“Tell me, Jeff—” Still Jeff thumped a fresh bottle down before him.
“Not drinking, Jeff,” said Young Jeff. “Tell me. What about Jim Ogden?”
Still Jeff jerked his head up in such fashion as to indicate that there was a stairway and that it led upstairs and that Jim Ogden might be found up there.
“And Arlene? Still with us?”
Still Jeff repeated his gesture with variations; his head jerking took on a tinge of deprecation. Sure, Arlene was up there, too; maybe she oughtn’t to be, but there she was. He slid the bottle along the bar to a fresh customer.
“What’s happened here?” demanded Young Jeff. “Looks like maybe somebody got the idea Halcyon was a good place to come to.”
Still Jeff hunched up his bony shoulders. Then he collected two dollars for two drinks and clinked them into his money box. Young Jeff went upstairs.
There were other men going up and there were men coming down. The place reeked with men. Where did they all come from, was the first question. Why did they come? That was the next, the paramount question.
“Gold,” thought Young Jeff. “I guess the cat’s jumped out of the sack. I guess word’s got around and they’ve found old Charlie Carter’s diggings.”
Then he heard a girl laughing. It was high-pitched, squeaky laughter and there didn’t seem to be half as much honest mirth in it as a wicked sort of glee. The old Witch Woman of Witch Woman’s Hollow, when a girl, might have laughed like that.
Running like a golden thread across that almost tinny laughter came the voice of another girl, Arlene’s voice.
“That’s the way you think it was, is it? And that’s how you feel about it? Like laughing? When—” The first girl’s voice came again, ringing metallically clear through the old flimsy door.
“Halcyon’s come back into its own, Arlene darling!” she cried gaily. “It’s just raising merry hell once more, and the old gent’s popping Jim Ogden over is nothing more than a part of it, the real beginning. It’s the funniest thing that ever happened. Of course I’m tickled to pieces; anybody who wasn’t a pink-and-white milk-sop would be. You soft thing!”
“Who told you?”
“About darling Daddy Warbuck shooting Jim Ogden? Nobody told me and I didn’t read it in the papers—”
“Sh! Not so loud. These walls—”
“Who cares? I don’t. You know, Arlene dear, I can read what’s in people’s minds like old Mother Grayle. There’s been Daddy Warbuck and Jim Ogden looking at each other in a funny way, and I’ve watched Jim snooping after our sweet papa—and the other night when Jim didn’t come home and you didn’t either, and Mr. Bart Warbuck had blood on the back of his hand—I wondered how it got there!”
Jeff came hurriedly to the door and knocked. The door was opened instantly and two girls looked out. One was Arlene; the other was Miriam Warbuck.
Jeff hadn’t seen Miriam in a long while, but if you went without seeing her for twenty years, you’d not for a second fail to recognize her. Of about Arlene’s age, she was no bigger than a child of eight or ten. She had a piquant dark little face framed in curly ink black hair; her lips were bright red, her eyes enormous and if possible even blacker than her hair. Little dark Miriam gave first of all an impression of crookedness; her slight, thin body was warped, one shoulder too high; she walked with a quick spry limp like a bird that had been hurt; on her face just now and at many another time was stamped a look of wickedly malicious, impish glee.
“Oh, Jeff!” said Arlene. And then, “You remember my sister?”
“Adopted sister, darling,” said Miriam, and stressed the first word. “Never forget the adopted part of it, dearest. Always remember how careful our lovely mama and papa are to have everyone know.” She tipped her head back to look up into Jeff’s face. “Hello,” she said impudently. “Been eavesdropping, haven’t you? You’re Young Jeff Cody—I remember you—”
“Hello, Miriam,” said Jeff briefly; she was a girl he had never liked, knowing her as he once had, a shrewd, selfish and wantonly cruel creature. He wondered vaguely whether she still had her twenty-two rifle; she loved to kill things with it; he had seen her once shoot a fluffy-tailed gray squirrel high-up in a pine, then stand below and watch with eager eyes while the squirrel in its final agony clung so desperately to a limb; he could still remember her bright, brittle laughter and the clapping of her hands.
So all that he said to her was a perfunctory, “Hello, Miriam.” Of Arlene he asked, “What about Ogden?”
“He’s all right,” said Arlene. “That is, he says that he is. He is here yet but is going tonight. He is just waiting for a wagon to come for him.”
“Going where?”
“Home, of course, ninny,” spoke up Miriam. “Back to dear old Daddy Warbuck who shot him by mistake. You see, Daddy thought Jim Ogden was a rabbit. Ever notice what long ears Jim has?”
Jeff shrugged. Strange, it struck him, that Jim was going back to Warbuck. But that was Ogden’s affair and Warbuck’s; if the two chose to cut each other’s throats he need not concern himself. It would be a good thing.
He asked of Arlene, “What about you? Been here all the time?” She nodded. “Staying?”
“Yes. I’m going to stay in Halcyon.”
“What’s happened down here the last couple of days? Where’d everybody come from? It’s a stampede into Halcyon. Why?”
“Everybody’s talking about a gold strike; they’re going crazy about it,” said Arlene. “The funny part of it is that no one seems to know where any gold is!”
Miriam began laughing again.
“I’ll tell you, Jeff! Funny? It’s a scream! The other night the night Jim Ogden got shot at for a rabbit, the two Duckweiler boys—you know old man Duckweiler, the barber in Pioneer?—came by this way late; they were getting back from Blue Ridge. They heard a couple of shots; they heard somebody riding like the devil was chasing him; they saw a couple of people scurrying. They crept in closer and saw lanterns moving about, people going into the hotel. They were thinking as everybody else in the country has been thinking, about the old gold times coming back into Deer Valley. There’s been talk, maybe you know, about Charlie Carter finding gold? They said, ‘Cripes, gold’s been found and the stampede has started!’ And they streaked into Pioneer to spread the news. They took their story to the right place; old man Duckweiler sprays news off his tongue like a skunk sprays perfume off his tail. And so Halcyon’s a boom town again, old timer. And take it from one who knows—” she grinned like the little she-devil she was—“there’s blood on the moon! Wheee!”
“Miriam!” said Arlene.
“Oh, shut up, softie!” snapped Miriam.
“I’ll go look in on Jim Ogden,” said Jeff.
He found Ogden fully dressed sitting on the edge of his bed, looking white and shaky and gaunt but nonetheless like a man who could still go places. The two men said, “Hello,” and looked each other up and down.
“You’re a funny damn fool, Jeff,” said Ogden, full of contempt. “You did all you could to save me from pegging out. Just the same you wish Warbuck had killed me, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t cry,” said Jeff.
“You half-way bozos never get anywhere,” grunted Ogden. “You might as well go jump off a cliff now as wait and get pushed off later. It takes men like Warbuck and me, Kid, to go places in this man’s country.”
“Still stringing along with Warbuck?” said Jeff.
“Hell, yes! He’s top dog, ain’t he. Pretty soon I’ll have his skull under my hoof—and what’ll I be then?”
Jeff didn’t say it aloud, but to himself, “Dead, most likely,” for he knew Warbuck and he knew Jim Ogden and if it came to placing a bet, well, his money would go down on Bart Warbuck.
“A wagon’s coming over for me,” said Ogden. “It ought to be here now.” He chuckled softly, then winced wit
h pain. But he went on, “I sent word over to Warbuck I’d got hurt. He sent word back he was damn sorry to hear it. I expect he’ll come along with the wagon. Don’t worry about me, Jeff; I’ll ride on the back seat.”
And as Jeff was drawing back out of the room, Warbuck did come. He went straight to Ogden, brushing by Jeff but not even seeing him, saying in that full voice of his, “Why, Jim! Shot up, huh? That’s tough, old man, but never mind. You’ll be as right as rain in no time. I’ll make that my job.”
“I know you will, Warbuck,” said Ogden.
On his way back to the staircase, Jeff saw that Arlene’s door was open; that Miriam was out in the hallway, watching and listening. Then he saw her running, in that queer fashion of hers, like a wounded bird with a dragging wing, to the room where he had left Warbuck and Jim Ogden. He heard Warbuck’s rumbling voice, “You here, Miriam? What the devil! And where’s Arlene? You’ll be sure to know, you damn little witch.”
“And you’re only a Warbuck—don’t you wish you were a warlock?” jibed tiny dark Miriam. “Of course I know where Arlene is; in a room right across the hall, hiding from you.”
Jeff went on downstairs. But before he reached the bottom he heard quick, light running feet coming after him and saw Arlene fleeing, passing him, running through the lobby and out to the porch and into the outer dark.
He tried to shake her out of his mind. What had all this to do with him? Nothing, of course. Yet as it happened, he had never set himself a harder task than now when he told himself coolly and in all commonsense, “What she does is her affair, not mine.” Somehow he kept seeing her not as he had glimpsed her just now when her face told him nothing, but as he had seen her, so desperate, after she had heard Bart Warbuck and Amanda Grayle talking together, after Jim Ogden had come upon them, after Warbuck had shot Ogden. He couldn’t help thinking, “Poor little devil, she’s harried from hell to hereafter, and can’t tell which way to turn.”
Nor could he help asking himself, “Where has she gone now?” Where on the big-bosomed, good green earth could she go? He knew, because he had seen the finality of the thing in her impassioned eyes, that she would never go back to Warbuck’s “castle” in Long Valley. The Pay Dirt Hotel had for a few hours been a sort of haven to her; but Warbuck himself and Warbuck’s men were here now—and she had darted out of it in full flight. Where?
He shrugged rather elaborately. None of his business. Sure. But he did not turn in through the lobby to the barroom where so much was going on, where men were electric, where there were friends of his. He stepped out onto the porch and stood at one side of the door, staring out into the night which was as black as mountain nights can be when the stars, myriads of them, are as bright as diamonds but only make pin pricks through the dark.
He saw Warbuck and Ogden come out, Ogden walking weakly, Warbuck supporting him with an arm about him. He saw where the wagon was, drawn up close to the porch; there were several riders, like an old time nobleman’s escort, around it.
Warbuck helped Jim Ogden up into the wagon. It was a long-bodied buckboard drawn by two fast horses; a rear seat had been put into it and Ogden went up into the rear seat. Warbuck said to the man holding the taut, jerking reins, “Wait a shake, Joe.” Anybody could hear that. But then he drew two of his riders aside, a dozen steps away where there was a pine tree under which, so dark was it there, that they vanished like men going down into a pool of ink. He talked with them in lowered tones. Jeff Cody caught never a word of what Warbuck was saying—and his words were most of all about Young Jeff Cody.
The two whom Warbuck had called aside were Nick Balff and Frank Bruce, Jeff could see that much, two rats of the order of the late Rick Voorhees. What Warbuck was saying was direct and to the point.
“All you boys stick around Halcyon for a while tonight,” he said in a voice which was about as warm and merciful as a meat ax. “Young Jeff Cody’s here somewhere. I wouldn’t be much surprised if somebody blasted him clean to hell tonight. I wouldn’t cry, either. He’s out to make trouble for all of us over at Long Valley. Let me know if it does happen, and think about this: The first man of you that brings me the news gets double pay—with five hundred dollars stuck on top of that for full measure. ’Night, boys, and take care of yourselves.”
With that he turned back to the wagon and went up over the wheel to sit beside Jim Ogden on the rear seat. Young Jeff heard him call out cheerily, “Get going, Joe. Only take it easy over the bumps because Jim’s been hurt, you know.”
Joe slackened his reins and his restive horses were off. Jeff idly watched the night swallow them. Then he noticed how the riders, Frank Bruce and Nick Balff and the rest, dismounted and stood for a couple of minutes in a tight packed circle, their heads together, their voices hushed. They found places to tie their horses and came on into the hotel. They didn’t notice him, standing there in the shadows, but he saw who all of them were; with Balff and Bruce were Pocopoco Malaga, buck-toothed Andy Coppler and Injun Long Knife.
“Coyotes,” thought Jeff angrily. “That dirty bunch of killers—” He remembered Bud King swinging under the old oak in Long Valley and his anger became a cold, baffled fury. The law couldn’t do anything to these fellows, couldn’t or wouldn’t. Warbuck playing his hand boldly, still played it craftily. And the country hereabouts was filled with Warbuck men. Just the same there were men like Jeff himself, like his friends from up Wandering River way, whose resentment had long been steadily mounting. They were patient men, law-abiding. They knew what a small civil war, raging in their high valleys, would mean. There’d be many a man killed, many a small family ruined—and as like as not Warbuck would ride out through the smoke of it unscathed.
He was about to turn back into the hotel when he heard a hushed, almost breathless voice calling to him; it called softly but urgently.
“Jeff! Jeff!”
He went slowly down the steps and toward the deep dark under the pine where only a few moments before Warbuck had talked with his hirelings. He recognized Arlene’s voice and realized that some new desperation gripped her.
Chapter Ten
“Jeff! Will you do something for me?”
“Why of course,” he told her.
“Sh! Not so loud. I don’t want anybody to hear!”
Having already promised to do what she asked, for her voice though scarcely raised above a whisper, had been so urgently supplicating, now he added, “What is it, Arlene?”
“Take me home!”
“Sure, I will. But I thought you were dead set against going back—”
“Not to my home, Jeff. To yours. Now; right now. I’m afraid here. Oh, please, Jeff.”
That mystified him; nothing could have been much more unexpected. But again he said, and every bit as heartily as before, “Of course.”
“Get your horse,” she said swiftly. “Oh, let’s hurry, Jeff.” He swung about promptly, untethered Ranger and led him to where she still awaited him in that deepest dark; her dark riding suit made her quite invisible; all that he could see of her was the vague whiteness of her face. Short as his journey had been he had had time for a thought: Arlene had been standing there while Warbuck had his brief secret parley with Balff and Bruce. And she had overheard whatever it was that he had said. He didn’t ask her about it just then; he asked instead where she had left her horse.
“In the old shed back of Still Jeff’s cabin,” she answered. “And let’s try not to have anyone notice us. I don’t want us to be seen. Oh, hurry, hurry!”
She was on the ragged edge of being panic-stricken, it seemed to him, and so he slipped his arm through hers and drew her snugly closer and hurried so longstridedly that she had now and then to run a few steps to keep up with him. They saw a few men going about, dark formless figures, and a couple of riders came speeding up from the south, but it was too dark to make out faces, and certainly no one seemed to pay them any attention. Arriving at Stil
l Jeff’s cabin, while Young Jeff groped in the dark and finally got Arlene’s horse saddled and bridled, she went into the house at the unlocked back door, and he saw a gleam of candlelight. But a moment later the light went out and she came hurrying back to him.
“I just had to leave a little note for that beloved old dear, your father,” she explained as Jeff gave her a hand up into the saddle. “He’s been so good to me, and I know he’d worry. So I just told him that I’m all right and will see him in a few days—and I asked him to tell Mr. Bill Morgan, too. They’ve both been a pair of angels to me.”
Jeff had to laugh a little. Angels, those two old devils! And also he wondered what Still Jeff would do about conveying her message to a man he hadn’t spoken to in something like twenty years!
* * * *
It was a ride that night to remember. The dead town, so strangely and suddenly alive again, fell away behind them, and they moved on up the quiet valley, with only the glassily glinting river to make any sound, with their horses’ hoofbeats muffled by the springy turf. The light of the stars was over them but did not seem to reach down to where they were; the mountains and the forests on the hills were black and without detail. The faint breeze dallying through the valley brought breaths of fragrance, green-grass smells and the tang of resinous conifers, but scarcely a sound. When Arlene’s breath rose and fell to a deep, deep sigh, Jeff heard it.
They passed through Witch Woman’s Hollow and saw a glint of light; seen through the laurels as they rode it was like a spark from a firefly.
“She is a witch!” said Arlene.
“The devil’s grandmother,” said Jeff.
“You heard all that she said the other night to—” She stopped short; she was never going to say “my father” again. “To Barton Warbuck,” she finished it.
“All that you heard, I think. She’s blackmailing him.”
And once again Arlene gasped out, “Oh, let’s hurry!”
They let their horses out for a comfortable run, and a mile of easy going dropped behind them like a shot. Thereafter they rode leisurely, slipping silently through a silent and serenely lovely night. And it didn’t seem long until they came to Young Jeff’s place in its upland meadow and saw his low rambling house and outbuildings. Again he heard Arlene’s sigh. He could not guess what her thought was, could not know that she was thinking most of all, “Maybe I’ve saved his life tonight.” And that other thought that went with it. “They can’t find me here. They won’t drag me away now.”
The Fifth Western Novel Page 65
