by Max Brand
“That slippery devil is not more enchanted than any of us,” he told his men calmly. “You’re rattled, boys,” and, he added diplomatically, “the same’s I’m rattled. I’ve hunted on the trail a good deal before this, as maybe you know, but I never had anything unsettle my trigger finger like The Whisperer! That’s how he killed Jerry and Joe, just now. All he had to do was to up and murder ’em — as easy as that!”
They were brought to their senses by this calm talk of their chief’s. Each man now set his teeth and smoothed the wrinkles out of his brow and the excitement out of his brain. Each now prepared to shoot as though at a mere target. But the chances which were offered to them were from this moment poorer and poorer, for as the fugitive climbed higher on the slope, the rocks sheltered him more effectually. He was now level with his enemies, and they no longer had the great advantage of delivering a plunging fire against him.
“Work down to the bottom of the gorge!” cried Stew Morrison suddenly, his brow puckering with the realization that his man was about to slip through his fingers. “Work down to the bottom. Leave the horses here. Lefty and Chris, you two start down on foot, and travel fast. There ain’t much danger of The Whisperer trying to shoot at you as you run. He’s too busy thinking how he’s going to get over the edge of that cliff without being seen and dropped by us. The rest of you scatter back up higher among the rocks. Get right on the edge of the cliff. That’ll give you a longer shot, but a better target. I’ll stay right here and keep making noise enough for five if I can.”
He was as good as his word. He remained in the original shelter, blazing away whenever he had, or thought he had, a glimpse of The Whisperer. His two men above had hastily worked into position. They were barely on the edge of the cliff when they saw The Whisperer himself emerge from a nest of shrubbery and leap up against the face of the rock on the farther side of the gorge. There he caught a handhold upon a projecting bush and swung himself in a swift circle upward until his knee hooked over the jutting edge of a rock above him. From this precarious position he twisted himself up to the level of the top of the cliff and then rolled into safety upon the surface of the plateau.
In the meantime, of course, he had been the target for a steady discharge of guns from the two opposite, and from Stew Morrison. In all, nine or ten bullets were directed at him, but while his movements take long to describe, they were in reality executed with the greatest speed. Each movement was unexpected and therefore shook the trigger fingers of the marksmen. At any rate, The Whisperer rolled unharmed upon the surface of the plateau above, having accomplished a feat which made the whole country ring with his fame as it had never rung before.
It was to go far and wide, that tale of his adventure in the Richmond Valley, and how he had come into the valley in spite of the outlook of five grim men. How he had made his double killing and then gone back up through the rocks in safety. It was the sort of a tale which men, even big and strong men, told one another with frowning brows of bewilderment and cold in their hearts. It was not to be explained or understood. But that it had happened there was no doubt.
Most of the other deeds attributed to The Whisperer had been half mythical, half legendary. But it was known beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had robbed the sheriff’s house in that wildly spectacular fashion, and it was also known that he had bearded the celebrated Morrison with four almost equally dangerous allies in Richmond Valley. After that, they were prepared to expect anything from the outlaw.
In the meantime, the two men who were sent into the bottom of the valley reached the bodies of Jerry and Joe first. Jerry had died instantly, and lay in a shapeless heap upon the rocks. But Joe had lived for a moment, and he had scrawled upon the rock with his own blood: “The Whisperer is”
There, like Tirrit, death struck him down.
That, however, was not the only message left for the world upon this day. When Stew and his men climbed wearily up to the edge of the opposite cliff, not in the real hope of being able to find the trail of The Whisperer, but because they knew it was their duty to make some effort to follow the terrible bandit, they found a broad slab of granite almost like a prepared tombstone upon which the bandit had whimsically written:
Here lies the last of The Whisperer,
who will never ride again on the trail.
he says good-by to his friends and his foes.
they will never see him again.
“A joke,” said Lefty.
But Stew Morrison took out his camera and made a careful photograph of the scratches upon the rock.
XXVI. RANKIN’S DISCOVERY
“NO MATTER WHAT’S happened to her,” said Shorty, when he spoke in the council of punchers in the bunk house, “she’ll be sick of him when she finds out that he’s a coward! She won’t be able to stand the sight of him after that!”
“How’ll we show him up?” was the next question.
“Me,” said Shorty. “I’ll handle him. If one of the rest of you was to take a hand with him, him being so darned delicate and made almost like a girl, they might say that you was just bullies. But me, I ain’t much bigger’n a minute, and if he won’t stand up to me, she’ll have to admit that he’s yaller!” This suggestion was greeted with the heartiest applause. Shorty looked like a grotesque carving of the body of a Hindu god rather than like an ordinary man. His body was like a doubled fist. His legs were bowed out beyond imagining. His face was of a monkeylike hideousness. Such was Shorty, who now prepared to step upon the center of the stage of this drama.
Rumor, which has a thousand tongues, and leaps from the beggar to the king, and from the king to the beggar in a manner and with a speed which men cannot understand — rumor brought a whisper to the rancher which he regarded as the best of good news. He sent for Shorty and spoke with him apart.
“Shorty,” he said, “I hear that you are getting ready for a fight.”
Shorty could not talk saving from the side of his mouth. “Wot you mean by that?” he said. “I dunno. I ain’t hunting a fight, I’m hunting for a skunk.”
The rancher was delighted. This passion of his daughter’s had seemed to him a terrible, a disgraceful thing; also, it was a business calamity, and in both aspects it blackened the future of Percival Kenworthy.
“I’ve always,” he said, “been very much interested in getting rid of pests of all kinds.”
He looked upon Shorty and Shorty looked upon him.
“I guess, we look at this here about the same way,” said Shorty, growing a little red.
“My boy,” said the rancher, almost paternally, “it is plain that you understand — er — what is for the best interests of — ah — the ranch. I can only say — that is to say, I hope—”
He grew terribly confused. Finally Shorty extricated his employer by laughing.
“I guess,” said he, “that if I was to take a day off for that skunk hunt, you wouldn’t care none.”
“Care? Shorty, you get a month’s wages for that day’s work, if you can show us the skunk!”
“There ain’t no doubt of that,” said Shorty, his far-away look fastened upon the gorgeous spree in which he would spend that kind donation of a month’s wages for one delightful day’s work. “I’ll turn it up, the varmint, and you can all have a laugh at it!”
He turned away.
“Wait,” said the rancher, with a palpitating heart. “When this is done, is it necessary that — that Rose should see it!”
“Sure,” said the cow-puncher. “Ain’t it her party?”
The problem remained with this statement of it. But Shorty lost no time. He haunted the ranch house awaiting his opportunity. It was really rather hard to find. The solitary Jeremy wandered off into the woods both night and day, sometimes with Rose Kenworthy and sometimes alone, and he was rarely to be seen lingering about the house.
Then a whisper came to the ear of Rose. She went straight to her father.
“Dad,” she said, “are the boys planning to make trouble with Jeremy?”
“Rose,” he answered her calmly, and looking her full in the eye, “won’t he have to take care of himself with the boys the rest of his life — if he’s to own and run the ranch?”
That prospect seemed not to have occurred to her before. She remained on the verge of speech for some seconds, and then went thoughtfully away without having spoken another word. Furthermore, the rancher had reason to believe that Jeremy had not received any warning from his fiancie. It rejoiced Kenworthy’s heart to see this first stirring of sense, as he called it, in his daughter.
Then came the dinouement. It happened with a terrible suddenness. The whole family was out strolling in front of the house and Jeremy was among them. Then, around the corner from the corrals appeared Shorty, mounted upon a buckskin mustang which was tying itself into artistic knots, impelled thereto by the left spur of Shorty, which was digging it cruelly in the flank. It brought laughter from the party to see the antics of Shorty in the saddle. He bounced dangerously high, but still he was not unseated.
Then, throwing himself out of the saddle, he let the buckskin race away with flying reins, while he waddled up to Jeremy Saylor with a face as black as night.
“Was you laughing at me?” he demanded.
“I?” murmured poor Jeremy. “Why, as a matter of fact”
“You skunk!” snarled Shorty, and with his broad, open hand he struck Jeremy along the side of the face, a blow so heavy that the report of it was like a revolver exploding. And Jeremy reeled back a long stride.
Rose Kenworthy knew that the great test had come. The manliness of Jeremy in the forest she had seen with her own eyes. Indeed, there was something formidable and wild in him when the darkness had come over the mountains. But what would he do when confronted with the danger of another man? And such a man! Shorty’s head came hardly to the shoulder of Jeremy; and Shorty as a fighter was ridiculous.
From her own part, every muscle in her lithe body grew hard. She saw in her mind’s eye the flash of Jeremy’s hand as he knocked the cow-puncher bleeding to the ground and then dragged him up again.
But this was not what happened. Jeremy Saylor merely stood in the distance, with his hand pressed against the cheek on which the blow had fallen, and his eyes fastened upon the ground. Shorty, swaying with his passion from side to side, was growling: “Only a yaller hound. Nothing but yaller! And laugh at me? Laugh at me? I’ll take a quirt to you first!”
So speaking, he turned upon his heel, and Rose, crimson with agony and shame, looked away, and saw, in front of the bunk house, the long semicircle of cow-punchers who had looked on and witnessed this whole drama of scorn. She almost fainted. But she managed to steady herself as she dragged herself away from the group and found a refuge in her room. But later in the evening she found Jeremy alone. A whole half hour had passed, but it seemed to her that she could still make out the faint outline of the horny hand of Shorty.
She wasted neither time nor words. She only tried to keep back her scorn.
“Jeremy,” she said, “when Shorty struck you, why didn’t you strike back?”
He looked at her with a sort of amazement. “He was much smaller than I,” he said.
To hear that feeble excuse sickened her.
“Jeremy!” she cried.
“Besides, I was afraid, to speak to you plainly. Rose, I was afraid to touch him, for fear that I’d go too far and do him a serious injury!”
“Bah!” cried the girl, starting back from him. “You — you coward!”
She hardly saw him wince from the lash of those words, she had fallen into such a passion of disgust and sorrow and shame and rage.
“This is the end! I can never marry you. Good heavens, I’m almost grateful to little Shorty for having shown me the truth about you! II never wish to see you again — never! Never!”
She heard him crying out behind her. But she hurried away from him. Then, in the silence of her own room, she cowered beside the window with her face in her hands.
“I’ll never be able to face the world again!” sobbed Rose. “The detestable coward!”
But what miracles can be performed by determination of the spirit and nerves of iron? She forced herself down the stairs. She went into the dining room for supper. She was nearly stunned with astonishment to see that Jeremy Saylor was among those present! Then a swirl of horror passed through her mind. She told herself that the rascal had determined to stay on at the house even after his repulse. Perhaps he had it in mind to force some financial settlement out of her father’s hand. She could not turn toward him; she could not meet his glance, and always she felt his appealing glance upon her.
“Like the eyes of a whipped dog,” she told herself.
It was in the very midst of this confusion of mind, while she was taking her chair, and there was a bustle of everyone sitting down, that there appeared in the doorway the familiar figure of Stephen Rankin, the detective.
Behind him there were three others.
“By the heavens!” cried Kenworthy, already flushed with happiness as he saw that his house was freed from the incubus of a disgraceful marriage. “By the heavens, Rankin, I think that this is a great day in my life. I guess at good news before you open your lips!”
“Yes,” exclaimed Rankin. “Good news, sir! Very good news!”
He rubbed his hands together. “I can tell you that The Whisperer will soon be of no trouble in the world!”
His three companions had sidled into the room and worked their way around the wall, unnoticed in the general excitement.
“You mean that the message the rascal wrote on the top of the cliff was true?”
“Without his knowledge,” said Rankin, “it was true!”
He broke off and exclaimed: “Good work, lads!”
For here a rope had been dropped over the shoulders and the arms of Jeremy Saylor, binding those arms against his sides. He made one desperate struggle. Then he sat still with his eyes fixed steadily upon the face of Rose Kenworthy. She did not know how to interpret that glance. She only knew that it made her heart cold with fear and with expectation.
Rankin stepped behind the prisoner who had been thus secured. He deliberately fastened his hands in the long and flowing black hair of the man of the forest. With a wrench he tore the wig away and exposed a head covered with closely curled, red hair.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Rankin, with all the calm which he could muster: “I present to you The Whisperer!”
XXVII. DOUBLY PROUD
HOW STRANGE A difference the change in that one feature of his appearance made! Indeed, this very remarkably made wig had escaped detection from everyone, including Rose herself. The long and silken black hair had graced him with a sort of feeble effeminacy of character; but now these curling locks of red were like a waving fire upon his head. The slumberous black eyes, too, were now seen to be blue, and there was fire in them. All of this was the more shocking because, only the moment before, so to speak, they had been reviling and scorning this very man, this terrible and elusive destroyer, and they had been pointing the finger of scorn at the man slayer because he had seemed in their eyes to be a coward!
There was little time or desire to ponder over this mistake and smile at one another, however. They were too much taken up by the aspect and the demeanor of this man. He remained bolt erect in his chair, never stirring after the first falling of the rope about his arms had made him helpless, and, all the while, his glare never left the face of the girl.
So grim and so fixed was that stare that the others, also, now turned with an eager curiosity to Rose Kenworthy. And they saw there enough to make them wonder. For she looked around her with the manner of one who has had a triumph. The very light of love was in her eyes; her cheeks were blooming with color; and the discovery that her lover was a bandit seemed to her of far less importance than the proof that he was a man!
She stood up at her place. “Dad,” she said, “do you mean to say that you are going to allow a hand to be laid on
your guest?”
“Be quiet, Rose!” said Kenworthy, doubly delighted in his character as a rancher and as a sheriff. “Be quiet, child. Do you suppose that this is not all of my contriving?”
He gave Rankin a glance which meant at least five thousand dollars to that worthy if he remained silent and allowed people to think that the whole work had been the plan of the sheriff. Rankin saw, and imperceptibly nodded, which was his method of telling the rancher that he knew and gave his sanction to the story, and at the same time he told the rest of the world that the cunning of the sheriff was indeed behind the capture. So the character of public benefactor was again bestowed upon Kenworthy, and he began to blossom in his part.
Only Rose Kenworthy seemed struck to the heart with indignation and shame by what she heard.
“Don’t tell them such a shameful thing!” she cried. “Oh, dad, don’t tell them that you kept a man under your roof as your guest and at the same time were preparing to arrest him!”
“Why not?” gasped out Kenworthy, and he flashed a glance around the circle of faces which reassured him. “Don’t talk to me about fine points of honor. When I’m dealing with a man I treat him like a man, but when I’m dealing with a wolf, I treat him like a wolf! You, sir — Whisperer — Saylor — whatever your name may be, have you any claim to lodge against me for dishonorable treatment?”