GETTING ACQUAINTED
It was Pony Baxter who gave the names of the dead gunmen to the police,
confirming the records of White-Eye, Pino, Longtree, and Jim
Ewell--known as The Spider. The identity of the fourth man, he of the
deformed shoulder and shriveled arm, was unknown to Baxter. The police
had no record of him under any alias, and he would have been entered on
their report of findings as "unknown," had not the faro-dealer and the
lookout both asserted that The Spider had called him Gary--in fact had
singled him out unmistakenly, asking him what be had to do with the
quarrel, which evidently concerned but three of the four men whom The
Spider had killed. Pony Baxter, slowly recovering from an all but
fatal gun-shot wound, disclaimed any knowledge of a "frame-up" to get
The Spider, stating that, while aware that the gunmen and The Spider
were enemies, The Spider's sudden appearance was as much of a surprise
to him as it evidently was to the gunmen--and Baxter's serious
condition pretty well substantiated this statement. Baxter's negro was
also questioned--concerning Baxter's story and explaining the
circumstances under which he had admitted The Spider to the back room.
When confronted with the torn slip of paper on which was written the
address of White-Eye, Baxter admitted that he knew of the rendezvous of
the gunmen, but refused to explain why he had their address in his
possession, and he put a quietus on that phase of the situation by
asking the police why they had not raided the place themselves before
the shooting occurred, as they seemed to have known of it for several
months. Eventually Baxter and the police "fixed it up." The gambler
did a thriving business through the notoriety the affair had given him.
Many came to see the rooms where The Spider had made his last venomous
fight, men who had never turned a card in their lives, and who doubted
the rumors current in the sporting world until actually in the room and
listening to the faro-dealer's cold and impassive account of the men
and the battle. And more often than not these curious souls, who came
to scoff, remained to play.
Pete, convalescing rapidly, had asked day after day if he might not be
allowed to sit with the other patients who, warmly blanketed, enjoyed
the sunshine on the wide veranda overlooking the city. One morning
Andover gave his consent, restricting Pete's first visit to thirty
minutes. Pete was only too glad of a respite from the monotony of
back-rest and pillow, bare walls, and the essential but soul-wearying
regularity of professional attention.
Not until Doris had helped him into the wheel-chair did he realize how
weak he was.
Out on the veranda, his weakness, the pallid faces of the other
convalescents, and even Doris herself, were forgotten as he gazed
across the city and beyond to the sunlit spaces softly glowing beneath
a cloudless sky. Sunlight! He had never known how much it meant,
until then. He breathed deep. His dark eyes closed. Life, which he
had hitherto valued only through sheer animal instinct, seemed to mean
so much more than he had ever imagined it could. Yet not in any
definite way, nor through contemplating any definite attainment. It
was simply good to be alive--to feel the pleasant, natural warmth of
the sun--to breathe the clear, keen air. And all his curiosity as to
what the world might look like--for to one who has come out of the
eternal shadows the world is ever strange--was drowned in the supreme
indifference of absolute ease and rest. It seemed to him as though he
were floating midway between the earth and the sun, not in a weird
dream wherein the subconscious mind says, "This is not real; I know
that I dream"; but actual, in that Pete could feel nothing above nor
beneath him. Being of a very practical turn of mind he straightway
opened his eyes and was at once conscious of the arm of the wheel-chair
beneath his hand and the blanket across his knees.
He was not aware that some of the patients were gazing at him
curiously--that gossip had passed his name from room to room and that
the papers had that morning printed a sort of revised sequel to the
original story of "The Spider Mystery"--as they chose to call it.
Doris glanced at her watch. "We'll have to go in," she said, rising
and adjusting Pete's pillow.
"Oh, shucks! We jest come out!"
"You've been asleep," said Doris.
Pete shook his head. "Nope. But I sure did git one good rest. Doc
Andover calls this a vacation, eh? Well, then I guess I got to go back
to work--and it sure is work, holdin' down that bed in there--and
nothin' to do but sleep and eat and--but it ain't so bad when you're
there. Now that there cow-bunny with the front teeth--"
"S-sh!" Doris flushed, and Pete glanced around, realizing that they
were not alone.
"Well, I reckon we got to go back to the corral!" Pete sighed heavily.
Back in bed he watched Doris as she made a notation on the chart of his
"case." He frowned irritably when she took his temperature.
"The doctor will want to know how you stood your first outing," she
said, smiling.
Pete wriggled the little glass thermometer round in his mouth until it
stuck up at an assertive angle, as some men hold a cigar, and glanced
mischievously at his nurse. "Why don't you light it?" he mumbled.
Doris tried not to laugh as she took the thermometer, glanced at it,
and charted a slight rise in the patient's temperature.
"Puttin' it in that glass of water to cool it off?" queried Pete.
She smiled as she carefully charted the temperature line.
"Kin I look at it?" queried Pete.
She gave the chart to him and he studied it frowningly. "What's this
here that looks like a range of mountains ?" he asked.
"Your temperature." And she explained the meaning of the wavering line.
"Gee! Back here I sure was climbin' the high hills! That's a
interestin' tally-sheet."
Pete saw a peculiar expression in her gray eyes. It was as though she
were searching for something beneath the surface of his superficial
humor; for she knew that there was something that he wanted to
say--something entirely alien to these chance pleasantries. She all
but anticipated his question.
"Would you mind tellin' me somethin'?" he queried abruptly.
"No. If there is anything that I can tell you."
"I was wonderin' who was payin' for this here private room--and reg'lar
nurse. I been sizin' up things--and folks like me don't get such fancy
trimmin's without payin'."
"Why--it was your--your father."
Pete sat up quickly. "My father! I ain't got no father. I--I reckon
somebody got things twisted."
"Why, the papers"--and Doris bit her lip--"I mean Miss Howard, the
nurse who was here that night . . ."
"When The Spider cashed in?"
Doris nodded.
"The Spider wasn't my father. But I guess mebby that nurse thought he
was, and got things mixed."
"The house-doctor would not have had him brought up here if he had
thought he was any one else."
"So The Spider said he was my father--so he could git to see me!" Pete
seemed to be talking to himself. "Was he the friend you was tellin' me
called regular?"
"Yes. I don't know, but I think he paid for your room and the
operation."
"Don't they make those operations on folks, anyhow, if they ain't got
money?"
"Yes, but in your case it was a very difficult and dangerous operation.
I saw that Dr. Andover hardly wanted to take the risk."
"So The Spider pays for everything!" Pete shook his head. "I don't
just sabe."
"I saw him watching you once--when you were asleep," said Doris. "He
seemed terribly anxious. I was afraid of him--and I felt sorry for
him--"
Pete lay back and stared at the opposite wall. "He sure was game!" he
murmured. "And he was my friend."
Pete turned his head quickly as Doris stepped toward the door. "Could
you git me some of them papers--about The Spider?"
"Yes," she answered hesitatingly, as she left the room.
Pete closed his eyes. He could see The Spider standing beside his bed
supported by two internes, dying on his feet, fighting for breath as he
told Pete to "see that party--in the letter"--and "that some one had
trailed him too close." And "close the cases," The Spider had said.
The game was ended.
When Doris came in again Pete was asleep. She laid a folded newspaper
by his pillow, gazed at him for a moment, and stepped softly from the
room.
At noon she brought his luncheon. When she came back for the tray she
noticed that he had not eaten, nor would he talk while she was there.
But that evening he seemed more like himself. After she had taken his
temperature he jokingly asked her if he bit that there little glass
dingus in two what would happen?"
"Why, I'd have to buy a new one," she replied, smiling.
Pete's face expressed surprise. "Say!" he queried, sitting up, "did
The Spider pay you for bein' my private nurse, too?"
"He must have made some arrangement with Dr. Andover. He put me in
charge of your case."
"But don't you git anything extra for--for smilin' at
folks--and--coaxin' 'em to eat--and wastin' your time botherin' around
'em most all day?"
"The hospital gets the extra money. I get my usual salary."
"You ain't mad at me, be you?"
"Why, no, why should I be?"
"I dunno. I reckon I talk kind of rough--and that mebby I said
somethin'--but--would you mind if I was to tell you somethin'. I been
thinkin' about it ever since you brung that paper. It's somethin'
mighty important--and--"
"Your dinner is getting cold," said Doris.
"Shucks! I jest got to tell somebody! Did you read what was in that
paper?"
Doris nodded.
"About that fella called Steve Gary that The Spider bumped off in that
gamblin'-joint?"
"Yes."
"Well, if that's right--and the papers ain't got things twisted, like
when they said The Spider was my father--why, if it _was_ Steve Gary--I
kin go back to the Concho and kind o' start over ag'in."
"I don't understand."
"'Course you don't! You see, me and Gary mixed onct--and--"
Doris' gray eyes grew big as Pete spoke rapidly of his early life, of
the horse-trader, of Annersley and Bailey and Montoya, and young Andy
White--characters who passed swiftly before her vision as she followed
Pete's fortunes up to the moment when he was brought into the hospital.
And presently she understood that he was trying to tell her that if the
newspaper report was authentic he was a free man. His eagerness to
vindicate himself was only too apparent.
Suddenly he ceased talking. The animation died from his dark eyes.
"Mebby it wa'n't the same Steve Gary," he said.
"If it had been, you mean that you could go back to your friends--and
there would be no trouble--?"
Pete nodded. "But I don't know."
"Is there any way of finding out--before you leave here?" she asked.
"I might write a letter and ask Jim Bailey, or Andy. They would know."
"I'll get you a pen and paper."
Pete flushed. "Would you mind writin' it for me? I ain't no reg'lar,
professional writer. Pop Annersley learned me some--but I reckon Jim
could read your writin' better."
"Of course I'll write the letter, if you want me to. If you'll just
tell me what you wish to say I'll take it down on this pad and copy it
in my room."
"Can't you write it here? Mebby we might want to change somethin'."
"Well, if you'll eat your dinner--" And Doris went for pen and paper.
When she returned she found that Pete had stacked the dishes in a
perilous pyramid on the floor, that the bed-tray might serve as a table
on which to write.
He watched her curiously as she unscrewed the cap of her fountain pen
and dated the letter.
"Jim Bailey, Concho--that's over in Arizona," he said, then he
hesitated. "I reckon I got to tell you the whole thing first and mebby
you kin put it down after I git through." Doris saw him eying the pen
intently. "You didn't fetch the ink," he said suddenly.
Doris laughed as she explained the fountain pen to him. Then she
listened while he told her what to say.
The letter written, Doris went to her room. Pete lay thinking of her
pleasant gray eyes and the way that she smiled understandingly and
nodded--"When most folks," he soliloquized, "would say something or ask
you what you was drivin' at."
To him she was an altogether wonderful person, so quietly cheerful,
natural, and unobtrusively competent . . . Then, through some queer
trick of memory, Boca's face was visioned to him and his thoughts were
of the desert, of men and horses and a far sky-line. "I got to get out
of here," he told himself sleepily. And he wondered if he would ever
see Doris Gray again after he left the hospital.