Trailin'! Part 34

"Help yourself." And to Kilrain, who was leaving the room: "Come back here."

"Well?" snarled the sailor, half turning at the door.

"While I'm runnin' this here ranch you're goin' to have manners, see?"

"If manners was like your whiskers," said the unabashed Shorty, "it'd take me nigh onto thirty years to get 'em."

And he winked at Bard for sympathy.

Lawlor smashed his fist on the table.

"What I say is, are you running this ranch or am I?"

"Well?" growled Kilrain.

"If you was a kid you'd have your mouth washed out with soap."

The eyes of Shorty bulged.

"It ought to be done now, but there ain't no one I'd give such dirty work to. What you're going to do is stand right here and show us you know how to sing a decent song in a decent way. That there song of yours didn't leave nothin' sacred untouched, from parsons and jails to women and the gallows. Stand over there and sing."

The eyes of the sailor filmed over with cold hate.

"Was I hired to punch cattle," he said, "or make a blasted, roarin' fool out of myself?"

"You was hired," answered Lawlor softly, as he filled his gla.s.s to the brim with the old rye whisky, "to be a cook, and you're the rottenest hash-slinger that ever served cold dough for biscuits; a blasted, roarin' fool you've already made out of yourself by singin' that song. I want another one to get the sound of that out of my ears. Tune up!"

Thoughts of murder, ill-concealed, whitened the face of the sailor.

"Some day--" he began hoa.r.s.ely, and then stopped. For a vision came to him of blithe mornings when he should sit on the top of the corral fence rolling a cigarette, while some other puncher went into the herd and roped and saddled his horse.

"D'you mean this--Drew?" he asked, with an odd emphasis.

"D'you think I'm talking for fun?"

"What'll I sing?" he asked in a voice which was reduced to a faint whisper by rage.

"I dunno," mused Lawlor, "but maybe it ought to lie between 'Alice, Ben Bolt,' and 'Annie Laurie.' What d'you choose, partner?"

He turned to Bard.

"'Alice, Ben Bolt,' by all means. I don't think he could manage the Scotch."

"Start!" commanded Lawlor.

The sailor closed his eyes, tilted back his head, twisted his face to a hideous grimace, and then opening his shapeless mouth emitted a tremendous wail which took shape in the following words:

"Oh, don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt, Sweet Alice, with hair like the sunshine--"

"Shut up!" roared Lawlor.

It required a moment for Shorty to unkink the congested muscles of his face.

"What the h.e.l.l's the matter now?" he inquired.

"Whoever heard of 'hair like the sunshine'? There ain't no such thing possible. 'Hair so brown,' that's what the song says. Shorty, we got more feelin' for our ears than to let you go on singin' an' showin' your ignerance. G'wan back to the kitchen!"

Kilrain drew a long breath, regarded Lawlor again with that considerate, expectant eye, and then turned on his heel and strode from the room.

Back to Bard came fragments of tremendous cursing of an epic breadth and a world-wide inclusiveness.

"Got to do things like this once in a while to keep 'em under my thumb,"

Lawlor explained genially.

With all his might Bard was struggling to reconcile this big-handed vulgarian with his mental picture of the man who could write for an epitaph: "Here sleeps Joan, the wife of William Drew. She chose this place for rest." But the two ideas were not inclusive.

He said aloud: "Aren't you afraid that that black-eyed fellow will run a knife between your ribs one of these dark nights?"

"Who? My ribs?" exclaimed Lawlor, nevertheless stirring somewhat uneasily in his chair. "Nope, they know that I'm William Drew. They may be hard, but they know I'm harder."

"Oh," drawled the other, and his eyes held with uncomfortable steadiness on the rosy face of Lawlor. "I understand."

To cover his confusion Lawlor seized his gla.s.s.

"Here's to you--drinkin' deep."

And he tossed off the mighty potion. Bard had poured only a few drops into his gla.s.s; he had too much sympathy for his empty stomach to do more. His host leaned back, coughing, with tears of pleasure in his eyes.

"d.a.m.n me!" he breathed reverently. "I ain't touched stuff like this in ten years."

"Is this a new stock?" inquired Bard, apparently puzzled.

"This?" said Lawlor, recalling his position with a start. "Sure it is; brand new. Yep, stuff ain't been in more'n five days. Smooth, ain't it?

Medicine, that's what I call it; a gentleman's drink--goes down like water."

Observing a rather quizzical light in the eyes of Bard, he felt that he had probably been making a few missteps, and being warmed greatly at the heart by the whisky, he launched forth in a new phase of the conversation.

CHAPTER XXVI

"THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON"

"Speakin' of hard cattlemen," he said, "I could maybe tell you a few things, son."

"No doubt of it," smiled Anthony. "I presume it would take a _very_ hard man to handle this crowd."