Bad Man's Gulch (15 page)

“That half hour took as long in rolling by as though it had been half a year. Ten times I thought it was strikin', and ten times I made a pass for my gun, but Billy Angel, if that's his name, he didn't pay no attention. He just lay there in his chair, watchin' me with a sick sort of a smile, not sayin' a word, with his eyes only a slit open. Mighty weak and flabby was how he looked just then.

“Then the clock struck, and the sound of it sort of gave me a shock, I can tell you. I jerked out my gun. I'm not slow on a draw. I spend my time practicing the same as most of you boys do, and I've never left off that practice no matter where in the world I might be. But I had no choice ag'in' him. I might as well tell you plain and frank . . . he beat me to the draw as easy as I'd snap my fingers. And when he shot, he shot at the gun in my hand, not at me. It knocked the gun clean across the room.

“‘I certainly do hope I ain't smashed up your hand,' he says as cool as the devil.

“I looked down and seen that there was only a small cut between the thumb and the forefinger.

“‘I'm all right,' says I.

“‘You can hand over your wallet, then,' says he.

“I gave it to him.

“‘Now,' says he, ‘there's two things left for me to do. One is that I can tie you hand and foot so's you
can't move, and the other is for you to give me your word that you won't make a move out of this shack for five minutes.'

“It sort of took me back, hearin' him talk about trusting me.

“‘Do you mean that?' I says.

“‘I mean it,' says he.

“‘Well, then,' says I, ‘I don't hanker to be tied up like a chicken for market. I'll give you my word.'

“I took out a watch and laid it on the table.

“‘All right,' says he. ‘In five minutes you can raise a noise. That's all I need for fadin' away.'

“And that was the way he left me. Except that, when he started away through the mud, it seemed to me that he sort of wobbled a mite, as though he found the goin' pretty hard for him. If that's Billy Angel, I'll lay you a hundred dollars to a nickel that he's been sick pretty recent.”

Such was the narrative of the gambler, concluded just as the sheriff rushed into the room. He went straight to Carney. “Is this true, Steve?” he asked. “Is this true, that that devil, Billy Angel, went in and cleaned you out?”

“As true as I'm standing here.”

“We'll have him in half an hour!” cried the sheriff. “He can't have gotten far. Boys, are you with me?”

They were already in their slickers. Now they stormed out of the room behind the sheriff. In the street they were joined by other voices. The whole town was up to apprehend the criminal. And the girl remained alone, listening, again, to the rain. It would not have been difficult, after all, she decided. Angel had simply climbed out of the window and then down the roof over the kitchen until he could drop from the lower edge of it to the ground. She must get into the room and make sure. She took a
hammer and ran up the stairs, determined to batter in the lock to her door, but when she laid her hand upon the knob, it yielded at once, and, stepping into the room, she found Billy Angel in person stretched upon her bed.

Impulses of rage and of scorn rushed through her brain so fast that she could not act upon one of them. First she decided to denounce him to his face. Then she was of a mind to run down the stairs and call back the men of Derby to come at once and capture the fellow. After that, she decided to get only one man, Steven Carney himself, to come to the room and destroy the villain.

No, for one man could not do it. She realized, looking down on him, that even limp and weak as he was, he was dangerous, and the steady black eyes looked up to her now without a trace of emotion. He showed neither shame nor remorse. His color, which was a very sick white, did not alter in the least. At this, something of awe came over her.

“Billy Angel,” she said to him, “you've robbed my friend, Steve Carney.”

He nodded.

“You've robbed him because
I
told you that he had money!”

He nodded again, and his complaisance infuriated her.

“Why don't I call them up here to take you? I
shall
call them in.” She turned toward the door.

“Nope,” he said, “I guess that you won't call 'em in.”

She turned back to hear his reasons. “Why not? I've treated you like a brother. And now you turn on me like a . . . like a traitor! What keeps me from turning you over to the law?”

“About three things, I figger,” he said.

“Really? What three, if you please!”

“First, because it would mean a lot of shootin' and bloodshed, and this here furniture would get pretty badly spoiled . . . that's the reason.”

“It's no reason at all!”

“Then you ain't so anxious to have folks know that you been takin' care of a murderer all these days.”

“Ah, coward!” she cried. “Do you count on my shame and take advantage of that?”

“I take advantage of anything,” he said, watching her without emotion. “The third thing is that you've sort of a kindly feeling to me, in spite of what you say.”

She was paralyzed with fury. It is odd that one should guard the emotions as such sacred things. It is pleasant to reveal them oneself; it is hideous sacrilege to have them revealed by another. That he should have discovered her weakness for him immediately wiped out any virtue that he might have. She told herself in a white rage that she hated him and everything about him. So, staring at him for an instant, wide-eyed, she hesitated, trying to find words. Words would not do, she decided. She whirled to the door, but, as she reached it, a long arm, thick with muscle stretched before it. Her rush
carried her against it. It was like striking against a wall. In some mysterious manner he had managed to slip from the bed and reach the door in a single leap. A noiseless movement, like a cat's.

“Let me go!” she cried.

He brushed her back, gently, irresistibly. He closed the door behind him, locked it, and took out the key, which he dropped in his pocket.

“I'll shout out the window,” she assured him, her voice low and earnest with her passion.

“Would they hear you through the rain?” he asked her.

“I'll . . . I'll . . .”

“Well?”

That terse, unsympathetic word broke down all of her strength, for like a rush of light it revealed to her perfectly her own impotence. She broke into tears and leaned against the wall with her face cupped in her hands.

“All right,” he said. “I was sort of worried for a moment.”

She heard a
jingle
on the floor. Then he recrossed the room and, reaching the bed, lay down on it. She discovered that he had thrown the key at her feet. It bewildered her. Why he should have thrust her back from the door one instant, and the next presented to her the means of leaving the room at her will, was most strange. It was as though he had dared to look into her heart once more and had seen that there was nothing remaining to be feared in her.

And she, looking inward into her soul of souls, saw that he was right. Her fury had changed to sorrow that any man could so repay good with evil as he had repaid her. That the very friend she had pointed out to him should have been selected as the
next prey, and that then he should have had the effrontery to return to her very room for shelter!

She had no longer the sharp fury at her command that could make her betray even this evildoer. He had seen it. Perhaps her very tears had been enough to reveal to him all that he cared to know. She looked across at him as he lay stretched on the bed. Wonder and hatred and awe and grief were mingled so inextricably in her mind that she could only snatch up the key and flee from the room. Before she went down, she stood at a window and let the cold, wet air blow in upon her face. Then she went down.

Of course, Billy Angel had not been found, and the trail that had been picked up from the shack of Steven Carney had merely led back into the town, a strange thing that dumbfounded everyone. For, with only five minutes to escape before the alarm was raised, certainly it seemed that every minute was very precious to him and he would try to put a mile between him and the pursuit in that interval. However, as Steve Carney himself suggested, that move back into the village was a mere feint. The instant he was out of sight he had doubled back for the hills. Yet there were some incredulous ones who swore that someone in the village must be playing the friend to Billy Angel and shielding him from discovery.

The sheriff was a desperate man. Never before in his reign had the law been so openly defied. He made the lunchroom of pretty Sue Markham the center. Beginning there, he searched every house in the town for the person of the ruffian. Through every nook they passed, and through every cellar, every garret, and every closet, and every shed, barn, and lean-to. But there was not a sign of big Billy Angel
. They came back wet with the rain, chilled with wet and wind, utterly downhearted.

“Well,” said the sheriff, and he stood steaming in front of Sue Markham's stove, “he ain't in Derby. That's pretty clear, I guess.”

“Have you searched every house?” asked someone.

“Every house in town.”

Jack Hopper stood out from a corner, where he had stood gloomily silent. He raised his head. “Every house except this one,” he suggested.

The sheriff merely tilted his head and laughed.

Never in the world was there such music to the ears of Sue as in that laughter.

“If Sue,” the sheriff said, “wants to keep a man-killer hid, I guess that we'll let her do it. She'd have better reasons for it than we'd have for hangin' him.”

He grinned at Sue to give a point to his jest. Half an hour later, he and the others were working through the country around the town, having ridden off with such a terrible zest and eagerness that she almost feared that on the broad, wild breast of the mountain they might find their man—as though he could exist both there and in her room at the same time.

All the rest of the day they labored. And when the evening came, they were still working in the distance when Steve Carney himself came into the lunch counter.

“Steve!” she gasped out at him. “They've found Billy Angel, then?”

“Found Angel? Found the devil, and a black, wet one! Nope, they ain't found Billy Angel.”

“But why are you back?”

“Something sort of told me that there wasn't any
use keeping it up. A man has to work by hunches half of the time, you know. That's the way I do, at least. So I turned around and came home. No use riding through mud and wind when they's a fire in town with an empty chair beside it, eh?”

He smiled at her so cheerfully that her heart went out to him with a rush.

“Oh, Steve,” she said to him, “there's not a mite of malice in you for all that he's done to you.”

He shook his head. “When a gent stands up and fights fair for a thing, I aim to say that he's won it and deserves to keep it . . . unless it can be took away from him by force. I wouldn't've called in the law to help me, except that I didn't want to waste a lot more years tearin' around to get together another stock of coin. Well,” he added, “I don't know that the money would make any difference, though, to a girl like you, Sue.”

She stamped her foot a little, in the strength of her affirmation. “Not a mite in the world!”

At this, he shook his head, watching her still in his half-smiling, half-derisive manner. “Ah, well, Sue, I'd feel a lot more hopeful if you'd only blushed and said nothing. If you come right down to it, I guess there ain't much hope for me with you, Sue.”

“There is!” she said stormily. “I like you more'n I like anybody, Steve!”

He shook his head again. “That doesn't fool me,” he said. “It's the sort of thing that doesn't come with waiting. I fool myself thinking that if I stay around a while, maybe you'll get to know me well enough to marry me. But doggone it, Sue, that sort of knowing ain't what counts. The sort of knowing that makes love is rigged up with lightning. That's the way I learned to love you. I seen you a couple of years back, polishing up the top of that counter with a rag
in your hand and listening to some lumberman flirting with you, and trying to keep from laughing at him, and only letting the smiles get as far as your eyes. Well, it didn't strike me at the time. But, a year later, when I was off by myself, holding the wheel of a little sloop that was smashing through a crazy head sea and near washing me off my feet every other jump, with a lee shore looking as tall as Derby Mountain and all rigged up with white teeth at its feet, and with one scared nigger to work the ropes for me . . . when I was out there, watching the clouds sashaying across the face of the moon, all at once I remembered the picture of how you'd stood back of the counter, here. And it was lightning, Sue. That let the picture of you into my heart, and it'll never get out again. If that sort of lightning had ever struck you, you couldn't help but talk right back to me when I told you that I love you. You wouldn't have to talk, because I'd feel it before you spoke.”

She could not speak. He stood up and went to the window. That window was crusted with mist and framed with sheerest, thickest black of the night. He had not gone there to look out but to cover emotion of which he was ashamed, she knew.

“However,” he said, without turning his head, “I s'pose that I'll stay around for a while, and wait to see what my luck might bring. If I can't get you to marry me out of love, maybe I'll get you to marry me out of pity, eh?” He looked at her with a mirthless, twisted smile. Then he went hastily out into the night.

Although she tried with all of her might, she was not able to say a word to him. It was a wretched evening that followed. When the last of the posse came in, at midnight, she had to rake up enthusiasm and interest and shakings of the head over the tales that
they had to tell her. They had not found Billy Angel. That mysterious fellow seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. She listened with an aching heart. How happy, she told herself, she would be if she had never seen that man. And in the first place of all, if she had never seen Billy Angel, she would have promised to marry Steve Carney. She was sure of it now.