"I never see such shooting in my life. But Perris puts up his gun and gets red as a girl when two gents ask her for the same dance.
""I"m plumb out of practice," he says. "Anyways, I guess I been talking too much. You"ll have to excuse me, Shorty!"
"And he meant it. He wasn"t talking guff. Didn"t seem possible anybody could shoot as fast and straight as that, but Perris was all cut up because he"d missed and he didn"t do no more singing for about half an hour. And I needed that time for a lot of thinking. Made up my mind that if anybody wanted to make trouble for Perris they could count me out of the party.
"And he kept on singing, when he started again, all the way to the ranch and me wondering when I was going to go to sleep and fall off. I tried to make talk. Seen a queer looking fob he wore for his watch pocket.
Asked him where he got it.
""Tell you about it," he says. "Comes from me being plumb peaceable." I remembered some of the things I"d heard about Red Perris in Glosterville and didn"t say nothing. I just swallowed hard and took a squint at a cloud. "Four or five years back," he says, "when they was more liquor and ambition floating around these parts, I was up in a little cross-roads saloon in Utah, near Gunterville. Saloon was pretty jammed with folks, all strangers to me. I wasn"t packing a gun. Never do when I"m in a crowd, if I can help it. Well, I got into a little game of stud, and things were running pretty easy for me when a big gent across the table that had been losing hard and drinking hard ups and says he allows I sure have the cards talking. It sort of riled me. I tell him pretty liberal what I think of him and all like him. I go back into the past and give him a nice little description all about his ancestors. I aim to wind up with an invite to step outside and have it out with fists, but he don"t wait. Right in the middle of my sermon he outs with a gat and blazes away at me. The slug drills me in the thigh and I go down.
""Well, this is the slug. And I been wearing it to remind me that I particular want to meet up with that same gent before he gets too old for a gunfight!""
Here Shorty paused and sighed, shaking his bullet-head. And a deep murmur of appreciation pa.s.sed around the room. Shorty sank back again on the bunk and turned his broad back on the crowd.
"Don"t n.o.body wake me for chuck," he warned them. "I"ve just finished cramming a month into four days and I got a night off coming."
Instantly his snoring began but it was some moments before anyone spoke.
Then it was Little Joe in his solemn ba.s.s voice.
"Sounds man-sized," he declared. "Wears a bullet for a watch-fob, busts hosses for fun, sleeps one day a week, and don"t work under a boss.
Hervey, you"ll have to put on kid gloves when you talk to that Perris, eh? Hey, where you going?"
"He"s going out to think it over!" chuckled another. "He needs air, and I don"t blame him. Just as soon be foreman over a wildcat as over a gent like Perris. There goes the gong!"
CHAPTER XIII
THE BARGAIN
But in spite of the dinner bell, Hervey made for the corrals instead of the house, roped and saddled the fastest pony in his string, jogged out to the eastern trail, and then sent his mount at a run into the evening haze. After a time he drew back to a more moderate gait, but still the narrow firs shot smoothly and swiftly past him for well over half an hour until the twilight settled into darkness and the treetops moved past the horseman against a sky alive with the brighter stars of the mountains. He reached the hills. The trail tangled into zigzag lines, tossing up and down, dodging here and there. And in one of these elbow turns, a team of horses loomed huge and black above him, and against the stars behind the hilltop it seemed as though the team were stepping out into the thin air. Behind them, Lew Hervey made out the low body of the buckboard and on the seat a squat, bunched figure with head dropped so low that the sombrero seemed to rest flat on the shoulders.
Hervey raised his hand with a shout of relief: "Hey, Jordan!"
The brakes crashed home, but the impetus of the downgrade bore the wagon to the bottom of the little slope before it came to a stop and Hervey was choked by the cloud of dust. He fanned a clear path for his voice.
"It"s me. Hervey." And he came close to the wagon.
"Well, Lew?" queried the uninterested voice of the master.
Hervey leaned a little from the saddle and peered anxiously at the "big boss." He counted on creating a panic with his news. But a man past hope might very well be a man past fear. Hopeless Oliver Jordan certainly had been since his accident, hopeless and blind. That blindness had enabled Hervey to reap tidy sums out of his management of the ranch, and now that the coming of the sharp-eyed girl had cut off his sources of revenue he was ready to fight hard to put himself back in the saddle as unquestioned master of the Valley of the Eagles. But he could only work on Jordan through fear and what capacity for that emotion remained in the rancher. He struck at once.
"Jordan, have you got a gun with you?"
"Gun? Nope. What do I need a gun for?"
"Take this, then. It"s my old gat. You know it pretty near as well as I do."
A nerveless hand accepted the heavy weapon and allowed it to sink idly upon his knee.
"How come?" drawled Jordan, and the heart of Lew Hervey sank. This was certainly not the voice of a man liable to panic.
"You and me got a bad time coming, Jordan, when we get to the ranch.
He"s there, and he"s a devil for a fight!"
"Who?"
"Him! You remember that fight you got into in that saloon up in Wyoming?
That night you and me was at the cross-roads saloon and you got off your feed with red-eye?"
The figure on the seat of the buckboard grew taller.
"Do I remember? Aye, and I"ll never forget! The one downright bad thing I"ve ever done, Hervey. It was the infernal red-eye that made me a crazy man. You should of let me go back and see how bad he was hurt, Lew!"
"Nope. I was right. Best thing a gent can do after he"s dropped his man is to climb a hoss and feed it leather."
"He didn"t have a gun," groaned Jordan heavily. "But I forgot it. The red-eye got to working on me. I was losing. It was the one rotten yaller thing I ever done, Lew!"
"I know. And now he"s here. He"s Red Perris!"
"Red Perris!" breathed Oliver Jordan. "The man Marianne sent for? Why-- why it"s like fate, her bringing him right to the ranch!"
Hervey was discreetly silent.
"But," cried Jordan suddenly, and there was a ghost of the old ring in his voice, "I dropped him once by a crooked play and now I"ll drop him fair and square, if he"s here looking for trouble! I don"t want your help, Lew. Mighty fine of you to offer it, but I ain"t plumb forgot how to shoot. I don"t want help!"
Hervey waited a moment for that heat of defiance to die away. Then he said with the quiet of certainty: "No use, Jordan. No use at all.
Shorty seen this gent do some shooting on the way up to the ranch. He pulled on a squirrel that dodged across the trail. First slug knocked dust into the squirrel"s belly-fur and the second chipped off his tail.
Both of them slugs would have landed dead-center in a target as big as the body of a man!"
He paused again. He could hear the heavy breathing of Oliver Jordan and the figure of the driver swayed a little back and forth in the seat as a man will do when his mind is swinging from one alternative to another.
"He done that shooting from the hip," added Hervey, as though by afterthought.
There was a gasp from Jordan.
"Good G.o.d, Lew! You don"t mean that!"
"That"s what he done the shooting for--to show Shorty how to get off a quick shot. Shorty says he got his gun out and fired inside the time it"d take a common gun-man to wink twice. And that"s why you and me have got to face him together, chief. You know I ain"t particular yaller. But I"d as soon tackle a machine gun with a pea-shooter as run into this Perris all by myself. He"s bad medicine, chief!"
"Two to one. That"d be worse"n murder, Lew. Neither you nor me could ever hold up a head around these parts again if the two of us jumped one gent."
"I know it," said Hervey solemnly. "But it"s better to be shamed than to be dead. That"s the way I figure. And I ain"t so sure that both of us together could win out."
There was another interval of silence, far more important than many words. Through the hush Hervey, with a beating heart, strove to peer into the mind of the rancher.
"I"ll go back and face him all by myself," said Jordan huskily. "I"ll let him rub out that old score. If he finishes me--well, what good am I in the world, anyway? No good, Lew. I"m done for just as much as though somebody had plugged me with a gat. Let Perris finish the job." He added hastily: "But these five years have changed me a lot. Maybe he won"t know me."
"You ain"t changed that much, Jordan. Look at Howlands. He hadn"t seen you for eight years. He knew you right off."