The Bad Man
The eyes of Beaudry, held in dreadful fascination, clung to the lupine
face behind the revolver. To save his life he could have looked
nowhere else except into those cold, narrow pupils where he read death.
Little beads of sweat stood on his forehead. The tongue in his mouth
was dry. His brain seemed paralyzed. Again he seemed to be lifted
from his feet by a wave of deadly terror.
Meldrum had been drinking heavily, but he was not drunk. He drew from
his pocket a watch and laid it on the arm of the chair. Roy noticed
that the rim of the revolver did not waver. It was pointed directly
between his eyes.
"Git down on yore knees and beg, damn you. In less 'n a minute hell
pops for you."
The savage, exultant voice of the former convict beat upon Roy like the
blows of a hammer. He would have begged for his life,--begged
abjectly, cravenly,--but his teeth chattered and his parched tongue was
palsied. He would have sunk to his knees, but terror had robbed his
muscles of the strength to move. He was tied to his chair by ropes
stronger than chains of steel.
The watch ticked away the seconds. From the face of Meldrum the grin
was snuffed out by a swift surge of wolfish anger.
"Are you deef and dumb?" he snarled. "It's Dan Meldrum talking--the
man yore dad sent to the penitentiary. I'm going to kill you. Then
I'll cut another notch on my gun. Understand?"
The brain of the young lawyer would not function. His will was
paralyzed. Yet every sense was amazingly alert. He did not miss a
tick of the watch. Every beat of his heart registered.
"You butted in and tried to spy like yore dad, did you?" the raucous
voice continued. "Thought you could sell us out and git away with it.
Here's where you learn different. Jack Beaudry was a man, anyhow, and
we got him. You're nothing but a pink-ear, a whey-faced baby without
guts to stand the gaff. Well, you've come to the end of yore trail.
Beg, you skunk!"
From the mind of Beaudry the fog lifted. In the savage, malignant eyes
glaring at him he read that he was lost. The clutch of fear so
overwhelmed him that suspense was unbearable. He wanted to shriek
aloud, to call on this man-killer to end the agony. It was the same
impulse, magnified a hundred times, that leads a man to bite on an
ulcerated tooth in a weak impotence of pain.
The tick-tick-tick of the watch mocked him to frenzied action. He
gripped the arms of the chair with both hands and thrust forward his
face against the cold rim of the revolver barrel.
"Shoot!" he cried hoarsely, drunk with terror. "Shoot, and be damned!"
Before the words were out of his mouth a shot echoed. For the second
time in his life Roy lost consciousness. Not many seconds could have
passed before he opened his eyes again. But what he saw puzzled him.
Meldrum was writhing on the ground and cursing. His left hand nursed
the right, which moved up and down frantically as if to escape from
pain. Toward the house walked Dingwell and by his side Beulah
Rutherford. Dave was ejecting a shell from the rifle he carried.
Slowly it came to the young man that he had not been shot. The convict
must have been hit instead by a bullet from the gun of the cattleman.
He was presently to learn that the forty-four had been struck and
knocked from the hand of its owner.
"Every little thing all right, son?" asked the cowman cheerily. "We
sure did run this rescue business fine. Another minute and--But what's
the use of worrying? Miss Beulah and I were Johnny-on-the-spot all
right."
Roy said nothing. He could not speak. His lips and cheeks were still
bloodless. By the narrowest margin in the world he had escaped.
Disgustedly the cattleman looked down at Meldrum, who was trying to
curse and weep from pain at the same time.
"Stung you up some, did I? Hm! You ought to be singing hymns because
I didn't let you have it in the haid, which I'd most certainly have
done if you had harmed my friend. Get up, you bully, and stop cursing.
There's a lady here, and you ain't damaged, anyhow."
The eyes of Beaudry met those of Beulah. It seemed to him that her lip
curled contemptuously. She had been witness of his degradation, had
seen him show the white feather. A pulse of shame beat in his throat.
"W-w-what are you doing here?" he asked wretchedly.
Dave answered for her. "Isn't she always on the job when she's needed?
Yore fairy godmother--that's what Miss Beulah Rutherford is. Rode
hell-for-leather down here to haid off that coyote there--and done it,
too. Bumped into me at the water-hole and I hopped on that Blacky
hawss behind her. He brought us in on the jump and Sharp's old
reliable upset Meldrum's apple cart."
Still nursing the tips of his tingling fingers, the ex-convict scowled
venomously at Beulah. "I'll remember that, missie. That's twice
you've interfered with me. I sure will learn you to mind yore own
business."
Dingwell looked steadily at him. "We've heard about enough from you.
Beat it! Hit the trail! Pull yore freight! Light out! _Vamos_!
Git!"
The man-killer glared at him. For a moment he hesitated. He would
have liked to try conclusions with the cattleman to a fighting finish,
but though he had held his own in many a rough-and-tumble fray, he
lacked the unflawed nerve to face this man with the cold gray eye and
the chilled-steel jaw. His fury broke in an impotent curse as he
slouched away.
"I don't understand yet," pursued Roy. "How did Miss Rutherford know
that Meldrum was coming here?"
"Friend Hart rode up to tell Tighe we were here. He met Meldrum close
to the school-house. The kids were playing hide-and-go-seek. One of
them was lying right back of a big rock beside the road. He heard Dan
swear he was coming down to stop yore clock, son. The kid went
straight to teacher soon as the men had ridden off. He told what
Meldrum had said. So, of course, Miss Beulah she sent the children
home and rode down to the hawss ranch to get her father or one of her
brothers. None of them were at home and she hit the trail alone to
warn us."
"I knew my people would be blamed for what this man did, so I blocked
him," explained the girl with her habitual effect of hostile pride.
"You said you would let Tighe have his way next time, but you don't
need to apologize for breaking yore word, Miss Beulah," responded
Dingwell with his friendly smile. "All we've got to say is that you've
got chalked up against us an account we'll never be able to pay."
The color beat into her cheeks. She was both embarrassed and annoyed.
With a gesture of impatience she turned away and walked to Blacky.
Lithely she swung to the saddle.
Mrs. Hart had come to the porch. In her harassed countenance still
lingered the remains of good looks. The droop at the corners of her
mouth suggested a faint resentment against a fate which had stolen her
youth without leaving the compensations of middle life.
"Won't you light off'n yore bronc and stay to supper, Miss Rutherford?"
she invited.
"Thank you, Mrs. Hart. I can't. Must get home."
With a little nod to the woman she swung her horse around and was gone.
Hart did not show up for supper nor for breakfast. It was an easy
guess that he lacked the hardihood to face them after his attempted
betrayal. At all events, they saw nothing of him before they left in
the morning. If they had penetrated his wife's tight-lipped reserve,
they might have shared her opinion, that he had gone off on a long
drinking-bout with Dan Meldrum.
Leisurely Beaudry and his friend rode down through the chaparral to
Battle Butte.
On the outskirts of the town they met Ned Rutherford. After they had
passed him, he turned and followed in their tracks.
Dingwell grinned across at Roy. "Some thorough our friends are. A
bulldog has got nothing on them. They're hanging around to help me dig
up that gunnysack when I get ready."
The two men rode straight to the office of the sheriff and had a talk
with him. From there they went to the hotel where Dave usually put up
when he was in town. Over their dinner the cattleman renewed an offer
he had been urging upon Roy all the way down from Hart's place. He
needed a reliable man to help him manage the different holdings he had
been accumulating. His proposition was to take Beaudry in as a junior
partner, the purchase price to be paid in installments to be earned out
of the profits of the business.
"Course I don't want to take you away from the law if you're set on
that profession, but if you don't really care--" Dave lifted an
eyebrow in a question.
"I think I'd like the law, but I know I would like better an active
outdoor life. That's not the point, Mr. Dingwell. I can't take
something for nothing. You can get a hundred men who know far more
about cattle than I do. Why do you pick me?"
"I've got reasons a-plenty. Right off the bat here are some of them.
I'm under obligations to Jack Beaudry and I'd like to pay my debt to
his son. I've got no near kin of my own. I need a partner, but it
isn't one man out of a dozen I can get along with. Most old cowmen are
rutted in their ways. You don't know a thing about the business. But
you can learn. You're teachable. You are not one of these wise guys.
Then, too, I like you, son. I don't want a partner that rubs me the
wrong way. Hell, my why-fors all simmer down to one. You're the
partner I want, Roy."
"If you find I don't suit you, will you let me know?"
"Sure. But there is no chance of that." Dave shook hands with him
joyously. "It's a deal, boy."
"It's a deal," agreed Beaudry.