Chapter XXVII. The Sixth Man
It caused a quick turning of heads.
"I don't want to put you out none," said the applicant gently. Hisvoice was extremely gentle, and there was about him all the shrinkingaloofness of the naturally timid. The deputy looked him over with quietamusement--slender fellow with the gentlest brown eyes--and then with aquick side glance invited the crowd to get in on the joke.
"You ain't puttin' me out," he assured the other. "Not if you pay foryour own ammunition."
"Oh, yes," answered the would-be man-hunter, "I reckon I could affordthat."
He was so serious about it that the crowd murmured its amusement insteadof bursting into loud laughter. If the man was a fool, at least he wasnot aggressive in his folly. They gave way and he walked slowly towardsthe counter and stepped into the little open space beside the master ofceremonies. Very obviously he was ill at ease to find himself the centerof so much attention.
"I s'pose you been practicin' up on tin-cans?" suggested the deputy,leaning on the counter.
"Sometimes I hit things and sometimes I don't," answered the stranger.
"Well," and this was put more crisply as the deputy brought out a largepad of paper, "jest gimme your name, partner."
"Joe Cumber." He grew still more ill at ease. "I hear that even if youhit the mark you got to talk to the sheriff himself afterwards?"
"Yep."
The applicant sighed.
"Why d'you ask?"
"I ain't much on words."
"But hell with your gun, eh?" The deputy sheriff grinned again, but whenthe other turned his head toward him, his smile went out, suddenly whilethe wrinkle of mirth still lay in his cheek. The deputy stroked his chinand looked thoughtful.
"Get your gun ready," he ordered.
The other slipped his hand down to his gun-butt and moved his weapon tomake sure that it was perfectly loose in the leather.
"Ain't you goin' to take your gun out?" queried the deputy.
"Can I do that?"
"I reckon not," said the deputy, and looked the stranger straight in theeyes.
His change to deadly earnestness put a hush over the crowd.
Across the target, not tossed easily as it had been for Pop Giersberg,but literally thrown, darted the line of white, while the gun flippedout of its holster as if it possessed life of its own and spoke. Thewhite line ended half way to the farther side of the target, and therevolver slid again into hiding.
A clamor of amazement broke from the crowd, but the deputy lookedsteadily, without enthusiasm, at the stranger.
"Joe Cumber," he said, when the noise fell away a little, "I guessyou'll see the sheriff. Harry, take Joe Cumber up to Pete, will you?"
One of the bystanders jumped at the suggestion and led the other fromthe room, with a full half of the crowd following. The deputy remainedbehind, thoughtful.
"What's the matter?" asked one of the spectators. "You look like you'dseen a ghost."
"Gents," answered the deputy, "do any of you recollect seein' thisfeller before?"
They did not.
"They's something queer about him," muttered the deputy.
"He may be word-shy," proffered a wit, "but he sure ain't gun-shy!"
"When he looked at me," said the deputy, more to himself than to theothers, "it seemed to me like they was a swirl of yaller come into hiseyes. Made me feel like some one had sneaked up behind me with a knife."
In his thoughtfulness his eyes wandered, and wandering, they fell uponthe notice of the reward for the capture, dead or alive, of DanielBarry, about five feet nine or ten, slender, with black hair and browneyes.
"My God!" cried the deputy.
But then he relaxed against the counter.
"It ain't possible," he murmured.
"What ain't possible?"
"However, I'm goin' to go and hang around. Gents, I got a crazy idea."
He had no sooner started toward the door than he seemed to gain suretyout of the motion.
"It's him!" he cried. He turned toward the others, white of face. "Comeon, all of you! It's him! Barry!"
But in the meantime Harry had gone on swiftly to the office of thesheriff with "Joe Cumber." Behind him swirled the curious crowd and fortheir benefit he asked his questions loudly.
"Partner, that was sure a pretty play you made. I've seen 'em alltry out to crack them balls, but I never seen none do it the way youdid--with your gun in the leather at the start. What part of the countrymight you be from?"
The other answered gently: "Why, from over yonder."
"The T O outfit, eh?"
"Beyond that."
"Up in the Gray Mountains? That so! I s'pose you been on trails likethis before?"
"Nothin' to talk about."
There might have been a double meaning in this remark, and Harry lookedtwice to make sure that there was no guile.
"Well, here we are." He threw open a door which revealed a bald-headedclerk seated at a desk in a little bare room. "Billy, here's a gent thatcracked it the first whack and started his gun from the leather, by God.He--"
"Jest kindly close the door, Harry," said Billy. "Step in, partner.Gimme your name?"
The door closed on the discomfited Harry, and "Joe Cumber" stoodclose to it, apparently driven to shrinking into the wall in hisembarrassment, but while he stood there his hand fumbled behind him andturned the key in the lock, and then extracted it.
"My name's Joe Cumber."
"Joe Cumber,"--this while inscribing it.
"Age?"
"About thirty-two, maybe."
"Don't you know?"
"I don't exactly."
His eyes were as vague as his words, gentle, and smiling.
"Thirty-two?" said Billy sharply. "You look more like twenty-five to me.S'pose we split the difference, eh?"
And with a grin he wrote: "Age twenty-two or three."
"Business?"
"Trapper."
"Good! The sheriff is pretty keen for 'em. You gents in that game gota sort of nose for the trail, mostly. All right, Cumber, you'll seeGlass."
He stood at the door.
"By the way, Cumber, is that straight about startin' your shot with yourgun in the holster?"
"I s'pose it is."
"You s'pose?" grunted the clerk. "Well, come on in."
He banged once on the door and then threw it open. "Joe Cumber, Pete.And he drilled the ball startin' his gun out of the leather. Here's hiscard."
He closed the door, and once more the stranger stood almost cringingagainst it, and once more his fingers deftly turned the key--softly,silently--and extracted it from the lock.
The sheriff had not looked up from the study of the card, for readingwas more difficult to him than man-killing, and Joe Cumber had anopportunity to examine the room. It was hung with a score of pictures.Some large, some small, but most of them enlargements, it was apparentof kodak snapshots, for the eyes had that bleary look which comes inphotographs spread over ten times their intended space. The faces hadlittle more than bleary eyes in common, for there were bearded men, andsmooth-shaven faces, and lean and fat men; there were round, cherubiccountenances, and lean, hungry heads; there were squared, protrudingchins, and there were chins which sloped away awkwardly toward the neck;in fact it seemed that the sheriff had collected twenty specimens torepresent every phase of weakness and strength in the human physiognomy.But beneath the pictures, almost without exception, there hung weapons:rifles, revolvers, knives, placed criss-cross in a decorative manner,and it came to "Joe Cumber" that he was looking at the galaxy of thedead who had fallen by the hand of Sheriff Pete Glass. Not a face meantanything to him but he knew, instinctively, that they were the chosenbad men of the past twenty years.
"So you're Joe Cumber?"
The sheriff turned in his swivel chair and tossed his cigarette buttthrough the open window.
"What can I do for you?"
"I got an idea, sheriff, that maybe you'd sort of like to have mypict
ure."
The sheriff looked up from his study of the card, and having lookedup his eyes remained riveted. The other no longer cringed withembarrassment, but every line of his body breathed a great happiness.He was like one who has been riding joyously, with a sharp wind in hisface.
There was a distant rushing of feet, a pounding on the door of the nextroom.
"What's that?" muttered the sheriff, his attention called away.
"They want me."
"Wait a minute," called the voice of Billy without.
"I'll open the door. By God, it's locked!"
"They want me--five feet nine or ten, slender, black hair and browneyes--"
"Barry!"
"Glass, I've come for you."
"And I'm ready. And I'll say this"--he was standing, now, and hisnervous hands were at his sides--"I been hungerin' and hopin' for thistime to come. Barry, before you die, I want to thank you!"
"You've followed me like a skunk," said Barry, "from the time you killeda hoss that had never done no harm to you. You got on my trail when Iwas livin' peaceable."
There was a tremendous beating on the outer door of the other room, butBarry went on: "You took a gent that was livin' straight and you made asneak and a crook out of him and sent him to double-cross me. You ain'tworth livin'. You've spent your life huntin' men, and now you're at theend of your trail. Think it over. You're ready to kill ag'in, but areyou ready to die?"
The little dusty man grew dustier still. His mouth worked.
"Damn you," he whispered, and went for his gun.
It was out, his finger on the trigger, the barrel whipping into line,when the weapon in Barry's hand exploded. The sheriff spun on his heeland fell on his face. Three times, as he lay there, dead in all exceptthe instinctive movement of his muscles, his right hand clawed at theempty holster at his side. The sixth man had died for Grey Molly.
The outer door of Billy's room crashed to the floor, and heavy feetthundered nearer. Barry ran to the window and whistled once, very highand thin. It brought a black horse racing around a corner nearby; itbrought a wolf-dog from an opposite direction, and as they drew upbeneath the window, he slid out and dropped lightly, catlike, to theground. One leap brought him to the saddle, and Satan stretched outalong the street.