Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  In short he was too deadly a marksman to be altogether pleasant company. When a man is so sure with his weapons that he kills another between smokes, without lifting an eyebrow or changing color, he is not altogether a comfortable companion. Yet the utter indifference of Ronicky Doone to the thing he had done continued until big Curly broke through the group and drew Ronicky to one side.

  “Ronicky,” he said, “if you pull a gun on me for what I’m going to tell you, I won’t blame you. Nobody would blame you.”

  “Go ahead,” said Ronicky. “I ain’t a gun-fighter every day of my life. Go ahead, Curly.”

  “Well,” said the wretched Curly, “from what I’ve found out, you were figuring on using fake slugs on Blondy — you were figuring on using wooden slugs that would just knock him down if they were planted right. Is that the straight of it?”

  “Who told you that?” asked Ronicky. “Who’s been spreading that sort of talk around about me?”

  “You were seen to dump ’em out of your gun,” said Curly. “I got one in my pocket now. But the point is this — that you dumped out them wooden slugs after I talked to you. And what I want to know, Ronicky, is: Did you dump ’em out because of what I said to you?” Ronicky paused. Then the cigarette crumpled between his fingers. He caught Curly by the shoulder with fingers that gripped deep in his flesh.

  “Curly,” he gasped, “don’t tell me that what you said ain’t the truth. Don’t tell me that!” But Curly dropped his head.

  “Being sorry ain’t a help — it’s that wagging tongue of mine. I can’t stop it when it gets started, Doone.”

  If he expected denunciation or violence from Ronicky, however, he was mistaken. The smaller man merely glided past him like a ghost and fled through the door of the hotel.

  “What did you do to bring him to life?” asked some one. “What yarn did you tell him this time, Curly?”

  But the miserable Curly went away trailing his feet in the deep, soft dust and answering nothing.

  Outside the door of the proprietor’s room Ronicky confronted the doctor, as that worthy came out. And there was something ominous in the softness with which he closed the door.

  “What’s the news?” asked Ronicky sharply.

  But the doctor raised his hand, as one who protests against too much noise in a holy place. And the cold dread came to Ronicky that it was the nearness of death which had awed the doctor.

  “I fear,” said the doctor sadly, “that there is no hope. Where—”

  “You lie!” groaned Ronicky.

  “Young man?” queried the doctor sternly. “Where, I was about to say, can we get in touch with his family?”

  Ronicky started for the door, but the doctor barred the way.

  “No one must enter. He is now in a state of coma. If he wakens from that condition, then we may begin to hope. But I fear — I greatly fear he will never waken.”

  “Carry the news out to the Bennett place, then,” said some one softly. “He done this thing for the sake of old Bennett — in a way. Bennett sure had ought to take care of him.”

  “You don’t know him!” snarled Al Jenkins in answer. “But I’ll see that the boy is cared for. If there’s a bunch of bills, send ’em to me. I ain’t no friend to Bennett nor none of them that fight for him, but when they get past fighting for him and are flat on their backs, they’ll find that I ain’t as hard as they think.”

  He was as good as his word. Not a penny was another person allowed to contribute to the care of Charlie Loring. In the meantime two men were chosen to go to the Bennett Ranch bearing the news that Loring had fallen in battle.

  And Ronicky Doone sat down to wait in the lobby, regardless of the men around him, though nearly all of them strove to draw him into conversation. He was waiting on the reports which were sent out from the sick room. On the whole they told a steady story of decline, or else there was “no change.”

  Ronicky had paid the doctor liberally to have these ten-minute reports sent out. And once, when the physician himself came out and walked up and down, not displeased at his opportunity to allow the world to see him engaged in the battle with death, Ronicky went up to the good man and inquired again.

  “It’s just as I sent you word,” said the doctor. “There is little use in watching him closely. The bullet entered adjacent to the—”

  But Ronicky waved the technical details away. He had heard them rehearsed three or four times before, because the description contained several large words which the doctor was fond of turning over his tongue’s tip.

  “I don’t give a hang about the facts. I just want to know what’s in your mind?”

  “Facts — you don’t care — my mind?” stammered the doctor. “My boy—”

  “Listen to me,” said Ronicky, and at the same time he stuffed his entire stock of money into the coat pocket of the doctor. “You are going back into that room, and you’re going to stick with Blondy Loring until there ain’t a chance left for him. And every minute that you’re in there you’re going to keep hammering the same thought at him; that he’s going to get well!”

  “But, Doone, he can’t hear a word — he’s senseless.”

  “He’ll feel your thinking. He can’t help it. And, besides, if you go in there to watch a man die, you’re going to see him die. But if you go in there to keep a man from dying, you got half a chance in ten of bringing him through. Go on back!”

  And the doctor went. It was not altogether the money that persuaded him. His heart was kindly enough and generous enough, but now and then most of us need to be shaken together, so to speak, and brought to a crisper sense of things. And this was what Ronicky had done for the doctor. He sent the good man back in a fighting humor, and for half an hour no message came out of the room.

  In the meantime the townsmen were baffled by the change in Ronicky. They had seen him perfectly indifferent one moment and wildly anxious the next. They had seen him sneering at the man who lay bleeding at his feet. And now they saw him pacing nervously up and down through the lobby, throwing himself into a chair, rising, and pacing again, and never stopping movement of one kind or another.

  He offered no explanation. And Curly waited wretchedly until he was sure that Ronicky would not speak of the lie which had been told him. When Curly was sure that this explanation was not forthcoming he offered one of his own to the others.

  “He looked like he was taking everything easy,” said Curly. “He was even rolling a cigarette with Blondy dying at his feet. But all the time there wasn’t really nothing going on inside of his head. It was just misty in there. But after a while the mist cleared off. He seen what he’d done. He heard that Blondy was dying, and then he come out of it with a jump and got the way you see him now.”

  This explanation had to pass.

  Al Jenkins approached Ronicky with an excellent proposal to the effect that Ronicky should come out to his ranch with him and look around until he found a place on it that suited him. Then he was to name his own salary.

  “And there you’ll stay,” said the rancher, “until I’m through with Bennett. Maybe you think, lad, that I ain’t a man that remembers. But when you knocked over big Blondy you took the wind out of Bennett’s sails. He’s done for now. And when I clean up the old hound and back him off the range, the same way that he done with me years back, I’ll be thinking that you had a hand in the shaping of the game, son!”

  But Ronicky refused to listen to him. He thanked the rancher for the offer. But just now, he declared, he could not think and did not wish to think of anything but the condition of Charlie Loring.

  “There’s a pile of ranches in the world,” said Ronicky. “But there ain’t another Charlie Loring. I’ll talk to you to-morrow, maybe, or whenever there’s a decision about Charlie. Up till then my time belongs to him!”

  “If you’re that fond of him,” grumbled the rancher, “why did you ever pull a gat on him?”

  But Ronicky turned his back and walked away.

  In the m
eantime the hours drifted slowly, wearily past. And still the condition of Charlie Loring was unchanged. And as every hour passed, the hopes of Ronicky increased. For if Charlie had held out as long as this, might he not eventually recover?

  The doctor issued again from the room, but this time it was only for an instant.

  He was a wonderfully and sadly changed man. There were pouches beneath his eyes. His shoulders were stooped. His every gesture betokened uneasiness. And when he saw Ronicky his face brightened a little.

  “It’s a queer thing to see,” he declared in a murmur. “It’s something I wouldn’t believe if I weren’t in there watching. But — come in for yourself! He’s living in spite of everything. God knows what keeps him up!”

  He dragged Ronicky through the door and closed it softly. Then he stole across the room to the bedside. Ronicky, following, looked down, cold with horror, on the face of the wounded man.

  For there was a strange alteration. It was no longer the rosy-cheeked Charlie Loring — Blondy — who had dazzled Twin Springs with his courage and his headlong taking of chances. Instead it was a thin-featured man that Ronicky saw. The flesh around the mouth had sagged away, making a ghastly caricature of a smile. The temples seemed to have fallen. The nose seemed sharper, thinner. Altogether there was the appearance of one who had been sick for a long time.

  “He’s dead!” breathed Ronicky, for it seemed impossible that there could be any life behind that mask of a face.

  But the doctor shook his head. “Still living!” he insisted.

  “Is there a hope?” whispered Ronicky.

  “No — I think not.”

  “There is a hope,” said Ronicky, “because there’s got to be.”

  The doctor made a gesture of abandon. Then there was a light, fluttering tap at the door.

  “They’ve got to stop bothering me,” said the doctor. “I can’t work when they’re holding my hands like this.”

  “I’ll go,” said Ronicky. “I’ll throw them out, the fools! They’d ought to have better sense!”

  He strode to the door and opened it with a jerk, his brow black as thunder, and he found himself glowering at Elsie Bennett.

  XX. “ALL AROUND A CIRCLE”

  SHE REPAID HIS scowl with an indignant, scornful glance which said plainly enough, “You here?” And then, as he fell in chagrin and surprise, she stepped into the room. She left Ronicky to close the door behind her. The throwing out of her arms narrowed all the world to what lay before her hands, and that one thing was Charlie Loring.

  Ronicky Doone was so fascinated by what followed that he only subconsciously and ineffectually resisted the pressure upon the door from the outside. When the door opened again and another stood beside him, Ronicky made no move to shut out the newcomer. He was too busy filling his eyes with the sight of beautiful Elsie Bennett dropping on her knees by the side of the bed of Charlie Loring. He saw the slender hands cherishing the pale face of Charlie Loring. And Ronicky Doone groaned silently. If they brought a man to this, the work of bullets was not all tragic.

  Then he turned his head and saw that he who had just intruded was not Bennett, as he had subconsciously expected, but Al Jenkins himself! The big fellow had settled his shoulders against the door, as though to endure a shock, and with his head thrust forward between his great shoulders he was glaring at Elsie Bennett, as though she were an enemy with a gun pointed at him. Ronicky could see the stiff lips of the man working a little. But the murmur was inaudible. Then the doctor drew Elsie from the bed.

  “You’re apt to do him harm,” said he. “He’s got to have quiet. But if you’ll stay and help nurse him — if you’ll stay and take care of him, that’s just what I want. He needs a woman’s hands around him. The hands of a man are too thick, too heavy. Will you stay and help me with him?”

  “Will I stay?” murmured she. “No one could make me leave!”

  She turned and saw Ronicky and Al Jenkins together. There was one flash of anger and scorn for Ronicky, and then her gaze centered bright and wide upon big Al Jenkins. She pointed.

  “Who is that?” she whispered.

  “You don’t know him? That’s Jenkins — Al Jenkins!”

  “Oh!” cried the girl and buried her face in her hands. It seemed impossible to Ronicky that she should never have seen the big rancher before. But then he remembered how recently it was that Jenkins had come back to that district, and how his way with Bennett must have kept the two apart, and the mystery was not so strange. It dawned on him in a burst that these two were seeing one another actually for the first time, the girl and her formidable antagonist. Ronicky was struck by the horror in the face of Jenkins, the look as if he were facing a ghost. Perhaps that sprang from the similarity he saw between her and her mother whom he had loved before her.

  At any rate she recovered before he did. Jenkins was still leaning against the door, overcome as it. seemed, when Elsie Bennett came swiftly to them, flushed with a lofty anger.

  “You and your hired man!” she said to Jenkins. “Is there no shame in you? Have you come here to gloat over him? Oh, I’ve heard of base things, but never anything so base as this! Will you go?”

  They looked at one another, as though each hoped the other would be able to speak, and then they turned of one accord and faded through the doorway.

  “I’m going up to my room,” said Ronicky, when they stood outside, silent and shamefaced.

  “And I’m going with you,” declared Jenkins. They climbed the stairs together, but at his door Ronicky turned to his companion. “I’d sort of like to be alone,” he said. “You think you would,” said Jenkins, “but you’re wrong. You wouldn’t like it a bit. You need company. I’m going in there and get you cheered up.”

  To this insistence there was nothing which Ronicky could oppose, and they went into the room and sat down. But almost immediately Ronicky was up and walking to and fro. The rancher watched him with a keen and measuring eye. Presently Ronicky spoke.

  “Did you ever see such love as she has for Blondy? Did you ever see anything like it, Jenkins?”

  He stopped, stared at the wall or vacancy, and shook his head as he remembered. To Ronicky’s surprise, Al Jenkins merely shrugged his shoulders.

  “It looks like love to you, son. But you never can tell.”

  “Eh?” cried Ronicky. “What do you mean by that?”

  “How old are you?” asked the rancher.

  “Twenty-seven,” said Ronicky. “But what the devil has that to do with—”

  ‘Twenty-seven! That’s about what I thought. You’re too young.”

  “Too young for what?” asked Ronicky, his irritation growing apace under the cross fire of apparently irrelevant questions.

  “To young to know anything about women. About ten years is what you need on top of your age, son.”

  Ronicky merely glared. His face might be youthful, he told himself, but inside him there was a weary sense of age. “I’m old enough to use my eyes and my ears,” he said. “I could see what she did and hear what she said.”

  “Sure you could,” said Jenkins, yawning. “My guns, ain’t she beautiful, Ronicky? I’ve only seen her a couple of times in the distance before. But today when I stood up and faced her in the same room, it was like having a gun shoved in my face. It carried me back twenty years in a second!”

  He stopped and sighed.

  “But what she did and said don’t mean nothing,” he declared presently.

  “Maybe she’s sort of weak-minded?” asked Ronicky fiercely. “Maybe that’s why what she says and does don’t mean anything?”

  This savage sarcasm left Jenkins untouched. He yawned again.

  “She’s in love with the idea of being in love, maybe,” he said at last.

  “Now what the devil do you mean by that?”

  “She’s at the ripe age for it, you see,” said Jenkins. “Most likely she’s been cramming her head full of stories about love, poems about love, music about love. Understand?”r />
  “I’m trying to follow you,” said Ronicky. “Go on.”

  “And presently along comes a young gent pretty well set up and with a good clear voice and a fine set of teeth and a handsome face. Well, she brings herself up short. ‘This is a man,’ says she to herself. ‘He’s young; he’s handsome; he’s a stranger. Why ain’t I in love with him?’

  “Well, sir, if you ask old folks a question the first thing that pops into their heads is to say ‘no’ tolerable loud. But if you ask young folks they all have ‘yes’ bubbling right behind their teeth. Take you, for instance. If I say to you: ‘Let’s start out and go to Alaska tomorrow,’ the first way you feel is that you’d sure like it a terrible lot if you could go. And you want to say yes. And it ain’t no different with girls.

  “They look different, but right down under their hides they’re just the same as boys, only more so. Well, when she asked herself that question about Charlie Loring, the first thing she did was to say ‘yes’ to herself. And no sooner did she say yes than she began to think the same way that she’d been talking. It’s easy to do that. Don’t take much to change a man’s mind. If you frown by accident, pretty soon you’re beginning to feel mad all the way through. But if you make yourself smile, pretty soon you’re smiling all the way through. So after she’d said yes, pretty soon she was feeling that she was in love with Loring!”

  Here Ronicky interrupted with an infusion of spectacular oaths that would have done credit to a mule skinner on a mountain road.

  “It was a fool question to ask herself!” he declared.

  “If that was the only fool thing that girls do,” said Jenkins, “it wouldn’t be so bad. But I’ve knowed it to go on and get worse and worse. Yes, sir, I’ve known girls to start fooling themselves that way and never wake up out of their dream till they was gray-headed grandmothers. And then all at once they give a start and a shake like Rip van Winkle. ‘Why,’ says they to themselves, ‘I been sleeping; I ain’t been living all this!’ And they wake up and get ready to live their real lives, but they find that their real lives are just about up, and by the time they find out what they’ve done with themselves they’re ready to die.”