Destry Rides Again (12 page)

A wind blew across that height and cut against the face of Destry, whipping the dust from his lungs, the weariness from his
heart. Across the rise and fall of the hills, he saw the dirty smudge which was the desert atmosphere; behind him the mountains
rose up, splitting apart at the pass through which he had just ridden. He gave it one glance, and then made up his mind. The
wind came from the left; it was to the right that he sent Fiddle, down into the hollows, so that the wind’s own voice might
help to stifle the sound of her hoofbeats. Cat claws tore at them as they whipped through, and the mesquite rose up around
them like a dusky mist, rolling back on either hand, as he kept Fiddle at full gallop for two miles at least, jockeying her
forward with his weight shifted toward the withers.

Then he pulled her up onto the trail, the old trail in the red of the sunset, and, leaping down, threw the reins. She was
breathing hard, but cleanly.

He hurried to the crest of the swale before him, and, glancing cautiously over, he saw the pinto and its rider jogging through
the hollow beneath, straight into his hands.

He looked back over his shoulder. Fiddle already was cropping grass at the side of the road, and far off he saw a slowly moving
cloud of smoke in the lowlands. It might have been dust raised by a whirlwind, but it leaned back too far for that, and he
knew it was a train. From this same rise the fugitive—if fugitive he were—would sight his open door to flight.

The thought pleased Destry and all the iron in his heart!

He crouched in a nest of stones and waited. He stayed there until he saw the sombrero grow up on the other side of the rise,
then the nodding head of the mustang—and the face of the rider.

It was Lefty Turnbull! It was Lefty, who, during the trial six years before, of all the twelve jurors, alone had sat from
first to last with a fixed sneer of hostility on his lips.

It seemed to the startled and vengeful eyes of Destry that the same smile was now on the lips of this man, and it transported
Destry back to the courtroom, to the spiderweb in the corner of the ceiling, to the slant shaft of the sunlight that streamed
through the window, to the barking voice of the district attorney— and again to this sneering smile of Turnbull!

Or was it merely weariness, the grin of long labor, which will make men seem to smile?

“Hey—!” cried out Lefty softly, and reined in his horse as he saw the mare before him.

“Fill your hand, Lefty,” cried Destry, from the side. “Fill your hand.” Then, remembering on what commission he rode, he added
loudly: “In the name of the law!”

There was an old saying among those who knew that there was enough of the cat in Lefty Turnbull to land him on his feet from
any height. Or, hold him by hands and feet a foot from the floor, like a cat he would land on all fours when dropped. Moreover,
he was an old and experienced fighter, polished by a trip to the Klondike, and hardened by a few winters in the Canada woods.

To all that was said of him he lived up now.

For at the sound of Destry’s voice, instead of
drawing a gun and shooting to the side from which the threat came, Lefty flung himself out of the saddle, and, as he dropped
past the belly line of the pinto, he was shooting.

The first bullet might well have ended the fight, for it struck a boulder inches from Destry’s head and cast a burning spray
of rock splinters into his face. Had they volleyed into his eyes, that would have proved the finish! But luck saved him. His
own first shot went wide to the right. He knew he had pulled it even as he compressed the trigger.

The second would split the forehead of Turnbull as a knife splits the brittle rind of a squash, yet there was somewhere a
hundredth part of a second which Destry could devote to thought, and in that whiplash instant he remembered his word to the
sheriff.

He was not his own man, now; he was the servant of the law and, being that, as Harry Destry he did not exist, nor were the
quarrels and the feuds of that man of any importance to him. He was not even sure that this was the criminal for whom he had
been sent!

So he turned his aim a little to the right, and literally saw the impact of the big slug jerk at the body of Turnbull. The
Colt exploded in Lefty’s hand; but dropped as it was fired, and rattled down the face of a rock.

Still, disarmed as he was, there was no thought of surrender in the man. He was lying sprawled on the ground, in the perfect
position for accurate shooting, when the bullet of Destry plunged through his left shoulder and ruined his shooting hand.
Yet he lurched up now to his feet and ran forward to scoop up the weapon with his other hand.

Never was there such fiercely sweet temptation in
Destry’s soul as when he saw the full target arise before him. The buttons of the coat seemed to glimmer like stars, inviting
the attention of the marksman, and the broad forehead seemed unmissable.

Yet he did not fire!

He belonged to the law. He was only a tool in the hands of the sheriff, and bitterly he told himself that Ding Slater well
knew the identity of the criminal, and had despatched Destry merely to torment him.

“I ain’t doin’ murder today,” said Destry. “Leave your gun be!”

Lefty Turnbull hesitated, his right hand reaching for the weapon. He was, like most left-handed people, quite hopeless on
the other side. He knew that he had no ghost of a chance to manage the Colt successfully under the very nose of Destry’s gun,
but still the fighting fury ruled him for a breathing space. Then it passed and left him cold, very cold— trembling with the
chill of realization that had struck through his mind.

He stood up, his empty hands dangling uselessly at his sides, his gaunt face as fixed as stone.

“It ain’t murder,” he said with perfect self-control. “It’s your right. But tell ’em, when the time comes for the talkin’,
that I didn’t go at you two for one, like the Ogdens, and that I didn’t run, like Wendell, nor play the sneak, like Clyde
Orrin, nor come at you in the dark, like Sam Warren. Do me right, Harry. Now turn loose and be damned to you!”

“If you was to of been told by me, you wouldn’t of said more that I’d like to say myself,” declared Destry. “But I ain’t playin’
my own game, or you’d be lookin’ at the sky now, old son, and not seein’ the pretty sunset Stand still. I’m gunna have to
tie up that—did it nick you deep?”

“Through the shoulder—that’s all,” said Lefty.

“Lemme see.”

Lefty sat on a rock, while his conqueror, in the ruddy but uncertain light of the sunset, sliced away the sleeve of his coat
and examined the wound.

“It went clean through,” said he. “Feel as though the bone was smashed, Lefty?”

“There ain’t no feelin’.”

“Try this!”

He grasped the dangling arm and slowly worked it around, listening closely for the grinding of the broken edges of bone, while
Lefty cursed steadily through his teeth, but endured.

“The bone’s safe,” said Destry. “I’m glad of that. I’ll save you whole and sound for——”

He stopped the sentence in its midst.

“For the next time?” completed Lefty. “I’m ready for you any day or time, young feller. I would of got you plenty today, only
you had the break of takin’ me unexpected from the side. Which I don’t mind telling you that I nigh dusted you that time,
Harry!”

The familiar sneer of ferocity and contempt was on his face as he spoke.

“You talk fine; you talk like a teacher,” said Destry. “Now shut up while I work on you.”

With dust he clotted the blood; with strips of his own under and outer shirt, he bound up the wound and fastened the arm tight,
from shoulder to elbow, against the side of his victim. All of this, Lefty endured in perfect silence, though the sweat dripped
steadily from his chin.

It was utterly dark when the last knot was tied.

“Now,” said Destry, “you ornery, low-lifed son of mis’ry, did you rob the
Fitzgerald store?”

“Are you doin’ errand boy work for the sheriff?”

“Which I ask you a question, which you ask me another. Does that make sense?”

“They’s a wallet in my coat,” said the prisoner. “You can look in that.”

“They is striped skunks and spotted polecats,” said Destry, “and you’re both if you think that I handle another gent’s private
wallet.”

“The mail—that’s different, eh?”

“You fool,” said Destry, “if you’d had a right to run me up, d’you think that I’d ever be here on your trail this minute?
D’you think I cant take my medicine as well as the next man? I ask you again: Did you grab the coin from Fitzgerald’s store?”

“Suppose I did?”

“Then why didn’t you clean out the till?”

“That’s my business. I needed some change. I didn’t want to harm Fitzgerald none. He’s white.”

“You lie!” persisted Destry. “You wanted a couple hundred so bad that it looked to you like a million. You grabbed what you
needed and the rest didn’t matter. You wasn’t thinkin’ about Fitzgerald, but about your own hide!”

“Go on,” said the other. “You act like you know!”

“You was sneakin’ out of town,” said Destry quietly, “because you’d heard about Sam Warren’s bad luck, and about me headin’
back for Wham. And when you heard that, you figgered on the railroad. You were scared out of Wham, son, and it was me that
scared you!”

“That’s the grandpa of all lies I ever heard!”

“Lefty, it’s the straight! By the look of the case I knew that him that grabbed that money was pretty much on the wing; I
figgered that the railroad was where he was headin’ for, with enough money to see him out. He only stopped at Fitzgerald’s
for a ticket,
as you might say, and havin’ that, he breezed along. Look me in the eye, Lefty, and—”

But though the darkness might have helped Lefty, for some reason he was unable to raise his head, which had fallen on his
chest.

“A peer!” said Destry bitterly. “One of the twelve peers! Peer of a gray cat and a yaller hound! I was aimin’ to be sorry
for you, Lefty, and I was aimin’ to figger a way to keep you out of jail, but there’s where you b’long, and there’s where
I’m takin’ you! Half of ’em are off the list. But it’s still six to one, and I’ve an idea that the rest of ’em are gunna play
their hand together, and close to the chest!”

Slowly they worked back through the mountains. The way was long, and the wounded man had to have rest and sleep and food.
Destry was guard, nurse, and cook for his companion, and silent in all three occupations; and sometimes as Lefty Turnbull
lay in the shade, setting his teeth against the pain in his wound, he would feel a slight chill run through him, and then
he dared not glance at Destry, for he knew that the latter would be watching him with cold, ominous eyes which it had grown
impossible for Lefty to meet.

Savage hate, contempt, bitter disappointment were the iron in the heart of Destry now; and once Lefty strove to banter with
him on the subject.

“Now, look here!” he said to his captor. “There’s only two dead. There’s Wendell scared stiff and driven away from home; there’s
Jud Ogden cripple, hut livin’; there’s Clyde Orrin shamed in front of everybody, but livin’ too. Why should you pick me out
for a killin’, Harry? Why should it bust your heart that I’m gunna be sent up to the pen for a dozen years, maybe? Ain’t that
enough?”

“Why, man,” said Destry, “they’s some folks that I’d hate to send behind the bars for a dozen days—if I could pick the dozen!
But one like you—you’ll be at home up yonder. They make trusties out of your kind of a man, and set ’em to spyin’ and playin’
stool-pidgeon. You might even get promoted to shine the warden’s boots, or play catch with his little boy. Prison ain’t gunna
mean much to you, but the sheriff’s tied my hands, and I’ve had to do his dirty work and leave my own work slip by!”

After that, Lefty did not pursue the subject for most obvious reasons, and so they worked gradually on their way, avoiding
all traveled trails, until in the dusk of the next day they came out from the woods upon the shoulder of the mountain overhanging
Wham.

There was still light to blink rosily on the windows toward the west, and to show the coiling arms of dust which enwrapped
the town; to show also the trailing smoke that traveled up the opposite slopes towards the mines of the Crystal Range.

“You don’t look happy,” suggested Lefty, staring aside at his companion.

And Destry said gloomily: “They’ve got together by this time. They scattered when they heard of me comin’ back; they joined
again when they heard I was tame; they ran again when they seen I wasn’t so safe. And now that I’ve worked down a few of ’em,
they’ll gather once more!”

“And you’re scared, Harry?” asked the other, very curiously, as though he really felt that this was an emotion about which
Destry could know nothing.

“Scared to death, pretty near,” replied Destry sourly. “Who wouldn’t be? What’s the old yarn about the six sticks in one bundle,
and apart? They’re down there plannin’ and workin’ together. Six rats, cornered, back up agin the wall, poison as rattlesnakes,
they’re hatin’ me so hard! And him— the one that’s leadin’—he’s the one that I’d like to find!”

“What one?” asked Lefty.

“Him that runs the party for the rest of you!” said Destry fiercely. “Who sent Jose Vedres with the letter to Orrin? That’s
what I wanta know! Lefty, if you’ll tell me that, maybe I’ll be able to wangle you away from the sheriff. I promised to turn
you in to
him as deputy. What hinders me tearin’ the badge off right after and takin’ you away agin?”

“For the name of who?” shouted Lefty, irritated by this hope, dangled under his nose. “Who is it?”

“You don’t know?” asked Destry, more curious than before “Does he work in the dark even with you? No wonder that I can’t find
him out! I tell you, old son, that the thought of him scares me more and more. It wasn’t either of the Ogdens, or Orrin, or
Wendell, or you, or Warren. Who’s left? There’s little Clifton. Looks like his forehead is too narrow to hold such ideas.
There’s Henry Cleeves that knows more about machinery than men. Bud Williams would be fine if it was only fightin’ with his
hands that he had to do, and Bud Truckman and Bull Hewitt are both too slow to think twice standin’ in the same place. They’s
Phil Barker left of the lot. It might be that they’s somethin’ more than his jokes about him, but I ain’t so sure. Lefty,
if I could lean on you for that information, I’d sure pay you back! I’d wipe out the score agin you, and be in your debt for
the bullet that snagged you! Who’s him that stands behind the show and tells the others what to do? I gotta get him, or I’ve
got nothin’.”

This speech he delivered in a murmuring voice, for he was thinking aloud, rather than addressing his companion, but when Lefty
heard the gist of the words, he was forced to shake his head.

“I dunno who it could be—not nobody!” he said. “You been imaginin’ all of this here direction and deep thinkin’!”

“Is rats hard to smell in an old house?” asked Destry.

“I reckon not!”

“I’ve smelled a rat, and a big one!” said Destry. “Now it’s dark enough for us to get down the hill!”

They went down to the rear of the village, and there they moved cautiously, with Destry directing the way, until they came
in behind the house of the sheriff.

They could look readily through the lighted kitchen window, and see fat Mrs. Slater washing supper dishes; rounding to the
side, they observed Ding Slater himself sitting on the screen porch with his feet in carpet slippers, a newspaper spread out
in his hands, and a pipe between his teeth.

“If the crooks hate him, why don’t they come and murder him on a night like this?” suggested Destry.

“Because birds don’t come nigh to snakes if they can help it,” replied Lefty readily. “Harry—whatever I done—the minute you
walk me onto that veranda, I’m in hell! I voted with the rest of ’em on that jury—”

“Are you gunna beg like a cur in the wind up?” he asked scornfully.

“No,” said the other. “I’m damned if I will. Shall I walk first?”

“Yeah. Go in first.”

Destry marched Lefty up the front steps in this fashion, and through the screened door until he was confronting the sheriff.
Ding Slater folded the paper in his lap.

“Hello,” said the sheriff. “You need a doctor, and not Ding Slater, Lefty. Who’s that with you?”

“Me,” said Destry.

At his voice, the sheriff leaped to his feet like a boy.

“ It ain’t Lefty that raked out the till for Fitzgerald!” he exclaimed. “Lefty ain’t cut small enough to do that sort of a
job!”

Destry threw a wallet on the table beside the sheriff’s chair.

“He says the coin is in this. I dunno. I leave it to you to look for it. But here he is. Ding, you knew before I started out
that he’d done that job!”

“Confound, you, Harry. How should I know?”

“You sent me out to keep me from drillin’ him, which is what’s comin’ to him. Ding, you did that on purpose.”

“If I’d knowed who done the job, would I of asked help from any man?” exclaimed the sheriff. “Harry, they’s times when you
talk like a young fool. But——”

“Take this,” said Destry. “I’ve done enough dirty work for you. I’ve mopped up your floor once, and that’s enough. It’ll take
me years to wear the stain off of my hands!”

He flung the badge of deputyship on the table and turned on his heel.

“But Harry—Harry!” called the sheriff.

Destry was already gone.

He passed back to the place where he had left the mare tethered and, taking her by the reins, led her slowly past the fence
of the rear yards of Wham, until he came to the place of Chester Bent.

Once more he left the mare at a distance, and approaching the house with caution, he slipped around the side of it and came
to the lighted front window. He caught the sill, and, drawing himself up, saw Bent himself inside his library, reading, or
seeming to read; but every now and then the glance of Bent rose from the book and was fixed in solemn reflection upon the
wall.

The front door was not far away, but Destry had several reasons, one better than another, for not going around to it. Instead,
he swung himself up on his hands, sat on the sill, and turned into the room.
A quick side step removed him from the lighted square of the window and he stood against the wall rolling a cigarette.

All of this had been accomplished so softly that Bent had not lifted his eyes from the big book which was unfolded in his
lap, and Destry waited before scratching his match, until he had made sure that his friend was not actually reading, but was
immersed in his own thoughts. For though he fingered the edge of the page for some time, he never raised and turned it. At
last, Destry struck the match. The explosion of the head sounded wonderfully loud in the room; it sent a shock through Bent
like the explosion of a revolver.

But he did not leap up to his feet. Instead, instantly mastering himself, he leaned forward a little in his chair and turned
his head toward the intruder.

Then: “Harry!” he said, and laughed with relief.

Destry went to the big library table and sat on the edge of it, swinging
one slender foot while he eyed his companion.

“Why the window, Harry?” asked the other.

“A man ain’t like a hoss,” said Destry. “He gets mighty tired of walkin’ through the same gate into the same pasture. So I
come in tonight over the bars.”

“Into the same old pasture, though. Eh, boy?”

“No,” said Destry. “I’ve found somethin’ new to think about. I’ve found it since I came in here!”

“What is it?”

“A thing I better not talk to you about,” said Harry.

The other looked down at the floor, then tapped his fingers lightly
on the face of his book. As he looked up once more, Destry said: “Them wrinkles in the back of your neck, and that sleekness
all over you, Chet, is it fat or muscle?”

“Muscle? What do I do to get muscle?” asked Bent. “I’m no athlete, Harry. You know that.”

“Some men are born strong and stay strong,” said Destry. “But that ain’t what I was thinkin’ about.”

“What was it, Harry?”

“I was rememberin’ back to a time when a strange boy come to school. He was not very big, but he looked thick and strong and
fast. I was scared of him from the first glance. And for a month I dodged him till one day as I went home after school I came
up sudden behind him and seen his eyes open big as I went by. By that, I knew he was as scared of me as I was of him; and
so we fought it out right pronto!”

“And you won, eh?”

“I disremember, but——”

“Am I afraid of you, Harry?”

The other thought, then shook his head.

“Of the whole bunch,” said Destry slowly, “I reckon that you’re the only man that ain’t afraid of anything above the ground
or under it!”