The Black Muldoon Read online

  It touched Andrew, the embarrassment of this huge, sturdy-hearted fellow. He went to him and touched his shoulder.

  “Sloan,” he said, “I know what’s on your mind. You think I’m getting mad at you, because you get the work. I’m not. Get everything you can, and don’t send me any overflow. You’re married, and you have kids. Get all the work you can. As for me, I’m not going to try to rustle trade with a gun.”

  * * * * *

  On the afternoon of the next day Hal Dozier stopped before the shop with a suggestion.

  “Andy,” he said, “Si Hulan is in town. Staying up at the hotel right now. He’s looking for hands. Why don’t you trot up to see him? He’d be glad to take you on if he has any sense. Got a big ranch. Soon as he learns that he can trust you, he’d be apt to make you foreman. You’re the man to handle that rough gang of his.”

  Andy Lanning was not at all enthusiastic.

  “You see,” he replied, “I’d be glad to do that, but Sally isn’t much good at working cows. She’s never had much experience.”

  “You could teach her.”

  “I could teach her, but that dodging and hustling around in a bunch isn’t very good for a horse’s legs.”

  “I know. Then ride another horse, Andy. Keep Sally for Sundays and holidays, eh?”

  “Ride another horse?” asked Andrew. “Man alive, Hal, you don’t mean that!”

  “Why not?” asked the marshal.

  Andrew was breathless. “Sally and me,” he attempted to explain. “Why … Sally and me are pals, you might say, Dozier.” He whistled softly, and at once the lovely head of Sally came around the corner of the shop. There she stood with her head raised, then canted to one side, her ears pricked, while she examined her master curiously.

  “She plays out there all day,” said Andrew, smiling at the mare. “I turn her loose in the morning when I come down to work, and she follows down here and plays around in the lot. Sometimes old Missus Calkin’s dog, old Fanny, you know, comes over and plays a game with Sally. Game seems to be for Fanny to set her teeth in Sally’s nose, and for Sally to let her come as close to it as she can without doing it. Hear Sally snorting and Fanny snarling, and you’d think they was a real battle on. Well, you see how it is. I couldn’t very well get on with Sally if I rode another horse. Besides, the minute I got off another horse, Sally would kick the daylights out of the nag. That’s Sally’s way … jealous as a cat and ready to fight for attention. She’ll come over here and nose in between us pretty soon if I talk to you and don’t pay no attention to her.” He rose as he spoke and winked at the marshal. “Watch her now.”

  He turned his back on Sally, and the marshal looked from one to the other of them. He thought them very much alike, these two. There was the same touch of wildness in both, the same high-headed pride, the same finely tempered muscles, the same stout spirit. Only one man had ever succeeded in riding Sally with a saddle, and that man was her present master. For the rest she was as wild as ever. And it came to the marshal that the same was true of the boy. One person in the world could tame him, and that was Anne Withero.

  Sally had stood her exclusion from the conversation as long as possible. She now snorted and stamped with a dainty forehoof. It caused Andy to wink at the marshal, but he gave her no direct attention, and presently she came hesitantly forward and, in reach of Andy, she laid her short ears back on her neck and bared her teeth. The marshal stifled an exclamation, so wicked was the look of Sally at that moment, so snake like she was with her long, graceful neck and glittering eyes. The teeth closed on a fold of Andy’s shirt at the shoulder, and she tugged him rudely around.

  He faced her with pretended anger. “What kind of manners is this?” demanded the master. “You need teaching, and by hell, you’ll get it. Now get out!” He threw up his arm, and the horse sprang sideways and back, lithe and neat footed as an enormous cat. There she stood alert, with ears pricking again.

  “Look at that,” said Andy. “Ready for a game, you see? What can you do with a horse like that?”

  “Ain’t you ever had to discipline her? Never used a whip on her?” asked the marshal.

  “I should say not,” replied Andy. “If I seen a gent raise a whip on Sally, I’d …”

  “Wait a minute!”

  Andy shuddered and allowed the interruption to silence him. “I dunno,” he muttered. “I could stand almost anything but that. If they was to shy a stone at Sally, like they done the other day …”

  “Did they do that?” asked the marshal softly.

  “It was the Perkins kid,” said Andy. “Sally dodged the stone a mile, but it was sharp edged enough to have hurt her bad. I went in to see Jim Perkins.”

  “You did? But you talked soft, Andy?”

  “I done as well as I could. He said that boys will be boys, and then, all at once, I wanted to take him by the throat. It came to me like a fit. I fought it off, and I was weak afterward.”

  “Did you say anything?”

  “Not a word, but Jim Perkins went to the door with me, looking scared, and he said that he’d see that they was no more stones thrown at Sally.” The very memory of his anger made Andy change, and his mouth grew straight and hard.

  “Then Sally doesn’t get on very well with the folks in town?” asked Hal Dozier. He himself had been too much on his big ranch of late to follow things in Martindale closely.

  “She gets on with the kids pretty fine, but if a man comes near her, she tries to take a chunk out of him with her teeth, or brain him with her heels. There was young Canning the other day … he just jumped the fence in time.” He broke into riotous laughter.

  “Wait a minute,” cut in the marshal. “There seems to be two sides to this story. Is that a laughing matter? Canning might have been killed!”

  “Served him right for teasing her.”

  The marshal shook his head. “You’d better see Hulan,” he suggested.

  After a little more talk, Andrew accepted the advice. The Hulan Ranch was neighbor to the town. He would be practically in Martindale, and all that he wanted was to convince Martindale of his honest determination to reform. Saying good-bye to the marshal, he went straight to the hotel.

  VI

  Business was slack; men were plentiful on the range at this season, so Andrew was not the only one who went to the hotel to call on old Si Hulan. He found that the rancher was in his room interviewing the applicants one by one. He had three vacancies, and he intended to fill them all, but only after he had seen every man who was asking for a place. There were a dozen men on the veranda, all waiting to be seen or, having been seen, they waited for the selection of the rancher. They were playing together like a lot of great, senseless puppies, working off practical jests that caused more pain than laughter, and every man was sharp-eyed for a chance to take advantage of his fellow. Even as Andy approached, someone happened to turn his head as he walked down the veranda. Instantly he was tripped and sent pitching across the porch. He stopped his fall by thrusting both arms into the back of another who was driven, catapulting, down the steps. This man in turn attempted to stop his momentum by breaking the shock at the expense of Andy Lanning.

  The latter had his back turned, but a running shadow warned him, and he leaped aside. The other rushed past with arms stretched out, grinning.

  There was a sudden cessation of laughter on the porch as Andrew turned. The man who had attempted to knock him down from behind came to a stumbling halt and faced about, deadly pale, his lips twitching, and the expectancy of the men on the veranda was a thing to be felt like electricity in the air. It was very clear to Andy that they expected him to take offense and, being a gunman, to show his offense by drawing his revolver. The white, working face of the big fellow before him told the same story. The man was terribly afraid, facing death, and certain of his destruction. But his great brown hand was knotted about the butt of his gun, and he would not give way. Rather die, to be sure, than be shamed before so many. Pity came to Andy, and he smiled
into the eyes of the other.

  “There’s no harm done, partner,” he said gently, and went up on the veranda.

  He left the big man behind him, stunned. Presently the latter went to the hitching rack, got his horse, and rode down the street. He would tell his children and his grandchildren in later years how he faced terrible Andy Lanning and came away with his life.

  The crowd on the veranda began to break out of their silence again, but the former mirth was not restored. A shadow of dread had passed over them, and their spirits were still dampened. Covertly every eye watched Andrew. He went gloomily up the steps and laid his hand on the back of the first chair he saw, just as another man came hurriedly from the interior of the hotel.

  “Hey,” he called, “my chair, you!”

  Andrew turned, and the newcomer stopped, as though he had received a blow in the face.

  “I made a mistake,” he said.

  “Take your chair,” replied Andrew gravely. “There are plenty more.”

  The other moistened his white lips. “I don’t want it,” he said unevenly. “Besides, I’m going right back inside.”

  Before Andrew could speak again, the latter had turned and gone hastily through the door. Lanning sat down, buried in gloom. Dead silence reigned along the veranda now. He knew what was in their thoughts—that twice they had come within the verge of seeing gunplay. And he writhed at the thought. Did they think he was a professional bully to take advantage of them? He knew, as well as they knew, that an ordinary man had no ghost of a chance against his trained speed of hand and steadiness of nerve and lightning accuracy of eye. Did they think he would force issues on them? Yet he felt bitterly that, sooner or later, they would actually herd him into a mortal fight. Indeed one of these boys would not wait to ask questions. If he crossed the path of Lanning by chance, he would take it for granted that guns were the order of the day and draw his weapon. And then what was the chance of Andy, except to kill, or be killed?

  Decidedly the marshal was right. He must get onto the Hulan Ranch and let Martindale grow more gradually acclimated to the changed Andrew Lanning. He knew that this position of his was one that many a bullying gunfighter had labored years to attain and had gloried in, but to him it was a horror. He wanted to stand up before them and tell them they were wrong. But he had tried that on the first day of his return to the town, and he had seen in every face the conviction that he lied.

  He was glad when it came his turn to see Hulan, and as he stepped through the door into the inner hall, he heard the murmur of voices break out again on the veranda in subdued whispers, and he knew that they were talking of him.

  Old Si Hulan greeted him with amazing warmth. He was a stringy, old man who had once been bulkily strong and was still active. Age had diminished him, but it had not crippled him. His lean, much-wrinkled face lighted, and he came out from behind the table to grip the hand of Andrew.

  “Why, son,” he said, “are you hunting for work on my ranch?”

  “That’s it,” said Andy. He had never known the old man well, and this generous greeting warmed his heart.

  “You are? Then I’ll tell a man that this is my lucky day. I been looking for your make of a man for a long time. Sit down, lad. Sit down and lemme look you over.” He pushed Andrew into a chair. “In the old days they didn’t think much of you. I’ve heard ’em talk, the idiots! But I knowed that a Lanning was always a Lanning, same as a hawk is always a hawk, even if a chicken does the hatching.”

  He kept grinning and chuckling to himself in the pauses of his talk.

  “You go back and get your blankets,” he said, “and get ready to come along with me this evening. Or, if you ain’t got blankets, it don’t make any difference. I’ll fix you up like a king. I’ll give you an outfit any rider on the range would be proud of.”

  “That’s mighty fine,” returned Andy, amazed by this cordiality. “About the wages … you can fix your own price. I’m pretty green at ranch work.”

  “We’ll agree on wages,” said the old man. “Ain’t any trouble on that head.”

  “Another thing you ought to know before you take me on. My horse ain’t very good at working cattle. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t even train her for that job. But if it’s just riding the range, she’ll be fine for that. But not for a lot of roping and heavy work.”

  It seemed that Si Hulan was daunted by these remarks.

  “Roping?” he demanded. “Roping? You? Why, boy, d’you think I’m going to use a mountain lion to pull a wagon? Cow work! Ride the range!” He rocked back on his heels, tucked his thumbs into the armholes of his vest, and burst into a roar of laughter.

  “Son,” he said, when he found his voice again, “you hark to me. The job I got for you is right in your own line.” He lowered his tone, and his eyes twinkled discreetly. “Up yonder in the hills I got the finest little layout for moonshining that ever you see. I raise my own grain, you see, and I feed it into my own still. Nothing easier. And I got the still cached away where the best fox in the police service would never find it. Well, Andy, what I’m going to use you for is running that moonshine over the hills and down to the river. That’s where I market it. I got a tough gang of boys working the run for me now, but what I need is a leader that’ll keep ’em in order. And you’re the man for me. I guess they ain’t any of ’em so hard but what they’ll soften up when Andy Lanning gives ’em an order. As for the wages, they ain’t going to be none. You and me will just split up the profit, almost any reasonable way you say. I furnish the goods, and you take what little risk they is. It ain’t really no big risk. It’s for running the men that I want you.”

  He had kept up his harangue so closely and with such a hot enthusiasm that Andrew could not interrupt him until he reached this point, and he interrupted by rising from the chair into which Si Hulan had thrust him.

  “Mister Hulan,” he said slowly, “you got me all wrong. I’m going straight. I’m staying inside the law as long as the law will let me. Run your own still. It’s nothing to me, but I’ll have no hand in it.”

  Hulan gasped. Then he nodded. “I see,” he said. “Trying me out? I don’t blame you for being mistrustful of folks after what you’ve been doing the past few years, but …”

  “First and last and all the time,” said Andrew, “I mean what I say. I’m going straight, Hulan. I can’t take that job. But, if you got an honest job running cattle on the range, let me take a try at it, and I’ll thank you for the chance. I don’t care what the wages are.”

  Hulan snorted, a flush growing up his withered face.

  “That’s the song, is it?” he asked. “D’you think I’m a fool, Lanning? D’you think you have anybody in this town fooled? Don’t you suppose everybody knows that you’re in here on some crooked job?” His voice became a growl. “I’ll tell you one thing that may surprise you. You wonder why nobody has asked you to step out of town, why we’ve been so simple we’ve let you stay and make your plans and your plots, whatever they may be. But we ain’t been sleeping, Andy. Not by a long sight. They’s five of the best men in this town has got together and sworn to keep a hoss saddled night and day, ready to jump on your trail and run you down the minute you make your break. And we got other towns all posted, so we can get in touch with them pronto, the minute you tear loose.

  “Why am I telling you all this? Simply to show you where you stand. No, Lanning, once wrong always wrong, and we know it. That’s why I make you my offer. Come out with me, and I’ll cover up your tracks. If you stay down here and try to work your game, we’ll get you the minute you step crooked. Why, you fool, we been holding our breath ever since you come in, waiting for a chance to nail you!”

  Andrew Lanning watched him gloomily. It was all in line with the attitude of the younger men on the veranda of the hotel. It was perfectly plain now. They hated him; they feared him, and they would get him if they dared. They would bide their time. If appearances were against him for a moment, they would make their play. The governor of the
state had pardoned him, but society had not forgiven him, would not forgive him. With a breaking heart, he saw the vision of Anne Withero, the happiness of which he had dreamed, grow dim and flicker out into complete darkness.

  He turned slowly away from Hulan and stepped into the hall, and then slowly down the stairs. As he went, anger rose in him and swelled his heart. It was unfair, cruelly unfair. In some way they should be made to pay for their stupidity. He hated them all.

  At the bottom of the stairs he came upon a knotted little group, standing with their heads together, listening to some jest or gossip.

  “Get out of the way!” said Andy Lanning angrily.

  They jerked their heads aside, saw him, and then melted back from his path. Andrew strode through them without deigning a glance in either direction. He detested them as much as they feared him. If they wanted war, let it be war. He heard the whisper stir behind him, but he strode on through the door and went slowly down the steps to the ground. War, indeed, had been declared.

  VII

  Through the little town of Martindale a single whisper traveled as distinctly and as swiftly as the report of cannon down a small gorge. Hal Dozier heard of the first outbreak of the ex-outlaw ten minutes after it happened. He went straight to the hotel and found a grave conclave deliberating on the veranda. There was no sign of the usual jesting or the usual tales. They crowded their heads close together and talked with frowns. The marshal knew that serious trouble was in the air.

  He was more alarmed than ever when they fell silent at his approach. He singled out Si Hulan, who was among the rest, and put the question to him.

  “What’s wrong with Andy Lanning?”

  “What’s wrong? Everything’s wrong with him. He’s no good,” said the old rancher with deliberation. “I offer him a job with me … a regular, honest job at good pay,” continued Hulan, lying smoothly, “and the infernal young hound asked me what he got on the side. I asked him what he meant by that. He said I ought to know that he wasn’t interested in small-fry talk. He wanted action and big pay, and he didn’t care for the danger. That’s the sort of talk he gave me. I told him to get out of my room and never let me see his face again. And he went, growling.”