"Don't know. He changed monikers when he took to the road."
"What was he to you?"
"A man I'm going to find."
"No matter where the trail takes you?"
"No matter where."
At this Lefty was seized with unaccountable laughter. He literally
strained his lungs with that Homeric outburst. When he wiped the tears
from his eyes, at length, the shadow on the opposite side of the doorway
had disappeared. He found his companion leaning over him, and this time
he could catch the dull glint of starlight on both hair and eyes.
"What d'you know?" asked Donnegan.
"How do you stand toward this bird with the birthmark and the red hair?"
queried Lefty with caution.
"What d'you know?" insisted Donnegan.
All at once passion shook him; he fastened his grip in the shoulder of
the larger man, and his fingertips worked toward the bone.
"What do you know?" he repeated for the third time, and now there was no
hint of laughter in the hard voice of Lefty.
"You fool, if you follow that trail you'll go to the devil. It was
Rusty Dick; and he's dead!"
His triumphant laughter came again, but Donnegan cut into it.
"Rusty Dick was the one you--killed!"
"Sure. What of it? We fought fair and square."
"Then Rusty wasn't the man I want. The man I want would of eaten two
like you, Lefty."
"What about the birthmark? It sure was on his shoulder; Donnegan."
"Heavens!" whispered Donnegan.
"What's the matter?"
"Rusty Dick," gasped Donnegan. "Yes, it must have been he."
"Sure it was. What did you have against him?"
"It was a matter of blood--between us," stammered Donnegan.
His voice rose in a peculiar manner, so that Lefty shrank involuntarily.
"You killed Rusty?"
"Ask any of the boys. But between you and me, it was the booze that
licked Rusty Dick. I just finished up the job and surprised everybody."
The train was out of the mountains and in a country of scattering hills,
but here it struck a steep grade and settled down to a grind of slow
labor; the rails hummed, and suspense filled the freight car.
"Hey," cried Lefty suddenly. "You fool, you'll do a flop out the door in
about a minute!"
He even reached out to steady the toppling figure, but Donnegan pitched
straight out into the night. Lefty craned his neck from the door,
studying the roadbed, but at that moment the locomotive topped the
little rise and the whole train lurched forward.
"After all," murmured Lefty Joe, "it sounds like Donnegan. Hated a guy
so bad that he hadn't any use for livin' when he heard the other guy was
dead. But I'm never goin' to cross his path again, I hope."
5
But Donnegan had leaped clear of the roadbed, and he struck almost to
the knees in a drift of sand. Otherwise, he might well have broken his
legs with that foolhardy chance. As it was, the fall whirled him over
and over, and by the time he had picked himself up the lighted caboose
of the train was rocking past him. Donnegan watched it grow small in the
distance, and then, when it was only a red, uncertain star far down the
track, he turned to the vast country around him.
The mountains were to his right, not far away, but caught up behind the
shadows so that it seemed a great distance. Like all huge, half-seen
things they seemed in motion toward him. For the rest, he was in bare,
rolling country. The sky line everywhere was clean; there was hardly a
sign of a tree. He knew, by a little reflection, that this must be
cattle country, for the brakie had intimated as much in their talk just
before dusk. Now it was early night, and a wind began to rise, blowing
down the valley with a keen motion and a rapidly lessening temperature,
so that Donnegan saw he must get to a shelter. He could, if necessary,
endure any privation, but his tastes were for luxurious comfort.
Accordingly he considered the landscape with gloomy disapproval. He was
almost inclined to regret his plunge from the lumbering freight train.
Two things had governed him in making that move. First, when he
discovered that the long trail he followed was definitely fruitless, he
was filled with a great desire to cut himself away from his past and
make a new start. Secondly, when he learned that Rusty Dick had been
killed by Joe, he wanted desperately to get the throttle of the latter
under his thumb. If ever a man risked his life to avoid a sin, it was
Donnegan jumping from the train to keep from murder.
He stooped to sight along the ground, for this is the best way at night
and often horizon lights are revealed in this manner. But now Donnegan
saw nothing to serve as a guide. He therefore drew in his belt until it
fitted snug about his gaunt waist, settled his cap firmly, and headed
straight into the wind.
Nothing could have shown his character more distinctly.
When in doubt, head into the wind.
With a jaunty, swinging step he sauntered along, and this time, at
least, his tactics found an early reward. Topping the first large rise
of ground, he saw in the hollow beneath him the outline of a large
building. And as he approached it, the wind clearing a high blowing mist
from the stars, he saw a jumble of outlying houses. Sheds, barns,
corrals--it was the nucleus of a big ranch. It is a maxim that, if you
wish to know a man look at his library and if you wish to know a
rancher, look at his barn. Donnegan made a small detour to the left and
headed for the largest of the barns.
He entered it by the big, sliding door, which stood open; he looked up,
and saw the stars shining through a gap in the roof. And then he stood
quietly for a time, listening to the voices of the wind in the ruin.
Oddly enough, it was pleasant to Donnegan. His own troubles and sorrow
had poured upon him so thickly in the past hour or so that it was
soothing to find evidence of the distress of others. But perhaps this
meant that the entire establishment was deserted.
He left the barn and went toward the house. Not until he was close under
its wall did he come to appreciate its size. It was one of those great,
rambling, two-storied structures which the cattle kings of the past
generation were fond of building. Standing close to it, he heard none of
the intimate sounds of the storm blowing through cracks and broken
walls; no matter into what disrepair the barns had fallen, the house was
still solid; only about the edges of the building the storm kept
murmuring.
Yet there was not a light, neither above nor below. He came to the front
of the house. Still no sign of life. He stood at the door and knocked
loudly upon it, and though, when he tried the knob, he found that the
door was latched, yet no one came in response. He knocked again, and
putting his ear close he heard the echoes walk through the interior of
the building.
After this, the wind rose in sudden strength and deafened him with
rattlings; above him, a shutter was swung open and then crashed to, so
that the opening of the door was a shock of surprise to Donnegan. A dim
light from a source which he could not direct suffused the interior of
the hall; the door itself was worked open a matter of inches and
Donnegan was aware of two keen old eyes glittering out at him. Beyond
this he could distinguish nothing.
"Who are you?" asked a woman's voice. "And what do you want?"
"I'm a stranger, and I want something to eat and a place to sleep. This
house looks as if it might have spare rooms."
"Where d'you come from?"
"Yonder," said Donnegan, with a sufficiently noncommittal gesture.
"What's your name?"
"Donnegan."
"I don't know you. Be off with you, Mr. Donnegan!"
He inserted his foot in the closing crack of the door.
"Tell me where I'm to go?" he persisted.
At this her voice rose in pitch, with squeaky rage.
"I'll raise the house on you!"
"Raise 'em. Call down the man of the house. I can talk to him better
than I can to you; but I won't walk off like this. If you can feed me,
I'll pay you for what I eat."
A shrill cackling--he could not make out the words. And since patience
was not the first of Donnegan's virtues, he seized on the knob of the
door and deliberately pressed it wide. Standing in the hall, now, and
closing the door slowly behind him, he saw a woman with old, keen eyes
shrinking away toward the staircase. She was evidently in great fear,
but there was something infinitely malicious in the manner in which she
kept working her lips soundlessly. She was shrinking, and half turned
away, yet there was a suggestion that in an instant she might whirl and
fly at his face. The door now clicked, and with the windstorm shut away
Donnegan had a queer feeling of being trapped.
"Now call the man of the house," he repeated. "See if I can't come to
terms with him."
"He'd make short work of you if he came," she replied. She broke into a
shrill laughter, and Donnegan thought he had never seen a face so ugly.
"If he came," she said, "you'd rue the day."
"Well, I'll talk to you, then. I'm not asking charity. I want to pay for
what I get."
"This ain't a hotel. You go on down the road. Inside eight miles you'll
come to the town."
"Eight miles!"
"That's nothing for a man to ride."
"Not at all, if I had something to ride."
"You ain't got a horse?"
"No."
"Then how do you come here?"
"I walked."
If this sharpened her suspicions, it sharpened her fear also. She put
one foot on the lowest step of the stairs.
"Be off with you, Mr. Donnegally, or whatever your outlandish name is.
You'll get nothing here. What brings you--"
A door closed and a footstep sounded lightly on the floor above. And
Donnegan, already alert in the strange atmosphere of this house, gave
back a pace so as to get an honest wall behind him. He noted that the
step was quick and small, and preparing himself to meet a wisp of
manhood--which, for that matter, was the type he was most inclined to
fear--Donnegan kept a corner glance upon the old woman at the foot of
the stairs and steadily surveyed the shadows at the head of the rise.
Out of that darkness a foot slipped; not even a boy's foot--a very
child's. The shock of it made Donnegan relax his caution for an instant,
and in that instant she came into the reach of the light. It was a
wretched light at best, for it came from a lamp with smoky chimney
which the old hag carried, and at the raising and lowering of her hand
the flame jumped and died in the throat of the chimney and set the hall
awash with shadows. Falling away to a point of yellow, the lamp allowed
the hall to assume a certain indefinite dignity of height and breadth
and calm proportions; but when the flame rose Donnegan could see the
broken balusters of the balustrade, the carpet, faded past any design
and worn to rattiness, wall paper which had rotted or dried away and
hung in crisp tatters here and there, and on the ceiling an irregular
patch from which the plaster had fallen and exposed the lathwork. But at
the coming of the girl the old woman had turned, and as she did the
flame tossed up in the lamp and Donnegan could see the newcomer
distinctly.
Once before his heart had risen as it rose now. It had been the fag end
of a long party, and Donnegan, rousing from a drunken sleep, staggered
to the window. Leaning there to get the freshness of the night air
against his hot face, he had looked up, and saw the white face of the
moon going up the sky; and a sudden sense of the blackness and loathing
against the city had come upon Donnegan, and the murky color of his own
life; and when he turned away from the window he was sober. And so it
was that he now stared up at the girl. At her breast she held a cloak
together with one hand and the other hand touched the railing of the
stairs. He saw one foot suspended for the next step, as though the sight
of him kept her back in fear. To the miserable soul of Donnegan she
seemed all that was lovely, young, and pure; and her hair, old gold in
the shadow and pale gold where the lamp struck it, was to Donnegan like
a miraculous light about her face.
Indeed, that little pause was a great and awful moment. For considering
that Donnegan, who had gone through his whole life with his eyes ready
either to mock or hate, and who had rarely used his hand except to make
a fist of it; Donnegan who had never, so far as is known, had a
companion; who had asked the world for action, not kindness; this
Donnegan now stood straight with his back against the wall, and poured
out the story of his wayward life to a mere slip of a girl.
6
Even the old woman, whose eyes were sharpened by her habit of looking
constantly for the weaknesses and vices of men, could not guess what was
going on behind the thin, rather ugly face of Donnegan; the girl,
perhaps, may have seen more. For she caught the glitter of his active
eyes even at that distance. The hag began to explain with vicious
gestures that set the light flaring up and down.
"He ain't come from nowhere, Lou," she said. "He ain't going nowhere; he
wants to stay here for the night."
The foot which had been suspended to take the next step was now
withdrawn. Donnegan, remembered at last, whipped off his cap, and at
once the light flared and burned upon his hair. It was a wonderful red;
it shone, and it had a terrible blood tinge so that his face seemed pale
beneath it. There were three things that made up the peculiar dominance
of Donnegan's countenance. The three things were the hair, the uneasy,
bright eyes, and the rather thin, compressed lips. When Donnegan slept
he seemed about to waken from a vigorous dream; when he sat down he
seemed about to leap to his feet; and when he was standing he gave that
impression of a poise which is ready for anything. It was no wonder that
the girl, seeing that face and that alert, aggressive body, shrank a
little on the stairs. Donnegan, that instant, knew that these two women
were really alone in the house as far as fighting men were concerned.
And the fact disturbed him more than a leveled gun would have done. He
went to the foot of the stairs, even past the old woman, and, raising
his head, he spoke to the girl.
"My name's Donnegan. I came over from the railroad--walked. I don't want
to walk that other eight miles unless there's a real need for it. I--"
Why did he pause? "I'll pay for anything I get here."
His voice was not too certain; behind his teeth there was knocking a
desire to cry out to her the truth. "I am Donnegan. Donnegan the tramp.
Donnegan the shiftless. Donnegan the fighter. Donnegan the killer.
Donnegan the penniless, worthless. But for heaven's sake let me stay
until morning and let me look at you--from a distance!"
But, after all, perhaps he did not need to say all these things. His
clothes were rags, upon his face there was a stubble of unshaven red,
which made the pallor about his eyes more pronounced. If the girl had
been half blind she must have felt that here was a man of fire. He saw
her gather the wrap a little closer about her shoulders, and that sign
of fear made him sick at heart.
"Mr. Donnegan," said the girl. "I am sorry. We cannot take you into the
house. Eight miles--"
Did she expect to turn a sinner from the gates of heaven with a mere
phrase? He cast out his hand, and she winced as though he had shaken his
fist at her.
"Are you afraid?" cried Donnegan.
"I don't control the house."
He paused, not that her reply had baffled him, but the mere pleasure of
hearing her speak accounted for it. It was one of those low, light
voices which are apt to have very little range or volume, and which
break and tremble absurdly under any stress of emotion; and often they
become shrill in a higher register; but inside conversational limits, if
such a term may be used, there is no fiber so delightful, so purely
musical. Suppose the word "velvet" applied to a sound. That voice came
soothingly and delightfully upon the ear of Donnegan, from which the
roar and rattle of the empty freight train had not quite departed. He
smiled at her.
"But," he protested, "this is west of the Rockies--and I don't see any
other way out."
The girl, all this time, was studying him intently, a little sadly, he
thought. Now she shook her head, but there was more warmth in her voice.
"I'm sorry. I can't ask you to stay without first consulting my father."
"Go ahead. Ask him."
She raised her hand a little; the thought seemed to bring her to the
verge of trembling, as though he were asking a sacrilege.
"Why not?" he urged.
She did not answer, but, instead, her eyes sought the old, woman, as if
to gain her interposition; she burst instantly into speech.
"Which there's no good talking any more," declared the ancient vixen.
"Are you wanting to make trouble for her with the colonel? Be off, young
man. It ain't the first time I've told you you'd get nowhere in this
house!"
There was no possible answer left to Donnegan, and he did as usual the
surprising thing. He broke into laughter of such clear and ringing
tone--such infectious laughter--that the old woman blinked in the midst
of her wrath as though she were seeing a new man, and he saw the lips of
the girl parted in wonder.
"My father is an invalid," said the girl. "And he lives by strict rules.
I could not break in on him at this time of the evening."
"If that's all"--Donnegan actually began to mount the steps--"I'll go in
and talk to your father myself."
She had retired one pace as he began advancing, but as the import of
what he said became clear to her she was rooted to one position by
astonishment.
"Colonel Macon--my father--" she began. Then: "Do you really wish to see
him?"
The hushed voice made Donnegan smile--it was such a voice as one boy
uses when he asks the other if he really dares enter the pasture of the
red bull. He chuckled again, and this time she smiled, and her eyes were
widened, partly by fear of his purpose and partly from his nearness.
They seemed to be suddenly closer together. As though they were on one
side against a common enemy, and that enemy was her father. The old
woman was cackling sharply from the bottom of the stairs, and then
bobbing in pursuit and calling on Donnegan to come back. At length the
girl raised her hand and silenced her with a gesture.
Donnegan was now hardly a pace away; and he saw that she lived up to all
the promise of that first glance. Yet still she seemed unreal. There is
a quality of the unearthly about a girl's beauty; it is, after all, only
a gay moment between the formlessness of childhood and the hardness of
middle age. This girl was pale, Donnegan saw, and yet she had color. She
had the luster, say, of a white rose, and the same bloom. Lou, the old
woman had called her, and Macon was her father's name. Lou Macon--the
name fitted her, Donnegan thought. For that matter, if her name had been
Sally Smith, Donnegan would probably have thought it beautiful. The
keener a man's mind is and the more he knows about men and women and the
ways of the world, the more apt he is to be intoxicated by a touch of
grace and thoughtfulness; and all these age-long seconds the perfume of
girlhood had been striking up to Donnegan's brain.
She brushed her timidity away and with the same gesture accepted
Donnegan as something more than a dangerous vagrant. She took the lamp
from the hands of the crone and sent her about her business,
disregarding the mutterings and the warnings which trailed behind the
departing form. Now she faced Donnegan, screening the light from her
eyes with a cupped hand and by the same device focusing it upon the face
of Donnegan. He mutely noted the small maneuver and gave her credit; but
for the pleasure of seeing the white of her fingers and the way they
tapered to a pink transparency at the tips, he forgot the poor figure he
must make with his soiled, ragged shirt, his unshaven face, his gaunt
cheeks.
Indeed, he looked so straight at her that in spite of her advantage with
the light she had to avoid his glance.
"I am sorry," said Lou Macon, "and ashamed because we can't take you in.
The only house on the range where you wouldn't be welcome, I know. But
my father leads a very close life; he has set ways. The ways of an
invalid, Mr. Donnegan."
"And you're bothered about speaking to him of me?"
"I'm almost afraid of letting you go in yourself."
"Let me take the risk."
She considered him again for a moment, and then turned with a nod and he
followed her up the stairs into the upper hall. The moment they stepped
into it he heard her clothes flutter and a small gale poured on them. It
was criminal to allow such a building to fall into this ruinous
condition. And a gloomy picture rose in Donnegan's mind of the invalid,
thin-faced, sallow-eyed, white-haired, lying in his bed listening to the
storm and silently gathering bitterness out of the pain of living. Lou
Macon paused again in the hall, close to a door on the right.
"I'm going to send you in to speak to my father," she said gravely.
"First I have to tell you that he's different."
Donnegan replied by looking straight at her, and this time she did not
wince from the glance. Indeed, she seemed to be probing him, searching
with a peculiar hope. What could she expect to find in him? What that
was useful to her? Not once in all his life had such a sense of
impotence descended upon Donnegan. Her father? Bah! Invalid or no
invalid he would handle that fellow, and if the old man had an acrid
temper, Donnegan at will could file his own speech to a point. But the
girl! In the meager hand which held the lamp there was a power which all
the muscles of Donnegan could not compass; and in his weakness he looked
wistfully at her.
"I hope your talk will be pleasant. I hope so." She laid her hand on the
knob of the door and withdrew it hastily; then, summoning great
resolution, she opened the door and showed Donnegan in.
"Father," she said, "this is Mr. Donnegan. He wishes to speak to you."
The door closed behind Donnegan, and hearing that whishing sound which
the door of a heavy safe will make, he looked down at this, and saw that
it was actually inches thick! Once more the sense of being in a trap
descended upon him.
7
He found himself in a large room which, before he could examine a single
feature of it, was effectively curtained from his sight. Straight into
his face shot a current of violent white light that made him blink.
There was the natural recoil, but in Donnegan recoils were generally
protected by several strata of willpower and seldom showed in any
physical action. On the present occasion his first dismay was swiftly
overwhelmed by a cold anger at the insulting trick. This was not the
trick of a helpless invalid; Donnegan could not see a single thing
before him, but he obeyed a very deep instinct and advanced straight
into the current of light.
He was glad to see the light switched away. The comparative darkness
washed across his eyes in a pleasant wave and he was now able to
distinguish a few things in the room. It was, as he had first surmised,
quite large. The ceiling was high; the proportions comfortably spacious;
but what astounded Donnegan was the real elegance of the furnishings.
There was no mistaking the deep, silken texture of the rug upon which he
stepped; the glow of light barely reached the wall, and there showed
faintly in streaks along yellowish hangings. Beside a table which
supported a big reading lamp--gasoline, no doubt, from the intensity of
its light--sat Colonel Macon with a large volume spread across his
knees. Donnegan saw two highlights--fine silver hair that covered the
head of the invalid and a pair of white hands fallen idly upon the
surface of the big book, for if the silver hair suggested age the
smoothly finished hands suggested perennial youth. They were strong,
carefully tended, complacent hands. They suggested to Donnegan a man
sufficient unto himself.
"Mr. Donnegan, I am sorry that I cannot rise to receive you. Now, what
pleasant accident has brought me the favor of this call?"
Donnegan was taken aback again, and this time more strongly than by the
flare of light against his eyes. For in the voice he recognized the
quality of the girl--the same softness, the same velvety richness,
though the pitch was a bass. In the voice of this man there was the same
suggestion that the tone would crack if it were forced either up or
down. With this great difference, one could hardly conceive of a
situation which would push that man's voice beyond its monotone. It
flowed with deadly, all-embracing softness. It clung about one; it
fascinated and baffled the mind of the listener.
But Donnegan was not in the habit of being baffled by voices. Neither
was he a lover of formality. He looked about for a place to sit down,
and immediately discovered that while the invalid sat in an enormous
easy-chair bordered by shelves and supplied with wheels for raising and
lowering the back and for propelling the chair about the room on its
rubber tires, it was the only chair in the room which could make any
pretensions toward comfort. As a matter of fact, aside from this one
immense chair, devoted to the pleasure of the invalid, there was nothing
in the room for his visitors to sit upon except two or three miserable
backless stools.
But Donnegan was not long taken aback. He tucked his cap under his arm,
bowed profoundly in honor of the colonel's compliments, and brought one
of the stools to a place where it was no nearer the rather ominous
circle of the lamplight than was the invalid himself. With his eyes
accustomed to the new light, Donnegan could now take better stock of his
host. He saw a rather handsome face, with eyes exceedingly blue, young,
and active; but the features of Macon as well as his body were blurred
and obscured by a great fatness. He was truly a prodigious man, and one
could understand the stoutness with which the invalid chair was made.
His great wrist dimpled like the wrist of a healthy baby, and his face
was so enlarged with superfluous flesh that the lower part of it quite
dwarfed the upper. He seemed, at first glance, a man with a low forehead
and bright, careless eyes and a body made immobile by flesh and
sickness. A man whose spirits despised and defied pain. Yet a second
glance showed that the forehead was, after all, a nobly proportioned
one, and for all the bulk of that figure, for all the cripple-chair,
Donnegan would not have been surprised to see the bulk spring lightly
out of the chair to meet him.
For his own part, sitting back on the stool with his cap tucked under
his arm and his hands folded about one knee, he met the faint, cold
smile of the colonel with a broad grin of his own.
"I can put it in a nutshell," said Donnegan. "I was tired; dead beat;
needed a handout, and rapped at your door. Along comes a mystery in the
shape of an ugly-looking woman and opens the door to me. Tries to shut
me out; I decided to come in. She insists on keeping me outside; all at
once I see that I have to get into the house. I am brought in; your
daughter tries to steer me off, sees that the job is more than she can
get away with, and shelves me off upon you. And that, Colonel Macon, is
the pleasant accident which brings you the favor of this call."
It would have been a speech both stupid and pert in the mouth of
another; but Donnegan knew how to flavor words with a touch of mockery
of himself as well as another. There were two manners in which this
speech could have been received--with a wink or with a smile. But it
would have been impossible to hear it and grow frigid. As for the
colonel, he smiled.
It was a tricky smile, however, as Donnegan felt. It spread easily upon
that vast face and again went out and left all to the dominion of the
cold, bright eyes.
"A case of curiosity," commented the colonel.
"A case of hunger," said Donnegan.
"My dear Mr. Donnegan, put it that way if you wish!"
"And a case of blankets needed for one night."
"Really? Have you ventured into such a country as this without any
equipment?"
"Outside of my purse, my equipment is of the invisible kind."
"Wits," suggested the colonel.
"Thank you."
"Not at all. You hinted at it yourself."
"However, a hint is harder to take than to make."
The colonel raised his faultless right hand--and oddly enough his great
corpulence did not extend in the slightest degree to his hand, but
stopped short at the wrists--and stroked his immense chin. His skin was
like Lou Macon's, except that in place of the white-flower bloom his was
a parchment, dead pallor. He lowered his hand with the same slow
precision and folded it with the other, all the time probing Donnegan
with his difficult eyes.
"Unfortunately--most unfortunately, it is impossible for me to
accommodate you, Mr. Donnegan."
The reply was not flippant, but quick. "Not at all. I am the easiest
person in the world to accommodate."
The big man smiled sadly.
"My fortune has fallen upon evil days, sir. It is no longer what it was.
There are in this house three habitable rooms; this one; my daughter's
apartment; the kitchen where old Haggie sleeps. Otherwise you are in a
rat trap of a place."
He shook his head, a slow, decisive motion.
"A spare blanket," said Donnegan, "will be enough."
There was another sigh and another shake of the head.
"Even a corner of a rug to roll up in will do perfectly."
"You see, it is impossible for me to entertain you."
"Bare boards will do well enough for me, Colonel Macon. And if I have a
piece of bread, a plate of cold beans--anything--I can entertain
myself."
"I am sorry to see you so compliant, Mr. Donnegan, because that makes my
refusal seem the more unkind. But I cannot have you sleeping on the bare
floor. Not on such a night. Pneumonia comes on one like a cat in the
dark in such weather. It is really impossible to keep you here, sir."
"H'm-m," said Donnegan. He began to feel that he was stumped, and it was
a most unusual feeling for him.
"Besides, for a young fellow like you, with your agility, what is eight
miles? Walk down the road and you will come to a place where you will be
made at home and fed like a king."
"Eight miles, that's not much! But on such a night as this?"
There was a faint glint in the eyes of the colonel; was he not
sharpening his wits for his contest of words, and enjoying it?
"The wind will be at your back and buoy your steps. It will shorten the
eight miles to four."
Very definitely Donnegan felt that the other was reading him. What was
it that he saw as he turned the pages?
"There is one thing you fail to take into your accounting."
"Ah?"
"I have an irresistible aversion to walking."
"Ah?" repeated Macon.
"Or exercise in any form."
"Then you are unfortunate to be in this country without a horse."
"Unfortunate, perhaps, but the fact is that I'm here. Very sorry to
trouble you, though, colonel."
"I am rarely troubled," said the colonel coldly. "And since I have no
means of accommodation, the laws of hospitality rest light on my
shoulders."
"Yet I have an odd thought," replied Donnegan.
"Well? You have expressed a number already, it seems to me."
"It's this: that you've already made up your mind to keep me here."
8
The colonel stiffened in his chair, and under his bulk even those
ponderous timbers quaked a little. Once more Donnegan gained an
impression of chained activity ready to rise to any emergency. The
colonel's jaw set and the last vestige of the smile left his eyes. Yet
it was not anger that showed in its place. Instead, it was rather a
hungry searching. He looked keenly into the face and the soul of
Donnegan as a searchlight sweeps over waters by night.
"You are a mind reader, Mr. Donnegan."
"No more of a mind reader than a Chinaman is."
"Ah, they are great readers of mind, my friend."
Donnegan grinned, and at this the colonel frowned.
"A great and mysterious people, sir. I keep evidences of them always
about me. Look!"
He swept the shaft of the reading light up and it fell upon a red vase
against the yellow hangings. Even Donnegan's inexperienced eye read a
price into that shimmering vase.
"Queer color," he said.
"Dusty claret. Ah, they have the only names for their colors. Think!
Peach bloom--liquid dawn--ripe cherry--oil green--green of powdered
tea--blue of the sky after rain--what names for color! What other land
possesses such a tongue that goes straight to the heart!"
The colonel waved his faultless hands and then dropped them back upon
the book with the tenderness of a benediction.
"And their terms for texture--pear's rind--lime peel--millet seed! Do
not scoff at China, Mr. Donnegan. She is the fairy godmother, and we are
the poor children."
He changed the direction of the light; Donnegan watched him, fascinated.
"But what convinced you that I wished to keep you here?"
"To amuse you, Colonel Macon."
The colonel exposed gleaming white teeth and laughed in that soft,
smooth-flowing voice.
"Amuse me? For fifteen years I have sat in this room and amused myself
by taking in what I would and shutting out the rest of the world. I have
made the walls thick and padded them to keep out all sound. You observe
that there is no evidence here of the storm that is going on tonight.
Amuse me? Indeed!"
And Donnegan thought of Lou Macon in her old, drab dress, huddling the
poor cloak around her shoulders to keep out the cold, while her father
lounged here in luxury. He could gladly have buried his lean fingers in
that fat throat. From the first he had had an aversion to this man.
"Very well, I shall go. It has been a pleasant chat, colonel."
"Very pleasant. And thank you. But before you go, taste this whisky. It
will help you when you enter the wind."
He opened a cabinet in the side of the chair and brought out a black
bottle and a pair of glasses and put them on the broad arm of the chair.
Donnegan sauntered back.
"You see," he murmured, "you will not let me go."
At this the colonel raised his head suddenly and glared into the eyes of
his guest, and yet so perfect was his muscular and nerve control that he
did not interrupt the thin stream of amber which trickled into one of
the glasses. Looking down again, he finished pouring the drinks. They
pledged each other with a motion, and drank. It was very old, very oily.
And Donnegan smiled as he put down the empty glass.
"Sit down," said the colonel in a new voice.
Donnegan obeyed.
"Fate," went on the colonel, "rules our lives. We give our honest
endeavors, but the deciding touch is the hand of Fate."
He garnished this absurd truism with a wave of his hand so solemn that
Donnegan was chilled; as though the fat man were actually conversant
with the Three Sisters.
"Fate has brought you to me; therefore, I intend to keep you."
"Here?"
"In my service. I am about to place a great mission and a great trust in
your hands."
"In the hands of a man you know nothing about?"
"I know you as if I had raised you."
Donnegan smiled, and shaking his head, the red hair flashed and
shimmered.
"As long as there is no work attached to the mission, it may be
agreeable to me."
"But there is work."
"Then the contract is broken before it is made."
"You are rash. But I had rather begin with a dissent and then work
upward."
Donnegan waited.
"To balance against work--"
"Excuse me. Nothing balances against work for me."
"To balance against work," continued the colonel, raising a white hand
and by that gesture crushing the protest of Donnegan, "there is a great
reward."
"Colonel Macon, I have never worked for money before and I shall not
work for it now."
"You trouble me with interruptions. Who mentioned money? You shall not
have a penny!"
"No?"
"The reward shall grow out of the work."
"And the work?"
"Is fighting."
At this Donnegan narrowed his eyes and searched the fat man thoroughly.
It sounded like the talk of a charlatan, and yet there was a crispness
to these sentences that made him suspect something underneath. For that
matter, in certain districts his name and his career were known. He had
never dreamed that that reputation could have come within a thousand
miles of this part of the mountain desert.
"You should have told me in the first place," he said with some anger,
"that you knew me."
"Mr. Donnegan, upon my honor, I never heard your name before my daughter
uttered it."
Donnegan waited soberly.
"I despise charlatanry as much as the next man. You shall see the steps
by which I judged you. When you entered the room I threw a strong light
upon you. You did not blanch; you immediately walked straight into the
shaft of light although you could not see a foot before you."
"And that proved?"
"A combative instinct, and coolness; not the sort of brute
vindictiveness that fights for a rage, for a cool-minded love of
conflict. Is that clear?"
Donnegan shrugged his shoulders.
"And above all, I need a fighter. Then I watched your eyes and your
hands. The first were direct and yet they were alert. And your hands
were perfectly steady."
"Qualifications for a fighter, eh?"
"Do you wish further proof?"
"Well?"
"What of the fight to the death which you went through this same night?"
Donnegan started. It was a small movement, that flinching, and he
covered it by continuing the upward gesture of his hand to his coat; he
drew out tobacco and cigarette papers and commenced to roll his smoke.
Looking up, he saw that the eyes of Colonel Macon were smiling, although
his face was grave.
A glint of understanding passed between the two men, but not a spoken
word.
"I assure you, there was no death tonight," said Donnegan at length.
"Tush! Of course not! But the tear on the shoulder of your coat--ah,
that is too smooth edged for a tear, too long for the bite of a
scissors. Am I right? Tush! Not a word!"
The colonel beamed with an almost tender pride, and Donnegan, knowing
that the fat man looked upon him as a murderer, newly come from a
death, considered the beaming face and thought many things in silence.
"So it was easy to see that in coolness, courage, fighting instinct,
skill, you were probably what I want. Yet something more than all these
qualifications is necessary for the task which lies ahead of you."
"You pile up the bad features, eh?"
"To entice you, Donnegan. For one man, paint a rosy beginning, and once
under way he will manage the hard parts. For you, show you the hard
shell and you will trust it contains the choice flesh. I was saying,
that I waited to see other qualities in you; qualities of the judgment.
And suddenly you flashed upon me a single glance; I felt it clash
against my willpower. I felt your look go past my guard like a rapier
slipping around my blade. I, Colonel Macon, was for the first time
outfaced, out-maneuvered. I admit it, for I rejoice in meeting such a
man. And the next instant you told me that I should keep you here out of
my own wish! Admirable!"
The admiration of the colonel, indeed, almost overwhelmed Donnegan, but
he saw that in spite of the genial smile, the face suffused with warmth,
the colonel was watching him every instant, flinty-eyed. Donnegan did as
he had done on the stairs; he burst into laughter.
When he had done, the colonel was leaning forward in his chair with his
fingers interlacing, examining his guest from beneath somber brows. As
he sat lurched forward he gave a terrible impression of that reserved
energy which Donnegan had sensed before.
"Donnegan," said the colonel, "I shall talk no more nonsense to you. You
are a terrible fellow!"
And Donnegan knew that, for the first time in the colonel's life, he was
meeting another man upon equal ground.
9
In a way, it was an awful tribute, for one great fact grew upon him:
that the colonel represented almost perfectly the power of absolute
evil. Donnegan was not a squeamish sort, but the fat, smiling face of
Macon filled him with unutterable aversion. A dozen times he would have
left the room, but a silken thread held him back, the thought of Lou.
"I shall be terse and entirely frank," said the colonel, and at once
Donnegan reared triple guard and balanced himself for attack or defense.
"Between you and me," went on the fat man, "deceptive words are folly. A
waste of energy." He flushed a little. "You are, I believe, the first
man who has ever laughed at me." The click of his teeth as he snapped
them on this sentence seemed to promise that he should also be the last.
"So I tear away the veils which made me ridiculous, I grant you.
Donnegan, we have met each other just in time."
"True," said Donnegan, "you have a task for me that promises a lot of
fighting; and in return I get lodgings for the night."
"Wrong, wrong! I offer you much more. I offer you a career of action in
which you may forget the great sorrow which has fallen upon you: and in
the battles which lie before you, you will find oblivion for the sad
past which lies behind you."
Here Donnegan sprang to his feet with his hand caught at his breast; and
he stood quivering, in an agony. Pain worked him as anger would do, and,
his slender frame swelling, his muscles taut, he stood like a panther
enduring the torture because knows it is folly to attempt to escape.
"You are a human devil!" Donnegan said at last, and sank back upon his
stool. For a moment he was overcome, his head falling upon his breast,
and even when he looked up his face was terribly pale, and his eyes
dull. His expression, however, cleared swiftly, and aside from the
perspiration which shone on his forehead it would have been impossible
ten seconds later to discover that the blow of the colonel had fallen
upon him.
All of this the colonel had observed and noted with grim satisfaction.
Not once did he speak until he saw that all was well.
"I am sorry," he said at length in a voice almost as delicate as the
voice of Lou Macon. "I am sorry, but you forced me to say more than I
wished to say."
Donnegan brushed the apology aside.
His voice became low and hurried. "Let us get on in the matter. I am
eager to learn from you, colonel."
"Very well. Since it seems that there is a place for both our interests
in this matter, I shall run on in my tale and make it, as I promised you
before, absolutely frank and curt. I shall not descend into small
details. I shall give you a main sketch of the high points; for all men
of mind are apt to be confused by the face of a thing, whereas the heart
of it is perfectly clear to them."
He settled into his narrative.
"You have heard of The Corner? No? Well, that is not strange; but a few
weeks ago gold was found in the sands where the valleys of Young Muddy
and Christobel Rivers join. The Corner is a long, wide triangle of sand,
and the sand is filled with a gold deposit brought down from the
headwaters of both rivers and precipitated here, where one current meets
the other and reduces the resultant stream to sluggishness. The sands
are rich--very rich!"
He had become a trifle flushed as he talked, and now, perhaps to cover
his emotion, he carefully selected a cigarette from the humidor beside
him and lighted it without haste before he spoke another word.
"Long ago I prospected over that valley; a few weeks ago it was brought
to my attention again. I determined to stake some claims and work them.
But I could not go myself. I had to send a trustworthy man. Whom should
I select? There was only one possible. Jack Landis is my ward. A dozen
years ago his parents died and they sent him to my care, for my fortune
was then comfortable. I raised him with as much tenderness as I could
have shown my own son; I lavished on him the affection and--"
Here Donnegan coughed lightly; the fat man paused, and observing that
this hypocrisy did not draw the veil over the bright eyes of his guest,
he continued: "In a word, I made him one of my family. And when the need
for a man came I turned to him. He is young, strong, active, able to
take care of himself."
At this Donnegan pricked his ears.
"He went, accordingly, to The Corner and staked the claims and filed
them as I directed. I was right. There was gold. Much gold. It panned
out in nuggets."
He made an indescribable gesture, and through his strong fingers
Donnegan had a vision of yellow gold pouring.
"But there is seldom a discovery of importance claimed by one man alone.
This was no exception. A villain named William Lester, known as a
scoundrel over the length and breadth of the cattle country, claimed
that he had made the discovery first. He even went so far as to claim
that I had obtained my information from him and he tried to jump the
claims staked by Jack Landis, whereupon Jack, very properly, shot Lester
down. Not dead, unfortunately, but slightly wounded.
"In the meantime the rush for The Corner started. In a week there was a
village; in a fortnight there was a town; in a month The Corner had
become the talk of the ranges. Jack Landis found in the claims a mint.
He sent me back a mere souvenir."
The fat man produced from his vest pocket a little chunk of yellow and
with a dexterous motion whipped it at Donnegan. It was done so suddenly,
so unexpectedly that the wanderer was well-nigh taken by surprise. But
his hand flashed up and caught the metal before it struck his face. He
found in the palm of his hand a nugget weighing perhaps five ounces,
and he flicked it back to the colonel.
"He sent me the souvenir, but that was all. Since that time I have
waited. Nothing has come. I sent for word, and I learned that Jack
Landis had betrayed his trust, fallen in love with some undesirable
woman of the mining camp, denied my claim to any of the gold to which I
had sent him. Unpleasant news? Yes. Ungrateful boy? Yes. But my mind is
hardened against adversity.
"Yet this blow struck me close to the heart. Because Landis is engaged
to marry my daughter, Lou. At first I could hardly believe in his
disaffection. But the truth has at length been borne home to me. The
scoundrel has abandoned both Lou and me!"