Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Perhaps he would be bringing the miracle to her. He laughed again. For the joy in him would not down.

  So he came down to the place where the new building on the Newell ranch had been raised, and as he approached the house, he wondered at its size. He had heard much talk, here and there, of the mansion which rich John Newell was erecting on his property, but it had never occurred to him that the building could be of such dimensions as this.

  It was all of stone, too — a fine yellow limestone which, in the starlight, seemed as clear and as pure as whitest marble itself. Vines had been trained along its sides. Already the edge of newness had been worn away enough to give the house charm. Men said that the total purpose of John Newell in the building of this house was to provide, in the first place, a fitting residence for the heir to his money and, in the second place, to keep his daughter home!

  And even this could not accomplish the purpose! At what expense, too, had this rising cattle baron excavated the place for the lake which now flowed near the walls of the house, and how had the lawns been made to grow, whose sweetness was now so eagerly sniffed by the great gray stallion?

  As Phil studied these things, he remembered more fabulous figures that he had heard, concerning the cost of the two great artesian wells which Mr. Newell had sunk in order to create this little green sketch of paradise. He would believe now the things which he had doubted before.

  He respected the bigness of the rancher’s labors. He admired him for the success which had made the erection of such a house possible. But he did condemn John Newell most heartily for creating such a labyrinthine place in which to find the lady of his heart in the blackness which was the end of the night. There was no great space of time left to him. Before long there would be an edging of gray toward the east, and on any ranch which was run by Newell, one could be sure that the workers would arise at the first hint of the day! The interim belonged to Phil Slader to find the girl, if he could, and to see her, if he dared.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  IT WOULD BE pleasant to say that Phil Slader felt some pangs of conscience in this matter of breaking into a locked house by night, but one must record truly that nothing troubled him. He left the stallion tethered under a fine stone pergola from which the climbing vines draped long tendrils. Already one of these was in the mouth of the gray horse when Phil Slader left him.

  He stood with a smile and scanned the imposing bulk of the structure before him. And I think that the thoughts of Phil at the moment were more adventurous than amative. The amatory impulse will lead young men far astray, but I doubt if it has ever led them as far as the mere love of mischief and danger for its own sake.

  Well, on the ground floor would be the living rooms, and above to the front was doubtless the chamber of Mr. Newell and his wife. Behind that, perhaps, would be the place of young Sam Newell. How mad with suspicion and rage he would be, if he were to guess that such a man as this stood beside their house on this night! And here toward the rear, where a little balcony stood before a window, where big boxes supported a little host of green things, shadowy against the stars — this was surely the place that they would have chosen for their loved and spoiled daughter!

  He was glad now that there were no riding boots on his feet. He laid his grip on a drainage pipe that ran down from the projecting eaves above, and up the side of the house he clambered as expertly as any sailor running up toward a cross spar. Then he reached the balcony and swung himself onto it.

  There he waited until his panting should have subsided a little, for there was no hope in trying to enter a room in secrecy when he was breathing as heavily as a Newfoundland dog on a summer’s day. At length, he was ready. The great window yawned wide before him — bless all such believers in the virtues of fresh air — and now he was stealing through into the chamber itself.

  He crouched on the floor and made his survey until his eyes grew a little accustomed to the pitchy darkness of the interior. It was not so pitchy black, either, for by degrees he could make out the outlines of chair and bed. Something gleamed near the wall — he stole toward it and found a rack filled with fishing rods.

  It was not the chamber of the girl but of her brother. Phil found the glitter of the polished doorknob, opened it with care, blessing again such soundless latches as these, and stood in the dark of the hall beyond.

  Another door opened to the right. He tried it and ran his nose into the edge of a shelf! This time he had entered a linen closet. All the while the precious moments were stealing away from him.

  He left that door ajar, to shock Mrs. Newell or the housekeeper the next morning, as the case might be. And then he tried the next door beyond, and the instant that it was opened a delicate scent of perfume crept out about him.

  Like a light and chilly wine it passed through him. This was she, indeed! He knew it by the very sense of the air which he breathed in that room. A streak of white yonder — that was her bed. And he leaned above it presently.

  On the starlit whiteness of her pillow, her face was like a shadow — a semi-translucent shadow, it seemed to Phil, as though the light which was in her every day was still burning, however faintly, in the night.

  He straightened again and tried to speak her name, but a sudden little contraction of his throat shut all the sound away. Then he leaned over and brushed her cheek with his lips.

  Aye, she was a sleeper, sound enough! She merely stirred, and then groaned a little and stretched her arms above her head.

  Her eyes must have opened, however, for though he did not stir, he heard the frightened catch in her breathing.

  “Nell,” he whispered, “this is Phil Slader.”

  She lay quite still for a long moment, while his heart stood still. It occurred to him for the first time that she might scream out and call for help, if he came upon her in this fashion. Far better for him to have committed a hundred foul murders, as far as the Western ideas of Western men would be concerned, than to be discovered like this in a woman’s room!

  He set his teeth upon the thought.

  “Phil Slader,” whispered the girl, “what in the name of Heaven?”

  He waited, not attempting any answer.

  And then she sat up in her bed and caught a dressing gown around her shoulders. “You’ve done something, Phil.”

  “Yes,” said he.

  “I knew it. I knew that it would come. Who was it?”

  “Fellow who tried to knife me while I was in bed.”

  “Ah! When?”

  “To-night.”

  “And now you’re here!”

  “Yes.”

  She waited again, and he could feel her eyes upon him.

  “Go over there to the window. It’s open, I think. There’s a balcony outside. Go out there and wait a minute.”

  He obeyed without a word and stood beneath the stars again. He could trace the source of the perfume now. It came from flowers which grew in the window boxes along the balcony and — farther away — he could see the corner of that other balcony to which he had climbed those few moments before.

  But what a riot of excited happiness was in him! It was not like conquering gray Rooster and whirling through the night as never a man before him had ridden. It was more than a greater sense of victory, a greater sense of conquest. And still he hardly knew. He could only guess — that she was excited, too — that she was not angry, at least, because of his coming.

  He had hardly reached that point in his thoughts when the whisper of soft slippers passed through the French doors and here she was standing beside him.

  “Now tell me!” said the girl.

  He did not answer.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked him.

  “I never guessed . . . .”

  “What?”

  “That you were so small!”

  “I know. High heels make a silly lot of difference, I suppose. Have you come here to talk about high heels, Phil?”

  Yes, she was laughing at him and laughing so heartily that
she could hardly keep her mirth inaudible.

  “By Heaven!” said Phil, “you’re a cool one.”

  “I’m not cool. I’m all in a flutter. D’you think that I’ve ever been waked up before by young men in my room at night? Phil Slader — hurry and talk, talk, talk! How do you know that you’re not being followed?”

  “I know that I am.”

  She stared at this.

  “Then if they find you here, Phil!”

  “They won’t find me here — not unless I stay a long time past sunrise.”

  “You took some short cut to get here?”

  “The fastest short cut that anybody ever used across the Crusoe.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t want to waste time talking about that. I want to talk about something else, Nell. I haven’t a lot of time before the dawn begins, and I suppose things are stirring around here, not long after that?”

  “You know dad — of course. Only — great heavens, what a lot there is to say, and no time to say it in! First, who was it?”

  “His name is Pasqual!”

  “I know! The Mexican! The Mexican! Thank heavens that it wasn’t a . . . .”

  “It don’t make much difference, I suppose,” said Phil. “A man’s a man, yellow or black or white. But where I’m concerned, it makes no difference at all. Anything to give them an excuse to hang something on me. If it had been a fellow with a price on his head, it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  “You’re bitter, Phil.”

  “Do I sound that way?”

  “Aye, bitter from the heart of you!”

  “Well, I don’t know that I mean it that way. Only, first of all, I wanted to tell you the facts, Nell. The rest of them — well, they’ll simply write me down a gun fighter and the son of a gun fighter, and they’ll say that it’s just the bad blood in me, working out the way that it was sure to work out in the long run. You know what they’ve said before and expected of me? Everybody knows. I’m like a mad dog. They’ve just been waiting for the poison to show — waiting for me to bite!”

  “Of course I know. And of course I’ve heard the talk. But you don’t have to explain to me.”

  “I do. I want you to know all of the facts just the way that they happened. They’ll tell you lies, of course. But this is gospel. I waked up — just the way that you did a while ago, except that I had my clothes on. Something that I had overheard between Pasqual and Magruder earlier in the night was enough to keep me ready, you know. And while I was lying there, I heard a sound, I thought. And I threw myself at it. Well, it was Pasqual. He missed me, but the flash of his gun showed me his face. He got into the hall. I caught him on the stairs. And in the hall below he tried to knife me, and I killed him with his own gun. You understand?”

  She had drawn back a little from him, studying him.

  “Turn around here where the starlight falls on your face, Phil. Somehow, the words all by themselves seem to make a difference. I can see you going after him more like a tiger than a man. It — scares me a little!”

  He turned obediently and faced the stars. And she stood close before him, looking up.

  “I was hemmed in in the lower hall. They had the way blocked behind me. Magruder was there. About a dozen more were scattered around. I made a feint at the locked front doors, and then I snaked off my shoes and ran back through them.”

  “Phil! Phil! And not . . . .”

  “Didn’t hurt any of them bad. I wish I’d killed Magruder, though, the cur! But I only knocked him down and a couple more, and got through. And so I came to you to tell you that these are the facts, no matter what low lies they try to make you believe about me. You won’t be able to say that they lie. But you’ll know down in your heart that they do lie. And that’s all that I care about. Not what a million of the rest of them may think — but only about you, Nell! I want you to think straight.”

  “I’ll never doubt you!” said the girl.

  She took one of his hands and pressed it with more strength than he dreamed was in her.

  “Thanks a lot,” said he. “But don’t say that. I may do something pretty bad after this. Only I haven’t done anything up to this time. I’ll swear that I haven’t, and you’ll believe me — and that’s all I want.”

  “Did you come here just to tell me that?”

  “No, I came for something else. You mighty well know that I came for something else, Nell. Why the devil should a man ride thirty miles otherwise? Or why the devil should he want one girl to know the facts about him?”

  A smile flashed across her face.

  “You’re a rough talker, Phil!”

  “Because I’m a rough man. You can write that down in red and believe it, Nell. I’m rough from this time onward. I tried to go smooth and I couldn’t do it. But I came here first of all because you ordered me to.”

  “What in the world do you mean?”

  “When I rode Rooster.”

  “You’ve done that, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew that you were different all the way through. But that’s it. You’ve ridden him, and he’s made the change.”

  “There was a change before I ever got on his back. I’m not just a kid any more. I’m a man. You understand me, Nell?”

  “Yes, I understand you, of course. You are a man.”

  “That leads up to the rest of it. You know what the rest is.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Be square and fair. You do know.”

  “Maybe I guess. I hope that I guess!”

  “Humph!” said Phil Slader. “There’s only one trouble with you.”

  “Thanks. And what’s that?”

  “You’re only a girl. Darn it, Nell, if you were a man, I’d take you away with me to-night, and we’d go through the night on the fastest horse that you’ve got. You and me could be such pals that we wouldn’t care what the rest of the folks were thinking about us or doing about us!”

  “I know,” said Nell. “Oh, I’ve felt the same way about it. I’ve wanted to cut loose and tear. Except that to-night — why, being a man, I never would of been able to drag you clear over here.”

  “I suppose not. Matter of fact, this thing has been sticking in my mind ever since I first saw you, Nell.”

  “Tell me what, then?”

  “Why, you know what I mean. I love you, I suppose.”

  “I hope that you do — a lot.”

  “And I do — and a lot! Such a lot that it scares me. I was a good deal set up about being free, until I came here. And now it makes me feel pretty weak.”

  “How?”

  “Lonesome as the devil. I thought that it was a pretty big night and the stars were pretty grand, and Rooster was the finest thing under the stars, and Rooster belonged to me, confound him! But — it doesn’t seem to amount to a snap now! Well, Nell, what’s the answer?”

  “What do you want me to answer?”

  “You don’t love me. I’m not fool enough to think that a girl could love a man after seeing him twice, ten years apart. And I wouldn’t want you to tell me, even if you did. Partly because it would make me so desperate to get back to you. And partly because you shouldn’t anyway. You’re not apt to see me again for a mighty long time.”

  “Hush!” said Nell. “You talk like a regular chief mourner. Matter of fact, Phil, seems to me that I’ve seen you about as often as you’ve seen me.”

  “I suppose so. But the difference is that you were something to look at. And even when you were a little kid, you were so darned sassy, Nell, that you were pretty easy to remember and think about, you know.”

  “You have a queer way of telling me that you love me,” said Nell. “I’ve thought that a man would polish up his talk a little when he told a girl such things. But you just curse and tell me that I’m a tomboy, and ought to be a man, and I never heard such talk, Phil. Honest, I never did!”

  “Nell,” said he, “there is something coming over me.”

  “Wh
at is it?”

  “I feel that I’m about to lay hands on you, and . . . .”

  “I suppose I should scream,” quavered Nell. “But I don’t suppose that I will!”

  “You are trembling all over, Nell. Are you afraid?”

  “Silly!” said Nell. “But can you make love al fresco, like this, without getting a chill?”

  “I am going to kiss you, Nell — if I may.”

  “If you don’t,” said Nell, “I’ll hate you till my dying day!”

  CHAPTER XXXII

  WHEN PHIL SLADER looked up from the face of the girl, he was facing the east, and across the edges of the eastern hills he saw a thin line of light creeping. Only a hint — a shadow of a shadow of brightness, if you will — that made the mountains stand blacker against the sky. Perhaps the stars were a little fainter, and a wind was rising.

  But he knew that the day was beginning, and that life would soon start here — and with that beginning of life, if a man were seen leaving the room of Nell Newell . . . .

  He gave himself one last glance at her face, and he paused with his hand on the railing of the balcony.

  “I got just this to say, Nell,” said he. “This here is all romantic, as you might say, and very foolish. But I don’t want to hold you to nothing. I want you to be just as free as the wind. I’ve come riding along and told you that I loved you. And no matter what you’ve said back — I’ll forget it. You hear me? And never blame you when you see that it’s no use being true to me.”

  “You talk,” said Nell in a trembling voice, “like a great idiot, Phil.”

  “I talk like I had a morsel of good sense. They’ll clap a price onto my head inside of twenty-four hours. They’ll have me wrote down a little blacker than the ace of spades, you understand? And inside of the week they’ll begin to tack other crimes onto me. Things in the same day and thousands of miles apart — but every man on a gray hoss that does anything wrong — he’ll be me — and every young man with black eyes — he’ll be me. I know it. But I don’t care. They’ll shut the door on me — but, by Heaven, I’ll make them know that I can still get into the house. So long, Nell!”