A younger man could not have talked quite so frankly to the formidable marshal. But Si Hulan was too old to be in danger of physical attack, and he spoke his mind outright to Dozier.
He went on: “You’ve made a pet out of this man killer, Hal. That’s bad enough for you, because one of these days he’ll turn and sink his teeth in you. But it’s particular bad for us in this here town, because you ain’t the only one he’s apt to muss up. I say it wasn’t square to bring him in.”
There was a gloomy murmur from the others, and Hal Dozier studied them in despair. One by one they told the story of how Lanning had come down the stairs and ordered the crowd to separate so that he could walk through. They told the tale profanely and expressively, and they assured the marshal that the next time such a thing happened they would not stand upon the order of procedure, they would fall upon young Andrew Lanning and teach him manners.
“Boys,” said the marshal gravely, “I know how you feel. You think that Lanning is taking advantage of you, because he’s a proved gunfighter. Maybe it looks that way, but if I could get close to this trouble, I know I could show you that you’d badgered Andy into it. He ain’t a bully. He never was, and he never will be. But they’s some around this town that’s been treating him like he was a bear to be baited. Well, boys, if you ever tease Andy to the point when he breaks loose, he’ll turn out the worst rampaging bear you ever see. Keep that under your hat, but give Andy a chance to make good, which he can do.”
With this mixture of cajoling and warning, Hal left the hotel and sought Lanning. He found his young protégé buried in gloom in the silent blacksmith shop. Andrew lifted his head slowly and greeted his friend with a lackluster eye.
“Keep your heart up,” advised the marshal. “Work will begin to come in to you, son. This old shop will be full of business all day long, as soon as the boys in town are sure you mean to settle down. You were a good blacksmith in the old days, and they know it. But no more busting out like you done today.”
It was proof of the despair of Andrew that even to Hal Dozier he did not offer the true explanation of that affair. He let it go.
“Hal,” he said sadly, “the main trouble is that I don’t think I want the work to come in. I was a blacksmith in the old days. I liked it, and I liked to make things. But it doesn’t interest me any more.”
“What in the world are you, then?”
“I dunno, Hal. I can’t find out. Maybe I’m what they figure me to be … no good.”
The marshal found that he had no answer ready, and he could only make one suggestion. “If you can’t make a go of the blacksmith work, come with me. I’ll make you a deputy. They’s a big bunch of cash right now over in the bank, and they have been asking me for a good man to guard it. Will you let me give them your name?”
But Andy shook his head. “They wouldn’t take me. Besides, I’m not ready to give up yet.”
Hal Dozier went straight to the telegraph office and wired to Anne Withero: COME QUICK, OR NOT AT ALL.
In the evening he received an answer from Anne Withero, saying she was coming on the next train. That telegram gave him heart. But would Andrew Lanning hold out until the arrival of this great ally?
The marshal did not know it, but the great temptation was coming to Andrew even at that very moment. He sat in the old shack that his uncle, Jasper Lanning, had owned before him. Never had it seemed more dreary, more deserted. As he was coming home from the shop at the end of the idle day, little Judy had crossed the street to avoid passing close to him, and that told Andy more than the curses of a crowd of grown men what the town thought of him.
He felt the blight of it cold in his heart all the time that he was cooking his supper, and then he sat down to the meal without appetite. The bacon was cold, the flapjacks soggy, the potatoes half cooked. He forced himself to eat.
All the windows were open, for the night was coming on close and windless, and he wished to take advantage of every stir of the air. It was very hot, and it seemed to have grown hotter since the coming of the darkness. The little flame of the lantern seemed to add to it. He could feel the glow against his face, and there was the nauseating odor of kerosene and the foul-burning wick. But he had not heart enough to trim the wick and freshen the light.
When he had finished his meal, there was the doubly disagreeable duty of washing the dishes. The water was greasy to the touch, nauseating again. The walls of the kitchen were hung with shadows, memories of the old days, and those old days seemed cramped and disagreeable. He was returning to that life, and there was no glamour to it. It was like crawling into a hole and waiting for death.
He finished his task by banging the dishpan onto its nail on the rough-finished boards of the wall and strode slowly back to the other room. There he sat down with a book, but the print would not take hold of his eye. He found the book falling to his lap, while his mind wandered through the past. He had lived greater things than were in these romantic pages. He had been part and parcel and the prime mover in deeds that had stirred the length and the breadth of the mountain desert. And a faint, grim smile played and grew and died on his lips, as he remembered some of them.
He was recalled from his dreaming sharply, as though by a voice. All at once, although he did not change from his position, he was tinglingly alert. Another person had entered the room and stood at the door behind him. An added sense, which only men who have been hunted possess, informed him of that fact. Someone was there. His mind flashed over a score of possibilities of men who hated him, men who might have trailed him to the town to wreak vengeance. Any one of them would be capable of shooting him in the back without warning.
All this went through his mind in the least part of a second. Then in a flash he whirled out of his chair, slipping into the dense shadow on the floor with the speed of a snake that twists and strikes. As he fell, the long gun, which never left his hip, was gleaming in his hand.
The man at the door jerked both empty hands above his head and cursed softly. He was a handsome fellow with a rather colorless face, bright eyes, and an alert, straight carriage.
“Don’t shoot!” he called. “Don’t shoot, Andy!”
The latter came softly to his feet, but still crouched, panting and savage under the urge of that swift impulse to fight. He kept low in the shadow that washed across the room, below the level of the table on which the squat lantern sat. In this shadow Andy slipped to the farther corner of the room. There he was in a position that neither the two windows nor the open door commanded. Here he straightened, still with the revolver ready.
“You can drop your hands now, Scottie,” he ordered.
Scottie had turned slowly to follow the movements of Lanning, always with his arms stiffly above his head.
“Whispering winds!” he exclaimed, as he brought his hands down. “Fast as ever, eh? Thought you’d be slowed up a little by the quiet life, but you’re not.”
“What’s up?” demanded Andrew Lanning. “And what d’you want, Scottie? Is there anyone outside?”
“Nobody that means you any harm. Suspicious, aren’t you, these days? How does that come, Andy? Living among these fine, quiet, honest men in Martindale, I should think that your life would be like a smooth-flowing river.” He grinned impishly at Lanning.
“You’ve said enough,” said Andy. It was a new man who faced Scottie, a dangerous, cunning, agile man whose eyes never ceased roving from door to window to the face of his guest. “Why are you here?”