Louisiana Lou

by William West Winter

  CHAPTER IX

  BEHIND PRISON BARS

  A somewhat intoxicated cow-puncher, in from the mountain ranges northof the town, intrigued De Launay when he returned to Johnny theGreek's. To be exact, it was not the cow-puncher, who was merely agawky, loud-mouthed and uncouth importation from a Middle Westernfarm, broken to ride after a fashion, to rope and brand when necessaryand to wield pliers in mending barbed wire, the sort of product, infact, that had disillusioned De Launay. It was his clothes that theex-l?gionnaire admired.

  They were clothes about like those worn by Sucatash and Dave Mackay.De Launay could have purchased such clothes at any one of a dozenshops, but they would have been new and conspicuous. The fellow wore awide-brimmed hat, the wear of which had resulted in certainpicturesque sags that De Launay considered extremely artistic. Hisboots were small and fairly new, and not over adorned withornamentation. There was also a buckskin waistcoat which was aged andripened. The other accessories were unimportant. Such things asspurs, bridle, and saddle De Launay had bought when he acquired ahorse.

  De Launay had imbibed enough of the terrible liquor served by SnakeMurphy to completely submerge his everyday personality. He retainedmerely a fixed idea that he wished to return as far as possible inspirit to the days of nineteen years ago. To his befuddled mind, thefirst step was to dress the part. He was groping after his lost youth,unable to realize that it was, indeed, lost beyond recovery; that hewas, in hardly a particular, the wild lad who had once ridden thedesert ranges.

  The more he drank, the firmer became the notion that, to him, insteadof to this imitation of the real thing, rightfully belonged theseinsignia of a vanishing fraternity. He considered ways and means,rejecting one after another. He vaguely laid plans to wait until thefellow went to his quarters for the night, and then break in and stealhis clothes. A better plan suggested itself; to ply him with drinkuntil unconscious and then drag him somewhere and strip him. This alsodid not seem practical. Then he thought of inducing him to gamble andwinning all his possessions, but a remnant of sense deterred him. DeLaunay, though he gambled recklessly, never, by any chance, won. Infact, his losings were so monotonous that the diversion had ceased tobe exciting and he had abandoned it.

  Finally, having reached a stage where the effort to think was toomuch for him, he did the obvious thing and offered to buy the fellow'sclothes. The cow-puncher was almost as drunk as De Launay and showedit much more. He was also belligerent, which De Launay never was.Furthermore, he had reached the stage where he was suspicious ofanything out of the ordinary. He thought De Launay was ridiculinghim.

  "Sell you my clo'es! Say, feller, what you givin' me?"

  A bullet-headed, crop-haired, and lowering laborer, who was leaningagainst the bar, uttered a snorting laugh.

  "Lamp de guys wit' de French heels an' de one wit' de sissy eyebrow on'is lip, would youse? Dey's a coupla heroes wat's been to France; deygets dem habits dere."

  The sensitive cow hand glared about him, but the leering toughs whoechoed their spokesman's laughter were not safe to challenge. Therewere too many of them. De Launay stood alone and, to him as to theothers, that little pointed mustache was a mark of affectation andeffeminacy.

  "You better pull yer freight before I take a wallop at yuh," heremarked, loudly.

  "Tell 'im to go git a shave, bo," suggested the bullet-headed man.

  "I'll singe the eyebrow offa him myself if he don't git outa here,"growled the cow hand, turning back to his liquor.

  De Launay went back to his table and sat down. He brooded on hisfailure, and to him it seemed that he must have that hat, thatwaistcoat and those boots at any cost. The others in the roomsnickered and jeered as they eyed his sagging figure and closed eyes.

  He finally got up and lurched out of the room. The door opened on anarrow stairway leading down to a sort of pantry behind the mainbilliard parlor on the ground floor. The stairway was steep and dark,and the landing was small and only dimly lighted by a dusty, cobwebbedsquare of window high up in the outer wall.

  De Launay sat on the top step and resumed his brooding, his head sunkon his arms, which were folded on his knees. He felt a deep sense ofinjury, and his sorrow for himself was acute. He was only halfconscious of his sufferings, but they were dully insistent, above thedeadening influence of the liquor. There were some things he wantedand they continually ran through his mind in jumbled sequence. Therewas a pair of high heels, then there was a sort of vision oflimitless, abandoned plain covered with yellowing grass and black sageclumps, and surmounted with a brilliant blue sky. Following this was aconfused picture of a blackened, greasy waistcoat from which a dark,fathomless pair of eyes looked out. He wondered how a waistcoat couldhave a pair of eyes, and why the eyes should hold in them lights likethose that flashed from a diamond.

  Men came up the stairs and crowded roughly past him. He paid them noheed. Occasionally other men left the hidden barroom and went down.These were rougher. One of them even kicked him in passing. He merelylooked up, dully took in the figure and sank his head again on hisarms. Inside, newcomers advised Snake Murphy to go out and throw thebum into the street. As this might have led to inquiries, Snakedecided to leave well enough alone until dark.

  Finally the cow-puncher, well loaded with more liquor than he couldcomfortably carry, decided to take an uncertain departure. He waved adebonair and inclusive farewell to all those about him, teetered a biton his high heels, straddled an imaginary horse, and, with legs wellapart and body balanced precariously, tacked, by and full, for thedoor.

  Reaching it, he leaned against it, felt for the knob, turned it,carefully backed away from the door and opened it. Holding the edge,he eased himself around it and, balancing on the outer side, closed itagain with elaborate care. Then he took a tentative step and liftedhis hand from its support.

  The next moment he tripped over De Launay and fell over his head,turning a complete flip.

  De Launay came out of his trance with a start to find a hundred andseventy pounds of cow-puncher sprawling in his lap and clinging abouthis neck. His dull eyes, gummy with sleep, showed him a hat of sorts,a greasy waistcoat----

  Calmly he took the cowboy by the neck and raised him. The fellowuttered a cry that was choked. De Launay pulled off his hat andsubstituted his own on the rumpled locks of the young man. He thenswung him about as though he were a child, laid him over his knees andstripped from him his waistcoat.

  His own coat was tossed aside while he wriggled into the ancientgarment. He held the cowboy during this process by throwing one legover him, around his neck, and clamping his legs together. The cowboyuttered muffled yells of protest.

  He hauled the fellow's boots off without much trouble, but when itcame to removing his own shoes there was a difficulty which he finallyadjusted by rising, grasping the man by the neck again--incidentallyshutting off his cries--and depositing him on the top step, afterwhich he sat upon him.

  It took only a second to rip the laces from his shoes and kick themoff. Then he started to pull on the boots. But the noise had finallyaroused those inside and they came charging out.

  Fortunately for De Launay, Snake Murphy and his cohorts were sosurprised to see the pose of the late guests that they gave him amoment of respite. He had time to get off of the cowboy and stamp thesecond boot on his foot. Then, with satisfaction, he turned to facethem.

  They answered the cowboy's protesting shout with a charge. De Launaywas peaceful, but he did not intend to lose his prize without a fight.He smote the first man with a straight jab that shook all his teeth.The next one he ducked under, throwing him over his shoulder and downthe stairs. Another he swept against the wall with a crash.

  They were over him and around him, slugging, kicking, and pushing. Hefought mechanically, and with incredible efficiency, striking with asnaky speed and accuracy that would have amazed any one capable ofnoting it. But they were too many for him. He was shoved from thestep, crowded back, stumbling downward, losing his balance, strugglinggamely but hopelessly, u
ntil, like Samson, he fell backward, draggingwith him a confused heap of his assailants, who went bumping down thestairs in a squirming, kicking mass.

  They brought up at the bottom, striking in all directions, with DeLaunay beneath, missing most of the destruction. The stair well wasdark and obscure, but at the bottom was a narrow space where thebattle waged wildly. De Launay managed to get to his hands and knees,but over him surged and swept a murmurous, sweating, reeking crowd whostruck and battered each other in the gloom.

  The door into the billiard parlor burst open and Johnny the Greek andre?nforcements rushed on the scene. But Johnny, not knowing what thefight was about and not being able to find out--the outraged cowboyhad thrust himself before a hostile fist in the start of the encounterand now lay unconscious at the top of the stairs--proceeded to dealwith what he imagined was impartiality. He simply added his weight tothe combat. This naturally increased the confusion.

  Such pandemonium was bound to attract attention. Still unable tocomprehend the reason of the whole affair, De Launay was crawlingbetween legs and making a more or less undamaged progress to the door,while his enemies battered one another. He had almost reached it, andwas rising to his feet, when a new element was injected into the riot.A couple of uniformed policemen threw themselves into the m?l?e.

  De Launay saw only the uniforms. His wrath surged up. What werepolicemen doing in this country of range and sheriffs? What had theyto do with the West? They stood for all that had come to the country,all the change and innovation that he hated.

  He expressed his feelings by letting the first policeman have it onthe point of the jaw. The second he proceeded to walk over, to beatback and to drive through the door, out into the big room and clearto the sidewalk. The man resisted, swinging his mace, but he found DeLaunay a cold, inhumanly accurate and swift antagonist, whom it wasdifficult to hit and impossible to dodge. Twice he was knocked down,and twice he leaped up, swinging his mace at a head that was neverthere when the club reached its objective.

  The policeman whom De Launay had first knocked down had arisen quicklyand, seeing his Nemesis now pursuing his comrade, ran to the rescue.De Launay could avoid a club in the hands of the man in front of himbut that wielded by the man behind was another matter. It fell on hishead just as he was driving the other policeman through the door intothe street. It was a shrewd blow and he went to the ground under it.

  While they waited for the patrol wagon, the two policemen tried togather information about the cause of the fight, but they found Johnnythe Greek somewhat reticent. The cowboy still was upstairs, held thereby Snake Murphy. The others were more or less confused in their ideas.Johnny was chiefly anxious that the police should remove the prisonerand refrain from any close inquiry into the premises, so he merelystated that the fellow had come in drunk and had made an attack onsome of the men playing pool. His henchman was seeing to it that therobbed and wronged cowboy had no opportunity to tell a story thatwould send the police upstairs.

  Half conscious and wholly drunk, De Launay was carted to SulphurFalls' imposing stone jail, where he was duly slated before a policesergeant for drunkenness, assault and battery, mayhem, inciting ariot, and resisting an officer in the performance of his duty. Then hewas led away and deposited in a cell. Here he went soundly to sleep.

  In the course of time he began to dream. He dreamed that he was on araft which floated on a limitless sea of bunch grass, alkali andsagebrush, where the waves ran high and regularly, rocking the raftback and forth monotonously and as monotonously throwing him from sideto side and against a mast to which he clung. Right in front of theraft, floating in the air above the waves, drifted a slender, veiledfigure, and through the veil sparkled a pair of eyes which werebottomless and yet held the colors of the rainbow in their depths.Above this figure, which beckoned him on, and after which the raftdrifted faster and faster, was a halo of sparkling hair, which caughtand broke up the light into prismatic colors.

  The raft sailed faster and faster, rotating in a circle until it wasspinning about the ghostly figure, which grew more and more distinctas the raft gyrated more crazily. Raft, desert, waves and sky becameconfused, hazy, fading out, but the figure stood there as he openedhis eyes and the stanchion thumped him in the ribs.

  His sleep and his liquor-drugged mind came back to him and he foundhimself lying on his bunk in a cell, while Solange stood before himand a turnkey poked him in the ribs and rocked him to wake him up.

  Sick, bruised and battered, he raised himself, swung his feet to thefloor and sat up on the edge of the bed. He tried to stand, but hishead swam and he became so dizzy that he feared to fall.

  "Don't get up," said Solange, icily.

  The turnkey went to the door. "I reckon he's all right now, ma'am. Yougot half an hour. If he gets rough just holler and we'll settle him."

  "Is the charge serious?" asked Solange.

  "It ought to be. He's a sure-enough hard case. But a fine and sixmonths on the rocks is about all he'll get."

  De Launay looked up sullenly. The turnkey made a derisive, threateningmotion and, grinning, slammed the door behind him, locking it.

  De Launay licked his dry lips. There was a pitcher of water on a standand he seized it, almost draining it as he gulped the lukewarm stuffdown his sizzling throat.

  It strengthened and revived him. He got up from the bed and stoodaside. Solange stood like a statue, but her eyes scorched him throughher veil.

  "So this is what a general of France has come to," she said. Words andtone burned him like fire. He said nothing, but motioned to the bedas the only seat in the cell.

  He picked up the hat, the battered thing that had brought on thisdisaster, from the floor and, stooping, felt the sharp throb of hishalf-fractured skull. His weakened nerves reacted sharply, and heuttered a half-suppressed cry, raising his hand to the lump on hiscranium.

  Solange started. "They have hurt you?" she said, sharply.

  De Launay took hold of himself again.

  "Nothing to speak of," he answered, gruffly. "Will you sit down?"

  She sat down, then. Through her veil he could not tell what herexpression was, but he was uneasily conscious of the black pools thatlurked there, searching his scarred soul to its depths, and finding itevil. He was in no condition to meet her, half drugged with stalealcohol, shaken to his inmost being by reaction against the poisoningof weeks, jumpy, imaginative, broken of mind and body.

  His eyes did not meet hers squarely. They shifted, sidelong andbloodshot. But she might have read in them something of despair,something of sullenness, something of shame, but mostly she could haveseen a plea for mercy, and perhaps she did.

  If so, she did not yield to the plea--at first. In a cold, steelyvoice she told him what he was. In incisive French she rebaptized hima coward, a beast, a low and disgusting thing. Her voice, curiouslybeautiful even in rage, cut and dissected him and laid him bare.

  She painted for him what a gentleman and a soldier should be andcontrasted with it what he was. She sketched for him all the glory andthe fame of the men who had led the soldiers of France, neithersparing nor exalting, but showing them to be, at least, men who hadcourage and command of themselves or had striven for it. Shecontrasted them with his own weakness and supineness and degradation.Then, her voice softening subtly, she shifted the picture to what hehad been, to his days of unutterable lowness in the Legion, the fiveyears of brutal struggle, fiercely won promotion. His gaining of acommission, the _cachet_ of respectability, his years of titanicstruggle and study and work through the hardly won grades of thearmy.

  She made him see himself as something glorious, rising from obscurityto respect and influence; made him see himself as he knew he was not;made him see his own courage, which he had; his ability, which he alsohad; and, what it had not, great pride, noble impulses, legitimateambition. When she painted the truth, he did not respond, but when shepictured credits he did not deserve he winced and longed to earnthem.

  "And, after all this," she said wearily, at
last, "you descend--tothis? It would seem that one might even gauge the depths from whichyou rose by the length and swiftness of the fall. Is it that you haveexhausted yourself in the effort that went before?"

  De Launay stared at the floor with dull eyes.

  "What would you expect of a l?gionnaire?" he muttered.

  "Nothing!" she cried, angrily. "Nothing from the l?gionnaire! But, inthe name of God, cannot one expect more than this from the man whowears the medaille militaire, the grand cross of the legion, who won acolonelcy in Champagne, a brigade at Verdun, a division at the Chemindes Dames, and who, as all know, should have had an army corps afterthe Balkan campaign? From such a man as that, from him, monsieur, oneexpects everything!"

  De Launay twisted the unfortunate hat in his hands and made no replyfor some minutes. Solange sat on the bed, one knee crossed over theother and her chin resting in her hand, supported on her elbow. Herhead was also bent toward the floor.

  "Mademoiselle," said De Launay, at last, "I think you have guessed thetrouble with me." His manner had reverted to that of his rank andclass, and she looked up in instant reaction to it. "I am all that yousay except what is good. There is no doubt of that. I have been asoldier for nineteen years; have made it the work of my life, in fact.I know nothing else--except, perhaps, a little of a passing, obsoletetrade of this fading West you see around you. I had hoped to win--hadwon, I thought, place and distinction in that profession. You knowwhat happened. Perhaps I did not deserve more. Perhaps it wasnecessary to reduce us all. Perhaps I was wrong in despairing. But Ihad won my way by effort, mademoiselle, that exhausted me. I was tootired to take up again the task of battering my way up through theremaining ranks.

  "There was nothing left to me. There is nothing for me to do. There isno one who can use me unless it be some petty state which needsmercenaries. I have served my purpose in the world. Why should I notwaste the rest of my time?"

  Solange nodded. "Then what you need is an object?" she said,reflectively. "Work?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "I have no need of money. And why should I work,otherwise? I know nothing of trade, and there are others who need therewards of labor more than I."

  "Philanthropy--service?"

  At this he grinned. "I am not a sentimentalist, but a soldier. As forservice--I served France until she had no further use for me."

  "Marriage; a family?"

  He laughed, now. "I am married. As for the love that is said tomitigate that relation, am I the sort of man a woman would care for?"

  Solange straightened up, and then rose from the bunk. She came andstood before him.

  "If neither love, ambition nor money will stir you," she said. "Still,you may find an incentive to serve. There is chivalry."

  "I'm no troubadour."

  "Will you serve me?" she asked abruptly. He looked at her insurprise.

  "Am I not serving you?"

  "You are--after your own fashion--which I do not like. I wish yourservice--need it. But not this way."

  He nodded slowly. "I will serve you--in any way you wish," he said.

  Solange smiled under the veil, her mouth curving into beautifullines.

  "That is better. I shall need you, monsieur. You cannot, it is clear,serve me effectively by being thrown into jail for months. I must findthe mine and the man who killed my father before that."

  De Launay shook his head. "You expect to find the mine and the man,after nineteen years?"

  "I expect to make the attempt," she replied, calmly. "It is in thehands of God, my success. Somehow, I feel that I shall succeed, atleast in some measure, but the same premonition points to you as onewho shall make that success possible. I do not know why that is."

  "Premonition!" said De Launay, doubtfully. "Still--from Morgan _laf?e_, even a premonition----"

  The shrouding mask was turned upon him with an effect of question ashe paused.

  "Is entitled to respectful consideration," he ended. He satthoughtfully a minute, his throbbing head making mental actiondifficult. "I see no hope of tracing the man--but one. Have you thatbullet, mademoiselle?"

  She took it out of the hand bag, shivering a little as she handed itto him.

  "It is common--a thirty caliber, such as most hunters use. Yet it isall the clew you possess. As for the mine, there seems to be only onehope, which is, to retrace as closely as possible, the route taken byyour father before he was shot. May I keep this?"

  She nodded her assent, and he put it in his pocket. Solange wasrelieved to be rid of it.

  "And now," he added, "I must get out of here."