There was a bluish haze hanging from the low ceiling, the office reeked with the smell of cigars and Tom Bender knew that when the smoke hung thick like this the Adjutant-General was getting ready to crawl somebody's frame. The thing to do was to let him alone and say nothing.
Bender sat down inelegantly in a Jacobean chair and waited. After a while he lighted a cigarette and as he began to puff the Adjutant-General said he had a trip for him and it was too bad he couldn't give it to somebody he didn't like. Bender asked him how was that and the Adjutant-General said it just looked like a hell of a way to reward him for getting those vaqueros.
Tom Bender laughed and said that was all right, the look on the Rinera sheriffs face was enough.
Then the Adjutant-General got up and stood by the desk. He looked down at the brim of Tom Bender's new white hat and said he was glad of that because he had a lulu now and he didn't mean maybe. Hell was popping over at Rondora. The old settlers had got enough of gangsters and gamblers and were about to take things into their own hands. The Adjutant-General said it was vigilante stuff.
Tom Bender nodded and declared that was the way with them —boom towns. They were so busy trying to get rich that the riff-raff had the place by the tail before they knew it.
“That's it exactly,” the Adjutant-General said. “Last week a couple of bums put on a shooting match on the main stem and accidentally killed a twelve-year-old girl. Neither one of them was hit but a bullet ricocheted and got the daughter of Jeff Peebles. He couldn't get any satisfaction from the sheriff so he's got the whole town steamed up. It's a tough place.”
Tom Bender looked up, bared his teeth wisely and said they were all tough but that some were tougher.
“Then Rondora's tougher,” the Adjutant-General said. “I want you to get over there and head off trouble. There may be some even after you get there.”
Tom Bender looked up, bared his teeth a little and said: “Yeah— there may be at that.”
He was a good officer and scared of nothing but when he got in a tight corner he unlimbered his guns and started blasting.
The Adjutant-General glared down and snapped: “And, by—! I don't want you to make a shooting gallery out of that town, either!”
Tom Bender grinned and spread his hands placatingly.
“All right,” he said; ”—no shooting gallery.”
It was easy to agree to anything when a man's insides felt as if they had soaked up a lot of sunshine and he knew he had a day or two to play before he went back to work.
The Adjutant-General wrinkled his brow studiously and said: “I think maybe I better get Klepper down from Fort Worth to help you.”
“Naw,” said Bender, shaking his head; “you leave Klep be. I'll take a crack at it by myself. If I need help I'll holler.”
“Well—” said the Adjutant-General, “all right. But I want results. I want the place mopped up.”
“I'll mop 'er up,” Bender said. “I'll get right over there tomorrow.”
“No, you won't,” his superior said quickly. “You have lunch with me and I'll put you on the train. There's a 1:15 train out for Amarillo that makes connections. I'll take you myself—I want to know you're on it.”
Every time Tom Bender was turned loose in Austin he hit the high spots. He didn't get in often but when he did he took all they had and yelled for more.
“Don't rush me,” he said, grinning. “I just got here. I know a lot of people here. I got to say hello to my friends.”
The Adjutant-General frowned through a geyser of smoke.
“Tom,” he said slowly, “you're a hell of a good man but the next time you get tight and wake up in Oklahoma City I'm going to kick you off the staff if I get impeached for it.”
Bender grinned boyishly and slanted his head with his left eye closed from the thin finger of smoke that pried at it.
“Naw,” he said disdainfully; “I ain't gonna get tight. I just wanna look around. I'll catch that train for sure.”
“All right—but if you don't it'll be just too bad. I'm telling you, Rondora's hot. They're ready to start stringing 'em up to telephone poles.”
“That'd be swell,” Bender said; “yes, sir—that'd be swell.”
The Adjutant-General meditated a moment and then gave up trying to be serious.
“Hell,” he said, and sat down.
Chapter III
Tom Bender Unloaded at Rondora the next night an hour after sunset when the drilling rigs were ablaze with lights. The rigs were thrown around the town in an uneven circle, a glow about the floor of each derrick, a lone light gleaming up near the double board, another ninety feet in the air to light the top of the stands and another above that on a gin pole which shone dully down on the crown blocks.
It was an unearthly spectacle and looking at it Tom Bender could believe those who said there was no arrangement of lights that could look like this. His nostrils were filled with the cloying smell of a breeze that has blown over hundreds of pools of oil and his ears vibrated to a slow boom that was like the ringing of a great bell from far off. Somewhere out there they were running surface casing in the holes and beating it with sledges.
He was unconscious of the people around him until he heard a voice say: “Taxi to the hotel,” and felt somebody tug at his glad-stone. He released it and followed a man across the gravel to a flivver that was parked in front of the station. The man hoisted the bag up and slammed it down hard in the space between the hood and the fender and then started back to the train from which people were still emerging.
The way he handled the bag got Tom Bender's dander up because it was a present from the Adjutant-General and he was as careful of it as he was of his watch. He yelled: “Hey!” and the driver stopped. Bender strode over with blood in his eyes and asked him where he was going. The driver replied shortly that he was going to get some more passengers and walked away muttering to himself.
“Hey!” Bender yelled again. When he faced him this time the yellow glare of the station lamps revealed deep lines in his face. Tom Bender was spoiling for a good ruction and he didn't care where it started. “How long you gonna be?” he challenged.
“Aw, I dunno,” the driver responded lazily. “You in a hurry?”
“You're right I'm in a hurry!” Bender snapped. The driver wasn't very big and Bender knew if he slammed him one he'd probably break him in two.
The driver's fingers were spread and working and his face was alight with belligerency but he knew this was too much man for him to take on single-handed. In a minute his fingers grew still, he relaxed a little and tried to take it good-naturedly.
“In that case,” he said; “I guess we better be rolling.”
“Yeah,” said Bender, still a little sore; “in that case we better be rolling.”
They rolled.
Rondora was booming. It was a settlement of drab one- and two-story buildings squatting upon the prairie with only a railroad to keep it alive. It was the sort of town that can be found nowhere but on the west Texas flats, and had the hand of fortune stayed itself Rondora probably would have gone on for generations on end creating not even a flicker of interest from the world outside. People were born, lived and died in the same house—that sort of town. Quick riches had increased the tempo of life and geared it too high for old-time fashions. She was an old chassis with a new and powerful motor and anybody who stopped to think would have known she couldn't stand a pace like this without bursting somewhere.
The single important street teemed with people. Automobiles were parked nose-first at the curbing and crowds were gathered on the corners and in the drug stores. Some of them were in the habiliments of the field and some of them were in plain trousers and shirt sleeves but all of them had money in their pockets and were looking for things to buy. From somewhere came the noisy discord of an electric piano. Conversation was loud, laughter was boisterous and women drove slowly up and down the street in closed cars, sitting alone in the shadows, and stealing surreptitious come-hither looks at the men on the sidewalks.