by Max Brand
“I give you my solemn word.” said Donnegan in torment, “that the colonel shall not come near Landis while you’re away with me.”
“Your word!” murmured the girl with a sort of horrified wonder. “Your word!”
And Donnegan bowed his head.
But all at once she cast out her free hand toward him, while the other still cherished the weakness of Jack Landis.
“Oh, give them up!” she cried. “Give up my father and all his wicked plans. There is something good in you. Give him up; come with us; stand for us: and we shall be grateful all our lives!”
The little man had removed his hat, so that the sunshine burned brightly on his red hair. Indeed, there was always a flamelike quality about him. In inaction he seemed femininely frail and pale; but when his spirit was roused his eyes blazed as his hair burned in the sunlight.
“You shall learn in the end,” he said to the girl, “that everything I do, I do for you.”
She cried out as if he had struck her.
“It’s not worthy of you,” she said bitterly. “You are keeping Jack here — in peril — for my sake?”
“For your sake,” said Donnegan.
She looked at him with a queer pain in her eyes.
“To keep you from needless lying,” she said, “let me tell you that Jack has told me everything. I am not angry because you come and pretend that you do all these horrible things for my sake. I know my father has tempted you with a promise of a great deal of money. But in the end you will get nothing. No, he will twist everything away from you and leave you nothing! But as for me — I know everything; Jack told me.”
“He has told you what? What?”
“About the woman you love.”
“The woman I love?” echoed Donnegan, stupefied.
It seemed that Lou Macon could only name her with an effort that left her trembling.
“The Lebrun woman,” she said. “Jack has told me.”
“Did you tell her that?” he asked Landis.
“The whole town knows it,” stammered the wounded man.
The cunning hypocrisy spurred Donnegan. He put his foot on the threshold of the shack, and at this the girl cried out and shrank from him; but Landis was too paralyzed to stir or speak. For a moment Donnegan was wildly tempted to pour his torrent of contempt and accusation upon Landis. To what end? To prove to the girl that the big fellow had coolly tricked her? That it was to be near Nelly Lebrun as much as to be away from the colonel that he wished so ardently to leave the shack? After all, Lou Macon was made happy by an illusion; let her keep it.
He looked at her sadly again. She stood defiant over Landis; ready to protect the helpless bulk of the man.
So Donnegan closed the door softly and turned away with ashes in his heart.
CHAPTER 35
WHEN NELLY LEBRUN raised her head from her hands, Donnegan was a far figure; yet even in the distance she could catch the lilt and easy sway of his body; he rode as he walked, lightly, his feet in the stirrups half taking his weight in a semi-English fashion. For a moment she was on the verge of spurring after him, but she kept the rein taut and merely stared until he dipped away among the hills. For one thing she was quite assured that she could not overtake that hard rider; and, again, she felt that it was useless to interfere. To step between Lord Nick and one of his purposes would have been like stepping before an avalanche and commanding it to halt with a raised hand.
She watched miserably until even the dust cloud dissolved and the bare, brown hills alone remained before her. Then she turned away, and hour after hour let her black jog on.
To Nelly Lebrun this day was one of those still times which come over the life of a person, and in which they see themselves in relation to the rest of the world clearly. It would not be true to say that Nelly loved Donnegan. Certainly not as yet, for the familiar figure of Lord Nick filled her imagination. But the little man was different. Lord Nick commanded respect, admiration, obedience; but there was about Donnegan something which touched her in an intimate and disturbing manner. She had felt the will-o’-the-wisp flame which burned in him in his great moments. It was possible for her to smile at Donnegan; it was possible even to pity him for his fragility, his touchy pride about his size; to criticize his fondness for taking the center of the stage even in a cheap little mining camp like this and strutting about, the center of all attention. Yet there were qualities in him which escaped her, a possibility of metallic hardness, a pitiless fire of purpose.
To Lord Nick, he was as the bull terrier to the mastiff.
But above all she could not dislodge the memory of his strange talk with her at Lebrun’s. Not that she did not season the odd avowals of Donnegan with a grain of salt, but even when she had discounted all that he said, she retained a quivering interest. Somewhere beneath his words she sensed reality. Somewhere beneath his actions she felt a selfless willingness to throw himself away.
As she rode she was comparing him steadily with Lord Nick. And as she made the comparisons she felt more and more assured that she could pick and choose between the two. They loved her, both of them. With Nick it was an old story; with Donnegan it might be equally true in spite of its newness. And Nelly Lebrun felt rich. Not that she would have been willing to give up Lord Nick. By no means. But neither was she willing to throw away Donnegan. Diamonds in one hand and pearls in the other. Which handful must she discard?
She remained riding an unconscionable length of time, and when she drew rein again before her father’s house, the black was flecked with foam from his clamped bit, and there was a thick lather under the stirrup leathers. She threw the reins to the servant who answered her call and went slowly into the house.
Donnegan, by this time, was dead. She began to feel that it would be hard to look Lord Nick in the face again. His other killings had often seemed to her glorious. She had rejoiced in the invincibility of her lover.
Now he suddenly took on the aspect of a murderer.
She found the house hushed. Perhaps everyone was at the gaming house; for now it was midafternoon. But when she opened the door to the apartment which they used as a living room she found Joe Rix and the Pedlar and Lester sitting side by side, silent. There was no whisky in sight; there were no cards to be seen. Marvel of marvels, these three men were spending their time in solemn thought. A sudden thought rushed over her, and her cry told where her heart really lay, at least at this time.
“Lord Nick — has he been—”
The Pedlar lifted his gaunt head and stared at her without expression. It was Joe Rix who answered.
“Nick’s upstairs.”
“Safe?”
“Not a scratch.”
She sank into a chair with a sigh, but was instantly on edge again with the second thought.
“Donnegan?” she whispered.
“Safe and sound,” said Lester coldly.
She could not gather the truth of the statement.
“Then Nick got Landis back before Donnegan returned?”
“No.”
Like any other girl, Nelly Lebrun hated a puzzle above all things in the world, at least a puzzle which affected her new friends.
“Lester, what’s happened?” she demanded.
At this Lester, who had been brooding upon the floor, raised his eyes and then switched one leg over the other. He was a typical cowman, was Lester, from his crimson handkerchief knotted around his throat to his shop-made boots which fitted slenderly about his instep with the care of a gloved hand.
“I dunno what happened,” said Lester. “Which looks like what counts is the things that didn’t happen. Landis is still with that devil, Macon. Donnegan is loose without a scratch, and Lord Nick is in his room with a face as black as a cloudy night.”
And briefly he described how Lord Nick had gone up the hill, seen the colonel, come back, taken a horse litter, and gone up the hill again, while the populace of The Corner waited for a crash. For Donnegan had arrived in the meantime. And how Nick had gone i
nto the cabin, remained a singularly long time, and then come out, with a face half white and half red and an eye that dared anyone to ask questions. He had strode straight home to Lebrun’s and gone to his room; and there he remained, never making a sound.
“But I’ll give you my way of readin’ the sign on that trail,” said Lester. “Nick goes up the hill to clean up on Donnegan. He sees him; they size each other up in a flash; they figure that if they’s a gun it means a double killin’ — and they simply haul off and say a perlite fare-thee-well.”
The girl paid no attention to these remarks. She was sunk in a brown study.
“There’s something behind it all,” she said, more to herself than to the men. “Nick is proud as the devil himself. And I can’t imagine why he’d let Donnegan go. Oh, it might have been done if they’d met alone in the desert. But with the whole town looking on and waiting for Nick to clean up on Donnegan — no, it isn’t possible. There must have been a showdown of some kind.”
There was a grim little silence after this.
“Maybe there was,” said the Pedlar dryly. “Maybe there was a showdown — and the wind-up of it is that Nick comes home meek as a six-year-old broke down in front.”
She stared at him, first astonished, and then almost frightened.
“You mean that Nick may have taken water?”
The three, as one man, shrugged their shoulders, and met her glance with cold eyes.
“You fools!” cried the girl, springing to her feet. “He’d rather die!”
Joe Rix leaned forward, and to emphasize his point he stabbed one dirty forefinger into the fat palm of his other hand.
“You just start thinkin’ back,” he said solemnly, “and you’ll remember that Donnegan has done some pretty slick things.”
Lester added with a touch of contempt: “Like shootin’ down Landis one day and then sittin’ down and havin’ a nice long chat with you the next. I dunno how he does it.”
“That hunch of yours,” said the girl fiercely, “ought to be roped and branded — lie! Lester, don’t look at me like that. And if you think Nick has lost his grip on things you’re dead wrong. Step light, Lester — and the rest of you. Or Nick may hear you walk — and think.”
She flung out of the room and raced up the stairs to Lord Nick’s room. There was an interval without response after her first knock. But when she rapped again he called out to know who was there. At her answer she heard his heavy stride cross the room, and the door opened slowly. His face, as she looked up to it, was so changed that she hardly knew him. His hair was unkempt, on end, where he had sat with his fingers thrust into it, buried in thought. And the marks of his palms were red upon his forehead.
“Nick,” she whispered, frightened, “what is it?”
He looked down half fiercely, half sadly at her. And though his lips parted they closed again before he spoke. Fear jumped coldly in Nelly Lebrun.
“Did Donnegan—” she pleaded, white-faced. “Did he—”
“Did he bluff me out?” finished Nick. “No, he didn’t. That’s what everybody’ll say. I know it, don’t I? And that’s why I’m staying here by myself, because the first fool that looks at me with a question in his face, why — I’ll break him in two.”
She pressed close to him, more frightened than before. That Lord Nick should have been driven to defend himself with words was almost too much for credence.
“You know I don’t believe it, Nick? You know that I’m not doubting you?”
But he brushed her hands roughly away.
“You want to know what it’s all about? Then go over to — well, to Milligan’s. Donnegan will be there. He’ll explain things to you, I guess. He wants to see you. And maybe I’ll come over later and join you.”
Seeing Lord Nick before her, so shaken, so gray of face, so dull of eye, she pictured Donnegan as a devil in human form, cunning, resistless.
“Nick, dear—” she pleaded.
He closed the door in her face, and she heard his heavy step go back across the room. In some mysterious manner she felt the Promethean fire had been stolen from Lord Nick, and Donnegan’s was the hand that had robbed him of it.
CHAPTER 36
IT WAS FEAR that Nelly Lebrun felt first of all. It was fear because the impossible had happened and the immovable object had been at last moved. Going back to her own room, the record of Lord Nick flashed across her mind; one long series of thrilling deeds. He had been a great and widely known figure on the mountain desert while she herself was no more than a girl. When she first met him she had been prepared for the sight of a firebreathing monster; and she had never quite recovered from the first thrill of finding him not devil but man.
Quite oddly, now that there seemed another man as powerful as Lord Nick or even more terrible, she felt for the big man more tenderly than ever; for like all women, there was a corner of her heart into which she wished to receive a thing she could cherish and protect. Lord Nick, the invincible, had seemed without any real need of other human beings. His love for her had seemed unreal because his need of her seemed a superficial thing. Now that he was in sorrow and defeat she suddenly visualized a Lord Nick to whom she could truly be a helpmate. Tears came to her eyes at the thought.
Yet, very contradictorily and very humanly, the moment she was in her room she began preparing her toilet for that evening at Lebrun’s. Let no one think that she was already preparing to cast Lord Nick away and turn to the new star in the sky of the mountain desert. By no means. No doubt her own heart was not quite clear to Nelly. Indeed, she put on her most lovely gown with a desire for revenge. If Lord Nick had been humbled by this singular Donnegan, would it not be a perfect revenge to bring Donnegan himself to her feet? Would it not be a joy to see him turn pale under her smile, and then, when he was well-nigh on his knees, spurn the love which he offered her?
She set her teeth and her eyes gleamed with the thought. But nevertheless she went on lavishing care in the preparation for that night.
As she visioned the scene, the many curious eyes that watched her with Donnegan; the keen envy in the faces of the women; the cold watchfulness of the men, were what she pictured.
In a way she almost regretted that she was admired by such fighting men, Landis, Lord Nick, and now Donnegan, who frightened away the rank and file of other would-be admirers. But it was a pang which she could readily control and subdue.
To tell the truth the rest of the day dragged through a weary length. At the dinner table her father leaned to her and talked in his usual murmuring voice which could reach her own ear and no other by any chance.
“Nelly, there’s going to be the devil to pay around The Corner. You know why. Now, be a good girl and wise girl and play your cards. Donnegan is losing his head; he’s losing it over you. So play your cards.”
“Turn down Nick and take up Donnegan?” she asked coldly.
“I’ve said enough already,” said her father, and would not speak again. But it was easy to see that he already felt Lord Nick’s star to be past its full glory.
Afterward, Lebrun himself took his daughter over to Milligan’s and left her under the care of the dance-hall proprietor.
“I’m waiting for someone,” said Nelly, and Milligan sat willingly at her table and made talk. He was like the rest of The Corner — full of the subject of the strange encounter between Lord Nick and Donnegan. What had Donnegan done to the big man? Nelly merely smiled and said they would all know in time: one thing was certain — Lord Nick had not taken water. But at this Milligan smiled behind his hand.
Ten minutes later there was that stir which announced the arrival of some public figures; and Donnegan with big George behind him came into the room. This evening he went straight to the table to Nelly Lebrun. Milligan, a little uneasy, rose. But Donnegan was gravely polite and regretted that he had interrupted.
“I have only come to ask you for five minutes of your time,” he said to the girl.
She was about to put him off merely to
make sure of her hold over him, but something she saw in his face fascinated her. She could not play her game. Milligan had slipped away before she knew it, and Donnegan was in his place at the table. He was as much changed as Lord Nick, she thought. Not that his clothes were less carefully arranged than ever, but in the compression of his lips and something behind his eyes she felt the difference. She would have given a great deal indeed to have learned what went on behind the door of Donnegan’s shack when Lord Nick was there.
“Last time you asked for one minute and stayed half an hour,” she said. “This time it’s five minutes.”
No matter what was on his mind he was able to answer fully as lightly.
“When I talk about myself, I’m always long-winded.”
“Tonight it’s someone else?”
“Yes.”
She was, being a woman, intensely disappointed, but her smile was as bright as ever.
“Of course I’m listening.”
“You remember what I told you of Landis and the girl on the hill?”
“She seems to stick in your thoughts, Mr. Donnegan.”
“Yes, she’s a lovely child.”
And by his frankness he very cunningly disarmed her. Even if he had hesitated an instant she would have been on the track of the truth, but he had foreseen the question and his reply came back instantly.
He added: “Also, what I say has to do with Lord Nick.”
“Ah,” said the girl a little coldly.
Donnegan went on. He had chosen frankness to be his role and he played it to the full.
“It is a rather wonderful story,” he went on. “You know that Lord Nick went up the hill for Landis? And The Corner was standing around waiting for him to bring the youngster down?”
“Of course.”
“There was only one obstacle — which you had so kindly removed — myself.”
“For your own sake, Mr. Donnegan.”
“Ah, don’t you suppose that I know?” And his voice touched her. “He came to kill me. And no doubt he could have done so.”