Destry Rides Again (10 page)

Destry went to bed at once. He was a little particular in his selection of a chamber, taking a corner one in the second story,
where the roof of the first floor jutted out beneath the window, but, having locked his door, he threw himself on the bed
without undressing and was instantly asleep.

Pop, having heard the key turned in the lock, returned to the kitchen to his wife.

“Well,” said he, “it sort of opened that young feller’s eyes, didn’t it, when I talked about Destry? I thought that they’d
pop right out of his head.”

“They sure did,” joined in Willie. “I never seen nothin’ like it.”

The wife put down a pan she was washing, and with such recklessness that greasy dishwater spurted from the sink over her apron
and far out on the floor.

Then she turned on her two menfolk. She was one of those excitable creatures whose emotions appear in their physical actions;
now she gripped her wet hands and shook her head at Pop.

“You know who that there is?”

“Who? The stranger?”

“Yes—stranger!”

“Why, and who might he be, bright eyes?” sneered her husband.

“Destry!”

It had the effect of what is called in the ring a lucky punch. In other words, it caught Pop when he was walking into danger,
not knowing that it was there. His head jerked back; his hair flopped under
the impact; his knees sagged; his eyes grew glassy. Then he staggered toward his wife exactly like a half stunned boxer striving
to fall into a clinch.

But she slipped away from him, holding him off at a distance while, with cruel eyes, she struck him again.

“It’s him! It’s that great friend of yours! It’s Destry himself!”

Willie rushed to the rescue.

“Him? You could cut Destry in two,” he declared, “and make a coupla men better than him!”

“Oh, of course Willie’s right,” said Pop. “As if I didn’t know Destry when I seen him! This here Destry? You wanta make me
laugh, don’t you?”

“D’you see his eyes when he watched you? Did you see the smile that he was swallerin’ while you puffed and talked like a fool
about how mighty well you knew him? Why, I seen they was something on his mind right from the first! And why shouldn’t Destry
come this way?”

“Why should he, ma?” asked Pop, still staggered and hurt, but fighting to save himself from this new suggestion.

“Wouldn’t this be his straightest line between the capital and Wham, if he went back that way?”

“He wouldn’t go back that way,” said Pop. “He’s through with Wham. He’d be driftin’ around the country, pickin’ off the jurymen.
Everybody knows what he’d do!”

“He’d go back to Wham,” insisted the wife. “And ain’t he ridin’ a tall bay mare?”

“A skinny, long-legged thing,” interjected Willie. “He said himself that she was so tired that she was plumb bogged down!”

“Gimme that lantern off the wall and we’ll go
see,” said she. “You Willie—you Pop, you never neither of you never had no eye for a hoss! But my old man raised ’em!”

She led the way with rapid steps, which her two men imitated poorly, as they followed stumbling in her rear; and through the
darkness, Willie again and again turned his head and stared wistfully, with a sick heart, toward his father. He had been in
doubt about this man many a time before, but now he feared that doubt would become crushing certainty.

They entered the barn, passed by a pair of mustangs which were in stalls there, and came to the place of the bay mare. She
started as she heard them, and, lifting her fine head, turned it full towards the lantern light which the woman had raised
high.

She did not go closer.

“Thoroughbred!” she said. “That’s all that mare is.”

Pop and Willie did not answer. There was no need, for the truth which they had overlooked now seemed to be stamped in letters
a foot high upon the forehead of Fiddle.

“It’s Fiddle,” said Willie slowly. “And him—he was Destry.”

His mother suddenly put an arm around Willie’s shoulder and drew him close to her.

“Don’t you bother none about this, son,” said she. “Men are mostly like this. You hear about ’em and away off in the distance
they look as big and blue and grand as mountains. But bring ’em up close and they ain’t no more than runts and dwarfs!”

They left the barn, Pop recovering a second wind as soon as they were under the stars again.

“As if I didn’t know!” said Pop. “Why, what was I doin’ all of the time but praisin’ Destry right to his
face? What was I doin’ but makin’ him feel good? You’d think that I was a fool, the way that you carry on. But I know what’s
what. I know how to handle things. I was just soft-soapin’ Destry a little and——”

“Leave off! Leave off!” said the wife. “It ain’t that I mind for myself. But Willie—give him a chance to respect you a little,
will you?”

Willie, however, had gone rapidly ahead and was now out of sight. It was for him the crashing of a world about his ears. He
had not been able to avoid seeing the truth about many phases of his father’s idleness and shiftlessness, but, no matter what
else he might be, for these years he had loomed in the mind of Willie as a great man, because he was the companion of Destry,
the famous. A hundred stories he had told Willie of adventures with that celebrated man, and now the stories had to be relegated
to the sphere of the fairy tale!

So Willie ran forward around the corner of the house and up the road with a breaking heart, not knowing or caring where he
was bound so long as it was away from the persistent misery of the pain in his heart. He went blindly, and as he hurried up
the trail he found himself suddenly caught by both shoulders.

“Who are you, kid?” asked a gruff voice.

Willie looked up to the face of a big man who held him, and behind him appeared eight or nine others, looming more or less
vaguely through the dark of the night. It was more mysterious, even, than any of the stories that his father had told him.
For every one of these men carried rifles and revolvers, and every one of them was on foot! Here, where men walked two miles
in order to catch a horse and ride one, here was a whole troop coming softly down the
road with weapons in their hands. The unreality of it made Willie’s head spin, as though he were plunged from the actual
world into a dream.

“I b’long here,” said he.

“He b’longs here, he says,” repeated his captor.

“Lemme see him,” said another.

They talked very quietly, guarding their voices. The second spokesman now approached him, took him with a jerk from the hands
of the first, and shook him so that his head teetered back and forth dizzily.

“You lie!” said the second man. “You been sent up the road with word to somebody. Don’t lie to me, or I’ll jerk you out of
your skin! Who sent you, and where?”

“Nobody sent me no place,” said Willie, anger growing greater than his fear. “And you let go your hold on me, will you? I
b’long here, I tell you, and I gotta right to walk up the road.”

He who was now holding him chuckled a little.

“Listen to the kid chirp up and talk,” said he. “He’s a game cock, this kid is. You belong back there in that house?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s the new hotel, ain’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me something.”

“Yeah.”

“Did Destry come by your place last evenin’?”

“Destry?” echoed the boy.

“Don’t stop to think up a lie. Did Destry come by your place?”

“Yes,” said Willie.

“Did he stop?”

“Yeah. He stopped for chow.”

“What did he eat? Answer up quick, now, and don’t you try to lie to me.”

“He had ham and eggs and cold ’pone, and coffee, and condensed milk in it. He said it was the outbeatin’est coffee that he
ever drunk.”

“Because it was good or bad?”

“Good, I reckon. He didn’t say. Why you askin’ me about Destry?”

The other hesitated.

“Because we’re friends of his,” said he. “There ain’t a one of us but has a lot of interest in meetin’ up with Destry. We
like him a lot, and we sure yearn to find him! That’s why we’re all here!”

“Well,” said Willie, “you’re headin’ exact the wrong way.”

“Which way should we go?”

“Slantin’ up the hills, there, to the right side of the pass.”

“To the right side of the Cumber Pass?”

“That’s it.”

“Doggone me,” said one, “I wouldn’t aim to guess that he would go that far out of his way even if he knowed we was waitin’
in the pass for him!”

“The pen has made him careful,” said another. “We better turn back and cut through the pass agin and nab him when he comes
down the far side. Did he saw where he was gunna go, kid?”

“He didn’t say,” replied Willie, “but he talked some about Wham.”

“He talked about Wham, did he? And what did he say?”

“Why, nothin’ much, except that he was needed powerful bad, back there.”

They consulted in murmurs.

“He said he was needed powerful bad in Wham. I reckon he ain’t needed so powerful as all of that!”

“No,” uttered another, “I reckon that Wham could get along tolerable without him!”

He who had first seized Willie said suddenly: “Suppose the kid’s lyin’!”

“He wouldn’t dare to lie. What would he lie for, besides?”

“Because Destry’s always a hero to the kids! They like the idea of the one man agin the many. They always have and they always
will—the kids and the women. Maybe Destry’s right back there in the house, this minute!”

“We’ll go look!”

“It’s no good doin’ that,” said Willie, “because Destry ain’t there.”

“Ain’t he?”

“Besides, ma is down with the scarlet fever, and pa has got a terrible rash——”

“The kid’s lyin’ like a tickin’ clock,” said one of the men. “Take him by the neck, and we’ll go back and look at all these
here fever patients. Take my word—Destry’s in that house!”

“Sam,” asked one of the men, “shall we all go in?”

“I’ll go in with a coupla you boys,” replied Sam, the leader. “The rest of you scatter around the house. I wish that we had
riot guns with us. But whatever you’re in doubt about, use a cartridge on it. There won’t be any harm in that! If Destry smells
trouble, he’s gunna be off like a shot. But if we have a fair chance, maybe we’ll get him. I’ll go in and talk to the folks!”

So he took Willie, still held by the nape of the neck, into the house and found his father and mother in the kitchen, still
wrangling, though with voices subdued by the greatness of their guest.

“Hey!” said Pop, “if it ain’t Sam Warren!”

“Yes, it’s me,” said Warren. “I hear that you’re all busted out into a rash, and your wife clean down with scarlet fever.”

“Is that Willie’s talk?” asked Pop, glaring severely toward the boy.

But even in reproof, he was not quite able to meet Willie’s eye, and the latter knew, with contempt and disgust, that he had
taken the measure of his father forever.

He was more interested in looking up at the man who held him and who led the night party. It was a name which had acquired
a sudden fame, along with the rest of that unlucky jury which had condemned Harry Destry to the penitentiary. He had been,
only a few months before, a fairly obscure cowpuncher, rather well considered for his speed and
accuracy with guns, but now he was celebrated as a marked man.

He was a very tall man, being upwards of six feet, and both his face and his body were unusual. His shoulders and hips were
narrow, his body almost emaciated, and the arms and legs very long. Hair grew on the back of his hands, which were long fingered
and suggested a strength uncanny in a body so slight. His face was almost handsome, up to the eyes, but these popped out with
an expression of continual anger beneath a perpetually frowning brow. The forehead rose high above, swelling out almost grotesquely
at the top.

When Willie had marked down the features of this man, he listened again to the conversation.

“Now, Pop,” said Sam Warren, “you know why I’m here?”

“Why, I couldn’t guess,” said Pop.

Sam Warren loosed his hold upon the neck of the boy in order to lay his hand upon the shoulder of Pop.

“You better think it over, Pop,” said he. “Mind you, I’m your friend, if you gimme a chance, and so are all of these here
boys along with me. But we ain’t gunna stand for no foolishness. Is Destry here?”

“Destry?” said Pop blankly.

And suddenly the very heart of Willie turned to water, for he knew that his father would betray the sleeping guest.

He worked, in the meantime, slowly toward the door, and heard Warren saying:

“If we have to search the house for him, he’ll hear us and get away; and if we find out, we’ll make things hot for you! But
if you’ll show us where he is—”

“He ain’t here at all,” declared Pop.

“You lie,” said Warren with a calm brutality, and Pop shrank under that verbal stroke.

“Now talk up,” said Warren. “I’ve wasted enough time. Likely he’s in the next room, listenin’ all of this while.”

Here Willie gained the door and stepped back into the shadow. He hardly could believe, for an instant, that these keen manhunters
actually had let him go, but expected a long arm to reach out after him.

Yet it was true!

He slid down the narrow hall, pulled the shoes from his feet, and then ran noiselessly to the top of the stairs. He found
the door of Destry’s room at once, and tapped softly, calling in a whisper through the crack of the door.

There was an answer immediately, the guarded voice of Destry calling: “What’s up? And who’s there?”

“Sam Warren’s downstairs. He’s huntin’ for you!”

“For me?”

“Yeah. For you. For Harry Destry!”

The door opened.

Willie found himself drawn hastily into the presence of the great man.

“How many are there, Willie?”

“About nine, countin’ ’em all. Three downstairs, and the rest circlin’ around the house, ready to shoot at anything at all!”

“Warren? You’re sure of him?”

“I’m dead sure of him. He’s wearin’ a pretty nigh snow white sombrero same as he always does; and you can’t forget his face,
once that you’ve seen it!”

“Warren,” said Destry thoughtfully, “is a mighty
rash and pushin’ man. Now, look here, kid. You see if you can get down to the stable and snake out the mare for me, will
you?”

“I’ll try!”

“Throw the saddle on her. Mind you watch her, because she snaps like a wolf at strangers. Hurry, Willie, and I’ll give you
something to remember me by——”

He was working busily in the dark of the room, as he spoke, gathering his pack together, and Willie waited for no more, but
slipped from the room and hastened in his bare feet down the upper corridor, down the narrow, twisting rear steps, and so
to the ground below.

He issued from a window to get to it, and flattened himself out like a snake in the dust. There was need of such caution,
for hardly an instant later a form strode through the darkness, and the fall of a foot puffed the watery dust into his face.
It filled his eyes, his nostrils, his lungs.

He lay quietly writhing in an ecstasy of strangulation and the overmastering desire to sneeze. It was terrible seconds before
that paroxysm ended, and during it, he told himself that he was sure to die, so great was the pressure of blood in his head.

Gradually he could breathe again, and now he made slowly forward. He knew the back yard of the house as intimately as he knew
the palm of his own hand, and so he was able to keep up his snake-like progress from one depression to another.

Near the barn, he looked back, and he was just in time to see a dark form slip out from the window of Destry’s room. There
it hung for an instant, dangling, helpless in this posture, while half a dozen guns began to roar at the same instant.

Never had Willie heard such a bellowing, crashing
noise. Men were shouting as the guns were fired, and yet for a long moment that swaying form remained there—surely with the
life torn out of it long before—hanging so, merely by the convulsive grip of the hands, no doubt!

Or could it be that the darkness of the night was so great and the excitement of the hunters so intense that they were missing
even at this short range?

Willie, his heart cold with anguish, stared dimly at that shadowy and pendulous form, while he heard the excited forms around
him, and finally one loud voice that yelled: “I’ll get him, damn him, even if he gets me!”

A man rushed foward, rifle at shoulder, shooting, advancing, shooting again.

Then:

“It’s a fake! It ain’t Destry! It’s a dummy he’s hung out for us! A fake! A fake! Scatter and look for him somewhere else,
or he’s sure gone from us! He’s snaked himself out the far side of the house, I reckon!”

They did not wait for further consultation, but splitting apart, one to one side and one to the other, they rushed to block
any further possible flight of the fugitive.

Willie, however, remained for one moment longer, for he was so overwhelmed with relief at the saving of his hero that he was
incapable of movement; so it was he and he alone who saw another form slide out over the sill of Destry’s window.

This time it did not hang foolishly by the hands, but flicked like a shadow down the side of the house—a shadow such as a
fire casts up and down a wall, sending it flickering from the height to the bottom, all in an instant.

Willie saw no more.

He turned madly and plunged into the barn, tortured by the thought that he had betrayed his own trust by not obeying the orders
of Destry long before.

Now he rushed for the stall of the tall mare, and whipped into it—to find himself embraced in long, powerful arms.

“It’s the kid, is it?” said the voice of Sam Warren. “It’s the scarlet fever kid, is it? And where’s the rash breakin’ out
now? Where’s Destry now?”

His hard tipped fingers sank into the flesh of the boy as he spoke. And Willie could not stir.

He could only gasp: “Destry’s dead! They’ve murdered him.”

“You lie,” said tall Sam Warren. “And here I got you on my hands——”

He found a short way out of that difficulty by rapping the youngster across the head with the barrel of his Colt. It was a
crushing blow, but though it felled Willie in a heap, it did not altogether stun him, for through a mist he could see a form
leap into the entrance of the barn. Then desperation gave Willie voice to yell: “Look out! Warren’s here!”

He heard Warren curse through gritted teeth; he saw the form that had darted through the barn door swerve to the side just
as the revolver above him thundered and thrust out a darting tongue of fire.

It was answered swifter than its own echo by a leap of flame from the hand of Destry, and Willie saw the tall man stride over
him, picking up his feet in a foolish, sprawling way. As Warren stepped forward, he sent in a steady fire, but Willie knew
that the shots were wild. He heard one crashing through the shakes that covered the roof of the shed; he heard another smash
a lantern so that there was a jingle of wires and a fall of glass.

Then Destry fired again, and Warren toppled stiffly forward, for all the world like a man tipping off a platform for a high
dive. His long body struck the ground with an audible thud, but did not move again. From the dark waters into which Sam Warren
had fallen, Willie knew that he never would arise.

But he had no time for reflection. There was work to do, and he sprang up with tigerish eagerness in spite of his reeling
head. From the peg he jerked the saddle. He had it over the back of the mare as a pantherlike shadow went by him, flirting
the bridle over the head of Fiddle. Quick hands dashed those of the boy aside and jerked the cinches up, as voices bawled
from the direction of the house: “What’s goin’ on back in the barn? Hey—Pat and Bill, come along with me!”

Destry was already out the rear door of the barn, and there he took the head of Willie between his hands—and felt the sticky,
hot blood that streamed down one side of his face, for the sight of the revolver had torn his scalp!