Ronicky Doone's Reward (1922)

by Max Brand

  When it was thought that Oliver was dead, the whole affair had taken on a somber and gloomy atmosphere. What had started as a prank had resulted as a killing, and only grim and joyless duty forced the riders along the trail of Blondy. But now it appeared that Hopkins lived, and the infuriated townsmen knew that they had been insulted, slapped in the face, and baffled!

  It was enough to spread a thick layer of shame over two generations, such an event as this. The cow-punchers ground their teeth. All sympathy for Blondy was conjured away into a thin mist immediately, and in its place there was fury. Law had now nothing to do with it The insult had been to the entire town. It became known that that morning Blondy had loudly boasted of how he intended to ride into Twin Springs, show his undaunted face wheresoever he pleased, and then return unscathed and thereby break the spell of dread with which the cow-punchers at the Bennett Ranch had come to regard the village.

  What was more, old Bennett had tried to dissuade him. And pretty Elsie Bennett, so they said, had followed him clear to his horse, entreating him with tears in her eyes not to take such a terrible chance.

  And how had he answered? He had laughed loudly as he sat in the saddle, and, waving his hat to her, he had cried that they didn't make men big enough in Twin Springs to keep him from riding peaceably into the town and peaceably out again.

  And he had done what he promised!

  In the completeness of their rage the foiled townsmen could not devise future punishment terrible enough to satisfy their spirits. Some suggested tar and feathers when they caught him. Others would have been content with riding him on a rail and kindred amusements. But here Ronicky Doone murmured his belief that the fugitive would never come back to face them. They laughed him to scorn. Short as was the time Blondy had been on the Bennett Ranch, it was an open secret that he was devoted body and soul to gay little Elsie. He would return to her as inevitably as iron must go to the magnet. As a matter of fact, they swore, he had simply undertaken this daring feat to make himself out a hero in the eyes of the girl.

  And Ronicky left them, while they were still devising ways and means and grinding their communal teeth, so to speak. He went up to his room in the hotel and sat before the window to watch in solitude the coming of the sunset He was in a gloomy humor. The mention of the girl had, for some reason, poured salt into his wounds. Here was young Blondy starting on a career of glory for fame and for the lady. And there sat he, Ronicky Doone, with the thin fingers of a thousand ghostly deeds plucking at his memory, but nothing left of all he had done! His life had left no solid body. The revolver at his hip, the rifle on his saddle, the horse he rode, the gay clothes upon his back and a pittance in his pocket this represented the total gain of his labors.

  With a sad pride he told himself that at least he had never debased himself to win money or reputation. He had labored for others more than for himself. And yet these were small consolations. The mere name of the unseen girl, linked with the thought of Blondy, tormented him. Blondy and Elsie Bennett would someday, he felt by premonition, be happy together. And he, Ronicky Doone, could never reach that wished for goal. He knew it with all the greater certainty, as the brilliance of the sunset faded out, and there fell over the town the partial night cast by the western mountains. Out of the past he carried nothing, he kept repeating he carried nothing! Such a monody, drumming into the ear and the spirit of a young man is not good for the soul, and Ronicky Doone finally dropped his head on his fist in a joyless study.

  It was certain that he could not leave the community until he had confronted big Blondy, and yet he longed with all his soul to leave the town and the men in it behind him and ride on. That had been the course of his past years riding on and on, from one set of acquaintances and from one community to another until there was behind him a wild and swiftly shifting host of recollections no fixed group of men and women and events such as make up the background of our average life.

  Here he was surprised and startled by a heavy knocking at the door, delivered so strongly as to suggest that the door had been kicked with the boot rather than struck by the hand. Ronicky rose in some anger.

  Chapter VII. AN INVITATION TO JOIN UP

  He had no more than time to rise and turn, however, when the door opened, and it opened in such a way as to indicate the manner in which the knocks had been delivered. It flew wide and folded back on the wall with a crash, and the foot of the man in the hall was stretched forth in mid-stride. He had announced himself by booting the door. And now he had kicked it open and stepped in before Ronicky, at the same time turning carelessly and waving toward some people on the outside.

  "I'll be down in a minute, boys. Start eating, and tell 'em that it's on me tonight. Everybody eats free on Al Jenkins!"

  And with this introduction he made a back swipe with his heel, caught the edge of the door with his spur, and slammed it shut as violently as he had opened it, the rowel cutting a visible gash in the wood. Then he advanced upon Ronicky.

  He was a man of middle height, though so stoutly built from head to foot that he seemed much less. Ronicky was surprised to find the eyes of Al Jenkins almost on a level with his own, and he hastily recast his first conception and mental measurements of the man. Truly Al was a mighty man. It would have been inappropriate to speak of his fifty winters; summers was the word for Al Jenkins. For there was a bloom and gloss to his cheek like the cheek of an apple when the leaves begin to bronze, and the apples shine on the bough. His eye was as bright as his cheek. His teeth when he smiled and he was always smiling were polished and white. He had a hand as big as two, and his foot was well nigh in the same proportion. So that Ronicky Doone could hardly repress a smile at the thought of such a man as this setting siege to the heart of a pretty girl and making and wrecking his life because of her.

  Yet he had once been other than he was now. His hand was made gross with flesh, whereas it had once been simply wide and strong. His waist, too, was unduly corpulent, and in a leaner youth those shoulders and that chest must have swelled with a suggestion of herculean power. Even at fifty be was a mighty man. Not only was he mighty in muscle, but his personality struck Ronicky in the face and made him look down. The great hand was stretched toward him. "You're Ronicky Doone?"

  "I'm him," said Ronicky and gingerly intrusted his fingers to the bone-breaking possibilities of that great paw. To his surprise the grip of Al Jenkins proved to be as gentle as the touch of a girl, and it told Ronicky, more strongly than words could have done, that Al Jenkins was as considerate as he was powerful. In a flash he understood the popularity of Al in the town. Money alone could not have purchased such a repute west of the rockies.

  "Been hearing about you," said Al Jenkins.

  "I been hearing more about you," said Ronicky.

  That's a lie," said Jenkins. "Because the gent that told me about you can tell more in a minute than another man can tell in a year. I mean old Sam Tompson. Most of what he says is lies, but he strings his lies together pretty well. He makes 'em look good. The only thing I balked on about you is when he told me that you was a mass of scars from head to foot, and that you done all he said you'd done and are still shy of twenty-seven. Turn around here and let me have a look at you!"

  He had a great proprietary, possessive air which was not really offensive. Now with one hand he turned Ronicky Doone around. With the other hand he struck a match and lighted a lamp and then held the light high, so that in the dusk he could examine the face of the youth. In another man it would have been intolerable impertinence, but in Al Jenkins it was simply an idiosyncrasy with which Ronicky for one was quite willing to put up. He even broke into laughter, as Al Jenkins stepped back and lowered the lamp, shaking his head in bewilderment.

  "What plumb beats me," said Al Jenkins, "is how he can keep a straight face when he tells them lies, that Tompson! He said that you why, half of the things that he said about you would have filled a book, Ronicky. How much of 'em are straight? What's all this about you being a fire-eating, ma
n-killing terror? Is that the truth about the time when you "

  "It's all wrong," said Ronicky instantly. "I'm the most gentlest, peaceablest, law-abidingest gent you ever seen, Mr. Jenkins. You can lay to that! I dunno where old Tompson got hold of his yarns about me, but "

  "He got 'em down south. Says that once on the Staked Plains "

  "Oh, he don't know what he's talking about," said Ronicky calmly. "There ain't no use talking about what he said."

  "For the first time I begin to think that there's something in what he told me," replied Jenkins.

  He now folded his arms above his stomach and planted his legs well apart. "Doone," he said, "I guess this is a lucky day for both of us."

  "I hope so," said Ronicky politely.

  "Well, I'm going to make it so!" boomed the big man. "Hope is all well and good. But it's better off when it's left inside the covers of a book. It ain't a good word for a man to use. He's got hands to make things and to take things with. That's better than a dreamer's head to hope!"

  He brought his sentence to a conclusion by crashing the flat of his hand down upon the table, so that that flimsy article of furniture sagged sadly to one side with a great groan. Al Jenkins straightened it with a jerk that set the lamp to dancing, and the flame to leaping in the glass chimney's throat. But Jenkins allowed the lamp to stagger unregarded. He was already pacing up and down the room, now and then coming to a pause in front of Ronicky and directing the full power of his resonant voice and his bright, clear eyes upon the younger man.

  "Here's what I'm driving at," said Jenkins. "You been in town long enough to know what I'm doing around here?"

  "I got a general idea," said Ronicky, fumbling to find the words which would most gently approach the truth. "They tell me that you're sort of interested in road building and real estate and that you are buying a good deal of land."

  "Thunder!" burst in Jenkins. "They tell you a lot of rot. What I'm after is old Bennett, and, if they talked to you about me at all, they told you that first off. I'm here doing things for the town, and maybe some of them are done because I do like the place. But right down in the bottom of your heart you can get to the real facts, which I don't try to hide: that I'm in here helping Twin Springs because I want Twin Springs to help me. And why do I need help? Because I'm smashing Bennett because I'm smashing him root and branch!"

  As he spoke he crashed his fist into the palm of his other hand repeatedly with force enough to have knocked down an ordinary man. The energy of the rancher was amazing. No wonder he had succeeded in tearing wealth out of the frozen land of Alaska. He put enough effort into five minutes of conversation to have enabled another to run a mile.

  "H'm." said Ronicky, "I see. Well I did hear a little about that "

  "And you thought I was a mean old scoundrel for doing it, eh?"

  "Why "

  "Don't deny it! That's what you thought! Well, there's no harm in thinking what you please. This is a mighty free country, son, and I want it to stay free so far as I'm concerned. Think what you please, Doone, but just listen to me while I talk sense to you. Ronicky, I've got a need of you. I want you on my side!"

  Ronicky Doone regarded him with wonder.

  "You got the wrong idea about me," he said. "I ain't floating through here aiming to get into trouble on one side or the other. Matter of fact all that I want to do is to get even with big Blondy, and then I'll be traveling along, I guess."

  "Sure," said Al Jenkins hastily, waving his hand in large agreement with this statement. "Don't I know what's going on inside of your head, boy? You're plumb peaceable. All you want to do is to finish up Blondy. But, Ronicky, I aim to tell you that before you've finished up Blondy you'll be a mite older than you are."

  Ronicky shook his head.

  "I finish my business quick," he declared. "Either he gets me, or I get him. That's all there is to it. As soon as he finds out that Oliver Hopkins ain't dead, he'll be back on the Bennett place as big as life. So I guess it won't be long before him and me meet up."

  Al Jenkins shook his head.

  "Son," he said, "I'd like to trust you to do the right thing, but I can't. You go to kill Blondy don't shake your head and cuss because I say that. You're going to fight him, and the only way you can stop one of Blondy's kind is to kill him. I know! But when you go out to the ranch, nine chances out of ten, the person you run into will be old Bennett, with a tongue slicker than a snake's tongue. And he'll talk you around onto his side quicker'n you can wink. Oh, he's a fine talker, old Bennett is. Why he picked a job where he'd have to talk to cows instead of to men, I can't make out! He could steal a baby out of the arms of the judge, if he was a lawyer, and have the jury weeping and swearing that the kid belonged to him, all inside of the shake of a lamb's tail. That's the sort of a pizen gent this Bennett is!"

  "But I'm not going out to talk," said Ronicky. "I "

  He might as well have tried to stop the rush of an undammed stream. Al Jenkins when he began to talk kept on until his mind was empty of ideas.

  "Or if it ain't the old man, then his girl will get you. Have you heard anything about his girl?"

  "Only that she's pretty," said Ronicky.

  The older man stared at him in disgust.

  "What kind of men do they breed nowadays?" he roared at last. "I'll tell you all about Elsie Bennett, son. She's the living image of her mother. Oh my, oh my, oh my!"

  He brought out the exclamations partly as devout sighs and partly as groans.

  "Know what that means? That means that she's one of them deadly blondes. She's one of them kind that got hair that's a sort of a palpitating gold. Pale gold, you see, with the sun in it, is what her hair is. She's got blue eyes. She may be thinking up more kinds of deviltry than there are underground, but all the time she'll have a look in her eye that makes a man think of heaven. She's got a dimple tucked away in one cheek and a sort of a little crooked smile. That smile always seems to be at you as much as it is with you. She ain't got one of these tissue-paper skins with color in her cheeks like it was slapped on with a paint brush one of them skins that fade and wrinkle up by the time a girl's thirty, in this here climate. No, sir. Her skin is just sort of creamy, with a look like it had been rubbed and sponged till it was fresh and clear as crystal. D'you foller me, son?"

  He had changed his tone wonderfully in speaking of the girl. He stood with his head thrown back, so that the immense column of this throat was exposed. But out of that great throat came a voice soft and deep and tremulous with an edging of emotion that cut to Ronicky's quick.

  "Oh, lad," said the big man, "a girl like her hadn't ought to belong to no one man. Why, she should be private property. She'd ought to be taken around where everybody could see her and be happy looking at her. A sight of her is better than good news. And a picture of her smiling, or the hearing of her laugh, is like striking gold in the desert."

  He raised his head again and scowled at Ronicky Doone.

  "Why ain't you standing on tiptoe, champing and chawing the bit to get out and see her, you young rapscallion?" he roared.

  "I can get along tolerable well without seeing her," admitted Ronicky Doone.

  "Bah!" said Al Jenkins. "You maybe think that you're in love with some other girl, but you ain't! It ain't no ways possible for a man to be really in love except with a woman like she is, or her mother was before her! Why, I got more reasons for hating Bennett and the Bennett stock than a spider has got for hating a wasp. But I don't dare get within range of that girl. All my hate would wither up. I'd soften up like a sponge. I'd begin to grin and gape at her. And I'd be lost, and she could do what she wanted with me. Inside of a minute I'd be signing over half of my land to that skunk of a father of hers. That's the sort of a girl she is!" He concluded with another explosion of sound.

  "And you think that you'd be safe if you went out to shoot Blondy and met her instead? Bah! She'd make a fool of you. You'd crawl around on your hands and knees begging for a chance to work for her and fight for her
!"

  "How does it come," suggested Ronicky, "that she doesn't have the same effect on the other men around these parts? Why doesn't she get a whole army of 'em for her father?"

  "I'll tell you why: folks are blind to what they grow up next to. I was born by the sea. And I never seen nothing in it. I come west and went plumb batty with a case of desert fever, and here I stick. And do you hear them that are born on the desert talking a lot about it? No, you don't. They're too used to it. When you take 'em away from it after a while, they may begin to mourn for it. But it's the things you ain't never lacked that you can't appreciate. Same way with the young folks around here and that flower of a girl, Elsie Bennett. They've growed up in the same schools with her. They've seen her playing dolls with other little girls and putting on long skirts to play grownups. They've seen her get into the feet-hands-and-elbows stage, when all girls look plumb ugly. They've seen all that, and no wonder they don't know what she is! One or two have rubbed their eyes and waked up and found out the truth and gone batty about her for a while, but she gives them the cold shoulder when they come talking marriage, and they wander off some other place to keep from busting their hearts. That's why they don't know what she is."

  Ronicky had listened with the most profound interest, not so much caught by the warnings and the pictures of Jenkins, but intrigued by the revelation of the old man's character.

  "But why are you so set on getting me?" he asked at length.

  "I'll tell you why. Because things ain't now the way they used to be. I don't mean to speak light of you, Doone, after all that I've heard about you. But I just want you to know that twenty years ago I wouldn't have given a shake which side you joined, because with my money and my men I could wipe out old Bennett any time I took a mind to it. But them days ain't no morel Them days ain't no more! They're gone!"