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

teeth when he smiled — and he was always smiling — were polished and white. He had a hand as big as two, and his foot was well nigh in the same proportion. So that Ronicky Doone could hardly repress a smile at the thought of such a man as this setting siege to the heart of a pretty girl and making and wrecking his life because of her.

Yet he had once been other than he was now. His hand was made gross with flesh, whereas it had once been simply wide and strong. His waist, too, was unduly corpulent, and in a leaner youth those shoulders and that chest must have swelled with a suggestion of herculean power. Even at fifty be was a mighty man. Not only was he mighty in muscle, but his personality struck Ronicky in the face and made him look down. The great hand was stretched toward him. “You’re Ronicky Doone?”

“I’m him,” said Ronicky and gingerly intrusted his fingers to the bone-breaking possibilities of that great paw. To his surprise the grip of Al Jenkins proved to be as gentle as the touch of a girl, and it told Ronicky, more strongly than words could have done, that Al Jenkins was as considerate as he was powerful. In a flash he understood the popularity of Al in the town. Money alone could not have purchased such a repute west of the rockies.

“Been hearing about you,” said Al Jenkins.

“I been hearing more about you,” said Ronicky.

That’s a lie,” said Jenkins. “Because the gent that told me about you can tell more in a minute than another man can tell in a year. I mean old Sam Tompson. Most of what he says is lies, but he strings his lies together pretty well. He makes ‘em look good. The only thing I balked on about you is when he told me that you was a mass of scars from head to foot, and that you done all he said you’d done and are still shy of twenty-seven. Turn around here and let me have a look at you!”

He had a great proprietary, possessive air which was not really offensive. Now with one hand he turned Ronicky Doone around. With the other hand he struck a match and lighted a lamp and then held the light high, so that in the dusk he could examine the face of the youth. In another man it would have been intolerable impertinence, but in Al Jenkins it was simply an idiosyncrasy with which Ronicky for one was quite willing to put up. He even broke into laughter, as Al Jenkins stepped back and lowered the lamp, shaking his head in bewilderment.

“What plumb beats me,” said Al Jenkins, “is how he can keep a straight face when he tells them lies, that Tompson! He said that you — why, half of the things that he said about you would have filled a book, Ronicky. How much of ‘em are straight? What’s all this about you being a fire-eating, man-killing terror? Is that the truth about the time when you — “

“It’s all wrong,” said Ronicky instantly. “I’m the most gentlest, peaceablest, law-abidingest gent you ever seen, Mr. Jenkins. You can lay to that! I dunno where old Tompson got hold of his yarns about me, but — “

“He got ‘em down south. Says that once on the Staked Plains — “

“Oh, he don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Ronicky calmly. “There ain’t no use talking about what he said.”

“For the first time I begin to think that there’s something in what he told me,” replied Jenkins.

He now folded his arms above his stomach and planted his legs well apart. “Doone,” he said, “I guess this is a lucky day for both of us.”

“I hope so,” said Ronicky politely.

“Well, I’m going to make it so!” boomed the big man. “Hope is all well and good. But it’s better off when it’s left inside the covers of a book. It ain’t a good word for a man to use. He’s got hands to make things and to take things with. That’s better than a dreamer’s head to hope!”

He brought his sentence to a conclusion by crashing the flat of his hand down upon the table, so that that flimsy article of furniture sagged sadly to one side with a great groan. Al Jenkins straightened it with a jerk that set the lamp to dancing, and the flame to leaping in the glass chimney’s throat. But Jenkins allowed the lamp to stagger unregarded. He was already pacing up and down the room, now and then coming to a pause in front of Ronicky and directing the full power of his resonant voice and his bright, clear eyes upon the younger man.

“Here’s what I’m driving at,” said Jenkins. “You been in town long enough to know what I’m doing around here?”

“I got a general idea,” said Ronicky, fumbling to find the words which would most gently approach the truth. “They tell me that you’re sort of interested in road building and real estate and that you are buying a good deal of land.”

“Thunder!” burst in Jenkins. “They tell you a lot of rot. What I’m after is old Bennett, and, if they talked to you about me at all, they told you that first off. I’m here doing things for the town, and maybe some of them are done because I do like the place. But right down in the bottom of your heart you can get to the real facts, which I don’t try to hide: that I’m in here helping Twin Springs because I want Twin Springs to help me. And why do I need help? Because I’m smashing Bennett — because I’m smashing him root and branch!”

As he spoke he crashed his fist into the palm of his other hand repeatedly with force enough to have knocked down an ordinary man. The energy of the rancher was amazing. No wonder he had succeeded in tearing wealth out of the frozen land of Alaska. He put enough effort into five minutes of conversation to have enabled another to run a mile.

“H’m.” said Ronicky, “I see. Well I did hear a little about that — “

“And you thought I was a mean old scoundrel for doing it, eh?”

“Why — “

“Don’t deny it! That’s what you thought! Well, there’s no harm in thinking what you please. This is a mighty free country, son, and I want it to stay free so far as I’m concerned. Think what you please, Doone, but just listen to me while I talk sense to you. Ronicky, I’ve got a need of you. I want you on my side!”

Ronicky Doone regarded him with wonder.

“You got the wrong idea about me,” he said. “I ain’t floating through here aiming to get into trouble on one side or the other. Matter of fact all that I want to do is to get even with big Blondy, and then I’ll be traveling along, I guess.”

“Sure,” said Al Jenkins hastily, waving his hand in large agreement with this statement. “Don’t I know what’s going on inside of your head, boy? You’re plumb peaceable. All you want to do is to finish up Blondy. But, Ronicky, I aim to tell you that before you’ve finished up Blondy you’ll be a mite older than you are.”

Ronicky shook his head.

“I finish my business quick,” he declared. “Either he gets me, or I get him. That’s all there is to it. As soon as he finds out that Oliver Hopkins ain’t dead, he’ll be back on the Bennett place as big as life. So I guess it won’t be long before him and me meet up.”

Al Jenkins shook his head.

“Son,” he said, “I’d like to trust you to do the right thing, but I can’t. You go to kill Blondy — don’t shake your head and cuss because I say that. You’re going to fight him, and the only way you can stop one of Blondy’s kind is to kill him. I know! But when you go out to the ranch, nine chances out of ten, the person you run into will be old Bennett, with a tongue slicker than a snake’s tongue. And he’ll talk you around onto his side quicker’n you can wink. Oh, he’s a fine talker, old Bennett is. Why he picked a job where he’d have to talk to cows instead of to men, I can’t make out! He could steal a baby out of the arms of the judge, if he was a lawyer, and have the jury weeping and swearing that the kid belonged to him, all inside of the shake of a lamb’s tail. That’s the sort of a pizen gent this Bennett is!”

“But I’m not going out to talk,” said Ronicky. “I — “

He might as well have tried to stop the rush of an undammed stream. Al Jenkins when he began to talk kept on until his mind was empty of ideas.

“Or if it ain’t the old man, then his girl will get you. Have you heard anything about his girl?”

“Only that she’s pretty,” said Ronicky.

The older man stared at him in disgust.

“What kind of men do they breed nowadays?” he roared at last. “I’ll tell you all about Elsie Bennett, son. She’s the living image of her mother. Oh my, oh my, oh my!”

He brought out the exclamations partly as devout sighs and partly as groans.

“Know what that means? That means that she’s one of them deadly blondes. She’s one of them kind that got hair that’s a sort of a palpitating gold. Pale gold, you see, with the sun in it, is what her hair is. She’s got blue eyes. She may be thinking up more kinds of deviltry than there are underground, but all the time she’ll have a look in her eye that makes a man think of heaven. She’s got a dimple tucked away in one cheek and a sort of a little crooked smile. That smile always seems to be at you as much as it is with you. She ain’t got one of these tissue-paper skins with color in her cheeks like it was slapped on with a paint brush — one of them skins that fade and wrinkle up by the time a girl’s thirty, in this here climate. No, sir. Her skin is just sort of creamy, with a look like it had been rubbed and sponged till it was fresh and clear as crystal. D’you foller me, son?”

He had changed his tone wonderfully in speaking of the girl. He stood with his head thrown back, so that the immense column of this throat was exposed. But out of that great throat came a voice soft and deep and tremulous with an edging of emotion that cut to Ronicky’s quick.

“Oh, lad,” said the big man, “a girl like her hadn’t ought to belong to no one man. Why, she should be private property. She’d ought to be taken around where everybody could see her and be happy looking at her. A sight of her is better than good news. And a picture of her smiling, or the hearing of her laugh, is like striking gold in the desert.”

He raised his head again and scowled at Ronicky Doone.

“Why ain’t you standing on tiptoe, champing and chawing the bit to get out and see her, you young rapscallion?” he roared.

“I can get along tolerable well without seeing her,” admitted Ronicky Doone.

“Bah!” said Al Jenkins. “You maybe think that you’re in love with some other girl, but you ain’t! It ain’t no ways possible for a man to be really in love except