Bad Man's Gulch (10 page)

The sheriff, growling deep in his throat and scowling, stepped to the back door of the room and cast it open. A great white hand of snow struck in at him. The flame leaped in the throat of the lamp, and the fire roared in the stove. He closed the door with a bang and turned his head down, shaking off the snowflakes.

“You're right, Jack,” he said. “He's gone for the hills. And we'd never find him in this weather. Maybe he'll freeze before morning, at that. I hope
not. I want to see the hanging of that rat.” He came back to the lunch counter. “Coffee all around, Sue. We're cold to the marrow.”

Her heart sank. Under her feet lay the wounded man. Perhaps at this very moment he was dying! His face was a dull white, his eyes were partly opened, and showed a narrow, glassy slit. She could not repress a shudder. But there was nothing to do except to obey the order. She went about it as cheerfully as possible.

From the big percolator, the polished, gleaming pride of the counter, she drew the cups rapidly, one after another, and then held them under the hot-milk faucet until they were filled. She set them out; she produced the sugar bowls and sent them rattling down the counter, where they came to a pause at an appropriate interval before the line.

They were beginning to grow comfortable, making little pilgrimages to the stove to spread their hands before the fire, and then returning in haste. Their faces grew fiery red, and the blood rushed up to the skin. The frowns of effort began to melt from their foreheads.

She was showered with orders.

“Lemon pie, Sue.”

“That custard, Sue, under that glass case.”

“Some of that coconut cake, Sue. Make it a double wedge.”

“When are you gonna leave off cooking for the world and center on one man, Sue?”

“I'm waiting for a silent man, Harry.”

“I'm silent by nacher and education, Sue.”

“We won't know till you've growed up, Harry.”

“Sue, gimme a dash of that Carnation cream, will you? This here milk ain't thick enough.”

“It's real cow's milk, Bud.”

“The only kind of cows I like are canned, Sue. This here fresh milk, it ain't got no taste to it.”

She opened a can of condensed milk and set it before Bud.

“Another slice of apple pie, Sue.”

“There ain't any more.” This to the engineer, Jack Hopper.

“Didn't I see some back of the counter on that shelf?”

“No, Jack! Really!”

But she spoke too late. He had already leaned far across the high counter, lifting himself on his elbows, and so his glance commanded everything that was behind it—everything including the pale, upturned face of the wounded man who was stretched along the floor.

Her hand froze on the edge of the counter. Before her eyes, the lighted lamp became a long swirl of yellow flame. When her sight cleared again, she found that Jack Hopper was standing back a little from the counter, saying slowly: “Well, Sue, I guess I'll change my mind about having another piece. Let it go.” He turned his back and went to the stove, and there he stood with his hands spread out to the blaze. Why had he not cried out? Because he thought that she had some profound reason for wishing to shelter the fugitive—and because Jack Hopper loved her.

The rest gave her a sentimental kindness, but Jack was different. He was no foolish boy, but a grown and hardened man, with a man's firmness, a man's singleness of thought and purpose. For two years he had been campaigning quietly to win her. And in turn, if she did not love him, she respected him as a rock of strength and of honesty. What passed in his mind now as he turned from the counter and stood by the stove?

The sheriff followed him with some question. How calamities rain one upon the other. His foot slipped; he looked down with a cry: “Blood, by the heavens! There's blood on the floor!” Then: “How did this stuff come here, Sue?”

They turned to her, but none with eyes so piercingly intent as those of Jack Hopper. In that crisis she felt herself perfectly calm. There was a stir beside her. She saw from the corner of her eye how Billy Angel was propping himself feebly upon one elbow. He was listening, too.

“One of the brakies off of Three Seventeen was whittling wood by the stove,” she said. “He cut his finger.”

“Where's the shavings, then?” snapped out the sheriff, frowning at her.

She saw the flush run up the face of Jack Hopper—saw him frown in a belligerent manner at the sheriff.

“He said it would dry up and stop bleeding,” Sue said. “He sat there like a fool, letting it drip on my floor until I made him stop.”

“Is that it?”

“Yes. I swept up the shavings. But I hadn't time to clean up that mess.”

The sheriff nodded. “I'll tell you, fellows,” he said to his companions, “I figgered for a minute that maybe that bullet of mine had nicked Billy Angel. He twisted around like it might've stung him a mite. Have you heard about the murder, Sue?”

“I don't want to hear,” she said. “These horror stories put my nerves on edge.”

“Since when?” The sheriff chuckled. “Well, Sue, you're a queer one. You've always been hunting for all the shooting stories. This was a bad case. Young Charlie Ormond . . . the son of that rich Ormond . . .
he was stabbed in the back by his cousin . . . this Billy Angel. A darned black case, I'd say. Angel was taken in by old Ormond and raised by him the same as Charlie.”

She gaped at that recital of horror. “Are you sure he did it, Tom?”

“Wasn't he seen? Oh, there ain't any doubt of it. And he ran for it. An honest man always takes the chance of bein' arrested. This here Billy Angel, he turned and cut for it like a streak.” He said to his companions: “Rustle around, boys. See if you can figger it out so's you get the best hosses around the town and have 'em ready by the mornin'. Surefooted ones are what you'll want after this snow. It's gonna be sloppy work tomorrow if the wind pulls around to the south ag'in.”

They went out, calling back to her as they passed through the door, each with some foolish thing to add to what the others said. But she waved to them all with the same fixed, meaningless smile. Then she looked down at Billy Angel.

He was sitting up with his back against the wall. Even while they were calling their farewells to her, he was calmly straightening the bandage on his arm where the bleeding had ceased entirely. Now he looked up calmly at her.

“Well?” she said, feeling that her heart had turned to iron in her breast.

“You could have saved the sheriff a pile of work by pointing behind the counter.”

She answered coldly: “They never do things that way in my family. If the dogs were after it . . . I wouldn't show even a rat to 'em.”

He watched her quietly. “I understand,” he said.

She would have given a great deal to have recalled that last speech of hers in the face of this perfect poise of the fugitive. For the steadiness with which his eyes held upon her seemed to tell her that, no matter what the sheriff had said, and no matter what the man himself confessed, he never could have been guilty of that dastardly crime of which he was accused. Moreover, there was a sense of a scornful curiosity with which he examined her, and seemed, behind those bright black eyes of his, to be weighing her. And finding her, no doubt, wanting.

Still, she could not unbend at once, and she was full of the revolt that had recently swept over her. There was iron in her voice when she said: “Can you walk?”

“I figger that I can,” he said. “Anyway, I aim to try.” He laid hold upon the supporting post that held up the counter, and, pulling with the one hand and thrusting himself up with the other, he managed to sway to his knees. There he paused. She could hear his panting, and his breast worked with
the cost of the labor. There came to her a disgusting suspicion that he was overdoing the fatigue and acting a part for the sake of imposing upon her. She did not stir to help him. Now he strove again, and came to his feet by degrees, and stood with his big hand spread on the counter, leaning over it, breathing hard.

There was no sham here. She could see a tremor in those large hands, and that was proof enough. No acting could counterfeit the reality so perfectly. Once again there was a sudden and hot melting of the girl's heart.

“Billy Angel,” she said fiercely, “did you do it? Did you really do it?”

Even in that moment of near collapse, his caustic humor did not desert him. “Are you aimin' to believe what I say?” he asked her.

“I
shall
believe it.”

“Why, then, sure I didn't.” He grinned at her again, as though part in mockery and part asking her to step inside a more intimate understanding of this affair. There was no way in which she could come close to him. Still he thrust her away to arm's length and seemed to laugh at her attempts to know him and the truth about him. Something about that grim independence made her admire him; something about it made her fear him. He seemed capable of anything, of facing one hundred men with guns in their hands—or, indeed, of stabbing one helpless man in the back by stealth. She would have paid down without an afterthought the treasures of a Crœsus to have known the truth. She would have paid down that much to win from him one serious, open, frank-hearted answer.

“You didn't do it,” she said. “Well, God knows, I
hope you didn't. Now I got to get you upstairs where I can have a look at that wound.”

He pointed up and over his shoulder. “Up to your room?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head with a half-scornful, half-mirthful smile. “I'll be off.”

“You'll freeze to death in an hour. Look at the windows.”

They were clouded with thick white, quite opaque.

“Sue,” he said, “I dunno but what you're an ace-high trump, but when it comes to hidin' in your room . . .” His smile disappeared; a wild and vacant look crossed his face, and he reeled, holding tight to the edge of the counter while his knees sagged. Only a giant effort of the will had kept him erect, she could see. She caught at him as she had done before, passing his unwounded arm over her shoulder, taking him around the triple-corded muscles of the waist with her free arm.

“Come along,” she commanded, and dragged him toward the door that led to the upstairs room.

Then his bravado deserted him. “Sue,” he said, “for heaven's sake, lemme go. I don't deserve the good treatment a dog . . .”

“I'm doin' no more for you than I would for a hurt dog.”

“Lemme rest one minute more,” he gasped out, “and then I can get outside. . . .”

“To die?”

“I'll find a . . . a way. . . .” He reeled, and the weight of his body sent them both staggering.

In that moment she brought him through the door. “Now up the stairs. You've got to work for me, and with me, Billy Angel!”

“Lemme rest . . . one minute. . . .”

She let him lean against the wall, his head fallen back, his wounded arm hanging limply, the other loosely over her, pressing close to him with its powerless weight. She could count the beating of his heart, feeble and fluttering, with pauses in the beats. It seemed that mere loss of blood could not so affect him. In that great bulk of muscle and bone there was only the faintest winking light of life, ready to snap out and leave all cold and dark forever. And it must be she, with an uninstructed wisdom, who should cherish that flame and keep it fluttering until it burned up strong again.

“Can you try now, Billy?”

“I'll try now.”

“There's one step up.” She lifted him with a fearful effort. “No, the other leg . . . the right leg, Billy. Steady. Now another step. Lean on me . . . I'm strong.”

“I got to go. . . .”

“In a little while. When you've had half an hour's sleep.”

He muttered with a drunken thickness: “That's it . . . a mite of sleep will set me up. . . . I'll . . . I'll sleep here . . . right on the stairs . . . it's good enough.”

It meant all his power every moment of that nightmare of a climb—and more than all her strength when he reeled and wavered—which was at every other step. But at last he reached the head of the stairs, and she brought him safely into her room. When she brought him into it, for the first time it seemed to her a mere corner—so small it was. They reached the bed—he slipped from her shoulder, and the bed groaned under his weight. There he lay on his back with his arms cast out clumsily.

Once more there was that look of death in his face. The eyelids were slightly opened, and the glazed pupils glimmered with the suggestion of departed life. Only, as she watched him with dread in her throat, she saw a faint twitching of his lips. Then she hurried about the proper bandaging of the wound. She brought warm water and washed it. Then, with care, she closed the rough edges of the wound, still oozing blood. It was no easy task. The great, twisted muscles of the forearm were as firm and tough as the thigh of an ordinary man, but she fixed the bandage in place. She had half a bottle of rye whiskey. She brought it for him and sat on the bed, lifting his head. His head alone, limp as it was, was a burden. It seemed a miracle now that she had been able to support that tottering, wavering bulk of a man. At last the glass was at his lips, they parted, tasted the stuff, and then swallowed it down.

Almost immediately a faint flush came into his face, and then his eyes fluttered open. They looked blankly up to her. “What's wrong? What's up?” he asked, half frowning.

“Nothing,” she said very softly.

“Nothing wrong? I thought . . . I dreamed . . . all right, then. I'll sleep. I got work . . . tomorrow. . . .” He sighed and instantly he was sound asleep.

She watched him for a moment, and then, hearing the
jingle
of her store bell, she rose hurriedly. She passed the mirror, and, catching a glimpse of her face, she found that it still wore a faint smile, half-wistful, half-contented.