"Maybe. If she don"t, I guess I"ll have to figger some way to beat it."
"What are Jedlick"s attractions? Surely not good looks."
"Money, Duke; that"s the answer to him--money. He"s got a salt barrel full of it; the old man favors him for that money."
"That"s harder to beat than a music box in a watch."
"You _can"t_ beat it, Duke. What"s good looks by the side of money? Or brains? Well, they don"t amount to cheese!"
"Are you goin" to sidestep in favor of Jedlick? A man with all your experience and good clothes!"
"Me? I"m a-goin" to lay that feller out on a board!"
They hitched at the hotel rack, that looking more respectable, as Taterleg said, than to leave their horses in front of the saloon. Alta was heard singing in the interior; there were two railroad men belonging to a traveling paint gang on the porch smoking their evening pipes.
Lambert felt that it was his duty to buy cigars in consideration of the use of the hitching-rack. Wood appeared in the office door as they came up the steps, and put his head beyond the jamb, looking this way and that, like a man considering a sortie with enemies lying in wait.
Taterleg went into the parlor to offer the incense of his cigar in the presence of Alta, who was cooing a sentimental ballad to her guitar. It seemed to be of parting, and the hope of reunion, involving one named Irene. There was a run in the chorus accompaniment which Alta had down very neatly.
The tinkling guitar, the simple, plaintive melody, sounded to Lambert as refreshing as the plash of a brook in the heat of the day. He stood listening, his elbow on the show case, thinking vaguely that Alta had a good voice for singing babies to sleep.
Wood stood in the door again, his stump of arm lifted a little with an alertness about it that made Lambert think of a listening ear. He looked up and down the street in that uneasy, inquiring way that Lambert had remarked on his arrival, then came back and got himself a cigar. He stood across the counter from Lambert a little while, smoking, his brows drawn in trouble, his eyes shifting constantly to the door.
"Duke," said he, as if with an effort, "there"s a man in town lookin"
for you. I thought I"d tell you."
"Lookin" for me? Who is he?"
"Sim Hargus."
"You don"t mean Nick?"
"No; he"s Nick"s brother. I don"t suppose you ever met him."
"I never heard of him."
"He"s only been back from Wyoming a week or two. He was over there some time--several years, I believe."
"In the pen over there?"
Wood took a careful survey of the door before replying, working his cigar over to the other side of his mouth in the way that a one-armed man acquires the trick.
"I--they say he got mixed up in a cattle deal down there."
Lambert smoked in silence a little while, his head bent, his face thoughtful. Wood shifted a little nearer, standing straight and alert behind his counter as if prepared to act in some sudden emergency.
"Does he live around here?" Lambert asked.
"He"s workin" for Berry Kerr, foreman over there. That"s the job he used to have before he--left."
Lambert grunted, expressing that he understood the situation. He stood in his leaning, careless posture, arm on the show case, thumb hooked in his belt near his gun.
"I thought I"d tell you," said Wood uneasily.
"Thanks."
Wood came a step nearer along the counter, leaned his good arm on it, watching the door without a break.
"He"s one of the old gang that used to give Philbrook so much trouble--he"s carryin" lead that Philbrook shot into him now. So he"s got it in for that ranch, and everybody on it. I thought I"d tell you."
"I"m much obliged to you, Mr. Wood," said Lambert heartily.
"He"s one of these kind of men you want to watch out for when your back"s turned, Duke."
"Thanks, old feller; I"ll keep in mind what you say."
"I don"t want it to look like I was on one side or the other, you understand, Duke; but I thought I"d tell you. Sim Hargus is one of them kind of men that a woman don"t dare to show her face around where he is without the risk of bein" insulted. He"s a foul-mouthed, foul-minded man, the kind of a feller that ought to be treated like a rattlesnake in the road."
Lambert thanked him again for his friendly information, understanding at once his watchful uneasiness and the absence of Alta from the front of the house. He was familiar with that type of man such as Wood had described Hargus as being; he had met some of them in the Bad Lands.
There was nothing holy to them in the heavens or the earth. They did not believe there was any such thing as a virtuous woman, and honor was a word they never had heard defined.
"I"ll go out and look him up," Lambert said. "If he happens to come in here askin" about me, I"ll be in either the store or the saloon."
"There"s where he is, Duke--in the saloon."
"I supposed he was."
"You"ll kind of run into him natural, won"t you, Duke, and not let him think I tipped you off?"
"Just as natural as the wind."
Lambert went out. From the hitching-rack he saw Wood at his post of vigil in the door, watching the road with anxious mien. It was a Sat.u.r.day night; the town was full of visitors. Lambert went on to the saloon, hitching at the long rack in front where twenty or thirty horses stood.
The custom of the country made it almost an obligatory courtesy to go in and spend money when one hitched in front of a saloon, an excuse for entering that Lambert accepted with a grim feeling of satisfaction.
While he didn"t want it to appear that he was crowding a quarrel with any man, the best way to meet a fellow who had gone spreading it abroad that he was out looking for one was to go where he was to be found. It wouldn"t look right to leave town without giving Hargus a chance to state his business; it would be a move subject to misinterpretation, and damaging to a man"s good name.
There was a crowd in the saloon, which had a smoky, blurred look through the open door. Some of the old gambling gear had been uncovered and pushed out from the wall. A faro game was running, with a dozen or more players, at the end of the bar; several poker tables stretched across the gloomy front of what had been the ballroom of more hilarious days.
These players were a noisy outfit. Little money was being risked, but it was going with enough profanity to melt it.
Lambert stood at the end of the bar near the door, his liquor in his hand, lounging in his careless att.i.tude of abstraction. But there was not a lax fiber in his body; every faculty was alert, every nerve set for any sudden development. The scene before him was disgusting, rather than diverting, in its squalid imitation of the rough-and-ready times which had pa.s.sed before many of these men were old enough to carry the weight of a gun. It was just a sporadic outburst, a pustule come to a sudden head that would burst before morning and clear away.
Lambert ran his eye among the twenty-five or thirty men in the place.
All appeared to be strangers to him. He began to a.s.sort their faces, as one searches for something in a heap, trying to fix on one that looked mean enough to belong to a Hargus. A mechanical banjo suddenly added its metallic noise to the din, fit music, it seemed, for such obscene company. Some started to dance lumberingly, with high-lifted legs and ludicrous turkey struts.
Among these Lambert recognized Tom Hargus, the young man who had made the ungallant attempt to pa.s.s Vesta Philbrook"s gate with his father. He had more whisky under his dark skin than he could take care of. As he jigged on limber legs he threw his hat down with a whoop, his long black hair falling around his ears and down to his eyes, bringing out the Indian that slept in him sharper than the liquor had done it.
His face was flushed, his eyes were heavy, as if he had been under headway a good while. Lambert watched him as he pranced about, chopping his steps with feet jerked up straight like a string-halt horse. The Indian was working, trying to express itself in him through this exaggerated imitation of his ancestral dances. His companions fell back in admiration, giving him the floor.
A cowboy was feeding money into the music box to keep it going, giving it a coin, together with certain grave, drunken advice, whenever it showed symptom of a pause. Young Hargus circled about in the middle of the room, barking in little short yelps. Every time he pa.s.sed his hat he kicked at it, sometimes. .h.i.tting, oftener missing it, at last driving it over against Lambert"s foot, where it lodged.