Comanche Page 8

  “Yes,” said David, “I’ll tell him that.”

  But he could not find any word of comment. He chiefly wondered, now that he had time to think of it, that the town should have remained so quiet, immediately following a double shooting. He could see, now, that he had most arrogantly and stupidly misjudged this slayer of men.

  The dark-eyed, slender youth continued: “You’ll be leaving town, now, I suppose, Apperley?”

  “Leaving town? Why?”

  “Because now it’ll be war to the finish. They’ll never stop until they’ve had a chance to sink some bullets into me . . . and you. And they’re more apt to have a chance to shoot you than to shoot me.”

  “Leave town? Let myself be bluffed out just after I’ve opened my office? I’m not a coward, Deems. I hope to prove that I’m not a coward. No, I’m going to stay here and prosecute the case against Whaley.”

  It seemed to young David Apperley that his companion had a hundred words hanging upon the tip of his tongue, but he crowded them all back as though seeing that they would be of no use. And, in fact, if there had been an attempt to persuade David to leave Yeoville, it would have been totally futile.

  David went on through the town to get to the little courthouse and open the proceedings against Whaley formally. And before he had finished, he had fresh business on his hands, for the men of his brother, combing the range carefully to fill the hands of the lawyer in Yeoville, had found another rustler caught red-handed in the act. They carried him to the town among the hills. It was Steve Grange, still in his teens, lean and strong as a young lion, with a bandage tied around his head. A glancing shot had knocked him out of his saddle. Otherwise, everyone said, he would never have been taken alive.

  David Apperley saw the new prisoner and rubbed his hands. Then, going down the street, he encountered Charley Johnson and Les Briggs.

  “I’m going to make cattle rustling the most unpopular sport on this range,” he said.

  “Go to it,” they responded. “We’re behind you. Though I don’t suppose we count much, now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Now that you got a gent like that Deems around you. You’ve kept him under cover pretty well, though, we got to admit.”

  “He seems to have made a great impression even on the ruffians in this town,” said David, who was not quite sure.

  Les Briggs turned his quid of chewing tobacco in his mouth and then spat accurately at a nearby stump of a tree. “I talked to old Porky Smith. Porky has seen pretty near everything in the way of fighting that is worth seeing, and he says that there was never nothing like it. Not for speed and for accuracy and for style, y’understand? You could imagine a gent with speed and luck, and everything, able to drop even two gunfighters like the Tucker boys. But you couldn’t imagine placing the shots, and being able to call them, both before and afterward. You got something valuable in Deems. Do they call him Single Jack because he just uses one gun at a time?”

  To these remarks David could not return any answer, but that night he had occasion to write to his brother.

  Single Jack has been cornered by two of the bullies of Shodress, who is trying to drive us out of town. I think that he wanted to kill Deems, so that the example would frighten me away from Yeoville. But Deems shot down both the would-be assassins, and, in so doing, it seems that he has stunned even a place as rough as this Yeoville. The people look upon him as a prodigy. They have no word or way for explaining his speed and his skill. In this single fracas, he has made Single Jack a byword.

  The fellow is not the least changed. He goes about as softly, and as much like a cat as ever. But I have changed my mind about him. It seems, Andy, that he’s quite devoted to me. At least, now that the shooting has brought a good deal of active peril about the heads of both of us, Single Jack is never far from me. If I walk down the street, I can be sure that he is an unobtrusive shadow, lingering behind me. A dozen times I have seen these gunfighters finger their guns greedily as I go by. But they dare not draw, because they know that Single Jack is near me. So that the man you sent to have me save, Andy, is really saving me ten times a day. I have no doubt that Shodress has placed a very high price upon my head. His men are anxious to claim the reward, but at the same time they don’t want to walk into the very intelligent gun of Mr. Deems—and I don’t blame them. In the cool of every morning, for one hour, Single Jack does his practicing in the back yard behind my office, and I’ve sneaked out and watched him at his work twice. It isn’t like marksmanship. It’s like an uncanny willpower at work. As though he were simply wishing things to happen—and they occur. I can’t tell you things that he does in much detail. He always works in the dimness of the dawn, as though he wants to test his skill to the utmost by giving himself difficult light. But I can give you a sample of the things he accomplishes. I have seen him throw small pebbles into the air with one hand and shoot them to pieces as they fly. And he has a little game of jack-stones, as you might call it. He takes a rubber ball in his left hand and starts it bouncing. On the ground before him lies a set of six small stones, and a Colt. He bounces the ball. While it is in the air and on the recoil, he snatches up a pebble and flicks it into the air and flips up the revolver’s muzzle and fires. By this time the ball has struck the earth again, and it seems that he must have finished the tossing of the pebble and the shooting as the ball recoils the second time, or else it is a point against him. If all goes well, he continues this queer game, bouncing the ball, from hand to hand, and firing with alternate hands, until he has struck the six pebbles with the six bullets. You can see that this is a fiendishly difficult task. I have only seen him work out the whole affair twice, I think. Usually something goes wrong. He fails to catch the ball, or else he misses one of the pebbles. And instead of being elated by the wonderful skill that he shows, he always appears downcast. But having seen what his practice is like, I tell you, Andy, that I would freely back him against any three men in a stand-up gunfight. He is extremely modest, and never refers to what he has done in the past or what he expects to do in the future. I have repeatedly begged him to do some target shooting that I could watch in open daylight, but he always finds some excuse.

  I have just had a singular example of his devotion. I had to leave my room, where I had been sitting up, writing this letter quite late at night, and, as I opened the door, I saw a shadow stretched across the hall. The green-eyed devil, Comanche, stood up and glared at me, and there was his master just sitting up and throwing off the blanket that had covered him. He told me it had been too hot to sleep in a stuffy bedroom on a bed. I said nothing, but I understood. He was guarding me through the middle of the night by lying across the hall in front of my door, his devil dog beside him.

  This touches me a great deal, and I think it will touch you more, because from the first you saw something in this fellow, and I was so stupid as to think him a thoroughly bad case.

  He has overwhelmed the whole town and all of its ruffians with his bravery and his peculiar gently, unassuming, but thoroughly terrible manner. There is a sort of inhuman, feline dreadfulness about his step, his eyes, and his soft, drawling, purring voice.

  In the meantime, the case gets on against Whaley. I have the jury selected, and I don’t think, though most of them are confessed Shodress men, that they can possibly turn in any but a verdict of guilty. The case is as plain as can be, and I intend to drive it home as hard as I can.

  At the same time, I am working matters up against young Steve Grange. He is younger than Whaley, but I think that he is infinitely the more important prize. The people in this town appear to respect him as though he were a much older and wiser man. He is an absolute daredevil. His record is a very wild one, and I think that I shall be able to lodge him in the penitentiary for a number of years.

  You will see that there is plenty of excitement up here. I like it. Without young Single Jack, I could not live for a single hour, I presume. With him, I think that I can get through any difficulty.

  So
wrote David Apperley in the small hours of the morning, and then went to the window to watch the waning of the stars. He was very contented with himself and with all that had passed in the last few days. He was beginning to lead a real life.

  Of course he had no prescience that enabled him to see that he was momentarily rushing into more and more terrible dangers. He was building up a fatal self-confidence. Well would it have been for him if he had scrupulously trusted to the guardianship of Single Jack. But his self-confidence was his undoing—that and a girl.

  Chapter Fifteen

  She was the lovely, red-haired sister of Steve Grange.

  But before we go back to her, we have to push ahead with other events, though they seem of no importance compared with Hester Grange.

  She would never have been called into the affair, perhaps, had it not been for the fine work that David performed against Whaley. That gentleman was defended by a capable lawyer hired by the money of Shodress. And Alec Shodress and his cigars were always in the courtroom, giving countenance to the defendant, and scowling bitterly at the prosecuting attorney. But even such influence could not absolutely down the facts in the case. Those facts were attested by competent eyewitnesses, and the final speech of David was really a little masterpiece, as he sketched in the evils of cattle rustling, and the future desolation of the range if the practice continued, pointing out that already even great owners of many herds of thousands could barely stand the yearly losses, whereas the small owners were wiped out root and branch by a single raid.

  At any rate, the verdict was guilty and the judge, scowling at the floor, gave the minimum sentence of three years. He was a perfectly good Shodress man, that judge, and he had made his final summing up as partial as any summing up could be. But he had to pronounce the sentence, and Whaley was packed away to serve a three-years’ sentence.

  It was the first great victory for young David. He had worked for it like a beaver and a hero, and he smiled with a calm triumph that promised more trouble for evil-doers in that part of the world.

  It was not the rule for that court to turn in convictions. It was distinctly not the rule. It appeared that even fellows as corrupt as those jurors had a certain honor, and they were heard to say with many oaths, as they left the courtroom: “Facts is facts, and they got to be listened to. What is the world coming to, otherwise?”

  What, indeed?

  Shodress, sitting by the window, allowed the cigar to droop down from his soft-lipped, pursy mouth, while his fat face sagged, and a grayness overspread it. He was seeing signs of the coming of the end. His empire of graft and treachery and crookedness, supported by brutality and money, was threatened with its end and he turned blazing eyes toward the young lawyer who was striking so valiantly for the right.

  Other eyes marked that glance, and they understood it. Twenty guns were ready, but, in the shadows of a corner, behind the lawyer, there was always seated a slender, boyish figure who watched all that happened with singular, dark, lackluster, feline eyes. And as they looked at Single Jack, and at his slender, bony hands, always moving slowly, as though bearing a weight of drowsiness, their own guns were forgotten, and they looked suddenly down to the floor again.

  So the crowd left the courtroom, and in the ears of many the words of Whaley were ringing, the words that he had uttered when the judge asked him if he had anything to say before sentence was pronounced.

  “I got this to say. There’s some think that money will buy anything. But what’s the price of living behind bars?”

  He had turned and glared openly at Shodress.

  Yes, it might be the beginning of the end. Everyone felt it. They had felt that Shodress was a sort of invincible archangel—an archangel of darkness, if you will, but a superhuman power, at the least. And now that power seemed to be failing. He had lost his first case. How many other cases would follow? It seemed a prophecy of the end of a great reign, and men looked soberly, one to the other, wondering what would happen next.

  All of this is directly important not so much because it shows the ability mingled with courage that David Apperley had exhibited, or because it was the first trenchant blow delivered at the great Shodress, or because it sent a rascal to the penitentiary for three years, but really because it had a vital bearing upon the next case that was coming up.

  That was the case of Steve Grange. If Whaley was manifestly guilty, was not Steve doubly so? And if the lawyer had spoken eloquently in the case of Whaley, what would he do about the man who had resisted arrest, gun in hand, until a chance bullet happened to knock him off his horse? And what light would he throw upon the wild career of this youth?

  No, Steve Grange was undoubtedly doomed before the trial, and there was all likelihood that the sentence would be nearer the maximum than the minimum, because there were open rumors of a breach between the judge and Shodress. The judge had said that his conscience had already been passed through enough fire. He was beginning to want to breathe a fresher air.

  All of this portended much. Men walked scowling through the streets of Yeoville, uncertain what to do next.

  Then the Grange-Shodress forces struck an unexpected blow, in the following manner.

  Other business than that of the rustlers was beginning to flow into the hands of David. Men saw ability in him, and ability is always used in the West. There were men on the range about Yeoville who were, in fact, only waiting for some vital sign that law was in force before they rallied against Shodress. These men had grievances of many kinds that they wanted to have represented in the court, and they rallied to David with much enthusiasm. So work flowed steadily into his hands, and he began to go down to his office early in the mornings.

  So it happened that, on this morning, he had barely opened his office and taken his place behind his desk, when he was called upon by what seemed to him the loveliest woman in the entire world. She was dressed most unpretentiously, like any girl from the range, but she was one who needed no adornment. When she stood before David, he found himself setting his teeth to keep his heart from fluttering, and, all the time that she was talking, the beauty of the coiled masses of that red hair, and the wonderful blue of her eyes unsettled poor David and made him much at outs with himself.

  She said: “I am the sister of Stephen Grange. Will you let me talk to you about him?”

  “Of course,” said David. He looked at her with a sinking heart. She was the sister of Steve Grange.

  But heaven alone could tell wherein the relationship appeared. For Steve was like a young lion, and this girl with her alluring, rather crooked smile, and the dimple that appeared and disappeared in one cheek was a delicate creature. Besides, Steve Grange was a youth of an iron nerve, and this girl was very badly frightened. See where her soft hands were clasped together, how the flesh whitened with the pressure as she strove to keep up her courage.

  Only one thing reminded David of Steve. Steve always looked one directly in the eye with an unwavering glance, and so did this girl. Her eyes clung to his, but not with challenge or force—with a sort of clinging, pathetic, frightened appeal.

  The pulse rate of David mounted by tens at a time.

  “I want you to say whatever you wish,” he told her. “Will you sit down here?”

  “Perhaps I had better not sit down. I know you are very busy. I only want to take one minute of your time. I only want to beg you to have mercy on poor Steve, because . . .” Tears flooded into her eyes. Still she did not look down to the floor, but studied him, as though she feared lest at any moment a flash of pity might appear in his eyes and she remain in ignorance of it.

  “My dear Miss Grange,” he said, “suppose that we look at it in this manner . . . that I am committed by my honor to work in the cause of justice . . .”

  Her lips trembled, but she did not speak, she only waited. He felt that he was striking a helpless creature, and the flesh of David crawled with horror and strong self-contempt.

  “And then again, suppose you admit that Steve is a misgu
ided fellow. Will you admit that?” he asked her.

  “We know that poor, dear Steve has done wrong . . . very great wrong. There isn’t any excuse.”

  “Very well, with a strong nature like Steve’s, the best cure is a strong hand, usually. He’s offended the law. Let him learn that no matter how strong he may be, the law is a great deal stronger. That lesson of respect may make the rest of his life a useful one, and while the years in prison may seem long to one who looks forward to them, they are sure to appear short, when he looks back.”

  She caught her breath. She said faintly: “Then I cannot do anything at all?” She drew back toward the door, but still with those tearful eyes fixed upon him.

  The very heart of David was smitten within him, and he hurried across to her and took her hands in his. A fatal error, David, to touch those hands, so soft, though not half so soft as they looked. And to come within range of the fragrance that hangs in her hair.

  Ah, foolish, foolish David. It mounts through your brain faster than incense ever wafted from this earth of sorrow to the blessed abodes of the gods.

  “What can I do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know,” she said, and, although she stood so close, her glance never once wavered from his; he could see the open, tear-brightened blueness of her eyes, so like the eyes of a child. “Only, it’s my fault, you see,” she added.

  “Come, come. Your fault?”

  “When Father died, he left Steve to Mother, and when Mother died, she left him to me, because we all knew that he needed to be taken care of. If I’d made the home brighter and happier, then he wouldn’t have been tempted to go out hunting such terrible adventures . . .”

  “But why in the name of heaven should he have been left in your care?”

  “Of course that was right, because I’m his older sister, you know. Oh, there was nothing else for Mother to do.”

  Older sister? Older baby.

  “I’ll tell you this,” said David. “I’ll . . . I’ll see what I can do . . . and let you know . . . er . . .”