Lightnin Part 16

Mrs. Jones shook him from her and went to the other desk, where she stood facing him, her face red and swollen from her tears. "Oh!" she wrung her hands as she looked at him with blazing eyes. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself with the gentlemen here to buy the place and you around the office drinking liquor."

"No, I ain't." Bill answered her outburst mildly, backing away from her lest she should discover the flask in his back pocket.

He was too late. Her eye, accustomed to just such investigations, had detected the lines of the flask as it protruded from his back pocket.

Taking hold of him, she put her hand in his pocket and produced the flask, holding it, half empty, to the light.

"That belongs to Mr. Harper," was Bill's ready excuse, given in the monotone which invariably masked a world of guilt. Seeing the doubt in his wife's eye, he added, "You can go up-stairs and ask him, if you don't believe it."

Mrs. Jones did not reply to his last remark. Instead of which she went back to the California desk, where she set down the flask, taking up the deed and holding it out to him. "Now, Bill," she said, in a coaxing voice, "I want you to put your name to this paper." She smiled kindly upon him for the first time in many hours.

Bill wavered before her smile. It was difficult for him to withstand it, especially as he knew how sorely he had tried her. But a promise was a promise with Bill, and his one pride was that he had kept intact through all the years of his digressions this one principle--he never broke his word. He had told Marvin he would not sign the deed without consulting him further, so he turned his eyes from his wife's face and answered, in a low voice, "I can't, mother."

"What's the reason you can't?" Mrs. Jones planted herself in front of him, determined that he should not evade her this time.

"Because I promised my lawyer I wouldn't," he answered, his head turned away from her.

Mrs. Jones took him by the arm and swung him into line with her gaze.

"Now see here, Bill," she snapped, "I've been working my fingers to the bone and I'm ent.i.tled to a rest and you sha'n't stop my having it. Mr.

Thomas is going to take Millie and me to the city to live. If you sign that you can come with us. If you don't you've got to look out for yourself for a while."

Bill had not paid much heed to Hammond's threat delivered a few minutes back. But now something in his wife's tone brought it, recurrent, to his mind. He wondered if, after all, there was some truth behind it.

Pausing to gather his points together, Bill nodded toward the stairs.

"Mother, that fellow, Hammond, said he'd throw me out. Do you want me to get out? Is that what you mean?"

It was not what Mrs. Jones had meant at all. But the events of the day had strained her nerves to breaking-point. Since daylight Thomas and Hammond had been after her to force Bill to do as she wished him to. To their suggestions that she teach him a lesson by leaving him for a while she had turned a deaf ear. But now they came surging back and, in answer to her call for a method of persuasion, clamored for recognition. Before she had time to stifle them they had their way. "I mean just that, Bill." There was silence as she thrust the words from her mouth. Bill stood still, gazing steadily at her.

She lowered her lids.

Then he came closer and looked up under her eyes, in the hope that he would find a relenting gleam there. But she turned away from him.

"All right, mother--I'll go."

Without another word he turned and walked toward the door. Mrs. Jones took a quick step forward, then paused. "Where'll you go?" she asked, half in surprise, half in defiance, for she had not believed that he would accept her challenge.

"Oh, 'most anywhere," he said, gaily, forcing a whistle, though his lips quivered. "I'll be all right, mother."

His wife stepped forward again, extending a staying hand, but her resentment had her in its grip. Her hand fell back to her side.

"Well," she called out to him as suddenly she turned from him and hurried up the stairs, "I mean every word I've said! It's one thing or the other! Either you make up your mind to sign this," and she tapped the paper in her hand, "or I'm through with you!" Without a backward glance--fearing, perhaps, that she might weaken--she disappeared along the upper hallway.

Bill took his hand from the door and came slowly back into the room. He strolled to the California desk, pushed back his old hat, and stood there with his hands in his pockets, thoughtfully. Of a sudden his absent eyes lighted on the flask resting on the desk, where Mrs. Jones had put it down. Bill stroked his stubbled chin and gazed at the flask.

It seemed to suggest an idea to him. Satisfying himself that there was no one around at the moment, he strolled to the door, poked his head out, and gave a peculiar whistle; then he walked back to the desk and leaned against it, waiting.

In a few minutes Zeb's unkempt visage silently framed itself in the softly opened door. Lightnin' jerked his head as a sign to enter.

Stealthily, with many a wary glance to right and left, his disreputable partner of the past eased himself across the lobby and stood before Bill, childlike, trustful inquiry in his eyes.

"What's the idee, Lightnin'?" he rumbled, puffing at the frayed remains of a cigar.

With a gesture of calm triumph Bill pointed to the flask on the desk.

"I said I had it, Zeb," he remarked, in the tone one uses when confronting and confounding a skeptic with ocular proof, "an' there it is!"

"Why, so it be!" said Zeb, reaching out for the prize.

But Lightnin' stopped him. "Hold on a minute, partner. The evidence ain't to be absorbed just yet. In fact, brother, we better keep it intact for future use, 'cause you're goin' on a long journey, Zeb. You an' me is goin' to hit the trail again, old-timer!"

"Gos.h.!.+ You mean it, Lightnin'?" Zeb showed almost human delight and antic.i.p.ation. "But for why? You had a row with your old woman?"

"Nope," Bill replied. "Can't call it that, exactly. You needn't worry them brains o' yours about why we're goin', Zeb. It's just that I got a notion to teach some people 'round here a lesson, an'--an' maybe I can bring poor mother to her senses," he added, gently.

"When we goin'?" Zeb questioned, his eyes on the flask.

"Right away--this here minute, in fact," said Bill.

Zeb looked at him dazedly. "Just as we is? Where 're we hittin' fer?"

"I ain't telling that just yet," said Bill, slowly. "Where we are goin'

is a secret."

"Oh," Zeb answered, with a nod of wisdom. "I--see. You ain't tellin' 'em you be goin'--not even your old woman, eh?"

"Them brains o' yours is pickin' up a bit, ain't they, Zeb?" Bill commented, with encouraging approval. "Well, you hit it, all right!

Nope, we ain't tellin' n.o.body. We're goin' to kinder disappear completely for a pretty good s.p.a.ce. Mother ain't to be able to locate me a-tall. There's some others as 'll likely find out, but I ain't worryin'

about them--they want to get rid o' me, an' they ain't likely to exhaust themselves any tryin' to find me. I got a object, Zeb. It ain't none o'

your business what that object is--by which I merely mean to say, old-timer, that you wouldn't have no particular interest in it. Come on--let's get out now, afore they begins to gather 'round me again!"

Picking up the flask and sliding it into his coat pocket, Lightnin'

walked away toward the door. Nodding wisely, Zeb followed, eyes hopefully on the pleasant bulge in his old partner's coat.

CHAPTER XII

"Well!" Millie, appearing with a tray of late supper to take up-stairs to one of the guests' rooms along about ten o'clock that evening, almost ran into Marvin, who had returned to the hotel in the hope of seeing Bill and giving him the full reason for his not being a party to the sale of the place. The lights in the lobby were turned low and he had managed to evade the sheriff, who was sitting in his buck-board outside, waiting for Lemuel Townsend, who was to return to Reno with him.

Millie's exclamation, because of her surprise in seeing Marvin again, escaped her in pleasant tones, but her memory a.s.serted itself and the smile rapidly faded from her face and she gave a haughty toss of her head, saying, as he stepped in front of her when she started for the stairs, "Will you please let me pa.s.s?"

But Marvin had wanted to see her quite as much as he did Bill, the impression she had given him of her liking for Thomas having cut deeper than the events of the earlier part of the day had given him time to realize. Ignoring her request, he removed his hat and said, as he searched her eyes for some play of the old light that had often gladdened his heart in the days when they were together in Thomas's office in San Francisco, "I suppose you are surprised to find me here still?"

Millie swayed toward the Nevada desk, depositing her tray upon it. She faced him, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng, her cheeks flushed. Her first impulse was not to answer him. She could not understand his interference in the matter of the deed. Neither did she believe one word he had uttered against Hammond and Thomas. On the contrary, Thomas's apparent interest in her and her mother and his constant flattery and attentions had attained their end. She believed in him implicitly and therefore had given credence to every word he had said against Marvin. Nevertheless, the charge that he was not honest could not quite overcome the quickening of her interest which had manifested itself lately in a heart that ran far ahead of itself at his approach.

After a silence in which she stared at him steadily, his eyes answering hers with an unflinching candor mixed with a vague wistfulness, she answered him. "I don't think anything you could do would surprise me, after all that has happened to-day and all that I've been told about you."

"Millie!" Marvin awkwardly rolled his hat in his hands, while his speech faltered. "I've been waiting around here now for two hours in the hope that I could explain to you why I wanted to stop that sale. And I cannot bear to have you believe that I am a thief and--"

Millie was touched by his att.i.tude. Her hand left her hip and started toward his arm in friendly contact. But again returned the whole picture of the afternoon's events and she coolly turned from him and went to take up her tray again.