Chapter 6. Plucking A Pigeon

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_ CHAPTER VI. PLUCKING A PIGEON

Steve slept almost around the clock. He lost breakfast, but was there promptly for luncheon with the appetite of a harvest hand. During the two days' drive he had missed the good home cooking of Mrs. Seymour and he intended to make up for it.

Orman and Shorty had reached town some time about daylight and had spread the story of the holdup, so that the dining-room was humming with excitement. A dozen questions were flung at Steve before he had well taken his seat. He threw up his hands in surrender.

Before he had finished telling his edited story, Shorty drifted in and divided the interest. The little extra promptly took the stage away from Yeager, whereupon Daisy Ellington absorbed the attention of Steve. She asked a sharp question or two which he answered blandly. It was not his intention to communicate any suspicions he happened to have.

They were waiting for the dessert. Daisy put her lean, pretty elbows on the table and her chin in her little doubled fists. A provocative audacity was in the tilted smile she flashed at him.

"Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Breeze on, Steve. You're doin' fine. Next scene."

"That's all."

"Say, do I look like I was born yesterday? See any green in my eye, Cactus Center?"

He grinned. "You're sure wise, compadre. But the rest is mostly suspicions."

"I'm listening," she nodded.

"You're such a Sherlock Holmes I'd hate to go out with the boys if I was married to you."

"I'm your friend and wouldn't wish any such bad luck on you," she countered gayly. Then, in a lower voice, with a sudden gravity: "Is it Harrison, Steve?"

Amazement sparkled for a moment in his eyes. "With your imagination, Daisy,--" he was beginning when she cut him short.

"You gotta tell me what's on your chest, you transparent kid."

He knew she could keep a secret like a well. Looking round guardedly, his voice fell to a whisper. "If I'd reached town ten minutes earlier I'd 'a' beat him in and showed him up. Threewit won't hear to it, of course, but the man that held me up was Chad Harrison. Take it or leave it. Just the same it's a fact."

Daisy nodded rapidly several times. "I take it, Steve. Always did know there was something shady about the big stiff. And I'll tell you something else you don't know. It's through that wild young colt brother of hers that he's got a strangle hold on Ruth."

Yeager set his lips to a noiseless whistle. "You mean--?"

She flung his question aside with an impatient wave of her hand. "I can't tell you what I mean. I've got no evidence. But it's true. She's ridiculously fond of that young scamp Phil. Somehow--in some way--Harrison has got the whip hand over him."

His eyes fell on the slender girl waiting on the table at the other end of the room. Her look met his. It almost seemed as if she knew they had been talking about her, for the milky cheek took on a shell-pink tinge. The long lashes fluttered down and she busied herself at once about her work.

"If she was my sister--"

Daisy did not need a completed sentence to understand his meaning. "Can you beat it?" she asked with a shrug. "Any gink that knows enough to come in out of the rain could tell that Chad Harrison is a bad egg. Give him the once over and you can see that."

After Ruth had arranged the tables for dinner she stole out to the porch for a breath of fresh air. Already the approach of an Arizona summer was beginning to make itself felt during the middle of the day. Yeager sat beneath the wild cucumber vines pleating a horsehair hatband for Daisy Ellington.

Ruth liked this brown, lithe cowpuncher, all sinew and bone and muscle. His smile was so warm and friendly, his manner so boyish and yet so competent. To look into his kind, steady eyes was to know that he could be trusted.

She moved in his direction shyly, a touch of pink blooming in her soft cheeks. Ruth was charmingly unsure of herself. It was always easy to disturb her composure. Even a casual encounter with the slim, brown-faced range-rider was an adventure for her. Now her pansy eyes deepened in color with excitement, with the tremulous fear of what she was to learn.

"Mr. Yeager, I--wanted to ask you about--about the holdup."

"What about it, Miss Ruth?"

"Did you--know any of them?"

"How could I? They were masked." His eyes had taken on a film of wariness that blotted out for the moment their kindness.

"I didn't know--I thought, perhaps,--" She tried a new start. "Did you say that three of them were Mexicans?"

"Two of them," he corrected.

There was the least quiver of her lip. "The others were--both big men, didn't you say?"

"I didn't say."

A footstep sounded on the crisp gravel walk. Steve looked up, in time to catch the flash of warning menace Harrison sent toward the girl.

"Mr. Yeager has been having a pipe-dream, Ruth. Don't wake him up," jeered the heavy.

Ruth fled unobtrusively and left the men alone.

"Hear you're going on a vacation," said Harrison gruffly.

"You've heard correct." Yeager pleated his hatband with steady fingers. His voice was even and placid.

Harrison looked him over with indolent insolence. "Some folks find this climate don't agree with them. Some folks find it better to drift out, casual-like, y' understand?"

"Yes?"

"I'm tellin' it to you straight."

"That you're going to leave? The Lunar Company will miss you," suggested the range-rider politely.

"Think you're darned clever, don't you? It's you that's leaving the company, Mr. Yeager."

"For a week."

"For good."

"Hadn't heard of it. News to me," answered Steve lightly.

"I'm givin' you the tip. See?"

"Oncet I knew a fellow who lived to be 'most ninety minding his own business," observed the cowpuncher to the world in general as he held up and examined his work.

"It ain't considered safe to get gay with me. I'm liable to lam your head off," threatened the big man sullenly.

"And then again you're liable not to. I'm not freightin' with your outfit, Mr. Harrison. Kindly lay off of me and you'll find we get along fine."

Steve rose and passed on his way to the street. Harrison was in two minds whether to force an issue again with him, but something in the contour of that close-gripped jaw, in the gleam of the steady eyes, was more potent than the dull rage surging in him. He let the opportunity pass.

Four Bits carried Yeager away from Los Robles at a road gait. Horse and rider were taking the border trail. It led them through a desolate country of desert where the flat-leafed prickly pear and the occasional pudgy creosote were the chief forms of vegetable life. Now and again a swift might be seen basking on a rock or a Gila monster motionless on the hillside. The ominous buzz of a rattler more than once made the pony sidestep. Mesa and flat and wash succeeded each other monotonously.

It was after sunset when they drew up at a feed corral in Arixico. Steve looked after his horse and sauntered down the little adobe street to a Chinese restaurant which ostentatiously announced itself as the "New York Cafe." This side of the business street was in the territory of Uncle Sam, the other half floated the Mexican flag. After he had eaten, the young man drifted across to one of the gambling-houses that invited the patronage of Americans and natives alike.

He found within the heterogeneous gathering usually to be observed in such a place. Vaqueros brushed shoulders with Chinese laundrymen, cowpunchers with soldiers, peons with cattlemen from Arizona and Texas. Here were miners and soldiers of fortune and plain tramps. More than one of the shining-eyed gamblers had a price upon his head. Several were outlaws. A score or more had taken part in the rapine and the pillage of the guerrilla warfare that has of late years been the curse of the country. It would have been hard in a day's travel to find an assembly where human life was held at less value.

Among these lawless, turbulent siftings of the continent Yeager was very much at home. He merged inconspicuously into the picture, a quiet, brown-faced man with cool, alert eyes. Nobody paid the least attention to him. He might be a horse-thief or an honest cowpuncher. It was a matter of supreme indifference to those present. Experience in that outdoor frontier school which always keeps open session had taught them that a man lived longer here when he minded his own business.

Steve stood close to the bar. A prospector leaned against it and talked to an acquaintance while they drank their beer.

"This here's how I figure it," he was saying. "I had a little dough when I begun digging gopher holes in these here hills. Not much--say fifteen hundred, mebbe. I sure ain't got it now. Lost it in a hole in the ground. Well; I reckon I'll go on looking for it where I lost it."

Casually Yeager sauntered over to the roulette table. A fat man in duck trousers--he was the agent for a firm of rifle manufacturers, Steve learned later--was bucking the wheel hard. In front of him lay a pile of gold-pieces and several stacks of chips. He was very red in the face from excitement and cocktails. The range-rider put a half-dollar on the red and won. He let it ride, won again, and shifted the chips to the black. Once more the goddess of luck favored him. He divided his pile. Half went on the red, the rest on the first number his eye caught. It happened to be seventeen. The croupier spun the wheel again. The ball whirled round, dipped down once or twice, and plumped into the compartment numbered seventeen.

"Enough's a-plenty. Here's where I cash in," announced Steve cheerfully.

He stuffed the bills carelessly into his pocket and strolled over to the faro table. Yeager had come on business, not for pleasure. He intended to play just enough to give a colorable reason for his presence.

His roving eye settled upon the poker table at the rear of the room. Five men were playing. Two were Mexicans, three white. Two of the Americans were dismissed from Steve's mind with a casual glance. They were negligible factors. The third had his back to the observer, but the figure had a slender, boyish trimness that spoke of youth. The Mexican sitting to his right was a square-built fellow of forty with a scar on the cheek running from mouth to ear. There was on his face a certain ugliness of expression, a furtive cruelty. That there was an understanding between him and the man opposite soon became apparent to Yeager. They cross-raised the boy, working together to mulct him of the pile of chips in front of him.

It was the Mexican who sat with his back to the wall that drew and held the cowpuncher's eye. He too was slender, not much past thirty, but with the youth long since stamped out of his face. Sleek and black, a dominant personality, he sat there warily as a rattlesnake, dark eyes gleaming from a masked, smiling countenance.

The boy was the pigeon, and it was the Mexicans that were plucking him. So much Steve learned within two minutes. He had cut his eye teeth at poker, and he saw at a glance that this was no game for a youngster. Quietly he moved a step or two closer along the wall. He observed the play without appearing to do so.

The tension of the game was relieved with casual conversation. The two negligibles, playing about even, contributed mostly to it. The bulky Mexican added his quota. The boy, a heavy loser, concealed his feelings under the bravado expected of a good sport.

They were playing jack pots with a stripped deck, the joker going as a fifth ace or to fill a straight or a flush. Several hands were dealt without any stayers. The slender Mexican was dealing when the sensation of the game was handed out.

One of the negligibles opened the pot. The bulky Mexican stayed.

In the slow, easy drawl of the Southwest the boy spoke. "Me, I reckon I'll have to tilt it. Got to protect your hand from these wolves, Dave." He pushed in a stack of blue chips.

The third American did not stay. It was now up to the dealer--his name, it appeared, was Ramon Culvera. After a moment's hesitation he measured a stack of blues by those the boy had put in the pot and added to it another pile of yellows. With a grunt of protest the older Mexican stayed. The man who had opened the pot dropped out.

"Enough's a-plenty. Me, I got no business trailing along with you hyenas," he explained.

"Different here," commented the boy. "My cards look good enough for another hike."

Culvera examined his hand carefully, met the raise, and picked up the deck.

The Mexican with the scar interposed. "But one moment, senor. Let us make it a good pot." He pushed in all the chips in front of him.

Yeager, standing against the wall, caught the swift flash of surprise in the eyes of the boy. He counted the chips of the Mexican and then his own. These he added to the small fortune in the center of the table.

"Call it. I'm fifty-three shy," he said in an even voice.

The range-rider knew without being told that this hand had been dealt from a cold deck for the express purpose of cleaning out the boy. From the tenseness of the lithe body, which had become, as it were, a coiled spring, he knew that the lad's suspicions were stirring to life.

The greedy little eyes of Culvera fastened on the boy. He made his first mistake. "How much you play back, Pheelip?"

The youngster answered. "I said a hundred bucks. I've got fifty-three in the pot now. That leaves forty-seven."

Culvera's raise was forty-seven dollars. The big Mexican shrugged. "Too steep for Jesus Mendoza." He threw his cards into the discard.

The boy who had been called Philip laid his cards face down on the table in front of him.

"Call it," he announced hoarsely. His eyes were fastened steadily on the nimble brown fingers of the dealer.

"Cards?" asked Culvera with an indolent lift of his eyebrows.

Philip hesitated. He had the nine, ten, and jack of clubs, the queen of hearts, and the joker. This counted as a king-high straight. Steve, standing back and to one side of him, guessed the boy's dilemma. Should he stand pat on his straight or discard the heart and draw to his straight flush? Culvera's play had shown great strength and would probably beat the pat hand. The lad took a chance and called for one card.

Culvera drew two. He left them lying on the table while he discarded leisurely.

"You're all in, Pheelip. It's a showdown. What you got?"

Philip had drawn the six of clubs. He spread his hand with a sweeping gesture. "All blue."

The Mexican shrugged. "Beats me unless I helped." He showed three eights, then faced the two cards he had drawn. The first was a king of diamonds, the second the fourth eight.

"Hard luck, Pheelip," he said, and all his teeth flashed in a friendly smile as he opened both arms to rake in the chips.

Philip sat silent, his mind seething with suspicions. Culvera had played his hand very strangely, unless--unless he had known that a fourth eight was waiting for him in the deck. The boy looked up, in time to catch a vanishing smile on the face of Mendoza.

"Just a moment, Ramon," he called sharply, covering the chips with his hands. "That play--it don't look good to me. A man don't play threes so strong as that."

Culvera still smiled blandly, though his eyes were very watchful. "Me, I have what you call a hunch, Pheelip."

Yeager took two steps forward. "You bet he did. Cold deck, kid. The other one is in his right-hand coat pocket."

The suavity went out of Culvera's face as a light does from a blown candle. Snarling, he rose from his seat and faced the cowpuncher.

"Liar! Cabrone!" he hissed, reaching for his gun.

Already the revolver of Mendoza was flashing in the air.

Like a streak Steve's arm swept up. Twice his revolver sounded. There was a crash of breaking glass from the incandescent lights. Yeager flung himself against the table and drove it against Culvera who reeled back against the wall and dropped his weapon. The sound of more shots, of men dodging their way to safety, of a sharp cry followed by groans, had trodden so swiftly on the heels of the range-rider's action that when he turned a moment later he saw in the semi-darkness a smoke-filled room in the confusion of chaotic movement.

Philip stood close to him, a smoking .38 in his hand, while Mendoza, clutching at his chair for support, sank slowly to the ground.

Close to the boy's ear spoke Steve. "Beat it. Make your getaway through that door. Meet me at Johanson's corral."

The boy plunged through the doorway into the darkness outside. Toward the exit after him backed the cowpuncher. Already scattered shots were being flung in his direction, but the dim light served him well. The last thing he saw before he vanished through the door was Culvera groping for his weapon. _

Read next: Chapter 7. Steve Tells Too Much Truth

Read previous: Chapter 5. Yeager Asks Advice

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