by Max Brand
“I do,” said the other, frowning. “You think there’ll be a lynching party on account of this chestnut horse . . . curses on his weak heart.”
His face convulsed as he spoke, and for a moment the sheriff sat with his mouth parted over his next word, staring at the stranger. He seemed to see new things in the horse thief—as if it were the middle of night and a match had been lighted under that face.
“I got to tell you another side of it,” said the sheriff. “Suppose the bunch of farmers don’t lynch this gent I’m talkin’ about, but they only muss him up a lot and call him names. Well, he’s the kind of a boy that takes hard names to heart terrible bad.”
“If I’m not mistaken,” said the stranger, “this young fellow won’t use his gun more than once in your district. You’re the sheriff, I take it.”
“My name is Sturgis,” the sheriff replied. There was no change in the horse thief’s expression. “Yes, I’m the sheriff and my record is pretty long and pretty clean.”
“I’m sure it is,” the stranger agreed earnestly.
“But,” went on Sturgis, “if all the gents I’ve ever taken was rolled into one, all their tricks, and all their speed with guns, and all their cool-headedness, and all their cussedness . . . if they was all rolled into one, I’d rather tackle them all over again than tackle this same young gent.”
The stranger scrubbed his chin nervously with his knuckles, and then replied: “I begin to see what you mean . . . but I’d like to see this remarkable young man.”
“Oh, he ain’t so different,” said the sheriff. “He ain’t so different from the rest. He’s just a split-second faster with his gun . . . he’s just an inch closer to the bell with his slug . . . he’s just a quiver steadier in his hand . . . he’s just a dash cooler in the head. But”—he sighed—“it’s surprisin’ what a lot of difference a few little things make when they’re all added up. You see, this boy had a considerable pile of an inheritance, and he improves a lot on what he got for a start.”
“That description reminds me of someone I knew,” the stranger said musingly.
“Was it, maybe, La Paloma that you knew?” murmured the sheriff innocently.
The glance of the other twitched across the face of the sheriff like the lash of whip and then back. “No,” he said, “who was La Paloma?”
“But I’ll tell you what,” said the sheriff suddenly, “in spite of all the harm that maybe you’ve done by stealin’ that horse, I can’t help lettin’ my heart go out to a gent that knows how rotten it is to walk on foot.”
“Ah?” murmured the other. Then he drew out a folded checkbook.
“Suppose,” said the sheriff, “that I had some dice here. I might take a chance to see whether you take my horse or whether you come back to Sloan with me.”
“We could flip a coin,” said the stranger.
“Too risky,” murmured the sheriff. “If we even had a pack of cards, we could get along.”
“Ah,” murmured the stranger, and instantly a black leather card case was in the palm of his hand.
“So . . .” The sheriff sighed. “Kind of looks like you’ve took me up. What’ll we play to decide?”
“Something short?” suggested the other.
“Sure.”
“Anything you say will do with me,” said the horse thief. “But wait a moment . . . why not cut for the first ace?” He broke off with a frown, for he suddenly discovered that the sheriff was smiling quietly, straight into his eyes.
“D’you know,” said the sheriff, “that I been waiting for this minute for years and years?”
“What?”
“You was always a queer one,” murmured Sturgis, “but still I can’t understand why you’d ever come back here, Pat.”
VI
The silence that followed had an acid quality. It seemed to eat into the mind of the stranger and weaken him. The black eyes lost some of their brilliance, and presently he moistened his white lips, and whispered a curse.
“Don’t do it,” said the sheriff, shaking his head. “Don’t talk like that, because it always makes me sort of uneasy when a gent cusses me . . . even an old acquaintance like you, Pat.” Then he added, after a moment during which he looked almost longingly at the other: “Well, I guess we’d better be goin’ back.” He broke out in a different tone that might have been called cheerful: “D’you remember that it was in a place about like this that we . . .”
“Wait.” Pat gasped and reached his hand out toward the sheriff, but, before it touched his fingers, he relaxed and the arm remained suspended in mid-air. “It can’t end like this!” he cried. “It can’t end like this!” His whole body was shaking, but all at once he straightened out his glance, and his mustache stopped working and bristling. “You’re waiting for me to break down, are you?”
The sheriff raised a deprecating hand. ‘‘A man like you break down? A scholar and a gentleman like you? Sure I ain’t waitin’ to see that. I’d be a fool, wouldn’t I?”
“Ed, it all happened twenty years ago. It’s dead.”
“She’s dead,” agreed the sheriff, nodding.
The other groaned and clenched his fists.
“It takes about twenty years for a good wine to get ripe and all softened down so’s a man can enjoy it,” said the sheriff calmly.
The horse thief appeared to be buried in thought. “Suppose I were to tell you a story of a fellow who was down and out . . . who’d lived like a hound while he was young . . . who straightened up and tried to be a man afterward . . .”
“Go on,” broke in the sheriff. “You was always a fine talker, Pat,” he added encouragingly. “You’d ought to make a good yarn out of it. Let’s hear it, Langley.”
“You know me too well to think I’d whine,” said Pat Langley.
“Sure I do.”
“I want you to see in one glance what you do if you take me into Sloan and drag up that other matter against me. Out in the West Indies on the island of Saint Hilaire I have one of the finest plantations in the whole place . . . I have a wife and daughter.” He drew a second little leather case from an inside pocket. “You’ll see their pictures on one side of the card and the picture of my house on the other.” He handed the case to the sheriff. “I want you to know that you’ll be stepping into the happiest home in Saint Hilaire and ruining two lives, besides mine. But if you’ll drop this affair, Ed, you’ll step through the doors you see in that picture and halve everything that’s inside. If you don’t want to be near me . . . and I don’t suppose you will . . . you get half of my bank account. More than that. You can see my financial statement and make your own terms. I’m not offering this as a bribe. In the first place, I did you a great wrong. I want to make amends for that wrong, and the only way I can do it is to work on the financial end. At the same time, I want you to see that, after I wronged you, I realized what a hound I had been. I did go straight.”
But the sheriff gave back the unopened leather case. “I couldn’t look into a woman’s face just now, Pat,” he said gently. But Langley paled as though he had gained a first glimpse into the mind of the other. A change came gradually over his face. The sheriff, watching in fascination, noted that change and dropped his hand for the first time upon his rifle stock, but always he had kept the muzzle directed at the horse thief.
Yet Langley only said: “Throw me the makings, will you? See if I’ve forgotten how to roll ’em.”
The sheriff obeyed without a word and watched him deftly make his smoke and light it. When he had inhaled the first breath, Langley seemed to find a new cheer. He raised his head and looked about him as he exhaled the blue-brown vapor slowly. “Not so bad,” he said. “Better than a lot of the tailor-mades I smoke.” He met the eye of the sheriff. “And now that I’m back in it,” he said, “this same country isn’t so bad. Cleaner air around here than we have in the islands.” He drew a long breath and puffed it out again. “Well, when did you spot me first, Ed? I knew you the moment I saw you, but I depended on th
e twenty years and this mustache . . . like a fool. I knew you when I was putting my hands up and I hesitated about making a try with that little necklace of mine. Well, when did you know me first?”
“You’re a hard man, ain’t you, Pat?’’ said the sheriff quietly. “When it comes to the pinch, wife and child can go hang.”
“You thought I’d weaken, didn’t you?” He chuckled.
“It wasn’t your face that told on you,” said the sheriff, “though it gave me a bit of a shock. Made me start thinking. First of all, when you threw yourself at the ground. That made me guess . . . that old trick, you know. But all those things were hints pilin’ up in the back of my head. Then I got my first real clue when you twisted your eyes at me when I mentioned La Paloma. Funny way you have of glintin’ at a gent out of the corner of your eyes, Pat. But what sewed the thing up in my mind was the cards. You always used to have cards with you, and, if it came to a choice in a pinch, you liked to cut for aces.”
The horse thief looked calmly at him and tossed his cigarette butt away. “Speaking of cards,” he said, “I wonder if she knew that you’d played cards that night?”
The rifle trembled in the hands of the sheriff, but Langley did not wince.
“I was drunk,” the sheriff replied.
The other chuckled. “We’ve all heard that sort of talk.”
Sturgis began to breathe through his mouth, as though he had been running.
“To go back to the beginning,” said the horse thief, “suppose you and I were to have an even break for our guns. Just you and me with nobody to look on. We take anything for a signal to start for the butts . . . say the next time that hawk screams. And the fellow who drops is left for the buzzards. If you get me . . . why, you did it making an arrest of a horse thief . . . if I get you, I take the pinto along over the hills.”
“I’d like the idea.” Sturgis sighed. “Heaven above, how I been prayin’ for it twenty years.”
“Good old sport,” Langley said as he rose. “It’s done, then?”
“Wait a minute. In the old days you was always a bit better with a gun than me, Pat.”
“But you’ve had more practice lately.”
“You lie,” said the sheriff, without heat. “You practice with a gun every day of your life. You have to.”
The other flushed, looked swiftly about him, and then saw that he was helpless.
“But aside from that,” went on the sheriff, “I think the way of the law is a pretty good way, mostly. It gets at the insides of some gents in a way that powder and lead can’t. Suppose I was to blow your head off. You wouldn’t feel nothin’. I’d feel sort of better afterward, but what would you feel? Nothin’! But s’pose you get sent up for a little while . . . for stealin’ a horse. That wouldn’t be bad. Not the prison, but after you got out, Saint Hilaire would have the news. I’d take care that they did. You’re proud, ain’t you, Pat?”
“I’d kill you,” said the other thoughtfully. “I’d kill you as sure as heaven when I was out.”
“I don’t cross no bridges till I come to ’em,” the sheriff replied. “Besides, I know the warden of the state prison. Maybe he’d let me come up and pay you friendly visits once in a while. And then maybe I’d get so fond of havin’ you where I could see you that I’d hate to see you leave. So I might want to dig back twenty years and get something else that would hold you the rest of your life. Or if I got tired of seein’ you that way, I might even get something that would hang you, Pat.” He bit off a large corner of his Virginia leaf and stowed it gingerly in his cheek. “You see how many sides there is to the thing, Pat?” he said gently.
“I see one thing,” said the other with equal calm. “Twenty years has drilled through your thick head and put some sense there.”
“Well, the day’s wearin’ on. S’pose we start back. I hate to make you walk.”
“Don’t mind me,” said Pat heartily. “I generally walk every day on the island, and I’m in pretty’ fair trim.”
The sheriff climbed on his horse, and, as he did so, the other stepped to the side of the road, whistling, and leaned over. “Stand up!” called the sheriff. The other slowly stood up and showed his teeth under the black mustache. He kicked the revolver away. “I almost had it,” he confided to the sheriff.
“My, my,” murmured Sturgis, smiling. “Wasn’t that a close chance, now? I’ll tell a man.” He motioned down the road ahead of him.
“Certainly,” said the horse thief, “I always like to go first.” And he stepped out into the road.
“The same old Pat,” the sheriff said reminiscently. “You was always prime company.”
VII
The things that the sheriff did not know about the farming element around the town of Sloan were supplied to him by a seventh sense. It all fell out as he had warned the horse thief. First the posse, led by red-bearded Rex Houlahan, swept like a storm down the valley. They rode hard and they rode well, and they had the fastest horses within two hundred miles of Sloan, except Prince Harry himself. In fact, the six were chosen men of courage, for, in recruiting his posse, Jan van Zandt had not even applied to the cattlemen, knowing their answer beforehand, and of the farmers, these six were the only ones who cared to come within rifle range of Jeremiah Peyton. Jan van Zandt knew how to pick his men both for the horses they rode and for their personal grit, and one day he might sit in the state legislature for just such qualities as he showed in this crisis.
He wanted Prince Harry back. The horse was the culmination of a long labor of breeding that ran back through two generations of the van Zandt family, and it would take another two generations to get him back, but the affair was more than the matter of one horse. It was the culmination of the ill feeling between the two main classes of population around the little town. To be sure, the majority on both sides remained quiescent. Of the farmers there were only the six, and of the cattlemen there was only Jeremiah Peyton. But if matters came to a showdown, the entire populace was apt to rise in arms and a class war result. The imagination of the sheriff had not stretched as far as this, but the calculation of Jan van Zandt had. And he figured that in the ultimate struggle the odds would be with the farmers in about the same proportion—six to one. However, as far as the sheriff’s predictions ran, they were correct. The posse rushed down the valley, flogging their spirited nags every jump of the way. And when they reached the end of the valley, where the foothills sprawled out to a flat and the muddy old Winton River went straggling into the desert beyond, they drew rein and looked about them. There was still no sign of a chestnut horse before them, and, when Rex Houlahan looked down to the road, for he was the most Western of the lot, he did not find a trace of a recent hoof print before them.
There was a rumble in the posse, but few words, and they turned back up the valley. At the town of Winton they stopped for lunch—it was already afternoon—and lay about mumbling threats against the universe in general and thieving cattlemen in particular. In the afternoon they started on up the valley. No sooner had they taken the road than they discovered new grievances all brought upon them by the hound who had stolen the chestnut stallion. Every one of their horses was stiff and sore from the unusual hard work of the morning; their delicate limbs were meant for it no more than the legs of Prince Harry had been meant to stall off the dogged pursuit of the sheriff’s pinto. Rex Houlahan’s bay mare had been raised from a delicate foal like a child in the family; now she was desperately lame in the off foreleg and Rex went stamping down the road on foot, gnashing his teeth behind his red beard, with the mare following him like a dog. Within a mile she was going chiefly upon three legs, her head nodding far down at each step, and Houlahan’s heart was too full for utterance.
For some reason, none of the other five cared to break in before the big Irishman. They let him walk ahead, and they followed in a somber group. For five miles not a word was said, and then, without sound or signal, the whole procession stopped in the road. The bay mare lay down at once in the dust. As
for Houlahan, he turned and cast one long look at his horse, and then he noted that they were opposite the house of Jeremiah Peyton. In fact, anyone with half an eye could see the master of the shack sitting on the front verandah, tilted back as usual against the wall. To be sure the chestnut stallion was not in sight, but, as the posse had explained to the sheriff that morning, the absence of the horse proved nothing. He might have been passed on to compatriots in the foothills beyond, thieving cowpunchers who well knew how to send horses along by subterranean courses and bring them out a hundred miles or more away to be sold innocently to the first high bidder. All these things ate into the hearts of the farmers as they sat the saddle, breathing the pungent alkali dust that the feet of their weary horses stirred up. Most of all the idle form of Jeremiah stirred them. Idleness in their Middle Western scheme of things was the all-surpassing sin. Then Rex Houlahan cursed once, softly, and started across the fields. The others followed him.
How it happened that Jeremiah Peyton, the son of Hank Peyton, himself the chief figure of many a tale of border war against the Mexicans, calmly sat on his porch without a weapon near, while he watched six of his enemies come across his land toward him, no one in Sloan could ever imagine. Men were to scratch their heads over this mystery for days and days. The only explanation lay in the profound contempt that he felt for these dirt grubbers and land hogs, as he had been known to call them to their faces. He did not even look up until they were close to the porch, and, when he did look up, he did not rise. He merely whittled on at his stick. First he looked at the tops of their hats, then he whistled to the sky, then he called negligently to an old yellow cur that skulked across the porch away from the strangers. Last of all he appeared to notice the silent, stationary group that sat in their saddles, armed to the teeth, before his porch. Most of all, there was Rex Houlahan on foot, and nearest to him. Although the loss was Jan van Zandt’s, Houlahan was the spokesman.