"That's right," nodded the sheriff."You got nothing on your shoulders.You can let yourself go, Vic.Sometimes I wish"--he sighed--"I wish I could do the same!""The sneaky coyote," thought Gregg, "he's lurin' me on!""Turned state's evidence!" maundered Lew Perkins."Well, they's a lot of 'em that lose their guts when they're caught.I remember way back in the time when Bannack was runnin' full blast--"Why did not some one shut off the old idiot before he was thoroughly started? He might keep on talking like the clank of a windmill in a steady breeze, endlessly.For Lew was old-seventy-five, eighty, eighty-five--he himself probably did not know just how old--and he had lived through at least two generations of pioneers with a myriad stories about them.He could string out tales of the Long Trail: Abilene, Wichita, Ellsworth, Great Bend, Newton, where eleven men were murdered in one night; he knew the vigilante days in San Francisco, and early times in Alder Gulch.
"Nobody would of thought Plummer was yaller, but he turned out that way,"droned on the narrator."Grit? He had enough to fit out twenty men.When Crawford shot him and busted his right arm, he went right on and learned to shoot with his left and started huntin' Jack again.Packed that lead with him till he died, and then they found Jack's bullet in his wrist, all worked smooth by the play of the bones.Afterwards it turned out that Plummer ran a whole gang; but before we learned that we'd been fools enough to make him sheriff.We got to Plummer right after he'd finished hangin' a man, and took him to his own gallows.""You'd of thought a cool devil like that would of made a good end, but he didn't.He just got down on his knees and cried, and asked God to help him.
Then he begged us to give him time to pray, but one of the boys up and told him he could do his prayin' from the cross-beam.And that was Henry Plummer, that killed a hundred men, him an' his gang.""H-m-m," murmured the sheriff, and looked uneasily about.Now that his eyes were turned away, Vic could study him at leisure, and he wondered at the smallness of the man.Suppose one were able to lay hands on him it would be easy to--"See you later, boys," drawled Glass, and sauntered from the room.
Lew Perkins sighed as the most important part of his audience disappeared, but having started talking the impetus carried him along, he held Vic Gregg with his hazy eyes.
"But they didn't all finish like Plummer, not all the bad ones.No sirree!
There was Boone Helm."
"I've heard about him," growled Vic, but the old man had fixed his glance and his reminiscent smile upon the past and his voice was soft with distance when he spoke again.
"Helm was a sure enough bad one, son.They don't grow like him no more.
Wild Bill was a baby compared with Helm, and Slade wasn't no man at all, even leavin' in the lies they tell about him.Why, son, Helm was just a lobo, in the skin of a man--""Like Barry?" put in Lorrimer, drifting closer down the bar.
"Who's he?"
"Ain't you heard of Whistlin' Dan? The one that killed Jim Silent and busted up his gang.Why, they say he's got a wolf that he can talk to like it was a man."Old Lew chuckled.
"They say a lot of things," he nodded, "but I'll tell a man that a wolf is a wolf and they ain't nothin' that can tame 'em.Don't you let 'em feed you up on lies like that, Lorrimer.But Helm was sure bad.He killed for the sake of killin', but he died game.When the boys run him down he swore on the bible that he's never killed a man, and they made him swear it over again just to watch his nerve; but he never batted an eye."The picture of that wild time grew up for Vic Gregg, and the thought of free men who laughed at the law, strong men, fierce men.What would one of these have done if the girl he intended to marry had treated him like a foil?
"Then they got him ready for the rope," went on Lew Perkins.
"'I've seen a tolerable lot of death,' says Helm.'I ain't afraid of it.'""There was about six thousand folks had come in to see the end of Boone Helm.Somebody asked him if he wanted anything.
"'Whisky,' says Boone.And he got it.
"Then he shook his hand and held it up.He had a sore finger and it bothered him a lot more than the thought of hangin'.
