CHAPTER VIIIGETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
Mademoiselle was having a series of enlivening shocks. First came Wilding, with Miss Pettis. He was received by Solange in the mezzanine gallery of the hotel and she learned, for the first time, that De Launay was sending her a lawyer to transact her business for her. This made her angry, his assuming that she needed a lawyer, or, even if she did, that he could provide her with one. However, as she needed a divorce from her incubus, and Wilding practiced also in the Nevada courts, she thought better of her first impulse to haughtily dismiss him. As for Wilding, he began to conclude that he had gone crazy or else had encountered a set of escaped lunatics when he beheld Solange, slender and straightly tailored, but with hair hidden under a close-fitting little turban and face masked by a fold of netting.
Marian Pettis was another shock. The extraordinary De Launay, whom she had supposed lost in some gutter, and without whose aid she had been puzzled how to proceed on her quest, was evidently very much on the job. Here was a starting point, at least.113
Although, behind her mask, her face registered disapproval of the girl, she welcomed her as cordially as possible. In her sweet, bell voice, she murmured an expression of concern for her grandfather and, when Marian bluntly said, “He’s dead,” she endeavored to convey her sorrow. To which Miss Pettis, staring at her with hard, bold eyes, as at some puzzling freak, made no reply, being engaged in uneasily wondering what “graft” the Frenchwoman was “on.” Marian disliked being reminded of her grandfather’s demise, having been largely responsible for it when she had run away with a plausible stranger who had assured her that she had only to present herself at Hollywood to become instantly famous as a moving-picture star, a promise that had sadly miscarried.
“But it was not so much of your grandfather as of my father that I wished to see you,” mademoiselle explained, ignoring Marian’s lack of response. “As for Monsieur Wilding, it is later I will require his services, though it may be that he can aid me not only in procuring a divorce from this husband, but in another matter also, Miss Pettis, and perhaps, Monsieur Wilding, you know how my father was murdered?”
Wilding shook his head but Marian nodded at once.
“Gee, yes!” she said. “I was a kid when he was croaked, but I remember it all right. There was a114guy they called Louisiana, and he was one of those old-time gunmen, but at that he was some kid believe me! He took a shot at a fellow here in Sulphur Falls—that was before there was any town here at all—and they was givin’ him the gate outa the neighborhood. Going to lynch him if they caught him, I guess. I don’t remember much of it except how this guy looks, but I’ve heard the old man tell about it.
“He come ridin’ out to our place all dressed up like a movie cow-puncher and you’d never have dreamed there was a mob about three jumps behind him. He sets in with us and takes a great shine to me. I was quite a doll in those days they tell me.” She tossed her head as much as to say that she was still able to qualify for the description.
“Believe me, he was a regular swell, and you’d never in the world a thought he was what he turned out to be. Delaney, his name was, or something like that. Well, he plays with me and when he goes away I cried and wanted him to stay. I remember it just as vivid! He had on these chaps—leather pants, you know—and a Stetson slanting on his head, and a fancy silk neckerchief which he made into comical dolls and things. Oh! he sure made a hit with Marian!
“He swore he was comin’ back, like young Lochinvar, and marry me some day, and I was all tickled to think he would do it.115
“Then, would you believe it, the murdering villain rides away about half an hour before the mob comes and goes south toward the mountains. Next day or so, we pick up your father, shot something terrible, and this awful ‘Louisiana’ Delaney had done it, in cold blood and just to be killing something.”
“Ah!” Mademoiselle stiffened and quivered. Her voice was like brass. “In cold blood, you say? Then he had no provocation? He was not an enemy of my father?”
“Naw. Your father didn’t have no enemies. So far as I know, this Louisiana didn’t even know him. He was a cattleman and they hated the sheepmen, you know, and used to fight them. Then, he was one of these gunmen, always shooting some one, and they used to be terrible. They’d kill some one just for the fun of it—to sort of keep in practice.”
Mademoiselle shuddered, envisioning some bloodthirsty, evil thing, unspeakably depraved. But it was momentary. She spoke again in hermetallicvoice.
“That is well to know. I will look for this Louisiana.”
“You ain’t likely to find him. He never was seen or heard of around here no more. I’ve heard granddad call him ‘the last of the gunmen,’ because the country was settling up and getting civilized then. One thing sure, he never made good on that Lochinvar sketch, I can promise you.”116
“It is no matter. He will come back—or I will follow him. It is of another matter I would talk. There was something of a mine that my father had found.”
“I’ve heard of that,” said Wilding. “It’s quite a legend around here. The Lunch Rock mine, they call it, and Jim Banker, the prospector, looks for it every year.”
“But he ain’t found it——”
A bell boy passed, singing out: “Call for Mad’mo’selle Dalbray! Call fer Mad’mo’selle Dalbray!” Mademoiselle rose and beckoned to him.
“Three men in the lobby wish to see yuh, miss!” the boy told her. “Said Mr. Delonny sent ’em.”
“Monsieur de Launay! What next? Well, show them up here.”
A few moments later Sucatash and Dave Mackay stalked on their high heels up the stairs and into the alcove of the mezzanine balcony, holding their broad hats in their hands. Sucatash gulped as mademoiselle’s slender figure confronted him, and Dave’s mouth fell open.
Behind them lurched another man, slinking in the background.
“What is it, messieurs?” asked Solange, her voice once more clear and sweet. The cow-punchers blushed in unison.
“This here Mr. Delonny done sent us here to see you, ma’am. He allows you-all wants a couple of117hands for this trip you’re takin’ into the Esmeraldas. He likewise instigates us to corral this here horned toad, Banker, who’s a prospector, because he says you’ll want to see him about some mine or other, and, Banker, he don’t know nothing about nothing but lookin’ for mines: which he ain’t never found a whole lot, I reckon, none whatever.”
Solange smiled and her smile, even with veiled face, was something to put these bashful range riders at their ease. Both of them felt warmed to their hearts.
“I am very glad to see you,” she said. “It is true that I require help, and I shall be glad of yours. It is kind of you to enter my employ.”
Dave uttered a protest. “Don’t you mention it, mad’moiselle. Sucatash and me was both in France and, while we can’t give that there country any rank ahead of the U. S. A., we hands it to her frank, that any time we can do anything fer a mad’moiselle, we does it pronto! We’re yours, ma’am, hide, hair an’ hoofs!”
“Which we sure are,” agreed Sucatash, not to be outdone. “That’s whatever!”
“And here is this minin’ sharp,” said Dave, turning about and reaching for the shrinking Banker. “Come here, Jim, and say howdy, if you ain’t herded with burros so long you’ve forgotten human amenities that a way. Mad’mo’selle wants to talk to you.”
Banker emerged from behind them. He, too, held118his hat in hand, an incredibly stained and battered felt atrocity. His seamed face was nut brown under constant exposure to the sun. His garments were faded nondescripts, and on his feet were thick-soled, high-lacing boots. He gave an impression of dry dinginess, like rawhide, and his eyes were mean and shifty. He might have been fifty or he might have been older; one could not tell.
Mademoiselle was uncertain. She hardly knew enough to question this queer specimen, and so she turned to Marian Pettis.
“Miss Pettis, can you explain to him? I can hardly tell him what we wish to know. And, if the mine is found, half of it will be yours, you know.”
“Mine! Lord sakes, I ain’t counting on it. You gotta fat chance to find it. This bird, here, has been searchin’ for it ever since the year one and he ain’t found it. Say, Banker, this is Mad’mo’selle Dalbray. She’s the daughter of that French Pete that was killed——”
“Hey?” said Banker, sharply.
“Ah, you know the yarn. You been huntin’ his mine since Lord knows when. This lady is lookin’ for it and she wants some dope on how to go about findin’ it.”
“An she expects me to tell her?” cried Banker, in a falsetto whine. “Yuh reckon if I knowed where it was I wouldn’t have staked it long ago? I don’t know nothin’ about it.”119
“Well, you know the Esmeraldas, old Stingin’ Lizard,” growled Sucatash. “You can tell her what to do about gettin’ there.”
“I can’t tell her nothin’ no more than you can,” said Banker. “She’s got Ike Brandon’s letters, ain’t she? He told her where it was, didn’t he? What’s she comin’ to me fer? I don’t know nothin’.”
“Were you here when my father was killed?” Solange asked, kindly. She felt sorry for the old fellow.
“Hey! What’s that? Was I here? No’m, I wasn’t here! I was—I reckon I was over south of the range, out on the desert. I don’t know nothin’ about the killin’.”
He was looking furtively at her veil, his eyes shifting away and back to it, awed by the mystery of the hidden eyes. He was like a wild, shy animal, uneasy in this place and among these people so foreign to his natural environment.
Solange sighed. “I am sorry, monsieur,” she said. “I had hoped you could tell me more.”
He broke in again with his whining voice. “It was this here Louisiana, every one says.”
“Louisiana! Yes——” Solange’s tones became fierce and she leaned closer to the dry desert rat, who shrank from her. “And when I find him—when I find this man who shot my father like a dog——”
Her voice was tense and almost shrill, cutting like steel.120
“I shall kill him!”
The dim, veiled face was close to Banker’s. He raised his corded, lean hand to the corded, lean throat as though he was choking. He stared at her fixedly, his shifty eyes for once held steady. There was horror and fear in the back of them. He put one foot back, shifted his weight to it, put the other back, then the first again, slowly retreating backward, with his stricken eyes still on her. Then he suddenly whirled about and scuttled down the stairs as though the devil were after him.
Solange remained standing, puzzled.
“That is queer,” she said. “Why is he frightened? I did not mean to startle him. I suppose he is shy.”
“No. Just locoed, like all them prospectors,” said Sucatash. “Furthermore, he’s ornery, ma’am. Probably don’t like this talk of killin’. They say he beefed Panamint Charlie, his partner, some years ago and I reckon he’s a mite sensitive that a way.”
“He doesn’t seem to know where the mine is,” said Solange. “Nor do you, mademoiselle?”
“Me?” said Marian, airily. “If I knew where that mine was, believe me, you’d be late looking for it. I’d have been settled on it long ago.”
“I wish,” said Solange, “that I knew what to do. Perhaps, if this unspeakable De Launay were here——”
“I can telephone the Greek’s and see if he’s there,”121suggested MacKay. Solange assented and he hurried to a telephone.
“It ain’t likely he knows much that will help, mad’mo’selle,” said Sucatash, also eager to aid, “but my old man was around here when these hostilities was pulled off, and it’s possible he might help you. He could tell you as much as any one, I reckon.”
“Your father?”
“Yes, ma’am. I recommend that you get your outfit together, except fer hosses, hire a car to take it out and start from our ranch at Willow Spring. It’s right near the mountains and not far from Shoestring Cañon, which it’s likely you’ll have to go that way to get into the hills. And you’ll be able to get all the hosses you want right there.”
“That sounds as though it might be the wise thing to do,” said Wilding.
Solange turned to him. “That is true. I thank Monsieur Sucatash. And, Monsieur Wilding, there is one thing you can do for me, besides the arrangements for that divorce. Can you not search the records to find out what is known of my father’s death and who killed him?”
“But it appears that the killer was Louisiana.”
“Yes—but who is Louisiana? Where did he go? That is what I must find out. Oh! If this depraved De Launay were of any benefit, instead of being a sorrow and disgust to me——”122
At this moment Dave MacKay reappeared. Solange turned to him eagerly. “Did you find him, monsieur?”
“I sure did,” said Dave, with disgust. “Leastways, I located him. That animated vat of inebriation has done went and landed in jail.”123
CHAPTER IXBEHIND PRISON BARS
A somewhat intoxicated cow-puncher, in from the mountain ranges north of the town, intrigued De Launay when he returned to Johnny the Greek’s. To be exact, it was not the cow-puncher, who was merely a gawky, loud-mouthed and uncouth importation from a Middle Western farm, broken to ride after a fashion, to rope and brand when necessary and to wield pliers in mending barbed wire, the sort of product, in fact, that haddisillusionedDe Launay. It was his clothes that the ex-légionnaire admired.
They were clothes about like those worn by Sucatash and Dave Mackay. De Launay could have purchased such clothes at any one of a dozen shops, but they would have been new and conspicuous. The fellow wore a wide-brimmed hat, the wear of which had resulted in certain picturesque sags that De Launay considered extremely artistic. His boots were small and fairly new, and not over adorned with ornamentation. There was also a buckskin waistcoat which was aged and ripened. The other accessories were unimportant. Such things as spurs,124bridle, and saddle De Launay had bought when he acquired a horse.
De Launay had imbibed enough of the terrible liquor served by Snake Murphy to completely submerge his everyday personality. He retained merely a fixed idea that he wished to return as far as possible in spirit to the days of nineteen years ago. To his befuddled mind, the first step was to dress the part. He was groping after his lost youth, unable to realize that it was, indeed, lost beyond recovery; that he was, in hardly a particular, the wild lad who had once ridden the desert ranges.
The more he drank, the firmer became the notion that, to him, instead of to this imitation of the real thing, rightfully belonged these insignia of a vanishing fraternity. He considered ways and means, rejecting one after another. He vaguely laid plans to wait until the fellow went to his quarters for the night, and then break in and steal his clothes. A better plan suggested itself; to ply him with drink until unconscious and then drag him somewhere and strip him. This also did not seem practical. Then he thought of inducing him to gamble and winning all his possessions, but a remnant of sense deterred him. De Launay, though he gambled recklessly, never, by any chance, won. In fact, his losings were so monotonous that the diversion had ceased to be exciting and he had abandoned it.
Finally, having reached a stage where the effort125to think was too much for him, he did the obvious thing and offered to buy the fellow’s clothes. The cow-puncher was almost as drunk as De Launay and showed it much more. He was also belligerent, which De Launay never was. Furthermore, he had reached the stage where he was suspicious of anything out of the ordinary. He thought De Launay was ridiculing him.
“Sell you my clo’es! Say, feller, what you givin’ me?”
A bullet-headed, crop-haired, and lowering laborer, who was leaning against the bar, uttered a snorting laugh.
“Lamp de guys wit’ de French heels an’ de one wit’ de sissy eyebrow on ’is lip, would youse? Dey’s a coupla heroes wat’s been to France; dey gets dem habits dere.”
The sensitive cow hand glared about him, but the leering toughs who echoed their spokesman’s laughter were not safe to challenge. There were too many of them. De Launay stood alone and, to him as to the others, that little pointed mustache was a mark of affectation and effeminacy.
“You better pull yer freight before I take a wallop at yuh,” he remarked, loudly.
“Tell ’im to go git a shave, bo,” suggested the bullet-headed man.
“I’ll singe the eyebrow offa him myself if he don’t126git outa here,” growled the cow hand, turning back to his liquor.
De Launay went back to his table and sat down. He brooded on his failure, and to him it seemed that he must have that hat, that waistcoat and those boots at any cost. The others in the room snickered and jeered as they eyed his sagging figure and closed eyes.
He finally got up and lurched out of the room. The door opened on a narrow stairway leading down to a sort of pantry behind the main billiard parlor on the ground floor. The stairway was steep and dark, and the landing was small and only dimly lighted by a dusty, cobwebbed square of window high up in the outer wall.
De Launay sat on the top step and resumed his brooding, his head sunk on his arms, which were folded on his knees. He felt a deep sense of injury, and his sorrow for himself was acute. He was only half conscious of his sufferings, but they were dullyinsistent, above the deadening influence of the liquor. There were some things he wanted and they continually ran through his mind in jumbled sequence. There was a pair of high heels, then there was a sort of vision of limitless, abandoned plain covered with yellowing grass and black sage clumps, and surmounted with a brilliant blue sky. Following this was a confused picture of a blackened, greasy waistcoat from which a dark, fathomless pair of eyes127looked out. He wondered how a waistcoat could have a pair of eyes, and why the eyes should hold in them lights like those that flashed from a diamond.
Men came up the stairs and crowded roughly past him. He paid them no heed. Occasionally other men left the hidden barroom and went down. These were rougher. One of them even kicked him in passing. He merely looked up, dully took in the figure and sank his head again on his arms. Inside, newcomers advised Snake Murphy to go out and throw the bum into the street. As this might have led to inquiries, Snake decided to leave well enough alone until dark.
Finally the cow-puncher, well loaded with more liquor than he could comfortably carry, decided to take an uncertain departure. He waved a debonair and inclusive farewell to all those about him, teetered a bit on his high heels, straddled an imaginary horse, and, with legs well apart and body balanced precariously, tacked, by and full, for the door.
Reaching it, he leaned against it, felt for the knob, turned it, carefully backed away from the door and opened it. Holding the edge, he eased himself around it and, balancing on the outer side, closed it again with elaborate care. Then he took a tentative step and lifted his hand from its support.
The next moment he tripped over De Launay and fell over his head, turning a complete flip.
De Launay came out of his trance with a start to128find a hundred and seventy pounds of cow-puncher sprawling in his lap and clinging about his neck. His dull eyes, gummy with sleep, showed him a hat of sorts, a greasy waistcoat——
Calmly he took the cowboy by the neck and raised him. The fellow uttered a cry that was choked. De Launay pulled off his hat and substituted his own on the rumpled locks of the young man. He then swung him about as though he were a child, laid him over his knees and stripped from him his waistcoat.
His own coat was tossed aside while he wriggled into the ancient garment. He held the cowboy during this process by throwing one leg over him, around his neck, and clamping his legs together. The cowboy uttered muffled yells of protest.
He hauled the fellow’s boots off without much trouble, but when it came to removing his own shoes there was a difficulty which he finally adjusted by rising, grasping the man by the neck again—incidentally shutting off his cries—and depositing him on the top step, after which he sat upon him.
It took only a second to rip the laces from his shoes and kick them off. Then he started to pull on the boots. But the noise had finally aroused those inside and they came charging out.
Fortunately for De Launay, Snake Murphy and his cohorts were so surprised to see the pose of the late guests that they gave him a moment of respite.129He had time to get off of the cowboy and stamp the second boot on his foot. Then, with satisfaction, he turned to face them.
They answered the cowboy’s protesting shout with a charge. De Launay was peaceful, but he did not intend to lose his prize without a fight. He smote the first man with a straight jab that shook all his teeth. The next one he ducked under, throwing him over his shoulder and down the stairs. Another he swept against the wall with a crash.
They were over him and around him, slugging, kicking, and pushing. He fought mechanically, and with incredible efficiency, striking with a snaky speed and accuracy that would have amazed any one capable of noting it. But they were too many for him. He was shoved from the step, crowded back, stumbling downward, losing his balance, struggling gamely but hopelessly, until, like Samson, he fell backward, dragging with him a confused heap of his assailants, who went bumping down the stairs in a squirming, kicking mass.
They brought up at the bottom, striking in all directions, with De Launay beneath, missing most of the destruction. The stair well was dark and obscure, but at the bottom was a narrow space where the battle waged wildly. De Launay managed to get to his hands and knees, but over him surged and swept a murmurous, sweating, reeking crowd who struck and battered each other in the gloom.130
The door into the billiard parlor burst open and Johnny the Greek and reënforcements rushed on the scene. But Johnny, not knowing what the fight was about and not being able to find out—the outraged cowboy had thrust himself before a hostile fist in the start of the encounter and now lay unconscious at the top of the stairs—proceeded to deal with what he imagined was impartiality. He simply added his weight to the combat. This naturally increased the confusion.
Such pandemonium was bound to attract attention. Still unable to comprehend the reason of the whole affair, De Launay was crawling between legs and making a more or less undamaged progress to the door, while his enemies battered one another. He had almost reached it, and was rising to his feet, when a new element was injected into the riot. A couple of uniformed policemen threw themselves into the mêlée.
De Launay saw only the uniforms. His wrath surged up. What were policemen doing in this country of range and sheriffs? What had they to do with the West? They stood for all that had come to the country, all the change and innovation that he hated.
He expressed his feelings by letting the first policeman have it on the point of the jaw. The second he proceeded to walk over, to beat back and to drive through the door, out into the big room and clear131to the sidewalk. The man resisted, swinging his mace, but he found De Launay a cold, inhumanly accurate and swift antagonist, whom it was difficult to hit and impossible to dodge. Twice he was knocked down, and twice he leaped up, swinging his mace at a head that was never there when the club reached its objective.
The policeman whom De Launay had first knocked down had arisen quickly and, seeing his Nemesis now pursuing his comrade, ran to the rescue. De Launay could avoid a club in the hands of the man in front of him but that wielded by the man behind was another matter. It fell on his head just as he was driving the other policeman through the door into the street. It was a shrewd blow and he went to the ground under it.
While they waited for the patrol wagon, the two policemen tried to gather information about the cause of the fight, but they found Johnny the Greek somewhat reticent. The cowboy still was upstairs, held there by Snake Murphy. The others were more or less confused in their ideas. Johnny was chiefly anxious that the police should remove the prisoner and refrain from any close inquiry into the premises, so he merely stated that the fellow had come in drunk and had made an attack on some of the men playing pool. His henchman was seeing to it that the robbed and wronged cowboy had no opportunity to tell a story that would send the police upstairs.132
Half conscious and wholly drunk, De Launay was carted to Sulphur Falls’ imposing stone jail, where he was duly slated before a police sergeant for drunkenness, assault and battery, mayhem, inciting a riot, and resisting an officer in the performance of his duty. Then he was led away and deposited in a cell. Here he went soundly to sleep.
In the course of time he began to dream. He dreamed that he was on a raft which floated on a limitless sea of bunch grass, alkali and sagebrush, where the waves ran high and regularly, rocking the raft back and forth monotonously and as monotonously throwing him from side to side and against a mast to which he clung. Right in front of the raft, floating in the air above the waves, drifted a slender, veiled figure, and through the veil sparkled a pair of eyes which were bottomless and yet held the colors of the rainbow in their depths. Above this figure, which beckoned him on, and after which the raft drifted faster and faster, was a halo of sparkling hair, which caught and broke up the light into prismatic colors.
The raft sailed faster and faster, rotating in a circle until it was spinning about the ghostly figure, which grew more and more distinct as the raftgyratedmore crazily. Raft, desert, waves and sky became confused, hazy, fading out, but the figure stood there as he opened his eyes and the stanchion thumped him in the ribs.133
His sleep and his liquor-drugged mind came back to him and he found himself lying on his bunk in a cell, while Solange stood before him and a turnkey poked him in the ribs and rocked him to wake him up.
Sick, bruised and battered, he raised himself, swung his feet to the floor and sat up on the edge of the bed. He tried to stand, but his head swam and he became so dizzy that he feared to fall.
“Don’t get up,” said Solange, icily.
The turnkey went to the door. “I reckon he’s all right now, ma’am. You got half an hour. If he gets rough just holler and we’ll settle him.”
“Is the charge serious?” asked Solange.
“It ought to be. He’s a sure-enough hard case. But a fine and six months on the rocks is about all he’ll get.”
De Launay looked up sullenly. The turnkey made a derisive, threatening motion and, grinning, slammed the door behind him, locking it.
De Launay licked his dry lips. There was a pitcher of water on a stand and he seized it, almost draining it as he gulped the lukewarm stuff down his sizzling throat.
It strengthened and revived him. He got up from the bed and stood aside. Solange stood like a statue, but her eyes scorched him through her veil.
“So this is what a general of France has come to,” she said. Words and tone burned him like fire.134He said nothing, but motioned to the bed as the only seat in the cell.
He picked up the hat, the battered thing that had brought on this disaster, from the floor and, stooping, felt the sharp throb of his half-fractured skull. His weakened nerves reacted sharply, and he uttered a half-suppressed cry, raising his hand to the lump on his cranium.
Solange started. “They have hurt you?” she said, sharply.
De Launay took hold of himself again.
“Nothing to speak of,” he answered, gruffly. “Will you sit down?”
She sat down, then. Through her veil he could not tell what her expression was, but he was uneasily conscious of the black pools that lurked there, searching his scarred soul to its depths, and finding it evil. He was in no condition to meet her, half drugged with stale alcohol, shaken to his inmost being by reaction against the poisoning of weeks, jumpy, imaginative, broken of mind and body.
His eyes did not meetherssquarely. They shifted, sidelong and bloodshot. But she might have read in them something of despair, something of sullenness, something of shame, but mostly she could have seen a plea for mercy, and perhaps she did.
If so, she did not yield to the plea—at first. In a cold, steely voice she told him what he was. In incisive French she rebaptized him a coward, a135beast, a low and disgusting thing. Her voice, curiously beautiful even in rage, cut and dissected him and laid him bare.
She painted for him what a gentleman and a soldier should be and contrasted with it what he was. She sketched for him all the glory and the fame of the men who had led the soldiers of France, neither sparing nor exalting, but showing them to be, at least, men who had courage and command of themselves or had striven for it. She contrasted them with his own weakness and supineness and degradation. Then, her voice softening subtly, she shifted the picture to what he had been, to his days of unutterable lowness in the Legion, the five years of brutal struggle, fiercely won promotion. His gaining of a commission, thecachetof respectability, his years of titanic struggle and study and work through the hardly won grades of the army.
She made him see himself as something glorious, rising from obscurity to respect and influence; made him see himself as he knew he was not; made him see his own courage, which he had; his ability, which he also had; and, what it had not, great pride, noble impulses, legitimate ambition. When she painted the truth, he did not respond, but when she pictured credits he did not deserve he winced and longed to earn them.
“And, after all this,” she said wearily, at last, “you descend—to this? It would seem that one might136even gauge the depths from which you rose by the length and swiftness of the fall. Is it that you have exhausted yourself in the effort that went before?”
De Launay stared at the floor with dull eyes.
“What would you expect of a légionnaire?” he muttered.
“Nothing!” she cried, angrily. “Nothing from the légionnaire! But, in the name of God, cannot one expect more than this from the man who wears the medaille militaire, the grand cross of the legion, who won a colonelcy in Champagne, a brigade at Verdun, a division at the Chemin des Dames, and who, as all know, should have had an army corps after the Balkan campaign? From such a man as that, from him, monsieur, one expects everything!”
De Launay twisted the unfortunate hat in his hands and made no reply for some minutes. Solange sat on the bed, one knee crossed over the other and her chin resting in her hand, supported on her elbow. Her head was also bent toward the floor.
“Mademoiselle,” said De Launay, at last, “I think you have guessed the trouble with me.” His manner had reverted to that of his rank and class, and she looked up in instant reaction to it. “I am all that you say except what is good. There is no doubt of that. I have been a soldier for nineteen years; have made it the work of my life, in fact. I know nothing else—except, perhaps, a little of a passing, obsolete trade of this fading West you see137around you. I had hoped to win—had won, I thought, place and distinction in that profession. You know what happened. Perhaps I did not deserve more. Perhaps it was necessary to reduce us all. Perhaps I was wrong in despairing. But I had won my way by effort, mademoiselle, that exhausted me. I was too tired to take up again the task of battering my way up through the remaining ranks.
“There was nothing left to me. There is nothing for me to do. There is no one who can use me unless it be some petty state which needs mercenaries. I have served my purpose in the world. Why should I not waste the rest of my time?”
Solange nodded. “Then what you need is an object?” she said, reflectively. “Work?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I have no need of money. And why should I work, otherwise? I know nothing of trade, and there are others who need the rewards of labor more than I.”
“Philanthropy—service?”
At this he grinned. “I am not a sentimentalist, but a soldier. As for service—I served France until she had no further use for me.”
“Marriage; a family?”
He laughed, now. “I am married. As for the love that is said to mitigate that relation, am I the sort of man a woman would care for?”
Solange straightened up, and then rose from the bunk. She came and stood before him.138
“If neither love, ambition nor money will stir you,” she said. “Still, you may find an incentive to serve. There is chivalry.”
“I’m no troubadour.”
“Will you serve me?” she asked abruptly. He looked at her in surprise.
“Am I not serving you?”
“You are—after your own fashion—which I do not like. I wish your service—need it. But not this way.”
He nodded slowly. “I will serve you—in any way you wish,” he said.
Solange smiled under the veil, her mouth curving into beautiful lines.
“That is better. I shall need you, monsieur. You cannot, it is clear, serve me effectively by being thrown into jail for months. I must find the mine and the man who killed my father before that.”
De Launay shook his head. “You expect to find the mine and the man, after nineteen years?”
“I expect to make the attempt,” she replied, calmly. “It is in the hands of God, my success. Somehow, I feel that I shall succeed, at least in some measure, but the same premonition points to you as one who shall make that success possible. I do not know why that is.”
“Premonition!” said De Launay, doubtfully. “Still—from Morganla fée, even a premonition——”139
The shrouding mask was turned upon him with an effect of question as he paused.
“Is entitled to respectful consideration,” he ended. He sat thoughtfully a minute, his throbbing head making mental action difficult. “I see no hope of tracing the man—but one. Have you that bullet, mademoiselle?”
She took it out of the hand bag, shivering a little as she handed it to him.
“It is common—a thirty caliber, such as most hunters use. Yet it is all the clew you possess. As for the mine, there seems to be only one hope, which is, to retrace as closely as possible, the route taken by your father before he was shot. May I keep this?”
She nodded her assent, and he put it in his pocket. Solange was relieved to be rid of it.
“And now,” he added, “I must get out of here.”140
CHAPTER XTHE GET-AWAY
“Ifyou need money—to pay the fine,” began Solange, doubtfully. He shook his head.
“I have a fancy to do this in my own way; the old-time way,” he said. “As for money, you will have need of all you possess. The cowboy, Sucatash, is a type I know. You may take a message to him for me, and I think he will not refuse to help.”
He gave her rapidly whispered instructions, her quick mind taking them in at once.
“And you,” he finished, “when you are ready to start, will gather your outfit at Wallace’s ranch near Willow Spring. From there is only one way that you can go to follow your father’s trail. He must have come out of the Esmeraldas through Shoestring Cañon, therefore you must go into them that way. I will be there when you come.”
Solange turned to the door and he bowed to her. She shook the grating and called for the turnkey. As she heard him coming she swung round and, with a smile, held out her hand to the soldier. His sallow face flushed as he took it. Her hand clung to his a moment and then the door swung open and she was gone.141
De Launay took the bullet from his pocket and held it in his hand. He sat on his bunk and weighed the thing reflectively, balancing it on his palm. It was just such a bullet as might have been shot from any one of a hundred rifles, a bullet of which nothing of the original shape remained except about a quarter of an inch of the butt.
He wondered if, after nineteen years, there remained any one who had even been present when French Pete was found dying.
As for the mine, that was even more hopeless. No one had seriously attempted any prolonged search for the murderer, he assumed, knowing the region as it had been. Homicides were not regarded as seriously as in later days and a Basco sheep-herder’s murder would arouse little interest. The mine, however, was a different thing, as he knew by the fact that even recent arrivals had heard of it. It was certain that, throughout all these years there had been many to search for it and the treasure it was supposed to hold. Yet none had found it.
Solange’s premonition made him smile tolerantly. Still, he was pledged to the search, and he would go through with it. They would not find it, of course, but there might be some way in which he could make up the disappointment to her. He thought he could understand the urge that had led her on the ridiculous quest. A young, pretty, but portionless girl, with just enough money to support142life in France for a few years, hopeless of marriage in a country where the women outnumbered the men by at least a million, would have a bleak future before her. He could guess that her high, proud spirit would rebel, on the one hand, at the prospect of pinching poverty and ignoble work and, on the other, from the alternative existence of thedemimondaine.
Here, in America, she might have a chance. He could see to it that she did have a chance. With those eyes and that hair and her voice, the stage would open its arms to her, and acting was a recognized and respectable profession. There might be other opportunities, also.
But the vendetta she would have to drop. In the Basses Pyrénées one might devote a life to hunting vengeance, but it wouldn’t do in the United States. If she found the man, by some freak of chance, what would she do with him? To expect to convict him after all these years was ridiculous, and it was not likely that he would confess. Though she might be certain, the only thing left to her would be the taking of the law into her own hands; and that would not do. He did not doubt her ability or her willingness to kill the man. He knew that she would do it, and he knew that she must not be allowed to do it. He shuddered to think of her imprisoned in some penitentiary, her bright hair cropped and those fathomless eyes looking out on the sun through stone143walls and barred windows; her delicate body clothed in rough, shapeless prison garments. If there was to be any killing, she must not do it.
She would insist on vengeance! Very well, he had promised to serve her; he had no particular object in life; he was abundantly able to kill; he would do her killing for her.
Having settled this to his satisfaction and feeling a certain complacent pleasure in the thought that, if the impossible happened, he could redeem himself in her eyes by an act that would condemn him in the eyes of every one else, he lay down on his bunk and went to sleep again.
In the morning he was aroused by the turnkey and brought out of his cell. A couple of officers took charge of him and led him from the jail to the street, across it and down a little way to the criminal court building. Here he was taken into a large room just off the courtroom, to await his preliminary hearing.
The rest was almost ridiculously simple. He had had no plan, beyond a vague one of breaking from his guardians when he was led back to the jail. But he formed a new one almost as soon as he had seated himself in the room where the prisoners were gathered.
He was placed on a long bench, the end of which was near a door leading to the corridor of the building. A door opposite led into the dock. A number144of prisoners were seated there and two men in uniform formed a guard. One of them spent practically all his time glancing through the door, which he held on a crack, into the courtroom.
The other was neither alert nor interested. The officer who had brought De Launay, and who, presumably, was to make the charge against him, remained, while his companion departed.
Among those gathered in the room were several relatives or friends of prisoners, lawyers, and bondsmen, who went from one to another, whispering their plans and proposals. One, a bulbous-nosed, greasy individual, sidled up to him and suggested that he could furnish bail, for a consideration.
De Launay’s immediate guard, at this moment, said something to the uniformed policeman who sat near the center of the room. The other glanced perfunctorily in De Launay’s direction and nodded, and the man stepped out into the hall.
De Launay whispered an intimation that he was interested in the bail suggestion. He arose and led the bondsman off to one side, near the outer door, and talked with him a few moments. He suggested that the man wait until they discovered what the bail would be, and said he would be glad to accept his services. He had money which had not been taken from him when he was searched.
The bondsman nodded his satisfaction at netting another victim and strolled away to seek further145prey. De Launay calmly turned around, opened the outer door and walked into the corridor.
He walked rapidly to the street entrance, out to the sidewalk, and down the street. At the first corner he turned. Then he hurried along until he saw what he was looking for. This was Sucatash, lounging easily against a lamp-post while De Launay’s horse, saddled and equipped, stood with head hanging and reins dangling just before him at the curb.
A close observer would have noticed that a pair of spurs hung at the saddle horn and that the saddle pockets bulged. But there were no close observers around.
De Launay came up to the horse while, as yet, there had been not the slightest indication of any hue and cry after him. This he knew could obtain for only a short time, but it would be sufficient.
Sucatash, against the lamp-post, lolled negligently and rolled a cigarette. He did not even look at De Launay, but spoke out of a corner of his mouth.
“How’d you make it, old-timer?”
“Walked out,” said the other, dryly.
“Huh? Well, them blue bellies are right bright, now. You’ll find pack hosses and an outfit at the spring west of the Lazy Y. Know where it is?”
De Launay nodded as he felt the cinch of the horse’s saddle.146
“But how the deuce will you get them there? It’s nearly ninety miles.”
“We got a telephone at pa’s ranch,” said Sucatash, complacently. “Better hit the high spots. There’s a row back there, now.”
De Launay swung into the saddle. “See you at Shoestring, this side the Crater,” he said, briefly. “Adios!”
“So long,” said Sucatash, indifferently. De Launay spurred the horse and took the middle of the road on a run. Sucatash looked after him reflectively.
“That hombre can ride a whole lot,” he remarked. “He’s a sure-enough, stingin’ lizard, I’ll say. Walked out! Huh!”
A few moments after De Launay had rounded a corner and disappeared with his ill-gotten habiliments, excited policemen and citizens came rushing to where Sucatash, with nothing on his mind but his hat, strolled along the sidewalk.
“Seen an escaped prisoner? Came this way. Wasn’t there a horse here a minute ago?” The questions were fired at him in rapid succession. Sucatash was exasperatingly leisurely in answering them.
“They was a hoss here, yes,” he drawled.
“Was it yours?”
“Not that I know of,” answered Sucatash. “Gent came along and forked it. I allowed it was hisn and so I didn’t snub him down none. Was he the gent you was lookin’ for?”147
“Which way did he go?”
“He was headin’ south-southeast by no’th or thereabouts when I last seen him,” said Sucatash. “And he was fannin’ a hole plumb through the atmosphere.”
They left the unsatisfactory witness and rushed to the corner around which De Launay had vanished. Here they found a man or two who had seen the galloping horse and its rider. But, as following on foot was manifestly impossible, one of them rushed to a telephone while others ran back to get a police automobile and give chase.
De Launay, meanwhile, was riding at a hard pace through the outlying streets of the town, heading toward the south. The paved streets gave way to gravel roads, and the smoke of the factories hung in the air behind him. Past comfortable bungalows and well-kept lawns he rushed, until the private hedges gave place to barbed-wire fences, and the cropped grass to fields of standing stubble.
The road ran along above and parallel to the river, following a ridge. To one side of it the farms lay, brown and gold in their autumn vesture. At regular intervals appeared a house, generally of the stereotyped bungalow form.
De Launay had passed several of these when he noticed, from one ahead of him, several men running toward the road. He watched them, saw that they gesticulated toward the cloud of dust out of which148he rode, and turned in his saddle to open the pockets back of the cantle. From one he drew belt and holster, sagging heavily with the pistol that filled it. From the other he pulled clips loaded with cartridges. Leaving the horse to run steadily on the road he strapped himself with the gun.
The men had reached the road and were lined up across it. One of them had a shotgun and others were armed with forks and rakes. They waved their weapons and shouted for him to stop. He calmly drew the pistol and pulled his horse down in the midst of them.
“Well?” he asked as they surged around him. The man with the shotgun suddenly saw the pistol and started to throw the gun to his shoulder.
“We got him!” he yelled, excitedly.
“Got who?” asked De Launay. “You pointing that gun at me? Better head it another way.”
His automatic was swinging carelessly at the belligerent farmer. The man was not long in that country, but he was long enough to know the difference between a shotgun and an automatic forty-five. He lost his nerve.
“We’re lookin’ for an escaped convict,” he muttered. “Be you the feller?”
“Keep on looking,” said De Launay, pleasantly. “But drop that gun and those pitchforks. What do you mean by holding up a peaceable man on the highroads?”149
The rattled farmer and his cohorts were bluffed and puzzled. The automatic spoke in terms too imperative to be disregarded. Capturing escaped prisoners was all very well, but when it involved risks such as this they preferred more peaceful pursuits. The men backed away, the farmer let the shotgun drop to the ground.
“Pull your freight!” said De Launay, shortly. They obeyed.
He whirled his horse and resumed his headlong flight. He had gained fifty yards when the farmer, who had run back to his gun, fired it after him. The shot scattered too much to cause him any uneasiness. He laughed back at them and fled away.
Other places hadbeenwarned also, but De Launay rushed past them without mishap. The automatic was a passport which these citizens were eager to honor, and which the police had not taken into account. To stop an unarmed fugitive was one thing, but to interfere with one who bristled with murder was quite another.
A new peril was on his trail, however. He soon heard the distant throb of a motor running with the muffler open. Looking back along the road, he could see the car as it rounded curves on top of the ridge. All too soon it was throbbing behind him and not half a mile away.
But he did not worry. Right ahead was a stone marker which he knew marked the boundary of150Nevada. Long before the car could reach him he had passed it. He kept on for two or three hundred yards at the same pace while the car, forging up on him, was noisy with shouts and commands to stop. He slowed down to a trot and grinned at the men who stood in the car and pointed their revolvers at him. His pistol was dangling in his hand.
“You gents want me?” he asked, pleasantly. His former captor sputtered an oath.
“You’re shoutin’ we want you,” he cried. “Get off that horse and climb in here, you——”
De Launay’s voice grew hard and incisive.
“You got a warrant for my arrest?”
“Warrant be hanged! You’re an escaped prisoner! Climb down before we let you have it!”
“That’s interesting. Where’s your extradition papers?”
The officer shrieked his commands and imprecations, waving his pistol. De Launay grinned.
“If you want to test the law, go ahead,” he said. “I’m in Nevada as you know very well. If you want to shoot, you may get me—but I can promise thatI’llget you, too. The first man of you that tightens a trigger will get his. Go to it!”
An officer who is on the right side of the law is thereby fortified and may proceed with confidence. If he is killed, his killer commits murder. But an officer who is on the wrong side of the law has no151such psychological reënforcement. He is decidedly at a disadvantage. The policemen were courageous—but they faced a dilemma. If they shot De Launay, they would have to explain. If he shot them, it would be in self-defense and lawful resistance to an illegal arrest. Furthermore, there was something about the way he acted that convinced them of his intention and ability. There were only three of them, and he seemed quite confident that he could get them all before they could kill him.
The officer who had been his guardian thought of a way out.
“There’s a justice of the peace a mile ahead,” he said. “We’ll just linger with you until we reach him and get a warrant.”
“Suit yourselves,” said De Launay, indifferently. “But don’t crowd me too closely. Those things make my horse nervous.”
They started the car, but he galloped easily on ahead, turning in his saddle to watch them. They proceeded slowly, allowing him to gain about forty yards. The officer thought of shooting at him when he was not looking, but desisted when he discovered that De Launay seemed to be always looking.
They had proceeded only a short distance when De Launay, without warning, spurred his horse into a run, swinging him at the same time from side to side of the road. Turned in his saddle, he raised his hand and the staccato rattle of his automatic152sounded like the roll of a drum. The startled officers fired and missed his elusive form. They had their aim disarranged by the sudden jolt and stoppage of the car. De Launay had shot the two front tires and a rear one to pieces.
The discomfited policemen saw him disappearing down the road in a cloud of dust from which echoed his mocking laugh and a chanted, jubilant verse that had not been heard in that region for nineteen years:
“My Louisiana! Louisiana Lou!”