Black Jack

CHAPTER 23

So turned, Terry could not see her clearly. He caught a glimmer of red bronze hair, dark in shadow and brilliant in high lights, and a sheen of greenish eyes. Otherwise, he only noted the casual manner in which she acknowledged the introduction, unsmiling, indifferent, as Pollard said: “Here's my daughter Kate. This is Terry—a new hand.”

It seemed to Terry that as he said this the rancher made a gesture as of warning, though this, no doubt, could be attributed to his wish to silently explain away the idiosyncrasy of Terry in using his first name only. He was presented in turn to the four men, and thought them the oddest collection he had ever laid eyes on.

Slim Dugan was tall, but not so tall as he looked, owing to his very small head and narrow shoulders. His hair was straw color, excessively silky, and thin as the hair of a year-old child. There were other points of interest in Slim Dugan; his feet, for instance, were small as the feet of a girl, accentuated by the long, narrow riding boots, and his hands seemed to be pulled out to a great and unnecessary length. They made up for it by their narrowness.

His exact opposite was Marty Cardiff, chunky, fat, it seemed, until one noted the roll and bulge of the muscles at the shoulders. His head was settled into his fat shoulders somewhat in the manner of Denver's, Terry thought.

Oregon Charlie looked the part of an Indian, with his broad nose and high cheekbones, flat face, slanted dark eyes; but his skin was a dead and peculiar white. He was a down-headed man, and one could rarely imagine him opening his lips to speak; he merely grunted as he shook hands with the stranger.

To finish the picture, there was a man as huge as Joe Pollard himself, and as powerful, to judge by appearances. His face was burned to a jovial red; his hair was red also, and there was red hair on the backs of his freckled hands.

All these men met Terry with cordial nods, but there was a carelessness about their demeanor which seemed strange to Terry. In his experience, the men of the mountains were a timid or a blustering lot before newcomers, uneasy, and anxious to establish their place. But these men acted as if meeting unknown men were a part of their common, daily experience. They were as much at their ease as social lions.

Pollard was explaining the presence of Terry.

“He's come up to clean out the varmints,” he said to the others. “They been getting pretty thick on the range, you know.”

“You came in just wrong,” complained Kate, while the men turned four pairs of grave eyes upon Terry and seemed to be judging him. “I got Oregon singing at last, and he was doing fine. Got a real voice, Charlie has. Regular branded baritone, I'll tell a man.”

“Strike up agin for us, Charlie,” said Pollard good-naturedly. “You don't never make much more noise'n a grizzly.”

But Charlie looked down at his hands and a faint spot of red appeared in his cheek. Obviously he was much embarrassed. And when he looked up, it was to fix a glance of cold suspicion upon Terry, as though warning him not to take this talk of social acquirements as an index to his real character.

“Get us some coffee, Kate,” said Pollard. “Turned off cold coming up the hill.”

She did not rise. She had turned around to her music again, and now she acknowledged the order by lifting her head and sending a shrill whistle through the room. Her father started violently.

“Damn it, Kate, don't do that!”

“The only thing that'll bring Johnny on the run,” she responded carelessly.

And, indeed, the door on the left of the room flew open a moment later, and a wide-eyed Chinaman appeared with a long pigtail jerking about his head as he halted and looked about in alarm.

“Coffee for the boss and the new hand,” said Kate, without turning her head, as soon as she heard the door open. “Pronto, Johnny.”

Johnny snarled an indistinct something and withdrew muttering.

“You'll have Johnny quitting the job,” complained Pollard, frowning. “You can't scare the poor devil out of his skin like that every time you want coffee. Besides, why didn't you get up and get it for us yourself?”

Still she did not turn; but, covering a yawn, replied: “Rather sit here and play.”

Her father swelled a moment in rage, but he subsided again without audible protest. Only he sent a scowl at Terry as though daring him to take notice of this insolence. As for the other men, they had scattered to various parts of the room and remained there, idly, while the boss and the new hand drank the scalding coffee of Johnny. All this time Pollard remained deep in thought. His meditations exploded as he banged the empty cup back on the table.

“Kate, this stuff has got to stop. Understand?”

The soft jingling of the piano continued without pause.

“Stop that damned noise!”

The music paused. Terry felt the long striking muscles leap into hard ridges along his arms, but glancing at the other four, he found that they were taking the violence of Pollard quite as a matter of course. One was whittling, another rolled a cigarette, and all of them, if they took any visible notice of the argument, did so with the calmest of side glances.

“Turn around!” roared Pollard.

His daughter turned slowly and faced him. Not white-faced with fear, but to the unutterable astonishment of Terry she was quietly looking her father up and down. Pollard sprang to his feet and struck the table so that it quivered through all its massive length.

“Are you trying to shame me before a stranger?” thundered the big man. “Is that the scene?”

She flicked Terry Hollis with a glance. “I think he'll understand and make allowances.”

It brought the heavy fist smashing on the table again. And an ugly feeling rose in Hollis that the big fellow might put hands on his daughter.

“And what d'you mean by that? What in hell d'you mean by that?”

In place of wincing, she in turn came to her feet gracefully. There had been such an easy dignity about her sitting at the piano that she had seemed tall to Terry. Now that she stood up, he was surprised to see that she was not a shade more than average height, beautifully and strongly made.

“You've gone about far enough with your little joke,” said the girl, and her voice was low, but with an edge of vibrancy that went through Hollis. “And you're going to stop—pronto!”

There was a flash of teeth as she spoke, and a quiver through her body. Terry had never seen such passion, such unreasoning, wild passion, as that which had leaped on the girl. Though her face was not contorted, danger spoke from every line of it. He made himself tense, prepared for a similar outbreak from the father, but the latter relaxed as suddenly as his daughter had become furious.

“There you go,” he complained, with a sort of heavy whine. “Always flying off the handle. Always turning into a wildcat when I try to reason with you!”

“Reason!” cried the girl. “Reason!”

Joe Pollard grew downcast under her scorn. And Terry, sensing that the crisis of the argument had passed, watched the other four men in the room. They had not paid the slightest attention to the debate during its later phases. And two of them—Slim and huge Phil Marvin—had begun to roll dice on a folded blanket, the little ivories winking in the light rapidly until they came to a rest at the farther end of the cloth. Possibly this family strife was a common thing in the Pollard household. At any rate, the father now passed off from accusation to abrupt apology. “You always get me riled at the end of the day, Kate. Damn it! Can't you never bear with a gent?”

The tigerish alertness passed from Kate Pollard. She was filled all at once with a winning gentleness and, crossing to her father, took his heavy hands in hers.

“I reckon I'm a bad one,” she accused herself. “I try to get over tantrums—but—I can't help it! Something—just sort of grabs me by the throat when I get mad. I—I see red.”

“Hush up, honey,” said the big man tenderly, and he ran his thick fingers over her hair. “You ain't so bad. And all that's bad in you comes out of me. You forget and I'll forget.”

He waved across the table.

“Terry'll be thinking we're a bunch of wild Indians the way we been actin'.”

“Oh!”

Plainly she was recalled to the presence of the stranger for the first time in many minutes and, dropping her chin in her hand, she studied the new arrival.

He found it difficult to meet her glance. The Lord had endowed Terry Hollis with a remarkable share of good looks, and it was not the first time that he had been investigated by the eyes of a woman. But in all his life he had never been subjected to an examination as minute, as insolently frank as this one. He felt himself taken part and parcel, examined in detail as to forehead, chin, and eyes and heft of shoulders, and then weighed altogether. In self-defense he looked boldly back at her, making himself examine her in equal detail. Seeing her so close, he was aware of a marvellously delicate olive-tanned skin with delightful tints of rose just beneath the surface. He found himself saying inwardly: “It's easy to look at her. It's very easy. By the Lord, she's beautiful!”

As for the girl, it seemed that she was not quite sure in her judgment. For now she turned to her father with a faint frown of wonder. And again it seemed to Terry that Joe Pollard made an imperceptible sign, such as he had made to the four men when he introduced Terry.

But now he broke into breezy talk.

“Met Terry down in Pedro's—”

The girl seemed to have dismissed Terry from her mind already, for she broke in: “Crooked game he's running, isn't it?”

“I thought so till today. Then I seen Terry, here, trim Pedro for a flat twenty thousand!”

“Oh,” nodded the girl. Again her gaze reverted leisurely to the stranger and with a not unflattering interest.

“And then I seen him lose most of it back again. Roulette.”

She nodded, keeping her eyes on Terry, and the boy found himself desiring mightily to discover just what was going on behind the changing green of her eyes. He was shocked when he discovered. It came like the break of high dawn in the mountains of the Big Bend. Suddenly she had smiled openly, frankly. “Hard luck, partner!”

A little shivering sense of pleasure ran through him. He knew that he had been admitted by her—accepted.

Her father had thrown up his head.

“Someone come in the back way. Oregon, go find out!”

Dark-eyed Oregon Charlie slipped up and through the door. Everyone in the room waited, a little tense, with lifted heads. Slim was studying the last throw that Phil Marvin had made. Terry could not but wonder what significance that “back way” had. Presently Oregon reappeared.

“Pete's come.”

“The hell!”

“Went upstairs.”

“Wants to be alone,” interrupted the girl. “He'll come down and talk when he feels like it. That's Pete's way.”

“Watching us, maybe,” growled Joe Pollard, with a shade of uneasiness still. “Damned funny gent, Pete is. Watches a man like a cat; watches a gopher hole all day, maybe. And maybe the gent he watches is a friend he's known for ten years. Well—let Pete go. They ain't no explaining him.”

Through the last part of his talk, and through the heaviness of his voice, cut another tone, lighter, sharper, venomous: “Phil, you gummed them dice that last time!”

Joe Pollard froze in place; the eyes of the girl widened. Terry, looking across the room, saw Phil Marvin scoop up the dice and start to his feet.

“You lie, Slim!”

Instinctively Terry slipped his hand onto his gun. It was what Phil Marvin had done, as a matter of fact. He stood swelling and glowering, staring down at Slim Dugan. Slim had not risen. His thin, lithe body was coiled, and he reminded Terry in ugly fashion of a snake ready to strike. His hand was not near his gun. It was the calm courage and self- confidence of a man who is sure of himself and of his enemy. Terry had heard of it before, but never seen it. As for Phil, it was plain that he was ill at ease in spite of his bulk and the advantage of his position. He was ready to fight. But he was not at all pleased with the prospect.

Terry again glanced at the witnesses. Every one of them was alert, but there was none of that fear which comes in the faces of ordinary men when strife between men is at hand. And suddenly Terry knew that every one of the five men in the room was an old familiar of danger, every one of them a past master of gun fighting!