by Max Brand
“You’ll never lose heart because a pair of cowards flinch like this! And — I’ll find you other men — somewhere,” she said rather desperately.
Plainly she had counted greatly upon this pair, and her lip curled with her scorn and her anger as she stared at them.
“I’ll find you other men, no matter what I have to pay for them!”
“That’s no use,” Signal told her. “That’s no use at all. The reason is, that some fellows who are really on the other side might be willing to take your money and work at the jail — but they’d be there only to shoot me in the back when the pinch comes!”
“And the sheriff! The sheriff!” she cried. “Won’t shame make him do something?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t leave the jail!” she pleaded. “Go back to it now; and stay there, stay there! Oh, Se¤or Alias, if you bring up to justice only three of the scoundrels who did the murders in San Real Ca¤on, what would I not do for you?”
And she made a gesture, a small gesture, with both hands, as though literally she placed her soul in his keeping.
He waved good-bye to her, and thanked her, and went on hastily toward the lodging house, rather upset because he had met her in this fashion. And, arriving in front of the house, he threw the reins and ran up the stairs.
The door swung suddenly open before him — and his Colt almost jumped from the holster in response, before he saw that it was that same gentleman of the testy manner and the haughty air — he whose daughter had fled from Signal in the hallway of the house.
He hesitated now, for an instant, and then lurched forward with a crimson face but a determined smile. He caught the hand of Signal and wrung it. He said earnestly:
“The other day I was a jackass. I didn’t understand you or what you represented, young man. My — er — my daughter is also waiting to apologize to you at the first opportunity. I thought — er — in short I was a fool. But now that I recognize the magnificent work you are trying to perform for law and order in Monument, I tell you I feel honored to have even laid eyes on you, Mr. Alias — since you choose to wear that name! I have been at a business meeting. I’ve heard twenty men just speaking. I tell you, young man, that because of you, we begin to see our way through the storm, and law and order not so very far off through the crowd.”
This speech was delivered with a good deal of mingled embarrassment and dignity and real admiration, so that John Signal blushed in turn. He said to the other:
“If you and other honest men in Monument want to help, it’s at the jail that you could be used!”
“To keep the man with whom you’ve baited the trap? By all means! We’ll see what we can do!”
But most of his ardor had vanished, and hastily he went away from the boy. Signal, glancing after him, understood. The honest men of Monument were at the present time quite willing to applaud the efforts toward law and order. But they were not yet willing to risk their necks for that fine project.
He turned again toward the door and saw Polly there, her arms folded, leaning her shoulder against the jamb of the door.
“Nice feller, ain’t he?” said Polly. “If words was bucks, he could pay his way, all right. You’ll see him at the jail, all right — when you arrest him and snake him there at the end of a lariat! No quicker, old son.”
He looked at her with a sudden, strange relief.
“Polly,” he said, “I’m tired as a fool. Can you get me a cup of coffee?”
“You’d better have some lunch,” she advised him.
“I don’t want any. I want to stay awake and think. I’m fagged.”
“Go into the dining room. I’ll fix you.”
By the time he had washed his hands, she had a steaming cup of coffee before him.
“That’s the way with brain work,” said she. “It tires out some people. Thinking about going onto the stage has worried me a pile more than just the singing ever would do.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” he told her. “I’m going to take you down to the opera house tomorrow.”
She smiled faintly at him.
“I mean it.”
“You look kinda vague, though.”
“I feel a little vague, too,” he explained, surprised at himself. “But it does seem a long ways off — tomorrow, I mean.”
“It is,” said the girl. “It’s a long ways off, all right. God knows if you’ll ever see the crack of the day beginnin’.”
“You know all about everything,” said he.
“I know about you and your job pretty good,” said she.
“And how, please?”
“Nobody can keep anything from Crawlin. He spreads everything around.”
“He ought to be in jail.”
“He has been. It don’t make no difference. He can start in the jail a whisper that’ll bust through the walls and circulate all around the town!” She added. “You better go up and lie down for half an hour.”
“I’ve got to go to the jail.”
“You gotta sleep first. A half hour now in the middle of the day, and you’ll be fit as a fiddle for the rest of the time.”
“Sleep?” he smiled.
“Go on,” said she. “I’ll go up and pack your duds for you.”
“Who told you I was moving?”
She winked.
“Aw, I could guess that!”
It was true that he was very sleepy. Much had rushed through his brain and over his head since he rose that morning. He went up the stairs with a stumbling step. When he entered his room, the heat of it rolled into his brain like a wave of liquid, but he fell on the bed and stretched himself out. A cool towel was laid over his forehead. From the opened window a breath of air touched him kindly.
He looked at Polly. She was moving quietly and dexterously about the room, getting his belongings together. And suddenly peace dropped upon the wearied, confused brain of the boy.
“This is great!” he murmured, and dropped instantly into heavy, dreamless sleep. Almost instantly, a hand dropped upon his shoulder. He opened startled eyes and found her smiling down at him.
“You’ve had your half hour,” she said, and he, propping himself up on the bed, saw his pack made up and laid upon the chair. His head was clear, his brain was quietly ordered, again, and the tangled mystery of all the actions and the motives which lay behind the sheriff and the Eagans and the Bones and the Pinetas and the Crawlins of Monument now appeared less confused, and less important. He stood up, stretched himself, and heaved the pack over his shoulder. She opened the doors for him all the way down to the street, and there he paused again, towering above her.
She nodded and smiled at him.
“Good luck to you,” said Polly.
“In the whole town,” said he, “you’re the only person that seems to want me to go to the jail and fight this thing out.”
She smiled, a twisted smile.
“The only one?”
“Yes.”
“Who put that red rose on your coat, Johnny?”
He clutched it, surprised. He had quite forgotten about it.
“Why d’you blush?” she asked him.
“Why, it don’t mean anything.”
“There’s a considerable hedge of roses just that kind beside the Pineta house,” said she.
“Is there?” he muttered.
And he plucked the rose from its fastening and slowly crushed it in his hand.
“D’you mean to do that?” she asked him, frowning.
He answered her indirectly.
“If ever I get through to tomorrow,” said he, “I’m going to come back here and see you, Polly.”
“You better,” said she. “We got the best coffee in town in this house.”
He hesitated. There were other and more serious things that he wanted to say.
“Well, so long!” said Polly.
“So long,” he murmured.
And she closed the door behind him, and shut him out into the bright desert o
f the open day.
At that, he turned again and laid his hand on the knob of the door, but the catch had caught. He could not turn it.
“Polly!” he called softly.
There was no answer, but suddenly he knew that Polly was inside that door, leaning heavily, limply against it, and hearing his voice, but held back from answering it.
He turned again and went down the steps and into the blast and burden of the sun which burned through his coat and scorched his shoulders. The pack he fastened behind the saddle upon the roan. A pair of cowpunchers, jogging down the street, brought their horses down to a walk and began to mutter to one another with side glances, as they went past.
He was known to them. He was known to everyone, apparently. But that was not worth his notice, at this moment. Other and more important things filled up his mind.
So he climbed into the saddle, slowly and stiffly, like an old man, and rode down the street.
But, at the next corner, he turned and glanced back at the house, and at an upper window he had a glimpse of Polly, her face looking oddly white and old, as he thought. Then he went on toward the jail.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
THE JAIL, RATHER oddly, was the last building of public utility of which Monument had thought, and when they came to build it, all the center of the town was closely occupied with frame and brick and dobe buildings, and Monument could not afford to waste money in the purchase of these, together with the land on which they stood. Prices, it must be understood, were soaring, and there was not too big a fund set aside for the jail. So they had to go to the outer edge of the town, where it stretched away toward the northern hills.
Here they bought a plot between a rambling old dobe house and an abandoned barn which even the careless, reckless population of Monument did not care to use as a habitation, for its back was broken and sagged sharply down, and at all the four corners its knees were giving way and breaking in.
This space between the two structures was completely filled by the jail, which was run up of red bricks. A fly could not have walked between the wall of the jail and the wall of the house and there was only a small alley between it and the side of the barn. Toward the town, there was a pair of empty lots, filled with tall brush; toward the hills, the trees began, here and there cut down and thinned away by seekers after fuel, but still a dense enough screen rolled away like smoke to the north.
And young John Signal, riding toward the jail on this fatal day, noted all of these things with a new interest.
Never before had he been so aware of the vulnerability of the jail. The stoutness of its walls and the yardage of its bars of iron always had given him an impression of strength; but it is an old maxim in a fighting country that a man must keep his back to the wall and his eye upon the door; and this was impossible for the jail. The house leaned perilously against it; the barn was in jumping distance of the roof; and the trees to the rear and the brush in front rolled dangerously close. Five hundred rifles could have been packed away in such a covert!
At the first view, rounding the corner, John Signal had reined in his horse a little, and now he noticed a small figure slouched against a telephone pole on the right hand side of the street.
Crawlin, of course!
Suddenly he wondered what news that scavenger of trouble could have gathered within the last hour; so he rode close to the little man, and, though he hardly glanced down from the saddle, he heard a gasping voice say:
“You wanta die, kid? Keep right on down this here street if you do!”
John Signal rode on — straight down that street toward the front of the jail, but he rode now with his eyes alert, probing at the windows of the house, at the yawning black entrance of the door of the mow, high on the side of the barn, and, most of all, at the tangle of brush to his right.
And he saw two things all in one instant — the movement of a human shadow behind a bush, and the glint of steel, deep behind a second story window of the house.
Signal twitched the reins of the roan. Not for nothing had he called it a cutting horse. Now it spun around like a top and darted back the way it had come while two hornet sounds darted with sinister humming past the ears of the boy, followed instantly by the reports of two rifles, like two hammer strokes.
He swerved the roan to the side, and swerved him back again; well and valiantly that practiced worker dodged, and this time half a dozen hornets were on wings about the head of John Signal.
With a twitch, his sombrero was lifted from his head and sailed off into the air, and a loud Indian yell of triumph rang behind him.
But he was unhurt as he jerked Grundy around the next corner out of the path of the fire. He leaned from the saddle upon either side to examine the roan. Grundy showed a long rip across his right shoulder, and the blood was streaking down from it, but his spirit was not hurt, and his long ears were pointed forward.
It made the heart of Signal boil with anger; it was more to him than the sight of a dead man lying in his way — a dead friend. And now, gritting his teeth, he wondered what he could attempt next!
There was the way by the trees at the rear of the jail, of course, and though the Bone tribe must have planted some lookouts here, perhaps he could break through them.
He cursed the delay he had made in going from the sheriff’s office to the jail again! For the tactics of the enemy were perfectly apparent. They would strive to keep him away from the jail during the day. In the night, they would rush the building, and, without Signal in it, it could not make any strong defense.
He rounded the group of sheds just before him and saw an old Mexican woman squatted at the door of one, patting out tortillas on a flat-topped stone.
She grinned at him, toothless and cheerful.
“Death is the friend of no man, se¤or; that is true, is it not?”
“That is true, mother,” said he. “How does your house open to the rear?”
“Only the barn for the horses and the mules, se¤or.”
“And beyond that?”
“The back of the barn is against an old house, se¤or.”
“And the old house?”
“It rests against the jail, Se¤or Alias.”
He marveled a little, at this. Even this ancient bit of wrinkled humanity knew him! And yet he could not take pleasure in this, for the moment. The better he was known, the more surely could rifles be aimed at him by knowing hands.
He dismounted on the spot. He stripped off the pack and the saddle and carried them into the house and laid them in a heap in a corner.
“Mother,” said he, “here are my belongings. Tell your man that I have left them here. If I am alive tomorrow, I shall come for them. If I die, they are all yours and your man’s.”
Her old eyes flashed at him, like lights through a mist.
“St. Christopher carry you back to us, my child!”
And he knew that she meant it, with all her heart.
He took his rifle under his arm. Two heavy Colts burdened his thighs, and so, bare headed, he made his way back through the house and into the narrow open yard behind. Then through the barn, where a moldy looking mule stood with flopped ears and pendent lower lip.
At the rear door of the barn he crouched for a moment. It hung a little ajar, and through the crack he could look out at the side of the house which leaned against the jail, as the old woman had so aptly put it. Earnestly he peered up at all the windows within view, and suddenly one on a level with his eyes was thrust up. The head and shoulders of a man appeared — a bandaged head — and Charlie Bone climbed out and reached back his hand. He drew up an unknown man to join him.
“He’ll never try again today,” said the second comer, pulling his tipped hat straight over his eyes.
“He’s a devil. He’ll try anything. That’s how he wins — by doing the wrong thing,” said Charlie Bone. “Cut down there behind that tree. Be careful that they don’t get a bead on you from the jail. Kid, if we can snag Alias yonder among the trees we’ll
never be forgotten!”
And they worked off from the house to the north.
Signal, listening with a beating heart, smiled fiercely to himself. It was a vast temptation to step out of the barn and hold them up as they hurried off, but it was more important to get himself into the jail than to get this precious pair into an early grave. Besides, his heart was softened a little toward them by the praise which he had received — the sweetest of all tributes, coming from enemy lips. And he felt, more than ever, that he never could be shuffled aside in the memoirs of Monument now, as a mere lawless, reckless boy. He was a man, and doing an honest man’s work. Let the world balance this against the killing in Bender Creek, and make up its mind. With mercy, he thought!
He had not, really, a thought that he could live through this mortal danger. He had received too many warnings. It was merely hope for the next blind moment that sustained him forward, step by step, like a blind man walking against a storm.
He pushed the rear door of the barn a little more ajar, and creeping out, he cast another glance up at the windows of the abandoned house. To him, it was as a cage filled with lions, hungry for his life.
All those windows appeared glimmering, black, empty; and glancing to the left, he saw that Charlie Bone and his companion had disappeared among the trees.
So he left the barn and leaped across the distance which separated him from the wall of the house of his enemies. Down this he stole, and, turning the corner, looked toward the jail.
If he got there, would he have to stand outside the door, calling for the door to be opened to him? Five seconds of such a pause would bring fifty bullets into his flesh, as he very well knew!
The house blocked away most of the view of the jail, as a matter of course, but he could see two windows, one on the ground floor and the next on the floor above. And, as he watched, the dim outline of a man appeared at the second. Frantically he waved his hand, but the image disappeared at the window.
No, in another moment he reappeared, closer to the glass, and then went out of sight again. Surely the man had been able to see him, and no matter which of the prison guards it might be, he could be reasonably sure that they would be glad to see him.