by Max Brand
As he said this, an odd light glimmered into his eyes and instantly passed out again. It made Signal consider him through a silent moment, staring steadily, and the longer he stared the more uneasy the other became. His weariness left him. He grew tense, and seemed poised on tiptoe, either for flight or for attack. Remorselessly Signal stared at him, and the pressure of that young and brilliant eye began to rob the other of his color. His face grew white and hard. His nostrils quivered. He seemed about to make some desperate start when Signal said:
“You know who that was!”
“How’n hell should I know?” gasped the other.
“Who are you?”
“Me? What difference does that make?”
“I ask you who you are!” shouted John Signal.
The other leaped back as though a bullet had torn through him.
“Name of Pete Graham!” he said. “What’s the matter?”
“Is that your rifle that’s leaning against the wall?”
“Maybe it is.”
“Is that your rifle?” roared John Signal.
“Yes, yes,” stammered Pete Graham.
Signal picked it up. He had little fear that the other would attempt a sudden attack upon him. Pete Graham was almost demoralized. His glance could not hold still for an instant but wavered from side to side, and his color was most sickly.
So John Signal opened the rifle and made sure that no bullet had been fired from it. He dropped the gun back against the wall and stared again at Pete Graham, curiously and savagely pleased to mark the disintegration of the man. It was almost like seeing a figure of sand dissolve in water.
“You didn’t shoot,” said John Signal. “But who did?”
“How should I know? I ain’t got eyes everywhere!”
“No. You only have eyes in your head. Who shot at me?”
He advanced a half step. Pete Graham, with a faint groan, drew himself back against the manger and set his teeth.
“I’ll see you damned before I tell!” said he.
“I guessed that you knew!” said Signal.
Pete Graham started to answer, but only achieved a writhing of his lips. He had begun to tremble violently. With all the bitterness of fear, he was tasting death.
Signal dropped a hand upon his gun.
“I’ll wait till I count three on you,” said he. “Then I want that name out of you.”
Pete Graham closed his eyes. He hung by his elbows on the manger, looking ready to faint.
“It was Langley!” he breathed. “God help me! It was Langley!”
Signal turned on his heel and went out from the horse shed. He was filled with cold rage at Langley, and a peculiar mixture of cruel satisfaction and pity as he thought of Pete Graham. Perhaps that had been a brave fellow, or brave enough to pass; but now he was dissolved, and he could never be much of a man again.
It reminded Signal of a young giant who had gone forth from Bender Creek to conquer the pugilistic world and who had risen with a dizzy suddenness, until he met the champion. The result of that fight was a crushing defeat, and when the giant came home, he had altered to a weak pulp of a man; he could hardly look a child in the face.
So it seemed to have happened with Pete Graham, all of whose strength had disappeared. And he, John Signal, had been the burning glass which had focused on poor Graham!
So, if pity was in him, that same cruel pride was in him, too. It had been a terrible experiment; it had been a wonderful thing, as well.
He walked around the house to enter it again, and so doing, he encountered a gasping, hurrying little man whose eyes seemed popping out of his head.
“Hey, John Alias!”
“Well?” said Signal with disdain, for he recognized the same little fellow who had been apparently spying on the sheriff, outside the sheriff’s door.
“Sheriff Ogden sent me up to find you. He says for you to look out. He says that Charlie and Jud Bone are both in Mortimer’s Saloon swearin’ that they’re gunna get you, and get you good, and get you today. He says, you better lie low for a while!”
Signal compressed his lips to keep back the first retort, which was:
“Why did the sheriff send such a warning, instead of putting under arrest the men who were threatening the life of a peaceful citizen in good standing — so far as Monument was concerned?”
He merely said: “You know Charlie and Jud?”
“Sure I know ’em! The pair of ’em could bust hell open, working together!”
“You hear me?”
“I hear you, Alias.”
“Go to Mortimer’s Saloon.”
“It ain’t hardly safe!”
“Isn’t it safe for you?”
The other moistened his lips. He looked with rat-like eyes upon Signal.
“Maybe I’d chance it,” said he.
From his pocket, Signal drew five dollars and dropped it into the ready palm of the other.
“You go to Mortimer’s Saloon. Is there a crowd there, besides Charlie and Jud?”
“It’s packed to the doors! They got about a hundred men in there, and Charlie and Jud are tellin’ what they’re gunna do! They’re all heated up, and ready for a kill!”
“You’ve seen ’em?”
“I’ve seen ’em!”
“Go back to Mortimer’s Saloon and make a little speech to the whole crowd, or else talk to Charlie and Jud so that everybody can hear. Say that I’m sending them word that I hear that they’re after me. That they want to run me out of town. Is that it?”
“They wanta run you into your grave, Alias. That’s the short of it!”
“Tell them that, in a half hour, I’m going to leave this house and I’m going to walk straight down to the sheriff’s office. I’m going to be armed and ready for trouble, and if they’re men and want trouble, they can stop me on the way. I’ll have nobody behind me. I’ll be tackling this game alone. If the pair of them have any nerve, if they’re men, tell them that I expect to be met!”
The messenger leaned against the picket fence very much as Pete Graham had leaned against the manger in the barn. Then he rallied.
“I’ll go as fast as I can,” said he. “I’ll go down there and tell the boys in Mortimer’s Saloon about everything that’s been told to me. Aw, my Gawd, there’s never been nothing like this, even in Monument!”
He looked at the boy for a single instant, with a grin of horrible joy; and then he turned and fled. Signal looked after him with a peculiar interest. In all his life he never had seen such a repulsive creature. There was no manliness in him; he was nothing but a negation, except that he loved trouble and lived upon it — the trouble of others! He was the pandar who brought fighting men together and watched them destroy one another. Like the most detestable jackal, he lived upon the scraps of danger thrown into his path when the giants clashed. Now, watching him running down the street, his feet shambling, his rounded shoulders working, Signal knew that the most dreadful greed was driving this pariah.
He stared after him in interest. Pete Graham recently had dropped a long distance. Would he ever drop as far as this? And if he dropped, what would have forced him down? The impact of more fierce and savage personalities — like his own — like John Signal’s!
What passed through the soul of John Signal then, as he reflected keenly on what he was and what he had done? There should have been Christian shame that there was in him such a power over his brother man; there should have been remorse and regret, of gigantic proportions. But in truth, since the truth we must have about him, although there were some faint shadowings of these more humble emotions, all was overridden by a great pride that rose in him like a pillar of white fire — pride, utter self-confidence, and a willingness to lay down his life struggling to maintain his czardom over the wills of lesser men.
It is not pleasant to tell such naked truth, but this must be the true narrative of all that happened in the flesh of John Signal, and of all that happened in his soul.
He went up
to his room and there he took up his rifle and began to unload it, preparatory to cleaning and oiling it, so that all would be in perfect readiness for his march into the throat of danger. He could have burst into song; in fact, he was humming softly to himself and regardless of the fact that his door was open, when the voice of Polly spoke from it, saying:
“I’ve always heard that a cat purrs before it pounces. But I never heard the cat before now!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HE LOOKED UP at the girl with a keen interest. She had shown before that she could look deeply through the ideas of men. How deeply would she look through him?
“Cat?” said he.
She nodded. She half closed her eyes and scanned him from head to foot.
“Big, sleek, soft, happy pussy,” said she, “about to jump on a mouse. Or a pair of mice!” she added.
“Hello!” said he. “What’s all this about?”
“Oh,” she answered, “Crawlin was here.”
“Who’s Crawlin?”
“The rat that was looking for you.”
“What did he say to you?”
“The same he said to you. That the pair of ’em were looking for you. He was so scared about it that he was happy. ‘Maybe they’ll all be killed,’ says he — the rat!”
“He is a rat!”
“When they took a shot at you, they didn’t scratch you?”
“What shot?”
She pointed at the chip taken from the window sill.
“It kept on traveling up,” said she. “It went through the floor of my room upstairs and nearly took the heel off my shoe. I came down to find out — and you’d sashayed out to ask questions, I suppose?”
“Langley shot at me,” he said.
He had been working on at the rifle while he talked. Now he paused and looked at her with luminous eyes.
“The murderer!” said he, softly.
“Ay,” said she. “Langley’s a murderer. Everybody always has known that. Indian kind of murder. That’s his long suit. But there’s other cards in the deck than the aces, such as you play. A straight flush beats four of a kind, Johnny.”
“Meaning what?”
“Why should you be so hard on the murderers?” she asked him.
“D’you want me to praise ’em?”
“I’d sort of expect you to.”
“Would you?” he asked icily. “What sort of a man d’you take me to be, Polly?”
“A doggone dangerous one,” said she.
His swift, well accustomed hands already had finished with the rifle. He began to slip the bullets into the magazine.
“That’s fine and friendly,” said he. “Dangerous to who?”
“Why, to pretty near anybody. Man or girl, old man or old woman. Dangerous to everybody, down to the babies in the cradle. That’s what you are, Johnny.”
“You don’t say that seriously, Polly.”
“Don’t I just!”
“How d’you mean dangerous to even babies?”
“A baby has to have a father, don’t it, to keep earning money, and what not?”
“And I’d kill the papa, eh?” He laughed, angrily. “Why, Polly, you’re talking crazy!”
“Perhaps I seem to be. I’m not. You’re going to run amok right now.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Instead of lying low, like the sheriff wants you to, you’re gunna prance down the street and soak the two of ’em full of lead.”
“That Crawlin told you everything, did he?”
“Sure. He tells everything, and then some more.”
“I’ll give him something else to think about, the next time I see him!” said he.
“Sure,” said Polly. “You’ll get down even as low as taking a crack at a worm like Crawlin.”
“Say,” cried he, “are you trying to get me all heated up, Polly? What’s the matter with you? What have I done to you?”
“Made me like you,” said Polly, “and that’s the worst thing that’s happened to me in a long time.”
“Humph!” said he. “Like you! And you come in here and call me — why, you call me a murderer! Like me!”
He repeated it, very bitterly.
“Oh, I mean it all,” said she. “But you fellows who live by the gun are so single track you can’t carry two loads at once. You’ve given me a bigger thrill than a roller coaster.”
“I wish you’d stop kidding and talk straight to me,” he complained.
“I’m talking nothing but,” she assured him. “Never anything like it since an actor I seen on the stage, once. He was mighty cool and slick. He had long white hands. He never raised his voice. He had a slow sort of a smile, and all the girls in the play were always falling in love with him. He made my heart jump right up in high C. But the next day — I hadn’t slept all night — I seen the wind blow off his hat when he was going down the street, and it took off his wig, too. He was about fifty-five, the old liar!”
She laughed at the memory.
“I’m a faker like him, am I?”
“You’re a lot worse. He never would make any widows, except through divorce courts. But you’ll make a plenty before you’re done.”
“You think that I’m a low gun-fighter!” he declaimed.
“No, I think you’re an ace-high gun-fighter. I’d put you right up there with the classy ones — with Colter and Fitz Eagan, even! And now that you’ve got me all in a fuss about you, you’re gunna—”
“Look here,” cried the boy, “I won’t listen to you, the way you’re carrying on to make a fool of me!”
“Bah!” answered Polly. “You make me tired. I’ve practically fallen in love, I think; and here you’re walking out to get yourself all shot to bits.”
“I won’t be shot to bits!” said he. “I think the shoe will be on the other foot. I’m not going to miss, I can tell you!”
“That’s pretty,” she nodded. “You ain’t gunna miss. You bet you ain’t!”
“But look here, Polly. The other thing, what I mean to say is — you know — speaking about you and me — jiminy, Polly, of course you’re just making a fool out of me!”
Polly regarded him with a bland blue eye.
“I got an idea,” said she, “that you’re tryin’ to say something kind to me. Is that right?”
Young John Signal turned the brightest of bright reds.
“You’re pretty hard,” said he.
“To say nice things to?” she echoed. “Not a bit. You try me!”
He gnawed his lip. The more he looked at her, the more delightful she appeared. After all, noses are the last feature to stop growing.
“Polly,” he said with a sigh, “you’re just badgering me.”
“If you want help,” said Polly, “I’ll help you out if I can. Do you want to say that you’re fond of me, Johnny?”
He jerked back his shoulders.
“How could I?” he demanded of her. “You start right in by calling me a cat; and then you say that I’m a murderer! And then—”
“You take things pretty hard,” she said. “You’re mighty nice, Johnny, but I don’t think you’ll ever be much use!”
“You’re just a nineteen-year-old girl,” said he. “What right have you to talk so grown up? You’re only nineteen. You’re just a baby, really!”
“Am I?” she said, smiling. “I wish I was! Oh, how I wish that I was!”
“I don’t pretend to be anything very much,” he went on, furiously hot with wounded dignity and spoiled vanity, “but you don’t think that I’ll ever be any use!”
“Not once that you’ve really gone wild. You was raised tame, eating out of the hand and getting used to the halter and the bridle right from the beginning. But once that you bust loose — well, the hardest outlaw hoss is the one that’s come out of a corral, not the one that’s always run wild!”
“I wish that you’d get away from horses and get down to men!” he said.
All at once, she threw out her hands toward
him, and the softest of music was in her voice.
“Oh, Johnny,” said she, “you’re such a good boy, in spots. You could be so grand! You’re so terrible goodlooking, too! Why won’t you be nice?”
He hesitated. There had been so much banter that he dared not take all for granted, but he was irresistibly drawn closer to her. He took her hands. They were ridiculously soft, and they quivered, and her fingers squirmed, but really she made hardly an effort to get away. She tipped back her head a little.
“You’re laughing at me all the time,” he stammered.
“I’m not! I’m not!” she whispered. “Johnny, say that you like me a little, because I know that you do! D’you think that I would have dared to talk this way to you if I hadn’t guessed?”
He held her with one arm; she laid her hands upon his shoulders with her face still raised to his, without the slightest trifle of defense.
And still he hesitated. His poor young brain was whirling wildly. Music rang in his ears, red joy floated before his eyes. But he was held back by a silken string of criticism, his mind still acting, no matter how imperfectly.
“Polly,” he said, “I know that you’d never come in here like this except that you had some bigger reason than just caring for me. You wouldn’t tell me so quickly. You’d hold off. You could see me going to pieces about you. What made you walk in and let me hold you like this?”
“Will you kiss me, Johnny, and be talkin’ about it afterward?” she said.
“Ay, Polly, if you’ll tell me what it is that you want!”
“Only a small thing — that you’ll stay here and not go prancin’ off down the street like a fool for them to shoot at you! Only for the promise of that!” she said.
He began to straighten a little, so drawing away from her.
“Wouldn’t you see, Polly, that I got all my honor pledged to walk down to the sheriff’s office in the middle of the street, so’s to give the pair of them a chance to meet me?”
“What is honor worth? What’s that kind of honor worth, honey? Look at me, Johnny. Don’t go starin’ at yourself in the street! Monument can see you other days, but you be stayin’ home here with me today, will you? I’ll make you happy! I’ll make you forget the rest of them — the gun-fightin’, murderin’ devils! Oh, Johnny, it ain’t only that you might be killed — it’s that you might kill one of them! And that’d be the finish of you, once you had the red taste of the blood in your mouth! Oh, honey, will you listen to me?”