_me_ none. He jest ambles along an' helps himself, and leaves th' dust
fer it every time. I jest lays low an' lets him operate. I never has no
_dealin's_ with him, understand. He jest nat'rally waltzes in an' plants
his grub-hooks on what he needs. _I_ don't know nothin' about it. _I'm_
dead asleep."
He bestowed a shadowy wink on the stranger
Below, the outlaws moved here and there.
"Billy!" shouted a commanding voice, "Billy Knapp!"
The hotel-keeper looked perplexed.
"Now, what's he tollin' _me_ for?" he asked of the man by his side.
"Billy!" shouted the voice again, "come down here, you Siwash. I want to
palaver with you!"
"All right, Hank," replied Billy.
He went to his "room," and buckled on a heavy belt; then descended the
steep stairs. The bar-room was lighted and filled with men. Some of them
were drinking and eating; others were strapping provisions into portable
form. Against the corner of the bar a tall figure of a man leaned
smoking--a man lithe, active, and muscular, with a keen dark face, and
black eyebrows which met over his nose. Billy walked silently to this
man.
"What is it?" he asked, shortly. "This yere ain't in th' agreement."
"I know that," replied the stranger.
"Then leave yore dust and vamoose."
"My dust is there," replied Black Hank, placing his hand on a buckskin
bag at his side, "and you're paid, Billy Knapp. I want to ask you a
question. Standing Rock has sent fifty thousand dollars in greenbacks to
Spotted Tail. The messenger went through here to-day. Have you seen
him?"
"Nary messenger," replied Billy, in relief. "Stage goes empty."
Charley had crept down the stairs and into the room.
"What in hell are yo' doin' yere, yo' ranikaboo ijit?" inquired Billy,
truculently.
"That thar stage ain't what you calls _empty_," observed Charley,
unmoved.
A light broke on Billy's mind. He remarked the valise which the stranger
had so carefully guarded; and though his common-sense told him that an
inoffensive non-combatant such as his guest would hardly be chosen as
express messenger, still the bare possibility remained.
"Yo're right," he agreed, carelessly, "thar is one tenderfoot, who knows
as much of ridin' express as a pig does of a ruffled shirt."
"I notes he's almighty particular about that carpet-bag of his'n,"
insisted Charley.
The man against the counter had lost nothing of the scene. Billy's
denial, his hesitation, his half-truth all looked suspicious to him.
With one swift, round sweep of the arm he had Billy covered. Billy's
hands shot over his head without the necessity of command.
The men ceased their occupations and gathered about. Scenes of this sort
were too common to elicit comment or arouse excitement. They knew
perfectly well the _laissez-faire_ relations which obtained between the
two Westerners.
"Now," said Black Hank, angrily, in a low tone, "I want to know why in
hell you tried that monkey game!"
Billy, wary and unafraid, replied that he had tried no game, that he had
forgotten the tenderfoot for the moment, and that he did not believe the
latter would prove to be the sought-for express messenger.
One of the men, at a signal from his leader, relieved Billy's heavy belt
of considerable weight. Then the latter was permitted to sit on a
cracker-box. Two more mounted the stairs. In a moment they returned to
report that the upper story contained no human beings, strange or
otherwise, except the girl, but that there remained a small trunk. Under
further orders, they dragged the trunk down into the bar-room. It was
broken open and found to contain nothing but clothes--of the plainsman's
cut, material, and state of wear; a neatly folded Mexican saddle showing
use, and a raw-hide quirt.
"Hell of a tenderfoot!" said Black Hank, contemptuously.
The outlaws had already scattered outside to look for the trail. In this
they were unsuccessful, reporting, indeed, that not the faintest sign
indicated escape in any direction.
Billy knew his man. The tightening of Black Hank's close-knit brows
meant but one thing. One does not gain chieftainship of any kind in the
West without propping his ascendency with acts of ruthless decision.
Billy leaped from his cracker-box with the suddenness of the puma,
seized Black Hank firmly about the waist, whirled him into a sort of
shield, and began an earnest struggle for the instant possession of the
outlaw's drawn revolver. It was a gallant attempt, but an unsuccessful
one. In a moment Billy was pinioned to the floor, and Black Hank was
rubbing his abraded fore-arm. After that the only question was whether
it should be rope or bullet.
Now, when Billy had gone downstairs, the stranger had wasted no further
time at the window. He had in his possession fifty thousand dollars in
greenbacks which he was to deliver as soon as possible to the Spotted
Tail agency in Wyoming. The necessary change of stage lines had forced
him to stay over night at Billy Knapp's hotel.
The messenger seized his bag and softly ran along through the
canvas-partitioned room wherein Billy slept, to a narrow window which he
had already noticed gave out almost directly into the pine woods. The
window was of oiled paper, and its catch baffled him. He knew it should
slide back; but it refused to slide. He did not dare break the paper
because of the crackling noise. A voice at his shoulder startled him.
"I'll show you," whispered the red-cheeked girl.
She was wrapped loosely in a blanket, her hair falling about her
shoulders, and her bare feet showed beneath her coverings. The little
man suffered at once an agony of embarrassment in which the thought of
his errand was lost. It was recalled to him by the girl.
"There you are," she whispered, showing him the open window.
"Thank you," he stammered, painfully, "I assure you--I wish----"
The girl laughed under her breath.
"That's all right," she said, heartily, "I owe you that for calling old
whiskers off his bronc," and she kissed him.
The messenger, trembling with self-consciousness, climbed hastily
through the window; ran the broad loop of the satchel up his arm; and,
instead of dropping to the ground, as the girl had expected, swung
himself lightly into the branches of a rather large scrub-oak that grew
near. She listened to the rustle of the leaves for a moment as he neared
the trunk, and then, unable longer to restrain her curiosity in regard
to the doings below, turned to the stairway.
As she did so, two men mounted. They examined the three rooms of the
upper story hastily but carefully, paying scant attention to her, and
departed swearing. In a few moments they returned for the stranger's
trunk. Nell followed them down the stairs as far as the doorway. There
she heard and saw things, and fled in bitter dismay to the back of the
house when Billy Knapp was overpowered.
At the window she knelt, clasping her hands and sinking her head between
her arms. Women in the West, at least women like Nell, do not weep. But
she came near it. Suddenly she raised her head. A voice next her ear had
addressed her.
She looked here and there and around, but could discover nothing.
"Here, outside," came the low, guarded voice, "in the tree."
Then she saw that the little stranger had not stirred from his first
alighting-place.
"Beg yore pardon, ma'am, fer startling you or fer addressing you at all,
which I shouldn't, but----"
"Oh, never mind that," said the girl, impatiently, shaking back her
hair. So deprecating and timid were the tones, that almost without an
effort of the imagination she could picture the little man's blushes and
his half-sidling method of delivery. At this supreme moment his
littleness and lack of self-assertion jarred on her mood. "What're you
doin' there? Thought you'd vamoosed."
"It was safer here," explained the stranger, "I left no trail."
She nodded comprehension of the common-sense of this.
"But, ma'am, I took the liberty of speakin' to you because you seems to
be in trouble. Of course, I ain't got no right to _ask_, an' if you
don't care to tell me----"
"They're goin' to kill Billy," broke in Nell, with a sob.
"What for?"
"I don't jest rightly make out. They's after someone, and they thinks
Billy's cacheing him. I reckon it's you. Billy ain't cacheing nothin',
but they thinks he is."
"It's me they's after, all right. Now, you know where I am, why don't
you tell them and save Billy?"
The girl started, but her keen Western mind saw the difficulty at once.
"They thinks Billy pertects you jest th' same."
"Do you love him?" asked the stranger.
"God knows I'm purty tough," confessed Nell, sobbing, "but I jest do
that!" and she dropped her head again.
The invisible stranger in the gloom fell silent, considering.
"I'm a pretty rank proposition, myself," said he at last, as if to
himself, "and I've got a job on hand which same I oughta put through
without givin' attention to anything else. As a usual thing folks don't
care fer me, and I don't care much fer folks. Women especial. They
drives me plumb tired. I reckon I don't stack up very high in th' blue
chips when it comes to cashin' in with the gentle sex, anyhow; but in
general they gives me as much notice as they lavishes on a doodle-bug. I
ain't kickin', you understand, nary bit; but onct in a dog's age I kind
of hankers fer a decent look from one of 'em. I ain't never had no
women-folks of my own, never. Sometimes I thinks it would be some
scrumptious to know a little gal waitin' fer me somewhere. They ain't
none. They never will be. I ain't built that way. You treated me white
to-night. You're th' first woman that ever kissed me of her own accord."
The girl heard a faint scramble, then the soft _pat_ of someone landing
on his feet. Peering from the window she made out a faint, shadowy form
stealing around the corner of the hotel. She put her hand to her heart
and listened. Her understanding of the stranger's motives was vague at
best, but she had caught his confession that her kiss had meant much to
him, and even in her anxiety she felt an inclination to laugh. She had
bestowed that caress as she would have kissed the cold end of a dog's
nose.
The men below stairs had, after some discussion, decided on bullet. This
was out of consideration for Billy's standing as a frontiersman.
Besides, he had stolen no horses. In order not to delay matters, the
execution was fixed for the present time and place. Billy stood with his
back to the logs of his own hotel, his hands and feet bound, but his
eyes uncovered. He had never lost his nerve. In the short respite which
preparation demanded, he told his opponents what he thought of them.
"Proud?" he concluded a long soliloquy as if to the reflector of the
lamp. "Proud?" he repeated, reflectively. "This yere Hank's jest that
proud he's all swelled up like a poisoned pup. Ain't everyone kin corall
a man sleepin' and git fifty thousand without turnin' a hair."
Black Hank distributed three men to do the business. There were no
heroics. The execution of this man was necessary to him, not because he
was particularly angry over the escape of the messenger--he expected to
capture that individual in due time--but in order to preserve his
authority over his men. He was in the act of moving back to give the
shooters room, when he heard behind him the door open and shut.
He turned. Before the door stood a small consumptive-looking man in a
light check suit. The tenderfoot carried two short-barrelled Colt's
revolvers, one of which he presented directly at Black Hank.
"'Nds up!" he commanded, sharply.
Hank was directly covered, so he obeyed. The new-comer's eye had a
strangely restless quality. Of the other dozen inmates of the room,
eleven were firmly convinced that the weapon and eye not directly
levelled at their leader were personally concerned with themselves. The
twelfth thought he saw his chance. To the bewildered onlookers there
seemed to be a flash and a bang, instantaneous; then things were as
before. One of the stranger's weapons still pointed at Black Hank's
breast; the other at each of the rest. Only the twelfth man, he who had
seen his chance, had collapsed forward to the floor. No one could assure
himself positively that he had discerned the slightest motion on the
part of the stranger.
"Now," said the latter, sharply, "one at a time, gentlemen. Drop yore
gun," this last to Black Hank, "muzzle down. Drop it! Correct!"
One of the men in the back of the room stirred slightly on the ball of
his foot.
"Steady, there!" warned the stranger. The man stiffened.
"Next gent," went on the little man, subtly indicating another. The
latter obeyed without hesitation. "Next. Now you. Now you in th'
corner."
One after another the pistols clattered to the floor. Not for an instant
could a single inmate of the apartment, armed or unarmed, flatter
himself that his slightest motion was unobserved. They were like tigers
on the crouch, ready to spring the moment the man's guard lowered. It
did not lower. The huddled figure on the floor reminded them of what
might happen. They obeyed.
"Step back," commanded the stranger next. In a moment he had them
standing in a row against the wall, rigid, upright, their hands over
their heads. Then for the first time the stranger moved from his
position by the door.
"Call her," he said to Billy, "th' girl."
Billy raised his voice. "Nell! Oh, Nell!"
In a moment she appeared in the doorway at the foot of the stairs,
without hesitation or fear. When she perceived the state of affairs, she
brightened almost mischievously.
"Would you jest as soon, ma'am, if it ain't troubling you too much, jest
nat'rally sort of untie Billy?" requested the stranger.
She did so. The hotel-keeper stretched his arms.
"Now, pick up th' guns, please."
The two set about it.
"Where's that damn ol' reprobate?" inquired Billy, truculently, looking
about for Charley.
The patriarch had quietly slipped away.
"You kin drop them hands," advised the stranger, lowering the muzzles of
his weapons. The leader started to say something.
"You shut up!" said Billy, selecting his own weapons from the heap.
The stranger suddenly picked up one of the Colt's single-action
revolvers which lay on the floor, and, holding the trigger back against
the guard, exploded the six charges by hitting the hammer smartly with
the palm of his hand. In the thrusting motion of this discharge he
evidently had design, for the first six wine-glasses on Billy's bar were
shivered. It was wonderful work, rattling fire, quicker than a
self-cocker even. He selected another weapon. From a pile of tomato-cans
he took one and tossed it into the air. Before it had fallen he had
perforated it twice, and as it rolled along the floor he helped its
progression by four more bullets which left streams of tomato-juice
where they had hit. The room was full of smoke. The group watched,
fascinated.
Then the men against the wall grew rigid. Out of the film of smoke long,
vivid streams of fire flashed toward them, now right, now left, like the
alternating steam of a locomotive's pistons. _Smash, smash! Smash,
smash!_ hit the bullets with regular thud. With the twelfth discharge
the din ceased. Midway in the space between the heads of each pair of
men against the wall was a round hole. No one was touched.
A silence fell. The smoke lightened and blew slowly through the open
door. The horses, long since deserted by their guardians in favour of
the excitement within, whinnied. The stranger dropped the smoking Colts,
and quietly reproduced his own short-barrelled arms from his
side-pockets, where he had thrust them. Billy broke the silence at last.
"That's _shootin'_!" he observed, with a sigh.
"Them fifty thousand is outside," clicked the stranger. "Do you want
them?"
There was no reply.
"I aims to pull out on one of these yere hosses of yours," said he.
"Billy he's all straight. He doesn't know nothin' about me."
He collected the six-shooters from the floor.
"I jest takes these with me for a spell," he continued. "You'll find
them, if you look hard enough, along on th' trail--also yore broncs."
He backed toward the door.
"I'm layin' fer th' man that sticks his head out that door," he warned.
"Stranger," said Black Hank as he neared the door.
The little man paused.
"Might I ask yore name?"
"My name is Alfred," replied the latter.
Black Hank looked chagrined.
"I've hearn tell of you," he acknowledged.
The stranger's eye ran over the room, and encountered that of the girl.
He shrank into himself and blushed.
"Good-night," he said, hastily, and disappeared. A moment later the beat
of hoofs became audible as he led the bunch of horses away.
For a time there was silence. Then Billy, "By God, Hank, I means to
stand in with you, but you let that kid alone, or I plugs you!"
"Kid, huh!" grunted Hank. "Alfred a kid! I've hearn tell of him."
"What've you heard?" inquired the girl.
"He's th' plumb best scout on th' southern trail," replied Black Hank.
The year following, Billy Knapp, Alfred, and another man named Jim
Buckley took across to the Hills the only wagon-train that dared set out
that summer.
III
THE TWO CARTRIDGES
This happened at the time Billy Knapp drove stage between Pierre and
Deadwood. I think you can still see the stage in Buffalo Bill's show.
Lest confusion arise and the reader be inclined to credit Billy with
more years than are his due, it might be well also to mention that the
period was some time after the summer he and Alfred and Jim Buckley had
made their famous march with the only wagon-train that dared set out,
and some time before Billy took to mining. Jim had already moved to
Montana.
The journey from Pierre to Deadwood amounted to something. All day long
the trail led up and down long grassy slopes, and across sweeping,
intervening flats. While climbing the slopes, you could never get your
experience to convince you that you were not, on topping the hill, about
to overlook the entire country for miles around. This never happened;
you saw no farther than the next roll of the prairie. While hurtling
down the slopes, you saw the intervening flat as interminably broad and
hot and breathless, or interminably broad and icy and full of arctic
winds, according to the season of the year. Once in a dog's age you came
to a straggling fringe of cottonwood-trees, indicating a creek bottom.
The latter was either quite dry or in raging flood. Close under the hill
huddled two buildings, half logs, half mud. There the horses were
changed by strange men with steel glints in their eyes, like those you
see under the brows of a north-country tug-boat captain. Passengers
could there eat flap-jacks architecturally warranted to hold together
against the most vigorous attack of the gastric juices, and drink green
tea that tasted of tannin and really demanded for its proper
accommodation porcelain-lined insides. It was not an inspiring trip.
Of course, Billy did not accompany the stage all of the way; only the
last hundred miles; but the passengers did, and by the time they reached
Billy they were usually heartily sick of their undertaking. Once a
tenderfoot came through in the fall of the year, simply for the love of
adventure. He got it.
"Driver," said he to Billy, as the brakes set for another plunge, "were
you ever held up?"
Billy had been deluged with questions like this for the last two hours.
Usually he looked straight in front of him, spat accurately between the
tail of the wheel-horse and the whiffle-tree, and answered in
monosyllables. The tenderfoot did not know that asking questions was not
the way to induce Billy to talk.
"Held up?" replied Billy, with scorn. "Young feller, I is held up
thirty-seven times in th' last year."
"Thunderation!" exclaimed the tenderfoot. "What do you do? Do you have
much trouble getting away? Have you had much fighting?"
"Fight nothin'. I ain't hired to fight. I'm hired to drive stage."
"And you just let them go through you?" cried the tenderfoot.
Billy was stung by the contempt in the stranger's tone.
"Go through nothin'," he explained. "They isn't touchin' _me_ none
whatever. Put her down fer argument that I'm damn fool enough to
sprinkle lead 'round some, and that I gets away. What happens? Nex' time
I drives stage some of these yere agents massacrees me from behind a
bush. Whar do I come in? Nary bit!"
The tenderfoot, struck by the logic of this reasoning, fell silent.
After an interval the sun set in a film of yellow light; then the
afterglow followed; and finally the stars pricked out the true immensity
of the prairies.
"_He's_ the feller hired to fight," observed the shadowy Billy, jerking
his thumb backward.
The tenderfoot now understood the silent, grim man who, unapproachable
and solitary, had alone occupied the seat on top of the stage. Looking
with more curiosity, the tenderfoot observed a shot-gun with abnormally
short barrels, slung in two brass clips along the back of the seat in
front of the messenger. The usual revolvers, too, were secured, instead
of by the regulation holsters, in brass clips riveted to the belt, so
that in case of necessity they could be snatched free with one forward
sweep of the arm. The man met his gaze keenly.
"Them Hills ain't fur now," vouchsafed Billy, as a cold breeze from the
west lifted the limp brim of his hat, and a film of cloud drew with
uncanny and silent rapidity across the stars.
The tenderfoot had turned again to look at the messenger, who interested
him exceedingly, when the stage came to a stop so violent as almost to
throw him from his seat. He recovered his balance with difficulty.
Billy, his foot braced against the brake, was engaged in leisurely
winding the reins around it.
"_Hands up, I say!_" cried a sharp voice from the darkness ahead.
"Meanin' you," observed Billy to the tenderfoot, at the same time
thrusting his own over his head and settling down comfortably on the
small of his back. "Time!" he called, facetiously, to the darkness.
As though at the signal the night split with the roar of buckshot, and
splintered with the answering crackle of a six-shooter three times
repeated. The screech of the brake had deceived the messenger as to the
whereabouts of the voice. He had jumped to the ground on the wrong side
of the stage, thus finding himself without protection against his
opponent, who, firing at the flash of the shot-gun, had brought him to
the ground.
The road-agent stepped confidently forward. "Billy," said he,
pleasantly, "jest pitch me that box."
Billy climbed over the seat and dropped a heavy, iron-bound case to the
ground. "Danged if I thinks anybody _kin_ git Buck, thar," he remarked,
in thoughtful reference to the messenger.
"Now, drive on," commanded the road-agent.
Three hours later Billy and the sobered tenderfoot pulled into Deadwood.
Ten minutes taught the camp what had occurred.
Now, it must be premised that Deadwood had recently chosen a sheriff. He
did not look much like a sheriff, for he was small and weak and bald,
and most childlike as to expression of countenance. But when I tell you
that his name was Alfred, you will know that it was all right. To him
the community looked for initiative. It expected him to organise a
posse, which would, of course, consist of every man in the place not
otherwise urgently employed, and to enter upon instant pursuit. He did
not.
"How many is they?" he asked of Billy.
"One lonesome one," replied the stage-driver.
"I plays her a lone hand," announced Alfred.
You see, Alfred knew well enough his own defects. He never could make
plans when anybody else was near, but always instinctively took the
second place. Then, when the other's scheme had fallen into ruins, he
would construct a most excellent expedient from the wreck of it. In the
case under consideration he preferred to arrange his own campaign, and
therefore to work alone.
By that time men knew Alfred. They made no objection.
"Snowin'," observed one of the chronic visitors of the saloon door.
There are always two or three of such in every Western gathering.
"One of you boys saddle my bronc," suddenly requested Alfred, and began
to examine his firearms by the light of the saloon lamp.
"Yo' ain't aimin' to set out to-night?" they asked, incredulously.
"I am. Th' snow will make a good trail, but she'll be covered come
mornin'."