Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  CHAPTER XXV

  PHIL HAD A strange interview, five days after he read the details of the capture of Lon Kirby. He had ridden to Crusoe to buy a pair of new collars to replace some which had been gradually worn beyond all patching. As he stepped out of the saddler’s shop, a shifty-eyed little man touched his arm.

  “You’re Phil Slader, kid?”

  “I’m Phil Slader.”

  “How are ye, Slader? I’m ‘Blinky’ Rosen, y’understand?”

  Phil smiled at him, much at a loss.

  “Come on!” snapped Blinky. “Take a tumble to yourself. I’m wise, kid. I’m wise. I come from the big chief, y’understand?”

  Phil shook his head.

  “Bah!” said Blinky. “Loosen up, kid. I’m on the level. What do you want out of me — a letter, eh?”

  And he sneered with much malignity.

  “Hold on,” said Phil. “You’re talking to the wrong man, I think. I don’t know any big chief that you speak about.”

  “You’re deep, eh?” said Blinky Rosen. “Oh, I used to be deep, too, when I was your age. I used to be deep as a well, till I found out that it didn’t buy me nothing. But look here, kid. I ain’t made any mistake. You’re Phil Slader. I got the description from him myself. And what he wants is iron boys — a flock of ’em. Ten grand is what he wants. He says that you’re to kick through with it. You hear me talk?”

  “I hear you,” said Phil, “but I don’t understand.”

  “I thought you wouldn’t,” said the other, sneering. “I told the boys that this would be trying to fly a kite on a calm day. Never raise that much wind for a guy that’s where Lon is now. However, I’ve made my try. You turn him down cold. Well, it’ll never win you no good name in the business, kid, and you can lay to that!”

  The first flash of his possible meaning crossed the mind of Phil Slader. It was Lon Kirby to whom the man referred. And Lon Kirby, in desperate need, had sent this man to receive money from the hidden store — had sent him to Phil Slader to receive ten grand — underworld talk which meant ten thousand dollars.

  It was an exquisite compliment, in its own way. It meant that Lon Kirby, even in his desperate need, dared not trust to any of his cronies the discovery of the hidden loot, for fear lest they should take the whole body of the money and convert it to their own uses.

  He had sent this emissary, instead, to find Phil Slader and to receive from Phil’s hand, then, the amount of money which he required.

  It threw Phil at once into the deepest sort of a quandary. That money was stolen, as he well knew. And if he became a partner in the distribution of it to other thugs, would he not really share in the guilt of the stealing of it or incur another form of guilt almost as black? Would he not be at once dabbling in the very sort of soot which he had striven all his young life to avoid with such a particular care?

  Yet he felt that there was a strong bond uniting him to the thug. On the one hand, his life had been in the hands of Lon Kirby, and that life had been spared, and the whole of a great treasure left by the outlaw at the mercy of a young boy whom he had seen on one occasion and no more. On the other hand, it was from Lon Kirby that he had received the gentlest and what seemed to him the truest portrait of his dead father, and therefore the best and tenderest strain in him was profoundly touched.

  He raised his head from these thoughts and he found that Blinky was regarding him with a quizzical and half-sympathetic grin.

  “I know,” said Blinky. “I’ve been where you are, though never so bad. I’ve had to loosen up with three grand at one time, to a pal that had his back against the wall, and it sure hurt. But I never regretted it afterwards. Neither will you. It pays to go square, kid. You been deep. Nobody ever guessed that Lon had a side-kicker. Nobody ever dreamed that he would of picked out a kid like you for a pal if he did want one. But if you try to go too deep — if you try to double cross Lon — you’ll go to the devil for it. I tell you and I know, because I know the gang! Understand? But take your own time — take your own time!”

  “I’ll see you to-morrow,” said Phil Slader.

  “To-morrow it is. Only — remember that the chief has to scramble. Time ain’t too rich with him, just now. He needs cash and he needs it bad or he would never of sent me out here for it. But I’ll see you here in town to-morrow. When?”

  “About nine in the morning.”

  “About nine. There’s a nine thirty that goes back to town. I hope that you got that in your mind. So long, Phil!” And he slouched up the street with Phil standing in a daze and staring after him. On the whole, it was the hardest moment in his life. He had been in tight places before. The bullet from the rifle of Magruder had been one thing, and the danger of Lon Kirby was another. But, after all, when there was only a matter of physical danger to encounter one could rally one’s muscles and harden one’s spirit to encounter the crisis. This, however, was far, far different. This was a matter of quite another strain.

  For, look as he would, he could not see what was the proper thing for him to do. Cold reason told him that the best thing was to go straight to the sheriff and tell him everything and turn the money over to him. That would be the perfectly legal thing to do.

  But what had legality to do with this? For, surely, there was a morality higher than that of the mere technical law. He had stood, in a way, indebted for his life to this same Lon Kirby. And now it was necessary that he make some return, if possible.

  But he could feel the world of crime in which his father had lived stretching out its arms toward him — and in his heart a wild and rising temptation. How simple it would be to take a single step through the door into the wild freedom that lay beyond! To cast off all weights and burdens of petty conscience and become winged with his own strength and liberty!

  He turned slowly up the street, pausing many times. And so, before he had gone fifty steps, a heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and he looked aside into the face of fat Sheriff Mitchel Holmer.

  “How are you, Holmer?” Phil asked.

  “Pretty well,” said the sheriff. “Took off three pounds, last month. Getting thinner every year now. Gunna have a human figger before I die, kid. But that ain’t what I want to talk to you about.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Back yonder,” said the sheriff, and he hooked his thumb over his shoulder.

  “Well?” asked Phil, frowning.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I tell you, it’s poison, kid. You may not believe me now; but I tell you that I know. I know the whole slimy gang of them. They ain’t fit for you, kid. And don’t you let them pull you down. I tell you, I know Blinky like a book, and the cur takes a lot of knowing. But just now — why, kid, it turned me sick all over when I seen you standing up there and talking serious to him. No matter what he wants you to do, lemme tell you that he’s wrong — wrong — wrong as the devil!”

  “Maybe he is,” admitted Phil Slader. “Maybe he is.”

  “It was nothing honest, Phil?”

  “No,” said Phil. “In a way it wasn’t honest. It was the sort of a thing that a man could go to jail for, I suppose.”

  The sheriff nodded.

  “I know, kid,” said he. “I know exactly how you feel. There’s some things that can be put up to a man — and particular to a young man like you — that seem pure and all right. Even though the law looks black on ’em. Well, I know that the law ain’t always right. There’s times when it does wrong. Only what I say is that the kind of right that’s outside the law don’t pass through the hands of a skunk like that Blinky. You take that from me and write it down in big red letters, because I know!”

  Phil Slader shook his head.

  “I’d like to talk it over with you, sheriff,” he said. “But it’s a thing that’s between me and my conscience, and nobody can help me.”

  “You and your conscience?” said the sheriff. “Well, kid, at your age, I know where that argument will end up. But I
tell you that you got to watch. Because if you once start sliding, you’re the kind that would go a long ways down the hill! And here’s another thing, Phil. Mind you, I don’t want to throw myself in your face, but I’ve got to tell you this. There’s a report come to me that for the first time in your life you’ve been acting ugly around a chap out at Magruder’s place — a Mexican — name of Diego Pasqual. What about it?”

  “Acting ugly to him?” echoed Phil Slader. “Darn it, sheriff, I’ve had to bite my tongue nearly out to keep from talking back to him half as bad as he’s been talking to me. Who told you this?”

  “I can’t pass it on. Only — I tell you plain, Slader. You ain’t a kid any more. Folks around here, some of them, have been waiting to see you go wrong. Heaven knows I hope that you don’t. But I tell you this for your own good. No matter what sort of a corner that you might get into, the moment that you so much as show the butt of a gun or the handle of a knife — you’re done. Folks will say that Slader is loose again — bad stuff! And after that — why, you know what I don’t want to say!”

  CHAPTER XXVI

  HE KNEW, INDEED, what the sheriff did not want to say. Perhaps Mitchel Holmer might have used more words, but he could not have said more clearly than this: “If you get into a serious fight, no matter how much you may be in the right, the instant that you strike a blow, public opinion will be solidly against you. The instant you strike, you had better flee!”

  Such was the interpretation which he placed upon the sheriff’s words, and they were all the more sharply brought home to him because he knew that of all the people in that county where he had been raised, there was none who was more of a friend to him in his heart than this same Mitchel Holmer.

  He thanked the sheriff for that warning and started back toward the farm. But what chiefly burdened his mind was who could have brought that lying word to the sheriff concerning the manner in which Phil was treating the Mexican, for he who sent that message was pretty sure to have some specifically evil intention against Phil Slader.

  He wanted above all an undistracted mind to use as an alembic for the testing of his thoughts, but here he was drawn in two ways — toward the problem of Magruder and the Mexican and, on the other hand, toward the problem of Lon Kirby and the treasure. The second matter he put first, because it had wholly to do with conscience. He felt that it would be a crime to obey the request of Lon Kirby; he felt that it would be a sin to refuse him. With young men sins are perhaps a bit more dreaded than crimes. The law is often considered an enemy and not a friend until a man reaches middle age and has settled to his final work, with his properties gathered around him.

  Not going straight home, he turned toward the valley of the Crusoe River and, forcing his way through the difficulties and the damp odors of the marshes, he came again to the beach at the edge of the river. The water had risen a great deal since his last sight of the spot. It was higher now, and he could see that the last rain had brought the watermark within a few feet of the stone. So he lifted the great rock in haste, fearing lest the stream might have soaked through to the paper money. But he found that the pit in the gravel was as dry as dust, and, inside its oiled-silk wrapper, the money was as secure as ever.

  He counted the whole treasure over again, bit by bit, and a keen temptation gnawed at his very heart. So much so that when a squirrel chattered suddenly in a tree just above his head, he leaped up with a gasp and jerked forth his gun — the start of a guilty man!

  A very strange affair it was, too — counting over this bulky fortune which lay here by the edge of the river, buried with not much more security than a squirrel will bury a nut for the wintertime.

  At length he stripped off the necessary bills — how small a part was the ten thousand of the whole mass — and with it made his way back through the marsh, spending a good half hour working to cleanse himself of the muck of that evil place. Then he went home. He passed Magruder as he went to the barn, and Magruder favored him with a smiling nod.

  The graciousness of Magruder with the passing of every day was a remarkably interesting study to Phil Slader.

  “You’ve been after fish, I see,” said Magruder, pointing to the ineradicable stains upon the clothes of Phil.

  “Yes,” said Phil, keeping a steady eye upon the older man. For the thousandth time the eye of Magruder wavered and fell away from the look of the boy.

  “Aye,” said Magruder, shaking his head and sighing. “Still keeping things from me. Still being secret. Still thinking behind my back — why, Phil, what have I ever done to make you hate me like that?”

  “You don’t know?” asked Phil Slader, smiling.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve made a slave of me for ten years. Or fourteen years, from another way of looking at it. Is that nothing, Doc?”

  “Heaven bless you!” exclaimed Doc Magruder in the greatest apparent bewilderment. “D’you mean, son, that you hold that old agreement agin’ me?”

  “Sounds queer, eh?” suggested Phil.

  “But, lad, ain’t we been friends all of this time?”

  “You see,” said Phil Slader, “I got a slow-working brain. Doesn’t function smooth and easy at all. What I chiefly remember is two things. The first is that you killed my father, Magruder. The second is that you held me ready to throw me over the edge of a cliff if I wouldn’t promise to put in ten years of Hades for you.”

  “A bluff, Phil!” cried Magruder. “A pure bluff! You don’t think that I would ever have tried to do what I threatened? No, no! But I was afraid that you would maybe try your hand at running away again, and I couldn’t afford to invest so much time chasing you all over the face of the hills. Will you believe me, kid?”

  “I was free to go at any time during these past ten years?” said Phil.

  “Of course — of course! Why, son, this here ain’t the slave days, and it ain’t a slave State. Of course, I couldn’t hold you, and I wouldn’t hold you! Couldn’t do it by law and wouldn’t try it outside of the law. Believe me, because that’s the whole fact!”

  Phil Slader rubbed his knuckles across his chin.

  “I’ve still got three weeks to put in with you. Then we finish. We’ll do more talking then, Magruder.”

  And he went on to the barn.

  When he came back toward the hotel, he found the usual half dozen idlers gathered on the veranda of the hotel, and there was Diego Pasqual as the center of unusual interest, standing with a graceful hand draped upon his hip, while in the other hand he practiced the draw of his revolver.

  He demonstrated with a delightful pride and a concentrated vanity such as made Phil Slader smile.

  “Not the shoulder and not the arm — but with the wrist and the tips of the fingers,” said Diego Pasqual. “Look, amigos!”

  The heavy Colt leaped forth like a living thing and glided back again into its hiding place. There was a good deal of admiration for this demonstration of skill in a most practical art.

  “Not for men — Oh, no!” said Diego Pasqual. “But when the head of the snake appears out of the hole — then you can shoot that head off, amigos. Do you hear me? You can shoot that head off before it is jerked back again!”

  And he bent back his head and laughed. Plainly this was an art of which he was a complete master, and he was beside himself at having such an adequate audience. Then he saw Phil Slader coming up from the side. He turned on him with a gleam of malice in his eyes.

  “You, too, Señor Slader,” said he, “shall see what I have to show my friends. Little arts of the draw — little arts of shooting. But you are the son of a very great man, señor. No doubt you could teach even Diego Pasqual a great deal!”

  And he leered at Phil Slader with much assurance.

  “Not interested,” said Phil Slader. “I don’t work with tools like that. Not interested a bit.”

  “Impossible!” said Diego Pasqual. “You say it only to insult me and my art, Señor Slader. But I am a man who cannot take an insult, Don Felipe.
Do you hear? I cannot take an insult!”

  He had worked himself into a wicked temper at once, and Phil Slader saw what seemed to him a most patent thing — that the Mexican had taken upon himself to force a quarrel upon Phil.

  Of course, there might be no connection between this and the conversation which he had had only a few moments before with big Magruder. But, on the other hand, it was certainly odd that Pasqual should have adopted such insolent measures immediately after Magruder had made his last attempt to induce Phil Slader to remain at the hotel. An offered partnership and then a hypocritical appeal — such things could not but have some meaning, connected with the behavior of Diego the Silk Hand, or so it seemed to Phil.

  But no matter how impertinent the Mexican might be, the warning of the sheriff, delivered that same day, still rang in the mind of Phil Slader.

  “All right,” said he to Diego Pasqual. “I’m not trying to insult you, Pasqual. If you’re an old hand at this game, let us see your stuff. Why, I’ll be your pupil, if you want! Where’s something to shoot at?”

  And he looked calmly around him. By the pinched smiles of the men on the veranda he knew that they considered he was taking water. But as for their opinion, he knew that it was hardly worth consideration.

  Señor Pasqual kicked a tin can that rolled twenty paces away. “There is an easy target for a quick shot, Slader. Will you try it?”

  “I’m not quick,” said Phil. “But lemme see your own hand at this here game?”