The Rustler of Wind River Part 14

Thorn got up, unlimbering slowly, and laid the pipe on the mantel-shelf.

He seemed unmoved, indifferent; apathetic as a toothless old lion.

After a little silence he shook his head.

"I'm done, I tell you," he said querulously, as if raising the question crossed him. "Pay me for that many, and call it square."

"Bring in Macdonald," Chadron demanded in firm tones.

"I ain't a-goin' to touch him! If I keep on after that man he'll git _me_--it's on the cards, I can see it in the dark."

"Yes, you're lost your nerve, you old wildcat!" There was a taunt in Chadron's voice, a sneer.

Thorn turned on him, a savage, smothered noise in his throat.

"You can say that because you owe me money, but you know it's a d.a.m.n lie! If you didn't owe me money, I'd make you swaller it with hot lead!"

"You're talkin' a little too free for a man of your trade, Mark."

While Chadron's tone was tolerant, even friendly, there was an undercurrent of warning, even threat, in his words.

"You're the feller that's lettin' his gab outrun his gumption. How many does that make for me, talkin' about nerve, how many? Do you know?"

"I don't care how many, it lacks one of bein' enough to suit me."

"Twenty-eight, and I've got 'em down in m' book and I can prove it!"

"Make it twenty-nine, and then quit if you want to."

"Maybe I will." Thorn leaned forward a little, a glitter in his smoky eyes.

Chadron fell back, his face growing pale. His hand was on his weapon, his eyes noting narrowly every move Thorn made.

"If you ever sling a gun on me, you old devil, it'll be--"

"I ain't a-goin' to sling no gun on you as long as you owe me money.

I ain't a-goin' to cut the bottom out of m' own money-poke, Chad; you don't need to swivel up in your hide, you ain't marked for twenty-nine."

"Well, don't throw out any more hints like that; I don't like that kind of a joke."

"No, I wouldn't touch a hair of your head," Thorn ran on, following a vein which seemed to amuse him, for he smiled, a horrible, face-drawing contortion of a smile, "for if you and me ever had a fallin' out over money I might git so hard up I couldn't travel, and one of them sheriff fellers might slip up on me."

"What's all this fool gab got to do with business?" Chadron was impatient; he looked at his watch.

"Well, I'd be purty sure to make a speech from the gallers--I always intended to--and lay everything open that ever took place between me and you and the rest of them big fellers. There's a newspaper feller in Cheyenne that wants to make a book out of m' life, with m' pict're in the inside of the lid, to be sold when I'm dead. I could git money for tellin' that feller what I know."

"Go on and tell him then,"--Chadron spoke with a dare in his words, and derision--"that'll be easy money, and it won't call for any nerve.

But you don't need to be plannin' any speech from the gallus--you'll never go that fur if you try to double-cross me!"

"I ain't aimin' to double-cross no man, but you can call it that if it suits you. You can call it whatever you purty d.a.m.n well care to--I'm done!"

Chadron made no reply to that. He was pulling on his great gloves, frowning savagely, as if he meant to close the matter with what he had said, and go.

"Do I git any money, or don't I?" Thorn asked, sharply.

"When you bring in that wolf's tail."

"I ain't a-goin' to touch that feller, I tell you, Chad. That man means bad luck to me--I can read it in the cards."

"Maybe you call that kind of skulkin' livin' up to your big name?"

Chadron spoke in derision, playing on the vanity which he knew to be as much a part of that old murderer's life as the blood of his merciless heart.

"I've got glory enough," said Thorn, satisfaction in his voice; "what I want right now's money."

"Earn it before you collect it."

"Twenty-eight 'd fill a purty fair book, countin' in what I could tell about the men I've had dealin's with," Thorn reflected, as to himself, leaning against the mantel, frowning down at the floor with bent head.

"Talk till you're empty, you old fool, and who'll believe you? Huh!

you couldn't git yourself hung if you was to try!" Chadron's dark face was blacker for the spreading flood of resentful blood; he pointed with his heavy quirt at Thorn, as if to impress him with a sense of the smallness of his wickedness, which men would not credit against the cattlemen's word, even if he should publish it abroad. "You'll never walk onto the scaffold, no matter how hard you try--there'll be somebody around to head you off and give you a shorter cut than that, I'm here to tell you!"

"Huh!" said Thorn, still keeping his thoughtful pose.

Man-killing is a trade that reacts differently on those who follow it, according to their depth and nature. It makes black devils of some who were once civil, smiling, wholesome men, whether the mischance of life-taking has fallen to them in their duty to society or in outlawed deeds. It plunges some into dark taciturnity and brooding coldness, as if they had eaten of some root which blunted them to all common relish of life.

There are others of whom the b.l.o.o.d.y trade makes gabbling fools, light-headed, wild-eyed wasters of words, full of the importance of their mind-wrecking deeds. Like the savage whose reputation mounts with each wet scalp, each fresh head, these kill out of depravity, glorying in the growing score. To this cla.s.s Mark Thorn belonged.

There was but one side left to that depraved man's mind; his b.l.o.o.d.y, base life had smothered the rest under the growing heap of his horrible deeds. Thorn had killed twenty-eight human beings for hire, of whom he had tally, but there was one to be included of whom he had not taken count--himself.

As he stood here against the chimney-shelf he was only the outside husk of a man. His soul had been judged already, and burned out of him by the unholy pa.s.sion which he had indulged. He was as simple in his garrulous chatter of glory and distinction as a half-fool. His warped mind ran only on the spectacular end that he had planned for himself, and the speech from the gallows that was to be the black, d.a.m.ning seal at the end of his atrocious life's record.

Thorn looked up from his study; he shook his head decisively.

"I ain't a-goin' to go back over there in your country and give you a chance at me. If you git me, you'll have to git me here. I ain't a-goin' to sling a gun down on n.o.body for the money that's in it, I tell you. I'm through; I'm out of the game; my craw's full. It's a bad sign when a man wastes a bullet on a hired hand, takin' him for the boss, and I ain't a-goin' to run no more resks on that feller. When my day for glory comes I'll step out on the gallers and say m' piece, and they'll be some big fellers in this country huntin' the tall gra.s.s about that time, I guess."

Chadron had taken up his quirt from the little round table where the hotel register lay. He turned now toward the outer door, as if in earnest about going his way and leaving Mark Thorn to follow his own path, no matter to what consequences it might lead.

"If you're square enough to settle up with me for this job," said Thorn, "and pay me five hundred for what I've done, I'll leave your name out when I come to make that little speech."

Chadron turned on him with a sneer. "You seem to have your hangin' all cut and dried, but you'll never go ten miles outside of this reservation if you don't turn around and put that job through. You'll never hang--you ain't cut out in the hangin' style."

"I tell you I will!" protested Thorn hotly. "I can see it in the cards."

"Well, you'd better shuffle 'em ag'in."

"I know what kind of a day it's goin' to be, and I know just adzackly how I'll look when I hold up m' hands for them fellers to keep still.

Shucks! you can't tell me; I've seen that day a thousand times. It'll be early in the mornin', and the sun bright--"

The door leading to the dining-room opened, and Thorn left his description of that great and final day in his career hanging like a broken bridge. He turned to see who it was, squinting his old eyes up sharply, and in watching the stranger he failed to see the whiteness that came over Chadron's face like a rus.h.i.+ng cloud.

"Grab your gun!" Chadron whispered.