Destry Rides Again (5 page)

After that first glance, they paid no heed to Destry, but strode to the bar and ordered whiskey, and Destry remained in the
corner, silent, looking at his dreams with open, empty eyes. The bartender, who had been through many phases of this mortal
coil, observed him with the eye of a physician who sees symptoms of a fatal disease, against the progress of which there is
no remedy. There were still five men in the room, and these drew back from the bar, not hastily, but by slow degrees, conversing
with one another, as though their business required greater privacy than could be found under the bright light of the two
kerosene lamps which flooded the bar and its vicinity.

Out of the chatter of conversation which had preceded the entry of the Ogden brothers, an approximate silence fell upon the
room, as when, before a prizefight, the voices of the spectators are gradually hushed, and there remains a dead moment in
which even the most casual murmur is audible, surprisingly, over several rows and the speakers grow embarrassed and glance
about in the hope that no one has overheard their profanity.

So it was now in the barroom after the Ogden brothers had come in. They were two of a kind. That kind originates somewhere
in the middle West, instantly understood by all who have been in that region, and understood by no others.

They were tall, but they were not awkwardly built. Their shoulders were broad, but their chests were not shallow. They stood
straight, and their
heads were high, and yet there was a trail of the eternal slime upon them. It appeared in their greasy complexions, their
overbright eyes, wrinkled too much at the corners, as though by continual laughter, though the practiced observer knew that
laughter had nothing to do with those lines. They had a way of smiling secretly, one to the other, conscious of a jest which
was not apparent to the rest of the world, and they fortified themselves with this laughter; for laughter is a two-edged sword,
and all of those who do not understand it are bound in the course of nature to be ill at ease.

At this very moment, they were smiling sourly at each other as they raised their glasses. They did not pledge the bartender
with the accustomed nod and tilt of the glass; they did not turn the usual good-natured grin towards the others at the bar,
but, instead, they raised their liquor swiftly, and swiftly they disposed of it. Then they put down the glasses with a clink
upon the varnished wood of the bar and considered the thing that was before them.

They had come to kill Harrison Destry. That much was plain to themselves and to all observers; but they needed a bridge by
which to pass from the commonplace to the greatly desired event. It would hardly do to turn on their heels and lay the new
born coward dead!

With secrecy, with some shame, with great embarrassment, indeed, they looked slyly at each other and considered the means
by which they would approach this fatal climax of the evening’s work.

And still Destry gave them no excuse, no finger’s hold, no faintest sham of a pretense to attack him. He stood with the same
considerate gaze steadily upon vacancy, and spoke not a word, invited no
comment, asked for no opinion. At last he said, timidly: “I’ll take another.”

The bartender noted with a real amaze that the glass of Destry was empty. He spun out the bottle, and when Destry had poured
a moderate measure, the saloon keeper filled a glass for himself to the brim, for once more he needed a stimulant.

There was no conversation at all. One man had slipped noiselessly through the swinging door; the remainder stayed for the
obvious purpose of seeing the killing of Harry Destry. Not that he was important now, but that he once had been a man of note.

Suddenly Jud Ogden said: “Destry?”

The latter raised his head with a faint smile.

“Yes?” he said.

No one could see his face, at that moment, except the bartender, and he underwent a strange convulsion that caused the liquor
to tilt in his raised glass and to spill upon the floor half of the contents. Still under the influence of the same shock,
whatever it could have been, he replaced his glass upon the bar, then changed his mind and tossed off the contents with a
single gesture.

He coughed hard, but he did not take a chaser. With both hands gripping the edge of the bar, he remained frozen in place,
looking not at the Ogden brothers, but at Destry, as though from him the important act was now to come.

“Destry,” said Clarence Ogden, taking up the speech where his brother had left off, “they was a time when you done us wrong,
you—Destry!”

“I done you wrong?” said Destry, as contemplative as ever. “
I
done you wrong?”

“You done us wrong,” broke in Jud Ogden brutally.

Silence once more fell over the barroom, and the
spectators, secure within their shadow, looked at one another, knowing that the time had almost come.

“Well,” said Destry, “I’d be powerful sorry to think that I’d made anybody in this town unhappy! I’d sure hate to think of
that!”

He turned from the bar as he spoke, a shrill laughter forced and unconvinced, breaking from his lips.

The bystanders winced, and their lips curled. As for the Ogdens, they looked secretly at each other, as much as to say that
they had expected this. Then Clarence Ogden turned bodily upon Destry.

“You lousy rat!” he said.

But Destry did nothing, neither did he stir a hand!

“That’s a hard name,” he said.

But, as he spoke, it became suddenly apparent to all who listened that he was not afraid! He, the coward, the nameless thing,
turned a little from the bar so that he faced the Ogdens, and as he spoke, his voice was like a caress.

“That’s a hard name,” said Destry.

And his voice was unafraid!

It was as though a masked battery had broken out from a screen of shrubbery. The greasy faces of the Ogdens lost color; the
spectators by instinct drew closer together, shoulder to shoulder, and stood wedged in a row.

And Destry went on: “What for d’you call me that, boys?”

The Ogdens in their turn were silenced.

They had come expecting to find a wild cat whose teeth and claws were drawn. It appeared that beyond all belief they might
be wrong!

“I hear a mighty bad word from the pair of you,” said Destry. “It sure hurts my feelings. Here I come in, askin’ for a little
quiet drink, and along comes the
Ogdens. Brave men. Big men. Pretty well known. They call me a yaller skunk, as you might say, for why?”

He smiled at the pair, and the pair did not smile back.

“It ain’t possible,” said Destry, continuing in the same subdued manner, “that you come here lookin’ for a whipped pup and
found a real dog in his place?”

His smile grew broader, and as he smiled, it appeared that the stature of Destry grew taller, that his chest expanded, his
eye grew brighter.

“It ain’t possible,” said he, “that the Ogdens are gunna prove themselves to be a pair of mangy rats that wouldn’t live up
to what they said?”

He made a single light step toward them, and they drew back instinctively before him.

“It ain’t possible that they’re a pair of lousy fakers,” said Destry. “It ain’t possible,” he added, in a louder tone, “that
they’re walkin’ up and down the town in the attitude of great men and great killers without the heart to back up what they
wanta seem to be?”

Fear? In this man?

The white face was lighted; the nostrils flared; the eyes of Destry gleamed with fire, and the audience shrank closer against
the wall. If there was sympathy now, it was not for the one man but for the pair.

So action hung suspended until Clarence Ogden yelled, with a voice like that of a screeching old woman: “I’ll take you, you——”

He yanked at his gun as he cried; he was dead in the middle of a curse; for out of the flap of his coat Destry had drawn a
revolver, long barreled, gleaming blue; a fire spat from its mouth.

Clarence Ogden made a blundering step forward.

“I’d—” he began in a subdued tone, as though about to make an explanation, then sank slowly to the floor, a lifeless heap.

No one noticed his word at the end. His brother had reached for a weapon at the same instant, and fired. Only by a breath
was he too late. By less time than it takes for an eye to wink, the second shot of Destry beat the bullet from his own weapon,
and Jud Ogden spun in a circle and fell with a crash against the wall. Still he struggled to regain the weapon which he had
let drop, sprawling forward like a frog on dry land.

Destry struck him across the head with the barrel of his Colt and leaned above him. Jud lay still. His great hand was fixed
on the floor, seeming to grip at it as though anxious to rip up a board and reveal a secret. But all his powerful body lay
helpless and unnerved upon the floor.

Destry stood up above his victim.

He said to the gaping row of witnesses along the wall: “I guess you boys all seen that I couldn’t do anything to stop this
here. I was tolerable helpless. They jus’ nacherally insisted on havin’ my scalp, as you might say! Terrible sorry!”

He stepped to the end man of the row, nearest to the door.

“Wendell, Jerry Wendell, you know him?”

“Yes,” gasped the man.

“Where does he live? Tell me that! I’ve heard before, and forgot!”

He was told in a stammer, and started for the door.

When he reached it, he turned again toward the others and surveyed the two motionless forms upon
the floor; and he laughed! Never to their death day would they forget the sound of that laughter. Then Destry was gone into
the night.

It was the bartender who roused himself before any of the others, and running to the telephone, which stood at the end of
the bar, he jerked off the receiver.

“One—nine—eight, quick, for God’s sake!”

No man stirred among the frozen audience.

Then, finally the saloon keeper was crying:

“Is that you, Wendell? This is the Last Chance Saloon. You hear? The Ogden boys both jumped Destry in my place. They’re both
dead, I think, or dying! He’s started for your house! Get out of town! Get out of town! He’s been shammin’. It ain’t the old
Destry that’s back here with us, but a devil that’s ten times worse! Wendell, get yourself out of town!”

There was one habit of industry which Benjamin Dangerfield had clung to all his life, and that was rising at an early hour.
To him the entire day was sick unless he saw the night turn gray and the pink of the dawn begin to blossom in the east. It
was still not sun-up when he sat at his breakfast table with his daughter.

“I ain’t showed you my new coat,” said he, and rose and turned before her, a piece of ham poised at his lips on the end of
a fork. “How does it look?”

“Mighty grand,” said Charlotte. “Down to the knees you look pretty near as fine as a gambler.”

For he had on common blue jeans beneath the coat, and the overall legs were stuffed into heavy riding boots, which never had
seen a touch of polish or of other care than a liberal greasing in the winter of the year.

Mr. Dangerfield sat down again.

“How I look below the table don’t matter; what I look above it is the thing that counts.”

He patted his necktie as he spoke and brushed his moustache with his finger tips, sensitively.

“Sure,” said the girl. “Anything that’s comfortable is right, I guess. The dogs under the table wouldn’t be comfortable if
they had to go sashayin’ around among broadcloth trousers. Neither would the cats.”

“Suppose,” said the father, “that you wanted to go and set on the corral fence and look at a hoss— would fancy trousers be
any good for that?”

“They wouldn’t,” she answered. “They’s just get all full of splinters.”

“Or suppose that you got tired of walkin’ and wanted to rest, would you go and set down on the ground in fancy pants?”

“No, sir, you most certainly wouldn’t.”

“Which you’re laughin’ at me the same,” said he. “Speakin’ of dogs, where’s that brindle hound? I ain’t seen him yet this
mornin’.”

“He’s on the foot of your bed, most like,” she answered. “You must of throwed the covers over him when you got up.”

“I reckon I did,” said he. “Mose, go upstairs and see if you can find me that wo’thless Major dog, will you?”

Mose disappeared.

“You look fair to middlin’ miserable,” observed Mr. Dangerfield. “Help yourself to some of that corn bread and pass it to
me. It’s cold! I’m gunna kill me a nigger out yonder in the kitchen, one of these days, if you don’t bring ’em to time pretty
quick!”

“How can I bring ’em to time?” asked the girl. “I’ve fired that good-for-nothin’ Elijah six times, and you always take him
back again!”

“In this family,” said Dangerfield, “niggers ain’t fired, I thank God!”

“Then don’t you raise a ruction because you got indigestion. You can thank God for that, too!”

“It ain’t the men in the kitchen, it’s the women there that makes the trouble. I’ve fired that useless Maria, too,” declared
Charlotte, “but bless my soul if she don’t start howlin’ like a dog at the moon. Last time, she set outside my door three
hours and give me nightmares with her carryin’s on.”

“You oughta cut down their pay,” said Dangerfield. “I never seen anything like the way you throw
money away on them niggers, the wo’thless good-for-nothin’s!”

“Why, how you carry on!” said his daughter. “What diff’ence does it make to them, the money? Didn’t they all keep on workin’
all them years when they didn’t get nothin’ at all for pay?”

“Money is no good for niggers,” said Dangerfield. “Money and votes ain’t no good for them. Pass me some of that fish. They
ain’t hardly a thing on this table fit to pass a man’s lips!”

“You’ve got a sight particular,” said she, “since you’ve blundered into a few pennies; I seen the day many a time when we
was glad to have just the corn bread on the breakfast table, without no eggs, nor ham, nor fish, nor milk, nor coffee neither.”

“It ain’t true!” said the father. “They never was a time, even when my fortune ebbed its lowest, when I didn’t have coffee
on my table.”

“Yeah,” drawled Charlotte. “But it was second and third boilin’ most of the time, and I had to flavor it up with molasses
to make it taste like something at all!”

“You gotta disposition,” said her father, “like a handful of tacks. You got the nacheral sweetness of a tangle of barbed wire,
Charlie. I ain’t gunna talk to you no more this mornin’.”

“Which I never asked you to,” said she.

“Why don’t you run along and leave me to finish my breakfast, then?”

“Because then I wouldn’t have nothin’ but niggers to bother,” she replied, her chin in her hand.

“Charlie, if you’re gunna be so downhearted about it, why don’t you go and take him back, then?”

“There ain’t anything to take back,” said she. “He’s only a handful of bubbles.”

“Then why for are you sorrowin’ so much?” he asked.

“Because I’ve lost my man,” she said, “and only his ghost come back.”

“You’ll get yourself fixed up with another right now,” said he. “You ain’t never had no trouble collectin’ young nuisances
around you. That tribe of young boys has et up a drove of hogs for me, and a herd of cattle, and a trainload of apples and
such; they’ve drunk enough of my whiskey to irrigate a thousand acres of corn; and all because you’re close onto half as good
lookin’ as your mother used to be, Charlie.”

“Thanks,” said she. “You wanta see me tied up in one of these love-me-little-love-me-long marriages. But the fact is that
I ain’t gunna marry, never.”

“If you ain’t gunna get yourself a husband,” said he, “you might get yourself some grammar; which a man would think that you
never been to school, to listen at you talk!”

“I only dress up my talk once a week,” said she, “and the rest of the time I’d rather go around comfortable and let the pronunciation
take care of itself. What difference does it make to an adjective if it’s used for an adverb? It don’t give the word no pain;
it’s easier for me; the niggers understand me better, and everybody’s happy all around.”

“I’ve seen young Chester Bent look kind of odd at some of your language, though,” observed Dangerfield.

“Young Chester Bent,” she mocked, “wouldn’t mind the language of a red Comanche if she had the Dangerfield money.”

“There you go,” said he, “puttin’ low motives into high minds! That boy is all right!”

“Yeah?” she queried. “Who’s that comin’ across the field?”

“I don’t care who it is,” said her father. “What I want to say is that Chester Bent is about the best——”

“It’s somebody tryin’ to catch something or tryin’ to keep from bein’ caught,’ said Charlotte.

Her father leaned to look through a gap in the trees that surrounded the ranchhouse, and he saw across the hill a rider flogging
forward a horse so tired that its head bobbed like a cork in rough water.

“He’s lookin’ back,” remarked the girl, “and the fact is that he’s scared pretty bad. He’s comin’ here like a gopher scootin’
for a hole in the ground.”

“Who is it?” asked Dangerfield.

“Some boy from town,” she replied, “because no puncher that’s worth his salt ever rode so slantin’ as that.”

“Which Harrison Destry sure could fork a boss,” remarked her father.

The rider disappeared behind the trees, but almost immediately afterward an excited negress appeared at the kitchen door saying:
“They’s a young gent here that wants powerful to see you, Colonel Dangerfield!”

It was the family title for him; it was a title that was spreading abroad, now that he was able to lend money instead of “borrowing”
it.

He had no chance to invite the stranger to enter and share the hospitality of his house, for the man that instant appeared,
shouldering past the fat cook. He was very dusty. Dust was thick in the wrinkles of his sleeve and on his shoulders. His hat
was off, and his hair blown into a rat’s nest; he walked with a stagger of exhaustion; his face was drawn, and his eyes sunken.
Yet it was a handsome face; some said
he was the finest looking fellow on the entire range, for it was Jerry Wendell.

He fell into a chair, gasping: “Lock the doors, Colonel! He’s not three jumps behind me! He means murder! He’s killed two
men already, this night. He’s hounded me across the hills. I’ve gone a complete circle around Wham, and he’s been after me
every minute!”

“Lock the doors and the windows, Charlie,” said the Colonel with composure. “Hand me that riot gun, too. I loaded it fresh
with buckshot yesterday. How many of them is there, Jerry, and who are they, and what the devil do they mean by chasing you
right onto my ranch? There ain’t anything to be afraid of. My niggers will fight for me. How many are there, though? Charlie,
give the alarm—”

“There’s only one,” said Jerry Wendell. “
Only
one, but he’s the devil. I’m not ashamed of running! You know who it is! You must have heard!”

“Nothing!”

“It’s Harry Destry running amok!”

The riot gun crashed to the floor from the hands of the girl.

Jerry Wendell, his eyes rolling wildly at the windows, was crowding himself back into the most obscure corner of the room,
as he continued, his voice shaking as violently as his body:

“It was all a sham! You see? Pretending to be afraid! Oh, what fools we were to think that Destry ever could be afraid of
anything! He wanted to trap us all—every man that sat on that jury—oh God, how I wish I never had seen that courtroom or listened
to that judge! He’ll kill the judge. I hope he kills the judge.”

“Straighten up,” said Dangerfield slowly. “I’ve
seen Destry actin’ like a yellow hound dog with his sneakin’ tail between its legs, and you tell me that he’s runnin’ wild?”

“That’s it! He waited till all of us were back in town. Then he trapped the Ogdens in the Last Chance. He—he—killed them both.
He killed them both!”

Dangerfield stepped closer to him.

“Murder?” he asked.

“Murder? What else? What else?” screamed Jerry Wendell. “What else is it when a killer like him starts after an ordinary man,
like me? Murder, murder, I tell you! And he’ll never stop till he’s got me here and slaughtered me under your eyes in your
own house!”