BAD END VALLEY

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13235, 10 January 1941, Page 3

BAD END VALLEY

BY W. B. BANNER,Vi AN

Garrick scowled. The hefty qualify of whisky he had drunk already that night was having its effect on him, and he was in no mood to be tolerant. “I said drink!" he bit out. "Go aet another glass, Sam. . . How old are yuh now —eighteen? Well, anyways, if yuh don’t drink now, yuh ain’t too old to start. That's right, ain’t it, Sam?’ Sam giggled uncomfortably. "That’s right. King ” He poured a drink into a fresh glass for his daughter and handed it to her. “Here’s how, Ruth!’’ said King, raising his glass. She nodded to him and pretended to drink, merely touching the liquor with her lips.. King, however, was satisfied. “That’s better. C’mon across here now, an’ sit beside me.” Meekly, she obeyed, putting down her glass on the table and coming to sit on the arm of his chair. He put his arm round her waist. “Now have a shot out of my glass, girlie,” he ordered her, thrusting his drink at her. With her face white and set, she went once again through the motions of drinking. There was an evil look on his face as he watched her.

“Down in Tucson, they call that a Dutch kiss —drinkin’ out of somebody else’s glass. C’mon now, girlie —what about a real one?”

He gripped her more tightly, drawing her close to him and thrusting his face close to hers. In sudden revulsion, she drew back. Tiie good-humour vanished from his face. His jaw set dangerously, and his eyes grew yellower as he glared at her. With a sudden roar, he jumped to his feet, flinging his glass against the wall, where it shattered into a dozen pieces with a crash.

“Gettin’ ritzy are yuh—with King Garrick!” he snarled at her. “By God, I’ll show yuh !” She sat facing him wide-eyed, like a rabbit fascinated by a snake. He took a step forward, and her heart was sick with disgust. He seized her arms in a grip that hurt cruelly.

Unexpectedly, he laughed—not a pleasant laugh. “I’ll show yuh. . . He took her in his arms again. She began wildly.,

And then there was the sound of feet scuffling outside the door. Next moment, the door was flung open, and Danny Seaton burst in, his eyes staring wildly, his face white and tortured.

“Let her go, King! Let her go or I’ll !’’

At the sudden entrance, King had swung round to face the newcomer. He stood gaping at Danny, with one cam still about Ruth.

Slowly, the expression of blank astonishment on his face changed to one of flaring fury.

“It’s you, is it?’’ he roared. “What in hell d’yuh mean by bustin’ in like that! By God. I’ll kill yuh, yuh yaller-bellied little skunk!”

“Take your hands off her, King!” Danny retorted trying without much success to keep his voice from shaking. “I saw yuh through the window—an’ I coudn’t stand no more of it. Let her go, will yuh!” The look of amazement crept back into Garrick’s face. That Danny of all people—the dreamy weakling of the valley—the kid whose gentleness made him the butt of the Millers’ crude jokes—that he should be the one to dare start ordering the mighty King about! It Garrick laughed

was fantastic! hoarsely—fiercely,

“So yuh gone all tough, have yuh Danny! Say listen, sonny. I'll talk to you about this later —an’ make you darn sorry! But I’m real busy right now. Beat it, will yuh, while yuh got your health. .• . .” Danny answered determinedly: “I ain’t goin’ till yuh let go of Ruth. Do that, an’ I’ll beat it.” King’s jaws snapped together. His face was lowering like that of a maddened bull. His yellow eyes glittered evilly. With a brutal movement he flung Ruth from him, sending her cannoning breathlessly against the wall. Slowly, he advanced on Danny.

“\uh Gawd-damn fool!” he growled. “Are yuh tryin’ to pull something on King Garrick. I told yuh t 0 Sit’ didn’t I? Well, that chance is gone now. I’m gonna show yuh what happens to little boys who

won’t play with me!” His rush bore Danny back to the door. The boy made no real attempt to use his lightness of foot to dodge it, and let Garrick fling him backwards,' his hands fastened on Danny’s throat. Danny’s shoulders came against the door with a crash, and King jerked his head sickeningly against the wood. Releasing his right hand, King pounded it again and again into the young man’s face, until it was smeared with blood about the mouth and Danny was limp and half-faint-ing.

From the minute that King had laid hands on him, he had barely struggled. From the moment when he had burst into the shack, he had been certain that he had no chance of standing up to the terrible Carrick in a fight, and that certainty had drained his spirit so that he did not even try to put up a show.

It was terrific punishment that Garrick was slamming into him. With each ferocious blow of that hammer-fist, his head jerked back more slackly and his body, pinned to the door by King’s left hand, slipped farther towards the floor. He was more than half insensible.

At last King ended it. With a final vicious hook on the side of Danny’s jaw, he simultaneously let go with his left hand. The boy slipped like a sack of coals and lay still.

Garrick stood looking down at him, grinning wolfishly. “Sam,” he ordered. “Throw some water over his mug.”

Sam hastily took a dipper from a pail of water and splashed it over Danny’s face. The fallen man did not move. “Do it again,” said King.

Sam emptied another dipper over the body. Still he did not move. King kicked him, and rolled him with a fierce thrust of his pointed heel.

“He’s yalle'r—the coyote!” he spat out contemptuously. “If he’d the guts, he’d get up an’ have a slap at me right now. But he didn’t even have the guts to stand up . to

me.”

He swung round and faced Ruth. “C’mon, girlie, let’s see how nice yuh can be to me,” he invited, with a leer. “We can let this crazy kid lie there.

Ruth was staring at Danny’s prostrate body through horror-stricken eyes. Slowly, she turned her eyes to Garrick, and a shaper horror took hold of her as she saw him coming towards her. With a sudden movement that took King by surprise, she darted away from him, dragged open the door, and ran madly into the darkness. , . *

For a second, King stood staring at the night yawning through the doorway: then, with a curse, he bent and hauled Danny up. With one heave of -his gigantic shoulders, he flung the inert body of the boy outside, and slammed the door shut.

“She’ll come back, the !” he growled. “Gimme that bottle, Sam.”

.Nelson handed him the whiskybottle obsequiously. He put his lips to the neck and gulped down several mouthfuls of the raw spirit. Banging the bottle down on the table, he shouted at Sam: “Well? What in hell are yuh standin’ round gapin’ for, yuh fool! C’mon, have a drink. This little party's goin’ on till that damn daughter of yourn gets back. . .”

Outside, Danny hauled himself painfully to his feet. Like a wounded animal, he staggered away into the shelter of the trees, where he flung himself down in exhaust-

Lying back against a tree-trunk, he stared into the darkness like a man seeing ghosts. He had broken in all right, when he had seen King mauling Ruth about, therein lay the only mitigation of his utter misery. But he had not been able to help himself breaking in. Something stronger than himself had urged him to do it. And after that.

If he had had a spark of manhood in him, he would not have let King bash him about like that, without putting up some sort of resistence.

But the look of King’s face—and the animal glint of his eyes as he had come for him . . . Before that anger, which he had been

taught from his earliest years to fear like the wrath of God, the power had left his limbs, and he had allowed King to knock him silly. The blackness that hung around him under the trees was no blacker than his thoughts. Ruth had told him outright that she did not believe he had the courage to go for King—and she was right. In her eyes, as well as his own, he must stand as a coward, a,* weakling.

But Danny, crushed as he was under that knowledge, knew that he was even more cowardly than she knew; and, at the memory of it, he covered his face with his hands. For Danny had not been insensible when he had slid to the floor under King’s rain of punches. He had merely counterfeited it to save himself from further punishment. Pretending to be unconscious, he had suffered water to be flung in his face, and Garrick to kick him where he lay.

Abjectly, he admitted to his secret soul why he had done it. It was because he was afraid to face King again. He had plenty of courage, when it came to talking: but, when the test of action came, he was a coward

(To be continued)