by Max Brand
The young man hesitated, as though about to walk on despite this question, but the air of the sheriff was so gentle, so free from suspicion, and so mildly filled with mere curiosity, that he decided that he would not bolt. Upon such a trifle, why should he?
“I don’t know where I picked it up,” he said. “You know about paper, too, do you?”
“I just happen to,” said the sheriff. “You see, there was a cousin of mine that worked in a paper mill. He used to tell me a good deal about it. He used to tell me the kind of paper that the swells wrote on. Imagine what they spend in a year on stationery? And me . . . all I got is a ten-cent pad, and it’s lasted me for two years, already. The envelopes come to something extra, though.”
This naïve comment made Garlan smile again. “If you’re through with me . . .,” he began.
“Wait a minute,” said the sheriff, “I’m closin’ up the shop. The old woman will want to meet you, too.” Garlan bit his lip, grown a trifle uneasy, but the sheriff continued: “You take when a women gets on to forty plus, she begins to want to ask a pile of questions. She’s got a right to ask them, you might think. Talking is her habit, and it’s better to give her something to talk about than it is to hear her chattering about nothing, eh?”
It seemed to Garlan that the sheriff had described his own garrulity well enough. He explained that though he would like very well to stay and talk with the lady, it was imperative that he should go on his way. But Daniel Tilly took him by the arm.
“Suppose I sit down to the table tonight and say . . . ‘Maria, what d’you think happened today in the shop?’
“‘Drat the shop!’ she’ll say to me.
“‘A man came in,’ I’ll say. ‘And he’d found ten thousand dollars, and he brought it in to me to find the rightful owner.’
“‘Where is he now?’ Maria’ll say.
“‘He rode along,’ I’ll answer.
“‘And me without layin’ eyes on the only honest man on the range,’ she’ll answer me back. And torment me for weeks. You dunno the temper of Maria, son. She says there ain’t an honest man in the world, and not more than one honest woman . . . meanin’ herself, as I always suppose.”
With this odd harangue, he had brought Garlan to the back steps of the little house, and now he escorted him to the door, calling: “Maria! Oh, Maria!”
“I don’t think I can stop,” Garlan protested weakly for the hundredth time, but just then the screen door was jerked open. A tall, powerfully built woman stood on the threshold. She had the shoulders and the hands of a female Hercules.
“What you yammerin’ about, Danny?” she asked in a stern bass voice.
“Nothin’ in particular,” said the sheriff. “But I want you to meet a friend of mine that’s stayin’ for dinner. This here is Mister Gannon.”
“Hullo, Gannon,” said the big woman, giving Garlan a hand as hard as leather. “Come in and rest your feet. Where’d you drop from?”
“He was just ridin’ along over the range, Ma,” said the sheriff, “and dog-gone me if he didn’t find . . . You guess what he found. Sit down here, son.” He pushed Garlan into a chair near the kitchen stove that was covered with steaming pans and pots, making ready the evening meal.
“How can I guess what he found? Hot weather, is the only safe thing to say.”
“He found a wallet, Ma.”
“Anything in it?”
“Only ten thousand dollars,” said the sheriff, and waited with childish expectancy for an explosion of curiosity and amazement.
But Mrs. Tilly took the cover off a pan and stirred the contents while blowing away the steam to examine her cookery. “Well?” she said.
The sheriff looked at Garlan with obvious disappointment. “He brought that wallet right in to me,” he said. “That’s what he done. And you that say there ain’t such a thing as an honest man.”
Mrs. Tilly turned upon Garlan her manly brow, now darkened with gloomy thought. “There’s all kinds of honesty that goes to the makin’ up of this here world,” she philosophized, “and there’s all kinds of crookedness. There’s the crook that has got to be fed with money, and there’s the crook that has a taste for blood.”
“You can’t please a woman that’s made up her mind not to believe,” averred Daniel Tilly. “It’s like religion . . . the brain of a woman, I mean.” Then he added, as an afterthought: “But maybe this here wallet won’t be claimed, you know. Maybe there’s nobody that’ll put in a claim for it, and then it’ll all go back to you, youngster. That’s what I hope.”
“Do you?” said his better half. “Then you’re wrong. Because it’s gonna be claimed.”
“And after bein’ claimed, them that claim it will have to show their proofs. That’s a mite different, I take it, Maria. They gotta show their proofs.” He blinked his pale eyes and nodded, sniffing with pleasure at this rudimentary cunning of his.
“Is it a pigskin wallet?” asked Mrs. Tilly.
“Well, it happens to be that,” said the sheriff.
“A pigskin wallet . . . oldish and brownish-looking?” she went on with a side glance of suspicion at Garlan.
“Yes, it’s that,” replied Garlan.
“It belonged to John Dixon,” said Mrs. Tilly.
“Lord, Lord,” breathed the sheriff, and rose slowly from his chair. He seemed astounded by this discovery. “John Dixon’s,” he repeated.
“Any fool could guess that,” said Mrs. Tilly. “Reach me that poker, Danny.”
He obeyed, and she lifted a lid of the stove and roused the fire vigorously.
“All right,” said the sheriff. “Dog-gone, but I wonder if that’s true.”
“Of course it’s true,” she replied. “Who else would have that much stowed away in his pocket?”
“Mister Gannon, here, he thought that maybe it was the payroll of one of the lumber companies, or something like that,” suggested the sheriff.
Mrs. Tilly turned her keen, unfavoring scrutiny upon Garlan and shook her head. She still looked at Garlan, though her words appeared to be for her husband. “You know as well as me,” she declared, “that there ain’t a lumber company around these parts that sends out as big a payroll as that. And where’d you come from, young man, that you expected that there might be such a thing? Ten thousand dollars . . . at fifteen or twenty dollars a head. That’d be about five or six hundred men to pay off.”
“Might be a monthly payroll,” suggested the sheriff rather timidly.
“Bah!” said the woman. “G’wan into the dinin’ room and set down, after you’ve washed your hands. And mind you don’t forget to use the scrubbin’ brush on your fingernails. I ain’t gonna sit opposite those dirty paws of yours for another meal, Daniel Tilly!”
On the back porch they washed their hands with water which was generously warmed by Mrs. Tilly from her boiling kettle. The scrubbing brush was applied with vigor. They tramped back and settled themselves at the table, Garlan rather wondering what would come of this, and greatly uneasy. He could hardly tell how he had been railroaded into this house, this veritable stronghold of the law, which he was most bound to avoid. But here he was.
The meal was good in quality and copious in quantity. And Mrs. Tilly did most of the talking. The wallet, she announced, had been dropped in the woods by Genniver’s partner—he who had killed that infamous man and made off with the spoils.
“And yet,” said the sheriff, “you wouldn’t think that a crook like him would drop the wallet, would you?”
“Accidents will happen,” observed Mrs. Tilly, “and pretty soon the crook will turn up and claim the honor of havin’ killed Genniver, and he’ll want the reward. It’s eight thousand dollars, ain’t it?”
“Eight thousand,” agreed the sheriff. “There’s a fortune for you. Look at the Joe Green place. It sold last week for eight thousand. Good enough place for anybody to make a living off of it.”
Garlan looked curiously at them both.
“Aye,” said the sheriff’
s wife in greater gloom than ever. “Enough you’ve done of ridin’ and shootin’ and bein’ shot, you never brought home no prize like that, Danny Tilly. You’ve brought in the cheap men. You’ve never brought in the high-priced ones.”
They came to pie and coffee, and the sheriff excused himself. And, after a moment, he came back into the house with a canvas bag that rattled musically in his hand. Garlan could hardly avoid pushing back his chair and starting up; he was only partly able to control himself.
“And what would you think was in this bag, Maria?” the sheriff asked.
“Nuts and bolts for the fool work that you do in that fool shop,” she suggested. “I wish that lightnin’ would strike and burn it to the ground.”
“Well,” said Tilly, “I’ll show you that you’re wrong for once.” He opened the mouth of the sack and poured out upon the table in front of his wife a flood of rings, watches, and petty jewelry.
“The rest of the stage robbery!” exclaimed Mrs. Tilly, and she raised her head and looked fixedly at young Garlan.
VIII
The silence continued. The sheriff, in turn, lifted his head and regarded the boy.
Garlan, profoundly uncomfortable, saw that he was undone. He could not possibly explain away the appearance of the other loot together with the wallet of money. His right hand he kept beneath the shelter of the table. His left hand was used to raise the coffee cup slowly to his lips.
Mrs. Tilly pointed a big forefinger at him. “Don’t you be a young fool,” she warned him.
But the glance of Garlan flashed from her to the sheriff, and fixed itself steadily on the other’s face.
Daniel Tilly resumed his seat with an air of thought. “What’re we gonna do about it, Ma?” he asked.
“You gotta arrest him,” said Mrs. Tilly.
“Here at your own table?” suggested the sheriff.
The force of this argument she admitted, and sighed deeply. “If you don’t arrest him, you’re a ruined man, Danny,” she told him.
“Arrestin’ ain’t so easy,” said the sheriff. “I don’t want to be killed, and I don’t want to kill.”
He looked calmly upon Garlan, and the latter saw for the first time in those pale eyes the gray of a January cold, cold and sharp as steel. A door was opened in his brain; he understood that he had ridiculously underrated the man of the law. In fact, he had been as a child in the hands of the sheriff. He said suddenly: “I don’t care to see the thing through in the other way. If you want to arrest me . . . here you are.” And he held out his hands, the wrists close together.
“Here you are, Danny,” said Mrs. Tilly.
The sheriff shook his head. “It’s a trick with these gunfighters,” he said. “They got a gun tucked up the sleeve. You bring out the handcuffs, and they shake down the gun and put a couple of bullets through your brain before you can say Jack Robinson.”
“Are you pretending to be afraid of this boy?” asked the wife harshly.
“Maria,” said the sheriff slowly, “sometimes you aggravate me a mite.”
There appeared to be a quality in that voice, soft as it was, which even Maria respected. For now she jerked her shoulders back and sat erect, scowling bitterly at Garlan.
“Your arms will begin to ache, pretty quick,” suggested Daniel Tilly.
Garlan drew back his hands. He was more thoroughly puzzled than ever.
“We got a governor in this state,” said Tilly at last, “that is a sensible man. Something might be done with him, Ma.”
“I dunno. It looks pretty bad,” said Maria.
“Gimme some more coffee,” demanded the sheriff. He leaned his face upon both hands. “What you gonna do with yourself, Gannon?” he asked.
“I’m looking for work.”
“So . . . so.”
“How long would you hold down a job?” asked Mrs. Tilly with a sort of fierceness.
“I don’t know,” admitted Garlan.
“You don’t know!” snorted the sheriff’s wife. “He don’t know, Danny.”
“Lemme see your hands,” said the sheriff.
Garlan held them forth.
Over the palms and the inside of the fingers the sheriff rubbed his thumb carefully. “You never done any roping,” he said.
“No.”
“You never done any ranching.”
“No.”
“You never done any kind of manual labor.”
“No.”
“What sort of work do you want? Indoors?”
“I thought that I could ride, a little.”
“Bronco busting?”
“No, I’m not good enough for that.”
“But you can handle a gun, I suppose.”
“I’m not an expert,” said Garlan.
“Ah, well,” murmured the sheriff, “there you are, Maria. And what are we gonna do for him?”
“And what business is it of ours?” she asked. “Except that you oughta put him in jail pronto.”
“If you was sheriff,” said the other, “would you jail him?”
“I’d make your head swim, I’d do it so fast.”
“He’s turned in the loot, he’s turned in the wallet, and he’s killed big Genniver,” remarked the sheriff.
At this, Mrs. Tilley scowled more bitterly than ever at Garlan. As though she hated him because it had been possible to make so many good points in his favor.
“What put you in with Genniver in the first place?” asked the sheriff sympathetically.
“I can’t talk about that,” replied the boy.
“He’s proud, too,” said the sheriff to his wife. “This is the worst mess. It’s worse than having to put on the lathe a . . .”
“Leave the shop out of this,” replied his wife.
The doorbell rang. The sheriff cast a guilty glance at his guest and then went to answer the summons.
Garlan heard him say from the door: “Hullo, Georgia. Come along in and sit down and have some supper with us.”
A girl’s voice answered. She came into the dining room first, her riding quirt hanging from her wrist, her sombrero tilting back from her face as though she had been riding hard against the wind.
“Hullo, Missus Tilly.”
“Hullo, Georgia. Sit down. This here is a friend of Danny’s, by name of Gannon.” She added: “This is Georgia Dixon, Gannon.”
Garlan stood up, oddly weak in the knees. He knew the significance in the voice of his hostess, and that this was the daughter of the murdered man.
Georgia Dixon shook hands with him, looking at him keenly with wide, steady, blue eyes. Then she sat down in a chair. “Go on with your dinner, Danny,” she said. “I just want to talk to you for a minute.”
He took his place obediently, his pale eyes blinking at her. “What you want, Georgia?”
“Help,” she said.
“And what’s botherin’ you, honey?”
“Here’s a cup of coffee that ain’t gonna do you any harm,” suggested Mrs. Tilly.
She thrust a great, steaming cup before the girl and heaped in sugar. Georgia Dixon took off her riding gloves and showed hands that fascinated Garlan while she stirred the sugar in. She tasted the coffee and smiled her appreciation to her hostess, and Mrs. Tilly beamed vastly back at her.
“It’s the ranch, again,” said the girl.
“And what’s wrong with the ranch?” asked Tilly,
“The same thing that’s always wrong with it. Crooks, Danny, crooks.”
“Shoving a few cows south, now and then?” he suggested.
“That’s it.”
“It’s a bad job,” the sheriff said, and sighed. “I’ve rode out ten horses tryin’ to snag them. But it don’t work. They get too long a start.”
“They’re raiding the place bad,” said the girl. “You don’t know what they’re doing to it, Danny.”
“You’ll never stop them,” suggested the sheriff. “I’d sell out, if I were you.”
“Maybe you would,” she replied. “But i
t was on that place that Dad made his start . . . before ever he took up banking.”
Without the slightest hint of emotion she referred to the dead man, but Garlan was moved.
“I always thought,” said the sheriff, “that if once you could get an honest man out there, he’d stop all the crooks in the world from their rustling.”
“Of course he would,” she replied. “But how can it be managed? I’ve tried three of them, now. And every one of them was a man you thought was honest.”
“Do you know they’re not?”
“They’re hand-in-glove with all the rest.”
“Men have gone bad on this here range,” observed the sheriff sadly. “There ain’t any manner of doubt about that.”
“So I came in tonight for advice. If you have any to give me, Danny.”
He struck his hands lightly together and sighed. “I’ve got news for you, though,” he said. He took the pigskin wallet from his pocket and opened it. “It was brought to this house today. We don’t know when. It was laid on the back steps by someone who soft-footed it away. And along with all of the other loot.”
The girl took the wallet in her hand, but if there was a tremor in her fingers, it stopped at once, and if tears came up into her eyes, they disappeared swiftly. She looked dry-eyed at Daniel Tilly. “There’s only one more thing to wait for,” she said. “The second man, Danny.”
At this, the sheriff started a little. “But it wasn’t the second man,” he began, “it was Genniver who . . .”
He was not able to finish that sentence, but the girl took up his meaning in the calmest of voices.
“It wasn’t the second man who fired the shot. But he was there. If a gang commits a murder, every one of them is guilty. And so I’ll never rest until I’ve found the second man out. And I tell you,” she cried with a sudden passion that made her words ring, “I tell you, the second man will be found! It’s almost as though . . . as though fate were taking a hand in this. See how quickly justice is being done.”
IX
Even the iron nerves of Mrs. Tilly seemed to be more than a little shaken by this last announcement from Georgia Dixon. She looked askance at the young man, as though to see to what extent he was disturbed by this expression of lasting malice on the part of the girl, but Garlan kept his face as noncommittal as possible.