THE LOOKOUT
"Tell you, gents, somethin's come up to change my plans." It was Jack
Harpe speaking. Racey and Swing had met him on the sidewalk in front
of Lainey's hotel shortly after breakfast the following morning, and
Racey had told him of their ultimate decision. As he spoke Mr. Harpe
braced an arm against the side of the building, crossed his feet, and
scratched the back of his head. "I'm shore sorry," he went on, "but
I'd like to call off that proposition about you riding for me. Coupla
men used to ride for me one time are coming back unexpected. You know.
Naturally--you know how it is yoreself--I'd like to have these fellers
riding for me, so if it's alla same to you two gents we'll call it
off. But I wanna be fair. You expected a job on my ranch. I told you
you could have it. I owe you somethin'. What say to a month's wages
apiece?"
Racey shook a slow head, and hooked his thumbs in his belt. "You don't
owe us a nickel," he told Jack Harpe. "Take back yore gold. We're
honest workin'-girls ourselves. Of course we may starve, but what's
that between friends? In words of one syllable what do we care for
poverty or precious stones?"
Jack Harpe followed this flight of fancy with an uncertain smile.
"Alla same," he said, "I wish you'd lemme give you that month's wages.
I'd feel better about it. Like I was paying my bets sort of."
"'Tsall right," nodded Racey Dawson. "We still don't want any money.
We're satisfied if you are. Yep, we're a heap satisfied--now. _But_ I
ain't contented--much."
"That's tough," commiserated Jack Harpe, and dropped at his side the
arm he had braced against the wall of the hotel. Also he straightened
his crossed leg. His air and manner, even to the most casual of eyes,
took on a sudden brisk watchfulness. "That's tough," repeated Jack
Harpe, and added a headshake for good measure.
"Ain't it?" Racey Dawson said, brightly. "But maybe you can help me
out. Lookit, I ain't trying to pry, y' understand. I'm the least
prying feller in four states, but this here ranch of yores which ain't
got anything to do with the 88 and won't cut any corners off the Bar S
might it by any chance overlap on Mr. Dale's li'l ranch?"
"Overlap the Dale ranch! What you talkin' about?"
"I dunno," Racey replied, simply. "I'm trying to find out."
Jack Harpe laughed his soundless laugh. "I dunno what it is to you,"
he said, "but if my ranch don't come near the Bar S how can it hit the
Dale place?"
"Stranger things than that have happened. But still, alla same, I'd
shore not admire to see any hardship come to old Chin Whisker--Dale, I
mean."
If Racey had hoped to gain any effect by mentioning "Chin Whisker" he
was disappointed. Jack Harpe was wearing his poker face at the moment.
"I wouldn't like that any myself," concurred Jack Harpe. "Old Dale
seems like a good feller, sort of shackles along a mite too shiftless
maybe, but his daughter takes the curse off, don't she?"
"We weren't talking about the daughter," Racey pointed out.
Swing Tunstall immediately stepped to one side. There was a something
in Racey's tone.
But Jack Harpe did not press the point. He smiled widely instead.
"We weren't talking about her, for a fact," he assented. "Coming right
down to cases, we'd oughta be about done talking, oughtn't we?"
"Depends," said Racey. "It all depends. I'd just like folks to know
that I'd take it a heap personal if any tough luck came to old Dale
and his ranch."
"Meanin'?"
"What I said. No more. No less."
"What you said can be took more ways than one."
"What do you care?" flashed Racey. "What I said concerns only the gent
or gents who are fixing to colddeck old Dale. Nobody else a-tall. So
what do you care?"
"I don't. Not a care, not a care. Only--only one thing. Mister Man, if
you're aiming to drynurse old Dale you're gonna have yore paws most
awful full of man's size work. Leastaways, that's the way she looks
to a man up a tree. Me, I'm a great hand for mindin' my own business,
but--"
"Yo're like Luke Tweezy thataway," cut in Racey. "That's what he's
always doing."
"Who's Luke Tweezy?"
"So you've learned yore lesson," chuckled Racey. "It was about time.
Guess you must 'a' bothered Luke Tweezy some when you spoke to him
that day in front of the Happy Heart just before you and Lanpher
crawled yore cayuses and rode to Dale's on Soogan Creek.... Don't
remember, huh? I do. You said, 'See you later, Luke,' and he didn't
speak back. Just kept on untying his hoss and keeping his head bent
down like he hadn't heard a word you said. 'S'funny, huh?"
"Damfunny," assented Jack Harpe with an odd smoothness.
"Yeah, you fellers that don't know each other are all of that. Tell me
something, do you meet in the cemetery by a dead nigger's grave in the
dark of the moon at midnight or what? I'm free to admit I'm puzzled.
She's all a heap too mysterious for me."
"Crazy talk," commented Jack Harpe. "You been wallowing in the
nosepaint and letting yore imagination run on the range too much."
"Maybe," Racey said, equably. "Maybe. You can't tell. As a young one I
had a powerful imagination. I might have it yet."
Jack Harpe gazed long and silently at Racey Dawson. The latter
returned the stare with interest. With the sixth sense possessed by
most men who live in a country where the law and the sixshooter are
practically synonymous terms, Racey was conscious that Marie, the
Happy Heart Lookout, had suddenly drifted up to his left flank and now
stood with arms akimbo on the inner edge of the sidewalk. Her body
was turned partly toward him but her head was turned wholly away.
Evidently there was something of interest farther up the street.
Racey moved slightly to the left. He wished to have a little more
light on Jack Harpe's right side. The Harpe right hand--it was in the
shadow. Jack Harpe pivoted to face Racey. The light from the hotel
window fell on the right hand. The member was near the gun butt, but
not suggestively near.
"Listen here," said Jack Harpe, suddenly, in a snarling whisper
designed solely for the ears of Racey Dawson, "I dunno what you been
a-drivin' at, but just for yore better information I'm telling you
that I always get what I go after. Whether it's land, cows, horses,
or--women, I get what I want. Nothing ever has stopped me. Nothing
ever will stop me. Don't forget."
"Thanks," smiled Racey. "I'll try not to."
"And here's somethin' else: What I take I keep--always."
"Always is a long word."
"There's a longer."
"What?"
"Death."
"Meanin'?"
"That folks who ain't for me are against me. Looks like yore friend
there wanted to talk to you. So long."
Abruptly Jack Harpe faced about and went into the hotel. Racey felt a
touch on his arm. He turned to find that Marie had almost bumped into
him. Her head was still turned away. One of her hands was groping for
his arm. Her fingers clutched his wrist, then slid upward to the crook
of his elbow.
"Le's go across the street," she said in a breathless voice, and
pulled him forward.
Her body as she pulled was pressed tightly against him. She seemed to
hang upon him. And all to the discomfort and mental anguish of Racey
Dawson. He was no prude. His moral sense had never oppressed him. But
this calm appropriation of him was too much. But he accompanied her.
For there was Swing Tunstall, a nothing if not interested observer.
Other folk as well were spectators. To shake loose Marie's grip,
to run away from her, would make him ridiculous. He continued to
accompany the young woman quite as if her kidnapping of him was a
matter of course.
In the middle of the street they were halted by the headlong approach
of a rapidly driven buckboard. As it swept past in front of them the
light of the lantern clamped on the dashboard flashed on their faces.
"'Lo, Mr. Dawson," cried the driver, her fresh young voice lifting
to be heard above the drum of the hoofs and the grind of the rolling
wheels. And the voice was the voice of Miss Molly Dale.
Racey did not reply to the greeting. He was too dumb-foundedly aghast
at the mischance that had presented him, while arm in arm with a
person of Marie's stamp, to the eyes of one upon whom he was striving
to make an impression. What would Molly Dale think? The worst, of
course. How could she help it? Appearances were all against him. Then
he recalled that she had been the sole occupant of the buckboard--that
she had called him by name _after_ the light had fallen on the face of
the lookout. It was possible that she might not know who Marie
was. Although it was no more than just possible, he cuddled the
potentiality to him as if it had been a purring kitten.
He allowed Marie to lead him across the sidewalk and into the
pot-black shadow between Tom Kane's house and an empty shack. But here
in the thick darkness he paused and looked back to see whether Swing
Tunstall were following. Swing was not. He was entering the hotel in
company with Windy Taylor.
Marie jerked at his arm. "C'mon," she urged, impatiently. "Gonna take
root, or what?"
Willy-nilly he accompanied his captor to the extremely private and
secluded rear of Tom Kane's new barn. Here were the remains of a
broken wagon, several wheels, and the major portion of a venerable and
useless stove. Marie released his arm and Racey sat down on the stove.
But it was a very useless stove, and it collapsed crashingly under his
weight (later he learned that even when it had been a working member
of Tom Kane's menage the stove had been held together mainly by trust
in the Lord and a good deal of baling wire).
"Clumsy!" Marie hissed as he arose hurriedly. "All thumbs and left
feet! Why don't you make a li'l more noise? I'll bet you could if you
tried."
"Say," Racey snapped, temperishly, for a sharp corner of the stove
door had totally obscured his sense of proportion, "say, I didn't ask
to come over here with you! What do you want, anyway?"
"Want you to shut up and pay attention to me!" she flung back. "I
thought you was gonna leave town. Why ain't you?"
"Changed my mind," was his answer.
"Why can't you do what you said you'd do?" She was quite vehement
about it.
"I got a right to change my mind, ain't I?"
"Go, dammit! Why can't you go? You gave them a chance to even up
when you ran that blazer on Doc Coffin an' Honey Hoke there in the
Starlight. Let it go at that. Whadda you want to hang round here for?
Don't you know that every hour you stay here makes it more dangerous
for you?... Oh, you can laugh! That's all you do when a feller does
her level best to see you don't come to any harm. Gawd! I could shake
you for a fool!"
"Was that what you pulled me alla way over here to tell me?" he
inquired, somewhat miffed at her acerbity.
"I pulled you across the street because if I'd left you where I found
you you wouldn't 'a' lived a minute." The starlight was bright enough
to reveal to him the set and earnest tenseness of her features.
"I wouldn't 'a' lived a minute, huh?" was his comment. "I didn't see
anybody round there fit and able to put in a period."
"It wasn't anybody you could _see_. Don't you remember what I said
about a knife in the night, or a shot in the dark? Man, do you have to
be killed before you're convinced?"
"Well--uh--I--"
"Whadda you guess I was standin' alongside of you for while you was
talkin' to that other feller, huh? Tryin' to listen to what you was
sayin'? Think so, huh?"
"You shore had yore nerve," he said, admiringly--and helplessly.
"Nerve nothin'!" she denied. "He wouldn't shoot through me. I know
that well enough."
"Why wouldn't he? And how do you know?"
"Because, and I do. That's enough."
"Which particular _one_ is he?"
"I ain't sayin'."
"Do you like him as much as that?" Shrewdly.
"Not the way you mean." Dispassionately.
"Then who is he?"
"I ain't sayin', I tell you!"
"You snitched on Nebraska." Persuasively.
"This feller's different."
"How different?"
"None of yore business. Lookit, I'm doin' my best for you, but I won't
have the luck every time that I had to-night--nor you won't, neither.
Gawd! if I hadn't just happened to strike for a night off this evenin'
I dunno where you'd be!"
"Say, I thought you didn't dare let them see you have anythin' to do
with me?"
"I didn't, and I don't. But I had to. I couldn't set by an' let you be
plugged, could I? Hardly."
"But--"
"'Tsall right, 'tsall right. Don't you worry any about me. I got a ace
in the hole if the weather gets wet. But I wanna tell you this: If
yo're bound to go on playin' the fool, keep a-movin' and walk round a
lighted window like it's a swamp."
She dodged past him and was gone. He made no move to follow. He pushed
back his hat and scratched his head.
"Helluva town this is," he muttered. "Can't stand still any more
without having some sport draw a fine sight where you'll feel it
most."
After she left Racey Dawson Marie diagonalled across Main Street,
passed between the dance hall and Dolan's warehouse, and made her way
to the most outlying of the half-dozen two-room shacks scattered
at the back of the dance hall. She entered the shack, felt for the
matches in the tin tobacco-box nailed against the wall, and struck one
to light the lamp. Like the provident miss she was she turned the wick
down after lighting in order that the chimney might heat slowly.
It may have been the dimness of the lighted lamp. It may have been
that she was not as observing as usual. But certainly she had no
inkling of another's presence in the same room with her till she had
slipped out of her waist. Then a man in the corner of the room swore
harshly.
"---- yore soul to ----!" were his remarks in part. "What did you horn
in for to-night?"