Ronicky Doone's Treasure - Max Brand (big screen ebook reader .txt) 📗
- Author: Max Brand
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Not a word, not a glance followed him. The remaining three shifted their places a little and closed the gap which he had left, as well-drilled soldiers close the gap where a comrade falls in the charge. Each of the three had shared in the plundering of Bud; each of the three was confident he could keep on winning from his companions. But Kent went gloomily to the leader.
“You seen that?” he said, in a deep voice of disgust.
“I seen it.” The chief nodded.
“Can you beat it?”
“Hard luck,” said Jack Moon, who knew perfectly what was coming.
“Well, sir,” went on Bud Kent, “there lies a hundred thousand in gold, and if I hadn’t hit that last streak of bad luck I’d of cleaned the whole thing up. Eh?”
“Maybe you would,” said the leader.
“Maybe? I’d of been sure to! Ain’t I played with all these gents time and again and always trimmed them? They can’t sit in the same game with me. Only the luck held steady for them and steady against me. But a couple more hands would of changed things. Luck? I never seen it hold like this! See that brace of bullets and the three nines I held? And four measly deuces come out and beat me!”
He groaned at the thought.
“If you was to back me,” he said suddenly, “I could clean out the whole mess. If you was to back me, I’d split the winnings with you, Jack.”
“Thanks,” said Jack Moon soberly.
“I’d make it two parts for you and one part for me,” persisted Bud Kent.
“I can’t do it, Bud,” said Moon as kindly as possible. “You know how it is with me. If I backed you, then the next fellow who went busted would come and ask me to back him. And then the next and the next. Of course you and me know that it’s different with you. We know that you sure can gamble. But the other boys wouldn’t see it that way. They’d think that because I backed you I ought to back them. They’d accuse me of playing favorites. That’s clear, ain’t it, Bud?”
“But you wouldn’t have to say anything,” suggested Bud. “Just slip me a handful of the stuff and — “
“They’d know where you got it. Nobody but me would stake any of the boys. If you think I’m wrong, go around to some of the other blankets and ask some of the fellows for a handout. See what you get!”
“I know,” grunted Bud Kent, and he rolled his eyes savagely at his former companions. “I’ll make ‘em pay sooner or later,” he declared. “The swine! Not a one in the crowd that’ll stake me!”
“What about Hugh Dawn?” suggested the leader.
Bud Kent looked up at him sharply. But Jack Moon, having dropped his sinister suggestion, was staring idly up to the dark of the sky.
The silence continued through a breathless moment.
“D’you mean it?” gasped Bud Kent at last.
“Mean what?” said Jack Moon, and his eye was innocent as the eye of a child.
Bud Kent considered his master. The moods of Jack Moon, he knew, were variable as the moods of the west wind. Other members of the crowd strove, from time to time, to find the meanings hidden in that implacable and cunning mind, but Bud Kent, the oldest member of the crew, had ceased striving to find the clue to the riddle. What Moon thought was his own property, and it was dangerous to attempt to read two meanings into his words. But now Bud scanned the face of the master and hungered for knowledge. What was the significance of that short phrase of a moment ago?
“You think,” said Bud at length, very slowly and very cautiously, “that Hugh ain’t got much use for his money?”
“I dunno,” said the leader, as carelessly as ever. “I ain’t asked him about it.”
“It might take a lot of persuading,” said Bud Kent, “and I ain’t much at talk.”
“Sure you ain’t,” said the other. “So you better arrange it so’s there won’t be no need for chatter.”
Bud Kent moistened his Ups, parted them to speak, changed his mind, and finally managed to whisper: “Chief, talk out. I don’t foller you exactly.”
“How to stop talk?” replied the leader casually. “Any fool knows that. What mostly keeps a gent from talking?”
“Being persuaded, I guess.”
“Think you can persuade a man out of thirty thousand dollars?”
Bud swallowed hard.
“I dunno,” he said desperately. “You might stop a gent by gagging him.”
He grinned, so that this last suggestion might pass in lieu of a jest if need be. But Jack Moon kept an entirely sober face. All the time he was watching the effect on Bud Kent. He was as interested as the scientist who watches the insect wriggle under the touch of acid.
“Gagging?” said he. “That’s a fool idea.”
“What is your idea?” asked Bud.
“Look here. I had to promise Dawn his share before I could find out where the gold was, didn’t I? And then I gave him the gold, didn’t I?”
“Sure.”
“But I ain’t his guardian, am I? After giving the stuff to him, I don’t have to stay up all night to guard it, do I?”
“No, no!” breathed Bud, beginning to see the light.
“It sure ought to be clear to you, Bud, that it don’t make me any too happy to see a skunk like Dawn, that’s left the crowd once, get away with all that loot.”
“That’s clear, chief.”
“Then, if a gent was to slip in soft to Hugh’s hut and grab the coin — “
“With three other men sleeping around him?”
“I’ll see that he sleeps alone tonight. They ain’t any need of guarding him. He thinks he’s extra safe with us now!”
“Ah!” murmured Bud.
“What you want is a stake,” went on Jack Moon. “Tonight ain’t the only night for poker. They’ll be another and then another, until the gold is all collected up in the hands of two or three of the boys. Well, Bud, you’re soft moving and silent. If you was to slide in and take the stuff, it wouldn’t make me extra mad. But mind this: They’s no harm to come to Hugh Dawn!”
Bud Kent replied with a broad grin, nodded, and then said suddenly: “But suppose he makes a kick about his money in the morning when he finds it’s gone? Suppose they search for it and find it in my saddlebags?”
“If you’re enough of a fool not to bury it, son, I suppose they would find it in your saddlebags.”
Bud Kent waited to hear no more, but, nodding to his chief with a whispered word of gratitude, he sauntered back to watch the game he had just left.
On and on to midnight the game continued, but by this time the terrific labors of the last two days began to tell. The gold fever was dying out, and, without this stimulant to keep them going, heads began to nod and eyes began to grow filmy. Seymour and Craig by this time were also broke; they joined Bud Kent as a gallery to watch the others. But at length, by mutual consent and almost at the same moment, the games were broken up and the gamblers staggered hollow-eyed toward their shacks. Here Jack Moon, who had been waiting for this moment, assigned them swiftly to their separate lodgings. He kept his promise to Bud, steering the others away from the hut of Dawn. The pretext was easily found — no use waking up a sleeper when there was plenty of room in other huts. One shack for the girl, one for her father, and the other structures afforded room for thrice the whole number of men.
Meanwhile Ronicky waited until the leader was out of sight. Then he glanced about the clearing. Other than himself, every man in the crowd was busy with getting into his blankets — all except the two outposts detailed to keep watch south and north, unfailing precautions which the bandit chief never overlooked. But the clearing itself was the very apotheosis of peace. Not a voice sounded, not a footfall was to be heard. All was dull quiet, and Ronicky turned his back on the scene, entered the hut, and straightened out his own blanket.
One by one the breathing of the men in the hut became more deep and regular. He himself imitated the same sound and lay back, veiling his eyes with the lids and only peering out through the curtain of lashes. The silence grew more and more deep, it seemed to him. The heavier sound of Treat’s breathing sounded above the hushed chorus of the others. Someone was snoring in a nearby hut. But beyond and above was the silence.
It was, indeed, too quiet. It was the quiet of a snare, an illusion, a trap. And one of those impulses, which no man can really explain, came to Ronicky. An hour had passed since he lay down, and still sleep was far from his eyes. At length, with the softness of a guilty man who dreads oversight, he drew back his blanket and sat up. Finally he rose to a crouching position, stole to the door, and looked out onto the clearing.
He saw nothing at first, and he was about to dismiss his foolish fears when something stirred near the hut in which the girl slept. Ronicky Doone was instantly alert. Staring fixedly, he saw the thing again.
It was the form of a man crawling in an almost prone position so that the ground shadows well nigh covered him from the most searching view. Suspicion had been like a searchlight to pick out the figure for Ronicky Doone. Ordinarily, he would never have seen it.
The fellow, whoever he might be, had just crawled out of sight behind the shack of the girl. Ronicky slid back to his blankets, buckled his cartridge belt about him, and, blessing the fact that he had no riding boots to encumber his stockinged feet, he stole again to the door, prepared to stalk toward the hut of Jerry Dawn.
But as he reached the door again, the figure reappeared on the nearer side of the girl’s hut and crawled on until it passed behind the next shack, that where Hugh Dawn slept, and, though Ronicky waited an ample time, the stalker did not reappear. Then suddenly it flashed across the mind of the watcher that Hugh Dawn slept alone in that shack this night! Was there some ulterior purpose in the kindly insistence of Moon that Hugh be allowed to sleep on, undisturbed by the coming of others in his shack?
Ronicky did not pause to dissect possibilities. That was not his habit. He was instantly out of the door and going across the clearing at a stealthy pace.
Was it Moon himself who wandered about the camp and spied on Hugh Dawn, fearful lest the man steal away with his share of the gold during the night?
Another moment and Ronicky was crouched just under the wall of the cabin. Slowly, inch by inch — how painful was the movement! — he raised his head and looked into the interior of the shack from the window at the side of the building.
He was right. The stalker had aimed at entering the shack of Dawn, for the back door of the little house was still ajar,
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