Bad Man's Gulch Read online

  “I think this is your son,” he said quietly.

  The old man showed no signs of emotion. His lips straightened somewhat, but, otherwise, his face was calm as he bent over the body. He pressed his ear against the boy’s heart. Then he stood to his full height, stiffly erect. “Will you carry the body this way?” he asked courteously, and waved toward the room that he had just left.

  Lazy Purdue entered a high-ceilinged room and strode across it with his burden, dimly conscious of oval-framed portraits of trim-whiskered gentlemen and lace-shawled ladies. He laid the body on a sofa and stepped back with nervously unoccupied fingers. The boy lay easily, as if asleep, a faint smile on his lips, and his head fallen slightly to one side. The stained bandages showed darkly against his body.

  A step sounded in the room, and Conover and Lazy Purdue turned their heads with one accord. It was a little, grave-eyed lady with iron-gray hair.

  “My dear,” began Conover, raising his hand in warning.

  She motioned him aside and leaned above the body. Outwardly she betrayed no more emotion than her husband had done, but as he watched her, Lazy Purdue shrank inwardly. Then she crossed the limp arms one above the other, straightened the head, closed the eyes, and, leaning a little farther forward, touched the colorless lips with her own. Lazy prayed heartily to himself that she would weep or cry out. This deathly silence in the presence of death made him cold and sick at heart.

  She turned to him at last, and her eyes lingered on a great red stain that crossed his forehead and another that marked his naked breast. He straightened under her glance as a soldier straightens under the eye of his captain.

  “Who has done this thing?” she asked. “Can you tell me?”

  II

  RESURRECTION

  The blood turned to ice in Lazy Purdue’s veins. It seemed to him as if that question cut the thread of his old life and brought him face to face with something new. He closed his eyes and shook his head. Then he saw in a vision that swiftly fleeing horseman riding into the night with the murdered boy left behind him. A trace of color came into Lazy Purdue’s face.

  “It was one of the McLanes,” he said in a strange, hushed voice. “It was one of the McLanes what done this here murder, so help me God!”

  She walked to him and stood inches away. He felt as though she were suddenly grown tall, and as if her eyes had grown into points of fire that burned into his heart.

  “Who was it?” she demanded. “Give me his name!”

  “I dunno,” Lazy said as steadily as a soldier answers a roll call. “He only told me it was a McLane when I found him. He was waylaid at a forking of the road, just below here a couple of miles, and shot by surprise. I saw the man ride away into the night.”

  She turned from him to her husband. “John, dear . . . ,” she began.

  A voice broke in from above: “Pa, oh, Pa!”

  The two old people started apart and looked at each other with suddenly stricken faces.

  “Keep Marion away!” he pleaded to his wife.

  “I . . . can’t speak!” she said. “John, you must go an’ keep her from comin’ down!”

  “Oh, Pa!” called the voice in a higher key.

  “We . . . we’ll go together,” said the old man, and he took his wife by the arm and they went together to the door that opened into the hall.

  Lazy Purdue followed them, and with them he looked up the broad and winding stairs that led from the hall into the second floor of the house.

  She stood at the upper bend of the staircase, leaning somewhat to look the better upon them. She had evidently been in bed when the cry of the old Negress disturbed her. She was dressed in a dressing robe of bronze, tinted green, and, above the place where her left hand gathered the robe at her breast, the fluffy white of her nightgown peered through. From the sidewise-tilted head, a tide of golden hair poured past her throat and over the white arm to her waist.

  She seemed to Purdue to have passed the wistful beauty of girlhood, and yet she was not a woman.

  “Pa,” she was saying, and the half-lisping murmur of her dialect ran like a flow of water in the heart of Lazy Purdue, “what has happened? I heard a cry like old Dinah a little while ago. Something has happened!”

  “Honey, dear, there ain’t nothin’ the matter. You go back to yo’ bed and sleep.”

  But her eyes had widened as they fell upon the grim and dark-stained torso of Lazy Purdue standing, towering, behind her parents. She ran lightly down the steps, pressed aside her parents, and stood bravely before Lazy, but he could see her glance growing full and steady with premonition. He pressed his lips hard together and returned her gaze.

  “What have you-all brought into this house?” she pleaded. “Stranger, what terrible thing have you brought heah, and what’s that blood on yo’ breas’?” A desperate meaning came into her eyes, and she caught the hard muscles of his naked arm with her hands.

  “It’s George!” she said. “Oh, my God!” She whirled and faced her father. “Father!”

  He strove to meet her eyes, but a tremulousness came on his face and his head sank.

  “Father!” She was beside him now, and her arms were around him, and she was kissing the old and wrinkled face. “Pa,” she said, “poor ol’ Pa, take me where he is!”

  He led her silently into the room, but, when she saw the body, she cried out—a sharp, hurt sound with a little drawling moan at the close. She broke away from his arms and ran to the body and knelt beside it.

  Lazy Purdue was conscious of a cold sweat on his face and a terrible faintness in his heart.

  The girl rose slowly and faced them with a hard and changed face. “Pa,” she said softly, in a tone that belied the hard-clenched hands and the narrowed eyes.

  Her father took a step forward and faced her, but made no answer. She pointed dumbly to the moveless figure behind her.

  “Aye,” said Conover, “don’ I know what it means? Dear God, don’ I know? There must be blood paid for this . . . an’ I . . . an’ I can hardly shoot a rifle from a rest.”

  There was a moment of grim silence. The girl’s finger still was pointing and the question was still in her eyes, but there was no further answer.

  “Marion,” said the old man at last in a calmer voice, “they’s some way out of this, an’ I reckon I’ll find it. Now, you-all go to bed. I reckon I got to think. Marion, you-all go to bed.”

  She hesitated, and then walked slowly from the room with bent head.

  The old man turned to Lazy Purdue. “An’ you, suh,” he said gently, “I know you will honor us by sleeping under my roof tonight.”

  Lazy Purdue shuddered. He could not meet Conover’s eye, but he spoke lowly: “I . . . I have no right to stay in this here house . . . least of all on this night.”

  “You will hurt me, suh,” said Conover, “if you leave. His room is ready for you, suh . . . I beg you to use it. It’s a long walk to any other place, and the night is late. Come with me.”

  He led the way and Lazy Purdue, after a moment of hesitation, followed him with bowed head as the girl had gone a moment before. He followed up the stairs, and the old man opened a door and lighted him into the room.

  Old Conover pottered about the room, lowering window shades, drawing back the sheets of the bed, and turning on the water in the bathroom, and then he laid out a suit of clothes on a chair.

  “You an’ George,” he muttered half musingly, “mus’ be about the same build. I reckon these will fit you tol’able well.”

  But Lazy Purdue could not answer for a strange choking in his throat.

  “Good night,” said Conover, “an’ God bless you for the kindness you done my boy when he was dyin’. Good night.”

  He closed the door softly, and Lazy Purdue looked grimly about the room. From every corner the thought of the dead boy looked out at him. Upon the wall hung brilliantly colored photographs of girls, evidently cut from calendars. Lazy Purdue recognized one of these as the inviting advertisement of a promi
nent breakfast food. Her hair fell down in two braids in front, and between her smiling lips lay a strand of heavily headed wheat straws. A brace of strong fishing rods stood slant in one corner of the room with a riding crop and two pairs of spurs near it. Another side of the wall bore a rack in which were three shotguns of the latest make, and below them the gray, shining barrel of a repeating rifle.

  It seemed to him that the boy had come back to life and was moving about the room with him as he made ready for bed. He could imagine the topics of the conversation from girls to hunting, and all in the whimsical drawl of the mountaineers, a remembered and delightful music to the ear of Lazy Purdue.

  The soothing touch of the warm water of the bath drew the ache from his body, and afterwards he sat a while near the window wrapped in a dressing gown and alive with thought. Then came a light tapping on the door. He opened the door cautiously and peeked out. Marion stood in the hallway. She was dressed in the robe still, and he glimpsed the white of her feet in their bedroom slippers.

  “I must speak to you,” she entreated. “Father and Mother have gone to bed, an’ I must speak with you for just a little minute. Will you let me in?”

  He opened the door silently, and she slipped past him. When he turned slowly from the closing of the door, he found her standing in the center of the room, facing him, her eyes wide with resolve and fear. They faced each other silently for a long moment; he with a certain sadness and she with a peculiar eagerness.

  “I have come on a strange errand,” she said somewhat breathlessly.

  He made no answer.

  “I have come on a strange errand,” she repeated, gathering courage and determination as she went on. “An’ when you hear what I ask, I’m only a-hopin’ that you won’t laugh. Oh, I know you won’t, for when I leaned over the rail o’ that stairs and looked down and met your eyes, I knew they was a man’s eyes, an’, when I went down an’ spoke to you, they was no waver in them and they looked through an’ through me. Will you-all hear me now?”

  He clenched his hand as the note of pleading came into her voice, and a shock of premonition as to the nature of her request made his forehead cold.

  “Go on,” he said somewhat hoarsely, “I’ll listen to the end.”

  “Stranger,” she said, “you brought a death into this here house, an’ the blood o’ that death was on your shoulders when you carried the body in. Stranger, it ain’t a common murder in your life. It ain’t something you c’n shake away from your mind after you leave this here part of the country. I know by the way you-all look that you been many places and you’ve seen many strange things, but there ain’t nothin’ that’ll ever stay with you the way this night will.”

  With an instinct for protection against the steady searching of her eyes, he dropped into a chair and covered his face with his hands. “Go on,” he whispered, “I’m hearin’ it all.”

  “Stranger,” she said evenly, “you done heard my father say that he c’n hardly shoot a rifle from a rest. Stranger, I reck’n you don’t need no rest for a rifle.”

  He heard the slip of her feet on the carpet as she went to him rapidly. Her hand fell lightly on his shoulder.

  “Will you-all take the place of the boy you done carried into his home dead? Will you-all be a brother to me till this here death is washed out in blood? Oh, suh, you’re a man, an’ a man’s man, an’ I c’n ask this thing of you, an’ I know you’ll say yes to me!”

  He rose and turned half away from her. She went grave with wonder, seeing the agony on his face, but, when her eyes ran down to the tight-clenched hands, her thoughts changed and she stepped a little away from him. “You ain’ afraid?” she breathed. “Oh, don’ say that you’re afraid!”

  “God help me,” he said, keeping his eyes away from her face by a great effort of will, “there don’t seem no way I c’n help myself. Oh, if you could only dream jus’ how many reasons I’ve got for not doin’ this thing, you wouldn’t talk o’ fear.”

  She stepped to him again and drew him facing her with a soft pressure of her hand upon his shoulder, and he could feel the light touch of her body against his, so intent was her pleading.

  “You’re goin’ to do it?” she begged. “Oh, I know you will! It’s a terrible lot to ask o’ a man, an’ you may have lots o’ reasons for not doin’ it, but, when I’ve lef’ you to yourself an’ you get to thinkin’ it over, you’ll see the dead boy again an’ you’ll make up your mind. Oh, he was such a nice boy, suh, an’ so gentle to me, an’ clean in his mind and clean o’ heart! Suh, he would never have killed a man by layin’ in wait for him an’ shooting him down with no warnin’! Even a snake makes a noise before it strikes. I ask you, stranger, are these McLanes as good as snakes? Think o’ that and answer me in the mornin’. Good night, an’ . . . an’ God bless you.”

  He heard the door close behind her, and suddenly the room seemed cramped and small to him. He went to the window and threw it up and leaned out into the cool, fresh air. By degrees the little noises of the night floated in upon his consciousness as if the silence grew into a nearer reality—the hushed whisper of the stirring trees about the house, the distant hoot of a far-away prowling owl, and the light incessant chirping of the crickets.

  He turned away and stood a long moment leaning against the wall with closed eyes, for he saw her clearly then as she had stood at the bend of the stairway with the tide of golden hair running by her throat, and the deep question of her eyes.

  “There’s one thing thicker than blood,” he groaned to himself, “an’ this is it, Lazy Purdue.” He opened his eyes and clenched his hands and made a great step into the center of the room. “An’ what do I owe to them? Didn’t they do me dirt when I was a kid an’ never hurt none of them? An’ I comin’ back to them after they turned me out?”

  He went to bed with his resolve, and, when he woke the next morning, his mind was clear with purpose and he felt even a return to his usual spirit of careless gaiety. He rose early and went downstairs dressed carefully in his new clothes, store clothes of far more luxurious material than any he had ever worn.

  He found Conover on the front verandah and went to him immediately. He had determined to speak the thing out while his mind was made up.

  “It ain’t easy for me to talk much,” he began, after they had exchanged their good mornings, “but last night I got to thinkin’ about the boy that’s lyin’ dead in the room, there. He died in my arms as I was carryin’ him through this here door, sir.” He paused a moment and swallowed hard. “I don’t mind sayin’,” he went on, “that I have killed men myself. But I never killed a man that wasn’t looking me straight in the eye and doin’ his damnedest to kill me. I never shot a man from behind a tree.”

  He started to walk uneasily up and down the verandah. Old man Conover watched him with an emotionless face.

  “Well, sir,” said Lazy Purdue, “I heard you say that you could hardly shoot a rifle from a rest. I don’t need no rest, Mister Conover. Will you use me like one of your own family to fight them McLanes?”

  The old man eyed him without changing a muscle of his face. “I reckon you said my boy died in your arms while you were bringin’ him through the door?” he queried.

  Lazy Purdue clenched his hands and opened them slowly. “Yes,” he said.

  “An’ you c’n shoot straight?”

  The shadow of a smile touched Lazy Purdue’s mouth. “It’s the only thing I can do well,” he said.

  “The McLanes shoot powerful straight,” said the old man dreamily.

  “If you have a hammer an’ some nails an’ a revolver,” said Lazy Purdue, “I’ll show you what they call shootin’ in my part of the country.”

  “They’s a post there, just off the verandah, wher’ you c’n drive them,” said Conover slowly, “an’ I’ll get you a hammer an’ nails, an’ here”—he reached to his hip pocket as he spoke—“is a gun.”

  In an old hitching post a few yards away Lazy Purdue drove six nails, one below the other. Then
he took the revolver, tried the action with a smile of content, and whirled the chambers.

  “I’m goin’ to walk away from this here post,” he stated, “an’, when you holler fire, I’m goin’ to turn and shoot. You see I haven’t my hand on the gun. You watch that bunch o’ nails.” He commenced to walk rapidly away from the post, his arms swinging carelessly and the revolver bulging slightly in his hip pocket.

  “Fire!” called Conover.

  Lazy Purdue whirled, and, as he whirled, the six shots rang out, one report blending with the other.

  Conover walked to the hitching post. He examined the post carefully. “The first shot was a hair’s breadth to the left,” he said, and, as he turned, he sighed heavily. “I don’t know what part of the country you come from, my frien’, but, oh, I wish to God that my boy had been raised there.”

  As they crossed the verandah, old Mrs. Conover met them at the door, her face somewhat paler than before. “John,” she queried, “what was that shootin’? Has there been some more devil’s work this mornin’?”

  The old man laid his hands on his wife’s shoulders. “Mary,” he said, “I c’n hardly shoot a rifle from a rest. But here’s a man who don’t need no rest. Mary, our boy died in this man’s arms, an’ he wants to make that death good on the McLanes.”

  She eyed Purdue coldly, and once more he straightened as if about to receive an order. “That death can’t be made good by anyone but a Conover,” she stated. “Have you forgotten that, John?”

  Old Conover turned almost fiercely on Lazy Purdue. “Will you change your name to George Conover?” he asked.

  “My first name hasn’t ever been anything but Lazy,” said Purdue, “an’ my last name . . . well, I reckon I have pretty strong reason for wanting to change that name right now, or leastwise forget it. I reckon George is a lot better name than Lazy, an’ I don’t know any better other name than Conover.”

  III

  THE FAIR

  As they walked into the breakfast room, Marion Conover entered. One glance at the faces of the three evidently told her all that she wanted to know. She walked to Lazy Purdue and shook hands with him silently, but the brightness of her eyes left him ill at ease as they sat down at the table.