Part 32 (1/2)
”You're all right, Charlie, all right; I knew you wouldn't----”
The Kid sprang to his feet, and flung the other's hands roughly from his shoulders.
”Keep your hands off me!” he said tensely. ”I don't stand for that!
And let's understand each other. You do your work here, and I do mine.
I don't want to talk to you. I don't want you to talk to me. I don't want anything to do with you--that's as straight as I know how to put it. The first chance I get I'll move--they'll never move you, for I know why they sent you here. That's all, and that's where we stand--McGrew.”
”D'ye mean that?” said McGrew, in a cowed, helpless way.
The Kid's answer was only a harsh, bitter laugh--but it was answer enough. McGrew, after a moment's hesitation, turned and went silently from the room.
A week pa.s.sed, and another week came and went, and neither man spoke to the other. Each lived his life apart, cooked for himself, and did his work; and it was good for neither one. McGrew grew morose and ugly; and the Kid somehow seemed to droop, and there was a pallor in his cheeks and a listless air about him that was far from the cheery optimism with which he had come to take the key at Angel Forks.
Two weeks pa.s.sed, and then one night, after the Kid had gone to bed, two men pitched a rough, weather-beaten tent on the plateau below the station. Hard-looking specimens they were; unkempt, unshaven, each with a mount and a pack horse. Harvey and Lansing they told McGrew their names were, when they dropped in for a social call that night, and they said that they were prospectors--but their geological hammers were bottles of raw spirit that the Indians loved, and the veins of ore they tapped were the furs that an Indian will sell for ”red-eye” when he will sell for no other thing on earth. It was against the law--enough against the law to keep a man's mouth who was engaged in that business pretty tightly shut--but, perhaps recognizing a kindred spirit in McGrew, and warmed by the bottle they had hospitably brought, before that first night was over no secret of that sort lay between them and McGrew.
And so drink came to Angel Forks; and in a supply that was not stinted.
It was Harvey and Lansing's stock in trade--and they were well stocked.
McGrew bought it from them with cash and with provisions, and played poker with them with a kitty for the ”red-eye.”
There was nothing riotous about it at first, not bad enough to incapacitate McGrew; and it was a night or two before the Kid knew what was going on, for McGrew was cautious. Harvey and Lansing were away in the mountains during the daytime, and they came late to fraternize with McGrew, around midnight, long after the Kid was asleep. Then McGrew began to tipple steadily, and signs of drink came patently enough--too patently to be ignored one morning when the Kid relieved McGrew and went on for the day trick.
The Kid said nothing, no word had pa.s.sed between them for two weeks; but that evening, when McGrew in turn went on for his trick, the Kid went upstairs and found a bottle, nearly full, hidden under McGrew's mattress. He took it, went outside with it, smashed it against a rock--and kept on across the plateau to the prospectors' outfit.
Harvey and Lansing, evidently just in from a day's lucrative trading, were unsaddling and busy over their pack animals.
”h.e.l.lo, Keene!” they greeted in chorus; and Lansing added: ”Hang 'round a bit an' join in; we're just goin' TO cook grub.”
The Kid ignored both the salutation and the proffered hospitality.
”I came down here to tell you two fellows something,” he said slowly, and there was a grim, earnest set to his lips that was not to be misunderstood. ”It's none of my business that you're camping around here, but up there is railroad property, and that _is_ my business. If you show your faces inside the station again or pa.s.s out any more booze to McGrew, I'll wire headquarters and have you run in; and somehow, though I've only met you once or twice, I don't fancy you're anxious to touch head-on with the authorities.” He looked at the two steadily for an instant, while they stared back half angrily, half sheepishly.
”That's fair warning, isn't it?” he ended, as he turned and began to retrace his steps to the station. ”You'd better take it--you won't get a second one.”
They cursed him when they found their tongues, and did it heartily, interwoven with threats and savage jeers that followed him halfway to the embankment. But their profanity did not cloak the fact that, to a certain extent, the Kid's words were worthy of consideration.
The extent was two nights--that night, and the next one.
On the third night, or rather, far on in the early morning hours, the Kid, upstairs, awakened from sleep, sat suddenly up in his bunk. A wild outburst of drunken song, accompanied by fists banging time on the table, reached him--then an abashed hush, through which the click of the sounder came to him and he read it mechanically--the despatcher at Big Cloud was making a meeting point for two trains at the Bend, forty miles away, nothing to do with Angel Forks. Came then a rough oath--another--and a loud, brawling altercation.
The Kid's lips thinned. He sprang out of his bunk, pulled on s.h.i.+rt and trousers, and went softly down the stairs. They didn't hear him, they were too drunk for that; and they didn't see him--until he was fairly inside the room; and then for a moment they leered at him, suddenly silent, in a silly, owl-like way.
There was an anger upon the Kid, a seething pa.s.sion, that showed in his bloodless face and quivering lips. He stood for an instant motionless, glancing around the office; the table from the other room had been dragged in; on either side of it sat Harvey and Lansing; at the end, within reach of the key, sat Dan McGrew, swaying tipsily back and forth, cards in hand; under the table was an empty bottle, another had rolled into a corner against the wall; and on the table itself were two more bottles amongst greasy, scattered cards, one almost full, the other still unopened.
”S'all right, Charlie,” hiccoughed McGrew blandly. ”S'all right--jus'
havin' little game--good boy, Charlie.”
McGrew's words seemed to break the spell. With a jump the Kid reached him, flung him roughly from his seat, toppling him to the floor, and stretched out his hand for the key--but he never reached it. Harvey and Lansing, remembering the threat, and having more reason to fear the law than on the simple count of trespa.s.sing on railroad property, lunged for him simultaneously. Quick as a cat on his feet, the Kid turned, and his fist shot out, driving full into Lansing's face, sending the man staggering backward--but Harvey closed. Purling oaths, Lansing s.n.a.t.c.hed the full bottle, and, as the Kid, locked in Harvey's arms, swung toward him, he brought the bottle down with a crash on the back of the Kid's head--and the Kid slid limply to the floor.
White-faced, motionless, unconscious, the Kid lay there, the blood beginning to trickle from his head, and in a little way it sobered the two ”prospectors”--but not McGrew.