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LOUISIANA LOU
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[Illustration: He saw the trail across the canyon alive with
moving men and beasts.
(_Frontispiece--Page 261_)]
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Louisiana Lou
_A Western Story_
BY
WILLIAM WEST WINTER
AUTHOR OF
"The Count of Ten"
[Illustration: Chelsea House logo]
CHELSEA HOUSE
79 Seventh Avenue New York City
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Copyright, 1922
By CHELSEA HOUSE
Louisiana Lou
(Printed in the United States of America)
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PROLOGUE 11
I. A GENERAL DEMOTED 32
II. MORGAN LA FEE 42
III. A SPORTING PROPOSITION 54
IV. HEADS! I WIN! 66
V. A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE 78
VI. WHERE THE DESERT HAD BEEN 94
VII. MAID MARIAN GROWN UP 103
VIII. GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS 112
IX. BEHIND PRISON BARS 123
X. THE GET-AWAY 140
XI. JIM BANKER HITS THE TRAIL 153
XII. A REMINDER OF OLD TIMES 162
XIII. AT WALLACE'S RANCH 174
XIV. READY FOR ACTION 182
XV. THE SHERIFF FINDS A CLEW 189
XVI. IN THE SOLITUDES OF THE CANYON 203
XVII. THE SECRET OF THE LOST MINE 217
XVIII. TELLTALE BULLETS 236
XIX. THE FINDING OF SUCATASH 247
XX. LOUISIANA! 259
XXI. GOLD SEEKERS 271
XXII. VENGEANCE! 283
XXIII. TO THE VALE OF AVALON 298
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LOUISIANA LOU
PROLOGUE
The sun was westering over Ike Brandon's ranch at Twin Forks. It was
the first year of a new century when the old order was giving place to
the new. Yet there was little to show the change that had already
begun to take place in the old West. The desert still stretched away
drearily to the south where it ended against the faint, dim line of
the Esmeralda Mountains. To the north it stretched again, unpopulated
and unmarked until it merged into prairie grass and again into
mountains. To west and east it stretched, brown and dusty. To the
south was the State of Nevada and to the north the State of Idaho. But
it was all alike; bare, brown rolling plain, with naught of greenness
except at the ranch where the creek watered the fields and, stretching
back to the north, the thread of bushy willows and cottonwoods that
lined it from its source in the mountains.
Ike Brandon was, himself, a sign of change and of new conditions,
though he did not know it. A sheepman, grazing large herds of woolly
pests in a country which, until recently, had been the habitat of
cattlemen exclusively, he was a symbol of conquest. He remembered the
petty warfare that had marked the coming of his kind, a warfare that
he had survived and which had ended in a sort of sullen tolerance of
his presence. A few years ago he had gone armed with rifle and pistol,
and his herders had been weaponed against attack. Now he strode his
acres unafraid and unthreatened, and his employees carried rifle or
six-shooter only for protection against prowling coyotes or "loafer"
wolves. Although the cow hands of his erstwhile enemies still belted
themselves with death, they no longer made war. The sheep had come to
stay.
The worst that he and his had to expect was a certain coldness toward
himself on the part of the cattle aristocracy, and a measure of
contempt and dislike toward his "Basco" herders on the part of the
rough-riding and gentle-speaking cow hands.
These things troubled him little. He had no near neighbors. To the
north, across the Idaho border, there was none nearer than Sulphur
Falls, where the Serpentine, rushing tumultuously from the mountains,
twisted in its canyon bed and squirmed away to westward and northward
after making a gigantic loop that took it almost to the Line. To the
south, a ranch at Willow Spring, where a stubborn cattleman hung on in
spite of growing barrenness due to the hated sheep, was forty miles
away. To east and west was no one within calling distance.
At Sulphur Falls were two or three "nesters," irrigating land from the
river, a store or two and a road house run by an unsavory holdover of
the old days named "Snake" Murphy. For a hundred and twenty-five miles
to southward was unbroken land. The cattle were mostly gone--though in
days to come they were to return again in some measure. Even the
Esmeralda Mountains were no longer roamed by populous herds. They were
bare and forbidding, except where the timber was heavy, for the sheep
of Brandon and others, rushing in behind the melting snow in the
spring, had cropped the tender young grass before it had a chance to
grow strong.
Brandon's ranch was an idyllic spot, however. His dead wife and, after
her, her daughter, also dead, had given it the touch of feminine
hands. Vines and creepers half hid the dingy house behind a festoon of
green and blossoms. Around it the lush fields of clover were brilliant
and cool in the expanse of brown sultriness. And here, Ike, now
growing old, lived in content with his idolized granddaughter, Marian,
who was about six years old.
Brandon, at peace with the world, awaited the return from the summer
range of "French Pete," his herder, who was to bring in one of the
largest flocks for an experiment in winter feeding at and in the
vicinity of the ranch. The other flocks and herders would, as usual,
feed down from the mountains out into the desert, where they would
winter.
Little Marian hung on the swinging gate which opened onto the apology
for a wagon road. She liked quaint French Pete and looked forward to
his return with eagerness. Like her grandfather, he always spoiled
her, slavishly submitting to her every whim because she reminded him
of his own _p'tit bébé_, in his far-away, Pyrenean home. Marian was
used to being spoiled. She was as beautiful as a flower and, already,
a veritable tyrant over men.
But now she saw no sign of French Pete and, being too young for
concentration, she let her glance rove to other points of the compass.
So she was first to become aware that a rider came from the north, the
direction of Sulphur Falls, and she called her grandfather to come and
see.
The horseman loped easily into sight through the brown dust that rose
about him. His horse was slim and clean limbed and ran steadily, but
Brandon noted that it was showing signs of a long journey made too
fast. It was a good horse, but it would not go much farther at the
pace it was keeping.
And then he frowned as he recognized the rider. It was a young man, or
rather, boy, about nineteen or twenty years old, rather dandified
after the cow-puncher fashion, sporting goatskin chaps and
silver-mounted bridle and spurs, silk neckerchief, and flat-brimmed
hat of the style now made common by the Boy Scouts. His shirt was
flannel, and his heavy roping saddle studded with silver conchas. He
was belted with heavy cartridges, and a holster strapped down to his
leg showed the butt of a six-shooter polished by constant handling.
"It's that damned Louisiana!" said Brandon, with disgust.
The rider trotted through the gate which he swung open and dropped to
the ground before the little veranda. Marian had run back behind the
vines whence she peered at him half curiously and half afraid. The
young fellow, teetering on his high heels, reached for her and,
smiling from pleasant eyes, swung her into the air and lifted her
high, bringing her down to his face and kissing her.
"Howdy, little Lily Bud!" he said, in a voice which was a soft blend
of accents, the slurred Southern, the drawled Southwestern, and
something subtly foreign.
He was a handsome, slender, dashing figure, and Marian's gleeful echo
to his laughter claimed him as her own. Even Ike Brandon relaxed and
grinned. If the little lady of his heart adopted the stranger, Ike
would put aside his prejudice. True, the man was that vanishing
rarity, a reputed gunman, uncannily skilled with six-shooter and
frowned on by a Western sentiment, new grown, for law and order, which
had determined to have peace if it had to wage war to accomplish it.
After all, reflected Ike, the boy, though noted for skill and a
certain arrogance which accompanied it, was not yet a killer. The
younger element among the cowmen, reckless enough though it was,
boasted no such skill as had been common with its fathers. They
carried weapons, but they recognized their limitations and there were
few of them who would care to test the skill that this young man was
supposed to possess. He might, and probably would, go through life
peaceably enough, though he was, potentially, as dangerous as a
rattlesnake.
"I reckon you could eat," he remarked, and Louisiana agreed.
"I reckon I can," he said. "And my old hoss can wrastle a bag of oats,
too. He's got a ride in front of him and he'd appreciate a chance to
rest and limber up."
"You'll stay the night?"
"No, thanks, seh! An hour or two's all I can spare. Got business
somewhere else."
Brandon did not urge nor show curiosity. That was not etiquette. But
little Marian, taken with the new acquaintance, broke into a wail.
"I want you should stay while I show you my dolly that Pete made me!"
she cried, imperiously. Louisiana laughed and ruffled her curls.
"You show me while I eat," he said. Then he followed Ike into the
cabin, debonair and apparently unconcerned. The little girl came too,
and, as the Mexican servant set the table, the stranger talked and
laughed with her, telling her stories which he made up as he went
along, tying his neckerchief into strange shapes of dolls and animals
for her, fascinating her with a ready charm that won, not only her,
but Ike himself.
He had seen that his horse was fed, and, after he had eaten, he sat
unconcerned on the veranda and played with the little girl who, by
now, was fairly doting on him. But at last he rose to go and she
voiced her sorrow by wails and commands to stay, which he sorrowfully
defied.
"I've got to ramble, little Lily Bud," he told her as he led his
resaddled and refreshed horse from the stable. "But don't you fret.
I'll come roamin' back hereaways some o' these days when you've done
married you a prince."
"Don't want to marry a prince!" screamed Marian. "Don't want to marry
no one but you-ou! You got to stay!"
"When I come back I sure will stay a whole lot, sweetheart. See here,
now, you-all don't cry no more and when I come back I'll sure come
a-ridin' like this Lochinvar sport and marry you-all a whole lot.
That's whatever! How'd you like that!"
"When will you come?" demanded Marian.
"Oh, right soon, honey! And you'll sure have a tame and dotin'
husband, I can tell you. But now, good-by!"
"You'll come back?"
"You're shoutin', I will! With a preacher and a license and all the
trimmin's. We'll certainly have one all-whoopin' weddin' when I come
rackin' in, Petty! Kiss me good-by, like a nice sweetheart and just
dream once in a while of Louisiana, won't you?"
"I'll say your name in my prayers," she assured him, watching him
doubtfully and hopefully as he wheeled his horse, striving to keep
back the tears.
And then he was gone, riding at a mile-eating pace toward the south
and the Esmeralda Mountains.
Two hours later a tired group of men and horses loped in and wanted to
know where he had gone. They were on his trail for, it seemed, he had
shot "Snake" Murphy in his own road house in a quarrel over some drab
of the place who was known as Lizzie Lewis.
Ike was cautious. It was not a regularly deputized posse and the
members were rather tough friends of Murphy. Between the two, he
preferred Louisiana. He remembered how unconcernedly that young man
had waited until he and his horse were fed and rested, though he must
have known that Death was on his trail. And how he had laughed and
petted Marian. There was good in the boy, he decided, though, now he
had started on his career as a killer, his end would probably be
tragic. Ike had no desire at any rate to hasten it.
Nor, as a matter of fact, had the posse. Their courage had cooled
during the long ride from Sulphur Falls as the whisky had evaporated
from their systems. They were by no means exceedingly anxious to
catch up with and encounter what was reputed to be the fastest gun in
southern Idaho.
"Whatever starts this hostile play?" asked Ike of the leader of the
posse.
"This here Louisiana, I gather, gets in a mix-up with Snake," the
officer explained rather languidly. "I ain't there and I don't know
the rights of it myself. As near as I can figure it Lizzie takes a
shine to him which he don't reciprocate none. There is some words
between them and Liz sets up a holler to Snake about this hombre
insultin' of her."
"Insultin' Lizzie Lewis?" said Ike, mildly surprised. "I'd sure admire
to hear how he done it."
"Well, Liz is a female, nohow, and in any case Snake allows it's his
play to horn in. Which he does with a derringer. He's just givin' it a
preliminary wave or two and preparin' his war song according to Hoyle
when Louisiana smokes him up a plenty."
"I reckon Snake starts it, then," remarked Ike.
"You might say so. But rightfully speakin' he don't never actually
_get_ started, Snake don't. He is just informin' the assembly what his
war plans are when Louisiana cracks down on him and busts his shootin'
arm. But this Louisiana has done frightened a lady a whole lot and
that's as good an excuse to get him as any."
"Well," said Ike, dryly, "the gent went by here maybe two hours gone
headin' south. He was goin' steady but he don't seem worried none as
I noticed. If you want him right bad I reckon you can run him down. As
for me I'm plumb neutral in this combat. I ain't lost no Louisiana."
Members of the posse looked at each other, glanced to the south where
the gray expanse of sage presented an uninviting vista, fidgeted a
little and, one by one, swung down from their saddles. The officer
observed his deputies and finally followed them in dismounting.
"I reckon you're about right," he said. "This here buckaroo has got a
good start and we ain't none too fresh. You got a bunk house here
where we can hole up for the night?"
Ike nodded his assent, noting that the posse seemed relieved at the
prospect of abandoning the chase. In the morning they headed back the
way they had come.
French Pete had not appeared on the following day, although he was
due, and Brandon decided that he would ride south and meet him.
Leaving Marian in charge of the Mexican woman, he took a pack horse
and rode away, making the Wallace Ranch at Willow Spring that evening.
Although Wallace was a cattleman with an enmity toward Brandon's
fraternity, it did not extend to Ike himself, and he was made welcome
by the rancher and his wife. Wallace's freckle-faced son, a lad of
five years, who was known among his vaqueros as "Sucatash," was the
other member of the family. Ike, who was fond of children, entertained
this youngster and made a rather strong impression on him.
On the following morning the sheepman saddled up and packed and got
away at a fairly early hour. He headed toward the Esmeraldas, pointing
at the break in the mountain wall where Shoestring Canyon flared out on
the plains, affording an entry to the range. This was the logical path
that the sheep-herders followed in crossing the range and, indeed, the
only feasible one for many miles in either direction, though there was
a fair wagon road that ran eastward and flanked that end of the range,
leading to Maryville on the other side of the mountains, where the
county seat was located.
But Ike rode until noon without seeing a sign of his missing herder
and his sheep. French Pete should have entered the plains long before
this, but, as yet, Ike was not alarmed. Many things might occur to
delay the flock, and it was impossible to herd sheep on hard and fast
schedules.
As he rode Ike looked at the trail for signs of passing horsemen, but
he noted no tracks that resembled those of Louisiana, which he had
observed for some distance after he had left the ranch at Twin Forks.
Just where they had left the trail and disappeared he had not noted,
having but an idle interest in them after all. He had not seen them
for many miles before reaching Willow Spring, he remembered. This
fact gave no clew to the direction the man had taken, of course,
since, being pursued, he would naturally leave the trail at some point
and endeavor to cover his sign. He might have continued south as he
had started or he might have doubled back.
At about one o'clock in the afternoon, as he was approaching the gap
that opened into Shoestring, Ike saw, far ahead, a group on the trail.
There seemed to be a wagon around which several men were standing. The
wagon resembled one of his own camp equipages, and he spurred up his
horse and hastened forward with some idea that the cow-punchers might
be attacking it.
As he came nearer, however, one of the men swung into his saddle and
headed back toward him at a gallop. Ike drew the rifle from its
scabbard under his knee and went more cautiously. The man came on at a
hard run, but made no hostile move, and when he was near enough Ike
saw that he was not armed. He shoved the rifle back beneath his knee,
as the rider set his horse on its haunches beside him.
"Ike Brandon?" the man asked, excitedly, as he reined in. "Say, Ike,
that Basco ewe-whacker o' yours is back there a ways and plumb
perforated. Some one shore up and busted him a plenty with a soft-nose
thirty. We're ridin' for Wallace, and we found him driftin' along in
the wagon a while back. I'm ridin' for a medicine man, but I reckon
we don't get one in time."
"Who done it?" asked Ike, grimly. The cow-puncher shook his head.
"None of us," he said, soberly. "We ain't any too lovin' with
sheep-herders, but we ain't aimin' to butcher 'em with soft-nose slugs
from behind a rock, neither. We picks him up a mile or two out of
Shoestring and his hoss is just driftin' along no'th with him while
he's slumped up on the seat. There ain't no sheep with him."
Ike nodded thoughtfully. "None o' you-all seen anythin' of Louisiana
driftin' up this a way?" he asked.
"Gosh, no!" said the rider. "You pickin' Louisiana? He's a bad hombre,
but this here don't look like his work."
"Pete's rifle with him?" asked Ike.
The man nodded. "It ain't been fouled. Looks like he was bushwacked
and didn't have no chance to shoot."
Ike picked up his reins, and the man spurred his horse off on his
errand. The sheepman rode on and soon met the wagon being escorted by
two more cowboys while a third rode at the side of the horses, leading
them. They stopped as Ike rode up, eying him uncomfortably. But he
merely nodded, with grim, set face, swung out of his saddle as they
pulled up, and strode to the covered vehicle, drawing the canvas door
open at the back.
On the side bunk of the wagon where the cowboys had stretched him,
wrapped in one of his blankets, lay the wounded man, his face, under
the black beard, pale and writhen, the eyes staring glassily and the
lips moving in the mutterings of what seemed to be delirium. Ike
climbed into the wagon and bent over his employee, whose mutterings,
as his glazing eyes fell on his master's face, became more rapid. But
he talked in a language that neither Ike nor any of the men could
understand.
With a soothing word or two, Ike drew the blanket down from Pete's
chest and looked at the great stain about the rude bandage which had
been applied by the men who had found him. One glance was enough to
show that Pete was in a bad way.
"Lie still!" said Ike, kindly. "Keep your shirt on, Pete, and we'll
git you outa this pretty soon."
But Pete was excited about something and insisted on trying to talk,
though the froth of blood on his lips indicated the folly of it. In
vain Ike soothed him and implored him to rest. His black eyes snapped
and his right hand made feeble motions toward the floor of the wagon
where, on a pile of supplies and camp equipment, lay a burlap sack
containing something lumpy and rough.
"Zose sheep--and zose r-rock!" he whispered, shifting to English mixed
with accented French. "_Pour vous--et le bébé! Le p'tit bébé_ an'
she's _mère_--France--_or_----"
"Never mind the sheep," said Ike. "You rough-lock your jaw, Pete, an'
we'll take care o' the sheep. Lie still, now!"
But Pete moaned and turned his head from side to side with his last
strength.
"_Mais--mais oui!_ ze sheep!" He again stuttered words meaningless to
his hearers who, of course, had no Basque at command. But here and
there were words of English and French, and even some Spanish, which
most of them understood a little.
"Ze r-rock--_pierre--or!_ Eet eez to you _et le bébé_ one half. Ze
res' you send--you send heem--France--_pour ma femme--mi esposa_ an'
ze leet-leetla one? _Mi padron_--you do heem?"
"What's he drivin' at?" muttered one of the cowboys. But Ike motioned
them to proceed and drive as fast as possible toward Willow Spring. He
bent toward the agitated herder again.
"I'll take care of it, Pete," he assured him. "Don't worry none."
But Pete had more on his mind. He groped feebly about and whined a
request which Ike finally understood to be for paper and a pencil. He
looked about but found nothing except a paper bag in which were some
candles. These he dumped out and, to pacify the man, handed the paper
to him with his own pencil. It was evident that Pete would not rest
until he had had his way, and if he was crossed further his
excitement was bound to kill him almost at once. In obedience to
Pete's wishes Ike lifted him slightly and held him up while he wrote a
few scrawling, ragged characters on the sack. Almost illegible, they
were written in some language which Ike knew nothing about but, at the
bottom of the bag Pete laboriously wrote a name and address which Ike
guessed was that of his wife, in the far-off Basse Pyrenean province
of France.
"I'll see it gits to her," said Ike, reassuringly. But Pete was not
satisfied.
"Zose or," he repeated, chokingly. "I find heem--on ze Lunch R-rock,
where I step. Eet ees half to you an' lettl' Marian--half to _ma
femme_ an' ze _bébé_. You weel find heem?"
"Ore?" repeated Ike, doubtingly. "You talking French or English?"
"_Or! Oui!_ Een Englees eet ees gol', you say! I find heem--back zere
by ze Lunch R-rock. Zen some one shoot--I no see heem! I not know w'y.
One 'bang!' I hear an' zat ees all. Ze wagon run away, ze sheep are
los', an' I lose ze head!"
"Ore!" repeated Ike, blankly. "You found gold, is that what you're
telling me? Where?"
"Back--back zere--by ze Lunch Rock where I eat! Much _or_--gold! I
find heem an' half is yours!"
"That's all right," soothed Ike, thinking the man was crazy. "You
found a lot of gold and half is mine and Marian's, while the rest goes
to your folks? That's it, ain't it?"
Pete nodded as well as he could and even tried to grin his
satisfaction at being understood, waving a feeble hand again in the
direction of the burlap sack. But his strength was gone and he could
not articulate any more. Pretty soon, as the wagon jolted onward, he
relapsed into a coma, broken only by mutterings in his native and
incomprehensible tongue. By his side Ike sat, vainly wondering who had
shot the man and why. But Pete, if he knew, was past telling. To the
story of gold, Ike paid hardly any heed, not even taking the trouble
to look into the sack.
After a while the mutterings ceased, while his breathing grew more
labored and uneven. Then, while Willow Spring was still miles away, he
suddenly gasped, choked, and writhed beneath the blanket. The blood
welled up to his lips, and he fell back and lay still.
Ike, with face twisted into lines of sorrow, drew the blanket over the
man's head and sat beside his body with bowed face.
As they rode he pondered, endeavoring to search out a clew to the
perpetrator of the murder, certainly a cold-blooded one, without any
provocation. Pete's rifle, the cowboys had said, was clean and
therefore had not been fired. Furthermore, the wound was in the back.
It had been made by a mushrooming bullet, and the wonder was that the
man had lived at all after receiving it.
He questioned the cowboys. They knew nothing except that Pete had been
found about two miles down on the plain from Shoestring and that his
sheep were, presumably, somewhere up the canyon. When Ike sought to
know who was in the Esmeraldas, they told him that they had been
riding the range for a week and had encountered no one but Pete
himself, who, about five days back, had driven into the canyon on his
way through the mountains. They had seen nothing of Louisiana, nor had
they cut his trail at any time.
The wound showed that it had been recently made; within twelve hours,
certainly. But the horses had traveled far in the time given them. One
of Wallace's riders had ridden back up the canyon to search for
possible clews and would, perhaps, have something to say when he
returned.
They finally arrived at Wallace's ranch, and found there a doctor who
had come from a little hamlet situated to the east. His services were
no longer of avail, but Ike asked him to extract the bullet, which he
did, finding it to be an ordinary mushroomed ball, to all appearance
such as was shot from half the rifles used in that country. There was
no clew there, and yet Ike kept it, with a grim idea in the back of
his mind suggested by tales which Pete had often told of smuggling
and vendettas among the Basques of the border between Spain and
France.
It was when the sack was opened, however, that the real sensation
appeared to dwarf the excitement over the murder of the sheep-herder.
It was found to contain a number of samples of rock in which appeared
speckles and nuggets of free gold, or what certainly looked like it.
On that point the doubt was settled by sending the samples to an
assayer, and his report left nothing to be desired. He estimated the
gold content of the ore to be worth from fifty to eighty thousand
dollars a ton.
The coroner's inquest, at Maryville, was attended by swarms, who hoped
to get from the testimony some clew to the whereabouts of the mine.
But many did not wait for that. Before the assayer's report had been
received there were prospectors hurrying into the Esmeraldas and
raking Shoestring Canyon and the environs. It was generally thought
that the Bonanza lay on the southern side of the range, however, and
on that side there were many places to search. Pete might have taken
almost any route to the top of the divide, and there were very few
clews as to just where he had entered the mountains and how he had
reached the canyon.
Nor did the inquest develop anything further except the fact that
Wallace's cow-puncher, who had ridden back up the canyon after finding
Pete, had found the spot where he had been shot, about five miles
from the exit on the plain, but had failed to discover anything
indicating who had done it. Other searchers also reported failure.
There had been burro tracks of some prospector seen at a point about
six miles from the canyon, but nothing to show that the owner of them
had been in that direction.
The verdict was characteristic. Louisiana's exploit had been noised
about; it was known that he was heading for the Esmeraldas when last
seen, and the fact that he was a gunman, or reputed to be one,
furnished the last bit of evidence to the jurors. No one else had done
it, and therefore Louisiana, who had quit the country, must have been
the culprit. In any event, he was a bad man and, even if innocent of
this, was probably guilty of things just as bad. Therefore a verdict
was returned against Louisiana, as the only available suspect.
Ike Brandon, after all, was the only person who cared much about the
fate of a sheep-herder, who was also a foreigner. Every one else was
chiefly interested in the gold mine. Ike offered a reward of five
hundred dollars, and the obliging sheriff of the county had handbills
printed in which, with characteristic directness, Louisiana was named
as the suspect.
The mountains swarmed for a time with searchers who sought the gold
Pete had found. It remained hidden, however, and, as time passed,
interest died out and the "Lunch Rock" was added to the long list of
"lost mines," taking its place by the side of the Peg Leg and others.
Ike wrote to Pete's wife in France and sent her his last message. With
it went a sample of the ore and the bullet that had killed Pete. Ike
reasoned that some of his relatives might wish to take up the hunt and
would be fortified by the smashed and distorted bullet.
CHAPTER I
A GENERAL DEMOTED
The general of division, De Launay, late of the French army operating
in the Balkans and, before that, of considerable distinction on the
western front, leaned forward in his chair as he sat in the
Franco-American banking house of Doolittle, Rambaud & Cie. in Paris.
His booted and spurred heels were hooked over the rung of the chair,
and his elbows, propped on his knees, supported his drooping back. His
clean-cut, youthful features were morose and heavy with depression and
listlessness, and his eyes were somewhat red and glassy. Under his
ruddy tan his skin was no longer fresh, but dull and sallow.
Opposite him, the precise and dapper Mr. Doolittle, expatriated
American, waved a carefully manicured hand in acquired Gallic gestures
as he expatiated on the circumstances which had summoned the soldier
to his office. As he discoursed of these extraordinary matters his
sharp eyes took in his client and noted the signs upon him, while he
speculated on their occasion.
The steel-blue uniform, which should have been immaculate and dashing,
as became a famous cavalry leader, showed signs of wear without the
ameliorating attention of a valet. The leather accouterments were
scratched and dull. The boots had not been polished for more than a
day or two and Paris mud had left stains upon them. The gold-banded
képi was tarnished, and it sat on the warrior's hair at an angle more
becoming to a recruit of the class of '19 than to the man who had
burst his way through the Bulgarian army in that wild ride to Nish
which marked the beginning of the end of Armageddon.
The banker, though he knew something of the man's history, found
himself wondering at his youthfulness. Most generals, even after
nearly five years of warfare, were elderly men, but this fellow looked
as much like a petulant boy as anything. It was only when one noted
that the hair just above the ears was graying and that there were
lines about the eyes that one recalled that he must be close to forty
years of age. His features failed to betray it and his small mustache
was brown and soft.
Yet the man had served nearly twenty years and had risen from that
unbelievable depth, a private in the Foreign Legion, to the rank of
general of division. That meant that he had served five years in hell,
and, in spite of that, had survived to be _sous-lieutenant_,
_lieutenant_, _capitaine_, and _commandant_ during the grueling
experience of nine more years of study and fighting in Africa,
Madagascar, and Cochin China.
A man who has won his commission from the ranks of the Foreign Legion
is a rarity almost unheard of, yet this one had done it. And he had
been no garrison soldier in the years that had followed. To keep the
spurs he had won, to force recognition of his right to command, even
in the democratic army of France, the erstwhile outcast had had to
show extraordinary metal and to waste no time in idleness. He was, in
a peculiar sense, the professional soldier par excellence, the man who
lived in and for warfare.
He had had his fill of that in the last four years, yet he did not
seem satisfied. Of course, Mr. Doolittle had heard rumors, as had many
others, but they seemed hardly enough to account for De Launay's
depression and general seediness. The man had been reduced in rank,
following the armistice, but so had many others; and he reverted no
lower than lieutenant colonel, whereas he might well have gone back
another stage to his rank when the war broke out. To be sure, his
record for courage and ability was almost as extraordinary as his
career, culminating in the wild and decisive cavalry dash that had
destroyed the Bulgarian army and, in any war less anonymous than this,
would have caused his name to ring in every ear on the boulevards.
Still, there were too many generals in the army to find place in a
peace establishment, and many a distinguished soldier had been demoted
when the emergency was over.
Moreover, not one that Mr. Doolittle had ever heard of had been
presented with such compensation as had this adventurer. High rank, in
the French army, means a struggle to keep up appearances, unless one
is wealthy, for the pay is low. A lower rank, when one has been
unexpectedly raised to unlimited riches, would be far from
insupportable, what with the social advantages attendant upon it.
This was what Doolittle, with a kindly impulse of sympathy, was
endeavoring tactfully to convey to the military gentleman. But he
found him unresponsive.
"There's one thing you overlook, Doolittle," De Launay retorted to his
well-meant suggestions. The banker, more used to French than English,
felt vaguely startled to find him talking in accents as unmistakably
American as had been his own many years ago, though there was
something unfamiliar about it, too--a drawl that was Southern and yet
different. "Money's no use to me, none whatever! I might have enjoyed
it--or enjoyed the getting of it--if I could have made it
myself--taken it away from some one else. But to have it left to me
like this after getting along without it for twenty years and more; to
get it through a streak of tinhorn luck; to turn over night from a
land-poor Louisiana nester to a reeking oil millionaire--well, it
leaves me plumb cold. Anyway, I don't need it. What'll I do with it? I
can't hope to spend it all on liquor--that's about all that's left for
me to spend it on."
"But, my dear general!" Doolittle found his native tongue rusty in his
mouth, although the twenty-year expatriate, who had originally been of
French descent, had used it with the ease of one who had never dropped
it. "My dear general! Even as a lieutenant colonel, the social
advantages open to a man of such wealth are boundless--absolutely
boundless, sir! And if you are ambitious, think where a man as young
as you, endowed with these millions, can rise in the army! You have
ability; you have shown that in abundance, and, with ability coupled
to wealth, a marshal's baton is none too much to hope for."
De Launay chuckled mirthlessly. "Tell it to the ministry of war!" he
sneered. "I'll say that much for them: in France, to-day, money
doesn't buy commands. Besides, I wouldn't give a lead two-bit piece
for all the rank I could come by that way. I fought for my gold
braid--and if they've taken it away from me, I'll not buy it back."
"There will be other opportunities for distinction," said Mr.
Doolittle, rather feebly.
"For diplomats and such cattle. Not for soldiers. There was a time
when I had ambition--there are those who say I had too much--but I've
seen the light. War, to-day, isn't what it used to be. It's too big
for any Napoleon. It's too big for any individual. It's too big for
any ambition. It's too damn big to be worth while--for a man like
me."
Mr. Doolittle was puzzled and said so.
"Well, I'll try to make it clear to you. When I started soldiering, it
was with the idea that I'd make it a life work. I had my dreams, even
when I was a degraded outcast in the Legion. I pursued 'em. They were
high dreams, too. They are right in suspecting me of that.
"For a good many years it looked as though they might be dreams that I
could realize. I'm a good soldier, if I do say it myself. I was coming
along nicely, in spite of the handicap of having come from the dregs
of Sidi-bel-Abbes up among the gold stripes. And I came along faster
when the war gave me an opportunity to show what I could do. But,
unfortunately for me, it also presented to me certain things neither I
nor any other man could do.
"You can't wield armies like a personal weapon when the armies are
nations and counted in millions. You can't build empires out of the
levy en masse. You can't, above all, seize the imagination of armies
and nations by victories, sway the opinions of a race, rise to
Napoleonic heights, unless you can get advertising--and nowadays a kid
aviator who downs his fifth enemy plane gets columns of it while
nobody knows who commands an army corps outside the general
staff--and nobody cares!
"Where do you get off under those circumstances? I'll tell you. You
get a decoration or two, temporary rank, mention in the _Gazette_--and
regretful demotion to your previous rank when the war is over.
"War, Mr. Doolittle, isn't half the hell that peace is--to a fellow
like me. Peace means the chance to eat my heart out in idleness; to
grow fat and gray and stupid; to--oh! what's the use! It means I'm
_through_--through at forty, when I ought to be rounding into the dash
for the final heights of success.
"That's what's the trouble with me. I'm through, Mr. Doolittle; and I
know it. That's why I look like this. That's why money means nothing
to me. I don't need it. Once I was a cow-puncher, and then I became a
soldier and finally a general. Those are the things I know, and the
things I am fit for, and money is not necessary to any of them.
"So I'm through as a soldier, and I have nothing to turn back
to--except punching cows. It's a comedown, Mr. Doolittle, that
you'd find it hard to realize. But _I_ realize it, you bet--and that's
why I prefer to feel sort of low-down, and reckless and
don't-give-a-damnish--like any other cow hand that's approaching
middle age with no future in front of him. That's why I'm taking to
drink after twenty years of French temperance. The Yankees say a man
may be down but he's never out. They're wrong. I'm down--and I'm out!
Out of humor, out of employment, out of ambition, out of everything."
"That, if you will pardon me, general, is ridiculous in your case,"
remonstrated the banker. "What if you have decided to leave the
army--which is your intention, I take it? There is much that a man of
wealth may accomplish; much that you may interest yourself in."
De Launay shook a weary head.
"You don't get me," he asserted. "I'm burned out. I've given the best
of me to this business--and I've realized that I gave it for nothing.
I've spent myself--put my very soul into it--lived for it--and now I
find that I couldn't ever have accomplished my ambition, even if I'd
been generalissimo itself, because such ambitions aren't realized
to-day. I was born fifty years too late."
Mr. Doolittle clung to his theme. "Still, you owe something to
society," he said. "You might marry."
De Launay laughed loudly. "Owe!" he cried. "Such men as I am don't owe
anything to any one. We're buccaneers; plunderers. We _levy_ on
society; we don't _owe_ it anything.
"As for marrying!" he laughed again. "I'd look pretty tying myself to
a petticoat! Any woman would have a fit if she could look into my
nature. And I hate women, anyway. I've not looked sideways at one for
twenty years. Too much water has run under the bridge for that,
old-timer. If I was a youngster, back again under the Esmeraldas----"
He smiled reminiscently, and his rather hard features softened.
"There was one then that I threatened to marry," he chuckled. "If they
made 'em like her----"
"Why don't you go back and find her?"
De Launay stared at him. "After twenty years? Lord, man! D'you think
she'd wait and remember me that long? Especially as she was about six
years old when I left there! She's grown up and married now, I reckon,
and she'd sick the dogs on me if I came back with any such
intentions."
He chuckled again, but his mirth was curiously soft and gentle.
Doolittle had little trouble in guessing that this memory was a tender
one.
But De Launay rose, picked up a bundle of notes that lay on the table
in front of him, stuffed them carelessly into the side pocket of his
tunic and pushed the képi still more recklessly back and sideways.
"No, old son!" he grinned. "I'm not the housebroke kind. The only
reason I'd ever marry would be to win a bet or something like that.
Make it a sporting proposition and I might consider it. Meantime, I'll
stick to drink and gambling for the remaining days of my existence."
Doolittle shook his head as he rose. "At any rate," he said,
regretfully, "you may draw to whatever extent you wish and whenever
you wish. And, if America should call you again, our house in New
York, Doolittle, Morton & Co., will be happy to afford you every
banking facility, general."
De Launay waved his hand. "I'll make a will and leave it in trust for
charity," he said, "with your firm as trustee. And forget the titles.
I'm nobody, now, but ex-cow hand, ex-gunman, once known as Louisiana,
and soon to be known no more except as a drunken souse. So long!"
He strode out of the door, swaggering a little. His képi was cocked
defiantly. His legs, in the cavalry boots, showed a faint bend. He
unconsciously fell into a sort of indefinable, flat, stumping gait,
barely noticeable to one who had never seen it before, but
recognizable, instantly, to any one who had ridden the Western range
in high-heeled boots.
In some indefinable manner, with the putting off of his soldierly
character, the man had instantly reverted twenty years to his youth in
a roping saddle.