Six Feet Four - Jackson Gregory

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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.

       Table of Contents

      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

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