THE MAN UNDER THE CLOAK
Dave Drennen was a big man, no man here so big save Kootanie George
alone, who was two inches the taller and fully thirty pounds the
heavier. The Canadian stood four inches better than six feet in his
squat, low-heeled boots and must turn sideways to get his massive
shoulders through most doors hereabouts. Unlike most very tall men
George carried himself straight, his enormous chest thrust forward.
Drennen was younger by half a dozen years, slenderer, of cleaner build.
Any man at Père Marquette's would have emptied his pockets that night
to witness a fight between the two. Men as a rule liked Kootanie
George, slow moving, slow spoken, heavily good humoured. And as an
even more unbroken rule they disliked Dave Drennen. Throughout the far
places of the great northwest into which of recent years he had fitted
restlessly he was known as a man at once too silent and too
quarrelsome. He trod his own trail alone. Other men had "pardners";
Drennen was no man's friend. He was hard and he was bitter. Not yet
at the end of his first score and ten, his mouth had grown set in
stern, harsh lines, his heavy brows had acquired the habit of bunching
ominously over eyes in which was the glint of steel. He was a man
whose smile was unpleasant, whose laugh could be as ugly as many a
man's curse.
It looked like a quarrel between No-luck Drennen and Blunt Rand. And
yet the men who ceased their playing at the snap of his voice forgot
Rand and hungered for trouble between Drennen and Kootanie George.
Rand had been measured long ago and didn't count. He blabbed big words
when he was drunk and whined when a man struck him. He would swallow
his words now and swallow with them No-luck Drennen's vicious "You're a
liar, Blunt Rand." Even if Drennen slapped his face he would merely
crawl away like a little bug, spitting venom.
Drennen was standing ten feet from him and made no move to draw closer.
"Did you hear me, Rand?" he demanded sharply.
"I heard you," grumbled the trapper. "What's eatin' you, Dave, anyway?"
"Tell them you lied."
Rand flushed, and inspired by his liquor a sudden, unusual stubbornness
sprang up in his eyes. He heard Ernestine laugh softly.
"You go to hell," he cried hotly. "I got a right . . ."
"No man has a right to lie about me," announced Drennen crisply. The
big hands at his sides had clenched swiftly with knotting muscles. At
last he took a quick step forward, his quarrelsome mood riding him.
"If you don't want me to choke the tongue out of your head tell them
you lied."
"_Messieurs, messieurs_," cried poor old Marquette imploringly. "For
the love of God! Tonight all mus' be gay, all mus' be frien's. It is
the night Mamma Jeanne an' me we are marry fifty year . . ."
Drennen snarled at him, shaking the thin old hand away angrily. Rand
was upon his feet, some of the stubbornness already fled from his eyes,
the sound of Ernestine Dumont's taunting laugh lost to him in the harsh
voice of Drennen.
"I don't want no trouble to-night, Dave," he said swiftly. "It's old
Papa Marquette's weddin' night. I . . . I was jus' joshin', Dave."
And then as Ernestine laughed again, he spat out, "Jus' joshin' to
tease Ernestine here."
"_Sangre de dios_!" murmured Ramon Garcia gently, his black eyes liquid
fire. "He is a little coward, that Rand."
Hardly more than a whisper and Garcia quite across the room from Rand.
And yet the stillness was so perfect that Rand heard and jerked his
head up, swinging toward the Mexican.
"You little Greaser!" he cried shrilly. "You dirty breed, you!" He
pushed through the crowd to Garcia's table. "Coward, am I? I'll show
you."
Ramon Garcia's laughter greeting the hot words was a clear burst of
unaffected, boyish merriment. He tilted his chair back against the
wall and turned a delighted face up to Rand's flushed one.
"Señor," he chided softly, shaking a slender white finger very close to
Rand's nose, "have you forgot it is the gala night of our good host,
the Papa Français? That you don't care for trouble to-night? _Mama
mia_! You are a comic--no?"
Then bringing his hand away and hooking both thumbs impudently into the
armholes of his gay vest the Mexican smiled as he hummed softly,
glancing away briefly to where Ernestine Dumont was watching them:
"The perfume of roses, of little red roses;
(Thou art a rose, oh, so sweet, _corazón_!)"
With men laughing at him Blunt Rand struck. The young Mexican was
still in his chair. Like a cat he slipped from it now, avoiding the
heavy, swinging blow, moving to one side with swift gracefulness,
standing with the table between him and Rand. As he moved his right
hand slid into his pocket.
"You dago!" Rand shouted at him, lunging forward while men scrambled
out of the way. "Call me coward an' then go for your knife! Fight
with your hands, damn you."
Again Garcia avoided him easily, calm and quick eyed, offering
pantherine swiftness against the blind fury of Rand.
"Si, señor," he answered lightly. "With the hands. But the hands I
mus' keep without dirt, señor!"
His hand came away from his pocket and he made a sudden gesture, still
laughing, toward Rand's face. The trapper jerked back quickly. Then a
great booming swell of laughter went up, even the slow rumble of
Kootanie George's voice and the tinkling tremulo of Ernestine Dumont's
joining it Ramon Garcia had brought out his gloves and had drawn them
on before Rand had understood.
In size and physique Rand was the average there. The young Mexican was
the shortest, slightest man in the house. But none knows better than
the dwellers in the North Woods that it is unwise to judge men by mere
size of body. It is well to look to the eyes of one's antagonist.
Garcia sprang forward and slapped Rand's face so that the face burned
and the sound of the blow was like a pistol shot in the quiet room.
And as Rand's return threshing blow sought him he sprang away, laughing.
"For calling me Greaser," he cried lightly. "When I have said out loud
that I am Ramon Garcia."
Bellowing curses Rand charged at him again. Garcia avoided and seemed
to have no difficulty whatever in so doing.
"Will you open the door, señor?" he called to a man standing near the
entrance.
"He wants to have an open trail to run," jeered Rand. And again
striking heavily his blow found the empty air and a second resounding
slap reddened his other cheek.
"For calling me a breed," taunted Garcia, so that all might hear the
words with the slap of the open hand. "Me who have the blood of kings,
blue like the skies."
The man standing at the door . . . it chanced to be young Frank
Marquette . . . obeyed Garcia's command silently and promptly. Rand,
his rage flaring ever higher as men drawing chairs and tables out of
the way laughed at him and as the Mexican's sallies taunted him, hurled
himself forward purposing to get his enemy in a corner of the room.
But at the best the trapper was awkward and Ramon Garcia's little feet
in his little boots carried him much as the fabled winged sandals bore
the hero Perseus in his encounter with the dragon. Not once had Rand
landed a square blow; not once had Garcia been where the big red fists
looked for him. And while Rand breathed heavily, Ramon Garcia, whose
soul was as deeply steeped in the dramatic as Père Marquette's in
colour, sang maddening little snatches of love songs and stole swift
glances now and then at Ernestine Dumont.
From the beginning it was clear that Garcia was playing with the other.
But the end, coming swiftly, was not what men had looked for. A great
gasp went up at it, followed by a shout of applause and a roar of
laughter. Garcia had tantalised his antagonist, but beyond slapping
his face twice had not touched him. He skipped about him like a French
dancing master and so allowed Rand to make a fool of himself for the
moment. Presently, so had the Mexican engineered it, they were not
five steps from the open door and the way was clear. One instant he
had seemed about to draw back again, to avoid Rand as he had avoided
him so many times.
"You little monkey-man!" Rand was shouting at him. "Stand still
and . . ."
That was all that he said. Garcia had leaped forward; his two gloved
hands had sped like lightning to Rand's wrists, he had seized the
bigger man and had pushed him backward, had suddenly whirled him about,
with a bunching of strength which men had not guessed was in him he had
thrown Rand out through the open door, and as the trapper plunged
forward into the muddy road the Mexican lifted his foot and kicked.
"For calling me dago!" smiled Garcia. "Me, whose blood is of Castile."
He stripped off his gloves and tossed them into the road. "They are
spoil! Bah. Pig!"
Rand was back at the threshold, his face blood red, his hands dripping
the mud from the slushy road. But young Frank Marquette had stepped
out to meet him and had closed the door.
For a little all eyes in the room rested intent upon Ramon Garcia. The
first estimate, founded upon dandified clothes and manner, had changed
swiftly. He was a man even though he wore gloves and was overfond of
posing. Even though everything he did was overdone, whether it be the
bowing over an old Frenchman's hand, the wide sweep of his hat in a
flourish of slow gracefulness, the tender love making to a woman for
whom he did not care the snap of his little white fingers, upon
occasion his soft eyes knew how to grow keen and hard and he carried
himself with the assurance of fearlessness. It was as though he had
worn a lace cloak over a capable, muscled body; as though the cloak had
been blown aside by a sudden gust and men had seen the true man
underneath.
In Kootanie George's eyes where there had come to be a widening of slow
astonishment during the brief struggle now was a dawning admiration.
He put out his great hand as he shambled forward.
"I called you Greaser, too," he said heavily. "I take it back, Garcia.
You're a white man. Shake."
Garcia took his hand readily, laughing.
"And you, señor, whom I thought a clown are a gentleman," he answered,
a trifle of impudence in the gaze which swept the big man from head to
heel. Kootanie grinned a bit, passed over the innuendo in silence and
went back to his chair. Garcia, giving an added twist of fierceness to
his mustaches, returned to his dice game.
For a little Dave Drennen had been forgotten. Now he was remembered.
His appearance here to-night provoked interest for two reasons. For
one thing he had packed off on a lonely prospecting trip two weeks
before, impatient at the delayed thaw, unwilling to wait until the
trails were open enough for a man to travel off the beaten route. For
another thing one never sought Dave Drennen where other men drew
together as they had congregated now. If under that hard exterior he
felt any of the emotions which other men feel, if he had his joys and
his griefs, he chose to experience them alone. Consequently the mere
fact of his appearance here now brought a flicker of curious interest
with it. Unless he had a quarrel with some man in the Frenchman's
house, what had brought him?
"M'sieu," Père Marquette was saying the worn phrase, "you do me an'
Mamma Jeanne the honour! You are welcome, m'sieu!"
With the usual phrase came the customary offering. Drennen caught the
glass from Marquette's hand and drank swiftly. The glass he set on the
counter, putting down a coin with it.
"There's your money, old man," he said shortly. "Give me my change."
"But, m'sieu," smiled Père Marquette, pushing the money back toward his
latest guest, "one does not pay to-night! It is fifty year . . ."
"I pay my way wherever I go," cut in Drennen curtly. "Will you give me
my change?"
Marquette lifted his two hands helplessly. Never had a man paid for
drink upon such an occasion, and this was the fiftieth! And yet never
before had Drennen come, and there must be no trouble to-night. With a
little sigh the old man took up the money, fumbled in his pockets and
laid down the change. Drennen took it up without a word and without
counting and strode through the room to the table where Ramon Garcia
sat, the one table where men were throwing dice. He drew up a chair
and sat down, his hat brought forward over his eyes.
When the last man to throw had rattled and rolled the dice across the
table top the cup sat at Drennen's right hand. He took it up, asking
no question, saw what the bet was which they were making, put his own
money in front of him and threw. He was in the game. And no man
living in MacLeod's Settlement had ever known Dave Drennen to sit into
any sort of game until now.
"_Tiens_!" whispered a dried up little fellow who had come down the
river from Moosejaw during the afternoon. "There shall be fon, _mes
enfants_! One day I see heem play _la roulette_ in the place of
Antoine Duart'. There shall be fon, _mes enfants_! _Sacré nom de
dieu_," and he rubbed his hands in the keenness of his anticipation,
"he play like me when I am yo'ng."