Black Jack, Max Brand [snow like ashes .txt] 📗

was doing fine. Got a real voice, Charlie

has. Regular branded baritone, I’ll tell a man.”

 

“Strike up agin for us, Charlie,” said Pollard good-naturedly. “You don’t

never make much more noise’n a grizzly.”

 

But Charlie looked down at his hands and a faint spot of red appeared in

his cheek. Obviously he was much embarrassed. And when he looked up, it

was to fix a glance of cold suspicion upon Terry, as though warning him

not to take this talk of social acquirements as an index to his real

character.

 

“Get us some coffee, Kate,” said Pollard. “Turned off cold coming up the

hill.”

 

She did not rise. She had turned around to her music again, and now she

acknowledged the order by lifting her head and sending a shrill whistle

through the room. Her father started violently.

 

“Damn it, Kate, don’t do that!”

 

“The only thing that’ll bring Johnny on the run,” she responded

carelessly.

 

And, indeed, the door on the left of the room flew open a moment later,

and a wide-eyed Chinaman appeared with a long pigtail jerking about his

head as he halted and looked about in alarm.

 

“Coffee for the boss and the new hand,” said Kate, without turning her

head, as soon as she heard the door open. “Pronto, Johnny.”

 

Johnny snarled an indistinct something and withdrew muttering.

 

“You’ll have Johnny quitting the job,” complained Pollard, frowning. “You

can’t scare the poor devil out of his skin like that every time you want

coffee. Besides, why didn’t you get up and get it for us yourself?”

 

Still she did not turn; but, covering a yawn, replied: “Rather sit here

and play.”

 

Her father swelled a moment in rage, but he subsided again without

audible protest. Only he sent a scowl at Terry as though daring him to

take notice of this insolence. As for the other men, they had scattered

to various parts of the room and remained there, idly, while the boss and

the new hand drank the scalding coffee of Johnny. All this time Pollard

remained deep in thought. His meditations exploded as he banged the empty

cup back on the table.

 

“Kate, this stuff has got to stop. Understand?”

 

The soft jingling of the piano continued without pause.

 

“Stop that damned noise!”

 

The music paused. Terry felt the long striking muscles leap into hard

ridges along his arms, but glancing at the other four, he found that they

were taking the violence of Pollard quite as a matter of course. One was

whittling, another rolled a cigarette, and all of them, if they took any

visible notice of the argument, did so with the calmest of side glances.

 

“Turn around!” roared Pollard.

 

His daughter turned slowly and faced him. Not white-faced with fear, but

to the unutterable astonishment of Terry she was quietly looking her

father up and down. Pollard sprang to his feet and struck the table so

that it quivered through all its massive length.

 

“Are you trying to shame me before a stranger?” thundered the big man.

“Is that the scene?”

 

She flicked Terry Hollis with a glance. “I think he’ll understand and

make allowances.”

 

It brought the heavy fist smashing on the table again. And an ugly

feeling rose in Hollis that the big fellow might put hands on his

daughter.

 

“And what d’you mean by that? What in hell d’you mean by that?”

 

In place of wincing, she in turn came to her feet gracefully. There had

been such an easy dignity about her sitting at the piano that she had

seemed tall to Terry. Now that she stood up, he was surprised to see that

she was not a shade more than average height, beautifully and strongly

made.

 

“You’ve gone about far enough with your little joke,” said the girl, and

her voice was low, but with an edge of vibrancy that went through Hollis.

“And you’re going to stop—pronto!”

 

There was a flash of teeth as she spoke, and a quiver through her body.

Terry had never seen such passion, such unreasoning, wild passion, as

that which had leaped on the girl. Though her face was not contorted,

danger spoke from every line of it. He made himself tense, prepared for a

similar outbreak from the father, but the latter relaxed as suddenly as

his daughter had become furious.

 

“There you go,” he complained, with a sort of heavy whine. “Always flying

off the handle. Always turning into a wildcat when I try to reason with

you!”

 

“Reason!” cried the girl. “Reason!”

 

Joe Pollard grew downcast under her scorn. And Terry, sensing that the

crisis of the argument had passed, watched the other four men in the

room. They had not paid the slightest attention to the debate during its

later phases. And two of them—Slim and huge Phil Marvin—had begun to

roll dice on a folded blanket, the little ivories winking in the light

rapidly until they came to a rest at the farther end of the cloth.

Possibly this family strife was a common thing in the Pollard household.

At any rate, the father now passed off from accusation to abrupt apology.

“You always get me riled at the end of the day, Kate. Damn it! Can’t you

never bear with a gent?”

 

The tigerish alertness passed from Kate Pollard. She was filled all at

once with a winning gentleness and, crossing to her father, took his

heavy hands in hers.

 

“I reckon I’m a bad one,” she accused herself. “I try to get over

tantrums—but—I can’t help it! Something—just sort of grabs me by the

throat when I get mad. I—I see red.”

 

“Hush up, honey,” said the big man tenderly, and he ran his thick fingers

over her hair. “You ain’t so bad. And all that’s bad in you comes out of

me. You forget and I’ll forget.”

 

He waved across the table.

 

“Terry’ll be thinking we’re a bunch of wild Indians the way we been

actin’.”

 

“Oh!”

 

Plainly she was recalled to the presence of the stranger for the first

time in many minutes and, dropping her chin in her hand, she studied the

new arrival.

 

He found it difficult to meet her glance. The Lord had endowed Terry

Hollis with a remarkable share of good looks, and it was not the first

time that he had been investigated by the eyes of a woman. But in all his

life he had never been subjected to an examination as minute, as

insolently frank as this one. He felt himself taken part and parcel,

examined in detail as to forehead, chin, and eyes and heft of shoulders,

and then weighed altogether. In self-defense he looked boldly back at

her, making himself examine her in equal detail. Seeing her so close, he

was aware of a marvellously delicate olive-tanned skin with delightful

tints of rose just beneath the surface. He found himself saying inwardly:

“It’s easy to look at her. It’s very easy. By the Lord, she’s beautiful!”

 

As for the girl, it seemed that she was not quite sure in her judgment.

For now she turned to her father with a faint frown of wonder. And again

it seemed to Terry that Joe Pollard made an imperceptible sign, such as

he had made to the four men when he introduced Terry.

 

But now he broke into breezy talk.

 

“Met Terry down in Pedro’s—”

 

The girl seemed to have dismissed Terry from her mind already, for she

broke in: “Crooked game he’s running, isn’t it?”

 

“I thought so till today. Then I seen Terry, here, trim Pedro for a flat

twenty thousand!”

 

“Oh,” nodded the girl. Again her gaze reverted leisurely to the stranger

and with a not unflattering interest.

 

“And then I seen him lose most of it back again. Roulette.”

 

She nodded, keeping her eyes on Terry, and the boy found himself desiring

mightily to discover just what was going on behind the changing green of

her eyes. He was shocked when he discovered. It came like the break of

high dawn in the mountains of the Big Bend. Suddenly she had smiled

openly, frankly. “Hard luck, partner!”

 

A little shivering sense of pleasure ran through him. He knew that he had

been admitted by her—accepted.

 

Her father had thrown up his head.

 

“Someone come in the back way. Oregon, go find out!”

 

Dark-eyed Oregon Charlie slipped up and through the door. Everyone in the

room waited, a little tense, with lifted heads. Slim was studying the

last throw that Phil Marvin had made. Terry could not but wonder what

significance that “back way” had. Presently Oregon reappeared.

 

“Pete’s come.”

 

“The hell!”

 

“Went upstairs.”

 

“Wants to be alone,” interrupted the girl. “He’ll come down and talk when

he feels like it. That’s Pete’s way.”

 

“Watching us, maybe,” growled Joe Pollard, with a shade of uneasiness

still. “Damned funny gent, Pete is. Watches a man like a cat; watches a

gopher hole all day, maybe. And maybe the gent he watches is a friend

he’s known for ten years. Well—let Pete go. They ain’t no explaining

him.”

 

Through the last part of his talk, and through the heaviness of his

voice, cut another tone, lighter, sharper, venomous: “Phil, you gummed

them dice that last time!”

 

Joe Pollard froze in place; the eyes of the girl widened. Terry, looking

across the room, saw Phil Marvin scoop up the dice and start to his feet.

 

“You lie, Slim!”

 

Instinctively Terry slipped his hand onto his gun. It was what Phil

Marvin had done, as a matter of fact. He stood swelling and glowering,

staring down at Slim Dugan. Slim had not risen. His thin, lithe body was

coiled, and he reminded Terry in ugly fashion of a snake ready to strike.

His hand was not near his gun. It was the calm courage and self-confidence of a man who is sure of himself and of his enemy. Terry had

heard of it before, but never seen it. As for Phil, it was plain that he

was ill at ease in spite of his bulk and the advantage of his position.

He was ready to fight. But he was not at all pleased with the prospect.

 

Terry again glanced at the witnesses. Every one of them was alert, but

there was none of that fear which comes in the faces of ordinary men when

strife between men is at hand. And suddenly Terry knew that every one of

the five men in the room was an old familiar of danger, every one of them

a past master of gun fighting!