The Essential Max Brand - 29 Westerns in One Edition. Max Brand
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figure on the floor, alarmed Ronicky. He came close to the door.
“Well?” he demanded, keeping his voice deep, like the voice of Harry Morgan, as well as he could remember it.
“Hurry! The chief, I tell you!”
He snapped out the light and turned resolutely to the door. He felt his faithful Colt, and the feel of the butt was like the touch of a friendly hand before he opened the door.
She was dressed in white and made a glimmering figure in the darkness of the hall, and her hair glimmered, also, almost as if it possessed a light and a life of its own. Ronicky Doone saw that she was a very pretty girl, indeed. Yes, it must be Caroline Smith. The very perfume of young girlhood breathed from her, and very sharply and suddenly he wondered why he should be here to fight the battle of Bill Gregg in this matter—Bill Gregg who slept peacefully and stupidly in the room across the street!
She had turned away, giving him only a side glance, as he came out. “I don’t know what’s on, something big. The chief’s going to give you your big chance—with me.”
Ronicky Doone grunted.
“Don’t do that,” exclaimed the girl impatiently. “I know you think Pete is the top of the world, but that doesn’t mean that you can make a good imitation of him. Don’t do it, Harry. You’ll pass by yourself. You don’t need a make-up, and not Pete’s on a bet.”
They reached the head of the stairs, and Ronicky Doone paused. To go down was to face the mysterious chief whom he had no doubt was the old man to whom Harry Morgan had already referred. In the meantime the conviction grew that this was indeed Caroline Smith. Her free-and-easy way of talk was exactly that of a girl who might become interested in a man whom she had never seen, merely by letters.
“I want to talk to you,” said Ronicky, muffling his voice. “I want to talk to you alone.”
“To me?” asked the girl, turning toward him. The light from the hall lamp below gave Ronicky the faintest hint of her profile.
“Yes.”
“But the chief?”
“He can wait.”
She hesitated, apparently drawn by curiosity in one direction, but stopped by another thought. “I suppose he can wait, but, if he gets stirred up about it—oh, we’ll, I’ll talk to you—but nothing foolish, Harry. Promise me that?”
“Yes.”
“Slip into my room for a minute.” She led the way a few steps down the hall, and he followed her through the door, working his mind frantically in an effort to find words with which to open his speech before she should see that he was not Harry Morgan and cry out to alarm the house. What should he say? Something about Bill Gregg at once, of course. That was the thing.
The electric light snapped on at the far side of the room. He saw a dressing table, an Empire bed covered with green-figured silk, a pleasant rug on the floor, and, just as he had gathered an impression of delightful femininity from these furnishings, the girl turned from the lamp on the dressing table, and he saw—not Caroline Smith, but a bronze-haired beauty, as different from Bill Gregg’s lady as day is from night.
11. A CROSS-EXAMINATION
He was conscious then only of green-blue eyes, very wide, very bright, and lips that parted on a word and froze there in silence. The heart of Ronicky Doone leaped with joy; he had passed the crisis in safety. She had not cried out.
“You’re not—” he had said in the first moment.
“I am not who?” asked the girl with amazing steadiness. But he saw her hand go back to the dressing table and open, with incredible deftness and speed, the little top drawer behind her.
“Don’t do that!” said Ronicky softly, but sharply. “Keep your hand off that table, lady, if you don’t mind.”
She hesitated a fraction of a second. In that moment she seemed to see that he was in earnest, and that it would be foolish to tamper with him.
“Stand away from that table; sit down yonder.”
Again she obeyed without a word. Her eyes, to be sure, flickered here and there about the room, as though they sought some means of sending a warning to her friends, or finding some escape for herself. Then her glance returned to Ronicky Doone.
“Well,” she said, as she settled in the chair. “Well?”
A world of meaning in those two small words—a world of dread controlled. He merely stared at her thoughtfully.
“I hit the wrong trail, lady,” he said quietly. “I was looking for somebody else.”
She started. “You were after—” She stopped.
“That’s right, I guess,” he admitted.
“How many of you are there?” she asked curiously, so curiously that she seemed to be forgetting the danger. “Poor Carry Smith with a mob—” She stopped suddenly again. “What did you do to Harry Morgan?”
“I left him safe and quiet,” said Ronicky Doone.
The girl’s face hardened strangely. “What you are, and what your game is I don’t know,” she said. “But I’ll tell you this: I’m letting you play as if you had all the cards in the deck. But you haven’t. I’ve got one ace that’ll take all your trumps. Suppose I call once what’ll happen to you, pal?”
“You don’t dare call,” he said.
“Don’t dare me,” said the girl angrily. “I hate a dare worse than anything in the world, almost.” For a moment her green-blue eyes were pools of light flashing angrily at him.
Into the hand of Ronicky Doone, with that magic speed and grace for which his fame was growing so great in the mountain desert, came the long, glimmering body of the revolver, and, holding it at the hip, he threatened her.
She shrank back at that, gasping. For there was an utter surety about this man’s handling of the weapon. The heavy gun balanced and steadied in his slim fingers, as if it were no more than a feather’s weight.
“I’m talking straight, lady,” said Ronicky Doone. “Sit down— pronto!”
In the very act of obedience she straightened again. “It’s bluff,” she said. “I’m going through that door!” Straight for the door she went, and Ronicky Doone set his teeth.
“Go back!” he commanded. He glided to the door and blocked her way, but the gun hung futile in his hand.
“It’s easy to pull a gun, eh?” said the girl, with something of a sneer. “But it takes nerve to use it. Let me through this door!”
“Not in a thousand years,” said Ronicky.
She laid her hand on the door and drew it back—it struck his shoulder—and Ronicky gave way with a groan and stood with his head bowed. Inwardly he cursed himself. Doubtless she was used to men who bullied her, as if she were another man of an inferior sort. Doubtless she despised him for his weakness. But, though he gritted his teeth, he could not make himself firm. Those old lessons which sink into a man’s soul in the West came back to him and held him. In the helpless rage which possessed him he wanted battle above all things in the world. If half a dozen men had poured through the doorway he would have rejoiced. But this one girl was enough to make him helpless.
He looked up in amazement. She had not gone; in fact, she had closed the door slowly and stood with her back against it, staring at him in a speechless bewilderment.
“What sort of a man are you?” asked the girl at last.
“A fool,” said Ronicky slowly. “Go out and