“Gordon,” he said, “you need a lesson yourself.”
Maurie stepped back.
“What’s eatin’ you?” he frowned.
“You hit him when he couldn’t hardly raise a hand,” snapped Carrigan.
There was no mistaking it. He meant fight. It shone in his eyes like
hunger. It tensed his muscles till he seemed crouching to spring like
some beast of prey.
“Please!” cried Jac, and stepped in between them.
“Shut up and sit down!” said Carrigan.
And he pointed with a stern arm. She shrank back to the wall.
“By God,” snarled Dave Carey, “you can’t talk to girls like that,
stranger!”
“Then come outside with me an’ I’ll talk to a man. You too, Gordon,
you--”
A thrilling cry from many women made them all turn. In the door stood
Harry During with the light gleaming on his long six-gun.
“Gordon,” he called. “Git down an’ crawl like the dirty dog you are!”
There was another flash of light on steel. It was the proprietor who had
drawn, but he did not attempt to draw a bead on Harry During. His gun
cracked; there was a clang of iron and a crash of glass as the big
gasoline lamp went out; the hall was flooded with a semi-dark. And with
the coming of the darkness fear rushed on the crowd. A stampede started
for the door, but who could find the door in that chaos of struggling
bodies and swinging shadows? Through the windows came the faint light of
the early dawn.
“Jac!” cried Carrigan.
But tall Ben Craig was already beside her.
“Leave it to me!” he said reassuringly. “You didn’t make no mistake when
you picked me out. I’ll show you that the mountain-desert’s got one real
man to make up for a lot of coyotes!”
“Wait!” she pleaded.
“Jac!” called Carrigan again.
“Here!”
“Don’t trust to no one but me,” said Craig.
“Then get me out of this mob.”
“Follow me.”
“I will if I can.”
“Then--”
He picked her up and lunged forward through the crowd.
“Drop her!” commanded the voice of Carrigan.
“Not for ten like you.”
He released Jac to turn and fight. A fist cracked home against his face,
and he swung furiously. They grappled, and Craig felt as if he were
fighting a steel automaton. The muscles his hands fell upon were rigid.
The fist on his head and ribs beat a tattoo. Dave Carey had found Jac.
“Thank God!” he cried. “I thought you were lost. Trust to me. I’ll see
you through!”
Like Craig, he picked her up.
“I’ll take you home if you’ll go with me.”
“Anywhere out of this crowd!”
“Jac!”
“Here!”
A hand caught Carey by the shoulder and jerked him around. In the dim
light he saw the convulsed face of Carrigan and dropped Jac to strike
out with all his might. His blow landed on thin air and a hard fist
smashed against his ribs. He went to the floor with a crash. But though
his breath was half gone, he clung to his foe and struggled like a
wildcat. Wild tales were told of Dave Carey in a fight. He lived up to
all those stories now. But finally a clubbed fist drove against the
point of his chin. He relaxed.
The burly shoulders of Maurie Gordon loomed through the semi-dark above
Jac.
“Jacqueline!”
“Maurie!”
“Thank God I’ve found you!”
“Yes, thank God!”
“This way after me. There’s the door!”
“Jac!”
“Here!”
And a demoniac sprang at Maurie through the dark.
Accustomed by this time to the dim light, the crowd was swirling rapidly
through the door, and in the outgoing tide went Jac. The same confusion
which made a hell of the dance-hall reigned in the open air. But there
was more space to maneuver, and Jac gathered her gown up high and
slipped through the crowd to the place at which Carrigan had tethered
his horse.
She caught the pommel and swung up to the saddle like a man. There was a
sickening sound of ripping and tearing. The green gown was hopelessly
done for. She gave no thought to it, and landing astride in the
saddle--a position which completed the ruin of the dress--she gave the
horse his head and drove forward with a shout like that of a drunken
cow-puncher.
And she was truly intoxicated with triumph. The men of her choice fought
for her in the dance-hall. They were her knights battling for the smile
of their lady. To one of them would go the victory, but hers was all the
glory. She shouted at the coming dawn and urged the horse into a faster
run. The wind caught at her face and whistled sharply past her ears--the
song of victory!
No delay for the fording of the river! She took it on the run, splashed
from head to foot with mud and water. She did not care. The gown was a
wreck. Her hair tumbled down her shoulders. But she reached the further
bank and drove on at a gallop, shouting like one of the Valkyrie.
* * * * *
A battle of giants waged in the dance-hall, where Maurie Gordon and
Carrigan raged back and forth, sometimes standing at arm’s length and
slugging with both hands, sometimes grappling and punching at close
range, sometimes rolling over and over on the floor and fighting every
inch of the way.
If the great arms of Maurie gave him an advantage in the open fighting,
the venomous agility of Carrigan evened matters when they came to close
quarters.
Dave Carey drew himself up to a sitting posture with both hands pressed
over his mid-ribs while he watched the conflict. Ben Craig leaned
against the wall, sick and white of face. Through his swollen eyes he
could barely make out the twisting figures. And still they slugged and
smashed with a noble will, until, missing a swing at the same time, they
were thrown to the floor by the wasted force of their own blows and sat
staring stupidly at one another.
The growing daylight made them quite visible now. It showed two battered
countenances. It showed equally torn clothes.
“Where’s Jacqueline?” cried Maurie.
“Gone!” cried Carrigan, and started to his feet.
Gordon followed suit, but slowly. He was badly hurt in both body and
mind. The two heroes stared at each other.
“Done for!” groaned Dave Carey from the distance.
“Stung!” sighed feeble Ben Craig.
“Beat!” growled Maurie.
“Roped!” said Carrigan.
“Fellers,” said Carey, struggling to his feet, and still caressing his
injured ribs, “I got an idea we better see that Fifth Avenue swell
before we do more fightin’.”
“I got to find her,” said Gordon stoutly. “She depends on me. I’m the
one real man she’s ever known.”
“You be damned before you find her,” said Carrigan, and the light of
battle flared in his eyes again.
“Hold on,” interposed Carey. “You ain’t the real man she’s found. _I’m_
it!”
“You are?” sneered Craig. “They tried to bury her in the West but she’s
goin’ to be set free by a man who--”
“Who tried to bury her in the western desert?” asked Carrigan.
The other three spoke with one voice.
“Her uncle!” said Carey.
“Her cruel father,” said Craig.
“Her older brother,” said Maurie.
They turned and stared at each other, stunned. Once more they spoke in
one voice.
“Stung!”
“I believe her.” defended Maurie. “She’s led a sad life in a convent all
these years--”
“In a boarding-school, you mean,” said Carey.
“Wrong; a girls’ school,” said Craig. They stopped again. Light from the
dim distance was coming in their eyes.
* * * * *
And Jac, after leaving the down-headed horse in front of her father’s
hotel, stole swiftly up the stairs to her room.
“Who’s there?” roared the familiar voice from Jim During’s room.
“Me.”
“Where’ve you been all night?”
“None of yer business.”
“Jac, I’m goin’ to raise the devil if you try many more of these funny
tricks.”
“I been out walkin’.”
“All night?”
“Ain’t I got a right to walk?”
“Jac, why wasn’t you born a boy?” groaned old Jim, reverting to his old
complaint.
“Because it’s a lot more fun bein’ a girl,” said Jac, “when you’ve got
the golden touch.”
And she went into her room.
It was hard to look at herself in the faint light and with the little
round pocket mirror which had been ample for all her needs before.
The glory of Cinderella was gone--quite gone! The green gown was a
wretched travesty; her hair was a tumbled mass; only in her smile and
her eyes there was a difference, a new light of power which, having once
come to a woman, dies only with her death. Truly the victory was hers!
She started to remove her clothes.
It was a long task, but finally they were rolled into a small bundle and
tucked into a little corner. She put on her old clothes and carefully
retied the hard knot in her hair. The fairy godmother was gone. She
washed the powder from her face. Cinderella once more sat in the ashes.
She was rattling away at the stove, preparing to make the fire for
breakfast, when a sound of singing down the road brought her to the
window. There came another Three Musketeers. They were mounted--Porthos,
Athos, and Aratnis. And before them walked the new D’Artagnan--Carrigan.
And with one voice they sang.
It should have been a sad song, for as they came closer she saw that
they were battered of face and torn of clothes. Yet their song was glad.
Experience, whether good or bad, makes strong men rejoice.
They trooped into the dining-room.
“Chow!” they thundered in unison, and Jac stepped to the door.
As one man they gaped.
Big Maurie Gordon walked to her with a scowl, took her face between his
hands, and stared into her eyes. His own were so swollen that he was
looking out of the narrowest of slits.
“Where have I seen you?” he said.
“Maybe you been dreamin’ about me, you big stiff!” said Jac amiably.
Maurie dropped his hands and turned away.
“Yep. A nightmare,” he said.
“I got a start, too,” growled Carey. “An’ when I seen Jac I thought
about--”
“Don’t say it,” broke in Craig. “It makes me see red.”
“Hit the kitchen, Bricktop,” said Maurie, “an’ rustle some ham an’
eggs--lots of ’em.”
She smiled, and the expression changed her whole face. The Three
Musketeers jumped and stared at her with a return of their first
interest. The fairy godmother was waving the wand.
“This,” said Jacqueline, “is worse than the convent.”
“The devil!” groaned Maurie. “This ain’t possible.”
“When I came west,” went on Jac with the same smile, “I thought that I
should find one real man.”
They listened with mouths agape. It was like watching base lead being
transmuted before their eyes to gold.
Carrigan winked his one good eye. The other was black and puffed.
“And I have found one,” said Jac.
And she winked at Carrigan.
“I can leave it to you,” said Carrigan, “to lead me a real man’s life.”
(The end.)
[Transcriber’s Note: This novelette originally appeared in the
July 10, 1920 issue of “All-Story Weekly” magazine.]