Old Carver Ranch

by Max Brand

  The destination of Carver, as he rode hastily from the Swain house, was Porterville, and in Porterville he went to the gambling house of Will Jackson. On lucky evenings he had made twenty dollars, ere this, grow into far more than a hundred and fifty dollars. But this night all luck was against him. The losses that he had sustained in his play against Kenyon, he never for a moment attributed to the dexterity of his opponent, but rather to a display of blind chance. But the losses that he met in Will Jackson’s were unquestionably due to the manipulations of a sharper more skillful than he, for, with unspeakable bad fortune, the man who he picked as a gull who might be easily trimmed, turned out to be an expert dauber who dispatched John Carver’s wretched twenty dollars in five minutes’ play.

  A muttered curse was all that the loser could invest further in that game. He hastily left the table and mingled in the crowd around the roulette wheel as though about to wager there. As a matter of fact, he was only lingering in the gambling house until he could make sure who had won heavily during the night.

  The scrupulous honesty that he had built up during his eight years of patient labor and suffering had completely broken down under the shocks of this single evening’s misfortunes. He had determined to step definitely back into his role of the White Mask—for that night at least—and so regain what he had lost to Timothy Kenyon and enable himself to face his wife in the morning. His victim it was not hard to select. Just as every ball will, as a rule, show its belle, so every evening in a gambling hall is apt to produce one favorite of fortune who, so it seems, cannot lose. For one bright and brilliant evening he startles his fellows with a spectacular series of successes. Cards, roulette, faro—it makes no difference to what he turns his hand, he is invariably successful. The thrill of that evening plants in him the germs of a lasting fever from which he can never free himself so long as he lives, and the view of his performances inspires every onlooker with the hope that he, too, will someday have just such a run of luck and make his clean-up.

  On this occasion, in Will Jackson’s gambling house at Porterville, the favorite of fortune was a stalwart young rancher, no native of the district, but a stranger from the south, whose winnings were all the more stinging because the chances were small that he would give Porterville an opportunity to win back from him what it had lost. Carver waited until he had printed in his mind all the necessary means of identifying his man, not only through his features, but by the outlines of his body, which was even more important on a moonlight night.

  At length he left the hall and crossed the street, where he waited in the shadow of a wall until—for it was now 3:00 a.m. and even the most resolute gamblers were being worn out—the winner of the evening stepped out from the door of Will Jackson’s, followed by a shout of farewell that was half envious cordiality and half a groan.

  He took the saddle on a cow pony that stood under the shed to the left of the house, and trotted off down the street, to be quickly lost to view around the first turn. Then Carver ran to his own horse, mounted in haste, and pushed on in the same direction. He took a moderate pace until he was well out of Porterville, but then he spurred on at a sharp gallop, until the moon haze before him divided and the black form of the horseman he followed began to show through. The latter, as though feeling that the pursuer might be from Jackson’s with either a message or else something that he had forgotten, turned his horse halfway around and waited for Carver to come up as soon as his ear caught the rapid poundings of the horse in his rear.

  Carver had prepared his mask before. He now waited until he was comparatively close before he reached up under his hat and jerked loose the white handkerchief with great gaping eyeholes cut in it. At the same time, he saw that both hands of the winner of the evening were engaged, the one in holding his reins, the other in waving good-naturedly to the approaching messenger. He saw the white mask too late. His startled cry had hardly left his lips, and his hand no more than started to dart back for his gun, when Carver was drawing rein in a pungent cloud of dust beside him, and the long blue barrel of the robber’s gun was directed at him.

  He had little fighting spirit. Up went his hands. In a few seconds he was stripped of all plunderable property, and he submitted with only stifled curses while Carver tied his hands securely behind his back, made him dismount, secured his feet in the same fashion, and left him, gagged and helpless, by the roadside. In the morning he would be found, unless a stray and hungry wolf happened upon the victim. But Carver needed peace and quiet in which to go back to the ranch.

  He drove the horse of his victim far down the road. Then he turned in the opposite direction so that, if the plundered man had sat up to watch the direction of his flight, he would be able to draw no true deduction. Cutting across the fields, he struck back squarely toward the ranch.

  It had all been so ridiculously easy—it had all been so perfectly safe—that he found himself chuckling and shaking his head in wonder to think of the wretched years that he had spent in poverty and honesty. This was not only the way out of his present small dilemma; it was also the way in which he could start to build a comfortable small fortune. No one would ever suspect the honest laborer whose eight years of patient work in the immediate past had guaranteed him. No one would suspect him, and in the meantime he could slip out at night—not too often, not more often than once a month, say—and strike down a carefully chosen victim. Within a few years he would be a comparatively rich man. And then he might be able to buy the improved ranch from kindly Timothy Kenyon. Or, at the least, he could buy a partnership with the latter. So old Carver Ranch would be once more established in the family.

  He reached this point in his reflections and the home place at the same time. He had cut in from behind the house, and now he turned his mount loose, watched the cow pony obliterate all saddle marks with a luxurious, wallowing roll in the dust, and then started for the barn, carrying the saddle over his arm.

  Only one more thing he had to do, and that was to get quietly into his bed without attracting the attention of his wife. But, even if she wakened, he could simply explain that he had been up with an attack of insomnia. Meanwhile, he could safely count his spoils.

  Having hung the saddle on its peg, he sat down on his heels near the wall, spread the wallet upon his knee, and lit a match. The bills were laid out in a neat pile, packing the wallet thickly. Holding the match in his right hand, with the forefinger of his left he drew back the edges of the bills and counted. There was a thousand dollars—no, closer to two thousand dollars! It was a better haul than he had dared to hope. The second match burned out. He would wait for daylight before he made an exact count. He would only take the one hundred and forty dollars that he needed to replace his and his wife’s savings. He reached out a third match to scratch it against the board, and, as he did so, something like a shadow fell across him—if there could be such a thing as a shadow in the complete darkness. Or rather, it was a chill that struck out at him like a breath of cold wind that went through and through his spirit. And he knew that someone was standing directly behind him, and had been standing there watching his count of the money.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Never before had his mind traveled so swiftly through so short a space of time. If he did not scratch the match, the man behind him would guess that he was discovered and would attack to kill, no doubt. If he did scratch the match, he would be furnishing the light by which he might be shot. He decided on a compromise. He scratched the match, but, as it flared into light, he allowed it to tumble from his fingertips, and then he put it out on the ground by fumbling for it—cursing softly as though in vexation. All this was to throw the watcher off guard and make him wait for the lighting of the next match.

  But, the moment the match went out, the robber whirled and flattened himself sidewise along the floor, at the same time reaching for his gun. As he twisted to the side, he saw a huge indistinct form take shape in the darkness and fall from above him. The
revolver came smoothly forth into his hand, but, before he could twitch the muzzle up, the body above him struck. A great weight knocked the breath from his lungs. Then tearing hands, with a force such as seemed hardly human, caught at him. One ground into his throat and throttled him. Another seized his right wrist and, having crushed it in a pressure like a twisted vise, turned and seemed to be burning the flesh loose from the bones.

  The revolver slid out of his numbed fingers. There was a savage grunt of satisfaction above him, and then he was jerked to his feet. This time he could measure the height of his assailant. He was half paralyzed by the attack, but, as the hand relaxed from his throat and he was simply crushed back against the wall of the barn, an overmastering horror swept across his brain. The rumbling voice that snarled at him, the immense bulk and strength of the attacker—all pointed far back in his memory to a man who would be quite capable of a brute ferocity such as this, and who would also have a motive for such an attack.

  “Tom Keene!” he stammered. “Tom Keene … good Lord!”

  “Yes,” gasped the conqueror, “Tom Keene.”

  After that, stout John Carver was wet clay to be molded as Tom wished. The conviction of Tom Keene as the White Mask had been sufficient to put a headline in every paper in the state. But eight years was a long time, and the news of the pardon was carried only in small items that were not copied as yet in the little Porterville weekly sheet. To Carver, the big man was presented as one who had escaped from prison. If so, he would be careless of life and death, and, if he did not kill instantly, it was because he wished to torment his victim before the end.

  A twist of rope, handled with wonderful dexterity, considering the dark, had rendered the hands of Carver helpless. Now a match was scratched, and, shielded in two huge hands, the light was thrown in a bright focus upon the face of the cringing rancher. Then a lantern was picked from the wall and lit. No sooner had the flame steadied in the chimney and the wide circle of light struck out around it, than Carver groaned in wonder and in dismay, for he saw before him not the handsome, black-bearded face of Tom Keene, but the white and worn features of Timothy Kenyon. And the whole strange truth burst upon the brain of Carver.

  “I thought they’d strung it out … almost to a life sentence,” he gasped.

  “They did. But then I was pardoned. You should follow the newspapers more closely, Carver.”

  “I’ve been blind … blind,” murmured Carver. And he watched Tom Keene scoop up the fallen wallet and the scattered bills. The big fingers of the man crushed home on the handful of money.

  “Look here. I’ve got you as sure as I’ve got this money, Carver. Do you see?”

  Carver nodded. It was beginning to dawn upon him that his life was not immediately threatened. He caught at the fresh hope silently. Or was it the prison that Keene was threatening? That must be it.

  “I’m going to take this wallet and all that’s in it into the house,” he said. “There I’m going to write out a full statement of everything that’s happened this evening. Then I shall seal the wallet with my statement and send it to my lawyer. With it go instructions to open the wallet if I should die in the near future. You understand, Carver? I’m not going to use this to put you in jail. It’s simply a club that hangs over your head if you displease me. And, if you attempt to get rid of the danger by simply putting me out of the way, then you cut the string that drops the club on your head. Is that clear?”

  Carver nodded. But still his eye was wild and wandering. “It’s the same voice … and the same bulk … but you talk different. You talk like a schooled man, Keene.”

  “I’ve been schooled,” Tom said, “in a place where one remembers one’s lessons for a long time. But if you doubt that I’m Tom Keene, I’ll tell you about the hillside where you lay after I shot you off the horse and …”

  Carver put up his hand, and his tormented glance wandered from side to side, dreading that he might be overheard. “But you can’t keep the money, Keene,” he protested. “If you do, it makes you a partner in the crime …”

  “I’ll find out tomorrow who you robbed, and I’ll send him the exact amount he lost in fresh new bills. That clears me. In the meantime, Carver, you’re my man. I’ve waited a month for this. I’ve managed to smile in your dog’s face while I waited. But tonight the chance came. Did you think it was luck that changed the queen of hearts into the king of that suit? Bah, you fool. Your hands were so stiff that a child could have followed your tricks. And when I cleaned you out, do you think it was because I wanted the miserable money? No. It was to make you do exactly what you did … go out to take the coin at the point of a gun.”

  Carver turned livid with fear and hatred, but he could not speak. He saw with what farsighted ease he had been trapped, and the more clearly he saw it, the more he dreaded the man he had injured so profoundly.

  “I’ve told you what I want to tell you,” said Tom. “Now you’re free to go back to your bed. But mind you, Carver, I’m keeping this blow ready to drop. If you please me, you may go along pretty much the way you have been going. If you displease me, I send you up for robbery on the highway. And, to a man of your age, that means life. Now get out of my sight.”

  The other felt the touch of the knife that severed the ropes that bound his hands, and then he turned and stumbled for the door of the barn. Once in the outer night, the touch of the cooling wind struck his face like an inspiration. He hesitated, on the verge of turning to attack the big man even with his bare hands. But a moment of afterthought, and the burning of the bruised flesh on his wrist where the grip of Tom Keene had lain, made him change his mind. He continued toward the cottage, with the soft, deep laughter of Tom Keene mocking him from the darkness.

  Carver knew not what lay before him. There were a thousand possibilities of torment with which the big man could make his days an agony. So full was he of the dread of the future that all smaller fears were as nothing.

  He stumbled into his room. Instantly his wife was awake, and she turned up the flame of the night lamp that burned near the head of her bed. It showed her the face of her husband obscured by a gray mask of fear, his eyes glaring, his mouth compressed with his anguish.

  “John, dear,” she breathed. “What in heaven … why, John …?”

  The tenderness and the fear in her voice melted the last particle of his self-restraint. He dropped on his knees beside the bed and buried his face in the work-worn hands that she held out to pity him. “Lizzie,” he said, “I got to talk. I got to talk. The whole truth is out. The whole truth.”

  “What?”

  She started to a sitting posture on the edge of the bed, and she forced him to look up at her. So intent were they in their agony that they did not see the white-shrouded form of Mary coming to the door, for she had been roused by the noisy entrance of her father. She would have drawn back at once, but, as she turned away, she heard the next speech of her father, and it froze her where she stood.

  It was impossible for Carver to tell the story slowly. It had to burst out in one heart-tearing sentence: “I lost all we made last month to Kenyon at cards, because that devil cheated … and then I went out and robbed a man to get it back, and, when I come home, Kenyon seen me with the money, and he has it now.”

  Mary Carver leaned against the wall, her head swimming.

  “This Kenyon, he’s been laying for us,” went on John Carver. “He hates us, Lizzie. And he’s been waiting till he could get me in his hand. You’ll see a change in him tomorrow. He knows that he can send me up for the rest of my life. And you’ll see a change in him. He can treat us like dogs from now on and … Lizzie, ain’t you going to even look at me?”

  “Oh, Lord,” moaned the poor woman, “what have I done to deserve all this?”

  Mary Carver stole away to her own room and sank on the floor where the moon shine fell through her window and there she prayed. She did not hear the answer of h
er father to Elizabeth Carver.

  “It’s a curse come on us,” John Carver said, “for what we done to Keene.”

  The wife shrank away as though the words stung her to the quick.

  “What has he to do with it?” she demanded fiercely. “And why d’you have to stir up all the torment in our lives and make us look at it this night? Ain’t what you’ve just told me enough? But it makes my head go around like a windmill. The Lord alone knows what he gains by being able to keep the whip hand over you. D’you mean, John, that he’s been kind to us all this month only waiting to …?”

  “He’s Tom Keene,” the husband said heavily.

  “Who is Tom Keene? John, what’s happened to you? Are your wits all gone? Who is Tom Keene?” She had risen now. She leaned above him and clutched his shoulders, shaking him as a teacher shakes a small boy to rouse his brain.

  “It’s Kenyon, don’t you see?” he answered. He staggered to his feet and clumped over to sit inertly in a chair. “Don’t you foller it, mother? Tom Keene … Timothy Kenyon? He got that white hair in the prison, and then he was pardoned.”

  A shrill moan from Elizabeth Carver stopped him. She had collapsed upon the bed with her face buried in her arms. And in this fashion and without changing their positions they lay and waited and waited while the night grew old and the deadly dawn light began to grow beyond the eastern windows.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  There was one part of his bargain upon which Tom Keene had not counted, and this was revealed to him in the morning. His sleep had been short but unutterably sweet during the close of that eventful night, and he wakened to the daylight realization that the man and woman who had sent him to prison were now in the hollow of his hand. Just how he should dispose of them, he did not know. What immediately confronted him as a problem was the best method of extracting the maximum pain from them. With this in his mind, he bathed and dressed slowly.