Black Jack

There was an astonishing deal of life in the town, however.  A large company had reopened some old diggings across the range to the north of Calkins, and some small fragments of business drifted the way of the little cattle town.  Terry found a long line of a dozen horses waiting to be shod before the blacksmith shop.  One great wagon was lumbering out at the farther end of the street, with the shrill yells of the teamster calling back as he picked up his horses one by one with his voice.  Another freight-wagon stood at one side, blocking half the street.  And a stir of busy life was everywhere in the town.  The hotel and store combined was flooded with sound, and the gambling hall across the street was alive even at midday.

It was noon, and Terry found that the dining room was packed to the last chair.  The sweating waiter improvised a table for him in the corner of the hall and kept him waiting twenty minutes before he was served with ham and eggs.  He had barely worked his fork into the ham when a familiar voice hailed him.

“Got room for another at that table?”

He looked up into the grinning face of Denver.  For some reason it was a shock to Terry.  Of course, the second meeting was entirely coincidental, but a still small voice kept whispering to him that there was fate in it.  He was so surprised that he could only nod.  Denver at once appropriated a chair and seated himself in his usual noiseless way.

When he rearranged the silver which the waiter placed before him, there was not the faintest click of the metal.  And Terry noted, too, a certain nice justness in every one of Denver’s motions.  He was never fiddling about with his hands; when they stirred, it was to do something, and when the thing was done, the hands became motionless again.

His eyes did not rove; they remained fixed for appreciable periods wherever they fell, as though Denver were finding something worth remembering in the wall, or in a spot on the table.  When his glance touched on a face, it hung there in the same manner.  After a moment one would forget all the rest of his face, brutal, muscular, shapeless, and see only the keen eyes.

Terry found it difficult to face the man.  There was need to be excited about something, to talk with passion, in order to hold one’s own in the presence of Denver, even when the chunky man was silent.  He was not silent now; he seemed in a highly cheerful, amiable mood.

“Here’s luck,” he said.  “I didn’t know this God-forsaken country could raise as much luck as this!”

“Luck?” echoed Terry.

“Why not?  D’you think I been trailing you?”

He chuckled in his noiseless way.  It gave Terry a feeling of expectation.  He kept waiting for the sound to come into that laughter, but it never did.  Suddenly he was frank, because it seemed utterly futile to attempt to mask one’s real thoughts from this fellow.

“I don’t know,” he said, “that it would surprise me if you had been tailing me.  I imagine you’re apt to do queer things, Denver.”

Denver hissed, very softly and with such a cutting whistle to his breath that Terry’s lips remained open over his last word.

“Forget that name!” Denver said in a half-articulate tone of voice.

He froze in his place, staring straight before him; but Terry gathered an impression of the most intense watchfulness—­as though, while he stared straight before him, he had sent other and mysterious senses exploring for him.  He seemed suddenly satisfied that all was well, and as he relaxed, Terry became aware of a faint gleam of perspiration on the brow of his companion.

“Why the devil did you tell me the name if you didn’t want me to use it?” he asked.

“I thought you’d have some savvy; I thought you’d have some of your dad’s horse sense,” said Denver.

“No offense,” answered Terry, with the utmost good nature.

“Call me Shorty if you want,” said Denver.  In the meantime he was regarding Terry more and more closely.

“Your old man would of made a fight out of it if I’d said as much to him as I’ve done to you,” he remarked at length.

“Really?” murmured Terry.

And the portrait of his father swept back on him—­the lean, imperious, handsome face, the boldness of the eyes.  Surely a man all fire and powder, ready to explode.  He probed his own nature.  He had never been particularly quick of temper—­until lately.  But he began to wonder if his equable disposition might not rise from the fact that his life in Bear Valley had been so sheltered.  He had been crossed rarely.  In the outer world it was different.  That very morning he had been tempted wickedly to take the tall rancher by the throat and grind his face into the sand.

“But maybe you’re different,” went on Denver.  “Your old man used to flare up and be over it in a minute.  Maybe you remember things and pack a grudge with you.”

“Perhaps,” said Terry, grown strangely meek.  “I hardly know.”

Indeed, he thought, how little he really knew of himself.  Suddenly he said:  “So you simply happened over this way, Shorty?”

“Sure.  Why not?  I got a right to trail around where I want.  Besides, what would there be in it for me—­following you?”

“I don’t know,” said Terry gravely.  “But I expect to find out sooner or later.  What else are you up to over here?”

“I have a little job in mind at the mine,” said Denver.  “Something that may give the sheriff a bit of trouble.”  He grinned.

“Isn’t it a little—­unprofessional,” said Terry dryly, “for you to tell me these things?”

“Sure it is, bo—­sure it is!  Worst in the world.  But I can always tell a gent that can keep his mouth shut.  By the way, how many jobs you been fired from already?”

Terry started.  “How do you know that?”

“I just guess at things.”

“I started working for an infernal idiot,” sighed Terry.  “When he learned my name, he seemed to be afraid I’d start shooting up his place one of these days.”

“Well, he was a wise gent.  You ain’t cut out for working, son.  Not a bit.  It’d be a shame to let you go to waste simply raising calluses on your hands.”

“You talk well,” sighed Terry, “but you can’t convince me.”

“Convince you?  Hell, I ain’t trying to convince your father’s son.  You’re like Black Jack.  You got to find out yourself.  We was with a Mick, once.  Red-headed devil, he was.  I says to Black Jack:  ’Don’t crack no jokes about the Irish around this guy!’

“‘Why not?’ says your dad.

“‘Because there’d be an explosion,’ says I.

“‘H’m,’ says Black Jack, and lifts his eyebrows in a way he had of doing.

“And the first thing he does is to try a joke on the Irish right in front of the Mick.  Well, there was an explosion, well enough.”

“What happened?” asked Terry, carried away with curiosity.

“What generally happened, kid, when somebody acted up in front of your dad?” From the air he secured an imaginary morsel between stubby thumb and forefinger and then blew the imaginary particle into empty space.

“He killed him?” asked Terry hoarsely.

“No,” said Denver, “he didn’t do that.  He just broke his heart for him.  Kicked the gat out of the hand of the poor stiff and wrestled with him.  Black Jack was a wildcat when it come to fighting with his hands.  When he got through with the Irishman, there wasn’t a sound place on the fool.  Black Jack climbed back on his horse and threw the gun back at the guy on the ground and rode off.  Next we heard, the guy was working for a Chinaman that run a restaurant.  Black Jack had taken all the fight out of him.”

That scene out of the past drifted vividly back before Terry’s eyes.  He saw the sneer on the lips of Black Jack; saw the Irishman go for his gun; saw the clash, with his father leaping in with tigerish speed; felt the shock of the two strong bodies, and saw the other turn to pulp under the grip of Black Jack.

By the time he had finished visualizing the scene, his jaw was set hard.  It had been easy, very easy, to throw himself into the fierceness of his dead father’s mood.  During this moment of brooding he had been looking down, and he did not notice the glance of Denver fasten upon him with an almost hypnotic fervor, as though he were striving to reach to the very soul of the younger man and read what was written there.  When Terry looked up, the face of his companion was as calm as ever.

“And you’re like the old boy,” declared Denver.  “You got to find out for yourself.  It’ll be that way with this work idea of yours.  You’ve lost one job.  You’ll lose the next one.  But—­I ain’t advising you no more!”