The Greatest Adventure Books - MacLeod Raine Edition. William MacLeod Raine

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      Chapter 19.

       A Villon of the Desert

       Table of Contents

      When Alice Mackenzie looked back in after years upon the incidents connected with that ride to the Rocking Chair, it was always with a kind of glorified pride in her villain-hero. He had his moments, had this twentieth-century Villon, when he represented not unworthily the divinity in man; and this day held more than one of them. Since he was what he was, it also held as many of his black moods.

      The start was delayed, owing to a cause Leroy had not foreseen. When York went, sleepy-eyed, to the corral to saddle the ponies, he found the bars into the pasture let clown, and the whole remunda kicking up its heels in a paddock large as a goodsized city. The result was that it took two hours to run up the bunch of ponies and another half-hour to cut out, rope, and saddle the three that were wanted. Throughout the process Reilly sat on the fence and scowled.

      Leroy, making an end of slapping on and cinching the last saddle, wheeled suddenly on the Irishman. “What's the matter, Reilly?”

      “Was I saying anything was the matter?”

      “You've been looking it right hard. Ain't you man enough to say it instead of playing dirty little three-for-a-cent tricks—like letting down the corral-bars?”

      Reilly flung a look at Neil that plainly demanded support, and then descended with truculent defiance from the fence.

      “Who says I let down the bars? You bet I am man enough to say what I think; and if ye think I ain't got the nerve—”

      His master encouraged him with ironic derision. “That's right, Reilly. Who's afraid? Cough it up and show York you're game.”

      “By thunder, I AM game. I've got a kick coming, sorr.”

      “Yes?” Leroy rolled and lit a cigarette, his black eyes fixed intently on the malcontent. “Well, register it on the jump. I've got to be off.”

      “That's the point.” The curly-headed Neil had lounged up to his comrade's support. “Why have you got to be off? We don't savvy your game, cap.”

      “Perhaps you would like to be major-domo of this outfit, Neil?” scoffed his chief, eying him scornfully.

      “No, sir. I ain't aimin' for no such thing. But we don't like the way things are shaping. What does all this here funny business mean, anyhow?” His thumb jerked toward Collins, already mounted and waiting for Leroy to join him. “Two days ago this world wasn't big enough to hold him and you. Well, I git the drop on him, and then you begin to cotton up to him right away. Big dinner last night—champagne corks popping, I hear. What I want to know is what it means. And here's this Miss Mackenzie. She's good for a big ransom, but I don't see it ambling our way. It looks darned funny.”

      “That's the ticket, York,” derided Leroy. “Come again. Turn your wolf loose.”

      “Oh! I ain't afraid to say what I think.”

      “I see you're not. You should try stump-speaking, my friend. There's a field fox you there.”

      “I'm asking you a question, Mr. Leroy.”

      “That's whatever,” chipped in Reilly.

      “Put a name to it.”

      “Well, I want to know what's the game, and where we come in.”

      “Think you're getting the double-cross?” asked Leroy pleasantly, his vigilant eyes covering them like a weapon.

      “Now you're shouting. That's what I'd like right well to know. There he sits”—with another thumbjerk at Collins—“and I'm a Chink if he ain't carryin' them same two guns I took offen him, one on the train and one here the other day. I ain't sayin' it ain't all right, cap. But what I do say is—how about it?”

      Leroy did some thinking out loud. “Of course I might tell you boys to go to the devil. That's my right, because you chose me to run this outfit without any advice from the rest of you. But you're such СКАЧАТЬ