"Lemme get at him. Lemme crack him one on the bean," insisted Meldrum as he made a wild pass at Beaudry.
"No hurry a-tall," soothed Ned. "We got all evening before us. Take yore time, Dan."
"Looks to me like it's certainly up to Mr. Cherokee-What's-his-name-Beaudry to treat the crowd," suggested Chet Fox.
The young man clutched at the straw. "Sure. Of course, I will. Glad to treat, even though I don't drink myself," he said with a weak, forced heartiness.
"You don't drink. The hell you don't!" cut in Meldrum above the Babel of voices.
"He drinks—hic—buttermilk," contributed Hart.
"He'll drink whiskey when I give the word, by Gad!" Meldrum shook himself free of Rutherford and pressed forward. He dragged a bottle from his pocket, drew out the cork, and thrust the liquor at Roy. "Drink, you yellow-streaked coyote—and drink a-plenty."
Roy shook his head. "No!—no," he protested. "I—I—never touch it." His lips were ashen. The color had fled from his cheeks.
The desperado pushed his cruel, vice-scarred face close to that of the man he hated.
"Sa-ay. Listen to me, young fellow. I'm going to bump you off one o' these days sure. Me, I don't like yore name nor the color of yore hair nor the map you wear for a face. I'm a killer. Me, Dan Meldrum. And I serve notice on you right now." With an effort he brought his mind back to the issue on hand. "But that ain't the point. When I ask a man to drink he drinks. See? You ain't deef, are you? Then drink, you rabbit!"
Beaudry, his heart beating like a triphammer, told himself that he was not going to drink that they could not make him—that he would die first. But before he knew it the flask was in his trembling fingers. Apparently, without the consent of his flaccid will, the muscles had responded to the impulse of obedience to the spur of fear. Even while his brain drummed the refrain, "I won't drink—I won't—I won't," the bottle was rising to his lips.
He turned a ghastly grin on his tormentors. It was meant to propitiate them, to save the last scrap of his self-respect by the assumption that they were all good fellows together. Feebly it suggested that after all a joke is a joke.
From the uptilted flask the whiskey poured into his mouth. He swallowed, and the fiery liquid scorched his throat. Before he could hand the liquor back to its owner, the ex-convict broke into a curse.
"Drink, you pink-ear. Don't play 'possum with me," he roared. Roy drank. Swallow after swallow of the stuff burned its way into his stomach. He stopped at last, sputtering and coughing.
"M—much obliged. I'll be going now," he stammered.
"Not quite yet, Mr. R. C. Street-Beaudry," demurred Charlton suavely. "Stay and play with us awhile, now you're here. No telling when we'll meet again." He climbed on the shoe-shining chair that stood in the entry. "I reckon I'll have my boots shined up. Go to it, Mr. Beaudry-Street."
With a whoop of malice the rest of them fell in with the suggestion. To make this young fellow black their boots in turn was the most humiliating thing they could think of at the moment. They pushed Roy toward the stand and put a brush into his hand. He stood still, hesitating.
"Git down on yore knees and hop to it," ordered Charlton. "Give him room, boys."
Again Beaudry swore to himself that he would not do it. He had an impulse to smash that sneering, cruel face, but it was physically impossible for him to lift a hand to strike. Though he was trembling violently, he had no intention of yielding. Yet the hinges of his knees bent automatically. He found himself reaching for the blacking just as if his will were paralyzed.
Perhaps it was the liquor rushing to his head when he stooped. Perhaps it was the madness of a terror-stricken rat driven into a corner. His fear broke bounds, leaped into action. Beaudry saw red. With both hands he caught Charlton's foot, twisted it savagely, and flung the man head over heels out of the chair. He snatched up the bootblack's stool by one leg and brought it crashing down on the head of Meldrum. The ex-convict went down as if he had been pole-axed.
There was no time to draw guns, no time to prepare a defense. His brain on fire from the liquor he had drunk and his overpowering terror, Beaudry was a berserk gone mad with the lust of battle. He ran amuck like a maniac, using the stool as a weapon to hammer down the heads of his foes. It crashed first upon one, now on another.
Charlton rushed him and was struck down beside Meldrum. Hart, flung back into the cigar-case, smashed the glass into a thousand splinters. Young Rutherford was sent spinning into the street.
His assailants gave way before Beaudry, at first slowly, then in a panic of haste to escape. He drove them to the sidewalk, flailing away at those within reach. Chet Fox hurdled in his flight a burro loaded with wood.
Then, suddenly as it had swept over Roy, the brain-storm passed. The mists cleared from his eyes. He looked down at the leg of the stool in his hand, which was all that remained of it. He looked up—and saw Beulah Rutherford in the street astride a horse.
She spoke to her brother, who had drawn a revolver from his pocket. "You don't need that now, Ned. He's through."
Her contemptuous voice stung Roy. "Why didn't they leave me alone, then?" he said sullenly in justification.
The girl did not answer him. She slipped from the horse and ran into the arcade with the light grace that came of perfect health and the freedom of the hills. The eyes of the young man followed this slim, long-limbed Diana as she knelt beside Charlton and lifted his bloody head into her arms. He noticed that her eyes burned and that her virginal bosom rose and fell in agitation.
None the less she gave first aid with a business-like economy of motion. "Bring water, Ned,—and a doctor," she snapped crisply, her handkerchief pressed against the wound.
To see what havoc he had wrought amazed Roy. The arcade looked as if a cyclone had swept through it. The cigar-stand was shattered beyond repair, its broken glass strewn everywhere. The chair of the bootblack had been splintered into kindling wood. Among the debris sat Meldrum groaning, both hands pressing a head that furiously ached. Brad Charlton was just beginning to wake up to his surroundings.
A crowd had miraculously gathered from nowhere. The fat marshal of Battle Butte was puffing up the street a block away. Beaudry judged it time to be gone. He dropped the leg of the stool and strode toward the hotel.
Already his fears were active again. What would the hillmen do to him when they had recovered from the panic into which his madness had thrown them? Would they start for him at once? Or would they mark one more score against him and wait? He could scarcely keep his feet from breaking into a run to get more quickly from the vicinity of the Silver Dollar. He longed mightily to reach the protection of Dave Dingwell's experience and debonair sang froid.
The cattleman had not yet reached the hotel. Roy went up to their room at once and locked himself in. He sat on the bed with a revolver in his hand. Now that it was all over, he was trembling like an aspen leaf. For the hundredth time in the past week he flung at himself his own contemptuous scorn. Why was the son of John Beaudry such an arrant coward? He knew that his sudden madness and its consequences had been born of panic. What was there about the quality of his nerves that differed from those of other men? Even now he was shivering from the dread that his enemies might come and break down the door to get at him.
He heard the jocund whistle of Dingwell as the cattleman came along the corridor. Swiftly he pocketed the revolver and unlocked the door. When Dave entered, Roy was lying on the bed pretending to read a newspaper.
If the older man noticed that the paper shook, he ignored it.
"What's this I hear, son, about you falling off the water-wagon and filling the hospital?" His gay grin challenged affectionately the boy on the bed. "Don't you know you're liable to give the new firm, Dingwell & Beaudry, a bad name if you pull off insurrections like that? The city dads are talking some of building a new wing to the accident ward to accommodate your victims. Taxes will go up and—"
Roy smiled wanly. "You've heard about it, then?"
"Heard about it! Say, son, I've heard nothing else for the last twenty minutes. You're the talk of the town. I didn't know you was such a bad actor." Dave stopped to break into a chuckle. "Wow! You certainly hit the high spots. Friend Meldrum and Charlton and our kind host Hart—all laid out at one clatter. I never was lucky. Here I wouldn't 'a' missed seeing you pull off this Samson encore for three cows on the hoof, and I get in too late for the show."
"They're not hurt badly, are they?" asked Beaudry, a little timidly.
Dave looked at him with a curious little smile. "You don't want to go back and do the job more thorough, do you? No need, son. Meldrum and Charlton are being patched up in the hospital and Hart is at Doc White's having the glass picked out of his geography. I've talked with some of the also rans, and they tell me unanimous that it was the most thorough clean-up they have participated in recently."
"What will they do—after they get over it?"
Dingwell grinned. "Search me! But I'll tell you what they won't do. They'll not invite you to take another drink right away. I'll bet a hat on that.… Come on, son. We got to hit the trail for home."
Chapter XVII
Roy Improves the Shining Hours
The tender spring burnt into crisp summer. Lean hill cattle that had roughed through the winter storms lost their shaggy look and began to fill out. For there had been early rains and the bunch grass was succulent this year.
Roy went about learning his new business with an energy that delighted his partner. He was eager to learn and was not too proud to ask questions. The range conditions, the breeding of cattle, and transportation problems were all studied by him. Within a month or two he had become a fair horseman and could rope a steer inexpertly.
Dingwell threw out a suggestion one day in his characteristic casual manner. The two men were riding a line fence and Roy had just missed a shot at a rabbit.
"Better learn to shoot, son. Take an hour off every day and practice. You hadn't ought to have missed that cottontail. What you want is to fire accurately, just as soon as yore gun jumps to the shoulder. I can teach you a wrinkle or two with a six-gun. Then every time you see a rattler, take a crack at it. Keep in form. You might need to bend a gun one of these days."
His partner understood what that last veiled allusion meant. The weeks had slipped away since the fracas in front of the Silver Dollar. The enemy had made no move. But cowpunchers returning to the ranch from town reported that both Meldrum and Charlton had sworn revenge. It was an even bet that either one of them would shoot on sight.
Beaudry took Dave's advice. Every day he rode out to a wash and carried with him a rifle and a revolver. He practiced for rapidity as well as accuracy. He learned how to fire from the hip, how to empty a revolver in less than two seconds, how to shoot lying down, and how to hit a mark either from above or below.
The young man never went to town alone. He stuck close to the ranch. The first weeks had been full of stark terror lest he might find one of his enemies waiting for him behind a clump of prickly pear or hidden in the mesquite of some lonely wash. He was past that stage, but his nerves were still jumpy. It was impossible for him to forget that at least three men were deadly enemies of his and would stamp out his life as they would that of a wolf. Each morning he wakened with a little shock of dread. At night he breathed relief for a few hours of safety.
Meanwhile Dave watched him with an indolent carelessness of manner that masked his sympathy. If it had been possible, he would have taken the burden on his own broad, competent shoulders. But this was not in Dingwell's code. He had been brought up in that outdoor school of the West where a man has to game out his own feuds. As the cattleman saw it, Roy had to go through now just as his father had done seventeen years before.
In town one day Dave met Pat Ryan and had a talk with him over dinner. A remark made by the little cowpuncher surprised his friend. Dingwell looked at him with narrowed, inquiring eyes.
The Irishman nodded. "Ye thought you were the only one that knew it? Well, I'm on, too, Dave."
"That's not what I hear everywhere else, Pat," answered the cattleman, still studying the other. "Go down the street and mention the same of Royal Beaudry—ask any one if he is game. What will you get for a reply?"
Without the least hesitation Ryan spoke out. "You'll hear that he's got more guts than any man in Washington County—that he doesn't know what fear is. Then likely you'll be told it's natural enough, since he's the son of Jack Beaudry, the fighting sheriff. Ever-rybody believes that excipt you and me, Dave. We know better."
"What do we know, Pat?"
"We know that the bye is up against a man-size job and is scared stiff."
"Hmp! Was he scared when he licked a dozen men at the Silver Dollar and laid out for repairs three of the best fighters in New Mexico?"
"You're shouting right he was, Dave. No man alive could 'a' done it if he hadn't been crazy with fright."
Dingwell laughed. "Hope I'm that way, then, when I get into my next tight place." He added after a moment: "The trouble with the boy is that he has too much imagination. He makes his own private little hell beforehand."
"I reckon he never learned to ride herd on his fears."
"Jack Beaudry told me about him onc't. The kid was born after his mother had been worrying herself sick about Jack. She never could tell when he'd be brought home dead. Well, Roy inherited fear. I've noticed that when a sidewinder rattles, he jumps. Same way, when any one comes up and surprises him. It's what you might call constitootional with him."
"Yep. That's how I've got it figured. But—" Pat hesitated and looked meditatively out of the window.
"All right. Onload yore mind. Gimme the run of the pen just as yore thoughts happen," suggested the cattleman.
"Well, I'm thinking—that he's been lucky, Dave. But soon as Tighe's tools guess what we know, something's going to happen to Beaudry. He's got them buffaloed now. But Charlton and Meldrum ain't going to quit. Can you tell me how your frind will stand the acid next time hell pops?"
Dave shook his head. "I cannot. That's just what is worrying me. There are men that have to be lashed on by ridicule to stand the gaff. But Roy is not like that. I reckon he's all the time flogging himself like the penitentes. He's sick with shame because he can't go out grinning to meet his troubles.… There ain't a thing I can do for him. He's got to play out his hand alone."
"Sure he has, and if the luck breaks right, I wouldn't put it past him to cash in a winner. He's gamer than most of us because he won't quit even when the divvle of terror is riding his back."
"Another point in his favor is that he learns easily. When he first came out to the Lazy Double D, he was afraid of horses. He has got over that. Give him another month and he'll be a pretty fair shot. Up till the time he struck this country, Roy had lived a soft city life. He's beginning to toughen. The things that scare a man are those that are mysteries to him. Any kid will fight his own brother because he knows all about him, but he's plumb shy about tackling a strange boy. Well, that's how it is with Roy. He has got the notion that Meldrum and Charlton are terrors, but now he has licked them onc't, he won't figure them out as so bad."
"He didn't exactly lick them in a stand-up fight, Dave."
"No, he just knocked them down and tromped on them and put them out of business," agreed Dingwell dryly.
The eyes of the little Irishman twinkled. "Brad Charlton is giving it out that it was an accident."
"That's what I'd call it, too, if I was Brad," assented the cattleman with a grin. "But if we could persuade Roy to put over about one more accident like that, I reckon Huerfano Park would let him alone."
"While Jess Tighe is living?"
Dingwell fell grave. "I'd forgotten Tighe. No, I expect the kid had better keep his weather eye peeled as long as that castor-oil smile of Jess is working."
Chapter XVIII
Rutherford Answers Questions
Beulah Rutherford took back with her to Huerfano Park an almost intolerable resentme
nt against the conditions of her life. She had the family capacity for sullen silence, and for weeks a kind of despairing rage simmered in her heart. She was essentially of a very direct, simple nature, clear as Big Creek where it tumbled down from the top of the world toward the foothills. An elemental honesty stirred in her. It was necessary to her happiness that she keep her own self-respect and be able to approve those she loved.
Just now she could do neither. The atmosphere of the ranch seemed to stifle her. When she rode out into a brave, clean world of sunshine, the girl carried her shame along. Ever since she could remember, outlaws and miscreants had slipped furtively about the suburbs of her life. The Rutherfords themselves were a hard and savage breed. To their door had come more than one night rider flying for his life, and Beulah had accepted the family tradition of hospitality to those at odds with society.
A fierce, untamed girl of primitive instincts, she was the heritor of the family temperament. But like threads of gold there ran through the warp of her being a fineness that was her salvation. She hated passionately cruelty and falsehood and deceit. All her life she had walked near pitch and had never been defiled.
Hal Rutherford was too close to her not to feel the estrangement of her spirit. He watched her anxiously, and at last one morning he spoke. She was standing on the porch waiting for Jeff to bring Blacky when Rutherford came out and put his arm around her shoulder.
"What is it, honey?" he asked timidly.
"It's—everything," she answered, her gaze still on the distant hills.
"You haven't quarreled with Brad?"
"No—and I'm not likely to if he'll let me alone."
Her father did not press the point. If Brad and she had fallen out, the young man would have to make his own amende.
"None of the boys been deviling you?"
"No."
"Aren't you going to tell dad about it, Boots?"
Presently her dark eyes swept round to his.
"Why did you say that you didn't know anything about the Western Express robbery?"
The Sheriff's Son Page 13
