by Max Brand
This direct appeal seemed to make it possible for the glance of The Whisperer to leave the face of the woman he loved, and he turned his eyes slowly upon the rancher. From head to foot he surveyed Percival Kenworthy, and when he ended, he smiled, and looked back to the girl once more. Yet, had he opened all the thunders of sarcasm and wrath upon the head of the rancher, he could not have damped him as effectually as with this quiet and cold contempt. It made even the self-assurance of Kenworthy tremble. The color left his face. For an instant it became almost possible for him to doubt himself. But then the blood returned to his face.
“The rascal admits by his silence,” he cried, “that there is nothing against me. He sneaked into my house under a false name. He lived here under a pretense — I only thank the dear God that he has been discovered before he worked any greater harm. Rose, what in heaven’s name are you doing?”
She had run around the table and stood now behind the chair of The Whisperer, with both of her hands resting upon his shoulders.
“I’ve come to tell you,” she said, “that I think it is a dastardly betrayal. But it shall never change me. If I was proud to let the world know that I was to marry Jeremy before, I tell you that I am doubly proud now that I know he is The Whisperer.”
“Rose — go to your room — I forbid you”
“I’ll not budge! There’ll be an explanation of what he’s done that will satisfy me. As for satisfying the others, I don’t care what they think!”
Here her father’s fat hand fell upon her arm; she resisted only an instant, and then she went quietly out of the room. Only, at the opposite door, she turned back and exchanged a look with The Whisperer, while for an instant the sardonic coldness of his eye softened and changed to a wonderful tenderness. Then she was gone, and all attention swung back and centered upon The Whisperer again. Something seemed to be struggling in him for expression.
“Listen to me,” said the sheriff. “Whatever you say may be used against you; you are now under arrest; but if you have a confession to make, it will be easier for your conscience. Whatever is said or done, for or against you, Whisperer, it won’t keep you from hanging in due course. But in the meantime, speak out and make a clean breast of it. It will get you better treatment in the prison, and perhaps it may even get you an extension of time!”
This tender and insinuating speech, so filled with promises, brought a sneer of disgust upon the lips of the bandit. Again he regarded his captor with an expression of the most complete scorn. Yet he spoke.
It was odd that, when he spoke, though he used still the very gentle and quiet tones of Jeremy Saylor, yet his voice had for the others a different significance now. As the sheriff afterward expressed it, one could hear the purr of the tiger under the softness of the tones.
“I have one thing to say,” said The Whisperer, “and that is to admit that I’ve done a bad thing. I’ve come into your house under a false name. I’ve lived here like a friend. I’ve — er — pretended to the hand of Rose knowing all the while that — Well, I can’t go further into that. I’ll only say this is my defense, that I thought that I was through with the life for which the governor will see me hanged; and I thought that it would be an honest man who would marry Rose Kenworthy. That’s my only defense. Since I’ve told you this thing, I’ll never open my lips to any living soul except Rose herself.”
He uttered this statement with a perfect calm, neither threatening nor bragging, but conducting himself as though this were an event of no more than ordinary importance in his life. Having expressed himself in this fashion, he settled back in his chair, and from that moment refused to speak. They fixed the irons upon his hands, and next they searched his pockets and his person. The found to their inexpressible astonishment that the terrible outlaw carried not so much as a pocket-knife upon his person, to say nothing of revolvers. He was quite unarmed. Neither was there anything upon him to suggest his identity. They went up to his room and searched it with the most minute care. But they found nothing in this place either.
When they came down to say this, there was the slightest lifting of The Whisperer’s eyes, as though he was touched for a moment with surprise. But almost at once, he shrugged his shoulders again, and then was as silent as ever.
Nothing more was to be gained by question, but the little detective, Rankin, could not resist shouldering up to his prisoner and leaned above him.
“The gent you smeared in the forest,” he said. “I’m the guy, Mr. Jeremy Saylor, Whisperer, Jack Richards.”
Here the bandit started, and the private detective drew back with a malevolent grin to enjoy an expression of dismay. But it was gone as quickly as it came, and the face of The Whisperer was once more bland and calm.
“This’ll be sweet news for your mother,” said Rankin sourly. “She’ll be all set up about the way her good boy works hard for her and catches so many furs every year that he’ll be able to keep her so comfortably out there in California. But I’ll have to let her know the facts. I promised her that I’d write to her if I should ever meet up with her son in the mountains!”
He laughed with the keenest enjoyment of this clever little jest.
He might as well have been addressing a face of stone, however, for The Whisperer continued to brood upon the infinite heart of space, and he heard not a word of the other, at least so it seemed.
So Rankin gave over, but not before he had muttered at the ear of The Whisperer: “There’s the third degree waiting for you, cull. Maybe you’re silent now, but we’ll find a way to make you open your mug, you rat!”
Afterward, leaving The Whisperer under the guard of a dozen leveled guns, he had a conference with the rancher. The delight of Kenworthy, which had been kept within bounds while there were others around him, now broke forth in the most extravagant expressions of delight and satisfaction. He clapped Rankin upon the shoulder; he almost embraced the detective as he told the latter that the honor of his family, his dignity as sheriff, had all been saved by the ingenuity of Rankin.
He then demanded a narrative of what the detective had done and in what mysterious fashion he had been able to in the first place locate the identity of the bandit and even to find the home of Saylor at all. The answer of the detective was not too much in detail. He had come to find, in his professional life, that a mystery once explained away, can never be a mystery again, and that if the steps to the solution of a crime are given, every blockhead who hears the tale will think that he could have mounted the steps, or perhaps found an even shorter cut.
So the story which Rankin told was full of gaps. It seemed that by mysterious intuition he had floated west and west until he came to a place where instinct bade him hunt, and that there he had immediately found out what he wanted.
“But finally it all came down to the looks of his hair in that picture that I took down off the piano. It sure enough wasn’t straight black hair. It was red, curly hair. The old lady told me what the color was. Right quick I jumped my mind back to The Whisperer. He wore curly, red hair; he worked by night, mostly, just the way that Saylor lived. The minute I remembered that, I said to myself that I had everything smooth and easy before me. I turned around and I come back fast to the ranch, and on the way I pick up a couple of birds to help me snag the big boy — and you know the rest!”
“A marvelous story,” commented the sheriff. “A very remarkable tale in every way. In the meantime, do not think that you are to suffer for what you have done. You asked in the first place a sum of ten thousand dollars. I know that some people would consider such a sum a fortune. But I, Rankin, do not. I hope that my ideas have expanded beyond such a point. What I wish to tell you now is that you are a made man.
“You shall never go hungry so long as you live. I give you ten thousand dollars this moment.” Here he sat down and drew a long check book from his pocket. “But that is not all. That is only a beginning. I tell you freely, my friend, that if you had not come I might have had the misery to find my daughter married to th
e infernal rascal, and my hands thereby tied unless I wished to undo the knot by making her a widow — and that is too much to expect, even of a sheriff, eh?”
The detective allowed that it was. He heard the sweet music of the fountain pen as it crinkled across the surface of the check. He saw the check blotted; then it was extended toward him, quivering with the emotion of the rancher. Upon the narrow slip he saw the magic words — written with thick strokes of ink — which made ten thousand dollars be paid to Stephen Rankin or the bearer of this check.
The detective folded the check and placed it slowly in his pocket, and as he did so, while he looked down to the floor, there appeared between him and the carpet, a brilliant picture of a race course, of the noisy bookies, of Stephen Rankin, resplendent in a brilliant checkered suit of black and gray, strolling from bookie to bookie with a fat cigar in his mouth and fat rolls of money in his hand. He saw his ten thousand bet; he heard the dull roar, “They’re off!” He saw his horse — it seemed to wear blue and white — dance away into the lead, float easily around the curve, and walk home by itself. He heard the dull murmur of concern. He found many haggard eyes fixed upon him. He heard voices whisper great music as he passed: “There goes Steve Rankin, the great plunger!”
Such was Rankin’s dream.
XXVIII. A HERO
IT WAS NOT for nothing that in business Kenworthy had always been a boomer and in pleasure a politician. He did not miss the chance of arranging a pageant around the capture of the notorious Whisperer. In the first place, he arranged to keep the great man in the ranch house until the next morning, and for that purpose he prepared a room in which four men, armed to the teeth, kept guard for two hours over their prisoner, after which their places were taken by four new guards, and so on through the night.
There was no lack of men for the duty of guarding, for the neighbors had heard the great news, and every man who rode into the ranch that night to make personal inquiry esteemed it a great honor to be allowed to sit guard during one watch over the famous man slayer and robber. It gave them a chance to ask him questions face to face, and though, to be sure, he always remained as oblivious of these remarks as though they had not been made at all, or as though he had been deaf, yet they could at least watch his face and his singular dark-blue, open eyes.
It was noted with interest that, cool as his nerves seemed to be, he did not sleep that night at all, but remained with his eyes open, staring before him. There was no expression in those eyes, however, neither grief nor fear, though many a one among the guards looked carefully to make out what he could. When they went out one of them tried to explain that absence of expression.
“The Whisperer,” he said, “is an animal. That’s why his expression doesn’t tell you anything. Look at a dog’s eye. Hard to tell whether a dog is going to bite you or lick your hand, if you judge by his eye only. It stays about the same. His tail does most of his talking for him, and his voice. Not like a man, where you keep listening to the words and reading in the eyes at the same time. That’s the way with The Whisperer. He looks like a man, but he’s got the soul of a beast. That’s why he doesn’t show anything that we can see. But down underneath you can lay to it that he’s burning up, he’s so scared about what’s going to happen to him!”
This, however, was certainly not the usual opinion of those who watched over The Whisperer upon this memorable occasion. On the whole, they considered him to be a man in whose being fear did not exist. So they guarded him carefully during the night, talked to him or about him, and so saw the morning dawn at last over the mountains and turn them all pale and make the light in the room rather haggard.
Then the sheriff rose from a sound and a sweet sleep and prepared for the work of that day. It might be that Stephen Rankin had captured the prisoner of state, and it might be that the whole credit was due to Rankin, but the sheriff would not allow any other man to say so or even to think so. He let it be noised abroad that the whole having been done by his management, Rankin was hardly any better than a tool in his masterly hands.
In fact, such were the reports which he sent into town before his coming. Before that day was over, if Rankin had attempted with a sworn statement to prove his right to some honors in this matter, he could not have received them, so filled was the public imagination and the public eye by the figure which the sheriff made.
For Kenworthy arranged matters so that his cavalcade arrived in the town just at the lunch hour, when the appetites of men are keenest, and their minds are apt to be most awake, before falling into the lethargy of the hot afternoon. He now made his entrance in the following fashion.
First rode two old and experienced cow-punchers from the ranch, traveling at a considerable distance ahead of the main body. They were mounted upon ponies as shaggy and as wild of eye as those horses which the wild Tartars ride, and on which they once plundered half the world. Behind these scouts, who were armed to the teeth like the rest of the party, with rifles balanced across the pommels of the saddles and with revolvers stuck into their holsters or hanging from their saddles, came half a dozen of the neighbors of the sheriff, who were eternally grateful to Kenworthy from that day forward because he allowed them to appear before the public eye in this fashion.
Be sure that the face of each one of these riders was grim and set, as though he had just returned from the most terrible danger. Be sure that they looked upon the bystanders with haggard eyes, as though to behold those people for whose safety and well-being they had recently undergone vast perils and taken their lives into the palms of their hands. Behind these men came more of the sheriff’s own cow-punchers, all tried and hardy men.
Surrounded by these, mounted upon a magnificent black horse which Kenworthy had furnished with a fine eye for the effect, appeared the terrible bandit, The Whisperer. Lest he should appear too young and inoffensive, the sheriff had carefully contrived that he should not be allowed to be shaved that morning, under the pretext that if he allowed the desperate man to have a razor in his hands, The Whisperer might cut his throat to avoid meeting his death at the hands of the ministers of the law.
It must be admitted that The Whisperer bore himself in a manner which made the sheriff almost love him, so perfectly did he fit into the picture of which he was, indeed, the central and most striking figure, save one. For The Whisperer, though his hands were secured in heavy irons and though his feet were bound together beneath the belly of his horse with a light fifth chain, was so adroit in his horsemanship that he controlled the magnificent animal upon which he rode entirely by the swaying of his body and the pressure of his knees. He rode the black, which was indeed a beautifully schooled animal, as though he had reins in his hands and a curb at the end of them to control the horse.
This was not all, for while his magnificent horsemanship enabled him to appear like a very part and portion of the animal which he bestrode, his upright and undaunted carriage, his thin and handsome face, and above all the expressionless eye with which he stared straight before him struck the people of the town dumb with horror and excitement. It was far more terrible than if The Whisperer had appeared before them as the wide-shouldered, massive creature which report made him out.
All of this was now shown to be merely a part of his dexterous disguise, for a little padding under the shoulders of his coat would furnish him with one detail of his usual appearance in the rC4le of The Whisperer. By doffing his wig and allowing some of his natural hair to show, he effectually buried “Jeremy Saylor” behind him. Being so young he seemed more fiendish; and he seemed yet more unearthly because of the almost feminine delicacy of his features.
For, after all, who conceives of the devil as an old man? His wickedness is united to too restless a malice to be dressed in anything except the activity of a young body. So The Whisperer appeared to the townsfolk, like a very incarnation of the fiend. That was the way they regarded him.
Behind him came the rest of the sheriff’s cow-punchers, for he had stripped his place in order to
make the more formidable show. He had even forced his old blacksmith and his yet more ancient dairyman into service and had armed them to the teeth, like all the rest, though neither of them would have been able to hit the side of a mountain with a bullet.
Last of all, riding alone, mounted upon his finest horse, a gray thoroughbred, came the sheriff himself. He came last, as one might say, so that he might be removed from the public gaze. He came last, also, that he might act as the solemn and efficient rear guard which held off the assaults of the enemy. For, what gave point and reason to all this formidable equipment for the transport of the prisoner, was the rumor which Kenworthy carefully spread around that beyond question a terrible and immediate assault would be made by all the followers of The Whisperer to deliver their leader from the hands of the law.
There, then, came the rancher, with the cares of State manifest upon his grave countenance, now and then turning over his shoulder a wary eye, as though even now that they had entered the village, he half expected the dreadful foemen to rush in upon him — in which case his own experienced and fearless breast should receive the first brunt of the attack.
If there were murmurs of excitement and admiration and even of alarm from the spectators as the rest of the little procession defiled past them, when Percival Kenworthy appeared last of all, emotions were turned into a great enthusiasm, and the people could not refrain from opening their throats in a long and ringing cheer. More than this, the women shrilled at him and waved their handkerchiefs, or their aprons. They lifted their little children that they might behold the great and good man, the public benefactor.
“Oh, what a good man!” they cried to one another, after the noble Kenworthy had gone past them. “Oh, what a blessing it is that there are a few such men in the world!”
Percival Kenworthy, in the center of the little town, was stopped by a rush of admirers who pressed before him, heedless of the trampling of his high-spirited horse. There they compelled him to pause. There some of the best and leading citizens of the town pressed close to him and clasped his hand and told him that he was an honor to the whole range; that he was an honor to America!