The Girl at the Halfway House, Emerson Hough [best summer books .TXT] 📗

enough to hold two hundred horses, with comfortable space for roping, and the snubbing post was grooved with the wear of many ropes. The central street needed no paving, for it was worn hard as flint. Long rows of cattle chutes lined the railroad yards, whence came continuous din of bellowing, crowding, maddened cattle, handled with ease and a certain exultation by men who had studied nothing but this thing. Horsemen clattered up and down the street day and night—riding, whether drunk or sober, with the incomparable confidence of the greatest horse country the world has ever known. Everywhere was the bustle of a unique commerce, mingled with a colossal joy of life. The smokes from the dugouts and shacks now began to grow still more numerous in the region round about, but there were not many homes, because there were not many women. For this reason men always kill each other very much more gladly and regularly than they do in countries where there are many women, it appearing to them, perhaps, that in a womanless country life is not worth the living. A few "hay ranches," a few fields even of "sod corn," now began to show here and there, index of a time to come, but for the most part this was yet a land of one sex and one occupation. The cattle trade monopolized the scene. The heaps of buffalo bones were now neglected. The long-horned cattle of the white men were coming in to take the place of the curved-horned cattle of the Indians. The curtain of the cattle drama of the West was now rung up full.

The sheriff finished the cleaning of his six-shooter and tossed the oiled rag into the drawer of the table where he kept the warrants. He slipped the heavy weapon into the scabbard at his right leg and saw that the string held the scabbard firmly to his trouser-leg, so that he might draw the gun smoothly and without hindrance from its sheath. He knew that the new bad man wore two guns, each adjusted in a similar manner; but it was always Bill Watson's contention (while he was alive) that a man with one gun was as good as a man with two. Sheriff Watson made no claim to being a two-handed shot. He was a simple, unpretentious man; not a heroic figure as he stood, his weight resting on the sides of his feet, looking out of the window down the long and wind-swept street of Ellisville.

Gradually the gaze of the sheriff focused, becoming occupied with the figure of a horseman whose steady riding seemed to have a purpose other than that of merely showing his joy in living and riding. This rider passed other riders without pausing. He came up the street at a gallop until opposite the office door, where he jerked up his horse sharply and sprang from the saddle. As he came into the room he pulled off his hat and mopped his face as far as he could reach with the corner of his neckerchief.

"Mornin', Bill," he said.

"Mornin', Curly," said the sheriff pleasantly. "Lookin' for a doctor?
You're ridin' perty fast."

"Nope," said Curly. "Reckon it's a shade too late fer a doctor."

The sheriff was gravely silent. After a while he said, quietly:"

"Any trouble?"

"Yep. Plenty."

"Who?"

"Why, it's Cal Greathouse. You know Cal. This is his second drive. His cows is down on the Rattlesnake bottoms now. He was camped there two weeks, not fur from my place. Last week he goes off west a ways, a-lookin' fer some winter range that won't be so crowded. He goes alone. Now, to-day his horse comes back, draggin' his lariat. We 'lowed we better come tell you. O' course, they ain't no horse gettin' away f'm Cal Greathouse, not if he's alive."

The sheriff was silent for some time, looking at his visitor straight with his oxlike eyes. "Did Cal have much money with him?" he asked, finally.

"Not so awful much, near's the boys can tell. Mebbe a few hundred, fer spendin' money, like."

"Had he had any furse with ary feller down in there lately?"

"Nope, not that any one knows of. He just done went off over the range, an' fanned out, seems like, without no special reason."

The sheriff again fell into thought, slowly chewing at a splinter. "I'll tell you," he said at length, slowly, "I kain't very well git away right now. You go over an' git Cap Franklin. He's a good man. Pick up somebody else you want to go along with you, an' then you start out on Cal's trail, near as you can git at it. You better take along that d——d Greaser o' yourn, that big Juan, fer he kin run trail like a houn'. You stop at all the outfits you come to, fer say fifty miles. Don't do nothin' more'n ask, an' then go on. If you come to a outfit that hain't seen him, an' then another outfit furder on that has seen him, you remember the one that hain't. If you don't git no track in fifty mile, swing around to the southeast, an' cut the main drive trail an' see if you hear of anything that-away. If you don't git no trace by that, you better come on back in an' tell me, an' then we'll see what to do about it furder."

"All right, Bill," said Curly, rising and taking a chew of tobacco, in which the sheriff joined him. "All right. You got any papers fer us to take along?"

"Papers?" said the sheriff contemptuously. "Papers? Hell!"

CHAPTER XXVI IKE ANDERSON

Ike Anderson was drunk—calmly, magnificently, satisfactorily drunk. It had taken time, but it was a fact accomplished. The actual state of affairs was best known to Ike Anderson himself, and not obvious to the passer-by. Ike Andersen's gaze might have been hard, but it was direct. His walk was perfectly decorous and straight, his brain perfectly clear, his hand perfectly steady. Only, somewhere deep down in his mind there burned some little, still, blue flame of devilishness, which left Ike Anderson not a human being, but a skilful, logical, and murderous animal.

"This," said Ike Anderson to himself all the time, "this is little Ike Anderson, a little boy, playing. I can see the green fields, the pleasant meadows, the little brook that crossed them. I remember my mother gave me bread and milk for my supper, always. My sister washed my bare feet, when I was a little, little boy." He paused and leaned one hand against a porch post, thinking. "A little, little boy," he repeated to himself.

"No, it isn't," he thought. "It's Ike Anderson, growing up. He's playing tag. The boy tripped him and laughed at him, and Ike Anderson got out his knife." He cast a red eye about him.

"No, it isn't," he thought. "It's Ike Anderson, with the people chasing him. And the shotgun. Ike's growing up faster, growing right along. They all want him, but they don't get him. One, two, three, five, nine, eight, seven—I could count them all once. Ike Anderson. No mother. No sweetheart. No home. Moving, moving. But they never scared him yet—Ike Anderson. . . . I never took any cattle!"

An impulse to walk seized him, and he did so, quietly, steadily, until he met a stranger, a man whose clothing bespoke his residence in another region.

"Good morning, gentle sir," said Ike.

"Good morning, friend," said the other, smiling.

"Gentle sir," said Ike, "just lemme look at your watch a minute, won't you, please?"

Laughingly the stranger complied, suspecting only that his odd accoster might have tarried too long over his cups. Ike took the watch in his hand, looked at it gravely for a moment, then gave it a jerk that broke the chain, and dropped it into his own pocket.

"I like it," said he simply, and passed on. The stranger followed, about to use violence, but caught sight of a white-faced man, who through a window vehemently beckoned him to pause.

Ike Anderson stepped into a saloon and took a straw from a glass standing on the bar, exercising an exact and critical taste in its selection. "I'm very thirsty," he remarked plaintively. Saying which, he shot a hole in a barrel of whisky, inserted the straw, and drank lingeringly.

"Thank you," he said softly, and shot the glass of straws off the counter. "Thank you. Not after me." The whisky ran out over the floor, out of the door, over the path and into the road, but no one raised a voice in rebuke.

The blue flame burned a trifle higher in Ike Anderson's brain. He was growing very much intoxicated, and therefore very quiet and very sober-looking. He did not yell and flourish his revolvers, but walked along decently, engaged in thought. He was a sandy-complexioned man, not over five feet six inches in height. His long front teeth projected very much, giving him a strange look. His chin was not heavy and square, but pointed, and his jaws were narrow. His eye was said by some to have been hazel when he was sober, though others said it was blue, or gray. No one had ever looked into it carefully enough to tell its colour when Ike Anderson was drunk, as he was to-day.

Ike Anderson passed by the front of the Cottage Hotel. A negro boy, who worked about the place, was sweeping idly at the porch door, shuffling lazily about at his employment. Ike paused and looked amiably at him for some moments.

"Good morning, coloured scion," he said pleasantly.

"Mawnin', boss," said the negro, grinning widely.

"Coloured scion," said Ike, "hereafter—to oblige me—would you mind whoopin' it up with yore broom a leetle faster?"

The negro scowled and muttered, and the next moment sprang sprawling forward with a scream. Ike had shot off the heel of his shoe, in the process not sparing all of the foot. The negro went ashy pale, and believed himself mortally hurt, but was restored by the icy tones of his visitor, who said, evenly and calmly:

"Coloured scion, please go over into that far corner and begin to sweep there, and then come on over the rest of the flo'. Now, sweep!"

The negro swept as he had never swept before. Twice a bullet cut the floor at his feet; and at last the stick of the broom was shattered in his hand. "Coloured scion," said Ike Anderson, as though in surprise, "yore broom is damaged. Kneel down and pray for another." The negro knelt and surely prayed.

On all sides swept the wide and empty streets. It was Ike Anderson's town. A red film seemed to his gaze to come over the face of things. He slipped his revolver back into the scabbard and paused again to think. A quiet footstep sounded on the walk behind him, and he wheeled, still puzzled with the red film and the mental problem.

The sheriff stood quietly facing him, with his thumbs resting lightly in his belt. He had not drawn his own revolver. He was chewing a splinter. "Ike," said he, "throw up your hands!"

The nerves of some men act more quickly than those of others, and such men make the most dangerous pistol shots, when they have good digestion and long practice at the rapid drawing of the revolver, an art at that time much cultivated. Ike Anderson's mind and nerves and muscles were always lightning-like in the instantaneous rapidity of their action. The eye could scarce have followed the movement by which the revolver leaped to a level from his right-hand scabbard. He had forgotten, in his moment of study, that with this six-shooter he had fired once at the whisky barrel, once at the glass of straws, once at the negro's heel, twice at the floor, and once at the broomstick. The click on the empty shell was heard clearly at the hotel bar, distinctly ahead of the double report that followed. For, such was the sharpness of this man's mental and muscular action, he had