MARSHALL HANEY CHANGES HEART
It was well for Haney that Bertie did not see him as he sat above his
gambling boards, watchful, keen-eyed, grim of visage, for she would have
trembled in fear of him. "Haney's" was both saloon and gambling hall. In
the front, on the right, ran the long bar with its shining brass and
polished mahogany (he prided himself on having the best bar west of
Denver), and in the rear, occupying both sides of the room, stood two
long rows of faro and roulette outfits, together with card-tables and
dice-boards. It was the largest and most prosperous gambling hall in the
camps, and always of an evening was crowded with gamesters and those who
came as lookers-on.
On the right side, in a raised seat about midway of the hall, Haney
usually sat, a handsome figure, in broad white hat, immaculate linen,
and well-cut frock-coat, his face as pale as that of a priest in the
glare of the big electric light. On the other side, and directly
opposite, Williams kept corresponding "lookout" over the dealers and the
crowd. He was a bold man who attempted any shenanigan with Mart Haney,
and the games of his halls were reported honest.
To think of a young and innocent girl married to this remorseless
gambler, scarred with the gun and the knife, was a profanation of
maidenhood--and yet, as he fell now and then into a dream, he took on a
kind of savage beauty which might allure and destroy a woman. Whatever
else he was, he was neither commonplace nor mean. The visitors to whom
he was pointed out as "a type of our modern Western desperado"
invariably acknowledged that he looked the part. His smile was of
singular sweetness--all the more alluring because of its rarity--and the
warm clasp of his big, soft hand had made him sheriff in San Juan
County, and his bravery and his love of fair play were well known and
admired among the miners.
The sombre look in his face, which resembled that of a dreaming leopard,
was due to the new and secret plans with which his mind was now engaged.
"If she takes me, I quit this business," he had promised himself. "She
despises me in it, and so does the mother, and so I reckon 'tis up to me
to clean house."
Then he thought of his own mother, who had the same prejudice, and who
would not have taken a cent of his earnings. "I see no harm in the
business," he said. "Men will drink and they will gamble, and I might as
well serve their wish as any other--better, indeed, for no man can
accuse me of dark ways nor complain of the order of me house. I am a
business man the same as him that runs a grocery store; but 'tis no
matter, she dislikes it, and that ends it. She's a clear-headed wan," he
thought, with a glow of admiration for her. "She's the captain."
He no longer thought of her as his victim--as something to be ruthlessly
enjoyed--he trembled before her, big and brave and relentless as he was
in the world of men. "What has come over me?" he asked himself. "Sure
she has me on me knees--the witch. Me mind is filled with her."
All through the week his agents were at work attempting to sell his
saloons. "I'm ready to close out at a moment's notice," he declared.
At times, as he sat in his place, he lost consciousness of the crowding,
rough-hatted, intent men and the monotonous calls of the dealers. The
click of balls, the buzz of low-toned comment died out of his ears--he
was back in Troy, looking for his father, whom he had not seen or
written to in twenty years. He saw himself, with a dainty little woman
on his arm, taking the boat to New York. "I will go to the biggest hotel
in the city; the girl shall have the best the old town has. Nothing will
be too good for her--"
He roused himself to a touch on his elbow. One of his agents had a new
offer for the two saloons. It was still less than he considered the
business worth, but in his softened mood he said, "It goes!"
"Make out your papers," replied the other man, with almost equal
brevity.
During the rest of the evening the gambler sat above his lay-out with
mingled feelings of relief and regret. After all, he was in command
here. He knew this business, and he loved the companionship and the
admiration of the men who dropped round by his side to discuss the camp
or the weather, or to invite him to join a hunting trip. He felt himself
to be one of the chief men of the town, and that he could at any time
become their Representative if he chose. For some years (he couldn't
have told why) he had taken on a thrift unknown to him before, and had
been attending strictly to business. He now saw that it must have been
from a foreknowledge of Bertha. In him the superstitions of both miner
and gambler mingled. The cards had run against him for three years, now
they were falling in his favor. "I will take advantage of them," he
declared.
Slowly the crowd thinned out, and at one o'clock only a few inveterate
poker-players and one or two young fellows who were still "bucking" the
roulette wheel remained and, calling one of his men to take charge,
Haney nodded to Williams and they went out on the street.
As he reached the cold, crisp, deliciously rarefied air outside, he took
off his hat and involuntarily looked up at the stars blazing thick in
the deep-blue midnight sky. With solemn voice he said to his partner:
"Well, 'Spot,' right here Mart Haney's saloon business ends. We're all
in."
Williams felt that his partner was acting rashly. "Oh, I wouldn't say
that! You may get into it again."
"No--the little girl and her mother won't stand for it, and, besides,
what's the use? I don't need to do it, and if I'm ever going to see the
world now is my chance. I'm goin' back East to discover how many
brothers and sisters I have livin'. The old father is dodderin 'round
somewheres back there. I'll surprise him, too. Now, have those papers
all made out ready to sign by eleven o'clock to-morrow. I'm goin' down
the valley on the noon train."
"All right, Mart, but you're makin' a mistake."
"Never you mind, me bucko. 'Tis me own game, and the mines will take all
the gray matter you can spare."
As the big man was walking away towards his hotel a woman met him.
"Hello, Mart!"
"Hello, Mag; what's doing?"
She was humped and bedraggled, and her face looked white in the
moonlight. "Nothing. Stake a fellow to a hot soup, won't you?"
"Sure thing, Mag." He handed her a five-dollar gold piece. "Is it as bad
as that? What's t' old man doin' these days?"
"Servin' time," she answered, bitterly.
"Oh, so he is!" replied Haney, hastily. "I'd forgotten. Well, take care
o' yourself," he added, genially, walking on in instant forgetfulness of
the woman's misery, for his mind was turned upon the talk which his
younger brother Charley had given him not long before in Denver.
It was not a cheerful conversation, for Charley flippantly confessed
that he didn't hold any family reunions, and that all he knew of his
brothers he gained by chance. "They're all great boozers," he said, in
summing them up. "Tim is a ward heeler in Buffalo--came to see me at the
stage-door loaded to the gunnels. Tom is a greasy, three-fingered
brakeman on the Central. Fannie married a carpenter and has about
seventeen young ones. Mary died, you know?"
"No, I didn't know."
"Yes, died about four years ago. She was like mother--a nice girl. Dad
sent me a paper with a notice of her death. He never writes, but now and
then, when Tim has a fight or Tom gets drunk and slips into the criminal
column, I hear of them."
Charles did not say so, but Mart knew that he was lumped among the other
poverty-stricken, worthless members of the family. He did not at the
time undeceive his brother, but now that he was no longer a gambler and
saloon-keeper, now that he was rich, he resolved not only to let his
father know of his good-fortune and his change of life, but also (and
this was due to Bertie's influence) he earnestly desired to help his
family out of their mire.
"We had good stuff in us," he said, "but we went wrong after the mother
left us."
As he walked on down the street a strange radiance came into the world.
The distant peaks of the Sangre de Cristo range rose in dim and shadowy
majesty to the south, and, wondering, astonished at the emotion stirring
in his heart, the regenerated desperado turned to see the moon lifting
above the crown of the great peak to the east. For the first time in
many years his heart was filled with a sense of the beauty of the world.