_ CHAPTER XVII. TWO POINTS OF VIEW
Beasley Melford was in a detestable mood. For one reason his miserable bar was empty of all customers, and, for another, he knew that he was responsible for the fact.
Had he any sense of humor, the absurdity of the thing must have forced itself upon him and possibly helped to improve his temper. But he had no humor, and so abandoned himself to the venomous temper that was practically the mainspring of his life.
He cursed his absent customers. He cursed the man, Curly Saunders. He cursed the girl whom the trouble had been about. But more than all he cursed himself for his own folly in permitting a desire to bait Joan Rest to interfere with his business.
In his restless mood he sought to occupy himself, and, nothing else offering, he cleared his rough counter of glasses, plunged them into a bucket of filthy water, and set them out to drain. Then he turned his attention to his two oil lamps. He snuffed them with his dirty fingers in a vain attempt to improve their miserable light. Then, seating himself upon his counter, he lit a cheap green cigar and prepared to wait.
"Damn 'em all anyway," he muttered comprehensively, and abandoned himself to watching the hands of a cheap alarm clock creeping on toward the hour of nine.
Apparently the soothing influence of his cigar changed the trend of his thoughts, for presently he began to smile in his own unpleasant way. He was reviewing the scene which his venom had inspired, and the possibilities of it--at the moment delayed, but not abandoned--gave him a peculiar sense of gratification.
He was thinking, too, of Joan Rest and some others. He was thinking of the day of her arrival in the camp, and the scene that had followed Buck's discovery of her. He could never forgive that scene, or those who took part in it. Buck, more surely than anybody else, he could never forgive. He had always hated Buck and his friend the Padre. They had been in a position to hand out benefits to the starving camp, and patronage was an intolerable insult to a man of his peculiar venom. The thought that he owed those men anything was anathema to him, for he knew in his heart that they despised him.
Since the day of Joan's coming he had pondered upon how he could pay Buck something of that which he owed him for the insult that still rankled. He had been called an "outlaw parson," and the truth of the appellation made the insult only the more maddening. Nothing else could have hurt the man so much as to remind him of the downfall which had reduced him to an "outlaw parson."
He had told Buck then that he would not forget. He might have added that he could not forget. So, ever since, he had cast about for any and every means of hurting the man who had injured him, and his curiously mean mind set him groping in the remotest and more subtle directions. Nor had it taken him long to locate the most vulnerable point in Buck's armor. He had realized something of the possibilities at the first coming of Joan. He had seen then the effect of the beautiful inanimate body upon the man's susceptibilities. It had been instantaneous. Then had come that scene at the farm, and Buck's further insult over the gold which he had hated to see pass into the girl's possession. It was then that the first glimmer of an opening for revenge had shown itself to him.
The rest was the simple matter of camp gossip. Here he learned, through the ridicule bestowed upon Montana Ike and Pete, who were always trying to outdo each other in their rivalry for the favors of Joan, and who never missed an opportunity of visiting the farm when they knew they would find her there, of Buck's constant attendance upon Joan. He needed very little of his evil imagination to tell him the rest. With Buck in love with the woman it was a simple enough process to his scheming mind to drive home his revenge upon the man--through her.
The necessary inspiration had come that night, when the four women vultures, plying their trade of preying upon the men in his bar, had reached a sufficient degree of drunkenness. Then it had occurred to his devilish mind to bribe them into going across to the farm and paying what he was pleased to call a "party" call upon its mistress, and, in their own phraseology, to "raise hell with her."
It was a master stroke. Then had come Curly's interference. The fool had spoilt it all. Nobody but Curly had attempted to interfere. The men had all been too drunk to bother, and the women had jumped at the chance of morally rending a virtuous member of their own sex.
He laughed silently as he thought of it all. But his laugh only expressed his gratification at the subtlety of his ideas. His failure still annoyed him. Curly had stood champion for this Golden Woman, as they called her. Well, it wasn't his, Beasley's, fault if he hadn't paid for his interference by this time. The men were quite drunk enough to hang him, or shoot him for "doing up" young Kid, who had been a mere tool in the matter. He cordially hoped they had. Anyway, the sport at Joan's expense was too good to miss, and the night was still young.
The prospect almost entirely restored his good-humor, and he was still smiling when the door was suddenly pushed open and the Padre's burly figure appeared on the threshold.
The saloon-keeper's smile died at sight of the familiar white hair. Of all the people on Yellow Creek this was the man he least wanted to see at the moment. But he was shrewd enough to avoid any sign of open antagonism. He knew well enough that Moreton Kenyon was neither a fool nor a coward. He knew that to openly measure swords with him was to challenge a man of far superior intellect and strength, and the issue was pretty sure to go against him. Besides, this man they affectionately called the Padre had the entire good-will of the place.
But though he always avoided open antagonism the storekeeper never let go his grip on his dislike. He clung to it hoping to discover some means of breaking the man's position in the camp and bringing about an utter revulsion of the public feeling for him. There was much about the Padre that gave him food for thought. One detail in particular was always in his mind, a detail such as a mind like his was bound to question closely. He could never understand the man's object in the isolation of the life he had lived for so many years here in the back country of the West.
However, he was only concerned at the moment with the object of this unusual visit, and his shrewd speculation turned upon the pursuit of Curly.
"Evenin', Padre," he said, with a cordiality the most exacting could have found no fault with.
"Good-evening," replied the newcomer, smiling pleasantly as he glanced round the sordid hovel. Then he added: "Times are changed, sure. But--where are your customers?"
Beasley's quick eyes gazed sharply at the perfect mask of disarming geniality. He was looking for some sign to give him a lead, but there was only easy good-nature in the deep gray eyes beneath their shaggy brows.
"Guess they're out chasin' that fool-head Curly Saunders," he said unguardedly. However, he saw his mistake in an instant and tried to rectify it. "Y' see they're always skylarkin' when they git liquor under their belts."
"Skylarking?" The Padre propped himself against the bar, and his eyes suddenly rested on an ugly stain on the sand floor.
Beasley followed his glance, and beheld the pool of blood which had flowed from the Kid's wound. He cursed himself for not having obliterated it. Then, in a moment, he decided to carry the matter with a high hand.
"Psha'! What's the use'n beatin' around!" he said half-defiantly. "They're chasin' Curly to lynch him for shootin' up the Kid."
The Padre gave a well-assumed start and emitted a low whistle. Then he turned directly toward the counter.
"You best have a drink on me--for the good of the house," he said. "I'll take rye."
Beasley swung himself across the counter with a laugh.
"Say, that beats the devil!" he cried. "I'll sure drink with you. No one sooner."
The Padre nodded.
"Splendid," he smiled. Then as the other passed glasses and the bottle, he went on: "Tell us about it--the racket, I mean."
Beasley helped himself to a drink and laughed harshly.
"Wal, I didn't get it right," he said, raising his glass. "Here's 'how'!" He gulped down his drink and set the empty glass on the counter. "Y' see, I was handin' out drinks when the racket started. They were all muckin' around with them four sluts that come in town the other day. Guess they was all most sloshed to the gills. First thing I know they were quarreling, then some un got busy with a gun. Then they started chasin' Curly, an' I see the Kid lying around shot up. It was jest a flesh wound, an' I had him boosted out to his own shack. His partner, Pete--they struck a partnership, those two--why, I guess he's seein' to him. 'Tain't on'y a scratch."
The Padre set his glass down. He had not drunk his liquor at a gulp like the other.
"Pity," he said, his eyes turned again to the blood-stained floor. "I s'pose it was the women--I mean the cause?"
The man's manner was so disarming that Beasley felt quite safe in "opening out."
"Pity?" he laughed brutally. "Wher's the pity? Course it was the women. It's always the women. Set men around a bunch of women and ther's always trouble. It's always been, and it always will be. Ther's no pity about it I can see. We're all made that way, and those who set us on this rotten earth meant it so, or it wouldn't be."
The Padre's gray eyes surveyed the narrow face before him. This man, with his virulent meanness, his iron-gray hair, his chequered past, always interested him.
"And do you think this sort of trouble would occur if--if the men hadn't been drunk?" he asked pointedly.
Beasley's antagonism surged, but his outward seeming was perfectly amiable.
"Meaning me?" he asked, with a grin.
The Padre shrugged.
"I was thinking that these things have been occurring ever since the camp was flooded with----"
"Rye!" Beasley's eyes sparkled. He reached the Padre's now empty glass and gave him a fresh one, pushing the bottle toward him. "You'll hev a drink on me, an' if you've got time, I'll tell you about this thing."
The other submitted, and the drink was poured out. The Padre ignored his.
"Get right ahead," he said in his easy way.
Beasley leered over the rim of his glass as he drank his whisky.
"You think it's rye," he said, setting his glass down with unnecessary force. "An' I say it's the women--or the woman. Trouble come to this camp with that tow-headed gal over at the farm. Anybody with two eyes could see that. Anybody that wasn't as blind as a dotin' mother. The boys are all mad 'bout her. They're plumb-crazed. They got her tow-head and sky-blue eyes on their addled brains, an' all the youngsters, anyway, are fumin' jealous of each other, and ready to shoot, or do anything else that comes handy, to out the other feller. That's the root of the trouble--an' you brought that about selling her your farm."
Beasley had let himself go intending to aggravate, but the other's manner still remained undisturbed.
"But this only happens when they're drunk," he said mildly.
Beasley's angry impatience broke out.
"Tcha'! Drunk or sober it don't make any difference. I tell you the whole camp's on edge over that gal. It only needs a word to set things hummin'. It's that gal! She's a Jonah, a Hoodoo to us all--to this place. She's got rotten luck all over her--and you brought her here. You needn't try an' sling mud at me fer handing them the rot-gut the boys ask for. Get that woman out of the place and things'll level up right away."
The man's rudeness still seemed to have no effect.
"But all this doesn't seem to fit in with--with this affair to-night," the Padre argued. "You said it began, you thought, over the four women you allow in here."
Beasley was being steadily drawn without knowing it. His swift-rising spleen led him farther into the trap.
"So it did," he snapped. Then he laughed mirthlessly. "Y' see some one suggested those gals pay a 'party' call on your Golden Woman," he said with elaborate sarcasm. "And it was because Mr. Curly Saunders sort o' fancies he's got some sort of right to that lady he butted in and shot up the Kid."
"Who suggested it?" asked the other quickly, his mild gray eyes hardening.
"Why, the Kid."
The Padre looked the saloon-keeper squarely in the eye.
"And who put it into that foolish boy's head?" he asked slowly.
Beasley's face purpled with rage.
"You needn't to put things that way with me," he cried. "If you got things to say, say 'em right out. You reckon I was the man who suggested----"
"I do."
The Padre's eyes were wide open. The hard gray gleam literally bored into the other's heated face. He stood up, his whole body rigid with purpose.
"I say right here that you were responsible for it all. The Kid wasn't capable of inventing such a dirty trick on a decent girl. He was sufficiently drunk to be influenced by you, and, but for Curly's timely interference, you would doubtless have had your rotten way. I tell you the trouble, whatever trouble happens in this camp, is trouble which you are directly or indirectly responsible for. These men, in their sober senses, are harmless. Give them the poison you charge extortionately for and they are ready to do anything. I warn you, Beasley, to be careful what you do--be damned careful. There are ways of beating you, and, by thunder! I'll beat you at your own game! Good-night!"
The Padre turned and walked out, leaving the discomfited storekeeper speechless with rage, his narrow eyes glaring after him.
Moreton Kenyon was never a man to allow an impulse of anger to get the better of him. All that he had said to Beasley he had made up his mind to say before starting for the camp. There was only one way of dealing with the man's genius for mischief. And that way did not lie in the direction of persuasion or moral talk. Force was the only thing such a nature as his would yield to. The Padre knew well enough that such force lay to his command should he choose to exert his influence in the camp. He was man of the world enough to understand that the moral condition of the life in this camp must level itself. It could not be regulated--yet. But the protection of a young and beautiful girl was not only his duty, but the duty of every sane citizen in the district, and he was determined it should be carried out. There was no ordinary law to hold this renegade in check, so, if necessary, he must be treated to the harshness of a law framed by the unpracticed hands of men who only understood the wild in which they lived.
On his way home the Padre encountered Buck, who had been back to the fur fort, and, learning from Curly the facts of what had occurred, was now on his way to join his friend.
They paused to talk for some minutes, and their talk was upon those things which were still running through their minds in a hot tide of resentment. After a while they parted, Buck to continue his way to the camp, and the Padre to his home.
"I think it's all right for to-night," the Padre said as he prepared to move off. "I don't think he'll make another attempt. Anyway, the boys will be sober. But you might have an eye on him."
Buck nodded, and in the darkness the fierce anger in his dark eyes was lost to his companion.
"I'll be to home when the camp's abed," he said. "I'll sure see the gal safe."
So they parted, leaving the Padre perfectly confident in Buck's ability to make good his assurance.
* * * * *
It was a wild scene inside the drinking-booth over which the ex-Churchman presided. The men had returned from their fruitless pursuit of their intended victim. And as they came in, no longer furiously determined upon a man's life, but laughing and joking over the events of their blind journey in the darkness, Beasley saw that they were rapidly sobering.
Still raging inwardly at the result of the Padre's visit he set to work at once, and, before any one else could call for a drink, he seized the opportunity himself. He plied them with a big drink at his own expense, and so promptly enlisted their favor--incidentally setting their appetites for a further orgie with a sharpness that it would take most of the night to appease.
The ball set rolling by his cunning hand quickly ran riot, and soon the place again became the pandemonium which was its nightly habit. Good-humor was the prevalent note, however. The men realized now, in their half-sober senses, that the Kid was only wounded, and this inclined them to leniency toward Curly. So it was quickly evident that their recently-intended victim need no longer have any fear for his life. He was forgiven as readily and as easily as he had been condemned.
So the night proceeded. The roulette board was set going again in one corner of the hut and a crowd hung about it, while the two operators of it, "Diamond" Jack and his partner, strangers to the place, raked in their harvest. The air was thick with the reek of cheap cigars, sold at tremendous prices, and the foul atmosphere of stale drink. The usual process of a further saturation had set in. Nor amidst the din of voices was there a discordant note. Even the cursings of the losers at the roulette board were drowned in the raucous din of laughter and loud-voiced talk around the bar.
As time went on Beasley saw that his moment was rapidly approaching. The shining, half-glazed eyes, the sudden outbursts of wild whoopings, told him the tale he liked to hear. And he promptly changed his own attitude of bonhomie, and began to remind those who cared to listen of the fun they had all missed through Curly's interference. This was done at the same time as he took to pouring out the drinks himself in smaller quantities, and became careless in the matter of making accurate change for the bigger bills of his customers.
Beasley's hints were not long in bearing the fruit he desired. Some one recollected the women who had been participants in their earlier frolic, and instantly there was a clamor for their presence.
Beasley grinned. He was feeling almost joyous.
The women readily answered the summons. They came garbed in long, flowing, tawdry wrappers, the hallmark of the lives they lived. Nor was it more than seconds before they were caught in the whirl of the orgie in progress.
The sight was beyond all description in its revolting and hideous pathos. These blind, besotted men hovered about these wrecks of womanhood much in the manner of hungry animals. They plied them with drink, and sought to win their favors by ribald jesting and talk as obscene as their condition of drunkenness would permit them, while the women accepted their attentions in the spirit in which they were offered, calculating, watching, with an eye trained to the highest pitch of mercenary motive, for the direction whence the greatest benefit was to come.
Beasley was watching too. He knew that the Padre's threat had been no idle one, but he meant to forestall its operation. The Padre was away to his home by now. Nothing that he could do could operate until the morning, when these men were sober. He had got this night, at least, in which to satisfy his evil whim.
His opportunity came sooner than he expected. One of the girls, quite a young creature, whose originally-pretty face was now distorted and bloated by the life she lived, suddenly appealed to him. She jumped up from the bench on which she had been sitting listening to the drunken attentions of a stranger who bored her, and challenged the saloon-keeper with a laugh and an ingratiating wink.
"Say, you gray-headed old beer-slinger," she cried, "how about that 'party' call you'd fixed up for us? Ain't ther' nuthin' doin' since that mutt with the thin yeller thatch got busy shootin'? Say, he got you all scared to a pea shuck."
She laughed immoderately, and, swaying drunkenly, was caught by the attentive stranger.
"Quit it, Mamie," protested one of the other girls. "If you want another racket I don't. You're always raisin' hell."
"Quit yourself," shrieked Mamie in sudden anger. "I ain't scared of a racket." She turned to Beasley, who was pouring out a round of drinks for Abe Allinson, now so drunk that he had to support himself against the counter. "Say, you don't need to be scared, that feller's out o' the way now," she jeered. "Wot say? Guess it would be a 'scream.'"
Beasley handed the change of a twenty-dollar bill to Abe and turned to the girl.
"Sure it would," he agreed promptly, his face beaming. Then he added cunningly: "But it's you folks are plumb scared."
"Who the h---- scared of a gal like that?" Mamie yelled at him, her eyes blazing. "I ain't. Are you, Lulu? You, Kit?" She turned to the other women, but ignored the protesting Sadie.
Lulu sprang from the arms of a man on whose shoulder she had been reclining.
"Scared?" she cried. "Come right on. I'm game. Beasley's keen to give her a twistin'--well, guess it's always up to us to oblige." And she laughed immoderately.
Kit joined in. She cared nothing so long as she was with the majority. And it was Beasley himself who finally challenged the recalcitrant Sadie.
"Guess you ain't on, though," he said, and there was something like a threat in his tone.
Sadie shrugged.
"It don't matter. If the others----"
"Bully for you, Sadie!" cried Mamie impulsively. "Come right on! Who's comin' to get the 'scream'?" she demanded of the men about her, while Beasley nodded his approval from his stand behind the bar.
But somehow her general invitation was not received with the same enthusiasm the occasion had met with earlier in the evening. The memory of the Kid still hovered over some of the muddled brains, and only a few of those who were in the furthest stages of drunkenness responded.
Nothing daunted, however, the girl Mamie, furiously anxious to stand well with the saloon-keeper, laughed over at him.
"We'll give her a joyous time," she shrieked. "Say, what's her name? Joan Rest, the Golden Woman! She'll need the rest when we're through. Come on, gals. We'll dance a cancan on her parlor table. Come on."
She made a move and the others prepared to follow. Several of the men, laughing recklessly, were ready enough to go whither they led. Already Mamie was within a pace of the closed door when a man suddenly pushed Abe Allinson roughly aside, leant his right elbow on the counter, and stood with his face half-turned toward the crowd. It was Buck. His movements had been so swift, so well calculated, that Beasley found himself looking into the muzzle of the man's heavy revolver before he could attempt to defend himself.
"Hold on!"
Buck's voice rang out above the din of the barroom. Instantly he had the attention of the whole company. The girls stood, staring back at him stupidly, and the men saw the gun leveled at the saloon-keeper's head. They saw more. They saw that Buck held another gun in his left hand, which was threatening the entire room. Most of them knew him. Some of them didn't. But one and all understood the threat and waited motionless. Nor did they have to wait long.
"Gals," said Buck sternly, "this racket's played out. Ther's been shootin' to-night over the same thing. Wal, ther's going to be more shootin' if it don't quit right here. If you leave this shanty to go across to the farm to molest the folks there, Beasley, here, is a dead man before you get a yard from the door."
Then his glance shifted so that the saloon-keeper came into his focus, while yet he held a perfect survey of the rest of the men.
"Do you get me, Beasley?" he went on coldly. "You're a dead man if those gals go. An' if you send them to the farm after this--ever--I'll shoot you on sight. Wal?"
Beasley knew when he was beaten. He had reckoned only on the Padre. He had forgotten Buck. However, he wouldn't forget him in the future.
"You can put up your gun, Buck," he said, with an assumption of geniality that deceived no one, and Buck least of all. "Quit your racket, gals," he went on. Then he added with the sarcasm he generally fell back on in such emergencies: "Guess this gentleman feels the same as Curly--only he ain't as--hasty."
The girls went slowly back to their seats, and Buck, lowering his guns, quietly restored them both to their holsters.
Beasley watched him, and as he saw them disappear his whole manner changed.
"Now, Mister Buck," he said, with a snarl, "I don't guess I need either your dollars or your company on my premises. You'll oblige me--that door ain't locked." And he pointed at it deliberately for the man to take his departure.
But Buck only laughed.
"Don't worry, Beasley," he said. "I'm here--till you close up for the night."
And the enraged saloon-keeper had a vision of a smile at his expense which promptly lit the faces of the entire company. _