“If the rascal have not given me medicines to make me love him, I’ll
be hanged.”
--_Falstaff._
“At the envoy’s end, I touch!”
--_Cyrano._
“Now, we must get to work,” said Jeff, after hurried mutual
explanations. “The natural impulse is to throw the customs house into
the river, to link arms and walk up Main Street, five abreast, pushing
the policemen off of the curb, raising our feet high and bringing them
down ker-smack--hay-foot, straw-foot, right foot, left: now is the time
for all good men--and the rest of it. But, perhaps, it wouldn’t be
wise. We’ve got to catch Thorpe off his guard--and that may be hard to
do----”
Wes’ pulled him down and whispered in his ear. Jeff’s face became
radiant.
“And after we have him safe we’ll get the others. Let’s go down to the
bank and steal a boat. Boys, this is Mr. MacGregor. We’ll take him with
us. Mac, you’d better tie a handkerchief around your head. You’ll take
cold.”
“Ye canna take a man from Mexico without extradeetion papers. It’s fair
keednappin’,” said Mac with a leer.
“So we can’t, so we can’t,” said Jeff pleasantly. “Not live men. Go
first. If you don’t come quietly----”
“Dinna tell me,” said the MacGregor scornfully. “Would I no have done
as much for you? But let me tell you one thing--and that is that ye are
showing small thanks to Thorpe for sparing your life.”
“Fudge! I didn’t ask him for my life and I owe him no gratitude,”
said Jeff. “It was a square contract. I was to hang him if I could
escape--and I had practically escaped when he agreed to it, except for
the mere detail of time. I am doing nothing unfair. Go on!”
“You’re right, ’twas a contract--I’ll say nae mair,” admitted Mac
grudgingly, and went up the stair.
Once on the street, however, he paused. “Mr. Bransford, there have been
kindly passages atween us. Let me have a word more.”
“Well?” said Jeff.
The outlaw sat him down on a crumbling wall. “I value your good
opeenion, Mr. Bransford, and I would not have ye judge that fear held
me from fightin’ ye, drop or no drop. ’Twould have done no good to
any one and I should certainly have been killed. Men, ye’ve a grand
idee of strategy yourself. I wouldna hae ye think I’m daft enough to
throw away my life to no good purpose. But there the case is verra
diff’rent. There are no thick walls now to muffle the noise: ye canna
keel me wi’oot muckle deesturbance, bringin’ the police on ye. Thorpe
has friends here, verra alert folk--and ’gin he gets wind o’ any
deesturbance at just this place--ye see!” He wagged his head in slow
cunning; he drew in a long breath. “_Ho!_” he bellowed. “_Ho! Murder!_”
[Illustration: THEY PULLED HIM DOWN, FIGHTING SAVAGELY.--Page 166.]
“Damnation!” said Jeff, and sprang at his throat. The others had his
arms: they pulled him down, fighting savagely, turned him over, piled
on his back, and gagged him. But it was too late. Two policemen were
already running down the street. The neighbors, however, kept prudently
within doors.
“Jeff, you and Pringle hike for the U. S. A.,” gasped Leo. “Get Thorpe,
anyhow. I’ll tap this devil dumb, and stay here and stand the gaff, to
give you a start.”
“Hold on! Don’t do it,” said Beebe. “Let me talk to the policemen. Do
you tie Mr. MacGregor up.”
“Talk to--why you can’t even speak Spanish!” said Pringle.
“You don’t know me. Watch!” said Billy.
Without waiting for further remonstrance he went to meet the advancing
officers. They halted; there was a short colloquy and, to the amazement
of the three friends, they turned amicably back together and passed
from sight at the next corner.
“Let me make a suggestion,” said Aughinbaugh. “Lug this gentleman back
to Jeff’s quarters, tie him up tight, and I think I can undertake
to keep him while you get your man. As soon as you have Thorpe, see
Tillotson’s lawyers and let them swear out warrants for the arrest of
Patterson and the cab driver, and then take steps to secure Borrowman
and Mr. MacGregor legally. You can have them arrested for kidnapping or
illegal detention, and held here until we can get extradition papers.
You might send some one--or two, or three--over right away, in case Mr.
Borrowman drops in. He might eat me if he found me there alone. For
myself, I am not sorry to remain in the background. I have no desire
for prominence. You fellows are going back to Rainbow--and you’re used
to trouble anyway, so it’s all very well for you. But I have to stay
here and I’m a legal-minded person. This will be a hanging matter for
some of ’em before they get done with it. They’ll talk like the parrot.
I’ve no desire to make a lot of enemies. There’s no knowing how many
leading lights may be implicated in this thing when they go to turning
state’s evidence.”
Here he was interrupted by a kick from the gagged prisoner. It was
not a vicious kick and evidently meant only to attract attention.
They bent over him. He was shaking his head; in the starlight his eyes
blazed denial.
“I didn’t mean you,” said George, respectfully and apologetically. “I’m
sure you wouldn’t do such a thing. But Borrowman might, and Patterson
will be even more likely to betray the others to save his own neck.”
The eyes expressed gloomy agreement. At Pringle’s urging, Mac consented
to walk back down to the underground room. That wily veteran evidently
reserved his stubbornness till there was a chance to accomplish
something by it. They were binding him to the bed when Billy rejoined
them. “Well! Wherever did you learn Spanish, Billy?” said Pringle
curiously.
“It wasn’t Spanish--not exactly,” said that accomplished linguist
modestly. “It was a sort of Esperanto. I met them with a cocked
revolver in one hand and a roll of bills in the other. They took the
bills.”
Jeff’s sprightly spirits were somewhat dampened. “Whoever would have
looked for such stubborn loyalty from this battered old rascal?” he
demanded, sighing. “Even Thorpe is not altogether to be despised--or
pitied. He had a friend. By Heavens, Mac! I’ll take every precaution
to hold fast to you--but I find it in my heart to hope you get away
in spite of me.” He bent over and met the dauntless eyes; he laid his
fingers on Mac’s hair, almost tenderly. “I’ll tell him, old man,” he
whispered.
He turned away, but after a step or two paused and looked back with an
irresolution foreign to his character. He finally came back and sat on
the edge of the bed, with his back to the MacGregor. He squeezed his
hands between his knees, idly clicking his heels together. His eyes
were intent on a crack in the floor: he recited in a dull monotone:
“‘And often after sunset, sir,
When it is bright and fair,
I take my little derringer
And eat my supper there!’”
The others waited by the door. John Wesley posted George with a sedate
and knowing wink. George eyed these movements of Jeff’s with grave
disapproval.
“How often have I heard you denounce precisely such proceedings as
these, as the fatal vice of Hamleting!” he jeered. “Flip up a dollar!
Or are you going to favor us with a soliloquy?”
Jeff raised his eyes. “I was just trying to remember an old story,”
he explained innocently. “My grandfather was a Hudson Bay man, and
this story was a John Company tradition when he was a boy. It’s
about two canny Scots. That’s what put me in mind of it, Mac being a
Scotchman--and in trouble.
“Their names were Kerr and McKensie. One day Kerr upset his canoe
in some rapids and lost everything he had but his clothes and his
sheath-knife. But at dark he happened on McKensie’s camp, and stayed
the night with him. McKensie had a good outfit--canoe, rifle, grub,
traps, and a big bundle of furs. He had also a deserved reputation for
shrewdness and thrift. And in the night they got to trading.
“When morning came McKensie had the sheath-knife and Kerr had
everything else. McKensie would never explain what happened. When asked
about it he looked a little dazed. He said, with marked emphasis:
“‘Yon is a verra intelligent pairson!’ The moral is, You’ve got to be
careful with a Scotchman.”
“You get out!” said George indignantly. “Go gather the Judge. I’ll
’tend to Mac.”
“All right,” said Jeff. “We’ll go. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
* * * * *
Judge Thorpe was particularly well pleased with himself. After a
prosperous and profitable day and a pleasant evening at his club, he
bethought himself of his old relentless enemy, obesity, and made his
way to the Turkish baths.
He had been boiled, baked and basted, and now lay swathed in linen on a
marble slab, blissfully drowsy, waiting to be curried. He was more than
half asleep when the operator came.
When the currying process began, however, the Judge noticed that the
hostler seemed anything but an expert. Why had they not sent Gibbons
as usual? He opened his eyes, intending remonstrance, but closed them
immediately; they were playing tricks on him. A curious thing! The
white-tunicked attendant, seen through the curling spirals of steam,
looked startlingly like his prisoner in Juarez. The Judge’s heart
skipped a beat or two and then started with a fearful thumping.
The rubber plied his mitten briskly; the Judge opened his eyes again.
Of course the prisoner was safe; the illusion was doubtless the effect
of the perspiration on his eyelashes. The billowy vapor parted, the
industrious attendant bent impersonally over him with a serene,
benevolent look--Good Heavens!
The Judge’s heart died horribly within him, his tongue was dry, his
bones turned to water and his flesh to a quivering jelly. He cast a
beseeching look to the open door. Beyond it, looking idly in, were
three men in street clothes. They entered, ranging themselves silently
against the wall. They looked amused. Thorpe’s lips moved, but no words
came.
Jeff Bransford rubbed away assiduously; there was a quizzical glint
in his pleasant brown eyes. “My wife, Judge,” he said cheerfully,
jerking his head to introduce Beebe, “and my two boys, Wes’ and Leo.
Fine, well-grown boys, aren’t they?” He prodded the Judge’s ribs with a
jocular thumb. “Say, Judge--how about that presentiment now?”
* * * * *
After personally attending the Judge and Patterson to jail, the G. M.
A. T. felt that the capture of minor offenders might safely be left to
the government. So they routed out Tillotson’s lawyers at the unseemly
hour of 4 A.M., broke the news gently, and haled them off to jail for
consultation with Tillotson.
Congratulation and explanation was over: the cumbrous machinery of the
law was fairly under way (creakingly, despite liberal oiling), and a
gorgeous breakfast for all hands was being brought into the jail from
a nearby restaurant, when the jailer ushered Aughinbaugh into the
presence of the friends in council.
He sauntered in with the most insouciant and complacent air imaginable.
El Paso’s best cigar was perked up at a jaunty angle from the corner of
his mouth; it was plain he was particularly well pleased with himself.
“Hello! where’s your prisoner?” said the firm in chorus.
Aughinbaugh removed the cigar and flicked the ash. “Mac? He got away,”
he said indifferently.
“Got away!” shrieked the senior lawyer. “Gagged, bound hand and foot,
tied to the bed--and got away!”
Aughinbaugh surveyed him placidly, and waved his cigar in graceful
explanation.
“Yon was a verra intelligent pairson!” said he.
THE END
HIT THE LINE HARD
HIT THE LINE HARD
Chapter I
Neighbor Jones gazed meditatively from his room in the Saragossa House:
an unwelcome guest buzzed empty boastings in his ear. He saw, between
narrowed lids, the dazzle of bright tracks, the Saragossa Station,
the bright green of irrigated fields beyond, merged to a vague and
half-sensed background. The object of his attentive consideration
was nearer at hand, by the west-most track--a long, squat warehouse,
battered and dingy red. And from this shabby beginning, while the
bore droned endlessly on, Neighbor Jones wove romance for his private
delight.
The warehouse was decked all about by a wide, high platform. A
low-pitched roof reached far out beyond the building to overhang this
platform, so that the whole bore a singular resemblance to Noah’s Ark
of happy memory. A forlorn and forgotten ark: the warped shingles,
the peeling, blistered paint, the frayed and splintered planks, were
eloquent of past prosperity and of change, neglect and decay.
The gable end was crowded with huge lettering of whitish gray. When
those gray letters were white the sign had read:
BROWN, ALMANDARES & COMPANY
GENERAL MERCHANDISE
BEST PRICES
FOR WOOL AND HIDES
Long ago the firm name had been painted out; but the old letters broke
dim and ghostly through, persisted stubborn under the paint that would
blot them, hid and haunted beyond the letters of a later name:
MARTIN BENNETT
Bennett had been the Company.
Neighbor Jones sprawled largely in his tilted chair, smoking with vast
and enviable enjoyment. One hand was pocketed. The other, big, strong,
blunt-fingered, tapped on the window sill a brave tattoo of ringing
hoofs--no finicky, mimimy tanbark trot, but steady and measured, a
great horse breasting the wind and the rain. To this strong cadence
Neighbor Jones trolled a merry stave from the amazing ballad of the
Chisholm Trail:
“_Foot in the saddle and a hand on the horn;
Best old cowboy ever was born.
Hi, yi--yi--yippy, yippy hi--yi--yi!
Hi--yi--yi--yippy--yippy--yea!--_”
In the lines of the long taper from broad shoulders to booted feet; in
the massive broad-browed head; the tawny hair; the square, ruddy-brown
face; the narrowed sleepy eyes--in every mold and motion of the man,
balanced and poised, there was something lionlike; something one might
do well to remark.
But his one companion, the Kansas City Kid, remarked none of those
things. The Kansas City Kid was otherwise engrossed--with his own
cleverness.
“Oh, I’ll show you, all right! There’s one born every minute,” said the
K. C. Kid crisply. “How many hands? Five? Five is right. Second hand
for Jones; first hand is the winner. Watch me close!”
He shuffled the cards with a brisk and careless swing, cutting them
once, twice, thrice, with flourish and slap; shuffled again, with a
smooth ripple pleasant to the ear, and shoved the deck across for a
final cut.
“See anything wrong? No? Here we go! Watch!” He dealt five poker hands,
face down. “Now then, look! You’ve got three tens and a pair of trays.
First hand has jacks up, opens, stands a raise from you, draws one
black jack.” Illustrating, the Kid flipped the top card from the deck.
It was the spade jack. “Then you bet your fool head off. He should
worry. And that’s the way they trimmed you--see?”
Neighbor Jones blinked a little and twisted his tawny-gold hair to a
peak, retaining unshaded and unchanged his look of sleepy good nature.
“Smooth work!” he said approvingly.
“You’re dead right, it’s smooth work!” asserted the gratified artist.
“Some class to that! Them guys that got yours couldn’t do any such
work--they was raw! I’m showing you what I got, so you can figure
out the surprise party you and me can hand to ’em--see? Say, they
pulled a lot of stunts the Old Ladies’ Home is wise to back in my
town--strippers, short cards, holdouts, cold decks--old stuff! Honest,
they make me sick! I can steal the gold out of their teeth and they’ll
never miss it!”
Jones looked at the man with wonder and pity. The poor wretch was
proud of his sorry accomplishment, displayed it with pleasure, thought
himself envied for it. By this shameful skill he had come so far, in
the pride and heyday of youth--to such dire shifts, such ebbs and
shallows; to empty days, joyless, friendless, without hope of any
better morrow. No dupe he had gulled but might grieve for him, cut off,
clean aside from all purpose or meaning of life.
“Well?” said the Kid impatiently.
The contemplative gentleman roused himself.
“Someway I don’t like this idea of being cheated pretty well.” His
voice was a mild and regretful drawl. “Never had much use for Beck; but
I did think old Scanlon was a square old sport!”
“Square sport! Why, you poor simp, you never had a look in!” sneered
the sharper. Then he wrinkled his brows in some perplexity. “What I
don’t see is why they didn’t skin the Eastern chap too. They could ’a’
had that gink’s wad--that Drake; but they let him down easy. Oh, well,
we should worry! It will leave all the more for us.”
“For us?” echoed Neighbor, puzzled.
“Sure, Mike! You get hold of a good piece of money and we’ll do a
brother act. You and me, we ain’t never been chummy--they won’t tumble.
We’ll sit in with ’em and string along with ’em till the big money
gets out in the open--just holding enough cards to keep in the swim.
When I give you the office, go get ’em! I’ll slip big ones to Beck and
the college Johnny--and the top hand to you, of course--and we’ll split
fifty-fifty.”
Neighbor’s mind groped back along the dusty years for a half-forgotten
adage.
“If a dog bites you once,” he said with halting speech, “shame on him;
if you bite a dog--shame on you!”
“Huh? I don’t get you.”
“Besides,” said Neighbor placidly, “you’ll be going away now.”
“Not me. Saragossa looks good to me.”
“You’ll be going away,” repeated Neighbor patiently, “on the next
train--any direction--and never coming back!”
“What?” The Kid jumped up, blazing wrath. “Why, you cheap skate--you
quitter! Are you goin’ to throw me down? You come-on! You piker----”
“Boob?” suggested Neighbor kindly. “Mutt? Sucker?”
“You hick! You yellow hound----”
“Sit down,” advised Neighbor quietly.
“You ought to lose your money! For ten cents----”
“Sit down,” said Neighbor more quietly. The pocketed hand produced a
dime and slid it across the table. “Go on with that ten-cent job you
had on your mind, whatever it was,” said Neighbor. “There’s the money.
Pick it up!”
Weight and inches, the two men evened up fairly well. Also, the ivory
butt of a forty-four peeped from the Kid’s waistband. But Neighbor’s
eye was convincing; here was a man who meant the thing he said. The
younger man shifted his own eyes uneasily, checked, faltered and sat
down.
“Pick up your dime!” said Neighbor. The Kid complied with a mumbling in
his throat. “That’s right,” said Jones. “Now, don’t you be too proud
to take advice from a yellow hound. First, don’t you bother your poor
head about me losing my money. My money don’t cost me anything,” he
explained--“I work for it. Next, about Beck--I’ll sleep on this matter
and look it over from all sides. No hurry. If I’m not just pleased with
Beck for cheating me I’ll adjust the matter with him--but I’ll not
cheat him. I never try to beat a man at his own game. Toddle along,
now. I hear a train coming. By-by!”
“It’s the freight. I’ll go on the five-o’clock passenger--not before.”
“Oh, yes you will!” said Jones confidently. “You’ve only accused Beck
of cheating, but you’ve proved it on yourself. The boys won’t like it.
It is best to leave me thus, dear--best for you and best for me.” His
eyes wandered to the window and rested calculatingly on the Fowler
cottonwood across the street. It was a historic tree; Joel Fowler had
been hanged thereon by disapproving friends.
The Kid caught the glance and the unspoken allusion; sweat beaded his
forehead.
“Aw, lemme wait for the passenger!” he protested. “I gotta go up to the
Windsor to pay what I owe and get my suit case.”
Neighbor rose.
“There, there! Don’t you fret,” he said, patting the other man’s
shoulder kindly. “Give me the money. I’ll pay your bill and keep the
suit case. You just run along.”
“Good lord, man! Those clothes cost me----”
“Now, now! Never mind--that’s all right--everything’s all right!” said
Neighbor soothingly. “We’re just about of a size.” He nudged the Kid’s
ribs with a confidential elbow. “Sly old dog! You had some of my money
too, didn’t you? Yes; and I’ll keep that cunning little gun of yours
as a souvenir.” The last remark came after--not before--Neighbor’s
acquisition of the cunning little gun. “Come on, my boy, we’ll mosey
along over to the station. Here’s our hats, on the bed.”
He linked his arm with the victim’s: he sang with a joyous and martial
note:
“_Hark! From the tombs a doleful sound;
Maryland, my Maryland!
My love lies buried underground;
Maryland, my Maryland!_”
Chapter II
It was nearing two P. M. when Mr. Jones, after speeding the parting
Kid, made his way uptown. Upstairs was the word in his thought.
Saragossa is built that way. Let Saragossa Mountain, close and great
and golden, stand for the house; the town will then be the front steps.
The first step is Venice, in the lush green of the valley--railroad
buildings, coal chute, ferryman, warehouses, two nth-class hotels, and
a few farmhouses, all on stilts, being a few feet above the Rio Grande
at low water and a few feet under it at high water. Whence the name,
Venice.
On the first rising ground to the westward is the business quarter,
as close to the railroad as safety permits. A step up comes to a
sheltered, sunny terrace and to the Old Town--the Mexican village
dating back to before the great uprising of 1680. Another, a steep and
high step, rose to the residence section, on a strip of yellow mesa;
for Saragossa has water piped from the high hills, so please you, and
is not confined to the lowlands, like most of her New Mexican sisters.
Still above, on the fifth and last step, smelter and mining town clung
to a yellow-brown slope reached by a spur of railroad looping in a long
bow-knot from the valley below.
Above all, sheer and steep, circling about, sheltering, brooding,
hung Saragossa Mountain, rose and gold in mid-day or morning sun;
blue and rose-edged when the long shadows thrust eastward stealthily,
steadily--crept like kittens at play, or like them fell off, down those
old, old steps.
Something of all this Neighbor saw and put into thoughts--not into
words. Saw, too, all beyond and all about, the vast and sun-drenched
land of all colors and all shapes--valley and plain and mesa, shelf
and slope and curve, and bend and broken ridge and hill; great
ranges against the turquoise sky, near or far, or far beyond belief,
saw-toothed or wall-straight or rounded--every one precisely unlike any
other visible mountain or any other possible mountain. By this cause
his step was sprightly and glad, his eye bright, his chin well up--a
very sincere way of thanking God.
Now, as he swung along the street, he voiced these thoughts in a little
hymn of praise. At least it sounded like a hymn of praise as he sang it
to a healthy and manful tune; resonant, ringing, reverberant:
“_Plunged in a gulf of dark despair--
Maryland, my Maryland!_”
On three sides of the shaded plaza business was housed in modern
comfort. In sharp contrast, all along the north, sprawled an unbroken,
staring huddle of haphazard buildings--frame, brick and adobe, tall
and squat jumbled together, broad fronted or pinched. At the riverward
corner, massive, ill-kept but dominant still, was a great structure of
gray-stone once the luckless home of Brown and Almandares.
Squalid, faded and time-stained, like Falstaff’s rabble of recruits,
this long row struck sinister to the eye. Any stranger, seeing what
blight had fallen ominous and threatening all about him, seeing on door
after door the same repeated name, might well guess the whole ugly
story. For this long, forlorn row housed Bennett’s General Stores.
Bennett sold everything but tunnels.
Here was Neighbor’s nearest errand. After a little delay he was shown
into the great man’s private office.
Bennett turned slowly in his revolving chair; a tall spare man, with
a thin straggle of sandy hair and a sharp, narrow face, close-shaven;
which might have been a pleasant face but for a pinched and cruel
mouth, a mean, pinched nose, and a shifty eye.
Here arose a curious contradiction. The man had held the whip hand for
years, his conscious manner was overbearing and arrogant, but his eyes
betrayed him, and all the unconscious lines of his face were slinking
and furtive. He now wore an austere frown.
“Mr. Jones, I hear you have been gambling.”
“Oh, _si_!” said Mr. Jones; and he made those simple words convey
enthusiasm, brightness and joy. “And--but, also, what do you suppose I
hear about you? Give you three guesses.”
“What!” Bennett gasped incredulously; he crashed his fist down on the
desk. “How about that mortgage?”
Jones beamed triumphant.
“You see? You don’t like it yourself--meddlin’, pryin’ and loose talk.”
“I’ll fix you! This’ll be the worst day’s work you ever did--trying to
get smart with me!”
“Percival Pulcifer, will you kindly retain your rompers?” said Neighbor
with eminent cheerfulness. “Now hark and heed! You did not ask me to
sit down. You are not a nice old man. I do not like you much. Don’t you
touch that bell!... I shall now sit down. Smoke? No? Well, I’ll roll
one.”
Rolling one with tender care, Neighbor cocked a pleasant but rather
impish eye on the seething financier and blithely prattled on:
“Allow me to say, Mr. Banker, that you are overlooking one point: You
have a mortgage on my cattle, but you haven’t got any mortgage on me.
Got that--clear?”
The banker gurgled, black faced and choking.
“I’ll ruin you! I’ll smash you!”
“Percival Pulcifer Peterkin Pool!”
For some reason, not at first easily apparent, these harmless words,
which Jones syllabled with great firmness, made the banker writhe. He
was wonted to hate--but ridicule was new to him and it hurt.
“You might at least show some respect for my gray hairs,” he
interrupted indignantly.
“Oh, dye your gray hairs!” said Neighbor simply. “Damn your old
gray hairs! Shoot, if you must, that old gray head! You’re an old
gray-headed scoundrel--that’s what you are!”
“Of course,” observed the gray-haired one, gathering himself together,
“you will be ready with the money on the nail?”
“Now you’re talking sense!” cried Neighbor warmly. “Now you’re getting
down to facts.” He threw back his head and sang with great heartiness
and zest:
“_That day of wrath, that dreadful day;
Maryland, my Maryland!
When heaven and earth shall pass away;
Maryland, my Maryland!_”
Clerks beyond the glass partition turned startled faces that way. In
that gloomy, haunted counting room, used only to the tones of meekness
or despair, the echoes rolled thunderous:
“_When, shriveling like a parchèd scroll,
The flaming heavens together roll----_”
“Will I have the money? _Quien sabe?_ If I don’t the brand is
yours--party of the first part, his heirs, executors and assigns
forever--nary a whimper from this corner. If I knew for certain I’d
tell you, for you have a plain right to know that; but that first line
of talk was just sickening drivel. If you held a mortgage on a man’s
stuff, would that give you any right to go snoopin’ round and compel
him to get in a poker game--hey? Would that look nice? Whaddy you mean,
then--how dast you, then--try to tell me not to play poker--meddling in
my private affairs? How dare you? Shame-y! Shame-y! S-s-h!”
“Jones,” said the other thickly, “I think the devil himself is in you
to-day. You poor, headstrong fool! I sent for you to do you a kindness.”
Jones rose anxiously.
“Shall I call a doctor?”
“Well, I did; but you make it hard for me.”
“Yes, yes! And you not used to doing kind things, either!” said Jones
sympathetically. “Go on. We’re all with you. Give it a name.”
Bennett paced up and down, clasping his hands behind his back.
“You know I have a cattle ranch out Luna way? Ever been there?”
“Not any. I stick to the east side. Saragossa is my furthest west; and,
as you know, I’ve never been here before. But don’t let me interrupt.
You were working yourself up to a kindness.”
Bennett flinched at his careless contempt, but he forced himself to go
on.
“I was intending to offer you a job as my foreman.”
Neighbor sat down with an air of relief.
“You don’t need no doctor. It’s yourself you’re trying to be kind
to. Go on with your talk. For a starter--what would I do with my own
cattle?”
“Sell, get a friend to run them; let them out on shares. You wouldn’t
need to worry about the mortgage. It could stand over--you’ll be
getting good money. And,” said the financier diffidently, spacing
the words and dropping his voice to tones singularly flat and even,
“if--everything--went--all--right, the--mortgage--might--be--canceled.”
“Yes? How jolly! But what’s the matter with the west-side cowmen? Can’t
you get some of the V T waddies? Should think you’d rather use home
talent.”
Bennett resumed his measured pacing. At the end of each beat he turned,
always away from Neighbor’s eyes, so that he marked out a distinct
figure eight. Other men, unhappy debtors, had walked that narrow space,
many of them; perhaps none so fiend-ridden as he who now tracked back
and forth. The jeers of this uncringing debtor galled him to the
quick, yet his purpose drove him on.
“We have been having a little trouble on the ranch. For many reasons I
do not think it wise to get a local man.” He coughed gently, and went
on in the same low and listless manner of speech he had used in his
hint about the mortgage. “Trouble was between my boys and the Quinliven
outfit--the Double Dee--about one of my watering places. I have no
legal title, but the spring is mine by all the customs of the country.
There was some shooting, I believe. No one was hurt, fortunately, but
there is hard feeling. I must put a stop to it. For his part in the
deplorable affair I let my foreman go--Tom Garst. Know him?”
“Sure!”
“So I thought I would get you for the place.”
“Me being a notorious peacemaker and cheekturner, suffering long, and
kind, not easily provoked--yes, yes!”
“Quinliven himself would be willing to let the matter drop, I think;
but young Roger Drake--why, you know young Drake--he was one of your
poker party!”
“The college lad--yes.”
“Nephew of Old Drake, Quinliven’s partner, who died a month or two
ago,” continued Bennett, sedulously avoiding Neighbor’s eye. “Young
Drake is hot-headed; says he’s going to hold that spring anyhow.
He--will--require--careful--handling.” Again that slow, significant
spacing of the words.
As lifelessly Neighbor answered:
“And--if--I--handle--him--carefully; if--everything--turns--out--all--
right, the--mortgage--will--be--canceled?”
“Yes,” said Bennett. He busied himself at his desk.
In a startled silence Neighbor rose, fold after fold, interminable
and slow. He fumbled for matches, pipe and tobacco; thoughtfully,
thoroughly, he constructed a smoke. Then he raised his eyes. Many a
hard Ulysses-year had passed over him, this old Neighbor; but his eyes
were clear and unstained yet. They now observed Mr. Bennett attentively.
“Sorry,” said Neighbor Jones. “I haven’t got a thing fit to wear.”
At the door he turned. “Now, I’ll tell you what you do,” he said
kindly. He spread out his left hand and drew a diagram down the palm:
“You go to hell and take the first turn to the left!”
Chapter III
Ducky Drake--Roger Olcott Drake, Second--dawdled over a four-o’clock
breakfast. He was in bathrobe and slippers, his feet on a second chair;
the morning paper was propped before him and the low western sun peeped
through his windows.
The room phone rang. “Hel-lo-o! Gentleman to see Mr. Drake--shall we
show him up?”... “Use your own judgment; the last time I tried to
show a man up he worked my face over.” Bring him up, the telephone
meant. Mr. Drake desired particulars: “What is the gentleman’s silly
name?”... “Jones. Cowpunch; six or seven feet up; incredibly sober.”...
“Sure, Moike! Bring him along! Say, send some good smokes, will
you?--and some swipes. What’s that? What do I mean, swipes? Beer, you
idiot--beer!”
A clear eye, bright and black; a clean, fresh-colored skin; a frank and
pleasant face--that was Ducky. He met his visitor at the door.
“Glad to see you, Mr. Neighbor--welcome to our well-known midst!
Weather! Chair! How’s every little thing? You look chirpy enough.
Shan’t I have breakfast sent up for you?”
“No, thank you; I got up at noon. You can give me a little help though.”
“Put it on the table, George. That’s all.” George, known in private
life as Gregorio, departed, and Ducky turned to his guest. “Whaddy you
mean--help?” he demanded, grinning sympathetically. “Did they put the
kibosh on you good and proper after I quit last night?” He pushed the
cigars over and began operations with a corkscrew.
“Oh, no--nothing like that. I want some advice.”
“Advice? This is the right shop.” Roger struck a Pecksniff pose, waved
the corkscrew aloft, and declaimed grandly: “Put your eggs in one
basket. Get on the wagon. Hitch your wagon to a star. Mind your step!
When in doubt, play trumps. Be sure you’re ahead and then go right
home.”
“Not advice exactly--information.”
“Oh!” said Ducky. “A straight line is the shortest distance between two
points; the woman who hesitations is lost; a Cobb in the club is worth
two in the bush; lead-pencil signatures are good in law; a receiver is
as bad as a promoter; hospitality is the thief of time; absinthe makes
the heart grow fonder.”
Neighbor shoved a bottle of beer into his host’s hand.
“Drink, pretty creature, drink! Let me explain: What I want is to ask
some questions--about words, and so on. You’re a college Johnny, ain’t
you?”
“Booze Arts, Harvard,” said Ducky. “Not graduated yet.”
“Man staying here in the Windsor with you--was staying here, gone
now--used a lot of words I don’t quite savvy.” Neighbor leaned forward,
blinking earnestly. “What is the precise distinction between a mutt, a
simp, a gink and a boob? And what did he mean by saying all the time,
‘I should worry!’?”
Ducky placed the tips of his fingers accurately together, and held his
head on one side, birdwise, pursing his lips precisely.
“The phrase I should worry is derived from the Hebrew verb to bibble,
meaning to worry--I should bibble; you should bibble; he or she should
bibble. Plural: we should bibble; ye should bibble; they should bibble.
“Mutt, simp, gink and boob are scientific terms employed rather
indiscriminately by philosophers of an idealistic tendency. Broadly
speaking, the words denote one whose speech, manner, education, habits
or clothes differ in any respect from your own; categorically, a
thinker whose opinions and ideals do not correspond in every particular
with your own. Exactly equivalent terms are--in religion, heretic or
infidel; in politics, demagogue, blatherskite!”
“Thank you,” said Neighbor humbly. “Myself, I understood him to mean
almost the same thing as a sucker; because this fellow--it was the K.
C. Kid, that sat on your left--he spoke of you and me being mutts and
simps, and all them things; and at the same time he said we’d been
swindled, cheated or skinned in that little poker game.”
Ducky made a passionate comment.
“That alley-goat could sure stack the cards. He showed me that,” said
Neighbor, and related the painful story of the K. C. Kid’s flitting.
“We are the victims of the highly accomplished fact,” said Roger. “We
can’t very well squeal; but can they do this to us with the well-known
impunity?”
“No,” said Neighbor; “they cannot. I’ll make a note of it. We’ll not
squeal and we’ll not cheat; but we’ll give ’em their come-uppances
someway. I do not, as a general thing, hold myself up for the
admiration of the good and wise; but I must say that I’ve always got
what I went after if I wanted it hard enough.”
“‘Don’t flinch; don’t foul; hit the line hard!’” said Roger. The words
snapped like a lash.
“Who said that? He did? Good for him once! And I want this, hard. When
I get my auger in I’ll give it another twist for you, Mr. Ducky, in
case you are not here. You haven’t lost much anyhow. That’s funny too!
Huh! Our tinhorn friend noticed that. Seems like they didn’t want to
rob you; and yet your wool was enough sight longer’n mine. I don’t get
the idea. I like to understand things as I go along.”
“I won away quite a wad, all right; but you might say I wasn’t a
loser at all compared to what I was two or three nights ago. I was
certain-lee in bad!” Ducky performed a hospitable rite. “Well, we’ll
have to give up poker at Beck’s. Here’s how!”
“That brings me up to the main point,” said Neighbor casually. “What
have you been and gone and done? Because a gentleman just offered me
the highest market price for your scalp.”
“What?”
“He wanted me to abate you--to abolish you--to beef you--to murder
you! Don’t be so dumb! So I thought I’d drop in and get your views.”
“What’s the joke?”
“It’s no joke. This _hombre_ sure wants you killed off. You’ll save
time by taking that for proved. And,” said Neighbor wistfully, “I
needed the money too.”
“But who--who----”
“Not at all,” said Jones. “Why--why? You tell me why, why, first, and
see how well it fits in with who, who. I know the answer all right but
I haven’t heard the riddle yet.”
“Oi, yoi, yoi!” Young Drake sat up with a sudden alertness and stared
hard at his visitor. “It’s Uncle Ducky’s money--that’s why--I’ll bet a
cooky!”
“Not with me, you won’t,” said Neighbor; “for if your Uncle Ducky left
any worldly goods the gentleman that offers a bounty for you is the
very man to covet those goods. Just how getting you killed would bring
him in anything I don’t almost see.”
“That’s just it!” cried Roger Drake. “He’s got the money now--or
somebody has; I haven’t. I’m trying to find it.”
“Son,” said Neighbor judicially, “this sounds real thrillin’. Tell it
to me.”
Young Drake hesitated.
“No offense, Mr. Jones; but I have been strongly advised to say
nothing.”
Neighbor nodded eagerly.
“Yes, yes! Mystery; sorcery; silence; wisdom! ‘But how do you know I’m
honest?’ says the lad in the story. ‘Why,’ says the other chap, ‘didn’t
you just tell me so?’ Well, I’m honest. Go on! Also curious. That’s why
I want to be told; but here is why you should want to tell me: If we
were back in New York town you’d understand the ins and outs of things
that I couldn’t make a guess at, and that it would take you large,
dreary centuries to tell me about. Ever think of that?”
“I gotcha!” said Roger joyously. “And this is your country, you mean;
while I’m a mere stranger----”
“Correct! Move up one girl! I never saw a merer stranger than you, Mr.
Ducky. You’re so mere that none know you but to love you. Why, the boys
you’ve met up with out on the range couldn’t even be hired to kill you,
and they had to offer me the chance. Durned if I believe I’m going to
do it myself! G’wan now; let’s hear the sad story of your life.”
Chapter IV
“When I think of that poor little answer waiting all alone for its own
dear riddle,” said Ducky, much affected, “I can’t refuse. But I’ll only
hit the high places. Uncle Roger is dead, and it isn’t a pleasant stunt
to rake up all his faults and catalogue ’em.”
He reflected a little while.
“My uncle put me through college and named me as his sole heir, for
the reason--I had it from his own lips--that he lost father’s little
property for him. Uncle Roger was the elder brother, head of the
family, and all that.
“He had a mighty high idea of the Drakes, did Uncle Roger, and he never
liked my mother. To the day of her death he was barely civil to her.
That’s what I couldn’t forgive in him, for all his cold and formal
kindness to me. Damn it! He ignored her and she was worth a hundred
like Roger Drake.
“From all accounts, my Uncle Roger was a warm baby at college. He
was the only original Ducky Drake; all others were base imitations.
Come back to li’l’ ol’ N’ York--lawyer; man about town; clubs; Tottie
Twinkletoes; birds and bottles at proper temperatures! New York took
his roll away from him.
“Did he buckle down to business and, by frugal industry--and so on? He
did not. He faded away into the dim blue and the tall green. Honest,
Jonesy, this is rotten of me--knockin’ like this! But if you’re going
to help me play Money, money, who’s got Uncle Ducky’s money? this is
what you want to know. It was the keynote of his character that he
wanted all the beastly junk money will buy, but wasn’t willing to hop
out and hustle for the money. He wanted it quick, easy and often.”
“Mind if I take notes?”
“’Eavings, no! Well, six years afterward he came back. A distant
relative--great-aunt or something--had left him a sizable legacy.
Business of killing calf. So he took his money and poor old dad’s and
set to work to found an estate. Mother didn’t know about it. I happened
along about that time and she took quite a fancy to me; didn’t notice
other things.
“It doesn’t seem possible that any one could consistently lose money in
real estate in a thrifty, growing burg like New York, does it? Uncle
Roger did. Then he ducked again.
“Some ten years later, back to New York--who comes here? Is it my
long-lost uncle? It is. Talked vaguely of holdings in New Mexico. Had
the mazuma, and spent it. He stayed all winter; then back to New Mex.
That’s been the program ever since--four to six months in New York, the
rest out here. But he didn’t talk about New Mexico and he didn’t urge
us to visit him there.
“To do him justice, he made good on one point. He came through with
good hard coin for dad. He was really very fond of poor old dad, and
he’d always been sore at himself about losing dad’s wad. And, as I
said, he put his ungrateful nephew through school.
“Two months ago we found him dead in his bed--heart disease. His will
left all his property to me unconditionally. But where and what was his
property? He hadn’t told us; and naturally dad hadn’t felt like asking
him.
“Saragossa was his post office. Except a pass book for his New York
bank we found no papers in his effects--not so much as a letter. We
applied at the bank.--Ahem! Huh? Mr. Drake had opened an account
with them years ago; the balance was so much--about one winter’s
spending for Uncle Roger. We pressed ’em a little. Very irregular,
said the bank; but, under the circumstances--ahem! It had been Mr.
Drake’s custom to make one large deposit each year, checking out
the greater part of it before he put in more. What was a little
unusual, he generally made these deposits personally and in cash;
sometimes--ahem!--there had been drafts from Albuquerque or El Paso.
“So there we were! How much property? According to the pass book, Uncle
Roger had been spending, on the average, about seven thousand a year,
including his two extravagances--father and yours truly. Said property
was evidently in the grand new state of New Mex. But where, what and
how much? Had Uncle Roger spent all his income or only part of it? All
of it, we judged; for, with all respect to your so wonderful Southwest,
my Uncle Roger thought life in any place more than half an hour away
from Broadway was a frost. If he stayed there only four months in the
year, it was because supplies didn’t hold out.”
“I knew of your uncle--never saw him,” said Neighbor. “He lived very
quietly. Stayed at the ranch mighty close; made no friends and no
enemies. No mixer. Had no visitors from the outside. Hunted a little.
No cowman. He didn’t know anything about cattle, he wouldn’t learn
anything about cattle, and he didn’t care anything about cattle. Left
that all to his partner. That’s his rep, according to campfire talk.
One thing’s certain--your uncle didn’t make any seven thousand per from
the ranch, or any big part of it. The Double Dee outfit doesn’t sell
three hundred steers a year. Your uncle only got half of that and paid
half the expenses. No, sir--that Double Dee brand helped some, but it
was mostly a blind for something else.”
“That’s what I’m headed for,” said Ducky. “Dad’s an invalid; so I
came out. At Albuquerque Mr. Drake had bought drafts at the banks.
The hotels knew him but none of the business men had ever heard of
him. El Paso, ditto. So he couldn’t have been engaged in any business
openly, aside from the ranch. I came to Saragossa. You know what I
found here. Uncle Roger’s whole bunch of cattle would have made about
a year’s pocket money for him. His partner offered me ten thousand for
my half of ranch and cattle. That’s enough to keep the wolf from the
well-known door, but hardly what was expected.”
“Grab it! That’s more than it’s worth. I know. Jim-Ike, my new
neighbor, worked that country last year.”
“Quinliven--Uncle Ducky’s pardner--showed me the tally book. According
to that, my share would be about that much.”
Jones bent his head to hide a significant smile.
“Take it! Well, what did he say about your uncle?”
“He didn’t believe my uncle owned any property here. Didn’t know what
he might have back East. Close-mouthed codger, he was.
“My own idea all along had been that my uncle had a secret mine. I
put this up to Quinliven. Secret mine? Rubbish! No one could work a
secret mine in this country--where everything was known; where the
smoke of the strange camp fire was something of vital interest, to be
looked into at once; where every cowpuncher had the time, ability and
inclination to follow up any strange track.
“Fat chance, when all the freight from a country as big as an
Eastern state was handled through one depot! Everybody knew all ore
shipped--where it came from and what it run. Rubbish! Placer mines?
‘Mai dear-r sir-r, to wash placer dirt, you must have water; and where
water is, in New Mexico, is a frequented and public place.’ Nuggets?
Pish! Bosh! Nowt!
“I questioned my uncle’s banker and his lawyer. Great astonishment.
Nothing knowing. Mr. Bennett showed me the joint account of Quinliven
& Drake, with a very small balance. My uncle kept no private account;
he knew of no other investment my uncle had made; no such sums as I
mentioned passed through his hands. The lawyer is now trying to solve
my problem for me.”
“Who’s the lawyer?”
“He’s a Mexican--a Mr. Octaviano Baca--and, at first, it seemed a
rum start that Uncle Roger should have a native for his attorney.
But he’s a live one, all right; a very shrewd, keen person, indeed.
Educated, too--good company; witty; speaks English with fluency and
precision--much better English than I do. But doubtless you are
acquainted with him. He is, I am told, something of a political power,
having great influence with the natives.”
Neighbor chuckled. He knew what young Drake did not. Octaviano Baca was
the Boss--King of Saragossa.
“Know him by sight; never met him. But we know all about everything
here, even people we’ve never seen. In this country our campfire talks
take the place of Bradstreet and Dun, or Who’s Who. Great help. They
ain’t afraid to say what they think, them firelighters; and they ain’t
afraid to think what they say! We’re all catalogued..... ‘Jones,
Neighbor. Good old wagon, but needs greasing. Use no hooks.’... That’s
me. I’m mighty proud of that biography too. So it is Baca and Bennett
that are looking after your interests?”
“Baca alone now,” corrected Ducky. “Bennett helped at first, making
inquiries from his business connections, and so on. We thought if we
could unearth some investment of my uncle’s we might follow it up; but
there was a silly gunplay on the range between Bennett’s men and ours,
and Bennett thought he had better withdraw from the investigation;
because Quinliven took it up, you know--grouchy old sorehead!--talked
pretty rough to Bennett, and took our account over to the other bank.”
“What was the trouble about--mavericks?”
“I hardly know--pure cussedness, I guess. Nothing worth quarreling
about. Tommy Garst and one of our boys had some words about some spring
up in the mountains. All foolishness--nobody had any real title to it
and everybody’s cattle watered there; so it made no difference who
claimed it. But they got to shooting over it--silly fools! Both gone
now.”
“Nobody hurt?”
“Dah!” said Ducky scornfully. “Well, how about that answer?”
Neighbor looked at his own toes with painstaking speculative interest.
To assist the process he cocked his head on one side and screwed his
mouth up. At last he glanced over at Ducky.
“I know a lot if I could only think of it,” he announced plaintively.
With a thoughtful face and apparently without his own knowledge, he
broke into song, with a gay, lilting voice:
“_Here I am, a-comin’ on the run--
Best durn cowboy ’at ever pulled a gun!
Hi-yi-yi-yippy; yippy-yi-yi-yi!
Hi-yi-yi-yippy; yippy-yea!_”
Ducky sniffed.
“Why don’t you learn a tune if you want to sing?”
Neighbor looked round with puckered eyes.
“Why, I ain’t singin’--not exactly!” he answered dreamily. “I’m
thinkin’--thinkin’ about your troubles and how to make ’em all come
out right in the next number. I’ve got a two-story mind, you see. One
of ’em is diggin’ away for you, hard, while the other one is singin’,
foot-loose, or talking to you. Me and the real serious-mind, we’re
studyin’ right now; we don’t hardly sense what I’m sayin’ to you. And
that’s a real nice tune too. I don’t like to have you make fun of that
tune. That’s a saddle song. That tune goes to a trotting horse. You try
it.”
“Why, so it does!” said Ducky after a brief experiment.
“Can you make your fingers go gallop-y? Well, do it, and I’ll show
you another. But don’t talk to me. I’m thinking fine and close, like
walkin’ a rope; and you’ll throw me off.”
So Ducky made his fingers go gallop-y and Neighbor kept time to it:
“_Percival Pulcifer Peterkin Pool,
Cloaked and mittened and ready for school;
Cloaked and muffled and gloved and spurred.
Gee! Wasn’t Peter a wise old bird?_”
“Any more?” demanded Ducky, highly diverted.
“Yes; here’s a pacing tune. They say,” added Neighbor absently,
“they say, back in Maryland and Virginia, that old King James
Fifth wrote this song--allowing for some expurgating and change o’
names--Albuquerque for Edinburgh--to give it local color. Hark!
“_Oh, when I got to Albuquerque I taken down my sign--
Tirra-la-la, tirra-la-la, lay!
Oh, when I gat to Albuquerque I taken down my sign,
For they’re all educated there in the riding line--
Ti-ri-laddy and a ti-ri-lay!_”
Here Neighbor brought his tilted chair back to level, removed his
clasped hands from the back of his head, and shook off his dreamy
expression.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to give it up for this time,” he sighed.
“Yah!” said Ducky, grinning. “A pish and three long tushes! You big
stiff! I thought you were going to tell me money, money, who’s got the
money? and where Uncle Roger plucked it in the first place. Little
Ducky, he sticks to his first guess--mines--and counterfeiting, for
place.”
“Where he got it? Where---- My poor, poor boy!” said Neighbor. “My poor
misguided lamb, I wasn’t studying on who’s got your uncle’s money; I
was figuring on a harder thing--and that’s how you and me are going to
get it. I know where your uncle’s money is. I know it was really cash
money, too, and not property. And I know how he got it!”
Ducky stared.
“Business of gasp!” he said. “Demonstrate! Produce!”
“Wait a minute!” said Neighbor, holding up a warning hand. “How do you
bate your breath? If you know, do it!”
“She’s bated. Break it to me!”
“I’ll tell you first and give you the reasons afterward; it makes the
reasons sound so much more reasonable, that way.”
“‘You may fire when ready, Gridley!’”
“Hist!” said Neighbor, weird, shaky and spook-eyed. “Listen to the evil
old man of Haunted Hill! Your uncle was the Man Higher Up! He made
his money backing gambling hells! U-r-r-r-r-h! The men who have now
got that money-money are Beck, Baca, Scanlon, Quinliven and Bennett!
And the men who are now going to get that money-money--open another
bottle, Ducky--are Roger Olcott Drake, Second--Present!--and Neighbor
Jones--Present! But how? How? How?”
Chapter V
Roger Drake caught his breath.
“Sir, do you inhale it or do you use a needle? Can you prove any of
that?”
“Prove it!” returned Neighbor indignantly. “I don’t have to prove it--I
know it. It’s just gemimini-mentally got to be that way. There ain’t no
proofs--the kind to convince a jury of peers; but there’s no other way
to account for what’s happened, and, if you’re not a natural-born peer,
I can show you.”
“Among the many beauties that add luster to my character are an
aptitude to be shown and a simple willingness to try anything--once. Go
to it, old summit! Wise me up!”
“Ver-ree well! Let us examine the simple and jolly facts--well-known,
but not to you. Tavy Baca is abso-lute-ly the Big Noise in Saragossa
County--accent on loot. Nominations and appointments f. o. b. for cash
with order. Special terms for convictions and acquittals. Try our
land-office decisions. Small graft of all kinds. Corpses to order in
neat hardwood boxes. Very Roycrofty. See us before trying elsewhere.
“Laying all juries aside, he’s a smart lawyer--Baca. He might be
immensely wealthy, but every Mexican within a radius, when he’s sick,
lazy or in trouble, makes a beeline for Baca and comes away with a
jingle in his pocket. It’s like packin’ water in a sieve.
“Gambling, as perhaps you know, is completely stamped out in New Mexico
since she joined the glorious sisterhood. Baca would be getting a juicy
rake-off from Beck’s game. Or, since Baca was your uncle’s lawyer,
uncle made the necessary arrangements himself, likely.”
“But how do you know my uncle was behind Beck?”
“I don’t--that comes later. I am now giving you known facts only, and
you can build for yourself wherever they’ll fit.
“Bennett owns a heap of other people’s property. He began life
by ruining Brown and Almandares--take thy bill and write down
fifty--deliberately smashed ’em so he could get the wreckage. As he
began, he kept on--a wrecker. He has no heart, lungs, lights or liver.
I knew Almandares; and the good Lord never made a better man than that
old Mexican.
“Let me at once show you the impassable gulf between Bennett and a
common cheat like Beck, or like Scanlon--blacklegs, card sharps,
flimflammers. With the Beck kind, you lose only what they win. The
Bennett kind gladly makes you lose ten dollars so he can get one. To
end with, Beck and Scanlon showed a tenderness toward you not wholly
explained by your many charms of face and form. It was magnificent, but
it was not poker. And there’s where I first got the hunch.
“Having stolen the big bundle, they, or either of them, felt a certain
delicacy about cheating you for your small change; so what they won
from you they won fair. But banker Bennett, with his share put up in
moth balls, he’s so scared you might find out and pry it away from him
that he wants to hire you killed!”
Ducky Drake made an impassioned remark. It was a household word.
“What makes it a good deal worse,” added Jones with exceeding
bitterness, “is that he picked on me to let the contracts to.”
“Well, but----”
“But, nothing! That is one word I can’t bear. He offered to cancel
the mortgage on my stuff if I’d expurgate you. That means nearly two
thousand perfectly good bucks. Why? Would Bennett do that from civic
pride? Nary! He’s got a big bunch of your money--that’s why. Is there
any other possible reason?”
“Mere as I am,” said Ducky, “I can see that. There is not. But how does
all this involve the others? And what makes you hook up my uncle with
the kitty industry?”
“When a man loves money and not work; when a man has run through three
fortunes, two of ’em his own; when he turns up with a taxable income
made in Saragossa County--how did he make it? How can he make it?
Openly, in mines, sheep, cattle, storekeeping, liquor or law. But,
except for one cattle ranch, misses’ size, your uncle had no business
relations--openly.
“What kind of business is done secretly? Business that is very
profitable and not well thought of; counterfeiting--smuggling--gambling.
This wasn’t smuggling--too far from the border. Nor counterfeiting--else
he might have printed off enough to let him live in New York. Also, it
couldn’t possibly be counterfeiting, because it was gambling.
“Now, Beck and Scanlon run the only dens in Saragossa and at Ridgepole.
Because they are all involved, your uncle must have been hooked up with
gambling; and, because your uncle was hooked up with gambling, they’re
all involved.”
Ducky looked dazed; with tolerable reason.
“Quinliven is involved bad and big and sure. He offered to take your
cattle for the full number on the tally book. No cowman would do
that. The calves on that tally are sold, lost, strayed, stolen, eaten,
skinned, and gone with the wild bunch. Quinnie, he wanted to get little
Ducky out of the country.
“That shooting scrape was all fake; so you wouldn’t suspect him and
Banker Bennett of standin’ in. Real sincere people don’t empty their
guns and not hit anybody--it ain’t respectable. But Bennett he intended
to make that water hole the explanation of your bein’ found dead and
promiscuous. That’s what he proposed to me.”
“Oh, goils, pinch me!”
“Baca is involved by being your uncle’s lawyer, and yet not knowing how
your uncle extracted that nice little income from Saragossa County; and
by being your lawyer and not finding out. And old Beck and Scanlon are
involved by their conscientious scruples in not wanting the last rag
off your back.”
Ducky remonstrated.
“Hi! You put that last in to make it easy--like the Englishman who
always added ‘and barks like a dog’ to all his riddles, to make ’em
harder. You’re throwing the long arm of coincidence out of socket. It
won’t wash, my Angular-Saxon friend! You’re a good old superdreadnought
and the best hand at a standing high guess I’ve ever seen--but we can’t
go to court waving any wild, wet tale like that.”
“Court? Oh, Jemima! Who said court? Let Tavy Baca pick the jury and
you couldn’t convict one of that push on his own written confession.
The right hunch is goin’ to be the best evidence, where we settle this
case--and that’s out of court.”
“Do you mean to use force?”
“Thank you, I shouldn’t wish any pie. Why, Ducky dear, some of that
outfit would lock horns with Julius K. Cæsar if he looked ogle-eyed at
’em. Tavy Baca especially is a cold proposition--the worst west of a
given point. Only one skunk in the firm. That’s Bennett. No, sir; if
you want to touch that tainted money----”
“I do. Let me leave no chance for misapprehension. I want to roll in
it! I want to puddle my paddies in it!”
“Then you’ve got to guess quick and guess right and guess hard; you’ve
got to mean what you think, and dig in your toes when you pray! To
handle this contract you have got to have the hunch, the punch, the pep
and the wallop!”
“But, even if you’re right----”
“If you say that again I’ll quit you!” declared Jones indignantly.
“Don’t say dem crool woids to me!” begged Ducky. “You’re horribly
right----but where are you going to begin? It’s like climbing a glass
wall.”
“Oh, no--not so bad as that! We have one highly important circumstance
in our favor. They haven’t divided the spoils yet. If they had they
wouldn’t be trying to get you out of the way. And when they do
divide--about this time look out for squalls; for I judge that most of
that cash was left on deposit with Bennett. The hell-housekeepers will
have the rest--what they had for the house roll when they heard that
Uncle Roger had cashed in, and what they’ve won or lost since.
“When you came on and it became plain that you didn’t know anything
about your uncle’s business, there they were! Bennett couldn’t keep it
all--the gamblers would give the snap away unless they got their share.
They couldn’t get it all--Bennett would tell you first.”
“Oh, my, my! Birds in their little nests should not fall out!”
Jones ignored the interruption.
“Baca and Quinliven horned in too--they each want a slice; but Bennett
won’t let it out of his hands till you go home. He’s afraid you’ll find
instructions from your uncle or some sort of a statement.”
“Uncle Roger knew, in a vague, general way, that men died; but he
thought that was only other people--people in the papers,” explained
Roger. “And yet he must have kept a pass book, receipts--something to
show for his deposits.”
“Exactly! Beck and Baca, between them, have got the pass book, and hold
it over Bennett’s head for a club, likely. That’s real funny. Bennett’s
the one that’s taken all the risks, this load. Generally it’s somebody
else that takes the chances, while Bennett gets the profit.”
“Well! You certainly are a wise old fowl!” said Roger with explosive
emphasis.
“If your uncle had trusted him, I think, maybe, Quinliven might have
come across--I judge he would. I reckon Quinnie, old boy, was just
uncle’s blind; but he guessed something and butted in to blackmail the
blackmailers. To make it nice and pleasant all round, him and Baca will
be wanting the gamesters to throw the house roll into the pool along
with the rest, and then split it all up, even Stephen. I would right
much admire to witness the executive session of that firm when they
declare the final dividend!” said Neighbor with a chuckle. Then his
brow clouded.
“But I can’t. Because we’re going to get it. To begin with, suppose you
step round and take Quinnie up on his offer for your cattle. Stick out
for cash. He hasn’t got it, but he’ll make the others dig it up from
the sinking fund. Right then that company will begin to get a pain in
the stumick-ache. They’ll see you makin’ ready to go ’way and they’ll
all begin playing for position. You hang to your cattle selling as
though you didn’t have another idea on earth.”
Neighbor Jones rose to go.
“And while you start that I’m going round and throw the clutch of
circumstance into the high gear.”
Chapter VI
In the lobby of the Windsor Hotel, as Neighbor Jones came down the
stairs, Mr. Octaviano Baca chatted with a little knot of guests.
A well-set-up man, tall and strong, with a dark, intelligent face
marred and pitted by smallpox but still pleasing, he carried his two
score years with the ease of twenty. A gay man, a friendly man, his
manner was suave and easy; his dress, place considered, rigorously
correct--frock coat, top hat, stick, gloves and gun. The gun was
covered, not concealed, by the coat; a chivalrous concession to the
law, of which he was so much an ornament.
Baca was born to riches, and born to the leadership of the clans. He
had brains in his own right; but it was his entire and often proved
willingness to waive any advantage and to discuss any moot point with
that gun which had won him admiration from the many and forgiveness
from the few.
Mr. Jones sank into a quiet chair and read the newspapers. When Mr.
Baca, after several false starts, left his friends and went out on the
street, Mr. Jones rose and followed him. Mr. Baca turned in at Beck’s
place, Jones behind him.
Gambling was completely eliminated in Saragossa, but the saloon was
in high favor legally; so Beck and Scanlon kept a saloon openly on
the ground floor. The poker rooms and the crap, monte, roulette and
faro layouts were upstairs. Their existence was a profound secret.
No stranger could find the gambling den in Saragossa without asking
somebody--any one would do; unless, indeed, he heard, as he passed, the
whir of the ivory ball or the clicking of chips.
Baca, with a nod and a smile for the bar, passed on to join a laughing
crowd behind, where two native boys were enjoying a bout with the
gloves. Neighbor leaned on the bar. The partners were ill matched.
Beck was tall, portly and, except for a conscientious, professional
smile, of a severe countenance, blond, florid and flaxen. Scanlon was a
slender wisp of a blue-eyed Irishman, dried up, wizened and silent.
“Well, boys,” said Neighbor jovially, “I got to go back to the hills
and grow a new fleece. Till then, you’ve lost my game. Sorry.”
Beck frowned.
“I hate to see a good fellow go bust. If boys like you had plenty of
money I wouldn’t never have to work. Well, hurry on back! And come
straight here the first night, before you waste any on clothes and
saddles and stuff.” He lowered his voice for Neighbor’s ears. “Say, if
you’re short, you know--hotel bills, and so on--come round.” He jerked
a confidential thumb at the house safe.
“Not so bad as that!” laughed Neighbor. “But you want to sharpen your
shears up. They pulled a little this time.” He passed on to the circle
round the boxers.
It was late dusk when, after certain sociable beverages, Mr. Baca
bethought himself of supper and started homeward. As he swung along
the sidewalk Mr. Jones was close behind. Mr. Baca took the first turn
to the left: Mr. Jones took the first turn to the left. Mr. Baca cut
across the Park: Mr. Jones also cut across the Park, now almost at his
quarry’s heels. Mr. Baca wheeled.
“Did you wish to speak with me?”
Neighbor came forward, with an air of relief.
“Why--er--not exactly; but I’d just as lief as not. And it’ll be easier
for me, now it’s getting so dark. You see,” he said confidentially,
“I’m shadowing you!”
“You’re--what?”
“Shadowing you. You seemed to have plenty of money; and I thought,”
said Neighbor hopefully, “that I might catch you doing something wrong
and blackmail you.”
“Are you trying to break into jail?” demanded Baca sharply. “You are
either intoxicated or mentally deficient. In either case----”
“No, no,” said Neighbor soothingly. “I’m not drunk. I really need the
money.”
“Except that I doubt your sanity,” said the outraged lawyer, “I’d make
you regret this bitterly. Do you know who I am?”
“Sure! You’re Tavy Baca--Boss, Prosecuting Attorney and two-gun man.
And please don’t talk that way about me,” Neighbor pleaded in an
injured voice. “It makes me feel bad. You wouldn’t like it yourself.
Don’t you know me? I’m not insane. I’m Jones--Neighbor Jones. I’ve been
bucking the poker game at Beck’s. But there--you don’t know about the
poker game, of course--you being Prosecuting Attorney and all.”
“See here!” said Baca with a dull, ugly note, “if you’re looking for
trouble you can get enough for a mess!”
“Not trouble--money!”
“I warn you now,” Baca advised. “Do not follow me another step. I’m
going.”
Jones burst into joyous laughter with so free and unfeigned a note that
Baca turned again.
“Come!” cried Jones. “I know what you think I’m going to say--that
before I started I left a sealed envelope with a friend and told him
if I didn’t come back by X o’clock to break the seal and be guided by
the contents--that’s what you thought I’d say. But you’re wrong!”
Unhesitatingly he took the few steps separating him from that silent,
angry figure in the starlight. “Nobody knows what I’m up to but you and
me and God, and you’re not right sure. So don’t waste any more breath
on warnings. I’m warned--and you are!”
Without a word Baca turned at right angles to his homeward course, and
led the way swiftly up the dark and steep street to a dark and silent
quarter of the Mexican suburb. Toward the street, these old adobe homes
presented a blank wall; windows, and all doors save one, fronting on
the inclosed _patio_.
“It’s like this,” said Jones cheerfully, pressing along the narrow
way a yard behind: “I had a nice little bunch of cows--nigh onto two
hundred--out in the Monuments. And Bennett, he was projecting about
like a roarin’ lion out there; and he says: ‘Jones, why don’t you buy
the Bar Nothing brand?’ ‘No money,’ says I.... I say, Baca, don’t go so
fast! This ain’t no Marathon! Lonesome, shivery place, isn’t it?”
The silent figure walked still swifter.
“Oh, all right, then! ‘I’ll lend you the money,’ says Bennett, ‘an’
take a mortgage on both brands.’ ‘There’ll come a drought,’ says I,
‘and them cattle will lay down and die on me, a lot of ’em; and I’ll
find myself in a fix.’ And he did, and they did, and I did.”
No word from Baca. In the black shadow of the dark unlighted houses he
passed swiftly and unhesitatingly. Jones continued:
“Since that I paid him all but eighteen hundred-odd; and now the
mortgage comes due pretty sudden, and I stand to lose both brands....
Say, Baca, where’re you takin’ me to? Some gang of thugs? You can do
that all right--but I’ll get you first and I’ll get you hard, and I’ll
get you sure! Don’t make any mistake!”
Baca gave way to his feelings.
“Oh, bother!” he said, and stopped, irresolute.
“What do you mean anyway, actin’ the way you do?” demanded Jones,
mopping his forehead. “Wouldn’t it sound silly, if I lay a-dyin’, for
you to threaten me with jail and shootin’ and law? They’d sound real
futile, wouldn’t they? Well, I’m dying right now. I’ve been a long time
at it; but there ain’t no cure for what ails me but death. I refer, of
course, to the malady of living.”
“Damn your eyes!” cried the exasperated King of Saragossa; and he began
rapidly to retrace his steps.
“And so,” continued the dying man, keeping pace, “I don’t never back
up. When I start out to blackmail a man he might just as well be nice
about it, ’cause I’m going to blackmail him.”
Despite himself, Baca had to laugh.
“What are you going to blackmail me for?”
“About two thousand,” said Jones.
“But what have I done?”
“Good Lord, man!” said Jones blankly. “I don’t know!”
“Come!” said Baca, and clapped his persecutor on the back. “I like a
brave man, even if he is a damned fool! Come home to supper with me.
I’ve got a little bachelor establishment beyond the Park, with an old
Mexican _hombre_ who can give you the best meal in town.”
“You’re on! And after supper, then we can fix up that mortgage, can’t
we? I want to specify that now, so I can eat your salt without
prejudice.”
* * * * *
“And now,” said Baca, replenishing his guest’s wine-glass, “about the
blackmail. Of what particular misdeed do you accuse me?”
“When you asked me to supper,” said Jones thoughtfully, “you virtually
admitted there was something. You see that? But I don’t like to intrude
on your private affairs--to butt in, as we say in Harvard.”
The host fixed keen eyes on him.
“As we say in Harvard? Yes,” he purred. “Go on!”
“It is very distasteful to me. Instead of me naming your crime-or
crimes--why could you not beg me to accept a suitable sum as a
recognition of my good taste? Just as you please! It’s up to you.”
“As we say in Harvard!” suggested Baca lightly, lifting his brows with
another piercing look.
“As we say in Harvard,” agreed Jones. “Any sum, so long as it comes to
exactly two thousand. Or, you might use your influence to get Bennett
to cancel my mortgage--that would be the same thing. He offered to
cancel it once this afternoon--on a condition.”
“And that condition?”
“Was not acceptable. It betrayed too plainly the influence--the style,
we might say--of the James brothers.”
“William and Henry?”
“Jesse and Frank. Man, dear,” said Neighbor with sudden, vehement
bitterness, “you and me, we’re no great shakes. You’re goin’ to rob
young Drake and I’m going to take hush money for it; but this man
Bennett is a stinking, rancid, gray-headed old synonym. He is so scared
he won’t be happy till he gets that boy killed. If I was as big a
coward as that, durned if I’d steal at all!”
Baca struck the table sharply; splotches of angry red flamed in his
cheeks.
“And I told him I wouldn’t stand for it! Damn him! Look here, Jones,
you ought to be boiled in oil for your stupefying insolence; but,
just to punish him, I’ll make Bennett pay your price. It will be like
drawing teeth; give me time.”
Chapter VII
The rain drenched in long shudders. Here and there a late lamp blurred
dimly at a pane; high-posted street lamps, at unequal and ineffectual
distances, glowed red through the slant lines of rain, reflected
faintly from puddle and gutter at their feet. Alone, bent, boring into
the storm, Martin Bennett shouldered his way to Baca’s door under the
rushing night.
A gush of yellow struck across the dark--the door opened at his first
summons; he was waited for. The master of the house helped him from
his raincoat and ushered him through crimson portières into a warm and
lighted room. Three men sat before an open fire, where a table gleamed
with glasses and bottles. There were two other doors, hung, like the
first, with warm, bright colors, reflecting and tingeing the light from
fire and lamp--a cheerful contrast to the raw, bleak night outside.
Here the good cheer ceased. The three faces, as they turned to scowl at
the newcomer, were sullen, distrustful and lowering.
Despite the raincoat, Bennett was sodden to his knees; his hands and
face and feet were soaked and streaming. No friendly voice arose to
remark on his plight; an ominous silence had prevailed since the street
door had opened to him. He bent shivering to the fire. With no word the
host filled and brought to him a stiff glass of liquor. Bennett drained
it eagerly and a little color crept back into his pinched features.
Owen Quinliven broke silence then, with a growl deep in his throat.
“Thought you’d better come, eh?” His mustached lip bristled.
“The storm was so bad. I thought it might let up after a while,” said
Bennett miserably.
“Don’t make that an excuse,” said Beck with a cold sneer. “You might
have slipped over to our place, a short block; or you could have had us
meet you at your own office.”
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” expostulated Baca, with a curling lip. “You do
not understand. Mr. Bennett has his position to think of. Mr. Bennett
is highly respectable. He could not let it be known that he had traffic
with professional gamblers like Mr. Beck and the estimable Scanlon.”
He bowed ironically; the estimable Scanlon rolled a slow, wicked
little eye, and Baca’s cheek twitched as he went on: “I say nothing,
as you observe, of myself or of our worthy friend Quinliven, who, as I
perceive, is in a very bad temper.”
Quinliven glowered at the speaker like a baited bull. He was a huge,
burly man with a shaggy, brindled head, a bull neck, a russet face
knotted with hard red lumps, and small, fiery, amber-colored eyes under
a thick tangle of bushy brows. The veins swelled in his neck as he
answered.
“Well, he’ll have some traffic with me, and do it quick! Here I’ve
talked young Drake into selling out and going home; I’m giving him
twenty-five hundred dollars too much, standin’ the loss out of my
share--and me not getting a full share at all! All I get is the cattle,
while the rest of you pull down nearly twelve thousand apiece, net
cash. That part is all right though. That’s my own proposition. I don’t
begrudge the little extra money to the boy, and I want him to get away
from here for his own sake as well as for mine. This crawling, slimy
Bennett thing is bound to have that boy killed.” He glared at the
steaming banker by the fire. “I don’t see how that man got by with it
so long. He wouldn’t last long on the range. And now, after I’ve made
the trade, Bennett hems and haws, and hangs fire about giving up the
money.”
“You don’t understand,” protested the wretched banker. “You’ll get your
share; but it would inconvenience me dreadfully to take that amount of
money immediately from a little private bank like mine. In ninety days,
or even sixty, I can so adjust my affairs as to settle with all of you.”
“My heart bleeds for you,” said Beck sympathetically. “For I’m going
to inconvenience you a heap more. You’ll adjust your affairs in less
than ninety hours, or even sixty. I’ve been fooled with long enough.
That pass book calls for a little over forty-six thousand dollars. We
expected to get half. Instead we’ve got to split it four ways. Young
Drake is going and I want my split right now.”
“What about me?” cried the banker in wild and desperate indignation.
“What do I get? Barely a fourth! And you two have Drake’s money
already--heaven knows how much!”
“Heaven don’t,” said Beck.
“But do I get any of that?” shouted the outraged banker.
“You do not,” returned Beck. “In the first place, the men are
different. You stepped out of your class when you started to mingle
with the likes of us. Why should you bother to rob a perfect stranger
anyhow? And you with money corded up! I don’t understand it.”
“Bennett!” cried the ranchman, “if I stood in your shoes, before I’d
allow any man to use me like we’re using you, I’d go to Drake and give
that money up. I’d say: ‘Young fellow, I meant to rob you; but my
conscience troubles me, and so do my feet.’ You ain’t got the gall, and
you’re too big a hog. I dare you to!”
“And in the next place,” continued the complacent gambler, ignoring the
interruption, “there’s not one scrap of paper to connect our money with
Old Drake. Part of it is ours anyhow, that we’ve made honestly----”
“At poker,” corrected Scanlon.
“At poker, I should say. But we’ve got your receipts, Mr. Banker.
That’s what makes you squirm! And they’re where you can’t get ’em; so
it won’t do you any good to get any of us murdered, the way you tried
to do that boy.”
“He tried it again yesterday,” interposed Baca softly.
Quinliven brought his heavy hand crashing down on the table.
“You damned coward! I told you to drop that!” His red mustache prickled
fiercely; above his eyes the red tufts knotted to bunches. He glanced
round at his fellows. “Look here; there’s no damn sense in hurting that
kid, the way things stand. If Drake gets killed over this I’m going to
see that Bennett swings for it if I have to swing with him--the yellow
cur!”
The banker shriveled under his look.
“Your sentiments do you vast credit,” observed Baca suavely. “I
concur most heartily. But, my good fellow, why bawl your remarks?” He
accompanied the query with a pleasant smile.
Scanlon raised his head to watch. The ranchman’s fingers worked and
quivered; for a moment it seemed as though he would leap on his
tormentor; but he settled back.
“I’m with you,” said Scanlon.
Then, noting that Beck did not commit himself to this self-denying
ordinance, he filled a glass with wine and, as he drank it, observed
his partner narrowly from the tail of his eye.
“You may rest easy, Mr. Quinliven,” observed Baca, straddling with
his back to the fire and his hands to the blaze. “There will be no
need for you to carry out your chivalrous intention. I assure you that
while I live I am perfectly capable of selecting a jury that will
hang Mr. Bennett without the disastrous concomitant you mention; and
I shall take great pleasure in doing so should need arise. I should
hate to see you hanged, Quinliven--I should indeed! You distress me!
But I fear----” He left the sentence unfinished, shaking his head
sorrowfully. “Mr. Bennett, I am sure, will bear himself to conform with
our wishes. However, I find myself in full accord with Mr. Bennett in
the matter of the moneys now in the hands of Messrs. Beck and Scanlon,
and wrongfully withheld from our little pool.”
“That will be a-plenty,” said Beck. “For fear of mistakes I will now
declare myself. We admit that we have a bundle of the Drake money
and we announce that we are going to keep it. How much, is nobody’s
business but our own. In consideration of that fact, however, the two
of us lay claim to only one full share of the Drake deposit. That gives
us twelve thousand; Bennett as much; the Honorable Prosecuting Attorney
the same; the Double Dee brand to Quinliven. That’s final!”
“I suppose you know, Mr. Beck,” said Baca, cupping his chin, “your
little joint can be closed any time I lift a finger?”
“Baca,” said Scanlon with level eyes, “you’ll close nawthin’! We bought
protection from you. We’ll get what we bought. When you feel any doubts
comin’ on, don’t talk to Beck about it. Talk to me! And,” he added
with venomous intensity, “one more word about any divvy on our poker
roll and that pass book goes to Ducky Drake!” He tapped his breast.
“I’ve got the pass book--not Beck.”
“Well, well,” said Baca indulgently, “have your own way. Far be it from
me to question any gentleman’s ultimatum, and so, perhaps, bring a
discordant note into our charming evening. Let us pass on to the next
subject. Is everybody happy? No! Mr. Bennett is not happy. Mr. Bennett
is a very able man, as we all know--exemplar to the young--a rich man,
merchant prince, and all that. And yet we can quite understand that he
may be temporarily embarrassed for actual cash. I, for one, am willing
to allow him a reasonable time. He cannot hide his real estate; so we
shall be taking no risks. Doubtless we can stand off young Drake for
the price of his cattle by giving him good security.”
The silent Scanlon leaped up and snarled in unimaginable ferocity.
“If there’s any more shilly-shally there’ll be a Standing Room Only
sign on the gates of hell and the devil sending out a hurry-up call
for the police!” His voice swelled in breathless crescendo. “I’m sick
of you--the whole pack and pilin’! I want to get so far away from here
it’ll take nine dollars to send me a postcard; so far east they’ll
give me change for a cent; so far north the sun don’t go down till
after dark.” His eyes were ablaze with blistering scorn. “Gawd! Look
at yourselves! Quinliven--the honorable, high-minded, grave-robbing
pardner----”
“Here!” bellowed Quinliven savagely. “I came through with the cattle,
straight as a die! That’s as far as I was any pardner of Drake’s. You
don’t know how that man treated me! It wasn’t only me doing all the
work--but his cold, sneering, overbearing----”
“Shut up, you polled Angus bull!” yelled Scanlon with a howl of joyous
truculence. “And Bennett--faugh! P-t-t-h!”
Scanlon spat in the fire, and wheeled on the other gambler. Beck’s face
was black with concentrated hate. The little man pointed a taunting
finger.
“Look at Beck!” he jeered. “Guess what he knows I think of ’im! And
I know him--he’s me pardner! Fish mouth and mackerel eye---- Yah!
And all three of you knuckle down to Baca! Year after year you let
yourselves be bullyragged, browbeaten, lorded over by a jury-packing,
witness-bribing shyster--a grafter, a crook, a dirty Mexican----”
Without hesitation or change of countenance Baca walked across the
open space toward him.
“Not one step more!” said Scanlon.
Baca stopped in his tracks.
“You nervy little runt,” he said, half in admiration, “you mean it!
Well, I mean this, too. If I’m a crook--and there is much in favor of
that contention--it is because my personal inclination lies that way,
and not in the least because of my Mexican blood. I am quite clear on
that point. Leave out the part about the dirty Mexican and I don’t take
that other step. Otherwise, I step! Choose!”
“I withdraw the Mexican!” said Scanlon ungrudgingly. “Dod! I believe
you’re the best of the rotten bunch!”
“Go on, then: ‘Grafter, crook’----” prompted Baca.
“Why--er--really!” stammered Scanlon. Then he brightened. “‘There has
been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said,’” he beamed,
canting his head on one side with a flat, oily smile, “‘that I will not
further detain you.’”
He seated himself, with a toothy, self-satisfied expression; but the
allusion was lost on all except the delighted Baca.
In glum silence, Quinliven reached for a bottle and glared at the
little Irishman, who smiled evilly back at him.
“There is one more point,” observed Baca in his best courtroom
manner, “on which I touch with a certain delicacy and, as it were,
with hesitation. I am reluctant to grieve further a spirit already
distressed; but the fact is, gentlemen, our impulsive friend
here”--he laid a gentle hand on Bennett’s shoulder and Bennett
squeaked--“undertook yesterday to employ this man Jones--Neighbor
Jones--to murder our friend Drake. I take this most unkindly.”
He teetered on his tiptoes; he twirled his eyeglasses; his hand made a
pleasant jingle with key ring and coin; his face expressed a keen sense
of well-being and social benevolence.
“As a matter of abstract principle, even before we had learned to love
our young friend Drake, we decided that such a step was unnecessary
and inexpedient; and so informed Mr. Bennett. But the idea of slaying
Mr. Drake seems to have become an obsession with Mr. Bennett--or, as
English Ben would put it, a fad. As English Ben would say, again, Mr.
Bennett is a beastly blighter.”
He adjusted the eyeglasses and beamed round on his cowed and sullen
confederates, goaded, for his delight, to madness and desperation; and
on the one uncowed co-devil, the mordant and cynical Scanlon.
“Our young Eastern friend has endeared himself to our hearts. I do
not exaggerate when I say that we feel quite an avuncular interest in
his fortunes. We are deeply hurt by Mr. Bennett’s persistence; but let
us not be severe. In this case retribution has been, as we might say,
automatic, for the man Jones, by some means, has acquired an inkling of
the posture in which our affairs lie in the little matter of the Drake
estate; though I believe he suspects only Bennett and myself. Bennett,
I judge, has talked too much. And--such is the wickedness and perfidy
of the human mind--the man Jones makes a shameless demand on us for
two thousand dollars, money current with the merchant, as the price of
silence. Alas, that such things can be!”
His hands, now deep in his trousers pockets, expressed a lively
abhorrence for the perfidy of the man Jones.
“This iniquitous demand is no better than blackmail and might be
resisted in our courts of justice; but, inasmuch as Mr. Bennett’s
sanguinary disposition has brought on us this fresh complication, would
it not be well to permit Mr. Bennett to pay this two thousand from his
private pocket? I pause for a reply.”
Bennett let out a screech between a howl and a shriek.
“This is infamous! You’re robbing me! Oh, why did I ever have dealings
with such desperadoes?”
“Why, indeed?” said Baca tranquilly. “I think, if you will permit me to
criticize, that was a mistake in judgment on your part, Mr. Bennett.
You have not the temperament for it.”
“He pays!” said Scanlon, gloating.
“He pays!” echoed the rancher.
“You’re robbing me!” Bennett crumpled to a wailing heap.
“We’re not, ye black scut!” snapped Scanlon, perking the unfortunate
banker upright by the collar. “But we will! We’re now holding to
the exact bargain we proposed and you agreed to; but if ever little
Mickey S. has need or desire av the red, red gold or the green, green
greenback, ’tis back here he will come to you. May Gawd have mercy on
your soul! Sit up, ye spineless jellyfish--sit up!”
Beck, sitting mute in a cold fury of hate, raised his eyes.
“This Neighbor Jones--I had a letter about him to-day. He’s caught on,
someway, that we’ve been workin’ him over in the shop; and he’s layin’
for us, I guess. That big lump that called himself the Kansas City
Kid--’twas him that wrote the letter. Jones accused him of cheating and
drove him out of town--took his gun, made him leave his clothes, and
hike. That’s a dangerous man, Baca. Now I think of it, young Drake
quit us at the same time. Jones told him our game was crooked, likely.”
“Them two was together all this forenoon--I seen ’em,” contributed
Quinliven. “Is Jones maybe fixing to give you the double cross?”
Baca considered with contracted brow.
“Possibly; but not necessarily so,” he said. “Drake agreed to sell
last night. Perhaps he merely got wise to himself--to use his own
phrase--and decided to sell out and go home while the going was good.
Jones would be his natural associate, the two having been bucking the
game together; but Jones expects to get clear of his debt by sticking
to me. He could gain nothing by telling Drake. We are too powerful.
He knows there is no way to make us disgorge--disgorge is the word, I
think, in this connection. I find Jones most amusing, myself. If he
wearies me----”
“Don’t you figure Jones for any easy mark,” warned Scanlon. “If he
tries to hand us something--look out! He is a bad actor.”
“Leave him to me,” said Baca with a tightening of the lips. “I’ll
take measures to improve his acting. Never mind Jones. We have
now satisfactorily adjusted the preliminaries, have we not? It is
established, I believe, that Mr. Scanlon and myself constitute a clear
majority of this meeting. Any objection? In that case, let us now get
down to the sad and sordid business before us. It is the sense of the
meeting, as I take it, that Mr. Bennett shall bring to this room, by
ten o’clock to-morrow--no; to-morrow is Sunday--by ten o’clock on
Monday, the purchase money for the Double Dee cattle.”
“Oh-h!” It was a mournful howl, a dog’s hopeless plaint to the moon;
emitted, however, by one of the gentlemen present.
“Objection overruled. You will, also, Mr. Bennett, provide twenty-four
thousand dollars to satisfy the other equities, here held in the Drake
estate.”
Scanlon held up a finger.
“Cash, you moind! No checks or drafts, to be headed off. Coin or
greenbacks! I will not be chipracked by this slippery ould man. He is
the human greased pig.”
By a prodigious effort Bennett pulled himself together; his face was
very pale.
“To provide that much cash, without warning, is impossible. I should
have nothing left to do the bank’s business with; in fact, I have not
half that amount of actual cash in the safe.”
He stood up and grasped the back of a chair--his knuckles were white
as he gripped; his voice grew firmer.
“I’ll be open with you, gentlemen. I am too much extended; I am
bitterly cramped for ready money. Give me time to turn round; don’t
force me to take this money out of the business now. Once let the
ordinary loans be refused to a few customers; let the rumor of it go
abroad; let my Eastern creditors once hear of it--and I must inevitably
stand a heavy loss. They will demand immediate payment, and that I
cannot make without sacrifice.”
“What would your creditors think if they knew what we know?” answered
Beck. “You’ll make your sacrifice right now, within forty-eight hours,
for your preferred creditors, here present.”
“Baca! I appeal to you. Help me! I’ll be honest. To pay out this sum
will not ruin me, but it’ll cripple me so that it may take me years
to recover. At the very best I shall lose far more than the pitiful
remnant of the Drake money you leave me. Give me time to turn round!
Give me thirty days!”
“Thirty hours,” said Beck; “Monday morning.”
“I tell you it will cost me two dollars for every one I pay over to you
now,” the banker pleaded. “Let me give you certificates of deposit.”
“That’s what you gave Drake!” said Scanlon.
For the first time in the somber silence that followed they heard the
loud clock on the mantel--tick, tock--tick, tock--tick, tock!
Baca spoke at last slowly and thoughtfully.
“Bennett, you have good standard securities in the El Paso National,
pledged for a comparatively small amount, as I happen to know. You can
sell them by wire and have the money here by the last train on Monday.
That’s what you’d better do. Personally I am not inclined----”
“Here is too much talk,” said Scanlon. “Cash or smash!”
Bennett threw up his hand in a gesture of despair.
“I’ll get it on Monday. Let me go home.”
“There now! I knew you would do the right thing if we forced you to!”
Baca went to the window. “It is not raining hard; so perhaps you had
better go home, as you suggest, Mr. Bennett. You seem fatigued. But the
rest of you will stay with me for the night, I trust. I have good beds;
here is wine and fire; and we can have a quiet rubber. No stakes, of
course.” He twisted his mouth and cocked an eyebrow at Beck.
“I’m gone!” announced Beck. He brushed by without a glance at the
others, jerked his hat and slicker from the rack, and flung out into
the night.
“Now who would suspect the urbane and lovable Beck of being so
sensitive?” asked Baca, rocking on his feet. “We shall not have our
whist game after all. You two will stay, however? Yes? That’s good!”
said the host. “Have a glass of wine before you go, Bennett. No? Let me
help you on with your raincoat, then. You have your rubbers?” He held
the door open. “Good-night!”
Chapter VIII
Beck did not take his way to his own rooms despite the lateness of the
hour. He followed the street at his left, the one that led to Bennett’s
home. A little later the door opened and Bennett took the same path at
a slower gait.
A head projected itself cautiously above the adobe wall that fenced the
Baca garden, looked forth swiftly, and vanished. After a few seconds
the head appeared again, farther away, where a lilac overhung the
wall. Screened by this background the head, with the body appertaining
thereunto, heaved, scrambling over the wall, and followed, with
infinite caution, the way of the two transgressors, keeping at a
discreet distance behind the slower one.
It was quite dark, though a few pale stars glimmered through rushing
clouds; the rain was a mere drizzle. Head and appurtenant body--the
latter slickered and bulky--paused to listen. They heard plainly the
plup of Bennett’s feet before them, and sat resolutely down on the
sloppy stone walk. There was a swift unlacing of shoes, a knotting of
laces. Slinging the shoes about the neck between them, they took up the
pursuit, swift and noiseless, slinking in the deeper shadows, darting
across the open spaces, and ever creeping closer and closer--a blacker
darkness against the dark.
* * * * *
When Bennett had passed through Baca’s door, framed for an instant,
black against a glowing square of light, Beck had been watching from
far down the street. Assured that Bennett was coming, he then walked
on swiftly for two or three blocks. Where a long row of cottonwoods
made dark the way, he waited in the shadows. He heard the slow steps of
his approaching victim, noted their feebleness, and waited impatiently
until Bennett passed his tree.
The gambler pounced on him; he crushed his puffy hand over Bennett’s
mouth.
“It’s me, Beck! If you make a sound, damn you, I’ll kill you! Feel
that gun at the back of your neck?” He took his hand away. “What’s
the matter with you? You old fool, can’t you stand up? I won’t hurt
you--unless you try to talk. If you say just one word to me I’m going
to kill you. I mean it!” His speech was low and guarded. “I’ve heard
enough talk to-night to do me quite some time. That Scanlon and
Baca--I’ll show them how to ride me!”
He peered up and down the deserted street.
“Walk on, now! Here; take my arm, you poor old fool! Let’s go down and
inspect your bank!”
Bennett gave a heart-rending groan; his knees sagged, and he clung
limply to his captor’s arm.
“If it will make you feel any better,” said Beck with a little note of
comfort in his voice, “I’m going to rob my own safe next.”
This assurance did not have the desired effect. With many exhortations,
slowly, painfully, they negotiated the distance to the Bennett
headquarters in the old Almandares Block.
With a strong hand on his collar and the muzzle of a forty-four pressed
between his shoulder blades, the unfortunate banker unlocked the
door, threaded the long, crowded aisles in the pitch dark, and came
at last to his private office. At his captor’s command he lighted a
single gas jet near the safe; it made a wan and spectral light in the
doleful place; in the corners of the great room the shadows crowded and
trampled.
With his shriveled face contorted in dumb protest, with tears on his
ash-pale cheeks, the wretched man groped at the combination. Strange
thoughts must have passed through his mind as he knelt there, delaying
desperately, hoping for the impossible.
Vainly, with a fiendish face, Beck urged and threatened; still the
shaking fingers fumbled, without result. With a horrible snarl the
gambler clasped Bennett’s wrist, twisted it up and back to the
shoulder blades, and pushed it violently forward. Stifling a shriek,
the tortured wretch pitched over on his face and lay there groveling,
gasping, his free hand clawing at the boards of the floor.
The gambler raised him up, releasing the pressure on the twisted arm;
Bennett twirled the knobs, the tumblers clicked, the bolts snicked
from their sockets; the great door swung open.
“Now the little doors and the drawers!” Beck directed. He was sweating
freely. For a moment it had seemed that Bennett would defy him at the
last. “Don’t leave anything locked on me! Man, the sweat’s just pouring
from you. That looks like a lot of money, to me. There, I forgot one
thing! I saw one of those little electric flashlights in your show
window yesterday. I want it. Lead me to it.”
After some delay in the dark the flashlight was found. By its aid the
robber compelled his victim to search out and carry a neat traveling
bag, certain coiled ropes, two silk handkerchiefs, and a round from a
loose stool; and drove him back to the office.
Here, heedless of voiceless protest and despairing tears, he gagged the
master of the counting house with the silk handkerchiefs and the chair
round, and then, with scientific precision, proceeded to bind him hand
and foot.
“There!” he said, after a final painstaking inspection. “That’ll hold
you a while! It’s a pity you’re a bachelor. If you had a family they
might find you here to-morrow. As it is I’m afraid you’ll have to wait
till Monday morning. If you’ll excuse me I’ll turn out the gas now.
Somebody might see it. I can do my packing by the searchlight.”
He sized up the stacks of gold, thumbed the bills, made a rough
calculation, rolled on the prisoner an eye dark with suspicion, and
remarked with great fervor, that he would be damned--Oh! Oh! He packed
the money neatly in the bag. Then he turned the flashlight on Bennett’s
livid face--a hopeless face, seared with greed and fear and all the
unlovely passions.
“Bennett, you’re the most contemptible liar God ever let live!” His
voice rang deep with scorn. “All that talk about your bein’ broke--and
here’s thirty-one thousand and some dollars--not counting the chicken
feed, which I leave for you. Say, do you know what I think?” He held
the flashlight closer to the quivering face. “I think you’ve reached
the end of your rope. I think you’re about ready for a smash-up. By
jingo, that’s it! You’ve been speculating deep or you never would have
stolen Drake’s deposit.
“It’s my notion that you intended to take this little wad and skip for
Old Mex--maybe selling them El Paso securities before we missed you. I
beat you to it, old hand! You can settle with my lovely companions on
Monday. I reckon they’ll be pretty sore, too, after all that big talk
they made--Scanlon especially. We have about twenty-six thousand in
our safe and I’m taking that. Well, I gotta go. S’long!”
But he came back at once. Bennett could not see his face; but the man’s
voice, for the first time since the hold-up, carried a human note.
“I kind of hate it, too--you layin’ here tied up this way all that
time. It’s going to be pretty tough. You’ll have to overlook it, old
man. There wasn’t any other way. It was that or kill you. If it’ll
make you any easier in your mind you’ve got my dyin’ oath that I’d ’a’
killed you in a holy minute if you hadn’t come through, or if you’d ’a’
made one wrong move. Bein’ tied up is a lot better than being dead.” A
new thought struck him. “I’ve got it!” he cried triumphantly. “Quick as
I get to Juarez I’ll wire somebody to let you go. That won’t be so bad.
I won’t waste a minute. Buck up! I’m gone now.”
Once in the open Beck trod with a jubilant step. It was darker now and
raining steadily; the smell of dawn was in the air; he quickened his
pace. No sign of life was on the street.
The gambler came to his place of business, took out his key ring, and
entered noiselessly. He worked swiftly. A through freight went south
before daylight, stopping at Saragossa for water; he would have time
to make it nicely. Very quickly the money in the safe was stowed in
his traveling bag. There was a little silver in stacks. Though the bag
was quite heavy enough already--for much of the money had been gold
pieces--Beck took the silver too.
Then a better thought came to him. He counted out nine silver dollars
and put them back in the safe; he laid a blank check, face down, on the
floor of the safe, with a dollar on each end like paper weights. And in
the slender lance of light cast by the electric flash he penciled a
brief note:
_Dear Scanlon_: I am leaving you nine dollars to send me a postcard.
He snapped out the flashlight, stuck it in his pocket, and tiptoed to
the front door, laughing softly.
Man is the slave of habit. Outside Beck turned to lock the door--a most
illogical thing to do. He placed the bag between his feet, fumbled for
the keyhole and inserted the key. Then he stiffened. He felt the cold
muzzle of a gun against his temple, and a gentle voice said:
“Let me carry your bag.”
Frozen with horror, the gambler felt a hand remove his own gun and the
flashlight.
“What’s this?” demanded the voice. “Oh, I see--a searchlight! That’ll
be nice. Keep your hands right where they are!” The hand felt for
further weapons. “All right!” said the voice. “Now open up and we’ll go
upstairs. You tote the baggage. Close the door gently, please. March!”
There was nothing else to do; so Beck marched.
“I may not do as good a job on you as you did with Bennett,” said the
voice apologetically; “but I’ll fix you up some way. While you was
tyin’ Bennett up I raided the whole durn neighborhood for clothesline.
This’ll be one awful grouchy town on wash-day!”
Beck’s scalp prickled with an agonizing memory of Bennett’s ghastly
face, as he had seen it last; the hair began to rise. He stopped on the
stairs rebelliously.
“I wish you would yell once, or balk--or something,” said the voice
hopefully. “It’d save me a heap o’ trouble--trussing you up. G’wan,
now!”
The gambler g’waned.
Chapter IX
The sky was washed clean; the sound of church bells floated across the
sunny meadows; the winds were still, save as a light and loitering air
wandered by, poignant with a spicy tang, the sweet alloy of earth.
Listening to those peaceful bells, Mr. Drake and Mr. Jones lolled at
ease in the modest hostelry favored by the latter gentleman, and looked
out on a freshened and sparkling world. As the last echo died away Mr.
Drake resumed the conversation:
“I gotta hand it to you, Mr. Weisenheimer. That’s a great bean of
yours! You’ve made your case. Uncle had money; it’s gone; somebody’s
got it; _x_ is eager to give too much for my brand; _y_ offers an
exorbitant price for my scalp; _z_ is willing to pay you to keep
quiet. How long will it take two men to dig two graves if the age of
the first man is twice that of the second one? And who should have the
custody of the child? Perfectly simple!”
“But you can’t explain it any other way.”
“Hang it! I don’t want to explain it any other way. You’re right--but
you can’t go ahead. Your wind-up is good; but can you put it over?
How do you propose to go ahead about collecting? It reminds me of a
little passage in Shakespeare that my chum sprung on the Frosh class in
English. I remember it because Kitty, the prof, was so justly indignant:
“_Deep and dangerous,
As full of peril and adventurous spirit
As to o’erwalk a current roaring loud
On the unsteadfast footing of a spear;
If he fall in--good-night!_”
“It is widely believed,” replied Neighbor, “that you cannot catch a
weasel asleep; but I think it can be done, with patience. Don’t be in
such a hurry--be calm!”
“I want you to know I can be as calm as anybody when there’s anything
to be calm about,” retorted Ducky with some acerbity. “It isn’t so much
the money--not but what I could use that to buy food with--but those
fellows are not doing me right.”
“There’s our one best chance,” said Neighbor, more seriously than was
his wont. “They’re doing wrong. Doing right is as easy as sticking a
needle in the eye of a camel; but to do wrong takes a steady, dead
lift. Every tendency and every fact pulls against it like the force of
gravity at four P. M. I’m not particularly bitter against my own dear
little sins, but I do believe that, in the long run, the way of the
transgressor is really hard.”
There came a tap at the door; Mr. Jones was wanted at the phone.
“Hello! This is Baca!” the telephone said; and could Mr. Jones
step up to the house? It thought that matters might be arranged.
“_Immediatamente!_” said Mr. Jones, and hung up.
“Now, Ducky,” he counseled, as they walked uptown, “you notice close,
and I’ll show you some diplomacy. I’ll make Baca commit himself so
deep that it will amount to a full confession. You still don’t quite
believe what you think. When I am done with him you’ll have no doubts.
That’s your great trouble, son--you don’t think hard enough. You don’t
concentrate. You will not give to the matter in hand the full impact of
your mind. You think straight enough but you haven’t got the punch.”
* * * * *
Baca lifted a sarcastic eyebrow at Ducky’s presence and bent a
questioning look on Neighbor Jones, but showed them into the curtained
room of the previous night’s conference. Refreshments were offered and
declined.
“Well, Mr. Jones, if you are still of the same mind to-morrow morning
at ten o’clock your mortgage will be released to you on the terms you
mentioned.”
Neighbor wore a shamefaced look. He twiddled with his hat.
“Maybe I didn’t do just right about that, Mr. Baca. I only wanted to
draw you.” He looked up and smiled. “You see, we knew all the time that
you fellows had Drake’s money,” he said chattily. “My proposition was
to make you tip your hand--to convince Mr. Ducky that my reasoning was
strictly O. K., if not logical.”
Mr. Baca received this rather staggering communication point-blank
but, aside from a heightened color, bore up under it with surprising
spirit. Indeed, he seemed less disconcerted than Ducky Drake.
“Ah!” said the lawyer. “You don’t lose much time in getting to the
point, do you? Your candor is most commendable, and it shall be my
endeavor to observe a like frankness with you. It is better so. Deceit
and subterfuge are foreign to my disposition. Though not anticipating
this particular turn of affairs, I have been forewarned against you,
Mr. Jones, and have made my preparations accordingly. Felipe!”
One of the portières slid aside, revealing a slim brown young man
with a heavy revolver, and a fat brown young man with a rifle. At
the other door the curtains parted for a glimpse of an older Mexican
with a benign and philosophical face and a long white beard. His
armament consisted of one double-barreled shotgun. All these men wore
appreciative grins, and all these weapons were accurately disposed to
rake Mr. Jones amidships.
“My executive staff!” announced the lawyer urbanely.
Neighbor nodded to the staff. Fascinated Ducky did the same.
“So pleased!” he murmured.
Baca paused for a moment to enjoy his triumph. Then he waved his hand.
“That will do.” The portières slid together.
“I’m not scared,” explained Neighbor Jones earnestly. “That noise you
hear is only my teeth chattering!”
“Oh, you punch!” Ducky drew a long breath. “If I had three wishes I’d
want to be a puzzle picture--find Ducky Drake!” Then he giggled. “‘Gee!
Sumpin’ must ’a’ happened to Ole!’” he suggested lightly.
“Did you ever hear of the old Texan’s advice to his boy?” asked Baca.
“‘My son, don’t steal cattle; but if you do steal cattle, never give
’em up’! It is an admirable maxim, and one which, in part, has been my
guide.”
“In part? Mr. Evers said in part: ‘My dear Mister Umpire--my very dear
sir--is it not possible that you erred in your decision?’” murmured
Ducky with an air of reminiscent abstraction.
“Drake!” said the lawyer, “whatever else you may have to complain of at
my hands, you owe me your life--once and twice.”
“Am I to be both your prisoner and your judge?” asked Ducky. “What
inference am I to draw?”
Baca snapped his fingers.
“My dear young friend, I do not care that for your inference! Be well
guided. Leave Saragossa to-day and never come back. The money for your
cattle will be forthcoming when you send a deed; get some lawyer or a
bank to attend to the details of exchange.”
“Oh! By the way, how about that mortgage of mine?” inquired Neighbor.
“Pray accept my apologies, Mr. Jones. I charged you with insolence:
you are merely impudent. You grow wearisome. Your caliber is about
twenty-two short, Jones!” said Baca, tapping a monitory finger with a
pencil. “I am no man to get gay with. When you measured your brains
against mine you flattered yourself considerably. I am not to be
bluffed. I am not to be forced. Judge for yourself what chance you have
of outwitting me. And, as for the courts--‘Fo’ de land’s sake, Br’er
Fox, whatever you does--don’t t’row me in de brieh bush!’”
Neighbor blinked mildly.
“Oh, well! When two men play at one game one of ’em has to lose!” he
said philosophically. “Never mind about the mortgage. I’ve got no
family anyway; so where’s the diff? You win!”
“I win!” repeated the other. “And now you will pay forfeit. Day before
yesterday, Mr. Jones, you drove a young man out of town. You made him
leave his suit case----”
“Oh, pshaw! I forgot that suit case. I must get it.”
“You will not! And you took his gun. That was an arbitrary act, Mr.
Jones; and now you are to receive fitting punishment for it. The
northbound accommodation leaves here at eleven-forty. You will board
that train, accompanied by Mr. Drake and escorted by myself. You will
never come back.”
“I hate to interrupt when you’re going so good; but it’ll be better
for all hands if I declare myself now. You might propose something I
shouldn’t want to do,” said Neighbor Jones. “I’m holding no grudge
against you for outwitting me, and I’m willing you should crow a
little; but don’t rub it in. I’m not the kind to be evened with a
tinhorn gambler. So I take that suit case with me. I value it highly.
It is a keepsake.”
“Pardon me; but I really do not see where you are in any position to
dictate terms.”
“It is a remarkable fact,” said Neighbor Jones with great composure,
“that, in spite of all the brag about the Southwest as a health resort,
the death rate here is precisely the same as that of the crowded East
Side of the city of New York--namely, one per capita. Such being
the case, since I can die but once and must die that once--I should
worry!--as we say in dear old Harvard. Therefore, though you may do all
the dictating, I will make bold to mention the only terms that will be
acceptable or accepted. I have no fancy for humble pie--my digestion
ain’t good.”
“There is a certain force to your contention, certainly,” conceded
Baca, bending an attentive regard on his opponent. “You put it in a new
light. Come, I must revise my former estimate of you, I see. And then?”
“Then, this!”--Neighbor checked off the counts with the thumb and
fingers of his left hand--“I am perfectly willing to leave town and
I never expect to come back--but I won’t promise not to come back.
Dicky can have his trunk packed and sent after him--leastly because he
wouldn’t have time to pack, and lastly because there was no question of
a threat about his baggage. Me, I’ll take my duds.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. And I’ll keep my gun. It’s become a habit with me--that
gun.”
“We shall have to insist on the gun, I’m afraid.”
“Baca,” said Neighbor severely, “do you want me to nonplus you?”
“Why, no,” said Baca after consideration; “I don’t.”
“Be a little ware, then. Don’t bank too much on your militia. Any
insurance company would rate you as a bad risk if they suspected you of
any designs on my gun.”
“Jones,” said Baca, “you please me. Have it your own way. By all means
march out with the honors of war, side arms and flags flying. Only you
needn’t march--I’ll take you down in the machine.”
Jones rose and looked at the clock.
“Well, let’s go, then.... One thing more: You send the money for the
cattle on to Albuquerque to-morrow, and we will both pass our words
that we’ll never, after this day and hour, try to recover the Drake
money from you or make any claim to it. Yes, we will, Ducky. Do as I
say and save your cow money. You can’t collect a cent from Bennett and
Baca, and there’s no use in trying.... All right--he’ll promise if you
will, Baca.”
“It’s a go!” said Baca.
“Shake, then!”
A big touring car purred at the door. At Baca’s invitation Ducky drove,
with Jones beside him; while the bearded philosopher sat with Baca in
the tonneau. During the exchange of views in the house the excitement
had kept Drake’s spirits up, but he cooled down now, and showed some
natural depression, realizing the extent and hopelessness of his loss.
But Jones was in no way abashed.
“I see the smoke. You’ll have to hurry, if you want that suit case,”
said Baca as they drew up at Neighbor’s hotel.
“Oh, no--got her all packed; it won’t take but a minute. Come along, if
you’re afraid I’ll give you the slip.”
“I’m not,” said Baca. “What good would it do you?”
“I guess that’s right,” grinned Jones. “I’ve done my worst now.” He
hurried in, thrust a bill into the hotelkeeper’s hand and grabbed up
the suit case, now his own, which had once belonged to the Kansas City
Kid. The car trundled them to the station just in time to buy tickets.
“Well, good-by, Baca! Oh, say! Here’s a V I borrowed from Beck. Wish
you’d give it to him as you go back uptown, and tell him I’m much
obliged. Give him my best. He sleeps up over the joint, you know.”
“All right; I’ll hand it to him. Hi! You’re forgetting your suit case.”
“Oh, yes! Well, here she comes. So long!”
“Glad to have met you. So long!”
There were no other passengers. The little jerkwater train halted for a
bare moment to let them on and then chugged stolidly on her way. They
stood on the platform of the rear car; the greenwood closed in beside
the right of way, so that the last Ducky saw of Saragossa was the
receding triangle made by the station, the old Almandares Warehouse,
and a black doll waving from a toy car. Ducky sighed.
“No hard feelings, kid?”
“Of course not,” said Ducky stoutly. “You’re not to blame. Besides,
I don’t believe we should ever have recovered that money. That crowd
got it, all right--I know that anyway. I knew it before, but I didn’t
know that I knew it--wasn’t sure; not sure enough, for instance, to
sanction an attempt to take it by force.”
“Yes,” assented Neighbor musingly. “I thought of that. That’s why I
took you up to Baca’s place with me. I sure wasn’t expectin’ an ambush,
though. Pretty smart fellow, Baca!”
“Yes; and if we had tried force we might jolly well have been killed,”
said Drake brightening.
“Maybe it’s all turned out for the best, Ducky. Well, let’s go in.”
“That’s a heavy bag you have there,” said Ducky, lifting it.
“Yes,” said Neighbor carelessly. “A good share of it was gold.”
“A good share--_huh_? Whadda you mean--gold?”
“Why, your uncle’s estate. It’s in there, under my clothes. Beck had it
in a new bag, but I put it in mine when I counted it.”
“_What!_”
“Don’t say what--say sir! Beck, he stole it from his pals last night.
They ain’t found it out yet; but Tavy will be untyin’ Beck about now.”
“_What?_”
Ducky was on his knees, struggling with the snaps of the suit case.
“Don’t spill any of it, Ducky. Yes; I gagged Beck and hogtied him up in
his own poker room. Some job--believe me! I put four aces in his vest
pocket.”
THE END
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
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Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
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Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.