by Max Brand
“Ross has seen a rabbit.” The sheriff chuckled.
So, indeed, Ross Hale had. And that rabbit lay dead, first lamed, and then with its head nearly torn off by the slugs from the gun of the farmer. It was a mighty satisfaction to him. He stood over the little animal for a moment and smiled. For, after all, there might be some chance that he could penetrate the camp of Jarvin, kill his man, and even fight his way out again.
He started at once to reach his best horse and saddle it for the long trail. It was a fine brown gelding with one white-stockinged foreleg and a white blaze down its face — a very good horse. Indeed, it was sure to be of the best, for Peter himself had made a present of it to his father, and when was Peter contented with anything other than the best?
On that same day, the sun was blazing hot on the mine and the shacks, which were clustered around the mouth of the shaft. Ordinarily there was a little breeze moving across the valley, carrying at the least a current of warm air around the buildings. But on this day, all was as deadly still and hot as an oven.
Jarvin was in great distress. He had taken off his coat; he had taken a rather greasy towel to mop the perspiration from his forehead and from under his chin. But still there was a working conscience, as one might say, that kept Jarvin to his labors. He sat at the table and shuffled the cards over and over again, and then dealt them.
It was a most bewildering thing to mark the dexterity of those fat, white fingers as they handled the pasteboards. Steadily, anxiously, with a puckered forehead, Mr. Jarvin worked at his art. As he dealt, he would say: “I win!” Or again: “You win!” Or: “Third man wins!”
Having completed the deal, he would turn the cards face up, and it was wonderful to note that his prophecies were rarely wrong. Not more than once in ten times did he make a mistake. But the hand that he selected was always the most powerful one going into the draw. In the draw itself, he could do astonishing things. The top two or three cards remained in place, but dexterously, from the center of the pack or from the bottom of it, he drew out cards, and all at such a flying speed that the most careful eye could not have detected it.
He grumbled to himself, however. Half a lifetime spent in similar labors, it was plain, had not lifted the cunning of Mr. Jarvin to the point that he desired. Like all great men, he had established above himself a goal that he could never quite attain. Still he struggled patiently toward that end.
Said Jarvin: “Hey, Peter... did you ever see such a cursed day?”
Peter, lying in the hammock outside the window, turned his head and observed his employer calmly.
“Very close,” he said.
“It’s worse,” said Mr. Jarvin with emphasis, “than a katzenjammer. Soapy, gimme a drink, will you?”
Soapy grunted: “I’m busy.”
It brought a roar from Mr. Jarvin.
“Say, Peter, ain’t you going to let that Negro of yours do what I tell him to do?”
“Why,” said Peter, “Soapy can’t really work for two masters, you know.”
A brilliant crimson suffused the face of Jarvin. Words swelled in his throat and made his fat lips tremble, but then they were suppressed again. He heaved himself from his chair and went to the side of the room, where he poured out a glass of tepid water and swallowed it, still looking askance at the pair beyond the windows.
They had not altered their position. Peter lay with his eyes closed, again, and beside him squatted Soapy, with a tattered remnant of a newspaper, yellow with time, made into a fan, with which he set up a steady current of air. Now and again, he stretched forth his enormous hand and brushed away a fly that threatened to settle upon the face of his master.
In the beginning, Jarvin had hardly been able to refrain from gigantic laughter when he saw Soapy adopting toward Peter the attitude of a mother to a child, or of a worshiper to a saint. However, the days had crept on, and still there was no change. Others, who looked on, ceased to smile, also. In the first place, it was always dangerous to smile when Soapy was near. Furthermore, it began to be apparent that this was no passing fancy in the mind of Soapy. He regarded the cripple with a strange species of veneration. Automatically he followed him about through all the day. He was like a dreadful shadow lurking behind Peter wherever the latter went. And his anxious eyes continually studied the face of his master, striving to discover the will of Peter before it could be spoken.
Some observing people thought that Soapy was going mad. But others contented themselves with observing that Peter was a very strange fellow and that he might accomplish queerer things than this, before the end.
Said Mr. Jarvin, as he scowled upon this peaceful picture: “The damned cards won’t behave.”
“Look here,” said Peter, “what’s upset you so much?”
A great oath ripped from the throat of Jarvin. “Who said that I was upset?”
“You’ve acted like a nervous child since last night,” replied Peter.
At this, Mr. Jarvin actually reached for his gun. But then he hesitated. The bright round, unwinking eye of Soapy was fixed upon him. Jarvin changed his mind. Nothing could be quite so discouraging to rashness as that unwinking eye of Soapy’s.
Peter asked: “Have you been sleeping badly? Or is it indigestion?”
Jarvin groaned suddenly. “Peter, it’s a ghost!”
The broad nostrils of Soapy flared; his eyes opened wider and rounder than ever.
“A ghost!” Jarvin moaned. “As I was riding along through the brush with you and Soapy, I looked back, and it sort of seemed to me that I could see a gent there behind the shadow of a bush... a gent with his hat off... and pale, silver- looking hair... that reminded me... of... somebody else.”
His voice trailed away into a little gasp of emotion, Plainly Jarvin had been badly frightened.
“And I remember,” said Peter, “that, when we were getting out of Lawson Creek in such a hurry, there was a fellow, such as you describe, standing on the steps of the general merchandise store. His hat had been blown off and his hair was long, and the wind was blowing through it. He was shooting after us a great deal straighter than the rest of them. More dangerous than the whole crowd put together. He was the one that crashed those bullets through the body of the buckboard, you know.”
Soapy cried: “Dog-gone it, Mister Hale, by the way that you and the boss talks, it would sound like old Sam Debney had come back to haunt...”
“Curse you, you fool, Soapy!” screamed Mr. Jarvin, leaping to his feet. “I’ll smash your skull in for you, if you say that again.” He relapsed into another groan. “I almost thought that it was,” whispered Jarvin. “The same... sort of a... white face, too.”
Yes, when Peter recalled the figure of the man who had stood on the steps of the store in Lawson Creek with such an accurate rifle, he could remember that the face of the stranger had seemed to him to be extraordinarily pale. But he had simply thought that this must be due to the manner in which the lamplight was streaming across his shoulder from the open door behind.
“Hello,” said Soapy in a whisper. “He’s back on that idea. He always said that Debney would come back to haunt him.”
CHAPTER XLIII
THE EVENING OF another day came softly down from the shadows of the mountains. But there was still enough light to pour through the window and illuminate the table of Mike Jarvin, where he worked patiently at his card packs. As the dimness increased, he thrice begged Soapy to light a lamp for him, but Soapy was as indifferent as a piece of stone, and Peter refused to interfere.
“Soapy works for me,” said Peter, “and that means he doesn’t have to serve other people, unless he wants to. That’s final, Jarvin. You’ve heard me say it before, for that matter.”
“Well,” Soapy said, “I’ll light his darn lamp for him. Maybe it’ll help him to keep the ghosts away.”
There was a half-angry and half-frightened snarl from Mr. Jarvin inside of the shack. But now as Soapy looked down the slope, he saw a rider approaching through the dusk —
a rider who came out of the shadows and rapidly into his ken — and he knew that it was a stranger to the mine.
“And there’s two more coming behind. A woman and a man coming up the slope behind, Mister Hale. What might they be? Woman riding a mighty bright pinto boss.”
“A pinto horse!” echoed Peter, rising suddenly in the hammock. He gave the couple, who were winding up the road, a single startled glance, and then heaved himself to his feet. But now he started again. For he saw the horseman who was drifting nearer. “Father!” cried Peter. “What in the name of wonder has brought you up here?”
“Why, Peter,” said the older man, waving his hand to him, “I’ve come up here to see how things was with you. There ain’t any harm in that, I guess?”
“No harm,” Peter stated in a somewhat stifled voice. “No harm at all.”
“But there’s somebody else coming up the road that might surprise you, Peter.”
“Tell me,” gasped the son. “It can’t be... it really can’t be that... ?”
“It’s McNair and his girl,” Ross Hale said calmly. “I passed them on the trail a while back. I recognised them, but they didn’t recognize me. I guess I was cutting in from the side and looking back, with the light ag’in’ their faces. You’d best go meet them, Peter.”
Said Peter in a shaken voice: “Do you hear, Jarvin?”
“I hear,” growled Jarvin.
“Shall I go to meet them, or shall I stay here with you?”
“Let them be cursed. Well, I don’t want to hear that McNair talk. Got no use for me... nor me for him. You go meet them, and let McNair know that he ain’t welcome here. The fool had ought to know. And you might take your old man along with you.”
“I’ll wait right here,” Ross Hale said as quietly as before. “There ain’t any hurry about what I got to say to you.”
Peter was already starting away with Soapy behind him.
“Hey, leave Soapy here!” shouted Jarvin.
“Go back, Soapy,” said Peter. “Watch Jarvin for me.”
Soapy obediently swung around and strode on to the verandah.
“No matches here for this lamp!” snarled Jarvin.
“Soapy, got a match?”
“No,” said Soapy.
“Go fetch me one, then.”
“I ain’t sent here to fetch things. The boss sent me to watch you, you fat swine,” replied amiable Soapy.
“Here,” said Ross Hale in genial tones. “Here’s a match, Jarvin.”
“Ah,” Mike Jarvin said, “come in, Hale. You can see what I got to put up with,” he continued, “from your son and his Negro. Thanks.”
For Ross Hale had entered the shack and handed a package of sulphur matches to the miner. One of those matches spluttered with a blue light that steadied to yellow, and the lamp was lighted.
“Now look here, Hale,” went on Jarvin more gently. “I suppose that you’ve come up here to get your boy. But that ain’t likely. He’s to stay with me, Hale. He gets pay enough for a major general. That ought to suit him. And he’s able to pull me out of a good many scrapes. You’ve heard about what happened at Lawson Creek, I suppose?”
“Yes,” said Ross Hale.
“So we ain’t gonna have no argument, eh?”
“What I want to ask you, Jarvin, is just this... how long will Peter be workin’ for you?”
“How long will I be livin’?” replied Jarvin. “That’s a more sensible way of puttin’ that question. And I’m tough, Hale, and I’m gonna last.”
There was a little pause, which lasted long enough to make Jarvin squint at his guest.
“I’d like to say,” murmured Ross Hale at last, “that, if you was to think things over careful, you might want to make a compromise with me, Jarvin.”
“Compromise?” Jarvin snarled, growing ugly at once. “Why should I? I got Peter and I’m gonna keep him. I got him so’s he can’t get away. And that’s the finish of it.”
“Are you set on that? Is that final?” asked Hale.
“Soapy,” grunted the mine owner, “this here looks like trouble. Are you watchin’?”
“I’m watchin’,” replied Soapy from the window.
“Jarvin,” said Hale, “I’ve come here to have it out with you. And... “ His right hand went back tohis hip; that gesture brought a snarl of fear from Jarvin. His own right hand went back to his gun and clung there.
As for Soapy, his own weapon was already bared and resting on the sill of the window. All of this, Ross Hale saw. He knew that, when he drew his own gun, a bullet would be through him. But still his courage did not falter. Life, for him, was not so sweet that he cared to linger it out. And before he died, he would be able to draw down Jarvin also into the eternal shadow. But there was no chance for him to fire.
Suddenly Jarvin looked askance at the window facing Soapy. And Jarvin, with a shrill scream, threw up his arms before his face and cringed back against the side of the wall.
“No, Sam!” he shouted. “For heaven’s sake... !”
It seemed to Ross Hale, as he looked in the same direction, that he saw at the other window a very pale face, framed with long, silver hair, distinguishable dimly under the shadow of a hat. He had only the faintest glimpse. A gun spoke from the hand of the stranger, filling the little room with sudden thunder. Jarvin crashed forward on his face and moved no more. The face at the other window was gone as Soapy, his attention drawn from Ross Hale, fired a bullet vainly in that direction. When Soapy rushed around the side of the shack, there was no trace of any stranger. Perhaps he had run down among the big rocks that bordered the plateau.
Soapy hurried back into the little house and found Ross Hale on his knees beside Jarvin. He had turned the wounded man upon his back, but it was plain that nothing could be done. A crimson patch was growing in the very center of Jarvin’s breast — and his eyes were closed.
He opened them at last with a faint chuckle, and then his voice sounded with wonderful steadiness and a note of exultation. “A full house beats three of a kind, stranger,” Jarvin murmured cheerfully.
With the last word his eyes grew blank, and he was dead.
Jarvin was buried at the edge of the plateau. Some of the miners blasted a hole among the rocks, and he was laid away for the endless sleep. Aterward, he remained in the minds of men only as an ugly rumor, and no more. Perhaps he occupied less space in the thoughts of Peter Hale and his father than in any others — because there was too much, now, to fill the minds of the two.
There was only one point on which they differed — only one point of importance. Ross Hale was firmly convinced that it was actually the ghost of Sam Debney, Jarvin’s murdered man, that had returned to work vengeance upon his destroyer. But Peter was just as firmly convinced that it must have been a brother, say, of poor Debney, who had returned after these many years to give Jarvin requital for that foul murder.
However, they could not dwell on such ideas, and certainly there was never a trace of the destroyer. He vanished from the knowledge of men utterly.
As for Peter and Ruth — they were married before the week was out, and at their marriage every notable in the county was present, with one exception.
Andy Hale was there, stern, and with a forced smile that deceived no one. But Charles Hale, it appeared, had been called away to the East upon important business, and no one could say how long it would be before he returned. Indeed, he did not return for many long months. Not, in fact, until his father had gone for him.
There were ugly rumors afloat — that Charlie had fallen in bad habits while he was away; that the gaming table had a singular lure for him; that he had learned to squander money. No one could understand how this could be, for certainly he had been raised according to a rigid rule of economy.
Peter passed on to a broader and a fuller life. He had the growing concerns of his father’s ranch to occupy him. Beyond this, he had all the business of McNair’s broad acres. McNair himself refused to lift a hand and left everything in the
power of his son-in-law. As he said, he had been merely a worker on the old scale and scheme of things. He had merely sketched in the outlines of the picture, and now Peter could fill in the details. As for himself, he was fond of sitting at his ease with Ross Hale on the verandah of Peter’s new house.
He would say to his friend: “Now which of us has the most claim to Peter, Ross? You made him, I know. But I discovered him. And that’s just as important.”
THE END
Werewolf (1926)
CONTENTS
I. THE NEW-COMER
II. THE LOCKED ROOM
III. DARK THOUGHTS
IV. NO ASSISTANCE
V. WORDS FOR THE WEAK
VI. A WOMAN OF STEEL
VII. FLIGHT
VIII. BITTER THOUGHTS
IX. THE PHANTOM
X. AN ANCIENT CREED
XI. WATCHED
XII. ONLY A MAN
XIII. READY
XIV. BEYOND FEAR
XV. BACK TO THE VALLEY
XVI. A QUEER DOG!
I. THE NEW-COMER
ALL DAY THE storm had been gathering behind Chimney Mountain and peering around the edges of that giant with a scowling brow, now and again; and all day there had been strainings of the wind and sounds of dim confusion in the upper air, but not until the evening did the storm break. A broad, yellow-cheeked moon was sailing up the eastern sky when ten thousand wild horses of darkness rushed out from behind Mount Chimney and covered the sky with darkness. Dashes and scatterings of rain and hail began to clang on the tin roofs in the valley, and the wind kept up a continual insane whining, now and then leaping against window or door and shaking them in an impatient frenzy.
On such a night as this, few men got as far as Yates’s Saloon beyond the outskirts of the town of Royal, but nevertheless he was always glad to have this weather, for those who did come stayed long and opened their purses with as much freedom as though the morrow was to be doomsday, and as though their souls needed much warming with honest rye whiskey against that great event.