The Max Brand Megapack (244 page)

“You’ve got me,” he said. “You’ve got me I guess, Doone. Going to make it a cold murder, eh?”

“Don’t talk like a rat,” answered Ronicky, very angry at this insinuation. “You know that I ain’t that kind of a hound. If you don’t know it, it’s time that you did. I ain’t going to take advantage. I’ve come here for a fair fight, Loring. You come up here where you left your saddle and your gun; then put your gat back on. Then we’ll have it out, fair and square. Does that suit you?”

“Right in here—where we’d scare the hosses?”

The nerve of big Blondy was a fine thing to see, and Ronicky grinned in whole-souled appreciation.

“It sure goes against the grain,” he told Blondy. “But I’ve done what I could to pay you back for saving Lou. I’ve kept ’em off of your trail, and I gave you a chance to find out the truth. I don’t aim to say that that makes us even up, but I hope it shows that I mean right by you, Blondy.”

“But I mean right by you, too,” said Blondy, still chuckling, as though the outcome of the battle were a foregone conclusion. “I mean right by you, and I’ll see that you get a fair and even break out of his, Ronicky. I’ll bury you in style when this is over, and I’ll do up your coffin all in velvet. What you say to that?”

Ronicky smiled again.

“Help yourself,” he said gallantly, and stepping back, as Loring drew near, he waved toward the gun belt.

As he did so he saw that Blondy was very pale. Yes, there were even little beads visible, as the lantern light struck aslant upon his forehead. It astonished Ronicky so much that for the moment his mind was dizzy and refused to act. Still Blondy was smiling, and yet the smile, which had seemed so real at a little distance, was a stiff, carved image of a smile, now that it was seen at close hand. Indeed it looked for all the world as though Blondy was in a blue funk.

That, Ronicky knew, could not be true. He had tried the courage of Blondy and believed it to be faultless. He had stood by and seen Blondy draw a gun with a nerve and hand as steady as though he were at target work.

“Go ahead,” said Ronicky, as the big man turned toward the saddle. “You don’t need to worry. I ain’t going to shoot you in the back, Blondy!”

Blondy shuddered and jerked about. His face was now positively ghastly. He had seemed a carefree boy a few moments before. Now he was a gray-faced old man.

“How do I know?” he snarled, grown suddenly vicious.

Ronicky Doone blinked at him. He could not believe his eyes.

“How do you know? Why, because you know that I ain’t that kind!”

Blondy ground his teeth. He seemed for all the world like a man striving vainly to lash himself into a temper.

“I know nothing about you,” he said.

“Then I’ll stand back as far as you want,” said Ronicky coldly. “But if—”

He got no farther with his offer. Blondy, turning as though to listen and consider the new proposal, now continued his turn until he was directly facing Ronicky, and at the same time he leaped out and hurled his whole great weight at Ronicky. Quick as a cat’s paw works, Ronicky side-stepped, but he was too close to have a chance at maneuvering. The great left arm of Blondy shot around him. In another moment the other arm of the big man got its hold, and Ronicky was lifted from the ground in arms which constricted like shrinking bands of hot steel around him, threatening to break every bone in his body.

CHAPTER XI

BLONDY’S BASE MOVE

It seemed at first, by
the savage and animal-like snarling of Blondy, that this was indeed his purpose, to half strangle Ronicky in mid-air and then finish the work by dashing him upon the ground. Never had Ronicky dreamed that a mere man could possess such herculean powers.

“You rat!” breathed Charlie Loring, and then, as though the surety of his victory restored his mental balance to some degree, he turned and strode forward through the door of the barn, still bearing Ronicky securely trussed in his arms.

It was in vain that Ronicky kicked and squirmed and struggled to be free. He was of average weight and of vastly more than average strength and activity, but caught unprepared, his agility neutralized by the surprise attack, he was perfectly helpless, and now every struggle only served to make the grip of Charlie sink more deeply into his body.

Then Ronicky went sick, almost fainted, as the sickening degradation to which he was going to be exposed was revealed to him. It was the purpose of Charlie Loring to take his captive straight into the big house and there, before Bennett and Elsie Bennett and whatever hands might be on the place, show Ronicky helpless in his hands!

Every step of the way the certainty grew until at last, as they reached the door of the bouse, Ronicky gasped: “Blondy, if you take me inside like this, you’ll have to kill me; because if you don’t I’ll get you sure for this.”

“Bah!” answered Blondy. “When I get through with you, Doone, you ain’t going to be able to lift your hands as high as your head for a year. Just lay to that and keep your mouth shut. I’m running this little party from now on!” And he kicked open the door and strode into the house.

The room in which he entered held both Bennett and the girl. There was no chance for Ronicky to steel himself against the shock. But all in a flash he found himself before them, and then he was crashed down into a chair with a force that stunned him, and his gun belt was torn from him. After that, Blondy stood behind the chair, with a revolver jammed against Ronicky’s neck.

And the latter looked miserably at Bennett and the girl.

Of course they had risen, as Blondy entered, the girl with an exclamation which identified her, if identification was needed, as she whom Ronicky had encountered near the brook so short a time before. And now that he could see her in the full light of the room, he felt that Al Jenkins had not exaggerated in his description of her. Blue, starry eyes and lighted hair of gold and features modeled with exquisite nicety, Ronicky had never before seen such a face in all his wide wanderings. Scorn and anger now made her eyes wide.

“That’s he!” she cried to a whiteheaded man. “That’s the man who spoke to me, I know! Oh, Charlie, I was right! He was sneaking somewhere near, and he followed you!”

“The hound!” growled the old man, shaking his venerable locks in detestation of such rascally work. And he folded his arms across his thin chest and glowered at Ronicky. He looked like a picture of a type—that type which is supposed to be represented in the gentlemen of the South, with fluffs of hair grown long, and wide mustaches made to bristle out in spikes or tufts, according to the fancy of the wearer, and nicely pointed beard. They have weary, droop-lidded eyes, these men of the fanciful Southland; they have erect, martial bearing, and their manner can rise to great heights of pomposity.

Such, in every detail, was the picture of Stephen Bennett who had conducted the long war against Al Jenkins. He had won at first, but now he was fallen on declining fortunes. The room in which he and his daughter had been reading, showed unmistakable signs of the loss of money. It had at one time been furnished with some elegance, for that section of the country. But the upholstery on the chairs was now sadly worn. The very pictures on the wall seemed to have faded. And only under the shelter of the great round center table did the carpet retain the pristine vigor of its color and design.

In the costume of Steve Bennett the same disrepair showed. He was wearing a long Prince Albert of faded cloth which went most inappropriately with the rather unclean riding boots on his feet and the much cheaper trousers. But he wore that Prince Albert in the way that
makes
one address the possessor as “colonel”; and he thrust out his breast as though it supported a row of medals.

In this fashion he looked down upon Ronicky Doone, striding toward him so brusquely and towering so high and so close above him that Ronicky would not have been surprised if the bony old fist had been dashed into his face.

In the meantime big Blondy was telling a strange story. He was pouring grain into the feed box of the gray, he declared, when he heard what was much like the sound of a stealthy footfall behind him. He had waited cautiously for a moment until he made sure that he who approached was close to him; and then he had whirled and discovered Ronicky Doone, stealing up with leveled revolver.

In the same motion with which he had whirled, he struck the weapon from the hand of the astonished Ronicky, and the next moment the would-be murderer was helpless in his arms. And here he was. He, Blondy, wanted to turn the hound loose and kick him off the place after disarming him, but he decided that it might not be well to leave such a sneak to wander near the premises. And for that reason he had decided to bring him in and allow Steve Bennett and Elsie to have a chance to pass judgment upon the villain.

This astounding story he told with the utmost fluidity and even with an air of indifference. It was not, he insisted, because he had the slightest desire to persecute this treacherous rascal, that he had brought him here. But something should be done as an example.

It was typical of father and daughter that, when the sordid recital was ended, the former drew closer, and the latter drew back.

“To think that I was within arm’s reach of him tonight!” breathed Elsie. “And—and that I thought his laugh was frank and manly! Oh!” Words failed her. Her father spoke. “This—this vermin,” he said, “ought to be tried in the courts of the law, Loring. But we ain’t got courts of law around Twin Springs.”

He shook his head and took a turn through the room, with one hand thrust into the breast of his coat and the other crossed upon the small of his back.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “the damnation truth—pardon me, Elsie—but it
is
the damnation truth that there ain’t justice to be had in the courts where the influence of that snake, Jenkins, reaches. There ain’t any justice, and there ain’t any chance of justice. He’s got folks so much in the palm of his hand that they can’t put him and wrongdoing in the same sentence, or even in the same day. Because he spent some money on a road, they got him worked up into a saint. I never seen anything like it! And more than that, if he wants to back up a man, there ain’t any power that dares to put out a hand to stop the man that Al Jenkins has picked. And all that Jenkins would need to do to keep this murderer of his—”

“Father!” cried the girl. “Do you really think that he sent this—this creature to kill Charlie Loring?”

“Do I think it? Bah! I know it! I know the workings of his reptile mind! And what can we do? If we harm this man seriously we’ll have to answer for it in the courts which Jenkins controls. If we don’t harm him, a flock of Jenkins’ other assistants of the same sort will be out here and after us! No sir! It ain’t any trouble to Jenkins if I have just a bunch of worn-out tramps working my range for me, men that’ll close their eyes when the rustlers want to run off some cows. That don’t mean nothing to Jenkins, but when it comes to letting me have a real honest-injun man like Charlie Loring, why, that’s a different yarn altogether. He’s going to get Loring away from me. If he can do it with fair play, well enough; but if he can’t he’ll try dirty means. So he’s sent this hound out here. Charlie, I near forget myself when I think of it!”

He fairly swelled with a poisonous anger. But the detestation in the face of the girl was what bowed the head of Ronicky and crushed his spirit. It made little difference that this was all blindest injustice. What mattered was that she should be able to scorn him so utterly. Out of that pit of wretchedness he could never climb to good esteem, he felt.

“Which all narrows the thing down,” said the rancher, “and leaves us only one thing to do, namely, to call the boys together at breakfast to-morrow and turn Ronicky over to them. Just let Charlie Loring stand up and tell ’em what he’s told us, and then let the boys be alone for five minutes with this Ronicky Doone. When they’re through with him, I guess he’ll be punished enough!”

He rubbed his hands violently together. The perfect thought grew upon his mind and entranced him.

“There’ll be justice done!” he cried.

And Ronicky Doone looked in horror at Charlie Loring to see if he would protest, but the handsome face of the big man was set and hard, and his eyes were glittering. No doubt remained that the mind of Loring was made up. The greatest possible evil that could be inflicted upon Ronicky Doone was, in the eyes of Loring, the greatest possible good. Only the girl cried out in a protest for which Ronicky could have blessed her.

“But father!” she exclaimed. “That’s worse than death, almost, if they mob him! You know what happened to that man of ours when he—”

“I
do
remember,” said Stephen Bennett, “and that’s just exactly why I propose to see to it that the same thing happens to Ronicky Doone. Our man very foolishly tried to steal a cow. This man tried to steal a human life. Does that answer you, Elsie?”

And Ronicky knew. Three or four times he had seen such things happen, though luckily his hands were clean of guilt. But he had seen the lynching of a horse thief, and more than that, he had seen the mobbing of a sneak who attempted a murder—not a fair fight, gun to gun, and man to man, but a shooting from behind, just of the nature of which big Blondy was about to accuse him. What had happened to that man had been so terrible that Ronicky had never dared recall the picture in its entirety.

And now he was in the same situation. The full and consummate cruelty of the rancher struck home in his mind, and he merely bowed his head still lower.

Of what use were words?

CHAPTER XII

OLD-FASHIONED IRONS

He would never forget what fo
llowed. Old Steve Bennett left the room, was gone for a minute, and then returned with an accompanying sound of clanking iron. When he reappeared he carried manacles in his hand.

“Old-fashioned irons, but strong,” he told Charlie Loring. “Like a lot of old-fashioned things, they don’t look as good as they really are.” And he snapped them over the wrists of Ronicky. Here the girl protested again.

“Charlie—father!” she exclaimed, coming between them and Ronicky. “There’s something wrong about all this. He—he might have something to say. Why don’t we give him a chance to talk—to explain—perhaps to put forward his side of the story.”