"You bet I'm proud," said Perrine. It sounded as if he spoke against time. "I cover a lot of ground. I cast a big shadder. I can do everything better'n you, which we will prove in another minute. About them hawsses—that was yore luck. It's alius been yore luck to draw meaner brutes than me. I can ride anythin' that wears hair, but I nev' could show on the leather-covered easy chairs they gimme. I don't like you—never did and never will. I'll be runnin' yore name into the ground a long time after yore dead. You been in my way too long. Yuh've hogged the middle o' the stage when it was my place by rights and—the light's out!"
The room was a cramped cell of blackness, the stink of kerosene filling Jim Chaffee's nostrils. He heard Perrine's mighty hand slap against a gun butt, and he found himself weaving on his feet, crouched forward like a wrestler; everything was atremble with sound, everything shook under the blasting reports that filled the place. Purple lights flashed and trailed into nothing; there was the spat of bullets behind him. He thought he had fired twice and the belief somehow disheartened him; he felt numb. Then Perrine's breathing came short and quick; rose to a titanic effort and sank to laggard spurts. Perrine was falling; and in falling carried everything around him, like the downsweep of a tree. The table capsized; the lamp smashed and jangled on the floor. Then Perrine was speaking for the last time.
"Never believe yuh—is a better man. Luck. Allus luck." So he died with this faith in himself, going down the corridor of eternity.
Callahan's was of a sudden full of men. Chaffee opened the office door and faced the light. Homesteaders ranged around the walls; Stirrup S men piled through. But when they saw him and observed the bleak gravity of his eyes they stopped.
"Perrine's in there," said he. "I beat him to the draw." That was all he said. He forced a way through the crowd and hurried down the street. During the last half hour there had been a thought and a desire in his head; he had been fighting against interruption. There was nothing now that could stay him, nothing to stop him from going to Gay and telling her what clamored for expression. Behind, he heard a vast upheaval in Callahan's. The saloon was being torn apart, a target for the long suppressed animosity of the Stirrup S men against the headquarters of every disturbing element in Roaring Horse. Another time and he might have turned back to check that, but now only one purpose swayed him; thus he shouldered through the guards and turned into the Gusher. The clerk, discreetly absent during the turmoil, was again in the lobby.
"Have you seen Miss Thatcher recently?" asked Chaffee.
"Not since right after she left the dining room," replied the clerk. "She stayed down here a minute and then went upstairs."
For the first time that evening Chaffee considered the possible significance of her room's open door. The thought sent him up the steps three at a time. The door was still open, the room still empty. He entered, looking about, trying to see if there had been marks of disturbance. But as he peered into the clothes closet he heard a faint murmur of a woman's voice somewhere in the hall. He hurried out, the sound leading him back to the landing, pulling him to the bottom of the rear stairs and across the kitchen to the storeroom. He put his hand to the door, finding it locked; and that isolated fact in all the night's turbulence aroused a hot anger.
"Gay—are you all right?"
"Y-yes, but there's a rat in here!"
He wasted no time on the lock. Bracing himself, he crushed the panel with a drive of his shoulder, ripped the catch clear, and caught hold of her extended arms. He saw instantly the mark of a blow on her temple.
"Who did that?"
"My dear man, don't you eat me alive. Let's wait until I get out of here."
"Soon settled," said he, and carried her back to her room. "Now, who did that?"
"Can it be so bad?" she wanted to know, and went directly to the mirror. "That is a mark of Mr. Woolfridge's affection, Jim. I suppose I should feel honored that he wished to kidnap me. Where is he now?"
"In jail."
She turned and came over. "My poor man! They have hurt you so much more than they've hurt me. Is it all done?"
"All but the judge and the jury."
She made a queer little gesture with her hand. "Then there is nothing for me to do but pack."
"Pack for what? Where are you going?"
"Back home," said she in a rather small voice.
He shook his head. "Not now. Nor any other time without me. Gay—"
Her fine rounding features were pale. One hand crept to her breast, and she seemed profoundly disturbed. He caught the changing expression had came nearer.
"I can only bring you a bad name," said she quietly. "Only a bad name."
"I ain't interested in that, Gay."
"Oh, you have always been that way! Why don't you ask me about myself? Why won't you let me tell you? Do you think I'd ever come to you with all that's behind me—you not knowing?"
"I know."
"You can't know. How could you?"
"Folks took plenty of pains to tell me during those days in Bannock City."
"Well?"
"They're a bunch of blind fools," he grunted. "Do you figure I believe it? The first time I saw you I knew the kind of a woman you were. I—"
"I ran away," said she, the words rushing out of her, "because home meant only a dad who worked me from daylight to dark and sent me to bed hungry. I ran away because the only man who was ever kind to me in those years helped me to do it. Whatever I am, Jim, I have made myself. That man was nothing but kind. Never anything but that from the time he took me in his rig until the time he put me on a train going east. I have never seen him again. Nobody else ever has. And so the story about me was carried on. Jim, I have been decent—I—"
"Don't need to tell me that, Gay," was his gruff reply. "I don't like to hear you defending yourself. You don't need to. Seems to me I need to do the explainin'. I'm white and twenty- eight. Sound of limb and busted flat. But I think, now that the fighting is over, I can get a job. Always some kind of a job. Some kind of shelter."
"Shelter—Jim I have never known the security of a home of my own. Never. Pillar to post is the way I have lived. I washed dishes to go to school. Always wandering. Wherever you want to take me—if you want me at all—"
Somebody came up the stairway and turned at the door. Craib's bald head glistened on them as he ducked.
"Oh, Jim."
"Come in, Craib."
But Craib stopped on the doorsill. "Man that rented your place from Woolfridge came to me to-night. I took it over. You're free to go back, Jim. I'll take care of all the details. It ain't mine yet and it ain't yours. But you go back. We'll straighten it out and we'll stock it up. I want no money from you till everything's back to normal. It's just a personal affair between the both of us and I wanted to come and tell you soon's I could. I would like—" and the heavy face changed a trifle, as much as it ever would—"I would like you to consider me a friend."
"Well," began Jim, and found himself looking at an empty opening. Craib had gone.
"There's shelter, Gay," he drawled.
She smiled, and the color came back to her as he closed in.
Presently she looked up, the film of tears in her eyes, but still smiling. "You take care of the outside of that cabin, Jim, and I'll take care of the inside."
"Put on a hat," said Chaffee with already that touch of proprietorship which comes to a married man, "and let's go down for a cup of coffee."