He faced her with pretended anger. “What kind of manners is this?” demanded the master. “You need teaching, and by hell, you’ll get it. Now get out!” He threw up his arm, and the horse sprang sideways and back, lithe and neat footed as an enormous cat. There she stood alert, with ears pricking again.
“Look at that,” said Andy. “Ready for a game, you see? What can you do with a horse like that?”
“Ain’t you ever had to discipline her? Never used a whip on her?” asked the marshal.
“I should say not,” replied Andy. “If I seen a gent raise a whip on Sally, I’d …”
“Wait a minute!”
Andy shuddered and allowed the interruption to silence him. “I dunno,” he muttered. “I could stand almost anything but that. If they was to shy a stone at Sally, like they done the other day …”
“Did they do that?” asked the marshal softly.
“It was the Perkins kid,” said Andy. “Sally dodged the stone a mile, but it was sharp edged enough to have hurt her bad. I went in to see Jim Perkins.”
“You did? But you talked soft, Andy?”
“I done as well as I could. He said that boys will be boys, and then, all at once, I wanted to take him by the throat. It came to me like a fit. I fought it off, and I was weak afterward.”
“Did you say anything?”
“Not a word, but Jim Perkins went to the door with me, looking scared, and he said that he’d see that they was no more stones thrown at Sally.” The very memory of his anger made Andy change, and his mouth grew straight and hard.
“Then Sally doesn’t get on very well with the folks in town?” asked Hal Dozier. He himself had been too much on his big ranch of late to follow things in Martindale closely.
“She gets on with the kids pretty fine, but if a man comes near her, she tries to take a chunk out of him with her teeth, or brain him with her heels. There was young Canning the other day … he just jumped the fence in time.” He broke into riotous laughter.
“Wait a minute,” cut in the marshal. “There seems to be two sides to this story. Is that a laughing matter? Canning might have been killed!”
“Served him right for teasing her.”
The marshal shook his head. “You’d better see Hulan,” he suggested.
After a little more talk, Andrew accepted the advice. The Hulan Ranch was neighbor to the town. He would be practically in Martindale, and all that he wanted was to convince Martindale of his honest determination to reform. Saying good-bye to the marshal, he went straight to the hotel.
VI
Business was slack; men were plentiful on the range at this season, so Andrew was not the only one who went to the hotel to call on old Si Hulan. He found that the rancher was in his room interviewing the applicants one by one. He had three vacancies, and he intended to fill them all, but only after he had seen every man who was asking for a place. There were a dozen men on the veranda, all waiting to be seen or, having been seen, they waited for the selection of the rancher. They were playing together like a lot of great, senseless puppies, working off practical jests that caused more pain than laughter, and every man was sharp-eyed for a chance to take advantage of his fellow. Even as Andy approached, someone happened to turn his head as he walked down the veranda. Instantly he was tripped and sent pitching across the porch. He stopped his fall by thrusting both arms into the back of another who was driven, catapulting, down the steps. This man in turn attempted to stop his momentum by breaking the shock at the expense of Andy Lanning.
The latter had his back turned, but a running shadow warned him, and he leaped aside. The other rushed past with arms stretched out, grinning.
There was a sudden cessation of laughter on the porch as Andrew turned. The man who had attempted to knock him down from behind came to a stumbling halt and faced about, deadly pale, his lips twitching, and the expectancy of the men on the veranda was a thing to be felt like electricity in the air. It was very clear to Andy that they expected him to take offense and, being a gunman, to show his offense by drawing his revolver. The white, working face of the big fellow before him told the same story. The man was terribly afraid, facing death, and certain of his destruction. But his great brown hand was knotted about the butt of his gun, and he would not give way. Rather die, to be sure, than be shamed before so many. Pity came to Andy, and he smiled into the eyes of the other.
“There’s no harm done, partner,” he said gently, and went up on the veranda.
He left the big man behind him, stunned. Presently the latter went to the hitching rack, got his horse, and rode down the street. He would tell his children and his grandchildren in later years how he faced terrible Andy Lanning and came away with his life.
The crowd on the veranda began to break out of their silence again, but the former mirth was not restored. A shadow of dread had passed over them, and their spirits were still dampened. Covertly every eye watched Andrew. He went gloomily up the steps and laid his hand on the back of the first chair he saw, just as another man came hurriedly from the interior of the hotel.
“Hey,” he called, “my chair, you!”
Andrew turned, and the newcomer stopped, as though he had received a blow in the face.
“I made a mistake,” he said.
“Take your chair,” replied Andrew gravely. “There are plenty more.”
The other moistened his white lips. “I don’t want it,” he said unevenly. “Besides, I’m going right back inside.”
Before Andrew could speak again, the latter had turned and gone hastily through the door. Lanning sat down, buried in gloom. Dead silence reigned along the veranda now. He knew what was in their thoughts—that twice they had come within the verge of seeing gunplay. And he writhed at the thought. Did they think he was a professional bully to take advantage of them? He knew, as well as they knew, that an ordinary man had no ghost of a chance against his trained speed of hand and steadiness of nerve and lightning accuracy of eye. Did they think he would force issues on them? Yet he felt bitterly that, sooner or later, they would actually herd him into a mortal fight. Indeed one of these boys would not wait to ask questions. If he crossed the path of Lanning by chance, he would take it for granted that guns were the order of the day and draw his weapon. And then what was the chance of Andy, except to kill, or be killed?
Decidedly the marshal was right. He must get onto the Hulan Ranch and let Martindale grow more gradually acclimated to the changed Andrew Lanning. He knew that this position of his was one that many a bullying gunfighter had labored years to attain and had gloried in, but to him it was a horror. He wanted to stand up before them and tell them they were wrong. But he had tried that on the first day of his return to the town, and he had seen in every face the conviction that he lied.
He was glad when it came his turn to see Hulan, and as he stepped through the door into the inner hall, he heard the murmur of voices break out again on the veranda in subdued whispers, and he knew that they were talking of him.
Old Si Hulan greeted him with amazing warmth. He was a stringy, old man who had once been bulkily strong and was still active. Age had diminished him, but it had not crippled him. His lean, much-wrinkled face lighted, and he came out from behind the table to grip the hand of Andrew.