CHAPTER XVI. The End of the Dots
Slim may not have been more curious than his fellows, but he was perhapsmore single-hearted in his loyalty to the outfit. To him the shootingof Happy Jack, once he felt assured that the wound was not necessarilyfatal, became of secondary importance. It was all in behalf of theFlying U; and if the bullet which laid Happy Jack upon the ground wasalso the means of driving the hated Dots from that neighborhood, hefelt, in his slow, phlegmatic way, that it wasn't such a catastrophe assome of the others seemed to think. Of course, he wouldn't want Happyto die; but he didn't believe, after all, that Happy was going to doanything like that. Old Patsy knew a lot about sickness and wounds. (Whocan cook for a cattle outfit, for twenty years and more, and not know agood deal of hurts?) Old Patsy had looked Happy over carefully, and hadgiven a grin and a snort.
"Py cosh, dot vos lucky for you, alreatty," he had pronounced. "So youdon't git plood-poisonings, mit fever, you be all right pretty soon.You go to shleep, yet. If fix you oop till der dochtor he cooms. I seenfellers shot plumb through der middle off dem, und git yell. You ain'tshot so bad. You go to shleep."
So, his immediate fears relieved, Slim's slow mind had swung back tothe Dots, and to Oleson, whom Weary was even now assisting to keep hispromise (Slim grinned widely to himself when he thought of the abjectfear which Oleson had displayed because of the murder he thought he haddone, while Happy Jack obediently "played dead"). And of Dunk, whom Slimhad hated most abominably of old; Dunk, a criminal found out; Dunk, aprisoner right there on the very ranch he had thought to despoil; Dunk,at that very moment locked in the blacksmith shop. Perhaps it was notcuriosity alone which sent him down there; perhaps it was partly adesire to look upon Dunk humbled--he who had trodden so arrogantlyupon the necks of those below him; so arrogantly that even Slim, theslow-witted one, had many a time trembled with anger at his tone.
Slim walked slowly, as was his wont; with deadly directness, as was hisnature. The blacksmith shop was silent, closed--as grimly noncommittalas a vault. You might guess whatever you pleased about its inmate; itwas like trying to imagine the emotions pictured upon the face behinda smooth, black mask. Slim stopped before the closed door and listened.The rusty, iron hasp attracted his slow gaze, at first puzzling him alittle, making him vaguely aware that something about it did not quiteharmonize with his mental attitude toward it. It took him a full minuteto realize that he had expected to find the door locked, and that thehasp hung downward uselessly, just as it hung every day in the year.
He remembered then that Andy had spoken of chaining Dunk to the anvil.That would make it unnecessary to lock the door, of course. Slim seizedthe hanging strip of iron, gave it a jerk and bathed all the dingyinterior with a soft, sunset glow. Cobwebs quivered at the inrush of thebreeze, and glistened like threads of fine gold. The forge remained adark blot in the corner. A new chisel, lying upon the earthen floor,became a bar of yellow light.
Slim's eyes went to the anvil and clung there in a widening stare. Hishands, white and soft when his gloves were off, drew up convulsivelyinto fighting fists, and as he stood looking, the cords swelled andstood out upon his thick neck. For years he had hated Dunk Whittaker--
The Happy Family, with rare good sense, had not hesitated to turn thewhite house into an impromptu hospital. They knew that if the LittleDoctor and Chip and the Old Man had been at home Happy Jack would havebeen taken unquestioningly into the guest chamber--which was a square,three-windowed room off the big livingroom. More than one of them hadoccupied it upon occasion. They took Happy Jack up there and put him tobed quite as a matter-of-course, and when he was asleep they lingeredupon the wide, front porch; the hammock of the Little Doctor squeakedunder the weight of Andy Green, and the wide-armed chairs received theweary forms of divers young cowpunchers who did not give a thought tothe intrusion, but were thankful for the comfort. Andy was swingingluxuriously and drawing the last few puffs from a cigarette when Slim,purple and puffing audibly, appeared portentously before him.
"I thought you said you was goin' to lock Dunk up in the blacksmithshop," he launched accusingly at Andy.
"We did," averred that young man, pushing his toe against the railing toaccelerate the voluptuous motion of the hammock.
"He ain't there. He's broke loose. The chain--by golly, yuh went an'used that chain that was broke an' jest barely hangin' together! Hishorse ain't anywheres around, either. You fellers make me sick. Lollin'around here an' not paying no attention, by golly--he's liable to be tenmile from here by this time!" When Slim stopped, his jaw quivered likea dish of disturbed jelly, and I wish I could give you his tone; choppy,every sentence an accusation that should have made those fellows wince.
Irish, Big Medicine and Jack Bates had sprung guiltily to their feetand started down the steps. The drawling voice of the Native Son stoppedthem, ten feet from the porch.
"Twelve, or fifteen, I should make it. That horse of his looked to melike a drifter."
"Well--are yuh goin' t' set there on your haunches an' let him GO?"Slim, by the look of him, was ripe for murder.
"You want to look out, or you'll get apoplexy sure," Andy soothed,giving himself another luxurious push and pulling the last, little whifffrom his cigarette before he threw away the stub. "Fat men can't affordto get as excited as skinny ones can."
"Aw, say! Where did you put him, Andy?" asked Big Medicine, his firstflurry subsiding before the absolute calm of those two on the porch.
"In the blacksmith shop," said Andy, with a slurring accent on the firstword that made the whole sentence perfectly maddening. "Ah, come on backhere and sit down. I guess we better tell 'em the how of it. Huh, Mig?"
Miguel cast a slow, humorous glance over the four. "Ye-es--they'll haveus treed in about two minutes if we don't," he assented. "Go ahead."
"Well," Andy lifted his head and shoulders that he might readjust apillow to his liking, "we wanted him to make a getaway. Fact is, if hehadn't, we'd have been--strictly up against it. Right! If he hadn't--howabout it, Mig? I guess we'd have been to the Little Rockies ourselves."
"You've got a sweet little voice," Irish cut in savagely, "but we'retired. We'd rather hear yuh say something!"
"Oh--all right. Well, Mig and I just ribbed up a josh on Dunk. I'd readsomewhere about the same kinda deal, so it ain't original; I don't layany claim to the idea at all; we just borrowed it. You see, it's likethis: We figured that a man as mean as this Dunk person most likely hadstepped over the line, somewhere. So we just took a gambling chance, andlet him do the rest. You see, we never saw him before in our lives. Allthat identification stunt of ours was just a bluff. But the minute Ishoved my chips to the center, I knew we had him dead to rights. Youwere there. You saw him wilt. By gracious--"
"Yuh don't know anything against him?" gasped Irish.
"Not a darned thing--any more than what you all know," testified Andycomplacently.
It took a minute or two for that to sink in.
"Well, I'll be damned!" breathed Irish.
"We did chain him to the anvil," Andy went on. "On the way down, wetalked about being in a hurry to get back to you fellows, and I toldMig--so Dunk could hear--that we wouldn't bother with the horse. We tiedhim to the corral. And I hunted around for that bum chain, and then wemade out we couldn't find the padlock for the door; so we decided, rightout loud, that he'd be dead safe for an hour or two, till the bunch ofus got back. Not knowing a darn thing about him, except what you boyshave told us, we sure would have been in bad if he hadn't taken a sneak.Fact is, we were kinda worried for fear he wouldn't have nerve enoughto try it. We waited, up on the hill, till we saw him sneak down to thecorral and jump on his horse and take off down the coulee like a scaredcoyote. It was," quoth the young man, unmistakably pleased with himself,"pretty smooth work, if you ask me."
"I'd hate to ride as fast and far to-night as that hombre will,"supplemented Miguel with his brief smile, that was just a flash ofwhite, even teeth and a momentary lightening of his languorous eyes.
Slim stood for five minutes, a stolid, stocky figure in the midst ofa storm of congratulatory comment. They forgot all about Happy Jack,asleep inside the house, and so their voices were not hushed. Indeed,Big Medicine's bull-like remarks boomed full-throated across the couleeand were flung back mockingly by the barren hills. Slim did not heara word they were saying; he was thinking it over, with that completemental concentration which is the chief recompense of a slow-workingmind. He was methodically thinking it all out--and, eventually, he sawthe joke.
"Well, by golly!" he bawled suddenly, and brought his palm down witha terrific smack upon his sore leg--whereat his fellows laugheduproariously.
"We told you not to try to see through any more jokes till your leg getswell, Slim," Andy reminded condescendingly.
"Say, by golly, that's a good one on Dunk, ain't it? Chasin' himselfclean outa the country, by golly--scared plumb to death---and youfellers was only jest makin' b'lieve yuh knowed him! By golly, that sureis a good one, all right!"
"You've got it; give you time enough and you could see through abarbed-wire fence," patronized Andy, from the hammock. "Yes, since youmention it, I think myself it ain't so bad."
"Aw-w shut up, out there, an' let a feller sleep!" came a querulousvoice from within. "I'd ruther bed down with a corral full uh calves atweanin' time, than be anywheres within ten mile uh you darned, mouthy--"The rest was indistinguishable, but it did not matter. The Happy Family,save Slim, who stayed to look after the patient, tiptoed penitentlyoff the porch and took themselves and their enthusiasm down to thebunk-house.