The Max Brand Megapack. Max Brand
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wavering when the wind stirred the flame in one of the lamps or sent it smoking up the chimney. Sally and Bard sat with their backs to the door, and Nash half facing it.
“Steve,” she said, with a sudden low tenseness of voice that sent a chill up Bard’s spinal cord, “Steve, what’s wrong?”
“This,” answered the cowboy calmly, and whirling in his chair, his gun flashed and exploded.
They sprang up in time to see the bulky form of Butch Conklin rise out of the shadows in the front part of the room with outstretched arms, from one of which a revolver dropped clattering to the floor. Backward he reeled as though a hand were pulling him from behind, and then measured his length with a crash on the floor.
Bard, standing erect, quite forgot to touch his weapon, but Sally had produced a ponderous forty-five with mysterious speed and now crouched behind a table with the gun poised. Nash, bending low, ran forward to the fallen man.
“Nicked, but not done for,” he called.
“Thank God!” cried Sally, and the two joined Nash about the prostrate body.
That bullet had had very certain intentions, but by a freak of chance it had been deflected on the angle of the skull and merely ploughed a bloody furrow through the mat of hair from forehead to the back of the skull. He was stunned, but hardly more seriously hurt than if he had been knocked down by a club.
“I’ve an idea,” said the Easterner calmly, “that I owe my life to you, Mr. Nash.”
“Let that drop,” answered the other.
“A quarter of an inch lower,” said the girl, who was examining the wound, “and Butch would have kissed the world good-bye.”
Not till then did the full horror of the thing dawn on Bard. The girl was no more excited than one of her Eastern cousins would have been over a game of bridge, and the man in the most matter-of-fact manner, was slipping another cartridge into the cylinder of the revolver, which he then restored to the holster.
It still seemed incredible that the man could have drawn his gun and fired it in that flash of time. He recalled his adventure with Butch earlier that evening and with Sandy Ferguson before; for the first time he realized what he had done and a cold horror possessed him like the man who has nerves to walk the tight rope across the chasm and faints when he looks back on the gorge from the safety of the other side. The girl took command.
“Steve, run down to the marshal’s office; Deputy Glendin is there.”
She took the wet cloth and made a deft bandage for the head of Conklin. With his shaggy hair covered, and all his face sagging with lines of weariness, the gun-fighter seemed no more than a middle-aged man asleep, worn out by trouble.
“Is there a doctor?” asked Bard anxiously.
“That ain’t a case for a doctor—look here; you’re in a blue faint. What is the matter?”
“I don’t know; I’m thinking of that quarter of an inch which would have meant the difference to poor Conklin.”
“‘Poor’ Conklin? Why, you fish, he was sneakin’ in here to try his hand on you. He found out he couldn’t get his gang into town, so he slipped in by himself. He’ll get ten years for this—and a thousand if they hold him up for the other things he’s done.”
“I know—and this fellow Nash was as quiet as the strike of a snake. If he’d been a fraction of a second slower I might be where Conklin is now. I’ll never forget Nash for this.”
She said pointedly: “No, he’s a bad one to forget; keep an eye on him. You spoke of a snake—that’s how smooth Steve is.”
“Remember your own motto, Miss Fortune. He saved my life; therefore I must trust him.”
She answered sullenly: “You’re your own boss.”
“What’s wrong with Nash?”
“Find out for yourself.”
“Are all these fellows something other than they seem?”
“What about yourself?”
“How do you mean that?”
“What trail are you on, Bard? Don’t look so innocent. Oh, I seen you was after something a long time ago.”
“I am. After excitement, you know.”
“Ain’t you finding enough?”
“I’ve got two things ahead of me.”
“Well?”
“This trip, and when I come back I think making love to you would be more exciting than gun-plays.”
They regarded each other with bantering smiles.
“A tenderfoot like you make love to me? That would be exciting, all right, if it wasn’t so funny.”
“As for the competition,” he said serenely, “that would be simply a good background.”
“Hate yourself, don’t you, Bard?” she grinned.
“The rest of these boys are all very well, but they don’t see that what you want is the velvet touch.”
“What’s that?”
She was as frankly curious as some boy hearing a new game described.
“You’ve only been loved in one way. These rough-handed fellows come in and throw an arm around you and ask you to marry them; isn’t that it? What you really need, is an old, simple, but very effective method.”
Though her eyes were shining, she yawned.
“It don’t interest me, Bard.”
“On the contrary, you’re getting quite excited.”
“So does a horse before it gets ready to buck.”
“Exactly. If I thought it would be easy I wouldn’t be tempted.”
“Well, if you like fighting you’ve sure mapped out a nice sizeable quarrel with me, Bud.”
“Good. I’m certainly coming back to Eldara. Now about this method of mine—”
“Throwing your cards on the table, eh? What you got, Bard, a royal flush?”
“Right again. It’s a very simple method but you couldn’t beat it.”
“Bud, you ain’t half old enough to kid me.”
“What you need,” he persisted calmly, “is someone who would sit down and simply talk good, plain English to you.”
“Let ’er go.”
“In the first place I will call attention to your method of dressing.”
“Anything wrong with it?”
“I knew you’d be interested.”
She slipped into a chair and sat cross-legged in it, her elbows on her knees and her chin cupped in both her hands.
“Sure I’m interested. If there’s a new way fixin’ ham-and, serve it out.”
“I would begin,” he went on judiciously, “by saying that you dressed in five minutes in the dark.”
“It’s generally dark at 5 a.m.,” she admitted.
“You look, on the whole, as if you’d fallen into your clothes.”
The wounded man stirred and groaned faintly.
She called: “Lie down, Butch; I’m busy. Go on, Bard.”
“If you keep a mirror it’s a wall decoration—not for personal use.”
“Maybe this is an old method, Bard; but around this place it’d be a quick way of gettin’ shot.”