Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

“Youngish — smart looking—”

  “I don’t care about that!”

  He was only glad that it was not the sheriff in person, no matter what deputy might have been sent upon this mission.

  “You are gunna go up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, God help you. You’re gunna walk straight into a jail, because I figger that the Bender man is still there!”

  But past this croaking raven of ill omen, John Signal walked up the stairs until he came to the office, and marched in, prepared, if necessary, to face drawn weapons. But there was only Sheriff Peter Ogden, bent over his desk, shuffling papers and chewing his cigar. He looked with a frown askance at his deputy.

  “You made a quick trip,” he said sourly.

  “I made a quick trip.”

  “You saw Hanford?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t see no money, I suppose?”

  “I found the tax money, if that’s what you mean!”

  He placed the sum on the desk in front of the other, and the sheriff tilted back in his swivel chair, amazed and speechless.

  “You got that out of your own pocket!” he charged bluntly.

  Signal flushed.

  “You better think that over again,” said he.

  Sheriff Ogden, strangely without pleasure, counted the money.

  “It’s straight,” said he. “The whole wad is here!”

  “Seems to worry you,” commented the boy.

  “I’m worried,” admitted the sheriff. “You got it out of ’em! How, in the name of God?”

  “Colter, of course.”

  “Ah, Colter. You got him in your pocket. I’d forgotten that Colter — the devil!”

  John Signal was growing more and more angry as he considered the words and the attitude of the sheriff. Then he said:

  “You don’t like Colter — you don’t like the money — then why in hell did you send me out there to collect the taxes? I want to know the truth about it!”

  The sheriff turned abruptly in his swivel chair, his head a trifle down, his eyes glaring upward. He looked a picture of dangerous strength.

  “Are you going to force something from me, young man?” he asked.

  “I am! I’m going to make you admit that you sent me out there for the sake of letting the Bone tribe murder me. That was all that you had in your mind!”

  The sheriff did not budge or change his expression.

  “And,” went on the boy, “you came within an inch of having your wish! You wanted to get rid of me, and you failed. Well, you can’t drive me out of the county. I see through you, Ogden. You’re a crook and a damned black one! But I won’t budge. You swore me in as a deputy. You can’t swear me out again. If you fire me, I’ll raise this town to a yell. You may be damn tired of me; but they want me. If you doubt that, go out and ask them!”

  At this, the sheriff slowly raised his head, slowly stood up from his chair, and then with equal lack of haste raised a balled fist toward the ceiling. He spoke not a word, but there seemed an infinite suppressed rage in his face.

  “I can’t drive you out, eh?” said he at last.

  “You cannot!”

  Alert and watchful — for now he was ready to suspect anything — young John Signal waited, and saw the burly sheriff stride to the window and stand there looking out. But his hands were behind his back, and those hands were clasped and unclasped rapidly and with great muscular force. The most convulsed face could not have showed more clearly the emotion which was inside him, the baffled straining of his spirit.

  It seemed to John Signal that the meaning of Henry Colter was now plain enough. Sheriff Peter Ogden was a scoundrel and, to all of the crooked fraternity, well-known as such. The fact was apparently so patent that Colter could not believe that anyone had failed to see the thing clearly.

  Peter Ogden whirled suddenly about.

  “Young man,” he said, “my duty to the law is to put you under arrest immediately — and for murder. Do you know that, John Alias — Signal?”

  But Crawlin had prepared him for the blow, and the boy merely smiled.

  “And why don’t you do it, Ogden?”

  “Because,” said the sheriff, “you’re only a kid. I sort of like you. I want to give you another chance. And I shall give you another chance. Alias, you’re free to get out of this here town, but you gotta get quick. I’ll give you an hour from this minute. If I catch you inside of Monument after that, God help you. You understand?”

  “I understand as though I’d read the words out of a book,” said Signal. “You stand for law and order, don’t you?”

  “With all my might!”

  “You lie!” said the boy quietly. “You’re a crook, and you stand for crookedness, and you play the Eagans and the Bones off against each other so’s to line your own pockets!”

  The flexible, heavy brows of the sheriff were drawn far down over his eyes. He waited, however, and did not reply, while John Signal continued:

  “You want me out of town. Not that you give a damn about me. You’d soonest of all see me strung up — or knifed in the back. Any way so’s to get rid of me — because I’m interfering with your ideas too much. I’m spoiling your crooked game. Is that right?”

  Still the sheriff did not speak, and the boy continued:

  “Besides, I can prove what I say!”

  “Good God!” exclaimed the sheriff, beneath his breath.

  “I can prove it,” said Signal with a cruel exultation. “And here’s the proof!”

  He held forth in the palm of his hand the golden medal of St. Christopher.

  “And what does that prove?” asked the sheriff, a little huskily.

  “It proves that you were with the gang that did the murdering in San Real Ca¤on! You were there! This came off the hat of Pineta!”

  He shook the little golden circle in the air, and the sheriff stared, agape. There was no doubt that his color had altered. He was dumbfounded.

  “By God,” cried Signal, filled with horror and disgust, “I’m going down now to let the rest of the town know what I know. No matter what they do to me, they’ll clean you out of office! And after that, I’m willing to let the law stretch my neck with a rope!”

  He backed toward the door.

  “Good-by — sheriff!” he snarled.

  The sheriff started like a man from the deepest sleep.

  “Hold on! Alias — Signal, I mean! Hold on, for God’s sake. Don’t go!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  JOHN SIGNAL HESITATED. It was no respect for Ogden that detained him, but an inborn respect for the office which the man held. For through all the wildness and the crimes of the Far West, the sheriff is a figure which moves with a singular directness and purity upon the paths of duty. Bad sheriffs there have been, but they can be counted upon the fingers of one hand, and so the office, in the days of guns, took on a sort of halo of dignity.

  Because of that sense of the place of the man, John Signal now paused and waited. He expected to see Ogden, thus endangered, beg pitifully. But the sheriff maintained a certain dignity throughout. Perhaps it was a political manner which sustained him.

  “My boy,” he said, “you haven’t lived a very long time in this here world. There’s a good many things about the law and the ways of the law that you don’t know. I want to tell you, in the first place, that I wasn’t in San Real Ca¤on the day of the murders of the Mexicans.”

  “You’d swear that, I suppose?”

  “I’d swear that, if it would make you believe me.”

  “It wouldn’t,” answered John Signal, more brutally than before. “Because I know in my heart that you’re as guilty as hell!”

  “You know that?”

  “What have you done from the first? You’ve tried to block me every time that I moved to enforce the law I was sworn to enforce. You’ve deviled me from the first! You hated me because I shot down a scoundrel like Jud Bone. You wanted to drive me out, after that. When you couldn�
��t budge me, then you tried to send me out to my death in Hanford. And when I came back alive from that, you tried the law on me. The law! Why, damn you, and all of the law that you can get behind you! It doesn’t have any meaning for me. I despise you and the rest of your kind. And that’s straight. You can smoke that, if you got a match that’ll light it!”

  So, fiercely, he laid down his denunciation of the sheriff, and the latter listened with a singular patience, and his big head canted a little to one side, thoughtfully. Finally he said:

  “I’ll tell you this: That medal was given to me by another man.”

  “Bah!” sneered the boy.

  “I give you my word.”

  “Your word!”

  The sheriff exclaimed impatiently, but then controlling himself he went on:

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Gimme the name of the man.”

  “I can’t do that, John.”

  “You can’t do that? Then you can give the name to the crowd that’s going to have a chance to see this St. Christopher and hear the name of the man from whose hat it was taken. You can explain better to the crowd, maybe. You can make one of your speeches to them, maybe — unless they rush you before you get well oiled up and started.”

  At this, the sheriff was so spurred that he actually dropped a hand upon the butt of his Colt. But the gun was not drawn.

  “Are you going to drag that name out of me?” he demanded bitterly.

  “I am. Or let the crowd drag it. I don’t care much which!”

  “I’ll tell you the name, then, if you’re willing to swear that you’ll keep your hands off the man.”

  “A low, sneaking dodge,” exclaimed the boy. “I keep my hands off him — that means that I keep him from proving that he didn’t give it to you.”

  “Ah, damn you!” gasped the sheriff in a sudden barking voice, as though he had been tortured past his ability to withstand pain.

  “Damn me if you can. But who was the man, if there was such?”

  “I’ll tell you, then. His name is Sim Langley.”

  “Your friend Sim Langley. I can believe that! He gave it to you for a memento, eh?”

  “No matter why he gave it to me. I’ve told you his name, and now I’ve got to beg you not to bother him for a few days. Do you hear me, John Signal? I beg you to leave him alone!”

  “Because of the law, maybe? Because of some doggone great scheme that you got up your sleeve, maybe?”

  The sheriff threw both arms toward the ceiling and stamped. John Signal drew back into the doorway.

  “I’m going to find Langley as fast as I can,” said he, “and when I find him, I’ll have the truth out of him.”

  “You will have the truth out of him!” exclaimed the sheriff. “You young fool, don’t you understand that Langley is more iron than he is flesh? What could you do with him?”

  “I could cross him off your visiting list, if nothing more!” said Signal. “And that’s what I’ll probably have to do!”

  “Signal!” shouted the sheriff. “I tell you that the plans that I’ve been making for months would—”

  “Oh, damn your plans, and you with them!” said the boy, and turned out through the door.

  He went rapidly down the stairs. At the first landing, the voice of the sheriff roared after him:

  “Hey! Hello! John Alias! John A-li-as!”

  He answered the wailing call:

  “Stop the noise; I’m not coming back to you till I have news!”

  Then he went down to the street. He leaned against a pillar with the sun burning upon the backs of his hands, which were beaded with sweat. There had been more tension than he had supposed in his interview with the sheriff.

  So, making a cigarette, he thought the thing over and decided that there was much to this Peter Ogden. A bad man he most undoubtedly was, as all the rest of the people in the know — in that county — probably understood perfectly. But there was strength in him, too. Considered as a sheriff, perhaps he was only a political trimmer. Considered as a criminal, no doubt he was very little short of a master mind.

  But this day he had made a slip. It had been only when he was driven into a corner that he had named Langley to take the blame for the stealing of the St. Christopher. He had put down as formidable a fellow as he could think of, but that would not stop John Signal. And, by the grace of God, he would this day force the celebrated Langley into a corner and then extract from him that truth which, Signal felt, was all that was needed for the unmasking of the sheriff.

  He could not but wonder at himself and at the intensity of emotion which he felt. Was it mere pique, because he was himself outlawed by the crime in Bender Creek? Or was it, unknown to himself, the working of a passion for order and law? Or was it, most likely of all, the mere uprising of cruelty and lionlike will to rule and to crush others — even the tallest figures?

  He, honestly enough struggling with these ideas, was inclined toward the last and basest of all. His self-respect was not advanced, but his determination was not blunted.

  Crawlin, the sneaking shadow of a man, appeared at his side, rubbing his pale palms together, and then expanding them in the fierce heat of the sun. He looked up to the youth with an ingratiating smile.

  “And here you are, back again, all safe and sound, and no harm done!” said he. “Well, well, you’re a man in a thousand — no, you’re a man in a million, Mr. Alias (Signal!)” he whispered confidentially, and winked with meaning at the boy.

  The latter looked down at his companion with an odd mixture of contempt and disgust and interest.

  “You must have telephones hitched to your ears,” said he. “How is it that you know everything that happens in town?”

  Crawlin cackled with great pleasure.

  “Now, you never could tell that,” he said. “Oh, but there’s ways — all kinds of ways, if you’re wise. There ain’t a wall, hardly, that a small enough thing can’t crawl through, and there ain’t a wall that a tall enough thing can’t look over. You take it that way — you see how a gent can look over things, and around the corners of things, and so see the truth about everything?”

  “I see,” smiled the boy. “I follow you, pretty well. You could almost wriggle through a keyhole, I think, if you wanted to see what was happening inside a room!”

  “I suppose that I could,” said Crawlin, with a nod of satisfaction. “Take when I was a kid growin’ up, before I got my talents all worked up and developed, as you might say. I always knew everything.

  “I could tell in the morning if the old man and the old woman was to have a fight before night. I could tell by one squint at the old man’s face whether he was gunna lick me or not!”

  He laughed again, and again rubbed his pale, cold hands and extended them to the sun.

  “It ain’t nothin’ to my credit,” said he. “It’s God that makes a man, I guess!”

  John Signal, peering at this monstrosity of distortion of the soul, merely nodded. The man was beneath advice, just as he was beneath correction. Even amid the booming guns and the hatreds of Monument, this contemptible little serpent was able to writhe through the streets and into the lives of other and stronger men, unharmed. Then Signal said:

  “I want to see Sim Langley. Can you tell me where he is?”

  The little man cocked his head to the side with a jerk, and looked at Signal with his birdlike eyes.

  “You want to find Langley!” he said. “What’s Langley to you?”

  “What’s Langley to me? Why, maybe, he is a friend!”

  “Maybe he is — and maybe he ain’t!” said Crawlin. “But—” he hesitated, agape for more news.

  “I’ve got a message for him from the sheriff,” said the boy.

  “From the sheriff!” exclaimed the other.

  “Yes.”

  “He gave the message to you, to give to Langley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” said Crawlin, “Langley is a pretty hard man to talk to. He’s a dangero
us gent!”

  “Here’s a dollar,” said Signal. “Go find him for me!”

  And Crawlin took the coin with a cringing grin, and instantly disappeared.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  A LONG HALF hour passed, and Signal began to think that Langley had not, perhaps, come back to Monument from Hanford, when Crawlin appeared again, snaking his way through the crowd. As always when he carried important news, his face was pale and his eyes glistened like the red-stained eyes of a ferret. He clutched the lapel of Signal’s coat, as though partly to sustain himself and partly to make sure of his auditor.

  “I’ve seen a thing,” said Crawlin, “that there was never anything like in Monument!”

  “Who’s dead now?” asked the boy, weary of this ceaseless passive savagery on the part of the little man.

  “Lemme finish! It was in front of Oliver’s hardware store. Fitz Eagan and Champ Mooney, the gambler, was both standing there. Up comes Joe Klaus and walks straight to Fitz Eagan. He pulls out his handkerchief and throws an end of it to Fitz. To Fitz Eagan, mind you.”

  “I suppose that Fitz shot him to bits?”

  “Here comes the wonder! Eagan didn’t catch hold of the end of the handkerchief that was snapped out to him. He just let it go by. He says to Joe Klaus: ‘Joe, you’re a fool to think that I’ll fight with you for fun. I’ll wait till I have a warrant for you, and then I’ll go get you!’ Klaus says to him: ‘I’m damned if I thought that Fitz Eagan ever would take water!’ And he walked on, just like that. And I was by, and saw it all!”

  Signal was stunned.

  “But after all,” he said, “that was his right. He’s the city marshal. He would be a fool to fight for no good reason at all.”

  “He took water,” said Crawlin, drawing his breath in with a drinking sound. “I was by, and I seen it!”

  “Let Fitz Eagan be!” said Signal sternly. “I know that he’s a man and never would take water from twenty like Joe Klaus.”

  “Nobody knows that!” declared the little man. “I’ve seen the bravest in the world, and they all have their weak times, the same as Fitz Eagan, even, has had his bad time today. There ain’t going to be nothing else talked about in town for a few days, I reckon.”