by Max Brand
And this leads me on to my changed way of living.
I had to be a fighting man. I knew that the instinct was in me. Since I couldn’t use my fists any more, except for one sock at a time, I began to pack a gun. Not that I was looking for trouble, but with my fighting stamina gone out of me, I felt scared and helpless. Packing the Colt made me feel better. And I used to ride out into the country districts and use that old cannon; I practiced pulling and pointing, when I was in my room. That revolver began to be a part of me.
In the meantime, the doctors had taken out the last of my dollars, and how was I to make any more? Well, with my hands and my face, not in the ring, but at a poker table. That face of mine was made of ice. It told nothing. If it was crooked work that the other fellows tried, my fingers not limber and educated enough to hold their own with most of the card mixers.
I began to rake in about a thousand a week. I was almost able to forget my sorrows, and then came the “bust” that kicked me off the face of Manhattan and landed me out in the cow country.
CHAPTER IV. END OF A POKER GAME
IT STARTED IN with a low-life rich man’s son, by name of Steven Cole. He was the son of Parker Cole who had yachts in the East and mines and ranches in the West. Steve was the brother of that Betty Cole who was beginning to break into the society headlines. She was all right, too. You’ll hear more about her, before I’m through.
This Steven Cole was sitting in at a poker game with me and Charley Newman, that red-headed crook, and Dick Stephani, and Lew Waddell. The Cole kid hands me the deck to cut on his deal, and I find a double crimp in it. I saw that the hound had run up the pack of us and I handed the boys the high sign.
Up to that, everything was easy and straight in that game, but when the kid tried to frame us, we trimmed him down to the oil. We just about put him out. At three o’clock that morning, he owed the game twenty-five thousand and a few extra hundreds. He looked a little sick, but he signed I.O.U.’s. My share was nine thousand; Stephani got twelve; Lew Waddell was only in for a few grand.
Stephani went to the door with Steve Cole and tapped him on the shoulder.
“You know, Steve,” said he, “we’ll take our money inside of a week. We give you that much grace.”
Steve Cole looked over his shoulder at Stephani’s dark features. Dick was the handsomest man that ever lived, bar none. And the blond kid got sicker and sicker in the face.
He came back inside the room and leaned against the wall; said that he didn’t know how he could pay; wanted to pay, but he’d already overdrawn his allowance, and only the month before he’d got into a scrape and his father had come to his assistance for the last time, as he said. We stood around and listened to this line of talk, and Waddell pointed out that Cole would have been ready to win; therefore, he had to be ready to lose and pay. Then Newman stepped up with his jaw sticking out and said that a week was too long to wait.
“There’s a safe in the cellar of your father’s house,” he went on. “You can get the combination to that safe. And we’ll call on you in two days and clean the safe out.”
Mind you, I heard the robbery proposed and I wasn’t even shocked. It looked all right to me. The kid owed us the money, and he had to come through. Cole wrinkled up his face so that I thought he was going to burst into tears. But he finally said:
“I see where I am. I think maybe this job will turn me straight, from to- night on. You crooks!”
He looked bitterly at us out of his brown eyes. He was a sleepy, good- natured young fellow, a little sleek and soft. He was about my age — twenty-two, at that moment.
I said to him: “You started running up the cards. Don’t call me a crook.”
He was game enough. He lost his temper and came savagely over toward me.
“I’ve a mind to break your neck, Poker-face!” he said to me. “You can bluff some, but you can’t bluff me.”
I had my nerves in hand. I was thinking about that kangaroo heart of mine that I had to keep in order. There wasn’t even a quiver in me, but when I saw him double up his fist, I said:
“If you lift your hand, I’ll kill you!”
He started to sneer, changed his mind, and turned as white as a piece of cloth. He backed out of that room, watching me as though I were a ghost. At the door he turned and said:
“All right. Night after next. I’ll be ready!”
He cleared out.
Waddell said to me: “It’s all right, Jerry. He’s gone, ain’t he? What you looking like that for, now that you’re bluff has worked?”
“Shut up,” says Newman. “It wasn’t a bluff. He meant it.”
Dick Stephani was lighting a cigarette. He looked up at me through the smoke.
“You didn’t really mean it, kid?” said he to me.
“I’ve lost my fists. You know that,” said I. “I’ll kill the first man that tries to beat me up. What else could I do?”
Stephani began to look thoughtful. So did the others. We all said good night, and arranged when and where we would meet to go after the Cole money the night after next.
Then I turned in. I felt pretty good about life at that time. And why not? I had been making, as I said, about a thousand a week and saving half of that, and here was a good tidy haul — ten weeks’ work in one, very nearly. So I decided that I’d take a rest — go to Europe and see what the doctors there could do for me. I’d heard a lot about a great man in Vienna who could take a heart to pieces and put it together again.
I went to sleep on that idea, and I was happy as could be until the time came for us to go to the Cole house.
Newman was to be outside man, across the street. Stephani took the next corner. Waddell went in with me. I remember how loudly he breathed as we stood in the thick black of the hall. There was a smell of flowers in the air, and the hall was warm. I uncorked a lantern and spilled a few drops of light across the polished floors, that looked like water. The rays blinked across a mirror or two, slid and shimmered across a table top, before I saw Steve Cole.
He met us and told us that the safe door was open. It was an easy cinch to go straight down into the cellar and help ourselves, only he hoped that we wouldn’t take more than we needed to make up for the gambling debt. The kid was feeling bad. There seemed a moan in his voice even though it got no deeper in his throat than a whisper.
We told him, whispering, too, that we would have to clean out the whole thing, or else the job would look phony. I told him, for my part, that I would see that everything was returned except enough to cover the cash he owed us. He thanked me for that.
Just then a door closed with a faint booming sound, and slippers came padding down the stairs. Waddell and I backed up into a corner. Cole was left standing near the foot of the stairs, and someone fair banged into him, then called out.
I heard Cole gasp.
“It’s you, Steve?” said a girl’s voice.
“Yes, it’s I,” he answered.
“What are you doing down here in the dark?” she said. “What have you been whispering about? Who’s here with you?”
She didn’t whisper. She talked right out, not loudly, either. Her voice was soft and almost drawling. It was warm and deep the way a Negro’s voice is, very often.
“Betty,” said the youth, “quit it. You shut up and go back to bed.”
“My goodness, Steve,” said she, “you’ve grown up, all at once, haven’t you? Ordering me about like this!”
“Betty, go back to bed,” said he.
“I’m going back,” said she. “I’ve no desire to spy on you. Only I had to come down and let you know that I guessed something was wrong. Now you go your own way, and get your hands and your heart just as dirty as you please. You know, Steve, the thing that makes me sick about you is that you’re such a fool! Such a plain fool!”
She went running up the stairs again, and Steve came back to me.
“Will you quit this job for to-night, boys?” he asked. “You see my sister will suspect me.”
“We’re going to go through with it right now,” growled Waddell.
He led the way. I followed. We got down into the cellar and found the safe. Its bright steel face was as easy to find as the moon in a clear, dark sky.
It was open, too, just as Cole had promised, and after we had pushed the door farther back, Waddell began to empty the contents of the drawers into a big felt bag that he had brought out from under his arm. He looked aside at me with an ugly expression.
“Do something!” said he. “Why just stand around and let somebody else do the dangerous work?”
“Show me what to do,” said I. “Shall I hold your hat, you stiff?”
He looked at me again, with a twist and a lift of his upper lip. Just then, a little chamois bag that he was handling gaped open and a shower of diamonds fell on the floor.
“The devil!” breathed Waddell with delight.
Just as he spoke, I saw a shadow swing across the ceiling and I ducked my head. The weight of that blow whirred past my ear. I heard a man grunt right behind me. Two more were running from nowhere toward Waddell, and I heard him cry out like a bull terrier whining as he turned to face them and went down under their weight.
We had been trapped, d’you see? Instantly I suspected not the kid, not young Cole, so much, as Charley Newman and handsome Stephani, the black and the red of our gang!
I had my gun out as I turned. I fired and saw one of the three men whirl about and go down. I told myself that he was not killed; the bullet must have hit him high — in a shoulder, say. That was why the plunging weight of it whirled him about.
As he dropped, I stepped back through the door.
Two bullets split it from head to heel. There were the stairs in front of me, and I told myself that I didn’t dare to run up them. Months and months of practice with sinking spells and collapses had taught me that the only way through a crisis was to go easily, smoothly, a step at a time. Still I feared the crash of my heart more than I did the bullets and the police. You see, the state of my heart was my professional preoccupation, so to speak.
Well, I got halfway up the steep flight of stairs before the door opened behind me. One man came charging through. One was flat with my bullet. The other was minding Waddell, you see. I turned around, but at the gleam of my gun, the detective gave a yelp, as though he had been kicked, and jumped for cover. I went on up the stairs and through the top door just as he opened fire.
But I didn’t mind him so much; it was what might lie before me that troubled me.
When I came into the hallway, I could hear the hum and the roar of a big household waking up. In a corner of the hall I saw where Steve Cole had dropped into a chair. The girl was there beside him, shaking a finger at him and talking fast and hard. There was one light on. It made the hallways seem as big as a barn and as dreary. The high lights were like trembling ghosts on the watery floors and in the sheen of the mirrors.
“There’s one now!” said the girl, spotting me. “If you’ve got the tenth part of a man in you, go for him, Steven Cole. Here’s a gun. I’d rather see you dead than shamed!”
CHAPTER V. HIS SISTER
ZINGO, BUT IT was something to hear her talk! It would have taken a pretty confirmed coward to face that Cole girl, I tell you. Her brother, at least, didn’t dare to stand up to her for a moment. He took the gun that she shoved into his hand and whirled about toward me.
I kept my own gun in my side pocket and my hand on top of it. I could feel my heart beginning to race. In another minute I would be sick with the strain. So, once again, the total call on me was to keep calm. Great Scott! Keep calm when every nerve in my legs was tingling to be off at full speed! But I had to keep that crazy pulsation in hand, and I did. I just walked on, while Steven Cole made a few running steps toward me.
I looked past him and saw his sister standing straight as a post. She looked like an Indian, her hair was so black, her skin so coppery, but there was more flame in her cheeks than there would be in the skin of an Indian. She was all lighted up now and if she feared for her brother, she didn’t show it.
That fellow Cole charged at me, pulling the trigger twice. That didn’t worry me so much, either, because I could see the crazy shaking of his hand as he shot. Then his gun clogged; he came straight on at me, swung up the Colt, and heaved it at my head. It barely missed, and as he rushed in, I heard the girl calling to him to fight like a man.
It was the effect of her voice on me that made me think twice. The first thought was that the Colt, of course, was what I had to use on the fool. The second thought was that there had been something rather fine, after all, in the way he had charged across that big hall at me. It made the killing of him murder. Murder of a real man, too, or of what might grow into a man!
Anyway, I used the second thought. I decided that for once I would do what the doctors said I never must — use my strength again. I brought out my hand with no gun in it and, as Steve Cole came in, I plugged him on the button with everything that I had. He went right on running by me, hit a wall, and flopped back on the floor, clean out.
That left the girl. And now I heard doors slamming and men’s voices very loud in the front of the house. They had reserves coming in to swamp me, of course! But the girl hadn’t moved from her place. I looked at her, a little bitterly.
That one wallop had seemed to tear me in two; the heart was pattering like rain, and noises roared in my ears. So I pulled out the gun and showed it to her. By thunder, she straightened, as though she expected me to shoot and didn’t intend to run away. She would take the fire in front, like a man!
I only said: “I should have used this on him, but you saw that I didn’t. Show me a back way, or a side way out of this place, will you?”
Watch the weight of the wind tip a bird on a branch — that’s the way she hesitated for half an instant, and then she came up to me and said, “This way!”
She steered me through about twenty doors. That house was ten in one. And always we were hearing voices and footsteps, roaring and rushing. We came to a narrow, dark hallway. The light from a street lamp glimmered through a little pane of heavy glass, and beyond I could see the green of a garden.
Just there, I had to stop. My head was spinning, and my breath wouldn’t come. It was like the fourth round of the fight, and I felt myself going down — forever, this time!
So I put my hand against the wall and paused, and the girl came running back to me.
“Have you got a bullet in you? Did they shoot you, man?”
She shook my arm impatiently.
“Is it just a dead funk?” she exclaimed, stamping. I grinned at her like an idiot. I could feel the stretch of that grin as far back as my ears almost.
“Rotten heart,” said I.
She shoved her hand inside my coat, then she shuddered.
“Will it pass?” she asked.
“Sure,” said I.
“Lean on me,” said the girl. “It isn’t far to the garden. They won’t search there. Put your weight on me. I’m strong.”
She was, too. She braced herself and took the soggy, sagging bulk of me along with her down the corridor.
She began to pant. She said: “A fine one you, to be a robber! And you use your fists, too! You should have taken the gun to him. Shooting low, I mean!”
“All right,” said I. “But I didn’t.”
We got to the door. She opened it and pushed me through. I staggered and nearly flopped.
But she had me under the armpits at once and supported me again to a bench in an arbor. I lay down flat. I was so far gone that she had to pick up my legs at the ankles and stretch me out. Then things got exceedingly dim, until cold water fell on my face.
I looked up and saw the girl, just an outline of blackness against the black pattern of the leaves behind and above her. She was kneeling beside me.
“How’s it coming?” she asked.
“I’m all right,” said I.
“Don’t be a fool,” she replied.
“You’re not all right.”
She was taking my pulse.
“It’s getting better,” she said. “Try not to think about yourself. Give your rotten heart a chance.”
“I’m not thinking about myself,” I whispered.
“That’s right; think about something else, will you? You’re all right now. You’re getting better. I’ll see you out of this tangle. What mixed you up with a lot of crooks? No, don’t tell me that, either. Don’t excite yourself. I won’t even ask for your name.”
“My name’s Jerry Ash,” said I. “They call me Poker-face.”
“What’s the matter? Too sick to work for an honest living?”
I thought.
“No, I could have gone straight,” said I. “But I took the easiest way out. Help me to sit up.”
She did that. I was still pretty dizzy, but I could breathe a lot better, and my head was clearing at an astonishing rate. I slid my right arm over her strong shoulders, and she lifted most of the burden as I got to my feet.
“Steer me out,” said I.
“You’re not fit to go,” said she.
“Steer me out. Don’t argue.”
She did as I told her to do, leading me to a little back gate of the garden. The lock screeched a little when she turned the key.
Then I turned my head so that my face was close to hers.
“Are you going to be a silly fool?” she asked me, though she didn’t shrink away.
“I’m going straight,” said I. “Will you try to believe that?”
“Never mind the future,” said the girl. “To-day is enough for you to think about. How are you to get away from here?”
“On my feet,” said I. “What’s your front name?”
“Betty,” said she.
“Well, Betty,” I answered, “you’re all out by yourself in front, and the rest are nowhere. Good-by.”