Destry Rides Again (14 page)

Back at his office once more, his secretary, Sarah Gann, came in to tell him that a visitor was there for him.

“Send him away,” said Bent irritably. “I don’t wanta see him, no matter who it is.”

“A boy,” said Sarah Gann.

“Well, I’ve told you what to do with him.”

“He’s come for something about Destry,” said she, looking back as she reached the door.

“Destry? Then send him in!”

A faint grimace that might have been triumph appeared on her lips as she went out, and presently at the door appeared as ragged
a boy as Bent ever had seen. He had on a coat that reached to his knees, the two side pockets bulging. His feet were without
shoes and apparently as hard as sole leather. All his clothing was that of a man, abbreviated and tattered. Yet he gave an
impression of a swift, muscular young body beneath those drapings.

“You carrying bombs in those pockets?” asked Bent, leaning a little forward in his chair and resting his elbows on the edge
of his desk.

For every man carries within himself a sympathy for free boyhood in which he can plunge and be lost; and Bent had reasons
for wishing to be freed from the facts of the moment.

“I got pecan nuts in this pocket,” said the youngster.

He was a little frightened, a little awestricken, but a fine straightness of regard was in his eyes.

“You like ’em?”

“They don’t weigh much, and they last a long time,” said the boy.

He took out a chamois bag and, opening it, revealed a quantity of kernels.

“The other pocket’s pretty full, too, eh?”

“Toothbrush,” said the boy, and, unconsciously smiling a little, Bent had a glimpse of snowy teeth. “Ma got me plumb in the
habit,” he apologized. “Then they’s a change of socks, and a bandana, and a chunk of soap.”

“You’re fixed for traveling,” declared Bent.

“Yeah. I done a hundred and ten mile.”

“In how long?”

“Three days.”

“Mountains?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good time.”

“My feet ain’t weighed down with shoes, none.”

“I don’t see a hat, though.”

A battered wisp of straw was produced from behind his back.

“It don’t look very much,” said the boy, “but it sure sheds rain pretty good, account of it havin’ so much hog grease on it.”

“Who are you, son?”

“Name of Willie Thornton, sir.”

“And what brought you here?”

“Destry.”

The man started from his leisurely posture, his leisurely thoughts.

“Destry! What’s he to you?”

“He said he wanted to see me agin; so I come to him. Home didn’t seem much after he been there.
Nobody knows where he is unless you can show me the way. They say you’re his best friend.”

“I’m his friend, Willie. Tell me. Are you the boy who stood by him when Sam Warren tackled him one night?”

“I was around,” said Willie with diffidence.

“Is that where you got the bump on the side of your head?”

“It might of been. I got whacked that night,” said Willie.

Bent suddenly realized that something was to be done. He left his chair with a start and held out his hand.

“I’m mighty glad to see you, mighty glad!” he said. “So will Destry be when you show up. He’s talked a good deal about you.
D’you want to start for him now?”

“I’d like that pretty well, sir.”

“You go home to my house, first of all. You need a couple of good meals under your belt and a sleep in an honest bed. Where
have you turned in the last few nights?”

“I found a farm once and made a bed of boughs the next night. It was tolerable cold, though.”

“I’ll bet it was. Ask your way to my house, up at the end of the street. Wait a moment. Take this!”

He scribbled a note on a piece of paper.

“Give that to any one at the house; they’ll take care of you till I come home, and if they don’t treat you right, you tell
me about it, Willie.”

Willie shifted from one foot to another.

“If I could find out the trail to Mr. Destry—” he began.

“You’ll have that trail told you, Willie. There’s no
hurry about that. In the meantime, I want to get to know you better. Remember that Destry’s my best friend, and I want to
know you for his sake. Run along, Willie; I’ll be home before very long.”

He took Willie to the door, patted his shoulder, and dismissed him; but the last upward flashes of Willie’s keen gray eyes
unsettled Bent a little. The wolf on the trail is a sleepy thing, and the wildcat is totally unobservant, compared with the
eye of a young boy; and Bent knew that he had been searched to the soul and found not altogether such a person as the best
friend of the great Destry should be.

Thinking of that, he turned back gloomily into his office. There appeared to be in Destry a force which frightened most people,
but which attracted a few with an unexplainable power. Here was this lad, whose eyes grew larger and whose voice changed when
he mentioned the great man; and there was Charlie Dangerfield who loved Destry still, as he very well knew. What was there
lacking in himself that he failed to inspire such emotion in others? He had ten thousand acquaintances; but no man even called
himself a near and dear friend to Chester Bent—no man except him whose death he desired above all things! The irony of this
made Bent laugh a little, and the laughter restored his spirits.

So he went on to the end of the day, until the unwelcome time came when he must go home and there face Jimmy Clifton. But
he put that time off, ate at a small restaurant across the street wedged in at a lunch counter between a pair of huge shouldered
cowpunchers and finally, after dark, went home.

He found Jimmy Clifton in the library, deep in one of the books which he himself pretended to read, and
the little man put it aside almost reluctantly, blinking his odd round, fiat eyes as he did so.

“You’re late, Chet,” he observed, “but don’t say you’re sorry. I’ve had a good time. I brought the notes over with me. I’ll
cancel ’em for your check.”

The ease with which the visitor got to the heart of the business upset Bent in spite of the fact that he was hardening himself
for more or less such a scene. But the matter of fact swiftness of Clifton disturbed him. He looked at the little sheaf of
papers in the hand of the smaller man and, with all his heart, hungrily, he wished to have them. Or to touch them with the
flame of a match, and let the fire work for one second.

Instead, he had to say: “I want to talk to you a minute about those notes, Jimmy. Of course you can have the money, but as
a matter of fact——”

Clifton shook his head.

“Don’t start it, old son,” he said. “Talk won’t help. If you have the money in the bank, I’ll take your check now. If you
haven’t money in the bank, I’ll take it dated ahead. I don’t want to be short, but I want to keep us from embarrassing one
another.”

“Of course,” said Bent. “Of course.”

But all of his wiles and his prepared persuasiveness shriveled up and became dead leaves in his hand. He could only say slowly:
“It looks as if you think I’m not sound, Jimmy.”

“Chet,” said the other, “in a business way, it’s pretty doggone hard, I think, to have to moralize about deals that have been
made. When you wanted that money, I gave it to you, because I thought you were a good business man, not because you were my
friend. Now the money’s due with interest. I want it back, not because you’re an enemy, but because the money’s due!”

“But speaking only in a business sense——”

Bent paused for a reply and got one straight from the shoulder.

“In a business sense, then, I think that you’ve been flyin’ a hawk with a hen’s wings. Or to put it in another way, I think
that you’re too high up in the air, and that you’re going to have a fall. Mind you, there’s no reproach to you, Chet. I like
you fine. But I think you’ve extended yourself too much. If Wham stopped booming tomorrow, I don’t think you could pay sixty
cents on the dollar the next day! That sounds hard, but I want to be straight and open with you. Sorry as the devil if I hurt
your feelings. But I want my money now.”

Bent hesitated a little longer. All day he had seen the necessity of the thing for which he was now nerving himself, but still
he needed a breathing space.

“It hits me hard, Jimmy, as I don’t mind letting you see. However, to take a weight off your mind, I can pay you in full at
once. But I’m going to take a walk with you—it’s too hot in the room here—and see if I can’t think up some good business reason
for you to change your mind.”

“All right,” said Clifton. “I’ve sounded pretty harsh, I know.”

“Not a bit, I like to hear business from a business man.”

He went to the door, saying that he would be back in a moment, and went up the stairs to Destry’s vacant room.

This he entered, lighted the lamp, and closed the door.

A dozen articles that belonged to the other were scattered here and there—an old quirt, for instance, lay on the bureau, a
battered hat hung in the closet,
in the top bureau drawer there was a hunting knife in a rawhide case, rudely ornamented, in the Indian style of decoration.

This was what he wanted. He took it out, unsheathed it, and tried the edge with his thumb. As he had known beforehand, so
it was—sharp as a razor. Of its own weight, well nigh, it would bury itself to the hilt in living flesh.

He put the knife in his pocket and was starting for the door when distinctly he heard something stir. He whirled and ran back
into the room, the naked knife instantly in his hand, but as he turned he heard a sound again, of the shutter outside, moved
by the wind, and told himself that this was the same.

Yet he was still not at ease as he went down the stairs, and still he felt a weight curiously cold in his heart, as though
some human eye had observed him taking the knife of Destry from the drawer.

“We’ll take the short cut home,” said Clifton, as they walked out of the house together.

Bent lingered on the steps, as though enjoying the evening; for it was just between the last of the sunset and the total dark
of the night when the shadows had blanketed up the glare and the dust of the day, when the ground had yielded up its first
radiation of heat, and the night wind began to fan cool through the trees and enter windows that yawned for it. The stars
were coming out dimly, twinkling, seeming to advance toward the earth. The very sounds of the day were altered. The wheels
and wagon beds of huge freighters no longer rattled and groaned in the streets, with a jingling of chains and hoarse shouts
from the teamsters. Hammers that had clanged in the smithies, and thudded in the houses which were building nearby, were now
silenced, as was the long, mournful scream of the saws in the lumber yard. Instead, they could hear children playing in the
streets, their joyful yells of laughter suddenly blotted out as they turned corners, and coming into ken again, musical with
distance; choruses of dogs suddenly began and ended, except for one sullen guardian who barked on the edge of the horizon,
a mere pulse of sound.

Now Bent stood on the front steps and seemed to drink in these sights and noises with a smile on his face, while Clifton said
quietly, as though ashamed to break in on him:

“Hate to hurry you, old fellow, but I have a meeting with some people at my house, tonight, and I
have some things to finish up before they come. If you don’t mind, we’d better start on.”

“Why the short cut?” asked Bent, stepping down beside the other.

“I don’t show myself in the street more than I have to, these days. You can guess why.”

“You mean Destry?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“I don’t think he’d murder you, Jimmy. Not off hand like that!”

“Murder’s not the worst thing. See what he did to Orrin!”

“Have you been dabbling in politics, too?”

“Not like Orrin, thanks. But as soon as I can wind up some affairs, I’m pulling out of this section of the country until things
quiet down a little.”

“Meaning by that, Destry?”

“Ay, somebody’s sure to get him, just as he’s gotten so many others. That’s reasonable to expect. And I’m going to advise
the rest of ’em to follow my example when I see them tonight.”

“They’re all coming—is that the meeting?”

“That’s the meeting.”

“You’ll be giving them a dinner, I suppose?”

“Not me. You know the old saying. A filled belly makes a blunt wit. We’ll need our wits tonight.”

“You will,” agreed the other. “So you all meet there and talk over Destry and what to do with him? I hope he doesn’t come
and listen in through the window.”

Clifton stopped short and raised his hand.

“Let’s not talk of that demi-devil any more,” said he. “We’ll chat about the notes, if you wish.”

But the plan which already had been forming in the mind of Bent now took a definite shape; for they
were walking along narrow alleys and winding paths where no eye observed them, as it seemed, and the secure shelter of high
board fences housed them on either side a great part of the time.

“I don’t know about that,” said Bent. “Perhaps the best way is just to give you a check and finish the business.”

“You can? I’m mighty glad that you’re able to, Chet. That’s the best way for me, and for you too, in the long run, I daresay.
I’m glad that you have the money on hand. Matter of fact, I was afraid that you didn’t!”

“Were you?” said Bent “Were you?”

He laughed, in such odd key that his companion looked quickly up into his face.

“I’ve got a reserve fund that I don’t like to dip into. I’ll use it now.”

He grew bolder as the sinister irony of the statement came home to him.

“The last time I used it was six years ago! Well, here we are at your back gate, Jimmy!”

The latter raised the wire hoop and pushed the door open, as a dog rushed at them, barking furiously, but immediately began
to whine and leap up at his master.

“They see with their noses, eh?” said Clifton, pushing the dog off, but with affectionate hands.

“Well,” said Bent, “I don’t know but that it’s the better way to see. A lot of things aren’t as they seem to the eye!”

“No,” said Clifton, “of course they aren’t. Come on in.”

He pushed open the rear door, and they passed through the kitchen and living room, into Clifton’s bedroom, which had a desk
in one corner and was evidently his office as well.

He lighted a lamp and hung his hat on a peg in the wall.

“Sit down here, Chet,” said he. “Here’s a pen and ink, if you want to make out the check at once. It may be a while before
the boys come in, but I’ll have to hurry you a bit. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll go and put the chairs around the table
in the other room.”

With that, he took a stool and a chair from the bedroom and carried them into the adjoining apartment, where he quickly arranged
six chairs around the table.

Bent, in the meantime, took a check book from his pocket and wrote out a check for twelve thousand dollars with the greatest
of care, forming the letters with a beautiful precision.

He had finished when his host returned.

The latter scanned the check, blotted it, and nodded.

“That’s finished, and a good job,” he said. “If I told you what a weight was off my mind, you’d be surprised. At the same
time, now that the thing’s ended and I know you could pay, I’m sorry that I pressed you so hard.”

“Business is business,” said Bent, and smiled in an odd way at the other. “You have to have what’s coming to you.”

“You’re a lucky fellow to have a reserve fund out of which you can dip such a bucketful as this!”

Bent bit his lip. The thing for him to do, he understood, was to finish what he had in mind as quickly as possible; and yet
all that was evil in him rose up from his heart to his brain and urged him to torture his victim before the stroke. So he
lingered, the smile still on his lips.

Clifton smiled in turn, but hesitantly, as one not following the drift of his companion.

“You see how it is,” said Bent. “A man needs to have something at his back?”

“Of course,” said Jimmy Clifton. “A good reserve—generals plan on one in a battle, but it makes me feel that you’re sounder
than I thought, old man, when I hear you talk like this!”

“You thought I’m one of these fly by night investors, eh?”

“Not exactly that. I always credited you with insight and brains, but——”

“But what?”

“Caesar was ambitious,” said Clifton, smiling at his own small jest.

There was a slight creaking sound, and Bent jerked about.

“What was that?” he asked. “Have they come? Have they come?”

Clifton was amazed at a sort of hard desperation that had crept into the voice of his friend.

“They? The five, you mean? No, they don’t show up for a few minutes. But they’ll come along. That was the wind handling the
kitchen screen door, I suppose. It’s in the right quarter for that, just now.”

Bent turned back, with a great gasp of relief.

“Thank God!” said he.

“What’s the matter, Chet?”

“I thought I was going to be interrupted,” said Bent. “But now that I see I won’t be, I wanted to ask you if you’d like to
know the nature of my reserve?”

“Of course I would. Some good bonds, I suppose? Negotiable securities? Those are the things to have on hand!”

“Yes, but as a matter of fact my reserve is only related second-hand to money.”

“What in the world is it, then?”

“A good right hand!” said Bent, still smiling.

Clifton frowned, then started a little as a possible interpretation jumped
into his mind, only to be dismissed at once as a total absurdity.

“A good right hand?” he echoed, in a rather worried manner.

“That’s it. A good right hand.”

“With what in it?”

“Not a pen, Jimmy.”

“No.”

“No, but a gun, or a knife!”

Clifton looked in the same puzzled manner at Bent, trying to push into his innermost thoughts, but it was impossible now to
place any other than one construction upon the fixed and baleful stare of Bent.

The man seemed to grow taller, and stiffer in his attitude. His eyes glittered, and the smile froze on his lips into an archaic
grimace, such as that with which the kings of Egypt look at their people in the tombs and on the pyramids.

Jimmy Clifton was not a coward. There was hardly a braver man in all of Wham, but he could not stir in his chair as he heard
the other continue:

“For instance, six years ago it looked as though I’d be disgraced and found out as a
petty
thief, and therefore I determined to become a real one, and on a big scale. So I went out and held up the express— the job
that poor Destry went to prison for.”

Clifton smiled wanly.

“I’m trying to see the point of the joke,” he said.

“It’s not a joke. That’s one reason that I hate Destry,
I suppose, because I’ve wronged him, as the poet says. Oh, no, I’m not here to tell jokes tonight, Jimmy.”

“You’re not?”

“No.”

Clifton stood up from his chair slowly.

His eyes wandered instinctively toward the wall, from which hung weapons enough. And by that glance Bent knew that the man
was helpless in his hands.

“Then what in the name of God
have
you come here for, Chet?”

“To cancel the notes, Jimmy, of course, but with a knife instead of a pen!”