Gunman's Reckoning Part 28

"Without force?"

"Listen to me," said the colonel. "You and I are not children, and therefore we know that ordinary men are commanded rather by fear of what may happen to them than by being confronted with an actual danger. I have told you that I shall not so much as raise the weight of a finger against Jack Landis. I shall not. But a whisper adroitly put in his ear may accomplish the same ends." He added with a smile. "Personally, I dislike physical violence. In that, Mr. Donnegan, we belong to opposite schools of action."

The picture came to Donnegan of Landis, lying in the cabin of the colonel, his childish mind worked upon by the devilish insinuation of the colonel. Truly, if Jack did not go mad under the strain he would be very apt to do as the colonel wished.

"I have made a mess of this from the beginning," said Donnegan, quietly.

"In the first place, I intended to play the role of the self-sacrificing. You don't understand? I didn't expect that you would.

In short, I intended to send Landis back to Lou by making a flash that would dazzle The Corner, and dazzle Nelly Lebrun as well--win her away from Landis, you see? But the fool, as soon as he saw that I was flirting with the girl, lowered his head and charged at me like a bull.

I had to strike him down in self-defense.

"But now you ask me to put him wholly in your possession. Colonel, you omit one link in your chain of reasoning. The link is important--to me.

What am I to gain by placing him within the range of your whispering?"

"Tus.h.!.+ Do I need to tell you? I still presume you are interested in Lou, though you attempted to do so much to give Landis back to her. Well, Donnegan, you must know that when she learns it was a bullet from your gun that struck down Landis, she'll hate you, my boy, as if you were a snake. But if she knows that after all you were forced into the fight, and that you took the first opportunity to bring Jack into my--er--paternal care--her sentiments may change. No, they will change."

Donnegan left his chair and began to pace the floor. He was no more self-conscious in the presence of the colonel than a man might be in the presence of his own evil instincts. And it was typical of the colonel's insight that he made no attempt to influence the decision of Donnegan after this point was reached. He allowed him to work out the matter in his own way. At length, Donnegan paused.

"What's the next step?" he asked.

The colonel sighed, and by that sigh he admitted more than words could tell.

"A reasonable man," he said, "is the delight of my heart. The next step, Donnegan, is to bring Jack Landis to this house."

"Tus.h.!.+" said Donnegan. "Bring him away from Lebrun? Bring him away from the tigers of Lord Nick's gang? I saw them at Milligan's place tonight.

A bad set, Colonel Macon."

"A set you can handle," said the colonel, calmly.

"Ah?"

"The danger will in itself be the thing that tempts you," he went on.

"To go among those fellows, wild as they are, and bring Jack Landis away to this house."

"Bring him here," said Donnegan with indescribable bitterness, "so that she may pity his wounds? Bring him here where she may think of him and tend him and grow to hate me?"

"Grow to fear you," said the colonel.

"An excellent thing to accomplish," said Donnegan coldly.

"I have found it so," remarked the colonel, and lighted a cigarette.

He drew the smoke so deep that when it issued again from between his lips it was a most transparent, bluish vapor. Fear came upon Donnegan.

Not fear, surely, of the fat man, helpless in his invalid's chair, but fear of the mind working ceaselessly behind those hazy eyes. He turned without a word and went to the door. The moment it opened under his hand, he felt a hysterical impulse to leap out of the room swiftly and slam the door behind him--to put a bar between him and the eye of the colonel, just as a child leaps from the dark room into the lighted and closes the door quickly to keep out the following night. He had to compel himself to move with proper dignity.

When outside, he sighed; the quiet of the night was like a blessing compared with the ordeal of the colonel's devilish coldness. Macon's advice had seemed almost logical the moment before. Win Lou Macon by the power of fear, well enough, for was not fear the thing which she had followed all her life? Was it not through fear that the colonel himself had reduced her to such abject, unquestioning obedience?

He went thoughtfully to his own cabin, and, down-headed in his musings, he became aware with a start of Lou Macon in the hut. She had changed the room as her father had bidden her to do. Just wherein the difference lay, Donnegan could not tell. There was a touch of evergreen in one corner; she had laid a strip of bright cloth over the rickety little table, and in ten minutes she had given the hut a semblance of permanent livableness. Donnegan saw her now, with some vestige of the smile of her art upon her face; but she immediately smoothed it to perfect gravity.

He had never seen such perfect self-command in a woman.

"Is there anything more that I can do?" she asked, moving toward the door.

"Nothing."

"Good night."

"Wait."

She still seemed to be under the authority which the colonel had delegated to Donnegan when they started for The Corner. She turned, and without a word came back to him. And a pang struck through Donnegan.

What would he not have given if she had come at his call not with these dumb eyes, but with a spark of kindliness? Instead, she obeyed him as a soldier obeys a commander.

"There has been trouble," said Donnegan.

"Yes?" she said, but there was no change in her face.

"It was forced upon me." Then he added: "It amounted to a shooting affair."

There was a change in her face now, indeed. A glint came in her eyes, and the suggestion of the colonel which he had once or twice before sensed in her, now became more vivid than ever before. The same contemptuous heartlessness, which was the colonel's most habitual expression, now looked at Donnegan out of the lovely face of the girl.

"They were fools to press you to the wall," she said. "I have no pity for them."

For a moment Donnegan only stared at her; on what did she base her confidence in his prowess as a fighting man?

"It was only one man," he said huskily.

Ah, there he had struck her home! As though the words were a burden, she shrank from him; then she slipped suddenly close to him and caught both his hands. Her head was raised far back; she had pressed close to him; she seemed in every line of her body to plead with him against himself, and all the veils which had curtained her mind from him dropped away. He found himself looking down into eyes full of fire and shadow; and eager lips; and the fiber of her voice made her whole body tremble.

"It isn't Jack?" she pleaded. "It isn't Jack that you've fought with?"

And he said to himself: "She loves him with all her heart and soul!"

"It is he," said Donnegan in an agony. Pain may be like a fire that tempers some strong men; and now Donnegan, because he was in torment, smiled, and his eye was as cold as steel.

The girl flung away his hands.

"You bought murderer!" she cried at him.

"He is not dead."

"But you shot him down!"

"He attacked me; it was self-defense."

She broke into a low-pitched, mirthless laughter. Where was the filmy-eyed girl he had known? The laughter broke off short--like a sob.

"Don't you suppose I've known?" she said. "That I've read my father?

That I knew he was sending a bloodhound when he sent you? But, oh, I thought you had a touch of the other thing!"

He cringed under her tone.