The Max Brand Megapack (242 page)

“And you think that you’d be safe if you went out to shoot Blondy and met her instead? Bah! She’d make a fool of you. You’d crawl around on your hands and knees begging for a chance to work for her and fight for her!”

“How does it come,” suggested Ronicky, “that she doesn’t have the same effect on the other men around these parts? Why doesn’t she get a whole army of ’em for her father?”

“I’ll tell you why: folks are blind to what they grow up next to. I was born by the sea. And I never seen nothing in it. I come west and went plumb batty with a case of desert fever, and here I stick. And do you hear them that are born on the desert talking a lot about it? No, you don’t. They’re too used to it. When you take ’em away from it after a while, they may begin to mourn for it. But it’s the things you ain’t never lacked that you can’t appreciate. Same way with the young folks around here and that flower of a girl, Elsie Bennett. They’ve growed up in the same schools with her. They’ve seen her playing dolls with other little girls and putting on long skirts to play grownups. They’ve seen her get into the feet-hands-and-elbows stage, when all girls look plumb ugly. They’ve seen all that, and no wonder they don’t know what she is! One or two have rubbed their eyes and waked up and found out the truth and gone batty about her for a while, but she gives them the cold shoulder when they come talking marriage, and they wander off some other place to keep from busting their hearts. That’s why they don’t know what she is.”

Ronicky had listened with the most profound interest, not so much caught by the warnings and the pictures of Jenkins, but intrigued by the revelation of the old man’s character.

“But why are you so set on getting me?” he asked at length.

“I’ll tell you why. Because things ain’t now the way they used to be. I don’t mean to speak light of you, Doone, after all that I’ve heard about you. But I just want you to know that twenty years ago I wouldn’t have given a shake which side you joined, because with my money and my men I could wipe out old Bennett any time I took a mind to it. But them days ain’t no morel Them days ain’t no more! They’re gone!”

He groaned bitterly.

“When Bennett wanted to run me out of the country twenty years ago, what did he do? He simply hired a bunch of men and run off my cows in a gang. He didn’t waste no time thinking and planning. He scooped what I had and left me busted. Easy for him! Oh, curse his hide! But when I come back with some money of my own and find him down, times have changed. A gent can’t come in and do what he pleases. No, sir; he’s got to wait around and see what the public sentiment is. Like as not, if he lifts a hand, he’ll get hanged for it. So I’ve been laboring here these years working up my case against Bennett. I have things all worked up fine and ready to squash Bennett when along comes this big Blondy and makes this play of his. Well, folks didn’t take him none too serious before. But they begin to now, and they take Bennett serious along with Blondy. And now if you go in and join up with Bennett—why, it’d be a mighty serious thing, and it might stall me altogether! You got brains, both you and Blondy, and you’re both born fighters. And if you teamed it on the same side you might bust up my little game for me and spoil things all around.”

His frankness made Ronicky gasp. Certainly there was an old-fashioned honesty underlying the malignant hatred with which Jenkins pursued Bennett.

“Talk straight out,” he said finally. “I don’t mind saying that I like you, Mr. Jenkins, and I’d like to please you. Just tell me where I could fit into your plans, and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

“That’s talk of the right kind!” cried Al Jenkins. “It’s taken a long tune to get around to it, but I seen when I laid eyes on you that I couldn’t get you in a second. Ronicky, d’you ever ride the range?”

“That’s my regular way of making a living.”

“Are you aiming to take a job pretty soon?”

“Maybe.”

“Then line up for a month under me, Ronicky. I just want to make sure that you ain’t going to be against me. I ain’t buying you, and I ain’t offering to, because I know that money couldn’t do it. I’m just saying: Will you come out and hang up your saddle in my bunk house for a while?”

“And if I don’t?” asked Ronicky.

“If you don’t, and particular if you line up with Bennett, it’s going to go hard with you. I’m ready to close in on them, son. I’ve got public opinion switched over my way. We’re a long, long ways from the law. And if I should clean up Bennett’s beef now, the way he done with mine, I don’t think he’d have much of a chance to prove anything against me and my men. What d’you say, Ronicky?”

“I’m going to take a ride around tonight,” said Ronicky, checking himself on the verge of agreeing. “When I come back I’ll let you know.”

“Right!” said Al Jenkins. “A gent that thinks before he does a thing is a gent that don’t change his mind afterward. Good-by!”

CHAPTER VIII

A CRY FROM THE SHRUBS

Aft
er Al Jenkins left the room there were still a few moments during which Ronicky Doone sat by the black square of the window, staring out on the shadows of the street, broken by the bars of yellow lamplight. The acrid scent of dust impregnated with bitter alkali floated toward him in thin drifts from time to time, after a horseman had lurched up or down the street, his hoofbeats muffled to soft thuds by the thick layer of dust through which they struck. While he sat there, letting the peace of the village steal over him and all the quiet of the mountains, he revolved in his mind what Al Jenkins had said to him, and the more he pondered the stranger the position seemed to him.

Yet what Jenkins wanted was understandable. He had reduced Bennett to such a point that he could soon crush his rival. But the addition of the slightest strength might unbalance the scale and postpone the destruction of Bennett for an indefinite period. One more daring deed performed in the name of Bennett, as Blondy had performed his deed this day, would convince the men of the village that Bennett had under him something beside a number of tramps. Public sentiment might swing mightily toward the opposite side. Therefore Jenkins had tried to make doubly sure of Ronicky.

As for Ronicky, the old urge to go on and on and on which whipped him remorselessly through the mountains, was now dying out. Twin Springs was becoming a focus around which his thoughts gathered and centered. Just in this fashion men find a new place strange and desolate which, after a little living, seems to become the center of the world, all their lives moving within its bounds. And Ronicky, looking out of the window, felt that he was looking into the heart of the town and the country around it.

Necessarily he must join the forces of honest Al Jenkins, if he stayed. And he must stay to fight big Blondy. And if he stayed to fight Blondy he must be with those who were opposed to Bennett. What could be more logical than this strain of reasoning? And yet, because he hated alliances of all kinds, he delayed and determined to have that ride before his mind was made up.

When he went down to the veranda of the hotel a score of heads—for the porch was well filled—turned toward him at once in greeting. That day’s work had got him known. More than that, those who had heard of him had been about buzzing the rumors which they had picked up. He was a known man, indeed.

He stepped down through a murmur of greetings and went out to the shed, where Lou was stabled. He groomed her by lantern light. For, though she was one of the tough mustang breed that live as happily without brushing as with it, yet it was a custom which Ronicky had started and could not stop. He worked until the red bay was a shining velvet, with high lights from the lantern splashed along the silk of her flanks. Then he saddled her and swung up in the stirrups.

She slipped out from the shed, as light of foot and eager on the bit as though she had been in pasture for a month. Truly she was made of watch springs and leather, a tireless mechanism! At the trough he gave her one swallow of water and then sent her across the country. He picked the course at random. East and west rose rough-sided mountains. He did not wish to break the heart of Lou with such work. They were out for a pleasure walk, so to speak, not for labor. To the south the hills separated in uninteresting monotony. But to the north a valley lay like a funnel into the heart of the mountains. And into this funnel he sent Lou.

There might be no road at all. But for that he did not care. Straight across the country fled Lou, running among shrubs, with a smoothly wavering line, just as a dry twig is floated down among stones by the current of a brook, twisted here and there quickly, but with never a jar. When a fence rose before her, she rose and cleared it in lovely style, tucking up her heels beneath her in the most approved manner, which a trained hunter might have envied. Over the meadows she struck a hotter pace; in the rough ground she went more slowly, but still fast enough. And all this while the rein was dangling loose on her neck!

Yes, once the direction was given to her, it was not necessary that he concern himself with the course she picked. She would keep on in the line selected, diverging here and there, as the lay of the land forced her to do, but swinging always back to the original direction, as the needle swings toward the pole. She kept her head high, for the sky was made darker than usual by a highflying sheet of clouds, which were swept rapidly across the heavens by a wind not felt in the valleys. That high head enabled her to pierce the dimness for some distance and plan her course with fair accuracy. And all the while she was enjoying her work just as much as Ronicky Doone enjoyed his ride.

Lou had so beautifully free and elastic a stride that by her way of going one would have guessed her to be ever on the trail for home; yes, one would have thought that she was every minute passing familiar landmarks which called into her mind the old home and brought the very scent of the sweet hay and the warm barn into her nostrils. This night ride was to her a frolic and more joyous than to her master. As for Ronicky, he had only to half close his eyes, as the deliciously cool air whirred against his face, and let his mind wander where it would.

He did not rouse himself into full consciousness of his direction until he felt Lou throw up her head with a little start, such as she always gave when there was before her a problem which she felt might better have the attention of the master. At the same time she quickened her stride, settling down toward the ground a little, in the manner which unmistakably betokens a leap to come.

Ronicky looked up barely in time to see before him a wide, still stretch of water, shining faintly in the darkness of the night. Where a star, looking through the swirl of dizzy clouds above, peered down at the water, there was a point of light. He saw that and measured with a sudden concern the width of the leap; then Lou rose like a swallow against a sudden gust of wind and sailed high in the air.

He could tell by the convulsive effort with which she flung herself up and forward that she knew the leap to be close to the limit of her ability. And, as she passed the apex of her spring and began to shoot down, it seemed to Ronicky a certain thing that she would dip in the water. But she shot on, and her forehoofs landed on the dry ground, and her hind toes scooped up a spray of the water, but the next moment she was cantering on, only laboring a little in the heavy going which the water of the creek had impregnated. But she had hardly taken a stride—indeed, it was almost simultaneous with her landing across the water—when there was a faint cry and then a shrill one from some shrubs to Ronicky’s right. At once he whirled the mare toward the voice.

CHAPTER IX

IN THE DARK

It was a woman’s vo
ice; the first sound coming as though she was half choked by surprise, and the second shrill with terror. Ronicky ranged his horse behind the shrubs, just as she darted out, an indistinct figure in the night. He halted her with a shout, at the same time peering on all sides to make out the light of her home, but there was no such light in view. She seemed to have been standing there in the thicket by choice. Ronicky had heard, however, of female tramps, though even in his wide wanderings he had never seen one. But such she must unquestionably be.

“Look here,” he said, “there ain’t any call for running. I ain’t going to harm you. Who might you be?”

She paused at the side of a tree, more distinctly visible to him, now that he was able to fix her with his eyes. Moreover she was wearing a dress of some light color which helped to define her in the night.

“Who are you?” she asked in turn. “And what are you doing here, off the road?”

The first sound of her voice convinced Ronicky that he had been wrong in his surmise about the female tramp. Never in the world could there be a wanderer of the road with such a voice. He could guess at other things, too, having once heard her speak. She had courage, or her voice would not have been so even. She had surprising courage considering the youth which her voice suggested, and the lateness of the hour and the midnight dark.

“Me?” answered Ronicky, with as much daylight good humor as he could manage to throw into his voice, “Why, I’m just a stranger out riding for the sake of the ride.”

She remained silent, as one who did not believe what she had heard, but who considered that it would be bad policy to dispute with the unknown.

“I might be asking you,” said Ronicky, “what you’re doing out here at this time of night—away from the road?”

“Oh, I’ll tell you how to reach it,” she said, not answering this question. “You start over to your right and keep going till you reach a fence. Then ride down the fence, turning north until you come to a gate. That gate opens onto the road to Twin Springs. I suppose that’s the place you’re trying to find?”

“That’s the place I’ve just left,” said Ronicky, “and I don’t worry about the road. My hoss and me—we sort of get along where there ain’t no road to speak of.”

Again she was silent, but what little she had spoken left such a pleasant impression on Ronicky that he paused and hunted through his mind for the means of prolonging the talk.

“I’d an idea,” he murmured at length, “that maybe you was lost yourself, being out here alone in the night. You see?”