“Hey, you runt! Get out of there! Where’s the son of a bitch who ordered this whisky?”
Like a python Pete Pitchlyn uncoiled to his full height and glared down on the bewildered bartender.
Crowded though it was, the drinks were on the house.
These two specimens of the Southwest it was that Yancey now approached, his step a saunter, his manner carefree, even bland. Almost imperceptibly the two seemed to stiffen, as though bracing themselves for action. In the old scout it evidenced itself in his sudden emergence from lounging cripple to statuesque giant. In the Spaniard you sensed, rather than saw, only a curiously rippling motion of the muscles beneath the smooth tawny skin, like a snake that glides before it really moves to go.
“Howdy, Pete!”
“Howdy, Yancey!”
He looked at the Spaniard. Miro eyed him innocently. “Que tal?”
“Bien. Y tu?”
They stood, the three, wary, silent. Yancey balanced gayly from shining boot toe to high heel and back again. The Cherokee woman kept her sloe eyes on her man, as though, having received one signal, she were holding herself in readiness for another.
Yancey put the eternal question of the inquiring reporter. “Well, boys, what do you know?”
The two were braced for a query less airy. Their faces relaxed in an expression resembling disappointment. It was as when gunfire fails to explode. The Spaniard shrugged his shoulders, a protean gesture intended on this occasion to convey to the utter innocence and uneventfulness of the daily existence led by Estevan Miro. Pete Pitchlyn’s eyes, in that ravaged face, were coals in an ash heap. It was not for him to be seen talking on the street corner with the man who was asking a fatal question—fatal not only to the asker but to the one who should be foolhardy enough to answer it. He knew Yancey, admired him, wished him well. Yet there was little he dared say now before the reptilian Miro. Yancey continued, conversationally:
“I understand there’s an element rarin’ around town bragging that they’re going to make Osage the terror of the Southwest, like Abilene and Dodge City in the old days; and the Cimarron.” The jaws of Pete Pitchlyn worked rhythmically on the form of nicotine to which he was addicted. Estevan Miro inhaled a deep draught of his brand of poison and sent forth its wraith, a pale gray jet, through his nostrils. Thus each maintained an air of nonchalance to hide his nervousness. “I’m interviewing citizens of note,” continued Yancey, blandly, “on whether they think this town ought to be run on that principle or on a Socratic one that the more modern element has in mind.” He lifted his great head and turned his rare gaze full on the little Spaniard. His gray eyes, quizzical, mocking, met the black eyes, and the darker ones shifted. “Are you at all familiar with the works of Socrates—‘Socrates … whom well inspir’d the oracle pronounced wisest of men’?”
Again Estevan Miro shrugged. This time the gesture was exquisitely complicated in its meaning, even for a low-class Spaniard. Slight embarrassment was in it, some bewilderment, and a grain—the merest fleck—of something as nearly approaching contempt as was possible in him for a man whom he feared.
“Yancey,” said Pete Pitchlyn, deliberately, “stick to your lawy’in’.”
“Why?”
“Anybody’s got the gift of gab like you have is wastin’ their time doin’ anything else.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Yancey replied, all modesty. “Running a newspaper keeps me in touch with folks. I like it. Besides, the law isn’t very remunerative in these parts. Running a newspaper’s my way of earning a living. Of course,” he continued brightly, as an afterthought, “there have been times when running a newspaper has saved the editor the trouble of ever again having to earn a living.” The faces of the two were blank as a sponged slate. Suddenly—“Come on, boys. Who killed Pegler?”
Pete Pitchlyn, his Cherokee squaw, and the litter of babies dispersed. It was magic. They faded, vanished. It was as though the woman had tossed her young into a pouch, like a kangaroo. As for the cripple, he might have been a centipede. Yancey and the Spaniard were left alone on the sunny street corner. The face of Miro now became strangely pinched. The eyes were inky slits. He was summoning all his little bravado, pulling it out of his inmost depths.
“I know something. I have that to tell you,” he said in Spanish, his lips barely moving.
Yancey replied in the same tongue, “Out with it.”
The Spaniard did not speak. The slits looked at Yancey. Yancey knew that already he must have been well paid by someone to show such temerity when his very vitals were gripped with fear. “You know something, h’m? Well, Miro, mas vale saber que haber.” With which bit of philosophy he showed Miro what a Westerner can do in the way of a shrug; and sauntered off.
Miro leaped after him in one noiseless bound, like a cat. He seemed now to be more afraid of not revealing that which he had been paid to say than of saying it. He spoke rapidly, in Spanish. His hard r sounds drummed like hail on a tin roof. “I say only that which was told to me. The words are not mine. They say, ‘Are you a friend of Yancey Cravat?’ I say, ‘Yes.’ They say then, ‘Tell your friend Yancey Cravat that wisdom is better than wealth. If he does not keep his damn mouth shut he will die.’ The words are not mine.”
“Thanks,” replied Yancey, thoughtfully, speaking in English now. Then with one fine white hand he reached out swiftly and gave Miro’s scarlet neckerchief a quick strong jerk and twist. The gesture was at once an insult and a threat.
