Comanche

by Max Brand

  The latter could not help snatching his gaze from the face of his persecutor and glancing aside at the wolf dog, and now he saw that the white fur on the breast of Comanche was broadly slashed across with fresh blood. And suddenly he knew. Out yonder among the trees, it had been this savage monster that had ripped open the throat of Jerry. And while he went down the street toward the Grange cottage, Single Jack himself had been gliding noiselessly among the trees and spying upon him.

  It seemed to the doctor as though his entire soul must have been laid bare to the keen eye of this strange young man.

  “Now drink,” suggested Single Jack.

  “I can’t . . . I daren’t touch the stuff!” exclaimed the doctor. “Because . . .” He stopped, in a shaking fit of terror.

  And Hester said suddenly: “Why? Why can’t you? Doctor Myers, is there poison in that glass? Is there poison? There is! You sneaking devil!”

  Dr. Myers seemed on the verge of a collapse. With all his might he struggled to speak, but he could not. And he strove to steady his glance in composure, but still his eyes flickered from the horrified stare of the girl to the deadly smile of Single Jack, and then down to the gleaming fangs of Comanche, which had so lately ripped open the throat of Jerry—which could tear wide the throat of a man—the tender throat of a man—with so much greater ease.

  “Just a moment,” said Single Jack. “I suppose, Hester, that even in Yeoville they’d lynch a hound like this?”

  “Lynch him? They’ll burn him by inches!”

  Here an inspiration flashed through the mind of Dr. Myers and he swept a frantic hand for the glass, but another hand forestalled him, a hand moving with the speed and the softness of a shadow. And Single Jack drew the glass toward him and remained smiling at his victim.

  “We’ve settled that,” he said. “It is poison, Doctor, eh?”

  The doctor could not answer.

  “Get a pen and ink and paper,” said Single Jack.

  The girl hastily and silently obeyed.

  “Take the pen, Myers, and begin writing. Shodress offered you money to do this, didn’t he?”

  Myers moistened his white, dry lips and looked at Deems with a dull eye.

  “It’s the main fault of Shodress, I know,” said Single Jack. “And here’s your chance to place the blame where it belongs. Do you understand, Myers?”

  Myers looked at him wildly. Then he seized the pen. “I never would have thought of it!” he almost shouted. “It’s that murdering devil of a Shodress that made me do it. He made me do it!”

  “Of course he did,” said Single Jack more gently than ever. “What have you to gain by poisoning Apperley? But just write down the details, and begin with the price that he was to pay.”

  Dr. Myers beat his fist against his forehead.

  “Not a penny, really. He was just going to run Goodrich out of the town, so that I could get the practice. That was all he was going to do. And for that . . .” He made a gesture of despair.

  “Write it down,” said Single Jack quietly. “That’s what we want.”

  And the doctor began to write, slowly and haltingly, at first, but then with a gathering impetus, as though he were gradually warming to his work. At length his eager temperament had mastered him altogether, and he was pouring forth in many words every detail of all that had passed between him and Alec Shodress concerning the convenient removal of Apperley from this vale of tears,

  Whether there was anything terrible and shameful in this confession did not seem to occur to the worthy doctor, after he had warmed to his epistle. He was only concerned in making the villain Shodress the root of all evil, in this matter, and, as the pages flowed off his active scratching pen, Single Jack and the girl read them.

  They found enough to make their eyes lift, now and then, and meet—the girl’s eyes sometimes ablaze with hot indignation and sometimes with cold horror, and the eyes of Deems always inscrutably dark and deep.

  The doctor had thrown himself into this work of confession with such violence that twice the nib was broken by his vigorous and sweeping strokes, and twice he had to be refurnished before he could continue.

  Single Jack, from a flask in his pocket, poured forth a good stiff dram of the liquor and placed it at the elbow of the man of medicine, and the latter, while he wrote, sipped the brandy with enjoyment. He ceased to be doctor; he became a literary artist. Tears of self-pity rose to his eyes as he described the manner in which Shodress had inveigled him into taking a part in this detestable affair.

  When, at last, the work was finished, Dr. Myers leaned suddenly back in his chair and pushed away paper and pen, after the manner of one who has completed a hearty and full meal. “That’s done with, and Shodress is done with, also,” he declared.

  “Yes,” said Single Jack, “if only we’re able to bring him to trial for it. But you won’t be here to be witness against him. We’ll have only this paper of yours. By the way, Hester, just sign this as a witness, will you?”

  “Not be here? I wouldn’t miss that trial for a million dollars!”

  “Wouldn’t you?” Single Jack grinned. “However, if you stay in this town, you can depend on it that Shodress will have you put away very shortly.”

  “Shodress? How could he learn about this?”

  “He learns everything, sooner or later. He can’t help it. Every pair of ears in the town belongs to him. That door onto the garden has been open all the while, and, if anyone were out there, every word we’ve said could have been overheard.”

  The poor doctor turned from red to white.

  “And if I were you, I’d do what the rat does when it smells the cat.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Run away as fast and as far as I could, Myers. And then find a hole, and get down into it as deep as you can go . . . and lie there trembling.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The good doctor blinked at the younger man. He glanced at Hester Grange, also, but what he saw in her face was such scorn and horror that he did not wish to look again.

  He stood up. Comanche shrank nearer, with a soul-stirring growl.

  “The wolf!” gasped Dr. Myers.

  “It’s all right,” said Single Jack. “Here, Comanche.” The great beast leaped back and planted himself at the side of his master. “Now get out.”

  The doctor got.

  “Will you watch him?” breathed the girl. “He may try to sneak back and murder us both.”

  “Comanche is giving him all the watching that he’ll need,” said Jack Deems. “Look.”

  For as the doctor made for the door, Comanche slipped unbidden at his heels, sniffing at each foot that Myers placed on the floor, and convulsive shudders rippled through the body of that poor victim. At the door, the nerves of Myers gave way completely, and he leaped across the porch, tripped, and fell headlong into the great climbing rose bush. He arose with a yell of pain, as though a hundred cats had scratched him, and bolted for the street.

  The pair in the Grange cottage listened with mirth to the sound of the flight. Even Comanche, lolling beside the door, and running out his long, red tongue seemed to be laughing.

  “How could you guess what was happening?” asked the girl, forgetting Myers in her outburst of curiosity. “How could you guess? How often do you watch this house?”

  “Off and on,” said Jack Deems. “I come around now and then in order to see how Apperley is getting on, I have to do that, you know.”

  She looked at him in fear and bewilderment.

  “And what made you guess, when you saw the glass of water?”

  “The face of the doc. He looked sort of smug and happy, as though he was tickled with what he was doing. And that started me guessing. By the make of him, I guessed that he’d be up to almost anything. And he was, you see. It didn’t take many questions to get that out of him.”

  The wolf dog stalked back from the door and lay down softly across his master’s feet. “Don’t do that!” exclaimed Jack Deems sharp
ly. Comanche twisted his head up and around with flattened ears, and eyes that asked what possibly could be wrong. “Steady,” murmured Deems. “It’s all right, then.” He ran the tips of his fingers across the massive head of Comanche, and that great dog twitched from head to foot with pleasure. “He’ll have me in trouble this way, sometime,” explained Deems. “This is his favorite place. On my feet. And someday when I need to move fast, why, he may be in the worst possible place.”

  She could understand what the other meant. For, hunted day and night by a thousand head-hunters, at any moment Jack Deems might need all the strength and skill and agility of which he was capable, and the slightest encumbrance, or possibility of an encumbrance, might be the most deadly handicap to him,

  “After all,” she said with a laugh, “it’s a rather tangled muddle. Shodress has been a friend of ours. You’re the enemy of Shodress. And here you are shielding us as though this house were filled with your brothers and sisters.” She leaned forward, her lips parted a little, her eyes shining. “Tell me why you do it.”

  “It’s my job,” he answered her, shrugging his shoulders.

  But she shook her head.

  “Suppose that I ask you why you take care of Apperley?” Deems said.

  “To save his life . . . poor fellow.”

  “You wanted him dead, and then you want him alive again?”

  “Wanted him dead? Who said I wanted him dead?”

  “You laid a trap for him, as though he were a bird, and he walked into it, and your fellows shot him down.”

  She started up from her chair, savage with indignation, but, after a moment, she mastered herself. “It’s no use talking back to you,” she said. “There’s nothing but such devilish wickedness in you that you can’t believe there’s goodness in any other person.”

  Deems smiled upon her, that odd and impersonal smile that had no mirth in it whatever. “It’s no good,” he said. “It’s no good at all.” He held to his point.

  Comanche rose and stood between his master and the girl, snarling silently at her, with his neck fur bristling.

  “It’s no good to tell you what I think of you?” she echoed. “No, you don’t care. You know yourself, and that’s enough. You don’t care what the rest of the world thinks of you. Every man and woman detests you, and there’s not even a child that doesn’t hate you, and tremble at you, and you’re so dyed in badness that you think there’s no kindness existing.”

  “You’re cool,” he said, canting his handsome head a little to one side and criticizing her without a change in his impersonal manner. “You’re cool, and sharp, and clever, and you act well. If you were back East where the big-money crooks are working, you’d soon be teamed up with someone better than this Shodress, this cheap poisoner. But don’t throw this bluff at me any longer. I know you. I’ve always known your kind.”

  “Know me?” she asked. “How could you?”

  “I’ve seen you fish, and the waters you fish in, and the kind of bait that you use.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’ll tell you how clever you are, though you know that already. When I first saw you, Hester, I almost believed in you. When I saw your big eyes and your smile and your dimple, I thought that for the first time in my life I was looking at a real woman. When I followed you down the street from the office of Apperley, it wasn’t because I had more than a tenth of a doubt about you. It was only that I couldn’t keep away. I wanted to see more of you. I wanted like the devil to see you smile again.” He laughed silently to himself and at himself, as she could see.

  “So I got to the cottage and I heard you talk to Oliver. And I had my eyes opened. But for half a minute I confess that I was more than done for. You had me giddy and dizzy. I was weak. I felt foolish for the first time in my life. But then I saw the truth. And I’ll go one step farther. I’ll admit that there are times when I find myself dreaming about you. Not really about you, but about what I thought you were. Then I open my eyes and see the facts . . . that you’re the coldest-blooded man-trapper and crook that I’ve ever run across.”

  She listened to him with a flush burning in her face. “Suppose that I wanted to have David Apperley dead,” she said. “Why shouldn’t I simply move the bandages a little, or dress the wounds clumsily? That’s all that I would have to do. Or leave him alone during one night. That would finish him. Did you think of that?”

  “Because you knew that I’d come back. Because you knew that the moment he dies, your brother Oliver follows him as fast as I can get at him.”

  “But with the whole town raised against you, how could I ever expect that you’d dare to come back into Yeoville?”

  The wolf dog glided to the door and looked out into the night. Then he turned and whined, but his master paid no heed, for he was too thoroughly taken up in the conversation with the girl.

  He nodded at her now. “You’re not as simple as that. You knew that I could slip in and out of this town,” he told her.

  “Nobody else in the world would dare to try it!” she exclaimed. “Nobody but you, for instance, would dare to stay here now, knowing that Doctor Myers may have run straight to Shodress to tell him that you’re here . . . or have been here.”

  “He’ll never do that. By this time, Myers is riding out of Yeoville as fast as a horse can gallop, and he’s only hoping that he can beat the men of Shodress to the railroad running East.”

  She marveled at his calm and at his assurance.

  The wolf dog slipped back to the side of his master and pulled at his sleeve.

  “Coming, Comanche,” said Jack Deems. “I only want to make sure of this stuff.” He raised the glass of water to his nose and inhaled a slow breath. Then a faint glint of light came into his eyes. “Smell this,” he told the girl.

  Her hand was trembling with her anger and her excitement as she took the glass. She, too, breathed the faint aroma which rose from it.

  “What is it?” asked Deems.

  “It smells . . . rather like crushed peach pits, I think. But I’m not sure. There’s hardly any odor.”

  “You’ve hit it, though. That’s exactly what the fragrance is like.”

  “Then what does it mean?”

  “Prussic acid has that smell.”

  “Prussic acid!”

  “And a moment after Apperley had tasted that stuff he would have died, in a good deal of pain. And quickly. Like heart failure. That would have been the end of him. He’s calling you, now.”

  For a faint, hurried, troubled voice sounded from within the bedroom adjoining. The girl listened to it with a start, and then with a smile and a frown together.

  “I’m going,” she said. “I only want to ask one question. How many thousands and thousands of dollars does Andrew Apperley pay to hire you to work so hard for his cause?”

  “Dollars?” said the criminal, and then with his usual cold smile he added: “He pays me with kindness and squareness, the first that I’ve ever known. I’m coming, Comanche.”

  And he turned toward the door, while the girl stared after him, with more bewilderment than ever in her eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Turmoil had spread through Yeoville a little earlier on this same day. It was not long before honest Dr. Myers started from his house to stroll toward the Grange cottage that a messenger on a sweating horse arrived at Shodress’s hotel and demanded admittance to him.

  “Who are you?” asked the scowling hotelkeeper.

  “I’m Blagden, from upcountry. I got some news that’ll make the old man’s hair stand on end. Where is he?”

  “You wait here and take things easy. I’ll find out if he wants to see you.”

  “Hold on. Is this here Shodress turned into a fool rajah, or something? Can’t a gent see him even when he’s got big news?”

  The hotelkeeper regarded the messenger with a doubtful eye. But it seemed that this man was exactly the type of the true adherents to the fortune of Alec Shodress. Here was the correct w
ild eye and reckless swing. Here was the squared fighting jaw and the pair of Colts swung low down on the thighs, just in twitching distance from the tips of the hanging fingers.

  “I’ll tell you the straight of it, partner,” he said in a lowered voice. “The old man won’t like to have it talked about, but the fact is that he’s nervous.”

  “Him? There ain’t a nerve in his body.”

  “Ain’t there? Well, maybe there wasn’t . . . in the old days.”

  “Old days? Man, I was with him a week ago.”

  “Sure, maybe you was. But since then, that devil Deems has been here and changed things a lot.”

  “Deems? I’ve heard about him. He shot up the Tuckers . . .”

  “That? That was nothing. Only showed half the length of his claws, that day. But what we all remember about him now is the soft-stepping, fire-breathing, straight-shooting devil that come for Alec Shodress right in his own town, and climbed right here into the hotel after him, and pretty near nailed him, too. And ever since that time, the old man has been a bit scary, and heaven knows that he’s had reason to be. And if he wasn’t, the yarn that Dan McGruder tells would be enough to raise his hair.”

  “What yarn is that?”

  “Where you been keeping yourself, man? The whole range ain’t been talking about nothing else. I mean, how McGruder and Westover and Lefty Mandell . . .”

  “I know ’em. Three mean gents.”

  “How those three mean gents and the two Wallis boys . . . all five . . . was piled into by this devil, and how they was run ragged, and how . . . but what’s the good? You wait and let poor Dan talk for himself. All I’ll say is that the old man has a spot cash offer of ten thousand dollars for the scalp of Deems. And there’s more money back East. He’s got a record as long as a book. They say that there’s another twenty thousand offered for him back yonder. Anyway, that’ll explain the nerves in Alec. Now if you got bad news, you’ll see that this is a poor time to break it to him.”

  “I understand,” said the messenger. “But you tell the old man that Blagden is here with word about Andy Apperley. That had ought to raise him, no matter what he’s got on his mind. About Apperley and eighty men.”