CHAPTER XVII. BUTCH RETURNS
He reminded Nash of some big puma cub warming itself at a hearth like a common tabby cat, a tame puma thrusting out its claws and turning its yellow eyes up to its owner—tame, but with infinite possibilities of danger. For the information which Nash had given seemed to remove all his distrust of the moment before and he became instantly genial, pleasant. In fact, he voiced this sentiment with a disarming frankness immediately.
"Perhaps I've seemed to be carrying a chip on my shoulder, Mr. Nash. You see, I'm not long in the West, and the people I've met seem to be ready to fight first and ask questions afterward. So I've caught the habit, I suppose." "Which a habit like that ain't uncommon. The graveyards are full of fellers that had that habit and they're going to be fuller still of the same kind." Here Sally entered, carrying the meal of the cowpuncher, arranged it, and then sat on the edge of Bard's table, turning from one to the other as a bird on a spray of leaves turns from sunlight to shadow and cannot make a choice. "Bard," stated Nash, "is going out to the ranch with me to-night." "Long ride for to-night, isn't it?" "Yes, but we'll bunk on the way and finish up early in the morning." "Then you'll have a chance to teach him Western manners on the way, Steve." "Manners?" queried the Easterner, smiling up to the girl.
She turned, caught him beneath the chin with one hand, tilting his face, and raised the lessoning forefinger of the other while she stared down at him with a half frown and a half smile like a schoolteacher about to discipline a recalcitrant boy.
"Western manners," she said, "mean first not to doubt a man till he tries to double-cross you, and not to trust him till he saves your life; to keep your gun inside the leather till you're backed up against the wall, and then to start shootin' as soon as the muzzle is past the holster. Then the thing to remember is that the fast shootin' is fine, but sure shootin' is a lot better. D'you get me?" "That's a fine sermon," smiled Bard, "but you're too young to make a convincing preacher, Miss Fortune." "Misfortune," said the girl quickly, "don't have to be old to do a lot of teachin'." She sat back and regarded him with something of a frown and with folded arms.
He said with a sudden earnestness: "You seem to take it for granted that I'm due for a lot of trouble." But she shook her head gloomily.
"I know what you're due for; I can see it in your eyes; I can hear it in your way of talkin'. If you was to ride the range with a sheriff on one side of you and a marshal on the other you couldn't help fallin' into trouble." "As a fortune-teller," remarked Nash, "you'd make a good undertaker, Sally." "Shut up, Steve. I've seen this bird in action and I know what I'm talking about. When you coming back this way, Bard?" He said thoughtfully: "Perhaps to-morrow night—perhaps—" "It ought to be to-morrow night," she said pointedly, her eyes on Nash. The latter had pushed his chair back a trifle and sat now with downward head and his right hand resting lightly on his thigh. Only the place in which they sat was illumined by the two lamps, and the forward part of the room, nearer the street, was a seat of shadows, wavering when the wind stirred the flame in one of the lamps or sent it smoking up the chimney. Sally and Bard sat with their backs to the door, and Nash half facing it.
"Steve," she said, with a sudden low tenseness of voice that sent a chill up Bard's spinal cord, "Steve, what's wrong?" "This," answered the cowboy calmly, and whirling in his chair, his gun flashed and exploded. They sprang up in time to see the bulky form of Butch Conklin rise out of the shadows in the front part of the room with outstretched arms, from one of which a revolver dropped clattering to the floor. Backward he reeled as though a hand were pulling him from behind, and then measured his length with a crash on the floor.
Bard, standing erect, quite forgot to touch his weapon, but Sally had produced a ponderous forty-five with mysterious speed and now crouched behind a table with the gun poised. Nash, bending low, ran forward to the fallen man.
"Nicked, but not done for," he called. "Thank God!" cried Sally, and the two joined Nash about the prostrate body.
That bullet had had very certain intentions, but by a freak of chance it had been deflected on the angle of the skull and merely ploughed a bloody furrow through the mat of hair from forehead to the back of the skull. He was stunned, but hardly more seriously hurt than if he had been knocked down by a club.
"I've an idea," said the Easterner calmly, "that I owe my life to you, Mr. Nash." "Let that drop," answered the other. "A quarter of an inch lower," said the girl, who was examining the wound, "and Butch would have kissed the world good-bye." Not till then did the full horror of the thing dawn on Bard. The girl was no more excited than one of her Eastern cousins would have been over a game of bridge, and the man in the most matter-of-fact manner, was slipping another cartridge into the cylinder of the revolver, which he then restored to the holster.
It still seemed incredible that the man could have drawn his gun and fired it in that flash of time. He recalled his adventure with Butch earlier that evening and with Sandy Ferguson before; for the first time he realized what he had done and a cold horror possessed him like the man who has nerves to walk the tight rope across the chasm and faints when he looks back on the gorge from the safety of the other side. The girl took command.
"Steve, run down to the marshal's office; Deputy Glendin is there." She took the wet cloth and made a deft bandage for the head of Conklin. With his shaggy hair covered, and all his face sagging with lines of weariness, the gun-fighter seemed no more than a middle-aged man asleep, worn out by trouble.
"Is there a doctor?" asked Bard anxiously.
"That ain't a case for a doctor—look here; you're in a blue faint. What is the matter?" "I don't know; I'm thinking of that quarter of an inch which would have meant the difference to poor Conklin." "'Poor' Conklin? Why, you fish, he was sneakin' in here to try his hand on you. He found out he couldn't get his gang into town, so he slipped in by himself. He'll get ten years for this—and a thousand if they hold him up for the other things he's done." "I know—and this fellow Nash was as quiet as the strike of a snake. If he'd been a fraction of a second slower I might be where Conklin is now. I'll never forget Nash for this." She said pointedly: "No, he's a bad one to forget; keep an eye on him. You spoke of a snake—that's how smooth Steve is." "Remember your own motto, Miss Fortune. He saved my life; therefore I must trust him." She answered sullenly: "You're your own boss." "What's wrong with Nash?" "Find out for yourself." "Are all these fellows something other than they seem?" "What about yourself?" "How do you mean that?" "What trail are you on, Bard? Don't look so innocent. Oh, I seen you was after something a long time ago." "I am. After excitement, you know." "Ain't you finding enough?" "I've got two things ahead of me." "Well?" "This trip, and when I come back I think making love to you would be more exciting than gun-plays." They regarded each other with bantering smiles.
"A tenderfoot like you make love to me? That would be exciting, all right, if it wasn't so funny." "As for the competition," he said serenely, "that would be simply a good background." "Hate yourself, don't you, Bard?" she grinned.
"The rest of these boys are all very well, but they don't see that what you want is the velvet touch." "What's that?" She was as frankly curious as some boy hearing a new game described.
"You've only been loved in one way. These rough-handed fellows come in and throw an arm around you and ask you to marry them; isn't that it? What you really need, is an old, simple, but very effective method." Though her eyes were shining, she yawned.
"It don't interest me, Bard." "On the contrary, you're getting quite excited." "So does a horse before it gets ready to buck." "Exactly. If I thought it would be easy I wouldn't be tempted." "Well, if you like fighting you've sure mapped out a nice sizeable quarrel with me, Bud." "Good. I'm certainly coming back to Eldara. Now about this method of mine—" "Throwing your cards on the table, eh? What you got, Bard, a royal flush?" "Right again. It's a very simple method but you couldn't beat it." "Bud, you ain't half old enough to kid me." "What you need," he persisted calmly, "is someone who would sit down and simply talk good, plain English to you." "Let 'er go." "In the first place I will call attention to your method of dressing." "Anything wrong with it?" "I knew you'd be interested." She slipped into a chair and sat cross-legged in it, her elbows on her knees and her chin cupped in both her hands.
"Sure I'm interested. If there's a new way fixin' ham-and, serve it out." "I would begin," he went on judiciously, "by saying that you dressed in five minutes in the dark." "It's generally dark at 5 a.m.," she admitted. "You look, on the whole, as if you'd fallen into your clothes." The wounded man stirred and groaned faintly.
She called: "Lie down, Butch; I'm busy. Go on, Bard." "If you keep a mirror it's a wall decoration—not for personal use." "Maybe this is an old method, Bard; but around this place it'd be a quick way of gettin' shot." "Angry?" "You'd peeve a mule." "This was only an introduction. The next thing is to sit close beside you and shift the lamp so that the light would shine on your face; then take your hand—" He suited his action to his word.
"Let go my hand, Bard. It's like the rest of me—not a decoration but for use." "Afraid of me, Sally?" "Not of a regiment like you." "Then of my method?" "Go on; I'm game." "But this is all there is to it." "What d'you mean?" "Just what I say. Having observed that you haven't set off any of your advantages, I will sit here and look into your face in silence, which is as much as to say that no matter how you dress you can't spoil a very excellent figure, Sally. I suppose you've heard that before?" "Lots of times," she muttered. "But you wouldn't hear it from me. All I would do would be to sit and stare and let you imagine what I'm thinking. And you'd begin to see that in spite of the way you do your hair you can't spoil its colour nor its texture." He raised his other hand and touched it.
"Like silk, Sally." He studied her closely, noting the flush which began to touch her cheeks.
"Part of the game is for you to keep looking me in the eye." "Well, I'll be—Go on, I'm game." "Is it hard to sit like this—silently? Do I do it badly?" "No, you show lots of practice. How many have you tried this method on, Bard?" He made a vague gesture and then, smiling: "Millions, Sally, and they all liked it." "So do I." And they laughed together, and grew serious at the same instant.
"All silence—like this?" she queried.
"No; after a while I would say: 'You are beautiful.'" "You don't get a blue ribbon for that, Bard." "Not for the words, but the way they're said, which shows I mean them." She blinked as though to clear her eyes and then met his stare again.
"You know you are beautiful, Sally." "With a pug nose—freckles—and all that?" "Just a tip-tilt in the nose, Sally. Why, it's charming. And you have everything else—young, strong, graceful, clear." "What d'you mean by that?" "Clear? Fresh and colourful like the sunset over the desert. Do you understand?" Her eyes went down to consider.
"I s'pose I do." "With a touch of awe in it, because the silence and the night are coming, and the stars walk down, one by one—one by one. And the wind is low, soft, musical, whispering, as you do now—What if this were not a game of suppose, Sally?" She wrenched herself suddenly away, rising.
"I'm tired of supposing!" she cried.
"Then we'll call it all real. What of that?" That colour was unmistakably high now; it ran down from her cheeks and even stained the pure white of the throat where the flap of the shirt was open. He was excited as a hunter who has tracked some new and dangerous animal and at last driven it to bay, holding his gun poised, and not knowing whether or not it will prove vulnerable.
He stepped close, eager, prepared for any wild burst of temper; but she let him take her hands, let him draw her close, bend back her head; hold her closer still, till the warmth and softness of her body reached him, but when his lips came close she said quietly: "Are you a rotter, Bard?" He stiffened and the smile went out on his lips. He stepped back.
She repeated: "Are you a rotter?" He raised the one hand which he still retained and touched it to his lips.
"I am very sorry," said Anthony, "will you forgive me?" And with her eyes large and grave upon him she answered: "I wonder if I can!" Butch Conklin looked up, raising his bandaged head slowly, like a white flag of truce, with a stain of red growing through the cloth. He stared at the two, raised a hand to his head as though to rub away the dream, found a pain too real for a dream, and then, like a crab which has grown almost too old to walk, waddled on hands and knees, slowly, from the room and melted silently into the dark beyond.
