The Heart of the Range

by William Patterson White

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE SHOWDOWN

  Racey, walking suddenly round the corner of the Dale stable, came uponMr. Dale tilting a bottle toward the sky. The business end of thebottle was inserted between Mr. Dale's lips. His Adam's apple slidgravely up and down. He did not see Racey Dawson.

  "Howdy," said the puncher.

  Mr. Dale removed the bottle, whirled, and thrust the bottle behindhim.

  "Oh, it's you," he said, blinking, and slowly producing the bottle."Huh-have one on me."

  "Not to-day," refused Racey, shaking his head. "I got a misery in mystummick. Doctor won't lemme drink any."

  "Yeah?" Thus Mr. Dale with interest. Then, again proffering theliquor, he said: "This here's fine for the misery. Better have asnooter."

  "No, I guess not."

  "Well, I will," averred Mr. Dale and downed three swallows rapidly."Yeah," he continued, driving in the cork with the heel of his hand,"a feller needs a drink now and then."

  "Helps him stand off trouble, don't it?" Racey hazarded,sympathetically, perceiving an opening.

  "Shore does," answered Mr. Dale. "I should say so. Dunno who'd oughtaknow that better'n I do. Trouble, Racey--well, say, I'm just made oftrouble I am."

  "Aw, it ain't as bad as that," encouraged Racey.

  "Yes, it is, too," contradicted the other. "I got more trouble on myhands than a rat-tailed hoss tied short in fly-time. Trouble--nothingbut."

  "Nothing is as bad as it looks."

  "Heaps of times she's worse."

  "I'm yore friend. You know me. If I can help you--"

  "Nobody can help me. I dunno what to do, Racey."

  "Well, you know best, I expect, but I've always found if I talk overwith somebody else anythin' that bothers me it don't seem to stick uphalf so big."

  Mr. Dale sank down upon one run-over heel and stared blearily offacross the flats. The bottle in his hip-pocket made a pronounced bulgeunder the cloth.

  "I dunno what to do, Racey," he said, looking up sidewise at Raceywhere he stood in front of him, his hands in his pockets and his haton the back of his head. "I owe a lot of money. I dunno how I'm gonnapay it, and I'm worried."

  "Let the other feller do the worrying," suggested Racey.

  "I wish I could," said Mr. Dale, drearily. "I wish I could."

  "Why don't you, then?"

  "He'll foreclose--they'll foreclose, I mean."

  "Aw, maybe not."

  "Yeah, they will. I know 'em! ---- 'em! They'd have the shirt off myback if they could. You see, Racey, she's thisaway: I borrowed fivethousand dollars from the Marysville bank, on a mortgage, and therethey went and sold the mortgage to Lanpher of the 88 and Luke Tweezy.And there's the rub, Racey. The bank would 'a' renewed all right, butyou can put down a bet and go the limit that Lanpher and Tweezy won't.I done asked 'em."

  "Five thousand dollars is a lot of money," said Racey, soberly. He hadbeen thinking that the mortgage would not have been above two thousandat the outside. But five thousand! What in Sam Hill had old Daledone with the money? In the next breath Dale answered the unspokenquestion.

  "I needed the money," he said in a low voice, his eyes lowered,"and--and I had bad luck with it."

  "Yeah, I know, the cattle dying and all."

  "Cattle! What cattle?" Mr. Dale stared blankly at Racey. "Oh, them!Hell, they didn't have nothin' to do with it, them cattle didn't. I'dworked out a system, Racey--a system to beat roulette, and I was shoreit was all right. By Gawd, it was all right! They was nothin' wrongwith that system. But I had bad luck. I had most awful bad luck."

  "And the system, I take it, didn't work?"

  "It didn't--against my bad luck."

  Mr. Dale again dropped his eyes, and Racey stared down at thehump-shouldered old figure with something akin to pity in his gaze.Certainly he was sorry for him. He was not in the least scornfuldespite the fact that it did not seem possible that any sensible mancould be such a fool. A system--a system to beat roulette! And badluck! The drably ancient and moth-eaten story with which everyunsuccessful gambler seeks to establish an alibi.

  "Whose wheel was it?" said Racey.

  "Lacey's at Marysville."

  "In the back room of the Sweet Dreams, huh? An' there's nothingcrooked about Lacey's wheel, either. It's as square as Lacey himself."

  "Lacey's wasn't the only wheel. They was McFluke's, too."

  So McFluke had a wheel, had he? This was news to Racey Dawson.

  "How long has McFluke been runnin' a wheel?" inquired Racey.

  "Quite a while," was the vague reply.

  "A year?"

  "Maybe longer. I dunno."

  "Funny it never got round."

  "It was a private wheel. Only for his friends. Nothin' public aboutit."

  "Who used to play it besides you?" persisted Racey, hanging to hissubject like a bull-pup to a tramp's trousers.

  Mr. Dale wrinkled his forehead. "Besides me? Lessee now. They were DocCoffin, Nebraska Jones, Honey Hoke, and Punch-the-breeze Thompson."

  "Nobody else?"

  "Aw, Galloway and Norton and that bunch," Mr. Dale said, shamefacedly.

  Racey nodded his head slowly. A crooked wheel. Of course it wascrooked. Why not? That Dale, Galloway, Norton, and a few othergentlemen of the neighbourhood were under their wives' thumbs to sucha degree that they did not dare to gamble openly was a matter ofcommon knowledge. What more natural than that someone should providethem with a private gambling place? With such cappers as Nebraska andhis gang, losers would not feel equal to making much of an outcry. Itmust be a paying occupation for McFluke, Nebraska, or whoever was atthe bottom of the business.

  Racey nodded again and squatted down on his heels. He picked up astick and squinted along its length.

  "None of my business, of course," he said, casually, "but would youmind telling me how much you lost to McFluke?"

  "About seven thousand."

  Racey looked up at the sky. Seven thousand dollars. The full amount ofthe mortgage and two thousand more. And McFluke had it all.

  "You see," said Mr. Dale, dolefully. "I began to make money afterI'd been here awhile and my health come back. Yeah, I made money allright, all right." He pushed back his hat and scratched a grizzledhead. "I had luck," he added. "But you wasn't round here then. You'dgone to the Bend."

  "Yep, I'd gone to the Bend, damitall, and it shore seems like I'dstayed there too long. Didn't you ever guess McFluke's wheel wasn'tstraight?"

  "Aw, it was so straight. Mac wouldn't cheat nobody. Yo're--yo'remistaken, Racey."

  "I am, huh? Likell I'm mistaken. I know what I'm talking about. I tellyou flat, McFluke is so crooked he could swallow a nail and spit out acorkscrew. And he's got that wheel trained. You just bet he has. Lookunder the table and see what he's doing with his feet or his knees.My Gawd, Dale, didn't you know they make roulette wheels with a brakelike a wagon?"

  "I--I've heard of 'em," Mr. Dale nodded, hesitatingly. "But I'm shoreMac's is on the level."

  "And you bet seven thousand dollars it was on the level, didn't you?"

  "But--"

  "But where did you come out? Do you think you ever got a show for yoremoney?"

  "Oh, I won a bet now and then," defended Mr. Dale.

  "Small ones, shore. Naturally he has to let you win now and then tosort of toll you along and keep you good-natured. You won now andthen, yep. But did you ever win when you had a sizable stake up?"

  Mr. Dale shook his head. "No, come to think of it, I don't believe Iever did."

  "I knowed you didn't," exclaimed Racey, triumphantly. "I tell you thatwheel is crooked."

  "Not so loud," cautioned Mr. Dale. "They'll hear you in the house."

  "Don't they know nothing about it a-tall?" probed Racey.

  "They know about the five-thousand-dollar mortgage," admitted Dale,reluctantly.

  Racey rubbed his chin. "I was here when Molly found it out."

  Mr. Dale nodded miserably. He was too utterly wretched to resentRacey's interference w
ith his affairs. "She--she told me," he said.

  "Don't they know about the other two thousand you lost to McFluke, orwhat you dropped at Lacey's?"

  Mr. Dale shook his head. "I never told 'em. I--I only lost fifteen orsixteen hundred at Lacey's, anyway."

  "Fifteen or sixteen hundred is a whole lot when you ain't got it,"said the direct and brutal Racey. "Instead of seven thousand then, youdone lost eighty-five or eighty-six hundred. I swear I don't see howyou managed to lose all that and yore family not find it out."

  "I kept quiet."

  "I guess you did keep quiet. Gawd, yes! Lookit, Dale, I'm going tohelp you out of this. But you'll have to start fresh. You've got togo in and make a clean breast to the family about where the otherthirty-six hundred over and above the five thousand went."

  Mr. Dale's jaw dropped. "I--I never even told 'em where the fivethousand went."

  "Huh? I thought you said they knew about the mortgage--after Mollyfound it out."

  "They knew about the mortgage all right enough, but they dunno wherethe money went. Yuh see, Racey, I--I done told 'em I lost it in a landdeal."

  "You did! Aw right, you go right in and tell 'em the truth, all of it,every last smidgen."

  "I cuc-can't!" protested Mr. Dale. "I ain't got the heart!"

  "You ain't got the nerve, you mean. You go on and tell 'em, Dale, an'I'll fix it up for you, but I won't fix up anything for you if youain't gonna play square with those women from now on. And you can'tplay square with 'em without you begin by telling 'em the truth."

  "How you gonna help me out?" temporized Mr. Dale.

  "I'm goin' to Old Salt, that's what I'm going to do. I'll fix it upwith him to lend you the money."

  Mr. Dale shook his head. "He won't do it."

  "Shore he'll do it. You don't think he's gonna have somebody else comein here in yore place, do you? Not much he ain't. He'll lend you themoney and glad to."

  "I done already asked him, an' he wouldn't."

  "'You asked him, and he wouldn't?'" repeated Racey, stupidly. "Whendid you ask him?"

  "About two months ago--soon as ever I found out I wouldn't be able topay off the mortgage."

  "And he wouldn't lend it to you? I don't understand it, damfi do. Itain't reasonable. Lookit here, did you tell him what you wanted itfor? Did you tell him about the mortgage?"

  "Non-no," said Mr. Dale in a still, small voice. "I didn't."

  "Why didn't you?"

  "Because I was afraid he'd take advantage of me. I was afraid he'd fixit so as to take my ranch away from me if he knowed how bad and whatfor I needed it."

  "But ain't that exactly what the Marysville bank could 'a' done if itwanted?" demanded Racey, aghast at the Dale obtuseness.

  "Yeah, but I had hopes of standing off the bank, and--"

  "But you ain't got any hope of standing off Lanpher and Tweezy. Nary ahope. Now lookit, Old Salt is yore only chance round here. Of course,he'd fix it to take away yore ranch if he could. That's his business.And it's yore business to see he don't. An' it's my business to helpyou see he don't. Suppose now I go to Old Salt and get him to lend youthe money on a mortgage, say a ten-year mortgage?"

  "But I got one mortgage on the place now. He'd never take a secondmortgage."

  "Naw, naw, that ain't gonna be the way of it a-tall. It will be fixedso's Old Salt's mortgage won't go into effect till the first one'spaid off."

  "But then till the first one is paid off--maybe it will be three-fourdays--Old Salt's five thousand will be unsecured."

  "It won't be unsecured. It won't go out of Saltoun's hands. He'll payoff the mortgage himself."

  "Do you think you can get a easy rate from Old Salt?" asked Dale, thelight of a new hope dawning in his faded old eyes. "It's a awful taxon a feller paying the full legal rate."

  "We'll have to take what we can get, but I'll do my best to tone itdown. Sometimes a man will take less if he has another object in viewbesides the interest. And you bet Old Salt will have a plenty bigobject in view in keeping out Lanpher and Tweezy. Money ain't tightnow, anyway. I'll do the best I can for you. Don't you fret. You go onin now and square up with the women and I'll slide out to the Bar Sinstanter."

  Mr. Dale, the poor old man, laid a hand on Racey's strong youngforearm. "I'll tell 'em," he said. "I'll tell 'em. You--you fix it upwith Old Salt."

  Abruptly he turned away and hobbled hurriedly around the corner of thebarn.