Destry Rides Again (17 page)

The next morning, Bent rode out to the Dangerfield place dressed like a puncher of the range, not because he wanted to play
that part, but because the cowpuncher’s costume is the only perfect one for rough riding across the brush-laced country of
the Western range. His tall hat turns the heat of the sun or the downpour of the rain. It is hat, parasol, and umbrella all
in one. His bandana keeps dust from falling down his neck, keeps off the hot rays of the sun where they are apt to fall with
most force—the back of the neck—and in time of need is the sieve through which his breath can be drawn and the dust kept from
his lungs. His leather chaps turn the needle points of the thorns. His high heeled, narrow toed boots, foolish for walking,
are ideal for a man who is half standing in the stirrups on a long ride and does not wish his foot to be too deeply engaged
in case of a fall.

Bent was dressed in this fashion, and he was well accustomed to it. He took a strong, fast horse from his barn and went on
a line as straight as a bird’s flight from his house to the Dangerfield place. He found “The Colonel” on the front veranda
smoking a long cigar.

“Hello,” said Dangerfield. “Are you masqueradin’ as a workin’ man, Chet?”

“I’m a working man every day,” said Bent with a smile, as he threw the reins over the post of the hitching rack and came up
to the steps. “I have to sit and grind, while you’re here in the cool of the wind.”

“There ain’t any sitting work,” declared the Colonel.
“The curse of Adam was sweat of the brow, not sweat of the brain.”

Bent stood with a hand against one of the narrow wooden pillars of the veranda and smiled down at the rancher.

“What about the worry of the poor devils in the offices?” said he. “Worry and trouble all day long!”

“What do kids do when they sit in the shade?” asked the Colonel.

“Day dream, I suppose.”

“A gent that lives on his brain is simply turning day dreams into money.”

“He has no pain, then?”

“Not a mite,” said the other. “But he knows that he’s makin’ a living, and that starts him pityin’ himself. Most men don’t
complain of work till they get married, and then it’s only to impress the wife. Because he finds out pretty pronto that he’s
gotta be the comforter if he don’t ask to be comforted. But toilin’ with your hands, that’s different. Seein’ the sun stick
in one place in the sky for a coupla dozen hours—that’s pain, with payday always about a week away.”

“I think that I have pain enough,” said Bent.

“You got it in your imagination,” said Dangerfield. “And there ain’t any larger
or more tenderer place to have a pain than in the imagination. Women folks used to have that kind; men
always
have ’em, unless they’re laborin’, and then they don’t need any imagination at all. But I’ve set here on this porch a good
many years and never seen much trouble, except thinkin’ of the first of the month, now and then. But it wasn’t anything serious!”

“Have you lived such a happy life, then?”

“Sure,” said Dangerfield. “By not workin’ I kept
ready for the luck, and when the luck came, I grabbed it and took off its scalp.”

He added: “I expect you didn’t sashay all the ways out here to talk to me, but if you came to see Charlie, I’ll tell you that
she ain’t good company lately.”

“I’ve never found Charlie dull,” said Bent.

“Mostly,” said Dangerfield, “young men don’t know nothin’ about girls. It ain’t
that girls wanta lie and be deceivin’ but they just nacherally can’t be themselves when a gent is around. They gotta put the
best foot forward. I tell you what, Chet, Sunday’s been a mighty miserable day around this place for years and years, with
Charlie usin’ up a whole week of good spirits on Saturday night. But now she ain’t dull; she’s just mean.”

“Mean?” said Bent. “Charlie mean?”

“A surprisin’ thing to you, I reckon. She’s so mean that she won’t talk to nobody, except a word or two to the niggers. The
rest of the time she spends wranglin’ mustangs. And the wear that she gives a cayuse in two days is enough to keep him thin
the rest of his life. I says to her: ‘Charlie, when you break a hoss, aim to save the pieces, will you?’ ”

“I didn’t know that Charlie went in for rough riding.”

“Sure you didn’t. But she’s gotta have some way of lettin’ off the steam, I reckon. It ain’t the hosses she’s mad at.”

“What is it, then?”

“Herself. Because she once had that crazy, fast flyin’ snipe, Destry, tied to a string, and now she’s gone and cut the cord.
Where’s he now?”

“I wanted to talk to her about that,” said Bent.

“Then she’ll listen,” said Dangerfield, “if you keep close onto that track.”

“Where is she now?”

“Anywhere from hell to breakfast—from that broken headed mesa yonder to the corrals.”

At the corrals, Bent found her. She had just turned loose a sweating mustang, chafed with white foam and froth about the shoulders;
the tired horse merely jogged wearily away. In the meantime, Charlie Dangerfield leaned against the corral fence and criticized
the handling of the next candidate for her attention. This was a bald faced chestnut with a Roman nose and the eye of a snake,
which was trying to tear the snubbing post out of the ground, and bite, kick, or strike the two men who were working on it.
The double purpose kept it from succeeding in either hope.

“Hello, Charlie,” said Bent. “That’s a pretty picture you’re going to fit yourself into, it looks to me.”

She waved her hand to him briefly, and hardly gave him a glance.

“Sweet boy, isn’t he?” said she. “Look at the iron hook in his nose and the hunch in his back. Up on that back, you’ll feel
as if you’re sitting on Mt. McKinley and looking down at the birds. Hey, Jerry, sink your knee in his ribs and give those
cinches another haul, will you? You’ve got his wind inside that!”

Jerry obeyed, and finally the gelding was prepared for riding. Bent, in the meantime, was looking over the girl quietly, and
found her much changed. She was thinner, he thought, and the shadow about her eyes made them look darker. She might have been
an older sister of the girl he had known.

“Charlie,” he said, “you come away and listen to me. I want to talk to you about Harry Destry.”

“Do you?” she replied. “Who’s Harry nicked lately?”

The hardness and casual quality of her voice did not deceive Bent.

“Little Jimmy Clifton,” he answered gravely.

“Jimmy? What was Jimmy’s shameful secret?”

“I don’t know. No one ever will know—if there was one—because it died with him, it appears.”

Still she would not turn her head, but he well knew that her pretended interest in the mustang had disappeared.

“Died?” she said.

“Yes,” answered Bent.

She turned slowly and faced him. He saw she was white.

“What made
that
a fair fight?” she asked. “Did Jimmy have a crowd with him?”

Bent looked down at the ground and seemed to study it before he answered; in reality he was concealing his exultation.

“Of course Jimmy must have had help or Harry never would have tackled him. But—no one knows who was with Clifton. He was found
with the knife—er—in his throat, Charlie!”

She threw out her hands as though she were casting away a disgusting thought.

“Not a knife!”

“Yes. It’s the worst business of all.”

“Stabbed Jimmy Clifton? Jimmy? I don’t believe it!”

“I don’t either,” said Bent hastily. “Only—the knife was there! The ‘D’ carved on it, and everything!”

“If he’d done such a thing, he wouldn’t be fool enough to leave the knife in the wound—not a knife that could be identified.
Somebody stole that knife and murdered Clifton!”

Protest, Bent had been prepared for, but not the naked truth so suddenly thrown in his face.

He was saved the necessity of finding words by the girl herself.

“Jerry,” she called faintly, “you take that red-eyed devil, will you? I’m afraid of him!”

She put her hand on Bent’s arm.

“Start me walking, and keep right on,” she said. “I’m mighty dizzy! Stabbed Jimmy? Stabbed him and left the knife in the wound
and——”

“Forget that, will you?” asked Bent. “I didn’t come to talk about it!”

She stopped short, and her hand gripped his arm fiercely.

“Why should I care a rap about him? Thief, gunman, professional fighter, lazy, shiftless—and now a murderer! Why should I
care a rap about him? I’m a fool! I’m a fool!” cried Charlie Dangerfield. “I don’t want to talk about him any longer!”

Bent looked hard at her, and then he answered: “If I thought I could believe you, Charlie, I’d lose my heart about saying
what I intend to say—what I came here to say. But I don’t believe you. Should I?”

“You came out to talk about this killing. You came out to explain it away, I suppose? God knows how Harry can deserve such
a friend as you are!”

“What of you, Charlie?”

“Ah, he found me when I was young—I was a baby, only. And he took my heart in his hands with such a grip, Chester, that I’ve
never been able to take it back. What with loving him, pitying him, being shamed for him, fearing him, and then losing him!
Why, the thought of Harry’s all around me, just as the hills and the mesas are all around this ranch. But what keeps you true
to him? That’s what I don’t understand!”

“Because, Charlie, I don’t care to analyze my best friend.”

She watched him for a moment, and then he saw her glance melting.

“Dear old Chet!” said she. “One man like you puts all the rest of us in our places! You’re true blue! Tell me what I’m to
do, and I’ll do it!”

“Is there a quiet place, a secluded place near the house, Charlie?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Some shack, say?”

“There’s the house by the old well.”

“The one that went dry?”

“Yes.”

“That would do, perfectly. You’re to be there tonight.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Night, did you say?”

“Yes. You can’t expect him to ride about the country during the day, can you?”

“Harry? Is he to come there?”

Bent set his teeth for an instant—such a joy came up in her eyes, and flushed in her brown face, that bitter envy burned him
up. This for Harry Destry, even when she thought that his hands were red with the murder of a helpless man!

“He’s to come there, I trust. If I can persuade him, at least.”

“And then?”

“And then you’re to start persuading where I left off!”

“Persuading him to do what? Am I to reform him? Is that the little thing you expect of me?”

“I expect that you can do anything with him, if you have a chance. If you’re not proud with him, I
should say! Because there’s enough iron in him to resent pride.”

“Proud?” said she. “Oh, I’ll not be proud! But what would I say?”

“You’d ask him to leave five of the twelve men untouched, and go away with you!”

She considered the idea, trembling.

Then, in a rapid murmur so that he hardly heard the words: “He wouldn’t listen, of course. I’ve failed him when he needed
me—when he pretended to need me. I’m dead to him, now!”

“You’re not. I don’t think so, at least. At any rate, will you make the experiment, Charlie?”

“Ask drowning men if they’ll catch at straws!” said she.

A happy glow of achievement already possessed the body and the soul of Bent as he returned to Wham. For if he had not actually
fulfilled all his purpose, the first part was done, and the remainder seemed easily at hand.

It was not possible that a guilty conscience could move him. Too much is made of guilty consciences. They generally begin
to work on criminals after the stern hand of the law has grasped them by the nape of the neck. They prepare for a holy death
to make up for a bad life, only after the hangman is assured. So Bent was unencumbered with remorse of any kind.

What fascinated him was the intricacy of his plan, the width of the end which he aimed at, the skill with which his purposes
were so dovetailed together that where the one plan ended and the other began would have been hard to tell.

On the whole, everything that he did seemed based upon the putting down of Destry. To the imprisonment of Destry he owed his
own safety from prosecution for the train robbery in the beginning of his prosperity. Again, to the cruel fame of Destry he
owed it that he had been able to strike down a creditor and cancel that debt. Yet again, the very act which would kill Destry
would be interpreted by Charlie Dangerfield as an accident which had taken place through the malice of others, and in spite
of the guarding care of the real contriver. She would credit him with having tried to save Destry from any calamity; the very
death of Destry he would so
arrange that she must feel Bent was least concerned in it.

The death of Clifton had removed the last danger to his fortune. The end of Destry would clear his way to the hand of Charlotte
Dangerfield. And as an extra profit, he would receive the undying gratitude of five men whom he had shown a way to rid themselves
of a mortal danger.

He knew that his way was not yet clear, but out of the darkness he saw light and was well content. Indeed, as he rode down
the street of Wham he was hardly sure that he would have been pleased to gain all his ends by legitimate means; crime, which
had been a tool, now was becoming an end, desirable for its excitement.

He drew up at the shop of Cleeves, who came out to him with the soot of the forge on his face, and black streaks of grease
on his hairy arms.

“You know the old dry well on the Dangerfield place?” he demanded without prelude.

“I reckon I do.”

“Be out there tonight and have the rest of the boys handy. There’s plenty of chaparral growing right up to the door where
the rest of ’em can hide. But you, Cleeves, you’re a shot-gun expert.”

“I can handle a shot gun.”

“You’ve got a sawed off gun?”

“I have one.”

“You get out there well before dark. Get up into the attic and lie there. Mind you that nobody sees you on the way. You’re
out to shoot doves, if anybody in the shop asks you when you start. Lie up there in the attic and wait for Destry to come.
The girl will be there first. Lie still as a mouse till Destry
comes. The fact is, I don’t depend on the other four; I depend on you, Cleeves!”

The other nodded. “If I miss that close up,” he said, “I’m a fool and I’ll never shoot again!”

“If you miss, you’ll never shoot again,” said Bent. “You’re right about that. If you miss, you’ll be a dead man, old fellow!
But you’re not going to miss. What’s happened in town today?”

“The merchants have got together and offered a reward for Destry. The coroner has hung the killing of Clifton on him. It’s
clear sailing in that direction.”

“What about old Ding Slater? What’s he done?”

“Nothing—as usual. He’ll never hold a job in this town when his term’s up this time. They’re tired of him.”

“What happened when Slater got to the house the other night?”

“Nothin’ happened. You can’t get fresh sense out of a dry brain! He just looked around and clucked like an old hen. After
a while, he stood in the doorway and asked if any of the furniture had been moved, and I told him it hadn’t. Then Ding says
he don’t see how Bent could of seen the dead body from the door, or something like that. The old man’s pretty far gone!”

This observation made Bent sit a little straighter, but he said nothing. To him, the observation of the sheriff seemed to
prove that Slater’s was far from a dry brain! However, the news about the reward was far the more important tidings, he judged.

He left Cleeves at once, and riding down the street he straightway encountered the sheriff and dismounted to say to him anxiously:
“Ding, it doesn’t seem possible that Harry Destry could have stabbed Clifton!”

“He didn’t,” said the sheriff.

“Didn’t he? Then what’s all the talk about?”

“I dunno. Some mighty ornery sneak got into the house and stole that knife; or else it’s an old knife that Harry give away
a long time ago. Anyway, Destry never done the job.”

“I knew he didn’t have that sort of work in him!”

“You knew right, Chet. They’s more knowledge of people in friendship than there is in the law! A mighty lot!”

“But who could have done the job?”

“They’re in town—plenty that hate Destry and would be glad to knife Clifton if they could do it so safe!”

With that uncomforting knowledge in his mind, Bent rode on from the town. Yet however keen the old sheriff might be on the
trail, it was patent that he did not suspect Chester Bent of the crime, otherwise he would not have spoken so freely. But
close trailing of the crime might reveal the real criminal. There was no doubt of that, and, though Bent could not see where
he had left incriminating evidence behind him, still he knew that a clever hand and a sharp eye can unravel nearly any crime,
no matter how well covered the traces of it may be.

He was reasonably confident, but he knew that his safety was not yet built upon bed rock.

There remained the problem of the boy, as well. If he was alive, then nothing but ruin hung over Bent’s head. But there was
hardly a chance that the youngster had not been torn to death among the sharp rocks of the Cumber Creek.

With that comfort, with no sureties, but with many excellent high hopes for the future, Bent rode out of Wham and took the
old trail toward Pike Pass.

He rode on through the heat of the afternoon, with the rocks burning about him and smoking with heat waves, until the mesquite
thinned out, and then the dauntless lodgepole pines, which seem able to live in a furnace or an icebox, began to cluster on
the hills.

He had turned a sharp corner of the trail when the voice of Destry called suddenly behind him. He whirled about, his hand
instinctively flying to his gun, and there was Destry in the middle of the trail with Fiddle sticking her head out from the
trees close by. The man was greatly changed. Continued exposure to wind and sun had browned his face, and as he took off his
hat and waved it, Bent saw that the hair of Destry was growing long. The clipped skull had made him seem a criminal by right
and profession; now he appeared a typical wild man of the mountains.

“I wanted to see if you’d lost some of the edge of your eye, Chet,” he called, “and here you been and let me stalk you like
a blind man!”

Bent came back to him, smiling and holding out a hand which was received with a quick grip, like a clutch of iron, a familiar
grip to Bent. And every time he felt it, he wondered how his own might of arm would match against that of Destry!

“I was hoping to be stalked,” said he, “not dodging it. Harry, I’ve brought you news. They’ve put a price on you, for Clifton!”

“For Clifton? What about him?”

“D’you ask me that?” said Bent slowly.

“I do.”

“
He
was found dead last night, and with a knife of yours in his throat!”

“That leaves five,” was the first response of Destry.

He added: “How come a knife of mine? I wasn’t near the town!”

“I’m going to believe you, Harry. Then what scoundrel could have done it?”

“I dunno,” said Destry. He asked curiously: “They’ve put a price on me?”

“Twenty-five hundred, and it’ll soon go up.”

“How did you know the knife was mine?”

“By a ‘D’ carved in the butt of it.”

“I left a knife like that in your house, Chet. They’ve stolen it.”

“Who would have dared——”

“Why, one of the five, d’you see? To throw the blame on me and bring the law onto their side of this business. When you can’t
win your own fight, call in a dog to help you! What does Ding say?”

“He’s for you. Three people in the world stick to you, Harry. I’m one. And the third is what I’ve come to talk about. Charlie
wants to see you.”

“Charlie’s kind,” said Destry drily.

“Are you going to take it like this?”

“How should I take it?”

“Man, man, she talked to me with tears in her eyes, and she’s not a soft headed type, as you ought to know.”

“Then what does she want?”

“She wants you.”

“Now that I’m a murderer, too?”

“What does she care? She wants you. She’s ready to pack up and leave with you. She’ll do anything. But she begs you to come
down to see her at the old house by the dry well.”

“I know the place.”

Bent laid a hand on the shoulder of his companion.

“You’re arming yourself with indifference, Harry,”
said he, “but the fact is that you know you love her still!”

“I’ve taken her out of my mind,” said Destry firmly. “You think you have. She’s at the door now. Can you keep her out, Harry?”

Destry drew a great breath.

Then he said thoughtfully: “If they’s more than you two that know of the meeting place, I’m no better than a dead man, Chet,
when I start down there. You realize that?”

“Who else
could
know?”

“True,” said Destry. “They wasn’t pity or conscience in what she said, man? She wanted to see me?”

“I give you my word.”

Destry threw up his hand. “Look!” said he.

“At what, Harry?”

“My good resolutions. There they go like smoke! And I’ll be riding down there this same evenin’; but I reckon that I’ll need
my guns before that ride is over!”