by Max Brand
He raised his hand in protest. He shook his noble gray head in protest at such devout compliments. He begged to assure them that he had done nothing beyond his duty.
At this, they thundered in his very face that he was no less than a hero. They then forced him to dismount. He was lifted again upon the shoulders of a banker on one side and an oil magnate upon the other. In this fashion he advanced down the street, and the yelling of the inhabitants made carnival in the air.
Stephen Rankin, smoking a cigar upon the sidewalk, watched all that passed with the greatest attention.
“By jiminy,” said Stephen when all had gone by, “the old devil has squeezed pretty near ten thousand dollars’ worth out of this here. He’ll be a hero; he’ll get his picture in the books.”
XXIX. ROSE VISITS JAIL
TAKEN ALL IN all, it was the greatest period in the life of Percival Kenworthy. He had always been surrounded by the admiration of others, but he was now surrounded by their worship. He had always imposed upon the women and the children, but now even the men followed in line.
The men of the cattle ranges and the mining districts had known and followed Kenworthy with interest for years in this fashion; when they read of him in the newspapers they nodded at the familiar name; sometimes his picture appeared. He knew the whole art of posing for newspaper pictures, with his face turned a little in profile, thrusting his jaw out to remedy its natural weakness, and gathering his brows in a frown, not of anger, but of resolute firmness. He looked, in that pose, exactly like a famous orator. Indeed, the sheriff looked so like a famous man in these clippings that he could not avoid keeping several of them with him at all times.
When he was alone in his office, or when taking a walk, he would take out half a dozen of the latest and favorite snapshots and thumb them over. In this way he was never without company; and he felt that the sight of his own face gave him an added strength; seeing himself at his best made him actually better; the man in the picture was so omniscient that the man in fact felt himself armed.
There was only one cloud upon his horizon at this time, which was the attitude of Rose. When he next saw his daughter he could not but expect that he would find her humbled and downcast, and that she would be forced to admit his provident care of her, which had torn the mask from her wooer. Instead, he found her merely silent and thoughtful. She had nothing to say, and she looked at her father as though she did not see him.
Then, the very next afternoon, she came to him and said that she wished to see the prisoner, the terrible Whisperer, in person, and alone. The sheriff asked her why, and she shrugged her shoulders. This made him consider, and he decided that, proud and self-composed as she was, she would not let him know what she thought, but that she wished to confront The Whisperer in person, and then denounce him face to face. Upon consideration of this, he allowed her to go, and sent note to the head jailer.
For there were many keepers of the little jail in the town, by this time. It was by no means the intention of these valiant people that The Whisperer, having been delivered into their hands, should escape. They surrounded him with something stronger than mere bars and bolts. They walled him in with the living might of armed men.
A little cordon waited constantly just outside the prison walls, lest he should dig his way through them; and in the jail itself, from which all lesser prisoners had been taken to another building, they kept a standing guard of half a dozen men who were constantly changed. They were not allowed to stand watch more than four hours at a time for fear that their vigilance should be dulled by sleepiness.
Rose Kenworthy arrived with the note from her father. “You may let Rose be alone with the prisoner for a few minutes,” said the note. “To make sure, after she has left, you may search The Whisperer and see that she has left nothing with him by accident.”
So Rose went into the jail and stood before her lover. He sat on his couch. His hands and his feet were secured by a vast weight of polished steel chains. He was calmly smoking a cigarette, lifting his hand clumsily every time he took a puff. But when he saw her, he sprang up, and the cigarette dropped to the floor.
She took hold upon the bars, and said not a word.
“Rose,” said he, “whatever the others think of me, I have no care. But before I die, I want you to know that I fought against playing the villain with you. After the first time I saw you, I knew it would be dangerous to meet you again. I didn’t wish to do it. But you know how it was. After the third meeting I was helpless. I loved you, Rose.
“From that moment I wasn’t thinking of consequences. I wasn’t thinking how you’d be damned if you should marry me.”
“Is that all you have to say?” she asked, watching him curiously.
He sighed. “There’s one more thing,” he said. “I knew that the cow- punchers on your father’s ranch were laying a plot against me. I knew that Shorty would try me out. I put away my guns for fear of being tempted to use them. I made up my mind that I’d try to be honorable by letting Shorty back me down before everyone. If that made you despise me, I vowed that I’d still stay on until you sent me away yourself and told me never to come back.
“That was just what was happening. You saw Shorty insult me, and you saw me swallow it.
Then you told me that you were through with me. It wasn’t easy to do, but I stomached it. I determined to sit through that dinner, with everyone around the table despising me, and I should have done it, and in that way I should have undone all the harm I had worked in letting you care for me.”
“Is that all you have to say?” she asked him.
He flinched and grew crimson under her blunt questions.
“One thing more,” he said huskily. “A lot of what they’ve charged against me is true. But not the killings.”
“None?” she said.
“Four,” he answered. “My brother was murdered by four hounds. I killed them all. It was to handle them that I came West and arranged the whole thing. I killed the four, and haven’t harmed another man. As for the robbing, I’ve given back to charity every cent that has come to my share. It was all a blind, Rose, a trap to catch the four, and after the four were caught — Montague and Jerry were the last of them — I was ready to stop. You know the message The Whisperer wrote on the rock?”
“Are you through?” she said.
He made a gesture of despair and surrender.
“Come closer to me, then,” she said. “I don’t want another soul to hear what I have to say.”
He stepped nearer, the chain clinking.
“Nearer,” she commanded.
He stood with his face against the bars, and suddenly her lips touched his.
“I came to tell you that, Jeremy. I love you. If they take you away from me, I shall never have any other man!”
“Rose! Rose!” he cried.
But she had turned away and hastened toward the door. Just before she reached it, she wavered so that she had to stretch out a hand and rest for an instant against the wall. Then she went on, and the door closed behind her.
She passed the men in the outer room, for this was the only way out of the jail unless the main door were opened. She made use of the tears in her eyes to smile at them, so that it would seem to them that her eyes were merely extraordinarily bright.
“She’s through with that bird,” said one of the cow-punchers who helped to stand guard that day. “She’s sure through with The Whisperer. Doggoned if she didn’t go out pretty near laughing.”
“That’s the way with a woman,” said another. “There’s only one good thing about it — they can’t keep what they think out of their faces!”
They went in to The Whisperer to search him, however. But they could tell by his very attitude and manner that nothing had been done for him. All of his carelessness had left him. He sat upon the edge of his bunk with his face between his hands and his head bowed.
“She’s hit him pretty hard!” said one of the punchers, who rejoiced in the appellation of �
�Slippy Pete.” “She soaked him when he was down. Dog-gone a woman for not giving a damn about fair play!”
The others agreed with solemn nods.
“Whisperer,” they told the prisoner, as they turned the key in the heavy wards of the lock which confined the famous criminal, “Whisperer, we got to search you. It won’t take long.”
The wretched prisoner did not seem to hear. They had to touch his shoulder, at which he looked up wildly to them, and seemed to search their faces without seeing them.
They raised him kindly to his feet, for there was not one among them who was not touched by the agony of The Whisperer. It mattered little that they could not understand his emotion as it really was. Then they searched him hastily, and, of course, they found nothing.
Then they returned to their outer guard room and conferred together.
“She put him on a fire and sure tortured him,” they told one another gloomily. “Damn a girl like her!”
“But what was she to do?” asked Slippy Pete. “She couldn’t go ahead and try to marry a gent that was going to be hanged, could she?”
Then he shuddered. “Damned if it didn’t give me a chill to see a gent like The Whisperer plumb broke down,” he murmured. “Think of him facing death and holding up the way he’s been doing. Then along comes a girl and knocks him into a cocked hat! Seems like it’s sort of unnacheral. Makes me kind of sick!”
“Look here,” said the oldest fellow there, “you can’t tell any man by what he does around a woman. Some of ’em are fools and some of ’em ain’t. Sometimes the fools are wise around the girls, and sometimes the wise men are fools. Take The Whisperer, there. If you was to stick a gun under his nose and tell him that you was going to blow his head off, he’d laugh at you and tell you that he’d always hated the idea of hanging. But when this girl comes along and knocks the props out from under him, he ain’t no ways fitted to buck up agin’ it!”
They could not guess, one of them, that the agony of The Whisperer came from the sudden rebirth of longing for life after he had resigned himself for the end. He had said that his doom was written and sealed, and he had scorned to rebel against the inevitable, and here came a sweet vision of all that might have been, and made his heart shrink within him!
The word of what had happened was brought quickly to the sheriff, and he was told that his daughter had dealt The Whisperer a blow which had taken all the strength and apparently all of the courage out of the desperado.
He went with this tidings to Rankin.
“H-m-m!” said that clever worthy. “Girl sick, is he? Well, they all got their weak sides, these crooks. You go to him now, and you’ll find he’s soft. You go and sit down on his cot beside him and talk mighty brotherly. He’ll tell you everything he knows. He’ll confess all of his crimes. That’s worth knowing. Afterward, I get my whirl at him. He gets the third degree from nobody but me!”
XXX. KENWORTHY’S MISTAKE
THE SHERIFF DID not pause to think over this advice, for he considered the opinion of Rankin upon such matters as little short of inspirational. He straightway repaired to the jail and entered to extract from the suffering prisoner the final confession.
At the first glance, he saw that the wise Rankin had been right, as usual. For The Whisperer was a mere wreck of that proud self who had defied the world and death so gayly upon the day before. He was wilted upon his bunk. The weight of the irons seemed more than he could endure. His head was fallen against his breast.
The sheriff put on the cheerful air of a doctor visiting at the bedside of a patient doomed by an inexorable disease to death. He banished from the cell room every other person. He unlocked the cell door. He entered and found himself alone, saving that the main door of the jail, through which he had rather pompously made his entrance, was standing a little ajar. He rather regretted that, but he did not wish to go clear back to close it. Outside there were half a dozen of the cow-punchers who stood on guard. One of them might be tempted to peek in and then would see the sheriff talking like a father to the poor prisoner, wheedling him out of his confession.
However, he sat him down as Rankin had advised, and began the conversation by laying his fat hand kindly upon the shoulder of the prisoner. That wretched man lifted his head and looked wildly about him. Then he made a feeble effort to rally, and even smiled at the sheriff.
“Friend,” said the sheriff, “I’ve come to tell you that I’m very sorry for one thing: which is, that I had to allow you to be taken in my own house!”
The Whisperer waved his hand. The chain jingled.
“When I started the wheels of justice, they rolled on in their own way,” said the pompous sheriff. “They happened to overtake you in a place which was not of my own choosing. In the meantime, my boy, I’ve come to ask you what I can do for you?”
“Hang me this afternoon,” said The Whisperer without an instant’s hesitation. “Hang me this afternoon and get it over with. I’m — I’m going to pieces.”
He closed his eyes and shuddered violently, and the sheriff himself turned pale. For he thought what an awful thing it would be if this reckless and daring man should indeed lose his nerve before the end, oppressed by the prison walls and borne down, perhaps, most of all by the last cruel words of Rose Kenworthy, and so die like a coward and lose the value of the last of his virtues — his courage!
Yet, thought the sheriff, turning the thought in his mind, it might not be a bad idea to let the imprisonment have its effect upon him, and disintegrate his obstinacy as much as might be, so that in the end he would confess everything, according to the degree of pressure which was put upon him with questions. Justice was not a thing of mercy, the sheriff told himself.
He said aloud: “That’s blasphemy, my lad. When your turn comes — well, it comes. But who can be sure? For all you know, the governor may pardon you!”
At this The Whisperer actually recovered enough to smile.
“Why not?” continued the sheriff. “As a matter of fact, the men who are pardoned are usually the hard — I mean, the men who have committed a good many crimes. Just why that is, I don’t know. Except that the governor often feels that what has been a strong force in crime may become a strong force for the good of society. Then, if you choose to confess everything, that confession would rake in so many men who would otherwise never be caught, that most likely the governor would think it worth his while to consider a pardon for you.”
So spoke the sheriff, not at all what he thought. But it seemed to strike the prisoner most forcibly.
“Ah?” he said, and stiffened a little.
The sheriff felt that he had made a great impression. And indeed, so he had. He followed it up.
“Consider it from another angle,” he said. “When a man is as well known as you are, Whisperer, people begin to think that there must be something to you — that there must be some reason for your crimes. If you had one murder — I have to talk plain English — against you, everyone would be for having you strung up. But since you have twenty — suppose we make it only that many — I think that everyone might consider you worth a new trial!”
The sheriff did not believe a word he had been speaking, at first, but he had talked on with such warmth that he had almost convinced himself. In the eyes of The Whisperer, he had planted a peculiarly thoughtful light. The prisoner began to hold up his head and look around him. For the first time, he began to see.
He looked down, and the first thing he saw was the fat handle of a Colt looking up from the holster at the hip of the sheriff, for, since the capture of The Whisperer, the worthy rancher had taken more and more to the cow- puncher’s costume.
With his ironed hands, the prisoner dipped the gun out of this scabbard. He did not seem in haste, and yet before the rancher could stir, the muzzle of the gun was nudged into the fat which covered his ribs.
“Now, you fat-faced fool,” said The Whisperer soothingly, “stop thinking anything but what I tell you to think.”
The br
ain of the rancher was more benumbed than his body could ever be. This was a thing which he would ponder over for many a day. He, Percival Kenworthy, had been called a fool!
“Take out the key for these irons,” said the bandit.
The sheriff had thrust his hands above his shoulders to the full length of his arms. Now he started to draw down his right hand, but he hesitated.
“Go on,” said the prisoner, with a broad smile. “I’ll trust you not to make any funny moves — but just remember, Kenworthy, that I’m as good as dead now, and that if I’ve killed twenty men before this, I’d as soon as not make you the twenty-first!”
This terrible confession of a crime-hardened nature made Kenworthy turn a pale green. At length his fear-stiffened fingers brought forth the bunch of keys. He was even allowed to use both hands to find the key, to insert it into the little lock, and to turn it. The manacles fell from the wrists of the fighter. How trebly terrible he became in that instant. In his left hand, carelessly, he now poised the weapon whose muzzle was digging into the aching ribs of Kenworthy. His terrible right hand was free, and it seemed to the rancher a separate agent of destruction, moved by an intelligence of his own.
“Now the leg irons,” said The Whisperer.
The sheriff leaned and unfastened them. As he straightened again, upon his own fat wrists the horrible manacles from which he had just freed the arms of the prisoner were snapped. Then his no less plump ankles were secured in the same fashion. Last of all, his handkerchief was jerked from the breast pocket of his shirt. All of these things were done with such great rapidity that Kenworthy had really not sufficient agility of brain to keep pace with them.
That handkerchief was now wadded into a lump. Forefinger and thumb of iron gripped his lower jaw and wrenched it open. Into the gap the balled handkerchief was thrust, and next a second handkerchief was tied around his head. He was thus securely bound and gagged within the space of half a minute. Next the lean and amazingly strong arms of The Whisperer lifted the soft bulk of the sheriff and laid him upon the floor. Squinting sidewise, Kenworthy saw the light-stepping bandit make for the door.