Over the Pass

by Frederick Palmer

  VII

  WHAT HAPPENED AT LANG'S

  While Jack had been playing the pioneer of rural free delivery in LittleRivers, Pete Leddy, in the rear of Bill Lang's store, was refusing allstimulants, but indulging in an unusually large cud of tobacco.

  "Liquor ain't no help in drawing a bead," he explained to the loungerswho followed him through the door after Jack had gone.

  If Pete did not want to drink it was not discreet to press him,considering the mood he was in. The others took liberal doses, whichseemed only to heighten the detail of the drama which they had witnessed.To Mary it had been all pantomime; to them it was dynamic with language.It was something beyond any previous contemplation of possibility intheir cosmos.

  The store had been enjoying an average evening. All present wereexpressing their undaunted faith in the invincibility of James J.Jeffries, when a smiling stranger appeared in the doorway. He was dressedlike a regular cowboy dude. His like might have appeared on the stage,but had never been known to get off a Pullman in Arizona. And the instanthe appeared, up flashed Pete Leddy's revolver.

  The gang had often discussed when and how Pete would get his seventhvictim, and here they were about to be witnesses of the deed. Instincttaught them the proper conduct on such occasions. The tenderfoot was asgood as dead; but, being a tenderfoot and naturally a bad shot and proneto excitement, he might draw and fire wild. They ducked with the avidityof woodchucks into their holes--all except Jim Galway, who remainedleaning against the counter.

  "I gin ye warning!" they heard Pete say, and closed their eyesinvoluntarily--all except Jim Galway--with their last impression thetenderfoot's ingenuous smile and the gleam on Pete's gun-barrel. Theywaited for the report, as Mary had, and then they heard steps and lookedup to see that dude tenderfoot, still smiling, going straight toward themuzzle pointed at his head, his hands at his side in no attempt to draw.The thing was incredible and supernatural.

  "Pete is letting him come close first," they thought.

  But there, unbelievable as it was, Pete was lowering his revolver andthe tenderfoot's hand was on his shoulder in a friendly, explanatoryposition. Pete seemed in a trance, without will-power over his triggerfinger, and Pete was the last man in the world that you would expectto lose his nerve. Jim Galway being the one calm observer, whosevision had not been disturbed by precipitancy in taking cover, let ushave his version.

  "He just walked over to Pete--that's all I can say--walked over to him,simple and calm, like he was going to ask for a match. All I could thinkof and see was his smile right into that muzzle and the glint in hiseyes, which were looking into Pete's. Someway you couldn't shoot intothat smile and that glint, which was sort of saying, 'Go ahead! I'mleaving it to you and I don't care!'--just as if a flash of powder wasall the same to him as a flash of lightning."

  The desert had given Jack life; and it would seem as if what the deserthad given, it might take away. He was not going to humble himself bythrowing up his arms or standing still for execution. He was on his wayinto the store and he continued on his way. If something stopped him,then he would not have to take the train East in the morning.

  "Now if you want to kill me, Pete Leddy," the astonished group heard thisstranger say, "why, I'm not going to deny you the chance. But I don'twant you to do it just out of impulse, and I know that is not your ownreasoned way. You certainly would want sporting rules to prevail and thatI should have an equal chance of killing you. So we will go outside,stand off any number of paces you say, let our gun-barrels hang down evenwith the seams of our trousers, and wait for somebody to say 'one, two,three--fire!'"

  Not once had that peculiar smile faded from Jack's lips or the glint inhis eyes diverted from its probe of Leddy's eyes. His voice went wellwith the smile and with an undercurrent of high voltage which seemed theaudible corollary of the glint. Every man knew that, despite his gayadornment, he was not bluffing. He had made his proposition in deadlyearnest and was ready to carry it out. Pete Leddy shuffled and bit theends of his moustache, and his face was drawn and white and his shoulderburning under the easy grip of Jack's hand. From the bore of theunremitting glance that had confounded him he shifted his gazesheepishly.

  "Oh, h--l!" he said, and the tone, in its disgust and its attempt tolaugh off the incident, gave the simplicity of an exclamation from hislimited vocabulary its character. "Oh, h--l! I was just trying you out asa tenderfoot--a little joke!"

  At this, all the crowd laughed in an explosive breath of relief. Theinflection of the laugh made Pete go red and look challengingly from faceto face, with the result that all became piously sober.

  "Then it is all right? I meant in no way to wound your feelings or evenyour susceptibilities," said Jack; and, accepting the incident as closed,he turned to the counter and asked for the Ewold mail.

  Free from that smile and the glint of the eyes, Pete came to in a torrentof reaction. He, with six notches on his gun-handle, had been trifledwith by a grinning tenderfoot. Rage mounted red to his brow. No man whohad humiliated him should live. He would have shot Jack in the back if ithad not been for Jim Galway, lean as a lath, lantern-jawed, with deep-setblue eyes, his bearing different from that of the other loungers. Jim hadnot joined in the laugh over Pete's explanation; he had remainedimpassive through the whole scene; but the readiness with which heknocked Leddy's revolver down showed that this immovability had letnothing escape his quiet observation.

  When Jack looked around and understood what had passed, his facewas without the smile. It was set and his body had stiffened freeof the counter.

  "I'll take the gun away from him. It's high time somebody did,"said Galway.

  "I think you had better, if that is the only way that he knows how tofight," said Jack. "I have wondered how he got the six. Presumably hemurdered them."

  "To their faces, as I'll get you!" Leddy answered. "I'll play your waynow, one, two, three--fire!"

  Galway, convinced that this stranger did not know how to shoot,turned to Jack:

  "It's not worth your being a target for a dead shot," he said.

  "In the morning, yes," answered Jack; and he was smiling again in a waythat swept the audience with uncanniness. "But to-night I am engaged.Make it early to-morrow, as I have to take the first train East."

  "Well, are you going to let me go?" Leddy asked Jim, while he looked inappeal to the loungers, who were his men.

  "Yes, by all means," Jack told Galway. "And as I shall want a man withme, may I rely on you? Four of us will be enough, with a fifth to givethe word."

  "Ropey Smith can go with me," said Leddy.

  It scarcely occurred to them to give the name of duel to this meeting,which Jack held was the only fair way when one felt that he must havesatisfaction from an adversary in the form of death. An _arroyo_ a milefrom town was chosen and the time dawn, for a meeting which was toreverse the ethics of that boasted fair-play in which the man who firstgets a bead is the hero.

  "It seems a mediaeval day for me," Jack said, when the details wereconcluded. "Good-night, gentlemen," he added, after Bill Lang, withfingers that bungled from agitation, had filled his arms withsecond-class matter.

  Jim Galway resumed his position, leaning against the counter watchfullyas the gang filed out to the rear to wet up, and in his right hand, whichwas in his pocket, nestled an automatic pistol.

  "I'd shot Pete Leddy dead--'twas the first real fair chance within thelaw--so help me, God! I would," he thought, "if there had been time tospare, and save that queer tenderfoot's life. And me a second in aregular duel! Well, I'll be--but it ain't no regular duel. One of 'em isgoing to drop--that is, the tenderfoot is. I don't just know how to linehim up. He beats me!"