In the days of his youth, someone in the midst of a barroom brawl had stood on Dan Carrol's nose, and the result was that the rest of his life it remained sadly crushed in the center. The nostrils flared out disagreeably from the same cause, over a wide, thin-lipped, sinister mouth and just such a jaw as brings admiration to the bull terrier. For Dan Carrol was the fighting type. Not brawny. But his body made up for flesh by bones and sinews. When he turned his head, the cords stood out on his neck. In spite of his little more than average weight, there were tales of Dan Carrol performing prodigious feats of strength.
In fact, he rarely used a gun in the brawls that often developed in his barroom, but was far more apt to trust to his naked hands. And it was known that more than one obstreperous drunkard, no matter what his size, had been lifted and swung crashing through the swinging doors of Dan's domain.
He was not a pretty man to look at. Aside from his ugly face, his shoulders sloped forward so as to give an unhealthy look to his chest, and he was remarkably bow-legged.
“When most kids was flat on their backs sucking their thumbs,” Dan used to say, “I was on my feet trying to get places. That's how it come I overstrained my legs.”
Dan's moral character was as deformed as his body. But it would require a book by itself to deal with his past; and as for the name of Dan Carrol in Salt Springs, it was an offense. However, so long as no one aired his opinion in the hearing of Dan Carrol, he was indifferent to private judgments. He was known to run the squarest game in Salt Springs and to sell the cleanest liquor; and for that reason his prosperity waxed and his purse grew fat.
As he passed through the rooms with the letter stuffed into his hip pocket, someone hailed him to rejoin the game which he had just left, but he consigned them to another table and went on. To the second story of his rambling building he climbed and came to a room in the rear with this sign in great letters upon it: “Storeroom. Keep out!”
Upon this he tapped—three short taps, a pause, and then three more.
Whereupon, after a moment's pause, but with no preliminary sound of the knob being turned, the door was opened swiftly.
There was no sign of an occupant, at first, though the storeroom was fitted up as a bedroom, and the cigarette smoke was still curling slowly from an ash tray toward the shaded lamp. But as Dan Carrol stepped in, the inhabitant, who had been standing directly behind the door, now closed it and turned to his host. It was Jess Dreer.
“Neat little trick, that,” said Dan Carrol.
“I ain't got a minute. I been wondering if you was getting lonely up here?”
“Me? I'm never lonely. Besides, I hear the boys soaking up the laughter and the booze downstairs, and I enjoy a jag at second hand. It's cheaper, and it don't give you no morning after.”
“That's the first economical thing I ever heard you say. Well, Jess, it's a shame you can't pry your way downstairs and take in some of the loose coin. It's floating in in oceans. I hate to take it away. They come up and pour it into my pockets.”
“I don't have to play with the crowd,” murmured Jess. “I got it down to a finer system. You take the stuff from the boys, and then I get it from you. Nothing easier or simpler, Dan.”
The face of the gambler clouded, and he cast an expressive glance at the table as though it recalled gloomy scenes to him.
“You got all the luck,” he declared, “that a man was ever born with.”
“Nope,” said Jess. “I work on a system.”
“What?” His eyes gleamed while he asked.
“I wait for a hunch and then plunge to the limit.”
The gambler leaned back with a growl of disgust.
“Well, if you're all right up here, I'll go back.”
“Go ahead. But, first, ain't you forgetting something?”
Dan Carrol squinted narrowly at his friend, for of all the men in the world he would, perhaps, have named Jess Dreer first in this capacity.
“What d'you mean?” he asked sharply.
“I mean, ain't you forgot the thing that brought you up here? Talk short. What's up?”
“A girl come here and wanted to see you, Jess.”
“She's here?” cried the big man in an indescribable tone.
“Carrol, you turned her away?”
There was something so sinister in his manner, so quietly grim, that the gambler gave back a little.
“Pardner, would you have wanted me to bring her in? Where a dozen men might have seen her? Where they'd been a hundred chances for folks to start talking about her? This ain't no ladies' seminary where they can come calling, is it?”
At this, Jess Dreer wiped his forehead.
“She gimme this letter for you, Jess.”
He extended the letter, and then—a rare act of delicacy—lest he should see an unwonted emotion in the face of the big man, Carrol bowed his head and left the room without another glance at his guest.
But Jess Dreer, when the door closed, stood for a long moment with the letter unopened. At length, nervously, he ripped the envelope open and shook out the folded paper. He read:
DEAR JESS DREER: I thought at the time that it was not a farewell, but I never dreamed that I would have to remember your offer. And now I have to come to you for help. I have thought and thought, but there is really nobody else. Others might be willing to try, but you are the only one who could accomplish it.It is an ugly thing out of my past. I hurt the feelings of young Joe Norman; and he said something indiscreet about me, and my cousin, Charlie Valentine, shot him—only a slight wound. The Normans were furious. They had no one to put up against Charlie, so they hunted until they found a professional fighter—the low cowards!—and that man is the notorious Jud Boone. Charlie has to go to Salt Springs tomorrow for a saddle he won in the bucking contest, and the plan as we hear it is for Jud Boone to meet him and bring on a fight.
What can I do? You see that Charlie is really in grave danger for my sake, for it all began with me. If I were a man—but I'm not a man, and I have to turn to the bravest and strongest man I know, and appeal to Jess Dreer for help.
Can you stop Jud Boone before he murders Charlie?
MARY VALENTINE.
