CHAPTER XVII
A TEST
Du Sang had the sidewise gait of a wolf, and crossed the street withthe choppy walk of the man out of a long saddle. Being both uncertainand quick, he was a man to slip a trail easily. He travelled aroundthe block and disappeared among the many open doors that blazed alongHill Street. Less alert trailers than the two behind him would havebeen at fault; but when he entered the place he was looking for,Kennedy was so close that Du Sang could have spoken to him had heturned around.
Kennedy passed directly ahead. A moment later Whispering Smith puthis head inside the door of the joint Du Sang had entered, withdrewit, and, rejoining his companions, spoke in an undertone: "A negrodive; he's lying low. Now we will keep our regular order. It's ahalf-basement, with a bar on the left; crap games at the table behindthe screen on the right. Kennedy, will you take the rear end of thebar? It covers the whole room and the back door. George, pass inahead of me and step just to the left of the slot machine; you'vegot the front door there and everything behind the screen, and I canget close to Du Sang. Look for a thinnish, yellow-faced man with abrown hat and a brown shirt--and pink eyes--shooting craps under thiswindow. I'll shoot craps with him. Is your heart pumping, George?Never mind, this is easy! Farrell, you're first!"
The dive, badly lighted and ventilated, was counted tough among toughplaces. White men and colored mixed before the bar and about thetables. When Smith stepped around the screen and into the flare of thehanging lamps, Du Sang stood in the small corner below the screenedstreet window. McCloud, though vitally interested in looking at theman that had come to town to kill him, felt his attention continuallywandering back to Whispering Smith. The clatter of the rolling dice,the guttural jargon of the negro gamblers, the drift of men to andfrom the bar, and the clouds of tobacco smoke made a hazy backgroundfor the stoop-shouldered man with his gray hat and shabby coat,dust-covered and travel-stained. Industriously licking the brokenwrapper of a cheap cigar and rolling it fondly under his forefinger,he was making his way unostentatiously toward Du Sang. Thirty-odd menwere in the saloon, but only two knew what the storm centre movingslowly across the room might develop. Kennedy, seeing everything andtalking pleasantly with one of the barkeepers, his close-set teethgleaming twenty feet away, stood at the end of the bar sliding anempty glass between his hands. Whispering Smith pushed past theon-lookers to get to the end of the table where Du Sang was shooting.He made no effort to attract Du Sang's attention, and when the latterlooked up he could have pulled the gray hat from the head of the manwhose brown eyes were mildly fixed on Du Sang's dice; they were lyingjust in front of Smith. Looking indifferently at the intruder, Du Sangreached for the dice: just ahead of his right hand, Whispering Smith'sright hand, the finger-tips extended on the table, rested in front ofthem; it might have been through accident or it might have beenthrough design. In his left hand Smith held the broken cigar, andwithout looking at Du Sang he passed the wrapper again over the tip ofhis tongue and slowly across his lips.
Du Sang now looked sharply at him, and Smith looked at his cigar.Others were playing around the semicircular table--it might meannothing. Du Sang waited. Smith lifted his right hand from the tableand felt in his waistcoat for a match. Du Sang, however, made noeffort to take up the dice. He watched Whispering Smith scratch amatch on the table, and, either because it failed to light or throughdesign, it was scratched the second time on the table, marking a crossbetween the two dice.
The meanest negro in the joint would not have stood that, yet Du Sanghesitated. Whispering Smith, mildly surprised, looked up. "Hello,Pearline! You shooting here?" He pushed the dice back toward theoutlaw. "Shoot again!"
Du Sang, scowling, snapped the dice and threw badly.
"Up jump the devil, is it? Shoot again!" And, pushing back the dice,Smith moved closer to Du Sang. The two men touched arms. Du Sang,threatened in a way wholly new to him, waited like a snake braved by amysterious enemy. His eyes blinked like a badger's. He caught up thedice and threw. "Is that the best you can do?" asked Smith. "Seehere!" He took up the dice. "Shoot with me!" Smith threw the dice upthe table toward Du Sang. Once he threw craps, but, reaching directlyin front of Du Sang, he picked the dice up and threw eleven. "Shootwith me, Du Sang."
"What's your game?" snapped Du Sang, with an oath.
"What do you care, if I've got the coin? I'll throw you fortwenty-dollar gold pieces."
Du Sang's eyes glittered. Unable to understand the reason for theaffront, he stood like a cat waiting to spring. "This is my game!" hesnarled.
"Then play it."
"Look here, what do you want?" he demanded angrily.
Smith stepped closer. "Any game you've got. I'll throw you left-handed,Du Sang." With his right hand he snapped the dice under Du Sang's noseand looked squarely into his eyes. "Got any Sugar Buttes money?"
Du Sang for an instant looked keenly back; his eyes contracted in thattime to a mere narrow slit; then, sudden as thought, he sprang backinto the corner. He knew now. This was the man who held the aces atthe barbecue, the railroad man--Whispering Smith. Kennedy, directlyacross the table, watched the lightning-like move. For the first timethe crap-dealer looked impatiently up.
It was a showdown. No one watching the two men under the windowbreathed for a moment. Whispering Smith, motionless, only watched thehalf-closed eyes. "You can't shoot craps," he said coldly. "What canyou shoot, Pearline? You can't stop a man on horseback."
Du Sang knew he must try for a quick kill or make a retreat. He tookin the field at a glance. Kennedy's teeth gleamed only ten feet away,and with his right hand half under his coat lapel he toyed with hiswatch-chain. McCloud had moved in from the slot machine and stood atthe point of the table, looking at Du Sang and laughing at him.Whispering Smith threw off all pretence. "Take your hand away fromyour gun, you albino! I'll blow your head off left-handed if you pull!Will you get out of this town to-night? If you can't drop a man in thesaddle at two hundred and fifty yards, what do you think you'd looklike after a break with me? Go back to the whelp that hired you, andtell him when he wants a friend of mine to send a man that can shoot.If you are within twenty miles of Medicine Bend at daylight I'll ropeyou like a fat cow and drag you down Front Street!"
Du Sang, with burning eyes, shrank narrower and smaller into hiscorner, ready to shoot if he had to, but not liking the chances. Noman in Williams Cache could pull or shoot with Du Sang, but no man inthe mountains had ever drawn successfully against the man that facedhim.
Whispering Smith saw that he would not draw. He taunted him again inlow tones, and, backing away, spoke laughingly to McCloud. WhileKennedy covered the corner, Smith backed to the door and waited forthe two to join him. They halted a moment at the door, then theybacked slowly up the steps and out into the street.
There was no talk till they reached the Wickiup office. "Now, willsome of you tell me who Du Sang is?" asked McCloud, after Kennedy andWhispering Smith with banter and laughing had gone over the scene.
Kennedy picked up the ruler. "The wickedest, cruelest man in thebunch--and the best shot."
"Where is your hat, George--the one he put the bullet through?" askedWhispering Smith, limp in the big chair. "Burn it up; he thinks hemissed you. Burn it up now. Never let him find out what a close callyou had. Du Sang! Yes, he is cold-blooded as a wild-cat and cruel as asoft bullet. Du Sang would shoot a dying man, George, just to keep himsquirming in the dirt. Did you ever see such eyes in a human being,set like that and blinking so in the light? It's bad enough to watch aman when you can see his eyes. Here's hoping we're done with him!"