The Golden Woman Part 27

"Why, the Kid."

The Padre looked the saloon-keeper squarely in the eye.

"And who put it into that foolish boy's head?" he asked slowly.

Beasley's face purpled with rage.

"You needn't to put things that way with me," he cried. "If you got things to say, say 'em right out. You reckon I was the man who suggested----"

"I do."

The Padre's eyes were wide open. The hard gray gleam literally bored into the other's heated face. He stood up, his whole body rigid with purpose.

"I say right here that you were responsible for it all. The Kid wasn't capable of inventing such a dirty trick on a decent girl. He was sufficiently drunk to be influenced by you, and, but for Curly's timely interference, you would doubtless have had your rotten way. I tell you the trouble, whatever trouble happens in this camp, is trouble which you are directly or indirectly responsible for. These men, in their sober senses, are harmless. Give them the poison you charge extortionately for and they are ready to do anything. I warn you, Beasley, to be careful what you do--be d.a.m.ned careful. There are ways of beating you, and, by thunder! I'll beat you at your own game!

Good-night!"

The Padre turned and walked out, leaving the discomfited storekeeper speechless with rage, his narrow eyes glaring after him.

Moreton Kenyon was never a man to allow an impulse of anger to get the better of him. All that he had said to Beasley he had made up his mind to say before starting for the camp. There was only one way of dealing with the man's genius for mischief. And that way did not lie in the direction of persuasion or moral talk. Force was the only thing such a nature as his would yield to. The Padre knew well enough that such force lay to his command should he choose to exert his influence in the camp. He was man of the world enough to understand that the moral condition of the life in this camp must level itself. It could not be regulated--yet. But the protection of a young and beautiful girl was not only his duty, but the duty of every sane citizen in the district, and he was determined it should be carried out. There was no ordinary law to hold this renegade in check, so, if necessary, he must be treated to the harshness of a law framed by the unpracticed hands of men who only understood the wild in which they lived.

On his way home the Padre encountered Buck, who had been back to the fur fort, and, learning from Curly the facts of what had occurred, was now on his way to join his friend.

They paused to talk for some minutes, and their talk was upon those things which were still running through their minds in a hot tide of resentment. After a while they parted, Buck to continue his way to the camp, and the Padre to his home.

"I think it's all right for to-night," the Padre said as he prepared to move off. "I don't think he'll make another attempt. Anyway, the boys will be sober. But you might have an eye on him."

Buck nodded, and in the darkness the fierce anger in his dark eyes was lost to his companion.

"I'll be to home when the camp's abed," he said. "I'll sure see the gal safe."

So they parted, leaving the Padre perfectly confident in Buck's ability to make good his a.s.surance.

It was a wild scene inside the drinking-booth over which the ex-Churchman presided. The men had returned from their fruitless pursuit of their intended victim. And as they came in, no longer furiously determined upon a man's life, but laughing and joking over the events of their blind journey in the darkness, Beasley saw that they were rapidly sobering.

Still raging inwardly at the result of the Padre's visit he set to work at once, and, before any one else could call for a drink, he seized the opportunity himself. He plied them with a big drink at his own expense, and so promptly enlisted their favor--incidentally setting their appet.i.tes for a further orgie with a sharpness that it would take most of the night to appease.

The ball set rolling by his cunning hand quickly ran riot, and soon the place again became the pandemonium which was its nightly habit.

Good-humor was the prevalent note, however. The men realized now, in their half-sober senses, that the Kid was only wounded, and this inclined them to leniency toward Curly. So it was quickly evident that their recently-intended victim need no longer have any fear for his life. He was forgiven as readily and as easily as he had been condemned.

So the night proceeded. The roulette board was set going again in one corner of the hut and a crowd hung about it, while the two operators of it, "Diamond" Jack and his partner, strangers to the place, raked in their harvest. The air was thick with the reek of cheap cigars, sold at tremendous prices, and the foul atmosphere of stale drink.

The usual process of a further saturation had set in. Nor amidst the din of voices was there a discordant note. Even the cursings of the losers at the roulette board were drowned in the raucous din of laughter and loud-voiced talk around the bar.

As time went on Beasley saw that his moment was rapidly approaching.

The shining, half-glazed eyes, the sudden outbursts of wild whoopings, told him the tale he liked to hear. And he promptly changed his own att.i.tude of bonhomie, and began to remind those who cared to listen of the fun they had all missed through Curly's interference. This was done at the same time as he took to pouring out the drinks himself in smaller quant.i.ties, and became careless in the matter of making accurate change for the bigger bills of his customers.

Beasley's hints were not long in bearing the fruit he desired. Some one recollected the women who had been partic.i.p.ants in their earlier frolic, and instantly there was a clamor for their presence.

Beasley grinned. He was feeling almost joyous.

The women readily answered the summons. They came garbed in long, flowing, tawdry wrappers, the hallmark of the lives they lived. Nor was it more than seconds before they were caught in the whirl of the orgie in progress.

The sight was beyond all description in its revolting and hideous pathos. These blind, besotted men hovered about these wrecks of womanhood much in the manner of hungry animals. They plied them with drink, and sought to win their favors by ribald jesting and talk as obscene as their condition of drunkenness would permit them, while the women accepted their attentions in the spirit in which they were offered, calculating, watching, with an eye trained to the highest pitch of mercenary motive, for the direction whence the greatest benefit was to come.

Beasley was watching too. He knew that the Padre's threat had been no idle one, but he meant to forestall its operation. The Padre was away to his home by now. Nothing that he could do could operate until the morning, when these men were sober. He had got this night, at least, in which to satisfy his evil whim.

His opportunity came sooner than he expected. One of the girls, quite a young creature, whose originally-pretty face was now distorted and bloated by the life she lived, suddenly appealed to him. She jumped up from the bench on which she had been sitting listening to the drunken attentions of a stranger who bored her, and challenged the saloon-keeper with a laugh and an ingratiating wink.

"Say, you gray-headed old beer-slinger," she cried, "how about that 'party' call you'd fixed up for us? Ain't ther' nuthin' doin' since that mutt with the thin yeller thatch got busy shootin'? Say, he got you all scared to a pea shuck."

She laughed immoderately, and, swaying drunkenly, was caught by the attentive stranger.

"Quit it, Mamie," protested one of the other girls. "If you want another racket I don't. You're always raisin' h.e.l.l."

"Quit yourself," shrieked Mamie in sudden anger. "I ain't scared of a racket." She turned to Beasley, who was pouring out a round of drinks for Abe Allinson, now so drunk that he had to support himself against the counter. "Say, you don't need to be scared, that feller's out o'

the way now," she jeered. "Wot say? Guess it would be a 'scream.'"

Beasley handed the change of a twenty-dollar bill to Abe and turned to the girl.

"Sure it would," he agreed promptly, his face beaming. Then he added cunningly: "But it's you folks are plumb scared."

"Who the h---- scared of a gal like that?" Mamie yelled at him, her eyes blazing. "I ain't. Are you, Lulu? You, Kit?" She turned to the other women, but ignored the protesting Sadie.

Lulu sprang from the arms of a man on whose shoulder she had been reclining.

"Scared?" she cried. "Come right on. I'm game. Beasley's keen to give her a twistin'--well, guess it's always up to us to oblige." And she laughed immoderately.

Kit joined in. She cared nothing so long as she was with the majority.

And it was Beasley himself who finally challenged the recalcitrant Sadie.

"Guess you ain't on, though," he said, and there was something like a threat in his tone.

Sadie shrugged.

"It don't matter. If the others----"

"Bully for you, Sadie!" cried Mamie impulsively. "Come right on! Who's comin' to get the 'scream'?" she demanded of the men about her, while Beasley nodded his approval from his stand behind the bar.

But somehow her general invitation was not received with the same enthusiasm the occasion had met with earlier in the evening. The memory of the Kid still hovered over some of the muddled brains, and only a few of those who were in the furthest stages of drunkenness responded.

Nothing daunted, however, the girl Mamie, furiously anxious to stand well with the saloon-keeper, laughed over at him.

"We'll give her a joyous time," she shrieked. "Say, what's her name?

Joan Rest, the Golden Woman! She'll need the rest when we're through.

Come on, gals. We'll dance a cancan on her parlor table. Come on."

She made a move and the others prepared to follow. Several of the men, laughing recklessly, were ready enough to go whither they led. Already Mamie was within a pace of the closed door when a man suddenly pushed Abe Allinson roughly aside, leant his right elbow on the counter, and stood with his face half-turned toward the crowd. It was Buck. His movements had been so swift, so well calculated, that Beasley found himself looking into the muzzle of the man's heavy revolver before he could attempt to defend himself.