Comanche Page 12

  For in the grim face of the man before him, and in the sudden edging closer of the other two, he saw that the last moment was at hand. He wondered at himself, for feeling no more fear than he did. His brain was clear, crystal clear, and he felt that he could look deep, deep into the secrets of himself and of others.

  He saw himself and the rigidity of his ideas, and how much of life he had missed, having failed to know that there is nothing really worthwhile except the work that a man can do. How shallow had been his insight into other men, especially into that grave, kind brother of his, who he had treated so lightly. There was another man about whom he had made a mistake, and that was Single Jack. Just how great the mistake was, he did not know. Just what sort of a man Deems might be, he could not guess. But the sudden peril in which the flight of Deems had placed him made him realize how vast a power had been in his employ when Deems was with him.

  There was only a second for such thoughts. Then a horseman turned sharply into the winding street and swung toward them at a full gallop.

  “Dan!” sang out Hank Westover.

  “Well?”

  “There’s someone coming.”

  “Let him come. I’m busy.”

  “Dan, I think it’s . . . I think that it’s Single Jack.”

  “What?” Dan McGruder cast a hasty and frightened glance over his shoulder in the direction of the approaching horseman.

  The road was too shadowy for them to make him out clearly. It could only be seen that he was riding in great haste.

  “Westover! Mandell! Who is it?”

  “Aw, I dunno, but it might be him. Finish him off, McGruder.”

  “Apperley,” said McGruder, savage with haste, “here’s your last chance to change your mind!”

  “I’ll never do that.”

  “It’s Single Jack!” chimed in Westover. “I can see the wolf dog! He’s coming fast!”

  For answer, a revolver glittered in the hand of Dan McGruder. David Apperley whipped out his own gun with such an explosion of nervous energy that he actually got off the first shot. However, it flew wild, and, before he could shoot again, he felt a shock and a sense of numbness in his breast. His balance grew unsteady. Then two weapons boomed in the hands of the pair at his side, and David Apperley was struck to the earth.

  Hoofs rushed up and seemed about to trample him. But they were checked just short of the spot where he lay, and the clear, cutting voice of Single Jack was in his ear.

  “Who did it? Apperley! It’s Deems. Who did it?”

  “McGruder, Westover, Mandell,” answered the young lawyer slowly. “I heard all their names distinctly.”

  “McGruder, Westover, Mandell. I’ll remember. Where’s the pain?”

  “They’ve finished me, as they said they would. They’ve shot me three times through the body, Single Jack, and any one of the bullets would account for me. I need a minister rather than a doctor. Get me one.”

  “We’ll see about a minister afterward. We want light for you, the first thing.”

  He was a slender fellow, this Single Jack, and yet he was able to stoop and lift the body of the lawyer lightly in his arms, and he half ran with his wounded man down the street and into the nearest house—which was the house of Hester Grange. She came running into the hall.

  “I’ve brought you your murdered man,” said Single Jack.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They laid him on Hester’s own bed, and while her shrill voice sent young Oliver racing away for the doctor, Single Jack ripped away the clothes from the upper part of David’s body and laid bare three wounds.

  Trembling, Hester came in with hot water in a basin. Deems raised his dark face and looked across the body of the wounded man with a meaningful glance. The girl grew from red to sudden white.

  “Do you think that I planned this terrible thing?” she asked him.

  “I don’t think,” said the other. “But he’s a dying man. And he was mobbed by three of Shodress’s crooks right under the shadow of your house. And as soon as he’s dead, I start out to collect payment for him. And I begin with the men of the house.”

  He was busily washing the wounds as he spoke, and then the doctor entered and took the case into his professional hands. They assisted him, moving hastily as he barked rough orders. He was probing the wounds.

  “Two clean through him . . . two clean through,” said the doctor. “And here is . . .” He turned the body of the senseless lawyer on its face, made a shallow incision in the back, and removed a big, misshapen slug of lead. Then the bandaging of those wounds commenced with a swift, rough hand.

  “He will live?” breathed Hester Grange.

  “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, it won’t make so much difference to you. He’ll die along about three or four in the morning, most likely. That’s the time when the endurance sags. He’s maybe got one chance in a hundred to last till the sun comes up . . . Hello! Are you off?”

  Single Jack paused in the doorway. “I have business,” he said. Then to Hester: “I want to speak to you before I go.”

  Hester came hastily up to him. “I know what you want to say,” she said, trembling violently. “But I didn’t have a thing to do with it. Never! Do you think that I would stand by and see them make a trap for a man . . . three against one?”

  The lips of Deems twisted suddenly and violently.

  “How you lie,” he said. “So easily. You could murder a man one minute and smile at his mother the next. I tell you, I’m cold-blooded, and I’ve known some of the worst of the world in that way, but you go in a class by yourself, with your baby face and your wickedness all locked up behind your pretty eyes. You baby blue-eyed devil. What a good thing it would be for the world if I sent a slug through your brain and stopped it ticking out trouble for more men.”

  He spoke these things with deliberate coolness, but she could see that he was shaken with a terrible passion. A sort of white insanity lived in his face, and made his eyes seem darker and bigger than ever. But they had at last become lighted, and with such a fire as she hoped never to see again.

  She could not speak to him. She could only watch, completely enchanted by terror.

  “I’ve stood up to some clever ones, but it took you to beat me, tie my hands, make a fool of me,” said Single Jack. “I’m going out now to get the three dogs that pulled him down. But after I get ’em, I’m going to come back to this town and find your brother Oliver. Maybe Steve will be out of jail, too, now that you’ve got Apperley off the job of prosecuting the case. In that case, I’ll have both of ’em before me. I’m telling you beforehand. I want you to have something to look forward to. And every day you can pray that there’ll be an end to me. But there won’t be an end. I’m coming back here like poison to finish my job.”

  He turned on his heel and hurried from the place, but not straight from the town. He went first to the hotel. As he came through the doorway, a whisper went far and wide on the verandah, and sped through the building. Single Jack had returned, and Single Jack in a most singular mood. There was not a vestige of color in his face. Looking at it, you would have thought that all of the blood had been drained from his body.

  He went straight across the lobby and sat down at the table where some cheap stationery was always available. Just over the table, against the wall, there was a long, narrow mirror. From one corner, through which a rifle bullet had clipped long ago, a number of cracks spread across the face of the glass. But nevertheless there was a wide reflection that was capable of showing most of what happened in the room behind him. Besides, the wolf dog stood guard at the back of his master, and watched all that passed with a restless eye.

  So though many men passed back and forth across the room, and though perhaps all of them were greatly tempted to try for name and fame by taking a shot at the slender youth whose back was turned, yet no one had quite sufficient daring to make the attempt.

  Single Jack was writing.
r />   Dear Mr. Apperley:

  Your brother David has just been shot down by three of Shodress’s men. The doctor says that he cannot live till the morning. He would never have been touched if I could have stayed with him. It was my fault that he went down.

  Shodress, like a cur, when he found that he couldn’t beat us with men, got a woman. He had Hester Grange work on your brother until he lost his wits about her. I threatened her and made her promise to see him no more. But when he got wind of the fact that I was behind the thing, he was very angry with me. We had some words, and I left him.

  When I got out on the road a mile from Yeoville, I remembered that I had given you a promise, and that I’d taken Comanche as advance payment for my contract, and that I’d quit my job without any notice to you.

  I turned around and rode back into town as fast as I could come, and just in time to see three men shoot down a fourth. The fourth was David.

  I took him into the Grange house—you see, he had started back toward it as soon as I left, and he had walked into a trap that that fiend of a girl had laid for him.

  Of all the devils in the world, man or woman, she’s the most complete!

  McGruder, Westover, and Mandell are the names of the three who killed David. I’m off on their trail, now. I’m only going to wait to take a shot at Shodress. Then I’m away. I’ve tried to go straight, out here. I’ve walked a line, and now I see that it’s no good. The thing for me to do is to play my own hand, and I am going to plant at least one row in the cemetery to make them pay for your brother’s death.

  There’s nothing more for me to say. I admit that I was to blame. But I’ll give you so much revenge that you won’t know what to do with it.

  Deems

  He signed and sealed and stamped that letter and was passing out across the lobby when he saw the fat bulk of Shodress in a doorway not far off. Just in the act of finishing a talk with Shodress was a short, stocky man wearing a derby hat that seemed out of place in Yeoville.

  The rest of his attire was instantly printed in detail upon the mind of Single Jack. There was a pair of broad-toed shoes, designed especially for a man who has to be much upon his feet. There was a neat blue suit. There was a turned-over collar and a narrow, four-in-hand tie.

  This fellow advanced across the floor and nodded to Single Jack: “Deems,” he said, “I’ve come for you.” And he added: “Don’t move. This hand in my coat pocket has a little cannon trained on your heart, my boy, and I’d a sight rather handle you dead than living.”

  “You’ve got me,” assented Single Jack without emotion. “I suppose that Shodress called you out onto my trail, didn’t he?”

  “The big boy has a pair of eyes in his head. And he seems to be the only man in this part of the world who has enough sense to read the papers and put two and two together. I’ll have to split twenty thousand with him, on this job.”

  “Have they put my price up there?”

  “Get your hands up, you sap. Do you think I’m kidding you?”

  Slowly the hands of Deems rose along his sides and crept higher and higher up his body toward his head. The detective watched him like a hawk.

  “You’re Cranston of Newark,” said Single Jack.

  “What do you know about me?”

  “I keep my eyes on the wise ones,” said Single Jack. “And I’ve been hoping for a long time that they wouldn’t have sense enough to put you on my trail.”

  “You have? Hey, keep those hands well away from your shoulders, kid, and get them up fast. Fast!” So snapped the detective, Cranston, watching all the time with an eye that missed not a quiver of the fingers of Single Jack.

  Other men were watching with equal interest. And the loud voice of the great Shodress was heard in the background saying: “When I sent for that dick, I didn’t dream that he could nab the great Single Jack without firing a shot. But you see yourselves. We’ve been buffaloed by a bluffer. The Tuckers must have been drunk the day that he dropped them.”

  Other men stared, with popping eyes, incredulous of what they saw, not trusting their own powers of vision.

  “All right, Cranston,” said Single Jack. “You win.”

  For, though he had been fighting himself for seconds, he had now pushed his hands well up above the line of his shoulder, so that he was in the most awkward possible position for snatching a gun from that most favorite hiding place—the armpit. As the detective noted this fact, his keen vigilance relaxed a little, and he nodded with satisfaction. That instant the right thumb of Deems hooked in under his collar and caught the line of a very thin strip of braided horsehair. A twist of the hand whipped up from his shirt what hung at the end of the tiny lariat, and that was a two-barreled, old-fashioned Derringer that snapped into his hand.

  Too late the detective saw the move and leaped to one side with a shout, pulling the trigger of his pocket gun blindly. The unerring hand of Single Jack, firing even shoulder-high, sent a raking shot plunging down into the body of Cranston, and the hand of the law had failed again. Single Jack was triumphant.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  That Cranston was a brave and clever man, let no one deny, for even as he sprawled on the floor, gasping and groaning, he snatched the short-nosed revolver from the pocket where he had already fired it once in vain and strove to plant a better-aimed bullet in the heart of his arch-enemy. The toe of the boot of Single Jack anticipated him and knocked the weapon from his fingers.

  More than that bullet and kick Deems did not bestow upon the detective, except to say calmly to the other man: “You lucky rat. If I’d fired a half inch lower, you’d be a dead man by this time, Cranston.”

  Then he leaped across the lobby with a wonderful speed, and raced straight through the doorway where the fat form of Alec Shodress had been leaning only the moment before. The great Alec was not down that hallway, however.

  But the wolf dog fleeing ahead, scratched frantically at a door half a dozen paces away. Single Jack needed no other hint. He smashed the lock of that door with a heavy bullet, while a hoarse shout of fear from stentorian lungs within the chamber told him that he was on the right track.

  He kicked open the door, and Comanche bounded ahead of him. He had only an instant’s vision of the flying coattail of Shodress as the boss of Yeoville dropped through the window down the wall of his hotel, while the white, sword-like teeth of the wolf slashed just near enough to rip away half the back of his coat.

  The scream of Alec Shodress filled the room he was leaving and resounded across the space of the open air beyond.

  Single Jack, rushing with gleaming eyes to that window, leaned out, his revolver balanced for the finishing shot with which he would break the back of Yeoville’s master.

  Bad luck was with him. Just beneath that window there was a door, and through that door the great Shodress was crawling. Deems had sight only of the last foot being hastily drawn into cover. Even at that small target he tried a quick shot.

  There was a wild screech from beneath him, and then he saw on the ground the heel and sole of a shoe, badly mangled by the force of the bullet that had just torn them off. However, there was no blood, and so he knew that Shodress had escaped unscathed from that shot.

  There was still a chance, however, that he could catch the big man. Through the window went Single Jack, and, leaping to the ground, he sprang at a heavy door just as it was being swung shut. His shoulder struck it an instant after the latch had clicked, and, as he recoiled and flung himself at it once more, he heard a ponderous bolt cast home.

  Once, twice, and again he fanned rapid bullets into the lock of the door, but the lock was as formidable as the door to a jail. It was of solid steel, and broad and thick, and all his bullets accomplished was to wedge in and lodge firmly in the interior mechanism of the lock.

  He drew back a little, and, as he did so, the long, shining barrel of a rifle was thrust through a barred lower window. He leaped back into the shelter of the wall just in time to escape a whistling slug. M
ore voices constantly sounded, and from within the hotel there was the thundering shout of Shodress, as he marshaled his men in his defense against his enemy.

  Perhaps you will say that people should have stood back in Yeoville, and allowed this single-handed fighter a chance to work out his own destiny without being checked by numbers. As a matter of fact, such was usually Yeoville’s policy. But Single Jack was different, and the cruel efficiency with which he handled his weapons had convinced all men that he should be regarded as though he were a whole company of warriors. Verily a host in himself.

  At any rate, here was a score or more of excited, heavily armed men on the alert to kill young Deems at that moment, and he saw that his fate was not to take him to the death of Shodress on this day, at the least.

  Straight beside the wall of the hotel he ran, and, darting off into the street, he had half a dozen shots fired at him as he crossed the open space.

  But it was thick night, now, and though there was enough mingled star shine and lamplight to discover him as a target, still he was safe enough so long as he kept moving, and that was exactly what he intended to do.

  He had left his horse behind him, but that was a small matter. Yeoville at least owed to him a horse and saddle, according to his determination. So he picked out the likeliest of those that stood tethered before the store, at the hitching rack. It was a clean-limbed bay. Single Jack climbed into the saddle and started on down the street at a raking gallop.

  He swung into the open trail beyond the town; behind him, there was an increasing turmoil, voices and lights danced in the heart of Yeoville, and now there was a confused mustering of horses.

  He drew rein suddenly, and, turning in the saddle, he put up his naked revolver and drew from the saddle holster the rifle that he found there. It was a fifteen-shot Winchester. By the weight of it, he knew that it was loaded to the brim. By the feel of the mechanism, he knew that the working parts were all in order. By the gleam of the barrel, he could tell that the chances were great that this was a new, straight-shooting weapon. Then let them charge out of the town after him if they dared. The wolf smile was curling on his lips as he waited.