The Cow Puncher Part 26

"Charlie."

"And your address?"

The boy mentioned a distant subdivision.

"That _is_ out, isn't it? Well, we'll take the car. We'll run right out and see what is to be done. I guess I'd better call a doctor at once."

He went to the telephone and gave some directions. Then he and the boy walked to a garage, and in a few moments were humming along the by-streets into the country. Dave had already become engrossed in his errand of mercy, and his rage at Conward, if not forgotten, was temporarily dismissed from his mind. He chatted with the boy as he drove.

"You go to school?"

"Not this year. Father has been too sick. Of course, this is holidays, and he says he'll be all right before they're over."

Dave smiled grimly. "The incurable optimism of it," he murmured to himself. Then outwardly, "Of course he will. We'll fix him up in no time with a good doctor and a good nurse."

They drove on through the calm night, leaving the city streets behind and following what was little more than a country trail. This was crossed in every direction, and at every possible angle, by just such other country trails, unravelling themselves into the darkness. Here and there they b.u.mped over pieces of graded street, infinitely rougher than the natural prairie; once Dave dropped his front wheels into a collapsing water trench; once he just grazed an isolated hydrant. The city lights were cut off by a shoulder of foothill; only their dull glow hung in the distant sky.

"And this is one of our 'choice residential subdivisions,'" said Dave to himself, as with Charlie's guidance and his own in-born sense of location he threaded his way through the maze of diverging trails.

"Fine business; fine business."

As the journey continued the sense of self-reproach which had been static in him for many months became more insistent, and he found himself repeating the ironical phrase, "Fine business, fine business.

Yes, I let Conward 'weigh the coal' all right." The intrusion of Conward into his mind sent the blood to his head, but at that moment his reflections were cut short by the boy.

"We will have to get out here," he said. "The bridge is down."

Investigation proved him to be right. A bridge over a small stream had collapsed, and was slowly disintegrating amid its own wreckage. Dave explored the stream bottom, getting muddy boots for his pains. Then he ran the car a little to one side of the road, locked the switch, and walked on with the boy.

"Pretty lonely out here, isn't it?" he ventured.

"Oh, no. There is a street light we can see in a little while; it is behind the hill now. We see it from the corner of our shack. It's very cheery."

"Fine business," Dave repeated to himself. "And this is how our big success was made. Well, the 'success' has vanished as quickly as it came. I suppose there is a Law somewhere that is not mocked."

They were pa.s.sing through a settlement of crude houses, dimly visible in the starlight and by occasional yellow blurs from their windows.

Before one of the meanest of these the boy at last stopped. The upper hinge of the door was broken, and a feeble light struggled through the s.p.a.ce where it gaped outward. Charlie pulled the door open, and Dave entered. At first his eyes could not take in the dim outlines before him; he was conscious of a very small and stuffy room, with a peculiar odour which he attributed to an oil lamp burning on a box. He walked over and turned the lamp up, but the oil was consumed; a red, sullen, smoking wick was its only response. Then he felt in his pocket, and struck a match.

The light revealed the dinginess of the little room. There was a bed, covered with musty, ragged clothing; a table, littered with broken and dirty dishes and pieces of stale food; a stove, cracked and greasy, and one or two bare boxes serving as articles of furniture. But it was to the bed Dave turned, and, with another match, bent over the shrunken form that lay almost concealed amid the coa.r.s.e coverings. He brought his face down close, then straightened up and steadied himself for a moment.

"He'll soon be well, don't you think, Mister? He said he would be well when the holidays----" But Dave's expression stopped the boy, whose own face went suddenly wild with fear.

"He is well now, Charlie," he said, as steadily as he could. "It is all holidays now for him."

The match had burnt out, and the room was in utter darkness. Dave heard the child drawing his feet slowly across the floor, then suddenly whimpering like a thing that had been mortally hurt. He groped toward him, and at length his fingers found his shock of hair. He drew the boy slowly into his arms; then very, very tight. . . . After all, they were orphans together.

"You will come with me," he said, at length. "I will see that you are provided for. The doctor will soon be here, or we will meet him on the way, and he will make the arrangements for--the arrangements that have to be made, you know."

They retraced their steps toward the town, meeting the doctor at the broken bridge. Dave exchanged a few words with him in low tones, and they pa.s.sed on. Soon they were swinging again through the city streets, this time through the busy thoroughfares, which were almost blocked with tense, excited crowds about the bulletin boards. Even with the developments of the evening pressing heavily upon his mind, Dave could not resist the temptation to stop and listen for a moment to bulletins being read through a megaphone.

"The Kaiser has stripped off his British regalia," said the announcer.

"He says he will never again wear a British uniform."

A chuckle of derisive laughter ran through the mob; then some one struck up a well-known refrain,--"What the h.e.l.l do we care?" Up and down the street voices caught up the chorus. . . . Within a year the bones of many in that thoughtless crowd, bleaching on the fields of Flanders, showed how much they cared.

Dave literally pressed his machine through the throng, which opened slowly to let it pa.s.s, and immediately filled up the wake behind. Then he drove direct to the Hardy home.

After some delay Irene met him at the door, and Dave explained the situation in a few words. "We must take care of him, Reenie," he said.

"I feel a personal responsibility."

"Of course we will take him," she answered. "He will live here until we have a--some place of our own." Her face was bright with something which must be tenderness. "Bring him upstairs. We will allot him a room, and introduce him, first, to--the bath-room. And tomorrow we shall have an excursion down town, and some new clothes for Charlie--Elden."

As they moved up the stairs Conward, who had been in another room in conversation with Mrs. Hardy, followed them unseen. The evening had been interminable for Conward. For three hours he had waited word that his victim had been trapped, and for three hours no word had come. He had smoked numberless cigarettes, and nibbled impatiently at his nails, and tried to appear at ease before Mrs. Hardy. If his plans had miscarried; if Dave had discovered the plot; well---- And here at length was Dave, engrossed in a very different matter. Conward followed them up the stairs.

Irene and Dave chatted with the boy for a few moments, trying to make him feel at home in his strange surroundings; then Irene turned to some arrangements for his comfort, and Dave started down stairs. In the pa.s.sage he was met by Conward. Conward seemed at last to have dropped the mask; he leered insolently, triumphantly, in Dave's face.

"What are you doing here?" Dave demanded, as he felt his head beginning to swim in anger.

Conward leered only the more offensively, and walked down the stairs beside him. At the foot he coolly lit another cigarette. If he was conscious of the hate in Dave's eyes he hid his emotions under a mask of insolence. He held the match before him and calmly watched it burn out. Then he extended it toward Dave.

"You remember our wager, Elden. I present you with--a burnt-out match."

"You liar!" cried Dave. "You infamous liar!"

"Ask _her_," Conward replied. "She will deny it, of course. All women do."

Dave felt his muscles tighten, and knew that in a moment he would tear his victim to pieces. As his clenched fist came to the side of his body it struck something hard. His revolver! He had forgotten; he was not in the habit of carrying it. In an instant he had Conward covered.

Dave did not press the trigger at once. He took a fierce delight in torturing the man who had wrecked his life,--even while he told himself he could not believe his boast. Now he watched the colour fade from Conward's cheek; the eyes stand out in his face; the livid blotches more livid still; the cigarette drop from his nerveless lips.

"You are a brave man, Conward," he said, and there was the rasp of hate and contempt in his voice. "You are a very brave man."

Mrs. Hardy, sensing something wrong, came out from her sitting-room.

With a little cry she swooned away.

Conward tried to speak, but words stuck in his throat. With a dry tongue he licked his drier lips.

"Do you believe in h.e.l.l, Conward?" Dave continued. "I've always had some doubt myself, but in thirty seconds--_you'll know_."

Irene, attracted by her mother's cry, appeared on the stairway. For a moment her eyes refused to grasp the scene before them; Conward cowering, terror-stricken; Dave fierce, steely, implacable, with his revolver lined on Conward's brain. Through some strange whim of her mind her thought in that instant flew back to the bottles on the posts of the Elden ranch, and Dave breaking five out of six on the gallop.

Then, suddenly, she became aware of one thing only. A tragedy was being enacted before her eyes, and Dave would be held responsible. In a moment every impulse within her beat forth in a wild frenzy to save him from such a consequence.

"Oh, don't, Dave, don't, don't shoot him," she cried, flying down the remaining steps. Before Dave could grasp her purpose she was upon him; had clutched his revolver; had wrapped her arms about his. "Don't, don't, Dave," she pleaded. "For my sake, don't do--_that_."

Her words were tragically unfortunate. For a moment Dave stood as one paralyzed; then his heart dried up within him.

"So that's the way of it," he said, as he broke her grip, and the horror in his own eyes would not let him read the sudden horror in hers. "All right; take it," and he placed the revolver in her hand.

"You should know what to do with it." And before she could stop him he had walked out of the house.

She rushed to the gate, but already the roar of his motor was lost in the hum of the city's traffic.