Ronicky Doones Treasure | Page 3

or something, where the sheriff could scoop the whole bunch of us in. Is that your idea, Marty?"
Ronicky Doone had already advanced a step toward the newcomers, but as he heard these speeches he slipped back again, and, putting his hand over the nose of Lou, he hissed a caution into her ear. And glad he was that he had taught her this signal for silence. She remained at his back, not daring to stir or make a sound, and Ronicky, with a beating heart, crouched behind his barrier to spy on these strangers.

Chapter Two
The Plot
"All I say, 'Baldy' McNair," said Marty, "Is that the old man is sure stepping out long and hard to make things seem as mysterious as he can. Which they ain't no real need to come clean out here. This makes fifty miles I've rode, and you've come nigher onto eighty. What sense is in that, Baldy?"
The match burned out. Baldy spoke in the dark.
"Maybe the work he's got planned out lies ahead -- lies north."
"Maybe. But it sure grinds in on me the way he works. Never no reasons. Just orders. 'Meet here today after sunset.' That's all he says. I up and asks him: "Why after sunset, Jack? Afraid they'll be somebody to see us out there -- a coyote or something, maybe?' But he wouldn't answer me nothing. 'You do what I say, ' says he, 'and figure out your reasons for yourself.' That's the way he talks. I say: Is it fit and proper to talk to a gent like he was a slave?"
"Let's start a fire," said his companion. "Talk a pile better when we get some light on the subject."
In a minute or two they had collected a great pile of dry stuff; a little later the flames were leaping up in great bodies toward the roof and puffing out into the darkness.
The firelight showed Ronicky two men who had thrown their dripping slickers back from their shoulders. Marty was a scowling fellow with a black leather patch over his right eye. His companion justified his nickname by taking off his hat and revealing a head entirely and astonishingly free from hair. From the nape of his neck to his eyebrows there was not a vestige or a haze of hair. It gave him a look strangely infantile, which was increased by cheeks as rosy as autumn apples.
"Now," went on Baldy McNair, "let me put something in your ear, Lang. A lot of the boys have heard you knock the chief. Which maybe the chief himself has heard."
"He's give no sign," muttered Marty.
"Son," said Baldy, who was obviously much younger than the man of the patched eye, but who apparently gained dignity by the baldness of his head, "when Jack Moon gives a sign, it's the first sign and the last sign all rolled into one. First you'll hear of it will be Moon asking you to step out and talk to him. And Moon'll come back from that talk alone and say that you started out sudden on a long trip. You wouldn't be the first. There was my old pal 'Lefty' and 'Gunner' Matthews. There was more, besides. Always that way! If they start getting sore at the way he runs things, he just takes them out walking, and they all go on that long journey that you'll be taking one of these days if you don't mind your talk, son! I'm telling you because I'm your friend, and you can lay to that!"
"What I don't see," answered Marty Lang, "is why the chief wants to hang on to a gent forever. You make it out? Once in the band, always in the band. That ain't no sense. A gent don't want to stick to this game forever."
"Oh, ho!" chuckled Baldy. "Is that the way of it? Well, son, don't ever let the chief hear you say that! Sure we get tired of having to ride wherever he tells us to ride, and we want to settle down now and then -- or we think that we want to -- and lead a quiet life and have a wife and a house and a family and all that. For that matter, there's nothing to keep us from it. The chief don't object."
"Don't object? How can a gent settle down at anything when he's apt to get a call from the chief any minute?"
"Wrong again. Not more'n once every six months. That's about the average. And then it's always something worth while. How long you been with us?"
"Four years."
"Ever gone hungry for four years?"
"No."
"When you was sick, two years back, were you took care of?"
"Sure."
"What did you have when the chief picked you up?"
"Nothing."
"All right. You were down to zero. He picked you up. He gave you a