Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “Certainly,” said the other, bowing. “I am entirely at your service.” He turned a little to Ruth. “I see that you have a most determined cavalier. I suppose he’ll instantly abduct you and sweep you away from beneath my eyes?”

  She made a vague gesture of denial.

  “Go ahead,” said the leader. “By the way, my name is John Mark.”

  “I’m Doone — some call me Ronicky Doone.”

  “I’m glad to know you, Ronicky Doone. I imagine that name fits you. Now tell me the story of why you came to this house; of course it wasn’t to see a girl!”

  “You’re wrong! It was.”

  “Ah?” In spite of himself the face of John Mark wrinkled with pain and suspicious rage.

  “I came to see a girl, and her name, I figure, is Caroline Smith.”

  Relief, wonder, and even a gleam of outright happiness shot into the eyes of John Mark. “Caroline? You came for that?” Suddenly he laughed heartily, but there was a tremor of emotion in that laughter. The perfect torture, which had been wringing the soul of the man of the sneer, projected through the laughter.

  “I ask your pardon, my dear,” said John Mark to Ruth. “I should have guessed. You found him; he confessed why he was here; you took pity on him — and—” He brushed a hand across his forehead and was instantly himself, calm and cool.

  “Very well, then. It seems I’ve made an ass of myself, but I’ll try to make up for it. Now what about Caroline? There seems to be a whole host of you Westerners annoying her.”

  “Only one: I’m acting as his agent.”

  “And what do you expect?”

  “I expect that you will send for her and tell her that she is free to go down with me — leave this house — and take a ride or a walk with me.”

  “As much as that? If you have to talk to her, why not do the talking here?”

  “I dunno,” replied Ronicky Doone. “I figure she’d think too much about you all the time.”

  “The basilisk, eh?” asked John Mark. “Well, you are going to persuade her to go to Bill Gregg?”

  “You know the name, eh?”

  “Yes, I have a curious stock of useless information.”

  “Well, you’re right; I’m going to try to get her back for Bill.”

  “But you can’t expect me to assent to that?”

  “I sure do.”

  “And why? This Caroline Smith may be a person of great value to me.”

  “I have no doubt she is, but I got a good argument.”

  “What is it?”

  “The gun, partner.”

  “And, if you couldn’t get the girl — but see how absurd the whole thing is, Ronicky Doone! I send for the girl; I request her to go down with you to the street and take a walk, because you wish to talk to her. Heavens, man, I can’t persuade her to go with a stranger at night! Surely you see that!”

  “I’ll do that persuading,” said Ronicky Doone calmly.

  “And, when you’re on the streets with the girl, do you suppose I’ll rest idle and let you walk away with her?”

  “Once we’re outside of the house, Mark,” said Ronicky Doone, “I don’t ask no favors. Let your men come on. All I got to say is that I come from a county where every man wears a gun and has to learn how to use it. I ain’t terrible backward with the trigger finger, John Mark. Not that I figure on bragging, but I want you to pick good men for my trail and tell ’em to step soft. Is that square?”

  “Aside from certain idiosyncrasies, such as your manner of paying a call by way of a cellar window, I think you are the soul of honor, Ronicky Doone. Now may I sit down?”

  “Suppose we shake hands to bind the bargain,” said Ronicky. “You send for Caroline Smith; I’m to do the persuading to get her out of the house. We’re safe to the doors of the house; the minute we step into the street, you’re free to do anything you want to get either of us. Will you shake on that?”

  For a moment the leader hesitated, then his fingers closed over the extended hand of Ronicky Doone and clamped down on them like so many steel wires contracting. At the same time a flush of excitement and fierceness passed over the face of John Mark. Ronicky Doone, taken utterly by surprise, was at a great disadvantage. Then he put the whole power of his own hand into the grip, and it was like iron meeting iron. A great rage came in the eyes of John Mark; a great wonder came in the eyes of the Westerner. Where did John Mark get his sudden strength?

  “Well,” said Ronicky, “we’ve shaken hands, and now you can do what you please! Sit down, leave the room — anything.” He shoved his gun away in his clothes. That brought a start from John Mark and a flash of eagerness, but he repressed the idea, after a single glance at the girl.

  “We’ve shaken hands,” he admitted slowly, as though just realizing the full extent of the meaning of that act. “Very well, Ronicky, I’ll send for Caroline Smith, and more power to your tongue, but you’ll never get her away from this house without force.”

  13. DOONE WINS

  A SERVANT ANSWERED the bell almost at once. “Tell Miss Smith that she’s wanted in Miss Tolliver’s room,” said Mark, and, when the servant disappeared, he began pacing up and down the room. Now and then he cast a sharp glance to the side and scrutinized the face of Ronicky Doone. With Ruth’s permission, the latter had lighted a cigarette and was smoking it in bland enjoyment. Again the leader paused directly before the girl, and, with his feet spread and his head bowed in an absurd Napoleonic posture, he considered every feature of her face. The uncertain smile, which came trembling on her face, elicited no response from Mark.

  She dreaded him, Ronicky saw, as a slave dreads a cruel master. Still she had a certain affection for him, partly as the result of many benefactions, no doubt, and partly from long acquaintance; and, above all, she respected his powers of mind intensely. The play of emotion in her face — fear, anger, suspicion — as John Mark paced up and down before her, was a study.

  With a secret satisfaction Ronicky Doone saw that her glances continually sought him, timidly, curiously. All vanity aside, he had dropped a bomb under the feet of John Mark, and some day the bomb might explode.

  There was a tap at the door, it opened and Caroline Smith entered in a dressing gown. She smiled brightly at Ruth and wanly at John Mark, then started at the sight of the stranger.

  “This,” said John Mark, “is Ronicky Doone.”

  The Westerner rose and bowed.

  “He has come,” said John Mark, “to try to persuade you to go out for a stroll with him, so that he can talk to you about that curious fellow, Bill Gregg. He is going to try to soften your heart, I believe, by telling you all the inconveniences which Bill Gregg has endured to find you here. But he will do his talking for himself. Just why he has to take you out of the house, at night, before he can talk to you is, I admit, a mystery to me. But let him do the persuading.”

  Ronicky Doone turned to his host, a cold gleam in his eyes. His case had been presented in such a way as to make his task of persuasion almost impossible. Then he turned back and looked at the girl. Her face was a little pale, he thought, but perfectly composed.

  “I don’t know Bill Gregg,” she said simply. “Of course, I’m glad to talk to you, Mr. Doone, but why not here?”

  John Mark covered a smile of satisfaction, and the girl looked at him, apparently to see if she had spoken correctly. It was obvious that the leader was pleased, and she glanced back at Ronicky, with a flush of pleasure.

  “I’ll tell you why I can’t talk to you in here,” said Ronicky gently. “Because, while you’re under the same roof with this gent with the sneer” — he turned and indicated Mark, sneering himself as he did so— “you’re not yourself. You don’t have a halfway chance to think for yourself. You feel him around you and behind you and beside you every minute, and you keep wondering not what you really feel about anything, but what John Mark wants you to feel. Ain’t that the straight of it?”

  She glanced apprehensively at John Mark, and, seeing that he d
id not move to resent this assertion, she looked again with wide-eyed wonder at Ronicky Doone.

  “You see,” said the man of the sneer to Caroline Smith, “that our friend from the West has a child-like faith in my powers of — what shall I say — hypnotism!”

  A faint smile of agreement flickered on her lips and went out. Then she regarded Ronicky, with an utter lack of emotion.

  “If I could talk like him,” said Ronicky Doone gravely, “I sure wouldn’t care where I had to do the talking; but I haven’t any smooth lingo — I ain’t got a lot of words all ready and handy. I’m a pretty simple-minded sort of a gent, Miss Smith. That’s why I want to get you out of this house, where I can talk to you alone.”

  She paused, then shook her head.

  “As far as going out with me goes,” went on Ronicky, “well, they’s nothing I can say except to ask you to look at me close, lady, and then ask yourself if I’m the sort of a gent a girl has got anything to be afraid about. I won’t keep you long; five minutes is all I ask. And we can walk up and down the street, in plain view of the house, if you want. Is it a go?”

  At least he had broken through the surface crust of indifference. She was looking at him now, with a shade of interest and sympathy, but she shook her head.

  “I’m afraid—” she began.

  “Don’t refuse right off, without thinking,” said Ronicky. “I’ve worked pretty hard to get a chance to meet you, face to face. I busted into this house tonight like a burglar—”

  “Oh,” cried the girl, “you’re the man — Harry Morgan—” She stopped, aghast.

  “He’s the man who nearly killed Morgan,” said John Mark.

  “Is that against me?” asked Ronicky eagerly. “Is that all against me? I was fighting for the chance to find you and talk to you. Give me that chance now.”

  Obviously she could not make up her mind. It had been curious that this handsome, boyish fellow should come as an emissary from Bill Gregg. It was more curious still that he should have had the daring and the strength to beat Harry Morgan.

  “What shall I do, Ruth?” she asked suddenly.

  Ruth Tolliver glanced apprehensively at John Mark and then flushed, but she raised her head bravely. “If I were you, Caroline,” she said steadily, “I’d simply ask myself if I could trust Ronicky Doone. Can you?”

  The girl faced Ronicky again, her hands clasped in indecision and excitement. Certainly, if clean honesty was ever written in the face of a man, it stood written in the clear-cut features of Ronicky Doone.

  “Yes,” she said at last, “I’ll go. For five minutes — only in the street — in full view of the house.”

  There was a hard, deep-throated exclamation from John Mark. He rose and glided across the room, as if to go and vent his anger elsewhere. But he checked and controlled himself at the door, then turned.

  “You seem to have won, Doone. I congratulate you. When he’s talking to you, Caroline, I want you constantly to remember that—”

  “Wait!” cut in Ronicky sharply. “She’ll do her own thinking, without your help.”

  John Mark bowed with a sardonic smile, but his face was colorless. Plainly he had been hard hit. “Later on,” he continued, “we’ll see more of each other, I expect — a great deal more, Doone.”

  “It’s something I’ll sure wait for,” said Ronicky savagely. “I got more than one little thing to talk over with you, Mark. Maybe about some of them we’ll have to do more than talking. Good-by. Lady, I’ll be waiting for you down by the front door of the house.”

  Caroline Smith nodded, flung one frightened and appealing glance to Ruth Tolliver for direction, then hurried out to her room to dress. Ronicky Doone turned back to Ruth.

  “In my part of the country,” he said simply, “they’s some gents we know sort of casual, and some gents we have for friends. Once in a while you bump into somebody that’s so straight and square-shooting that you’d like to have him for a partner. If you were out West, lady, and if you were a man — well, I’d pick you for a partner, because you’ve sure played straight and square with me tonight.”

  He turned, hesitated, and, facing her again, caught up her hand, touched it to his lips, then hurried past John Mark and through the doorway. They could hear his rapid footfalls descending the stairs, and John Mark was thoughtful indeed. He was watching Ruth Tolliver, as she stared down at her hand. When she raised her head and met the glance of the leader she flushed slowly to the roots of her hair.

  “Yes,” muttered John Mark, still thoughtfully and half to himself, “there’s really true steel in him. He’s done more against me in one half hour than any other dozen men in ten years.”

  14. HER LITTLE JOKE

  A BRIEF TEN minutes of waiting beside the front door of the house, and then Ronicky Doone heard a swift pattering of feet on the stairs. Presently the girl was moving very slowly toward him down the hall. Plainly she was bitterly afraid when she came beside him, under the dim hall light. She wore that same black hat, turned back from her white face, and the red flower beside it was a dull, uncertain blur. Decidedly she was pretty enough to explain Bill Gregg’s sorrow.

  Ronicky gave her no chance to think twice. She was in the very act of murmuring something about a change of mind, when he opened the door and, stepping out into the starlight, invited her with a smile and a gesture to follow. In a moment they were in the freshness of the night air. He took her arm, and they passed slowly down the steps. At the bottom she turned and looked anxiously at the house.

  “Lady,” murmured Ronicky, “they’s nothing to be afraid of. We’re going to walk right up and down this street and never get out of sight of the friends you got in this here house.”

  At the word “friends” she shivered slightly, and he added: “Unless you want to go farther of your own free will.”

  “No, no!” she exclaimed, as if frightened by the very prospect.

  “Then we won’t. It’s all up to you. You’re the boss, and I’m the cow- puncher, lady.”

  “But tell me quickly,” she urged. “I — I have to go back. I mustn’t stay out too long.”

  “Starting right in at the first,” Ronicky said, “I got to tell you that Bill has told me pretty much everything that ever went on between you two. All about the correspondence-school work and about the letters and about the pictures.”

  “I don’t understand,” murmured the girl faintly.

  But Ronicky diplomatically raised his voice and went on, as if he had not heard her. “You know what he’s done with that picture of yours?”

  “No,” she said faintly.

  “He got the biggest nugget that he’s ever taken out of the dirt. He got it beaten out into the right shape, and then he made a locket out of it and put your picture in it, and now he wears it around his neck, even when he’s working at the mine.”

  Her breath caught. “That silly, cheap snapshot!”

  She stopped. She had admitted everything already, and she had intended to be a very sphinx with this strange Westerner.

  “It was only a joke,” she said. “I — I didn’t really mean to—”

  “Do you know what that joke did?” asked Ronicky. “It made two men fight, then cross the continent together and get on the trail of a girl whose name they didn’t even know. They found the girl, and then she said she’d forgotten — but no, I don’t mean to blame you. There’s something queer behind it all. But I want to explain one thing. The reason that Bill didn’t get to that train wasn’t because he didn’t try. He did try. He tried so hard that he got into a fight with a gent that tried to hold him up for a few words, and Bill got shot off his hoss.”

  “Shot?” asked the girl. “Shot?”

  Suddenly she was clutching his arm, terrified at the thought. She recovered herself at once and drew away, eluding the hand of Ronicky. He made no further attempt to detain her.

  But he had lifted the mask and seen the real state of her mind; and she, too, knew that the secret was discovered. It angered he
r and threw her instantly on the aggressive.

  “I tell you what I guessed from the window,” said Ronicky. “You went down to the street, all prepared to meet up with poor old Bill—”

  “Prepared to meet him?” She started up at Ronicky. “How in the world could I ever guess—”

  She was looking up to him, trying to drag his eyes down to hers, but Ronicky diplomatically kept his attention straight ahead.

  “You couldn’t guess,” he suggested, “but there was someone who could guess for you. Someone who pretty well knew we were in town, who wanted to keep you away from Bill because he was afraid—”

  “Of what?” she demanded sharply.

  “Afraid of losing you.”

  This seemed to frighten her. “What do you know?” she asked.

  “I know this,” he answered, “that I think a girl like you, all in all, is too good for any man. But, if any man ought to have her, it’s the gent that is fondest of her. And Bill is terrible fond of you, lady — he don’t think of nothing else. He’s grown thin as a ghost, longing for you.”

  “So he sends another man to risk his life to find me and tell me about it?” she demanded, between anger and sadness.

  “He didn’t send me — I just came. But the reason I came was because I knew Bill would give up without a fight.”

  “I hate a man who won’t fight,” said the girl.

  “It’s because he figures he’s so much beneath you,” said Ronicky. “And, besides, he can’t talk about himself. He’s no good at that at all. But, if it comes to fighting, lady, why, he rode a couple of hosses to death and stole another and had a gunfight, all for the sake of seeing you, when a train passed through a town.”

  She was speechless.

  “So I thought I’d come,” said Ronicky Doone, “and tell you the insides of things, the way I knew Bill wouldn’t and couldn’t, but I figure it don’t mean nothing much to you.”

  She did not answer directly. She only said: “Are men like this in the West? Do they do so much for their friends?”