by Max Brand
“It was a low thing,” said he. “How old are you, my friend?”
“Seventeen,” said I.
He turned and spat in the dust. “He’s seventeen!” said he to the others.
They nodded their confirmation.
“How old is Andrew Chase?” he asked.
“Twenty-two,” said several voices.
“A grown man and a boy,” said the little stranger. “Do you allow this thing to pass like this? Is that the Arizona way?”
“I don’t want help,” said I. “I’ll handle my own affairs. Andrew Chase is too much for me now, but I’m not at my full strength, yet.”
The little man turned his gray head to me again. “If I’m not mistaken,” said he, “there’ll be a little nest of hell raised around this town as a memento of today. The rest of you can write down what I say. Keep it in mind. Keep it in red. Some day a bomb will break. Then I should not like to be in the boots of the Chase family!”
That black day was not relieved by the homecoming of Father McGuire, who found me with my books spread out before me on the library table and my head buried in my hands. He sat down opposite me. I was too sick at heart to look up at him.
“Of course,” said he, “I have heard everything.”
I did not answer.
He went on: “I made a point of asking from several eye-witnesses. Each of them gave me a picture that was a little blacker that the one before. Personally, I cannot understand it! Andrew Chase is not the sort of a man who could do such a thing. It isn’t possible. It isn’t in his eyes or his speech. I can’t imagine it in his heart.”
Still I did not speak.
“Have you made up your mind about what you will do, Leon?” said he at the last.
“I’ll wait,” said I bitterly. “It’s all that I can do, isn’t it?”
He sighed.
“Is it too much to ask you to forget?” said he.
At this, I looked up indeed! I smiled at him. “It’s too much!” said I. “A hundred people saw him do it, and they’ll never forget. How can you ask me to?”
Father McGuire rose and walked restlessly around the room, striking his hands together and then dragging them apart.
“The thing grows,” said he. “It grows every moment! I had a foreboding of it before, but now I feel the certainty of it. The pride of Andrew Chase — that’s the keystone of the arch! It will never stop working until he has ruined everything! How many lives will be involved?”
VIII. A PROPOSITION
I HAVE NO doubt that, had it been any person other than Andrew Chase, the community would have taken action, and very stern action, against him. But he was the son of the richest and most respected man in the whole range; and he was also Andrew Chase! To see him, to conceive of him, was to conceive and see a person incapable of a small or knavish action. He might be capable of some crime, but it would have to be upon a grand scale. But Andrew Chase in the role of a bully? Surely not!
I myself, thinking of the matter, could hardly see him again doing the very thing which the purple lump on my chin was evidence that he had done. He might be a thousand things — but surely never a bully!
I do not believe that it was the pressure of any public opinion, which made him do what he next attempted. The thing came out of his own mind and his own heart, and I suppose that I have to admit that it was worthy of him. The hatred which I feel now for Andrew was built up in after years. He had changed from his youth before he accomplished the things which make me loathe him now!
At any rate, that same evening, as we were finishing our coffee after supper, old Mimsy answered the doorbell and came scurrying back in a fright to tell us that Mr. Andrew Chase had just arrived to call upon us.
Father McGuire gave me a look which was eloquent enough. But I told him that I would do nothing foolish, and that I hoped I would not say a foolish thing, either. Then we went in together to Andrew Chase. Mimsy had ushered him into the library. He stood up to greet us as we entered.
First he shook the hand of Father McGuire. Then he turned to me and said: “I won’t offer you my hand at present, Porfilo. Not until we have had a chance to talk and you have had a chance to consider my apology. Then we will shake hands, I hope.”
Father McGuire fairly groaned with relief.
He said: “I knew that you would do something like this. It was unlike you to take advantage of him, Andrew Chase. I am grateful to Heaven for it.”
“It was the most detestable thing I have done in my life,” said Andrew. “I am grateful to you because you knew I could not let things stand as they were without another word. Of course I have to do something. I am just now turning over in my mind some sort of an apology which may please Leon Porfilo. Do you know exactly what I did to him?”
This was really exceedingly adroit. He turned to Father McGuire and discussed his own sins as though it were a detached wickedness with which he really had no vital connection. Even at that age I was able to understand and admire his policy.
“I think that I have heard all the details of the affair,” said Father McGuire, “but not from Leon.”
“Exactly,” said Andrew, flashing a quick glance at me. “A man of spirit doesn’t talk about such things, of course. Well, sir, to put the whole thing in a word, Leon Porfilo, who is a gentleman, was used by me as though he were a rat. That’s putting it mildly. In the first place, I called him a greaser.
“In the second place, I stood to what I said. In the third place, when he very promptly and properly resented what I had said, I took advantage of my superior age and strength to knock him senseless. I tell you, sir, that when I review those things, I cannot see myself in the role. There must have been a devil in me!”
He had grown red and then pale, and there was a look of disgust in his handsome face.
“I’ve done such a thing,” said he, “as a man cannot forget. It will be a detestable stain in my mind so long as I live. There is only one extenuating remark which I can make. I don’t claim it as an excuse, but to help to show you how I could have acted as I did act: I was maddened at the sight of my brother battered and helpless in the hands of a younger and smaller man than himself after all the work which we had put upon him to make him capable of a better fight! I was in a frenzy, and the thing got the best of me. It was worse than drunkenness; it was a thing that makes me writhe now as I think of it!”
“You are very severe with yourself,” said Father McGuire gravely. “But I admit that I feel you are not too severe.”
“Not a whit!” declared Andrew Chase.
Here he turned sharply round upon me. “Porfilo,” said he, “I have several direct apologies to make to you.
“In the first place, I reflected upon an ancestry which is just as cleanly Anglo-Saxon as my own.
“In the second place, I badgered you while you were in the midst of the fight with another man who should have given you hard work enough without my help.
“In the third place, like a brutal bully, I took advantage of my own size and my strength to strike you down.”
He concluded this list of facts, which made my face burn, by saying simply: “If a man had done such things to me, I think I could never forget it. I tell you that frankly. But that is because my family has always been cursed with a species of false pride which is one of the worst vices in the world.
“I would nourish a sulky resentment until I had a chance to fight it out. But I think there may be finer stuff than that in you, Porfilo. If you accept my apology in the first place, don’t dream that anyone will ever accuse you of cowardice. Not at all! The manner in which you have disposed of my brother on two successive occasions”
Here he was forced to pause, for he was breathing hard, and his breath came in gasps. The color changed in his face, and for a moment he was livid. He mastered himself as quickly as he could, but I had had a sufficient glimpse of emotions which were almost beyond my conception. Proud I might be; but I could never rival such pride as this, which became a
veritable physical thing!
“In a word,” went on Andrew Chase, “I am offering you my hand. If you take it, I shall feel that you have helped to clean away a very soiled place in my honor. Will you be generous enough to forgive me for the things I have done, Porfilo?”
He said it in an indescribable manner, so filled with grace and with directness, so filled with humility and with pride that my heart melted at once. Truly, this fellow was full of magic! I had been raging with resentment an instant before. Now I found myself surging with the very kindest emotions concerning Andrew Chase.
“Why,” I said, “I can understand. You wanted Harry to win. Then you got mad — and you did a lot of things that anybody might be apt to do. I won’t keep any resentment. If you knocked me down, you did it fairly enough. Some day I might want to take another shot at you, though.”
“When you do,” said he, very grave, “come to me day or night and we’ll go off by ourselves or back to the same town plaza, and you can have your satisfaction. A large satisfaction it’s apt to be, if you grow into your promise for manhood, Leon!”
Was not this enough? Yes, sufficient to make me seize his hand and to wring it with all my might.
“I’ve forgotten everything! I — I thank you for being so square and coming to me like this. Tomorrow I’m going to let people know that I have no grudge against you!”
“Will you do that?” he asked a little eagerly.
“I will.”
“Then we can talk about the next thing that’s in my mind, and in my father’s mind, also. It’s really more difficult than the first proposition. I may need your help in it, Father McGuire!”
“You’ve done one good thing to-night,” said Father McGuire. His heart was in his voice. “It’ll be odd if I don’t help you to do another.”
“This has to do with poor Harry. I told you before that the Chase family is cursed with a devilish pride, and Harry, poor fellow, has as big a share as any of us. Well, Father McGuire, he has tried twice to match his fists against Leon’s and twice he has been beaten fairly and squarely by a youngster smaller and younger than himself. Both times a whole town has been able to look on at the affair! That’s rather irksome, you’ll admit.”
“I admit it,” said Father McGuire, as grave as ever.
“Harry knows, now, that he hasn’t the hand craft to stand up to Leon Porfilo. Very few men of any age could. But most men would accept that fact, no matter how they had to grit their teeth about it. My great fear is that Harry is apt to go a step farther. I am afraid, in a word, that he may take to some other weapon than his hands!”
Neither Father McGuire nor I spoke a word in answer to this.
Andrew Chase went on: “We can’t control Harry. He’s half insane with shame and rage. If we send him away, he’ll slip back and come at you. Then Heaven knows what the consequences may be. He’s a handy fellow with a gun; far handier than he is with his fists! But I don’t think fear of him would ever budge you, Leon.
“What we want to do — my father and I — is to ask you to slip out to a different section of the country. For instance, if you had in mind something such as starting in partnership with some older man — say the cattle business, or a long apprenticeship, or some such matter — why, if five or six thousand in spot cash would influence you — it would be a delight to supply you!”
Father McGuire looked at me, and I at him. I was bewildered. Then the priest put his hand on my shoulder.
“I have had only one son in my house, Mr. Chase,” said he.
“I believe I understand,” said Andrew gently, “and therefore I know that you will not stand between him and a bright future. Besides, you would be helping my family out of a frightful danger.”
“I think that is true,” said Father McGuire. He made a little pause before he turned to me. Their eyes bore heavily upon me.
“My dear Leon,” said that good man, “it goes much against my heart, but I feel that for your own sake and also for the sake of that headstrong young man, Harry Chase, you should accept what Mr. Chase has suggested. Take time, then, before you give me an answer!”
I did take time. I turned that matter back and forth as deliberately as I could, but, strive as I would, I could not reconcile myself to the idea. It was one thing to accept the apology of Andrew Chase and continue to live on as I had been living before in the house of good Father McGuire. It was still another matter to advance against the public voice by leaving Mendez and skulking away so secretly that Harry Chase might never find me.
No matter how many times a man proves himself a hero, if he has ever shown the white feather, even for a fraction of a second, it is neither forgotten nor forgiven. So it would be with my name and my fame.
I looked up from all of these reflections straight into the eye of Andrew Chase.
“I respect you too much,” I told him, “to think that you’d advise me to do this, if you’d looked at it from my angle. I can’t back out. I’ve got to stay here and see this through.”
Andrew Chase turned with a gesture of despair to Father McGuire.
But I stopped all argument and killed it at the root by simply saying: “Twenty years from now, suppose somebody from Mendez met me and said to himself: ‘There goes the fellow that was scared out of Mendez by young Harry Chase!’ Well, that would be enough to make me wish that I’d died.”
Of course, being sensible men, they knew that they could not argue against pride and prejudice like this. They simply glanced at one another, Andrew with his question and Father McGuire with a shake of the head. Then Andrew changed his tone at once. He told me he was sorry that he could not move me to do what he and his father wanted me to, but at the same time that did not alter his respect and liking for me.
He shook my hand again, asked me again to forgive him, and was assured by my simple self that I was glad to have met him, even at a price such as I had paid.
When Andrew had left, Father McGuire said: “Did you mean that?”
“I meant it!” said I. “Of course, some day I’m going to try to thrash him, because of the way he knocked me down. But”
“Don’t you suppose that he knows that?” said Father McGuire. “Haven’t you told him that?”
“Of course!” I admitted.
“Do you think that he’ll stand by and let you have that chance?”
“A man like Andrew Chase will,” said I.
“I don’t know,” said Father McGuire. “But, between you and me, I think this young man talks just a little too smoothly. He’s only twenty-two, and though that may seem a very mature age to you, it makes me wonder! He controls himself too well. There is a great deal of the diplomat about young Mr. Chase, or else I am very mistaken.”
I gave no credit to Father McGuire’s insinuations of double dealing on the part of Andrew. I was only seventeen!
A new phase of my life began to develop now. By the warning of Andrew Chase himself, we knew that Harry was more or less of an expert with a revolver, and since he was such an expert, I expected him daily to ride down upon me and attempt to gain his satisfaction at my expense by putting a bullet through my head.
For my part, I suppose that I had handled weapons more than most youngsters. I had done more than my share of hunting, and I was a good hand with a rifle. With a revolver I had done my share, too, of blazing away at snakes or rabbits that crossed my path, and wasted my ten or twenty bullets for every target I struck.
But now I began to work feverishly in preparation for the struggle which must lie ahead — according to the warning from Andrew himself. I bought a brand-new Colt and a large stock of ammunition. Every day, I took a new horse, which I had bought — a strong-limbed mustang well able to support my weight — and galloped off to a secluded spot between two hills on the desert. There I hammered away at some difficult target in all manner of difficult positions on horseback and on foot.
Every morning I went out for at least an hour; every afternoon I was away again. Sometimes I went out in
the gray of the evening. For who could tell under what light conditions I might have to meet Harry Chase?
Three months, four months, and there was no sign of Harry Chase. He had gone from the vicinity of Mendez. His family had sent him, it appeared at last, not to an Eastern school, but far across the water to England. Not for English culture, but for English safety.
I felt that I was rescued from the most vital pressure of danger, but still, all through the winter and into the dawn of my eighteenth year the next spring, I was working hard and faithfully with my revolver, and with the gloves of Father McGuire.
My lessons did not greatly suffer. When a young man is keyed up for one piece of work, he is apt to be able to do all of his work much more effectively. So it was with me. All the progress I had made in my first two years of study was not half of what I advanced through in my third year under Father McGuire.
You will wonder what his attitude may have been toward my constant practice with guns. It was rather amusing, but very characteristic.
“You used to fight all the time, before you learned how to box, Lee. Since you learned to box, you’ve fought only three times — twice with Harry Chase and once with Andrew.”
I turned a dark red, at this. The mention of my “fight” with Andrew always touched a tender spot in my nature.
“When a man knows what a blow is and how it should be struck,” went on Father McGuire, “he is not so apt to be a quarrelsome chap. You must not think that most of the battles on the frontier were the work of real gunmen, either. There are a few men who fight because they do love bloodshed. There are a few unfortunate souls who have that blood lust. But they are very few.
“Most of the men who understand what they can accomplish with a gun in the hand, usually prefer to keep that gun in a holster — until their backs are against the wall. Do you understand me? But the great using up of ammunition, the smashing of windows and mirrors, the ripping up of floors and ceilings — and the occasional slaughter of one another — all of that was the work of the tenderfoot, my boy.