To Bill Jordan the news was manna from heaven. It gave him new life, and he instantly unfolded his plan to the sheriff. The sheriff listened first with wonder and then with a grin of interest, for the plan of Bill Jordan was that Bud Fuller should show his intention of becoming a peaceful citizen by first acting as a decoy to take in another one of the lawless. In a word, Bud Fuller should be the bait for the trap which was to close over the head of Pete Reeve. The sheriff doubted the possibility of using Bud for a bait.
“He’s a fox, and Bud Fuller is a fox,” said the sheriff, “and it’ll take a cleverer man than either of us, Bill, to use them together.”
“Poison fights poison,” insisted Bill Jordan. “You send for Bud Fuller and just leave the rest to me.”
Accordingly, Bud Fuller was sent for. He was a middle-aged fellow with a worn and solemn face; his smile was a painful thing to see, and it twisted ironically to the side of his face. That smile appeared when Bill Jordan, in the presence of the sheriff, made his offer. The smile even persisted when the sheriff in his turn, as soon as Jordan was silent, announced that if the scheme were put through he would see that people were kept from troubling Bud Fuller, and he could manage this by the simple and efficient expedient of making Bud a deputy sheriff.
“Listen, gents,” said Bud Fuller when both had finished their speeches, “do either of you know Pete Reeve - well?”
“I know he has a long record; just what that record is I can’t say,” said the sheriff.
“Nor nobody else can say,” declared Fuller. “Nobody else knows just what Pete Reeve has done. Speaking personal, I don’t want to know. But I’ve run into enough stuff about him to know that he’s one of the hardest gunmen that ever packed a Colt.” He turned on the sheriff. “You remember Denman?”
“Sure.”
“Was he bad?”
“One of the worst.”
“And a fighter?”
“Fight a bull with his bare hands.”
“D’you know who finished him?”
“No.”
“Pete Reeve. And they’s others. I could go on talking, but I won’t. No, sir; give me an easy job while you’re at it. No Pete Reeve in my game.”
Bill Jordan had been thinking hard and fast. Now he entered the argument decisively.
“Look here, Fuller, you want to go straight. But there are a pile of gents who won’t believe that you’ve quit your old game, and there are a pile more who don’t care whether you’ve quit or not. They’re on your trail, and they want to get you. Is that straight?”
At the latter part of his speech Fuller winced and then thrust out his lower jaw, but it was the savagery of desperation rather than of courage.
“I know! They want me bad, some of the boys!”
“And who’s going to keep them away?”
“The - the sheriff. It’s his job.”
“You know the sheriff can’t be your bodyguard. It’s public opinion that’s got to protect you, Bud. You ought to see that. Just now public opinion ain’t for you. People around here don’t think much of you, if you want me to be frank. They think you’re just down here as part of another of your games. What you’ve got to do is to prove that you’re on the side of law and order. Once that’s proved, everybody will be your friend. You can count on the gun of every law-abiding citizen, and they’re the people who will make these parts too hot for any one that’s after you. Bud, ain’t that something worth having?”
He concluded swiftly: “Maybe you will run some risk with Pete Reeve. But you can take care of yourself with him or any other man, and ...”
Here Bud broke in: “Don’t make no mistake there. Sure I can take care of myself with most any man. But Pete Reeve is different. I wouldn’t have no chance agin’ him, and I know it.”
“But think it over, Bud. How will he ever suspect you?”
“He’s a fox, I tell you; a wise old fox, and he’d smell me out!”
“Then make your choice, Bud. Either you follow my plan and help us catch Pete Reeve or else you stay here - unguarded, helpless; and the first pair of your enemies who happen to get together, there’ll be an end of Bud Fuller. But it’s nothing to us. Make your choice!”
It was a brutal way of putting the situation; but Bud Fuller was sufficiently brutal himself to be appealed to by such methods. For a long time he sat with his head bowed and his forehead corrugated in thought. When he raised his head his eye was dull and his face resigned.
“I’m going to take the chance and make the play for you,” said Bud Fuller, “but the chances is ten to one that this job will finish me.”
The sheriff and Bill Jordan apparently appreciated the importance of the decision. They rose in turn solemnly and shook hands with him. Then Jordan entered into the final detail of the scheme.
When it was finished, Bud made no delay. His horse stood saddled before the building. Five minutes later he was jogging out of town.
He headed straight for the little shack where Pete and Hunter lived, and camping that night on the way, he jogged into the vicinity of the shack a little past noon of the next day. It was a commonplace, sun-blistered little building, but the heart of Bud Fuller leaped in him as he saw it, for there was to be performed the first part of the most exciting, important, and dangerous adventure he had ever undertaken in a life crammed with action and fighting.
Bud let his pony jog on slowly, and dismounting before the door, he set about beating the dust out of his trousers with his quirt; through the door he looked straight at the profile of little Pete Reeve.
Something about the expression of the formidable gunfighter, and something about the tenseness of his position, made Bud Fuller stop beating his trousers with the quirt and stare.
Reeve sat tilting forward on a box, his face set, his right hand twitching toward his hip. By something about his eyes, Fuller knew that some object was approaching steadily, an object which Pete Reeve viewed with terror.
Fuller was bewildered.
Then a deep voice boomed from the shack: “Steady, boy,” and into the range of Bud’s vision came the ominous head of an enormous wolf, carried close to the floor, the gray, terrible head of the lobo.
Instinctively Fuller brought out his gun, wondering why Reeve had not shot already. Then he noted that the lobo carried a red cloth in his mouth.
“Down! Down with it!” said the heavy voice from the hidden part of the shack.
The huge head slowly sank still lower. At the feet of Pete Reeve the red handkerchief was deposited, and then the giant wolf, whose powerful shoulders also had come into view, winced away with a snarl of hate.
“That’s enough!” cried Pete Reeve. “If I have to face that four-footed devil coming toward me again I’ll lose my nerve and go for my gun. No more, Bull.”
“The minute you go for your gun he’ll go for your throat,” the deep, smooth voice said, and chuckled.
“But,” cried Reeve, “it’s facing death, I tell you, Bull!”
“Not a bit. I can stop him in the middle of the air with a call. Try it, Pete.”
“Not for a thousand dollars! If you’re crazy, I’m not!”
Here Fuller, wondering, approached the door and showed himself. He saw, at the far end of the shack, the great body of the wolf backed up between the knees of Hunter and snarling at the man before whose feet he had just deposited the handkerchief. No wonder the nerve of Pete was nearly gone. It was the face of a wise devil in the skin of a wolf.
“This beats me!” cried Fuller. “A tame lobo!”
“Tame devil, you mean,” said Reeve, rising and mopping his brow. “And I’d trust him just as far!”
He turned to Fuller and extended his hand with a rather drawn smile.
“How are you, Fuller? What are you doing in these parts?”