The Black Muldoon Read online

  II

  That evening Hal Dozier sat long at his desk, writing. Now and then he stopped to think, or even rose and paced the room until new ideas came to him, and it was late when he had finished a letter that ran as follows:

  Dear Miss Withero:

  I’m keeping the promise I made you to give you the news, as soon as there was news to give. To start with there’s the biggest and best kind of news. Andrew has come into town!

  He came as big as life, and very much as you must remember him; a little thinner, I think, and a little sterner, compared to the old Andy we used to know about Martindale. He came on Sally, of course, and Sally, at least, hasn’t changed. I used to hate that horse. It was Sally, you know, who ran my Gray Peter to death. But she’s such a beauty that I’ve forgiven her. She follows Andy about like a dog. If it weren’t for her, he’d die of loneliness, I know.

  But to get back to important facts. When Andy came in I ran over things as clearly as I could, told him that the governor had pardoned him for the past and hoped well for his future. I advised him to accept your invitation to go East, and I promised to help him in any way that I could.

  But he was stubborn as steel. Under his gentle manner there’s no end of metal. As for you, he refuses even to mention your name, far less write to you, because, he says, he hasn’t earned the right to speak to you. As for going East and working out his life in a new country, he says that he loves these mountains, that he belongs here, that in the East he’d be a fish out of water, and that, if he isn’t strong enough to work out his destiny in his own land and among his own people, he doesn’t want to live at all. He said these things in such a way that I couldn’t find answers. I told him that the people of Martindale were neutral and pretty suspicious. But they’d give him a chance.

  Do you know what he did then?

  He walked straight out of my office and went to the veranda of the hotel. Here a dozen or more men were sitting around, and Andy made them a speech. I wish you could have heard it, it was so straight from the shoulder. And I won’t forget him standing up as straight as a soldier and looking them all in the eye. He has a hard look to meet, has Andrew, as you may know someday if you ever make him angry.

  He told them in words of one syllable that he knew he’d led a bad life for the past two years. He didn’t make any bones of it, and he didn’t make any excuses. That isn’t his way. After he got started, he acknowledged that he’d lived as an outlaw. He said that he wanted to come back to Martindale, where he was born, and show the people of it that he could live as a sober, hard-working citizen. He said it was a bargain. As long as he roved around the mountains, he was simply a burden, for he lived off the work of other people. If he was allowed to settle down peaceably in the town, he would cease being a burden for anyone to carry. It was up to them. If they wanted to get rid of him and didn’t want him around, they had only to say the word, and he would jump on the horse that was standing behind him and ride away and never come back—peacefully. But if they allowed him to stay he would do his best to be as law-abiding as the next one.

  Then he waited for his answer, but there was no answer made! They sat like owls on stumps and stared at him. They were afraid to give him a cheer and tell him to stay, and they were afraid to tell him to get out of town. Andrew waited a minute or two, and then he turned on his heel and walked away with his head down.

  I tried to cheer him up and told him that the people of the town were simply waiting to see if he meant what he said, and that as soon as he showed them, they would be with him heart and soul. But he was too shrewd to believe me.

  He went to his old blacksmith shop and opened it. Things were a little rusty, but pretty much as they had always been. He polished it up a bit and then sat down at the door to wait for work. But there’s a new blacksmith shop in Martindale now, and all the work that came in to town today drifted right past Andy’s old shop. They turned and stared at him, but they didn’t ask him to shoe their horses.

  Tonight he went back to his uncle’s old house. I went to see him there. The old shack has run down since Jasper Lanning’s death, and I found Andrew pacing up and down in the dust, with the old, warped boards of the floor creaking under him. Not a very cheery place for him, you see. And he was as restless as a wolf in a cage, and every once in a while he would stop his pacing at a window and look out at the mountains and then begin to walk up and down again, leaving his trail in the dust of the floor.

  He was in an ugly mood, but he tried to keep it concealed. He swore that he would stay on as long as he could, and then I came back to my office to write to you.

  I’m afraid for Andy, Miss Withero, I’m mortally afraid. He’s closer to me than anything on earth. I went to kill him for the sake of the price on his head. He shot me down and then fought with four men to save my life. Men of Andy’s stamp aren’t turned out every day, and it’s a pity to see him fail.

  But fail he inevitably will. The men of this town are watching and waiting for an explosion, and the more they watch and the more suspicious they grow, the more nervous Andrew is. He knows that a lot of them hate him and would shoot him in the back if they could. Sooner or later someone is sure to get drunk and cross him, or some crowd will get together and try to bully him. If either of these things happens, someone is going to die. It won’t be Andrew. After the explosion he’ll be on Sally on his way back to the mountains and the free life he loves. So you can very well see that I live over dry powder, with sparks flying all the time. When will Andy blow up?

  There’s one thing that can dampen the powder. There’s one thing stronger than Andrew’s nervousness. You know what that one thing is—his love for you. It’s more than a love; it’s worship. You’re more than a woman to him. He’s dressed you up as a saint, aureole and all. When he speaks of you, his voice changes, and he lowers his eyes.

  Well, Miss Withero, I think you would do a good deal to help Andrew. I want to find out how much. Will you come West to Martindale and see Andrew and give him patience for the fight? Five minutes of you mean more to him than five years of adventure and freedom.

  He doesn’t know that I’ve written to you. I don’t dare tell him. He thinks he must make himself go through the trial and try to see you after he has proven himself. But I say that the trial is greater than his strength. What will you do?

  Hal Dozier

  The marshal wrote that letter in the best of good faith, never dreaming that out of that letter would come the hardest test young Andrew Lanning was ever to receive. Moreover, it was destined to enter many hands and put strange thoughts in many minds and bring great results, some of which the marshal hoped for and some of which were the opposite of his desires.

  It began by interrupting an important conversation. The conversation in itself was the result of long planning on the part of Charles Merchant. For a month he had been laboring to bring about a meeting between himself and Anne Withero, and eventually he had been able to maneuver until he was invited to this weekend party at the house where Anne was a guest for the summer. It was a typical Long Island estate, with oceans of lawn washing away from a Tudor house, so cunningly overgrown with vines and artificially weathered that, although it was hardly ten years old, it looked 500. Beyond the lawns were bits of an ancient forest, although it was not quite so ancient as it looked. In one of these groves Charles Merchant would have greatly preferred to have the walk and talk. But the best he could do was to keep Anne strolling up and down in the formal garden, in full sight of the house, almost in hearing of the guests. It was one of those foolish, little handmade gardens, with hedges clipped and sculptured into true curves and rigid square edges, and flower beds planned like a problem in geometry. Stiff benches that no one in the world would ever dream of sitting on added to the artificiality, and imported French sculptures of the seventeenth century, dotted here and there—ladies with fat legs and silly, little grinning faces and simpering, corpulent cupids—completed the picture. It was one of those formal French gardens
that call from every nook and cranny: “Man made me, and God had absolutely nothing to do with it!”

  But from this garden one could look through graceful oaks on the edge of the hill, down to the blue of the sea. Through those trees the glances of Anne Withero went, but the glances of Charles Merchant never strayed from the face of the girl. He could not tell exactly where he stood with her, but he felt that he was making very fair progress. In the first place, she was listening to him, and that was really more than he had reason to hope. His argument was based on a very old doctrine.

  “If I have done things that were wrong, and heaven knows I have, it was because I was fighting to keep you, Anne. And you know everything is fair in such a case, isn’t that true?”

  And she had answered: “To tell you the truth, Charlie, I’m trying to forget all about the mountains and what happened there. I’m trying to forget anything very bad that you may have done. Is that what you want to know?”

  It was not all, and he was frank to tell her so. “If you succeed too well,” he said, “you may forget me altogether. I’d rather be remembered a little, even if it has to be viciously.”

  He was convinced that he was very far on the outskirts of her attention, and it cut him to the quick. Had she not once been his prospective wife? But he clung to the task, and before long she was listening with more attention, although she persisted in confining their walk to the ridiculous little paths of that garden. He grew bolder as the moments passed. When she asked him when he was going West, he said: “When I have to give up hope.”

  “Just what do you mean by that?” she asked him, and she asked it so unemotionally, so far from either scorn or invitation, that he was abashed, but he said gravely: “I mean that I’m struggling to win back your friendly respect first, Anne. And when that comes … well, then I’ll go on hoping for something else. Do you think I’m wrong to do so?”

  He had always been a proud and downright fellow, and he knew that his humility was what was breaking down her dislike for him and opening her mind, but he was delighted beyond all bounds when she did not at once return a negative answer to his last question. Indeed, she did not answer at all, and when she straightened and looked wistfully at the rich blue of the sea beyond the yellow-green oaks, he knew that she was remembering pleasant things out of their mutual past. He had his share of intuition and cunning, and he discreetly kept silent.

  It was at this very moment that the letter was brought to her. She glanced down at it carelessly and continued her walk, but, presently looking down again, she seemed to read the address and understand it for the first time. He saw her hand hastily cover the writing on the envelope, and at the same time her eyes became alert. She wanted to get rid of him at once, and he knew it. More than that, when she looked at him now there was a certain hardness in her eyes. Something about that handwriting had made her suddenly call up her old anger, her old distaste for him.

  But still, although the test was a stern one, Charles Merchant was not a fool. He brought her back to the house at the first pretext and left her alone with the infernal letter, then he went to find Anne’s maid.

  When he had decided that life was not worthwhile without Anne Withero and that he must make a deliberate and determined campaign to regain his old position with her, he had, like a good general, cast about to find a friend in the enemy’s camp. By means of a small subsidy, he had secured a friend in the person of Mary, Anne’s maid. She had already proven invaluable to him in many ways. She could not only keep him informed of her mistress’s movements, but she was also intelligent enough to catch the general drift of Anne’s interests of the moment. When Anne was reading books of the West and talking about the mountains, Charles Merchant knew perfectly well that her mind was turning to Andrew Lanning, that strange adventurer who had literally dropped out of the sky to ruin his own romance with Anne Withero. And, when Anne read and talked of other things, Charles knew in turn that she was letting the memory of her outlaw lover grow dim. In time, and with three thousand miles between them, he was sure that the girl would forget the fellow entirely. Any other solution was socially impossible. But he remained uneasy.

  He met Mary at their appointed rendezvous beyond the tennis courts, and he told her at once what he wanted.

  “Your lady got a letter a few minutes ago,” he said, “a fat letter on blue-white paper. You know, the cheap stuff and the big, sprawling handwriting. You can’t mistake it. Now, I want that letter to be in my hands before the night comes, you understand?”

  When Mary stood with her hands folded and her eyes cast down, there was a good deal of the angel in her pale face. When she glanced up quickly, however, one found a pronounced seasoning of mischief in her eyes. And now she looked up very quickly, indeed. In her heart Mary despised big, handsome Charles Merchant; she had her own opinion of men who could not take the queen of their hearts by storm, but had to resort to such tactics as bribing maids. Nevertheless, she had decided to serve Charles Merchant. It was really for her mistress’s sake more than her own. For Charles Merchant was rich, and he was also weak. An ideal man for a master and, also, from Mary’s point of view, for a husband. If Anne married him she, Mary, would retain a mighty hold on the purse and the respect of the master of the house. She might even stand at the balance between master and mistress of a great establishment. She would be the power behind the throne. All of these things were in her mind as she now looked into the face of Charles Merchant, but she could not keep back the small grimace of mockery.

  “Mister Merchant,” she said, “may I ask you just one thing?”

  “Fire away, Mary.”

  “After you marry Miss Withero, will you keep on handling her the same way?”

  He laughed, and there was a sigh of relief behind the laughter. “After we’re married!” he exclaimed. “After we’re married, I’ll find a way of handling her, never doubt that. Plenty of ways.”

  There was something in his manner of saying this that made Mary’s eyes grow very big, and a sudden doubt of Charles Merchant came to her. His short command for her to hurry sent her away before she had time to speak again, but she went away thoughtfully.

  III

  That night the letter was in the hands of Charles Merchant. He read it hastily, for Mary was waiting anxiously to take it back to its proper place. He detained her for a moment.

  “Has she been talking about anything unusual?” he asked, almost fiercely.

  “No, nothing.”

  “Thank goodness!” said Merchant. “You’re sure? No mention of a journey?”

  Mary grew thoughtful. “She asked me, when she was dressing for dinner, if I had ever been West, and if I’d like to go there.”

  Merchant groaned. “She said that?”

  “What’s in that? She was just talking about the mountains.”

  “Only the mountains?”

  “And she said there was a different breed of men there, too.”

  “That’s all!”

  He slammed the door after her and, going back to the window, slumped into a chair with his face between his hands. For all that he shut out the light from his eyes, he was seeing too clearly the picture of the lithe fellow, straight, graceful, dark-eyed, and light and nervous of hand—that was Andrew Lanning. He cursed the picture and the name and the thought of the name, as his mind went back to the night, so long ago, when the figure had leaned over his bed and asked through the darkness: “Where is the girl’s room?” And then, lest he make an outcry and alarm the house, Lanning had tied and gagged him.

  In truth, the coming of Lanning had tied and gagged him forever, so far as Anne Withero’s interest was concerned. Afterward the name of Lanning had grown in importance, had become a legend, one of those soul-stirring legends that grow up, now and then, around the figure of a stirring man of action.

  An outlaw certainly was beyond the pale of Anne’s interest, but Charles could see now that, perhaps, the very strangeness of the wanderer’s position and character had made him
fascinating in the romantic eyes of the girl. And then, striking back through a thousand dangers and risking his life for the sake of one interview, Andy Lanning, the outlaw, had come to the Merchant house again and seen Anne Withero once more. Only twice they had seen one another, but out of those two meetings had come the wreck of his own affair with her. He gritted his teeth when he recalled it.

  Moreover, he was quite certain that Hal Dozier was right. Hal was a shrewd judge of men and events. If he said that the girl could tame wild Lanning and keep him a law-abiding man, then he was right. But he must also be right when he said that Lanning was balancing on a precarious edge, ready to fall into violent action and outrage society again.

  Was it not possible, then, to knock the ground from beneath the tottering figure? Could not the necessary impetus be supplied that would throw Lanning off his balance and plunge him once more into a career of crime? There must surely be a way. And he, Charles Merchant, had money, could buy who he willed to buy. The cause was worth it! It was a crusade, this saving of such a girl as Anne Withero from the low entanglements of an ex-criminal.

  He packed his things that night. In the morning he said good-bye to her.

  “I’m going West, Anne,” he told her. “I see that the past is still too close to you, and that you haven’t been able to forgive me entirely. I’m going West and wait, for I haven’t given up. I’m going to come back and try again. In the meantime, if it should happen that you need a helper, let me know. Will you do that?”

  Even then he hoped that she might confide enough in him to admit that she was soon going West herself, but he was disappointed. She gave him a chilly farewell and no hint of her plans. In the morning he returned to New York and purchased a ticket for the West. Then he bought an early edition of an evening paper and went into the smoking room of the station to wait for his train. His eyes took in the headlines dimly. How could print catch his attention when a story of far more vital interest was running through his mind?