The Trail Rider/Chapter 20
STOTT was at his desk early, for banking-hours ran long in Cottonwood. After the habit of bankers, who seem to be so eager that the world see what they are doing, when in reality so little of it is ever known, Stott's desk was near the one window in the front of the brick building on the corner.
This was a low structure, built especially for the bank, and it was an ugly and uninviting place for any man to enter and leave his money. The word "Bank" was cut into the limestone lintel of the door, and painted again in gilt across the window near which Stott displayed his financial prowess.
As seen from the street that morning, Henry Stott was a figure to inspire a sense of solidity, even if one could read no deeper at a passing glance through his gilt-adorned window-pane. He was a large man, at work without a coat, heavy suspenders over his white shirt, no necktie to his collar; a man of pasty-whiteness, of broad, soft face, and small eyes placed so far apart that they looked as if nature had designed them for watching both sides of the fence at once.
Banking in that part of the country in those days was a game of chance for both the bank and its patrons. A gambling-house was a safer and surer business for the man that owned it, and the chances were about even between the two institutions when it came to profit and surety for the patrons. It was a significant fact that more banks than gambling-houses failed in the cattle country in those times.
But, unpromising as the bank appeared, and uncouth as the banker, large transactions were the daily rule within those uninviting walls. Loans of a hundred thousand dollars had been no unusual thing in the experience of Henry Stott, short loans at that, with interest as high as ten per centum monthly.
Cattlemen in a hole were glad to accept his hard conditions until they could turn their stock, and consider it a favor. When they sold, their money, such as remained to them, went on deposit in Stott's bank, to be loaned out to others on the same unstable security. The risks were big for the banker, and his profits probably justified thereby.
So there was no lack of money in the squat little bank, no matter what day or hour you might come to it, and no unusual sight, indeed, to see a cattleman get off the train from Kansas City, walk into the bank, open his old, battered gripsack, and pile up seventy-five or eighty thousand dollars for deposit as carelessly as some of us would handle collars. Those were the days on the range when men made money in a hurry when they made it, and lost it on the jump when it began to go. There wasn't any plodding, slow-going medium road for a faint-hearted man.
There were but two people regularly engaged in the bank besides Stott, the bookkeeper and receiving-paying teller. Neither of these had arrived when Texas Hartwell and Fannie Goodnight walked in through the wide-swung door and confronted Stott at his desk. A revolver lay on the desk within Stott's instant grasp, a rifle leaned against the wall not three feet away, and he seemed to hesitate between them as his early visitors drew up to the railing behind which he sat.
Stott was facing the door, and, as his hand crept now stealthily toward his revolver weighting the pile of papers at his side, his eyes sought the street as if for the waiting horses, or accomplices, of the two who had appeared so unexpectedly.
"It isn't a raid, Mr. Stott, sir," Texas hastened to assure him. "We've come to talk over a matter of business with you."
"Well, what can I do for you?" Stott asked, his ludicrous, high, metallic voice in absurd keeping with his bulk.
He looked them over sharply, sure of Texas at the first glance, as his expression betrayed, but altogether at sea regarding Fannie, who had added colored spectacles to her disguise.
"I see you know me," Texas said.
"I was just wonderin' if I did," Stott replied, affably enough, and apparently at ease, "but you've got me."
"It was night-time when we met, and you couldn't see my face, but from what you said at that time, sir, I was sure you knew who you were ropin' up."
A little color came into Stott's face as Texas spoke, but he laughed with a show of good humor, like a man who appreciates the spirit of a joke, even though he doesn't understand it.
"I guess I don't belong to your lodge," he said.
As he spoke his fingers were tapping the stock of his revolver paper-weight, and his quick little eyes were following every movement of foot and hand of the pair before him.
"We came in on you early, Mr. Stott, to save makin' these explanations before folks, and we haven't got time to trifle away on useless introductions. You know me, and you know who's with me."
"We've come to talk over old times with you, Henry—away back old times."
In spite of his stolidity Stott's face changed at Fannie's first word. He jumped to his feet, revolver in hand.
"Get to hell out of here!" he ordered.
"You'd better put down that gun, Henry," Fannie cautioned with reproachful scorn.
"You can't come in here and work any of your blackmail on me!"
"Sir, we're not even goin' to try it."
Texas had drawn back a step from the railing. He stood with his hand on his gun, every muscle of his body set.
"Get to hell out of here!" Stott repeated, his revolver lifted as if to fire a signal. Texas made a little motion of caution, an eloquent command of restraint, with his left hand, the other on his pistolstock.
"Put down that gun, sir!" he ordered. "We're not intendin' to rob you—we're after a settlement of another kind."
Stott was purple in the congestion of rage and fright. His moment had gone, and he seemed to realize it, for the weapon in his hand wavered. He made an indecisive movement as if to put it down, another as if to point it toward the ceiling and fire. But his moment had passed.
If he had fired it on the impulse he could have carried it for an attempt to rob the bank, and no testimony to the contrary ever would have convinced the public of Cottonwood. Besides that, there wouldn't have been anybody left to testify. Now it was too late to summon help, and Stott knew it. Texas had not drawn his gun; Fannie had not even put her hand to the weapon she wore. A banker couldn't rise up and give the alarm of thieves every time armed men came in his door, for eight out of ten of his customers wore guns.
"We want to talk Southern cattle for a minute, for one thing, unless you'd rather we'd talk it over with Duncan and the association," Texas said, a politeness in his voice that he did not feel in his heart.
Stott threw the gun down with a jerk of the head, in the manner of a man who yields to pressure against his judgment.
"Well, what do you want?"
"A little dab of justice," Texas said. "Your clerk's just stepped in next door for his morning snort, and he'll be here direc'ly. When he comes, you tell him we're goin' to your private room back yonder to talk over a deal. There'll not be any shootin', and there'll not be any cussin' and snortin', Mr. Stott, sir, unless you start it up yourself."
The teller came in before Texas had finished speaking; a little wrinkled old man, wearing his hat with juvenile tilt over his left ear, walking in a veritable alcoholic fog. Stott addressed him as "major," with a word about the business ahead, and led the way to his private room, with "President" painted on its door. Texas closed the door after them.
Stott threw back the top of his desk with a clatter, and sat down, facing them, with his thick hands spread on his thighs, a surly defiance in his face.
"Accordin' to your intentions both of us ought to be dead down in the brush on Clear Creek," Texas said.
Stott leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head, as if he had suddenly thrown away his worry and his ill-humor along with it, and had settled down into his unruffled business front.
"How far do you suppose your word would go against mine with the cattlemen on this range?" he wanted to know.
"I don't count," Texas admitted. "That's why I'm here to send you out to talk for me."
"You're a slick pair!" Stott sneered. "Now you're here, say something."
"One way or another, I aim to say enough to satisfy you, Mr. Stott."
Fannie had dropped wearily into a chair and taken off her hat. She sat looking up at Texas, who stood before Stott in the dignity of his clean life and clean conscience, a superman compared with the gross, heavy-feeding banker. If there was admiration in her eyes, surely it was justified; and confidence, certainly it was not altogether misplaced.
Stott looked at her, a sneering smile lifting his thick lip.
"Fannie, what're you goin' to tell them?" he asked in a manner of friendly banter.
"I'll tell enough to crack your neck, you swill-guzzler!"
Stott's anger burned up his caution in a flash. He unclasped his thick hands, leveling a finger at her face, a vile name on his tongue.
"You and Mackey went into this to hold me up!" he charged.
Fannie leaned toward him, her face dark with the flush that sprang into it, holding out one hand to stop Texas, who had started at the name which Stott had applied to her as if he would turn it back down the foul lane of his throat.
"I went into it to draw a card to fill the hand I waited a long time to play against you, Henry Stott. It wasn't because Johnnie Mackey—"
"And you threw both of us down for this Texas rattler! If Mackey's half the man I think he is he'll cut your throat for that little trick!"
"He's not even that much of a man!"
"I'm sorry I didn't—"
"Let me talk a minute, Henry," said Fannie, something of her old sauciness in her manner, broken in spirit as she seemed to be. "Ever since I began to help Mackey shove his counterfeit money and raised bills, I've been holding a hand against you, waiting for the day when I was ready to make a big clean-up and quit."
"You never had anything on me, you little—"
"Johnnie's not much of a man, but he will stand by his friends—up to a certain time," she continued, unmoved by Stott's interruption. "We fussed over it the night before I went down there to help you trap Texas. Johnnie tried to kill me that time. I was afraid of the little devil after that."
Stott rolled his head, laughed a little, played with a pencil on his desk. He seemed rather amused by this attempt to trouble the waters of his security.
"I never trusted Mackey, even when we were as thick as we could be mixed, for he's a man that will throw anybody to save himself, and I started out early to get a cinch on him that I could twist when the time came. I got it, Henry."
"Well, go an' hold him up," Stott suggested mockingly.
"Mackey was afraid to use what he had on you, and I was satisfied to hold off on it as long as I didn't need the money. When you started him up in business here, Johnnie considered things square between him and you."
"I never started him up in business here, or anywhere else," Stott declared, red with his vehemence.
"Johnnie was satisfied, he was making ten dollars to your one. I got to thinking the hand I held against you never would be any good, and I was glad enough to draw another to fill. I'm full now; I hold a royal flush."
"And the settlement you're going to make to-day, sir," said Texas very gently, his voice low and well controlled, "goes back to the time Mackey raised that six-thousand-dollar note of Ed McCoy's for you to read sixty thousand, the very day you murdered McCoy with your own hand."
"You're a liar!" said Stott, springing to his feet, his face as white as the dead. "I'll make you prove it!"
"You'd better set down and keep cool," Texas advised.
"Do you realize what it means to charge a man with murder?" Stott demanded. His hand shook as he gripped the back of his chair.
"To the last word I do, Mr. Stott."
"I'll hand you over to the sheriff—I'll make you sweat for this dirty attempt to blackmail me!"
"If you're still in that notion five minutes from now, go and do it, sir."
Fannie stepped in front of Stott as he moved as if to leave the room in his high and virtuous heat.
"You can call the devil when we're through with you, Stott," she said.
"If Mackey's in this—"
"Mackey left Cottonwood last night, sir."
"We had a session with him yesterday afternoon, Henry. He sold his joint to Jud Springer last night."
Stott sat down again. Every word they said seemed to drive him a little lower, until he leaned forward, his head down, an ungainly, dispirited lump.
"Zeb Smith is drunk this morning, and locked up in a safe place," Texas added, speaking close to Stott's ear, as if in confidence. "He'll keep where he is without any sheriff."
"After you went to all that expense to have the wrong man killed, Henry," Fannie mocked, "and old Zeb came back to hold you up again."
"He's ready to go into court and swear he saw you shoot Ed McCoy. Now, if you want to fetch sheriffs into this case, sir, you can go right on and do it."
Stott sat up with a sudden wrench, making his chair complain.
"Nobody in this country would believe that drunken burn on oath, any more than they would you two buzzards!" he declared, seeming to gather a breath of new courage.
"It might be that a jury in a court-room wouldn't take much stock in him, sir, but a jury of cattlemen on the open range is a different set of men," said Texas very solemnly. "Mackey wasn't willing to take the chance, and he was only your hired hand."
"You can't prove it—you can't prove a word of it!"
"But we can prove southern cattle on you to a fare-you-well."
Stott sat in heavy meditation a little while, the two who had brought him to such unexpected and heavy judgment waiting silently by.
"It's blackmail—I'll never pay it!" he muttered.
"You couldn't hire us to touch a cent of your money, Stott," Texas corrected him, his voice like the word of judgment in the banker's ear.
"Then what do you want?" Stott appealed, lifting his miserable face, staring at them in a dumb wonder, turning his glance from one to the other of that unaccountable pair.
"There's an old debt that's stood cryin' to your deaf ears many a day, Mr. Stott." Texas reminded him, "and this is the time you'll listen to its demands."
"What do you mean, Hartwell?"
"I mean the difference between six thousand legal debt and sixty thousand forged, with inter-ust from that day to this."
"You can't prove it!" said Stott again, weakly. "It can't be proved!"
"You might as well call it sixty thousand, to make it look better. We'll let you put any kind of a face to it you can think up, Stott, to save you in front of the world on that. You can send for Mrs. McCoy and count the cash money down in her hand, and tell her it's your gratitude for past favors done you by Ed McCoy, or that it's your heart moved by your great prosperity, or that you've got religion—or anything you want to tell her. That done, we cross off your crime and let you free on murder."
Stott sat thinking it over. Perhaps the turn that things took when they scorned his money put a newer and graver complexion on their case in his eyes; doubtless he realized that he couldn't make the plea of blackmail stick against them before the public. On their part, taking Mackey's skulking retreat into consideration, they could ruin him in an hour.
By the payment of the money to Mrs. McCoy as demanded by this unfathomable Texas stranger, his position would be strengthened against the shock of the cattlemen's discovery of his duplicity in running in the Texas herd. The glow of public approbation of such a deed would be warm and profitable. It would be almost worth the money—if these two dangerous people were out of the way.
There were many things for Stott to consider, indeed, in those hard-pressing moments. But behind all the argument that he could bring up to support a denial, plain and final, of their demand, stood the panic of his own guilty heart which cried out that no sacrifice was too dear to buy immunity from this ruinous exposure.
"What guarantee?" he asked, with his business caution, "will I have, if I do what you say, that you'll get out of the country and keep still?"
"There are conditions to add, sir, before any guarantee at all will be given," Texas told him. "First, do what I tell you—send for Mrs. McCoy and pay her sixty thousand dollars, cash money. You brought back more than that with you this morning from the sale of that first bunch of southern cattle. Mrs. McCoy is at Uncle Boley Drumgoole's shop, waitin' on your message, sir."
"So you've told it all!"
Stott looked up sharply, his words the yelp of a beaten whelp. There stood in his face the ghost of his guilty years, the specter that had haunted him with the dread of discovery since the day of his cowardly shot in the prairie silences, with the unseen Zeb Smith lying low behind a sumac-clump.
"She don't know anything about it, sir, nor what she's there for. Send for her; we'll leave it to you to deal square with her, believin' that it will be done."
"All right, Hartwell," Stott agreed, nodding his heavy head, the fright of his cowardly soul almost shriveling his gross body, "I promise you I'll deal it straight to Ed McCoy's women—I'll deal it straight."
"When you've paid her, cash money in hand, and refused to take a cent of it back on deposit in this bank if she offers it to you, you'll send word to Malcolm Duncan, or carry it to him yourself, that will clear me of the charge of sellin' out my honor and trust to the men that brought that southern herd up and run it over me, sir."
"Hartwell, I'll hand you five thousand dollars if you'll let things stand like they are on that, and leave the country."
Stott begged it of him abjectly, holding out his guilty hands.
Hartwell drew back a step hurriedly, away from the possible contamination of Stott's unholy touch.
"You'll do what I set for you to do," he said sternly, "and bring back results within twenty-four hours, or you'll answer to me with your life!"