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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Had Jenkins been right? Had she wakened in her age to find out the truth concerning the man she had married? Ronicky could only hope, for her own sake and the sake of her daughter, that she had remained blind to the end.
“Well?” Bennett was urging him. “Are you going to talk? Or are you going to stand there the rest of the night like a buzzard looking at a dead cow?”
“Bennett,” said Ronicky, “suppose a real man was to offer to work for you, what sort of terms would you make with him?”
“A real man?” asked Bennett, but at the suggestion a flare of fire altered his eyes.
“I mean a man that’s square and a man that’s not afraid to fight for himself and his boss.”
Bennett threw himself back in the chair with a grim laugh.
“They don’t come that way any more,” he said. “When I was your age we’d all have risked our lives for the sake of one hoof of the scrawniest yearling on the boss’ range. We took it for granted. He paid us to look out for his interests. But nowadays it’s different. You can’t get men.”
“Not if you underpay ‘em, underfeed ‘em and treat ‘em like a lot of dogs. Real men won’t work for you then, that’s dead sure.”
“Well,” snarled Bennett, anxiety and anger combining to bring his tone to a singularly piercing whine, “what’s up?”
“Bennett, I’ll come out here, if you can hit up the right terms with me.”
Steve Bennett gasped, glared with a wild hope, and then sank back into his chair, from which he had half risen, with something between a growl and a groan.
“This is some of Al Jenkins’ work,” he vowed. “He’s sent you out here to get a job so that you can dig the ground from under me, and when he’s ready he can — “
“Stop that kind of talk,” said Ronicky. “It just peeves me and it don’t bring you no place in particular, Bennett.”
The rancher shrugged his bony shoulders.
“I say again,” said Ronicky, “I’ll work on your place for you.”
Bennett merely stared. Not at Ronicky’s face, but in a grim effort to get at his secret mind.
“It’s the girl!” he exclaimed suddenly. “She’s got enough of her mother in her for that. It’s Elsie that’s bringing you.”
He chuckled and twisted one hand inside the other, as though he were trying to warm them. And more and more the wonder grew in Ronicky that beautiful Elsie Bennett could be the daughter of this man.
“No matter what’s bringing me,” said Ronicky, “I’m here to hit up a bargain with you. I’ll run your place until you’re through with the fight with Jenkins. I’ll do that, if you’ll give me full swing and let me run everything. I’ll do it, if you’ll let me hire your men and fire ‘em, just as I see fit. Does that sound good to you at all, Bennett?”
The rancher, breathing hard, stepped up from his chair and elevated his tall form by the table. He glowered at Ronicky like a famine-stricken wretch who sees food, but fears that it is poisoned.
“How would I know that you ain’t from Jenkins?” he asked. “How would I know that you ain’t out here to arrange so’s he can scoop up the last of my cattle — the unhung robber! — and get off clean and free with it? How am I to know that?”
“I dunno,” said Ronicky. “unless you read my mind. But you got no other chance, Bennett. It’s up to you to do this or go under. You got no real men on your ranch. You — “
“A lot of cowards — a lot of yallarlivered — “
“Then let me fire them and get a new set.”
“You can’t. You can’t pick up a crew in Twin Springs — not for my ranch. Jenkins, curse him, with his bought men and his bought lies — he’s seen to that! He’ll be singed for it! Oh, he’ll burn for it.”
In the strength of his malice he literally gnashed his teeth, and then he brought his attention back to Ronicky Doone. He stalked slowly forward. He laid a gaunt, cold hand upon Ronicky’s shoulder.
“Ah,” he said, “you got an honest face, Doone. You got an honest face, after all!”
Ronicky struck his hand away with an irresistible outbreak of disgust. For he was remembering how Bennett had stood over him on the evening when big Blondy carried him into this very room and denounced him.
“I don’t want your lies,” said Ronicky. “You and me might as well come out in the clear quick, Bennett. I ain’t doing this to please you, none. And I ain’t doing it for your money, because you ain’t got none. But I want your promise to let me go straight ahead and run things. Will you do that?”
“And take a chance of getting the house burned down right from over my head, so far as I know?”
He was fairly shaken by dread and temptation combined.
“And take that chance, yes,” admitted Ronicky. It seemed that this admission that he had no proof of good faith to offer made a great impression upon the other. For his face brightened at once.
“I was always a good gambler,” he said. “I’ve gambled on life and death. And why shouldn’t I gamble on this ranch that never brought me luck?”
He turned to a cabinet, drew out a bottle, and placed two glasses upon the table.
“I ain’t drinking,” said Ronicky in return to the questioning glance. “I don’t drink when I got hard work ahead.”
“Then,” said the old man, “I’ll drink to myself. It’ll give me heart for the chance that I’m taking.”
And he poured the little glass full and tossed it off, and then he leaned back against the wall, watching Ronicky with blurred eyes of pleasure, as the alcohol burned home in him.
This, then, was the father of Elsie Bennett. It made Ronicky think of some graceful and lovely orchid rooted in decay. Yet, on a day, no doubt, the mind and the body of Bennett had been far other than it now was. He must have been handsome, strong, vivacious. And such a man as that had married the mother of the girl. The betrayal of Al Jenkins, in the first place, must have begun to undermine his nature. That was the seed of poison which spread until now he was only a ghost of his old self, a ghost in very fact. The long years of failure had put their mark on him. They had made him into a vicious-minded, cruel-witted fellow, such as now leered at Ronicky.
“And now,” asked the rancher, “where d’you begin?”
“With sleep,” said Ronicky. “Where’s a bed for me?” The old man broke into his harsh laughter, still rubbing his hands with glee and still unable to work any warmth into the bony fingers.
“Sleep?” he asked. “Aye, that’s the best place for a beginning, and that’s the usual place for an ending, too! Yes, that’s where they all end up. I’m close to it. But the rest will finish the same way. You — Loring — Elsie — you’ll all end up in a sleep!”
This he muttered to himself, some words audible, others mere indistinct murmurs. And in the meantime he picked up the lamp and went toward the door of the room behind him, walking back into the shadows which finally rushed across it, as the rancher passed into the hall.
He climbed the stairs with Ronicky behind him, thinking sharply back to that other night when he had climbed the same stairs behind the same lamp bearer, with manacles on his wrists. At the head of the stair Bennett stepped aside, allowed him to climb to the top, and then went to the door of the room where Ronicky had been a prisoner, and, pushing it open, turned to him with an evil grin of enjoyment.
It seemed to Ronicky, as he stared into the flat wall of darkness which the lamplight failed to penetrate, that a ghost of himself must still be within, so vivid was his recollection of his waiting in the place for the morning. Now Bennett went on down the hall and took Ronicky to an end room. It was very dingy. The curtains at the window, even, seemed worn and rubbed by age. Here the rancher put the light down and bade his guest farewell for the night. But he paused again at the door still grinning. Then he shook a long forefinger at Ronicky.
“I ain’t asking no more questions,” he said. “You notice that, Ronicky Doone. I ain’t asking what might be in your head, or what your motives could be. No, sir, all I’m doing is waiting — and waiting — waiting to see how things turn out, eh?”
Then he turned and walked off into the darkness of the hall, still muttering to himself and occasionally breaking into a chuckle, a strange and conversational effect that made the body of Ronicky lose some warmth. He harkened to the steps of the rancher going down the stairs slowly, but surely. No one would ever have dreamed that he was walking without a light, to listen to that unfumbling step.
For a time Ronicky sat on the edge of the bed, pondering on the place where he found himself, on the events which were around him, behind and before. And it was like walking in a dream, so unreal was it. When he closed his eyes for a moment he half expected that when he opened them he would find himself back on the veranda of the hotel in Twin Springs, sunning himself lazily, with only his head in the shadow, while some one announced again that Blondy Loring was coming to town.
But when he did open his eyes his glance fell upon the bureau on the far side of the room, with a silver brush upon it, and on either side of the brush was a dainty little bottle of perfume, while still farther on either side —
Suddenly Ronicky sprang up with a stifled oath. He looked around him again. He noted the bright color of the curtain, no matter how faded from the original. He glanced down to the flowered rug beside the bed. He turned to the bed itself and the stainless white of the spread which covered it.
“Lord above,” said Ronicky, “he’s given me her room!”
And all at once he felt like rushing out into the hall and shouting curses down at the old man and demanding a different place. But what difference did it make? And, after all, perhaps there was no other place for him to sleep in the house on that particular night. Besides, why should he feel like an eavesdropper, an interloper, because he was in the room?
Nevertheless, he did feel that way. Something pressed on his mind from every side. It was shouting out at him now — something of which he had been totally unaware when he first came into the apartment. There were photographs on the wall, photographs of young men and girls. And there was a chest of some dark wood under the window, and upon it lay a dress
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