Paradise Bend Part 51

"Who was he?" queried Loudon, blankly.

"A great man, a very great man. He's dead at present."

"He would be. Fellah never is appreciated till he shuffles off."

"We live in an unappreciative world, Mr. Franklin. I know. I ought to. A judge is never appreciated, that is, not pleasantly. Why, last year I sentenced Tom Durry for beating his wife, and Mrs. Tom endeavoured to shoot me the day after Tom was sent away. The mental processes of a woman are incomprehensible. Have another c.o.c.ktail?"

"No more, thanks, Judge. I've had a-plenty. Them c.o.c.ktail jiggers ain't strong or nothin'. Oh, no! Two or three more of 'em an' I'd go right out an' push the house over. I'm feelin' fine now. Don't want to feel a bit better. Ever go huntin', Judge?"

"No, I don't. I used to. Why?"

"I was just a-wonderin'. Yuh see, me an' my friend are thinkin' o'

prospectin' the Fryin' Pans, an' we was a-wonderin' how the game was.

Don't want to pack much grub if we can help it."

"The Frying Pans! Why, Bill Archer has a claim there. Never gets anything out of it, though. Works it hard enough, too, or he used to at any rate. Odd. About three weeks ago he told me he was riding out to give it another whirl. Last week, Tuesday, to be exact, I was riding about twenty miles south of here and I met Bill Archer riding north. He seemed quite surprised to meet me. I guess he doesn't work that claim as much as he says."

"That's the way we come north--through that country east of the Blossom trail."

"Oh, I was west of the Blossom trail--fully ten miles west. What?

Going already? Why, I haven't had time to ask you about that extraordinary case of ringbone you ran across in Texas. Wait. I'll get a book. I want to show you something."

It was fully an hour before Loudon could tear himself away from Judge Allison. As he crossed the street, a buckboard drawn by two sweating, dust-caked ponies rattled past him and stopped in front of the Judge's office. The driver was a woman swathed in a shapeless duster, her face hidden by a heavy veil, and a wide-brimmed Stetson tied sunbonnet-fas.h.i.+on over her ears. At first glance she was not attractive, and Loudon, absorbed in his own affairs, did not look twice.

"Find out anythin'?" inquired Laguerre, when Loudon met him at the hotel corral.

"I found out that when Archer came back from that claim in the Fryin'

Pans he come from the direction o' the railroad. The Judge met him twenty mile south an' ten mile west o' the trail to Blossom. Blossom is almost due south o' here. The next station west is Damson. We'll go to Damson first. C'mon an' eat."

The long table in the dining room was almost deserted. At one end sat Archer and a lanky person in chaps. Loudon caught the lanky gentleman casting sidelong glances in his direction. Archer did not look up from his plate. It was the first meal at which they had met either the dance-hall keeper or his tall friend.

"I wonder," mused Loudon. "I wonder."

After dinner Loudon inquired of the bartender whether it was Archer's custom to eat at the hotel.

"First time he ever ate here to my knowledge," said the bartender.

"He's got a home an' a Injun woman to cook."

"It's the little tumble-weeds show how the wind blows," thought Loudon to himself, and sat down in a corner of the barroom and pondered deeply.

A few minutes later he removed his cartridge-belt, hung it on the back of his chair, and composed himself ostensibly to doze. His three-quarter shut eyes, however, missed nothing that went on in the barroom.

Archer and his lanky friend entered and draped themselves over the bar.

Loudon, after a brief s.p.a.ce of time, arose, stretched, and yawningly stumbled upstairs. He lay down on his cot and smoked one cigarette after another, his eyes on the ceiling.

Laguerre wandered in, and Loudon uttered cogent sentences in a whisper.

Laguerre grinned delightedly. His perverted sense of humour was aroused. Loudon did not smile. What he believed to be impending gave him no pleasure.

"Guess I'll go down," announced Loudon, when an hour had elapsed. "No sense in delayin' too long."

"No," said Laguerre, "no sense een dat."

He followed his friend downstairs.

"Seems to me I took it off in here," Loudon flung back over his shoulder, as though in response to a question. "Sh.o.r.e, there it is."

He walked across the barroom to where his cartridge-belt and six-shooter hung on the back of a chair. He buckled on the belt, Archer and his lanky friend watching him the while.

"How about a little game, gents?" suggested Archer.

In a flash Loudon saw again the barroom of the Happy Heart and the Sheriff of Sunset County surrounded by Block's friends. The wolf-faced man had employed almost those very words. Loudon smiled cheerfully.

"Why, sh.o.r.e," he said, "I'm with yuh. I left my coin upstairs. I'll be right down."

He hurried up to his room, closed the door, and set his back against it. Drawing his six-shooter he flipped out the cylinder. No circle of bra.s.s heads and copper primers met his eye. His weapon had been unloaded.

"Fell plumb into it," he muttered without exultation. "The ---- murderers!"

He tried the action. Nothing wrong there. Only the cartridges had been juggled. He reloaded hastily from a fresh box of cartridges. He would not trust those in his belt. Heaven only knew how far ahead the gentleman who tampered with his gun had looked.

When Loudon returned to the barroom, Laguerre and the other two men were sitting at a battered little table. The vacant chair was opposite Archer's lanky friend, and the man sitting in that chair would have his back to the door.

"I don't like to sit with my back to the door," stated Loudon.

"Some don't," said the lanky man, shuffling the cards.

"Meanin'?" Loudon c.o.c.ked an inquisitive eyebrow.

"Oh, nothin'."

"Sh.o.r.e?"

"Positive, stranger, positive."

"That's good. Change seats, will yuh?"

The lanky citizen hesitated. Loudon remained standing, his gray eyes cold and hard. Then slowly the other man arose, circled the table, and sat down. Loudon slid into the vacated chair.

The lanky man dealt. Loudon watched the deft fingers--fingers too deft for the excessively crude exhibition of cheating that occurred almost instantly. To Archer the dealer dealt from the bottom of the pack, and did it clumsily. Hardly the veriest tyro would have so openly bungled the performance. For all that, however, it was done so that Loudon, and not Laguerre, saw the action.

"Where I come from," observed Loudon, softly, "we don't deal from the bottom of the pack."

"Do you say I'm a-dealin' from the bottom of the pack?" loudly demanded the lanky man.

"Just that," replied Loudon, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his vest.

"Yo're a liar!" roared the lanky one, and reached for his gun.