by Max Brand
“All right,” said the doctor cheerily. “I’d as soon take care of a horse thief as another. A case is a case.”
“Who called Jerry a horse thief?” the sheriff asked. He spoke gently, but once more his voice carried to the outermost edges of the crowd. “What fool called Jerry Peyton a horse thief?”
No one answered. The six brave men on the steps remained tongue-tied.
Then Doc Brown said: “Well, I’ll be hanged.”
“Take this wagon back to Jerry’s place, and half a dozen of you put him to bed,” the sheriff ordered. “Doc, you stay with him.” He turned and went up the steps and opened the door to the jail. “Come in, boys,” he said. “I reckon I got room for you all in here.”
The six looked at one another. Then they met the smile of the sheriff, and finally they trooped in single file through the door.
“Let me understand this,” Jan van Zandt said, when they all stood in Sturgis’s office. “You stick up for a thief . . . a horse thief, Sheriff?” His voice rose as he remembered something from a book. “You want to arrest us because we handled a crook? I tell you to look out, Sturgis. Maybe we didn’t have no warrant for what we done, but we taught a lesson that was needed. And we don’t need a warrant, because we’re the voice of the people.”
“You’re the voice of a coyote,” the sheriff replied sternly. “I recognize it by the whine. Don’t talk back to me, Jan. Don’t even look back to me. Don’t none of the rest of you do nothin’ but smile pleasant at me. All of you sit quiet like little lambs, which you are. Don’t none of you stir a hand nor raise a head. Because I’m plumb fed up. I’m fed up so much that I’m puffin’ inside and I’m lookin’ for action.” He methodically made a cigarette and lighted it. “Speakin’ of horses,” he said nonchalantly, “they’s a chestnut horse lying in the woods up in Dogberry Cañon. It’s been run through the temple with a knife because the no-good horse give out and the gent that stole him wanted to get rid of all that useless horseflesh. Maybe you’d like to see that horse, Jan?”
The farmer dropped his head into his hands and groaned. At another time such grief, and particularly for a horse, would have moved the sheriff, but now he let his eyes rest fondly upon Jan through a long moment, and then moved them lingeringly across five other faces.
“Well, boys,” he said, “I think I’ve changed my mind. I ain’t goin’ to jail you. And they’s a sad reason why. Jerry Peyton is goin’ to get well.”
The six quivered under the stroke. Jan van Zandt raised his head and gasped. “And when he gets well,” said the sheriff sadly, “he’ll be callin’ on you to pay you some attentions. He’s like the rest of the Peytons. He’s like his father. He’s thoughtful. I seen his wrists. It’ll be four weeks, near, before he can handle a gun. Well, boys, I guess that’s all. I wish you all four weeks of good luck.”
Jan van Zandt parted his lips to speak. The sheriff leaped straight into the air and, coming down, smashed his fist upon his desk. “Not a word out of you, you sneakin’, man-slaughterin’ coyote. Git out, you and your pack!”
The six in the same silence rose and put on their hats, and slunk through the door, and silently down the steps to the street. There they parted and the sheriff from a window watched them split apart and travel in different directions. After he had seen this, he turned and made his way through the office to the little wing of the jail where the prisoners were kept. There was only one man there. The sheriff took his way down the little corridor between the bars of tool-proof steel and the wall. He sat down on a folding stool that leaned close to the bars, and, while he rolled another cigarette, he looked with interest upon Pat Langley behind the bars. The latter lay in a vest and stockinged feet on his bunk, and, although he was immediately aware that another person had come, it was some time before he laid down his newspaper.
The sheriff spoke first. “I got some news that’ll interest you,” he said.
Pat Langley yawned deliberately. “Yes?”
“You mostly remember what I said the farmers would do to Jerry Peyton?”
“Is that his name?”
“Old Hank’s son.”
The prisoner whistled.
“Well, they done it,” said the sheriff.
“Strung him up, eh?” said Pat Langley, losing interest. “Did he pot any of them?”
“They must’ve got him when he didn’t have a gun,” said the sheriff. “They all had the signature of his fist, right enough. I could’ve told from a block away that they’d been talkin’ to Jerry by the look of their faces. I disremember when it was I seen him arguin’ with four Mexicans in the street one day.”
“Does he make the yellow boys his meat?” Pat Langley asked scornfully.
“Mostly he don’t pay no attention to ’em,” said the sheriff. “But sometimes he gets his feet all tangled up in ’em, and then he just cuts his way out.”
“In self-defense?” inquired Langley.
“Sure.” The sheriff grinned. “Otherwise, I’d’ve arrested him long ago, wouldn’t I?”
“Of course,” said Langley, smiling in turn. They seemed to understand one another perfectly.
“But comin’ back to the Mexicans,” went on Sturgis, “they was all a husky crew and they took him with a rush while his back was turned and his hands was full of the makin’s. It was a pretty sight to foller, if your eyes was fast enough to see all that happened. I disremember, as I was sayin’, most of the details, but toward the end I recall Jerry steppin’ on the face of one Mex while he belted the other in the jaw. Pretty soon he come up to the door of the jail . . . he had all the Mexicans tied together. ‘I hear you been havin’ dull times in your boardin’ house,’ says he to me. ‘So I been drummin’ up some trade for you.’ And then I got a good look at the faces of them Mexicans, and their own mothers wouldn’t’ve recognized ’em. Well, that’s the way the six farmers looked today,” concluded the sheriff.
“But they hung him, eh?” said Pat, rising upon one elbow to listen.
“Nope.”
Pat stretched himself out again, yawning.
“They only hung him up by the wrists,” said the sheriff, “to make him confess, I guess. His arms are sure a rotten mess to look at just now. They hung him up till he fainted dead away. D’you ever hear of such foolishness?”
“Foolishness?” Pat questioned.
“Sure . . . to hang him up and then let him get away alive. Damned foolishness. And now,” continued the sheriff, “what’ll happen when the boy is on his feet and shoots Jan van Zandt full of holes?”
“Why, when that happens,” said the man of the black mustache, “you’ll have to go out and get Jerry Peyton.” He sat up and laughed. “By heavens, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You got an ugly laugh, Pat,” the sheriff said.
“When I read of your demise,” said Pat, “I’ll give you a tender thought, Ed. But do you know that this terrible Peyton of yours interests me? I wasn’t a bad hand in a pinch in the old days.”
“I’ll tell a man,” said the sheriff gently.
“And now,” went on Pat Langley, “I feel a lot better. As a matter of fact, Ed, it was pretty clever of you not to try a hand-to-hand scrap of it . . . out there in the Dogberry Cañon. How did you tell I was in shape?”
“By your hands,” said the sheriff. “The rest of you is pretty fat, but your hands is as skinny and quick as they ever were.” He stared fixedly at Pat Langley.
“Well,” said Pat, “what do you see? Me in a suit of stripes or yourself eating Peyton’s lead?”
The little animal eyes of the sheriff went up and down. “D’ you know, Pat, that I got a funny thing to tell you?”
“You’re full of funny sayings,” said the horse thief coldly.
“There you go,” murmured the sheriff. “You always have tried to read my mind, Pat. And you always have read it wrong.”
There was something sad about the voice of the sheriff that made the other man frown at him.
“Out with
it,” he said. “What’s the funny little thing?”
“Well, ever since I laid eyes on you out in the road up there, I been tryin’ to convince myself that I hate you, Pat, but I don’t convince worth a cuss.”
X
As for Langley, he rolled off the bunk, and, coming to the steel bars of his cage, he took two of them in his small, strong hands and looked steadily through the intervening space at the sheriff. He contented himself with that long, steady gaze, never saying a word. The sheriff blinked once or twice, but aside from that he met Langley with a sad, calm regard.
“For instance,” said the sheriff, “when I brung you in, I went down to write the charge ag’in’ you onto the little hotel register that I keep for my guests. Well, somehow I couldn’t write down the number that means larceny after your name. Couldn’t do it, Pat. I couldn’t even write down your name.”
“Are you playing a little game?” asked Langley, and he pressed his face against the bars in his desire to look through the little eyes of Ed Sturgis and get at his mind.
“Me?” queried the other in surprise. “What sort of a game do I need to play on you now, Pat?”
It was quite unanswerable. This truth gradually became clear in the mind of Langley. “I can even explain why you feel this way,” he said with a sudden change of voice.
“You was always a great hand at explainin’,” murmured the sheriff, but, although Pat Langley shot one of his sudden glances at Sturgis, he was able to read nothing in the bland face of his old companion.
“This is why,” Pat said. “In the old days I did you a great wrong, Ed. You have kept that in mind all these years, you see. You’ve been hating me all this time and wishing and waiting for a chance to get back at me. Is that the truth?”
“I guess it’s pretty close to gospel, old-timer.”
“But down in your heart,” continued Pat Langley, “all the time you weren’t hating me so much as the thing I had done.”
The sheriff blinked again. “I don’t quite follow,” he murmured.
“I mean this,” Pat said hurriedly. “Outside of that one thing I did, I was always square with you. I played straight. I backed you up in every pinch. You remember?”
“That’s true.”
“So all these twenty years,” said Langley, “you’ve been concentrating to hate that one thing I did. It was a mean piece of work. I don’t deny that, Ed, and not once during these years have I attempted to excuse it to myself.”
“Go on,” said the sheriff, and a little spot of white had come in either cheek. “Let’s leave that go.”
“Let that pass.” Langley nodded. “And when you saw me today, it was a man you couldn’t recognize. You found that you didn’t hate that stranger you met in the road. It wasn’t until you found out what his name is that you began to hate him. Is that straight, Ed?”
It must have been to conceal his emotion that the sheriff looked down and placed his hand above his eyes. He was thinking, and it was some time before he could raise his head and look at his prisoner again. When he did so, it was to say: “Pat, you’re right.”
The other turned, and, since he dared not raise his voice and, above all, allow the sheriff to see his face, he turned and walked to his bunk and stood with his back to the sheriff and his head fallen.
“What’s the matter?” asked the sheriff cheerily, after a time.
“It’s because I can’t help thinking what a hound I was,” Pat Langley said, choking. “And you . . . Ed . . . when all’s done, you were the finest friend I’ve ever had.”
“Tut, tut,” the sheriff replied. “D’you mean that?”
“Do you doubt me?” cried Langley, whirling on his heel. “Now that I’m here and down and ruined . . . do you doubt me?” He waved to the bars, to the wretched bunk.
“Yes,” agreed the sheriff, “sometimes the steel slats work through the blankets and sort of leave a pattern on a gent’s back. Them bunks ain’t what I’d recommend to anybody that likes to lie soft at night.”
To this naïve speech the reply of the horse thief was another of the flickering, bright glances, but there was apparently no mockery in the face of the sheriff.
“What I’m chiefly sorry for,” said Langley, “is that I’ve left you in another mess by this unfortunate episode of the chestnut horse.”
“Yep,” agreed the sheriff, “that’s a pretty bad mix-up, all right. Tell me, honest, Pat, did you figure on sending back the price of that horse when you got to the end of your trip?”
“So help me, I did,” Langley said, and there was a ring of truth in his voice.
“My, my,” said the sheriff. “You have changed a pile, Pat. Well, I’ll tell you about this Peyton. I tell you I fear him, and I do. You remember his dad, don’t you?”
“Old Hank? Of course. I had a run-in with him, you remember.”
“And came out on top. Yes, I remember. But Hank was a fast man and pretty accurate, and his son is a shade better. But why I fear him is because he has all my luck. No use runnin’ foul of a man that has your luck.”
“How did he get it?” said Pat Langley with interest. “But to tell you the truth, Ed, you’re a fool to fear any man under thirty. It takes a certain age to harden a man’s nerve, and the boy could never stand up to you.”
“Not unless he had my luck, I wouldn’t bat an eye about him.”
“H-m-m,” Langley said. “That makes a difference, of course.”
“It was just before I come to Sloan,” the sheriff continued. “First place I landed when I headed West was in Nevada, and I hit her when she was wide open and roarin’.”
“I’ve always regretted missing those days in Nevada,” Pat Langley said, and sighed.
“Sure, you would have been right at home,” agreed the sheriff.
Again Langley looked to discover proof of double-entendre, but he found nothing.
“I was some green,” the sheriff went on, “in those days. I was all set up to find trouble. Knew how to shoot, I thought, and at a target I was some handy boy. So I got all togged up with a brace of gats and a frosty eye and went about with a chip on my shoulder. Particular, I had one gun that was a beauty. It was a new model, just out of the shop, and she worked like she had brains of her own. In fact, it’s a pretty old model for a Colt today, but in fingers that know their business it don’t have to take a back seat to nothin’ right up to this minute.”
“I think I know that old model,” said Pat.
“With that gun,” the sheriff continued, “I felt like Hercules, and then some. And so one evenin’ I run into a little gent in a saloon. We was playin’ cards and I seen him palm a card once . . . then I seen him do it again. For that matter, they was a couple of the other boys that I was sure had seen it. But they didn’t say nothin’. At the time, I wondered why, but I didn’t stop to ask any questions about who this gent was. I just give him a call and then start for my gun. Well, Pat, he got me covered before I had my forefinger on the butt of my gun. He seen I was a kid and mostly a fool, though, and he didn’t feel much like action, I guess. Anyway, he let me off with a bit of advice, and he took away both my guns for safekeepin’, he said, to keep me out of trouble.”
“Funny you never told me this story before,” Langley said.
“When I knew you,” said the sheriff, “I was still too young. The thing was too fresh in my mind, and I hadn’t reached the stage when I could tell about the lickin’s I’d had in the past. Now, I can grin about ’em.”
“H-m-m,” Langley said thoughtfully.
“But the point of that yarn ain’t out yet. The name of the quiet gent that got my guns was La Paloma.”
“The devil you say,” murmured Langley.
“The devil I do say,” said the sheriff calmly. “It was sure La Paloma, though he hadn’t picked up that name yet. And that gun he got from me was the one he always packed later on. That’s the gun the greasers called The Voice of La Paloma, he used it so handy.”
“But what the devil
has that to do with your luck leaving you, Ed?”
“Why, just this. The chap that got La Paloma . . . that was two years after you left . . . was Hank Peyton, you see? And Hank got The Voice of La Paloma and passed it along to his kid. So Jerry has my gun . . . and whoever had any luck trailin’ a gent that had your own gun? It’s more’n that, Pat. The kid puts an awful lot of stock in that gun. I figure he ain’t practiced with anything else since he was knee-high. And if he didn’t have it, he’d be up in the air. You see how everything turns around it? He’s got my luck. My luck is his luck. There you are, and when Jerry Peyton bumps off the first of them farmers . . . I wish to heaven that he’d get the whole crew of ’em at once, for my part. I got to go out on the trail of a gent that has all my luck pulling at his holster. I’d as soon jump over a cliff. I wouldn’t be no surer of dyin’ that way.”
As he concluded this gloomy story, his eyes dropped to the floor and remained there, studying the shadow. It gave Pat Langley a chance to lift his own glance and observe every detail of the face of the sheriff. He even permitted the faintest hint of a smile that might have been either contempt or scorn to touch his lips. Then he brushed this smile away and came close to the bars.
“Ed,” he whispered.
“Well, Pat,” the sheriff said absently.
“I have a little proposition that might interest you.”
“Fire away, old-timer.”
“You say you haven’t put my name in the book?”
“I haven’t.”
“And no one knows that I’m here?”
“Not a soul.” He looked quickly into Pat Langley’s face. “What are you figurin’ on, Pat?”
“On playing your game and mine with the same hand, old boy.”
“Go on, Pat. You was always a hand at sayin’ surprisin’ things.”
“Ed, you’ve already admitted that your old grudge against me is dead. I’m simply a burden on your hands here. Well, let me out of this mess. Give me a horse and a gun. I’ll doll myself up in a mask and slide over to the house of this young Peyton, do the robber stunt, you see? Turn things upside down, and finally take his gun and bring it out to you. Then you’ll have your luck back and I’ll have my freedom and a horse to go on my way. What d’you think?”