by Max Brand
Slowly he wiped off the perspiration. His own image from the mirror above the bureau looked forth at him, and he saw a drawn, anguished face.
And, as a matter of fact, he was confident that he was signing his death warrant as he drew out his Colt and placed it on the paper and the money below the paper. Mrs. Neilan would understand when she saw it. At least she would understand what a thousand good men in the southland could have told her before—that the word of Happy Jack was as good as gold.
Once more he turned toward the door of the room, and this time he passed through it, walking strangely light without the weight of the gun at his hip. But there was no other way. To be sure, once outside the house he would have to run the gantlet of Sandy Crisp and whatever men Sandy might have with him. But, if he wished to keep his plighted word, he dared not carry a weapon. His fingers would be too practiced in the art of whipping it forth, and in time of need they would act without his volition. The gun would suddenly appear in his hand and would be discharged before conscience and memory could stop him. Indeed, all the perils that he had previously faced in his life would be nothing compared with the troubles to which the good old woman had consigned him with the promise that she had exacted.
And so, going thoughtfully, and down-headed, along the hall, quite heedless now of the noise that his footsteps made—that being the difference between guilt and an innocent mind—he was quite unaware of a door swinging softly ajar behind him. It was not until he heard the voice, raised barely above a whisper, that he turned.
It was Mary Thomas, a figure to be guessed at rather than seen. Behind her, the shaded lamp, further obscured by the back of a chair pushed up against it, sent a broad film of light straight up toward the ceiling. But the radiance did not reach to her. It was rather the background against which she stood out.
The first thing he noted was the white gesture of her hand waving him toward her. The second thing he saw was that she had not prepared to retire. And that item might mean anything. It might be explained, perhaps, by the curious manner in which she had watched him all through the earlier part of the evening. He went to her at once, for there was no graceful escape.
“I knew it would be this way,” she said, as soon as he was close enough. “But you mustn’t do it. Come in here a moment.”
He obeyed without a word. She closed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock. And now, as she faced him, there was light enough to show her eyes dancing with excitement.
“You were going to leave?” she said at once. “You were going to leave forever?”
He hesitated. How much did she know?
“I think I understand,” she said. “It was either one of two ways. You made a bet that you could do this cruel thing. Or else you were simply hungry and decided to do a bit of acting for the sake of a Christmas dinner.”
He rubbed his big, bony knuckles across his chin and smiled at her rather foolishly.
“When did you find out?” he asked
She did not understand. “It was perfectly clear to anyone with an eye to see. It was perfectly clear the moment you refused to open the packages that they gave you for Christmas. You wouldn’t open them simply because they didn’t belong to you.”
“Hmm,” muttered the wanderer. “If I’d thought about it, I would have opened ’em.”
She shook her head, still smiling, still keeping back something whose suppression excited her.
“You’ve been listening for me to start out?”
“I heard you when you left your room before. But I was too late to stop you. I was afraid then that you had gone for good. But I peeked into your room and saw your coat, so I was sure that you had simply gone out for walk. I wanted to talk to you, you see? That’s why I’ve been waiting and watching, and all the time the idea has been growing.”
“Fire it at me,” Happy Jack said. “I’m tolerable open to good ideas all the time.”
“It’s simply this, that if you go away now, you’ll break Missus Neilan’s heart. I know her. She isn’t very well, and she isn’t very strong. Such a shock as this would be about the end, I think.”
“I don’t quite follow the drift,” said Happy Jack. “You know I ain’t Johnny, and yet you seem to be figuring that I had ought to stay here?”
“Why not?” she said with a wide gesture. “Why not? Don’t you like the place?”
“But what’s that got to do with it? It ain’t mine, lady.”
“It has everything to do with it. You can have it if you want it.”
He gaped at her.
“How far away is your own country, the place where people know you?”
“Oh, around about five days’ stiff riding, I guess.”
She clapped her hands, triumphant. “Then it’s settled. You’ll stay.”
“Miss Thomas,” he said soberly, “this sure is queer talk.”
“It’s right talk and true talk. No matter what made you come here, Providence was behind it. It was intended for the best. This is the place you belong. Johnny is dead. Everyone really knows that … everyone except the old folks. And they’ll never believe. So let them have their belief, because they’d die without it. Let them have it and think that you are he.”
“Do you think I’m lowdown enough to do a thing like that?”
“No. I think you’re big and fine enough to do it. Oh, I know you’re honest, and that it goes against the grain to think of such a thing as that which I suggest. But at bottom, isn’t it a bit of charity?”
“Things that are built up on lies, lady, don’t usually last particular long, from what I’ve seen. Some folks may call it charity, and some folks may call it another thing … but a lie is pretty apt to be a lie, and that’s an end to it.”
He shook his head with such finality that the argument seemed ended on the spot. And still she persisted.
“The ranch has been like a graveyard. There has never been a smile or a laugh, so far as I can remember, until tonight. There has been no kindness, no thought for others, until you came. Oh, this evening it seemed to me that you were working a miracle. And that’s why I’m asking you to stay.”
“And you ain’t joking?”
“Joking? I tell you in all seriousness that I really think it’s a matter of life or death to them. Mister Neilan has had no interest in life for years, and Missus Neilan has simply been living in the hope that Johnny would come back. And if you disappoint her, I know the effect. It will be murder, just as certainly as though you pressed a revolver against her temple and fired!”
He wavered. “Is it square?” he said. “Is it square to even think about playing a trick like that?”
“Not for some people. But for you, yes. Because you’re honest.”
“Are you sure of that?” he asked.
“Hasn’t every word you’ve said to me gone to prove it?”
She had stepped close to him while she spoke, and now she made a gesture of such lasting trust in him, and smiled up at him so perilously near, that the sense of her went to the brain of Happy Jack and made his heart leap.
“I’m going to show you how much I’m worth a trust like that,” he said at length. “Will you come with me for a minute?”
He led the way to his own room. He opened the door. He pointed to the telltale pile of money on top of the bureau with the long revolver weighing it down.
She went close to examine it, made sure of what it was, and then started back with a soft exclamation of dismay. And the frightened eyes that she turned on Happy Jack hurt the big man more than a blow.
“You see how it is, and you see how much I can be trusted,” he said.
“That’s what you came for?”
“Yep. That’s what I came for.”
“Someone else put it into your mind. You never thought of it by yourself.”
“How come you figure that?”
/>
“Why, simply because you couldn’t go through with it. You did all the hard part of the work, and then, when you had merely to walk out of the house with the money, you stopped and left it there. Why, if I thought you were honest and to be trusted before, I know it now.”
Happy Jack shook his head. Such reasoning as this was beyond him.
“Besides,” she was saying suddenly, “it isn’t only for the sake of the old folks. I’m partly selfish about it. I’ve dreaded every vacation, because every vacation brought me back to the ranch. But if there were … were a human being here who knew how to smile … why, it would be wonderful to come back to the mountains, because I love them.”
Happy Jack caught his breath. Her color had mounted as she spoke. And, though she could never be really beautiful, she was so pretty at that moment, so clear of eye, so wonderfully fresh in her young womanhood, that Happy Jack believed until that moment he had never known a woman worth looking at.
“I got few rules to live by,” he said after a moment of staring at her, “but one of ’em is never to refuse a girl what she asks for. And if you really mean what you say …”
“I’ll shake on it,” broke in Mary Thomas.
He took her hand and pressed it gently.
IX
The bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Neilan was on the first floor of the house with a big window opening onto the veranda, and the wife had barely finished detailing to her smiling husband the account of her interview with the wanderer, when a light tapping came against that window.
“How come anybody to be rapping at the window?” growled John Neilan. “And at this time of night!”
“It’s only the wind shaking the pane,” said his wife. “There can’t be anyone out there in the storm.”
“Hark at that! There is someone.”
It was unmistakable this time—three strong taps, equally spaced—and John Neilan, slipping out of bed into a capacious bathrobe, tucked his old feet into slippers and picked up the Colt that he always kept at hand near his bedside.
“John,” cautioned Mrs. Neilan, “you aren’t going to answer that knock with a gun in your hand?”
“Why not?”
“It’s Christmas Day! That’s why. No good will come of it. I know. Surely this day of all days is for gentleness.”
“Gentleness … stuff!” grunted Neilan.
He went to the window and cast it up suddenly, at the same time stepping to one side in case some enemy attempted a direct attack by leaping into the room. But there appeared at the window the gray head of Chip Flinders, the oldest of their cowpunchers. He was obviously in a state of the most intense alarm, his jaw set hard and his eyes glancing hastily from side to side.
“What fool business is this?” Neilan grumbled.
“I didn’t dare come around the front way,” said Chip Flinders, his voice husky with fear. “He might’ve seen me.”
“Who might have seen you?”
“Him,” and he pointed above his head.
The rancher regarded Chip a moment from beneath the shadow of scowling brows. “Come in,” he growled at length.
And Chip stepped through the window and stood turning his hat uneasily in his hands and looking from side to side at the carpet, so as to avoid looking at Mrs. Neilan, who was sitting bolt erect in the bed, hugging a cloak around her shoulders.
“Now,” said the rancher, “talk straight and talk quick. You ain’t the kind to come around packing fool yarns to me, Chip. What’s got into your head tonight?”
“I figured I knew him the minute I clapped eyes on him,” said the cowpuncher hurriedly, “but I couldn’t place him, and I began figuring hard. But the harder I figured, the farther away I stayed from getting at him. I was plumb in bed and lying there almost asleep when it popped into my head. I seen the whole thing over again, and I knew him.”
“Knew who, idiot? Who are you talking about?”
“Him that calls himself your son. And he’s no more your son than I am.”
There was a faint cry of alarm from the bed.
“It isn’t true,” Mrs. Neilan moaned. “I tell you, John, I’d swear it’s Johnny. He … he’s promised never again to use a gun just because I asked him. Isn’t that proof?”
Chip Flinders suddenly began to laugh. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “You mean to say Happy Jack said he wouldn’t pull a gun again in a fight? Why, lady, he could just about as soon stop drawing his breath as stop drawing his gun. His Colt is his third hand. It’s his brains. Down south, they say he does his thinking with it.”
“Happy Jack?” Neilan said. “You call him Happy Jack?”
“Don’t listen to him, John,” pleaded the wife. “Ah, I knew this would bring bad luck! But don’t talk to him any longer!”
“Hush up,” growled Neilan. “I’m going to get at the truth of this. Maybe Johnny went by the name of Happy Jack down south. What of it?”
Chip Flinders shook his head.
“Tell your story. Take your time,” Neilan insisted. “I’ll wait and listen patient till you’re all through. This is tolerable important, Chip. If you’re wrong, you’re done with me. If you’re right, I’ll see that you don’t lose none by opening my eyes to an impostor. Now take a breath and get your brain to working and start in.”
Chip Flinders obeyed these instructions to the letter, bowed his head a moment in thought, and then looked up.
“You remember when I got restive about five years back?” he said.
“The time you quit and went south to do some prospecting?”
“Sure. That’s the time.”
“It was a fool thing to do. You came back broke … nothing left of all your savings.”
“Right enough. I come back broke, but I sure got my money’s worth in experiences.”
“When a gent’s got gray hair, it’s time for him to let somebody else do the collecting of experiences.”
“Maybe. But this experience that I had is sure something you can be glad of, Mister Neilan.”
“Huh,” grunted the rancher. “Go ahead, and I’ll see.”
“It was down in the town of Lesterville,” began Chip Flinders. “I’d made a little stake up working a vein that pinched out on me just when I thought I’d struck it sure enough rich. I come down into Lesterville and put eight hundred in the bank, which was a tidy little stake and would see me get all fixed and started for another flyer at the mountains and the mines. Left me about three hundred dollars, and I started out to liquor up and have a large time, generally and all around.
“Which I was doing pretty good in a small way when there was a bunch of shooting started in town, and a lot of folks begun to rear and tear around. And pretty soon we got word that Bill Tucker’s gang had just passed through, stuck up the cashier in the bank, and cleaned out the safes with a dust cloth. He didn’t leave a penny behind him.
“I ain’t a fighting man, but when I heard that and figured all was gone up in smoke, it sure hit me hard. I run out and tossed a saddle on my bronc and tore around and got to the center of town in time to join in with the posse that was starting. Sheriff Brown was running the party. I guess you’ve heard about Brown even away up here … but down there he still is pretty much looked up to. He’d a pile rather fight than eat. I seen him sitting his horse and giving directions about how some of the boys should start in one direction and some should start in another. But every now and then he’d stop and turn around and ask a question of a gent that was sitting a horse beside him, like he wanted to have that gent check up on what he was doing and say it was all right.
“It seemed to me pretty queer that a man like Brown would have to ask advice of anybody, even a judge, so I took a good look at the stranger. And they was a lot to see. He was only a kid, not much more than twenty, I guess. But he was sure built for keeps. Big wide shoulders and a thick chest, and always gri
nning and laughing and treating this like it was the beginning of a fine party. I turned to a gent nearby me, and I asked him who that was.
“‘You don’t know him?’ he says, turning around and looking at me sort of queer.
“‘No’ says I. ‘I sure don’t. Who is he?’
“‘Before this here party is over you’ll find out,’ he says. ‘That’s Happy Jack, and you can lay to it that the trail he makes Tucker run will be the hottest that skunk ever traveled over. And that’s the straight of it. That’s Happy Jack. A plumb nacheral fighting man, son. The kind you heard your dad talking about that used to frolic around in the days of ’49. Well, Happy Jack is a ringer for that kind. He makes a gun talk Spanish when he feels like it.’
“‘Regular killer?’ says I.
“‘Nope. Fighter. Not killer. He don’t fight to get notches on his gun.’
“Well, after that I sure watched Happy Jack close. When the sheriff was ready to start, he took most of us boys with him, but Happy Jack picked out half a dozen gents and rode off another way.
“I asked where he was going, and somebody told me that he was going to try to head off Tucker by a short cut across the mountains. But the gent that told me said they wasn’t no chance of him doing it, that short cut being plain murder on a horse.
“Anyway, Happy Jack started off and disappeared, and the rest of us buckled down and started to follow Sheriff Brown. We headed straight up a valley out of Lesterville. We rode hard, too, I’ll tell a man. They was fifty-two gents started that trail, by my way of counting. When he got up the valley, they was only eighteen left. I had that Molly pinto, and that was the only reason I was left in the running. Sheriff Brown sure used up horseflesh when he hit a trail.
“And it done him some good, too, for pretty soon, away off in the moonlight, when we rounded a hill, we seen Tucker’s men scooting away. When they seen us, they let out a yell that we could hear, the whole bunch of ’em, and they lit out as hard as they could ride. They was weighted down by a lot of gold. But our horses were all plumb fagged by the hard work they’d done already. First we lost ground, and then we picked it up. On the open we could run faster than Tucker’s men, but when it come to climbing, they sure had us beat.