Bad Man's Gulch (2 page)

Lazy Purdue started. The deeper shadow of the night concealed a frown that stirred his forehead. “An' what's the matter with the McLanes?” he queried.

“They's a tolerable lot that's wrong with 'em,” stated the boy. “For my part, I never heard anything good about them. If you want work, you better go up to Conover's. That's my name.”

Lazy Purdue started so perceptibly that young Conover leaned down from his saddle to look more closely at him.

“Are you George Conover?” asked Lazy Purdue.

“I reckon I am,” said the boy, “but who might
you
be? How did you know me?”

“I didn't know ye,” answered Lazy Purdue in a murmur, “I jus' heard a little about you when I come first into these parts. I reckon I'll go along up to your place.”

“Can you find the way?” asked Conover.

“Sure,” said Purdue. “I reckon I can pick it out from what people have told me. It lies to the right from that forking of the road right ahead, doesn't it?”

“Right,” said Conover. “Hope you land a place. I'm thinkin' Pa wants another man.”

He spurred down the road, drowning the sound of Lazy's thanks with the rattle of hoofs. Lazy looked after him with a strange chuckle. “
Me
go to the Conovers?” he murmured. “I reckon not. Will a cat go into a dog's house? The McLanes is no good, eh?” He broke off with a sudden laugh. Something in the idea struck him as irresistibly humorous.

In the meanwhile, young Conover whirled out of sight behind the trees at the fork of the road ahead. At the same instant two shots struck through the
quiet of the night, followed by a choking shout, then a moment of silence, and a horseman, bent far over his mount's neck, raced down the left side of the fork.

Lazy ran toward the forking of the ways. He found young Conover propped against a rock by the roadside with his horse standing motionlessly beside him. Lazy cursed softly as he leaned over him.

“Where's you hurt?” he asked gently as he raised the fallen head to the light.

The boy smiled feebly up at him in the moonlight. “I reckon I'm hurt all over,” he answered in his drawling voice.

“That dirty dog that rode down the road did it?” whispered Lazy fiercely. He had seen many a death, but this helpless body that a few moments before had ridden so strongly and bravely to be shot down without warning—Lazy Purdue struck the back of his hand against his forehead.

“Tell me,” he demanded, “was it one of the McLanes?”

Conover looked up at him with a dim wonder. “You seem tolerably familiar with things in these parts for a stranger,” he answered. “Yep, it was one of the McLanes. I don't know which one. I didn't get a good look at his face, but I know it was a McLane. It's the old feud. I reckoned it was dead years ago when old Henry McLane was driven out of the country for killin' two Conovers. The feud's come again. You tell Dad it was a McLane. I ain't goin' to last long enough to tell him myself.”

“I'll remember it till I'm dead,” breathed Lazy Purdue. “Where're you hurt, partner? Maybe it ain't so bad!”

“Aw, I'm done for all right,” said the boy faintly.
“He got me clean with both shots. One high in the chest. One's lower down. That one'll do the work.”

Lazy was already stripping his shirt into long pieces. He tore off the boy's upper garments and saw against the white skin two purple patches from which ran the telltale trickle. He used up the shirts with his hasty bandages.

“It ain't much use”—the boy sighed—“I'm tol'able sleepy already, and . . . and it hurts like . . . like hell!”

“Steady, old pal,” commanded Lazy Purdue, “we're goin' to pull you through yet . . . or God help the McLanes!”

“Maybe you c'n get me home,” whispered Conover. “I kind of hanker to get home before . . . before . . . My, I'm awful sleepy.”

The horse shied twice before Lazy could lift his helpless burden to the saddle. Then he climbed on behind and started the horse at a walk up the road. Young Conover's head fell back limply against his shoulder. He talked feebly with little silences between his words.

“I dunno why they wanted so powerful bad to get me,” he said. “I ain't never done anything to harm 'em except that I'm the last of the old line of Conovers. Think o' that. The very last one, 'ceptin' Pa, who ain't due to live much longer. My, ain't it a terrible chilly night for May time?”

Lazy said nothing, but urged the horse to a faster walk. He felt an almost brotherly urge of affection for the dying boy. A peculiar gritting sound reached his ear. It was a moment or two before he realized it was the grinding of his own teeth.

Young Conover was beginning to rave. He repeated bits of remembered conversation, and terms
of fishing and hunting. By the time they reached the long avenue of trees at the end of which the old Conover house rose, white and tall, he fell silent, and his breath began to come in great, hoarse gasps.

“Faster,” he urged. “Faster. I'm goin' quick. My Gawd, ain't the trees powerful dark an' powerful high?”

They came to the verandah, and Lazy halted, dropped to the ground, and exerted all his unusual strength to gather the boy into his arms. The verandah was dark, but through the open door came a glow of lights down the steps. As he put his foot on the lowest of these, Lazy felt the body in his arms stir convulsively. He ran up the steps and entered the open door, but, as he did so, the body fell limp. Something told Lazy that he had carried death into that home.

“Hello, there!” called Lazy Purdue in loud tones. “Yoo-hoo! Come here, someone!”

An old Negress ran into the hall. She came to an abrupt halt when she saw the light from the pendant lamp white on Lazy's strong, naked torso and glimmering ominously on the limp body in his arms.

“Oh, my Gawd!” she screamed. “Marse Conover! Oh, my Gawd, come quick!”

A white-haired little man appeared in the door that she had left ajar. Lazy Purdue thrilled a little as he studied the face.

“I think this is your son,” he said quietly.

The old man showed no signs of emotion. His lips straightened somewhat, but, otherwise, his face was calm as he bent over the body. He pressed his ear against the boy's heart. Then he stood to his full height, stiffly erect. “Will you carry the body this way?” he asked courteously, and waved toward the room that he had just left.

Lazy Purdue entered a high-ceilinged room and strode across it with his burden, dimly conscious of oval-framed portraits of trim-whiskered gentlemen and lace-shawled ladies. He laid the body on a sofa and stepped back with nervously unoccupied fingers. The boy lay easily, as if asleep, a faint smile on his lips, and his head fallen slightly to one side. The stained bandages showed darkly against his body.

A step sounded in the room, and Conover and Lazy Purdue turned their heads with one accord. It was a little, grave-eyed lady with iron-gray hair.

“My dear,” began Conover, raising his hand in warning.

She motioned him aside and leaned above the body. Outwardly she betrayed no more emotion than her husband had done, but as he watched her, Lazy Purdue shrank inwardly. Then she crossed the limp arms one above the other, straightened the head, closed the eyes, and, leaning a little farther forward, touched the colorless lips with her own. Lazy prayed heartily to himself that she would weep or cry out. This deathly silence in the presence of death made him cold and sick at heart.

She turned to him at last, and her eyes lingered on a great red stain that crossed his forehead and another that marked his naked breast. He straightened under her glance as a soldier straightens under the eye of his captain.

“Who has done this thing?” she asked. “Can you tell me?”

The blood turned to ice in Lazy Purdue's veins. It seemed to him as if that question cut the thread of his old life and brought him face to face with something new. He closed his eyes and shook his head. Then he saw in a vision that swiftly fleeing horseman riding into the night with the murdered boy left behind him. A trace of color came into Lazy Purdue's face.

“It was one of the McLanes,” he said in a strange, hushed voice. “It was one of the McLanes what done this here murder, so help me God!”

She walked to him and stood inches away. He felt as though she were suddenly grown tall, and as if her eyes had grown into points of fire that burned into his heart.

“Who was it?” she demanded. “Give me his name!”

“I dunno,” Lazy said as steadily as a soldier answers a roll call. “He only told me it was a McLane when I found him. He was waylaid at a forking of the road, just below here a couple of miles, and shot by surprise. I saw the man ride away into the night.”

She turned from him to her husband. “John, dear . . . ,” she began.

A voice broke in from above: “Pa, oh, Pa!”

The two old people started apart and looked at each other with suddenly stricken faces.

“Keep Marion away!” he pleaded to his wife.

“I . . . can't speak!” she said. “John, you must go an' keep her from comin' down!”

“Oh, Pa!” called the voice in a higher key.

“We . . . we'll go together,” said the old man, and he took his wife by the arm and they went together to the door that opened into the hall.

Lazy Purdue followed them, and with them he looked up the broad and winding stairs that led from the hall into the second floor of the house.

She stood at the upper bend of the staircase, leaning somewhat to look the better upon them. She had evidently been in bed when the cry of the old Negress disturbed her. She was dressed in a dressing robe of bronze, tinted green, and, above the place where her left hand gathered the robe at her breast, the fluffy white of her nightgown peered through. From the sidewise-tilted head, a tide of golden hair poured past her throat and over the white arm to her waist.

She seemed to Purdue to have passed the wistful beauty of girlhood, and yet she was not a woman.

“Pa,” she was saying, and the half-lisping murmur of her dialect ran like a flow of water in the heart of Lazy Purdue, “what has happened? I heard a cry like old Dinah a little while ago. Something has happened!”

“Honey, dear, there ain't nothin' the matter. You go back to yo' bed and sleep.”

But her eyes had widened as they fell upon the
grim and dark-stained torso of Lazy Purdue standing, towering, behind her parents. She ran lightly down the steps, pressed aside her parents, and stood bravely before Lazy, but he could see her glance growing full and steady with premonition. He pressed his lips hard together and returned her gaze.

“What have you-all brought into this house?” she pleaded. “Stranger, what terrible thing have you brought heah, and what's that blood on yo' breas'?” A desperate meaning came into her eyes, and she caught the hard muscles of his naked arm with her hands.

“It's George!” she said. “Oh, my God!” She whirled and faced her father. “Father!”

He strove to meet her eyes, but a tremulousness came on his face and his head sank.

“Father!” She was beside him now, and her arms were around him, and she was kissing the old and wrinkled face. “Pa,” she said, “poor ol' Pa, take me where he is!”

He led her silently into the room, but, when she saw the body, she cried out—a sharp, hurt sound with a little drawling moan at the close. She broke away from his arms and ran to the body and knelt beside it.

Lazy Purdue was conscious of a cold sweat on his face and a terrible faintness in his heart.

The girl rose slowly and faced them with a hard and changed face. “Pa,” she said softly, in a tone that belied the hard-clenched hands and the narrowed eyes.

Her father took a step forward and faced her, but made no answer. She pointed dumbly to the moveless figure behind her.

“Aye,” said Conover, “don' I know what it means? Dear God, don' I know? There must be blood paid
for this . . . an' I . . . an' I can hardly shoot a rifle from a rest.”

There was a moment of grim silence. The girl's finger still was pointing and the question was still in her eyes, but there was no further answer.

“Marion,” said the old man at last in a calmer voice, “they's some way out of this, an' I reckon I'll find it. Now, you-all go to bed. I reckon I got to think. Marion, you-all go to bed.”

She hesitated, and then walked slowly from the room with bent head.

The old man turned to Lazy Purdue. “An' you, suh,” he said gently, “I know you will honor us by sleeping under my roof tonight.”

Lazy Purdue shuddered. He could not meet Conover's eye, but he spoke lowly: “I . . . I have no right to stay in this here house . . . least of all on
this
night.”

“You will hurt me, suh,” said Conover, “if you leave. His room is ready for you, suh . . . I beg you to use it. It's a long walk to any other place, and the night is late. Come with me.”

He led the way and Lazy Purdue, after a moment of hesitation, followed him with bowed head as the girl had gone a moment before. He followed up the stairs, and the old man opened a door and lighted him into the room.

Old Conover pottered about the room, lowering window shades, drawing back the sheets of the bed, and turning on the water in the bathroom, and then he laid out a suit of clothes on a chair.

“You an' George,” he muttered half musingly, “mus' be about the same build. I reckon these will fit you tol'able well.”

But Lazy Purdue could not answer for a strange choking in his throat.

“Good night,” said Conover, “an' God bless you for the kindness you done my boy when he was dyin'. Good night.”

He closed the door softly, and Lazy Purdue looked grimly about the room. From every corner the thought of the dead boy looked out at him. Upon the wall hung brilliantly colored photographs of girls, evidently cut from calendars. Lazy Purdue recognized one of these as the inviting advertisement of a prominent breakfast food. Her hair fell down in two braids in front, and between her smiling lips lay a strand of heavily headed wheat straws. A brace of strong fishing rods stood slant in one corner of the room with a riding crop and two pairs of spurs near it. Another side of the wall bore a rack in which were three shotguns of the latest make, and below them the gray, shining barrel of a repeating rifle.