by Max Brand
“Name him! Name him!” called two or three voices. The others waited with faces prepared for anger and outrage, and Pudge McArthur roared mightily, “Slip Liddell … the crook … the gambler … the murderer! It’s Liddell that I’m talking about. And there ain’t guts enough to San Jacinto and there ain’t ropes enough and there ain’t hands to pull ’em, to take care of a skunk like Liddell! There ain’t …”
His voice grew dim in the rising outcry of the mob.
Skeeter said, “Unlimber that accordion, Pop. Play something jolly. Play something that’ll get into my feet. We’ve got to change the mind of these boys.” She was whipping out of the blue jeans as she spoke and tucking her feet into the slippers.
“Leave them be,” answered Pop, grinning. “If he’s as much man as you think, they’ll do nothing but bend their teeth when they bite him. If he’s as much man as you think, he’ll blow ’em down faster than they can come up.”
She said, “Get that accordion off the strap and hop lively or I’ll never shake a foot for you again.”
He obeyed gloomily and muttered, “It’s a wrong gag to play twice in the same joint. They get tired of handing out the cash.”
“They’re not handing out the cash. We are,” she answered.
And a moment later she was at the bar rapping money on the edge of it, and calling for a drink all around. She hardly could make herself heard, for the anger and the resolution of Pudge McArthur had spread to nearly everyone in the room and they were beginning to mill like cattle before a stampede. Once they started spilling through the door into the street, nothing but more men and more guns could stop them.
There was no harm in having another free drink, however, and there was no harm in watching the girl clattering up and down the bar. To see her laughing made you think of every good time you ever had in your life. It made your own toe start tapping and started your head nodding. And it was plain that there was nothing but good nature and merriment in her, for now she was buying another round. When she jumped to the floor, Pop got her by the shoulder and shook her.
“Are you gone clean crazy?” gasped Pop. “Are you spendin’ money when it’s your job to make others spend on you?”
“Shut up and make an accompaniment for those two over there who’ve started singing,” directed Skeeter. “Keep on playing. Liven it up. Put a smile on that old leather mug of yours.”
“Wait …” Pop began, but she was gone through the side door of the saloon before the others could notice her swift way in a crowd.
V
It was not the cold of the morning that wakened Liddell, but a young voice that said, “Hi, Slip! Hi! You’re overdue. Wake up!”
He pulled away the bandage and found his eyes almost healed from the effects of the sandstorm. Still a haze remained across them, slowly clearing, and through that haze he saw a slim figure seated in his window. A big cap sloped down over the head. The jacket and trousers were faded jeans. He saw a brown face weathered right into the grain of the skin. It was a sleek, slim youngster, almost too handsome, almost too effeminately light of wrist and hand.
“Who are you, brother?” asked Liddell.
“Skeet they call me. Or Skeeter, sometimes. You better be up and vamoose, Slip.”
“Yeah?” drawled Liddell, making his head comfortable on the fold of his arm.
“Some old pals of yours are around smoking up trouble.”
“What pals?”
“Those two fat-faced hams … Soapy Jones and Pudge McArthur. And who’s that smooth guy, called Heath?”
“Mark Heath? He’s one of the best fellows in the world,” answered Liddell. “He’s a straight-shooter and he’s worth having for a friend.”
“Is he your friend?”
“He’ll never be my friend, I’m afraid,” said Liddell.
“He’s making trouble for you now,” she told him.
“What trouble?”
“Talk,” said Skeeter.
“Where?”
“Up at the Royal all night. They’re still there.”
“What were you doing at the Royal all night?” demanded Liddell.
“I helped the barman wash up and snitched a few beers. I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about you.”
“I hear you.”
“D’you want to know what they’re saying?”
“I can’t keep you from telling me.”
“You won’t be so upstage when I tell you. They’re saying that you double-crossed your old partner. They’re saying that you did in Frank Pollard. They’re saying that you killed him when he wasn’t looking … for the blood money.”
“Did I shoot him in the back?”
“You did.”
“Was somebody looking from behind a rock?”
“No. But that’s why you rolled the body down into the San Jacinto, so that nobody could see where the bullet went in through the head and came out through the face.”
“If I murdered a friend like that … they ought to raise a mob and lynch me,” commented Liddell.
“That’s what Soapy and Pudge are talking up. They almost got a crowd started before I left and came to tell you. They ought to be along in ten minutes. Maybe less.”
Liddell yawned. “I’d better be getting along, maybe.”
“You better be,” declared Skeeter. “There’s a bay mare walking loose in the court here. You borrow her and light out. She looks as fast as a hawk.”
“Sis!” called Liddell. “Hi, Cicely!”
The bay mare put her head in through the window. She seemed to be resting her chin on Skeeter’s knees.
“Ready for another trip?” asked Liddell.
The mare shook her head.
“Couldn’t you take me on just a little, tiny trip?” asked Liddell.
Cicely shook her head with an angry decision.
“Get out of my sight, then!” exclaimed Liddell. “Fine gratitude you’ve got for all the oats and barley I’ve poured into you!”
The mare backed away into the courtyard again.
“How’d you do it?” asked Skeeter. “How’d you make her shake her head like that?”
“Why, I asked her a question, and she answered it, that’s all,” said Liddell. “She’s like all women. There’s no gratitude in her.”
“You’re a funny sort of a guy, all right,” observed Skeeter. “But maybe you’ll feel less funny when they use you to stretch out forty feet of new rope.”
“Maybe I will,” agreed Liddell. He began to make a cigarette. His hands, using separate intelligences, found the brown wheat-straw papers and the little sack of tobacco with the big revenue stamp stuck on it. The fingers turned the paper into a trough, sifted in the tobacco, smoothed it, leveled it off, turned it hard, then engaged one lip under the other and rolled up the smoke. He glued it with the tip of his tongue, turned one end over, and lit his smoke. But not for an instant did he give this bit of work his attention. He was saying, “How did you know I was down here?”
“There’s a good beam end sticking out the stable window,” remarked Skeeter, pointing. “That’ll be better than the limb of a tree when they come to string you up. Wait a minute! You hear them now?”
In fact there seemed to be a swarming hum from higher up the street.
“They don’t know where to find me, brother,” Liddell pointed out.
“Everybody in town knows where you are and why you’re here,” answered Skeeter.
“Why am I here?” asked Liddell
“Because there’s a gal in the house with hips and eyes that work together. Even the kids in the street laugh at her when she goes by … but everybody knows that when it comes to the gals, you’re a swell horse trainer.”
“You little pint of dishwater,” Liddell said, sitting up. “I’ve got a mind to take you by the nape of the neck and p
our you down the sink.”
“You big, four-flushing ham,” said Skeeter, “I’ve a mind to come down in there and knock the dust out of you.”
Liddell leaned back on his bed with a sigh. “Breeze along, kid,” he said. “Thanks for bringing me the news. Breeze along back where you came from. By the way, where did you come from?”
“That’s my business,” answered Skeeter. “You hear ’em coming now? Slip, get up and out of here. There’s thirty, forty of those bums and they’re mean.”
Liddell rubbed at the dimness of his eyes, but they wouldn’t clear. There was something about Skeeter that was very unlike other people.
“How old are you, Skeet?” he asked.
“To hell with me!” snapped Skeeter. “Are you going to lie right there and let ’em grab you?”
“Fourteen … fifteen … ?” said Liddell. “Where you live?”
“Wherever I find the living good.”
“Are you on the bum?”
“Are you gonna be sorry for me?” asked Skeeter, with head tipped to one side.
“I’d as soon be sorry for a wasp or a butcher bird, or any other thing that’s small and full of teeth and claws. How long you been on the bum?”
“Listen, mug,” said Skeeter, “I’m not one of the punks that batter the back doors and get the dog or a cold hand-out. I come in the front way and sit down to my ham and …”
“You play a sob story and get the women mothering you, eh?” asked Liddell.
“Leave me out,” said Skeeter. “There’s a mob in this town that’s going to have the hanging of you and like it.”
“It’s after five,” answered Liddell. “If whiskey started them, the booze will be stale and cold in ’em. If a man-size dog barked at ’em, that whole gang would turn and run.”
“You don’t think you’re taking a big chance?” asked Skeeter.
“No,” answered Liddell. “A mob is like a mob of town dogs. They only chase the things that’ll run from ’em.”
“It knocks me for a loop,” murmured Skeeter.
“Thanks for bringing me word,” he said. “Wait a minute … are you broke?”
“I don’t want your coin,” answered Skeeter.
“Why not?” asked Liddell.
“I ought to be doing the paying. You’re putting on the show,” said Skeeter.
“You’re a queer little mug,” Liddell said, and yawned.
“I’ll tell you something a lot queerer than me. Some of those thugs in the saloon are going to think you over when they’re dirt dry and stone sober. And then maybe they’ll oil up their guns and come for you. Maybe they’re coming now.”
“They won’t come now,” said Liddell.
“That fellow Soapy Jones, has he always hated you?”
“No. Soapy used to be a friend.”
“He’d chew poison if he could spit it in your face now. He hates your heart, Slip.”
“Why shouldn’t he?” asked Liddell.
“You mean, it don’t bother you?”
“It bothers me, all right. Soapy is a bulldog, and he’ll hold on.”
“But you don’t hate him for it?”
“Listen, kid. I killed the guy he loved.”
“Everybody seems to’ve loved this Frank Pollard,” remarked Skeeter.
“He was one of the kind that was always trying to help others and the poor sucker couldn’t help himself,” answered Liddell.
“How come you slipped the lead into him?” asked Skeeter.
“Don’t you go through life being surprised by things. I’ll give you some advice.”
“Shoot,” said Skeeter.
“Get off the road … settle down. You’ll never be more than half a man. You couldn’t take care of yourself in a pinch.”
“The hell I couldn’t,” said Skeeter.
“What do you use? A knife or a blackjack?”
There was a silence.
“You settle down. You’re going to be one of those slim sizes all your life. Learn stenography. Get off the road.”
“I’ll be darned if I sharpen pencils all my life,” declared Skeeter.
“You’re a fresh sort of a kid,” Liddell said sleepily. “I don’t know why I like you. But you get off the road and settle down. I’m telling you.”
“It’s OK. It’s OK,” muttered Skeeter. “But leave me out of this. The point is there’s a gang in this town that’ll never rest easy till they shoot the wishbone right out of you. Why don’t you get out?”
“Maybe I will. Right now, I’m sleeping,” answered Liddell. “So long, kid. Thanks for coming.”
“OK.” Skeeter nodded. “I’ve just tried to get some sense into you. When you wake up and find things have happened, remember me. I tried to make you move with common sense.”
“I’ll remember. Good night,” said Liddell, and turned his face to the wall.
VI
After that interruption, Liddell slept on into the warmth of the morning. Then he took a bath and sat down to a breakfast of toast and Mexican chocolate, frothed by Dolores herself, with Dolores to look at as he ate and drank. Her beauty had an extra edge because she was frightened, and she was frightened because she had heard ugly rumors from the street. She followed him to the door, afterward, begging him not to go out through the curious crowd that was gathered in front of the silversmith’s.
But Liddell went out. All voices stopped when he appeared. Then murmurs began. They were pointing him out. They were saying that he was the man who had done it. A woman with a broad face and a red nose leaned out of a window and yelled, “He shot his partner in the back! Put the dogs on him! He shot him in the back!”
It was plain that the town of San Jacinto had been hearing plenty about Slip Liddell during the night. When he walked into the sheriff’s office, Chris Tolliver was running the tip of his tongue, with a painful slowness, over the crack in his lip. He looked at Liddell as though at a bodiless image of the night before.
“What about that five thousand?” asked Liddell.
“I’ve forwarded your claim and proofs,” said the sheriff shortly. “I sent it up to the attorney general. Maybe we’ll be hearing in a couple of days.” He smiled all on one side of his mouth, as though in that way he would less endanger that splitting lower lip.
“It’s funny, is it?” asked Liddell.
“Kind of,” agreed the sheriff. He rubbed his bulging eyes, always tired, always reddened.
“A five thousand dollar joke, eh?” asked Liddell.
“Kind of,” repeated Chris Tolliver.
The secretary pretended to be busy, but he had stopped typing and shuffled many papers softly together, searching for something that he obviously would not find.
“Tell me where the point is. I could use a good joke,” observed Liddell.
“The point is … will you be here in San Jacinto when the money comes through?” asked Tolliver.
“Why not?” answered Liddell.
“Some of the boys were ready to pay a call on you this morning.”
“They’d’ve found me in, too. What about it?”
“When they come to call, will you be there?”
“They won’t be calling.”
“Won’t they?”
“No,” said Liddell.
“Maybe not. Maybe I don’t know my town,” remarked Tolliver.
Liddell went back to the silversmith’s. The air was full of noise like the Fourth of July. For the custom in San Jacinto during the fiesta season was to keep the day and the night alive. Hurdy-gurdies pushed through the streets; mandolin players strolled and serenaded favored windows; snatches of band music always were growing and disappearing out of the distances; and the children of the town suddenly multiplied by ten and poured, chattering and yelling, into every crevice of quiet.
> In spite of himself, he did not wish to pass down the street in front of Pinelli’s. He did not want that fat-faced woman to lean out of the window with her denunciation as she had done before. So he took another way home, though it meant climbing a wall. When he reached the courtyard, he stepped into the stable. The mule stood there with dreaming eyes and a cruelly puckered mouth but Cicely was gone.
When he asked in the house, no one could tell what had happened. Armando rushed off upstairs to Dolores and that left Liddell for a moment alone in the shop with Juanita. She softened her voice in a half-audible whisper.
She looked up at Liddell with the friendliest of smiles so that if her husband returned down the inner hall he would observe only that expression on her face, but what she was saying was, “Why don’t you go, Señor Jimmy? Why don’t you go before you have the house pulled down over our heads? The whole town hates you. And Saint Mary of God knows that I’ve hated you these years.” She was still smiling.
“It’s good for your complexion to do a little hating,” answered Liddell. “It takes ten years off that pretty face, Juanita.”
Her smile stretched and froze in place, and then both her husband and her daughter came with clattering feet and a double outcry down the stairs and into the hall.
Liddell did not wait for them. He knew by the exclamations of dismay that they had no news of how the mare had gone, so he stepped into the street and ran the gantlet this time of silent eyes, which looked at him as at something monstrous.
He went neither north or south through the town with his inquiries because in those directions ran the river roads, where automobiles could overtake even the swiftest of horses. But he went east with inquiry first and then west, and it was near the western rim of the little town that he found a peddler leading a mule that carried two great hampers and the peddler had, in fact, seen just such a golden bay mare ridden toward the hills by a ragged young lad. He described the rider.
“Skeeter,” said Liddell softly to himself, and stood still, looking west toward the ragged sides of the range so ineptly named Monte Verde. No horse in San Jacinto could overtake that wise-footed Cicely with such a featherweight as Skeeter on her back, and an automobile might as well try to run down a shark’s throat as through those rocks. He stood there for a moment with anger overtaking him from behind, as it were, until the weight of it turned his face crimson.