Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  X. JAILED

  THINGS WOULD HAVE gone better for me in many Western communities, I very well knew. But the reign of law and order which our good sheriff had established in Mendez was such an iron-clad thing that shooting affairs were a novelty. People had been horrified by my affair with Harry Chase; and though Harry was more blamed, still I was blamed, also.

  I would not have accepted his invitation to a gun fight, it was felt, unless I had been a lover of gun play. Also, as I have said before, my past record and all my fist work were against me.

  Father McGuire believed my tale even less than others might have believed it. He came to see me twice every day. On the second occasion he begged me for a long time to confess and meet my sentence like a man. But I would not make an answer except to say, doggedly, that I was not guilty of any crime. At this, he pressed his lips together and returned no reply. It was plain that his mind was entirely made up!

  I shall not linger on the details of the trial. It was swift and to the point. I stood up before a crowd of hostile eyes and told my simple narrative. It was too absurd to be given credence for an instant. I was considered not even a good liar. That a man I had never seen should have gone to the sheriff with an appeal for protection against me, and that he afterward should have attempted to murder me on the open highway, was too absurd.

  As for the decision of the jury, they did not have to remain out for five minutes. Five minutes more saw me standing before the judge, condemned to twenty-five years of imprisonment in the State penitentiary.

  I, a boy of eighteen — and twenty-five years!

  I would be forty-three when I came out! At my age, forty-three seemed almost the end of life.

  I shall not ask you to sit in my cell with me in the first wild hours of my anguish. I shall leap ahead to the evening of that day when the sheriff brought in to see me a gray-haired, lean-faced man with an eye wonderfully blue and bright.

  I remembered him instantly. It was he who had chosen to back me against Harry Chase on the day of our second fight.

  He said, cheerfully: “Youngster, you seem to have dropped into a bit of hard luck!”

  I could not help breaking out: “I’m done for now. I’ve got life in prison, or practically that. I’m not saying it because I hope anyone will believe me, but now I want to say for the last time I’ll ever say it, and to a stranger like you: That I swear to Heaven Niginski carried a gun and fired the first bullet, and that everything I’ve said about him has been the truth and the whole truth!”

  “Why, the devil, lad,” said the blue-eyed man, “I know that perfectly well!”

  “What?” cried the sheriff, who had been just a little impressed by the solemnity of what I had said.

  “I won’t say what my reasons are,” said the blue-eyed stranger. “You wouldn’t believe them, sheriff, any more than you would believe this unlucky youngster. But I know that he told the truth.”

  “I’d like to see how you know!” exclaimed the sheriff.

  “I’ll give you one reason,” said the other, with a snap of his fingers.

  “Let me have it, then.”

  “Is this kid supposed, around your town, to be a fool?”

  “No. He’s had a name for a good deal of sense — since he went to live with Father McGuire.”

  “Very well. Would anyone but a fool have told the sort of a story he gave the judge and jury — unless it had been the truth? As a lie, can you imagine anything worse and weaker than the yarn he composed?”

  The sheriff was a bit struck, and bit his lip in thought.

  “All kids are complicated liars,” said the stranger.

  “Darned if it don’t sound pretty reasonable,” said the sheriff. “But there was too much evidence!”

  “Oh, I know a good deal about evidence!” said the other airily. “Youngster,” he added to me, “I’ve not stopped trying to do something for you. But I didn’t know what shape you were in until the other day. I was busy at some work which I suppose your friend, the sheriff, would not have liked.”

  Here he gave a calm, smiling side glance to the sheriff. But the sheriff said nothing at all.

  “I’d like to know,” said I, “what reason you had for wanting to help me.”

  Don’t put it in the past tense,” said he. “I saw you knock big Harry Chase kicking. I saw you stand up to that multiplied fiend incarnate — Andrew Chase. I’ll never forget it. The rest of the dubs and blockheads in this town wouldn’t forget it, if they had the wits of a child!”

  I expected the sheriff to explode with rage; but there was something about the cool manner of this man which discouraged explosions very decidedly.

  He went on: “My name is ‘Tex’ Cummins. Will you remember that?”

  “I shall,” said I.

  “Before I go”

  “Before you go,” said I, “tell me what could have been in the brain of that Niginski to attack me the way he did! Was he crazy?”

  “Not a bit. He had taken good money for that job. The game was to incriminate you, of course, if Niginski was killed. But the real hope was that Niginski would dispose of you, instead of vice versa.”

  “Niginski did not even carry a gun!” cried the sheriff.

  “Bah!” said Tex Cummins. “Look up his record and see if he was the kind to go without a gun even to a dance!”

  “But no one would have done a rotten thing like that!” cried I, more bewildered than ever, as he offered this solution. “Who in the world would hire a man to kill me? Who have I done a real wrong to?”

  He merely smiled at me. “Youngsters are always like that,” said he. “They either think that everybody in the world is a crook — outside of themselves — or else they think that the world has no villains in it. Look here, Leon Porfilo, can you tell me that you have no real enemies around this town?”

  “Only” I stopped short and blushed. It seemed madness to attempt to connect the proud and wealthy family of Chase with such a brutal affair.

  “Only what?” said Cummins. “I’m not the sheriff. I’m not the judge and the jury. But I’m the man who knows all about this. Let me hear you guess!”

  “Harry Chase!” exclaimed I.

  “Nonsense!” shouted the sheriff.

  “Is it?” said Cummins coldly, and he looked our sheriff deliberately up and down. “I think that the time may come when Mendez will sweat, because, like a crowd of blind fools, you people have turned this honest youngster, here, into a criminal. But he’s right.

  “Harry Chase is well again and practicing with his guns. His whole family knew that. Do you think that they wanted him to go out and stand up to you once more? Do you think that Harry himself wanted to do that, if there was any way of avoiding it and keeping his honor intact?”

  It was the true explosion of a bomb. The sheriff simply gripped at the bars and gaped at Tex Cummins. I could not say a word.

  “Well,” said Tex Cummins, “I’d like to shake hands with your prisoner, sheriff!”

  He did not wait for a permission which the astonished sheriff did not have the voice to give, but he reached his hands through the bars to me and I, as I closed my fingers heartily over his, blinked violently. I had felt a sharp edge cutting into the palm of my hand. I had received, also, a small vial.

  The rankest sort of an amateur detective could have told that I had received something from the hand of the stranger; but our good sheriff was at that moment the most green of all keepers of the law. He was still tasting the strange news which Tex Cummins had brought. I think that in the sheriff’s mind, from that moment, there was an innate conviction that this blue-eyed, insolent man was right.

  At least, the sheriff lingered after Cummins had left, and he said to me:

  “I dunno, kid. All I wish is for the right man to get it in the neck. Dog- gone me if it’s possible that the Chase bunch could be mixed up in dirty work like this.”

  “I’ve never accused them,” I pointed out.

  “Are you a fool, an innocen
t, or are you a smart crook?” roared the sheriff suddenly.

  I said nothing, of course, and he strode away filled with emotion, leaving me alone in that nest of cells. For there was no other prisoner in the place.

  I did not wait for night and darkness. In a trice I was examining that gift of Tex Cummins, and I found that I had in my hand the neatest of all small steel saws — a saw with an edge as brilliant, as keen, and as hard as though set with diamonds. The vial was full of the best oil.

  I tried that saw dubiously — it was so tiny — on one of the stout bars of my cage. Behold! The keen edge sank into the strong steel of the bars with an exquisite ease!

  As a matter of fact, that was not tool-proof steel — that cell of mine — or I should not have had such an easy time of it. But as it was, I was able to make the saw glide deep into the heart of the bar in a few moments. When it grew hot in my fingers and deep in the steel rut it had made, I used the oil, and once more it glided into the metal.

  I had to make two cuttings, after which there would be room enough for me to press my body sidewise through the gap made by removing the one bar. I started the two cuttings, therefore, and cut each bar almost through. Then I sat down to wait.

  When supper was brought in to me — rice and syrup and tea with a big lump of stale bread — I chatted good-naturedly to the jailer to keep his attention from the bars. And I fell to work on my food.

  I finished and gave him back the tray. In another ten minutes the jail was closed, the great locks turned, and the lights were off. That jailer had other business on hand for the evening, and he was anxious to be away.

  I did not wait for the town to grow quiet with the night. I should have stifled, I am sure, if I had had to keep inactive another moment. Instead, I fell to work on my cutting, and in a few moments the bar was sawed through and placed with a joyous care upon the floor.

  That was a scant third of my labor done. I had to run down the hall to the big window which filled one end of it. I had to cut through two of the bars which covered its face. I worked with a furious energy, thrilled with terrible pangs of fear when the saw squeaked; with blisters growing on the tips of my fingers and with my wrists aching from the incessant play back and forth.

  But those two bars were divided, each in two places, and lifted gently to the floor. My way was clear.

  I cast one savage glance over my shoulder as I heard, I thought, a sound at the front of the jail.

  Then I was instantly through the aperture which I had made through the window. I slipped to the ground outside, and it seemed to me that the taste of the free air which I breathed was the most dainty food, the most exquisite perfume which I had ever enjoyed. Then, around the corner of the jail, walked a man with a light, long stride. He came straight on, toward me. I was half of a mind to throw myself on him, but there was something about his jovial air and the manner in which he whistled lightly as he walked that made me hope that he might pass me without observing me.

  He did pass!

  But after he had made a single stride more, he paused sharply, and I heard him say: “There is a bay gelding on the far side of the plaza, tied in the shadow of the trees. No one will say you are a horse thief if you take him.”

  And he was gone! It was Tex Cummins again!

  I gaped after him until he turned the farther corner of the jail. But here was no time to wonder at him. I was turning my back upon my old life. I was preparing to start north for the cloudy blue of the mountains and the safety they might give me. I was preparing to leave Mendez forever, I hoped, and I would leave behind me only one stinging regret — that the faith in my guilt was so strong in the heart of Father McGuire.

  Yet, as the first chapter of my life ended, as I stood there an outlaw and an escaped convict, with the dread of the law to hang over me forever, I had much to be thankful for. No one could ever take from me those pleasant memories of the blessed years that I had spent with Father McGuire.

  XI. “MIKE” O’ROURKE

  WHEN I WENT across the plaza from the jail I was glad of two things in this world, and no more: Tex Cummins and the night — Tex because he had made my escape possible, and the night because it shut me away from the view of the townsmen. I found at once the horse which he had named, but it seemed to me that the undoing of the knot required an age. Two men, half seen through the darkness, paused on the sidewalk and muttered to one another. I was sure that it was about me, and I was in a fever to be off. Yet I had the good sense to get into the saddle in a leisurely manner and start off into the saddle in a mild-mannered gallop.

  I had to keep a stiff pull on the reins for that purpose, because the horse which my mysterious friend Cummins had provided was fairly rearing to go. But at least the two fellows on the sidewalk made no attempt to follow me. I considered that my first triumph.

  But, no matter how eager I was to be out of the town — for at any moment my escape might be noticed — I drew the rein for an instant in front of the house of good Father McGuire. When I thought of my three happy years with him, I was on the verge of calling him out to me.

  I recollected that it would not have been fair to him; it might have put him in the light of one who failed in his duty to the law by having cognizance of the escape of a prisoner, and yet it made my heart ache to leave the town without saying farewell to him. All that he had done for me ran like wildfire through my mind. I think, indeed, that the entire fifteen years of my life before I came to him could not have weighed against a single six months of my stay with the priest. I loved him more than I had loved my father; and he loved me as a son.

  I loosed the rein and let the gelding have more of its head. So we darted out of Mendez and onto the northern road. I had not the slightest doubt of what my destination should be. All my life I had looked toward the piled blue mountains on the northern horizon as toward a promised land. Now I knew that they should be my land indeed.

  So I choked the gait of the gelding to a long, rolling canter which ate up the miles with an effortless ease. Three times I stopped my good nag and loosened the cinches and walked a mile or so beside him to let him take his breath and cool off, for the night was hot. Then we struck briskly on again.

  When the dawn came, I knew how much Tex Cummins had done for me by selecting such a horse. There must have been some of the bone and heart of a thoroughbred in him, for in spite of the keen work of the night, his head was still high, and his ears were pricking now and again.

  It had been a mighty march, but now I had my reward, for we were already in the foothills, and the great dawn-blackened mountains went storming up through the gray of the sky above me. They had seemed gentle marvels of cool blue, in the distance — they were bleak monsters with ragged heads, viewed at close hand.

  I kept straight ahead, however, in spite of the fatigue of my horse, until the rolling lands tossed me into the heart of the more rugged country. I chose for my halting place the flat shoulder of a mountain fenced about by a scattering of young firs and pines. In the central clearing there was ample good pasturage for my horse. As for myself, I was hungry enough, but I was far more weary. In a snug roll of blankets which the kindness of Tex Cummins had provided behind my saddle, I rolled up and in the thickest spot of shade which I could find, I was soon soundly asleep.

  It was early morning! I suppose that the sun had not been above the eastern mountains more than an hour on its way when I first closed my eyes, and it was in just the opposite place when I opened them again. I had slept through a full twelve hours!

  What I first felt was a stab of hunger. It was something over thirty hours since I had eaten, and at eighteen, with six feet and some odd inches of strong body maturing, and after a huge ride and after all the weary, lean hours of fasting during my jail days of trial and imprisonment, I was in the mood of a python which has a winter’s fast behind it.

  But I forgot food an instant later. Something stirred stealthily in the trees and brought flashing back upon my mind the realization that I was a fu
gitive from justice, condemned to a dreary long term of imprisonment by the due course of the law, and in as much vital danger as though I had really murdered that queer beast, Turk Niginski, and not downed him in the fairest of fair fights.

  The realization of what I was, combined with that sound among the trees, brought me whirling to my feet with a gun in my hand. In three bounds, there was the cry of a girl, half squeal and half scream, in front of me, while she went scurrying out into the open.

  I stopped at the edge of the trees and considered her, running with the sun sparkling in the red hair which the wind of her speed had blown out behind her. She was such a pretty sight that I almost forgot to be afraid of the danger which this glimpse she had had of me asleep might bring on my trail.

  I called: “Well, kid, what’s behind you?”

  It stopped her as though I had tossed a rope over her head and borne back on it. She halted and turned around on me. I saw that I should not have called her “kid.” She was a bit too old and too pretty for that. She seemed about fifteen or sixteen; but she was not tall for her age, and that was why I thought she was just a youngster when she ran away from me. Perhaps fifteen or sixteen may seem young enough to you, but you must remember that I was only eighteen myself.

  “What do you mean by calling me a kid?” said she, still gasping a little.

  But the shock of that first fright was leaving her every moment.

  I sat down on a flat-topped stump. There was no one to see. There was only an old shack of a farmhouse down in the cup of the valley with a stick of white smoke stuck on top of it and broken squarely across by the wind after it rose a little way.

  “I didn’t think,” said I, “that a grown-up woman like you would be running away every time a man said good morning to you.”