PLUCKING A PIGEON
Steve slept almost around the clock. He lost breakfast, but was there
promptly for luncheon with the appetite of a harvest hand. During the
two days' drive he had missed the good home cooking of Mrs. Seymour and
he intended to make up for it.
Orman and Shorty had reached town some time about daylight and had
spread the story of the holdup, so that the dining-room was humming with
excitement. A dozen questions were flung at Steve before he had well
taken his seat. He threw up his hands in surrender.
Before he had finished telling his edited story, Shorty drifted in and
divided the interest. The little extra promptly took the stage away from
Yeager, whereupon Daisy Ellington absorbed the attention of Steve. She
asked a sharp question or two which he answered blandly. It was not his
intention to communicate any suspicions he happened to have.
They were waiting for the dessert. Daisy put her lean, pretty elbows on
the table and her chin in her little doubled fists. A provocative
audacity was in the tilted smile she flashed at him.
"Well?"
"Well, what?"
"Breeze on, Steve. You're doin' fine. Next scene."
"That's all."
"Say, do I look like I was born yesterday? See any green in my eye,
Cactus Center?"
He grinned. "You're sure wise, compadre. But the rest is mostly
suspicions."
"I'm listening," she nodded.
"You're such a Sherlock Holmes I'd hate to go out with the boys if I was
married to you."
"I'm your friend and wouldn't wish any such bad luck on you," she
countered gayly. Then, in a lower voice, with a sudden gravity: "Is it
Harrison, Steve?"
Amazement sparkled for a moment in his eyes. "With your imagination,
Daisy,--" he was beginning when she cut him short.
"You gotta tell me what's on your chest, you transparent kid."
He knew she could keep a secret like a well. Looking round guardedly,
his voice fell to a whisper. "If I'd reached town ten minutes earlier
I'd 'a' beat him in and showed him up. Threewit won't hear to it, of
course, but the man that held me up was Chad Harrison. Take it or leave
it. Just the same it's a fact."
Daisy nodded rapidly several times. "I take it, Steve. Always did know
there was something shady about the big stiff. And I'll tell you
something else you don't know. It's through that wild young colt brother
of hers that he's got a strangle hold on Ruth."
Yeager set his lips to a noiseless whistle. "You mean--?"
She flung his question aside with an impatient wave of her hand. "I
can't tell you what I mean. I've got no evidence. But it's true. She's
ridiculously fond of that young scamp Phil. Somehow--in some
way--Harrison has got the whip hand over him."
His eyes fell on the slender girl waiting on the table at the other end
of the room. Her look met his. It almost seemed as if she knew they had
been talking about her, for the milky cheek took on a shell-pink tinge.
The long lashes fluttered down and she busied herself at once about her
work.
"If she was my sister--"
Daisy did not need a completed sentence to understand his meaning. "Can
you beat it?" she asked with a shrug. "Any gink that knows enough to
come in out of the rain could tell that Chad Harrison is a bad egg. Give
him the once over and you can see that."
After Ruth had arranged the tables for dinner she stole out to the porch
for a breath of fresh air. Already the approach of an Arizona summer was
beginning to make itself felt during the middle of the day. Yeager sat
beneath the wild cucumber vines pleating a horsehair hatband for Daisy
Ellington.
Ruth liked this brown, lithe cowpuncher, all sinew and bone and muscle.
His smile was so warm and friendly, his manner so boyish and yet so
competent. To look into his kind, steady eyes was to know that he could
be trusted.
She moved in his direction shyly, a touch of pink blooming in her soft
cheeks. Ruth was charmingly unsure of herself. It was always easy to
disturb her composure. Even a casual encounter with the slim,
brown-faced range-rider was an adventure for her. Now her pansy eyes
deepened in color with excitement, with the tremulous fear of what she
was to learn.
"Mr. Yeager, I--wanted to ask you about--about the holdup."
"What about it, Miss Ruth?"
"Did you--know any of them?"
"How could I? They were masked." His eyes had taken on a film of
wariness that blotted out for the moment their kindness.
"I didn't know--I thought, perhaps,--" She tried a new start. "Did you
say that three of them were Mexicans?"
"Two of them," he corrected.
There was the least quiver of her lip. "The others were--both big men,
didn't you say?"
"I didn't say."
A footstep sounded on the crisp gravel walk. Steve looked up, in time to
catch the flash of warning menace Harrison sent toward the girl.
"Mr. Yeager has been having a pipe-dream, Ruth. Don't wake him up,"
jeered the heavy.
Ruth fled unobtrusively and left the men alone.
"Hear you're going on a vacation," said Harrison gruffly.
"You've heard correct." Yeager pleated his hatband with steady fingers.
His voice was even and placid.
Harrison looked him over with indolent insolence. "Some folks find this
climate don't agree with them. Some folks find it better to drift out,
casual-like, y' understand?"
"Yes?"
"I'm tellin' it to you straight."
"That you're going to leave? The Lunar Company will miss you," suggested
the range-rider politely.
"Think you're darned clever, don't you? It's you that's leaving the
company, Mr. Yeager."
"For a week."
"For good."
"Hadn't heard of it. News to me," answered Steve lightly.
"I'm givin' you the tip. See?"
"Oncet I knew a fellow who lived to be 'most ninety minding his own
business," observed the cowpuncher to the world in general as he held up
and examined his work.
"It ain't considered safe to get gay with me. I'm liable to lam your
head off," threatened the big man sullenly.
"And then again you're liable not to. I'm not freightin' with your
outfit, Mr. Harrison. Kindly lay off of me and you'll find we get along
fine."
Steve rose and passed on his way to the street. Harrison was in two
minds whether to force an issue again with him, but something in the
contour of that close-gripped jaw, in the gleam of the steady eyes, was
more potent than the dull rage surging in him. He let the opportunity
pass.
Four Bits carried Yeager away from Los Robles at a road gait. Horse and
rider were taking the border trail. It led them through a desolate
country of desert where the flat-leafed prickly pear and the occasional
pudgy creosote were the chief forms of vegetable life. Now and again a
swift might be seen basking on a rock or a Gila monster motionless on
the hillside. The ominous buzz of a rattler more than once made the pony
sidestep. Mesa and flat and wash succeeded each other monotonously.
It was after sunset when they drew up at a feed corral in Arixico. Steve
looked after his horse and sauntered down the little adobe street to a
Chinese restaurant which ostentatiously announced itself as the "New
York Cafe." This side of the business street was in the territory of
Uncle Sam, the other half floated the Mexican flag. After he had eaten,
the young man drifted across to one of the gambling-houses that invited
the patronage of Americans and natives alike.
He found within the heterogeneous gathering usually to be observed in
such a place. Vaqueros brushed shoulders with Chinese laundrymen,
cowpunchers with soldiers, peons with cattlemen from Arizona and Texas.
Here were miners and soldiers of fortune and plain tramps. More than one
of the shining-eyed gamblers had a price upon his head. Several were
outlaws. A score or more had taken part in the rapine and the pillage of
the guerrilla warfare that has of late years been the curse of the
country. It would have been hard in a day's travel to find an assembly
where human life was held at less value.
Among these lawless, turbulent siftings of the continent Yeager was
very much at home. He merged inconspicuously into the picture, a quiet,
brown-faced man with cool, alert eyes. Nobody paid the least attention
to him. He might be a horse-thief or an honest cowpuncher. It was a
matter of supreme indifference to those present. Experience in that
outdoor frontier school which always keeps open session had taught them
that a man lived longer here when he minded his own business.
Steve stood close to the bar. A prospector leaned against it and talked
to an acquaintance while they drank their beer.
"This here's how I figure it," he was saying. "I had a little dough when
I begun digging gopher holes in these here hills. Not much--say fifteen
hundred, mebbe. I sure ain't got it now. Lost it in a hole in the
ground. Well; I reckon I'll go on looking for it where I lost it."
Casually Yeager sauntered over to the roulette table. A fat man in duck
trousers--he was the agent for a firm of rifle manufacturers, Steve
learned later--was bucking the wheel hard. In front of him lay a pile of
gold-pieces and several stacks of chips. He was very red in the face
from excitement and cocktails. The range-rider put a half-dollar on the
red and won. He let it ride, won again, and shifted the chips to the
black. Once more the goddess of luck favored him. He divided his pile.
Half went on the red, the rest on the first number his eye caught. It
happened to be seventeen. The croupier spun the wheel again. The ball
whirled round, dipped down once or twice, and plumped into the
compartment numbered seventeen.
"Enough's a-plenty. Here's where I cash in," announced Steve cheerfully.
He stuffed the bills carelessly into his pocket and strolled over to the
faro table. Yeager had come on business, not for pleasure. He intended
to play just enough to give a colorable reason for his presence.
His roving eye settled upon the poker table at the rear of the room.
Five men were playing. Two were Mexicans, three white. Two of the
Americans were dismissed from Steve's mind with a casual glance. They
were negligible factors. The third had his back to the observer, but the
figure had a slender, boyish trimness that spoke of youth. The Mexican
sitting to his right was a square-built fellow of forty with a scar on
the cheek running from mouth to ear. There was on his face a certain
ugliness of expression, a furtive cruelty. That there was an
understanding between him and the man opposite soon became apparent to
Yeager. They cross-raised the boy, working together to mulct him of the
pile of chips in front of him.
It was the Mexican who sat with his back to the wall that drew and held
the cowpuncher's eye. He too was slender, not much past thirty, but with
the youth long since stamped out of his face. Sleek and black, a
dominant personality, he sat there warily as a rattlesnake, dark eyes
gleaming from a masked, smiling countenance.
The boy was the pigeon, and it was the Mexicans that were plucking him.
So much Steve learned within two minutes. He had cut his eye teeth at
poker, and he saw at a glance that this was no game for a youngster.
Quietly he moved a step or two closer along the wall. He observed the
play without appearing to do so.
The tension of the game was relieved with casual conversation. The two
negligibles, playing about even, contributed mostly to it. The bulky
Mexican added his quota. The boy, a heavy loser, concealed his feelings
under the bravado expected of a good sport.
They were playing jack pots with a stripped deck, the joker going as a
fifth ace or to fill a straight or a flush. Several hands were dealt
without any stayers. The slender Mexican was dealing when the sensation
of the game was handed out.
One of the negligibles opened the pot. The bulky Mexican stayed.
In the slow, easy drawl of the Southwest the boy spoke. "Me, I reckon
I'll have to tilt it. Got to protect your hand from these wolves, Dave."
He pushed in a stack of blue chips.
The third American did not stay. It was now up to the dealer--his name,
it appeared, was Ramon Culvera. After a moment's hesitation he measured
a stack of blues by those the boy had put in the pot and added to it
another pile of yellows. With a grunt of protest the older Mexican
stayed. The man who had opened the pot dropped out.
"Enough's a-plenty. Me, I got no business trailing along with you
hyenas," he explained.
"Different here," commented the boy. "My cards look good enough for
another hike."
Culvera examined his hand carefully, met the raise, and picked up the
deck.
The Mexican with the scar interposed. "But one moment, señor. Let us
make it a good pot." He pushed in all the chips in front of him.
Yeager, standing against the wall, caught the swift flash of surprise in
the eyes of the boy. He counted the chips of the Mexican and then his
own. These he added to the small fortune in the center of the table.
"Call it. I'm fifty-three shy," he said in an even voice.
The range-rider knew without being told that this hand had been dealt
from a cold deck for the express purpose of cleaning out the boy. From
the tenseness of the lithe body, which had become, as it were, a coiled
spring, he knew that the lad's suspicions were stirring to life.
The greedy little eyes of Culvera fastened on the boy. He made his first
mistake. "How much you play back, Pheelip?"
The youngster answered. "I said a hundred bucks. I've got fifty-three in
the pot now. That leaves forty-seven."
Culvera's raise was forty-seven dollars. The big Mexican shrugged. "Too
steep for Jesus Mendoza." He threw his cards into the discard.
The boy who had been called Philip laid his cards face down on the table
in front of him.
"Call it," he announced hoarsely. His eyes were fastened steadily on the
nimble brown fingers of the dealer.
"Cards?" asked Culvera with an indolent lift of his eyebrows.
Philip hesitated. He had the nine, ten, and jack of clubs, the queen of
hearts, and the joker. This counted as a king-high straight. Steve,
standing back and to one side of him, guessed the boy's dilemma. Should
he stand pat on his straight or discard the heart and draw to his
straight flush? Culvera's play had shown great strength and would
probably beat the pat hand. The lad took a chance and called for one
card.
Culvera drew two. He left them lying on the table while he discarded
leisurely.
"You're all in, Pheelip. It's a showdown. What you got?"
Philip had drawn the six of clubs. He spread his hand with a sweeping
gesture. "All blue."
The Mexican shrugged. "Beats me unless I helped." He showed three
eights, then faced the two cards he had drawn. The first was a king of
diamonds, the second the fourth eight.
"Hard luck, Pheelip," he said, and all his teeth flashed in a friendly
smile as he opened both arms to rake in the chips.
Philip sat silent, his mind seething with suspicions. Culvera had played
his hand very strangely, unless--unless he had known that a fourth eight
was waiting for him in the deck. The boy looked up, in time to catch a
vanishing smile on the face of Mendoza.
"Just a moment, Ramon," he called sharply, covering the chips with his
hands. "That play--it don't look good to me. A man don't play threes so
strong as that."
Culvera still smiled blandly, though his eyes were very watchful. "Me, I
have what you call a hunch, Pheelip."
Yeager took two steps forward. "You bet he did. Cold deck, kid. The
other one is in his right-hand coat pocket."
The suavity went out of Culvera's face as a light does from a blown
candle. Snarling, he rose from his seat and faced the cowpuncher.
"Liar! Cabrone!" he hissed, reaching for his gun.
Already the revolver of Mendoza was flashing in the air.
Like a streak Steve's arm swept up. Twice his revolver sounded. There
was a crash of breaking glass from the incandescent lights. Yeager flung
himself against the table and drove it against Culvera who reeled back
against the wall and dropped his weapon. The sound of more shots, of men
dodging their way to safety, of a sharp cry followed by groans, had
trodden so swiftly on the heels of the range-rider's action that when he
turned a moment later he saw in the semi-darkness a smoke-filled room in
the confusion of chaotic movement.
Philip stood close to him, a smoking .38 in his hand, while Mendoza,
clutching at his chair for support, sank slowly to the ground.
Close to the boy's ear spoke Steve. "Beat it. Make your getaway through
that door. Meet me at Johanson's corral."
The boy plunged through the doorway into the darkness outside. Toward
the exit after him backed the cowpuncher. Already scattered shots were
being flung in his direction, but the dim light served him well. The
last thing he saw before he vanished through the door was Culvera
groping for his weapon.