Ronicky Doone's Reward (1922) (26 page)

"But no matter how you felt," she cried, "you surely wouldn't have hurt a helpless old man like that to get some money away from him?"

"Hurt him?" Charlie laughed. Here, at least, he was telling the truth, and he rejoiced in the memory of the encounter. "Didn't I say that he always carried a couple of thousand along with him? Well, do you think that old skinflint would have gone out with all that money and nothing but his own withered-up hands to protect it? You don't know Lucas! No, sir, he never stirred that he didn't have a couple of big-nephews of his along, regular bulldogs they were! They'd as soon shoot a man down as a dog. They'd both had their killings to their credit. Anyway, when I looked at them three, I said to myself that it sure wouldn't be harming the world none if I took from Lucas five hundred dollars to save my best friend. So I fixed up a mask out of my handkerchief and "

"Oh, Charlie!"

"It was for my friend, I tell you!"

"I know, but go on, go on!"

"I slipped around in front of 'em, jumped out, and stuck 'em up."

"You did what?"

"Shoved my gun under their noses and asked them to put their hands up. The old man was yaller. He stuck his hands up quick enough, but his two nephews just let out growls like a coupla of bulldogs. They both dived to the side and went for their guns."

Here he paused significantly, while the girl trembled with excitement.

"When the smoke cleared away," said Charlie sadly, "they was both on the ground, and I was still on my feet, and the old man was begging for mercy!"

"You you didn't hurt him?"

"Hurt an old man like him? Of course not! I just took his wallet and went on my way!"

"And the two the two they they weren't dead, Charlie?"

"But they weren't dead," said Charlie. "They were hurt considerable, because a forty-five slug ain't exactly a needle going through a gent. But they both got well, and I paid their doctor bills!"

The last was a grace note in the way of a lie of which he had not thought until the spur of the moment, but the effect of it was completely to convince the girl. Instantly she was all flushed with pleasure.

"Oh, that was a fine thing to do, Charlie! And your friend? Your money saved him?"

"He turned straight and never touched the coin of other folks afterward," lied Charlie Christopher calmly. "A month later he was married to one of the finest girls you ever laid eyes on. They got twin boys and a little girl now."

Elsie gasped, and Charlie looked sharply at her. Had he piled this on a little too thick? He had not. Starry-eyed she was looking into the dim future.

"But that's something that I got no right to think about," said Charlie gloomily. "It's the one thing that I want more'n anything else that's kids of my own, I take to 'em nacheral, but I can never have one!"

"Why not? Oh, why not, Charlie?"

"Because of the life I led," said Charlie. "What I done when I held up Lucas was only a start. I was seen and recognized. And after that, no matter how hard I tried to go straight, they wouldn't let me. If I went into a town and started to work quiet and honest, pretty soon somebody would drift into town that had heard of me, and then I'd have to get out. They hunted me the way they'd hunt a wolf. Nobody in the whole range of the mountains ever done anything real bad that wasn't blamed onto me. Why, sometimes I've heard crimes laid up to me so thick and so horrible, that I almost got to believing that I done them myself."

"Yes, yes!" she said eagerly. "I can see perfectly how that might be."

"Not that I didn't do enough," said the outlaw sadly. "Yes, I got so that I didn't care what become of me. They hated me; they were hunting me. So I just hit back at 'em. What I needed I took, and I took it at the point of a gun, simply because I didn't have a chance to make money by honest work."

"I believe it!" she cried. She made a gesture to show that a vast burden was falling from her heart. "Oh, Charlie, I've known all this before all about the terrible things you've done. You told of them when you were delirious; one by one you told about them horrible things that you've done, or planned to do. But that's in the past. That's forgotten. All the things you've done were in other places. And people don't know your face. You can stay here in Twin Springs when you're well, or on our ranch if we still have it!"

"On your ranch?" asked Charlie softly, and he drew at her hand until she was close to him. "Elsie, it's the love of you that kept me on your ranch, do you know that? And if I'm ever a good man again, it'd be the love of you that has made me. Elsie, do you care even half of a little bit for me?"

He expected her to wince with joy, grow crimson, and pale in turn. Instead, to his profound astonishment, she simply pressed his hand gently and looked down at him with a peculiar, brooding quiet in her eyes which reminded him of the look of motherhood.

"Poor Charlie!" she said. "Do you really care as much as that?"

It amazed and shocked him. Was she pitying him?

"I wish I profoundly wish," she was saying, "that I could say I love you. But love is something made up of fire and wonder. Isn't it?"

"Book talk," said Charlie, hoarse with shame and anger.

"And in real life, too. But I haven't it in me, Charlie, the thing that makes you red in the face and white about the lips. I have no emotion as intense as that for you."

She was attributing the color of his anger to love. He could have laughed in her face, had he dared!

"But at least I respect you, I see the possibilities of a fine manhood in you, Charlie. And if I could help you to realize your possibilities why, what more could any woman wish for in her life? If I could be a true helpmate to you do you understand what I am trying to say, Charlie?"

He cast his hand across his eyes as though to hide his emotion, and his emotion was a raging shame. She was daring to talk down to him to Charlie Christopher to the adored of a hundred pretty girls, in a hundred scattered towns through the mountains. He wanted to cut at her with scornful jests and throw her loving-kindness back in her face. But, instead, he must lie there and endure it all for fear of death. And it was almost worse than death to Charlie, this trial of pride!

She was continuing, her voice the soul of gentleness: "But even if I wish to help you in all that a woman can help a man, even if I should be your wife, Charlie, and should try to bring more happiness into this wild, strong life of yours I couldn't stir to help you. The doctor knows all that I know! And he hates you so much that if he thought we were to be married, he would expose you and turn you over to the law!"

Even as she spoke, Charlie saw the loophole through which he must escape if he escaped at all. And he sprang at the chance.

"The doctor? That old fool!"

"Fool? He saved your life, Charlie!"

"Of course! And he's a good man, Elsie, but the trouble is that he thinks I'm worse than I am. However, as much as he hates me, he loves you. And if once you and I were man and wife, do you think that he'd even dream of accusing me? No, no! He would never do it! He'd rather die first, Elsie!"

She pondered on what he said for a moment. "If we were actually married if we were man and wife." Then the whole idea came home to her.

But he was continuing with his persuasion.

"Besides, Elsie, I can't trust him the way it is. As soon as I get a little better he may turn me over to the sheriff. I got no guarantee. But if you and I were married, he'd grind his teeth maybe, but he'd have to give up and give in! He'd feel like cursing me, but he wouldn't betray me. Ain't that clear?"

It was almost too clear. For the moment she looked at him doubtfully. This was strangely like cowardice. This was strangely like shielding himself behind her. But in an instant, as he smiled at her in his excitement, she forgot the ugly suspicion. He was brave, if ever a man were brave. Besides, what he suggested was dangerously intriguing. It meant marriage by stealth. It would be an undoing of the stern old doctor's precautions. It only needed that they should take him by surprise, or render him helpless for a few short moments.

She knew the minister who would come to her in no matter what situation, and at her will he would perform the ceremony. And she thought of nothing else just the excitement and the opportunity, as she felt it to be, of helping Charlie Christopher. But that she was binding herself for life to a man she did not love and whose past was black with crime this slipped out of her thoughts.

Charlie, lying tense in the bed, knew by the dawning radiance in her face that she was swinging around to the acceptance of his proposal.

Chapter
XXXIV. RONICKY PREVAILS

The men of Mount Solomon took the story which Ronicky Doone had told them as a joke. Had they detected anything overcunning in the narrative which he presented for their inspection, they might have resented the attempt to pull the wool over their eyes. But the truth, exactly as he told it, seemed so entirely absurd that they laughed heartily, and still more heartily whenever they thought of it.

And afterward, when they found that he was quite willing to be laughed at, and even would smile with them, they liked him for it and accepted him as a whole-hearted good fellow. For he had proved both courage and fighting skill in downing Christopher, and this adventure onto Mount Solomon was only an excess of foolhardiness.

They even began to banter him about his good intentions in riding to Mount Solomon and posing as a recruit for the band, all for the sake of leading some half dozen fighters down to mask the batteries of terrible Al Jenkins.

"Maybe," they suggested, "you're kind of fond of Charlie and hate to see his work wasted on the Bennett place."

"That's just it," said Ronicky. And they roared with laughter at the thought of it. "And why," they asked, "are you so thick with Charlie?"

"He saved my hoss," said Ronicky. This brought fresh laughter. Everything he said seemed to amuse them. They threw back their heads and shouted with pleasure at the thought of a man venturing his neck to repay the saving of a horse. For horses in their minds were simply the tough, ugly little cow ponies of the Western mountains.

Ronicky cut their laughter short. With a low whistle he brought a short neigh of response, and then out of the entrance passage flashed the bay mare and came straight to him, dancing eagerly and tossing her head at the strangers. Her beauty brought a volley of admiration and curses from the outlaws. To them such speed as her shapely body and strong legs represented, might mean the difference between freedom and imprisonment, or life and death. And then a wave of Ronicky's hand sent her back to her original hiding place.

There was no need of words. The sight of the mare had been enough to convince them of the importance of the action whereby Christopher had drawn her from the very grip of death. And they looked at Ronicky with a renewed respect and interest.

But they went back in their banter to another subject: the pretense of Ronicky that he would attempt to persuade them to go down and ride herd for Steve Bennett.

"How would you go about persuading a gent to leave off a free life and the ability to do what he wants, in order to go down there and be the slave of another man?" they asked.

Ronicky's answer was ready.

"You sure got a lot of fine freedom up here," he said. "Living in a hole like rats and sitting on stones that's a fine freedom, gents. But I'd rather be a slave and live easy, while I'm living. We're a long time dead."

This pointed remark brought something of a growl from them.

"You'd have us leave off and work on cows, eh? Twelve hours a day running the doggies?"

"How many hours do you work at your jobs that you got now?" he asked them.

"Only when we feel like it!" They answered him in a chorus. Evidently this was one point which they relished most.

"Sure," said Ronicky, "you only work when you feel like it, but it seems to me that you must feel like it all the time. There's old Cook. He just come in from a hard trail, and he had to go right out again. He didn't have time to do much more'n say hello. But didn't he want to stay here? Sure he did, only he was due a long ways off, and if he misses connections at the other end of that ride he'll have to turn around and come clear back, living on hope most of the way, going and coming. I sure don't cotton to that sort of a life, boys, because, take me by and large, you'll find me a lazy cuss! I like the ease of punching cows."

They regarded him almost agape. Such reasoning was beyond them, although the bitter truth of the last remark he had made was bearing in on the mind of every one of them. They, all of them, had ridden their trails which had no ending, and they had turned back from a lost goal, hungry and weary and hopeless.

"Besides, the odds are too big," said Ronicky, continuing a monologue which was addressed to himself as much as to them for he seemed to be merely thinking aloud. "You boys against the rest of the world. Nobody can beat that game forever."

In protest they shrugged their shoulders.

"Freedom," said Ronicky, "you ain't got. And a chance for a lazy life you sure ain't got. What else is on your side of the fence, boys?"

"Money," said the red-shirted man hotly. "We got some coin to spend, now and then. That's more'n the cow-punchers have!"