by Max Brand
“Of course not,” said Mary. “Then I’ll take the lock back, if you’ll let me have a saw.”
Mrs. Zellar was gone a long time in the house, apparently hunting for the saw, but Mary heard the voice of mother and son in heated argument. At length, Mrs. Zellar came out with the saw and, gloomier than ever, proceeded to cut out the lock and hand it to Mary. “I hope it brings bad luck to Jack Whatever’s-his-name. I hope this lock is the thing that hangs him,” she said savagely.
Mary untethered the horse and climbed back into her buggy. “Why do you hate Jack so much?” she asked, when she had turned the buggy around.
“Why? Because he’s a crook,” said Mrs. Zellar fiercely. “And because he done a murder under my roof and robbed me!”
“Robbed you?” asked Mary Larrabee.
“Sure he did. Wouldn’t Mister Benton, if he’d died natural, have left me something in his will? Of course, he would have. Who robbed me of it, then? Why, this Jack, this devil did! Ain’t that clear as day?”
Mary shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, “but, if Jack is a murderer, I don’t know where we can find men we can trust.”
“Wait a minute,” said Mrs. Zellar suddenly, starting for the heads of the horses. “Wait a minute! Hold on, Mary Larrabee! I’ve changed my mind about....”
But a sharp cut of the buggy whip sent the bays sprinting away. “I can’t wait,” called Mary in explanation. “I have to hurry back!”
Then she dashed past the big woman and out onto the road. Mrs. Zellar followed a step or two, then paused with her arms akimbo, and stared after the flying little equipage. At length, she turned sullenly back toward the house.
“There’s a devil in these young girls,” she confided to her son a little later. “And I’d give a lot to know what she’s up to, the little vixen.”
The first thing that Mary did could have been seen from the house. She halted her team beside the tree, where the tramp was known to have kept his fire on that night of nights. The site of the fire she examined carefully and then swung the team back onto the road. The bays were in a foam, when she brought them back into Boonetown and drew up before the carpenter shop. She found the proprietor in the very act of starting for the country.
“Old Missus Purvis just phoned in,” he said. “If your dad has some business for me, Mary, I guess it’ll have to wait. Missus Purvis is plumb rushed. That’s the way it goes with old folks. They want everything done so fast you’d think they was afraid death would come along before it was done.”
“But Mister Hands,” said the girl, “this is a matter of life and death.”
“Hmm,” said the carpenter, and pulled his glasses down on his nose, so that he could peer at her over them. “Life and death?”
She placed the lock on the workbench. “Is that a common lock, Mister Hands?”
He examined it, took up a bundle of keys, and tried some, one by one. Presently the lock was turned under his manipulation. “Common enough lock, all right,” he said. “I got twenty old keys, right here, that could turn it.”
Mary Larrabee uttered an exclamation of despair. “But,” she protested, “I want to prove that this key belongs to that lock. And now you’ve spoiled everything for me!”
She drew forth the key and handed it to him. “Lemme see,” muttered the carpenter, who was locksmith as well. “Lemme see, now. Maybe it does belong, but what difference does that make? I can fix you up with other keys for it.”
“Other keys? No, no! Mister Hands, you must prove that this key belongs to this lock.”
“Well, maybe I could. You see where the bit of this key is worn off a little? That comes from being used in a lock that has a rough place in it. I can find out in a minute.”
He set to work with a screw driver, taking the lock apart, examined it carefully, and then straightened with a grunt of satisfaction. “Look for yourself,” he said. “Don’t need no microscope for this. See this place, sticking out in the lock? That’s what’s worn away the key. Must have took a tolerable lot of use to do it, but there ain’t any doubt. See how it fits into the worn place?”
“Mister Hands,” asked the girl, “how can I thank you for showing me? You’ve saved him!”
“Saved who?”
But lock and key were snatched from the carpenter’s hand, and she was gone, whirling through the door.
XI. THE WHOLE STORY
AT THE JAIL she swept her father into the storm of her enthusiasm. Key and lock were placed in his great brown hands.
“You see,” she explained, “that key has to belong to the lock!”
“Well, Mary,” he admitted, “it sure looks like it. And what d’you make of it?”
“It must have been brought from the Zellar house?”
“That’s nacheral... no doubt about that.”
“And who could have brought it?”
“Jack, I suppose.”
“Oh, Dad, don’t you see that his cell is on the other side of the jail? How could he have thrown it there?”
“Eh?”
“It’s the tramp, Dad. He’s the one who threw it out the window to get rid of the only clue that connected him with the murder. Isn’t that clear?”
Her father shook his head, frowning. “Don’t sound like a strong argument, girl.”
“But how could that key have come there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you search Slim when you picked him up?”
“Why should I search him? He wasn’t near the house.”
“Then he might have had the key on him, when he was brought to the jail?”
“I suppose so.”
“How long would it take to walk from the tree where he had his fire to the house? Not more than ten minutes, do you think?”
“Not more’n that, I guess, if a gent stepped out lively.”
“Dad, he’s the murderer!”
“But, if he got rid of the key by throwing it out the window, he didn’t get rid of the money that was taken from Benton’s chest.”
She pondered a moment. “Will you take a drive with me out to Slim’s fire?”
He nodded, and a moment later they were spinning down the road toward the Zellar place, once more.
“He might have cached the money any place around this tree,” said the girl enthusiastically, as she dismounted from the buggy at the site of the fire.
“That’s true,” said the sheriff, and he began an ardent search. But there was nothing to be found. In half a dozen places, where boughs joined the trunk, at a steep angle, he looked, but there was no sign of the money.
“Or he might have dug a hole,” suggested the girl at length.
They examined the ground around the tree, within a radius of a hundred feet, but there was no sign of earth having been broken.
“Still,” said the girl, “it must be here. He wouldn’t wait to hide it any other place, because he’d be in such a hurry to get back to his fire. Isn’t that logical? Before the murder he was seen drowsing by the fire... after the murder he was back at his fire again. That is his alibi.”
“You got all the terms down pat,” said her father. “And it sounds reasonable, too. But what next?”
“What about the fire itself?”
“Buried paper money in a fire?” Larrabee was chuckling.
“See where he scraped that fire to one side. He first had the fire going on the left, then he moved it to the right, where it is now... scraping the whole bed of coals. Well, is it reasonable that a man would move his fire, once it’s going? Isn’t the hot bed of coals the most important part of a campfire, Dad?”
“That’s gospel, Mary.”
“Then, perhaps, he moved that fire to cover something.”
The sheriff said not a word, but simply kicked away the ashes and the charred remains of the fire. He thrust his hand down into the half-baked earth below it, tearing it away in clods, until at last he uttered a cry, worked a moment longer, and then stood up, holding a handful of d
irty greenbacks!
But Mary Larrabee, staring, saw two visions pass before her eyes — and money had no part to play in either. She saw Mississippi Slim, hanging with a rope knotted around his neck, and she saw Jack walking out of the jail, a free man. There in the hand of her father was the evidence that would accomplish both purposes.
“The money and the key,” the sheriff was saying. “Well, it sounds pretty good, but we can’t be sure. The thing to do, Mary, is to get a confession out of Slim, if we can. That’s the way to clear Jack. Otherwise, even if he gets off, his name won’t be plumb cleared. Once a gent is accused of a bad crime, his name is black the rest of his life. I’ll have to call in the snake, Lavigne, to help. My, won’t he grind his teeth when he finds out what I’ve learned?”
On the way back to Boonetown he detailed briefly the scene between Jack and the district attorney, which he had interrupted, and the mad fervor of the attorney’s desire to hang the prisoner. She had the pleasure, an hour later, of seeing the district attorney swallow the bitter pill and admit that he had been wrong. But in five minutes he had regained some of his happiness. One trail was lost, but another had been opened. No matter what man died, a death was a death. Indeed, with marvelous elasticity of spirits, he was rubbing his hands and walking up and down his office in a fine heat of inspiration, rehearsing the evidence bit by bit. At length he said: “It’s clear as day! He did it, but a good lawyer could get him off, probably. Somebody else might have buried that money under the tree... somebody else might have tossed the key into the sand. The confession is what we need, and the confession is what I’m going to get. Come along!”
Never in her life could the girl forget the scene that followed. She and her father accompanied the district attorney back to the jail and into the cell of Mississippi Slim, where the latter was walking busily up and down, “getting my exercise for the road,” he told them.
The attorney took out his pad at once. “Now, Slim,” he said, “I want to go over one part of your evidence.”
“Many times as you want, chief,” said Mississippi glibly.
“It was about what time when you first saw Jack?”
“I dunno. Ten or after, maybe.”
“He disappeared down the road toward the house?”
“Yes.”
“Good! Now, when you asked for food at the Zellar place earlier in the evening, what did you do when you were turned from the door?”
“Went up the road.”
“You didn’t stay about for a while?”
“No.”
“Didn’t try to get into the house, maybe, and walk off with something to get even with them for turning you out?”
The district attorney chuckled, and Slim laughed loudly.
“I wish I had,” he said.
“Did you ever see this?” asked Lavigne, with a sudden and harsh change of voice, and he produced the key in the flat of his hand.
There was an even more startling change in the rat-sharp face of Slim, as he settled back on his bunk and sneered at them. “Playing tricks, eh?” he asked. “I’ll do no more talking... not until I got a lawyer here.”
“All right,” said the district attorney, “but I suppose you’re willing to hear a little story?”
“Talk your head off,” said Slim fiercely, “but don’t ask me no questions.”
“It begins,” said Lavigne, “with the moment Jack rode on toward the house. You looked after him... you began to wonder if he might not have better luck than you did. Particularly, you wondered what would happen when that big fellow tried to force the Zellars to give him a hand out. Eh?
“Well, you got so curious that after a time you decided it was worth getting a soaking to see the party. So you got up and followed... you came to the kitchen door and saw him go inside... you listened for a while outside the window until you were sure that he was being fed.
“And, the moment you knew that, you were wild with anger! You wanted to do something to injure those people. So you sneaked around the house, looking for a place to get in, eh?”
The face of Slim was grave with boredom. There was no other expression in it.
“Finally,” went on the district attorney, “you found you could shinny up one of the verandah posts and get onto the roof. By the time you got up there, the old man, Benton, was just coming back into the room, and he settled down in a chair near the window. Only for a moment, though. After a time he went over to his chest and opened it. You saw him take out some money and make sure of it... you saw him lock the chest and saw the pocket into which he dropped the key. Is that right?”
Slim merely yawned.
“Then,” said Lavigne, “the old man came back to his chair and sat down to read. A minute later you began to work... you tried the window behind his chair. It came up without making a sound. Inch by inch you lifted it, pressing very softly for fear of a squeak. And all the time the old man kept right on reading, eh?”
“This is sure a fool story,” declared Slim. “Maybe you think anybody would believe it?”
“You got the window up, at last,” insisted Lavigne, “and then you slipped your hands in and settled them around the throat of Benton. He hardly made a struggle. At least, whatever struggle he made was not loud enough to be heard above the roar of the rain on the roof. So you slipped in, when Benton stopped wiggling, and you gave him a look.
“His face was purple... he wasn’t breathing. His eyes were popping out of his head, and he looked dead as a door-nail. You locked the door. Then you fished out the key from his pocket and took out that money.
“But, while you were stuffing it into a pocket, you heard a shriek behind you... the old fellow was only partly stifled. You saw him getting up out of the chair and staggering toward you to fight for his money. You had to act quick. You had to get rid of him and get back to your fire. You caught up a piece of firewood, hit him over the head, and, without waiting to see how it ended, you jumped through the window, ran over the verandah roof, jumped off, and made it back to your fire, and....”
There was a sound of gasping breath. Slim had risen from his bunk with staring eyes. “Where were you hid in that room?” he asked. “Say, how did you see it?”
^
* * * * *
THE Boonetown paper gave much credit to the district attorney for the cleverness with which he had fastened the meshes upon the real criminal and freed an innocent man. It gave a long write-up to Fitzpatrick Lavigne, while the part which Mary Larrabee had played disappeared in a single paragraph. Lavigne, as usual, took all the credit to himself.
But Mary Larrabee cared not a whit about reporters and papers. She was too preoccupied that evening in hearing from Jack his name and the history of his past. She was interested to the point of tears, while he told of his life before that wild night of storm and murder; how he had lived with his sister and brother-in-law, how, to raise much-needed money, his brother-in-law had made a practice of changing brands on the cattle that he caught off the range; how exposure had threatened; and how he, the man without a family, had taken the blame on his own wide shoulders and slipped away out of the country, penniless and despairing, but determined to give his sister’s family a fighting chance to live in honor.
For the first time and the last she heard all this with misty eyes, and it was never again referred to. Nor were any of the events of the Benton murder ever mentioned in the house. But, when she was Mrs. Jack Montagne, Mary kept in a secret place, to be looked at on holy days, the little worn key that had saved the life of one man and sent another to his death.
A Shower of Silver (1921)
CONTENTS
I. A WHISPER AND A WOMAN
II. RANKIN’S RECORD
III. PHILANTHROPIC INTERFERENCE
IV. ALL FOR ANNE
V. THROUGH THE WINDOW
VI. MOSTLY ABOUT ANNE
VII.— “FOR BETTER OR WORSE”
VIII.— “A STRANGE COMBINATION”
IX. AL SLEEPS IN HIS BOOTS
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X. RANKIN’S ESCAPE
XI.— “WRONG — ALL WRONG!”
XII.— “PLUMB HOLLOW INSIDE”
I. A WHISPER AND A WOMAN
THE LAST THREE months had been a dull time for Bob Lake. He had in the beginning coiled his rope, bidden a profane farewell to his favorite broncho, oiled up his best .45 Colt, planted a gray Stetson on his head, packed a grip, and started to see New York. And he saw it — at a considerable expense. Eventually he parted with everything except the gun and the Stetson, which were holy things to Bob, and, with his last five-dollar bill in his pocket, he sat in at a game of poker with a fat roll and an urgent desire to leave for the land of open skies and little rain. Two hours later he was bound West.
Impulse ruled Bob Lake. Give a man some hundred and ninety pounds of iron-hard muscle, a willingness to fight plus a desire to smile, no master except necessity, and no necessity except the wish for action, and the result is a character as stable as a hair trigger. He had one of those big-featured, but ugly, faces that have all manner of good nature about the mouth, and all manner of danger behind the eyes. He had both enemies and friends in legion, but they all united in the opinion that sooner or later Bob Lake was due to fall foul of the law.
At present Bob Lake was melancholy. This morning he had chuckled with joy to see the mountains of the land of his desire rolling blue against the western sky. It was now noon, and, although the train was rocking along among those same mountains, the joy had departed from the face of Bob Lake. The reason sat in the seat ahead of him.
A newly married couple had boarded the train at ten o’clock that morning at a town in the foothills. The party that accompanied them to the station had swirled about them, laughing, shouting, throwing rice, and out of the confusion had come the girl on the arm of her husband. He was a man as big and Western as Bob Lake, but the pallor of his face bespoke an indoor life. A very handsome fellow, although there were qualities of sternness in him. Bob would not soon forget the grim smile with which he shook the rice from the brim of his hat and looked back on the shouting crowd.