by Max Brand
The other nodded gravely. “They were looking for me,” he admitted, “but I was looking for them, too, and so I drifted along until I heard Comanche calling.”
There were many, many things that Apperley would have been glad to know, but he felt that it was useless to ask. What would be the sense in addressing questions to the wolf dog that crouched at the foot of this strange youth? And in the dark face and the black eyes of Single Jack, he saw, or thought he saw, the same wolfish spirit that caused Comanche to bare his fangs. How had he eluded the searchers? How had he journeyed across the range? Who had he dared to ask questions of? But there was no way of drawing out the answer.
“After I got Comanche,” went on the other, “I couldn’t help remembering that you helped him fish me out of the river when I was spent. I owe you something for that, and I owe you something for Comanche. About what does the bill come to?”
“I’ve never put a price on such things,” said the rancher, drawing him out.
“You never have?”
“Never,” said Andrew Apperley, finding it a little hard to meet those dark, fathomless eyes. For there was no human kindness in them. There was nothing but the dark watchfulness of a panther. Neither kind nor unkind, but ceaselessly alert, and always with a haunting fire ready to appear in them.
What were those eyes when the fire burned brightly? Apperley wondered.
“You can make a guess. There’s a price for everything,” said Single Jack.
“For everything?”
“Why yes. You’re a businessman.”
“But for fishing a man out of the river?”
“Well, there’s ways of guessing at a price on me,” said the youth as gravely as ever. “The government has staked eleven thousand dollars on me . . . dead or alive.”
“Dead or alive,” murmured the rancher.
“Yes.”
“Any man who dares to fight you and can down you gets that much?”
“Yes.”
“And any sneak who can worm his way up to you in the dark and put a bullet through your head gets that much, too?”
“Yes.”
“It’s hard,” said Apperley. “It’s hard practice.”
The other shook his head. “I don’t ask anything better,” he said. “I don’t ask them if they mind when I blow a safe, do I? There’s lots of good men that have been ruined because I’ve cracked a safe or lifted some bonds, here and there. So why shouldn’t the government put a price on my head?”
It was not the logic of this so much as the calm conviction with which it was stated that amazed Apperley.
“In one way,” he consented, “it makes a business out of it.”
“Or a good gambling deal, at least,” said Single Jack. “With the cards crooked on both sides.”
“Crooked?”
“Is there anything that they haven’t tried, to get me? Even bribing people that might have been my friends. Even poison . . .”
“Hello! Not poison.”
“Let someone put eleven thousand on your head, Apperley, and see how long it will be that they hunt you fair and square. However, I don’t mind. I crook the cards on them, too. I bribe cashiers, now and then. I stack the deck whenever I can. And so we’re all square. I’ve given them as much as they’ve given me. The rope that’s to hang me is still on the stretch. And I hold no grudges against them, or anybody. I hold no kind feelings, either, except . . .”
He paused, and the dangerous glimmer that had come into his eyes faded and was lost in a shadow of perplexity.
“Except with you, Apperley,” he said. “You could have had that eleven thousand dollars, if you wanted it. Just by speaking my name, and you didn’t. Why not?” His amazement stared blankly at the face of the rancher.
“Why, man, being on my boat, you were a guest, weren’t you?”
“Eleven thousand dollars’ worth of guest?” sneered the criminal, his eyes flashing into the very soul of the other.
“Or eleven million dollars’ worth of guest,” said Apperley firmly.
“I see,” said the other, as cold as ice. “Your honor got mixed into it. Your honor wouldn’t let you. Was that it?”
“Perhaps you can call it that.”
“We’ll let that slide, for a minute,” said Single Jack Deems very crisply, as though he were filled with doubts concerning the current value of honor in his host or in any other man in the world. “We’ll let that slide, and I’ll simply ask you please to explain what is the price that you want for Comanche?”
“Is there a price on everything?”
“You’re a businessman,” said the other for the second time. “I don’t have to talk nonsense to you.”
“You’d have to pay me,” said Apperley, “for the pride I have in owning Comanche.”
“That’s one item.”
“Then for the long hunt I followed on his trail.”
“Very well.”
“My time has a value. I spent twenty or thirty full working days trailing him.”
“Yes.”
“I thought, planned, dreamed how to get him. I imported a pack of dogs and watched them slaughtered. I carted him all the way East with me, and there I spent more time and money over him.”
“It’s a bill. Add it up.”
“Still, more than all the rest, I am fond of the great brute, Deems.”
“I’ll admit that, too.”
“Now, on the other hand, I consider it shameful to sell a dog for money . . . shameful for a rich man like myself.”
“I’ll pay you for your shame, too,” said Single Jack.
“How much money have you, then, to invest? I don’t mean to ask that, but what would you do if I asked you several thousand?”
“Five thousand, say?”
“Yes, let’s say five thousand.”
The left hand of Mister Deems slipped into his pocket and suddenly five $1,000 bills lay on the table before the rancher.
“And that settles the ownership of Comanche, I hope?” asked Single Jack.
Chapter Nine
It should be borne in mind that Andrew Apperley was not only a man of money, but he was one who was accustomed to taking what pleased him, regardless of the price. But in those days money meant more than it does today. One paid $5, perhaps, for an Indian pony that was good enough for most of the uses of the range, and one paid $30 for a very well-broken saddle horse, whereas $100 would buy one with at least a liberal strain of Kentucky blood in it. And $1,000 brought home a fine thoroughbred racer. And here was a fellow whose fortune was his wits calmly laying down $5,000 on the table for the sake of a wild dog.
It was more than a mere shock to the rancher. It slipped back the doors of his mind and allowed an entire new vision to enter—a vision of a Deems quite other than the man he had been picturing before. It was plain to him, at a glance, that money was a mere nothing in the life of this fellow. He could not help saying gravely: “Tell me, Deems, what does money mean to you?”
A touch of blankness appeared in the eyes of the youngster, and then he replied with an equal gravity: “Why, everybody else is out for it. I suppose that it’s worth the game.”
“Very well,” said the rancher, “no matter what money is worth to you, your money is worth nothing to me. I can’t take the five thousand dollars.” He passed it back.
Single Jack Deems regarded him with a keen scrutiny, not as one who admires largeness of soul, but as one who searches for a hidden and unworthy motive. He pocketed the money slowly.
“Still,” said the rancher, “I don’t give you the dog for nothing.”
Jack Deems smiled a little, as though the idea of charity were too irresistibly ridiculous even for a moment’s consideration. “All right,” he said. “I guess what you want, but I’ll tell you in the beginning that I’m not that kind.”
“Not what kind, Deems?”
“You’ve got a grudge and you want me to wipe it out for you, eh? Is that it?”
“Man, man, I
handle my own enemies. No, it’s not that.”
The other waited.
“It’s a job, Deems, that would keep you in this part of the country. Could you stand that?”
“Where else can I go with the dog?” asked Single Jack gloomily. He cast a glance toward the door. “But if I stay here with him,” he said, “I’ll be hounded across the mountains, and it’s easier to hide in alleys that you know than in mountains that you don’t.”
The rancher shook his head and explained: “You’re in no danger out here except the danger that you make for yourself.”
“I’m not known, then?” asked Single Jack, smiling a little, with an odd mixture of vanity and gloom.
“Not a whit known,” replied the rancher.
Single Jack waited, his face as enigmatic as usual, and it was plain that he placed not the slightest credence in what he heard.
Apperley went on to explain. “News comes slowly out this way,” he said. “Papers may be half a year old before they fall into your hands. They’re almost sure to be a month old, and so you form the habit of reading newspapers as though they were ancient history. In that way, you pay attention to the stories, but not to the names. Half the men out here could hardly tell you the name of the President of these United States, because that doesn’t matter. What matters in the cattle country is the name of your boss and the names of the horses in your string. Other things are decorations. You understand? And Single Jack Deems, with a list of dead men as long as his arm, is no more out here than John Deems, cowpuncher, if he cares to start that way. And after that, men will take you just as they find you.”
Perhaps the rancher was enlarging upon the truth a little, but at least he had painted a picture that attracted the elusive attention of the younger man, and that was what Apperley wanted.
“It’s a queer idea,” said Single Jack. He looked far away, as though at a vision. “A very queer idea,” he repeated. “Do you half mean it?”
“I mean it altogether.”
“You mean, Apperley, that I could actually walk down the street of a cow town and let men look in my face, just as it is, just the way God made me?”
“I mean exactly that.”
Deems frowned at the floor,
“Why, man,” went on the rancher, “literally thousands of men have come West because their crimes made it hot for them in the East. But out here, they’re lost. I think that half of them turn into decent fellows. A quarter of them are half good and half bad, and it depends on how you take them. The rest of them are born bad, and they stay bad. They wind up with their boots on, and lead in their bodies, most of that lot.”
The other nodded. “I see that you mean what you say,” he murmured. “And it would be odd to do that . . . to walk down a street with your hands in your pockets . . . not caring . . . to sit in a room without your back to the wall . . .”
He broke off, and a violent shudder passed through him. For an instant, he looked a very facsimile of the wolf at his feet, and, as though he sensed something wrong, Comanche turned his head and looked up into the face of his master, with a snarl lifting his upper lip and exposing his gleaming teeth.
“Well,” sighed Deems, “how many days would it be before someone recognized my face and used eleven thousand dollars’ worth of memory?”
“He wouldn’t shoot you from behind,” said the rancher, “because if he did, he would be strung up as high as a kite in less than two minutes by the other men in the room. And he probably wouldn’t be able to shoot you from in front. At least, I suppose that that’s a danger that you don’t often worry about.”
“Do you mean one man?”
“Yes. We never allow two men to pick on one . . . not out here.”
“Why”—Single Jack smiled, with a sudden and strange illumination of face—“if what you say is true, I might live another five years as safe as could be.”
“Five years, man? Yes, or fifty.”
“I’m not a fool,” said Single Jack quietly.
“How long did you have back East?”
“They were dodging me pretty closely. Perhaps five days. Perhaps five weeks. With good luck, I might have lasted a whole year. But that was hardly likely. They had me in their hands twice in the last nine months.”
“You were going back to die, then?”
“Not that. I was going back to play another hand at the game. You don’t like to quit while you’re winning, you know.”
The rancher stared. In the presence of this boy, he repeatedly had a feeling of complete helplessness. He could reach far, but never quite far enough to comprehend the depths of this nature.
“Let me tell you.” said Mr. Apperley, “that, if you act like a white man out here, you can live as long as the end of your century. I mean that. And yet you’ll have plenty of action, of any kind that you want. But I should say that the chief thing for you to do, just now, is to take up with the suggestion that I make to you.”
“I’m listening.”
“I have on my hands, just now, my younger brother. He’s a boy perfectly honest, straightforward, frank, open. He’s strong in his hands, a good shot, a straight eye, a clear head. He’s educated to be a lawyer, and he has the making of a good one in him. But the only thing that he’s ever been able to take an interest in is the hunting of big game. Now, finally, he’s grown heated about a great idea of his, which is to go up into the town of the cattle rustler, Shodress, and there open up his lawyer’s office, and make it his business to fight out the cases that I . . . and other cattlemen . . . wish to push through against some of the crooked cattlemen. He has been appointed special prosecuting attorney. Now, once he gets there, his life will be worth about a damaged nickel. He is perfectly willing to fight any man in the world, especially with guns. But he doesn’t understand the Western system of fanning a gun. And he hasn’t spent a lifetime of practice at hitting the mark, as most of these gunfighters have done. Before he is a day in Yeoville, one of them will pick a fight with him and shoot him six times through the heart before he can strike the ground. You understand?”
“Yes,” said the other calmly. “I’ve seen it done.”
Apperley did not ask him to enlarge the thought. But he could not help wondering whether, at the time he had seen it done, Single Jack had been on the stage or in the audience.
“Now,” said Apperley, “the price that I want you to pay me, the price I ask for Comanche, and for your own life, when we fished you out of the river, is to take my brother to Yeoville and there try to nurse him through about the first ten days. After that time, he’ll be on his feet. He’ll know those men, and those men will know him, and I don’t think that either side will be apt to take liberties with the other. But the first days are the fatal ones to be passed. And I tell you, Deems, that, if you can see my brother through that critical period, you may be giving the world a useful citizen in the place of a useless waster.”
“Ten days?” asked the criminal.
“About that.”
“It’s a long time . . . for me.”
“Yes, I know it.”
“For Comanche? After that, I’d own him by rights?”
“Exactly.”
“Whist,” said the criminal. “Comanche, shall I go?”
The monster turned, and flattening his ears, and whined.
“Listen, listen,” breathed Single Jack. “He tells me to take you up, and I shall. But look at him now. Do you think that he really cares for me, Apperley?”
Chapter Ten
It was necessary for Andrew Apperley to use a good deal of diplomacy with his brother. For when he suggested that Single Jack accompany him as a bodyguard to secure him from the possible attacks of Shodress and the hired murderers in the employ of that scoundrel, young David curled a lip of scorn.
“I’ll take care of myself in every company of men,” he said. “I’ve always been able to stand on my feet before this, and I don’t expect suddenly to stop, now. As for their guns, I have a pair of Colts, and
I’ve been practicing with them, between you and me, very steadily for the last three days.”
Andrew Apperley said no more in the way of argument upon this point. He did not even try to describe the painful years of effort by which one of these same Westerners attempted to tame a Colt before he felt, as the saying went, that he could ride it. He shifted his grounds abruptly.
“Naturally, Dave, I wanted to use an argument that I thought might convince you of the actual utility of Deems. But between you and me, I’m sure that he’ll be nothing but a terrible handicap.”
“He would be that . . . if I let him,” assented David with much surety.
“But I think, Dave, that if you were to take him along with you, it might prove the actual making of the fellow. It might be what he needs to jerk him out of the slough of despond, you know. You might be the actual making of him, Dave.”
“Nothing will make him,” said David, with his usual cocksureness. “He was born bad, he’s grown bad, and he can’t help dying bad.”
“It’s rather unChristian to cut a man off and damn him before he’s had even a first chance!”
“I’d rather be a bit unChristian than totally illogical. I really would, old fellow. This Single Jack Deems is a man-murdering scoundrel, and he deserves to hang. I don’t want him under my wing.”
“But I tell you, Dave, that unless a strong and resolute fellow like yourself takes him in hand, he’s utterly damned.”
The exquisite poisoned point of flattery touched David to the heart. He wavered in his resolution. “He’ll have to take strict orders from me,” he announced.
“That could be arranged,” said Andrew, though he felt the ground slip rapidly from beneath his feet.
“Then I’ll take him along with me and give him his chance.”
Quite hopeless, Andrew Apperley went to Single Jack and found the criminal lying under a fig tree, with his hands clasped beneath his head. Over him rose the ominous form of Comanche, teeth bared and mane bristling. “Whist, boy,” said the youth.