by Max Brand
“Besides, the odds are too big,” said Ronicky, continuing a monologue which was addressed to himself as much as to them—for he seemed to be merely thinking aloud. “You boys against the rest of the world. Nobody can beat that game forever.”
In protest they shrugged their shoulders.
“Freedom,” said Ronicky, “you ain’t got. And a chance for a lazy life you sure ain’t got. What else is on your side of the fence, boys?”
“Money,” said the red-shirted man hotly. “We got some coin to spend, now and then. That’s more’n the cow-punchers have!”
“Well,” said Ronicky, “how much are you ahead of the game?”
“I’ve been rich, pretty near,” said the other reminiscently. He rocked back on the big stone on which he was sitting and, clasping his knee in his hands, gazed intently into his past. “There was a month right after a little job that me and Turk Ralston done in Nevada, when we was rolling in loot. Yep, we sure had lots of the kale. I had close to twenty-five thousand on me then!”
There was a little murmur that passed around the circle. All eyes turned upon Ronicky. Certainly he was answered this time. Ronicky himself took off his hat and waved it to the other.
“If you got twenty-five thousand,” he said, “you sure have a lot more’n I’ll ever get out of cow-punching.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that I have it now,” said the other. And he shivered a little as he spoke. The joy went out of his face, and a wintry darkness took its place. “Nope, right after that, Ralston, the dog, double-crossed me and turned me over to the sheriff. And the sheriff got the loot and me with it. I got five years for that!”
“All right,” said Ronicky. “That sort of changes things. I was envying you a lot a while back, but I feel a little different right now. You have twenty-five thousand to look at for a month, and then you paid for it by busting rocks for five years for nothing. Is that right?”
He of the red shirt moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue and cast an ugly look at Ronicky. He did not like to have the glory of that twenty-five-thousand-dollar haul besmirched so rudely.
“It’s more’n you’ll ever put your finger on, son,” he said sharply.
“Sure it is,” said Ronicky, “because I can’t figure on paying a price as high as that for money. Not for one month’s worth of money! You see, I like my freedom too well!”
There was a moment of silence, while the outlaws reflected darkly upon these remarks. It seemed that they were being backed up against the wall, and yet they felt that there must be some escape.
“Now, there’s Bud, yonder,” said he of the red shirt at last. “He ain’t ever spent a day in jail in his life. There’s freedom for you!”
At once the case of Bud was taken up with acclaim.
“Yep, let’s have any of the cow-punchers, beginning with yourself, stand up and say that they’ve led as free a life as Bud has led!”
Ronicky looked closely at Bud. He was a very tall, very thin man. Eternal melancholy sat upon his eyes. His cheek were drawn famine-thin. And there was a faint and uncertain spot of color in each cheek, although the rest of his face was deathly white. Even as Ronicky looked at him, Bud coughed, a racking cough that tore his frame.
“All right,” said Ronicky with deadly solemnity. “I guess Bud may have lived a free life. But there’s other ways of paying for freedom than in a prison. I wish Bud all the freedom he can get and the best time!”
Plainly he had guessed the grim secret of Bud and a heavy silence fell on the circle.
“In the whole bunch of you,” asked Ronicky suddenly, “is there just one that’s got a thousand dollars?”
The silence was an eloquent answer in the negative.
“Among the whole bunch of you,” demanded Ronicky, “is there a one that ain’t paid for his times when he was flush, by months of prison and hard riding in all kinds of weather, and being hounded here and there through the mountains, till you had to keep your eyes peeled on every bush that you passed? Is there a one of you that doesn’t have to look extra hard when a new man comes into the room, because that new gent may be somebody that you fell foul of?”
He paused abruptly from the tirade and found that one and all were watching him, with haunted eyes of dread. It seemed that he was speaking for each man in words which revealed his own peril most intimately.
Finally he of the red shirt, but in a harsh, choked voice, said: “Well, Ronicky, I dunno where you aim to drive with all this chatter. You sure don’t expect that we’d go down onto Bennett’s Ranch and really ride herd for you.”
“Why not?” asked Ronicky sharply.
“Why—thunder! Us? They’d have us hung inside of ten days at the most!”
“Why would they? You boys ain’t been operating around here. Nine chance out of ten they won’t be a soul around that’ll know you at all.”
“Go into slavery?” asked one.
“Why not try it for a week—or for a day?” asked Ronicky. “There’s nobody to make you do anything longer than you want to.”
The novelty of the idea began to appeal to them suddenly.
“Why, boys,” said the tall man, Bud, raising his great length and looking hungrily at Ronicky, “if I could get to a real, honest-Injun bed for one night, I figure that it might do me some good, eh?”
“It’d be sort of fun to sing to the doggies, too,” said another reflectively.
“And as he says, we don’t have to stay.”
“But what about keeping him here for a hostage until Christopher is in the clear?”
“Tell that idea to your hat. He ain’t going to blow on Kit. He’s got too much sense. He knows that if he starts anything like that he’ll have the whole mob of us after him, and he sure ain’t lining out any sort of a future like that for himself!”
Ronicky Doone said not a word. He was looking down at his watch. It was still only a little after noon, and there was time if they acted at once!
CHAPTER XXXV
RONICKY’S TRIUMPH
The greatest day of Al Jenkins’ life had come. He sat his horse on the tallest hill near his house, and he could look across more than the mere ground. What he was seeing was his entire past life reduced to pictures. Just below him was the small house where he had begun his struggle. It was a battered and sadly worn house. Once it had represented almost an ideal to him, because it had been around that house that he had grouped his hopes for a home. He remembered when he had planted the small orchard to the left of the house, and the line of trees which was to fence in the drive out to the main road up the valley.
All of these things he had done in the flush of youth, when both he and young Steve Bennett had been fighting fiercely for the hand of the same girl. Far, far away to his right, buried from sight among the hills, was the old Bennett house. It had gone to rack and ruin long since; it had not been lived in for twenty years, for Bennett married a home as well as a wife. Yonder thin streak of blue against the brown hillside told of the big house. This, also, was falling to pieces in the Bennett regime. They were doomed to be destroyers, so it seemed. But in the old days that big house, of which the rising smoke was telling, had been the show place of the mountains.
It was for the sake of the big house and the big property, as much as for the girl, Al could not help but feel, that Steve Bennett had betrayed him. Had it been for love alone, Al vowed that he could have forgiven his lucky rival for his success, but he had always felt that love for the girl was only one small part of it.
He turned his glance back to the little house in the hollow beneath him. Certainly it had not been her wealth that had been the loadstone to him. It was not the thought of the big ranch and what he could have done with it, that made his heart heavy as lead. It was she who might have made his life a heaven upon earth!
It was with a sharp pang that he stared down on the house. He could remember the planting of every one of those trees, he felt. They would tempt her eye, he had felt at the time. He would make t
his so smiling a home that she could not but cast a longing glance toward it.
The orchard was withered now. Only a few withered, writhen trunks, here and there, told of the labor that had made it and the hopes that had been planted with it. The paint, too, which he had plastered on the house with such a devout joyousness, was long since peeled and cracked away, and it left the boards a sturdy and weathered brown. It was a symbol of the changes in his whole life, he told himself.
He had started out the gayest and gentlest of men. And now long experience, bitter disappointments, had taught him that no man was to be trusted outside of his interests. He might reproach himself for his lack of faith in his fellow men, but no amount of self-reproaching could change his mental furniture. And it seemed to Al Jenkins that he sat his horse in the midst of a desert. There was no joy in it; there was no joy in his life. At least there was no pleasure other than the pleasure of great power. He was the strongest man in that district, he assured himself. No one could stand up against him. As for Steve Bennett, there was no real war with him now. There was no suspense other than that which he himself had provided by delaying the destruction of the other for a few days. He could have struck as soon as Blondy Loring was shot down. But he had delayed those six days to give poor Bennett a chance to fight against the inevitable. Inevitable the conclusion certainly must be!
There was only the shadowy form of Ronicky Doone, that strange youth who had forwarded his plans an immense step by removing the formidable and active Blondy, only to turn around and swear that he intended to do his best for Bennett. Ronicky Doone, to be sure, had loomed large in his mind’s eye for a few days. But now that the week was almost lapsed, Al Jenkins was beginning to consign Ronicky’s threats and promises to the region of the thin and shadowy spirits. Ronicky had made a few boasts and then ridden off and left Al to digest them the rest of his life.
Besides, what could one man do to stop him?
Al Jenkins turned his head. Beside him and behind him there were three stalwarts, chosen men of war in case of need. And yonder, scattered at different points through the mountains on the Bennett ranch, there were twenty more picked men, ready for any sort of trouble. These were the ones who were about to close in upon the rancher and scoop his ranges clean of cattle. How could one man block schemes as widely extended as these?
And there was more, much more to be said. For behind him stood arrayed a solid body of public opinion which would back him against any odds and against all foes. Truly he was well fortified. He looked back of him to the very crest of the hill. At that highest point there was a great pile of wood. It was a truly imposing mass, which had been collected for weeks and months, no one being able to understand its purpose. And now it had been recently finished off, to the complete wonder of Al’s men, with a thick crown of green wood and foliage.
They could not understand, but a torch applied to that heap of wood would send a vast smoke column standing stiffly into the air, and the sight of that smoke column would warn every one of the score of men scattered among the hills, that the time to begin the drive had come; and they would set to work just as in the old days that same Steve Bennett had launched a brutal host against him and swept his smaller ranch clean.
No wonder that Al Jenkins delayed in applying the torch. For he was in the position of Jove. At his nod the lightning flew. But it would only fly once; and he lingered, delaying the stroke for the joy of balancing the destruction in the palm of his hand.
But at last he made up his mind that the time had come past delay. His men must be safely in their appointed places for the beginning of the round-up. The cowardly crew of cow-punchers who had been working for Bennett before, had been seen to leave the ranch long ago, warned of the impending blow. All the stage was set for the catastrophe. In the meantime the sun had reached the late afternoon, and already its light was beginning to turn yellow and give a less biting brilliance, a less withering blast of heat.
He turned to give the signal which would sweep Steve Bennett into pauperism, and then he delayed the signal for yet another moment. For his eye had caught an advancing group of horsemen who had just wound into view on the valley road. He lowered the hand which he was about to wave, as he called to “Freckles” to light the match that would start the fire. For there was something in the manner of riding in that group and in the group itself, that arrested his attention.
In the first place there were eight men, which was a larger number than generally gathered together going to and from a ranch. In the second place they rode well bunched together and went along at a steady gait as though they were in a businesslike mood and had a distinct destination just before them.
And above all, as they drew nearer, a rather small bay horse, which even in the distance showed the utmost delicacy and beauty of line, flashed into the lead and then turned suddenly into the very driveway which led to Al Jenkins’ house!
Jenkins forgot all about the high-built bonfire behind him. He uttered an exclamation of the keenest wonder and interest.
“It’s Ronicky Doone!” he cried. “It’s Ronicky Doone, boys, and if I ain’t mistaken, he’s here to raise trouble with me!”
The announcement caused a burst of consternation. The defeat of Blondy Loring in the center of Twin Springs had been spectacular enough to impress even the dullest minds and the least apprehensive spirits. But the sight of such a man, riding at the head of seven followers who, so far as was known, might be men of his own caliber, was a thunderbolt to their plans and their confidence. They packed in close around the rancher and waited eagerly for his decision.
Immediately they grew nervous when he did not give a command for them to turn the heads of their horses and start traveling in the opposite direction. Especially now that the advancing party swarmed around the house, apparently found at once that there was no one in it, and then straightened out for the place where Jenkins and his smaller party waited.
Freckles voiced the opinion of the others.
“If Ronicky Doone is working for Bennett,” he said, “and if he’s got us, eight to four, don’t it seem sort of nacheral and wise for us to vamoose, chief?”
But Al Jenkins waved the thought aside.
“If Blondy Loring on his little bunch of gray lightning couldn’t ride away from that bay mare, what chance do you think we’d have with our hosses? No, if he wants to talk to us, let him come up here and talk. I’m going to stay right here, but the rest of you can do what you want to do.”
They made no reply, but, reigning their horses back, they prepared to wait for the attack.
It came with a rush and a swirl. Up the hill dashed the eight in a scattered line, but what Al Jenkins looked at was not the row of horses, stretching in a hard gallop up the slope, but the riders who spurred them on. He thought that he had never seen seven such formidable characters. There was a wide-shouldered man in a red shirt riding right behind Ronicky Doone, an ugly man, the ugliest that Al Jenkins could remember encountering. And he had a purposeful manner about him that suggested great readiness with weapons. At one end of the line there was a man famine-thin and very tall. And his lean face had the ferocious eagerness of a shark. And all the other men in between were hardly less impressive. If it came to a show-down, “God pity my men,” thought the rancher.
In the meantime he summoned a cheerful smile and rode out a pace or two in the front. Ronicky brought the bay mare to a halt immediately before him.
He had expected a triumphant defiance in the manner of the fighting youth. He was agreeably surprised when Ronicky came to him with a smile and an outstretched hand. They shook hands to the mutual bewilderment of the opposing parties, both of which were glowering darkly at one another.
“I’m mighty glad to see you again,” said Ronicky. “We’re lined up on the wrong sides in this party, it looks like, but I’m aiming to play clean and fair, Mr. Jenkins!”
Al Jenkins was so relieved that he broke into laughter and smote Ronicky a tremendous blow on the shoulder
.
“I’ve never yet worked crooked,” he said, “and I ain’t going to begin. But what you driving at, Ronicky?”
The explanation of Ronicky was brief and wholly to the point.
“I’ve come down with some partners of mine,” he said, “to give things a look around these parts. We aim to be friends of Steve Bennett, all of us. And being friends of his, we thought maybe you might like to know that we was around in this neighborhood.”
“Sure.” said Al Jenkins, falling at once into the spirit of this talk. “I’m a public-spirited man, son, and I’m always interested in the folks that call on my neighbors. You’re going to stay with Steve Bennett for a while?”
“Sure! We’re his new hands. Me and the boys figured that maybe he’d be losing some of his hands before long, and that he’d want to take on a few more.”
“Right.” replied Al Jenkins. “His whole gang quit just this morning. But I didn’t know that he ever used a crowd as big as eight, outside of a rush season?”
“But this,” said Ronicky, “is a rush season with Bennett, though I suppose that you’d never guess it.”
The innuendoes were hugely to the taste of the cow-punchers on both sides, and they grinned at each other with a mutual understanding. Now Ronicky and Al Jenkins drew to one side.
“It means that your game is called off, Jenkins,” said Ronicky. “These boys of mine may not be as many as the ones that you’ve got working for you. But they got something better than numbers—they got good steady hands and quick trigger fingers. Look ’em over, Jenkins. And, besides, they’re better than they look!”
“In one sense I suppose that they are,” said Jenkins gloomily. His good humor was rapidly vanishing, as he saw the chance for action on this day removed. Then he added with a touch of malice: “I’d like to have the history of every one of that gang. I think it might be interesting to people—particularly to the sheriff!”
