by Max Brand
When this question was first asked in a trembling voice and with shining eyes, the doctor was too dumfounded to answer.
"I don't know about it. I'm not the sky pilot of the town," he said. "Evil in his soul? Well, since it is nothing that can be cut out with a knife, or rooted out with medicine, I can't pretend to argue about it. I won't answer you."
"Because you have a blind prejudice against him," said the girl hotly. "But I tell you, doctor, there is something in instinct, and instinct tells me "
Here the doctor threw up both hands and groaned. "Instinct!" he said. "That's the last resort of my dear wife. And I've learned not to run against that wall of rock. If you've come to the question of instinct, this is no longer an argument. But go on, and I'll try to listen calmly."
"I knew you would act in this manner," said Elsie Bennett sadly. "You wouldn't understand how, the first moment I laid eyes on him, I said to myself that there was something he needed, and which I could give him."
"H'm," said, the doctor.
"It was instinct!" cried Elsie Bennett. "And though my faith was shaken for a little while by by by what we've found out "
"By the fact that we now know Blondy Loring is the thief, hypocrite, and murderer, Charlie Christopher?"
The array of unbeautiful words jolted at her shrewdly and made her head come up by jerks and stole her color away.
"You don't know everything!" she managed to exclaim faintly.
"Do you?" demanded the doctor.
"What temptations may have been in his path, and how he may have been forced by circumstances "
"Forced? Bah!" said the brutal doctor. "I tell you, my dear girl, that every one knows the story of Christopher. And every one knows that he was given a good education good enough so that he should have been able to know right from wrong, anyway! But he was spoiled, and he got into the habit of wanting his own way. So when his father died and left Christopher without any money, the boy went bad. He got at the point of a gun what he used to get from his father. And that's all there is to it. He went from bad to worse. And now here he is!"
"From bad to worse!" cried the girl indignantly and skipping over the part of the doctor's remark which appeared to her unanswerable. "From bad to worse! Do you call it worse for him to have worked as he has done for my poor father, without even wages to encourage him or for him to hope for?"
Here the doctor actually burst into laughter, regardless of the sleeping patient.
"Wages? Nonsense! He'd seen you, my dear. He'd seen you, and your pretty face was what he was working for, and any boy I know of would consider the hope of you wages enough!"
This bluntness brought a wonderful crimson up her cheeks. She stared angrily at the doctor, but it was through a mist of tears.
"How dare " she began and then changed her plan and the point of her remark.
"He has always been the height of courtesy to me," she said.
"I have never denied him good sense," said the doctor.
Here she stamped as one provoked well-nigh beyond endurance.
"It was something in him," she declared, "speaking to something in me."
"If you're in love with him," said the doctor, "I'll stop arguing."
"I'm not in you have no right oh, won't you understand?" she cried and threw out her hands in such a fashion that the doctor, who certainly could make no sense at all out of this sentence, nodded and smiled in the kindliest and briskest manner possible.
"Now, my dear, my dear!" said he, and gathering in both her hands he patted them. "Don't be silly. In the end you will have your own way. You're too pretty for it to be otherwise, and that's the curse of pretty girls all that I've known."
"I'm not asking anything," said she. "All I want to do is to convince you that I haven't the slightest feeling about Charlie except in so far as I can help him. We have very little in common, he and I."
Here the doctor coughed, and she was instantly angered out of reason.
"You are mocking me?" she asked.
"Tush!" said the doctor. "The neatest little tragedy I've ever had under my eyes is in progress, and do you think that I could mock? No, I am sorry to say that my heart is not as hard as that, and the more's the pity. I should have been a rich man, otherwise!"
"Tragedy?" she asked.
"You are beginning to pity him," said the doctor. "And if that doesn't lead to a tragedy, I confess myself a blind idiot unable to see the width of my hand into the future."
"Pity!" she exclaimed. "I should not dare to say as much as that! But I simply see an opportunity for service. Perhaps I can be the small lever that will pry him out of his old ways and lift him to a higher level where "
The groan of the doctor ended her discourse.
"Marriage?" he asked.
She flushed still more hotly.
"Why not?"
Here the doctor leaned forward and punched his remarks with a stubby forefinger into the palm of his opposite hand.
"The minute you start to marry him," he said, "I expose the facts about Christopher to the entire world. His wedding ceremony will put a rope around his neck. I tell you, I'm not going to see your life sacrificed!"
And he left the room, while Elsie Bennett sat stark and stiff in her chair and stared after him and studied blankly the panels of the door through which he had disappeared.
This was the conversation which preceded the wakening of the outlaw on the sixth morning, when he looked about him, with a steady pulse, a normal temperature, and a clear eye. In the last long sleep he had advanced to absolute safety so far as the results of that bullet wound were concerned.
He had improved so much that even the talk with the doctor did not throw him back into a fever. To be sure the threats of the honest physician made his pulses jump, but he controlled them with a great effort and managed to establish one of those calms in which the mind works hard, beating back every impulse toward hysteria.
His foolhardiness in venturing out of his stronghold in the mountains and his double safeguard of the outlaw companion seemed now little short of insanity. And yet, when he turned his head and looked toward the girl, where she was sleeping on the couch on the far side of the room, he could not question but that she was a prize worthy of a great risk.
Worthy of a great risk, indeed, but certainly not worth his own life. He gritted his teeth at the thought. He even felt a huge wave of resentment against her rising in him. It was as though she had deliberately tricked him into loving her. In truth there was little room in the heart of Charlie Loring Christopher for love of another; his affection and esteem for himself occupied most of the available space. And though the beauty of Elsie Bennett thrilled him, he had looked forward to a wedding with her rather as a proof of his own daring and a glove thrown in the face of the law-abiding world, than because his happiness would be unassured until she was his. It had been a great adventure. Instead of bullion, there was a girl. And now, like the treasure seeker wrecked on a desert island, he was apt to curse the goal which had induced him to set sail and trust to chance.
She was very beautiful, but she was not beautiful enough to make up for the pain he was undergoing and the downright peril which now threatened him in case he should push forward his schemes concerning the girl.
But one thing worried him terribly. As long as the doctor knew the truth about him, was it not true that the doctor would conceal his knowledge only so long as the outlaw was sick, and as soon as he approached a cure, would not the physician turn over his patient to the hangman?
Any other course than this seemed to Christopher impossible. And this for the simple reason that he would have adopted no other course himself had he been in the doctor's position.
His dilemma then began to grow blacker and blacker. He must provide against the future danger. He must manage in some way to tie the hands of the doctor. And what instrument did he possess with which he could make the doctor his man? Hunting desperately for a solution he turned his head after the fashion worried me
n have, and his eyes rested upon the girl. They lingered long on her pale, tired face, and the longer he looked the more brightly a fire began to blaze up in them.
He did not see the solution, but he began to see a light which was a hope of help.
Chapter XXXII. HELD BY THE OUTLAWS
As he stepped from the recess where he had been talking with Montana Charlie, Ronicky Doone took care to hang back, so that the attention of Cook would not be immediately called to him. Luckily for him the talk was now so busy and unceasing that there was no attention paid to him. Not even Montana gained a word; for when he hailed Cook, the new arrival merely waved and went on with his narrative of news.
And Ronicky employed the interval in studying the face of Cook. He could not remember a man with such features in Twin Springs. And he felt a great sense of relief as he made sure of the fact. However his memory for the faces of the men in Twin Springs would not be particularly keen, for most of the time he spent in the village had been passed in lounging in the sunshine and smoking innumerable cigarettes. Moreover there was nothing by which Cook could have been easily remembered. He was simply the usual type of sun-blackened, lean, hard-skinned cow-puncher. He was neither young nor old, big nor small, blond nor dark, but in all things he was average. He would have faded into the background of any crowd.
He was enjoying his prominence of the moment on Mount Solomon, as though this were an unaccustomed thing. But Ronicky ground his teeth, as the talk, by evil chance, swung around and centered upon himself.
"What about this Ronicky Doone?"
Cook replied: "Of course I looked up as much as I could about him. There were a couple of gents in Twin Springs that claimed to know all about him. I talked to them. They said that farther up north, Ronicky Doone had a mighty big name for fighting of any kind. And when I asked 'em some more about him, each of 'em come out with a string of yarns big enough to choke a hoss. That was all good enough, but the main trouble was that the yarns didn't hitch up together at all! Wasn't two alike in either set!"
"Was old Ingram one of them that talked?" asked Montana Charlie.
"Sure he was one."
"He's made up of nothing but lies," said Montana. "I guess maybe both of 'em were just stringing you along a little, eh? They found out that nobody in town knew any facts, so they got a little attention by making up histories of Ronicky Doone, eh?"
"Maybe they done that easy enough," said Cook. "Fact remains that he was good enough to down Christopher."
"Might have been some luck in that," remarked another. "Which reminds me of a time down near the Rio Grande when "
The talk veered away from the subject of Ronicky Doone as quickly as it had focused upon him, and he was duly grateful. He began edging more deeply into the shadow by the wall of the cave, where the light from the fissure above fell dim and uncertain. In this light, unless Cook were entirely sure of his man, he would probably go unrecognized. And before he stirred out of that shadow, who could tell but that Cook might be called off on a mission of some sort that would carry him away from Mount Solomon?
So he sat down and literally made himself small while he waited. In half an hour he saw Cook rise and stretch.
"I got to be drifting on," he said. "I took up too much time in Twin Springs the way it was, and now I got to ride."
Ronicky felt a thrill of gratification and an odd fear commingled. For was it not too good to be true that Cook was actually leaving? They were all bidding Cook good-by, waving and calling. Ronicky waved with the rest to make himself less conspicuous than he might have been had he remained motionless.
But the instant he spoke, the head of Cook snapped toward him. And Ronicky knew that he was lost. That sudden turning of the head, that brightening and hardening of the eyes, recalled him to some face which he had seen at the moment of his encounter with Blondy Loring. Whether he had seen the man at a window or an open door, or merely on the far side of the street, he could not tell. But during the moments when he was facing Loring and waiting for the bark of the dog, all his senses had been raised to a new level of keen alertness. He had seen as though all objects were outlined in fire.
And now he recalled that face of Cook in fiery vividness. Cook had seen him shoot down Blondy. Cook had heard him speak. Would he come back now to further investigate the voice which had sounded familiarly upon his ear?
Cook stood with his legs braced, his thumbs hooked into his belt, glaring into the shadow. Apparently in the distance he mistook Ronicky for another companion.
Now he laughed, saying: "That was funny. Just for a minute I took 'Hank,' yonder, for well, I won't say who. But it was plumb funny what a trick my ear played on me. So long, boys."
He waved again, and, as Ronicky's panic-stricken heart stopped its thunder and relapsed into a steadier beating, Cook turned on his heel and disappeared in the passage which led out toward the daylight. Here a red-shirted man arose from a sitting posture to his heels and loosed a stentorian roar: "Cook!"
"Well?" called Cook.
"Come back here!"
"What do you want?" he asked with a curse.
But in spite of his curses Cook reappeared.
"Who'd you call Hank?" asked the red-shirted man. "Hank ain't here. He left yesterday."
"What?"
Ronicky found himself freezing to the rigidity of the stone against which his shoulders leaned. Then Cook strode toward him, and Cook's right hand was held dangerously near to his holster.
Ronicky began to estimate chances. He could do one of two things: He could stay where he was and start shooting from the little niche into which he had squeezed himself to take advantage of the shadow, or else he could plunge for the opening of the passage which led out of the cave. In the former case the chances were ten to one against him. In the latter case the chances of taking so many and such men by surprise were almost equally small.
He decided to do neither, but sat perfectly still; and now Cook halted two paces away, with an oath that rang up and down the cave.
"It's Doone!" he called. "It's Ronicky Doone! What is he doing here?"
There was a shout from the others. In an instant a solid semicircle of men hemmed in Ronicky, and each of them was perilously prepared for shooting. Ronicky rolled up to his feet slowly, so that they could watch his every motion, and he confronted them with his arms folded high, for in this fashion they were most clearly able to see that his hands were kept well away from his revolver.
"I'm Ronicky Doone," he said quietly, "and I guess I've jammed into a sort of a mess."
He could see that they were too unutterably amazed at his presence to make head or tail of him.
"D'you mind," he asked, "if I try to tell you just why I've come up here?"
They were falling back a little, as he stepped out where the light fell clearly upon his face. Now they studied him with scowls of the most intense interest, and he looked gradually from one to another until he had surveyed the entire group as he spoke.
"I'll tell you what," he said. "A shooting is a pile easier to think about than it is to do. I thought that shooting up Blondy would be plumb satisfactory, but when I seen him drop it made me sick. And when I heard how the Bennett place would go bust with Blondy off of it, it made me a lot sicker. On top of that I seen the girl, and she made me sicker still!"
He sighed and went on: "I made up my mind that, even if I'd pushed Blondy off the stage for a while, I'd try to keep his work from going smash all around. So I went out to the Bennett place to see what I could do. And the first and last thing I seen that I had to do was to get men, plenty of men, fighting men, to stave off Al Jenkins when he starts to clean up the ranch and rustle off the cows. And I made up my mind that I'd take a chance. I'd go up to Mount Solomon, try to play the part of being one of you gents, and finally get half a dozen of you to come down and spend a week's vacation just riding the range for Bennett! Well, I was held up for the most part of the week by a lot of bad luck. And now I've got roped by Cook, and I guess a p
lan that looked sort of crazy to start with is sure turning out crazy all around! But I've told you the straight of this yarn so's you can know just where to figure me."
He stepped back again and leaned once more against the rock wall. For a moment the outlaws were bewildered. Then Cook, edged back toward the exit by the necessity of his sudden departure, spoke before he left.
"Boys," he said, "go easy on believing a yarn like that. It sounds too saintly to be true. And just put this inside of your heads: if the gents in Twin Springs ever wake up to the fact that the man they got on the sick bed down there is Christopher, it may come in pretty handy to us and to Christopher if we have somebody up here that we could trade in for him. Ain't that reasonable? Keep the gent that knocked Blondy over, for them, and if they're men they'll trade even Christopher to see that no harm comes to Doone. Anyway keep thinking about that hard and fast. I got to go!"
He disappeared. But he had fired a shot which, it seemed, was to sink the ship of Ronicky's hopes. The certainty of Cook was all they needed.
Quickly they rehearsed the possibilities. They dared not turn him loose at once and let him go. He had learned too much about the men and the ways of Mount Solomon. And yet if they kept him as an exchange, he would carry an even greater knowledge away with him when he left.
They decided that the only thing to do was to follow the advice of Cook and keep Ronicky Doone a secure prisoner until they were assured that Christopher was back on his feet and safely out of the town.
"And when Kit is up on his feet and back among us once more," suggested the man in the red shirt, "we don't have to worry none about what to do with Doone. Because maybe Kit will have a couple of suggestions about that, all out of his own head!"
This suggestion brought an ominous laugh, and Ronicky saw that he was fettered again. To be restrained by big Curly had been bad enough. But to be a captive in the hands of all these fighters was a thousand times worse. Five seconds later they had his gun, and he was more helpless than the rope of Curly had rendered him.
