IV
The first was a boy, and was well and duly named Jack Loupel; and Uncle Jack used to go to the house for Sunday dinner and play bear all over the floor of the sitting room. The next was a girl, and the next was a boy again. Bud was by that time cashier of the bank, and Sam Rand left most of the work to him. Jack Mills was just what he had always been; that is to say, a likable, wild young chap with a quick gun and a reckless eye and a fondness for the society he found at Brady’s. Sometimes, after eating one of Jeanie’s dinners, he would take his horse and ride out of town and be gone for a day or two. He was always alone on these excursions; but ranging cowboys came across him now and then and reported that he seemed to be just sitting around, smoking, doing nothing at all. When he got ready he would drift back into town and go to work again. Old man Ross liked him; Jeanie liked him; everybody liked him. But the sober citizens were also inclined to disapprove of him; and some of the stories that came to Jeanie’s ears made her think that when the children were a little older she had better quit asking Jack to come to the house. She hated to think of doing this; and because she was kind of heart, it is unlikely that she would ever have come to the actual point. But that the possibility should occur to her is some measure of the man’s standing in the town.
One day, about seven years after Bud and Jeanie were married, Bud sought out Jack Mills and asked him to get his horse and come for a ride. “Want to tell you something, Jack,” he explained.
Mills saw the trouble and distress in the other’s eyes, so he saddled up, and they trotted out of town. When the last building was well behind them, Jack asked mildly: “What’s on your mind, Bud?”
Bud Loupel, with some hesitation, said: “I’m in trouble.”
“Yeah! I judged so,” Mills told him. “Well, what brand?”
“I’ve been putting money in the market at Wichita,” Loupel said. “I’ve had rotten luck. It’s gone.”
Jack nodded. “I got three-four hundred in the bank,” he suggested. “Take that.”
“It’s not enough.”
“Maybe I could look around and raise five hundred more.”
“It wouldn’t do a bit of good.”
Mills produced tobacco and papers and rolled a slow cigarette while their horses jogged along. At last: “How much?” he asked.
“Forty-four hundred.”
“You’ve saved a right smart, ain’t you?”
“It’s the bank’s,” Loupel confessed, and Jack puffed deeply and expelled the smoke in a cloud and remarked:
“Well, at a guess, I’d say you were a damned fool.”
“I know it.”
Their horses plodded on, and the dust cloud rose and hovered in the air behind them. For a space neither man spoke at all. Then Loupel bitterly exclaimed: “I’m not whining for my own sake, Jack. If it was me, I’d hop out. I’d take a chance. But Jeanie....”
“Sure,” Jack Mills mildly agreed. “Sure.”
“Damn it, Jack, Jeanie’s proud of me. She’s proud of me.”
“Yeah!”
“I can’t bear to think of her knowing. It would just about bust her.”
Mills drawled: “Your sentiments does you credit, Bud.”
There was a cold and scornful anger in his tone that kept the other for the moment silent. They rode on, side by side, and Loupel, covertly watching the younger man, waited for him to speak. Mills finished his cigarette, eyes straight before him, face unchanging. Then he flicked the butt away and turned in his saddle and looked at his pardner.
“What’s Rand say?” he asked.
“He’s been away. Due back to-morrow afternoon. He’ll spot it in a minute.”
Mills whistled for a moment, between his teeth, a gallant little tune; then he nodded, as though in decision, and he asked: “All right, Bud. What’s your idea?”
While they rode on at the trot toward the low hills south of the town Bud Loupel outlined his idea; and when they turned back again at sunset Jack had agreed to do what the other asked of him.