Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  He had simply gone mad and become a destroyer for a moment. If-any one had told him that he had really done nothing vitally wrong, he would have been the most astonished man in the world, and the most disbelieving. If any one had told him as a matter of fact that his very action had been based only upon a greater devotion to another than a devotion to himself, he would have thought that they spoke out of pity.

  And he did not want pity. He wanted only to face the penalty and pay the price. The world said that he was very bad; he was much too simple to ever dream of denying the world’s verdict. What he wished most of all was to have the business over with, pay that debt, and pass to the endless silence after having seen only one thing — and that was the face of Frances.

  There she was in the corner of the courtroom, wonderfully pale, with great still eyes fixed upon him. She had a look, somehow, as though some one had been beating her and as though the ache of the pain were still in her flesh and in her heart. Why she should have come there he could not tell. At least it must mean that Jim was better. He paused in the aisle opposite her and he asked her with his lips; “Jim?”

  “Better!” said the pale lips of Frances. And then what a smile came on her face. Another man would have seen pity and tenderness and the whole expression of a great, warm heart in that smile, but Allan, as he went on, was only saying to himself: “Having Jim get well will make her mighty happy. How she loves him!”

  In the jail Elias Johnston sat down in the cell beside him. “Al,” he said, “why didn’t you make a fight of it?”

  “Why,” said Allan, “you could see that people knew I deserved what I have got.”

  “D’you know something?” said Johnston. “What?”

  “I think you’d be ashamed to take the present of your life from the governor if you knowed that the majority was agin’ you. But wait till to-morrow. The governor will have time to telegraph.”

  But the governor did not telegraph. In due time a letter arrived. It informed the sheriff that the governor had perused the letter of that official with the most intense interest. But, having reviewed all the facts of the case, he could not but feel that the sentence was justified and that he did not see any way in which he could reverse the opinion of so excellent a judge and citizen as Herbert Thomas in order to set at liberty a man slayer. The sentence would stand.

  The sheriff balled the letter into a small knot and hurled it through the window.

  “He’s reviewed the facts!” groaned the sheriff. “He’s reviewed ’em in a newspaper, and he’s let it go at that!”

  Then he forced himself in to tell Vincent Allan. But all that Allan would say was: “You see? You’re too good-natured, Elias, to see that the others are right.”

  They took Allan to the penitentiary to wait for his execution. But before he left, Frances came to him, and Johnston broke sundry scores of rules in order that she might go into the cell of the prisoner.

  “Do you know what has happened?” she asked. “Something good about Jim?” he answered, studying her shining face.

  “He’s pardoned — freely pardoned for everything. The law has no claim on him now!”

  “God bless old Jim. I knew that things would turn out well with him.”

  “But you, Al! Oh, the governor is a blind man.” “Not blind, Frank. He simply sees the truth about me. I deserve what’s coming.”

  “But what have you done, except to help Jim and to help me?”

  He shook his head and smiled down at her.

  “Al, you make me mad!” she cried, stamping. “As if you knew something mysterious about yourself that was wicked and terrible. Al, don’t you see that what they ought to do is to — to”

  “What, Frank?”

  “Put a crown on your head and a pair of wings on your shoulders. You’re — you’re simply too good for the world, that’s what!”

  He smiled at this jest and then murmured: Frank, you re so angry with me that you have tears in your eyes. I’ll call myself as good as you wish, if it’ll make you any happier.”

  “Oh,” said she, “What can be done with you?”

  “Nothing except what they intend to do.”

  She caught him by both shoulders and looked him squarely in the face, while great tears rose brightly in her eyes and then ran over.

  “In the name of Heaven, Frank, what’s wrong?”

  “Can’t you see?”

  “That you’re troubled, Frank. I wish there were something that I could do—”

  “You? Something that you could do? You could do everything!”

  “What?”

  She turned from him and blindly found the sheriff’s arm. And he led her into the outer office and bodily threw out two men who were waiting there to see him. Then he put her in a chair

  “Sit right still and have a cry,” said Johnston. “It’ll do you good!”

  “Was there ever such a man?” sobbed Frances Jones.

  “There never was,” agreed the scowling sheriff.

  “I — I hate him!” said Frances.

  “So do I,” said Johnston.

  “I wish I’d never seen him!”

  “So do I,” said the sheriff.

  “He’ll never understand!”

  “Never,” agreed the sheriff.

  Here the tears came in such floods that she rocked herself back and forth in her chair. It was a long time, and two of the sheriff’s capacious handkerchiefs had been soaked before she was able to speak at last.

  “What shall I do?” she said huskily.

  “God knows!” said the sheriff.

  She stood up and before the mirror she touched at her hat to put it straight and at her face to remove the tear stains. Then, at the door, she rested her forehead against her arm and her arm against the wall.

  “Will you try to tell him?” she said brokenly.

  “I’ll do my best,” said the sheriff humbly.

  After she had left he went back to Allan. “Al,” he said somberly, “you’re a first-class fool.”

  Allan grew judicious and then nodded. “I suppose I am,” said he.

  “Is that what makes you look sort of sad, right now?” continued the new-made man of the law.

  “No,” admitted the prisoner. “It was quite another matter. It was quite another person, in fact.”

  At this the sheriff suddenly sighed. “She’s got the looks,” he said. “And she’s got the heart. Dog-gone me if she ain’t a fine woman!”

  Allan smiled faintly. It was such a small way of expressing a great truth, he thought!

  “She asked me to tell you something that you was too wooden-headed to understand when she was here.”

  “Ah?”

  “She loves you, Al!”

  It brought Allan stiffly to his feet, staring. He stood with a tranced face as though light had fallen upon him from heaven.

  Then the light went out as suddenly as it had come. He sank down again on the cot.

  “What’s wrong?” asked the sheriff curiously.

  “Why,” said the prisoner, “it’s like her, isn’t it? She wanted to make me happy. And so she asked you to tell me that. Well, it did make me happy for a moment. Until I understood.”

  “Understood what?”

  “That they’re only so many words. But I care all the more for her because she even thought of having you tell me that lie.”

  “Lie?” said the sheriff.

  He stared wildly around him. Then, with a groan, he rushed from the cell and returned to his office. He could be heard for a long time afterward stamping up and down the floor, and muttering all the while.

  33. COMPLETELY REFORMED

  “A YOUNG LADY,” began the secretary.

  “About five feet five?” said the governor.

  “Yes,” said the secretary.

  “Blond, curly hair?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Fine blue eyes?”

  “Quite so, sir.”

  “Pretty as the devil?”

 
; “Prettier than that, even!”

  “I know what she wants. She wants to see me about young Vincent Allan.”

  “Ah!” sighed the secretary. “I suppose”

  “Exactly. The law has to take its course. There is a time — I’ll not go through it all again! Besides, the people have expressed their opinion.”

  “Certainly, sir. I’ll tell her that you cannot see her.”

  “She’s probably from a newspaper,” said the governor. “Put it gently. You never can tell”

  The secretary left in deepest thought. How one with such power to please a girl with such a face could overlook his opportunities he could not understand. But the ways of the great were often beyond and above his ken. He went back to Frances Jones and told her, gloomily, with his glance on the floor, that the governor was deeply engaged and regretted that he could not see her.

  There was a sigh. He could not help looking up, and the sad eyes took hold on him again.

  “There’s no way?” she murmured.

  “I’m very sorry. I’m afraid not.”

  “I only have two days left.”

  “I understand.”

  All at once she stamped and tossed her head. “There has to be a way!” she said, and slipped from the room.

  He was so alarmed that he followed her to the door and saw her going out to the street. Then he went back to sit with his hands folded, dreaming dreams of blue eyes and trembling smiles; and now and again heaved a long, mournful sigh.

  As for Frances, she had turned at the door and walked straight back again and up the hall to the door which bore the dignified sign: “Private.” The knob of that door she turned and stepped briskly inside. The governor looked up, saw her, and groaned.

  “My dear young lady “ he began.

  “It ain’t going to do,” she said. “You’ve got to talk to me.” He noted the “ain’t” with great relief. Certainly she had not come from a newspaper. And with that, he became firm. “I am really too busy to talk with you,” he said. “You were not too busy to have your heels on the desk and your eyes out the window,” said she.

  The governor flushed. “Young lady “ said he.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s life and death,” she said. “You got to listen.”

  “I’m very sorry,” said he, “but my time belongs to the State, my dear girl, and not to individuals.”

  “That sounds nice. I dunno what it quite means,” said she, and with that she turned the key in the big lock and sent the bolt snapping home. The governor leaped from his chair. “What? What?” he breathed. “Give me the key.” She slipped past him to the window. “I’ll throw it out if I have to,” she said.

  “This is an abuse of the rights of woman,” he declared. “Sir,” said Frances, “I only want five minutes.” “Five damnations!” said the governor under his breath. Then he drew out his watch and placed it on the desk.

  “You may have five minutes,” he said. “Do anything you wish to, except cry. Do you understand?”

  “They’s only one man in the world that’s ever made me cry,” said she.

  “And who is that?” he asked, interested in spite of himself by this personal touch. “Your father and his switch?” “Vincent Allan.”

  “Ah?” said the governor. “He has made you suffer, then? I thought that you came for another reason. But surely you must know that he is about to suffer the full penalty for all his crimes!”

  “He’s never committed a crime.”

  The governor groaned. “I knew it would be this,” he said. “He’s killed half a dozen men. But pass that by. He has virtues, you’ll say. He can ride a horse and he dances well, eh?” “I’ve come to tell you the whole truth about him. He joined Harry Christopher because my brother, Jim Jones, was with Christopher.”

  “You are Jim’s sister, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, well! I’m glad that it was in my power to help Jim. After all, you see that justice is merciful when it can be.”

  “If Jim was taken ten times over,” she said firmly, “you could put all his goodness into Al and there’d still be so much room that it would rattle.”

  “Not exactly a sisterly speech.”

  “I ain’t here to be sisterly. I’m here to talk facts. I say that what Al done was to join Christopher because of Jim. He busted the law first to save Jim from prison. You know that.”

  “I remember,” said the governor, his mind going back rather dimly over the record of the criminal.

  “Then he rode with Christopher, and he was there when the train was held up. What he did was just to line up one carload of passengers while Jim went through them.”

  “I can’t withdraw my pardon of your brother even if you wish me to.”

  “I say that Al didn’t shoot the guard. Tom Morris did, and ten men could swear to it, if they’d been asked to talk. Afterward, there’s nothing against Al. He saved Bill Tucker from being’-murdered. That was all.”

  “This man Tucker,” said the governor, “has been writing letters — it seems an oddly confused case. But — justice must take her course. We must have examples, even if they are cruel ones.”

  “Those are the facts. Do they sound wrong?”

  “Justice—” began the governor.

  She dropped on her knees in front of him.

  “Oh, sir,” she said, “if you could see poor All He’s as simple as a boy. Because people have been calling him a bad man, he’s begun to believe it. He won’t even believe — he won’t even believe — that I love him!”

  The governor scratched his chin. He was beginning to grow nervous, for, after all, the eyes were exceedingly big and exceedingly blue. And there was not a tear in them, only a desperate eagerness. Besides, he was not altogether politician. He was a man with core of the heart of a man. Also, he had a child of his own.

  So, presently, he leaned and took Frances beneath the arms and raised her and led her to the window, and let the light shine into her eyes.

  “Why, my dear,” said the governor, “I believe that there may have been a mistake.”

  And the girl sobbed suddenly: “Thank God that you are a good man — like Al — like Al. He would be like this!”

  “It will cost me thirty thousand votes,” said the governor.

  “It will make you happy,” said she.

  “And, after all,” said the governor, “that is the main thing.

  However, I wish that my son could meet “ He coughed.

  “Everything you wish shall be done!” said he.

  * * * * *

  The papers raged for three weeks. The editorial writers exhausted the vials of their sarcasm. But the governor had still two years to reign, and several things happened in the case of Vincent Allan before the two years ended.

  In the first year he married. In the second year he became a father. In the same year, as a deputy sheriff under one Elias Johnston, he went on the trail which ended in the capture of “Twister” Joe Matthews. That was a story all in itself.

  At any rate, public opinion began to change very fast, and when the governor ran again, his campaign managers could point to a prospering little ranch among the mountains near El Ridal, and call their political star a prophet.

  The ridiculous part of it was that while everyone believed that Vincent Allan had completely reformed, they were just as convinced that he had at one time been a very bad man. He himself, of course, believed it more firmly than ever. And he, like the others, waited in a daily dread lest the evil nature should break out and reassert itself. That fear gave a certain grave sorrow and dignity to his face and to his manner.

  There were only two people who understood and did not go in some awe of the gentle, kindly fellow. One was the sheriff, Elias Johnston, who had paid with a broken right hand for one of the things he knew about Allan. The other was Allan’s wife. These two refused to be overawed. And when he sometimes talked seriously of his sins and prayed that they would not reappear in their child, Johnst
on and Frances would look at one another and smile behind their hands.

  But they never could convince Allan that he had not been a dissolute and abandoned character. When they strove to argue with him, he would smile sadly and say nothing in reply, as though he knew that they were merely trying to make him happy, and that they were not speaking their true convictions at all.

  Indeed, he would never quite believe that Frances loved him because he was so very much beneath her in his own estimation; he simply felt that she had married him from pity.

  But, after all, if there were a shadow on their home, it was only enough to make the real happiness seem more delightful and more golden bright.

  THE END

  The Whispering Outlaw (1924)

  OR, THE WHISPERER OF THE WILDERNESS

  CONTENTS

  I. PURSUIT

  II. SCALING THE CLIFF

  III. A MYSTERIOUS SCHEMER

  IV. FACING THE WHISPERER

  V. TIRRIT TALKS

  VI. IN THE CLEARING

  VIII. LISTENING

  VIII. NO MYSTERY

  IX.— “THE FERRET” TALKS

  X. BORGEN ACCUSED

  XI. CHAMPION’S FATE

  XII. KENWORTHY’S MOVE

  XIII. MR. GLENHOLLEN

  XIV. IN THE GARDEN

  XV. PAYING THE PENALTY

  XVI. THE WHISPERER’S TRAIL

  XVII. THE UNWANTED ESCORT

  XVIII. THE ENCHANTED SPOT

  XIX. A KILLING

  XX. JEREMY SAYLOR

  XXI. LAUGHED AT

  XXII. INSTRUCTIONS

  XXIII. AT THE COTTAGE

  XXIV. THE TRAP

  XXV. THE LAST KILLING

  XXVI. RANKIN’S DISCOVERY

  XXVII. DOUBLY PROUD

  XXVIII. A HERO