THE QUARREL

“Lo, Peaches, ain’t you afraid of gettin’ sunburnt?” Peaches Austin, gambler though he was, flickered his eyelashes. He was startled. He had not had the slightest warning of Racey Dawson’s approach.

“Didn’t hear me, did you?” Racey continued, conversationally. “I didn’t want you to. That’s why I kept my spurs off and sifted round from the back of the blacksmith shop. And you were expecting me to come scampering down the trail over Injun Ridge, weren’t you? Joke’s on you, Peaches, sort of.”

Still Peaches said nothing. He sat and gazed at Racey Dawson.

“Don’t be a hawg,” resumed Racey. “Move over and lemme sit down, too. That’s the boy. Now we’re both comfortable, Peaches, you mean to sit there and tell me you didn’t hear any shooting up at the Starlight a while back?”

Peaches Austin wetted his lips with the tip of a careful tongue. “I heard shootin’,” he admitted, stiff-lipped.

“And what did you think it was?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t you see Thompson ride away?”

“Shore.”

“And didn’t you think anything about that, either?”

“Oh, I thought, but ”

“But you had yore orders to sit here and wait for li’l Willie. And you always obey orders. That it, Peaches?”

“What are you drivin’ at?”

“Yo’re always asking me that, Peaches. Try something new for a change. Look.”

Racey extended a long arm past Peaches’ nose and pointed up the street toward the Starlight Saloon. A man was backing out through the doorway. Another followed, walking forward. Between them they were carrying a third man. The hat of the third man was over his face. His arms, which hung down, jerked like the arms of a doll. Even at that distance Peaches could see that there was no life in the third man.

“That’s Doc Coffin,” Racey murmured without rancour. “I wonder where they’re taking him? He used to bach with Nebraska Jones, didn’t he? I guess that’s where they’re taking him to. Yep, they’ve gone round the corner of the stage company’s corral.”

“Where’s Honey?” queried Peaches in a still, small voice.

“In the Starlight. He ain’t hurt bad. Foot and arm. Lucky, huh?”

Peaches Austin considered these things a moment. “Doc Coffin was reckoned a fast man,” he said in the tone of one who, after adding up a column of figures, has found the correct total, “and Honey Hoke wasn’t none slow himself. And you got ’em both.”

“I didn’t get ’em both,” corrected Racey. “Honey is only wounded.”

“Same thing. You could ‘a’ got ’him if you wanted to. Yo’re lucky, that’s what it is. Yo’re lucky. And you been lucky from the beginning. I ain’t superstitious, but ” Here he lied. Like most gamblers Peaches was sadly superstitious. He looked at Racey, and there was something much akin to wonder on his countenance. He shook his head and was silent a long thirty seconds. “Yo’re too lucky for me I quit,” he finished.

“How much?”

“Complete. I tell you, I don’t buck no such luck as yores no longer. I’ll never have none myself if I do. I’m goin’.”

Peaches Austin got to his feet and walked across the street to the hotel. Twenty minutes later Racey, sitting on the bench in front of the blacksmith shop, saw him issue from the hotel, carrying a saddle, packed saddlebags, and cantenas, blanket and bridle, and go to the hotel corral.

Within three minutes Peaches Austin rode out from behind the hotel. As he passed the blacksmith shop he said “So long” to Racey.

“See you later,” nodded that serene young man.

“I hope not,” tossed back Peaches, and rode on down the trail that leads over Indian Ridge to Marysville and the south.

Racey watched him out of town. Then he went to Mike Flynn’s to see and, if it were possible, to cheer up his wounded friend, Swing Tunstall. But he was not allowed to see him. Swing, it appeared, had been given an opiate by Joy Blythe, who was acting as nurse, and she refused to awaken her patient for anybody. So there.

Racey went to the Happy Heart to while away the remainder of the hour set by Judge Dolan. The bartender greeted him respectfully and curiously. So did several other men he knew. For that respect and that curiosity he understood the reason. It lay on a bunk in Nebraska Jones’s shack.

No one asked him to drink. People are usually a little backward in social intercourse with a citizen who has just killed his fellowman. Of course in time the coolness wears off. In this case the time would be short, Doc Coffin having been one of those that more or less encumber the face of the earth. But for the moment Racey felt his ostracism and resented it.

He set down his drink half drunk and walked out of the Happy Heart.

“See anything of Luke Tweezy lately?” asked Judge Dolan when Racey was sitting across the table from him in the Judge’s office.

“Saw him to-day.”

“Where?”

“Moccasin Spring.”

Judge Dolan nodded and rasped a hand across his stubbly chin. “Luke is in town now,” said he.

“I ain’t lost any Luke Tweezys,” observed Racey, looking up at the ceiling.

“I wonder how long Luke is figuring on staying in town,” went on Judge Dolan, sticking like a stamp to his original subject.

“Nothing to me.”

“It might be. It might be. You never can tell about them things, Racey.”

Racey Dawson’s eyes came down from the ceiling. He studied the Judge’s face attentively. What was Dolan driving at? Racey had known the Judge for several years, and he was aware that the more indirect the Judge became in his discourse the more important the subject matter was likely to be.

“No,” said Racey, willing to bite, “you never can tell.”

“We was talking one day about a feller making mistakes.” The tangent was merely apparent.

“Yep,” acquiesced Racey. “We were saying Luke Tweezy made a good many.”

“Something like that, yeah. You run across any of Luke’s mistakes yet, Racey?”

Racey shook his head. “No.”

“Did you go to Marysville?”

“Why for Marysville?”

“Luke Tweezy lives in Marysville.”

“And you think there’s somebody in Marysville would talk?”

Judge Dolan looked pained. “I didn’t say so,” he was quick to remark.

“I know you didn’t, but ”

“I don’t guess they’s many folks in Marysville know much about Luke no, not many. Luke is careful and clever, damn clever. But they’s other things besides folks which might have useful information.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. A gent, a lawyer anyway, keeps a lot of papers in his safe as a rule. Sometimes them papers make a heap interesting readin’.” The Judge paused and regarded Racey coolly.

“They might prove interesting reading, that’s a fact,” drawled Racey.

“Now I ain’t suggestin’ anything,” pursued Judge Dolan. “I couldn’t on account of my oath. But it ain’t so Gawd-awful far from Farewell to Marysville.”

“It ain’t too far.”

“I got a notion Luke Tweezy will find important business to keep him here in Farewell the next four or five days.”

“I wonder what kind of a safe Luke has got,” murmured Racey.

“Damfino,” said the Judge. “You know anything about dynamite how it’s handled, huh?”

“Shore, handle it carefully.”

“I mean how to prepare a fuse and detonator and stick it in the cartridge. You know how?”

“I helped a miner man once for a week. Shore I know. You cut the fuse square-ended. Stick the square end into the cap until it touches the fulminate, and crimp down the copper shell all round with a dull knife to hold the fuse. Then you make a hole in the end of the cartridge and ”

“I guess you know yore business, Racey,” interrupted Judge Dolan. “You’ll find a package on that shelf by the door. Handle it carefully. I’m glad you dropped in, Racey, Nice weather we’re having.”

“But there are some people about due for a cold wave,” capped Racey, stopping on his way out to take the package from the shelf and wink at Judge Dolan.

The wink was not returned. But the Judge’s tongue may have been in his cheek. He was a most human person, was Judge Dolan of Farewell.

Racey, handling the package with care, went back to the draw where he had left the two horses. In the draw he opened the package. It contained six sticks of dynamite and the necessary detonators and fuse.

“Good old Judge,” said Racey, admiringly, and rewrapped the dynamite, the detonators, and the fuse with even more care than he had employed in unwrapping them.

He rolled the package into his slicker and tied down the slicker behind the cantle of his saddle. Untying the two horses he mounted his own and, leading the other, rode to the hotel corral.

Bill Lainey was only too glad to lend him a fresh horse and a bran sack.

It was dusk when he dismounted at the Dale corral. There was a lamp in the kitchen. Its rays shone out through the open door and made a rectangle of golden light on the dusty earth. Molly was standing at the kitchen table. She was stirring something in a bowl. She did not turn her head when he came to the door.

“Evenin’, Molly,” said Racey.

“Good evening.” Just that.

“Uh. Yore ma around?”

“She’s gone to bed.” Still the dark head was not raised.

He misunderstood both her brevity and the following silence. He left his hat on the washbench outside the door and stepped into the kitchen.

“Don’t take it so to heart, Molly,” he said, awkwardly.

“It’s hard, but Shucks, lookit, I’ve got something to tell you.”

In very truth he had something to tell her but he had not meant to tell her so soon.

“Lemme take care of you, Molly dear. You know I love you, and ”

“Stop!” Molly turned to him an expressionless face. She looked at him steadily. “You say you love me?” she went on.

“Shore I say it.” He was plainly puzzled at her reception of what he had said. Girls did not act this way in books.

“How about that that other girl? Marie, I think her name is.”

“What about her?”

“A good deal.”

“What has she got to do with my loving you, I’d like to know?”

“She loves you.”

“Marie? Loves me? Yo’re crazy!”

“Oh, am I? If she hadn’t loved you do you think for one minute she’d come riding all the way out here to give you a warning?”

“Marie and I are friends,” he admitted. “But there ain’t any law against that.”

“None at all.” Molly’s eyes dropped. Her head turned back. She resumed her operations with a spoon in the bowl.

“Lookit here, Molly ”

“Don’t you call me Molly.” Her tone was as lacking in expression as was her face.

“But you’ve got to listen to me!” he insisted, desperately. “I tell you there ain’t anything between Marie and me.”

“Then there ought to be.” Thus Molly. Womanlike she yearned to use her claws.

“But ”

“Oh, I’ve heard all about your carryings on with that creature; how you talk to her, and people have seen you walking with her on the street. I saw you myself. Yesterday when Mis’ Jackson drove out here to buy three hens she told me when the girl was arrested and fined for trying to murder a man you stepped up and paid her fine. Did you?”

“I did. But ”

“There aren’t any buts! You’ve got a nerve, you have, making love to me after running round with that wretched hussy!”

“She ain’t a hussy!” denied the exasperated Racey, who was always loyal to absent friends. “She’s all right. Just because she happens to be a lookout in the Happy Heart ain’t anything against her. It don’t give you nor anybody else license to insult her.”

This was too much. Not content with confessing his friendship for the girl, he was standing up for her. Molly whirled upon him.

“Go!” Tone and business could not have been excelled by Peg Woffington herself.

Racey went.

“What’s the matter?” queried a sleepy voice from the doorway giving into an inner room, as Racey’s spurred heels jingled past the washbench. “What’s goin’ on? Who was here? What you yelling about, anyway?”

“Racey was here, Ma,” said Molly.

“Seems to me you made an uncommon racket about it,” grumbled her mother, plodding into the kitchen in her slippers.

Her gray hair was all in strings about her face. Her eyes and cheeks were puffed with sleep. She had pulled a quilt round her shoulders over her nightdress. Now she gave the quilt a hitch up and sat down in a chair.

“Make me a cup o’ coffee, will you, Molly?” said Mrs. Dale. “My head aches sort of. I hope you didn’t have a fight with Racey Dawson.”

“Well, we didn’t quite agree,” admitted Molly, snapping shut the cover of the coffee-mill and clamping the mill between her knees. “I don’t like him any more, Ma.”

“And after he’s helped us so! I was counting on him to fix up this mortgage business! Whatever’s got into you, Molly?”

“He’s been running round with that awful lookout girl at the Happy Heart.”

“Is that all?” yawned Mrs. Dale, greatly relieved. “I thought it might have been something serious.”

“It is serious! What right has he to ”

“Why hasn’t he? You ain’t engaged to him.”

“I know I’m not, but he I you ” Molly began to flounder.

“Has he ever told you he loved you?” Mrs. Dale inquired, shrewdly.

“Not in so many words, but ”

“But you know he does. Well, so do I know he does. I knew it soon as you did before, most likely. Don’t you fret, Molly, he’ll come back.”

“No, he won’t. Not now. I don’t want him to.”

“Then who’s to fix up this mortgage business with Tweezy, I’d like to know? I declare, I wish I’d taken that lawyer’s offer. We’d have something then, anyhow. Now we’ll have to get out without a nickel. Oh, Molly, what did you quarrel with Racey for?”