Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  But this rider with the black beard was not old. When he turned from one, the look of his shoulders was young, and there was something very trim about those shoulders, and the way the head was canted thoughtfully to one side that reminded me of a man who had sunk deep on my mind and my imagination.

  I got to the side of this fellow and looked up into his face.

  “Chuck,” said I, “just slide off your horse and come in with me.”

  He sat motionless, wordless. I saw his right hand poised in the air near his hip, like a humming bird near a flower.

  “It’s all right, Chuck,” said I. “Your chief needs you, and I’ll show you a back way in.”

  Suddenly he nodded, and turned his horse away. I went through the crowd again, and on the way, I saw young Harry.

  “Harry,” said I, “will you do me a favor?”

  “I’ll give you my head — take it!” said Harry, with his grin that always made me feel old.

  “Where can I get a pair of fast horses that are tough and will go?”

  “I have ’em,” said he.

  “How much?”

  “Nothing, to you.”

  “They’re for a friend.”

  “A friend of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Two hundred for the pair,” said he.

  I knew that a hundred dollars bought a very fair pony in that part of the world, but I could guess that this pair was outstanding, or Harry would not have asked so much. That was what I wanted — a pair of horses that could really travel.

  —

  “Get them,” said I. “Here’s the coin. Bring them around in back of the hotel, and tie them into that patch of poplars. Tie them right in the center of the thicket.”

  “All right,” said he. “What’s up?”

  I took a long chance, but I did not want that youngster to think that I was working behind his back, and he might have strange thoughts when he learned what people had used his horseflesh.

  “I’m getting Maker out of town to-night,” said I.

  I saw Harry start, but he was as game and steady as I ever have seen.

  “Maker!” he said. Then he added hastily, as though he were being caught out: “All right. I’ll have the horses there.”

  He looked grave and sober as a judge, in a moment.

  And I went into the hotel just as a tide of celebration caught up the colonel, shoulder-high, and swept him into the saloon.

  I was glad of that, for it began to look as though I could get Maker out of the hotel without real trouble. I wanted to manage the thing before the whisky turned sour in some of those wild brains and started them thinking of “revenge” in the midst of the triumph.

  So I went to my room, got a pair of good files that I had ready for the emergency, and a can of oil. Then I stepped out the back way and spotted Chuck, at once.

  He said: “I’m covering you from this pocket, Poker-face, if that’s any comfort to you.”

  “All right, Chuck,” said I. “But I happen to be playing this one straight.”

  So I walked in first, and he behind me, through the hall, up the back stairs, and so to Maker’s room. When he saw us come in, he gave me a look and said:

  “There was a whip snap at the finish, eh, Jerry?”

  “About Makerville being an earthquake trap — the mountain boys didn’t like that,” I reported.

  He grinned and nodded.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll have Makerville growing and going in spite of the colonel. But I’ve got to say that I never thought he could win this deal, even with me in a trap. I thought I had men who would handle my end of the job. By the way, who’s your undertaker friend?”

  “We were on the job, chief,” said Chuck. “We worked day and night. We would have split this cheese of a town wide open to get you out, too, except that we agreed that they’d murder you the minute we attacked. I dunno how the luck happened to turn against us. We all five worked like the devil for you — and ourselves!”

  “I should have known you would, Chuck,” said Maker. “How do you happen to be here with that brush on your face?”

  “It was all right, but Poker-face spotted me. He’s a hawk. What’s he to you, chief?”

  “He’s the reason that I’m not packed in clay and sealed for delivery,” said Maker. “What’s the game now, Jerry?”

  But I was already at work with the files. I knew such things fairly well, having had some experience and the priceless advice of Stephani. But though the files worked very well, that steel was as tough as could be, and I began to think over the possibility of picking the colonel’s pocket for the key to the lock as the shortest way out.

  We discussed that a little, but we finally decided that it was best to stick it out this way. We used plenty of oil, and after an hour and a half we could break the shackles off Maker’s ankles.

  He stood up and stretched himself. He looked to the gun which I had given him and which he had kept all of this time, and then he said, with a grin, that he was ready to start.

  “There’s just one thing,” says Chuck, in that quiet, thoughtful voice of his, “and that’s this: Suppose that Jerry, here, is walking you out into a trap that will swallow both you and me?”

  Maker clapped him on the shoulder.

  “You don’t know Jerry as I do,” said he.

  “He’s made a fool of me once,” said Chuck. “I don’t think that he’ll make a fool of me twice.”

  “You see how Chuck is?” said Maker, half joking, half serious. “If you live to be a hundred, both of you, he’ll never forgive you for that slick job of kidnaping. But you’re wrong here, Chuck. Put the cold poison out of your mind. Jerry’s all that’s stood between me and murder every day that I’ve been here!”

  Chuck turned to me again, and his eyes looked straight through to the root of my mind.

  “What are you, anyway?” said he. “Are you in the air, the water, or walkin’ on the dry land?”

  “Wherever he is, he’s right,” said Maker. “Now let’s start.”

  I went first out of the room, and down the hall. And when I came to the back stairs, I saw a group of four men huddled at the bottom of them. Every man was carrying a shotgun.

  I stepped back and told in a whisper what I had seen.

  “We all have guns,” whispered Chuck.

  But I shook my head. It froze my blood to see, in the dim light of the hall, the eagerness that was in Chuck’s face. The man had no gentleness in his heart, when it came to a time of action. Bloodshed meant nothing at all to him.

  We went to the front stairs, and at the bottom of those stairs I saw not four, but five or six people gathered together. A horrible thought came to me that perhaps young Harry had given away the game!

  Those fellows were all armed. They looked as though they were only waiting for a signal to climb the stairs and start business operations, and I had seen a whisky flask going around. If there’s hell on earth, whisky is the stuff that makes it burn with the hottest flame.

  I said: “Boys, they’ve blocked us here, too. But I’ll tell you the best way for us. Chuck and I will go down first. You come behind us, and come close, Sid. You’re short, and they won’t see you very well. Keep your hat pulled down low. They’ll probably think it’s all right, if we walk down slowly. When we get to the foot of the stairs, we’ll break through of a sudden when I give a yip as the signal. Then you two hoof it around the far corner of the building, and drive straight back for the poplars that stand off there. In the middle of the trees you’ll find two strong, fast horses, saddled and ready. Hop them, and ride like the devil!”

  Maker nodded at once. But Chuck gave me a long, careful look, and said not a word.

  What I had suggested seemed the only way. Chuck and I walked deliberately and slowly down the stairs, and Chuck whistled a little song as we went. I’ve never forgotten the tune of it to this day.

  Halfway down the stairs, I told myself that it wouldn’t do.

  That
shotgun brigade was staring up at me.

  “What’s the matter, boys?” I asked.

  One of them said: “Oh, it’s Jerry Ash. What’s on our minds wouldn’t interest you a pile, Jerry. We’re just doin’ a little thinkin’.”

  He laughed. The others joined in with him, and while they were still laughing, we got to the bottom of the steps and walked straight through to the front door of the hotel.

  Behind us, I heard the laughter die out, and then a man said: “By thunder, boys, I almost thought that that last man looked like”

  Another shouted suddenly: “It’s Sid Maker!”

  “Run!” I gasped to my two companions.

  I didn’t need to advise them to do that. They were already through that front door like exploding shells.

  I ran out and turned sharply to the right, and as I did so, about four shotguns roared at once, and the loads of buckshot screamed out into the night air.

  Just across the street was the “post-office” sign. It was badly plastered. So badly that it was replaced the next day.

  Those fellows followed their volley with a charge. They floundered out, and were lost in a moment’s confusion. Then they rushed straight past me — they didn’t seem to see my face — down the veranda.

  Their yelling and the noise of the guns had the men in the saloon pouring out, by this time. Some of them hopped into saddles, and at the same time, they got their directions for the pursuit from the rear of the hotel.

  For out of the darkness, from that direction, came two voices in a prolonged, wild, whooping, Indian yell of mockery and triumph.

  So I knew, by that, that Chuck and Maker were on the wing.

  I half wished that I were with them, because I could guess that times might become pretty hot for me, after this, in Piegan.

  CHAPTER XXIII. MAKER’S FORTUNE

  MURDER, SURELY, WAS in the mind of that shotgun brigade. But though the colonel, I have no doubt, had inspired the thoughts in them, directly or indirectly, the result of the affair was quite different from what I expected.

  I thought that I would be the black sheep, the hated of the town for having thwarted that bloody plan, but instead, people instantly forgot about their first malice toward Maker, and Piegan as a whole seemed to take it for granted that the freeing of Sid Maker had been the act of the entire citizen body! I had been appointed, it seemed, to see that the man got off safely; and Piegan, the next morning, congratulated me as the agent, and itself as the employer of the agent!

  I never saw such a town. I never saw such a lot of optimists. I don’t know what other term to use for them.

  The days went spinning by at a great rate, from this time forward.

  The county was now Piegan County, and Piegan was the accepted county seat. The same election had voted funds for a courthouse, and other funds for the salaries of county officers. And suddenly we had a sheriff, and a lot of other people, put in at a special election.

  That hardly mattered. For they were all Piegan men. They would do what Colonel Riggs told them to do, and that was that!

  The colonel had his hands full, of course.

  One moment he was overlooking the digging for the foundation of the courthouse or the post office. The next he was hurrying off to receive a new batch of settlers in the place. Or else he was settling disputes of all sort — she acted as an ex-officio judge and did it very well — or he was sitting in his office transacting business of a thousand kinds, writing articles for Eastern newspapers and magazines, or ordering supplies of one sort or another.

  The cream of the week for him was Thursday afternoon, when he held an auction, and sold lots in the town. And the eloquence which he had been spilling during the rest of the week never prevented him from having an extra supply on tap when Thursday turned up. I loved to sit by and hear him spin his yarns, and paint the bright picture of what Piegan was going to be, and raise factories out of dust, and widen the streets, and fill up the outskirts with palatial residences.

  A great liar — or poet — was the colonel!

  My six lots, I hung on to. I could have sold them any Thursday, because the colonel, in a streak of strange generosity, had really given me some beauties. I had all four corners of a street crossing in the very center of things, and two more adjoining. As a matter of fact, I think Riggs had given them to me when he was in despair of really winning the election and pulling through. And now he used to advise me, seriously, at least once or twice a week to get rid of the things and take my profit. It was tempting, too, because the price of that stuff had gone up to fifteen hundred dollars a lot. I don’t think that Riggs paid that much for the entire townsite, in the beginning.

  Most of these prices were the result of sheer speculating, of course. Every inch the walls of the courthouse rose, the speculators had a new spasm of joy. And the prices leaped again.

  It was while the first batches of new settlers, speculators, gamblers, et cetera, were coming into the town, and the stage service to the railroad had been trebled, that the colonel stopped me in the street, one day, and I saw that his face was very troubled.

  He linked his arm through mine and walked along with me, pulling me in his direction.

  “What’s the matter, colonel?” said I. “You act as though Makerville had won the election — as though that election hadn’t put thousands and thousands in your pocket — as though you were ready for the road, once more.”

  “The election has put a little money in my safe, I admit, Jerry,” said he. “But the money I have is really, as you must know, held in trust for the entire community. Just now we are growing and prosperous, and if times should change, of course I will be here with my profits in readiness to throw into the breach.”

  “Yes, of course you will,” said I. He looked askance at me, after a quick, shifty way he had.

  “You’re a pessimist, Jerry,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “It darkens my mind and bothers me a great deal to see the tone you take, the attitude that you are assuming towards life. Nothing is built upon doubt except the castle of despair, my lad.”

  I only grinned.

  “Save that for Thursday afternoon, colonel,” I advised him. “Now tell me what’s wrong. What’s happened?”

  “Makerville is permanently on the map, it seems,” he said, bitterly.

  “Has Makerville had another election on her own account?” I asked him.

  He sighed.

  “Copper!” said he.

  “Copper what?” I asked him.

  “Who would have suspected it?” he exclaimed, very irritated. “Silver or gold — yes, somewhere around. But copper! Who would have suspected copper!”

  “They’ve struck copper near by, have they?” I asked.

  “Near by?” he growled. “It’s right in the town. Confound the luck. And all my fault, too!”

  “How was it your fault?” said I, amazed at this.

  “It shows you, Jerry,” said Riggs, “that even the enemies of a thinking man may profit by his thoughts. I never wish Sidney Maker well.”

  “I know that,” said I.

  “He’s a ruffian,” said the colonel. “The sort of fellow that we don’t want in the West. A brutal type — a very brutal type!”

  “I like him a lot,” said I truthfully. “But go right on.”

  “You have the gullible and easy nature of youth, Jerry,” said the colonel. “There is something charming in your naïve approach to life, Jerry — so open-hearted and believing in—”

  “You had me a pessimist, a moment back,” I broke in.

  “Don’t interrupt me, Jerry,” said he. “You break straight into the center of my train of thought. You mustn’t do that, I was about to say that I had warned the county about the loose gravels underlying the town of Makerville, rendering it an earthquake trap.”

  “Well, was there anything in what you made up about that?” I asked.

  “The point is,” said he, “that what I said troubled some of the citizens. They began dippi
ng down to find out what manner of foundations were really under the town and now — the devil take the luck — they’ve found that Makerville is really sitting on top of a copper mine! Maker is a millionaire overnight, all of his cronies are rich, too, and a rush is starting that is likely to sweep my town right off the map.”

  “The rush can’t sweep your town off the map,” said I. “Not while you’ve got the courthouse here.”

  He writhed and groaned.

  “Think of that ruffian Maker,” he said, “sitting pretty with a fortune pouring into his lap like a fountain of diamonds, and here am I, working hard, a public servant, in fact, and only getting”

  “Just a few hundred thousand,” said I.

  “Don’t interrupt me, Jerry,” said he.

  “All right, colonel. Go right on.”

  “The news is spreading through Piegan now. I tried to keep it back, but no use. The people are beginning to pack up and streak for the other place. They’ll leave us as rats leave a sinking ship!”

  He groaned aloud. The colonel was in a real agony, and I thought, for a moment, that he actually had an affection for his latest town aside from the money he hoped to make out of the town site.

  Then he said: “Yesterday, I was planning the municipal park, and laying out the avenues of the better residential section. This morning, a thunderbolt comes from Makerville. Oh, Jerry, how I wish for a newspaper so that I could pour out some of my thoughts about that place!”

  “You’ll have a newspaper before long!” said I. “As for Makerville, I’m not sorry. I’m glad. We strong-armed Sid Maker, and in spite of that, he’s winning his game.”

  Then Colonel Riggs gripped my arm harder and said a thing which I’ve never forgotten to this day. The words come again, striking home deep in my mind, for he said:

  “The point is, Jerry, that this West is bigger than any man or men in it. None of us can measure its possibilities. It surpasses and overlies everything that we say about it. The harder I strain my imagination to strike at the truth, the more I fail. The reality is going to be greater than any man’s dream of it, believe me! Where blow-sand is drifting to-day, orchards will be green to-morrow.”