Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  This was a reasonably fair statement, one must admit. Mike was just the person to see the reasonableness of it.

  “Every one knows,” said she, “that I’m proud to be the friend of Leon Porfilo. How can you ask me to be friendly with you, too?”

  “Oh, I don’t ask that,” said Andrew Chase. “I’ve simply come to introduce myself and ask you to look at me not as a beast, but as a man — guilty of a great many faults, I know, but not of murder. I’ve come to see you because I intend to haunt this section around your house for a long time to come. I am not going to hunt Leon Porfilo. I am going to let him come down here to hunt me!”

  It must have chilled the big heart of Mike to hear such a calm statement of facts.

  “Knowing that I’ll warn him?” she said.

  “Taking that for granted, of course.”

  “It seems a terrible thing!”

  “But isn’t it fair?”

  “I can’t help saying that it looks fair. A man has to fight when his honor is attacked as they’ve attacked yours, I know.”

  That was the mountain way of looking at the matter. I can’t help thinking that it was the right way of looking at it, too. But, oh, what a tragedy it put in store for me!

  “I can’t very well ask you into the house for a cup of coffee,” said Mike, puzzling over him. “I can’t — and be true to poor Leon. Yet I’d like to!”

  “I’m as greatly obliged to you,” said Andrew. “But, you see, I’d hardly be comfortable there. It would be like taking charity from Leon himself. I couldn’t do that, you know!”

  How could he have put it more neatly? And with that matchless smile of his to crown it all!

  He said good-bye and stepped back to the side of the big, black Tennessee, and the stallion pricked his ears and nibbled gently at the shoulder of his master. They always made a grand picture, standing side by side.

  Then, suddenly, from Mike: “I am going to ask you in!”

  “No, no!”

  “You’re hot and tired.”

  “We’d both be embarrassed.”

  “I wouldn’t!”

  “But people have a nasty way of talking”

  “What do I care about people? They’ve wagged their tongues almost out about me, already.”

  “Then it would have to be explained to Porfilo. I can’t put that on you.”

  “Nothing I do has to be explained to anyone — now that I’m eighteen!” said she.

  You observe, Mike was always a little lioness. He, wise fox, from the very first appealed to her love of something startling — appealed, above all, to her courage itself.

  That afternoon he drank the coffee and ate a fat sandwich which she prepared!

  XXII. HOT WORDS

  IT WAS NO rumor of the meeting between Mike and Andrew Chase that brought me down the valley, but, making a swing down the western canyon, from Buffalo Bend, I dropped in on Cam Tucker. Whenever I was in that vicinity I used to drop in on him, and he was usually glad to see me.

  He had made a very fair profit on me in our one horse deal, and after that the noise went abroad so far about the outlaw who had spent twelve hundred dollars upon one of the Tucker horses, that other people became interested in his breeding. His prices soared. He was able to double them within a month. Naturally, he was very grateful to me.

  So that queer, rigid, fearless little man used to prop himself against the back of his chair and tell me all the news that he thought would interest me. He told me on this day of the bank robbery at Timber Creek. It had been a bad affair. When all was nearly said and done, and the robbers about to ride away, a one-legged cow-puncher had looked out of the window of his room across the street — because his recently amputated leg gave him too much pain to let him sleep — and he opened fire upon the suspicious forms coming from the bank.

  There were four of them, and that lucky cow-puncher, with his plunging fire from above out of the mouth of a repeating Winchester, dropped two of them and killed a third. Only one man remained, and he got away with a small quantity of loot. Seven or eight thousand dollars was all that the bank missed. The bank, out of gratitude, had given the one-legged cow-puncher a job as inside watchman in the bank for the rest of his days.

  I asked what description they had of the man who had escaped, and I was told that the men who had ridden for some distance in hot pursuit of him, blazing away with their rifles all the time, had made out a rather short-bodied man with extraordinarily broad shoulders.

  It meant a good deal to me. I called up the figure of Sam Moyer at once. It was true that he had not been seen in these parts for more than a year, but that made it all the more likely that he would come back and try another fling in his old camping grounds. Sam had fled north of Timber Creek, but I knew fairly clearly that he would eventually turn and ride south, for he was one of Tex Cummins’ men, and the houses of the friends of Tex were scattered south from Timber Creek, which was almost the northernmost boundary of the district in which he operated.

  I found his trail and followed it until it brought me, just at the first thickening of the dark, into the valley and opposite the ravine which held the house of O’Rourke. Of course I could not give over seeing her now that I was so close.

  I headed across the valley at Roanoke’s shambling trot. His natural gait was not the usual mustang canter which rocks one across the miles without effort, but his swinging trot was almost as fast as the average canter — faster than some — and he was as unwearying at that pace as a wolf.

  So he slid me across the night and up the darker ravine beyond, until I came under the trees opposite the house. There I dismounted and whistled the usual signal, my throat so closed with a joyous expectation that I could hardly make a sound.

  She came at once, out the side door, and then running through the darkness to me. But when she came near there was no joyous greeting. She simply caught at my hands and shook them with her fear for me.

  “Leon, you have not come down to fight him?”

  “To fight whom?”

  “You have not heard?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He is here! Andrew Chase is here!”

  It made me throw a startled glance over my shoulder, but then I tried to reassure her with a confidence which I by no means felt. For I was perfectly well aware, then and at all times, that Andrew Chase was a better man than I. By nothing but luck could I beat him.

  “He’s been here every day, waiting and watching for you, Leon. You must not meet him!”

  “How have you seen him?” I asked. “Has he shown himself as openly as that?”

  “Oh, he’s as brave as a lion,” said Mike.

  “Humph!” said I. “Have you been talking to him?”

  “Will you believe,” said Mike, with a little drawn breath of wonder, “that he came to me and told me everything, very frankly? There is no deceit in him. He’s as open as the day, Leon!”

  What could I do except marvel at her; and the first dread came over me. I knew the smooth tongue and the easy manner of Andrew Chase too well, and I knew that there was danger in it. But now she was rushing ahead with the story. She was telling me how he came and how he met her; she was telling me how tall and how handsome he had stood before her.

  “As big and as tall as you are, Leon, but”

  She stopped hastily here and went on with something else, but I had sense enough to fill out the uncompleted sentence. As tall and as heavy as I, but not with the ugly face of a prize fighter, not with beetling brows and swarthy skin and cold black eyes, and big, heavy-boned jaw; not with monstrous feet and huge hands; not with the bone of a horse and something of the clumsiness of a steer. I could fill in all that sentence for myself, and fear grew greater in me every moment — not the fear of Andrew’s gun!

  She had finished the story of how he sat in her house drinking coffee; then I broke in on her. That fear, and that grief, made me rude.

  “You’ve been doing a fool thing, Mike,” said I.

  �
��What’s that?” snapped out Mike.

  “I tell you, it’s dangerous,” said I.

  “What is dangerous?” said Mike, very cool.

  “Andrew Chase. Do you think that you know enough about men to handle him?”

  I should not have said that. She was eighteen, and at eighteen she was a great deal wiser than I at twenty, I have no doubt.

  “I don’t understand you,” said Mike, “unless you are suggesting that Andrew Chase is not a gentleman.”

  “I don’t mean that,” said I. “Not at all! At least, he can talk like a gentleman. But what has talk to do with the real thing? Politeness is only one part, I suppose.”

  “You seem to know all about it,” said Mike, more cold than ever.

  “Mike,” said I, “I suppose that I’m not to talk frankly to you?”

  She stamped. “I wish you could have heard what he had to say about you!” cried Mike. “He didn’t speak one thing against you. He didn’t try to slander you behind your back!”

  “You mean that I’m slandering him? I can see how it is. He has you charmed already.”

  “Leon Porfilo, how do you dare say that?”

  “Oh, I don’t mean that he’s turned your head. But the way a snake charms a bird!”

  “I’m a silly little fool like a bird in a nest, I suppose?”

  “Mike, will you listen to reason?”

  “I’m listening — but I don’t hear the reason. I’ve never heard you talk like this before!”

  “I hope to Heaven that I never have to talk like this again!” I exclaimed. “But I tell you what I know — that Andrew Chase is no good!”

  “I don’t believe it!” she answered tartly.

  “Can a man be really good after he’s hired a crook to shoot”

  “Oh, that!” she exclaimed. “He told me all about it. He told me how that foolish story started.”

  “Is it a foolish story?”

  “Then tell me what real proofs you have against him?”

  “If I had real proofs, I’d have him in jail, if I wanted to. One doesn’t get real proofs of such dirty work. He’s too smart to let such proofs float around.”

  “You’ve only guessed bad things about him. Isn’t that true? Then you come to me and slander him. Leon, it isn’t manly!”

  I was desperate. “It has to stop!” I shouted at her.

  “What has to stop?”

  “You must stop seeing him.”

  “I must?” said she, full of danger.

  “Don’t you understand that he’ll begin to wind you around his little finger?”

  “Bah!” said Mike. “I’m — I’m ashamed to stand here and let you talk like this!”

  “Mike, I forbid you to see him, and that’s flat!”

  Looking back upon it, I think that I must have been half mad to speak to her in such a manner — to Mike, of all the women in the world. I was not long left in the dark.

  “You forbid me?”

  “I do!”

  “What right have you over me, Leon Porfilo?”

  It brought me back to my sense with a jerk. “No right, only”

  “You owe an apology to him — and to me!” said she.

  “Mike, I shall apologize to you, if you want me to. But I don’t make any bones about it. I love you, Mike. It makes me sick inside to think of you in the hands of that fix”

  “Leon,” cried she, with a voice that fairly trembled with anger, “I don’t want to hear any more. I’ve heard a lot too much already. Good-bye!”

  I took one step after her and dropped my heavy hand on her shoulder. “Are you going to go like this, Mike?”

  “Will you take your hand away?”

  “Very well! I’ll never bother you again, if you wish to be left to Andrew Chase and his grand ways!”

  “You coward!” exclaimed Mike.

  It was like a whip struck across my face, and as I recoiled from her, she ran on toward the house. I did not follow again. I felt that in five minutes I had blasted away the greatest happiness in my life, and that I could never repair the damage which had been done. I knew, no matter how she might have felt toward him before, that this scene with me was almost enough to throw her headlong into his arms.

  I went back to Roanoke and rode him slowly through the trees. We climbed the ragged wall of the ravine, and I was preparing to camp for the night, when I saw a light blinking four or five miles to the south. I remembered, then, the shack which the Ricks brothers, Willie and Joe, had built on the edge of the highlands above the valley. I remembered, too, that I had heard they were friendly to Tex Cummins. What was more likely than that Sam Moyer, whose trail had led toward the valley the night before, might be lying up and resting at the Ricks house?

  It was enough to start me. After my interview with Mike I wanted action and lots of it. I wanted blood, and with the smell of blood in my nostrils, I started for the Ricks house.

  However, I made no attempt to reconnoiter. I simply left Roanoke nearby and strode to the door. The jumble of voices inside stopped instantly as I stirred the latch.

  “Who’s there?” asked the voice of Willie Ricks.

  The blind devil which makes men kill and gets them killed was certainly on me. “Porfilo!” I shouted, and gave the door my shoulder.

  “Porfilo!” rumbled several voices within.

  For my career in the past two years, preying on the thieves themselves and making myself fat with the spoils which their cunning had gathered, had made me as dreaded among them as a man-eating tiger is dreaded in a Hindu village.

  That instant the light was blown out, and at the same time I struck the door with my shoulder.

  It was a good, strong bolt, well secured in stout, new wood, but the demon in me had no regard for wood or iron this night. I ground that bolt through the wood as though it were secured in hollowed paper, and flung the door wide as a voice barked — pitched high with half-hysterical rage and fear:

  “Keep back, Porfilo! Keep out, or I’ll shoot!”

  That was my wide-shouldered friend, Sam Moyer, I knew, and as the door darted open before me, a pistol blazed out of the pitchy blackness within.

  XXIII. THE BIG SCRAP

  I HAD PITCHED forward on my belly as I tossed the door wide. The slug from the gun of Moyer combed the air breast high above me — a well-intentioned shot, but fired just a trick too late.

  Someone was yelling — I think it was Joe Ricks:

  “Lord, boys! Are you gonna do a murder? Will you put up your guns? Porfilo, are you drunk? No, darn you, take it, then!”

  I saw a shadow to the left of me, and I leaped at it like a dog off my hands and feet and knees. I struck that body and it went down with a yell before me.

  “Help!” screamed the voice beneath me.

  I reached for his windpipe, found it, and crushed my hands deep. The shout went out in a bubbling cry.

  “Don’t shoot!” yelled another. “Don’t shoot, Sam. He’s got Joe down. Knives, Sam!”

  I knew what that meant. I surged to my knees and heaved up the senseless form of Joe with me. He was a heavy man. I presume he weighed not ten pounds short of two hundred, but there was enough strength of passion in me to let me throw him straight into the face of a shadow which was lunging at me — lunging with a pale glint of steel in front.

  A muffled cry — a crashing fall — and that danger was blotted out as Joe and the other tumbled in an inextricably jumbled mass in a corner of the cabin, with a force that seemed to threaten to tear out the side of the cabin.

  I whirled back from that ruinous fall with my left fist swinging as I turned, for I knew that the third man would be leaping at me from behind.

  It was in the last nick of time. His knife flicked a bit of skin and flesh from the rim of my right ear; then the side of my arm struck him and flattened him against the wall. Before he could straighten up, I let him have it with a straight right that bit into his face, through the flesh, against the bone, and flattened him against the wall. He
hung there for an instant as though glued. Then he crumpled gently forward and slumped upon his face.

  He was ended — whichever he was — and so was Joe. There was only the second man to handle and when I gripped him as he disentangled himself from Joe’s body, I knew that I had Sam Moyer, for his body was a writhing mass of the hardest muscle.

  The knife had been knocked from his hand, and now he was reaching for his gun. I got his wrist in time, and with a twist burned the flesh and rolled the sinews against the bone. That hand was numb and useless.

  He dashed his other fist, with a groan, against my jaw. It was like the playful slap of a child to me. I struck with deliberation, up and across, with a toss of my whole weight. The knuckles lodged fairly under his chin and snapped the head back as though a sledge had struck him on the forehead. He fell backward and rolled upon his face.

  Then I lighted the lamp.

  I paid no attention to the men, but sought for the loot at once. It was simply padded into an old pigskin wallet, blackened by usage and much time. I took out the money and deliberately counted it. Either he had gotten rid of part of it already, or else there had been an overstatement on the part of the bank.

  There was only forty-eight hundred and a few odd dollars in that wallet. I picked up the cash, crammed it into my pocket, and backed out from the cabin. I had filled my hands with pleasant action for a few sweet instants, and now I was willing to retire. It was not the money that mattered, though my stock of cash was at that moment rather low — it was the delight of the battle which I left behind me. Even the scene with Mike, and all the gloomy consequences which it foreboded, was forgotten for the time.

  That sense of exaltation lasted long enough for me to find a new camping ground not four hundred yards from the cabin itself, on a grassy knoll with a sound of running water at the side of the open space. There, facing the east so that the first light would most surely rouse me, I stretched out within hearing distance of the cabin which I had wrecked, and in five minutes, wrapped snugly in my blankets, I was sound asleep.