Louisiana Lou

by William West Winter

  CHAPTER VII

  MAID MARIAN GROWN UP

  The Empire Pool Room was an innocent enough place to the uninitiate.To those who had the confidence of the proprietor it was somethingelse. There were rooms upstairs where games were played that weresomewhat different from pool and billiards. There was also a bar upthere and the drinks that were served over it were not of the softvariety. It seemed that Sucatash and Dave MacKay were known here andhad the entr?e to the inner circles.

  De Launay followed them trustfully. The only thing he took the troubleto note was at a rack in front of the place where--strange anachronismin a town that swarmed with shiny automobiles--were tethered twoslumberous, moth-eaten burros laden with heavy packs, miners' pan,pick and bedding.

  "Prospector?" he asked, indicating the dilapidated songsters of thedesert.

  The two cow hands looked at the beasts, identifying them with thefacility of their breed.

  "Old Jim Banker, I reckon. In for a wrastlin' match with the demonrum. Anything you want to know about the Esmeraldas he can tell you,if you can make him talk."

  "Old Jim Banker? Old-timer, is he?"

  "Been a-soakin' liquor and a-dryin' out in the desert hereaways eversince fourteen ninety-two, I reckon. B'en here so long he resembles ahorned toad more'n anything else." This from Sucatash.

  De Launay paused inside the door. "I wonder. Are there any moreold-timers left hereaways?"

  "Oh, sure. There's some that dates back past the Spanish War. I reckon'Snake' Murphy--he tends bar for Johnny the Greek, who runs thishonkatonk--he's one of 'em. Banker's another. You remember when themWall Street guys hired 'Panamint Charlie' Wantage to splurge East in aprivate car scatterin' double eagles all the way and hoorayin' aboutthe big mine he had in Death Valley?"

  "No," said De Launay. "When was that?"

  "Back in nineteen eight."

  "I was in Algeria then. I'd never heard. But I remember Panamint. Heand Jim Banker were partners, weren't they?"

  "They was." Sucatash looked curiously at De Launay, wondering how aman who was in Algeria came to know so much about these old survivals."Leastways, I've heard tell they was both of them prospectin' theEsmeraldas a whole lot in them days and hangin' together. But Panamintstruck this soft graft and wouldn't let Jim in on it, so they broke upthe household. You know--or maybe you don't--that Panamint was finallyfound dead in a cave in Death Valley and there was talk that Bankerfollowed him there and beefed him, thinkin' he really had a mine.Nothin' come of it except to make folks a little dubious about Jim. Henever was remarkable for popularity, nohow, so it don't amount tomuch."

  "And Snake Murphy: he used to keep the road house at the ford over theriver, didn't he?"

  Once more Sucatash, fairly well informed on ancient history himself,eyed De Launay askance.

  "Which he might have. That's before my time, I reckon. I was justbein' weaned when Louisiana was run out of the country. My old mancould tell you all about it. He's Carter Wallace, of the Lazy Y atWillow Spring."

  "I knew him," said De Launay.

  "You knowed my old man?"

  "But maybe he'd not remember me."

  Sucatash sensed the fact that De Launay intended to be reticent. "Dadsure knows all the old-timers and their histories," he declared. "Himand old Ike Brandon was the last ranchers left this side theEsmeraldas, and since Ike checked in a year ago he's the lastsurvivor. There's a few has moved into town, but mostly the place isall pilgrims and nesters."

  They had climbed the stairs and come into the hidden sanctum of Johnnythe Greek, and De Launay looked about curiously, noting the tables andthe scattering of customers about the place, rough men, closecropped, hard faced and sullen of countenance, most of them, typicalof the sort of itinerant labor that was filling the town with recruitsand initiates of the I.?W.?W. There were one or two who were ofcleaner strain, like the two young cowmen. Behind the bar was ared-faced, shifty-eyed man, wearing a mustache so black as to appearstartling in contrast to his sandy hair. De Launay eyed him curiously,noting with a secret smile that his right arm appeared to be stiff atthe wrist. He made no comment, however, but followed the two men tothe bar where the business of the day began. It consisted of imbibingvile whisky served by the stiff-armed Snake Murphy.

  But De Launay still had something on his mind. "You say Ike Brandon'sdead?" he asked. "What became of his granddaughter?"

  "Went to work," said Sucatash. "Dave, where's Marian Pettis?"

  "Beatin' a typewriter fer 'Cap' Wilding, last I heard," said Dave.

  "She was a little girl when I knew her," said De Launay, his voicesoftening a little with a queer change of accent into a Southern slur.Snake Murphy, who was polishing the rough bar in front of him, glancedquickly up, as though hearing something vaguely familiar. But he sawnothing but De Launay's thoughtful eyes and sober face with its small,pointed mustache.

  "'Scuse me, gents," he murmured. "What'll it be?"

  "A very little girl," said De Launay, absently looking into andthrough Murphy. "A sort of little fairy."

  The lanky Sucatash looked at him askance, catching the note ofsentiment. "Yeah?" he said, a bit dryly. "Well, folks change, youknow. They grow up."

  "Yes," said De Launay.

  "And this Marian Pettis, she done growed up. I ain't sayin' nothin'against a lady, you understand, but she ain't exactly in the fairyclass nowadays, I reckon."

  De Launay, somewhat to his surprise, although he sensed the note ofwarning and dry enlightenment in Sucatash's words, felt no shock. Hehad had a sentimental desire to see if the girl of six had fulfilledthe promise of her youth after nineteen years, had even dreamed, inhis soberer moments, of coming back to her to play the r?le of aprince, but nevertheless, he found himself philosophically acceptingthe possibility hinted at by Sucatash and even feeling a vague sort ofrelief.

  "Who's Wilding?" he asked. They told him that he was a young lawyer ofthe town, an officer of their regiment during the war. They seemed tothink highly of him.

  De Launay had postponed his intended debauch. In spite ofmademoiselle's conviction, his lapses from sobriety had been onlyoccasional as long as he had work to do, and this occasion, after theinformation he had gathered, was one calling for the exercise of hisfaculties.

  "If you-all will hang around and herd this here desert rat, Banker,with you when you can find him, and then call at the hotel forMademoiselle d'Albret, I'll look up this lawyer and his stenographer.I have to interview her."

  He left them then and went out, a bit unsteady, seedy,unprepossessing, but carrying under his dilapidated exterior someremains of the man he had been.

  He reached Wilding's office and found the man, a young fellow whoappeared capable and alert. He also found, with a distinct shock, thegirl who had occupied a niche in his memory for nineteen years. Hefound her with banged and docked hair, rouged and bepowdered, clad ingeorgette and glimmering artificial silk, tapping at a typewriter inWilding's office. He had seen Broadway swarming with replicas of her.

  His business with Wilding took a little time. He explained thatmademoiselle might have need of his legal services and certainly wouldwish to see Miss Pettis. The lawyer called the girl in and to her DeLaunay explained that mademoiselle was the daughter of hergrandfather's former employee and that she would wish to discuss withher certain matters connected with the death of French Pete. The girlswept De Launay with hard, disdainful eyes, and he knew that she wasforming a concept of mademoiselle by comparison with his own generaldisreputableness.

  "Oh, sure; I jus' as soon drop in on this dame," she said. "One o'these Frog refygees, I s'pose. Well, believe me, she's come a long wayto get disappointed if she thinks I'm givin' any hand-outs togranddad's pensioners. I got troubles of my own."

  "We'll be at the hotel, Miss Pettis and I," said Wilding. "That willdo, Miss Pettis."

  The girl teetered out on her spiky heels, with a sway of hips.

  De Launay turned back to the lawyer. "I've a little personal businessyou might attend to," he said. Wi
lding set himself to listen,resignedly, imagining that this bum would yield him nothing ofprofit.

  In ten minutes he was staring at De Launay with amazement that wasalmost stupefaction, fingering documents as though he must awake fromsleep and find he had been dreaming. De Launay talked on, his voiceslightly thick, his eyes heavy, but his mind clear and capable.

  Wilding went with him to a bank and, after their business there wasfinished, shook hands in parting with a mixture of astonishment,disapproval and awe.

  De Launay, having finished the more pressing parts of his business,made straight for Johnny the Greek's. The two burros still stoodthere, eyes closed and heads hanging. He walked around them beforegoing in. A worn, dirty leather scabbard, bursting at the seams,slanted up past the withers of one brute, and out of its mouthprojected the butt of a rifle. The plate was bright with wear, and thewalnut of the stock was battered and dull with age.

  De Launay scratched the chin of the burro, was rewarded by the lazyflopping of an ear and then went in to his delayed orgy.

  He had received a shock, as he realized he would, and for the momentall thought of Solange and his responsibility to her had vanished. Hehad come back home after twenty years, seeking solace in the scenes hehad known as a boy, seeking, with half-sentimental memory, a littlegirl with bright hair and sweet face. He had come to find a roaring,artificial city on the site of the range, the friends of his youthgone, the men he had known dying out, his very trade a vanishing art.Instead of a fairy maiden, sweet and demure, a grown-up child as hehad vaguely pictured her, he had found a brazen, painted, slangy,gum-chewing flapper, a modern of moderns such as would have broken oldIke Brandon's heart--as it doubtless had. The last of the old-timerswere a bootlegging bartender and a half-crazy and wholly viciousprospector.

  Writhing under the sting of futility and disappointment, even therotten poison served by Johnny the Greek appealed to him. His oldneurosis, almost forgotten in the half-tolerant, half-amused interestin Mademoiselle d'Albret's adventure which had occupied his activitiesduring the past weeks, revived with redoubled force. Sick, shaken, anddisgusted, he strode through the pool room and, with deliberationmasking his avid desire for forgetfulness, climbed the stairs to thehidden oasis presided over by his old enemy, Snake Murphy.