Part 8 (1/2)
While Sergeant King was thus employed in bringing about that needed temperature, as though Fate were delivering his victim into his clutch, Mr. Masterson with Mr. Dixon came into the Lady Gay. The two sat at a table just across from Sergeant King.
It was a big day for the Lady Gay; the tides of custom had risen to unusual heights. There were a busy dozen about the faro table, which stood at the end of the bar; an equal number bent noisily over monte, the latter diversion being dealt by a careworn Mexican, who looked as though luck were against him. In the far end a sedate poker game prevailed.
To every man his interest; with two-score folk in the Lady Gay, no one observed the sombre Sergeant King, brooding schemes of blood. A Mexican lost his last _peso_ at monte, and drew out of the eager fringe about the table. Sergeant King called him with a motion of his hand. The Mexican approached, received the whispered directions, took the gold piece tendered, and disappeared. By the time Sergeant King had taken another drink the Mexican led up his pony, saddled and bridled, to the door of the Lady Gay and stood holding it by the bits, awaiting the murderous convenience of its owner. Plainly Sergeant King was opening a gate for final flight.
There be many species of courage; there are day courage and night courage, water courage and land courage, gun courage and knife courage, with forty further courages beside. And, when you have settled its sort, there remains the matter of comparison. There is a courage born of caution; it is fed and led by caution, and runs by its side like a calf by the side of the mother-cow. There is another courage, whitely desperate, which owns no element of prudence, and against which no odds prevail.
Once in the Panhandle-he may be there to-day-there lived a personage of cows whose name was Old Tom Harris. I have referred to this worthy man before. He numbered but thirty years, and the epithet of ”Old” was a t.i.tle of endearment which his mates of rope and running-iron had conferred upon him to mark their admiration of his arctic dauntlessness of heart. Mr. Willingham, sheriff, having official reason so to do, aimed his six-shooter at Old Tom Harris when the latter's back was turned. Then he called upon him to hold up his hands. Old Tom Harris came 'round on his heel, but he did not throw up his hands. Looking into the point-blank mouth of the Willingham pistol, he pulled his own. Then he laid it, muzzle for muzzle, with the opposing piece of ordnance, and defied Mr. Willingham to begin his blazing work.
”You haven't the sand to shoot!” said Old Tom Harris.
And Mr. Willingham hadn't.
It might bear suggestion that the courage of Sergeant King was caution-born. With seven chances in his favour where his enemy possessed but three he would offer battle. With chances even he would be more discreet. Mr. Masterson's courage was of the Old Tom Harris stamp.
The Mexican stood at the door of the Lady Gay, holding the pony of Sergeant King. Suddenly, above the hubbub of the games, arose the voice of that unworthy.
”Thar's a hoss thief here I'd like to kill!”
In the hush that followed every eye went nervously seeking the speaker.
He stood erect, his six-shooter in his right hand and hanging by his side.
It would have been wiser, from the standpoint of his enterprise, you will say, had Sergeant King gone instantly and wordlessly to work; you will condemn the oratory as marking a lack of military intelligence.
There was a reason for the rhetoric of Sergeant King. The rules to govern Western gun-play do not permit the shooting of one's enemy in the back. It is one's notifying duty to arouse him. Once he be on his guard, and reaching for his artillery, one is licensed to begin his downfall. A violation of these laws leads to a vigilance committee, a rope, and a nearest tree.
Sergeant King was aware of these courtesies of the gun and what public resentment would attend their violation. Wherefore, and that the proprieties related might be appeased, he shouted:
”Thar's a hoss thief here I'd like to kill.”
Mr. Masterson was in no wise a friend of Sergeant King, and yet he would not have called himself that person's enemy. He quietly distasted, and as quietly failed, to be on nearer than nodding terms with him. Also, he distrusted the fort.i.tude of Sergeant King as neither granite-bedded nor iron-bound.
”I once,” observed Mr. Masterson, in later exposition of that courage of Sergeant King, and his estimate thereof; ”I once saw him jump over a counter to get at a party, when he might as well have gone 'round, and the episode struck me as too dramatic. From that moment I knew the Sergeant wasn't clean strain game.”
There is a telepathy of the guns. This was once shown when Clay Allison-but that comes later; let us return to the Lady Gay. With the first war-shout, the experienced intuition of what portion of the Mobeetie public was then gathered in the Lady Gay, went wholly aware that the feud of Sergeant King was addressed solely to Mr. Masterson.
Not a whit behind the public in the feather-edged character of his apprehension, Mr. Masterson was likewise made aware of it. In logical retort and with the promptness of light, he kicked his chair from beneath him and arose to his feet.
”I reckon I'm the horse thief you refer to,” said Mr. Masterson, and when he said it his six-shooter was pointing squarely at the plotting head of Sergeant King.
You have read of such a commodity as fascination, and that a sure nearness of death induces trance. It is the bird with the serpent, the mouse with the cat. It is also the palsied truth of divers men when brought within touch of cold eternity.
Of those who congeal at sight of death was Sergeant King. He had performed with reckless valour, as he would have held it, on twenty smoke-swept fields, and more than once had killed his man. What was it now that froze him motionless? As he looked into the mouth of that Colt's-45, and beheld the gray fire in the eye beyond, for the earliest time he felt the clutch of the grave upon him. It left him still as stone; his heart became water, his cheek clay.
There was a chill pause-a silence as of the tomb! You might have heard the heart-beats of the Mobeetie public as, strung like a bow, it waited on the fatal crash.
Four seconds went ticking into the past; their pa.s.sing was as the pa.s.sing of four ages. Mr. Masterson, with unwavering muzzle and unblinking eye, began slowly closing in on Sergeant King, who remained as though planet-struck.
The slow advance continued until the pistol of Mr. Masterson was within an inch of the transfixed face. Then, with the abruptness of a shot, Mr.
Masterson let down the hammer of his weapon, and with it smote the other on the head. It was a downright, crus.h.i.+ng blow, and only the good thickness of the skull of Sergeant King saved him from annihilation. He dropped like some log of wood-his pistol falling from his fingers and rattling on the board floor of the Lady Gay. As Mr. Masterson replaced his own weapon in his belt, he kicked that of Sergeant King into a nook of safety. ”It's the notion of Mobeetie,” explained Mr. Dixon to Sergeant King, when thirty minutes later the latter was mentally fit to grasp a warning, ”it's the notion of Mobeetie that you'd better pull your freight. Here's your gun, thar's your hoss; an' if you've got a lick of savey, by noon to-morry you'll be either in Tascosa, Fort Elliot or Fort Sill. Any one of 'em's a heap healthier than Mobeetie, which for you at least might be deescribed as a mighty sickly camp.”