The Gringos | Page 7

in that land
where the primal instincts lay all on the surface; where men looked
askance at the one who drew oftenest the glances of the women and
who walked erect and unafraid in the midst of the lawlessness. Jack
Allen was fast making enemies, and no one knew it better than Bill.
When the young fellow disappeared, Bill looked again at the shifting
crowd upon which his eyes were wont to rest with the speculative gaze
of a farmer who leans upon the fence that bounds his land, and regards
his wheat-fields ripening for the sickle. He liked Jack, and the soul of
him was bitter with the bitterness that is the portion of maturity, when it
must stand by and see youth learn by the pangs of experience that fire
will burn most agonizingly if you hold your hand in the blaze.
One of his night bartenders came up; and Bill, dismissing Jack from his
mind, with a grunt of disgust, went in to talk over certain changes

which he meant to make in the bar as soon as he could get material and
carpenter together upon the spot.
He was still fussing with certain of the petty details that make or mar
the smooth running of an establishment like his, when his ear, trained
to detect the first note of discord in the babble which filled his big room
by night, caught an ominous note in the hum of the street crowd outside.
He lifted his head from examining a rickety table-leg.
"Go see what's happened, Jim," he suggested to the man, who had just
come up with a hammer and some nails; and went back to dreaming of
the time when his place should be a palace, and he would not have to
nail the legs on his tables every few days because of the ebullitions of
excitement in his customers. He had strengthened the legs, and was
testing them by rocking the table slightly with a broad palm upon it,
when Jim came back.
"Some shooting scrape, back on the flat," Jim announced indifferently.
"Some say it was a hold-up. Two or three of the Committee have gone
out to investigate."
"Yeah--I'll bet the Committee went out!" snorted Bill. "They'll be
lynching the Diggers' dogs for fighting, when the supply of humans
runs out. They've just about played that buckskin out, packing men out
to the oak to hang 'em lately," he went on glumly, sliding the
rejuvenated table into its place in the long row that filled that side of
the room. "I never saw such an enthusiastic bunch as they're getting to
be!"
"That's right," Jim agreed perfunctorily, as a man is wont to agree with
his employer. "Somebody'll hang, all right."
"There's plenty that need it--if the Committee only had sense enough to
pick 'em out and leave the rest alone," growled Bill, going from table to
table, tipping and testing for other legs that wobbled.
Jim sensed the rebuff in his tone and went back to the door, around
which a knot of men engaged in desultory conjectures while they

waited expectantly. A large tent that Perkins had found convenient as a
temporary jail for those unfortunates upon whom his heavy hand fell
swiftly, stood next to Bill's place; and it spoke eloquently of the manner
in which the Committee then worked, that men gathered there
instinctively at the first sign of trouble. For when the Committee went
out after culprits, it did not return empty-handed, as the populace knew
well. Zealous custodians of the law were they, as Bill had said; and
though they might have exchanged much of their zeal for a little of
Bill's sense of justice (to the betterment of the town), few of the waiting
crowd had the temerity to say so.
Up the street, necks (whose owners had not thought it worth while to
wade through the sand to the scene of the shooting) were being craned
towards the flat behind the town, where the Captain and a few of his
men had hurried at the first shot.
"They're comin'," Jim announced, thrusting his head into the gambling
hall and raising his voice above the sound of the boss's nail-driving.
"Well--what of it?" snapped Bill. "Why don't you yell at me that the
sun is going to set in the west to-night?" Bill drove the head of a
four-cornered, iron nail clean out of sight in a table top. And Jim
prudently withdrew his head and turned his face and his attention
towards the little procession that was just coming into sight at the end
of the rambling street, with the crowd closing in behind it as the water
comes surging together behind an ocean liner.
Jim worshiped his boss, but he knew better than to argue