Comanche

by Max Brand

  “They would tear you to pieces! They would burn you alive if you dared to murder Oliver!” she cried to him.

  “I’ve been threatened with those things before,” said the other. “But then, your brother is man-size. And everyone knows that he’s very excited because his brother is in jail . . . and I belong to the crew that’s trying to put Steve in the penitentiary. So, of course, in meeting me . . . alone . . . if he were to lose his temper and try to murder me . . . and if I shot in self-defense, why . . .” He made a little explanatory gesture and smiled into her eyes.

  And suddenly—she had not seen the creature before—from the dark shadow of a corner behind his master stepped forth Comanche and regarded the girl with a curling lip and glittering green eyes, and somehow it seemed to her that there was a relation between these two destroying creatures, and the smile of the wolf was no more deadly than the smile of the man.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I think that you mean it,” said Hester Grange suddenly.

  “I mean it.”

  “Why do they let a man like you continue to live?” she cried. “If they’re so brave and so wild, why don’t they crush you . . . ?”

  “Oh, someday they will. But that mustn’t spoil my fun, now. Tomorrow will take care of itself.”

  She watched him with her graceful head inclined a little to the side. Then she nodded. “You’re different,” she said, more to herself than to him. “I can manage the others. But not you. Did anybody ever make you change your mind?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Comanche.”

  The wolf dog, hearing its name, suddenly depressed its ears and turned its head for a glance back and up to its master. The girl saw a flash of love soften those cold green eyes. She could not help a shudder.

  “Then what is it that you want me to do?”

  “Keep David Apperley away from you.”

  “How can I do that?”

  “That’s simple. Just by sending him a note and saying that you’ve changed your mind, and that you can’t see him.”

  “He’ll be insulted.”

  “Perhaps he will be.”

  “And also . . . it may make him want to come all the more.”

  Single Jack Deems smiled at her. “I don’t know exactly how you can manage it,” he confessed. “I’m not a woman, and therefore I don’t know all the ways in which a woman can work. But what I do know is that I want you to keep Apperley away from you, and, if you don’t, I’ve told you what will happen.”

  A flush of anger rose in her face. But she bit her lip and nodded. “Only,” she said, “it’s hard for me to believe that I’m being so bullied. But I’ll manage it.”

  “Then good bye.” He went toward the door, and the great wolf dog slouched after him, turning its head to watch the girl as though he feared danger from her.

  So Single Jack went from the porch, and down the little path, and through the gate, and she watched his smooth, gliding step take him up the street. He seemed to her, as she stood at the window, like the shadow of a man rather than an actual human being, and he left a coldness of dread with her all the while that she stared after him. Then another thought came to her.

  She went to the back door, and in the yard she saw her brother Oliver in the very act of drawing a bead upon the golden rooster.

  “Oliver! Oliver!” she called.

  Oliver turned a tense face toward her. She could see by his expression how terribly hard was the sacrifice that she had demanded of him. Her conscience reproved her roughly.

  “Oliver, I don’t think that we’ll need the chicken, after all. I want you to take a note for me to David Apperley, instead.”

  He came gladly and waited in patience for her to write the note, which she scratched off swiftly in a bold, sprawling hand, very like the writing of a man.

  Dear Mr. Apperley:

  I am sorry to say that something has happened which makes it impossible for me to see you tonight. Will you forgive me for making the change?

  She considered the note for a moment. What would he make of it? Would his curiosity be intrigued? Would he simply be furious with her? At any rate, it was better to make the note simple and brief. So she signed her name without delay and dispatched her brother with word not to linger in the office of the lawyer.

  “Why should I stay there?” asked Oliver sternly. “Unless I wanted to lose my head and sink a bullet through that hound.”

  “Why do you call him a hound, Oliver?”

  “Why, dear, isn’t he trying to polish off poor Steve?”

  “That’s his business as a lawyer . . . to make trouble for other people. But don’t you wait there. That Single Jack Deems is around the office all the while. And if you should get into trouble with him . . .” She made a significant pause.

  “Deems? Single Jack?” repeated her brother hotly. “And what’s he? He’s a man, like the rest of us, and bullets will down him just the same.”

  “Oliver!” she cried.

  He retreated a little before her outburst of fear. “I’m going to be good,” said Oliver sullenly. “I won’t hunt any trouble, but it makes me sick to see the whole town standing around on one foot because of a tenderfoot out of the East that doesn’t know one end of a horse from the other. A sneaking, spying, crooked . . .”

  “Oliver!”

  “Well, all right, all right!”

  He took the note and strode off up the street while she remained in the door looking earnestly and anxiously after him. She loved him as a sister and somewhat as a mother, also. For, though she was a scant twenty herself, yet for five years she had been the head of this odd little household. And she had managed affairs for her two brothers and for herself. She had kept them under her thumb. If she had grown a bit too hard and too sharp-sighted, perhaps, it could be charged to all the anxieties with which her young shoulders had been loaded. Steve had escaped from her influence to a large degree. And the result was that Steve had been arrested for a serious crime, and now he was threatened with a prison sentence, which fact, she well knew, would make him desperate. If any prison walls were able to hold him, he would come forth from the time of his sentence a thoroughly terrible criminal. Oliver, she now felt, was perilously near to following in the same pathway. And standing in the doorway, watching him disappear, she made up her mind that she would gather all of her strength, and she would keep Oliver safe. And if there were any choice to be made between Steve and Oliver, she knew that her younger brother was the better and the stronger man. Him she must save. Even if it meant the necessity of throwing poor Steve away.

  But, ah, how savagely she wished, now, that one of the Tucker brothers had been able to shoot a little quicker and straighter and so have put an end to the formidable youth who had just crossed her path like a shadow.

  But if she thought that her note would definitely turn back David Apperley, she was greatly mistaken.

  * * * * *

  David read the little letter and blood rushed hotly into his head, and he could feel an aching pulse in his throat. Then he sat down by the window where the wind could get to his face and cool him a little. There he strove to think the matter out. And yet the more he thought of it, the more tangled it seemed to become. For there was no doubt that she had intended to use him as the instrument that might soften the fate of her brother. Certainly that was a thing that he might have accomplished as no other man could have done. Beyond that, what motive could have influenced her to change her mind? Did she think that Steve was about to be freed?

  The young lawyer looked across the street at the squat, impressive lines of the little jail, with the heavy bars and crossbars that closed in its windows.

  Finally he said to himself that it was very doubtful if she believed in a jail break for the sake of Steve. Then what remained that could have made her change her plans? What was there in the world that she held more dear than her brother’s safety?

  Something very strange has happened, he t
hought to himself.

  Straightway he went across to the court to open the proceedings against Steve Grange, for this was the scheduled first day of the trial, and it was to be spent in selecting the jurymen. Against him, there was a stout, florid-faced attorney with a windy eloquence and patently a very small knowledge of the law. He was apt to spring to his feet and bawl out a loud objection at the slightest provocation. He seemed more bent upon impressing the courtroom and his client with his talent and his strength of throat than upon directing his energies at the judge.

  David, quietly taking the measure of the other, felt that he was definitely the master. His own voice grew quieter and quieter; his own objections and remarks became fewer and fewer. Presently he had created the atmosphere that he really cared not at all what jurymen were selected for this case—so long as the jury was selected quickly. It made an impression on the judge, on the jurymen as they were gathered, and, above all, it made an impression upon the banked faces of the spectators. And behind David Apperley, ever obscurely to be seen among the shadows of a corner, was young Single Jack Deems with the wolf dog crouched at his feet.

  So, that day, the jury was selected, and nearly every man on it, David felt, was willing to listen to him ten times as readily as to the other attorney. He almost felt a twinge of remorse to think that poor Hester Grange was spending her money on such a fellow. However, he had a grim satisfaction in showing her that he was the master of the situation. Now let her regret that she had changed that evening’s appointment.

  So thought David Apperley, in the brightness of the day, and he reached the evening with a sense of strength and of triumph. But the moment that the shadows gathered, there was a change, and he told himself that it would have been better if he had made more inquiries. He hardly knew what could have caused Hester to change her mind, but as the evening gathered there was a melting of his heart, and the coming of the stars made him remember with a sweet and ghostly clearness the smile and the beauty of Hester Grange.

  Suppose that he were to saunter down past her house—there would be nothing wrong in that—and if he should see her on the lawn and enter into a bit of a conversation with her . . .

  As he turned the corner of the street, full of this musing, he heard a light, quick step before him—and there he stood face to face with Hester herself.

  Chapter Nineteen

  You may be sure that he colored; you may be sure that she herself turned a little pale, but she would have gone on with a smile and a nod, had he not turned suddenly upon her and said: “You mustn’t go by like this.”

  She lingered. He could see that she did not wish to remain near him, and the knowledge irritated and bewildered him. She who had been so clinging, so helpless, so full of faith in him that morning.

  “You’ll have to tell me what’s happened,” he said. “You’ve had trouble of some kind . . . and you changed your mind about talking over your affairs with me this evening?”

  “I . . . ,” she began. And then: “I can’t explain. I’m sorry, but I can’t explain.” And she could not help rushing on to say: “But, oh, believe me, I never needed to talk to you more than I do now.”

  “Then talk, child, talk,” he said.

  “I cannot. I’ve talked too much, already.”

  “You? In the name of heaven, what have you said?”

  “He doesn’t want me to talk to you at all,” she breathed, and hurried off.

  He turned about and stared after her in utter bewilderment. Who dared to forbid her to talk with him? Who made it perilous for her to have any conversation with him?

  He followed the direction in which her glance had traveled when she said that she dared not stay to talk any longer, and at first he could see nothing except the shadows beneath a long sweep of cottonwood trees down the street. But then, among the shadows, he saw something else—the barely perceptible forms of the wolf dog and of young Single Jack Deems.

  Rage and astonishment stormed wildly into his brain. Could Single Jack have dared to speak to this girl? Dared to forbid her to talk with him—with David Apperley?

  He almost ran to the spot where the pair were loitering.

  “Deems!”

  “Yes?” said the mild voice.

  “Deems, have you been talking with Miss Grange?”

  There was a bit of hesitation, and then: “Did she say so?”

  “Not directly. No. But I was given to understand that it was not pleasing to you if I talked with her. I was given to understand that you yourself let her draw that deduction. Deems, is there anything in it?”

  There was no answer.

  “I say, man,” exclaimed the lawyer, “is there anything in it?”

  Still there was no response.

  Suddenly the beautiful face of Hester, flushed and sad and appealing as it had been that same morning, crossed the vision of David Apperley, and fury rushed from his brain to his heart. This was the fellow who dared to stand between him and that dearest of women.

  “Deems,” he said, “I’m a calm man. I’m a very calm man. But I have never heard of such intolerable insolence . . .”

  “Wait a moment,” broke in the quiet voice of Single Jack. “I don’t want to hear any more of this.”

  “You don’t want to hear? Confound you, Deems, are you drunk?” He became aware that Single Jack had drawn a little closer to him, and the ghostly wolf dog strode closer, also, and its eyes were eyes of fire.

  “I’ll let you alone. I’ll let you die. I’ll let you rot, you fool,” said Single Jack. “Good bye.”

  Suddenly he was drifting away among the shadows again, with Comanche skulking at his heels. Then the dog bounded, shoulder-high, beside his master, as though he had been touched by the electric spark of happiness to see Single Jack freed from his servile work.

  The lawyer watched them departing with a good deal of awe, and now that the back of Deems was turned upon him, he felt a sudden sense of naked weakness. How greatly Deems had supported him through the first days in Yeoville, David himself had never guessed before. But he could see now what it had meant to have behind him always the formidable skill of this strange gunfighter, this crafty destroyer of men. A hundred weapons had been paralyzed because Single Jack lurked in the background.

  Now that shield was about to be withdrawn from David Apperley.

  It sobered him so completely that he forgot for the moment about Hester Grange, except to remember an old maxim, which declares that women are the root of all evil.

  He sat for a time in his office, scowling at the heap of papers before him. That office was in a changed atmosphere, now. Before, it had been simply a place of work. But now it was like a trap. He had had enemies from the first in this town. But if they came here, they would know that they came not only where he was, but where Single Jack was, also—and that was a distinction that made a great difference. A very great difference, indeed.

  Suddenly he felt that he had made such a mistake that he must take direct steps to undo it. He hurried out into the night air, intending to seek Deems. The first place to look was in the hotel.

  There he went and asked of the clerk if Single Jack were then in his room.

  “Deems just went off with his blanket roll,” said the clerk. “I thought that maybe you had sent him away. No?”

  The clerk’s eyes narrowed, and a glimmer of evil light came into them—he who had always been so fawningly polite. No, even the hotel clerk no longer feared, in fact, hardly respected this lawyer from whom the shield of Achilles had been withdrawn.

  Surely never did a man so quickly and so thoroughly repent a hot-headed action as did David Apperley on this occasion. And, as he remembered the almost dog-like fidelity with which the other had watched over and guarded him, a qualm touched his heart in another manner—a new kind of pain.

  He went slowly back into the street. But all the while he was steeling himself and squaring his shoulders. After all, he had done very well when he did not know how invaluable was the guardians
hip of young Deems. He had got on well enough depending upon himself and looking upon Single Jack simply as a vast encumbrance. He must return to that state again. He must see through the battle to the end, because, since he was an Apperley, it must be impossible for him to retreat.

  So decided David Apperley, and his strength was renewed by his own courage. And yet—if he had only thought to use a little more patience with Single Jack, to inquire into his motives . . .

  Even that regret grew dim, a moment later. Somewhere a door opened in a nearby house, and a drift of girlish laughter floated out through the still heart of the night. It left a tingle of pain and pleasure in the breast of Apperley, and suddenly the picture of Hester Grange leaped into brightness before his mind’s eye once more.

  After all, had not that other decision to which he had come been a fair one? It would do no harm to saunter down toward the cottage where Hester Grange lived, and, if he found her on the lawn in the cool of the evening, a few words with her . . .

  He turned his face that way. His heart was lighter than ever. He was swinging along with a confident step when a man driving past in a buckboard called out: “Hello! Apperley?”

  “Yes, this is Apperley.”

  “I’m Dunstan.”

  “Hello, Dunstan.” He turned into the street and shook the iron hand of the old cattleman.

  “Look here, Apperley, what’s the great trouble?”

  “Trouble?”

  “Yes. You and Deems,”

  “Ah? Nothing to talk about.”

  “You even sent him away from you, I understand.”

  “I had to let him go.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then the rancher went on: “I wonder if you’d like to spend a few days out at my ranch? Or stay as long as you like. When you have to come to town, I could send in some of my ’punchers to take care of you.”

  “Confound it, Dunstan, I’m not a baby. I can take care of myself. I’ve spent a good many years hunting. I know a rifle. I can handle a revolver, too, and, if any of the men in this town think that I’m afraid to show my face without a gunfighter behind me, they’re mistaken, and I’ll prove it to them with bullets, if I have to.”