by Max Brand
Tom Keene almost forgot those eight terrible years in the vista that was opening before him.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was a joyous month that began at old Carver Ranch. The hope with which the Carver family looked upon Tom, turned into a golden opinion before that month ended. He was better than all his spoken and unspoken promises. The cottage he fitted up with comfortable and solid furniture, even appearing to bestow more attention upon it than he paid heed to the care of the big house itself. And, although he reserved the main building for his own uses, Mrs. Carver declared with a covert smile of great insight that before long he would tire of the loneliness of the house.
“He ain’t so old as he looks,” she said. “And he’ll be hankering for company one of these days. Those rooms will look every one as big as barns to him. Wouldn’t be surprised if he cleaned out everything that he’s put into the cottage … including us … and move it all back to the big house.”
This was also the true opinion of the girl, and of her father as well. As for John Carver, he began to thank heaven for the day when Timothy Kenyon arrived and ended the long persecution that he had undergone at the hands of Jerry Swain. There was less dignity, to be sure, in his position as foreman of the ranch than there had been when he was owner. But, for all that, he had more real comfort and power joined. The new owner seemed to care little what was done on the ranch. He left it all to Carver, giving him a free hand to spend as he pleased in the repairing of sheds and barns or the replacing of outworn fencing. Neither did he examine the receipts for expenditures with too close an eye, and Carver found increasing opportunities to line his pockets.
Mrs. Carver, for her part, was only too delighted by the returning good nature of her husband, and by the entirely unexpected ease with which he bore the blow that had fallen upon him. She had been prepared for a sorrow and a despair that would weigh her husband to the grave. But, instead, he began to show better spirits than she had known him to be in for years. He began to show for what he really was—a stalwart fellow in his forties with the constitution of an ox and the ability to live through well-nigh as many years in the future as he had in the past.
Moreover, Mary Carver was far better off than anyone could have expected. She had undertaken the work of the house and the cooking for the master with a fine spirit of cheerfulness, gritting her teeth and forcing herself through many an unpleasant task. But, if she showed an ideal spirit for a servant, Timothy Kenyon showed an even more perfect spirit as a master. There was nothing that could upset his equilibrium. If the soup were burned, he shrugged his shoulders. If the pie crust was of a leathery consistency, he shrugged his shoulders again. He seemed oblivious to faults, and yet he was instantly and keenly appreciative of all her successes. It became a strangely fascinating game for her to play. A month was not a long time, but before that month was ended, what with her own eager efforts and her mother’s patient instruction, she was doing very well, indeed. She had forgotten the prospective secretaryship to a railroad president at the end of twelve years. She had banished, with astonishing ease, so it seemed to her mother, all the high hopes and ambitions that had been nurtured by her schooling. Behold, she sang in the kitchen, and she sang as she scrubbed the floor.
“Why,” she cried to her mother as she sat in the cottage in the middle of the afternoon with the sun spilling into the room through the leaves of the climbing vine, “I’ve never been truly happy before in all my life, and the reason is simply that I’ve never really worked! It’s as though he paid me for being happy.”
The cause of that remark was the monthly pay that she held in her hand, examining each bill with a smile of pleasure before she handed the whole to her mother. At this rate, they decided, it would not be long before they could go to the city, should they so desire. In the meantime, all was well on the ranch, and they were saving money much faster than they could ever hope to in a town where Mary might work as a clerk, at the best.
There was not even the strain of feeling that they were shamed in the eyes of their neighbors by their work as servants. Indeed, with the fine and truly Western spirit, the ranchers and their families made a point of going out of their way to prove to the Carvers that, although fallen in fortune, they were not despised. Mrs. Carver was the recipient of more calls than she had ever been in a similar period before. And the hearty good humor with which the whole Carver family met the new turn in their affairs only called forth the unstinted praise of man and woman throughout the mountains.
“The long and short of it is,” Mrs. Carver said on this afternoon, “that Timothy Kenyon is a good man as well as a rich man. And if you’re going to keep on being foolish and turning up your nose at Jerry Swain and his millions, there is no man in the world I’d rather see you marry than just such a man as Timothy Kenyon.”
At this Mary Carver clasped her hands. “Good heavens, Mother dear!” she cried. “Good heavens!” And she turned a delightful pink from her forehead to her throat. “Why, he’s old enough to be my father.”
“Father, fiddlesticks!” said Mrs. Carver. “He’s not more than thirty-five or thirty-six, if he’s a day. His hair is white, but what of that?”
“Why,” cried Mary again, “I wouldn’t dream of such a thing! Why …”
“Humph!” her mother said with a shrewd look. Then she turned and pointed through a window on the other side of the room. “There he is now with Major.”
“With Major,” Mary repeated. “Oh, he’s trying to steal my horse from me.”
For Tom—now Timothy Kenyon—was standing by the corral feeding wisps of hay and wheat heads to the great black horse. Presently he left the stallion, walked to the far side of the enclosure, and whistled. Through the open window the notes fell faintly upon the ears of the listeners. The call brought Major whirling around on his hind legs, rearing in order to swerve the more quickly. And he rushed for the big man, halted as though his eyes gave other evidence than his ears, and then advanced and thrust out a nose that the new owner patted.
“Why,” Mrs. Carver murmured, “doesn’t that beat all? I never saw Major act as friendly as that with anyone other than you, Mary.”
But here she found that Mary was sitting bolt erect with a face as white as it had been pink the moment before. “Oh,” she whispered. “Who can it be? Who can it be?”
“What do you mean, silly girl? It’s Timothy Kenyon. Who else? Mary, you’d make a mystery out of one-two-three. He’s heard the whistle you learned from that terrible Tom Keene, that’s all. He’s heard you use that whistle, and now he’s trying it himself.”
Mary Carver sank back in her chair, but still she stared, fascinated. “I suppose that’s it,” she whispered, “and yet … look at Major now.”
The great black horse had reached out with such deftness that he caught the sombrero from the head of the man, and now he tossed it and pretended to be on the verge of trampling it under foot as he galloped about the corral, but he ended by stopping in front of the man and letting him take the hat again. Mary Carver rose, crossed the room, and resolutely closed the window and drew the curtain.
“I know I’m foolish,” she said, “but I … It’s like seeing a ghost.”
“A ghost of whom?” her mother cried sternly now. “A ghost of that Tom Keene … simply because a man has a bass voice and whistles to a horse? Besides, Mary, you have to stop remembering the White Mask, murderer and robber that he was. He carried you out of a well. Heaven bless him for that. But what other man wouldn’t have tried to do as much?”
“I never speak of him,” Mary said. “I haven’t spoken of him for years.”
“That’s because you think of him the more and keep your thoughts to yourself, you strange girl.”
But here Mary, her lips compressed, bowed her head and made no answer.
No matter what the courtesies that Timothy Kenyon had extended to his family of hired hands, he had not yet invi
ted them to come into the big house to spend the evening with him. And it was on this very day that he broke the precedent, not by calling in the entire family, but by asking John Carver alone. Mrs. Carver prepared her husband for the eventful occasion.
“It means a lot, John,” she assured him as she brushed his clothes. “It means that, if everything goes well, he may want us to move back into the old house. And then …”
“And then what?”
“And then if Mary and him …”
“What the devil do you mean, Lizzie?”
“Nothing,” she said, smiling. And they looked at each other with infinite understanding.
Five minutes later, John Carver was seated opposite Kenyon at a table in the parlor of the ranch house, and he was shuffling the pack of cards that the rancher had pushed toward him. It had been almost too good to be true, the sight of those cards. In his day, John Carver had been a very good gambler, and, though he had never neglected his main trade of yegg and stick-up man, he had nevertheless turned some pretty deals. And at the sight of the pasteboards, even now his blood quickened, and the hands, which eight years of steady labor had stiffened, were suddenly made deft and limber.
Why should he not do a great deed this evening? Why should he not, if all went well, lift several cold thousand out of the swollen bank account of the rancher and transfer them to his own? At least he would make the effort. The game was of his own choosing—stud poker. At that game he was a master, and before midnight he had piled up five hundred dollars worth of chips on his side of the board.
After that, the rancher grew suddenly careless. He was becoming bored with the game, perhaps. There was too much effort for too little return. At any rate, he made a large bet against which John had to stake his winnings and month’s pay in order to see the cards, and, when those cards were exposed, the card in the hole, which Carver could have sworn was a jack, turned out to be a ten, and a miserable two pair was thus converted into a full house. How it had happened that he made this mistake, John Carver could not see.
Carver left the table and excused himself while he went after more money. And on the way he decided that, after all, it was a good thing. Following this victory, the rancher would have a taste for the game. He could be drained far dryer than if he did nothing but lose.
In the cottage, he stole into his bedroom and deftly, noiselessly extracted from the top bureau drawer the money that his wife had placed there—all his daughter’s pay for the month, and all of the money that he himself had made, by small peculation here and there while handling the funds for the repair work on the ranch. It made no difference. In the morning the store would not only be replaced, it would be redoubled and more than redoubled.
When he returned to the ranch house, he found Kenyon yawning and talking of bed, and it required great dexterity for him to lead the rancher back to the game. In that, however, he succeeded, and luck, of course, again favored him. The money flowed smoothly into his hands, its steady course only halting infrequently, when Kenyon was dealing. An hour passed in this fashion before the big man became nervous again. And now, as before, he wagered the entire sum that Carver could muster.
This time there could be no mistake. That deck was a perfectly stacked one. He knew where every card lay. And the buried card of Kenyon’s hand was a queen of hearts. In addition, there were exposed in that hand a king of clubs, a king of spades, a nine and a seven of diamonds. His own hand consisted of an ace in the hole and an ace exposed, with nothing else of the slightest value. But, when he called the big bet that Kenyon shoved to the center of the table, the buried card had been mysteriously altered from a queen of hearts to a king of the same suit—and three of a kind certainly beat a pair.
For a time he leaned staring at the result of the hand, utterly baffled. There was only one way in which that card could have been changed, and that was by the most consummate dexterity in palming. He raised his glance to the face of his host and stared fixedly. Had he been tricked and duped by a cardsharper? It seemed impossible. The whole course of the evening’s play went to show that the rancher was utterly indifferent to victory or defeat, so far as the money was concerned. It was only the thrill of the playing of the hands that amused him. A rich man, decided John Carver, could well enjoy that thrill. Yes, impossible though it seemed, it must be that his eye had simply failed him. The queen of hearts had not fallen. It had been the king instead, just as it had been exposed. The certain proof that there had been no crookedness lay in the calm ease and steadiness with which the winner met his eye.
Afterward, when he had managed to mutter a half-stifled good night, and had escaped from the big house, John Carver paused with the cool of the night air against his face and attempted to see a way out of the dilemma. His wife must not waken in the morning and find their hoard gone. That much was plain. But how could he replace what he had lost?
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was the endeavor to answer that problem that brought him, hardly a half hour later, to the house of Jerry Swain. Once before, he had entered that house by stealth and at night. Now he entered again and, as before, went straight up to the room of Jerry Jr.
A shaft of pale moon shine struck across from the window and fell upon the bed of the sleeper. John Carver wakened his man by touching his foot and stifled the exclamation with which Jerry wakened by presenting a revolver under his nose.
“Maybe you think,” he began bluntly “that I’ve forgot how you lied to me and fell down on me a month back at the sale. But I ain’t forgot. I’ve come now to remind you.”
It was a moment before the sleep cleared from the brain of Jerry, and the hysteria, also. He managed to stammer: “I … I’ve been wanting to explain ever since.”
“And why haven’t you?” asked John Carver. He eyed the other with cold displeasure. Only the fact that the past month had been the happiest one in years had kept him from acting upon his hatred for Jerry Jr. And now he regarded Jerry with the roving glance of one who seeks out the place where he will strike the blow.
“I was afraid,” Jerry said, trembling visibly, “that if I came to talk to you, you’d …”
“I’d start making a gun talk, instead, eh? And maybe I would’ve … and that’s what I ought to do now. But the matter of fact is that I’ve made up my mind to change things around, Swain. Instead of you blackmailing me, I’m going to stick you up for a little hard cash. Swain, I’m not going to drain you dry the way that you’ve done me more’n once. I’m only going to ask you for a hundred and forty-five dollars. That’s what I’ve got to have, and that’s what I’m going to get out of you.”
Jerry Swain swallowed twice. Then he managed to gasp, “John, I swear to heaven I haven’t that much money.”
“Then get it from your father.”
“From my father!” His voice raised. It seemed that his hair stood up at the very thought. “Why, he’d kill me if he found me out trying to steal.”
“Would he? Then he’d save me a job that I’m apt to have on my hands. And, whether he’d kill you or not, Swain, I’ll have that money, or else you’ll talk to me right here and now.”
He was in a black fury. It set his voice shaking and quavering. And the eyes of Jerry rolled back in his head in his anguish of fear.
“I’ve got twenty dollars, Carver,” he gasped. “That’s all I’ve got. There’s no way I can get any more unless I have the key to my father’s safe downstairs. And I can’t get that. He keeps it with him day and night.”
“Gimme the twenty,” commanded Carver.
Jerry climbed from the bed, produced the money, and handed it over.
“It was the limit that my father put on the bidding that kept me from buying the place. You got to know that I’m telling you the truth when I tell you that, Carver. Besides, you’re not such a fool as to get me out of the way. If I’m gone, your last chance to have enough money to retire on is gone, becau
se Mary will have to marry some poor man.”
“Is Timothy Kenyon poor?” asked the other.
There was a gasp and a start from Jerry Swain. Only the day before his father had told him with bitter and biting scorn that some other man would win Mary Carver unless he acted quickly. And, in spite of his dread of the girl’s father, he had come within an ace of riding over to the familiar place.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“I mean what I say. He’s acting mighty kind and smooth to all of us, Jerry. What’s the reason for it? No reason that we can figure out except that he’s made up his mind that he wants to marry our girl.”
“It can’t … How does she like him?” muttered the wretched Jerry.
“She sure likes him fine … a thousand times better than she ever liked you, Swain. He’s a man, and she likes him for that.” He continued, after a moment’s pause to allow his contempt to sink into the other, “I’m going back now, Swain. I see it ain’t any use trying to get you to squeeze money out of your old man, because, even if you’re afraid of death … and the Lord knows I never seen one that was more afraid … you’re worse afraid of him. I’m not going to waste time trying to collect back the thousands that you owe me. But one of these days, Jerry, we’re sure going to have an accounting, unless you and Mary should happen to hook up together. You write that down inside that head of yours and keep thinking about it until I see you again. So long.”
It was the sight of the twenty dollars in his hand that changed the mind of John Carver, so that he began to think to himself: There is still a way out before I collect in full from Jerry Swain. To that thought, and to the feeling that, after all, Jerry might be destined to marry Mary Carver and bring prosperity to the family, the rich rancher’s son owed his life.