Stepsons of Light

“Well, I’m not walking in my sleep this bright beautiful evening. Whispering fools, you mean?”

“Exactly. Some knaves, too. But fools are worse always, and more dangerous. This town is all fussed up and hectic about the Forbes killing. Ugly rumors – Dines did this, Dines did that, Dines is a red hellion. I don’t like the way things shape up. There’s a lot of offscourings and riffraff here – and someone is putting up free whisky. It’s known that I was a friend of this boy’s father, and it is suspected that I may be interested in his father’s son. But you – can’t you find out – Oh, hell, you know what I want!”

“Sure I do. You’re afraid of a mob, with a scoundrel back of it. Excuse me for wasting words. You’re afraid of a mob. I’m your man. Free whisky is where I live. Me for the gilded haunts of sin. Any particular haunt you have in mind?”

“Sure I have. No need to go to The Bank. Joe is a pretty decent old scout. You skip Joe’s place and drop in at The Mermaid. Where they love money most is where trouble starts.”

“Where will I report to you?”

“You know Perrault’s house?”

“With trees all round, and a little vineyard? Just below the jail? Yes.”

“You’ll find me there, and a couple more old residenters. Hop along, now.”

The Mermaid saloon squatted in a low, dark corner of Hillsboro – even if the words were used in the most literal sense.

Waywardly careless, Hillsboro checkered with alternate homes and mines the undulations of a dozen low hills; an amphitheater girdled by high mountain walls, with a central arena for commercial gladiators. Stamp mills hung along the scarred hillsides, stamp mills exhibiting every known variety of size and battery. In quite the Athenian manner, courthouse, church and school crowned each a hill of its own, and doubtless proved what has been so often and so well said of our civilization. At any rate the courthouse cost more than the school – about as much more as it was used less; and the church steeple was such as to attract comment from any god. The school was less imposing.

This was a high, rainy country. The frontier of the pines lay just behind and just above the town, on the first upward slopes. The desert levels were far below. Shade trees, then, can grow in Hillsboro; do grow there by Nature and by artifice, making a joyous riot of visible song – in the residential section. Industrial Hillsboro, however, held – or was held? – to the flintier hills, bleak and bare and brown, where the big smelter overhung and dominated the north. The steep narrow valley of the Percha divided Hillsboro rather equally between the good and the goats.

There was also the inevitable Mexican quarter – here, as ever, Chihuahua. But if Hillsboro could claim no originality of naming, she could boast of something unique in map making. The Mexican suburb ran directly through the heart of the town. Then the Mexican town was the old town? A good guess, but not the right one. The effective cause was that the lordly white man scorned to garden – cowmen and miners holding an equally foolish tradition on this head; while the humble paisano has gardened since Scipio and Hasdrubal; would garden in hell. So the narrow bottom lands of the creek were given over to truck patches and brown gardeners; tiny empires between loop and loop of twisting water; black loam, pay dirt. It is curious to consider that this pay dirt will be fruitful still, these homes will still be homes, a thousand years after the last yellow dross has been sifted from the hills.

So much for the town proper. A small outlying fringe lay below the broad white wagon road twisting away between the hills in long curves or terraced zigzags to the railhead. Here a flat black level of glassy obsidian shouldered across the valley and forced the little river to an unexpected whirling plunge where the dark box of the Percha led wandering through the eastern barrier of hills; and on that black cheerless level huddled the wide, low length of The Mermaid, paintless, forbidding, shunning and shunned. Most odd to contemplate; this glassy barren, nonproducing, uncultivated and unmined, waste and sterile, was yet a better money-maker than the best placer or the richest loam land of all Hillsboro. Tellurian papers please copy.

The Mermaid boasted no Jonson, and differed in other respects from The Mermaid of Broad Street. Nor might it be reproached with any insidious allure, though one of the seven deadly arts had been invoked. Facing the bar, a startled sea maid turned her head, ever about to plunge to the safety of green seas. The result was not convincing; she did not look startled enough to dive. But perhaps the artist had a model. Legend says the canvas was painted to liquidate a liquor bill, which would explain much; it is hard paying for a dead horse. It had once been signed, but some kindly hand had scraped the name away. In moments of irritation Hillsboro spoke of The Mermaid as “The Dive.”

“Johnny Dines – yah! Thought he could pull that stuff and get away with it,” said Jody Weir loudly. “Fine bluff, but it got called. Bankin’ on the cowmen to stick with him and get him out of it.”

The Mermaid bar was crowded. It was a dingy place and a dingy crew. The barkeeper had need for all his craft and swiftness to give service. The barkeeper was also the owner – a tall man with a white bloodless face, whiter for black brows like scars. The gambling hall behind was lit up but deserted. The crowd was in too ugly a mood for gambling. They had been drinking bad liquor, much too much for most of them; headed by Weir, Caney and Hales, seconded by any chance buyer, and followed up by the Merman, who served a round on the house with unwonted frequency.

Jody pounded on the bar.

“Yes, that’s his little scheme – intimidation. He’s countin’ on the cowboys to scare Hillsboro out – him playin’ plumb innocent of course – knowin’ nothin’, victim of circumstances. Sure! ‘Turn this poor persecuted boy loose!’ they’ll say. ‘You got nothin’ on him.’ Oh, them bold bad men!”

“That don’t sound reasonable, Jody,” objected Shaky Akins. “Forbes was a cowman. You’re a cowman yourself.”

“Yes – but I saw. These fellers’ll hear, and then they’ll shoot off their mouths on general principles, not knowing straight up about it; then they’ll stick to what they first said, out of plumb pig-headedness. One thing I’m glad of: I sure hope Cole Ralston likes the way his new man turned out.”

“Dines and Charlie See favor each other a heap. Not in looks so much,” said Shaky, “but in their ways. I used to know Charlie See right well, over on the Pecos. He was shortstop on the Roswell nine. He couldn’t hit, and he couldn’t field, and he couldn’t run bases – but oh, people, how that man could play ball!”

“Nonsense. They’re not a bit alike. You think so, just because they’re both little.”

“I don’t either. I think so because they’re both – oh my!”

“I don’t like this man See, either,” said Caney. “I don’t like a hair of his head. Too damn smart. Somebody’s going to break him in two before he’s much older.”

“Now listen!” said Shaky Akins, without heat. “When you go to break Charlie See you’ll find he is a right flexible citizen – any man, any time, anywhere.”

“Well,” said Hales, “all this talking is dry work. Come up, boys. This one is on me.”

“What will it be, gentlemen?” inquired the suave Merman. “One Scotch. Yes. Three straights. A highball. Three rums. One gin sling. Make it two? Right. Next? Whisky straight. And the same. What’s yours, Mr. Akins?”

“Another blond bland blend,” said Shaky. “But you haven’t answered my question, Jody. Why should cowmen see this killing any different from anyone else? Just clannishness, you think?”

“Because cowmen can read sign,” said Charlie See. He stood framed in the front door: he stepped inside.

The startled room turned to the door. There were nudges and whispers. Talking ceased. There had been a dozen noisy conversations besides the one recorded.

“Reading tracks is harder to learn than Greek, and more interesting,” said Charlie. “Cattlemen have always had to read sign, and they’ve always had to read it right – ever since they was six years old. What you begin learning at six years old is the only thing you ever learn good. So cowmen don’t just look and talk. They see and think.”

He moved easily across the room in a vast silence. Caney’s eyes met those of the Merman barkeeper. The Merman’s bloodless and sinister face made no change, but he made a change in the order.

“Step up, Mr. See,” said the Merman. “This one’s on me. What will it be?”

“Beer,” said Charlie. He nodded to the crowd. “Howdy, boys! Hello, Shaky – that you?”

He lined up beside Shaky; he noted sly sidelong glances and furtive faces reflected in the blistered mirror behind the bar.

“Sure is. Play you a game of pool – what?”

“All set?” demanded Caney from the other end of the bar. “Drink her down, fellers! Here’s to the gallows tree!”

“Looks like a good season for fruit,” said Charlie. A miner laughed.

Shaky drained his glass. “Come on, pool shark.” He hooked his arm in Charlie’s and they went back to the big hall. Part of the crowd drifted after them.

There was only one pool table, just beyond the door. Down one side were ranged tables for monte, faro, senate and stud. On the other side the bar extended beyond the partition and took up twenty feet of the hall, opposite the pool table. On the end of the bar were ranged generous platters of free lunch – shrimps, pretzels, strips of toasted bread, sausages, mustard, pickles, olives, crackers and cheese. Behind it was a large quick-lunch oil stove, darkened now. Beyond that was a vast oak refrigerator with a high ornamental top reaching almost to the ceiling. Next in order was a crap table and another for seven-and-a-half. A big heater, unused now, shared the central space with the pool table. Between these last two was a small table littered with papers and magazines. Two or three men sat there reading.

“Pretty quiet to-night?” said Charlie, nodding his chin at the sheeted games.

“Yes. Halfway between pay days. Don’t pay to start up,” said Shaky carelessly. “At that, it is quieter than usual to-night.”

They played golf pool.

“It is not true that everyone who plays golf pool goes goopy,” remarked Charlie at the end of the first game. “All crazy men play golf pool, of course. But that is not quite the same thing, I hope. Beware of hasty deductions – as the bank examiner told the cashier. Let’s play rotation.”

Jody Weir stuck his head through the doorway. “Hey, you! I’m buying. Come have a drink!”

Most of the loungers rose and went forward to the bar. The men at the reading table did not move; possibly they did not hear. One was an Australian, a simple-faced giant, fathoms deep in a Sydney paper; his lips moved as he read, his eye glistened.

“Let’s go up to the hotel,” said Akins. “This table is no good. They got a jim dandy up there. New one.”

“Oh, this is all right,” said Charlie. “I’ll break. Say, Shaky, you’ve seen my new ranch. What’ll you give me for it, lock, stock and barrel, lease, cattle and cat, just as she lays, everything except the saddle stock? I’m thinking some about drifting.”

“That’s a good idea – a fine idea,” said Shaky. He caught Charlie’s eye, and pointed his brows significantly toward the barroom. “Where to?”

“Away. Old Mex, I guess. Gimme a bid.”

Shaky considered while he chalked his cue. Then he shook his head.

“No. Nice place – but I wouldn’t ever be satisfied there… Mescaleros held up a wagon train there in 1879 – where your pasture is now, halfway between your well and Mason’s Ranch. Killed thirteen men and one woman. I was a kid then, living at Fort Selden. A damn fool took me out with the burial party, and I saw all those mutilated bodies. I never got over it. That’s why I’m Shaky Akins.”

“Why, I thought – ” began See uncomfortably.

“No. ’Twasn’t chills. I’m giving it to you straight. I hesitated about telling you. I’ve never told anyone – but there’s a reason for telling you – now – to-night. I lost my nerve. I’m not a man. See, I’ve dreamed of those people ten thousand times. It’s hell!”

Weir’s head appeared at the door again; his face was red and hot.

“You, See! Ain’t you comin’ out to drink?”

“Why, no. We’re playing pool.”

“Well, I must say, you’re not a bit – ”

“I know I’m not a bit,” said See placidly. “That’s no news. I’ve been told before that I’m not a bit. You run on, now. We’re playing pool.”

The face withdrew. There was a hush in the boisterous mirth without. Then it rose in redoubled volume.

“Come up to the hotel with me,” urged Shaky, moistening his lips. “I got a date with a man there at ten. We can play pool there while I’m waiting.”

“Oh, I’ll stay here, I guess. I want to read the papers.”

“You headstrong little fool,” whispered Akins. “Their hearts is bad – can’t you see? Come along!” Aloud he said: “If you get that ball it makes you pool.”

The door from the barroom opened and two men appeared. One, a heavy man with a bullet head much too small for him, went to the free lunch; the other, a dwarfish creature with a twisted sullen face, walked to the Australian and shook him by the shoulder.

“Come on, Sanders. Say good night to the library. You’re a married man and you don’t want to be in this.” His voice had been contemptuously kind so far; but now he snarled hatred. “Hell will be popping here pretty quick, and some smart Aleck is going to get what’s coming to him. Oh, bring your precious ‘pyper,’ if you want to. Sim won’t mind. Come along – Larriken!”

The big man followed obediently.

“Part of that is good,” observed Shaky Akins. “The part where he said good night. I’m saying it.”

He made for the back door. The other man at the reading table rose and followed him.

“Good night, Shaky. Drop me a post hole, sometime,” said Charlie.

The bullet-head man, now eating toast and shrimps, regarded See with a malicious sneer. See rummaged through the papers, selected a copy of The Black Range, and seated himself sidewise on the end of the billiard table; then laying the paper down he reached for the triangle and pyramided the pool balls.

The swinging door crashed inward before a vicious kick. Caney stalked in. His pitted face was black with rage. Weir followed. As the door swung to there was a glimpse of savage eager faces crowded beyond.

Caney glared across the billiard table.

“We’re not good enough for you to drink with, I reckon,” he croaked.

Charlie laid aside the triangle. The free lunch man laughed spitefully. “Aren’t you?” said Charlie, indifferently.

Caney raised his voice. “And I hear you been saying I was a gallows bird?”

Charlie See adjusted a ball at the corner of the pyramid. Then he gave to Caney a slow and speculative glance.

“Now that I take a good look at you – it seems probable, don’t it?”

“Damn you!” roared Caney. “What do you mean?”

“Business!”

No man’s eye could have said which hand moved first. But See was the quicker. As Caney’s gun flashed, a pool ball struck him over the heart, he dropped like a log, his bullet went wide. A green ball glanced from Jody’s gun arm as it rose; the cartridge exploded harmlessly as the gun dropped; Weir staggered back, howling. He struck the swinging door simultaneously with the free-lunch man; and in that same second a battering-ram mob crashed against it from the other side. Weir was knocked sprawling; the door sagged from a broken hinge. See crouched behind the heavy table and pitched. Two things happened. Bullets plowed the green cloth of the table and ricocheted from the smooth slate; bushels of billiard balls streamed through the open door and thudded on quivering flesh. Flesh did not like that. It squeaked and turned and fled, tramping the fallen, screaming. Billiard balls crashed sickeningly on defenseless backs. In cold fact, Charlie See threw six balls; at that close range flesh could have sworn to sixty. Charlie felt rather than saw a bloodless face rise behind the bar; he ducked to the shelter of the billiard table as a bullet grooved the rail; his own gun roared, a heavy mirror splintered behind the bar: the Merman had also ducked. Charlie threw two shots through the partition. At the front, woodwork groaned and shattered as a six-foot mob passed through a four-foot door. Charlie had a glimpse of the crouching Merman, the last man through. For encouragement another shot, purposely high, crashed through the transom; the Merman escaped in a shower of glass.

“How’s that, umpire?” said Charlie See.

The business had been transacted in ten seconds. If one man can cover a hundred yards in ten seconds how many yards can forty men make in the same time?

“Curious!” said Charlie. “Some of that bunch might have stood up to a gun well enough. But they can’t see bullets. And once they turned tail – good night!”

He slipped along the rail to the other end of the table, his gun poised and ready. Caney sprawled on the floor in a huddle. His mouth was open, gasping, his eyes rolled back so that only the whites were visible, his livid face twitched horribly. See swooped down on Caney’s gun and made swift inspection of the cylinder; he did the like by Weir’s, and then tiptoed to the partition door, first thrusting his own gun into his waistband. The barroom was empty; only the diving Mermaid smiled invitation to him. See turned and raced for the back door. Even as he turned a gust of wind puffed through the open front door and the wrecked middle door; the lamps flared, the back door slammed with a crash.

With the sound of that slamming door, a swift new thought came to See. He checked, halted, turned back. He took one look at the unconscious Caney. Then he swept a generous portion of free lunch into his hat and tossed it over the crowning woodwork of the ten-foot refrigerator, with the level motion of a mason tossing bricks to his mate. Caney’s revolver followed, then Weir’s and his own. He darted behind the bar and confiscated a half-filled bottle of wine, the appetizing name of which had won his approving notice earlier in the evening. He stepped on a chair beside the refrigerator, leaped up, caught the oaken edge of it, swung up with a supple twist of his strong young body, and dropped to the top of the refrigerator, safe hidden by the two-foot parapet of ornamental woodwork.

A little later two men sprang together through the front door; a sloe-eyed Mexican and the dwarfish friend of the Australian giant. They leaped aside to left and right, guns ready; they looked into the gambling hall; they flanked the bar, one at each end, and searched behind it.

Then the little man went to the door and called out scornfully: “Come in, you damn cowards! He’s gone!”

Shadowy forms grew out of the starlight, with whistlings, answered from afar; more shadows came.

“Is Caney dead?” inquired a voice.

“Hell, I don’t know and I don’t care!” answered the little man truculently. “I had no time to look at Caney, not knowing when that devil would hop me. See for yourself.”

The crowd struggled in – but not all of them. Weir came in groaning, his face distorted with pain as he fondled his crippled arm. The Merman examined Caney. “Dead, nothing,” he reported. “Knocked out. He won’t breathe easy again for a week. Bring some whisky and a pail of water. Isn’t this fine? I don’t think! Billiard table ruined – plate-glass mirror shot to pieces – half a dozen men crippled, and that damned little hell hound got off scot-free!”

“You mention your men last, I notice,” sneered the little man. “Art Price has got three of his back ribs caved in, and Lanning needs a full set of teeth – to say nothing of them run over by the stampede. Jiminy, but you’re a fine bunch!”

They poured water on Caney’s head, and they poured whisky down Caney’s throat; he gasped, spluttered, opened his eyes, and sat up, assisted by Hales and the Merman.

“Here – four of you chaps carry Caney to the doc,” ordered the Merman. “Take that door – break off the other hinge. Tell doc a windlass got away from him and the handle struck him in the breast. Tell him that he stopped the ore bucket from smashing the men at the bottom – sob stuff. Coach Caney up, before you go in. He’s not so bad – he’s coming to. Fresh air will do him good, likely. Drag it, now.”

“Say, Travis, I didn’t see you doin’ so much,” muttered one of the gangsters as Caney was carried away, deathly sick. He eyed the little man resentfully. “Seems to me like you talk pretty big.”

The little man turned on him in a fury.

“What the hell could I do? Swept up in a bunch of blatting bull calves like that, and me the size I am? By the jumping Jupiter, if I could have got the chance I would ’a’ stayed for one fall if he had been the devil himself, pitchfork, horns and tail! As it was, I’m blame well thankful I wasn’t stomped to death.”

“All this proves what I was telling you,” said Hales suavely. “If you chaps intend to stretch Johnny Dines, to-night’s the only time. If one puncher can do this to you” – he surveyed the wrecked saloon with a malicious grin – “what do you expect when the John Cross warriors get here? It’s now or never.”

“Never, as far as I’m concerned,” declared the bullet-headed man of the free lunch. “I’m outclassed. I’ve had e-nough! I’m done and I’m gone!”

“Never for me too. And I’m done with this pack of curs – done for all time,” yelped the little man. “I’m beginning to get a faint idea of what I must look like to any man that’s even half white. Little See is worth the whole boiling of us. For two cents I’d hunt him up and kiss his foot and be his Man Friday – if he’d have me. I begin to think Dines never killed Forbes at all. Forbes was shot in the back, and Shaky Akins says Dines is just such another as Charlie See. And Shaky would be a decent man himself if he didn’t have to pack soapstones. I’ll take his word for Dines. As sure as I’m a foot high, I’ve a good mind to go down to the jail and throw in with Gwinne.”

“You wouldn’t squeal, Travis?” pleaded the Merman. “You was in this as deep as the rest of us, and you passed your word.”

“Yes, I suppose I did,” agreed the little man reluctantly. Then he burst into a sudden fury. “Damn my word, if that was all! Old Gwinne wouldn’t have me – he wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole. I’ve kept my word to scum like you till no decent man will believe me under oath.” He threw up his hands with a tragic gesture. “Oh, I’ve played the fool!” he said. “I have been a common fool!”

He turned his back deliberately to that enraged crew of murderers and walked the length of the long hall to the back door. From his hiding place above the big refrigerator Charlie See raised his head to peer between the interstices and curlicues of the woodwork so he might look after this later prodigal. Charlie was really quite touched, and he warmed toward the prodigal all the more because that evildoer had wasted no regret on wickedness, but had gone straight to the root of the matter and reserved his remorse for the more serious offense. This was Charlie’s own view in the matter of fools; and he was tolerant of all opinion which matched his own. But Charlie did not wear a sympathetic look; he munched contentedly on a cheese sandwich.

“Never mind Travis,” said the Merman. “Let him go. The little fool won’t peach, and that’s the main thing. I’m going after Dines now, if we did make a bad start. There’s plenty of us here, and I can wake up two of my dealers who will stand hitched. And that ain’t all. A bunch from the mines will drop down for a snifter at eleven o’clock, when the graveyard shift goes on and they come off. I’ll pick out those I can trust. Some of ’em are tough enough to suit even Travis – though I doubt if they’d take any kinder to pool balls than you boys did – not till they got used to ’em. I don’t blame you fellows. Billiard balls are something new.”

“We want to get a move on, before the moon gets up,” said Weir.

“Oh, that’s all right! Lots of time. We’ll stretch Mr. Dines, moonrise or not,” said the Merman reassuringly. “But we’ll meet the night shift at the bridge as they come off, and save a lot of time. Let’s see now – Ames, Vet Blackman, Kroner, Shaw, Lithpin Tham – ”

On the refrigerator, Charlie See put by his lunch. He fished out a tally book and pencil and began taking down names.

Charlie See raced to Perrault’s door a little before eleven. He slipped in without a summons, he closed the door behind him and leaned his back against it. The waiting men rose to meet him – Perrault, Maginnis, Preisser, and a fourth, whom Charlie did not know.