The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Devil's deputy
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Title: The Devil's deputy
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Illustrator: Arthur Rodman Bowker
Fred Craft
Release date: September 16, 2026 [eBook #79595]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Pro-Distributors Publishing Company, Inc., 1928
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79595
Credits: Prepared by volunteers at BookCove (bookcove.net)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVIL'S DEPUTY ***
THE DEVIL’S DEPUTY
By Erle Stanley Gardner
Black Barr meets up with the “devil’s deputy.”
Fate stood at the forks of the trail.
At least that is the only way by which I can explain why I took the turn
to the left when the choice of either directions meant nothing to me.
For a mile we followed the left-hand trail, my black and myself,
swinging forward at a fast trail-walk, the high chaparral shutting out
all but occasional glimpses of the view. We were working down the side
of a long ridge, approaching a valley. The main trail, from which I had
turned, kept to the summit and went on. This left-hand fork was headed
toward a plateau-like valley, where it probably ended.
A white signboard hung at an angle from a small tree, fastened by a
rusty nail, bleached by sun and wind, cracked and checked, and yet it
still bore its message “_Caliente Flats 10 M._” It was a sign such as is
used by the Forestry Service to mark mountain fire trails. Yet the
printing was not that of a government stencil. It was crude
hand-lettering.
Another mile and a rider approached, coming up the trail, pressing his
horse.
I stopped, swung to one side, and waited, hands ready, poised over my
pistols. In the mountains of the West, particularly in those communities
where the main means of communication are over horseback trails, it is
well to be prepared for trouble when one meets another on the trail.
He saw me, scowled, averted his glance and passed in sullen silence.
That, of itself, was unusual. The code of the West calls for a brief
exchange of courtesies when two riders meet. More, there was a
blood-stained bandage on his shoulder, and the blood was a bright
scarlet, not the rusty red of dried blood. The man had been wounded, and
the wound was bleeding even as he urged his mount up that trail, away
from Caliente Flats.
I shrugged my shoulders and rode on.
Then I came to other signs, signs announcing that the trail was closed
by landslides, signs which gave detours up bare mountain sides, signs
which were all in the crude lettering of uneducated hands. And past all
these signs, straight down the trail, led the tracks of the horseman I
had met.
I followed those tracks, followed them until I came within sight of a
group of rough buildings huddled together at the head of a little
valley. On the sides of the mountains which rimmed the valley showed the
great scars of mining operations, the white piles of rock at the ore
dumps. The setting sun glinted from galvanized iron roofs, shone redly
on board shacks, cast long shadows from grazing cattle, showed a long
line of rutted roadway running to the north, a roadway which would
probably connect with the railroad.
The sun swung behind the mountains to the west; a chill of the high
places swept subtly through the still air. Darkness came, and lights
began to glow from the clump of buildings.
A ride up and down the main street of the town told me all that I needed
to know.
There was no hotel, but one restaurant worthy of being called such, and
any number of pool-halls, card-rooms, dance-halls and saloons. There are
hundreds of such places scattered through the West, places where
prohibition simply has not penetrated because the people do not wish it.
Mining communities out in the desert, in the heart of the mountains, are
a law unto themselves. Delving underground is a cheerless business, and
men who work in the mines must have such enjoyment as the body craves if
they are to be held in camps out in the wilds, out where there is none
of the diversions of civilization.
I left my horse before the entrance of the restaurant and entered. It
was a rather pretentious place for a mining camp feeding house. There
was a long counter, a row of oilcloth-covered tables, and then a doorway
leading to a corridor, from which opened booths. The lumber was all
homemade, cut from slabs of the sugar pines which grew on the high
mountains to the west.
Several men sat at the counter, and one or two were sprawled over the
tables. They were a hard-looking lot, men who wolfed their food with
shoulders hunched forward, knife and fork in constant motion, eyes fixed
vacantly ahead, jaws working rapidly.
I sat at a table and looked past the line of oil lamps to the murky
mystery of the corridor where were located the booths; booths from which
came an occasional shrill of feminine laughter.
A Chinaman came shuffling through the curtained doorway. His beady eyes
glanced about the place, spotted me as a newcomer, and he made his way
toward me with a heavy tumbler filled with water, a knife and fork.
“H’lo. You likum eat?”
There was a steady impassivity about his stare, an impersonal something
in his tone which seemed a mask, more of a mask than the Oriental
habitually wears.
I gave him my order and he shuffled away.
A silence had fallen on the place, an ominous, tense silence. The men at
the counter had quit chewing their food, had laid knife and fork to one
side and were half turned, watching over their shoulders. The men at the
other tables had somehow tensed, and one who had his back toward me
seemed to have worked his feet under him, preparatory to a swift jump.
The Chink was engaged in flopping my steak on the greasy stove top,
crooning some weird Chinese song to himself.
And then it happened.
The man, who had his back turned, flung out of his chair and abruptly
faced me, his face working with some strong emotion. I had been ready,
and my own hand held the butt of a forty-five, concealed beneath the
table, the muzzle pointed on a line with his heart.
When he saw me, his face relaxed somewhat and his eyes narrowed. In that
split second before I had registered on his mind, when he had nothing by
which to identify me but the sound of my voice, I had sensed the emotion
which gripped him. It had been a half fear, half hate.
As it was, his face became drawn, determined. He let his hand drop from
the handle of his revolver, and strode purposefully to my table.
“Just got in the valley, eh?” he greeted.
“I have already given my order,” I said.
He was a big, burly individual, one who had played hard at the game of
life, plunged over his head with Devil’s stakes, and was continuing the
game at headlong pace. He was a creature of fierce emotions, an animal
cunning being the only indication of intelligence on his face—a face
that was scarred and seamed, warped by evil emotions. Cruelty and
cowardice showed in the line of his quivering mouth, but his hands were
steady.
“Order, hell! I ain’t runnin’ this joint. Are yuh lookin’ for work?”
“If I am I shall find it.”
His hand dropped again.
“Well, you needn’t be so damned fresh. Get this an’ get it straight. Yuh
ain’t goin’ to like it here. It’s a powerful unhealthy climate for
strangers, an’ we don’t want ’em around. Our graveyard ain’t big
enough.”
“The climate and I will get along,” I said; “but I am sorry about your
graveyard being so small. Perhaps it will be even more crowded when _I_
leave.”
He sucked in his breath in a great gasp. I could see in his eyes the
determination to reach for his guns, to have it out—and then he
stiffened, tensed. His eyes had caught the significance of my hand which
was under the table.
“I was just warnin’ yuh,” he said in a voice that had suddenly changed
its tone. His eyes squirmed about; his mouth twitched and beads of
perspiration came on his forehead. Slowly, he walked away, never turning
his back to me, his fascinated eyes on the table cloth which masked the
gun, the fingers of his hands working.
Arrived at his table, he sighed and sat down.
The men at the counter turned again to their food. The other diners
clattered knife and fork. Life in the restaurant returned to normal—and
then my ears caught the note of the Chinaman’s song. It had subtly
changed from the weird undulations of Chinese music, such as a mother
might croon to an infant, and contained a subtle note of triumph.
A few minutes more and he seemed to catch himself, looked sheepishly
about him, lowered his voice, scooped up some potatoes, spread them on
the hot platter, flopped on the steak and came shuffling along the board
floor, his beady eyes darting over my face as though they would cover
the minutest detail of my every feature. The face itself, however, was
an impassive mask of yellow skin.
He set down the food, then took his way once more through the curtained
doorway.
In a few moments he returned, glanced sharply at me once again, then
came to my table, stooped, picked up my plate, swept knife and fork into
his yellow talons, gathered bread, butter and water into his crooked
arm, and started slowly toward the curtain.
“You eatum in here,” he said over his shoulder.
For the moment I was on the point of jerking him back by the slack of
his blouse, and then, for the second time that day, I yielded to an
inexplicable whim.
I followed him through the heavy, grimy curtain, into the dim hallway,
past a few booths, and into a little compartment where, without another
word, he spread out my food on the table.
It is as useless to puzzle over the ways of a Chinaman as it is to argue
with the universe. The average man thinks of eternity as of something
distant, to come into existence on his death. A Chinaman thinks of
eternity as being present. He lives in cycles, lives in eons, and, once
having made up his mind, becomes impervious to argument.
I resumed my eating, saying no word. If words would do no good I would
not waste them. But one thing I had determined. No curtain would be
drawn across that booth, no concealment behind which a man might come
down the dim corridor and shoot me from ambush.
As though divining my thought, the Chinaman threw back the curtain over
the top of the booth, leaving the doorway open ... and then I caught
sight of the occupant of the opposite booth, caught the curve of her
shoulder, the delicate line of her stocking. The rest was hidden by the
curtain which dropped over the doorway.
I scooped up some greasy potatoes and cut at the steak, saw the curve of
the shoulder heave, and caught the sound of a stifled sob. The woman was
crying, crying not with the gentle helplessness which is the weapon of
the sex, the last resort in times of stress, but crying with anger, a
fierce, choking anger which was impotent.
I sat up, interested.
Shuffling steps again.
The Chink came with a cup of coffee, and his eyes intercepted mine as I
stared with frank curiosity at the next booth. Ordinarily the eyes of a
Chinaman are inexpressive, darting, furtive, subtle. Now, however, there
came the swift gleam of an expression. He set down the coffee and
hurried away, and there could be no doubting the triumph of his weird
crooning, a fierce triumph which might have been a hymn of thanks to
some war god.
From the booth opposite I heard the swift crumple of paper; a wadded
note was thrust beneath the delicate, high-arched foot, and the shoe
stamped down again and again. Then the curtain swept back and she saw me
for the first time.
Her face was flushed, the cheeks stained with tears, but there was none
of the washed-out look in her eyes. Rather they glowed with a fierce
intensity, and about her mouth was a look of determination. Her eyes
were weeping, but her mouth was indomitable as Gibraltar.
She saw me, caught the glance of my eyes, and her lip curled a trifle.
Then she was gone, sweeping down the dim corridor with the carriage of a
queen. Not like other women was she. There had been no effort to conceal
her tears, no attempt to soften the ravages of crying by powder and
rouge, but she faced the world defiantly, the tears streaming down her
face, her mouth set in rage.
She was perhaps twenty-two or three, a girl who had blossomed into
woman’s estate, rather small of bone, delicate of figure, yet firm of
mouth and steady of eye, and there was a something in the poise of her
head which spoke of self-reliance.
I glanced at the table in the opposite booth. A dinner had been brought,
served with a delicacy of fancy dishes such as hardly seemed possible in
this rude camp. Yet the dinner had not been touched. There was a small
tenderloin steak, planked, ornamental potatoes bordering it. Radishes
had been cut into delicate petaled roses. Deliciously browned biscuits
sat in a little individual pan. That dinner was not one that might be
selected from the bill of fare in this Chinese restaurant. The
preparation of that meal had been a work of love, not a commercial
enterprise.
Upon the floor of the restaurant there lay the crumpled paper which had
been stamped beneath her foot; and down the corridor came the
shuffle-slip, slip-shuffle, slap-slap of the straw slippers of the
Chinaman.
“You likum pie. All light. I bling um one piecee pie.”
A wedge of restaurant pie was set before me, and the Chinaman turned to
the other table. As he saw the untouched food he made queer, guttural
sounds, and then, for a moment, his voice rose in some Cantonese
exclamation of wrath, but soon he calmed down and began stolidly to
remove the dishes.
At length the table was cleared, but the paper still remained crumpled
on the floor. Also I had a peculiar sensation of dark, beady eyes
glittering down the corridor, fastened on that crumpled sheet. Fool! Did
he think that I would lean across the aisle and pick up that paper?
He waited while I finished my pie, and then came slippety-slapping along
the rough boards.
“You likum check? Me catchum paper makum check.”
There followed a search through the folds of his blouse.
“No catchum paper.... All light. Me catchum.”
With the words he stooped as swiftly and accurately as the swoop of a
hawk, and clutched the crumpled paper in his yellow talons, smoothed it
out, spread it on my table, and scrawled the figure fifty on the back.
“All light. You pay um flifty cents you come cashier’s desk,” he
sing-songed and was gone, this time pulling the cloth curtain over the
entrance to the door. Beyond doubt he intended that I should read that
paper.
I turned it over.
The words were scrawled rather than written, scrawled in indelible
pencil, and there were purple blotches where tears had fallen on the
penciled lines. However, it could still be easily deciphered.
“_Your uncle is gone. You will be next. Beat it quick. U-No-Hoo._”
At the end of the counter I looked for the cashier. There was none, not
even a cash register. The Oriental shuffled down the bar and held me
with his beady eyes.
“You pay um flifty cents. You come back bleakfast?”
I threw him a half dollar and shrugged my shoulders by way of answer,
then strolled to my black, took a nosebag from the saddle and gave him
his grain. He had come far that day, and there was a strange feeling in
the depths of my mind that he might have to go further that night.
The lights of a card-room blazed forth whitely into the night. The place
was lit with a gasoline lantern, and the windows showed startlingly
brilliant against the black of the night. I wandered aimlessly within,
found a vacant chair at a draw poker game, and purchased a stack of
chips.
The play was slow, and I was paying more attention to the men in the
room than to the cards. I did not play to win, and I did not intend to
lose. As a result I made many antes but few draws, looking, listening,
thinking.
And then, suddenly, I caught my own name. It was in the middle of a
sentence, and it came from behind me, where some man was leaning against
the bar, drinking the deadly white mule and discoursing with a friend.
“... Black Barr; yeah, sure I know him. I throwed down on him once near
Yuma, an’ he was a good dog with me ever after. Yeah, he may be quick,
but he ain’t so all-fired quick as yuh hear about. I gave him an even
break, an’ I had him covered before his own guns were half way out.
“What’d he do? He just histed his hands for the sky an’ grinned at
me—not that deadly grin he gets when he’s killin’, but a sorta friendly,
sociable grin. ‘You win,’ he says, an’ he says it so blame sociable an’
friendly like that I didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger.
“Yeah, he looks just like the way they describe him. He’s got black hair
an’ eyes, an’ there’s a sombre somethin’ about his face. He wears a
black hat an’ coat, an’ black angora chaps. When he’s gettin’ mad is the
time to recognize him, though. Then his mouth commences to crawl an’
squirm over his face like a rattlesnake twistin’ around through a clump
o’ cactus.”
Casually, I turned and surveyed the speaker. He was a loud-mouthed
killer. One of the second-rate gunmen who circulate around wherever
trouble is to be had, selling their services as paid murderers,
enhancing their reputations by bar-room bragging. Yellow to the core,
they shoot from ambush or when they have all the advantage, and seek to
terrify honest cattlemen by tales of their exploits. I knew the type,
but the man I had never seen before.
I shrugged my shoulders and fixed my attention on the card game. I am
not a killer, although I have often killed; and therein is a vast
difference.
I looked at my cards, and saw three queens. A player across the board
pulled out a roll of bills. “I’m declarin’ these in the game,” he said
before picking up his cards. “Any other player can do the same.”
I glanced casually at the faces of the men. Without exception my fellow
players were looking at me. Evidently a deal had been framed up. I would
be given four queens after the draw, and my opponent would have the hand
beaten, the others dropping out after the betting was well under way. It
was an old trap, but I would pretend to walk in it, would declare in a
roll of bills and then throw the four queens into the discard with the
money still in front of me. There is nothing which causes more
irritation to a professional gambler who is trying to catch a “live
one.”
I pulled out my own roll.
“This is in,” I said shortly. “Give me two cards.”
The other man drew two cards. The remaining players made various draws.
I looked at my two cards, a queen and a ten. Four queens, and there was
a subtle tension around the table.
“Betting fifty,” announced the man across from me, as he slid a stack of
chips into the center of the table.
“Here, stranger, yuh dropped a paper.”
The voice came from behind me, and was the voice of the bragging killer
who had boasted of getting the drop on Black Barr.
I looked over my shoulder.
The paper he had picked up was the paper I had secured in the
restaurant, the tear-stained threat which the girl had trampled on, and
he was holding it in such a way that the folded paper was slowly
opening.
“Ah yes, thanks,” I said, reaching out my hand.
The fold straightened. The paper lay spread out before the gaze of all
present, and the man who was holding it out jumped back with an oath.
“Hey, you, how did you get this?”
I disdained to answer the question, but reached out my hand.
The other jerked his own hand back, his eyes narrowing, his lips
twitching.
“Havin’ this is just like havin’ a death warrant!” he snarled, his hands
hovering around the butts of his guns, ready to drop the paper and reach
for his weapons.
I knew the type. He would get into action while I was getting up from my
chair. His kind didn’t believe in giving an even break. Safety first was
his motto. Particularly when it came to a killing.
I glanced over the table.
Cold hostility was written upon the faces of the men who were about the
green cloth. Evidently I had become unpopular. The man who was sitting
across the table had lowered his cards slightly—sufficiently for me to
see the corners of four kings.
That was the last straw.
I swept my hands to my guns even as I leapt from the chair. The cheap
killer did as I anticipated. He had dropped the note and had started for
his weapons as soon as he saw me start to get back from the table.
Ordinarily a man would have got to his feet, and then started things.
Then the killer would have had the advantage. As it was, I was having
almost an even break with him.
Never had I been in better form. Never had my hands worked with smoother
rhythm. My guns were out before the other’s hands had started from his
holsters, and, suddenly, it flashed through my mind that here would be a
good chance to show him in his true colors. I did not fire, but thrust
the weapons into the pit of his stomach.
So wide a margin did I have on him at the draw that he had time to
appreciate it, to take stock of the situation. His hands paused, the
guns half out from his holsters, and his bulging eyes fastened on my
face.
My mouth was writhing, twisting into that deadly smile which has made
the name of Black Barr known from one end of the Border to the other,
all over the West, wherever men of the outdoors gather about camp fires
or carry braided ropes coiled on their saddles.
“BLACK BARR!” he yelled, his face turning a sickly yellow with sheer
terror.
And then the lights went out.
How it had been arranged I do not know, probably by some clever
arrangement for just such a purpose, as ordinarily a lantern of this
sort is not quickly extinguished. At any rate the room plunged into
darkness with no stage of transition, no slight afterglow. One moment I
was standing there, weapons drawn, the yammering coward before me,
slavering at the thought of death. The next instant and all was dark,
and I had thrown myself forward.
Guns blazed in the dark, shots which came from the location of the card
table. Bullets thudded into the wood of the bar over my head. But there
were no flashes of light from where stood the man who had picked up the
letter. He had learned his lesson.
As for the others—I had no quarrel with them other than the holding of
those cards, four queens which would have been out against four kings.
And then there was the matter of those flashing guns which had been
directed toward the place where I had been standing when the lights went
out. That matter could wait.
I rolled over, crawled under the card table, made for a corner of the
room, ran into a mass of huddled humanity—non-combatants who were
crowding away from the flying lead—felt a welcome breeze coming through
an open side door, stepped out into the night, through a cluttered yard,
into a narrow alley down to the street and up to my horse.
When the lights should again be turned on and the men look for the
riddled body of Black Barr they would have a shock. I would have
vanished into the night without so much as a trace behind. I had not
fired a shot, had said no word. When there had been no answering flashes
from my guns they would have felt certain I was dead. Their feelings
when the lights came on could be readily imagined. Black Barr has a
reputation, and these men who had sought to kill him would not be
resting very easy, knowing that he was out in the night, a constant
menace.
The black had finished his grain, and had worked off the nosebag, a
trick of his, and stood regarding me with distended nostrils. He had
heard the shooting and was wondering whether there would be the smell of
blood in his delicate nose. I quieted him with a word, swung into the
saddle and loped off into the night.
I usually sleep alone under the stars. Not for one who has a price on
his head, who is the quarry of every gunman who shoots from ambush, can
there be the luxury of a hotel bed. Too many gunmen would like to have
the honor of having dispatched the notorious Black Barr.
I rode several miles away from the town. Of a sudden men had become
obnoxious to me. I wanted the quiet of the night, the swinging stars,
the noises of the desert, the rustling of sage, the whispering of
drifting sand.
I unsaddled, turned the black loose where there seemed to be some feed,
rolled out my blankets, and drifted off into warm drowsiness, lulled by
the hushed noises of the outdoors, a great peace descending upon me.
It was some time later, how much later I had no means of knowing, that
flooding consciousness came back to my brain. My mind was weary, my body
warm and resting, and my senses rebelled against being awakened, but
some mysterious force snapped open my eyes, and when the red blotch on
the horizon registered upon my brain I sat upright, all thought of sleep
gone from me.
It was a fire, not the scattered, diffused radiance of a brush fire, but
the ugly, sullen glow of a house. Above the glow there showed a
writhing, twisting column of smoke, smoke which twisted this way,
writhed that, puffed up into great billows, then spread out into
scattered wisps.
Somewhere over the little ridge which lay to the south, not over two
miles from where I was laying, a house was going up in smoke.
I kicked out of my light blanket and whistled for my black. Out in the
darkness he whinnied his response, waited for a second whistle, and then
came cantering up, surprised at a start in the dead of night, but
holding steady, nevertheless, while I threw the saddle blankets and cold
saddle on his back. A few moments more and I was ready to travel; but,
just as I swung into the saddle, I heard the thud-thud-thud of many
hoofs, horses proceeding at a rapid pace, bunched, compact.
I ducked low in the saddle, insured the silence of my horse by a word,
and waited.
Out of the darkness there came a vague, floating shadow, and then, for a
brief instant, there showed against the red glare on the horizon some
ten horsemen, riding in close formation. A moment only and then they
were gone. For several seconds the sound of the horses came to my ears,
and then that, too, faded away. Silence once more on the floor of the
valley, a silence that was rimmed with mighty mountains and blazing
stars. The glare over the ridge deepened. A tongue of flame writhed and
twisted up in the smoke.
I turned the horse and we went at a swift gallop. As I rode, I thought
of the dark mystery of the shadowy horsemen. During all of the time I
had been able to hear them there had been no word spoken. The men had no
elation over the outcome of their errand, had such a perfect
understanding that words were idle. They had merely floated through the
night like a black cloud gliding silently over the trackless heavens.
Once over the top of the ridge and I could see that both a house and
barn were burning. They were within half a mile, and I pressed the black
forward, but, even as I rode, I could see that it was too late to save
anything from the flames.
A figure that seemed surrounded by a filmy halo dashed back and forth
before the fire, and, as I rode closer, I could see that it was the
figure of a girl, that the filmy halo was the diaphanous transparency of
some thin night attire which floated about her in light folds. Her
activity puzzled me. She was not attempting to save anything from the
blazing inferno, but rather she seemed to be executing some strange
dance, some weird incantation before the burning buildings, using them
as a ceremonial fire about which she leapt.
The firelight outlined her shapely limbs, seemed to gild them with
flickering flame, turned to ruddy gold the flowing locks of her hair,
the fluttering silk of the night-dress. I could not make out the dance.
It was like the dance of an Indian ceremonial, rhythmic, elemental,
unmeasured, yet graceful, purposeful.
My black thundered on. The distance was shortened to yards, to feet. The
girl turned, and I recognized the features of the girl I had seen in the
restaurant.
And then suddenly she paused, stooped, and whirled with elbows elevated.
For a moment I could not understand the posture, and then I flung myself
sideways. She was aiming a rifle directly at me, and the raised elbows
of the silhouette was all that the firelight showed me.
There was a flash, the whisper of a bullet as it skimmed through the
air, the rapid motion of the girl’s arms as another shell was thrown
into the gun.
“I am a friend!” I shouted.
The words served only to give her a more accurate conception of my
whereabouts for her next shot. There was a flash, and the whipping
impact of a bullet in my hat brim.
Bending low over the saddle, I swung out in a series of zigzags, and
from the darkness somewhere to my right came the mocking sound of a
taunting laugh, a laugh that was the laugh of a man. The girl, too,
heard the laugh, for she shifted her position, the firelight glittered
redly along the barrel of the rifle, and two shots crashed out in the
direction of the laugh.
After that there was silence.
I went over the top of the ridge before I again unsaddled, stretched out
my blanket and rolled within it. A moment more and I was asleep with the
black crunching the short grass nearby. If our help was not wanted it
would not be given. I had offered the girl assistance. My answer had
been the deadly whisper of a bullet, the crash of a rifle. She could
dance around the fire until doomsday so far as I was concerned.
I awoke in the soft hush which comes before dawn, when there is the
faintest whisper of a mysterious wind sweeping over the plain, when the
colors in the east run from brassy green to bright orange.
By sunup I was in the saddle, headed toward Caliente Flats, and, as I
rode, I loosed my guns in their holsters. The action was purely
instinctive, prompted perhaps by a subconscious recollection of the
mysterious riders, the flaming building, the mocking laugh from the
darkness.
I breakfasted in the restaurant of the Chinese.
He watched me enter with calm impassivity, but, when I would have seated
myself at the counter, he crooked his finger and shuffled into the
corridor leading to the booths.
I followed him.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Wing Lee.”
“Why you put me here?”
“Bling you bleakfast,” he said, and shuffled away.
A few minutes and he was back with oatmeal and coffee. I resumed the
conversation.
“Why you no let me eat outside, Wing Lee? What for you bring me back
here?”
The interrogation was couched in the pidgin-English which is the
accepted method of communication with his kind, but he blinked his eyes
vacantly.
“No sabbe,” he remarked. “I go bling ham ’n eggs. You likum ham ’n
eggs?”
There is no use wasting breath on a Chinaman who holds his tongue, or
resorts to the “no sabbe” game. When he brought the ham and eggs I
remained silent, as though the matter were closed.
He hesitated, sucked in his breath as though to speak, and then
slippety-slapped away.
Five minutes later and I heard his voice, crooning away a steady stream
of sing-song English. It was as though he was talking to a horse he was
trying to catch, seeking to distract its attention from the cold-bitted
bridle.
“You no eatum out there. Him no good. I catchum you one piecee room. You
eatum no catchum bothered. Me, I smart man, I heap sabbe. You likum
eatum where nobody ’round. You come me, I fixum. I catchum ham ’n eggs.
You heap likum nice flesh egg?”
Keeping up his perpetual wheedling conversation, he came shuffling along
the rough boards leading some bulky figure to the adjoining booth.
Habit, which has taught me to trust no man, made me shift my eyes from
the Chinaman to the figure which followed, and then I instantly
stiffened. It was the cheap killer of the pool-hall; the man who had
boasted of having had the drop on Black Barr, who had picked up the
crumpled piece of paper which had fallen from my pocket.
“Look here, John....” he was saying, using the conventional name by
which all Chinese are known in the mining and cattle camps of the West.
“You likee make piecum money? You likee shagum powder one cup coffee
make one hundred dollars? You sabbe big man, black hat, black shirt,
black horse, black guns...”
The Chinaman moved to one side, moved just far enough so that there was
no obstruction to my view, so that the other man could see me.
“No-o-o-o sabbe,” he intoned.
The man across the way caught the glitter of my eyes, realized that his
conversation had been overheard, knew that the time for a showdown had
come.
He thought quickly, that man. His hand did not swoop immediately to his
guns, but paused long enough to flip the glass of water which was on the
table in front of him, straight at my face. Then his hands went for his
guns with all the speed they could command.
The shot from my right gun caught the hurtling water glass, smashed it
in the air, into a thousand pieces. My second shot crashed through the
forehead of the would-be poisoner.
There was the silent flitting of a shadow and the Chinaman was at my
elbow.
“You come this way, quick!” he hissed.
I followed him, my hand on my gun, ready for a shot at the first sign of
treachery.
“You climb out window,” he said in his sing-song voice. “You come in
flont door, you eatum one more bleakfast. I say him first time you come
this morning.”
There was much wisdom in what Wing Lee said, and but little time for
meditation upon that wisdom or the reason back of it. Already, feet were
rushing down the boards of the corridor; already men were piling in
through the entrance of the restaurant.
I dived through the window, bent double, ran to the corner of the
building, waited for a moment, and sauntered quietly and unobserved into
the crowd which was packing the doorway.
A moment more and I had forced my way through, and sauntered to one of
the oilcloth-covered tables.
“What’s all the excitement, John?” I asked, casually.
Several pairs of eyes turned at the sound of my voice.
“Somebody shootum,” remarked the Chinaman placidly as he drew a cup of
coffee with a hand that was as steady as a graven image. “You likum
bleakfast? Catchum nice flesh egg. You likum ploached egg?”
I nodded.
From the corridor came the awkward shuffle of many feet, and the body of
the killer was borne past, borne by men who were cursing, masking their
terror by rough talk.
“The back door’s locked,” said one. “Must’ve shot him through a window,”
opined another. “Wing Lee says he was the only one back in the booth.”
I remembered that the restaurant had been deserted when I entered, and
chuckled, but the chuckle was short-lived. My thought turned to the
Chinaman. Had he heard of the trouble the night before? Why had he
escorted me to the booth? Why had he brought the killer to the other
booth? Why had he so nimbly skipped to one side just before the shooting
commenced? Was he friend or foe—and who was the girl who had occupied
that same booth the night before?
That Chink was playing a deep game, and he would bear watching.
However, his ruse worked, and no one thought of connecting me with the
shooting. I nibbled through my second breakfast, and then strolled to my
horse. A piece of paper dangled from the saddlehorn, and a closer
inspection showed that it was an envelope, twisting and spinning at the
end of a string.
With narrowed, watchful eyes, I tore open the envelope and read the
message within.
“_Come to the Half Box Ranch at once_,” it said, and it was unsigned.
There was a hundred-dollar bank note accompanying the missive.
I could see no one taking an undue interest in my movements. There were
people on the street, loungers in front of the restaurant, still talking
of the shooting, an occasional horseman going past, a few men grouped
before one of the combination saloons and pool-halls, but no one that I
could spot as being particularly interested in me. However, I had no
doubt but what there was a hidden pair of eyes watching to see how I
took the message.
I twisted the bill and the note up into a spiral, touched a match to
both and used them to light the end of a cigar. Black Barr did not
accept orders, even when they were accompanied with bank notes. Whoever
had delivered his letter could have his answer in my actions.
Two minutes later and a big, burly figure elbowed its way from the
pool-hall, and heaved into a saddle which was on the back of a spirited
horse that had been tied to the hitching rack, and loped to the edge of
the town, then struck into a gallop and vanished into the heat haze in a
cloud of dust.
I recognized him as the man who had approached me in the restaurant, the
man with the crafty eyes, the one who had warned me of the climate and
the small graveyard.
I fancied that I knew where he was going, fancied that I could tell the
report he was taking with him.
I spent an hour mingling with the men of Caliente Flats, joining the
crowds of gossips, taking a great delight in the way conversation
languished whenever I came within earshot, noticing the way men found
occasion to leave a group as soon as I joined it. They were, then,
talking about me. More than that, I was considered a dangerous
companion. Men did not want to be seen talking with me, did not wish to
appear intimate. I was an outcast, a marked man. I might have been
carrying the plague and still have been made more welcome.
I grinned to myself. That would mean a quick showdown. There were events
impending, and their coming was presaged in the very atmosphere of the
place.
I determined to ride out to the scene of the fire. I owned a curiosity
concerning the girl who stamped on threatening letters and who executed
a war dance in the light of burning buildings. I went for my horse and
the animal was gone, had been led away.
I knew he had been led away because he would permit no one but me to
ride him; knew that it had taken main force to drag him from the place
where he awaited the return of his master. A cold rage swept me. My
mouth began its strange writhing. Whoever it was who had taken that
horse would hear from me, and that soon. A wanderer makes but few
friends. My horse was my companion, my only close friend.
A flicker of white caught my eye. Another of those envelopes had been
fastened to the hitching rack near where my black had stood.
I ripped it open.
“_Black Barr. Your horse is at the Half Box._”
The message was unsigned.
I looked about. Nearby was the animal I had earlier seen the burly
individual mount and on which he had recently returned. He was lathered
from a long gallop, but still had plenty of strength and wind. I became
conscious of the eyes of the loungers fastened upon me. Without
appreciable hesitation I picked up the reins of the lathered mount.
“Hey, what yuh doin’ with that bronc?”
It was the voice of the heavy, burly fellow with the cunning eyes.
“I’m just taking him as a guide,” I said. “I want to find the Half Box
ranch and I want to find it in a hurry.”
He disclosed a long row of yellow, fanglike teeth.
“Give’m his head an’ he’ll show it to yuh.”
The words were all I needed to connect up the information I had with the
surmises I conjectured. He and I would have an accounting, this man with
the fanglike teeth and the cunning eyes; but that could wait.
The horse set his own pace and took his own trail. He was a splendid
animal. Too good an animal for the ordinary cowhand to ride. Whoever
that fellow was, he held some important position; foreman perhaps,
perhaps manager.
It was twenty minutes to the Half Box. I spotted the brand on some
pastured cattle, and the horse turned in at a rutted road, into a yard
where buildings, low, unpainted, ugly, squatted about in a rude half
square. There was a bunkhouse, a stable, a harness house, blacksmith
shop, and a big, rambling ranch-house with broad verandas. My black was
in the yard, tied snugly to a post, and he whinnied his welcome.
I untied him, then strode to the ranch-house.
A cowpuncher came to the door, a gun on either hip, a broad smile on his
face, and jerked his thumb to a side door.
“You’ll find ’m in there.”
I went through the side door, and my hands swung low as I entered the
spacious room.
A figure was seated before a desk, a figure that was almost unbelievably
fat. Fat seemed to ooze through his skin, to collect in greasy globules
on his forehead, to have formed in a rancid coating over the hairy
hands. His thick, sensuous lips were wreathed in a smile and his eye
glittered with hoggish self-satisfaction.
“Black Barr, I believe,” and his voice was thin, piping, high like the
squeal of a pig when he first plants his forefeet in a food trough. “I
had to get you out here some way. I can’t ride, and I wanted to talk
with you.”
On either side of him was a bodyguard, and he needed it. Thin, rat-like
individuals they were, with shifty glances and hands that rested on
their belts.
“Black Barr, I need you. My enemies, the Flying M, are on the warpath,
my men are being killed and my homesteads are being burned.”
I glared at him.
“When you want to talk with me after this use a long-distance telephone.
Don’t ever let anyone lay hands on my horse again. You hear?”
The piggish eyes glittered again. This time a steely glitter. His hands
were folded upon his huge stomach, and there was nothing that moved
about him except the lids of his eyes, but somehow he contrived to give
an impression of deadly menace, like a fat spider, sitting in its web,
waiting for the fly to entangle itself a trifle deeper.
“My name is Ed Boswell,” he piped, in his thin voice, “and you’ll hear
more of it if you stay hereabouts. I do what I want to do, and what I
can’t do myself I have others do for me. I’m not used to being
threatened.”
I laughed.
“Was it _your_ homestead that burned last night?”
His small eyes searched my face, and he shifted slightly. The muscles
moved under the great layer of fat, but the body gave only a shimmying
shiver.
“It was my homestead, although the Flying M claim it, and although a
girl claims it.”
“Who built the buildings?”
Another shimmy that would be a squirm, and the pale tongue flecked the
heavy lips.
“The girl’s uncle built ’em, but they were built on my land.”
I turned.
“Next time you have anything to say to me write me a note.”
My eyes were on the two guards. Would they go into action?
“You burnt up one note,” he complained.
“And I intend to burn up the rest,” I said, and slammed the door.
“Ten thousand dollars,” he piped after me. “Ten thousand dollars for
possession of that homestead for thirty days.”
Abruptly, I turned and came back. I could see that he thought the money
tempted me and an oily smile smirked over his flabby face. He had opened
a drawer, and his thick fingers were plucking forth one-hundred-dollar
bank notes, stacking them up before my eyes.
“There was one thing I overlooked telling you,” I said. “I’m getting
tired of someone around here. If it’s you, this is your warning.”
His eyes grew vacant, puzzled.
I slammed the door, this time for good. He had had his warning. The
future was up to him.
I mounted the black and swung out in a wide circle, riding so that I
would go past the place where I had seen the burning buildings. That
homestead commenced to interest me.
The charred buildings still gave forth little wisps of white smoke. The
fire had been complete and there was not so much as a cornerpost left
standing. A clump of horses were fastened to a fence, and the horses
bore the brand of the Half Box. I sneered. Whatever the fat man might
have said, the fire had served to put him in possession— Yet he had
offered ten thousand for possession for the next thirty days. Evidently
he feared an attack, feared an attack that his men would not be able to
repel.
A figure waddled to the group of ponies, and presently a horse cut out
from the bunch. The mounted figure swung in a half-circle to intercept
me.
“I wouldn’t go no closer,” he said pleasantly. “There’s been a fire and
we’re trying to keep whatever evidence there may be intact so we can
show the sheriff what happened.”
I grinned at him.
“Who’s we?”
“The owners—the Half Box,” he said.
I stared at him. “You look sleepy,” I said.
He lowered his eyes. “I ain’t.”
I kept my eyes boring into his.
“That’s a lie.”
His face snapped up, and his shoulders lowered, and then his wide,
startled eyes took me in from head to foot, caught the writhing smile
that was commencing to twist my mouth.
“God in heaven! It’s Black Barr!” he exclaimed, whirled his horse,
elevated his hands, and went on a gallop for his companions.
I had learned what I sought to know. I rode slowly back to town.
In front of the pool-hall the man with the cunning eyes and seamed
countenance was waiting for me with outstretched, pudgy hand and evil
leer.
“I’m Bob Carstairs of the Half Box. Didja see the main squeeze?”
I nodded, slowly, hostilely, not noticing the outstretched hand.
The meaning of my attitude dawned upon him as I swung from my horse.
“Say, what’d yuh do with my bronc?”
I walked close to him, took in the unpleasant reek of his dirty body,
the odor of stale tobacco on his breath, the sudden enmity of his
snarling face.
“I left him where you left mine—at the Half Box, and if you want him
real bad, you’re at liberty to walk out for him—and let me tell you
another thing. The next man to lay a hand on this horse passes in his
chips. Get that?”
His face paled somewhat. He was a blusterer, this man, a fourflusher who
sought to save his face, but who struck through other hands and in the
dark. Yet he tried to bluster, to avoid the appearance of being
mastered.
“Say, where d’yuh get that stuff? I’m good-natured, but yuh can’t pull
no blazer like that on me. I’m Carstairs, an’ I’m the manager of the
whole blamed Half Box an’ I got half a hundred cowpunchers at my back.
I’m tellin’ yuh....”
He never finished what he had to say. I stepped forward and thrust my
empty glove between his yellow teeth, thrust it well back, down his
throat.
“Chew on that for a while,” I said, and walked casually toward the
pool-room.
His hands seemed undecided whether to reach for the glove or his gun,
and hovered in the air, doing neither. In the meantime the glove refused
to be spat out, and wiggled and flopped in his mouth as his chin
quivered and his vocal organs vainly tried to formulate words.
The crowd on the porch of the pool-hall grinned silently, watching me
with a new respect, a certain touch of awe. I made no salutation and
acknowledged none, but strode into the pool-hall.
There I instantly became aware that something unusual was in progress. A
crowd was beginning to pack about a card table, and I could hear the
tones of a woman’s voice.
I stepped forward, raised my head, the better to see, and recognized the
features of the girl of the restaurant. Her hair was singed in places,
but, aside from that, she was unchanged, in as perfect control of
herself as though she had not been burned out of house and home, as
though she were sitting in a drawing room, sipping weak tea.
“I’m offering to cut the cards for myself against your claim to the
homestead,” she said. “Surely you can’t misunderstand me. If you win you
have—me. If you lose you give me a quitclaim to the ranch.”
A couple of the men in front, feeling the pressure of my elbows, turned
around with a scowl, and, as soon as they saw who it was, melted to one
side, leaving the way open for me to approach the table.
Then, for the first time, I noticed that there must be a faint trace of
Indian blood in the girl. There was that about the corners of her eyes,
now that she was excited, that spoke of Indian ancestry somewhere in the
family, and that expressionless set to the lips I had seen on the face
of an Indian chieftain as he was being led to the gallows for the
shooting of a white man who had defrauded him.
The man at the other end of the table was handsome in a selfish sort of
way, and there were devils of passion in his eyes.
“Mattie, you can’t do a thing like this; you simply _can’t_!” he said.
“It cheapens you.”
Her eyes bored into his with a tinge of scorn.
“You with your talk of cheapening myself. You didn’t hesitate to try and
steal the homestead from Uncle. You didn’t hesitate to plunge the
property into a lawsuit, to prevent him from borrowing any money with
the notice you filed in the recorder’s office. You did all this to force
me to give in—to marry you. Well and good. Here’s your chance, and it’s
the only one you’ll ever have. If you cut high, you may have me. If you
cut low, you lose the homestead and give me a quitclaim for it.”
His tongue caressed his lips.
“And if I win, you’ll come, you’ll deliver the merchandise.”
In the flush which came to her skin I could catch the faint tinge of
coppery color.
“You have my word for that,” she said.
A crowd had gathered. The word had passed with lightning rapidity, and
men jostled and shoved about the card table.
“You’ll have to take care of the other outfit—the Half Box, if you win,”
he said. “I won’t guarantee to deliver possession. Just a quitclaim to
all of my interest is all I’m offering if I lose.”
She nodded.
“Go ahead and shuffle the cards. You talk too easily, and it makes you
talk too damned much.”
He shuffled the cards, attempting to ignore the snicker which ran
through the crowd that ringed the table.
“Go ahead and cut,” he said. “The ace is low.”
With a hand that trembled not in the slightest, the girl cut the pack,
looked at her card and flipped it over on the table. It was the deuce of
hearts.
With a bound he was up from his chair.
“Mattie! Mattie! You’re mine, _mine_!”
She waved him back, her face cast into a mould of impersonal
impassivity. “You haven’t cut yet,” she said in an expressionless tone.
Carelessly he leaned back and flipped over the first card, hardly
pausing to look at it. And then a laugh struck his attention. He paused
at that laugh and at something he saw in the eyes of the girl, and
looked at the card. It was the ace of spades.
The man stood rooted to the spot, the color draining from his handsome,
sensuous face. The girl had drawn herself proudly erect, a barrier
between them that had become as permanent as death.
“I’m waiting for the deed,” she remarked.
He dashed a hand across his eyes.
“That wasn’t a fair cut. I turned my back on the deck for a second, and
someone slipped that ace on top. You’ll have to cut again—to give me one
more chance. Anyway, it was the best two out of three. You didn’t
specify, and that’s the way it always goes. Horse and horse, anyhow.”
Bah! The fourflusher. I dropped my hand to my hip and leaned forward.
She spared me the trouble. Her hand came from a fold of her shawl, and
an ugly automatic peeped forth.
“That’s the reason I never could care very much for you,” she said. “You
always were such a grandstander, such a fourflusher. Make out that deed,
and if you lay a hand on me, I’ll shoot you.”
He sighed, glanced helplessly around him, then sank at the table and
began to scribble out a deed. I made for the open air. Nine times out of
ten a handsome man is yellow underneath, and this bird had the features
of a statue.... Bah!
And, as I made for the door, I caught a glimpse of a furtive movement at
my side. Wing Lee, the Chink of the restaurant was slipping a long knife
up his sleeve. Evidently the girl had another string to her bow, even if
she hadn’t known it. I had not seen the Chinaman in the circle of
spectators, but I recognized the gesture with which that knife was
sheathed.
I laughed, and he glanced up at the laugh, but his face was as
expressionless as the countenance of an idol.
“You come supper?” he inquired.
“Sure, Wing Lee, I come supper,” I told him. I was beginning to have a
great liking for this Chink.
The girl took her quitclaim, walked past the crowd of men that hung
around the pool-room, with head up and eyes flashing, climbed on her
horse and galloped away. I knew that the homestead was in the actual
possession of the Half Box outfit, and wondered whether she was headed
for an interview with the fat bird.
* * * * *
I strolled into Wing Lee’s for an early supper. He glittered his beady
eyes at me and crooked his finger, leading the way into that back
corridor where the booths were located. Pausing before the entrance to
one of them he flipped back the curtain and bowed.
Watching him, I stepped inside, and then a rustle of motion told me that
the booth was occupied. In an instant I was on the defensive, my hands
racing to my guns.
A feminine laugh interrupted the motion.
“Wing Lee insists that you are a friend.”
It was the girl of the homestead, the war dance, the cut cards, and
there was a lazy amusement in her voice, almost a note of superiority.
I bowed.
“He allee time makum heap tlouble Half Box,” explained Wing Lee to the
girl, the words rushing out in a burst of sing-song eloquence, as though
to justify his action to her. “He no ’flaid. No matter big man, little
man, quick man, slow man, allee same, he fixum. One man already he
shootum, one man stickum glove in mouth no talkum. He heap smart man. He
allee samee one piecee fliend.”
With which introduction he dropped the curtain and was gone.
“Sit down, Black Barr,” said the girl. “I am Mattie Bevans. I take it
that we’re both pleased to meet each other, so we can eliminate all
those preliminary formalities. I also take it that you’re not overly
pleased at having Wing Lee catapult you into the mess that I’m in, so
we’ll just forget that. With Wing Lee a man who is unfriendly to the
Half Box or the Flying M must be a friend of mine since I’m fighting
both of them.”
I watched her closely. She had received the benefit of a college
education somewhere. Her poise, the diction of her words, her easy
manner showed her training, her education. Now that there was no trace
of emotion on her face, it was almost impossible to detect the slight
strain of Indian blood which had become noticeable when she was excited,
had become apparent through her very immobility of expression.
“When I last sought to have words with you, you sent a few rifle shots
at me,” I remarked, exhibiting the brim of my hat.
Instantly her eyes hardened, and the lips seemed to take on that
peculiar, expressionless set.
“You were there at the burning?” and the coppery tint showed once more
in her skin, while one hand dropped below the level of the table.
“I was there shortly afterward. I was awakened by the red glow and came
to see if I could be of any assistance. In my position one does not
sleep within buildings, but out in the open, and at a different place
each night. I saw you while you were ... er ... dancing.”
Her hand came up from under the table, and her mouth softened slightly
although the coppery tinge deepened.
“And you were shocked to find a girl with hardly any clothes on dancing
around the burning building?”
There was something hostile in the tone.
“Miss Bevans, I have lived much. I have hated much, and I have fought
much. There are times when rage requires some physical outlet. The more
overwhelming the odds, the more necessity for deferred action, the more
need there is for physical expression of rage. And then again, it was a
ceremonial dance. I have seen it before—once.”
Her hand abruptly came across the table and rested on my own.
“Black Barr, thank you. Thank you for understanding. I am part Indian,
and I am proud of it. That was the dance of revenge, and I needed to
dance it or go mad. My uncle and I located that homestead. It was ours,
our title never questioned, until we sunk a well. Then it appeared that
a narrow belt of artesian water ran along the place, down from the
canyon. Artesian water is more precious than gold in this country.
Immediately both of the big cattle camps claimed that the homestead was
within the lines of their survey. They took us into court, hired crooked
surveyors, bribed witnesses, and finally, tried to run us out of the
country, to burn the place, to obtain possession. My uncle was killed
two nights ago, and then they thought they had me, but I stuck it out,
put up the best fight I could.
“This afternoon I disposed of the Flying M. The Half Box is another
matter. Ed Boswell has built up his land holdings by dirty work. He is a
land grabber, a ranch pirate, and he knows no mercy. He keeps himself
surrounded by gunfighters. Let a man get a reputation for being a
killer, and immediately Ed Boswell hears of it, searches him out, gives
him a bonus to come to work for the Half Box.”
The curtain was thrust back and Wing Lee began to deposit platters
containing such viands as I hardly believed could exist in this remote
section. He had evidently been cooking all afternoon.
The girl rewarded him with a swift smile. I said nothing, realizing that
I was merely an incidental guest.
“Wing Lee has been a jewel,” she said. “He was our cook at one time, and
he has the loyalty of the Chinese, a loyalty that cannot be purchased or
destroyed.”
I nodded.
“To return to the subject,” I said as soon as Wing Lee’s shuffling
footsteps had receded down the rough board hallway. “I saw you cutting
cards this afternoon, but I didn’t see you after that.”
She looked at me steadily.
“I went to Ed Boswell with the same proposition,” she said. “That
homestead was all we had. I cannot carry on litigation for it. I haven’t
the money.”
“And you wanted it that bad!” I exclaimed incredulously.
“Certainly not!” she snapped, her eyes blazing into mine. “What do you
think I am?” And then, her fury subsiding, she went on. “Pardon me, I
forgot that you could not know. My uncle and I owned each a half
interest. My own interest I care nothing about, but there was a girl, a
child of my uncle’s who is East in school. She is a helpless, lovable
little kitten, impractical—perhaps weak. The homestead has been paying a
good income, and will pay much more now that the water has been
discovered. I am fighting for that girl. To have her income stopped will
mean ... well it will mean much to her. She is easily influenced.”
I thought for a moment.
“And did you cut cards with Ed Boswell?” I asked.
Her mouth set again. “He said there was no use gambling for the
possession of that which providence had already given to him.”
“Meaning the ranch?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Meaning me.”
“What!”
She nodded and dropped her eyes. “He ordered his men to see that I did
not leave the ranch, shut me in a room, sought to hold me a prisoner, to
have myself as well as the homestead.... They forgot to search me. One
of the guards I shot—not seriously, unfortunately. They tried to
recapture me, but my horse was fast.”
I sought her gaze.
“Suppose you had lost in that card cutting?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Either man would have given me enough to
keep the girl in school. You don’t understand. I am desperate. Our house
has been destroyed, our barn, our hay. Our stock has been run off. I’m
out of possession of the property, and have no money to pay the
lawyers—and I am fighting unlimited capital.”
There was nothing in her tone which suggested a plea for sympathy.
Merely she reported facts.
“And can I be of some assistance?” I asked, more to see what her reply
would be than otherwise. My own mind was already made up. From what I
had seen and heard of some of the actors in this land piracy, Fate was,
indeed, tired of many of the residents of Caliente Valley.
She shook her head emphatically. “I have nothing to offer by way of pay,
and I would not neither ask for, nor accept your aid otherwise. Now
let’s talk of something else; one would think that mine were the only
troubles in the world.”
With that she commenced to talk of books, seeking with almost childish
eagerness to learn what I knew of them. As it happens, books are my one
source of recreation, one friend that I can confide in and take with me.
In my saddlebag I always have one or more books, sent me by mail,
carried with me to read on the long trails, about my camp fires on the
desert. An education is at once a privilege and a curse. I, too, have
been through the best of the Eastern colleges, and my mind cannot remain
inactive, cannot hibernate within a shell. On my travels I must have
something with which to occupy my mind.
For an hour the girl talked, and in her eagerness actually forgot her
troubles. It was not until she mentioned the wonderful collection of
books in her library that her eyes suddenly clouded and her mouth took
on that woodenish, expressionless look—and then I knew that her library
had been destroyed in the fire.
She had been eating as she talked, and Wing Lee’s face beamed approval
as he brought in a dessert.
“Thing be allee light now,” he said, confidently; and, even as he spoke,
my ears caught the stealthy creak of footsteps along the floor behind
him.
I was on my feet, my hands ready to drop to my guns by the time the huge
figure hulked in the doorway. It was the heavy-set man with the seamed
face and cunning eyes, and there was an oily smirk upon his evil
countenance.
“Yuh craved some action with the card cuttin’ out at the ranch, Miss
Bevans, an’ the boss has decided to give it to yuh. He’s squeezed
himself into a buckboard, an’ come in. He’ll meet yuh at the Green
Leaf.”
I held no love for Bob Carstairs, and I felt that I would have something
to say to him shortly, so I advanced slightly, getting my eyes where he
could not avoid them. A shapely hand pressed my arm, however, and the
words which were on my lips never came.
“Never mind, Mr. Barr. It is the best way after all. I will get it over
with, one way or another. Let’s go.”
And, hearing those words, Bob Carstairs stood not upon the order of his
departure, but shambled swiftly and awkwardly out of the place, like a
great bear shuffling down the side of a mountain. It was that very
haste, that cunning leer of his face which gave me concern, but there
was no chance to talk to the girl. She was tripping out of the room with
the lithe grace of a panther. I followed.
Without, there could be discerned the vague form of a buckboard,
illuminated by the light of the stars and the reddish gleam which came
from the window of the restaurant. Within the buckboard, pressing it
down until the springs seemed entirely flattened, the huge bulk that sat
in the driver’s seat leered out at us with oily triumph. Ed Boswell
seemed even fatter than when I had seen him at the ranch. His hairy
hands held the reins; his great weight careened the buckboard well to
one side, and his greasy countenance essayed a lardy smile as he chirped
to the horses and started slowly toward the Green Leaf, one of the
popular gambling halls of the little place.
On either side was his bodyguard, splendidly mounted on spirited horses.
Their hands fluttered about the butts of their guns, and their eyes were
ever on me. Half a block behind, there bulked the dark forms of many
horsemen. It had all the earmarks of a fight, and I swung to the saddle
of my black and followed down to the Green Leaf with the corners of my
mouth commencing to twitch with nervous rage.
Somehow word seemed to have reached the gambling place of the event that
was to take place, for men were gathered on either side of the door,
forming a living lane down which the principal actors in the drama went
their way.
The girl stepped quickly, gracefully, with impassive face, dainty ankles
and easy carriage. Five men helped the huge bulk of Ed Boswell, owner of
the Half Box, from the buckboard, and he wheezed and waddled into the
room, his face wreathed with exultation. Bob Carstairs shambled along
behind, seeming almost dwarfed behind the huge carcass of his master.
Then the others hung slightly back, and I was the next to enter the
room, my guns swinging, and my eyes continually watching the gunmen who
escorted me on either side, the bodyguard of Ed Boswell, paid killers,
who had been instructed as to their duties, and there could be but
little doubt as to what those instructions had been. They never took
their eyes from my hands, or their own hands from their guns. They were
watching, waiting.
The girl and Boswell sat at a vacant card table, and Boswell’s thick,
puffy fingers shuffled a deck of cards, while his eyes rested hungrily
on the girl’s face. At one side there reposed a long, legal-looking
document.
“Here’s the cards, and here’s a quitclaim deed to the homestead,” he
wheezed, his eyes fixed intently upon the girl. “We cut the cards. If
I’m low you take the deed. If I’m high I take you.”
The girl nodded, her face coppery in its impassivity, her eyes fixed on
the fat hands that shuffled the cards.
I could not see more. I dared not let these paid killers get at my back,
and it was necessary for me to work back against the wall. Here I stood
on a chair and could catch glimpses of the tables, the cards, the faces
of the two players. Before me, their eyes continually upon me, watching
every motion, were the two killers, and several of the cowpunchers
loitered about in significant attitudes, their hands on their guns,
their eyes and attention only half occupied by the action at the table.
They outnumbered me fifteen to one, and they were ready for me.
The oily, hairy hands fumbled with the cards, picking one from the very
top of the deck. It was the ten of clubs.
A tense sigh ran around that room like a breath of wind rustling through
dry sage; and then the slender arm of the girl came into view. Her
well-formed fingers spread out the other cards in the deck and picked
one from well toward the bottom.
She pulled the card back, away from the deck, face down, and hesitated a
moment before she turned it.
“If it is lower than the ten you get me. If it is higher I get the
deed,” she said, as though she feared some trickery.
Boswell wrinkled his fat neck in what was meant for a nod, but his eyes
never left the girl’s face.
There was something uncanny about the power of the man. It was his eyes
that gave the impression. They were as steady as a rock, as keen as an
eagle’s, as remorseless as a cat’s, and they surmounted great puffs of
baggy flesh which seemed somehow out of place beneath the piercing
immobility of those steady eyes.
The girl slowly flipped the card—A nine of diamonds!
Instantly there became apparent a swift tension about the room. Men
seemed frozen into rigid suspense. Only at the back of the table was
there a commotion. A commotion where a yellow face with beady,
glittering eyes swirled through a sea of faces.
It was the voice of the girl, calm, steady, self-contained which stopped
him, which held me.
“Wing Lee, stop!” she commanded. “You and Barr will both remain quiet. I
have gambled and I have lost.”
I thrilled to think that she had mentioned my name, that she had known
me well enough, even in the brief time of our acquaintance, to be sure
that I stood ready to help her, to back whatever play she might make.
But she would have none of it.
“I have lost, and I will pay,” she repeated, standing as a queen might
stand. “If I am not given a chance to pay my honest debt, if you seek to
thwart me, I will kill myself. Rather death than the feeling that I
gambled in a one-sided game where I might win but could not lose.”
She meant it, this girl who had descended from the most ancient race in
America. In her veins flowed the blood of proud chieftans, men who had
unflinchingly stood at the stake and watched burning splinters of pine
eat into their bleeding flesh. Not one whimper would ever escape her.
She had staked her all on a cut of the cards and had lost—and she would
play the game.
Swiftly, she made for the door, climbed into the buckboard and called to
Boswell. “I am ready. Hurry!”
He could not hurry, but he appreciated the danger of the moment, knew
the necessity for getting away with his prize, and he did the best he
could. The floor bent and sagged beneath the great weight of the man as
his fat legs took short steps, his weight balanced by an arm on the
shoulder of a cowpuncher who stood on either side.
All of the time the killers stood, watching me, tense, ready; and my
hand was stayed, stayed by the words of the girl.
There came a great commotion from without, the creaking of springs, the
grunts of laboring men, and Ed Boswell was in the buckboard with his
prize. There came the sound of a spoken command to the horses, the
rattle of wheels, and they drove off into the night, escorted by a
half-circle of cowpunchers, an armed guard that protected the rear.
I sighed, got down from my chair and walked past the two killers who
still watched me, walked to the card table, and reached for the deck of
cards that still remained scattered over the green cloth, all but two of
the cards face down, the winning ten and the fatal nine showing with
faces up.
“Don’t touch those cards.”
The words were those of Bob Carstairs, and there was a certain tension
in his tone which convinced me he had remained behind for a
purpose—probably to pick a fight with me, a fight in which his two
killers could effectively dispose of me. Very well, it would be a
showdown.
I straightened, my hands dropping, my mouth commencing to writhe and
twist in its deadly smile.
“And why not?”
“Boswell wants ’em. He told me to bring them out to the ranch. He wants
’em for a souvenir.”
“Tell Ed Boswell that I also desired them as a souvenir, and that _I_
got them,” I said, and again reached for the pack, but this time I
reached with my left hand. My right remained near my holster.
There was a tense silence, a moment of hesitating uncertainty. The
killers flickered their eyes anxiously at Bob Carstairs, waiting for
orders, and Bob Carstairs flecked his lips with his tongue, and
refrained from giving the signal that would have turned the gambling
room into a shambles.
It is not often that I am surprised, but this was one of the times. I
had confidently expected that the men would start shooting as I reached
for the cards. I knew that Ed Boswell had left his bodyguard of killers
behind for but one purpose, to finish me. Why then didn’t they do it?
Why overlook such an opportunity?
I could not reason out the answer, but put the deck of cards in my coat
pocket, and backed to the crude bar which ran the length of the room on
one side, my hands still ready, mouth still twitching.
Slowly, a bit at a time, by imperceptible degrees, the tension relaxed.
Spectators left their places along the walls to advance cautiously
toward the center of the room. A cowpuncher ordered a drink. Somewhere a
chair scraped. There came the rattle of chips, and a poker game started,
slowly, stiffly at first, but gradually getting more into the swing of
accustomed usage.
Carstairs and his killers still remained in the room, gravitating toward
each other, getting sufficiently close so that the gunmen could hear the
whisper which came from Carstairs’s lips. I could see the thick lips
move, but could not catch the words, even though I knew their import.
Those words were my death warrant, some instructions which would have to
do with concerted action, with a swift rush for guns when I was off my
guard.... Bah! The man was obvious, as transparent as a window pane, and
yet—why did he not do something? Why had he let me get that deck of
cards? Why had he not started to shoot it out when I had one hand busy
gathering up the pasteboards?
Half an hour passed, a tense half hour while the killers watched and I
waited. Perhaps it was their intention to wait until all of the
witnesses would have their eyes elsewhere; perhaps they were seeking to
have me relax, to catch me off my guard. Perhaps, after all, they had
been instructed not to start things, but merely to watch and make sure I
did not follow the buckboard.
And then, suddenly, a suspicion crossed my mind. Were they afraid to
shoot while I was gathering those cards because they dared not let the
spectators see those cards? If I were shot, or if I killed them, either
way, there would be a rush of spectators and the cards would be still on
the table. Mentally, I kicked myself for not having thought of it
sooner.
That would answer everything. It would even explain their present
inactivity. They were afraid to pick a fight, to kill me, knowing that
the deck of cards would be found on my body.
I kept my eyes on them, dropped one hand to my coat pocket, took out the
cards, and riffled through the corners of the deck while the pack was
still half in my coat.
I should have known. Fat Ed Boswell gambled only with certainties, took
no chances. The deck was a phony one. There was only one high card in
it, the ten. The rest of the cards were nines, eights, sevens, sixes, on
down to deuces. The girl had walked into a trap. In the tension of that
moment no one had thought of the cards. The demeanor of the actors of
the drama, the momentous possibilities of the occasion had engrossed the
attention of every one. Boswell had managed to keep his high card on the
top of the deck throughout his shuffle, and the girl had stood no
chance.
Cold rage flowed through my veins, and my mouth felt like a snake
crawling over my face. Bob Carstairs’s horrified eyes read the
expression rightly, knew that I had peeked at the deck, had solved the
mystery of the cut cards.
He coughed, a wheezy, spasmodic cough—and that cough was a signal.
They were quick, those gunmen, but I had little attention for them. My
own moves had already been planned. They swept into action with absolute
unison, the swift rhythm which is the criterion of gunfighters the West
over, but they were too slow. In the first place I had read decision in
the eyes of Bob Carstairs even before the sound of that cough had
penetrated to the consciousness of the killers.
My guns were coming from their holsters before the first sputter of that
cough had emanated from the thick lips of the plotter, and my shots
went, not for the paid gunmen, but for the lights.
There were two lanterns, burning with a filament, and they were placed
on either wall. My first two bullets made dead center shots and plunged
the place in total darkness; but even as I pulled the triggers I could
see the guns of the killers coming out, could see even Bob Carstairs
himself tugging at a gun which he carried in a holster, back of his fat
hip. He was unbelievably awkward as he sought to twist his huge body
about and get at that weapon.
However, I had no time to waste on revenge. Somewhere in the night the
proud girl had gone forth to ally herself to the slimy beast who had
tricked her into submission. My first work was to be done there, and I
must escape from that gambling hall, from the watchful eyes of the two
guards if I were going to be of any assistance to the girl.
With the darkness came the flashing of guns, the crash of bullets, the
acrid fumes of powder, nor was I at any pains this time not to return
the fire. I shot at the flashes as well as I was able, kept my guns
blazing so that the innocent bystanders would fall back, hug the floor
and keep out of my way.
I gained the welcome freshness of the star-studded night, vaulted into
the saddle of my snorting black, and reloaded my guns as I galloped away
into the darkness, following the trail to the Half Box ranch.
Behind me came a thundering mass of horseflesh, a jumble of pursuing
men. I could hear hoarse shouts, curses, the rattle of pistols, the
whizzing of bullets.
I bent low and spoke to the black. We would be at the ranch well in
advance of those who pursued. The black had never failed me, nor would
he now. I could feel the bunching of his muscles beneath the creaking
saddle, the snap of his stride, the ripple of smooth action, and the
desert beneath me swept past in a white blur.
I wasted no time firing at my pursuers, but helped my horse by sitting
low, quietly, balanced in the saddle. At high speed the faintest
suggestion of motion of the rider will throw the horse out of balance
just enough to interfere slightly with his stride, and I was measuring
my plan for future activity in seconds, in fractions of seconds.
Slowly, I drew away from my pursuers. The firing behind me ceased, and
there was no sound to reach my ears save the drumming of the hoofs of
the black as he thundered his way across the floor of the elevated
valley. Ahead there flickered a faint light—a light which showed redly
for a minute and then was gone. Again it showed, then glowed steadily,
becoming momentarily brighter. Other lights appeared—the Half Box
outfit.
I checked the horse I was riding, checked him to a trot, a swift, silent
walk, led him from the main trail to the shelter of a barn, left him in
the dark shadows, the reins twisted over the horn of the saddle. He
understood, this black horse, and he would wait there for my whistle,
and then come to me.
Perhaps it was instinct which led me to the dark window at the rear of
the ranch-house, perhaps it was sheer luck. It might have been either.
I slipped through the dark oblong, into the musty mystery of a strange
room. The house seemed strangely silent, a silence which suddenly
savored of a trap, a trap which was baited, set, ready to spring. My
hands dropped to my sides, ready to jerk out my guns, and I stood,
poised, tense, balanced on the balls of my feet, waiting.
Still there was no sound. The velvety blackness of the house seemed
something tangible, a cloak that could be touched, that closed in upon
me, oppressive, heavy, stifling. There was none of those faint creaks
which come to deserted houses at night, none of those settling noises
which, while at first startling the senses, nevertheless lend a
comforting feeling of physical contact with the walls and floors.
I tiptoed across the room, toward the faintest possible thread of light
which seemed to indicate a door. My hand groped along the wall, the
rasping of the fingertips seeming magnified a thousand-fold, and then my
fingers closed on the knob of the door.
From without came the sound of galloping hoofs. There was a shout, a
welcoming hail, a medley of excited questions and answers, and then the
rhythmic pulsations of the thundering hoofbeats of running horses broke
up into a series of irregular ruddy-tud-thuds as horses were drawn up
and riders leapt to the ground. There was no time to be lost if I would
be of any service to the girl, and I threw open the door.
A surprise awaited me. My senses had not been in error after all. That
intuitive warning which had mentioned a trap to my unheeding mind had
been no idle worry of strained nerves. They were waiting for me, and
there was a smile upon the flabby lips of Ed Boswell as he looked at the
door, his eyes gleaming as cold and compassionless as ever, his hands
folded in his lap, the flesh billowing in greasy folds over his immobile
face. On either side of him stood his bodyguard, and their hands were on
their guns, their eyes also on the door.
They had left that window open as a trap, and I had walked into it.
Mattie Bevans stood to one side, her hand at her breast, her eyes wide,
but there was none of the helpless doll about her. Her lips were firm,
her chin up in the air and her eyes steady.
“Ah, yes, Black Barr, himself,” piped Boswell. “You have just broken and
entered, and I shall be compelled to turn you over to the authorities
for imprisonment. I thought that _perhaps_ you would take advantage of
that open window. It leads directly into the outer room of my study, you
see. And, of course, I would not want any visitor to call and find me
remiss in my duties as host.”
In a strained, detached, impersonal tone, the girl spoke to me.
“Mr. Barr, you apparently do not understand that I have made a choice of
my own free will. You have mentioned Fate. Surely Fate has willed that I
should solve my problems in this way—and I have given my word to Mr.
Boswell.”
I noticed then that the big man was fingering the quitclaim deed, that
he had taken it from his pocket and was twirling it in his fingers. It
was as though he tried to impress upon the girl that she had gambled,
that she had cut cards with Fate, and that she had lost.
I had need of my hands near my guns at that moment, but I risked a
bullet to make a spectacular play. My hand pulled the cards from my
pocket and spread them, face upward, on the table.
“Perhaps before you question the wisdom of Fate you should see just how
far her decision had been anticipated,” I said, shortly. “This is the
deck which Boswell shuffled and gave you to cut.”
Her eyes looked at the cards, and the coppery tinge of her cheeks became
more pronounced. Her face remained firm, calm, expressionless, but her
eyes seemed to be covered with a film of black fire. Quick as a panther,
as accurately as a hawk, she swooped forward, and her hand darted toward
the bosom of her dress.
As though the motion had been a signal, the guards stiffened, and, at
that moment, there came the sounds of heavy feet on the wooden porch, a
clamoring of many voices as the front door swung open.
They started for their guns at the same time, those guards. They had
caught, and correctly interpreted, the twisting, writhing smile which
distorted my features.
They were quick, these men, but not quick enough. My hands seemed
literally to fly through the air, and I could feel the jarring recoil of
my heavy weapons even before I fully realized that my wrists had jerked
the muzzles free from the holsters. In my draw I never pause for aim,
never seek to raise my arms. My hands drop to my guns, and I am pulling
back the hammers even as I pull the guns. The trigger is held against
the guard, and such aiming as I do is done in that infinitesimal, split
fraction of a heartbeat during which the hammer is descending upon the
firing cap of the shell. It is merely a flip of the wrist.
Four guns thundered, and to the ears of the uninitiated it would have
seemed that they roared their messages of death in unison; but the two
killers were dead when they fired. Two bullets had torn their black
hearts asunder, and they were falling as they discharged their weapons.
The girl, swift though she had been, still had her hand groping in the
bosom of her dress. The action she had seen had been the action of
trained men, killers against a killer, the pick of the Border ruffians
against one who had need of his skill for others besides himself.
And then there came a shout from the hallway.
The door stood open behind me, that door through which I had made my
way, and back of which I knew was an open window leading into the night.
I had no time to enjoy the expression of utter incredulity which pushed
its way to the surface of Ed Boswell’s face, fighting upward through the
folds of fat as a swimmer fights to the surface; had no time even to
estimate the strength of the force at the door. It was a time for
action, and quick action at that. I swept Mattie Bevans back into the
darkness of that room and slammed the door, nor was I a second too soon.
The warm, velvety darkness of the room closed about us, and then the
silence of the night was shattered by a burst of firing. Light trickled
into the room through jagged, splintered holes which appeared in the
door as by some magic.
Nor did I need to explain matters to the girl. She rushed for the oblong
of darkness which marked the star-studded location of the open window as
direct as though she had been a homing pigeon seeking the air. Together
we went through the opening, seemingly almost at the same instant, so
close was I upon her heels. Behind us came the pack. The door banged
open, and there sounded the shouts of men, the rattle of pistols, the
foul-mouthed curses of ruffians who saw their prey escaping; and,
through the open door, in that brief instant while I looked back, I
could catch a glimpse of Ed Boswell, sitting in that chair, held in one
position by the great billows of flesh which enveloped him, motionless
by his very weight, almost helpless, incapable of quick action.
Only for a second was the sight burnt in on my vision, and then I had
jerked my head down and to one side, and the darkness above was
punctuated by ruddy spurts of stabbing flame.
We made the corner of the porch, and the girl would have made a run for
it through the darkness, straight for the open, but I held her back.
There was no time for words, nor would I have wasted them on her. Ed
Boswell had held a quitclaim deed in his hairy, oily hand when the
action started, and I did not propose that he be left with it.
And, even at that, it was the best move. Twenty cowpunchers were on my
trail, were determined on having my life, and to rush out into the open
would have been to give them a certain, unbeatable advantage. By rushing
around the corner of the house, half doubling on our tracks, we were
able to baffle them, to start them running in several directions,
calling out in their confusion.
The girl was dressed in a dark suit, and never have I had occasion to be
more thankful for the dark garments which I habitually wear. There was
nothing to give them a clue, no fluttering, filmy veil to wave at them
as we rounded the corner, no billowy skirts to have revealed a flash of
white petticoat. Dark, silent, swift, we skirted the corner of the
house, my hand holding the arm of the girl in an iron grip.
Another spurt and another corner. The front steps loomed before us, and
they were deserted. All of the cowpunchers, like so many banded sheep,
had stampeded through the front door at the sound of the firing, had
gone into the room from which we had made our escape, had stumbled over
each other in making for the window.
To the surprise of the girl, I guided her up those steps and into the
house we had so lately quitted. Breathless, hurried, but determined, we
thrust our way into the study, and paused before the figure which hulked
in the chair.
On either side there lay the killers, the paid bodyguard who had
escorted the big man wherever he went, who had worked in shifts, two on
and two off. Two of the killers had accompanied him to town and been
left behind to account for me; these two had remained, to watch their
master when he returned with his prize, and these two had paid the
penalty for their part in the affair. They sprawled in the awkward
postures of men who have met death suddenly and unexpectedly.
Ed Boswell hulked in his chair, absolutely immobile, his eyes wide and
staring straight ahead, his hands resting on his lap.
“The deed!” I ordered, turning one of my guns toward his fat stomach.
He neither moved nor answered, but sat rigid, ignoring my presence and
my summons, his putty-like face a sickly hue, his lips slightly blued,
his eyes seemingly somewhat filmed, but steady.
And then something caught my attention. It was a trickle of red, and it
drew my eye at the same time my forehead puckered in bewilderment over
his strange calm, his placid self-possession.
I bent forward and looked again. The handle of a knife protruded from
his chest, over the heart, and the handle was almost buried in the
sagging folds of fat. A long knife it was, and it had penetrated neatly
and cleanly at the first thrust. The man was stone dead.
I glanced at his hands, and his hands were empty.
And then I caught a quick sound, a gasping of breath, a slight wheezing
sigh.
Bob Carstairs stood in the doorway, his face mottled, his eyes
protruding, his chest heaving, and his hands resting on the guns at his
side. Beside him, and slightly to one side, were the two killers who had
escorted Ed Boswell to town, who had remained behind at the gambling
hall. Their faces were working and twisting with the excitement of the
moment, in an effort to lend speed to their flying hands.
But I was ready. My own guns were out. They would have drawn and fired
without compunction while I had my back to them, but now that I had seen
them, now that the laboring lungs of Bob Carstairs had given me a
warning, they hesitated.
Bob Carstairs squirmed slightly, his face paling, the big bulk shifting
to one foot then the other, his hands working, ever nearer to his guns,
indecision in his eyes, fear in his heart, and treachery in his mind. He
would mask the moves of the two men behind him with the bulk of his
body, would throw himself to one side at the proper time and leave me to
face the blazing guns of the other killers.
And he did just that, but his body moved slowly, clumsily. The guns of
the killers blazed, but mine as well, and I have noticed that it is hard
for men to shoot straight when they are face to face with a man who is
known for straight, cool shooting.
Their craven natures told. Nights of carousal, days of indolent
laziness, years of dissipation, all had left their marks in a nervous
system which could not properly co-ordinate at the critical time, in
spirits which lacked the moral courage to go down into the valley of the
shadow in equal combat.
One bullet hit me in the flesh of the arm, one tore through my coat, but
my own bullets crashed forth with deadly accuracy.
Ten seconds later and we were in the yard. A whistle and my black was
with me, and I speedily located another horse. The pursuing cowpunchers
had rushed to the scene of the latest burst of firing, and there was
something in what they saw there which gave them a check. Ed Boswell was
dead. The four killers whom he had kept in his service as a bodyguard,
as hired murderers, reputed to be the swiftest and most accurate shots
on the Border, had been sprawled face down upon the floor. Bob Carstairs
was lying on his back, his glazed eyes staring upward in startled
incredulity, his black heart stilled forever, and, out in the darkness,
Black Barr waited with loaded guns. It was not a situation which made
these hired land-grabbers feel any too enthusiastic about pursuit. They
hesitated, held back, leaderless, each waiting for the other, and each
questioning in his own mind whether there remained any incentive for him
to risk his life against the death which lurked in the darkness.
Oh, yes, they came, but it was a half-hearted pursuit, and the
scattering volleys which rattled forth upon the still night air were
more for the sake of keeping up their own spirits than for the purpose
of actually accomplishing any damage.
By common consent we swung in a great half circle, headed toward the
homestead. We were cleaning things up, paying off old scores, righting
wrongs, and I wanted the girl to have possession of that homestead.
To myself I was grateful for the trace of Indian blood in the girl. She
rode proudly, swiftly, with none of the hysterical thanks or babbling
comment which might have characterized another girl.
And so we rode, stirrup to stirrup, the floor of the valley slipping
beneath the hoofs of our mounts, the sand and gravel rattling on the
sage and cacti, while the pursuit dropped behind, and, finally, turned
back.
Out in the darkness there gleamed a flickering light. Even as we
watched, the light took on new body and a tongue of flame licked
greedily upward against the dark background of silhouetted hills. It was
the camp fire of the watchers who guarded the homestead, seeking to
retain possession at all costs.
“You will stay back here until I call,” I told the girl, the first words
I had spoken since leaving the Half Box outfit.
Her face was a white blur in the starlight, and I could not see the
expression, but I could and did see the sudden uptilting of the chin,
the set of the shoulders. She swung her horse even closer and came on,
running stride for stride, her stirrup leather actually touching mine at
times. Useless to argue with such a girl. The veneer of civilization had
given to her merely a feeling of independence, a will to do as she
wished, a sex emancipation. At heart she was a savage.
Together we pounded up to the barbed wire barrier which had been
erected. There were shadowy forms to receive us, men rolling out of
blankets at a whispered summons, the watchers who had been doing sentry
duty, tending the fire.
From the confidence of the man who came forward to meet us, I was
satisfied that riflemen were concealed in the darkness, ready to shoot
us down at the first sign of trouble. I wasted no time.
“I am Black Barr, and I have with me the owner of this homestead. I want
possession.”
The very crispness of the message puzzled the man for a moment. He
parried for time.
“You’ll have to see Ed Boswell. We’re taking our orders from him.”
“I have seen Ed Boswell,” I said slowly, evenly.
“What did _he_ say?” asked the guard.
“He is dead,” I retorted gravely.
From the darkness there came a slight stirring, no motion which could be
sensed, but a vague feeling of psychic unrest as when invisible men
shift their positions uncomfortably, peer doubtfully at each other.
I gathered that the force had been somewhat reduced to take part in the
visit to the card-room at the Green Leaf. The very fact of my presence
there with the girl at my side told them much. They were rapidly losing
heart.
“You’ll have to see Bob Carstairs, then.”
I kept my tone low, steady, deadly. “I have seen Bob Carstairs.”
There was a pause while I could hear a rasping in the other’s throat as
he swallowed, gulped, sought to keep his voice steady.
“What did _he_ say?”
“He is dead.”
The man fidgeted, mumbled something about “seeing the boys,” and stepped
slightly to one side.
It was a time for action, for complete assurance, a chance to dominate
the situation by sheer force of personality. I swung from my horse with
calm, deliberate manner, and approached the barrier. “Where’s the gate
in this thing?” I asked.
“Ov—over this way,” said the watcher, and himself pulled back the
twisted wire gate.
I entered, and the girl was at my heels. The man fell back, undecided. I
knew the type, recognized the symptoms. I would have no trouble with
him. He was licked. It was those men who were scattered through the
darkness who worried me.
“Here, you fellows, come on up here to the fire,” I said.
There was a silence, and then suddenly, that silence was broken by a
metallic double click—the cocking of a rifle.
My ears are acutely sensitive, and I recognized the sound at once. It
was the crucial moment. If the men yielded to my order they would leave
the property, never to return. If I should allow them to hesitate,
permit them to start a fight, my doom was sealed. They outnumbered me,
and they were invisible in the darkness.
“Stick ’em up, Barr,” came a rasping voice.
I had been prepared for that voice. The double click had warned me, had
given me the direction of the danger, had enabled me to brace my muscles
so that the smooth ripple of motion which jerked out my gun, which sent
a shot crashing into the darkness, was no mere chance. I had
deliberately planned my move. The hand that drew the gun had been on the
side away from the fire. The eyes of the man in the darkness, looking
toward the glow of the flame, could not have seen the motion. The bullet
was sent toward the location of the speaker. Shooting always by the feel
of the gun, never by an alignment of the sights, I had acquired an
accuracy which was as deadly in the dark as in the daylight.
With the shot came a scream.
“Don’t shoot!”
A man arose to his feet, clutching a dangling arm which was bleeding at
the shoulder. All about me, from the darkness, men came to the fire,
hands uplifted.
“Get your things together and start, and don’t come back,” I said. “The
next man who sets foot on this ground will have to account to Black
Barr.”
In silence they gathered their things, saddled their picketed stock, and
filed through the gate in the barrier. The man in the lead broke into a
gallop, and soon the men were headed in a mad, panic-stricken race for
the ranch-house of the Half Box. They were not fighters, merely Border
toughs, and they were yellow, clean through.
“And do we stay here?” asked the girl.
I shook my head. “We have taken possession, ejected the guards, and you
will have no more trouble. Had they headed toward town we would have
stayed, but they went to the ranch. What they will find there will
convince them that they are finished. Hired killers do not fight when
their pay has ceased. Cowards cease to obey orders which are given by
dead lips.”
She nodded.
Together again we trotted toward town.
There was a light in the restaurant of Wing Lee. I had hoped it would be
there. Probably the girl would collapse when she could let down from the
nervous strain under which she labored. The Chinaman had been a family
servant, and there is a loyalty in the Chinese race which knows no
bounds.
Wing Lee, himself, came to the door.
And then came a surprise. Both the Chinaman and the girl turned to me
with a series of swift, efficient motions. The patch of light from the
door had revealed my blood-soaked sleeve, the wound which had been
slowly welling blood during my long ride.
While the girl applied hot water and bandages the Chinaman brought forth
certain native lotions, evil-smelling, pungent, contained in red-labeled
bottles of thick glass, bottles which were three inches high, an inch
wide and contained but a score of drops when filled.
“You big killum,” announced Wing Lee when the arm had been bandaged and
he was serving tea to the girl and myself.
I said nothing. Evidently he knew something, this Chink.
The girl’s eyes looked me over, and there was something of a caress in
her look. To my surprise I found that I understood her better through
silence than I had been able to understand many other women through
words. Between us there was some tangible bond of psychic affinity
which, though invisible, linked us together in a common bond. I could
feel it, struggle against it as I might. I am Black Barr, the killer,
and the love of a good woman is not for me. Had the girl spoken I would
have been rude, have shattered her faith in me, but she did not speak,
merely penetrated the inner silences of my soul.
And then the Chinaman broke into his weird chant, a wild, ululating hymn
of pagan hate.
“You heap killum!” he said at length, ceasing his music, his beady eyes
glowing like polished ebony.
I endeavored to explain to him and to the girl at the same time. “I am
the executioner of Fate, Wing Lee. I go ridum my horse. Maybe Fate
gettum tired somebody. She send me. Man he fight me. I killum, then go
’way.”
He looked at me without nodding, and I noticed that there was a flicker
of red in the whites of his eyes.
“You allee samee execlutioner for Fate,” he singsonged, “I allee samee
deputy for devil,” and, with that, his hand plunged into his sleeve and
drew out—a long, legal-looking document. It was the quitclaim deed for
the homestead, properly signed and acknowledged by Ed Boswell. In the
upper corner was a spatter or two of blood.
Gravely I bowed to the devil worshipper and passed the document to the
girl.
She took it in dignified silence. It was almost as though the delivery
of the deed was a part of some strange ceremonial rite. And well it
might be. The Devil’s Deputy and the Executioner of Fate had united to
right a wrong—and the deed vested a complete record title.
[Notes on the Text: This story appeared in _Black Mask_, September,
1928. It is believed to be in the public domain in the United States;
copyright status may differ in other countries.]
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