Part 35 (2/2)

They got along famously from the start, and Tom positively blossomed under the attentions he received. It had been a trying day for him, but his ill humor quickly disappeared in the warmth of a new-found friends.h.i.+p, and he talked more than was his custom. He was even led to speak of old days, old combats, of which the bloodless encounter that evening was but a tame reminder. The pictures he conjured up were colorful.

A unique and an engaging person he proved to be; an odd compound of gentleness and acerbity, of kindliness and rancor; a quiet, guileless, stubborn, violent old man-at-arms, who would not be interrupted while he was eating. He was both scornful and contemptuous of evildoers. All needed killing.

”Hard luck, I call it, for a budding desperado to wreck a career of promise the way that wretched fellow did,” Gray told him with a laugh.

”Out of all the men in Texas, to pick you--”

”Oh, he ain't a bud! He's quite a killer.”

”Indeed?”

”He kills Mexicans and n.i.g.g.e.rs and folks without guns, mostly. Low-down stuff! He's got three or four, I believe. I never could see why the Nelsons kep' him.”

There was a brief silence. ”I beg pardon?” said Gray.

”He's been on the Nelson pay roll for years--doing odd jobs that wasn't fit to be done. But I guess they got tired of him, anyhow he's been hanging around Wichita for the last two or three weeks. He's been in an out of our office quite a bit.”

”Your office? What for?”

”I dunno, unless he took a s.h.i.+ne to 'Bob.'”

”Not--really?”

Mr. Parker uttered an unpleasant sound. ”She never said anything about it, but I suspicioned she had to order him out, finally. I'd of split his third s.h.i.+rt b.u.t.ton if he'd stood his ground. He knew I had something on him, but he couldn't figure just what it was.” Old Tom's teeth shone through the gloom. ”A man will 'most always act like that when he don't know just where he's at. I knew where _I_ was at, all the time, only I wanted to see that b.u.t.ton plain. I allus know where _I'm_ at.”

Later, when the journey was over and Tom Parker had been dropped at his gate, Gray spoke to his two companions.

”Did you hear what he said?”

”We did.”

”Do you believe I was framed?”

Both Mallow and Stoner nodded. ”Don't you?” the former inquired. When no answer was forthcoming, he said: ”Better give us the flag, Governor.

We're rar'ing to go.”

”You mean--?”

”You know what I mean. Nelson's so crooked his bedclothes fall off. We pulled a b.o.n.e.r this time, but Brick has got another window dressed for him.”

”I'll think it over,” said Gray.

CHAPTER XX

Ozark Briskow, like his sister Allegheny, was studying hard and learning rapidly, but he had adopted an educational plan, a curriculum, so to speak, far different from hers. Whereas she lived between book covers and the thousand and one details of her daily existence were governed by a bewildering army of ”don'ts,” Buddy had devised his own peculiar system of acquiring wisdom, and from it the word ”don't” had been deliberately dropped. His excursion into the halls of learning, brief as it had been, had convinced him that books could teach him only words, whereas he craved experiences, ideas, adventures. Adventure comes at night; pleasure walks by gaslight. Young Briskow told himself that he had missed a lot of late hours and would have to work diligently to catch up, but he undertook the effort with commendable courage.

It is said that all wish to possess knowledge, but few are willing to pay the price. Buddy was one of the minority. Early he adopted the motto, ”Money no object,” and it provoked him not at all to learn that there is a scale of night prices considerably higher than the scale of day prices; to find, for instance, that a nocturnal highball costs twice as much as one purchased during daylight hours. That phenomenon, by the way, had nothing to do with the provisions of the Eighteenth Amendment, it merely explained why farmers went to bed early--they couldn't afford to sit up, so Buddy decided.

He had learned a lot since leaving school, not only about prohibition, but also about speed laws, men's fas.h.i.+ons, facial ma.s.sage, the fox trot and the s.h.i.+mmy, caviar, silk pajamas, bromo-seltzer, the language of flowers, and many of the pleasures and displeasures of the higher intellectual life, such as love and insomnia.

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