Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Mary Meehan and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
SIX FEET FOUR
by Jackson Gregory
1917
TO E. M. GREGORY
"HERE'S YOUR BOOK"
CHAPTER
I The Storm
II The Devil's Own Night
III Buck Thornton, Man's Man
IV The Ford
V The Man from Poison Hole Ranch
VI Winifred Judges a Man
VII An Invitation to Supper
VIII In Harte's Cabin
IX The Double Theft
X In the Moonlight
XI The Bedloe Boys
XII Rattlesnake Pollard
XIII The Ranch on Big Little River
XIV In the Name of Friendship
XV The Kid
XVI A Guarded Conference
XVII Suspicion
XVIII The Dance at Deer Creek Schoolhouse
XIX Six Feet Four!
XX Pollard Talks "Business"
XXI The Girl and the Game
XXII The Yellow Envelope Again!
XXIII Warning
XXIV The Gentleman from New Mexico
XXV In the Dark
XXVI The Frame-Up
XXVII Jimmie Squares Himself
XXVIII The Show Down
CHAPTER I
THE STORM
All day long, from an hour before the pale dawn until now after the
thick dark, the storm had raged through the mountains. Before midday it
had grown dark in the cañons. In the driving blast of the wind many a
tall pine had snapped, broken at last after long valiant years of
victorious buffeting with the seasons, while countless tossing branches
had been riven away from the parent boles and hurled far out in all
directions. Through the narrow cañons the wet wind went shrieking
fearsomely, driving the slant rain like countless thin spears of
glistening steel.
At the wan daybreak the sound filling the air was one of many-voiced but
subdued tumult, like the faraway growling of fierce, hungry, imprisoned
beasts. As the sodden hours dragged by the noises everywhere increased
steadily, so that before noon the whole of the wilderness seemed to be
shouting; narrow creek beds were filled with gushing, muddy water; the
trees on the mountainsides shook and snapped and creaked and hissed to
the hissing of the racing wind; at intervals the thunder echoing
ominously added its boom to the general uproar. Not for a score of
years and upward had such a storm visited the mountains in the vicinity
of the old road house in Big Pine Flat.
Night, as though it had leaped upon the back of the storm and had ridden
hitherward on the wings of the wind all impatience to defy the laws of
daylight, was in truth mistress of the mountains a full hour or more
before the invisible sun's allotted time of setting. In the
storm-smitten, lonely building at the foot of the rocky slope, shivering
as though with the cold, rocking crazily as though in startled fear at
each gust, the roaring log fire in the open fireplace made an uncertain
twilight and innumerable ghostlike shadows. The wind whistling down the
chimney, making that eerie sound known locally as the voice of William
Henry, came and went fitfully. Poke Drury, the cheerful, one-legged
keeper of the road house, swung back and forth up and down on his one
crutch, whistling blithely with his guest of the chimney and lighting
the last of his coal oil lamps and candles.
"She's a Lu-lu bird, all right," acknowledged Poke Drury. He swung
across his long "general room" to the fireplace, balanced on his crutch
while he shifted and kicked at a fallen burning log with his one boot,
and then hooked his elbows on his mantel. His very black, smiling eyes
took cheerful stock of his guests whom the storm had brought him. They
were many, more than had ever at one time honoured the Big Pine road
house. And still others were coming.
"If Hap Smith ain't forgot how to sling a four horse team through the
dark, huh?" continued the landlord as he placed still another candle at
the south window.
In architectural design Poke Drury's road house was as simple an affair
as Poke Drury himself. There was but one story: the whole front of the
house facing the country road was devoted to the "general room." Here
was a bar, occupying the far end. Then there were two or three rude pine
tables, oil-cloth covered. The chairs were plentiful and all of the
rawhide bottom species, austere looking, but comfortable enough. And,
at the other end of the barn like chamber was the long dining table.
Beyond it a door leading to the kitchen at the back of the house. Next
to the kitchen the family bed room where Poke Drury and his dreary
looking spouse slept. Adjoining this was the one spare bed room, with a
couple of broken legged cots and a wash-stand without any bowl or
pitcher. If one wished to lave his hands and face or comb his hair let
him step out on the back porch under the shoulder of the mountain and
utilize the road house toilet facilities there: they were a tin basin, a
water pipe leading from a spring and a broken comb stuck after the
fashion of the country in the long hairs of the ox's tail nailed to the
porch post.
"You gents is sure right welcome," the one-legged proprietor went on,
having paused a moment to listen to the wind howling through the narrow
pass and battling at his door and windows. "I got plenty to eat an'
more'n plenty to drink, same as usual. But when it comes to sleepin',
well, you got to make floors an' chairs an' tables do. You see this here
little shower has filled me all up. The Lew Yates place up the river got
itself pretty well washed out; Lew's young wife an' ol' mother-in-law,"
and Poke's voice was properly modified, "got scared clean to pieces. Not
bein' used to our ways out here," he added brightly. "Any way they've
got the spare bed room. An' my room an' Ma's ... well, Ma's got a real
bad cold an' she's camped there for the night. But, shucks, boys, what's
the odds, when there's fire in the fire place an' grub in the grub box
an' as fine a line of licker as you can find any place I know of. An' a
deck or two of cards an' the bones to rattle for them that's anxious to
make or break quick ... Hap Smith _ought_ to been here before now. You
wouldn't suppose...."
He broke off and looked at those of the faces which had been turned his
way. His thought was plain to read, at least for those who understood
recent local conditions. Hap Smith had been driving the stage over the
mountains for only something less than three weeks; which is to say
since the violent taking off of his predecessor, Bill Varney.
Before any one spoke the dozen men in the room had had ample time to
consider this suggestion. One or two of them glanced up at the clock
swinging its pendulum over the chimney piece. Then they went on with
what they were doing, glancing through old newspapers, dealing at
cards, smoking or just sitting and staring at nothing in particular.
"The last week has put lots of water in all the cricks," offered old man
Adams from his place by the fire. "Then with this cloud-bust an'
downpour today, it ain't real nice travellin'. That would be about all
that's holdin' Hap up. An' I'm tellin' you why: Did you ever hear a man
tell of a stick-up party on a night like this? No, sir! These here
stick-up gents got more sense than that; they'd be settin' nice an' snug
an' dry like us fellers, right now."
As usual, old man Adams had stated a theory with emphasis and utterly
without any previous reflection, being a positive soul, but never a
brilliant. And, again quite as usual, a theory stated was naturally to
be combated with more or less violence. Out of the innocent enough
statement there grew a long, devious argument. An argument which was at
its height and evincing no signs of ever getting anywhere at all, when
from the night without came the rattle of wheels, the jingle of harness
chains and Hap Smith's voice shouting out the tidings of his tardy
arrival.
The front door was flung open, lamps and candles and log fire all danced
in the sudden draft and some of the flickering flames went out, and the
first one of Hap Smith's belated passengers, a young girl, was fairly
blown into the room. She, like the rest, was drenched and as she
hastened across the floor to the welcome fire trailed rain water from
her cape and dress. But her eyes were sparkling, her cheeks rosy with
the rude wooing of the outside night. After her, stamping noisily, glad
of the light and warmth and a prospect of food and drink, came Hap
Smith's other passengers, four booted men from the mines and the cattle
country.
To the last man of them in the road house they gave her their immediate
and exclusive attention. Briefly suspended were all such operations as
smoking, drinking, newspaper reading or card playing. They looked at her
gravely, speculatively and with frankly unhidden interest. One man who
had laid a wet coat aside donned it again swiftly and surreptitiously.
Another in awkward fashion, as she passed close to him, half rose and
then sank back into his chair. Still others merely narrowed the gaze
that was bent upon her steadily.
She went straight to the fireplace, threw off her wraps and extended her
hands to the blaze. So for a moment she stood, her shoulders stirring to
the shiver which ran down her whole body. Then she turned her head a
little and for the first time took in all of the rude appointments of
the room.
"Oh!" she gasped. "I...."
"It's all right, Miss," said Poke Drury, swinging toward her, his hand
lifted as though to stop one in full flight. "You see ... just that end
there is the bar room," he explained nodding at her reassuringly. "The
middle of the room here is the ... the parlour; an' down at that end,
where the long table is, that's the dinin' room. I ain't ever got
aroun' to the partitions yet, but I'm goin' to some day. An' ... Ahem!"
He had said it all and, all things considered, had done rather well with
an impossible job. The clearing of the throat and a glare to go with it
were not for the startled girl but for that part of the room where the
bar and card tables were being used.
"Oh," said the girl again. And then, turning her back upon the bar and
so allowing the firelight to add to the sparkle of her eyes and the
flush on her cheeks, "Of course. One mustn't expect everything. And
please don't ask the gentlemen to ... to stop whatever they are doing on
my account. I'm quite warm now." She smiled brightly at her host and
shivered again.
"May I go right to my room?"
In the days when Poke Drury's road house stood lone and aloof from the
world in Big Pine Flat, very little of the world from which such as Poke
Drury had retreated had ever peered into these mountain-bound
fastnesses; certainly less than few women of the type of this girl had
ever come here in the memory of the men who now, some boldly and some
shyly, regarded her drying herself and seeking warmth in front of the
blazing fire. True, at the time there were in the house three others of
her sex. But they were ... different.
"May I go right to my room?" she repeated as the landlord stood gaping
at her rather foolishly. She imagined that he had not heard, being a
little deaf ... or that, possibly, the poor chap was a trifle slow
witted. And again she smiled on him kindly and again he noted the
shiver bespeaking both chill and fatigue.
But to Poke Drury there had come an inspiration. Not much of one,
perhaps, yet he quickly availed himself of it. Hanging in a dusty corner
near the long dining table, was an old and long disused guest's book,
the official road house register. Drury's wandering eye lighted upon it.
"If you'll sign up, Miss," he suggested, "I'll go have Ma get your room
ready."
And away he scurried on his crutch, casting a last look over his
shoulder at his ruder male guests.
The girl went hastily as directed and sat down at the table, her back to
the room. The book she lifted down from its hanging place; there was a
stub of pencil tied to the string. She took it stiffly into her fingers
and wrote, "Winifred Waverly." Her pencil in the space reserved for the
signer's home town, she hesitated. Only briefly, however. With a little
shrug, she completed the legend, inscribing swiftly, "Hill's Corners."
Then she sat still, feeling that many eyes were upon her and waited the
return of the road house keeper. When finally he came back into the
room, his slow hesitating gait and puckered face gave her a suspicion of
the truth.
"I'm downright sorry, Miss," he began lamely. "Ma's got
somethin' ... bad cold or pneumonia ... an' she won't budge. There's
only one more bed room an' Lew Yates's wife has got one cot an Lew's
mother-in-law has got the other. An' _they_ won't budge. An' ..."
He ended there abruptly.
"I see," said the girl wearily. "There isn't any place for me."
"Unless," offered Drury without enthusiasm and equally without
expectation of his offer being of any great value, "you'd care to crawl
in with Ma ..."
"No, thank you!" said Miss Waverly hastily. "I can sit up somewhere;
after all it won't be long until morning and we start on again. Or, if I
might have a blanket to throw down in a corner ..."
Again Poke Drury left her abruptly. She sat still at the table, without
turning, again conscious of many eyes steadily on her. Presently from an
adjoining room came Drury's voice, subdued to a low mutter. Then a
woman's voice, snapping and querrulous. And a moment later the return of
Drury, his haste savouring somewhat of flight from the connubial
chamber, but certain spoils of victory with him; from his arm trailed a
crazy-quilt which it was perfectly clear he had snatched from his wife's
bed.
He led the way to the kitchen, stuck a candle in a bottle on the table,
spread the quilt on the floor in the corner, made a veritable ceremony
of fastening the back door and left her. The girl shivered and went
slowly to her uninviting couch.
Poke Drury, in his big general room again, stood staring with troubled
face at the other men. With common consent and to the last man of them
they had already tiptoed to the register and were seeking to inform
themselves as to the name and habitat of the prettiest girl who had ever
found herself within the four walls of Poke Drury's road house.
"Nice name," offered old man Adams whose curiosity had kept stride with
his years and who, lacking all youthful hesitation, had been first to
get to the book. "Kind of stylish soundin'. But, Hill's Corners?" He
shook his head. "I ain't been to the Corners for a right smart spell,
but I didn't know such as _her_ lived there."
"They don't," growled the heavy set man who had snatched the register
from old man Adams' fingers. "An' I been there recent. Only last week.
The Corners ain't so all-fired big as a female like her is goin' to be
livin' there an' it not be knowed all over."
Poke Drury descended upon them, jerked the book away and with a screwed
up face and many gestures toward the kitchen recalled to them that a
flimsy partition, though it may shut out the vision, is hardly to be
counted on to stop the passage of an unguarded voice.
"Step down this way, gents," he said tactfully. "Where the bar is. Bein'
it's a right winterish sort of night I don't reckon a little drop o'
kindness would go bad, huh? Name your poison, gents. It's on me."
In her corner just beyond the flimsy partition, Winifred Waverly, of
Hill's Corners or elsewhere, drew the many coloured patch work quilt
about her and shivered again.