The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

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СКАЧАТЬ G riders crossed and held their course until the lights of Nelson glimmered up from the prairie. They swept into town and down the street. Gillette dismounted before the principal saloon and strode inside.

      The place was nearly empty; but up at the bar two men stood side by side—Barron Grist and his foreman. Grist was angry and erect; the foreman's body sagged against the bar for support and his head was down on the mahogany top, rolling from side to side in evident pain. A bottle, half empty, was gripped in one fist. They were talking when Gillette entered. And then, aware of his presence, both of them turned toward him, Grist in a rage that lifted him out of his negative self and put a definite character upon his smooth cheeks. The ranch boss pulled himself together, one hand whipped away a patch of blood congealed on his temple. The very sight of Gillette affected him like the presence of a ghost; he crouched.

      The light played on Gillette. He was gray with dust, his face was a mask—a mask once seen not to be forgotten. He had harried the rustlers as he would have harried a pack of wolves, he had killed, and the fury of all this was settled along the rugged features. He was like his kind, slow to wrath and slow to forgive and the lees of the fight flared out of the deep eye sockets; his words sang resonantly across the dead, silent room.

      "I told you, Grist, I didn't want war. You're a powerful outfit, we're just a handful. But you started it, and we'll see it to a finish. The kind you'll remember to your last day."

      "Don't know what you're talking about!" was Grist's irritable answer. "You're drunk."

      "You sent your men to rustle my cattle and break me. Well, some of those men are still out there. And they'll be there till you go bury 'em. Down in Texas we kill rustlers. This is a lesson for Dakota renegades, Grist."

      "You're crazy," muttered Grist. "Trying to pin something on me to cover up your own dirty tracks? Don't stare at me like that, man! I resent it."

      Gillette turned his attention to the ranch boss. That man swayed and his elbows straightened; a pinched gravity covered his face; his half-closed eyes clung doggedly to Gillette's right arm. "Maybe you've had your medicine, friend. Who told you a Texan wouldn't fight? We called your bluff tonight. How did you like it?"

      The ranch boss was rigid from his shoulders to his hips; his head tipped. "It ain't finished yet," he grumbled.

      "Shut up!" snapped Grist. "You talk too much."

      But the ranch boss was beyond bridling. "It ain't finished yet! Somebody's goin' to pay. You foot the bill, you wild, blood- swillin' savage!"

      His arm blurred in the light; Gillette swayed on his heels. A table crashed to the floor, chips scattered, and Barron Grist pulled himself backward, crying: "I'm out of this—I'm out..." Whatever else he said was lost in the roar that ran along the space and up to the ceiling. Gillette's gun tilted upward. The ranch boss of the P.R.N. staggered and tipped against the bar, elbows hooked over it. He seemed to be nodding, and then his head sagged and he fell to his knees and for another instant tried to gather himself. It was of no use. He was dead before the gun dropped from his fingers.

      "I'm out of this!" repeated Grist.

      "If you've got a conscience, may God give you pity," said Gillette. "These fellows died at your orders. If you try to rustle another Circle G cow I'll come after you personally."

      He passed out. In the darkness of the street he stopped and leaned against the saloon wall. The sand trickled out of him, and the cold air went through him like a knife. He was sick, physically sick, and the muscles of his arms and legs trembled. He wanted a drink, yet he hadn't the heart to go back there and see the ranch boss lying in the puddling blood. What had he done? Only what the country demanded of him, nothing more, nothing less. And as be looked towards the heavens he felt a thousand years old. He was not the man who had come out of the East with fine ideas in his head. How soon all that insecure stuff faded. All that remained now was the simple rules he had been reared in: never to go back on his word, to give all humans the right to live the way they wanted to live in return for the same right for himself. To respect rights and to see his own respected. That was all.

      He drew a breath. A man got scarred in the process of passing through the world. That was inevitable, that was life. Only a fool expected to dwell in paradise; nobody had a right to dodge his chores, no matter how dirty they might be. A man paid as he went. He moved from the wall, seeing his crew patiently waiting. Boots scuffed along the walk, and a strange voice arrested his progress.

      "You Gillette of the Circle G? Yeah. Was you a-lookin' for a gent by name of San Saba? Yeah. Fella built like a cotton wood an' sorrel by complexion?"

      The man was old and seamed and obscured in the shadows. Gillette stared at him. "How do you know?" was his blunt reply.

      "Heard you advertisin' same hereabouts some time ago. Well, be you still lookin'?"

      "Where is he?"

      The man's voice trailed off. "On the trail to Deadwood. Saw him four days ago. With a yaller-haired podner." And the man vanished into an alley.

      Gillette mounted and rode homeward with his men. Here was another chore he had staved off as long as he could. Seemed like these things came in bunches. Oh, it was easy enough to forget them, to excuse himself from performing them. Yet if he did he would never have another moment's peace. A man had to play with the rules. On over the ford they went, and along the familiar trail to the ranch house, a light shining out to them. Quagmire already was in from the prairie, morose and subdued.

      "A long ride for Nig Akers. Joe Blunt is only pinked. But Nig's done. Man is mortal. Tom, this is val'able country. Texas men is buried in it."

      Gillette studied the southwestern sky. Deadwood was over there. He nodded and went into the house. Kit Ballard waited for him, framed in the bedroom door; the girl's black hair tumbled down in rippling ropes, and she held a robe around her.

      "Go back to bed, girl. I can't talk to-night."

      "To do what—to sleep? How can I sleep? I prayed tonight, and I never prayed before. Whatever you have done, I don't care. Wherever you choose to stay, I don't care. Tom—come here to me!"

      He shook his head, the weariness pulling his shoulders down. "I'm leavin' to-night."

      "For where?"

      "Deadwood. San Saba's in Deadwood."

      She knew the story, she knew the purpose of that journey. Her face went dead white, and when she raised her head the higher yellow light pooled in the triangle of her throat. As he looked at her all the loneliness and hunger of his solitary nature rose to torment him. No man living could miss the beauty or the allure of Christine Ballard. What was lacking in her for such a man as he was? What more could he want? The sacrifice was all hers, the surrender all hers. So he thought while the hunger grew to an obsession. A man was only flesh and blood. He pivoted on his heels and started for the door. She was in front of him instantly, throwing herself against him. He had never known what strength lay in a woman's arms once they were around a man's neck; he had never heard a woman cry in this suppressed manner. It seemed to put her on the torture rack. And all the while the incense of her hair and the warmth of her body assailed his senses.

      "Kit—why couldn't this have happened a long time ago?"

      The crying stopped. She stepped aside, and her echo of his question rang passionately through the room. "Why couldn't it have happened, Tom? People have to live to learn, don't they? Where else will you find another woman any better?"

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