The Triumph of John Kars Part 30

Kars followed his personal baggage which a quayside porter had taken on to the grandiosely named mail train.

John Kars was standing at the curtained window of Dr. Bill's apartment in the Hoffman Apartment House. His back was turned on the luxuriously furnished room. For some time the silence had been broken only by the level tones of the owner of the apartment who was lounging in the depths of a big rocker adjacent to a table laden with surgical instruments. He had been telling the detailed story of the preparations made at the camp some ten miles distant from the city, and the supervision of whose affairs Kars had left in his hands. As he ceased speaking Kars turned from his contemplation of the tawdry white and gold of the Elysian Fields which stood out in full view from the window of the apartment.

"Now tell me of that boy--Alec," he demanded.

The directness of the challenge had its effect. Bill Brudenell stirred uneasily in his chair. His shrewd eyes widened with a shade of trouble. Nor did he answer readily.

"Things are wrong?" Kars' steady eyes searched his friend's face.

"Well--they're not--good."

"Ah. Tell me."

Kars moved from the window. It almost seemed that all that had pa.s.sed was incomparable in interest with his present subject. He seated himself on the corner of the table which held the surgical instruments.

"No. It's not good. It's--it's darned bad." Bill rose abruptly from his chair and began to pace the room, his trim shoulders hunched as though he were suddenly driven to a desire for aggression. "Look here, John," he cried almost vehemently. "If you or I had had that boy set in our charge, seeing what we saw that first night, and knowing what I've heard since, could we have quit this lousy city for months and left him to his fool play over at Pap's? Not on your life. But it's what Murray's done. Gee, I could almost think he did it purposely."

Kars pointed at the rocker. There was a curious light in his gray eyes. It was a half smile. Also it possessed a subtle stirring of fierceness.

"Sit down, Bill," he said calmly. "But start right in from--the start."

The man of healing obeyed mechanically, but he chafed at the restraint.

His usual ease had undergone a serious disturbance. There was nothing calculated to upset him like the disregard of moral obligation. Crime he understood, folly he accepted as something belonging to human nature. But the moral "stunt," as he was wont to characterize it, hurt him badly. Just now he was regarding Murray McTavish with no very friendly eyes, and he deplored beyond words the doings of the boy who was Jessie Mowbray's brother.

"The start!" he exploded. "Where _can_ I start? If the start were as I see it, it 'ud be to tell you that Murray's a callous skunk who don't care a whoop for the obligations Allan's murder left on his fat shoulders. But I guess that's not the start as you see it. That boy!"

He sprang from his seat again and Kars made no further attempt to restrain him. "He's on the road to the devil faster than an express locomotive could carry him. He's in the hands of 'Chesapeake' Maude, who's got him by both feet and neck. And he's handing his bank roll over to Pap, and his gang, with a shovel. He's half soused any old time after eleven in the morning. And his back teeth are awash by midnight 'most every day. You can see him muling around the dance floor till you get sick of the sight of his darn fool smile, and you wish all the diamonds Maude wears were lost in the deepest smudge fires of h.e.l.l. Start? There is no start. But there's a sure finish."

"You mean if he don't quit he'll go right down and out?"

Bill came to a halt directly in front of his friend. His keen eyes gazed straight into the strong face confronting him.

"No, I don't mean that. It's worse," he said, with a gravity quite changed from his recent agitated manner.

"Worse?" Kars' question came sharply. "Go on."

"Oh, I did all you said that night. I got a holt on him next day at the Gridiron, where he's stopping. He told me to go to a certain hot place and mind my own business, which was doping out drugs. I went to Murray, and he served me little better. He grinned. He always grins.

He threw hot air about a youngster and wild oats. He guessed the kid would sober up after a fling. They'd figgered on this play. His mother, and Jose, and him. They guessed it was best. Then he was going to get around back and act the man his father was on the trail.

That was his talk. And he grinned--only grinned when I guessed he was five sorts of darned fool."

Bill paused. It might almost have been that he paused for breath after the speed at which his words came. Kars waited with deliberate patience, but his jaws were set hard.

"But now--now?" The doctor pa.s.sed a hand across his broad forehead and smoothed his iron gray hair. He turned his eyes thoughtfully upon the window through which they beheld the white and gold of the Elysian Fields. "The worst thing's happened. It's in the mouth of every one in Leaping Horse. It's the scream of every faro joint and 'draw'

table. The fellers on the sidewalk have got the laugh of it. Maude's got dopey on him. She's plumb stuck on him. The dame Pap's spilt thousands on has gone back on him for a fool boy she was there to roll.

Things are seething under the surface, and it's the sort of atmosphere Pap mostly lives in. He's crazy mad. And when Pap's crazy, things are going to happen. There's just one end coming. Only one end. That boy's going to get done up, and Pap's to be all in at the doing. Oh, he'll take no chances. There'll be no shriek. That kid'll peter right out sudden. And it'll be Pap who knows how."

"Murray's in the city. Have you seen him?" Kars spoke coldly.

"I saw him yesterday noon. I went to Adler's at lunch time to be sure getting him."

"What did he say?"

"I scared him. Plumb scared him. But it was the same grin. Gee, how that feller grins."

"What did he say?" Kars persisted.

"He'd do all he knew to get the kid away. But he guessed he'd be up against it. He guessed Alec had mighty little use for him, and you can't blame the kid when you think of that grin. But he figgered to do his best anyway. He cursed the kid for a sucker, and talked of a mother's broken heart if things happened. But I don't reckon he cares a cuss anyway. That feller's got one thing in life if I got any sane notion. It's trade. He hasn't the scruples of a Jew money-lender for anything else."

Kars nodded.

"I'm feeling that way--too."

"You couldn't feel otherwise."

"I wasn't thinking of your yarn, Bill," Kars said quickly. "It's something else. That feller's s.h.i.+pped in a thousand rifles, and a big lot of ammunition. I lit on it through John Dunne. What's he want 'em for? I've been asking myself that ever since. He don't need a thousand rifles for trade."

It was Bill's turn for inquiry. It came with a promptness that suggested his estimation of the importance of the news.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"Is he going to wipe out the Bell River outfit?" Kars' eyes regarded his friend steadily.

For some moments no further word was spoken. Each was contemplating the ruthless purpose of a man who contemplated wiping out a tribe of savages to suit his own sordid ends. It was almost unbelievable. Yet a thousand rifles for a small trading post. It was the number which inspired the doubt.

It was Kars who finally broke the silence. He left his seat on the table and stood again at the window with his back turned.

"Guess we best leave it at that," he said.

"Yes. What are you going to do?"

"Look in at the Gridiron, and pa.s.s the time of day with young Alec."

Kars laughed shortly. Then he turned, and his purpose was s.h.i.+ning in his eyes. "Alec's Jessie's brother--and I've got to save that kid from himself."

CHAPTER XIX

AT THE GRIDIRON

Kars was early abroad. He left his apartment on the first floor of the same apartment house which furnished Bill Brudenell with his less palatial quarters, and sauntered down the main street in the direction of the Gridiron.

His mood was by no means a happy one. He realized only too surely that a man bent upon an errand such as he was stood at something more than a disadvantage. His life was made up of the study of the life about him.

His understanding was of the cruder side of things. But now, when action, when simple force of character were his chief a.s.sets, he was called upon, or he had called upon himself, to undertake the difficult task of making a youth, big, strong, hot-headed, mad with the newly tasted joy of living, detach himself from his new life.

Nor was he without qualms when he pa.s.sed the portals of the hotel, which ranked second only in ill-fame to Pap Shaunbaum's.

If the Gridiron possessed less ill-fame than its contemporary it was not because its proprietor was any less a "hold-up" than Pap. It was simply that his methods were governed by a certain circ.u.mspection. He cloaked his misdoings under a display of earnest endeavor in the better direction. For instance, every room displayed a printed set of regulations against anything and everything calculated to offend the customer of moral scruples--if such an one could be discovered in Leaping Horse. Dan McCrae enforced just as many of these regulations as suited him. And, somehow, for all he had drawn them up himself, none of them ever seemed to suit him. But they had their effect on his business. It became the fas.h.i.+on of the men of greater substance to make it a headquarters. And it was his boast that more wealth pa.s.sed in and out of his doors than those of any house in Leaping Horse, except the bank.