by Max Brand
“Them that want work always get it,” he said. “And them that want trouble,” he added significantly, “mostly get what they want, too!”
Upon this wise suggestion Allan brooded for some time. Then he started out on a tour of the village, but a rumor had spread with the mysterious speed of whispers before him. No one needed his two strong hands, it seemed. He came to the blacksmith who was cursing an inefficient helper and letting the latter hold the tongs while he himself worked with the sledge.
“Can you use another man?” asked Allan from the doorway.
“Man?” thundered the blacksmith, shaking his gray head, darkened almost to black by the soot which had collected on it. “There ain’t no men in these days. The old brand of men has gone out of style. They got nothin’ but clipped coins circulatin’ these here days!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Allan mildly.
The blacksmith waved his helper toward the forge with the bar of iron on which they had been working.
“You don’t know!” sneered the smith, whose gray hairs gave him liberty of speech. “You’re like the rest of the young men of these here days. You don’t want to know. Sweat ain’t honest enough for the young gents, and the old ones has busted their backs raisin’ a flock of good-for-nothin’s! How tall was your dad?”
To that sudden question Allan answered that his father had been an even six feet in height.
“That’s it! He was six feet! What’re you? Old story — they’ve shrunk up. Nothin’ but runts, these days, and them that are big are weedy! Look yonder by the door. I was a young man when that barrel was put there, son, with as much scrap iron in it as there is right to-day, and no more. I wasn’t more’n thirty, then, and El Ridal wasn’t no more’n a pup of a town. Well, sir, I took hold on that there barrel and lowered it down by myself clean out of the back of the wagon that brung it. Where’s there a man in El Ridal to-day that can budge it? Where’s there a man?”
Just then the thrill of his own might ran warm in the arms of Allan. He stooped and fixed his grip on the barrel. His knees sagged, his shoulders gave, then straightened, and the barrel rose from its settled place in the floor, rose with clots of moist dirt clinging to its bottom. It ascended until it was waist high. Then the bottom burst and the iron junk rained upon the floor.
The blacksmith had run forward with a shout of amazement; he halted in mid- stride and stared at the youth who had torn to shreds the pride of his own herculean youth. For in the old days the might of the blacksmith had been a thing of wonder, and men had traveled many miles to look upon him. Still, in his gesture, there was revealed a speaking suggestion of the power which had once clothed his arms and of which age had robbed him. He looked upon Allan, now, as though that youth had been personally guilty of the crime. But his ill humor left him almost at once. Like most men who work with their hands and feel the curse of Adam in the actual sweat of the brow, there was a broad vein of honesty in him, and now he began to nod as he looked at the young man.
“Takes an exception to prove a rule,” he said not unkindly. “But what might you be looking for with me, friend?”
“Work,” said Allan.
The other smiled and then shook his head, “I’ve heard tell about you, partner,” he said. “Friend of Jim Jones ain’t here in El Ridal lookin’ for the kind of work that I can give ’em to do. The pay is too slow.”
With that cold comfort he sent Allan away, and the latter went back to the hotel. Affairs were now serious indeed, for his funds could not hold out for more than two days at the most, considering that he had the girl to provide for as well as himself. At supper they sat at the end of the long table which the Empire Hotel set out for its guests, and he told her nothing of his unlucky adventures. There were half a dozen others at the table, all rough-dressed, rough-mannered men, but Allan could not help but admire their tact. They were hungry with curiosity concerning the sister of Jim Jones, yet they veiled their glances and seemed to study her from the corners of their eyes only. Had she possessed nothing but her pretty face, she would have been stared at in any other place, he thought, but here they treated her as carefully as though she were an old woman! He observed these things and admired. But he had little room in his heart to pay attention to them. He was himself full of the subject of Frank, and full of the face which smiled at him across the table. He was full of the charm of her grace, of the slenderness of her round wrists, and of the taper delicacy of her fingers. He was full, too, of that strength of mind which kept her from so much as mentioning her anxiety for her brother. His name never came upon her lips; not even a shadow of trouble was allowed to appear in her eyes. For all her bluntness and her carefree ways he felt what he had felt before — the very aroma and radiance of gentility.
They sat together on the veranda after supper, in a far corner, away from the rumbling voices of the men. They spoke seldom, because of the trouble in the heart of the girl, and because of the content which was growing in the heart of Allan, for he could feel them growing closer and closer together; he could feel her thought resting upon him and turning toward him. Once she said: “After all, Al, a woman is pretty weak, I guess.”
He could finish the rest of that sentence to his own satisfaction, and finish it he did. When she said good night, he still remained on the veranda, lost in thought, brooding on the rough-headed mountains where they pressed up among the white hosts of the stars, and listened to the far-off rumble of El Ridal falls, a tremor which was felt by the mind rather than heard by the ear.
Afterward he went for a stroll, because there were so many things in his heart that he could not keep them to himself and felt that, before long, he should have to talk to his nearest neighbor, uninvited. Once or twice he walked up and down in front of the hotel. Then he turned away and entered the trees which filled the empty lot at its side. And here it occurred to him that from this place he could see the very window of her room. It gave him a foolish thrill of happiness. He checked it off from the front of the building — the third from the very end, now vacant of any glow from within — a black rectangle glittering with a single starry high light. He saw that, and he saw in the next moment a dark form of a man climbing the side of the building. He had barely cleared the ground, and his destination might be any one of half a dozen windows, but all that Allan thought of was that the window of the girl’s room was just above the head of the stranger.
It did not occur to him to make an outcry. Or even had he wished to do so, he was possessed of such a fury of anger that it filled his throat and choked him. He raced straight for the hotel, caught a dangling foot just as it reached up for a fresh hold, and plucked the night wanderer to the ground.
The fallen man leaped from the ground with a cry, and Allan saw the dun wink of steel in the starlight. He had no time to see more. The fastest of all gunmen could not draw a weapon as fast as the naked fist can strike, and the fist of Allan was already on the way. It landed somewhere on the body of the man and sent the stranger reeling away. His gun exploded; a bullet sang into the distance; and then Allan had him in his hands.
He had no thought in his mind except that this fellow might have intended to reach the room of the girl, and that thought filled him with a brutish desire to rend limb from limb. He fumbled for a hold, found it, and felt the form beneath him go limp while many voices turned the corner of the building and rushed toward him. They swarmed about him and lifted him up; his victim came with him.
“Jim Jones!” cried someone. “It’s Jones, sheriff!”
That name had turned Allan sick and weak, and he staggered back from them, relaxing his grip. He saw a little man, with a tuft of gray beard, leaning above the prostrate figure on the ground.
“I thought this gent was a friend of Jones,” he heard the little man muttering, “but if we hadn’t got here pronto, boys, Jim Jones would of been so doggone dead that a rope around the neck couldn’t of done no more for him.”
He straightened and faced Allan. “You get t
he reward for this, son,” he said. “Was that the game that you was playing with the girl?”
Allan could not answer. She, too, would think that. She, too, would feel that he had been playing a game, and for a reward collected on the head of her brother!
8. THE RESCUE
THEY CARRIED THE limp form of Jim Jones to the veranda of the hotel, and there they laid him down. The sheriff had handcuffed the wrists of his prisoner and removed no less than two pairs of revolvers from his person. Thus stripped of weapons and secured, they seemed to feel far more at ease, but even so they were restless, and Allan could see them peering up and down the street as though they expected a rescue party to rush upon them at any moment. For his own part, he was busy only in watching the face of the unconscious man. There was no doubt as to his relationship with the girl. There were the same finely made features, the same nervous, clearly cut lips, the same bigness of eye, the same resolute square to the chin, the same curling blond hair. But whereas the girl was small even for a woman, her brother was big even among men, a strong, lithe body which seemed formidable even in this utter repose. A purple splotch covered his throat. There was no doubt where the terrible grip of Allan had rested upon him.
Now he stirred, opened his eyes, and groaned. They waited for no further recovery, but lifted him at once and with a man on either side, the sheriff walking with drawn gun behind, they escorted him toward the jail.
It was a little frame shack which contained two cells made of steel bars and a small office in front which was used by the sheriff as his place of business. In one of the cells they placed young Jim Jones who, from the time his memory had returned to him, had not uttered a syllable.
“What will happen to Jones?” asked Allan of the sheriff.
The latter made an unmistakable gesture, as of arranging a noose around his neck.
“Hanging!” breathed Allan, full of horror.
“I’ll tell a man!” said the sheriff. “Now, you’ll be wantin’ to know when you get that reward, son. That’ll be fixed up inside of two or three”
“Darn the reward!” burst out Allan, and hurried from the jail, feeling that he would stifle if he remained longer within its walls.
At the very door he met Frances Jones, white, anxious and in haste. There was no doubt that she had heard what had happened; there was no doubt that she had learned his part in the capture, for she gave him a look of horror and of scorn as she passed, that withered on his lips the words he would have spoken. He stumbled out into the night, trying to bring this matter right m his own mind, but the more he thought of it the more he cursed his own stupidity.
He should have guessed who that stranger was, climbing the wall of the hotel. It was the very thing which he had himself suggested. The news of his sister’s arrival would bring down Jim Jones to the town to see her; that had been his idea. It was only that the coming of Jim was so sudden that he had been unable to believe that the stranger might be he.
In the meantime, El Ridal was coming to life. There was a humming and a murmuring throughout the town. People appeared in clusters, here and there, wandering toward the jail, and fragments of their talk came to the ears of Allan. It was he of whom they were all talking. They had learned of his feat in the blacksmith shop that afternoon; they linked it with his capture of Jim Jones and made him out a Hercules. He sat down behind a tree to try to fumble his way through this misty difficulty, and as he sat there he heard two voices approach and pass him on the farther side.
“He looked,” said one, “like a doggone tenderfoot.”
“Tender the devil!” said the other. “That gent is a detective. You can lay to that. A darn foxy game he played, too. He meets up with Jim’s sister. He’s got an idea that she’s tryin’ to meet her brother. So this gent, Vincent, they call him, lays low to grab Jim when he shows. And dog-gone me if he ain’t done it. He’ll make a nice bit of money out of that!”
“It was a low thing to do!” cried the other of the two.
“Sure,” said his companion, “he ain’t nothin’ but a skunk with a strong pair of hands. But did you hear what he done to Jim Jones in about five seconds?”
“Near tore him in two, I understand.”
“I seen Jim afterward. Looked like a grizzly had been pawin’ him.”
The two drifted farther down the street, and their voices became an indistinct blur in the ears of the listener; he had heard enough and more than enough. If those who were only strangers to Jim Jones felt like this about him, what a white fury must be that of the girl? She would never forgive him — a thousand times never! Not unless he should take Jim out of the danger into which he had thrown him. Not unless he should bring Jim safely from the jail where he was now locked. Of course that was to ask for a miracle which could not be performed I
He began to walk up and down behind the southern row of houses which straggled along the main street of El Ridal. Half a dozen times he measured the distance back and forth; then he came back wearily into the street itself, intent only on reaching the hotel and getting into his bed before anyone could see him. When the morning came, a long rest might have brought an idea into his mind. He passed the jail on the way and found it quiet at last, with only a single light burning in a front window of the little shack. But when he came to the hotel he found that another center of interest had been found. It was a tall bay stallion which stood in the street, flattening its ears at the strangers who pressed so closely around it, sometimes dancing with its hind feet, as though preparatory to lacing out with them. It was a glorious animal, mounted with a fine saddle and with a profusion of chased gold on the bridle and saddle.
“No wonder,” said Bill Hodge, “that them rascals that hang out with Harry Christopher can jump down here on us and then get away again without our bein’ able to catch ’em. They put enough money into hossflesh. That there hoss might be a racer, from the lines and the legs of him! What becomes of him?”
The voice of the sheriff made answer: “He stays right yonder in your stable till we get young Jim Jones sentenced. Then we’ll put the horse up for auction.”
All of this was enough and more than enough for Allan. He went sadly away through the night to ponder the problem over again from the start. An irresistible attraction brought him back to the little jail, and there he peered through the barred window and saw the captive seated on his cot, holding a cigarette with his iron-bound hands and even whistling a tune as he finished the smoke and dropped it under his heel. He seemed to Allan the best-looking, the finest-spirited, the most courageous man he had ever seen. And that he himself should have betrayed such a fellow into the hands of a law which would destroy him was indeed too terrible! All the labors of a long life could never unbalance such a calamity. He would owe the world a debt which he could never repay if he were the agent of the fall of Jim Jones.
These were the heavy thoughts of Allan as he went back toward the hotel again. He found all quiet there by this time. The gossips had at last scattered. Only one light burned in the whole face of the big, rambling structure, and all the other windows were blank and black. Allan, entering, went softly up the stairway and came to the door of the room of Frances. There was no sleep for her on this terrible night, of course, and her door was raggedly framed with pencilings of yellow lamplight. All the money that remained to him he put together, folded it thin, and slipped it cautiously under the door. Then he withdrew in a panic, his heart in his mouth, expecting the door to fly open before him at any instant and the girl to be raging at him. To her he was a traitor, the coldest and the most malignant of scheming traitors, and he dreaded meeting her more than he would have dreaded the passage through a living wall of flames. But fate was kind to him in this instance.
He went from the hotel to the bam, and there he saddled Mustard first, and afterward the magnificent horse of Jim. Then he led the pair behind the houses until he reached a cluster of saplings near the jail, where he left them. Mustard would stand so long as her reins were thrown. That
was almost the only good feature among her manners. And the stallion he tethered to Mustard. There remained nothing, now, except to storm the fort itself, and he looked sadly and gravely down from the hillside where he stood toward the little squat shadow of the jail.
Two expert warriors, two gallant men of gun and battle, were seated in the sheriff’s office to guard the prisoner, and guard him they would with the last drop of their blood. Even one of them would have been too much for Allan to master, he felt, for all his strength could be made into nothing and unstrung by the touch of a single bullet. They were men of fire and steel; he was a thing of wood which they could easily blast from existence.
He took note, before he started, of the blue blackness of the sky, of how the mountains were roughly sketched in with spotted lines of stars, of how the great, soft masses of black forest curved in around El Ridal, and of how El Ridal river flashed and rumbled in the distance, springing down the breast of the mountain.
Allan began to grow cold. Where would the bullet strike, and how would it feel tearing the flesh or smashing through bones? He thought of all the faces of all the men and women and children who had ever come within the narrow circle of his small life. He saw them clearly, and a sneer of scorn seemed to be upon the lips of all, and their eyes were blank with indifference. If the men in the branch bank where he had served so long could have heard of his fall, they would only smile and shrug their shoulders and declare that a house dog should not try to be a wild wolf! That was what they would say, and having said it they would forget him. However, they would never know. All that the world would hear was that an obscure young man who called himself Allan Vincent had perished while attempting to liberate an outlaw from the jail.
He looked still further. He saw his grave dug. He saw his body carried unhonored to the place and lowered into the eternal cold and wet and darkness of the pit. But with that, the first warm glow of light came across his mind. For beside his grave there would be at least one sincere mourner, and that would be the girl with tears in her eyes and sorrow in her heart for she would know by the very act of his last moment of life that he had not willingly betrayed poor Jim.