Читать книгу Paul Rundel - Will N. Harben - Страница 18

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HOAG had some important business to transact in the little bank on one of the comers of the Square, and he was detained there half an hour or more. The thought flashed on him, as he sat alone at the banker's desk in the rear, that a prudent man at such a time would make a will; but the idea chilled him, horrified him. This feeling was followed by a desperate sort of anger over the realization that a low, shiftless clodhopper could so materially upset a man of his importance. He had recalled the idle remark which had reached Warren's ears, and knew it was the kind of thing the man would fight to the death about. And there was no way out of it—no way under the sun. He could not—as Trawley had said—appeal to the law for protection; such a course would make him the laughing-stock of all his followers, who thought him to be a man of unquestioned courage. Hoag drew a sheet of paper to him and began to write, but was unable to fix his mind on the matter in hand. It seemed utterly trivial beside the encroaching horror. Jeff Warren might walk in at any moment and level his revolver; Jeff Warren would kill the traducer of a woman in a church or in a group of mourners over a new grave and feel that he had done his duty. Hoag crumpled up the sheet of paper and dropped it into a waste-paper basket under the desk. He thrust his hand behind him and drew out his revolver and looked at it. He noticed, as he twirled the polished cylinder, that his fingers shook. He ground his teeth, uttered a low oath, and put the revolver back into his pocket. How could he defend himself with nerves such as the combination of tobacco and whisky had given him? He rose and went through the bank to the street, returning the banker's smiling salutation from the little grated window as he passed out.

He drew a breath of relief when he reached the sidewalk, for Warren was not in sight. To Hoag an irrelevant sort of mocking placidity rested on the scene. Storekeepers, clerks, and cotton-buyers were moving about without their coats, pencils behind their ears. Countrymen from the mountains in white-hooded wagons were unloading grain, potatoes, apples, chickens in coops, and bales of hay, with their hearts in their work, while he, the financial superior of them all, was every minute expecting to grapple with a bloody and ignominious death. He had a deed to record at the Court House, and he went into the big, cool building and turned the document over to the clerk with instructions to keep the paper till he called for it. Two lank, coatless farmers, seated near the desk, were playing checkers on a worn, greasy board.

“Ah, ha!” one of them said, “cap that un, an' watch me swipe the balance.”

Hoag was going out when he saw, carelessly leaning in the doorway at the front of the hall, the man he was dreading to meet. For an instant he had an impulse to fall back into the clerk's office, and then the sheer futility of such a course presented itself. Besides, the tall, slender man, with dark hair and eyes and waxed mustache, who had no weapon in sight, was calmly addressing him.

“I want to see you, Jim Hoag,” he said. “Suppose we step back in the yard at the end o' the house?”

“Oh, hello, Warren, how are you?” Hoag said, forcing a desperate smile to his stiff mouth and chilled cheeks.

“I'll try to show you how I am in a few minutes,” Warren answered, coldly, and he led the way down the hall, his high-heeled boots ringing on the bare floor, toward the door at the end. “Or maybe it will be t'other way—you may show me. Well, if you can, you are welcome.”

“I see you are lookin' for trouble, Jeff,” Hoag began. “I heard you wanted to see me, an' I heard you was mad at some fool lie or other that—”

“You step out here on the grass,” Warren said. “I never seed the day I wouldn't give even a bloated skunk like you a fair chance. Draw your gun. You've got more money 'an I have, Hoag; but, by God! my honor an' the honor of a respectable lady of my acquaintance is worth as much to me as—”

“Look here, Jeff, I ain't armed.” Hoag lied flatly as he saw Warren thrust his hand behind him. “You say you want to act fair, then be fair—be reasonable. The truth is—”

“Oh, I see—well, if you ain't ready, that alters it! No man can't accuse me of pullin' down on a feller that ain't fixed. I know you ain't a-goin' to back down after what I've said to your teeth, an' I'll set here on this step an' you go across to the hardware store an' fix yourself. Mine's a thirty-eight. I don't care what size you git. I want you to be plumb satisfied. Don't tell anybody, either. We don't want no crowd. This is our affair.” Hoag moved a step nearer to the offended man. He smiled rigidly. His voice fell into appealing, pleading gentleness.

“Looky here, Jeff, you an' me 've had differences, I know, an' thar's been plenty o' bad blood betwixt us; but as God is my judge I never had any deep ill-will ag'in' you. I've always known you was a brave man, an' I admired it in you. You are mad now, an' you are not seein' things straight. You've heard some'n or other; but it ain't true. Now, I don't want any trouble with you, an—”

“Trouble!” Warren's dark eyes flashed; his voice rang like steel striking steel. It was an odd blending of threat and laughter. “If we don't have trouble the sun won't set to-night. I'm talkin' about what you said at the post-office t'other day to a gang about me an' a certain neighbor's wife.”

“I think I can guess what you are talkin' about, an' you've got it plumb crooked, Jeff.” Hoag bent toward the man and laid a bloodless hand full of soothing intent on his shoulder. “You say you are a fair man, Jeff, an' I know you are, an' when a man like me says he's sorry and wants to fix things straight—without bloodshed—be reasonable. I didn't mean to reflect on the lady. I just said, if I remember right, that it looked like she admired you some. An' if you say so, I'll apologize to her myself. No man could ask more than that.”

The fierce dark eyes blinked; their glare subsided. There was a momentous pause.

“I wouldn't want 'er to hear a thing like that,” Warren faltered. “Too much has been said anyway, one way an' another, by meddlin' gossips, an' it would hurt her feelin's. I didn't want to fight about it, but couldn't hold in. An' if you say you didn't mean nothin' disrespectful, why, that will have to do. We'll drop it. I don't want bloodshed myself, if I kin get around it.”

“I don't want any either, Jeff,” Hoag said, still pacifically, and yet his fury, contempt for himself, and hatred for the man before him were already returning, “so we'll call it settled?”

“All right, all right,” Warren agreed; “it will have to do. When a man talks like you do nothin' more is to be said. I never yet have whipped a man that didn't want to fight. I'd as soon hit a suckin' baby.” They parted, Warren going into the Court House and Hoag to the stable for his horse. Trawley was at the front waiting for him.

“Hello,” he cried, “I see he didn't plug you full o' holes. I watched 'im follow you into the Court House, an' expected to hear a whole volley o' shots.”

“He did want to see me,” Hoag sneered, loftily. “In fact, he come while I was havin' a paper recorded an' wanted to see me. He tried to git me to admit I was slanderin' that woman, an' I gave 'im a piece o' my mind about it. Her son works for me, an' I think a lot of the boy. I wouldn't have Paul hear a thing like that for anything. He's all right an' is tryin' hard to make his way. I told Jeff if he wanted bloodshed to git up some other pretext an' I'd give 'im all he wanted. A triflin' scamp like he is can't stamp me in public as a traducer of women.”

“I see, I see,” said Trawley, in vague approval. “Well, that's out of the way, an' we can attend to the other matter. It's a serious thing, Jim Hoag. The sheriff over in Canton may tell us to mind our own rat-killin', and then we would be in a box.”

“We've got to bring all our force to bear an' pull 'im round,” Hoag said. “I'm goin' to see a few of our main men here in town, an' sorter map out a plan. If we go at it right, we'll pull it through. I'll meet you all at the Cove to-night.”