by Max Brand
The sneak thief grunted.
“Well,” said Chapel after a pause, in which he appeared to be stumbling with incoherent mind over the memories of that evening, “I wrote down in red what you said about me, and I ain’t going to forget it. You’re solid with me for life, Lou Alp.”
Alp said nothing at all. Outside the window a fresh gust of the storm went rattling and howling by and, if he could have done so, Lou would gladly have transformed his companion into a dead leaf and thrown him to the mercies of that wind. He began to ask questions and, though every answer was a fresh probing of this new and acute inner wound, he could not desist. He took a perverse pleasure in torturing himself.
He learned that Kate and Jack had talked together a good deal during the supper. Old man Moore had broken in for a few snatches of talk. When he found that Jack had no pronounced political views, was not an expert cattleman, had no intimate knowledge of guns and gunnery, he lost interest. He confined his own share in the conversation to a few threadbare anecdotes at which the family had faintly smiled, as at old, familiar faces, and at which Jack had made an effort and had been able to muster a laugh at the correct times. “Kind of jokes my grandfather told,” said Jack.
Then, after supper, they had drifted into a big, dark room with a fireplace of gigantic dimensions, filled with great logs that roared and snapped like musketry. Here Mr. Moore had fallen asleep in his easy-chair, Mrs. Moore had gone up to her room, and Jack and the girl had the time and the silence to themselves. He appeared to have made great progress in the direction of securing information. He knew the schools to which she had gone. He knew the names of her friends and particularly of one Ross Kirkpatrick, of whom Chapel spoke with a concentrated venom, which it was easy for Lou to understand. He was a wealthy mining man. He had built up his own fortune. He was an Eastern “college gent.” Chapel referred to him with the polite endurance a Puritan would show for the devil. In the middle of this talk the door was suddenly flung open, and without any warning Katherine Moore flung into the room.
VII. ENTER MARSHAL GAINES
THE RUSH OF air from the opened door passed like a solemn sighing through the big room, but it did not need that sound to send the chill through Alp and Jack Chapel. The face of the girl was enough. She went straight to Chapel.
“Have you done anything wrong?” she whispered.
Why was all the concern for Jack Chapel? Was there not another man in the room? Through a haze of jealous agony Lou heard Jack answer: “In my time... things bad enough, I guess. Why?”
It was the grave and perfectly controlled voice which Alp envied. He was almost glad that the girl had not come so directly to him with that whispered alarm, for he knew that a sudden blanching of the face would have answered her. But Jack Chapel was quite controlled.
“I don’t mean what you’ve done long ago, but lately... I haven’t any time... a robbery...”
There was a little pause — a heart-breaking little pause — and during that space of a second or so Alp stared intensely at the girl. She was without color. There seemed a cold film of blue shadow around her mouth, and her eyes were unnaturally dark and deep. There was accusation in the glance she fixed upon Chapel. It was rather a prayer for his good. It seemed impossible that Jack Chapel could lie to that face.
Then he heard Chapel’s voice, rather stifled. “Robbery? I’ll say this: that I’ve never taken a penny that I didn’t feel was owing to me!”
Lou Alp sighed with relief. After all, had not the queer fool said something like this when he was about to commit the robbery? Had he not actually left part of the money behind, and the greater part at that? But he had no time for his own thoughts. There was a sobbing, small breath of relief from the girl.
“I knew... oh, I knew,” she said. “But I had to ask you. And I had to... to tell you that Marshal Gaines is here, and that he’s coming up to see you.”
“Who?”
Lou could see that the name shook his companion.
“Marshal Gaines. But I’m so glad... so happy... that there’s no trouble.”
She was gone like a shadow and, as she went through the door, she looked back as she had looked at Lou once before, only this time the look was for Jack Chapel. And what a look it was! What a flash of eyes! What a tremulous smile! Bitterly Alp remembered that not once had she glanced at him this time. Her whole care was for Jack Chapel, and he, the wounded man, could fend for himself as best he might. His companion turned slowly toward the bed, smiling faintly.
“Who’s Marshal Gaines?” asked Alp, leaning forward.
“She’s got eyes like a man,” was the singular answer of Chapel. “Eyes like a man’s eyes. But her smiles! That’s all woman. Have you noticed her smile, Lou?”
“Forget her smile,” groaned the sneak thief. “Who’s Marshal Gaines?”
“Marshal Gaines?” echoed Chapel carelessly. “Oh, he’s just a gent that I know.”
The words froze the trembling heart of the thief to motionlessness. “That you know?” he whispered at length. “Then, for heaven’s sake, does he know you?”
“Better’n you do, a lot,” replied Jack Chapel.
Lou Alp fell back in the pillows with a chalky face. “What does it mean?” he asked.
“It means we’re done for,” said Chapel.
“No, no, no,” whined Lou. “No, no, no!” He began wringing his hands; then he stretched them out to Jack Chapel. “Gimme a lift out of the bed. I can’t go back to the pen, pal. I can’t go! Who got me into this? You did! Who tried to keep away from the whole thing? I did! You got to save me. You got to!”
“Shut up,” said the larger man. He winced before this exhibition of cowardice and looked at the other with new eyes. “Is this the stuff you’re made of? Shut up, or she’ll hear you!”
“I don’t care,” gasped Alp. “Gimme a lift to the window. I can stand the drop to the ground. There’s snow on it and it’ll break the fall. Then, my leg’s good enough. Gimme a help and I can wiggle along. I’ll get away from this infernal trap.”
“Shut up, will you?” snapped Chapel. “I got you into this. I’d get you out if I could, but I can’t. Now stop whining. I told you who the gent is. It’s Marshal Gaines. There’s no hope.”
“None?”
“None!”
A singular change came over Alp. He arranged the pillows behind his back. His natural color returned. “Pass me the makings, will you?” he demanded. “I thought there was a show but, if there ain’t, let’s see what the music’s like.”
The sudden change of front made Chapel blink. “You’ve got something, Lou,” he admitted admiringly. He himself was gray about the mouth, and his jaw was set.
“Tell me about Gaines.”
“It’d take all the rest of the night. I’ll tell you this much. If I knew that Gaines was out on my trail, I’d stop runnin’. I’d turn around and go in and give myself up to him to save a lot of trouble for both him and me. That’s the sort he is. He’s so good that, if I had two guns and he didn’t have nothin’ but a knife, I’d throw up my hands and let him take me. Why, man, I ain’t a gunfighter, and Gaines is a devil. He took `Sandy’ Crew. He took Gus Landers. He killed Peters and Galbright, and I could reel ’em off by the yard. That’s Gaines.”
“Well,” sighed the sneak thief, “it’s something to be taken by a bird like that. Thing that makes me sore is to be nabbed by some greasy cheap flatty, like’s happened to me. Well, lead on your man-eater and let’s have a look at his teeth.”
He twisted his cigarette deftly into shape, lighted a match, and waited with a steady hand for the sulfur to burn away. Then he lighted his smoke and inhaled a deep breath.
“That’s nerve,” admitted Chapel, and brushed the perspiration from his own forehead. “That’s nerve a-plenty. Here they come.”
They heard the rhythm of footfalls coming unhurriedly up the stairs. Once, and once only, the eyes of the sneak thief darkened as he glanced toward the window. Then his glance went back to
the face of Chapel and lingered there with a hungry content. In this crisis he felt his superiority. The larger man was going through a torture.
“The girl,” asked Chapel. “What’ll she think?”
“Nothing,” said Lou coldly. “After a day or two she’ll brush us out of her mind. No trouble at all when they see they’ve made a mistake. Girls can forget anything.”
“Do you think so?” said Jack through his teeth. “But not this girl. She’ll remember. Lou, what’ll we get for this?”
“Oh, about five more years for you, same for me, maybe, or less seeing you started everything and simply took me along.”
“Five and ten... fifteen... forty-one,” said the other, rather incoherently. “Too long! She...”
He stopped, for the knob of the door turned slowly, then opened and Moore entered with a man behind him. Lou Alp prepared himself for a shock meeting the eye of this savage marshal, this man so terrible that even Jack Chapel gave up at the mere thought of him. But what he saw was a dusty little man with misty, long-distance eyes. He carried his hat in an apologetic manner in both hands, fingering the brim as though he felt that he was out of place, but Lou was fascinated by the action of those nervous broken hands. He recognized in them a quality of deft and easy precision.
“Here they are, Marshal,” said Moore. “Here’s Jack Chandler and his partner, Louis Angus. Jack and Lou, here’s Marshal Gaines, my old friend. He wants to talk to you boys. There’s been an outrage. Holdup down the valley. Thirty-five hundred dollars walked off by a holdup artist. Between you and me, Marshal, I don’t see what good this talk will do you. That holdup was worked by one gent. Here’s two of ’em.”
The marshal nodded. He stepped from behind Moore and glanced at Chapel. Alp braced himself for the shock of the recognition, the flash of steel, as the marshal covered his man. He was stunned by the difference between his expectation and what actually happened. The marshal passed Chapel over with a glance and turned at once to Lou Alp, lying there helpless in the bed. It was embarrassing. Alp blinked and then smoothed his face to a smile.
“How are you, Marshal,” he said. It was always a policy of his to be ingratiating with police. And here was simply a new form of flattery.
“I’m doin’ fairly well,” said the marshal, advancing as far as the foot of the bed. “Got a touch of rheumatism, though. Settled in my left hip a couple of years ago and I ain’t much in the saddle when these cold snaps come on.”
“Oh, you’ll do well enough,” boomed Moore from the background.
“Sorry to bother you boys,” went on the marshal, “but I got to look over the strangers in these parts. I’d be sayin’ that you’re kind of new around here, Mister Angus?”
“Kind of,” admitted Alp.
He observed a spark that came up behind the eye of the marshal, and the spark grew into a small and hungry fire. It made Alp feel distinctly ill at ease. The marshal’s form was growing rapidly in his eyes.
“Well,” said the marshal, “it ain’t often that we get visitors around here in the cold spells. How long you think of staying on, partner?”
It occurred suddenly to Lou Alp that there was a double meaning in what the marshal was saying. He was addressing to the thief words apparently quite innocent in the ears of the other people in the room, but to Lou they might mean many things. At least he surmised that double meaning, and he decided to try out his theory.
“I dunno,” he declared. “Maybe a month. Maybe a year. Maybe more.”
The marshal shook his head. “I dunno,” he said, “but I kind of feel maybe you’re makin’ a mistake. Take a gun wound like that, and it don’t stand up none too well in stormy weather. I know.”
Lou Alp shifted his eyes to the puzzled face of Jack Chapel. Plainly his companion was bewildered by this friendly dialogue and was waiting for the denouement.
“Know what I’d do if I was you?” went on the marshal.
“Well?” asked Alp seriously.
“I’d climb on a hoss as soon as that wound would let me and get away from here. I’d get down to some warmer climate. Otherwise you’ll find rheumatism settlin’ in your leg and making you lame, maybe for the rest of your life. Understand?”
“Maybe I do,” said Lou, and his eyes grew larger. “Maybe I do.”
“You look like an intelligent sort,” said the marshal carelessly. “I wouldn’t give that advice to everybody. Take your friend... Chandler” — and he turned to Chapel and looked him over— “if he had a wound like that in the leg, I’d leave it to his blood and good bones to bring him through safe and sound, even up here in the winter and in the mountains. Fact is, seems to me that some gents is all cut out for mountain life, winter or summer... and some ain’t.”
This statement of Gaines’s was prompted by the fact that he had learned of Chapel’s innocence of the crime with which he had been charged through letters from the prison authorities. The real murderer had confessed. Chapel understood.
Moore began to laugh thunderously. “There you go on your rheumatics,” he said. “Get you on that and they ain’t any means of pryin’ you loose from it. Come on downstairs and have a drink, Gaines. I guess you’ve talked to these boys long enough?”
“Sure. I guess I have.” The glance of the marshal went back and dwelt gently upon the face of Alp. The latter changed color. “I’m sure I have,” continued the marshal.
“And you don’t no ways think that they took the coin?” chuckled Moore.
“Nope. What I’m really lookin’ for, Moore, is somebody that thought the big boss owed him some money, about thirty-five hundred of it. Well, glad to’ve met you boys. S’long.”
Without another word he was gone. Chapel turned to Lou with a white face.
“He didn’t know you, after all,” said Alp cheerily. “Ain’t that a load off? He didn’t know you, the batty-eyed old fool. He missed you clean.”
“He knew me,” said Jack, “better’n you do. Why, three years ago I went on a hunting trip with the marshal. Not only knows me, but he knows that I ought to be in prison on a charge of murder.”
“He can’t know that. He’d...” began Alp.
“But he does. I got a letter from him while I was there.”
“Then he’s gone down to frame us!”
“That’s not his way. And he seemed to take a fancy to you, Lou.”
“You fool! Didn’t you hear him plain as day tell me to get out of this country as soon as I could ride a hoss, and stay out?”
“You mean?”
“I mean that he knowed me. Heaven knows how. He’s giving you a chance to make good, but he’s letting me go to the devil.”
VIII. LOUIS’S LETTER
HOWEVER INCREDIBLE THE miracle was, yet it happened. Not only did the marshal leave the house of Moore, but he never returned. Afterward Lou and Jack heard frequent reports. The marshal let it be known throughout the countryside that he was going to get the daring outlaw or bust in the attempt. It was reported that he had brought several clues into the wind, and it was known that on two occasions he had made long rides through the mountains. But still the perpetrator of the outrage remained undiscovered.
What it was that urged the marshal toward this elaborate camouflage, Lou and Jack did not know, unless indeed it was that out of old friendship he had determined to give Jack another chance. One of the few failures which the marshal had ever made was being scored in this case, and people of the mountains wondered at it. Sheriff Meigs took a hand and followed separate clues, but those clues never brought him to the house of Moore, and Lou and Jack were safe.
The days went on with Alp improving by leaps and bounds. By the end of the first week the wound was only a red blur on the surface of the skin. In ten days he had taken his first careful step; within a fortnight he and Chapel were thinking of their departure.
Yet those days of recovery were by no means altogether happy days for Lou Alp. It was a period of storm and stress, with the storm composed of small things no
louder than the laughter of a girl or the fall of a woman’s foot. After that first day he saw the hopelessness of hope. Every morning, when he wakened, he made a firm resolve that that day he would bar her out of his heart. But before he had even seen her, at the first sound of her step or her voice, the hard lines in which he had set his face in preparation for the meeting dissolved, and invariably he smiled when he saw her.
If she had been oblivious of him, it would have been easier, but she paid him every attention. In fact, the girl and Jack Chapel were meeting, as it were, over his body. His welfare and the progress of his healing wound composed a topic which apparently possessed undying interest for them. He used to lie in his bed and read through the hypocritical warmth with which they made their inquiries. Always his condition was the starting point, and always the talk ended in something a thousand miles removed from him. Usually it brought both the talkers out of the room, and then a time of misery would begin for Lou Alp.
All day long, while he was bedridden, he found himself listening with terrific concentration for all sounds of life that passed through the walls of his room. When his door was left open, it was a double trial. Sometimes he could hear them talking, their voices reduced to an echoing murmur up the long hall. Sometimes the piano tinkled directly beneath him. Or again, and this more and more often, he caught the sound of their singing. They had learned some two-part songs. Jack Chapel had a strong, somewhat rough baritone, and the girl’s voice was a light, sweet-toned soprano. It seemed that his strength covered the meagerness of her voice, and her quality smoothed the harshness of the man. The result was altogether pleasant. Lou Alp admitted that fact with the cruel and cold justice which had come to temper his mind more and more since the first day. But all things else were nothing compared to the sound of the girl’s laughter. He could almost hear that even when the door was closed. He had a seventh sense for it. He could feel the rhythm of the sound before it was audible to his ear. He could tell it by a sudden quickening of the pulse and falling of the heart. Yet it was a mellow laughter, though it went through the heart of Lou Alp like a sword of fire.