by Max Brand
“If you will let me dare to hope . . . oh, God bless you! Because if Steve were put in prison, he would rage like a wild creature. He would break out. Then even murder would be nothing to him. Oh, I know him so well! He is so terribly strong, and so young . . .”
She to talk of youth with pity! She!
“Poor child,” murmured David, a lump in his throat.
Suddenly she was smiling at him sympathetically through her tears.
“Yes, that is all he is, isn’t it? Oh, thank you for understanding.”
Chapter Sixteen
About a truly beautiful woman all things are beautiful; even her slightest and most mundane actions have their charm. Tears, for instance, which make another swollen and red of face, make her only flushed and more humanly delightful.
Now David Apperley was a great distance from a fool, neither was he a novice who had had nothing to do with women in his life. But to most of us the feminine world is a humdrum affair, very wearisome and silly, and hardly to be borne with; only once in our lives, perhaps, we find her who possesses the key of mystery that unlocks the heart and lets the wind of an unknown country pass through all the chambers. David Apperley had met her on this day, and his heart expanded immensely; he was filled with strength; he wanted to cherish this fragile and gentle creature, and with a moist eye he followed her to the door of his office.
“If I had known that Steve Grange was your brother,” he said, “I should have dropped the prosecution before it was started. But now that it is under way, it has to be pushed ahead a certain distance, at least. However, I think that I can find a manner of keeping him from harm. I’ll do my best for you.”
She looked up to him with a new hope, half smiling and half wondering, and surveyed his face as though it were a strange country in which infinite good might be found.
“I’ve never met anyone like you before,” said Hester Grange.
“Tush,” said David.
“No,” she said gravely, “no one so stern and strong . . . but so good.”
Somehow he got her onto the street.
“You’ll be much too busy with important affairs to see me again,” said Hester.
“Not a bit,” David insisted. For it seemed to him that only the moment before had anything of a definite importance really entered his life. “I think that I should see you again, soon, so that we can talk the case of your brother over in detail.”
Her joy and gratitude dawned in her face with a child-like suddenness.
“Do you really mean that?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, thank you! Then when will you let me come?”
He looked down to her and set his teeth a little, for otherwise a veritable flood of tenderness and joy and love would have rushed up into his eyes and made his lips tremble with words that he must not speak—as yet. He wondered out of what nest this bird had come; he must see her among her people, no matter how savage and crude they might be.
“It would be more proper for me to come to you, if you will tell me when.”
“Would you come? No, that would be a trouble.”
“Not in the least . . . if I may make it after office hours. I have to work rather late, just now.”
“Then will you come to dinner?”
“May I do that?”
“I’m not a very good cook, I’m afraid, but I shall do my best.”
A little ecstasy of foolish delight made him tremble at the thought of sitting at a table served by her hands, and eating food that she had cooked for him. With a sudden touch of prophecy, he felt that he could see a long prospect of years before him during which, God willing, she should minister to him, while he protected her, and surrounded her with such love as a woman had never known before.
So it was arranged, and he went back to his office walking lightly. There he encountered an impatient cattleman, chewing the end of a cigar that had long ago gone out. He was filled with troubles. He had made a loan to a certain one of the men of Alec Shodress, and now that the loan was due, the fellow refused repayment, and snapped his fingers in the face of the cattleman. Let the latter try to foreclose. Only let him try. If he had a single four-footed beast on his entire ranch within a week after the foreclosure, it would be very odd.
That threat was not without a very great deal of point, as the cattleman knew, and therefore he had decided that he would fly to seek the new power that had raised its head so suddenly on the range, a power that had been long a stranger and that was therefore all the more welcome—the law.
But as he stormed forth his case, that veteran of the cow country could not help thinking that this was a strange young fellow to be the brother of Andrew Apperley and the brilliant and courageous antagonist of Alec Shodress himself. For poor David was sunk in a dream from which it would never be in his power to recover altogether.
In the meantime, so deep was he in his thoughts that he did not notice that his constant shadow, Single Jack Deems, no longer kept post near his door. Single Jack was gone, for the first time in all of these days.
He had started down the street following Hester Grange, and he went after her until she came to a little cottage on the outer edge of the town, all embowered among orchard trees, and with a tangled hedge of greenery and flowers rising above the pickets of the front-yard fence.
Through the gate went the girl, calling out blithely: “Oliver! Oliver! Hello, Oliver!”
A deep young voice answered her, and through the front door of the house bounded a big youngster of seventeen or eighteen years. It seemed to the startled Single Jack that this must be Steve Grange himself, escaped from the jail, but, at a second glance, he was sure that this fellow was a little younger, a little gentler, not yet of a steel so heat-tempered as that of Steve. But it was exactly the same material, and eventually it would be coming to the same end.
“What luck, old girl?”
“Why, Oliver, he’s the softest thing I ever met in my life. I left him. If I’d stayed another five minutes, he would have been kissing my hand. I was ashamed, Oliver, to see any man act like such a fool. And he’s going to come down tonight to have dinner with us.”
“The deuce he is!”
“The deuce he isn’t. He wants to talk more about the case of my brother in jail. So he says. He wants to hold my hand and have a chance to be sentimental, really. Oh, Oliver, I wish I were a man, once in a while, so that I could do and say what I really feel, instead of having to wear this baby face.”
“It’s the best and the prettiest face in the world,” said Oliver Grange.
“Well, I’m tired of it,” said Hester with emphasis. “I’m tired of being fussed over and having every man I meet want to paw me about and treat me like a doll that likes to be petted.”
“If they dare, I’ll cut their throats,” said young Oliver with a sudden savagery.
“You wildcat,” said the girl, glancing at him with a spark of fierce admiration. “But I don’t need your help to take care of myself. Oliver, how I wish to heaven that I could meet some man that I didn’t despise.”
“I know.” Oliver nodded. “You’ll never be happy until you’ve met up with some brute that’ll beat you a couple of times a day, make you cook for a whole gang, and raise a flock of children while you keep house for him. Sometime you’ll meet a man like that, that’ll take a whip to you . . . and you’ll follow him home.”
“Oliver,” said the girl savagely, “do you really think that I’m made of such stuff?”
“You wait and see,” he said with the infinite assurance of youth. “But in the first place, what about dinner tonight? Are you going to give him a spread?”
“I am. I’m going to have your golden rooster.”
“Hello, is that a joke?”
“Not a bit.”
“Look here, honey, not the one that I raised since it was a sick little chicken that couldn’t . . .”
“It’s not sick any longer.”
“But, Sis . . . the one that
comes when I whistle to it? Why, it knows as much as I do.”
“Are you going to be soft-headed about a chicken?” asked the girl sternly. “When it may help your brother to come off with his life?”
He winced a little. “But there are lots of others.”
“You know that there’s nothing in the yard as big and fat and fine as your golden rooster. And I can see him now, all crusted with brown, when I take him out of the oven and offer him up to this lawyer. I’m going to break up that David Apperley like little kindling, Oliver dear, I’m going to make him get down on his knees . . . and beg me to be his wife, before he leaves this house tonight. And”—she broke out of her fierceness with gay laughter—“it may be that a good roast chicken will be just the thing to turn the trick.”
Oliver looked down to the ground, sorrowfully, but he gave way to the superior strength of her nature.
“Only, is it right to treat him like that . . . if he really falls in love with you?”
“I can’t help it if a man’s a fool,” said the girl. “And I’m fighting for Steve’s life, as Mama told me that I’d have to do. You go get that rooster, and get it quick.”
Poor Oliver turned away with trailing feet and a downcast head. Single Jack Deems watched him go into the yard behind the house and whistle, whereat a magnificent, golden-plumed rooster came running, heavy and waddling with fat, and rushed with beating wings in haste to get to its master. The boy took it up, caressed it, and put it down again in haste.
He turned into a shed and came out again with a .32-caliber rifle, which he poised. He looked sternly at the rooster, but that gaily colored bird was picking in the dust at his feet, all unsuspicious. Oliver shook his head. He could not commit this murder.
Chapter Seventeen
So beautiful Hester Grange ran up steps into the house, with a song trailing behind her as she went. She hurried to her room to take off her hat, and presently she swept into the parlor to begin the house cleaning at that point, for the place must be well furbished before the evening came.
She stopped in the doorway, for she saw seated in the armchair at the farther end of the room a slender young man with a darkly handsome face, and graceful hands folded in his lap. Single Jack Deems.
Her impulse was to run away. But Single Jack raised his hand and beckoned.
“You sit down over there,” he said, and pointed to a chair.
She hesitated. It was the rule with Hester to gain a certain supremacy over men at her first meeting with them. But she felt that it might be very unwise to challenge this masterful young man at once. With her heart beating fast, she crossed to the designated chair and rested her hands on the back of it.
“You’re talking very strangely,” said Hester. “I don’t know what is wrong. I do hope that you’re not bringing me any bad news from poor Steve.” And she let her big blue eyes fill with tears as they looked softly toward him. For that was perhaps her mightiest weapon. Men melted at once before those blue eyes.
However, in this case, the slender young man merely smiled in turn, but it was not exactly a pleasant smile. It touched the corners of his lips, but his eyes remained as dull and deep a black as ever.
“I’m bringing you bad news,” he agreed, “about Steve, and about other things, maybe.”
She stared intently at him, trying to guess. But there was no hope of finding out his hidden meanings. He was as obscure as the grave itself.
“In the first place,” he said, “you can make up your mind that Steve is going to the penitentiary. That’s the first point to rest on.”
She gasped a little. “Did your employer tell you to talk like that?”
“I have no employer,” he said. “If you mean Apperley . . . no. He’s still dazed and half sick. It will be a long time before he gets over what you’ve done to him.” He leaned forward and the faintest of lights glistened in his eyes. “You work fast,” he continued. “I’ve known some nifty ones, but never any like you. All that I don’t see is what are you doing in the bushes?”
“Bushes?” she answered vaguely, for she was stunned by the manner and the voice of this cold youth.
“Yes, why in the sticks? You should be on the soft end of a confidence job, my dear. There are some mighty clever men in the country who’d be glad to use you. Inside of six months, you could be taking down thirty or forty thousand a year for your share of the loot. So why waste yourself out here?”
Now she fired. “Do you think that I’m dishonest?” she asked him fiercely.
The answer was a slightly curling sneer. “Will you listen to me?” he said. “I’m not a baby, like the rest of ’em. I know you, Hester. I know you like a book. Because I’ve read your kind before.”
It was the ultimate insult. For whatever else a woman may be, she is always sure that she is unique, and to be placed in a category is more terrible for her than for a man to be placed in a prison.
“I’ve heard you long enough,” she said angrily. “I don’t think that there’s any reason I should stay here longer. I’m very busy, Mister Deems.” She turned toward the door.
“Don’t lose your temper,” said this smooth youth. “It never works with me. I don’t want you to try the baby stuff with me, but the haughty air won’t work, either. You sit down here and stay till I’ve finished with you.”
A little laugh came from her throat, a bubbling little laugh, but her eyes were as bright and as hard as steel. “How can you compel me to?” she said.
“That’s only one of the things I’m going to compel you to do,” said Single Jack. “After I’ve made you stay here, what really counts are the other things I’ll lay out for you to do.”
“You’re a little mad,” said the girl. “You can’t force me to do anything. Do you know that window is open? And do you hear those men singing? Those are the three Gresham brothers. I only need to call, and they’d be here at once.”
As though to punctuate and underline this remark, there was the sound of a rifle exploding. The girl started a little.
“It’s all right,” said Deems. “It’s only Oliver shooting at a mark and trying to work up his courage to murder the rooster.”
“Do you know about that?” she asked him, rather shocked.
“It’s simple. I followed you down from the office and heard what you had to say to Oliver. I wish that David Apperley had been handy to hear, also.”
“You crooked, clever yegg!” she burst out at him in a passion.
“Names are no weapons,” said Single Jack with a smile. “Are you ready to do what I want?”
“Why under heaven should I? Go back to David Apperley, if you wish, and tell him whatever you please, but you can’t keep him away.” She breathed hard and fast with her savage triumph. “He’ll come wherever I call him,” she said.
“Yes,” agreed Single Jack, “but he’ll also stay away, if you tell him to.”
“If! But do you think that I’ll be so foolish as to send him away?”
He nodded at her in perfect sympathy and understanding. “I know,” said Single Jack. “It’s hard to do. When you’ve planted a good job, and all that you have to do is just to collect, it’s bitter hard to give up the profits.”
“You see,” she said, “it’s no good trying to bluff me.”
“Bluff you, my dear?” murmured Single Jack. “I never dreamed of bluffing you. I have never bluffed in my life.”
“Then will you tell me what earthly power you have over me?”
“I don’t have to tell you. Look out the window into the back yard and you’ll see for yourself.”
She looked out obediently, for she was as interested as she was appalled and baffled by this conversation.
“There’s no one but Oliver and the chickens out there.”
“Oliver?”
“Yes.”
“You love Oliver, don’t you?”
“Dear, silly old Ollie. What have you to say about him?”
“I mean that you’re an odd one. Hard a
s nails. But you’re fond of your family. You remember your father and mother. And you really love your brothers. But Oliver you love more than Steve. Steve is a bit hard and cold even for you.”
“I’m not interested,” said the girl sharply. “Not a bit interested in all of this nonsense.”
“Oh, but you will be. Suppose that you insist on having David Apperley down here . . .”
“I shall insist.”
“Very well. The day following that, I’ll contrive to meet your brother Oliver, put a fight on his hands, and lay him dead in the street.”
She started to laugh in fierce mockery, but no sound came from her lips. “There is no one in the world wicked enough to do such a thing,” she declared.
“Do you think that I wouldn’t? Look at me again. You don’t know me, yet. But look at me again. I always do exactly what I promise. Exactly. My word is a one-hundred percent gold bond.” He leaned forward a little in his chair, as though when he brought himself that vital bit closer, she could see him more distinctly.
She did see him more distinctly, but she cried with a trembling voice: “I’ll send Oliver out of harm’s way. I’ll send him out of the town.”
Single Jack shook his head and smiled. “He’s not that sort of a boy. You try to persuade him to run away. Do you think that he would? Not for a minute, while there’s a man’s work to do. He seems to be softer and simpler than you and your brother. But when the pinch comes, you’ll find that he has a strain of hero in him. He may hesitate about slaughtering his pet rooster. But he’ll never hesitate in a fight with other men where there are bullets flying.”
She gazed, rapt and amazed, at this calm speaker. For he spoke with an absolute knowledge that she could not question, and, try as she would to deny it, she had to admit that there was a proper substance of right in what he said. This was exactly the proud, tender, gentle, and strong nature of young Oliver. She could push him along in any direction with a feather, if she chose. But when a certain point came, and he felt that such a thing as his manhood was appealed to, then a thousand wild horses could not budge him.