by Max Brand
“You’ll have to dispose of me,” I assured him, “and that’s something that you can’t do, Señor Vidett.”
“Stand to him, friend,” groaned the man Vidett had called Sam. “Stand to him, and the devil will wilt.”
Vidett’s face quivered with fury. Then he cast a lightning glance down to his wrist, which was still in my grasp. I knew the reason of that glance. I had put my power into my fingers, and I knew that the right hand of Vidett would be numb and fairly useless for the next hour or so. No matter what his courage might be, he would have been a perfect fool to attack me with such a handicap working against him. He controlled himself with a frightful effort that made the perspiration come out in beads on his face and started his nostrils flaring.
“Ah, Mendez,” he whispered to me, “what a fool you are to do this.” He added, aloud: “Very well. It was your shot that dropped him, and I owe you my life, perhaps, Mendez. Do with him whatever you choose to do. But I warn you that he’s as dangerous and as treacherous as a rattlesnake.”
“We’ll take him on to the house of Señor Caporno, of course,” I said. “There’s no better way, I suppose, of managing to take care of his wound.”
Here Vidett flew into another rage, but a briefer one.
“And why in the name of the devil should his wound be cared for? Are you going to treat the dog like a Christian?”
I said no more to Vidett. I judged that I had crossed him sufficiently far in one day. But, with José and the other Negro, we arranged a horse litter for the wounded man, slinging him very comfortably between two of the nags, and then leading them at a gentle pace down the road.
“Friend,” Sam said to me, “did I hear you say that you were taking me to the house of Caporno?”
“I am,” I said in English.
“For heaven’s sake stop here and put a slug through my head right now. It’s what’ll happen before the next morning comes.”
“Look here,” I said. “You’re going into that house under my protection. I’ll be with you most of the time. And if anything happens to you, they’ll know that they’re responsible to me.”
He was in great pain that made his face pale, but as he looked up to me there was a twisting smile on his face. He stretched out his hand, to me, and I closed mine over it with a nod of greater reassurance.
I was far from feeling that same reassurance, however. Lewis Vidett was already flying down the road on his horse to tell his version of the encounter and of my actions to Señor Caporno. And here was I trailing in the rear, with no ability to arrange any lie to match against the inventions of Lewis Vidett. Besides, in such a game as this, I knew that he had much too great an intellectual subtlety for me to contend against him.
In the meantime, my heart was beating wild and high. For here was Crinky, at last. It seemed like a dream of magic that I had been able to turn the name first found on that obscure letter in the hut of Truck Janvers into a living, breathing person.
But, at the same time, I felt that my problem was made more obscure than ever. For, having run this man down, I discovered that the man who I suspected to be behind the death of Truck Janvers was the very one who had written a most submissively appealing letter to him. How could I reconcile these two ideas together?
However, I was fairly well past trying to link up every scrap in the evidence that was pouring so fast into my hands. It was enough that the trail of the murderer of Truck Janvers was growing hot and hotter to me. And I trusted that the end of that trail was now not very far away.
When we reached the house of Caporno, a house mozo came hurrying out to us to tell us that a room had been arranged for the wounded man.
“As sure as my name is Sam Clyde,” said the man on the litter, “I’ll never live past tomorrow in that house of Caporno. Stranger, I give you my word for it.”
“Sam Clyde,” I said, “if they murder you in my hands, they’ll wish that they’d dropped a spark into a ton of dry powder. It will be quite a bit safer for them.”
He fastened one misty, pain-clouded eye upon me. Then he smiled faintly, as though the matter were so well settled in his mind that it was not worth the trouble of an argument—as though he thanked me, too, for my kindness to him.
XXI
I gave Sam Clyde as much attention as I could, which was not much, for a wrinkle-faced Mexican Indian came in and dressed that wound in the thigh of Clyde with more speed and thoroughness than I have ever seen before or since.
After Clyde had been made fairly comfortable, I sat beside him and asked him if there was anything that he wanted.
“The open sky to die under,” said Clyde.
“You can’t trust me?”
“Partner,” said the other with a grin, “I make a point of trustin’ any gent that sinks a chunk of lead in me fair and square the way that you done . . . a darn’ flippy and neat snap shot, it was. Well, sir, that’s all very well. But you’re one man in this house, and they got aplenty more here. They might be sneakin’ up behind my bed any time and ready to knife me in the dark as soon as you leave me.”
I had to admit that there was that danger. That is to say, I had to admit it to myself, and even to him, tacitly, by the thing that I did next. I picked up the cot and the man in the cot and carried him to the corner of the room. He would not have such a stir of air about him, here, but he would at least have the security of a thick wall upon either side of him.
“Is that better?” I asked him.
He seemed much moved.
“Partner,” he said, “you talk square, you shoot square, and I think that you are square. Then what you doin’ mixed up with this bunch of hydrophobia cats?”
“Do you know a lot about them?” I asked.
“I could talk a spell about ’em,” he admitted.
“You’ll talk to me, then?”
“Partner, are you kiddin’ me? You mean to say that you’re workin’ for Caporno and that you don’t really know him?”
“I suppose I have to admit that.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m darned.” And he lay staring at the ceiling.
I pushed the butt of a big Colt into his hand. He took it as though it were the hand of a friend in need and there was love in his eyes, I can tell you, as he looked down to it.
“Will that keep you company for a spell?”
“It’ll keep me fine. So long, Mendez, if you got to leave me.”
I went straight to Caporno. He was enjoying a siesta and Pedro would not allow me to enter the room where he was sleeping. I took the dried-up little man beneath the armpits and lifted him out of the way. Then I stepped through the door and entered, leaving Pedro on the other side of the door, gasping and snarling like a sick old dog in the corridor.
The room was cool and dim. There was a feminine scent of perfume in the room. No, it was too strong to be merely feminine. It was Oriental. And there lay Caporno on a soft couch in the corner of the room. I could make out the huge silhouette of his belly against the wall. A water-pipe stood near by. The rubber pipe that connected with it had slipped from the fat, inert fingers of Caporno, and he lay with mouth open, sleeping most unbeautifully.
I said: “Señor Caporno.”
It was exactly as though I had fired a pistol bullet into him. He leaped off the couch and shoved a heavy gun right under my nose, gasping: “Ah, murder!”
Then he saw that it was I and it didn’t seem to please him a great deal more. He stormed away into another rage and spilled quarts of fancy language all over the rug. He wanted to know why I had come into his room while he slept. He wanted to know what I meant by it? And how I had dared to come in, in spite of the prohibition that I must have received from Pedro at the door?
After he had run along for some time, I sat down on the arm of a chair and lighted a cigarette to show that I was willing to wait until he was tired before I would try to talk back. When he saw that, his temperature jumped another ten degrees and his language got so thick and so boiling in spite of it
s thickness that I had to bring about a little halt.
I pointed a finger at him. “Señor,” I said, “I am sorry to say that I have had enough.”
He blurted out half a dozen more triple-jointed insults and I cocked my finger again. I was pretty thoroughly angered. After four years of the life that I had led, it may surprise you that mere language could have the slightest effect upon me. But it certainly did.
I said: “Caporno, if you curse me again, even a little one, even a ‘damn’, I’ll take you by the head and see what holds it to that fat neck of yours. That’s final!”
He was instantly sobered. He sat down and snatched up a pipe. He sat cross-legged in the big chair he had selected and held the pipe like a Chinaman and puffed furiously at it.
“What is it?” he asked me.
“I have brought a man named Sam Clyde into your house,” I said. “Do you know him?”
“I never heard of him.”
“Señor,” I said, “I am afraid that is not true.”
He took the pipe out of his mouth and blew a long, thin web of smoke against the ceiling of the room.
“So?” he said, without the slightest trace of heat.
“That is not true. You know a great deal about him, and so does he about you.”
“Perhaps.”
“He tells me that he cannot expect to live to see the morning in this house. Is there anything in that?”
“A great deal.”
“You expect to have him murdered?”
“Unquestionably. Do you object?”
“I do.”
“I am sorry.”
“If he dies before morning, you will be more than sorry. You will be very sad, señor.”
“You speak with much strength . . . like a prophet, almost.”
“There is a little difference,” I said. “A prophet trusts in a dream or a vision or some such rot. I trust in my hands. And they’re worth a little trust.”
I spread them out toward him, and then clenched my fists and watched the rascal’s eye and waited.
He appeared to debate the matter softly to himself, weighing the thing with scrupulous scales that tottered back and forth a number of times. But, at length, he began to nod.
“I think that it would be a considerable risk,” he declared.
“It would,” I said.
“And I detest risks,” he said. “You might even get at me. And in case this Sam Clyde were to die before the morning, what would you have in mind concerning me?”
“Death, señor.”
“Shocking,” said Caporno, and grinned at me through a blue mist of pipe smoke. “You are engaged to serve me, in the meantime.”
“I am, señor. But I have a thing called a sense of honor. It often comes between me and my work. I have never had glasses strong enough to let me look through it to what you would call the . . . facts.”
This was enough to have insulted almost any man. Well, it had not the slightest effect upon that Caporno. The villain wagged his head from side to side and chuckled at one of his thoughts.
“I love a man of honor,” he said. “I have always liked to have them around me . . . for conversation. Sometimes, for use. Well, my friend, suppose that we strike a new little bargain regarding this?”
“Whatever you please.”
I was so amazed by the easy fashion of my victory over him that I was ready to go a great distance in any other respect in order to please him.
“This Clyde is a man of opinions and imagination. He might have a great deal to say about me . . . about Vidett, even. A very hard man in his language. Suppose that I agree that he shall not be injured in this house . . . will you agree not to listen to him if he were to try to talk?”
Another most odd proposal.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then you are free to go back to him and tell him that his worries are ended. And you will be expected to spend no more than thirty seconds in his room. You understand me?”
“Exactly.”
“Adiós. And watch for Pedro at the door as you go out. He is apt to try to knife you because I suppose that you used force on him.”
Old Pedro would certainly have planted his knife between a pair of my ribs had it not been for this timely warning. As I stepped cautiously through the doorway, looking to either side, I made out Pedro, flattened against the wall on my right, flattened until he seemed rather a bas-relief than a man. He jabbed at me with a knife and I had barely time to knock his hand up. Then I whirled him around and tossed him into the room of his genial master and immediately closed the door gently after him.
I felt as if I had had my hands on the body of an old snake in which the poison is dried but the fangs are still sharp. Then I went to Sam Clyde. I found him lying on his back, combing his long yellow mustaches, with a frown on his sun-blackened face. I was greeted with a leveled revolver, which was lowered the instant he recognized me.
“Well?” he said.
I went to him and took the revolver out of his hand.
“You are safe,” I said, “as long as I am safe. Do you understand? They will not knife you or poison you until they have disposed of me. Will that do for you?”
He scanned me again, and then fumbled for my hand and found it. “Partner,” he said, “I begin to hope. I got to say. . . .”
“I’ve no time to listen. I’m under honor not to talk to you while you’re in the house. I’ll look in at you once every day. So long.”
“God bless you!” he said, and I left the room.
XXII
Old Caporno was standing down the hall, staring at me, as I issued from the doorway, and his watch was in his hand.
“Just five seconds over,” he said.
“I thought you were using a figure of speech,” I said.
“When I make a bargain,” he said, “I never use figures of speech. However, this is all right. I think that you’re still honest, Mendez.”
He came up to me and linked his fat arm in mine almost affectionately.
“Very well,” he said, “for so long as you remain fairly honest, I am fairly disposed to keep you with me. It is a bargain, is it not?”
“Of course. Who is to be judge?”
“Either of us. I am sorry to hear that you have had troubles with Vidett.”
“Has he told you about it?”
“Yes.”
“What has he told you?”
He paused and frowned a little in thought.
“The truth, I think. Yes, I believe that he has told me nothing but the truth. Lies from him to me or from me to him are so difficult that eventually they are really not worthwhile, if you can understand what I mean by that.”
I understood that I was in an atmosphere filled with poison and with daggers.
“I can understand,” I said. “You heard the truth, then, you think?”
“I did.”
“What did you make out of it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Which of us was right?”
“Right? I rarely bother with such matters. Ethics is a science with which I have had very little to do. But what I usually strive after are the ascertained facts. You follow me? I wish to know what has happened, rather than what might have happened, or the reasons behind.”
I nodded. Yet it was a viewpoint difficult for me to grapple with.
“What is of importance is that you saved the life of Mister Vidett. And, a moment later, you have mortally offended him. Which, I suppose, more or less counterbalances the first service.”
“So that I remain with him exactly as though today had never come between us? One thing has neutralized the other?”
Caporno grinned sharply aside at me, and, stopping the shuffling of his slippers, he slapped one of them violently against the floor.
“Excellent,” he said. “I am delighted by that. And I tell you, my amiable Mendez, that, if you were dealing with me directly in this matter of today, that would be exactly my attitu
de concerning it. This, however, is different. In Vidett, you have to deal with a man of brilliancy, but not of judgment. His brain is at present under the cloud of prejudice that you raised in it a little time ago. I am sorry.”
“At present, then, he is an enemy?”
Caporno made a gesture of surrender.
“Well,” I said, “while I guard him, I shall do my very best to guard against him.”
Caporno actually sighed. “Yet,” he said, “in a way it must be delightful . . . to an adventurous young spirit like yours.”
“Señor,” I said, “I have been four years. . . .”
But here I paused, for it would not do to give him details out of my life that might connect me in his mind with my true identity.
“Four years of what?”
“Of the truest hell,” I admitted to him. “So that I really am not very eager for more trouble. This is. . . .”
“A business venture?”
“Yes. Call it that.”
Caporno turned upon me and took my hand. “You are in a position of the greatest difficulty,” he said, bowing toward me a little. “And I trust that you will solve the problem.”
In this fashion that unique fellow parted from me. But events had become so strange and so strangely crowded in the house of Caporno that I no longer paid much attention to little matters such as those through which I had just passed.
* * * * *
I went back to my own room and threw myself down on my bed for a moment of rest and of reflection—mental rest was what I most needed. But I felt as though I had drunk too much. The moment I lay down, my head began to spin. I started up again, and I hurried as fast as I could to find Mr. Lewis Vidett.
He was in the open yard behind the garden and in front of the corrals, and he was talking busily with two or three of the Negroes, who listened with the greatest gravity to what he had to say.
I came straight up to him, with my mind made up.
“Vidett . . .,” I said as I came near.
He turned on me without a word, but with a slight paling of his color that told me how truly he hated me for the offense that I had given him.