Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “Oh,” said Sammy, “have I changed as much as that? But I am Sammy, just the same. I hope Sue is home?”

  Mrs. Mitchell seemed totally overwhelmed. She merely backed down the hall, gaping at him.

  “I’ll send Mr. Mitchell to you!” said she, and whirled and fled.

  So Sammy walked into the front room and looked at himself with a grin in the gold-gilt mirror between the two front windows. Many a time, in his boyhood, he had seen his frightened face in that mirror when he had ventured into that sanctum of sanctums with Susie Mitchell. And now he could sit here at ease, and admire his new, ruddy complexion. Ah, could this quiet household see the scenes in which that tan had been acquired!

  The heavy step of Mr. Mitchell himself approached, and now he entered in the act of settling his spectacles upon the bridge of his nose and smiling with professional courtesy upon his visitor. For Mr. Mitchell was a grocer by trade, and his smile was a noted asset.

  “Little Sammy Gregg!” murmured Mr. Mitchell. “Turned into a wanderer, and then come home again! After such a steady life, too!”

  Sammy was a little taken aback. He had hardly expected such a reception from his future father-in-law.

  “However,” went on Mr. Mitchell mildly, “I suppose that even the quietest of us have a small patch of wild oats that need sowing. Isn’t that so? But I never thought it of you, Sammy! However, I was sorry to hear from the mill people that they have no place for you now.”

  “No place for me now?” cried Sammy turning pale. “You mean to say that in spite of their promises when I left—”

  “It’s a shame how people will make promises and never intend to live up to them, isn’t it?” said Mitchell sympathetically. “But it seems that the manager had thought it all over. Good, conservative, close-headed business man, I have to call him! He says that when a young man takes six months in which to turn five thousand dollars into fifteen thousand, why, it shows what the manager calls a little streak of foolishness, besides a desire to take a gambler’s chance!”

  Mr. Mitchell’s own opinion was so apparently tucked into this same speech that Sammy was more amazed than ever. He was glad, at least, that Susie remained for him to give him comfort.

  The paper mill, however, had closed him out! After ten years of faithful, most faithful service. Oh, all the nights when he had remained after hours, hoping against hope that his bulldog devotion to work would take the eye of one of the upper members of the firm! And now this ambition wiped away!

  “It’s a very hard blow to me,” he confessed to Mitchell. “I didn’t expect that of my employers. They know how I’ve slaved for them.”

  “It’s always this way,” said Mr. Mitchell. “Unfortunately the world is so made that one stroke of folly will erase a hundred strokes of good sense and industry. Only one match need be lighted, my boy, to ignite the greatest building in the world!”

  In the far West, from which he had just come, Sammy was well aware that such talk would cause men to say: “Aw, cut out the Sunday-school stuff, partner!” And he had an almost irresistible temptation to say the same thing on his own behalf. However, he checked himself and remarked:

  “It’s a hard thing, Mr. Mitchell, if a young man is not to be allowed to step out and take a chance for himself now and then! Otherwise, how is he to get on?” Mr. Mitchell leaned forward in his chair and pressed his fat hands upon his fat knees, until the palms squeezed out on the sides, white as the belly of a fish.

  “Young man,” said he, “slow and steady is the word, slow and steady is the word that builds life in the way it ought to be built. Now tell me, frankly, out of the five thousand dollars in honest money that you took West, how much did you lose?”

  Sammy closed his eyes to calculate. “Nearly three thousand,” he said. For, up to the day of his arrival at the Crumbock Lode he had, indeed, been that much cash out of pocket.

  Mr. Mitchell writhed in his chair. “Three thousand,” he groaned. “Three thousand honest dollars thrown away! Why, with that kind of money I could have built a new wing, oh, Sammy, this is a thing for which you will grieve in years to come! Three thousand dollars at six percent is a hundred and eighty dollars a year! Many a poor man in Europe is toiling fifteen hours a day for smaller pay than that!”

  He closed his eyes and fairly groaned aloud in the pain which the thought of such waste gave him.

  “Ah, well,” said he, “it is a fortunate thing for Susie that I warned her and opened her eyes.”

  “Warned her?” murmured Sammy.

  “That this would be the probable outcome of wild adventures in the West! Fifteen thousand out of five thousand! Stuff and nonsense! Why, young man, even I, at my time of life and with my experience in the business world, would not attempt to accomplish a thing of such a magnitude. It argues a wild brain on those young shoulders of yours, Sammy, my boy. A very wild brain, but I thank Heaven that poor Susie will never bear any of the painful results of such folly.”

  A terrible thought blasted its way into the mind of Sammy. “Where is Susie?”

  “Not here,” said Mr. Mitchell gravely.

  “Not here!” echoed Sammy in a whisper. “But she’s out shopping, out calling, she’s over at the Johnson house, maybe”

  “Oh, Sammy,” said Mr. Mitchell, shaking a fat, white finger at him, “how I hope that this will be a lesson to you never again to venture all and lose all!”

  “My Lord,” breathed Sammy, “you mean that she has left home?”

  “Yes, but not alone!”

  Sammy, perfectly white by this time, stood up from his chair. “Mr. Mitchell!” he gasped.

  “Sammy,” said the grocer, “I grieve for you. Upon my soul, I grieve for you bitterly. But I trust that the lesson will not be wasted upon you.”

  A bright spot of color came back in either of Sammy’s cheeks. There was in his eyes such a fire as Brooklyn had never seen there before. And when he spoke, his voice was suddenly rough and harsh.

  “I hate to think it,” said Sammy, “but it’s forced on me that you, you fat sneak, may have advised your daughter to many another man.”

  The grocer rose also, and stood big and towering and fat as butter above little Sammy. “Samuel Gregg,” said he, “can I trust my ears?”

  Those astonished ears drank in the following unholy words: “You can trust your ears, you blockhead! But tell me if I have guessed right? Have you really told Susie to marry another man?”

  “Yes!” shouted Mr. Mitchell in a voice which Mrs. Mitchell, in the backyard, heard and knew and quailed beneath. “Yes! I have told her to marry another man.”

  “And the little fool!” said Sammy. “The little fool has taken your advice!”

  Mr. Mitchell raised both fat hands. No, rage and bewilderment had paralyzed him. His thick arms fell with a wheeze to his sides again and left Sammy intact.

  “My guess is a good guess, I think,” said Sammy.

  He stepped to the mantelpiece and lifted the picture which stood where his picture had once reposed. And out of the frame he saw the chinless face of young Tom Hooker, the dentist’s son, a pleasant, smiling, useless face.

  “My Lord,” said Sammy, “is this my substitute?”

  “Young man,” shouted Mr. Mitchell, “leave these premises! You are a worthless young reprobate. Never return to this place again, or with my own hands—”

  “Stuff!” said Sammy. And he dropped his brown fists upon his hip. “Stuff, you fool!” said he. “I’ve killed men twice your size, Mitchell. And men twice as good as you. Why, in the country where I’ve been, we use fellows like you for grease! Sit down before I wring your stuffy neck for you. Sit down, while I talk to you.”

  Mr. Mitchell turned flabby, like a punctured balloon, and sank, almost lifeless, into a chair. His pale, fishy eyes beheld Sammy Gregg in the act of taking a wallet from his pocket. From that wallet Sammy counted forth, one by one, fifteen new, crisp, bank notes of one thousand dollars — oh, magic word — to the note.

 
Fifteen thousand dollars — a treasure.

  And then a handful of smaller currency.

  “And another thousand, just for luckan, other thousand to paint the house, maybe,” said Sammy Gregg, thrusting out his jaw. “Luck was with me. And tomorrow I’m going back to the free country. I’m through with you people back here. Why, you choke me. I can’t talk, and I don’t seem to be able to think.

  “I’m glad that Susie has that pinhead. She’d look up to a wooden image, I suppose, and call it a man. And you can pay the bills for the party. I wish you luck!

  “As for me, I’m going back to the West, and roll this fifteen thousand into a couple of million, maybe. And when I get that, I’ll have just about enough to marry one of those Western girls. And they’re worth it. Mr. Mitchell, I hope you have luck!”

  He settled his hat upon his head, he turned his back; and he swaggered deliberately out the front door, and only one sound pursued him, the faint whisper of the grocer, moaning: “Six-teen thousand dol-lars!”

  Then Sammy found himself in the familiar street once more. But the joy had gone out of it. Only, in the first place, he felt a burning fierceness in his soul. And in the second place, he began to discover that what he had said to the grocer had not been altogether a bluff.

  How small, after all, had been his hold upon the life in this street when one conversation of five minutes could suffice to root up all his interests here!

  But out West, aye, that was different! Gamblers, hobos, thieves, horse rustlers, miners, teamsters, villains — he felt suddenly that they were his brothers. And that night the westbound train took Sammy with it from Manhattan!

  CHAPTER XIV. ANOTHER IDEA

  MUNSON HAD GROWN even since Sammy last saw it. Here, there, and again he saw the white faces of new buildings, all of raw, unpainted pine boards, with cracks between them so wide that they could be distinguished a block away. For no nails in the world could keep the half-seasoned timbers from warping, once this hot sun got in its work on them.

  Munson was growing, but that thought brought no cheer to Sammy. He slumped gloomily down the street, ankle deep in dust. And the dirt which his footfall loosened was combed up instantly and curled like a plume over his head by the wind. He was white with a thick layer of the dust before he got to the store which carried above the door the name of Rendell.

  He stepped into the door of the store, and there he encountered almost the last person in the range that he wanted to meet — none other than Cumnor, whose revolver had fired the bullet that had caused a furrow to be made down the side of his head. The hair was growing out now, along the scar, and that hair was a white slash in a brown head.

  The meeting seemed no more pleasant to Cumnor than it was to little Sammy Gregg. But Sammy looked him coldly in the eye and stepped to one side. Yet Cumnor did not pass. He stood there ill at ease, combing his long, drooping, sandy mustaches.

  “Gregg,” he began.

  Sammy scowled, but said nothing, and a crimson tide washed across the heavy features of the rancher.

  “Gregg,” he repeated resolutely, “I got to tell you that I want to apologize for the downright low trick I done to you here a while back. Only, at that time, when you stepped up and claimed them hosses that I had just bought from Furness, well, it went sort of agin’ the grain to pay out three hundred dollars twice for the same stock. Y’understand?”

  Sammy, watching him in wonder, nodded.

  “But here,” said Cumnor, “I’ve had a chance to think things over. I’ve had a chance to see that you’re a man of your word and a square shooter. And I’ve got to say that I’m sorry about the shooting, and here’s three hundred dollars now, for those ponies! Gregg, I want to be friends with you!”

  It would have been a considerable speech in any part of the world, between man and man. But this speech was overheard by an audience, consisting of Rendell and a gaunt cowpuncher who was buying a yard or so of plug chewing tobacco. And in the far West apologies come hard. It is apt to be considered unmanly not to persist, even in error. For that, after all, is the frontier’s unwritten law.

  Now, Sammy was not a man who forgot or forgave lightly. And during many a month he had taken home the thought of Cumnor to his heart and sworn that some day he would find a means of righting the wrong that had been done him. However, he had seen enough of the frontier and its ways to know that this apology from such a man as Cumnor meant almost as much as bullets themselves could write. And he stretched out his hand.

  “Cumnor,” he said, “I believe you mean it.”

  “Mean it?” said Cumnor. “I’ll tell you that I do!” And he clutched the hand of Sammy. “And here’s three hundred just to say for certain that I don’t lie!”

  “Keep it for me,” said Sammy, “until I need it. Be my banker to that extent, old-timer.”

  The big man regarded him for a moment in wonder, and then his glance passed over the head of Sammy and toward the rear of the store.

  “You were right, Rendell,” was all he said, and he hurried out from the store.

  The cowpuncher, staring at the little man, followed. And Sammy was left alone to shake hands with Rendell. That crippled hulk of a man heaved himself partly up on his counter and sat there grinning down at Sammy.

  “Where’s the wife?” said he. “Back in the hotel?”

  “I don’t know what hotel she’s in,” said Sammy. “She married, all right, but she married another man!”

  Mr. Rendell gaped, started to speak, and then busied himself biting off a great corner from a wedge of chewing tobacco. When he had stowed that great quid safely in a corner of his mouth, he said solemnly:

  “Questions is always foolish things to ask. I’m sorry, Gregg.”

  But Sammy was able to grin.

  “What the boys will want to know,” went on Rendell, “is what queer new dodge you’re gunna try on the town this time? After driving a few hundred hosses clean up from the river to Crumbock!”

  “I could never have done it. It was a man named Major.”

  “Oh, he’s getting to be pretty well known, now, that same gent. But who would have figured that you would know a gent like him to help you out? Well, Gregg, what are you going to do this time?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sammy. “Something big enough and hard enough to keep me busy hand and foot and brain until I get over feeling the way I do.”

  “Something real hard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Start over Crumbock way and try to find the mother lode. That ought to be a job for you!”

  “It’s hard enough to get to the mines, let alone the lode,” said Sammy.

  “Aye, if you want a real man-sized job, start a stage to the Crumbock Mines, old son.”

  “A stage?” said Sammy doubtfully. “Is there money in it?”

  “Oh, I ain’t serious,” said Rendell. “Nobody’ll start a stage line in this part of the world while there’s so many gents like The Duke, hanging around.”

  “The Duke?” asked Sammy.

  “That’s Furness.”

  “How did he get a title. Does he own one?”

  “No, it’s only a way he’s got, they say, when he shoves a gun under your nose and tells you to stand and hand over. Kind of high and lofty, like a duke would be if he was a road agent, maybe!”

  Sammy whistled.

  “Have they got the goods on him?” he asked. “Is he living out?”

  “If there was a sheriff and a decent judge in the county,” said Rendell, “they’d find that they had enough goods to nail him, right enough, but the law ain’t more’n a baby around here, and any way that you look at him, The Duke is sure a growed-up man. Young Blythe and Harper was the last pair that started out to get him. We ain’t heard from them, yet. But there is three other gents in the last three months that has gone out and started to get famous by bringing in the scalp of The Duke, and them three has all failed.

  “Leastwise, they ain’t showed up lately, and I don’t look, personal, f
or Harper and Blythe to show up neither. But nobody’ll start a stage and run men and money between Munson and Crumbock while birds like The Duke has got their wing feathers unclipped! Look at the Chadwick City bunch! They’ve closed down and offered their stages and their whole string of hosses for sale! The hosses has gone. But who the devil wants a stagecoach?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sammy, “but maybe I’m the man.”

  “Hey, Sammy Gregg! You ain’t takin’ me seriously about starting that stage line?”

  “No,” said Sammy. “I’m only thinking.”

  Chadwick City was only seventy miles away. And it was forty miles farther away from Crumbock than was Munson. So Sammy rode over to find out what he could find out. He found four magnificently built coaches standing out in the open for the wind and the weather to wreck, though so far wind and weather had not accomplished much harm. For these were masterpieces of Yankee craftsmanship in the good old days when there still were Yankee mechanics who were proud of the things that they could shape by hand and hammer and lathe, instead of by machine. Those coaches were built of the very finest hickory, with a generation of seasoning to make it tough. Tough it was, light as dry wood should be, tough as leather, strong as iron.

  Sammy knew little about wood, but when he heard that those coaches had actually been used over the rough roads, he was amazed. Certainly there was little sign.

  “What might you want with them coaches?” asked the representative of the defunct stage company.

  “Nothing,” said Sammy. “Nothing, perhaps, and yet the running gear might be useful for something.”

  For Sammy himself was enough of a Yankee to know how to cheapen a price.

  “A hundred and fifty dollars will buy the lot,” said the other sadly. “And when I think of what it cost to build ary a one of them wagons, it makes me powerful sick, old-timer!”

  A hundred and fifty dollars for all four! Sammy blinked and then drew a long breath.

  “Hold out your hand,” said he. And he closed the money in the other’s palm. “Now,” said Sammy, “tell me if you have had any experience in the staging business?”