Louisiana Lou Part 12

He was looking furtively at her veil, his eyes shifting away and back to it, awed by the mystery of the hidden eyes. He was like a wild, shy animal, uneasy in this place and among these people so foreign to his natural environment.

Solange sighed. "I am sorry, monsieur," she said. "I had hoped you could tell me more."

He broke in again with his whining voice. "It was this here Louisiana, every one says."

"Louisiana! Yes----" Solange's tones became fierce and she leaned closer to the dry desert rat, who shrank from her. "And when I find him--when I find this man who shot my father like a dog----"

Her voice was tense and almost shrill, cutting like steel.

"I shall kill him!"

The dim, veiled face was close to Banker's. He raised his corded, lean hand to the corded, lean throat as though he was choking. He stared at her fixedly, his shifty eyes for once held steady. There was horror and fear in the back of them. He put one foot back, shifted his weight to it, put the other back, then the first again, slowly retreating backward, with his stricken eyes still on her. Then he suddenly whirled about and scuttled down the stairs as though the devil were after him.

Solange remained standing, puzzled.

"That is queer," she said. "Why is he frightened? I did not mean to startle him. I suppose he is shy."

"No. Just locoed, like all them prospectors," said Sucatash.

"Furthermore, he's ornery, ma'am. Probably don't like this talk of killin'. They say he beefed Panamint Charlie, his partner, some years ago and I reckon he's a mite sensitive that a way."

"He doesn't seem to know where the mine is," said Solange. "Nor do you, mademoiselle?"

"Me?" said Marian, airily. "If I knew where that mine was, believe me, you'd be late looking for it. I'd have been settled on it long ago."

"I wish," said Solange, "that I knew what to do. Perhaps, if this unspeakable De Launay were here----"

"I can telephone the Greek's and see if he's there," suggested MacKay. Solange a.s.sented and he hurried to a telephone.

"It ain't likely he knows much that will help, mad'mo'selle," said Sucatash, also eager to aid, "but my old man was around here when these hostilities was pulled off, and it's possible he might help you.

He could tell you as much as any one, I reckon."

"Your father?"

"Yes, ma'am. I recommend that you get your outfit together, except fer hosses, hire a car to take it out and start from our ranch at Willow Spring. It's right near the mountains and not far from Shoestring Canyon, which it's likely you'll have to go that way to get into the hills. And you'll be able to get all the hosses you want right there."

"That sounds as though it might be the wise thing to do," said Wilding.

Solange turned to him. "That is true. I thank Monsieur Sucatash. And, Monsieur Wilding, there is one thing you can do for me, besides the arrangements for that divorce. Can you not search the records to find out what is known of my father's death and who killed him?"

"But it appears that the killer was Louisiana."

"Yes--but who is Louisiana? Where did he go? That is what I must find out. Oh! If this depraved De Launay were of any benefit, instead of being a sorrow and disgust to me----"

At this moment Dave MacKay reappeared. Solange turned to him eagerly.

"Did you find him, monsieur?"

"I sure did," said Dave, with disgust. "Leastways, I located him. That animated vat of inebriation has done went and landed in jail."

CHAPTER IX

BEHIND PRISON BARS

A somewhat intoxicated cow-puncher, in from the mountain ranges north of the town, intrigued De Launay when he returned to Johnny the Greek's. To be exact, it was not the cow-puncher, who was merely a gawky, loud-mouthed and uncouth importation from a Middle Western farm, broken to ride after a fashion, to rope and brand when necessary and to wield pliers in mending barbed wire, the sort of product, in fact, that had disillusioned De Launay. It was his clothes that the ex-legionnaire admired.

They were clothes about like those worn by Sucatash and Dave Mackay.

De Launay could have purchased such clothes at any one of a dozen shops, but they would have been new and conspicuous. The fellow wore a wide-brimmed hat, the wear of which had resulted in certain picturesque sags that De Launay considered extremely artistic. His boots were small and fairly new, and not over adorned with ornamentation. There was also a buckskin waistcoat which was aged and ripened. The other accessories were unimportant. Such things as spurs, bridle, and saddle De Launay had bought when he acquired a horse.

De Launay had imbibed enough of the terrible liquor served by Snake Murphy to completely submerge his everyday personality. He retained merely a fixed idea that he wished to return as far as possible in spirit to the days of nineteen years ago. To his befuddled mind, the first step was to dress the part. He was groping after his lost youth, unable to realize that it was, indeed, lost beyond recovery; that he was, in hardly a particular, the wild lad who had once ridden the desert ranges.

The more he drank, the firmer became the notion that, to him, instead of to this imitation of the real thing, rightfully belonged these insignia of a vanishing fraternity. He considered ways and means, rejecting one after another. He vaguely laid plans to wait until the fellow went to his quarters for the night, and then break in and steal his clothes. A better plan suggested itself; to ply him with drink until unconscious and then drag him somewhere and strip him. This also did not seem practical. Then he thought of inducing him to gamble and winning all his possessions, but a remnant of sense deterred him. De Launay, though he gambled recklessly, never, by any chance, won. In fact, his losings were so monotonous that the diversion had ceased to be exciting and he had abandoned it.

Finally, having reached a stage where the effort to think was too much for him, he did the obvious thing and offered to buy the fellow's clothes. The cow-puncher was almost as drunk as De Launay and showed it much more. He was also belligerent, which De Launay never was.

Furthermore, he had reached the stage where he was suspicious of anything out of the ordinary. He thought De Launay was ridiculing him.

"Sell you my clo'es! Say, feller, what you givin' me?"

A bullet-headed, crop-haired, and lowering laborer, who was leaning against the bar, uttered a snorting laugh.

"Lamp de guys wit' de French heels an' de one wit' de sissy eyebrow on 'is lip, would youse? Dey's a coupla heroes wat's been to France; dey gets dem habits dere."

The sensitive cow hand glared about him, but the leering toughs who echoed their spokesman's laughter were not safe to challenge. There were too many of them. De Launay stood alone and, to him as to the others, that little pointed mustache was a mark of affectation and effeminacy.

"You better pull yer freight before I take a wallop at yuh," he remarked, loudly.

"Tell 'im to go git a shave, bo," suggested the bullet-headed man.

"I'll singe the eyebrow offa him myself if he don't git outa here,"

growled the cow hand, turning back to his liquor.

De Launay went back to his table and sat down. He brooded on his failure, and to him it seemed that he must have that hat, that waistcoat and those boots at any cost. The others in the room snickered and jeered as they eyed his sagging figure and closed eyes.

He finally got up and lurched out of the room. The door opened on a narrow stairway leading down to a sort of pantry behind the main billiard parlor on the ground floor. The stairway was steep and dark, and the landing was small and only dimly lighted by a dusty, cobwebbed square of window high up in the outer wall.

De Launay sat on the top step and resumed his brooding, his head sunk on his arms, which were folded on his knees. He felt a deep sense of injury, and his sorrow for himself was acute. He was only half conscious of his sufferings, but they were dully insistent, above the deadening influence of the liquor. There were some things he wanted and they continually ran through his mind in jumbled sequence. There was a pair of high heels, then there was a sort of vision of limitless, abandoned plain covered with yellowing gra.s.s and black sage clumps, and surmounted with a brilliant blue sky. Following this was a confused picture of a blackened, greasy waistcoat from which a dark, fathomless pair of eyes looked out. He wondered how a waistcoat could have a pair of eyes, and why the eyes should hold in them lights like those that flashed from a diamond.

Men came up the stairs and crowded roughly past him. He paid them no heed. Occasionally other men left the hidden barroom and went down.

These were rougher. One of them even kicked him in pa.s.sing. He merely looked up, dully took in the figure and sank his head again on his arms. Inside, newcomers advised Snake Murphy to go out and throw the b.u.m into the street. As this might have led to inquiries, Snake decided to leave well enough alone until dark.

Finally the cow-puncher, well loaded with more liquor than he could comfortably carry, decided to take an uncertain departure. He waved a debonair and inclusive farewell to all those about him, teetered a bit on his high heels, straddled an imaginary horse, and, with legs well apart and body balanced precariously, tacked, by and full, for the door.

Reaching it, he leaned against it, felt for the k.n.o.b, turned it, carefully backed away from the door and opened it. Holding the edge, he eased himself around it and, balancing on the outer side, closed it again with elaborate care. Then he took a tentative step and lifted his hand from its support.

The next moment he tripped over De Launay and fell over his head, turning a complete flip.