by Max Brand
He waited. There was not a chance in ten that she had not betrayed that he was a harmless weakling who had won a great conquest by a great bluff.
“She told me,” said Larramee, “that your actions spoke for themselves. As for the quelling of that town nuisance, the bully Crogan—it was a confounded commendable thing. I grant that. As for what else you are other than a gun fighter and adventurer—I wait for the information with much curiosity. But as for the remark through which you connected yourself with my daughter—why, darn me, Mr. Holden, such a—” He paused, not quite ready to commit himself to a denunciation.
“You would say that every man has a right to speak what is his expectation?” asked Holden.
“Naturally. But in heaven’s name, my dear young man, unless you are mad—”
“I only spoke,” said Holden, “what I hope to make true.”
Mr. Larramee reached for the wall and supported himself against it. “Go on,” said he. “I am a very patient man. Explain yourself.”
“I had to bring my hope to your attention. You perhaps will wonder why I did not come to you in person to—”
“Not at all,” said Larramee grimly. “I might have been overcome by a desire to throw you out of the house by the nape of the neck.”
“Certainly,” said Holden gravely. “That was in my mind. And if you had done such a thing I should have been in a quandary. Of course I would have been physically too weak to resist you. I should have been forced to submit, and thereby be shamed forever in your eyes and in the eyes of Miss Larramee. Or else, I should have been compelled to kill you, Mr. Larramee.”
The great man grunted.
“It was so difficult for me to decide,” said Holden, making a graceful gesture, “that I thought it would be best to use general rumor.”
Mr. Larramee sat down suddenly and with jarring weight. “Young Mr. Holden,” said he, “I begin to agree with Miss Davis that you are an extraordinary youth. Somewhere hidden behind all of this there is an immense jest, I have no doubt. You are an intelligent fellow. You seem to be well educated. You have the command of your brains. For these reasons I am still in this room waiting for you to explain yourself.”
Holden trailed his fingers through the shaggy scalp of Sneak. Then he looked up.
“I shall tell you the exact truth, I saw the picture of your daughter and fell in love with it. I heard she was to be at the dance and went there to see her. As I looked at her, some one spoke to me. And I uttered my thoughts aloud. That, sir, is the entire story.”
The rapid glance of the big man measured him again. “This is apparently a serious truth,” said he, almost gently.
“Entirely.”
“You propose yourself as a suitor for the hand of my daughter Alexa?”
“I do.”
“And your grounds for hope?”
“Are my love for her, sir, and the hope that I may prove worthy of her.”
A dazed expression passed across the eyes of Mr. Larramee. He looked rather wildly about him, found no help, and uttered a long sigh.
“I am a very bewildered man,” said he.
“What qualifications must a man have?” asked Holden. “Money?”
“Money be darned!” said the millionaire. He rose from his chair and walked to the window. “The entire countryside is talking about this,” he said to himself rather than to his host. “Poor Alexa!”
The cripple raised himself from the chair and hobbled to the window also. “Tell me,” said he, “what can I do to make my peace? With you, Mr. Larramee, and perhaps with her also.”
Mr. Larramee looked down upon him. Then he glanced hastily out the window.
“Do you see that horse?” said he.
“Clancy? Yes.”
“Ride that horse to my ranch house.”
Holden sighed. “And then?” said he.
“And then we may consider ourselves introduced.”
“And Miss Larramee?”
The rich man stamped. “What of her?” he asked impatiently.
Holden grew pale. “Will you yourself introduce me to her?”
“What!”
“If I ride out the horse to your ranch—”
“In that case,” said Larramee, with a faint smile, “I shall be very happy to introduce you to her. In the meantime, her name—”
“I shall never mention her again, without your permission.”
CHAPTER 12
After the heavy stride of Larramee went down the corridor and then thudded along the stairs and disappeared, it was a long time before Holden gathered the shattered bits of his self-control and was able to take Sneak on the chain and lead him downstairs. He met the proprietor in the little lobby. It was the last person in the world he would have chosen to encounter, but the proprietor did not laugh. He did not even smile.
“Been talkin’ to Mr. Larramee?” he asked pleasantly.
And Holden, bewildered, was aware that the rich man had not spoken his mind in public. For that, he blessed his fortunate stars.
“We had quite a chat,” said he easily. “Is it too late to get some breakfast?”
“Not for a friend of Mr. Larramee’s!” said the host, and in person he escorted his guest into the dining room, and in person he braved the impatient anger of the Chinese cook which was audible behind the swinging door, and in person, moreover, he sat down at Holden’s table and held him in talk.
But to the questions of where he first knew Mr. Larramee and when that meeting took place, Holden replied with vague responses. Such a great impression had been made upon the excellent proprietor by the visit from the great Larramee, however, that after breakfast he insisted upon moving the room of Holden to the best chamber in the hotel, which was not good enough to be worth remark, at that! In the meantime, through the window, Holden kept watch upon the little white house of Aunt Carrie in the distance, and presently, as he had expected, he saw the form of Mr. Larramee issue from it in haste, slam the gate open, sweep onto the back of a horse, and spur furiously away before the gate had time to swing shut. After that Holden left his host to his own devices and hurried forth to the house of the witch with the great dog at his heels.
He found Aunt Carrie muttering to herself in the garden and stabbing viciously at the soil with a trowel. When his shadow fell across her, she wrenched out a handful of weeds without looking up.
“Well,” said the witch, “you have brought me the first call I’ve received from Mr. Larramee since I left his house. Two calls from him, in fact!” She looked up at him. “And a pretty state of mind you left him in,” she went on. “He doesn’t know whether you’re completely mad or simply foolish. He doesn’t know whether to have you mobbed or bribe you to stay away.”
“We had quite a talk,” admitted Holden.
“That dog still has a hollow look,” said Aunt Carrie dubiously. “Has it had breakfast?”
“Yes.”
“After all,” said she, “I swore that he’d have to be the first one to come. I swore that I’d never cross his threshold before he asked my pardon for certain things he said.”
“I’m glad that I brought you some good,” said Holden.
“You?” she cried. “Well, of all things! You’re the picture of complacence, I must say, young Mr. Holden!”
Young Mr. Holden sat down on an inverted flowerpot and prodded the soil with the end of his staff. “He is to introduce me himself,” said he dreamily.
Aunt Carrie leaped to her feet. “What?” cried she.
“He’s to introduce me himself,” repeated he sleepily. “What did you tell him about me?”
“Nothing!” she answered. “But—what lies have you been telling that man about yourself?”
“Not very many. This was a bargain.”
“Come, come,” said the lady. “I know the faults of Oliphant Larramee, but to bargain about his daughter was never among his bad qualities. He’d as soon deal lightly with heaven, if he believed in anything. Alexa is the nearest thought
to heaven that he has!”
“I am to be introduced,” said he, “when I ride Clancy out to the Larramee house.”
“Sacred heaven!” cried Miss Carrie Davis. “You don’t mean that you’ll attempt it, child?”
“For her?” asked Holden.
Miss Davis seized upon him and led him into the house. “You are mad,” said she, when she had planted him in a chair so violently that Sneak favored her with a terrible snarl. “Clancy would eat you like a buttered biscuit.”
“I am going to let him try,” said Holden, making a wry face.
She folded her skinny arms and shook her head. “There is a devil in you, then,” said she. “I told Larramee that much. That was when he started laughing at you.”
“Did he laugh, then?”
“Not long. I straightened him out. Now, Tom Holden, you’ve made my girl the common talk of the town, and what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” said he. “I won’t know until I see her. Can you manage that?”
“Get out!” snapped out Aunt Carrie. “You have almost ruined her good name already. If you dare to mention her again as long as you live, I’ll tell the whole world that you’re a bluff and a sham!” She escorted him to the door.
There he paused. “The whole world,” said he, “might not believe you.”
He was more comfortable, when he went back to the hotel. That day he spent most of his time at the window looking down at the great stallion, until big Clancy came to know that he was there. Sometimes, when the monster was strolling about the enclosure, he would whirl suddenly about and shake his head at Holden. Once he actually snorted and stamped and flattened his ears at the sight of the impassive face in the window. But Holden paid no heed. He was growing used to the horse from a distance. In the meantime, he was turning over many thoughts in his mind. He had enough money to live on for a time. That money which Chris Venner had forced on him still was not exhausted. If so small a portion of it had amounted to two hundred dollars, what must the entire sum have been?
He ate a late supper after the other guests were finished, and then he went out to the corral. He had a folding chair and a small bundle of hay, all with the wheat heads attached. And he sat down at a far corner of the corral and took a handful of the hay and extended it between the bars. There was a pair of tall shrubs which sheltered him from view upon either side. No one missed the broken old chair from the veranda. He was all alone with his work, which consisted in simply sitting there hour after hour with some of the wheat heads protruding through the bars of the corral.
At first it was nervous work. Sometimes big Clancy leaped at him and tried to wedge his snaky head and neck through the bars to get at him with his teeth. Sometimes he raced off around the enclosure, tossing up his heels and his head and snorting. Sometimes he sneaked up on the place little by little and made a sudden dart at the end. And at other times he pretended to be totally oblivious of the presence of the man—a pretense which he kept up for hours. But if he wanted to drink, Clancy had to come to the trough, and the trough was fairly under the hand of the stranger. And if he did not drink, the heat of the night air, and the thirst which nervousness brought on him, was a torment. And when he came to drink, there were the tempting wheat heads, with the terrible human scent behind them. Clancy was fairly sweating with fear and anger before an hour had passed. And if the smell of the sweet wheat heads did not draw him, the need of water did!
In the meantime, with growing patience, Holden watched the dimly glimmering form of the horse by the starlight, and he watched the dark shapes of the evergreens which stood in the copse near by, and he listened to the voices of the town. They were very many. At first there was chiefly the racket of children playing through the streets of Larramee. Afterward these noises and the sounds of the tins rattling in the dish waters of many kitchens, passed away, and there followed pairs of voices passing up and down. Usually there were men talking with women. Sometimes woman and woman; sometimes man and man went by, murmuring. He heard little snatches of talk, for who could have guessed that an eavesdropper was crouched there in the sparse brush, so close to the corral of terrible Clancy?
Once two men came and leaned on the corral fence.
“Three weeks for Clancy, and then a gun!” said one. “That’s a devil of an end for a hoss like him!”
“Where do devils belong?” asked the other.
And then he heard two girls chattering. Their voices were not loud, but they were pitched so high that he could hear the penetrating sounds long before they reached him and long after they went by.
“Will he marry her?”
“I hope not!”
“It would be a wonder, I guess.”
“Sort of horrible, I think.”
“But he said that he would.”
“Maybe he was lying.”
“Well, would a man dare to lie about a girl like that?”
“I don’t know. He’s not like other men.”
“And she’s so beautiful.”
“She ain’t so very much. I seen Minne Slawson last month in Tuckhony. She looked a pile prettier than Alexa Larramee ever did.”
“Well, she’s too pretty to waste on a cripple, anyway.”
They were talking of him—and of the girl! Even to have the thing talked about made it more possible, somehow. He listened, half tortured, half enraptured.
“Her father will never—”
“You can’t tell. You know he came in and talked a long time with Holden today.”
“You don’t mean it!”
“He did, though.”
“Maybe this Holden knows something about Mr. Larramee.”
“Maybe! Besides, he’s queer.”
“Of course. They say he’s made that wolf as tame as a dog. He just has to give it a look. The wolf understands.”
“Is it really a wolf?”
“Dad heard Harry describe it. He says that it’s sure a wolf. A real lobo!”
“I don’t see how he dares!”
“He dared big Crogan.”
“I saw Louise Crogan this morning. She says—”
What Louise had to say was lost on Holden. The voices at this point finally faded out down the street and only broken fragments came back to him as he listened, but it was enough to convince him that the mind of the town was still full of him. He went back to his room in the morning with the first gray of the dawn, for no one must note the manner in which he spent his time with big Clancy. After all, it promised to be a long hunt, for Clancy had not yet so much as torn at the wheat heads!
He slept then, until noon. All the afternoon he drowsed at the window of his room, keeping a dim lookout toward the little white house with the red roof and the green blinds. And it was almost evening, it was the very golden hour of the late day, when he saw her canter a graceful stepping bay up to the hitching rack in front of Aunt Carrie’s house.
He knew that it was she. He knew it by the carriage of her head and by something in the modeling of her shoulders and the nape of her neck—something more delicately finished than in other women. Then, as she dismounted, the sun struck her face, and he saw her smile and wave to Aunt Carrie, who was coming through the door of the little house and running to greet her guest.
Holden looked again, then reached excitedly for his hat and staff and hurried from his room.
CHAPTER 13
It did not occur to him to think of the morality of the thing. He was embarked in a desperate venture in which he must use every weapon on which he could lay his hands. If he could help himself by merely using his ears, certainly he would do so. He had already picked out a path. It led from the back of the hotel to the back of Miss Davis’ house, and by keeping to the shelter between a long arbor and a hedge, he was able to come well up to the house itself and then crouch beneath a window.
The sound of their voices guided him. He circled the house with cautious haste; finally crouched beneath a window of the living room, he could hear
everything plainly. It was mostly the voice of Alexa, and he listened to it with his eyes shut. It was an inner light, showing him her face, and her soul. For what are the eyes and what do they take in, compared with the delicate nuances which the ear perceives and knows in every finest shade of meaning at once? She was telling of a visit—of a letter from an old friend—of a new horse which her father had given her—of a trip planned for Spain the next spring, but the eavesdropper paid no heed to all of this. A pause came in the current of her talking.
“Does your father know that you’ve come to see me?”
“I won’t have to hide that any more. Not since he came to see you himself.”
“What did he say?”
“I think, Aunt Carrie, that he’s afraid of you.”
“Tush! Oliphant Larramee?”
“That very man. He really is. He would have smashed that insolent rascal to bits, if you hadn’t spoken in favor of the—oh, Aunt Carrie, why did you do that? You were just being perverse. Confess it!”
“If I had given him a bad report, what would your father have done?”
“I hardly dare to think!”
“Neither did I. So I gave him a rather good report. I didn’t want your father hanged for murder, you know. Not so much for his sake as for yours.”
“Aunt Carrie!”
“That was only part of it. Chiefly, I was afraid for him. I wouldn’t let him go storming at such a tiger as that Tom Holden!”
“But he’s only a cripple!”
“He was enough to manage Crogan.”
“Crogan is a stupid bully. This Holden simply outwitted him; his smartness and not his courage beat Crogan.”
“Let me tell you, Alexa, I was here in this room, and listened. Crogan came here to kill if ever I saw a man ready for a killing. And I could watch him change his mind. It was a dreadful thing to see his manhood wither away in front of that terrible boy!”
“Is he so young?”
“In his early twenties.”
“How queer!”
“Without his glasses, extraordinarily good looking.”
“Why should such a desperate man have had—”