There are many people who, in some subtle psychological way, are very
like their names; as though some one had whispered to “the parents of
this child” the name designed for it from the beginning of time. So it
was with Shiel Crozier. Does not the name suggest a man lean and flat,
sinewy, angular and isolated like a figure in one of El Greco’s pictures
in the Prado at Madrid? Does not the name suggest a figure of elongated
humanity with a touch of ancient mysticism and yet also of the
fantastical humour of Don Quixote?
In outward appearance Shiel Crozier, otherwise J. G. Kerry, of Askatoon,
was like his name for the greater part of the time. Take him in
repose, and he looked a lank ascetic who dreamed of a happy land where
flagellation was a joy and pain a panacea. In action, however, as when
Kitty Tynan helped him on with his coat, he was a pure improvisation
of nature. He had a face with a Cromwellian mole, which broke out in
emotion like an April day, with eyes changing from a blue-grey to the
deepest ultramarine that ever delighted the soul and made the reputation
of an Old Master. Even in the prairie town of Askatoon, where every man
is so busy that he scarcely knows his own children when he meets them,
and almost requires an introduction to his wife when the door closes on
them at bedtime, people took a second look at him when he passed. Many
who came in much direct contact with him, as Augustus Burlingame the
lawyer had done, tried to draw from him all there was to tell about
himself; which is a friendly custom of the far West. The native-born
greatly desire to tell about themselves. They wear their hearts on their
sleeves, and are childlike in the frank recitals of all they were and
are and hope to be. This covers up also a good deal of business acumen,
shrewdness, and secretiveness which is not so childlike and bland.
In this they are in sharp contrast to those not native-born. These
come from many places on the earth, and they are seldom garrulously
historical. Some of them go to the prairie country to forget they ever
lived before, and to begin the world again, having been hurt in life
undeservingly; some go to bury their mistakes or worse in pioneer work
and adventure; some flee from a wrath that would devour them--the law,
society, or a woman.
This much must be said at once for Crozier, that he had no crime to
hide. It was not because of crime that “He buckles up his talk like the
bellyband on a broncho,” as Malachi Deely, the exile from Tralee, said
of him; and Deely was a man of “horse-sense,” no doubt because he was a
horse-doctor--“a veterenny surgeon,” as his friends called him when they
wished to flatter him. Deely supplemented this chaste remark about the
broncho with the observation that, “Same as the broncho, you buckle him
tightest when you know the divil is stirring in his underbrush.” And he
added further, “‘Tis a woman that’s put the mumplaster on his tongue,
Sibley, and I bet you a hundred it’s another man’s wife.”
Like many a speculator, Malachi Deely would have made no profit out of
his bet in the end, for Shiel Crozier had had no trouble with the law,
or with another man’s wife, nor yet with any single maid--not yet;
though there was now Kitty Tynan in his path. Yet he had had trouble.
There was hint of it in his occasional profound abstraction; but more
than all else in the fact that here he was, a gentleman, having lived
his life for over four years past as a sort of horse-expert, overseer,
and stud-manager for Terry Brennan, the absentee millionaire. In the
opinion of the West, “big-bugs” did not come down to this kind of
occupation unless they had been roughly handled by fate or fortune.
“Talk? Watch me now, he talks like a testimonial in a frame,” said
Malachi Deely on the day this tale opens, to John Sibley, the gambling
young farmer who, strange to say, did well out of both gambling and
farming.
“Words to him are like nuts to a monkey. He’s an artist, that man is.
Been in the circles where the band plays good and soft, where the music
smells--fairly smells like parfumery,” responded Sibley. “I’d like to
get at the bottom of him. There’s a real good story under his asbestos
vest--something that’d make a man call for the oh-be-joyful, same as I
do now.”
After they had seen the world through the bottom of a tumbler Deely
continued the gossip. “Watch me now, been a friend of dukes in
England--and Ireland, that Mr. James Gathorne Kerry, as any one can see;
and there he is feelin’ the hocks of a filly or openin’ the jaws of a
stud horse, age-hunting! Why, you needn’t tell me--I’ve had my mind made
up ever since the day he broke the temper of Terry Brennan’s Inniskillen
chestnut, and won the gold cup with her afterwards. He just sort of
appeared out of the mist of the marnin’, there bein’ a divil’s lot of
excursions and conferences and holy gatherin’s in Askatoon that time
back, ostensible for the business which their names denote, like the
Dioceesan Conference and the Pure White Water Society. That was their
bluff; but they’d come herealong for one good pure white dioceesan thing
before all, and that was to see the dandiest horse-racing which ever
infested the West. Come--he come like that!”--Deely made a motion like
a swoop of an aeroplane to earth--“and here he is buckin’ about like a
rough-neck same as you and me; but yet a gent, a swell, a cream della
cream, that’s turned his back on a lady--a lady not his own wife, that’s
my sure and sacred belief.”
“You certainly have got women on the brain,” retorted Sibley. “I ain’t
ever seen such a man as you. There never was a woman crossing the street
on a muddy day that you didn’t sprint to get a look at her ankles.
Behind everything you see a woman. Horses is your profession, but woman
is your practice.”
“There ain’t but one thing worth livin’ for, and that’s a woman,”
remarked Deely.
“Do you tell Mrs. Deely that?” asked Sibley.
“Watch me now, she knows. What woman is there don’t know when her
husband is what he is! And it’s how I know that the trouble with James
Gathorne Kerry is a woman. I know the signs. Divils me own, he’s got ‘em
in his face.”
“He’s got in his face what don’t belong here and what you don’t know
much about--never having kept company with that sort,” rejoined Sibley.
“The way he lives and talks--‘No, thank you, I don’t care for any
thing,’ says he, when you’re standin’ at the door of a friendly saloon,
which is established by law to bespeak peace and goodwill towards men,
and you ask him pleasant to step inside. He don’t seem to have a single
vice. Haven’t we tried him? There was Belle Bingley, all frizzy hair and
a kicker; we put her on to him. But he give her ten dollars to buy a hat
on condition she behaved like a lady in the future--smilin’ at her, the
divil! And Belle, with temper like dinnemite, took it kneelin’ as it
were, and smiled back at him--her! Drink, women--nothin’ seems to have a
hold on him. What’s his vice? Sure, then, that’s what I say, what’s his
vice? He’s got to have one; any man as is a man has to have one vice.”
“Bosh! Look at me,” rejoined Sibley. “Drink women--nit! Not for me! I’ve
got no vice. I don’t even smoke.”
“No vice? Begobs, yours has got you like a tire on a wheel! Vice--what
do you call gamblin’? It’s the biggest vice ever tuk grip of a man. It’s
like a fever, and it’s got you, John, like the nail on your finger.”
“Well, p’r’aps, he’s got that vice too. P’r’aps J. G. Kerry’s got that
vice same as me.”
“Anyhow, we’ll get to know all we want when he goes into the witness
box at the Logan murder trial next week. That’s what I’m waitin’ for,”
Deely returned, with a grin of anticipation. “That drug-eating Gus
Burlingame’s got a grudge against him somehow, and when a lawyer’s got
a grudge against you it’s just as well to look where y’ are goin’.
Burlingame don’t care what he does to get his way in court. What set him
against Kerry I ain’t sure, but, bedad, I think it’s looks. Burlingame
goes in for lookin’ like a picture in a frame--gold seals hangin’ beyant
his vestpocket, broad silk cord to his eye-glass, loose flowin’ tie,
and long hair-makes him look pretentuous and showy. But your ‘Mr. Kerry,
sir,’ he don’t have any tricks to make him look like a doge from Veenis
and all the eyes of the females battin’ where’er he goes. Jealousy, John
Sibley, me boy, is a cruil thing.”
“Why is it you ain’t jealous of him? There’s plenty of women that
watch you go down-town--you got a name for it, anyway,” remarked Sibley
maliciously.
Deely nodded sagely. “Watch me now, that’s right, me boy. I got a name
for it, but I want the game without the name, and that’s why I ain’t
puttin’ on any airs--none at all. I depend on me tongue, not on me
looks, which goes against me. I like Mr. J. G. Kerry. I’ve plenty
dealin’s with him, naturally, both of us being in the horse business,
and I say he’s right as a minted dollar as he goes now. Also, and
behold, I’d take my oath he never done anything to blush for. His
touble’s been a woman--wayward woman what stoops to folly! I give up
tryin’ to pump him just as soon as I made up my mind it was a woman.
That shuts a man’s mouth like a poor-box.
“Next week’s fixed for the Logan killin’ case, is it?”
“Monday comin’, for sure. I wouldn’t like to be in Mr. Kerry’s shoes.
Watch me now, if he gives the evidence they say he can give--the
prasecution say it--that M’Mahon Gang behind Logan ‘ll get him sure as
guns, one way or another.”
“Some one ought to give Mr. Kerry the tip to get out and not give
evidence,” remarked Sibley sagely. Deely shook his head vigorously.
“Begobs, he’s had the tip all right, but he’s not goin’. He’s got as
much fear as a canary has whiskers. He doesn’t want to give evidence,
he says, but he wants to see the law do its work. Burlingame ‘ll try to
make it out manslaughter; but there’s a widow with children to suffer
for the manslaughter, just as much as though it was murder, and there
isn’t a man that doesn’t think murder was the game, and the grand joory
had that idea too.
“Between Gus Burlingame and that M’Mahon bunch of horse-thieves,
the stranger in a strange land ‘ll have to keep his eyes open, I’m
thinkin’.”
“Divils me darlin’, his eyes are open all right,” returned Deely.
“Still, I’d like to jog his elbow,” Sibley answered reflectively. “It
couldn’t do any harm, and it might do good.”
Deely nodded good-naturedly. “If you want to so bad as that, John,
you’ve got the chance, for he’s up at the Sovereign Bank now. I seen
him leave the Great Overland Railway Bureau ten minutes ago and get away
quick to the bank.”
“What’s he got on at the bank and the railway?”
“Some big deal, I guess. I’ve seen him with Studd Bradley.”
“The Great North Trust Company boss?”
“On it, my boy, on it--the other day as thick as thieves. Studd Bradley
doesn’t knit up with an outsider from the old country unless there’s
reason for it--good gold-currency reasons.”
“A land deal, eh?” ventured Sibley. “What did I say--speculation,
that’s his vice, same as mine! P’r’aps that’s what ruined him. Cards,
speculation, what’s the difference? And he’s got a quiet look, same as
me.”
Deely laughed loudly. “And bursts out same as you! Quiet one hour like
a mill-pond or a well, and then--swhish, he’s blazin’! He’s a volcano in
harness, that spalpeen.”
“He’s a volcano that doesn’t erupt when there’s danger,” responded
Sibley. “It’s when there’s just fun on that his volcano gets loose. I’ll
go wait for him at the bank. I got a fellow-feeling for Mr. Kerry. I’d
like to whisper in his ear that he’d better be lookin’ sharp for the
M’Mahon Gang, and that if he’s a man of peace he’d best take a holiday
till after next week, or get smallpox or something.”
The two friends lounged slowly up the street, and presently parted near
the door of the bank. As Sibley waited, his attention was drawn to a
window on the opposite side of the street at an angle from themselves.
The light was such that the room was revealed to its farthest corners,
and Sibley noted that three men were evidently carefully watching the
bank, and that one of the men was Studd Bradley, the so-called boss. The
others were local men of some position commercially and financially in
the town. Sibley did not give any sign that he noticed the three men,
but he watched carefully from under the rim of his hat. His imagination,
however, read a story of consequence in the secretive vigilance of the
three, who evidently thought that, standing far back in the room, they
could not be seen.
Presently the door of the bank opened, and Sibley saw Studd Bradley lean
forward eagerly, then draw back and speak hurriedly to his companions,
using a gesture of satisfaction.
“Something damn funny there!” Sibley said to himself, and stepped
forward to Crozier with a friendly exclamation. Crozier turned rather
impatiently, for his face was aflame with some exciting reflection. At
this moment his eyes were the deepest blue that could be imagined--an
almost impossible colour, like that of the Mediterranean when it
reflects the perfect sapphire of the sky. There was something almost
wonderful in their expression. A woman once said as she looked at a
picture of Herschel, whose eyes had the unworldly gaze of the great
dreamer looking beyond this sphere, “The stars startled him.” Such a
look was in Crozier’s eyes now, as though he was seeing the bright end
of a long road, the desire of his soul.
That, indeed, was what he saw. After two years of secret negotiation
he had (inspired by information dropped by Jesse Bulrush, his
fellow-boarder) made definite arrangements for a big land-deal in
connection with the route of a new railway and a town-site, which would
mean more to him than any one could know. If it went through, he would,
for an investment of ten thousand dollars, have a hundred and fifty
thousand dollars; and that would solve an everlasting problem for him.
He had reached a critical point in his enterprise. All that was wanted
now was ten thousand dollars in cash to enable him to close the great
bargain and make his hundred and fifty thousand. But to want ten
thousand dollars and to get it in a given space of time, when you have
neither securities, cash, nor real estate, is enough to keep you awake
at night. Crozier had been so busy with the delicate and difficult
negotiations that he had not deeply concerned himself with the absence
of the necessary ten thousand dollars. He thought he could get the
money at any time, so good was the proposition; and it was best to defer
raising it to the last moment lest some one learning the secret should
forestall him. He must first have the stake to be played for before
he moved to get the cash with which to make the throw. This is not
generally thought a good way, but it was his way, and it had yet to be
tested.
There was no cloud of apprehension, however, in Crozier’s eyes as they
met those of Sibley. He liked Sibley. At this point it is not necessary
to say why. The reason will appear in due time. Sibley’s face had always
something of that immobility and gravity which Crozier’s face had part
of the time-paler, less intelligent, with dark lines and secret
shadows absent from Crozier’s face; but still with some of the El Greco
characteristics which marked so powerfully that of the man who passed as
J. G. Kerry.
“Ah, Sibley,” he said, “glad to see you! Anything I can do for you?”
“It’s the other way if there’s any doing at all,” was the quick
response.
“Well, let’s walk along together,” remarked Crozier a little
abstractedly, for he was thinking hard about his great enterprise.
“We might be seen,” said Sibley, with an obvious undermeaning meant to
provoke a question.
Crozier caught the undertone of suggestion. “Being about to burgle the
bank, it’s well not to be seen together--eh?”
“No, I’m not in on that business, Mr. Kerry. I’m for breaking banks, not
burgling ‘em,” was the cheerful reply.
They laughed, but Crozier knew that the observant gambling farmer was
not talking at haphazard. They had met on the highway, as it were, many
times since Crozier had come to Askatoon, and Crozier knew his man.
“Well, what are we going to do, and who will see us if we do it?”
Crozier asked briskly.
“Studd Bradley and his secret-service corps have got their eyes on this
street--and on you,” returned Sibley dryly.
Crozier’s face sobered and his eyes became less emotional. “I don’t see
them anywhere,” he answered, but looking nowhere.
“They’re in Gus Burlingame’s office. They had you under observation
while you were in the bank.”
“I couldn’t run off with the land, could I?” Crozier remarked dryly, yet
suggestively, in his desire to see how much Sibley knew.
“Well, you said it was a bank. I’ve no more idea what it is you’re
tryin’ to run off with than I know what an ace is goin’ to do when
there’s a joker in the pack,” remarked Sibley; “but I thought I’d tell
you that Bradley and his lot are watchin’ you gettin’ ready to run.”
Then he hastily told what he had seen.
Crozier was reassured. It was natural that Bradley & Co. should take an
interest in his movements. They would make a pile of money if he pulled
off the deal-far more than he would. It was not strange that they should
watch his invasion of the bank. They knew he wanted money, and a bank
was the place to get it. That was the way he viewed the matter on the
instant. He replied to Sibley cheerfully. “A hundred to one is a lot
when you win it,” he said enigmatically.
“It depends on how much you have on,” was Sibley’s quiet reply--“a
dollar or a thousand dollars.
“If you’ve got a big thing on, and you’ve got an outsider that you think
is goin’ to win and beat the favourite, it’s just as well to run no
risks. Believe me, Mr. Kerry, if you’ve got anything on that asks for
your attention, it’d be sense and saving if you didn’t give evidence at
the Logan Trial next week. It’s pretty well-guessed what you’re goin’ to
say and what you know, and you take it from me, the M’Mahon mob that’s
behind Logan ‘ll have it in for you. They’re terrors when they get
goin’, and if your evidence puts one of that lot away, ther’ll be
trouble for you. I wouldn’t do it--honest, I wouldn’t. I’ve been out
West here a good many years, and I know the place and the people. It’s
a good place, and there’s lots of first-class people here, but there’s
a few offscourings that hang like wolves on the edge of the sheepfold,
ready to murder and git.”
“That was what you wanted to see me about, wasn’t it?” Crozier asked
quietly.
“Yes; the other was just a shot on the chance. I don’t like to see men
sneakin’ about and watching. If they do, you can bet there’s something
wrong. But the other thing, the Logan Trial business, is a dead
certainty. You’re only a new-comer, in a kind of way, and you don’t
need to have the same responsibility as the rest. The Law’ll get what it
wants whether you chip in or not. Let it alone. What’s the Law ever done
for you that you should run risks for it? It’s straight talk, Mr. Kerry.
Have a cancer in the bowels next week or go off to see a dyin’ brother,
but don’t give evidence at the Logan Trial--don’t do it. I got a
feeling--I’m superstitious--all sportsmen are. By following my instincts
I’ve saved myself a whole lot in my time.”
“Yes; all men that run chances have their superstitions, and they’re
not to be sneered at,” replied Crozier thoughtfully. “If you see black,
don’t play white; if you see a chestnut crumpled up, put your money
on the bay even when the chestnut is a favourite. Of course you’re
superstitious, Sibley. The tan and the green baize are covered with
ghosts that want to help you, if you’ll let them.”
Sibley’s mouth opened in amazement. Crozier was speaking with the look
of the man who hypnotises himself, who “sees things,” who dreams as only
the gambler and the plunger on the turf do dream, not even excepting the
latter-day Irish poets.
“Say, I was right what I said to Deely--I was right,” remarked Sibley
almost huskily, for it seemed to him as though he had found a long-lost
brother. No man except one who had staked all he had again and again
could have looked or spoken like that.
Crozier looked at the other thoughtfully for a moment, then he said:
“I don’t know what you said to Deely, but I do know that I’m going to
the Logan Trial in spite of the M’Mahon mob. I don’t feel about it as
you do. I’ve got a different feeling, Sibley. I’ll play the game out.
I shall not hedge. I shall not play for safety. It’s everything on the
favourite this time.”
“You’ll excuse me, but Gus Burlingame is for the defence, and he’s got
his knife into you,” returned Sibley.
“Not yet.” Crozier smiled sardonically.
“Well, I apologise, but what I’ve said, Mr. Kerry, is said as man to
man. You’re ridin’ game in a tough place, as any man has to do who
starts with only his pants and his head on. That’s the way you begun
here, I guess; and I don’t want to see your horse tumble because some
one throws a fence-rail at its legs. Your class has enemies always in a
new country--jealousy, envy.”
The lean, aristocratic, angular Crozier, with a musing look on his long
face, grown ascetic again, as he held out his hand and gripped that of
the other, said warmly: “I’m just as much obliged to you as though I
took your advice, Sibley. I am not taking it, but I am taking a pledge
to return the compliment to you if ever I get the chance.”
“Well, most men get chances of that kind,” was the gratified reply of
the gambling farmer, and then Crozier turned quickly and entered the
doorway of the British Bank, the rival of that from which he had turned
in brave disappointment a little while before.
Left alone in the street, Sibley looked back with the instinct of the
hunter. As he expected, he saw a head thrust out from the window where
Studd Bradley and his friends had been. There was an hotel opposite the
British Bank. He entered and waited. Bradley and one of his companions
presently came in and seated themselves far back in the shadow, where
they could watch the doorway of the bank.
It was quite a half-hour before Shiel Crozier emerged from the bank. His
face was set and pale. For an instant he stood as though wondering which
way to go, then he moved up the street the way he had come.
Sibley heard a low, poisonous laugh of triumph rankle through the
hotel office. He turned round. Bradley, the over-fed, over-confident,
over-estimated financier, laid a hand on the shoulder of his companion
as they moved towards the door.
“That’s another gate shut,” he said. “I guess we can close ‘em all with
a little care. It’s working all right. He’s got no chance of raising the
cash,” he added, as the two passed the chair where Sibley sat--with his
hat over his eyes, chewing an unlighted cigar.
“I don’t know what it is, but it’s dirt--and muck at that,” John Sibley
remarked as he rose from his chair and followed the two into the street.
Bradley and his friends were trying steadily to close up the avenues of
credit to the man to whom the success of his enterprise meant so much.
To crowd him out would mean an extra hundred and fifty thousand dollars
for themselves.