Stepsons of Light Part 22

"I withdraw the collar b.u.t.ton," said Charlie. He slowed his step and shot a glance at the grizzled face beside him. Who's Who in Cowland has a well-thumbed page for Spinal Maginnis. "What's your will?"

"You arrested young Dines?"

"In a way, yes. I was with the bunch."

"It is told of you by camp fires," said Maginnis, "that you'll do to take along. Will you come?"

"With you, yes. Spill it."

"For me. To do what I can't do for myself. You arrested Johnny Dines, or helped; so you can go where I'm not wanted. Notice anything back yonder?" He jerked his head toward the main street.

"Well, I'm not walking in my sleep this bright beautiful evening.

Whispering fools, you mean?"

"Exactly. Some knaves, too. But fools are worse always, and more dangerous. This town is all fussed up and hectic about the Forbes killing. Ugly rumors--Dines did this, Dines did that, Dines is a red h.e.l.lion. I don't like the way things shape up. There's a lot of offscourings and riffraff here--and someone is putting up free whisky.

It's known that I was a friend of this boy's father, and it is suspected that I may be interested in his father's son. But you--can't you find out--Oh, h.e.l.l, you know what I want!"

"Sure I do. You're afraid of a mob, with a scoundrel back of it.

Excuse me for wasting words. You're afraid of a mob. I'm your man.

Free whisky is where I live. Me for the gilded haunts of sin. Any particular haunt you have in mind?"

"Sure I have. No need to go to The Bank. Joe is a pretty decent old scout. You skip Joe's place and drop in at The Mermaid. Where they love money most is where trouble starts."

"Where will I report to you?"

"You know Perrault's house?"

"With trees all round, and a little vineyard? Just below the jail?

Yes."

"You'll find me there, and a couple more old residenters. Hop along, now."

The Mermaid saloon squatted in a low, dark corner of Hillsboro--even if the words were used in the most literal sense.

Waywardly careless, Hillsboro checkered with alternate homes and mines the undulations of a dozen low hills; an amphitheater girdled by high mountain walls, with a central arena for commercial gladiators.

Stamp mills hung along the scarred hillsides, stamp mills exhibiting every known variety of size and battery. In quite the Athenian manner, courthouse, church and school crowned each a hill of its own, and doubtless proved what has been so often and so well said of our civilization. At any rate the courthouse cost more than the school--about as much more as it was used less; and the church steeple was such as to attract comment from any G.o.d. The school was less imposing.

This was a high, rainy country. The frontier of the pines lay just behind and just above the town, on the first upward slopes. The desert levels were far below. Shade trees, then, can grow in Hillsboro; do grow there by Nature and by artifice, making a joyous riot of visible song--in the residential section. Industrial Hillsboro, however, held--or was held?--to the flintier hills, bleak and bare and brown, where the big smelter overhung and dominated the north. The steep narrow valley of the Percha divided Hillsboro rather equally between the good and the goats.

There was also the inevitable Mexican quarter--here, as ever, Chihuahua. But if Hillsboro could claim no originality of naming, she could boast of something unique in map making. The Mexican suburb ran directly through the heart of the town. Then the Mexican town was the old town? A good guess, but not the right one. The effective cause was that the lordly white man scorned to garden--cowmen and miners holding an equally foolish tradition on this head; while the humble _paisano_ has gardened since Scipio and Hasdrubal; would garden in h.e.l.l. So the narrow bottom lands of the creek were given over to truck patches and brown gardeners; tiny empires between loop and loop of twisting water; black loam, pay dirt. It is curious to consider that this pay dirt will be fruitful still, these homes will still be homes, a thousand years after the last yellow dross has been sifted from the hills.

So much for the town proper. A small outlying fringe lay below the broad white wagon road twisting away between the hills in long curves or terraced zigzags to the railhead. Here a flat black level of gla.s.sy obsidian shouldered across the valley and forced the little river to an unexpected whirling plunge where the dark box of the Percha led wandering through the eastern barrier of hills; and on that black cheerless level huddled the wide, low length of The Mermaid, paintless, forbidding, shunning and shunned. Most odd to contemplate; this gla.s.sy barren, nonproducing, uncultivated and unmined, waste and sterile, was yet a better money-maker than the best placer or the richest loam land of all Hillsboro. Tellurian papers please copy.

The Mermaid boasted no Jonson, and differed in other respects from The Mermaid of Broad Street. Nor might it be reproached with any insidious allure, though one of the seven deadly arts had been invoked. Facing the bar, a startled sea maid turned her head, ever about to plunge to the safety of green seas. The result was not convincing; she did not look startled enough to dive. But perhaps the artist had a model.

Legend says the canvas was painted to liquidate a liquor bill, which would explain much; it is hard paying for a dead horse. It had once been signed, but some kindly hand had sc.r.a.ped the name away. In moments of irritation Hillsboro spoke of The Mermaid as "The Dive."

"Johnny Dines--yah! Thought he could pull that stuff and get away with it," said Jody Weir loudly. "Fine bluff, but it got called. Bankin'

on the cowmen to stick with him and get him out of it."

The Mermaid bar was crowded. It was a dingy place and a dingy crew.

The barkeeper had need for all his craft and swiftness to give service. The barkeeper was also the owner--a tall man with a white bloodless face, whiter for black brows like scars. The gambling hall behind was lit up but deserted. The crowd was in too ugly a mood for gambling. They had been drinking bad liquor, much too much for most of them; headed by Weir, Caney and Hales, seconded by any chance buyer, and followed up by the Merman, who served a round on the house with unwonted frequency.

Jody pounded on the bar.

"Yes, that's his little scheme--intimidation. He's countin' on the cowboys to scare Hillsboro out--him playin' plumb innocent of course--knowin' nothin', victim of circ.u.mstances. Sure! 'Turn this poor persecuted boy loose!' they'll say. 'You got nothin' on him.' Oh, them bold bad men!"

"That don't sound reasonable, Jody," objected Shaky Akins. "Forbes was a cowman. You're a cowman yourself."

"Yes--but I saw. These fellers'll hear, and then they'll shoot off their mouths on general principles, not knowing straight up about it; then they'll stick to what they first said, out of plumb pig-headedness. One thing I'm glad of: I sure hope Cole Ralston likes the way his new man turned out."

"Dines and Charlie See favor each other a heap. Not in looks so much,"

said Shaky, "but in their ways. I used to know Charlie See right well, over on the Pecos. He was shortstop on the Roswell nine. He couldn't hit, and he couldn't field, and he couldn't run bases--but oh, people, how that man could play ball!"

"Nonsense. They're not a bit alike. You think so, just because they're both little."

"I don't either. I think so because they're both--oh my!"

"I don't like this man See, either," said Caney. "I don't like a hair of his head. Too d.a.m.n smart. Somebody's going to break him in two before he's much older."

"Now listen!" said Shaky Akins, without heat. "When you go to break Charlie See you'll find he is a right flexible citizen--any man, any time, anywhere."

"Well," said Hales, "all this talking is dry work. Come up, boys. This one is on me."

"What will it be, gentlemen?" inquired the suave Merman. "One Scotch.

Yes. Three straights. A highball. Three rums. One gin sling. Make it two? Right. Next? Whisky straight. And the same. What's yours, Mr.

Akins?"

"Another blond bland blend," said Shaky. "But you haven't answered my question, Jody. Why should cowmen see this killing any different from anyone else? Just clannishness, you think?"

"Because cowmen can read sign," said Charlie See. He stood framed in the front door: he stepped inside.

The startled room turned to the door. There were nudges and whispers.

Talking ceased. There had been a dozen noisy conversations besides the one recorded.

"Reading tracks is harder to learn than Greek, and more interesting,"

said Charlie. "Cattlemen have always had to read sign, and they've always had to read it right--ever since they was six years old. What you begin learning at six years old is the only thing you ever learn good. So cowmen don't just look and talk. They see and think."

He moved easily across the room in a vast silence. Caney's eyes met those of the Merman barkeeper. The Merman's bloodless and sinister face made no change, but he made a change in the order.

"Step up, Mr. See," said the Merman. "This one's on me. What will it be?"

"Beer," said Charlie. He nodded to the crowd. "Howdy, boys! h.e.l.lo, Shaky--that you?"

He lined up beside Shaky; he noted sly sidelong glances and furtive faces reflected in the blistered mirror behind the bar.

"Sure is. Play you a game of pool--what?"

"All set?" demanded Caney from the other end of the bar. "Drink her down, fellers! Here's to the gallows tree!"