for the other name, failed to get it, and busied himself with his cigarette, looking mean and bloodthirsty to make up. “Still,” he added darkly, “if I should happen to meet up with him, yuh couldn’t blame me—”
“Oh, sure not!” the bartender hastened to cut in. “It’d be a case uh self-defence—the way he’s been makin’ threats. But—”
“Maybe,” hazarded Weary mildly, “you’d kinda like to see—her—a widow?”
“From all accounts,” the other retorted, flushing a bit nevertheless, “If yuh make her a widow, yuh won’t leave her that way long. I’ve heard it said you was pretty far gone, there.”
Weary considered, the while he struck another match and relighted his cigarette. He had not expected to lay bare any romance in the somewhat tumultuous past of Irish. Irish had not seemed the sort of fellow who had an unhappy love affair to dream of nights; he had seemed a particularly whole-hearted young man.
“Well, yuh see,” he said vaguely, “Maybe I’ve got over it.”
The bartender regarded him fixedly and unbelievingly. “You’ll have quite a contract making Spikes swallow that,” he remarked drily.
“Oh, damn Spikes,” murmured Weary, with the fine recklessness of Irish in his tone.
At that moment a cowboy jangled in, caught sight of Weary’s back and fell upon him joyously, hailing him as Irish. Weary was very glad to see him, and listened assiduously for something that would give him a clue to the fellow’s identity. In the meantime he called him “Say, Old-timer,” and “Cully.” It had come to be a self-instituted point of honor to play the game through without blundering. He waved his hand hospitably toward the ribbed bottle, and told the stranger to “Throw into yuh, Old-timer—it’s on me.” And when Old-timer straightway began doing so, Weary leaned against the bar and wiped his forehead, and wondered who the dickens the fellow could be. In Dry Lake, Irish had been—well, hilarious—and not accountable for any little peculiarities. In Sleepy Trail Weary was, perhaps he considered unfortunately, sober and therefore obliged to feel his way carefully.
“Say! yuh want to keep your eyes peeled for Spikes Weber, Irish,” remarked the unknown, after two drinks. “He’s pawing up the earth whenever he hears your name called. He’s sure anxious to see the sod packed down nice on top uh yuh.”
“So I heard; his nibs here,” indicating the bartender, “has been wising me up, a lot. When’s the stage due, tomorrow, Oldtimer?” Weary was getting a bit ashamed of addressing them both impartially in that manner, but it was the best he could do, not knowing the names men called them. In this instance he spoke to the bartender.
“Why, yuh going to pull out while your hide’s whole?” bantered the cowboy, with the freedom which long acquaintance breeds.
“I’ve got business out uh town, and I want to be back time the stage pulls in.”
“Well, Limpy’s still holding the ribbons over them buckskins uh his, and he ain’t varied five minutes in five years,” responded the bartender. “So I guess yuh can look for him same old time.”
Weary’s eyes opened a bit wider, then drooped humorously. “Oh, all right,” he murmured, as though thoroughly enlightened rather than being rather more in the dark than before. In the name of Irish he found it expedient to take another modest drink, and then excused himself with a “See yuh later, boys,” and went out and mounted Glory.
Ten miles nearer the railroad—which at that was not what even a Montanan would call close—he had that day established headquarters and was holding a bunch of saddle horses pending the arrival of help. He rode out on the trail thoughtfully, a bit surprised that he had not found the situation more amusing. To be taken for Irish was a joke, and to learn thereby of Irish’s little romance should be funny. But it wasn’t.
> Weary wondered how Irish got mixed up in a deal like that, which somehow did not seem to be in line with his character. And he wished, a bit vindictively, that this Spikes Weber could meet Irish. He rather thought that Spikes needed the chastening effects of such a meeting. Weary, while not in the least quarrelsome on his own account, was ever the staunch defender of a friend.
Just where another brown trail branched off and wandered away over a hill to the east, a woman rode out and met him face to face. She pulled up and gave a little cry that brought Weary involuntarily to a halt.
“You!” she exclaimed, in a tone that Weary felt he had no right to hear from any but his little schoolma’am. “But I knew you’d come back when you heard I—Have—have you seen Spikes, Ira?”
Weary flushed embarrassment; this was no joke. “No,” he stammered, in some doubt just how to proceed. “The fact is, you’ve made a little mistake. I’m not—”
“Oh, you needn’t go on,” she interrupted, and her voice, had Weary known it better, heralded the pouring out of a woman’s heart. “I know I’ve made a mistake, all right; you don’t need to tell me that. And I suppose you want to tell me that you’ve got over—things; that you don’t care, any more. Maybe you don’t, but it’ll take a lot to make me believe it. Because you did care, Ira. You cared, all right enough!” She laughed in the way that makes one very uncomfortable.
“And maybe you’ll tell me that I didn’t. But I did, and I do yet. I ain’t ashamed to say it, if I did marry Spikes Weber just to spite you. That’s all it was, and you’d have found it out if you hadn’t gone off the way you did. I hate Spikes Weber; and he knows it, Ira. He knows I—care—for you, and he’s making my life a hell. Oh, maybe I deserve it—but you won’t— Now you’ve come back, you can have it out with him; and I—I almost hope you’ll kill him! I do, and I don’t care if it is wicked. I—I don’t care for anything much, but—you.” She had big, soft brown eyes, and a sweet, weak mouth, and she stopped and looked at Weary in a way that he could easily imagine would be irresistible—to a man who cared.
Weary felt that he was quite helpless. She had hurried out sentences that sealed his lips. He could not tell her now that she had made a mistake; that he was not Ira Mallory, but a perfect stranger. The only thing to do now was to carry the thing through as tactfully as possible, and get away as soon as he could. Playing he was Irish, he found, was not without its disadvantages.
“What particular brand of hell has he been making for you?” he asked her sympathetically.
“I wouldn’t think, knowing Spikes as you do, you’d need to ask,” she said impatiently. “The same old brand, I guess. He gets drunk, and then—I told him, right out, just after we were married, that I liked you the best, and he don’t forget it; and he don’t let me. He swears he’ll shoot you on sight—as if that would do any good! He hates you, Ira.” She laughed again unpleasantly.
Weary, sitting uneasily in the saddle looking at her, wondered if Irish really cared; or if, in Weary’s place, he would have sat there so calmly and just looked at her. She was rather pretty, in a pink and white, weak way. He could easily imagine her marrying Spikes Weber for mere spite; what he could not imagine, was Irish in love with her.
It seemed almost as if she caught a glimmer of his thoughts, for she reined closer, and her teeth were digging into her lower lip. “Well, aren’t you going to do anything?” she demanded desperately. “You’re here, and I’ve told you I—care. Are you going to leave me to bear Spikes’ abuse always?”
“You married him,” Weary remarked mildly and a bit defensively. It seemed to him that loyalty to Irish impelled him.
She tossed her head contemptuously. “It’s nice to throw that at me. I might get back at you and say you loved me. You did, you know.”
“And you married Spikes; what can I do about it?”
“What—can—you—do—about it? Did you come back to ask me that?” There was a well defined, white line around her mouth, and her eyes were growing ominously bright.
Weary did not like the look of her, nor her tone. He felt, somehow, glad that it was not Irish, but himself; Irish might have felt the thrall of old times—whatever they were—and have been tempted. His eyes, also, grew ominous, but his voice was very smooth. (Irish, too, had that trait of being quietest when he was most roused.)
“I came back on business; I will confess I didn’t come to see you,” he said. “I’m only a bone-headed cowpuncher, but even cowpunchers can play square. They don’t, as a rule step in between a man and his wife. You married Spikes, and according to your own tell, you did it to spite me. So I say again, what can I do about it?”
She looked at him dazedly.
“Uh course,” he went on gently, “I won’t stand to see any man abuse his wife, or bandy her name or mine around the country. If I should happen to meet up with Spikes, there’ll likely be some dust raised. And if I was you, and Spikes abused me, I’d quit him cold.”
“Oh, I see,” she said sharply, with an exaggeration of scorn. “You have got over it, then. There’s someone else. I might have known a man can’t be trusted to care for the same woman long. You ran after me and acted the fool, and kept on till you made me believe you really meant all you said—”
“And you married Spikes,” Weary reiterated—ungenerously, perhaps; but it was the only card he felt sure of. There was no gainsaying that fact, it seemed. She had married Spikes in a fit of pique at Irish. Still, it was not well to remind her of it too often. In the next five minutes of tumultuous recrimination, Weary had cause to remember what Shakespeare has to say about a woman scorned, and he wondered, more than ever, if Irish had really cared. The girl—even now he did not know what name to call her—was showing a strain of coarse temper; the temper that must descend to personalities and the calling of unflattering names. Weary, not being that type of male human who can retort in kind, sat helpless and speechless the while she berated him. When at last he found opportunity for closing the interview and riding on, her anger-sharpened voice followed him shrewishly afar. Weary breathed deep relief when the distance swallowed it, and lifted his gray hat to wipe his beaded forehead.
“Mamma mine!” he said fervently to Glory. “Irish was sure playing big luck when she did marry Spikes; and I don’t wonder at the poor devil taking to drink. I would, too, if my little schoolma’am—”
At the ranch, he hastened to make it quite plain that he was not Ira Mallory, but merely his cousin, Will Davidson. He was quite determined to put a stop to all this annoying mixing up of identities. And as for Spikes Weber, since meeting the woman Spikes claimed from him something very like sympathy; only Weary had no mind to stand calmly and hear Irish maligned by anybody.
The next day he rode again to Sleepy Trail to meet the stage, hoping fervently that he would get some word—and that favorable—from Chip. He was thinking, just then, a great deal about his own affairs and not at all about the affairs of Irish. So that he was inside the saloon before he remembered that the bartender knew him for Irish.
The bartender nodded to him in friendly fashion, and jerked his head warningly toward a far corner where two men sat playing seven-up half-heartedly. Weary looked, saw that both were strangers, and puzzled a minute over the mysterious gesture of the bartender. It did not occur to him, just then, that one of the men might be Spikes Weber.
The man who was facing him nipped the corners of the cards idly together and glanced up; saw Weary standing there with an elbow on the bar looking at him, and pushed back his chair with an oath unmistakably warlike. Weary resettled his hat and looked mildly surprised. The bartender moved out of range and watched breathlessly.
“You ———!” swore Spikes Weber, coming truculently forward, hand to hip. He was of medium height and stockily built, with the bull neck and little, deep-set eyes that go often with a nature quarrelsome.
Weary still leaned his elbow on the bar and smiled at him tolerantly. “Feel bad anywhere?” he wanted to know, when the other was very
close.
Spikes Weber, from very surprise, stopped and regarded Weary for a space before he began swearing again. His hand was still at his hip, but the gun it touched remained in his pocket. Plainly, he had not expected just this attitude.
Weary waited, smothering a yawn, until the other finished a particularly pungent paragraph. “A good jolt uh brandy’ll sometimes cure a bad case uh colic,” he remarked. “Better have our friend here fix yuh up—but it’ll be on you. I ain’t paying for drinks just now.”
Spikes snorted and began upon the pedigree and general character of Irish. Weary took his elbow off the bar, and his eyes lost their sunniness and became a hard blue, darker than was usual. It took a good deal to rouse Weary to the fighting point, and it is saying much for the tongue of Spikes that Weary was roused thoroughly.
“That’ll be about enough,” he said sharply, cutting short a sentence from the other. “I kinda hated to start in and take yuh all to pieces—but yuh better saw off right there, or I can’t be responsible—”
A gun barrel caught the light menacingly, and Weary sprang like the pounce of a cat, wrested the gun from the hand of Spikes and rapped him smartly over the head with the barrel. “Yuh would, eh?” he snarled, and tossed the gun upon the bar, where the bartender caught it as it slid along the smooth surface and put it out of reach.
After that, chairs went spinning out of the way, and glasses jingled to the impact of a body striking the floor with much force. Came the slapping sound of hammering fists and the scuffling of booted feet, together with the hard breathing of fighting men.
Spikes, on his back, looked up into the blazing eyes he thought were the eyes of Irish and silently acknowledged defeat. But Weary would not let it go at that.
“Are yuh whipped to a finish, so that yuh don’t want any more trouble with anybody?” he wanted to know.