by Max Brand
He laughed soundlessly to himself, filled with a malicious joy, as though he fed himself upon the contemplation of evil in his fellows.
“And what about Langley? You didn’t find him?”
“Didn’t I? I found Langley in the back room of Steeven’s Saloon, playing poker with Sam Tucker and a couple of miners, just down to town for the day. Langley and Tucker is cleaning them up!”
“Where’s Steeven’s Saloon?”
“Not four blocks away.”
“Did you give Langley my message that I wanted to see him for the sheriff?”
“I didn’t. He wouldn’t leave as fat a game as that, even for the sake of the sheriff!”
“Take me over to Steeven’s place, then.”
Little Crawlin assented with a nod and scurried away to show the deputy sheriff to the spot, and as they came near the door, he tipped his evil face sidewise and up and stared up at John Signal.
“You’re all by yourself!” he declared. “The rest of ’em will enjoy a fight, now and agin, if they’re drunk. But you cotton to it when you’re sober. And that’s different. Gimme a chance to get around to the window, will you, so’s I can look in and see you tackle him?”
“Take your time,” said Signal, and began to saunter slowly back through Steeven’s array of little card rooms, where the games ran day and night. There were few people in them at this hour of the day. The all-nighters were hardly up; and the players by day rarely got seriously to work before the afternoon.
But when he came into the last room of all, there he saw at the corner table the layout of four, just as Crawlin had stated — and Langley in the farthest corner, facing the room.
He came out of his chair with a bound when he saw the deputy sheriff, but time was sadly against poor Langley. He was looking into the ominous face of a Colt before he had half risen; he was helpless before he could make a draw.
The other three at the table departed from their places at high speed. One slid down to the floor as though he suddenly had been turned to a wet rag. The other pair dived for the corners of the room — dived as though the hard flooring were water to receive them. So they rolled out of the probable path of bullets.
They left Langley alone, white, stammering, but unyielding.
“It’s a damned low trick, Alias,” said he. “Give me a half chance and I’ll fight you to a finish. You come in here and take the jump on me!”
John Signal said with calm:
“Push your hands over your head. Walk out from behind that table. Turn your face to the wall!”
The eyes of the other flashed wildly from side to side.
“Boys,” he said, his voice shaking, “are you gunna let me be murdered like this?”
There was no answer. One of the recent gamblers was squeezing through a window too small for him. Another was scrambling through the doorway.
So Signal went up to his victim and “fanned” him for no fewer than three Colts, and a long and heavy-bladed knife. There was even a sling shot attached to the wrist of Langley by a flexible elastic, so that it could be jerked down to the finger tips of the wearer and used to slap a man into unconsciousness with a single gesture.
This array of weapons being transferred, the deputy sheriff walked his man out of the saloon, his hands still in the air above his head. It would have been safer, and easier, to take him in irons by side streets to the jail, but Signal had a very definite thought in mind, and he persisted in driving Langley straight through the center of Monument’s traffic, his hands still above his head, and sagging down with weariness. Behind him came the captor, a Colt in either hand, while the crowd gathered thickly before, and split away in a constantly receding furrow to make way for their advance.
There was a shower of questions, but Signal moved through them, unheeding. They reached the jail. It was newly built, of red brick, with heavily barred windows, and a door of special strength, so that it might defy a great battering.
Into the jail he conducted Langley, who was now raging and raving against such treatment. Signal took him into the sheriff’s own sanctum, a little room which was lighted by a single window, set high in the wall and thronged with iron bars. It was a dim room. Even in midday, as it was now, there was use for a lamp, which Signal now lighted. He looked up from that operation and found Langley biting his lips with nervousness, and Signal smiled again with a cruel pleasure in his heart. As he had done with Graham, so would he now do with this man, he thought.
“It’s more’n you can get away with,” said Langley. “It’s a damn sight more!”
“Sit down,” said Signal gently.
“There’s a law of habeas corpus, or some such thing. I appeal to that!” cried Langley.
“Sit down!” commanded the deputy.
Langley shouted in a louder voice than ever:
“I have friends who’ll see that I get the law. Friends who could crack open this jail like a rotten nut! You — you fool!”
He was crimson with anger, and his confidence would have grown great very shortly, had it not been for the calm and satisfied manner in which John Signal watched him. The latter repeated, now:
“You’d better sit down. You’ll be waiting a while, I think.”
“The sheriff don’t know about this!” exclaimed Langley. “He wouldn’t stand for it. You hear me? He wouldn’t stand for it. He’s my friend!”
And the boy smiled coldly.
“I have no doubt that the sheriff’s your friend!”
He himself could not have said what he meant this to infer, but the mysterious manner of the speech told shrewdly upon the other.
“I don’t know what you’re at,” he said in protest. “You sashay in and shove a gun under my nose! I dunno what you mean by that, Alias!”
“I ought to kill you!” said the deputy. “I ought to have killed you when I first saw you in Steeven’s place. But I’m not going to kill you. I want to hear you talk.”
“You want to hear me talk? My God,” said Langley, “there ain’t a thing for me to tell, but if there was, wild horses wouldn’t make me double-cross any partner of mine. That’s the kind of a man that I am, Alias!”
“I’m not wild horses,” said the boy, “but you’ll talk for me!”
“I’ll see you damned first!”
“There’s ways and ways of making people talk, Langley!”
The other suddenly blenched.
“What ways d’you mean?”
“I mean the ways of the Indians, Langley. You’ve been with the tribes. You know something about Apache ways!”
“It’s a lie,” gasped Langley. “It’s a lie that I ever lived with them or was a squaw man, or that I ever rode in their raids! It’s a lie, Alias!”
This involuntary self-accusation was stored away in the memory of the boy.
“You rode with ’em,” said Signal. “I’m telling you that I know the facts about you. All that I want is to get you to write down a full confession and sign it. That’s all that I want.”
“Why,” said the other, laughing in a forced fashion, “you must think that I’m crazy if you figure that I’d make out a warrant for my own hanging!” He added suddenly:
“I suppose that you want me to turn state’s evidence?”
“No,” said the boy, “I’ve got enough to hang you now. I just want the pleasure of having the whole story out of you.”
Perspiration suddenly drenched the face of Langley.
“You know nothing!” he said.
“Don’t I?” answered John Signal, and he took from his pocket the medal of St. Christopher.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
UPON THIS, THE prisoner stared, fascinated. But Signal, having given him a glimpse, absent-mindedly restored the trinket to a vest pocket.
“It was you, Langley, who tried to shoot me when I was sitting in the window of my boarding house.”
“That’s a lie and a loud lie!” said Langley.
Signal smiled again. He was gathering in this m
an with a secure ease, he felt.
“I have the word of an eye-witness,” said he.
“It ain’t possible. Who?”
“Graham.”
“The sneak!” groaned Langley. “The — the liar!”
“Liar?”
“Yes, yes! Great God, man, would I be sneaking around and trying to murder you? I don’t like you. I never pretended that I liked you! But murder? That ain’t my style!”
“You don’t lie well,” criticized Signal. “But take your time. Afterward you’ll remember the truth.”
“I’ve finished talking,” said the other, “and I’m damned if I’ll ever say another word!”
Signal took from his pocket a stout length of cord and knotted the ends together as he answered.
“You’re a broad-minded man, Langley, and you’ll change your mind about answering. I could almost swear that you’ll change your mind!”
He held up the cord. Langley watched him with a scowl.
“When you rode south into Mexico with the Apaches,” said Signal, “did you ever raid a town and catch a few of the men and women and ask ’em where they kept their money? And did you ever urge ’em to talk by twisting a cord like this around their heads and then turning it tighter and tighter?”
Langley’s mouth sagged open, and over his white lips he passed the tip of his tongue. The words which he had sworn he would not speak came out with a groan.
“You’re a white man, Signal. You wouldn’t do a thing like that to a gent that ain’t got a chance to help himself!”
“You lie!” said Signal, with sudden anger. “You could have pulled your gun and died fighting in Steeven’s place. You knew that I’d said that I’d get you the first time I met you on the street!”
Langley swallowed. His color was a peculiar pale yellow-green.
“I dunno what you want to get out of me!” said he.
“I want the whole story,” said the boy.
“About what?”
“About you!”
“I could tell you the story of my life,” said Langley, with a flash of cunning in his face.
“With everything in?”
“Yes. Everything. I wouldn’t try to fool you, Alias. You’re too smart for me!”
He looked keenly at the boy, as he spoke, trying desperately to read around the corner, as it were.
“You’ll put in San Real Ca¤on in full?” asked Signal.
The other blinked his eyes hard.
“What should I know about that?” he asked.
Again Signal took out the figure of St. Christopher. He held it up to the other.
“You’ve seen this before?”
“There might be twenty like that in the world!” said Langley miserably.
“There’s this one,” replied Signal. “There’s no more in this part of the world. You gave it to the sheriff.”
“And he turned me over to you. Is that it?” shouted Langley in a new fury.
“No matter what he did. Here I am. I’m asking to have the facts out of you. Will you put ’em down in black and white?”
“Not a word!”
“You’re going to stick it out?”
“I’m going to stick it out.”
“Well,” said Signal, standing up, the cord ready in his hand. “I didn’t want to go this far, but I see that I’ll have to.”
“You’d try torture!” gasped Langley. “It ain’t possible. Alias, you’re a white man. You ain’t a—”
“Will you talk?”
“The mark of it’ll be on me!” exclaimed Langley. “If you twist that damned thing around my head, it’ll leave the mark on me, and Monument’ll lynch you!”
“Monument will do no more lynching,” said the boy. “Monument is going to quiet down and be a model town. I give you your last chance, Langley. Will you write the little story for me?”
“They’d kill me!” said the prisoner hoarsely. “What good would it do me to win my life from ’em? They’d bust in here and tear me to bits!”
“I give you my word that nobody is going to be able to tear in here. I’m going to stay.”
“To guard me?”
“To guard you.”
“A hell of a lot I could trust to you!”
“Look here,” said the boy quietly, “I’ll show you what I mean. Out of what you write down, I can bust Monument wide open. You’ll be like a nutcracker. You’ll make the inside of the nut easy to eat. Protect you? I’d keep you safer than a watch in cotton batting. I’ll keep you safer than I’d keep myself!”
Langley flung himself back in his chair. His hands worked at his throat, opening the shirt so that he could breathe more easily, and his eyes were closed. For a moment he suffered silently. Then he said in a croaking voice:
“How would I ever get out of the country alive?”
“I’d take you out.”
“Into the next county. What’s that to me? They’d reach clean to Canada after me!”
“I’ll see you to Canada, then. I’ll see you safely out!”
Langley opened his eyes and slowly pushed himself up in the chair.
“It started with a damned roan hoss,” said he, “and look where I am now! I been square, but I’ve gone to hell. I’ll have to change my name. After this, everybody that’s ever heard of me will damn me for a yellow skunk!”
“It’s better to be damned than to be dead,” said the boy. “Besides, there’s places as far off as Australia.”
“There are!” said the other, with a flash of better hope in his face. “And I’ll have to head out that way. Alias, what you want me to do first?”
“Start writing. There’s a desk. There’s ink. There’s paper.”
“All right. Where shall I begin?”
“You better begin with San Real Ca¤on.”
“Well?”
“You killed one of the Pinetas. Say that.”
“How in the name of God d’you know that I killed him?”
The wonder of the prisoner almost overcame his extreme fear and trouble of mind.
“You shot him through the head,” guessed the deputy sheriff, “while he was lying on the ground.”
Langley rose slowly to his feet and as slowly sat down again.
“By God, you were hidin’ somewhere near!” said he. “Or,” he added, guessing wildly, “you were one of us!”
The boy smiled. And Langley, seeing that he had implied everything in this remark, groaned deeply.
“You killed Pineta. Write that down and sign it,” said the deputy sheriff. “That’ll make a beginning for us!”
The other nodded. He set his teeth, took up the pen, and scratched rapidly, fiercely, at the paper. When he had ended, he thrust the paper toward Signal and then rested his forehead on his hand. Shame had not prevented him from joining the murderers in the ca¤on or from taking a flying shot at Signal; but shame overcame him now, as he thought of betraying his associates. Shame and fear, no doubt, in equal portions. His whole body was trembling. And the deputy read on the paper, in uneven letters that stumbled and shook across the page:
In the fight in San Real Ca¤on, I took my bead on the older Pineta and dropped him. Afterward, because he wasn’t quite finished, I put a bullet through his head while he was lying in the trail.
SIMEON LANGLEY.
“That’s all for the minute,” said the deputy.
“I get protection?” demanded the other suddenly. “You swear that?”
“Yes.”
“Will you shake on it?”
“I’d rather touch a snake than touch your hand!” said the boy.
“Well, let that go. But I got your oath?”
“Yes.”
“What happens to me now?”
“You go to a cell. That’s the safest place in Monument for you just now!”
“Ay,” agreed the other, with a shiver. “That’s the best place for me now, and the safest.”
He went without a murmur from the little office to the cell roo
m. There were no other prisoners in the jail and Signal locked his captive in a corner cell.
“Nobody can come at your back, now,” explained the boy.
Langley nodded at him and even managed a smile.
“I dunno how you can steer me through the hell that’s going to start popping now,” he said, “but I gotta trust to you, old-timer.”
“Trust to me,” answered the boy, “and line up your story ready for writing in full.”
So he left him and went to the sheriff, and found Ogden still in his office, furiously chewing a cigar and lost in thought.
“You got Langley!” said he. “But how’ll you hold him? Where’s the warrant?”
“Here’s a confession of murder,” said the boy. “Will that do?”
And he held the damning paper before the eyes of the sheriff!
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THE SHERIFF APPEARED as one appalled with wonder rather than one shocked with horror. He stared at the paper and then at the youth.
“How in the name of God,” said he, “did you manage to make him put his head inside the noose in this fashion?”
“He turns state’s evidence,” said the boy.
“And who authorized you to offer him that chance of saving his skin?”
“I knew,” said young Signal, “that you’d agree with me that it was the easiest way to get one of them to confess and through him rope the rest of ’em.”
“And who may the rest of ’em be?”
“I’m going to pump him later for all of the details.”
“Did you warn him not to start talking on his own?”
“About what?”
“About the thing he’s arrested for.”
“No. I didn’t think of that.”
The sheriff did not seem greatly annoyed. Neither did he seem greatly shocked. Indeed his attitude was not that of a man who is violently guilty or violently innocent. For one thing, the boy had proved that the sheriff was not, indeed, the slayer of Pineta, though as a matter of fact he might well have been present in San Real Ca¤on. His attitude was rather a noncommittal air.
“You didn’t think of that!” repeated the sheriff gently.
“And why is it important?”