by Max Brand
“Barney Dwyer!” he shrieked. “I’ve caught Barney! Hurry!”
With one hand, Barney lifted the wriggling youngster by the nape of the neck. The terrible grasp of the other hand he laid on the wrist of the boy, who was trying to pull his grip loose. But he was afraid to use his strength. Even the iron-hard bones of grown men were apt to snap under his hold. Therefore he went gingerly about the work of detaching the grip of the boy.
And the youngster yelled louder than ever.
Here at last came the red mare, though late. And Barney could see that she limped. He was horrified. He looked again, and he saw that an iron band had been hammered into place around her left foreleg. It jounced up and down and made her gallop shorten to a hobble. While behind her, led by her going, streamed the head of the mob, rushing straight down upon Barney Dwyer.
II
Sweat broke out on the face of Barney Dwyer. He groaned to the clinging weight of the boy: “Let me go. I’ll give you a good .22 rifle, if you’ll let go . . . I don’t want to hurt you.”
The boy glanced up at him with a fierce joy. “I’ve got Barney! Hurry!” he shrieked.
The people in the head of the mob came, without shame disturbing them. And what a mob. There were young men dashing at the head of it, and when they saw Barney, they gave tongue like dogs, and they made spy-hops into the air, like rabbits running from a foe. Behind them came children, grown men of dignity, and those people who abandon their dignity the last of any in a city—the girls of marriageable age, who usually walk with a conscious slowness, looking straight before them, aware with every nerve of the eyes of men. But even these were in the outskirts of the crowd, and so were the elder matrons, picking up their skirts in front of their fat knees and laughing and panting and blushing with the speed of their running.
“Let me go!” groaned Barney, more desperately than ever, and putting forth a little more of his strength, he plucked the boy from him.
The red mare was there, but her coming was too late. He could not leap into the saddle and ride her away, as a dead leaf rides an autumn gale. Not while that loop of iron was rattling up and down along her foreleg, threatening to lame her.
And directly behind her came the crowd. It spilled around Barney. He looked up from the agony of his embarrassment and saw that the wicked sheriff remained in the rear window of the hotel and laughed, and from that window, the snaky length of the rope still dangled in the air, to betray the means of his retreat.
Instantly he felt that he had made a fool of himself, and he prayed with all of his heart that the word of this might not suddenly be carried to Sue Jones, so that she would be forced to smile faintly and sadly, as he had seen her smiling more than once already. She could always forgive him for his follies; she always would. But that made the pain no less.
They were all about him, the mob. The freckle-faced boy of the fishing rod was dancing up and down, laughing at a furious rate, clapping his hands together.
Some of the people had cameras. They began to call out to one another to get out of the way. They began to yell out and exclaim.
A big man came laboring up among the last. He was white, a cellar white, a prison white, and he was patched with the red of effort. He wore a blue suit and yellow-spotted, blue silk-necktie. He had spats over his low shoes. He had a golden watch chain draped across the large swell of his stomach.
He came through the rest like a great, old-fashioned galleon that rides slowly, staggering among the swift waves. He panted exceedingly, poking before him with a polished cane in order to clear the way. When he was near enough he put a fat, wet hand upon the shoulder of Barney Dwyer.
“Came here . . . all the way . . . got news . . . good news . . . lucky boy,” he said.
He really spoke as one capable of bestowing benefits. And the other people nearby actually cleared a circle and pushed back one against the other. They acted as though they knew that something more than curiosity had brought this man, at least. And they contented themselves with exclaiming noisily and with lifting their cameras to get better angles on Barney.
His embarrassment rose to enormous proportions.
The fat man in the blue suit and the silken shirt took off his hat. He mopped the wet-and-rosy baldness of his head with one hand, and with the hat made eloquent gestures.
“Lucky, lucky boy,” he said. “I’m from the Armitages Vaudeville Circuit. I’m a booking agent from them. I’m Isaac Baldwin. I’ve come to give you a contract . . . a good, fat contract. No more punching of cows at ten dollars a week. I’m offering you a contract signed on the line for a hundred dollars a week for a whole year. I’m offering you a fortune, Barney Dwyer!”
The mention of such a huge salary made other people speechless. Even the women forgot to snap photographs. Generally $1 a day was not bad pay on a ranch during many seasons of the year, and how many cowpunchers worked out the winter months merely for board?
Isaac Baldwin went on: “That’s not all. I’m offering you a whole lot more. I’m offering you two hundred . . . mind you . . . two hundred dollars a week, the instant that the charming girl who went through the dangers with you . . . two hundred dollars . . . the minute she puts her signature under yours. That’s more than ten thousand dollars a year. You can marry on that. Ten thousand dollars a year! Ha?”
“For what?” asked Barney, the mention of such a figure beginning to work like wildfire through his brain.
“For what? For simply walking on the stage and doing a little song and dance. I’ve got the song in my head already. I know the men to write it up and do the words, too. Bernie Falkenstein is the man.”
“But I can’t sing. I can’t dance,” said Barney.
“Anybody can sing and dance for ten thousand a year,” said Isaac Baldwin. “It don’t matter how you do it, does it? All the folks want to see is you and the girl. That’s all they wanna see. A little front-stage scene. Western. Mountains painted on the backdrop. You come in. Two guns. Sombrero, chaps, silver conchos, and all that. By God, I’ve got it better still. You lead the red mare with you. Everybody goes crazy. Everybody knows about you and the red mare. We’ll throw in fifty dollars a week for the red mare, too.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Barney said gently.
“Yeah, you know all right,” said Baldwin. “You mean you want more money? Whatcha call more money? I’m willing to talk business.”
Another man came rushing from the distance. He was as lean as Isaac Baldwin was fat. He had grey side whiskers that fluffed out at the side of his face. He was dressed so noisily that it was apparent that he did not care how many people looked at him.
“Don’t do no business with Baldwin! Don’t do no business with Ickey!” he yelled through his nose. His voice was a nasal trumpet. “I’m from the Morpheum! Wait till you hear from me! Wait till you hear our terms.”
He rushed right in through the crowd, and the people gave way before him, as though he were a plowshare and they the soil. He was talking money, and big money.
“Three hundred a week for you and the girl . . . a little song and dance number,” he said. “I’m Jakie Blattman from the Morpheum booking office. Don’t listen to them pikers of the Armitages! Listen to me. We’re your friends. We’re gonna do right by you.”
“That’s right. They’ll do you proper!” yelled fat Isaac Baldwin. “The pikers! I’m gonna offer you four hundred a week . . . and all expenses. You two and the mare, besides. The famous Barney Dwyer and his red mare. All in headlines. All in the biggest electric signs that we can get. And his sweetheart . . . Sue Jones . . . the sweetheart of the Western World. D’you hear me?”
“The dirty piker!” yelled Blattman. “I’m talkin’ to you, boy! Five hundred . . . six hundred dollars a week . . .”
“A thousand dollars a week!” screamed Isaac Baldwin, turning crimson and purple in his excitement and his vocal efforts.
“Don’t offer any more money,” said Barney. “People might come to look at us. But we don�
�t want to be looked at. Not for a million dollars a week. We couldn’t talk to you about business. I’m sorry.”
Baldwin turned furiously on Blattman. “You done it, Blattman!” he roared. “You spoiled everything. I could’ve got him on a cheap, quiet little contract, and you spoiled it all. You went and spoiled it, you did. A pig is what you are. Listen, Mister Dwyer,” he went on, whining to Barney, “I’m gonna make you our top offer for yourself and the mare and the girl . . . fifteen hundred dollars a week . . . which is fifty months’ salary as a cowpuncher for you every week of your life. Fifteen hundred dollars . . .”
“Sixteen hundred!” screamed Blattman.
“Not for sixteen million!” thundered Barney Dwyer. “Get out of here, will you?!”
At that unexpected lion’s roar, the two booking agents suddenly bolted off to a little distance, and the crowd shouldered them instantly to a greater distance still. The whole mob began to cheer.
“Barney Dwyer’s no cheapskate!” yelled one cowpuncher.
And they all cheered again, tumultuously.
Barney was glad of that cheering. He would have been gladder still to escape from them all, but he could not manage that while the mob was shouldering about him and the red mare was unable to run. So he leaned and laid his grasp on the round of iron that encircled her leg.
It was an ordinary horseshoe the toes of which had been hammered in to make the ring complete and enclose the slender cannon bone of the mare’s near foreleg.
“Now we’re gonna see!” exclaimed a big fellow with the soot of the blacksmith shop still on his forearms and with a swipe of it across his forehead. “Now we’re gonna see, and now we’re gonna be able to tell what liars some folks is that say that they seen him break a horseshoe.”
Barney already had his grip inside the heavy iron ring, and he tugged at the iron circle. The flesh of his fingers brushed against the bone vainly, until he heard the blacksmith’s remark, and when he perceived that there was a silly trickery about the whole thing and that this had been devised as a test for his strength, a fury boiled up in Barney Dwyer. He jerked. If that band were of iron, his hands and wrists became of steel and unbent it enough to draw it free from the leg entirely.
He faced the blacksmith and hurled the unbent shoe down into the dust before him. Barney Dwyer was utterly mindless of the shouts of joyous astonishment and of the long, amazed face of the blacksmith.
“It’s all right to make a fool of me,” exclaimed Barney, “but if you touch my horse again, I’ll see what your bones are made of!”
The big blacksmith said not a word. He merely bent and picked up the unbent horseshoe from the dust at his feet and then slunk away through the crowd.
Barney swung on high into the saddle. They scattered back before him. He was about to ride off when a tall fellow with an authoritative air came out from the side of the lane, where he had been watching critically. He had just suppressed a smile of satisfaction, and now he said: “Dwyer, I’m Parmelee of the Parmelee Ranch. Will you talk business with me?”
Barney instantly jumped down to the ground. There were scores of witnesses of the conversation that followed.
“Yes, Mister Parmelee?” said Barney.
“You know my ranch?” asked Robert Parmelee.
“No, sir,” Barney said respectfully.
“It’s up yonder,” said Parmelee. “Up there in the pass. Up there in the hole-in-the-wall country. D’you see?” He pointed toward the ragged, distant tide of the mountains.
“I see,” said Barney.
“I need a foreman to take charge for me,” said Parmelee. “Will you take the job? It’s not fifteen hundred dollars a week. It’s not more than a hundred and fifty a month . . . to start with.”
Barney glanced hastily around him and flushed. He wished that he might be alone with Parmelee to make the confession that followed. But the truth had to out. It was impossible for him to lie or to allow false ideas to be afloat about him.
Then he said, confronting the lean, shrewd face of Parmelee: “The fact is that I’m not fit to boss a gang, Mister Parmelee. I’m not a very good hand with a rope. And I don’t know how to handle cattle very well. I couldn’t take such a responsibility as running your ranch for you.”
At this, a little hush fell over the crowd. They knew Parmelee. A good many of them had eloquent reasons for knowing him. He himself grinned sourly.
“I’ll run my own ranch and handle my own cows,” he said. “But the men I need up there are men made of iron. And I see that you’re a fellow who can bend iron. That’s the fellow I want for a foreman. I have plenty of acres of grasslands. I have plenty of dirty rustlers for neighbors, too. I want ’punchers made of iron. I want ’punchers that Winchester bullets will bounce off. And I want a foreman that’s able to bend those iron men. Dwyer, don’t tell me whether or not you’re the right man. Just tell me that you’ll do your best.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Barney, staring. He was like a child forced to answer a teacher.
“Then come up there tomorrow. I’ll be waiting for you,” said Parmelee.
With that, he turned his back, abruptly, and was gone.
III
It was later in that day when Harris Fielding, lawyer extraordinaire, talked with his two clients in the Coffeeville jail. Adler and McGregor stood on one side of the steel grating, and little Harris Fielding walked impatiently up and down on the outer side of it. The guard stood in a far corner, only making sure that the visitor made no effort to pass anything into the hands of the accused men. It was an old frame building, that jail, as has been said, and yet it had an excellent reputation, for the cells were of the best bars of tool-proof steel, and the sheriff saw to it that the guards were of the best sort of fighting material.
Harris Fielding was terse and excited. As he walked up and down, he talked only while he was pacing in one direction. As he moved in the other, he silently fixed his glance on the long-white face, the white hair, the black eyes of Doc Adler—eyes that were perennially young, for evil was in him like a bright fountain of youth. Doc Adler sat in a chair, his head thrust forward by the crook in his back, while McGregor stood beside him, resting a hand on the back of the chair. McGregor did the talking, his face, hard as iron, never changing its expression no matter what he said.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” said Harris Fielding.
“At the price we pay you, you ought to have nothing but good news,” said McGregor.
“You think I can pull a man clear when he’s all in hell except one fingertip?” snapped Harris Fielding, shaking a bony finger at McGregor. Fuming cigarettes had stained that finger yellow; his complexion was almost the same hue.
“You’ve done it before,” said McGregor. “And you can do it again. What’s the good news?”
“Big Barney Dwyer refuses to press the case against you. He won’t go into the courtroom and give testimony against you,” said Harris Fielding.
Adler lifted his head like an old buzzard on a roost, smelling food. McGregor’s lip curled.
“He thinks that he can make us forget other things he’s done, eh? He’s turning yellow, is he?” said McGregor.
“I’m telling you the facts, not the motives,” answered Harris Fielding. “But from what the people say, there’s no fear in him. Now for my bad news, and it’s enough to overweigh the good news. Your man, Justis, the big fellow with the long, black hair, is ready to turn state’s evidence.”
“Justis?” said McGregor calmly. “Then get to him and stop him.”
“I’ve got to him,” said Harris Fielding. “I didn’t need to wait for orders to do that. I got to him, but I can’t stop him.”
“Money will stop him. Money will choke him . . . the traitor!” said McGregor.
“Money won’t stop him. I offered him fifty thousand dollars to keep his mouth shut. He won’t take a penny. He’s sick of you, he says, ever since Adler put a bullet through the shoulder of the girl. He says that a man who woul
d shoot a woman isn’t fit for murder, even. Adler did it, though. And Adler was your right-hand man. So Justis is through with you.”
“I’ve put money by the tens of thousands in the hands of Justis,” remarked McGregor, “and now he turns on me, the snake!”
“He says that you and Adler are a disgrace to the West,” said Harris Fielding. “He says that burning is what you ought to have and not hanging. He says that he’d like to light the fire that roasts you.”
McGregor looked down at Adler, and Adler looked up at McGregor.
“When I’m out of this,” said McGregor, “I’ll call on Mister Justis even before I call on Barney Dwyer.”
“Boys,” said Harris Fielding, pausing at last in his pacing and standing directly before the pair, “I don’t think that you’re going to get out.”
“We’re going to get out. I have some things to do before I die,” answered McGregor. “What’s the idea, Fielding? Trying to shake us down for a bigger retainer?”
“If I can’t do more than I’ve managed up to this point,” answered Fielding, “I’ll give back the retainer. I’m not trying to shake you down. I’m just telling you how near the rope you are.”
“You don’t see a way to save us? What about the judge? You said that you knew him.”
“I do. And he’s as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. But when I talked to him last night, he said that there’s nothing that he dares to try when the trial takes place. He says that the whole district around here thinks that Barney Dwyer is a hero.”
“Hero? He’s a half-wit,” said McGregor.
“He may be a little simple about some things,” answered Fielding. “He may be too trusting and good-natured, but I should say that he’s something more than a half-wit. At least, he’s beaten you and Adler . . . the wisest crooks in the whole range. He’s beaten you over and over.”
With one voice, both Adler and McGregor croaked: “Luck! He had some crazy luck. Beginners’ luck. He couldn’t sit in with us through the whole game. We’d have his scalp,” added McGregor.