The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 2 Page 28

  Corcoran caught that uplifted wrist, and deftly flicked the ivory sphere from her fingers. Instantly she whirled on him like a tigress, her yellow hair falling in disorder over her shoulders, bared by the violence of the struggle, her eyes blazing. She lifted her hands toward his face, her fingers working spasmodically, at which some drunk bawled, with a shout of laughter: “Scratch his eyes out, Glory!”

  Corcoran made no move to defend his features; he did not seem to see the white fingers twitching so near his face. He was staring into her furious face, and the candid admiration of his gaze seemed to confuse her, even in her anger. She dropped her hands but fell back on woman’s traditional weapon – her tongue.

  “You’re Middleton’s new deputy! I might have expected you to butt in! Where are McNab and the rest? Drunk in some gutter? Is this the way you catch murderers? You lawmen are all alike – better at bullying girls than at catching outlaws!”

  Corcoran stepped past her and picked up the hysterical Mexican girl. Conchita seeing that she was more frightened than hurt, scurried toward the back rooms, sobbing in rage and humiliation, and clutching about her the shreds of garments her enemy’s tigerish attack had left her.

  Corcoran looked again at Glory, who stood clenching and unclenching her white fists. She was still fermenting with anger, and furious at his intervention. No one in the crowd about them spoke; no one laughed, but all seemed to hold their breaths as she launched into another tirade. They knew Corcoran was a dangerous man, but they did not know the code by which he had been reared; did not know that Glory, or any other woman, was safe from violence at his hands, whatever her offense.

  “Why don’t you call McNab?” she sneered. “Judging from the way Middleton’s deputies have been working, it will probably take three or four of you to drag one helpless girl to jail!”

  “Who said anything about takin’ you to jail?” Corcoran’s gaze dwelt in fascination on her ruddy cheeks, the crimson of her full lips in startling contrast against the whiteness of her teeth. She shook her yellow hair back impatiently, as a spirited young animal might shake back its flowing mane.

  “You’re not arresting me?” She seemed startled, thrown into confusion by this unexpected statement.

  “No. I just kept you from killin’ that girl. If you’d brained her with that billiard ball I’d have had to arrest you.”

  “She lied about me!” Her wide eyes flashed, and her breast heaved again.

  “That wasn’t no excuse for makin’ a public show of yourself,” he answered without heat. “If ladies have got to fight, they ought to do it in private.”

  And so saying he turned away. A gusty exhalation of breath seemed to escape the crowd, and the tension vanished, as they turned to the bar. The incident was forgotten, merely a trifling episode in an existence crowded with violent incidents. Jovial masculine voices mingled with the shriller laughter of women, as glasses began to clink along the bar.

  Glory hesitated, drawing her torn dress together over her bosom, then darted after Corcoran, who was moving toward the door. When she touched his arm he whipped about as quick as a cat, a hand flashing to a gun. She glimpsed a momentary gleam in his eyes as menacing and predatory as the threat that leaps in a panther’s eyes. Then it was gone as he saw whose hand had touched him.

  “She lied about me,” Glory said, as if defending herself from a charge of misconduct. “She’s a dirty little cat.”

  Corcoran looked her over from head to foot, as if he had not heard her; his blue eyes burned her like a physical fire.

  She stammered in confusion. Direct and unveiled admiration was commonplace, but there was an elemental candor about the Texan such as she had never before encountered.

  He broke in on her stammerings in a way that showed he had paid no attention to what she was saying.

  “Let me buy you a drink. There’s a table over there where we can sit down.”

  “No. I must go and put on another dress. I just wanted to say that I’m glad you kept me from killing Conchita. She’s a slut, but I don’t want her blood on my hands.”

  “All right.”

  She found it hard to make conversation with him, and could not have said why she wished to make conversation.

  “McNab arrested me once,” she said, irrelevantly, her eyes dilating as if at the memory of an injustice. “I slapped him for something he said. He was going to put me in jail for resisting an officer of the law! Middleton made him turn me loose.”

  “McNab must be a fool,” said Corcoran slowly.

  “He’s mean; he’s got a nasty temper, and he – what’s that?”

  Down the street sounded a fusillade of shots, a blurry voice yelling gleefully.

  “Some fool shooting up a saloon,” she murmured, and darted a strange glance at her companion, as if a drunk shooting into the air was an unusual occurrence in that wild mining camp.

  “Middleton said that’s against the law,” he grunted, turning away.

  “Wait!” she cried sharply, catching at him. But he was already moving through the door, and Glory stopped short as a hand fell lightly on her shoulder from behind. Turning her head she paled to see the keenly-chiselled face of Ace Brent. His hand lay gently on her shoulder, but there was a command and a blood-chilling threat in its touch. She shivered and stood still as a statue, as Corcoran, unaware of the drama being played behind him, disappeared into the street.

  The racket was coming from the Blackfoot Chief Saloon, a few doors down, and on the same side of the street as the Golden Garter. With a few long strides Corcoran reached the door. But he did not rush in. He halted and swept his cool gaze deliberately over the interior. In the center of the saloon a roughly dressed man was reeling about, whooping and discharging a pistol into the ceiling, perilously close to the big oil lamp which hung there. The bar was lined with men, all bearded and uncouthly garbed, so it was impossible to tell which were ruffians and which were honest miners. All the men in the room were at the bar, with the exception of the drunken man.

  Corcoran paid little heed to him as he came through the door, though he moved straight toward him, and to the tense watchers it seemed the Texan was looking at no one else. In reality, from the corner of his eye he was watching the men at the bar; and as he moved deliberately from the door, across the room, he distinguished the pose of honest curiosity from the tension of intended murder. He saw the three hands that gripped gun butts.

  And as he, apparently ignorant of what was going on at the bar, stepped toward the man reeling in the center of the room, a gun jumped from its scabbard and pointed toward the lamp. And even as it moved, Corcoran moved quicker. His turn was a blur of motion too quick for the eye to follow and even as he turned his gun was burning red.

  The man who had drawn died on his feet with his gun still pointed toward the ceiling, unfired. Another stood gaping, stunned, a pistol dangling in his fingers, for that fleeting tick of time; then as he woke and whipped the gun up, hot lead ripped through his brain. A third gun spoke once as the owner fired wildly, and then he went to his knees under the blast of ripping lead, slumped over on the floor and lay twitching.

  It was over in a flash, action so blurred with speed that not one of the watchers could ever tell just exactly what had happened. One instant Corcoran had been moving toward the man in the center of the room, the next both guns were blazing and three men were falling from the bar, crashing dead on the floor.

  For an instant the scene held, Corcoran half crouching, guns held at his hips, facing the men who stood stunned along the bar. Wisps of blue smoke drifted from the muzzles of his guns, forming a misty veil through which his grim face looked, implacable and passionless as that of an image carved from granite. But his eyes blazed.

  Shakily, moving like puppets on a string, the men at the bar lifted their hands clear of their waistline. Death hung on the crook of a finger for a shuddering tick of time. Then with a choking gasp the man who had played drunk made a stumbling rush toward the door. With a catlike wh
eel and stroke Corcoran crashed a gun barrel over his head and stretched him stunned and bleeding on the floor.

  The Texan was facing the men at the bar again before any of them could have moved. He had not looked at the men on the floor since they had fallen.

  “Well, amigos!” His voice was soft, but it was thick with killer’s lust. “Why don’t you-all keep the baile goin’? Ain’t these hombres got no friends?”

  Apparently they had not. No one made a move.

  Realizing that the crisis had passed, that there was no more killing to be done just then, Corcoran straightened, shoving his guns back in his scabbards.

  “Purty crude,” he criticized. “I don’t see how anybody could fall for a trick that stale. Man plays drunk and starts shootin’ at the roof. Officer comes in to arrest him. When the officer’s back’s turned, somebody shoots out the light, and the drunk falls on the floor to get out of the line of fire. Three or four men planted along the bar start blazin’ away in the dark at the place where they know the law’s standin’, and out of eighteen or twenty-four shots, some’s bound to connect.”

  With a harsh laugh he stooped, grabbed the “drunk” by the collar and hauled him upright. The man staggered and stared wildly about him, blood dripping from the gash in his scalp.

  “You got to come along to jail,” said Corcoran unemotionally. “Sheriff says it’s against the law to shoot up saloons. I ought to shoot you, but I ain’t in the habit of pluggin’ men with empty guns. Reckon you’ll be more value to the sheriff alive than dead, anyway.”

  And propelling his dizzy charge, he strode out into the street. A crowd had gathered about the door, and they gave back suddenly. He saw a supple, feminine figure dart into the circle of light, which illumined the white face and golden hair of the girl Glory.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed sharply. “Oh!” Her exclamation was almost drowned in a sudden clamor of voices as the men in the street realized what had happened in the Blackfoot Chief.

  Corcoran felt her pluck at his sleeve as he passed her, heard her tense whisper.

  “I was afraid – I tried to warn you – I’m glad they didn’t –”

  A shadow of a smile touched his hard lips as he glanced down at her.

  Then he was gone, striding down the street toward the jail, half pushing, half dragging his bewildered prisoner.

  IV

  THE MADNESS THAT BLINDS MEN

  Corcoran locked the door on the man who seemed utterly unable to realize just what had happened, and turned away, heading for the sheriff’s office at the other end of town. He kicked on the door of the jailer’s shack, a few yards from the jail, and roused that individual out of a slumber he believed was alcoholic, and informed him he had a prisoner in his care. The jailer seemed as surprised as the victim was.

  No one had followed Corcoran to the jail, and the street was almost deserted, as the people jammed morbidly into the Blackfoot Chief to stare at the bodies and listen to conflicting stories as to just what had happened.

  Colonel Hopkins came running up, breathlessly, to grab Corcoran’s hand and pump it vigorously.

  “By gad, sir, you have the real spirit! Guts! Speed! They tell me the loafers at the bar didn’t even have time to dive for cover before it was over! I’ll admit I’d ceased to expect much of John’s deputies, but you’ve shown your metal! These fellows were undoubtedly Vultures. That Tom Deal, you’ve got in jail, I’ve suspected him for some time. We’ll question him – make him tell us who the rest are, and who their leader is. Come in and have a drink, sir!”

  “Thanks, but not just now. I’m goin’ to find Middleton and report this business. His office ought to be closer to the jail. I don’t think much of his jailer. When I get through reportin’ I’m goin’ back and guard that fellow myself.”

  Hopkins emitted more laudations, and then clapped the Texan on the back and darted away to take part in whatever informal inquest was being made, and Corcoran strode on through the emptying street. The fact that so much uproar was being made over the killing of three would-be murderers showed him how rare was a successful resistance to the Vultures. He shrugged his shoulders as he remembered feuds and range wars in his native Southwest: men falling like flies under the unerring drive of bullets on the open range and in the streets of Texas towns. But there all men were frontiersmen, sons and grandsons of frontiersmen; here, in the mining camps, the frontier element was only one of several elements, many drawn from sections where men had forgotten how to defend themselves through generations of law and order.

  He saw a light spring up in the sheriff’s cabin just before he reached it, and, with his mind on possible gunmen lurking in ambush – for they must have known he would go directly to the cabin from the jail – he swung about and approached the building by a route that would not take him across the bar of light pouring from the window. So it was that the man who came running noisily down the road passed him without seeing the Texan as he kept in the shadows of the cliff. The man was McNab; Corcoran knew him by his powerful build, his slouching carriage. And as he burst through the door, his face was illuminated and Corcoran was amazed to see it contorted in a grimace of passion.

  Voices rose inside the cabin, McNab’s bull-like roar, thick with fury, and the calmer tones of Middleton. Corcoran hurried forward, and as he approached he heard McNab roar: “Damn you, Middleton, you’ve got a lot of explainin’ to do! Why didn’t you warn the boys he was a killer?”

  At that moment Corcoran stepped into the cabin and demanded: “What’s the trouble, McNab?”

  The big deputy whirled with a feline snarl of rage, his eyes glaring with murderous madness as they recognized Corcoran.

  “You damned –” A string of filthy expletives gushed from his thick lips as he ripped out his gun. Its muzzle had scarcely cleared leather when a Colt banged in Corcoran’s right hand. McNab’s gun clattered to the floor and he staggered back, grasping his right arm with his left hand, and cursing like a madman.

  “What’s the matter with you, you fool?” demanded Corcoran harshly. “Shut up! I did you a favor by not killin’ you. If you wasn’t a deputy I’d have drilled you through the head. But I will anyway, if you don’t shut your dirty trap.”

  “You killed Breckman, Red Bill and Curly!” raved McNab; he looked like a wounded grizzly as he swayed there, blood trickling down his wrist and dripping off his fingers.

  “Was that their names? Well, what about it?”

  “Bill’s drunk, Corcoran,” interposed Middleton. “He goes crazy when he’s full of liquor.”

  McNab’s roar of fury shook the cabin. His eyes turned red and he swayed on his feet as if about to plunge at Middleton’s throat.

  “Drunk?” he bellowed. “You lie, Middleton! Damn you, what’s your game? You sent your own men to death! Without warnin’!”

  “His own men?” Corcoran’s eyes were suddenly glittering slits. He stepped back and made a half turn so that he was facing both men; his hands became claws hovering over his gun-butts.

  “Yes, his men!” snarled McNab. “You fool, he’s the chief of the Vultures!”

  An electric silence gripped the cabin. Middleton stood rigid, his empty hands hanging limp, knowing that his life hung on a thread no more substantial than a filament of morning dew. If he moved, if, when he spoke, his tone jarred on Corcoran’s suspicious ears, guns would be roaring before a man could snap his fingers.

  “Is that so?” Corcoran shot at him.

  “Yes,” Middleton said calmly, with no inflection in his voice that could be taken as a threat. “I’m chief of the Vultures.”

  Corcoran glared at him puzzled. “What’s your game?” he demanded, his tone thick with the deadly instinct of his breed.

  “That’s what I want to know!” bawled McNab. “We killed Grimes for you, because he was catchin’ on to things. And we set the same trap for this devil. He knew! He must have known! You warned him – told him all about it!”

  “He told me nothin’,” grated Corcoran.
“He didn’t have to. Nobody but a fool would have been caught in a trap like that. Middleton, before I blow you to hell, I want to know one thing: what good was it goin’ to do you to bring me into Wahpeton, and have me killed the first night I was here?”

  “I didn’t bring you here for that,” answered Middleton.

  “Then what’d you bring him here for?” yelled McNab. “You told us –”

  “I told you I was bringing a new deputy here, that was a gun-slinging fool,” broke in Middleton. “That was the truth. That should have been warning enough.”

  “But we thought that was just talk, to fool the people,” protested McNab bewilderedly. He sensed that he was beginning to be wound in a web he could not break.

  “Did I tell you it was just talk?”

  “No, but we thought –”

  “I gave you no reason to think anything. The night when Grimes was killed I told everyone in the Golden Eagle that I was bringing in a Texas gunfighter as my deputy. I spoke the truth.”

  “But you wanted him killed, and –”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t say a word about having him killed.”

  “But –”

  “Did I?” Middleton pursued relentlessly. “Did I give you a definite order to kill Corcoran, to molest him in any way?”

  Corcoran’s eyes were molten steel, burning into McNab’s soul. The befuddled giant scowled and floundered, vaguely realizing that he was being put in the wrong, but not understanding how, or why.

  “No, you didn’t tell us to kill him in so many words; but you didn’t tell us to let him alone.”

  “Do I have to tell you to let people alone to keep you from killing them? There are about three thousand people in this camp I’ve never given any definite orders about. Are you going out and kill them, and say you thought I meant you to do it, because I didn’t tell you not to?”