Nan of Music Mountain. Spearman Frank Hamilton
do you want me to do–back a horse and shoot two guns at once up and down Main Street, cowboy style?”
Lefever kept his patience without difficulty. “No, no. You’ll understand.”
“Scott advised me to run down to Medicine Bend for a few days to let the Morgans cool off.”
“Right. That was the first step. The few days are a thing of the past. I suppose you know,” continued Lefever, in as well-modulated a tone as he could assume to convey information that could not be regarded as wholly cheerful, “that they expect to get you for this Sassoon job.”
De Spain flushed. But the red anger lasted only a moment. “Who are ‘they’?” he asked after a pause.
“Deaf Sandusky, Logan, of course, the Calabasas bunch, and the Morgans.”
De Spain regarded his companion unamiably. “What do they expect I’ll be doing while they are getting me?”
Lefever raised a hand deprecatingly. “Don’t be overconfident, Henry; that’s your danger. I know you can take care of yourself. All I want to do is to get the folks here acquainted with your ability, without taking unnecessary chances. You see, people are not now asking questions of one another; they are asking them of themselves. Who and what is this newcomer–an accident or a genuine arrival? A common squib or a real explosion? Don’t get excited,” he added, in an effort to soothe de Spain’s obvious irritation. “You have the idea, Henry. It’s time to show yourself.”
“I can’t very well do business here without showing myself,” retorted de Spain.
“But it is a thing to be managed,” persisted Lefever. “Now, suppose–since the topic is up–we ‘show’ in Main Street for a while.”
“Suppose we do,” echoed de Spain ungraciously.
“That will crack the début ice. We will call at Harry Tenison’s hotel, and then go to his new rooms–go right to society headquarters first–that’s my theory of doing it. If anybody has any shooting in mind, Tenison’s is a quiet and orderly place. And if a man declines to eat anybody up at Tenison’s, we put him down, Henry, as not ravenously hungry.”
“One man I would like to see is that sheriff, Druel, who let Sassoon get out.”
“Ready to interview him now?”
“I’ve got some telegrams to answer.”
“Those will keep. The Morgans are in town. We’ll start out and find somebody.”
It was wet and sloppy outside, but Lefever was indifferent to the rain, and de Spain thought it would be undignified to complain of it.
When, followed by Lefever, he walked into the lobby of Tenison’s hotel a few moments later the office was empty. Nevertheless, the news of the appearance of Sassoon’s captor spread. The two sauntered into the billiard-hall, which occupied a deep room adjoining the office and opened with large plate-glass windows on Main Street. Every table was in use. A fringe of spectators in the chairs, ostensibly watching the pool games, turned their eyes toward de Spain–those that recognized him distinguishing him by nods and whispers to others.
Among several groups of men standing before the long bar, one party of four near the front end likewise engaged the interest of those keener loafers who were capable of foreseeing situations. These men, Satterlee Morgan, the cattleman; Bull Page, one of his cowboys; Sheriff Druel, and Judge Druel, his brother, had been drinking together. They did not see Lefever and his companion as the two came in through the rear lobby door. But Lefever, on catching sight of them, welcomed his opportunity. Walking directly forward, he laid his hand on Satt Morgan’s shoulder. As the cattleman turned, Lefever, genially grasping his hand, introduced de Spain to each of the party in turn. What followed in the brief interval between the meeting of the six men and the sudden breaking up of the group a few moments later was never clearly known, but a fairly conclusive theory of it was afterward accepted by Sleepy Cat.
Morgan threw the brim of his weather-beaten hat back from his tanned face. He wore a mustache and a chin whisker of that variety designated in the mountains by the most opprobrious of epithets. But his smile, which drew his cheeks into wrinkles all about his long, round nose, was not unfriendly. He looked with open interest from his frank but not overtrustworthy eyes at de Spain. “I heard,” he said in a good-natured, slightly nasal tone, “you made a sunrise call on us one day last week.”
“And I want to say,” returned de Spain, equally amiable, “that if I had had any idea you folks would take it so hard–I mean, as an affront intended to any of you–I never would have gone into the Gap after Sassoon. I just assumed–making a mistake as I now realize–that my scrap would be with Sassoon, not with the Morgans.”
Satt’s face wrinkled into a humorous grin. “You sure kicked up some alkali.”
De Spain nodded candidly. “More than I intended to. And I say–without any intention of impertinence to anybody else–Sassoon is a cur. I supposed when I brought him in here after so much riding, that we had sheriff enough to keep him.” He looked at Druel with such composure that the latter for a moment was nonplussed. Then he discharged a volley of oaths, and demanded what de Spain meant. De Spain did not move. He refused to see the angry sheriff. “That is where I made my second mistake,” he continued, speaking to Morgan and forcing his tone just enough to be heard. Druel, with more hard words, began to abuse the railroad for not paying taxes enough to build a decent jail. De Spain took another tack. He eyed the sheriff calmly as the latter continued to draw away and left de Spain standing somewhat apart from the rest of the group. “Then it may be I am making another mistake, Druel, in blaming you. It may not be your fault.”
“The fault is, you’re fresh,” cried Druel, warming up as de Spain appeared to cool. The line of tipplers backed away from the bar. De Spain, stepping toward the sheriff, raised his hand in a friendly way. “Druel, you’re hurting yourself by your talk. Make me your deputy again sometime,” he concluded, “and I’ll see that Sassoon stays where he is put.”
“I’ll just do that,” cried Druel, with a very strong word, and he raised his hand in turn. “Next time you want him locked up, you can take care of him yourself.”
The sharp crack of a rifle cut off the words; a bullet tore like a lightning-bolt across de Spain’s neck, crashed through a mahogany pilaster back of the bar, and embedded itself in the wall. The shot had been aimed from the street for his head. The noisy room instantly hushed. Spectators sat glued to their chairs. White-faced players leaned motionless against the tables. De Spain alone had acted; all that the bartenders could ever remember after the single rifle-shot was seeing his hand go back as he whirled and shot instantly toward the heavy report. He had whipped out his gun and fired sidewise through the window at the sound.
That was all. The bartenders breathed and looked again. Men were crowding like mad through the back doors. De Spain, at the cigar case, looked intently into the rainy street, lighted from the corner by a dingy lamp. The four men near him had not stirred, but, startled and alert, the right hand of each covered the butt of a revolver. De Spain moved first. While the pool players jammed the back doors to escape, he spoke to, without looking at, the bartender. “What’s the matter with your curtains?” he demanded, sheathing his revolver and pointing with an expletive to the big sheet of plate glass. “Is this the way you build up business for the house?”
Those close enough to the window saw that the bare pane had been cut, just above the middle, by two bullet-holes. Curious men examined both fractures when de Spain and Lefever had left the saloon. The first hole was the larger. It had been made by a high-powered rifle; the second was from a bullet of a Colt’s revolver; it was remarked as a miracle of gun-play that the two were hardly an inch apart.
In the street a few minutes later, de Spain and Lefever encountered Scott, who, with his back hunched up, his cheap black hat pulled well down over his ears, his hands in his trousers pockets and his thin coat collar modestly turned against the drizzling rain, was walking across the parkway from the station.
“Sassoon is in town,” exclaimed Lefever with certainty after he had told the story. He waited for the