Chapter IV. King Hol
There is a very general and very erroneous impression that alcoholbuilds the mood of a man; as a matter of fact it merely makes his temperof the moment fast--the man who takes his first drink with a smile endsin uproarious laughter, and he who frowns will often end in fighting.Vic Gregg did not frown as he drank, but the corners of his lips turnedup a trifle in a smile of fixed and acid pleasantry and his glance wentfrom face to face in the barroom, steadily, with a trifling pause ateach pair of eyes. Beginning with himself, he hated mankind in general;the burn of the cheap whisky within served to set the color of thathatred in a fixed dye. He did not lift his chaser, but his hand closedaround it hard. If some one had given him an excuse for a fist-fight oran outburst of cursing it would have washed his mind as clean as anew slate, and five minutes later he might have been with Betty Neal,riotously happy. Instead, everyone overflowed with good nature, gossip,questions about his work, and the danger in him crystallized. Heregistered cold reasons for his disgust.
Beginning in the first person, he loathed himself as a thick-headedass for talking to Betty as he had done; as well put a burr under one'ssaddle and then feel surprise because the horse bucks. He passed onto the others with equal precision. Captain Lorrimer was as dirty as agreaser; and like a greaser, loose-lipped, unshaven. Chick Stewart was aborn fool, and a fool by self-culture, as his never changing grin amplyproved. Lew Perkins sat in the corner on a shaky old apple barrel andbrushed back his long mustaches to spit at the cuspidor--and miss it. Ifthis were Vic Gregg's saloon he would teach the old loafer more accuracyor break his neck.
"How are you, Gregg?" murmured some one behind him.
He turned and found Sheriff Pete Glass with his right hand alreadyspread on the bar while he ordered a drink for two. That was one of thesheriff's idiosyncrasies; he never shook hands if he could avoid it, andGregg hated him senselessly, bitterly, for it. No doubt every one in theroom noticed, and they would tell afterwards how the sheriff had avoidedshaking hands with Vic Gregg. Cheap play for notoriety, thought Gregg;Glass was pushing the bottle towards him.
"Help yourself," said Gregg.
"This is on me, Vic."
"I most generally like to buy the first drink."
Pete Glass turned his head slowly, for indeed all his motions wereleisurely and one could not help wondering at the stories of hisexploits, the tales of his hair-trigger alertness. Perhaps these halflegendary deeds sent the thrill of uneasiness through Vic Gregg; perhapsit was owing to the singular hazel eyes, with little splotches of redin them; very mild eyes, but one could imagine anything about them.Otherwise there was nothing exceptional in Glass, for he stood wellunder middle height, a starved figure, with a sinewy crooked neck, asif bent on looking up to taller men. His hair was sandy, his face tawnybrown, his shirt a gray blue, and every one knew his dusty roan horse;by nature, by temperament and by personal selection he was suited toblend into a landscape of sage-dotted plains or sand. Tireless as a loboon the trail, swift as a bobcat in fight, hunted men had been known toride in and give themselves up when they heard that Pete Glass was afterthem.
"Anyway you want, partner," he was saying, in his soft, rather huskyvoice.
He poured his drink, barely enough to cover the bottom of his glass,for that was another of Pete's ways; he could never afford to weaken hishand or deaden his eye with alcohol, and even now he stood sideways atthe bar, facing Gregg and also facing the others in the room. But thelarger man, with sudden scorn for this caution, brimmed his own glass,and poised it swiftly. "Here's how!" and down it went.
Ordinarily red-eye heated his blood and made his brain dizzy, itloosened his tongue and numbed his lips, but today it left him cool,confident, and sharpened his vision until he felt that he could seethrough the minds of every one in the room. Captain Lorrimer, forinstance, was telling a jocular story to Chick Stewart in the hope thatChick would set them up for every one; and old Lew Perkins was waitingfor the treat; and perhaps the sheriff was wondering how he could handleVic in case of need, or how long it would take to run him down. Notlong, decided Gregg, breathing hard; no man in the world could put himon the run. Glass was treating in turn, and again the brimming drinkwent down Vic's throat and left his brain clear, wonderfully clear. Hesaw through Betty Neal now; she had purposely played off Blondy againsthim, to make them both jealous.
"Won't you join us, Dad?" the sheriff was saying to Lew Perkins, andVic Gregg smiled. He understood. The sheriff wanted an excuse to orderanother round of drinks because he had it in mind to intoxicate Gregg;perhaps Glass had something on him; perhaps the manhunter thought thatVic had had a part in that Wilsonville affair two years back. That wasit, and he wanted to make Vic talk when he was drunk.
"Don't mind if I do," Lew said, slapping both hands on the bar as if heowned it; and while he waited for his drink: "What are they going to dowith Swain?"
The doddering idiot! Swain was the last man Glass had taken, and LewPerkins should have known that the sheriff never talked about his work;the old ass was in his green age, his second childhood.
"Swain turned state's evidence," said Pete, curtly. "He'll go free, Isuppose. Fill up your glass, partner. Can see you're thirsty yet."
This was to Gregg, who had purposely poured out a drink of the sheriff'sown chosen dimension to see if the latter would notice; this remarkfixed his suspicions. It was certain that the manhunter was after him,but again, in scorn, he accepted the challenge and poured a stiff dram.
"That's right," nodded the sheriff. "You got nothing on your shoulders.You can let yourself go, Vic. Sometimes I wish"--he sighed--"I wish Icould do the same!"
"The sneaky coyote," thought Gregg, "he's lurin' me on!"
"Turned state's evidence!" maundered Lew Perkins. "Well, they's a lot of'em that lose their guts when they're caught. I remember way back in thetime when Bannack was runnin' full blast--"
Why did not some one shut off the old idiot before he was thoroughlystarted? He might keep on talking like the clank of a windmill ina steady breeze, endlessly. For Lew was old-seventy-five, eighty,eighty-five--he himself probably did not know just how old--and he hadlived through at least two generations of pioneers with a myriad storiesabout them. He could string out tales of the Long Trail: Abilene,Wichita, Ellsworth, Great Bend, Newton, where eleven men were murderedin one night; he knew the vigilante days in San Francisco, and earlytimes in Alder Gulch.
"Nobody would of thought Plummer was yaller, but he turned out thatway," droned on the narrator. "Grit? He had enough to fit out twentymen. When Crawford shot him and busted his right arm, he went righton and learned to shoot with his left and started huntin' Jack again.Packed that lead with him till he died, and then they found Jack'sbullet in his wrist, all worked smooth by the play of the bones.Afterwards it turned out that Plummer ran a whole gang; but beforewe learned that we'd been fools enough to make him sheriff. We got toPlummer right after he'd finished hangin' a man, and took him to his owngallows."
"You'd of thought a cool devil like that would of made a good end, buthe didn't. He just got down on his knees and cried, and asked God tohelp him. Then he begged us to give him time to pray, but one of theboys up and told him he could do his prayin' from the cross-beam. Andthat was Henry Plummer, that killed a hundred men, him an' his gang."
"H-m-m," murmured the sheriff, and looked uneasily about. Now that hiseyes were turned away, Vic could study him at leisure, and he wonderedat the smallness of the man. Suppose one were able to lay hands on himit would be easy to--
"See you later, boys," drawled Glass, and sauntered from the room.
Lew Perkins sighed as the most important part of his audiencedisappeared, but having started talking the impetus carried him along,he held Vic Gregg with his hazy eyes.
"But they didn't all finish like Plummer, not all the bad ones. Nosirree! There was Boone Helm."
"I've heard about him," growled Vic, but the old man had fixed hisglance and his reminiscent smile upon the past and his voice wa
s softwith distance when he spoke again.
"Helm was a sure enough bad one, son. They don't grow like him no more.Wild Bill was a baby compared with Helm, and Slade wasn't no man at all,even leavin' in the lies they tell about him. Why, son, Helm was just alobo, in the skin of a man--"
"Like Barry?" put in Lorrimer, drifting closer down the bar.
"Who's he?"
"Ain't you heard of Whistlin' Dan? The one that killed Jim Silent andbusted up his gang. Why, they say he's got a wolf that he can talk tolike it was a man."
Old Lew chuckled.
"They say a lot of things," he nodded, "but I'll tell a man that a wolfis a wolf and they ain't nothin' that can tame 'em. Don't you let 'emfeed you up on lies like that, Lorrimer. But Helm was sure bad. Hekilled for the sake of killin', but he died game. When the boys run himdown he swore on the bible that he's never killed a man, and they madehim swear it over again just to watch his nerve; but he never batted aneye."
The picture of that wild time grew up for Vic Gregg, and the thought offree men who laughed at the law, strong men, fierce men. What would oneof these have done if the girl he intended to marry had treated him likea foil?
"Then they got him ready for the rope," went on Lew Perkins.
"'I've seen a tolerable lot of death,' says Helm. 'I ain't afraid ofit.'"
"There was about six thousand folks had come in to see the end of BooneHelm. Somebody asked him if he wanted anything.
"'Whisky,' says Boone. And he got it.
"Then he shook his hand and held it up. He had a sore finger and itbothered him a lot more than the thought of hangin'.
"'You gents get through with this or else tie up my finger,' he keptsayin'."
"Helm wasn't the whole show. There was some others bein' hung that dayand when one of them dropped off his box, Boone says: 'There's one goneto hell.' Pretty soon another went, and hung there wiggling, and sixtimes he went through all the motions of pullin' his six-shooter andfirin' it. I counted. 'Kick away, old fellow,' says Boone Helm, 'I'll bewith you soon.' Then it came his turn and he hollered: 'Hurrah for JeffDavis; let her rip!' That was how Boone Helm--"
The rest of the story was blotted from the mind of Vic Gregg by the thudof a heavy heel on the veranda, and then the broad shoulders of BlondyHansen darkened the doorway, Blondy Hansen dressed for the dance, withthe knot of his black silk handkerchief turned to the front and abovethat the gleam of his celluloid collar. It was dim in the saloon,compared with the brightness of the outdoors, and perhaps Blondy didnot see Vic. At any rate he took his place at the other end of thebar. Three pictures tangled in the mind of Gregg like three bodies ina whirlpool--Betty, Blondy, Pete Glass. That strange clearness ofperception increased and the whole affair lay plainly before him. Bettyhad sent Hansen, dressed manifestly for the festival, to gloat over Vicin Lorrimer's place. He was at it already.
"All turned out for the dance, Blondy, eh? Takin' a girl?"
"Betty Neal," answered Blondy.
"The hell you are!" inquired Lorrimer, mildly astonished. "Ithought--why, Vic's back in town, don't you know that?"
"He ain't got a mortgage on what she does."
Then, guided by the side-glance of Lorrimer, Hansen saw Gregg, andhe stiffened. As for Vic, he perceived the last link in his chain ofevidence. Hansen was going to a dance, and yet he wore a gun, and therecould be only one meaning in that: Betty had sent him down there to windup the affair.
"Didn't see you, Vic," Blondy was saying, his flushed face seemingdoubly red against the paleness of his hair. "Have something?"
"I ain't drinkin'," answered Gregg, and slowly, to make sure that no onecould miss his meaning, he poured out a glass of liquor, and drank itwith his face towards Hansen. When he put his glass down his mind wasclearer than ever; and with omniscient precision, with nerveless calm,he knew that he was going to kill Blondy Hansen; knew exactly wherethe bullet would strike. It was something put behind him; his mind hadalready seen Hansen fall, and he smiled.
Dead silence had fallen over the room, and in the silence Gregg heard amuffled, ticking sound, the beating of his heart; heard old Lew Perkinsas the latter softly, slowly, glided back out of the straight line ofdanger; heard the quick breathing of Captain Lorrimer who stood pastypale, gaping behind the bar; heard the gritted teeth of Blondy Hansen,who would not take water.
"Vic," said Blondy, "it looks like you mean trouble. Anyway, you justnow done something that needs explaining."
He stood straight as a soldier, rigid, but the fingers of his right handtwitched, twitched, twitched; the hand itself stole higher. Very calmly,Vic hunted for his words, found them.
"A cattle rustler is bad," he pronounced, "a hoss thief is worse, butyou're the lowest sneak of the lot, Blondy."
Again that silence with the pulse in it, and Vic Gregg could feel thechill which numbed every one except himself.
The lower jaw of Captain Lorrimer sagged, and his whisper came out injerking syllables: "God Almighty!" Then Blondy went for his gun, and Vicwaited with his hand on the butt of his own, waited with a perfect, coldforeknowledge, heard Blondy moan as his Colt hung in the holster, sawthe flash of the barrel as it whipped out, and then jerked his ownweapon and fired from the hip. Blondy staggered but kept himself fromfalling by gripping the edge of the bar with his left hand; the right,still holding the gun, raised and rubbed across his forehead; he lookedlike a sleeper awakening.
Not a sound from any one else, while Vic watched the tiny wraith ofsmoke jerk up from the muzzle of his revolver. Then Blondy's gun flasheddown and clanked on the floor. A red spot grew on the breast of Hansen'sshirt; now he leaned as if to pick up something, but instead, slidforward on his face. Vic stepped to him and stirred the body with histoe; it wobbled, limp.