by Max Brand
Such were the ways of Phil Slader and such were the speeches with which Magruder rewarded him. Though Phil knew it all, he set his teeth and endured and prayed for the day of his freedom. For when that day came, he wanted to startle this doubting world by a proof of his quiet virtue. On the very day that he left Magruder, he intended to go down to the blacksmith in Crusoe town and there take a position as an apprentice! An heroic resolution? No, for the very fingers of Phil Slader itched with the love of craftsmanship.
As I have said, the history of the ten long years can be sketched in or inferred, if you choose. Now there were exactly three months before the day of liberation should come for Phil. The three months seemed to him so long that he had to grit his teeth to force himself to endure. But his will was iron, and endure he would. He had no doubt of that. Had he not been tempted a thousand times? Yes, and every time he came through the test with flying colors! Three months, then, still remained, when Magruder on an ever-unlucky day hurried out from his hotel one morning and stood looking about him, his eyes filled with a sudden resolution. Finally, he heard a sound that told him where to look — a deep throated voice that called from time to time from the direction of the alfalfa fields beside the creek.
Mr. Magruder struck out for the spot with a swinging stride. His wallet was packed with currency. His heart was light. If he had known anything worth singing, he would have attempted a song on this morning of mornings. So joyous was his spirit that it had even overflowed with kindliness in the direction of the person who, in all the world, he most feared.
CHAPTER IX
HE HAD LOCATED the voice correctly, because when he had passed beyond the orchard and the pasture he could see Philip Slader behind a plow drawn by four horses. He should have had a plow on high wheels with a gauge and lever for regulating the depth to which the share sank, for he was now engaged in the heavy labor of plowing up an alfalfa field for reseeding. No, it would not be planted in alfalfa again, but in some grain, perhaps, to change the quality of the soil before the alfalfa was brought in again.
But, in the meantime, there was Philip, doing the work of a more costly machine with a hand plow of his own contriving. It had a wonderfully deep and well-tempered share, held by a long and narrow plow beam and footing, and that narrowly angled cutting edge tore through the enmeshed alfalfa roots to a great depth. The hotel proprietor, listening, could hear the stout old roots snapping with muffled explosions beneath the rich ground, as the plow cut through them. Six horses could be used more profitably for such work as this, but Philip had only four at his disposal, for Mr. Magruder was by no means anxious to waste money on unnecessary objects. Moreover, Magruder knew that Philip would get the labor of six horses out of four, if he were put to it.
They were doing that, and more, as Magruder now looked at them, with their heads down and their hip straps lifting above their backs as they tugged patiently and together.
They struck some hidden obstacle beneath the surface, some knot of tangled roots or some stratum of extra hard earth. The shock staggered Phil Slader, but he recovered himself and with his voice caught the four horses as they were recoiling from the heavy jerk on their traces. His shout was like a blow of four whips, nicely timed — except that no stroke of a whip ever sent a horse into the collar with pricking ears. They laid down to their work like the tried veterans they were. There was a faint groaning beneath the ground, and then the plow lurched forward, with Philip reeling along behind it, steadying the jerking handles.
Magruder watched, amazed. The fine pulling of the sweating horses pleased him, in part, but after the first glance he paid them no further heed. Their power was one thing, but it was brute power. This strength behind the handles of the plow was a different matter. He had known that Philip was a youth of stout thews. As he watched young Slader staggering down the furrow, meeting the jerks and twists of the rebellious handles, he knew that here was one doing the work of three — a clever driver to manipulate the team and two strong and skillful fellows to hold that leaping, twisting, unlucky plow straight.
Even Philip Slader felt the effect of his exertions. His face was streaming with perspiration. He reached the end of the furrow; his voice turned the team like so many well-trained men. Then, with a wrench and a tug he tore the plow out and around; he was driving the point in to start the new furrow when Magruder’s voice stopped him. He leaned on the handles of the plow, wiped his forehead, and waited. As always, he was neither surly nor snarling, but rather grimly thoughtful and observant.
However, there was such inward sunshine in Mr. Magruder that he could shine even through such a cloud as this.
He said: “This here ground look different than I ever seen it before, Phil. How come it’s so much blacker?”
“It’s that much richer,” said Phil.
“And little white lumps down here on the roots?”
“Nitrogen in those little white lumps. I’ll get forty sacks of barley for every acre of this stuff, or call me a liar, Doc.”
“Forty sacks!” cried Magruder, honestly astonished. “Forty sacks? Why, that would come over the crops that they brag about down on the bottoms.”
“I’m writing it down to the smallest thing we’ll get,” said Philip. “We might hit sixty.”
“Bless my soul!” said Magruder, which was the most innocuous oath that he knew, by long odds.
He added: “But I don’t see why you have to rip the heart out of a good field like this! The last crop. . . .”
“Patchy,” said Philip curtly. “It’s getting patchy. When you get alfalfa stubble that looks like a gent just beginning to get bald, that’s the time to rip her up, before she goes all bad. Keep the land working right up to the limit, Doc. That’s the way that you’ll make money farming!”
“Aye, but it ain’t!” said Doc with real emotion. He pointed. “It’s you, kid, that’s made this land yield so big!”
“Humph,” said Phil. “Well, I got to get on with this job, Doc, unless you need me for something. I don’t want these hosses to get cold on the job. Bess, there, is kind of sore on the point of the shoulder, and she takes a lot of persuading to make her hit the collar after she gets a bit cooled off.”
“Why not carry a blacksnake along with you, Phil? Cursed if a blacksnake ain’t by long odds the quickest persuader of a hoss to change its mind from wrong to right! Why not pack one? Ain’t you got a chance to use it, hanging onto that plow?”
Philip raised his head a little and looked at the older man in the familiar way, not in contempt and not in disgust, but rather with a thoughtful appreciation of just what Magruder was. It was a subject which never failed to fill him with interest.
“Yes,” he said dryly. “That’s the reason that I don’t carry a whip. My hands are full without it. Well, Doc, what is it? Are you going to get married?”
“No,” said Magruder. “I’m forty, but I’m not foolish yet. Came out here to suggest that you take a day off and come to town with me, kid. They’re gunna start that rodeo to-day.”
“You been drinking,” suggested Phil Slader. “You don’t mean that you want me to lay off work?”
“I mean it a hundred per cent. A hundred per cent, Phil. You and me are going in to bust ourselves.”
“I see,” said Phil, nodding.
“You see what?”
“You cleaned up that gang of tenderfeet, last night, at poker?”
“That? Oh, yes. I got something out of them. But . . . .”
“But ain’t it dangerous, Doc? Tell me, ain’t it dangerous to keep right on trimming the suckers, like that? Every time a real experienced, crooked gambler comes along, he lifts most of your money right out of your pocket in no time. But then the boys come in that have got their coin out of honest work — the gents with the callouses on their fingers — and you hold them up and slip across some of your phony sleight of hand. Why, Doc, I don’t see how you get away with it!”
“Get away with what?” asked Doc Magruder, staring, and very much embarrassed.
“You ever suspect that I. . . .”
“That you stacked the cards? Yes, and a darned poor job that you do of it. I have eyes, Doc. I’m not blind. And the crimp that you put in the side of that pack when you run it up is big enough for a blind baby to see.”
“Why,” began Magruder, “matter of fact I never played a crooked . . . .”
The smile of Phil Slader stopped him.
“All right!” said Magruder with a sudden sigh. “You’re not going to be bluffed out. But I never trimmed anybody the way that I’ve been robbed. Never! Would be ashamed to hold up folks the way that some of the sneaks have held up me. Criminal, Phil. Darned if it ain’t criminal what some men will do with the cards. Now, what about coming to town with me, old boy? What about Crusoe, today, and a look at that rodeo?”
“Thanks,” said Phil Slader. “But to-day, if you want to give me time off, I’ll lay around here and do some tinkering with the forge. The bellows don’t work up half the draft they ought to — and I’m thinking of putting a wheel . . . .”
“Curse the blacksmith shop! Sonny, you’re coming in with me. And I’ll tell you why you’re coming. I’ve seen you grinding out here long enough, and now I want you to come in with me and have a holiday while I pick you out a new sombrero — a real one, old son, that will make you look like something under it!”
Phil Slader shook his head, smiling in his faint way. “I don’t understand, Doc,” said he. “You’re different. You’re sort of expanding to-day. You’ll rise and float right up to heaven, in another minute. Wait till I get washed up and some other clothes on.”
He put up the team and plunged into a tub; in an astonishingly short time, they were in the buckboard, side by side, with the old, down-headed buckskin mare dragging them loyally, but haltingly toward the town.
“Now,” said the younger man, “tell me what you want out of me to-day, Doc?”
The other flashed an irritated side glance at his companion; then he shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Well,” said he, “I won’t try to fool with you. It’s partly because I really want that you should come to town and have a little time off and a vacation from the farm work that you seem to like so well. But matter of fact, I’m going to meet a bad actor this here day and pay him twenty dollars that I’ve owed to him for a long time. Y’understand? A real bad one, son, and he wrote to me when he broke jail that he would expect me in town to-day to pay him back. He didn’t say where he would be, either. But I’ll have to go in!”
“You’re going in,” repeated Phil Slader, “and you’re going to look up a fellow that you’re afraid of and pay him some money that you owe him. And you want me along for a sort of a bodyguard, eh?”
“Yes,” admitted the big man. “That’s the long and the short of it, I suppose. I want your protection, and I want you to take this here gun . . . .”
But Phil Slader shrank as from poison.
“Doc,” said he, “it’s hard enough for me to go straight as it is. But if I had a gun, it would make the temptation be too great! Tell me the name of this bucko that you say you’re going to meet.”
“Well, you’ve heard of him times enough. It’s no less a man than ‘Lon’ Kirby!”
CHAPTER X
OF COURSE, PHIL had heard of him. Most other people had. Lon Kirby had not had many years in which to make himself well known. He had achieved his life work, so far, in the scant span of three or four years. It was not that he was any child, but out of his forty years or more he had spent some twenty-five in reform schools or in penitentiaries, and with infancy subtracted, you will see that the remainder is not very large. However, it had been enough for Lon. He was a specialist. He had a fondness for study of a particular kind. The science of safe combinations was the lore which he loved, and he liked to study it at night, with the aid of nothing more than a flash light or a bull’s-eye lantern. He had pursued his investigations in various parts of the country, and though his time had been so badly-limited, Lon had achieved certain results that kept him in the front pages of the newspapers. Indeed, it was the boast of Lon that he had never receded farther back than the second page of a metropolitan daily, and this was a record of which he was inordinately vain. It was said that he had taken sums amounting, in all, to several millions of dollars — from various banks. And here he was, loose again!
“When did he get out?” asked young Phil Slader.
“When did he get out?” repeated his guardian. “You don’t read the papers, or nothing, do you?”
“No, I don’t put much time in on them.”
“They don’t pack enough news about alfalfa to please you,” said Doc, sneering. “But the fact is that he got loose more than ten days ago. And he croaked a guard, when he was getting loose!” Magruder chuckled with a venomous pleasure as he spoke. “He’s here now. That’s all that I know. He’s probably hard up for cash until he pulls off another job. He shook his pursuers off and he got here, curse him!”
Phil Slader regarded him in silence for a moment.
“If you’re afraid of him, why don’t you turn in a report to the sheriff?”
“Afraid of him?” cried Magruder. “Only the way that you’d be afraid of a snake. Give me any man that’ll stand up to me, and I’ll handle him, well enough. But this Lon Kirby, he’s different. Smooth as silk and more slippery. He’d slip in between them folks and he’d get at me, no matter how hard they tried to protect me and catch him. No, I won’t tell the sheriff. I’m not that ready to get a bullet through the back! But I need you, kid. If you won’t pack a gun — why, so much the worse for me. But I’m glad to have even them bare hands of yours along. They’ll make trouble for that Kirby if he tackles me!”
They had jogged the horse to the top of a small rise of land and now they saw before them a rolling and rising head of dust that shaped its way rapidly toward them out of the distance.
“Well,” said Phil Slader, “there’s some of the boys that ain’t riding toward the rodeo today. Look at that!”
The dust cloud dissolved. Shadowy shapes appeared and then hard-riding horsemen, who swept up the slope and poured about the buckboard.
The fat form of Sheriff Mitchel Holmer was ominously to the fore, shouting: “Have you seen a rider going up the road or across the country in this direction? Seen anybody at all, Magruder?”
“Nobody worth naming,” said Magruder. “What’s up?”
“The sort of work where we need a hand like yours, Magruder, to help us out. Here’s a trail almost as important as that of . . . .”
He stopped short, looking at young Phil Slader.
Magruder nodded. “I’d like to help,” said he, “if I saw that you had a hoss that would pack my weight. But you ain’t got one of that type. Tell me — what’s up?”
“That hound, Lon Kirby, is loose again — turned loose on us, worse luck! Why couldn’t he of picked out some county besides mine?”
“What’s he done?”
“What ain’t he done? Well, I got to get along.”
“Bumped somebody off, Sheriff?”
“No, walked into the Crusoe bank in broad daylight and stuck up the whole gang in there — four men, all with guns — but when they saw the rat face of Kirby they turned to water. Did just what he wanted; opened all the safes, handed out the stuff to him. He jammed more than a hundred thousand into a canvas sack and went out and climbed on his hoss. The only shooting they got was at his back, just as he scooted around the corner of the street. Of course, they didn’t hit him. He drifted out in this direction — think of it! Broad daylight!”
The sheriff, with a moan, spurred his horse away down the road, and the posse of a dozen dusty, long-faced men followed him.
“They ain’t riding with no heart at all,” said Phil, looking back. “They’ll never catch him at this rate.”
“How can you tell?”
“By the way that they’re stringing out over the road. Something terrible. They want to be back there at the rodeo, and the sheriff, he’s had t
o gather them up by main force. I figure that not many would be volunteering to capture Kirby. He must be quite a man!”
“He’s poison, the skunk. I hate him. Everybody hates him. Got no friends at all! But — a hundred thousand dollars — a hundred thousand dollars! And to think that only a short time ago he would have been glad of the twenty I owe him!”
He closed his eyes with a groan.
“It wouldn’t do you no good if you had a hundred thousand,” said the boy. “You’d get in a couple of big games and get excited. You’d drop the first half and then you’d sit in at another game to win back what you’d lost the first time. And the rest of it would follow.”
Magruder shook his head. “There’s a difference between big things and little things,” he said. “There’s a big difference. I can throw away the small pieces of change that have come my way. They never amounted to anything. But you know what I’d do with a hundred thousand berries?”
“I dunno. Sit down cross-legged and play with it?”
“I’d soak it all into a good set of bonds, kid. Municipal. That would be my game. You can pick out seven per cent, at that stuff. A hundred thousand iron men, all working every day and every night! Ah, that’s the grand thing about money, kid. It never stops. It never gets tired out or old or lame. It never quits, but keeps on piling up a mite more for you every day so long as you live, or them that you leave it all to! A hundred thousand!”
He paused and drew in his breath through his teeth. “That would be seven thousand dollars a year!”
“No!” said the boy.
“It would, though. Figure it for yourself.”
“Never thought. Why, Doc, folks commit robberies for a lot less than even the interest on that much cash!”
“Don’t I know it? And don’t it fair make me sick to think that that much coin is locked up in the dirty hands of Lon Kirby? Oh, but I do know it! And it tires me. It plumb fatigues me, kid. I can tell you that. Seven thousand iron men every year is all that I would be taking in if I had that chunk of money that Kirby has managed to grab. That’s twenty dollars for every day of my life. Think of that! Twenty dog-gone dollars that I didn’t work for, and coming in every day of my life. Secure — no chance of losing it — no chance of gambling it away. Oh, kid, I hate the heart of that Lon Kirby for making a scoop like that, and here I am, worth ten like him, and living out here in the dirt, as you may say. Ain’t it enough to bust your heart, pretty near?”