The Golden Woman

by Cullum, Ridgwell

  But though he always avoided open antagonism the storekeeper never let go his grip on his dislike. He clung to it hoping to discover some means of breaking the man’s position in the camp and bringing about an utter revulsion of the public feeling for him. There was much about the Padre that gave him food for thought. One detail in particular was always in his mind, a detail such as a mind like his was bound to question closely. He could never understand the man’s object in the isolation of the life he had lived for so many years here in the back country of the West.

  However, he was only concerned at the moment with the object of this unusual visit, and his shrewd speculation turned upon the pursuit of Curly.

  “Evenin’, Padre,” he said, with a cordiality the most exacting could have found no fault with.

  “Good-evening,” replied the newcomer, smiling pleasantly as he glanced round the sordid hovel. Then he added: “Times are changed, sure. But—where are your customers?”

  Beasley’s quick eyes gazed sharply at the perfect mask of disarming geniality. He was looking for some sign to give him a lead, but there was only easy good-nature in the deep gray eyes beneath their shaggy brows.

  “Guess they’re out chasin’ that fool-head Curly Saunders,” he said unguardedly. However, he saw his mistake in an instant and tried to rectify it. “Y’ see they’re always skylarkin’ when they git liquor under their belts.”

  “Skylarking?” The Padre propped himself against the bar, and his eyes suddenly rested on an ugly stain on the sand floor.

  Beasley followed his glance, and beheld the pool of blood which had flowed from the Kid’s wound. He cursed himself for not having obliterated it. Then, in a moment, he decided to carry the matter with a high hand.

  “Psha’! What’s the use’n beatin’ around!” he said half-defiantly. “They’re chasin’ Curly to lynch him for shootin’ up the Kid.”

  The Padre gave a well-assumed start and emitted a low whistle. Then he turned directly toward the counter.

  “You best have a drink on me—for the good of the house,” he said. “I’ll take rye.”

  Beasley swung himself across the counter with a laugh.

  “Say, that beats the devil!” he cried. “I’ll sure drink with you. No one sooner.”

  The Padre nodded.

  “Splendid,” he smiled. Then as the other passed glasses and the bottle, he went on: “Tell us about it—the racket, I mean.”

  Beasley helped himself to a drink and laughed harshly.

  “Wal, I didn’t get it right,” he said, raising his glass. “Here’s ‘how’!” He gulped down his drink and set the empty glass on the counter. “Y’ see, I was handin’ out drinks when the racket started. They were all muckin’ around with them four sluts that come in town the other day. Guess they was all most sloshed to the gills. First thing I know they were quarreling, then some un got busy with a gun. Then they started chasin’ Curly, an’ I see the Kid lying around shot up. It was jest a flesh wound, an’ I had him boosted out to his own shack. His partner, Pete—they struck a partnership, those two—why, I guess he’s seein’ to him. ’Tain’t on’y a scratch.”

  The Padre set his glass down. He had not drunk his liquor at a gulp like the other.

  “Pity,” he said, his eyes turned again to the blood-stained floor. “I s’pose it was the women—I mean the cause?”

  The man’s manner was so disarming that Beasley felt quite safe in “opening out.”

  “Pity?” he laughed brutally. “Wher’s the pity? Course it was the women. It’s always the women. Set men around a bunch of women and ther’s always trouble. It’s always been, and it always will be. Ther’s no pity about it I can see. We’re all made that way, and those who set us on this rotten earth meant it so, or it wouldn’t be.”

  The Padre’s gray eyes surveyed the narrow face before him. This man, with his virulent meanness, his iron-gray hair, his chequered past, always interested him.

  “And do you think this sort of trouble would occur if—if the men hadn’t been drunk?” he asked pointedly.

  Beasley’s antagonism surged, but his outward seeming was perfectly amiable.

  “Meaning me?” he asked, with a grin.

  The Padre shrugged.

  “I was thinking that these things have been occurring ever since the camp was flooded with——”

  “Rye!” Beasley’s eyes sparkled. He reached the Padre’s now empty glass and gave him a fresh one, pushing the bottle toward him. “You’ll hev a drink on me, an’ if you’ve got time, I’ll tell you about this thing.”

  The other submitted, and the drink was poured out. The Padre ignored his.

  “Get right ahead,” he said in his easy way.

  Beasley leered over the rim of his glass as he drank his whisky.

  “You think it’s rye,” he said, setting his glass down with unnecessary force. “An’ I say it’s the women—or the woman. Trouble come to this camp with that tow-headed gal over at the farm. Anybody with two eyes could see that. Anybody that wasn’t as blind as a dotin’ mother. The boys are all mad ’bout her. They’re plumb-crazed. They got her tow-head and sky-blue eyes on their addled brains, an’ all the youngsters, anyway, are fumin’ jealous of each other, and ready to shoot, or do anything else that comes handy, to out the other feller. That’s the root of the trouble—an’ you brought that about selling her your farm.”

  Beasley had let himself go intending to aggravate, but the other’s manner still remained undisturbed.

  “But this only happens when they’re drunk,” he said mildly.

  Beasley’s angry impatience broke out.

  “Tcha’! Drunk or sober it don’t make any difference. I tell you the whole camp’s on edge over that gal. It only needs a word to set things hummin’. It’s that gal! She’s a Jonah, a Hoodoo to us all—to this place. She’s got rotten luck all over her—and you brought her here. You needn’t try an’ sling mud at me fer handing them the rot-gut the boys ask for. Get that woman out of the place and things’ll level up right away.”

  The man’s rudeness still seemed to have no effect.

  “But all this doesn’t seem to fit in with—with this affair to-night,” the Padre argued. “You said it began, you thought, over the four women you allow in here.”

  Beasley was being steadily drawn without knowing it. His swift-rising spleen led him farther into the trap.

  “So it did,” he snapped. Then he laughed mirthlessly. “Y’ see some one suggested those gals pay a ‘party’ call on your Golden Woman,” he said with elaborate sarcasm. “And it was because Mr. Curly Saunders sort o’ fancies he’s got some sort of right to that lady he butted in and shot up the Kid.”

  “Who suggested it?” asked the other quickly, his mild gray eyes hardening.

  “Why, the Kid.”

  The Padre looked the saloon-keeper squarely in the eye.

  “And who put it into that foolish boy’s head?” he asked slowly.

  Beasley’s face purpled with rage.

  “You needn’t to put things that way with me,” he cried. “If you got things to say, say ’em right out. You reckon I was the man who suggested——”

  “I do.”

  The Padre’s eyes were wide open. The hard gray gleam literally bored into the other’s heated face. He stood up, his whole body rigid with purpose.

  “I say right here that you were responsible for it all. The Kid wasn’t capable of inventing such a dirty trick on a decent girl. He was sufficiently drunk to be influenced by you, and, but for Curly’s timely interference, you would doubtless have had your rotten way. I tell you the trouble, whatever trouble happens in this camp, is trouble which you are directly or indirectly responsible for. These men, in their sober senses, are harmless. Give them the poison you charge extortionately for and they are ready to do anything. I warn you, Beasley, to be careful what you do—be damned careful. There are ways of beating you, and, by thunder! I’ll beat you at your own game! Good-night!”

  T
he Padre turned and walked out, leaving the discomfited storekeeper speechless with rage, his narrow eyes glaring after him.

  Moreton Kenyon was never a man to allow an impulse of anger to get the better of him. All that he had said to Beasley he had made up his mind to say before starting for the camp. There was only one way of dealing with the man’s genius for mischief. And that way did not lie in the direction of persuasion or moral talk. Force was the only thing such a nature as his would yield to. The Padre knew well enough that such force lay to his command should he choose to exert his influence in the camp. He was man of the world enough to understand that the moral condition of the life in this camp must level itself. It could not be regulated—yet. But the protection of a young and beautiful girl was not only his duty, but the duty of every sane citizen in the district, and he was determined it should be carried out. There was no ordinary law to hold this renegade in check, so, if necessary, he must be treated to the harshness of a law framed by the unpracticed hands of men who only understood the wild in which they lived.

  On his way home the Padre encountered Buck, who had been back to the fur fort, and, learning from Curly the facts of what had occurred, was now on his way to join his friend.

  They paused to talk for some minutes, and their talk was upon those things which were still running through their minds in a hot tide of resentment. After a while they parted, Buck to continue his way to the camp, and the Padre to his home.

  “I think it’s all right for to-night,” the Padre said as he prepared to move off. “I don’t think he’ll make another attempt. Anyway, the boys will be sober. But you might have an eye on him.”

  Buck nodded, and in the darkness the fierce anger in his dark eyes was lost to his companion.

  “I’ll be to home when the camp’s abed,” he said. “I’ll sure see the gal safe.”

  So they parted, leaving the Padre perfectly confident in Buck’s ability to make good his assurance.

  * * *

  It was a wild scene inside the drinking-booth over which the ex-Churchman presided. The men had returned from their fruitless pursuit of their intended victim. And as they came in, no longer furiously determined upon a man’s life, but laughing and joking over the events of their blind journey in the darkness, Beasley saw that they were rapidly sobering.

  Still raging inwardly at the result of the Padre’s visit he set to work at once, and, before any one else could call for a drink, he seized the opportunity himself. He plied them with a big drink at his own expense, and so promptly enlisted their favor—incidentally setting their appetites for a further orgie with a sharpness that it would take most of the night to appease.

  The ball set rolling by his cunning hand quickly ran riot, and soon the place again became the pandemonium which was its nightly habit. Good-humor was the prevalent note, however. The men realized now, in their half-sober senses, that the Kid was only wounded, and this inclined them to leniency toward Curly. So it was quickly evident that their recently-intended victim need no longer have any fear for his life. He was forgiven as readily and as easily as he had been condemned.

  So the night proceeded. The roulette board was set going again in one corner of the hut and a crowd hung about it, while the two operators of it, “Diamond” Jack and his partner, strangers to the place, raked in their harvest. The air was thick with the reek of cheap cigars, sold at tremendous prices, and the foul atmosphere of stale drink. The usual process of a further saturation had set in. Nor amidst the din of voices was there a discordant note. Even the cursings of the losers at the roulette board were drowned in the raucous din of laughter and loud-voiced talk around the bar.

  As time went on Beasley saw that his moment was rapidly approaching. The shining, half-glazed eyes, the sudden outbursts of wild whoopings, told him the tale he liked to hear. And he promptly changed his own attitude of bonhomie, and began to remind those who cared to listen of the fun they had all missed through Curly’s interference. This was done at the same time as he took to pouring out the drinks himself in smaller quantities, and became careless in the matter of making accurate change for the bigger bills of his customers.

  Beasley’s hints were not long in bearing the fruit he desired. Some one recollected the women who had been participants in their earlier frolic, and instantly there was a clamor for their presence.

  Beasley grinned. He was feeling almost joyous.

  The women readily answered the summons. They came garbed in long, flowing, tawdry wrappers, the hallmark of the lives they lived. Nor was it more than seconds before they were caught in the whirl of the orgie in progress.

  The sight was beyond all description in its revolting and hideous pathos. These blind, besotted men hovered about these wrecks of womanhood much in the manner of hungry animals. They plied them with drink, and sought to win their favors by ribald jesting and talk as obscene as their condition of drunkenness would permit them, while the women accepted their attentions in the spirit in which they were offered, calculating, watching, with an eye trained to the highest pitch of mercenary motive, for the direction whence the greatest benefit was to come.

  Beasley was watching too. He knew that the Padre’s threat had been no idle one, but he meant to forestall its operation. The Padre was away to his home by now. Nothing that he could do could operate until the morning, when these men were sober. He had got this night, at least, in which to satisfy his evil whim.

  His opportunity came sooner than he expected. One of the girls, quite a young creature, whose originally-pretty face was now distorted and bloated by the life she lived, suddenly appealed to him. She jumped up from the bench on which she had been sitting listening to the drunken attentions of a stranger who bored her, and challenged the saloon-keeper with a laugh and an ingratiating wink.

  “Say, you gray-headed old beer-slinger,” she cried, “how about that ‘party’ call you’d fixed up for us? Ain’t ther’ nuthin’ doin’ since that mutt with the thin yeller thatch got busy shootin’? Say, he got you all scared to a pea shuck.”

  She laughed immoderately, and, swaying drunkenly, was caught by the attentive stranger.

  “Quit it, Mamie,” protested one of the other girls. “If you want another racket I don’t. You’re always raisin’ hell.”

  “Quit yourself,” shrieked Mamie in sudden anger. “I ain’t scared of a racket.” She turned to Beasley, who was pouring out a round of drinks for Abe Allinson, now so drunk that he had to support himself against the counter. “Say, you don’t need to be scared, that feller’s out o’ the way now,” she jeered. “Wot say? Guess it would be a ‘scream.’”

  Beasley handed the change of a twenty-dollar bill to Abe and turned to the girl.

  “Sure it would,” he agreed promptly, his face beaming. Then he added cunningly: “But it’s you folks are plumb scared.”

  “Who the h—— scared of a gal like that?” Mamie yelled at him, her eyes blazing. “I ain’t. Are you, Lulu? You, Kit?” She turned to the other women, but ignored the protesting Sadie.

  Lulu sprang from the arms of a man on whose shoulder she had been reclining.

  “Scared?” she cried. “Come right on. I’m game. Beasley’s keen to give her a twistin’—well, guess it’s always up to us to oblige.” And she laughed immoderately.

  Kit joined in. She cared nothing so long as she was with the majority. And it was Beasley himself who finally challenged the recalcitrant Sadie.

  “Guess you ain’t on, though,” he said, and there was something like a threat in his tone.

  Sadie shrugged.

  “It don’t matter. If the others——”

  “Bully for you, Sadie!” cried Mamie impulsively. “Come right on! Who’s comin’ to get the ‘scream’?” she demanded of the men about her, while Beasley nodded his approval from his stand behind the bar.

  But somehow her general invitation was not received with the same enthusiasm the occasion had met with earlier in the evening. The memory of the Kid still hovered over s
ome of the muddled brains, and only a few of those who were in the furthest stages of drunkenness responded.

  Nothing daunted, however, the girl Mamie, furiously anxious to stand well with the saloon-keeper, laughed over at him.

  “We’ll give her a joyous time,” she shrieked. “Say, what’s her name? Joan Rest, the Golden Woman! She’ll need the rest when we’re through. Come on, gals. We’ll dance a cancan on her parlor table. Come on.”

  She made a move and the others prepared to follow. Several of the men, laughing recklessly, were ready enough to go whither they led. Already Mamie was within a pace of the closed door when a man suddenly pushed Abe Allinson roughly aside, leant his right elbow on the counter, and stood with his face half-turned toward the crowd. It was Buck. His movements had been so swift, so well calculated, that Beasley found himself looking into the muzzle of the man’s heavy revolver before he could attempt to defend himself.

  “Hold on!”

  Buck’s voice rang out above the din of the barroom. Instantly he had the attention of the whole company. The girls stood, staring back at him stupidly, and the men saw the gun leveled at the saloon-keeper’s head. They saw more. They saw that Buck held another gun in his left hand, which was threatening the entire room. Most of them knew him. Some of them didn’t. But one and all understood the threat and waited motionless. Nor did they have to wait long.

  “Gals,” said Buck sternly, “this racket’s played out. Ther’s been shootin’ to-night over the same thing. Wal, ther’s going to be more shootin’ if it don’t quit right here. If you leave this shanty to go across to the farm to molest the folks there, Beasley, here, is a dead man before you get a yard from the door.”

  Then his glance shifted so that the saloon-keeper came into his focus, while yet he held a perfect survey of the rest of the men.

  “Do you get me, Beasley?” he went on coldly. “You’re a dead man if those gals go. An’ if you send them to the farm after this—ever—I’ll shoot you on sight. Wal?”