The Forfeit Part 3

fancies handin' you fer--nix. That an' hoss sense. That's pretty well the world to-day, no matter what the sky-pilots an' Sunday-school ma'ams dope out in their fancy literature. I know. You offer ten thousand dollars for the hangin' of Lightfoot's gang, an', I say right here, there ain't a feller in it from Lightfoot--if there is sech a feller--down, who wouldn't make a grab at that wad by givin' the rest of the crowd away. Makes you think, don't it? Sort o' worries them empty think tanks o' yours."

But Ju's satisfaction received an unexpected shaking.

"Some wind," observed the slim, lonely drinker, in the blandest fashion.

Ju was round on him in a flash, his walrus moustache bristling.

"I'm listening," he said, with a calmness which belied his att.i.tude.

The other set his gla.s.s down on the counter with a b.u.mp.

"If you're listening," he said, "you have probably understood what I said. You're talking through a fog of cynicism which seems to obscure an otherwise fairly competent intellect. You've plundered so many innocents in your time by purveying an excessive quant.i.ty of bluestone disguised under the name of alcohol that your overweening conceit has entirely distorted your perspective till you fancy that your own dregs of human nature const.i.tute the human nature of all the rest of the world, who would entirely resent being cla.s.sed as your fellows. In a word you need physic, Ju."

The speaker laughed amiably, and his smile revealed the weakness which was pointed by the signs of debauchery in his good-looking face. Ju eyed him steadily. The offense of his words was mitigated by his manner, but Ju resented the laugh which went round the entire room at his expense.

"See here, Bob Whitstone," he began, abandoning his gla.s.s wiping and supporting himself on his counter, with his face offensively thrust in his opponent's direction, "I ain't got the langwidge you seem to have lapped up with your mother's milk. I don't guess any sucker paid a thousand dollars a year for my college eddication so I could come out here and grow a couple of old beeves and spend my leisure picklin' my food depot in a low down prairie saloon. Therefor' I'll ask you to excuse me if I talk in a kind o' langwidge the folks about here most gener'ly understan'. Guess you think you know some. Maybe you figger to know it all. Wal, get this. When you get back home jest stand in front of a fi' cent mirror, if you got one in your b.u.m shanty, an' get a peek at your map, an' ask yourself--when you studied it well--if I couldn't buy you, body an' soul, fer two thousand dollars--cash. I'd sure hate slingin' mud at any feller's features, much less yours, who're a good customer to me, but you're comin' the highbrow, an' you got notions of honor still floatin' around in your flabby thinkin'

department sech as was handed you by the guys who ran that thousand dollar college. Wal, ef you'll look at yourself honest, an' argue with yourself honest, you'll find them things is sure a shadder of the past which happened somew'eres before you tasted that first dose o' prairie poison which has since become a kind o' habit. It ain't no use in getting riled, Bob, it ain't no use in workin' overtime on that college dictionary o' yours to set me crawlin' around among the spit boxes.

Fac's is fac's. Ken you hand me a list o' the things you--you who ain't got two spare cents to push into the mission box, an' who'd willingly sleep in a hog pen if it weren't for a dandy wife who'd got no more sense than to marry you--wouldn't do if I was to hand you out a roll of ten thousand dollars right now--cash? Tcha! You think. I know."

He turned away in a wave of contemptuous disgust. And as he did so a harsh voice from the other end of the bar held him up.

"What about me, Ju?"

The tough-looking prairie man made his demand with a laugh only a shade less harsh than his speaking voice.

Ju stood. His desperate, keen face was coldly still as he regarded the powerful frame of his challenger. Then his retort came swift and poignant.

"You, Sikkem? You'd allus _give_ yourself away. Get me?"

The frigidity of the saloon-keeper's manner was over-powering. The man called Sikkem was unequal in words to such a challenge. A flush slowly dyed his lean cheeks, and an angry depression of the brows suggested something pa.s.sionate and forceful. Just for a moment many eyes glanced in his direction. The saloon-keeper was steadily regarding him. There was no suggestion of anger in his att.i.tude, merely cat-like watchfulness. Their eyes met. Then the cloud abruptly lifted from Sikkem's brow, and he laughed with unsmiling, black eyes. The saloon-keeper rinsed a gla.s.s and unconcernedly began to wipe it.

The incident was allowed to pa.s.s. But it was the termination of the discussion, a termination which left Ju victor, not because of the rightness of his views, but because there was no man in Orrville capable of joining issue with him in debate with any hope of success.

Action rather than words was the prevailing feature with these people, and, in his way, Ju Penrose was equal, if not superior, not only in debate, but in the very method these people best understood.

A moment later Sikkem took his departure.

It was well past midnight when the last man turned out of Ju's bar.

But the crowd had not yet scattered to their various homes. They were gathered in a small, excited cl.u.s.ter gaping up at a big notice pasted on the weather-boarding of the saloon-keeper's shack. Ju himself was standing in their midst, right in front of the notice, which had been indited in ink, evidently executed with a piece of flat wood. He was holding up a lantern, and every eye was carefully, and in many instances laboriously, studying the text inscribed.

It was a notice of reward. A reward of ten thousand dollars for information leading to the capture of the gang of cattle thieves known as the "Lightfoot gang." And it was signed by Dug McFarlane on behalf of the Orrville Rancher's Vigilance Committee.

"Guess Ju knowed after all," somebody observed, in a confidential tone to his neighbor.

But Ju's ears were as long and sharp as his tongue. He flashed round on the instant, his lantern lowered from the level of the notice board.

There was a sort of cold triumph in his manner as his eyes fell upon the speaker.

"Know'd?" he cried sharply. "Ain't 'knowin'' my business? Psha!" His contempt was withering. Then his manner changed back to the triumph which the notice had inspired. "Say, it's a great piece of money. It surely is some bunch. Ten thousand dollars! Gee! His game's up.

Lightfoot's as good as kickin' his heels agin the breezes. He's played his hand, an'--lost."

And somehow no one seemed inclined to add to his statement. Nor, which was much more remarkable, contradict it. Now that these men had seen the notice with their own eyes the force of all Ju had so recently contended came home to them. There was not one amongst that little gathering who did not realize the extent of the odds militating against the rustlers. Ten thousand dollars! There was not a man present who did not feel the tremendous power of such a reward.

The gathering melted away slowly, and finally Bob Whitstone was left alone before the gleaming sheet of paper, with Ju standing in his doorway. The lantern was at his feet upon the sill. His hands were thrust in the tops of his shabby trousers. He was regarding the "gentleman" rancher meditatively, and his half burnt cigar glowed under the deep intake of his powerful lungs.

"It's a dandy bunch, Bob, eh?" he demanded presently, in an ironical tone. "Guess I'd come nigh sellin' my own father fer--ten thousand dollars. An' I don't calc'late I'd get nightmare neither." Then he drew a deep breath which suggested regret. "But--it ain't comin' my way. No. Not by a sight." Then, after a watchful pause, he continued: "I'm kind o' figgerin' whose way. Not mine, or--yours. Eh, Bob? We could do with it. Pity, ain't it?"

Bob turned. His eyes sought the face in the shadow of the doorway.

"I'm no descendant of Judas," he said coldly.

"No. But--Judas didn't sell a gang of murdering cattle rustlers. That ain't Judas money."

"Maybe. But it's blood money all the same."

"Mighty bad blood that oughter be spilt."

Bob turned away. His gaze wandered out westward. Then his eyes came slowly back to the man in the door-way.

"You thought I was talking hot air just now--about a man's price. You didn't like it. Well, when I find myself with a price I hope I shan't live to be paid it. That's all."

The man in the doorway shook his head. Then he spoke slowly, deliberately. And somehow much of the sharpness had gone out of his tone, and the hard glitter of his steely eyes had somehow become less p.r.o.nounced.

"Oh, I guess I got your meanin' right, fer all yer thousand dollar langwidge. Sure, I took you right away. But--it don't signify a cuss anyways. Guess you was born a gentleman, Bob, which I wa'an't. An'

because you was born an' raised that-a-way you'd surely like to kep right hold o' the notion that folks ken still act as though they'd been weaned on talk of honor an' sichlike. I sez kep a holt on that notion.

Grip it tight, an' don't never let go on it. Grab it same as you would the feller that's yearnin' fer your scalp. If you lose your grip that tow-colored scalp of yours'll be raised sure, an' every penicious breeze that blows 'll get into your think depot and hand you every sort of mental disease ther' ain't physic enough in the world to cure.

Guess that's plumb right. It don't cut no ice what I think. A feller like me jest thinks the way life happens to boost him. Y'see, I ain't had no thousand dollar eddication to make me see things any other ways.

Life's a mighty tough proposition an' it can't be run on no schedule, an' each feller's got to travel the way he sees with his own two eyes.

If he's got the spectacles of a thousand dollar eddication he's an a'mighty lucky feller, an' I'm guessin' they'll help him dodge a whole heap o' muck holes he'd otherwise bury his silly head in. So hang on, boy. Grip them darn fool notions so they ain't got a chance. If you let go--wal, you'll get a full-sized peek into a pretty fancy sort o'

h.e.l.l wher' ther' ain't any sort o' chance o' dopin' your visions out o'

sight with Ju Penrose's belly wash. So long."

Ju picked up his lantern and turned back into his bar, closing and securing his door behind him. Then, with keen antic.i.p.ation and enjoyment, he approached his till and proceeded to count his day's takings.

Bob Whitstone unhitched his horse from Ju's tying post. He swung himself into the saddle and rode away,--away toward his outland home under the starlit roof of the plains. It was an almost nightly journey with him now, for the saloon habit had caught him in its toils, and was already holding him firmly.

His mood was not easy. He resented Ju Penrose. He resented all men of his type. He knew him for a crook. He believed he possessed no more conscience than any other habitual criminal. But his resentment was the weak echo of an upbringing which had never intended him for such a.s.sociation, and, in spite of it, the man's personality held him, and its strength dominated him.

His way took him out across an almost trackless waste of rich gra.s.s-land. Somewhere out there, hidden away at the foot of the Cathills, lay his homestead, and the wife for whom he had abandoned all that his birth had ent.i.tled him to. During the past two years he had learned truly all that he had sacrificed for the greatest of all dreams of youth.

But these things, for the moment, were not in his mind. Only Penrose.

Ju Penrose, whom he had learned to detest and despise out of the educated mind that was his. The man's final homily was entirely lost upon Bob. Such was his temper that only the gross outrages against the precepts of his youth remained. He only heard the hateful, detestable cynicism, brutally expressed. It was something curious how he only took note of these things, and missed the rough solicitude of Ju's final admonishment. But he was young and weak, and a shadow of bitterness had entered his life, which, at his age, should have found no place in it.

The miles swept away under his horse's hoofs. Already the township, that spa.r.s.e little oasis of shelter in a desert of gra.s.s-land, lay lost behind him in the depths of some hidden trough in the waves of the prairie ocean, The great yellow disc of the moon had cut the horizon and lit his tracks, but its light was still unrevealing and only added charm to the blaze of summer jewels which adorned the soft velvet of the heavens.

He glanced back. But almost instantly his eyes were turned again ahead. The night scene of these plains was too familiar to him to excite interest. To him there were simply miles intervening between him and the slumbers he was seeking. The prairie, for all its beauties, spelt toilful days and bitter disappointment for him.

Wherein then should be discovered its charms?