Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US
Page 384
Then Bob Lake saw the girl. His first impulse was to pray that the seat of the pair would be in his car. His second impulse was to pray that the seat might be elsewhere. For he had a profound conviction that, if he had a chance to look into the eyes of this girl at short range, there would be trouble brewing in no time.
After they had climbed the steps he held his breath, and then straight down the aisle they came. A battery of smiles and chuckles on either side of them marked their progress, and the shouting of the crowd volleyed from outside. The girl was very conscious of it. She came timidly, and her little side glances seemed to beg them to look in another direction, and every step she made down that aisle was straight into the heart of Bob Lake.
Perhaps they would go on through to another car. No, they paused near him, and the crowd with flowers and candy and gay-colored parcels poured around Bob’s seat. He saw a gray-haired woman with tears streaming down her cheeks; he saw a gray-haired man with twitching lips that attempted to smile. When the warning— “All aboard!” — had sounded, and the crowd had swept out again, Bob Lake found that the pair were in the seat directly ahead of him.
When he made this discovery, he felt that it was fate. He was as certain of it as if he had seen a shadowy figure in retrospect bidding him rise from that poker table in New York and rush on board the train.
Ordinarily Bob Lake was the very soul of honor; he would rather have blinded his eyes than let them look twice at the wife of another man. But in this case he felt a shrewd difference. Something was taking him up and carrying him on against his own volition as a tide sweeps a man out to the open sea. The irony of it made him wince. Women had never been anything to him. A few had laughed their way into his life for an evening at a dance, but they had all yawned their way out again, and Bob Lake remained essentially heart free. At last it was the wife of another man.
It’s fate, he kept repeating to himself. If the thing had not been preordained, why that sudden mad rush from New York? Of course, Bob did not at the moment recall that everything he had ever done had been on spur of the instant. Why, he went on to ask himself, did her glance take hold on him like a hand, if there were not some weird power to blame?
He was glad of one thing — that she was not facing him. He could only see her hair. When he turned to shut out this sight by staring out of the window, the sound of her voice pursued him, tugged at him, made him turn to look at her again and listen with held breath to make out the words. He felt like an eavesdropper, but, nevertheless, he could not help damning the roar of the train. Something, he kept assuring himself, was going to happen. And when a hundred and ninety pounds of manhood feels that way, something usually does happen.
He made out snatches of the conversation. The marriage ceremony had taken place an hour before they boarded the train. The man’s name was Rankin, and the girl’s name was Anne. The most wonderful name in the world, Bob instantly decided. They were going into the mountains to Al Rankin’s country, which the girl did not know, and to his home there that she had never seen.
But what could happen? A train wreck, perhaps. There was a good deal of the boy in Bob Lake. An instant picture was launched in his mind of himself striding through smoke among smashed timbers, carrying the body of the girl. He brushed the dream away and concentrated on reality. For at any moment the train might stop among the mountains — the girl and the man might leave his life forever. The thought turned Lake cold.
Once he got up and walked down the length of the train in order to return a little later and approach the girl so as to see her face. But when he came back, he saw nothing. He was afraid to look. He, Bob Lake, afraid to look a girl in the face. But, although he saw nothing, there was an impression. It was as if a light had shone on him in the night. When he slipped back into his place, his pulses were hammering. And then it happened.
It was the end of a division, and, when the train stopped, a chunky man with a great spread of hat, with baggy-kneed trousers, and riding boots came to the head of the car and squinted down its length. At the same time a newspaper was raised before the face of Al Rankin and shaken out. The result was that Bob Lake did not see what immediately appeared until a pudgy, brown hand appeared over the edge of the paper, pulled it unceremoniously down, and the chunky little man stood looking down at Rankin. He leaned and murmured something.
In fact, his voice was most carefully guarded, but Bob Lake had been training his ear to catch whispers through the roar of the moving train. Now he made out one word: “Arrest.”
And he heard what Al Rankin answered: “What charge?”
The whisper which replied to this missed his ear, but Al Rankin immediately rose. His wife was on her feet at the same moment.
“Infernal nuisance,” Rankin told her calmly enough. “Meet Bill White... an old friend of mine. Bill has a message that takes me off the train here.”
“I’m ready, Al,” Anne stated.
“Ready for what?”
“To go with you, of course.”
“Nonsense! Break up the trip for this? Certainly not. You stay aboard. When you get to the station, old Charley will be waiting. You can tell him by his beard... just like a goat’s. He’ll take you out to the house and make you comfortable. I’ll be up tomorrow.”
He turned and nodded to Bill White, who was watching the girl steadily. He had bowed in a jerky fashion to acknowledge the introduction, and now he was looking at the young wife with a sort of hard sympathy.
“Al, there’s nothing wrong?”
Just a moment of pause. Something gathered in the face of Al Rankin. “Haven’t I told you there’s nothing wrong?” he said sullenly. “You stay aboard and don’t worry. They don’t make enough trouble in these parts to bother me.”
He had changed his tone toward the end of this speech and qualified the scowl with the beginning of a smile. But the blow had fallen. Bob Lake saw the girl wince and whiten a little about the mouth, but she made no further protest. Al Rankin turned with a careless wave of farewell and strolled down the aisle, followed by the little gray-headed man. It seemed to Bob Lake that the girl started impulsively to follow. Perhaps it was the memory of the gruff rebuke that stopped her short and made her sink slowly into her seat again.
From the window he saw Al Rankin sauntering away with his companion. Whatever their business might be, they seemed in no hurry to accomplish it. Then he saw the girl was not looking after them through the window. She sat close to the side of the car with her head turned straight before her.
Al, Bob Lake thought, you sure made a bum play with the rough talk... a rotten bad play.
He felt the preliminary lurch of the starting train, and it pressed him back against the seat — just as Al Rankin, he recalled, had lurched back when the chunky little man had whispered into his ear the charge on which he was being arrested. Bob Lake became solemnly thoughtful. There was only one charge which could have disturbed the fine calm of Al Rankin, he felt, and to himself Bob whispered the word: Murder! When the thought entered his mind, he glanced guiltily around the car, half expecting to see pitying eyes directed at the young wife. But, instead, everyone was settling back to sleep through that stretch of dreary mountains.
Murder! He was as certain of it now as though he had heard the whisper. And this was the thing for which he had waited to happen. A sudden self-loathing took possession of Bob Lake. He hated himself for the gleam of joy that he had felt as the first surmise came to him. What of the girl? Would she not go through life even as she sat now, looking straight ahead of her, fearing to meet the eyes of men and women in her shame? All the beauty of her smile would be straightened from her lips, he knew, and the thought made him grind his teeth.
The wheels were beginning to groan as the train slowly started.
And then Bob Lake acted. It was one of those sudden, mad, unreasoning impulses. Two sweeps of his arm planted his hat on his head and gathered up his suitcase. He fairly ran down the aisle and at the door turned for a last look.
Then he tore himself away, pushed open the door, and poised on the lowest step. The ground was already shooting past with terrifying speed. Yet he gauged his distance, leaned back, and dropped free of the train. The blow crumpled his legs. He went down in a confused mass of whirling arms and legs and suitcase, yet he laughingly scrambled to his feet in time to see a white face pressed against the window as the car shot past. He waved his hand to that face. How much would she understand? That thought held him gaping, until the length of the train had rushed past, and the rear end was whipping off into the distance with a mist of dust drawing after it. Then he turned back to take up the adventure. Al Rankin must be saved from the law.
II. RANKIN’S RECORD
HE HAD NO time to balance reasons nicely or appreciate the folly that had started him on this blind trail. Al Rankin and the stranger had stepped into an automobile where two other men already sat. He saw that Al was put into the back seat between the other men. Then the car shot down the south road.
There were two questions to be asked. One was where that south road led, and a youngster near the platform told him that it went directly to Everett, twenty miles away. The second question was where he could get an automobile for his own use. It was almost as easily answered, and five minutes after he dropped from the train he was in a machine, speeding down the south road for Everett.
The owner of the car drove him, and he looked a cross between a mechanic and a farmer. Old buckboard customs now made him press the feed with his right foot while his left dangled over the side of the car, and he kept his right shoulder habitually turned to his passenger. Bob Lake had made the necessary explanations about a short business trip, and the first five miles shot past — wild driving over wild roads — without another word exchanged.
They climbed a steep grade and pitched forward at fifty miles on a downward stretch. “You know Bill White?” asked Bob Lake in a different voice.
“Sure, I know the sheriff.”
That was all Bob wished to know. He settled back against the seat until they rushed with open exhaust into the town of Everett. It was rather a village than a town. There was the inevitable single street, deep with dust, and the only up-to-date thing that Bob Lake saw was the automobile in which he sat. His driver came in as the cowpunchers in the good old days used to “come to town.” He came wide open in a dense cloud of dust and came to a stop with jammed brakes, skidding the last few yards into place before the hotel.
“Here you are,” he announced, and one corner of his eye glinted in expectation of applause.
Bob Lake paid him while the dust cloud they had torn up slowly overtook them and enveloped them in white. Then he went into the hotel. When he had secured a room on the second floor and thrown his suitcase on the bed, he slumped into the rickety chair and buried his face in his hands to think. He had great need of thought. Indeed, the last hour had been so dream-like that he would not have been surprised at all if, when he looked up, he had seen the head of Al Rankin leaning against the back of the seat before him and the mountains rushing past the windows of the train. The dust with which he was covered brought him to a realization of the facts. He dragged in a breath through his set teeth and cursed. Once more he had played the impulsive fool.
Perhaps the sheriff had not made an arrest. Perhaps he had only taken Rankin from the train because he needed him badly on a manhunt. Rankin had impressed him as a fighting type. Of course, it was strange that a man’s honeymoon should be interrupted for such a purpose, but, Bob Lake knew, stranger things than this had happened in the mountain-desert country.
He made brief preparations to hunt for information. The shoes came off his feet. The riding boots that he had been unable to leave behind when he started in New York, and which he had never been able to trust to the chance delivery of a trunk — those priceless shop-made boots — were drawn upon his feet. He took a step in them, and the clinking of the spurs was music to his ears. He stepped to the mirror and grinned at the face he saw — the red necktie, the high stiff collar, the coat. Ten seconds tore away that mask. The collar and tie were gone, tossed to a corner of the room, and a voluminous silk bandanna knotted in place around his neck skillfully. Out of the suitcase came the old cartridge belt, and the gun, that had been worn so long in concealment, came into the open and was dropped with a thud into the holster. Last he tossed off his coat and unbuttoned his vest. He was ready again to take his place in the world as a man. But first he walked up and down the room to ease his feet into the familiar boots with their paper-thin soles. Then he tried his gun half a dozen times for the sheer joy of feeling it come out in his fingertips as freely as the wind and the hug of the butt against the palm of his hand.
Then he started out to find information. It came to him at once and not through a coincidence. The whole town was buzzing with it, and most of the buzzing concentrated on the verandah of the hotel. With a little patience he could have gathered the whole tale piecemeal from exclamations and bits of irrelevant news. But he preferred to get his facts in a lump. He found a man young enough to tell the truth and old enough to yearn for an audience. Bob Lake cornered him, and appealed as a stranger for the story.
The fellow was delighted. First a leisurely examination assured him that Bob “belonged” and was “right.” Then he launched into the narrative.
“Them boys think they know a lot,” he said. “But what they’re short on is the facts. I know, because I’m the only one that seen the sheriff since he brought Rankin to town.”
“Is Rankin an outlaw?”
“Worse.”
“Eh?”
“I mean he’s the kind that does things and never gets picked up for ’em. Most boys that goes wrong are plumb fools, or else the booze gets ’em, or they get mad about a little thing and do a big thing that’s worse. Al Rankin ain’t none of them. He’s crooked because it pays him. Oh, everybody has known it for a long time. A lot of things happened around these parts. There was that gang that stole Chet Bernard’s cows three years back. There was the killing of young Murphy, and there was the shooting of Lanning and Halsey. Self-defense, you see?” He winked at Bob Lake without mirth. “I leave it to you, stranger. When a gent practices two hours a day with the cards and never loses when he’s playing for big stakes, would you call him a gambler or a card sharp?”
“Hmm,” murmured Bob Lake.
“And when a gent goes out and practices with his gun, shooting from all kinds of positions, fanning ’er and wasting a hundred shots a day, would you say that gent was a straight gunfighter who knew he would have trouble and was getting all set to meet it?”
“Hmm,” repeated Bob Lake.
“And when a gent kills another man in self-defense... well, that’s all right. But, when he shoots two more, that self-defense looks kind of thin, eh? And when you add all the facts up, you begin to figure that you’ve got a gambler and a robber and a man-killer. But with a smart one like Al Rankin, it ain’t easy to nail anything on him. They even say he’s got a home in another part of the mountains, and that he’s pretty well thought of up there. He goes other places and raises his trouble and gets his income.
“Well, Bill White has had his eye on Al for a long time, but he couldn’t get nothing to use on him. There was always a lot of bad talk, but bad talk ain’t any good with twelve men in a jury box that want facts to hang a man with. So Bill kept waiting for facts, and pretty soon the facts come.
“You see, there was a killing about a year
back that nobody thought much of. Sam Coy was a bad one... bad all the way through. When he was found dead at the door of his shack, nobody did much except shrug their shoulders. Good riddance, everybody said.
“Well, sir, I’ll come back to the Coy killing pretty soon. In the meantime, Al Rankin was pretty sweet on Hugh Smiley’s daughter, Sylvia. He kept taking her around to all the parties, and folks begun to say maybe Al would marry and settle down. Worse ones than him has turned out straight. And Sylvia is a pretty fine girl by all accounts. But after a while Al Rankin drops her. That’s his way.
“This time he had her expecting to marry him sure, and it about broke her heart, they say. Well, the next thing you know, there comes talk that Al Rankin is down to Polkville trying to marry another girl, and Hugh Smiley gets all heated up about it. Polkville is over behind the mountains, you know.
“Then Hugh Smiley comes into town and says to the sheriff... Bill White told me this himself not more’n half an hour ago... Hugh says to Bill... ‘I got something that’ll hang Al Rankin.’
“‘Give it to me,’ says Bill.
“‘Not while Al is ranging around loose,’ says Hugh. ‘I ain’t ready to die.’
“‘How come, then?’ says Bill.
“‘Put him behind bars, and then I’ll give you the testimony that’ll hang him.’
“‘Are you sure?’ says the sheriff.
“‘Sure as I live,’ says Hugh Smiley.
“‘But you got to get it to me, quick,’ says the sheriff. ‘If I lock up Al, I got to have the testimony in my hands within the day. I can’t hold him on a trumped-up charge longer’n that. Besides, I’d have him gunning for me after he got turned loose.’