Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  In that manner Jack Chapel found him sitting when, a little later, he opened the door softly. He shut it again, just as silently. The girl behind met him with a glance of eager curiosity when he turned away. Jack Chapel laid a finger against his lips, and then whispered: “Hush! He’s remembering.”

  “Poor fellow,” said the girl, and her eyes misted.

  “Poor devil,” said Jack Chapel.

  They had between them such a great happiness that they felt they could give alms to all the world and still have plenty left.

  X. A MAN WHO FORGOT CHRISTMAS

  WHO KNOWS WHAT might have happened if Lou Alp had heard nothing of what they said? But he heard. The closing of the door, softly as it was done, had roused him as a whisper rouses a cat. Instantly he was beside the door, on his knees, and this was what he heard:

  “Poor fellow!”

  “Poor devil!”

  There is no man so low as to accept pity from a successful rival. If a great tide of tenderness had been rising in the heart of Lou Alp the moment before, it was now suddenly checked. He remembered that a treasure remained to Jack Chapel. The pity had a string to it that sent him reeling and gasping back into the room, as though a bullet had plowed through his vitals. He remained there in a silent frenzy, biting his hands, beating at his face.

  Who has seen the frantic contortions of the cat that, playing with the mouse, loses the little creature? For such was the fury of Lou Alp. The fact that he despised himself for still hating Jack Chapel did not matter, it only intensified the hatred.

  Going down for breakfast a little later, he found the old Negro servant hobbling up in the opposite direction. Lou nodded to him, and shrank aside, for he had an almost physical aversion for Negroes. But there was a great red-lipped smile, a flash of rolling eyes, and out of a deep throat the greeting: “Merry Christmas!”

  The words came back from the lips of Lou Alp, but they came as a harsh and hardly whispered echo: “Merry Christmas.”

  That chance meeting prepared him for what was to follow. In the dining room the people were already gathering. Mrs. Moore had on a new dress and, from the manner in which she kept looking down at it and then across at her daughter, it was plain who had made the gift.

  The bald head of Roger Moore was covered by a black silk skull cap which he touched now and then, as one will handle a novelty. But what Lou chiefly saw was the picture of Kate Moore and Jack Chapel in the corner. They were whispering together. They were almost holding each other’s hands. Lou, shocked with surprise, realized that the parents of the girl must know what had been going on, that they actually approved of her affection for this unknown fellow, this chance acquaintance.

  In the meantime all eyes had whipped across in his direction the moment he put foot through the door. There was a chorus of greetings.

  “I dunno what to say,” muttered Lou Alp.

  “You don’t have to say a thing.”

  “I forgot...”

  What a joyous laugh there was.

  “The best joke I ever heard,” cried Roger Moore in his enormous voice. “A man who forgot Christmas!”

  The words remained ringing in the ears of Lou Alp all during the breakfast, all during the rest of the day. But, after all, what was Christmas? Weren’t there other holidays? What about Washington’s Birthday? What about New Year’s? Certainly all those were holidays which closed banks and stores with as much definiteness as any Christmas that had ever happened. Yet no one would laugh at him for forgetting such days. And here was Roger Moore with a brand-new jest added to his stale collection, happy as a child with a new toy.

  “Don’t apologize,” the old fellow said. “You made us all a present, without knowing it. I wouldn’t have missed this for a year of life!”

  Wherein was the day different? For it was different. It came tinglingly to Lou Alp himself. This was the one day in the year when the world forgot its taking and gave itself up to giving. Very strange! People gave things away and were happier because of the giving.

  Here he sat, the sole member of that household who had not given away valuable things, and yet all the rest were happy and he was wrapped in gloom. It made him shake his head. How had it all begun, this giving away? Out of his childhood the old story came slowly back to him, the stable, the manger, and Mary with the child. The child who grew to manhood and gave everything and took nothing. The one perfect type of the selfless man, who lived for others and who died for others.

  And what was the result of this giving, this senseless outpouring of effort? Buildings erected in His name around the world, and myriads carrying His thought and one day each year set aside for giving in some small measure as He had given. The thought burdened and bewildered Lou Alp who had lived with his hand in the pockets of others. These people had given, and yet they acted as if they had received. Kate Moore, Jack Chapel, Mrs. Moore, Roger Moore, they all met him with open eyes and open hearts as though he had conferred a favor on each by his mute acceptances.

  A bee buzzing in a small, closed room fills it with sound to bursting, and one large thought crammed the narrow brain of Lou Alp until it reeled. The thought kept him occupied all that day. Automatically he spoke, answered questions, smiled vaguely, and lived on the edge of the happiness which flushed the others and raised their voices. Nothing mattered. When the cook dropped the platter and spoiled the dinner set, there was only laughter from Roger Moore, and a smiling shake of the head from Mrs. Moore. When a gust of snow rushed through an opened window and soaked the carpet, there was an outburst of merriment, and everyone set about repairing the damage.

  One would have thought that the howling wind was the voice of a friend, to see these people and to hear them. One would have thought that each of them sat in expectation of a legacy. And was there not, perhaps, a legacy left them by that man who had died two thousand years before? Again the thought appalled Lou Alp.

  They were seated around the dinner table. Roger Moore was at the head, Mrs. Moore at the foot, with her cheeks roses and her hair whiter than ever by contrast. Lou Alp sat at one side, and Jack Chapel and Kate Moore at the other. It was a large table, so heaped with food that the five people seemed utterly inadequate. The mountain of bittersweet in the center helped to separate one from another, so that Lou felt that a great distance lay between him and the two opposite.

  Things came and went, plates were passed before him, and he ate mechanically, hardly tasting what he touched. Roger Moore was filling his glass with wine, a rare treat in the mountains.

  “Watery stuff,” Roger Moore said, “but it’s sort of in style this time of year.”

  Lou Alp did not hear or, if he heard, he did not understand. For the great thought was still rising and ebbing through his mind and crowding all other things out. All other things except the loveliness of Kate Moore.

  How beautiful she was! There was about her a perishable quality. One might have wished that she be transmuted to marble and color, so that she could neither grow old nor die. No, death was not so much to be dreaded as the withering years.

  Lou Alp attempted to push the thought of her beauty away by remembering what time accomplished. There was Belle Samson of Fourth Street near the Bowery. Belle at nineteen had been ravishing. The sort of girl people turned to look at and go on, half smiling and half sad. But Belle married Gandil, the saloon keeper, and at twenty-five her color was gone, the luster fled from her hair, her shoulders bowed, her fingers stubby. Still pretty, but without that other thing, that quality of a different world which stops the minds of men.

  He could enumerate others. And then he squinted at Kate Moore across the table. It made no difference. He tried to dim those eyes with time. He tried to paint in the wrinkles on the brow and by the mouth. He tried to straighten the curve of the lips. But, when he had finished the picture which fifteen years would make of her, his hand fell away from the picture and his eyes saw the truth. No matter what she became, she would always remain, to him who loved her, what she was at this time.
As if these young years alone truly expressed the soul within her. Afterward the husk of the body changed, but the spirit of beauty remained. Into the dark mind of the sneak thief the gentle thought made way, that love is an immortalizer, that time cannot undo that marvelous embalming.

  XI. THE GREATEST GIFT

  IT HAD BEEN an unfinished beauty, the face of Kate Moore, when he first saw her on the day of the shooting and the robbery. There had been lacking some master touch, and his weak hand had aspired, all unknowing, to supply the missing thing. But now the picture was completed. The room was lighted. There was nothing more to be wished. Every time she turned to Jack Chapel, the sneak thief remembered his first aspiration and knew that another hand had done what his own could not accomplish. Something as dry as soot choked him with hatred for Chapel.

  They had come to mince pie and plum pudding when a knock was heard at the front door. The old Negro with a yellow face appeared at one of the two doors leading from the hall to the dining room, his lips parted to speak. He did not come to speech, for a hand brushed him roughly to one side and a big man, armed, stood in the doorway.

  Lou Alp glanced to the other door. Immediately it was filled by a second man. Likewise he was tall and he was armed. There needed only one glance at either of them to know that these were trained man-hunters. The face of Roger Moore, starting up from his chair, would have supplied the information.

  He choked down his morsel of pudding. “What the devil, Sheriff...?”

  The tall man who had first appeared raised his hand and took off his hat, which up to that time he had apparently forgotten.

  “Maybe I look like the devil to you, Roger,” he said genially, “and I’m a pile sorry that I have to break in on a party like this. I’ll tell you how it is. I’ve got a little job to do here, and I’ve got to see that you folks all stay in your places while the job is bein’ done. They ain’t goin’ to be no unpleasantness I hope. Jest you go right on eatin’. And then I’ll slope and there you are. But don’t nobody, man or woman, leave his chair till I get back!”

  He disappeared, and a third man stepped up to fill the vacant place at the door. Neither he nor the other man offered a single offensive word or gesture, but it was plain from their shifting glances that they were keeping every member of that Christmas group in mind. But that was not what Lou Alp saw first of all. He saw Kate Moore, as she had sprung up, clutch the arm of Jack Chapel with both her hands, and the white, still face which she turned to her companion told Lou that she knew everything — everything. Jack Chapel had laid his past bare before the girl. Had he told her about Lou as well, curse him? But he had told her, and in spite of that she loved him. Once more the knife entered the flesh of Lou Alp, and he grinned in his agony.

  Now another thing. They were settling back in their chairs, and Roger Moore was saying something about an outrage and that the sheriff couldn’t run for dog catcher in that county after an affair like this, invading a private home at Christmas. But the big voice of Roger Moore was a blur in the ears of Lou Alp. He saw Jack Chapel sink back into his chair with a reassuring word to Kate that brought a tint into her cheeks again, and then the eyes of Jack went across the table, across the mountain of bittersweet, and dwelt steadily on the face of Lou Alp.

  He knew! As sure as there was a God in heaven, he knew that he had been betrayed and who the Judas was. Lou Alp, with murder and horror in his heart, slipped his cold fingers over the butt of his automatic. Yet it did not come. The explosion hung fire, and then did not explode. There was death in the eyes of Jack Chapel and yet he did not lift his hand.

  A vast wonder swept over Lou. Roger Moore was ordering everyone to fall to and enjoy the dinner in spite of the sheriff. Jack Chapel seemed to be obeying the order. He did not eat. He drained his wineglass, and then he turned to Kate Moore and began talking in a low, swift monotone. There was something almost fierce about his face, the set of his jaw, and the flare of his eyes, and Lou quaked with the thought that he was telling the girl the story of the betrayer.

  But no. She raised her glance and gazed at Lou, and yet he knew that she did not see him. Her eyes were wide and starry with the look of distance. Her lips were parted as though she drank. Lou Alp knew that indeed she was drinking, drinking the words of the condemned man at her side. That was the reason, then, that Jack Chapel would not lift his hand for vengeance. That was the reason he let Judas sit unharmed across the very table. He needed those last, priceless moments to pour out his heart to the girl. The whisper became more than the rush of the storm past the windows, and like a storm it shook Lou Alp.

  In a rush of inspiration he knew that man who sat opposite him for the first time, knew that Jack Chapel would let himself be taken without one word of accusation leveled at his confederate. What had the whole story of their relations been? It had been a giving by Jack and a taking by Lou. He had given Lou the very gun, which now threatened his life, if he made one hostile move.

  Lou Alp closed his eyes and sagged forward in his chair but, in the darkness that swam before his vision, he saw a picture grow, a picture he had seen long before, forgotten, almost. It was a picture of one man among many at a table. There was light upon that single face. Lou Alp opened his eyes again and saw Jack Chapel’s face. For the moment in the blur of his sight it seemed that there was a light upon the face of his companion.

  Steps were coming heavily down the stairs from above, and the heart of Lou Alp beat steadily in unison with that sound. The form of the sheriff towered again at the door and, casting down a bag which he carried, it struck the floor with a clash of much metal within. Jack Chapel stood up by his chair. He laid his hand on the shoulder of the girl, but he sent his last glance across the table, and Lou knew that he was forgiven.

  “Gents,” said the sheriff, “I’m sorry to say it, but there’s a thief in this house and his name is...”

  The explosion of a revolver tore the next word to rags. Lou Alp was on his feet with the automatic barking in his hands. Roger Moore, with an expression of dumb surprise, slid gently under the table. Kate Moore had shrunk back against the wall, carrying Jack with her and circling him with her entangling arms. Mrs. Moore sat stupefied.

  Not one living soul would ever know what beautiful gun play was going on before them. For Lou Alp was a master hand, when his hand was steady, and today his hand was steadier than it had ever been before in his life. He did better than hit the bull’s-eye. He chipped the edges of his target. He sent a slug through the shoulder of the sheriff’s coat and trimmed the edge of the other fellow’s long mustache with his first two shots. So lightning fast was his work that he had fired twice before the others, trained gunmen though they were, had their weapons out.

  A bullet crashed through the left shoulder of Lou Alp and drove him back against the wall. He fired again, aiming nicely, and gave the hair of the sheriff a new part. Another slug struck him in the hip. Two guns roared at once, and Lou sank gently forward on his knees, still farther forward, and finally lay on his face.

  The sheriff was the first to cease firing. His long legs brought him first to the side of Lou. He jerked him over upon his back.

  “Yes,” said Lou Alp, “I done the job. And then I shoved the coin in Jack’s room, because I wanted to frame him. He didn’t have nothin’ to do with it.”

  Jack Chapel burst in between and gathered the shattered body in his arms. The whisper reached his ear only.

  “My gift,” said Lou Alp. “Be good to her.”

  Black Jack (1921)

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

 
CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 1

  IT WAS CHARACTERISTIC of the two that when the uproar broke out Vance Cornish raised his eyes, but went on lighting his pipe. Then his sister Elizabeth ran to the window with a swish of skirts around her long legs. After the first shot there was a lull. The little cattle town was as peaceful as ever with its storm-shaken houses staggering away down the street.

  A boy was stirring up the dust of the street, enjoying its heat with his bare toes, and the same old man was bunched in his chair in front of the store. During the two days Elizabeth had been in town on her cattle- buying trip, she had never see him alter his position. But she was accustomed to the West, and this advent of sleep in the town did not satisfy her. A drowsy town, like a drowsy-looking cow-puncher, might be capable of unexpected things.

  “Vance,” she said, “there’s trouble starting.”

  “Somebody shooting at a target,” he answered.

  As if to mock him, he had no sooner spoken than a dozen voices yelled down the street in a wailing chorus cut short by the rapid chattering of revolvers. Vance ran to the window. Just below the hotel the street made an elbow-turn for no particular reason except that the original cattle- trail had made exactly the same turn before Garrison City was built. Toward the corner ran the hubbub at the pace of a running horse. Shouts, shrill, trailing curses, and the muffled beat of hoofs in the dust. A rider plunged into view now, his horse leaning far in to take the sharp angle, and the dust skidding out and away from his sliding hoofs. The rider gave easily and gracefully to the wrench of his mount.