in a way,” she said faintly, rising slowly from her chair, “I can’t help feeling some interest.”
“Naturally not. But, you see, I was worried so much about you and this foolish fellow that I gave orders for him to be put out of the way, as soon as you left him.”
Caroline Smith stood for a moment stunned and then ran to him.
“No, no!” she declared. “In the name of the dear mercy of Heaven, John, you haven’t done that?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Then call him back—the one you sent. Call him back, John, and I’ll serve you the rest of my life without question. I’ll never fail you, John, but for your own sake and mine, for the sake of everything fair in the world, call him back!”
He pushed away her hands, but without violence. “I thought it would be this way,” he said coldly. “You told a very good lie, Caroline. I suppose clever Ronicky Doone rehearsed you in it, but it needed only the oldest trick in the world to expose you.”
She recoiled from him. “It was only a joke, then? You didn’t mean it, John? Thank Heaven for that!”
A savagery which, though generally concealed, was never far from the surface, now broke out in him, making the muscles of his face tense and his voice metallic. “Get to your room,” he said fiercely, “get to your room. I’ve wasted time enough on you and your brat of a brother, and now a Western lout is to spoil what I’ve done? I’ve a mind to wash my hands of all of you—and sink you. Get to your room, and stay there, while I make up my mind which of the two I shall do.”
She went, cringing like one beaten, to the door, and he followed her, trembling with rage.
“Or have you a choice?” he asked. “Brother or lover, which shall it be?”
She turned and stretched out her hands to him, unable to speak; but the man of the sneer struck down her arms and laughed in her face. In mute terror she fled to her room.
17. OLD SCARS
In his room Bill Gregg was striding up and down, throwing his hands toward the ceiling. Now and then he paused to slap Ronicky Doone on the back.
“It’s fate, Ronicky,” he said, over and over again. “Thinking of waking up and finding the girl that you’ve loved and lost standing waiting for you! It’s the dead come to life. I’m the happiest man in the world. Ronicky, old boy, one of these days I’ll be able—” He paused, stopped by the solemnity of Doone’s face. “What’s wrong, Ronicky?”
“I don’t know,” said the other gloomily. He rubbed his arms slowly, as if to bring back the circulation to numbed limbs.
“You act like you’re sick, Ronicky.”
“I’m getting bad-luck signs, Bill. That’s the short of it.”
“How come?”
“The old scars are prickling.”
“Scars? What scars?”
“Ain’t you noticed ‘em.”
It was bedtime, so Ronicky Doone took off his coat and shirt. The rounded body, alive with playing muscles, was striped, here and there, with white streaks—scars left by healed wounds.
“At your age? A kid like you with scars?” Bill Gregg had been asking, and then he saw the exposed scars and gasped. “How come, Ronicky,” he asked huskily in his astonishment, “that you got all those and ain’t dead yet?”
“I dunno,” said the other. “I wonder a pile about that, myself. Fact is I’m a lucky gent, Bill Gregg.”
“They say back yonder in your country that you ain’t never been beaten, Ronicky.”
“They sure say a lot of foolish things, just to hear themselves talk, partner. A gent gets pretty good with a gun, then they say he’s the best that ever breathed—that he’s never been beat. But they forget things that happened just a year back. No, sir; I sure took my lickings when I started.”
“But, dog-gone it, Ronicky, you ain’t twenty-four now!”
“Between sixteen and twenty-two I spent a pile of time in bed, Bill, and you can lay to that!”
“And you kept practicing?”
“Sure, when I found out that I had to. I never liked shooting much. Hated to think of having a gent’s life right inside the crook of my trigger finger. But, when I seen that I had to get good, why I just let go all holds and practiced day and night. And I still got to practice.”
“I seen that,” said Bill Gregg. “Every day, for an hour or two, you work with your guns.”
“It’s like being a musician,” said Ronicky without enthusiasm. “I heard about it once. Suppose a gent works up to be a fine musician, maybe at the piano. You’d think, when he got to the top and knew everything, he could lay off and take things easy the rest of his life. But not him! Nope, he’s got to work like a slave every day.”
“But how come you felt them scars pricking as a bad-luck sign, Ronicky?” he asked after a time. “Is there anything that’s gone wrong, far as you see?”
“I dunno,” said Ronicky gravely. “Maybe not, and maybe so. I ain’t a prophet, but I don’t like having everything so smooth—not when they’s a gent like the man with the sneer on the other end of the wire. It means he’s holding back some cards on us, and I’d sure like to see the color of what he’s got. What I’m going to work for is this, Bill: To get Caroline’s brother, Jerry Smith, and rustle him out of town.”
“But how can you do that when John Mark has a hold on him?”
“That’s a pile of bunk, Bill. I figure Mark is just bluffing. He ain’t going to turn anybody over to the police. Less he has to do with the police the happier he’ll be. You can lay to that. Matter of fact, he’s been loaning money to Caroline’s brother. You heard her say that. Also, he thinks that Mark is the finest and most generous gent that ever stepped. Probably a selfish skunk of a spoiled kid, this brother of hers. Most like he puts Mark up as sort of an ideal. Well, the thing to do is to get hold of him and wake him up and pay off his debts to Mark, which most like run to several thousand.”
“Several thousand, Ronicky? But where’ll we get the money?”
“You forget that I can always get money. It grows on the bushes for me.” He grinned at Bill Gregg.
“Once we get Jerry Smith, then the whole gang of us will head straight West, as fast as we can step. Now let’s hit the hay.”
Never had the mind of Ronicky Doone worked more quickly and surely to the point. The case of Jerry Smith was exactly what he had surmised. As for the crime of which John Mark knew, and which he held like a club over Jerry Smith, it had been purely and simply an act of self-defense. But, to Caroline and her brother, Mark
