by Max Brand
“She didn’t say nothing for a minute. She just stood there drying the dishwater off her hands and looking me up and down.
“‘Oh,’ she says after a while, ‘it’s you, is it? And why didn’t your brother come and ask about his murdered man?’
“And when she said that, all the men on the veranda growled. I turned away and didn’t say any more?”
“Oh,” cried Mary Valentine, “I wish that I’d been in your boots! I’d have found something to say!”
“Mary,” said Mrs. Valentine, “it looks to me like you’d found too much to say other times.”
Her husband checked her with a swiftly raised hand, but Mary continued to stare defiantly at her aunt. Since the episode of Joe Norman they had been almost openly at war, and now Mrs. Valentine compressed her lips and knitted with a venomous speed.
“You needn’t think that I wouldn’t have talked back fast enough if one of the men had talked up,” said Louis, turning red. “I wasn’t afraid of any of ’em, Mary, if that’s what you mean.”
“You know it isn’t what I mean, Lou,” she said with a diplomatic change of voice. “Nobody is fool enough to doubt your courage; you’re a Valentine, I guess! But it makes me mad to think of you turning away without giving that mob a few hot shots between wind and water.”
“I wish I’d had the chance at ’em,” said Charlie ferociously, and he flashed Mary a glance that sought approval.
“Good thing you hadn’t,” replied the girl instantly. “You’d probably have had ten men on your hands in no time. Better to say nothing at all, like Lou, than say the wrong thing.”
It made Charlie glower at her, but Louis smiled in triumph. Plainly Jess Dreer saw how the clever girl balanced one of them against the other.
“But here we are talking family shop before a stranger!” continued Mary Valentine, and she smiled an apology at Jess Dreer.
He shifted his regard from Louis to his cousin, and, if ever a smile failed to strike its target, certainly Mary’s smile glanced harmlessly away from the impersonal eyes of Dreer. She found herself suddenly sobered.
“Don’t mind me,” he was saying in that surprisingly gentle voice.
“A little fracas,” explained his host swiftly. “Charlie had a mix-up with Joe Norman and dropped him — through the arm — nothing to talk of.”
Here Mrs. Valentine raised her eyes, let her glance fall pointedly upon Mary, sighed, and shook her head. It was impossible to miss her meaning. Mary had been the cause of the quarrel. But Jess Dreer was looking toward the ceiling and had apparently seen nothing. Mary did not know whether to be relieved or piqued. But now that the stranger’s attention was diverted to other things she took the occasion to examine him more minutely. Ordinarily she was not in the least interested in the few acquaintances whom her uncle brought home, but now she discovered that this stranger was probably not quite so old as his weather- beaten appearance had at first led her to imagine.
Then she found that the conversation had taken a new turn. Mrs. Valentine apparently felt that it was the part of a perfect hostess to draw the stranger into the center of attention.
“How long have you and Mr. Dreer known each other, Morgan?” she asked.
CHAPTER 9
AT THIS MORGAN Valentine flashed a glance at his companion, indicating that the danger line was being approached.
“Oh — about five years,” he said carelessly. He should have said more. His very carelessness made Mrs. Valentine continue her inquiry as though she feared that Dreer would consider himself slighted by so summary a dismissal from conversation.
“Five years? Well, you’re a secretive man, Morgan. Would you believe, Mr. Dreer, that he’s never mentioned you in all that time? I’ve known him to do the same with some of his oldest and best friends. That’s Morgan’s way! Where was it you first met Mr. Dreer, Morgan?”
“Down in Ireton.”
“Well, well! As long ago as that?” And the subject was closed for Mrs. Valentine. Then Mary entered the lists.
“Why, that was the time you bought the timber, Uncle Morgan?”
“I guess it was. I disremember.”
“Were you one of the men Uncle Morgan bought it from?”
“I never been interested in timber,” said Jess Dreer. “Horses is more my line. But speaking about timber?”
Who knows how far he might have rambled afield on the subject of timber and all its possibilities had not chance interrupted him. There was a snap, and a bright coal leaped out of the fireplace and onto the rug. In the flurry of putting it out Dreer’s promised anecdote was forgotten, and before he could resume it, Mary was back on the subject.
“Oh, did you buy that string of grays from Mr. Dreer, Uncle Morgan?”
“I disremember how it was that I met Dreer,” said Valentine, with a mild voice like that of one who labors in vain to find a suitable lie.
Dreer came to his rescue.
“It was in Tolliver’s saloon. We were drinking—”
“Why, Uncle Morgan! I thought it was ten years since you’d had a drink!”
“Not drinking whisky,” put in Jess Dreer calmly. “Leastways, he was taking lemonade, and I was tossing off my redeye. That was how we come to talk.”
As plain as day the steady eye of the girl said to him: “You are lying, Mr. Jess Dreer, and I know it.”
But he went on: “And I’ll tell you why Mr. Valentine ain’t ever mentioned me. It’s because he’s a modest man. But here’s the facts. I was saying that I had been drinking whisky. Well, when I went out into the sun, it got into my head and made it spin. When I climbed onto my hoss, I raked his side with a spur, and the next thing I knew my pinto was ten feet in the air. When he landed, I kept right on traveling. And when pinto seen me on the ground, he allowed I was his meat and started for me. He was a maneater, was pinto.
“There I lay stretched out with eight hundred and fifty pounds of redeyed hossflesh tearing for me and about twenty fools laughing their heads off in front of the saloon. But they was one man cool enough to see what was coming off: a man-killing. He had a split part of a second to keep that hoss from reaching me, and he done it. He outs with his guns and drills pinto clean through the temples. As pretty a snapshot as ever I seen. And that man was Morgan Valentine!”
He dropped his hand lightly on the shoulder of Valentine.
“But he’s so modest that it ain’t no wonder he’s never talked about me.”
Now Mary Valentine sat next to the tall stranger, and she was leaning forward to catch every syllable and read every detail of his expression, but for some reason he did not seem to see her. His target lay beyond. It was Elizabeth who had pushed her chair a little out of line with the rest of the circle, quite content to let Mary take the lion’s share of the attention of the evening. On her Jess Dreer bent his steady eye, and every inflection of his voice was aimed at the girl, so that she, too, leaned forward, and before the end was smiling in breathless interest.
While the general exclamation went the rounds at the end of the tale, Mary snapped a glance over her shoulder at her cousin. Then she turned her attention back upon the tall man.
“I guess you’ve made that a bit strong,” Valentine was saying.
“Facts are facts,” said the bandit, and rolled a cigarette.
He had adroitly pushed his host out of the embarrassing center of the stage and stepped into the spotlight himself.
“Pinto reared when the lead hit him; coming down, one of his forefeet clipped me here.”
And the bandit touched the scar upon his forehead. There was a general leaning forward and an intaken breath; Mrs. Valentine fixed her starry eyes upon her husband. In the clamor Mary could say to the stranger without fear of being overheard:
“Mr. Dreer, how much of that is made up?”
He neither smiled nor flushed.
“Guess,” he said.
“The whole thing.”
“Lady,” he answered calmly, “you sure got faith in my im
agination!”
At this point the fire blazed up so hot that Mrs. Valentine had to move her chair. It was Jess Dreer who read her wish and pulled the chair back, and when he sat down again, it was in a place beside Lizbeth.
It would not be fair to Mary to say that she was piqued by this occurrence. She was not angered; she was merely gathered up in the silence of a vast astonishment. For the first time in her life she had been overlooked, it seemed, and her cousin was preferred. And yet she had given Jess Dreer his full share of intriguing glances and bright smiles.
Indeed, the interest of the stranger in Lizbeth was so pointed that the whole family began to notice. He gave his host and hostess a phrase or a word now and then, but he contrived to make his talk go constantly toward the girl. And it was plain that Mrs. Valentine was not altogether displeased. As for Elizabeth, Mary saw her at first embarrassed, and then flushed, and then lost in a great interest. She was beginning to dwell on the face of Dreer while he spoke. Mary drew her uncle to one side.
“Your friend likes Lizbeth,” she said pointedly. “And Lizbeth seems to like him.”
“Now, Mary, what are you aiming to come at?”
“I aim to know who Jess Dreer is.”
“Ain’t you been told tolerable in detail?”
“Too much detail, dear Uncle Morgan. Do you think I was taken in by that cock- and-bull story about the mad horse?”
“Hush, Mary!” and his glance sought his wife guiltily.
“I knew it!”
“Mary, you’re a nuisance.”
“But just tell me who he is, and I won’t bother you a word more.”
“He’s a man. Two legs, tolerable long; two arms, tolerable strong, and, speaking in general, he’s like any other man.”
“He’s as much like any other man,” said the girl, watching him earnestly, “as a wolf is like a dog. Look at his hands, Uncle Morgan. They’re brown. He hasn’t worn gloves much, the way honest cowpunchers do. Look at the inside of his palms. No calluses. I noticed when I shook hands with him. Look at the way he moves! Like a cat moves, Uncle. Don’t tell me he’s an ordinary man!”
“They’s all kinds of men, and when you’re older, you’ll know it. Wolf? That’s foolishness, honey.”
“A wolf, Uncle.”
“You think he’s talking too much to Lizbeth?”
“Oh, no. Lizbeth is too much of a baby to be harmed.”
“She’s grown up, Mary.”
“On the outside; inside she’s about ten years old. But I’m right about this stranger. Even Charlie and Louis see that he’s different. Usually Charlie starts edging up to new men, but he keeps clear of Dreer. See how he eyes him!”
“There you go again.”
“Then tell me the truth about him.”
“I’ll tell you this much, honey. He’s not the kind for you to set your cap at.”
“You mean that you think I’ll flirt with him?”
“Maybe.”
“Uncle! With a man fifteen years older than I am?”
“Maybe not so old as that. But he’s old enough. You’ve played around with boys, Mary, and they was no particular harm in it, excepting for getting Charlie into scrapes now and then. But when you start making eyes at a grown man, trouble will hit you and not them.”
“You admit that it isn’t very safe to be friendly with him. And yet you’ve known him five years—”
“No matter how long. I know him. And you keep away from him, honey.”
“How long does he stay?”
“Till after you go.”
“Somewhere there’s a mystery,” said Mary Valentine, and she added suddenly: “There he is laughing at us now. Why, he knows we’re talking about him, and he’s mocking me.”
“Honey, he ain’t laughing.”
“With his eyes, Uncle Morgan. Oh, he’s a deep one!”
CHAPTER 10
IF VALENTINE HAD sought to create a diversion and start new interests by bringing his bandit home, he had indubitably succeeded. The advent of the stranger had the effect of a bomb which is about to explode. No one could really have said why Dreer was exciting, but before he had been in the room for ten minutes, each member of Valentine’s family had felt the same influence of excitement which had affected Morgan Valentine and induced him to bring the stranger to his home. Perhaps it was that in spite of the grave decorum of Dreer’s manner one felt about him a native wildness. In a way, it might be said that he carried a gust of fresh air into the room. And he was constantly alert and active after the manner of wild things. His hands were rarely still, and though he seldom turned his head, his eyes went everywhere.
When he smiled at a remark of Elizabeth’s, Mary felt that he was laughing at her, and Charlie felt that he was being mocked. Not that the stranger pointedly ignored the rest of the room, but it seemed that he had happened to sit down by Elizabeth, and he found her sufficiently entertaining. But the great point of wonder was that Elizabeth was actually talking. At first haltingly, confused because the eyes of the others in the room were occasionally turning upon her with wonder, but by degrees warming into complete forgetfulness of the rest. She lowered her voice. She was talking to the tall man alone. About what? The others caught fragments of phrases about her horses, about her last hunting trip, about the lobo she shot last spring. She had begun by asking timidly polite questions. She ended by chattering gaily about herself.
It was a pretty thing to see her grow excited. What Mary Valentine could not decide was whether her cousin was excited by Jess Dreer the man, or Jess Dreer the audience.
She was similarly puzzled by Dreer. In another she would have thought his attitude one of polite indifference. But she could not be sure of him and his mental status.
She had known many a boy and many a boy’s mind. They always showed their entire hand at once. One read the cards, was fascinated for a moment perhaps, and the next moment became bored because the antagonist was a known quantity. But Jess Dreer was not known. He lurked behind a screen. He revealed not half, not a tithe of his strength — or of his weakness, for that matter. As far as Mary could make out, this fellow had brought Lizbeth out of her shell as another woman might have done. It was odd. Mary would have given a great deal to know why he winced when a door was opened behind him, why his eyes were apt to flash suddenly up, glitter, and droop. She felt that he would be more content if his chair were back against the wall.
It was at this point in her train of thought that the doorbell rang, and Mary sprang up to answer it. She was glad to get away from the room. She wanted to have the chill air of the night against her face — to breathe of it in the hope that it would clear a mist from her mind and enable her to think logically and brush away her rising excitement. For the question was beating into her consciousness always: What is Jess Dreer? Her uncle had put her off. Why? Or did he know? And was Jess Dreer there because he had some claim and power over Morgan Valentine?
She threw open the front door after she had gone thoughtfully down the hall, and she saw — dim figures in the moonlight, and with the reek of a long horseback ride about them — Sheriff Clancy of Salt Springs, and another man. Now Sheriff Clancy’s boy had been one of Mary’s victims in the near past, and that was the reason that she threw a conciliatory warmth into her greeting:
“Why, Sheriff Clancy! Come in. Dad will be happy to see you.”
The sheriff smiled at her, and in smiling the ends of his drooping mustaches bristled out to the sides like tusks.
“Mostly folks feel another way when I come along to say how d’you do. But wait a minute, Mary. I ain’t here on a pleasure call.”
“You have business — here?”
She thought of Charlie’s affair with Joe Norman.
“That miserable Norman family — have they sent you after Charlie?”
The sheriff smiled, disagreeably.
“I dunno anything about Charlie and the Norman boy,” he said. “I don’t go prying after trouble. Mostly, enough of it comes my
way without hunting. All I want to do is to ask you a few questions, Mary.”
“And you won’t come in?”
“Nope. Is there a man in your house called Jess Dreer?”
The floodgates opened, the water burst through the dam, and Mary Valentine was picked up in a torrent of sudden knowledge. Jess Dreer! The question flashed a lantern light on the man.
“Jess Dreer?” she repeated.
“That’s the name. Is he inside?”
She fought for time. As a matter of fact she was balancing between two impulses. The first was to hand this fellow over to the law at once. The second impulse was — she did not know what — but certainly it was to keep him safe.
“What does he look like?”
“About as tall as my friend here. Mr. John Caswell — Miss Mary Valentine. About as tall as Caswell, maybe a mite smaller. Big shoulders, I understand, and the sort of a face that’s easy to remember. Quiet. Soft-spoken. Active with his hands.”
She still paused. How fast her mind was working! And therefore her speech was slow.
“Oh, yes, I remember now. Yes, there was a man like that here, and, now that I remember, I think he said that his name was Jess Dreer.”
“But he ain’t here now?”
“No. He rode away — quite a while ago.”
“I told you so,” said the big man who had been called Caswell. “That gent is a fox. He’s got these people on his side.”
But Sheriff Clancy hushed the other with a raised hand.
“I think maybe you’re mistaken, miss. We’ve got an idea that Dreer is in the house right now. Maybe he’s hiding, and you don’t know it. But we got his hoss and his saddle. In fact, we’ve found his hoss in the corral and saddled her, and now we got that hoss waiting for Mr. Dreer!”
“Of course you have his horse.” Mary Valentine nodded. “He left the mare and took one of Dad’s horses. I think he paid Dad something into the bargain for the exchange.”
“How long ago?” Sheriff Claney asked.
“An hour; but, Sheriff, come on inside and search the house if you want.”