"Cold feet?"
"Horrible!" said Anastacio.
Matthew Lisner, sheriff of Dona Ana, bent a hard eye on his
subordinate.
"It's got to be done," he urged. "To elect our ticket we must have
all the respectable and responsible people of the valley. If we can
provoke Foy into an outbreak----"
"Not we--you," corrected Anastacio. "Myself, I do not feel provoking."
"Are you going to lay down on me?"
"If you care to put it that way--yes. Kit Foy is just the man to leave
alone."
"Now, listen!" said the sheriff impatiently. "Half the valley is owned
by newcomers, men of substance, who, with the votes they influence
or control, will decide the election. Foy is half a hero with them,
because of these vague old stories. But let him be stirred up to
violence now and you'll see! They won't see any romance in it--just an
open outrage; they will flock to us to the last man. Ours is the party
of law and order--"
"Law _to_ order, some say."
The veins swelled in the sheriff's heavy face and thick neck; he
regarded his deputy darkly.
"That comes well from you, Barela! Don't you see, with the law on our
side all these men of substance will be with us unconditionally?
I tell you, Christopher Foy is the brains of his party. Once he is
discredited--"
"And I tell you that I am the brains of your party and I'll have
nothing to do with your fine plan. 'Tis an old stratagem to call
oppression, law, and resistance to oppression, lawlessness. You tried
just that in ninety-six, didn't you? And I never could hear that our
side had any the best of it or that the good name of Dona Ana was in
any way bettered by our wars. Come, Mr. Lisner--the Kingdom of Lady
Ann has been quiet now for nearly eight years. Let us leave it so. For
myself, the last row brought me reputation and place, made me chief
deputy under two sheriffs--so I need have the less hesitation in
setting forth my passionate preference for peace."
"You have as much to gain as I have," growled the sheriff. "Besides
your own cinch, you have one of your _gente_ for deputy in every
precinct in the county."
"Exactly! And if we have wars again, who but the Barelas would bear
the brunt? No, no, Mr. Matt Lisner; while I may be a merely ornamental
chief deputy, it will never be denied that I am a very careful chief
to my _gente_. Be sure that I shall think more than once or twice
before I set a man of my men at a useless hazard to pleasure you--or
to reëlect you."
"You speak plainly."
"I intend to. I speak for three hundred--and we vote solid. Make no
mistake, Mr. Lisner. You need me in your business, but I can do nicely
without you."
"Perhaps you'd like to be sheriff yourself."
"I might like it--except that I am not as young and foolish as I was,"
said Anastacio, smiling. "Now that I am so old, and so wise and all,
it is clear to see that neither myself nor any of the fighting men of
the mad old days--on either side--should be sheriff."
"You were not always so thoughtful of the best interests of the dear
pee-pul," sneered the sheriff.
"That I wasn't. I was as silly and hot-brained a fool as either side
could boast. But you, Sheriff, are neither silly nor hot-headed. In
cold blood you are planning that men shall die; that other men shall
rot in prison. Why? For hate and revenge? Not even that. Oh, a little
spice of revenge, perhaps; Foy and his friends made you something of
a laughing stock. But your main motive is--money. And I don't see why.
You've got all the money any one man needs now."
"I notice you get your share."
"I hope so. But, even as a money-making proposition, your
troubled-voters policy is a mistake. All the mountain men want is to
be let alone, and you might be sheriff for life for all they care. But
you fan up every little bicker into a lawsuit--don't I know? Just for
the mileage--ten cents a mile each way in a county that's jam full of
miles from one edge to the other; ten cents a mile each way for
each and every arrest and subpoena. You drag them to court twice a
year--the farmer at seed time and harvest, the cowman from the spring
and fall round-ups. It hurts, it cripples them, they ride thirty
miles to vote against you; it costs you all the extra mileage money to
offset their votes. As a final folly, you purpose deliberately to stir
up the old factions. What was it Napoleon said? 'It is worse than
a crime: it is a blunder.' I'll tell you now, not a Barela nor an
Ascarate shall stir a foot in such a quarrel. If you want to bait Kit
Foy, do it yourself--or set your city police on him."
"I will."
A faint tinge of color came to the clear olive of Anastacio's cheek as
he rose.
"But don't promise my place to any of them, sheriff. I might hear of
it."
"Stranger," said Ben Creagan, "you can't play pool! I can't--and I
beat you four straight games. You better toddle your little trotters
off to bed." The words alone might have been mere playfulness; glance
and tone made plain the purposed offense.
The after-supper crowd in the hotel barroom had suddenly slipped away,
leaving Max Barkeep, three others, and John Wesley Pringle--the last
not unnoting of nudge and whisper attending the exodus. Since that,
Pringle had suffered, unprotesting, more gratuitous insults than
he had met in all the rest of his stormy years. His curiosity was
aroused; he played the stupid, unseeing, patient, and timid person he
was so eminently not. Plainly these people desired his absence; and
Pringle highly resolved to know why. He now blinked mildly.
"But I'm not sleepy a-tall," he objected.
He tried and missed an easy shot; he chalked his cue with assiduous
care.
"Here, you! Quit knockin' those balls round!" bawled Max, the
bartender. "What you think this is--a kindergarten?"
"Why, I paid for all the games I lost, didn't I?" asked Pringle, much
abashed.
He mopped his face. It was warm, though the windows and doors were
open.
"Well, nobody's going to play any more with you," snapped Max. "You
bore 'em."
He pyramided the balls and covered the table. With a sad and lingering
backward look Pringle slouched abjectly through the wide-arched
doorway to the bar.
"Come on, fellers--have something."
"Naw!" snarled José Espalin. "I'm a-tryin' to theenk. Shut up, won't
you?"
Pringle sighed patiently at the rebuff and stole a timid glance at the
thinker. Espalin was a lean little, dried-up manikin, with legs,
arms, and mustaches disproportionately long for his dwarfish body. His
black, wiry hair hung in ragged witchlocks; his black pin-point eyes
were glittering, cold, and venomous. He looked, thought Pringle, very
much like a spider.
"I'm steerin' you right, old man," said Creagan. "You'd better drag it
for bed."
"I ain't sleepy, I tell you."
Espalin leaped up, snarling.
"Say! You lukeing for troubles, maybe? Bell, I theenk thees _hombre_
got a gun. Shall we freesk him?"
As he flung the query over his shoulder his beady little eyes did not
leave Pringle's.
Bell Applegate got leisurely to his feet--a tall man, well set up,
with a smooth-shaved, florid face and red hair.
"If he has we'll jack him in the jug." He threw back the lapel of his
coat, displaying a silver star.
"But I ain't got no gun," protested John Wesley meekly. "You-all can
see for yourself."
"We will--don't worry! Don't you make one wrong move or I'll put out
your light!"
"Be you the sheriff?"
"Police. Go to him, Ben!"
"No gun," reported Ben after a swift search of the shrinking captive.
"I done told you so, didn't I?"
"Mighty good thing for you, old rooster. Gun-toting is strictly barred
in Las Uvas. You got to take your gun off fifteen minutes after you
get in from the road and you can't put it on till fifteen minutes
before you take the road again."
"Is that--er--police regulations or state law?"
"State law--and has been any time these twenty-five years. Say, you
doddering old fool, what do you think this is--a night school?"
"I--I guess I'll go to bed," said Pringle miserably.
"I--I guess if you come back I'll throw you out," mimicked Ben with a
guffaw.
Pringle made no answer. He shuffled into the hall and up the stairway
to his bedroom. He unlocked the door noisily; he opened it noisily;
he took his sixshooter and belt from the wall quietly and closed the
door, noisily again; he locked it--from the outside. Then he did a
curious thing; he sat down very gently and removed his boots.
* * * * *
The four in the barroom listened, grinning. When they heard Pringle's
door slam shut Bell Applegate nodded and Creagan went out on the
street. Behind him, at a table near the pool-room door, the law
planned ways and means in a slinking undertone. "You keep in the
background, Joe. Let us do the talking. Foy just naturally despises
you--we might not get him to stay the fifteen minutes out. You stay
back there. Remember now, don't shoot till Ben lets him get his arm
loose. _Sabe_?"
"Maybe Meester Ben don't find heem."
"Oh, yes, he will. Ditch meeting to-night. Ought to be out about now.
Setting the time to use the water and assessing _fatiga_ work. Every
last man with a water right will be there, sure, and Foy's got a
dozen. Max, you are to be a witness, remember, and you mustn't be
mixed up in it. Got your story straight?"
"Foy he comes in and makes a war-talk about Dick Marr," recited Max.
"After we powwow awhile you see his gun. You tell him he's under
arrest for carryin' concealed weapons. You and Ben grabbed his arm; he
jerked loose and went after his gun. And then Joe shot him."
"That's it. We'll all stick to that. S-st! Here they come!"
There are men whose faces stand out in a crowd, men you turn to look
after on the street. Such--quite apart from his sprightly past--was
Christopher Foy, who now entered with Creagan. He was about thirty,
above middle height, every mold and line of him slender and fine and
strong. His face was resolute, vivacious, intelligent; his eyes were
large and brown, pleasant and fearless. A wide black hat, pushed back
now, showed a broad forehead white against crisp coal-black hair and
the pleasant tan of neck and cheek. But it was not his dark, forceful
face alone that lent him such distinction. Rather it was the perfect
poise and balance of the man, the ease and unconscious grace of every
swift and sure motion. He wore a working garb now--blue overalls and a
blue rowdy. But he wore them with an air that made him well dressed.
Foy paused for a second; Applegate rose.
"Well, Chris!" he laughed. "There has been a time when you might not
have fancied this particular bunch--hey? All over now, please the
pigs. Come in and give it a name. Beer for mine."
"I'll smoke," said Foy.
"Me too," said Espalin.
He lit a cigar and returned to his chair. Ben Creagan passed behind
the bar and handed over a sixshooter and a cartridge belt.
"Here, Chris--here's the gun I borrowed of you when I broke mine. Much
obliged."
Foy twirled the cylinder to make sure the hammer was on an empty
chamber and buckled the belt under his rowdy.
"My hardware is mostly plows and scrappers and irrigating hoes
nowadays," he remarked. "Good thing too."
"All the same, Foy, I'd keep a gun with me if I were you. Dick Marr is
drinking again--and when he soaks it up he gets discontented over
old times, you know." Applegate lowered his voice, with a significant
glance at Espalin. "He threatened your life to-day. I thought you
ought to know it."
Foy considered his cigar.
"That's awkward," he replied briefly.
"Chris," said Ben, "this isn't the first time. Dick's heart is bad
to you. I'm sorry. He was my friend and you were not. But you're not
looking for any trouble now. Dick is. And I'm afraid he'll keep on
till he gets it. Me and the sheriff we managed to get him off to bed,
but he says he's going to shoot you on sight--and I believe he means
it. You ought to have him bound over to keep the peace."
Foy smiled and shook his head.
"I can't do that--and it would only make him madder than ever. But
I'll get out of his way and keep out of his way. I'll go up to the
Jornado to-night and stay with the Bar Cross boys awhile. He won't
come up there."
"You'll enjoy having people tellin' how you run away to keep from
meeting Dick Marr?" said Applegate incredulously.
"Why shouldn't they say it? It will be exactly true," responded Foy
quietly, "and you're authorized to say so. I'm learning some sense
now; I'm getting to own quite a mess of property; I'm going to be
married soon; and I don't want to fight anyone. Besides, quite apart
from my own interests, other men will be drawn into it if I shoot it
out with Marr. No knowing where it will stop. No, sir; I'll go punch
cows till Marr quiets down. Maybe it's just the whisky talking. Dick
isn't such a bad fellow when he's not fighting booze. Or maybe he'll
go away. He hasn't much to keep him here."
"Say, I could get a job offered to him out in San Simon," said
Applegate, brightening.
His eye rested on the clock over the long mirror. He stepped over to
the show case, clipped the end from a cigar and obtained a light from
a shapely bronze lady with a torch. When he came back he fell in on
Foy's left; at Foy's right Creagan leaned his elbows on the bar.
"Well, I'm obliged to you, boys," said Foy. "This one's on me. Come
on, Joe--have a hoot."
"Thanks, no," said Espalin. "I not dreenkin' none thees times. Eef I
dreenk some I get full, and loose my job maybe."
"Vichy," said Foy. "Take something yourself, Max."
As Mr. Max poured the drinks an odd experience befell Mr. José
Espalin. His tilted chair leaned against the casing of the
billiard-room door. As Max filled the first glass Espalin became
suddenly aware of something round and hard and cold pressed against
his right temple. Mr. Espalin felt some curiosity, but he sat
perfectly still. The object shifted a few inches; Mr. Espalin
perceived from the tail of his eye the large, unfeeling muzzle of a
sixshooter; beyond it, a glimpse of the forgotten elderly stranger,
Mr. Pringle.
Only Mr. Pringle's fighting face appeared, and that but for a moment;
he laid a finger to lip and crouched, hidden by the partition and by
Espalin's body. Mr. Espalin gathered that Pringle desired no outcry
and shunned observation; he sat motionless accordingly; he felt a hand
at his belt, which removed his gun.
"Happy days!" said Foy, and raised his glass to his lips.
Creagan seized the uplifted wrist with both hands, Applegate pounced
on the other arm. Pringle leaped through the doorway. But something
happened swifter than Pringle's swift rush. Foy's knee shot up to
Applegate's stomach. Applegate fell, sprawling. Foy hurled himself on
Creagan and bore him crashing to the floor. Foy whirled over; he rose
on one hand and knee, gun drawn, visibly annoyed; also considerably
astonished at the unexpected advent of Mr. Pringle. Applegate lay
groaning on the floor. Pringle kicked his gun from the holster and set
foot upon it; one of his own guns covered the bartender and the other
kept watch on Espalin, silent on his still-tilted chair.
"Who're you!" challenged Foy.
"Friend with the countersign. Don't shoot! Don't shoot me, anyhow."
Foy rose from hand and knee to knee and foot. This rescuer, so
opportunely arrived from nowhere, seemed to be an ally. But to avoid
mistakes, Foy's gun followed Pringle's motions, at the same time
willing and able to blow out Creagan's brains if advisable. He also
acquired Creagan's gun quite subconsciously.
"Let me introduce myself, gentlemen," said Pringle. "I'm
Jack-in-a-Pinch, Little Friend of the Under Dog--see Who's This? page
two-thirteen. My German friend, come out from behind that bar--hands
up--step lively! Spot yourself! My Mexican friend, join Mr. Max.
Move, you poisonous little spider--jump! That's better! Gentlemen--be
seated! Right there--smack, slapdab on the floor. Sit down and think.
Say! I'm serious. Am I going to have to kill some few of you just
because you don't know who I am? I'll count three! One! two!--That's
it. Very good--hold that--register anticipation! I am a worldly man,"
said Pringle with emotion, "but this spectacle touches me--it does
indeed!"
"I'll get square with you!" gurgled Applegate, as fiercely as his
breathless condition would permit.
"George--may I call you George? I don't know your name. You may get
square with me, George--but you'll never be square with anyone. You
are a rhomboidinaltitudinous isosohedronal catawampus, George!"
George raved unprintably. He made a motion to rise, but reconsidered
it as he noted the tension of Pringle's trigger finger.
"Don't be an old fuss-budget, George," said Pringle reprovingly.
"Because I forgot to tell you--I've got my gun now--and yours. You
won't need to arrest me, though, for I'm hitting the trail in fifteen
minutes. But if I wasn't going--and if you had your gun--you couldn't
arrest one side of me. You couldn't arrest one of my old boots!
Listen, George! You heard this Chris-gentleman give his reasons for
wanting peace? Yes? Well, it's oh-so-different here. I hate peace! I
loathe, detest, abhor, and abominate peace! My very soul with strong
disgust is stirred--by peace! I'm growing younger every year, I don't
own any property here, I'm not going to be married; I ain't feeling
pretty well anyhow; and if you don't think I'll shoot, try to get
up! Just look as if you thought you wanted to wish to try to make an
effort to get up."
"How--who----" began Creagan; but Pringle cut him short.
"Ask me no more, sweet! You have no speaking part here. We'll do the
talking. I just love to talk. I am the original tongue-tied man; I ebb
and flow. Don't let me hear a word from any of you! Well, pardner?"
Foy, still kneeling in fascinated amaze, now rose. Creagan's nose was
bleeding profusely.
"That was one awful wallop you handed our gimlet-eyed friend," said
Pringle admiringly. "Neatest bit of work I ever saw. Sir, to you! My
compliments!" He placed a chair near the front door and sat down. "I
feel like a lion in a den of Daniels," he sighed.
"But how did you happen to be here so handy?" inquired Foy.
"Didn't happen--I did it on purpose," said John Wesley. "You see,
these four birds tipped their hand. All evening they been instructing
me where I got off. They would-ed I had the wings of a dove, so I
might fly far, far away and be at rest. Now, I put it to you, do I
look like a dove?"
"Not at present," laughed Foy.
"Well, I didn't like it--nobody would. I see there was a hen on, I
knew the lay of the ground from looking after my horse. So I
clomped off to bed, got my good old Excalibur gun--full name X.L.V.
Caliber--slipped off my boots, tippytoed down the back stairs like a
Barred Rock cat, oozed in by the side door--and here I be! I overheard
their pleasant little plan to do you. I meant to do the big rescue
act, but you mobilize too quick for me. All the same, maybe it's as
well I chipped in, because--take a look at them cartridges in your
gun, will you? Your own gun--the one they borrowed from you."
Foy twisted a bullet from a cartridge. There was no powder. The four
men on the floor looked unhappy under his thoughtful eye.
"Nice little plant--what? Do we kill 'em?" said Pringle cheerfully. "I
don't know the rules well enough to break them. What was the big idea?
Was they vexed at you, son?"
"It would seem so," said Foy, smiling. "We had a little war here a
spell back. I suspect they wanted to stir it up again for political
effect. Election this fall."
"And you were not in their party? I see!" said Pringle, nodding
intelligently, "Well, they sure had it fixed to make your side lose
one vote--fixed good and proper. The Ben-boy was to let your right
hand loose and the Joe-boy was to shoot you as you pulled your gun.
Why, if you had lived to make a statement your own story woulda mighty
near let them out."
"I believe that I am greatly obliged to you, sir."
"I believe you are," said Pringle. "And--but, also, I know the two
gentlemen you were drinking with should be very grateful to you. They
had just half a second more to live--and you beat me to it. Too bad!
Well, what next?"
Foy pondered a little.
"I guess I'll go up to the Bar Cross wagon, as I intended, till things
simmer down. The Las Uvas warriors seldom ever bother the Bar Cross
Range. My horse is hitched up the street. How'd you like to go along
with me, stranger? You and me would make a fair-sized crowd."
"I'd like it fine and dandy," said Pringle. "But I got a little visit
to make to-morrow. Maybe I'll join you later. I like Las Uvas," stated
John Wesley, beaming. "Nice, lively little place! I think I'll settle
down here after a bit. Some of the young fellows are shy on good
manners. But I can teach 'em. I'd enjoy it.... Now, let's see: If
you'll hold these lads a few minutes I'll get my boots and saddle up
and bring my horse to the door; then I'll pay Max my hotel bill and
talk to them while you get your horse; and we'll ride together till we
get out in the open. How's that for a lay?"
That was a good lay, it seemed; and it was carried out--with one
addition: After Foy brought his horse he rang Central and called up
the sheriff.
"Hello! That you, Mr. Lisner? This is Kitty Foy," he said sweetly.
"Sheriff, I hate to bother you, but old Nueces River, your chief
of police, is out of town. And I thought you ought to know that the
police force is all balled up. They're here at the Gadsden Purchase.
Bell Applegate is sick--seems to be indigestion; Espalin is having
a nervous spell; and Ben Creagan is bleeding from his happiest vein.
You'd better come see to 'em. Good-by!"
Pringle smiled benevolently from the door.
"There! I almost forgot to tell you boys. We disapprove of your
actions oh-very-much! You know you were doing what was very, very
wrong--like three little mice that were playing in the barn though
the old mouse said: 'Little mice, beware! When the owl comes singing
"Too-whoo" take care!' If you do it again we shall consider it
deliberately unfriendly of you.... Well, I'll toddle my decrepit old
bones out of this. Eleven o'clock! How time has flown, to be sure!
Thank you for a pleasant evening. Good-by, George. Good-by, all! Be
good little boys--go nighty-nighty!"
They raced to the corner, scurried down the first side street, turned
again, and slowed to a gallop. Pringle was in high feather; he caroled
blithesome as he rode:
_"So those three little owls flew back up in the barn--
Inky, dinky, doodum, day!
And they said, 'Those little mice make us feel so nice and warm!'
Inky, dinky, doodum, day!
Then they all began to sing, 'Too-whit! Too-who!'
I don't think much of this song, do you?
But there's one thing about it--'tis certainly true--
Inky, dinky, doodum, day!"_
They reached the open; the gallop became a trot.
"I go north here," said Foy at the cross-roads above the town. "Which
way for you?"
"North too," said Pringle. "I don't know just where, but you can tell
me. I go to a railroad station first--Aden. Then to the Vorhis place?"
"Vorhis? I'm going there myself?" said Foy. "You didn't tell me your
name yet."
"Pringle."
"What? Not John Wesley Pringle? Great Scott, man! I've heard Stella
talk about you a thousand times. Say, I'm sure glad to meet you! My
name's Foy--Christopher Foy."
"Why, yes," said Pringle. "I think I've heard Stella speak of you,
too."