DOUBLE CROOKEDNESS
Comanche was drying up like a leaky pail. There remained only the dregs
of the thronging thousands who had chopped its streets to dust beneath
their heels; and they were worked out, panned down to scant profit, and
growing leaner picking every day.
The ginger was gone out of the barker's spiel; the forced gaiety was
dying out of the loud levees where the abandoned of the earth held their
nightly carousals. Comanche was in the lethargy of dissolution; its
tents were in the shadow of the approaching end.
Most of the shows had gone, leaving great gaps in the tented streets
where they had stood, their débris behind them, and many of the saloons
were packing their furnishings to follow. It had been a seasonable
reaping; quick work, and plenty of it while it lasted; and they were
departing with the cream of it in their pouches. What remained ran in a
stream too thin to divide, so the big ones were off, leaving the little
fellows to lick up the trickle.
A few gambling-joints were doing business still, for men will gamble
when they will neither eat nor drink. Hun Shanklin had set up a tent of
his own, the big one in which he had made his stand at the beginning
having been taken down. To make sure of police protection, he had
established himself on Main Street, next door to headquarters.
Ten-Gallon, the chief, now constituted the entire force, all his special
officers having been dropped to save expense to the municipality, since
the population had begun to leak away so rapidly and the gamblers' trust
had been dissolved.
The chief slept until the middle of each afternoon. Then he went on duty
in Hun Shanklin's tent, where he usually remained the rest of the day,
his chair tilted back against the pole at the front end. It was
generally understood that he had a large interest in the game, which was
the same old one of twenty-seven.
On the side there was an army-game outfit at which a pimple-faced young
man presided, small whiskers growing between his humors where they had
escaped the razor, like the vegetation of that harsh land in the low
places, out of the destroying edge of the wind. For army-game was held
so innocuous in Comanche that even a cook might run it.
It was the third day after the drawing, and the middle of the afternoon.
That short-time had seen these many changes in Comanche, and every hour
was witnessing more. Mrs. Reed and her party had gone that morning in
the wagon sent for them from the Governor's ranch. The Hotel Metropole,
now almost entirely without guests for its many tents and cots, was
being taken down.
The red-nosed proprietor was loading cots into a wagon, his large wife,
in a striped kimono with red ruffles at the sleeves and a large V of
bare bosom showing, standing in the door of the office-tent directing
his labors in a voice which suggested a mustache and knee-boots. A
dangling strand of her greasy black hair swung in the wind across her
cheek, at times lodging in the curve of it and obscuring her eye. As the
lady's hands were both employed, one in holding up the train of her
florescent garb, the other in supporting her weight against the
tent-pole, she had no free fingers to tuck the blowing wisp in place.
So, when it lodged she blew it out of the way, slewing her mouth around
to do so, and shutting one eye as if taking aim.
All these employments left her no time for the man who had approached
within a few feet of her and stood with an inquiring poise as if asking
permission to speak. She went on with her directing, and skirt-holding,
and leaning against the tent-pole, and blowing, without giving him a
full look, although she had taken his appraisement with the corner of
her eye.
The man was not of an appearance to inspire the hope of gain in the
bosom of the hostess. His band-less slouch-hat flapped down over his
forehead and face, partly hiding a bandage, the sanguine dye of which
told what it concealed. A black beard of some days' growth, the dust of
the range caught in it, covered his chin and jowls; and a greasy khaki
coat, such as sheep-herders wear, threatened to split upon his wide
shoulders every time he moved his arms.
His trousers were torn, and streaked with the stain of rain and clay. He
had pinned the rents about his knees together, but he seemed so
insecurely covered that a strong wind might expose him, or a sudden
start burst his seams and scant contrivances to shield his nakedness. He
touched his hat in a moment when he caught the quick eye of the
landlord's wife upon him again, and moved a little nearer.
"Can you tell me, madam," said he respectfully, "what has become of the
party that was camped in the tent around on the other side--four ladies
and several men?"
"We don't lodge either sheep-herders or sheep-shearers unless they take
a bath first," said she, turning from him disdainfully.
"But I am neither a herder nor a shearer," he protested, "although I
may----"
"May be worse," she finished, though perhaps not in the way he
intended.
"Suit yourself about it," he yielded. "I don't want lodging, anyhow."
The landlord came staggering in with an armload of cheap bed-covers and
threw them down where his dragoon of a wife directed with imperious
gesture.
"Just look at all that money invested and no return!" she lamented.
The battered stranger appealed to the landlord, repeating his question.
"None of your business," the landlord replied crabbedly. "But they're
gone, if that'll do you any good."
"Did they leave two grips--a suitcase and a doctor's instrument-case--with
you?" inquired the man.
"They left a pie-anno and a foldin'-bed, and a automobile and a
safety-razor!" said the landlord, looking reproachfully at his big wife,
who was motioning him out to his labors again.
"Or any word for Dr. Slavens?" the stranger pursued with well-contained
patience.
"What do you want to know for?" asked the woman, turning upon him
suddenly.
"Because the grips belonged to me, madam; I am Dr. Slavens."
The landlord looked at him sharply.
"Oh, you're the feller that went off on a drunk, ain't you? I remember
you now. Well, they didn't leave no grips here."
"And no word either that I know of," added the woman.
She swept Dr. Slavens with wondering eyes, for she had held a pretty
good opinion of him before his sudden, and evidently heavy, fall.
"But where in this world have you been, man?" she asked.
"Nowhere in _this_ world," he answered. "I've been taking a little
side-trip to hell!"
"You cert'nly look like it, mister!" the woman shuddered, closing the
wide V at her bosom, the flaring garment clutched in her great
ring-encumbered hand.
"Will you tell me, then, about my friends?" he asked.
"Gone; that's all we know," said she.
"Part went on the train, two or three days ago; some went on the stage;
and the rest left in a wagon this morning," said the landlord.
But he couldn't tell who went on the train, the stage, or the wagon. It
was none of his business, he said. They paid their bill; that was all he
knew, or cared.
"May I take a look around the tent to see if they left any written word
for me there?" the doctor requested.
"Go on," said the woman, a little softening of sympathy coming into her
hard eyes.
Dr. Slavens went back to the tent, which stood as it had been left that
morning when the last of the party went away. The canvas under which
their table stood stretched there hospitably still, and the stove with
the morning's ashes cold upon its little hearth. Inside, the cots were
all in place, but there was not a line of writing from any friendly hand
to tell him where they had gone, or where his property had been left.
He walked toward the business part of the town and turned down Main
Street, considering with himself what turn to make next. His head bent
in meditation, he passed along lamely, his hands in the pockets of his
torn trousers, where there was nothing, not even the thickness of a
dime, to cramp his finger-room. Pausing in the aimless way of one who
has no unfinished business ahead of him, he looked around, marking the
changes which had come upon the street during those few days.
The litter of broken camp was on every hand; broken barrels, piles of
boxes, scattered straw, bottles sown as thickly upon the ground as if
someone had planted them there in the expectation of reaping a harvest
of malt liquors and ardent spirits. Here the depression of a few inches
marked where a tent had stood, the earth where the walls had protected
it from the beating feet showing a little higher all around; there in
the soft ground was the mark of a bar, the vapors of spilled liquors
rising sharply in the sun.
Bands of boys and camp-dregs, of whom he might have been one from his
appearance, scraped and dug among the débris, searching for what might
have been dropped from careless or drunken hands and trampled out of
sight. That they were rewarded frequently was attested by the sharp
exclamations and triumphant cries.
Across from where he stood was the site of a large place, its littered
leavings either already worked over or not yet touched. No one scratched
and peered among its trash-heaps or clawed over its reeking straw. Dr.
Slavens took possession of the place, turning the loose earth and heaped
accumulations with his feet as he rooted around like a swine. It must
have been worked over and exhausted, he concluded, for it turned no
glint of silver to the sun. Persisting, he worked across the space which
the tent had covered, and sat down on a box to rest.
The sun was low; the tops of two tall, round tents across the way came
between it and his eyes when he sat down. That was the luck of some
people, thought he, to arrive too late. The pay-dirt was all worked out;
the pasturage was cropped; the dry sage was all gathered and burned.
No matter. A man had but one moment of life to call his own, wrote
Marcus Aurelius. The moment just passed into the score of time's count,
the moment which the hand of the clock trembles over, a hair's breadth
yet to go--these are no man's to claim. One is gone forever; the other
may mark the passing of his soul. Only this moment, this throb of the
heart, this half-drawn breath, is a living man's to claim. The beggar
has it; the monarch can command no more. Poor as he was, Dr. Slavens
thought, smiling as he worked his foot, into the trampled dust, he was
as rich in life's allotment as the best.
The sole of his cut and broken shoe struck some little thing which
resisted, then turned up white beneath his eye. Broken porcelain, or
bone fragment, it appeared. He would have pushed it aside with his toe;
but just then it turned, showing the marking of a die.
Here was a whimsical turn of circumstance, thought he. An outcast die
for a broken man, recalling by its presence the high games of chance
which both of them had played in their day and lost, perhaps. It was a
little, round-cornered die, its spots marked deep and plain. As it lay
in his hand it brought reminiscences of Hun Shanklin, for it was of his
pattern of dice, and his size, convenient for hiding between the fingers
of his deceptive hand.
Dr. Slavens rolled it on the box beside him. It seemed a true and honest
die, for it came up now an ace, now trey; now six, now deuce. He rolled
it, rolled it, thinking of Hun Shanklin and Hun's long, loose-skinned
hand.
For a place of wiles, such as Comanche had been and doubtless was still,
it was a very honest little die, indeed. What use would anybody have for
it there? he wondered. The memory of what he had seen dice do there
moved him to smile. Then the recollection of what had stood on that spot
came to him; the big tent, with the living pictures and variety show,
and Hun Shanklin's crescent table over against the wall.
That must have been the very spot of its location, with the divided wall
of the tent back of him, through which he had disappeared on the night
that Walker lost his money and Shanklin dropped his dice. Of course.
That was the explanation. The little cube in Slavens' palm was one of
Shanklin's honest dice, with which he tolled on the suckers. He had lost
one of them in his precipitate retreat.
Dr. Slavens put the cube in his pocket and got up, turning the débris of
the camp again with his foot, watching for the gleam of silver. As he
worked, a tubby man with whiskers turned out of the thin stream of
traffic which passed through the street and sat on one of the boxes
near at hand. He sat there wiping his face, which was as red and
sweat-drenched as if he had just finished a race, holding his hat in
his hand, exclaiming and talking to himself.
He was so self-centered in his overflowing indignation that he did not
notice the man kicking among the rubbish just a few feet away. Presently
the little man drew out a roll of money and counted it on his knee, to
look up when he had finished, and shake his fist at the tent which stood
shoulder-to-shoulder by the police station. The gesture was accompanied
by maledictions upon crooks and robbers, and the force of his
expressions made necessary the use of the handkerchief again. This the
man took from his hat, which he held in his hand ready to receive it
again like a dish, and scrubbed his fiery face, set over with fiery
whiskers and adorned with a fiery nose. When he had cooled himself a bit
he sat watching the doctor at his labor, lifting his eyebrows every time
he blinked.
"Lost something?" he asked.
"Yes," replied the doctor, kicking away, not even looking at his
questioner.
"Well, if you dropped it out of your hand or through a hole in your
pocket you're lucky!" said the little man, shaking his fist at the tent
where his wrath appeared to center. "This place is full of crooks.
They'll rob you when you're asleep and they'll skin you when you're
awake, with both eyes open."
The doctor had nothing to add to this, and no comment to append. The man
on the box put on his hat, with a corner of handkerchief dangling from
it over his ear.
"You live here?" he inquired.
"Yes; right now I do," the doctor replied.
"Well, do you know anything about a long, lean, one-eyed man that runs a
dice-game over there in that tent?"
"I've heard of him," said the doctor.
"Well, he skinned me out of two hundred dollars a little while ago,
blast his gizzard!"
"You're not the first one, and it's not likely that you'll be the last,"
the doctor assured him, drawing a little nearer and studying the victim
from beneath his hanging hat-brim.
"No; maybe not," snapped the other. "But I'll even up with him before I
go away from here."
"Would you be willing to risk ten dollars more on a chance to get it
back?" asked the doctor.
"Show me the man who can tell me how to do it, and watch me," bristled
the victim.
"I know that man, and I know his scheme," said the doctor, "and I've got
one that will beat it."
The whiskered man put his hand into the pocket where the remainder of
his roll was stored, and looked at the battered stranger with a
disfavoring scowl.
"How do I know you ain't another crook?" he asked.
"You don't know, and maybe I am a crook in a small way. I'm in hard luck
right now."
"What's your scheme?"
"That's my capital," the doctor told him. "If I had a few dollars I'd
put it through without splitting with anybody; but I haven't a cent.
I've been kicking this straw and trash around here for the last hour in
the hope of turning up a dime. I'll say this to you: I'll undertake to
recover your two hundred dollars for you if you'll put up ten. If I get
it back, then you are to give me twenty-five of it, and if I win more
I'm to keep all above the two hundred. And you can hold on to your ten
dollars till we stand up to the table, and then you can hold to my coat.
I can't get away with it, but I don't guarantee, you understand, that
I'll win."
The little man was thoughtful a spell. When he looked up there was the
glitter of hope in his sharp scrutiny.
"It'd take a crook to beat that old man's game," said he, "and maybe you
can do it. As long as I can hold on to the money I don't see how I stand
to lose it, and I've got a notion to go you."
"Suit yourself," said the doctor, turning again to his exploration of
the straw.
"Ain't much in that," commented the gambler's victim, watching him with
puzzled face.
No comment from the searching man.
"You're a funny feller, anyhow, and I got a notion to take you up.
Crook, heh?"
"Oh, a sort of a tin-horn," answered the doctor apparently indifferent
about the whole matter.
Slavens was working farther away now, so the man left his place on the
box to draw within the range of confidential conversation.
"If I was to put up the ten, would you be willing to go over there now
and put that scheme of yours in motion?" he asked.
"No; not now. There would be some preliminaries. In the first place,
that old man knows me, although he might not spot me at the first look
in this rig. I'd have to get a pair of goggles to hide my eyes. And then
there would be supper."
"Sure," agreed the little man. "I was going to ask you about that,
anyhow."
"Thank you. The crowd will be thicker in there about ten o'clock
tonight, and he'll have more money on the table. It will be better for
me and for my scheme to wait till about that time. It's a long shot,
partner; I'll tell you that before you take it."
"One in five?" asked the man, looking around cautiously, leaning
forward, whispering.
"Not one in twenty," discounted the doctor. "But if it goes, it goes as
smooth as grease."
The man stood considering it, looking as grave as a Scotch capitalist.
Suddenly he jerked his head.
"I'll take it!" said he.
Over a greasy supper, in a tent away out on the edge of things, they
arranged the details of their plot against Hun Shanklin's sure thing.
What scheme the doctor had in mind he kept to himself, but he told
his co-conspirator how to carry himself, and, with six small bills
and some paper, he made up as handsome a gambler's roll as could have
been met with in all Comanche that night. Out of the middle of its
alluring girth the corner of a five-dollar note showed, and around the
outside Slavens bound a strip of the red handkerchief upon which the
little man had mopped his sweating brow. It looked bungling enough for
any sheep-herder's hoard, and fat enough to tempt old Hun Shanklin to
lead its possessor on.
After he had arranged it, the doctor pushed it across to his admiring
companion.
"No," said the little man, shaking his head; "you keep it. You may be a
crook, but I'll trust you with it. Anyhow, if you are a crook, I'm one
too, I reckon."
"Both of us, then, for tonight," said the doctor, hooking the smoked
goggles behind his ears.