Like almost all business Radville, Duncan went home for his midday
meal. It wasn't much of a walk from Sam Graham's store to Miss
Carpenter's, and he didn't mind in the least.
On this particular day he was sincerely hungry, but he had much to
think about besides, and between the two he just bolted his food and
made off, hot-foot for the store, greatly to the distress of his
landlady.
Naturally, knowing nothing about Sam's note, although he knew Pete
Willing by sight as the sheriff and town drunkard in one, it didn't
worry him at all to discover that gentleman tacking toward the store as
he hurried up Beech Street, eager to get back to his job. The first
intimation that he had of anything seriously amiss was when he entered,
practically on Pete's heels.
Pete Willing is the best-natured man in the world, as a general rule;
drunk or sober, Radville tolerates him for just that quality. On only
two occasions is he irritable and unmanageable: when his wife gets
after him about the drink (Mrs. Willing is an able-bodied lady of Irish
descent, with a will and a tongue of her own, to say nothing of
an arm a blacksmith might envy) and when he has a duty to perform in
his official capacity. It is in the latter instance that he rises
magnificently to the dignity of his position. The majesty of the law in
his hands becomes at once a bludgeon and a pandemonium. No one has ever
been arrested in Radville, since Pete became sheriff, without the
entire community becoming aware of it simultaneously. Pete's voice in
moments of excitement carries like a cannonade. Legrand Gunn said that
Pete had only to get into an argument in front of the Bigelow House to
make the entire disorderly population of the Flats, across the river,
break for the hills. (This is probably an exaggeration.)
Tall, gaunt, gangling and loose-jointed, Duncan found Pete standing in
the middle of the floor, hands in pockets and a noisome stogie thrust
into a corner of his mouth, swaying a little (he was almost sober at
the moment) and explaining his mission to old Sam in a voice of
thunder.
"I'm sorry about this, Sam," he bellowed, "but there ain't no use
wastin' words 'bout it. I'm here on business."
"But what's the matter, Sheriff?" Graham asked, his voice breaking.
"Ah, you know you got a note due at the bank, don't you?"
"Yes, but----"
"Well, it's protested. Y'un'erstand that, don't you?"
"Why, Pete!" Graham swayed, half-dazed.
"An' I'm here to serve the papers onto you."
"But--but there must be some mistake." Sam clutched blindly for his
hat. "I'll step over and see Mr. Lockwood. He'll arrange to give me a
little more time, I'm sure. He's always been kind, very kind."
"Naw!" Pete bawled, "Mr. Lockwood don't want to see you unless you can
settle. Y'can save yourself the trouble. Y'gottuh put up or git out!"
"But, Pete--Mr. Lockwood said he didn't want to see me?"
"Yah, that's what he said, and I got orders from him, soon's I got
judgment to close y'up. And that goes, see!"
"To--to turn me out of the store, Pete?" Graham's world had slipped
from beneath his feet. He was overwhelmed, witless, as helpless as a
child. And it was with a child's look of pitiful dismay and perplexity
that he faced the sheriff.
The father who has fallen short of his child's trust and confidence
knows that look. To Duncan its appeal was irresistible. He had his
hand in his pocket, clutching the still considerable remains of what
Kellogg had termed his grubstake, before he knew it.
"But--there must be some mistake," Graham repeated pleadingly. "It
can't be--Mr. Lockwood surely wouldn't----"
"Now there ain't no use whinin' about it!" Willing roared him into
silence. "Law is Law, and----" He ceased quickly, surprised to find
Duncan standing between him and his prey. "What----!" he began.
"Wait!" Duncan touched him gently on the chest with a forefinger, at
the same time catching and holding the sheriff's eye. "Are you," he
inquired quietly, "labouring under the impression that Mr. Graham is
deaf?"
"What----!"
Duncan turned to Sam, apologetically. "He said 'what.' Did you hear it,
sir?"
But by this time Pete was recovering to some degree. "What've you got
to say about this?" he demanded, crescendo.
"I'll show you," Duncan told him in the same quiet voice, "what I've
got to say if you'll just put the soft pedal on and tell me the amount
of that note."
Pete struggled mightily to regain his vanished advantage, but try as he
would he could not escape Duncan's cool, inquisitive eye. Visibly he
lost importance as he yielded and dived into his pocket. "With interest
and costs," he said less stridently, "it figgers up three hundred 'n'
eighty dollars 'n' eighty-two cents."
There's no use denying that Duncan was staggered. For the moment his
poise deserted him utterly. He could only repeat, as one who dreams:
_"Three hundred and eighty dollars!..."_
His momentary consternation afforded Pete the opening he needed. The
room shook with his regained sense of prestige.
"Yes, three hundred 'n' eighty dollars 'n'--say, you look a-here!----"
Again the calm forefinger touched him, and like a hypnotist's pass
checked the rolling volume of noise. "Listen," begged Duncan: "if
you've got anything else to tell me, please retire to the opposite side
of the street and whisper it. Meanwhile, _be quiet!"_
Pete's jaw dropped. In all his experience no one had ever succeeded in
taming him so completely--and in so brief a time. He experienced a
sensation of having been robbed of his spinal column, and before he
could pull himself together was staring in awe, while with one final
admonitory poke of his finger Duncan turned and made for the soda
counter, beneath which was the till. His scanty roll of bills was in
his right hand, and there concealed. He stepped behind the counter (old
Sam watching him with an amazement no less absolute than Pete's),
pulled out the till, bent over it with an assured air, and pushed back
the coin slide. Then quite naturally, he produced--with his right
hand--his four-hundred-and-odd dollars from the bill drawer, stood up
and counted them with great deliberation.
"One ... two ... three ... four."
He smiled winningly at Pete. "Four hundred dollars, Mr. Sheriff. Now
will you be good enough to hand over that note and the change and then
put yourself, and that pickle you're wearing in your face, on the other
side of the door?"
Pete struggled tremendously and finally succeeded in producing from
his system a still, small voice:
"I ain't got the note with me, Mr. Duncan."
"Then perhaps you won't mind going to the bank for it?"
Half suffocated, Pete assented. "Aw'right, I'll go and git it. Kin I
have the money?"
"Certainly." Duncan extended the bills, then on second thought withheld
them. "I presume you're a regular sheriff?" he inquired.
Very proudly Pete turned back the lapel of his coat and distended the
chest on which shone his nickel-plated badge of office. Duncan examined
it with grave admiration.
"It's beautiful," he said with a sigh. "Here."
Gingerly, Pete grasped the bills, thumbed them over to make sure they
were real, and bolted as for his life, his coat-tails level on the
breeze.
[Illustration: "Four hundred dollars, Mr. Sheriff"]
There floated back to Duncan and old Sam his valedictory: "Wal, I'll be
damned!"
With a short, quiet laugh Duncan made as though to go out to the
back-yard, where the new stock was being delivered, having been carted
up from the station through the alley--thereby doing away with the
necessity of cluttering up the store with a debris of packing. His
primal instinct of the moment was to get right out of that with all the
expedition practicable. He didn't want to be alone with old Sam another
second. The essential insanity of which he had just done was patent;
there was no excuse for it, and he was like to suffer severely as a
consequence. But he wasn't sorry, and he did not want to be thanked.
"I'm going," he said hurriedly, "to find me a hatchet and knock the
stuffing out of some of those packing-cases. Want to get all that truck
indoors before nightfall, you know----"
But old Sam wasn't to be put off by any such obvious subterfuge as
that. He put himself in front of Duncan.
"Nat, my boy," he said, tremulous, "I can't let this go through--I
can't allow you----"
"There, now!" Duncan told him, unconcernedly yet kindly, "don't say
anything more. It's over and done with."
"But you mustn't--I'll turn over the store to you, if----"
"O Lord!" Duncan's dismay was as genuine as his desire to escape
Graham's gratitude. "No--don't! Please don't do that!"
"But I must do something, my boy. I can't accept so great a kindness--
unless," said Graham with a timid flash of hope--"you'll consider a
partnership----"
"That's it!" cried Duncan, glad of any way out of the situation.
"That's the way to do it--a partnership. No, please don't say any more
about it, just now. We can settle details later. ... We've got to get
busy. Tell you what I wish you'd do while I'm busting open those boxes:
if you don't mind going down to the station to make sure that
everything's----"
"Yes, I'll go; I'll go at once." Sam groped for Duncan's hand, caught
and held it between both his own. "If--if fate--or something hadn't
brought you here to-day--I don't know what would've happened to Betty
and me. ..."
"Never mind," Duncan tried to soothe him. "Just don't you think about
it."
Graham shook his head, still bewildered. "Perhaps," he stumbled on, "to
a gentleman of your wealth four hundred dollars isn't much----"
"No," said Duncan gravely, without the flicker of an eyelash:
"nothing." Then he smiled cheerfully. "There, that's all right."
"To me it's meant everything. I--I only hope I'll be able to repay
you some day. God bless you, my boy, God bless you!"
He managed to jam his hat awry on his white old head and found his way
out, his hands fumbling with one another, his lips moving inaudibly--
perhaps in a prayer of thanksgiving.
Motionless, Duncan watched him go, and for several minutes thereafter
stood without stirring, lost in thought. Then his quaint, deprecatory
grin dawned. He found a handkerchief and mopped his forehead.
"Whew!" he whistled. "I wouldn't go through that again for a million
dollars."
Gradually the smile faded. He puckered his brows and drew down the
corners of his mouth. Thoughtfully he ran a hand into his pocket and
produced the little crumpled wad of bills of small denominations,
representing all he had left in the world. Smoothing them out on the
counter, he arranged them carefully, summing up; then returned them to
his pocket.
"Harry," he observed--"Harry said I couldn't get rid of that stake in a
year!...
"He doesn't know what a fast town this is!"