Bad Man's Gulch (18 page)

Billy Angel smiled. “I'll give you my word about nothin',” he said. “I haven't asked to be brought in here. You take all the chances if I'm left. That's all.”

At the brutal curtness of this speech, the color of the sheriff became high. He hesitated, wavering in his angry impulse. But a glance at the girl decided. “I'll trust it all to you, Sue,” he said. “I'll stand outside the door . . . if you want me to keep from hearin' your voices, you'll have to talk soft. But the first queer noise that I hear, I'll be back through that door with a gun. That's for you, Angel. Lemme tell you that I brought you in alive because it was my duty to try it. But if they's trouble, remember that you mean as much to me dead as you do alive . . . or a mite more, my friend. Sue, it's up to you.” So, curtly, he turned his back and left them.

The prisoner sat down in a chair and leaned his head against the wall. Without embarrassment, he watched the face of the girl. He seemed more interested in her than he was in his own fate. Was he, then, merely a brute?

“Billy,” she said, trembling as she spoke, “I want to know what I can do for you?”

“You can make me a cigarette,” Billy said calmly.

“I mean . . .” She broke off. After all, no matter what her aspirations might be now, what was there that she could do for him more important, truly, than some such small service as this? She took the
sack from his vest pocket, together with the package of brown papers that accompanied it. Then, with clumsy, inexpert fingers, she slowly fashioned the smoke and handed it to him.

“A match,” said Billy.

She took his box of matches and lighted the cigarette. Drawing a great breath, he closed his eyes, allowed the smoke to circulate through his lungs, and then blew forth a thin blue-brown cloud.

“I've come to ask if I couldn't do something more than this for you, Billy.”

He nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Jail grub ain't the best. You might send in some fruit, and such stuff.”

It amazed her. Iron-nerved though she knew that he was, still this exhibition of animal disinterest staggered her.

“Oh, Billy Angel,” she said, “heaven help you!”

“Heaven's not showed much interest so far,” returned Billy. “But there ain't anything else that you can do.”

“I can get a lawyer for you.”

“Lawyers cost money, Sue.”

“I have a little saved up. I could get it from the bank and make a first payment to the lawyer and pay the rest to him little by little.”

He raised his hands in protest.

“Why not? Why not?” cried the girl.

He looked fixedly down to the floor. There was no frown of thought on his brow, but she could tell that he was intensely fixed upon some problem. At length he looked up to her with a quick, half-sidelong glance.

“I see,” he said at length. “It was you.”

“I?”

“That told them where to camp for me.”

She was struck mute, striving to speak, although
she knew that her white face and her staring eyes convicted her.

He nodded again. “How did you know?” he went on, thinking aloud, and watching the confirmation of all he said appear in her face. “You saddled the mare and follered me when I left. That was it. And you follered me on until I came . . . by the heavens, you was outside, lookin' in!”

She shrank from him.

“You saw!” he said huskily.

It would not have been a great deal in any other man.

But when he raised his head and looked at her with glittering eyes and with a set jaw, it seemed to the girl that a very devil sat before her.

“I . . . ,” she began, and there paused, unable to speak again.

“Then you followed back,” he went on, “until you seen me take the upper road, and you cut straight back to town . . . was that it?” He paused, then said: “It was the hoss! You was scared that I'd take the hoss along with me! Why, Sue, if I'd wanted that wooden hoss, I'd never've rode back by that trail, would I?”

“It wasn't that, Billy . . . only . . .”

“Well, there ain't any use talking about it. I ain't complaining. Only, why did you ever put out a hand for me in the first place? Well, I won't ask you even that. I'm through talkin'.”

“It came all over me in a sweep, Billy Angel. I had to come back to the town and tell the sheriff. I
had
to tell him.”

“For whose sake?”

“For the sake of Elizabeth Wainwright,” she whispered.

At that, she thought that his eyes drew to two points of light. He stared at her and said not a word.

“Do you understand, Billy Angel?”

He uttered not a syllable in reply; a cold dread entered her soul.

“Billy, will you speak to me?”

There was not a word.

“Tom!” she cried in a sudden panic.

The sheriff was instantly in the room, a gun in his hand, his faced covered with perspiration—a mute testimony of the agony of spirit and of suspense through which he had been passing. “What's wrong?” he asked sharply. “What's he been doin' to you, Sue?”

“Nothing . . . only, I want to go and . . . and . . . I was afraid, Tom.”

“Angel,” said the sheriff bitterly, “hangin' is a sight too good for you. Sue, come away with me.” He showed her through the door, and, as she fled away, she heard his voice continuing to his prisoner: “Now, you stand up, young feller. Stand up, Angel, and march. Faster! Why God ever made rats like you, I dunno. It sure beats me. It sure does.”

She went on as fast as she could, eager to get where that voice would not follow, yet knowing to the day of her death she would never stop hearing it.

Sometimes conscience has no voice at all. Sometimes it forms itself into a small, dull chant, endlessly repeated. Into such a monotony it framed itself in the mind of the girl, and she went down the winding street saying to herself over and over, endlessly, helplessly, hopelessly: “I have killed a man! I have killed a man!”

She passed the Hinchman place. Oliver Hinchman was in the pasture riding his new cutting horse and trying to work the big roan stallion out into the paddock. A dangerous task, for the roan was a devil, ready to use teeth, heels, or two fore hoofs like steel stamps. Oliver waved cheerfully to her, and she paused to wave back and to watch him, for in some mysterious manner it eased her mind to watch the skill of his horsemanship and the cunning with which he drove the stallion before him. Most of all, the stallion himself was beautiful to see, terrible, useless, but glorious as he was, no man had been able to stay on his back for more than a few minutes at a time. Eventually he would be destroyed as not worth his keep. But she wondered if merely to live
and be beautiful was not worth something to the world, even though the heart is wicked.

And if that were true of a dumb beast, was it not trebly true of big Billy Angel? A glorious form among men was his. Herculean strength, lion-like courage was his. And even if his soul was one compact of evil, there might well be a reason for his existence. But she had chosen to slay him, with her own hand. She could not think of it in any other way. The hand that fitted the rope around his neck was hers.

She went back to her place again. It was like entering a dungeon, and like a dungeon it remained all the day. For between her hands and the things she strove to do, shadows arose and filled her with sadness. Before noon she went to Humphrey Wraxall, the lawyer, and carried with her $115. She put it down on his desk.

“Mister Wraxall,” she said, “I've got this much to begin paying you. I could save a lot of money by putting it away every week. Instead of putting it away, I'd give it to you. I could give you a share of everything I take in, at the end of every day, if you want it that way and . . .”

Mr. Wraxall took out his old fountain pen that was to him what the marshal's baton is to the general. He began to pass it through his pale fingers. “Now, what's the trouble?” he said. “What's the money for?”

“Billy Angel . . . ,” she began.

“Ah!” said the lawyer. “Ah!”

There was something so full of suggestion in the way he raised his eyebrows and looked at her, there was something so sinister, almost, that she quaked and then grew crimson. “I'm only interested . . . ,” she began.

“In seeing justice done, of course,” said the lawyer.

But still his voice was rich with undertones of suggestion. She hated him. But he was clever. He had a reputation. Such brains as his must be enlisted if Billy Angel were to be saved.

Mr. Wraxall became serious. He tapped the fountain pen against the desk. “If you employ me,” he said, “I must know everything.” The fox was in his eyes.

“There is nothing to know,” she said, “except that I want to see Billy Angel . . . free.”

“Because he's innocent? Because you are sure he's innocent?”

She could not answer. Putting the question, in turn, to herself, what was her pushing reason? What did she think of Billy Angel? What was he to her?

“Innocent of what?” asked the lawyer's smooth voice. “Of robbing Steven Carney? Of stealing your horse? Or . . . innocent of murder, Miss Markham?”

She was transfixed. She could not answer.

“Ah,” said the lawyer. “Then it's not because you feel he is innocent . . . but because you . . . admire this man? Because you respect him? Is that it? I must know everything, Miss Markham!”

“I'll come again tomorrow,” she murmured, and fled from the office with an impression that he was left, smiling and triumphant, behind her.

But the questions that he had put remained in her mind all the rest of that day and all of the morrow, while she worked in a dream at the lunch counter, serving men who talked of one thing only—and that was Billy Angel, his career, and the probable end of it all.

Steve Carney came to her that evening at a moment when the room was empty. “Have you had a chance to think things over, Sue?” he asked.

She regarded him vaguely. It seemed a thousand
years ago and another self that he had asked to marry him. Then she flushed a little. “I've thought it over, Steve,” she said gently.

“It's no go,” he said. “I could see what was coming. Well, that's done for, then. That's done.” He took a breath. He made a little gesture in which he seemed to be casting away one half of his life. “There's no hope of staying around, Sue, I suppose?”

“There's no hope, Steve. I'm sorry.”

“You're a kind sort of a girl, Sue,” he said. “But, that's that.” He settled his hat on his head firmly, as though he were about to walk out into a storm, even though the sun was shining brightly and the air was soft for that October day. Then he left the room, and she knew, as well as though she had heard him vow it, that the town of Derby would never see him again.

There was no meeting place in Derby except for the lunch counter. And in this time of excitement, there was a greater call for coffee and for pie than ever before since she had opened the place. She was glad of it. The baking, the brewing of the coffee, the endless cleaning of the cups and plates, the serving, the necessity of making some reply to the chatter that went on around her, kept her from going distraught with all that was sweeping ceaselessly through her mind.

She had only glimpses of the sheriff, now and then. He was busy keeping guard over his prisoner, who was about to be removed to a stronger place of safekeeping. Besides, she felt that Tom Kitchin had avoided her since the day of her interview with Billy Angel. Yet Tom was in her place when the revelation came.

He had come in to find his deputy, Jerry Saunders, and, while he was there, conversing heatedly with Jerry in a corner of the room that the loungers had generously left to them, a big man, well advanced in years, but still strong as an oak, came striding into the place.

“I want to see Sheriff Kitchin,” he said.

His strong bull's voice brought every eye to him. They saw a rough, red face, beetling brows, a wide, thin-lipped mouth. He was clad in a linen duster, and he was stamping the dust out of the wrinkles of his boots. Plainly he had traveled some distance that day.

“I'm the sheriff,” said Tom, turning to him.

“I'm Wainwright,” said the big, rough man. “I'm Wainwright, from down the valley way. Maybe you've heard of me?”

“I have,” said Tom.

“Most folks have up this way,” said the cattleman, running his glance swiftly over the faces of the others, like a politician anxious lest he neglect a vote. “Well,” he said, “I've come to see you about this here Billy Angel.”

“Billy Angel?” said the sheriff. “If you have a complaint against him . . . if you've found some sort of a clue . . . just step over to my office.”

The girl behind the counter listened, unimpressed. So much had fallen upon the head of Billy Angel, that she merely wondered, dimly, why men chose to torment him still.

“I got nothin' ag'in' him,” said the cowman. “I got something for him.”

“What?” exclaimed the sheriff.

“That's it. Something for him. I'm gonna set him free!”

The sheriff started. Then he smiled. He shook his head. “That sort of a joke don't get many laughs in Derby, Mister Wainwright,” he said.

“Laughs ain't what I'm after,” said Wainwright. “What I want to know is, first, what's ag'in' this here Billy Angel?”

“Stealing horses, robbery, and murder, that's all,” said the sheriff with a very faint smile.

“What hoss did he steal?” boomed Wainwright. “Damn my heart if a gent like him would be low enough skunk to steal a hoss. But I dunno. When his mind is made up, he'd do most things, I s'pose, that stood in his way. Whose hoss did he steal?”