Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  He patted the horse’s mane.

  “But how,” exclaimed the robber, unable to suppress the cry, “how’d you know that I’ll come riding back here inside of four weeks when I got your hoss and your money to use for my own? What makes you trust me, stranger?”

  There was another little pause; and this time, when the voices ceased, they could hear a coyote wailing faint and far upon the very horizon of sounds.

  “I’m a judge of men,” said the stranger at length. “I look at a gent’s face, and then I know what to expect out of him. I know what to expect out of you, Borgen, and I know that you’ll play square with me!”

  IV. FACING THE WHISPERER

  BORGEN HAD NOT known that he was a man so esteemed among the brethren who lived outside of the law, but everywhere he went he and his plan were well received; from Champion, that agile little black-eyed ferret of a man, famous for a hundred robberies, to big, lumbering Anson, celebrated for the killing of the great “Kid” Jennings, all the men who were listed to him by the nameless fellow in the night listened to his plan with the keenest interest, and, without an exception, they subscribed their strength.

  Doran summed up their opinion: “This here is what we been needing. It’s an age of combinations, ain’t it? There’s corporations for everything. And here we start up our corporation, too. Who in the devil can this gent be? Maybe it’s old Thomas? By the heavens, I’ll bet it’s him. He was turned loose from prison about three months back!”

  Every one of the elected, in fact, had an opinion as to the identity of the stranger, but Lew Borgen was past guessing. He hardly cared, for as he progressed from place to place, a new and greater thought had come to him. Suppose that he were to make this nameless progenitor of the scheme stay outside of the workings of the plan? Suppose that he, Lew Borgen, were to constitute himself the unseen director of crime and be the lieutenant to himself? For one thing, he would be then the recipient of five shares — two for himself and three for the man who did not exist. In order to carry on his scheme safely, he had only, it seemed, to shoot down the originator of the scheme at their second meeting. In that fashion he would himself become the fountain head of the work. There would be the great advantage that while so much glory would go to the phantom, all the blame would also go to the invisible idea of a man who no longer existed, and Lew Borgen, as the mere transmitter of orders, could not be attacked for the failures.

  The more he contemplated that position, the more ideal it seemed to him, and when at length he approached the scene of the rendezvous, his mind was fully determined. He waited among the neighboring hills until the darkness had fallen thick and black across the sky. Then he left his horse behind him — that same wiry little goat of a horse which had turned out to be worth all the praise which “The Whisperer” had bestowed upon it — and started forward on foot, after stripping off his riding boots and drawing upon his feet soft and soundless moccasins. It would go hard indeed if, so equipped, he could not steal upon his man unseen and unheard. To guide his approach, there flared the camp fire of The Whisperer upon the hilltop!

  What a fool yonder schemer was, for all of his brains!

  “That,” said Lew Borgen to himself, “is the trouble with all these here brainy gents. They can do a pile of thinking, but that lets ’em out. They ain’t no good at working out the details. Me, I’m different!”

  Borgen saw himself already rich. Within a year of this systematic plunder, he would be able to retire with his gains to some far-off quiet place.

  He went onward, crouched low, the revolver ready in his right hand, sometimes steadying himself with his left hand against the boulders over which he was passing. Now and again he paused to study the fire in front of him. There were a number of wavering shadows around it, some of them were rocks, and one must come from the form of the man of the night.

  “Steady, Borgen,” said a terrible and familiar murmur behind him. “Steady, man. If you turn, I shoot.”

  Borgen straightened himself by jerks until he was erect. His blood was racing, and yet he was cold from head to foot. In the same jerky fashion he began to realize what he had done — how he had repaid the generous kindness of his benefactor with an attempted treason — a most foul murder! He waited for his death. He wanted to whirl and attempt to fight it out, but the steadiness of that soft voice had made it impossible for him to stir, it seemed. He was chained to the spot.

  “Stranger,” he started to say in a husky voice.

  “Be quiet, Borgen,” said The Whisperer. “I understand. This is what I expected. This is what I wanted you to do. Do you think I’d have any value or any respect for you, if you’d just gone blindly ahead doing what I told you to do? You’d of been a fool, then, not a man. Them that think — them that keep trying to improve themselves and their chances — them are the kind of men that I want around me. The way you laid in them moccasins — that showed foresight, Borgen. I sure admired to see that!”

  Borgen dropped his gun to the ground and then turned halfway around; finally he turned again and faced The Whisperer for the first time.

  “It’s all right,” said the latter. “I don’t aim to be seen by many folks, but you and me are going to meet a thousand times, and here’s where you might as well begin to get used to me.”

  Borgen grunted. He had not yet made out what was in store for him; but he was certain that he was being tantalized with a cruel irony, and that in the end the pellet of lead must crash through his brain. In the meantime, he stared until his eyes ached at the figure before him. He saw a man not more than middle height, with shoulders so exceptionally wide that he seemed rather short. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, his face was a black shadow of a mask, and for the rest, there was nothing to distinguish him from a hundred other cow-punchers. He was not Thomas, that was certain; neither was he half a dozen of the other guesses which had been made about his identity.

  “Light a cigarette,” said The Whisperer. “Then we can start in and talk free and easy.”

  He added: “But first pick up your gun and slide it into the holster. Only — after it’s in there, don’t disturb it none, Borgen!”

  Borgen obeyed. He noted with a grim amazement that the man before him had sheathed his own weapon and did not bother to draw it again while Borgen raised his own. But the hand of The Whisperer hung close to the butt of his Colt, and it seemed to Borgen that there was power in that dangling hand to strike him with a thunderbolt. Slowly, slowly he raised his gun; and at last he pushed it harmlessly home in the holster just as he had been ordered. In that brief instant he had accepted the superiority of The Whisperer forever, and it had become impossible for him to strike in his own behalf. He was subdued utterly.

  He rolled his smoke, and The Whisperer did the same, with such adroitness that he had scratched his match before the other had completed his manufacture. Lew Borgen began to study his chief by the light of the match. It burned blue till the sulphur was gone, then the clear yellow flame sprang out and showed The Whisperer with dazzling clearness against the velvet black of the night. He seemed even broader of shoulders, more wedgelike in build than he had been in the dark. His hands were slender. His face was completely hidden behind the black mask. But between the side of the mask and the crown of his hat there was a curl or two exposed, of brilliant red hair.

  The heart of Lew Borgen leaped. It was “Red” Murray, then! No, he decided an instant later, it could not be the celebrated Red. That worthy was a full two inches taller than The Whisperer. Neither was Red capable of a scheme of such fine proportions. Neither would he have been able to read another man’s mind as The Whisperer had truly read the mind of Lew.

  “It worked out like a charm,” said The Whisperer in that same voice, which was indeed not a whisper at all, but a barely audible enunciation. It was hardly as penetrating as a whisper; it lacked the sibilant sharpness of the latter, which carries far, even though the words are not audible.

  “It worked out like a charm, Lew. You got them all
in line, I see.”

  “How the devil do you know that?” blurted out Lew, stung into speech by his impatience. For such omniscience was like a weight upon his soul.

  “Why,” explained the leader, “that ain’t hard to make out. There’s nothing spooky about me, Lew. I knew my scheme had worked out, because otherwise, you wouldn’t of come back to murder me on account of it. When I seen you sneaking up the hillside, I knowed right off that you was paying me a mighty big compliment without being right sure of it yourself!”

  The other shrugged his shoulders. This explanation had at first seemed to simplify matters a great deal and to explain everything, but the more he pondered upon it the more worthy of thought it seemed to him. Such cleverness was even more than mysterious — it was a terrible thing.

  “You was watching for me to come at you — from behind?” he growled out, forcing out the words of his shame.

  “Oh, I knowed where you’d come,” said the other calmly. “They ain’t no doubt that a gent has to try to improve himself when he gets a chance, and here was a chance for you to get rich quick. With the cream of the plunder rolling in, and you getting five shares out of eighteen or twenty”

  Lew Borgen was crushed to the very ground; this seemed to give proof that the other had actually the power to step into the minds of others. For had that not been the very inner thought of Lew when he planned the assassination of his chief?

  “What name do I call you by?” he asked suddenly.

  “Whatever you want. I’d rather stay without a name.”

  “Well, then, d’you mean to say that you still want me — after all of this — to stay on as your — lieutenant?”

  “Of course,” said The Whisperer. “Look here, Borgen, ain’t it better the way it is? Now you know a little more about me than you used to. If I took another gent, I’d have to go through all of this again. It’d take time, and it’d be trouble. I hate work, Borgen. I sure hate laboring!”

  Borgen drew a long, slow breath. He began to feel that he had entered the service of the devil indeed; and he would just as soon have attacked Satan in person as to have raised a hand, after that instant, against The Whisperer. Yet, when he tried to explain it to himself, he had to admit that the latter had neither drawn a gun, fired a shot to demonstrate his skill, nor even raised his voice with threats. It was odd, indeed. But Borgen felt as though he had come from facing cannon when he left The Whisperer that night.

  V. TIRRIT TALKS

  THERE WAS NO tidal wave of crime, of murder, and robbery. Here and there, separated at distances of five hundred or even a thousand miles, crimes were committed which were carefully prepared with a painful and laborious hand; and then they were executed in an instant by one or two bold spirits who dashed into a town, did the work for which they had been appointed, and sped away again. Sometimes they struck at night; but sometimes they shot in and out upon their mission in the daylight, securely masked. No one could say that there was a single method in these crimes, for each of them was committed in a totally different fashion, having been planned by a totally different head.

  But for six months nothing was known to the public, or, for that matter, to the busy police themselves. They simply were aware that there were more crimes this year. There are always crimes which go undetected, for a time, at least; and the police are not impatient. They endure a world of abuse and contempt, but when the time comes, they do their work and go on without cheering. They have no bands and battle flags to raise their spirits high for their struggles, but each man goes over the top by himself, in the dark of the night. The police, then, knew that there was a slight increase in the number of unpunished crimes, but the increase was small.

  No one would have guessed that a new and incredibly successful band was at work had it not been for an accident. A certain eminent rancher, the owner of numberless acres, cows by the thousands, farm land along one rich river bottom, and many an irrigated desert acre — a man of untold wealth in fact — was riding over his domain one day when he came upon a horse standing beside a prostrate man, in a gully. He thought at first that it was one of his lazy cow-punchers taking an afternoon nap, so he spurred his horse ahead and galloped to the place.

  Percival Kenworthy, for that was his name, found a wounded man. The bullet had apparently gone straight through the heart, but this was only in appearance, for it had glanced around the ribs and lodged in the poor fellow’s back. He was unconscious. His pulse was fluttering on the verge of extinction; plainly he was close to death. So Kenworthy forced a dram of brandy from his saddle flask down the throat of the dying man and was rewarded suddenly by a gasping voice and opened eyes. He was a stranger to the rancher, but he knew his good Samaritan at once.

  “Kenworthy,” he gasped out, “listen to me. I’m Tirrit. Ask the sheriff. He knows me — too — well, maybe. I’m dying. Him that killed me was”

  Here his eyes grew dull, and he passed into unconsciousness again. Kenworthy, feeling that a terrible revelation was about to be made, applied another dram of the powerful drink. It recalled the wounded Tirrit again to consciousness, and he picked up the story where he had left off.

  “The Whisperer killed me!” he murmured.

  “What about The Whisperer?” asked Kenworthy.

  At this the eyes of the other grew dull with despair, as if he realized that there was more to tell than he had time and strength to relate.

  “All them robberies” he began. “The safe cracking at the First National in Deaconville — the clean-up in Lead City — twenty others; they was done by one gang, and The Whisperer runs that gang. Me — I was one of the crew. But they got me. The Whisperer got me. I was trying to find out who he was. I did find out! And so he plugged me. His name”

  His voice choked away. With a feeble hand he drew the rancher’s ear down to his stiffly struggling lips.

  “The real name of The Whisperer is”

  What that name was, the rancher could not make out. It was only a confused gasp of breath, and then Tirrit died. But Kenworthy had the body brought into town and carried his strange tale to the sheriff. And, just as Tirrit had suggested, the sheriff knew him only too well. Tirrit was young. He could not have been past thirty, but it appeared that he was old in crime. He had spent half of his years since he was eighteen in prison. The other half he had sustained himself with crimes of a dozen sorts. Moreover, the sheriff knew all about the clever work which had resulted in the cracking of the safe in the First National Bank in Deaconville. He knew, also, of the clean-up in Lead City; and he frowned in sober intensity of thought at the news.

  Not only that, but he entreated the rancher to say nothing of his experience or of what he had heard from the dying bandit. Too much publicity would destroy the chances of the police to run down the criminals.

  In the meantime, the worthy sheriff got in touch with the officials of neighboring counties and neighboring States and passed the word to them. He himself went to Lead City and then to Deaconville, and, with the aid of the local authorities, used his best efforts to discover similar methods and the work of the same master hand behind those crimes. But they were very different. They were as entirely unique, so far as one another was concerned, as if they had been conceived by two entirely separate minds.

  Yet all officers of the law know that the majority of criminals, even the greatest of them, perform their crimes according to one pattern. Having achieved their first real success in breaking the law, they continue until death to duplicate that first great effort. Here, however, was all the evidence of two distinct minds conceiving, and two distinct hands in the execution. The police were disturbed. Some of them went so far as to openly state that they discredited the dying statement of Tirrit. It was simply an effort of dying malice to make trouble for a companion whom Tirrit hated, and who had shot him down in a fair fight.

  All that really resulted from this careful examination was that the rumor spread abroad. Knowledge shared by so many men could not be kept secret. Indeed, it
is the nature of a secret to make men desire to talk about it. The most harmless gossip, if it be told in a whisper, will immediately be exploded into public attention. So it was with the tale of Tirrit’s dying story. The noise of it shot abroad upon the thousand invisible wires of rumor, and straightway other men who dwelt outside the law heard of it.

  The tale wandered to a hundred resorts of crime — somewhere in the West a great band was operating. Its exact location was unknown, but at least it was certain that it operated, or had operated, in that great county of mountains and desert where the rich man, Percival Kenworthy, had established his ranch. So, toward this focal point the powers of the world of crime began to draw. Wild fellows with ungloved right hands and bright eyes and faces as sunburned and lean as hawks, started over the mountains and through the desert.

  They found no Whisperer ready to enroll them in a secret gang when they arrived, but they did find one another. Straightway they pulled together in threes and half dozens. They began to strike right and left. They rustled cattle. They blew safes. They worked as footpads in the towns and as holdup artists and plain highwaymen in the open roads. The carnival of crime which the plans of The Whisperer had so carefully avoided, came into birth within a month after the death of Tirrit. By a cruel trick of fate, it was Percival Kenworthy who suffered more than all the rest.

  He was not a man to sit still and endure such a life, having his cattle driven off by the hundreds, his payroll intercepted on its way out from town, his foreman “stuck-up” in the very shadow of the bunk house. He took the matter into his own hands. He called a meeting of his neighbors, the most representative citizens from the mining district in the mountains, the lumber camps, the cattle ranges, and the nearby towns.