Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 1334
“Pard, heah’s to the old Cimarron,” said Blinky, as they drank again.
Pan had no response. Memory of the Cimarron only guided his flying mind over the ranges to Las Animas. They drank and drank. Blinky’s tongue grew looser.
“Hold your tongue, damn you,” said Pan.
“Imposshiblity. Lesh have another.”
“One more then. You’re drunk, cowboy.”
“Me drunk? No shir, pard. I’m just tongue-tied...Now, by Gawd, heah’s to Louise Melliss!”
“I drink to that,” flashed Pan, as he drained his glass.
The afternoon had waned. Matthews lay dead in the street. He lay in front of the Yellow Mine, from which he had been driven by men who would no longer stand the strain.
The street was deserted except for that black figure, lying face down with a gun in his right hand. His black sombrero lay flat. The wind had blown a high hat down the street until it had stopped near the sombrero. Those who peeped out from behind doors or from windows espied these sinister objects.
Pan had patrolled the street. He had made a house-to-house canvass, searching for Jim Blake. He had entered every place except the Yellow Mine. That he reserved for the last. But he did not find Blake. He encountered, however, a slight pale man in clerical garb.
“Are you the parson Matthews brought to Marco?” demanded Pan harshly.
“Yes, Sir,” came the reply.
“Did you marry young Hardman to — to—” Pan could not end the query.
The minister likewise found speech difficult, but his affirmative was not necessary.
“Man, you may be innocent of evil intent. But you’ve ruined my — girl...and me! You’ve sent me to hell. I ought to kill you.”
“Pard, shore we mushn’t kill thish heah parson just yet,” drawled Blinky, thickly. “He’ll come in handy.”
“Ahuh! Right you are, Blinky,” returned Pan, with a ghastly pretense of gaiety. “Parson, stay right here till we come for you. — Maybe you make up a little for the wrong you did one girl.”
The Yellow Mine stood with glass uplifted and card unplayed.
Pan had entered from the dance hall entrance. Blinky, unsteady on his feet, came in from the street. After a tense moment the poker players went on with their game, and the drinkers emptied their glasses. But voices were low, glances were furtive.
Pan had seen every man there before he had been seen himself. Only one interested him — that was Jim Blake. What to do to this man or with him Pan found it hard to decide. Blake had indeed fallen low. But Pan gave him the benefit of one doubt — that he had been wholly dominated by Hardman. Yet there was the matter of accepting money for his part in forcing Lucy to marry Dick.
The nearer end of the bar had almost imperceptibly been vacated by drinkers sliding down toward the other rear end. Pan took the foremost end of the vacated position. He called for drink. As fast as he had drunk, the fiery effects had as swiftly passed away. Yet each drink for the moment kept up that unnatural stimulus.
Pan beckoned for Blinky. That worthy caused a stir, then a silence, by going round about the tables, so as not to come between Pan and any men there.
“Blink, do you know where Louise’s room is?” queried Pan.
“Shore. Down thish hall — third door on left,” replied Blinky.
“Well, you go over there to Blake and tell him I want to talk to him. Then you go to Louise’s room. I’ll follow directly.”
Blake received the message, but he did not act promptly. Pan caught his suspicious eye, baleful, gleaming. Possibly the man was worse than weak. Presently he left the poker game which he had been watching and shuffled up to Pan. He appeared to be enough under the influence of liquor to be leeringly bold.
“Howdy,” he said.
“Blake, today I got from Hardman the truth about the deal you gave me and Lucy,” returned Pan, and then in cold deliberate tones he called the man every infamous name known to the ranges. Under this onslaught, Blake sank into something akin to abasement.
“Reckon you think,” concluded Pan, “that because you’re Lucy’s father I can’t take a shot at you. Don’t fool yourself. You’ve killed her soul — and mine. So why shouldn’t I kill you?...Well, there isn’t any reason except that away from Hardman’s influence you might brace up. I’ll take the chance. You’re done in Marco. Jard Hardman is dead and Dick’s chances of seeing the sun rise are damn thin...Now you rustle out that door and out of Marco. When you make a man of yourself come to Siccane, Arizona.”
Blake lurched himself erect, and met Pan’s glance with astonished bewildered eyes; then he wheeled to march out of the saloon.
Pan turned into the hallway leading into the hotel part of the building, and soon encountered Blinky leaning against the wall.
“Blink, isn’t she in?” asked Pan, low voiced and eager.
“Shore, but she won’t open the door,” replied Blinky dejectedly.
Pan knocked and called low: “Louise, let us in.”
There was a long wait, then came a low voice: “No.”
“Please, it’s very important.”
“Who are you?”
“It’s Panhandle Smith,” replied Pan.
“That cowboy’s drunk and I — no — I’m sorry.”
“Louise I’m not drunk, but I am in bad temper. I ask as a friend. Don’t cross me here. I can easy shove in this door.”
He heard soft steps, a breathless exclamation, then a key turned in the lock, and the door opened. The lamplight was not bright, Louise stood there half dressed, her bare arms and bosom gleaming. Pan entered, dragging Blinky with him, and closed the door all but tight.
“Louise, it wasn’t kind of you to do that,” said Pan reproachfully. “Have you any better friends than Blinky or me?”
“God knows — I haven’t,” faltered the girl. “But I’ve been ill — in bed — and am just getting out. I — I — heard about you — today — and Blink being with you — drunk.”
Pan stepped to the red-shaded lamp on a small table beside the bed, and turned up the light. The room had more comfort and color than any Pan had seen for many a day.
He bent searching eyes upon Louise. She did look ill — white, with great dark shadows under her eyes, but she seemed really beautiful. What a tragic face it was, betrayed now by lack of paint! Pan had never seen her like this. If he had needed it, this would have warmed his heart to her.
“What do you want of me?” she asked, with a nervous twisting of hands she tried to hide.
Pan took her hands and pulled her a little toward him.
“Louise, you like me, don’t you, as a friend or brother?” he asked gently.
“Yes, when I’m sober,” she replied wanly.
“And you like Blinky, here, don’t you — like him a lot?”
“I did. I couldn’t help it, the damn faithful little cowboy,” she returned. “But I hate him when he’s drunk, and he hates me when I’m drunk.”
“Blink, go out and fetch back a bottle — presently. We’ll all get drunk.”
The cowboy stared like a solemn owl, then very quietly went out.
“Louise, put something over your shoulders. You’ll catch cold. Here,” said Pan and he picked a robe off the bed and wrapped it round her. “I didn’t know you were so pretty. No wonder poor Blink worships you.”
She drew away from him and sat upon the bed, dark eyes questioning, suspicious. Yet she seemed fascinated. Pan caught a slight quivering of her frame. Where was the audacity, the boldness of this girl? But he did not know her, and he had her word that drink alone enabled her to carry on. He had surprised her. Yet could that account for something different, something quite beyond his power to grasp? Surely this girl could not fear him. Suddenly he remembered that Hardman had fled to this house — was hidden there now. Pan’s nerves tautened.
“Louise,” he began, taking her hand again, and launching directly into the reason for this interview he had sought, “we’ve had a great drive. Blink and I have had luck. Oh, such luck! We sold over fifteen hundred horses...Well, we’re going to Arizona, to a sunny open country, not like this...Now Blink and I want you to go with us.”
“What! Go away with you? How, in God’s name?” she gasped in utter amaze.
“Why, as Blink’s wife, of course. And I’ll be your big brother,” replied Pan, not without agitation. It was a pregnant moment. She stared a second, white and still, with great solemn searching eyes on his. Pan felt strangely embarrassed, yet somehow happy that he had dared to approach her with such a proposition.
Suddenly she kissed him, she clung to him, she buried her face on his shoulder and he heard her murmur incoherently something about “honest-to-God men.”
“What do you say, little girl?” he went on. “It’s a chance for you to be good again. It’ll save that wild cowboy, who never had a decent ambition till he met you. He loves you. He worships you. He hates what you have to suffer here. He—”
“So this is Panhandle Smith?” she interrupted, looking up at him with eyes like dark stars. “No! No! No! I wouldn’t degrade even a worthless cowboy.”
“You’re wrong. He’ll not be worthless, if you repay his faith. Louise, don’t turn your back on hope, on love, on a home.”
“No!” she flashed, passionately.
“Why?” he returned, in sharp appeal.
“Because he’s too good for me. Because I don’t deserve your friendship. But so help me God I’ll love you both all the rest of my miserable life — which won’t be long.”
He took her in his arms, as if to add force to argument. “But, you poor child, this is no place for you. You’ll only go to hell — commit suicide or be killed in a drunken brawl.”
“Panhandle, I may end even worse,” she replied, in bitter mockery. “I might marry Dick Hardman. He talks of it — when he’s drunk.”
Pan released her, and leaned back to see her face. “Marry you! Dick Hardman talks of that?” he burst out incredulously.
“Yes, he does. And I might let him when I’m drunk. I’d do anything then.”
At that moment the door opened noiselessly and Blinky entered carrying a bottle and glasses.
“Good, Blink, old pard,” said Pan, breathing heavily. “Louise and I have just made up our minds to get drunk together. Blink, you stay sober.”
“I cain’t stay what I ain’t,” retorted Blinky. “An’ I won’t stay heah, either, to see her drink. I hate her then.”
She poured the dark red liquor out into the glasses. “Boy, I want you to hate me. I’ll make you hate me...Here’s to Panhandle Smith!”
While she drank Blinky moved backwards to the door, eyes glinting brightly into Pan’s and then he was gone.
In the mood under which Pan labored, liquor had no effect upon him but to act as fire to body and mind. The girl, however, was transformed into another creature. Bright red spots glowed in her cheeks, her eyes danced and dilated, her whole body answered to the stimulus. One drink led to another. She could not resist the insidious appetite thus created. She did not see whether Pan drank or not. She grew funny, then sentimental, and finally lost herself in that stage of unnatural abandon for which, when sober, she frankly confessed she drank.
Pan decided that presently he would wrap a blanket around her, pick her up and pack her out. Blinky would shoot out the lights in the saloon, and the rest would be easy. If she knew that Hardman was in the house, as Pan had suspected, she had now no memory of it.
“You big handsome devil,” she called Pan. “I told you — to keep away from me.”
“Louise, don’t make love to me,” replied Pan.
“Why not? Men are all alike.”
“No, you’re wrong. You forget what you said a little while ago. I’ve lost my sweetheart, and my heart is broken.”
She leered at him, and offered him another drink. Pan took the glass away from her. It was possible he might overdo his part.
“So you’re liable to marry young Hardman?” he asked deliberately.
The question, the name, gave her pause, as if they had startled her memory.
“Sure I am.”
“But, Louise, how can you marry Hardman when he already has a wife?” asked Pan.
She grasped that import only slowly, by degrees.
“You lie, you gun-slinging cowboy!” she cried.
“No, Louise. He told me so himself.”
“He did!...When?” she whispered, very low.
“Today. He was at the stage office. He meant to leave today. He was all togged up, frock coat, high hat...Oh, God — Louise, I know, I know, because it — was — my — sweetheart — he married.”
Pan ended gaspingly. What agony to speak that aloud — to make his own soul hear that aloud!
“Your sweetheart?...Little Lucy — of your boyhood — you told me about?”
Pan was confronted now by something terrible. He had sought to make this girl betray herself, if she had anything to betray. But this Medusa face! Those awful eyes!
“Yes, Lucy, I told you,” he said, reaching for her. “He forced her to marry him. They had Lucy’s father in jail. Dick got him out. Oh, it was all a scheme to work on the poor girl. She thought it was to save her father...Why, Dick paid her father. I made him tell me...yes, Dick Hardman in his frock coat and high hat! But when I drove him out to get his gun, he forgot that high hat.”
“Ah! His high hat!”
“Yes, it’s out in the street now. The wind blew it over where I killed Matthews. Funny!...And Louise, I’m going to kill Dick Hardman, too.”
“Like hell you are!” she hissed, and leaped swiftly to snatch something from under the pillow.
Pan started back, thinking that she meant to attack him. How tigerishly she bounded! Her white arm swept aside red curtains. They hid a shallow closet. It seemed her white shape flashed in and out. A hard choking gasp! Could that have come from her? Pan did not see her drawn lips move. Something hard dropped to the floor with metallic sound.
The hall door opened with a single sweep. Blinky stood framed there, wild eyed. And the next instant Dick Hardman staggered from that closet. He had both hands pressed to his abdomen. Blood poured out in a stream. Pan heard strange watery sounds. Hardman reeled out into the hall, groaning. He slipped along the wall. Pan leaped, to see him slide down into a widening pool of blood.
It was a paralyzing moment. But Pan recovered first. The girl swayed with naked arms outstretched against the wall. On her white wrist showed a crimson blot. Pan looked no more. Snatching a blanket off the bed he threw it round her, wrapped it tight, and lifted her in his arms.
“Blink, go ahead,” he whispered, as he went into the hall. “Hurry! Shoot out the lights! Go through the dance hall!”
The cowboy seemed galvanized into action. He leaped over Hardman’s body, huddled and lax, and down the hall, pulling his guns.
Pan edged round the body on the floor. He saw a ghastly face — protruding eyes. And on the instant, like lightning, came the thought that Lucy was free. Almost immediately thundering shots filled the saloon. Crash! Crash! Crash! The lights faded, darkened, went out. Yells and scraping chairs and overturned tables, breaking glass, pounding boots merged in a pandemonium of sound.
Pan hurried through the dance hall, where the windows gave dim light, found the doorway, gained the side entrance to the street. Blinky waited there, smoking guns in his hands.
“Heah — this — way,” he directed in a panting whisper, as he sheathed the guns, and took the lead. Pan followed in the shadow of the houses.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE STREET DOWN that way was dark, with but few lights showing. Blinky kept looking back in the direction of the slowly subsiding tumult. Pan carried Louise at rapid pace, as if she made no burden at all. In the middle of the next block Blinky slowed up, carefully scrutinizing the entrances to the buildings. They came to an open hallway, dimly lighted. Pan read a sign he remembered. This was the lodging house.
“Go in, Blink,” directed Pan quickly. “If you find our parson chase everybody but him and call me pronto.”
Blinky ran into the place. Pan let Louise down on her feet. She could not stand alone.
“Cowboy — smozzer me,” she giggled, pulling at the fold of blanket round her face.
Pan rearranged the blanket over her bare shoulders, and folded it round more like a coat. He feared she might collapse before they could accomplish their design. The plight of this girl struck deeply into his heart.
“Whaz — mazzer, cowboy?” she asked. “Somebody’s raid us?”
“Hush, Louie,” whispered Pan shaking her. “There’ll be a gang after us.”
“Hell with gang...Shay, Pan, whaz become of Dick?”
She was so drunk she did not remember. Pan thanked God for that! How white the tragic face! Her big eyes resembled bottomless gulfs. Her hair hung disheveled round her.
A low whistle made Pan jump. Blinky stood inside in a flare of light from an open door. He beckoned. Pan lifted the girl and carried her in.
Five minutes later they came out, one on each side of Louise, trying to keep her quiet. She was gay, maudlin. But once outside again, the rush of cold mountain air aided them. They hurried down the dark street, almost carrying the girl between them. A few people passed, fortunately on the other side. These pedestrians were hurrying in the other direction. Some excitement uptown, Pan thought grimly! Soon they passed the outskirts of Marco and gained the open country. Pan cast off what seemed a weight of responsibility for Blinky and Louise. Once he got them out of town they were safe.
Suddenly Blinky reached behind the girl and gave Pan a punch. Turning, Pan saw his comrade point back. A dull red flare lighted up the sky. Fire! Pan’s heart gave a leap. The Yellow Mine was burning. The crowd of drinkers and gamblers had fled before Blinky’s guns. Pan was hoping that only he and Blinky would ever know who had killed Dick Hardman.
From time to time Pan glanced back over his shoulder. The flare of red light grew brighter and higher. One corner of Marco would surely be wiped out.
The road curved. Soon a dark patch of trees, and a flickering light, told Pan they had reached his father’s place. It gave him a shock. He had forgotten his parents. They entered the lane and cut off through the dew-wet grass of the orchard to the barn. Pan caught the round pale gleam of canvas-covered wagons.
