Blue Kingdom (25 page)

“That's my business.”

“You won't say?”

“No, I won't say.”

“You're not serious.”

“I'm as serious as I ever was in my life.”

“To go with you . . . out of the mountains . . . for ten days. To travel alone with you all that time, do you mean?”

“Aye. That's what I mean.”

“Then,” said the girl, “you're absolutely a madman.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Will you tell me,” she said, “what you could gain by having me with you for ten days? Except for the pleasure of making me talked about?”

He frowned. “I've thought of all that. We can get married on the plains, if you want. . . .”

“I won't want!” she said, and her lips curled with distaste.

He could not continue smoothly, but for a moment he had to look away from her disdain, across the bright surface of the pool, and at the glittering white pebbles with translucent shadows rippling over them. Then he could face her again with his customary half smile that so puzzled and intrigued her.

“Otherwise,” he said, “I don't think that most folks will talk very much about a friend of mine, woman or man.” He hesitated. “If somebody started scandal floatin',” he said at last, “I'd promise to pay him a call, if that would make you feel any better.”

She stared straight through him. “I travel with you for ten days . . . through the woods?”

“Aye. That's the plan.”

“Suppose I tell that plan to Jim Tankerton?”

“He'd get his gang together to kill me, I suppose. That would make him fight. If the gang would follow him.”

“Do you think they wouldn't?”

“I dunno,” he answered. “It's a mighty good gang, but then they's some things that you can't always expect a gang to like to do.”

“Such as fighting a Dunmore?”

“They hate to make trouble for a good-natured man like me,” he stated.

“What could you gain by such a trick,” asked Beatrice, “except to cover me with scandal, and to make the whole gang chase you? What else?”

Dunmore shrugged his shoulders again. “I've talked it out as simple as a child's sayin' a lesson,” he assured her. “Will you let it go at that?”

“Do you think that I'll do such a crazy thing?”

“You don't like to think of Furneaux dying,” he told her.

“Whatever you have in mind, it's something deep as the roots of the world. Whatever you're aiming at, I'm to be taken along and see the shot fired. But did any woman ever do such a thing?” She came a little closer, curious and trembling with excitement. “Will you give me one hint of why you want me to make that ride?”

“Love, Beatrice,” he said. “I'm wild in love of you, d'you see?”

“And you smile in my face as you talk? What shall I do? What shall I do?”

“Make up your mind by dinner time,” said Dunmore, “or Furneaux will be dead before the meal's over.”

She went from him at once, stepping lightly over the rocks that cropped from the surface of the water. On the farther side, she paused and half turned, as though there was still some word she wished to speak, but she went on again at once, with lowered head, and the brush closed about her.

“She kinda thought that you were jokin',” said a voice at the shoulder of Dunmore.

He turned and looked down into the face of Larren. “Was she wrong?” asked Dunmore.

“Aw, I'll tell a man that she was wrong,” said Jimmy, “and, if she'd had half an eye, she'd 'a' seen it.”

“Her eyes weren't closed, Jimmy.”

“She was thinkin' too much, and thinkin' is always hard on the eyes,” said Jimmy. “When Chuck Barnard come to town, I was pretty bad scared. His dad had been in the ring and knew all the slick ways of sneakin' a punch home. Well, I had to fight him. . . .”

“Why did you have to?”

“Why, what else would I do?” asked Jimmy, amazed.
“Was I gonna back up and give up the game of bein' boss before I'd had my chance at him? We had it out behind the Schuyler barn. He began boxing high and fine. He kept stickin' a straight left in my face and clubbin' me over my shoulder with his right. But pretty soon I noticed that he always was lookin' thoughtful, like he was tryin' to remember something. So I begun tryin' fancy stuff myself. I begun to feint for the stomach, and then hit for the stomach. He could tell there was a feint, but he'd think that the next punch would be for the face. After he'd made a couple of mistakes like that he was no good, and pretty soon he was all upset and remembered that he had to go home and chop the kindlin' up.” Jimmy paused, with happy eyes, and ran the tip of his red tongue over his lips. “Chuck was thinkin' too much to really watch where my hands was goin'. And Beatrice, here, she was thinkin' too much about what you said to keep watchin' your face.”

“Well, Jimmy, what will she do?”

“Go and get set and think, of course,” said Jimmy.

“And what'll come of that?”

“Why, what always happens when a woman goes and sets and thinks?”

“You tell me, Jimmy.”

“Sure, I can tell, and so can you. I seen my aunt once set and have a long think about would she go buy a new hat that day . . . she set so long that the bread burned in the oven. And, that afternoon, she did get the hat.”

Dunmore chuckled. “Are all women like that, Jimmy?”

“Sure. When a man sets and thinks, mostly it means that he ain't made up his mind, yet . . . but you take
with a woman, it's just the opposite. She don't really set and think . . . she's just makin' up excuses.”

“Then you think that Beatrice has made up her mind already?”

Jimmy thrust his bare toes into the verge of the stream, and wriggled them thoughtfully in the cool mud. “I dunno, just,” he said. “I dunno. She ain't like common folks. You take a fast hoss and you see more of his speed than you do of his points. I reckon that she's that way. She could change, too. But just now, I guess that she's aimin' to go away with you.”

“I think she is,” agreed Dunmore.

Jimmy sighed. “I'd be missin' you a good deal up around here, chief.”

“You're coming down with us,” said Dunmore.

“Coming down where, chief?”

“Wherever I take you.”

“You and me and her?”

“Yes, the three of us.”

“I'd like that,” said Jimmy, “I'd like that more'n a mountain of gold.”

“All right, Jim. We'll probably start tonight. You'd better get your mustang in order.”

“Tonight?”

“I hope so.”

“You ain't rushin' things, chief?”

“No, Jimmy. If I stay here more than another day, I'll never leave the camp alive.”

It was Jimmy's turn to express greatest wonder. “Anybody been sneakin' around you, chief?”

“Nobody. You can smell wood smoke before you see it.”

“A mighty lot,” agreed the boy. “Well, are we comin' back up here?”

“Except on a stretcher, no, I guess.”

“Then I won't need the mustang.”

“What will you do?”

“They's a piebald hoss in the barn that I been talkin' to considerable. He don't mind me, and I don't mind him. So maybe we could get along together, pretty well.”

Dunmore grinned. “Who owns him?” he asked.

“That Lynn Tucker, and nobody else.”

“Take him if you can. Get the horses out of the stable while the rest of us are finishing supper. Get 'em out and saddled. It won't be long after that before we're movin', three of us, or only two.”

They crossed the creek, the boy skipping across first, and Dunmore following more slowly, but, as he reached the farther bank, Jimmy Larren turned with a squeal: “Duck!”

He flung himself straight at Dunmore's knees. That hard impact, so totally unexpected, dropped Dunmore flat.

“Harper!” the boy had ejaculated, as he struck home against the knees of his friend.

As Dunmore fell, he actually felt the wind of a bullet beside his head. Falling, he drew his Colt, and fired at a vague outline behind the brush. Distinctly, like the thud of a fist against a soft body, he heard that bullet strike home. Then the head and shoulders of Chuck Harper appeared above the brush, with both his arms flung high. It looked as though he were striving to leap out at the man he hated, for there was both malice and
agony in his squinting eyes and grinning lips. Instead, he crashed face downward through the brush, and rolled over on his back in the open. He was in his shirt sleeves, and red already stained the breast of his shirt. He began to bite at the air, like a dog in a fit.

“Chuck,” said Dunmore, “tell me if this was your own idea, or if somebody put it into your head. Tell me that, and I'll help you. Otherwise, you can lie here and bleed to death, you murderin' scoundrel.”

Harper beckoned twice with his right hand, so that Dunmore leaned over him. For that opportunity, Chuck had saved the last of his strength. He snatched from his belt a knife that jerked upward at the breast of Dunmore. But the barrel of the ready Colt dropped across the clutching fingers, battering the weapon from their grip. One final oath bubbled red upon the lips of Chuck Harper—his death agony rolled him upon his face—the pebbles rattled under his clawing feet and hands—then he lay still.

Dunmore looked across at the white, strained face of his companion.

“Thanks, Jim,” he said. “That was close.”

Jimmy laughed to cover a shudder. “Did you have your gun up your sleeve?” he asked.

“Inside my coat. I'll show you the trick of it, one of these days. I'd like to know his secret, Jimmy.”

“What secret?”

“Whether he was sent by someone else, or came by himself.”

“Maybe he's got the answer in his pocket.”

“Aye. Look and see.”

So Jimmy knelt by the big man. Presently he rose, a
wallet in his hand, which when opened showed a thin, clean sheaf of bills.

“Five . . . hundred . . . iron . . . men,” said Jimmy with awe, as he counted. “Think of havin' that much. That's about half the price that hired him, I bet on that, chief.”

Dunmore nodded. “A thousand dollars was high pay for Harper,” he brooded.

“Sure. He hated you already a million dollars' worth,” suggested Jimmy Larren. “But maybe he didn't hate you just enough to make him take this here chance. Besides, if the money was showed him, fresh and clean, he couldn't keep his paws off of it.”

“You look a little sick, Jim.”

“Do I? It's kind of a new game with me, chief.”

A shade passed over the face of Dunmore. “This here gent was more hog than man, Jimmy,” he said. “But death takes away something, and adds something.” He sighed, and then he added: “I never seen a man dead that I didn't wish alive again.”

“It scares me, sort of,” whispered Jimmy. “Him lyin' on his face . . . seein' what?”

“Seein' all the good of his life, and all the bad . . . and likely none of the things that he dreamed and wished. Go back to the clearin', Jim, and tell Tanker-ton that Harper went crazy and tried to kill me. I'll wait here.”

Jimmy looked around at the tall, darkening trees in awe. “Alone?” he asked. “You gonna wait here alone, chief?”

“Aye,” said Dunmore, “alone. Wait a minute, Jim. That five hundred is yours, if you want!”

The face of Jimmy brightened, then his lips curled with disgust. From his opening hand the bright new money fluttered down to the earth. “It's not the kind of money that I like,” he said. “It's a hoss, and a Winchester, and a saddle, and shop boots, and spurs, and a knife, and a beaver hat, and silver
conchas
, and everything. But I'd sort of itch under anything that money bought for me, I reckon.” He hesitated for one last glance at the fallen greenbacks. Then he fled away through the trees as though to escape violently from temptation.

Dunmore listened to the last crackling of the twigs underfoot, then he began to pace up and down the bank like a sentinel.

Down to Harpersville, the heliograph winked in the golden light of the late afternoon sun: “Harper is dead . . . killed by Dunmore . . . tell Mrs. Harper.”

In ten minutes back came the answer: “Bury him. Mrs. Harper too busy smoking bacon to come.”

This message caused grim laughter in the camp. However, they prepared at once for the burial.

“He sure liked to sit in the sun,” said Lynn Tucker.

So they dug his grave on the south front of the mountain where the shadows of the trees never could fall. All was rose and blue and gold when the company stood about the hole into which the bulk of Harper had just been lowered. Tankerton then asked if anyone wished to say anything before the grave was filled in, and this caused rather an awkward and depressing silence, as each man looked to his fellow, and all faces remained blank. There never had been in the band a more unpopular member than Chuck Harper.

At last, Dr. Legges stepped forward. “I can see how it is,” he said. “Every heart is too full for utterance . . .
because Chuck Harper was big enough to fill any heart. Therefore, I'll say a few words about this remarkable man.

“He was the biggest man in the mountain, and the strongest man, until our new brother, Dunmore, came to join us. Now all that strength of his only serves to fill his grave more fully from side to side and thereby reminds us of the vanity of all human possessions, brothers, even thick necks and big biceps. But if the great body of Chuck Harper is now gone from us, we have many causes to remember him, and, when I come to consider his moral excellences, I hardly know where I am to begin. However, you all remember how Chuck loved the sun. He could not have enough of it and, as we all know, could sit happily in it from morning to night. He loved his land, also, so much that he forgot that it came to him from his wife . . . he loved his house, as well. I have heard him say that it was the finest house in the mountains, and that he would knock down any man who dared to doubt it. However, Chuck was not a man to paint a thing in order to give it a prettier face. He let his house go unpainted for that reason, beyond a doubt.