THE BAR S
"_Kind friends, you must pity my horrible tale.
I'm an object of sorrow, I'm looking quite stale.
I gone up my trade selling Pink's Patent Pills
To go hunting gold in the dreary Black Hills_."
"I wish to Gawd you'd stayed there," said Jimmie, the Bar S cook,
pausing in his march past to poke his head in at the bunkhouse
doorway. "Honest, Racey, don't you ever get tired of yell-bellerin'
thisaway?"
Racey Dawson, standing in front of the mirror, ceased not to adjust
his necktie. The mirror was small and he was not, and it was only
by dint of much wriggling that he was succeeding in his purpose. To
Jimmie and his question he paid absolutely no attention.
"_Don't go away, stay at home if you can,
Stay away from that city, they call it Cheyenne_."
"Seemin'ly he don't get tired," Jimmie answered the question for
himself. "And what's more, he don't ever get tired of dandy-floppin'
himself all up like King Solomon's pet pony. Yup," Jimmie continued
with enthusiasm, addressing the world at large, "I can remember when
Racey used to ride for the 88 and the Cross-in-a-box how he was a
regular two-legged human being. A handkerchief round his neck was good
enough for him _always_. If his pants had a rip in 'em anywheres, or
they was buttons off his vest, or his shirt was tore, did it matter?
No, it didn't matter. It didn't matter a-tall. But now he's gotta buy
new pants if his old ones is tore, and a new shirt besides, and he
sews the buttons on his vest, and he's took to wearin' a necktie. A
_necktie_!"
Jimmie, words failing him for the moment, paused and hooked one foot
comfortably behind the other. He leaned hipshot against the doorjamb,
and spat accurately through a knothole in the bunkhouse floor.
"Yop," he went on, ramming his quid into the angle of his jaw, "and
he's always admiring himself in the mirror, Racey is. He pats his hair
down, after partin' it and usin' enough goose-grease on it to keep
forty guns from rusting for ten years, and he shines his boots with
blacking, _my_ stove-blacking, the rustling scoundrel. Scrouge
southwest a li'l more, Racey, and look at yore chin. They's a li'l
speck of dust on it. Oh, me, oh, my! Li'l sweetheart will have to wash
his face again. Who is she?"
Still Racey did not deign to reply. He placed, removed, and replaced a
garnet stickpin in the necktie a dozen times handrunning. Jimmie beat
the long roll with his knuckles on the bottom of the frying-pan, and
winked at the broad back of Racey Dawson.
"I hear they's a new hasher at Bill Lainey's hotel," pursued the
indefatigable Jimmie. "Tim Page told me she only weighed three hundred
pounds without her shoes. It ain't her! Don't tell me it's her! You
ain't, are you, Racey?"
Racey, pivoting on a spurred heel, faced Jimmie, stuck his arms
akimbo, and spoke:
"Not mentioning any names, of course, but there's some people round
here got an awful lot to say. Which if a gent was to say their tongues
are hung in the middle he'd be only tellin' half the truth. Not that
you ain't popular with me, James. You are. I think the world of you.
How can I help it when you remind me all the time of my aunt's pet
parrot in yore face and language. Except you ain't the right colour.
If yore whiskers had only grown out green."
"We're forgetting what we was talkin' about," tucked in Jimmie the
cook, smiling sweetly. "The lady, Racey. Who is she?"
"James," said Racey, his smile matching that of the cook, "they's
something about you to-day, something I don't like. I dunno the name
for it exactly. But if you'll step inside the bunkhouse a minute, I'll
show you what I mean. I'll show you in two shakes."
Jimmie shook a wise head and backed out into the open. "Not while I
got my health. You come out here and show me."
"Oh, I ain't gonna play any tricks on you," protested Racey Dawson.
"You bet you ain't," Jimmie concurred, warmly. "Not by severial
jugfuls. I--" He broke off, cocking a listening ear.
"Yeah," grinned Racey, "you hear a noise in the cook-shack, huh? I
_thought_ I saw the Kid slide past in the lookin'-glass while you were
standing in the doorway."
"And you never told me!" squalled Jimmie, speeding toward his beloved
place of business.
He reached it rather late. When he entered by the doorway the Kid, a
pie in each hand, was disappearing through a back window.
"Did you ever get left!" tossed back the Kid as the flung frying-pan
buzzed past his ear.--"Now see what you done," he continued, skipping
safely out of range; "dented yore nice new frypan all up. You
oughtn'ta done that, Jimmie. Fry-pans cost money. Some day, if you
ain't careful, you'll break something, you and yore temper."
"Them's the Old Man's pies," declared Jimmie, leaning over the
window-sill and shaking an indignant fist at the Kid. "You bring 'em
back, you hear?"
"They ain't, and I won't, and I do," was the brisk answer. "Yo're
making a big mistake, Jimmie boy, if you think they're _his_ pies.
Don't you s'pose I know he's gone to Piegan City, and he won't be back
for a coupla weeks? And don't you s'pose I know them pies would be too
stale for him to eat by the time he got back? You must take me for a
fool, Jimmie. And you lied to me, Jimmie, you lied. Just for that I'll
keep these pies, I'll keep 'em and eat 'em no matter how big a pain
I get, and let this be a lesson to you. Hey, Racey, Jimmie gimme a
coupla pies! C'mon out and we'll eat 'em where Jimmie can watch us."
"If I catch you--" began the angry Jimmie.
"But you ain't gonna catch me," tantalized the Kid. "C'mon, Racey,
hurry up."
Racey came slowly and with dignity.
The Kid stared. "Well, I bedam! Where are you goin'?"
"Ride, just a li'l ride," was the vague reply.
"Is that all? I thought it was a funeral or a wedding or something,
an' I was wonderin'. Just a li'l ride, huh? And where might you be
a-going to ride to, if I may make so bold as to ask?"
"You can ask, of course," replied Racey, shrugging his wide shoulders
and spreading his hands after the fashion of Telescope Laguerre.
"But that ain't sayin' he'll tell you," put in Jimmie. "Bet you he's
gonna go see that new hasher of Bill Lainey's."
"No," denied the Kid, judicially, "not that lady. Even Racey's arms
ain't long enough to reach round her. I--_Say_, one of these pies is a
_raisin_ pie!"
"You can gimme that one," suggested Racey Dawson, glad of an
opportunity to change the subject.
The Kid, his teeth sunk in the raisin pie, shook a decisive head and
mumbled unintelligibly. He thrust the other pie toward his friend.
Racey Dawson rode away westward munching pie. And it was a very good
pie, and would have brought credit to any cook. He regretfully ate the
last crumb, and rolled a cigarette. He felt fairly full and at utter
peace with the world. Why not? Wasn't it a good old world, and a
mighty friendly world despite the Harpes and Tweezys and Joneses that
infested it? I should say so.
Racey Dawson inhaled luxuriously, pushed back his wide hat, and let
the breeze ruffle his brown hair. He rubbed the back of one hand
across his straight eyebrows, and stared across the range toward
the distant hills that marked his goal. Which goal was the old C Y
ranch-house at Moccasin Spring on Soogan Creek, where lived the Dales
and their daughter Molly.
And as he looked at the hill and bethought him of what lay beyond it,
he drew a Winchester from the scabbard under his left leg and made
sure that he had not forgotten to load it. For Racey laboured under no
delusion as to the danger that menaced not only his own existence but
that of his friend Swing. He knew that their lives hung by a thread,
and a thin thread at that. They were but two against many, and
their position had not been aided by the string of uneventful days
succeeding their advent at the Bar S. For their enemies were taking
their time in the launching of their enterprise. And Racey had not
expected this. It threw him off his balance somewhat. Certainly it
worried him.
It was not humanly possible that Jack Harpe could be aware that Old
Man Saltoun did not believe what Racey had told him. But he was acting
as if he knew. Perhaps he was waiting till Nebraska Jones should be
entirely well of his wound. That was possible, but not probable. Jack
Harpe had not impressed Racey as a man who would allow his plans to
be indefinitely held up for such a cause. There was no telling
when Nebraska would be up and about. His recovery, thanks to past
dissipations, had been exceedingly slow.
Again, perhaps the delay might be merely a detail of the plan Fat
Jakey Pooley mentioned in his letter to Luke Tweezy, or it might be
due to the more-than-watchful care the Dales and Morgans were taking
of old Mr. Dale. Wherever the old gentleman went, some one of his
relations went with him. Certainly no ill-wisher had been able to
approach Mr. Dale (since his spree at McFluke's) at any time. Mr.
Dale, to all intents and purposes, was impossible to isolate.
At any rate, whatever the reason, the fact remained that Harpe had not
moved and showed no signs of moving. Mr. Saltoun, every time he met
Racey, took special pains to ask his puncher how much twice six times
two hundred was. Then Mr. Saltoun, without waiting for an answer,
would walk off slapping his leg and cackling with laughter. Even Tom
London was beginning to take the view that perhaps his father-in-law
was in the right, after all.
"You been here near two months now, Racey," he had said that very
morning, "and they ain't anything happened yet."
"I've got four months to go," Racey had replied with a placidity he
did not feel.
Now as he rode, his eyes closely scanning the various places in the
landscape providing good cover for possible bushwhackers, he recalled
what Loudon had said.
"I'll show him all the happenstances he wants to see before I'm
through," he said, aloud. "Something's gonna happen. Something's got
to happen. Jack Harpe won't let this slide. Not by a jugful."
The words were confident enough, but they were words that he had been
in the habit of repeating to himself nearly every day for some time.
Perhaps they had lost some of their force. Perhaps--
"Twelve hundred dollars," mused Racey. "And the same for Swing. Six
months' work for--Hell, it can't turn out different! I know it can't.
We'll show 'em all yet, won't we, Cuter old settler?"
Cuter old settler waggled his ears. He was a companionable horse,
never kicked human beings, and bucked but seldom.
"Yep," continued Racey, sitting back against the cantle, "she's a long
creek that don't bend some'ers or other."
And then the creek that was his flow of thought shot round a bend into
the broad and sparkling reaches of a much pleasanter subject than the
one that had to do with Harpes and Tweezys and Joneses. After a time
he came to where the pleasanter subject, on her knees, was
weeding among the flowers that grew tidily round Moccasin Spring.
Baby-blue-eyes, low and lovely, cuddled down between tall columbines
and orange wall-flowers. Side by side with the pink geranium of
old-fashioned gardens the wild geranium nodded its lavender blooms in
perfect harmony.
The subject, black-haired Molly Dale, rested the point of her
hand-fork between two rows of ragged sailors and Johnny-jump-ups and
lifted a pair of the clearest, softest blue eyes in the world in
greeting to Racey Dawson.
"This is a fine time for you to be traipsing in," she told him, with
a smile that revealed a deep dimple in each cheek. "I thought you
promised to help me weed my garden to-day."
"I did," he returned, humbly, dismounting and sliding the reins over
Cuter's neck and head, "but you know how it is Sunday mornin's, Molly.
There's a lot to do round the ranch sometimes. Now, this mornin'--"
"I'll bet," she interrupted, smoothing out the smile and frowning as
severely as she was able. "I'd just tell a man that, I would. I would,
indeed. I'm sure it must have taken you at least half-an-hour to shine
those boots. Half-an-hour! More likely an hour. Why, I can see my face
in them."
"And a very pretty face, too," said Racey, rising to the occasion. "If
I owned that face I'd never stop looking at it myself. I mean--" He
floundered, aghast at his own temerity.
But the lady smiled. "That'll do," she cautioned him. "Don't try to
flirt with me. I won't have it."
"I ain't--" he began, and stopped.
Molly Dale continued to look at him inquiringly. But as he gave no
evidence of completing the sentence, she lowered her gaze and resumed
her weeding. Racey thought to have glimpsed a disappointed look in her
eyes as she dropped her chin, but he could not be certain. Probably he
had been mistaken. Why should she be disappointed? Why, indeed?
"Start in on that bed, Racey," she directed, nodding her head toward
the columbines and wall-flowers. "There's some of that miserable
pusley inching in on the baby-blue-eyes and they're such tiny things
it doesn't take much to kill them. And Lord knows I had a hard enough
job persuading 'em to grow in the first place."
"Wild things never cotton to living inside a fence," he told her.
"They're like Injuns thataway--put 'em in a house and they don't do so
well."
"Shucks, look at the Rainbow."
"Half-breed. There's the difference, and besides the Rainbow ain't
lived in a house since she left the convent. She lives in a tepee same
as her uncle and aunties."
"I don't care," defended Molly, straightening on her knees to survey
her garden. "Every single plant in my garden except the pink geraniums
is wild. Look at those thimble-berry bushes round the spring, and the
blue camass along the brook, and the squaw bushes round the house,
and the squaw grass and pussy paws back of the clothes-lines. Some I
transplanted, the rest I grew from seeds. And where will you find a
better-looking garden?"
Racey sagged back on his heels and stared critically about him.
"Yeah," he drawled, nodding a slow head, "they do look pretty good.
Got to give you lots of credit. But those squaw bushes now--" He broke
off, grinning.
"Oh, of course, you provoking thing!" cried she, irately. "Might know
you'd pick on those squaw bushes. It is a mite too shady for 'em
where they are, but still they're doing pretty well, considering. I'm
satisfied--What's that?"
"That" was a horseman appearing suddenly among the cottonwoods that
belted with a scattering grove the garden and the spring. The horseman
was Lanpher, manager of the 88 ranch. He was followed by another
rider, a lean, swarthy individual with a smooth-shaven, saturnine
face. Racey knew the latter by sight and reputation. The man was one
Skeel and rejoiced in the nick-name of "Alicran." The furtive scorpion
whose sting is death is not indigenous to the territory, but Mr.
Skeel had gained the appellation in New Mexico, a region where the
tail-bearing insect may be found, and when the man left the Border for
the Border's good the name left with him.
"Oh, lookout! The bushes! The bushes! Don't trample my
thimble-berries!"
But Lanpher, heeding not at all Molly's cries of warning, spurred his
sweating horse through the thimble-berry growth, breaking down three
shrubs, and splashed cat-a-corneredly across the spring, the brook,
and several rows of flowers.
The garden looked as if a miniature cyclone had passed that way.
Midway across the garden Lanpher's horse halted--halted because a
flying figure in chaps had appeared from nowhere and seized it by the
rein. But the horse did more than halt. In obedience to a powerful
jerk administered by the man in chaps the horse pivoted on its
forelegs and slid its rider out of the saddle and deposited him
a-sprawl and face downward among the flowers.
Lanpher arose, snarling, to face a levelled sixshooter. It did not
signify that Racey had not drawn the weapon. He was perfectly capable
of shooting through the bottom of his holster and Lanpher knew it. And
Racey knew that he knew it.
"Get out of this garden!" ordered Racey. "Take yore friend with you,"
he added, tossing the horse's bridle to Lanpher. "And if I were you
I'd walk a heap careful between the rows. I just wouldn't go a-busting
any more of these posies."
Lanpher went. He went carefully. He was followed quite as carefully by
Racey Dawson.
When Lanpher was free of the neat rows he looked up venomously into
the face of Alicran Skeel who had meticulously ridden round the
garden.
"I was wondering where you was," Lanpher remarked with deep meaning.
"I ain't rooting up nobody's gyarden," Alicran returned, cheerfully.
"And don't wonder too hard. Might strain yore intellect or something.
I'll always be where I aim to be--always. You done scratched yore
face, Lanpher."
Lanpher turned from Alicran Skeel and spat upon the ground.
"Alicran," said Racey, holding his alert attitude, "the first false
move you make Lanpher gets it."
"I ain't makin' a move," said Alicran, thumbs hooked in the armholes
of his vest. "I got plenty to do minding my own business."
"Huh?" Thus the sceptical Racey, who did not trust Mr. Skeel as far as
he could throw a horse by the tail.
"Shucks," said Alicran, out of deference to the lady, "you don't
believe me."
"Shore I do," asserted Racey, "Shore, you bet you. I--_Careful,
Lanpher_! I can talk to somebody else and watch you at the same time!"
"If Alicran was worth a--" began Lanpher, furiously, and stopped.
"You was gonna say--what?" queried Alicran, softly.
"Nothing," said Lanpher, sulkily. "Put yore gun away," he continued to
Racey. "I ain't gonna hurt you."
"Now that's what I call downright generous of you, Lanpher," Racey
declared, warmly. "I'd shore hate to be hurt. I shore would. But if
it's alla same to you, I'll keep my gun right where she is--if it's
alla same to you."
"That'll do, Racey. Stop this rowing. I won't have it." It was Molly
Dale pushing past Racey and standing with arms akimbo directly
in front of his gun-muzzle. Racey let his gun and holster fall
up-and-down, but he did not remove his hand from the gunbutt.
"Who do you want here?" Molly inquired of Lanpher.
Lanpher's rat-like features cracked into an ugly smile. "Is yore paw
home?" he asked.
"Father's gone to Marysville."
"When'll he be back?"
"Day after to-morrow, I guess."
"Yeah, I kind of guess he'd want to spend the night so's he could do
business in the morning, huh?" The Lanpher smile grew even uglier.
"He has some business to attend to in the morning, yes."
"I kind of thought he would. Yeah. You don't happen to know the nature
of his business, do you?"
"His business is none of yours, and I'll thank you to pick up your
feet and clear out, the pair of you."
"Not so fast." Lanpher spread deprecatory hands, and his smile became
suddenly crooked. "I just come down to do yore paw a favour."
"A favour? You?" Blank unbelief was patent in Molly's tone and
expression.
"A favour. Me. You see, yore paw's got a mortgage coming due on the
tenth, and the reason yore paw went to Marysville was so he could be
there bright and early to-morrow morning at the bank to renew the
mortgage. Ain't I right?"
"You might be." Molly's face was now a mask of indifference, but there
was no indifference in her heart. There was cold fear.
Racey's expression was likewise indifferent. But there was no fear in
his heart. There was anger, cold anger. For he had sensed what was
coming. He knew that the previous winter had been a hard one on the
Dale fortunes. They had lost most of their little bunch of cattle in a
blizzard, and the roof of their stable had collapsed, killing two team
horses and a riding pony. Racey had conjectured that Mr. Dale would
have been forced to borrow on mortgage to make a fresh start in the
spring. And at that time in the territory the legal rate was 12 per
cent. Stiff? To be sure. But the security in those days was never
gilt-edged--cattle were prone to die at inconvenient moments, and land
was not worth what it was east of the Mississippi.
"We'll take it I'm right," pursued Lanpher, lapping his tongue round
the words as though they possessed taste and that taste pleasant. "And
being that I'm right I'll say yore paw could 'a' saved himself the
ride to Marysville by stayin' to home."
Oh, Lanpher was the sort of man who, as a boy, was accustomed to
thoroughly enjoy the pastime of pulling wings from living flies and
drowning a helpless kitten by inches.
Now he nodded his head and grinned anew, and put up a satisfied
hand and rubbed his stubbly chin. Racey yearned to kick him. It was
shameful that Molly should be compelled to bandy words with this
reptile. Racey stepped forward determinedly, and slid past Molly.
Promptly she caught him by the sleeve. "Don't mix in, Racey," she
commanded with set face. "It's all right. It's all right, I tell you."
"'Course it's all right," Lanpher hastened to say, more than a hint of
worriment in his little black eyes. One could never be sure of these
Bar S boys. They were uncertain propositions, every measly one of
them. "Shore it's all right," went on the 88 manager. "I ain't meaning
no harm. Yo're taking a lot for granted, Racey, a whole lot for
granted."
"Nemmine what I'm taking for granted," flung back Racey. "I get along
with taking only what's mine, anyway."
Which was equivalent to saying that Lanpher was a thief. But Lanpher
overlooked the poorly veiled insult, and switched his gaze to Molly
Dale.
"I just rid over to say," he told her, "that if yore paw is still set
on renewing the mortgage when he comes back from Marysville he'll have
to see me and Luke Tweezy at the 88. We done bought that mortgage from
the bank."
Molly Dale said nothing. Racey felt that if he held his tongue another
second he would incontinently burst. He sidestepped past the girl.
"You've said yore li'l piece," he told Lanpher, "and for a feller who
was bellyaching so loud about keeping out of this deal it strikes me
yo're a-getting in good and deep--buying up mortgages and all. Dunno
what I mean, huh? Yep, you do. Shore you do. Think back. Think way
back, and it'll come to you. Jack Harpe. You know him. Bossy-looking
jigger, seemed like. Has he been a-bearing down on you lately,
Lanpher? Mustn't let him run you thataway. Bad business. Might be
expensive. You can't tell. You be careful, Lanpher. You go slow--a
mite slow. Yep. Well, don't lemme keep you. This way out."
He flicked a thumb westward, and stared at Lanpher with bright eyes.
Lanpher's eyes dropped, lifted, then veered toward Alicran Skeel, that
appreciative observer, who continued to sit his horse as good as gold
and silent as a clam.
Lanpher turned to his horse without another word, slid the reins over
the animal's neck and crossed them slackly. He stuck toe in stirrup
and swung up. He looked down at Molly where she stood dumbly, her
troubled eyes gazing at nothing and the fingers of one hand slowly
plaiting and unplaiting a corner of her apron. Lanpher opened his
mouth as if to speak, but no words issued. For Racey had coughed a
peremptory cough.
Lanpher turned his horse's head toward the creek.
"Lookit here, Alicran," the peevish Lanpher burst forth when he and
his henchman had forded the creek and were riding westward, "whatsa
matter with you, anyway?"
"With me?" Alicran tilted a questioning bead. "I dunno. I don't feel a
mite sick."
"What do you think I hired you for?" Heatedly.
"Gawd he knows." Business of rolling a cigarette.
"Yo're supposed to be a two-legged man with a gun."
"Yeah?" Indifferently.
"Yeah, but I got my doubts--now. Hell's bells! Wasn't you off to one
side there when Racey pulled? Wasn't you?"
"Wasn't you listenin' to what Racey said at the time? Wasn't you?"
"After! I mean after! His gun was back hugging his leg after the girl
slid in between. What more of a chance didja want?"
"So that's it, huh?"
"That's--it." Between the two words was a perceptible pause.
"I ain't shootin' nobody in the back. I never have yet, and I ain't
beginnin' now, not for you or any other damn man."
"Say--" began Lanpher, threateningly.
Alicran Skeel turned a grim face on his employer so suddenly and
sharply that Lanpher almost dodged.
"Lookit here, Lanpher," said he, quietly, "don't you try to start
nothin' that I'll have to finish. I know you from way back, you
lizard, and outside of my regular work I ain't taking no orders from
you. Don't gimme any more of yore lip."
"Aw, I didn't mean nothing, Alicran. You ain't got any call to get
het. I need you in the business."
"Shore you do," Alicran declared, contemptuously. "You need me to do
anything you ain't got the nerve to do."
"I got my duty to my company," Lanpher bluffed lamely.
"Duty bedam. You ain't got the guts for a tough job, that's whatsa
matter."
This was rubbing it in. Lanpher plucked at the loose strings of his
courage, and managed to draw out a faintly responsive twang. "I'll
show you whether I got guts--" he began.
"Oh, look," said Alicran. "See that wild currant bush."
To Lanpher it seemed that the sixshooter was barely out of the holster
before it was back again. But there was a swirl of smoke adrift in the
windless air and the topmost branch of a wild currant bush thirty feet
distant had been that instant cut in two.
"What was that you was gonna say?" Alicran prompted, softly.
"I forget," evaded Lanpher. "But they's one thing you wanna remember,
Alicran. It don't pay to be squeamish. It comes high in the end
usually. You'll find, if you keep on being mushy thisaway, that you'll
have more'n you can swing at the finish."
"Is that so? You leave me do things my own way, you hear? Lemme tell
you if I'd 'a' knowed all what you was up to by coming to Dale's this
mornin' I'd never have allowed it."
"Allowed it!"
"Yes, allowed it, I said. Want me to spell it for you? You
thumb-handed idjit, if you had any more sense you'd be a damfool.
Don't you know that in anything you do, no matter what, they's no
profit in unnecessary trimmings? Most always it's the extra frills on
a feller's work that pushes the bridge over and lands him underneath
with everything on top of him and the job to do again, if he's lucky
enough to be livin' at the finish. And yore swashing through that
girl's gyarden was a heap unnecessary. It was a close squeak you
wasn't drilled by Racey Dawson. I wouldn't have blamed him if he had
let a little light in on yore darkened soul. Done it myself in his
place. And yore rubbing in that mortgage deal was another unnecessary
piece o' damfoolishness. It only made Racey have it in for you more'n
ever. And after acting like more kinds of a fool thataway in less time
than anybody I ever see before, you sit up on yore hunkers and tell
_me_ I'll have more'n I can swing at the finish. Say, you make me
laugh! Listen, Lanpher, for a feller that's come out second best with
the Bar S outfit as many times as you have it looks to me like you was
crowdin' Providence a heap close."
"That's all right," sulked Lanpher, then added, with a sudden flare of
spite: "When I hired you as foreman I shore never expected to draw a
skypilot full o' sermons into the bargain."
"No?" drawled Alicran, looking hard at Lanpher. "I often wonder just
what you did hire me for."
On which Lanpher made no comment.
"Yeah," resumed Alicran, the fish having failed to bite, "I often
wonder about that. Was it a foreman you wanted or a--gunman? And what
did Racey mean about Jack Harpe a-bearing down on you so hard, huh?"
"Nothing, nothing, nothing a-tall," Lanpher replied, irritably.
"If Racey didn't mean nothing by it, what did yore eyes flip for and
why didja shuffle yore feet?"
"Whatell business is it of yores?" burst out the goaded manager.
"None," Alicran replied, calmly. "I was just wondering. I got a
curiosity to know why, thassall."
"Then hogtie yore curiosity--or you'll be gettin' yore time. I'm free
to admit I need you, like I said before, but I can do without you if I
gotta."
"That's just where yo're dead wrong," Alicran promptly contradicted.
"You can't do without me. Lanpher, I like the job of bein' yore
foreman. I like it so well that if you was to fire me I dunno what I
wouldn't do. You know, Lanpher, a man is a whole lot bigger target
than the branch of a wild currant bush."
Frankly speculative, the eyes of Alicran travelled up and down the
spare frame of the 88 manager. Which gave Lanpher furiously to think,
as it were.
"Why," said he, forcing a smile, "I guess we understand each other,
Alicran."
"Shore we do," said Alicran, cheerfully. "And don't you forget it."