Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  The host went at once to the big stove at the back of the room, and from some big pots which stood upon it he ladled out an immense portion of the tramp’s favorite dish — mulligan! That, with a huge half loaf of stale bread and a great cup of night-black coffee, composed the portion of Phil and he devoured it with a hungry man’s relish. He was halfway through with his silent meal when a gesture of the fat host made him look up with a start. The forefinger of Don Remy was leveled like a gun at him.

  “Jack Slader!” he exclaimed.

  It made the other three jump.

  “Good heavens, Dad,” said the young-faced man. “Jack Slader is dead, for fifteen years! What are you talking about?”

  The host blinked. “Dead for fifteen years! Dead for fifteen years! Oh, well, but there’s something in it, because my memory doesn’t lie. Look at him, ‘Buck!’ Remind you of anybody else?”

  The gentleman of the Italian cast of features, looked long and earnestly at Phil Slader. “I dunno,” said he at last. “I dunno that I’ve seen anybody before with just that look. Why d’you ask?”

  “I’m trying to place him. That’s all. Look here, kid — have you got any of the blood of the Sladers in you? Hey, Buck, didn’t Jack Slader have a son?”

  Here there was a rattle at the door, and it yawned open with a loudly whistling draft of wind. Into the room stepped the slouching form of ‘Blinky’ Rosen. And Phil Slader drew back into the shadow of a corner.

  Blinky flashed a glance over the others. “Hello, Buck,” he said, “you lucky devil! How are you? Whew, ain’t it cold?”

  He banged the door behind him and strode to the stove. “Well, Pop?” said he to the fat man.

  “You razor-faced rat,” said Daddy Remy, “what did I tell you the last time that you was up here?”

  “Easy, easy!” said Blinky, spreading out protesting hands. “Go easy, Dad. Don’t you get reckless, now!”

  “I told you to get out and to stay out and to never come back! And I meant it. Curse me if it don’t rile me to see a gent that is built like a man, pull a knife. Curse me if it don’t!”

  Blinky spread his hands closer to the stove and wrung them together, and he merely grinned at his host.

  “D’you hear me?” cried Remy.

  “Say, boys,” whined Blinky, “ain’t there none of you that’ll pass a good word for me, maybe?’”

  “You know the rules, Blinky,” said Buck. “The fat boy is the whole show up here. If he says go, you go. That’s all, I guess. And if you been flashing a knife around these parts, I don’t blame him none.”

  “Is that so?” said Blinky Rosen with a sneer. “The gent that you carved up back in Chi was a . . . .”

  “Shut up,” cried Daddy Remy. “It’s agin’ the rules to pull up old things by the roots. Besides, what he done in Chicago ain’t no affair of mine. What he does here is what counts with me. I say, get out and get quick, or I’ll have the boys roll you out and dress you down, you . . . .”

  “Aw, tame down — tame down!” growled Blinky. “You would think that I was a disease and catching, the way that you talk. Lemme tell you that there’s a gent coming in that will have a word to say for me. I’ll wait here until you’ve persuaded him that I had ought to go.”

  “Who is it?” asked the host curiously. “You little tin-pan bread stealers, you little pocket pickers nowadays, you don’t scare me. There ain’t many names among the lot of you that I would take my hat off to . . . .”

  “Shut up, you fool!” said Blinky Rosen. “Shut up, will you? It’s the chief. And he’s back as the devil. He’s feeling mean! He might hear you.”

  “Kirby!” said the host, whistling long and softly. “Kirby!”

  “Him!” said Blinky, nodding.

  “Tell us how that deal was managed,” said Buck.

  “Let him tell you himself,” said Blinky, “if he wants to talk about it. But I don’t. And underground like that — why the darker it’s kept, the fresher it’ll be for them that have to use it. I don’t talk about that. Let the chief do the chattering, if he wants to. And here he is, now.”

  At this, the door was wrenched open, and Lon Kirby strode into the building, with that rolling stride which comes to sailors and to cowpunchers. He glared at the others, he nodded to big Don Remy. And then he stood with his hands in his pockets and glared around him.

  The old man was still nursing the last of his tin of coffee. But now he rose and offered the stool on which he was sitting.

  “Glad to see you again, Lon,” said he. “So’s all of us. There was a time, not far back, when we didn’t think that there was going to be much hope for you. But here you are! They can’t beat old Lon, I guess!”

  Lon Kirby regarded him with perfect indifference. But he took the stool and sat with his long sinister chin dropped upon one fist. Blinky Rosen busied himself in bringing a steaming portion to his master, and Phil Slader, withdrawn to the farthest, coldest and most shadowy corner, noted with some interest that there was no longer any talk of removing Blinky from their midst. There seemed, suddenly, to be only two men in the room — one, the giant host with his strange yellow eyes, like the eyes of an owl that hunts by night, and Kirby. The others were as nothing.

  There was no doubting the excitement which pervaded the atmosphere. It was like a breath of mountain air in a desert place. There was a native strangeness in Lon Kirby. Even the fat man was a good deal worked up. No matter what he had had to say about the great men of the past and the pygmies of the present, it was plain that he made an exception in the favor of Lon Kirby. He belonged, clearly, to the heroes!

  Blinky Rosen, in the meantime, freshened the fire and helped himself to food. The silence was broken only by the occasional moan of the wind outside, and the crackling of the fire as the flames rushed up the chimney. A warmth began to pass through the room and reached even to the farther corner, where Phil sat watching.

  Lon Kirby, having eaten, said to the old man who had given up the stool to him: “There’s a place over by the fire, oldster. Why don’t you take it?”

  This amend for past discourtesy seemed amply sufficient to make the other nod and grin; but he did not move from the spot where he stood. He merely said:

  “Pay me for that stool by telling us how you managed to get loose, Lon. Tell us that, will you?”

  Lon Kirby turned a sneering, wolfish face toward the other. “I’ll tell you about that, old man,” said he. “I’ll tell you the strangest story that anybody in this here world ever run up against. I found an honest man!”

  He said it with a peculiar emphasis and a raising of his eyes, so that it was plain that there was more than a sneer in the remark.

  “An honest man,” said big Don Remy with almost equal solemnity, “is something that I’ve heard tell about and never have met up with.”

  The fierce eyes of Kirby flashed across at his host. “That’s one time that you ain’t lying,” said Kirby, “one of the few times that I’ve heard you open that big mouth of yours without flopping out a lie. Well, it’s true. I met an honest man.”

  “But how the devil would an honest man get you out of prison?” asked Buck, the Italian.

  “You wouldn’t know,” said Kirby with his evil eye fixed upon the handsome youth. “You wouldn’t even be able to guess, because honesty is something that you don’t know much about, old-timer. It’s a foreign land to you, right enough.”

  Anger showed in the eyes of Buck, but it was only an amorphous light, not fixed and formed with resolution. Lon Kirby was plainly too much of a man to be answered back in that assembly.

  “But honesty,” went on Lon Kirby, “can do more things than any of you would guess. It was that honest man that reached out a hand a thousand miles long. He smashed down the walls and he busted open the doors and he twisted the tool-proof bars like they was just straws. And so he took me out as safe and as sound and as easy as you please.”

  “All right,” said the host, after a bit of silence, “we’ll admit th
at the honest man could of done all of these big things. But still we’re a long ways from understanding just why any honest man should of took such a whopping big interest in you, Lon?”

  “You wouldn’t be able to guess that. But I’ll tell you what an honest man does. He pays you back ten for one. I done a little favor for him. And then he turned around and paid me back like this. Paid me back by setting me free, by Heaven! Free! Free!”

  He closed his eyes suddenly and ground the stiffened fingers of his right hand across his throat. And deathly silence fell over that room.

  They knew that, in this moment of delicious agony, the soul of Lon Kirby had felt the grip of the hangman’s noose from which he had escaped by miracle.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  “AH, WELL,” SAID Kirby, speaking with his eyes still closed and his long, ugly face white with emotion, “there’s no use wondering and gaping over it. Here I am safe — safe — safe! And where did they have me?”

  “I know,” said the fat man.

  “Aye,” said Lon Kirby, “you ought to know!”

  “Shut up, will you?” said Don Remy, growing very pallid and flabby of cheek.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Kirby. “Ashamed of having beat them right from the death house? Not me, old kid. I’m proud of it. They’ll never choke me with a rope and they’ll never send me up Salt Creek, because when I die, I’ll die with a gun in my hand. Something tells me that. I’m bad. Sure, I’m awful bad, friends. But I’m good enough to deserve to die like a man instead of a rat!”

  It was a most amazing thing to Phil Slader to listen to this outburst of superstition and of childishness. He felt that he was opening sudden and unexpected doors and viewing all of these men in new lights, looking deep and deeper into their souls.

  “And where’s the honest man?” asked the host at last.

  “I’m trying to get on his trail now,” said Lon Kirby. “I’m trying to get onto his trail, but I got only a small chance. I’m trying to find him, now!”

  “On a trail?”

  “Yes.”

  “What d’you mean, Lon? You mean that he’s not too honest to be afraid of the law, too?”

  “They trapped him,” said Lon Kirby. “They done a dirty job and trapped him. And the meanest and the lowest skunk in the world was the one that had a hand in it. Will you guess who I mean?”

  “The meanest and the lowest skunk in the world?” said the host. “Who is it, boys?”

  He turned blandly to the others, and each had an instant answer, for men in their callings are sure to have precious friends and more precious foemen.

  “There’s a low-down elbow in St. Louis,” said the old man, “by the name of Chivvers, that I would . . . .”

  “Some day when I get a chance,” said Buck, “I’m going to take a year off and go to Alaska and get me a big Canuck that is up there bluffing folks into thinking that he’s a man, when he’s only a low-down pup! I’m going up there and I’m going to get him, and I’m going to get him good!”

  “I tell you what . . . .” began Blinky Rosen, with a whine. The voice of the host cut in: “Shut up, all of you. There’s only one man that’s lower than anybody else. None of you know him. I don’t think you do, anyways. But I been told about him, and the name of him won’t never get out of my throat. Magruder is his name.”

  “Magruder!” shouted Lon Kirby. “Where did you get that name, you old ragpicker? Where did you get hold of that name? Do you know him, too?”

  “Oh, I know him too, right enough! And you, Lon? Is that your man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ve picked out the lowest rat in the world, right enough.”

  “I know that as well as you do. Well, Don, it’s strange that you should have known of him, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “After all,” said Lon Kirby, “he’s pretty famous. But anyway, it was a dirty trick of his that sent the kid away. The finest and the straightest gent that ever lived — and now he’s gone to the devil. They sent in a murdering greaser to get him. And he got the greaser instead. Ten bunches of wildcats — that’s all that he is. And now he’s gone to the devil — too young to know how to travel through this stuff.”

  “What stuff, Lon?”

  “This stuff. If he was here, wouldn’t he be in a fight inside of ten minutes? But tell me more about what you know of Magruder. I’m gunna kill that man, Remy. So you might as well tell me what you know. All that I got for a fact is how he crooked the kid and then I know that he killed Jack Slader in a fight.”

  “In a murder!” said Don Remy.

  “Murder?” repeated Kirby. “Yes, I always guessed that that was the way of it. But tell me how you know. Were you there? I thought that they was alone.”

  “They was alone — they thought. But I’ll tell you the facts. There was one other man that knew the whole truth. Or rather, he wasn’t a man either. But only a little kid. But he could stand up and tell you a story that would of turned your blood downright cold, Kirby. Even yours!”

  “Go on!” said Lon Kirby.

  “No,” said the host, “When you come to be my age you don’t want to think about things like that. And I won’t tell that story again, not even to please you, Lon. No sir, I can’t do it. But I’ll give you my downright word for it — that Magruder is the meanest and the lowest skunk that ever breathed. You guessed him right. And if it was him that sent your kid on the trail — why, then, maybe the kid is honest, after all, but . . . .”

  Then Phil Slader, who had remained in the dark of the background as long as he could contain himself, arose and stepped forward.

  “I’ll tell you what, Remy,” said he, “I’ll give you a good excuse, now, for telling that story. I’ll give you reason for telling it now, if you never tell it again.”

  “Hello,” said Don Remy. “Here’s the kid come to life. I thought that you was asleep, back yonder!”

  Lon Kirby burst in between them with a shout. “It’s Phil! It’s the kid! It’s the kid!” he shouted. “Remy, it’s him! I tell you, Remy, I’ll be your friend for life for turning up this kid for me.”

  “Curse me white and black,” said Remy. “I don’t know him from Adam. But don’t tell me that he’s your honest man?”

  “Honest?” said Kirby. “I tell you, gents, that this here is the gent that the word was made to fit, and that it don’t belong to no other. Kid, I’m so darned glad to see you, that you wouldn’t believe it. Sit down — sit here — curse my heart, but this is fine!”

  He gripped Phil by the shoulders and, leaning close to his ear, he said: “I went back to the spot. I moved the rock and I found every penny — except that stuff which you had sent to me by Blinky, the rat. Why, Phil, I would go to perdition and back for a man like you!”

  He was so thoroughly excited that he would hardly allow Phil Slader himself to say a word.

  “I’ve got to tell him why I have to hear the story,” said Phil. “Let me tell him that, Lon, will you?”

  “I’ll do your talking for you,” said the outlaw. “Remy, open up, and say what you got in your pocket. I got the pleasure of introducing to you the son of the finest man that ever lived — a kid that has got the promise of being all the man that his dad was before him. I want you to shake hands with Phil Slader, Don.”

  “It’s the son of Jack,” said the fat man, grinning. “Yep, and I knew it and I picked him. Tell Kirby if I didn’t pick you, Phil? And as for Magruder — well, it’s a nasty yarn. But you’re the one gent in the world that has the right to hear it told just as it was spoke out to me by a Mexican — a skinny young card sharp he was, with a right eye that turned out a little — a very handy kid at a knife or a gun either.”

  “And his name was Diego Pasqual?” asked Phil Slader.

  “Diego Pasqual!” shouted the host. “Why, this here is getting a little too spooky! How come that you ever heard of that name, kid?

  “Shut up, you fat fool!” said Lon Kirby. “Lemme tell you tha
t Pasqual is the name of a gent that is pushing up a headboard with his forehead in the graveyard down at Crusoe. They planted him just the other day. It was him that went in to sink a knife in the back of Phil Slader, here; and it was him that Phil Slader got all ready for the long sleep, y’understand?”

  Remy emitted a long, soft whistle, though his lips were so thick and unwieldy with fat that it was less a whistle than a moaning sound. “It was Diego that tried that?” he said. “Well, that was the speed of Pasqual. He was made real fine and handy to try a knife play in the dark. It was the sort of a game that he would shine at when he wasn’t dealing crooked poker. Son, I begin to see that maybe my friend, Kirby, ain’t so very far wrong about you. I begin to see that maybe I’ll have to back him up in what he’s been saying. Diego come for you, with Magruder sending him. Is that straight?”

  “I think that it’s straight,” said Phil. “I’ve got almost a sure proof of it. I know that I overheard them that same night, and Magruder was blaming Diego for not having done the job for which he was hired and brought to the farmhouse.”

  “Very sweet!” said Remy. “That’s the kind that Magruder is. Deep — and dangerous and mean. And now, old son, I’m going to tell you the story just the way that I got it from the greaser — and that was about five years ago, when I was taking a little vacation trip down into Mexico, y’understand? I had started out to . . . .”

  “Leave out the trimmings and give us the bald facts, will you?” asked Kirby.

  The fat man began to cram his pipe with black tobacco from a capacious pouch, and as he stuffed and lighted it, the fire of the narrator’s ardor began to kindle in his eye.

  “I’ll give you just the facts, if you want them that way,” he said, “because I can see that the kid, yonder, is breaking his heart to know what I got to say!”

  CHAPTER XXXVI