by Max Brand
And now Holden drew out the Colt. It was a heavy burden to his unmuscled arm. That made no difference. At the full length of his arm he let it hang.
“Until I count five, Crogan,” he said. “After that, if you are still in the yard, I’ll have to kill you—my man!”
Crogan looked wildly about him. He was neither a fool nor a coward. He was only a bully, and therefore used to taking things in a rush. These delays were deadly things to him. They let the brute out and let the mind in, so to speak. And this was what baffled Crogan. He did not understand mind. It was a foreign substance. It was not in him.
He took one step backward to brace himself, he said in his own mind.
“One!” said Holden.
But just as Crogan took that backward step he heard a little indrawn breath behind him, a breath drawn by many throats. Oh, how many were there to watch, and what if they thought that backward step was in flight? Indeed, worst horror of all, what if he did flee?
At this Crogan’s forehead was coated with cold water.
“Two!” said the voice from the porch, raised a little and ringing in a strange fashion that went to the very soul of Crogan. “Three!”
“Come down here where—” gasped out Crogan.
“Four!”
“Oh, Lord!” moaned Crogan, and, wheeling on his heel, he fled with the guns through the streets of the town.
Not a head turned to watch his flight, not a voice was raised. Of all the score and a half or two score young and hardy devils by the fence of Aunt Carrie’s front yard, not one had an eye for the fall of the great Crogan. But all stared fixedly, through a hush, at the slender form on the porch of Aunt Carrie’s house. They saw the light shimmer on the broad glasses of his spectacles; they saw the delicate whiteness of his hand upon the staff, his hand upon the gunbutt. Then love, awe, worship poured across their faces. Crogan had been ever an unsatisfactory hero, for a boy must be able to love where he worships. But now there was a new hero, strange, with a strength immeasurable because inexplicable.
They waited until he disappeared into the darkening house again. Then, as having seen a mysterious, almost a holy thing, they broke up in silence, and in silence they went home.
CHAPTER 8
But in the dark of the house, little Tom Holden slipped into a chair by the window and lay back in it with his eyes closed. The heavy revolver dropped from his hand to the carpet. Sneak came to examine it from end to end, carried it to a distant corner, and then lay down to chew the butt. But this Holden did not heed.
Then Aunt Carrie brought a lighted lamp and set it gently on the table beside him; next she drew the window shade near by, rather hastily.
“How are you feeling now?” she asked.
He opened his eyes and smiled up to her. “A little shaky, still,” said he.
She went without a word into the kitchen and returned with a glass of fragrant apple brandy.
“Close your eyes and breathe deep before you drink it,” said Aunt Carrie, “and you’ll be able to see a whole field of apple blossoms. I know!”
He obeyed.
“It’s very strong,” said Tom Holden, coughing. “And very good.”
She took the glass again and frowned down at him. “Were you very scared of him?” she asked at last.
“Terribly!” said Holden with perfect frankness. “I was so frightened that I was sick, I still am—a little. But then, the brandy helps a lot.”
She sat down, still holding the glass, and from time to time inhaling the fragrance of its last drops.
“What gave you the strength?” she said.
“I had to brave it out. Otherwise I was lost. I knew that. The brute was written so clearly in his face!”
“Well,” said the witch, “if you had failed—”
“That would have been the end of me.”
“Do you think he would have killed you?”
“Of course not. But he would have beaten me, with his hands, you know. And when he was through, all the boys would have had their fling at me. And after that—I never should have been much good again as long as I lived. Any child could have made me tremble.”
She considered this confession for a long moment, nodding all the time and still frowning at him.
“After all,” said she, “I thought that you were very brave, but it seems that you were only afraid of being afraid.”
“Exactly.”
“There was a moment when I actually thought that you were almost a hero.”
“Ridiculous,” said Tom Holden. “It was simply an immense bluff.”
“Oh,” said she, and smiled strangely at him. “But don’t keep up the bluff with me!”
“That would be foolish.”
“Why so? Because you know that there’s nothing to fear in me?”
He shook his head at her. “Some people have eyes that look through things,” he said. “You’re like that.”
“Humph!” said Aunt Carrie. “I suspect you very much of being a shrewd young flatterer, but nevertheless I wish that I could be of some help to you. I’ve an idea that your father is not taking much interest in you just at present.” And she eyed his clothes.
“He died long ago,” said Holden.
“And your mother?”
“She can’t even help herself, poor dear. That’s why I left home—to make a fortune for her, you know.”
He took off his glasses and smiled at her, and she almost smiled back!
“Your eyes don’t look in the least weak,” said she.
“Don’t they?”
“Not a whit.”
“As a matter of fact, they aren’t.”
“Then why do you wear glasses, foolish boy?”
“One has to do something for the sake of appearances. Really! These bits of window glass make me look a bit older and more settled, don’t you think?” He put them on again and regarded her with a judicial air which made the smile come very, very close to the corners of her mouth.
“You are a queer youngster,” said she. “How are you going to make money for your mother?”
“I haven’t settled on that,” said he.
“Have you any profession?”
“None at all. Besides, professions are much too slow. Poor mother needs happiness quickly.”
“You really are fond of her, I see.”
“She’s a dear thing,” said he.
“About this matter of making a fortune. If you have no profession, perhaps you want to try your hand at prospecting or some such matter?”
“Drag my leg over the mountains?” said he with a smile which did not leave his face less sad. “No, no! I could never do such a thing as that, and I know it. I have great limitations, you see!”
He took off the glasses and regarded her gravely. He looked very young with the glasses off.
“You are a boy, really!” said Aunt Carrie.
“I am twenty-two,” he protested.
“Well, well! You’re a child. Not bad looking with your glasses off. You might marry money, my boy.”
“The very thing!” said he. “But, unfortunately, my mind is made up.”
“About what?” said she, frowning more darkly than ever.
“Is the lady in the picture—” Here he pointed toward the next room. “Has she much money?”
“The lady of the picture—my Alexa—heavens, boy, what has she to do with this business?”
“I’ll be perfectly frank with you. If I do not marry her, I shall never marry anyone!”
He saw the red blood pour over the face of the witch. Then she stamped to the window and jerked up the shade. Night was passing fast across the world. The face of the ground was already velvet black, and the western hills were like cut-out cardboard silhouettes. Between the two highest hills, painted in black also on the last delicate rose of the western sky, there was a great house. Lights showed in some of its windows. More lights were kindled momentarily and cast splintered yellow rays down into the valley and toward the town.
“Do you see that?” asked the witch.
“It is a lovely place,” said he. “Are those poplar trees—that fringing on the hill to the right?”
“I mean the house.”
“So do I.”
“Young man, Oliphant Larramee lives there!”
“Well, well! I suppose he is rich, then?”
“His father left him a big fortune.”
“Inherited money, eh? That’s hardly fair!”
“He went to New York, this Oliphant Larramee. He decided to leave the ranch and try his luck where money rolled about more freely.”
“And there he lost enough to make him a misanthrope?”
“And there he made so much money that in ten years he decided that he would give up the game. He had more millions than he knew what to do with. He hunted about for a more difficult task still, to give himself something so huge and so hard that wits and money could hardly compass it! And, finally, of all things, he found an island near the coast of South America. All that was on the east side of the island was a terrible jungle full of marshes, snakes, spiders and fevers. All on the west side of the hills of that island was a burning desert on which not even a cactus could be happy and even a lizard considered it hard luck to be among those sands. Well, Oliphant Larramee went down to that island and lived there for fifteen winters.”
“What did he do in the summers?” asked Holden.
“He played the race tracks of the world, dined in Paris, heard German music, drank French wines, bought Italian pictures and Spanish castles, was talked about everywhere, and never repeated a word that was said about him. Those are a very few of the things that he did, you flippant young man! But to return to the desert island—”
“That was where luck turned and that was where he lost his millions so that he had to return to the West, I suppose?”
“He drained that jungle; he drew its water through tunnels in the hills and made it stream across the desert. The jungle fevers and the jungle swamps disappeared. The desert became green and gold. And where there had not been a single human soul before there are now thousands.”
“Thousands?” said Holden.
“Thousands!” she repeated with emphasis.
“All working for Mr. Larramee, I suppose?”
“Exactly!”
“This is like a fairy story. What brought him back to the West?”
“His daughter, young man!”
“Ah?”
“He did not want to keep her in the tropics. He couldn’t live happily there himself without her. He didn’t want her in the entanglements of a great city. So he took her to this place. He wants to keep her here until he can find a husband who is good enough for her. In the meantime, he guards her every moment. She is never out of his mind. One reason is because he loves her very dearly. The other reason is that her husband will take with her all of the Larramee millions. Do you understand, young man? Look up there!”
The importance of her gesture made him rise to his feet and stand at the window with the hat crushed against his breast.
“She is like a princess,” said Holden softly.
“She is!”
“But you did not tell me—does she love her father very dearly?”
“He is her father. He is also her best friend.”
“Ah,” said Holden, “for the first time it begins to seem really difficult!”
CHAPTER 9
Afterward he ate supper at the house of Aunt Carrie. And then she followed him to the front door, and down the garden path surrounded by the scent of the green things in the night, and the wet garden mold. At the gate she bade him good night.
“What are you going to do, young man?” she asked him.
“I’m going to stay,” said Holden, “near enough to see that house on the hill.”
“And keep hope?”
“I suppose that I’ll have to do that. I can’t help it.”
“You are very foolish,” said the witch. “She could have a prince, if she wanted him.”
“In reputation,” said Holden, “princes are apt to be dull fellows. Perhaps she’s tired of them all!”
“You’re a very pert young man,” said the witch, and grinned broadly, because the darkness covered her smile.
“Besides,” said Holden, “I have an advantage which no prince could have.”
“Humph!” said the witch. “What in the world may that be, if you please?”
“Your kind word in my behalf, and your help.”
“You are the most brazen youngster under the sky,” said the witch. “What on earth makes you think that I’ll help you?”
“Because,” said he, “I’ve an idea that you will always have some sympathy for the underdog.”
Afterward, when he reached the hotel, he was cold with shame and self-consciousness. He knew that he had said a great many foolish things. He wondered what would be the contempt and the amusement of blue-eyed Alexa if she should ever hear them. So it was a humble Tom Holden who helped himself into the hotel with his staff, with Sneak crowding against his legs and almost toppling him over at every other step—a savagely snarling dog, showing its teeth to every man in the little lobby of the old hotel. Over those men came a hush; and that silence weighed upon Holden. They were rough-handed men—cow-punchers, most of them, and a sprinkling of lumbermen and trappers. He felt their keenly critical eyes upon him. He heard their murmurings to one another.
A fat man in shirt sleeves, his trousers supported by a belt that made a deep dent in his midriff, came to meet him. It was the proprietor.
“You’re Crogan’s friend, I guess?” said he with a grin, as he shoved the register forward.
“I’ve met him,” said Holden anxiously, and this remark, which in the silence of the room was audible to its farthest end, was greeted with deep-throated, subdued laughter.
Presently he was led up to a room by the proprietor in person, who opened the window and arranged a chair busily. He was plainly anxious for conversation.
“Where might you of come from, Mr. Holden?” he asked.
“Yonder,” said Holden, waving obscurely toward half the points of the compass.
“Just travelin’, I guess?”
“More or less.”
“Maybe you only come in for the dance,” suggested the other. Then, taking new note of the crippled leg of his guest, he flushed and began to explain: “What I mean—”
“Never mind,” said Holden. “Is there a dance?”
“At the schoolhouse. Everybody is comin’ in.”
“Including Miss Larramee?”
The host started. “D’you know the Larramees?” he asked anxiously.
“Will she be there?” asked Holden countering.
“I s’pose she will. She ain’t so proud of herself as most rich folks might be.”
That was enough for Holden. He borrowed a chain from the host and tied Sneak to the leg of the bed. Then he made himself as clean as possible and sallied out for the schoolhouse, staff in hand. It was quite late when he reached it. He found a jam of horses at the hitching racks. He found the buckboards everywhere, and the light through the open door of the schoolhouse showed men and girls idling out of the dance room and into the cool of the night, and late arrivals hurrying in for the next dance. Holden went to the door of the place and looked in. It was at the very end of a dance. He saw the last swirling of the couples. He heard the music crash and die, the talk and the laughter begin, and then the hand clapping in a frantic effort to secure another encore. At last the crowd on the floor began to break up and move in narrow, huddling streams toward the chairs at the edges of the room.
He had searched the whole distant crowd for her. Then, taking him by surprise, she came past, close to the door. It shocked Tom Holden, like something out of a fairy tale turned into flesh and blood. The painter had not flattered. She was childishly small, and her eyes were as blue as the picture, and her smile just the same, half whimsical and half friendly.
A fat man came beside Holden; it was the proprietor of the hotel. “There she is,” he said in a hushed, confiding way.
“That’s Alexa Larramee,” returned Holden.
“You know her then, I guess?”
Holden hardly saw him, hardly heard him. The voice was like a prompting of his own thought, and his answer was a murmured, barely distinct: “She is to be my wife.”
He heard the gasp of the host; then he realized what he had said and fled as fast as his staff could help him along into the outer night, and on and on, with the wind of the darkness seeming hot on his burning face. What had he done! And why had he done it? What imp of the perverse had ever brought those words up into this throat? What devil had made him utter them? And where could he flee to hide himself from the ridicule of his fellow men? Why had he done it?
He went back to the hotel. Two cow waddies by the hotel stove tried to hail him and draw him into talk, but he waved them away and labored up the stairs to his room. There Sneak whined a greeting. He dropped down on the floor beside the big dog and buried his face in the ragged, coarse fur of its neck. And he stayed there a long time, shuddering spasmodically as he recalled the question, again and again, and again and again his answer. He tried to put a careless significance on his words, but there was no hope of that. He had said definitely: “She is to be my wife!” And the proprietor had gasped with astonishment. In ten minutes that news must be over the entire town.
Then he thought of the only thing that remained for him to do. He would wait until the first cold gray of the dawn. After that, he would slip down the stairs, leave money for his bill, and strike off down the road. That town of Larramee must never see him again.