by Max Brand
“He’s a dead man,” said the doctor calmly, for he was not a youth, that doctor, to be moved by the miseries of others. “He’s a dead man. He ought to have been worm food days ago. But the reason that he keeps up is because that girl won’t let him die. She’s laid her hands on his soul, as you might say. I’ve seen her talk three degrees off his fever in three minutes.”
“You don’t say.”
“Yes, I do. But it’s not so queer. Maybe he’s sweet on her. I’ve seen such things. Mostly, though, when a mother is fighting for a baby’s life. You wouldn’t believe what a mother can do by way of cheating death, Alec.
“Mothers,” said Shodress, “are all right in their own place, but their place ain’t in Yeoville. Now I’ll tell you what, my young friend, it’s awkward as the devil, this boy hanging onto his life, that way. Very awkward. Suppose that he was to come to and recite the names of the gents that plugged him? All friends of mine, as you know. Well, Myers, it wouldn’t be so sweet for me, as maybe you can guess.”
“I can guess it, well enough,” agreed the doctor. “They might even have you up for assisting at a murder, eh? But what d’you want me to do?”
“Look here. This Apperley is right on the edge of the dropping-off place, ain’t he?”
“More than that. He’s halfway down the edge.”
“Doc, suppose that you was just to lay a hand on his shoulder and give a little push . . . to sort of assist Nature along.”
The doctor turned full around and looked Shodress in the face, and then they both nodded, for each understood and appreciated just what sort of a man the other was. Faint smiles appeared upon their lips.
“Well?” said Dr. Myers.
“I don’t know,” said Shodress. “It ain’t the hard cash that counts. It’s the good will. There’s that other doctor . . . Goodrich. Suppose that I was to pass a bad word around among the boys about him? They might even escort him out of the town and leave you the field to yourself. And you could double your rates.”
“I wish they’d ride him on a rail!” snarled Yeoville’s other doctor. “I hate him. He’s called me a quack, and a poisoner. Did you know that? There’s only one trouble about this job, though. Can I get back into the house of Grange?”
“Get there? Why not?”
“That girl don’t like me. She won’t have me around. Partly because she don’t think I’ve treated this Apperley careful enough, and partly, maybe, because I patted her hand, the other day.”
He grinned again, and Shodress shook his head.
“You step soft and light in that direction around here, young man,” he said. “Because if the boys had anything real against you in that line, even me, I couldn’t help you much.”
“I’ll change all that,” said the other calmly. “I’ll change all of that. You won’t have any fault to find with me. And if I can talk my way into the house . . .”
“If Goodrich is carted out of town, she’ll have to let you in.”
“That’s true.”
“Then Goodrich is gone, right now.”
* * * * *
Turn to the outskirts of the town and see a ragged man on a staggering horse riding in and falling off his horse at the first house and asking for a drink of whiskey, in the name of heaven.
They looked at him with amazement and with horror.
“Who are you?”
“I’m one of Shodress’s special men. I’m Dan McGruder. There’s Charley Patrick. Charley! Gimme a hand.”
Charley Patrick came running. He received his friend and passed an arm beneath his shoulders. “What in the world has happened to you, Dan?”
“Single Jack happened to me.”
“But there was with you old sure-shot Westover and there was that devil, Mandell, too.”
“I can’t talk. Gimme whiskey. I been through hell for five days.”
They laid him on the verandah with a coat rolled under his head. They gave him some whiskey, and then he asked for food, and devoured a great chunk of cold, boiled ham.
After that, some strength seemed to flow back into his exhausted body, and he braced his shoulders against the wall of the house and cursed feebly. His face was thin; his eyes were bloodshot; his clothes were in tatters, and his nerves were so completely gone that his lips trembled almost too violently to allow him to frame speech. Finally his swollen right arm was bound around with a mass of rags by way of bandages.
“I say, there was Westover and there was Mandell with you, old fellow. What’s come of them?”
“They’ve gone to the devil.” A violent fit of shuddering seized upon the body of McGruder.
“What happened?”
“I can’t think about it.”
“It’ll do you good to talk it out.”
“Maybe. We three hit for the Wallis shack. And that first night, Single Jack jumped us . . .”
“Who was with him?”
“Alone. Except that he had the devil along . . . and he killed Westover the first crack out of the box, and then he dropped Mandell with a slug through the body, as near as I could make out. And then, with the lamp out, him and the wolf tore into us in the dark of the room, and Comanche give me this.” He pointed to his bandaged arm. “Then we broke away through the back door and got loose, though I never could understand why that devil didn’t chase us into the ground, right then. But he came along behind us, soon enough. He run us down into the Big Silver marshes. I lost the Wallis boys there. For three days I lived there with him following . . .” He shuddered. “Gimme another shot at that whiskey,” he said.
They held the whiskey flask to his lips. Then he raised himself to his feet.
“Where’s Shodress? One of you show me the way to him. I don’t want to be alone. Not even in the streets of this here town. I don’t ever want to be alone again, as long as I live.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
In the dusk of the day, Dr. Rudolf Myers went toward the Grange cottage. The doctor preferred, as a rule, to make his professional calls before or after daylight, because so long as the sun is shining, there is sure to be a modicum of hope, but in the dark all that is terrible and unknown, including the fear of death, comes more intimately close to us, and the whisper that in the sunshine we know is merely the wind in the leaves, becomes at night a wordless prophecy of evil—a vague forewarning of doom.
Dr. Myers was acutely aware of things, and so he chose to be idle in the day and busy when the shadows began. For this very reason he approached the Grange cottage in the dusk. He was swinging his stick—because he affected the manners of a gentleman newly out of the East—and whistling now and again to Jerry, the great mastiff that jogged ahead of him, wandering from side to side of the path, sniffing old trails. Dr. Myers was a little afraid to carry a gun, lest he might be called upon to use it, but he had bought a man-killing dog in the belief that this would be a sufficient protection. And he had never had occasion to regret his choice, for though Jerry was a stupid and intractable beast, at least he was a splendid warrior.
The doctor, having come within view of the Grange house, paused to adjust his thoughts to the thing that he was about to do, and to admire the glistening yellow rays of the lamp that shone through the open front window of the cottage. In the past of Dr. Myers there were various unsavory affairs that the world had frowned upon, but there was nothing quite on a par with the deed that he was now prepared to do.
He fingered the little vial in the pocket of his vest. It contained a colorless liquid, nearly odorless, except that it might leave in the air a faint aroma of crushed peach pits. And yet a drop or two in a glass of water would finish the case of young David Apperley, and, at a stroke, win Dr. Myers the lasting friendship of Shodress. That accomplished, his fortune was made.
That very afternoon, he had had the pleasure of seeing a riotous crowd of the Shodress cowpunchers whirl down the street, harrying his rival, Goodrich, out of Yeoville. And by the panic-stricken, enraged look on the face of that physician, Myers could gue
ss that he would not soon return.
There followed, in due course, a message from the Grange cottage. Young Oliver had come to him with a word that the other doctor was no longer available, and that they would need the presence of Dr. Myers. Would he come at once?
He was very sorry—pressing work to do—but, as soon as he could manage it, he would arrive.
And so he was arriving, several hours late, and now he lit a cigarette and steadied his nerves by reviewing the facts of the case. There is nothing so soothing to the nerves and so destructive of apprehensions as lifting one’s head and examining the actual facts. And what were they?
In yonder cottage lay a young man wounded terribly in three places by bullets that had been fired from expert hands at close range. It was only miraculous that David Apperley had lived so long. And what more natural than that his strength should suddenly fail, that a convulsion should seize upon him, and that his heart should stop its functioning?
If, afterward, there was that faint, faint fragrance of crushed peach pits perceptible about his lips, who was there in Yeoville capable of identifying the odor? Certainly no one except that same Dr. Goodrich who had been escorted out of town in such a providential haste.
This reasoning was flawless, and, before the cigarette was half consumed, the doctor knew just what he was to do, and exactly how he would do it. He had faced the consequences, and he was not afraid.
So he started ahead, and, as he did so, he suddenly became aware that Jerry had strayed far from him. He whistled anxiously. There was no response. He had last seen the big brute wandering off aimlessly among the trees toward the cottage, and he now hurried in that direction. He had not gone fifty yards before he stumbled over something lying in the path. It was not a fallen log, because it gave a little under the impact of his toe. He leaned to stare. It was the body of a dead dog—it was the body of Jerry!
The hair bristled upon the head of the doctor. The slayer of the mastiff must be his enemy. The dog had been removed to clear the way for the destruction of the master.
Dr. Myers was on the point of taking to his heels, and bolting from the trees toward the street. But he checked the impulse of panic and delayed his flight to light a match and examine the body.
There was no mystery about the death of Jerry. His throat was torn open horribly wide. The doctor looked closer. The slashing had been done by huge, tearing teeth; such teeth as it was hideous even to think of. It seemed as though this must have been the bite of a tiger. And were there tigers prowling through the brush near Yeoville?
Dr. Myers, at least, had seen enough to make him scurry back to the street, and, when he arrived there, he ran out into the middle of the thoroughfare and paused, his breath gone, and his eyes rolling in his head. But he made sure that he was not followed. Then the steadied himself and merely stammered through his teeth: “Twenty-five dollars thrown to the devil.”
For that was the price he had paid for poor Jerry.
Then he went ahead toward the Grange cottage, and now with a heightened resolution, for he felt spitefully that the world owed him a good deal. It had stolen from him the life of a dog. Why should he not make rejoinder by stealing from it the life of a man? The idea pleased him much.
At the front door, he tapped lightly and waited, summoning his most professional air of gravity.
Lovely Hester Grange let him in, and she exclaimed with impatient relief when she saw him: “We’ve waited hours and hours.”
“Unfortunately my hands were very full,” said the doctor. “Now let me see the patient. How is he?”
“The dressing has to be changed. Doctor Goodrich told me that I must never do it alone. And now he’s gone. What fools! How could they have driven such a man from Yeoville? Will you come in at once? He’s restless and in a good deal of pain.”
“We’ll soon have him right,” the doctor said, and went into the sick room.
It was the best room in the cottage, and the most spacious, but nevertheless it seemed shabby enough and small enough. And in the bed lay young David Apperley, his face white and thin, and his eyes surrounded with great blue circles, like the shadow of coming death.
He opened his eyes and looked at the doctor without speaking, then closed the lids again, and Dr. Myers knew what that meant. This was no nervous and whining invalid. This was a man who was bent upon conserving every atom of his strength of body and mind to regain his health. He was fighting. And the miracle of his continued existence could be attributed to that iron will constantly at work.
The doctor felt the pulse. It was not strong, but it was not blurred or stammering, and, when he had counted the breathing and noted the temperature, he was certain that this man was not to die today, in the natural course of events. Nor tomorrow, either. He would live on until he was healed, unless something unforeseen happened. And Dr. Myers nodded his wise, wicked head in satisfaction. It was plain that he would he earning the praise of the great Shodress.
But first he set about changing the dressing, and he managed it with such skill of hand and such tenderness and speed of touch, that Hester Grange, who stood by frowning, and ready to criticize—for she did not trust this physician—could not help murmuring in admiration, for it seemed as though Dr. Myers was thrice as skillful as Dr. Goodrich had been.
When the dressing was changed, a faint smile appeared on the lips of the patient. “I’m going to do well with you,” Apperley said softly, and he closed his eyes again.
“You have his confidence,” whispered the girl, and she smiled upon him so brightly and kindly that the doctor looked at her again.
She was much changed from what she had been. Her color was faded. Her face was thin, and the shadows of watching were beneath her eyes. Men said that day and night she was never for thirty seconds away from the sick bed.
Dr. Myers now held out a glass of water into which, openly, he had dropped two minims of colorless liquid.
“This will give him a good night,” he said.
“Shall I give it to him at once?”
“Yes. Or perhaps a little later. When he’s ready to sleep.”
“I’ll let him have it now.” She went to the bed and slipped her arm beneath the patient’s head. “There’s only a little, David. Not much to swallow. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Not quite ready,” said a voice from the doorway of the room.
And they turned and saw standing there that much-dreaded and much-hunted criminal, Single Jack himself.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Then Dr. Myers did what the bravest and most conservative citizen of Yeoville would probably have done under similar circumstances. He threw his arms above his head and backed against the wall.
“Oh,” he moaned. “have you come for me?”
“Not at all,” said Single Jack. “But I’ve had to learn a bit about the care of wounds. That drink . . . I suppose it’s a bromide to quiet the nerves of Apperley?”
“Yes,” stammered the doctor. “Just a bromide.”
“Then,” said Single Jack, “it’ll be good for you, because you seem a bit nervous, just now. Will you drink this, Doctor Myers?”
He took the glass from the paralyzed hand of Hester Grange, and with it approached Myers. The doctor turned a pale green.
“Drink . . . that?” he gasped.
“It’s only for nerves, you see,” explained Single Jack coldly.
The doctor could not answer. He could only stare alternately at the colorless liquid in the glass and then up to the relentless face of the criminal.
“What’s up? What’s wrong?” asked the faint voice of Apperley.
“A little joke of Shodress,” I think,” replied Single Jack. “You rest easy and don’t worry. You”—and this unceremonious word was directed at Hester Grange—“come along with us into the next room. I may want you as a witness.”
So, followed by the dull, curious eyes of the wounded man, he herded the doctor through the door, and Hester went behind
them.
“Sit down,” said Single Jack in the dining room. “There. That’s better. And you sit here.”
So Hester and the doctor took chairs on opposite sides of the table. Single Jack remained at one side.
“Watch his face,” he said to the girl. “You may see something in it worth noticing. Now about this little glass of bromide. I want you to drink it off, Doctor, so that your nerves will be steadier.”
“My nerves are steady,” Myers said, “and I’m perfectly all right.”
What in the world does it mean? Hester thought to herself. She looked at Single Jack as though she thought that terrible young man must have lost his wits.
“The poor doctor doesn’t know what he says,” said Single Jack with a smile. “You notice how his hand shakes, Hester?” The doctor snatched his hand off the table and kept it out of view. “And so,” said Single Jack, “I’m going to insist that he drink the bromide. I’m going to insist. Doctor, take the glass.”
He spoke softly, very softly. But nevertheless there was a gentle irresistibility in his tone, so that the wretched doctor picked up the glass and its colorless, dreadful contents. The liquid sloshed from side to side in the glass, so violently did the hand of the doctor shake.
“See,” said Single Jack. “See how nervous he is.”
There was no need to commend such vigilance to the girl. She was devouring the man of medicine with a constant stare, and her color faded as she began to guess at the significance that might be lying behind this singular scene.
Myers put down the glass with a crash. “I don’t need the stuff. I won’t have it,” he groaned.
Single Jack merely smiled again. But there was no doubt as to the meaning of his quiet insistence, now. It seemed to the girl that there was nothing in the world so dreadful as the gentleness of this man-slayer.
“Comanche!” he called.
The shadowy form of the wolf dog slipped through the open garden door.
“Watch him,” said Single Jack, and pointed.
At once, the great brute slunk up to doctor, and, crouching on its belly, with a silent snarl, it fastened its glistening green eyes upon poor Myers.