Destry Rides Again (15 page)

It is necessary to return to young Willie Thornton as he approached the big house of Bent earlier in that day and stood at
last before it quite overcome with awe. It was the largest and finest dwelling house he ever had seen. It even had little
wooden towers at each of the corners that faced on the main street, and those towers, it seemed to Willie, would be marvelous
places for princesses to inhabit by day, and ghosts and owls by night. When he had passed the front gate and it had clanked
behind him, he made sure that he had taken the first step into a fairyland.

It was hard for him to strike with the knocker at the front door. He had to linger on the front steps and look up and down
the street, where a cloud of dust was enveloping a train of burros which were waddling along under great packs. This dust
cloud, the burros, and the signs of the shops looked so thoroughly familiar to Willie, and so like any other of a dozen Western
towns he had seen, that he recovered somewhat from his awe and was able to use the knocker.

The door was presently opened by a scowling negress, who waved him away and assured him that no dirty little beggars were
wanted there. He was so overwhelmed that he barely remembered the note he carried, and then only because he was gripping it
in his hand.

This he now presented, and the effect of it was instant! He was not allowed in the front door with his dusty feet, to be sure,
but the cook in person issued forth and escorted him around to the rear.

There he was made to visit a pump and wash basin, with soap and a towel, but after that trying ordeal, he found himself in
a trice with his legs under a kitchen table and quantities of food appearing before him.

Such food and such quantities he never had known. Ham spiced with cloves, fragrant to the core, and corn bread made with eggs
and brittle with shortening, and great glasses of rich milk. This was only the beginning, to be followed by an apple pie from
which only one section had been removed.

He took one piece and hesitated.

“He’p yo’se’f,” said the cook.

He helped himself. Assisted by another glass of milk, he gradually put himself outside that entire pie. He felt guilty, but
he also felt happy; and what is more delicious than a guilty joy?

Immediately afterward, he was sleepy, and straightway his mentor led him up a winding back stair and into a little attic room.

She shocked him into wakefulness for an instant by saying: “Right next, there, is where Mr. Destry lives, honey, if you ever
heard tell of that man!”

Destry lived there!

“You lie down,” he was commanded.

And the instant that he was stretched upon a bed of marvelous softness, his eyes began to close, as though they were mechanically
weighted, like those of a doll. His heart beat fast with excitement and happiness at the thought of having his hero so near
to him; but sleep was mightier than his joy.

The last he knew, as his head swam dizzily, was the voice of the cook saying: “Growin’ tenderhearted—and to beggar boys! They
ain’t no tellin’
how men’ll change. Money to a man is like water to a desert, I declare. They begin to grow kinder!”

But the meaning of this did not enter the mind of the boy, for a great wave of sleep swept over him, and instantly he was
unconscious. It was dusk when he wakened.

As he lifted his head, he saw the red rim of the horizon sketched roughly across the window, and by degrees he remembered
where he was. His stomach was no longer tight; his head was clear; he was refreshed as a grown man could not have been by
sleeping the clock around.

Yet his feet were on the floor and he was stretching himself myscle by muscle before he remembered that the cook had said
Destry lived next door. At that, excitement made him instantly wide awake.

He slipped into the dusky corridor and tapped at the door of the adjoining room, tapped three times, with growing force, and
with respectful intervals between. But there was no answer.

At last, he tried the knob, found that the door opened readily, and entered.

“Mister Destry!” he called faintly.

He had no answer.

But when he scratched a match and looked around him, the sight of battered boots and a quirt, and a rifle in a corner suddenly
re-created Destry, as though the great man was there in the body.

Willie was happy and comforted.

He could have sat among those relics with a swelling heart of pride in his acquaintance with that man of destiny!

Then a qualm struck him, as he wondered whether or not the hero would care to remember
him. There is nothing in the living world so proudly sensitive as a boy, but when he recalled the manner of Destry on that
night of battle he was reassured. There could be nothing but honesty in such a man as that!

So thought Willie and pursued his investigations, lighting match after match. He even opened the bureau drawers. It was not
that he wished to spy on the secrets of Destry, but that every sight of the possessions of that wanderer filled him with pleasure.
There in the top drawer, standing tiptoe, he found the hunting knife, and took it out. There were legends about this knife,
as well as the gun of Destry. Had not Pop said that Destry could throw a knife accurately a hundred feet?

Pop lied, perhaps. Alas, he had lied in other matters dealing with Destry, and perhaps about this, also. But at least, this
was the hero’s knife, with a small “D” cut accurately into the base of the handle.

He put it back reverently, in exactly the position he had found it; he had not dared to bare the bright blade.

He had barely pushed the drawer in when he heard a step in the hall and terror mastered him. Suppose that it was Destry, coming
to his room, and suppose that a thief or a spy was found therein?

He slid into the closet and hid behind a long slicker, leaving the door a little ajar just as it had been. There he was hidden
when Chester Bent entered and lighted the lamp. He saw the investigations of Bent with wonder, and with a growing fear, for
there is something in the manner of a vicious man that betrays him as clearly as the manner of a stalking cat. So did that
gliding furtiveness of Bent, in spite of himself, cast a light on him.

And the boy, watching, knew by an instinct that all was not well. He saw the knife taken, and, in his excitement, he stirred,
and the buckle of his belt scratched against the wall behind him.

The whirl of Bent was like the turning of a tiger, as he ran back into the room, the knife now naked in his hand. For a moment
he glared about him, then the shutter moved in the wind and he seemed satisfied that all was well. Still grudgingly he left
that room, and the boy remained for a long moment trembling in the closet, surrounded by utter darkness.

However much he was devoted to Destry, his affection for that man was nothing compared with the terror he felt for Chester
Bent! When at last he summoned the courage to leave the room, he glided down the stairs intent on only one thing—and that
was to escape from this house of guessed-at horrors as quickly as possible.

He left by neither the front door, nor the back, but slid through an open window and dropped from the sill to the ground.
The garden mold received the impression of his bare feet up to the ankles, and, stepping back onto the graveled path, he smoothed
out the deep imprints which he had made.

He hurried on, now, crouching a little as if to make himself smaller, after the ancient instinct of the hunted, and so he
came to the front corner of the house just in time to hear the voice of Bent speaking from the steps of the house.

A moment later, he saw the man he dreaded going down the front path with a smaller companion. And Willie looked after them,
breathing deep and thanking God that he did not have to accompany that man of mysterious fear.

Yet it is by the perversity of our emotions that we
are governed, as much as by the legitimate warnings which our instincts give us. The horse he fears is the horse the rider
mounts. The man she does not understand is married by the girl. The dog who growls at him, the boy tries to pet.

And the instant that Willie told himself he must not remain near Bent, that moment he felt an inescapable longing to lurk
near the man. It was something like the horrible fascination of a great height, tempting him to let go his hold and jump.
He sweated in the grip of it; but as the gate clanged behind the two, Willie was down the path in pursuit.

The moment he was in action, the fear almost disappeared, and it was sheer delight, merely seasoned with danger, as he followed
the two on their way. All the old joy of the hunter was running like quicksilver in the young veins of the boy, and he slipped
from shrub to shrub, from tree to tree, from fence to gateway, always keeping his soundless feet on the search for twigs or
dry leaves that might be in the path.

He kept step with the two he followed, so that the impact of their heavy heels might drown any sound made by his naked feet,
and he could congratulate himself that they suspected nothing as they went in the back way to the house of Clifton.

He had gone far enough in his little scouting expedition, but still he was not content. Success, even in this small way, had
mounted to his head, and he was keen as a hound to continue the trail, for he knew that in the pocket of Bent rested Destry’s
knife, as yet unused!

He determined to go on, but the dog, which had followed the master to the door of the house, bounding and whining with pleasure,
now turned back, and made an additional danger. Boldness, he decided,
was the better way. So he opened the gate boldly and walked straight up the rear path. His way was blocked instantly by the
dog. He was a big yellow and black mongrel with a head like a mastiff’s, less squarely made than the model. He came at Willie
with a rush, crouching low, but as the bare feet swung steadily forward, the monster slouched guiltily, suspiciously to the
side—and the road was open to the spy!

The bravado which had carried the boy past the dog endured until he had reached the kitchen door, with the cold nose of the
animal sniffing at his fragile heels; even there it did not desert him, but, hearing voices inside, and seeing the darkness
within, he wondered if he could not slip in farther and come closer to the words.

He actually had drawn the door open when he remembered what he was doing—entering a trap quite ready to close on him and hold
him for disastrous punishment of which he could not even dream. In that moment, it seemed to the boy that the roar of the
river, strongly with melted snow water from the mountains, sang suddenly louder, and in a more personal note warned him away.

He let the door close quickly, not enough to make it slam, but so that the rusted hinges groaned faintly. That sound made
him turn to flee, but a sudden weakness unnerved him at the knees. He sank down by the wall of the house, panting. Before
him came the dog, growling faintly deep in its throat, the hair lifting along the back of its neck; but a so much greater
terror was in the heart of Willie that he did not regard this close danger.

He waited through the eternity of a dozen heartbeats, but no swift step came toward him through the house.

He was spared again!

And, as the heart of a boy will do, now that of Willie leaped up from utter consternation to overbearing presumption. If there
was anything worth
hearing in that conversation between the knife bearer and the smaller man, he intended to hear it. The opportunity was not
far away. Lamplight streamed through another window at the rear of the house, and Willie started up and went toward it.

For the dog he had developed a quick contempt, the fruit of reaction from his greater fear, and he cuffed the brute in the
ribs with his bare foot; the cur snapped, but at the empty air, and slunk away mastered.

If anything could have raised the spirits of Willie higher, this was the final touch. He had been the cowering hare the instant
before; he was the brave and cunning fox, now.

Through the lighted window came the voices which he sought, but indistinctly at times, so that he could not follow the trend
of the conversation; and that made Willie climb up on the base board that encircled the bottom of the cheap little house.

Gripping the corner of the sill, where it jutted out on the side, he was in a difficult position, but one from which it was
possible for him to hear every word and, if he dared, look in on the actors. He barely reached that place of vantage when
he heard Bent saying in a voice which he hardly could recognize:

“To cancel the notes, Jimmy, of course, but with a knife instead of a pen!”

The voice ended, and there was a breath of silence that stabbed Willie to the heart, like the stroke of a knife. Irresistible
instinct made him look, and he saw Clifton just arisen, still partly crouched, from the chair.

He could not watch the face of the victim, but he could see Bent’s clearly, and the murder in it.

All that wild action of the night of Warren’s death now seemed as nothing compared with the horror of the silence in which
Bent looked down at the smaller man.

Willie could not endure it. Choked and faint, he looked away, ready to step down, but fearing to move lest he should fall
and the noise attract the attention of the monster in the room, three short steps from him.

He looked away, therefore, trying to steady himself for flight and he saw the dark, dim rows of the greens in the vegetable
garden, the vague outline of the dog not far away, standing remorsefully on guard, with less courage than suspicion. More
than that, he heard again the distinct roar of the Cumber River as it hurried through its shallow gorge at Wham; and in some
house nearby people were talking—women’s voices, rapid, beating one on top of the other, filled with exclamations and laughter
that tumbled together like the gamboling of puppies.

Even in that moment, the lip of Willie curled a little, and into his troubled brain flowed other sounds, and above all, that
of a mandolin far off. He could hear only the jangle of the strings that kept the tune, and the pulse of a soft singing rather
than the actual timbre.

So that moment was filled for the boy, when he heard Clifton saying:

“It’s hard to look at you, Chet, you’re acting the part so well. I’d almost think, to hear you, that you
would
murder me!”

And he laughed. So rich and so real was his laughter that the boy looked back with a sudden great hope. It was, after all,
only a practical jest!

But no! The instant he saw the face of Bent he
knew, as he had known before, that murder was in the air!

And Clifton knew it, also. His laughter died away with a break. One hand was behind him, hard gripped, and again the dreadful
silence went on, heartbeat by heartbeat.

Then Bent said through his teeth, “You’re not a fool, Jimmy. You know that if I let Destry go to prison in my place a thing
such as wiping you off the ledger with blood won’t stop me for a moment!”

“You know that you’ll infallibly hang!” said Clifton, in a shaken tone.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Bent. “Don’t comfort yourself with that, Jimmy! Destry is my professional buffer state. The knife
that I stab you with will be found in your body, and there is a clever ‘D’ cut into the handle of it. I suppose that a hundred
people will be able to identify that knife as Destry’s. He’s been proud of his work with it, you know. He can hit things at
twenty paces—sink the knife half the length of its blade into green wood, and that sort of thing. No, no, Jimmy! This will
be laid on Destry’s shoulders!”

“Then Destry will have you by the throat for it!”

“Have me? He’ll never suspect! Destry’s one of those clever, cunning people who prefer to keep a blind side for their friends.
He has a blind side for me. He knows a dozen of my faults, has seen them, listed them, acknowledged them, but still he can’t
add up the total and see what I am. Destry’s not a fool; he’s only a fool about his friend, Chester Bent. The point will be
that the cunning assassin of poor Jimmy Clifton stole the knife from Destry’s room in my house in order to throw the blame
on him! You
see? But the rest of the world will have a fine reason for hanging Destry by the neck!”

He, in his turn, laughed a little, and did not finish his mirth in a hurry. Rather he seemed to be tasting and retasting it,
and he was still laughing in that almost silent way when Clifton spoke again. His courage was going; with horrible clarity.
Willie knew that, and saw a brave man turning into a dog before his eyes.

“D’you hear me—will you hear me, Chet?” he gasped.

“Of course. I want to hear you. I want to see you, too! I want to see you whine, you fool!”

“Chet,” said the other, “I’ve never had anything against you, or you against me!”

“Except the notes, my boy!”

“They’re yours! Look! Take and tear ’em up, and tear up your check, besides!”

“Are you a total ass, Jimmy? Tear the things up, but leave in Wham a man who knows all about me—and my reserve fund?”

“I’ll forget it, Chet. Good God, man, I’ll forget all about it. I tell you what—I’m going to leave Wham. You know that. I’ll
swear never to come back—”

“You don’t have to. A letter to the sheriff would be enough.”

“Man, I’ll give you my sacred word of honor. The thing’s ended with me. I’ll say no more. It’s finished. Every word you’ve
spoken, and every act I’ve seen—which isn’t much—I’ll tear them out of the book of my brain and burn the leaves!”

Bent, listening, smiled with a peculiar gratification, as though the terror of the other were feeding him with a more than
physical food.

This smile was accepted by Clifton, rightly as a
refusal, and suddently he slumped to his knees upon the floor.

Bent stepped back, in loathing, and yet in animal-like pleasure at this horror, and Clifton followed on his knees, reaching
out his thick, yellow, trembling hands. His head was thrown back. His voice choked in his throat.

“Chet, you and me—for God’s sake!—always friends—school together—”

A scream came up in the throat of Willie and stuck there like a bone.

“Stand up, and face it like a man!” commanded Bent.

“Chet, Chet, I’ve always respected you, liked you, loved you, d’you hear? Old friends! Chet, I’m young, I’m gunna get married—”

“You lie! Get up, or I’ll lift you up by the hair of the head, you cur!”

“I swear it’s true. Gunna marry Jenny Cleaver. She’s to meet me in Denver—young, Chet—life before me—friends——”

Then the monster moved. He did not seem to hurry. It was like the action of the wasp in stinging the spider already paralyzed
with horror. So Bent leaned and actually grasped Clifton by the hair of the head and jerked the head far back.

Willie saw the hands of the man stiffen as they clutched at the air, saw his mouth drawn open, and yet he did not scream for
help.

Then Bent struck.

Straight through the base of the throat he drove the long knife, and left it sticking in the wound, then stepped back with
blood running down his right hand.

Clifton fell on the floor, writhed his legs together,
then turned on his back and lay motionless. He was dead! Already the boy had seen a death, but it had seemed to him then the
most magnificent thing he ever had witnessed—a strong man rushing into battle against equal odds, and beaten, broken with
bullets, snuffed out like a light. It had left glory for the victor, but this was a thing that words could not be used upon!

His long held breath now failed him, and he gasped. It was only a faint sound, but it was enough.

He saw the eyes of Bent roll up and fix steadily upon him, and he knew that the shadows had not screened him. That keen glance
had gone out with the lamplight into the dark beyond the window and clearly discerned the face of the witness!