Part 46 (1/2)

Braun looked at her with pallid scorn:

”You little, ignorant fool,” he said, ”I'd have made you a better lover than you'll ever have now!”

He shrugged his square shoulders in contempt, turned without a glance at Smith and Glenn, and stepped outward into s.p.a.ce. And as he fell there between sky and earth, hurtling downward under the stars, Glenn's pistol flashed twice, killing his quarry in midair while falling.

”Can you beat it?” he demanded hoa.r.s.ely, turning on Smith. ”Ain't that me all over!--soft-hearted enough to do that skunk a kindness thataway!”

But his youthful voice was shaking, and he stared at the edge of the abyss, listening to the far tumult now arising from the street below.

”Did you shoot?” he inquired, controlling his nervous voice with an effort.

”Naw,” said Smith disgustedly. ”... Now, Maryette, put one arm around my neck, and me and the Kid will take you down them stairs, because you look tired--kind o' peeked and fussed, what with all this funny business going on----”

”Oh, Steek! Steek!” she sobbed. ”Oh, _mon ami_, Steek!”

She began to cry bitterly. Smith picked her up in his arms.

”What you need is sleep,” he said very gently.

But she shook her head: she had business to transact on her knees that night--business with the Mother of G.o.d that would take all night long--and many, many other sleepless nights; and many candles.

She put her left arm around Smith's neck and hid her tear-wet face on his shoulder. And, as he bore her out of the high tower and descended the unlighted, interminable stairs of stone, he heard her weeping against his breast and softly asking intercession in behalf of a dead young man who had tried to be to her a ”Kamerad”--as he understood it--including the entire gamut, from amorous beast to fiend.

There was a single candle lighted in the bar of the White Doe. On the ”zinc,” side by side, like birds on a rail, sat the two muleteers. In each big, sunburnt fist was an empty gla.s.s; their spurred feet dangled; they leaned forward where they sat, hunched up over their knees, heads slightly turned, as though intently listening. A haze of cigarette smoke dimmed the candle flame.

The drone of an aeroplane high in the midnight sky came to them at intervals. At last the sound died away under the far stars.

By the smoky candle flame Kid Glenn unfolded and once more read the letter that kept them there:

--I ought to get to Sainte Lesse somewhere around midnight. Don't say a word to Maryette.

Jack.

Sticky Smith, reading over his shoulder, slowly rolled another cigarette.

”When Jack comes,” he drawled, ”it's a-goin' to he'p a lot. That Maryette girl's plumb done in.”

”Sure she's done in,” nodded Kid Glenn. ”Wouldn't it do in anybody to shoot up a young man an' then see him step off the top of a skysc.r.a.per?”

Smith admitted that he himself had felt ”kind er squeamish.” He added: ”Gawd, how he spread when he hit them flags! You didn't look at him, did you, Kid?”

”Naw. Say, d'ya think Maryette has gone to bed?”

”I dunno. When we left her up there in her room, I turned and took a peek to see she was comfy, but she was down onto both knees before that china virgin on the niche over her bed.”

”She oughter be in bed. You gotta sleep off a thing like that, or you feel punk next day,” remarked Glenn, meditatively twirling the last drops of eau-de-vie around in his tumbler. Then he swallowed them and smacked his lips. ”She'll come around all O. K. when she sees Jack,” he added.

”Goin' to let him wake her up?”