Ronicky Doone's Reward by Max Brand (ebook offline reader .txt) 📕

but taking the life of a man was quite another, and so completely did it outbalance the former that it ceased to exist on the books. But Ronicky Doone was not of that opinion. And when they asked him if he were not going to saddle and continue the trail with them, he rose and made his answer briefly and to the point

“Gents, I’d sure like to see the insides of big Blondy. But I’d rather be plugged myself, I guess, than to have another gent do the opening of him. No, I ain’t going to ride down that trail any more, and if you ask me straight, I don’t mind saying that I’m plumb set against any of the rest of you riding down that trail. Is that clear?”

They could hardly believe him. For upon his head they could see still the crimson imprint which the fist of big Blondy had made. And yet here was the enemy barring their way!

They shouted furiously at him to step aside, but he remained firm in their path.

“In the first place,” he told them, “I’ve promised Blondy that he ain’t going to be followed after to-day, and that he’s going to have a chance to get clean of this section of the country. And I aim to do what I’ve said for him. In the second place, boys, before you get all riled and boiling and ready to eat me up, you can lay to it that you wouldn’t never catch him even if you went on ahead. That little gray hoss of his has a pile of running in it still. It could take up with the best hoss in your whole bunch and run the legs right off of it.”

“D’you think,” they roared, “that we’re going to turn around and go back and tell the boys that the six of us got scared or tired of following the trail of the gent that killed poor Oliver Hopkins?”

“What I think you’ll do,” said Ronicky, diplomatically, “is to go back to Twin Springs and tell the folks there that when you come up with me and seen what Blondy had stopped and done for my hoss when it was drowning, you just nacherally didn’t have it in your hearts to go after him any more that day. Besides, he was too far ahead of you anyway! That’ll sound good, and it’ll give all the boys a fine warm feeling, like they’d had a good drink or just finished the reading of a pretty story.”

He grinned as he spoke, and the others were forced to agree with him. There was nothing else for them to do but bring their horses about and journey slowly, wearily back toward the little town, and this finally they did. But all the way the bay mare, Lou, with the dried saddle bound once more upon her back, danced along among the jaded horses, as though she had not that day run down one good horse and looked death in the face.

So that they all agreed, as they neared the town of Twin Springs, that there was never a horse more honest and fleet of foot than Lou. Moreover, there was no particular sting of shame in having been blocked in their pursuit by Ronicky Doone. As a matter of fact he had simply warned them that if they continued on the trail of Blondy, there would be trouble in great chunks ahead of them. But he had said it in such a manner that they were fairly certain he would never make what he had done a subject of boasting. There was nothing insulting in his attitude, as they returned. He picked up with them the subject of Blondy, and be agreed with them that for what he had done that day Blondy must die. It merely happened that on this occasion Blondy’s horse had been good enough to outfoot the pursuers.

“And yet,” they admitted, when they cantered back into Twin Springs, “ain’t it a shame that a game gent like Blondy has to be plugged because he done what any one of the rest of us, being in Blondy’s boots, would have done.”

No sooner were they within the confines of Twin Springs, however, than they began to learn new things with great rapidity. In the first place they were greeted by a crowd of men at the hotel, where, as at the seat of knowledge, the crowd was assembled to await bulletins which would give them the latest information from the battle front, so to speak. And when the little host learned that big Blondy still rode unmolested over the hills, there was a howl of rage.

The reason for their sorrow was a strange one. For it was discovered that Oliver Hopkins was not dead — he was not even seriously wounded; for the bullet had simply taken a glancing course around his body, and what had seemed mortal had been no more than a stunning and surface injury! Oliver Hopkins was not dead, and therefore there was no reason for killing the victor. But there was another angle from which the case had to be viewed.

When it was thought that Oliver was dead, the whole affair had taken on a somber and gloomy atmosphere. What had started as a prank had resulted as a killing, and only grim and joyless duty forced the riders along the trail of Blondy. But now it appeared that Hopkins lived, and the infuriated townsmen knew that they had been insulted, slapped in the face, and baffled!

It was enough to spread a thick layer of shame over two generations, such an event as this. The cow-punchers ground their teeth. All sympathy for Blondy was conjured away into a thin mist immediately, and in its place there was fury. Law had now nothing to do with it The insult had been to the entire town. It became known that that morning Blondy had loudly boasted of how he intended to ride into Twin Springs, show his undaunted face wheresoever he pleased, and then return unscathed and thereby break the spell of dread with which the cow-punchers at the Bennett Ranch had come to regard the village.

What was more, old Bennett had tried to dissuade him. And pretty Elsie Bennett, so they said, had followed him clear to his horse, entreating him with tears in her eyes not to take such a terrible chance.

And how had he answered? He had laughed loudly as he sat in the saddle, and, waving his hat to her, he had cried that they didn’t make men big enough in Twin Springs to keep him from riding peaceably into the town and peaceably out again.

And he had done what he promised!

In the completeness of their rage the foiled townsmen could not devise future punishment terrible enough to satisfy their spirits. Some suggested tar and feathers when they caught him. Others would have been content with riding him on a rail and kindred amusements. But here Ronicky Doone murmured his belief that the fugitive would never come back to face them. They laughed him to scorn. Short as was the time Blondy had been on the Bennett Ranch, it was an open secret that he was devoted body and soul to gay little Elsie. He would return to her as inevitably as iron must go to the magnet. As a matter of fact, they swore, he had simply undertaken this daring feat to make himself out a hero in the eyes of the girl.

And Ronicky left them, while they were still devising ways and means and grinding their communal teeth, so to speak. He went up to his room in the hotel and sat before the window to watch in solitude the coming of the sunset

He was in a gloomy humor. The mention of the girl had, for some reason, poured salt into his wounds. Here was young Blondy starting on a career of glory for fame and for the lady. And there sat he, Ronicky Doone, with the thin fingers of a thousand ghostly deeds plucking at his memory, but nothing left of all he had done! His life had left no solid body. The revolver at his hip, the rifle on his saddle, the horse he rode, the gay clothes upon his back and a pittance in his pocket — this represented the total gain of his labors.

With a sad pride he told himself that at least he had never debased himself to win money or reputation. He had labored for others more than for himself. And yet these were small consolations. The mere name of the unseen girl, linked with the thought of Blondy, tormented him. Blondy and Elsie Bennett would someday, he felt by premonition, be happy together. And he, Ronicky Doone, could never reach that wished for goal. He knew it with all the greater certainty, as the brilliance of the sunset faded out, and there fell over the town the partial night cast by the western mountains. Out of the past he carried nothing, he kept repeating — he carried nothing! Such a monody, drumming into the ear and the spirit of a young man is not good for the soul, and Ronicky Doone finally dropped his head on his fist in a joyless study.

It was certain that he could not leave the community until he had confronted big Blondy, and yet he longed with all his soul to leave the town and the men in it behind him and ride on. That had been the course of his past years — riding on and on, from one set of acquaintances and from one community to another until there was behind him a wild and swiftly shifting host of recollections — no fixed group of men and women and events such as make up the background of our average life.

Here he was surprised and startled by a heavy knocking at the door, delivered so strongly as to suggest that the door had been kicked with the boot rather than struck by the hand. Ronicky rose in some anger.