by Max Brand
“Twenty thousand!” said Sam Buttrick, whose brute mind had paused to grasp only one particle of this statement. “Twenty thousand for news!”
“That ain’t nothin’,” answered ‘Lefty’ Bill. “Mostly the boys have to pony up with a quarter to a third of everything they haul down to the gents inside that furnish the lay to ’em.”
“They got no cash,” responded Harry Christopher scornfully. “Them poor, driveling fools is workin’ for the sake of the fun in it, not for the cash. Take one of them bums like Twister Matthews or Lew Shawney that’s talked about so much — what do they get out of their work? Just enough to keep ’em with a taste of high life in their mouths, that’s all. They’re hired, you might say, by the skunks that lay back and take none of the chances. I’ll show you how they work it. Suppose that I’m on the inside of an office. I know about a big money shipment. Well, I send out to a bird like this Twister or Lew, and they say, ‘Here — you take half and gimme half, and we’ll call it quits. I’ll take my share after you’ve pulled down the stuff.’”
“How,” asked Buttrick, rubbing the back of his hand over the bruised and flattened button which served him as a nose, “how can the gents on the inside be sure that the gents like us, after we got our paws on the coin would live up to our promise and give ’em a half?”
“Because,” said Harry Christopher promptly, “the minute that one of ’em was double crossed, the word would spread around among the whole of the gents that handle coin, that Twister, say, is crooked. The minute that that news gets around, Twister couldn’t get enough real news about shipments and such things to be worth five cents. He might as well go out of business. But as I was sayin’, most of the boys have to do business on credit. They say: ‘Tell me where to pick up fifty thousand and I’ll give you half.’ But that ain’t my way. I pick out a gent that needs coin bad and that knows what I need to know. I wait till his rent comes due, and his kids needs clothes, and his wife is down sick. That’s what I wait for. Then I slip around to him and I say: ‘Kid, all you got to do is to open your trap and say six words; an’ I’ll pay you a thousand a word. Are you on?’ That’s all there is to it. Simple, if you know how to work it!”
“Suppose they won’t kick through?” asked Sam Buttrick, his jaw dropping, so profound was his interest in the details of these criminal maneuvers which were beyond the ken of his brute mind.
“If they won’t kick through, try somebody else that might know. If you can’t get somebody else, you go back to the first gent. His doc has told him by this time that his wife had ought to have a trip to Florida for the winter. You know that line? You take him and say: Ten thousand cash I Here it is in my hand I’”
“That always gets ’em?” muttered Buttrick.
“I ain’t ever failed,” answered the chief sneeringly.
“Well,” said Lefty suddenly, “where do we get at the train?”
“Don’t rush,” said the captain with the same tone of contempt. “I got all the details worked out. But I want you all here before I tell ’em to you. Where’s the kid?”
“Al went for a walk, I think,” said Jim.
“I told him to keep close,” said the captain. “What’n the devil does he mean by leavin’ the place?”
“I dunno,” said Jim. “I guess he got sort of restless. He’ll be careful.”
“He dunno enough to be careful,” put in Hank — the first word he had spoken in an hour.
“He dunno enough to do. nothin’!” responded Buttrick. “He don’t look much to me — that kid.”
“What he’s doin’ with you, Harry,” said Lefty Bill, “beats us all, and that’s flat. Jim is a good kid, and I suppose that Al Vincent is his friend, but what Al can do that figures him in with us, I dunno!”
“He rides,” said Hank, “like an old woman on a plow hoss. He can’t shoot none. He can’t talk none. He don’t know nothin’. He acts like a boob and dog-gone me if I don’t think that he is a boob!”
“What’s the word, chief?” asked Buttrick.
“When the time comes,” said the chief, “you’ll see him come through well enough. At least, he’s a strong man.”
“Lemme work two minutes alone on that kid,” said Buttrick sneeringly, “an’ I’ll mash his face in for him. That’s what I think about him bein’ strong. I don’t worry about his strength!”
“You’ve heard what he’s done?”
“I don’t give a dam about hearin’. I care about seein’. I’ve heard a lot of queer things since I come West, but I ain’t seen much that was worth seein’. Let the kid show.”
Hank and Lefty Bill nodded their heads and the chief, after a survey of their faces, nodded likewise.
“There’s the kid now,” he said. “I can hear him whistlin’. Sam, you think that you can handle the kid. Well, we’ll leave you in here alone with him. You do your best. But, mind you, don’t try no gun play or knife play, because if you do, though you might kill the kid, I’ll tell you sure that he’ll kill you, too, before he’s ended. He can’t be stopped!”
He uttered this last warning in a tone so solemn that all were impressed; and even Sam Buttrick seemed a little abashed.
“It ain’t because I doubt your judgment that I doubt the kid—” he began.
But Christopher shook his head in token that he wanted to hear no more. He had seen the doubts of his crew concerning young Al Vincent, as the latter called himself, growing darker and darker from day to day, and he knew that there was only on© thing to do, and that was to let the “kid” fight his way into some sort of recognition.
“You’ve made your choice,” he said darkly to Buttrick. “You’re forty pounds heavier than the kid. You’ve had your turn in the ring. You ought to be able to handle him easy. And you say that all you want is a chance at him. Well, Sam, you get your chance. We’re goin’ out, all of us. We’ll wait outside for ten minutes. That ought to be long enough for you and him to settle up your troubles. So long!”
With that, he turned upon his heel and left the place and the others trooped out after him. They passed Allan nearing the house, waved to him, and watched him go on with that peculiar effortless, ground-covering stride which was typical of him when he walked.
When he had disappeared into the shack, they took up a position to the windward of the place and waited. With the wind combing through the old building, it carried to them, in general, all the noises which sounded from the interior. Waiting there, they were.not long in hearing the trouble begin.
The front door had scarcely slammed behind the “kid” before the great, harsh voice of Sam Buttrick began to bellow.
“That won’t last long,” said Jim Jones to the others. “And if you want Sam to come out of this with a whole skin, you’d better step back there and be ready to bear a hand!”
The chief, however, merely raised a hand for silence. The others were lending all of their attention to the scene within the house of which they could not pick up, however, any intelligible words, but only the throaty roars of Sam Buttrick and, after these, the mere murmurs of Vincent Allan in response. This continued through a long two or three minutes, then stopped.
“Something’s happened,” said Lefty Bill. “Let’s go in and see!”
“We’ll stay here,” said Harry Christopher. “We promised Sam that he could have ten minutes, and we’ll give him all of that time.”
“Whatever’s happened is wound up already,” said Jim Jones. “And it lasted so dog-gone short that I figure it must of been knife work, chief. Sam has slipped his knife into the ribs of the kid — and if he has—”
“Stay where you are,” said the chief sternly. “If I got the say in this company still, you’ll all stay put right where you are. If Al couldn’t stave off Buttrick — we don’t want him with us. If he was fool enough to get knifed, we’ll bury him all decent and proper, but there ain’t goin’ to be no hand laid on Sam. We invited him free and easy to step into this fight. He ain’t goin’ to collect no bad conseq
uences. That’s flat and that’s final!”
There was no gainsaying Harry Christopher in such a black humor. In his heart of hearts, Jim Jones suspected that the chief had never forgiven Allan for the first encounter between them when, it might be said, Allan had called the former’s bluff. At any rate, they waited now in the rear of the shack until the whole length of the ten minutes had elapsed — and like an eternity it seemed to Jim Jones before the signal was given. Then he was in the shack in a trice with Lefty Bill at his heels and the others following hard.
What he saw was a scene peaceful enough. The huge form of Sam Buttrick lay stretched upon the floor and beside him kneeled the “kid,” busily bathing his face and his breast with cold water and then fanning him vigorously with an old magazine.
“Sam stumbled and hit his chin on the floor,” said Allan mildly, and looked gravely up to the faces of the others.
They leaned, astonished. There was a large purplish welt along the side of Sam’s jaw. There was a lump on the back of his head. And across the knuckles of the right hand of Allan there was a flush of red.
Here Sam opened his eyes suddenly, gasped, choked, and then swayed to his feet. With one hand, strong as rock, Allan caught him under the pit of the arm and supported the reeling form.
“I was telling them,” said Allan gravely and loudly, “how you stumbled and hit your chin on the floor. You understand, Sam?”
Some of the cloud of pain, fury, and astonishment cleared from the swollen face of Sam Buttrick.
“Mighty queer thing,” said Sam Buttrick, now recovering rapidly. “Caught my toe on a board on this fool floor and come down slam on my chin. Darn queer. Never had it happen to me before.”
So saying, he glared about him at the circle of listeners, and they dared not grin in return.
“Looks kind of funny, though,” whispered Lefty Bill a little later, “how a floor could of hit him on the jaw and the back of the head at the same time!”
15. THE LETTERS FROM AL
THE PARTNERSHIP OF Walter Jardine and Elias Johnston had become indissoluble, for having been friends and co-helpers in many triumphs, they were now riveted together by the disgrace of a failure which involved them both. Having lived on a mountain top of glory for many years, they were now brought down to the dust of the commonplace and surrounded by the amusement and the shrugged shoulders of those who had always stood in awe of them.
Lesser men would have sped away from El Ridal and gone to distant parts of the country where men did not know their shame. Rasher men would have plunged headlong onto the trail of Allan. Indeed, this was the advice of Jardine, but Elias Johnston would not hear of it.
“If it was this tenderfoot himself and just him,” he said, “I’d be for trailin’ him. But it ain’t him. He’s throwed in with Jim Jones and Jones is with Christopher. Even if we get the trail of Al Vincent, it would only lead us into the Christopher gang.”
“What could be better?” said Jardine.
“I can think of better ways of dying,” said Elias Johnston. “We might drop three or four of ’em, but they’d be sure to get us in the long run.”
“What’ll we do, then?”
“Set right here in El Ridal.”
“And hatch a lot of laughter,” said Jardine. “I’ll be doin’ a killin’ if this here keeps up much longer. That old fool Carpenter laughed plumb in my face to- day.”
“You won’t do no killin’,” said Johnston. “I say that we’ll set right here and wait.”
“For what?” said Jardine.
Johnston became a Socrates. He sat up on the edge of his chair and jabbed his questions at his companion briefly, with a pointing forefinger to give them emphasis.
“How did young Al come here?”
“On a hoss, I suppose.”
“He’ll come back on a hoss, too. But who brought him here?”
“Why, the girl, I guess.”
“All right, what happened?”
“You ought to know.”
“I’m askin’ you.”
“Words is cheap. He come here and grabbed Jim Jones while Jim was tryin’ to get in to see his sister.”
“Why did he do that?”
“To get the name of it and the coin, of course.”
“What did he do afterward?”
Jardine grew purple. “I ain’t goin’ into that.”
“Did he get Jones out of jail after he’d put him in?”
“He sure enough did.”
“What make him do it?”
“I dunno. I ain’t no prophet, and I can’t read the minds of fools!”
“He was a fool to do it, then?”
“He was.”
“He changed his mind about keepin’ Jones in jail and gettin’ the reward?”
“Sure. It looked that way, don’t it?”
“What makes a fool out of a man?”
“Booze, I say—”
“Booze — right! Right! What next?”
“Women?”
“Right ag’in. You got a head on your shoulders, Walt. Well, then, was Al drinkin’ while he was in town?”
“Not that I heard about.”
“Did he have a breath when he come to tackle us at the jail?”
“The dam smooth-talkin’ hypocrite — no!”
“Then booze didn’t make no fool out of him, but women did.”
“Maybe that follers.”
“Who was the woman?”
“You mean — Frances Jones — Jim’s sister?”
“I mean her, I guess.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Is she pretty?”
“Like a picture.”
“Is she dog-gone nice to talk to?”
“She sure is.”
“Well, then, she’s the kind that makes fools out of men. Look here. Who would Al please by settin’ Jim free?”
“Jim and his sister, I guess.”
“He done it to please the girl, then.
“I guess so.”
“Then he’s lost his head about her.
“Maybe so.”
“If he’s lost his head about her, will he stay away from her?
“I guess not”
“Where is she now?”
“Right here in El Ridal, I guess.”
“Then will he come right back here to El Ridal?”
“Not unless he’s a fool.”
“We’ve already pretty nigh proved that he’s a fool, ain’t we?”
There was an exclamation from Jardine. “You mean that we hang about and watch the girl.”
“She’s our bait, old son. We watch her and we catch the sucker!”
“How’ll we do it?”
“Go right to the hotel and put up there. If folks talk, let ’em talk. We’ll watch her and we’ll watch her mail.”
“How can we do that?”
“When does the mail train come in?”
“Once a day, about eight o’clock, evening.”
“Soon as it’s sorted, is the mail that goes to the hotel took up there?”
“Sure.”
“What happens to it?”
“It’s brought around and put under the door of the rooms.”
“Well, son, when mail comes for Frank Jones, we’ll be handy around to get it before she does. Ain’t that sense? And you can lay to it that some of that mail will be comin’ from young Al!”
Upon these suggestions Walter Jardine agreed to act, and the two of them promptly rented a room in the hotel where they lived very quietly, letting it be known that they were getting ready to do some trapping among the mountains. They had two occupations. One was to follow Frank Jones at a distance every day, no matter where she went or what she did. One was to watch the evening mail and see what letters came for the girl.
It was a program simple to execute. There was no more suspicion in Frank than there might have been in a child. She lived very quietly and, apparently, contentedly in El Ridal. In the day she rode her pinto
through the hills in the morning and in the afternoon she visited friends in the town, for she had not been there three days before she knew every one in the place. At night, she went to bed early. And when she rode out, Johnston or Jardine were sure to pick her up shortly after she left the town and trail quietly behind her. At night, too, when the mail came in, and when it was distributed to the doors of the guests in the hotel, though the proprietor who executed this mission usually rapped at the doors, he never disturbed the girl. Her mail was left pushed half through the crack beneath the door, and here Elias Johnston, light-footed as a gliding snake, came to steal it and carry it away to his room. There they steamed open the flap and slipped out the folded sheets which were contained.
There were many letters, after the first few days, and nearly all of them were from girlhood friends who lived in the home country of Frances. Now and again they came across the stiff and stilted letter of some youth from the same district, someone far more eloquent with a quirt or a rope than with a pen. Through these labored scrawls they waded laboriously, and night after night, having completed their tasks, they carried the letters back, having carefully resealed them, and replaced them beneath the door of her room.
Both of them had moral scruples. But Elias Johnston hit upon a bit of sophistry which eased their consciences.
“What we’re doin’,” he said, “is to try to keep her away from this gent. It ain’t nothin’ in our pockets but trouble. But it means maybe that we’ll be able to keep her from bein’ foolish with a crook. That’s the only way to look at it.”
Here was a sufficient excuse to put them both entirely at their ease, and when the haul came, it could be relished with an undiminished joy. There was nothing remarkable about the envelope except the almost feminine precision and delicacy with which the address was written. So carefully drawn were the letters that all character disappeared from them.