THE RED HAND
Darkness came, bringing the day’s work to an end. The commotion on
the wool platform ceased. Down the tracks from the direction of the
shipping pens came the Diamond-Bar boys. They had just put ten hours
of hard work behind them, but one would not have guessed it from
their present vociferousness.
Johnny Allerdyce, or rather Johnny Dice—to give him what he called
his “_nom devoid_”—led the column headed for the Palace. He was
walking the ties, taking three of them at a step. Behind him some
fifteen of his pals were strung out at varying intervals.
Johnny’s legs were pronouncedly bowed from his life in a saddle, and
this long-stepping walk, or half run, only accentuated his
deformity. Big hat flapping in the wind, the tails of his
neckerchief flattening out behind him, made him seem grotesque. But
there was action in every line of him, untouched vitality. Freckled
face, untamed hair of flaming hue—they were fit companions for his
dancing, mischievous eyes.
“Hi, hi, you gamblin’ fool,” some one in back of him yelled. “I hope
you stub your toe and break yore damned haid. You let me know how
the town is when you git there!”
“You tell him, cowboy!” Johnny flung over his shoulder. “I crave
food and pleasure!”
Laughter of marked contempt greeted this retort. Somebody cried:
“Liar!” Johnny was strictly a night-blooming plant; this talk of
food was just talk.
At the hotel, Vin was going about lighting the lamps. No one ever
locked a door. In turn, he left a light in Crosbie Traynor’s room.
The sleeper had not moved. Vin surveyed him calmly, wondering if he
had ever seen the man before. Without his hat, Traynor seemed older.
Vincenzo shrugged his shoulders as he turned away. The man was a
total stranger to him. And still this mysterious _señor_ aroused the
Basque’s curiosity.
Vin had been on the desert too long not to have learned the wisdom
of keeping his own counsel; but he took much pleasure from building
romantic adventures around his guests. Some _señors_ there had been
who were in great haste. He had sped them on their way. But they
were not forgotten.
This man was in no seeming haste, but something about him sent
delicious little chills racing up and down Vin’s spine. He would
have spent more time on the matter had not Scanlon called to him at
the moment. Johnny and the other Diamond-Bar warriors had arrived.
In this democratic inn the proprietors—or to be exact, one of
them—served the meals. His name was not Scanlon, that individual
confining his efforts to the well-known cash register and the
dealing of much poker.
Jackson Kent, the big boss of the Diamond-Bar, came in before supper
was over. He was a hawk-faced old man, silent as a rule. Hobe
Ferris, his foreman, was with him. Pushing back the knife and fork
set before him, the old man began stacking five, ten, and twenty
dollar gold pieces into neat little piles. This was pay night.
Some of the boys had not drawn a cent in three months. Hobe called
off their names and the amounts due, and old man Kent counted it out
to them as they filed past. The owner of the Diamond-Bar caressed
his little stacks of gold pieces with his fingers as the piles grew
smaller and smaller. He caught Scanlon eyeing him.
“Might jest as well be payin’ him,” he muttered to Hobe, shaking his
head regretfully. “What a waste of good money this is,” he added.
“Won’t a one of ’em have a cent left time they git back to the
ranch.”
“You ain’t includin’ Johnny in that remark, be you?” Hobe demanded.
“Ain’t one of the boys but owes him plenty cash right now. He’ll git
more of their jack tonight.”
“Huh!” the old man grunted. “Huh!” His contempt for Johnny’s genius
was of long standing. “Somebody’ll git him jest like he gits these
fools. Gamblin’s made a smart aleck out of him. Always figurin’ how
things is goin’ to break; talkin’ his head off about the laws of
chance. Jest spoiled a good hand, that’s all gamblin’s done to
Johnny Dice. His mind ain’t on cattle no more. Damn it, Hobe, half
the time I believe he don’t know whether he’s runnin’ sheep or
steers.”
Hobe was a good foreman, so he wisely agreed with the old man. He
had been doing this for ten years; a time in which the Diamond-Bar
had prospered.
“Don’t let ’em git too drunk, Hobe,” Kent cautioned as he began his
supper. “We got work to do tomorrow mornin’. The Lawrence boys will
be here with their stuff by noon. We’ve got to git out of the way.”
Hobe nodded as he strolled to the bar. “We’ll be in the clear, I
reckon,” he drawled. “Hain’t had no trouble yit.”
Hobe Ferris had long since forgotten the knack of smiling, but he
almost remembered it as he thought of the old man’s concern for his
men.
“Old age certainly uses y’u up, don’t it?” he mused. “Yes, sir!
Think of him worryin’ thataway. If this keeps up, Miss Molly’ll be
bossin’ the brand ’fore long.”
Ferris looked about for Johnny, but he and his pal, Tony Madeiras,
had gone down the street. There were other places of chance in
Standing Rock, and wise Johnny was off to a picking.
Stuffy Tyler, who had raced through his supper and who had been busy
ever since refreshing himself at the bar, greeted his foreman with a
hearty smack on the back.
“Y’u again?” Hobe queried.
“Little me, Hobe.”
And then, without further ado, he roared that old range song, the
first two lines of which run:
“Oh, no, Jenny!
What would yore father say?”
Hobe knew what father said, and he was not minded to listen to his
complaint this night. A wooden awning stretched across the walk in
front of the hotel. There, the foreman found refuge from Stuffy’s
bawling.
The storm clouds which had been gathering to the north had circled
round to the west; but they were nearer now. Far away, a mile or
more, the steel rails of the Espee main line began to dance in the
glow of a powerful headlight. A second later the light itself
appeared. It was the freight that would roll away with those loaded
cars of wool and those others filled with Diamond-Bar’s steers.
For a brief moment the light seemed to pause there on the brink of
the wide valley. Another second and it was dashing down upon
Standing Rock.
Its coming was dramatic, and it held Hobe’s attention. Suddenly the
speeding circle of light was dimmed. It was rain. Not a drop had
fallen, as yet, where he sat. But there, a quarter of a mile away,
was the coming storm, racing the train into town.
The engineer blew for the station before the rain began to spatter
down in the dry dust of the street in front of the hotel. A few
seconds later the big mogul engine, panting and puffing, came to a
grinding stop fifteen feet from where Ferris sat.
Inside the hotel things were humming. Scanlon was playing cards; Yin
was hammering a staccato tune on the cash register. Two partners
could hardly have been more profitably engaged.
A man skulking in the shadows across the tracks wondered at the big
fellow sitting there on the porch, getting wet beyond a doubt,
refraining from joining the sport of his pals. He had recognized the
big man as Ferris. For the second time he wondered if the foreman by
any chance might be watching him.
The storm became heavier. The high wind in back of it began to send
the rain with such force that the wooden awning no longer offered
any protection. Reluctantly, Hobe arose and went inside.
The man, who had been waiting for him to go in, speedily crossed the
tracks and made for the wool platform in back of the hotel. For a
person of his age, he was spry. Picking up a wool hook, he
noiselessly climbed over the tops of the loaded freighters until he
was abreast one of the freight cars.
With remarkable quickness he crawled to the top of it. Flat on his
stomach he lay, peering into the darkness, trying to make certain
that his movements were unwatched. The rain beat into his face so
violently that he had to raise his hand to protect his eyes.
His roving glance found nothing to disturb him. In the inky
blackness the warehouse beside the platform bulked dark and
forbidding. From its protecting shadows to where he lay now his path
had not crossed any chance ray of light.
Turning on his side, he surveyed the hotel. Curtains flapped in the
second story windows; flickering yellow light streamed through them.
The wind eddied every now and then, bidding fair to extinguish the
lamps Vin had lighted; but, with the persistency of oil wicks, they
fluttered on.
A thankful curse escaped the man as he observed the open windows. He
wondered why Vin had not been up to close them. He knew the Basque’s
habits.
Far down the track at the shipping pens the train crew was switching
the loaded cars. Ten minutes and they would be back here, moving
this very car on which he lay. Ten minutes—it was enough. He had but
to walk these five loaded wool cars to sweep the interior of the
Palace Hotel. If the man he sought slept within—well, it wouldn’t
take ten minutes to finish this little errand.
From the edge of the big freight cars he could reach out and touch
the wall of the hotel. Grasping the steel hook with which he had
provided himself, he began to move toward the lighted windows.
Seconds slipped by as he came abreast the first window before he
satisfied himself that the room was unoccupied. On hands and knees,
drawing himself forward noiselessly, he crept on. An even longer
time did he pause before passing the second window. He began to
wonder if the man he sought had gone downstairs. He knew he had been
in his room twenty minutes ago. Rather, he had believed as much,
inasmuch as the man had not been in the bar.
Subconsciously he became aware of the approaching engine. It drove
him forward. With half the caution he had used in surveying the
other rooms, he stared into the third one. Something stuck in his
throat as he beheld Crosbie Traynor sound asleep on the narrow bed,
his head within a foot of the window.
Black hatred leaped in the man’s soul as he stared at the sleeping
Traynor. This was going to be almost too easy! There had been
moments in his approach to this spot in which his determination to
go through with his mission had wavered; his hands had shaken.
That was gone now. He not only wanted to kill, but he found himself
able to restrain his desire—to snuggle it to his heart, to wait for
the propitious second, to do the deed cleverly. It was a revelation
to the man. He had never suspected himself of such metal.
He had drawn his gun, but he put it back. Wisdom was guiding him.
The long steel wool hook became his weapon. Reaching into the room
with it, he picked Traynor’s belt and loaded holster from its perch
on the chair beside the bed. Next he secured the hat the sleeping
man had worn.
The feel of it infuriated him. Savagely he ripped away the band and
the gold charm snapped into it. He threw the hat back into the room.
It would have pleased him to have hurled the little gold snake into
the blackness, but that was the very sort of thing he had told
himself a minute ago he had mastered. So the little charm went into
his pocket.
With the steel hook, he replaced Traynor’s gun belt, minus the gun.
The engine, with its string of cattle cars, bumped into the line of
cars on which he lay as he drew back from depositing the holster.
For a second he wavered, fighting to regain his balance. He could
hear the air shooting through the brakes. This car would be moving
in another moment. A brakeman ran down alongside the train. Thanks
to the rain he had not come across the tops!
Some one shouted, a lantern waved, the train tensed as if to spring
forward. A grinding, tearing sound, the lurching of the big car, and
then the long-drawn, piercing whistle.
It was for this he had waited. Reaching in through the window, he
fired!
Gloating, wholly evil, the murderer’s face gleamed in the streaming
light. The train was moving—taking him away to safety. The sound of
the shot has been lost, dimmed by the noise of the storm and the
piercing blast of the whistle.
He had played it to the last line! Cross Traynor had been erased.
There’d be no coming back this time. He saw him half out of bed, his
head on the floor—a gory relic of what had been a man.
With an easy toss the killer dropped the dead man’s gun to the floor
beside the body. That was the last, final touch! It made the slayer
smile.
“That’s that, I guess. Dead—and by his own gun, too! Cross, you’ll
never come back now.”
The train was gathering speed. The man flattened himself out. At the
shipping pens the freight moved upon the main track. This slowing
down was the awaited moment. Unseen, the man who had killed so
easily slipped to the ground. The wool hook which had served him so
well was tossed into the sage. Then, with sure step, he moved away
in the night. This affair was a thing of the past. Who was there to
question him?