BEHIND PRISON BARS
A somewhat intoxicated cow-puncher, in from the mountain ranges north
of the town, intrigued De Launay when he returned to Johnny the
Greek's. To be exact, it was not the cow-puncher, who was merely a
gawky, loud-mouthed and uncouth importation from a Middle Western
farm, broken to ride after a fashion, to rope and brand when necessary
and to wield pliers in mending barbed wire, the sort of product, in
fact, that had disillusioned De Launay. It was his clothes that the
ex-légionnaire admired.
They were clothes about like those worn by Sucatash and Dave Mackay.
De Launay could have purchased such clothes at any one of a dozen
shops, but they would have been new and conspicuous. The fellow wore a
wide-brimmed hat, the wear of which had resulted in certain
picturesque sags that De Launay considered extremely artistic. His
boots were small and fairly new, and not over adorned with
ornamentation. There was also a buckskin waistcoat which was aged and
ripened. The other accessories were unimportant. Such things as
spurs, bridle, and saddle De Launay had bought when he acquired a
horse.
De Launay had imbibed enough of the terrible liquor served by Snake
Murphy to completely submerge his everyday personality. He retained
merely a fixed idea that he wished to return as far as possible in
spirit to the days of nineteen years ago. To his befuddled mind, the
first step was to dress the part. He was groping after his lost youth,
unable to realize that it was, indeed, lost beyond recovery; that he
was, in hardly a particular, the wild lad who had once ridden the
desert ranges.
The more he drank, the firmer became the notion that, to him, instead
of to this imitation of the real thing, rightfully belonged these
insignia of a vanishing fraternity. He considered ways and means,
rejecting one after another. He vaguely laid plans to wait until the
fellow went to his quarters for the night, and then break in and steal
his clothes. A better plan suggested itself; to ply him with drink
until unconscious and then drag him somewhere and strip him. This also
did not seem practical. Then he thought of inducing him to gamble and
winning all his possessions, but a remnant of sense deterred him. De
Launay, though he gambled recklessly, never, by any chance, won. In
fact, his losings were so monotonous that the diversion had ceased to
be exciting and he had abandoned it.
Finally, having reached a stage where the effort to think was too
much for him, he did the obvious thing and offered to buy the fellow's
clothes. The cow-puncher was almost as drunk as De Launay and showed
it much more. He was also belligerent, which De Launay never was.
Furthermore, he had reached the stage where he was suspicious of
anything out of the ordinary. He thought De Launay was ridiculing
him.
"Sell you my clo'es! Say, feller, what you givin' me?"
A bullet-headed, crop-haired, and lowering laborer, who was leaning
against the bar, uttered a snorting laugh.
"Lamp de guys wit' de French heels an' de one wit' de sissy eyebrow on
'is lip, would youse? Dey's a coupla heroes wat's been to France; dey
gets dem habits dere."
The sensitive cow hand glared about him, but the leering toughs who
echoed their spokesman's laughter were not safe to challenge. There
were too many of them. De Launay stood alone and, to him as to the
others, that little pointed mustache was a mark of affectation and
effeminacy.
"You better pull yer freight before I take a wallop at yuh," he
remarked, loudly.
"Tell 'im to go git a shave, bo," suggested the bullet-headed man.
"I'll singe the eyebrow offa him myself if he don't git outa here,"
growled the cow hand, turning back to his liquor.
De Launay went back to his table and sat down. He brooded on his
failure, and to him it seemed that he must have that hat, that
waistcoat and those boots at any cost. The others in the room
snickered and jeered as they eyed his sagging figure and closed eyes.
He finally got up and lurched out of the room. The door opened on a
narrow stairway leading down to a sort of pantry behind the main
billiard parlor on the ground floor. The stairway was steep and dark,
and the landing was small and only dimly lighted by a dusty, cobwebbed
square of window high up in the outer wall.
De Launay sat on the top step and resumed his brooding, his head sunk
on his arms, which were folded on his knees. He felt a deep sense of
injury, and his sorrow for himself was acute. He was only half
conscious of his sufferings, but they were dully insistent, above the
deadening influence of the liquor. There were some things he wanted
and they continually ran through his mind in jumbled sequence. There
was a pair of high heels, then there was a sort of vision of
limitless, abandoned plain covered with yellowing grass and black sage
clumps, and surmounted with a brilliant blue sky. Following this was a
confused picture of a blackened, greasy waistcoat from which a dark,
fathomless pair of eyes looked out. He wondered how a waistcoat could
have a pair of eyes, and why the eyes should hold in them lights like
those that flashed from a diamond.
Men came up the stairs and crowded roughly past him. He paid them no
heed. Occasionally other men left the hidden barroom and went down.
These were rougher. One of them even kicked him in passing. He merely
looked up, dully took in the figure and sank his head again on his
arms. Inside, newcomers advised Snake Murphy to go out and throw the
bum into the street. As this might have led to inquiries, Snake
decided to leave well enough alone until dark.
Finally the cow-puncher, well loaded with more liquor than he could
comfortably carry, decided to take an uncertain departure. He waved a
debonair and inclusive farewell to all those about him, teetered a bit
on his high heels, straddled an imaginary horse, and, with legs well
apart and body balanced precariously, tacked, by and full, for the
door.
Reaching it, he leaned against it, felt for the knob, turned it,
carefully backed away from the door and opened it. Holding the edge,
he eased himself around it and, balancing on the outer side, closed it
again with elaborate care. Then he took a tentative step and lifted
his hand from its support.
The next moment he tripped over De Launay and fell over his head,
turning a complete flip.
De Launay came out of his trance with a start to find a hundred and
seventy pounds of cow-puncher sprawling in his lap and clinging about
his neck. His dull eyes, gummy with sleep, showed him a hat of sorts,
a greasy waistcoat----
Calmly he took the cowboy by the neck and raised him. The fellow
uttered a cry that was choked. De Launay pulled off his hat and
substituted his own on the rumpled locks of the young man. He then
swung him about as though he were a child, laid him over his knees and
stripped from him his waistcoat.
His own coat was tossed aside while he wriggled into the ancient
garment. He held the cowboy during this process by throwing one leg
over him, around his neck, and clamping his legs together. The cowboy
uttered muffled yells of protest.
He hauled the fellow's boots off without much trouble, but when it
came to removing his own shoes there was a difficulty which he finally
adjusted by rising, grasping the man by the neck again--incidentally
shutting off his cries--and depositing him on the top step, after
which he sat upon him.
It took only a second to rip the laces from his shoes and kick them
off. Then he started to pull on the boots. But the noise had finally
aroused those inside and they came charging out.
Fortunately for De Launay, Snake Murphy and his cohorts were so
surprised to see the pose of the late guests that they gave him a
moment of respite. He had time to get off of the cowboy and stamp the
second boot on his foot. Then, with satisfaction, he turned to face
them.
They answered the cowboy's protesting shout with a charge. De Launay
was peaceful, but he did not intend to lose his prize without a fight.
He smote the first man with a straight jab that shook all his teeth.
The next one he ducked under, throwing him over his shoulder and down
the stairs. Another he swept against the wall with a crash.
They were over him and around him, slugging, kicking, and pushing. He
fought mechanically, and with incredible efficiency, striking with a
snaky speed and accuracy that would have amazed any one capable of
noting it. But they were too many for him. He was shoved from the
step, crowded back, stumbling downward, losing his balance, struggling
gamely but hopelessly, until, like Samson, he fell backward, dragging
with him a confused heap of his assailants, who went bumping down the
stairs in a squirming, kicking mass.
They brought up at the bottom, striking in all directions, with De
Launay beneath, missing most of the destruction. The stair well was
dark and obscure, but at the bottom was a narrow space where the
battle waged wildly. De Launay managed to get to his hands and knees,
but over him surged and swept a murmurous, sweating, reeking crowd who
struck and battered each other in the gloom.
The door into the billiard parlor burst open and Johnny the Greek and
reënforcements rushed on the scene. But Johnny, not knowing what the
fight was about and not being able to find out--the outraged cowboy
had thrust himself before a hostile fist in the start of the encounter
and now lay unconscious at the top of the stairs--proceeded to deal
with what he imagined was impartiality. He simply added his weight to
the combat. This naturally increased the confusion.
Such pandemonium was bound to attract attention. Still unable to
comprehend the reason of the whole affair, De Launay was crawling
between legs and making a more or less undamaged progress to the door,
while his enemies battered one another. He had almost reached it, and
was rising to his feet, when a new element was injected into the riot.
A couple of uniformed policemen threw themselves into the mêlée.
De Launay saw only the uniforms. His wrath surged up. What were
policemen doing in this country of range and sheriffs? What had they
to do with the West? They stood for all that had come to the country,
all the change and innovation that he hated.
He expressed his feelings by letting the first policeman have it on
the point of the jaw. The second he proceeded to walk over, to beat
back and to drive through the door, out into the big room and clear
to the sidewalk. The man resisted, swinging his mace, but he found De
Launay a cold, inhumanly accurate and swift antagonist, whom it was
difficult to hit and impossible to dodge. Twice he was knocked down,
and twice he leaped up, swinging his mace at a head that was never
there when the club reached its objective.
The policeman whom De Launay had first knocked down had arisen quickly
and, seeing his Nemesis now pursuing his comrade, ran to the rescue.
De Launay could avoid a club in the hands of the man in front of him
but that wielded by the man behind was another matter. It fell on his
head just as he was driving the other policeman through the door into
the street. It was a shrewd blow and he went to the ground under it.
While they waited for the patrol wagon, the two policemen tried to
gather information about the cause of the fight, but they found Johnny
the Greek somewhat reticent. The cowboy still was upstairs, held there
by Snake Murphy. The others were more or less confused in their ideas.
Johnny was chiefly anxious that the police should remove the prisoner
and refrain from any close inquiry into the premises, so he merely
stated that the fellow had come in drunk and had made an attack on
some of the men playing pool. His henchman was seeing to it that the
robbed and wronged cowboy had no opportunity to tell a story that
would send the police upstairs.
Half conscious and wholly drunk, De Launay was carted to Sulphur
Falls' imposing stone jail, where he was duly slated before a police
sergeant for drunkenness, assault and battery, mayhem, inciting a
riot, and resisting an officer in the performance of his duty. Then he
was led away and deposited in a cell. Here he went soundly to sleep.
In the course of time he began to dream. He dreamed that he was on a
raft which floated on a limitless sea of bunch grass, alkali and
sagebrush, where the waves ran high and regularly, rocking the raft
back and forth monotonously and as monotonously throwing him from side
to side and against a mast to which he clung. Right in front of the
raft, floating in the air above the waves, drifted a slender, veiled
figure, and through the veil sparkled a pair of eyes which were
bottomless and yet held the colors of the rainbow in their depths.
Above this figure, which beckoned him on, and after which the raft
drifted faster and faster, was a halo of sparkling hair, which caught
and broke up the light into prismatic colors.
The raft sailed faster and faster, rotating in a circle until it was
spinning about the ghostly figure, which grew more and more distinct
as the raft gyrated more crazily. Raft, desert, waves and sky became
confused, hazy, fading out, but the figure stood there as he opened
his eyes and the stanchion thumped him in the ribs.
His sleep and his liquor-drugged mind came back to him and he found
himself lying on his bunk in a cell, while Solange stood before him
and a turnkey poked him in the ribs and rocked him to wake him up.
Sick, bruised and battered, he raised himself, swung his feet to the
floor and sat up on the edge of the bed. He tried to stand, but his
head swam and he became so dizzy that he feared to fall.
"Don't get up," said Solange, icily.
The turnkey went to the door. "I reckon he's all right now, ma'am. You
got half an hour. If he gets rough just holler and we'll settle him."
"Is the charge serious?" asked Solange.
"It ought to be. He's a sure-enough hard case. But a fine and six
months on the rocks is about all he'll get."
De Launay looked up sullenly. The turnkey made a derisive, threatening
motion and, grinning, slammed the door behind him, locking it.
De Launay licked his dry lips. There was a pitcher of water on a stand
and he seized it, almost draining it as he gulped the lukewarm stuff
down his sizzling throat.
It strengthened and revived him. He got up from the bed and stood
aside. Solange stood like a statue, but her eyes scorched him through
her veil.
"So this is what a general of France has come to," she said. Words and
tone burned him like fire. He said nothing, but motioned to the bed
as the only seat in the cell.
He picked up the hat, the battered thing that had brought on this
disaster, from the floor and, stooping, felt the sharp throb of his
half-fractured skull. His weakened nerves reacted sharply, and he
uttered a half-suppressed cry, raising his hand to the lump on his
cranium.
Solange started. "They have hurt you?" she said, sharply.
De Launay took hold of himself again.
"Nothing to speak of," he answered, gruffly. "Will you sit down?"
She sat down, then. Through her veil he could not tell what her
expression was, but he was uneasily conscious of the black pools that
lurked there, searching his scarred soul to its depths, and finding it
evil. He was in no condition to meet her, half drugged with stale
alcohol, shaken to his inmost being by reaction against the poisoning
of weeks, jumpy, imaginative, broken of mind and body.
His eyes did not meet hers squarely. They shifted, sidelong and
bloodshot. But she might have read in them something of despair,
something of sullenness, something of shame, but mostly she could have
seen a plea for mercy, and perhaps she did.
If so, she did not yield to the plea--at first. In a cold, steely
voice she told him what he was. In incisive French she rebaptized him
a coward, a beast, a low and disgusting thing. Her voice, curiously
beautiful even in rage, cut and dissected him and laid him bare.
She painted for him what a gentleman and a soldier should be and
contrasted with it what he was. She sketched for him all the glory and
the fame of the men who had led the soldiers of France, neither
sparing nor exalting, but showing them to be, at least, men who had
courage and command of themselves or had striven for it. She
contrasted them with his own weakness and supineness and degradation.
Then, her voice softening subtly, she shifted the picture to what he
had been, to his days of unutterable lowness in the Legion, the five
years of brutal struggle, fiercely won promotion. His gaining of a
commission, the _cachet_ of respectability, his years of titanic
struggle and study and work through the hardly won grades of the
army.
She made him see himself as something glorious, rising from obscurity
to respect and influence; made him see himself as he knew he was not;
made him see his own courage, which he had; his ability, which he also
had; and, what it had not, great pride, noble impulses, legitimate
ambition. When she painted the truth, he did not respond, but when she
pictured credits he did not deserve he winced and longed to earn
them.
"And, after all this," she said wearily, at last, "you descend--to
this? It would seem that one might even gauge the depths from which
you rose by the length and swiftness of the fall. Is it that you have
exhausted yourself in the effort that went before?"
De Launay stared at the floor with dull eyes.
"What would you expect of a légionnaire?" he muttered.
"Nothing!" she cried, angrily. "Nothing from the légionnaire! But, in
the name of God, cannot one expect more than this from the man who
wears the medaille militaire, the grand cross of the legion, who won a
colonelcy in Champagne, a brigade at Verdun, a division at the Chemin
des Dames, and who, as all know, should have had an army corps after
the Balkan campaign? From such a man as that, from him, monsieur, one
expects everything!"
De Launay twisted the unfortunate hat in his hands and made no reply
for some minutes. Solange sat on the bed, one knee crossed over the
other and her chin resting in her hand, supported on her elbow. Her
head was also bent toward the floor.
"Mademoiselle," said De Launay, at last, "I think you have guessed the
trouble with me." His manner had reverted to that of his rank and
class, and she looked up in instant reaction to it. "I am all that you
say except what is good. There is no doubt of that. I have been a
soldier for nineteen years; have made it the work of my life, in fact.
I know nothing else--except, perhaps, a little of a passing, obsolete
trade of this fading West you see around you. I had hoped to win--had
won, I thought, place and distinction in that profession. You know
what happened. Perhaps I did not deserve more. Perhaps it was
necessary to reduce us all. Perhaps I was wrong in despairing. But I
had won my way by effort, mademoiselle, that exhausted me. I was too
tired to take up again the task of battering my way up through the
remaining ranks.
"There was nothing left to me. There is nothing for me to do. There is
no one who can use me unless it be some petty state which needs
mercenaries. I have served my purpose in the world. Why should I not
waste the rest of my time?"
Solange nodded. "Then what you need is an object?" she said,
reflectively. "Work?" she asked.
He shook his head. "I have no need of money. And why should I work,
otherwise? I know nothing of trade, and there are others who need the
rewards of labor more than I."
"Philanthropy--service?"
At this he grinned. "I am not a sentimentalist, but a soldier. As for
service--I served France until she had no further use for me."
"Marriage; a family?"
He laughed, now. "I am married. As for the love that is said to
mitigate that relation, am I the sort of man a woman would care for?"
Solange straightened up, and then rose from the bunk. She came and
stood before him.
"If neither love, ambition nor money will stir you," she said. "Still,
you may find an incentive to serve. There is chivalry."
"I'm no troubadour."
"Will you serve me?" she asked abruptly. He looked at her in
surprise.
"Am I not serving you?"
"You are--after your own fashion--which I do not like. I wish your
service--need it. But not this way."
He nodded slowly. "I will serve you--in any way you wish," he said.
Solange smiled under the veil, her mouth curving into beautiful
lines.
"That is better. I shall need you, monsieur. You cannot, it is clear,
serve me effectively by being thrown into jail for months. I must find
the mine and the man who killed my father before that."
De Launay shook his head. "You expect to find the mine and the man,
after nineteen years?"
"I expect to make the attempt," she replied, calmly. "It is in the
hands of God, my success. Somehow, I feel that I shall succeed, at
least in some measure, but the same premonition points to you as one
who shall make that success possible. I do not know why that is."
"Premonition!" said De Launay, doubtfully. "Still--from Morgan _la
fée_, even a premonition----"
The shrouding mask was turned upon him with an effect of question as
he paused.
"Is entitled to respectful consideration," he ended. He sat
thoughtfully a minute, his throbbing head making mental action
difficult. "I see no hope of tracing the man--but one. Have you that
bullet, mademoiselle?"
She took it out of the hand bag, shivering a little as she handed it
to him.
"It is common--a thirty caliber, such as most hunters use. Yet it is
all the clew you possess. As for the mine, there seems to be only one
hope, which is, to retrace as closely as possible, the route taken by
your father before he was shot. May I keep this?"
She nodded her assent, and he put it in his pocket. Solange was
relieved to be rid of it.
"And now," he added, "I must get out of here."