by Max Brand
He spoke this loudly enough to reach the ears of two men who were laboring up the slope. They hurried to an opening and looked out. One was Jefferson Purchass and the other was the fiancé of Rose.
“But now that I have found you,” Pierre was saying, “I have to say how happy I was in talking with you last night, and how sorry I am that I must say good bye.”
“But,” said the girl, “don’t you know that we live very near the town?”
“I am leaving it,” he said.
“Leaving the town! But this Von Ehrn—”
“He and I have parted company.”
What a transformation struck across her face at that.
“Ah,” she cried, “do you mean that you have — ?”
“There was something else on my mind,” said Pierre, “and Von Ehrn saw it.”
“What was that thing, then?”
“That made me give up gambling?”
“Then you have definitely done it?”
“Yes. As for what made me do it — well, it will take me a time to tell you about that.”
“I have the entire morning weighing on my hands.”
“Then suppose we sit down.”
They sat down, accordingly, side by side in a patch that was half sunshine and half the shadow of the leaves.
“I must begin at the very beginning,” said Pierre.
“I adore long stories,” she said.
“Even when they are in the first person?”
“Oh,” she cried in a soft, startled voice, “is it — ?” But she added: “Well, I shall love to hear it.”
“In the beginning — ,” said Pierre.
At this point the two who were watching through the gap in the shrubbery sank back behind the screen of foliage to watch and to listen.
IX. PURCHASS GOES FOR HELP
THAT DAY THE fishing party returned to the ranch house where Rose Purchass was entertaining the big party of her friends. It was late afternoon before the rancher had a chance to take Sam Stevens to one side.
“I’ve been giving you the whole day to think things over,” said Purchass. “Now I want to know what your thinking comes to.”
“You mean,” said Sam, moistening his lips, “about — this morning?”
The rancher grunted. “What else?” he said.
“Well, it seemed an interesting story,” suggested Sam. “That is, if it were true.”
“True? Of course, it ain’t true. He was lying like a champion every minute that he talked. But it sure seemed to me that Rose was believing him!”
“I thought so, too,” said Sam Stevens.
“And her the most level-headed girl that ever come out of the West. I dunno how he put it over with her.”
“Nor I,” said the acquiescent Sam.
“When he wound up, seemed like he was telling her that he was quitting gambling.”
“She seemed to like that,” murmured Sam.
“Of course, she did. He meant her to like it. He was making a bluff at putting all his cards on the table, and she didn’t have the sense to see through it. I was sure surprised at Rose.”
“I was, too,” said Sam.
“And what do you figure she thinks of him now that he’s given her all that guff?”
“Why,” said Sam, “he made no — er — declaration of affection, did he?”
“You mean, did he ask her to marry him? No, he didn’t have the face to do that, but he did everything else. He was making love to her as fast and as hard as any man I ever see—”
“But,” Sam put in, “he didn’t so much as touch her hand — he didn’t so much as say that he even liked her.”
Jeff Purchass swung around and favored the youth beside him with a searching glare. It was apparent that a new opinion of Sam had just entered his head. He hesitated, and, when he spoke, it was plain that his words did not match with the original expression on his face. “D’you think that a man has to talk like that, when he wants to make a girl like him? Don’t you figure that by opening up and pretending to show her the inside workings of himself that he’s doing as much as when he bawls out like a calf that he loves her?”
“Why, I don’t know that I’d ever thought of that before. But you must be right.”
The rancher bit his lip. What he was tempted to say then could not be respectably represented in print, but he controlled himself. As a matter of fact, he never allowed his temper to carry him beyond a certain point. After that, it was kept in check. And his passion could not go too far to remember that the father of Sam Stevens was several times a millionaire, and that this marriage would essentially strengthen the financial position of Jefferson Purchass, Esquire. So he held himself in check and glared at Sam with an attempt at a smile that was a terrible grimace.
“At least,” said Purchass, “you admit that she took Delapin seriously?”
“Oh,” said Sam, “you know her much better than I do. If you think so, of course, you must be right.”
The rancher sighed and looked for a time straight into space. “What do you think should be done about it, Sam?”
“I don’t know. Do you think that something should be done?”
The rancher gritted his teeth before he answered. And now he could no longer look his future son-in-law in the face. “I’m afraid that Rose is losing her head,” he answered. “I’m afraid that this Pierre Delapin is too much for her. She’s never known any one of his smooth type before. Thank the Lord, her other friends have been gentlemen.”
“If you are afraid of Delapin — why,” cried Sam Stevens with an air of triumph, “I have the very thing to solve the whole riddle!”
“The devil you have!” The rancher looked at Sam in amazement. “Well, spout it out — what’s the solution going to be?”
“Simply forbid her to see him!”
Jeff Purchass, for an immediate reply, sank his teeth in the corner of a plug of chewing tobacco.
“You’d forbid her, eh? Lemme tell you, son, that after you marry up with Rose, and you want her to do anything, one of the very best little ways of making her do what you want is to put down your foot and forbid her to do the opposite. When I want her to stay in at night, all I got to do is to tell her that she’s staying in too much at night, and that I want her to get interested in young folks and start going out to parties. That’s all I got to say, and pronto she begins to find out that all the young folks she knows are a shallow lot, and that she’s going to spend her evenings at home with good, sober books and fine music and — man alive, it ain’t that she’s nacherally mean. It’s just that she’s got a contrary streak — in little things.”
He had gone a bit further than he had intended. There was a worried look in the eye of Sam Stevens, and the rancher hastened to add: “But when along comes anything important, then she’s like a rock — you know just where to find her. That’s the sort of girl she is.”
“Well,” said Sam, “I guess that she’s a character, all right. Maybe she’ll quiet down when she gets older.”
“Of course, she will,” said the rancher, and he looked straight through the young man with a very faint and a very grim smile, as if he said to himself that, if his daughter changed, her husband would be altered, indeed. “In the meantime,” he went on, “what are we going to do about Delapin?”
“It seems,” said Sam, “that it will be difficult to effect anything through Rose.”
“Sort of difficult,” admitted Purchass dryly, “so I imagine we’ll have to work on Delapin. And do you know what that means?”
“Do you mean — ?”
“I mean just that.”
“Good Lord!” cried Sam.
“Don’t show your yaller, till I’m through talking.”
“But Pierre Delapin is a gunfighter himself.”
“That’s why I don’t care about getting him bumped off. When he was a kid, he was a regular fire-eater. Now he’s going to get some of his own kind of medicine. It’ll come to him a bit late, but safe and su
re just the same.”
“You would — you don’t mean — ?”
“Have him killed? Why not? Folks have tried to get me put away time and again. Folks’ll try it again later on. Now I’m going to get a man to handle Delapin.”
“But — but—”
“You mean that Pierre might get the best of the fight?”
“He’s a famous shot, sir.”
“He’s living on a past reputation. It’s years since he has done much shooting, I’d swear. Besides, the man I’ll send to him will be good enough to match the best that Pierre Delapin ever was capable of doing. That’s flat!”
“Of course — if that could be done—”
“If it was safe enough, you wouldn’t object to the murder?”
“Murder,” breathed Sam.
Purchass groaned “When will I meet a man that ain’t afraid of a word?”
He left Sam Stevens at once. He had hoped to find in Sam a man of sufficient nerve and force to handle the disagreeable end of this business himself. But, since Sam had failed him, he went off to find his man for the evil work that lay ahead. As to the morals of the thing, Jeff Purchass gave them not a thought. He was a hero of the days when citizen committees had volunteered to serve as the strong right hand of a law that had not kept pace with the westward roll of civilization. In those days a man who was a gambler, a gunfighter, and perhaps a criminal in other ways unknown, was not given the slightest consideration. He was simply a menace that had to be wiped out, and the best way to deal with him was the quickest extermination of the viper. In the viper class Purchass put Pierre Delapin without the slightest hesitation, for the rancher was a man upon whose reputation for integrity there was not even the hint of a spot. The thought that a crook should have actually aroused an interest in the heart of Rose maddened him.
He knew where to go to find help. He rode into town and through to the other side. A mile out there was a tumble-down shack surrounded by a few wretched sheds. On the front doorstep, whittling at a stick, was a middle-aged man whose tobacco-stained Vandyke and heavy eyebrows gave him an impressive appearance at a distance, but at close hand one was too much aware of the dirt and the half-weak, half-cunning gleam in the eyes. Yet he had been a famous man at a time. There was a day when he was still under twenty that the accuracy of his gun play had made him dreaded over leagues of country.
“Bud,” said the rancher without preliminaries, “how’s the old eye for a gun?”
Bud produced from nowhere a long Colt which, in his lightning touch, was simply a flash of light. The flash of light exploded, and a little tin can thirty yards away tumbled headlong.
“Fair to middling,” said Bud, stowing the revolver with as much speed and nonchalance as he had shown in drawing it. And his eyes twinkled up at the rancher in a hunt for admiration.
“Then,” said Purchass, “you’re my man. I’ve come here to talk business.”
X. CRAVEN AND STRONG
IT WAS NOT what the letter said, but what it implied, that was wonderful to Delapin. He sat up until midnight, dreaming over it and reading it again and then passing into another dream. Yet it was a short, plain letter in itself.
“Dear Pierre,” it began — and, indeed, that had progressed wonderfully in two short meetings, if it brought her to call him by his first name.
Dear Pierre:
My father has been walking about in a terrible rage. I suspect that it has something to do with you. I think I have told you that Dad is the best man in the world; but he is also the worst. If he becomes angry enough, there is nothing he will stick at. Will you please take care of yourself, both for your own sake and the sake of Dad? I think his rage concerns you.
And it was signed Rose Purchass. It seemed to the eager eyes of Pierre that the Rose had been written boldly, strongly, as if meant to stand by itself, and that the Purchass was more faintly inscribed, as though added through an afterthought. This might be all the fondest imagining, and yet he could not persuade himself that there was nothing in it.
But, as for taking precautions, he merely laughed and threw himself into bed, still smiling. He had not feared a human being since he was a child, and he did not intend to begin now. His dreams, also, were of the pleasantest, for the face and the form of Rose Purchass kept drifting through his dreams.
He left his visions and his sleep suddenly, and then found himself lying wide awake in the black of the night with something breathing and living in the room. Another man would have dismissed that thought at once, but the senses of Pierre were not quite robbed of that hair-trigger acuteness that they had gained when he had been a youngster, wandering through the mountain desert. And now he knew perfectly that it was not imagination that told him that another man was in the room, for he felt more than he heard, and what he felt was that strange touch of electric sensibility which comes when another person is near. And it is only in the utter dark, or when the other looks at one from behind, that this eerie feeling comes.
Instead of lying still, sweating with fear, or starting up noisily in bed, Pierre stole his hands above his head and gripped the heavy rail at the head of the bed. There he made his hold strong, and, when he had pushed the bedclothes away from his body with one careful foot, he was ready for action.
He turned his head to scan the room, and waited. Since the bed was in a recess, it was impossible for the other to steal upon him. He would have to come up from the one side, and there was this advantage for Pierre. He was awake, while the other thought that he slept. The pale, rough-plastered wall made an excellent background against which to see any object, so that, presently, he saw a shadow among shadows sliding gently forward along the wall at the head of the bed.
Now he did not wait. He was one of those fortunate persons who can act instantly the moment they see an opening for action. And he struck with his whole body just as a pugilist, seeing a guard wide, drives his fist home. First, he hooked his right leg over the edge of the bed. His left foot he planted against the wall behind him. Then he thrust himself out, driving from the left foot and pulling with his right leg, and swinging himself with all his might with his muscular arms. Whoever has seen the impetus that can be given an athlete’s hammer by a single twist of the wrists can imagine what happened with Pierre Delapin. His hundred and seventy pounds of stalwart muscle and bone whipped into motion like an avalanche in the middle of its race down a slope. And when he loosed his hands from the bed rail, he shot through the air straight at that shadow which was flattened against the wall.
He had made a noise, of course, but no more than a man will make turning over in his sleep. At the noise the stealthy shadow paused in its advance. But just as it paused, there came destruction hurtling out of the dark of the alcove. Pierre struck body and bone, crunched it against the wall, and saw the man slump into a pile on the floor, as though he had been turned to sand.
Pierre did not hurry to light the lamp. He knew that he had plenty of time before the other could possibly move. In fact, after it was lighted, he turned to find that his victim had not stirred. He put his foot on the shoulder of the fellow and pushed him back. The body rolled limp and stretched out on the floor, and Pierre found himself looking down into the well-known features of Bud, the gunfighter. The gun lay an arm’s length away.
He contemplated that wreck of humanity for a moment of unutterable scorn and disgust. If it had not been for Mrs. Winton, might not he himself have one day degenerated into such as this — a night murderer?
He doused a pitcher of cold water over the prostrate figure. Bud gasped and opened his eyes. Whatever else he might have been, he was quick-witted. He rolled his glance once around the room and then centered it upon Pierre with a perfect comprehension. His face was still sick from the blow that had knocked him senseless. But he understood and waited for the end with calm.
“Get up,” said Pierre.
The other cast one miserable glance at the revolver that lay on the floor, only an inch too far away. Then he stood up, and,
having risen, he looked less like a drowned rat.
“You’re not very happy, Bud,” said Pierre.
The other shrugged his shoulders. “Wet, that’s all,” he said.
He had lost his pride, and, when a man has lost his pride, certain ordinary weapons are taken out of the hands of other men. Shame is a mighty lever.
“Got the makings?” asked Bud presently.
Pierre turned his back on him to get what he wanted. He turned his back in the faint hope that Bud would dive for the gun on the floor. That would give them a fair enough break. And what Pierre Delapin wanted to do was to kill this man. He wanted it, as he had never desired another thing in his life. He found that for five years he had been living in the constant expectation of a gun play across the card table, but the expectation had been all. His reputation and his readiness had saved him. And, now that the chance for a fight had come, he was hungry for it.
Yet, he reached the tobacco and the brown papers, and, when he turned and tossed them to Bud, the latter had not stirred from his place. His ratty eyes were still flashing from Pierre to the gun and back again. But he had decided that the chance was not worth the taking. Instead, he began to roll his cigarette.
“Bud,” said Pierre, “you’re a yellow dog.”
The yellow dog turned up his eyes and watched Pierre, while, at the same time, he licked his cigarette into shape and then lighted it. He was actually smiling.
“You don’t believe me?” asked Pierre.
Bud shrugged his shoulders. His attitude was that of a man who had been so many times proven that it is impossible for the world to doubt his courage. In fact, it is impossible for him to doubt himself.
“Look.” Pierre said, “there’s my gun yonder, hanging on the wall in that belt. And here’s yours—” And with a flick of his bare foot he knocked Bud’s weapon closer to him.
“It’s quicker for you to scoop up that gun of yours than it is for me to step across to my gun and pull it out of the holster. And — well — there you are, Bud.”