Bad Man's Gulch (25 page)

The gun roared, but it merely plumped a .45 bullet deep in the hard-packed dirt floor of Hans Grimm's gaming house. The next instant a clenched fist, as hard as a rock, clipped the chin of Legrain. He felt his knees buckle under him, his head jerked back under the impact. But when he strove to tear his gun free, it seemed to him that his right wrist was encircled with four bands of biting fire. He saw
the second blow coming and strove to lurch inside of it, but it went home, and Legrain fell limply upon the ground, face down.

Even then there was enough fighting instinct in him to make him reach for the gun that had fallen from his fingers. A hard heel stamped down on his hand, and he screeched with pain.

The Colt was scooped into the hand of Melendez. “Get up, Legrain!” he ordered. “Get up, do you hear me?”

A bullet knocked the white Panama from the head of the gambler. And suddenly he had the strength to rise to his feet.

“Now get out!” commanded the tyrant. “And get fast, Legrain. If I lay eyes on you again in this camp, I'm going to wring your neck. Move!”

Legrain did not have to be told again. Indeed, he would almost rather have faced a dozen guns than look for an instant into the changed face of Melendez. He lunged forward unsteadily, took a sudden strength from his very panic, and raced blindly for the entrance. Melendez turned back upon the stunned crowd, and his face was not pleasant.

“You, there!” rang his voice. “You in the black hat with the two guns. You wanted the fight to go on. And it's started. D'you wear those guns for ornament, you fat-faced swine? Step out and let's see what you're made of. He don't step. He backs up. He ain't so set on fights when
he
has to take a hand in 'em. Boys, I've gone for years without a gun or a knife. I've lived like a lamb. But now a gun has been shoved into my hand, and I'm aching to use it.”

He turned closely around to face the circle, and the circle widened before him. There was a slow movement toward the door. Following them, he clipped his words, each with a ring like a falling coin.

“Or a knife, if you like. If there's any talented greaser in this lot, let him step out and talk turkey. Or if you don't like that, bare hands. I tell you, I need action and I'm gonna
have
action. Or else I'm gonna have room! Why, you look like men . . . you stand like men, and you talk like men . . . but you
ain't
men. You're all hollow. Did you hear me talk? I need action or I need room. I need lots of room! I need this whole place to myself! Move!”

They moved. Most shameful to relate, all those brave and hardened men, good warriors most of them, felt the craven spirit of the crowd master them. They started more swiftly for the door. They turned their backs. The blindness of panic that instant seized upon them. They lurched forward with shouts.

The gun roared from the hand of Melendez and blew a neat little eyelet through the top of the canvas roof of the house, but it seemed to every man in that crowd that the bullet had whistled a fraction of an inch from his ear, and so they stormed, screeching, for the door. They fought and clawed and wrestled their way out. The weaker went down with groans; the stronger stamped upon them and pushed on for the safety of the open.

In a moment the great, round room was empty, except for a few prostrate forms by the entrance, crawling feebly toward the street.

But Melendez had sunk down in a chair and buried his face in his hands.

The house of Hans Grimm had become as silent as a cave. All the noise was removed to the street. Only Melendez remained at the table with his head in his hands. Coming toward him now was the last survivor of the crowd, a broad, rosy-faced man, whose cheeks seemed all the pinker because they contrasted with the tuft of white hair at either temple.

When the noise of the man's soft footfall came closer, Melendez looked up with a fierce snarl and reached for the gun that he had taken from big Legrain. But although that gun was pointed at Hans, the muzzle presently wavered and declined again.

Hans Grimm sat down in an opposite chair. “Are you smoking, mine friend?” he asked.

“No,” said Melendez.

“Are you drinking?” asked Hans, waving an inviting hand toward the bar.

Melendez, following the gesture, shook his head with a shudder. “No.” He groaned. “I ain't drinking! Not any more. For three years or so I've been
able to do as I please, take life easy, never worry, and have one drink or ten, just as I pleased, but that time is ended. My vacation is plumb over.”

He sighed as he said it, and Hans Grimm nodded.

“Very well,” said Hans, “I understand this all pretty good.”

The glance of Melendez fastened itself more intently upon the other. “Who might you be?”

“I'm Hans Grimm.”

“Ah, you run this joint.”

“Yes.”

“I've busted up your games for today,” said Melendez.

“It was a good show,” Hans Grimm said. “I don't mind it, if I have to pay. You don't get something for nothing.”

“Not even at a gaming table?” asked Melendez.

“No,” said Hans Grimm.

“Not even if you win?”

“If you win,” Hans Grimm said, “you make other people think that
they
beat the game. They think that the luck is running. So they start playing big. But there ain't any such thing as luck in this world.”

“Nothing like luck?” exclaimed the younger man. “Why, Grimm, luck is all that there is.”

“There is no luck,” Grimm repeated, shaking his head with such a perfect conviction that he could afford to smile.

“Not even at cards?”

“No, you can work all the chances out with mathematics. Not very hard. There is no such thing as luck. She's a ghost, but most people chase her. They come here most of all to find her. There is no luck in the world, Melendez. Only brains.”

It was a philosophy that tore to shreds the innermost
convictions of Melendez, and he fought against accepting it.

“What was it but luck,” he said, “that kept Legrain from backing me out of this here place and making me look as yaller as a rag?”

“Two things,” Hans Grimm explained, counting them off on the pudgy tips of his fingers. “First place . . . you are a fighting man . . .”

“That don't go,” interrupted Melendez. “I tell you, old-timer, that for three years I been making it a rule to take water rather than have to fight. And only the bad luck of Legrain . . .”

“First place,” Grimm insisted mildly, “you are a fighting man. You held yourself in for a long time, but sooner or later you had to break out. If you keep a fire under a stopped-up boiler long enough, it will bust. It
has
to bust. Same way with you.”

“All right,” said Melendez, “I won't argue.”

“Second place,” continued the proprietor of the gambling house, “Legrain, like a fool, didn't stop where he should have stopped. He spoke about the girl.”

“Ah?” grunted Melendez. “How could you hear that?”

“Because I was close,” said the other. “I'm always as close as I can get when there is trouble here. Besides, I have very sharp ears. I tell you, mine friend, when the other players hear nothing, I hear the groans of the people who lose around my tables.”

Melendez stared at him as at some enchanter.

“And so I heard what he said,” finished Grimm. “This is not a place to speak of women . . . not to a man like you. Legrain was a fool, and therefore he had a fool's reward. He should have left Miss Berenger out of it.”

“Now curse my eyes,” said Melendez, “how did you guess at her name?” He frowned with wonder.

“It was not hard to guess,” Hans Grimm said, still smiling.

“Ain't there more than one woman in camp?”

“There are others. But there is only one that would make you fight.”

Melendez drummed upon the edge of the table. “You're smart, Grimm. Dog-gone me if you ain't among the smartest that I ever seen.”

“Not smart,” said Grimm. “It is only simple . . . like adding numbers. You put together the little things that you know, and they add up to some big thing that you didn't guess that you knew.”

“All right,” said Melendez. “I ain't gonna argue. You know a bit too much for me. You know enough, old-timer, to make me ask you for your advice. What'll I do now?”

“Take your horse and ride out of Slosson's Gulch as fast as you can. That is exactly what you ought to do.”

“Humph!”
exclaimed Melendez. “You mind telling me why?”

“I can tell you why. It is to get away from the danger here. You have shamed a great many people today. When a man has been shamed, he is always dangerous.”

“It's a fact,” admitted Melendez.

“So what you should do is to ride away as fast as you can go. That is what you should do, but what you won't.”

“Hey, Grimm, what makes you so sure that I won't?”

“That is still simple. I add up the figures. They tell me that you will not go.”

“Old son,” Melendez said, leaning forward and
scowling with the intensity of his conviction and determination, “I'll tell you that you're wrong. I'm gonna go right out from here and saddle up my hoss and ride right out of Slosson's Gulch.”

“You may start, but you ain't going to finish.”

“Will a bullet stop me? Is that what you mean?”

“Not a bullet. They are not ready to shoot, just yet. But you will not leave.”

“Will you be reasonable?” asked Melendez. “Tell me what makes you guess that.”

“It is not guessing. I never guess. Either I know, or else I don't know. There is nothing mysterious. When Legrain mentioned the girl, I didn't know who it was until I saw you begin to fight. But after I saw you fight, I knew that you would have to see her again before very long. You are thinking more about her, right now, than you are about leaving Slosson's Gulch.”

Melendez stood up. “Old-timer,” he said, “you're smart. You're terrible smart. I see that. But this time, you're wrong. I'm thinking about her, sure. But, also, I'm gonna think still more about leaving. I'm saying good bye, Grimm!”

“Good!” said the other. “I like to see a man fight against himself. If you can get away from here, you will have a chance to live a happy life again.”

“Meaning what?”

“Why, meaning that you could go back to drifting . . . no fighting . . . taking things easy . . . never worrying. That was what made you very happy, Melendez.”

“Aye,” said the younger man, “you seem to know me pretty well! And if I stay here?”

“You'd have to be on your guard every moment of the day and of the night. You'd have to have your head turned to look over your shoulder, never
knowing when a bullet would come at you from behind. You'd have to sleep light and wake early. And it would be work. Hard work, Melendez. You don't like work very well, I think?”

“Are you still smiling?” Melendez asked gloomily.

“Why not?”

“Meaning,” said young Melendez, “that you think that I
ought
to stay here?”

“Well?” said the other.

“And get a bullet in my back, as you say?”

“Perhaps a bullet in your back . . . if you ever dare to grow sleepy.”

“And tell me this, old-timer . . . what's to be gained for me if I
do
stay here? What's to be gained, outside of a fair-sized chance of dying with my boots on?”

“Why,” Hans Grimm said, “I suppose that there are things to be gained, too. There is one thing
always
gained by hard work and hard fighting.”

“Eh? Hard fighting? Ain't that the thing that preachers all howl against?”

“Fighting? Why, Melendez, if men wouldn't fight for what they thought was right, this wouldn't be a world. It'd be a dog kennel. As for what's gained by work and fighting . . . why, Melendez, it teaches a fellow how to be a man.”

“I ain't a man, then?” snapped Melendez, his muscles tensing along his arm.

The eyes of Hans Grimm lost their kindness. All of the gentle good humor faded from them and left them wonderfully cold and dead.

“No, Melendez,” he said. “You are only an overgrown boy. But after you come through this fire, you'll either be a man . . . or dead.”

It is proverbial that prophets are not regarded when they cry aloud in the street. Yet one would rather expect to find a prophet in the street than the proprietor of a gambling hall.

When young Melendez came out into the air, he merely shrugged his shoulders and drew one breath of pure air, scenting the pine-laden wind that came down the valley—mixed with the fragrance of frying bacon, not far away. He breathed of this and he said to himself that Hans Grimm was a very clever fellow, no doubt, but that he, Melendez, could not waste time thinking of such nonsense.

If he were to arrive at manhood, he would try to accomplish it in some other place than this mining town, unless he could find a bulletproof suit to wear while he had to remain here. Only one thing was real—and that was the danger in which he stood.

When he started down the street, men drew aside to let him pass, and their faces turned to stone as he went by. It seemed as if every soul in the gulch had been driven out of the gambling hall by him that same day, and hated him most cordially for it. As he
went by them, he could feel the sting of their glances of anger following him and resting coldly in the small of his back. With every step that he made, he knew that he would never regard the advice of Mr. Grimm for an instant. No matter what else was to be found here, at the end of the rainbow would be death.

He went straight to the stable, where he had put up Rob, saddled him, paid the bill, bought some crushed barley to take along with him, and started straight out of Slosson's Gulch. In his pocket there was the revolver that he had taken from Legrain. There were still three bullets in it, and, if he could once get free of the town without having to use up those remaining cartridges, he swore that he would throw the weapon into the nearest nook and go on again, with his hands washed clean of the dreadful temptation to battle.