False face
treetops, bringing with it a clammy touch. For the most part the people
had finished with their supper and were now lying around, spinning
yarns and weaving dreams. It was a time for babies to be cooing in the
wagons, half asleep; for the younger boys and girls to be out among the
shadows playing hide and seek. One darted up to Budd and used the
storekeeper’s vast bulk for a momentary refuge. A guitar strummed and a
couple intoned a song about “Sweet Genevieve.” It struck directly to
the hearts of all the middle-aged in that particular circle and voices
died away. Budd moved on with a feeling of compassion. These were his
people, his kind of men and women. Then he saw Bill squatting, Indian
fashion, before a solitary little blaze.
“No comp’ny?” said Budd.
Bill nodded his head to the group ten yards beyond. “Sam’s there
tellin’ the gol-darndest stories. I don’t need no comp’ny when I can
listen in on them yarns.”
Sam was, indeed, relaxing from his taciturnity. He sat with his feet
crossed and illustrated his yarn with a jerky motion of his fingers and
arms, greatly resembling Indian sign language. The girl sat across from
him, her chin cupped in a palm, sometimes looking to him and sometimes
away. Budd wondered if she had deliberately put her back to Bill.
“’Spect so,” he thought, chuckling, and went on.
His last glimpse was of her staring somberly into the fire. He paid his
compliments here and there, answered a question or two and returned to
the house. It was pretty late and he had worked rather hard. In ten
minutes he had found his bed and was fast asleep.
Budd’s manner of slumber was an inheritance from early range days. No
matter how exhausted, he had trained himself to wake at the least
untoward sound. So it was that an unusual commotion out among the
wagons around midnight brought him up instantly. A moment later he was
diving into his clothes upon hearing the repeated bark of a revolver. A
man’s voice lashed out in the night, calling down all the wrath of
heaven. A dog began to howl dismally and a woman screamed. Budd,
forging to the porch, saw the glimmer of a newly lighted lantern and
heard the mumble of a gathering crowd. He walked over to the scene
where a dozen sleepy men had gathered. The lantern, held high, revealed
an irate and whiskered citizen waving a gun and shouting:
“I’ll get the ornery sneak! Come right into my wagon, by gollus! Snuck
the wallet from under my coat.” He saw Budd and reiterated his charge.
“You got to do somethin’ about this, Mr. Budd! Took four hundred an’
ten dollars right from anunder my nose, by gollus! Jest stuck his hand
through the canvas and helped himself.”
A murmur ran through the group. Four hundred dollars was a large sum of
money, and the manner of taking had been audacious. The thief had
obviously threaded his way around sleeping bodies until he found the
wagon. Equally obvious was it that he must have spent some few days in
observing the robbed man’s habits.
“That’s a purty tidy sum of money,” ventured one. Budd’s vast presence
seemed to absorb responsibility like a blotter. To a man they turned
their attention his way. He walked to the wagon. “Stuck his arm through
here?” he asked. On affirmation he plunged his own burly hand through
the slit. “Put yore coat right where it was when the money was took.”
The man climbed inside and did as requested. Budd pawed around the
wagon bed. “You shore that’s where you had it?”
“By gollus, don’t I know? Sure.”
Budd shoved the weight of his body against the canvas and by dint of an
extra lunge his fingers touched the coat. He said to himself, “That
feller’s arm was right long to do things so quick and quiet.” He
turned. “What kind o’ wallet? How’d you have the money?”
“One o’ these twice-fold-over dinguses. It was black leather. My wife
give it to me as a present nine years ago. Nine, wasn’t it, Carrie?
Yep, shore. Four hundred an’ ten dollars in greenbacks. Sixteen
twenties and the rest tens.” He sat down weakly and ran a hand over his
head. “By gollus, I--I don’t know what to do about it! Powerful lot o’
money to lose.”
The crowd moved again. Sam’s tall, impassive presence stood forth.
“This ain’t the first time,” he added significantly. “Stealin’ been
goin’ on for three days. Jest little things.”
Other lanterns arrived and the circle became fairly well illuminated.
Budd swept the faces, and for the first time made out Bill and his
flaming red thatch standing silent and speculative with his slate-gray
eyes fixed on Sam.
“Got to stop,” continued Sam. “What I say is: Search every man here an’
search his duffle.”
There was a dubious approval. Men bent their mind to the feasibility of
it. A voice murmured, “Sounds kinda severe, but I’d be willin’.”
“Only way,” asserted Sam. “Got to stop it now. Any man to object sh’d
be considered guilty.”
A dry answer met this. Bill rubbed his red crest and stuck out his
chin. “Go lay down, Paralyzed. Yore voice makes me tired. Moreover,
yore idea is plumb foolish. Search the whole camp? Shucks, the man that
got this money ain’t an entire fool. He’s cached it away by now.”
“Mean to say,” countered Sam in the same, unexpressive drawl, “you’re
unwillin’?”
“Yore brain does you credit. I said that an’ I mean that. Don’t care
about a lot o’ loose fingers pokin’ through my war bag.” The chin
seemed to advance a little farther. Those slate-gray eyes fired a plain
challenge at the big man. But Bill had reckoned without the sudden,
unanimous spirit that sometimes takes hold of a crowd. A pair of arms
pinioned him around the waist and the circle closed in like a rubber
band. “See about that, young fella!” cried one.
The few women withdrew quickly. Budd, still a spectator, saw the girl’s
troubled face by the lantern’s gleam. Then she was gone. Somebody took
upon himself the task of inspecting Bill’s clothes and for his pains
found nothing. Sam’s curiously disinterested voice pointed the search
in another direction. “His war bag, boys. Better look there.”
Two or three left the circle with a lantern. Budd, waiting, found time
to study Sam’s face again and was compelled to mutter admiringly,
“Ain’t that a poker expression, though?” Bill was plainly outraged and
bucked in his captor’s arm. “Boys, you better hold tight. Dad gum my
soul, somebody’s goin’ to dance fer this!”
“Hi! Boys, here’s the wallet all right! Take a look, fella. That it?”
The crowd moved over, the robbed one identified his wallet with a
brightening eye and the crowd turned upon Bill with a satisfied sigh.
“Now, ‘Red,’ you’re in poor comp’ny. Better cough up the money or we’ll
get plumb mad.”
Bill stared around him in plain disgust. His gaze fell upon the cool
and aloof Sam. “Paralyzed, I shore give you credit for bein’ the little
deteckatiff.” Then he grew sober. “Oh, go home, you galoots, and get a
night’s sleep. I got nobody’s money. Can’t you see it was planted?
That’s terrible old stuff. Gamblers used to pull that in Montana when I
was a little boy.”
They were all silent and ominous. Some one spoke the popular opinion.
“Talkin’ ain’t helpin’ yore case at all, Red. Figger you’d like to
dance a jig in the cold night air? Don’t be foolish. Where’s the man’s
money?”
Bill snorted in anger. “Money? I tell you I ain’t got the money! Was
sleepin’ peacefullike when some ornery maverick stepped in my face and
hollered there was a wallet missin’.”
Once again silence and finally a slow, hesitant suggestion. “Mebbe a
rope’d help things out consid’ble, boys.”
Budd elected to become active. He put out his two arms and moved a half
dozen men out of his path in the manner of one shoving aside the
branches of a tree. “Reckon the talk is gettin’ a leetle wild, friends.
When a gent says ‘rope,’ the time’s come for a mite o’ mature
reflection. Speakin’ as deppity sher’ff, I guess I’ll jest take the boy
in hand. Mebbe a few hours’ thought’ll change his mind.”
“Don’t need no reflection,” muttered somebody. “Need rope. Ain’t goin’
to be sidetracked this-a-way. The measly cuss stole a man’s hard-earned
money, and it ain’t to be tolerated in these parts. I’m fer summary
justice.”
“Ain’t carin’ what you’re for,” stated Budd in flat finality. “Anybody
wishin’ to doubt my authority?”
Somehow in the lantern light the man had become as a mountain of
purpose; his face, which in daylight looked bland and cherubic, was
rock hard. He spoke easily and his movements were deliberate, but there
was no single man to raise a voice in further protest.
“Bill, you just march in front of me to the store. Rest o’ you night
birds walk around a while and cool off. Don’t get no queer ideas about
rope and tree limbs; I don’t aim to tolerate foolishness. We’ll stick
to plain law.”
He marched Bill into the storeroom, shut the door, and put his lantern
on the counter. “Regardless of circumstances and greenback bills,” said
he, “I reckon I’ll have to tie you up for the night. Don’t aim to make
it any harder on you than I have to. There’s blankets on the floor. Git
down on ’em, young feller. I’ll bundle you up so’s it won’t bind you.”
“This,” said Bill in a kind of restrained fury, “is plumb unreasonable
and aggravatin’. First I get my face stepped on, and next they want to
lynch me. Now I got to be wound up like a roll of fence wire.”
Budd clucked his tongue. “Shore is enough to make a man swear. Git
down, Bill. Now take it easy. But sometimes certain moves lead to
certain other moves.”
Bill submitted to the operation. “Yeah, ain’t that as clear as mud?
First you put out yore right foot and then yore left. But if I never do
anything else in my life I’m shore goin’ to change that waddy Sam’s
complexion. I shore am.” He rested, finally, with his arms and legs
more or less tightly bound, and yet Budd had done the trussing cleverly
enough to allow the prisoner a certain comfort on his hard bed. Then he
strung the free end of the rope through the kitchen door and tied it to
a leg of the range. “Reckon if you go to threshing around too much,” he
observed, “I’ll hear the stove creakin’. Now I aim to finish off a
little business of six hours sleep.”
Bill surveyed his bonds and cast a candid eye upon his captor. “Now
listen, hombre, if a man wanted to wiggle out o’ this----”
Budd looked him in the eye. “You dang fool,” he muttered; “you dang
fool.”
The captive closed his mouth and opened his eyes a little wider. After
a few moments silence he muttered, “Oh.”
Then he turned his back to the big storekeeper and fell silent. Budd
was as inscrutable as a Chinese idol. He picked up the lantern, went
back to his bedroom and blew out the light. “Feel a lot easier in the
conscience,” he muttered, “if I didn’t have this cussed piece o’ tin.”
He stared at the ceiling and presently was asleep. No more strange
sounds from the wagons awoke him that night, and if the kitchen range
creaked, he gave no notice that he was aware of it. Yet he seemed fated
to be wakened by another noisy event. When gray dawn seeped into the
clearing a file of excited men trooped through the house, banged at his
door, and brought him up from the pillow with one trenchant question.
“Whar’s yore prisoner?”
Budd yawned and reached for his pipe. “Guess you’ll find him sleepin’
behind the counter where I tied him.”
A sarcastic rumble greeted this. “Yes we will! Of all the fool ideas!
He shucked himself out o’ that rope and vamosed.”
The storekeeper’s heavy lids drooped; he fumbled with his tobacco pouch
and muttered, “Y’ don’t say!”
Then he slid into his clothes and led the impromptu committee back to
the storeroom. True enough, his bird had fled. The free end of the rope
still was tied around a stove log, but the rest of it was slit in a
dozen places. The cheese knife, which ordinarily rested on the counter,