Trailin'! Part 22

"Exactly. Also I wish to see Logan again. I've got several little things I'd like to have him explain."

"H-m!" grunted Nash without apparent interest.

"And Drew?"

"He's a big feller; big and grey."

"Ah-h-h," said the other, and drew in his breath, as though he were drinking.

It seemed to Nash that he had never seen such an unpleasant smile.

"You'll get what you want out of Drew. He's generous."

"I hope so," nodded the other, with far-off eyes. "I've got a lot to ask of him."

CHAPTER XVII

BUTCH RETURNS

He reminded Nash of some big puma cub warming itself at a hearth like a common tabby cat, a tame puma thrusting out its claws and turning its yellow eyes up to its owner--tame, but with infinite possibilities of danger. For the information which Nash had given seemed to remove all his distrust of the moment before and he became instantly genial, pleasant. In fact, he voiced this sentiment with a disarming frankness immediately.

"Perhaps I've seemed to be carrying a chip on my shoulder, Mr. Nash. You see, I'm not long in the West, and the people I've met seem to be ready to fight first and ask questions afterward. So I've caught the habit, I suppose."

"Which a habit like that ain't uncommon. The graveyards are full of fellers that had that habit and they're going to be fuller still of the same kind."

Here Sally entered, carrying the meal of the cowpuncher, arranged it, and then sat on the edge of Bard's table, turning from one to the other as a bird on a spray of leaves turns from sunlight to shadow and cannot make a choice.

"Bard," stated Nash, "is going out to the ranch with me to-night."

"Long ride for to-night, isn't it?"

"Yes, but we'll bunk on the way and finish up early in the morning."

"Then you'll have a chance to teach him Western manners on the way, Steve."

"Manners?" queried the Easterner, smiling up to the girl.

She turned, caught him beneath the chin with one hand, tilting his face, and raised the lessoning forefinger of the other while she stared down at him with a half frown and a half smile like a schoolteacher about to discipline a recalcitrant boy.

"Western manners," she said, "mean first not to doubt a man till he tries to double-cross you, and not to trust him till he saves your life; to keep your gun inside the leather till you're backed up against the wall, and then to start shootin' as soon as the muzzle is past the holster. Then the thing to remember is that the fast shootin' is fine, but sure shootin' is a lot better. D'you get me?"

"That's a fine sermon," smiled Bard, "but you're too young to make a convincing preacher, Miss Fortune."

"Misfortune," said the girl quickly, "don't have to be old to do a lot of teachin'."

She sat back and regarded him with something of a frown and with folded arms.

He said with a sudden earnestness: "You seem to take it for granted that I'm due for a lot of trouble."

But she shook her head gloomily.

"I know what you're due for; I can see it in your eyes; I can hear it in your way of talkin'. If you was to ride the range with a sheriff on one side of you and a marshal on the other you couldn't help fallin' into trouble."

"As a fortune-teller," remarked Nash, "you'd make a good undertaker, Sally."

"Shut up, Steve. I've seen this bird in action and I know what I'm talking about. When you coming back this way, Bard?"

He said thoughtfully: "Perhaps to-morrow night--perhaps--"

"It ought to be to-morrow night," she said pointedly, her eyes on Nash.

The latter had pushed his chair back a trifle and sat now with downward head and his right hand resting lightly on his thigh. Only the place in which they sat was illumined by the two lamps, and the forward part of the room, nearer the street, was a sea of shadows, wavering when the wind stirred the flame in one of the lamps or sent it smoking up the chimney. Sally and Bard sat with their backs to the door, and Nash half facing it.

"Steve," she said, with a sudden low tenseness of voice that sent a chill up Bard's spinal cord, "Steve, what's wrong?"

"This," answered the cowboy calmly, and whirling in his chair, his gun flashed and exploded.

They sprang up in time to see the bulky form of Butch Conklin rise out of the shadows in the front part of the room with outstretched arms, from one of which a revolver dropped clattering to the floor. Backward he reeled as though a hand were pulling him from behind, and then measured his length with a crash on the floor.

Bard, standing erect, quite forgot to touch his weapon, but Sally had produced a ponderous forty-five with mysterious speed and now crouched behind a table with the gun poised. Nash, bending low, ran forward to the fallen man.

"Nicked, but not done for," he called.

"Thank G.o.d!" cried Sally, and the two joined Nash about the prostrate body.

That bullet had had very certain intentions, but by a freak of chance it had been deflected on the angle of the skull and merely ploughed a b.l.o.o.d.y furrow through the mat of hair from forehead to the back of the skull. He was stunned, but hardly more seriously hurt than if he had been knocked down by a club.

"I've an idea," said the Easterner calmly, "that I owe my life to you, Mr. Nash."

"Let that drop," answered the other.

"A quarter of an inch lower," said the girl, who was examining the wound, "and Butch would have kissed the world good-bye."

Not till then did the full horror of the thing dawn on Bard. The girl was no more excited than one of her Eastern cousins would have been over a game of bridge, and the man in the most matter-of-fact manner, was slipping another cartridge into the cylinder of the revolver, which he then restored to the holster.

It still seemed incredible that the man could have drawn his gun and fired it in that flash of time. He recalled his adventure with Butch earlier that evening and with Sandy Ferguson before; for the first time he realized what he had done and a cold horror possessed him like the man who has nerves to walk the tight rope across the chasm and faints when he looks back on the gorge from the safety of the other side. The girl took command.

"Steve, run down to the marshal's office; Deputy Glendin is there."

She took the wet cloth and made a deft bandage for the head of Conklin.

With his s.h.a.ggy hair covered, and all his face sagging with lines of weariness, the gun-fighter seemed no more than a middle-aged man asleep, worn out by trouble.

"Is there a doctor?" asked Bard anxiously.

"That ain't a case for a doctor--look here; you're in a blue faint. What is the matter?"