Ronicky Doone's Reward by Max Brand (best ereader for students .txt) 📖
- Author: Max Brand
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Ronicky sat down again gingerly on the bed. How completely the sense of her had wiped out the rest of the world! And when he slept that night she still was walking and talking in his dreams.
In the morning he wakened with the knowledge that only six days remained in which he was to build up the power to foil big Al Jenkins. Six days to meet and counterbalance a strength which had been slowly accumulating for the past years in Twin Springs, nourished by the wealth and by the personality of the rancher. And yet Ronicky Doone, glancing out of the window at the red sky of the dawn, merely tugged his belt tight and shrugged his shoulders.
He was whistling when he went down to breakfast and looked over the cow-punchers who came into the dining room. They were an odd lot and a bad lot. Four sad-faced, underfed, ragged men as ever he had seen, ate their meal in the midst of complete gloom. They were nameless hobos of the range, poor, broken-spirited men who had failed in every other place and had at last drifted to this last resort, knowing perfectly well that they could remain here only because there were no others to replace them.
But what most interested Ronicky was the figure of old Bennett sitting at the head of the table, with a grand manner. He was amiable, smooth-tongued, courteous to these wrecks who worked as cow-punchers on his ranch, selling him out at every turn, as all knew, to Al Jenkins. Ronicky had expected to see fire poured every moment upon the punchers. But he gradually came to the solution of the problem. Only with such as these was Steve Bennett able to act in the grand manner. And therefore he was making the most of the opportunity. Only one voice was heard — the voice of Bennett narrating, and then the polite chuckles and the nods and the grins and sympathetic exclamations, as those rags of humanity jibed in with the master of the pay roll, applauding exactly where applause was expected and needed.
Ronicky watched them in increasing disgust. After breakfast he was drawn to one side by old Bennett.
“Are you going to fire them now?” he asked eagerly. “Are you going to run ‘em all off this morning?”
His eagerness was horrible to Ronicky. Here the rancher had been playing the part of the amiable host the one moment, and the next he was ready to knife his late guests.
“Let’em stay,” said Ronicky. “Let ‘em be where they are. They can do the work, or not do it, for the next six days. End of that time I hope that I’ll be coming back with some way of helping out.”
“You’re leaving now?” asked Bennett sharply.
“D’you think I’m enough, all by myself, to stop Jenkins and his gang?” asked Ronicky scornfully.
The other nodded and drew back, and from that moment until the time Ronicky left the house the rancher watched him with ratty eyes of suspicion. Up to that moment, perhaps, he had been hoping against hope that Ronicky actually intended to help him. But now he was sure that it was only a bluff.
And Ronicky gladly heard the door slam behind him as he went out to Lou. He saddled the bay mare at once and rode her out from the barn and onto the road, or rather the wagon trail, which led up the valley toward the ranch. Then, after surveying the landscape carelessly, he picked out as his goal no less a target than the ragged summits of Mount Solomon, and toward this he directed Lou in all her eagerness of morning freshness.
The way wound off from the main floor of the valley after a time, and he headed into a narrow gorge forested closely on either side and with only an open runway of a dozen feet in the center, worn there by the sudden floods which tore down the side of the mountain during the heavy rains. Here the trees closed in on either hand, their branches intertwining across the blue sky above him. He rode under a continually changing pattern too busy with the irregularities of the ground underfoot, however, to pay much heed to what was above him or on either side. And that was the reason, perhaps, that he encountered the danger which almost immediately befell him.
It came unheralded. There was only a faint whisper in the air behind him, such a hissing as a branch makes when it sways through the wind: Yet that noise was sufficient to make Ronicky Doone whirl In his saddle. He was in time to see the open noose of rope hovering above his head, and at the far end of the noose was a man just on the verge of starting out from the edge of the trees, from the shelter of which he had made his cast.
Ronicky saw him in the flash of time that it took him to whirl. But the next moment the rope had whipped down, and his arms were pinned to his sides. His right hand, the fingers of which were just in the act of curling around the butt of his revolver, was paralyzed at the root of its strength. And at the same moment the forward swing of Lou, checked too late by the shout of Ronicky, snapped the rope taut, and Ronicky was lifted from the saddle as cleanly as in the days of old an expert spearsman hurled his foeman over the croup in full career.
It might have broken his neck, that fall. But he unstrung his limbs in mid-air, so to speak, relaxing himself so that every muscle was soft. And he landed on that cushioning of muscle which is the natural pad against shocks at the back of the neck. The impetus of that rolling fall swung him onto his feet again, but still he was helpless.
In the air before him and above him the rope became a living thing. It twisted and writhed and coiled, and every twist was a new bond laid about the struggling form of Ronicky Doone. In five seconds he was trussed securely and sat helpless on the ground, looking up into the face of his captor.
That captor was no other than the celebrated Ananias of Twin Springs, Curly. The usual calm of Curly was gone. The mist of thoughtfulness was gone from his eyes, which sparkled with joy. And he stood with his hands planted on his hips, the fingers of one hand still gripping the end of the rope which he had used with such dexterity.
Both he and his captive were panting from the brief struggle.
“You!” said Ronicky, disgusted beyond measure that the victor should prove this man of all men — this creator of myths.
“Me!” said the other.
“This is the second time,” said Ronicky. “I sure got to write you down in my books, Curly. First you tell me the lie about Blondy. And now you — “
Rage choked him.
But the attitude of Curly was one of conscious and easy virtue.
“I done this to make up for the other,” be said.
“What?” cried Ronicky.
“Sure,” said Curly. “I make it a rule never to have no fallings out with no gun fighters. When I seen how you just wished your gat out of the leather and pumped that slug into Blondy before I could have thought about shooting, I said to myself right there that you were a gent that I’d never have no trouble with if I could help it!”
Ronicky stared at him, helpless with amazement.
“I don’t foller you,” he gasped. “I sure don’t function fast enough for my brain to keep up with you, Curly! Here you — “
He stopped again. Lou came back to him anxiously and snuffed at his dust covered shoulder. And he directed her to stand back with a savage jerk of his head. She obeyed, while Curly swore with admiration at her trained docility.
“I never seen her equal!” he declared.
“They don’t grow hosses as fine as that in these parts! But to come back to you and me, Ronicky. Can I trust you if I take that rope off of you?”
“Would you trust me if I gave you my word?” asked Ronicky, very curious.
“Sure,” answered Curly cheerfully. “I’d trust you to the end of the earth if you just gave me the word to!”
“H’m,” said Ronicky, some of his original fury leaving him. “And how do you work this out, Curly? I ain’t going to give you my word, so you can leave the rope around me. But how do you work it out that roping me and jerking me off my hoss was doing me a favor? Leaving out that there was nine chances out of ten that you’d break my neck, how do you work it out?”
“Nine chances out of ten with some folks,” admitted Curly. “But not with you. I could tell after watching you take two steps that there was no more chance of throwing you on your head than there would be of throwing a cat. You’d twist around and manage to land right.”
“H’m,” said Ronicky again, and still he studied big Curly intently. “Go on,” he said. “Al Jenkins sent you out to get me out of the way, I guess?”
“He didn’t,” said the surprising fellow. “He told me to keep away from you less’n I wanted to get hurt, and hurt bad.” He added: “The plan is for Al and his men to get together in a flock and herd you into a corner, and then make you give up by force of numbers.”
“Get me to take water, eh?” asked Ronicky.
“Which simply means,” said Curly, “that they had figured on wiping you off the face of the earth and putting up a stone to show where you made your last appearance, as they say about the lady singer. But I took to thinking things over, Ronicky. I seen as how if there was a crowd, I’d have to be in it. And if there was any shooting at you, you’d be doing some shooting back. And if you done some shooting back, you’d pick out somebody you wasn’t partial to for a target. And if you done that, I’d stand a pretty good show of getting into the center of the stage, you see?”
“I see,” said Ronicky.
“So what I thought would be better,” said Curly, “was for me to go out where you and me could have our little party all over by ourselves. When I heard that you’d gone out to old Bennett’s, I climbed on my hoss about daybreak and sloped out here and got onto the top of a hill — you see that round topped feller over yonder — so’s I could get a good look at the Bennett house. I had my glasses here along with me, and when you come out, I clamped these glasses onto the house and made out quick that it was you. Then I waited until I seen you going down the valley. That made me lose hope for a while. I thought you were aiming at Twin Springs again. But pretty soon I seen you head in for the gulley.
“I slid over here ahead of you and just got planted comfortable when you come by, and here you are!” He stopped with a grin of satisfaction.
“All right,” said Ronicky. “I suppose you start herding me
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