Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  In the meantime, there was the interview with her father and the affair of young Glenhollen to be settled, and it made her shiver to think of the anger of the sheriff. So she dressed herself in the color she knew that he liked best, and sat down with him at the breakfast table in apparently the highest of spirits. That she was afraid of him was only one emotion, indeed; that Jeremy Saylor loved her, and that she loved him was the all-important thing.

  Twice he tried to ask what she had decided about Alexander Glenhollen, and twice she avoided an answer, for she remembered her dead mother’s wise saying, that a man should never be crossed until after his first smoke and his breakfast were completed. But when her father had finished his after-breakfast pipe and was walking in the garden, she came out to him and told him the truth. Her definite and calm refusal of Glenhollen left him staggered, and she sat down on a bench calmly, and watched, with a sort of scientific coolness, the rage gathering in his face.

  The sheriff made a mighty effort and controlled himself so that he was even able to smile down on her and say in a choked voice: “I suppose that you’ve found a better suitor, Rose?”

  “One whom I love,” she answered.

  “The devil!” thundered the irate rancher. He took a turn up and down the path, however, and so was enabled to control himself.

  “Rose, I hear you say an impossible thing, but I’m trying to believe you. You say that you love another man?”

  “I do.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “In the forest yonder.”

  “In the forest! When?”

  “On the night we rode to catch The Whisperer.”

  “Damnation, Rose, are you making a joke for me?”

  “I am telling you the simple truth.”

  “Good — good! You met this — this — what’s his name?”

  “Jeremy Saylor.”

  “Ah? Who is he?”

  “A young man.”

  “The devil! I mean, where does he live?”

  “In the mountains.”

  “Confound it, Rose, don’t provoke me too much. I’m bursting as it is! I mean, where is his home?”

  “He has none.”

  “Eh?”

  “He simply wanders through the forest.”

  “The devil; a penniless vagabond — a rascal who dared to—”

  At this she stood up; for, measuring herself beside her father’s rage, she was beginning to realize the full extent of her love for the man of the forest. She told her father calmly enough all that was in her mind — that she loved Jeremy Saylor; that she was of age to pick and choose among men as she pleased; that she loved her father and would gladly have pleased him with her choice of a husband, but that Jeremy Saylor was one step from wedded to her, and if need be, it would cost her no more than a sigh to leave her father’s mansion and his fortune behind her.

  “And follow this fortune hunter like alike a squaw behind her man?”

  “Like a squaw,” she answered steadily, “if you choose to use that word!”

  He might very well have fallen into a wild storm of abuse and driven her forever from his presence; but the effort at self-control had told so bitterly upon him that now these accumulated blows took his strength from him. Besides, he was meant by nature to stand up against bluster, not against quiet firmness, and now he met in his daughter the same soft-voiced and iron strength which made him quail before his wife during her life. His strength suddenly left him, and he sank down upon a bench, pale and shaking. The bold dream of greatness which had been filling his mind since his first interview with young Glenhollen faded like a rainbow when a cloud blows over the sun.

  Rose got on her knees before him, with tears in her eyes, holding both his hands and told him over and over that she would do anything in the world for him except to give up the man she loved. He asked her, still dazed, to tell him everything, and she gave him the story word for word — all her meetings with this strange fellow of the forest, and every word he had spoken to her about himself.

  Before she ended, he had fallen upon a new expedient. “Rose,” he said, “Good knows that at my time of life there is one thing dearer to me than all the rest, and this is to secure your happiness. But I’ve seen so many young girls throw away their lives and their happiness upon a chance love affair and a sudden passion, that I’m going to ask only one thing of you. When Saylor comes to the house today, I’ll treat him with as much kindness as I can, but I want you to tell him that you cannot marry him at once. Let him live with us for a month, at least. At the end of that time, if you still find that you care for him, I’ll never stand in your way. Will you do that?”

  She gave him her promise with joy filling her throat and her eyes, and then the wily sheriff went to seek an ally. It was the detective, Stephen Rankin, who appeared that morning hollow-eyed as if from a vigil, and paler of face than usual. Also, he was strangely depressed and thoughtful, which the sheriff attributed to his lack of success, so far, in the chase of The Whisperer.

  To Rankin he unburdened himself. To Rankin he repeated, word for word, the story which Rose had told him, and then he added: “What do you make of it? What is Saylor?”

  “A cheat,” said the detective without hesitation. He recalled his night in the forest with a shudder. “That any man could wander of choice through these mountains — it isn’t possible, Mr. Kenworthy. He’s simply lying to your daughter!”

  The sheriff nodded and rubbed his hands together. He’s a fugitive; that’s what he is, Rankin. I want you to find out what he’s fled from. I want you to get on his trail, and if you can locate the place he came from — somewhere in the East, I suppose”

  “There ain’t many walnut orchards in the East, Mr. Kenworthy.”

  “What have they to do with the place he came from?”

  “You say he talked to your daughter about the fog coming in from the bay and rolling over the walnut grove on the top of the hill — that sounds like California to me, sir!”

  “Eh? Perhaps it is! You have a head for these things!”

  “Besides, there is only one place in California which they refer to as ‘the bay,’ and that’s San Francisco Bay. I think I’ll be hot on his trail in a week.”

  The rancher struck him confidently upon the shoulder. “Good! Good!” he said. “If you can fasten enough on him to break off this ridiculous affair by sending him to jail — you can name your own price, Rankin — by heaven, the ten thousand you want for The Whisperer in nothing to what I’m willing to pay. You’re a made man, in short!”

  Rankin rolled his eyes up to the blue of the sky and drew in a sharp breath. Already he was hungry to start.

  “As soon as I’ve laid my eyes on this bird,” he told the rancher with an oily malevolence, “I’ll know something about him. Maybe — who knows? I might be able to recognize him! I’ve studied the rogue’s gallery like a Bible!”

  XXI. LAUGHED AT

  HE DID NOT recognize Jeremy Saylor, however; the girl herself felt that she hardly knew him. It was her father who received the first shock. He came to the room of Rose with a singular light in his eye and told her that her friend had come. There was an odd emphasis in this, and she went down to Jeremy with an apprehension of — she knew not what!

  She found Jeremy in one of the big parlor chairs, wearing the same tattered deerskin garments which he had worn before. How great and gaping were the edges of those rents, now! His black hair was combed out carefully, so that it fell to such a length that it brushed against his shoulders, and the light of the morning glimmered smoothly along its silky waves. But the long hair was not enough. In the deerskin jacket he had pierced a hole at a place corresponding to where the lapels would have been. Here there was fastened a whole spray of yellow flowers.

  No wonder there had been the singular light in the eyes of her father. Her face became fiery when she thought that the cow-punchers had already seen that freak approach the house, and that they were soon to know that she was engaged t
o him. Then, beating down her self-consciousness as an unworthy emotion, she greeted Jeremy with all her heart in her throat.

  But it was fearfully hard to talk to him. The free-swinging and courageous independence which had marked his bearing in the forest was quite dwindled, now, and he sat rather stiffly erect in his chair, looking about him as though he feared that the pictures hanging upon the walls might turn into enemies. The ceiling above his head appeared an impending danger. The place he chose for his chair was a secluded corner with the wall shielding him on either side.

  She asked him what made him nervous, and he confessed that the presence of so many walls, so many corners behind which enemies could hide, was almost more than he could endure; he had been accustomed to too many years of the open forest or the desert itself. In the meantime, she suggested his stay in the house, according as her father had desired; a room was prepared for him, and he would be furnished with clothes and all things necessary to make him ready to appear among civilized men again; she would even guarantee him a barber.

  But that suggestion he did not take at all kindly. Running his fingers through the black locks, he suggested that he would feel like a different man if they were shortened. A sudden little thrill of disgust kept Rose from pressing the point. As she sat there for an instant with her eyes upon the floor, she was on the verge of telling him that she had made a great mistake — that it must not continue for another instant, and that he must go back into the forest from which he had come. She hardly dared to glance at him again; but just then a bird sang at the window beside him, and when she looked at Jeremy she found him smiling, with his head thrown high, a fine and handsome fellow, surely!

  There was nothing to do but to go through with it, she decided, though certainly the man who had won her love by night was far, far from this shrinking, unkempt fellow whom she saw by day! Jeremy was escorted up the stairs by a grinning servant toward his room. Then Stephen Rankin went past her, going down the hall, and there was a certain consideration in his eyes which made her certain that he knew. She paused; for he was about to go outside and tell what he had learned to the cow-punchers. Ah, what game they would make of poor Jeremy, and the yellow spray of flowers at his breast! She was on the verge of calling out to the detective and telling him to keep to himself what he knew, but then pride prevented her, and she forced her head high.

  Then her father encountered her. He had the same amused look in the corner of his eye which she had seen in the face of Rankin. He took one of her hands and patted it, and then be began to laugh in the highest good humor.

  “Honey,” he said, “you saw this scared rabbit of a man by night and not by the day, and that’s why you found something in him. It won’t be a month; before a week’s out, you’ll be tired of everything except his flowers!”

  He burst into a roar of laughter, which fairly shook the rafters above him. Oh, crowning humiliation! There was no answer which she could make. Only, she felt at that moment that if she had not despised Jeremy Saylor so much she might have come to hate him; he was not worthy even of hate!

  Such was the feeling of Rose on the first day of Jeremy’s coming; but she covered her feelings from the others; most of all she covered them from the observance of Jeremy. Yet strange, strange that he who was so keen eyed in the forest should be so dull in a house! At the table she passed through the most terrible ordeals. He seemed quite oblivious of every other person at the table; he even forgot his food. What she wanted to do was to shake him by the shoulder as a teacher shakes a refractory pupil, but instead, she had to sit patiently and endure those eyes which crushed all conversation at the table, and made everyone sit through long moments of anguish and shame on her account. She hardly dared to meet the eyes of Jeremy on such occasions, but when she did so, she discovered that they were not black after all, but that there was a shade of blue in the darkness.

  “What was the business that you failed in, Jeremy?” she asked him one evening.

  “I was a grocer,” said Jeremy.

  It was a crowning blow; somehow, it struck her to the very heart with shame. But other things were happening, in the meantime. The cow-punchers had received the news of the coming of the stranger who had won the heart of Rose Kenworthy with astonishment, with mirth, and then with horror. After all, this was not a thing for laughter. Upon it depended, in a measure, their own honor. For they felt that to allow a girl to throw herself away on such a fellow would shame them all, and forever.

  “Shorty” was commissioned to examine the newcomer who had won the heart of the girl and then come back to report what he found out. When Shorty came into the bunk house he was as sick and pale and yellow as though he were ill indeed. He spat his tobacco into the stove and then addressed his silent and passionately interested companions.

  “He ain’t man,” said Shorty, his upper lip lifting. “He’s a rat. Darned if he ain’t! He’s got a soft, shifty eye. By the heavens, it’s true that his hair is clean down to his shoulders and that he wears flowers in his buttonhole right along!”

  The terrible news was digested in silence and with sick faces by the others. Then the foreman, Bill Matthews, arose and spoke from the bottom of his heart.

  “Boys, he’s like one of these here hypnotists I’ve seen that make fools out of people; he’s hypnotized the girl. Looks like if we was fair-sized men with fair-sized brains we’d ought to have sense enough among us to wake her up again!”

  It was a noble proposal, and it was warmly greeted. It was decided that, in want of a good plan for the nonce, they would wait until occasion or inspiration served them.

  A new rumor floated out to them the next day. It was said that the girl was already sick of her bargain, but that, having taken up the wanderer in the forest and brought him home, pride would force her to go through with a bargain of which she was already tired and heartily ashamed.

  There was some basis for the talk. It had flowed out of a noisy interview between the rancher and his daughter. Jeremy Saylor had been there three days when the sheriff took his child apart.

  “Rose,” he said, “for Heaven’s sake put an end to this foolish thing, won’t you? We’re all sick of Saylor; and so are you! Be brave enough to admit it and tell him to go back to the forests he started from!”

  To this ardent appeal she made no reply; yet though she flushed, it was plain that she was a little thoughtful. Her father rashly went on, not content with the success which he had already gained.

  “Between you and me, what Saylor is after is a little money. He knows that he can’t marry you; but he wants to stay on until you and I are willing to buy him off, and I stand ready and willing at any time to give him whatever he asks. I’ll even settle an income on him, so that he can live comfortably in any town in the land!”

  But here Rose exploded with anger. For she was remembering the glacier meadow in the moonlight; and then the killing of the loafer wolf.

  “I know that he’s different from the rest of us,” she told her father, “but a time will come when you’ll see what sort of a man he is! When you find out, it’ll be like the striking of a thunderbolt! I know what he is!”

  The sheriff swallowed his retort, though he almost choked with the effort of it. He retired straightway to his room; but that day a rumor spread abroad and reached the bunk house in the form which already has been noted. Only the first part of the interview was reported. The latter half remained unknown. But had it been even whispered, it would have roused huge laughter from the rough men who listened.

  But they were not finding a convenient time for a demonstration of what they wished to prove on the body of the man of the forest. For he kept himself well out of their hands. If he occasionally came near them, it was only to lean against the outside of a corral fence and watch, with wide, innocent eyes, while they roped a horse. Sometimes he walked for a short distance through the fields, but whenever he saw one of the cow-punchers coming toward him, he beat a hasty retreat.

  “She’s warned him of
what’s coming!” groaned Shorty one evening in the bunk house. “She already knows that he’s a coward, and still she stays with him. There ain’t nothing that can be done to open her eyes, boys!”

  “You talk like a fool, Shorty,” said the foreman. “When we’ve warmed up Saylor in a coat of tar, and feathered him down pretty well, I guess that she’ll see he’s black — I guess that she’ll hear the rest of us laughing. No woman can stand having her man laughed at, boys!”

  XXII. INSTRUCTIONS

  THE WORK OF Stew Morrison was made easier by the town in which he found himself. As a rule it was hard for him to drop into any community where he was not known to one or more of the inhabitants; and these quickly enough made him known to all the others in the place, so that his face and his accomplishments became household talk.

  Moreover, it was known that he was busy on a criminal case, and this at once scattered every crook to the four winds to escape from his presence. But in the town where Lew Borgen lived, he found that he could be unhampered by such a misfortune. He was unknown as a blessed angel, and it allowed Stew to go about his work with a blissful sense of ease.

  He simply found out where the grocery store and general merchandise establishment of Lew Borgen was situated, and then he rented a room in the house next door — a rear room which he told the landlady he preferred so that the eastern light might not waken him in the morning. In reality that rear room overlooked the living quarters of Borgen, who was installed in the rear of his store.