Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “Guttorm wants to see you,” he whispered behind his hand. “He’s out in his hoss shed behind his house — the red house at the end of the street, if you don’t know.”

  He disappeared around the corner, while Lee turned in the bidden direction down the street, passing through the yellow bars of lamplight that struck out from the open doors. Overhead the darkness pressed flat against the roofs of the town, for the sky was massed with clouds, and not a star showed through. Yet Lee was singing softly when he came opposite the big, sprawling house of Guttorm. He paused by an open window on his way toward the horse shed, and inside he saw little Charlie and McLeod. Charlie was wrapped to the chin in a brilliant Indian blanket in whose folds there seemed more strength than in the small body they surrounded. His head lay back against a pillow, and in his pinched features there was a dying wanness. The “doctor” walked to and fro with his hands dropped in the pockets of his coat, talking steadily, although Lee could not make out what he said.

  The eyes of Charlie opened, savagely discontent. “Stop!” he commanded. “I don’t like it. I hate that story!”

  “Shall I leave you, Charlie? Do you want to stay here and rest by yourself?”

  “I want another story, with bears in it!”

  “A man hunting bears, eh?”

  The dull eyes of Charlie gleamed. “Or how bears hunt a man,” he suggested.

  The last was hardly above a whisper, but Lee understood, because he was half expecting exactly those words. He started on just as the smooth, pleasant voice of McLeod began again.

  On one side of the horse shed there was a light, and, going toward it, Lee found Olie Guttorm seated cross-legged on the ground, busily at work with awl and waxed thread, repairing harness. As he sewed, he whistled softly. Now, for a moment, the burden of wealth had slipped from his shoulders. It touched Lee far more than the sight of the dying boy. He was strangely unable to be angry with the big man.

  At his approach Olie Guttorm rose solemnly to his full height, and the lantern cast his sprawling shadow over the wall beside him. He scowled upon his visitor.

  “Look here, Olie,” said Lee, “you think that I’ve come to Crooked Creek to make you trouble. You’re wrong.” He paused placatingly.

  “Good,” said the miner. “That’s good!” He rubbed his hands. “You want a share of what I’ve made out of the mines, eh? Well, it’s coming to you. I might say that I bought that ore and that location from you fair and square with the tobacco — or I might say, being as how I was drifting along in that direction, I’d have found that ledge myself in a few more hours. But I never dodge a debt. I pay up. Nobody could buy Crooked Creek with a pinch of tobacco.” He had advanced to Lee, and now he dropped a hand on the latter’s shoulder.

  “Still wrong, Olie,” said the younger man. “Damned if you aren’t all wrong. I don’t want money that I haven’t worked for.”

  Olie Guttorm stepped back, lifting his hand from Lee’s shoulder and hanging it in the air as a great fist, hard and jagged as a rock. Slowly the fist dropped to his side.

  “I thought it’d be this way,” he said growlingly. “You want to get the credit for the Crooked Creek strike.” His whiskers bristled. A black vein swelled on his forehead.

  “You don’t understand,” Lee insisted. “I don’t want—”

  “You lie!” gasped out the giant, glancing furtively around him. “Don’t I see what’s inside your head? You want ’em to cheer you the way they cheer me. You want to make me out a liar. But you’re a fool to hold out for that, because I’ll give you more money than you ever dreamed of, if you’ll get out of Crooked Creek and never come back.”

  “I been telling you that I won’t take money, and—”

  “Wait, wait!” pleaded Guttorm. “You dunno what you’re about to say. I ain’t talking about a few hundreds. I’m talking about hundreds of thousands to you, Garrison! Will you listen to me, partner? What does it mean to you? You’re young, and, if you got money aplenty, you can make a name for yourself later on. But think what it’d mean to me, if the truth got out about how the strike was made. Why, they’d despise me! All them that have been talking as if I’d given them what they’ve dug up. Garrison, if you go inside the house with me, I’ll show you sacks—”

  “I’ll come back and talk to you tomorrow,” said Lee, backing toward the door. “You don’t get my drift at all, tonight. All I’ve been trying to say is that you’re welcome to—”

  He was unheard. “Then go and be damned to you,” cried Guttorm. “I’ve made a good offer. I’d give you a quarter, a third, of it all. But you want — get out!”

  With the last words his voice swelled to a roar, and he rushed at Lee with his clenched hands raised. And Lee Garrison fled without shame as one would flee from a beast. He raced through the darkness to the street, found himself unpursued, and slackened to a walk, panting.

  They were all mad, it seemed. The whole town was filled with the insane. If only the girl were not here, he would throw his gambler winnings into the dirt and not wait to get rid of them at Lefhvre’s. But now that meant a diverting way of killing time until eight, that hour for which the world was waiting.

  XVII. ROULETTE

  A SEARCHER FOR noisy excitement in Crooked Creek after dark would have passed up Monsieur Lefhvre’s amusement palace for Crawford’s, or one of the score of other saloons. And, in fact, fully as many jammed their way into Crawford’s as passed through the wide door of Lefhvre’s. For the Frenchman had established a law of silence in his gaming room, and, although the quiet kept out many a merrymaker with a pouchful of gold, Lefhvre had found that in a hushed room the bets run higher and men feel that fortune is leaning behind their chairs.

  The result was that there were few quarrels over the tables in Lefhvre’s place, although a good many happened within twenty yards of his door. As midnight drew near, to be sure, there was a pronounced increase and sharpening of voices in the dancing section, but the moment that Lefhvre’s big clock struck the first chime for twelve o’clock, every game stopped, every dance ended, and the guests must start elsewhere.

  If, at that hour, they went into Crawford’s across the way, the contrast was sure to react most favorably in his behalf. But, at any rate, he was building up a repute that would make him strong as a rock when, as must inevitably happen, the town grew more settled and law and order became an invited guest. Then the past of Crawford’s would rise in a black wave and sweep it away.

  When Lee turned in from the street through the little grove of whispering aspens that Lefhvre had so wisely left standing and that gave so much privacy to his house, a voice called softly, and “Doctor” McLeod appeared from among the trees.

  “I’m ready for the raid,” said McLeod.

  “How much have you brought along?” asked Lee.

  “Five thousand,” said the other.

  “Hmm,” murmured Lee. “Did you get all of it out of Guttorm?”

  “That and more. Everything that touches him is gilded. He is all gold! But, by the way, that was rather a raw rub you gave the idiot.”

  “What?”

  “He came raving into the house a while back and told me that you had threatened to claim the honor of a prior discovery of the Crooked Creek ore, and that you are going about the town, swearing that you met him when you were famished and sold your knowledge to him for a pipeful of tobacco. He’s nearly mad — he ramped and raved through the house until Charlie began to squeal — confound him! And the last I saw of them, Guttorm had the brat on his knees and was rumbling a song that sounded like a cart rolling over a bridge. But whatever your game is with Guttorm, you’re pressing him pretty far. The big chap will be running berserk one of these days.”

  “I have a grudge against him,” said Lee, “and I worked up that yarn to worry him.”

  “It sounds almost queer enough to be true. You have an imagination, Garrison, by heaven you have! What’s the plan? How can you use me? I suppose you’ll play poker?”

&nbs
p; “No, the machines?”

  “Good heavens, man, can you use me playing the machines?”

  “You’re welcome to what you win,” said Lee, smiling. “Follow me and bet where I bet.”

  “But the machines — ?” began McLeod in anxiety. “You have a system?”

  “Sure.”

  “No doubt, but every system I’ve ever heard of.—”

  Lee Garrison cut him short by stepping through the door and into the hushed interior. He saw at once that the silence at Lefhvre’s was maintained as a game by the miners. They stalked about with gliding steps, and where one of their fellows landed with a heavy heel or exclaimed in an unguarded moment, a score of heads were sure to turn toward him. The floor itself in the gaming section of the house was of a nature to induce silence, for it consisted of the heaviest canvas stretched over the unsmoothed timbers beneath. Canvas, again, formed the roof, for a timber roof would have been far too ponderous to be supported by the meager uprights, which, for the most part, were simply straight saplings with the limbs lopped off.

  As for the arrangement of Lefhvre’s, it was both simple and effective. The one half of the place was the game room, scattered full of card tables at the sides, with the gambling machines in the center. At the rear of the room was a long bar well equipped with white-clad bartenders against the background of a thousand bottles of a thousand dyes. The bar extended out of the game room and into the other half of the building, that is to say, the dance hall. Through the big swinging doors, Lee glimpsed a polished floor, waxed and rubbed until it picked up the reflections of the lanterns and carried them to dim and watery depths. Moreover, the lights in the dance hall were so much brighter that the shaft through the door struck into the game room as into semi-darkness. He saw a swirl of color moving across the floor, with shadows in pastel shades underfoot. And in the dance music there was no bray of brass such as tore the ear at Crawford’s across the street, but singing violins ruled the orchestra.

  Dulled by the intervening wall, the one solid and abiding feature of Lefhvre’s house, the music came dimly into the game room, a moan of strings, a faint whistle of the clarinets, or the pulse of the drums, so that varying melody pervaded the air of the game room.

  On four things Lefhvre spent with a prodigal hand — his music, his waxed dance floor, his liquor, and his gambling equipment of tables and machines. In his house men dallied with chance, lured and prompted to carelessness by the promise of the distant music. If they lost, they sought courage at the bar and returned to the gambling table to lose with greater rapidity. If they won, they went to the bar to celebrate the victory and returned to the table with a dazed brain and lost. But in the end they arrived at one of two stations — either they had spent all but the fag end of their stake and sought the dance hall to go broke in style, or else as winners they went for a few turns in the hall to display their wealth. But no matter what they did or where they turned, the net of Monsieur Lefhvre was spread, and small were the winnings that escaped through the doors of his establishment.

  To Lee Garrison the music was like a breath of perfume. It was a promise of Alice, and, if she had been lovely as framed in the darkness of the window, how thrice more beautiful in the splendor of that shining room beyond the door.

  As Lee drank in the scene, smiling with half-drunken joy, McLeod had drifted to a little distance, letting himself be carried along by the next eddy that came through the door. It was the expectancy in his glance which aroused Lee Garrison to the memory that he had come for a distinct purpose. No doubt to McLeod the smile of Lee was that of one looking down on the battlefield where he sees victory.

  That thought made Lee laugh aloud. And this was to be the second time in his life that he had gambled. What should he try? Where should he lose his little fortune? There was one main center of interest among the machines. The chuck-a-luck table languished with only two or three dogged patrons. Faro had its meager half dozen advocates. But the thick group in the exact middle of the room surrounded the roulette wheel. Lee Garrison made for it. From the side came McLeod, his face dark with doubt.

  Lee swallowed a smile. He would begin in a small way, but he hardly knew how to play the machine. There were colors on each side of him marked off in little squares in which bets were laid. There were also squares on which numbers were marked. On one of these a neighbor deposited a dollar, and Lee promptly put ten dollars on the adjoining spot, covering the figure nine. From the corner of his eye he saw McLeod hesitate, and then shake his head. Evidently this was water too deep for him. Now the wheel spun, slowed, and stopped with a click. His neighbor’s dollar disappeared under the expert stick of the man behind the wheel, but upon his own ten dollars, an instant later, three one-hundred-dollar bills and six tens were deposited. He had been paid thirty-six for one!

  A flurry of placing bets recommenced. The man behind the wheel in a quiet voice was urging his patrons to get their money down more quickly, but Lee chiefly heard the man beside him saying: “Heaven a’mighty, stranger, you letting her ride?”

  “Not this time,” said Lee, and shifted his pile to a new spot. The wheel spun again, hissed, slow, and stopped with a gentle click as the ball dropped. But this time the stopping of the wheel brought a great commotion. A dozen people were talking at once. Something had gone wrong, perhaps? There was a protest.

  The immediate companions of Lee had pushed a few feet back from him, and all eyes were fastened steadily on him for a blazing moment of envy and surprise. The man behind the wheel, after deftly taking in the lost bets, began as swiftly paying the winners. Three or four had won on the color, two on the odd, and now he placed a neat pile of double eagles before McLeod, who was utterly colorless except for a purple patch high upon his cheek. After that, the payer flashed over his stacks of money swiftly, then sent an assistant scurrying across the floor. He seemed to spread silence with him.

  The news ran along invisible wires of rumor. The card games came to a pause, and the heads of the players turned. And again it was Lee who was the focus of interest.

  “I’ve seen it tried,” said Lee’s nearest companion, “but this is the first time I ever seen it worked. Two times running. And here comes the old man!”

  The messenger, walking heavily under a burden, was returning at the rear of a portly man who paddled across the floor on little short legs and ridiculously small feet. He nodded to patrons on either side with a courtly gesture to accompany each salutation.

  “Ain’t he the game old sport?” said the murmurers around Lee. “Old French himself is coming out to pay. Maybe he wants you to take his note, Garrison!” But here was Lefhvre, extending his hand. Lee’s fingers sank into soft, cold flesh.

  “I’ve heard of you before, Mister Garrison,” said the proprietor, “and I’ve been hoping that we should see you here. I see that you have made your own welcome, in a way—” Here he laughed a little and was accompanied by the polite murmur of the crowd. “Although I am a little late, let me add my congratulations, sir!”

  So saying, he took a heavy canvas sack from his messenger and gave it to Lee. “Thirteen thousand, three hundred and twenty dollars,” he said, loudly enough to be heard distinctly for some distance, “and now won’t you drink with me?”

  Lee found himself carried off in the midst of a hearty muttering of applause for Lefhvre. Lee Garrison protested. “I sure hate to do this, Mister Lefhvre,” he said. “The luck—”

  “Tut, tut,” the gambler assured him with a handsome frankness. “It is the fortunes of war. Today you win, and tomorrow I win. Do not pity me, Mister Garrison, but be happy without a cloud. There are some poor fellows who creep in and out of here with their heads down and their last penny gone. On my honor, I am sorry for them, and they know they can come to Lefhvre for help, but their honest Western pride forbids that, it seems. However, Mister Garrison, you will go out in a different manner. To your good health, sir, although I’m afraid I can’t drink to your continued luck!”

  The remark se
t the crowd laughing as their glasses flashed to their lips — a roomful of men and a streak of crystal light rising in every hand for, when Lefhvre treated, the whole house drank.

  He would not accept a drink which Lee offered to buy, however, and immediately left the room. If someone had proposed a cheer for the proprietor at that moment, it would have been given with a mighty will. So gracious did he seem that it threw a peculiar imputation of craft and unfair cunning on Garrison by contrast, a slight cloud from which Lee could partially extricate himself by leaving the odd three hundred and twenty dollars with the bartender “to treat the boys when they looked downhearted!” Even this royal generosity made only a slight impression, for a big winner in gambling is too envied to be liked.

  If he had instantly and joyously devoted himself to the labor of getting drunk in celebration, he would have been looked upon with a more kindly eye, but the complete daze in which Lee found himself was misinterpreted as professional nonchalance. If there were needed proof of Slocum’s report that Garrison was a seasoned expert, it was herein provided. But Lee was not thinking of the opinions of others. That unworldly mind of his was merely grasping at the fact that he had come here to rid himself of money that was too unclean to be carried into the presence of the girl.

  He sighed and looked around into the smoke-blue atmosphere of Lefhvre’s. Every light was encircled by a luminous, milk-white fog. Yonder was McLeod, idling in front of a crap table, but he was keeping strict watch on his master. Lee Garrison made straight for that table, counted out fifty twenty-dollar gold pieces, and wagered them against the point of the house, which was eight. That thousand vanished. He replaced it, and the next thousand was swept away. He repeated for the third time. At one side he saw McLeod, who had been following these bets in a smaller way, break into a perspiration that made his face gleam, and Lee, as his fourth thousand disappeared, laughed joyously and bet again. He heard a murmur that said: “So sure of his system that he don’t give a damn! That ain’t gambling — it’s gold digging. I told you so!”