Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Alice laughed a little as she recalled the brilliance of that retort. “‘Look here,’ says Crawford, ‘you do what I tell you — you key down or get out of my place!’

  “‘Oh, is that so?’ says I. ‘I’ll certainly be moving, then. The point is that you ain’t used to having ladies in your hold-up of a dive. But the day’ll come when you come begging me to pass a good word for you around among the boys,’ says I, ‘and then there won’t be no noise about good talking.’

  “‘Shut up,’ says he, ‘and get out! You’re drunk!’

  “I jabbed my heel into the foot of the flathead that was keeping me company that night. The boob was dead to the world. He’d been mixing his drinks. All I could do was to stand up and give Crawford one look and walk out.”

  Alice paused. The expression of Lee Garrison was part the daze of liquor and part bewilderment, with not nearly as much anger as she had expected. Had she said anything that might shock or offend him? She cast back over her remarks. No, her narrative had only been the spirited account of an indignity offered to a lady. Alice, herself, had been drinking a bit beyond her average.

  She varied her tone. “And that’s what I’ve come to, Lee. After my bringing up and the home that I was used to, that’s what I’ve come to — a low- life like Crawford, daring to — And what d’you think he said as I went out? ‘Never come back!’ says he. ‘Your back going out is the most I want to see of you.’”

  Lee Garrison dropped his fist on the table. “Did he say that? Why, the insulting hound!” Righteous indignation burned through him. The narration of Alice had been dim in his ears for some time, but now he recalled himself. She had been driven out of Crawford’s by the proprietor — driven out by a man. Looking at her through a haze, the dazzling white of her arms and shoulders blinded him. Oh, cowardly brutality to have so shamed and maltreated this innocent and charming girl.

  He started to his feet. “Meet me at the door,” he said, and was gone.

  XX. HE FINDS TRUE GOLD

  APPALLED, ALICE CRIED after him, but he was beyond reach, cleaving a downright road through the midst of the dancers and aiming at the door. Gertie swung out of a dance and appeared before her friend. She sent her escort on an errand to a far corner and so secured a moment for quiet chat with her companion.

  “Well,” she said, breathing hard from her exercise, “ain’t you got enough out of him? Can’t you let him go now? I’d be ashamed, Alice, as greedy as that!”

  Alice sank back into her chair. “Shut up, Gertie,” she said. “You make me tired. Besides, you don’t know nothing.”

  “Don’t I? I know that you made a fat haul — unless he pushed some queer on you.”

  Alice gasped, jerked open the vanity case, hastily and critically examined some of the broad pieces with which it was loaded, and then sank back with a long sigh of relief.

  “My heavens, Gertie,” she said, “you might as well kill me as to scare me stiff! No, that boodle is straight stuff. The only thing that’s queer is Garrison. I can’t figure him — either a simp or a nut or a wise guy too deep for yours truly.”

  “A simp for blowing himself like that?” said Gertie, her eyes dim with desire as she gazed at the vanity case. “But honest, dearie, how did you get it out of him? Or don’t money mean nothing to that gold digger?”

  “I dunno — nothing. My head’s swimming.”

  “You better go home. I’ve got a lemon. I’ll shed him and take you home — you been drinking too much, Alice.” Gertie softened her voice to the gentlest sympathy, because, with Alice so suddenly flush, it would be the height of folly not to establish the best diplomatic relations.

  Alice shook her bright head decisively. “He told me to meet him at the door.”

  “And you’re going to? He’ll be sober, when he comes back, and he’ll grab every cent he gave you.”

  Alice dropped her cigarette from lifeless fingers. But she recovered her assurance at once and shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll stick,” she declared. “You don’t know him, Gertie. All I’m afraid of is that he’s gone gunning for that fat pig, Crawford, and he may go after me, if he comes back and finds me gone. Never can tell about a killer like him.”

  “My heavens, dearie,” panted Gertie. “D’you mean to say he’s gone to — and you ain’t sent a warning to Crawford?”

  “Warning? I would have stopped Garrison, if I could, but now that he’s gone, I hope he turns Crawford into a sieve. Why, what he said to me, Gertie — but I’m going out to see what’s what.”

  * * * * *

  She reached the door of Lefhvre’s barely in time to meet Lee Garrison with a gun belted around his waist, his hair blown awry by the night wind, his eyes flaring, his shirt opened to the air at the throat. And beside him was Moonshine! The left hand of the master, twined in his mane, steadied the frightened stallion. It was like hanging a sword from a thread, and Alice of the window shrank away. A word had been passed. A crowd was flocking out of Lefhvre’s.

  “You’re coming with me,” commanded Lee. “Get up on Moonshine, Alice.”

  “Oh, Lee — he’ll tear me to bits, if I come near him — he’ll kill me, Lee!”

  “Don’t talk foolish, but gimme your foot. There you are, Moonshine, stand still.”

  The stallion obeyed, but he crouched till he well-nigh touched the street in his terror. That made it easier to put the girl on his back, and there she sat sideways, clutching at the mane close to his withers to steady herself, and shaken violently by the tremor of the stallion.

  “You keep quiet and you’re all right,” said Lee. “You aren’t going to get hurt. Come along, Moonshine.”

  And the stallion, snorting and prancing, stole along beside the master. Monsieur Lefhvre himself, who had hurried toward the noise and had begun applauding, for he had a Frenchman’s eye for effects. The example was followed with cheers and clapping of hands and stamping of feet, for, after all, it made a very pretty picture — the yellow-haired girl on that shining beauty of a horse, and the wild figure of Lee Garrison walking ahead.

  They poured out behind the horse and into the street, while the broad shaft of light from the dance hall streamed clearly after them and showed the way to Crawford’s place opposite. Straight on went Lee Garrison, reached the flight of half a dozen steps leading to Crawford’s door, and behold Moonshine climbing those steps, one by one, trembling with terror, but going steadily on in obedience to the hand on his mane. The applause became a roar. Men rushed for the doors and the windows of Crawford’s to see the effect of that entrance.

  The orchestra, chiefly brass, blared its music from the far end of the hall and kept a narrow maze of dancers in motion up and down its length, while packed tables on either side accommodated gamblers or drinkers.

  Breaking through the rolling fog of tobacco smoke, the watchers saw man and horse and girl led straight down the hall, while the dancers packed back to clear a lane, and the music shrieked to a pause. Garrison stopped opposite the big chair in which Crawford sat enthroned, a gross body with his head inclined and his chin resting on his breast. In that position he continued for endless hours, rolling his glances from side to side and missing nothing.

  At the sight of the horse and the woman he jerked up his head and shouted to half a dozen onlookers. But not a one moved. They were too intent on the words of Lee.

  “I’ve been hearing a pile of bad things about you, Crawford,” said Lee. Before the sound of his voice a wave of silence spread, and even the watchers at the windows could hear. “Mostly I’ve been told that you threw this lady out of your place, Crawford. Lemme tell you — in this part of the country you can’t treat a lady like that, understand?”

  From one end of the hall to the other rolled a deep groan of assent. It pleases the true Westerner to have chivalry attributed to him. He feels it to be just compensation for rough clothes, rough manners.

  Besides, there is a grain of truth in the fable, for there are fewer women than men on the frontiers. Now Lee was
making himself spokesman for the honorable sentiment, and he received commendation accordingly. Crawford, rolling his bright little eyes up and down the double rows of faces, instantly saw the drift of feeling and determined to give way before it. He was a braver man save when courage interfered with business.

  “Young feller,” he said, “you’re talking loud and long about nothing much. Who said that she couldn’t come back here? Sure she can, and she’s welcome!”

  “Hear him crawl!” cried Alice. “He’s yellow, too, the big four-flusher!”

  “I sure doubt you, partner,” said Lee with much gravity. “But I’m here to state that the lady’s come back because she felt like coming, and she’s going out again, when she feels like going, but first there’s an apology coming to her. Let me hear it!”

  The hand of Crawford twitched halfway to his gun — and paused. A remembered picture had crossed his mind of terrible young King Peters lying on the floor of his saloon that very day and shooting from the hip while this wild man, barehanded, ran in on him. The perspiring face of Crawford grew pale as tallow. In a great distance he saw the scorn in the faces of the men around him, but grimly near at hand were the fingers of Garrison, trembling just above the butt of his gun.

  “Why,” said Crawford, “I’m sure sorry, if the lady’s feelings have been hurt.”

  “That’s enough,” said Garrison, and he turned Moonshine back toward the door. He did not see Crawford roll out of his chair and tug out his gun. He did not see two of Crawford’s bouncers throw themselves on the man with curses and tear the weapon from his hand. It seemed to Lee that the uproar through which he passed was all a thunder of applause for Moonshine and the adorable beauty on his back.

  It seemed to Alice, as they came out under the stars again, that it was the greatest night of her life. She could feel beauty that had vanished ten years before, returning to her now, untarnished. And she began to feel both gratitude and awe for Lee. He was partly drunk and partly different, but he had placed her in an epic light tonight. She had been only one among many in the evening. In the morning she would be famous.

  As for Lee, the fumes of the whiskey were mounting more and more to his head, and, although the excitement of that incursion into Crawford’s had nerved him, still alcohol colored all that he saw and did. And, as it operates on many nervous temperaments, it made him white of face and bright of eye as he started across the street for Lefhvre’s again with his way fenced in on either side by men and girls from both dance halls, by other townsfolk who had been attracted by the uproar, and, in fact, by everyone who happened to be astir in the town. There were even half a dozen gaping children, drawn out by the uproar, and girls dressed brightly, and scores of laughing men. Immense brotherliness welled in him. They had misunderstood him for a time, but now there was more applause than criticism in their laughter — even the formidable old barber was chuckling and nodding approval. Indeed, among them all there was only one who sneered — Harry Chandler, who now drew back with the girl who stood beside him. But it was not the sneer of Handsome Harry that cleared the whiskey from the head of Lee Garrison. It was the face of the girl beside the big fellow. For this was she whom he had hunted. She was the incarnate thought that had sprung into his mind when he had found the glove in the distant cabin, and the sight of her was to him like a friend’s voice in a foreign land. Only a glimpse of her beauty and her scorn. Then she turned with Harry Chandler. But even with her head turned there was something sadly familiar. It was as though he had known her once and had been close and dear to her. And in her place sat Alice of the window, on Moonshine.

  He turned and looked up to her. Oh, fool, fool, to have thought that this was the goal of the quest, or even a station by the way.

  XXI. HE ACQUIRES A PARTNER

  SICK AT HEART, he turned Moonshine up the street through the jam of people that split away before him. He was suddenly beyond the crowd.

  “Lee, Lee!” called the anxious voice of the girl. “I can’t wander around without a coat. I’ll freeze. Go back to Lefhvre’s.”

  He looked around. The entrances of both houses of pleasure were black with returning people. Already their uproar and exclamations were far off and blurring like something half remembered. He did not speak at once, and Alice, in quick alarm, slipped from the back of the stallion and came to him.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked anxiously. “Are you sick, Lee? Don’t look back there at them — look here at me.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I guess I’m sick. Where d’you want to go — back to Lefhvre’s or home?”

  “Home — if you’re sick. But ain’t it rotten luck that we’ve gotta miss what the boys will be saying? Come on, then! Is the booze getting to you? Don’t you worry about nothing — I’ll take care of you. Turn to your right. Here we are!”

  He stopped at the door of her rooming house. “Good night,” he said. “It was a fine party.”

  She caught his arm. “You seen someone else just now!”

  As that made him start, panic swept her away at the thought of losing this gold mine.

  “Don’t be making a fool of yourself, honey,” she said, attempting to fondle him. “That stuff at Lefhvre’s went to your head, and you don’t know what you’re doing — if I let you go back to that crowd, they’ll pick you clean. You’ll lose every cent you.—”

  He drew back a little from her until a dull light from the nearest window fell on his face, and she saw in it enough to make her release his arm with a gasp. Then rage was born from hopelessness.

  “Go back, then!” she shrilled. “Go back and find some flat-faced booby who’ll get out of you all that I couldn’t get.” She slipped into the half-open door, holding it ready to slam in his face. “You pin-head!” cried Alice of the window. “I’d’ve trimmed you right to your skin in another hour. Go back and find her, and I hope she hooks you for good and keeps you working overtime like the sucker you are!”

  Instead of advancing, he turned to Moonshine and hooked his arm over the neck of the stallion. They went off together like two friends, and she heard him saying: “It’s better to be a horse than to be a man and born blind, like I am. There isn’t anybody as big a fool as I am. Why, I’ll be thinking a light in a kitchen is a star in the sky, pretty soon.”

  “Crazy,” muttered Alice. “Plain nutty.” She slammed the door. And straightway she burst into tears. “I wish I was dead,” sobbed Alice as she dragged herself slowly up the steps, but the vanity case was tight in her grip.

  * * * * *

  Who can prophesy what our dreams will be? Even an agony of remorse could not keep Lee awake, and, when he slept, he met, in a bright vision, the girl with Handsome Harry. He saw her leave Harry and come to him. And he took out the glove and tried it on her hand. Behold! Her hand fitted it as the foot of astonished little Cinderella fitted the slipper. Only the pink tip of one finger showed through the torn end.

  He wakened in a flood of golden sunshine and in a mood of no less golden happiness that started him laughing softly.

  “Well,” drawled a voice. “You got cause for laughing, I guess.”

  He heaved himself up on one elbow and saw old Bad Luck Billy Sidney tilted back in a chair in the full glare of the sunshine, his hat on the back of his head, and his knife leisurely employed in whittling a stick of soft pine into grotesque shapes. Lee Garrison blinked at him until in swift stages the truth about the night before crowded upon his memory and made him sit up with a groan.

  The old man did not turn his head. “That’s life for ye,” he said at length. “A-laughing one minute and a-groaning the next. Well, well, well!”

  “How come you’re here?” asked Lee, swinging his legs down from the bed and dropping his elbows on his knees. But his question was received with a counter interrogation.

  “Is your head a-swelling and a-busting now, maybe?” asked Billy Sidney tenderly, turning toward the youth.

  “No,” said Lee.

  “Ain’t it now?” The bushy wh
ite eyebrows went up. “Well, hornswoggle me, if that ain’t queer! Crawford, now, he moans and curses and shows his teeth when he wakes up of a morning after blotting up red-eye the way you was going last night. But you’re younger. That’s it. Oh, they’s a pile of gifts that young folks has that they don’t know enough to be thankful for.”

  “Crawford sent you over to ask me to pay up damage done to his dance floor when the horse pranced on it — is that why you’re here, Billy?”

  The ancient wagged his head in melancholy dissent. “If spoiled dance floors was all that you owed Crawford,” murmured Billy Sidney, “he’s be a happier man than what he is this blessed morning, lad.”

  “Then what else did he lose? I’ll pay.”

  “You’ll pay? Then pay the good name that he used to have that’s gone now. Bring back the crowds that need to go drink there and that’ll never drink in a place of his again. No, sir, never no more will gents hunting a good time go to Crawford’s — only them that want cheap liquor, and rotten cheap it is!”

  Upon this amazing speech Lee focused his attention in vain. He could make nothing of it, and he said as much to his strange visitor. Bad Luck Billy Sidney turned toward him at last.

  “Didn’t you show us the rotten yaller heart of Crawford’s?” he asked. “Didn’t you take the gal back that he’d told to stay out, and didn’t you take her on horseback? And then didn’t you make him crawl like a hound?” For every statement his pointing hand jerked up, and his voice squeaked higher. He relaxed from this climax and settled back in his chair. “Yes, Garrison, you done all that, and more. When you left, I was plumb sick, thinking of the time that I’d wasted trying to drag Crawford up and make a man of him. I unbuttoned the flap of my holster and got my old gun loose in the leather. I walked up to Crawford and told him plain what I was thinking. I was sure particular to leave nothing out. You’d think he’d’ve tied me in a knot and throwed me through the window? No, sir, he couldn’t take his eyes off of my old hand, wrapped around the butt of my gun, and pretty soon he wets his lips and looks up at me sort of scared, like a kid waiting for the teacher to hit him.