MRS. COWGILL's fear that Tom Laylander might walk out of her door, and out of the world at the same time, leaving his supper bill unpaid, was premature and unfounded. While she stood making her appeal for interference to the railroad men, who had no concern whatever in what might happen to either of the combatants beyond the entertainment their engagement might afford, the little desk bell began to clamor in insistent and imperative call.
Mrs. Cowgill ran from the room, followed by the railroaders, who came crowding and jesting, working their jaws on the last hurriedly snatched bite, Goosie in the midst of them as gay as if going to a fair. Louise stood a few moments beside the table, hands on the dish-laden tray as if to lift it and go about her duty, let tragedy run out of the door as it might.
She felt a cold numbness settle over her, a shocking realization of the sacrifice that youth was marching out so passionately white and erect to make to honor. She had no doubt that Laylander had been cheated out of his property, or was in the way of being cheated, by a groundless claim, but she could not see how he was to help matters any by killing or being killed in the dusty road before the hotel door. She ran after the others, hoping to see somebody come between the angry men and send them away without a fight.
Laylander was before the desk, waiting for Mrs. Cowgill, who was just edging around behind it as Louise reached the office. The railroaders were bunched where they had stopped just inside the office door, not rash enough to allow curiosity to draw them into danger. Angus Valorous, in his white shirt without a collar, the neckband open on his whiskered throat, was pushing after Mrs. Cowgill as if to lend his assistance in the crisis which seemed to confront the establishment. Withers had gone out to the sidewalk. Louise saw him stand there a moment, then turn to the right and saunter nonchalantly past the window out of sight.
"I wish to pay for myself and the other gentleman that et with me," Laylander said, his voice calm and steady.
"It'll be a dollar," Mrs. Cowgill told him, a flutter in her tone, a greater flutter in her heart, which, as she said when recalling the experience, felt like it would wear itself out against her ribs.
Laylander put the money down. At the sight of it all of Mrs. Cowgill's concern for herself was dissipated, the humane and gentle part of her nature, pretty well hardened and driven back out of sight by frontier boarding house life for twenty years and more, impelled her to grasp the young man's hand.
"Don't go out there, don't you go!" she begged. "Cal Withers has killed three or four men in his time—they say he's a man that never takes chances—he'll not take any chances with you. He'll drop you the minute you step out of that door!'
"Thank you, ma'am," said Laylander, too haughtily proud in his anger and outraged feelings to be embarrassed by her restraining hand. "That was a very nice supper, ma'am. I'm much obliged."
He drew his hand away, gently, thoughtful of her, a kind stranger who wished him well, and started for the door.
"Don't go out there!" Mrs. Cowgill leaned over the counter and stretched her arms out in womanly appeal, the desperation of his situation growing on her as she pleaded. "Go to law and fight him, but don't try to do it with your gun!"
Laylander was at the door, his hand on the screen to push it open. He paused long enough to face around to her in grateful acknowledgment of her concern. He lifted his hand to her in a gallant little salute, and smiled.
"Can't some of you men stop him?" Mrs. Cowgill demanded of them savagely, turning to Windy Moore,'the brakeman, the roundhouse foreman and three others who made up the little crowd. "It's murder—it's murder!"
Angus Valorous reached under the counter and drew out a club, a stick such as brakemen used in those days for coupling cars and setting brakes. He made a dash for the end of the counter with it in his capable fist. Mrs. Cowgill threw herself in front of him, denying him passage.
"Not you—I don't mean you. One boy's enough to be killed!"
She cornered him behind the counter, pushing along close to the window, where Angus stood glaring and white, holding his club in both hands, like a ball bat, leaning over as if calculating his chances of jumping the counter and making for the door. Mrs. Cowgill caught him by the suspenders and held him prisoner.
Laylander was in plain view through the screen door, standing where he had stepped to the sidewalk, hand close to his gun. He was looking down the street in the direction Withers had gone.
"Somebody make him come in here!" Mrs. Cowgill begged.
The railroaders did not respond. They spread out a little, moving toward the door for a better view, indifferent to anybody's safety but their own. Louise went to the front of the office, where she stood leaning against the counter, feeling as weak and breathless as if her own life depended on some quick action of which she was not capable. She was only dimly conscious of other people in the room, the dread that chilled her was so benumbing and intense. She saw Laylander walk slowly across the broad sidewalk under the hotel awning, hand hovering over his pistol, fingers spread stiffly, awkwardly for such a tremendous emergency, it seemed. He stepped carefully, like a man wading a shallow, rapid, rocky stream, head turned to watch down the street.
Through the window at the end of the counter Louise saw Withers and three other men, all armed, starting across the street at a point about opposite the farther corner of the hotel. They were walking in the same cautious way, feet raised high at every step, heads twisted to watch the lone man who was wading out into that invisible stream of death, as it seemed to Louise, to face them and fall.
The railroaders craned their necks; nobody spoke. Angus Valorous, held by Mrs. Cowgill's determined hand, was beating the counter in quick, savage blows of his club, like a caged gorilla venting its impotent rage. Myron Cowgill came, pipe in his mouth, moved by a slow curiosity, to stand behind the railroaders and stretch his spine and tiptoe, in the deferential way of a man who had been subordinated to boarders for many years. A thin stream of smoke issued from the bowl of his pipe, to be drawn slowly out through the screen door.
Laylander was about a quarter of the way across the broad, dust-smothered street, his left hand a little before him, his feet lifted slowly and put down carefully, wading, wading into that invisible swift stream. He was watching Cal Withers and the three men along with him, as he went. Withers had come to the middle of the street, and stopped.
Louise Gardner moved a little nearer the door. She was taut as a wet rope, choked with the indignant, voiceless protest against one man's foolish courage and four men's shameless threat. The others who stood watching the oncoming tragedy were silent. Angus Valorous ceased his clatter to lean and look, breath held for the first shot. Mrs. Cowgill stood clinging to his suspenders, her eyes big with the terror that paralyzed her ready tongue.
Laylander reached the middle of the street. There he squared around to face the little bunch of men twenty yards or less along the dusty way, backing from them a little, as if the distance did not agree with his method, or to give himself more time to calculate his chance against this unexpected number. As if in derision of this maneuver, but in fact to provoke Laylander into firing the first shot, Withers jerked off his hat and flung it sailing into the space that lay between them.
Laylander fell into the trap that would give Withers an excuse in law for shooting him down. He slung out his gun and put a bullet through the hat before it struck the ground.
Louise saw Laylander skip and leap, as a boy prances to dodge rocks and confuse the aim of his assailants, when the others began to shoot; she saw the little spurts of dust around his feet, and the jerking motion of his arm as he threw a quick shot in reply.
"Stop her! stop that girl!" Mrs. Cowgill screamed.
Angus Valorous beat a frenzied tattoo on the counter with his club as Louise dashed open the screen door and ran into the street between the fighting men, before Laylander could steady himself for a second, and more effective, shot.
"They'll murder her!" Mrs. Cowgill cried out, her voice broken by alarm.
She hurried to the door, Angus close after her, club in his hand.
Louise stood facing Withers, her arms stretched out in commanding gesture, as if she barred the way to both his bullets and himself.
"She's flagged him!" said Windy Moore.
The shooting stopped with the appearance of Louise in the road. Mrs. Cowgill and Angus rushed in to enforce her demand for peace; everybody thought it was a good time to go out and hear what was said. Windy Moore, the brakeman, led the way from the hotel; Banjo Gibson came at the head of those who started over from the saloon. There was such a crowd between the lines in a few seconds that any more shooting for that occasion was out of all safety bounds.
Withers put up his pistol; somebody handed him his hat. He jerked it ungraciously from the man who had picked it up, beat the dust out of it against his leg, put it on, and stood glaring at Angus Valorous as if the blame for the whole disturbance lay on his head. Nobody appeared to be hurt on either side, although Laylander was lost sight of for the moment in the crowding forward and the up-trampling of dust.
"If I ever saw a low-down houn' on two legs," said Mrs. Cowgill, "I'm lookin' at one right now. Four of you to pile onto that innocent boy, no more shame in you, Cal Withers, than a dog!"
"When your opinion's needed, ma'am, it'll be called for," Withers said, the sting of her reproach bringing a surge of blood into his face.
"Put up that gun!" Angus Valorous commanded, lifting his club against one of Withers' men who stood with his weapon drawn as if he wanted to go on with the fight. The fellow looked with a sort of startled surprise at the bristling young man with the unsullied new club. "Put it up, I said!" Angus repeated, in the deep harsh voice of a terrible man.
The cowboy seemed to be charmed by the peculiar weapon that menaced his head. He fixed his eyes on Angus with startled, staring attention as his hand moved slowly to restore the pistol to its place.
"If you ever pull a gun on me I'll bust you wide open!" Angus threatened.
The people who had crowded up to see and hear pressed around Withers and his men in that questioning silence peculiar to a crowd that has arrived when the thing is over. There is an expression in such silence of feeling cheated out of something, and a question of whether it is going to begin again. Laylander approached, pushing his way apologetically among those who stood near Mrs. Cowgill.
"It's a handy thing to have a lady friend around to do your fightin' for you!" Withers said.
"The lady is a stranger to me, but no man can speak a slight against her where I'm at," Laylander replied.
Mrs. Cowgill put herself between them as the others fell back to make room for the show they had hoped all along would open again.
"She's the same to me as my daughter," Mrs. Cowgill declared. "You keep a still tongue in your mouth when you speak of that girl, Cal Withers!"
"Ma'am, I don't need any he-woman to tell me my business." Withers scored her with a look as he spoke. "You got through this time, but," turning to Laylander, "but you're not apt to be so lucky the next time I catch you away from the women folks. I just want to say this to you, kid: you're standin' where the roads branch; one of 'em runs off to nowhere, the other one to Texas. I'll leave it to you to pick the one you take."
"I'll be found right around here till I get my property back, Colonel Withers."
"He's no more colonel than my old black Rachel!" Mrs. Cowgill declared.
"You'll stay some time," Withers said, passing over Mrs. Cowgill's challenge to his honorable auctioneering title.
"I'll law you ten years, but I'll get them cattle of mine," Laylander said.
"You'll never live ten seconds if I meet you in the road!"
"There never will be a better time than right now, Colonel Withers."
"That's right!" said Windy Moore. "You might as well have it out right here."
"Four to one, the way Cal Withers always fights, I've heard it said, and I'll bet money he could clean you up, too," Mrs. Cowgill said. "I'm not goin' to have any fightin' and scrappin' in front of my hotel, now or any other time, if I can put a stop to it."
The city marshal appeared at that moment. He had a word or two with Cal Withers, who started off in the direction of the saloon, his men shouldering up close around him, their heads together in close talk.
"They look as mean as misery," Banjo Gibson said.
Laylander looked around for the girl who had imperiled her life to save his own. She was not there. Windy Moore, who had an eye for every direction, saw what was passing in the young man's mind.
"I saw her skim across to the hotel," he said.
The crowd scattered, the sun went down, red as a clinker from a fire-box, with clouds banked darkly in the northwest threatening rain. Mrs. Cowgill looked strangely at Angus Valorous as he returned to the hotel beside her, his good sound club in hand. It was as if she had seen the man rise up in him, and was puzzled to account for it by any reasoning at her command.
Tom Laylander, under tow of Banjo Gibson, returned to the hotel and sat on a bench beside the door. From that haven they saw Withers and his men get on their horses presently and ride away, lifting, for a time at least, the constraint of watching from Laylander's troubled mind.
"She run right up to the room," Goosie whispered as she stood with her mother looking into the deserted dining-room.
"Well," said Mrs. Cowgill, in meaningless, empty way. "I'll send Angus to clear away the dishes."
"Didn't she make a sight of herself!" Goosie said, shocked beyond all bounds.
"I spoke my mind to Cal Withers," her mother returned, with wide irrelevance. "It'll cost me money, but I can live without his business. And I spoke my mind."
When she sent Angus Valorous to help Goosie with the dishes, Mrs. Cowgill gave him that queer, baffled, questioning look again. She went outside to take the cool of the evening on the bench along with Banjo Gibson and the young man from Texas, whose fresh, honest, homely face made her think of a pink cosmos flower, it was so plain, and yet so good to see. She did her best to assure him that he was among friends at the Cottonwood Hotel, no matter what might wait for him out in the road.
Business was slack at that hour; cowhands did not begin to come in until much later in the night, after they had made the round of the town. Angus Valorous—commonly called by her Angus I'lor's, after his own pronunciation of the sonorous word—would take care of them, as always. She puzzled again over that unexpected showing of the man in him, thinking in her own strange way that he must have grown up in the night without her noticing it.
She looked in at the window to see if Angus Valorous had returned to his duty behind the desk. Angus was there. He had taken three cigar boxes from the showcase, put the ink-bottle on one of them, making an engine of it. He was pushing this little train forward and back the length of the short counter, between showcase and wall, fat little mouth puckered, black-whiskered cheeks rising and falling in the rapid exhaust of his chuffing engine, the world and its business, its comedies and tragedies, shut out of his thoughts as by an iron door.