by Max Brand
“But what’ve I got to do with it?” he asked tremulously. “I didn’t do it! I swear I didn’t do it, Sheriff!”
“I’m not saying you did,” said the sheriff, disgusted by such cringing. “But you step along. I want to keep you under my eye.”
Gus skulked into line, glancing fearfully behind, as if anticipating a kick. They hurried up the stairs, the woman exclaiming eagerly: “You got to hurry, Sheriff. He left in a rush, and he’ll be riding like a fiend all night. Every minute counts, when you’re trailing a gent like him!”
“Like who?” asked the sheriff.
“I’ll tell you about him after you see what he’s done.”
They had hurried up to the floor of the second story of the house, and now they went straight behind Mrs. Zellar into the room, directly opposite the head of the stairs. They passed through a broken door. It had been splintered exactly in the center, and both halves were still attached — the one by its hinges and the other by the lock. Mrs. Zellar placed the lamp on the table near the center of the room.
“There!” she exclaimed dramatically, stepping back. “Nothing ain’t been touched. There you are!”
They looked past her and saw, within the bright circle cast by the lamp, the figure of old Mr. Benton, lying on his back. Both hands were caught up to his breast, and he lay in a crimson pool that had run from a great wound in his head.
The sheriff’s son gasped, turned sick, and caught at the wall for support. But the sheriff himself showed not the slightest emotion. He merely leaned over the body, saying: “Never knowed he was that tall ... never saw the old codger straightened out before.”
“Now you’ve seen,” said Mrs. Zellar shrilly, “and now go get him!”
“How long ago did he leave?”
“Only forty minutes by the clock. I been watching for you to come and watching the clock and thinking you’d never come. But he can’t get far through the mud.”
“Forty minutes?” asked the sheriff, and he suddenly lost all eagerness. “Well, let’s hear about this. Get over here, will you?”
The last words were a savage roar, and they jerked Gus away from the door, toward which he had been sneaking. He stood back against the wall, shuddering, and his eyes twitched nervously from face to face.
“They ain’t no call to talk to Gus like that,” said Mrs. Zellar. “He didn’t do nothing.”
“Perhaps not,” said the sheriff, and, maintaining his aggravating calm, he produced a cut of chewing tobacco and worked off a comfortable bite between his front teeth.
“Say, Dad,” broke in his son, “you ain’t going to stand around while he gets away?”
“You talk less and listen more,” said his father sagely. “And you cotton onto this... before you start following a trail, find out where it leads. Now, Missus Zellar, what happened?”
“He came here and made us...,” began the woman.
“Who’s he?”
“Wouldn’t give no name... that kind never do. Just said he was Jack. But Mister Benton knew right off, the minute he laid eyes on him, that Jack was no good, and he said so right to his face. Well, Jack come and knocked open our kitchen door and asked for a meal and a bed. I didn’t like the looks of him, but, when I told him there wasn’t nothing for him here, he pulled a gun and started ordering us around. Ain’t that right, Gus?”
“Every single word,” said the truthful Gus, rolling his eyes.
“Leave Gus out and talk to me.”
“Afterward, Mister Benton come down, like he mostly always does, to say a word or two to us before he goes to bed, him knowing that we’re about the only friends he has in the world.”
The sheriff was now walking around the room, carelessly examining every corner of it. Mrs. Zellar followed him a pace or two in every direction he took, raising her voice, when he was far away, lowering it slightly, when he was close.
“He seen Jack, as I was saying, and Jack seen him. And while Benton was talking, Jack found out that the old man kept a pile of money in his chest in his room.”
“You knew that, did you?” asked the sheriff, his back turned.
“Does it mean anything... my knowing it?” asked Mrs. Zellar.
“Go on.”
“Finally, after Mister Benton left, and Jack got through eating... he ate like he hadn’t had food for a couple of days... Jack went up to bed, and he wouldn’t be suited with nothing but Gus’s own room, right next to Mister Benton’s room.
“Gus come downstairs afterward. ‘I don’t like the looks of him,’ says Gus. ‘Nor his ways,’ says I.
“‘I’m going to sit up a while,’ says Gus, ‘till Jack turns out his light.’
“So we done it. We turned down the lamp in the kitchen, so it didn’t make no light, just a glooming through the room. Then we waited and waited. All at once we heard a scream. Quick as a flash, Gus jumps to his feet.
“‘I been waiting for just that,’ he said, and starts running up the stairs, with me after him.”
“Are you sure he went first?” asked the sheriff.
“Sure he did. Ain’t he the man of the house?”
“Go on,” said Larrabee dryly.
“Gus tried the door, and it was locked. He took a run and broke the door open... you see... and there he found Mister Benton lying, poor soul, with the chest open and the papers and everything all ruffled up, just the way you see. Nothing ain’t been touched... not a thing is touched, Sheriff, since we first seen it.”
The chest in the corner of the room, indeed, was open, and a confusion of papers tumbled in it and on the floor around it.
“And then the door of Jack’s room opens, and out he comes, rubbing his eyes like he’d just waked up, as though he could have slept through all that noise.
“‘What’s all the racket about?’ he says. Well he knew, the murderer. Look here!”
She led the way to the window. Below it was the roof of the verandah that wound around the side of the house. Opposite was another window.
“That window yonder opens into Jack’s room, where he was supposed to sleep... the liar. What he done was to slip out of that window of his room and walk right across the roof and open this window and come in. He had first throttled the old man. You see?”
She advanced to the body and, leaning about it, pointed to some discolorations on the throat. There was something hideous in this eagerness, something unnatural for her sex. She was giving the scent of Jack Montagne to the bloodhounds.
“But the old boy died hard,” went on Mrs. Zellar, stepping back again. “He wasn’t dead, when Jack finished the throttling. He come to life, got his breath, and let out the screech that I heard down below and near stopped my heart beating.”
The sheriff, in the meantime, went to the window, leading onto the roof, and tried it. It opened frictionlessly and without sound under the lift of his hand. He turned, nodding, and marked the last of Mrs. Zellar’s words with more apparent interest.
“And, when he screeched, Jack, who was getting the money out of the chest, turned around and hit him over the head with a chunk of wood from the fireplace. There it is.”
By the open hearth of the fireplace there was a pile of cut wood, each piece well over two feet in length. But one of these pieces lay in the middle of the floor, an ugly stain splotched about its sharp edge.
“You sure he got the money?” asked the sheriff.
“There ain’t a cent in the chest!” she exclaimed. “Look for yourself, the way I done.”
“I thought you didn’t touch anything?” he asked sharply.
“Are you going to lay the stealing on me?”
“What did Jack do then?” asked the sheriff.
“When he seen the body, he tried to act surprised, but me and Gus drew back and looked at him. He tried to talk the thing off, but we just kept on looking. Pretty soon he run out of the room. Next thing we knew, he was jumping downstairs. He didn’t hit more’n twice, all the way to the bottom. Outdoors he went, and the next minu
te he was tearing down the road on his hoss... riding west.”
“Thanks,” said the sheriff. “What did he look like?”
“Good looking, but mean. About five feet eleven... dark, straight-looking eyes, dark hair... about thirty years old, or less ... gray around the temples. Rides a gray hoss. Gus went out and seen it in the barn, after Jack went to bed... or after he was in his room. That’s all I can think about, except that he looked like a killer. Mister Benton said so, right to his face.”
“Hmm,” said the sheriff, and raised his eyebrows. “Wait a minute,” he added. “Here come the boys.”
IV. LARRABEE WINS HIS BET
HE WENT TO the door and called down. There was a sound of horses snorting in the rainfall outside, and presently a cluster of five men climbed the stairs in answer to the call. The three Gloster boys came first. They had answered with all speed the summons from the house of the sheriff. Behind them came Mississippi Slim with his guard.
The sheriff greeted the Gloster boys with a word of thanks for their promptness. “We got a bad ride ahead of us,” he said. “This is the work the gent we’re after done.” He pointed to the body of Benton. “And the man that done it has taken the west road. We’ll start right away. Chris, you stay here and keep everybody out of this room. Wait a minute.”
He turned and eyed Mississippi Slim. The latter was moving stealthily about the room, with his head thrust forward and bent low. He was oddly like a sniffing dog.
“Slim,” called the sheriff.
Slim whirled, as if at the sound of a shot. He had been leaning over the chest full of papers.
“You had your fire near the road. See anybody passing tonight?”
Slim raised one finger.
“What was he like?”
“Bad looking... on a gray hoss.”
“Know anything about him?”
“Nope.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Nothing much.”
“Talk out, Slim. What did he say?”
“Asked me why I didn’t come down here and get a hand-out and a bed. I said it couldn’t be done, because the lady didn’t waste no time on gents that was wandering on the road looking for work.”
Here Mrs. Zellar snorted her contempt.
“But this gent on the gray hoss allowed that he’d get a hand-out and a bunk. Said he’d see if he couldn’t get treated right.”
“Did he come on to this house, then?”
“I dunno.”
“You didn’t follow him?”
“Follow him? Let my fire go out?” Slim shook his head in wonder at such a thought.
The sheriff turned on Gus. “That door was locked when you came up?”
“Yep, it sure was, and I busted it in,” he said defiantly. “Ask Ma if I didn’t.”
“Where’s the key?”
“I dunno. I didn’t look for it.”
“Look on the floor,” said the sheriff, himself joining the search. “Whether that door was locked from the inside or the outside makes a pile of difference.”
The floor of the hall and the floor of the room revealed no key. The sheriff desisted from the search and gave his final directions. “You stay here, Chris, and you hold Slim.”
“Why?” asked Slim. “What I got to do with all this killing?”
“You’re a material witness. You’ll get chuck and a free bunk. Ain’t that good enough for you? We got good enough bunks to suit anybody in the jail.”
“Jail!” Slim exclaimed. His rat eyes jerked from face to face and then became fixed on the floor, while a violent shiver ran through his meager body, but he said no more.
“And get in touch with the coroner... tell him to get his men down here, first thing,” went on the sheriff to Chris. “We’ll hit the trail, boys!”
“Now that he’s clean gone,” put in Mrs. Zellar malevolently.
The sheriff turned on her with a mild and curious glance, but the effect of it was to make her wince and change color. Then the men passed on out of the room.
The Gloster boys, Pete and Bob and Jerry, were first in the saddle, with Jud Larrabee and his father following after, but, as the former started down the road to the west, the sheriff called him back.
“Where you going?” he asked.
“Why, follow the trail, I guess.”
“You think he went that way?”
“Why not?”
“If he’s got any sense at all, he knows that Missus Zellar seen the way he started, and the first thing he’ll do’ll be to switch off.”
“Which way, then?”
“What d’you see?” asked the sheriff. “Look around through the rain. What d’you see?”
The storm had fallen away to a faint misting, but still it blanketed the landscape. Indeed, nothing could have been visible, had it not been for the high-riding moon that was itself unseen, but served to outline the rain clouds in varying shades of deep gray and black.
“Don’t see nothing,” said the sheriff’s son, “except the mountains, yonder. I can just make them out.”
“Then,” said the sheriff complacently, “that’s where he’s gone, and we’ll go the same way. Chris!”
His other son came a pace closer.
“Start using that telephone,” said his father. “Get Boonetown and tell the central there to spread the description of Jack around. Get old Miller in Boonetown, too, and tell him to get to work, talking. That’s the best thing he does, anyway! Good bye, boy!”
Once under way he made up for his seeming inactivity in the house of the Zellars. He was a heavier weight than the younger men, and his horse, an old buckskin campaigner, was inferior in speed to the mounts of the rest, and yet, before they had gone half a mile, the sheriff was in the lead, pushing his horse along with such skill that it seemed he could sense through the dark the obstacles that came in his way. Where the others floundered six times, the wise-footed buckskin slipped once.
The first excitement wore off with the posse, too, but the sheriff seemed to be spurred on by a steady and unflagging interest that kept his head high and his eyes straining on through the dark. The gray of dawn, which found them in the foothills, following trails that began to wind with the contours of the land, discovered the sheriff as agile of eye as ever and cheerfully examining the hills and the trees as they passed along.
The others awakened, also, as the day began. A freshening north wind chopped the sheeted storm clouds into thin drifts that served to shut the sun out, but allowed most of its light to sift through. In this invigorating air the sleepless quintet kept on until presently the sheriff raised his hand.
“Now,” he said, “I figure it’s about time for us to look about.”
His followers had been very prone to beat up every thicket along the way, and they were quite disgusted by the careless methods of their guide and leader. To their minds a thousand men might have hidden along the way and laughed as the posse went by on a wild-goose chase. The sheriff had chosen to stop on the top of a bare hill, with a bare country all around him. Why waste time here?
They conveyed their ideas bluntly and immodestly. The more so since the sheriff scratched the stubble on his chin, a far-away look in his eyes, while they talked and seemed to be almost persuaded at every other word. What he said at length was: “Are you hungry, boys?”
“Sure,” was the chorus.
“So’s Jack,” said the sheriff.
His followers glanced at one another in disgust, and Jud Larrabee flushed with shame. Certainly the old man was growing old and simple. He glared defiantly at the Gloster boys. But it certainly was a very foolish remark — this reference to the appetite of Jack. What had that to do with a manhunt — the appetite of the hunted?
“He’s hungry,” said the leader, “and most like he’s smelled the bacon going up in smoke, yonder.” There were three or four streaks of smoke in view, very dimly perceptible against the gray of the sky. “Nothing like the sight of smoke to make a gent uncommon hungry,” wen
t on the sheriff.
“Let’s start on,” urged his son uncomfortably. “We can talk on the way.”
“On the way to what?” asked his father gently. “Let’s make that out, first.”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” burst out Jud. “Looks to me like we’re all wrong. Who’d ride this way... clean out into the open... if he was hunting shelter?”
“Maybe he wouldn’t,” said the sheriff. “It’s just my guess. But, if you don’t do no guessing, you don’t catch no men at the end of the trail. I figure Jack pictures us riding hard along the west trail. He’s come up here to the hills. He’s got a lot of hours ahead of us, he’s thinking. So he comes over the hill, here, with a raging, tearing hunger, and he can’t help stopping to eat. Now, first thing is... where’d he go to eat?”
“There’s the biggest smoke, yonder,” said Jud, very miserable, but striving to seem as if he took his father seriously. All the time he was wretchedly conscious of the smiles of the Gloster boys.
“That’s the biggest smoke,” admitted the sheriff, “and that’s the one he wouldn’t go to. That little house over the hill would be the place that a gent would run for, unless he was professional and had done murders before.”
“Ain’t that just what he is?” asked Pete Gloster. “Ain’t that what Benton called him at sight?”
“A murderer? Nope, he called Jack a killer. They’s a pile of difference. Jack’s an amateur.”
“What?”
“Sure. He turned his trick before he made sure the other folks was in bed. He took a room in the house, when he could have pretended he had to keep on his way, and so he could have ridden off and come back and done the job with nobody knowing. Nope, Jack’s an amateur. Killers don’t pick out old men. Jack needed money and needed it bad. He started to get it. He choked the old man, not with no pleasure, but because it had to be done. And then, when the old boy screeched, he picked up a piece of wood and batted him over the head. That was plain clumsy.”