CHAPTER III
BUCK THORNTON, MAN'S MAN
Those who had rushed into the outer darkness in the wake of thehighwayman returned presently. Mere impulse and swift natural reactionfrom their former enforced inactivity rather than any hope of successhad sent them hot-foot on the pursuit. The noisy, windy night, theabsolute dark, obviated all possibility of coming up with him. Grumblingand theorising, they returned to the room and closed the door behindthem.
Now that the tense moment of the actual robbery had passed there was ageneral buzzing talk, voices lifted in surmise, a lively excitementreplacing the cosy quiet of a few moments ago. Voices from the spare bedroom urged Ma Drury to bring an account of the adventure, and Poke'swife, having first escorted the wounded man to her own bed and donned awrapper and shoes and stockings, gave to Lew Yates's women folk ascircumstantial a description of the whole affair as though she herselfhad witnessed it.
After a while a man here and there began to eat, taking a slab of breadand meat in one hand and a cup of black coffee in the other, walkingback and forth and talking thickly. The girl at the fireplace sat stiffand still, staring at the flames; she had lost her appetite, had quiteforgotten it in fact. At first from under the hand shading her eyes shewatched the men going for one drink after another, the strong drink ofthe frontier; but after a little, as though this had been a novel sightin the beginning but soon lost interest for her, she let her look droopto the fire. Fresh dry fuel had been piled on the back log and at last agrateful sense of warmth and sleepiness pervaded her being. She nolonger felt hunger; she was too tired, her eyelids had grown too heavyfor her to harbour the thought of food. She settled forward in her chairand nodded. The talk of the men, though as they ate and drank theirvoices were lifted, grew fainter and fainter in her ears, further andfurther away. Finally they were blended in an indistinguishable murmurthat meant nothing.... In a doze she caught herself wondering if thewounded man in the next room would live. It was terribly still in there.
She was in that mental and physical condition when, the body tired andthe brain betwixt dozing and waking, thought becomes a feverish process,the mind snatching vivid pictures from the day's experience and weavingthem into as illogical a pattern as that of the crazy quilt over hershoulders. All day long she had ridden in the swaying, lurching, jerkingstage until now in her chair, as she slipped a little forward, sheexperienced the sensations of the day. Many a time that day as theracing horses obeying the experienced hand of the driver swept around asharp turn in the road she had looked down a sheer cliff that had madeher flesh quiver so that it had been hard not to draw back and cry out.She had seen the horses leaping forward scamper like mad runaways down along slope, dashing through the spray of a rising creek to take theuphill climb on the run. And tonight she had seen a masked man shootdown one of her day's companions and loot the United States mail.... Andin a register somewhere she had written down the name of Hill's Corners.The place men called Dead Man's Alley. She had never heard the nameuntil today. Tomorrow she would ask the exact significance of it....
At last she was sound asleep. She had found comfort by twisting sidewaysin her chair and resting her shoulder against the warm rock-masonry ofthe outer edge of the fireplace. She awoke with a start. What hadrecalled her to consciousness she did not know. Perhaps a new voice inher ears, perhaps Poke Drury's tones become suddenly shrill. Or it maybe that just a sudden sinking and falling away into utter silence of allvoices, the growing still of hands upon dice cups, all eloquent of a newbreathless atmosphere in the room had succeeded in impressing upon hersleep-drugged brain the fact of still another vital, electricallycharged moment. She turned in her chair. Then she settled back,wondering.
The door was open; the wind was sweeping in; again old newspapers wentflying wildly as though in panicky fear. The men in the room werestaring even as she stared, in bewilderment. She heard old man Adams'stongue clicking in his toothless old mouth. She saw Hap Smith, hisexpression one of pure amazement, standing, half crouching as though tospring, his hands like claws at his sides. And all of this because ofthe man who stood in the open doorway, looking in.
The man who had shot Bert Stone, who had looted a mail bag, hadreturned! That was her instant thought. And clearly enough it was thethought shared by all of Poke Drury's guests. To be sure he carried novisible gun and his face was unhidden. But there was the hugeness ofhim, bulking big in the doorway, the spare, sinewy height made thetaller by his tall boot heels, the wide black hat with the drooping brimfrom which rain drops trickled in a quick flashing chain, the shaggyblack chaps of a cowboy in holiday attire, the soft grey shirt, the greyneck handkerchief about a brown throat, even the end of a faded bandanatrailing from a hip pocket.
He stood stone-still a moment, looking in at them with that queerexpression in his eyes. Then he stepped forward swiftly and closed thedoor. He had glanced sharply at the girl by the fire; she had shaded hereyes with her hand, the shadow of which lay across her face. He turnedagain from her to the men, his regard chiefly for Hap Smith.
"Well?" he said lightly, being the first to break the silence. "What'swrong?"
There are moments in which it seems as if time itself stood still.During the spellbound fragment of time a girl, looking out from under acupped hand, noted a man and marvelled at him. By his sheer physicalbigness, first, he fascinated her. He was like the night and the stormitself, big, powerful, not the kind born to know and suffer restraint;but rather the type of man to dwell in such lands as stretched mileafter unfenced mile "out yonder" beyond the mountains. As he moved hegave forth a vital impression of immense animal power; standing still hewas dynamic. A sculptor might have carved him in stone and named theresult "Masculinity."
The brief moment in which souls balanced and muscles were chained passedswiftly. Strangely enough it was old man Adams who precipitated action.The old man was nervous; more than that, bred here, he was fearless.Also fortune had given him a place of vantage. His body was halfscreened by that of Hap Smith and by a corner of the bar. His eager oldhand snatched out Hap Smith's dragging revolver, levelled it andsteadied it across the bar, the muzzle seeking the young giant who hadcome a step forward.
"Hands up!" clacked the old man in tremulous triumph. "I got you, dadburn you!" And at the same instant Hap Smith cried out wonderingly:
"Buck Thornton! You!"
The big man stood very still, only his head turning quickly so that hiseyes were upon the feverish eyes of old man Adams.
"Yes," he returned coolly. "I'm Thornton." And, "Got me, have you?" headded just as coolly.
Winifred Waverly stiffened in her chair; already tonight had she heardgunshots and smelled powder and seen spurting red blood. A little surgeof sick horror brought its tinge of vertigo and left her clear thoughtedand afraid.
"Hands up, I say," repeated the old man sharply. "I got you."
"You go to hell," returned Thornton, and his coolness had grown intocurt insolence. "I never saw the man yet that I'm going to do that for."He came on two more quick, long strides, thrust his face forward andcried in a voice that rang out commandingly above the crash of the wind,"_Drop that gun! Drop it!_"
Old man Adams had no intention of obeying; he had played poker himselffor some fifty odd years and knew what bluff meant. But for just onebrief instant he was taken aback, fairly shocked into a flutteringindecision by the thunderous voice. Then, before he could recoverhimself the big man had flung a heavy wet coat into Adams's face, a gunhad been fired wildly, the bullet ripping into the ceiling, and BuckThornton had sprung forward and whipped the smoking weapon from anuncertain grasp. Winifred Waverly, without breathing and withoutstirring, saw Buck Thornton's strong white teeth in a wide, goodhumoured smile.
"I know you were just joking but..."
He whirled and fired, never lifting the gun from his side. And a manacross the room from him cried out and dropped his own gun and graspedhis shoulder with a hand which slowly went red.
Now again she saw Buck Thornton's teet
h. But no longer in a smile. Hehad seemed to condone the act of old Adams as a bit of senility; thelook in his eyes was one of blazing rage as this other man drew back andback from him, muttering.
"I'd have killed you then," said Thornton coldly, his rage the coldwrath that begets murder in men's souls. "But I shot just a shade tooquick. Try it again, or any other man here draw, and by God, I'll showyou a dead man in ten seconds."
He drew back and put the bar just behind him. Then with a suddengesture, he flung down the revolver which had come from Hap Smith'sholster and more recently from old man Adams's fingers, and his handflashed to his arm pit and back into plain sight, his own weapon in it.
"I don't savvy your game, sports," he said with the same cool insolence."But if you want me to play just go ahead and deal me a hand."
To the last man of them they looked at him and hesitated. It was writtenin large bold script upon the faces of them that the girl's thought wastheir thought. And yet, though there were upward a dozen of them andthough Poke Drury's firelight flickered on several gun barrels andthough here were men who were not cowards and who did not lackinitiative, to the last man of them they hesitated. As his glance spedhere and there it seemed to stab at them like a knife blade. Hechallenged them and stood quietly waiting for the first move. And thegirl by the fire knew almost from the first that no hostile move wasforthcoming. And she knew further that had a man there lifted his handBuck Thornton's promise would have been kept and he'd show them a deadman in ten seconds.
"Suppose," said Thornton suddenly, "you explain. Poke Drury, this beingyour shack.... What's the play?"
Drury moistened his lips. But it was Hap Smith who spoke up.
"I've knowed you some time, Buck," he said bluntly. "An' I never knowedyou to go wrong. But ... Well, not an hour ago a man your build an' sizean' with a bandana across his face stuck this place up."
"Well?" said Thornton coolly.
"At first," went on the stage driver heavily and a bit defiantly, "wethought it was him come back when you come in." His eye met Thornton'sin a long unwavering look. "We ain't certain yet," he ended briefly.
Thornton pondered the matter, his thumb softly caressing the hammer ofhis revolver.
"So that's it, is it?" he said finally.
"That's it," returned Hap Smith.
"And what have you decided to do in the matter?"
Smith shrugged. "We acted like a pack of kids," he said. "Lettin' youget the drop on us like this. Oh, you're twice as quick on the draw asthe best two of us an' we know it. An' ... an' we ain't dead sure as weain't made a mistake."
His candidly honest face was troubled. He was not sure that Thornton wasthe same man who so short a time ago had shot Bert Stone. It did notseem reasonable to Hap Smith that a man, having successfully made hisplay, would return just to court trouble.
"If you're on the square, Buck," he said in a moment, "throw down yourgun an' let's see the linin' of your pockets!"
"Yes?" retorted Thornton. "What else, Mr. Smith?"
"Let us take a squint at that bandana trailin' out'n your back pocket,"said Smith crisply. "If it ain't got deep holes cut in it!"
Now that was stupid, thought Winifred. Nothing could be more stupid, infact. If this man had committed the crime and had thus voluntarilyreturned to the road house, he would be prepared. He would have emptiedhis pockets, he certainly would have had enough brains to dispose of sotell-tale a bit of evidence as a handkerchief with slits let into it.
"Maybe," said Thornton quietly, and she did not detect the contemptuousinsolence under the slow words until he had nearly completed hismeaning, "you'd like to have me tell you where I'm riding from and why?And maybe you'd like to have me take off my shoes so you can look inthem for your lost treasures?" Now was his contempt unhidden. He strodequickly across the room, coming to the fireplace where the girl sat. Hetook the handkerchief from his pocket, keeping it rolled up in his hand;stooping forward he dropped it into the fire, well behind the back log.
Then for the first time he saw her face plainly. As he had come close toher she had slipped from her chair and stood now, her face lifted,looking at him. His gaze was arrested as his eyes met hers. He stoodvery still, plainly showing the surprise which he made no slightesteffort to disguise. She flushed, bit her lip, went a fiery red. He putup his hand and removed his hat.
"I didn't expect," he said, still looking at her with that intent,openly admiring acknowledgment of her beauty, "to see a girl like you.Here."
The thing which struck her was that still there were men in the room whowere armed and distrustful of him and that he had forgotten them. Whatshe could not gauge was the full of the effect she had had upon him. Hehad marked a female form at the fireside, shawled by a shapelesspatchwork quilt; out of it, magically it seemed to his startledfancies, there had stepped a superb creature with eyes on fire with heryouth, a superlatively lovely creature, essentially feminine. From theflash of her eyes to the curl of her hair, she was all girl. And to BuckThornton, man's man of the wide open country beyond the mountains, whohad set his eyes upon no woman for a half year, who had looked on nowoman of her obvious class and type for two years, who had seen thewoman of one half her physical loveliness and tugging charm never, theeffect was instant and tremendous. A little shiver went through him; hiseyes caught fire.
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