by Max Brand
Nash stood in the shadow of the doorway watching that lean, handsome face with the suggestion of mockery in the eyes and the trace of sternness around the thin lips. Not a formidable figure by any means, but since his experiences of the past few days, Nash was grown extremely thoughtful.
What he finally thought he caught in this most unusual tenderfoot was a certain alertness of a more or less hair-trigger variety. Even now as he sat at ease at the table, one elbow resting lightly upon it, apparently enwrapped in the converse of Sally Fortune, Nash had a consciousness that the other might be on his feet and in the most distant part of the room within a second.
What he noted in the second instant of his observation was that Sally was not at all loath to waste her time on the stranger. She was eating with a truly formidable conventionality of manner, and a certain grace with which she raised the ponderous coffee cup, made of crockery guaranteed to resist all falls, struck awe through the heart of the cowpuncher. She was bent on another conquest, beyond all doubt, and that she would not make it never entered the thoughts of Nash. He set his face to banish a natural scowl and advanced with a good-natured smile into the room.
"Hello!" he called.
"It's old Steve!" sang out Sally, and whirling from her chair, she advanced almost at a run to meet him, caught him by both hands, and led him to a table next to that at which she had been sitting.
It was as gracefully done as if she had been welcoming a brother, but Nash, knowing Sally, understood perfectly that it was only a play to impress the eye of Bard. Nevertheless he was forced to accept it in good part.
"My old pal, Steve Nash," said Sally, "and this is Mr. Anthony Bard."
Just the faintest accent fell on the "Mr.," but it made Steve wince. He rose and shook hands gravely with the tenderfoot.
"I stopped at Butler's place down the street," he said, "and been hearin' a pile about a little play you made a while ago. It was about time for somebody to call old Butch's bluff."
"Bluff?" cried Sally indignantly.
"Bluff?" queried Bard, with a slight raising of the eyebrows.
"Sure--bluff. Butch wasn't any more dangerous than a cat with trimmed claws. But I guess you seen that?"
He settled down easily in his chair just as Sally resumed her place opposite Bard.
"Steve," she said, with a quiet venom, "that bluff of his has been as good as four-of-a-kind with you for a long time. I never seen you make any play at Butch."
He returned amiably: "Like to sit here and have a nice social chat, Sally, but I got to be gettin' back to the ranch, and in the meantime, I'm sure hungry."
At the reminder of business a green light came in the fine blue eyes of Sally. They were her only really fine features, for the nose tilted an engaging trifle, the mouth was a little too generous, the chin so strong that it gave, in moments of passivity, an air of sternness to her face. That sternness was exaggerated as she rose, keeping her glare fixed upon Nash; a thing impossible for him to bear, so he lowered his eyes and engaged in rolling a cigarette. She turned back toward Bard.
"Sorry I got to go--before I finished eating--but business is business."
"And sometimes," suggested Bard, "a bore."
It was an excellent opening for a quarrel, but Nash was remembering religiously a certain thousand dollars, and also a gesture of William Drew when he seemed to be breaking an imaginary twig. So he merely lighted his cigarette and seemed to have heard nothing.
"The whole town," he remarked casually, "seems scared stiff by this Butch; but of course he ain't comin' back to-night."
"I suppose," said the tenderfoot, after a cold pause, "that he will not."
But the coldness reacted like the most genial warmth upon Nash. He had chosen a part detestable to him but necessary to his business. He must be a "gabber" for the nonce, a free talker, a chatterer, who would cover up all pauses.
"Kind of strange to ride into a dark town like this," he began, "but I could tell you a story about--"
"Oh, Steve," called the voice of Sally from the kitchen.
He rose and nodded to Bard.
"'Scuse me, I'll be back in a minute."
"Thanks," answered the other, with a somewhat grim emphasis.
In the kitchen Sally spoke without prelude. "What deviltry are you up to now, Steve?"
"Me?" he repeated with eyes widened by innocence. "What d'you mean, Sally?"
"Don't four-flush me, Steve."
"Is eating in your place deviltry?"
"Am I blind?" she answered hotly. "Have I got spring-halt, maybe? You're too polite, Steve; I can always tell when you're on the way to a little bell of your own making, by the way you get sort of kind and warmed up. What is it now?"
"Kiss me, Sally, and I'll tell you why I came to town."
She said with a touch of colour: "I'll see you--" and then changing quickly, she slipped inside his ready arms with a smile and tilted up her face.
"Now what is it, Steve?"
"This," he answered.
"What d'you mean?"
"You know me, Sally. I've worn out the other ways of raising hell, so I thought I'd start a little by coming to Eldara to kiss you."
Her open hand cracked sharply twice on his lean face and she was out of his arms. He followed, laughing, but she armed herself with a red-hot frying pan and defied him.
"You ain't even a good sport, Steve. I'm done with you! Kiss you?"
He said calmly: "I see the hell is startin', all right."
But she changed at once, and smiled up to him.
"I can't stay mad at you, Steve. I s'pose it's because of your nerve. I want you to do something for me."
"What?"
"Is that a way to take it! I've asked you a favour, Steve."
He said suspiciously: "It's got something to do with the tenderfoot in the room out there?"
It was a palpable hit, for she coloured sharply. Then she took the bull by the horns.
"What if it is?"
"Sally, d'you mean to say you've fallen for that cheap line of lingo he passes out?"
"Steve, don't try to kid me."
"Why, you know who he is, don't you?"
"Sure; Anthony Bard."
"And do you know who Anthony Bard is?"
"Well?" she asked with some anxiety.
"Well, if you don't know you can find out. That's what the last girl done."
She wavered, and then blinked her eyes as if she were resolved to shut out the truth.
"I asked you to do me a favour, Steve."
"And I will. You know that."
"I want you to see that Bard gets safe out of this town."
"Sure. Nothing I'd rather do."
She tilted her head a little to one side and regarded him wistfully.
"Are you double-crossin' me, Steve?"
"Why d'you suspect me? Haven't I said I'd do it?"
"But you said it too easy."
The gentleness died in her face. She said sternly: "If you do double-cross me, you'll find I'm about as hard as any man on the range. Get me?"
"Shake."
Their hands met. After all, he did not guarantee what would happen to the tenderfoot after they were clear of the town. But perhaps this was a distinction a little too fine for the downright mind of the girl. A sea of troubles besieged the mind of Nash.
And to let that sea subside he wandered back to the eating room and found the tenderfoot finishing his coffee. The latter kept an eye of frank suspicion upon him. So the silence held for a brooding moment, until Bard asked: "D'you know the way to the ranch of William Drew?"
It was a puzzler to Nash. Was not that his job, to go out and bring the man to Drew's place? Here he was already on the way. He remembered just in time that the manner of bringing was decidedly qualified.
He said aloud: "The way? Sure; I work on Drew's place."
"Really!"
"Yep; foreman."
"You don't happen to be going back that way to-night?"
"Not all
the way; part of it."
"Mind if I went along?"
"Nobody to keep you from it," said the cowpuncher without enthusiasm.
"By the way, what sort of a man is Drew?"
"Don't you know him?"
"No. The reason I want to see him is because I want to get the right to do some--er--fishing and hunting on a place of his on the other side of the range."
"The place with the old house on it; the place Logan is?"
"Exactly. Also I wish to see Logan again. I've got several little things I'd like to have him explain."
"H-m!" grunted Nash without apparent interest.
"And Drew?"
"He's a big feller; big and grey."
"Ah-h-h," said the other, and drew in his breath, as though he were drinking.
It seemed to Nash that he had never seen such an unpleasant smile.
"You'll get what you want out of Drew. He's generous."
"I hope so," nodded the other, with far-off eyes. "I've got a lot to ask of him."
Chapter XVII
BUTCH RETURNS
He reminded Nash of some big puma cub warming itself at a hearth like a common tabby cat, a tame puma thrusting out its claws and turning its yellow eyes up to its owner--tame, but with infinite possibilities of danger. For the information which Nash had given seemed to remove all his distrust of the moment before and he became instantly genial, pleasant. In fact, he voiced this sentiment with a disarming frankness immediately.
"Perhaps I've seemed to be carrying a chip on my shoulder, Mr. Nash. You see, I'm not long in the West, and the people I've met seem to be ready to fight first and ask questions afterward. So I've caught the habit, I suppose."
"Which a habit like that ain't uncommon. The graveyards are full of fellers that had that habit and they're going to be fuller still of the same kind."
Here Sally entered, carrying the meal of the cowpuncher, arranged it, and then sat on the edge of Bard's table, turning from one to the other as a bird on a spray of leaves turns from sunlight to shadow and cannot make a choice.
"Bard," stated Nash, "is going out to the ranch with me to-night."
"Long ride for to-night, isn't it?"
"Yes, but we'll bunk on the way and finish up early in the morning."
"Then you'll have a chance to teach him Western manners on the way, Steve."
"Manners?" queried the Easterner, smiling up to the girl.
She turned, caught him beneath the chin with one hand, tilting his face, and raised the lessoning forefinger of the other while she stared down at him with a half frown and a half smile like a schoolteacher about to discipline a recalcitrant boy.
"Western manners," she said, "mean first not to doubt a man till he tries to double-cross you, and not to trust him till he saves your life; to keep your gun inside the leather till you're backed up against the wall, and then to start shootin' as soon as the muzzle is past the holster. Then the thing to remember is that the fast shootin' is fine, but sure shootin' is a lot better. D'you get me?"
"That's a fine sermon," smiled Bard, "but you're too young to make a convincing preacher, Miss Fortune."
"Misfortune," said the girl quickly, "don't have to be old to do a lot of teachin'."
She sat back and regarded him with something of a frown and with folded arms.
He said with a sudden earnestness: "You seem to take it for granted that I'm due for a lot of trouble."
But she shook her head gloomily.
"I know what you're due for; I can see it in your eyes; I can hear it in your way of talkin'. If you was to ride the range with a sheriff on one side of you and a marshal on the other you couldn't help fallin' into trouble."
"As a fortune-teller," remarked Nash, "you'd make a good undertaker, Sally."
"Shut up, Steve. I've seen this bird in action and I know what I'm talking about. When you coming back this way, Bard?"
He said thoughtfully: "Perhaps to-morrow night--perhaps--"
"It ought to be to-morrow night," she said pointedly, her eyes on Nash.
The latter had pushed his chair back a trifle and sat now with downward head and his right hand resting lightly on his thigh. Only the place in which they sat was illumined by the two lamps, and the forward part of the room, nearer the street, was a seat of shadows, wavering when the wind stirred the flame in one of the lamps or sent it smoking up the chimney. Sally and Bard sat with their backs to the door, and Nash half facing it.
"Steve," she said, with a sudden low tenseness of voice that sent a chill up Bard's spinal cord, "Steve, what's wrong?"
"This," answered the cowboy calmly, and whirling in his chair, his gun flashed and exploded.
They sprang up in time to see the bulky form of Butch Conklin rise out of the shadows in the front part of the room with outstretched arms, from one of which a revolver dropped clattering to the floor. Backward he reeled as though a hand were pulling him from behind, and then measured his length with a crash on the floor.
Bard, standing erect, quite forgot to touch his weapon, but Sally had produced a ponderous forty-five with mysterious speed and now crouched behind a table with the gun poised. Nash, bending low, ran forward to the fallen man.
"Nicked, but not done for," he called.
"Thank God!" cried Sally, and the two joined Nash about the prostrate body.
That bullet had had very certain intentions, but by a freak of chance it had been deflected on the angle of the skull and merely ploughed a bloody furrow through the mat of hair from forehead to the back of the skull. He was stunned, but hardly more seriously hurt than if he had been knocked down by a club.
"I've an idea," said the Easterner calmly, "that I owe my life to you, Mr. Nash."
"Let that drop," answered the other.
"A quarter of an inch lower," said the girl, who was examining the wound, "and Butch would have kissed the world good-bye."
Not till then did the full horror of the thing dawn on Bard. The girl was no more excited than one of her Eastern cousins would have been over a game of bridge, and the man in the most matter-of-fact manner, was slipping another cartridge into the cylinder of the revolver, which he then restored to the holster.
It still seemed incredible that the man could have drawn his gun and fired it in that flash of time. He recalled his adventure with Butch earlier that evening and with Sandy Ferguson before; for the first time he realized what he had done and a cold horror possessed him like the man who has nerves to walk the tight rope across the chasm and faints when he looks back on the gorge from the safety of the other side. The girl took command.
"Steve, run down to the marshal's office; Deputy Glendin is there."
She took the wet cloth and made a deft bandage for the head of Conklin. With his shaggy hair covered, and all his face sagging with lines of weariness, the gun-fighter seemed no more than a middle-aged man asleep, worn out by trouble.
"Is there a doctor?" asked Bard anxiously.
"That ain't a case for a doctor--look here; you're in a blue faint. What is the matter?"
"I don't know; I'm thinking of that quarter of an inch which would have meant the difference to poor Conklin."
"'Poor' Conklin? Why, you fish, he was sneakin' in here to try his hand on you. He found out he couldn't get his gang into town, so he slipped in by himself. He'll get ten years for this--and a thousand if they hold him up for the other things he's done."
"I know--and this fellow Nash was as quiet as the strike of a snake. If he'd been a fraction of a second slower I might be where Conklin is now. I'll never forget Nash for this."
She said pointedly: "No, he's a bad one to forget; keep an eye on him. You spoke of a snake--that's how smooth Steve is."
"Remember your own motto, Miss Fortune. He saved my life; therefore I must trust him."
She answered sullenly: "You're your own boss."
"What's wrong with Nash?"
"Find out for yourself."
"Are all these fellows something other tha
n they seem?"
"What about yourself?"
"How do you mean that?"
"What trail are you on, Bard? Don't look so innocent. Oh, I seen you was after something a long time ago."
"I am. After excitement, you know."
"Ain't you finding enough?"
"I've got two things ahead of me."
"Well?"
"This trip, and when I come back I think making love to you would be more exciting than gun-plays."
They regarded each other with bantering smiles.
"A tenderfoot like you make love to me? That would be exciting, all right, if it wasn't so funny."
"As for the competition," he said serenely, "that would be simply a good background."
"Hate yourself, don't you, Bard?" she grinned.
"The rest of these boys are all very well, but they don't see that what you want is the velvet touch."
"What's that?"
She was as frankly curious as some boy hearing a new game described.
"You've only been loved in one way. These rough-handed fellows come in and throw an arm around you and ask you to marry them; isn't that it? What you really need, is an old, simple, but very effective method."
Though her eyes were shining, she yawned.
"It don't interest me, Bard."
"On the contrary, you're getting quite excited."
"So does a horse before it gets ready to buck."
"Exactly. If I thought it would be easy I wouldn't be tempted."
"Well, if you like fighting you've sure mapped out a nice sizeable quarrel with me, Bud."
"Good. I'm certainly coming back to Eldara. Now about this method of mine--"
"Throwing your cards on the table, eh? What you got, Bard, a royal flush?"
"Right again. It's a very simple method but you couldn't beat it."
"Bud, you ain't half old enough to kid me."
"What you need," he persisted calmly, "is someone who would sit down and simply talk good, plain English to you."
"Let 'er go."
"In the first place I will call attention to your method of dressing."
"Anything wrong with it?"
"I knew you'd be interested."
She slipped into a chair and sat cross-legged in it, her elbows on her knees and her chin cupped in both her hands.
