by Max Brand
I turned back into the room.
“Slim Jim is the biggest natural liar that I ever listened to,” I said to Maker.
He only laughed.
“We breed ’em the biggest of all kinds, in everything, out this far West,” said he. “Don’t be surprised, son!” And he laughed again. “Listen to ’em now!” said he.
They were cheering once more, organized cheering, and the person that they were cheering was Poker-face!
I have to be honest. It made me feel small. Something shrank inside me, but there was a core of burning joy that made me tremble. Then the speech of the colonel went on, but I had heard enough. I got my blanket, rolled up in it, and lay down in the exact center of the room.
“Maker,” I said, “if anything happens, give me a call.”
Then I went to sleep like falling off a log.
However, I wasn’t due to sleep out the whole of that night. The colonel, confound him, had started that crowd to madness with his greasy, hypocritical talk. And it appeared that after I went to sleep, he talked right on, and gradually built for the people a pretty frightful picture of Sidney Maker, the man-killer, the destroyer who wanted to burn Piegan to the ground. And he particularly drew a bright picture of the guard posted on the Maker Creek bridge, with orders to hang any man from Piegan who attempted to cross it.
This thing went on for some time.
At last, through my sleep, I seemed to hear a sound of thunder. And next, a voice called:
“Jerry! Hey!”
I started up, with my heart hammering.
“They’re coming for me, boy,” said Maker.
That was it. The sound of thunder had been the roar of footfalls on the stairs. The noise was flowing down the upper hall now. It seemed to be right in the same room with me.
Outside, in the street, I could hear voices yelling: “We want Maker! We want Maker!”
Yes, that smooth devil of a Riggs had done his business thoroughly and started the bloodhounds after a helpless prisoner. I saw the thing in a flash, and it made me sick at heart, I can tell you!
Maker was saying, as I ran to the window and looked out: “It’s no use, son. They want me, and they’re going to have me. I knew it would be this way, the moment I saw Riggs’s face, when you refused him the wallet. He meant murder then. He’s doing murder now. Keep out of the way and see that you don’t get mixed in. I’ll tell you this — you’ve been a white man. The only white man in the whole town of Piegan!”
Outside the door, the footfalls stopped. A hand beat heavily upon the door.
“Hey, Poker-face!”
“Yes?” I answered.
“Are you there, Poker-face?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Is Maker in there with you?”
“No,” said I. “He’s in another room.”
“He says that Maker is in another room,” called the questioner.
There was a loud answer from the back of the crowd.
Then the hand beat on my door again.
“It won’t do, Poker-face,” said the speaker. “You’re a good kid, a grand kid, and the pride of Piegan. But we want Maker, and we’re goin’ to have him. If you knew what he was, you wouldn’t want to save him. Open the door, because we’re goin’ to come in.”
I waited a moment. Then I sat down in the chair. I was sick. Icy sweat came out all over my body. It came out so thick that it began to run.
“D’you hear?” called the man at the door, beating on it again, and anger coming hotter in his voice.
His enunciation was a little thick. I guessed that he and two thirds of the rest were partly drunk. Just drunk enough for blind murder.
But something forced me ahead. I won’t call it conscience, but a voice came up in me that found its own way through my lips, a thin, small, croaking voice that I didn’t recognize.
“I’ll shoot the first man through the door!” said that voice.
CHAPTER XVII. GUN PLAY
THERE WAS AN uproar, in answer. I heard some of them saying that they would break my neck, and others yelling to the leaders to go on and break down the door.
Then some one put a big bullet through the lock of the door and smashed it open with a kick.
I was sitting in the chair telling myself that I must not faint. I knew that I was about as good as dead. For I had to interfere, and if I did, that mob would break me into pieces too small to find.
Well, as I sat there with the revolver hanging loosely out of my fingers, through the door charged the figure of a man I recognized, for it was that same Hooker who had been bullying Riggs in the office during the evening of that day. I tell you, I was positively glad to see that it was Hooker. If I had to shoot somebody, he was just the man for me.
When he saw me with the gun in my hand, he yelled out: “Murder! Come on, boys!”
Jerking up a short-barreled, heavy carbine that he was carrying, he let drive at me. The thing was a regular blunderbuss. The kick of it turned him half around, and as he turned, I fired.
I knew that my shot had gone home. Hooker sagged sidewise toward the door, for a step or two.
It seemed to me that there were ten people jammed in that doorway, but not a one of them made an attempt to break in on me after the shot I fired.
Hooker turned around toward them, with one hand held over the wound, and the other hand stretched out before him, as though he were groping for a light.
That big, roaring voice of his had become as quiet as the voice of a sick child, as he said:
“Boys, he shot me! Boys, he’s killed me!”
He stumbled out into the hallway, and there I saw him collapsing, and hands grasping at him, and supporting him, and carrying him away.
Well, the whole crowd turned its attention to Hooker, and not a soul was left to charge me through that open door. I could hardly believe that the danger had come and gone like this. But there I sat, still master of the situation.
I was thankful that my heart was not rioting. I told myself that I would be hanged for this, in due course of time. But there was hardly any way for me to get out of the hotel, and in the meantime, I seemed dying of fatigue. So I gave my revolver to my prisoner, and told him to use it to stop any advance through the door, and to wake me up in the pinch.
“Boy,” he said, “set me free from these irons, and you and I will break through ten walls of hellfire. Together, nothing in the world could stop me!”
I answered what I thought, for some reason. Perhaps I was too sick and tired to do any real thinking.
“I’ve started on this line, and I’m going to fight it out this way. I’ll try to see that they don’t double-cross you again, Maker.”
He was too much of a man to argue. I wrapped myself in the blanket and lay down. For a time, I watched Maker, interested in the tireless way in which he sat up there on the bed, gun in hand, rigid, always ready for a fight. Then I began to wonder about the silence that had fallen over Piegan. It had been as noisy as a great battlefield, a short time before. Now it was as still as a graveyard. Only, from time to time, I thought that I heard whispering voices. In the midst of that wonder I fell asleep.
When I wakened, it was well past dawn, and along in the rose of the early morning. I got up and washed, and wished for a shave. I took some soap and water to Maker, and he looked me over with a grin.
“Not as neat as I’ve seen you, Poker-face,” said he. “Give me the makings, will you?”
He made his smoke with his manacled hands, and I lighted it for him. He drew in a great breath of the smoke, and talked with the cloud issuing in a rush from mouth and nose, torn into fragments by his enunciation.
“That didn’t mean anything to you, kid, I guess,” said he.
“What? Last night?” said I.
“Yes, last night. You snored in your sleep. You’ve got enough brass in you to line all the boilers in the world.”
“I was tired, Sid,” said I, “but I was scared, too. I was terribly scared.”
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“Yeah, I’ll bet you were scared,” he drawled in unbelief.
“I was. I was scared to death.”
“Quit it, Poker-face,” said he. “I never saw a cooler thing in my life than the way you let that brute of a Hooker take a shot at you before you plastered him. That’s drawing it pretty fine, boy, to let a man drive at you from that distance. You’re cutting it pretty fine, Poker-face, and one of these days you may miss a trick. But I suppose that you’ve kidded with death so long and so often that you think she’s a sweetheart, eh?”
“Listen to me, Sid,” said I seriously. “You’re getting an entirely wrong notion. My nerves are just as weak as the next fellow’s. I didn’t expect that Hooker would be brute enough to shoot at me before I’d lifted a hand against him. That’s the only reason that I waited. Not because I wanted to give him the first chance. It makes me sick to have you wander around with the wrong impression of me, Sid. I’m just as common and ordinary in every way as any other man. There was once a time, but that’s gone — that’s gone!”
I stopped off short, for I was thinking about my palmy days, when I lived in the pink of condition, and ten hours slogging in the gymnasium were not too much for me. Those were the days when I was all India rubber and tool-proof steel. Those were the days when I could let the hefty socks bounce off my jaw, while I waded in with both hands, hunting for the knock-out.
But those days were all dead for me. And they wouldn’t come back, either. I was a dead man. Half of me was dead, that is to say. The other half dragged on a miserable existence.
I recovered to hear Maker saying: “Once you were an artist, eh? Was that it? Now you’re only the pet man-killer of Piegan. But you’re doing pretty well in your line, kid. Don’t you complain. You’re making yourself a real headliner.”
I saw, all at once, that it was no use to argue. Maker was a level-headed fellow, but he had seen me under such circumstances that he insisted on making me out a prodigy.
I sat silently by the window and looked up and down the street. It was fairly empty. A man walked across toward the hotel with his coat collar turned up around his neck, and a derby hat on the back of his head, and his hands shoved down into his coat pockets. He looked dirty, unshaven, and whisky-sick.
I felt somewhat the same way, though I hadn’t a drink in me.
How I yearned for a drink then! How I begged in my soul for one, but I knew that I didn’t dare touch the stuff. Not with a crazy, shaking heart like mine.
“You better go to sleep, Maker,” said I.
“I slept four or five hours last night,” said Sid Maker. “I’m all right. I’ve had all the sleep that I can use. I want food, right now.”
“Maybe they’ll try to starve me out,” I suggested.
Just then, down the hallway, came a light, long step, drawing rapidly near us.
“Hello, boys! Hello, Jerry,” sang out the voice of that scoundrel, Colonel Riggs.
I took the revolver from Maker, shoved it into my coat, and went to the door. There I met the colonel.
“Well?” said I.
He tried to meet my eyes, but he couldn’t.
Then he wanted to carry the thing off with a flow of words. He always had plenty of words, confound him.
“Things are swimming, positively swimming along,” said he. “I’ve sent my agents all over the county. Makerville — you’ll be sorry to hear this, Sidney — is buzzing like a hive of wasps, but the town has just learned that you’re visiting over here, and they hardly know what to do. In fact, they’re doing nothing, but letting Piegan step out and collect the honey!”
He laughed and rubbed his hands.
I let him come in and stood back against the wall, bracing my shoulders against it, studying him.
“The whole county will be swept,” he said. “There’s no doubt about the way that things are going. I won’t deny, Sidney, that you had a great following, but you must understand how it is. People in this part of the world believe that a man is either on top of his luck or under it. They like to follow the man who’s on top, and since they find me sitting in the saddle just now, they’re following me. Several of your best men from Makerville have ridden over and offered to enlist with my forces, to-day.”
“Have they?” snapped Maker, touched at last. “Bert?”
“No.”
“Swede?”
“No, not that one.”
“Chuck?”
“I haven’t denied that a few of your men are faithful, Maker. I wouldn’t expect them all to come away.”
“If I have those three, I don’t care about the rest,” said Maker. “You’re welcome to the lot. You hear?”
“I hear you, of course,” said the colonel. “But, in addition, you must remember that the election is to-morrow. Forgotten that?”
Maker said nothing. He made his face a rather sullen blank and comforted himself with silence.
“Now then, boys,” said the colonel, carrying on smoothly, “I suppose that you have an appetite for breakfast. I’ve got some of the best ham you ever laid an eye on, and fresh eggs, too. And coffee — you can smell it from here! There’s only a little trifle to ask of you first, my son.” He turned to me.
“What is it, colonel?” said I.
“There are a lot of angry men in this town, boy. They want your life, but I’ll stand between you and them, never fear. However, I think that you better intrust that wallet to me, in the first place. It would be safer, I should say.”
I merely stared at him, my shoulders comfortably against the wall.
“Well?” he asked, somewhat impatiently. “What are you thinking of?”
“I’m thinking it’s a strange thing,” said I, “that nobody’s killed you. Because I’m half of a mind to do that job myself, right now!”
CHAPTER XVIII. THE COLONEL PAYS
IT WAS ALWAYS amusing to see the line that the old rascal took when he was in a corner. He pretended to be very surprised now.
“Why, my dear boy, my dear boy! I’m offering you my personal guarantee of safety against mob violence in this rough young community. And in exchange, I’m merely suggesting that you should let”
“Colonel,” said I, “will you quit it?”
He dropped his manner at once.
“Quit what, Jerry?” said he.
“Quit this nonsense. Don’t you suppose that I understand perfectly that you built up that crowd last night for the sake of seeing Sid Maker, here, smashed and torn to pieces?”
“I?” cried the colonel, lifting both hands in protest toward the ceiling.
Suddenly I began to laugh. I couldn’t help it. The old boy was too perfect in his part and in his lines. I saw that he was a perfect rascal, and while I was laughing, I saw him looking toward me with a twinkle in his eyes.
When I could sober up, I said that I wanted a shave and breakfast for two.
“Come down with me,” said Riggs, “unless you think that Maker may not be safe in your absence. Safe from the crowd, I mean.”
“I’ve made him safe from the crowd,” said I. And I nodded at Sid.
He lifted in his manacled hands the big, blue-barreled Colt that I had passed to him.
I thought that Riggs would faint. He actually made a step to get behind me.
“It’s no use, colonel,” said I. “That gun is a beauty. It would think nothing of shooting through a span of men at this distance.”
“You’ve given Sid Maker a gun!” said Riggs.
“He was pretty lonely without it,” said I.
“I never thought to see the day when Sid Maker would be in my hotel with a gun in his hand! Get out of this, boy. I want to talk with you. Come along with me!” ordered the colonel.
I tailed along behind him, and stopped at the door to say:
“I’d leave that wallet with you, Sid but it would only get you murdered while I’m gone. I’ll see that some breakfast is sent up to you, though.”
He thanked me, and I went down the hall behind Rig
gs.
The rascal took me to his own room, which was furnished very comfortably, and he offered me a drink of whisky out of his own silver-mounted flask. Well, I stared at that drink which he had poured for nearly a minute, with my whole soul turning over from a desire for the shot, but finally I shook my head. I knew that even a single slug might put me in bed for twenty-four hours, if it happened to hit me in the wrong way.
But I took a bath and a shave, and left my clothes to be cleaned and brushed and pressed, while I wrapped up in one of the colonel’s dressing gowns and had breakfast in his room — and what a breakfast it was. He was tormented by the sight of me eating, and as I put away steaks and eggs and ham and hot corn bread, and a lot of hot milk and coffee, Riggs walked up and down the room and made faces that looked like indigestion pains.
I ate and ate, and ate again. I stocked up for everything that I had missed. Supper of the night before had been merely a whet, so to speak.
In the meantime, while he stalked about the room, Riggs was telling me about his plans for sweeping the county. And I must say that he had thought up some good things.
He had a dozen men and women working in various places, quietly spreading rumors that boosted Piegan and dropped the stock of Makerville as a possibility for the county seat.
He had it out that Makerville was lying on loose gravel inclining toward the bed of Maker Creek, and that the first serious earthquake would spill the whole town down into the creek bed. Then, again, he had other people telling that the gravel on which Makerville stood would not uphold securely the foundations necessary for public buildings.
He had it rumored that Makerville was a fever hole, and that the place had always been avoided by the Indians, natural connoisseurs of healthful spots.
In a word, he was undermining Makerville from beneath and blasting it from above. And where these methods did not seem likely to succeed, he was rounding up all the floating “vote” of tramps and hoodlums and buying them for election day.
That was the way of it with Colonel Riggs, “maker of cities.”
He got very enthusiastic, as he detailed his plans, and enlarged upon his schemes. And as he talked, he caught fire from fire, and new ideas came to him that made him jump for pencil and notebook. He said that I was a stimulating companion, and that it was easy to see that I got the best out of people by inspiring them. As a matter of fact, I had hardly said three words.