Crossroads (10 page)

A
s plain Jack she had entered madame’s shop. As Miss Jacqueline Boone she stepped out upon the street afterward. She could not even think of herself by the abbreviated title. Only one metaphor, and an ancient one at that, fitted her case. She had burst from the cocoon, and now she fluttered into the sunlight, enjoying the beauty of her own wings. The new clothes, to be sure, were excessively strange and a burden in many ways. The rather tight skirts, for instance, cut short the free swing of her stride and reduced her gait to a sort of lame hobble. However, the soul of an actress is in every woman. She responds to make up as readily as she responds to the actualities of her situation—or even better. Give an Eastside washer woman fifty thousand a year, and inside of a month she will criticize the chef at the Claridge and speak movingly of the primitives of Italian art.

It is hard to believe that these instincts were not in Eve even before she tasted the apple. As for the hiss of the serpent, it may have been only the still, small whisper of a woman’s heart. At least, Miss Jacqueline Boone heard something like that whisper as she walked slowly out of Madame Sarah’s shop. She wore an afternoon street gown, and her hat was circled with artificial pansies and violets. The glow of that color was repeated like a dulled reflection in the flush that came tingling in the olive of
her cheeks. The long gloves made her hands seem absurdly small. When she looked at them, she hardly recognized them as her own. They seemed more like something she had purchased in the shop. Most wonderful of all were the tiny black shining triangles that appeared in front of her skirt now and then: her feet—
her
feet—the things she was walking on!

Like a snake creeping out of an old skin, she slipped out of her former drab self. Before she had gone a block, she was pretty thoroughly at home in the brilliant markings of her new apparel. Her sense of power had always lain in an ability to ride any horse on the range except a few very bad outlaws, a sensitive trigger finger, a steady eye, and a heart that had known fear only twice. Once when McGurk was on the trail of her father’s gang and once when she was with Pierre le Rouge. But McGurk was less than a woman now, and Pierre le Rouge, the last save one of the men of Boone’s gang, was lost forever in the wide plains that sweep east until they reach the ocean of oblivion. She had been like a man, and more dangerous than nineteen out of twenty men at that. Now a new sense came over her—a sense of control, an electric thing that sparked and snapped in her vitals when men passed her on the street this day. Each of them, in passing, let his eyes widen the least trifle, and each one swerved a little toward her. A matter of mere inches but Jacqueline was conscious of the pull. Men dropped past her like trees past a galloping horse, and she felt them swirl into her wake as though she were traveling at a tremendous speed.

She pulled down the thickly woven veil from the brim of her hat. It did not conceal her, but it gave the impression that she wished concealment. The black lower line of the veil made her throat seem very round and soft and white. She had seen these things in the mirror in Madame
Sarah’s dressing room, and they had thrilled her. Also she unfurled the light blue sun parasol and twirled it slowly over her shoulder.

As she sauntered along the street she was literally walking into a new part, a new life, a new self. Every man she passed gave her a keener self-confidence. The Lord had endowed her, she began to feel, with weapons more deadly than the six-gun that had been her father’s last gift. To be sure, she was not yet familiar with the weapons. But at least she felt, as she had felt when her childish eyes first saw the oily blue barrel of a gun, that these things would kill from afar. She was not familiar with the new powers, and she knew that she was capable of only a walking part in this new self. If she had to speak, she determined to use the careful vocabulary that she had partially learned from Pierre le Rouge—a vocabulary of clean-cut words, many of them large, that one must pronounce slowly, giving the tongue plenty of time to strike the roof of the mouth or hit against the teeth, so that every syllable was distinct.

She came to the building with the wide steps in front of it. It was the widest set of steps she had ever seen. Also, there were columns above the steps, as tall and as straight as stone trees—the pride of the state. Somewhere beyond that granite forest was the great man she must see—she—Jack Boone, rough rider and gunfighter. She did not even know whether to call him “Governor,” or “Governor Boardman,” or “Mister Boardman,” or plain “sir.” She decided on the last term.

On the floor of the lower hall—in itself the most imposing apartment Jack had ever seen—one man was scattering sawdust and another was sweeping it up with a very long push broom. She stopped near the man with the push broom and smiled at him. He stood straight like a soldier and took off his hat. When she told him that she
wanted to see the governor, he dropped his broom with a clatter to the floor and led her in person to the door. In the outer office she entered, there sat a dozen people and in one corner behind a desk was a red-haired man with a pug nose and blue eyes. He looked up at her with a weary scowl. She smiled and nodded. The scowl vanished. He rose. Her smile was repeated widely on his mouth. She stepped close.

“Do you think,” said Jacqueline, combing her memory for the careful words and the careful pronunciation, “that it would be possible for me to see the governor?”

“Sure,” said the red-headed youth, and she saw the eyes narrow as he peered through the veil. “Just give me your card to take in.”

The heart of Jacqueline fell. It fell so far and so hard that she heard it bump. She was almost afraid that the man heard it also. “That’s the trouble,” she said. “I really can’t give him my name.”

“Oh!” said the red-haired man, and this time he looked
at
the veil, not through it. “Oh!” His smile went out. Then it came again slowly. It had a meaning that made Jacqueline uncomfortable, though she could not tell exactly why. “I dunno,” said the man, growing a little careless in both manner and speech and leaning back to examine her more critically. “
Maybe
it can be done.”

In the crisis she forgot to act a part. She leaned a little closer to him, and one hand went out in an impulsive gesture—a hand ridiculously small in that long glove. “I’m in trouble,” she whispered, “great trouble. Won’t you help me?”

The blue eyes of the man widened and held upon her as though fascinated. Then a color came up in his face. When he spoke, it was through set teeth, as though he were very angry—though obviously not at her. It was as if he wanted to strike someone standing behind her. “If
that’s the case,” he said in a low, hard voice, “you can bet your last dollar that I’ll go the limit for you.” He turned away. “Wait here. I’ll be back in half a minute.”

As he passed through the inner door he seemed to be swearing to himself softly through set teeth. What he did was break into the office of the private secretary and bang the door with unnecessary loudness behind him. “Joe,” he said to the secretary, “is the old man doing anything?”

“Nope,” said the other, without looking up from his typewriter. “Old stunt of letting the people wait…make ’em think he’s up to his eyes in work. That’s all.”

“Well, he’ll be busy enough in a minute. There’s a girl out there who won’t give her name. She wants to see the old bluffer personally.”

“Hmm,” said the secretary, “can’t be done. Better pass her on to me.”

The red-headed man caught the secretary by the shoulder and gripped hard. “Joe,” he said, “she’s
got
to see him. Understand?”

“What’s the dope?”

“I dunno. But she’s a dinger, Joe. And she’s wearing a veil so she won’t be recognized. She’s in trouble, see?”

“Oh!” said the secretary, exactly as the red-headed man had spoken a few minutes before. He added with a grin: “The old hound!”

“The damned cur!” said the red-headed man softly. “Wait till you see her, Joe, and you’ll understand. I’d like to lean his head against the wall and punch it to a jelly.”

“Oh!” said Joe. There seemed much meaning in this exclamation in the governor’s office.

“She’s a lady, Joe,” said the red-headed man.

“A lady!” cried Joe, and he rose from his chair. “Bring her right in. Pete, politics are sure rotten, ain’t they?”

“Ain’t they?” agreed Pete fiercely. “I’ll bring her in.”

G
overnor Boardman looked up from the morning newspaper and glanced over his spectacles at his private secretary. “A lady?” he repeated. “What’s she want?”

“Don’t know,” said Joe. “Won’t give her name. Won’t tell her business.”

“Let her wait,” said the governor. “Women don’t come ahead of men in my office. Not yet!”

It was like a political dictum. He scowled back at his paper to dismiss the subject.

“She’s wearing a thick veil,” said Joe, apropos of nothing.

“Oh!” said the governor, reverting to the usual exclamation in turn. He laid down his newspaper.

“She says,” continued Joe absently, turning toward his door, “that she’s in trouble.”

The governor started. He reddened and then frowned to cover his flush. “Wait a minute, Joe,” he called.

The secretary turned, and the governor removed his spectacles and polished them vigorously—an unfailing sign of mental perturbation.

“What…er…does she look like?” he asked.

“A beaut,” said Joe, irreverent of the chief executive’s presence, “a knock-out, and a lady.”

“A lady!” echoed the governor, sitting bolt upright in his chair.

“Right,” said Joe. “Pete came in himself to tell me about her.”

“Oh,” said the governor.

He leaned back in his chair and patted his desk with a thoughtful palm. “D’you say she’s wearing a veil?”

“Yep. A thick one. But it can’t hide her.”

The governor placed his spectacles in their case, closed the case with a decisive snap, slipped it into his upper vest pocket, and smoothed his hair. He scowled at Joe, but there was a certain wistfulness in his eye. “If she’s in trouble,” said the chief executive, “that alters the case. A woman in distress…er…should always receive consideration. Remember that, my lad…always!”

“Sure,” said Joe, and turned on his heel.

The remark that had been made about the valets of great men should perhaps be extended to their private secretaries. As Joe, the secretary, went out by one door, Jack, the girl, came in by the other, and the red hair of Pete showed for an instant. “Good luck!” he whispered, and then the door closed with a click behind her, and she was left to the awful solemnity of the governor’s presence.

Her eyes, at first, she could not raise to meet his glance and then slowly, inch by inch, her survey went up the creases of his trousers, numbered the buttons of his vest, paused with a start on his flowered necktie—ah, humanizing touch!—and passed with swift mental notation the fold of flabby flesh that overflowed his collar, and then more quickly went up and shocked against his eyes. She suddenly discovered that she was not afraid. She looked again, met a certain knowing half-smile on the lips of the great man, and knew that she was not even awed. He was leaning a little forward in his chair. She could feel her draw upon him as of a magnet upon iron. The knowledge that began with Eve dropped suddenly, as from a great
height, upon Jacqueline. She knew that the governor was only a man!

She said: “Sir, may I talk with you alone?” Her voice was very low. In her uncertainty there was a hint of a tremolo in it.

The governor did not seem displeased. He rose from his chair. He tucked his pudgy hands into his trousers pockets. He beamed upon her. “Sit down, my girl,” he said genially. “Certainly we can be alone.”

“The doors?” she queried faintly.

The smile froze for an instant on the lips of the governor, went out, and came again. He locked each of the doors and placed the keys on the table near her. It was gracefully done. She thanked him with a smile and sat down gingerly on the edge of a chair.

“Make yourself comfortable,” said Governor Boardman. “I’m told that you’re in trouble. Well, just look on me as a father…or”—he corrected himself hastily—“as a brother, say. Or anyone you can talk freely and confidentially to.”

“Thank you,” said Jacqueline, and was silent. She had learned much, very much, in the last few hours, or she would never have thought of preserving that silence.

“Well, my dear,” said the governor, “take your time. And perhaps you’ll let me see your face?”

“Oh, no!” said Jacqueline, and shrank back in the chair, raising her hand hastily to her veil.

The governor smiled. In fact, it was almost a grin.

“I
am
in trouble,” said Jacqueline. “Great trouble. A man….”

“Brother, father, or…sweetheart?” asked the governor hastily.

“A…a…friend,” said Jacqueline.

While the chuckle of the governor rolled in her ear, she hastily put the question to herself again.
Could Dix
Van Dyck be any one of the three things?
It alarmed her. For the first time she felt really uncomfortable. She became angry at the chuckle of the governor. It seemed to her that he was not only a mere man but in ways a very stupid man.

“His name is Dix Van Dyck,” she said.

It was an effectual period to the governor’s chuckle. He sat stiffer in his chair—as straight as his round body permitted. A little more and he would have rolled out of his seat. “Him!” said the governor ungrammatically.

“He,” corrected Jacqueline, remembering Pierre le Rouge.

“An outlaw,” said the governor with heat, “a man-killer. A price on his head for his outrages! Madame, if you have come on his behalf, there is nothing I can do for you except to express my sorrow that you have interested yourself in so worthless a man. Strange!”

It
was
strange, to his mind, that a woman dressed like this should be interested in a man who had been represented to him as a worthless, idling, drunken cowpuncher. Not even that. A loafer. He stared more keenly through the thick veil and made out only the deep shadows of the eyes of Jacqueline.

“People have told you lies,” said Jacqueline coldly, and the desire to fight rose slowly in her and made her low voice as cold as the feeling of smooth steel. “People have told you lies. He’s not a murderer. He’s a man.”

There was a singular accent on that last word. It made the eyes of the governor glance inward, and he winced. “The course of justice must not be interrupted,” he said rather feebly. “When a man makes himself the enemy of society, he should be prepared to pay the penalty to society. Dix Van Dyck is…I beg your pardon…a ruffian and a born gunfighter. Society cannot tolerate such men. They destroy the very soul of order. And I, madame, represent
the spirit of order in the state. You cannot expect me to intervene on behalf of Dix Van Dyck.”

Something very like despair swept over Jacqueline. The tremble came again in her voice, and she spoke with both her hands held out toward Governor Boardman. “Then I won’t ask for justice,” she said. “I’ll only beg you for mercy!” She saw his anger at least disappear. Half his weapons were torn away from him. She saw that she could not fight him with words, but she might win through entreaty. “He has always fought in self-defense. Give him one more chance. For my sake, I know he’ll change. Sir, he has….”

“This,” he said, wiping his forehead, “ends a useless and painful interview. Madame, I regret that I can do nothing for your…friend.”

She stood up straight by the table and caught up the keys with one hand. The other hand slipped into a fold of her dress. “You’re all wrong, Governor,” she said calmly.

“What?” he said, frowning as if he tried to clear his eyes.

“You heard me,” she announced. “You’re all wrong. You’re going to take a piece of paper and sit at that desk and write a pardon for Dix Van Dyck. You can do it and you
will
do it.”

“My dear girl,” said the governor, “grief has made you hysterical. What can make me give him his pardon?”

“This,” she said, and in an instant a long, blue-barreled gun shone in her hand and covered the governor. She held it at the hip. If she had poised it in the air and drawn a careful bead, he might have been foolish enough to attempt to overpower her, for he was not without courage. But he had seen experts handle guns, and he knew the meaning of that position at the hip—knew the meaning of that slightly crouched body. He saw a thousand things in that instant. He saw the red headline announcing his
death. He saw the face of Oñate if he should make out the pardon. He reached for the edge of the desk as if to grip it for support. By Providence his thumb was guided to the button that rang for his private secretary. He recognized the button. He made the pressure long.

The girl had come a stealthy pace closer to him. Something about her had changed quickly. Her words came sharply, smoothly, with a click, like the spinning of an oiled cylinder. “The doors are locked. I got the keys. You haven’t got a chance, partner. You got a pair of deuces, and I carry a royal flush. All I ask for is speed. Understand?”

The ashen lips of the governor said: “But….”

A loud knocking came at the door. It was repeated, still louder. She raised her veil with a hasty hand, and what the Governor saw in the angry black eyes made him shrink back as if she had covered him with another gun.

“You called for help, eh?” she murmured. “But that won’t work. Go to that door, open it, and tell the men outside you don’t want ’em. If you make a wrong move, I’ll drill you, partner, quicker’n hell!” She drawled the last word with a fierce relish. “I’ll drill you and take a chance on my getaway. Now, step fast. They’re wearin’ out their hands on that door.”

The governor obeyed. He was conscious, as he walked toward the door, of the direction of the leveled revolver. It was like something prodding him in the ribs. As he passed to the side, his careful glance noted the small forefinger curved around the trigger. A breath more pressure and his term of life would end. It gave him a feeling of uncanny lightness. She tossed him the keys, and he opened the door, though it was difficult for his trembling hand to place the key in the lock. He waved a brusque hand to the private secretary. “My mistake, Joe,” he said with white-faced cheerfulness, then closed the door, and turned back into the room.