Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “Of course,” said Pierre, “you have lived in the desert, but I am the desert!”

  This was a singular response. It called for thought before an answer was given, but the rich alumnus hated thought. He wrote back to alma materthat the mind of the poor Delapin had been affected by grief and disappointment of a lost fortune. Alma mater wrote to other matres and spread the word. In ten days Pierre was utterly forgotten.

  Before the end of that period he was on a ranch in the outfit of a cowpuncher.

  IV. PIERRE FACES A BLUNT TRUTH

  HE WAS NOT a success as a cowpuncher. All that he had dreamed about, when the death of Mrs. Winton threw him back on his memory of his earlier days, was changed. In those happy times there was no necessity for work. He had simply wandered through the hills and towns, doing as he pleased. Five dollars a year would clothe him, and the other incidentals of equipment were of the smallest value. He could almost literally live on nothing. But Mrs. Winton had given him other tastes. He needed money — at least a little of it. And the only way he could make it was through the labor of his hands.

  But Pierre Delapin did not like labor. It did not matter that he had learned to work like a Trojan in preparing himself for athletic contests of one kind or another. That had not been work for such a purpose as bread and butter. The thought that the meal he ate at night had been earned with his own toil during the day was, for some reason, utterly repulsive to Pierre. The result was that in a fortnight he was bidden to take his way to town. And back to town he went. There he was almost instantly approached by the gambler, Von Ehrn.

  Von Ehrn was one of those men who never die. He was over sixty, as everyone knew, yet he often looked at least fifteen years younger. And his spirits were ever younger than his body. He had been mixed up with every rascally scheme that had brought disgrace upon the community for the past forty years, and still he went unscathed by the hands of the law. He had been operating a gambling house for the last twenty years, accumulating a fortune and exchanging winks with the sheriff once a month. Such was the amiable Von Ehrn.

  He approached Pierre Delapin with his usual directness. “Pierre,” he said, “I have work for you.”

  “Von Ehrn,” said Pierre, “you are an old man.”

  “What,” said Von Ehrn, “has that got to do with the matter?”

  “If you were young enough to shoot straight,” said Pierre, “I’d tell you a few truths about yourself and your work.”

  “Well, well,” Von Ehrn smiled. His skin was quite impenetrable to ordinary insult. “Do you mean to say you would have the courage to start a gun play after being so long away from guns? Can you handle a Colt after four years without one?”

  “I’ll tell you something,” said Pierre. “Instead of parties, I have stuck to this sort of thing while I was away. I’m glad to have this chance of telling you. Some of the boys seem to think that it will be safe to step on my toes now that I’ve been away so long. But just tell them that I’ve never missed a night.” As he spoke, he produced his Colt, spun it in his hand, skidded a card through the air, and split it with a bullet.

  “Very good,” said Von Ehrn, without turning his head to see if the bullet had struck.

  “And you may talk about that, if you will,” said Pierre. “I want to keep out of trouble.” He put away the gun.

  “Mighty smooth,” said Von Ehrn. “And I’m glad that I’m going to have you.”

  “Have me where?”

  “Dealing for me.”

  “I’d rather see you dead than work for you, Von Ehrn. That’s for frankness.”

  Von Ehrn only laughed. “Still,” he said, “you are my man.”

  “Explain.”

  “You are speaking better English, now,” Von Ehrn told him quietly. “I am glad of that. Good grammar helps a poker player more than any one thing I could name.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” murmured Pierre. “I give you my solemn word that I have never played poker in my life, and that I have no desire to learn — that if I ever choose to learn, it will not be with you — and that I am tired of our conversation, sir!”

  “Excellent,” said Von Ehrn. “You have the perfect manner. That is worth five thousand a year to me, and five thousand is what I am going to pay you.”

  “Not if you offered fifty thousand.”

  “What will you wager?”

  “That I don’t work for you? Anything you wish to name.”

  “I am not a cheap sport,” said Von Ehrn. “I’ll not bet with you on a sure thing. But to begin with, why won’t you work for me?”

  “I prefer the work I’m in.”

  “That’s not true, asking your pardon for contradiction. You’re too lazy to be a cowpuncher, my friend.”

  “Perhaps I am.”

  “What other objection do you have to working for me?”

  “A man is disgraced who works for you, Von Ehrn.”

  “I won’t believe that you care what the other fools around you say, when you act to suit yourself. They’ve tried to hound you down before. Are you going to run your life to suit them?”

  “I’ll suit myself in keeping away from your crooked card tables, Von Ehrn.”

  “Who said that I’d give you a crooked table to work at?”

  “You mean you’d run straight?”

  “I’d run your table straight, not the rest.”

  “What would you gain out of having me deal for you, then?”

  “Partly your name — people would come in to play with you. Partly because you have the makings of a fine gambler. And you couldn’t help winning for me.”

  “That’s the real reason you want me?”

  “The real reason. Business is getting slack with me. I’ve run so many crooked games that everyone begins to know it. These fools will walk right into a crooked game in the hope of beating it sooner or later, anyway. Nobody’s so blind as a man with the gambling fever. But even the worst of the blockheads begins to know that he can’t help losing when he visits me. I’ve got to get a new method and some new help, or my place goes broke.”

  “And so?”

  “And so I get you in, and advertise that your table is the squarest gaming table in the world, and that they can bet the limit with the sky as the top when they’re playing against you.”

  “Will you back my game as highly as that?”

  “I shall.”

  “You’re a real gambler yourself, Von Ehrn.”

  “On men — yes. I have an eye for men. When do you begin work?”

  “You expect me to come — to be a gambler, Von Ehrn?”

  “Rather a gambler than a hold-up artist.”

  “Meaning by that?”

  “That you’ll have to do one of the two, because you’ll never work again. You’ve tried cowpunching. Mining is worse. You’ve got to stay West in your own country. And if you stay here, what can you do for a living? You won’t work. You’ve got the lazy streak that runs deepest. And if you wait to make money grow without work, it means either dice, cards, or guns. Am I right?”

  This was a blunt arrayal of an argument that shocked Pierre Delapin to his first real attention, and then he began to see the force of all that he had heard. It was perfectly true. He could not work. When he remembered his session on the ranch, it seemed to him that every day had been an eternity of pain. He could not work, and yet he must live, and to live he must have money.

  “Unless,” said the gambler, “you make a rich marriage. Of course, that would help you on.”

  The face of Pierre Delapin burned. With those words that oily, evil voice had chimed into the very heart of his thoughts. He scowled heavily at the other.

  “I’d rather be dead,” he protested. “But if I worked for you, you swear that the game would be clean?”

  “That,” said Von Ehrn, “will be entirely in your hands.”

  Pierre drew a great breath. It seemed to him that he was already seated at the table, willing money out of the pockets of oth
er men. And yet, if it was a fair fight of their wits against his wits, why should he not?

  “But what will happen if a crooked gambler sits down at my table?” he asked.

  “Son,” said Von Ehrn, “no crooked gambler will ever try any of his tricks at your table. You’re too well known for your gun work. Rest easy on that.”

  “Then,” said Pierre, “I begin today. Take me to your dive.”

  V. NOT TOM OR JACK OR BILL

  IT MADE A more than minor sensation. The evil-minded said that they had always known that Pierre Delapin was headed for some such career. The more generous were inclined to sorrow. And a few actually believed the rumor that was busily circulated by Von Ehrn himself, that the table at which Pierre Delapin sat would be the most honest gambling table at which men ever took a hand — where the dealer would be above reproach, and where the dealer would enforce the honesty of the others, if the need arose, with bullets from his gun. Such was the arrangement which was rumored, and it was stated, moreover, that the stakes to be played for at that table would go as high as the sky.

  Then George Chambers from Cheyenne came in with enough loose cash to stagger the imagination of a miner. He sat in at the game and walked away with twenty-five thousand dollars in coin, which he freely showed the next day around the town. It did not matter that he went back to Von Ehrn’s the next night and lost forty thousand at that same table, facing young Pierre Delapin. That did not matter at all. The original spectacular report was what stayed in the minds of men. And they began to flock to Von Ehrn’s to test the truth of the tale.

  It was a master stroke on the part of the old gambler. With straight card- playing and no tricks, he was sure that the cold nerve and the good fortune of Pierre would win for him. And win it did. Every day his game improved in quality, and, where skill was insufficient, beginner’s luck helped him out. The fame of this honest table was spread with the speed of the seven-league boots of rumor. And men who wished to play very high and very squarely came hundreds of miles to sit in at the game. Pierre Delapin became an institution.

  Being an institution he had to dress for the part. No man can be looked at constantly by many curious eyes without feeling as if he were on a stage and behind footlights. The sunburn of a wild life in the first place, and constant athletics in the second place, began to fade and kept on fading until Pierre was very pale, indeed — the gambler’s pallor, into which the effect of late hours enters. In addition he began to accentuate that pallor by wearing black. It was a strange vanity, but Pierre was still very young. At this point in his history he was only beginning to feel the difference between himself and other men. He became scrupulously careful in matters of costume. His clothes were expensive, modish, and as different from the cow country outfit as he could make them.

  He made a distinction in manners, also. The more he had to do with rough men raised in rough ways, the more he practiced the most formal courtesy for his own part. And, so doing, he gained a weight of something that more than made up for his youth. People respected him for the honesty of his game; they respected him for his cool politeness, also. And those who played opposite him would as soon have taken liberties with his gun as with his self-esteem.

  Psychologists would say that the end of this régime would have come quickly enough. Pierre would have been drawn into ruin and died a shameful and despised figure while still in his youth, or else, with a mighty effort of the will, he would have torn himself from the power of his tempter, Von Ehrn. But this is no hypothetical treatise. This is a plain recital of certain facts in the life of Pierre Delapin, and, although some of them are strange, perhaps none is stranger than this — that Pierre stayed on at his work with Von Ehrn year after year. Doubtless not a month passed that he did not set a date after which he should not be seen again in Von Ehrn’s gaming room, but still the months drifted on, and he was not gone.

  Indeed, it was very hard to leave. He had more than his salary. After he had been there three months, Von Ehrn saw that he had a great prize and came to him with a fat bonus. Von Ehrn was insulted for his pains.

  “Do you think,” said Pierre, “that it is not shameful enough to fleece the poor devils who play opposite me, without taking an actual share in the spoils?”

  “Fleece them?” said Von Ehrn. “This is ridiculous talk! A gambler is a public benefactor.”

  Pierre smiled in spite of himself. He was accustomed to hearing the old fellow hold forth in this cryptic fashion.

  “Observe, now,” said Von Ehrn. “I prove to you that I am a public benefactor. The love of chance is the same love that sends men out to find fights, to cut one another’s throats, or to fill each other full of lead. The love of chance is what makes a man turn his back on his wife and family and seek new fields of adventure. The love of chance is the spark that the devil maintains in the soul of every man. But here stand I, ready with an opportunity for any of them, If they want action, here it is. In five minutes they can lose enough money to keep them sober and working for a year. And this you call fleecing? I tell you again, Delapin, that I do for them what the doctors did in the old days — I free them of their excess blood and give them a chance to become normal.”

  In spite of this argument, Pierre Delapin refused the bonus, but, when a larger one was offered a month later, he could not resist. And thereafter a percentage of the gains of the house was turned over to him regularly. Indeed, he was becoming the whole attraction at Von Ehrn’s. And he managed everything so well that Von Ehrn himself decided that he could relax and lead a life of leisure. So he relaxed, and within a year he was an old man, a little tremulous about his hands and knees, and nervous of mouth. His back began to stoop almost at once. His hair grew whiter. He added ten years to his apparent age within a twelvemonth.

  The rest of the gaming house languished. Finally, it was entirely given up. There was, in all the place, only the table behind which sat Pierre Delapin, with his calm face and his mobile hands. But that one table paid more than a score of ordinary ones. The other tables having been cleared out, Von Ehrn sent for an interior decorator, gave him his expenses from the East and back, paid him a fat sum and a bonus at the end, and through him produced a beautiful chamber. Outside, the house was squalid adobe, but this one room within was worthy of a palace.

  There were deep-textured Persian rugs on the floor; there were rich hangings on the walls; tall, warm-shaded lamps kept a glow in the place; and, when the gamblers raised their eyes from the green top of the game table, their glances could pass into shadowy corners to chairs covered with quaintly figured tapestries, and yonder to an oil painting, a stern-featured gentleman of the 17th Century with a placid brow and a head of dangling curls.

  Even Von Ehrn was a little staggered by the price he was forced to pay for these things, but, after all, they were worthwhile. The cattlemen and the miners and the lumber princes who came to patronize “the only honest gambler in the world” were impressed by this solemn magnificence, even though they did not understand it. But they felt that this was such a place in which a man could win a huge fortune. The glowing rugs on the floor were a more ample guarantee that Von Ehrn could pay losses of any size than a certified check of a definite figure. When there were big winnings in Von Ehrn’s house, the payments were instant and cheerful. When men lost huge sums of money, they found it mysteriously easy to endure the losses in such a room as this. In short, in this apartment Pierre Delapin was enthroned like a prince.

  One day an old man came into the hall and walked up to him. He was a little man with a wedge of white beard on his chin, and black eyes indomitably keen and knowing.

  “Are you Pierre Delapin?” he asked.

  “I am he,” said Pierre, and rose from his chair.

  “I am glad to see you,” said the stranger without shaking hands. “I am the doctor who ushered you into this world of sorrows.”

  “I am charmed to see you, sir,” said Pierre.

  “And I see,” said the doctor, “that you have risen in
the world.”

  Pierre was rigidly silent.

  “Well,” went on the doctor, “I didn’t mean to offend you, but, when you look around on all this luxury, I think you may keep me in mind. I gave it to you, you know. I am the man who kept you from being called Tom or Jack or Bill. I gave you the name of Pierre, and, therefore, I have given you all the rest of this that goes with it. By heavens, with a name I have recreated a bit of the Seventeenth Century and placed it in the middle of the mountain desert. Who shall say that there is nothing in magic or incantation?”

  With this he left the room in haste, chuckling to himself. Pierre walked slowly after him. There was no one else in the room except the big Negro who stood beside the polished door, a solemn and imposing figure with his head of snowy curls. Pierre paused in the center of the room. He was seeing himself in the tall and narrow mirror at the farther end of the room. With one foot advanced, with the shadows covering the bright and telltale surface of the glass, it seemed as though a figure were stepping toward him out of the very wall.

  That figure was of a man in a dinner jacket, slenderly and exquisitely proportioned. His hands and face were deadly pale, so white that his brown hair seemed black by the contrast, and his eyes were deep shadows. It was a wonderfully handsome face, with features deeply cut, and an expression of the profoundest hauteur. And as the gambler stared at his image, he felt, with a little shudder of fear, that the doctor had been right. This was a world of magic. And the influence of the name must have done it.

  Pierre Delapin! Indeed, it carried an aroma of romance about it; it had transformed this adobe building in the little Western cow town. It had transformed Pierre himself, for it was his foreign name, as he knew, that had first won the attention of Mrs. Winton. That gentle and sweet-faced woman had drawn him out of his past and given him a new future. He wondered sadly whether she had been right, for in the other life there had been content enough. He half closed his eyes and looked back to the scantily clad boy, brown-bodied, reckless as a wolf, who had lain on the bunk in the jail and rolled his eyes back to look at the sheriff. Mrs. Winton had taken him out of that. Certainly he could never forget it.