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Six Feet Four

<h2 id="id01339" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXVII</h2> <h5 id="id01340">JIMMIE SQUARES HIMSELF</h5> A horseman was riding toward him upon the far bank of the Big Little River where it straightened out beyond the cabin. He recognized the horse and a moment later the rider now waving his hat to him, and knew that it was Two-Hand Billy Comstock returning. He turned and rode slowly to meet the officer. "Back already, Comstock?" he called carelessly. "What luck?" "Bully luck," grinned Comstock, replacing his hat and looking as fresh and well groomed as though he were but this minute up from bed and a long sleep. "First let me tell you the news." He slipped his hand into his breast pocket and took out an envelope. "More mail for you, Thornton! You're doing a big correspondence, it seems to me!" In spite of him a quick flush ran up to Thornton's brow. For his first thought was that Winifred Waverly…. "Wrong guess, Buck," chuckled Comstock, his good humour seemingly flowing from an inexhaustible source. "It's from a man." "Who?" demanded Thornton sharply, putting out his hand. Comstock's amusement welled up into open laughter. "It's a prime joke of the Fates," he cried cheerfully. "Here is William Comstock, United States Deputy Marshal, carrying a message from no less a person than Jimmie Clayton, jail bird, crook and murderer! A man wanted in two states!" "Clayton!" said Thornton in amazement. "You don't mean to tell me…." "Oh, he'd never seen me, you know. Nor I him. But then I've seen his picture more than once and I know all about him. He's keeping low but he took a chance on me. I was just a whiskey drummer last night, you know, and happened to let it out that I was riding this way this morning on my way to Dry Town. So Jimmie slipped me the letter! Read it." Thornton took it, wondering. The envelope was sealed and much soiled where Jimmie Clayton's hand had closed the mucilaged flap. He tore it open and read almost at a glance: Deere buck come the same place tonight I want to put you wise. Theare is sum danger to you buck. Keap your eyes open on the way. I will be there late tonight. j.C. Thornton looked up to see the twinkling eyes of Two-Hand Billy Comstock watching him. "You had better tell me what he says," said Comstock coolly. "I don't know but that I should have been well within my rights to open it, eh? But I hate to open another man's private mail." Thornton hesitated. He must not forget that Comstock was an officer—that even now he was upon a state errand—that it was his duty to bring such men as Jimmie Clayton to justice. He must not forget that Clayton had been a friend to him—or, at least, that he had credited the crook with a feeling of friendship and the care of a friend. True, Comstock, who seemed to know everything, had said in a matter-of-fact way that it had been Jimmie Clayton who had shot him that night between Juarez and El Paso. But nothing was proven. He had long thought of Clayton as a man to whom he owed a debt of gratitude, and now with the man, hunted as he was, his sympathy naturally went out to him, evil-doer as he knew him to be. Evidently Comstock read what was passing in the cowboy's mind. "I'm not asking you to squeal on him, Buck," he said quietly. "Look here, I could have taken him in last night if I had wanted to. I could have got him a week ago if I had wanted him. But I didn't want him—I don't want him now. I'm hunting bigger game." Still Thornton hesitated, but now his hesitation was brief. He swung his horse around toward the cabin. "Let's ride back, Comstock," he said shortly. "I want a good long talk with you." Not another word about the matter did either man say as they unsaddled or as they went up the knoll to the cabin. Not a word until the fragrance of boiling coffee and frying bacon went out to mingle with the freshness of the new day. Then as they sat at table and Comstock began to soak the biscuits Thornton had made in the bacon gravy, they looked at each other, and their eyes were alike grave and equally stern. "First thing," began Comstock, "let me finish my news. Charley Bedloe was murdered last night." "I know." "The devil you do? All right. Then here's something else. His brother, the Kid, they call him, swears that you killed him." "I know," nodded Thornton as quietly as before. Comstock made no pretence of hiding his surprise. "I thought you had left before the shooting happened. I was all over town; no one saw you…." "Except the Kid. He did. He saw me outside the window through which somebody shot Charley." Comstock returned his attention to his biscuit and gravy. "I'm a failure as a news monger," he grunted. "Go on. You tell me." And Thornton told him. Before he had finished Comstock had pushed back his chair and was letting his coffee go cold. For Thornton had told him not alone of what had happened at the Here's How Saloon last night, but of the work that Broderick and Pollard were doing, of all of his certainties and his suspicions, of the "planted" evidence he had found in the hay loft, of the missing saddle. Only he did not mention the name of a girl, and he remembered that Pollard was her uncle and spared him where he could. "What a game! By high heaven, what a game!" Comstock pursed his lips into a long whistle. Then he banged his first down upon the table, his eyes grown wonderfully bright and keen, crying softly, "I've got him, I've got him at last, and he's going to pay to the uttermost for all he has done in the last seven years … and before! Got him—by thunder!" "Pollard?" asked the cowboy quickly. "No. Not Pollard." "Then Broderick?" "Not Broderick." "Bedloe?… The Kid?" "What does his name matter? I'll give him a dozen names when the time comes, and by heaven he's got a crime to pay for for every name he ever wore!" He grew suddenly silent and sat staring out through the open door at the distant mountains. At last he turned back toward Thornton, his eyes very clear, his expression placid. "Guess why they are waiting five days more before springing their mine?" he asked abruptly. "Yes. I figured it out a little while ago, after I found the truck in my loft. In five days it'll be the first of the month. On the first of the month the stage from the Rock Creek Mines will be worth holding up. It carried in ten thousand dollars last month. At times, there has been a lot more. Just as sure as a hen lays eggs, it is due to be robbed on the first; they'll find something here to prove I was the hold up man, and I…." "And you go over the road for life or take a drop at the end of a rope? And they quit being badmen and buy ranches? That it?" "That's it. It's a gamble, but…." "But it's a damned good gamble," laughed Comstock softly. "You ought to be sheriff, Buck." But Buck, thinking of how blind to all this he had been so long, how not even now would he have his eyes open were it not for a girl, longed with an intense longing for the end of this thing when she might be free to go from the house of a man like Henry Pollard, when he might be free to go to her and… "How does it happen," he asked suddenly, "that you are not after Jimmie Clayton?" "When I'm out for a big grizzily," returned Comstock, "I can't waste my time on little brown bears! That's one thing. Another is that Jimmie Clayton never had a chance of getting away. If he lives ten days he'll be nabbed, and he won't live ten days. He's shot to pieces and he's sick on top of it. I told you last night the poor devil is a fool and a tool rather than a real badman. If he's got a chance to die quietly, why let him die outside of jail. It's all one in the end." Thornton had always felt a sort of pity for Jimmie Clayton; it had always seemed to him that the poor devil was merely one of the weaker vessels that go down the stream of life, borne this way and that by the current that sweeps them on, with little enough chance from the beginning, having come warped and misshapen from the hands of the potter. And now Jimmie was about to die. Well, whether it had been Jimmie Clayton or another who had shot him that night down in Texas, he would heed the entreaty of the letter and go to him for the last time. So that night, when darkness came, Thornton left Comstock at the cabin and rode out towards the mountains, towards the Poison Hole and the dugout at its side. It was dark, but not so dark as last night, there being no clouds to blot out the stars. And the moon was slipping upward through the trees upon the mountain top when Thornton came at last to the lake. As before, he was watchful and alert. Clayton was Kid Bedloe's friend, and Clayton had always struck him as a man in whom one could put little faith. It was quite in keeping with what he knew that Jimmie's note had been written at the instigation of Kid Bedloe himself and that he was to be led out here where Kid Bedloe and Ed might be in waiting for him. It was quite possible, even probable. But he thought it more than likely that for once Jimmie Clayton was acting in good faith. The Jimmie Clayton whom he found alone a little after moonrise was very much as he had found him that other night. The fugitive lay upon the bunk in the darkness of the dugout, and only when he was assured that it was Buck Thornton come to him did he light his stub of candle. As before Thornton entered and closed the door after him to look down on the man with a sharp twinge of pity. "How're they coming, Jimmie?" he asked gently. "Can't you see?" replied Clayton with a nervous laugh. "I'm all in, Buck. All in." If ever a man looked to be "all in" it was poor little Jimmie Clayton. He threw back his coat for Thornton to see. There upon the side was the stain of blood hardly dry upon the shirt. His eyes were hollow, sunken, fever-filled, his cheeks unthinkably drawn, yellow-white and sickly, the hand which fell back weakly from the exertion of opening his coat showed the bones thrust up as though they would pierce the skin. "You've been shot again?" demanded the cowboy. Jimmie shook his head. "The same ol' hole, Buck; Colt forty-five. It won't heal up, it breaks out all the time. I can't sleep with it, I can't eat, I can't set still." He had begun manfully, but now the little whimper came back into his voice, his shaking hand gripped Thornton's arm feebly, and he cried tremulously, "I wisht I was dead, Buck. Hones' to Gawd, I wisht I was dead!" "Poor little old Jimmie," Thornton muttered just as he had muttered the words once before, gently, pityingly. "Is there anything I can do, Jimmie." Jimmie drew back his hand and lay still for a little, his eyes seeming unnaturally large as he turned them upwards, filled at once with a sort of defiance and an abject, cringing terror. "Nothin'," he said a little sullenly. His eyes dropped and ran to the fingers of his hand which were plucking nervously at his coat. He parted his lips as though he would say something else and then closed them tightly; even his eyes shut tight for a moment. Thornton watched him, waiting. It was easy to see that Jimmie Clayton had upon the tip of his tongue something he wished to say, and that he hesitated … through fear? "What is it, Jimmie?" Thornton asked after a while. Jimmie lifted his head quickly, his eyes flew open with a look in them almost of defiance as he blurted out: "Do you know who shot you … that time down in Juarez?" "Was it you, Jimmie?" asked Thornton. Jimmie's eyes grew larger; all defiance fled from them and the terror came back. "You … you think …" he faltered. "You thought all along…." "Was it you, Jimmie?" The voice was soft, the eyes gentle and now a little smile accompanied the words. It was so easy to forget what had happened so long ago, to disregard it when one looked into this man's eyes and saw there the end of the earthly story of a man who had not been a good man because he had never had a chance, who had never really earned his spurs as a Western badman, because he was of too small calibre, who was after all a vessel that had come imperfect from the hands of the potter. Now Jimmie answered, his voice hushed, his eyes wide, his soul filled with wonderment: "It was … me, Buck!" "Well, Jimmie, I'm sorry. But it can't be helped now, can it? And I'll forget it if you will." He looked at the worn, frail form, and knew that Comstock was right and that little Jimmie Clayton was lying in the valley of the shadow of death. So he added, his voice very low and very gentle, "I'll even shake hands if you will, Jimmie." Jimmie closed his eyes but not quick enough to hide the mistiness which had rushed into them. His breathing was irregular and heavy, its sound being the only sound in the dugout. He did not put out his hand. Finally, his voice steadier than it had been before, he spoke again. "You've been square with me, Buck. I want to be square with you…. There's a frame-up to get you. Now don't stop me an' I'll talk as fast as I can. It hurts me to talk much." He pressed a thin hand upon his side, paused a moment, and then went on. "I think Broderick's the man as has been putting over most of the stick-ups around here for quite some time. Him and Pollard in together. I ain't squealin' on a pal when I tell you this, neither," with a little flash of his old defiance. "Broderick's no pal of mine. The dirty cur. He could of got me clear…. He wanted to make 'em give me up, to git the reward…. Their game is to make folks think you been doing these things, and to send you up for 'em." He stopped to rest, but even now did not look to see what effect his words had upon his hearer. "I don't know much about it," he went on after a moment. "You can find out. But I do know they stole a saddle of yours, and a horse. They're going to stick up the stage out of Rock Creek Mines next week; there's going to be some shooting, and a horse is going to get killed. That'll be your horse, Buck. An' it'll have your saddle on." He had told his story. He told nothing of how he knew, and Thornton did not press him, for he guessed swiftly that somehow the telling would implicate Kid Bedloe, who was a pal… and little Jimmie Clayton was not going to squeal on a pal. Half an hour after he had come to the dugout Thornton left it. For Clayton would not talk further and would not let him stay. "I got a horse out there," he had said irritably. "I can get along. I'm going to move on in the morning. So long, Buck." So Thornton went back to his horse, wondering if, when tomorrow came, Jimmie Clayton would not indeed be moving on, moving on like little Jo to the land where men will be given an even break, where they will be "given their chance." His foot was in the stirrup when he heard Clayton's voice calling. He went back into the dugout. The light was out and it was very dark. "What is it, Jimmie?" he asked. "I was thinking, Buck," came the halting answer, "that … if you don't care … I will shake hands." Thornton put out his hand a little eagerly and his strong fingers closed tightly upon the thin nervous fingers of Jimmie Clayton. Then he went out without speaking. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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