Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  That left the way clear for John Signal, and he saw before him first of all Charlie Bone, a gun flaming in his right hand, his face convulsed with a wild laughter. Beside him stood Henry Colter, with two six shooters booming.

  He looked like a tiger. His dark hair was on end, his face grimly set. Straight at that face the boy fired, and saw his man go down.

  He swung on Charlie Bone and fired again, and Charlie Bone dropped his gun and clutched his breast, staggered, and went down on his face under Signal’s third bullet.

  Clear of the doorway, now, Signal could see the whole scene. Old Dad Bone, his white hair flying, his beard divided, was heaving a sawed-off shotgun to his shoulder. That maneuver must be stopped! Joe Klaus was running into the hall from an adjoining room, which appeared to be filled with oil smoke. He came like a giant out of a cloud, with the white mist clinging to his shoulders. There were other fighting men right and left. The cream of the whole Bone faction was gathered here.

  To meet them, Langley came shouting through the doorway, ready to die; and Major Harkness, fighting with a rifle for surety, even at this close range, followed.

  In the first half second, as Charlie Bone pitched forward, Signal saw these things; and then a heavy impact struck his left shoulder and jammed him against the wall.

  He sank to his knees, and, looking across the room, now rapidly darkening with smoke, he could see Henry Colter, already on his knees and driving another bullet after the first. That second shot skimmed past the cheek of Signal and he fired in return as a burning pain leaped through his right side. The revolver began to wobble in his fingers. He tried to take it with his left hand, but his left arm hung helpless, useless, and still Colter, like a demoniac, was firing through the mist.

  Then a giant charged through the smoke-fog — Fitz Eagan, who had found his man. And the boy saw Henry Colter swaying to his feet to fight out the battle.

  After this, John Signal saw little more. It was not merely the smoke which clouded his vision, but a dimness of his eyes, and the last thing which lived in his senses was the lion’s roar of Fitz Eagan, grappling with his foe.

  Then bursts and red jets, as it were, of consciousness, returned to Signal, and he was aware of little flashes of the things that passed around him.

  He saw a narrow, fear-strained face close to his, and vaguely he recognized Crawlin and heard the shrieking of the little man:

  “Alias, Alias, are you dead? Are you dead?”

  Afterward, frightful agony seized upon him. He looked up; he saw through a fiery mist of agony that Crawlin, with labor, was dragging him off!

  Again consciousness snapped back to him. Through wildest chaos he heard the voice of Major Harkness vowing that he would get one more before he died.

  But that was the end for John Signal.

  He heard and he saw no more until a sense of cool dampness crept up his spine; and then bitterly stabbing pains through his right side, and through his left shoulder. There was a sting in his cheek, also.

  He wakened.

  Strong bandages gripped his body. He could look out from one eye, only, for the other was shrouded by a tightly fitted strip of cloth.

  But through that one eye, he saw the leonine face of Fitz Eagan, and nearer, leaning above him, the freckled bridge of Polly’s nose, and Polly herself, looking a singular greenish-white.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  THEY MADE A peaceful party on the veranda of Fitz Eagan’s house by the river.

  John Signal had been carried out for the first time to enjoy the evening coolness. His face was thin and covered with long, scraggling, pale beard; but his eyes were bright again. Fitz Eagan and the sheriff had carried out his cot, each damning the other for carelessness and stumbling, while Polly moved beside him, giving crisp orders.

  Major Harkness, his left arm in a sling, stood near by, smoking a cigarette which Crawlin, perched at the top of the veranda steps, had rolled for him.

  “The papers are still playing it up,” said Major Harkness. “They’ve lighted on Crawlin, now. They’ve made Crawlin the real hero.”

  “And so he was,” said the sheriff. “Without Crawlin, how would we have won through? You boys would have tried to break loose, and then you would have been fairly peppered! Who but Crawlin would have dared to even try to get through into the jail?”

  Crawlin stood up and cleared his throat.

  “Aw,” said he, “a man has to take a chance, don’t he?”

  They did not smile. They looked gravely at Crawlin and then at one another.

  “A lot of rot,” said the sour major. “This talk about the Wild West makes me sick.”

  “Well,” admitted the sheriff comfortably, “Monument is getting tolerable quiet, now.”

  “I always knew that Ogden would spoil our fun if he got half a chance,” said the major. “And he’s gone and done it. But it never was really wild.”

  “No, nice and quiet you’d call it,” said the sheriff.

  “Look here at the little old fracas in the jail,” said the major. “You’d think, to hear the talk, that everything was dripping with blood. Hell, no! Charlie Bone and Colter dead on one side, and Langley on the other, if you can say that Langley was on the other side!”

  He laughed.

  “Is that a pitched battle, as they called it?” said the major in conclusion.

  “It was pitched enough,” said Polly. “They nearly did enough harm!”

  She glanced at the wounded boy, and he smiled frankly up at her.

  “Are you better, honey?”

  “I’m fit as a fiddle,” said John Signal.

  “But Monument is only a monument now of the good old days,” said the major, pursuing his tone of bitterness. “It ain’t a wheel of what it used to be. You did it, sheriff! You and Signal, of course! Confound him!”

  He scowled at the boy, and John Signal smiled at the ceiling.

  “I didn’t want to use him,” said the sheriff. “I’ll let you ask him if I did.”

  “You tried to run me out of town,” said Signal. “I never quite understood it.”

  “You’re tolerably young, Johnny,” said the sheriff. “You gotta admit that you’re tolerably young, I guess!”

  “I’ll admit that! But when you sent me out to collect those taxes — that looked as though you wanted to get rid of me!”

  “D’you think that I ever dreamed that you’d do it? I never thought that any man in the world was young enough and fool enough to risk his life like that! I was only giving you a good man’s chance of resigning.”

  “And what made you so hot to have me resign?”

  “Because I saw from the way you’d started that you’d soon have everything in a mess around here! Of course, I saw that, and that you’d be at the throats of the Bone outfit before long. I didn’t want that. I wanted more time. I was crowding them — and the Eagans! — into a corner.”

  He paused to chuckle, and Fitz Eagan freely joined in.

  “Besides,” said the sheriff, “I knew all about you before you’d been in Monument a day.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  “About the shooting in Bender Creek?”

  “Yes, I knew that, but not the truth about it. I knew that you’d been forced into that fight. I didn’t know that your man hadn’t died, though. But I knew that you were a straight kid. When you came, I was glad to have you for a new deputy. In about one day, I thought you were going to burn up Monument.”

  “He didn’t, though,” commented Fitz Eagan. “He only burned up a house, a barn and the jail!”

  They laughed, all of them, with much good nature.

  “Where’s the flowers?” asked the major suddenly.

  “What flowers?” asked Polly.

  “Didn’t Esmeralda send any today?”

  “They’re doing perfectly well inside the house,” said Polly sharply.

  “Look here, Polly, ain’t she got a right to send flowers, even, to Johnny?”

&
nbsp; “Stuff!” said Polly.

  “Poor Johnny,” said Fitz Eagan. “He’s got a claim filed on him, and he’ll never be a free man again!”

  But John Signal merely smiled at the ceiling.

  “Hey,” said Crawlin, “ain’t that one of those reporters coming down the street?”

  “It is, sure enough.”

  “I’ll do the talking,” said Fitz Eagan.

  The reporter, young, straw-hatted, paused at the gate and raised his hat.

  “May I come in?”

  “You may not, son.”

  “I see the major is much better.”

  “Who told you so?” asked Harkness sharply.

  “I would like a few words with Mr. Crawlin, if possible.”

  “Not possible,” said Harkness, as Crawlin eagerly started up.

  Crawlin sat down, greatly disappointed.

  “About Mr. Signal,” continued the reporter, “we would like to know if it is true that the Se¤orita Pineta and Mr. Signal have become betrothed.”

  “About that,” said Fitz Eagan, “I dunno what to say, but I could introduce you here to the next Mrs. Signal.”

  And he waved to Polly.

  “But it isn’t true!” cried Polly.

  She cried out so faintly, however, that the reporter did not hear.

  “And now you better run along, me son,” said Fitz Eagan.

  That lion’s voice did not need to repeat itself. The reporter went off, with a halting step as he scribbled notes frantically. He had his dearly prized scoop at last.

  “Why did you say that?” stammered Polly to Fitz Eagan. “There — there isn’t a word of truth in it!”

  “Ain’t there?” grinned Fitz Eagan. “You mean because Johnny is too much down to talk to the papers for himself? But I’ll do his thinking for him, Polly! Or, if you got any sense, look at the fool expression that Johnny is wearin’ now!”

  There was no doubt about it. John Signal was pink with pleasure, and Polly turned and ran suddenly into the house. Said John Signal:

  “D’you mind, one of you, going in and telling Polly that Fitz spoke for me?”

  “I — I’ll do it!” cried Crawlin, and was gone through the door before a more dignified messenger could be selected.

  There was only a brief silence on the porch, and then Crawlin came sauntering out again with an absent-minded expression.

  “What happened?” asked Fitz Eagan.

  “About what?” asked Crawlin.

  “Why, what did she say?”

  “Aw, she’s all right,” said Crawlin carelessly.

  “What d’you mean, then?”

  “I was just wondering.”

  “About what?”

  “Why, you know this newspaper talk about me?”

  “We know it, well enough.”

  “About me and me fearless work in the jail?”

  “Yeh. We read all of that.”

  “I wanted to say, bein’ frank and open, that while the fightin’ was goin’ on, I was scared. Not much, y’understand, but a little bit!”

  Marbleface (1930)

  OR, A. POKERFACE; OR, THE TOUGH TENDERFOOT

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I. THE FIRST THREE ROUNDS

  CHAPTER II. THE FINISH

  CHAPTER III. RECOVERY

  CHAPTER IV. END OF A POKER GAME

  CHAPTER V. HIS SISTER

  CHAPTER VI. THE HOLDUP

  CHAPTER VII. THE TOWN OF PIEGAN

  CHAPTER VIII. The Road to Makerville

  CHAPTER IX. MEN OF MAKERVILLE

  CHAPTER X. SIDNEY MAKER

  CHAPTER XI. BLUFF

  CHAPTER XII. THE PURSUIT

  CHAPTER XIII. THE TEAMSTER

  CHAPTER XIV. THE TRUMP CARD

  CHAPTER XV. THE WALLET

  CHAPTER XVI. THE CELEBRATION

  CHAPTER XVII. GUN PLAY

  CHAPTER XVIII. THE COLONEL PAYS

  CHAPTER XIX. A YOUTH’S PRIDE

  CHAPTER XX. A FRIEND

  CHAPTER XXI. THE ELECTION

  CHAPTER XXII. MEN WITH SHOTGUNS

  CHAPTER XXIII. MAKER’S FORTUNE

  CHAPTER XXIV. THE DETECTIVE

  CHAPTER XXV. COLE’S ARRIVAL

  CHAPTER XXVI. A DRIVE WITH RIGGS

  CHAPTER XXVII. THE PALMED ACE

  CHAPTER XXVIII. A TALK WITH STEVE

  CHAPTER XXIX.— “THE LUCK OF PIEGAN”

  CHAPTER XXX. THE FINAL PLANS

  CHAPTER XXXI. THE HALF-BREED

  CHAPTER XXXII. THE MAKERVILLE PARTY

  CHAPTER XXXIII. STEALING THE STAGE

  CHAPTER XXXIV. THE WORDS OF THE BREED

  CHAPTER XXXV. A REAL HERO

  CHAPTER XXXVI. A BOMBSHELL

  CHAPTER XXXVII. THE BOOM

  CHAPTER XXXVIII. VENGEANCE

  CHAPTER XXXIX. A PAIR OF RIDERS

  CHAPTER I. THE FIRST THREE ROUNDS

  THERE ARE TWO ways of telling a thing. You start at the beginning and go straight ahead or else you begin in the middle. I’d rather begin in the middle. That means cutting out everything before my fight with “Digger” Murphy, beginning with the fourth round of that fight, when he pasted me and knocked me cold.

  The events preceding that don’t count.

  I mean, of course, it would be pleasant and a lot of fun to commence at the very beginning and tell about how I started out and loved using my fists when I was just a kid; how I grew up and kept using them; how “Dutch” Keller saw me using my fists, one day, on a couple of the boys and decided that he could use me in his string of fighters; how he kept me in his gymnasium and made me like it while he put me through the ropes for three years, worked my head off, and never gave me a chance at money; how he finally uncorked me and how I started to make good; how I fought my way up until there was nothing between me and the champ except Digger Murphy and Digger was only a set-up for me.

  I would like to tell all of those things, because the taste of them is still mighty sweet in my mind. But you know how it is. I have to explain how I came to be out here in the West, wearing chaps, packing a gun, daubing ropes on cows, and all that sort of thing. And the explanation of that is the fourth round of my fight with Digger Murphy.

  That fight was as easy as any of the set-ups that Dutch had found for me when he started me in and gave me the soft ones to break my teeth on. He used to say that fighters have to find their teeth, and that gymnasium is important, but it’s only gymnasium. The ring is the ring, and that’s a lot different. He was right. He used to say that many a man was great for a show and no good for the money, and he wanted me to bring in the cash. He made me do it, too.

  He got me when I was seventeen. He kept me till I was twenty-one. He gave me three years of hell in the gym. Then he gave me one year of glory in the ring, and, believe me, I would have worn the middleweight crown if only the crash hadn’t stopped me. It wasn’t the fists of another man that did it, but a thing that nobody can figure on. It was fate.

  When I was a kid, just coming on, Dutch used to throw all kinds against me. One day it would be a big, hard-boiled heavyweight who only hit me once a round but, when he connected, what a song and dance there was in my brain!

  “That’s what it feels like when you’re socked,” Dutch used to say. “You gotta get used to it. That’s nothing to the way you’ll be socked when you get up against the fast ones.”

  The next day he’d throw in a fast, snappy little lightweight, all feathers and fluff, who would bang me from the belt to the part of my hair, fists going so fast that you couldn’t see them.

  “That’s a real boxer,” Dutch would say to me. “Until you can box like that, you’ll never be fit to go up against a classy middleweight.”

  The next day it would be someone of my own weight, some old, cagey guy, who was going downhill, but was still full of tricks, who knew how to seem “out” while he was on his feet and then would drop a ton of bricks on your chin just as you were stepping in to finish him.

  Well, everything went fin
e. I climbed right up in the profession. And in those days it was a profession. But I pass over those days. I pass over the headlines they began to carry about me in the papers after I knocked out Jeff Thomas in three rounds. That made me.

  For the rest of the year, I kept on growing. Thomas was the first hot one that Dutch fed to me. He made me study him hard. He told me that he was a tough nut. But after the first round I saw that he was easy, unless he was faking and keeping something back. In the second round I got to him and plastered him black and blue. Then I knew that I had read that book from cover to cover. It gave me confidence. But still I waited. I waited till I could walk in behind a perfect fence in the third round and then I poisoned him.

  Brutal? Sure it was brutal when I saw his hands go down. But I didn’t feel like a brute. I just felt pretty good when I stepped in and rose on my toes and dropped on my heels and cracked him on the button. He fell forward on his face. They’re done when they do that. And I felt pretty sweet, what I mean to say.

  Dutch told me a lot of bad things I had done in the fight, but I looked him in the eye and grinned, because for the first time I knew that I was good, and how!

  After that I had confidence, and confidence is worth a horseshoe in your boxing glove. It adds fifty pounds to every punch. And it makes the other fellow know that you’re going to get him. I smiled when I was stung. It was that way with “Soldier” Baker. He was fast. He was tough. He nearly turned out the lights for me in the fifth round, but I only laughed, and so he held off a little, thinking that I hadn’t been really hurt. Finally, when he made up his mind to step in, I did the stepping first and dropped him off the map. That was sweet, too.

  That was the fight, in fact, that cinched me to go up against the champion. He didn’t want me. He’d seen me and he knew that I was poison. So he just threw in the name of Digger Murphy. If I beat Murphy, he would take me on.

  Well, Murphy was nothing. I’d seen him and I knew that he was my meat. I knew all his tricks. He had a hanging guard and he liked to step in with his head and body weaving and sock for the body. Well, I knew all about that.