Hell on hoofs, p.21
Hell on Hoofs, page 21
Bobs’s new dress was torn and earth-grimed, her hands were black and her face tear-smudged, her feather was broken and her hat dangled askew, but she was beautiful; and the kid, dazed by her adoration, heard:
“Never was done before, Bill! Never in a quarter race! To get away first then fall back, but come on to win with a crippled horse, all in a race that short! She did it for you, Bill! And now that Joel’s bought her, she’s ours! He’s going to adopt you! He told me so, and we’ll be cousins!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BY SUNDOWN the kid was alone with Blue Chip in the Kramer stable. She had perked up and was enjoying her oats, though she gingerly favored the swollen ankle. Before leaving for the ranch Boran had replaced the tight bandage with one of loose wool, and the kid was to keep it wet with hot vinegar and salt. Rest for a few days was what she needed most.
Now only covered wagons with people about their supper fires remained at the grove; but folks were still straggling out of town, heading for home, curling up dust in the still air.
A solemn unhappiness overlay all of the kid’s pleasure, overlay even the generous and humble warmheartedness with which Bobs had flung herself at him. The kid’s thoughts went around and around that gambler; there was no getting him out of mind, no wanting to get him out. He had hurt and crippled Blue Chip, and that alone would have made the kid vengeful; but now the kid knew how he had been fooled and bed to and wronged. And on the way to the stable Bobs, in telling everything bad that she could think of about Trusand, had said fiercely that Miss Kate never got drunk and fell downstairs. She didn’t drink anyhow; and she had just pretended that because the gambler would shoot anybody that took up for her.
The kid was weary and could have dropped in his tracks and slept, but he spooned hot vinegar onto the bandage and kept adjusting Blue Chip’s blanket. All the while he brooded on the promise he had made to himself: I’m going to kill him! Fair and to his face, I’ll kill him!
Nevertheless, some of the trifling events of the day kept jumping up in his thoughts, were briefly remembered, pushed aside. Doc Burrows had stopped by to shake hands all around. Young Toby, sober as a judge ought to be, loped up and grinned as he pointed to the star on his vest and called it a hell of a trick for the sheriff to play on a fellow at a time like this I The little barber looked as rumpled as if he had been in a fight, and he joyfully stuffed money into the kid’s pocket. When the kid wanted to repay Bobs she couldn’t take it, she said, because she hadn’t a purse or a pocket.
Sam Malloy came, red-faced and puffing, ostensibly with the bill of sale, and he talked in a mutter with Allentyre. Then it was that Allentyre told Bobs to hurry to the hotel, get into her togs, and head for home.
“But why, Joel? Why?” she asked stormily. “Why tonight? Now?” And when he said that she could overtake
Boran and have company through the dark, Bobs hooted at the idea of caring about the dark, and she turned on Malloy. “Sam, you’ve just told him something that makes him want me to leave town! Haven’t you? What was it?”
Malloy carefully looked down his nose and pretended to examine the wire off Blue Chip’s ankle. When Bobs at last yielded, it was with a sarcastic, “All right, Mr. Allentyre!” Then she pulled the kid into a corner of the stall and whispered, “I’m not going! You’ll see!” But she made the pretense of obedience by marching uptown with Malloy.
Allentyre stayed on at the stable to rebuff the curious and meddlesome who stopped in clusters on their way back from the grove; the kid could see that his manner had been changed by the coming of Malloy. Something impatient and hard was moving about under Allentyre’s quietness; he grew taciturn even toward friends who paused, and he often looked at his watch. That slick-tongued gambler was telling uptown that he had never thought of throwing the race until he learned how heavily Allentyre had bet on Blue Chip; then he had been willing to ruin even himself in order to keep Allentyre from winning so much as a dollar; Allentyre was in love with his wife, and she with him, and that was why she had left her home. “And a lot of the damn’ fools believe him!” Malloy had groaned.
Now, left to himself, loneliness put its weighty shadow on the kid, and he was tired and tense and missed not having seen Kate after the race.
Her warm hug and joy were what he wanted.
Kate had come hurrying to be near him, but Joel Allentyre stood in the alley, so she turned quickly and went on uptown alone. Ned and Sadie, thinking of farm chores, had pulled for home as soon as the race was over. Uptown, Kate found there wasn’t a room to be had. She wouldn’t return to the Palace but thought of Doc Burrows’s office, and . sat there and looked out over the Main Street jostle, mostly around saloon doors, until the doctor came.
He was solicitous and unbantering toward her now, not like himself; when she asked what was wrong, he growled, “Human nature!” and unlocked the door to the room where he slept and told her to use it. He grumbled that he wouldn’t go to bed anyhow on a night like this because he was sure to be pulled out to hunt for a bullet or sew up some heads. He was almost sorry, he said, that it now looked like Reseda would remain the county seat.
2
It was dark when the kid hung up the lantern and went into the kitchen. The woman had dragged her tired tow-heads back from the grove and gone to bed with a headache herself. The kid stirred up the coals and laid on pieces of a broken pine box. He liked the smell of the vinegar and tried its heat on the back of his hand.
When he returned to the stable the alley door was open and a small pockmarked man lounged there, reins in his hands and a horse’s head behind him. The kid challenged him instantly with “What d’you want?”
“Friend of yours wants to have a talk, alone. You all alone?”
The kid said that he was, and the man stepped back into the alley and whistled, then moved out of the light. Another horse came up and Red Sanger got off and stood in the door. He had lost weight and a tired haggardness was all over him, but he was still big and calm, and he peered with an eager reaching look as he said, “I never forget when I owe something, son. I owe you a loti” The kid shook his head denyingly.
Then Red’s deep voice had a slow, hard sound: “I hear you purt’ near didn’t win your race.”
The kid put his hand to Blue Chip’s shoulder. “She won it, crippled!” he said proudly. And after that he stared at Red and used man-sized curses on the gambler.
Red listened without any movement or expression, and the kid shut up, standing glum and tense, uncomfortable that this outlaw was here. Then, without thinking, he blurted, “Why’re you back in town?”
There was still no change on the haggard bristly face. “For a little business that’ll be finished pretty soon—I hope. Though I reckon I won’t have time to do ever’thing I’d like. But I sort of wanted to say howdy and good-bye to you, son. And I’ve heard what Trusand done to your horse—done after he knew better too! So I thought maybe it would be a good thing for you to let the sheriff know it was him who told me when that gold was going through to Risto. He was as much, one of the bunch as anybody! The sheriff then can check back and tie things up. ’Tain’t often I turn on a friend, son. But this time I got my reasons. That’ll be about all, so good-bye.”
Red Sanger held out his hand and the kid took it, and Sanger read the kid’s face and nodded. “I’m sorry too. But somehow crooked trails are narrow and you can’t turn back —leastwise, till you get a long ways off.”
He faced about and went into the alley and closed the door quietly; then the kid heard the two horses leave at a walk. They were going back uptown.
After that the kid sat with his head between his hands and wondered if he ought to tell the sheriff that Red Sanger was in town. He thought that he ought but he knew he wouldn’t, and it was a worrisome thing when thoughts and feelings met head on.
Then a horse ramped up at full lope and stopped suddenly. Toby flung the stable door wide, striding in, and Blue Chip flinched with limping sway. The kid jumped up and swore at him, but Toby reached out, caught the kid’s arm, pulled. “Joel’s been shot an’s asking for you! Come climb up behind me! They took him up to the doc’s office.”
3
A lot of men were bunched up on the sidewalk near the Bull’s Head Saloon, and Toby, riding with the kid behind him, pointed. “That’s where it happened!”
They dismounted at the drugstore and squeezed by men who were using the stairs as seats. It was too dark to see faces until they reached the hall, and there Toby jammed through the small circle about Sam Malloy and thrust the kid forward.
Malloy’s pudgy body sagged worriedly. He looked at the kid, looked at his cigar, took another puff, threw it down and stepped on it; then he opened the door for the kid and went in with him.
No one was in the outer room but Jeff, and the big carpenter looked through the inner door and had a bowed quietness. As the kid went by Jeff silently patted the boy’s shoulder.
The curtains were down and one lamp was on the table but Kate held the other one for the doc, and she put a finger to her lips and wamingly shook her head at the kid. For him it was like coming to the side of a grave because everybody was so quiet and looked despondent. Bobs cried with a choking sound as if trying not to be heard.
Malloy rose on tiptoes as he approached the couch and whispered, “Any hope?”
“If you believe in miracles!” Doc Burrows growled unbelievingly, and his eyes didn’t lift. He held a long, glittering something that was shaped like narrow scissors with flat tips and he looked at it distrustfully.
Malloy stepped back on tiptoes to where Bobs was huddled in the big worn chair and he crouched with an arm about her and didn’t speak.
The kid thought Allentyre was dead. He lay on his back and had been stripped to the waist and his eyes were closed; a blue puckered spot scarred the left side of his neck and another was more vivid on his breast. Kate’s hand began to tremble, as she watched the kid, and the doc growled roughly, “Hold that light still, can’t you?”
The kid’s voice flew up in startling loudness: “Who shot him? That gambler, I bet!”
The doc’s voice was harsh. “You’d lose! Now get out of here!” Then Kate pointed toward Jeff, and the kid understood and went back to him.
Jeff rested a hip on the table in the front room and twisted one button after another on his vest, and his words stumbled in telling that Joel had gone to the Palace just about dark and asked for Trusand, and nobody knew, or would say, where he was. Joel had looked at his watch. “Tell that gambler I’ll be back at eight o’clock, and I’ll come straight from across the street!”
No need to ask why he was coming back; and by announcing which way he’d come people would know and could keep out of the line of fire if the gambler waited to meet him.
At five minutes of eight Joel walked out of the Alpine and started up, and men hung in dark doorways to watch.
Jeff himself was under the porch of the hardware store next to the Bull’s Head when Joel passed. Joel didn’t look to the right or the left, but kept his eyes fixed ahead toward the Palace doorway. Somebody shot him from the narrow space between the hardware store and saloon.
The fellow fired three times and was so close that it looked like the muzzle blast was hitting Joel. He went down, and Jeff was the first man to reach him. Since the doctor’s office was so near, Jeff and Toby had at once carried him up here.
“That gambler!” the kid said accusingly.
Jeff gauntly shook his head. No, Trusand had been playing stud, and when somebody told him it was about eight o’clock he nodded and went right on dealing, cold as a dead man sitting upright. “Anyhow,” Jeff said, looking the kid up and down, “nobody much bigger than you could squeeze through between the buildings. Somebody little was layin’ for Joel!”
The kid had an angered stubbornness in declaring it was somebody that the gambler had put there, and again Jeff shook his head; Trusand had never been known to dodge a fight.
The kid went back on tiptoes and again looked into the room. Now Kate was holding a basin and with a wet, red-stained rag kept wiping while the shaggy doc bent over and looked as if trying to poke carefully. Sam Malloy held the lamp and seemed to be holding his breath too. Bobs was crumpled up in the chair, her overalled legs drawn under her and her head was down, and her hair had fallen forward.
The kid tiptoed back and pulled at Jeff. “You come with me!”
“For to do what?”
“What ought to be done!”
4
Men still hung about the sidewalk where Allentyre had been shot. From across the street the kid could recognize the sheriff, a dogged lump of a man, listening to talk and hoping that somebody’s chance guess might be helpful.
The kid wouldn’t tell Jeff what he was up to but trotted along in a way that made the carpenter stretch his legs. They stopped before Hartmann’s General Store; it was closed but a lamp burned in the rear where the Hartmanns lived. The kid beat on the door until the squaw-shaped figure of Mrs. Hartmann appeared. Poppa Hartmann was somewhere about town, lamentatiously talking with men.
Mama Hartmann wouldn’t open the door until she knew who it was, and the kid had Jeff remain outside. When she heard that he wanted a gun, refusal gathered on Mama’s worried face. “Gun? You don’t need a gun! Too many guns in this town now! You’re just a boy!”
But it made some difference after he explained that he wanted a rifle, she gave him the grease-packed carbine that he asked for, and also a ramrod and a box of shells. He paid her from the money that the barber had put in his pocket.
When he left the store Jeff eyed’ the rifle and asked questions, and the kid said, “You’ve got to cut it down to fit me.”
Jeff wanted to know why, and the kid said that he had been eager for this carbine from the time he had first seen it, and winning the bet had permitted him to buy it. “Tomorrow I’ll fix it for you,” Jeff promised.
“Right now and I’ll pay what you say!” The kid jangled his pocket, but the word “pay” made Jeff snort. “Who wants pay? Anyhow, I owe a boy like you something for making fun of him that day like I did!”
They cut across the street and went through the alley by Mark’s restaurant, empty now and dark, and turned down behind the Alpine where Jeff opened the back door and hung up a lantern.
The gun was a Winchester lever action .44-40, with a twenty-inch round barrel and a tubular magazine that held twelve shots. The kid explained, “My dad cut four inches off one just like this for me. I’m bigger now. You take off three.”
Jeff scratched his head doubtfully, but placed the gun in a vise between pieces of wood, and cut three inches from the butt. The butt plate now wouldn’t fit where the stock had been sawed, and with a carpenter’s care he rasped and sandpapered the rough edges of the black walnut until they were smooth. All the while the kid hung over the workbench. Jeff loosened the vise and gave him the gun with, “There you are!” and reached for the lantern.
“You’ve got to wait!” the kid said, and Jeff watched him clean the gun. He wiped out the barrel and magazine, then dug with stick and cloth to get the thick grease from the action: after that he worked the lever and snapped the hammer before he loaded the magazine and with the butt to his hip began throwing the cartridges out and they came fast.
“You shoot that way?” Jeff asked.
“If I have to,” the kid said, then put the gun to his shoulder, cheeked the stock in sighting, and threw out the remaining shells even faster.
“Damn’ if you don’t know about guns!” Jeff admitted, and stooped and poked about to help pick up the scattered cartridges, and the kid wiped each one before he reloaded, then took others from the box to replace those that couldn’t be readily found among the floor’s shavings and sawdust.
The kid moseyed toward the door, saying, “Now you can put out the light.”
Jeff turned back to the workbench and reached up; something caused him to look back over his shoulder, but the boy had gone. His running feet were heard, then lost, and Jeff didn’t know whether he had gone up or down the alley.
Jeff felt hurt and mad too. He had been as nice as he knew how to be to the kid, and for him to act like this! Then Jeff quit being mad and had a cramplike sick feeling as Trusand lurched into his thoughts. That kid would try anything, and he believed Trusand had planned to have Allentyre killed. Jeff was suddenly cold, then hot and weak. He’d have taken the gun away if he had suspected anything of the kind, and the kid knew it and dodged off so that Jeff wouldn’t come along with him. ’
Now Jeff didn’t stop to put out the lantern or shut the door; his big feet pounded up the alley, and cut back alongside of Mark’s to the street. Men were shouting and riding and running, and Jeff thought the excitement was because of something the kid had already done. But the little barber, who wouldn’t mix in any of the town’s night-wildness, was again peering from the unlighted door of his shop, and he told Jeff that folks had just learned how Red Sanger had come to town, laid for the jailer, and made him turn Mike Eads loose; then he had gagged the jailer and locked him up in Eads’s place.
5
Music was going in the Palace and smoke wreathed men’s heads, making a blurrish swirl against the lamps. A thick jostle stirred along the bar with voices going up and down, some in sharp, disputatious wrangling over events of the day. Knuckles rapped, bottles passed, and glasses were overfilled greedily; Blacky’s bar cloth sopped up spilled liquor. Sweat was all over Blacky’s greasy glum face; he had dug deep to bet on what Trusand promised would be a sure-thing win. He knew that the gambler had been badly shaken by the way things were turning out, and Blacky was glad of it and wished him worse luck.
