The Westerners Part 14

He reached for his gun, remembered on the instant that his holster was empty, and sprang for Lafond. The half-breed calmly lifted a whiskey gla.s.s, near which he had taken the precaution to stand, and slopped its contents full in the other's eyes. Harry, blinded, struck against the corner of the bar. Mike slipped to one side and produced his revolver.

Several sprang between the two men. The room was in an uproar. Peter barked, clamant, frantic. Everybody tried to talk at once. In the background the faro dealer ceased shuffling his cards, and began imperturbably, indifferently, to pack together his layout. He had made little that night. After a moment he went out, without a glance toward the excited group.

The men were forcing the blinded and raving Harry toward the door.

Mike leaned over the bar, watching with bright eyes, his arms folded across his chest and the pistol barrel peeping over the crook of one elbow.

When they had all gone out, most of them shouting good-natured farewells, he turned savagely on the pale-faced Mudge. The native cruelty of the man blazed forth. He scored the barkeeper with a tongue that lashed like a whip, vituperating, crushing with the weight of his sarcasm, frightening with the vividness of his threats. Mudge shrank back into the corner of the s.p.a.ce behind the bar, spreading his arms along either side, watching the half-breed with wide-open fascinated eyes, as one would watch a dangerous wild beast.

After a little the storm pa.s.sed. Lafond asked in surly tones where the bunk was. Frosty showed him his own, behind the saloon, in a little shack of hewn timbers. Without a word Lafond turned in, dressed as he was, and closed his eyes. For a time he ruminated slowly. He had seen his man, and already he could put his finger on one weak point in Billy's personality--love of the spectacular, of bombast. A blow to his vanity would hurt. The half-breed had also taken fair measure of most of the other men in the room. He knew how to ingratiate himself, and his bold move in the case of Cheyenne Harry had had that object directly in view. He did not as yet see clearly just what form his blow to Billy's vanity was to take, but that would come with time.

Lafond's calling and his position in the new town gave him unlimited opportunities for observation, and he was in no hurry. After waiting fifteen years, another twelvemonth would not matter.

"Go slow," said Black Mike to himself.

His doze was abruptly broken by Frosty's scared voice asking a question. The barkeeper's thick wits could not take in the situation.

He was frightened almost out of his senses, and incapable of consecutive thought.

"And where shall I sleep, sir?" he asked stupidly in a timid little voice.

Mike turned over explosively. "You can sleep in h.e.l.l for all of me!"

he shouted angrily. "Get out!"

Frosty returned to the main room of the saloon. There he spread a horse blanket, redolent of the stables, on the floor behind the stove.

After a time Peter lay down beside him. The barkeeper, frightened, stupid, vaguely nervous, in his slow nerveless way, gathered the strange intelligent dog to him, and the two slept.

The men took Harry to the creek, where he washed out his eyes. They had many comments to make, to none of which Harry vouchsafed a reply.

But his sulkiness was gone. Suddenly he paused for a moment in his ablutions, and laughed.

"d.a.m.ned if they ain't a pair!" he a.s.serted. "And that gal----"

"She sh.o.r.e beats gra.s.s-widders and school-ma'ams!" said Old Mizzou.

XVI

AND GETS IT BACK AGAIN

The girl had seen all that Lafond had seen and more. She knew now that Billy Knapp was easily the most important figure in the camp; that Cheyenne Harry was the most admired and feared; that Jack Graham was the most likely to be heard from in the future. The other men fell into the background behind these three figures. The situation was simplified by the fact. All she needed now for complete triumph was, to discover the vulnerable points of these three, attack them craftily, and the game was hers.

She thought she knew the way. She fell asleep dreaming of it. She awoke in the early morning with the day's plan clear and perfect in her mind, each move in the game she was to play clearly outlined before her. It had come to her in the night without conscious effort on her own part.

She dressed herself in the semi-obscurity of the wagon-body, and stepped out into the morning. The brook was not far away. She discovered it, and bathed her face and throat in its ice-cold waters.

Then she returned to the wagon, where she made breakfast of a huge irregular chunk of bread and slices of cold bacon, sitting on the wagon tongue and swinging her feet carelessly back and forth while eating.

Occasionally she threw a remnant to the few silent Canada jays that drifted here and there in the sleeping town, fluffed out like milkweed pollen in the summer, searching for sc.r.a.ps. They swooped to her offerings on swift motionless wing, and then retreated to a distance, whence they abused their benefactor with strident voice. The girl watched them idly.

How to impress her personality in the most agreeable way on the greatest number of men! The problem was many faceted. She must not show favoritism; therefore the method must be general. She must render herself and not merely her s.e.x agreeable: therefore it would have to be personal. It must appeal to the men's sense of protection rather than to their mere admiration; therefore in it she must efface herself, and exalt them. This was all apparently contradictory. But no; she saw it clearly in a flash. She must let them do her a favor. Instinctively she realized, though she did not formulate the thought, that this is one of the sure ways of gaining a man's good will. She cast back over the necessities of the case, and saw that it would suffice. In doing something for her, they would at once stand well in their own eyes, because of a certain consciousness of unselfish effort; they would expand protectively toward her, because of her weakness, implied in the fact that they could do her a kindness. What was the favor to be? The wagon behind her answered the question. They should build her a house.

All this pa.s.sed through her mind, as a drift setting in from upstream, gliding before her consciousness, and floating on down stream in unhasting progression. She did not realize that she was thinking out a problem; at least she made no effort to do so. It came to her as she needed it. To all appearance she was watching idly, with unruffled brow, the tenuous threads of smoke which indicated that the camp was awakening. The number of these smoke signals suggested a new problem.

She could hardly enlist the entire population of a camp the size of Copper Creek in the task of building one little log cabin. The idea of the swarming mult.i.tude struck her as so funny that she laughed aloud.

She must choose; and the choice must be judicious. The men selected must represent the influential element, the leaders of opinion; while those denied the privilege of serving her must be the sort who always follow with the majority. Here her intuition balked, and her scanty knowledge could not help it out. She was frankly puzzled.

As she sat there knitting her brows, a boy came up the street. He was bare-foot, straw-hatted, freckled. He had wide gray eyes, a snub nose, and an impudent mouth. His clothes were varied and inadequate. Over his arm he carried a little rifle. About him, at a wary distance, frisked Peter, escaped from the Little Nugget through some mysterious back exit.

The boy occasionally threw an impatient stick at Peter, whereupon Peter would suddenly place two paws in front of him and bend his back down, with every appearance of delight. Then the boy would issue commands to Peter anent returning home, to which Peter paid not the slightest attention. So absorbed was he in his effort to get rid of what he evidently considered an undesirable companion, that he did not notice the girl until he was within a few yards of her. He then gave his entire attention to her inspection. He stood on one spot and stared without winking, digging a big toe into the dust. His unabashed eyes took in every detail. He was without embarra.s.sment, and evidently gave not a thought to the effect of this extended scrutiny on the object of it.

"h.e.l.lo, kid!" called Molly.

The boy completed his leisurely inspection. Then, "h.e.l.lo," he answered, with reserve.

"Won't you come over and see me?"

He weighed the point and drew nearer.

"Who are you?" he asked bluntly.

"My name's Molly; what's yours?"

"Dennis Moroney. They call me the Kid. What-chew doin' here?"

"I'm going to live here."

"Oh," said he, and looked her all over again. "This rifle's a flobert," he observed.

"Is it? Let's see. What do you shoot with it? Is there much game up here?"

"Don't snap it; it's bad for it. They's lots of game. I got a fox squirrel the other day. He was so long. He was up a big pine, and I hit him right through the head."

"You must be a good shot. Will you take me hunting with you some day?"

"I dunno," he replied doubtfully. "Girls ain't much good."

"Try me," urged Molly, smiling.

"I'll let you shoot her off anyway," he said magnanimously. "But you gotter help clean her. If you don't clean her, she gets rusty and won't shoot straight. Here's the catridges."

"What little bits of things! Will they kill anything?"

"Hoh!" replied the Kid with contempt.

"Is that your dog?" hastily inquired Molly, conscious of her error.

Peter was busily engaged in acquiring an olfactory knowledge of the four wheels and two axles of the wagon.

"Him? Naw. He's the bigges' fool dog I ever see. He goes along unless you tie him up. And he keeps rummagin' around, and he scares all the game there is. _I_ can't _make_ him stay home."

A cabin door opened quickly, and a miner issued forth.

"There goes Dan Barker," said the Kid.