The Fugitive

by Max Brand

  “Speedy was dead right, Jessica,” said her father. “I should have kept away. But I wanted to find that hound of a Ben Thomas.”

  Speedy was already in the hallway, speaking to the sheriff. The curious crowd had dispersed when it found that no information about the gunfight was leaking out.

  “What’ll you do with him, Hollis?” he asked.

  “He goes to jail as soon as he’s fit to be carried there,” said Hollis. “That’s all the news you need from me, and that’s about all you get.”

  “Good,” said Speedy. “That’s the way for a sheriff to talk. Wash the blood off your hands, and get ready for a new job, Sheriff. You may be needed again before the evening’s over.”

  He went slowly back to the room of John Wilson, slowly, because the sense of failure was a bitter weight upon his heart. He had failed with Fenton. The man would be tenderly nursed back to life by the men of the law, and then securely hanged by the same careful hands that had tended him in sickness. That was the end of him. Jessica Fenton would go on through life with the stigma of her father’s shameful death on her name. The other problem, John Wilson—well, Wilson would probably never be urged on to toe the mark.

  When Speedy opened the door of the room again, he saw that not even the uproar in the hall had drawn Wilson away from his writing. He was addressing the letter, when Speedy came in, and he winced at the sight of the small man.

  Speedy went to the window and sat on the sill of it, and he wondered bitterly and callously how many men, passing in the street, would put a charge of buckshot or a rifle bullet in his back, if only they could have known who was sitting there, a helpless target.

  “Ready now?” he asked.

  The stone-pale lips of the other made no answer.

  “Jessica Fenton can’t be wrong,” said Speedy. “She and I both can’t be wrong about you.”

  “What does she say of me?” groaned Wilson.

  “It isn’t what she says about you,” Speedy responded. “It’s the way she looks about you that counts.”

  Chapter 15

  It was no matter to Speedy how far he carried deception, so long as he could make his point, so long as he could force John Wilson to play the man even for a moment, even though he were to die under the bullets of Slade Bennett the next minute. Jessica Fenton? She was not to be considered, if only her name and influence could make the blood of Wilson respond.

  In fact, Wilson had risen from the table, as one drawn upward by a hand. “What about Jessica Fenton?” he asked.

  “What about her?” echoed the other. “Why, you’re not a fool as well as a coward, I hope. You can see what’s in a girl’s face, when she shows it as openly as Jessica Fenton had showed it to you.”

  The white face of the young man flushed crimson. “Maybe I’m both a fool and a coward,” he admitted. “Only, Speedy, has Jessica said anything to you?”

  “She didn’t tell me that she’d go on her knees across the Rocky Mountains for the sake of one kind look from you,” said Speedy. “She didn’t tell me that. She didn’t write it on paper, either, and sign it before a notary. That’s the only kind of information that you’d be interested in, though, I suppose.”

  Big John Wilson, breathing hard, glared out the window, then he looked back toward Speedy. “I’ve worshiped her from the day I first laid eyes on her,” he said hoarsely. “But I thought . . .”

  “It’s all right,” said Speedy. “She’ll soon be over caring anything about you, when she hears that you’ve taken water. She’ll find that out soon enough, when Slade Bennett comes over to kick you out of town.”

  The young man closed his eyes and groaned.

  The heart of Speedy sank like a stone in thinnest water. It struck bottom. Then a cold demon got him by the throat and made him say: “Go over there and face him, you rat.”

  “I can’t, I can’t,” breathed Wilson.

  “You can, and you will,” said Speedy. “There’s your gun. Take it, you dog, and go over and face him. Throw open the saloon door. Thunder out his name. Ask . . .’Where’s Slade Bennett?’ And then start shooting. You can shoot straight and fast. Every coward learns how to use a gun like an expert.”

  “It’s no good, all my practice,” said John Wilson. “There’s nothing in me. I can’t do a thing. I’ve got to get out of town . . . I’vegot to go.” He started for the door.

  Speedy stepped in front of him. “You’re not leaving town. You’re going with me to Haggerty’s Saloon.” “No!” cried Wilson.

  “Then, I’ll take you.”

  “Curse you,” rasped Wilson. “Get out of my way!”

  In his frenzy, he struck for the dark head of Speedy, but that lightning-quick eye of Speedy saw clearly enough the coming of the blow. A dozen ways he could have avoided it, but a new thought had come to him and stopped him. There he stood, patient as a log, and let the stroke crash home against his head. It knocked him flat with a force that skidded him on the floor. A cloud of darkness, mingled with red sparks, flew up across his eyes. Through that cloud, he saw Wilson leaning above him, and heard the astonished voice gasping: “And that’s Speedy!”

  Speedy lay still.

  “If I can do that to him,” muttered the voice of the other, “what’s a bully like Slade Bennett to me?” Suddenly he had snatched the gun from the table on which Speedy had laid it and rushed for the door.

  Speedy gathered himself from the floor and followed. His brain was still buzzing and his jaw felt as though it were broken, but there was triumph in his heart. There was a hidden manliness in big John Wilson, and he, Speedy, had finally opened the door upon the secret treasure. He was hurrying on now to face Bennett, this young man who had newly discovered himself. In another thirty seconds, he might be dead. But from the viewpoint of Speedy, that mattered nothing, or little more than nothing. To die like a man, from his conception, was far better than to live like a coward, haunted forever by fear. If only the impulse would last and carry John Wilson across the street, and through the door of Haggerty’s Saloon.

  Speedy, running fast, saw the big fellow lurch out of the door of the hotel and crash across the veranda, then race on across the street. In Wilson, too, there was probably a dread lest the heat of the impulse should cool before it had been given form in action. Speedy was on the heels of the runner, when the latter reached the swinging doors of Haggerty’s Saloon and, casting them wide, strode in, shouting: “Where’s Slade Bennett?”

  As a ripple of water curls around a stone, so Speedy slipped around big John Wilson, and stood some distance along the wall of the saloon.

  It was brief. Slade Bennett was standing near the head of the bar and, as Wilson’s stentorian shout reached his ears, he wheeled suddenly about with a deep, muffled cry, a revolver flashing in his hand like the gleam of a knife.

  There was even time for Speedy to see Wilson, also, as he stood just inside the swinging doors of the saloon, with his head thrown up and back, his face deadly pale. Such was the strife of emotion within his spirit, but there was an overriding gleam in his eyes that, it seemed to Speedy, had been born back there in the hotel room when he leaned above him as he was stretched on the floor.

  He had a mere half second to see these things. Then, as big Slade Bennett turned and fired, John Wilson, calmly, deliberately, as it seemed, drew his own gun and shot Slade Bennett down.

  Twice had Slade fired, so much greater was his speed of hand than Wilson’s, but twice he had missed, and the first fire of Wilson brought down his man.

  Speedy went across the floor in an instant and was on his knees beside the fallen man. He tore open coat and shirt, and found the purple spot out of which the blood was oozing gradually, a mere drop at a time, and, with that glance, and by a look at the purple-white band that was forming around the mouth of Bennett, he knew that the end had come for the gunman. Slade Bennett did not open his eyes, but in his breathing he groaned and there was a bubbling in his throat.

  Other men came up. A hard, ringing v
oice, just over the head of Speedy, said: “I’m sorry for this. And I’d like to help. What can I do for him?”

  Speedy looked up and saw John Wilson, a man transformed. The color was back in his face; his eyes flamed; a sort of swelling and transcendent power was quivering in his voice and in his eyes, like an overcharge of light or electricity.

  Speedy said coldly: “The thing for you to do, and all the rest, is to take off your hats. Slade Bennett’s dying. Where’s a doctor?”

  There was always at least one doctor present in such a crowd in those days, and now the man of science came forward to do what he could.

  But Speedy did not leave the fallen man. He said: “Slade, Slade. They’ve found out about everything. They’ve found out that you murdered Dodson. What are we going to do about it?”

  The eyes of Slade Bennett flashed open and closed again; his mouth sneered. “Dodson had to get it,” he said. “You know why I killed him, Jerry. After I stabbed him, I made it look as though that fool, that Oliver Fenton, had turned the trick. Honest people are all jackasses. The sheriffs have been hunting Fenton, and I’ve walked about the streets. Jerry, open the window, open the door, I’m choking.” He raised himself on his hands with his eyes wide, but frightfully unseeing. On his hands and his heels, his body stiffened an instant, then he collapsed.

  Speedy, reaching past the doctor, closed the eyelids as faithfully as that Jerry for whom his voice had been mistaken. And he murmured, not without emotion: “ ‘And all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men, can never put Humpty Dumpty together again.’ ”

  Slade Bennett lay dead on the floor, and the men who had gathered close for an instant to look down into the dead face were now scattering to find their drinks in another saloon.

  Speedy heard a voice that said: “Wilson, that was the coolest trick and the best gunplay that I ever seen. I wish that you’d come and have a drink with me. My name’s Thompson.”

  Speedy listened to the voices depart; for his own part, he remained fixed and still beside the dead man, looking steadily down into his face, watching the dawning of the death smile and feeling once again, as he had so often felt in the past, that something out of his own bright spirit had fallen and lay like a dissolving shadow there, before his own eyes.

  Chapter 16

  Then, in the saloon across the street, he found John Wilson celebrating in the midst of a circle of newfound friends who, only the moment before, were so ready to howl like wolfish ghouls over his downfall before that hero, Slade Bennett.

  He touched the arm of the young man and, looking up, he saw Wilson turn and look down at him with eyes of liquid fire. The icy barrier of half a lifetime of restraint and discontent had fallen, and John Wilson was just beginning to enjoy himself as the thing he had never dreamed of being. But when he saw Speedy, he stepped through the crowd at the bar and laid his hand on the shoulder of the smaller man.

  “I know part of what you’ve done for me, Speedy,” he said. “I can guess at the rest. You let me hit you back there in the hotel room. Nobody can manhandle you, if you don’t want ’em to, but you let me slug you. Speedy, is that right?”

  Speedy made a brief gesture to disclaim the suggestion. Then he muttered: “Wilson, you’ve done part of the great job. Now go over and collect on it.”

  “Collect on what?” asked Wilson.

  “On the killing of Slade Bennett.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Wilson, suddenly frowning, “that I never could have done anything with him, except that the bluff that you’d put up for me unnerved him a little when he heard me rush into the saloon and bawl out the words that you wanted me to shout. There’s nothing for me to collect out of the killing of Slade Bennett, except a chance to pay his funeral expenses, and I’m glad to do that.”

  Speedy nodded rather grimly as he surveyed the other. “You’re a good fellow, and a white man, Wilson,” he said. “And I’m mighty glad of that. But I’ll tell you what you’re to collect. That’s the girl . . . Jessica Fenton. Come down with me to the jail this moment . . . no, they won’t have moved Fenton, yet. He’ll still be in the hotel. And we’ll go and take Fenton away from the sheriff.”

  Wilson frowned. “I don’t know what you mean, Speedy,” he said. “If the law . . .”

  “The law has nothing to do with Oliver Fenton,” said Speedy. “Slade Bennett has barely finished confessing that he killed Dodson. That’s enough to suit the law. Oliver Fenton is free, and you can stand in on the party as the hero of the hour.”

  “You’re laughing at me,” Wilson said gloomily.

  “I’m not laughing,” answered Speedy. “I mean what I say. Now, you come along with me.” He took the big hand of Wilson and drew him out of the saloon.

  As they came under the open stars, in the fresh air of the night, Wilson halted suddenly.

  “Speedy,” he said, “I seem to be seeing the face of the world for the first time. And I’ve you to thank for that and I do thank you. Will you believe me?”

  “Of course, I’ll believe you,” said Speedy.

  “I’ve never come so close to happiness before . . . I’ve never felt happiness before,” said the other. “And I’m only beginning to know what to thank you for. But I can see more and more clearly, Speedy, that you played on me. You led me on . . . you made yourself the victim, and let me knock my first spark of fire out of you. Isn’t that true? You let me manhandle you, just to raise my spirits, and get me started?”

  “Nonsense,” Speedy dismissed carelessly. “I don’t let people manhandle me, if I can help it, as a rule. Come on, man, come on. You strike while the iron’s hot. Jessica Fenton’s up there. She’s the one that would like to hear from you.”

  “Did you know,” said John Wilson, still immovable in the street, “that I confessed everything to her about . . . about what I’ve been in the past?”

  “No,” said Speedy.

  “I did, though,” answered Wilson. “And she told me that she had faith in me. You know what she based her faith on?”

  “What?” murmured Speedy.

  “On what you’d said to me back there in the station house at Council Flat . . . that there was the fear of danger in me, but that I was stronger than I thought.”

  “Go see her now,” said Speedy, “and see if she’s glad to know that you found yourself for her sake.”

  “But it wasn’t exactly for her sake,” admitted Wilson. “I was just a shaking cur, thinking only about myself and wanting to die, if I could find the courage to meet death. Then you put the spark in me. You set me on fire and I still seem to burn, Speedy. The cold demon is gone out of me. Perhaps it’ll come back into me, later on.”

  “You’ve talked enough,” Speedy said not unpleasantly. “Now go up there in the hotel. Step along. See Jessica Fenton and talk to her. You’ve started in the right direction tonight, man, but you’ll need a woman like that to keep you there.”

  John Wilson, with a start, straightened and then hurried across the street. Speedy followed more slowly, and came into the lobby of the hotel a sufficient distance behind the new-made hero to appreciate the silence that came over the buzzing room as Wilson entered.

  All eyes were turned toward the stairs up which Wilson had disappeared at a run, and Speedy followed, smiling faintly. It seemed that his work was drawing rapidly to a close, that there was little more for him to do, in this case, except to look on at the fruition of his work.

  He got to the upper hall in time to see Wilson knock at the door of the room in which the wounded man was lying. The door opened, and he heard the outcry of a happy girl’s voice and saw the sheen of her hands in the lamplight as she put her hands on the hands of Wilson and drew him into the room.

  Well, the news had come before him to the hotel, and the Fentons knew that Oliver Fenton was free.

  Speedy nodded and sighed. He stepped closer. Voices boiled up within the room like water in a teakettle. The door opened again, and the sheriff came out with a wide grin on his face.<
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  Speedy was near enough to hear, as the door closed, the voice of big John Wilson saying: “It’s nothing, Jessica. I didn’t come here to be thanked. I only came here to say that, for your sake, I wish that I could have faced down a dozen like Slade Bennett. And . . .”

  The closing of the door shut off the voice of the man, and the girl’s voice cut in with words that could not be distinguished. Yet there was no need for words. The music of the miracle of happiness was rising like a bright fountain from the throat of the girl.

  The sheriff laid his hand on the arm of Speedy. “There it goes, Speedy,” said Sam Hollis. “You’ve spoke some hard words to me, lately, but I’m ready to forget ’em. Now that Fenton has turned out innocent, and Slade Bennett was the guilty man, why, it looks as though I was pretty mean to Fenton. But I had nothing against him . . . it was only the law, not me, that wanted him.”

  “Where’s Ben Thomas?” asked Speedy.

  “Ben Thomas won’t be seen around these parts for quite a spell,” said the sheriff soberly. “He showed up to ask his share of the blood money when he heard that Fenton was caught, and I told him that he could have all the blood money, when it was paid, and, in the meantime, he could have my opinion of him. When I got through talking . . . and I talked in front of the whole crowd . . . he sneaked out. There was some talk of tar and feathers, but I guess all that the boys did was to give him a mighty fast ride out of town.”

  “It would be a lot better for him if he had had a bullet through the brain,” said Speedy. “When I first saw him with the girl, I smelled blood as surely as any hungry cat, Sheriff, but he’s still breathing, yet he’ll never be able to look a decent man in the face from now on. And the blood I smelled was Slade Bennett’s.”

  “Yes,” said Sam Hollis, “heaven help him and every other man that lives by knife and gun, like me, Speedy, or like you, though the only tools you use are your bare hands. Come and have a drink with me, will you?”