by Max Brand
Finally, my clothes came back in neat order at the end of the meal, and I dressed. Then I suggested to Riggs that he might pay me for the work I had done.
“Come, come, my boy,” says he, “you can’t expect to keep the thing and make me pay for it?”
“Keep what?” I asked.
“You’re keeping Maker in your hands,” said Riggs.
“I’m keeping him from dirty murder, that’s all,” said I.
“He’s no use to me,” said Riggs.
“I’ll turn him loose then,” said I, “and you’ll see how long it takes him to knock all of your fine election schemes into a cocked hat.”
I started for the door.
“Hold on, Jerry,” bawled the colonel, “you don’t seem to understand that a man will talk in a heat, now and then, and exceed caution, a little. You must allow for a trifle of exaggeration. Of course I’m glad to have that rascal of a Marker here in quiet. Though it”
“All right,” said I. “You admit that he’s worth a lot to you. But all I want is the twenty-five hundred that I bargained for. I want that and I want it now. I’m collecting, Riggs.”
“But the bargain” he protested.
“The bargain was that I should deliver him in Piegan. Here he is.”
Riggs sighed. “I half expected,” said he, “that you would take this line with me. But I’m too old a man to expect real justice from a young man. Well, well, my friend, here is the money agreed upon. Take it, and good luck to you.”
He held out to me a heavy little canvas bag. I took it.
“Now the hundred dollars to fill up Maker’s wallet?” said I.
“Yes, I haven’t forgotten that, either,” said Riggs.
He smiled at me in the most genial fashion, and of course I knew at once that he was lying as fast as a clock can tick. However, I chose to grin at him.
He was in a good deal of a hurry now, and looked at his watch, and exclaimed that he had an appointment, and that he would have to run, as a matter of fact!
Well, I simply stood between him and the door and laughed some more.
“It’s no good, Riggs,” said I.
“What’s no good?” said he, frowning.
“I’m going to count my money — so that I can give you a receipt in full.”
He lost some of the pink in his hanging jowls.
“Tut, tut, Jerry,” said he. “Between gentlemen — a receipt, indeed! Wouldn’t dream of asking such a thing. I know that your word is as good as another man’s bond. I have the most perfect trust in your integrity, my boy. The most perfect faith in the world.”
He tried to push past me, saying that he would see me later but that now
I caught him by the arm.
“Sit down, colonel!” said I.
He looked back at me, saw poison, I suppose, and submitted. He went over to the window and sat down in a chair, where a broad stream of sunshine poured in upon him. And his long, active fingers were drumming rapidly against the arm of the chair.
Then I opened the canvas bag and poured the money out on the table. The stack was big enough to contain twenty-five hundred dollars in gold, but as a matter of fact, a good part of it consisted of fine, fat, silver dollars!
I counted the sum over, calling to the colonel to watch me, and make sure that I didn’t palm any of the coins.
He muttered something about perfect faith and trust between gentlemen, but I paid no attention to that. I was stacking the coins in heaps of ten which made the counting easier, and that blackguard, I found, had put into the canvas sack, exactly one half of the sum he had promised. There were twelve hundred and fifty dollars!
“What did you put in here, Riggs?” I asked him.
“I? The sum agreed upon, of course,” said he.
“That was twenty-five hundred?”
“Yes, certainly, and with the deductions”
“What deductions?”
“Four horses and a buckboard — thrown quite away, my lad. You understand”
“They were simply tools in the job. You knew that. What value did you put on them, though?”
“For the horses, I called it five hundred”
“Five hundred?” I broke in. “You could buy a gross of ponies like that for forty dollars apiece, and you know it. But let it go. The rig?”
“For the rig, two hundred”
“That second-hand affair is not worth a hundred.”
“Come, come, my boy,” said he, “business is business, you know.”
“And robbery is robbery,” said I. “But even checking it off at your rate, you take seven hundred from twenty-five hundred. No, from twenty-six hundred, and that leaves me with nineteen hundred coming.”
“My dear lad, why should I pay for the hay load and hire? You receive a flat rate and you contract to deliver certain goods — Maker, in this case. Naturally, you may have certain incidental expenses along the way. Now you come to me and ask for repayment!”
“Granting you all that,” said I, “you would owe me eighteen hundred. Now, you’re exactly five hundred and fifty shy of that sum.”
“My dear lad,” said he, “you deliver Maker, but you keep a string on him. Turn him and his wallet freely over to me and”
I sat back with a sigh.
“Colonel,” said I, “think it over. I’m with you, if you want. I know that you can be crooked. You think the whole world is crooked. But I’m suggesting that you try to play straight with me. Think it over, and then tell me.”
When I said that, he began to lean forward in his chair, and he kept on leaning as he stared at me, until I almost thought that he would fall. All the smiling was gone from his wicked old face. He was simply drilling away at me and trying to get at the secret that he seemed to think was hidden somewhere in my soul.
I looked back. And, as I looked, I wondered how many miles of muck he had waded through in his journey through the world. I felt suddenly clean, in comparison, even with my burglary charge, and all of that stacked up against me.
“You don’t forget, my lad,” said he, “that you’re wanted by the police!” He slowly grated out the words at me.
“Haven’t you forgotten it?” said I.
He hesitated through another long moment. He was working his brain so hard that I could see his forehead glistening with the heat of thought. At length he pushed himself out of his chair and got to his feet.
There was a heavy safe against the wall, in a corner of the room. He went to it, worked on the combination, opened the door, and reached inside.
Then he straightened and came back to me, with another sack in his hands.
“Here’s the other half of what I owe you, boy,” said he, and clinked it down upon the table. “And here’s an extra thousand out of which you can take the hundred you borrowed from Maker’s wallet.”
I didn’t count that new money. I knew that he had told me the truth, and I was so astonished I almost fell out of my chair. But I was doing some fast thinking on my own behalf, just then. I took up two piles of twenties.
“This will do me for the time,” said I. “You keep the rest safe in your strong box for me, will you, colonel?”
And I went straight out of the room, leaving things that way.
CHAPTER XIX. A YOUTH’S PRIDE
WHEN I WALKED downstairs, that day, I stepped into a new world that I had never seen before. It had changed, for me, overnight. I met no one till I got down to the office in the lobby. In the lobby there were three or four men sitting about, hard-looking cowpunchers, brown with wind and weather, and looking fit for anything. They were smoking, and when I came down the stairs, I saw that their hands stopped moving back and forth from their mouths. Every right hand was stationary, and from it the fumes of the smoke rose steadily upward. I knew I had stopped their talk, for the moment, at least.
I went over to the desk, and there I found the same clerk who had been on such a high horse a couple of evenings before. He had changed his tune now. He spoke to me
and gave me a good morning, and he nodded so profoundly that it was almost a bow. Well, I listened to him chattering about weather, and saw him rubbing his hands together, and watched his foolish eyes go past me toward the others in the lobby. It occurred to me that the idiot thought he was talking to a really important person.
All I wanted to know was how Hooker was getting on, and the clerk said that the doctor thought he might live through the thing, though it was a bad wound, straight through the body. The clerk said that Hooker was a tough fellow, and that a lot of people had been able to guess that before, but that now they knew it!
I was glad to know that Hooker might recover. Tough as he was said to be, if he had lasted through the first night, I felt that it was better than an even break that he would entirely get well.
With that off my mind, I hunted for the writing room, which was one of the luxuries of the hotel of which Riggs was most proud. I found it empty, almost as a matter of course, and I sat down there and wrote my full report to Betty Cole. I put down all the facts in order, and I found that there were so many of them that I had filled six pages with the list, before the finish.
Then, after I had sealed and addressed the envelope, I sat and dreamed for a while, wondering how many days it would be before I could have an answer from her, and as I sat there, I seemed to be urging the trains faster and faster across the continent. A miserable long time seemed to lie ahead of me!
After a time I got up and went out on the front porch of the hotel, with the veranda stretching off to the left of it, the veranda which was a regular fixture with hotels in the West, and in towns of such a size as Piegan.
A dozen men were seated there, canting their chairs back against the wall of the building, and one of them was talking in a way that interested me so that I paused a minute, before stepping onto the porch. He was saying:
“He’s one of those Eastern crooks. He’s done a lot of time. That’s why he doesn’t show any emotion in his face. You take a man who’s been most of his life behind the bars, he learns how to think one thing and to look another. That’s the truth about Poker-face.”
“Well, he’s not so old,” said another man.
“He’s around thirty-two,” said the first speaker.
That was adding ten years or so to my age, and it was quite a jolt to think that I really seemed that old to people. Yes, the last year must have put a lot in my face, for another man added:
“He’s about that age.”
The first fellow went on: “Probably been in the pen, off and on, ever since he was about eighteen, or so.”
“Maybe,” says another.
A nice picture they were making of me!
“He sits on that chair,” said the first one, “and just lets the gun hang from his fingers, and then he lets drive at poor Hooker.”
“I wouldn’t pity Hooker so much,” said another. “Hooker had a gun in his hands. They say that he fired first.”
“That’s a lie,” said the first speaker loudly. “If he’d shot at Poker-face, he couldn’t have missed, at that distance and”
I pushed the door open softly and stepped out. I saw that the first and principal speaker was a youngster of nineteen or twenty. I felt pretty old, in comparison, as I looked at that smooth, brown face.
“I say,” he went on, “that it’s a pretty sad thing when the colonel has to call in Eastern crooks to help him run a town like Piegan, that oughta go straight, and I say”
Just then he noticed that heads were turning away from him, and glancing down the line, he saw me. He gasped, and jumped to his feet.
I waited for a minute, staring at him. I had no desire for trouble. It seemed to me that I had been through so much in the last few weeks that a matter of personal opinion was nothing at all, even when that opinion turned on me.
So I walked over to the pillar at the side of the steps and leaned against it, and rolled a cigarette. Behind me, there was one brief murmur, and then a dead silence. I used that silence to tell my fool of a heart to behave, and it did, very fairly enough. For I was beginning to have it under my thumb, so to speak, and it dared not jump while its boss was watching.
I had lighted my cigarette, when I heard a quick step come down the veranda toward me, and then, close behind my shoulder, a harsh, high, strained voice barked:
“Hey, you!”
I turned around. It was the young fellow. He was twitching all over; his face was white, and his eyes were crazy.
I heard somebody muttering: “Don’t you go and be a fool, Harry!”
But Harry didn’t look like a fool; he looked like a crazy man. Behind him, I could see men shifting rapidly out of the line that projected past me and the youngster. It was plain that they expected bullets to start flying. It was plain that Harry expected the same thing. For he had one hand behind him, clutching something at his hip.
I did not need to be a prophet to know that what he clutched was the handle of a Colt.
And I was wearing no gun! Upstairs sat Sid Maker, with my Colt!
I hoped it was a warm comfort to him, because it left me pretty chilly.
What was the matter with Harry, anyway?
I saw, a moment later, as he broke out: “I been saying some things about you, Ash. You heard ’em?”
His voice was higher and more cracked than ever.
“I heard some of them,” said I.
“I only wanta tell you this,” said he. “What I’ve said, I stick by it!”
Then I understood. He was half mad with fear, but his pride was stronger than his terror, by far. He had talked before a crowd, and he was not going to take water before a crowd. He would rather die. He was expecting to die, and at once.
Why?
Well, I could understand that, too. After the accidents and adventures of the last couple of days, the people of Piegan were beginning to think that I was one of those lightning artists with a gun. One of those dead-shot marvels who have appeared now and again, man-killers, apparently invincible, with a movement of the hand as fast as thought. Of course, that was rot. I never was a very good shot. And I never was above the average on the draw. There was no need of being above average, in a case like this. If I had had a gun, I could have pulled it out at my leisure and killed this fool of a kid.
However, I had no gun, and it was plain that he intended to fight the thing right through. He looked like a frenzied horse, that’s ready to dash over a precipice.
What could I do? To say that I had no weapon would make me out a coward, in turn. No one would believe that. My hands were empty. All that I could do with them was to make them into fists.
“It’s all right, Harry,” I said. “Words don’t hurt me. They’re not bullets, and I don’t carry grudges.”
He blinked.
“You think that you can laugh at me?” he screamed. “Fill your hand, you”
He began to curse me. He was shaking more than ever. His eyes were horrible to see. They were green, and rolling.
There was nothing for it. I had to lean once more on the old game and trust once more that there was something left in my right arm.
So I jerked the hand from below my hip and rose on my toes, and snapped the punch fairly home on the end of his chin.
He swayed back. A Colt swung out in his right hand, and I thought it was the end of me, but instead of shooting, he slumped to both knees and one hand. I leaned over and picked the gun from his nerveless fingers.
CHAPTER XX. A FRIEND
NOTHING THAT I know of was ever such a great comfort to me as that moment. I mean to say, to know that the old right arm still had some dynamite in it was more than a blessing. That Harry was a good, solid chunk of a fellow; I had been surprised by the weight of him against my fist. But there he was kneeling on the veranda ready to be counted out if ever a man was.
When I had his gun, I asked a couple of the bystanders to help him into a chair. Then I changed my mind and asked them to take him into the corner saloon which was also the prope
rty of the great Colonel Riggs.
In there, they put him into a chair. Everybody on the veranda had sidled in to see what might happen. As Harry was coming to, I gave him a slug of redeye, and he put it down, his eyes still rolling. The shock of it straightened him, all at once. He jumped up, saw me, and reached for his gun.
So I handed it to him, butt first, and he gaped as he took it. Then he felt the sore spot on his jaw. It was so childish and naïve, this action of his as he recovered his wits, that one of the fools looking on broke out into a guffaw. I turned and paid that fellow off with a glare that silenced him.
I felt no animosity towards Harry. In fact, I was simply glad that I had had a target to shoot at with my fist, so to speak. I asked him if he were willing to shake hands and call everything quits, but he stared emptily at me, and so I turned around and went out of the place.
He worried me a good deal, so much, in fact, that I went down the street to the general-merchandise store. There I found a good gun counter and bought myself a pair of Colts. The storekeeper insisted that I should take the guns for nothing. He tried to compliment me by saying that as long as I was in town I saved him the cost of an insurance policy. But I made him take the money, and so I got out of the place and away down the street.
All this time I was thinking pretty hard and fast.
What had happened so far had made me, in the eyes of Piegan, a great man. That was all very well. It was pleasant to be a great man in the eyes of any community, large or small. But the better known I became, the more apt the law was to get on my traces.
Besides, it appeared from the actions of Harry that I was now celebrated as a gun-fighter. If not, he would not have made such a desperate scene with me. An ordinary fellow he would have allowed to pass. But if he let me go by, he would be said to have taken water.