The Trail Rider/Chapter 5
THERE were certain precautions to be observed in Cottonwood in killing a man, for no matter how worthless or obscure a man might be in that town, nobody knew what powerful friends or relatives might be uncovered elsewhere by his sudden death. Friends, relatives, money in the family, political influence, sometimes meant the utmost penalty of the law for his slayer. So it was a matter of common prudence to have the plea of self-defense to stand on, with witnesses to maintain it.
For that reason alone the four gun-slingers did not pull out weapons and kill Hartwell the moment that he stepped into the street. A quarrel had to be provoked first, and the victim badgered into putting his hand toward his gun, or making a start as if he intended to do it. Some shadow of justification must be contrived. Many a man had been killed on the cattle-ranges for starting to take his handkerchief out of his pocket. That was the beginning of the cowboy fashion of wearing that article around the neck.
Texas stood a moment framed in the open door, in the manner of a man undecided which way he will turn when he has no definite business ahead of him. The four men across the street scattered out of the close formation that they had maintained as they came along, as if they expected hostilities to open immediately. Texas did not betray any evidence that he was even aware of their existence, much less their presence not more than sixty feet distant, where they stood convicted of their intention by their flighty start.
There was a telegraph-pole in the edge of the sidewalk a little way along the street from Uncle Boley's door, the planks trimmed to fit round it. Texas sauntered along to it with the deliberate air of a man who had the night ahead of him, leaned his back against it, and began to roll a cigarette. Two of the mayor's committee started across the street, the other two shifting down to a stand diagonally across from the spot where Texas stood.
Texas ran his eye over them, and kept it on them sharply, for all that he seemed engrossed in the task of contriving his cigarette. They had the appearance of men such as stood lookout over faro games, and worked as bouncers in the rough resorts common to that country and time. Three of them wore white shirts and the little narrow-brimmed derby hats which were popular among the frontier gamblers of that day. The other was a composition of cowboy and sport. Texas recalled having seen him at the show.
The pair approaching Texas crossed over to the sidewalk a little way below him, where they stood waiting for their companions to join them. These latter came over in the cautious manner of men stalking game, walking two yards apart, one a little in advance of the other, watching Texas for the first movement of hostile demonstration.
People in shop doors and on the street knew at once what these preparations portended. Many battles had been fought out in the open on that ground, frequently with more damage to those not engaged than to the principals. It had come to the point where nobody took chances, and with this gathering of the battle-cloud before their doors the storekeepers retreated to the backs of their shops, and put something solid between them and the street; pedestrians dodged behind buildings and into the shelter of open doors. In an emergency like that a sod house was the most popular structure within reach.
One of the men came up within three yards of Texas, watching him at every step as closely as he would have watched a trapped bear.
"Sport, there'll be a train along here in twenty minutes, and you're goin' to take it," he announced.
Texas glanced up from the contemplation of a match that had failed to ignite against the telegraph-pole, with a look in his face as if he had been philosophizing on its weakness, and drawing comparisons between it and the failure of a friend in the hour of necessity.
"Were you addressin' me, sir?" he asked.
"I was addressin' you, pardner. You take to the middle of the road and trot ahead of us, and you make a start right now!"
Texas tried the match again, looked at the head of it with a little cloud as of sorrow and disappointment in his face, as if the undoubted discovery of its unworthiness had hurt him deeply. He stood a moment, the unlit cigarette in his lips, his head bent a trifle, as if thinking more of the match than the man.
"I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm not ready to leave this evenin'."
Indifferent, unmoved, as he seemed, Texas was set like a hair-trigger, watching every man of them, the match in his fingers, his hand just a few inches above the butt of his gun.
Heads were put cautiously around corners of buildings and out of doors to investigate this delay and silence in the street. The spokesman of the gunners' committee came half a step nearer.
It was not meant that Texas should take the train out of Cottonwood that evening, or ever again. The command to take the road and trot ahead of them had been given with the accent of insult to make it gall deeper, in the belief that it would be resented by the man of spirit whom they knew Texas to be. His failure to fly up all afire as they had expected, and give them what they would call a justification for their deed was a circumstance upon which they had not counted.
Inside his little shop Uncle Boley felt the strain of waiting. He hoped that Texas had not changed his mind after coming in sight of them and given them the dodge; he hoped it sincerely, for the honor of the gun that he wore. Unable to stand the uncertainty of the situation any longer, he went to the door and stood there boldly, his long beard like a white apron down his vest.
"I'm sorry to refuse," said Texas, and with that word flipped the unburned match from his fingers.
At that little movement the man in front of Texas threw his hand to his weapon. Uncle Boley always said that he lost track of things from that point. But he was certain that the man who started to draw his gun never got any farther with it than just clear enough of the holster to let it fall when Texas nipped him through the wrist-bone.
There was a good deal of smoke and a lot of noise around the telegraph-pole where Texas stood with his back to it, and Uncle Boley was so excited that he found himself out on the sidewalk, right in the middle of things, when he got hold of the swift-running events again.
The man who had started to sling down on Texas was holding his crippled arm, making no effort to pick up his gun with his whole hand. The other three were not in sight, but some shots came from the corner of a building fifty yards down the street, doing no damage.
Texas was loading his gun, his cigarette in his lips, quite calm and undisturbed. There were two little hard hats on the sidewalk where the three men had stood, a hole in each of them that Uncle Boley said he could have shoved his fist through.
The crowd came filling into the street as silently as water, not a word in any man's mouth. The shot hats were picked up, the press swallowed the man with the shattered wrist, and people with white faces and big, wondering eyes stood off a little way in a ring around Texas, with a strained, fearful respect in their attitude, as if ready to burst away and run at his slightest movement.
Uncle Boley pushed his way through to Texas. The young man had put his pistol in the holster, and was standing with his head bent a little, in his thoughtful, contemplative pose, as if bowed with regret for the necessity of the swift adjustment he had made in that unfair attempt to take his life. Uncle Boley said afterward that he knew Texas was not hit, because he didn't stand on his legs like a man with a bullet in him. Uncle Boley had seen too many of them in that fix to make a mistake.
"You got 'em, ever' dern one of 'em!" Uncle Boley said, his old eyes lively with the pride that seemed to lift him and make him young again.
"No, sir, I got mostly hats," Texas replied, his eye-warming smile kindling a glimmer for a moment on his lips.
"Yes, and that crowd'll know who to monkey with next time, I bet you a button!" the old man said, turning to the people round him, giving it off with impressive authority. "Come on in, Texas, gol dern 'em!"
It was a high and mighty moment for Uncle Boley when he opened the crowd on the sidewalk to his little shop door, Texas coming along behind, a hand on the old man's shoulder with something in the touch of unbounded gentleness and affection.
A commotion in the crowd caused them to stop at the door and look back. Texas's right hand hovered over his revolver in that ready, watchful poise that he had held when he stood with his back to the telegraph-pole, the match in his fingers.
But the gun-slingers were not rallying to battle again. It was the mayor and the city marshal. The mayor stopped near the pole, where there was a wide blot of blood on the boards of the sidewalk, a trail running off from it marking the way the crippled man had gone.
"They didn't get him!" said the mayor with a curse.
"He's over there," said somebody. The mayor looked and saw Texas waiting with his old whiskered friend for the outcome of the mayor's miscarried plot.
"Arrest that man!" the mayor ordered, giving it as a general command to the public.
"You let that kid alone, Johnnie," said a soft, calm voice behind Texas.
Texas looked to see who had lifted a word for him in that place, where every face expressed either hate of him or fear. It was the lady in the green velvet dress, her little silver trinkets and ornaments white against the rich cloth in the blur that was coming into the passing day. Texas put his hand to his hat in grateful acknowledgment. She smiled as the wind moved the long hair on his temples.
"I saw it all," she said, speaking to the mayor with a cold, commanding directness. "You let that kid alone!"
A sneer jerked the mayor's face, which grew paler at her word. He was a slender man of medium height, with a clerkly fairness of skin, fair hair cut close to his small head, small ears pressed tight against his skull. But a man with something behind the mask of his commonplace face, something ungrasped at the first look, which grew elusive as one studied it and groped to define it; a something that left a sense of disquietude in the mind, a feeling that this man would come again into the business or the tragedy of one's days, and for no good purpose ever.
He turned his back to her with a quick, uplifting shake of the head, as of defiance, or threat of future adjustment, pushed into the crowd and disappeared. With another smile, and a direct look into his eyes that brought the blood to Hartwell's lean cheeks, the velvet lady followed after the mayor. Uncle Boley touched his young friend's arm; they went in and shut the door.
"You showed them light-heels!" Uncle Boley exulted. "Yes, and I'll bet four bits Johnnie Mackey will have to do some tall lookin' around before he can hire another crowd to tackle that job, by granger!"
"It was uncommonly generous for that young lady to speak up for me," said Texas reflectively, still in that mood of thoughtful depression that seemed to have settled over him like a cloud.
"I don't know who that Fannie Goodnight is, but she's got a rope on Johnnie Mackey's leg. Yes, and I'll bet four bits she can flop him quicker'n she did that shadder of a steer any time she wants to. That white-eyed son-of-a-gun's a-scairt of her; he wilted like a frosted turnip when she dressed him down."
"He did seem to act like he'd taken orders from her before. Well, sir, do you reckon I'll be taken up for what I had to do?"
"They can't take a man up in Cottonwood for defendin' his life," said Uncle Boley, a sort of triumphant pride in the immunities of his town. "The thing's settled as fur as any lawin's goin' to come in. I reckon a hundred people could be called up that saw them fellers crowd that fight on you."
"I hope they could," sighed Texas.
"I was standin' right there in that door when that feller made that pass to sling his gun down on you."
Uncle Boley chuckled at the recollection.
"You moved so dang swift I couldn't tell how you done it, but I can swear till the cows come home that he made the first break toward a gun."
"I'm glad to hear you say it, sir. That young lady remarked that she saw it, too. Two reliable witnesses ought to get a man off from a little fuss like that."
Texas unbelted the gun and offered it to the old man.
"That's a good and a true gun, sir. It came up to what was expected of it, like a friend a man can depend on."
"Keep it; buckle it on you and wear it, son. I've been waitin' for a man to come along that was big enough to stand up under Ed McCoy's gun. It's yours now."
A flush of pride came over the good, homely face of the young man as he drew the big gun from the holster and laid its long barrel in his palm. He stood looking at it with such a tenderness in his eyes as might have gladdened a woman's heart.
"I hope I'll never be called on to sling this gun down on any man again," he said, his voice earnest and low, "and I never will draw it except to defend my life or what belongs to me, or the life or property of somebody not able to fight for himself."
It was as if he pronounced the words of a vow, or the spirit of Ed McCoy had come to confront him, demanding a pledge of his worthiness.
"And I'm a goin' to turn my face around, sir, and see if there isn't some justice to be had for those left behind by the man that used to wear this gun. If the day ever comes that I have to draw it in that cause. I'll use it till I drop with it in my hand, so help me God!"
"Amen!" said Uncle Boley, his head bowed as if he had listened to a prayer.