The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

      "I had ought to of gone along," muttered Steve. "Ruther be dead than wait like this. Have a drink, Al."

      Niland shook his head. "How drunk do you have to be, Steve? You're about paralyzed now."

      "It ain't enough," sighed Steve. "Grogan, this bug-killer of yores is either rotten poison or else yore miserable mug is double. Always did know yuh to be two-faced."

      Grogan leaned against the bottle shelf, breathing hard. One palm lay against a blackjack on the shelf. "I had about enough from you, Steers. My face is good enough for you, and my liquor is straight."

      "Both of which is neither," jeered Steve. "Layin' for me, ain't yuh? Try it and I'll break yore back, you ox."

      Meems and Wango went off in a sputtering argument. All Grogan's free lunch platters were on the bar in front of them, fearsomely raped. The litter of chicken bones and half bitten sandwiches strewed the floor at their feet.

      "Don't yuh eat nothin' but white meat?" demanded Wango. "I been nibblin' on wings and necks till I c'd crow an' fly away. Gimme a chanst."

      "Thasso? Ev'time I reach I run into yore cussed arm. Git yore fool head outa the platter. It ain't no bed."

      "I'm tellin' yuh once an' all—quit throwin' yore bones anunder my feet!"

      "I alius—uck—throw scraps to the dawg, Wango."

      "Don't throw no more bones anunder my feet!"

      "He calls 'em feet!" cackled Meems.

      Steve reached for the bottle. "Hit this, you sod busters. Ain't there nothin' that'll stop yuh but arsenic?"

      Meems shook with palsy as he drank. Wango paled and began to shudder enormously. Both of his feet were inside the brass rail; attempting to maneuver around, he began to wilt. His feet slid, his knees buckled, his hind quarters struck the rail, bounced, and settled to the floor. Meems, bereft of moral support, laid his head on the bar. "I reckon—I done got ample," he moaned. "My Gawd, what a night!"

      Steve stared at the partners. "They never was no good and never will be. But if they look like I think they look, then I shore must be hog drunk." With a jerk of his arm he swallowed what remained in his glass. "Now I got to take my punishment. Stay here, Al, till I come back."

      He batted the doors before him, glowered at the crowd, passed through. Toward the hotel he rolled. There was sweat on his face and a film over his eyes. Once he thought he would never make it and slouched against a hitching rack; but a horse backed away from him, and that roused sufficient anger to propel him to the hotel porch. He couldn't see Debbie and he knew he never would be able to master the stairs. So he dropped his anchor and called.

      "Debbie—oh, Debbie."

      Then she was standing above him, silent and still. She held her chin steady, but in a sudden passion of self-disgust he saw that he had hurt her as no other soul had ever done. The deep blue of her eyes was covered by a cloud. He had shamed her, soiled her by coming out in the street and calling her name. The damage was done, and for the rest of his life he would regret it. Even so, he clung to his purpose.

      "Debbie," said he, "I'm drunk."

      Something else appeared in her eyes. She spoke softly and not with the tart impatience to which he was accustomed. "I see that, Steve. Maybe we have waited too long. On the first of the month we'll be married. And you'll never drink again."

      "What's that? Debbie—but, Debbie, yuh said—"

      She was gone. Steve turned and plowed back to the saloon, on through the crowd, on across the hall to the bar. And in front of Al Niland he exploded.

      "My God, Al, why don't wimmen make up their minds and stick to it? Here I went and spent thirty dollars to get this way—and it went for nothin'! Wimmen—why—!"

      A running, rising murmur swept the saloon.

      "Here's somebody! Clear that door—!"

      "Doc—"

      "Denver—"

      That last name was repeated again with a dying inflection. The talk fell off. Steve turned slowly. The first face he saw was that of Al Niland, set and pallid. Then he discovered a figure framed in the doors, a tall, spare figure. Doc Williamson. Doc passed a hand across his forehead and broke the hush.

      "I guess you boys had better know it. Dave Denver is dead."

      All men are touched with queerness. Steve Steers pivoted on his heels and faced Grogan behind the bar. He called Grogan a name, a name than which there can be none worse when spoken as Steve spoke it. Grogan leaped for his blackjack. Steve smashed the man's head with a whisky bottle and flung the broken neck after Grogan's sinking bulk. He saw nothing but red streaks of fire, and it was an act of Providence that guided him through the door. Fifteen minutes later one of the Nightingale men found him stretched on the ground back of the Palace, stone sober. Crying like a child.

      WHEN THE DARK GODS CALL

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      A long gray column slid sinuously through the green thicket and shot across the Sundown-Ysabel Junction road. The last man in the column dismounted, erased the hoofmarks in the dust with his coat, and caught up with the procession. Then the column vanished through the ranking trees of the high ridge near Starlight Canyon. Some minutes later it reached a commanding summit, halted, and took rest. Lou Redmain rode off by himself to where the road, the lower end of Sundown Valley, and the Leverage home meadows were spread out before him. He tipped back his hat, fingers tapering down a cigarette. Having lighted it and swung one knee over the saddlehorn, he began a slow survey of the country from north to south.

      For all his apparent ease of posture, there was a wariness about him, an animal restlessness. His clothes were streaked with dirt; a dark stubble of beard ran from temple to jaw. Normally Lou Redmain was almost like a woman in neatness and choice of clothes. Now, unkempt and sullen for lack of sleep, his features betrayed him. The willfulness, the faithlessness, the unbridled appetites—these faults any man could see at a glance. Redmain had never been anything else, nor anything better than he was now.

      Yet he had changed. Through the years he had been denied a full fellowship with the range people. Hating these people because of that, and hating himself because he understood better than any living soul the rotten streaks in him, he had lived in solitary rebellion, cursing a society he could not enter and could not destroy. He had drifted to the Wells, despising the brutally degraded human beings he necessarily was forced to call his friends. The Wells became his town, the outlaws in it his henchmen. So inevitably the passions guiding Lou Redmain led him step by step into organized thievery. Now he stood on the summit of the ridge, inflamed with the knowledge he had met the best force society could launch against him and tricked it to defeat; hardened and made desperately dangerous by knowing that in the black night just gone he had forfeited every right to mercy and publicly branded himself with the one brand no human being can ever erase—murder.

      His gaze traveled as far as the mouth of Starlight. A rider emerged from Starlight, turning west; whoever it was, he went slowly and seemed to sway in the saddle. Redmain whipped a pair of glasses from his coat and bent them on the road for a long interval. Perceptibly the corners of his mouth tightened. Then obeying a cagy impulse, he ran the glasses along the trees fringing Starlight's mouth and on ahead of the rider to where dark angles of the hill country abutted upon the road. He replaced the glasses, and went down to the resting men.

      "Up and ride," said he, and spurred ahead without waiting. He threaded the pines, swung to avoid an open meadow, and fell upon a narrow trail. His men strung out, murmuring. He turned and spoke with stinging calm. "Choke off that noise and quit straggling."

      Dann drew nearer. "Stage comin'?"

      "Never mind," grunted Redmain. He departed from the trail so unexpectedly that Dann shot past him and had to swing back. Some hundred yards