by Max Brand
He did not regard the others, however. It was well to have so much attention, of course, and from such men. It would make him a known and feared man in the camp. But it was Melendez in whom he was interested, and he found that for the first time in his life he was standing before a man who did not change color when a gun was pointed at his heart.
It was a staggering discovery to Legrain, opening possibilities in human nature such as he had never dreamed of before. But he made sure that the eye of Melendez was as clear, as bright, and as open as ever, and that the form of Melendez did not shrink back one jot from him. He heard the younger man saying in the most calm of voices:
“Why, partner, what’s eating you? You don’t mean me, do you?”
“Don’t I mean you?” said Legrain. “But I do, you swine. You tried to kick me out of your way just now and you . . .” He hardly knew to what conclusion he could bring this affair, but he stepped boldly forward. Certainly the nerve of this young fellow must have some snapping point.
Melendez did not so much as budge. He merely shrugged his shoulders and stood now at arm’s length, looking quietly into the face of the other.
It was a dreadful thing to Legrain. It blasted away all his confidence in himself. The knees of his spirit, so to speak, were bowed almost to the earth. And he knew that he would have to do something desperate to maintain himself.
Just at that critical instant a strong voice called: “Put up your gat, Legrain! Are you trying to do a murder in here?”
Legrain wrote the sound of that voice down in his memory and swore that, if he lived through this trial, he would never forget the speaker as a most deadly enemy, to be brought to account for such an unseasonable remark.
If there had been only one voice behind the suggestion, Legrain would never have listened. He would have been deaf, indeed, to half a dozen such remarks. But now there was a roar from 100 strong men, calling upon him to restore his gun to its holster and to put the fight back upon even terms. But did he dare to do it?
IX
NO FIGHT IN HIM
With an eye most quiet and yet most calculating, as of one who reads an interesting book, Melendez was looking his antagonist up and down. It seemed to Legrain’s evil heart that the younger man was glancing over a tale more than twice told. Standing so boldly and so steadily, it seemed as though Melendez was simply waiting for the instant when that leveled revolver was put away before he snatched out his own gun and fired from the hip. Or, perhaps, he would simply rely upon the power of his long, strong right arm. That clenched fist promised to go through another’s body almost like a leaden bullet. Mr. Legrain vowed that he would almost as soon be shot outright as struck by such a man, with such a heft of shoulder behind the punch.
He balanced the question in his mind and found the scales just even, until another universal roar from the crowd advised him to put up his gun at once. There was no denying those voices. He had heard it roaring before, on sundry occasions. Once he had been glad enough to have the walls of a jail, and the guns of a sheriff, between him and just such a roaring crowd. Now Legrain decided that obey he must, dangerous though he felt it to be, when he was in arm’s reach of this man.
He dropped the Colt suddenly into his holster—although as his right hand came a little clear of the holster, it hung there quivering above the grip, ready to snatch out the weapon again with one convulsive movement of wrist and fingertips.
Yet as fast as he knew he could make his move—and with the stranger’s handicap in having to extract a gun from beneath his coat—the cold certainty arose in Mr. Legrain that his was a losing cause, that, at the command of this youngster, there was such blinding speed that his own cunning would avail him nothing.
So he waited, tensed. The whole crowd waited, also, pressing back on either side so as to leave a narrow channel open through which bullets might be free to fly.
But bullets did not fly. There was no swift reaching forward of the right hand of Mr. Melendez. Neither did one of his hands flip up under his coat to make the draw. He remained as he had been before, with his arms hanging patiently by his side.
Legrain snarled, although he could hardly believe the thing as it snapped into his own frantic mind: “You’re yaller!”
Even that crowning insult, although it wrung a groan of expectancy from the crowd, could not force the hand of Melendez. His smile did not waver. His pale-blue, thoughtful eyes continued to gaze at his foe.
“You yaller skunk!” screamed Legrain. “It’s a mask that you’re wearing, and, inside, you’re shaking in your boots!” As he spoke, he reached out swiftly and struck the other lightly across the mouth with his open hand.
Striking with his left, his right hand was free to make his draw, and he snatched his Colt out, ready to split the heart of young Melendez and send his spirit on a distant journey. But Melendez did not stir to defend himself.
Another universal voice rose from the crowd, but this time it was one of purest disgust. “Leave him be, Legrain. There ain’t any fight left in him.”
“Leave him be?” repeated Legrain. “No, curse him, I ain’t gonna leave him be. Not when I’m kicked around by a yellow dog that wants to bully people that he hasn’t the nerve to stand up to in a fair fight . . . knife them in the back.” He struck out savagely as he spoke. The other stepped lightly back, and Legrain floundered as he missed. He dropped his revolver into his holster, furiously greedy for the work by this time; his hunger was razor-edged.
Now he heard Melendez saying—although in a voice not trembling with fear: “Fellows, I’m not a fighting man. Will you take him off?”
There was a veritable gasp of disgust.
“No,” shouted someone fiercely, “let him take what’s coming to him . . . the cur!”
Sweet, sweet music to the ears of big Mr. Legrain. He laughed through his set teeth as he strode upon Melendez.
“And you’re the hero, are you?” he panted. “You’re the one that’s going to tear six of us to pieces if the girl asks you to?”
For the first time a tremor was struck through the body of Melendez. “Girl?” he echoed faintly.
“Aye, and I wish that she was here to see what I’m going to do to you!” snarled Legrain. “I only wish for that. Because I’m going to break you up, Melendez! I’m going to. . . .”
He had broken through the calm of Mr. Melendez at last. The color indeed ebbed from the brown cheeks, and the lips of Melendez were suddenly pinched.
“Did she tell you that I’d tear half a dozen of you to pieces for her?”
“Yes!” Legrain grinned. “And so . . .”
He struck again, and this time the other did not leap back; an arm of steel rose and turned the blow of Legrain. He found himself staring, scant inches away, into glittering, terrible eyes.
“Back up, Legrain!” said the younger man. “I’ve been holding myself hard, but now I tell you that if you so much as stir a hand, I’ll kill you, man. Do you hear me?”
“Hear you? You rat, will you still try bluff? Go for your gun. I give you your last chance before I salt you away, Melendez!”
“Gun? The devil with a gun. I don’t need a gun for trash like you.” And he surged forward.
Legrain should have killed him, perhaps. His own Colt was already in his hand as he sensed the change in this odd enemy. But, strangely enough, he could not tip up the muzzle of the weapon as fast as the left hand of the brown man darted out and gripped his gun wrist.
The gun roared, but it merely plumped a .45 bullet deep in the hard-packed dirt floor of Hans Grimm’s gaming house. The next instant a clenched fist, as hard as a rock, clipped the chin of Legrain. He felt his knees buckle under him, his head jerked back under the impact. But when he strove to tear his gun free, it seemed to him that his right wrist was encircled with four bands of biting fire. He saw the second blow coming and strove to lurch inside of it, but it went home, and Legrain fell limply upon the ground, face down.
Even then there was enough fight
ing instinct in him to make him reach for the gun that had fallen from his fingers. A hard heel stamped down on his hand, and he screeched with pain.
The Colt was scooped into the hand of Melendez. “Get up, Legrain!” he ordered. “Get up, do you hear me?”
A bullet knocked the white Panama from the head of the gambler. And suddenly he had the strength to rise to his feet.
“Now get out!” commanded the tyrant. “And get fast, Legrain. If I lay eyes on you again in this camp, I’m going to wring your neck. Move!”
Legrain did not have to be told again. Indeed, he would almost rather have faced a dozen guns than look for an instant into the changed face of Melendez. He lunged forward unsteadily, took a sudden strength from his very panic, and raced blindly for the entrance. Melendez turned back upon the stunned crowd, and his face was not pleasant.
“You, there!” rang his voice. “You in the black hat with the two guns. You wanted the fight to go on. And it’s started. D’you wear those guns for ornament, you fat-faced swine? Step out and let’s see what you’re made of. He don’t step. He backs up. He ain’t so set on fights when he has to take a hand in ’em. Boys, I’ve gone for years without a gun or a knife. I’ve lived like a lamb. But now a gun has been shoved into my hand, and I’m aching to use it.”
He turned closely around to face the circle, and the circle widened before him. There was a slow movement toward the door. Following them, he clipped his words, each with a ring like a falling coin.
“Or a knife, if you like. If there’s any talented greaser in this lot, let him step out and talk turkey. Or if you don’t like that, bare hands. I tell you, I need action and I’m gonna have action. Or else I’m gonna have room! Why, you look like men . . . you stand like men, and you talk like men . . . but you ain’t men. You’re all hollow. Did you hear me talk? I need action or I need room. I need lots of room! I need this whole place to myself! Move!”
They moved. Most shameful to relate, all those brave and hardened men, good warriors most of them, felt the craven spirit of the crowd master them. They started more swiftly for the door. They turned their backs. The blindness of panic that instant seized upon them. They lurched forward with shouts.
The gun roared from the hand of Melendez and blew a neat little eyelet through the top of the canvas roof of the house, but it seemed to every man in that crowd that the bullet had whistled a fraction of an inch from his ear, and so they stormed, screeching, for the door. They fought and clawed and wrestled their way out. The weaker went down with groans; the stronger stamped upon them and pushed on for the safety of the open.
In a moment the great, round room was empty, except for a few prostrate forms by the entrance, crawling feebly toward the street.
But Melendez had sunk down in a chair and buried his face in his hands.
X
A PROPHECY
The house of Hans Grimm had become as silent as a cave. All the noise was removed to the street. Only Melendez remained at the table with his head in his hands. Coming toward him now was the last survivor of the crowd, a broad, rosy-faced man, whose cheeks seemed all the pinker because they contrasted with the tuft of white hair at either temple.
When the noise of the man’s soft footfall came closer, Melendez looked up with a fierce snarl and reached for the gun that he had taken from big Legrain. But although that gun was pointed at Hans, the muzzle presently wavered and declined again.
Hans Grimm sat down in an opposite chair. “Are you smoking, mine friend?” he asked.
“No,” said Melendez.
“Are you drinking?” asked Hans, waving an inviting hand toward the bar.
Melendez, following the gesture, shook his head with a shudder. “No.” He groaned. “I ain’t drinking! Not any more. For three years or so I’ve been able to do as I please, take life easy, never worry, and have one drink or ten, just as I pleased, but that time is ended. My vacation is plumb over.”
He sighed as he said it, and Hans Grimm nodded.
“Very well,” said Hans, “I understand this all pretty good.”
The glance of Melendez fastened itself more intently upon the other. “Who might you be?”
“I’m Hans Grimm.”
“Ah, you run this joint.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve busted up your games for today,” said Melendez.
“It was a good show,” Hans Grimm said. “I don’t mind it, if I have to pay. You don’t get something for nothing.”
“Not even at a gaming table?” asked Melendez.
“No,” said Hans Grimm.
“Not even if you win?”
“If you win,” Hans Grimm said, “you make other people think that they beat the game. They think that the luck is running. So they start playing big. But there ain’t any such thing as luck in this world.”
“Nothing like luck?” exclaimed the younger man. “Why, Grimm, luck is all that there is.”
“There is no luck,” Grimm repeated, shaking his head with such a perfect conviction that he could afford to smile.
“Not even at cards?”
“No, you can work all the chances out with mathematics. Not very hard. There is no such thing as luck. She’s a ghost, but most people chase her. They come here most of all to find her. There is no luck in the world, Melendez. Only brains.”
It was a philosophy that tore to shreds the innermost convictions of Melendez, and he fought against accepting it.
“What was it but luck,” he said, “that kept Legrain from backing me out of this here place and making me look as yaller as a rag?”
“Two things,” Hans Grimm explained, counting them off on the pudgy tips of his fingers. “First place . . . you are a fighting man . . .”
“That don’t go,” interrupted Melendez. “I tell you, old-timer, that for three years I been making it a rule to take water rather than have to fight. And only the bad luck of Legrain . . .”
“First place,” Grimm insisted mildly, “you are a fighting man. You held yourself in for a long time, but sooner or later you had to break out. If you keep a fire under a stopped-up boiler long enough, it will bust. It has to bust. Same way with you.”
“All right,” said Melendez, “I won’t argue.”
“Second place,” continued the proprietor of the gambling house, “Legrain, like a fool, didn’t stop where he should have stopped. He spoke about the girl.”
“Ah?” grunted Melendez. “How could you hear that?”
“Because I was close,” said the other. “I’m always as close as I can get when there is trouble here. Besides, I have very sharp ears. I tell you, mine friend, when the other players hear nothing, I hear the groans of the people who lose around my tables.”
Melendez stared at him as at some enchanter.
“And so I heard what he said,” finished Grimm. “This is not a place to speak of women . . . not to a man like you. Legrain was a fool, and therefore he had a fool’s reward. He should have left Miss Berenger out of it.”
“Now curse my eyes,” said Melendez, “how did you guess at her name?” He frowned with wonder.
“It was not hard to guess,” Hans Grimm said, still smiling.
“Ain’t there more than one woman in camp?”
“There are others. But there is only one that would make you fight.”
Melendez drummed upon the edge of the table. “You’re smart, Grimm. Dog-gone me if you ain’t among the smartest that I ever seen.”
“Not smart,” said Grimm. “It is only simple . . . like adding numbers. You put together the little things that you know, and they add up to some big thing that you didn’t guess that you knew.”
“All right,” said Melendez. “I ain’t gonna argue. You know a bit too much for me. You know enough, old-timer, to make me ask you for your advice. What’ll I do now?”
“Take your horse and ride out of Slosson’s Gulch as fast as you can. That is exactly what you ought to do.”
“Humph!” exclaimed Mel
endez. “You mind telling me why?”
“I can tell you why. It is to get away from the danger here. You have shamed a great many people today. When a man has been shamed, he is always dangerous.”
“It’s a fact,” admitted Melendez.
“So what you should do is to ride away as fast as you can go. That is what you should do, but what you won’t.”
“Hey, Grimm, what makes you so sure that I won’t?”
“That is still simple. I add up the figures. They tell me that you will not go.”
“Old son,” Melendez said, leaning forward and scowling with the intensity of his conviction and determination, “I’ll tell you that you’re wrong. I’m gonna go right out from here and saddle up my hoss and ride right out of Slosson’s Gulch.”
“You may start, but you ain’t going to finish.”
“Will a bullet stop me? Is that what you mean?”
“Not a bullet. They are not ready to shoot, just yet. But you will not leave.”
“Will you be reasonable?” asked Melendez. “Tell me what makes you guess that.”
“It is not guessing. I never guess. Either I know, or else I don’t know. There is nothing mysterious. When Legrain mentioned the girl, I didn’t know who it was until I saw you begin to fight. But after I saw you fight, I knew that you would have to see her again before very long. You are thinking more about her, right now, than you are about leaving Slosson’s Gulch.”
Melendez stood up. “Old-timer,” he said, “you’re smart. You’re terrible smart. I see that. But this time, you’re wrong. I’m thinking about her, sure. But, also, I’m gonna think still more about leaving. I’m saying good bye, Grimm!”
“Good!” said the other. “I like to see a man fight against himself. If you can get away from here, you will have a chance to live a happy life again.”
“Meaning what?”
“Why, meaning that you could go back to drifting . . . no fighting . . . taking things easy . . . never worrying. That was what made you very happy, Melendez.”