Nan of Music Mountain. Frank H. Spearman
was a time limit, you understand, William,” persisted Lefever, continuing to stick pins calmly into de Spain. “Henry got to shooting too fast.”
“That wasn’t what beat me,” exclaimed de Spain curtly. And taking up the offending rifle he walked out of the room.
“Nor was it the most humiliating feature of his defeat,” murmured Lefever, as the door closed behind his discomfited champion. “What do you think, William?” he grumbled on. “The Morgans ran in a girl to shoot against us––true as there’s a God in heaven. They put up Nan 6 Morgan, old Duke Morgan’s little niece. And what do you think? She shot the fingers clean off our well-known Black Hand scout. I never before in my life saw Henry so fussed. The little Music Mountain skirt simply put it all over him. She had five bull’s-eyes to Henry’s three when the lever snapped. He forfeited.”
“Some shooting,” commented Jeffries, rapidly signing letters.
“We expected some when Henry unslung his gun,” Lefever went on without respecting Jeffries’s preoccupation. “As it is, those fellows have cleaned up every dollar loose in Sleepy Cat, and then some. Money? They could start a bank this minute.”
Sounds of revelry continued to pour in through the street window. The Morgans were celebrating uncommonly. “Rubbing it in, eh, John?” suggested Jeffries.
“Think of it,” gasped Lefever, “to be beaten by an eighteen-year-old girl.”
“Now that,” declared Jeffries, waking up as if for the first time interested, “is exactly where you made your mistake, John. Henry is young and excitable–––”
“Excitable!” echoed Lefever, taken aback.
“Yes, excitable––when a girl is in the ring––why not? Especially a trim, all-alive, up-and-coming, 7 blue-eyed hussy like that girl of Duke Morgan’s. She would upset any young fellow, John.”
“A girl from Morgan’s Gap?”
“Morgan’s Gap, nothing!” responded Jeffries scornfully. “What’s that got to do with it? Does that change the fire in the girl’s eye, the curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulder, John, or the color of her cheek?” Lefever only stared. “De Spain got to thinking about the girl,” persisted Jeffries, “her eyes and neck and pink cheeks rattled him. Against a girl you should have put up an old, one-eyed scout like yourself, or me, or Bob Scott.
“There’s another thing you forget, John,” continued Jeffries, signing even more rapidly. “A gunman shoots his best when there’s somebody shooting at him––otherwise he wouldn’t be a gunman––he would be just an ordinary, every-day marksman, with a Schuetzenverein medal and a rooster feather in his hat. That’s why you shoot well, John––because you’re a gunman, and not a marksman.”
“That boy can shoot all around me, Jeff.”
“For instance,” continued Jeffries, tossing off signatures now with a rubber stamp, and developing his incontestable theory at the same time, “if you had put Gale Morgan up against Henry 8 at, say five hundred yards, and told them to shoot at each other, instead of against each other, you’d have got bull’s-eyes to burn from de Spain. And the Calabasas crowd wouldn’t have your money. John, if you want to win money, you must study the psychological.”
There was abundance of raillery in Lefever’s retort: “That’s why you are rich, Jeff?”
“No, I am poor because I failed to study it. That is why I am at Sleepy Cat holding down a division. But now that you’ve brought Henry up here, we’ll keep him.”
“What do you mean, keep him?” demanded Lefever, starting in protest.
“What do I mean?” thundered Jeffries, who frequently thundered even when it didn’t rain in the office. “I mean I need him. I mean the time to shoot a bear is when you see him. John, what kind of a fellow is de Spain?” demanded the superintendent, as if he had never heard of him.
“Henry de Spain?” asked Lefever, sparring innocently for time.
“No, Commodore George Washington, General Jackson, Isaac Watts de Spain,” retorted Jeffries peevishly. “Don’t you know the man we’re talking about?”
“Known him for ten years.”
9
“Then why say ‘Henry’ de Spain, as if there were a dozen of him? He’s the only de Spain in these parts, isn’t he? What kind of a fellow is he?”
Lefever was ready; and as he sat in a chair sidewise at the table, one arm flung across the green baize, he looked every inch his devil-may-care part. Regarding Jeffries keenly, he exclaimed with emphasis: “Why, if you want him short and sharp, he’s a man with a soft eye and a snap-turtle jaw, a man of close squeaks and short-arm shots, always getting into trouble, always getting out; a man that can wheedle more out of a horse than anybody but an Indian; coax more shots out of a gun than anybody else can put into it––if you want him flat, that’s Henry, as I size him.”
Jeffries resumed his mildest tone: “Tell him to come in a minute, John.”
De Spain himself expressed contemptuous impatience when Lefever told him the superintendent wanted him to go to work at Sleepy Cat. He declared he had always hated the town; and Lefever readily understood why he should especially detest it just now. Every horseman’s yell that rang on the sunny afternoon air through the open windows––and from up the street and down there were still a good many––was one of 10 derision at de Spain’s galling defeat. When he at length consented to talk with Jeffries about coming to Sleepy Cat, the interview was of a positive sort on the one side and an obstinate sort on the other. De Spain raised one objection after another to leaving Medicine Bend, and Jeffries finally summoned a show of impatience.
“You are looking for promotion, aren’t you?” he demanded threateningly.
“Yes, but not for motion without the ‘pro,’ ” objected de Spain. “I want to stick to the railroad business. You want to get me into the stage business.”
“Temporarily, yes. But I’ve told you when you come back to the division proper, you come as my assistant, if you make good running the Thief River stages. Think of the salary.”
“I have no immediate heirs.”
“This is not a matter for joking, de Spain.”
“I know that, too. How many men have been shot on the stages in the last six months?”
“Why, now and again the stages are held up, yes,” admitted Jeffries brusquely; “that is to be expected where the specie shipments are large. The Thief River mines are rotten with gold just now. But you don’t have to drive a stage. We supply you with good men for that, and good guards––men willing to take any kind of a chance 11 if the pay is right. And the pay is right, and yours as general manager will be right.”
“I have never as yet generally managed any stage line,” remarked de Spain, poking ridicule at the title, “no matter how modest an outfit.”
“You will never learn younger. There is a fascination,” declared Jeffries, ignoring the fling, and tilting his chair eloquently back to give ease and conviction to his words, “about running a good stage line that no railroad business can ever touch. There is, of course, nothing in the Rocky Mountains, for that matter in the United States––nothing, I guess, in the world––that approaches the Thief River line in its opportunities. Every wagon we own, from the lightest to the heaviest, is built to order on our particular specifications by the Studebaker people.” Here Jeffries pointed his finger sharply at de Spain as if to convict him of some dereliction. “You’ve seen them! You know what they are.”
De Spain, bullied, haltingly nodded acquiescence.
“Second-growth hickory in the gears,” continued Jeffries encouragingly,