He took the bottle and glasses and walked over to the booth at the wall across from the bar, and sat down. Dustin was right along with him.
He poured two drinks, shoved Dustin’s over to him, then took his copy of the deposition out of his pocket and, opening it, spread it in front of Dustin.
“Read it, Dustin, and you’ll see what I mean.”
Dustin downed his drink and began reading, while Webster rolled a cigarette and watched his face. Dustin’s eyes sharpened and he licked his lips as he read into the long statement. Then the breath was whistling through his nose, his nostrils were expanding and contracting sharply, and the hand on his whiskey glass was white over the knuckles.
Webster sat silent before him, watching the play of emotion on his face as he read through the document that could hang him.
When Dustin had gone through the paper, he started rubbing his chin constantly with one hand while his eyes wandered back and forth along the floor, never coming up to meet Webster’s.
Webster spoke gently to him. “Take a look at some of those gold pieces you were rattling in your pocket a while ago.”
Almost in a daze, it seemed, Dustin extracted one of the coins from his pocket and dropped it on the table before him as though it were contaminated. He turned it around gingerly with the point of his finger until the figure of the woman on it was right side up to him so that he could read the date on it.
Then he stared long at the coin, fascinated, like a bird returning the hypnotic gaze of the snake that would swallow it.
Webster said, “The Federal Government takes a rather critical attitude toward people who steal its money and kill its officers. I hear that that judge over in Fort Smith always sentences all prisoners to death because he gets fifty dollars extra for doing his own hanging. As to the Texas Rangers, well, they are not any too fond of the boys who kill off their men.”
Dustin’s face went white except for pink spots over his cheek bones. Still he did not look up at Webster, but kept his eyes on the floor.
“One other thought,” Webster continued in the purring voice he had adopted. “I’ll take this paper back, if you’re through reading it.”
He folded the deposition and returned it to his pocket. “What I was going to say,” he continued, “was this! I imagine that if I had a proposition like that put to me, the first thing I would do would be to start figuring how I could get the other guy out somewhere and kill him and get hold of that paper and destroy it. You couldn’t blame a fellow for that, of course. So I’m not holding it against you. I want to be friends. But I reckon I ought to tell you this, so you won’t be acting without having full information on which to make your decisions. This is a duplicate. The other copy, along with the guns and ammunition, and the officers’ badges, and the like, have been turned over to other parties for safekeeping. I am a man who likes to provide for his own safety. I’m always looking ahead, so I made the necessary arrangements so that if I didn’t check in with the parties who are holding the other copy and the various things, they were to mail all those things to the U. S. Marshal’s office up in the Territory. Just a precaution, you understand, so there would be others helping look after my welfare. As you see, that little piece of forethought makes it mighty important to you and Faulkner to see that I stay alive. Not a bad idea, don’t you think?”
Dustin’s hands were clenched into fists on the table when he looked up, and his face was strained with an expression Webster could not read completely.
“Just who the hell are you, and what are you trying to get at?” Dustin’s voice was inclined to rise to a high pitch.
Webster made a quieting gesture with his hand. “Just like I told you, I’m a man who likes to make a few dollars when he sees the chance. There’s a chance here. A good one. I thought you might like to come in on it.”
“What’s the trick? Are you a Ranger trying to make me admit something? Or a Federal Marshal out of your bailiwick?”
“Neither one! I came here on my own. I just bumped into that Faulkner business by accident. But now that I’m in it, I’m going to make it pay off.”
“How?”
“How?” Webster repeated. “Man, haven’t you got any imagination at all? Or ambition? What’s the sense in cutting Faulkner in on a big slice of this? That’s a perfect setup, and if we do the work, we ought to get the big share. Just you and me, say.”
“And what about Faulkner?”
“You mean you can’t handle him?”
“I haven’t even admitted that I know him. I don’t admit a thing that you’ve got written down there.”
“Of course not. But here’s a thing that I know about you that you don’t realize that I know. You like a dollar as well as the next man. I know Faulkner well enough to feel that he’s not giving you any too big a cut in this deal. Maybe out of that ten thousand, he took half, and gave you another half. And out of your half, you took probably a couple of thousand, and split the rest with the boys out there in the valley.”
“I wouldn’t know what valley you are talking about.”
“Have it your way,” Webster said patiently. “In that case, I’ll have to go to Faulkner by myself. And if I do that, I take over the whole layout. I don’t play penny-ante. I’m out for something worth while. You can come along and take a share in it. Or if you don’t, then I’ll throw you to the wolves. That thousand dollars in gold I won off you last night will hang you higher than a kite, and the judge will get an extra fifty of it for doing the job. That’ll get you out of my way.”
“Maybe you’ll do that. Maybe you won’t.”
“Maybe you’ll kill me, and have the duplicate of that paper mailed to the Federal Government?” Webster mocked gently. “You’re not that dumb, Dustin. Now, do you want to go and talk to Faulkner with me—or do I go and talk to him myself, and for myself?”
“Suppose I just sit and watch you do it. Then I’ve got you where the hair is short, just like you think you’ve got me now.”
“Sure,” Webster agreed. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of that. And when I know a man has got me where the hair is short, I’ve got to get him out of my hair before he can do me any damage. Haven’t I? Just like you were thinking about doing to me. See how it goes?”
Dustin eyed Webster with frank amazement. “You’re a coldblooded skunk, ain’t you?”
“Tell me, Dustin, how far would I go if I weren’t? Where could I get moving in on Faulkner if I couldn’t beat him at his own game?”
Dustin did not answer that. He poured another drink and tossed it down with a trembling hand.
After he had thought a while, he asked, “What’s your idea?”
“I’ve got a million of them. You’ll hear them when you and I have that little talk with Faulkner. We can use him in our business for a while. Let him go on thinking he is running the show. When we get all we want out of him, we’ll throw him to the dogs. No use in carrying excess baggage. Travel light and you travel faster. Right?”
Dustin shook his head in silent amazement.
“Suppose I don’t go along with you on this?”
“You will! You’d rather live and get a slice of it than to be outside—with those officers. I’m not worried about you running around footloose and tongue free, and knowing what you know about the setup I’ll be running.”
“You’ll be running?”
“I’ll be running. Don’t fool yourself, Dustin.”
Dustin studied his glass, his mind’s working showing on his face. Then he got his features composed, and managed a smile in which there was a spark of triumph which he could not entirely conceal.
“Nope, Webster. I don’t think I’ll buy in on your deal. Just forget it.”
“Suit yourself,” Webster shrugged. “But remember what you were telling me about that tender neck of yours.”
“I’m not worried about my
neck. You see, you didn’t hide the fish hook deep enough. You’re not thinking of turning me over to the law, because you were involved in that robbery as deep as I was. You’ve got part of that gold now. Try and tell a jury that you won it from me in a poker game. The jury would laugh your neck into a noose if you told a yarn like that. You pulled that little fandango with Flint just to get your own chance to rob that wagon. You were the boy who engineered that deal, and everybody in town saw you do it. No, Webster, you play a pretty good game of poker; that was a very good bluff, but I’m calling it and raising you. In fact, I’m telling you to get out of town. Now! In a hurry! Because, if you don’t, I’m going to take you and turn you over to the law for that robbery. Personally, I don’t know a thing about it except what I’ve heard from you. All right, you can go now. And better luck next time.”
Webster shrugged and got to his feet. “All right,” he said. “If that’s the way you want it, I’ll go.”
“You’d better.”
“There’s just one detail to be covered first,” Webster added in what appeared to be an afterthought. “You see, just like the paper says, I was a deputized officer at the time of the robbery, and was along with the other two officers guarding the gold. I’m still a deputized officer, if my memory serves me right. So, I’m going, just as you suggest. But I’m arresting you for murder and robbery, and taking you along with me. And let me warn you, if you resist arrest, I’ll have to use whatever means I find necessary to take you—dead or alive. What’ll it be? Make up your mind. I’m in a hurry, like you told me to be.”
Having stood up, he was standing over Dustin, and his right hand was on his gun. Dustin sat with his whiskey glass in his right hand, and he had too much sense to even consider moving that hand down in an effort to get to his weapon.
Dustin’s face turned a little gray, and the triumph faded out of him, leaving him petulant.
“First you’re going to take over this business, and forget that you’re a marshal. Next, you remember that you’re a deputy, and you get filled with a righteous sense of duty and are going to cart me off to the calaboose. Why don’t you make up your mind? Can’t you remember whether you are a crook or a peace officer?”
Webster smiled at him. “Dustin, a man in my business has to learn to control his memory, so he can remember the right things at the right time. You are coming along with me to Faulkner, or you are going to be taken out of here feet first for resisting arrest. It makes no difference to me whether I have to shoot you here or farther up the road. If I have to do it sooner or later, I might just as well do it now and get it over, while I’ve got this fresh robbery case against you.”
“You haven’t got a case against me.”
“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about in a court of law. I’m getting a little tired of all this jawing. Are you coming with me or do you want to find out what I’ll do?”
Dustin got up reluctantly and went with Webster to the bar to pay his bill.
“Where you fellows going?” Stoney grinned. “Fishing? You had your heads together there like you was framing up to catch every catfish in the country.”
“Yeah,” Webster answered, picking up his change. “We’re going to catch the big speckled fish.”
As they walked toward Faulkner’s warehouse, they passed Dick Hammond driving Sonia Swanson into town in a buck-board. Sonia waved at Dustin, and spoke a word to Dick. Hammond stopped the team and Dustin went out to the buggy and had a few words with her. Hammond kept his eyes to the front, and Webster waited on the sidewalk, not having been recognized nor spoken to by either one of them.
As Webster stood waiting for Dustin, he studied the boy and the girl in the buggy. They were a finely matched pair, and their interests already lay close together. He compared the clean and frank young Hammond with Dustin, who was talking to the girl, and to whom she had given her trust, and one of the spells of bitterness which often afflicted him came upon him. Reflecting on the injustices which, with so little reason, seemed to descend upon people he reached the dead-end which he always reached. He never could understand the unfairness of it, and the thought angered him. He kicked a stone out into the gutter, and rolled a cigarette with taut fingers.
These little scenes in which he saw the seeds of unhappiness so unfairly planted always took him back to his own youth. His father and mother who had worked hard to build a home for themselves, and for him and his younger sister, had suddenly been caught between the millstones of two land-hungry ranchers. Unimportant as he was, and alone, Webster’s father had not had a chance. He had merely been a small obstacle brushed aside by the first of the two men who rolled over his place. He had tried to protect himself, and had been killed, just in passing, just an incidental casualty in the big war. But when it was over, and the one man had control of all the land, and there was peace there, the tragic effect continued to pile up, and the man who had caused it did not even know about it—or care.
Webster’s mother, toilworn and sick, and with two young children to support, did not last long. She died of overwork and starvation, and that was a result of the greed of two men who never heard of her, and would not have been interested. His sister had taken a job as a domestic in a house in town, and that had destroyed the pride of a free person. She had tried to escape from her menial position; she fell in love with a good-looking young gambler with black wavy hair and she went away with him.
Webster did not know where she was, but he knew that somewhere she was still paying dearly for something that had happened which had not concerned her at all.
It was this seemingly meaningless injustice and others like it, which embittered him at times. And at other times, because he had no blood ties of his own, it drove him to have a sentimental interest in the relationships of other people, as though someway, by taking an interest in them, he were creating a family of his own which he could cherish and protect.
That was the way he had felt about Sonia Swanson and Dick Hammond, the way he felt about them now. And watching Dustin, he had a strong urge to take that warped young creature and stamp him into the earth. It was people like him—and like Faulkner—who cost the innocent and decent folks so much in anguish and in the fruits of their toil.
It was this thought that hardened him against the Faulkners and the Dustins, which made it possible for him to deal with them with the same merciless cruelty that they inflicted on their victims.
He did it with a cold and calculated intensity, and it was the fact that he must wait and rip this whole sore out of this country that kept him from stepping out to the buggy and straightening out Sonia Swanson’s ideas about Dustin at this moment.
Webster had a long and treacherous road ahead of him before he could bring about the showdown. A tall man with sadness touching his rugged face, he forced the feeling of loneliness out of his consciousness by concentrating on his hatred of the kind of men he had to fight.
CHAPTER XII
Business Arrangement
A few minutes later Webster and Dustin walked into Faulkner’s warehouse and started toward the office. The mousy old clerk stepped in front of them and gave them a timid smile.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Faulkner is busy right now.”
Webster shoved the man aside roughly. “Is he, for a fact?” he said, and continued on toward the office without breaking his stride. He pushed the door open and Dustin followed him in and closed the door behind him.
Faulkner sat behind his desk and looked up at them with no change of expression on his dead-man’s face. Webster looked on past him and saw Ike Flint standing at the window.
He could almost see Flint roach up his fur like an angry cat. He gave the whiskered man a brief smile and then turned back to Faulkner.
“I’ve got something to talk over with you,” he said. Then he looked significantly at Flint. “In private.”
“I’m busy right now,” Faulkner said, his h
ands toying with a writing pen on his desk. “Come back after I’m finished.”
“This can’t wait. Get him out so we can talk,” Webster said, nodding toward Flint.
Flint looked inquiringly at Faulkner for a sign, and Faulkner made no sign.
“All right, if you want him to stay around, it’s okay by me—for the present.” Webster took his deposition out of his pocket, unfolded it carefully and laid it on Faulkner’s desk. “I’ve just shown this to Dustin, and he has read it through and agreed that the facts are stated correctly—”
“I didn’t do any such a damned thing,” Dustin interposed. “I read it, and said that there wasn’t a thing to it.”
“All right,” Webster said soothingly. “I thought I’d sold you on the idea. I’ll finish that job later, as soon as you’re convinced that Faulkner is going to agree with me. Read it, Faulkner, and then we’ll talk a little business.”
Faulkner’s glazed eyes went to the paper reluctantly and with no show of interest. Suddenly they became glued to the paper, and then there was no sound in the room except the buzzing of a horsefly trying to get out through the glass windowpane over Faulkner’s head.
After a long, silent interval, Faulkner shoved the paper back across the desk, and looked up at Webster.
“Well,” he said. “What?”
Dustin interposed again. “I told him he didn’t have a thing there that could do us any harm or him any good. It’s not worth the paper it is written on.”
Faulkner seemed not to hear him, but had his eyes on Webster.
“Well?” he repeated.
“A partnership,” Webster said coldly.
“In what?”
Webster nodded toward the paper. “In that.”
“I don’t know a thing about that,” Faulkner said. “It only tells me one thing. That you’ve got hold of some grandiose idea which you’ve built out of nothing. You couldn’t make a judge even hear that story, much less make a jury believe it.”
Webster sighed wearily, and shrugged. “Oh, well. If you’ve got to have pictures drawn for you like Dustin did, I guess I’ll have to do it all over again.”
The Fifth Western Novel Page 33
