Ronicky Doone's Reward by Max Brand (ebook offline reader .txt) 📕
And now he saw Blondy slowly produce cigarette papers and tobacco. He saw the cigarette manufactured; he saw it placed between Blondy's lips; he saw the sulphur match separated carefully from the rest of the pack; he saw the cigarette lighted; he saw the handsome head of Blondy wreathed in thin blue-brown smoke.
And every other person on the veranda was following every act with similar exactitude of interest and observation. For they had instantly seen the throwing of the gage. The unspoken challenge of Blondy, as plain as words could have stated it, was this: "I shall stand here calmly upon the veranda, roll my cigarette, light and smoke it, and then depart. And if I am able to do this in peace, then I shall consider myself at liberty to go forth into the world and tell other men that I have bearded the citizens of Twin Springs and come off unscathed."
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“Of course!”
“Then you figure that my honor is worth something. And if it is, I sure can’t wait around after Charlie Loring has knocked me down and — lied about me! Miss Bennett, I got to fight back!”
“Then you can’t expect me to help you!”
“Why not? I’ll give you this promise — that I won’t hurt him on this ranch. Will that suit you? And if I ever get the upper hand with him, I’ll promise to go easy for your sake.”
At this she smiled in frank scorn. It was plain that her mind was unable to grasp the possibility of big Charlie Loring being defeated by any man that lived.
“Very good,” she said thoughtfully. “Suppose I let you go and trust to your promise — it seems to me that I’m doing a great deal for a very small return and no security — at least none that a bank would take.”
“It’ll be the first time,” said Ronicky, “that I’ve had this sort of a favor done me. But wait and see. In the end, maybe, I can pay you back.”
She bit her lip and looked down at the floor, and by that he knew that she would do as he wished.
“I’m going to take your word and let you go,” she said at the last. “And your word is simply that you’ll never come back to the Bennett Ranch to hunt down Charlie — and lie in wait for him on the range.”
He nodded, and Elsie Bennett without another word unlocked the handcuffs and stepped back from him, a little frightened by the possibilities of what he might do. He reassured her with a smile and by chafing his wrists to restore the circulation. Then, as she backed toward the door, he followed her to it.
She put out the candle before she stepped into the hall. There, swallowed again in the gloom, they exchanged some whispered words.
“I suppose it’s for the sake of your name that I’m doing this,” she said. “But there’s such a fine free swing to that name — Ronicky Doone — that I couldn’t hold all the evil against you that my father does, for instance.”
“I’ve noticed it before,” said Ronicky Doone, “that a good woman don’t need any long list of reasons for doing a good thing. God bless you for this one!”
She could literally feel the quiver of the gesture with which he jerked his liberated hands above his head and shook them at nothingness, rejoicing in his freedom. Then he turned down the stairs, but with his foot on the first step he turned back again toward the dim form in the hall.
“And when they start in damning me tomorrow and the days that come after,” he said, “will you keep a place in the back of your brain where you cache away a couple of good, man-sized doubts? Just wait to be showed?”
“I think I shall,” said the girl. “At least I’ll honestly try to!”
“Then — good-by!”
“Good-by,” said Elsie Bennett, and he felt her leaning above him in the darkness, as he glided down the steps.
The consummate noiselessness of that descent roused the old alarm and suspicion in the heart of Elsie Bennett. She hurried to her own room on the front of the big house and leaned out the window to watch her freed prisoner depart. She had a great and swelling desire suddenly to rouse the people in the house and endeavor to reclaim the fugitive. It seemed madness, this thing she had done. It was sending danger of death to hover over the head of Charlie Loring.
And then, out of the night beneath her window, she heard a faint whistle. It was keyed so high that it pierced to a great distance. The whistle was repeated. Ronicky Doone was standing beneath the window waiting — for what?
There came a rapid beat of hoofs. The form of a horse glimmered in the night, and Ronicky Doone swung into the saddle and disappeared at a rapid gallop.
With a beating heart she watched him fade out.
“He can’t be all bad,” said Elsie Bennett. “He can’t be all bad when he has a horse that comes to his whistle.”
Of all the winged things in the world, there is nothing that flies so fast as rumor, and of all rumors there is none so fleet as bad news.
Ronicky Doone reached Twin Springs late, very late. And he slept till noon at the hotel. When he wakened he found that the town knew more about his adventure of the night before than he knew himself. He could tell by the first face he confronted down the stairs that all was known — at least from the viewpoint of Blondy Loring.
Another man would have lost all appetite for the day when he confronted that expression of sneering disgust on the face of the hotel keeper. But Ronicky Doone merely drew the belt of his trousers tighter and walked into the dining room for lunch.
He ate it in profound silence. Not a man spoke to him except one or two who happened to catch his eye full upon them, and they favored him with a muffled grunt. Plainly he was in the deepest disgrace into which it is possible for a man to fall; at least in the West.
He finished his lunch slowly, however, admirable testimony that his nerve was as cold as steel in a crisis, and he looked up unabashed when the proprietor of the hotel paused at his table in his round of the room to inquire after the comfort of his guests.
“Look here,” said the proprietor, looking out the window above the head of Ronicky, so that he might not be forced to encounter the eyes of the despicable gunman who stole upon his victims from behind. “Look here, Doone, I got a terrible rush of business coming, and when I looked over the list I seen how I’d reserved all the rooms. I’ll have to use your place tonight, so I guess you’ll be moseying along to-day.” And he turned his back without further explanation. But the hand of Ronicky shot out and touched his arm.
“Turn around,” said Ronicky.
The other turned a quarter of the way.
“Look me in the eye,” said Ronicky.
Reluctantly it was done.
“I’ll stay till I’m good and ready to go,” said Ronicky. “You write that down in red and start betting on it. I’ll stay here till I can’t pay for my room no more. That’s final.”
The proprietor started to hurl a loud protest upon Ronicky’s head. But apparently he found something in the eye of Ronicky that was in sharp contrast with the reports of Ronicky’s meeting with Blondy Loring, which had been retailed throughout the town during the morning. At any rate the host retreated to a corner, muttering like a dog over a bone.
And Ronicky rose, stretched himself, carelessly picked up every disgusted, scornful eye that dwelt upon him, and then sauntered out of the room.
As on the day before, he selected the one, large, easy chair on the veranda and bore it to the edge of the shadow, where he stretched out luxuriously in the sun; and while the heat seeped through his tissues and filled him with a pleasant drowsiness, he smoked a cigarette and watched the smoke drift up, blue-brown in the sun, rising sometimes a considerable distance until it vanished in a touch of the wind.
In the meantime Ronicky was thinking, buried in the most profound reflection. He was picking up one idea at a time and turning it and examining it, as an expert raises and turns a jewel, criticizing every tiny facet. And all this he did with a sleepy face. For the brow of a philosopher is never wrinkled.
The other men began to troop out. He heard the jingling of their spurs as from a great distance. Loud laughter somewhere jarred on his ear; and the murmur of other voices made a smooth current bearing one on toward sleep. Ronicky Doone regarded them not. He was forgetting the village of Twin Springs rapidly. He was totally occupied with the more vitally engrossing problem of how he could draw to him big Blondy.
For it stood to reason that Charlie Loring would never come to meet him. For some reason the big fellow had wished to avoid a man-to-man conflict with Ronicky. No matter what that reason was — and Ronicky could not discover it — if it had made Charlie take the risk of being shot while he sprang barehanded upon Ronicky in the barn, it would make him resort to other and stranger methods to avoid the conflict. Since Ronicky could not hunt him down on Blondy’s own range, Ronicky must induce his quarry to come to his place.
He was still struggling with this great problem when a heavy foot crunched on the boards near him, and a cloud of smoke billowed across him. Ronicky turned and saw big Al Jenkins standing there, and the look on Al’s face was by no means an invitation to cordial talk.
“I been hearing things,” was what Jenkins said, “and the things that I been hearing about you, stranger, is enough to turn a man’s hair gray. It seems that you ain’t Ronicky Doone at all. It seems that you just been wandering around and using his name promiscuous without being him at all!”
Ronicky covered a yawn. He turned his head a little and considered Jenkins with solemn gravity. But he did not speak, and this silence caused the lower jaw of Jenkins to thrust out. He even made a motion with his big hands, as though he were about to grasp Ronicky and break him like a stick of kindling. He gathered himself into control after a moment, and he went on: “I suppose that that don’t mean much in your life, son. But around Twin Springs we’re a queer lot of people. And we take every man for what he says he is. That’s why, when we hear that a gent has been telling a flock of lies about himself, it riles us, son — it sure riles us terrible!”
And he waited, grinding his teeth with increasing fury. Here Ronicky Doone yawned again, and this caused Jenkins to stamp with such convulsive energy that the board beneath his heel cracked loudly. He had to shift to one side to avoid a possible fall through the broken flooring.
“D’you hear me talk?” he roared at last. “D’you hear what I’m saying to you?”
“Yes,” said Ronicky gently.
“And what d’you think about it?”
The voice of Ronicky was more gentle than ever.
“You’re too old,” he said, “for me to tell you what I think. That’s all.”
Al Jenkins, the fearless, the battle-hardened, the man-breaker, was struck purple. His face swelled. Dark veins stood out on the temples.
“You insulting young rat!” he thundered. “I got a mind to tear the hide off of you and — “
He paused. Ronicky Doone had swung to a sitting posture. It was amazing to watch him. A cat does not glide from deep sleep to wakefulness more suddenly or completely. One second her eyes are dull; the next they are balls of baleful fire. And the change in the face of Ronicky Doone was hardly less.
“Back up,” he said. “You’re right on the edge of a cliff. Back up and start pawing for a good road,” said Ronicky. “Now tell me what you want.”
In fact the rich man gave back a short step in his astonishment. He had
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