Beaudry Blows a Smoke Wreath
Royal Beaudry carried about with him in his work on the Lazy Double D
persistent memories of the sloe-eyed gypsy who had recently played so
large a part in his life. Men of imagination fall in love, not with a
woman, but with the mystery they make of her. The young cattleman was
not yet a lover, but a rumor of the future began to murmur in his ears.
Beulah Rutherford was on the surface very simple and direct, but his
thoughts were occupied with the soul of her. What was the girl like
whose actions functioned in courage and independence and harsh
hostility?
Life had imposed on her a hard finish. But it was impossible for Roy
to believe that this slender, tawny child of the wind and the sun could
at heart be bitter and suspicious. He had seen the sweet look of her
dark-lashed eyes turned in troubled appeal upon her father. There had
been one hour when he had looked into her face and found it radiant,
all light and response and ecstasy. The emotion that had pulsed
through her then had given the lie to the sullen silence upon which she
fell back as a defense. If the gods were good to her some day, the red
flower of passion would bloom on her cheeks and the mists that dulled
her spirit would melt in the warm sunshine of love.
So the dreamer wove the web of his fancy about her, and the mystery
that was Beulah Rutherford lay near his thoughts when he walked or rode
or ate or talked.
Nor did it lessen his interest in her that he felt she despised him.
The flash of her scornful eyes still stung him. He was beyond caring
whether she thought him a spy. He knew that the facts justified him in
his attempt to save Dingwell. But he writhed that she should believe
him a coward. It came too close home. And since the affray in the
arcade, no doubt she set him down, too, as a drunken rowdy.
He made the usual vain valorous resolutions of youth to show her his
heroic quality. These served at least one good purpose. If he could
not control his fears, he could govern his actions. Roy forced himself
by sheer will power to ride alone into Battle Butte once a week.
Without hurry he went about his business up and down Mission Street.
The town watched him and commented. "Got sand in his craw, young
Beaudry has," was the common verdict. Men wondered what would happen
when he met Charlton and Meldrum. Most of them would have backed John
Beaudry's son both in their hopes and in their opinion of the result.
Into saloons and gambling-houses word was carried, and from there to
the hillmen of the park by industrious peddlers of trouble, that the
young cattleman from the Lazy Double D could be found by his enemies
heeled for business whenever they wanted him.
Charlton kept morosely to the park. If he had had nothing to consider
except his own inclination, he would have slapped the saddle upon a
cowpony and ridden in to Battle Butte at once. But Beulah had laid an
interdict upon him. For a year he had been trying to persuade her to
marry him, and he knew that he must say good-bye to his hopes if he
fought with his enemy.
It was fear that kept Meldrum at home. He had been a killer, but the
men he had killed had been taken at advantage. It was one thing to
shoot this Beaudry cub down from ambush. It was another to meet him in
the open. Moreover, he knew the Rutherfords. The owner of the horse
ranch had laid the law down to him. No chance shot from the chaparral
was to cut down Dingwell's partner.
The ex-convict listened to the whispers of Tighe. He brooded over
them, but he did not act on them. His alcohol-dulled brain told him
that he had reached the limit of public sufferance. One more killing
by him, and he would pay the penalty at the hands of the law. When he
took his revenge, it must be done so secretly that no evidence could
connect him with the crime. He must, too, have an _alibi_ acceptable
to Hal Rutherford.
Meldrum carried with him to Battle Butte, on his first trip after the
arcade affair, a fixed determination to avoid Beaudry. In case he met
him, he would pass without speaking.
But all of Meldrum's resolutions were apt to become modified by
subsequent inhibitions. In company with one or two cronies he made a
tour of the saloons of the town. At each of them he said, "Have
another," and followed his own advice to show good faith.
On one of these voyages from port to port the bad man from Chicito
Canon sighted a tall, lean-flanked, long-legged brown man. He was
crossing the street so that the party came face to face with him at the
apex of a right angle. The tanned stranger in corduroys, hickory
shirt, and pinched-in hat of the range rider was Royal Beaudry. It was
with a start of surprise that Meldrum recognized him. His enemy was no
longer a "pink-ear." There was that in his stride, his garb, and the
steady look of his eye which told of a growing confidence and
competence. He looked like a horseman of the plains, fit for any
emergency that might confront him.
Taken at advantage by the suddenness of the meeting, Meldrum gave
ground with a muttered oath. The young cattleman nodded to the trio
and kept on his way. None of the others knew that his heart was
hammering a tattoo against his ribs or that queer little chills chased
each other down his spine.
Chet Fox ventured a sly dig at the ex-convict. "Looks a right healthy
sick man, Dan."
"Who said he was sick?" growled Meldrum.
"Didn't you-all say he was good as dead?"
"A man can change his mind, Chet, can't he?" jeered Hart.
The blotched face of the bad man grew purple. "That'll be about enough
from both of you. But I'll say this: when I get ready to settle with
Mr. Beaudry you can order his coffin."
Nevertheless, Meldrum had the humiliating sense that he had failed to
live up to his reputation as a killer. He had promised Battle Butte to
give it something to talk about, but he had not meant to let the
whisper pass that he was a four-flusher. His natural recourse was to
further libations. These made for a sullen, ingrowing rage as the day
grew older.
More than one well-meaning citizen carried to Roy the superfluous
warning that Meldrum was in town and drinking hard. The young man
thanked them quietly without comment. His reticence gave the
impression of strength.
But Beaudry felt far from easy in mind. A good deal of water had
flowed under the Big Creek bridge since the time when he had looked
under the bed at nights for burglars. He had schooled himself not to
yield to the impulses of his rabbit heart, but the unexpected clatter
of hoofs still set his pulses a-flutter. Why had fate snatched so
gentle a youth from his law desk and flung him into such turbid waters
to sink or swim? All he had asked was peace--friends, books, a quiet
life. By some ironic quirk be found himself in scenes of battle and
turmoil. As the son of John Beaudry he was expected to show an
unflawed nerve, whereas his eager desire was to run away and hide.
He resisted the first panicky incitement to fly back to the Lazy Double
D, and went doggedly about the business that had brought him to Battle
Butte. Roy had come to meet a cattle-buyer from Denver and the man had
wired that he would be in on the next train. Meanwhile Beaudry had to
see the blacksmith, the feed-store manager, the station agent, and
several others.
This kept him so busy that he reached the Station only just in time to
meet the incoming train. He introduced himself to the buyer, captured
his suitcase, and turned to lead the way to the rig.
Meldrum lurched forward to intercept him. "Shus' a moment."
Roy went white. He knew the crisis was upon him. The right hand of
the hillman was hidden under the breast of his coat. Even the
cattle-buyer from Denver knew what was in that hand and edged toward
the train. For this ruffian was plainly working himself into a rage
sufficient to launch murder.
"Yore father railroaded me to the penitentiary--cooked up testimony
against me. You bust me with a club when I wasn't looking. Here's
where I git even. See?"
The imminence of tragedy had swept the space about them empty of
people. Roy knew with a sinking heart that it was between him and the
hillman to settle this alone. He had been caught with the suitcase in
his right hand, so that he was practically trapped unarmed. Before he
could draw his revolver, Meldrum would be pumping lead.
Two months ago under similar circumstances terror had paralyzed Roy's
thinking power. Now his brain functioned in spite of his fear. He was
shaken to the center of his being, but he was not in panic.
Immediately he set himself to play the poor cards he found in his hand.
"Liar!" Beaudry heard a chill voice say and knew it was his own.
"Liar on both counts! My father sent you up because you were a thief.
I beat your head off because you are a bully. Listen!" Roy shot the
last word out in crescendo to forestall the result of a convulsive
movement of the hand beneath his enemy's coat. "_Listen, if you want
to live the day out_, you yellow coyote!"
Beaudry had scored his first point--to gain time for his argument to
get home to the sodden brain. Dave Dingwell had told him that most men
were afraid of something, though some hid it better than others; and he
had added that Dan Meldrum had the murderer's dread lest vengeance
overtake him unexpectedly. Roy knew now that his partner had spoken
the true word. At that last stinging sentence, alarm had jumped to the
blear eyes of the former convict.
"Whadjamean?" demanded Meldrum thickly, the menace of horrible things
in his voice.
"Mean? Why, this. You came here to kill me, but you haven't the nerve
to do it. You've reached the end of your rope, Dan Meldrum. You're a
killer, but you'll never kill again. Murder me, and the law would hang
you high as Haman--_if it ever got a chance_."
The provisional clause came out with a little pause between each word
to stress the meaning. The drunken man caught at it to spur his rage.
"Hmp! Mean you're man enough to beat the law to it?"
Beaudry managed to get out a derisive laugh. "Oh, no! Not when I have
a suitcase in my right hand and you have the drop on me. I can't help
myself--_and twenty men see it_."
"Think they'll help you?" Meldrum swept his hand toward the frightened
loungers and railroad officials. His revolver was out in the open now.
He let its barrel waver in a semi-circle of defiance.
"No. They won't help me, but they'll hang you. There's no hole where
you can hide that they won't find you. Before night you'll be swinging
underneath the big live-oak on the plaza. That's a prophecy for you to
swallow, you four-flushing bully."
It went home like an arrow. The furtive eyes of the killer slid
sideways to question this public which had scattered so promptly to
save itself. Would the mob turn on him later and destroy him?
Young Beaudry's voice flowed on. "Even if you reached the hills, you
would be doomed. Tighe can't save you--and he wouldn't try.
Rutherford would wash his hands of you. They'll drag you back from
your hole."
The prediction rang a bell in Meldrum's craven soul. Again he sought
reassurance from those about him and found none. In their place he
knew that he would revenge himself for present humiliation by cruelty
later. He was checkmated.
It was an odd psychological effect of Beaudry's hollow defiance that
confidence flowed in upon him as that of Meldrum ebbed. The chill
drench of fear had lifted from his heart. It came to him that his
enemy lacked the courage to kill. Safety lay in acting upon this
assumption.
He raised his left hand and brushed the barrel of the revolver aside
contemptuously, then turned and walked along the platform to the
building. At the door he stopped, to lean faintly against the jamb,
still without turning. Meldrum might shoot at any moment. It depended
on how drunk he was, how clearly he could vision the future, how
greatly his prophecy had impressed him. Cold chills ran up and down
the spinal column of the young cattleman. His senses were reeling.
To cover his weakness Roy drew tobacco from his coat-pocket and rolled
a cigarette with trembling fingers. He flashed a match. A moment
later an insolent smoke wreath rose into the air and floated back
toward Meldrum. Roy passed through the waiting-room to the street
beyond.
Young Beaudry knew that the cigarette episode had been the weak bluff
of one whose strength had suddenly deserted him. He had snatched at it
to cover his weakness. But to the score or more who saw that spiral of
smoke dissolving jauntily into air, no such thought was possible. The
filmy wreath represented the acme of dare-devil recklessness, the final
proof of gameness in John Beaudry's son. He had turned his back on a
drunken killer crazy for revenge and mocked the fellow at the risk of
his life.
Presently Roy and the cattle-buyer were bowling down the street behind
Dingwell's fast young four-year-olds. The Denver man did not know that
his host was as weak from the reaction of the strain as a child
stricken with fear.