The Forfeit Part 14

Ju set the two fresh bottles on the counter while Bud lit his cigar.

"That's so," he said with appreciation, and propped his folded arms upon the bar. "It sort o' come sudden, too." He smiled faintly. "It come as I said it would right here in this bar. The boys was settin'

around sousing, an' pushin' round the cyards, an' the Vigilante Committee was settin' on a pow-wow. I was tellin' 'em ef the folks had the sense of a blind louse they'd dope out a reward, an' make it big.

I guessed they'd get the gang quick that way. Y'see, it don't matter who it is, folks is all after dollars--if there's only enough of 'em.

Life's jest made up of two sorts o' guys, the fellers with dollars an'

them without. Wal, I guess it's a sort o' play goes right on all the time. You just raise h.e.l.l around till you get 'em, the other fellers raise h.e.l.l till you ain't. It's a sort o' give and take, though I reckon the taking seems to be the general scheme adopted. That's how it comes Lightfoot an' his gang got a nasty kink in most o' their necks. It's them dollars. Some wise guy around here jest took himself by the neck and squeezed out a present of ten thousand dollars to the feller who'd sell up Lightfoot's good-will an' business. What happened? Why, it took jest about twenty-four hours for the transaction to be put through. Say, ever hear tell of a time when ther' wa'an't some feller waiting ready to grab on to ten thousand dollars? No, sir. You never did. No, nor no one else, 'cep' he spent the whole of his life in the foolish house."

"Some one betrayed 'em--for ten thousand dollars?"

Bud's question came with a sharp edge to it.

"Don't guess 'betray's' the word, mister. It was jest a commercial transaction. You jest need to get a right understanding of them things. When I got something to sell, an' you're yearnin' to dope out the dollars for it--say ten thousand of 'em--why, I don't guess there's anything else to it but a straight business proposition."

"So you netted the ten thousand?" enquired Bud, in his simplest fashion.

"Me? Gee! Say, if them ten thousand dollars had wafted my way I'd have set this city crazy drunk fer a week. No, sir," he added, with a coldly gloomy shake of the head. "That's jest about the pain I'm sufferin' right now. Some mighty slick aleck's helped hisself to them dollars, an' I don't know who--nor does anybody else, 'cep' him who paid 'em."

Bud realized the man's shameless earnestness, but pa.s.sed it by. He was seeking information. It was what he and Jeff had come for. The manner of this man was coldly callous, and he knew that every word he uttered was a lash applied to the bruised soul of the man by the window.

Irresistible sympathy made him turn about.

"Here's your lager, Jeff," he said, in his easiest fashion. He had no desire that Ju should be made aware of the trouble that Jeff was laboring under.

Jeff replied at once. His readiness and even cheerfulness of manner surprised Bud. But it relieved him as well.

"Bully!" he cried, as he came back to the bar. "I was just gettin' a look around at the--city." He turned to Ju with his shadowy smile which almost broke Bud's heart. "Quite a place, eh?"

"Place? Wal, it's got points I allow. So's h.e.l.l ef you kin look at it right." Ju lit a cigar and hid nearly half of it in his capacious mouth. "I'd say," he went on, with a certain satisfaction, "ther's more mush-headed souses in this lay out to the square yard than I've ever heard tell of in any other city. Ef it wa'an't that way I couldn't see myself wastin' a valuable life lookin' at gra.s.s, hearin'

talk of gra.s.s, smellin' gra.s.s, an' durned nigh eatin' gra.s.s. I tell you right here it takes me countin' my legs twice a day to keep me from the delusion I got four, an' every time I got to shake my head at some haf soused b.u.m who's needin' credit I'm scared to death my blamed ears'll start right in flappin'. Why, yes, I guess it's some place--if you don't know no other."

Bud was eager to get to the end of the task he had a.s.sumed for his friend. He wanted the facts, all the facts as far as they were available, of the terrible enactments in that valley of his early youth.

"An' who antied the price?" he demanded.

"Who? Why, the President of the Western Union Cattle Breeders'

a.s.sociation--Dug McFarlane."

"And you don't know who--accepted it?"

It was Jeff who put the question, and Bud, looking on, saw the steely gleam that lit the man's eyes as he spoke.

But Ju's amiability was pa.s.sing. He was getting tired of a subject which dealt with another man's profit. He rolled his cigar across his mouth.

"Here. Guess I best tell you the yarn as we know it. Y'see," he added regretfully, "we ain't learned a heap 'cep' jest the racket of it. Dug set up the reward overnight. Next night twenty-five of the boys rode out with him to the hills. Ther' was some guy with 'em leadin'. But none of the boys come up with him. He rode with Dug. We've all guessed, but I don't reckon we know, or'll ever know. You see, he got shot up they say by Lightfoot himself. However, it don't signify. I got my notions 'bout it, an' anyway I guess they're jest my own. The boys guess it was one of the gang itself. Mebbe it was. Can't rightly say. After they'd located the camp they set out to surround it. It was in a bluff. The sc.r.a.p started right away, an' there was a deal o'

shootin'. One or two o' the boys got shot up bad. Then some one fired the bluff, an' burned 'em right out like a crowd of gophers. After that the sc.r.a.p came good an' plenty, an' it seems to've lasted nigh an hour. Anyways, they got three of 'em. They shot up several others, an' not more than three got clear away."

"An' what about Lightfoot?" It was Bud who spoke. His voice was changed from its usual deep tone. It was sharp, and almost impatient.

"They got him," said Ju, with a delight so evident that Bud felt like killing him for it. "Oh, yes, they got him, sure. A dandy gent with his blue eyes an' curly, tow hair. They don't guess that's his right name tho'. But it don't signify. He was the boss all right, all right, an' they took him, an' hanged him with the other two, right out of hand. Gee, I'd have give a deal to have seen----"

"We'll have to be pushing on now, Bud."

Jeff spoke with his head bent, examining the face of his gold timepiece. Bud glanced at him. He could see the ghastly hue of the averted features, and his answer came on the instant.

"You git the ponies cinched up, Jeff," he said quickly. "I'll be right with you."

Ju watched Jeff hurry out of the bar. Then his eyes came searchingly back to Bud's grimly set face.

"Kind o' seems in a hurry, don't he?" he demanded, with a curious look in his hard eyes. "Looks sick, too. Say, I didn't git his name right.

Mebbe he's traveling around incog.--ain't that the word?"

There was no mistaking the suggestion in the man's half-smiling, half-sneering manner. The ranchman understood it only too well. He understood most of the ways and expressions of the men of the prairie.

The hot blood surged under his calm exterior. His gray eyes, so accustomed to smiling, snapped dangerously. But his reply came with the same ease which he had displayed most of the time.

"Wal, I don't guess ther's no myst'ry 'bout either of us, which you kind o' seem you'd like to think. Jeff Masters of the 'O----'s' is well enough known to most folks, who got any sort o' knowledge of these parts. An' ther's quite a few folks around here, including Dug McFarlane, li'ble to remember the name of Bud Tristram, of the 'T.T.'s.' But you're sure right in guessin' he's in a hurry to quit.

Ther's some places, an' some folks, it ain't good to see a heap of.

Ther's fellers with minds like sinks, an' others with natures like rattlers. Neither of them things is as wholesome as a Sunday-school, I allow. Jeff ain't yearnin' to explore no sinks, human or any other.

An' I've generally noticed his favorite pastime is killin' rattlers.

So it's jest about the only thing to do--quit this saloon, same as I'm goin' to do. But say, 'fore I go I'd jest like to hand you this.

Justice is justice, an' we all need to take our dope when it comes our way. But ther' ain't no right on this blamed earth fer any feller to whoop it up at another feller's misdoin's, an' his ultimate undoin'.

An' you kin take it how you fancy when I say only the heart of a louse could feel that-a-way--an' that's about the lowest I know how to hand you."

Bud's eyes were shining dangerously. They were squarely looking into the hard face of the saloon-keeper. Not the movement of an eyelid escaped him. He literally seemed to devour the unwholesome picture confronting him. The aggressive chin beard, the continual mastication of the cigar which protruded from the corner of the mouth. There was deadly fury lurking behind Ju's cruel eyes. But the looked-for physical display was withheld, and Bud finally turned and walked slowly out of the bar.

It was some minutes since a word had pa.s.sed between the two men. Jeff had nothing to say, and Bud's sympathy was too deep for words. He was waiting for the younger man to fight his battle to its logical end. He knew, only too well, all that Jeff had suffered since the moment of that gruesome discovery in the Cathills valley. It had been no figure of speech when Jeff had described his twin brother as part of himself.

The shock the man had received was, to Bud's mind, as though his heart had been torn asunder. Hanged as a cattle thief! Was there anything more dire, more terrible in the imagination of man than to suddenly find that his well-loved brother, twin body of his own, was a cattle thief, possibly a murderer, and had been hanged by his fellow-men? It was a thought to leave the simple Bud staggered. And for the victim of the shock it might well mean the mental breaking point.

Jeff was fighting out his battle with an almost super-human courage.

Bud knew that. It was written in every detail of his att.i.tude. In the straining of his blue eyes, in the deep knitting of his fair strong brows, in the painful lines ploughing deeper and deeper about his mouth, and the set of his strong jaws.

No. There was no thought of breaking in upon the boy's black moments of suffering. He must fight his own battle now, once and for all.

When victory had been achieved, then perhaps his sympathy might become helpful. But till then nothing but the necessities of their journey must be allowed to intrude between them.

So they rode over the southern trail. The noontide sun scorched the parching earth with a blistering heat, drinking up the last moisture which the tall prairie gra.s.s sought to secrete at its attenuated roots.

The world about them was unchanged. Every scene was similar in its characteristics to all that which had become their lives. Yet Bud knew that for one of them, at least, the whole of life, and everything pertaining to it, had been completely and terribly distorted.

But the character of Jeffrey Masters was stronger and fiercer than Bud knew. For all his suffering there was no yielding in him. There had been moments when his soul had cried out in agony. There had been moments when the hideousness of his weak brother's fall had driven him to the verge of madness. But with each yielding to suffering had come a rally of pa.s.sionate force that would not be overborne, and gradually mastery supervened.

Ten miles out of Orrville on the homeward journey Bud received his first intimation that the battle was waning. It came almost as a shock. They had pa.s.sed a long stretch of flat gra.s.s-land, and were breasting an incline. Jeff, on the lead, had reined his horse down to a walk. In a moment they were riding abreast, with Bud's pack pony in between them. Jeff turned his bloodshot eyes upon his friend, then they turned again to the trail.

"There's nothing now, Bud, but to get ahead with all our plans and schemes," he said. "We must drive ahead without any looking back.

There's still things in life, I guess, that's worth while, and I'd say not the least of 'em is--work."

He paused. He had been gazing straight ahead to disguise his effort.

Now he turned and looked into the face of his friend, and thrust his hat back on his head.

"It's been tough, Bud. So tough I don't know how I got through. Guess I shouldn't have without you. You see, Bud, you never said a thing, and--and that saved me. Guess I'm sort of tired now. Tired of thinking, tired of--everything. But it's over, and now I sort of feel I've got to get busy, or I'll forget how to play the man. I don't guess I'll ever hope to forget. No, I don't want to forget. I couldn't, just as I couldn't forget that there's some one in the world took ten thousand dollars as the price of Ronny's poor foolish life.