Revenge! by Robert Barr (popular books of all time .TXT) 📕

indecision at the lawyer and at Sam sitting high above the crowd on the barrel.

"Certainly," said Hickory. "We'd all like to hear the will, although I suppose it's none of our business."

The lawyer made no comment on this remark, but bowing to the assemblage, unfolded a paper and read it.

Mr. Buller left all his property to his nephew in the East with the exception of fifty thousand dollars in greenbacks, then deposited in the Coyote County Bank at Salt Lick. The testator had reason to suspect that a desperado named Hickory Sam (real name or designation unknown) had designs on the testator's life. In case these designs were successful, the whole of this money was to go to the person or persons who succeeded in removing this scoundrel from the face of the earth. In case the Sheriff arrested the said Hickory Sam and he was tried and executed, the money was to be divided between the Sheriff and those who assisted in the capture. If any man on his own responsibility shot and killed the said Hickory Sam, the fifty thousand dollars became his sole property, and would be handed over to him by the bank manager, in whom Mr. Buller expressed every confidence, as soon as the slayer of Hickory Sam proved the deed to the satisfaction of the manager. In every case the bank manager had full control of the disposal of the fund, and could pay it in bulk, or divide it among those who had succeeded in eliminating from a contentious world one of its most contentious members.

The amazed silence which followed the reading of this document was broken by a loud jeering and defiant laugh from the man on the barrel. He laughed long, but no one joined him, and, as he noticed this, his hilarity died down, being in a measure forced and mechanical. The lawyer methodically folded up his papers. As some of the jury glanced down at the face of the dead man who had originated this financial scheme of _post mortem_ vengeance, they almost fancied they saw a malicious leer about the half-open eyes and lips. An awed whisper ran round the assemblage. Each man said to the other under his breath: "Fif--ty--thous--and--dollars," as if the dwelling on each syllable made the total seem larger. The same thought was in every man's mind; a clean, cool little fortune merely for the crooking of a forefinger and the correct levelling of a pistol barrel.

The lawyer had silently taken his departure. Sam, soberer than he had been for many days, slid down from the barrel, and, with his hand on the butt of his gun, sidled, his back against the wall, towards the door. No one raised a finger to stop him; all sat there watching him as if they were hypnotised. He was no longer a man in their eyes, but the embodiment of a sum to be earned in a moment, for which thousands worked hard all their lives, often in vain, to accumulate.

Sam's brain on a problem was not so quick as his finger on a trigger, but it began to filter slowly into his mind that he was now face to face with a danger against which his pistol was powerless. Heretofore, roughly speaking, nearly everybody had been his friend; now the hand of the world was against him, with a most powerful motive for being against him; a motive which he himself could understand. For a mere fraction of fifty thousand dollars he would kill anybody, so long as the deed could be done with reasonable safety to himself. Why then should any man stay his hand against him with such a reward hanging over his head? As Sam retreated backwards from among his former friends they saw in his eyes what they had never seen there before, something that was not exactly fear, but a look of furtive suspicion against the whole human race.

Out in the open air once again Sam breathed more freely. He must get away from Salt Lick, and that quickly. Once on the prairie he could make up his mind what the next move was to be. He kept his revolver in his hand, not daring to put it into its holster. Every sound made him jump, and he was afraid to stand in the open, yet he could not remain constantly with his back to the wall. Poor Buller's horse, fully accoutred, cropped the grass by the side of the road. To be a horse- thief was, of course, worse than to be a murderer, but there was no help for it; without the horse escape was impossible. He secured the animal with but little trouble and sprang upon its back.

As he mounted, a shot rang out from the saloon. Sam whirled around in the saddle, but no one was to be seen; nothing but a thin film of pistol smoke melting in the air above the open door. The rider fired twice into the empty doorway, then, with a threat, turned towards the open country and galloped away, and Salt Lick was far behind him when night fell. He tethered his horse and threw himself down on the grass, but dared not sleep. For all he knew, his pursuers might be within a few rods of where he lay, for he was certain they would be on his trail as soon as they knew he had left Salt Lick. The prize was too great for no effort to be made to secure it.

There is an enemy before whom the strongest and bravest man must succumb; that enemy is sleeplessness. When daylight found the desperado, he had not closed an eye all night. His nerve was gone, and, perhaps for the first time in his life, he felt a thrill of fear. The emptiness of the prairie, which should have encouraged him, struck a chill of loneliness into him, and he longed for the sight of a man, even though he might have to fight him when he approached. He must have a comrade, he said to himself, if he could find any human being in straits as terrible as his own, some one who would keep watch and watch with him through the night; but the comrade must either be ignorant of the weight of money that hung over the desperado's head, or there must be a price on his own. An innocent man would not see the use of keeping such strict watch; a guilty man, on learning the circumstances of the case, would sell Sam's life to purchase his own freedom. Fifty thousand dollars, in the desperado's mind, would do anything, and yet he himself, of all the sixty million people in the land, was the only one who could not earn it! A comrade, then, innocent or guilty, was impossible, and yet was absolutely necessary if the wanderer was to have sleep.

The horse was in distress through lack of water, and Sam himself was both hungry and thirsty. His next halting-place must be near a stream, yet perhaps his safety during the first night was due to the fact that his pursuers would naturally have looked for him near some watercourse, and not on the open prairie.

Ten days later, Mike Davlin was awakened at three in the morning, to find standing by his bed a gaunt, haggard living skeleton, holding a candle in one hand, and pointing a cocked revolver at Mike's head with the other.

"Get up," said the apparition hoarsely, "and get me something to eat and drink. Drink first, and be quick about it. Make no noise. Is there anybody else in the house?"

"No," said Mike, shivering. "You wait here, Sam, and I'll bring you something. I thought you were among the Indians, or in Mexico, or in the Bad Lands long ago."

"I'm in bad lands enough here. I'll go with you. I'm not going to let you out of my sight, and no tricks, mind, or you know what will happen."

"Surely you trust me, Sam," whined Mike, getting up.

"I don't trust any living man. Who fired that shot at me when I was leaving?"

"So help me," protested Mike, "I dunno. I wasn't in the bar at the time. I can prove I wasn't. Yer not looking well, Sam."

"Blister you for a slow dawdler, you'd not look well either, if you had no sleep for a week and was starved into the bargain. Get a move on you."

Sam ate like a wild beast what was set before him, and although he took a stiff glass of whiskey and water at the beginning, he now drank sparingly. He laid the revolver on the table at his elbow, and made Mike sit opposite him. When the ravenous meal was finished, he pushed the plate from him and looked across at Davlin.

"When I said I didn't trust you, Mike, I was a liar. I do, an' I'll prove it. When it's your interest to befriend a man, you'll do it every time."

"I will that," said Mike, not quite comprehending what the other had said.

"Now listen to me, Mike, and be sure you do exactly as I tell you. Go to where the bank manager lives and rouse him up as I roused you. He'll not be afraid when he sees it's you. Tell him you've got me over in the saloon, and that I've come to rob the bank of that fifty thousand dollars. Say that I'm desperate and can't be taken short of a dozen lives, and there is no lie in that, as you know. Tell him you've fallen in with my plans, and that we'll go over there and hold him up. Tell him the only chance of catching me is by a trick. He's to open the door of the place where the money is, and you're to shove me in and lock me up. But when he opens the door I'll send a bullet through him, and you and me will divide the money. Nobody will suspect you, for nobody'll know you were there but the bank man, and he'll be dead. But if you make one move except as I tell you the first bullet goes through you. See?"

Mike's eyes opened wider and wider as the scheme was disclosed. "Lord, what a head you have, Sam!" he said. "Why didn't you think of that before? The bank manager is in Austin."

"What the blazes is he doing there?"

"He took the money with him to put it in the Austin Bank. He left the day after you did, for he said the only chance you had, was to get that money. You might have done this the night you left, but not since."

"That's straight, is it?" said Sam suspiciously.

"It's God's truth I'm speaking," asserted Mike earnestly. "You can find that out for yourself in the morning. Nobody'll molest ye. Yer jus' dead beat for want o' sleep, I can see that. Go upstairs and go to bed. I'll keep watch, and not a soul'll know you're here."

Hickory Sam's shoulders sank when he heard the money was gone, and a look of despair came into his half closed eyes. He sat thus for a few moments unheeding the other's advice, then with an effort shook off his lethargy.

"No," he said at last, "I won't go to bed. I'd like to enrich you, Mike, but that would be too easy. Cut me off some slices of this cold meat and put them between chunks of bread. I want a three days' supply, and a bottle of whiskey."

Mike did as requested, and at Sam's orders attended to