Blue Kingdom (12 page)

Chuck blinked again, for this was a spirit to which he could listen, but which he could not very well comprehend. He knew that it was above and beyond him, and a new thrill jumped from his heart to his brain as he realized that his master was, indeed, utterly fearless. Sometimes, men were apt to say that he was a wily fox who put the burden of his labors upon the shoulders of others, and then collected the money and the fame at their expense, but Chuck could see now that this question was answered once and for all. For his own part, he would rather have faced a fiery dragon than that pair of smiling eyes and that faintly smiling mouth of Carrick Dunmore.

Actually he fell back a pace and took a short breath. “All right, chief,” he said.

“Where is he now?”

“Up in his room. He's just made the wife bring him up tea and m'lasses and hot cakes. This time of day, will you think?”

“How can he make her, Chuck?”

“It's better to fetch him what he wants than to have him come and take it,” said Harper.

“Very well,” said Tankerton, “then I'll go to his room, rather than let him come to fetch me.”

Before he left the screen of trees behind it, Tankerton paused and examined the hotel with care, for there was plenty of danger in crossing the clearing if some accurate shot waited behind the windows, rifle in hand. The face of the building depressed him, as the sight of a new school does a boy on the first day of a term. However, he shrugged away this weakness and immediately stepped out from the trees to the open, crossing it with never an apparent look at the windows before him.

As he went, he was deeply realizing what he had almost forgotten in the last few years—that his kingdom was built upon his own strength and courage alone. He had his little army of scouts and of fighters to deal with the heavy posses who rode up from the plains, but it had never occurred to him that a single man might quietly step through his outer defenses and sit down here in the heart of his power.

From the street beyond the hotel he could hear someone whistling “The Campbells Are Coming”, and
he wondered if this might be a signal that concerned his own approach.

The rear door of the hotel opened, and Chuck Harper was there holding it ajar and greeting him with a twisted grin and a white face. The big fellow was badly frightened, but viciously hopeful, and, as for his wife, she looked at Tankerton as one who already smells a feast.

“If you take off your boots here,” said Harper, “I'll show you how to get up the stairs to his room without makin' no noise.”

“I'll walk up in my boots,” said Tankerton calmly. “I may be dying in a few moments.”

“Don't talk about it!” Chuck Harper said in horror. “But the main thing is for you to get there easy. Now I could show you a way across the roof. He might be watchin' the door. He ain't so likely to look for a gent to pop in at his window.”

Tankerton smiled. “Do you think that I want to do a murder, Chuck?” he asked. “This is the way up, isn't it?”

Straightway he marched across the dining room and through the hall, and up the darkened staircase, his feet heavy with the knowledge that this day would make history in his life, and his heart strengthening itself for the battle. For the tenth time he loosened his revolver as he walked.

From the top of the stairs, Chuck Harper, who had stolen noiselessly up behind his master, pointed and whispered: “Last door on the left . . . your room.”

“My room,” said Tankerton beneath his breath. Then he went forward with anger. There was enough
anger, at least, to warm him thoroughly and to make him grateful for the last remark made by Harper.

So he came to the door at a brisk walk, jerked it open, and stepped inside with gun in hand and a bounding joy that he had not found the door locked. He was taking advantage, but such advantages were permissible, according to his code. As he snatched the door wide, he heard from the street the shrilling whistle of “The Campbells Are Coming” still in progress, and with the lift of that music in his ears he saw a man turning toward him from the window, and stepping out to him at the same time. He saw every detail of this man in the burning concentration of the first glance. He saw the shoulders sleeked over with strength, the fine head, and, above all, a faint smile in lips and eyes—the stern joy of one who really loves battle.

The gun of Tankerton was poised as he entered—he needed only to let the muzzle drop down upon the mark, and into the breast of the other he sent a .45-caliber bullet. It was as though an invisible finger pushed through the shirt of the other from left to right, but he did not fall. And then the wink of steel that had appeared in the hand of Dunmore—plucked out of the air, as it were—exploded. A stifling breath struck the face of Tankerton, like the breath of a great beast of prey, with hot prickles of fire stinging his eyes blind.

Into the red-speckled darkness he fired blindly. The gun was wrenched from his hand and he himself embraced with such a might as he never had dreamed of. He reached for his second gun—it already was gone— and a cold muzzle was clapped under his chin.

At the same time the voice of Dunmore said loudly:
“Well, Tankerton, it's a draw. Are we going to murder each other, or do we stop here?”

The brain of Tankerton spun.

“Answer, you fool,” said Dunmore in a whisper. “They're listening. You see no sense in murder. . . .”

“There's no sense in stupid murder, Dunmore,” said Tankerton.

“Sit down, then,” said Dunmore, “and we'll talk the thing over.”

Tankerton found himself lightly lifted, and then deposited into a chair. In the hall, dimly, he heard retreating footfalls, rapid steps that ran away with such reckless haste that the floor pulsed with the impacts.

A fiery torment still blinded him, so that he saw only red-speckled blackness streaked across with dazzling white lights. A wet cloth now pressed across his face gave almost instant relief. There was some soothing medicament upon it. His eyes cleared, and once more he could look about him, although somewhat dimly for the moment. At least, he could see that Dunmore was on the opposite side of the room, rolling a cigarette, which he now lighted.

“Have the makings?” he politely proffered.

“No,” said Tankerton. He was anxious enough to smoke, but he was afraid lest there might be a visible tremor in his hand. He was still shaken from head to foot by the shock of what had happened, and his very vitals ached from the grip of Dunmore's arm.

“Reckon that they won't be listening at the door,” said Dunmore. “But they's quite a little ol' crowd gatherin' below. Hear 'em?”

There was a confusion of many voices that lifted to
the ears of Tankerton, but all these voices were suppressed and kept down, as though by fear. Then his eyes cleared altogether; his mind at the same time could function again, and he realized that he had been beaten for the first time.

Dunmore, watching him critically, understood. “Sort of a low-down trick that I played you, Tanker-ton,” he said. He undid his shirt at the neck, and, drawing over his head a loop of leather thong, he pulled out the broad, heavy blade of a plowshare. “I couldn't've taken the chance with a less straight shot than you, Tankerton,” said Dunmore, “but I knew that you'd hit the heart, and you done it.” He laughed a little as he indicated a bright streak across the rusted face of the iron. “You hit it with a whang. That time, you must've heard the bell ring, Tankerton?”

The outlaw sat with head erect, leaning a little forward in his chair, and studying the other with a calm brightness of eye. Never before had Dunmore seen such a man, or felt in another such nerve of dauntless steel.

“The stuff I used on you,” said Dunmore, “was not fair, of course. But it was better than knocking you over with a slug, wasn't it?”

“What are you after, Dunmore?” he said.

“A talk with you,” said Dunmore.

“Did you have to run this mystery game at Harper's place in order to talk with me? You must have known that I'm always ready to talk with any man.”

“This takes a little explaining,” said Dunmore. “The fact is that I knew I could talk to you when I felt like it, but, from my way of lookin' at it, it was a lot better to
have you come to my office than for me to go to yours. Saved me from sendin' in my card, you might say.”

Tankerton made another brief gesture. “You have all the cards in the pack,” he said, “so you can say how the game is to be played.”

“Why, we'll each take half,” said Dunmore.

“Half of what?”

“We'll make a merger, Tankerton.”

“A merger? I want to try to understand you, Dunmore.”

“I'll put it straight as I can. We each of us have something to give . . . we've each got something to get. For instance, you've got the mountains, here, under your thumb. I want half of that power. You've got a gang of hard-handed fightin' men. I want half of that bunch. You're the king, Tankerton. You can keep right on bein' the king, but I'm gonna be the grand vizier, or something like that. Instead of one whip, they's gonna be two.”

Tankerton waited a moment, flushing a little. “I understand you now, I think,” he said. “The point is that you will buy half the stock in my company.”

“That's a way of putting it.”

“Nearly everything in the world is for sale,” said Tankerton. “I might point out that I've worked a good many years to build up this company. What price are you paying to let yourself into it on an equal basis?”

“What price did you pay to get it?” asked Dunmore.

“Careful planning, patience, and dangers faced and outfaced.”

“I've paid in the same coin,” said Dunmore. “I've come in and stepped into the teepee of a big chief with
a lot of scalps already at his belt. I've hung out here while a gunman came down and tried to murder me in the night. I sat around until murder with poison was tried. And, after that, the king got off his throne and come sashayin' down here to polish me off. But he tripped. He didn't have the luck. So he's settin' here thinkin' things over and decidin' that, after all, I'm talkin' business the right way.”

Tankerton shook his head. “Do you think that my men would follow you?”

“I got an idea that they'd learn to.”

“I don't see the possibility,” Tankerton contradicted.

The face of Dunmore grew hard. “Think it over, old-timer,” he said. “You'll see that I'm right when I say that we'd better shake hands, and then go to the window and let the boys outside see us together.”

Still, Tankerton waited for a moment, his teeth clenched hard, but suddenly he rose and held out his hand. “I'll agree on the start,” said he, “but you'll have to take care of your own finish.”

Dunmore met the proffered grip willingly. “I never asked for loaded dice,” he said.

Standing shoulder to shoulder, as though for mutual support, Chuck Harper and his wife saw Carrick Dunmore and Tankerton come down the stairs side-by-side—Dunmore with his pack across his shoulder. The two were talking in the most amiable fashion.

Whatever Chuck had heard from the hall outside the door of Dunmore's room, he could not be prepared for this, and his jaw sagged loosely as he watched.

Tankerton went up to him with a smile. “Why, Chuck,” he said, “you might have known that you were mistaken about Dunmore. He's one of my oldest friends, and one of my best, come out here at my invitation to be my partner. But the scoundrel wanted to introduce himself in his own way . . . so long since we've seen each other that I hardly recognized him, at that. Eh, Carrie?”

“Well,” said Dunmore, “it's the first time that Judge Colt has made old friends recognize one another. What's my bill, Harper?”

“Seventy-four dollars and fifty cents this morning,” said Chuck, “and. . . .”

“Pay him for me, old fellow, will you?” Dunmore said to the outlaw. “Don't generally carry such small change as that around with me.”

Tankerton flashed a grim side glance at his companion, but he immediately took out a roll of bills and peeled off two of them. “Here's a hundred, Chuck,” he said. “You keep the change for luck, will you?”

Chuck, trembling with emotion in all his great bulk, drew the other aside. He was breathing so hard that it was almost impossible for him to speak. Finally he could say: “Him? A friend of yours, chief?”

“We played together when we were youngsters,” Tankerton explained easily. “He's all right, Chuck . . . only a little eccentric, you know, and that doesn't matter among old friends. You see that you've been paid for what he's eaten.”

“Paid?” echoed Chuck hollowly. “I couldn't be paid with a million dollars, unless the money was printed on his hide.” He jerked about, presenting his back to his master, and strode away.

This was an act of open rebellion that would have called for quick disciplining at any other time, but Tankerton had now many important details to occupy his mind and let the trifles slip. He heard Dunmore saying good-bye to Mrs. Harper, and watched her face turn yellow with disappointed malice. In their own way, Tankerton felt that there were no two more evil characters in the mountains than this precious pair, and it seemed that Dunmore had been at pains to bring out every ugly phase of them.

He was saying now: “This here is a sad time for both of us, Missus Harper. But that's the way of things. Smooth goin' for a little while, and then we get the bumps. Don't you take on though, little woman. Because all the time that I'm away, I'm gonna be thinkin' of you. Every time I see a wildflower, like a flowerin' cactus, say, or a prickly pear, I'm gonna be reminded of you constant, and that'll help me to bear up. Shake hands, little woman.”

She jerked her hands behind her back. “I'd . . . I'd rather touch a toad!” she gasped at him, and fled from the room.