“Well, he was a wise gent. You ain’t
cut out for working, son. Not a bit. It’d
be a shame to let you go to waste simply raising calluses
on your hands.”
“You talk well,” sighed Terry, “but
you can’t convince me.”
“Convince you? Hell, I ain’t trying
to convince your father’s son. You’re
like Black Jack. You got to find out yourself.
We was with a Mick, once. Red-headed devil, he
was. I says to Black Jack: ’Don’t
crack no jokes about the Irish around this guy!’
“‘Why not?’ says your dad.
“‘Because there’d be an explosion,’
says I.
“‘H’m,’ says Black Jack, and
lifts his eyebrows in a way he had of doing.
“And the first thing he does is to try a joke
on the Irish right in front of the Mick. Well,
there was an explosion, well enough.”
“What happened?” asked Terry, carried
away with curiosity.
“What generally happened, kid, when somebody
acted up in front of your dad?” From the air
he secured an imaginary morsel between stubby thumb
and forefinger and then blew the imaginary particle
into empty space.
“He killed him?” asked Terry hoarsely.
“No,” said Denver, “he didn’t
do that. He just broke his heart for him.
Kicked the gat out of the hand of the poor stiff and
wrestled with him. Black Jack was a wildcat when
it come to fighting with his hands. When he got
through with the Irishman, there wasn’t a sound
place on the fool. Black Jack climbed back on
his horse and threw the gun back at the guy on the
ground and rode off. Next we heard, the guy was
working for a Chinaman that run a restaurant.
Black Jack had taken all the fight out of him.”
That scene out of the past drifted vividly back before
Terry’s eyes. He saw the sneer on the lips
of Black Jack; saw the Irishman go for his gun; saw
the clash, with his father leaping in with tigerish
speed; felt the shock of the two strong bodies, and
saw the other turn to pulp under the grip of Black
Jack.
By the time he had finished visualizing the scene,
his jaw was set hard. It had been easy, very
easy, to throw himself into the fierceness of his
dead father’s mood. During this moment of
brooding he had been looking down, and he did not
notice the glance of Denver fasten upon him with an
almost hypnotic fervor, as though he were striving
to reach to the very soul of the younger man and read
what was written there. When Terry looked up,
the face of his companion was as calm as ever.
“And you’re like the old boy,” declared
Denver. “You got to find out for yourself.
It’ll be that way with this work idea of yours.
You’ve lost one job. You’ll lose
the next one. But—I ain’t advising
you no more!”
