The Max Brand Megapack (253 page)

Had Jenkins been right? Had she wakened in her age to find out the truth concerning the man she had married? Ronicky could only hope, for her own sake and the sake of her daughter, that she had remained blind to the end.

“Well?” Bennett was urging him. “Are you going to talk? Or are you going to stand there the rest of the night like a buzzard looking at a dead cow?”

“Bennett,” said Ronicky, “suppose a real man was to offer to work for you, what sort of terms would you make with him?”

“A real man?” asked Bennett, but at the suggestion a flare of fire altered his eyes.

“I mean a man that’s square and a man that’s not afraid to fight for himself and his boss.”

Bennett threw himself back in the chair with a grim laugh.

“They don’t come that way any more,” he said. “When I was your age we’d all have risked our lives for the sake of one hoof of the scrawniest yearling on the boss’ range. We took it for granted. He paid us to look out for his interests. But nowadays it’s different. You can’t get men.”

“Not if you underpay ’em, underfeed ’em and treat ’em like a lot of dogs. Real men won’t work for you then, that’s dead sure.”

“Well,” snarled Bennett, anxiety and anger combining to bring his tone to a singularly piercing whine, “what’s up?”

“Bennett, I’ll come out here, if you can hit up the right terms with me.”

Steve Bennett gasped, glared with a wild hope, and then sank back into his chair, from which he had half risen, with something between a growl and a groan.

“This is some of Al Jenkins’ work,” he vowed. “He’s sent you out here to get a job so that you can dig the ground from under me, and when he’s ready he can—”

“Stop that kind of talk,” said Ronicky. “It just peeves me and it don’t bring you no place in particular, Bennett.”

The rancher shrugged his bony shoulders.

“I say again,” said Ronicky, “I’ll work on your place for you.”

Bennett merely stared. Not at Ronicky’s face, but in a grim effort to get at his secret mind.

“It’s the girl!” he exclaimed suddenly. “She’s got enough of her mother in her for that. It’s Elsie that’s bringing you.”

He chuckled and twisted one hand inside the other, as though he were trying to warm them. And more and more the wonder grew in Ronicky that beautiful Elsie Bennett could be the daughter of this man.

“No matter what’s bringing me,” said Ronicky, “I’m here to hit up a bargain with you. I’ll run your place until you’re through with the fight with Jenkins. I’ll do that, if you’ll give me full swing and let me run everything. I’ll do it, if you’ll let me hire your men and fire ’em, just as I see fit. Does that sound good to you at all, Bennett?”

The rancher, breathing hard, stepped up from his chair and elevated his tall form by the table. He glowered at Ronicky like a famine-stricken wretch who sees food, but fears that it is poisoned.

“How would I know that you ain’t from Jenkins?” he asked. “How would I know that you ain’t out here to arrange so’s he can scoop up the last of my cattle—the unhung robber!—and get off clean and free with it? How am I to know that?”

“I dunno,” said Ronicky. “unless you read my mind. But you got no other chance, Bennett. It’s up to you to do this or go under. You got no real men on your ranch. You—”

“A lot of cowards—a lot of yallarlivered—”

“Then let me fire them and get a new set.”

“You can’t. You can’t pick up a crew in Twin Springs—not for my ranch. Jenkins, curse him, with his bought men and his bought lies—he’s seen to that! He’ll be singed for it! Oh, he’ll burn for it.”

In the strength of his malice he literally gnashed his teeth, and then he brought his attention back to Ronicky Doone. He stalked slowly forward. He laid a gaunt, cold hand upon Ronicky’s shoulder.

“Ah,” he said, “you got an honest face, Doone. You got an honest face, after all!”

Ronicky struck his hand away with an irresistible outbreak of disgust. For he was remembering how Bennett had stood over him on the evening when big Blondy carried him into this very room and denounced him.

“I don’t want your lies,” said Ronicky. “You and me might as well come out in the clear quick, Bennett. I ain’t doing this to please you, none. And I ain’t doing it for your money, because you ain’t got none. But I want your promise to let me go straight ahead and run things. Will you do that?”

“And take a chance of getting the house burned down right from over my head, so far as I know?”

He was fairly shaken by dread and temptation combined.

“And take that chance, yes,” admitted Ronicky. It seemed that this admission that he had no proof of good faith to offer made a great impression upon the other. For his face brightened at once.

“I was always a good gambler,” he said. “I’ve gambled on life and death. And why shouldn’t I gamble on this ranch that never brought me luck?”

He turned to a cabinet, drew out a bottle, and placed two glasses upon the table.

“I ain’t drinking,” said Ronicky in return to the questioning glance. “I don’t drink when I got hard work ahead.”

“Then,” said the old man, “I’ll drink to myself. It’ll give me heart for the chance that I’m taking.”

And he poured the little glass full and tossed it off, and then he leaned back against the wall, watching Ronicky with blurred eyes of pleasure, as the alcohol burned home in him.

CHAPTER
XXIII

RONICKY’S FIRST MOVE

This, then, was the father of Elsie Bennett. It made Ronicky think of some graceful and lovely orchid rooted in decay. Yet, on a day, no doubt, the mind and the body of Bennett had been far other than it now was. He must have been handsome, strong, vivacious. And such a man as that had married the mother of the girl. The betrayal of Al Jenkins, in the first place, must have begun to undermine his nature. That was the seed of poison which spread until now he was only a ghost of his old self, a ghost in very fact. The long years of failure had put their mark on him. They had made him into a vicious-minded, cruel-witted fellow, such as now leered at Ronicky.

“And now,” asked the rancher, “where d’you begin?”

“With sleep,” said Ronicky. “Where’s a bed for me?” The old man broke into his harsh laughter, still rubbing his hands with glee and still unable to work any warmth into the bony fingers.

“Sleep?” he asked. “Aye, that’s the best place for a beginning, and that’s the usual place for an ending, too! Yes, that’s where they all end up. I’m close to it. But the rest will finish the same way. You—Loring—Elsie—you’ll all end up in a sleep!”

This he muttered to himself, some words audible, others mere indistinct murmurs. And in the meantime he picked up the lamp and went toward the door of the room behind him, walking back into the shadows which finally rushed across it, as the rancher passed into the hall.

He climbed the stairs with Ronicky behind him, thinking sharply back to that other night when he had climbed the same stairs behind the same lamp bearer, with manacles on his wrists. At the head of the stair Bennett stepped aside, allowed him to climb to the top, and then went to the door of the room where Ronicky had been a prisoner, and, pushing it open, turned to him with an evil grin of enjoyment.

It seemed to Ronicky, as he stared into the flat wall of darkness which the lamplight failed to penetrate, that a ghost of himself must still be within, so vivid was his recollection of his waiting in the place for the morning. Now Bennett went on down the hall and took Ronicky to an end room. It was very dingy. The curtains at the window, even, seemed worn and rubbed by age. Here the rancher put the light down and bade his guest farewell for the night. But he paused again at the door still grinning. Then he shook a long forefinger at Ronicky.

“I ain’t asking no more questions,” he said. “You notice that, Ronicky Doone. I ain’t asking what might be in your head, or what your motives could be. No, sir, all I’m doing is waiting—and waiting—waiting to see how things turn out, eh?”

Then he turned and walked off into the darkness of the hall, still muttering to himself and occasionally breaking into a chuckle, a strange and conversational effect that made the body of Ronicky lose some warmth. He harkened to the steps of the rancher going down the stairs slowly, but surely. No one would ever have dreamed that he was walking without a light, to listen to that unfumbling step.

For a time Ronicky sat on the edge of the bed, pondering on the place where he found himself, on the events which were around him, behind and before. And it was like walking in a dream, so unreal was it. When he closed his eyes for a moment he half expected that when he opened them he would find himself back on the veranda of the hotel in Twin Springs, sunning himself lazily, with only his head in the shadow, while some one announced again that Blondy Loring was coming to town.

But when he did open his eyes his glance fell upon the bureau on the far side of the room, with a silver brush upon it, and on either side of the brush was a dainty little bottle of perfume, while still farther on either side—

Suddenly Ronicky sprang up with a stifled oath. He looked around him again. He noted the bright color of the curtain, no matter how faded from the original. He glanced down to the flowered rug beside the bed. He turned to the bed itself and the stainless white of the spread which covered it.

“Lord above,” said Ronicky, “he’s given me her room!”

And all at once he felt like rushing out into the hall and shouting curses down at the old man and demanding a different place. But what difference did it make? And, after all, perhaps there was no other place for him to sleep in the house on that particular night. Besides, why should he feel like an eavesdropper, an interloper, because he was in the room?

Nevertheless, he did feel that way. Something pressed on his mind from every side. It was shouting out at him now—something of which he had been totally unaware when he first came into the apartment. There were photographs on the wall, photographs of young men and girls. And there was a chest of some dark wood under the window, and upon it lay a dress of dull red. It was her room. A faint perfume had been unnoticeable before. Now it drifted to him clearly. It was like sight of her face, sound of her voice. It brought her bodily within the walls.

Ronicky sat down again gingerly on the bed. How completely the sense of her had wiped out the rest of the world! And when he slept that night she still was walking and talking in his dreams.

In the morning he wakened with the knowledge that only six days remained in which he was to build up the power to foil big Al Jenkins. Six days to meet and counterbalance a strength which had been slowly accumulating for the past years in Twin Springs, nourished by the wealth and by the personality of the rancher. And yet Ronicky Doone, glancing out of the window at the red sky of the dawn, merely tugged his belt tight and shrugged his shoulders.

He was whistling when he went down to breakfast and looked over the cow-punchers who came into the dining room. They were an odd lot and a bad lot. Four sad-faced, underfed, ragged men as ever he had seen, ate their meal in the midst of complete gloom. They were nameless hobos of the range, poor, broken-spirited men who had failed in every other place and had at last drifted to this last resort, knowing perfectly well that they could remain here only because there were no others to replace them.

But what most interested Ronicky was the figure of old Bennett sitting at the head of the table, with a grand manner. He was amiable, smooth-tongued, courteous to these wrecks who worked as cow-punchers on his ranch, selling him out at every turn, as all knew, to Al Jenkins. Ronicky had expected to see fire poured every moment upon the punchers. But he gradually came to the solution of the problem. Only with such as these was Steve Bennett able to act in the grand manner. And therefore he was making the most of the opportunity. Only one voice was heard—the voice of Bennett narrating, and then the polite chuckles and the nods and the grins and sympathetic exclamations, as those rags of humanity jibed in with the master of the pay roll, applauding exactly where applause was expected and needed.

Ronicky watched them in increasing disgust. After breakfast he was drawn to one side by old Bennett.

“Are you going to fire them now?” he asked eagerly. “Are you going to run ’em all off this morning?”

His eagerness was horrible to Ronicky. Here the rancher had been playing the part of the amiable host the one moment, and the next he was ready to knife his late guests.

“Let’em stay,” said Ronicky. “Let ’em be where they are. They can do the work, or not do it, for the next six days. End of that time I hope that I’ll be coming back with some way of helping out.”

“You’re leaving now?” asked Bennett sharply.

“D’you think I’m enough, all by myself, to stop Jenkins and his gang?” asked Ronicky scornfully.

The other nodded and drew back, and from that moment until the time Ronicky left the house the rancher watched him with ratty eyes of suspicion. Up to that moment, perhaps, he had been hoping against hope that Ronicky actually intended to help him. But now he was sure that it was only a bluff.

And Ronicky gladly heard the door slam behind him as he went out to Lou. He saddled the bay mare at once and rode her out from the barn and onto the road, or rather the wagon trail, which led up the valley toward the ranch. Then, after surveying the landscape carelessly, he picked out as his goal no less a target than the ragged summits of Mount Solomon, and toward this he directed Lou in all her eagerness of morning freshness.

CHAPTER XXIV

CUR
LY’S CAPTURE

The way wound off from the main floor of the valley after a time, and he headed into a narrow gorge forested closely on either side and with only an open runway of a dozen feet in the center, worn there by the sudden floods which tore down the side of the mountain during the heavy rains. Here the trees closed in on either hand, their branches intertwining across the blue sky above him. He rode under a continually changing pattern too busy with the irregularities of the ground underfoot, however, to pay much heed to what was above him or on either side. And that was the reason, perhaps, that he encountered the danger which almost immediately befell him.