BUSINESS, NOT COMPANY
Saul Chadron was at breakfast next morning when Maggie the cook
appeared in the dining-room and announced a visitor for the señor
boss. Maggie's eyes were bulging, and she did a great deal of
pantomime with her shapely shoulders to express her combined fright,
disgust, and indignation.
Chadron looked up from his ham and eggs, with a considerable portion
of the eggs on the blade of his knife, handle-down in one fist, his
fork standing like a lightning rod in the other, and asked her who the
man was and what he wanted at that hour of the day. Chadron was eating
by lamplight, and alone, according to his thrifty custom of slipping
up on the day before it was awake, as if in the hope of surprising it
at a vast disadvantage to itself, after his way of handling men and
things.
"_Es un extranjero_," replied Maggie, forgetting her English in her
excitement.
"Talk white man, you old sow!" Chadron growled.
"He ees a es-trenger, I do not knowed to heem."
"Tell him to go to the barn and wait, I'll be out there in a minute."
"He will not a-goed. I told to heem--whee!" Maggie clamped her hands
to her back as if somebody had caught her in a ticklish spot, as she
squealed, and jumped into the room where the grand duke of the
cattlemen's nobility was taking his refreshment.
Chadron had returned to his meal after ordering her to send his
visitor to the barn. He was swabbing his knife in the fold of a
pancake when Maggie made that frightful, shivering exclamation and
jumped aside out of the door. Now he looked up to reprove her, and met
the smoky eyes of Mark Thorn peering in from the kitchen.
"What're you doin' around here, you old--come in--shut that door! Git
him some breakfast," he ordered, turning to Maggie.
Maggie hung back a moment, until Thorn had come into the room, then
she shot into the kitchen like a cat through a fence, and slammed the
door behind her.
"What in the hell do you mean by comin' around here?" Chadron demanded
angrily. "Didn't I tell you never to come here? you blink-eyed old
snag-shin!"
"You told me," Thorn admitted, putting his rifle down across a chair,
drawing another to the table, and seating himself in readiness for the
coming meal.
"Then what'd you sneak--"
"News," said Thorn, in his brief way.
"Which news?" Chadron brightened hopefully, his implements, clamped in
his hairy fists, inviting the first bolt from the heavens.
"I got him last night."
"You got--_him?_" Chadron lifted himself from his chair on his bent
legs in the excitement of the news.
"And I'm through with this job. I've come to cash in, and quit."
"The hell you say!"
"I'm gittin' too old for this kind of work. That feller chased me
around till my tongue was hangin' out so fur I stepped on it. I tell
you he was--"
"How did you do it?"
Thorn looked at him with a scowl. "Well, I never used a club on a man
yit," he said.
"Where did it happen at?"
"Up there at his place. He'd been chasin' me for two days, and when he
went back--after grub, I reckon--I doubled on him. Just as he went in
the door I got him. I left him with his damn feet stickin' out like a
shoemaker's sign."
"How fur was you off from him, Mark?"
"Fifty yards, more 'r less."
"Did you go over to him to see if he was finished, or just creased?"
"I never creased a man in my life!" Thorn was indignant over the
imputation.
Chadron shook his head, in doubt, in discredit, in gloomy disbelief.
"If you didn't go up to him and turn him over and look at the whites
of his eyes, you ain't sure," he protested. "That man's as slippery as
wet leather--he's fooled more than one that thought they had him, and
I'll bet you two bits he's fooled you."
"Go and see, and settle it yourself, then," Thorn proposed, in surly
humor.
Chadron had suspended his breakfast, as if the news had come between
him and his appetite. He sat in a study, his big hand curved round his
cup, his gaze on the cloth. At that juncture Maggie came in with a
platter of eggs and ham, which she put down before Mark Thorn
skittishly, ready to jump at the slightest hostile start. Thorn began
to eat, as calmly as if there was not a stain on his crippled soul.
Unlike the meal of canned oysters which he had consumed as Chadron's
guest not many days before, Thorn was not welcomed to this by friendly
words and urging to take off the limit. Chadron sat watching him, in
divided attention and with dark face, as if he turned troubles over in
his mind.
Thorn cleaned the platter in front of him, and looked round hungrily,
like a cat that has half-satisfied its stomach on a stolen bird. He
said nothing, only he reached his foul hand across the table and took
up the dish containing the remnant of Chadron's breakfast. This he
soon cleared up, when he rasped the back of his hand across his harsh
mustache, like a vulture preening its filthy plumage, and leaned back
with a full-stomached sigh.
"He makes six," said he, looking hard at Chadron.
"Huh!" Chadron grunted, noncommittally.
"I want the money, down on the nail, a thousand for the job. I'm
through."
"I'll have to look into it. I ain't payin' for anything sight 'nseen,"
Chadron told him, starting out of his speculative wanderings.
"Money down, on the nail," repeated Thorn, as if he had not heard. His
old cap was hovering over his long hair, its flaps down like the wings
of a brooding hen. There were clinging bits of broken sage on it, and
burrs, which it had gathered in his skulking through the brush.
"I'll send a man up the river right away, and find out about this last
one," Chadron told him, nodding slowly. "If you've got Macdonald--"
"If hell's got fire in it!"
"If you've got him, I'll put something to the figure agreed on between
you and me. The other fellers you've knocked over don't count."
"I'll hang around--"
"Not here! You'll not hang around here, I tell you!" Chadron cut him
off harshly, fairly bristling. "Snake along out of here, and don't let
anybody see you. I'll meet you at the hotel in the morning."
"Gittin' peticlar of your company, ain't you?" sneered Thorn.
"You're not company--you're business," Chadron told him, with stern
and reproving eyes.
* * * * *
Chadron found Mark Thorn smoking into the chimney in the hotel office
next morning, apparently as if he had not moved from that spot since
their first meeting on that peculiar business. The old man-killer did
not turn his head as Chadron entered the room with a show of caution
and suspicion in his movements, and closed the door after him.
He crossed over to the fire and stood near Thorn, who was slouching
low in his chair, his long legs stretched straight, his heels crossed
before the low ashy fire that smoldered in the chimney. For a little
while Chadron stood looking down on his hired scourge, a knitting of
displeasure in his face, as if he waited for him to break the silence.
Thorn continued his dark reverie undisturbed, it seemed, his pipestem
between his fingers.
"Yes, it was his damn hired hand!" said Chadron, with profound
disgust.
"That's what I heard you say," acknowledged Thorn, not moving his
head.
"You knew it all the time; you was tryin' to work me for the money, so
you could light out!"
"I didn't even know he had a hired hand!" Thorn drew in his legs,
straightened his back, and came with considerable spirit to the
defense of his evil intent.
"Well, he ain't got none now, but _he's_ alive and kickin'. You've
bungled on this job worse than an old woman. I didn't fetch you in
here to clean out hired hands and kids; we can shake a blanket and
scare that kind out of the country!"
"Well, put him in at fifty then, if he was only a hired hand," said
Thorn, willing to oblige.
"When you go ahead and do what you agreed to, then we'll talk money,
and not a red till then."
Thorn got up, unlimbering slowly, and laid the pipe on the mantel-shelf.
He seemed unmoved, indifferent; apathetic as a toothless old lion.
After a little silence he shook his head.
"I'm done, I tell you," he said querulously, as if raising the
question crossed him. "Pay me for that many, and call it square."
"Bring in Macdonald," Chadron demanded in firm tones.
"I ain't a-goin' to touch him! If I keep on after that man he'll git
_me_--it's on the cards, I can see it in the dark."
"Yes, you're lost your nerve, you old wildcat!" There was a taunt in
Chadron's voice, a sneer.
Thorn turned on him, a savage, smothered noise in his throat.
"You can say that because you owe me money, but you know it's a damn
lie! If you didn't owe me money, I'd make you swaller it with hot
lead!"
"You're talkin' a little too free for a man of your trade, Mark."
While Chadron's tone was tolerant, even friendly, there was an
undercurrent of warning, even threat, in his words.
"You're the feller that's lettin' his gab outrun his gumption. How
many does that make for me, talkin' about nerve, how many? Do you
know?"
"I don't care how many, it lacks one of bein' enough to suit me."
"Twenty-eight, and I've got 'em down in m' book and I can prove it!"
"Make it twenty-nine, and then quit if you want to."
"Maybe I will." Thorn leaned forward a little, a glitter in his smoky
eyes.
Chadron fell back, his face growing pale. His hand was on his weapon,
his eyes noting narrowly every move Thorn made.
"If you ever sling a gun on me, you old devil, it'll be--"
"I ain't a-goin' to sling no gun on you as long as you owe me money.
I ain't a-goin' to cut the bottom out of m' own money-poke, Chad;
you don't need to swivel up in your hide, you ain't marked for
twenty-nine."
"Well, don't throw out any more hints like that; I don't like that
kind of a joke."
"No, I wouldn't touch a hair of your head," Thorn ran on, following
a vein which seemed to amuse him, for he smiled, a horrible,
face-drawing contortion of a smile, "for if you and me ever had a
fallin' out over money I might git so hard up I couldn't travel, and
one of them sheriff fellers might slip up on me."
"What's all this fool gab got to do with business?" Chadron was
impatient; he looked at his watch.
"Well, I'd be purty sure to make a speech from the gallers--I always
intended to--and lay everything open that ever took place between me
and you and the rest of them big fellers. There's a newspaper feller
in Cheyenne that wants to make a book out of m' life, with m' pict're
in the inside of the lid, to be sold when I'm dead. I could git money
for tellin' that feller what I know."
"Go on and tell him then,"--Chadron spoke with a dare in his words,
and derision--"that'll be easy money, and it won't call for any nerve.
But you don't need to be plannin' any speech from the gallus--you'll
never go that fur if you try to double-cross me!"
"I ain't aimin' to double-cross no man, but you can call it that if it
suits you. You can call it whatever you purty damn well care to--I'm
done!"
Chadron made no reply to that. He was pulling on his great gloves,
frowning savagely, as if he meant to close the matter with what he had
said, and go.
"Do I git any money, or don't I?" Thorn asked, sharply.
"When you bring in that wolf's tail."
"I ain't a-goin' to touch that feller, I tell you, Chad. That man
means bad luck to me--I can read it in the cards."
"Maybe you call that kind of skulkin' livin' up to your big name?"
Chadron spoke in derision, playing on the vanity which he knew to be
as much a part of that old murderer's life as the blood of his
merciless heart.
"I've got glory enough," said Thorn, satisfaction in his voice; "what
I want right now's money."
"Earn it before you collect it."
"Twenty-eight 'd fill a purty fair book, countin' in what I could tell
about the men I've had dealin's with," Thorn reflected, as to himself,
leaning against the mantel, frowning down at the floor with bent
head.
"Talk till you're empty, you old fool, and who'll believe you? Huh!
you couldn't git yourself hung if you was to try!" Chadron's dark face
was blacker for the spreading flood of resentful blood; he pointed
with his heavy quirt at Thorn, as if to impress him with a sense of
the smallness of his wickedness, which men would not credit against
the cattlemen's word, even if he should publish it abroad. "You'll
never walk onto the scaffold, no matter how hard you try--there'll be
somebody around to head you off and give you a shorter cut than that,
I'm here to tell you!"
"Huh!" said Thorn, still keeping his thoughtful pose.
Man-killing is a trade that reacts differently on those who follow it,
according to their depth and nature. It makes black devils of some who
were once civil, smiling, wholesome men, whether the mischance of
life-taking has fallen to them in their duty to society or in outlawed
deeds. It plunges some into dark taciturnity and brooding coldness, as
if they had eaten of some root which blunted them to all common relish
of life.
There are others of whom the bloody trade makes gabbling fools,
light-headed, wild-eyed wasters of words, full of the importance of
their mind-wrecking deeds. Like the savage whose reputation mounts
with each wet scalp, each fresh head, these kill out of depravity,
glorying in the growing score. To this class Mark Thorn belonged.
There was but one side left to that depraved man's mind; his bloody,
base life had smothered the rest under the growing heap of his
horrible deeds. Thorn had killed twenty-eight human beings for hire,
of whom he had tally, but there was one to be included of whom he had
not taken count--himself.
As he stood here against the chimney-shelf he was only the outside
husk of a man. His soul had been judged already, and burned out of him
by the unholy passion which he had indulged. He was as simple in his
garrulous chatter of glory and distinction as a half-fool. His warped
mind ran only on the spectacular end that he had planned for himself,
and the speech from the gallows that was to be the black, damning seal
at the end of his atrocious life's record.
Thorn looked up from his study; he shook his head decisively.
"I ain't a-goin' to go back over there in your country and give you a
chance at me. If you git me, you'll have to git me here. I ain't
a-goin' to sling a gun down on nobody for the money that's in it, I
tell you. I'm through; I'm out of the game; my craw's full. It's a bad
sign when a man wastes a bullet on a hired hand, takin' him for the
boss, and I ain't a-goin' to run no more resks on that feller. When my
day for glory comes I'll step out on the gallers and say m' piece, and
they'll be some big fellers in this country huntin' the tall grass
about that time, I guess."
Chadron had taken up his quirt from the little round table where the
hotel register lay. He turned now toward the outer door, as if in
earnest about going his way and leaving Mark Thorn to follow his own
path, no matter to what consequences it might lead.
"If you're square enough to settle up with me for this job," said
Thorn, "and pay me five hundred for what I've done, I'll leave your
name out when I come to make that little speech."
Chadron turned on him with a sneer. "You seem to have your hangin' all
cut and dried, but you'll never go ten miles outside of this
reservation if you don't turn around and put that job through. You'll
never hang--you ain't cut out in the hangin' style."
"I tell you I will!" protested Thorn hotly. "I can see it in the
cards."
"Well, you'd better shuffle 'em ag'in."
"I know what kind of a day it's goin' to be, and I know just adzackly
how I'll look when I hold up m' hands for them fellers to keep still.
Shucks! you can't tell me; I've seen that day a thousand times. It'll
be early in the mornin', and the sun bright--"
The door leading to the dining-room opened, and Thorn left his
description of that great and final day in his career hanging like a
broken bridge. He turned to see who it was, squinting his old eyes up
sharply, and in watching the stranger he failed to see the whiteness
that came over Chadron's face like a rushing cloud.
"Grab your gun!" Chadron whispered.
"Just let it stay where it is, Thorn," advised the stranger, his quick
hand on his own weapon before Thorn could grasp what it was all about,
believing, as he did, in the safety of the reservation's neutral
ground. "Macdonald is my name; I've been looking for you." The
stranger came on as he spoke.
He was but a few feet away from Thorn, and the old man-killer had his
revolvers buckled around him in their accustomed place, while his
death-spreading rifle stood near his hand, leaning its muzzle against
the chimney-jamb. Thorn seemed to be measuring all the chances which
he had left to him in that bold surprise, and to conclude in the same
second that they were not worth taking.
Macdonald had not drawn his revolver. His hand was on the butt of it,
and his eye held Thorn with a challenge that the old slayer was in no
mind to accept.
Thorn was not a close-fighting man. He never had killed one of his
kind in a face-to-face battle in all his bloody days. At the bottom he
was a coward, as his skulking deeds attested, and in that moment he
knew that he stood before his master. Slowly he lifted his long arms
above his head, without a word, and stood in the posture of complete
surrender.
Nearer the outer door stood Chadron, to whom Macdonald seemed to give
little attention, as if not counting him in the game. The big
cattleman was "white to the gills," as his kind expressed that state.
Macdonald unbuckled Thorn's belt and hung his revolvers over his arm.
"I knowed you'd git me, Macdonald," the old scoundrel said.
Macdonald, haggard and dusty, and grim as the last day that old Mark
Thorn had pictured for himself, pushed his prisoner away from the
chimney, out of reach of the rifle, and indicated that he was to march
for the open door, through which the tables in the dining-room could
be seen. At Macdonald's coming Chadron had thrown his hand to his
revolver, where he still held it, as if undecided how far to go.
"Keep your gun where it is, Chadron," Macdonald advised. "This isn't
my day for you. Clear out of here--quick!"
Chadron backed toward the front door, his hand still dubiously on his
revolver. Still suspicious, his face as white as it would have been in
death, he reached back with his free hand to open the door.
"I told you he'd git me," nodded Thorn, with something near to
exultation in the vindication of his reading of the cards. "I give you
a chance--no man's money ain't a-goin' to shut my mouth now!"
"I'll shut it, damn you!" Chadron's voice was dry-sounding and far
up in his throat. He drew his revolver with a quick jerk that
seemed nothing more than a slight movement of the shoulder. Quick
as he was--and few in the cattlemen's baronies were ahead of him
there--Macdonald was quicker. The muzzle of Chadron's pistol was
still in the leather when Macdonald's weapon was leveled at his eyes.
"Drop that gun!"
A moment Chadron's arm hung stiffly in that half-finished movement,
while his eyes gave defiance. He had not bent before any man in many a
year of growing power. But there was no other way; it was either bend
or break, and the break would be beyond repair.
Chadron's fingers were damp with sudden sweat as he unclasped them
from the pistol-butt and let the weapon fall; sweat was on his
forehead, and a heaviness on his chest as if a man sat on him. He felt
backwards through the open door with one foot, like an old man
distrustful of his limbs, and steadied himself with his shoulder
against the jamb, for there was a trembling in his knees. He knew that
he had saved himself from the drop into eternal inconsequence by the
shading of a second, for there was death in dusty Alan Macdonald's
face. The escape left Chadron shaken, like a man who has held himself
away from death by his finger-ends at the lip of a ledge.
"I knowed you'd git me, Macdonald," Thorn repeated. "You don't need no
handcuffs nor nothin' for me. I'll go along with you as gentle as a
fish."
Macdonald indicated that Thorn might lower his arms, having taken
possession of the rifle. "Have you got a horse?" he asked.
Thorn said that he had one in the hotel stable. "But don't you try to
take me too fur, Macdonald," he advised. "Chadron he'll ride a streak
to git his men together and try to take me away from you--I could see
it in his eye when he went out of that door."
Macdonald knew that Thorn had read Chadron's intentions right. He
nodded, to let him know that he understood the cattleman's motives.
"Well, don't you run me off to no private rope party, neither,
Macdonald, for I can tell you things that many a man'd pay me big
money to keep my mouth shut on."
"You'll have a chance, Thorn."
"But I want it done in the right way, so's I'll git the credit and the
fame."
Macdonald was surprised to find this man, whose infamous career had
branded him as the arch-monster of modern times, so vain and
garrulous. He could account for it by no other hypothesis than that
much killing had indurated the warped mind of the slayer until the
taking of a human life was to him a commonplace. He was not capable of
remorse, any more than he had been disposed to pity. He was not a man,
only the blighted and cursed husk of a man, indeed, but doubly
dangerous for his irresponsibility, for his atrophied small
understanding.
Twenty miles lay between the prisoner and the doubtful security of the
jail at Meander, and most of the distance was through the grazing
lands within Chadron's bounds. On the other hand, it was not more than
twelve miles to his ranch on the river. He believed that he could
reach it before Chadron could raise men to stop him and take the
prisoner away.
Once home with Thorn, he could raise a posse to guard him until the
sheriff could be summoned. Even then there was no certainty that the
prisoner ever would see the inside of the Meander jail, for the
sheriff of that county was nothing more than one of Chadron's cowboys,
elevated to office to serve the unrighteous desires of the men who had
put him there.
But Macdonald was determined that there should be no private rope
party for Thorn, neither at the hands of the prisoner's employers nor
at those of the outraged settlers. Thorn must be brought to trial
publicly, and the story of his employment, which he appeared ready
enough to tell for the "glory" in it, must be told in a manner that
would establish its value.
The cruelly inhuman tale of his contracts and killings, his
engagements and rewards, must be sown by the newspapers far and wide.
Out of this dark phase of their oppression their deliverance must
rise.