Trailin'!

THE STAGE

“You first,” said Lawlor at the door.

“I’ve been taught to let an older man go first,” said Bard, smiling pleasantly.  “After you, sir.”

“Any way you want it, Bard,” answered Lawlor, but as he led the way down the hall he was saying to himself, through his stiffly mumbling lips:  “He knows!  Calamity was right; there’s going to be hell poppin’ before long.”

He lengthened his stride going down the long hall to the dining-room, and entering, he found the cowpunchers about to take their places around the big table.  Straight toward the head to the big chair he stalked, and paused an instant beside little Duffy.  Their interchange of whispers was like a muffled rapid-fire, for they had to finish before young Bard, now just entering the room, could reach them and take his designated chair at the right of Lawlor.

“He knows,” muttered Lawlor.

“Hell!  Then it’s all up?”

“No; keep bluffin’; wait.  How’s everything?”

“Gregory ain’t come in, but Drew may put him wise before he gets inside the house.”

“You done all I could expect,” said Lawlor aloud as Bard came up, “but to-morrow go back on the same job and try to get something definite.”

To Bard:  “Here’s your place, partner.  Just been tellin’ Duffy, there on your right, about some work.  Some of the doggies have been rustled lately and we’re on their trail.”

They took their places, and Bard surveyed the room carefully, as an actor who stands in the wings and surveys the stage on which he is soon to step and play a great part; for in Anthony there was a gathering sense of impending disaster and action.  What he saw was a long, low apartment, the bare rafters overhead browned by the kitchen smoke, which even now was rolling in from the wide door at the end of the room—­the thick, oily smoke of burnt meat mingled with steam and the nameless vapours of a great oven.

There was no semblance of a decoration on the walls; the boards were not even painted.  It was strictly a place for use, not pleasure.  The food itself which Shorty Kilrain and Calamity Ben now brought on was distinctly utilitarian rather than appetizing.  The pièce de resistance was a monstrous platter heaped high with beefsteak, not the inviting meat of a restaurant in a civilized city, but thin, brown slabs, fried dry throughout.  The real nourishment was in the gravy in which the steak swam.  In a dish of even more amazing proportions was a vast heap of potatoes boiled with their jackets on.  Lawlor commenced loading the stack of plates before him, each with a slab and a potato or two.

Meantime from a umber of big coffee pots a stream of a liquid, bitter as lye and black as night, was poured into the tin cups.  Yet the cattlemen about the table settled themselves for the meal with a pleasant expectation fully equal to that of the most seasoned gourmand in a Manhattan restaurant.

The peculiar cowboy’s squint—­a frowning of the brow and a compression of the thin lips—­relaxed.  That frown came from the steady effort to shade the eyes from the white-hot sunlight; the compression of the lips was due to a determination to admit none of the air, laden with alkali dust, except through the nostrils.  It grew in time into a perpetual grimace, so that the expression of an old range rider is that of a man steeling himself to pass through some grim ordeal.

Now as they relaxed, Anthony perceived first of all that most of the grimness passed away from the narrowed eyes and they lighted instead with good-humoured banter, though of a weary nature.  One by one, they cast off ten years of age; the lines rubbed out; the jaws which had thrust out grew normal; the leaning heads straightened and went back.

They paid not the slightest attention to the newcomer, talking easily among themselves, but Anthony was certain that at least some of them were thinking of him.  If they said nothing, their thoughts were the more.

In fact, in the meantime little Duffy had passed on to the next man, in a side mutter, the significant phrase:  “He knows!” It went from lip to lip like a watchword passing along a line of sentinels.  Each man heard it imperturbably, completed the sentence he was speaking before, or maintained his original silence through a pause, and then repeated it to his right-hand neighbour.  Their demeanour did not alter perceptibly, except that the laughter, perhaps, became a little more uproarious, and they were sitting straighter in their chairs, their eyes brighter.

All they knew was that Drew had impressed on them that Bard must not leave that room in command of his six-shooter or even of his hands.  He must be bound securely.  The working out of the details of execution he had left to their own ingenuity.  It might have seemed a little thing to do to greener fellows, but every one of these men was an experienced cowpuncher, and like all old hands on the range they were perfectly familiar with the amount of damage which a single armed man can do.

The thing could be done, of course, but the point was to do it with the minimum of danger.  So they waited, and talked, and ate and always from the corners of their eyes were conscious of the slightly built, inoffensive man who sat beside Lawlor near the head of the table.  In appearance he was surely most innocuous, but Nash had spoken, and in such matters they were all willing to take his word with a childlike faith.

So the meal went on, and the only sign, to the most experienced eye, was that the chairs were placed a little far back from the edge of the table, a most necessary condition when men may have to rise rapidly or get at their holsters for a quick draw.

Calamity Ben bearing a mighty dish of bread pudding, passed directly behind the chair of the stranger.  The whole table watched with a sudden keenness, and they saw Bard turn, ever so slightly, just as Calamity passed behind the chair.

“I say,” he said, “may I have a bit of hot water to put in this coffee?”

“Sure,” said Calamity, and went on, but the whole table knew that the stranger was on his guard.

The mutual suspicion gave a tenseness to the atmosphere, as if it were charged with the electricity of a coming storm, a tingling waiting which made the men prone to become silent and then talk again in fitful outbursts.  Or it might be said that it was like a glass full of precipitate which only waits for the injection of a single unusual substance before it settles to the bottom and leaves the remaining liquid clear.  It was for the unusual, then, that the entire assembly waited, feeling momentarily that it must be coming, for the strain could not endure.

As for Bard, he stuck by his original apparent indifference.  For he still felt sure that the real William Drew was behind this elaborate deception and the thing for which he waited was some revelation of the hand of the master.  The trumps which he felt he held was in being forewarned; he could not see that the others knew his hand.

He said to Lawlor:  “I think a man named Nash works on this ranch.  I expected to see him at supper here.”

“Nash?” answered Lawlor.  “Sure, he used to be foreman here.  Ain’t no more.  Nope—­I couldn’t stand for his lip.  Didn’t mind him getting fresh till he tried to ride me.  Then I turned him loose.  Where did you meet him?”

“While I was riding in this direction.”

“Want to see him bad?”

The other moistened his lips.

“Rather!  He killed my horse.”

A silence fell on these who were within hearing.  They would not have given equal attention to the story of the killing of a man.

“How’d he get away with it?”

“The Saverack was between us.  Before I could get my gun out he was riding out of range.  I’ll meet him and have another talk some day.”

“Well, the range ain’t very small.”

“But my dear fellow, it’s not nearly as big as my certainty of meeting this—­cur.”

There is something in a low, slow voice more thrilling than the thunder of actual rage.  Those who heard glanced to one another with thoughtful eyes.  They were thinking of Nash, and thinking of him with sympathy.

Little Duffy, squat and thick-set, felt inspiration descend on him.  He turned to Bard on his left.

“That ain’t a full-size forty-five, is it—­that one you’re packin’?”

“Doesn’t it look it?” answered Bard.

“Nope.  Holster seems pretty small to me.”

“It’s the usual gun, I’m sure,” said Bard, and pulled the weapon from the leather.

Holding the butt loosely, his trigger finger hooked clear around the far side of the guard, he showed the gun.

“I was wrong,” nodded Duffy unabashed, “that’s the regular kind.  Let’s have a look at it.”

And he stretched out his hand.  No one would ever have guessed how closely the table followed what now happened, for each man began talking in a voice even louder than before.  It was as if they sought to cover the stratagem of Duffy with their noise.

“There’s nothing unusual about the gun,” said Bard, “but I’d be glad to let you have it except that I’ve formed a habit of never letting a six-shooter get away from me.  It’s a foolish habit, I know, but I can’t lose it.  If there’s any part you’d like to see, just name it.”

“Thanks,” answered Duffy.  “I guess I’ve seen all I want of it.”

Calamity had failed; Duffy had failed.  It began to look as if force of downright numbers must settle the affair.