FullReads

Ruth responded to this dialectical inquiry affirmatively by putting his hand on his revolver.

“Good! Now, SECOND, Have you got the gal along here with you?”

“No,” responded Ruth in a hollow voice.

“That’s better yet,” said the man, without heeding the tone of the reply. “A woman–and especially THE woman in a row of this kind–handicaps a man awful.” He paused, and took up the empty glass. “Look yer, Ruth Pinkney, I’m a square man, and I’ll be square with you. So I’ll just tell you you’ve got the demdest odds agin’ ye. Pr’aps ye know it, and don’t keer. Well, the boys around yer are all sidin’ with the old man Nixon. It’s the first time the old rip ever had a hand in his favor: so the boys will see fair play for Nixon, and agin’ YOU. But I reckon you don’t mind him!”

“So little, I shall never pull trigger on him,” said Ruth gravely.

The bar-keeper stared, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, thar’s that Kanaka Joe, who used to be sorter sweet on Mornie,–he’s an ugly devil,–he’s helpin’ the old man.”

The sad look faded from Ruth’s eyes suddenly. A certain wild Berserker rage–a taint of the blood, inherited from heaven knows what Old-World ancestry, which had made the twin-brothers’ Southwestern eccentricities respected in the settlement–glowed in its place. The barkeeper noted it, and augured a lively future for the day’s festivities. But it faded again; and Ruth, as he rose, turned hesitatingly towards him.

“Have you seen my brother Rand lately?”

“Nary.”

“He hasn’t been here, or about the Ferry?”

“Nary time.”

“You haven’t heard,” said Ruth, with a faint attempt at a smile, “if he’s been around here asking after me,–sorter looking me up, you know?”

“Not much,” returned the bar-keeper deliberately. “Ez far ez I know Rand,–that ar brother o’ yours,–he’s one of yer high-toned chaps ez doesn’t drink, thinks bar-rooms is pizen, and ain’t the sort to come round yer, and sling yarns with me.”

Ruth rose; but the hand that he placed upon the table, albeit a powerful one, trembled so that it was with difficulty he resumed his knapsack. When he did so, his bent figure, stooping shoulders, and haggard face, made him appear another man from the one who had sat down. There was a slight touch of apologetic deference and humility in his manner as he paid his reckoning, and slowly and hesitatingly began to descend the steps.

The bar-keeper looked after him thoughtfully. “Well, dog my skin!” he ejaculated to himself, “ef I hadn’t seen that man–that same Ruth Pinkney–straddle a friend’s body in this yer very room, and dare a whole crowd to come on, I’d swar that he hadn’t any grit in him. Thar’s something up!”

But here Ruth reached the last step, and turned again.

“If you see old man Nixon, say I’m in town; if you see that ——– —-” (I regret to say that I cannot repeat his exact, and brief characterization of the present condition and natal antecedents of Kanaka Joe), “say I’m looking out for him,” and was gone.

He wandered down the road, towards the one long, straggling street of the settlement. The few people who met him at that early hour greeted him with a kind of constrained civility; certain cautious souls hurried by without seeing him; all turned and looked after him; and a few followed him at a respectful distance. A somewhat notorious practical joker and recognized wag at the Ferry apparently awaited his coming with something of invitation and expectation, but, catching sight of Ruth’s haggard face and blazing eyes, became instantly practical, and by no means jocular in his greeting. At the top of the hill, Ruth turned to look once more upon the distant mountain, now again a mere cloud-line on the horizon. In the firm belief that he would never again see the sun rise upon it, he turned aside into a hazel-thicket, and, tearing out a few leaves from his pocket-book, wrote two letters,–one to Rand, and one to Mornie, but which, as they were never delivered, shall not burden this brief chronicle of that eventful day. For, while transcribing them, he was startled by the sounds of a dozen pistol-shots in the direction of the hotel he had recently quitted. Something in the mere sound provoked the old hereditary fighting instinct, and sent him to his feet with a bound, and a slight distension of the nostrils, and sniffing of the air, not unknown to certain men who become half intoxicated by the smell of powder. He quickly folded his letters, and addressed them carefully, and, taking off his knapsack and blanket, methodically arranged them under a tree, with the letters on top. Then he examined the lock of his revolver, and then, with the step of a man ten years younger, leaped into the road. He had scarcely done so when he was seized, and by sheer force dragged into a blacksmith’s shop at the roadside. He turned his savage face and drawn weapon upon his assailant, but was surprised to meet the anxious eyes of the bar-keeper of the Mansion House.