Lucky Larribee E-Book

Max Brand

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

First published in 1932, „Lucky Larribee” is another great read by Max Brand. Alfred Larribee likes drinking, not working. He likes gambling, too. Maybe that’s what drives him to risk his easy-going life for Sky Blue, the horse of a lifetime. When he first goes after this wild and magnificent animal, he knows about the back shooters. But no one tells him about the Indians... they play for keeps. How safe is this bet? Neatly plotted and briskly told, it illustrates Brand’s remarkable gift for storytelling. One of the greatest western authors of all time. Max Brand leads the reader on a very authentic tale of the old west the way it was.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER XLII

CHAPTER XLIII

CHAPTER I

LARRIBEE was plain no good. Larribee was low. The Dents did not have to do much thinking. The fact was clear after a single half day of their cousin’s company.

His father’s letter had pointed out that he sent the young man into the Far West–meaning, in those days, anything west of the Mississippi–in the hope that he might find himself. He said that he had given Alfred every opening and encouragement that he could, but the boy was averse to labour. He hoped that Wilbur Dent would be able to make a man of him; “But,” said the letter, “you’ll find Alfred very odd.”

Wilbur Dent had lifted eight hundred pounds of wheat off a scale in a single clean effort. Now he set his jaw and said to his wife: “I’ll make a man of him!”

She smiled a little and then forced herself to swallow the smile.

“You mustn’t be too hard on the poor boy,” said she.

As a matter of fact, she hoped that her dear husband would flay the youth alive, if by so doing he was able to accomplish the will of the boy’s father. For the elder Larribee was rich. He was wilfully, almost sinfully rich, and if all went well, if they reformed young Larribee, might not a grateful father then open a door to culture and prosperity for one or more of her own darling sons?

They expected a high strung spendthrift, a youth with vices, but also a youth with fire. They were wrong. He had all the vices, but he had none of the fire.

He drank to excess, gambled to the value of his last shirt, loved cards and dice and was oddly proficient in their management, never raised his hand to do a stroke of work of any sort, and contributed nothing to the family or to the well-being of his host except a continual flow of lazy, good-natured conversation.

There were two hundred pounds of him, rising to a height of six feet. He looked like a seal. His neck was thick, with the same softly flowing lines over shoulders and chest. He had, above all, the same air of sleekness, and a slightly oily duskiness of voice completed the resemblance.

“We’ll soon get his weight down,” said the elder Dent.

So he introduced Alfred Larribee to the woodpile. He gave him the introduction in the morning; an hour later the blows of the axe ceased ringing; Larribee had disappeared. He turned up at midnight, singing in a somewhat wavering voice as he came down the front path. Dent was waiting for him, but when he saw the unsteady figure, clad in torn and ragged clothes, he shrugged his shoulders and let the boy go to sleep unreproved.

He said to Mrs. Dent: “After all, he’s only twenty-one. Lots of boys are lazy at that age. Lots of boys drink a bit, also.”

Then, the next morning, they got full reports of what had happened to Larribee the night before. Fort Ransome was a thriving little town which had a lot of loose cash generally afloat in it, owning to the sale of outfits to trappers and the shipping of their furs up the river to St. Louis, or down the river to New Orleans. The core of the population of Fort Ransome consisted of the sturdy farmers, like Dent, who kept on clearing land and increasing the acreage of their crops, as well as raising cattle and horses; but the life of Fort Ransome apparently settled around the traders’ stores during the day and the gambling houses during the night, with a good deal of activity in the saloons during all of the twenty-four hours.

It was in the Potswood gambling house that young Larribee had been the day before, inveigled into a game of poker. It lasted until midnight, at which time Larribee had accumulated all the stakes on the table.

Then five angry men glared at one another, swore that so much luck could not be honest, and laid their hands not only on young Larribee, but on the money as well. Larribee managed to escape by diving through a window, but his money remained behind him.

“He ran away,” said Fort Ransome. “He’s a coward!”

But Wilbur Dent led the youth back to the woodpile, patiently, the next morning. In half an hour he was gone again!

Where did he get the money to commence the game, having left his winnings behind the night before?

At any rate, that night he won fifteen hundred dollars at dice before the following morning dawned. When he left the gaming house he was stuck up by a pair of footpads and robbed of every penny. Once more Wilbur Dent was waiting up for him when he returned home; he allowed Larribee to enter his room, and then turned the key in the door.

“You stay in there,” he said, “until you’ve decided to settle down to honest work!”

Later Dent showed how an axe should be properly swung, and how its flashing blade should be fleshed to the handle in the wood. So young Larribee took his stance, swung, and at the third stroke broke the axe-handle neatly in twain.

A flaw in the wood, declared Dent. And he furnished another axe, with the handle of truest, toughest hickory.

Alas, it endured only six strokes, and then that noble hickory stick was ignobly shattered in the hands of the boy.

Wilbur Dent had lifted eight hundred pounds of wheat, but he had never seen such a thing as this happen. Even granting that the boy, from sheer malice and laziness, might have struck a little slantwise with the axe, still, hickory is hickory to every Yankee–a wood, and almost more than a wood; a sort of moral thing, undefeatable except by time.

So Dent laid his hand upon the shoulder of Larribee. It was soft and sleek. He could poke his forefinger, he felt, almost to the shoulder bone; but when he grasped that handful of flesh hard, he felt that it was filled with ten thousand small fibres. He felt it, and he was thoroughly amazed for he well knew the difference between fat and muscle.

An axe was too fine an instrument for such horse-power, evidently. So Dent took him to the field where two of his sons were wielding a great crosscut saw on several oak trees. He ordered Douglas to the barn; he commanded Larribee to sit down with Derry and take the opposite end of the crosscut. Dent stood by to watch.

It was a good thing to see the bright blade of the saw flashing back and forth, spouting a white gush of wood fibres and dust at every stroke. Wilbur Dent looked with pride on Derry, his oldest son, his favourite of the three, seeing the sway of his strong back and his resolute shoulders. For the oak was tough, the inner grain was hard as iron, and the saw-teeth screamed against it.

On the other side of the tree Dent saw Larribee with only one hand upon the saw, and his rage burst out.

“Two hands, you lazy loafer!” he shouted. “You’ll do your share of this work or I’ll have the hide off you!”

Larribee looked at him with a sigh, a melancholy look, and laying both hands upon the long grip, he thrust forward.

Dent saw the thing that happened; but afterwards he could hardly believe that it had not been a dream. It was a new saw, freshly sharpened. Perhaps that was the trouble, for the keen teeth bit too deeply into the metallic hardness of the oak’s heart and lodged there. But that saw-blade of bright new steel, supple as a sword, and mighty, gave with a ripple and a bulge before the thrust of Larribee. There was a clang like a rifle shot; and the blade snapped six inches from the trunk of the tree.

“That’s a pity,” said Larribee, standing up with the mutilated stump of the saw in his hand.

“You blasted vandal,” exclaimed Dent. “The price of this comes out of your own pocket. I’ll find work for you!”

He paused to think. What work, after all? A spade has a wooden handle; he could not set this monster to digging. A pitchfork has a slender handle of wood also, and it would snap at the first mighty heave of those shoulders.

Dent stared at Larribee with actual hatred.

“Horses!” he said to himself.

He had a dozen freshly bought plains mustangs of Indian stock, wilder than eagles, wilier than snakes. He took Larribee to the corral, where they were now being given a three-day course of starvation before experts attempted to manage them.

“You ride every one of that lot before night!” said he. “And if you quit, I’ll give you a ticket back to your father and let him handle you. A precious lot you’re worth to a ranch!”

CHAPTER II

WHATEVER went on in the mind of this idle, worthless fellow, it was very clear that he did not wish to be returned to his father. He remained out until noon, and then he came back to the house in prompt response to the dinner bell. He carried saddle and bridle, and Wilbur Dent looked him over critically. There was no sweat on his brow, though the day was warm; there was no dust on his torn clothes, there was no limp to his gait.

“How many have you rode?” asked Dent.

“All twelve,” said Larribee, and pumped out a basin of water to wash for lunch.

There is no use calling a man a liar until you have the proof of his lie. Dent strode to the outer corral, and there he saw twelve mustangs, and on the back of every one there was the print of a saddle in sweat, and on the head of the mustangs were the signs of cheek straps.

He came back to the house in muse. There was of course, some trick about it, but even to have saddled the twelve, to say nothing of backing them, was a feat. He said not a word to Larribee. After lunch they would see.

So they sat down to the table, where the Dents talked to one another and looked sourly as Larribee twice heaped his plate with baked beans, ate six rashers of bacon, and cleaned his plate. Then he poured in a tide of molasses and licked it up with half a dozen of Mrs. Dent’s best sour-milk biscuits, golden beauties, and her pride. He ate with the mild absorption of a stalled ox, and almost as much. When it came to coffee, his cup had to be filled five times!

West of the Mississippi, hospitality is more than a virtue; it is a religion; but Mrs. Dent could not look on at this havoc. She had to lower her eyes to her own modest portion, and finally she left the table, unable to endure the sight.

Then Wilbur Dent spoke: “Well, boys, Alfred says that he’s rode all twelve of those mustangs. You, there, Dan, you can take a fling at one of ’em after lunch and see how he’s gentled down.”

After lunch Larribee extended his large frame under a tree, folded his hands beneath his head, and slept; the rest of the menfolk filed out to the corral gate, looking sourly askance upon the sleeper. His mouth was open; his snoring was deep and vibrant.

“I wish a spider would drop down his throat,” said Dan Dent. “I’m gonna get spilled plenty. They’re as wild as mosquitoes, those devils. Look at ’em!”

For the mustangs milled as wildly as ever when the four men came to the corral fence.

“He rode ‘em, did he?” said Daniel Dent. “He rode a broomstick, is what he rode.”

But he went in with his rope and snagged the smallest of the lot. It was not the smallest in spirit, however; it exploded all over the corral, and the others, in sympathy with their brother, exploded also.

The mustang, when its eyes were free from the blindfold, hesitated. Then it bucked its way to the corral fence in three jumps, and with the third it skyrocketed Daniel Dent into space.

He landed on his head and lay still. He was not dead, but he was badly stunned; and when they got him up, blood was trickling from ears, nose and mouth. His eyes were the eyes of a drunkard.

“Go get Larribee,” said the father gently.

Deny and Douglas went to the sleeper and stirred him with the toes of their boots. He opened one eye. His sleek face was flushed with sleep.

“Yes?” murmured Larribee in his husky, oily voice.

“Get up and come along,” said the two. “The old man, he wants to see you ride one of those hosses out there.”

The elder Dent pointed with a rigid arm.

“You say you rode them hosses, all of ‘em,” he said, iron in his voice. “Now you can sashay in there and ride only one of ’em again. You won’t have to bother about saddlin’ it. There’s a saddle already on it. Get in there and do it!”

Larribee seemed in no hurry. He leaned for a moment on the rail of the fence and looked over the little herd.

“I left them all quiet and peaceable,” said he. “And now you’ve stirred them up. You know about bees–they’ll let you alone if you don’t bother them.”

“Shut up and get in there!” ordered Dent.

Larribee sighed. He opened the gate and walked in slowly. The mustangs faced him in a row, ready to charge. They shook their heads. Their eyes were red with the wild beast’s hatred of man and the man smell, the awkward, two-legged mysteriously horrible enemy of all things.

“Poor boys,” said Larribee. “I’m sorry for you. But you’ve got to have iron on your teeth and the saddle on your back, because nature gave you more than you need, and other people will be sure to use it. You, there, pinto, don’t roll your eyes. I know exactly what’s biting you!”

He sauntered up, talking in this idle manner. And Daniel Dent, who had regained his wits and his feet, said: “Now watch that hand-made tiger eat him up!”

But it was a strange thing to see those mustangs stand as Larribee walked about among them. He took the saddled horse by the bit and led it to the gate. It hardly knew how to lead. It seemed to follow the man by choice rather than by compulsion, and behold the whole group walked behind their brother to the gate, and when he was led out into the open, they hung their ugly heads over the rail and stared after him.

Larribee fitted his foot into the stirrup and then mounted, the saddle twisting a little under his weight. He hunched it straight as he sat upright, fumbling for the other stirrup in the meantime.

“He’s not bridlewise, yet,” said he. “But he’s learning.”

Before a silent, stupefied audience he steered the mustang slowly around the outer corral. Then he halted it by the gate again.

“Try it now, Derry,” said the father as Larribee dismounted in a continued silence.

Larribee stood at the mustang’s head. It made not a move while he was there, merely lifting its head a little and flattening its ears as Derry Dent mounted. Then the word was given, and Larribee stepped away, and that inspired little fiend deliberately tied himself into half a dozen knots. When he unravelled them, Derry was picking himself up from a dust cloud that filled half the corral.

Larribee caught the panting horse and put it inside the corral again.

“What did you do to it?” asked Wilbur Dent. “Now, you tell me what you did to that hoss?”

“I talked. You heard me,” said Larribee. “If there’s nothing more on hand, I’ll go back and have a sleep.”

They let him go because they wanted to be alone for a moment; they craved a conference.

“What good is it anyway?” said Daniel. “Suppose that he can ride any old hoss, what good is it if nobody else can foller in his tracks?”

“What good is Larribee for anything?” growled the father. “Nothin’ except to break handles, and gamble and drink. A coward, too, that runs away from everybody. The whole town is sneerin’ at him. He’s makin’ a joke out of my household. By thunder, I ain’t going to stand it!”

CHAPTER III

LARRIBEE, who had taken what he considered his dismissal for the day, went down the street towards the centre of Fort Ransome. He had with him a pocket-knife, a pipe, tobacco, and some matches. What he wanted was money. He wanted a drink, and he wanted it badly. Then he wanted to sit down with a cool patch of sea-green felt before him, and either the rattle of the dice or the whisper of cards to make the music which he loved to hear.

There was no pride in Larribee. He wore the same clothes which had almost been dragged from his back on the first night he played cards in Fort Ransome, but he cared not for the rents or the stains on coat and trousers, nor that he looked the part of a loafer.

When handsome young Joe Ransome, son of the major and grandson of the founder of the town, rode up to the Potswood entrance, he tossed the reins to Larribee and called out: “Tie the horse up, my boy!” And he flung a coin into the dust at the feet of Larribee.

Larribee was not proud. He tethered the horse, regardless of the sneers of the bystanders, by-sitters rather, for they were all lined up in the chairs that backed against the wall of the Potswood veranda. Then he mined in the dust where the coin had fallen and picked up a twenty-five-cent piece. He spun it in the air, watched it glitter at the height of its rise, and was pleased by the comfortable spat of it in the palm of his hand when it fell.

To a poor man, something is an infinity better than nothing; and besides, to Larribee this was a lever with which he might open important doors after he had finished making it grow.

He leaned against one of the pillars of the veranda. He filled and lighted his pipe, while he looked up and down the row of sneering, hostile faces. He had “taken water” three times in Fort Ransome, where a man was supposed, first and last, to be a man.

But Larribee was not proud. He saw the contempt, but he regarded it not.

“I’ll match you,” he said to a trapper clad in deerskins from the plains. “I’ll match you a quarter against a quarter.”

“Oh, you–take yourself off,” said the trapper. “Your hands ain’t clean enough to play with me!”

Those who heard the remark laughed loudly. Some of them watched Larribee for a moment with cruelly expectant eyes, but he paid no heed to the rebuff.

He walked down the veranda and leaned against another pillar.

“I’ll match you,” he said to a trapper clad in deerskins from a long-tailed coat and a wide-brimmed hat. He looked the part of a gambler. The latter stared at Larribee up and down.

“Quarters be blowed,” said he. “But still, a principle is a principle. Here you are.”

“Heads!” said Larribee.

The stranger spun his coin as Larribee spoke. It clinked on the veranda floor. “Heads it is,” said the gambler and kicked the coin towards Larribee, who gathered it up.

“I’ll give you revenge,” said Larribee smiling gently.

“Find out some small fry. I don’t want to waste my time,” said the gambler. “But–well, here you are!”

He spun a fifty-cent piece. It went the way of the quarter. He lost a dollar, two dollars, four dollars, eight.

Then he stopped in the act of drawing out gold, and squinted at Larribee.

“What the deuce does he do?” he asked.

He was not angry, only curious.

“He sees ’em as they start up in the air, and knows how they’ll fall,” said a confident neighbour.

The gambler dropped the gold back into this pocket.

“It’s a good trick, boy,” said he. “It’s a good trick for picking up a bit of chicken feed here and there.”

Larribee went into the bar. He had a stiff drink of whisky which was coloured juice and raw alcohol. A half-breed, a Negro, a decrepit full-blooded Indian, and a plains trader with a prosperous appearance were all leaning at that bar. Larribee shook dice with the Negro, lost five dollars and won forty. He went into the gambling rooms after that.

There were three of them, each turning a corner from the other. For the sake of making more bullets fly wide, said the inhabitants of Fort Ransome, callous but very tolerant.

Larribee found a score of men playing, for it was too early in the day to enlist the interest of the majority. The effect of last nights’ poisonous liquor had not yet worn off, and they had not built up sufficient enthusiasm on this new day’s supply. About sunset the play would grow higher, the players more numerous.

Larribee played red and black at roulette. He lost all but a dollar in half an hour’s play. He shifted to numbers, playing combinations, and in ten minutes he had an even hundred. He put ten dollars on the nine; the ball clicked home on the nine, and Larribee took three hundred and fifty dollars from the table.

That was a poker stake. But there was no poker to be played. In fact, no game of any size was going on except in a far corner of the farthest room, where young Josiah Ransome, third of that name, was rolling dice on a blanket, bouncing them off a wall before the call. Larribee joined the group. There were five of them, all well-dressed, all apparently well in funds. They looked coldly aside at him.

“That’s my horse-boy,” said young Ransome, laughing. “Let him lose his money if he wants to. This is a democracy, gentlemen.”

Larribee was not proud. He stood on the extreme edge of the group, at a corner of the table. The house was not represented. It was merely a private game, a “gentleman’s” game. He lost a hundred dollars before he got the box; then he won a thousand in four straight rolls. Young Ransome had lost more than half of it.

He was a well-made youth, straight, tall with a proud head proudly carried. After the fourth cast he fastened his eyes on Larribee for a long moment; then he left the room and went out into the bar. There he called the barkeeper to one side and said to him: “There’s a ragged fellow in the rooms shaking dice, and I think he’s crooked. What do you know about him?”

“By name of Larribee he is,” said the barkeeper. “He’s more crookeder than a dog’s hind leg. Dice or poker or matching coins, he’s more slippery than a greased pig. You ain’t been playing with him, Mr. Ransome?”

Ransome stepped back from the bar and surveyed its length. Near the farther end he saw a bulky pair of shoulders, a small head, a jaw made to endure batterings.

“Mullins!” he called. “Leave that whisky and come here!”

Mullins looked about with a scowl, but when he saw the speaker he put the glass back on the bar and approached. He even touched the brim of his hat, for the Ransomes were as hereditary princes in the town which had been named after them.

“Yes, sir,” said Mullins, at attention.

“There’s a fellow named Larribee–” begun Ransome.

“I know the yellow dog,” said Mullins.

“He’s been cheating at dice,” said Ransome, “and he’s not quite fit for me to handle. Here’s a trifle.”

“No, sir,” said Mullins. “To clean up that little jot it’ll be a pleasure to me. I wouldn’t shame myself by takin’ your money for it, Mr. Ransome.”

He went out on to the veranda and looked about him.

He was a known man, this Mullins. He, and no other Mullins, had stood up for forty red, bare-fisted rounds against terrible Jem Richards in the height of that champion’s career. Now, older, a little slower, he was still great enough to command a following of his own kind in Fort Ransome. At his nod, three burly fellows came up to him. He said to one: “Go in and find that Larribee. Tell him there’s a friend wants him right bad out here. Then you can stand by, you boys, and see a show.”

So it was that Larribee was tapped on the shoulder and called forth.

He came unwillingly. The game was good, the stakes were high, and he was more than holding his own after his first fine run of luck. So he came out, frowning a little against the brightness of the outer day.

“You’re Larribee,” said Mullins. “You called me a blankety-blank a while ago. I’m gonna hear you apologize out here, and loud.”

The bystanders grinned, all except young Ransome. He stood rather coldly aloof. He was seeing justice administered, as was his duty. He felt that Fort Ransome should be kept fairly clean.

“All right,” said Larribee. “I’m not proud. I didn’t call you names. I never call anybody names, Mr. Mullins. But I apologize, just the same.”

“You sneakin’ cur,” said Mullins, snapping his teeth like an angry dog to work up his temper. “I dunno that just apologizin’ is good enough for me. I’m gonna give you a taste of what’s what in the old country. I’m gonna bash in your face for you.”

He had talked enough to oil his excitable temper. Now he drew back a fist oddly small and compact compared with the bulk of his arm and the shoulder behind it. He drew it back and hit like a good marksman for the head of Larribee.

Larribee ducked. It seemed as though the wind of the blow travelled before it and tipped the head of Larribee aside. The massive arm of Mullins went over his shoulder, and Larribee, with a surprised look, appeared to stumble forward and to save himself by grasping at the shirt of Mullins just over the heart.

The great Mullins staggered backwards. His face had turned grey in streaks, as though he had been slapped by a many-lashed whip. His body was canted sharply to the left, the heavy fence of his forearms was erected defensively before his face, and he bit at the air with gasps.

“Cheese it, Jerry,” muttered one of Mullins’s champions. “The rat got in a lucky wallop. You on this side and me on that–”

They charged young Larribee with fists ready like horns, and he swayed down like a man paralysed with terror, flinging himself face downwards upon the veranda floor in token of submission. So it chanced that the swinging punches just grazed the top of his head as Larribee unexpectedly straightened and came erect, as it were, by reaching for the body of one man with his right and for the other with his left.

The two champions sat down. Then one, gasping, with an expression of agony, toppled slowly over on his side.

CHAPTER IV

IT looked accidental. It almost had to be accidental. The trouble was that three accidents do not usually happen in a row, in the course of as many seconds. Even young Mr. Ransome forgot his dignity a little and stared.

As for the famous Mullins, he said to his third companion, “He’s a ringer. Take him together. You try his head, me his middle. We’ll knock the lights out of him.”

Mr. Mullins had not quite recovered his breath, however. For that reason he was a little behind in the charge that ensued, and his gallant friend went nobly on, half a step in the lead, bereft of help by that small but vital margin. When he saw that he was somewhat ahead of his friend, he was not abashed. Neither was he troubled by the sight of the two men twisting and squirming on the ground. Instead, he fairly leaped at the head of Larribee so that the latter, throwing up a hand as to ward off the attack, happened to strike with his closed fist upon the very point of the other’s chin.

The impact flung the man backward straight upon Mullins, and the two rolled over and over at the feet of Larribee. Then, for the first time the spectators found their tongues for a long, wild, whooping shout. They agreed that they had been sold, that yonder sleek-faced youth was some famous character who had chosen to hide his prowess behind a mask of humility. And many a one among them shrugged his collar a little more warmly up about his neck.

Larribee reached into the heap and plucked forth Mullins by the hair of the head. It was a dazed and gaping face that was dragged upwards. Not only was there a severe and cramping pain in the body of the ex-pugilist, but he had just fallen on his head, with the weight of his friend’s body to push his face into the dust. He panted loudly, and his breath was white with the dust.

“Who was it that wanted to speak to me, Mr. Mullins?” asked Larribee.

The eyes of Mullins rolled wildly, and it happened that at this moment he looked towards young Mr. Ransome. He really intended no harm to Josiah Ransome III, but the face was familiar in the general haze which possessed his mind, and he pointed with a vague finger.

“Mr. Ransome–” he said.

Larribee dropped him, and turning about on his heel, he sauntered slowly to young Ransome and stood smiling before him.

He was the only one of those present who was smiling at the moment. The onlookers leaned forward in their chairs and gaped, but they did not grin either at one another or at the two who were now facing each other. Young Mr. Ransome looked just a trifle pale, but his head was as high as ever. Larribee was still smiling in his good-natured, rather sleepy way as he stood before the prince of the town.

“Did you send for me, Mr. Ransome?” he said.

Ransome looked him over. He tried to think of some cutting retort, but his wits were not particularly active at the moment. So he kept silent and continued to survey the sleekness of Larribee.

“Did you want me so badly,” said Larribee, “that you sent a man in and had three more waiting for me when I came out? You know, Mr. Ransome, I’m only a humble fellow. I’m not proud, and I never aspire to a guard of honour. But now that I’m here, thank you, what is it that you want to say to me?”

Mr. Ransome decided at last what he should do. He turned his back upon the other and said to a loitering boy: “Untie that horse for me, my son, will you?”

And he threw a quarter towards the lad.

Larribee touched his arm.

Now, young Josiah Ransome was a fellow of infinite spirit, and when he felt himself touched by one whom he put down as a worthless vagabond, his blood fairly boiled. He forgot the thin frost of terror which he had felt the moment before, when he saw this sleek mauler of men advance towards him, and, whirling around on one heel violently, he threw off the grasp of Larribee with one hand, and with the other snatched out a good revolver, a shining Colt.

“Keep your hands off, you hoodlum,” said young Mr. Ransome, “or I’ll teach you–”

He got out this much of his remark in the proper style, but then his gun hand fell into a grasp such as Josiah Ransome never had conceived of. It grated the bones of his fingers against the wood and steel as though there were no intervening padding of flesh whatever. It numbed his hand to the wrist and upward.

But what made this all the more unreal and horrible was that the face of Larribee did not alter in the least, but remained as sleekly smiling, as sleepily good-humoured as ever, as he said: “I didn’t know that guns were manners, Ransome. But if they are–”

With this he literally lifted the young fellow before him and cast him backward. Mr. Josiah Ransome, as he fell, blindly fired his revolver into the thin blue face of the sky, which was the only basis upon which this encounter could have been described as a gun fight, the usual description in narrating it later on by all those who saw the affair. In falling, young Ransome struck the edge of the veranda, spun over, and fell straight down, a full three feet. His forehead was opened up by the iron edge of the boot-scraper beneath, and the blow knocked the wits quite out of his handsome, gay young head.

No one stirred to pick him up except Larribee himself. He gathered Josiah Ransome in his arms, carried him into the saloon end of the Potswood place, and with his own hand poured a dram of whisky down the unconscious throat.

Ransome wakened with a coughing and spluttering; a doctor was called to sew up the spouting, gaping wound; and in the midst of the confusion, Larribee quietly got out of the mix-up and went home.

The first person he saw was Mrs. Dent, who cried out: “Have you been stealin’ chickens, you great big thing? What’s that blood on your coat?”

“Just a little accident,” said Larribee.

“Get out to the barn,” said she. “Mr. Dent, he wants you.”

So Larribee went out to the barn and received hard words; and that was why he happened to be mounting on a scaffolding, slowly, slowly drawing a paintbrush back and forth over the rough boards, whistling gently to himself, squinting at his work as though he were a landscape artist, when Marshal Steve Hannahan came galloping out on his foaming horse.

There was a five-foot gate leading into the Dent corrals, but the marshal did not stop to unbar it. He simply leaped his mustang across it, and though the rear legs of the mustang knocked off the top bar of the gate and left their skins behind, though the blow nearly tumbled the poor brute on its head, the marshal gave the thing not a thought as he dashed on and pulled up under the scaffolding of the painter.

Wilbur Dent had heard the crash of the broken gate and came hurrying out from the barn prepared to swear, but when he saw the marshal he thought better of it. He was a silent witness to what followed. The marshal was in a rage.

He called out: “Are you the blackguard by name of Larribee who’s been rioting at the Potswood?”

Larribee stopped painting, restored his brush carefully to the bucket of paint, turned a little on the scaffolding plank that supported him, looked down with attention at the marshal, and then, as a puff of wind blew Hannahan’s coat open and showed the flaring steel medal inside, Larribee raised his hat in salute.

“I’ve been at the Potswood, sir,” said he.

The marshal was hot. “Don’t you “sir’ me,” he said. “I’ll have you know who runs Potswood, and I’m the man. You dice-throwing, card-marking vagabonds I’m going to put down and give the decent people a show in this town. Climb down off that scaffold and I’ll give you a lesson!”

“Well, sir,” said Larribee, “if you’ll just hand that ladder over here, I’ll come right down.”

“Hand you the–hand yourself the ladder, confound you,” said the marshal. “Get off that scaffold and get quick, or I’ll have you down, ladder or no ladder. I’ll have you down in such a shape that you won’t be getting up again in a hurry! I’ll teach you to blackguard and riot! I’ll teach you to slug the first citizens of Fort Ransome! I’m going to make an example of you!”

He made his quirt sing through the air as he spoke, as though he intended to scorch his lesson into the hide of Larribee with those lashes. The swinging of the quirt made the mustang swerve and rear right under the scaffolding. It was so very close that one of the marshal’s legs scraped against the wall of the barn, and Larribee was so alarmed that he started violently and uttered a faint exclamation which Daniel Dent said was “Well, well sir!” At the same time, his careless right hand tipped over the bucket of white paint, so that the entire contents spilled straight downward and exactly hit the centre of the marshal’s upturned face!