The Rustler of Wind River Part 13

"What're you doin' around here, you old--come in--shut that door! Git him some breakfast," he ordered, turning to Maggie.

Maggie hung back a moment, until Thorn had come into the room, then she shot into the kitchen like a cat through a fence, and slammed the door behind her.

"What in the h.e.l.l do you mean by comin' around here?" Chadron demanded angrily. "Didn't I tell you never to come here? you blink-eyed old snag-shin!"

"You told me," Thorn admitted, putting his rifle down across a chair, drawing another to the table, and seating himself in readiness for the coming meal.

"Then what'd you sneak--"

"News," said Thorn, in his brief way.

"Which news?" Chadron brightened hopefully, his implements, clamped in his hairy fists, inviting the first bolt from the heavens.

"I got him last night."

"You got--_him?_" Chadron lifted himself from his chair on his bent legs in the excitement of the news.

"And I'm through with this job. I've come to cash in, and quit."

"The h.e.l.l you say!"

"I'm gittin' too old for this kind of work. That feller chased me around till my tongue was hangin' out so fur I stepped on it. I tell you he was--"

"How did you do it?"

Thorn looked at him with a scowl. "Well, I never used a club on a man yit," he said.

"Where did it happen at?"

"Up there at his place. He'd been chasin' me for two days, and when he went back--after grub, I reckon--I doubled on him. Just as he went in the door I got him. I left him with his d.a.m.n feet stickin' out like a shoemaker's sign."

"How fur was you off from him, Mark?"

"Fifty yards, more 'r less."

"Did you go over to him to see if he was finished, or just creased?"

"I never creased a man in my life!" Thorn was indignant over the imputation.

Chadron shook his head, in doubt, in discredit, in gloomy disbelief.

"If you didn't go up to him and turn him over and look at the whites of his eyes, you ain't sure," he protested. "That man's as slippery as wet leather--he's fooled more than one that thought they had him, and I'll bet you two bits he's fooled you."

"Go and see, and settle it yourself, then," Thorn proposed, in surly humor.

Chadron had suspended his breakfast, as if the news had come between him and his appet.i.te. He sat in a study, his big hand curved round his cup, his gaze on the cloth. At that juncture Maggie came in with a platter of eggs and ham, which she put down before Mark Thorn skittishly, ready to jump at the slightest hostile start. Thorn began to eat, as calmly as if there was not a stain on his crippled soul.

Unlike the meal of canned oysters which he had consumed as Chadron's guest not many days before, Thorn was not welcomed to this by friendly words and urging to take off the limit. Chadron sat watching him, in divided attention and with dark face, as if he turned troubles over in his mind.

Thorn cleaned the platter in front of him, and looked round hungrily, like a cat that has half-satisfied its stomach on a stolen bird. He said nothing, only he reached his foul hand across the table and took up the dish containing the remnant of Chadron's breakfast. This he soon cleared up, when he rasped the back of his hand across his harsh mustache, like a vulture preening its filthy plumage, and leaned back with a full-stomached sigh.

"He makes six," said he, looking hard at Chadron.

"Huh!" Chadron grunted, noncommittally.

"I want the money, down on the nail, a thousand for the job. I'm through."

"I'll have to look into it. I ain't payin' for anything sight 'nseen,"

Chadron told him, starting out of his speculative wanderings.

"Money down, on the nail," repeated Thorn, as if he had not heard. His old cap was hovering over his long hair, its flaps down like the wings of a brooding hen. There were clinging bits of broken sage on it, and burrs, which it had gathered in his skulking through the brush.

"I'll send a man up the river right away, and find out about this last one," Chadron told him, nodding slowly. "If you've got Macdonald--"

"If h.e.l.l's got fire in it!"

"If you've got him, I'll put something to the figure agreed on between you and me. The other fellers you've knocked over don't count."

"I'll hang around--"

"Not here! You'll not hang around here, I tell you!" Chadron cut him off harshly, fairly bristling. "Snake along out of here, and don't let anybody see you. I'll meet you at the hotel in the morning."

"Gittin' peticlar of your company, ain't you?" sneered Thorn.

"You're not company--you're business," Chadron told him, with stern and reproving eyes.

Chadron found Mark Thorn smoking into the chimney in the hotel office next morning, apparently as if he had not moved from that spot since their first meeting on that peculiar business. The old man-killer did not turn his head as Chadron entered the room with a show of caution and suspicion in his movements, and closed the door after him.

He crossed over to the fire and stood near Thorn, who was slouching low in his chair, his long legs stretched straight, his heels crossed before the low ashy fire that smoldered in the chimney. For a little while Chadron stood looking down on his hired scourge, a knitting of displeasure in his face, as if he waited for him to break the silence.

Thorn continued his dark reverie undisturbed, it seemed, his pipestem between his fingers.

"Yes, it was his d.a.m.n hired hand!" said Chadron, with profound disgust.

"That's what I heard you say," acknowledged Thorn, not moving his head.

"You knew it all the time; you was tryin' to work me for the money, so you could light out!"

"I didn't even know he had a hired hand!" Thorn drew in his legs, straightened his back, and came with considerable spirit to the defense of his evil intent.

"Well, he ain't got none now, but _he's_ alive and kickin'. You've bungled on this job worse than an old woman. I didn't fetch you in here to clean out hired hands and kids; we can shake a blanket and scare that kind out of the country!"

"Well, put him in at fifty then, if he was only a hired hand," said Thorn, willing to oblige.

"When you go ahead and do what you agreed to, then we'll talk money, and not a red till then."