Ronicky Doone (1921) (9 page)

"I left him safe and quiet," said Ronicky Doone.

The girl's face hardened strangely. "What you are, and what your game is I don't know," she said. "But I'll tell you this: I'm letting you play as if you had all the cards in the deck. But you haven't. I've got one ace that'll take all your trumps. Suppose I call once what'll happen to you, pal?"

"You don't dare call," he said.

"Don't dare me," said the girl angrily. "I hate a dare worse than anything in the world, almost." For a moment her green-blue eyes were pools of light flashing angrily at him.

Into the hand of Ronicky Doone, with that magic speed and grace for which his fame was growing so great in the mountain desert, came the long, glimmering body of the revolver, and, holding it at the hip, he threatened her.

She shrank back at that, gasping. For there was an utter surety about this man's handling of the weapon. The heavy gun balanced and steadied in his slim fingers, as if it were no more than a feather's weight.

"I'm talking straight, lady," said Ronicky Doone. "Sit down pronto!"

In the very act of obedience she straightened again. "It's bluff," she said. "I'm going through that door!" Straight for the door she went, and Ronicky Doone set his teeth.

"Go back!" he commanded. He glided to the door and blocked her way, but the gun hung futile in his hand.

"It's easy to pull a gun, eh?" said the girl, with something of a sneer. "But it takes nerve to use it. Let me through this door!"

"Not in a thousand years," said Ronicky.

She laid her hand on the door and drew it back it struck his shoulder and Ronicky gave way with a groan and stood with his head bowed. Inwardly he cursed himself. Doubtless she was used to men who bullied her, as if she were another man of an inferior sort. Doubtless she despised him for his weakness. But, though he gritted his teeth, he could not make himself firm. Those old lessons which sink into a man's soul in the West came back to him and held him. In the helpless rage which possessed him he wanted battle above all things in the world. If half a dozen men had poured through the doorway he would have rejoiced. But this one girl was enough to make him helpless.

He looked up in amazement. She had not gone; in fact, she had closed the door slowly and stood with her back against it, staring at him in a speechless bewilderment.

"What sort of a man are you?" asked the girl at last.

"A fool," said Ronicky slowly. "Go out and round up your friends; I can't stop you."

"No," said the girl thoughtfully, "but that was a poor bluff at stopping me."

He nodded. And she hesitated still, watching his face closely.

"Listen to me," she said suddenly. "I have two minutes to talk to you, and I'll give you those two minutes. You can use them in getting out of the house I'll show you a way or you can use them to tell me just why you've come."

In spite of himself Ronicky smiled. "Lady," he said, "if a rat was in a trap d'you think he'd stop very long between a chance of getting clear and a chance to tell how he come to get into the place?"

"I have a perfectly good reason for asking," she answered. "Even if you now get out of the house safely you'll try to come back later on."

"Lady," said Ronicky, "do I look as plumb foolish as that?"

"You're from the West," she said in answer to his slang.

"Yes."

She considered the straight-looking honesty of his eyes. "Out West," she said, "I know you men are different. Not one of the men I know here would take another chance as risky as this, once they were out of it. But out there in the mountains you follow long trails, trails that haven't anything but a hope to lead you along them? Isn't that so?"

"Maybe," admitted Ronicky. "It's the fever out of the gold days, lady. You start out chipping rocks to find the right color; maybe you never find the right color; maybe you never find a streak of pay stuff, but you keep on trying. You're always just sort of around the corner from making a big strike."

She nodded, smiling again, and the smiles changed her pleasantly, it seemed to Ronicky Doone. At first she had impressed him almost as a man, with her cold, steady eyes, but now she was all woman, indeed.

"That's why I say that you'll come back. You won't give up with one failure. Am I right?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I dunno. If the trail fever hits me again maybe I would come back."

"You started to tell me. It's because of Caroline Smith?"

"Yes."

"You don't have to talk to me," said the girl. "As a matter of fact I shouldn't be here listening to you. But, I don't know why, I want to help you. You you are in love with Caroline?"

"No," said Ronicky.

Her expression grew grave and cold again. "Then why are you here hunting for her? What do you want with her?"

"Lady," said Ronicky, "I'm going to show you the whole layout of the cards. Maybe you'll take what I say right to headquarters the man that smiles and block my game."

"You know him?" she asked sharply.

Apparently that phrase, "the man who smiles," was enough to identify him.

"I've seen him. I dunno what he is, I dunno what you are, lady, but I figure that you and Caroline Smith and everybody else in this house is under the thumb of the gent that smiles."

Her eyes darkened with a shadow of alarm. "Go on," she said curtly.

"I'm not going on to guess about what you all are. All I know is what I'm here trying to do. I'm not working for myself. I'm working for a partner."

She started. "That's the second man, the one who stopped her on the street today?"

"You're pretty well posted," replied Ronicky. "Yes, that's the one. He started after Caroline Smith, not even knowing her name with just a picture of her. We found out that she lived in sight of the East River, and pretty soon we located her here."

"And what are you hoping to do?"

"To find her and talk to her straight from the shoulder and tell her what a pile Bill has done to get to her and a lot of other things."

"Can't he find her and tell her those things for himself?"

"He can't talk," said Ronicky. "Not that I'm a pile better, but I could talk better for a friend than he could talk for himself, I figure. If things don't go right then I'll know that the trouble is with the gent with the smile."

"And then?" asked the girl, very excited and grave.

"I'll find him," said Ronicky Doone.

"And "

"Lady," he replied obliquely, "because I couldn't use a gun on a girl ain't no sign that I can't use it on a gent!"

"I've one thing to tell you," she said, breaking in swiftly on him. "Do what you want take all the chances you care to but, if you value your life and the life of your friend, keep away from the man who smiles."

"I'll have a fighting chance, I guess," said Ronicky quietly.

"You'll have no chance at all. The moment he knows your hand is against him, I don't care how brave or how clever you are, you're doomed!"

She spoke with such a passion of conviction that she flushed, and a moment later she was shivering. It might have been the draft from the window which made her gather the hazy-green mantle closer about her and glance over her shoulder; but a grim feeling came to Ronicky Doone that the reason why the girl trembled and her eyes grew wide, was that the mention of "the man who smiles" had brought the thought of him into the room like a breath of cold wind.

"Don't you see," she went on gently, "that I like you? It's the first and the last time that I'm going to see you, so I can talk. I know you're honest, and I know you're brave. Why, I can see your whole character in the way you've stayed by your friend; and, if there's a possible way of helping you, I'll do it. But you must promise me first that you'll never cross the man with the sneer, as you call him."

"There's a sort of a fate in it," said Ronicky slowly. "I don't think I could promise. There's a chill in my bones that tells me I'm going to meet up with him one of these days."

She gasped at that, and, stepping back from him, she appeared to be searching her mind to discover something which would finally and completely convince him. At length she found it.

"Do I look to you like a coward?" she said. "Do I seem to be weak-kneed?"

He shook his head.

"And what will a woman fight hardest for?"

"For the youngsters she's got," said Ronicky after a moment's thought. "And, outside of that, I suppose a girl will fight the hardest to marry the gent she loves."

"And to keep from marrying a man she doesn't love, as she'd try to keep from death?"

"Sure," said Ronicky. "But these days a girl don't have to marry that way."

"I am going to marry the man with the sneer," she said simply enough, and with dull, patient eyes she watched the face of Ronicky wrinkle and grow pale, as if a heavy fist had struck him.

"You?" he asked. "You marry him?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"And you hate the thought of him!"

"I I don't know. He's kind "

"You hate him," insisted Ronicky. "And he's to have you, that cold-eyed snake, that devil of a man?" He moved a little, and she turned toward him, smiling faintly and allowing the light to come more clearly and fully on her face. "You're meant for a king o' men, lady; you got the queen in you it's in the lift of your head. When you find the gent you can love, why, lady, he'll be pretty near the richest man in the world!"

The ghost of a flush bloomed in her cheeks, but her faint smile did not alter, and she seemed to be hearing him from far away. "The man with the sneer," she said at length, "will never talk to me like that, and still I shall marry him."

"Tell me your name," said Ronicky Doone bluntly.

"My name is Ruth Tolliver."

"Listen to me, Ruth Tolliver: If you was to live a thousand years, and the gent with the smile was to keep going for two thousand, it'd never come about that he could ever marry you."

She shook her head, still watching him as from a distance.

"If I've crossed the country and followed a hard trail and come here tonight and stuck my head in a trap, as you might say, for the sake of a gent like Bill Gregg fine fellow though he is what d'you think I would do to keep a girl like you from life-long misery?"

And he dwelt on the last word until the girl shivered.

"It's what it means," said Ronicky Doone, "lifelong misery for you. And it won't happen it can't happen."

"Are you mad are you quite mad?" asked the girl. "What on earth have I and my affairs got to do with you? Who are you?"

"I dunno," said Ronicky Doone. "I suppose you might say I'm a champion of lost causes, lady. Why have I got something to do with you? I'll tell you why: Because, when a girl gets past being just pretty and starts in being plumb beautiful, she lays off being the business of any one gent her father or her brother she starts being the business of the whole world. You see? They come like that about one in ten million, and I figure you're that one, lady."

The far away smile went out. She was looking at him now with a sort of sad wonder. "Do you know what I am?" she said gravely.

"I dunno," said Ronicky, "and I don't care. What you do don't count. It's the inside that matters, and the inside of you is all right. Lady, so long as I can sling a gun, and so long as my name is Ronicky Doone, you ain't going to marry the gent with the smile."

If he expected an outbreak of protest from her he was mistaken. For what she said was: "Ronicky Doone! Is that the name? Ronicky Doone!" Then she smiled up at him. "I'm within one ace of being foolish and saying But I won't."

She made a gesture of brushing a mist away from her and then stepped back a little. "I'm going down to see the man with the smile, and I'm going to tell him that Harry Morgan is not in his room, that he didn't answer my knock, and then that I looked around through the house and didn't find him. After that I'm coming back here, Ronicky Doone, and I'm going to try to get an opportunity for you to talk to Caroline Smith."

"I knew you'd change your mind," said Ronicky Doone.

"I'll even tell you why," she said. "It isn't for your friend who's asleep, but it's to give you a chance to finish this business and come to the end of this trail and go back to your own country. Because, if you stay around here long, there'll be trouble, a lot of trouble, Ronicky Doone. Now stay here and wait for me. If anyone taps at the door, you'd better slip into that closet in the corner. Will you wait?"

"Yes."

"And you'll trust me?"

"To the end of the trail, lady."

She smiled at him again and was gone.

Now the house was perfectly hushed. He went to the window and looked down to the quiet street with all its atmosphere of some old New England village and eternal peace. It seemed impossible that in the house behind him there were

He caught his breath. Somewhere in the house the muffled sound of a struggle rose. He ran to the door, thinking of Ruth Tolliver at once, and then he shrank back again, for a door was slammed open, and a voice shouted the voice of a man: "Help! Harrison! Lefty! Jerry!"