The Black Muldoon Page 5

  Hal Dozier scented the lie under this talk. He had known Hulan for a long time as a man of dubious life, but now it was impossible for him directly to challenge the statement. All he could say was: “It doesn’t sound like Andy. He doesn’t talk that way, Hulan.”

  “Not to you. Sure he don’t talk that way to you,” said Hulan. “He’s pulled the wool over your eyes and made a fool of you, Hal. Everybody in town knows it except you, and it’s time that you be told. That kid comes to you and makes good talk, says he’s going to reform. The rest of us know that he’s gone wrong. Once wrong always wrong. He’s going to the bad, and you’re a fool to let him take you in.”

  A younger man could not have talked quite so frankly to the formidable marshal. But Si Hulan was too old to be in danger of physical attack, and he spoke his mind outright to Dozier.

  He went on: “You’ve made a pet out of this man killer, Hal. That’s bad enough for you, because one of these days he’ll turn and sink his teeth in you. But it’s particular bad for us in this here town, because you ain’t the only one he’s apt to muss up. I say it wasn’t square to bring him in.”

  There was a gloomy murmur from the others, and Hal Dozier studied them in despair. One by one they told the story of how Lanning had come down the stairs and ordered the crowd to separate so that he could walk through. They told the tale profanely and expressively, and they assured the marshal that the next time such a thing happened they would not stand upon the order of procedure, they would fall upon young Andrew Lanning and teach him manners.

  “Boys,” said the marshal gravely, “I know how you feel. You think that Lanning is taking advantage of you, because he’s a proved gunfighter. Maybe it looks that way, but if I could get close to this trouble, I know I could show you that you’d badgered Andy into it. He ain’t a bully. He never was, and he never will be. But they’s some around this town that’s been treating him like he was a bear to be baited. Well, boys, if you ever tease Andy to the point when he breaks loose, he’ll turn out the worst rampaging bear you ever see. Keep that under your hat, but give Andy a chance to make good, which he can do.”

  With this mixture of cajoling and warning, Hal left the hotel and sought Lanning. He found his young protégé buried in gloom in the silent blacksmith shop. Andrew lifted his head slowly and greeted his friend with a lackluster eye.

  “Keep your heart up,” advised the marshal. “Work will begin to come in to you, son. This old shop will be full of business all day long, as soon as the boys in town are sure you mean to settle down. You were a good blacksmith in the old days, and they know it. But no more busting out like you done today.”

  It was proof of the despair of Andrew that even to Hal Dozier he did not offer the true explanation of that affair. He let it go.

  “Hal,” he said sadly, “the main trouble is that I don’t think I want the work to come in. I was a blacksmith in the old days. I liked it, and I liked to make things. But it doesn’t interest me any more.”

  “What in the world are you, then?”

  “I dunno, Hal. I can’t find out. Maybe I’m what they figure me to be … no good.”

  The marshal found that he had no answer ready, and he could only make one suggestion. “If you can’t make a go of the blacksmith work, come with me. I’ll make you a deputy. They’s a big bunch of cash right now over in the bank, and they have been asking me for a good man to guard it. Will you let me give them your name?”

  But Andy shook his head. “They wouldn’t take me. Besides, I’m not ready to give up yet.”

  Hal Dozier went straight to the telegraph office and wired to Anne Withero: COME QUICK, OR NOT AT ALL.

  In the evening he received an answer from Anne Withero, saying she was coming on the next train. That telegram gave him heart. But would Andrew Lanning hold out until the arrival of this great ally?

  The marshal did not know it, but the great temptation was coming to Andrew even at that very moment. He sat in the old shack that his uncle, Jasper Lanning, had owned before him. Never had it seemed more dreary, more deserted. As he was coming home from the shop at the end of the idle day, little Judy had crossed the street to avoid passing close to him, and that told Andy more than the curses of a crowd of grown men what the town thought of him.

  He felt the blight of it cold in his heart all the time that he was cooking his supper, and then he sat down to the meal without appetite. The bacon was cold, the flapjacks soggy, the potatoes half cooked. He forced himself to eat.

  All the windows were open, for the night was coming on close and windless, and he wished to take advantage of every stir of the air. It was very hot, and it seemed to have grown hotter since the coming of the darkness. The little flame of the lantern seemed to add to it. He could feel the glow against his face, and there was the nauseating odor of kerosene and the foul-burning wick. But he had not heart enough to trim the wick and freshen the light.

  When he had finished his meal, there was the doubly disagreeable duty of washing the dishes. The water was greasy to the touch, nauseating again. The walls of the kitchen were hung with shadows, memories of the old days, and those old days seemed cramped and disagreeable. He was returning to that life, and there was no glamour to it. It was like crawling into a hole and waiting for death.

  He finished his task by banging the dishpan onto its nail on the rough-finished boards of the wall and strode slowly back to the other room. There he sat down with a book, but the print would not take hold of his eye. He found the book falling to his lap, while his mind wandered through the past. He had lived greater things than were in these romantic pages. He had been part and parcel and the prime mover in deeds that had stirred the length and the breadth of the mountain desert. And a faint, grim smile played and grew and died on his lips, as he remembered some of them.

  He was recalled from his dreaming sharply, as though by a voice. All at once, although he did not change from his position, he was tinglingly alert. Another person had entered the room and stood at the door behind him. An added sense, which only men who have been hunted possess, informed him of that fact. Someone was there. His mind flashed over a score of possibilities of men who hated him, men who might have trailed him to the town to wreak vengeance. Any one of them would be capable of shooting him in the back without warning.

  All this went through his mind in the least part of a second. Then in a flash he whirled out of his chair, slipping into the dense shadow on the floor with the speed of a snake that twists and strikes. As he fell, the long gun, which never left his hip, was gleaming in his hand.

  The man at the door jerked both empty hands above his head and cursed softly. He was a handsome fellow with a rather colorless face, bright eyes, and an alert, straight carriage.

  “Don’t shoot!” he called. “Don’t shoot, Andy!”

  The latter came softly to his feet, but still crouched, panting and savage under the urge of that swift impulse to fight. He kept low in the shadow that washed across the room, below the level of the table on which the squat lantern sat. In this shadow Andy slipped to the farther corner of the room. There he was in a position that neither the two windows nor the open door commanded. Here he straightened, still with the revolver ready.

  “You can drop your hands now, Scottie,” he ordered.

  Scottie had turned slowly to follow the movements of Lanning, always with his arms stiffly above his head.

  “Whispering winds!” he exclaimed, as he brought his hands down. “Fast as ever, eh? Thought you’d be slowed up a little by the quiet life, but you’re not.”

  “What’s up?” demanded Andrew Lanning. “And what d’you want, Scottie? Is there anyone outside?”

  “Nobody that means you any harm. Suspicious, aren’t you, these days? How does that come, Andy? Living among these fine, quiet, honest men in Martindale, I should think that your life would be like a smooth-flowing river.” He grinned impishly at Lanning.

  “You’ve said enough,” said Andy. It was a new man who fa
ced Scottie, a dangerous, cunning, agile man whose eyes never ceased roving from door to window to the face of his guest. “Why are you here?”

  Scottie sauntered to a chair and dropped into it, his hands folded behind his head. In this fashion, with a slow and lordly turning of the eyes, he surveyed the house.

  “Not a lot to boast of as a house, Andy. Why am I here? Why, just for a chat. Dropped in to chat about old days, you know, Andy. The way you sat there, with your book upside down and your eye looking at nothing, I thought you might be thinking of the same thing. What about it?”

  Andy watched him carefully, but he dropped the gun back in the holster.

  “Well, Scottie?”

  The latter refused to be pinned down to reasons and purposes. He rambled on. “Any of our camps could beat this, eh? In the old days when Allister led us around? Those were free times, Andy. Money, liquor, good cigars, best chuck on the range. Can you come over that here in Martindale?”

  Andy was silent. Into his mind had flashed a picture of the campfire and the circle of faces bathed in yellow light and carved from black shadow.

  “But I suppose you got friends down here who more than make up for what you miss, eh?”

  There was a flash and twinkle in his bright eyes. How unlike the eyes of any man Lanning had seen in Martindale since his return. For the wolf light was in them, and as his heart leaped in response, he knew that the wolf light was in his own eyes. He knew that if he lived a long and peaceful life to the very end, that light would gleam from time to time in his face, and the fierce, free, joyous urge would pulse and rush through his veins. It was in him, and it was part of him. When he spoke to Scottie, like spoke to like. One word between them might mean more than a whole conversation with the men of Martindale. Two glances were question and reply.

  “Leave out my Martindale friends,” said Andy dryly. “Why are you here? And who came with you?”

  “I came alone.”

  Andy smiled.

  “You’re right, chief,” said Scottie. “You know I wouldn’t risk coming down here alone.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “Ask.”

  Andy whistled a prolonged, low note that traveled far and quavered up at the end weirdly. After a moment there came a still-softer answer.

  “Larry la Roche and Clune, eh? Where’s the big fellow?”

  Scottie made a careless gesture of lighting a match and blowing it out.

  “Dead?” asked Andy huskily.

  “Dead.”

  “How?”

  “They cornered him at Old Willow, Jordan and his two cubs of kids. Jordan came up and talked to him. His kids sneaked around behind and drilled him.”

  Andy began to pace up and down lightly, swiftly, soundlessly. “I wish I’d been there!” he said. “Jordan, eh?”

  “I wish you’d been there,” replied Scottie. “The big fellow would never have dropped out if you’d been there to lead. But the rest of us couldn’t handle him, and now he’s done for. As a matter of fact, chief, the three of us have come down here to make a little proposition to you.” He leaned forward, his elbows sprawling out on the table. “Lanning, will you listen?”

  Andrew hesitated, and before he could answer, Scottie struck smoothly into his talk.

  “Chief, we need you back. I admit that we did a dirty trick. I admit that you’ve reason not to trust us. Particularly me. But you were getting Hal Dozier off free, and every one of us hates Hal Dozier like poison, and has reason to. We couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand it. I made a mistake and tried to get Dozier, whether you wanted to or not. Well, I didn’t do it. You turned out faster in the head and stronger than the whole lot of us. I admit it, Andy. I’m older than you are. I’ve followed the game a lot longer than you’ve followed it, but I’ll freely admit that, next to Allister, you’re the best leader that ever rode the mountains. And time will give you as much or more than Allister had.

  “Clune and Larry la Roche and I are three good men. You know that. But, without a leader, we play lone hands, and we get poor results. And what leader can we get? I tried to hold the boys together. I couldn’t do it. I’m ashamed to admit it, but it’s true. Then we agreed to follow Larry, but he’s too hotheaded, just as you told us a long time ago. Matter of fact we thought you were too young to know much. It’s taken the last few months to teach us that you knew a lot more than we gave you credit for. In short, we agree that we have to have you back.

  “Allister picked you to follow him in the lead, and Allister was right. You were the next best man to him. We see that now. If you come to us, you’ll be the chief, just as Allister was, and you’ll settle the disputes, decide on the plans, and take two shares for yourself every time we split the pot. How does that sound to you, Andy?”

  Lanning opened his lips to speak and then sank into a chair, with something like a groan. “No!” he declared.

  “Lad, we need you.”

  “Clear out, Scottie,” said Andrew.

  “But I’m coming back,” said Scottie, rising, but smiling in the face of Andrew. “I’m coming back, and when I come back, I’ll get another answer. Remember, Andy, we’re three who can do more than three things, and with you to organize and keep us together we’ll live like kings, free kings, Andy. You’re not cut out for life in a dump like this. Don’t forget, I’m coming back.”

  “Don’t do it,” replied Andrew. “I’ve given you my answer. Stay away.”

  But Scottie laughed mockingly, waved from the doorway, and disappeared into the deep, hot black of the night.

  Andrew stared after him with trembling lips, and his deep agitation showed in his face. He had to fight hard to keep from following.

  VIII

  There had been strange men in Martindale, but none stranger than the man who arrived the next morning. It would have been hard to imagine one less in tune and in touch with his surroundings. The slouching, loose-dressed careless cowpunchers on the hotel veranda stared at him askance, as he came up the steps. He wore a little, low-crowned, narrow-brimmed derby, a low collar, very tight for the bull-like neck, close-fitting clothes, through which the rolling muscles of his shoulders bulged under the coat, rubber-heeled shoes, square and comfortably blunt of toe.

  When he signed his name on the register, he seemed to be trying to dig the pen through the paper, and the name sprawled huge and legible at a great distance: J. J. Gruger. While he waited to be taken to his room, he snapped a tailor-made cigarette out of a box and lighted it with singular dexterity.

  He was the sort of man the cowboys would ordinarily have laughed at, almost openly. But there was something muscularly intense about the bulldog face of J. J. Gruger that discouraged laughter, and his eyes had a way of jerking from place to place and lingering a piercing instant, wherever they fell.

  He was only a moment in his room upstairs, and then he came down. With short, springy steps he proceeded to the dining room and ate hugely. After that he came out onto the veranda, not to lounge about, but as one on business bent. He did not approve of Martindale any more than Martindale approved of him, and he was not at all eager to disguise his emotions. Having surveyed the white-hot, dusty street he turned with a characteristic suddenness upon one of the loungers who was no less a person than Si Hulan.

  But the address of Lefty Gruger was not nearly so jerky and blunt as one would have expected from his demeanor. He drew up a chair beside Si, who eyed him curiously, and leaned a little toward the crafty old rancher. In his manner there was a sort of confiding interest, as though he were imparting a secret of great value. And he talked rather from the side of his mouth, gauging his voice so accurately that the sound traveled as far as the ear of Si Hulan and not an inch farther.

  “Name’s Gruger,” he said by way of introduction. “I’m up here looking for a bird called Lanning. Got any dope on him, or is he a stranger to you?”

  “More or less,” said Si. “He’s twenty-five or twenty-six years old, and I’ve knowed him along about twenty
-four years, I reckon. But I wouldn’t say we was ever familiar-like.”

  There was a little glint in the quick eyes of Lefty as they traveled over the face of his companion. In some subtle way the two came to an understanding on the spot.

  “If you mean you ain’t a friend of this guy,” said Lefty, “it don’t bother me none. I ain’t his brother myself. But can you tell me anything about him?”

  Si Hulan cleared his throat and paused, as if making up his mind how far he could go. Then he felt his way as he spoke. “Lanning was a nice, quiet kid around town,” he said. “Nobody had nothing ag’in him, thought he was kind of spineless, as a matter of fact. All at once he busted loose. Got to be a regular fighter, a gunfighter!”

  He waited to see if this shot had taken effect.

  “You don’t say,” said Lefty with polite interest.

  “Maybe you don’t know what a gunfighter is, friend,” observed Hulan.

  “Maybe not,” said Lefty guilelessly.

  “It means a gent who lives with his gun day and night and never lets it get more than an inch or so out of his hand. He practices all the time. Tries the draw, tries himself at a mark, and gets ready to use that gun in a fight to kill. And the usual windup is that he gets so blamed skillful that he ends by trying himself out and picking fights till he drops somebody. Then he’s outlawed and goes to the devil.”

  “But I sort of get it that young Lanning ain’t gone to the devil yet.”

  “Son,” said Si Hulan, who now seemed to feel at ease with the stranger, “that boy is rapping at Satan’s door, and he’ll get inside pretty pronto.”

  “Uhn-huh,” said Lefty Gruger.

  “Yesterday he made a little bust,” said Si Hulan. “He’s been here with us a few days, trying to make out that he figures on living real quiet. But yesterday he sort of busted loose. And now we’re sitting around waiting for him to make a play. And the minute he pulls a gun, he’ll be salted down. He’s no good. Once wrong always wrong.”