Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

There was a short parley between them, talk shuttling back and forth in murmuring spurts. Perrine appeared to be urging some course of action that Locklear and the others disliked. The sheriff began to shake his head, whereat Perrine tilted his massive chin and spoke bluntly that a dull color came back to Locklear's cheek bones. But his only answer was to raise one hand and point outward in the direction of the mob. The girl got up, no longer able to sit so near the center of the gathering storm, and climbed the stairs. On the landing she turned to see Perrine looking up to her with a hard grin.

"You'll git yore money's worth before this sight-seein' trip is over, sister," he rumbled.

She passed along the dark hall and unlocked her door. The lamp still burned on the table as she had left it, and so she went in, a wave of relief coming over her at the knowledge she could shut herself away from the turbulence below. Pushing the door behind her, she heard a sighing sound on the carpet of the hall, the door struck resistance and flew open again. Whirling about she confronted William Wells Woolfridge. And the next moment he was in the room, closing the door and leaning against it.

"Well, my dear lady, have you been enjoying the show?"

He had changed. The smoothness was gone, the scrupulous grooming no longer showed on his clothing, and it appeared very odd to her that he should be wearing a pair of low street shoes instead of the customary boots. These, set against the bottom of his riding breeches, gave his attire a laughable incompleteness. But she was in no humor to laugh, for she knew she faced a dangerous man. There was a suppressed fury about him, an indefinable barbaric glint in his eyes that rose above his normal colorlessness. In his question was a trace of the old suavity, but only a trace.

"Mr. Woolfridge, I have not asked you to enter my room."

"No? This is not a time for ceremony. I have played your game long enough. There is always a time when rules cease to be desirable. I trust you have found the street scene as dramatic and thrilling as the customary act."

"I am not the kind to enjoy tragedy. Please go out."

"Ah. So you perceive tragedy? And perhaps feel this tragedy is a little of your own making?"

She had not thought of that. His question brought a moment's depression. Had she been the instrument by which this fury was loosened? Her clear, sound sense told her she had not been. Long before her part in the tangled affairs of Roaring Horse had been played, this dark night was in the making. Her share had been but to help reveal the inevitable result of another's wrongdoing.

"Mr. Woolfridge, look back on your own trail. Have you come to the point where you must blame others for your own scheming? You told me once of the great things you meant to do. Look out on the street! There is the result. You ought to be on your knees, praying. You are a man of education. You have money. Why should you want to bring starvation to these poor folks? You knew it wasn't right!"

He looked down at her, his face seeming to turn to stone. "You play your part well. Is it not time to drop the pretense that you love those clods out yonder? Dull kine—stupid with their lives, dumb and unthrifty. You say I should be sorry for them. I do not have so soft and civilized a conscience."

"Please go," she asked. "I don't care to argue. No—don't come any closer to me!"

She backed away, hand behind her. At the far side of the room, in a drawer of a desk, was the small pistol she always carried. She felt the need of it now. In the course of the week she had watched carefully for just such an interruption as this, knowing that Woolfridge might at some reckless hour cross the border line that divided the two sides of his dual nature. She had never left her door unlocked and never traveled alone outside the limits of town. Yet with all her watchfulness he had caught her off guard and now, step at a time, advanced as she retreated.

"I wouldn't try to attain melodrama," was Woolfridge's cool warning. "If you are trying to get a weapon stop where you are. I must have a talk with you."

"I'll ask you again to leave my room," said she.

"And don't scream," he went on as if he hadn't heard her. "I am past pretty manners right now."

She halted. Woolfridge nodded his head and likewise stopped. Though he never let his eyes stray from her, he seemed to be listening to the undertone of the mob rising up from the street and dimly sifting down the hall. His shoulders lifted. "Time changes all things. Well, I am not fool enough to play the part of King John. The waves may come. I won't try to stop them. In this world we go from one thing to another. Some people make the mistake of trying to hang on when it is too late. I never do. My dear, you are a beauty!"

"Did you come here to say that?"

He inclined his head. "To tell you that and more. You are worth all any man might offer. You are a beauty. You have a rare intelligence, and I love the combination. I did not, of course, bargain on your past. But, after all, what's the difference? It gives you a worldliness. And that, too, I admire. I am a worldling myself and sophistication is dear to me—"

Color flooded her cheeks. "You have no right to say that! Neither you nor your spy, Hunnewell. It is false!"

His cheeks pinched up. "So Hunnewell told you? He wrote me a very hysterical letter afterward. I'd like to wring the man's skinny neck. There is one mistake I made. I meant Hunnewell as a water carrier, nothing else. The big moments are not for him. When he faced one he fell to pieces. That was just one mistake, and not the greatest. You were very clever, Miss Thatcher. You took me in completely."

"I asked nothing of you," replied Gay. "I wanted you to tell me nothing. I came here only to see and hear what Roaring Horse did. There never was a time when I asked you a question or expected you to tell me anything. Remember that."

"Nevertheless," said Wooifridge, "it was shrewd of the governor. Ah well. He is a canny man. And he has watched me closely. I knew it all the time. But my greatest mistake was in allowing Bangor into my plans. I served him well once and expected a return favor. But he was afraid of me. The higher men go in this world the more cold blooded they become. The more treacherous. I should have held the whip over his head. Whatever I wanted done through his office I ought to have done personally. There is the secret. Do things yourself. But the book is closed. I have no regrets."

"You don't mean that," replied the girl. "You can't mean it. All this will come back to haunt you. You have taken the last penny of many families. What of that?"

"Well, and what of it?" Woolfridge shook his head. "The weak perish, the fit survive. Rightly so. Those people are only pawns, sports of fate. It is in the infinite plan of things that they go down. Why be sorry about it? I do not even let myself be sorry for my failure. That intrigues you, I suppose? All that I have has been given to me. I inherited. What can a man do to satisfy the brute instincts in a case like that? Most men would accept their fortune quietly. Not I."

The last sentence rang through the room. He squared his shoulders, looking over her head as if pronouncing the pervading gospel of his existence. "I broke away. I had the courage to smash the picayune barriers. I had a dream. Of an empire in my own making. It would have been an honest one but for the turn of events. Did I halt when I knew it could not be done honestly? Most men would have halted. I did not. I built another dream and went on. And that is going to pot this night. What of it? I have made my mark on this country. I have been a pirate for a little while. To-night, a hundred men fight for me and against me. What is morally wrong about that? In another age it would have been legal, customary. I broke through, I smashed things. And I glory in it. Now I give it up. But there is always another dream to fashion, my dear girl, another empire over the hill!"