Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  He had many glimpses of the faces which flowed along, making those hats bob up and down, and he saw peons and high-blooded Mexicans, and half breeds, and full-blooded Indians from both the north and the south of the Rio Grande; and he saw Negroes, and all the shades of the black man up to the octoroon whose blood was betrayed only by the smoke in the whites of his eyes, and perhaps by a certain frightened look. For the rest, there were all the nationalities of white man, and all the grades, and all the classes, from the laborer to the affected gentility of the professional gambler; from the dour-faced gunman to the youngster from England, in riding boots and breeches, unconcerned by the glances of amusement cast after him.

  John Signal was so amazed and delighted by this stream of life that he felt that he could have gazed at it during the rest of his days. But here he came to a great sign:

  “Jenkins’ Employment Agency!”

  And suddenly he remembered that he had to work in order to live. He had exactly eight dollars in his pocket, and he gathered that eight dollars would not lead him far in such a community as this. He halted the roan horse with a sigh and tethered it at the hitching rack, where already there were half a dozen other horses tied, all of them lump-headed mustangs. Then, resigning himself to the curse of Adam, he passed into the employment agency.

  It was one small room, and there was not a soul in it except a single fat fellow, with one arm, who leaned at the center table upon his single hand and seemed to sleep. Young Signal touched his shoulder and was rewarded by a grunt, a start, a whirl of the little man, and a big Colt jabbed into his stomach.

  But the other instantly realized that he had made a mistake, and he backed away, grinning shamefacedly.

  “I was havin’ a dream!” he said.

  “I’m sorry I woke you up,” said Signal, good-natured. “You almost put me to sleep for good and all.”

  “Not me! Not me!” said the other. “But what d’you want with me, son?”

  His hand gestured toward his bosom, and the big Colt disappeared.

  “I want to talk to the employment agent.”

  “That’s me.”

  “Are you Jenkins?”

  “Thank God I ain’t. The dirty crook beat me out of my money. All I got is his business. And you see how thick that is!”

  “Are there a lot of other agencies in the town?”

  “There ain’t another one.”

  It was again time for the boy to gape in bewilderment.

  “How can you keep everybody in jobs?” he asked.

  “How can’t I? Who wants to work in Monument? Do you?”

  He looked in open wonder at the boy.

  “I do.”

  “What can you handle? A drill and a single-jack? Know how to break ground long? There’s a place for practiced hands at that, but they collect more blisters than dollars, and bust their backs, besides!”

  “I can ride a little and use a rope.”

  “Are you handy with a rope?”

  “I can daub it on a cow, now and then.”

  “You’ll find plenty of bulls in this here town, but not so many cows,” chuckled the fat man. “But now and then I get a call for a puncher on one of the places near here. Shall I write you down?”

  “Yes — no,” hesitated Signal.

  He had not yet decided upon a name which he could assume.

  “John is my name,” said he.

  “John what?” asked the fat man, leaning over a large book which he had opened.

  “John what? John nothing.”

  “You only got one name?”

  “That’s all.”

  “There’s a million Johns,” protested the owner of the business. “Why, if you want something short and snappy, don’t you call yourself ‘Red-eye,’ or ‘Whisky John,’ or something like that? People could remember you, then.”

  It appeared to the boy that he had made a ridiculous mistake. He should, of course, have thought of something else to go with his own real name. But all that could pop into his mind at the moment was “Jones” or “Smith,” and it seemed to him that the combination would smack too much of an obvious alias.

  “Red-eye John, alias Whisky John. I like the name of that, old son,” went on the employment agent.

  There was a rushing of hoofs, a confused bawling as a herd of cattle poured down the street, casting up clouds of dust which boiled against the door of the agency, and sifted in through the screen.

  “I can do without the alias,” said Signal shortly.

  “Hold on!” cried the fat man. “I gotta name for you. I gotta beaut. And it stands by itself. There ain’t any other like it. John Alias! How’s that!”

  He rejoiced in the name with a loud laughter, smiting his paunch with his open hand, until it resounded.

  “It’s all right,” answered Signal, casting his dignity aside, and chuckling in turn. “Call me John Alias, if you want to.”

  “Alias what?” roared the agent. “They’ll always say that. It’ll start conversation. You’ll never have a dull time — not around this part of the world!”

  He laughed again, and there was something other than good nature blended with his mirth, which the boy could hear in the laughter but could not exactly analyze.

  “John Alias,” said the employment agent, “wants a job punching cows. Got his own hoss?”

  “Yes.”

  “A good one? That counts.”

  “A cutting horse.”

  “Got a cutting hoss, too. That’ll land you a job inside of a week. So long, John Alias!”

  And, still laughing, he followed Signal to the door of the place.

  Inside of a week! And how to lodge and board on eight dollars for a week? That was the problem.

  He leaned against a pillar outside the agency and rolled a cigarette, frowning in thought, but as he lighted the smoke, he noticed with amazement that the roan horse was gone!

  He looked wildly about him, certain that he must have mistaken the hitching rack, but stare as he would, he could not spot Grundy.

  This, indeed, was the rack. He could not be mistaken. Yonder with the mustang which had neighbored Grundy on the right, with a tuft of dirty white forelock thrusting out under the brow band.

  He turned to a pair of idlers standing near by. One was a short, broad man; the other tall, pale, handsome dressed in a frock coat and a tall hat.

  “I had a roan horse here!” exclaimed the boy. “Did you see anyone take him — by mistake?”

  They looked at him with a curious intentness. Then they looked at one another.

  “Have you got any friends here in Monument?” asked the broad fellow.

  “No. No one. I’ve just ridden into town.”

  “It’s a bad town to ride into,” said the tall man, and turned deliberately away.

  The blood of John Signal was just a little slower to take fire than a train of oil and powder commingled; he wondered if this attitude on the part of the stranger were not enough to justify him in taking offense. As he paused, he noticed a Negro in a leathern apron, sitting cross-legged at the entrance to a small shop with a “First Class Boot Repairing” sign above the door, and in the eye of the Negro, who was looking straight at him, there was a certain message, though the black man looked down again in haste.

  So he stepped to the door of the shop.

  “Morning, Uncle George.”

  “Mawnin’, son, mawnin’!” And a broad grin, lined with shining white!

  “I had a roan horse hitched out here. Did you see anybody take it?”

  “There’s two kinds of takin’, son. There’s takin’, and there’s stealin’.”

  “I have no friends here. Nobody was authorized to take that roan!”

  “That remembers me of a story about a kid from Denver that rode in last week. Sullivan was borrowin’ his hoss and gettin’ into the saddle when the kid runs out of a saloon.

  “‘Git off that hoss,’ says he. ‘You thief!’

  “Sullivan shot him through the head.<
br />
  “‘Borrowin’ ain’t robbery,’ says Sullivan, and the sheriff seemed to agree.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  IF THIS STORY made it clear that accusations of theft were dangerous to scatter abroad in Monument, it did not help the boy to find the person of the robber, if robber he were and not “borrower.”

  “You leave me in the dark,” he commented.

  “They’s a good many mighty smaht men in this heah town,” said the black man, “who doan think nothin’ of losin’ a hoss. Hosses is cheap heah, son.”

  “Not horses like my Grundy.”

  “A good one, was he?”

  “The best I ever sat on, and we have good horses, the part of the country that I come from.”

  “What paht is that, son?”

  “Yonder,” said the boy hastily, and waved in a gesture that embraced half the points on the horizon.

  “Come to think,” said the other, “you gunna find a lot of neighbors right heah in Monument. Mos’ of the gemmen has come from jes’ that place.” And he laughed, a Negro’s strange, throaty, high-pitched laughter.

  “He had a lump of a head and a ewe neck and plenty of hip bones,” went on Signal, “but he was all horse, and a yard wide, at that.”

  “It would of took a hossman to tell his points, ah’m thinkin’,” said the black man.

  “Just that, it would!”

  “Well,” said the Negro, slowly, “Sim Langley has the name of being a judge of hossflesh!”

  “Who’s Sim Langley? Is that the man who took him? Where shall I find him?” stammered the boy in haste.

  “Langley? Ah dunno nothin’ about him!” said the other, and bent over his work with a scowl.

  Plainly he had already said more than he wished, and would not add a word to his statement. Therefore, Signal waited no longer.

  He went slowly down the street. To his left was a gunshop, and into this he stepped. A very lean little man with a rat-like face furnished with a long nose met him in the middle of the floor.

  “What’ll you have?”

  “I’m looking for a man by name of Sim Langley,” said John Signal. “Can you—”

  “D’you think that I got him in here?” snapped the other. “Have I got him in one of those bins, maybe? Do I keep him here and feed him lead and gunpowder, maybe?”

  Signal retreated a step before the condensed fury of the other. He began to feel that the people of Monument were one half mad and the other half purely insulting. The long striking muscles along his arms twitched and hardened. But then he controlled himself.

  “People may get guns in your place, but they don’t get manners,” said he.

  “And what in hell might you mean by that?” asked the little man. The ferret-like fury seized upon him. Actually, his hand jerked back to his hip, and he glared with red-stained eyes at the youngster.

  It would have frightened most men. Size makes no difference in a gun-fight, except that a smaller man is apt to have quicker nerves and a bigger target. But John Signal had the temper of a bull terrier, which leaves the stranger unregarded until the stranger picks up a rock. Now the boy said with simplicity and directness: “You poison little rat!”

  And he waited for that speech to take effect. For an instant he felt that the convulsed face of the gun salesman would twist itself to bits with rage; but then the beady eyes grew dimmer. They wavered to the side.

  And with that, Signal turned upon his heel and left the place. He accosted the first man who passed, a free-swinging cowpuncher, by the look of him, with his sombrero pushed back from a round, red, sweating, cheerful face.

  “Stranger, can you tell me if you know a man named Sim Langley?”

  The other halted, suddenly serious.

  “Who don’t?” he asked. And he passed straight on.

  Signal leaned a hand against the nearest pillar and gritted his teeth. He was fast losing his temper completely, and he felt that the next rebuff would bring a gun jumping out of his holster to start talking the only language which this mad town, apparently, could understand. But still he fought hard, and controlled himself.

  He sauntered on down the street, his face a little pinched and white with the relics of his passion, and so he came to a door beside which, inscribed on a brass plate, were the words: “Sheriff’s Office.” And beneath: “First floor up.”

  Signal went one floor up and turned to the left down a narrow hallway, the floor giving in noisy squeaks beneath his feet. He reached a door the upper half of which was of frosted glass, with the black letters painted upon it:

  “Sheriff Peter Ogden. Walk in!”

  Signal walked in. He saw a dingy room, a roll-top desk in one corner, a round table in the center, and around the table a shirt-sleeve party playing poker. The chips were stacked in small piles. Evidently it was only a friendly game.

  Five men sat at that table. Five cigars tilted as the men turned their heads toward the stranger.

  A narrow counter enclosed the door, as though to keep the press of business from overflowing into the room itself. Upon that counter the boy leaned his left hand. Already he had been in the town long enough to realize the necessity of keeping the right hand free.

  “I want to see Sheriff Peter Ogden.”

  A large and rosy man removed his cigar.

  “You’re seeing him, my boy.”

  “Then I want to talk to you about a stolen horse.”

  “A stolen horse?”

  “That’s it.”

  The sheriff rose with a sigh and approached the counter.

  “I’ll take down the particulars,” said he. “First time that a stolen horse is picked up, I’ll let you know.”

  This touch of irony brought the teeth of young John Signal together with a click. But the sheriff did not appear to notice. He had taken out a sheet of note paper.

  “Kind of horse?”

  “Roan gelding.”

  “That the only description?”

  “Roman-nosed. Fifteen three. Ewe-necked. Prominent hip bones. Good legs. Keeps his ears back.”

  “That’s a lot to write,” said the sheriff, “about a ewe-necked horse.” But, looking up, he encountered a blaze of dangerous light in the eyes of the boy. At that, he pushed the paper to one side.

  “How long you been in Monument?”

  “About two hours.”

  “Ah-h-h!” murmured the sheriff. Then he added: “Where’d you leave this horse?”

  “At a rack outside of the employment agency.”

  “You’re looking for work?”

  “I am.”

  The sheriff tapped upon the counter with his soft, fat fingers.

  “What sort of work?”

  “Horses and cows. That’s my line.”

  “You can ride?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pretty well?”

  “I’m not a bronc peeler. But I can ride ’em!”

  “You come out of the agency and your horse is gone?”

  “Yes. He’s gone.”

  “Anybody standing around?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did they say?”

  “That I ought to keep my horses in my pocket when I come in to Monument!”

  Again the teeth of the boy clicked, and the sheriff banished his smile.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “there are about twenty horses a week stolen in one way or another around Monument.”

  The retort of Signal was hardly courteous.

  “Are you the sheriff?” he asked.

  The latter tipped up his head, and so doing, he showed a bull neck with the lines of great power beneath its fat. A cold light appeared in his eyes.

  “I’m the sheriff,” he said, “what about it?”

  “Twenty stolen horses a week are what about it,” said John Signal.

  There was a little stir at the table. He paid no heed, but his bright, angry eyes glared at the fat man. The latter’s mouth twitched.

  “You’re young,” said he. �
�You have no line on the thief?”

  “A man said it might be Sim Langley. Who’s he?”

  The sheriff started erect.

  “You don’t know that?”

  “I don’t know that. Why should I?”

  “Young fellow,” said the sheriff, “take the chip off your shoulder, or are you here to try to make a reputation out of me?”

  “I want nothing out of you or the rest of Monument,” said the boy, “except my horse back and a job if I can get it.”

  “Who told you about Langley taking the roan?”

  “A man who doesn’t want his name used.”

  “Do you want me to arrest Langley without anything on which to make out a warrant?”

  “I want my horse.”

  “My boy,” said the sheriff, “it’s not hard to find Langley. If he’s got your horse, take him back. And when you bring him in — I’ll give you a job — as deputy sheriff — at a hundred and fifty a month!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THIS REMARK OF the sheriff was not made to the boy alone. Rather, it was delivered to the entire room, for he turned half way from the counter in order to let all the men hear what he had to say. From the four who lolled in their chairs at the table, came appreciative laughter. They had been enjoying this scene with the dull eyes of content, putting by their impatience for the game in the superior pleasure of listening to the follies and the conceits of a very young man. It was not difficult to hear everything that young Signal said. He spoke crisply, biting off his words, like a man who controlled his passion better than his voice.