Bad Man's Gulch (24 page)

But of all the men he had stood up to in a long and varied career of battle, he had never seen one that appealed to him less as an antagonist. He did not mind surly savagery in another man. He could handle the bitter natures well enough, because usually they were either too sluggish or too nervous. Nor did he object to taking his chances with fellows whose faces showed the animal cunning that was in
them, because he would freely match cunning against cunning. He loved to encounter men who were running berserk in the madness of too much whiskey beneath the belt.

But, above all things, he avoided as most dangerous the smiling men, and yonder Melendez at the roulette table was decidedly the smiling type. Having put $3,000 of his winnings on the black—and lost—he merely chuckled. He placed another $1,000 on the same color. It was swept away in due course by the croupier. Still Melendez smiled. And the more he smiled, the more intensely Mr. Legrain was worried.

He looked back to the Yankee and the others, and he found that their eyes were still fixed expectantly upon him. What was he to do? Yonder Melendez had been formally announced by the girl as a prospective enemy; it was up to Legrain to nip his hostility in the bud. By just such exhibitions of his power had he been able to maintain his authority among his followers.

Yet the more he examined Mr. Melendez, the less he liked the affair. Whether it was the long-fingered, strong hand of this young man, the depth of his chest, or the wiry strength of his arms, there was nothing about him that promised an easy foe. Perhaps the worst of all was the fact that no weapon appeared on his person. In this crowd there was hardly a soul who did not wear his Colt in open view, as if to show that he was ready and prepared to defend himself and his rights. But Legrain felt that he knew enough about human nature in the West to be sure that, when no weapon showed, it was because the man who appeared so innocent of guns and gunpowder was in fact so deadly an expert that he knew how to conjure forth a Colt from
beneath his coat as swiftly as another could yank his weapon out of a holster.

In places a little less rough than Slosson's Gulch, did not Mr. Legrain himself carry his weapons out of sight? So he felt for Melendez as one expert for another. Under that smile he told himself that there was the coolest set of nerves that had ever been furnished to a human being. Those long, strong fingers would snap out a revolver with the expedition of a cat pawing at a mouse.

Altogether the affair looked most unpromising to Legrain. Again and again the stranger lost, and still his good nature was a fort that was not in the slightest shaken. Finally he pushed back his chair and stood up, nodding to the crowd of sympathetic spectators.

“That's all, boys,” he said. “I've had my licking!”

They gave him a hearty cheer of approval for the fine way in which he had taken his defeat after being so near to a great coup. He could easily have lingered, in order to collect their kindness and their respect, easily have remained to let fall remarks about other exploits of his that had turned out more favorably. Almost any man, Legrain felt, must have succumbed to some of these temptations to fix himself in the minds of so many spectators as a hero. For this, Legrain waited and watched. It would be a sign of a human failing, but still it would be a failing that would supply a bit of confidence to him.

Yet none of these things was done by Melendez. He made his way through the crowd, adroitly avoiding those who would have talked with him. Presently it would have been hard to tell where he had disappeared, had not Legrain followed all of his windings and known that the stranger was standing in the crowd that watched at another table. Al
though, if Legrain had not known, there were others at hand ready to keep him advised.

“He's yonder!” the Yankee said, pointing, with a leer of savage pleasure.

Legrain set his teeth. He knew that these fellows did not love him. They feared him and they respected his accuracy and speed with a gun as well as a certain daring and adroitness of mind that were his. But they had no fondness for him. They followed him, still, as the coyotes will follow the ranging lobo, expectant of cheap food after the hero of the range has made his kill. Now, no doubt, the Yankee and the rest would be fully as pleased to see their leader thoroughly beaten and crushed as they would be to see him defeat the gambler.

Backwards and forwards, Legrain balanced the matter. He was no sentimentalist but, after all, he liked to have his following, his audience, to wonder at his cleverness and his cruel boldness of maneuver. These were his men, and, if he did not down Melendez, their faith in him would be dreadfully shaken. He would be a lost leader in a very short time, no doubt.

Believing that, Legrain felt that there might be a very great danger in Melendez. He determined instantly to put the matter to the touch.

The instant that he had made up his mind, he determined to put his re-resolve into execution before too much thinking weakened it. He went straight across the room, with his followers drifting hungrily behind him. In his heart of hearts he scorned them utterly, and in his heart of hearts he admired his own courage immensely.

As he entered the little crowd at the farther table, there was an end of the gaming that had drawn
their interest. All faces turned suddenly toward Legrain, and men shouldered past him. He was very glad of this. For, having made up his own mind in just such a moment of confusion as this was, he might be able to find his opportunity and take advantage of surprise to help him beat Melendez.

So he put himself in the way of the other, weaving through the crowd. As the tall, brown-faced youth came by him, Legrain drooped his shoulder and jarred heavily against his enemy.

With the same instant he spun about on toe and heel, his voice screeching a harsh challenge. “Curse you!” yelled Legrain, “do you own this place and everybody in it? Are we dirt for you to kick around in front of you!”

At the first sound of his voice, the brown-faced man spun around to face him with such instant speed, that Legrain looked for the sparkle of a gun in the hand of the other. His own Colt was out and leveled; he intended to shoot, and shoot to kill, the instant that he spotted a weapon in the grip of Melendez.

But there was no weapon there, and, having the drop upon the stranger, Legrain, vastly reënforced in spirit, poured out the rest of his insulting speech. It was as though a bomb had exploded. A sudden rush on all sides jammed the crowd back, leaving a gaping hole in the center, where Legrain and his opponent stood face to face.

He did not regard the others, however. It was well to have so much attention, of course, and from such men. It would make him a known and feared man in the camp. But it was Melendez in whom he was interested, and he found that for the first time in his life he was standing before a man who did
not change color when a gun was pointed at his heart.

It was a staggering discovery to Legrain, opening possibilities in human nature such as he had never dreamed of before. But he made sure that the eye of Melendez was as clear, as bright, and as open as ever, and that the form of Melendez did not shrink back one jot from him. He heard the younger man saying in the most calm of voices:

“Why, partner, what's eating you? You don't mean me, do you?”

“Don't I mean you?” said Legrain. “But I do, you swine. You tried to kick me out of your way just now and you . . .” He hardly knew to what conclusion he could bring this affair, but he stepped boldly forward. Certainly the nerve of this young fellow must have some snapping point.

Melendez did not so much as budge. He merely shrugged his shoulders and stood now at arm's length, looking quietly into the face of the other.

It was a dreadful thing to Legrain. It blasted away all his confidence in himself. The knees of his spirit, so to speak, were bowed almost to the earth. And he knew that he would have to do something desperate to maintain himself.

Just at that critical instant a strong voice called: “Put up your gat, Legrain! Are you trying to do a murder in here?”

Legrain wrote the sound of that voice down in his memory and swore that, if he lived through this trial, he would never forget the speaker as a most deadly enemy, to be brought to account for such an unseasonable remark.

If there had been only one voice behind the suggestion, Legrain would never have listened. He would have been deaf, indeed, to half a dozen such
remarks. But now there was a roar from 100 strong men, calling upon him to restore his gun to its holster and to put the fight back upon even terms. But did he dare to do it?

With an eye most quiet and yet most calculating, as of one who reads an interesting book, Melendez was looking his antagonist up and down. It seemed to Legrain's evil heart that the younger man was glancing over a tale more than twice told. Standing so boldly and so steadily, it seemed as though Melendez was simply waiting for the instant when that leveled revolver was put away before he snatched out his own gun and fired from the hip. Or, perhaps, he would simply rely upon the power of his long, strong right arm. That clenched fist promised to go through another's body almost like a leaden bullet. Mr. Legrain vowed that he would almost as soon be shot outright as struck by such a man, with such a heft of shoulder behind the punch.

He balanced the question in his mind and found the scales just even, until another universal roar from the crowd advised him to put up his gun at once. There was no denying those voices. He had heard it roaring before, on sundry occasions. Once he had been glad enough to have the walls of a jail,
and the guns of a sheriff, between him and just such a roaring crowd. Now Legrain decided that obey he must, dangerous though he felt it to be, when he was in arm's reach of this man.

He dropped the Colt suddenly into his holster—although as his right hand came a little clear of the holster, it hung there quivering above the grip, ready to snatch out the weapon again with one convulsive movement of wrist and fingertips.

Yet as fast as he knew he could make his move—and with the stranger's handicap in having to extract a gun from beneath his coat—the cold certainty arose in Mr. Legrain that his was a losing cause, that, at the command of this youngster, there was such blinding speed that his own cunning would avail him nothing.

So he waited, tensed. The whole crowd waited, also, pressing back on either side so as to leave a narrow channel open through which bullets might be free to fly.

But bullets did not fly. There was no swift reaching forward of the right hand of Mr. Melendez. Neither did one of his hands flip up under his coat to make the draw. He remained as he had been before, with his arms hanging patiently by his side.

Legrain snarled, although he could hardly believe the thing as it snapped into his own frantic mind: “You're yaller!”

Even that crowning insult, although it wrung a groan of expectancy from the crowd, could not force the hand of Melendez. His smile did not waver. His pale-blue, thoughtful eyes continued to gaze at his foe.

“You yaller skunk!” screamed Legrain. “It's a
mask
that you're wearing, and, inside, you're shaking
in your boots!” As he spoke, he reached out swiftly and struck the other lightly across the mouth with his open hand.

Striking with his left, his right hand was free to make his draw, and he snatched his Colt out, ready to split the heart of young Melendez and send his spirit on a distant journey. But Melendez did not stir to defend himself.

Another universal voice rose from the crowd, but this time it was one of purest disgust. “Leave him be, Legrain. There ain't any fight left in him.”

“Leave him be?” repeated Legrain. “No, curse him, I ain't gonna leave him be. Not when I'm kicked around by a yellow dog that wants to bully people that he hasn't the nerve to stand up to in a fair fight . . . knife them in the back.” He struck out savagely as he spoke. The other stepped lightly back, and Legrain floundered as he missed. He dropped his revolver into his holster, furiously greedy for the work by this time; his hunger was razor-edged.

Now he heard Melendez saying—although in a voice not trembling with fear: “Fellows, I'm not a fighting man. Will you take him off?”

There was a veritable gasp of disgust.

“No,” shouted someone fiercely, “let him take what's coming to him . . . the cur!”

Sweet, sweet music to the ears of big Mr. Legrain. He laughed through his set teeth as he strode upon Melendez.

“And you're the hero, are you?” he panted. “You're the one that's going to tear six of us to pieces if the girl asks you to?”

For the first time a tremor was struck through the body of Melendez. “Girl?” he echoed faintly.

“Aye, and I wish that she was here to see what I'm going to do to you!” snarled Legrain. “I only wish
for that. Because I'm going to break you up, Melendez! I'm going to. . . .”

He had broken through the calm of Mr. Melendez at last. The color indeed ebbed from the brown cheeks, and the lips of Melendez were suddenly pinched.

“Did she tell you that I'd tear half a dozen of you to pieces for her?”

“Yes!” Legrain grinned. “And so . . .”

He struck again, and this time the other did not leap back; an arm of steel rose and turned the blow of Legrain. He found himself staring, scant inches away, into glittering, terrible eyes.

“Back up, Legrain!” said the younger man. “I've been holding myself hard, but now I tell you that if you so much as stir a hand, I'll kill you, man. Do you hear me?”

“Hear you? You rat, will you still try bluff? Go for your gun. I give you your last chance before I salt you away, Melendez!”

“Gun? The devil with a gun. I don't need a gun for trash like you.” And he surged forward.

Legrain should have killed him, perhaps. His own Colt was already in his hand as he sensed the change in this odd enemy. But, strangely enough, he could not tip up the muzzle of the weapon as fast as the left hand of the brown man darted out and gripped his gun wrist.