Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  He defied me with his eyes to solve such an impossible situation.

  “I can tell you simply enough. There is a great deal of money in these mountains that is not in the pockets of honest men.”

  “You mean it’s in the pockets of the crooks? Yes, I know that. I’d need a thousand deputies — and real men, every one of ’em — to keep these here mountains combed clean. A man can hide ten times in every quarter mile. Where did you hide, kid?”

  “A quarter of a mile from your house,” said I.

  He threw up his hands with a groan of despair.

  “I might of knowed that,” moaned Sheriff Lawton. “Well, go and tell me how you can make an honest living while you’re an outlawed man with a face that’s as well known as if it was the map of the United States?”

  “There’s no good reason why I shouldn’t hunt down a few of the crooks, from time to time,” said I. “They have money. Here’s my first job, which isn’t so bad. There’s six thousand dollars’ reward for the capture of Lucas. That money comes to me.”

  “How are you gonna be able to claim it without steppin’ yourself into a jail?”

  “You’ll claim it for me, and I’ll claim it from you.”

  “Cool,” said the sheriff. “Always cool. Enough brass to fit up a stamp mill. I’m gonna claim that reward and then pay it over to you?”

  “You are,” said I.

  “Ah, Lord,” sighed the sheriff, “I suppose that I shall. How come I’m always your handy tool, Porfilo?”

  “Because we need one another,” said I.

  “It’s the first rim of the day stickin’ over the hills yonder,” said my friend Lawton. “If you’re seen sneakin’ around my house, I’m a ruined man and you’re a lost man. Get out of here. Come back in a week. Tap at my window, and I’ll pass your money out of the window to you. But after that, kid, I’m after you on your trail again. You understand?”

  I understood clearly enough, and I left the house at once. I gathered from the sheriff that during the next week he would allow me a truce. So I spent the next day and the next night resting in my old clearing near his house.

  After that, I dropped across the mountains on the chestnut and reached a little crossroads town at the junction of two big ravines. I got hold of a newspaper.

  According to the paper, there was no doubt about Lucas’ guilt. Perhaps it was the effect of the wounds which he bore from that fatal snapshot which I took at him with my revolver. At any rate, a little grilling from the sheriff had brought out a full confession from the poor sinner. In that confession, he admitted a career of crime which sickened me to read, and which I cannot repeat without loathing.

  I was rather astonished to see that Sheriff Lawton had put down the facts in black and white. He began with a peroration which was typical of him, though I suppose that the reporter or editor had altered the grammar quite a little to the better.

  What he began with was a naked statement of how he had first met me, how he had turned me loose from his house on account of his feeling that the spirit of Western hospitality is a sacred thing, and how he had pursued and failed to capture me.

  He went on to tell how I had gone to town and sent the doctor back to the wounded men at sufficient risk to bring a fight on my shoulders before I was clear of the village. Then he told how I had come to him and brought the person of Steve Lucas, whose confession to many black and startling crimes was added in another part of the paper.

  After that he shocked me by repeating exactly what I had said to him — that I expected the six thousand dollars’ reward; for which I was repaying to the right owners the fifth part of a million dollars which had been taken from the bank at Crockett. Furthermore, I expected the sheriff to claim that money and to receive it from him. Beyond all this, he intended to give me that money before he started on my trail again, and he ended with a frank appeal to any voter in the country to impeach his conduct and his intentions and to criticize him if it was felt that he deserved criticism.

  As for the criticism, I felt that perhaps the newspaper editorial summed up the possibilities fairly well. That editor was a born Westerner, and he declared in unhesitating language that the duty of hospitality impinged upon the officer of the law as much as upon any other human being. The sheriff, declared the editor, had done no more than right, and in promising me the six thousand dollars, he had made at least a fair exchange for a hundred and eighty-nine thousand.

  XIX. TWO ENEMIES

  I WAS AT the sheriff’s window at the appointed time, and in answer to my knock, the sheriff thrust out his head almost at once.

  He seemed in the highest of good humor.

  “Porfilo,” said he, “this here thing has come off in fine shape. Folks feel so dog-gone good toward you that I’m afraid I’d be lynched if I got you by shooting. They seem to figger that you’ve been partly unlucky and partly young — but that you mean right. Maybe you got more friends out of this fracas than you’d ever imagine. I’ve heard from the bank at Crockett. That bank went bust, my son, as maybe you heard?”

  I told him that I had not heard.

  He began to laugh. I have never heard a man so pleased with himself as the sheriff was on this night.

  “Oh, yes. I’ll say that that bank was sort of mildly pleased with the world when it heard that you was returning all that money. I’ve had the president of the bank up here. All he could say was that he wanted to have a chance to meet you and shake hands with you. When I told him that I couldn’t manage that, he said that he would send along a little messenger to talk to you in his place. Here’s the messenger. Open it, kid, and read it aloud.”

  He handed me the letter and held up a lantern at the same time. I opened that letter and took out five one-thousand-dollar bills. The letter read:

  My Dear Mr. Porfilo:

  We have received, in a complete accounting, all of the money to the last penny that was stolen from the Crockett Bank. I have called a meeting of the directors, and it is their opinion that something should be done to reward the extraordinary conduct which has returned such a vast sum of money to our vault. The more extraordinary, I may say, because we realize that this money is sent in by a man whose life is already endangered by a criminal judgment against him, so that it might be taken for granted that he would have ventured any crime in addition to that which is charged against him.

  We have felt that your action is inspired by a real feeling both for the bank and for the numbers of unlucky depositors who would have been bankrupted by this great loss.

  Accordingly, we have decided to send you a small token of our regard in the form of the contents which are enclosed with this letter. We beg you to accept them, and assure you that we wish our finances were at the present moment in such a state that we could make a larger reward.

  In conclusion, after conversation with Mr. Lawton, it is our opinion that you cannot really be guilty of all the charges which are brought against you, and we beg to express to you our sympathy in your unlucky condition and ask you to call upon us still further should a time of need come upon you.

  With many good wishes to you, we remain,

  Cordially yours, Samuel J. Crockett,

  for the Directors of the Crockett Bank.

  I read this dignified epistle several times through before all the meaning of it was digested by my befogged brain. Then I handed back the money to the sheriff.

  “Lawton,” I said to him, “I helped to take that money out of their vault and I don’t deserve a reward for giving it back to them. But with their permission I’d like to take one thousand of the money they’ve offered me.

  “I want to pay Jackson five hundred dollars for his horse, which I’m still riding. I want the other five hundred to go to pay his doctor bills and pay him, too, for all the time that he’s laid up.”

  Lawton took the money with a grunt. “This is all queer,” said he. “I think I’m gonna wake up and find that I’ve been readin’ a fairy story. Now, kid, will you lemme give you
some good advice? While all the folks are bustin’ themselves with good things to say about you, I suggest that you give yourself up. I’ll lay a dollar to a doughnut that inside of a week the governor will come through with a pardon for you. He’d be a fool if he didn’t. It would bring him in twenty thousand extra votes at the next election!”

  It was a tempting offer, of course. But when I reflected that the sheriff might be wrong, and what the alternative was for me in case he was in error, I could only shudder and shake my head.

  “I can’t do it, Lawton,” I told him.

  He sighed with a great relief. “Thank heavens for that,” said he. “Then I’m gonna still get my chance at you in the open.”

  “You’re going to get your chance at me.”

  “I’ll nail you, son!” said he through his teeth. “You’ve made a fool of me once. You’ll never make a fool of me again!”

  I went away from Lawton’s house with a strange feeling about him and about the world in general. There was no doubt that I had been wrong in my first conclusion. The world was not filled with selfish villains. There was plenty of good feeling and kindness and mercy everywhere. But could I trust to the clemency of the cold mind of a judge or of a governor to stand between me and half a lifetime of prison? I decided that I could not. No doubt I was foolish, but I ask you to remember, again, that I was only eighteen.

  I went back to my Roman-nosed chestnut mare and rode her away to the south and the east down a trail with which I was familiar now. It carried me over a ridge and into a broad, pleasant valley, and down that valley until I turned into a narrow ravine, filled with shadows so thick that the light of the stars hardly could enter.

  There I gave my signal according to the old agreement, and presently, at that place, I saw the shadowy form run out from the house toward me.

  It was Mike, of course.

  “Leon Porfilo!” called she from the distance.

  I answered her with a cautious halloo. Then she was up with me and wringing my hand in both of hers.

  “You are going straight?” cried Mike.

  “I am,” said I. “You bought twenty dollars’ worth of stock in me, and that twenty dollars sort of outweighs the rest of me. I want to be crooked, Mike, but your share in me won’t let me go wrong.”

  How she laughed, with her head thrown back.

  “No one in the world guessed it,” said she. “But what a lot of talk you’ve made! What a lot of things you’ve done — and all fine, Leon, since I saw you last!”

  “And made a great enemy,” said I.

  “Bah,” said she. “What enemy matters to a man like you?”

  “I had one already. Two are too much,” said I.

  “Who are they?” said she.

  “One is Andrew Chase,” said I.

  “Of course I’ve heard about him,” said Mike. “But what’s he? He’s only a man. Who’s the other one?”

  “Tex Cummins,” said I.

  At this, she shrank suddenly away from me, and she looked up at me with a gasp of horror.

  “Oh, Leon,” moaned Mike. “Do you mean that he’s against you?”

  “I do,” said I. “Does that make such a difference to you?”

  For she was backing away from me. “Such a difference,” said Mike, “that the best I can hope for you is that I’ll never see you again!”

  She turned back toward the house of her father.

  I stood petrified and tried to make it out, but it defied analysis. I could only know two things. The first was that I could never follow the life of a law-breaker again. The second was that my first act of resolute honesty had alienated Mr. Texas Cummins, and with him I realized that I had lost the girl I loved.

  Yet, no matter what mysteriously strong influence he might have over her, I knew that the victory was mine and that it was far better, at all costs, to go straight.

  XX. ANDREW STARTS OUT

  IT WAS FATHER McGuire who started Andrew on his search for me. They met on the road, and it was Andrew Chase who stopped to speak to the priest.

  “You have not been particularly cordial to me since there was that unlucky affair of poor Leon Porfilo,” said Andrew.

  I suppose that the priest jerked back his head, and his eyes fired, as they always did when any one who was dear to him was mentioned. I think that he loved me more than he loved any other thing in the world. Had he not poured out upon me years of teaching and patient labor?

  “I have avoided you lately,” admitted Father McGuire with that warlike frankness of his.

  “But why?” said Andrew Chase.

  Not that he valued Father McGuire, but he was so used to admiration that it was rather a shock to him to be talked to in this manner.

  “Because,” said Father McGuire, “I have thought over the matter from A to Z. At first I thought that Leon might be in the wrong. I knew that he was headstrong. I knew that he was found of violence. But in time I have come to see that it would have been impossible for him to murder Niginski in cold blood. He was falsely accused.”

  “I trust that you are right,” said Andrew Chase.

  “Niginski was set upon him by some other person. There could have been no other reason behind the fight.”

  “Isn’t that an odd conclusion?” said the big man.

  “Examine your own heart, young man,” said Father McGuire.

  He would have passed on, but Chase, with a thrust of his spurs, planted the great black squarely in his path.

  “Now tell me what you mean by that,” said he.

  There was never a very thick crust over the fires that burned in the priest. Now he broke out:

  “It was you, Andrew Chase, or some other person in your family, who bribed the ruffian, Niginski, to attack the boy!”

  With that he went on up the street and left Chase behind him. I have all the details of this scene which meant so much to my life. I had them from Father McGuire himself when I saw him again on a sad day.

  Now I can dare to step into the mind of Andrew Chase to a certain extent and tell you what went on there. When he went back to his home, he turned this matter over and over in his mind. Whether he were guilty or not of the crime which Father McGuire charged to him, he knew that if the priest felt so strongly about the matter, other less kindly men and less judicious men must be thinking the thing, also.

  Such a condition of life was intolerable to him. He could not exist except in that atmosphere of unqualified admiration with which he had been surrounded from his infancy. Two things he chiefly prized. The one was praise; the other was fear. If he could not be praised, he would be feared. But the praise was that for which he chiefly hungered.

  He had never been without it. He had never attended a school where he was not the first scholar. He had never competed in a game where he was not the leading athlete, and I have no doubt that he told himself this suspicion was intolerable. He must remove it. How could that be done?

  Where I was concerned, the way was cleared before him. I was an outlawed man. There was a price on my head which had mounted to three thousand dollars a very few weeks after my escape from the Mendez jail; and in the two years which followed that price had been raised, gradually, until now he who captured me was assured of the very substantial sum of seven thousand dollars!

  The reward could not tempt him, but it pointed out to him that he could do a brilliant thing. He could remove this growing scandal which was spreading through the range about him.

  He could remove it by removing the man whom he was said to have wronged. When he had disposed of me, instead of taking the handsome reward which was offered for my apprehension, alive or dead, he could make a fine gesture and crown himself with new laurels by turning over the entire sum to some popular charity.

  I know from several events that followed later that this was lurking in his mind.

  But, perhaps more than all else, I am sure that the sheer adventure for its own sake was a great impelling factor in the mind of Andrew. He had lived a soft
life too long. The thought of danger was an inviting thing to him, and he prepared at once to make his journey.

  I have no doubt that, no matter what his other motives, he would not have undertaken that ride to the north, through the mountains, if his goal had been any common man. But, by this time, rumor and gossip had piled up quite a heap of talk around me and made me a figure of some size in the eye of the Western world. The man who conquered me was sure to gain a great reputation. Andrew Chase decided that the time had come for him to put a bullet through my head and clap my little fame into his pocket.

  It was when I was making an excellent bargain, that I first heard the grim news that Andrew was on my trail.

  My horse was still Jackson’s chestnut mare, which I had taken in the first place, and paid for in the second, so that no charge of horse theft could be lodged against me. On Jackson’s mare, I started for the barren highlands above the timber line, and spent a day of laborious moiling and toiling before I got to the high places, in which I felt fairly safe. For it was not the first time I had gone among the cliffs and the heads of the great ravine for a refuge. I knew that high country better than anyone except an unshaven naturalist who tramped those dreary regions to study birds and flowers and insects.

  It was not the fear of the sheriff and the hunting posses which had driven me to the heights, but the efforts of no less a person than Tex Cummins himself to destroy me!

  I was well up in the rocks, when a disaster of the first magnitude overtook me — the chestnut mare went lame! I could do nothing but find a sheltered place in a great nest of rocks on the flat shoulder of a windy height and wait for her leg to become sound again.

  I waited for two days, and she was progressing toward recovery. But they were two such days as I hope never to pass through again. Every moment of them I expected the sound of horses, and then the sound of guns.

  When I heard a human voice from the ridge above me on the morning of the third day, I felt sure that I had been cornered at last.