by Max Brand
“I’ve heard about you folks,” he said, “turning people out into this sort of a storm, but I didn’t believe it. Now I’m going to talk straight... I ain’t got a cent, but I’m going to get a dry place to sleep, and I’m going to get a place for my hoss and feed for it in the barn... I’m going to get supper for myself. You lay to that. I say I ain’t got a cent on me now, but, when I come back, I’ll pay you every cent it’s worth, and then double. You can trust that. I never been known to break a promise... but, whether you trust me or not, I’m going to get what I said I’d get. Now, listen, I’m going to take my hoss out to the barn, yonder, and find feed for him. Then I’m coming back here, and I expect to find supper started for me. Understand? I’ve fed a hundred gents in my day and never took nothing for it. Now I’m going to get a little part of it back.”
So saying, he stepped backward into the night and slammed the door behind him. No sooner had it closed than the son slipped to it and laid the great bolt softly in place. Then he turned with a grin of triumph to his mother. “We’ll lock him out, confound him,” he said.
“Think you can hold out one like him?” asked the woman. “Not if you were ten times the man you are, Gus. It would have taken your father, aye, or a better one than your father, to handle this one.”
“I dunno,” replied Gus. “I can do my share, if I got a chance and ain’t took by surprise.”
“I know. If you got a chance to sneak up on somebody, and get a gun trained on ’em, you’re brave enough. But don’t try to sneak up on the gent that just come in here. Know why?”
“Why?” asked her son, blinking.
She slipped a little closer to him and glanced aside at the door through which Montagne had just disappeared, as if fearful that he might return at that instant and overhear.
“Because he’s a killer,” she whispered. “I know that kind. You see the way he rocked a little from side to side, he was so mad? You seen the way he went white, and the veins sprang out purple on his forehead? You seen the way his eyes went jumping everywhere? That’s because he was a killer. He had his hand on his gun, and he wouldn’t have thought nothing of blowing off both our heads. Oh, I know the likes of him, and I know ’em well! He’s a bad one, Gus, and you can lay to that! Don’t try no fancy work on him.”
The pale, brutish eyes of Gus opened wide, as he drank in this information. Then the woman went to the door, removed the bolt again, and shook her fist in a consuming burst of rage. “Why should he have come on this night of all nights?” she snarlingly demanded.
“We’ll just have to put it off,” said the son.
“You fool!” replied his amiable mother. “Why was I cursed by having a coward and an idiot for a son? But you’re like your father before you ... no sense... like a swine... just made for eating and drinking and sleeping and grunting in your sleep. Bah!”
The son replied to this outburst of affection with a wicked glint of his eyes and a twitching of his loose upper lip, but, apparently, he had had too much experience of the virago’s tongue to invite a fresh outburst.
“How can we put it off? Ain’t we got to have the money by tomorrow?” she went on as savagely as before. “You think you can put off Cusick? No, not that leech! He’d foreclose in a minute. His mouth is watering at the idea of getting the ranch, anyway. And now this killer comes and....”
“Shut up,” muttered the son, as an idea flashed across his brutish face. “Maybe this ain’t the worst that could have happened... this having the stranger with us tonight. Maybe we could make him....”
His mother checked him with a raised hand, and the next moment the door opened, and Jack Montagne entered the room again. This time he came rather carelessly, even whistling, as if he were now an old acquaintance. He settled himself in a chair, leaned back against the wall, and twitched the holster at his right hip so that the butt of the gun fell into a convenient position. He regarded the pair with quiet interest. They gave him a glance in return and then busied themselves in laying out a supper of cold ham and cold fried potatoes and lukewarm coffee, left over from their own evening meal.
Without a word they served him; without a word he drew up his chair and began to eat. As has been said before, he was a good-looking fellow, except when his face was contorted by rage. He had an ominously sudden way of glancing from side to side, and the muscles of the jaw were strongly developed, as in one who habitually kept his teeth set. In actual years Montagne could not have been more than twenty-seven or eight, but hard experience, of one kind or another, had touched his hair with a streak of gray over the temples. He was a man of many expressions. Looking down, he often seemed middle-aged and weary; looking up, he seemed years younger; when he smiled, he was suddenly a boy, filled with geniality.
“And now,” he said, as he approached the conclusion of that cheerless meal, “where do I sleep?”
“In the barn,” said the woman savagely. “I guess hay is good enough for you!”
“Sure,” agreed Jack Montagne. “Only you were so kind of generous about making me accept things ever since I landed here, that I thought maybe you’d want me to sleep in a nice comfortable bed in the house.”
He grinned, as he spoke, but Gus said: “And so we do. There’s a spare bed in the room right next to mine, and....”
“D’you think I’ll have him in the house?” asked the woman.
But her son winked at her, and, regarding her steadily, he said: “Shut up and let me talk. Ain’t I the man about this house? I say he’s going to sleep inside!”
He had raised his voice to a shout, and his mother submitted to him with suspicious suddenness. At the same moment a slow, feeble step was heard descending the stairs, a step that hesitated like the movement of extreme old age.
“You’ve got the old devil up with your yelling,” said the woman. “Now he’ll make us all dance for it.”
The next moment a bent old man came into the doorway. If the woman and her boy were of bearish temper and bearish conformation, the old fellow who now came before the view of Jack Montagne was certainly of the wolf breed. His eagle nose, his grimly compressed lips, his forward-jutting chin, and, above all, the cold, keen eyes, under the bushy, white brows, told of a predatory soul. Years had bowed him, but there was something so significant about him that the hawk-like figure seemed to tower above them all. It was rather as if he had stooped to come through the doorway than as if the weight of time had stooped him. He carried a long cane, gathered up toward his breast, in a hand that was a blue claw, entirely unfleshed.
He stamped this cane upon the floor. Age had stiffened his neck, but his eyes, for that reason, roved the more keenly. “I told you before,” he said, “that I ain’t going to have noise in the evening... evening is my time for reading... evening is my time for quiet. I ain’t going to have noise. I heard a racket once before tonight, and now you’re shouting. It’s got to stop. D’you hear? It’s got to stop!” He whipped up his cane suddenly and shook it in malevolent rage at Gus. “You lout! You fool!” he exclaimed. “It’s you that makes life a torture around here. Now, mind you, no more noise!”
To the surprise of Montagne this fierce reproof was received in a mild silence. Both the woman and her son lowered their eyes to the floor, and then Gus looked up in apology.
“I’m sure sorry,” he said. “I got to arguing and....”
“That’s the trouble with fools,” said the terrible old man. “They always talk too much. Who’s this?” He picked out Jack Montagne with a gesture of his cane.
“A stranger,” said the woman, “that we never seen before. But we can’t turn folks away on nights like this. We got to show some sort of kindness, even if we ain’t rich folks, and even if we don’t get paid.”
She said this with a sort of cringing humility, glancing sadly toward the ceiling, as if bewailing the ingratitude of a hard world.
But the old man merely grunted, and then grinned at her. “You’ll get a reward in heaven for all your kindness,” he told her
. “You sure will get a reward there. Who are you?” This last was directed at Montagne.
“I’m Jack,” said Montagne.
“Jack, eh?” said the old fellow. “Jack the Baker, Jack the Butcher, Jack the Ropemaker, Jack the Killer... which one are you?” And, as he concluded the list of fanciful appellations, his narrow chin thrust out, and his keen eyes probed and stabbed at the eyes of Jack Montagne.
In spite of himself Montagne felt a chill running through his veins. The old man knew too much about human nature, and all his knowledge seemed to be of evil.
“I don’t like him,” went on the old man. “Send him away. I’d have nightmares all night, if I knew that man was sleeping here, under the same roof with me. I don’t like him... he’s too hungry. Them that have nothing want everything. And him... you ain’t got a cent in your pocket!”
As he said this, he advanced a long step, a light and stealthy step, and thrust his cane almost in the face of Jack. The latter half rose from his chair, alarmed and filled with an almost superstitious fear. The old man began to laugh mirthlessly, his eyes snapping. Then he stamped his cane on the floor, as he stepped back.
“I know you,” he went on, nodding to himself, “I know you all... starvelings, buzzards. Bah! You’ll find no meat on my bones to fatten you... not you. Out with you, Jack the Beggar, Jack the Knave, Jack the Killer. Out with you and sleep in the barn! I’ll not have you under the same roof with me, I say. I prophesy you won’t come to no good end!”
Jack Montagne slowly recovered his poise in the face of this malignant attack. He settled back again in his chair and smiled in the wicked face of the old man. “I’ll stay here,” he said, “old bones... I’ll stay here and be comfortable. It ain’t none too warm outside.”
“You won’t leave, won’t you?” demanded the hostile old ogre. “You can’t throw him out, can you?” he asked of Gus. Then he answered his own question: “Nope, it’d take ten like you to handle one like him. But, if I was forty years younger, I’d... well, no matter. Forty years are forty years and can’t be changed.”
“Mister Benton,” broke in the woman, “I’m terribly sorry, I sure am. I do what I can to make you comfortable, but, when gents come and force their way in on me....”
“I thought you took him in out of kindness?” The irritable old man fairly snapped his question. “Don’t talk, Missus Zellar... don’t talk. I see through you, and I don’t see no good!” He turned on Gus. “By the way, seen young Walters lately?”
“Seen him this mornin’, Mister Benton.”
“You did, eh? And what’s he say?”
“He’s doing fine. Says he’ll have his interest money ready for you next week. He could pay it now.”
The old fellow nodded his head slowly back and forth, half closing his eyes. “I knowed Walters would be made by the money I loaned him... I knowed that. I always know.”
“And right here, Mister Benton,” said the woman, “I could have used that money fine. Me and Gus could have improved the ranch no end and give you a better rate of interest than Walters does.”
“Don’t talk,” declared the octogenarian. “Don’t talk. I see through you ... like you had a window over where your heart is.”
He turned and stalked toward the door. His back was visibly pinched and withered under his coat. From that rear view he seemed suddenly weak, but, when he turned on them again at the door, all thought of his feebleness left Jack Montagne. The withered lips of Mr. Benton continued to writhe, but he uttered no sound. Presently his halting step went up the stairs again and disappeared through a doorway beyond.
When he was gone, there was a sigh emitted by all three. For a moment, exchanging glances, they seemed to be of one mind. Truly they were all, in differing ways, grim people, but compared with this terrible old man they were weaklings.
“That bed I told you about,” said Gus suddenly, “I’ll show you where the room is, if you like.”
Jack Montagne nodded, rose, and followed his guide up the stairs, noting the empty bareness of the house. Dissolute spending, which had impoverished the ranch, had gutted the house, it seemed. The very hall seemed to beg for new voices and cheerier footfalls — certainly less stealthy ones.
When they came to the room, Gus deposited the lamp on the table beside the bed and left without a word. Jack Montagne sat down and buried his face in his hands. He had come to another halting place in his downward progress through life. Had the old man been right? Was he, indeed, bound for damnation?
He shrugged away that fierce prophecy. In the meantime, the fact was that he needed money, needed it terribly, must have it, and the old fellow, beyond doubt, possessed what he wanted. Had he not heard the two in the kitchen speak of money and a chest? All was as clear as day. The old usurer kept a store of coin in his room and loaned it out about the countryside.
III. LARRABEE LISTENS
THE SHERIFF, HENRY Larrabee, jerked up his head and listened.
“That phone call is for me,” he said instantly, as the first ring ended. Two long and three short was the sheriff’s ring on that country line, and the ring was ground out on a little crank, without summoning the assistance of a central. This first long ring was made in what might have been called a breathless fashion, the crank turning so swiftly in the middle of the motion that it produced only a rattle, not a true ring.
“Not for you! Not on a night like this!” exclaimed his wife, as the good woman lifted her head and listened to the crashing of the rain against the roof.
A second long ring had begun. “It’s for me, right enough,” said the sheriff, and rose to his feet.
His daughter, Mary, rose, also, staring with excitement. “Oh, Dad, what could be happening?”
“On a night like this... anything. There it goes.”
The second long ring had ended, and there followed three short rings in swift succession. The sheriff ran to the phone with great strides. “Hello!” he called.
“Sheriff Larrabee,” said a woman’s voice, “come quick, for there’s been a murder here.”
“Who are you?”
“Missus Zellar... murder... ah!”
The last word was a half scream, and there was the sound of the telephone receiver dropping with a jerk.
“You devil!” the sheriff heard a man’s voice shouting.
Larrabee smashed up his own receiver. “Jud!” he thundered. “Chris!”
His two sons answered with shouts from the upper part of the house.
“Come down to me, quick! We got riding to do!”
“Henry,” breathed his wife, stammering with fear, as she ran to him. “What is it? Where?”
“Nothing,” he answered sternly. “Don’t hang onto me. I got work... that’s all. When I’m gone, call the Gloster house and get the Gloster boys to ride toward the Zellar place, as fast as they can saddle and get under way. I’ll meet ’em on the road. That’s all. Don’t ask questions. Just do what I say.”
Catching up his hat, he plunged from the house, the front door banging heavily behind him at the same time that the thunder of his sons’ feet began on the stairs above. Within five minutes they were in the saddle and racing out onto the muddy road. For they kept their horses in a shed near the house, ready for quick saddling at any hour of the day or night. Going up the first steep hill, they could talk.
“I knew,” said Jud, “that they’d be trouble some day in the Zellar house. What’s up?”
“I dunno,” answered the father. “Just heard a woman talking, and woman talk don’t mean much usually. But it sure sounded like trouble was busted loose. Come on, lads!”
They had reached the crest of the hill, and now they lurched down into the valley at a reckless gallop, the horses sliding and slipping over the mud. Turning down the valley road, they presently came in view of a fire beneath a tree, and the sheriff headed straight for it. He swung out of the saddle in front of the tramp whom Jack Montagne had seen earlier in the night. The tramp straightened up — he had been
dozing, with his head almost dropped into the flame of the fire — and blinked at the new arrivals. The stern hand of the sheriff helped him to his feet, and he stifled his yawn.
“Who’re you?” asked the sheriff.
“Slim,” said the tramp. “Some call me Mississippi Slim.”
“What else?”
“Disremember being called any other name.”
“You come with me, Mississippi Slim. Jud, take him along and follow me to the Zellar place. This is the kind that know things, this Slim. Chris, come on with me. We got to ride hard.”
“What can you get out of Slim?” asked Chris, as the two spurred on through the mud.
“Never can tell. But, if you ever step into my boots, boy, and get my job, you want to pick up them that look like Slim. If there’s trouble around, they’re ‘most always down-wind from it, and they know all about what’s going on. They smell it before they see it, and they see it before us ordinary folks dream it.”
He concluded with a brief admonition. “If Gus Zellar is mixed up in this killing, or whatever it is, that we’re moving toward, and we come across him armed, don’t waste no time arguing. If he shows fight, shoot... and shoot to kill. Handle him the way you’d handle a dog. He ain’t no better, much.”
He had no chance to say more, for now they came to the house, where lights were burning in half of the windows. The sheriff’s son was for a careful approach. The sheriff, however, scoffed at such an idea, and, advancing to the kitchen door, he cast it open and stepped into the presence of Gus Zellar and his mother.
There was no need to fear Gus Zellar. He was a white-faced, trembling wreck of a man, shrinking against the wall. His mother was ten times more formidable. Her eyes were gleaming, her hands clenched, and her whole attitude that of one ready to fight a great battle.
“You sure come slow,” she said to Larrabee. “Come upstairs, and you’ll find it.”
There was something so ominous in that last syllable that even the sheriff, time-hardened by contact with crime and criminals, was a trifle shocked. As she took up the lamp, he swung in behind her, first ordering Gus Zellar to follow close to his mother. The order threw Gus into a sudden panic.