The Golden Woman Part 52

For some moments Buck stared down at the st.u.r.dy friend who had taken the place of his dead father. His eyes softened, and their fire died out. But there was no rescinding of his desperate decision. He was thinking of what it would mean, the thought of this white-haired man in the hands of the executioner. He was thinking of the kindly heart beating within that stalwart bosom. He was thinking of the wonderful, thoughtful kindness for others which was always the motive of his life. And a deep-throated curse rose to his lips. But it found no utterance. It could not in that presence.

"An' my mind's made up," he jerked out at last, with concentrated force. Then he added with an abrupt softening, "Let's eat, Padre. I was forgettin'. Mebbe you're hungry some."

CHAPTER x.x.xI

THE JOY OF BEASLEY

An unusual number of horses were tethered at the posts outside Beasley's saloon, and, a still more unusual thing, their owners, for the most part, were not in their usual places within the building.

Most of them were lounging on the veranda in various att.i.tudes best calculated to rest them from the effects of the overpowering heat of the day. Beasley was lounging with them. For once he seemed to have weakened in his restless energy, or found something of greater interest than that of netting questionable gains.

The latter seemed to be the more likely, for his restless eyes displayed no lack of mental activity. At any rate, he displayed an att.i.tude that afternoon which startled even his bartender. Not once, but several times that individual, of pessimistic mood, had been called upon to dispense free rations of the worst possible liquor in the place, until, driven from wonder to protest, he declared, with emphatic conviction and an adequate flow of blasphemy, addressing himself to the bottles under the counter, the smeary gla.s.ses he breathed upon while wiping with a soiled and odoriferous cloth, that the boss was "bug--plumb bug." Nevertheless, his own understanding of "crookedness" warned him that the man had method, and he was anxious to discover the direction in which it was moving. Therefore he watched Beasley's doings with appreciative eyes, and his interest grew as the afternoon waned.

"He's on a crook lay," he told himself after a while. And the thought brightened his outlook upon life, and helped to banish some of his pessimism.

The chief feature of interest for him lay in the fact that the men foregathered were a collection of those who belonged to the "something-for-nothing" cla.s.s, as he graphically described them. And he observed, too, that Beasley was carefully shepherding them. There were a few of the older hands of the camp, but these seemed to have less interest for his boss. At least he showed far less consideration for them. And it quickly became evident that the whole afternoon's object was the adequate ingratiation and stimulation of these dregs of frontier life.

This the bartender saw quite clearly. For the rest he was content to wait. He had spent most of his life in thus waiting and watching the nefarious schemes of unscrupulous men.

The heat was overpowering. It was almost an effort to breathe, let alone move about. The men lolled, propped against the baulks of timber supporting the veranda roof, stretched out on benches, or crouching on the raised edge of the wooden flooring. One and all were in a state of wiltering in the stewing heat, from which only an intermittent flow of fiery spirit could rouse them.

Beasley was the one exception to this general condition of things.

Mentally he was particularly alert. And, what is more, his temper, usually so irritable and fiery, was reduced to a perfect level of good humor.

For some moments talk had died out. Then in a sudden fit of irritability Abe Allinson kicked a loose stone in the direction of the tethered horses.

"Say," he observed, "this 'minds one o' the time we struck color at the hill."

His eyes wandered toward the gathering shadows, slowly obscuring the grim sides of Devil's Hill. His remark was addressed to no one in particular.

Beasley took him up. It was his purpose to keep these men stirring.

"How?" he inquired.

"Why, the heat. Say, git a peek at that sky. Look yonder. The sun. Get them durned banks o' cloud swallerin' it right up atop o' them hills.

Makes you think, don't it? That's storm. It's comin' big--an' before many hours."

"For which we'll all be a heap thankful." Beasley laughed. "Another day of this an' I'll be done that tender a gran'ma could eat me."

His remark drew a flicker of a smile.

"She'd need good ivories," observed the gambler, Diamond Jack, with mild sarcasm.

Beasley took the remark as a compliment to his business capacity, and grinned amiably.

"Jack's right. You'd sure give her an elegant pain, else," added Curly, in a tired voice. He was steadily staring down the trail in a manner that suggested indifference to any coming storm. Somebody laughed half-heartedly. But Curly had no desire to enliven things, and went on quite seriously.

"Say, when's this b.u.m sheriff gettin' around?" he demanded.

Beasley took him up at once.

"Some time to-night," he said, in a well-calculated tone of resentment. "That's why I got you boys around now," he added significantly.

"You mean----?" Diamond Jack nodded in the direction of the farm.

Beasley nodded.

"That old crow bait got back early this mornin'," he went on. "I was waitin' on her. She guessed she hadn't a thing to say, an' I surely was up agin a proposition. So I jest made out I was feelin' good seein' her git back, an' told her I wa'an't lookin' for information she didn't guess she was givin', and ther' wasn't no need fer her to say a thing. She guessed that was so. After that I pa.s.sed things by, sayin' how some o' the boys hated sheriffs wuss'n rattlesnakes--an'

she laffed. Yes, sir, she laffed, an' it must have hurt her some.

Anyways she opened out at that, an' said, if any boys hated the sight of sheriffs they'd better hunt their holes before sun-up. Guess she didn't just use them words, but she give 'em that time limit. Say, if I was the Padre I'd sooner have the devil on my trail than that old--bunch o' marrow bones."

Slaney looked up from the bench on which he was spread out.

"Guess he'll have wuss'n her when Bob Richards gets around," he said gloomily.

"D'you reckon they'll git him--with Buck around?" inquired Curly anxiously.

"Buck! Tcha!" Beasley's dislike for the moment got the better of his discretion. But he quickly realized his mistake, and proceeded to twist his meaning. "It makes me mad. It makes me plumb crazed when I think o' that bully feller, the Padre, bein' give dead away by the folks at the farm. Buck? Psha'! Who's Buck agin a feller like Bob Richards? Bob's the greatest sheriff ever stepped in Montana. He'll twist Buck so he won't know rye whisky from sow-belly. Buck's grit, elegant grit, but Bob--wal, I'd say he's the wisest guy west of Chicago, when it comes to stringin' up a crook."

"I'm with you, boss," cried Diamond Jack, in a quick rage. "This farm needs lookin' to to-night sure. We got to git in 'fore sheriffs git around. They're playin' a low-down racket. Jonahs don't cut no ice with me, but they're chasin' up glory agin the camp. That's how I read it. Guess none of us is saints, anyways I don't seem to hear no wings flappin'; but givin' folks up to the law is--low."

Abe Allinson grunted, and a general atmosphere of silent approval prevailed. Beasley, whose eyes were watching every expression, pushed the ball further along.

"Low?" he cried. "You, Jack, don't know the guy we're so dead keen to help out. If you did you'd git right up on to your hind legs an' cuss terrible--an' you've cussed some in your time. But for him this camp wouldn't be the bonanza it is. You wouldn't be nettin' a pile of dollars every night in my bar. I wouldn't be runnin' a big proposition in dollar makin'. These boys wouldn't be chasin' gold on full bellies.

Gee, it makes me mad--an' thirsty. Let's get around inside an' see what that gla.s.s rustler of mine can do."

The response was immediate and complete. No man had ever been known to refuse Beasley's hospitality. Everybody drank. And they drank again at Diamond Jack's expense. Then later they drank at their own. And all the while Beasley, with consummate skill, shepherded them to his own ends.

It was truly wonderful to see the manner in which he handled them. He adopted the simplest tactics, once he had set the ball rolling, contenting himself with dropping in a word here and there every time the subject of the sheriff drifted toward his ears. He knew these men.

He possessed that keenness of insight into his customers which no successful saloon-keeper fails to acquire. He understood their weaknesses in a manner which left it a simple enough task to play upon them. In this case the basis of his procedure was drink--strong, harsh whisky, of a violent type.

The banking clouds rose ponderously upon the hilltops, blacking out the twilight with an abruptness which must have held deep significance for men less occupied. But the dominant overcast of their minds was the coming of the sheriff. For many of them it was far more ominous than any storm of nature.

The bar filled to overflowing. No one cared to gamble. There would have been no room for them, anyway. Even Diamond Jack showed no inclination to pursue his trade. Perhaps this was the most significant feature of all.

His was a weighty word thrown in the balance of public opinion.

Perhaps this was the result of his well-understood shrewdness. At any rate he never failed to find a ready audience for his opinions, and to-night his opinions were strongly and forcefully declared. Beasley listened to him with interest, and smiled as he observed him moving about amongst the crowd drinking with one, treating another, his tongue never idle in his denunciation of sheriffs, and all those who called in their aid. It almost seemed as if the man was acting under orders, orders, perhaps inspired by a subtler mind, to disguise the real source whence they sprang.

The gambler was truly a firebrand, and so well did he handle his people, so well did he stir them by his disgust and righteous horror at the employment of a sheriff in their midst, that by nine o'clock the camp was loud in its clamor for retribution to be visited upon those who had brought such a terror into their midst.

Beasley's amiability grew. His bartender watched it in amazement. But it oppressed him. His pessimism resented it. He hated joy, and the evidences of joy in others. There was real pleasure for him in Diamond Jack's hectoring denunciations. It was something which appealed to him. Besides, he could see the gambler was hara.s.sed, perhaps afraid of the sheriff himself. He even envied him his fear. But Beasley's satisfaction was depressing, and, as a protest, he neglected to overcharge the more drunken of their customers. Beasley must not have all the satisfaction.

But, as far as Beasley was concerned, the bartender was little better than a piece of furniture that night. His employer had almost forgotten his existence. Truth to tell, Beasley had lost his head in his disease of venom. One thought, and one thought only urged him.

To-night, before the advent of the sheriff to seize upon the person of the hated Padre, he hoped, by one stroke, to crush the heart of Buck, and bow the proud head of the girl who had so plainly showed her dislike and contempt for him, in the dust of shame and despair.

It was a moment worth waiting for. It was a moment of joy he would not lightly forego. Nor did he care what time, patience, or money it cost him. To strike at those whom he hated was as the breath of life to him. And he meant to drink deeply of his cup of joy.