A Breath of Prairie and other stories Part 20

The fellow had grinned here and drank some more, before finishing the story; the surrounding audience winking at each other meanwhile, and drinking in company.

Then he went on to tell how Camilla Maurice had sat just inside the doorway, her face in her hands, sobbing,--so hard she hadn't noticed him; and--and--it wasn't the doctor who had been there at all!

Ichabod had been holding a pail of water so that a horse might drink.

At the end he motioned Ole very quietly, to take his place.

"Finish watering them, and--wait for me, please."

It was far from what the Swede had expected; but he accepted the task, obediently.

The only saloon of the town stood almost exactly opposite Hans Becher's place, flush with the street. A long, low building, communicating with the outer world by one door--sans gla.s.s--its single window in front and at the rear lit it but imperfectly at midday, and now at early evening made faces almost indistinguishable, and cast kindly shadow over the fly specks and smoke stains of a low roof. A narrow pine bar, redolent of tribute absorbed from innumerable pa.s.sing "schooners," stretched the entire length of the room at one side; and back of it, in shirt sleeves and stained ap.r.o.n, presided the typical bar-keeper of the frontier. All this Ichabod saw as he stepped inside; then, himself in shadow, he studied the group before him.

Railroad and cattle men, mostly, made up the gathering, with a scant sprinkling of farmers and others uncla.s.sified. A big, ill-dressed fellow was repeating the tale of scandal for the benefit of a newcomer; the narrative moving jerkily over hiccoughs, like hurdles.

"--I drew up to th' house quick, an' went up th' path quiet like,"--he tapped thunderously on the bar with a heavy gla.s.s for silence--"quiet--sh-h--like; an' when I come t' th' door, ther' 't was open, an'--as I hope--hope t' die,... drink on me, b'ys, aller y'--set 'm up, Barney ol' b'y, m' treat,... hope t' die, ther' she sat, like this--" He looked around mistily for a chair, but none was convenient, and he slid flat to the floor in their midst, his face in his hands, blubbering dismally in imitation.... "Sat (hic) like this; rockin' an' moanin' n' callin' his name: Asa--Asa--Asa--(hic) Arnold--'shure 's I'm a sinner she--"

He did not finish. Very suddenly the surrounding group had scattered, and he peered up through maudlin tears to learn the cause. One man alone stood above him. The room had grown still as a church.

The drunken one blinked his watery eyes and showed his yellow teeth in a convivial grin.

"G'd evnin', pard.... Serve th'--th' gem'n, Barney; m' treat." Again the teeth obtruded. "Was jes'--"

"Get up!"

He of the story winked harder than before.

"Bless m'--" He paused for an expletive, hiccoughed, and forgetting what had caused the halt, stumbled on:--"Didn' rec'gniz' y'

b'fore. Shake, ol' boy. S--sh-sorry for y'." Tears rose copiously.

"Tough--when feller's wife--"

Interrupting suddenly a m.u.f.fled sound like the distant exhaust of a big engine--the meeting of a heavy boot with an obstacle on the floor.

"Get up!"

A very mountain of human brawn resolved itself upward; a hand on its hips; a curse on its lips.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "You'll apologize."]

"You d.a.m.ned lantern-faced--" No hiccough now, but a pause from pure physical impotence, pending a doubtful struggle against a half-dozen men.

"Order, gentlemen!" demanded the bar-keeper, adding emphasis by hammering a heavy bottle on the bar.

"Let him go," commanded Ichabod very quietly; but they all heard through the confusion. "Let him go."

The country was by no means the wild West of the story-papers, but it was primitive, and no man thought, then, of preventing the obviously inevitable.

Ichabod held up his hand, suggestively, imperatively, and the crowd fell back, silent,--leaving him facing the big man.

"You'll apologize!" The thin jaw showed clear, through the shade of brown stubble on Ichabod's face.

For answer, the big man leaning on the bar exhibited his discolored teeth and breathed hard.

"How shall it be?" asked Ichabod.

A grimy hand twitched toward a grimier hip.

"You've seen the likes of this--"

Ichabod turned toward the spectators.

"Will any man lend me--"

"Here--"

"Here--"

"And give us a little light."

"Outside," suggested the saloon-keeper.

"We're not advertising patent medicine," blazed Ichabod, and the lamps were lit immediately.

Once more the long-visaged man appealed to the group lined up now against the bar.

"Gentlemen--I never carried a revolver a half-hour in my life. Is it any more than fair that I name the details?"

"Name 'm and be quick," acquiesced his big opponent before the others could speak.

"Thanks, Mr. Duggin," with equal swiftness. "These, then, are the conditions." For three seconds, that seemed a minute, Ichabod looked steadily between his adversary's bushy eyebrows. "The conditions," he repeated, "are, that starting from opposite ends of the room, we don't fire until our toes touch in the middle line."

"Good!" commended a voice; but it was not big Duggin who spoke.

"I'll see that it's done, too,"--added a listening cattleman, grasping Ichabod by the hand.

"And I."

The building had been designed as a bowling-alley and was built the entire length of the lot. With an alacrity born of experience, the long s.p.a.ce opposite the bar was cleared, and the belligerents stationed one at either end, their faces toward the wall. Midway between them a heavy line had been drawn with chalk, and beside it stood a half-dozen grim men, their hands resting suggestively on their hips. The room was again very quiet, and from out-of-doors penetrated the shrill sound of a schoolboy whistling "Annie Laurie" with original variations. So exotic seemed the entire scene in its prairie setting, that it might have been transferred bodily from the stage of a distant theatre and set down here,--by mistake.

"Now," directed a voice. "You understand, men. You're to face and walk to the line. When your feet touch--fire; and," warningly--"remember, not before. Ready, gentlemen. Turn."

Ichabod faced about, the c.o.c.ked revolver in his hand, the name Asa Arnold singing in his ears. A terrible cold-white anger was in his heart against the man opposite, who had publicly caused the resurrection of this hated, buried thing. For a moment it blotted out all other sensations; then, rushing, crowding came other thoughts,--vision from boyhood down. In the s.p.a.ce of seconds, faded scenes of the dead past took on sudden color and as suddenly vanished. Faces, he had forgotten for years, flashed instantaneously into view. Voices long hushed in oblivion, re-embodied, spoke in accents as familiar as his own. Inwardly he was seething with the myriad shifting pictures of a drowning man. Outwardly he walked those half-score steps to the line, unflinchingly; came to certain death,--and waited: personification of all that is cool and deliberate--of the sudden abundant nerve in emergencies which comes only to the highly evolved.

Duggin, the big man, turned likewise at the word and came part way swiftly; then stopped, his face very pale. Another step he took, with another pause, and with great drops of perspiration gathering on his face, and on the backs of his hands. Yet another start, and he came very near; so near that he gazed into the blue of Ichabod's eyes. They seemed to him now devil's eyes, and he halted, looking at them, fingering the weapon in his hand, his courage oozing at every pore.

Out of those eyes and that long, thin face stared death; not hot, sudden death, but nihility, cool, deliberate, that waited for one! The big beads on his forehead gathered in drops and ran down his cheeks.

He tried to move on, but his legs only trembled beneath him. The hopeless, unreasoning terror of the frightened animal, the raw recruit, the superst.i.tious negro, was upon him. The last fragment of self-respect, of bravado even, was in tatters. No object on earth, no fear of hereafter, could have made him face death in that way, with those eyes looking into his.

The weapon shook from Duggin's hand to the floor,--with a sound like the first clatter of gravel on a coffin lid; and in abas.e.m.e.nt absolute he dropped his head; his hands nerveless, his jaw trembling.

"I beg your pardon--and your wife's," he faltered.