I said: “Well, I’ll take time off and do a little scouting around. I’ll meet some old friends, surely, and I’ll ask a few questions. And it might have been one of the boys with a smuggled rifle, as you suggested, Captain Rawlins. I’ll see what I can find.”
“Please do, Mr. Bryant, immediately,” he said.
I looked back at him, just as I was going out the door, and he wasn’t expecting it. He didn’t look cold and brisk then. Just worried. He hadn’t sounded as though he’d expected me to find any smuggled guns, either — and that meant quite a lot. This Rawlins had been taken from the regular army and put in charge of a bunch of city kids — and he didn’t like one bit of it. He didn’t know anything about his new job — but he was no fool.
There was trouble in the air and he’d caught the feeling.
Fred Ardella was waiting for me outside the office building. He said: “Hey, Mr. Bryant! I just seen somebody sneaking around the cookhouse.”
“Probably somebody trying to snag a little something extra from the cook,” I said. “This air and exercise will pick up you fellows’ city appetites in a hurry.”
“It wasn’t any of the guys, Mr. Bryant. It was somebody in hick clothes. I seen him plain.”
I said, “It’s saw, Fred, not seen,” headed for the cookhouse, and walked fairly into the mess — with Fred behind me, which wasn’t so good.
The cook was on the floor, half under a table. He was on his side and there was blood on his forehead and on the floor by it. The second cook and the four boys who were on cookhouse duty were standing by the big range, with their hands raised. The cook and three of the boys looked scared, but the other boy was grinning as if he enjoyed the show. There was a husky, stockily built man standing in front of them and holding a gun on them, and when I went in the door he swung the gun my way and said: “Get over in line.”
I got over in line. I didn’t even own a gun, much less have one with me. Fred tried to duck back out of sight, but the man saw him and Fred joined us.
The boy that wasn’t scared looked at me and kept his grin and said: “Big-city stuff, hey, mister?”
I didn’t know his name but I grinned back at him and said it was. The cook started to stir around, where he was under the table, and the man with the gun turned that way a little — and I went for his knees with all the speed I could put in it.
My game knee went back on me, which was a usual thing, and I fell five feet short and flat on my face. Then the lights went out for me.
I came back with Captain Rawlins squatting on the floor by me and giving me part of a haircut. He was just taking off a bit on one side, so he could tape a bandage down over the cut on my head, but I didn’t know that and rolled away from him and his scissors.
He said, in his clipped way: “Please lie quiet, Mr. Bryant! That thug struck you on the head with a gun barrel. Fortunately, he didn’t fracture your skull.”
The moment I moved I wished I hadn’t. It felt as though the top of my head was going to lift off.
I said: “Where’d he go? My leg went bad or I’d have got him.”
Rawlins said reprovingly: “Mr. Bryant! Don’t ever do such a foolish thing again. The man would undoubtedly have shot you had you succeeded in reaching him. Such heroics are suicidal. Nothing less.”
He sounded as though he didn’t like my going for the hold-up man, but his eyes didn’t look the way his voice sounded. They were friendly.
I looked around and saw the cook sitting on the floor but leaning back against the cookhouse wall, and he said: “I got the same thing you got, Mr. Bryant. I thought it was a joke, at first.”
All the boys were standing around, and the one that hadn’t been scared was still wearing his grin. He said: “Aw, it was nothing! The guy just lowered the boom, is all. He wasn’t doing any shooting — I could see he didn’t want no part of any shooting, right when he come in.”
“What’s that?” said Rawlins, looking over that way.
“Hagh! He come in and I seen right off he wasn’t wanting to shoot nobody. He kept close, so he could club with the gun in case one of us made a break. If he’d wanted to shoot, he’d have stayed back a ways. ’At’s easy to figure out, mister.”
“Call me Captain Rawlins,” said Rawlins, automatically. And then to me, “Would you know the man again, Mr. Bryant?”
“Yes, sir. A man about thirty. He was dressed in rough clothes, but he’s not from this country. He’s not a native, I’m sure.”
“Why?”
I’d been trying to think just what had struck me wrong about the hold-up man and I finally got what had puzzled me. I said: “His clothes were all right, sir, but his face wasn’t tanned the way it should have been. He was sun-burned instead of tanned. And he was carrying an automatic — pretty near all the people around here favor a revolver. Though most of them don’t own one. A rifle and a shotgun can be used in this country — a revolver is almost useless.”
The boy who’d spoken before said: “A hell of a lot of guys have been bumped off with ’em, mister.”
Rawlins said: “I’ll have no profanity in my presence, young man. What’s your name?”
The boy said: “Richard Deiss.”
“Add the word ‘sir’ to that, if you please.”
“Well... sir.”
Rawlins said to me: “Suppose you go to your quarters, sir, and rest until you feel more fit I’d like to speak with you then, if I may. Are you feeling better, cook?”
The cook said he was feeling much better, and Rawlins walked out.
The boy named Deiss said: “The dirty—! Telling me to call him ‘sir’.”
Then Fred Ardella said, “You’re in the army now.” and all the others laughed.
Fred walked back with me to my cabin because I was still shaky. He said, just as we got there: “This guy Deiss is all right. His brother’s in the can for manslaughter and his old lady’s dead. His old man won’t work and Blacky — we call him Blacky — sort of run around by himself, if you know what I mean.”
I said, “Oh, he’ll get used to it here and like it,” and hoped I was speaking the truth.
Chapter Two
Mass Murder
This time Lieutenant Ward was with the captain when I went in. Ward, who was young and almost fat, grinned at me and said: “Ah-ha! The hero himself. All I’ve been hearing from the kids is how you tackled the hold-up man with your bare hands. They think you’re hot stuff, Bryant.”
I said: “It’s probably a good thing for me I didn’t make my tackle. The guy would probably have done me in right there.”
Rawlins frowned and said: “There’s something odd about this. The man asked for nothing, I understand. He just stood the boys up against the wall and kept them there. It’s a mystery. After he knocked you out, Mr. Bryant, he ran out of the cookhouse and that was the last seen of him. He wasn’t alone. I understand some of the boys scouted around and found where three horses had been tied to trees, on the far side of the camp but out of sight. Do you understand it?”
I said: “Indeed I don’t. I’m afraid one of the boys might meet the man and do something foolish. There’s a possibility of the man leaving the country now, of course.”
Ward said: “Let some of these tough Chicago babies of mine get their hands on him and he’ll wish he’d left. I’ve got a dozen little hoodlums in that crowd that will end up on the gallows.”