by Max Brand
“Well?” asked Harry Masters.
In the old days not one of them would have dared to voice the question, but now things were changing, and well Lord Nick could read the change and its causes.
“Are you talking to me?” asked Nick, and he looked straight between the eyes of Masters.
The glance of the other did not falter, and it maddened Nick.
“I’m talking to you,” said Masters coolly enough. “What happened between you and Donnegan?”
“What should happen?” asked Lord Nick.
“Maybe all this is a joke,” said Masters bitterly. He was a square-built man, with a square face and a wrinkled, fleshy forehead. In intelligence, Nick ranked him first among the men. And if a new leader were to be chosen there was no doubt as to where the choice of the men would fall. No doubt that was why Masters put himself forward now, ready to brave the wrath of the chief. “Maybe we’re fooled,” went on Masters. “Maybe they ain’t any call for you to fall out with Donnegan?”
“Maybe there’s a call to find out this,” answered Lord Nick. “Why did you leave the mines? What are you doing up here?”
The other swallowed so hard that he blinked.
“I left the mines,” he declared through his set teeth, “because I was run off ’em.”
“Ah,” said Lord Nick, for the devil was rising in him, “I always had an idea that you might be yellow, Masters.”
The right hand of Masters swayed toward his gun, hesitated, and then poised idly.
“You heard me talk?” persisted Lord Nick brutally. “I call you yellow. Why don’t you draw on me? I called you yellow, you swine, and I call the rest of you yellow. You think you have me down? Why, curse you, if there were thirty of your cut, I’d say the same to you!”
There was a quick shift, the three men faced Lord Nick, but each from a different angle. And opposing them, he stood superbly indifferent, his arms folded, his feet braced. His arms were folded, but each hand, for all they knew, might be grasping the butt of a gun hidden away in his clothes. Once they flashed a glance from face to face; but there was no action. They were remembering only too well some of the wild deeds of this giant.
“You think I’m through,” went on Lord Nick. “Maybe I am—through with you. You hear me talk?”
One by one, his eyes dared them, and one by one they took up the challenge, struggled, and lowered their glances. He was still their master and in that mute moment the three admitted it, the Pedlar last of all.
Masters saw fit to fall back on the last remark.
“I’ve swallowed a lot from you, Nick,” he said gravely.
“Maybe there’ll be an end to what we take one of these days. But now I’ll tell you how yellow I was. A couple of gents come to me and tell me I’m through at the mine. I told them they were crazy. They said old Colonel Macon had sent them down to take charge. I laughed at ’em. They went away and came back. Who with? With the sheriff. And he flashed a paper on me. It was all drawn up clean as a whistle. Trimmed up with a lot of ‘whereases’ and ‘as hereinbefore mentioned’ and such like things. But the sheriff just gimme a look and then he tells me what it’s about. Jack Landis has signed over all the mines to the colonel and the colonel has taken possession.”
As he stopped, a growl came from the others.
“Lester is the man that has the complaint,” said Lord Nick. “Where do the rest of you figure in it? Lester had the mines; he lost ’em because he couldn’t drop Landis with his gun. He’d never have had a smell of the gold if I hadn’t come in. Who made Landis see light? I did! Who worked it so that every nickel that came out of the mines went through the fingers of Landis and came back to us? I did! But I’m through with you. You can hunt for yourselves now. I’ve kept you together to guard one another’s backs. I’ve kept the law off your trail. You, Masters, you’d have swung for killing the McKay brothers. Who saved you? Who was it bribed the jury that tried you for the shooting up of Derbyville, Pedlar? Who took the marshal off your trail after you’d knifed Lefty Waller, Joe Rix? I’ve saved you all a dozen times. Now you whine at me. I’m through with you forever!”
Stopping, he glared about him. His knuckles stung from the impact of the blow he had delivered in Milligan’s place. He hungered to have one of these three stir a hand and get into action.
And they knew it. All at once they crumbled and became clay in his hands.
“Chief,” said Joe Rix, the smoothest spoken of the lot, and one who was supposed to stand specially well with Lord Nick on account of his ability to bake beans, Spanish. “Chief, you’ve said a whole pile. You’re worth more’n the rest of us all rolled together. Sure. We know that. There ain’t any argument. But here’s just one little point that I want to make.
“We was doing fine. The gold was running fine and free. Along comes this Donnegan. He busts up our good time. He forks in on your girl—”
A convulsion of the chief’s face made Rix waver in his speech and then he went on: “He shoots Landis, and when he misses killing him—by some accident, he comes down here and grabs him out of Lebrun’s own house. Smooth, eh? Then he makes Landis sign that deed to the mines. Oh, very nice work, I say. Too nice.
“‘Now, speakin’ man to man, they ain’t any doubt that you’d like to get rid of Donnegan. Why don’t you? Because everybody has a jinx, and he’s yours. I ain’t easy scared, maybe, but I knew an albino with white eyes once, and just to look at him made me some sick. Well, chief, they ain’t nobody can say that you ever took water or ever will. But maybe the fact that this Donnegan has hair just as plumb red as yours may sort of get you off your feed. I’m just suggesting. Now, what I say is, let the rest of us take a crack at Donnegan, and you sit back and come in on the results when we’ve cleaned up. D’you give us a free road?”
How much went through the brain of Lord Nick? But in the end he gave his brother up to death. For he remembered how Nelly Lebrun had sat in Milligan’s laughing.
“Do what you want,” he said suddenly. “But I want to know none of your plans—and the man that tells me Donnegan is dead gets paid—in lead!”
CHAPTER 38
The smile of Joe Rix was the smile of a diplomat. It could be maintained upon his face as unwaveringly as if it were wrought out of marble while Joe heard insult and lie. As a matter of fact Joe had smiled in the face of death more than once, and this is a school through which even diplomats rarely pass. Yet it was with an effort that he maintained the characteristic good-natured expression when the door to Donnegan’s shack opened and he saw big George and, beyond him, Donnegan himself.
“Booze,” said Joe Rix to himself instantly.
For Donnegan was a wreck. The unshaven beard—it was the middle of morning—was a reddish mist over his face. His eyes were sunken in shadow. His hair was uncombed. He sat with his shoulders hunched up like one who suffers from cold. Altogether his appearance was that of one whose energy has been utterly sapped.
“The top of the morning, Mr. Donnegan,” said Joe Rix, and put his foot on the threshold.
But since big George did not move it was impossible to enter.
“Who’s there?” asked Donnegan.
It was a strange question to ask, for by raising his eyes he could have seen. But Donnegan was staring down at the floor. Even his voice was a weak murmur.
“What a party! What a party he’s had!” thought Joe Rix, and after all, there was cause for a celebration. Had not the little man in almost one stroke won the heart of the prettiest girl in The Corner, and also did he not probably have a working share in the richest of the diggings?
“I’m Joe Rix,” he said.
“Joe Rix?” murmured Donnegan softly. “Then you’re one of Lord Nick’s men?”
“I was,” said Joe Rix, “sort of attached to him, maybe.”
Perhaps this pointed remark won the interest of Donnegan. He raised his eyes, and Joe Rix beheld the most unhappy face he had ever seen. “A bad hangover,” he decided, “and that makes it bad
for me!”
“Come in,” said Donnegan in the same monotonous, lifeless voice.
Big George reluctantly, it seemed, withdrew to one side, and Rix was instantly in the room and drawing out a chair so that he could face Donnegan.
“I was,” he proceeded “sort of tied up with Lord Nick. But”—and here he winked broadly—“it ain’t much of a secret that Nick ain’t altogether a lord any more. Nope. Seems he turned out sort of common, they say.”
“What fool,” murmured Donnegan, “has told you that? What ass had told you that Lord Nick is a common sort?”
It shocked Joe Rix, but being a diplomat he avoided friction by changing his tactics.
“Between you and me,” he said calmly enough, “I took what I heard with a grain of salt. There’s something about Nick that ain’t common, no matter what they say. Besides, they’s some men that nobody but a fool would stand up to. It ain’t hardly a shame for a man to back down from ’em.”
He pointed this remark with a nod to Donnegan.
“I’ll give you a bit of free information,” said the little man, with his weary eyes lighted a little. “There’s no man on the face of the earth who could make Lord Nick back down.”
Once more Joe Rix was shocked to the verge of gaping, but again he exercised a power of marvelous self control “About that,” he remarked as pointedly as before, “I got my doubts. Because there’s some things that any gent with sense will always clear away from. Maybe not one man—but say a bunch of all standin’ together.”
Donnegan leaned back in his chair and waited. Both of his hands remained drooping from the edge of the table, and the tired eyes drifted slowly across the face of Joe Rix.
It was obviously not the aftereffects of liquor. The astonishing possibility occurred to Joe Rix that this seemed to be a man with a broken spirit and a great sorrow. He blinked that absurdity away.
“Coming to cases,” he went on, “there’s yourself, Mr. Donnegan. Now, you’re the sort of a man that don’t sidestep nobody. Too proud to do it. But even you, I guess, would step careful if there was a whole bunch agin’ you.”
“No doubt,” remarked Donnegan.
“I don’t mean any ordinary bunch,” explained Joe Rix, “but a lot of hard fellows. Gents that handle their guns like they was born with a holster on the hip.”
“Fellows like Nick’s crowd,” suggested Donnegan quietly.
At this thrust the eyes of Joe narrowed a little.
“Yes,” he admitted, “I see you get my drift.”
“I think so.”
“Two hard fighters would give the best man that ever pulled a gun a lot of trouble. Eh?”
“No doubt.”
“And three men—they ain’t any question, Mr. Donnegan—would get him ready for a hole in the ground.”
“I suppose so.”
“And four men would make it no fight—jest a plain butchery.”
“Yes?”
“Now, I don’t mean that Nick’s crowd has any hard feeling about you, Mr. Donnegan.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“I knew you’d be. That’s why I’ve come, all friendly, to talk things over. Suppose you look at it this way—”
“Joe Rix,” broke in Donnegan, sighing, “I’m very tired. Won’t you cut this short? Tell me in ten words just how you stand.”
Joe Rix blinked once more, caught his breath, and fired his volley.
“Short talk is straight talk, mostly,” he declared. “This is what Lester and the rest of us want—the mines!”
“Ah?”
“Macon stole ’em. We got ’em back through Landis. Now we’ve got to get ’em back through the colonel himself. But we can’t get at the colonel while you’re around.”
“In short, you’re going to start out to get me? I expected it, but it’s kind of you to warn me.”
“Wait, wait, wait! Don’t rush along to conclusions. We ain’t so much in a hurry. We don’t want you out of the way. We just want you on our side.”
“Shoot me up and then bring me back to life, eh?”
“Mr. Donnegan,” said the other, spreading out his hands solemnly on the table, “you ain’t doin’ us justice. We don’t hanker none for trouble with you. Any way it comes, a fight with you means somebody dead besides you. We’d get you. Four to one is too much for any man. But one or two of us might go down. Who would it be? Maybe the Pedlar, maybe Harry Masters, maybe Lester, maybe me! Oh, we know all that. No gunplay if we can keep away from it.”
“You’ve left out the name of Lord Nick,” said Donnegan.
Joe Rix winked.
“Seems like you tended to him once and for all when you got him alone in this cabin. Must have thrown a mighty big scare into him. He won’t lift a hand agin’ you now.”
“No?” murmured Donnegan hoarsely.
“Not him! But that leaves four of us, and four is plenty, eh?”
“Perhaps.”
“But I’m not here to insist on that point. No, we put a value on keepin’ up good feeling between us and you, Mr. Donnegan. We ain’t fools. We know a man when we see him—and the fastest gunman that ever slid a gun out of leather ain’t the sort of a man that me and the rest of the boys pass over lightly. Not us! We know you, Mr. Donnegan; we respect you; we want you with us; we’re going to have you with us.”
“You flatter me and I thank you. But I’m glad to see that you are at last coming to the point.”
“I am, and the point is five thousand dollars that’s tied behind the hoss that stands outside your door.”
He pushed his fat hand a little way across the table, as though the gold even then were resting in it, a yellow tide of fortune.
“For which,” said Donnegan, “I’m to step aside and let you at the colonel?”
“Right.”
Donnegan smiled.
“Wait,” said Joe Rix. “I was makin’ a first offer to see how you stood, but you’re right. Five thousand ain’t enough and we ain’t cheapskates. Not us. Mr. Donnegan, they’s ten thousand cold iron men behind that saddle out there and every cent of it belongs to you when you come over on our side.”
But Donnegan merely dropped his chin upon his hand and smiled mirthlessly at Joe Rix. A wild thought came to the other man. Both of Donnegan’s hands were far from his weapons. Why not a quick draw, a snap shot, and then the glory of having killed this manslayer in single battle for Joe Rix?
The thought rushed red across his brain and then faded slowly. Something kept him back. Perhaps it was the singular calm of Donnegan; no matter how quiet he sat he suggested the sleeping cat which can leap out of dead sleep into fighting action at a touch. By the time a second thought had come to Joe Rix the idea of an attack was like an idea of suicide.
“Is that final?” he asked, though Donnegan had not said a word.
“It is.”
Joe Rix stood up.
“You put it to us kind of hard. But we want you, Mr. Donnegan. And here’s the whole thing in a nutshell. Come over to us. We’ll stand behind you. Lord Nick is slipping. We’ll put you in his place. You won’t even have to face him; we’ll get rid of him.”
“You’ll kill him and give his place to me?” asked Donnegan.
“We will. And when you’re with us, you cut in on the whole amount of coin that the mines turn out—and it’ll be something tidy. And right now, to show where we stand and how high we put you, I’ll let you in on the rock-bottom truth. Mr. Donnegan out there tied behind my saddle there’s thirty thousand dollars in pure gold. You can take it in here and weigh it out!”
He stepped back to watch this blow take effect. To his unutterable astonishment the little man had not moved. His chin still rested upon the back of his hand, and the smile which was on the lips and not in the eyes of Donnegan remained there, fixed.
“Donnegan,” muttered Joe Rix, “if we can’t get you, we’ll get rid of you. You understand?”
But the other continued to smile.
It gave
Joe Rix a shuddering feeling that someone was stealing behind him to block his way to the door. He cast one swift glance over his shoulder and then, seeing that the way was clear, he slunk back, always keeping his face to the red-headed man. But when he came to the doorway his nerve collapsed. He whirled, covered the rest of the distance with a leap, and emerged from the cabin in a fashion ludicrously like one who has been kicked through a door.
His nerve returned as soon as the sunlight fell warmly upon him again; and he looked around hastily to see if anyone had observed his flight.
There was no one on the whole hillside except Colonel Macon in the invalid chair, and the colonel was smiling broadly, beneficently. He had his perfect hands folded across his breast and seemed to cast a prayer of peace and goodwill upon Joe Rix.
CHAPTER 39
Nelly Lebrun smelled danger. She sensed it as plainly as the deer when the puma comes between her and the wind. The many tokens that something was wrong came to her by small hints which had to be put together before they assumed any importance.
First of all, her father, who should have burst out at her in a tirade for having left Lord Nick for Donnegan said nothing at all, but kept a dark smile on his face when she was near him. He even insinuated that Nick’s time was done and that another was due to supersede him.
In the second place, she had passed into a room where Masters, Joe Rix, and the Pedlar sat cheek by jowl in close conference with a hum of deep voice. But at her appearance all talk was broken off.
It was not strange that they should not invite her into their confidence if they had some dark work ahead of them; but it was exceedingly suspicious that Joe Rix attempted to pass off their whispers by immediately breaking off the soft talk and springing into the midst of a full-fledged jest; also, it was strangest of all that when the jest ended even the Pedlar, who rarely smiled, now laughed uproariously and smote Joe soundingly upon the back.
