Larramee's Ranch

2 ◈

2

◈But when Holden came to the village, he turned and skirted around it through the fields, for he had a deep dislike of the questions which would be showered upon him. Besides, some of the children were sure to be playing about the streets at this time of day, and he was game for the children. They could play a thousand tricks upon him, and dodge away from the reach of that long staff. So he cut through the fields. He did not know just where he was going. And as the wrath deep in his heart settled, it became a chill of despair. The dark of the coming evening made him think of one thing only—that he was walking out to his death!

He put this thought behind him with an effort. And just then his mind was taken by something else. Doc sighted a rabbit and made for it. The brindle was not much use on the trail of a wolf or even a coyote, but he was a terror to cats and to rabbits. Now he scared up a rabbit and went after it. Away he scurried after the dodging flight of the jack. Off and away they went and vanished in the gloom. But Holden, guessing that they might come back again, sat down to wait. Presently through the dusk came the yipping of the dog again. To the very feet of Holden he chased the rabbit, and the poor little beast leaped in between the legs of the man and crouched there, never guessing that this was the archenemy of all. Holden scooped the rabbit from the very jaws of death, and caught it up under his arm. It lay very still, its ears flattened, its eyes dull with exhaustion and the last paroxysm of terror, and all the while its heart pattered like a rolling drum against the arm of Holden. He felt stronger and bigger, and had become, in an instant, the dispenser of fate to at least one creature in the world. This thought he smiled at, but presently he began to stroke the sleek head of the little wild thing.

Doc, in the meantime, having barked and leaped savagely, was soundly cuffed with the staff and ran to a distance. From that vantage point he waited sadly and challengingly. And when Holden called him, Doc tucked his tail between his legs and ran away. After all, this was a turn against nature—for man or any other creature to take into protection that staff of life, the rabbit!

Holden watched the brindle depart with another sigh. For, after all, Doc was something like company, even though very poor company at that. And in the next hollow, he turned the rabbit loose. It cowered for an instant—then leaped up and rushed away, bounding high into the air every seventh or eighth jump to make sure that he was not following at its heels, and finally scurrying off into darkness, which was growing fast. Then Holden went on.

It was practically night, now. His way grew more difficult. He thought of the house he had left, of the worn, sad, kind face of his mother, of the familiar kitchen and its familiar smells, of the face of even Cousin Joe Curtis, with a sort of regret. For they were all he had. And something is better than nothing, even if that something be painful. Now he was stumbling over unknown ways. Twice he caught the toe of his trailing left foot on the rough ground and fell heavily forward. When he had circled back on the farther side of town, the parallel tracks of the railroad, passing off into a shining distance, fascinated him. When a train passed, if he chose, here would be a painless and perfect death for him.

He sat down to take this idea into his heart, but at once he remembered his mother. He had made her a promise. He had made a promise to Cousin Joe Curtis, too, and after all he might be given power to execute both. One never could tell in this wonderful world, so full of miracles of one sort and another—at least so the books said!

He stood up and walked slowly down the tracks until he came to the railroad bridge across the gully, and in the heart of the gully, through the trees, he saw the glimmering of a fire. It was like a beckoning hand to Holden. So he clambered down the steep side of the gully with infinite difficulty, his weak leg continually doing the wrong thing, so that once he almost pitched forward into the empty air, with a full fifty feet to fall to the bottom of the ravine. A lucky clutch at a shrub saved him. He clung there for a moment, shuddering; then he went on and came to the edge of the clearing in the center of which the fire burned.

And near the fire simmered the ragged lower half of an old washtub, giving forth a steam filled with the inestimable fragrance of a rich stew. No one was near, so far as the dull eyes of Holden could make out, so he stepped from the shadow of the trees and made toward the fire—and the prize!

Just what he intended to do was not clear in his own mind. Certainly if he stole some of the contents of that tub he stood in the veriest danger of reprisal on the part of the owner of the food. But he had taken only a step or two when an instinct keener than any physical sense told him that he was in danger. He paused and scanned the little dark arena of the clearing more acutely, and as he did so, as though stimulated by his fear, the fire leaped and gave him a glimpse of two things which were enough to have startled him.

For on either side of the clearing, but backed up against the tree, stood a man with a naked revolver in his hand. It seemed to Holden, at first, that they were both facing him, their guns ready, the food in the tin the bait which was to draw in men for murder. But after this gruesome idea had touched his mind, he was aware that they were not looking at him at all, that they seemed even unaware of his coming, for they were facing each other steadily, and now one of them spoke.

“You first, Blinky, you little rat.”

“Me first? I’ll see you in purgatory before I make the first move. I don’t take no charity from a overgrown sap, a big beef, a sow-sided porker like you, Chris Venner!”

There was a growl from Chris Venner. “I’ll tear you to bits for this, Blinky!”

“You’ll never get them hands near me again, you cheap bum. I’m gunna let a couple of slugs of daylight through where your brain ought to be, and ain’t. In your belly—that’s where your brain is. That’s where you do your thinkin’—with your guts, you hog!”

“Are you ready?” snarled out Venner savagely.

“Ready, damn you!”

The air grew charged with that deadly tenseness of expectation which precedes a violent action. Then the crisp, cool voice of Holden broke in. It was a very pleasant voice. He had a trick of making it carry without raising it, like the ringing tones of a bell which melt through the thickest walls and into the farthest corner of a house.

“This is very good,” said he. “I will have two shares of stew to myself. And for nothing!”

His voice came in on them so suddenly, so unexpectedly, so blind had they been to his coming in the depth of their mutual passion, that they grunted, each like a horse under the spur before it leaps.

“Who in the devil is this?” inquired the bull tones of Chris Venner.

“I’ll tend to him when I finish you,” said Blinky Wickson. “Keep back from that fire, stranger, or by—”

But Holden advanced to the verge of the fire and remained there, with the light bright upon him. Then he leaned and tested the fragrance of the stew at shorter range.

“Tomatoes,” he said judicially, aloud. “And beans—canned beans with pork—and chicken—yes, by heaven, there’s a good bit of chicken here. I hope you boys both shoot straight!”

The passion to kill is a very violent passion, no doubt; but it is hard for it to hold up its head in the face of certain other things, and one of them is indifference.

“Chris,” said Blinky, “gimme a minute’s fair play, and lemme take care of this here young rat. Then I’ll come back and tend to you.”

“You don’t need to ask for fair play,” said Chris Venner. “But that kid is a crip. You ain’t gunna beat up a one-legger, Blinky?”

“What in the devil is it to you what I do?”

“I’m gunna have the killin’ of you, you ferret-faced snake!” bellowed Chris Venner. “That’s what I’m gunna have! Leave the kid alone, I say!”

They both advanced, and came to the edge of the circle of the firelight, glowering at each other. And there they saw Holden sitting down by the simmering stew. He had reached into the mess with a tentative pocket knife and now he drew out upon the point of the longest blade a bit of white breast soaked in the richest of gravies. He tasted it, deliberately with the eyes of the two killers fastened upon him.

“Delicious!” said Holden. “Before you murder each other, you really should take my advice—”

Chris Venner suddenly burst into huge-throated laughter that roared and rang through the ravine. He staggered across and dropped by the fire. He tossed his gun aside. And still he thundered forth his laughter. Blinky stood by, a short, wide-shouldered man with a long-featured, narrow-faced head and a venomous small pair of eyes. He glowered from his laughing enemy to the complacent form of Holden as though unable to decide on which he should deliver his attack. Finally he drew back and vented his disgust with an oath.

“Are you quittin’?” he yelled at Chris Venner.

The latter rolled to a sitting position.

“Why, Blinky,” he said, “it just beats me, that’s all. If it was anybody else—but this here kid talkin’ up to you, and to me. I call that funny!”

This gave Blinky a new idea. “Maybe the kid don’t know,” he said.

He stepped closer and leaned above Holden, and the latter could barely repress a shudder, so malignant, so ugly was the face of the man.

“D’you know, kid, who we are?”

“Do I know?” asked Holden deliberately. “Do you think that I came down here by accident?” And, adjusting his glasses calmly, he stared with much deliberation into the face of the other.