Gunman's Reckoning Part 21

The men faced the door, wondering, and then the swift rumor pa.s.sed from lip to lip--almost from eye to eye, so rapidly it sped--Donnegan is coming! Donnegan, and big George with him.

"Someone tell Milligan!"

But Milligan had already heard; he was back of the bar giving directions; guns were actually unlimbering. What would happen?

"Shall I get you out of this?" Landis asked the girl.

"Leave now?" She laughed fiercely and silently. "I'm just beginning to live! Miss Donnegan in action? No, sir!"

She would have given a good deal to retract that sentence, for it washed the face of Landis white with jealousy.

Surely Donnegan had built greater than he knew.

And suddenly he was there in the midst of the house. No one had stopped him--at least, no one had interfered with his servant. Big George had on a white suit and a dappled green necktie; he stood directly behind his master and made him look like a small boy. For Donnegan was in black, and he had a white neckcloth wrapped as high and stiffly as an old-fas.h.i.+oned stock. Altogether he was a queer, drab figure compared with the brilliant Donnegan of that afternoon. He looked older, more weary. His lean face was pale; and his hair flamed with redoubled ardor on that account. Never was hair as red as that, not even the hair of Lord Nick, said the people in Milligan's this night.

He was perfectly calm even in the midst of that deadly silence. He stood looking about him. He saw Gloster, the real estate man, and bowed to him deliberately.

For some reason that drew a gasp.

Then he observed a table which was apparently to his fancy and crossed the floor with a light, noiseless step, big George padding heavily behind him. At the little round table he waited until George had drawn out the chair for him and then he sat down. He folded his arms lightly upon his breast and once more surveyed the scene, and big George drew himself up behind Donnegan. Just once his eyes rolled and flashed savagely in delight at the sensation that they were making, then the face of George was once again impa.s.sive.

If Donnegan had not carried it off with a certain air, the whole entrance would have seemed decidedly stagey, but The Corner, as it was, found much to wonder at and little to criticize. And in the West grown men are as shrewd judges of affectation as children are in other places.

"Putting on a lot of style, eh?" said Jack Landis, and with fierce intensity he watched the face of Nelly Lebrun.

For once she was unguarded.

"He's superb!" she exclaimed. "The big fellow is going to bring a drink for him."

She looked up, surprised by the silence of Landis, and found that his face was actually yellow.

"I'll tell you something. Do you remember the little red-headed tramp who came in here the other night and spoke to me?"

"Very well. You seemed to be bothered."

"Maybe. I dunno. But that's the man--the one who's sitting over there now all dressed up--the man The Corner is talking about--Donnegan! A tramp!"

She caught her breath.

"Is that the one?" A pause. "Well, I believe it. He's capable of anything!"

"I think you like him all the better for knowing that."

"Jack, you're angry."

"Why should I be? I hate to see you fooled by the bluff of a tramp, though."

"Tus.h.!.+ Do you think I'm fooled by it? But it's an interesting bluff, Jack, don't you think?"

"Nelly, he's interesting enough to make you blush; by heaven, the hound is lookin' right at you now, Nelly!"

He had pressed her suddenly against the wall and she struck back desperately in self-defense.

"By the way, what did he want to see you about?"

It spiked the guns of Landis for the time being, at least. And the girl followed by striving to prove that her interest in Donnegan was purely impersonal.

"He's clever," she ran on, not daring to look at the set face of her companion. "See how he fails to notice that he's making a sensation?

You'd think he was in a big restaurant in a city. He takes the drink off the tray from that fellow as if it were a common thing to be waited on by a body-servant in The Corner. Jack, I'll wager that there's something crooked about him. A professional gambler, say!"

Jack Landis thawed a little under this careless chatter. He still did not quite trust her.

"Do you know what they're whispering? That I was afraid to face him!"

She tilted her head back, so that the light gleamed on her young throat, and she broke into laughter.

"Why, Jack, that's foolish. You proved yourself when you first came to The Corner. Maybe some of the newcomers may have said something, but all the old-timers know you had some different reason for leaving the rest of them. By the way, what was the reason?"

She sent a keen little glance at him from the corner of her eyes, but the moment she saw that he was embarra.s.sed and at sea because of the query she instantly slipped into a fresh tide of careless chatter and covered up his confusion for him.

"See how the girls are making eyes at him."

"I'll tell you why," Jack replied. "A girl likes to be with the man who's making the town talk." He added pointedly: "Oh, I've found that out!"

She shrugged that comment away.

"He isn't paying the slightest attention to any of them," she murmured.

"He's queer! Has he just come here hunting trouble?"

20

It should be understood that before this the men in Milligan's had reached a subtly unspoken agreement that red-haired Donnegan was not one of them. In a word, they did not like him because he made a mystery of himself. And, also, because he was different. Yet there was a growing feeling that the shooting of Lewis through the hand had not been an accident, for the whole demeanor of Donnegan composed the action of a man who is a professional trouble maker. There was no reason why he should go to Milligan's and take his servant with him unless he wished a fight. And why a man should wish to fight the entire Corner was something no one could guess.

That he should have done all this merely to focus all eyes upon him, and particularly the eyes of a girl, did not occur to anyone. It looked rather like the bravado of a man who lived for the sake of fighting.

Now, men who hunt trouble in the mountain desert generally find all that they may desire, but for the time being everyone held back, wolfishly, waiting for another to take the first step toward Donnegan. Indeed, there was an unspoken conviction that the man who took the first step would probably not live to take another. In the meantime both men and women gave Donnegan the lion's share of their attention. There was only one who was clever enough to conceal it, and that one was the pair of eyes to which the red-haired man was playing--Nelly Lebrun. She confined herself strictly to Jack Landis.

So it was that when Milligan announced a tag dance and the couples swirled onto the floor gayly, Donnegan decided to take matters into his own hands and offer the first overt act. It was clumsy; he did not like it; but he hated this delay. And he knew that every moment he stayed on there with big George behind his chair was another red rag flaunted in the face of The Corner.

He saw the men who had no girl with them brighten at the announcement of the tag dance. And when the dance began he saw the prettiest girls tagged quickly, one after the other. All except Nelly Lebrun. She swung securely around the circle in the big arms of Jack Landis. She seemed to be set apart and protected from the common touch by his size, and by his formidable, challenging eye. Donnegan felt as never before the una.s.sailable position of this fellow; not only from his own fighting qualities, but because he had behind him the whole unfathomable power of Lord Nick and his gang.

Nelly approached in the arms of Landis in making the first circle of the dance floor; her eyes, grown dull as she surrendered herself wholly to the rhythm of the waltz, saw nothing. They were blank as unlighted charcoal. She came opposite Donnegan, her back was toward him; she swung in the arms of Landis, and then, past the shoulder of her partner, she flashed a glance at Donnegan. The spark had fallen on the charcoal, and her eyes were aflame. Aflame to Donnegan; the next instant the veil had dropped across her face once more.

She was carried on, leaving Donnegan tingling.