by Max Brand
“Only two to guard him?” gasped the colonel. “Great heavens, man, that was rash. Only two! Maker is a snake. He could get through a solid stone wall! Only two to guard him. Let’s hurry! Let’s get there!”
He couldn’t hurry very well, at first. He had to get his breath back, and we stumbled together through the dark across the empty yard and out to the shed behind the barn. When we came up to the barn, we could hear voices inside of it, and one of them was Slim Jim asking a question and the other was the deep rumble of Maker.
When he heard that, the colonel almost fell to the ground. He had to clutch my shoulder and support himself for a moment. His head was hanging down. He acted as though a bullet had ripped through his body.
“He’s there! He’s there!” he kept repeating, over and over again.
I heard him drawing deeper breaths, and then he raised his head and whispered: “Saved!”
I don’t think that any one ever breathed out the word with more feeling than there was in Riggs’s voice.
“How did you do it? How did you do it?” he murmured, but he wasn’t wanting an answer. He was wanting to feast his eyes on the face of Maker.
We went into the thick shadows inside the shed, and Riggs straightened and found the trio with his eyes. Then he walked slowly up to Maker and said to him quietly:
“Maker, I’m sorry that we’ve had to be guilty of this outrage. We’ll try to make you as comfortable as possible during your little stay with us!”
Maker merely snorted. He was no actor, like Riggs, and he merely blurted out:
“You big four-flusher!”
The colonel laughed gently, as though he had heard the most courteous rejoinder in the world.
“Don’t take it too hard, Sidney,” said he. “The fact is that some of your friends will believe that you were kidnaped by force, though I suppose that most of them will have to think that you ran away from your post!”
CHAPTER XV. THE WALLET
WHEN IT CAME to the rank and file of words, as you see, Maker was no match at all for the colonel. That last speech was my idea of a good, hard sock to the chin, but Maker only grunted something unintelligible.
Then the colonel wanted to know exactly what had happened, and I told him, putting in all the facts, and nothing else. It doesn’t take long, when one is boiling everything down to the facts. I finished my story in about three minutes. Then I asked Slim Jim and Dan Loftus if I had left anything out or said anything wrong, and they both vowed that it was gospel, but that something had been left out. I felt the same way about it. I mean to say, it didn’t seem possible that I had been able to produce the events of that entire night within the compass of two or three minutes of talk.
Even Maker said, with his usual grunt:
“The kid’s modest, you know. Who handed you this one, Riggs? He ain’t your kind of a man!”
Riggs said good night to Slim Jim and Dan Loftus. He praised them to the skies, and he told them that they were going to learn that gratitude can take a more practical form than mere words. In the meantime, he wanted to look around and see just what he could do for them. They thanked him. Jim wanted to know about the price of the four horses and the buckboard, and the colonel airily told him to come back in the morning, when they could talk everything over in more detail.
So we got rid of the pair of them. They shook hands specially with me, each in turn, and each in silence. That was a thrill for me. It made me feel that somehow I had passed the stage of initiation and had become a full-fledged Westerner.
Then with the colonel and Maker, I went into the hotel. I went first, to clear the way. Then Maker walked, and behind him was Riggs. According to his direction, we went up to the second story of the hotel, to a corner room with furnishings such as one doesn’t expect to find in a hotel. I mean to say, the bed was bolted heavily to the wall, and the wall was reinforced with big six-by-six stanchions to accommodate the bolts. There was a chair, screwed to the floor, also; and there was an iron rod running across one side of the room, with a chain and a double pair of shackles hitched to it.
“We’ll try to make you comfortable here, Sidney,” said the colonel. “It’s the best that I can do for you, at the moment.”
He said this as he turned from lighting a lantern that was bracketed onto the wall of the room, and the falling glow of light etched his smile in white and black, and made him look like a very contented old devil.
Maker said: “This is all right, Riggs. When one end of the plank goes up, the other one has to go down. That’s a law, I suppose.”
He sat himself down in the chair and folded his hands. I’ve said before that I had tied his hands in front of him. The colonel noticed this and called it rash. However, after he had fitted the shackles on his guest and locked them, he seemed much more contented. In the meantime, he pointed out that he had hated to have a place like this in his hotel, but that there had to be something in lieu of a jail in a town like Piegan.
Maker only nodded, and yawned. He was as cool a fellow as I ever saw.
“Now, Sidney,” said Riggs, “what can I do to make you comfortable?”
“Feed me,” said Maker.
The colonel nodded, and pulled a bell rope that made a faint tingling in the distance.
“By the way,” said I, “you owe Maker a hundred dollars.”
“I do?” murmured the colonel, waiting for the point of the joke.
“I had to borrow a hundred dollars from him,” said I. “I had to take it out of his wallet.”
I pulled out the leather case as a sort of proof.
“By the jumping thunder!” said the colonel. “Is that Maker’s wallet? Let me have it!”
I stared at him.
“I’m not a robber, colonel,” said I. “I keep this until Maker goes free, and then he gets it back. I only want you to pass over the hundred to fill it up the way I found it.”
“That’s a good one, too.” Maker sneered.
The colonel laughed. He was in the highest good humor, as a matter of course.
“Look here,” he said, “I see a whole sheaf of papers in that wallet. I don’t give a whack about the gold that’s in it, but I’d like to look into the secret workings of Mr. Maker’s mind. Let me have the wallet, Jerry. Don’t you fear that I’ll steal a penny from an old friend like Sid Maker.”
He laughed again, holding out his hand, but I shoved the wallet back inside my coat.
“You don’t understand,” said I. “This belongs to Maker. It’s not mine to give you.”
By this time, Riggs was ready to gape.
“Say that again!” he commanded.
“I said,” I repeated, “that I’m not a thief.”
“Just a kidnaper, eh?” said Riggs, with his sneer, which was as ready as his smile.
I had to groan a little, when he called me a kidnaper, and I answered: “Well, colonel, you may call me that, I suppose. But this is a strange part of the world. You’re all breaking the law, out here. When we got to the bridge over Maker Creek, we were almost lynched, all three of us. Heads are fitted on pretty loosely, it seems, in this neck of the world. And stealing Maker himself, why, that’s in the game, as I see it. But stealing a penny out of Maker’s pocket, that doesn’t go.”
In fact, that was the way that I saw the thing then, and to tell you the truth, that’s the way I see it now. The whole set of them, on both sides, were ready to stuff ballot boxes, fight to the death, cut throats right and left. Grabbing Maker was simply in that game, it seemed to me. But Maker’s wallet — well, that was different, and I had made a certain promise to Betty Cole.
No matter how clear the affair was to me, and my point of view, Riggs was staggered as if I had shot him through the head, and even Maker was agape as he stared at me.
“I know what you mean,” said Riggs dryly. “Of course there’s a value on that wallet. I know that, you’re not fool enough to give away your fortune, though I can’t help telling you that if you resign your future into
my hands, it will be all the better for you, my lad!”
The oily old hypocrite!
I looked in his face and smiled.
“Good for you, colonel,” said I. “I know that you’ll be generous. But the wallet stays with me till we turn Maker loose. It has to be that way because it’s the only way that I can see. First I want something to eat. Then I want to sleep. And I’m going to do both inside of this room. Otherwise, we’ll find that Maker has slipped out and taken to wings.”
The colonel swayed back on his heels, as though he needed a little extra distance from which to look me over. And after a long moment of silence he muttered:
“Well, we’ll let it go like that, just now! Only don’t try to play both ends against the middle, my son!”
With that, he went stalking out of the room, in a cold fury!
I saw him go with no great concern. This was a pretty confused business, all right.
Presently they brought in a pair of heavy trays, and I set the hands of Maker free and shoved the table over where he could sit on the chair and eat in some comfort.
He said nothing to me, during all of that time, but just ate, and drank his coffee, and every now and then he lifted a scowling glance at me, and held it steadily on my face for a moment.
Finally he finished. I gave him the makings of a cigarette, and we smoked together, while I filled up the cups with the last of the coffee.
Then he said:
“You’ve got me beat. You’ve got me stopped, kid.”
I shrugged my shoulders. There was really nothing that I could say to that, of course.
“What’s the matter, Jerry — if that’s your name,” said he. “Why do you throw in with that long-legged frog eater, that crook of a Riggs?”
“I bumped into him first, and he’s done me a good turn,” said I.
He began to nod.
“You’re right,” said he. “It pays to remember a good friend. But I’m sorry for you. The pay will be slow, in your case, I’m afraid. But about that wallet. You meant what you said?”
“Yes. I meant it.”
“Well, you’ve got me beat,” said Maker.
He went on smoking, his scowl deepening, his eyes almost disappearing under his brows.
“Look here!” said he.
“Well?” said I.
“You know that Riggs will never stop till he has that wallet out of you? You know that he’ll cut your throat to get at it? You know that what’s in that wallet means more to him than I do?”
I listened, and could guess that he was right. When the colonel left the room, it was with the look of one who is coming back, before long.
“That’s all right,” said I. “A man has to take his chances.”
“Well,” muttered Maker, “I wish you luck. But you’re going up against a tough one. Riggs, he looks good-natured. He is, too. He’s free and easy, with the lives and the money of other men. He never has used a gun in his life, but he’s caused more killings than any ten men in the West!”
That I could more than half believe, too. And the more I thought about this picture into which I was fitting myself, the crazier and more dangerous it seemed. I finished my cigarette, stamped out the coal of it, and carried the trays outside the door, into the hall. Down the hall there were two shadows, leaning on things that were not walking sticks. I saw that my friend the colonel had blocked the hall with a pair of riflemen.
So I went back and locked the door behind me.
“Your chain is long enough to let you go to bed,” said I to Maker. “I’ll borrow one blanket off the bed and turn in on the floor. It won’t make my bones ache. I could sleep through a hurricane, just now. But if you stir on the bed, or so much as lift your head, it will waken me. And the minute that you hear a noise, let me know, will you? If they try to break through that door or climb through that window, I’ll stop them if I can.”
CHAPTER XVI. THE CELEBRATION
I COULDN’T GO to sleep at once, for all of that. Because suddenly Piegan woke up. The whole of that little town got up on its highest horse and came with tin pans and horns and lighted lanterns and flaming torches, and pranced and danced and raised the devil in front of the Riggs Hotel.
I said that the town seemed under a shadow when I rode into it that afternoon. But the shadow had lifted now. That was the sunniest little spot in the world, in spite of the dark of the night. A word and a rumor had gone around, and I could guess what that word and that rumor was, because when the crowd came yelling, they were singing the praises of Colonel Riggs, and cheering for Piegan, the county seat!
You can bet that they wanted to win that election. The winning meant that every man’s investment was returned to him, multiplied by ten; the losing mean that the investment was wiped right off the books just the way that Piegan would be wiped off the map.
They yelled for the colonel; they demanded a speech.
I went to the window and saw a fellow get on the seat of a buckboard with a bottle of whisky in one hand and a revolver in the other. He would let off a sentence in praise of Riggs, and then fire a couple of shots out of his gun. And when he fired, the horses hitched to the buckboard would make a lurch and he would sway over and balance on one foot, like a performer on a tight wire.
When he rocked back to the level again, he would take a swig out of the bottle and resume his speech in the favor of Riggs, the maker, the creator, the savior of Piegan.
The crowd was greatly amused by this performance, and in the interims of the speech, they yelled and howled, and they called for the colonel over and over again.
Finally he came out and stood on the front of the porch, where I could just see him. How they yipped when they saw him. Some of them wanted to give him a ride on their shoulders. But he waved them away, and said it would be a shame to leave that spot, because he had just ordered a barrel of whisky to be tapped in the middle of the street.
After that, the crowd was pretty willing to linger right there!
Then everybody grew silent, and the colonel started in his speech.
He began it quietly, making a few jokes, and picking out men here and there for a word or two, or a pleasant remark, and all heads turned, with a white flash, toward the people he was singling out. A neat way he had of making friends from the platform, that fellow Riggs. And one could see that he was a good fellow — in public!
Then he changed his topic a trifle, and he said that he feared it could not be a perfect evening for everybody in Piegan. He feared that there was one exception. He was afraid that there was a man in Piegan, that night, who was famous as a builder of towns. And he couldn’t be sure that that man was really happy.
Of course the crowd appreciated this a lot. They howled and laughed, and then a couple who were already more than half drunk, began to yell that it was time to lynch Sid Maker, and that he had lived long enough, and that he was a treacherous snake, and not a man at all.
The colonel held up both his hands to command silence. It was quite grand and made a fine picture to see him stand there, with his long arms lifted, and the wind fanning the long tails of his coat — he had put on a claw hammer — and the torch light dancing and flaming against the silver of his flowing hair.
I admired him, and despised him, and laughed at him, and admired him again, all in a moment.
Then he told the crowd that it was far from him to wish to see any mob violence staining the pure record of Piegan. Some one burst out into a guffaw, at this, because it was known that at least half a dozen men had been murdered up to date in the young “pure” record of that city. The man who laughed was hit by about ten fists from ten different angles, and his laughter went out like a candle.
Yes, a nice, gentle crowd that was!
The colonel went on talking, after the interruption, and he said that he wouldn’t countenance any harm done to Maker. He realized that he was only one voice in the growing city of Piegan, but that that one voice must always be raised against violence, and upon the side
of right and law.
I thought that every one would break into a roar of laughter, at this nonsense, but the people simply nodded, and murmured agreement. They had been ready to take off the colonel’s hide, at sunset. They were ready to make him a hero, now, and a prophet, too.
He went on with some more balderdash, and finally he referred to “three brave young men who had endangered their lives for the sake of Piegan.”
There was a long, loud howl, a cowboy yell, at that. And every hat went spinning up into the air, as though the thing had been rehearsed.
Then the colonel stretched out a long, skinny arm, and singled out a face.
“There’s one of them now,” said he, “as brave a lad as ever forked a horse!”
It was Slim Jim Earl, and the men near him had him on their shoulders, at once. He stood up in their arms and began to saw the air and make a speech. He had had too much of that free whisky, of course, and it had loosened his tongue clear to the roots. He declared that there had not been three. There had been only one, and two of them were just present, and that was all. He and Dan Loftus had worked on marching orders, and he wanted to tell them what Poker-face had done.
Believe me when I say that he told them. I never heard such a strong imagination at work. He knew a good deal of what had happened, and even that he embroidered with a margin of red and gold. And when he came to the missing chapter, my excursion to the house of Maker, he let his imagination run riot. He simply gave the boys red-hot shots, one after another. According to him, I seemed able to walk through walls, make myself invisible, out-shot five or six practiced gun fighters, and he wound up by having me run half a mile, carrying Sid Maker like a sack of potatoes on my shoulders, and turning, now and then, to shoot it out with the mounted Makerites.
I never had heard such rot. I heard the crowd grow silent. I waited, holding my breath, for the explosion of derisive laughter. But they didn’t laugh! They exploded, right enough, but it was with cheers. They fairly split the sky with their noise, and made a flame jump in the center of my brain.