Then I'll Come Back to You Part 26

Joe shook his head.

"That ain't quite what I mean. I've seen lots of the younger sons of them old families. I've run into them in Yokohoma and Buenos Ayres; I've met up with them along the Yukon and down on the Mexican border.

They're scattered all around, out through the Panhandle, ridin' calico ponies, with jingly spurs and more than a bushel of doo-dads on the saddle. They all come from old families, and I suppose after all it was a blessing that they had that much in their favor. Because if most of them hadn't had a family tree to lean up against at times, they never could have kept their feet at all."

"No, that wasn't what I meant, Steve. I figured he was kind of a regular chap--the hero guy that's too hot proud to bat an eye, you know, even when he's--well, I just can't get it straight in words, but this is what I'm driving at. The first night after you had gone he was settin' right here where I'm settin' now, looking quiet into the fire.

I didn't ask him what was on his mind, not because I've learned not to go trackin' across other men's mental preserves, but simply because I didn't even have to guess more than once. He's a nice lookin' boy, ain't he? Sort of fine cut and tight built, and clean and decent looking. I'd been thinkin' of that, too; thinkin' he didn't look like the others I've seen drop off so sudden it left me gasping. Nor like them who went over so screamin' mad it left my palms wet and clammy from hangin' on to myself while they were going. He looked different, settin' here and staring into the fire, and h.e.l.l burning inside him, and saying nothing. I sort of got to figurin' over him about then--sort of begun to wonder, even before I hunted up a deck of cards.

"Oh, you can smile if you want to, but you'll have to admit, just the same, that it's helped you stay sane once or twice yourself, figurin'

whether or not I had an ace in the hole. Lonesomeness like what we've both seen ain't so very different from what he was fightin' at that very moment--not if the thing you're lonesome for and the thing you're thirsty for are things you know you can't have.

"I invited him to set in for a bit of intellectual pastime; I had to invite him twice, but he smiled then and agreed just as though he was glad to. And then, careless and off-hand, I asked him would he care to name the stakes.

"He waited quite a while before he answered me. You know how quiet it can be here in the timber, Steve, when it starts out to be quiet.

Well, I could just feel the silence right here in this room. And then he laughed! It wasn't hardly any sound at all he made, and yet it might have been a blast, it hit me that sudden. I don't like that kind of laughter.

"'Stakes?' he says after me, just as precise as could be. 'Why, surely! I should be happy to back my play, but I'm afraid that my present supply of cash would hardly stand a very heavy drain.'

"He didn't have to explain even that much. Right along I'd been certain enough that he didn't have a copper with him. I'd put his watch away where he couldn't find it and--and maybe swap it with one of the hands for a half a pint. But I let on to be thinkin' for a while, until I brightened up as if the idea just hit me.

"It wasn't exactly fair, I'll admit. It wasn't what either of us would call a straight play, but--but--oh, I'd been watching him, just as I've told you. I knew he would about pay his soul for the drink that was due him in fifteen or twenty minutes; he was eyein' the bottle on the shelf right that minute. But I'd never seen a man's face give the lie to his spirit, either, the way his did, if he was the kind that would quit cold.

"'Cash ain't no consideration with me,' I told him, generous enough.

'But, personally, I've reached that degree of excellence where I can't play the game just for the sake of the technique of it any more. It's a quarter to nine,' says I, 'and in just fifteen minutes you get your gill of Three Star. Now, how much--how much, figurin' on the present state of supply and demand--would you reckon that drink appeals to you, in dollars and cents, U. S. A.?"

"Steve, you know he wasn't too steady. His hands were shaking--oh, you've seen 'em, too. But there he sits and looks back across the table at me, monkeyin' with a stack of chips, and giving me smile for smile.

"'I wouldn't sell that drink,' he murmured, 'I wouldn't sell it for . . . well'--and he licked his lips that were dry as leather.

"That was enough! I knew as well as he did how much he wanted it, but I was kind of disappointed, too. I'd been hopin'--I thought maybe--Say, don't you just naturally hate to have your judgment of human nature miss the whole blamed target, just when you think you've scored a bulls-eye? I do. It hurts my self-confidence; makes me wonder if I ain't growin' careless of details. And then, right there, I found out how close I'd come, and shootin' off-hand at that, mind you! Right there he gave me my next lesson. The nice, gentle way he cussed me out, that morning, was the first. Maybe he'd read the disappointment in my face, because he laughed again, not quite so sudden this time.

"'I wouldn't sell that drink for any price,' he repeats. 'But when it resolves itself to a gamble, I suppose, Joe, no gentleman should refuse the issue. If I understand you correctly, if cash is no consideration, then suppose we say that one drink against the rest of the bottle, chip for chip and stack for stack. Your confidence is not entirely rea.s.suring to me, and yet perhaps I should tell you beforehand that I've always thought I could play this game half way well myself.'"

Fat Joe rose and crossed to the table for a match.

"Now wasn't that meeting me half way?" he continued, when he was seated again. "Wasn't it neatly done? Why, for a moment I was most ashamed to go through with it. I wouldn't have, only he sat there, smilin' so easy and confident. But we played. We played until daylight came around. And accordin' to the way he scored it, just before we went down to the works in the morning, he didn't have a drink comin' to him for the next forty-eight hours! I play a real involved and scientific game, Steve--but that ain't what I'm drivin' at. When we'd got done--when we'd finished--I tried to make him take the gla.s.s that had been comin' to him at nine. And he needed it, don't doubt that. He needed it and could have had it, for I made it just as easy as anybody could. . . . Steve, he ain't had a drink since that first night. That was what I meant when I spoke about him being what they call a thoroughbred."

They sat for a time in silence after Joe had finished.

"Pride!" Stephen O'Mara exploded softly. "Pride! And Garry thinks his is dead; he thinks he has killed it himself. But it was there on his face to-night, too, laughing up at me, Joe, just as it did at you--laughing at me, all amused at itself, out of that crooked smile of his. And it'll never die. It'll live as long as he does!"

He looked down at the gun on his knee.

"That's all, Joe?"

Fat Joe cleared his throat.

"I--I gave him a job the next morning," lamely. "We seemed to be getting along together fine so I---- Shucks, I was just afraid to have him go! That's the flat truth of it. And you told me to keep him, if I could. So I set him to checking up the stock in the storeroom and put him on keepin' time for the squad up here. He's drawin' eighteen a week, Steve. Was that all right? You were figurin' on keeping him here?"

And then Joe Morgan saw Steve's eyes light up. He saw a swift something flash out from within, which, once or twice before in the years of their friends.h.i.+p, had set his face to burning.

"Joe," Steve exclaimed, "you're right about that matter of family trees. I know a man right now who doesn't have to go back one minute in his pedigree to prove that he's a gentleman. I've left some tough propositions for you to solve, Joe. Lots of times, when I couldn't see the way out, I've put it up to you. If I merely say 'thanks, Joe,' and let it go at that, do you think it will do?"

"Suits me!" Joe's jauntiness was large. "And it goes double on the rebound. But how--how do you suppose any woman ever came to set a--boy like that to slipping? Or why didn't he sit down where it was quiet and figure it all out for himself? One bad guess don't make the whole world wrong. And say, wouldn't it be lucky, though, if he could meet a real nice girl about now?"

Steve leaned back and gave way to rare and subdued laughter. It was much as though he did not want the sound to penetrate to that dark end room in the shack beyond. And then he was quickly sober-faced again.

"I think he is going to, Joe. I think I may promise that he is likely to, very, very soon. And it will make a difference--a mighty big difference for Garry. For, if you don't mind my mentioning the matter again, in spite of the preachments of many of your novelists to the contrary, it's just about as Garry has argued it to be. Most men are just as fine--just as decent--as women demand they shall be."

He lifted the revolver and tossed it negligently across the room. It struck with a thud in the middle of his own bunk.

"Where did he get that six-shooter? It looks like one of yours?"

"It is," said Joe. "Nothing gaudy nor ornamental, but a right handy thing. And, there! That's another error I made, ain't it? I reckon it's going to be difficult for me to get used to the idea of any man being a dangerous enemy to himself. I gave it to him the first day he went to work."

Joe's eyes traveled across to the object under discussion.

"Harrigan came back before you did," his explanation seemed to veer to another quarter. "He was most punctual, I'd say, wouldn't you? He came in tuned up real melodious on the last load with Big Louie. He sung big-voiced that night; he's been talkin' big-voiced since, I'm led to understand." Again that mental s.h.i.+ft. "Gun-play always did seem awful foolish to me--to talk about! When men start to advertisin'

trouble to come, by word o' mouth, it never does worry me particularly.

I just gave your friend the gun to keep around handy, if he should happen to need it. Did you know he could make the ace of spades look shopworn and weary at thirty paces with one of those toys? Well, he can."

Steve smiled.

"You're not totin' one of them yourself, yet, I see?" he remarked lazily.

Fat Joe spat in vast contempt. He clenched one pudgy hand and sat watching the knuckles pale, iron-hard, beneath the seeming softness.

"Are you?" he countered.

This time Steve's laughter was soundless.

"Scarcely! We're going to hear some of them yap lots louder than they do now, before the winter is over. But you might give that one back to Garry in the morning. And, as for the rest of it, I suppose we'll be quite likely to forget, won't we, Joe, that either of us has so much as seen or thought of a gun to-night?"

Both of them had risen. Joe puckered his lips.

"Forget it? How can we," he demanded, "when we don't even know anything to forget! Why, as I reckon it, we'll both get up in the morning and regard it as a dream just too foolish even to bother to relate."

Their eyes held for a moment, before Steve turned again toward the door. And perhaps his manner was a little too unconcerned that evening, a little too carefully careless, for almost before he had lifted the latch Fat Joe stepped forward, one quick, protesting step, and then stopped on second thought.

"You ain't goin'----" he began, and suffered that spoken protest also to remain uncompleted.

"It's not late," Steve's voice was thoughtful. "It's not late, but it's surely very quiet." He stood gazing out into the gloom. "Maybe I'd best run down and see what ails our soloist to-night. Somehow, the more I've thought about it, the more I've come to fear that he is temperamental, Joe--too temperamental, for such a wearing proposition as this one is likely to be. And you haven't slept much since I've been gone. Oh, that was easy, just from your eyes! So you'd better turn in. I'll just stroll down and let them know that I'm back home."

It is odd how much of finality there can be in the quietest of statements. Eyes narrowed, Joe stood in the middle of the floor and watched him depart without further objection. But the moment the blackness had swallowed him up he backed to the bunk, fumbled for the gun which Steve had tossed upon the blankets, and followed out into the dark.

Stephen O'Mara stood a long time outside the door of the men's bunkhouse that night, fingers upon the latch, before he made any move to enter. But neither a wish to eavesdrop nor a desire to frame, experimentally, the words he meant to speak was the reason behind that pause. It was in itself a new thing to find the long, low building lighted at that hour, even though, as he had himself put it to Joe an instant before, it was hours from being late. That night the almost absolute silence beyond the closed door was an even more unusual state of affairs. The voice of one man only was audible; the words he spoke indistinguishable altogether. But sudden bursts of laughter, punctuating the recital which he could not clearly follow, were indication enough to the man outside of what manner of tale was holding the ears of that roomful of rivermen. Stephen O'Mara, who had long ceased to wonder at the discovery in them, of new and impulsive finenesses which bordered close upon inherent n.o.bility, knew fully as well how utterly and unspeakably gross could be the premeditated coa.r.s.eness of those same men.

There was no movement to mark his entrance when he finally pressed the latch and swung the door open; not so much as a single glance to indicate that his presence was noted. Under the yellow light of flickering oil lamps the eyes of all those scores of gaudy-s.h.i.+rted figures lounging against the walls were fixed eagerly upon the face of him who held the middle of their stage--him who talked from where he half-lay, propped on one elbow, in his bunk at the end of the room.

Harrigan, red-s.h.i.+rted, red-headed, was lounging at case, waiting for the last gurgle of appreciation to subside, before he gave them the close of the story--the last t.i.tbit, the savor of which already had set him noisily to licking his lips. And in the doorway Steve, rigid of a sudden, sensed what that climax was to be.