The Seventh Man | Page 4

half her own weight, live on forage that might
have starved a goat, and smell water fifteen miles in time of drought.
Speed was not in her vocabulary, and accordingly it was late afternoon
rather than morning when Gregg, pointing his course between the ears
of Marne, steered her through Murphy's Pass and came out over Alder.
There they paused by mutual consent, and the burro flicked one long
ear forward to listen to the rushing of the Doane River. It filled the
valley with continual murmur, and just below them, where the brown,
white-flecked current twisted around an elbow bend, lay Alder tossed
down without plan, here a boulder and there a house. They seemed
marvelously flimsy structures, and one felt surprise that the weight the
winter snow had not crushed them, or that the Doane River had not sent
a strong current licking over bank and tossed the whole village crashing
down the ravine. One building was very much like other, but Gregg's
familiar eye pierced through the roofs and into Widow Sullivan's
staggering shack, into Hezekiah Whittleby's hushed sitting-room, down
to the moist, dark floor of the Captain's saloon into that amazing
junkshop, the General Merchandise store; but first and last he looked to
the little flag which gleamed and snapped above the schoolhouse, and it
spelled "my country" to Vic.
Marne consented to break into a neat-footed jog-trot going down the
last slope, and so she went up the single winding street of Alder,
grunting at every step, with Gregg's whistle behind her. In town, he
lived with his friend, Dug Pym, who kept their attic room reserved for
his occupancy, so he headed straight for that place. What human face
would he see first?

It was Mrs. Sweeney's little boy, Jack, who raced into the street
whooping, and Vic caught him under the armpits and swung him
dizzily into the air.
"By God," muttered Vic, as he strode on, "that's a good kid, that Jack."
And he straightway forgot all about that knife which Jackie had
purloined from him the summer before. "Me and Betty," he thought,
"we'll have kids, like Jack; tougher'n leather."
Old Garrigan saw him next and cackled from his truck garden in the
backyard, but Vic went on with a wave of his arm, and on past Gertie
Vincent's inviting shout (Gertie had been his particular girl before Betty
Neal came to town), and on with the determination of a soldier even
past the veranda of Captain Lorrimier's saloon, though Lorrimer
himself bellowed a greeting and "Chick" Stewart crooked a significant
thumb over his shoulder towards the open door. He only paused at the
blacksmith shop and looked in at Dug, who was struggling to make the
print of a hot shoe on a hind foot of Simpson's sorrel Glencoe.
"Hey, Dug!"
Pym raised a grimy, sweating forehead.
"You, boy; easy, damn you! Hello, Vic!" and he propped that restless
hind foot on his inner thigh and extended a hand.
"Go an workin', Dug, because I can't stop; I just want a rope to catch
Grey Molly."
"You red devil--take that rope over there, Vic. You won't have no work
catchin' Molly. Which she's plumb tame. Stand still, damn you. I never
seen a Glencoe with any sense!--Where you goin', Vic? Up to the
school?"
And his sweaty grin followed Vic as the latter went out with the coil of
rope over his shoulder. When Gregg reached the house, Nelly Pym
hugged him, which is the privilege of fat and forty, and then she sat at
the foot of the stairs and shouted up gossip while he shaved with frantic

haste and jumped into his best clothes. He answered her with
monosyllables and only half his mind.
"Finish up your work, Vic?"
"Nope."
"You sure worked yourself all thin. I hope somebody appreciates it."
She chuckled. "Ain't been sick, have you?"
"Say, who d!you think's in town? Sheriff Glass!"
This information sank in on him while he tugged at a boot at least a
size and half too small.
"Pete Glass!" he echoed. Then: "Who's he after?"
"I dunno. Vic, he don't look like such a bad one."
"He's plenty bad enough," Gregg assured her. "Ah-h-h!"
His foot ground into place, torturing his toes.
'"Well," considered Mrs. Pym, in a philosophic rumble, "I s'pose them
quiet gents is the dangerous ones, mostly; but looking at Glass you
wouldn't think he'd ever killed all those men. Know about the dance?"
"Nope."
"Down to Singer's place. Betty goin' with you?"
He jerked open the door and barked down at her: "Who else would she
be goin' with?"
"Don't start pullin' leather before the horse bucks," said Mrs. Pym. "I
don't know who else she'd be goin' with. You sure look fine in that red
shirt,