Comanche Page 7

  In the meantime, they planned to show their power by stamping out Single Jack Deems.

  Perhaps it should have made the young lawyer smile, to think of their being so full of folly as to attack that poisonous fighter, Deems. But David did not smile. He was very, very far from smiling. No matter how formidable Single Jack might be considered in the cities of the East, David was convinced that here, in Yeoville, he was a fish out of water. He looked upon Single Jack with nothing but apprehension, as a burden to his progress, and a helpless weight that must be cared for. So, every morning, when Deems came to report and asked—“What are the orders for today, Apperley?”—David would simply answer: “Just keep yourself out of harm’s way, that’s all.”

  So far, it seemed as though Deems had done it, but perhaps he had overdone that quiet part, and had been so very stealthy that he had given the impression of being a cowardly spy, sneaking about the town. So David locked his office and started out in haste to find his ward.

  He was much, much too late. Indeed, had he known how swiftly events transpired in that town, and with what snake-like speed the hand of big Shodress could strike, he would have mounted his horse and started at a frantic gallop, shouting the name of Deems. Even then he might have been too late.

  For as Shodress went raging up the street from the office of the newly arrived attorney, he saw two men ride by on cow ponies—two men who waved their hands to him in a sort of informal salute. Shodress ran into the street and called them.

  “Hey, Sam and Lew, hey, come here!”

  They reined swiftly to him. They were two sun-thinned fellows, who shaved once a week and that present week was approaching an end.

  Shodress could not have stumbled upon two more likely instruments of his vengeance. Both Sam and Lew were graced with prison records, and though those records were long, they were not so long as they might have been. Twice, at least, the strong hand of Alec Shodress had intervened to rescue them from the grip of the law, and therefore he was a part owner of their very souls.

  “Boys,” he said, “I’m bothered with a little, sneaking rat that’s spying into my affairs here in Yeoville and making life dangerous for all of us. Name of Deems.”

  “We know him.”

  “D’you know any good of him?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Boys, I wish he was dead.”

  “All right, chief, we’ll see that he is.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “We seen him not five minutes ago back at the store.”

  “I hope you make it hard for me to find him. So long.”

  “So long, Alec.”

  They swung their horses around and cantered blithely up the street, and Shodress watched them go with a smile of gratified vanity. It pleased him to the core of his soul to have such winged messengers in his service. Men strong as thunderbolts, willing to fly to the ends of the earth in his service. Strong, keen, edged tools that he knew how to use so that they were not blunted, but ever rendered sharper for his work.

  It did not occur to him that there was something brutal in ordering the murder of a man in this casual manner. It was necessary to strike a sharp blow in the face of Apperley, and the slaughter of this adherent would be enough to drive him out of the town, even though the nerves of an Apperley were apt to be most steady. To have Apperley himself killed—why, that was a different matter, and the sort of a thing that might cause a government investigation, with all of its attending evils. But for the murder of such a cringing fellow as young Deems—that could not be an affair of much importance.

  Shodress went up the street again, his face shining with perspiration and pleasure, and a cigar stuffed into one corner of his fat mouth. After all, he was used to the details of such affairs as this.

  In the meantime, the two brothers, Sam and Lew Tucker, swung down the street at a round gallop. It was long since they had been seriously employed, and, not having been employed, they had begun to feel that they were forgotten. Their funds had been eaten very low. Their spirits had become depressed. But now all was altered. To them, the killing of a man was hardly more than routine labor.

  “You see,” said Sam Tucker, “the old man was just saving us for something important.”

  “You were right.” admitted the other brother. “I thought that the old fathead had plumb forgot us. But I never done nothing that pleased me more than wiping this sneaking coward of a Deems out of the way.”

  “Nor me neither. I never liked his looks. A sneak and a rat. There he is. Lew, you edge up to him and begin it.”

  “Leave that to me.”

  There were several verandahs in the town of Yeoville, but none in more demand than the long stretch of shadow that ran up and down past the front windows of the general merchandise store. That was owned by Shodress, just as everything that was really worthwhile in Yeoville was owned by the same gentleman. There could hardly have been a better place to meet and idle. For, whereas, on the hotel verandah important matters and people often got together, still in front of the store something was constantly happening. People came in for supplies, and, as they went out again, they lingered for a while in the shade to hear the latest news—not cold news read out of a paper, but rich and spicy news, flavored by all the tongues over which it had passed. News that could be heard and re-heard. News that, in the second or third telling, could be reinforced a little by one’s own repeating. Each arrival from a different part of the range was sure to carry his own bit of treasure to the general feast of knowledge.

  For other reasons, the front of the store was a favored place for congregation. On that deep and wide verandah, one could turn one’s head and grace the eye with the prospect of good saddles, richly carved, and giving forth the fragrance of tanned leather, and there were chaps of all kinds, boots decorated with graceful, spoon-handled spurs, sombreros and felt hats, guns, fishing rods, cutlery, hardware such as gladdens the heart of the camper, and clothes worthy of any man’s wearing. From the interior deeps of the store, moreover, one could enjoy the smell of roasted coffee, richest of perfumes, and the mingled spicery of dried apples, sides of bacon, and a hundred other necessaries that were luxuries, also, on a range where pork and beans made up so great a portion of the regular ration of every cowpuncher.

  It was in a corner of this porch that Single Jack now sat, between a great pair of saddles.

  “Look at the sneak,” said Lew with a virtuous wrath. “Where he can hear everything, and where he ain’t going to be noticed much. Why it’s a real pleasure to have to finish him off.”

  “I’ll do the job myself, without no help from you,” said Sam.

  “And get the price from the old man, all by yourself, too? No, I’ll just take a little hand at the deal, old-timer, and split the reward with you.”

  They journeyed up the verandah, leaving their horses by the watering trough. They lingered along the way, speaking here and there to an acquaintance—because friends the Tuckers had none—and so they came at last in the vicinity of the chair in which Single Jack Deems was sitting, with his hands clasped in his lap—what long and slender fingers—and with his head tilted back a little, and a faint smile in his eyes and on his lips, as though he were brooding over distant things too terrible, or too trivial, to take the attention of other men.

  Lew Tucker began it. He made a blundering step and stumbled straight over the big dog that lay at the feet of Deems.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Now the side rip of the white fangs of Comanche cut just as deeply as a heavy Bowie knife, wielded by the hand of an expert, and the movement of his head was just as inescapable as the dart of a snake when it strikes without warning. So that one of the brothers Tucker was apt to be put out of action before the battle began had it not been that there was something else present that was just a shade faster than the lightning snap of the wolf dog. It was the hand of Single Jack.

  It darted out and checked the danger. There was only a formidable clash of teeth as Lew T
ucker stumbled past, but that sound made him whirl about in real apprehension. He marked the snarl on the lips of the great brute, and he saw the green fire in his eyes, and the hand that was wound into his mane, restraining him.

  “Curses on you and your dog!” exclaimed Tucker. “Why are you always in the way?”

  Deems was never in a hurry in his speech. Usually he spoke just loud enough for people to hear, by straining their ears a little. You would have said that there was something wrong with the organs of his throat, that he was not able to raise a sufficient volume of sound. But on the other hand, he enunciated with such peculiar distinctness that even his whisper would carry a surprising distance. But like everything else about him, his voice was oddly relaxed. When he lifted his hand, it was as though a weight were attached to it, and, when he raised his eyes, it was as though he were rousing himself from sleep.

  He said in his very gentle way: “I have been sitting here because I was sure that I would be in no one’s way.”

  “You were sure, were you?” snarled Lew Tucker. “You were sure that you could set around and spy on everybody else in the town, hiding in the dark corners, like this. Do you think that the rest of us are fools?”

  “Oh, no,” said Single Jack gently. “I didn’t think that, of course.”

  “By Jupiter,” cried Lew Tucker, “you admit that you have been spying here!”

  Now the noise of the raised voice of Tucker had rung up and down the verandah, and there was a sudden murmur of assent and sympathy.

  “That sneak of a tenderfoot is going to get his.”

  No one liked Deems in this new part of the world. His strange, dark, watchful eyes troubled them, and the odd silence of his step disturbed them, for they would find him among them without knowing exactly how he had approached them. Now they were very glad, when they felt that punishment was about to descend upon the head of Deems. Not that they had anything concrete against him, but we always hate most that which is least known to us—unless we have picked it out for worship. Strange people are ridiculous and disgusting; so are strange gods. And never had the blunt and free-swinging West seen a man less like itself than was Single Jack Deems.

  The two brothers could see at a glance that they had the matter entirely in their own hands. There would not be the slightest interruption from this obliging crowd. They would stand by and see summary execution done upon the stranger without so much as lifting a hand in his defense, and therefore Sam Tucker roared: “I’m going to have it out of him with my own hands! I’m going to tear it out of him. I’m going to make him tell me who it was that hired him to do his dirty work in Yeoville.”

  He reached out a strong right hand and fastened his grip upon the neck of Deems. I mean to say that he reached out, intending to fasten his grip upon the neck of Single Jack, but somehow he missed, as Deems glided from his chair and said mildly: “I hope that there will be no trouble, sir. I don’t want to make any trouble for anybody.”

  “It ain’t a trouble. It’s a pleasure,” snarled Lew Tucker, closing in from the other side.

  There was a sudden, throat-rending snarl from the wolf dog that plainly apprehended what these maneuvers on the part of the two men might mean. He rose, bristling, his reddened eyes turning up to his master for the slightest signal.

  “Kill the brute!” cried Lew Tucker, springing back from the danger. “Shoot that wolf dog. It’ll have its teeth in one or both of us in another minute!”

  “I’ll finish it,” said Sam Tucker, and laid his hand upon the butt of his Colt.

  But now we must go slowly, because we have arrived at the moment when Deems first dawned like a new star upon the mind and the heart of the free West. It must be noted that here was Deems with his back against the wall, and the wolf dog crowded against his legs, and twenty pairs of eyes not far away to note everything that he did, or tried to do. Every man in the crowd waited confidently, knowing that both of the Tuckers were tried and proved gunmen, who lived by their craft, and whose weapons—Colts and rifles—were in their hands for practice every day of their lives.

  They heard young Deems saying in his gentle voice: “Please don’t hurt my dog.”

  “Please don’t hurt his dog! The rat won’t even fight for his dog. D’you see that?”

  Then came the roar of Sam Tucker: “Get back from that wolf, or I’ll miss him, maybe, and sink a shot in you!”

  “Please don’t shoot,” said Deems. “Please don’t shoot. Won’t some of you other men give me a little help to keep them from murdering my dog?”

  He looked vaguely around him at the semicircle of faces of the spectators who were observing all of these actions. But there was a brutal content in every eye. Not a one but was pleased to witness this little sample of harshness. Justice, they called it. It had the making of a story that would be worth repeating.

  “Stand back, you fool!” shouted Sam Tucker. “I warn you for the last time!” His fingers tightened on the butt of his Colt.

  “I’ve asked you fellows to help me.” Single Jack sighed. “But you don’t seem to want to.”

  A roar of brutal laughter answered that almost feminine appeal.

  “And so,” they heard the soft voice of Single Jack continue, “I’m afraid that I shall have to shoot them both. But you be my witnesses that I have tried to avoid all trouble.”

  They gaped at him in a sort of horror. There was no sign of any gun carried by this stranger. Could it be that the poor fellow was a half-wit? No, his face seemed intelligent enough. If one looked a little more closely at it, one could see that it had lost a bit of its usual pallor, and there was almost a smile upon the lips, and in the dark, dead eyes a spark had at last been blown up.

  So he meant what he said.

  “Look out, Lew!” called Sam Tucker in mockery. “You’ll be getting yourself killed in a minute. This here rat is going to show his teeth. All right. Here goes the dog . . . you watch the man.”

  He snatched out his Colt to fan it from the hip, intending to send a liberal spray of lead in the direction of his opponents—the first bullet at the dog, and then if his next shots flew a little wild, flew heart-high, say, and reached the man, why who could really blame him? And would it not appear in any court before which he might appear, that he had merely defended himself when attacked by a wild brute of a wolf dog? And that an accidental shot that he greatly regretted . . .

  So flew the thoughts of Sam Tucker, a little faster than his gun, but not much. But just as his thumb pressed the hammer of his gun, a miracle happened.

  For Deems had made a sudden gesture toward the left armpit of his coat, and, when his right hand came away, there was a gleam of steel, something to be guessed at, rather than seen, until it blossomed into a flash of fire, a spout of smoke, and the plainly heard impact of a large caliber bullet as it struck the body of Sam Tucker and knocked him down.

  Lew Tucker had not waited to see more than the first flash of steel in the hand of the stranger before he himself made his draw, and he was admittedly a better and a faster fighter than his brother, and yet Lew Tucker did not seem to be moving rapidly. It seemed that he was reaching most leisurely for his weapon. It seemed that he was drawing and holding it at the hip with the deliberation of a madman. Or was it only because the hand of Deems was no longer moving as though weighted, but traveling with electric surety and speed?

  As the Colt came to the level at the hip of Lew Tucker, a second shot from the gun in the hand of Deems struck Lew on the left thigh and ripped its way through both his legs, so that he pitched forward upon his face and discharged his weapon into the boards of the verandah floor as he fell.

  Then over the two writhing, groaning, stricken men leaned Single Jack, saying in a voice of pleading eagerness: “I hope that you gentlemen will all be witnesses for me, that I didn’t want to do it. And you’ll agree with me that I didn’t hunt for the trouble. And won’t you please notice, also, that I haven’t killed either of them? The first one is just through the center of
the right shoulder, so that he wouldn’t have the use of his gun hand, you see, and the second one through the upper legs, just in front of the thigh bones . . . I do hope that the bones were not broken.”

  He fell to work with a singular dexterity, using a knife to open the clothes above the wounds of the two fallen men, and examining their hurts.

  The doctor came at that moment, and Single Jack said to him gently: “There’s no need for you to worry. They’ll both just need a cleansing of the wounds with a good antiseptic. And then a little rest. I’m so sorry that it happened.”

  The doctor did not answer him, because he thought the man was jesting. And no one else answered him, as they saw him retreat, solemnly, from the verandah, with the slinking wolf dog at his heels. They had no breath, indeed, for speech.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Straight down the street went Single Jack Deems and found David coming hastily up toward him.

  “I thought I heard guns. Was someone practicing?” asked David.

  Deems seemed very much perturbed, and he answered gravely that he trusted that he had not made any undue trouble for David Apperley.

  “Trouble? Trouble?” asked David. “What do you mean?”

  “Two of them backed me into a corner,” said Deems, “and they were going to shoot Comanche. I had to do something.”

  “And you ran away, I suppose?” suggested David. Which shows how far Single Jack had fallen in the esteem of the young lawyer.

  “I came away as soon as I could,” said Single Jack seriously. “But before I could leave, I had to shoot them both.” He added, while David stared: “Not fatally. But just one through the shoulder and the other through the legs. It was that or have bullets in Comanche and me.” He remained looking earnestly into the face of David, and then said: “You’ll tell your brother that I didn’t hunt for the trouble?”