The Trail Rider/Chapter 21
HARTWELL and Fannie loitered along the street until they saw the bank teller leave Uncle Boley's shop with Mrs. McCoy; turned and walked back toward the bank after they had passed on the other side, and waited in that vicinity until the widow came out with the package in her hand.
Mrs. McCoy held straight for Uncle Boley's shop, walking rapidly. They followed, well behind her, and stood in front of Noggle's barbershop, a little way down the street, waiting for her to leave. She had been in the shop but a minute when Uncle Boley came hurrying out, bare-headed, his beard broken loose from under his suspenders and flying in the wind. He looked round him this way and that, like a man who hears a swarm of bees, his hoary face tipped up to the sky.
Presently he popped back into the shop, only to come out again at once with his hat on and repeat his queer weather-observation antics. Texas stood enjoying the old soul's excited maneuvers, not fully understanding what they meant, but he believed part of them related to a search of the heavens for the Angel Gabriel, part of them to a mundane exploration of the environs for himself.
"We'll go in here," he said.
Texas was in no mood for receiving either the credit or the thanks of Uncle Boley and Mrs. McCoy. He never wanted to be known in the transaction if he could keep his part in it covered, and the thought that it might come out on him before he could get away from Cottonwood made him cross. He cared little whether Noggle wanted his custom in that shop or not.
Noggle was contemplating the reflection of his own charms in the glass, adding a little powder here, smoothing an eyebrow there, giving a turn to the end of his long mustache with his beautiful soft fingrs. He turned with a hand still at the curling end of that adornment, to see who was breaking in upon his preening hour for a shave.
"Bennie, sit down and read the paper till I'm through," Texas directed.
"Good merning," said Noggle, pronouncing the good old word with a gimlet-hole sound. There would have been no distinction in saying it like everybody else in Cottonwood, and no style.
"Hi're you, sir?" Texas returned, his fingers busy with his cravat, his coat already on the hook. "I want a hair-cut and shave."
He spread himself out in the chair, and Noggle stood by as if he teetered on indecision.
"All right," he yielded at last, "all right. But it hurts a man's business—"
"Damn your fool business, sir!" said Texas, lifting his head savagely.
Noggle shrank back from him, pressing his hand to his mouth as if he had bitten his tongue. Over in the corner, where she stood looking at the cigarette cards tacked to the wall, Fannie laughed.
Noggle began to snip round the edges of Hartwell's long hair with his shears, pausing now and then to tap them on the back of the comb, for no apparent reason in the barbering world. Noggle could not be expected to hold silence very long, not even while clipping an undesirable customer, especially when he was itching all over inside with big news. But it was along toward the end of the hairtrimming that he melted enough to begin.
"Cowboy in here from the Diamond Tail this morning said the Texas fever's broke out over there," said he.
"That so?"
Texas spoke as if the news was of little concern to him, but Fannie turned with a sharp exclamation, looking at Noggle with big eyes.
"Lost twenty-odd two days ago," he said, "and spreadin' like fire."
"Too bad," said Texas, unmoved.
Noggle clipped on, nodding over Hartwell's head at Fannie, whose interest made her a better mark.
"Clean 'em out if it keeps on spreading they say, and make hard times here in the Arkansaw Valley. Well, the beauty of my business is, a man can pick up and foiler the money."
"Did you say he was from the Diamond Tail?" Fannie asked.
"Yes, that's Sawyer's brand, you know. He said it was spreadin' in on the Open Hat, too. I guess somebody oncorked a bottle of hornets when they drove them Texas cattle in here!"
Nobody offered any word to combat or agree with the assertion. Noggle pressed his subject back into the chair and began to rub the lather into his chin, keeping time to the movement with his foot like a man playing a banjo.
"I wouldn't like to stand in the shoes of the man who was to blame for them tick-bringin' cattle gittin' on this range," he said. "Cowboy that was in here from the Diamond Tail—I give him a hair-fcut, shave, shampoo, massage, and singe—said the cow-men was comin' in here in a day or two to look for the feller and handle him around some. If I knew who that man was I'd tip it off to him, as a friend, so he could make his gitaway."
"You're very kind and generous, sir," said Texas, pushing Noggle's finger and thumb away from the hold on his upper lip; "and if I happen to meet the feller you speak of I'll pass the word on to him."
"A man owes something to a feller that's stood up for him," said the barber, but looking about him and craning his long neck to sweep the street and make sure that his words would not be heard by anybody through the open door; "and I'm one of the kind that remembers my friends, no matter if my business is apt to suffer by it."
"No man's business ever suffered very long because he had the honor to do what was right," Texas assured him, his opinion of the barber rising a considerable degree.
"I sent for Malvina and told her to pass the tip on to that feller if she saw him."
"You're a sport, Nick!" said Fannie warmly.
Noggle suspended his operations, razor lifted high, to look at her, a cast of hauteur on his narrow face.
"Time for you to begin shavin', if you're ever goin' to, kid," said he.
"I shave with a hot wagon-tire," Fannie said, turning to study the cigarette pictures again.
"Yes, and there's one feller in this town I'd like to shave with my six-shooter!"
Noggle looked steadily at Fannie, his chin thrust out, his powdered forehead wrinkled in a scowl. Perhaps he was trying the effect on her of an expression of fierceness which he had studied out before his mirror. If so, it looked as if he'd have to design a new one, for Fannie only laughed at him and turned her back.
"If you're hintin' at Zeb Smith, I can lead you to him," Texas offered.
"I don't want bloodshed, I don't want to git mixed up in any more of it if I can help it," said Noggle, as if his past had been drenched with the sanguinary fluid that waters human hearts, "but I ain't a goin' to hide out from no man, neither."
"I'll send him down to the shop, if it will oblige you any, sir."
"Don't you do it, don't you do it!" Noggle protested with undignified haste.
"If you don't wish it, sir—"
"I don't want to muss up the shop."
It takes a bluffer to color a thing like that with the significance, the unexpressed ferocity, that gives it weight. Noggle had practiced the art a long time; there wasn't a match for him between the Arkansas and the Rio Grande, with Zeb Smith in the contest.
"Yes, sir, I reckon they'll be some ground tore up and bushes bent down the day you two meet," said Texas gravely, his hand in his pocket for the fee.
"Your money ain't good here," said Noggle generously.
"Sir, I insist on—"
"It don't pass in this shop, Texas. You know, there'll be a up-train at two ten, and a down-one at four nineteen. Or if you didn't want to wait that long, you might buy a horse."
"Yes, sir, I reckon it could be done."
"You could sell him up at Wichita, you know."
"I guess I might be able to sell him up there," said Texas, his head bent thoughtfully, his hand still in his pocket; "but I'll not have any need, thank you, sir. I'll be around here a day or two more."
On the street Texas faced toward Uncle Boley's shop.
"I'll go on down to the hotel," said Fannie.
"Uncle Boley he'll be wantin' to see you, Fannie."
"I'm not going up there, I tell you!" She spoke sharply, a surge of blood in her dark-stained face.
"You don't need to mind Uncle Boley," he persuaded.
Fannie stood rasping her spur over the end of a board in the sidewalk, stubbornly refusing to lift her head.
"That McCoy kid'll be up there, suckin' a stick of candy!" she said.
"Why, Miss Fannie!"
"Oh, it's all right, Texas—go on up and see her," she said, her voice trembling, her face turned away. "She's a good kid, I haven't got anything against her. Go on up and see her if you want to."
"Fannie, you mustn't think that way about me. Miss McCoy can't be anything in this world to me."
"You care for her—you care a whole lot for her!"
"Her way and mine, Fannie—"
"I gave you my cards and you played them for her—you thought of her all the time!"
"You didn't want me to hold Stott up—that would have been blackmail, Fannie."
"You held him up for her!"
"That wasn't a hold-up, it was restitution. Stott owed them; he didn't owe you and me anything that money would pay."
Fannie thought it over a little while, then she turned frankly to him, her hand extended, a smile on her lips, a struggle in her throat to hold down the tears.
"I know it, Texas. I've run with crooks so long I can't see straight all at once."
"You're all right, Fannie; you're as straight as a plumb-line."
"No, money wouldn't square what Stott owes you and me, Texas. I guess we'll have to cross that off—if I'm going to stay square."
"We've got to cross off a lot of things in this world," sighed he.
"Yes, when you stand clean and think square, I guess you have, kid. You're clean—it isn't hard for you. So is that girl with the big brown eyes. Maybe if I was—"
"You're as square as a die!" he protested.
"Oh, go on up and see her!" said Fannie crossly.
There were not many people in the street at that hour of the forenoon, and the few who passed behind them where they stood on the edge of the sidewalk facing into the street heeded them no more than they would have any pair of cowboys. They were as much alone, indeed, as they would have been in seclusion, as far as public notice was concerned. Texas put his hand on her shoulder and looked into her face.
"Fannie, there's no reason why I should go to Uncle Boley's, not any more at all, as I know of. We'll go back to the ho-tel, and set down and talk things over, for our roads are beginning to stretch out from the forks, and we'll be ridin' our ways, far apart, di-rec'ly."
Again Texas saw that convulsive struggle in her throat, and her head was bent, her face turned from him, as if she was ashamed to let him see that there were tears on her cheeks, and her eyes half-blinded in their hot rain.
"All right, Texas," she said.
When they came to the hotel, Texas stopped, his shoulders back, his chin lifted, as if he turned his face up to feel the rain after a drought. The strong southern breeze lifted his broad hat-brim.
"The wind's blowin' right up from Taixas this morning; you can taste the taste of home in it," said he. "Wouldn't you like to take a little walk on out a-past the houses, Fannie, where it can come to you clean?"
For answer she started forward, and he walked beside her, looking now and then with all the compassion of his soul into her face. She did not turn her eyes to meet his, but kept on at his side, her great spurs clashing over the uneven planks, her head bent as if sorrow had descended upon her and wrapped her in its cloud.
They turned from the unfenced highway well beyond the last house of Cottonwood, and sat on a little knoll, where the wind from Texas came blowing free, full of the indefinable spices of autumn, soft and beguiling, and home-calling as a maiden's song.
"I wish I had my hair," said she, after a long silence.
"It was too bad to cut it off thataway, Fannie. Couldn't it 'a' been combed out?"
"Maybe."
"It was the finest hair I ever saw on a lady's head, bar none. Well, it'll grow out again, Fannie."
"Yes," she said, "it'll grow out, but you'll be gone then, Texas."
"Yes, I'll be gone."
"If I'd known for sure you were here I wouldn't have had it cut. But I didn't know whether you were alive or dead, and I was afraid to come back a girl. Between them, Stott and Mackey would have killed me, Texas."
"I wouldn't put it past them."
"Yes, and I'll tell you, Texas, Stott won't own up to the cattlemen to clear you. He'll wiggle out of it some way."
"I'll call him up to the lick-log in the morning."
"He'll not be afraid of us now, since he's paid that money back to the McCoys; he'll tell us to go to hell."
"Maybe he will, Fannie."
"Nobody will believe a man as generous as him would shoot his pardner in the back. I guess we cut the string and let him go when we put that up to him, Texas."
"Well, it's done; he owed the money, and it's paid—I reckon it's paid."
Fannie rolled over on the grass, stretched herself on her stomach, propping herself on her elbows. She chewed a joint of bluestem, and took her hat off to let the wind have its way, saying nothing for a long time. Then:
"Texas?"
"Yes, Fannie."
"Don't you think you ought to take the train out of here to-day?"
"I'm not runnin' away from any man, or set of men, Fannie. I'm not ready to leave just now."
"Stott won't tell the cattlemen you're square, Texas, and they'll get you. They'll be in here fifty to one, and you'll never have a show for your money at all."
"If Stott don't clear me, I'll have to do it myself, Fannie. I've got an appointment with a man that's undertaken to settle it in his own way for the rest of them. That's one reason why I can't leave till he comes."
Fannie got up, looking at him with a question in her frightened eyes.
"What man, Texas?"
"His name is Winch. I don't reckon you know him."
The name seemed to daze her. She sat staring at him, her lips open, her eyes distended, her breath held as if she listened.
"I've been hearing about him for years. He'll never give you a square deal, Texas—he never gave any man a square deal. Dee Winch is as crooked as a snake!"