Destry Rides Again (20 page)

Now his body was hardly more than a bundle of limp string, but his brain remained clear enough. The girl ran to him, caught
him beneath the shoulder, her fingers gripping the flaccid flesh with the strength of a man’s hand.

But as for that, he remembered, she was the woman who loved Destry—not to be expected like other women! His faith in what
she might accomplish soared suddenly.

“Who are you, son?” she asked. “And what d’you want of me. Why, you’re sick! You’re hot as fire with fever!”

“I gotta say something!” said Willie Thornton. “Will ya listen?”

“I’ll listen! Poor youngster!”

She kneeled on the ground by him, supporting him still beneath the shoulders. Neither she nor the boy was conscious of the
form that stepped silently from the shrubbery and loomed beside them, listening.

“You’re Charlie Dangerfield?”

“Yes.”

“You b’long to Destry?”

She hesitated not an instant.

“I b’long to Harry Destry,” she admitted. “Why?”

“You swear you’ll b’lieve what I’m gunna tell you?”

“I’ll believe!”

“Destry didn’t kill Clifton!”

“Ah, ah!” he heard her gasp. “Thank God!”

He raised a hand and gripped weakly on her arm. His head fell back with mortal weakness, but she
passed a hand beneath it and held him close to her like a helpless child. He would have resented that support fiercely at
any other time, but now he was glad of it, for out of her cool hands strength flowed into him, greater than the strength which
pure air gives; and he breathed a delicate scent of lavender, held close against her breast.

“He didn’t kill Clifton. I seen. I was in Bent’s house. I seen Bent steal the knife from Destry’s room.”

He could make his lips move, but suddenly his voice failed him; his eyes closed.

“Make your strength hold out one minute,” he heard the girl appealing to him.

Her face pressed close to his.

“Try to tell me the rest!”

“I follered Bent and Clifton out of Bent’s house. I was scared, but I follered. There was murder’n the air! I come to Clifton’s
house behind ’em—garden gate—dog——”

His voice trailed off.

“Try, honey, try!” she whispered eagerly.

“I got up to the window. I seen Bent talk to Clifton. I heard him say something about money he owned Clifton. I seen Clifton
beg for his life, mighty horrible. I seen him crawl like a dog. I seen—I seen——”

“One more word—then I’ll take care of you. I’ll make you well again, poor boy!”

“I seen Bent grab him by the hair——”

“Clifton?”

“Ay, I seen him grab Clifton by the hair and yank back his head, and stab him in the hollow of the throat, and I heard Clifton
gag, like a stuck pig, and fall, and twist his legs on the floor and——”

The life went out of Willie Thornton suddenly. He hung limp in the arms of the girl, breathing so
faintly that she scarcely felt the stir of it against her cheek.

And now, as she looked up from him, ready to call for help to carry him to the house, she saw the silhouette of the second
listener beside her.

“Harry?” she gasped.

“It’s me,” said Destry.

“Did you hear?”

“I heard.”

“Is it true, Harry? Could Chet have done such a thing?”

“I’m plumb turned to stone,” said Destry. “But the kid wouldn’t lie. He’s give my life to me once; tonight he’s give it to
me agin! It’s Willie Thornton.”

The voice of the boy began again in a fluttering gasp:

“He seen me at the window and hunted me through the dark. Him and the dog. Jumped—the water was mighty cold. But Jack and
Pete they caught me—go on, old hoss, because I ain’t gunna fall!”

“He’s out of his head, poor kid!” said the girl. “He’s tremblin’ with the fever, Harry. God keep him from no harm out of this!”

“Give him to me,” said Destry. “I’ll carry him into the house. You go fetch over some blankets and more help, then we’ll pack
him over there!”

The voice muttered softly, barely audible to them both:

“You b’longin’ to Destry, I didn’t dare to tell nobody but you. It was a long way, between dyin’ and livin’. One side of the
road dyin’, one side livin’— the old hoss kep’ movin’—which I didn’t fall——”

Destry stood up, with the youngster in his arms, holding him gently, holding him close.

“He’s out of his head,” said the girl.

“Quick!” said Destry, and she turned and ran swiftly from the shack, through the brush, and toward the house of her father.

Destry went on into the cabin where he managed to support the boy with one arm while he took out a match with the free hand
and prepared to scratch it.

As he did so, something of an incredible lightness touched his face, like a spider’s web, but falling toward the floor. He
looked up, bewildered, and again there were several light touches against his skin.

“You’re mighty strong,” said the boy. “You’re the one for Destry. You go tell the judge; you swear what I said was true. Them
that are dyin’ don’t lie, which Pop always said in the old days. Me dyin’, I’m tellin’ the truth. I seen it. I seen him kill
Clifton—not Destry—he ain’t no murderer——”

“Son,” said Destry, “it ain’t Charlie that’s holdin’ you here. It’s Destry. I——”

He felt the slim body stiffen.

“Hey! Is it you, Harry?”

“It’s me, old timer! You ain’t dyin’. Charlie’ll get you well.”

“Why, I wouldn’t care much,” said Willie, “me bein’ tolerable sleepy, right now. Lemme get down, Destry. I can stand pretty
good, I reckon—only bein’ a mite sleepy——”

Destry struck a light, and looked down at a face white as the death of which Willie had spoken, and wildly staring eyes, rimmed
with black; and pale lips, purple gray, as though they were coated with dust.

Such a horror struck through the man at the sight of this, that he jerked his head up, and saw, as the match flame spurted
wide, the thin gleam of a fleck of straw falling from the ceiling above him.

But straw does not sift through cracks in an old
ceiling unless it is disturbed. By wind, perhaps. But there was not a mortal touch of wind in the air, this evening! What
else was above them in the attic?

He dashed the match to the floor and leaped to the side. That moment, from the trap door, the sawed-off shot gun of Cleeves
roared like thunder and lightning.

The flare of the double discharge showed the whole shack lighted, and, behind the leveled barrels of the gun, the contorted
face of the marksman.

Destry, springing aside, had snatched his Colt out; now he fired at the point where the pale face had glimmered in the dark
of the attic above him, and next stood still.

The boy had fainted. His legs and head dragged down feebly, loosely, but as Destry held the small body close, he felt the
uncertain, slow flutter of the heart. Fortune and his own quick foot had enabled him to side step the double charge even at
this close range. Too close, perhaps, for the purpose of the sawed-off gun; five feet farther away the charge would have spread
out inescapably wide!

What was the marksman above them doing now? Destry poised his gun to shoot a second time, but he feared that the flash of
his weapon would illumine him as a target for another shot; furthermore, if he strove to glide back through the doorway, he
would similarly be placing himself against a light, no matter how dim a one it seemed. So he stepped back against the wall
and waited through a long moment, lifting the head of Willie Thornton until it rested comfortably against his shoulder.

Now he heard, at first too softly to be sure of it, but presently distinctly, a sound which might have been the soft and regular
movement of someone
crossing the floor, or the creaking of the ladder as someone cautiously descended it, lowering himself softly from rung to
rung.

There was this peculiarity about the sound, that it was quite regular, and yet that it seemed to come from different parts
of the room, sometimes from the window, or again from the door, or rising out of the very floor, as it were.

The nerves of Destry were firm enough—none firmer in all of the world, perhaps—and yet they began to shudder a bit under this
suspense.

He could not stand still. Moreover, there must be something done for the boy, who hung limply in his arms. This might be no
fainting spell, but death itself, for he no longer felt the beating of the feeble heart against his breast!

So Destry started moving toward the doorway, and as he did so, a warm drop struck the back of the hand with which he held
his Colt ready for a second shot. He stopped with a leap of nerves. Then, passing his hand over the same place, again the
warm drop fell upon it.

And then he knew!

His first shot had gone home, and Hank Cleeves lay dead in the attic, whose loosened straw had sifted down and betrayed the
presence of something living within the house. Cleeves lay dead. That was the reason there had been no stir of the man as
he reloaded his double-barreled weapon. That was the reason that there had been no second shot, and the first spurt of blood,
soaking through the crack in the floor, had made that singular tapping sound which had almost frightened Destry forth from
the shack.

He shook his head to drive away the concern from
his mind. As he did so, he heard a stifled voice just outside the door exclaiming: “Hank! Hank!”

There was a pause, and then the voice repeated: “Hank, did you get him?”

And Destry grinned in the darkness and felt the hot blood thrill along his veins. More than Hank had come to make this trap
and more than Hank might pay for its catch!

Somewhere yonder in the darkness, Fiddle waited for him; somewhere away from him, Charlie Dangerfield was calling together
her men who were to carry poor little Willie Thornton to the house. But there was another danger close at hand. He heard voices
at the door and a little outside it.

“Hank doesn’t answer.”

“Call again, then.”

“Hey, Hank!”

Louder they called: “Hello, Hank!”

There was no answer from Cleeves. He never again would answer any man. His lips were cold. Until Judgment Day, a thousand
trumpets might blow, and Hank never would reply. He whom a hundred thousand eyes had seen now had vanished. He was gone. He
was away. Deeper than the seas he was buried, and deeper than the mountains could hide him. The impalpable spirit was gone,
and only the living blood remained to tell of him, dripping down into the silence of the old shack, drop by drop, softly spattering,
like footsteps wonderfully light and wonderfully clear. Hank Cleeves was ended, and his long fingers and his hairy hands would
never again do wonders with hammer and chisel, with saw, and wrench. The boys would no longer stand around and admire the
mechanic. They would no longer yearn to grow up to such a man. The chips would no longer fly, nor the nails sink home for
Hank Cleeves, nor the rafters ring under his hammer.

He was gone. Yonder lay his body, perhaps with the heavy forty-five calibre slug of lead smashed
through the breast and into the vitals. Perhaps the bullet had beaten through brain and brainpan, and so the body lay lifeless.
But he was ended; that cunning machine could function no more; that ineffable spark was extinguished.

And Destry stood below in the darkness, still between life and death, with the limp body of the boy in his arms.

He heard from the lips of Willie the faintest of sighs, and it made his breast lift, as the breast of a mother stirs when
the infant moves beside her, at night. He felt all of paternity, all of motherhood, also, since both qualities lie mysteriously
buried in the heart of man; since he strives to be himself, and also to reproduce physically what cannot physically be born
to the world. His ideas, his spirit, his heart and soul he would put into flesh, but they must remain forever unfleshed, ideal,
impalpable, here glimpsed at with paint, here staring out of stone, here charmed into words, but always hints, glimpses, and
nothing to fill the material arms as a child fills the arms of its mother.

So these mysteries softly thronged down on the sad soul of Destry, and he touched them in their flight as a child might hold
up its hands and touch moths flying in the night, without comprehension, with only vague desires and emotions.

But one thing he could know, in the feeble rationalization of all men, with which they strive to reduce the eternal emotions
to concrete “yes” and “no,” that this boy had once almost died for him, and now actually might be dying for him in very fact.
He knew it, and wonder filled him. He became to himself something more than a mere name and a vague thing; he for the first
time visualized “Destry” as
that man appeared before the eyes of others, striking terror, striking wonder, filling at least the eyes of a child with an
ideal!

Knowing this, he felt a sudden scorn for the baser parts that were in him, the idler, the scoffer at others, the disdainful
mocker at the labors of life. He wished to be simple, real, quiet, able to command the affection of his peers.

It seemed to Destry that, through the boy, for the first time he could realize the meaning of the word “peer.” Equal. For
all men are equal. Not as he blindly had taken the word in the courtroom, with wrath and with contempt. Not equal in strength
of hand, in talent, in craft, in speed of foot or in leap of mind, but equal in mystery, in the identity of the race which
breathes through all men, out of the soil, and out of the heavens.

So it was that hatred for his enemies left him.

In another day, he had derided them, he had contested with them, he had conquered them; for those defeats they had avenged
themselves by confining him for six years for an offense of which he was innocent; but, at the same time, of another offense
he had preeminently been guilty, for he had looked down upon them, and from a tower of self-content, he had laughed at them.

Why?

Because they were less swift in unsheathing a six-shooter!

Because they stuck less firmly on the back of a horse!

Because there was more weak flesh and less leather in them!

Because they faltered in the climb, weakened under the weight, staggered in the crisis, looked for
help where no help could come! So he also had faltered, had weakened, had staggered, had looked about him in the prison.

They were not different. They were made of one flesh and spirit and therefore they were his equals, his “peers.” To them the
world in which he had been free was to them, in a sense, a prison.

These understandings, rushed suddenly upon him, made him slip back closer against the wall, and hold the limp form of the
boy more tenderly in his arms. He, too, had been a child; so were they all, men, and women, children also, needing help, protection,
cherishing, but capable now and then and here and there of great deeds inspired by love and high aspiration. It was such a
power that had come upon little Willie Thornton. He with his small hand had snatched a life from the shadow of the law and
thrown another man in the peril of the gibbet!

So Destry stood close by the door and waited, more stirred with sudden, deep striking thoughts than in all his life before;
so that it seemed to him there was a pure, thin light of beauty falling upon the world and upon all of the men in the world,
except only Chester Bent. He, like a shadow, lay athwart the life of Destry, and there arose in the latter no boyish and irresponsible
hate, no transient hunger for vengeance, but a vast and all possessing disdain and disgust.

With it came a fear, also. For if Bent had deceived him, then he knew that Bent was such a power as he never before had tried
his strength of mind and hand against.

He heard the voices continue, close beside him.

“There ain’t any answer.”

“He’s there.”

“He couldn’t of missed.”

“I seen that gun loaded myself with two charges of buckshot. Extra big. It would of blowed the side out of a house.”

“I think I heard them shot strike wood, though! They rattled!”

“Sure, but some of them hit Destry.”

“I heard him fall!”

“What about the kid?”

“He’s scared sick, somewheres in there.”

“Maybe the slugs hit him.”

“A kid like that ain’t much loss.”

“Why don’t Hank answer?”

“Because he’s gloatin’. He ain’t a talker, anyways!”

“Go on in, Bud.”

“I’m with you, Phil, but I ain’t gunna go in first!”

“Come on, all of us!”

“We’ll all go in, or Hank’ll say we was scared!”

Suddenly four men slid through the doorway, closely packed, one behind the other.

“Hey, Hank!” called one of the voices softly.

There was no answer from Hank Cleeves.

“Hello, Hank, where are you?”

Destry stepped into the doorway, and then outside into the open, pure, safe air of the night, and no eye noted him against
the stars beyond the door. Certainly he heard no voice call out after him!

But within the house, he heard a voice insistently repeat: “Hello, there, Cleeves! Where are you?”

And then a faintly groaning throat replied, above them: “Dead, dead, and God forgive me!”

Destry paused, with an odd thrill running through his body, for he remembered Hank Cleeves of old, tall, wiry, pale, thoughtful,
an ironic and caustic boy, walking apart from the rest, acclaimed as a genius
by boys with lesser talents for the making of sleighs, and toys of all sorts.

Now Hank lay dying in the attic, and his friends were climbing up the ladder toward him, and Destry was filled with a sense
of desolation because he was the slayer, and not among the rescuers!

The hot, long school afternoons poured back upon his mind, the races to the swimming pool, and flash of naked bodies from
the old log into the water, and Hank Cleeves treading water and throwing back his long hair from his eyes with both hands—a
bold, strong, fearless, reckless leader among boys, until Destry adroitly had pushed him to one side. For that very reason,
he knew in his heart, Cleeves now lay dying in the attic of the shanty!

But he stepped around the corner of the cabin, hearing the half-suppressed, excited voices behind him in the house, and passed
through the thicket to the place where he had left Fiddle tethered. Here he mounted, and leaning from the saddle, he picked
up the still senseless body of Willie Thornton, and rode back with him toward the Dangerfield place.

As he went he heard a sudden snorting of horses, a trampling of hoofs, rushing off violently, as if under the thrust of the
spur, and a crackling of the brush as the mustangs were forced furiously through it.

The four who remained were in full flight, the four left of the twelve men he had selected as his enemies. Perhaps they feared
that he might be rushing on their trail, ready to pick them off, one by one, for he could hear them scattering to either side,
and fanning out to make his way behind them yet more difficult.

They were not in his mind, except with pity.

He went on toward the Dangerfield house, and on
the way, he met three men and Charlie Dangerfield herself, coming in haste with a litter borne among them, to carry Willie
Thornton back to the house.

He gave the child down into their hands. He saw Charlie Dangerfield cherishing his face between her hands, by the starlight.

She paid no more attention to Destry than if he had been a spirit rather than a mounted man. So he turned the fine head of
Fiddle toward Wham and rode straight toward it across country, going as the bird flies, regardless of fences and ditches in
his way.