Ironheart

The fury of the storm rattled the window panes. Down the chimney came the shrill whistle of the gale. The light of day broke dimly through the heavy clouds that swept above the gulch from peak to peak.

Two of the men sitting at dinner in the cabin watched each other intently if covertly. The third, dog-tired, nodded over the food he rushed voraciously to his mouth.

“Gonna pound my ear,” Cig announced as soon as he had finished eating.

He threw himself on a bunk and inside of five minutes was snoring.

Tug, too, wanted to sleep. The desire of it grew on him with the passing hours. Overtaxed nature demanded a chance to recuperate. Instead, the young man drank strong coffee.

Jake Prowers’s shrill little voice asked mildly, with the hint of a cackle in it, if he was not tired.

“In the middle of the day?” answered Tug, stifling a yawn.

“Glad you ain’t. You ’n’ me’ll be comp’ny for each other. Storm’s peterin’ out, looks like.”

“Yes,” agreed the guest.

It was. Except for occasional gusts, the wind had died away. Tug considered the possibility of leaving before night fell. But if he left, where could he go in the gathering darkness? Would Prowers let him walk safely away? Or would a declaration of his intention to go bring an immediate showdown? Even so, better fight the thing out now, while he was awake and Cig asleep, than wait until he slipped into drowsiness that would give the little spider-man his chance to strike and kill.

Tug had no longer any doubt of his host’s intention. Under a thin disguise he saw the horrible purpose riding every word and look. It would be soon now. Why not choose his own time and try to get the break of the draw?

He could not do it. Neither will nor muscles would respond to the logical conviction of his mind that he was entitled to any advantage he could get. To whip out his gun and fire might be fair. He had no trouble in deciding that it was. But if luck were with him—if he came out alive from the duel—how could he explain why he had shot down without warning the man who was sheltering him from the blizzard? For that matter, how could he justify it to himself in the years to come? A moral certainty was not enough. He must wait until he knew, until the old killer made that lightning move which would give him just the vantage-ground Tug was denying himself.

All that Tug could do was watch him, every nerve keyed and muscle tensed, or bring the struggle to immediate issue. He came, suddenly, clearly, to the end of doubt.

“Time I was going,” he said, and his voice rang clear.

“Going where?” Prowers’s hand stopped caressing his unshaven chin and fell, almost too casually, to his side.

They glared at each other, tense, crouched, eyes narrowed and unwinking. Duels are fought and lost in that preliminary battle of locked eyes which precedes the short, sharp stabbings of the cartridge explosions. Soul searches soul for the temper of the foe’s courage.

Neither gaze wavered. Each found the other stark, indomitable. The odds were heavily in favor of the old cattleman. He was a practiced gunman. Quicker than the eye could follow would come the upsweep of his arm. He could fire from the hip without taking aim. Nobody in the county could empty a revolver faster than he. But the younger man had one advantage. He had disarranged Prowers’s plans by taking the initiative, by forcing the killer’s hand. This was unexpected. It disturbed Jake the least in the world. His opponents usually dodged a crisis that would lead to conflict.

A cold blast beat into the house. In the open doorway stood a man, the range rider Black. Both men stared at him silently. Each knew that his coming had changed the conditions of the equation.

Under the blue cheek of the newcomer a quid of tobacco stood out. It was impossible to tell from his impassive face how much or how little of the situation he guessed.

“Ran outa smokin’,” he said. “Thought I’d drap over an’ have you loan me the makin’s.”

He had closed the door. Now he shuffled forward to the fire and with a charred stick knocked the snow from his webs.

“A sure enough rip-snorter, if any one asks you,” he continued mildly by way of comment on the weather. “Don’t know as I recall any storm wuss while it lasted. I seen longer ones, unless this ’un ’s jest gatherin’ second wind.”

Tug drew a deep breath of relief and eased down. Red tragedy had been hovering in the gathering shadows of the room. It was there no longer. The blessed homely commonplace of life had entered with the lank homesteader and his need of “the makin’s.”

“Not fur from my place,” Black went on, ignoring the silence. “But I’ll be dawg-goned if it wasn’t ’most all I could do to break through the drifts. If I’d ’a’ known it was so bad I’m blamed if I wouldn’t ’a’ stayed right by my own fireside an’ read that book my sister give me twenty-odd years ago. Its a right good book, I been told, an’ I been waitin’ till I broke my laig to read it. Funny about that, too. The only time I ever bust my laig an’ got stove up proper was ’way down on Wild Cat Creek. The doc kep’ me flat on a bunk three weeks, an’ that book ‘David Coppermine’ a whole day away from me up in the hills.”

“David Copperfield,” suggested Tug.

“Tha’s right, too. But it sure fooled me when I looked into it onct. It ain’t got a thing to do with the Butte mines or the Arizona ones neither. Say, Jake, what about that tobacco? Can you lend me the loan of a sack?”

Prowers pointed to a shelf above the table. He was annoyed at Black. It was like his shiftlessness not to keep enough tobacco on hand. Of all the hours in the year, why should he butt in at precisely this one? He was confoundedly in the way. The cattleman knew that he could not go on with this thing now. Don was not thoroughgoing enough. He would do a good many things outside the law, but they had to conform to his own peculiar code. He had joined in the cattle stampede only after being persuaded that nobody would be hurt by it. Since then Jake had not felt that he was dependable. The homesteader was suffering from an attack of conscience.

Cig had wakened when the rush of cold air from the open door had swept across the room. He sat up now, yawning and stretching himself awake.

“What a Gawd-forsaken country!” he jeered. “Me for de bright lights of li’l’ ol’ New York. If Cig ever lands in de Grand Central, he’ll stick right on de island, b’lieve me. I wisht I was at Mike’s Place right dis minute. A skoit hangs out dere who’s stuck on yours truly. Some dame, I’ll tell de world.” And he launched into a disreputable reminiscence.

Nobody echoed his laughter. Hollister was disgusted. Black did not like the tramp. The brain of Prowers was already spinning a cobweb of plots.

Cig looked round. What was the matter with these boobs, anyhow? Didn’t they know a good story when they heard one?

“Say, wot’ell is dis—a Salvation Army dump before de music opens up?” he asked, with an insulting lift of the upper lip.

Tug strapped on his skis, always with an eye on Prowers.

Which reminded Cig. A triumphant venom surged up in him.

“Gonna take me down to de cop, are youse?” he sneered. “Say, will youse ring for a taxi, Jake? I gotta go to jail wid dis bird.”

In two sentences Prowers gave his version of the story to Black. Tug corrected him instantly.

“He came to blow us up in the tunnel. When I took him back, he dug six sticks of dynamite out of the dirt in the rock wall.”

Black spat into the fire. His face reflected disgust, but he said nothing. What was there to say, except that his soul was sick of the evil into which he was being dragged by the man he accepted as leader?

Tug put on his slicker.

“Where you going?” asked Black.

“To the camp.”

“’S a long way. Better stay at my shack to-night.”

“Much obliged. I will.”

They went out together. Tug was careful to walk with Black between him and the cabin as long as it was in sight.

The wind had died completely, so that the air was no longer a white smother. Travel was easy, for the cold had crusted the top of the snow. They worked their way out of the gulch, crossed an edge of the forest reserve, and passed the cabin of the homesteader Howard. Not far from this, Black turned into his own place.

The range rider kicked off his webs and replenished the fire. While he made supper, Hollister sat on the floor before the glowing piñon knots and dried his skis. When they were thoroughly dry, he waxed them well, rubbing in the wax with a cork.

“Come an’ get it,” Black called presently.

They sat down to a meal of ham, potatoes, biscuits, plenty of gravy, and coffee. Tug did himself well. He had worked hard enough in the drifts to justify a man-size hunger.

Their talk rambled in the casual fashion of haphazard conversation. It touched on Jake Prowers and Cig, rather sketchily, for Black did not care to discuss the men with whom he was still allied, no matter what his private opinion of them might be. It included the tunnel and the chances of success of the Sweetwater Dam project, this last a matter upon which they differed. Don had spent his life in the saddle. He stuck doggedly to the contention that, since water will not run uphill, the whole enterprise was “dawg-goned foolishness.”

Hollister gave up, shrugging his shoulders. “All right with me. A man convinced against his will, you know. Trouble with you is that you don’t want the Flat Tops irrigated, so you won’t let yourself believe they can be.”

“The Government engineers said they couldn’t be watered, didn’t they? Well, their say-so goes with me all right.”

“They were wrong, but you needn’t believe it till you see water in the ditches on Flat Top.”

“I won’t.”

Tug rose from the table and expanded his lungs in a deep, luxurious yawn. “Think I’ll turn in and sleep round the clock if you don’t mind. I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

Black waved his hand at the nearest bunk. “Go to it.”

While he was taking off his boots, the engineer came to a matter he wanted to get off his mind. “Expect you know the hole I was in when you showed up this afternoon. I’ll say I never was more glad to see anybody in my life.”

“What d’you mean?” asked Black, blank wall eyes full on his guest.

“I mean that Prowers was watching for a chance to kill me. I’d called for a showdown a moment before you opened the door.”

The range rider lied, loyally. “Nothin’ to that a-tall. What would Jake want to do that for? Would it get him anything if he did? You sure fooled yoreself if that’s what you were thinking.”

“Did I?” The eyes of the younger man were on Black, hard, keen, and intent. “Well, that’s exactly what I was thinking. And still am. Subject number two on which we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

“Jake’s no bad man runnin’ around gunnin’ men for to see ’em kick. You been readin’ too much Billy the Kid stuff, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Tug dropped the second boot on the floor and rose to take off his coat.

There came the sound of a shot, the crash of breaking glass. Hollister swayed drunkenly on his feet, groped for the back of a chair, half turned, and slid to the floor beside the bunk.

Usually Black’s movements were slow. Now no panther could have leaped for the lamp more swiftly. He blew out the light, crept along the log wall to the window, reached out a hand cautiously, and drew a curtain across the pane through which a bullet had just come. Then, crouching, he ran across the room and took a rifle from the deer’s horns upon which it rested.

“Come on, you damn bushwhacker. I’m ready for you,” he muttered.