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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“Just after dark — ” she began.
And here he interrupted: “It’s in actual shadow, then? Ah, Elsie, it isn’t fair to the rest of us. We’ve been waiting all these years in the hope that eventually we should see you walk up the aisle in the church and — “
He stopped and shook his head again.
“But I’ll come there tonight as you wish, and if an old man’s honest blessing can help you to happiness, you shall have it, my dear. You shall have it!”
And so she left him. But when she reached the street on the way back to the hotel, she found that she was not happy at all. Indeed a darkness had fallen upon her spirit. And this with a blessing hardly yet silent in her ears! But it was simply because the old man had brought such an air of solemnity to the occasion. And now Elsie began to remember that weddings were times of tears and sad thought as well as of merriment and laughter. A wedding was the death of a name, the death of an old life, and the beginning of a new.
So she said to herself as she went slowly onward. But the happiness was taken out of her heart. Moreover, now that two of the steps had been taken, there seemed no great need for anxiety about the third. This was the step which was most important of all, and in the eyes of Blondy it would be the most difficult for her to accomplish. But he did not know her power.
On the outskirts of the town, where it began to run into the western hills, she stopped before a small cottage set well back from the street, and at her coming a tall, brown-faced, long-shanked boy in the awkward age of fifteen, rose and uncoiled his length to greet her. His grin abashed and diminished all the other features of his face.
Why a cousin of her own should look like this she could not tell, though she had often asked that question of an uncommunicative Providence. But from his birth, it seemed, Willie Chalmers had been mostly mouth, so far as his face was concerned, and mostly legs in the rest of his make-up. She could not look beyond the veil of the future and see him a stalwart, fine-looking youth a short three years hence.
“Willie,” she asked, “why have you never come to see me all the time I’ve been at the hotel?”
“I sort of thought,” he answered, “that you’d be busy, Elsie. That’s why I never come. But I sure enough thought about it a couple of times. How’s everything with you been going?”
He advanced toward the gate and faced her, dropping the heel of his right shoe most awkwardly upon the toes of his left and thrusting his hands into bottomless pockets.
So she explained to him, still smiling and watching him during every instant of that smile, that on that very night she would have a tremendous need of him, and she wondered if she could depend on him. Willie was so eager that he swallowed before he could answer. Of course she could use him as she pleased to use him!
“How far is it,” she asked, “to the Roger place?”
“About a mile and a half,” said Willie.
“And how long would it take a man to ride that far?”
“All depends,” said Willie. “If he went like lickety he might get there in five minutes, I suppose.”
“It has to be farther then,” she said. “But how far is it to the Chalmers’ place?”
“That’s three mile, I guess.”
“Oh, three miles — then it will take twice as long.”
“More’n that His hoss would get pretty tired before it hit the last mile and a half at that clip.”
“Well, that’s good! Willie, you know the Chalmers boy?”
“Joe Chalmers? Sure, him and me fought every other week last year. I busted his face good for him. Sure I know Joe. Him and me are chums. We’re going shooting next month!”
She was too serious to smile at this strange recital of the bases of friendship among the young.
“Willie,” she said, “this is to be kept a dead secret, you see?”
His eyes grew very wide.
“Cross my heart to die!” whispered Willie in delight. “I sure won’t breathe a word of it to nobody!”
“Then you come running to the hotel tonight at a quarter to eight — mind you, at seven-forty-five sharp! And you come shouting for the doctor!”
“Why for the doctor?”
“Because the Chalmers boy has been thrown from a horse and broken his leg.”
“Thrown from a hoss? Why, there ain’t a hoss in the world that could throw — oh!”
With this exclamation the light dawned upon Willie in a great and a blinding burst, so that he gasped, choked, and then was silent.
“Will you do it?” she asked.
“Will I do it?” exclaimed Willie. “Didn’t that damn doctor — excuse me for swearing, Elsie — pretty near raise me on castor oil?”
Perhaps the agreement at which Ronicky Doone arrived with the rancher was not large in words, but it was eloquent in substance.
“How come you’ve lost so much coin?” asked Ronicky when he came to the gist of his argument in the growing twilight before the ranch house.
“By bad luck,” said the other sadly. “Nobody in the world, hardly, has had such bad luck as I’ve had!”
“At what?”
“Cows — men — everything that I count on goes wrong.”
“Chiefly cards, though,” said Ronicky.
“Eh? The cards? I’ve had my ups and downs with ‘em! Are you feeling up to a small game of stud?”
But Ronicky was shaking his head and grinning scornfully.
“I can see through you like glass, Bennett,” he said. “It’s the cards that have taken everything away from you. If you and me hit up for an agreement, we got to start right there!”
“Right where?” asked the rancher, dismayed.
“Right at the cards! Bennett, you’re through. You never lay a bet on the turn of a card again so long as you live. Understand?”
Steve Bennett gasped a protest, but Ronicky raised his hand to silence the older man.
“These boys I brung down here,” he said, “will be plumb happy to work for you and to clean up on Jenkins’ men. But the minute I give ‘em the word they’ll be against you and for Jenkins. And the first time that I hear of you putting up some stakes I’m going to send word to the boys. Is that clear, and does that go?”
Bennett swallowed and nodded sadly.
“I was thinking of keeping ‘em amused,” he began.
“You keep ‘em amused,” said Ronicky, “by starting your chink to cooking the best dinner that he ever turned out. That’s the best way to keep them amused. And don’t mind it if they make a mite of racket. They’re that kind.”
Again Bennett could only mutely agree with the terms laid down by the dictator.
“I’m going to slide off to Twin Springs,” said Ronicky. “But tell the boys that I’m coming back tonight. There ain’t going to be no trouble and no shooting scrapes come out of this little party. Everything is going to be plumb quiet, but tomorrow morning early I’m going to be back on the job, rounding up all the chances for a fight with Jenkins’ gang. But I think we’ve got ‘em beat!”
“We have!”, shouted Bennett savagely. “We’ve beat ‘em, and when I see him again, the skunk, I’m going to tell him just what I — “
But Ronicky had no desire to hear more of this meaningless boasting. He turned Lou with a twist of his body and, waving farewell to Bennett, galloped down the valley toward the little town.
It was completely dark before he had covered more than half of the distance. In the shadows of the full night he swung down the street of Twin Springs, the bay mare rocking along as tirelessly as when he began the long run of that day’s journeying. And so he came to the hotel.
But he did not choose to enter from the front. There might be too much talk, too much comment from the other men of the town. It seemed far better to Ronicky to send Lou between the two buildings next to the hotel and so around to the rear of the place. Here he dismounted and slipped up onto the veranda.
There he paused, recalling the picture which he had last seen from that veranda, looking through the big window into the room where Blondy Loring lay. Now, stepping close to the outside edge, so that the boards would not creak under his weight, he stole softly on.
As he went he heard a regular murmuring from the room — the low, low voice of the girl — the voices of two men — but all was kept so indistinct that he could not understand a syllable of it until he came opposite the window, and then a single glance was more eloquent with meaning than a thousand words.
For there sat Elsie Bennett, wonderfully beautiful in an old yellow dress, with little flowers worked obscurely upon it in pastel shades, her blonde hair done low upon her forehead and upon her neck, her face quite pale with emotion that seemed to Ronicky to be fear. But with all her heart and soul she seemed to be driving herself forward.
Beside her lay Blondy Loring, one hand stretched out from the bed and holding her hand. Over them stood a man reading from a book, a little man, with a high light thrown from the lamp on the back of his very bald head, and the light also shining in the aureole of misty hair which floated around the edge of the bald spot.
And now the voice of Blondy, repeating the words of the minister, rose in a deep, heavy volume: “With this ring I thee wed!” And then the pale face of the girl was bowed over Blondy to kiss him.
One step took Ronicky to the window, and another carried him over the low ledge and into the room. At the very shadow of his coming Elsie Bennett had started back. In vain Blondy strove to detain her with his big arm. She slipped out of his grasp and stood back against the farther wall, gasping, while the minister turned agape to face the intruder. Blondy was barely able to turn his head to view Ronicky.
“You’re too late for the fun, son,” he sneered at Ronicky. “I’m sorry you didn’t come for the rest of the show!”
“I’ve come to give it the last send-off, though,” said Ronicky grimly. “I’ve come to bring you good news.”
“What news?”
“A son has been born to your wife, and she’s sent for you — she needs you, Christopher!”
He could not tell that this last name was already known to the girl. But it was not the name which struck her dumb; it was that first horrible message. Little Philip Walton reached her in time to lower her into a chair, where she sat nearly fainting and staring at Ronicky with uncomprehending eyes.
Ronicky stepped to the bed and towered over the cringing, trembling outlaw. All the courage had gone out of the body of the bold Christopher, like the water out of a squeezed sponge.
“I’m going to get you safe out of this,” said Ronicky Doone. “But when you’re safe and well, I’m going to run you down and kill you, you hound. At first I thought you were a sort of hero, and then
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