Chapter 7

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_ CHAPTER VII

Denny Bolton never quite knew at what hour of that long black night he reached the final decision; there was no actual beginning or ending or logical sequence to the argument in the back of his brain which led up to it, to crystallize into final resolve.

He merely sat there in the open door of his half-lighted kitchen, swaying a little from side to side at first, giddy with the pain of that crashing blow that had laid open his chin; then balancing, motionless as the thick shadows themselves, in a silence that was unbroken save for the creaking night noises about him and the rhythmic splash of the warm drops that fell more and more slowly from the gaping, unheeded wound, he groped back over the succession of events of that afternoon and night, reconstructing with a sort of dogged patience detail after detail which was waveringly uncertain of outline, until with the clearing of his numbed brain they stood out once again in sane, well-ordered clarity. And as they gradually took shape again each detail grew only more fantastically unbelievable.

It seemed ages since he had stood against the closed door of the Tavern office and seen Judge Maynard turn and falter before his unsuspected presence--days and days since he had stood there and watched that round moon-like face flush heavily with the first shock of surprise, and realized that the startled light in the shifty eyes of Boltonwood's most prominent citizen was part fear, part appeal, that he, Denny Bolton, whose name in the estimation of that same village stood for all that was at the other extreme, would confirm and support his barefaced lying statement. It was more than merely fantastic; and yet, at that, sitting there in the dark, Young Denny still found something in the recollection that was amusing--far more amusing than he had imagined anything so simple ever could be.

And already, although it was scarcely hours old, the rest of it, too, was tinged with an uncanny unreality that was not far removed from the bodiless fabric of nightmare itself: Those great, catapulting hoofs which had thundered against him from the darkness and beaten him back, a half-senseless heap, against the barn wall; the blind, mad rage, as much a wildly hysterical abandonment of utter joy as anything else, which had surged through him when, with the stinging odor of the overturned jug in his nostrils, he had stooped and straightened and sent the old stone demijohn, that had stood sentinel for years in the corner near the door, splintering its way through the window into the night; and, last of all, the sick horror of the girl's face as she recoiled before him came vividly before his eyes, and his own strange impotence of limb and lip when he had tried to follow and found that his feet would not obey the impulse of his brain, tried to explain only to find that his tongue somehow refused at that moment to voice the words he would have spoken.

That was hardest of all to believe--most difficult to visualize--and he would not give it full credence until he had reached out behind him in the dark and found the bit of a cloak which, slipping from her shoulders, become entangled in his stumbling feet and brought him crashing to his knees. The feel of that rough cloth beneath his hand was more than enough to convince him, and swiftly, unreasonably, the old bitter tide of resentment began to creep back upon him--bitter resentment of her quick judgment of him, which like that of the village, had condemned in the years that were past, even without a hearing.

"She thought," he muttered slowly aloud to himself, "she thought I had--" He left the sentence unfinished to drift off into a long brooding silence; and then, many minutes later: "She didn't even wait to ask--to see--to let me tell her----"

One hand went tentatively to the point of his chin--his old, vaguely preoccupied trick of a gesture--and the wet touch of that open wound helped to bring him back to himself. A moment longer he sat, trying to make out the stained figures that were invisible even though he held them a scant few inches from his eyes, before he rose, stretching his legs in experimental doubt at first, and passed inside. And once more he stood before the square patch of mirror on the wall, with the small black-chimneyed lamp lifted high in one hand, just as he had stood earlier that same night, and scanned his own face.

All trace of resentment left his eyes as he realized the ghastly pallor of those features--all the ragged horror of that oozing welt which he had only half seen in that first moment when he was clinging to consciousness with clenched teeth. It was not nice to look at, and the light that replaced that sudden flare of bitterness was so new that he did not even recognize it himself at first.

It was a clearer, steadier, surer thing than he had ever known them to reflect before; all hint of lost-dog sophistication was gone; even the smile that touched his thin, pain-straightened lips was different somehow. It was just as whimsical as before, and just as half-mirthless--gentle as it always had been whenever he thought at all of her--but there was no wistful hunger left in it, and little of boyishness, and nothing of lurking self-doubt.

"Why, she couldn't have known," he went on then, still murmuring aloud. "She couldn't have been expected to believe anything else. I--I'm not much to look at--just now."

He even forgot that he had tried to follow her--forgot that her cloak had thrown him sprawling in the doorway.

"I ought to have told her," he condemned himself. "I shouldn't have let her go--not like that."

In the fullness of this new certainty of self that was setting his pulses hammering, he even turned toward the sleeping town, thickly blanketed by the shadows in the valley, in a sudden boyish burst of generosity.

"Maybe they didn't mean to lie, either," he mused thoughtfully. "Maybe they haven't really meant to lie--all this time. They could have been mistaken, just as she was tonight--they certainly could have been that."

He found and filled a basin with cold water and washed out the cut until the bleeding had stopped entirely. And then, with the paper which that afternoon's mail had brought--the sheet with the astounding news of Jed The Red, which Old Jerry prophesied would put Boltonwood in black letters on the map of publicity--spread out on the table before him, he sat until daybreak poring over it with eyes that were filmed with preoccupation one moment and keenly strained the next to make out the close-set type.

Not long before dawn he reached inside his coat and brought out a bit of burnished white card and set it up in front of him against the lamp. There was much in the plump, black capitals and knobby script of Judge Maynard's invitation which was very suggestive of the man himself, but Young Denny failed to catch the suggestion at that moment.

He never quite knew when that decision became final, nor what the mental process was which brought it about. Nor did he even dream of the connection there might have been between it and that square of cardboard lying in front of him. Just once, as the first light came streaking in through the uncurtained window beside him, he nodded his head in deliberate, definite finality.

"Why, it's the thing I've been waiting for," he stated, something close akin to wonder in his voice. "It's just a man's size chance. I'd have to take it--I'd have to do that, even if I didn't want to--for myself."

And later, while he was kindling a fire in the stove and methodically preparing his own breakfast, he paused to add with what seemed to be absolute irrelevance:

"Silk--silk, next to her skin!"

There were only two trains a day over the single-track spur road that connected Boltonwood with the outer world beyond the hills; one which left at a most unreasonably inconvenient hour in the early morning and one which left just as inconveniently late at night. Denny Bolton, who had viewed from a distinctly unfavorable angle any possible enchantment which the town might chance to offer, settled upon the first as the entirely probable choice of the short, fat, brown-clad newspaper man, even without a moment's hesitation to weigh the merits of either. And the sight of the round bulk of the latter, huddled alone upon a baggage truck before the deserted Boltonwood station-shed, fully vindicated his judgment.

It was still only a scant hour since daybreak. Heavy, low-hanging clouds in the east, gray with threatening rain, cut off any warmth there might have been in the rising sun and sharpened the raw wind to a knifelike edge. The man on the truck was too engrossed with the thoughts that shook his plump shoulders in regularly recurring, silent chuckles, and a ludicrously doleful effort to shut off with upturned collar the draft from the back of his neck, to hear the boy's approaching footsteps. He started guiltily to his feet in the very middle of a spasmodic upheaval, to stand and stare questioningly at the big figure whose fingers had plucked tentatively at his elbow, until a sudden, delighted recognition flooded his face. Then he reached out one pudgy hand with eager cordiality.

"Why, greetings--greetings!" he exclaimed. "Didn't quite recognize you with your--er--decoration." His eyes dwelt in frank inquisitiveness upon the ragged red bruise across Young Denny's chin. "You're the member who stood near the door last night, aren't you--the one who didn't join to any marked degree in the general jubilee?"

Young Denny's big, hard hand closed over the outstretched pudgy white one. He grinned a little and slowly nodded his head.

"Thought so," the man in brown rambled blithely on, "and glad to see you again. Glad of a chance to speak to you! I wanted most mightily to ask you a few pertinent questions last night, but it hardly seemed a fitting occasion."

He tapped Young Denny's arm with a stubby forefinger, one eyelid drooping quizzically.

"Entre nous--just 'twixt thee and me," he went on, "and not for publication, was this Jeddy Conway, as you knew him, all that your eminent citizenry would lead a poor gullible stranger to believe, or was he just a small-sized edition of the full-blown crook he happens to be at the present stage of developments? Not that it makes any difference here," he tapped the big notebook under his arm, "but I'm just curious, a little, because the Jed The Red whom I happen to know is so crooked nowadays that his own manager is afraid to place a bet on him half the time. See?"

Denny smiled comprehendingly. He shifted his big body to a more comfortable and far less awkward position.

"I see," he agreed.

Somehow, where it would have been an utter impossibility to have spoken lightly to him the night before, he found it very easy now to understand and meet half way the frivolity of the fat, grinning man before him.

"Well, when he left town about eight years ago, his going was just a trifle hasty. He--he took about everything there was in the cash-drawer of Benson's store with him--except maybe a lead slug or two--and there are some who think he only overlooked those."

The gurgle of sheer delight that broke from the lips of the man in brown was spontaneously contagious.

"Just about as your servant had it figured out last night," he fairly chirped. Then he slipped one hand through the crook of Denny's elbow. "I guess I'll have to take a chance on you. It's too good to keep all to myself." He led the way back to the empty truck. "And you ought to be safe, too, for judging from the sentiments that were expressed after you left last night, you--er--don't run very strong with this community, either."

Again he paused, his eyelid cocked in comical suggestion. Instead of narrowing ominously, as they might have twelve hours before, Denny's own eyes lighted appreciatively at the statement. He even waited an instant while he pondered with mock gravity.

"I reckon," he drawled finally, "that I'll have to confess that I've never been what you might call a general favorite."

The newspaper man's head lifted a little. He flashed a covertly surprised glance at the boy's sharp profile. It was far from being the sort of an answer that he had expected.

"No, you certainly are not," he emphasized, and then he opened the flat notebook with almost loving care across his knees.

Young Denny, with the first glimpse he caught of that very first page, comprehended in one illuminating flash the cause of those muffled chuckles which had convulsed that rounded back when he turned the corner of the station-shed a moment before; he even remembered that half-veiled mirth in the eyes of the man who had sat balanced upon the desk in the Tavern office the night before and understood that, too. For the hurriedly penciled sketch, which completely filled the first page of the notebook, needed no explanation--not even that of the single line of writing beneath it, which read:

"I always said he'd make the best of 'em hustle--yes, sir, the very best of 'em!"

It was a picture of Judge Maynard--the Judge Maynard whom Young Denny knew best of all--unctuous of lip and furtively calculating of eye. For all the haste of its creation it was marvelously perfect in detail, and as he stared the corners of the boy's lips began to twitch until his teeth showed white beneath. The fat man grinned with him.

"Get it, do you?" he chuckled. "Get it, eh?"

And with the big-shouldered figure leaning eagerly nearer he turned through page after page to the end.

"Not bad--not bad at all," he frankly admired his own handiwork at the finish. "You see, it was like this. I've been short on anything like this for a long time--good Rube stuff--and so when Conway came through in his match the other night it looked like a providential opportunity--and it certainly has panned up to expectations."

Once more he turned to scan the lean face turned toward him, far more openly, far more inquisitively, this time. It perplexed him, bewildered him--this easy certainty and consciousness of power which had replaced the lost-dog light that had driven the smile from his own lips the night before when he had followed Judge Maynard's beckoning finger.

Hours after the enthusiastic circle about the Tavern stove had dissolved he had labored to reproduce that white, bitter, quivering face at the door, only to find that the very vividness of his memory somehow baffled the cunning of his pencil. There had been more than mere bitterness in those curveless, colorless lips; something more than doubt of self behind the white hot flare in the gray eyes. Now, in the light of day, his eyes searched for it openly and failed to find even a ghost of what it might have been.

"No," he ruminated gently, and he spoke more to himself than the other, "you don't stand deuce high with this community. You're way down on the list." He hesitated, weighing his words, suddenly a little doubtful as to how far he might safely venture. "I--I guess you've--er--disappointed them too long, haven't you?"

The blood surged up under Young Denny's dark skin until it touched his crisp black hair, and the fat man hastened to throw a touch of jocularity into the statement.

"Yep, you've disappointed 'em sorely. But I've been monopolizing all the conversation. I can't convince myself that you've come down here merely to say me a touching farewell. Was there--was there something you wanted to see me about in particular?"

It was the very opening for which Denny had been waiting--the opening which he had not known how to make himself, for his plan for procedure by which he was to accomplish it was just as indistinct as his resolution had been final. He nodded silently, uncertain just how to begin, and then he plunged desperately into the very middle of it.

"I thought maybe you could tell me if this was true or not," he said, and he drew from his pocket the paper which bore the account of Jed The Red's victory over The Texan. A hint of a frown appeared upon the forehead of the man in brown as he took the folded sheet and read where Denny's finger indicated--the last paragraph of all.

"The winner's share of the receipts amounted to twelve thousand dollars," was its succinct burden.

He read it through twice, as if searching for any puzzling phrase it might contain.

"I certainly can," he admitted at last. "I wrote it myself, but it's no doubt true, for all that. Not a very big purse, of course, but then, you know, he isn't really championship calibre. He's just a second-rate hopeful, that's all. It seems hard to find a real one these days. But why the riddle?" he finished, as he handed back the paper.

"Why, I thought if it was true maybe I'd ask you to tell me if I--how I could get a chance at him."

The boy's explanation was even more flounderingly abrupt than his former question had been, but his eyes never wavered from the newspaper man's face. The latter laid his notebook upon the truck with exaggerated care and rose and faced him.

"Another!" he lamented in simulated despair. But the next moment all the bantering light went from his face, while his eyes flashed in lightning-like appraisement over Denny's lean shoulder-heavy body, from his feet, small and narrow in spite of the clumsy high boots, to his clean-cut head, and back again. There was a hint of businesslike eagerness in that swift calculation of possibilities. The boy shifted consciously under the scrutiny.

"It isn't that he never was able to whip me--even when he was a kid," he tried to explain. "It--it's because I don't believe, somehow, that he ever could."

All the strained eagerness disappeared from the face of the pudgy man in brown. He laughed softly, a short little laugh of amusement at his own momentary folly.

"Whew!" he murmured. "I'm getting to be just as bad as all the rest!"

He felt in a pocket for a card and scribbled an address across its back. A trace of good-natured familiarity--the first hint of superiority that had marked his manner--accompanied his gesture when he extended it in one hand. It savored of the harmless humoring of a childish vagary.

"If you ever did chance to get as far from home as that, there's a man at that address who'd fall on your neck and weep real tears if you happened to have the stuff," he said. "But just one additional word. Maybe I've led you astray a bit. Just because I said that Jed The Red is a second-rater, don't think for a moment that he fights like a schoolboy now. He doesn't--nothing like that!"

He gazed for another second at the boy's thin, grave face, so like, in its very thinness and gravity, all that a composite of its Puritan forbears might have been. And as he became suddenly conscious of that resemblance he reversed the card, a whimsical twist touching his lips, and wrote above his own name, "Introducing the Pilgrim," and put it in the outstretched hand.

"Any idea when you expect to make a start?" he inquired with an elaborate negligence that brought the hot color to the boy's cheeks. But again, at the words, he caught, too, a glimpse of the unshaken certainty that backed their gray gravity.

"Tomorrow, I reckon. It'll take me all of today to get things fixed up so I can leave. I'll take this train in the morning. And they--they ought to have told you at the hotel that it's always a half-hour late."

Young Denny rose.

"Surely--surely," the chubby man agreed. "Nothing like getting away with the bell. And--er--there's one other thing. Of course if it's a little private affair, I'll bow myself gracefully out, but I do confess to a lot of curiosity concerning that small souvenir." His eyes traveled to the red welt across the boy's chin. "May I inquire just how it happened?"

Denny failed to understand him at first; then his finger lifted and touched the wound interrogatively.

"This?" he inquired.

The man in brown nodded.

"Last night," the boy explained, "I--I kind of forgot myself and walked in on the horses in the dark, without speaking to them. I'd forgot to feed before I went to the village. One of them's young yet--and nervous--and----"

The other scowled comprehendingly.

"And so, just for that, they both went hungry till you came to in the morning and found yourself stretched out on the floor, eh?"

Again Young Denny puzzled a moment over the words. He shook his head negatively.

"No-o-o," he contradicted slowly. "No, it wasn't as bad as that. Knocked me across the floor and into the wall and made me pretty dizzy and faint for a little while. But I managed to feed them. I--I'd worked them pretty hard in the timber last week."

The man in brown puckered his lips sympathetically, whistling softly while he considered the damage which that flying hoof had done, and the utter simplicity of the explanation.

"I wonder," he said to himself, "I wonder--I wonder!" And then, almost roughly: "Give me back that card!"

Young Denny's eyes widened with surprise, but he complied without a word. The man in brown stood a moment, tapping his lips with the pencil, before he wrote hastily under the scribbled address, cocked his head while he read it through, and handed it back again.

The belated train was whistling for the station crossing when he thrust out his pudgy white hand in farewell.

"My name's Morehouse," he said, "and I've been called 'Chub' by my immediate friends, a title which is neither dignified nor reverend, and yet I answer to it with cheerful readiness. I tell you this because I have a premonition that we are to meet again. And don't lose that card!"

Young Denny's fingers closed over the outstretched hand with a grip that brought the short, fat man in brown up to his toes. Long after the train had crawled out of sight the boy stood there motionless beside the empty truck, reading over and over again the few scrawled words that underran the line of address.

"Some of them may have science," it read, "and some of them may have speed, but, after all, it's the man that can take punishment who gets the final decision. Call me up if this ever comes to hand."

Which, after all, was not so cryptic as it might have been. _

Read next: Chapter 8

Read previous: Chapter 6

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