Part 14 (1/2)

”Let me go! ---- you, let me free. I want to fight the coward that struck my wife. You've killed her. Who was it? Let me get at him.”

Shorty stiffened as though a douche of ice-water had struck him.

”Killed her! Struck his wife!” My G.o.d! Not that sweet creature of his dreams who had talked and smiled at him without noting his deformity--

An awful anger rose in him and he moved out into the light.

”Han'sup!”

Whatever of weakness may have dragged at his legs, none sounded in the great bellowing command that flooded the room. At the compelling volume of the sound every man whirled and eight empty hands shot skyward. Their startled eyes beheld a man's squat body weaving uncertainly on the limbs of an insect, while in each hand shone a blue-black Colt that waved and circled in maddening, erratic orbits.

At the command, Marsh Tremper's mind had leaped to the fact that behind him was one man; one against five, and he took a gambler's chance.

As he whirled, he drew and fired. None but the dwarf of Bar X could have lived, for he was the deadliest hip shot in the territory. His bullet crashed into the wall, a hand's breadth over Shorty's ”cow-lick.” It was a clean heart shot; the practised whirl and flip of the finished gun fighter; but the roar of his explosion was echoed by another, and the elder Tremper spun unsteadily against the table with a broken shoulder.

”Too high,” moaned the big voice. ”--The liquor.”

He swayed drunkenly, but at the slightest s.h.i.+ft of his quarry, the aimless wanderings of a black muzzle stopped on the spot and the body behind the guns was congested with deadly menace.

”Face the wall,” he cried. ”Quick! Keep 'em up higher!” They sullenly obeyed; their wounded leader reaching with his uninjured member.

To the complacent Shorty, it seemed that things were working nicely, though he was disturbingly conscious of his alcoholic lack of balance, and tortured by the fear that he might suddenly lose the iron grip of his faculties.

Then, for the second time that night, from the stairs came the voice that threw him into the dreadful confusion of his modesty.

”O Ross!” it cried, ”I've brought your gun,” and there on the steps, dishevelled, pallid and quivering, was the bride, and grasped in one trembling hand was her husband's weapon.

”Ah--h!” sighed Shorty, seraphically, as the vision beat in upon his misty conceptions. ”_She ain't hurt_!”

In his mind there was no room for desperadoes contemporaneously with Her. Then he became conscious of the lady's raiment, and his brown cheeks flamed brick-red, while he dropped his eyes. In his shrinking, grovelling modesty, he made for his dark corner.

One of those at bay, familiar with this strange abashment, seized the moment, but at his motion the sheriff screamed: ”Look out!”

The quick danger in the cry brought back with a surge the men against the wall and Shorty swung instantly, firing at the outstretched hand of Bailey as it reached for Tremper's weapon.

The landlord straightened, gazing affrightedly at his finger tips.

”Too low!” and Shorty's voice held aching tears. ”I'll never touch another drop; it's plumb ruined my aim.”

”Cut these strings, girlie,” said the sheriff, as the little man's gaze again wavered, threatening to leave his prisoners.

”Quick. He's blus.h.i.+ng again.”.

When they were manacled, Shorty stood in moist exudation, trembling and speechless, under the incoherent thanks of the bride and the silent admiration of her handsome husband. She fluttered about him in a tremor of anxiety, lest he be wounded, caressing him here and there with solicitous pats till he felt his shamed and happy spirit would surely burst from its misshapen prison.

”You've made a good thing to-night,” said Turney, clapping him heartily on his ma.s.sive back. ”You get the five thousand all right.

We were going to Mexico City on that for a bridal trip when I rounded up the gang, but I'll see you get every cent of it, old man. If it wasn't for you I'd have been a heap farther south than that by now.”

The open camaraderie and good-fellows.h.i.+p that rang in the man's voice affected Shorty strangely, accustomed as he was to the veiled contempt or open compa.s.sion of his fellows. Here was one who recognized him as a man, an equal.