by Max Brand
“I talked as I never talked before,” Jerry said to his father. “And she listened, but she wouldn’t be persuaded.”
“Bah!” snapped the older man. “The best you could do in the line of talking would be shabby work. But she’s a sensible girl as well as a lovely one, Jerry. If you put the point directly to her, I’ll wager that she would be reasonable enough.”
“But I did that very thing,” said poor Jerry Jr. “I told her pointblank that, if she cared much for her father’s happiness, she’d better marry me.”
“And she …?”
“She had tears in her eyes. But still she managed to shake her head.”
“And with the sheriff’s sale tomorrow. Did she shake her head, anyway? Well, then, she has a harder heart than I ever imagined.”
“No, you don’t know her,” the son said. “She’s as hard as flint under the surface. I even told her that Major would be sold as well as the roof over their heads. Major means more to her than all the rest of the place. And the tears ran down her face when she answered me, but still all she would say was … ‘But I don’t love you, Jerry. I don’t love you, and therefore it’s a sin for me even to think of marrying you.’”
Jerry Swain Sr. exploded. “There’s nothing like one of these stubborn girls!” he shouted. “Still you must have her, Jerry. By the Lord, she’s got to be your wife. Mind what I said before. If you win her, then I forget all that has happened between us. I’ll see that you have money enough. I’ll see that you have a house … this very house we’re in now, if you want it … and I’ll give you an income that will be big enough, you can be sure.”
The son writhed in his anguish. But still he protested that he had talked as he never talked before, and she persisted in being adamant. In the midst of it there had come an unlucky interruption in the form of a stranger on an immense and ugly horse who rode past them and picked a quarrel with Jerry. And, if she had been cool before, she was veritable ice thereafter. To this the father listened with a sudden concern. That his son was a coward, he sometimes guessed, but he could never be sure. And it seemed impossible that the girl could have thought it of Jerry because he had not flown at the throat of the elderly stranger.
“He had white hair, Dad,” said Jerry Jr. “How could I knock an old fellow like that off his horse?”
And his father, of course, agreed. Then he laid down his ultimatum. “You’re going tomorrow to that sale,” he said. “If you had come home tonight and told me that you were engaged to Mary Carver, I intended to give John enough money to pull him through. But, as it is, I’m going to save money by buying him in. At that, I think I’d rather own his place and him outright than simply be his creditor. He owes a flat thirty thousand dollars, and his place won’t bring in more than twenty thousand as it stands. But …”
“Thirty thousand?” exclaimed the son.
“You wonder how he happens to owe that much?” asked the father. “I’ve wondered the same thing. There’s a mystery about it. He’s been a perfect demon for work this past eight years … ever since he was shot by the White Mask, in fact. And everything that he’s turned his hand to has prospered. And yet, in spite of that, he’s in debt … thirty thousand dollars in debt.”
“He spent a lot of money educating Mary, for one thing,” suggested Jerry Jr. “And he’s spent a good many thousands in repairing the fences and buildings on the old ranch.”
“I’ve counted all that in,” his father said, “but, in spite of those items, he ought to be well ahead. In the past eight years, about twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars has simply dropped out of sight on that ranch. What’s happened to it? Where’s the leak? Where’s the hole down which John Carver pours his profits? Well, that’s an ended matter. Tomorrow night will see me the owner of old Carver Ranch, and then perhaps Mary Carver will look at things in a different light. What could she do for a living?”
“Teach.”
“Stuff and nonsense! One term of teaching, and then you’ll see her ready to fall into your arms. Tomorrow you go to that sale and bid on the old place no more than twenty-five thousand dollars. Probably you can get it for twenty thousand. Chances are that nobody will buck you up higher than that.”
“But suppose that somebody should go up higher than twenty-five thousand?” asked the son.
“Suppose the moon were made of green cheese,” the father responded. “I tell you, I know what the ranch is worth, and what every man in this neighborhood is qualified to bid on it. As for strangers, there is nothing about it to attract them to the sale.”
To this, Jerry Jr. returned no answer. But he took the first opportunity to leave the room and go up to his own chamber. He had many reasons to wish to be alone. It seemed that, after all, it made no great difference what happened. If his father became the eventual owner of the Carver land, all would be well yet, he promised himself.
He lit the lamp in his bedchamber and had turned to take a cigarette from the box on the table when he saw a dim form in the corner of the room, a form that immediately slid from the gloom and took shape as a man. Jerry had been caught once that day without a gun in time of need. This would not happen twice. And as he dexterously put a table between himself and the other, he brought his Colt into his hand and directed it steadily enough at the intruder.
But the other continued to approach, with no gleam of answering metal in his hand, until he stepped into the circle of the lamplight, which shone upon the rugged features of John Carver. He was much altered by the eight years. Not only were his features heavily lined, but his hair was turned to a rough and patchy gray. His body was changed, too, having lost much of its original, bulky strength. His step was slouching. His head thrust forward with a chin protruded by weariness rather than pugnacity. His big hands dangled loosely at his sides. Altogether, he gave, as he stepped into the light, a very picture of weariness too great to fear danger. A wave of his hand literally brushed the gun away.
Jerry Swain, with a gasp of relief, lowered the weapon and said softly, “You, Carver? I thought for a minute that … No matter what. But I’m glad to see you.”
“That’s more,” Carver said, “than I can say for you. Heaven curse the day that I first laid eyes on you. You leech!”
“This is a queer way to talk,” Jerry said. What’s wrong, Carver?”
“Everything’s wrong. The fool girl’s gone mad.”
“You talked to her, and she wouldn’t listen?”
“Aye! I talked … her mother talked. She done nothing but sit and fold her hands and look out the window and mumble like an idiot … ‘I don’t love him. How can I marry him?’ I went near mad. But nothing can be done with her.”
“I’m sorry,” Jerry said. “You’re a witness that I did all I could to help. But when a man is refused by …”
“You failed once,” Carver said doggedly. “That means that you got to start in again. Find another way for me. Try again.”
Jerry Swain flinched and changed color a little. “Look here,” he said. “I want to help you out. But this is your fight, you know. It isn’t mine.”
“Ain’t it? I’ll show you where you’re wrong. Who’s pulled me down? Who’s been the leech all these years? You, Swain … you … you hound! You’ve squeezed me white. I’ve kept the accounting. Twenty-eight thousand five hundred is what I’ve dumped into your pockets these past eight years. If I had that, d’you think I’d be afraid of bankruptcy? No! And where has the coin gone? It’s gone across the gambling table, where you’re too big a fool to win … and you’re too weak to keep away from the game. I owe the world about thirty thousand dollars. But you owe me twenty-eight thousand five hundred. My money is due tomorrow … your money is due to me tonight. Swain, come across!”
Jerry Swain had backed away until his shoulders were wedged into a corner of the wall during this speech, every word of which seemed to push him away like a jerk from a hand. Now
he managed by a desperate effort to step forward again and speak with some show of self-control. “Someday I’ll pay you,” he declared. “You know that.”
“I know nothing about you except that you’re a rat,” said John Carver. “I know that, and I know it makes me plumb sick to think of you marrying Mary. Why, she’s got more man in her little finger than you have in your whole body.”
“Talk low,” muttered the other, half frightened and half savage, but excited by the fear of discovery rather than by the insults that were being showered upon him.
“I’m tired of talking low,” Carver said. “I’ve a mind to begin talking out loud. I’ve a mind to break up this eight-year-old silence and begin letting the world know what I know about you, Swain!”
“Suppose I were to do the same thing, Carver? You’d go to prison fast enough.”
“And you’d go to Hades,” Carver replied.
“I’d risk that. But what’s the use of this sort of talk? The point of it all is that we need each other. Now listen to the latest. Father will buy you in tomorrow. There’s no fear of anything else. Father will buy the ranch in.”
“What good does that do me?”
“It does you every good if you’ll open your eyes. It means that you’ll keep right on living on the ranch, and that Mary’ll have more time to come to her senses. When she sees that the right thing is for her to marry me, then there’ll be no more trouble. You understand?”
“Aye.” The rancher nodded, and his lips trembled with weariness and grief as he spoke. “Aye, old Jerry Swain ever had an eye for something with value. And that’s why he wants to buy my girl in for you … buy her in just the same as if she were a horse or a cow.”
“What other way is there?” asked Jerry.
John Carver glowered at the younger man. “Mark this, son,” he said heavily at length. “I’m a calm man and a peaceful man, but there’s one thing that I’m going to stand on … if there’s any slip or mix-up in the business tomorrow, I’m going to have your life. Mind that! If you don’t buy me in, I’m coming straight for you with a gun.”
He made a half-completed gesture that revealed more clearly than words the position of the heavy revolver that he carried. And all at once, in the eyes of frightened Jerry Swain, he ceased to be the father of Mary Carver, the patient rancher who during the past eight years had labored so ceaselessly, so bitterly to help his family up. He became, in a trice, the savage man hunter and robber, the White Mask.
“There’ll be no need of that,” said Jerry. “You go home and stop worrying.”
Chapter Thirty
It was the first large business transaction that had ever been entrusted to the hands of Jerry Swain by his father. And accordingly he swelled with pride. There were only fifty or sixty persons in the room, most of them men. They sat at the desks, their knees depressed and cramped in spaces intended for children. But the demeanor of each man was solemn. In a way, they were attending the obsequies of a comrade. They were sitting at the burial of the last of the once great Carver estate.
And it seemed to Jerry that in this manner he was stepping up and assuming a proper place among the men of the community. They had long paid the proper respect to his father; it was now high time that they should pay the proper respect to Jerry himself. Looking carefully over the faces in that room, he was aware that the most prominent members of the community were around him. Few had come to bid, it turned out when the bidding commenced, but they had come to listen and to take notes.
It was John Castor who, when the bids were first called for, began with the ridiculous sum of five thousand dollars.
“Not that I figure on five thousand dollars pulling down the plum,” he had assured the auctioneer with a broad grin, “but because I like to start in easy.”
“Six thousand!” sang out Jeff Crothers from the other side of the room. “Not that I figure on six thousand pulling down the plum, but because six thousand looks to me a sight better than five thousand!”
But, though this remark brought a laugh, it was plain, before long, that both Castor and Crothers were in earnest and were going to make a serious battle for the ranch. At once they jumped up to fifteen thousand dollars and thereby shut out all the other contestants, for several had come with a hope that the ranch might be knocked down at some lucky and low figure.
From fifteen thousand dollars to eighteen thousand dollars, the bids climbed by five hundred dollars a time. Plainly Castor and Crothers wanted that ranch, but it was equally plain that they hated to push up the bidding.
At eighteen thousand dollars there was a momentary pause, and the auctioneer seemed about to knock the ranch down to Crothers at that sum, before Castor boosted a hundred dollars. And the progression up the ladder was commenced again by hundreds, a slow and yet an eminently thrilling process.
And all the while Jerry Swain sat back in his chair and spun around his forefinger his gold chain weighted with a knife. He was waiting until the favorable opportunity came when he would, as the saying went “knock them out of their chairs.”
The time came.
“Nineteen thousand four hundred and fifty!” sang out Castor.
Crothers, with a black face, made no answering bid. He had come in hopes of a bargain. But now he began to see that he would have to calculate values closely if he wished to get more than a hundred cents for every dollar.
An electric quality hung in the air. Men began to center their attention upon Castor as the probable winner.
“Twenty thousand,” Jerry Swain said calmly.
He had succeeded better than he had dreamed. Heads jerked around in his direction as though a string were attached to their chins and he had pulled it.
“Twenty thousand!” cried the auctioneer, taking a new lease on life at the prospect of three bidding one another up to the skies. And he turned a broad, kindly smile upon poor John Carver. Perhaps, despite all expectations, John would get enough, not only to clear away the debts, but also have a little left for himself.
Such hopes died at once, however, for no sooner had that twenty thousand dollars been bid and the bidder located definitely as no less a person than the son of the richest man in the community than Castor and Crothers both gave up the battle and sat back in their chairs with disgusted looks. By waiting until the last moment, Jerry Swain had as effectually knocked the wind out of their sails as his shrewd father could ever have done.
At twenty thousand dollars the bid died an abrupt death. If Jerry Swain actually wanted the ranch, who in the world could keep him from taking it? Certainly he had a wealth at command that defied competition.
The joy faded from the face of the auctioneer. But John Carver, with a look of relief, began to roll a cigarette. The boy had kept his word, after all. And now the crowd began to understand. The love of Jerry Swain for Mary Carver was an old story. It was taken for granted that Jerry would buy the ranch, let Carver pay what he could on his debts with the purchase price, and then deed the ranch back to its original owner.
It was a fine thought. Though the auctioneer, disappointed in his hope of further battle, registered gloom, there was a deep-throated mutter of content that passed around the rest of the room. This pleased the stern cattlemen. This was an exhibition of sentiment in the form of dollars and cents that they could fully appreciate.
“Going to Mister Swain at twenty thousand,” the auctioneer announced. “Going …”
“Twenty-one thousand,” said another voice.
It was a huge bass voice that flooded through the room, and the little crowd turned and saw that the doorway was filled by the form of a very tall, very heavily built man who was smoking a cigarette, and who now, stepping into the interior, removed his hat and exposed a mop of silver, shining hair.
He was so big, when he stepped into the room, that the rectangle of the lighted doorway was just of sufficient size to outline him. And
Jerry Swain recognized, with a peculiar sinking of the heart, the big man who he had encountered on the road the previous day.
“Twenty-one thousand,” repeated the big man, for the silence that greeted him was so profound that he might well have been forgiven for feeling that his first call had not been heard.
“Twenty-one thousand! You hear it, gentlemen?” cried the auctioneer. “You hear him calling it? Twenty-one thousand? Who makes it twenty-two?”
Jerry Swain glared at the big stranger. There was nothing in the make-up of the man to suggest wealth. He was plainly, even roughly dressed. A rough shirt of gray flannel, heavy ready-made boots, great buckskin gloves, a worn and floppy sombrero—in all of these particulars, he was the type of the ordinary cowpuncher.
Yet, when he inhaled a great cloud of cigarette smoke and then blew it toward the ceiling, there was no one to dispute the fact that he was full of potentialities. His ease, his careless manner as he leaned against the wall and looked the crowd over in detail, gave the feeling that he was sure of himself, that he had ten times the power necessary to live up to his words.
Jerry Swain rose to his feet. The limit that his father had set was still four thousand dollars away, but it was probable that, when the big stranger realized who it was he opposed, he would cease bidding. For though, in his ignorance of the identity of Jerry Swain’s son, he might have been blustering and bold on the road the day before, it stood to reason that he could not have remained in Porterville overnight without learning the truth about the county’s richest man. Therefore it was that Jerry rose and faced squarely toward the intruder while he announced his next bid in a defiant voice.