by Max Brand
“I take that kind of you,” said the sheriff gently. “I take that mighty kind. All right, boys, jump on your hosses, and we’ll start. Climb on this one, Jack.”
Montagne hesitated. “You going to walk, Sheriff?”
“I can do it better’n you. Ain’t handy to walk when you can’t swing your hands.”
It was strange to hear these politely diplomatic moves between the two. Presently Montagne was seated on the horse, and they started back for the town, with the sheriff walking a little behind the captive. Suddenly he drew up beside his prisoner.
“Jack,” he said, in a purely conversational tone, “why did you do it?”
“Do what?” asked Montagne out of a dream.
“The old boy... old Benton... ? Why did you finish him?”
“You’re a pretty good guesser,” answered Montagne without emotion. “Suppose you try to figure this puzzle out.”
So the matter was allowed to rest. They took a midnight train out, and in the dawn they arrived at the sheriff’s county seat, where Montagne was escorted to the jail. He preserved his careless demeanor throughout, even when the front door of the jail slammed heavily behind him.
When they reached the door of the cell designated for Jack, the sheriff drew forth his bunch of keys. “Just hold onto your patience for a while,” he said to Jack. “Take me a while to find the right key.”
“You don’t need one,” answered Montagne. “Here you are.” And, folding his hands small, he slipped them deftly out of the handcuffs. The sheriff watched with intense interest.
“You could have done that any time and made a play to get loose,” he observed. “Why didn’t you, Jack? I know you got plenty of nerve for a break.”
“Because I’ve made my play and finished it. I’m beat, Sheriff, and that’s all there is to it.” Then he walked calmly into the barred enclosure.
VII. PUBLIC OPINION
BOONETOWN, THE COUNTY seat, was so small that the uninitiated were apt to call it a village, but it was not too small to be without that mysterious and uncontrollable voice, usually called public opinion. Public opinion on this occasion was wakening from a long, long sleep.
For some years public opinion had expressed itself only at elections and similar unimportant and formal functions. But, when the news arrived that the murderer of old Benton was in town and in jail, the man whom the district attorney had arraigned beforehand with terrible eloquence in the little Boonetown newspaper, public opinion wakened with a start, yawned forth a growl from some four hundred throats, and stretched its thousand arms to find something on which to vent its rage.
For public opinion is a blind beast, even when it wakens. The maladministration of officials, the legal cruelties of business oppression, and business betrayals are very apt never to reach the sleepy ear of the creature. But it may suddenly start up to yell itself hoarse with applause, because a politician gives birth to a neat phrase. Then it falls asleep with a grunt and a smile, when the lucky fellow bows his thanks and dips his fingers in the public purse.
This great, stupid beast, public opinion, having long slumbered in Boonetown, now roused itself with a roar and called for a victim. And on this occasion there was some justification for noise. The district attorney had called attention to the brutality of the crime — to the youth of the murderer — to the white-haired feebleness of the murdered man. Finally, the district attorney had declared his intention of suppressing such crimes, of ending the reign of violence in that violent county, of bringing in a golden age of peace, by hanging this red-handed devil, called Jack, from the highest gallows. A good beginning, he pointed out, was nine-tenths of a good ending; and a good example was the better part of a good beginning. The broken neck of Jack was to furnish the good example that would, thereafter, make crime hang its head and slink away from the precincts favored by the presence of the district attorney.
It may be gathered that he was a very young man to hold such a very old office. Fitzpatrick Lavigne was one of those who love the practice of criminal law; and he loved the prosecuting end of it, because, he said, that end was morally cleaner. In reality his love for the attorney’s office was like the love of the barbarian for the sword — Fitzpatrick Lavigne liked to kill. His summing up to a jury was delivered with both violence and relish; he expanded his naturally meager inches; he became huge and dominated a courtroom, while he was whipping a victim toward death. He never recommended mercy to a judge on any occasion.
In appearance he was small, rather plump, with clear, red cheeks, a childishly smooth brow, and eyes of sparkling brightness. He was a favorite among ladies, young and old; among men he was highly prized for his contagious good cheer and his thrilling anecdotes, generally about his own experiences — because, as he was fond of saying, a man generally talks best about himself. He was about twenty-seven years old, but he seemed five full years short of that age, and his youthful appearance was a tremendous advantage to him. When, with fiery indignation, he assailed a criminal in the court, the jury felt that so young a man, with so smooth a brow, must be filled with legal inspiration to use such violent words. He spoke with a sort of indignant virtue that was wholly convincing. He could make twelve honest men sway and stiffen with him. And, when he turned and shook his extended forefinger at the accused, twelve pairs of eyes would generally turn and glare in the same direction. No one would understand, no one could be expected to understand that this Apollo-faced man was consumed with a fanatical zeal to sacrifice a fellow creature on the altar of justice.
Fitzpatrick Lavigne knelt at only one shrine — this was his percentage of convictions. He worshipped that god, and he prayed to it. He dreamed of a time when his picture would appear in some metropolitan newspaper, setting forth the record of that brilliant young lawyer, Fitzpatrick Lavigne.
But Boonetown did not act, as Lavigne’s legal experience in other parts of the country had led him to suppose it would act. No, it rose up and seized guns and rushed to the jail and demanded that the murderer of old men should straightway be handed over to it, to be torn limb from limb.
From a window of the hotel the young district attorney stared thoughtfully down upon this troubled sea before the jail. What oil could he throw upon the waters? Not that he cared for the life of Jack Montagne, but Jack represented a sure conviction. If the mob rent him limb from limb, a scalp, that should hang at Fitzpatrick’s belt, would be gone. He went down and waded through the mob to the jail.
Cries accompanied him: “Give the skunk to us, Fitz! We’ll teach him manners! Feed him out the window to us, Fitz. We’ll teach him!”
Fitzpatrick Lavigne reached the door of the jail. Two pale-faced men, with double-barreled shotguns, guarded the prison, but they were not the force which held the mob at bay. That force the district attorney found in the office, a large quid of tobacco bulging his cheek, his heels cocked up on the desk. The sheriff rolled dull, contented eyes toward his visitor.
“Hello, Lavigne,” he said. “Kind of noisy, ain’t they?”
Lavigne despised the sheriff, and the sheriff knew it. The sheriff despised Lavigne, and Lavigne knew it. Consequently they were extremely amiable on all occasions.
“But,” said Lavigne, consternation in his face, “aren’t you going to do anything?”
“About what?”
Fitzpatrick saw visions of the murderer torn from the jail, a conviction hopelessly lost. It was like a conspiracy, and the sheriff would not raise a hand.
“About the mob,” declared Fitzpatrick. “Are you going to let them take him?”
“Take nothing,” replied the sheriff. “They know me, son. If you don’t like the noise, go out and quiet ’em. You started all this with your talk in the paper about ‘white-haired innocence’ and ‘youthful brutality.’”
“Well,” said Lavigne, “I only told the truth!”
“Did you? Ever know Benton?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, sir, he was exactly a devil. He didn’t have one
corner of a good deed tucked away in his make-up. You can lay to that! But there’s your mob, Lavigne. What are you going to do with it?”
“You’re not afraid they’ll get him, then?” asked Lavigne, immensely relieved.
The sheriff laughed softly. “Sooner than see them get him, I’d arm the prisoner, son.”
“But what could you two... ?”
“Wait till you see him, Lavigne. He’s a man. With him at my back... well, there ain’t any use talking about it, because the crowd ain’t going to bust any doors down. They’ll just holler out there and have a good time. If I get an earache, I’ll just go out and clear the street. Otherwise, it don’t amount to nothing.”
Lavigne walked to one side, pondering. As the sheriff had said, he had raised the crowd. What should he now do with it? An idea leaped into that young and surprisingly fertile brain. First he seized two officers of the law, such as he usually liked to have with him on similar occasions. They were both broad and correspondingly small of forehead and brain. With them he went to the cell of the prisoner. He waited outside, until his two worthies had secured the arms of the prisoner with handcuffs. Then the district attorney led the way to a back room of the jail, a small room fenced in with almost soundproof walls. Here Jack Montagne was seated near the wall, with an officer on either side.
“You heard that racket outside?” asked the district attorney, taking his stand with spread feet before the prisoner. “And you know what it means?”
“They want me?” asked the prisoner, and yawned.
The yawn startled Lavigne. “And,” he said ferociously, “they’ll probably get you, and you know what that means?”
“Tolerable well.”
“There’s no use in talking,” said Lavigne. “We can’t afford to have the jail attacked and risk the lives of law-abiding citizens to protect a worthless dog like you. There’s only one thing that’ll quiet that mob, and that’s to know that the law is going to finish you up in its own way and its own time. There’s only one way that the law can be absolutely sure of you, and that’s through a confession. You understand?”
Montagne nodded.
“Now,” said Lavigne, “I don’t mind telling you that you haven’t a chance, and you’re going to hang. Everything is against you. I could hang ten men on what I have against you. It’s only a matter of time and legal formalities which have to be gone through. So the best thing for you, all around, is to let me have a full confession. I can make things pretty miserable for you, my friend, if you hold out. But, if you talk out and tell the whole story, I’ll see that you live on the fat of the land... up to the last day.” He smiled generously on his prisoner and went on: “Besides, there’s no sense in this fool silence of yours. You won’t tell your name, except to call yourself Jack... you won’t give the name of the town you come from... and all this is really evidence against you. A man who is afraid to have the law know his past is a man the law handles without gloves. Will you talk, Jack?”
“I’ll talk,” said Jack Montagne.
The district attorney sighed with relief. In another minute he had spread out a pad on his knee, for shorthand was included in his accomplishments.
“Start in,” he said, “where your story begins to be different from what Slim and the Zellars have sworn to.”
On a previous occasion he had listed all the sworn facts to Jack in a vain effort to elicit a confession.
VIII. LAVIGNE LEARNS A LESSON
“WELL,” SAID JACK Montagne, “that makes me begin at the beginning, or pretty close to that. Mind you, I don’t expect you to believe me, but I’m going to talk so’s you’ll stop bothering me.”
“Start with when I got to the Zellar house... and make it brief. It runs like this... I didn’t have a cent. I had to get a place to sleep, and I wanted chuck and wanted it bad. Besides, I hated skunks that would have turned a gent out into a storm like that. So I made the Zellars give me chuck. While I was eating, the old man came in and called me a crook, or words to that effect, and right after that young Zellar took me up and showed me into a room.
“I was so sleepy I didn’t take off my clothes. I hit that bed and was off in a flash. A scream woke me up. I jumped out of my room and found a light shining under the door of Benton’s room. I smashed that door, when I found it was locked, because, inside that room, I heard a scampering of feet. When I ran in, there was nobody there, but old Benton was lying dead. The chest was open, and the papers were ruffled a good deal.
“I went downstairs and called Missus Zellar and her kid. They came up and looked. Then, while I was talking to the kid, Missus Zellar sneaked out. I went after her in a minute, and I heard her telephoning the sheriff, so I knew her plan was to send Larrabee after me.
“I was alone. I knew that both the woman and Gus would swear their lives away to stick me for the murder, because that was their only way of taking suspicion off their own shoulders, where it belongs. What was my word against both of theirs? I didn’t wait... I grabbed my hoss and started. The sheriff followed. You know the rest.”
As he concluded, Fitzpatrick Lavigne smashed the pad to the floor. “That’s your confession, is it?”
“Yes.”
“By heaven, I’ve a mind to let that mob in! Listen to ’em.”
Outside, the crowd set up a fresh clamor, surging toward the jail. For half an hour the good men of Boonetown had been shouting to keep their anger alive, shouting to find a leader.
“I hear ’em,” said the prisoner, “and I’d a pile rather face them than face you and your crowd in the courtroom.”
The lip of the district attorney curled. He cast one glance at his henchmen, and they rose instantly to the occasion.
“You skunk,” said the red-headed man at Jack’s right. “Take this to teach you manners!” And he smashed his fist into Montagne’s face. The impact toppled man and chair. He was jerked to his feet, and the district attorney, first making sure that the prisoner was securely pinioned on both sides, stepped close and shook his fist under the nose of Montagne.
“There’s more of the same stuff coming for you,” he said, “unless you stop lying and tell the truth. Are you ready to talk?”
It was only the beginning of the third degree; it was only the beginning of that process which Fitzpatrick Lavigne loved above all else. In the meantime, he watched, fascinated, the progress of a crimson stain rolling down from the mouth of Jack Montagne.
The stain was doubly red, because Montagne had suddenly become deathly white. At sight of that badge of fear, the heart of the district attorney leaped with pleasure.
“I’ve told you the truth,” he said, “and I ain’t going to lie even to give you the pleasure of hanging me. But... don’t have one of these gents hit me again.”
In reply Fitzpatrick Lavigne smiled slowly, as a connoisseur smiles when he inhales the bouquet of a favorite vintage. He raised one finger, and this time the black-haired man, at Montagne’s left, acted. His burly fist drove home with a sickening impact. Jack went down, his head striking the wall. He rolled forward on the floor and lay quiet.
“Pick him up,” said Fitzpatrick Lavigne. “I’ll teach the dog to threaten me. You heard him threaten me, Dick?”
Dick grinned and, reaching down, jerked Montagne up with one exertion of his burly arms. But it was like lifting a wildcat. Montagne came to his feet, the handcuffs dangling from one wrist. The sheriff very foolishly had neglected to warn his assistants about the great flexibility of those slender hands of Jack, and now his hands were free.
He swung the manacles into the face of Dick, and the black-haired man dropped without a cry. Then Jack spun on his heel and smashed his right hand into the face of the redhead and sent that worthy crashing back against the wall.
The district attorney leaped for the door, but, between glancing over his shoulder in terror to see how long it might be before the danger assailed him from the rear and the shaking of his hand, he could not fit the key into the lock of the door.
&
nbsp; The redhead was battling with noble vigor and calling wildly on Dick to come to his aid, but his voice was choked and stifled in a rain of blows. He got to his revolver only to have it kicked out of his hand.
It exploded, as it fell on the far side of the room, and the explosion drew a fresh shriek of amazing power from the district attorney. At the same instant the red-headed fellow was backed to the wall, and the whipping fists of Jack Montagne, driven with uncanny speed and terrible power, smashed his face until he cringed down, moaning for quarter.
Then Jack Montagne turned on the district attorney. The latter, with one last, despairing effort, strove to get the key from the lock. The key merely stuttered against the door, and Fitzpatrick Lavigne fled to a corner. Here he crouched, shielding his face with both arms. “No, no!” he exclaimed. “Don’t! I’ll see that you go free. I’ll get you out. You ... you... but don’t come near me!”
At that moment a hand turned the knob of the door from without, and the prisoner worked his free hand deftly into the manacle, the palm doubling to half its ordinary compass. The sheriff opened the door to find Jack Montagne leaning carelessly against the wall on the far side of the room, his hands in irons. Dick lay with his face down, unstirring, and the red-headed man was just beginning to straighten up, while the district attorney peered in terror between his arms, as if through the bars of a cage.
“Kill him! Kill the devil!” Fitzpatrick Lavigne yelled. “He’s tried to murder me! He’s tried to murder us! He got those handcuffs off and....”
“What,” demanded the sheriff sternly, “have you been doing with him in here?”
“What my office compels me to do... trying to get a confession out of him. And the devil....”
“How,” said the sheriff, “did he get his lip cut?”
“He attacked us,” began Lavigne.
“He attacked the three of you... two of you with guns... and him with none? He started this game, did he?”