Gunmans Reckoning

by Brand, Max

  The cynical glance of Donnegan probed the colonel to the heart, but the eyes of the fat man did not wince. Neither did he speak again, but the two calmly stared at each other. At the end of the minute, Donnegan slipped the watch into his pocket.

  "I am ready to listen to reason," he said. And the colonel passed one of his strong hands across his forehead.

  "Now," and he sighed, "I feel that the crisis is passed. With a man of your caliber, Donnegan, I fear a snap judgment above all things. Since you give me a chance to appeal to your reason I feel safe. As from the first, I shall lay my cards upon the table. You are fond of Lou. I took it for granted that you would welcome a chance to brush Landis out of your path. It appears that I am wrong. I admit my error. Only fools cling to convictions; wise men are ready to meet new viewpoints. Very well. You wish to spare Landis for reasons of your own which I do not pretend to fathom. Perhaps, you pity him; I cannot tell. Now, you wonder why I wish to have Landis in my care if I do not intend to put an end to him and thereby become owner of his mines? I shall tell you frankly. I intend to own the mines, if not through the death of Jack, then through a legal act signed by the hand of Jack."

  "A willing signature?" asked Donnegan, calmly.

  A shadow came and went across the face of the colonel, and Donnegan caught his breath. There were times when he felt that if the colonel possessed strength of body as well as strength of mind even he, Donnegan, would be afraid of the fat man.

  "Willing or unwilling," said the colonel, "he shall do as I direct!"

  "Without force?"

  "Listen to me," said the colonel. "You and I are not children, and therefore we know that ordinary men are commanded rather by fear of what may happen to them than by being confronted with an actual danger. I have told you that I shall not so much as raise the weight of a finger against Jack Landis. I shall not. But a whisper adroitly put in his ear may accomplish the same ends." He added with a smile. "Personally, I dislike physical violence. In that, Mr. Donnegan, we belong to opposite schools of action."

  The picture came to Donnegan of Landis, lying in the cabin of the colonel, his childish mind worked upon by the devilish insinuation of the colonel. Truly, if Jack did not go mad under the strain he would be very apt to do as the colonel wished.

  "I have made a mess of this from the beginning," said Donnegan, quietly. "In the first place, I intended to play the role of the self-sacrificing. You don't understand? I didn't expect that you would. In short, I intended to send Landis back to Lou by making a flash that would dazzle The Corner, and dazzle Nelly Lebrun as well--win her away from Landis, you see? But the fool, as soon as he saw that I was flirting with the girl, lowered his head and charged at me like a bull. I had to strike him down in self-defense.

  "But now you ask me to put him wholly in your possession. Colonel, you omit one link in your chain of reasoning. The link is important--to me. What am I to gain by placing him within the range of your whispering?"

  "Tush! Do I need to tell you? I still presume you are interested in Lou, though you attempted to do so much to give Landis back to her. Well, Donnegan, you must know that when she learns it was a bullet from your gun that struck down Landis, she'll hate you, my boy, as if you were a snake. But if she knows that after all you were forced into the fight, and that you took the first opportunity to bring Jack into my--er--paternal care--her sentiments may change. No, they will change."

  Donnegan left his chair and began to pace the floor. He was no more self-conscious in the presence of the colonel than a man might be in the presence of his own evil instincts. And it was typical of the colonel's insight that he made no attempt to influence the decision of Donnegan after this point was reached. He allowed him to work out the matter in his own way. At length, Donnegan paused.

  "What's the next step?" he asked.

  The colonel sighed, and by that sigh he admitted more than words could tell.

  "A reasonable man," he said, "is the delight of my heart. The next step, Donnegan, is to bring Jack Landis to this house."

  "Tush!" said Donnegan. "Bring him away from Lebrun? Bring him away from the tigers of Lord Nick's gang? I saw them at Milligan's place tonight. A bad set, Colonel Macon."

  "A set you can handle," said the colonel, calmly.

  "Ah?"

  "The danger will in itself be the thing that tempts you," he went on. "To go among those fellows, wild as they are, and bring Jack Landis away to this house."

  "Bring him here," said Donnegan with indescribable bitterness, "so that she may pity his wounds? Bring him here where she may think of him and tend him and grow to hate me?"

  "Grow to fear you," said the colonel.

  "An excellent thing to accomplish," said Donnegan coldly.

  "I have found it so," remarked the colonel, and lighted a cigarette.

  He drew the smoke so deep that when it issued again from between his lips it was a most transparent, bluish vapor. Fear came upon Donnegan. Not fear, surely, of the fat man, helpless in his invalid's chair, but fear of the mind working ceaselessly behind those hazy eyes. He turned without a word and went to the door. The moment it opened under his hand, he felt a hysterical impulse to leap out of the room swiftly and slam the door behind him--to put a bar between him and the eye of the colonel, just as a child leaps from the dark room into the lighted and closes the door quickly to keep out the following night. He had to compel himself to move with proper dignity.

  When outside, he sighed; the quiet of the night was like a blessing compared with the ordeal of the colonel's devilish coldness. Macon's advice had seemed almost logical the moment before. Win Lou Macon by the power of fear, well enough, for was not fear the thing which she had followed all her life? Was it not through fear that the colonel himself had reduced her to such abject, unquestioning obedience?

  He went thoughtfully to his own cabin, and, down-headed in his musings, he became aware with a start of Lou Macon in the hut. She had changed the room as her father had bidden her to do. Just wherein the difference lay, Donnegan could not tell. There was a touch of evergreen in one corner; she had laid a strip of bright cloth over the rickety little table, and in ten minutes she had given the hut a semblance of permanent livableness. Donnegan saw her now, with some vestige of the smile of her art upon her face; but she immediately smoothed it to perfect gravity. He had never seen such perfect self-command in a woman.

  "Is there anything more that I can do?" she asked, moving toward the door.

  "Nothing."

  "Good night."

  "Wait."

  She still seemed to be under the authority which the colonel had delegated to Donnegan when they started for The Corner. She turned, and without a word came back to him. And a pang struck through Donnegan. What would he not have given if she had come at his call not with these dumb eyes, but with a spark of kindliness? Instead, she obeyed him as a soldier obeys a commander.

  "There has been trouble," said Donnegan.

  "Yes?" she said, but there was no change in her face.

  "It was forced upon me." Then he added: "It amounted to a shooting affair."

  There was a change in her face now, indeed. A glint came in her eyes, and the suggestion of the colonel which he had once or twice before sensed in her, now became more vivid than ever before. The same contemptuous heartlessness, which was the colonel's most habitual expression, now looked at Donnegan out of the lovely face of the girl.

  "They were fools to press you to the wall," she said. "I have no pity for them."

  For a moment Donnegan only stared at her; on what did she base her confidence in his prowess as a fighting man?

  "It was only one man," he said huskily.

  Ah, there he had struck her home! As though the words were a burden, she shrank from him; then she slipped suddenly close to him and caught both his hands. Her head was raised far back; she had pressed close to him; she seemed in every line of her body to plead with him against himself, and all the veils which had curtained her mind from him
dropped away. He found himself looking down into eyes full of fire and shadow; and eager lips; and the fiber of her voice made her whole body tremble.

  "It isn't Jack?" she pleaded. "It isn't Jack that you've fought with?"

  And he said to himself: "She loves him with all her heart and soul!"

  "It is he," said Donnegan in an agony. Pain may be like a fire that tempers some strong men; and now Donnegan, because he was in torment, smiled, and his eye was as cold as steel.

  The girl flung away his hands.

  "You bought murderer!" she cried at him.

  "He is not dead."

  "But you shot him down!"

  "He attacked me; it was self-defense."

  She broke into a low-pitched, mirthless laughter. Where was the filmy-eyed girl he had known? The laughter broke off short--like a sob.

  "Don't you suppose I've known?" she said. "That I've read my father? That I knew he was sending a bloodhound when he sent you? But, oh, I thought you had a touch of the other thing!"

  He cringed under her tone.

  "I'll bring him to you," said Donnegan desperately. "I'll bring him here so that you can take care of him."

  "You'll take him away from Lord Nick--and Lebrun--and the rest?" And it was the cold smile of her father with which she mocked him.

  "I'll do it."

  "You play a deep game," said the girl bitterly. "Why would you do it?"

  "Because," said Donnegan faintly. "I love you."

  Her hand had been on the knob of the door; now she twitched it open and was gone; and the last that Donnegan saw was the width of the startled eyes.

  "As if I were a leper," muttered Donnegan. "By heaven, she looked at me as if I were unclean!"

  But once outside the door, the girl stood with both hands pressed to her face, stunned. When she dropped them, they folded against her breast, and her face tipped up.

  Even by starlight, had Donnegan been there to look, he would have seen the divinity which comes in the face of a woman when she loves.

  * * *

  26

  Had he been there to see, even in the darkness he would have known, and he could have crossed the distance between their lives with a single step, and taken her into his heart. But he did not see. He had thrown himself upon his bunk and lay face down, his arms stretched rigidly out before him, his teeth set, his eyes closed.

  For what Donnegan had wanted in the world, he had taken; by force when he could, by subtlety when he must. And now, what he wanted most of all was gone from him, he felt, forever. There was no power in his arms to take that part of her which he wanted; he had no craft which could encompass her.

  Big George, stealing into the room, wondered at the lithe, slender form of the man in the bed. Seeing him thus, it seemed that with the power of one hand, George could crush him. But George would as soon have closed his fingers over a rattler. He slipped away into the kitchen and sat with his arms wrapped around his body, as frightened as though he had seen a ghost.

  But Donnegan lay on the bed without moving for hours and hours, until big George, who sat wakeful and terrified all that time, was sure that he slept. Then he stole in and covered Donnegan with a blanket, for it was the chill, gray time of the night.

  But Donnegan was not asleep, and when George rose in the morning, he found the master sitting at the table with his arms folded tightly across his breast and his eyes burning into vacancy.

  He spent the day in that chair.

  It was the middle of the afternoon when George came with a scared face and a message that a "gen'leman who looks riled, sir," wanted to see him. There was no answer, and George perforce took the silence as acquiescence. So he opened the door and announced: "Mr. Lester to see you, sir."

  Into the fiery haze of Donnegan's vision stepped a raw-boned fellow with sandy hair and a disagreeably strong jaw.

  "You're the gent that's here with the colonel, ain't you?" said Lester.

  Donnegan did not reply.

  "You're the gent that cleaned up on Landis, ain't you?" continued the sandy-haired man.

  There was still the same silence, and Lester burst out: "It don't work, Donnegan. You've showed you're man-sized several ways since you been in The Corner. Now I come to tell you to get out from under Colonel Macon. Why? Because he's crooked, because we know he's crooked; because he played crooked with me. You hear me talk?"

  Still Donnegan considered him without a word.

  "We're goin' to run him out, Donnegan. We want you on our side if we can get you; if we can't get you, then we'll run you out along with the colonel."

  He began to talk with difficulty, as though Donnegan's stare unnerved him. He even took a step back toward the door.

  "You can't bluff me out, Donnegan. I ain't alone. They's others behind me. I don't need to name no names. Here's another thing: you ain't alone yourself. You got a woman and a cripple on your hands. Now, Donnegan, you're a fast man with a gun and you're a fast man at thinkin', but I ask you personal: have you got a chance runnin' under that weight?"

  He added fiercely: "I'm through. Now, talk turkey, Donnegan, or you're done!"

  For the first time Donnegan moved. It was to make to big George a significant signal with his thumb, indicating the visitor. However, Lester did not wait to be thrown bodily from the cabin. One enormous oath exploded from his lips, and he backed sullenly through the door and slammed it after him.

  "It kind of looks," said big George, "like a war, sir."

  And still Donnegan did not speak, until the afternoon was gone, and the evening, and the full black of the night had swallowed up the hills around The Corner.

  Then he left the chair, shaved, and dressed carefully, looked to his revolver, stowed it carefully and invisibly away among his clothes, and walked leisurely down the hill. An outbreak of cursing, stamping, hair-tearing, shooting could not have affected big George as this quiet departure did. He followed, unordered, but as he stepped across the threshold of the hut he rolled up his eyes to the stars.

  "Oh, heavens above," muttered George, "have mercy on Mr. Donnegan. He ain't happy."

  And he went down the hill, making sure that he was fit for battle with knife and gun.

  He had sensed Donnegan's mental condition accurately enough. The heart of the little man was swelled to the point of breaking. A twenty-hour vigil had whitened his face, drawn in his cheeks, and painted his eyes with shadow; and now he wanted action. He wanted excitement, strife, competition; something to fill his mind. And naturally enough he had two places in mind--Lebrun's and Milligan's.

  It is hard to relate the state of Donnegan's mind at this time. Chiefly, he was conscious of a peculiar and cruel pain that made him hollow; it was like homesickness raised to the nth degree. Vaguely he realized that in some way, somehow, he must fulfill his promise to the girl and bring Jack Landis home. The colonel dared not harm the boy for fear of Donnegan; and the girl would be happy. For that very reason Donnegan wanted to tear Landis to shreds.

  It is not extremely heroic for a man tormented with sorrow to go to a gambling hall and then to a dance hall to seek relief. But Donnegan was not a hero. He was only a man, and, since his heart was empty, he wanted something that might fill it. Indeed, like most men, suffering made him a good deal of a boy.

  So the high heels of Donnegan tapped across the floor of Lebrun's. A murmur went before him whenever he appeared now, and a way opened for him. At the roulette wheel he stopped, placed fifty on red, and watched it double three times. George, at a signal from the master, raked in the winnings. And Donnegan sat at a faro table and won again, and again rose disconsolately and went on. For when men do not care how luck runs it never fails to favor them. The devotees of fortune are the ones she punishes.

  In the meantime the whisper ran swiftly through The Corner.

  "Donnegan is out hunting trouble."

  About the good that is in men rumor often makes mistakes, but for evil she has an infallible eye and at once sets all of her thousand tongues wa
gging. Indeed, any man with half an eye could not fail to get the meaning of his fixed glance, his hard set jaw, and the straightness of his mouth. If he had been a ghost, men could not have avoided him more sedulously, and the giant servant who stalked at his back. Not that The Corner was peopled with cowards. The true Westerner avoids trouble, but cornered, he will fight like a wildcat.

  So people watched from the corner of their eyes as Donnegan passed.

  He left Lebrun's. There was no competition. Luck blindly favored him, and Donnegan wanted contest, excitement. He crossed to Milligan's. Rumor was there before him. A whisper conveyed to a pair of mighty-limbed cow-punchers that they were sitting at the table which Donnegan had occupied the night before, and they wisely rose without further hint and sought other chairs. Milligan, anxious-eyed, hurried to the orchestra, and with a blast of sound they sought to cover up the entry of the gunman.

  As a matter of fact that blare of horns only served to announce him. Something was about to happen; the eyes of men grew shadowy; the eyes of women brightened. And then Donnegan appeared, with George behind him, and crossed the floor straight to his table of the night before. Not that he had forethought in going toward it, but he was moving absent-mindedly.

  Indeed, he had half forgotten that he was a public figure in The Corner, and sitting sipping the cordial which big George brought him at once, he let his glance rove swiftly around the room. The eye of more than one brave man sank under that glance; the eye of more than one woman smiled back at him; but where the survey of Donnegan halted was on the face of Nelly Lebrun.

  She was crossing the farther side of the floor alone, unescorted except for the whisper about her, but seeing Donnegan she stopped abruptly. Donnegan instantly rose. She would have gone on again in a flurry; but that would have been too pointed.

  A moment later Donnegan was threading his way across the dance floor to Nelly Lebrun, with all eyes turned in his direction. He had his hat under his arm; and in his black clothes, with his white stock, he made an old-fashioned figure as he bowed before the girl and straightened again.