by Max Brand
“We won’t talk about the girl,” said Andrew in a heavy voice.
“Tut, tut. Won’t we? Boy, we’re going to do more talking about her than about anything else. Well, anyway, you saw the girl, fell in love with her, went away. Met up with a posse that my brother happened to lead. Killed your man. Went on. Rode like the wind. Went through about a hundred adventures in as many days. And little by little, you were fixing in your ways. You were changing from boyhood into manhood, and you were changing without any authority over you. Most youngsters have their fathers over them when that change comes. All of ’em have the law. But you didn’t have either. And the result was that you changed from a boy into a man, and a free man. You hear me? You found that you could do what you wanted to do… nothing could hold you back except one thing… the girl.”
Andrew caught his breath, but the marshal would not let him speak.
“I’ve seen other free men… most people called them desperadoes. What’s a desperado in the real sense? A man who won’t submit to the law. That’s all he is. But because he won’t submit, he usually runs foul of other men. He kills one. Then he kills another. Finally he gets the bloodlust. Well, Andy, that’s what you never got. You killed one man… he brought it on himself. But look back over the rest of your career. Most people think you’ve killed twenty. That’s because they’ve heard a pack of lies. You’re a desperado… a free man… but you’re not a man killer. And there’s the whole point.
“And this was what turned you loose as a criminal… you thought the girl had cut loose from you. Otherwise to this day you’d have been trying to get away across the mountains and be a good, quiet member of society. But you thought the girl had cut loose from you, and it hurt you. Man killer? Bah! You’re simply lovesick, my boy.”
“Talk slow,” whispered Andrew. “My… my head’s whirling.”
“It’ll whirl more, pretty soon. Andy, do you know that the girl never married Charles Merchant?”
There was a wild yell; Andrew was stopped in midair by a rifle thrust into his stomach.
“She broke off her engagement. She came to me, because she knew I was running the manhunt. She begged me to let you have a chance. She tried to buy me. She told me everything that had gone between you. Andy, she put her head on my desk and cried while she was begging for you.”
“Stop,” whispered Andrew.
“But I wouldn’t lay off your trail, Andy. Why? Because I’m as proud as a devil. I’d started to get you, and I’d lost Gray Peter trying. And even after you saved me from Allister’s men, I was still figuring how I could get you. And then, little by little, I saw that the girl had seen the truth. You weren’t really a crook. You weren’t really a man killer. You were simply a kid that turned into a man in a day… and turned into a free man. You were too strong for the law.
“Now, Andrew, here’s my point. As long as you stay here in the mountain desert, you’ve no chance. You’ll be among men who know you. Even if the governor pardons you… as he might do if a certain deputy marshal were to start pulling strings… you’d run someday into a man who had an old grudge against you, and there’d be another explosion. Because there’s nitroglycerin inside you, son.
“Well, the thing for you to do is to get where men don’t wear guns. The thing for you to do is to find a girl you love a lot more than you do your freedom, even. If that’s possible…”
“Where is she?” broke in Andy. “Hal, for pity’s sake, tell me where she is.”
“I’ve got her address all written out. She forgot nothing. She left it with me, she said, so she could keep in touch with me.”
“It’s no good,” said Andy suddenly. “I could never get through the mountains. People know me too well. They know Sally too well.”
“Of course they do. So you’re not going to go with Sally. You’re not going to ride a horse. You’re going in another way. Everybody’s seen your picture. But who’d recognize the dashing young man killer, the original, wild Andrew Lanning in the shape of a greasy, dirty tramp, with a ten-days’-old beard on his face… with a dirty felt hat pulled over one eye… and riding the brake beams on the way East? And before you got off the beams, Andrew, the governor of this state will have signed a pardon for you. Well, lad, what do you say?”
But Andrew, walking like one dazed, had crossed the room slowly. The marshal saw him go across to the place where Sally stood; she met him halfway, and in her impudent way, tipped his hat half off his head with a toss of her nose. He put his arm around her neck, and they walked slowly off together.
“Well,” said Hal Dozier faintly, “what can you do with a man who don’t know how to choose between a horse and a girl?”
THE END
About the Author
Max Brand is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately 30,000,000 words or the equivalent of 530 ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, fashionable society, big business, and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his work, along with many radio and television programs. For good measure he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in more different ways.
Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures, culminating in New York City, where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, and finally in Los Angeles.
Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials, unpublished manuscripts, or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1997), edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski. His website is
www.MaxBrandOnline.com.