THE KID
So the next day Buck Thornton rode away to the south and to Hill's
Corners.
He had planned to have his errand over early, to have seen the Kid and
to have turned back toward the ranch before noon. For he knew the town's
habit of late sleeping and he wanted to be gone from it before it was
awake and pouring into its long street and into its many swinging doors
the stream of men whom he had no wish to see now. Perfectly well he knew
how easily he could find trouble there, and it seemed to him that he had
enough on his hands already without seeking to add to it.
But the press of range business kept him later than he had thought it
would. And then the one horse on the range he would ride today had to be
found out in the hills and roped.
"For," he told himself grimly, "if I'm going to stick my nose in that
man's town I'm going to have a horse between my knees that knows how to
do something more than creep! And when it comes to horses there's only
one real horse I ever saw. I got you, Comet, you old son-of-a-gun!"
And his rope flew out and its wide noose landed with much precision,
drawing tight about the neck of a great, lean barrelled, defiant-eyed
four-year-old that in the midst of its headlong flight stopped with feet
bunched together before the rope had grown taut. The animal, standing
now like a horse cut from a block of grey granite, chiselled by the
hands of a great sculptor who at the same time was a great lover of
equine perfection, swung about upon its captor, its eyes blazing, just a
little quiver of the clean-cut nostrils showing the red satin of the
skin lining them. The mane was like a tumbled silken skein, the ears
dainty and small and keen pointed, the chest splendidly deep and strong;
the forelegs small, so slender that to a man who did not know a horse
they would have seemed fragile but only because they were all bone and
sinew like steel and muscle hardened and stripped clean of the last
milligram of fat, as exquisite as the perfect ankle of a high bred
woman.
"Part greyhound and part steam engine and part devil!" Thornton muttered
with vast approval shining in his eyes. "And _all horse_! A man could
ride you right through hell, Little Horse, and come out the other side
and never smell your hair burn!"
He drew saddle and bridle from the animal he had been riding and turned
it loose. Then coiling his rope as he went, he came up to Comet's
high-lifted head. With much evident distaste but with what looked like
too much pride to struggle in an encounter in which he knew that he was
to be overcome, the big grey accepted the hard Spanish bit. He allowed,
too, the saddle to be thrown on him, only a quick little quivering of
the tense flanks and a twitching of the skin upon his back showing that
he felt and resented. And then with his master's weight upon him, his
master's softened voice in his ear, a hard hand very gently stroking the
hot shoulder, Comet shook his head, a great sigh expanded the deep
lungs, and he was the perfect saddle horse with too much sense to rebel
further at the knowledge that after all he is a horse and the man who
bestrides him is a man. And Buck Thornton, because he knew this animal
and loved him, slackened the reins a little, sensed the tensing of the
powerful muscles slipping like pliant steel through satin sheaths,
turned the proud head toward the south and felt the rush of air whipping
back his hat brim, stinging his face as they shot out across the rolling
hills.
When Comet had had his run, racing through the other herds that flung up
their heads to look at him and the first half mile had sped away behind,
Thornton coaxed him down into a gentle gallop, swearing at him with much
soft and deep affection.
"Easy, Little Horse," he soothed. "Easy. We're going to Dead Man's.
We'll go in slow and watching where we put our feet, all rested and
quick on the trigger and ready to come out ... if we _want_ to! ... like
winning a race."
And Comet, snorting his dislike of any conservation of strength and
energy, nevertheless obeyed. So it was a little after three o'clock
when they entered the crooked, narrow street which gives a bad town a
bad name.
The town had shaken off the lethargy of its morning sleep: there were
many men in the street, some riding back and forth, disdaining to walk
the distance of a hundred yards from a saloon they had just left to the
saloon to which they were going, some sitting their horses in the shade,
lounging in the saddle as a man may lounge in an arm chair, some idled
on foot at the swinging doors, while many others made a buzz of deep
throated voices at the bars and over the gaming tables. As Buck
Thornton, riding slowly, his hat back upon his head, his eyes ranging to
right and left, came into the street where Winifred Waverly had entered
it last week, more than one man lifted his eyebrows on seeing him and
wondered what business had brought him here. For the memory of his
meeting with the Bedloes was still green, the scars which the Kid wore
on his right wrist and his left arm were still fresh, and this town was
the Bedloes' town in more ways than one.
He nodded to a few men, spoke to fewer, for here was he more a stranger
than he was in Dry Town. Riding straight to the Brown Bear Saloon he
swung down. He left his horse, trained to stand by the hour for him, at
the edge of the board sidewalk, the bridle reins caught around the horn
of the saddle, moved at an even pace through the men at the door and
went inside.
A dozen men stood at the long bar, big men and little, dark men and
light, of this nationality and that, but alike in the one essential
thing that they were of the type by which the far-out places are wrested
from the wilderness of God and made part of the wildness of man, hard
men of tongue, of hand, of nature, hard drinkers, hard fighters. Gunmen,
to the last man of them, who live with a gun always, by a gun often
enough, who are dropping fast before the onrush of the civilization for
which they themselves have made the way, but who will daily walk over
their graves until the glimmer of steel rails runs into the last of the
far places, until there be no longer wide, unfenced miles where cattle
run free and rugged mountain sides into which men dip to bring out red
and yellow gold.
Thornton's eyes ran down the line of them, swiftly. There was no man
there whom he knew. He stepped a little to one side, the door at his
left, the bare front wall at his back. He stood loosely, carelessly to
judge from the little slump of the shoulders, the burning cigarette in
the fingers of his left hand, the thumb of the right hand caught in his
belt.
The bar was at his left, the bare floor running away in front of him,
sawdust covered, the string of gaming tables stretched along the wall at
his right. As by instinct his eyes lighted upon the man whom he sought.
First a round topped table where three men cut and dealt at "stud";
then a faro lay-out with its quick-eyed dealer, its quick-eyed look-out
upon his stool, its half dozen men playing and looking on; then the
"wheel"; then a second table with six men busy at "draw." There, at this
table, with his broad back to him, sat the Kid. And as usual, to complete
the youthful swagger of him, he wore his two guns in plain sight.
Still the cattle man made no move, still his eyes ran back and forth,
seeking, showing nothing of what they sought or of what they had found
already. He marked every man in the place; saw that there were only two
of them besides the Kid whom he had ever seen before, one the bartender,
one a man with whom he had had no dealings; noted that neither Charley
nor Ed Bedloe were in the house. He saw too that the bartender had
leaned a little over his bar, saying something swiftly to the man whom
he was serving; that the man turned curiously to look toward the door;
while at the same time the man across the table from the Kid had given
warning, and the Kid's hands had come away from his cards, dropping down
into his lap.
Then Thornton came on, walking slowly, passing about the first poker
table, then by the faro table, the roulette wheel, and finally to the
table where the Kid sat. Bedloe had not moved again: he had not turned,
his cards lay unheeded before him. The other men were silent with a jack
pot waiting for their attention.
"When he turns," Thornton was telling himself, "it's going to be in the
direction of his gun, and he's going to come up shooting."
There were many men there who sensed the thing he did. Not a man in the
saloon whose eyes were not keen and expectant as they ran back and forth
between the two, Thornton who had shot Bedloe before now, Bedloe who had
sworn to "get him." A chair leg scraped and many men started as if it
had been the first pistol shot; it was only the man across the table
from Bedloe moving back a little, ready to leap to his feet to right or
left. Somebody laughed. At the sound though Bedloe's big thick body
remained steady like a rock his fingers twitched perceptibly.
"Bedloe," and Thornton's voice was cool and low toned, with no tremor in
it, no fear, no threat, no hint of any kind of expression, "I want a
talk with you."
He was not five short paces behind the brawler's back. The Kid turned a
little in his chair, slowly, very slowly like a machine. His eyes came
to rest full upon Thornton's. And Thornton, looking back steadily into
the hard eyes, steely and blue and fearless, low lidded and watchful,
knew that the man had fully expected to see straight into the barrel of
a revolver. For a moment it was as though this place had come under such
a spell as that in the tale of the Sleeping Beauty, with every man
touched by a swift enchantment that had stilled his blood and turned his
body to stone.
Thornton saw that Bedloe's hands were tense with tendons standing out
sharply under the brown skin, the fingers rigid, curved inward a little,
and not three inches from the grips of his guns. And Bedloe saw that
Thornton carried a burning cigarette in his left hand, that his right,
with thumb caught in the band of his chaps, was careless only in the
seeming and that it, too, was alert and tense. And he remembered the
lighting quickness of that right hand.
"What do you want?"
No bluster, no threat, no fear, no hint of expression in the voice which
was as steady as Thornton's, with something in it akin to the steely
steadiness of the hard eyes.
They spoke slowly, with little pauses, little silences between. The man
whose chair had scraped looked uncomfortable; the muscles of his throat
contracted; his hand shut tight upon his cards, cracking the backs; then
he pushed back his chair again, swiftly, and got to his feet. His deep
breathing was audible when he stood to one side where, if there was to
be shooting, he would no longer be "in line." No one noticed him.
"I want a quiet talk," was Thornton's reply. "I'm not here to start
anything, Bedloe. Will you give me a chance to talk with you?"
Bedloe pondered the words, without distrust, without credence, merely
searching for what lay back of them. And finally he answered with a
brief question:
"Where?"
"Anywhere. In yonder," and Thornton's nod indicated the little room
partitioned off from the larger for a private poker room while his eyes
clung to Bedloe's. "Or outside. Anywhere."
Again the Kid pondered.
"I'm playin' poker," he said presently, very quietly. "An' I ain't
playin' for fun. There's one hell of a lot of money changin' han's this
deal, an'," with the first flash of defiance, and much significance to
words and look alike, "my luck's runnin' high today!"
"I'll wait until you play your hand," returned Thornton without
hesitation. "I'll step right over here."
As he spoke he moved, walking slowly with cautious feet feeling for an
obstacle over which he might stumble and so for just the one vital
fraction of a second give the Kid the chance to draw first, his eyes
upon the eyes which followed him. He stepped, so, about the table, to
the other side, so that Bedloe, once more sitting straight in his chair,
faced him over the jack pot.
The big blue eyed man didn't speak. It was his move and he knew it, knew
that all men there were looking at him. He studied Thornton's eyes as he
had never studied a man before, taking his time, cool, clear headed. He
could get his gun in a flash; he could throw himself to one side as he
jammed it across the table, shooting; he could do it before most men
there could even guess that he was going to do it. He knew that very
well. And he knew too, that although he was quick and sure on the draw,
here was a man who was just that wee, deadly fraction of a second
quicker.
As though he would find a flicker in the steady eyes of the other man to
tell him what he wanted to know, he moved his hand, his left, a very,
very little, so little that save at a time like this no man would have
seen. There came no change in Thornton's eyes. The Kid lifted the hand,
laying it with still fingers upon the table before him. Still nothing in
Thornton's eyes to tell that he had seen or had not seen. One second
more the Kid sat motionless, pondered. Then he had decided. The right
hand came up and lay beside the left on the table.
A man at the bar set down his glass and the faint noise against the hard
wood sounded unnaturally loud. Another man ordered a drink, and the low
voice breaking the silence sounded like a shout. Men who had stood in
tense, cramped positions moved, games that had stopped went on. The
strain of a few moments was gone, though still no one lost sight for
more than an instant of Thornton and the Kid.
Bedloe dropped his eyes to his cards, merely turning the corners as they
lay flat on the table. The man who had gotten hastily out of his chair
came back. The game went on as the others were going, silently and
swiftly. The jack pot was opened, "boosted," and grew fat. Bedloe played
a cool hand, and the impression until near the show-down was that he was
not to be reckoned with. Then, a little impudently, as was his way, he
shoved his pile to the centre of the table.
"See that or drop out," he said curtly.
The nervous man dropped out. Two men saw it. They both lost to the Kid's
full hand.
He swept up the gold and silver and slipped it into his pocket, his
hand going very close to his gun during the process but never
hesitating. Then he got to his feet.
"Let's go outside," he said, turning toward Thornton.
He led the way, swinging about so that the broad of his back was to the
man who followed him and the man whom he had sworn to kill. Walking so,
a few paces between them, they passed by the bar, through the clutter of
men about the door and out upon the narrow sidewalk. Still the Kid did
not stop. He strode on, not so much as looking to see if he were
followed, until he came to the middle of the narrow street. Then he came
to a quick halt and turned.
"Now," said the Kid, "spit it out. If you want to finish what we begun
at Smith's start in. I'm ready."
"I told you," Thornton answered him, "that I am not looking for trouble.
When I am I know where I can find it." He dropped his voice yet lower so
that by no possibility could any one of the men upon the sidewalk hear
him, and ended, "Jimmie Clayton sent me."
"An'," asked the Kid coolly, "who the hell is Jimmie Clayton?"
"He's a poor little devil who is in need of a friend, if he's got any,"
Thornton returned. "And he said you were the only friend he had here."
"Maybe I am an' maybe I ain't." The sharpness of suspicion was still high
in Bedloe's eyes. "What about him?"
"You knew he was in the pen?"
"I ain't answerin' questions. Go ahead."
"He broke jail a few days ago. He killed his guard and got himself
pretty badly shot up. I guess they're on his trail now. And he's going
to swing for it if they ever get him."
"Where is he?" asked Bedloe sharply with no lessening of the suspicion
and ready watchfulness.
"In the old dugout at the Poison Hole."
"How's it happen you know so much about it?"
"Jimmie was a friend to me once when I needed a friend. He got this far,
he held out to ride to my cabin night before last and left a note. I
took him out some grub last night. It's all I can do for him; I haven't
any way to hide him out. And he's in too bad shape to ride."
"Well, where do I come in?"
Thornton shrugged his shoulders.
"That's your business, yours and Jimmie's. He said that you were a pal
of his, and," he added bluntly, with a keen curious look into the Kid's
steel-blue eyes, "that you never went back on a pal."
Behind him in the street Thornton heard the clatter of horses' hoofs
coming on rapidly. He paid no attention until they were close to him, so
close that from the corner of his eye he caught the flutter of a woman's
skirt. Then he knew who it was before she passed on. One was Pollard
looking white and sick; the other, rosy cheeked and bright eyed, was
Winifred Waverly.
A quick smile drove the sternness from his eyes and he swept off his hat
to her, ignoring the presence of Pollard. But into her expression as she
returned his look for the moment in which she was flashing by, there
came no vague hint of recognition. He turned back to Bedloe, a little
flush of anger in his cheeks. The two men were very near only battle
just then. For the Kid smiled.
"How do I know you're tellin' me the truth?" They had gone back to
Jimmie Clayton, Bedloe speaking suspiciously again. "How do I know you
ain't puttin' up a game on me? It's a nice lonely place, where that
dugout is."
The flush died out of the cowboy's tanned skin as swiftly as it had run
into it.
"I guess you can't tell," he retorted. "Unless you go and find out. And
you know if I wanted to get you I could have got you in there, and I
could have got you that time at Smith's. And," with an impudence to
match Bedloe's, "I could get you now!"
The Kid passed over the remark, his brows knitted thoughtfully.
"Well," he said in a moment, "you've shot your wad now, ain't you? I
guess there ain't no call for me an' you to talk all day."
"That's all. What'll I tell Jimmie?"
"You can tell him he ain't made no mistake. You may be lyin' an' you
may be tippin' me the straight. But he is a pal of mine an' a damn
decent little pal, an' I'll take a chance."
"You'll get him?"
"If he's there I'll get him."
"When?"
"You'd like the time o' day to the minute, I reckon!" He laughed softly.
"Jus' the first show I get, which'll be in three or four days."
"If you want a horse for him after a while, a good horse, I'll give him
one. That's the best I can do. And I guess that's all, Bedloe."
Thornton stepped back toward his horse. Bedloe turned abruptly and
strode through the crowd of men on the sidewalk and back to the saloon
and his game, no doubt. Thornton swung up into the saddle, and riding
swiftly, passed down the street and back toward the range. As he went he
felt little satisfaction in an errand done, little relief to have it
over. For he was thinking of the look in a girl's eyes, and again a
flush ran up into his cheeks, the bright flush of anger.