Six Feet Four by Jackson Gregory

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SIX FEET FOUR

by Jackson Gregory

1917

TO E. M. GREGORY

"HERE'S YOUR BOOK"

CHAPTER

I The Storm

II The Devil's Own Night

III Buck Thornton, Man's Man

IV The Ford

V The Man from Poison Hole Ranch

VI Winifred Judges a Man

VII An Invitation to Supper

VIII In Harte's Cabin

IX The Double Theft

X In the Moonlight

XI The Bedloe Boys

XII Rattlesnake Pollard

XIII The Ranch on Big Little River

XIV In the Name of Friendship

XV The Kid

XVI A Guarded Conference

XVII Suspicion

XVIII The Dance at Deer Creek Schoolhouse

XIX Six Feet Four!

XX Pollard Talks "Business"

XXI The Girl and the Game

XXII The Yellow Envelope Again!

XXIII Warning

XXIV The Gentleman from New Mexico

XXV In the Dark

XXVI The Frame-Up

XXVII Jimmie Squares Himself

XXVIII The Show Down

CHAPTER I

THE STORM

All day long, from an hour before the pale dawn until now after the
thick dark, the storm had raged through the mountains. Before midday it
had grown dark in the canons. In the driving blast of the wind many a
tall pine had snapped, broken at last after long valiant years of
victorious buffeting with the seasons, while countless tossing branches
had been riven away from the parent boles and hurled far out in all
directions. Through the narrow canons the wet wind went shrieking
fearsomely, driving the slant rain like countless thin spears of
glistening steel.

At the wan daybreak the sound filling the air was one of many-voiced but
subdued tumult, like the faraway growling of fierce, hungry, imprisoned
beasts. As the sodden hours dragged by the noises everywhere increased
steadily, so that before noon the whole of the wilderness seemed to be
shouting; narrow creek beds were filled with gushing, muddy water; the
trees on the mountainsides shook and snapped and creaked and hissed to
the hissing of the racing wind; at intervals the thunder echoing
ominously added its boom to the general uproar. Not for a score of
years and upward had such a storm visited the mountains in the vicinity
of the old road house in Big Pine Flat.

Night, as though it had leaped upon the back of the storm and had ridden
hitherward on the wings of the wind all impatience to defy the laws of
daylight, was in truth mistress of the mountains a full hour or more
before the invisible sun's allotted time of setting. In the
storm-smitten, lonely building at the foot of the rocky slope, shivering
as though with the cold, rocking crazily as though in startled fear at
each gust, the roaring log fire in the open fireplace made an uncertain
twilight and innumerable ghostlike shadows. The wind whistling down the
chimney, making that eerie sound known locally as the voice of William
Henry, came and went fitfully. Poke Drury, the cheerful, one-legged
keeper of the road house, swung back and forth up and down on his one
crutch, whistling blithely with his guest of the chimney and lighting
the last of his coal oil lamps and candles.

"She's a Lu-lu bird, all right," acknowledged Poke Drury. He swung
across his long "general room" to the fireplace, balanced on his crutch
while he shifted and kicked at a fallen burning log with his one boot,
and then hooked his elbows on his mantel. His very black, smiling eyes
took cheerful stock of his guests whom the storm had brought him. They
were many, more than had ever at one time honoured the Big Pine road
house. And still others were coming.

"If Hap Smith ain't forgot how to sling a four horse team through the
dark, huh?" continued the landlord as he placed still another candle at
the south window.

In architectural design Poke Drury's road house was as simple an affair
as Poke Drury himself. There was but one story: the whole front of the
house facing the country road was devoted to the "general room." Here
was a bar, occupying the far end. Then there were two or three rude pine
tables, oil-cloth covered. The chairs were plentiful and all of the
rawhide bottom species, austere looking, but comfortable enough. And,
at the other end of the barn like chamber was the long dining table.
Beyond it a door leading to the kitchen at the back of the house. Next
to the kitchen the family bed room where Poke Drury and his dreary
looking spouse slept. Adjoining this was the one spare bed room, with a
couple of broken legged cots and a wash-stand without any bowl or
pitcher. If one wished to lave his hands and face or comb his hair let
him step out on the back porch under the shoulder of the mountain and
utilize the road house toilet facilities there: they were a tin basin, a
water pipe leading from a spring and a broken comb stuck after the
fashion of the country in the long hairs of the ox's tail nailed to the
porch post.

"You gents is sure right welcome," the one-legged proprietor went on,
having paused a moment to listen to the wind howling through the narrow
pass and battling at his door and windows. "I got plenty to eat an'
more'n plenty to drink, same as usual. But when it comes to sleepin',
well, you got to make floors an' chairs an' tables do. You see this here
little shower has filled me all up. The Lew Yates place up the river got
itself pretty well washed out; Lew's young wife an' ol' mother-in-law,"
and Poke's voice was properly modified, "got scared clean to pieces. Not
bein' used to our ways out here," he added brightly. "Any way they've
got the spare bed room. An' my room an' Ma's ... well, Ma's got a real
bad cold an' she's camped there for the night. But, shucks, boys, what's
the odds, when there's fire in the fire place an' grub in the grub box
an' as fine a line of licker as you can find any place I know of. An' a
deck or two of cards an' the bones to rattle for them that's anxious to
make or break quick ... Hap Smith _ought_ to been here before now. You
wouldn't suppose...."

He broke off and looked at those of the faces which had been turned his
way. His thought was plain to read, at least for those who understood
recent local conditions. Hap Smith had been driving the stage over the
mountains for only something less than three weeks; which is to say
since the violent taking off of his predecessor, Bill Varney.

Before any one spoke the dozen men in the room had had ample time to
consider this suggestion. One or two of them glanced up at the clock
swinging its pendulum over the chimney piece. Then they went on with
what they were doing, glancing through old newspapers, dealing at
cards, smoking or just sitting and staring at nothing in particular.

"The last week has put lots of water in all the cricks," offered old man
Adams from his place by the fire. "Then with this cloud-bust an'
downpour today, it ain't real nice travellin'. That would be about all
that's holdin' Hap up. An' I'm tellin' you why: Did you ever hear a man
tell of a stick-up party on a night like this? No, sir! These here
stick-up gents got more sense than that; they'd be settin' nice an' snug
an' dry like us fellers, right now."

As usual, old man Adams had stated a theory with emphasis and utterly
without any previous reflection, being a positive soul, but never a
brilliant. And, again quite as usual, a theory stated was naturally to
be combated with more or less violence. Out of the innocent enough
statement there grew a long, devious argument. An argument which was at
its height and evincing no signs of ever getting anywhere at all, when
from the night without came the rattle of wheels, the jingle of harness
chains and Hap Smith's voice shouting out the tidings of his tardy
arrival.

The front door was flung open, lamps and candles and log fire all danced
in the sudden draft and some of the flickering flames went out, and the
first one of Hap Smith's belated passengers, a young girl, was fairly
blown into the room. She, like the rest, was drenched and as she
hastened across the floor to the welcome fire trailed rain water from
her cape and dress. But her eyes were sparkling, her cheeks rosy with
the rude wooing of the outside night. After her, stamping noisily, glad
of the light and warmth and a prospect of food and drink, came Hap
Smith's other passengers, four booted men from the mines and the cattle
country.

To the last man of them in the road house they gave her their immediate
and exclusive attention. Briefly suspended were all such operations as
smoking, drinking, newspaper reading or card playing. They looked at her
gravely, speculatively and with frankly unhidden interest. One man who
had laid a wet coat aside donned it again swiftly and surreptitiously.
Another in awkward fashion, as she passed close to him, half rose and
then sank back into his chair. Still others merely narrowed the gaze
that was bent upon her steadily.

She went straight to the fireplace, threw off her wraps and extended her
hands to the blaze. So for a moment she stood, her shoulders stirring to
the shiver which ran down her whole body. Then she turned her head a
little and for the first time took in all of the rude appointments of
the room.

"Oh!" she gasped. "I...."

"It's all right, Miss," said Poke Drury, swinging toward her, his hand
lifted as though to stop one in full flight. "You see ... just that end
there is the bar room," he explained nodding at her reassuringly. "The
middle of the room here is the ... the parlour; an' down at that end,
where the long table is, that's the dinin' room. I ain't ever got
aroun' to the partitions yet, but I'm goin' to some day. An' ... Ahem!"

He had said it all and, all things considered, had done rather well with
an impossible job. The clearing of the throat and a glare to go with it
were not for the startled girl but for that part of the room where the
bar and card tables were being used.

"Oh," said the girl again. And then, turning her back upon the bar and
so allowing the firelight to add to the sparkle of her eyes and the
flush on her cheeks, "Of course. One mustn't expect everything. And
please don't ask the gentlemen to ... to stop whatever they are doing on
my account. I'm quite warm now." She smiled brightly at her host and
shivered again.

"May I go right to my room?"

In the days when Poke Drury's road house stood lone and aloof from the
world in Big Pine Flat, very little of the world from which such as Poke
Drury had retreated had ever peered into these mountain-bound
fastnesses; certainly less than few women of the type of this girl had
ever come here in the memory of the men who now, some boldly and some
shyly, regarded her drying herself and seeking warmth in front of the
blazing fire. True, at the time there were in the house three others of
her sex. But they were ... different.

"May I go right to my room?" she repeated as the landlord stood gaping
at her rather foolishly. She imagined that he had not heard, being a
little deaf ... or that, possibly, the poor chap was a trifle slow
witted. And again she smiled on him kindly and again he noted the
shiver bespeaking both chill and fatigue.

But to Poke Drury there had come an inspiration. Not much of one,
perhaps, yet he quickly availed himself of it. Hanging in a dusty corner
near the long dining table, was an old and long disused guest's book,
the official road house register. Drury's wandering eye lighted upon it.

"If you'll sign up, Miss," he suggested, "I'll go have Ma get your room
ready."

And away he scurried on his crutch, casting a last look over his
shoulder at his ruder male guests.

The girl went hastily as directed and sat down at the table, her back to
the room. The book she lifted down from its hanging place; there was a
stub of pencil tied to the string. She took it stiffly into her fingers
and wrote, "Winifred Waverly." Her pencil in the space reserved for the
signer's home town, she hesitated. Only briefly, however. With a little
shrug, she completed the legend, inscribing swiftly, "Hill's Corners."
Then she sat still, feeling that many eyes were upon her and waited the
return of the road house keeper. When finally he came back into the
room, his slow hesitating gait and puckered face gave her a suspicion of
the truth.

"I'm downright sorry, Miss," he began lamely. "Ma's got
somethin' ... bad cold or pneumonia ... an' she won't budge. There's
only one more bed room an' Lew Yates's wife has got one cot an Lew's
mother-in-law has got the other. An' _they_ won't budge. An' ..."

He ended there abruptly.

"I see," said the girl wearily. "There isn't any place for me."

"Unless," offered Drury without enthusiasm and equally without
expectation of his offer being of any great value, "you'd care to crawl
in with Ma ..."

"No, thank you!" said Miss Waverly hastily. "I can sit up somewhere;
after all it won't be long until morning and we start on again. Or, if I
might have a blanket to throw down in a corner ..."

Again Poke Drury left her abruptly. She sat still at the table, without
turning, again conscious of many eyes steadily on her. Presently from an
adjoining room came Drury's voice, subdued to a low mutter. Then a
woman's voice, snapping and querrulous. And a moment later the return of
Drury, his haste savouring somewhat of flight from the connubial
chamber, but certain spoils of victory with him; from his arm trailed a
crazy-quilt which it was perfectly clear he had snatched from his wife's
bed.

He led the way to the kitchen, stuck a candle in a bottle on the table,
spread the quilt on the floor in the corner, made a veritable ceremony
of fastening the back door and left her. The girl shivered and went
slowly to her uninviting couch.

Poke Drury, in his big general room again, stood staring with troubled
face at the other men. With common consent and to the last man of them
they had already tiptoed to the register and were seeking to inform
themselves as to the name and habitat of the prettiest girl who had ever
found herself within the four walls of Poke Drury's road house.

"Nice name," offered old man Adams whose curiosity had kept stride with
his years and who, lacking all youthful hesitation, had been first to
get to the book. "Kind of stylish soundin'. But, Hill's Corners?" He
shook his head. "I ain't been to the Corners for a right smart spell,
but I didn't know such as _her_ lived there."

"They don't," growled the heavy set man who had snatched the register
from old man Adams' fingers. "An' I been there recent. Only last week.
The Corners ain't so all-fired big as a female like her is goin' to be
livin' there an' it not be knowed all over."

Poke Drury descended upon them, jerked the book away and with a screwed
up face and many gestures toward the kitchen recalled to them that a
flimsy partition, though it may shut out the vision, is hardly to be
counted on to stop the passage of an unguarded voice.

"Step down this way, gents," he said tactfully. "Where the bar is. Bein'
it's a right winterish sort of night I don't reckon a little drop o'
kindness would go bad, huh? Name your poison, gents. It's on me."

In her corner just beyond the flimsy partition, Winifred Waverly, of
Hill's Corners or elsewhere, drew the many coloured patch work quilt
about her and shivered again.

CHAPTER II

THE DEVIL'S OWN NIGHT

Hap Smith, the last to come in, opened the front door which the wind
snatched from his hands and slammed violently against the wall. In the
sudden draft the old newspapers on one of the oil-cloth covered tables
went flying across the room, while the rain drove in and blackened the
floor. Hap Smith got the door shut and for a moment stood with his back
against it, his two mail bags, a lean and a fat, tied together and flung
over his shoulder, while he smote his hands together and laughed.

"A night for the devil to go skylarkin' in!" he cried jovially. "A night
for murder an' arson an' robbin' graveyards! Listen to her, boys! Hear
her roar! Poke Drury, I'm tellin' you, I'm glad your shack's right where
it is instead of seventeen miles fu'ther on. An' ... Where's the girl?"
He had swept the room with his roving eye; now, dropping his voice a
little he came on down the room and to the bar. "Gone to bed?"

As one thoroughly at home here he went for a moment behind the bar,
dropped the bags into a corner for safety and threw off his heavy outer
coat, frankly exposing the big revolver which dragged openly at his
right hip. Bill Varney had always carried a rifle and had been unable to
avail himself of it in time; Hap Smith in assuming the responsibilities
of the United States Mail had forthwith invested heavily of his cash on
hand for a Colt forty-five and wore it frankly in the open. His, by the
way, was the only gun in sight, although there were perhaps a half dozen
in the room.

"She ain't exactly gone to bed," giggled the garrulous old man Adams,
"bein' as there ain't no bed for her to go to. Ma Drury is inhabitin'
one right now, while the other two is pre-empted by Lew Yates' wife an'
his mother-in-law."

"Pshaw," muttered Hap Smith. "That ain't right. She's an awful nice girl
an' she's clean tuckered out an' cold an' wet. She'd ought to have a bed
to creep into." His eyes reproachfully trailed off to Poke Drury. The
one-legged man made a grimace and shrugged.

"I can't drag Lew's folks out, can I?" he demanded. "An' I'd like to see
the jasper as would try pryin' Ma loose from the covers right now. It
can't be did, Hap."

Hap sighed, seeming to agree, and sighing reached out a big hairy hand
for the bottle.

"She's an awful nice girl, jus' the same," he repeated with head-nodding
emphasis. And then, feeling no doubt that he had done his chivalrous
duty, he tossed off his liquor, stretched his thick arms high over his
head, squared his shoulders comfortably in his blue flannel shirt and
grinned in wide good humour. "This here campoody of yours ain't a
terrible bad place to be right bow, Poke, old scout. Not a bad place
a-tall."

"You said twice, she was nice," put in old man Adams, his bleary, red
rimmed ferret eyes gimleting at the stage driver. "But you ain't said
who she was? Now..."

Hap Smith stared at him and chuckled.

"Ain't that jus' like Adams for you?" he wanted to know. "Who is she, he
says! An' here I been ridin' alongside her all day an' never once does
it pop into my head to ask whether she minds the name of Daisy or Sweet
Marie!"

"Name's Winifred Waverly," chirped up the old man. "But a name don't
mean much; not in this end of the world least ways. But us boys finds it
kind of interestin' how she hangs out to Dead Man's Alley. That bein'
kind of strange an' ..."

"Poh!" snorted Hap Smith disdainfully. "Her hang out in that little town
of Hill's Corners? Seein' as she ain't ever been there, havin' tol' me
so on the stage less'n two hours ago, what's the sense of sayin' a fool
thing like that? She ain't the kind as dwells in the likes of that nest
of polecats an' sidewinders. Poh!"

"Poh, is it?" jeered old man Adams tremulously. "Clap your peep sight on
that, Hap Smith. Poh at me, will you?" and close up to the driver's eyes
he thrust the road house register with its newly pencilled inscription
so close that Hap Smith dodged and was some time deciphering the brief
legend.

"Beats me," he grunted, when he had done. He tossed the book to a table
as a matter of no moment and shrugged. "Anyways she's a nice girl, I
don't care where she abides, so to speak. An' me an' these other boys,"
with a sweeping glance at the four of his recent male passengers, "is
hungrier than wolves. How about it, Poke? Late hours, but considerin'
the kind of night the devil's dealin' we're lucky to be here a-tall. I
could eat the hind leg off a ten year ol' steer."

"Jus' because a girl's got a red mouth an' purty eyes ..." began old man
Adams knowingly. But Smith snorted "Poh!" at him again and clapped him
good naturedly on the thin old shoulders after such a fashion as to
double the old man up and send him coughing and catching at his breath
back to his chair by the fire.

Poke Drury, staring strangely at Smith, showed unmistakable signs of his
embarrassment. Slowly under several pairs of interested eyes his face
went a flaming red.

"I don't know what's got into me tonight," he muttered, slapping a very
high and shining forehead with a very soft, flabby hand. "I clean forgot
you boys hadn't had supper. An' now ... the grub's all in the kitchen
an' ... _she's_ in there, all curled up in a quilt an' mos' likely
asleep."

Several mouths dropped. As for Hap Smith he again smote his big hands
together and laughed.

"Drinks on Poke Drury," he announced cheerfully. "For havin' got so
excited over a pretty girl he forgot we hadn't had supper! Bein' that's
what's got into him."

Drury hastily set forth bottles and glasses. More than that, being
tactful, he started Hap Smith talking. He asked of the roads, called
attention to the fact that the stage was several hours late, hinted at
danger from the same gentleman who had taken off Bill Varney only
recently, and so succeeded in attaining the desired result. Hap Smith,
a glass twisting slowly in his hand, declaimed long and loudly.

But in the midst of his dissertation the kitchen door opened and the
girl, her quilt about her shoulders like a shawl, came in.

"I heard," she said quietly. "You are all hungry and the food is in
there." She came on to the fireplace and sat down. "I am hungry, too.
And cold." She looked upon the broad genial face of Hap Smith as upon
the visage of an old friend. "I am not going to be stupid," she
announced with a little air of taking the situation in hand. "I would
be, if I stayed in there and caught cold. Tell them," and it was still
Hap Smith whom she addressed, "to go on with whatever they are doing."

Again she came in for a close general scrutiny, one of serious, frank
and matter of fact appraisal. Conscious of it, as she could not help
being, she for a little lifted her head and turned her eyes gravely to
meet the eyes directed upon her. Hers were clear, untroubled, a deep
grey and eminently pleasant to look into; especially now that she put
into them a little friendly smile. But in another moment and with a half
sigh of weariness, she settled into a chair at the fireside and let her
gaze wander back to the blazing fire.

Again among themselves they conceded, what by glances and covert nods,
that she was most decidedly worth a man's second look and another after
that. "Pretty, like a picture," offered Joe Hamby in a guarded whisper
to one of the recent arrivals, who was standing with him at the bar.
"Or," amended Joe with a flash of inspiration, "like a flower; one of
them nice blue flowers on a long stem down by the crick."

"Nice to talk to, too," returned Joe's companion, something of the pride
of ownership in his tone and look. For, during the day on the stage had
he not once summoned the courage for a stammering remark to her, and had
she not replied pleasantly? "Never travelled with a nicer lady."
Whereupon Joe Hamby regarded him enviously. And old man Adams, with a
sly look out of his senile old eyes, jerked his thin old body across the
floor, dragging a chair after him, and sat down to entertain the lady.
Who, it would seem from the twitching of her lips, had been in reality
wooed out of herself and highly amused, when the interruption to the
quiet hour came, abruptly and without warning.

Poke Drury, willingly aided by the hungrier of his guests, had brought
in the cold dishes; a big roast of beef, boiled potatoes, quantities of
bread and butter and the last of Ma Drury's dried-apple pies. The long
dining table had begun to take on a truly festive air. The coffee was
boiling in the coals of the fireplace. Then the front door, the knob
turned and released from without, was blown wide open by the gusty wind
and a tall man stood in the black rectangle of the doorway. His
appearance and attitude were significant, making useless all conjecture.
A faded red bandana handkerchief was knotted about his face with rude
slits for the eyes. A broad black hat with flapping, dripping brim was
down over his forehead. In his two hands, the barrel thrust forward into
the room, was a sawed-off shotgun.

He did not speak, it being plain that words were utterly superfluous and
that he knew it. Nor was there any outcry in the room. At first the girl
had not seen, her back being to the door. Nor had old man Adams, his red
rimmed eyes being on the girl. They turned together. The old man's jaw
dropped; the girl's eyes widened, rather to a lively interest, it would
seem, than to alarm. One had but to sit tight at times like this and
obey orders....

The intruder's eyes were everywhere. His chief concern, however, from
the start appeared to be Hap Smith. The stage driver's hand had gone to
the butt of his revolver and now rested there. The muzzle of the short
barrelled shotgun made a short quick arc and came to bear on Hap Smith.
Slowly his fingers dropped from his belt.

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