Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “We’ve come to the end of the road,” he said.

  “This wilderness? Where in the name of heaven can we put up? Jack, I can’t stand much more!”

  “Look over there.”

  Lou strained his feverish eyes and made out the vague form of a house ghost-like in the storm, a big house of which he saw more the longer he stared.

  “But how’ll I get there?” he groaned. “Must be half a mile, Jack.”

  “I’ll get you there.”

  Something of restraint in his voice made Lou wince again. He broached the vital question. “Will... will you be safe there?” he asked. “Suppose the posse turns along this road?”

  “I dunno,” replied the other. He turned as he spoke and looked into the teeth of the storm as though danger were at that moment riding upon him out of it. “I dunno. But I’ve got to get you to that house before you get a cold in your wound.”

  Lou could see his friend hesitating, and that hesitation drove him into a panic. Would he be abandoned here in the snow on the meager chance that someone from the house should happen on him, or that he could drag himself to the shelter? He was on the verge of breaking into a frantic appeal when he checked himself and thought of new tactics.

  “Jack,” he said, “listen to me. I’ve done you no good. First to last you’ve started everything and finished everything all by yourself. You got me out of jail. You brought me West. You planned the job down the road. You pulled it off. And all I’ve done is to clog up the works and gum the cards.” He paused a little to study the effect of his words. It was hard to read Jack Chapel with the wind turning up his hat behind and the snow spattering on his shoulders. He seemed so self-reliant and self-possessed that again the shivering took Lou Alp. Yet he persisted in his singular appeal.

  “Leave me be where I am, Jack,” he went on, his voice shaking. “If you come up there to the house with me, they’ll have you sure. Before ten hours somebody’ll come along this way and the folks at the house’ll tell ’em that you been there to leave me.”

  The larger man grunted. “What’ll you do without me?” he asked harshly. “You don’t know these folks around here. You don’t know their ways. You ain’t like ’em and they’ll see the difference. They’ll start askin’ questions and you’ll be fool enough to start tellin’ ’em lies. Inside of five days they’ll have the sheriff out here to look you over as a queer one.”

  The sneak thief looked into his wretched soul and shook in acknowledgment of the truth. “Let them come and get me,” he said hoarsely. “Let ’em come. But if they get me, I’ll have this one satisfaction, that I didn’t drag you into it. Jack, pal, you take the horses and go on. I’ll take my own chances.”

  Through a heart-breaking pause he saw the other hesitate, and even turn partly away; but at the very moment, when a wild and craven appeal was about to break from the lips of Lou Alp, Chapel turned again and caught the meager hand of the thief.

  “I thought you were bluffin’ me,” he said with emotion. “I thought you were yellow and were just bluffin’ me. But now I see you’re straight, partner, and I’ll tell you where I stand. Back there when you were peeved and wanted me to bump off those two gents, I figured that you meant it, and it sort of riled me a little. Speakin’ man to man, I thought you were a skunk, Lou. Been thinkin’ so all this time right up to now. But a gent that plays square once, can’t play crooked the next minute. Here you lie, helpless, but not thinkin’ once about yourself.”

  The emotion in his voice had a powerful effect upon Lou Alp. Tears of self-pity for the sacrifice which he had shammed began to gather.

  “And now I feel like a skunk,” said Jack Chapel. “If you can take my hand and call it square in spite of what I been thinkin’ about you, here it is. If you’re still mad at me, why, when you get on your feet again, we’ll fight it out. What say?”

  Lou Alp, trembling at the narrowness of his escape, clutched the proffered hand eagerly and wrung it.

  “That’s good,” said Jack Chapel simply. “That’s mighty good!” He seemed to brush away the remnants of the situation and turned to new things. “Give me your arms and I’ll get you on my back,” he directed.

  “But what about the wagon and the horses?”

  “Don’t you see what’ll become of ’em? With this storm at their backs, they’ll drift straight down the road. I don’t know a whole pile about this country, but I know there ain’t more’n one road for ’em to take down this valley. As long as the wind blows, they’ll keep moving and they may wind up fifty miles from here. The posse, if they start one out right away, will go straight for the place where the horses and wagon, or what’s left of the wagon, are picked up. They’ll start combing the hills for me around that place. They’ll never think to look for me in a house. Even if they find me, they won’t know me because I had my handkerchief over the lower part of my face and my hat pretty well down over my eyes. And it’s a cinch that they’ll never dream of lookin’ for two of us!”

  It was all so logically reasoned that the sneak thief nodded in admiration. The fever which had been gathering in him, and the waves of weakness, began to make his head swim. Yet he followed Jack Chapel’s voice.

  “First thing they’ll do will be to look over the list of their old employees. Why? Because I only took part of the coin. On account of that the big boss will think that somebody he’d wronged, or somebody with a debt he wouldn’t pay, tuned up a gun and came out to take what belonged to him by rights. And I’ll tell you what they’ll do. They’ll be apt to send the posse right to the house of the first man around these parts that the big boss owes around thirty-five hundred dollars to. When they get all through with that sort of lookin’... then, and not till then... they’ll take the back trail. By that time anything may have happened. Ten days ought to make you fit for a saddle, and most likely it’ll be ten days before anybody bothers us here.”

  “And so?” queried Lou Alp.

  “And so I’m goin’ to take you up to that house, and I’m goin’ to stay there with you. I dunno who lives there. But if it’s white folks, and you don’t talk too much, we won’t be bothered. You hear me talk?”

  The sneak thief smiled feebly as he was raised into the arms of Jack Chapel. “Jack,” he said, “you’re riskin’ your life for me. I know you could make a getaway into the hills if you wanted to. You’re riskin’ everything to save me. You’re givin’ me everything. Some day I’ll give it all back in a chunk!”

  “Forget it,” answered Chapel. “You talk a pile too much, partner.”

  Again he began to breathe hard as the strain of the steep hillside told on his legs and the weight of the limp body told on his arms.

  IV. GOOD SAMARITANS

  THE HALF MILE up that grade was no easy walk under any circumstances. With a staggering storm from one side, with the rocks slippery from snow, and with the burden of another man weighting him, it was a terrific task for Jack Chapel. Looking up into his face, Alp saw the fighting jaw thrust out and the muscles over the angles of the jaw harden. Yet he took the half mile with only three brief pauses for rest. Finally, just a brief distance from the house, he deposited the wounded man in a bank of snow and leaned over him, panting.

  “I don’t know what our story is going to be till I see the people of the house,” he said. “The thing for you to do is to keep your ears open and your eyes shut. You understand?”

  “You want me to faint?” grinned Lou Alp.

  “Sure. Soon as I come close up to the door, I’ll give you the word and you go limp. That’ll bring me to the door with an unconscious man. As soon as I go in, they’ll rush around until your senses come back. I’ll have a chance that way to size up the gang in that house and frame a story. I’ll tell the story so you can hear it. It won’t be long, and you hang on to what I say. Will you do that?”

  “I’ll turn a flop,” said the sneak thief, “that’ll have the real thing beat a mile. Lead on!”

  Where it was a mere matter of stratagem, Alp fe
lt at home. His head cleared and his pulse strengthened as matters approached this new crisis. Once more he was taken up and they came in full view of a square-built ranch house whose tall windows promised capacious rooms within.

  “Now!” cautioned Jack Chapel, and the thief made himself limp.

  He became so perfectly inert that his left arm dangled toward the ground, his head dropped back and allowed his hat to fall off, while his long black hair blew in the wind. He heard a grunt of satisfaction from Jack Chapel that was music in his ears. Then he closed his eyes.

  He was too much of an artist to attempt to look through the lashes at what passed around him. He remained in darkness, his mouth agape, his head dangling, his whole weight utterly inert. He felt Jack prop him up on one knee and then heard the clatter of knuckles against the front door; it was opened. Warm air rushed out around them.

  “Hello, there! What you got? Not dead, man?”

  It was a deep, strong bass voice.

  “No. But drilled through the leg. Accident. Hunting.” The reply of Jack Chapel was a tumbling mass of words panted out. “Lemme get him to a bed, will you?”

  “Of course. Let me carry him.”

  “No, I’ll manage him. Not serious, but he’s played out. Lost a lot of blood.”

  “Up this way, then, son. Hello! Mother! Kate! Come here. Hurry up. Hurry, I say!”

  A scurry of voices and footsteps in the distance, and then Lou felt himself being carried up a flight of stairs. The feminine rustling and voices came from behind and below and poured up around him. A young, pleasant voice had cried: “Poor fellow!” The voice of an older woman had screamed.

  “Now, none of that foolishness,” said the man who led the way. “Keep your head, Mother. He ain’t goin’ to die. Just a scratch. Lost a little blood. Kate, I want you to stand by to help. Get some water and bandages.”

  They reached level flooring, turned, and a door was opened. Lou could tell by the changed temperature of the air.

  “I’ll have a fire going in a jiffy,” said the big man’s voice. “Kate, get that hot water. But how did you get him here? How far’d you carry him?”

  Lou felt himself laid upon a bed and then Jack Chapel was answering: “Not so far. We’d been hunting through the mountains. The storm got us, and we started down for lower levels. Coming along fine when this accident happened just in the hills, there above your house. And mighty lucky we were so close. Barbed wire is a curse, sir. Climbing through a fence got my holster caught... tried to get it loose... reached to pull my gun out... and somehow the thing went off and drilled Lou through the calf of his leg.”

  All the time he talked brokenly, he was working swiftly, taking off Lou’s clothes. Presently Lou Alp found himself slipped in between chilly sheets. In the meantime, a pair of massive fingers closed over his wrist.

  “He’ll come along all right,” said the deep voice after a moment. “Lucky it wasn’t higher. Lucky it didn’t hit the bone. Men of this generation don’t know how to handle guns any more. No sense for ’em. Don’t mean to hurt your feelin’s, my young friend. By the way, my name’s Moore, Roger Moore.”

  “My name is Jack Chandler and this is Louis Angus.”

  “Glad to know you. He ain’t one of the Barr County Angus family, is he?”

  “Might be related. I dunno.”

  “No, he ain’t got bone enough to be one of ’em. Well, son, lucky you landed here. And you’re welcome as long as you’ll stay, and that’ll be ten days anyway before he’s on his feet. Come on in, Kate. Meet Jack Chandler. This is my daughter. Put that basin down over here, Kate. There’s a good girl. Nothin’ to be white about. The gent ain’t goin’ to die. Got a .45 through the calf of his leg, though. Was it a .45?”

  “A .32,” said Jack Chandler.

  “What! Never seen a .32 tear things up like that, but bullets are as tricky as guns. Never know what they’ll do. Look at that scar on my wrist. Bullet went in there, twisted clean around my forearm, and come out by the elbow. Didn’t break a bone or tear a tendon and my arm was as good as ever inside three weeks. That’s one of the queer things a bullet’ll do. Luck, eh? Hello! He’s comin’ to!”

  Alp had felt a covert nudge from the knee of his companion and he took it as a signal to open his eyes. He did it very well. First he blinked. Then he glared up at the ceiling and murmured: “It’s all right, Jack. You couldn’t help it.”

  “Delirious a little,” muttered the deep voice.

  Alp sat bolt upright in the bed and stared wildly around him. “What the devil!” he exclaimed.

  His words met a pleased chuckle from half a dozen faces, and each with shining, kindly eyes.

  “The snow,” said Lou vaguely, rubbing his eyes. “The wind... I...”

  A silver-haired woman with a youthful, beautiful face came beside him and laid her hand gently on his shoulder.

  “You lie down, my boy,” she said. “The snow and the wind and the trouble are all left outside. And now we’re goin’ to take care of you.”

  He allowed himself to be pressed back into the bed, but still his eyes went the rounds of the room. He saw Jack Chapel standing over him, his face grave with well-simulated trouble. He saw behind the woman the owner of the deep, bass voice. From the hand and the voice, he had expected a giant. Instead, he saw a stubby fellow, middle-aged, with a prodigious pair of shoulders and a not over large head set between them. His arms were very long, and the hands in exact proportion to the shoulders. Yet the small face which topped off this clumsy body was so filled with energy and penetration that Lou Alp forgot the lack of proportion.

  Rattling at the fireplace at one side of the big bedroom was evidently a woman servant, and close to her stood a girl with sunny hair and earnest blue eyes, still darkened with the shadow of her recent fright. Her head was framed by the snow-crusted window beyond, and against that cold background the brown of her hair seemed golden and the olive skin took on tints of rich life. Upon Lou Alp she broke as light breaks upon deep darkness. Only the knee of Jack Chapel, striking his ribs, made him rouse himself enough to turn his glance.

  “You’ll have this room to yourself,” the rancher was saying to Alp. “And you can take that smaller room next door, Mister Chandler. I suppose you’ll want to be handy to your partner, eh? That way he can call you plumb easy.”

  He accepted the thanks which Jack Chapel proffered with a negligent wave of his massive arm.

  “It ain’t a thing,” he said. “We’re glad to have you. Lonely life we lead out here. Need company. Take Kate in particular, over there. She gets blue from bein’ alone so much. Don’t blame her. You try to cheer her up and I’ll thank you for it.”

  The girl flushed and parted her lips to protest, but her father, laughing uproariously, drove her and the others out of the room.

  “You boys make yourselves to home,” he said from the door. “I’ll see that you’re kept quiet. If you need anything, just holler. We chow in about half an hour. We’ll send up some broth and chicken for Mister Angus. S’long, boys.”

  He banged the door after him and went down the hall with a thunderous step.

  The moment he was assured that there was no danger of being overheard, Lou Alp cried: “Did you see?”

  His companion turned moodily. “See what?”

  “The girl!”

  “Huh?”

  “The girl, blockhead!”

  “Forget the girl.”

  Chapel began to pace the floor slowly. Once he stopped and kicked at the fire so that a shower of sparks went snapping up the chimney.

  “Don’t cuss women,” said Alp, his face darkening. He was a good-looking fellow in his lean, dark way but, when he frowned, his face became savage to the point of venom.

  “Cuss women?” said the other with a start. “Who cussed them? I didn’t mean to.”

  “What a girl,” sighed Alp. He looked hungrily at Chapel but, seeing that he could not confide in the larger man, he changed the topic reluctantly. “I guess we lande
d on our feet well enough.”

  “I guess we did.”

  “You don’t seem terrible cheerful about it.”

  “Maybe I don’t,” growled Chapel.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “They’re clean,” said Jack. He straightened, and took a deep breath. “They’re clean!”

  The sneak thief gathered the bed clothes a little closer around his throat. “But ain’t... ain’t you clean yourself, Jack? Wasn’t it a frame that put you in jail?”

  There was a sort of acid eagerness in his query, a bitter longing to hold his head as high as his companion’s.

  “I s’pose I’m all right,” said the big man dubiously. “But I’ve been in jail, and I bring the scent of it with me. I’ve been in the shadow, and now I don’t feel right. Understand?”

  The thief merely stared. His mind came near enough to comprehension to be disturbed, but no more.

  In the meantime Jack Chapel paced up and down the floor thoughtfully. “Did you notice their eyes?” he kept repeating “Nothing behind them. Did you notice their eyes? Straight as a string. You can look a mile into eyes like that. Nothing to hide in ’em.”

  “What have you got to hide?” asked Lou, rather viciously.

  “Nothin’ much. I’m just a supposed murderer and an uncaught highway robber. I’m a jail breaker and a bum. Outside of them little things, I guess the doctor’ll give me a clean bill of health.”

  He began to laugh in an ugly manner. Then the laughter broke off short, and he stood beside the fire with his elbow resting on the mantel. Over his downcast face the light tossed up bursts of yellow and bursts of red. It made the lines deeper and the strong jaw became a cruel, dominant feature. Lou Alp, looking on, saw as from a distance there was some inner struggle going on in the man. But he did not speak. He could not even silently name the trouble to himself.