by Max Brand
“Miss Dennis,” cried Mrs. Peters, “I dunno how you can talk about Jack being quicker! Anybody that’s ever seen the two of ’em around horses …” She stopped, breathless with indignation.
“I’ve no doubt,” said Elsie Dennis in her most gentle voice, “that Jack may be more apt with horses, but with books … you see, it isn’t exactly the same with books and with horses. They’re so different.”
Mrs. Peters sat back with a superior sniff intended to indicate that no matter what the teacher said, she had her doubts about it.
“Well,” said Mr. Peters, reverting to the immediate cause of their call at the school, “we want to know what can be done to bring up their standing. There ain’t any natural reason, so far as I can see, why my boys shouldn’t be right up with the leaders in their class.”
“If they got the right sort of teaching,” appended his better half.
Elsie Dennis confined her answer to the father. Somehow, it was always thrice as easy to talk to a man.
“The reason they don’t lead … oh, it would be hard for any boy really to lead so long as Jerry Peters is in his class.” Her eyes shone as she spoke. She threw back her head with a fine little outburst of enthusiasm, which for the instant, made her actually pretty. “Oh, what a boy he is,” she cried softly. “Sometimes he stares at me so hard when I’m talking or reading to the class that I think the words are being printed on his brain.”
She looked down to the parents. She found that their faces were utterly blank and cold. It was Elsie’s first term at the little school. She had not yet learned that Jerry was only an adopted child. And poor Elsie, bewildered, stared at the two in amazement. She knew that parental likes and dislikes are often hard to understand, but how any human beings could prefer such children as Jack and Harry to that restless flame of a boy, Jerry Peters—that was indeed beyond her.
“But with a great deal of special care,” she concluded lamely, “I think that Harry and Jack may be brought up in time. They’ve improved a lot over their last year’s record already.”
“If Jerry has been favored so much,” said Mrs. Peters, fixing upon poor Elsie Dennis her frostiest glance, “it’s no wonder that little Harry and Jack are backward. Children can’t be expected to get on when they’re neglected, Miss Dennis.”
Elsie Dennis crimsoned. Her lips trembled.
“And as for even comparing Jack, for quickness, with Harry,” said the mother, “why …”
She made an eloquent pause. Her spouse bit his lip and, stirring in his chair, cast anxious glances from one to the other. He foresaw a storm, and he almost equally dreaded the lightning cuts of Kate when they were directed at the head of another. He never knew when a random bolt would strike him.
“Dear little Jerry,” went on Mrs. Peters, “is such a mischief … but, if you put up with that …” She paused again, sternly.
“I try to keep discipline,” said Elsie Dennis. “Jerry is high-spirited … that is all.” Her color was gone now. Her fighting instinct was aroused. Another side fling at Jerry would bring fire from her.
Here they were interrupted by a shrill clamor in the schoolyard, followed by utter silence and then the scurry of many running feet converging to a point. One keen voice pierced the air: “Fight!”
Elsie and her two visitors ran to the door of the school. They were in time to see the slender form of Jerry bristling up to another boy of far-greater bulk. The other youngsters of the school were scampering to form a circle, the boys pressing to the center, the girls at the outer rim on tiptoe, terrified and delighted.
“William!” cried poor Elsie Dennis. “Don’t you dare to strike Jerry Peters! William, do you hear me?”
As well call to a thundering storm. At that instant, big William smote in hearty earnest at the fire-red head of Jerry with such effect that Jerry tumbled head over heels in the dust, and there was a shout to witness the fall. Prominent among the rejoicers were Harry and Jack Peters, who saw many a downfall of their own now about to be requited with a vengeance.
But Jerry had come to his feet as by magic, and before William could follow his first advantage, he was assailed by a hail of fists. The air was thick with the showering blows. William, smiting in roundabout fashion, with eyes closed, struck nothing but utter emptiness, and all the time those hard, stinging little fists were cracking against his face. A trickle of red began to pour down from his nose. Both eyes and his mouth puffed. And then, retreating and raising a hand to his face, the fingers came away stained with gore. The sight completely unmanned him. A loud yell of terror issued from his lusty throat. Turning on his heel, he fled for safety.
He would have gained it, perhaps, had there not been that circle of witnesses. But they impeded his course, and before he had taken half a dozen steps, there was a red-headed fury upon his back. Down he went with a final shriek of mortal anguish and fear.
Elsie Dennis and the Peterses, in the meantime, had hurried down from the front door of the school. All this part of the brief fight they had seen to the point when stout William crashed to the ground, and now, as they went forward, the shrill shout of the onlookers turned to a cry of dismay in which the voices of the older boys predominated.
What Jeff Peters, brushing his way through the tangle, found was William lying flat on his back and making faint gurgling sounds, while the hands of Jerry were buried deeply in his throat. William was far gone. His eyes were wide and popping out, his face was purple, his mouth was distended as he gasped in vain for air that would not come, and the older boys, in alarm, were trying to tug the conqueror away from his victim. But he clung like a leech.
It required the entire force of Peters to tear Jerry away, and then it was to divert the force of the attack to himself. There was a wild and mighty flailing of little fists at him. At length, dismayed, he brushed them away and captured the warrior.
But by this time, the passion of Jerry had broken into outright grief. Suddenly he began to weep. He pointed with mingled rage and disdain at the prostrate and gasping form of William.
“He said,” gasped out Jerry, “that I haven’t any father or mother, and that I just happened along and you found me, Dad. And I … I’ll kill him unless he takes it back!”
“Jefferson Peters!” called his wife. “I hope you’ll thrash that young man within an inch of his life. Look at the condition of William Jones. Why, in another ten seconds there would have been a tragedy. Why …” She became speechless. The real nearness of the catastrophe stopped her usual flow of words.
But her husband had picked up Jerry and carried him to a little distance, and now he put him down with a suddenness that seemed to come from his weakness. His face was gray, and he was trembling.
“Mother,” he said to Kate, “I guess this ain’t the time for a thrashing. There’ll have to be a talking first. Or maybe it’s best not to talk, even. Blood will out. It ain’t poor Jerry’s fault. Blood will out.” He took Jerry by the hand, silencing the clamor of Mrs. Peters with a single gesture. “I’ll take this matter in hand,” he declared. “Let me manage it. Miss Dennis, we’ll take Jerry out and home for the day.”
They left the poor schoolteacher, pale and trembling, with concern for her favorite. She followed them to the corner of the yard, saying over and over: “Something went wrong. We all have our outbursts. Oh, Mister Peters, you won’t be too hard on him?”
Jerry cast a wan and unhappy look after Elsie Dennis as they departed, but he said not a word and walked, stiff and straight, down the street ahead of his foster parents.
“And now, Jefferson Peters,” whispered his wife sternly, “I’d like to know about the real father and the real mother of that boy. How come you been telling me for eight years that you didn’t know?”
“Kate,” said her husband, “you got to take my plain word for it. If you learn who his father was, it’ll scare you plumb to death. And … I wish to heaven that somebody, besides me, could tell him that you and me ain’t his real father and his real mother.”
III
The best way to make a secret delectable is to surround it with terrors if it is revealed. The one room we are forbidden is the one we truly desire to enter. And so it was with Mrs. Peters.
Yet fifteen years more passed, and the question that devoured her soul was never answered. Sometimes, to be sure, there came to her a poisonous doubt that Jeff Peters himself might be the father of the boy. But that doubt never endured long. She knew that her husband was not a good actor; the fear with which he referred to the true parent of Jerry could not have been assumed. Therefore, during the fifteen years, she held her council.
In fact, the knowledge that her husband had guarded a great secret all this length of time had established her respect for him upon a foundation of rock. Hitherto, she had felt rather contemptuous. But thereafter she came to believe that, no matter how weak he was in appearance, there was a mysterious strength about him that was worthy of respect.
Moreover, of late, Jerry had proved to be far from a bad investment. Jack and Harry had grown into fine, young range riders no better and no worse than a thousand others. But Jerry was different. He was a man in ten thousand.
Ever since that day of the fight, the character of Jerry had changed. He had become more sober, more quiet. Even at the age of eight he had seemed to understand that the mystery of his parentage would prove a weight hereafter. The world at large saw in him, at the age of twenty-three, a mighty-limbed young Samson with a clear blue eye and hair like blowing flame. It saw in him a bulwark of the community, a strength and support for Custis. No longer would they be unrepresented at steer-roping and mustang-riding exhibitions. In fact, they were turning to Jerry in the confident expectation that he would put them on the map.
Yet this universal esteem and all the prowess of his six-feet-two of strong muscle and bone had not served to turn the head of the young giant. Mere flattery could not affect him since that day when his foster father had told him that his real father and mother were unknown. Since that time an undercurrent of melancholy had been established in his nature. It had made him more quiet. It had tamed him, so to speak, and it had given him an air of command that was felt and admitted among young fellows of his own age.
He had developed habits of thrift from which the Peters family profited hugely. A venture at prospecting in his eighteenth year had given him a partnership in a mine that he turned over to Jeff Peters, and that partnership had become a handsome business. In reality, it was the source of Jeff’s prosperity in his later life, although he carefully concealed from Jerry all knowledge of the handsome dimensions of the gift. For he and Mrs. Peters had decided at once that it would not do to allow Jerry to conceive that he had repaid all the years of care that had been given to him by a single stroke. And, by concealing the size of the donation from him, they continued to incur benefits. They became a prominent family in the town of Custis simply for the reason that Jerry brought home with him a good portion of their distinguished visitors.
What ambitious legislator could pass through the town of Custis without looking up that brilliant youngster who had won a second at the national horse-breaking contest in his twentieth year, and who had won a first on two successive years thereafter? What sheriff or federal marshal could come nearby without dropping in on so deft a marksman? Those who Jerry met, the rest of the Peters family met likewise, with the result that they were in what Mrs. Peters, more than the rest, felt to be true social clover.
As for the immediate future of Jerry, he had only to choose one of a dozen openings. He could go into lumber or cows or mining, or he could play politics or start any one of a number of careers. For men of established position had their eyes upon him. To enlist the youth would, they felt, be guaranteeing their own futures. Honesty, strength, patience—what more could be asked?
When they put these questions to Jeff Peters, the worthy storekeeper would nod and keep his own council. But all those years he had been waiting—for fifteen mortal years he had been unable to forget the picture of William, flat on his back, and the small fists of Jerry in the very act of throttling the other. That had been an indubitable outbreak of the bad blood of a black Muldoon, he had felt. And he had been waiting for another outburst, only wondering how the lightning would strike. If a child of eight, in a passion, had come so close to murder, what would this hard-handed giant do? And should he, in the meantime, risk the wrath of a black Muldoon in order to warn the boy of the bad blood that was in him?
He put off what might have seemed to others a duty, and the result was that he was out of town when the first great blow fell. A man on an outworn mustang, with a crimson-stained rag tied around his head and a shirt encrusted with red, spurred into town with tidings that a black Muldoon had just swept down with his gang upon New Custis, higher in the mountains, and blown up the safe in the store. It was the first time in twenty-three years that the famous outlaw had come near Custis, and while other districts in the mountains had suffered, the little town had come to feel that it lived a charmed life. But now that the blow had fallen on their neighbors, the men of Custis rallied gallantly for a counter attack.
The news reached Jerry in the house of Lou Donnell. As a matter of fact, most of his spare moments were spent in the house of Donnell. The Donnells were newcomers. They had not been in Custis more than half a dozen years and, although they were of rather better social position than anyone else in Custis, Jerry was the first to secure an intimate relationship with them. He secured it by dragging young Mark Donnell out of the lake when the youngster was sinking with a cramp in the bitter chill of the snow water. After that, as a matter of course, the doors to the big Donnell house were open to Jerry night and day. The reason that he darkened them so often had little to do with Mark. Mark was a fine fellow, but his chief virtue was that he had a sister. There was a singular mystery attached to Louise Donnell, and that was that any girl with so much poise and inherent dignity as she, should have had her musical name shortened to Lou. But it had happened early in her life, and she would carry the nickname to the grave.
She was an Irish beauty, was Lou. That is to say, she had blue-black, lustrous hair that swept low over a broad forehead. And under the black brows, there were deep-blue eyes. But the naming of color contrasts never paints the whole picture, and only an artist familiar with paints and their making can even faintly conceive the effect of black and blue and white and delicate pink in the face of Lou Donnell.
What is so hard to describe with words was easy to grasp at one effort of the eyes. At least Jerry had found it easy. Even six years before, when he carried Mark Donnell home on that fateful day, the sight of Lou as she ran with a cry to her brother had been a sweet and soul-thrilling shock. For six years he had been unable to disentangle from his memory the fair, young face and the grief-stricken voice. A hundred times he had wakened from his sleep in the middle of the night, so keen had been the joy and sorrow of his dream of her. What wonder that he haunted the Donnell house.
And what did the Donnells think of him? Plainly they considered him merely a boyish friend. They did not take him seriously for the simple reason that the pretty face of Lou had made them visualize a throne for her—millions or a title or some such roseate future was planned for the treading of her feet, and that the penniless young Jerry could ever draw her from the great road to fortune never came into their minds.
The swirl of horsemen stormed to a stop at the veranda of the Donnell house. And from the shade beside Lou arose Jerry.
“Jerry!” they cried. “A black Muldoon … Bill Muldoon … he’s raided New Custis!”
Jerry turned pale with joy. “That’s a yarn somebody’s been spinning,” he said. “They’re always talking about a Muldoon every time there’s anything goes wrong.”
“I tell you,” shouted one of the dusty riders, “that Oscar Little seen him with his own eyes! He’s in Custis now, Oscar is. And he’s got two bullets out of Muldoon’s gun inside of him. And the sheriff sent us extra special to get yo
u. He said you’d want to come, Jerry. And … don’t turn us down, Jerry! We sure need you.”
“Muldoon himself,” said Jerry, and he tingled to the tips of his long fingers with an exquisite foretaste of pleasure.
The girl was turned in her chair. Leaning sidewise, she read his face with a swift and faultless accuracy, as women can. She saw him white with pleasure. She saw him literally trembling with delight. She came out of her chair and caught his hands.
“Jerry,” she whispered. “Jerry.” She was oblivious of all the others, yet a country girl is the most self-conscious creature under the arch of heaven.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said to her.
But she clung to him, and the clinging was wonderfully strange and sweet to Jerry. It had always seemed to him, before, that she spoke to him from a great height, a great distance. Now she had stepped from an eternity of distance and was close to him in flesh and spirit. He looked at her in amazement. Her eyes were filled with moisture. Her face was turned up to him in human entreaty. For the first time he noticed that she was really quite small. At least she was not above an average height, and she seemed small beside his bulk.
“Jerry, if you go, there’s bad luck in it. Believe me!”
“It’s the hot weather, Lou,” he answered. “You’re nervous, that’s all. But it’s pretty fine of you to be nervous on my account. I sure appreciate it.”
“But I mean it, Jerry. It’s more than nervousness … it’s a premonition. Besides, Jerry, I think this manhunting fever you have is horrible.”
“You’ve never said so before.”
“I’ve never dared to think that you’d take my thoughts seriously. But today I’m going to chance it. Today, Jerry, you’ve got to listen and believe me.”
“Lou, it draws me wonderfully hard. But they’re all waiting.” His voice became a whisper. “They’re all waiting and watching us, Lou.”
“Do you think that I care what they see? Oh, Jerry, if you would only see half of what they can see, how happy I should be.”