Chapter 3 The Bandit of Hell's Bend by Edgar Rice Burroughs
SUSPICIONS
As the stage swirled through the dusty street of Hendersville an hour later and drew up before The Donovan House the loiterers about the hotel and the saloons gathered about it for the news and the gossip from the outer world. Gum Smith, sheriff, was among them.
“Stuck up again, Gum, at the gap,” the driver called to him. “They bored Mack.”
Mary Donovan and the little old gentleman were assisting the messenger from the stage, though he protested that he was all right and required no assistance. As the woman’s eyes alighted upon the sheriff, she turned upon him, her arms akimbo.
“Sure, yese a fine spicimin uv a sheriff, Gum Smith, that ye are—not!” she yelled in a voice that could be heard the length of the single street. “Three holdups in the two months right under yer nose, and all ye do is ‘depatize’ an’ ‘depatize’ an’ ‘depatize.’ Why don’t ye git out an’ git ’em—ye ould woman,” she concluded scornfully, and then turning to the wounded man, her voice instantly as soft as a lullaby.
“Get inside wid ye, ye poor b’y, an’ Mary Donovan’ll be after makin’ ye comfortable ’til we get hould uv the ould saw-bones, if he’s sober, which he ain’t, or I’m no lady, which I am. Come on now, aisy like, there’s a good b’y,” and she put a motherly arm about the lad and helped him to the porch of the hotel, just as Diana Henders appeared from the interior, attracted by the sounds from without.
“Oh, Mrs. Donovan!” she exclaimed. “What has happened? Why, it’s Mack! The Black Coyote again?” she guessed quickly.
“Shure an’ it was none other. I seen him wid me own eyes—the black silk handkerchief about the neck uv him an’ another over his ugly face. An’ his pardner—sure now I couldn’t be mishtaken wid the rollin’ walk uv him—if it wasn’t that dhirty greaser, Gregorio, me name’s not Mary Donovan, which it is.”
Together the two women helped the messenger into a bedroom where Mary Donovan, despite the embarrassed protests of her patient, undressed him and put him to bed while Diana Henders went to the kitchen for hot water and cloths.
Mack had an ugly flesh wound in his side, and this they had cleansed as best they could by the time the doctor arrived—a drink-broken old man who had drifted in from the East. His knowledge and skill were of the first rank and Hendersville boasted that it owned the best doctor in the Territory—when he was sober.
In Gum’s Place—Liquors and Cigars—the male population was listening to the account of the holdup as expounded by the little old gentleman and the other passenger, the latter being a stranger in the community.
It was he who had the floor at the moment.
“I never laughed so much in my life,” he averred, “as when the old woman calls the old man here the ’ould woman with the artillery.’ ”
The little old gentleman was standing at the bar with a glass of whiskey in his hand. Apparently with a single movement, so swift was he, he dashed the glass and its contents in the face of the stranger, whipped out both guns and commenced shooting.
A stream of lurid profanity accompanied his act, yet through the flood of incoherent obscenity the nub of an idea occasionally appeared, which was to the effect that “no blankety, blank tin-horn could git gay with Wildcat Bob.” Almost instantly, as if a magician had waved his wand, the room, that had been comfortably filled with men, became deserted, as far as human eye could discern, except for the little old gentleman with the tobacco-dewed whiskers.
The front door had accommodated some, while heavy pieces of furniture and the bar accounted for the rest—all but the stranger with the ill-directed sense of humor. He had gone through the back window and taken the sash with him.
The shooting over, the company reappeared, grinning. Most of them knew Wildcat Bob. It had been the stranger’s misfortune that he had not.
“I’d orter ’a’ bored him, the dinged pole-cat,” growled the little old gentleman, filling a fresh glass; “but I guess I larnt him his lesson. The idear of him a-speakin’ of Mrs. Donovan disrespectful-like like that—callin’ her the ‘old woman’! Why, she’s the finest lady ever drew breath.
“An’ says she to me, says she, Mister Bob, says she, ‘It’s such a relief to have a man like you along when there’s danger,’ says she, but she can’t stand bloodshed, bein’ that timid and shrinkin’ and she begged me not to start shootin’ at the varmints, otherwise than which I shore would of messed them up somethin’ awful,” interspersed with which were quite two oaths or obscenities to each word.
The shooting over and quiet restored, Gum Smith made his belated appearance. At sight of the little old gentleman he smiled affably.
“Dog-gone my hide if it ain’t Bob,” he exclaimed, crossing the room with extended hand. “Have a drink on the house, Bob.”
Wildcat Bob ignored the proffered hand. “I got the dust to cover my own drinks, Mister Sheriff,” he replied, “an’ instid of loafin’ around here buyin’ drinks why ain’t you-all out scoutin’ after that there Black Coyote hombre? You’re shore a hell of a sheriff, you are, Gum Smith.”
“Don’t git excited, Bob,” urged the sheriff, flushing. “Give a man time. Ah got to git me a posse, ain’t Ah? Thet’s jest what Ah was allowin’ to do right now, an’ Ah’ll start by depatizin’ yo.”
“You’ll deputize me—hell, you will, Gum Smith,” returned the old man with a snort of disgust. “I ben out with you-all before. When you thinks danger’s north you heads south. I had all the travelin’ I wants today.”
The sheriff mumbled something beneath his breath and turned away. Some half-hour later he rode out of town with a posse consisting of half a dozen of his cronies and leisurely took his way toward the gap.
In Mrs. Donovan’s sitting room Mary Donovan sat rocking comfortably and chatting with Diana Henders. Mack had been made as comfortable as circumstances permitted. The doctor had assured them that he was in no danger and had gone his way—back to Gum’s Place—Liquors and Cigars.
“And what are you doin’ in town this day, Diana?” inquired Mrs. Donovan.
“I rode in with Hal Colby, he’s foreman now,” replied the girl. “I wanted to buy a few things while Hal rode on over to the West Ranch. We have some horses over there. He ought to be back any minute now.”
“So Colby’s foreman. What’s become of Bull—quit?”
“He got drunk again and Dad broke him. I’m so sorry for him.”
“Don’t be after wastin’ your pity on the loikes ov him,” advised Mary Donovan. “There’s not the wan ov thim’s fit to black your boots, darlin’.”
“I don’t understand Bull,” continued the girl, ignoring the interruption. “Sometimes I think he’s all right and then again I’m afraid of him. He’s so quiet and reserved that I feel as though no one could ever know him, and when a man’s like that, as Hal says, you can’t help but think that maybe he’s done something that makes him afraid to talk, for fear he’ll give himself away.”
“So Hal Colby was after sayin’ that? Well, maybe he’s right an’ maybe he’s wrong. It’s not Mary Donovan that’ll be sayin’ as don’t know. But this I do be after knowin’—they’re both ov thim in love with ye, and——”
“Hush, Mrs. Donovan! The boys all think they’re in love with me, but I hate to hear anyone else say it seriously. It’s perfectly silly. They’d be just as much in love with any other girl, if she chanced to be the only girl on the ranch, as I am, and pretty nearly the only girl in the county, too. There’s Hal now. I must be going. Good-bye, Mrs. Donovan.”
“Good-bye, darlin’, an’ be after comin’ over again soon. It’s that lonesome here, you never could imagine! An’ what wid that ould scoundrel back in town again, to say nothin’ ov Gum Smith!”
“What old scoundrel?” inquired the girl.
“Sure, no one else but Wildcat Bob, the spalpeen!”
Diana Henders laughed. “He’s a very persistent suitor, isn’t he, Mrs. Donovan?”
“Sure he’s a very pestiferous shooter, that’s what he is—the ould fool. Actin’ like a wild broth ov a b’y, an’ him sivinty if he’s a day. He ought to be ashamed of himself, I’m sayin’; but at that he’s better than Gum Smith—say, that man’s so crooked ye could pull corks wid him.”
The girl was still laughing as she emerged from the hotel and mounted her pony. Hal Colby sat his horse a few yards away, talking with half a dozen men. At sight of Diana Henders he reined about and joined her.
“The boys were just telling me about the latest holdup in Hell’s Bend,” he said, as they cantered, stirrup to stirrup, out of town. “How’s Mack?”
“The doctor says he’ll be all right,” replied Diana. “Just a bad flesh wound. I don’t see why something isn’t done to put a stop to these holdups. Gum Smith doesn’t seem to care whether he gets The Black Coyote or not.”
“Oh, Gum’s doin’ the best he can,” Colby assured her good-naturedly.
“You’re too easy, Hal. You never like to say anything against a man, and of course that is right, too; but the lives and property of all of us are under Gum Smith’s protection, to a greater or less extent, and if he was the right sort he’d realize his responsibility and make a determined effort to run down this fellow.”
“He went out after him with a posse—the boys just told me so. What more can he do?”
“It was half an hour or more after the stage pulled in before Gum started,” she retorted. “Does he or anyone else imagine that those two scoundrels are going to wait around the gap until Gum gets there? And he’ll be back with his posse right after dark. He’ll say he lost the trail, and that’ll be the end of it until next time.”
The man made no reply and the two rode on in silence for a few minutes.
It was the girl who spoke again first.
“I wonder,” she said, “who this Black Coyote really is.”
“Everybody seems pretty sure it was The Black Coyote,” remarked Colby. “How did they know?”
“The black silk handkerchief he uses for a mask, and the other one about his neck,” she explained. “It must be the same man. Everyone has noticed these handkerchiefs on one of the men in every holdup in Hell’s Bend Pass during the last six months. There is scarce any one that isn’t positive that the second man is the Mexican, Gregorio; but no one seems to have recognized the principal.”
“I got my own opinion,” said Colby.
“What do you mean? Do you know who The Black Coyote really is?”
“I wouldn’t want to say that I know, exactly; but I got my own opinion.”
“Well!” she urged.
“I wouldn’t want to mention no names—until I was shore. But,” after a pause, “I’d like to see his cayuse. No one ever sees either his or his pardner’s. They keep ’em hid out in the brush alongside the trail; but I got a guess that if anyone ever seed The Black Coyote’s pony we’d all know for shore who The Black Coyote is.”
She did not insist further when she saw that he was apparently shielding the name of some man whom they both knew, and whom he suspicioned. It was only right that he should do this, she thought, and she admired him the more for it. So they talked of other things as they jogged along the dusty road toward home, the man riding a stirrup’s width behind that he might feast his eyes upon the profile of his companion. As they neared the ranch they saw the figure of a solitary horseman approaching from the north.
“Looks like Blazes,” remarked the girl.
“It is,” said the man. “I sent Bull up to Cottonwood this morning. I don’t see what he’s doin’ comin’ in from the north. The Cottonwood trail’s almost due west.”
“He might have come back along the foot hill trail,” suggested Diana.
“He might, but it’s farther, an’ I never seed a puncher yet that’d ride any farther than you told him to.”
“Bull’s different,” she replied, simply. “If you sent him out for any purpose he’d accomplish it no matter how far he had to ride. He’s always been a good hand.”
A moment later the ex-foreman joined them where the two trails met. He accorded the girl the customary, “Howdy, Miss,” of the times, and nodded to Colby. His mount was streaked with sweat and dust. It was evident that he had been ridden hard.
“Did you find them cows?” asked the foreman.
Bull nodded.
“In Cottonwood?”
“No, Belter’s.”
Diana Henders glanced at the foreman as much as to say, “I told you so!” Then, glancing back at Bull, she noticed a reddish brown stain on the side of his shirt, and gave a little exclamation of concern.
“Oh, Bull!” she cried, “you’ve been hurt—that’s blood, isn’t it? How did it happen?”
“Oh, that ain’t nothin’, Miss, just a little scratch,” and he closed up, like a clam, spurring ahead of them.
Neither Colby nor the girl spoke, but both were thinking of the same things—that Bull wore a black silk handkerchief about his neck and that Mary Donovan had fired back upon The Black Coyote and his confederate following the holdup in Hell’s Bend earlier in the afternoon.
Mrs. Donovan, her hands on her hips, stood just inside the dining room door as her guests filed in for supper that evening and seated themselves at the long deal table covered with its clean red and white cloth. She had a good-natured word for each of them, until her eyes alighted upon Wildcat Bob, attempting to sneak in unnoticed behind the broad figure of Jim Weller.
“So-o!” she exclaimed scornfully. “Ye ould fool—yer drunk again. Ta-ake off thim guns an’ give thim to me.”
“I haven’t had a drink, Mary,” expostulated the old man.
“Don’t ‘Mary’ me, ye ould reprobate, an’ be after givin’ me thim guns, quick!”
Meekly he unbuckled his belt and passed it over to her. “I was just bringin’ ’em in to you, Ma—Mrs. Donovan,” he assured her.
“Yed better be. Now go an’ sit down. I’ll feed you this night, but don’t you iver step foot into Mary Donovan’s dining room again in liquor.”
“I tell you I ain’t had a drink,” he insisted.
“Pha-at?” The word reeked with disbelief.
“Only just a drop to settle the dust after we pulled in,” he qualified his original statement.
“Ye must uv been that dusty then!” she exclaimed scornfully.
“I was.”
“Don’t talk back. And did ye find yer horses, Jim Weller?” she inquired of the big man behind whom Wildcat Bob had made his unimpressive entrance.
Weller shook his head, negatively, his mouth being full of baked beans.
“Patches probably run ’em off,” suggested Bill Gatlin, the stage driver.
“What with renegades and holdups this country ain’t safe to live in no more,” remarked Mrs. Donovan. “If some of these here would-be bad-men would git out an’ shoot up the bandits and the Injuns instid of shootin’ up saloons,” she stated meaningly, casting a baneful look at Wildcat Bob.
“Hadn’t orter be hard to find ’em, least wise one of ’em,” stated Weller, “when every son-of-a-gun in the county knows who he is.”
“Meanin’?” inquired the stage driver.
“Gregorio, in course,” said Weller. “I seen him comin’ out o’ Cottonwood not three hours before the stage was stuck up, an’ he was headin’ towards Hell’s Bend—him an’ that Bar Y Bull feller.”
“You mean them two was together?” asked Gatlin.
“Well, they warn’t exactly together. Gregorio comes out fust an’ about five minutes later I meets Bull acomin’ down the canyon; but they couldn’t have both been up there without t’other knowin’ it.”
“I don’t believe Bull would be doin’ it,” said Mary Donovan.
“You can’t never tell nothin’ about them quiet fellers,” remarked Gatlin, sententiously.
There was a pounding of hoofs without, the creaking of leather as men dismounted and a moment later the sheriff and some of his posse entered the dining room.
“I suppose ye got ’em, Gum Smith,” said Mrs. Donovan, with sarcasm, “or ye wouldn’t be back this soon.”
“Ah ain’t no cat, Mrs. Donovan,” said the sheriff, on the defensive, “to see in the dark.”
“Yese ain’t no sheriff nayther,” she shot back.
Wildcat Bob succeeded in calling attention to derisive laughter by pretending to hide it. Gum Smith looked at his rival angrily, immediately discovering that he was unarmed.
“What’s the matter with the old woman with the artillery—is she chokin’?” he inquired sweetly.
Wildcat Bob went red to the verge of apoplexy, seized a heavy cup half-filled with coffee and started to rise.
“Sit down wid ye!” roared the stentorian voice of Mary Donovan.
“I—” started Wildcat Bob.
“Shut up an’ sit down!”
The Wildcat did both, simultaneously.
“It’s a sha-ame, that it is, that a respictable widdy lady should be redjuced to fadin’ the likes o’ yese fer a livin’,” wailed Mrs. Donovan, sniffing, as she dabbed at her eyes with the corner of her apron, “all alone and unproticted as I am. Sure an’ if poor Tim was here he’d wipe the ground wid the both ov yese.”
Wildcat Bob, very red and uncomfortable, ate diligently, his eyes glued to his plate. Well did Mary Donovan know how to handle this terror of an earlier day, whose short temper and quick guns still held the respect and admiration of the roughest characters of the great empire of the southwest, but whose heart could be dissolved by a single tear.
As for Gum Smith, he was only too glad to be relieved of the embarrassment of the Wildcat’s further attentions and he too gave himself willingly over to peace and supper. For the balance of the meal, however, conversation languished.
At the Bar Y Ranch the men sat smoking after the evening meal. Bull was silently puffing upon a cigarette. Hal Colby, always good-natured and laughing, told stories. During the silences Texas Pete strove diligently to recall the half-forgotten verses of The Bad Hombre.
But over all there hovered an atmosphere of restraint. No one could have put his finger upon the cause, yet all sensed it. Things were not as they had been yesterday, or for many days before. Perhaps there was a feeling that an older man should have been chosen to replace Bull, for Colby was one of the newer hands. Without volition and unconsciously the men were taking sides. Some, mostly the men who had worked longest for Henders, drew imperceptibly nearer Bull. Texas Pete was one of them. The others laughed a little louder, now, at Colby’s stories.
“By gollies!” exclaimed Pete, “I remember some more of it:
“ ‘I am the original bad un, I am;
I eats ’em alive an’ I don’t give a damn
Fer how fast they come er how many they be—
Of all the bad hombres the wust one is me.’ ”
sang Texas Pete. “Good night, fellers, I’m goin’ to turn in.”