The Cow Puncher - Robert J. C. Stead (best reads .TXT) 📗

was under high tension; powerful currents of thought were bearing the masses along unaccustomed channels; society itself was in a state of flux. If he were to strike at all let the blow fall at once.

On this early August night he ascertained that Dave was working alone in his office. Then he called a number on a telephone.

"This is the night," he explained. "You will find him alone in his office. I will be waiting to hear from you at——"—he quoted Mrs. Hardy's telephone number. Then he drove his car to the Hardy home, exchanged a few words with Irene, and sat down to a hand of cribbage with her mother.

Poring over his correspondence, Dave tried to abstract his mind from the tumultuous doings of these last days. Office organization had been paralyzed; stenographers and clerks were incapable with excitement. It was as though some great excursion had been announced; something wonderful and novel, which divorced the interest from the dull routine of business. And Dave, with his ear cocked for the cry of the latest extra, spent the evening hours in a valiant effort at concentration.

Suddenly he heard a knock at the door; not a business man's knock; not an office girl's knock; a hesitating, timid, apologetic knock.

"Come in," he called. No one entered, but presently he heard the knock again. He arose and walked to the door. Outside stood a young woman. She looked up shyly, her face half concealed beneath a broad hat.

"If you please," she said, "excuse me, but—you are Mr. Elden, aren't you?"

"Yes; can I help you in any way?"

The woman tittered a moment, but resumed soberly, "You will wonder at me coming to you, but I'm from the country. Did you think that?"

"I suspected it," said Dave, with a smile. "You knocked——" He paused.

"Yes?"

"Like a country girl," he said, boldly.

She tittered again. "Well, I'm lost," she confessed. "I got off the train a short time ago. My aunt was to meet me, but there are such crowds in the street—I must have missed her. And I saw your name on the window, and I had heard of you. So I just thought I'd ask—if you wouldn't mind—showing me to this address."

She fumbled in her pocket, and Dave invited her into the office. There she produced a torn piece of paper with an address.

"Why, that's just a few blocks," said Dave. "I'll walk around with you." He turned for his hat, but at that moment there was another timid knock on the door. He opened it. A boy of eight or ten years stood outside.

"Can I come in?" the lad ventured.

"Why, of course you can. What is it, son?"

"Are you Mr. Elden?"

"Yes."

The lad looked shyly about the office. It was evident he was impressed with its magnificence. Suddenly he pulled off his hat, disclosing a shock of brown hair.

"Are you Mr. Elden that sells lots?"

"Yes. Or, rather, I did sell lots, but not many of late. Were you thinking of buying a few lots?"

"Did you sell lots to my father?"

"Well, if I knew your father's name perhaps I could tell you. Who is your father?"

"He's Mr. Merton. I'm his son. And he said to me, before he got so bad, he said, 'There's just one honest man in this city, and that's Mr. Elden.' Is that you, Mr. Elden?"

"Well, I hope it is, but I won't claim such a distinction. I remember your father very well. Did he send you to me?"

"No sir. He's too sick. He don't know anybody now. He didn't know me to-night." The boy's voice went thick, and he stopped and swallowed. "And then I remembered what he said about you, and I just came. Was that all right, Mr. Elden?"

"You say your father is very sick?"

"He don't know anybody."

"Have you help—a doctor—a nurse?"

"No sir. We haven't any money. My father spent it all for the lots that he bought from you."

Dave winced. Then, turning to the young woman, "I'm afraid this is a more urgent case than yours. I'll call a taxi to take you to your address."

To his surprise his visitor broke out in a ribald laugh. She had seated herself on a desk, and was swinging one foot jauntily.

"It's all off," she said. "Say, Dave, you couldn't lose me in this burg. You don't remember me, do you? Well, all the better. I'm rather glad I broke down on this job. I used to be something of an actress, and I'd have put it over if it hadn't been for the kid. The fact is, Dave," she continued, "I was sent up here to decoy you. It wasn't fair fighting, and I didn't like it, but money has been mighty slow of late. I wonder—how much you'd give to know who sent me?"

Dave pulled some bills from his pocket and held them before her. She took them from his hand.

"Conward," she said.

Dave's blood went to his head. "The scoundrel!" he cried. "The low down dog! There's more in this than appears on the surface."

"Sure there is," she said. "There's another woman. There always is."

Elden walked to his desk. From a drawer he took a revolver; toyed with it a moment in his hands; broke it open, crammed it full of cartridges and thrust it in his pocket.

The girl watched him with friendly interest. "Believe me, Dave," she said, "if Conward turns up missing I won't know a thing—not a d—— thing."

For a moment he stood irresolute. He could only guess what Conward's plan had been, but that it had been diabolical and cowardly, and that it concerned Irene, he had no doubt. His impulse was to immediately confront Conward, force a confession, and deal with him as the occasion might seem to require. But his eye fell on the boy, with his shock of brown hair and wistful, half-frightened face.

"I'll go with you first," he said, with quick decision. Then to the girl, "Sorry I must turn you out, but this case is urgent."

"That's all right," she said. Suddenly there was a little catch in her voice. "I'm used to being turned out."

He shot a sharp glance at her. Her face was laughing. "You're too decent for your job," he said, abruptly.

"Thanks, Dave," she answered, and he saw her eyes glisten. "That helps—some." And before he knew it she was into the street.

"All right, son," said Dave, taking up the matter now in hand. "What's your name—your first name?"

"Charlie."

"And your address?"

The boy mentioned a distant subdivision.

"That is out, isn't it? Well, we'll take the car. We'll run right out and see what is to be done. I guess I'd better call a doctor at once."

He went to the telephone and gave some directions. Then he and the boy walked to a garage, and in a few moments were humming along the by-streets into the country. Dave had already become engrossed in his errand of mercy, and his rage at Conward, if not forgotten, was temporarily dismissed from his mind. He chatted with the boy as he drove.

"You go to school?"

"Not this year. Father has been too sick. Of course, this is holidays, and he says he'll be all right before they're over."

Dave smiled grimly. "The incurable optimism of it," he murmured to himself. Then outwardly, "Of course he will. We'll fix him up in no time with a good doctor and a good nurse."

They drove on through the calm night, leaving the city streets behind and following what was little more than a country trail. This was crossed in every direction, and at every possible angle, by just such other country trails, unravelling themselves into the darkness. Here and there they bumped over pieces of graded street, infinitely rougher than the natural prairie; once Dave dropped his front wheels into a collapsing water trench; once he just grazed an isolated hydrant. The city lights were cut off by a shoulder of foothill; only their dull glow hung in the distant sky.

"And this is one of our 'choice residential subdivisions,'" said Dave to himself, as with Charlie's guidance and his own in-born sense of location he threaded his way through the maze of diverging trails. "Fine business; fine business."

As the journey continued the sense of self-reproach which had been static in him for many months became more insistent, and he found himself repeating the ironical phrase, "Fine business, fine business. Yes, I let Conward 'weigh the coal' all right." The intrusion of Conward into his mind sent the blood to his head, but at that moment his reflections were cut short by the boy.

"We will have to get out here," he said. "The bridge is down."

Investigation proved him to be right. A bridge over a small stream had collapsed, and was slowly disintegrating amid its own wreckage. Dave explored the stream bottom, getting muddy boots for his pains. Then he ran the car a little to one side of the road, locked the switch, and walked on with the boy.

"Pretty lonely out here, isn't it?" he ventured.

"Oh, no. There is a street light we can see in a little while; it is behind the hill now. We see it from the corner of our shack. It's very cheery."

"Fine business," Dave repeated to himself. "And this is how our big success was made. Well, the 'success' has vanished as quickly as it came. I suppose there is a Law somewhere that is not mocked."

They were passing through a settlement of crude houses, dimly visible in the starlight and by occasional yellow blurs from their windows. Before one of the meanest of these the boy at last stopped. The upper hinge of the door was broken, and a feeble light struggled through the space where it gaped outward. Charlie pulled the door open, and Dave entered. At first his eyes could not take in the dim outlines before him; he was conscious of a very small and stuffy room, with a peculiar odour which he attributed to an oil lamp burning on a box. He walked over and turned the lamp up, but the oil was consumed; a red, sullen, smoking wick was its only response. Then he felt in his pocket, and struck a match.

The light revealed the dinginess of the little room. There was a bed, covered with musty, ragged clothing; a table, littered with broken and dirty dishes and pieces of stale food; a stove, cracked and greasy, and one or two bare boxes serving as articles of furniture. But it was to the bed Dave turned, and, with another match, bent over the shrunken form that lay almost concealed amid the coarse coverings. He brought his face down close, then straightened up and steadied himself for a moment.

"He'll soon be well, don't you think, Mister? He said he would be well when the holidays——" But Dave's expression stopped the boy, whose own face went suddenly wild with fear.

"He is well now, Charlie," he said, as steadily as he could. "It is all holidays now for him."

The match had burnt out, and the room was in utter darkness. Dave heard the child drawing his feet slowly across the floor, then suddenly whimpering like a thing that had been mortally hurt. He groped toward him, and at length his fingers found his shock of hair. He drew the boy slowly into his arms; then very, very tight.… After all, they were orphans together.

"You will come with me," he said, at length. "I will see that you are provided for. The doctor will soon be here, or we will meet him on the way, and he will make the arrangements for—the arrangements that have to be made, you know."

They retraced their steps toward the town, meeting the doctor at the broken bridge. Dave exchanged a few words with him in low tones, and they passed on. Soon they were swinging again through the city streets, this time through the busy thoroughfares, which were almost blocked with tense, excited crowds about the bulletin boards. Even with the developments of the evening